Chronology
Jul. 9th, 2006 03:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shankieWally discusses the nature of his power with The Phantom Stranger, and puts the advise to the test.
Chapter Three: The Kindness of Strangers
Wally was somewhere that definitely was not Clark's kitchen. That much, he did know.
He also knew that The Phantom Stranger wasn't known for... proactive involvement. Or clear advise.
Yet here he was, walking beside him on a twisting black ribbon that was somehow steady under their feet, with something too big for Wally to comprehend swirling around them. Something like reality itself, expressing itself like galaxies in a universe everywhere. But this wasn't about the fate of the universe, or even the whole world.
Wally knew that.
The Stranger didn't have to tell him that, and indeed, wasn't; wasn't saying anything at all.
"Are you here to tell me why... what I want... why it can't happen?" Wally finally asked. "Because I don't buy that, and I don't think anything you have to say could change that." He paused, then added, "with all due respect."
"You are asking for a world where you can live your life, together, without knowing what that would be, Wallace West. Without you, life continued, paths converged and split, and all the great truths remain as such, in balance. What more would you ask?"
"What kind of balance is that?" Wally exclaimed, gesturing wildly. "Everything we worked for, everything he dedicated his life to, just gone? I want my chance, I want my life!"
"No matter what it may cost?"
"What could it possibly make worse? I mean, when I always went on and on about how I was the conscience of the League, that wasn't all hot air, egotistical as that may sound."
"But ultimately proven to be true."
"So... what? Just... show me what you're here to show me or whatever."
"There is nothing outside of yourself that can grant your wish."
"I just have to want it bad enough?"
"If I understand your meaning correctly, Wallace West, that is my meaning, to an extent. You brought yourself to this place on your own, a path that remains open."
"The Speed Force... but I can't. I don't know how."
"But you have."
"But, if I go back there, I can't come back."
The space around them began to fill with images, like a thousand movies running at once.
He saw himself, the lightning bolt that gave him his power, running alongside Barry. And then he was suddenly in that moment, watching himself run by looking for all the world like he'd just been handed joy itself. How true that'd been.
He watched the streak of flame that had been the Flash vanish again, never to be seen again.
But did that mean that Barry was somehow alive somewhere?
That, the Stranger didn't show him. Instead, he saw the day he'd first became the Flash, like taking the mantle of a legend all at once.
Fighting with the League. Everything.
"The only way out is through, Wallace West. You are here because you fear to embrace that which grants you power. As long as that fear remains, this is your fate."
Wally stopped in front of him with his arms crossed.
"Stranger... what does that mean? Can't you give me something besides... doom and gloom and fuzzy logic?" He sighed. "Obviously there's some reason you're even talking to me."
The Stranger stopped, and looked at him with those unsetting glowing eyes, and then took off his hat... and he was just... a man. White hair brushing away from a time-weary face and eyes that weren't so much colour as... something else entirely.
"A ripple through time has made something undone that should always exist. Little is unknown to me, and the bond of love is among my many memories."
"You're telling me you... want me to be happy?"
"While my existence is not unfeeling, that was not my entire meaning."
"Does this have something to do with Fate being all chummy?" Wally asked, tilting his head a bit to one side.
"That is something you will have to decide for yourself."
"What?"
The world shifted, and then they were standing on that lonely beach in Gotham, right where he'd started out here.
"In this moment, the reins of destiny are in your own hands. I have no tools to offer, no magics to conjure that could alter your own course."
"So I just have to... embrace it? Not run away?" Wally laughed. "You got summoned for a pep-talk?"
"I keep watch on the course of destinies, and found your crossroads a matter not too small to be visited."
"Do you know what'll happen if I do it? Are you trying to tell me something? Because I'm not great at this reading between the lines stuff."
"You alone can walk your path."
"Oh would you cut it out."
"It is my nature, Wallace West."
"And don't call me that. I'm Wally." Wally looked out over the harbour like it might have answers, but there was just the tolling of a clock in the distance. "Okay. Look inside myself. Step one."
He perched on a rock and closed his eyes. Heartbeat, breathing, rhythm.
His body moved like a clock, even ticking, and focused harder. 'Fear. I have to get rid of my fear.' Fear of what? Going too fast? But that wasn't exactly it. He felt it, then, a presence that had faded into the background and filled everything until he couldn't even see it anymore.
