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Inertia
Chapter 9: Mobilization
Bruce didn't immediately go transport back down to the cave. The League computers were on par with those in his personal domain, with more than a few programs developed by Terrific and Blue Beetle to render them possibly even more advanced, but he had always found it easiest to work how he found it easiest to live: alone. The WatchTower was manic with activity; the teleporters so exhausted they had begun to make a static mosquito whine. He made a mental note to take a Javelin as he made his way away from the womb, away from the conference room without turning to the bay, heading, in fact, the opposite direction. Calculative Batman was deadpanning somewhere that time was of the essence, every minute he spent up top was another minute a civilian lost their life, that—
Bruce told him to shut up.
He nearly collided with Tim on the way into the MedLab room as the teenager pushed out the door while Bruce simultaneously attempted to enter. The second Robin had joked all the way to Dick's room upon arrival that he was going to draw on Dick's face with a marker while he was out. Now Tim just looked pale, drawn, sick. He pushed past Bruce, muttering some excuse; wrist over his mouth and eyes that were red, eyelids that batted like busy doors. Bruce touched his hair. Tim jerked away from him, rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Bruce sighed heavily, pushed the door open the rest of the way and stopped short of entering.
"I'll talk to him." Barbara Gordon said softly. She was sitting beside Dick's bed, petting his hair, holding the unconscious man's hand loosely. Two of the fingers were broken, splinted together with metal bands and gauze. Bruce's eyes fixed on that and couldn't seem to draw away. "He's done it a couple of times. He's never seen any of us this hurt before . . . he's having trouble."
She looked up at Bruce. Her crimson hair spilled over one shoulder, and under the harsh hospital light it was lackluster. She looked tired. Smudged mascara and the ghost lighting made raccoon rings beneath her eyes. "They just brought Dick back from surgery." She murmured. Bruce thought about taking the medical chart clipped to the edge of the bed and reviewing it, didn't. "They just bolted half of his ribs back together, when he's stable they'll . . ."
She didn't finish, instead glanced down and away from him, brushing a lock of hair from Dick's taped eyes. Bruce stood still in the doorway, a silent statuesque guardian, waiting for her to finish if she would. The hiss of the ventilator matched the artificial rise of Dick's chest, the rhythmic beeping parried lines across primitive screens and block numbers. In the busy, nervous hush that bordered on madcap, Bruce imagined he could hear the sound of the IV's rapid drip into Dick's body, and the sound was like rain on tin roofs.
"I never told him--!" Barbara burst suddenly, just as quickly silenced herself. The hand that was not twined with Dick's balled into a white-knuckled, trembling fist. She looked up at the figure in the doorway and he recoiled.
Rage made her pretty face monstrous.
"Find them."
Bruce nodded, swept away.
"It's the same here in Jump as it is in the rest of the country." Cyborg's face filled the screen central in the monitor womb, did nothing to lighten it with its hard lines, not all of them metal-based. "We've got Troia and Raven on the ground, but we don't dare send anyone—" There was the sound of a far-off explosion. Victor Stone jerked to the side, the camera bucked and wobbled. The screen cut with a line of static. The signal regained integrity in the blink of an eye and Cyborg continued as if uninterrupted. "—else after what happened to Nightwing. Impulse is with Max, but we've activated his communicator so he should be here soon." His deadpan expression fell slightly. "The Titan Tower's been taking some hits, but our defenses are holding, for now. We're going to be sending the other kids up to you."
"Agreed." J'onn said. "We will get back with you within the hour."
Cyborg nodded. J'onn touched the panel and the screen faded to black. Far below, the teleportation bay flashed with what was almost a strobe light. Blue Devil. Crimson Fox. Vixen, apparently right off the runway in what looked like a diamond bikini. Shayera and John, looking haggard and exhausted. J'onn gave the silent go-ahead to Ted Kord, who meandered around the civilian operating the teleporter and popped the panel up like a car hood. Blue Beetle hunkered down, hiding his face from sight; sparks and blue light began to emit from around the vertical console lid.
"Is that everyone?" He turned to Mr. Terrific. The other man was holding a cell phone in one hand, scrolling through a list of computerized names with the other on a smaller screen. The majority had been marked off.
