Chronology
Jul. 8th, 2006 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shankieIt's a strange new world, and things can only get stranger before they get better.
Chapter Two: Time, Warped
Bruce had run off to check on something, and Wally was almost glad. There was... way too much to take in.
So he did what he usually did when he was trying to get an even keel; he began to sing to himself.
"Everybody's wait-ing for some-thing to ha-appen, everybody's waiting for something to see! Lunatics wait-ing for bigger disa-asters. Everyone's wait-ing for news on TV!"
He browsed through the library idly, noting the books all looked ancient and priceless.
'What is going on?'
"So I watch and I wait! And I praaay for an answer! An end to the strife and the wo-orld's misery! But the end never came! And we're digging the graves! And we're loading the guns for the kiiiiilll!"
"You never change, do you?" Wally turned around and smiled as Bruce came back from whatever errand he'd deemed vital and got a little shy under the look he was giving him. "Bart knew. I couldn't tell Terry, not without compromising everything. He's good, but..." Bruce sat down and folded his hands together in front of his chin. "I'm sure he would have told you, given time... but I don't know how much you should know. Just what you already do. You... you never went back, Wally. And I don't know what that means now."
"Bruce what... what are you doing here? Why are you calling yourself The Demon Head? Why..?" He stopped and bit his lip. Bruce looked almost lost... so he knelt before him and leaned on his knee. "I don't care about the timeline, Bruce. I need to know everything."
Bruce leaned down and had a look like he was about to shatter into a million pieces, but just kissed Wally gently on the forehead, like he'd done so many times before.
"It was all over," Bruce began, "everything. I could feel the grip of death come closer every day... my name had gone to someone else. Some days, it was like I had nothing left to live for. And then everything changed."
Wally gazed up at him and listened in wonder. It was unbelievable... impossible that this was even happening, and yet, it was.
"Ra's wasn't dead. Of course, I never really thought he had. Just like..." he continued, then paused, looking down, then off in the distance again. "You were gone, Wally. At first, I was certain you'd come running back at any moment, but you'd said, the last time, that you wouldn't be able to. And years passed, and... I finally believed it. I believed you were dead and I had nothing left but my work. Drove everyone away, and after Alfred died... there was nobody left."
Bruce's far-off gaze focused on him again.
"Wally, I... It was decades before I could even speak of you again. Once Bart's visits changed. He moved out, and came less frequently, until he only came once a year... so we could remember you. So many people that did were gone, and... we had to remember you."
Wally got an image of his own funeral, of sad faces and somber black. So surreal.
"I can't... I still... I mean..." Wally waved around at nothing in particular. "None of this has to happen. I can just go home and we'll be together again. It doesn't matter what you remember, there has to be a way."
"If there's a way, I'll help you find it, I swear," Bruce said empassionedly. "I'd like love nothing better. But I don't have any technology to get you back into the timestream, and you can't risk what you did before. I watched you die Wally... that's what I believed, what everyone believed, for over half a century. You can't risk it again."
"I wish that you weren't right," Wally said resignedly. "But... the treadmill?"
"Destroyed in an earthquake years ago. I never thought I'd use it, and by then Palmer had retired. I don't think there's anyone alive who could reproduce it now."
Wally thought hard. He'd gotten lost in the Speed Force and just barely made it out, and fell into the timestream... hard. He might very well not be able to do that again, and even if he could... there was no guarantee of where he'd end up.
He might be flung anywhere.
"Ra's was still alive," Bruce continued after a pause, "had cheated death to the point where he believed he was undefeatable. But I, even as an old man nearing the end, presented the greatest threat to him. So he kidnapped me and offered me a choice; he'd go after Terry, or we could do a final battle of wits. Both enter the Lazarus pit at once, and see who survived." Bruce grinned a little before continuing. "I won."
Wally couldn't help but laugh. As if Bruce wouldn't win or something.
"Ever since then, I've been convincing his old followers that I'm his successor, and unbenowst to them, I've turned Ra's organization bent on terror into something good for the world, and a powerful tool to acquire anything I need."
"That's why you didn't tell Terry? So he'd keep trying to find you and fool everyone?"
"I don't like it. But for now, I only keep things together by a tenuous string, and I can't afford to lose."
Wally leaned back a little and looked at him quizzically.
"Yeah, you said I had to help you... with what?"
"It's a different world now. The Justice League does what they can, but they aren't like we were. If something came to earth... for instance, if Darkseid ever came back for revenge, I'm not sure they would be enough. So I've... taken the initiative."
