Thea and Harry - Vacationing in Central City

[queenleftbehind]

She didn't want to be in Star City. It wasn't that Thea wanted to leave it altogether. Not permanently. But she needed to be away from Felicity's sympathetic glances and Ollie's pointed looks and the emptiness that was their base of operations. With Laurel...gone and John off playing soldier, it was a lonely place. Which was why she could understand the way Ollie was looking at her. She just didn't want to feel guilty for her decision. Just because he'd come back when they'd asked didn't mean it was the right decision for her.

So to sum up, staying in Star City wasn't an option for the immediate future. She needed to give Ollie a chance to digest and accept her decision. She thought briefly about trying to figure out where Roy had ended up, but he'd kept his distance and if she expected Ollie to respect her decision, she had to respect Roy's. Her father was no option at all. She'd tried that once and it was the cause of most of her current problems.

She eventually came up with the solution of heading to Central City to find out what was going on with Barry and company. She'd leave the mask at home. If they needed an archer, they were in trouble enough to call in her brother. Of course, it was possible she'd show up in the middle of whatever crisis was going on at the moment, but maybe she'd just be able to tease Barry and have actual conversations with women who hadn't slept with her brother. Not that she disliked Felicity, but it could be awkward talking about relationships and she thought she might need to talk about Alex sooner or later.

And so she ended up at Star Labs, waiting for the gang to arrive, feet on the console a few inches away from one of the keyboards - Cisco was probably going to have a fit, but that was half of the fun - answering the latest of her brother's texts. No, she wasn't in town. No, she wouldn't be back for a while. Yes, she was very proud of him for being the acting mayor. No, that didn't change her opinion of retiring. She finally put the phone on the desk and closed her eyes with a sigh.

Comments

[binarythinking]

When it came down to it - Harry couldn't stay in his own world. Jesse was happy again, reunited with her friends and reacquainting herself with the life she had before Zoom had upended everything. So he'd signed over STAR Labs to the care of his daughter once they had sent the captured speedster back home to his own world. After that? It was time to come back to this world, to the team that had carved out a hole in his life. Cisco, who challenged him endlessly. Snow's careful composure. Barry's shattered heart.

Simply put - Harry could not abandon them.

So he gathered his gear, hugged his daughter fiercely and he set foot through the portal again. His new home.

The lab was quiet with the exception of a familiar face in the Cortex, idly fiddling with her phone. A faint smile plays at the corners of his lips. "Miss Queen. I didn't expect to see you here." Or anyone else really, given the hour.

[queenleftbehind]

Thea shot Harry a confused look. The last she'd heard through the superhero grapevine, they were planning on shutting down the rifts. Planning on sending him home. But she'd been dealing with so many emotional punches lately that seeing him again was no more than a light slap, the pleasant, playful kind. In fact, probably better that he was here than gone. It wouldn't remind her so sharply about all the things that had changed.

"Call me Miss Queen and I'm going to have to frisk you for cameras, Doc. The only ones who still call me that are the paparazzi either looking to catch me reverting to my bad girl ways or looking for a quote about the new mayor. It's Thea."

She had an odd thought. "Do you mind them calling you Harry?" She doubted he'd had a nickname like that back home. He always seemed too serious for a nickname, though if she squinted in the right light she might almost say that he was smiling. But they'd had to have a way to distinguish them in their own minds from the Harrison Wells who hadn't even been Wells at all and Harry was not the kind of name to instill fear. But, knowing what little she did of the team here, she was betting that they'd never got his opinion or, if they had, they'd steamrolled right over it.

[binarythinking]

His smile is quietly amused and he tips his head, "Fair enough. Thea." It wasn't the first time someone had simply let themselves into the Cortex, but thanks to security upgrades they could at least throttle back the number of visitors to a few approved people.

Naturally those who associated with the Arrow were on such a list, but he still didn't expect to see Thea without her brother or anyone else hovering close by.

The question is unexpected and he pauses to give it a moment of consideration. "No. It took some getting used to but I've grown accustomed to hearing it rather than Harrison or Dr. Wells."

[queenleftbehind]

"You let people call you Harrison?" she teased, turning her full attention to him rather than her phone. "You wild man. What's next, wearing a color that isn't black?" Her eyes followed his outfit up and down and her smile evolved, turning into a full-on grin. "But no, there's adventurous and there's downright crazy. You wouldn't be that crazy."

Come to think of it, she didn't remember ever seeing the fake Wells ever wearing anything but black. Maybe it was something that came with the name. Or maybe there was a Flash dress code that she'd never seen. Caitlyn dressed up, Cisco dressed down, Barry wore red, and Wells wore black.

"So, Doc. What are you doing here? I thought you were headed off back home."

[binarythinking]

"Well that is my name," another faint quirk of his lips as he sets down his coffee. "Black is easy to maintain." No worrying about matching, no searching for the right piece to match, never mind he's normally being dragged out of bed for some impending crisis.

"I am home." He pulls up the other desk chair to sit with her. "Jesse is safe back with her friends and the life she built. The life I had.. it wasn't one I could go back to. Not after everything we had done here to stop Zoom."

"So once I knew she was safe and the other speedster was home, I had Barry bring me back."

[queenleftbehind]

Wow. If it'd been her, having to leave her only family behind in another universe... She wasn't sure she'd be able to do it. Then again, her only stable of friends were all connected in some way or another to her brother. So if they he was in another universe or they were, it wouldn't last that way for long.