The Speed Force. He'd been thinking of it like something outside, being reached for and ran towards. That was wrong. It was in him and through him. He didn't reach for it anymore, he just let it flow through him, and he could feel it everywhere.
He could feel Bart running home from Metropolis, and something else... He could feel Bruce out there, like a faint thread in a tapestry.
It was beyond time somehow, and he knew that he could always find his way back to him, to that echo, no matter how faint. That he didn't have to fear running too fast; he had to fear not running fast enough.
"Mister! Mister! Are you okay?" Wally blinked out of his reverie, to a cop in futuristic armour and a uniform shaking his shoulder. "Phew, I was worried about you for a second there guy. That happen often?"
"Does what happen often?"
"Your eyes going all sparks like that? Hey..." The cop took a long close look at him. "Are you some kind of superhero or something?"
"I guess I'll have to find out, officer. Thanks."
He took off in a gust, back towards the city. If he'd understood the Stranger correctly, was, of course, possibly totally wrong about that, all he had to do was know he could go back, and things would already set themselves right. Maybe.
Where better to find a gauge for the future than Gotham City?
Wally found it very much the same as he'd left it, apparently. Same sleek architecture built all on top of itself, the same electric hum of energy.
He'd thought, that maybe, just before he'd been shaken out of his meditation, that he'd felt... blips. Whatever that meant.
He perched up above Gazette Square again, looking around for... anything, really.
After a while he decided to go right to the source, and go to Wayne Manor. Two streets over, he ran past an alley, and caught the tail end of a cry for help. Time displacement or not, he was still the Flash.
He doubled back and found three punks wearing something disturbingly similar to clown makeup cornering a girl with long silvery guns and wicked leers.
But before he could react, a dark figure leapt down as a silhouette, and for a moment, he thought it was Bruce.
That didn't last long.
She was wearing a black costume cut up under her arms and up over her face in a white-eyed mask that left her long red hair free, white tape on her hands and up to her biceps, and a white belt slung across her hips, from which she drew and extended a fighting staff, and took them all down so quickly he doubted they even saw what hit them as she continued back up the side of the building.
Stunned for a moment, he still was able to follow her, and catch up on the rooftop.
"Hey, wait!" he called after her.
She dropped to her hands to skid to a quick stop, whirling around.
"Oh come on Bart, please. Will you ever decide if you want to wear the old stitches or not?" She stood up and looked at him closely, like a Bat, all defensive and fluid. "You aren't Bart."
"No," he replied, for lack of any better response.
"You move like my father."
"Who would that be?" He settled his hands on his hips and eyed her curiously.
She was like another red-haired Bat, like Barbara. But... no, that wasn't right. She had speed. Bats didn't have super-powers.
"I think, if you don't know, this isn't a conversation we should be having," she said, deep, silky words cutting with just enough of a threat to end the matter where it stood.
Very, very familiar. It had been a while since the tone unsettled him, but it did now, for a myriad of reasons.
And, he figured, she was way smarter than he was, if she was a masked vigilante in Gotham.
But wait... did that mean... things were different? That it'd worked?
"So, I know you have to be a Bat, because, I've hung around with them enough to know, no matter when I am."
She just smiled a little and raised an eyebrow almost teasingly.
"And, that means you know Batman, right? Stop me when I'm wrong here." She just looked even more amused at that. "And that means, you know who he is and stuff."
"It's entirely possible, I'd imagine."
"Great, sarcasm. Now I totally know you're a Bat."
"I prefer to think of it as 'dry wit' if I can."
"Familiar," he said with a grin, folding his arms.
This might drive him crazy. She obviously wasn't going to let her guard down about anything, and he didn't want to just blurt out names if she wasn't actually who he thought she was.
Maybe... no. He couldn't quite figure her out.
He didn't need one of Bruce's protoge`s getting in his way, at any rate. He could muse about it later.
Wally took off towards Bristol, and found her hot on his heels in a streak of black, white and red. He pushed up past the sound barrier in the harbour, sending a crack through the air closer to populations than he usually preferred, and she was gone. He went straight for the manor and knocked on the door.
Sure, she might catch up before someone answered the door. But seconds ticked by, and she didn't.
Somehow, he wasn't all that surprised when Terry was facing him in the doorway.
"Who..?"
"I'm in kinda a time-loop sort of thing, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay before I went back to the past. Where's Bruce?"
"Bruce? He's where he's been for the past eight years..."
"Oh please don't say dead."