"And all the while they think you're a terrorist."
"If the organization were to discover the truth, the plan would fail."
"You couldn't do it as... well... you?"
"Return to Gotham and attempt to explain that I've become an immortal? Leave the League to be taken over by the next person to come along with designs on power?"
"Oh."
Bruce sighed.
"Now that you're here, anything you do might be the reason you never return to the past."
"Bruce!" Wally sat back and shook his head at him, then started pacing around and counting off on his fingers. "I've won the lottery. Been struck by lightning; twice. Became a superhero back when most kids were still thought girls were icky. Got reality-displaced out of an infinite number of possibilities, by chance. And even more impossible, I dated the most elusive, dangerous, and powerful man on earth. Don't even start about what-ifs. My life has been about beating the odds. If there's a chance, I'll do it!"
Wally circled the room again anxiously, then stopped and leaned against the carved oak desk in front of the window.
"I will get home," he said, "but, for now... why don't you show me around?"
"Perhaps after a change of clothes," Bruce said, a happier look returning to his face. "Capes, rare as they are these days, make my men nervous."
'Huh.'
"Well, okay."
Bruce's bedroom here was best described as something stolen off the set of The Ten Commandments. The Charlton Heston one.
Arches over carved white pillars held drapes that fluttered in the dry desert wind, with furniture all ornate and worth a fortune each, he figured. Thick, embroidered rugs on the floor that wasn't polished mosaic patterns, and a four-poster bed that could sleep ten easily.
"Did you turn into the king of the desert or what?"
"I try not to think about it that way." He pulled some blue, black, and tan fabric out of a dresser and draped it on the bed, then just stood there and looked at him. "I still can't believe you're real, Wally."
"Well, I am, near as I can tell."
He wanted to walk over there and touch him until they both forgot. Until Wally forgot that the man before him was still Bruce... but it was like he was someone else entirely. He couldn't shake the feeling, no matter how he tried. Something different was in those blue eyes, like light couldn't escape them.
Instead, he just picked up the fabric, puzzled out how to put it on, then whipped up a whirlwind and emerged clad in loose black pants with a sash across his waist belting a long blue sleeveless tunic.
A very... Ra's al Ghul kind of outfit.
He shook a little sand out of his hair, and Bruce pulled something out of his pocket, then walked up behind him and gently ran his fingers through Wally's hair, smoothing it down, then tying most of it back, with the rest drifting forward along the sides of his face.
"You'll have less difficulty with the sand that way," Bruce explained, then stepped forward and offered his hand. "I'll show you everything."
In spite of all his worries, he didn't hesitate to take it and hold on to it as they stepped outside past guards that made their little bows as they went by, through high-ceilinged halls that opened over the horizon still waiting for sunset.
Everyone here had the whole pants-and-sash thing going, and there was a lot included in 'everyone'... training yards out the windows ran with the grunts and systematic yells of martial arts practices held in long rows of white-draped ninjas.
At least, that's what he figured they were. A big horde of ninjas. Like out of a Bruce Lee movie. Actually, it was a lot like that. But that would make Bruce the boss at the end of the story that has a crackhouse in his basement or something. And he'd be the overdone chick who secretly knows kung-fu. Or something.
And where was Bart?
"Where's Bart?"
"I sent him home. You can see him whenever you'd like, but I wanted... time."
"Oh."
He squeezed the fingers laced in his own a little, and Bruce smiled, then gestured into a wide room full of people leaning over bits of technology with little tools.
"One of my strengths has continued to be the development of advanced technology to withhold, while sending previous versions on the open market."
"Flying cars and stuff?"
"Something like that."
Bruce turned his head distractedly as a short man in a green robe made a little bow.
"My lord, lady Talia has returned from her mission and seeks an audience."
"Tell her I'll be there shortly."
The man bowed again and hastily strode off.
"Talia's here?"
"Yes. She is... one of my operatives." They headed in the direction the other guy had scurried off to, and Wally continued to be mesmerized by the army training outside. "She, like her father, was not dead."
But wasn't she... huh.
"Oh."
"Our marriage is purely ceremonial, to appease the organization and the lineage."
"Lineage? Marriage?"
They stepped into what looked like some kind of throne room, where Talia greeted Bruce with a kiss on the cheek and eyed Wally warily. A man with green eyes that looked at him sharply, short black hair, and a face ever so familiar stood behind her stoically.