"Close. There are a few we haven't been able to get, and it's going to be even harder since a lot of telephone lines are down. Crimson Avenger . . . Aquaman . . ." He looked at J'onn with some nervousness. "We haven't been able to get a hold of Wally, either."
J'onn paused minutely. "Keep trying." He called out to Diana and Clark in the conference room. They were out of time, could not spare any longer. His rust red eyes had just faded to hue when a harsh voice cut the air behind him.
"Where do you get off, pulling us out of Central City?" J'onn turned, startled. So involved in his work he hadn't sensed Shayera coming up on his back. The crowd in the room instantly quieted, stared with the curiosity of children ogling the standoff before a schoolyard brawl.
Shayera was caked in dust and grime, her hair matted, slight burns radiating pink from one shoulder, the feathers of her wings dirty and disheveled. She looked furious, teeth clenched under lips pressed in a firm line, emerald eyes blazing like twin green flames. J'onn looked behind her to John, who was in much the same physical state. His expression, though calmer and more controlled than hers, offered no help.
"Shayera," J'onn started lowly, gently, "Calm yourself."
She was having none of it. The hands on her mace tightened. "There are plenty of those nut cases running around where we were, J'onn, you had no right to--"
"There have been forty-one reported crimes in Central City. There have been two hundred and fifty seven in Metropolis, and three hundred nineteen in Gotham." He reached out and touched he shoulder with one green hand and she flinched under the grasp, looked away from him. Her shoulders sagged.
"He's fine, Shayera. Contrary to popular belief, Wally isn't stupid. For now, we have to look at the big picture." She muttered something under her breath and pushed away from him, but did not retreat. John continued to watch the Martian with brilliant eyes that were guarded and unreadable. J'onn did not back down from the glower.
There are more lives at stake than one, John.
I was a soldier. I know. That doesn't make the situation any easier to take.
Behind the emotional blockade, he felt the familiar, unconscious touch of Diana and Clark as they entered to room, reached out mentally to draw some comfort from their strength. He turned to the group of heroes, spotted the twin caps of dark hair near the back, pushing towards the front. It was finally time, then.
J'onn's voice bellowed over the thin stream of mutterings that had resumed once it seemed no fight would occur. "The following Leaguers are to remain for briefing and assignment. All others, check in with Mr. Terrific and await further instruction: Superman, Metamorpho, Plastic Man—"
Wally considered his supplies carefully, tapped his fingers in a rolling line against the laminate counter. Peanut Butter, loaf of Wonder, Peach Jelly. One knife. So what if he got a little jelly in his butter and vice versa? John and Dick both used two knives. He'd never understand the reasoning of it.
Before . . . well, before, he would have used the entire loaf, creating a skyscraper PB&J that made double deckers, even triple deckers look like pawns to his well-exercised king. He'd made quite a few of them on the old WatchTower and gotten funny looks from D and Supes, sarcastic ribs from Shay and GL. On the new, expanded Tower, however, the cooks made the sandwiches for them.
Which was annoying. Instead of getting one huge sandwich, he got a dozen little ones, wasting valuable space for other foodstuffs. And they were always soggy. Didn't they know to put peanut butter on both pieces of bread to insulate the jelly and keep it from soaking through? And it was always grape jelly. No peach. Sometimes there was strawberry, but that was only a little better.
Aunt Iris could teach them a thing or two. And not just about sandwiches, the cookies in that place—
Wally shook his head, chasing off the distracted half-daydream. He carefully constructed two levels, added a third after a moment of thought. He'd weighed himself in the bathroom scale and, in the last few days, had actually lost another pound, go figure. Not bothering with a plate (he didn't need one; the sandwich fit in his hand, which was kind of neat and a helluva lot less hassle) and grabbed a beer from the door of the fridge, went into his room and sat on the floor. He took a few bites of the sandwich, not necessarily because he was hungry but because he knew he should be eating something, set the drink unopened on the floor, balanced the sandwich precariously on top. Hand empty, he flipped up the trail of bed coverlet and reached under the bed frame.