"I wasn't going to."
"What were you going to say?"
"I was going to ask you who you were again. I don't usually get costumed superheroes knocking on my front door."
"Oh, right. They usually just teleport in, right?"
Terry grabbed him and yanked him inside, slamming the door behind him.
"Okay, who are you?"
"Can't get anything past you, at least the chick mistook me for Bart for a second." He pushed back the cowl and shook his hair free. "She was with you, right? See, I wasn't..." Wally trailed off as Terry gave him the strangest look of surprise he'd ever seen. "What, I'm not still dead, am I? Maybe it didn't work that way, after all."
"Wally, you're a paradox."
"That's a new one."
"No, you... you can't be here." Terry dialed his cellphone and hung up; Wally wasn't at all surprised when a red and yellow streak came flying through and up to them. "Did you feel this coming?" Terry asked him.
"Woah," Bart said, a little startled before he answered Terry's question. "Yeah, kinda, but you know Iris is better at that. I mean, I didn't say that. Um." He looked positively frantic at this point. "Supergirl gave me a head's up about some thing in the 30th century I was more looking at..."
They all stared at each other for a minute until Bart spoke up again.
"You, see, you Wally? Are coming with me."
"Where?"
"The 30th century. You can't be here, it's all time-wonky."
"Time wonky?"
"Just trust me on this. You do know how to travel through time already, right?"
"Uh... I haven't exactly..."
"You'll do fine, just follow me, come on. Bye Bats!" Bart waved at Terry then ran off, and Wally didn't see much other choice than to follow him.
Apparently he knew how to do what Wally hadn't tried yet, he'd learn, maybe help out a little, then just go home. That was the plan, after all. Get back home, worry about the rest after that. Nobody had remembered him already being there, which meant he'd done it, right? Now he just had to get there.
"It's easy Wally, just keep up and follow me. I do this all the time."
"If you say so."
Bart glanced back and laughed, then went faster. They accelerated until things blueshifted, then even faster, until near light-speed, where it's all just streaks of bright colour.
And they went faster.
Just like before, when he'd used this stunt to sent Savitar into the timestream, a memory coming back clearly now.
He'd used his speed to take out the Justice League; he'd been faster than Wally, all he could do was dodge him.
Then he'd tried to send him into the Speed Force, just like what had happened to him, and lent him speed while they were near the edge of lightspeed, sending them both careening through time.
Who knows where Savitar might be now.
He kept following Bart, who acted like he was being drawn towards something, pulling it towards him like a string through this world of energy.
Energy and a sudden rush of bliss, of one-ness, of perfection. Wally felt Barry close somewhere, even as he kept Bart ahead of him like a beacon, until they were in the timestream in one jolting instant. He could see Bart again, instead of just feeling where he was, flashing through history in a blur around them.
This way was definitely better than tripping and falling through it.
They began to slow, and then came to a stop in a dizzying new world. The 30th century. He'd been close to here before, on his first time escapade, unpleasant as that ultimately was.
And no Ray Palmer on his shoulder this time, just Bart giving him a wink and taking off again.
Everything here gleamed with technology, moving incredibly fast as the air was as choked as the ground with people and life and motion. Even as it was when they ran, like it was hanging still in the air, he could feel it everywhere in the crazy still-life. It was beautiful in it's choked insanity, somehow still all logical on some level.
He was already inside the Legion headquarters before he stopped to think about it beyond that. Like, about how Bart... this Bart... had just showed up and dragged him on a field trip to the far future.
"Wait, Bart!" He ran to catch up, to ask questions burning on his tongue, but was stopped short by the wonderfully familiar sight of Kara, still exactly like she should be in his time, as increasingly distant as that both was, and felt. "Kara?"
"Flash? What are you doing here?" She caught him in an unexpected hug, just a little too tight, just like her cousin.
"Well, I was chasing Savitar... you were there, remember?"
"Oh, right, that means... I get it now."
"Oh good. Because I'm only about halfway there."
"I shouldn't tell you..."
"Anything about your own future, I get it. I suppose I'll have to start buying that line now, huh?"
"Oh I really missed you," she said with a chuckle. "I've been living here for months, and it's been great, but I do miss it sometimes."
"How did you get here in the first place?"
"I shouldn't..."
"Okay, okay, I get it," he laughed and pointed at Bart with his thumb. "Well, I'm here now. What'd you need the other Flash here for?"