"Talia, this is Wally West, my... consort." 'Consort?' Wally thought bemusedly, and gave Bruce a raised eyebrow, but he continued, gesturing at the silent man. "Wally, this is my son, Ibn. But I prefer to call him Jason, much to his mother's irritation," he said with a smirk.
Wally just stared with his jaw hanging open and blinked.
"But I thought..?"
"Jason was born the year I first became Batman."
"Buh?"
'Hold up, hold up, hold UP. That means he's alive now, I mean, then, and he... she...' Wally couldn't find anything coherent to say, so he just shut his mouth and rubbed his forehead until he could figure out what sort of response should give to not have this all go terribly uncomfortably.
"I need to run. I... I'll be back, I guess."
The shoes and flapping fabric made him run a little slower than he'd like to, but it wasn't distance he was going for.
This couldn't be right, none of this. It didn't make any sense. Since when did Bruce have a son that'd be... almost a teenager by now. Then. Whatever. And he's all lord of half the earth in some palace? With an army? And a wife?
It didn't make any damn sense at all.
'What isn't Bruce telling me?'
Wally took a tour of China, a bustling industrial nation now, with cities that went on for miles and miles. He waited until the sky went red to head back... but he didn't go more than a mile away, and just sat up on a sand dune and watched the sky.
He was still feeling haunted by doubt.
After a while, he heard the unmistakable sound of a horse galloping over the sand, coming to a slow walk behind him and a stop as someone jumped off and silently walked up. He didn't have to turn around to know it was him.
"You were right about the hair," Wally said, "much less sand to worry about."
Then there was a hand wrapping around his bare arm, and lips on the back of his neck that made him shiver. Without as much as a word, sucking on his ear and kneeling down to reach in front of him and into the front of the tunic across the skin of his chest.
It felt like him. It had to be him.
"You called me your consort. Doesn't that mean mistress or something?"
"Something," he murmured, sliding his hand into his pants and gently leaning him back onto his chest as he began cupping, and then stroking his erection. "I've missed you," he breathed into the back of Wally's neck.
"Bruce, I..." 'I what? I don't know.' "Nothing... just don't... oh don't stop..."
With that, Bruce pushed him up forward, pressing tight behind him and loosening his clothes until he was facing an endless stretch of emptiness streaked with the red sunset, hands all over him.
Everywhere, until he was just vibrating blissfully and had, indeed, forgotten all about his worries.
Could feel unburdened in Bruce's strong grip.
He came over the sand, and found himself wrapped up snuggled across the front of the saddle when he was coherent again.
Bruce looked so... majestic... as he held the reins and took them galloping towards the dying light in the sky, until a million stars came out in the sky, so close Wally could almost reach up and grab one.
Definitely like out of a movie, all of it.
"I know this is all a lot to take in, but you wanted to know," Bruce said, after a long, long time.
"What else is there?"
"Not tonight, please. I want to have this."
With that, all the mild freaking out came back, but Wally tried to relax. Whatever it was, it couldn't be that bad. This was Batman. Well, not anymore... but still.
So he didn't say anything as they returned to the glowing fortress Bruce now called home, and he was left so his Batship could go take care of some vague 'business'.
He wasn't gone for seconds before curiosity got the best of Wally, and he put all of Bruce's lessons about stealth to work following him and his assistants... or whoever they were, as they walked inside and to Bruce's office.
There was no guard outside, so he pressed his ear to a crack in the wood and kept an eye out.
"We've caught up with Strega, the strike team is ranked with your best men, and at your command, there will be no failure," an unfamiliar voice related with some kind of European accent he couldn't quite place.
"Good. I want no bystanders harmed, I won't tolerate another episode like Cairo."
"Yes my lord. His blood is ours."
Wally ran up the high wall and hid on top of one of the wide arches and screamed silently into his fist. He sat perfectly silent and still as he really was freaking out now, pressed close to the wood in the hopes that even Bruce wouldn't know he was there.
Definitely not Bruce.
Not-Bruce.
'Oh god.' Now what? Play dumb with the murderer that was his lover? Find the new Batman and tell him everything? Find Bart? 'No matter what, I won't believe Bart is evil.' He placated himself for the moment. 'Damn it when is something going to make SENSE?'
Wally waited until Bruce was gone, and realized he prolly had some way to track him, what with being able to find him before, but a search of his clothes found nothing. He didn't want to stick around to change, so he just took off, knowing Bruce knew he'd left.
His clothes shredded in the wind and his feet were raw until he hit the Pacific and ran hard towards the United States, blistered and cut halfway through the Midwest, and bleeding and numb by the time he stumbled through the metropolis that was Central City, almost unrecognizable.