He was never sure what the others did with their random super hero paraphernalia, but the stuff tended to build up like plaque: thank-you gifts from civilizations who's doom had been narrowly averted, gadgets and weapons from super-villains (though Bats tended to be their tech geek in that department, and spirited anything interesting into some random file cabinet of the Batcave), keys to cities, artifacts from retired heroes, blah blah blah. There was a whole hall dedicated to the mementos in the bowels of the WatchTower, designated the League Museum, which housed an array of the aforementioned items, along with their own personal collection of alien plant and bacteria life. The Museum was a hook-on to the League Library, where they kept all the magical and alien books that couldn't otherwise be translated into binary, due to language and mystical properties complications, or something like that. Past the first couple of weeks -- after the new recruits had gotten over the kids-at-a-carnival mentality – the Library and Museum tied for least-used areas of the Tower. Wally was pretty sure the only reason the only reason everything wasn't in a couple of cardboard boxes in the storage dock was when the annual 'World Leader Tour' came around, about fifty different old people crapped their pants over the stuff in fifty different languages.
Or maybe it was all that stuff Supes said about 'preserving their legacy' or something like that. Wally wasn't sure. He tended to . . . drift off when Supes talked about stuff like that.
Either way, Wally never contributed. He preferred to hang onto the stuff, no matter how campy or junky or how, if some thief were to find this at the event of a robbery, his cover would be blown even more terrifically than if they came across the drawer full of Flash rings. After a moment of blind groping, his hand found what it was looking for: a Converse shoebox. He pulled out from beneath the bed. The top was coated with a thin layer of dust, the corners hugged by dust-kitties. He had taken precautions of course, guarded the shoebox against the shrewd eye of a potentially snoopy girlfriend by writing PORN across the top in black magic marker.
Wally grinned, admiring his own ingenuity. He pushed the slightly popped cardboard top all the way open.
There wasn't a whole lot in it. The golden laurel from when they saved Hippo's sorority island (precluding the foot in the ass un-invite, of course). Some of the shards of the red gem Mophir had given him to combat the snake boogies. The headband Solovar had given him to ward off mind-control. A Boom-Tube from Mr. Miracle. A Justice Guild of America ring – not the one he had been given, of course, that one had disintegrated with the rest of the illusion – one that he had found on eBay, one of the originals that kids could get back in the seventies for sending in an advertisement to the comic book company and a quarter. It cost him five bucks, and he'd gotten one for himself and John, then for J'onn and Shayera when they inquired.
Wally took out all the mementoes, one by one. Nostalgia washed over him, coaxing a smile to his mouth and melancholy clenching in his guts. He mused over them only for a few moments before setting them in a semi-circle on the floor around him. The rest of the stuff was more standard, weaponry from his more colorful rouges. One of Boomer's boomerangs, some fake dog turds from the Trickster, a handful of 4x4 mirrors that once belonged Mirror Master's kaleidoscope gun (there a funny story behind that). Three of the Top's trick tops. A metal capsule from an extraterrestrial electrical being named Kilg/re, a guy that looked like he had taken a bath in quicksilver, with an ability to control electrical systems that made Livewire look like a spark plug.
Wally paused over this one, pinched the capsule between his fingers and held it up to the light. There was no seam, like a normal pill. Fighting Kilg/re had been his first real case after Barry died, one of the few he handled solo before the League. The weirdo had started off taking over machinery and attacking him with it, had escalated into infiltrating the power systems of all of North America. Wally had been forced, of course, to kick its ass, and with some help from Cyborg had orchestrated a nationwide power outage to put a damper on the alien's parade. And in one of the weirdest plays to date, the guy had given him something upon his defeat, before vanishing into who-knows-where.
Not that Wally even knew what it did. He'd tried breaking it open and the damn thing was indestructible. He'd buried it, heated it, vibrated it at sonic speed, and since come to the conclusion that Kil-whatsis was off somewhere laughing his ass off and Trickster could definitely get some pointers from the guy. Hell, he'd even tried eating it.
Needless to say, he had it back.
Wally set it on the floor with the others, came to the last item in the box. He removed it with reverence, careful not to let any of the parts come unfolded and trail on the floor. He held it to his chest, the outward facing symbol pressed against where he had worn his own.
It was not the suit Barry had died in. That had been buried at the Flash funeral in an otherwise empty coffin. Wally didn't want that one, anyways. He'd been the one to find it after, and . . . and . . .
