While Nora was inside quietly unravelling her sense of reality, the two Flashes and Jude were outside quietly failing to have a conversation.
"Can we move?" Jude looked between them — two identical men doing an uncanny impression of a pair of goldfish staring at each other through the glass. "We're on a clock. The longer she's in there comparing notes with Henry, the faster she hits a discrepancy she can't explain away. So: words. Now. Quickly."
Both Barries nodded.
Then both Barries spoke at exactly the same time.
They stopped. Looked at each other. One of them made a go ahead gesture. The other made the same gesture simultaneously. They both started talking again.
"Are you kidding me."
Jude pinched the bridge of his nose. He'd known the Flash was a talker — the transuniversal smuggling trip had made that abundantly clear — but experiencing it in stereo was a uniquely excruciating form of suffering that he was not sure any multiverse theory had adequately prepared him for.
"One at a time. Whoever—" He stopped. Made a decision. Turned to the Barry from the other universe. "You. Start talking. And you—" he pointed at this universe's Barry— "don't finish his sentences."
Then he turned back to the other Barry and punched him in the shoulder. "You're the one who showed up unannounced at my door. Explain yourself."
"Okay, okay." The other Barry rubbed his arm with an expression of mild betrayal. "So — Shawna and Ronnie and I were doing training runs, and I was pushing my speed, and I accidentally hit a wormhole again. Followed the Speed Force connection through and ended up here." He broke into a grin that was almost aggressively sincere. "Honestly, I'm really glad to see you, Jude. I should have put it together sooner — that you were from another universe."
"You are the root of all evil," Jude said. "Not today, specifically. But the actuarial projections are not in your favour."
"That's fair," Barry agreed cheerfully, which was not the response Jude had expected.
"Right. Two things." Jude held up two fingers. "In order. No tangents."
He paused to make sure they were both actually listening.
"First — you saw Henry Allen just now, didn't you?"
The other Barry's expression shifted into something warmer, more complicated. "Yeah. I mean — he really does look exactly like my dad." He glanced at his counterpart. "And you got him out of prison? Without breaking the law? I couldn't even — I can't imagine doing that without—" He caught Jude's look and stopped himself. "Sorry. Tangent. Continuing."
This universe's Barry had gone very still. He was parsing something — filing away a piece of information the other man had just dropped without meaning to.
Reverse-Flash. The other Barry had just referenced defeating a Reverse-Flash. Recently, by the sound of it.
Which means he's barely started, this Barry thought. He's right at the beginning.
"Second point." Jude watched both their faces. "Did you catch what I said earlier — about Nora being inside?"
The other Barry nodded on autopilot. "Yeah, you mentioned it, so—"
He stopped.
The automatic nodding ceased. His mouth stayed slightly open for a moment as his brain finished processing the sentence he'd been in the middle of.
"Is that..." His voice dropped. Steadied itself with some effort. "Is that my mother?"
Nobody answered immediately, and the silence was its own answer.
Barry from the other universe had been on the far side of a particle accelerator wormhole when he'd tried to save her. Everyone at S.T.A.R. Labs had known he was going back. Nobody had known — not really — what it had cost him to make that run, or what it had cost him to come back without her.
Two things had shaped every year of his life since he was eleven years old: his father in a prison cell for a murder he didn't commit, and the image of his mother on the kitchen floor. One of those wounds still had the possibility of healing. The other one had always been the kind of grief you learned to carry rather than the kind you ever set down.
He reached out and grabbed his counterpart's shoulders without quite meaning to.
"There's no Reverse-Flash in this universe? Or did another version of me — did you — did someone save her?" His voice was doing something involuntary. He didn't try to stop it. "You saved her. You actually saved her?"
His eyes were bright in a way that had nothing to do with the Speed Force.
This universe's Barry looked at him steadily.
"I didn't." His voice was quiet but not unkind. "Not before today. I couldn't."
He let that land. Then: "Barry. You've altered a timeline before, haven't you? Even once?"
Silence. Which was its own answer.
"A single day," this Barry continued. "One day changed in the past and you can feel the consequences for years. Your mother's death happened more than a decade ago. Everything we are — everything we've built, the people we've found, the fights we've survived — all of it is built on top of that decade. You go back and undo that night, and all of it goes with it."
The other Barry pressed both hands against the sides of his head and stared at the floor.
"Then why," he said, "is there a Nora Allen in that apartment?"
He answered his own question before anyone else could — using the speed to crack the door open an inch, just long enough to see the profile of the woman inside, the familiar angle of her jaw, the way she held her mug. His nose stung.
He turned back to Jude. "Someone time-traveled to save her. That's the only explanation."
"Yes," Jude said simply.
Both Barries looked at him.
"This Nora Allen is your mother," Jude said, meeting the other Barry's eyes. "Specifically yours."
The other Barry stared at him. This Barry stared at him. Neither of them spoke, each processing from a different direction — one wondering which universe Nora had actually come from, the other still doing the calculation on what Jude had just confirmed.
"Mine," the other Barry said. Not quite a question.
"Your future self found a way around the timeline." Jude kept his voice level, practical, because this needed to be heard clearly. "He took me back to that night. We substituted Nora's body, left in place, the timeline sees what it needs to see. I used the Smuggling skill to bring the real Nora here."
He let that settle.
"In your universe, Nora Allen still died. The records show it. Barry Allen's life for the next decade is unchanged — every choice, every loss, every person you became because of her absence. The timeline is intact." He paused. "But my universe has a refugee."
"You can visit, whenever you can make the crossing. She can live here, properly. She doesn't have to die."
The other Barry stood very still.
The grief that had lived in his chest for fifteen years — the particular weight of a thing you've accepted will never be resolved — shifted. Didn't disappear. But shifted, in the way that a door does when the lock inside finally turns.
He wasn't sure, in that moment, whether he wanted to laugh or cry or simply sit down on the hallway floor and stop pretending he was handling any of this with any degree of composure.
He'd been waiting for something like this for a long time. He hadn't quite let himself believe it was possible.
This universe's Barry watched him for a moment, then asked the thing that had been sitting in the back of his mind since Jude's explanation.
"So." His tone was careful. Practical. Already thinking two steps ahead. "Are we going to have a problem with Black Lightning?"