Wally bathed his legs in the surprisingly clean water of the river, shaking dust and mud flecks off his pants and surveying the damage to all his clothes. Torn, ratty on the edges, but they'd have to do.
He ate an abandoned picnic lunch and hid under a bridge, repressing the urge to scream or cry or somehow just flip out and ended up just staring at the water, bright and sparkling in the midday sunshine.
The cuts on his feet healed up by the time the sun had travelled across the sky, so he bought some donuts and coffee with a card he's scavenged by the shoreline, and then to call the operator, all too easily connected to 'Allen, Bartholemew H.'
"Hello?"
"Bart, it's me."
"Oh grife, where are you?"
"The city. We need to talk."
"Yeah, okay. Barry's monument in the park."
Wally hung up and easily found the ten-foot statue, sitting cross-legged on a bench across from Barry's smiling stone face. A little deteriorated from the years, patched in a few places. One of the things that was around before the Flash museum even opened. Bart was there a few seconds later, not in costume either.
"Very inconspicuous," Bart said, raising his eyebrow at Wally's Lawrence of Arabia getup.
"I was in a hurry."
Bart sat down next to him and sighed.
"I'm sorry, Wally."
"About what, exactly? About not telling me and letting me run off? About Bruce being a supervillain? Or about Batman being clueless? It's cats and dogs living together and nothing makes any goddamn sense."
"He's not a supervillain."
"Oh yeah? So what's with the bumping people off routine and his merry band of killer ninjas?"
"Things are different now..."
"So we're condoning murder now? What does the League do these days, execute people?"
"No." Bart sighed and looked down at his hands.
"I can't let this happen," Wally whispered, "it's not right."
"He does what he has to do, to..."
"No, just, stop. I don't want to hear it." Wally held his face in his hands, leaning down on his knees, and tried to think of anything else. "Bart, if you know of anything we can do, you have to tell me."
"History..."
"I don't care."
They both stared up at the statue, Wally waiting for anything that Bart could offer.
"We could go to Superman," he finally said. "He kept a lot of things that got salvaged from the destruction of the second Watchtower, maybe he could help. He still runs the Justice League, but... I haven't gone to see him for years."
"Gee, I wonder why."
"Damn it Wally, what do you want from me?" Bart said sharply, standing up and pacing furiously. "He was it, you left me with him and Aunt Mary never understood, and then Tim..." He trailed off and set his jaw.
"Tim what?"
"I don't want to talk about it. And you're right. We have to change things." Bart looked at him with big sad eyes and sighed again. "Clark still lives in Metropolis."
* * *
They went to Bart's house to change, startlingly spartan and only a little cluttered. He had one of Wally's old costumes, so they ran to Metropolis as two Flashes bent on changing the course of history. The thought made it all the easier to believe they could accomplish anything.
It was getting into early evening when they rang the doorbell of a modest home in the city, and were answered by a grey-haired, massive figure in flannel that could only be Superman.
Clark recognized Wally with a big smile as soon as he swept back the mask, and grabbed him in a bear hug with his feet dangling off the ground.
"Wally! You're alive!"
"Heyya... Supes... can't breathe..."
"Oh! Sorry." Clark put him down and beckoned them into his clean, simple kitchen, where they were offered chairs at the table and cocoa, which Wally accepted gratefully. Count on Clark to make everything normal and familiar all at once. "Wally, where'd you come from? You haven't aged a day."
"No, well, I got a little lost on the trip back." He rubbed his thumb on the handle of the mug thoughtfully. "And, well... the reason we're here, is, I want to fix that."
"Time travel? Oh, I can't really help you with that... but..."
"But?"
"Hm." Clark leaned back against the counter thoughtfully. "I could... call in a favour. But it's a very big string, Wally."
"Supes. Clark. I have to do something." He looked at Clark's hesitant expression curiously. "How big?"
"Big."
"Doctor Fate big?"
"Bigger."
"Highfather big?"
"Bigger."
"Who's bigger than that?"
"It's a long story." Clark refilled his mug from the steel decanter. "You're talking about altering the timeline here."
"Well do you really want things to just stay this way?"
"Maybe this is how things were always going to be. The way we're supposed to end up."
"I don't believe that. I refuse to believe that." Wally looked down at his reflection in the mug, then back up again. "Please. I have to go back. I can't stay here. I don't belong here."
Clark walked over and put a big hand on Wally's shoulder.
"If this is just about Bruce..."
"It's not. Not really."
