Work Text:
The only warning he gets that they're reading this earth's Dr McGee -and from what he's heard and witnessed, it's about damn time- in is the echo of voices down the hallway. He can hear Barry explaining the breaches, how certain of the metahumans who have terrorised Central City in the past few months have come from 'Earth-2', and then they round the corner into the Cortex.
He glances up from his work on Velocity, locks eyes with ones that are all at once painfully familiar, yet horribly different. Harrison knows his expression doesn't change, because he already knew about her, because he has years of practise in hiding his emotions until he only gives away exactly what he means to under most circumstances. But Dr McGee's does, from the annoyed frown of a woman who is Not Best Pleased with having crucial information hidden from her, to the naked shock of seeing a man she thought dead standing there behind a computer.
"But you…" she begins, "You're dead. And where's your wheelchair?"
Apparently Barry had neglected to explain who he was, and he's just not in the mood to deal yet again with having to explain that he's not him. Harrison rolls his eyes and straightens up. He shoots Barry a look that clearly says, You're dealing with this, before he storms out of the Cortex, headed for his workroom down below.
It feels appropriate to work on the energy gun prototype he'd stolen weeks ago, when he first arrived here and found he needed a weapon for his plan. He's got some improvements to finish on it, primarily improving the efficiency of the power source. It's terribly interesting, a fun little puzzle to tease out the inefficiencies of. He's not entirely sure how long the fuel will last, what he is sure of is that he has no intentions to use the weapon until failure, but there's something to be said about the best laid plans of men.
They often go astray.
So what he wants is to keep the power levels the same, but have them use less energy. A difficult concept to realise, to be sure, but if he can prevent even the slightest bit of unnecessary energy loss, then he can use less of the fuel source to get the same effect.
He's proverbially elbows deep in schematics and parts when he hears footsteps pause outside his door. Harrison doesn't look up, doesn't need to, because some things are universal constants and one of those is apparently how Tina McGee walks.
She's the one who breaks the silence. "I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that you look just like him, but it does."
He glances up over the rim of his glances, annoyed. "Oh?" he asks brusquely.
His tone makes her frown. Good. "I would have at least thought you'd have different glasses. Or are those his?"
Harrison sighs and tugs the glasses off his face sharply, glares at her. "They're mine. Unless my counterpart was such an idiot that you'd think I'd go dimension-hopping without being able to read."
It's not fair to her, he knows, he knows, that he's making her bear the brunt of his ire. But it's one thing to suffer comparisons to a dead man, a false shade, from people he never met before.
It is another entirely to hear those comparisons in the voice of his closest friend.
"No," she says warily, stepping into the room, "No, he wasn't. Impulsive, yes, and terribly idealistic, but not an idiot. And neither was that… other man."
"Mm, Eobard Thawne?" Harrison asks without really asking.
McGee answers anyways. "Yes. And I admit, I do wonder…"
"I'm not him," he says, a reflex by this point. "If you're going to compare me to anyone, compare me to the real Harrison Wells from this earth. I'm tired of hearing about Thawne."
He pointedly ignores the scowl she shoots him as he bends his head back to his work. He blinks at it, squints, frowns at how he cannot quite make out the finer lines of the rough blueprint he's sketched out. Then he remembers his glasses are in his hand, not on his face, and he shoves them back into place with enough force the stems scrape his ears.
"…Now that is very much the Harrison I knew before," McGee observes.
Harrison snaps his head up, unable to fully hide the shock in his eyes before he meets her gaze. But he schools his expression to something neutral and guarded. Just because he demanded she compare him to his actual doppelgänger if comparisons need be made did not mean he had expected to hear one. Or wanted to. "Is that so?" he mumbles.
"And that's more the one I knew after."
He doesn't need to ask for clarification on what she means by before and after. It grates even worse than the comparisons from anyone else, because… Well, she knew the real Harrison Wells from this world. And from the others, he could convince himself that the comparisons came from some part of the other Wells that Thawne had absorbed into himself. But from her? It's not just hearing them from the counterpart of his oldest friend. It's hearing it from someone who could compare the real Wells to the man who had stolen his life.
It's enough to make him want to shout I'm not him! over and over until his voice is raw and hoarse. And it's less that he minds being compared to Harrison Wells and more that he minds being compared to Eobard Thawne.
After all, he's met Eobard Thawne. And from his brief observations, the man is every bit the piece of work his prior -future?- actions had made him out to be. He has no desire to be told he's anything like that man. (But he wonders, now, if the real reason for the similarities is not that he is like Thawne, but that Thawne had seen a cold, hard Harrison Wells and based his performance on him. Though that thought raises questions on the nature of time that make even his brain protest.)