"Do you have a way to get back to her?" She frowned, trying to remember what she'd heard from the brief updates she'd heard from Ollie and Felicity. "Weren't you, uh, closing the rifts or something?" What she didn't remember hearing was why, so maybe they'd ended up not closing them and all Barry had to do was whip them across. That would make more sense. If it were something like living in another city or something, then maybe she'd do that.

Who knows, maybe she'd go visit Jesse and see what this other Earth was like. That was about as far from Star City as she could imagine getting.

[binarythinking]

"Of course I do." Harry might be letting his daughter live her life but the last thing he would do it permanently cut ties with her. "We have a way to open rifts back home whenever needed."

He will leave it to Ramon to tell Thea that he's the source of the rifts.

"With Zoom gone, I can let Jesse live her own life. But here is where I belong."

[queenleftbehind]

"Look at you, not being the overprotective parent." She was thinking of Ollie, of course. Her mother wasn't around anymore, but it'd been a long time even before she'd died since she'd stuck her nose into Thea's business. Ollie was the only one who tried, even if he had an odd way of doing it. Wanting her to be a part of his team again. It was her way of wanting her close, she guessed.

She tapped his leg with her foot. "I'm proud of you. Although maybe you've replaced it with being a workaholic?"

She glanced around significantly. She was here to get away, but she didn't know what other reason he had to be here except work, especially when Barry wasn't even here.

[binarythinking]

"It took time," he offers with a faint smile. Jesse had approved of his change of heart, being able to let her go and live her own life and without Zoom to threaten her, Harry could do it. He could let her live her life while he tried to live his.

A faint smile as he sips at his coffee. "I still look like a wanted man. Going out isn't quite that simple." But Cisco and Felicity are working on setting up a new identity for him but it tended to get shoved on the back burner whenever another crisis arose.

[queenleftbehind]

"You were a complete rebel without a cause when you were a teenager, weren't you? Except science. So maybe the kid who blew up the lab a few times too many in high school for it to be strictly an accident. First you come to live here full time and now you're a wanted man." Although she knew that it wasn't exactly his fault. It was the fault of the guy who had pretended to be Harrison Wells. The one who'd killed him and taken over his life. How weird it must be to come here and find out there was a man who looked like you but wasn't you?

"I'm surprised that they don't explain about the other Earth. I mean, all the people showing up in the city, the police must be suspecting something's up."

[binarythinking]

"Oh there was always a reason behind it," he allows with a small smile.

Harry shakes his head. "No. Not yet. Some Earths are a little more ready for the concept of the multiverse than others. Given the presence of men like General Eiling, I think it would be wiser to keep the notion of other Earths strictly in the hypothetical realm." Never mind that it could endanger what they do at STAR Labs and draw unnecessary attention to Cisco, Barry and Caitlin. People Harry would do anything to protect.

[queenleftbehind]

"Some Earths? And here I thought we were your first." She pouted a little although she figured he was just generalizing. If there were a handful of alternate worlds out there, she probably would have heard about it before now. Probably. It wasn't like she kept in close contact with the people out here.

"So you're staying. Good. Barry and company need someone to look out for them." She wouldn't ever accuse Barry of being naive, but he always seemed so exceptionally...cheery. Sometimes it was hard to remember he was a few years older than she was.

"I don't suppose you have a couch I can steal?"

[binarythinking]

"The first one I've traveled to," he admits. But there were others. Worlds they had just barely managed to save from the machinations of Zoom. He could bore her to tears about probability theory and quantum dynamics, but even Harry knows when he should shut off the science.

"Yes, I'm staying." The follow up question however, gets a curious cant of his head. "A couch?"

[queenleftbehind]

She grabbed her phone again for something to fidget with. She hadn't really thought about how she was going to tell people she wanted to stay here for a while. When she'd pictured the confrontation, if she'd pictured it at all, it was usually her showing up in a busy room and giving the task of Watch this or Repeat this back. Or even showing up on an off day and just having a little fun for a while.

She hadn't expected to show up when the only person there was someone she knew even less well than she knew Barry and who was probably about to call her out on all the reasons she needed to be away from Star City right now. But here it was. She took a breath.

"I just needed a vacation-" A lifelong vacation if she had her way. "-and thought I'd visit my red-clothed cousin-in-arms." Not that she was a cousin anymore. But she wasn't sure she was ready for that conversation.

[binarythinking]

There's a faint tip of his head as she fiddles, but Harry doesn't press for more details. He simply waits. There are times when he can be patient. "You needed a vacation from Star City and wind up here," he says slowly.

"Allen won't be back in until morning. He stops by before his shift at CCPD and normally after if we're working on anything." Which was most nights. Harry waves a hand back at the elevator. "There are spare cots two levels down. You can claim whichever one you want." Not that it's technically his lab to offer, but Barry isn't here and he can't imagine he'd turn anyone away in the first place.

[queenleftbehind]

"Oh. Right." She felt stupid. She was so used to Green Arrow hours that she didn't even stop to think that Barry might keep actual hours. She'd forgotten what those were like. Which didn't actually explain what Harry was doing here. Working. That's right. He'd probably come in to work and she was interrupting him. Two levels down. There was probably a maze two levels down, but she'd find the cots he was talking about eventually. And then tomorrow she'd figure out what to do about a shower.

"Well, I don't want to distract you from what you were going to do." She got to her feet and stretched. She still wasn't exactly tired, but she'd figure something out. Except that she hadn't figured out anything so far.

What was she even doing here? Such a bad idea.