It was the truth. Whatever Bart wasn't saying, sitting silently beside him, whatever evils in this world had turned everything hopelessly upside-down... all of it.
"Okay, then."
"So... who?"
Clark stepped aside, and turned to a dark figure that had materialized in the corner, with a long black trenchcoat and a golden medallion glowing on his white-shirted chest, a black fedora shading white eyes that pierced through the shadows of it.
Like a living character from a pulp novel, sprinkled with endless mystery and enough vague metaphorical advice to give Confucius a headache.
"It is I he refers to, Wallace West. Ever a Stranger, but perhaps, a friend."
Chapter Two: Time, Warped
Bruce had run off to check on something, and Wally was almost glad. There was... way too much to take in.
So he did what he usually did when he was trying to get an even keel; he began to sing to himself.
"Everybody's wait-ing for some-thing to ha-appen, everybody's waiting for something to see! Lunatics wait-ing for bigger disa-asters. Everyone's wait-ing for news on TV!"
He browsed through the library idly, noting the books all looked ancient and priceless.
'What is going on?'
"So I watch and I wait! And I praaay for an answer! An end to the strife and the wo-orld's misery! But the end never came! And we're digging the graves! And we're loading the guns for the kiiiiilll!"
"You never change, do you?" Wally turned around and smiled as Bruce came back from whatever errand he'd deemed vital and got a little shy under the look he was giving him. "Bart knew. I couldn't tell Terry, not without compromising everything. He's good, but..." Bruce sat down and folded his hands together in front of his chin. "I'm sure he would have told you, given time... but I don't know how much you should know. Just what you already do. You... you never went back, Wally. And I don't know what that means now."
"Bruce what... what are you doing here? Why are you calling yourself The Demon Head? Why..?" He stopped and bit his lip. Bruce looked almost lost... so he knelt before him and leaned on his knee. "I don't care about the timeline, Bruce. I need to know everything."
Bruce leaned down and had a look like he was about to shatter into a million pieces, but just kissed Wally gently on the forehead, like he'd done so many times before.
"It was all over," Bruce began, "everything. I could feel the grip of death come closer every day... my name had gone to someone else. Some days, it was like I had nothing left to live for. And then everything changed."
Wally gazed up at him and listened in wonder. It was unbelievable... impossible that this was even happening, and yet, it was.
"Ra's wasn't dead. Of course, I never really thought he had. Just like..." he continued, then paused, looking down, then off in the distance again. "You were gone, Wally. At first, I was certain you'd come running back at any moment, but you'd said, the last time, that you wouldn't be able to. And years passed, and... I finally believed it. I believed you were dead and I had nothing left but my work. Drove everyone away, and after Alfred died... there was nobody left."
Bruce's far-off gaze focused on him again.
"Wally, I... It was decades before I could even speak of you again. Once Bart's visits changed. He moved out, and came less frequently, until he only came once a year... so we could remember you. So many people that did were gone, and... we had to remember you."
Wally got an image of his own funeral, of sad faces and somber black. So surreal.
"I can't... I still... I mean..." Wally waved around at nothing in particular. "None of this has to happen. I can just go home and we'll be together again. It doesn't matter what you remember, there has to be a way."
"If there's a way, I'll help you find it, I swear," Bruce said empassionedly. "I'd like love nothing better. But I don't have any technology to get you back into the timestream, and you can't risk what you did before. I watched you die Wally... that's what I believed, what everyone believed, for over half a century. You can't risk it again."
"I wish that you weren't right," Wally said resignedly. "But... the treadmill?"
"Destroyed in an earthquake years ago. I never thought I'd use it, and by then Palmer had retired. I don't think there's anyone alive who could reproduce it now."
Wally thought hard. He'd gotten lost in the Speed Force and just barely made it out, and fell into the timestream... hard. He might very well not be able to do that again, and even if he could... there was no guarantee of where he'd end up.
He might be flung anywhere.
"Ra's was still alive," Bruce continued after a pause, "had cheated death to the point where he believed he was undefeatable. But I, even as an old man nearing the end, presented the greatest threat to him. So he kidnapped me and offered me a choice; he'd go after Terry, or we could do a final battle of wits. Both enter the Lazarus pit at once, and see who survived." Bruce grinned a little before continuing. "I won."
Wally couldn't help but laugh. As if Bruce wouldn't win or something.
"Ever since then, I've been convincing his old followers that I'm his successor, and unbenowst to them, I've turned Ra's organization bent on terror into something good for the world, and a powerful tool to acquire anything I need."