"What do you want?" he asks, more acid in his tone than is perhaps strictly warranted.
She sighs, and Harrison watches her warily as she moves closer, stops with just the workstation separating them and no spare inches on her side. "I'm not entirely sure," McGee admits quietly.
"I saw you. The night you stole that," she gestures with a small motion to the weapon partially disassembled before them. "And I spent so long trying to convince myself that, no, Harrison Wells was dead, I had to have been imagining things. And he is dead, has been dead longer than I thought, but… I was not imagining who I saw. It isn't easy for me."
He rubs his temple, just under the stem of his glasses. It's not like any of this is easy for him either, he wants to say. Not like it does him any good to constantly be told he's so like an impostor. But he doesn't say any of that, because this Tina McGee deserves his ire as much as the one he knows back home does: that is to say, not at all.
Instead, he goes with a simple, "I can't imagine it would be."
She studies him, and Harrison doesn't want to read too much into it based on Tina, because it galls him to be compared to his counterpart. Then again, her counterpart wasn't in any regards a murderous body-snatching sociopath, so perhaps a comparison wouldn't be as cruel.
If his Tina were looking at him like that, he'd be waiting for her to ask him just where he went wrong. Ask him what happened in his life to make him the man he is today. Possibly because she has asked him the second one before, on the tails of that same concerned, pensive look that says she's evaluated who she sees before her and finds him wanting in human kindness.
He sighs softly, lets his eyes slip closed, because it's so hard to keep his aggressive posturing up in front of Tina, even if it's not his Tina, and he begins to understand just why his team here have had such a hard time letting go of their hatred for Eobard Thawne when they look at him. As much as he cannot separate the love he has for his Tina -she is the sister he never knew he always wanted- from this stranger, how could any of them not look on his face with loathing?
"I'm sorry," he says at long last. He's not entirely sure what it is he's apologising for. Not being enough like her Harrison? Reminding her in some way of Thawne? He'd like to think it's just because he has been rude, but he knows himself well enough to know that the truth lies somewhere in the maelstrom of conflicting emotions she's causing to well up in him. "I've been… cruel."
McGee's expression softens slightly around the edges. She taps her fingers against the desk, fingernails a bit more neatly manicured than he'd have anticipated. But she's not the same Tina he knows, so he ignores that observation. "I haven't been exactly kind myself. Looking at you, and expecting to see someone else."
"Mm," he agrees, "I know. I've been doing the same."
"I suppose there's no love lost between yourself and my doppelgänger, then?" she asks.
He laughs, a soft, hollow sound. Looks away, at the wall beyond her side. For a moment, he considers lying, telling her that they are bitter rivals. But the truth has a tendency to win out in the end, and if they might end up working together in the future… The lie tempts him, but he decides that he cannot lie to any version of Tina to such a degree. "Not quite. More, there's a lot of love to lose."
That answer surprises her, it's written clearly on her face and Harrison needs no familiarity with her to see what it is. She looks like she's about to speak, and he cannot have that, too afraid of what else might come from her mouth.
"She'd probably slap me if she knew I'd stolen from you. If there's a way I can pay you for this…" he taps the energy rifle with his fore and middle fingers, "It would sit easier on my conscience."
Well, honestly, paying her somehow wouldn't make the theft bother him any less than it already doesn't, but it's the sort of thing Tina would appreciate him doing. Offering to make right on his necessary wrongs.
"I don't suppose you have a few million quid just lying around, do you?" she asks, a touch of amusement in her tone that feels oddly misplaced to him.
Harrison hums. "No, unfortunately. The currency from my earth is worthless here."
"In that case… whatever improvements you make to the design. I want them."
His instinct says not only no, but Hell no. Except, really, he has no life here, doesn't exist here… It would hardly harm him at all to just let her have his ideas and profit on them. It's not like he couldn't take hers back to his earth and do just the same, and goodness that is a tempting thought. He eyes her, measuring her up as he thinks about this.
In the end, though, he can't deny Tina a reasonable request, and here Dr McGee is, making a reasonable request. "Fair enough."
She nods once, face set firmly. "Then we have a deal. I expect your work at your earliest convenience. And don't go skipping off back to Earth-2 without delivering it, or else I will hunt you down myself."
That makes Harrison grin, a genuine smile. Oh, he likes this Dr McGee; she has just as much spine as Tina does. They'd get along like a house on fire, and he makes a mental note to definitely send her his work, because the last thing he needs is two Tina McGees teaming up against him for stealing her work and reneging on a deal.
There is no universe in which that could end well for him.