"Savitar landed here, broke into this building, and used our time-travel device set to the 28th century, but our own Flash is on another planet right now and has her hands full."
"Her?"
"You bet she is, she's..." Kara gave Bart a warning look, and he just stopped and shrugged. "Not even that? Okay, fine."
"Riiight... Listen, I'm here to help, then see about getting back home."
"We hoped you could track him before his wave of destruction escalates."
"Can we do that?" Wally asked Bart, who gave him a wide grin.
"You're so... young."
"And you're so old."
Bart just laughed.
"Well, we'll see what we can do, Kara."
They both waved and Bart began accelerating again.
"Why did she call you?"
"It was Brainy's idea at first. Now they just... do. From time to time. Heh."
"So now what are we doing?"
"Look for the anomaly in the Speed Force."
"How do you even know how to do that?"
"You taught me." He replied with a laugh, and pushed faster.
Circular time-logic. Wally was getting a headache. Time travel was way too stressful. The Legion was more than welcome to call future-Bart instead of him for it.
"Never again!"
"What?"
"Nothing!"
At this speed, they were communicating more than speaking, outrunning any sound, yet still somehow hearing each other.
Then they hit the wall of the Speed Force, and again, Wally dove in headfirst, free of fear or doubt.
The Stranger had been right.
* * *
Iris West by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
batfan_sarah
Chapter Three: The Kindness of Strangers
Wally was somewhere that definitely was not Clark's kitchen. That much, he did know.
He also knew that The Phantom Stranger wasn't known for... proactive involvement. Or clear advise.
Yet here he was, walking beside him on a twisting black ribbon that was somehow steady under their feet, with something too big for Wally to comprehend swirling around them. Something like reality itself, expressing itself like galaxies in a universe everywhere. But this wasn't about the fate of the universe, or even the whole world.
Wally knew that.
The Stranger didn't have to tell him that, and indeed, wasn't; wasn't saying anything at all.
"Are you here to tell me why... what I want... why it can't happen?" Wally finally asked. "Because I don't buy that, and I don't think anything you have to say could change that." He paused, then added, "with all due respect."
"You are asking for a world where you can live your life, together, without knowing what that would be, Wallace West. Without you, life continued, paths converged and split, and all the great truths remain as such, in balance. What more would you ask?"
"What kind of balance is that?" Wally exclaimed, gesturing wildly. "Everything we worked for, everything he dedicated his life to, just gone? I want my chance, I want my life!"
"No matter what it may cost?"
"What could it possibly make worse? I mean, when I always went on and on about how I was the conscience of the League, that wasn't all hot air, egotistical as that may sound."
"But ultimately proven to be true."
"So... what? Just... show me what you're here to show me or whatever."
"There is nothing outside of yourself that can grant your wish."
"I just have to want it bad enough?"
"If I understand your meaning correctly, Wallace West, that is my meaning, to an extent. You brought yourself to this place on your own, a path that remains open."
"The Speed Force... but I can't. I don't know how."
"But you have."
"But, if I go back there, I can't come back."
The space around them began to fill with images, like a thousand movies running at once.
He saw himself, the lightning bolt that gave him his power, running alongside Barry. And then he was suddenly in that moment, watching himself run by looking for all the world like he'd just been handed joy itself. How true that'd been.
He watched the streak of flame that had been the Flash vanish again, never to be seen again.
But did that mean that Barry was somehow alive somewhere?
That, the Stranger didn't show him. Instead, he saw the day he'd first became the Flash, like taking the mantle of a legend all at once.
Fighting with the League. Everything.
"The only way out is through, Wallace West. You are here because you fear to embrace that which grants you power. As long as that fear remains, this is your fate."
Wally stopped in front of him with his arms crossed.
"Stranger... what does that mean? Can't you give me something besides... doom and gloom and fuzzy logic?" He sighed. "Obviously there's some reason you're even talking to me."
The Stranger stopped, and looked at him with those unsetting glowing eyes, and then took off his hat... and he was just... a man. White hair brushing away from a time-weary face and eyes that weren't so much colour as... something else entirely.
"A ripple through time has made something undone that should always exist. Little is unknown to me, and the bond of love is among my many memories."
"You're telling me you... want me to be happy?"
"While my existence is not unfeeling, that was not my entire meaning."
"Does this have something to do with Fate being all chummy?" Wally asked, tilting his head a bit to one side.