"That's why you didn't tell Terry? So he'd keep trying to find you and fool everyone?"
"I don't like it. But for now, I only keep things together by a tenuous string, and I can't afford to lose."
Wally leaned back a little and looked at him quizzically.
"Yeah, you said I had to help you... with what?"
"It's a different world now. The Justice League does what they can, but they aren't like we were. If something came to earth... for instance, if Darkseid ever came back for revenge, I'm not sure they would be enough. So I've... taken the initiative."
"And all the while they think you're a terrorist."
"If the organization were to discover the truth, the plan would fail."
"You couldn't do it as... well... you?"
"Return to Gotham and attempt to explain that I've become an immortal? Leave the League to be taken over by the next person to come along with designs on power?"
"Oh."
Bruce sighed.
"Now that you're here, anything you do might be the reason you never return to the past."
"Bruce!" Wally sat back and shook his head at him, then started pacing around and counting off on his fingers. "I've won the lottery. Been struck by lightning; twice. Became a superhero back when most kids were still thought girls were icky. Got reality-displaced out of an infinite number of possibilities, by chance. And even more impossible, I dated the most elusive, dangerous, and powerful man on earth. Don't even start about what-ifs. My life has been about beating the odds. If there's a chance, I'll do it!"
Wally circled the room again anxiously, then stopped and leaned against the carved oak desk in front of the window.
"I will get home," he said, "but, for now... why don't you show me around?"
"Perhaps after a change of clothes," Bruce said, a happier look returning to his face. "Capes, rare as they are these days, make my men nervous."
'Huh.'
"Well, okay."
Bruce's bedroom here was best described as something stolen off the set of The Ten Commandments. The Charlton Heston one.
Arches over carved white pillars held drapes that fluttered in the dry desert wind, with furniture all ornate and worth a fortune each, he figured. Thick, embroidered rugs on the floor that wasn't polished mosaic patterns, and a four-poster bed that could sleep ten easily.
"Did you turn into the king of the desert or what?"
"I try not to think about it that way." He pulled some blue, black, and tan fabric out of a dresser and draped it on the bed, then just stood there and looked at him. "I still can't believe you're real, Wally."
"Well, I am, near as I can tell."
He wanted to walk over there and touch him until they both forgot. Until Wally forgot that the man before him was still Bruce... but it was like he was someone else entirely. He couldn't shake the feeling, no matter how he tried. Something different was in those blue eyes, like light couldn't escape them.
Instead, he just picked up the fabric, puzzled out how to put it on, then whipped up a whirlwind and emerged clad in loose black pants with a sash across his waist belting a long blue sleeveless tunic.
A very... Ra's al Ghul kind of outfit.
He shook a little sand out of his hair, and Bruce pulled something out of his pocket, then walked up behind him and gently ran his fingers through Wally's hair, smoothing it down, then tying most of it back, with the rest drifting forward along the sides of his face.
"You'll have less difficulty with the sand that way," Bruce explained, then stepped forward and offered his hand. "I'll show you everything."
In spite of all his worries, he didn't hesitate to take it and hold on to it as they stepped outside past guards that made their little bows as they went by, through high-ceilinged halls that opened over the horizon still waiting for sunset.
Everyone here had the whole pants-and-sash thing going, and there was a lot included in 'everyone'... training yards out the windows ran with the grunts and systematic yells of martial arts practices held in long rows of white-draped ninjas.
At least, that's what he figured they were. A big horde of ninjas. Like out of a Bruce Lee movie. Actually, it was a lot like that. But that would make Bruce the boss at the end of the story that has a crackhouse in his basement or something. And he'd be the overdone chick who secretly knows kung-fu. Or something.
And where was Bart?
"Where's Bart?"
"I sent him home. You can see him whenever you'd like, but I wanted... time."
"Oh."
He squeezed the fingers laced in his own a little, and Bruce smiled, then gestured into a wide room full of people leaning over bits of technology with little tools.
"One of my strengths has continued to be the development of advanced technology to withhold, while sending previous versions on the open market."
"Flying cars and stuff?"
"Something like that."
Bruce turned his head distractedly as a short man in a green robe made a little bow.
"My lord, lady Talia has returned from her mission and seeks an audience."
"Tell her I'll be there shortly."
The man bowed again and hastily strode off.
"Talia's here?"
"Yes. She is... one of my operatives." They headed in the direction the other guy had scurried off to, and Wally continued to be mesmerized by the army training outside. "She, like her father, was not dead."
But wasn't she... huh.
"Oh."