He didn't want that one.
It was, however, one of the few the second Flash had left behind after his death. Iris had two, Jay had one, and Wally was pretty sure there was one on display in the dumb League Museum. He had the last. He'd borrowed it when it came time to fashion his own suit, to put on the legacy and try to fill the golden boots, and he'd kept it since. He didn't think Iris minded.
Wally thumbed the fabric absently, leaned back to rest against the mattress side and frame of his bed. He'd changed the belt design, darkened the color to make it more streamlined. Removed those stupid little foot ornaments.
Wally barked out a distracted laugh. Man, had he gotten a ration of shit about that.
He didn't take Barry's costume out very often. It was like . . . well, he'd never been very religious, but he imagined it was like the family bible, the one that only came out when there was a tornado alert on the news or word came the Uncle Lester had suffered a stroke. Wally had only taken it from its crude hiding place a few times before, the first after the Thanagarian Invasion, which was the first big thing he'd had to deal with on his own, the first time he'd had to face the betrayal of a friend. The second was after Bart came (and he'd yelled at the damn suit, and if that wasn't the most psychotic/pathetic thing he'd ever done, he wasn't sure what was) and the third was when he'd almost been taken into the Speed Force.
"The Speed Force." Wally murmured. Not exactly a creative title but an appropriate one. He was the first to return, the first to confirm it's fabled actuality, he first to put a name to it. The Speed Force, a force that was both a sentient being and not, one with no discernable motivations other than to dole out the tricks and ride with the game before, on the turn of a dime, it seemed, to trade the chips for cash. Wally could still feel it, and that was worst; worse than the fact that time that seemed to slip through his fingers like smoke, worse than lying awake at night with a belly that wasn't grumbling, worse than watching the world pass by and wondering when it had gotten so damn fast. He felt like a tropical fish, plucked from the ocean and planted in an aquarium with a clear view of the beach. He could still feel it, and it felt close enough to touch, and every time he tried there was a glass wall that bent his groping fingers in.
Though, he thought, on some level he might be grateful. Velocity 9 had just extended his life expectancy substantially. Another truth of the system: speedsters lived fast, died young. The power they had – and Wally was just finally coming to realize the ramifications, since his fight with Luthor/Brainiac – was almost limitless in potential, had no real weakness, but came not with a monkey but a damn succubus on the back. He had used his power with the knowledge that it would inevitably, eventually, destroy him.
And in some really messed up way, Wally was okay with it. It was morbid and terrible to say, but he had come to terms with life and death pretty early on. Maybe it was the result of his adolescent mentality – live like a bus is going to cream you tomorrow; life's a game nobody wins, better enjoy it while you can, all that jazz – or the root of it. Because from the moment the lightning hit the tray in the Central City Crime Lab some ten-plus years before, the moment he was given an electrically charged chemical shower, death came knocking and said, "Look, kid, you're going to die before you get any discernable gray hair, and certainly before wrinkles, but you're going to die saving the world, and the show is going to be spectacular."
What more could someone want? And yeah, maybe Wally did want to go out like a hero and not like Jack from PR who had a heart attack in the parking lot, and maybe he did want to follow in the footsteps of the man who had been more a father to him than Rudolph West ever had, right down to his last, vanishing steps. Maybe he did resent the other six for pulling him back from what Max called the 'Valhalla of Speedsters', for stealing that thunder.
Now look where he was.
"Rip-off." Wally shook the thought away and it abated, another reared with an undeniable truth. With that gone, what did he have? He didn't have a secret identity. Okay, yes, he was Wally West and he didn't run around with a big-ass sign around his neck proclaiming his extracurricular crime fighting.
But at the same time, he did. He was just as likely to walk into a door as Wally as he was the Flash. He cracked the same jokes in and out of costume, hit on the same women, made the same mistakes and beamed the same eight-thousand watt grin. Bats and Supes – the only other two of their original family that also maintained private personas – were completely different. Supes, always the bashful Kansas boy, went from being a force of unquestionable leadership and unshakeable strength, to being a dork. Bats . . . well, he smiled when not in his kevlar and cowl, which, in Wally's opinion, said about all that needed to be said. Yeah, sure, anyone with half a brain might put together that Bruce Wayne was one of maybe ten people in the entire world that could afford the bat-gadgets and hey, Clark Kent bears a striking resemblance to the super-dude and why aren't they ever in the same place at the same time?