"That is something you will have to decide for yourself."
"What?"
The world shifted, and then they were standing on that lonely beach in Gotham, right where he'd started out here.
"In this moment, the reins of destiny are in your own hands. I have no tools to offer, no magics to conjure that could alter your own course."
"So I just have to... embrace it? Not run away?" Wally laughed. "You got summoned for a pep-talk?"
"I keep watch on the course of destinies, and found your crossroads a matter not too small to be visited."
"Do you know what'll happen if I do it? Are you trying to tell me something? Because I'm not great at this reading between the lines stuff."
"You alone can walk your path."
"Oh would you cut it out."
"It is my nature, Wallace West."
"And don't call me that. I'm Wally." Wally looked out over the harbour like it might have answers, but there was just the tolling of a clock in the distance. "Okay. Look inside myself. Step one."
He perched on a rock and closed his eyes. Heartbeat, breathing, rhythm.
His body moved like a clock, even ticking, and focused harder. 'Fear. I have to get rid of my fear.' Fear of what? Going too fast? But that wasn't exactly it. He felt it, then, a presence that had faded into the background and filled everything until he couldn't even see it anymore.
The Speed Force. He'd been thinking of it like something outside, being reached for and ran towards. That was wrong. It was in him and through him. He didn't reach for it anymore, he just let it flow through him, and he could feel it everywhere.
He could feel Bart running home from Metropolis, and something else... He could feel Bruce out there, like a faint thread in a tapestry.
It was beyond time somehow, and he knew that he could always find his way back to him, to that echo, no matter how faint. That he didn't have to fear running too fast; he had to fear not running fast enough.
"Mister! Mister! Are you okay?" Wally blinked out of his reverie, to a cop in futuristic armour and a uniform shaking his shoulder. "Phew, I was worried about you for a second there guy. That happen often?"
"Does what happen often?"
"Your eyes going all sparks like that? Hey..." The cop took a long close look at him. "Are you some kind of superhero or something?"
"I guess I'll have to find out, officer. Thanks."
He took off in a gust, back towards the city. If he'd understood the Stranger correctly, was, of course, possibly totally wrong about that, all he had to do was know he could go back, and things would already set themselves right. Maybe.
Where better to find a gauge for the future than Gotham City?
Wally found it very much the same as he'd left it, apparently. Same sleek architecture built all on top of itself, the same electric hum of energy.
He'd thought, that maybe, just before he'd been shaken out of his meditation, that he'd felt... blips. Whatever that meant.
He perched up above Gazette Square again, looking around for... anything, really.
After a while he decided to go right to the source, and go to Wayne Manor. Two streets over, he ran past an alley, and caught the tail end of a cry for help. Time displacement or not, he was still the Flash.
He doubled back and found three punks wearing something disturbingly similar to clown makeup cornering a girl with long silvery guns and wicked leers.
But before he could react, a dark figure leapt down as a silhouette, and for a moment, he thought it was Bruce.
That didn't last long.
She was wearing a black costume cut up under her arms and up over her face in a white-eyed mask that left her long red hair free, white tape on her hands and up to her biceps, and a white belt slung across her hips, from which she drew and extended a fighting staff, and took them all down so quickly he doubted they even saw what hit them as she continued back up the side of the building.
Stunned for a moment, he still was able to follow her, and catch up on the rooftop.
"Hey, wait!" he called after her.
She dropped to her hands to skid to a quick stop, whirling around.
"Oh come on Bart, please. Will you ever decide if you want to wear the old stitches or not?" She stood up and looked at him closely, like a Bat, all defensive and fluid. "You aren't Bart."
"No," he replied, for lack of any better response.
"You move like my father."
"Who would that be?" He settled his hands on his hips and eyed her curiously.
She was like another red-haired Bat, like Barbara. But... no, that wasn't right. She had speed. Bats didn't have super-powers.
"I think, if you don't know, this isn't a conversation we should be having," she said, deep, silky words cutting with just enough of a threat to end the matter where it stood.
Very, very familiar. It had been a while since the tone unsettled him, but it did now, for a myriad of reasons.
And, he figured, she was way smarter than he was, if she was a masked vigilante in Gotham.
But wait... did that mean... things were different? That it'd worked?
"So, I know you have to be a Bat, because, I've hung around with them enough to know, no matter when I am."
She just smiled a little and raised an eyebrow almost teasingly.