"Our marriage is purely ceremonial, to appease the organization and the lineage."
"Lineage? Marriage?"
They stepped into what looked like some kind of throne room, where Talia greeted Bruce with a kiss on the cheek and eyed Wally warily. A man with green eyes that looked at him sharply, short black hair, and a face ever so familiar stood behind her stoically.
"Talia, this is Wally West, my... consort." 'Consort?' Wally thought bemusedly, and gave Bruce a raised eyebrow, but he continued, gesturing at the silent man. "Wally, this is my son, Ibn. But I prefer to call him Jason, much to his mother's irritation," he said with a smirk.
Wally just stared with his jaw hanging open and blinked.
"But I thought..?"
"Jason was born the year I first became Batman."
"Buh?"
'Hold up, hold up, hold UP. That means he's alive now, I mean, then, and he... she...' Wally couldn't find anything coherent to say, so he just shut his mouth and rubbed his forehead until he could figure out what sort of response should give to not have this all go terribly uncomfortably.
"I need to run. I... I'll be back, I guess."
The shoes and flapping fabric made him run a little slower than he'd like to, but it wasn't distance he was going for.
This couldn't be right, none of this. It didn't make any sense. Since when did Bruce have a son that'd be... almost a teenager by now. Then. Whatever. And he's all lord of half the earth in some palace? With an army? And a wife?
It didn't make any damn sense at all.
'What isn't Bruce telling me?'
Wally took a tour of China, a bustling industrial nation now, with cities that went on for miles and miles. He waited until the sky went red to head back... but he didn't go more than a mile away, and just sat up on a sand dune and watched the sky.
He was still feeling haunted by doubt.
After a while, he heard the unmistakable sound of a horse galloping over the sand, coming to a slow walk behind him and a stop as someone jumped off and silently walked up. He didn't have to turn around to know it was him.
"You were right about the hair," Wally said, "much less sand to worry about."
Then there was a hand wrapping around his bare arm, and lips on the back of his neck that made him shiver. Without as much as a word, sucking on his ear and kneeling down to reach in front of him and into the front of the tunic across the skin of his chest.
It felt like him. It had to be him.
"You called me your consort. Doesn't that mean mistress or something?"
"Something," he murmured, sliding his hand into his pants and gently leaning him back onto his chest as he began cupping, and then stroking his erection. "I've missed you," he breathed into the back of Wally's neck.
"Bruce, I..." 'I what? I don't know.' "Nothing... just don't... oh don't stop..."
With that, Bruce pushed him up forward, pressing tight behind him and loosening his clothes until he was facing an endless stretch of emptiness streaked with the red sunset, hands all over him.
Everywhere, until he was just vibrating blissfully and had, indeed, forgotten all about his worries.
Could feel unburdened in Bruce's strong grip.
He came over the sand, and found himself wrapped up snuggled across the front of the saddle when he was coherent again.
Bruce looked so... majestic... as he held the reins and took them galloping towards the dying light in the sky, until a million stars came out in the sky, so close Wally could almost reach up and grab one.
Definitely like out of a movie, all of it.
"I know this is all a lot to take in, but you wanted to know," Bruce said, after a long, long time.
"What else is there?"
"Not tonight, please. I want to have this."
With that, all the mild freaking out came back, but Wally tried to relax. Whatever it was, it couldn't be that bad. This was Batman. Well, not anymore... but still.
So he didn't say anything as they returned to the glowing fortress Bruce now called home, and he was left so his Batship could go take care of some vague 'business'.
He wasn't gone for seconds before curiosity got the best of Wally, and he put all of Bruce's lessons about stealth to work following him and his assistants... or whoever they were, as they walked inside and to Bruce's office.
There was no guard outside, so he pressed his ear to a crack in the wood and kept an eye out.
"We've caught up with Strega, the strike team is ranked with your best men, and at your command, there will be no failure," an unfamiliar voice related with some kind of European accent he couldn't quite place.
"Good. I want no bystanders harmed, I won't tolerate another episode like Cairo."
"Yes my lord. His blood is ours."
Wally ran up the high wall and hid on top of one of the wide arches and screamed silently into his fist. He sat perfectly silent and still as he really was freaking out now, pressed close to the wood in the hopes that even Bruce wouldn't know he was there.
Definitely not Bruce.
Not-Bruce.
'Oh god.' Now what? Play dumb with the murderer that was his lover? Find the new Batman and tell him everything? Find Bart? 'No matter what, I won't believe Bart is evil.' He placated himself for the moment. 'Damn it when is something going to make SENSE?'
