And if you think you won't walk on coals, you will

[musicboxings]

Realistically, Gabe shouldn't be alive. Realistically, Gabe also shouldn't be able to do what he does, let alone do it so well. But he does, and he loves it. Revels in it. There's not much else he knows how to do now, save for this. Save for twisting. Because that's what he does, he thinks--he twists knives that other people have put in each other's backs. He gets off on it, too, or at the very least it fills the strange, empty hole in the entity that calls itself Gabe.

It's the accident--the stupid accelerator accident, and all of the sudden he got his mom to kill herself and he felt happy for the first time in a long time. He remembers smiling at her funeral, remembers whispering to Natalie that she'd probably be better doing the same thing just because he craved that same feeling he got. She told him he was a freak and he disappeared, panicked, because whatever he could do--and he still wasn't sure what it was--didn't work.

Gabe, eventually, figured it out. He could make people think he'd been there their entire lives with just a little verbal coaxing here and there, ruin their lives, feed off of it--that's what he called it--feeding--and then move on. He convinced waitresses and waiters at diners that they'd known him his whole life and he can get things on the house, convinced hotel after hotel that he was just always there for as long as they can remember. He got by. And then? Then Gabe got ambitious.

He remembers a field trip he only half paid attention to to the labs, and then realized that that was his big score--his big fix. The guy that was responsible for that entire accident had to be the most miserable son of a bitch there was. He marches up right to the only crew left, convinces them he was there since the beginning, and is officially part of the team. It works--he just feeds some lie about Harrison Well's wife knowing him and recommending him and he knows he's in for keeps.

Currently, he's got his legs kicked up on a table, everyone else gone home save for him and the professor--doctor--whatever he is. He's got a Nintendo in hand, half-heartedly playing, as he goes through the facts for a hundredth, millionth time: metahumans existed. He was a metahuman. And if he scores a friendship with another one--not Barry, it would fuck with his plan--he'd probably get the biggest meal of his life.

"Hey," he brings his feet down and spins on his chair towards the man in the wheelchair. "What are you doing here, anyway? Whatcha workin' on? Shouldn't you be home?"

Comments

[contranitoris]

Harrison sat tinkering with something. A tiny metal devise that he intently prodded with an even small screw driver. He'd been working on it for several days, now. An old project he'd unearthed from the bowels of the lab. Something had been off for a while, but it was hard to put his finger on exactly. It started with a feeling, a hunch. That itch at the back of his mind telling him something wasn't right.

He'd watched and observed to see what was off. But his team wasn't any different than it had ever been. Cisco cracking jokes about the newest Meta they were hunting. Caitlin being a bit too serious. Barry bouncing in and out and fretting over something new. Gabe slacking off and poking at everyone.

It had taken him several days to see it, because it wasn't anything to be seen. It was a memory. A memory that shouldn't exist. That couldn't exist. A memory of Tess, warm and smiling, introducing the bright young Gabe to him. A budding mentorship that sprang from that one event. But that was impossible. He'd only known that woman for a few brief moments of her life. So when he was alone, truly alone, he'd slipped into the time vault to consult Gideon, to dig up all he could on Gabe Goodman.

There wasn't much to find. A young man lost to history. No record of him working with Harrison Wells or Tess Morgan. No achievements or contributions. No records of him having gone to college. Nothing but an obituary of a Diane Goodman, mentioning her son by name.

That was all he needed to know. Something to hold on to, to keep himself grounded. He needed Gabe to think everything was fine, which meant continuing to subject himself to whatever the boy was actually doing. But from that point forward, he'd dedicated every moment to perfecting something very important.

"What I'm working on, Gabriel, isn't really any of your concern." He didn't even bother looking up, pulling a magnifying glass over his workspace to better see what he was doing. "I'll be here a while yet, go on ahead and get some rest. We've got a big day tomorrow."