"And, that means you know Batman, right? Stop me when I'm wrong here." She just looked even more amused at that. "And that means, you know who he is and stuff."
"It's entirely possible, I'd imagine."
"Great, sarcasm. Now I totally know you're a Bat."
"I prefer to think of it as 'dry wit' if I can."
"Familiar," he said with a grin, folding his arms.
This might drive him crazy. She obviously wasn't going to let her guard down about anything, and he didn't want to just blurt out names if she wasn't actually who he thought she was.
Maybe... no. He couldn't quite figure her out.
He didn't need one of Bruce's protoge`s getting in his way, at any rate. He could muse about it later.
Wally took off towards Bristol, and found her hot on his heels in a streak of black, white and red. He pushed up past the sound barrier in the harbour, sending a crack through the air closer to populations than he usually preferred, and she was gone. He went straight for the manor and knocked on the door.
Sure, she might catch up before someone answered the door. But seconds ticked by, and she didn't.
Somehow, he wasn't all that surprised when Terry was facing him in the doorway.
"Who..?"
"I'm in kinda a time-loop sort of thing, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay before I went back to the past. Where's Bruce?"
"Bruce? He's where he's been for the past eight years..."
"Oh please don't say dead."
"I wasn't going to."
"What were you going to say?"
"I was going to ask you who you were again. I don't usually get costumed superheroes knocking on my front door."
"Oh, right. They usually just teleport in, right?"
Terry grabbed him and yanked him inside, slamming the door behind him.
"Okay, who are you?"
"Can't get anything past you, at least the chick mistook me for Bart for a second." He pushed back the cowl and shook his hair free. "She was with you, right? See, I wasn't..." Wally trailed off as Terry gave him the strangest look of surprise he'd ever seen. "What, I'm not still dead, am I? Maybe it didn't work that way, after all."
"Wally, you're a paradox."
"That's a new one."
"No, you... you can't be here." Terry dialed his cellphone and hung up; Wally wasn't at all surprised when a red and yellow streak came flying through and up to them. "Did you feel this coming?" Terry asked him.
"Woah," Bart said, a little startled before he answered Terry's question. "Yeah, kinda, but you know Iris is better at that. I mean, I didn't say that. Um." He looked positively frantic at this point. "Supergirl gave me a head's up about some thing in the 30th century I was more looking at..."
They all stared at each other for a minute until Bart spoke up again.
"You, see, you Wally? Are coming with me."
"Where?"
"The 30th century. You can't be here, it's all time-wonky."
"Time wonky?"
"Just trust me on this. You do know how to travel through time already, right?"
"Uh... I haven't exactly..."
"You'll do fine, just follow me, come on. Bye Bats!" Bart waved at Terry then ran off, and Wally didn't see much other choice than to follow him.
Apparently he knew how to do what Wally hadn't tried yet, he'd learn, maybe help out a little, then just go home. That was the plan, after all. Get back home, worry about the rest after that. Nobody had remembered him already being there, which meant he'd done it, right? Now he just had to get there.
"It's easy Wally, just keep up and follow me. I do this all the time."
"If you say so."
Bart glanced back and laughed, then went faster. They accelerated until things blueshifted, then even faster, until near light-speed, where it's all just streaks of bright colour.
And they went faster.
Just like before, when he'd used this stunt to sent Savitar into the timestream, a memory coming back clearly now.
He'd used his speed to take out the Justice League; he'd been faster than Wally, all he could do was dodge him.
Then he'd tried to send him into the Speed Force, just like what had happened to him, and lent him speed while they were near the edge of lightspeed, sending them both careening through time.
Who knows where Savitar might be now.
He kept following Bart, who acted like he was being drawn towards something, pulling it towards him like a string through this world of energy.
Energy and a sudden rush of bliss, of one-ness, of perfection. Wally felt Barry close somewhere, even as he kept Bart ahead of him like a beacon, until they were in the timestream in one jolting instant. He could see Bart again, instead of just feeling where he was, flashing through history in a blur around them.
This way was definitely better than tripping and falling through it.
They began to slow, and then came to a stop in a dizzying new world. The 30th century. He'd been close to here before, on his first time escapade, unpleasant as that ultimately was.
And no Ray Palmer on his shoulder this time, just Bart giving him a wink and taking off again.