The suspicions would be quickly dismissed, however. The two had the dual personality thing down so well it was unnerving, and probably not entirely healthy on a few levels. Wally, on the other hand, found his only reprieve of secrecy in patrolling two cities, and that the cowl he wore covered everything but his mouth. If he tried to pull the magical on-glasses, off-glasses thing, he'd be found out in an hour. Maybe half that, if it were a slow news day.
Maybe that was it. Maybe it was that Wally West wasn't so much the Flash as the Flash was Wally West. Linda had been the first girl he had gone out with as Wally in ages. The fact that he hadn't been seen on the WatchTower in two days was what alerted them to his trouble. And when not sending the required forty hours at work, he was at the orphanage, at city hall, at bank and museum and mall openings, spending time with Dick and Roy, comparing super-hero notes. Or, of course, off saving the world.
He had never realized before how much he neglected one in favor of the other; how he so reveled in his extraordinary life he forgot to keep a solid anchor in normalcy. Sure, if Supes was everyone's best friend and Bat's was everyone's worst nightmare, then Flash was just the every-man. And maybe that was the problem. The Flash and Wally West were so closely intertwined they had become interchangeable, and one without the other was just a mousetrap without a spring.
It would have been better if . . .
The distracted thought, rising from some depth as a breathless whisper made Wally jump as if he'd been shocked. "If what?" He muttered in a low, throaty voice. "If what?!"
There was no answer. The small tide and ebbed back to whatever dark mind-closet had birthed it. Wally was shaking, found errant moisture on his cheeks. He clutched the Flash suit, curled around it.
"What am I thinking?" He moaned. "God, what am I even thinking?"
Overhead, the lights flickered. Wally blinked, scrubbed the back of his hand absently at his face, looked up. The lights waned in and out, then died completely. In the other room, the once chattering TV went silent. Wally saw his cell phone lying across the floor, had long since acclimated himself to its incessant ring, picked it up, looked at the display.
9:27. He'd spent the better part of a half an hour reminiscing. Wallowing. Wally shook his head in something like disgust, jammed the phone into his pocket with the communicator. Half an hour, he chastised himself silently. How much damage could they have done? How many people could they have killed? Half an hour, half an hour, you might as well have given them ten years.
There was time for self-pity later, to make sense of and deal with all of these epiphanies after Velocity 9. For now, he had a job to do, and there wasn't any gray area in that.
With loving delicacy, Wally replaced the Flash suit. Smoothed the fabric into lineless repose back in the box. He then turned to the contents on the floor, squinting in the somewhat dim light. He grabbed the boomerang, tucked it into the waistband of his jeans and straightened his shirt over it, hoping he didn't somehow set it off and blow his nuts to Chattahoochee. Tucked the three tops into a pocket, though he wasn't sure what they did (you think the guy could put a label on them.) After sweeping over the objects once more, he took the Kilg/re pill and tucked it away with the phone and the commlink. You never knew, after all. He was, however, going to have to make a stop before he really got down to any business.
He replaced the items in the Allstar box, closed the lid, slid it back to its place under the bed. He went to his closet, pulled out his temporary resort and exited.
He stalled in the doorway, glanced compulsively over his shoulder at the bed, the spot he knew the box was under.
"Hope I make you proud, Barry."
Okie-dokie. More of a filler chapter here, but for those of you who wanted Wally . . . Voila! Five pages worth, and angsty Wally no less. Aww. We'll get back to the action next chapter.
As for when that's going to be . . . I'm heading down to Florida for the next eight days, so plenty of time to write! Wee. Unfortunately, wether or not I update in said time pivots on wether or not the hotel I'm staying in has WiFi. Of that, I have no idea.
For fans of the comic: Anyone about to flame me about the spelling of a certain villain's name . . . well, FF doesn't allow for special characters, so I improvised. Believe me, I was uber pissed when I figured that one out. And I know I changed the history of all that quite a lot. If you haven't noticed, this really isn't following the comic very much at all. That's what makes it fanfiction. :)
As always, Review!