Everything here gleamed with technology, moving incredibly fast as the air was as choked as the ground with people and life and motion. Even as it was when they ran, like it was hanging still in the air, he could feel it everywhere in the crazy still-life. It was beautiful in it's choked insanity, somehow still all logical on some level.
He was already inside the Legion headquarters before he stopped to think about it beyond that. Like, about how Bart... this Bart... had just showed up and dragged him on a field trip to the far future.
"Wait, Bart!" He ran to catch up, to ask questions burning on his tongue, but was stopped short by the wonderfully familiar sight of Kara, still exactly like she should be in his time, as increasingly distant as that both was, and felt. "Kara?"
"Flash? What are you doing here?" She caught him in an unexpected hug, just a little too tight, just like her cousin.
"Well, I was chasing Savitar... you were there, remember?"
"Oh, right, that means... I get it now."
"Oh good. Because I'm only about halfway there."
"I shouldn't tell you..."
"Anything about your own future, I get it. I suppose I'll have to start buying that line now, huh?"
"Oh I really missed you," she said with a chuckle. "I've been living here for months, and it's been great, but I do miss it sometimes."
"How did you get here in the first place?"
"I shouldn't..."
"Okay, okay, I get it," he laughed and pointed at Bart with his thumb. "Well, I'm here now. What'd you need the other Flash here for?"
"Savitar landed here, broke into this building, and used our time-travel device set to the 28th century, but our own Flash is on another planet right now and has her hands full."
"Her?"
"You bet she is, she's..." Kara gave Bart a warning look, and he just stopped and shrugged. "Not even that? Okay, fine."
"Riiight... Listen, I'm here to help, then see about getting back home."
"We hoped you could track him before his wave of destruction escalates."
"Can we do that?" Wally asked Bart, who gave him a wide grin.
"You're so... young."
"And you're so old."
Bart just laughed.
"Well, we'll see what we can do, Kara."
They both waved and Bart began accelerating again.
"Why did she call you?"
"It was Brainy's idea at first. Now they just... do. From time to time. Heh."
"So now what are we doing?"
"Look for the anomaly in the Speed Force."
"How do you even know how to do that?"
"You taught me." He replied with a laugh, and pushed faster.
Circular time-logic. Wally was getting a headache. Time travel was way too stressful. The Legion was more than welcome to call future-Bart instead of him for it.
"Never again!"
"What?"
"Nothing!"
At this speed, they were communicating more than speaking, outrunning any sound, yet still somehow hearing each other.
Then they hit the wall of the Speed Force, and again, Wally dove in headfirst, free of fear or doubt.
The Stranger had been right.
Iris West by
batfan_sarah
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on 2006-07-09 07:43 am (UTC)Though now I'm left with all these questions!! Argh!!
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on 2006-07-09 08:18 am (UTC)"And you're so old."
That is made of awesome, kthanks. Poor Wally, I hope he gets home soon. Without any more hitches. That won't be the case, so I hope he gets something to eat. I am also kind of beginning to feel bad for Bruce in the previous chapter, but I have to wonder how he expected Wally to react. I mean, "Hi honey, you are home! I now have a wife, a kid, and I'm head of a major criminal organization type thing. Did I mention I went evil? Oh, and you died (maybe) a while ago."
Poor, poor Wally.
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on 2006-07-09 08:26 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-09 08:22 am (UTC)Snarky Bat-people. Gotta love them.
I like how you're mixing in all these other events that happened and throwing in cameos when you can. It really gives it the DC feel, since they just LOVE to throw in cameos.
You're putting out these chapters fast. Don't burn yourself out.
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on 2006-07-09 08:29 am (UTC)Burning out isn't a concern for the foreseeable future, don't worry. :D
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on 2006-07-09 08:39 am (UTC);aslkdj;ljsa;f And yay! Your Kara is not a completely idiot! :D
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on 2006-07-09 08:47 am (UTC):P I no speaky the English.
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on 2006-07-09 08:50 am (UTC)And um, yeah. Well. He's the Flash. And stuff.
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on 2006-07-09 10:21 am (UTC)Kick. Ass.
I love you.
*waits for whatever comes next...*
*shift*
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on 2006-07-09 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-09 03:02 pm (UTC)Girls Blogs...interesting!
on 2007-05-24 01:48 am (UTC)Thank You for site
on 2007-08-26 01:36 pm (UTC)Good site ! ;)
Re: Thank You for site
on 2007-08-28 03:19 pm (UTC)I'm glad you like it, thanks!