Wally waited until Bruce was gone, and realized he prolly had some way to track him, what with being able to find him before, but a search of his clothes found nothing. He didn't want to stick around to change, so he just took off, knowing Bruce knew he'd left.
His clothes shredded in the wind and his feet were raw until he hit the Pacific and ran hard towards the United States, blistered and cut halfway through the Midwest, and bleeding and numb by the time he stumbled through the metropolis that was Central City, almost unrecognizable.
Wally bathed his legs in the surprisingly clean water of the river, shaking dust and mud flecks off his pants and surveying the damage to all his clothes. Torn, ratty on the edges, but they'd have to do.
He ate an abandoned picnic lunch and hid under a bridge, repressing the urge to scream or cry or somehow just flip out and ended up just staring at the water, bright and sparkling in the midday sunshine.
The cuts on his feet healed up by the time the sun had travelled across the sky, so he bought some donuts and coffee with a card he's scavenged by the shoreline, and then to call the operator, all too easily connected to 'Allen, Bartholemew H.'
"Hello?"
"Bart, it's me."
"Oh grife, where are you?"
"The city. We need to talk."
"Yeah, okay. Barry's monument in the park."
Wally hung up and easily found the ten-foot statue, sitting cross-legged on a bench across from Barry's smiling stone face. A little deteriorated from the years, patched in a few places. One of the things that was around before the Flash museum even opened. Bart was there a few seconds later, not in costume either.
"Very inconspicuous," Bart said, raising his eyebrow at Wally's Lawrence of Arabia getup.
"I was in a hurry."
Bart sat down next to him and sighed.
"I'm sorry, Wally."
"About what, exactly? About not telling me and letting me run off? About Bruce being a supervillain? Or about Batman being clueless? It's cats and dogs living together and nothing makes any goddamn sense."
"He's not a supervillain."
"Oh yeah? So what's with the bumping people off routine and his merry band of killer ninjas?"
"Things are different now..."
"So we're condoning murder now? What does the League do these days, execute people?"
"No." Bart sighed and looked down at his hands.
"I can't let this happen," Wally whispered, "it's not right."
"He does what he has to do, to..."
"No, just, stop. I don't want to hear it." Wally held his face in his hands, leaning down on his knees, and tried to think of anything else. "Bart, if you know of anything we can do, you have to tell me."
"History..."
"I don't care."
They both stared up at the statue, Wally waiting for anything that Bart could offer.
"We could go to Superman," he finally said. "He kept a lot of things that got salvaged from the destruction of the second Watchtower, maybe he could help. He still runs the Justice League, but... I haven't gone to see him for years."
"Gee, I wonder why."
"Damn it Wally, what do you want from me?" Bart said sharply, standing up and pacing furiously. "He was it, you left me with him and Aunt Mary never understood, and then Tim..." He trailed off and set his jaw.
"Tim what?"
"I don't want to talk about it. And you're right. We have to change things." Bart looked at him with big sad eyes and sighed again. "Clark still lives in Metropolis."
They went to Bart's house to change, startlingly spartan and only a little cluttered. He had one of Wally's old costumes, so they ran to Metropolis as two Flashes bent on changing the course of history. The thought made it all the easier to believe they could accomplish anything.
It was getting into early evening when they rang the doorbell of a modest home in the city, and were answered by a grey-haired, massive figure in flannel that could only be Superman.
Clark recognized Wally with a big smile as soon as he swept back the mask, and grabbed him in a bear hug with his feet dangling off the ground.
"Wally! You're alive!"
"Heyya... Supes... can't breathe..."
"Oh! Sorry." Clark put him down and beckoned them into his clean, simple kitchen, where they were offered chairs at the table and cocoa, which Wally accepted gratefully. Count on Clark to make everything normal and familiar all at once. "Wally, where'd you come from? You haven't aged a day."
"No, well, I got a little lost on the trip back." He rubbed his thumb on the handle of the mug thoughtfully. "And, well... the reason we're here, is, I want to fix that."
"Time travel? Oh, I can't really help you with that... but..."
"But?"
"Hm." Clark leaned back against the counter thoughtfully. "I could... call in a favour. But it's a very big string, Wally."
"Supes. Clark. I have to do something." He looked at Clark's hesitant expression curiously. "How big?"
"Big."
"Doctor Fate big?"
"Bigger."
"Highfather big?"
"Bigger."
"Who's bigger than that?"
"It's a long story." Clark refilled his mug from the steel decanter. "You're talking about altering the timeline here."
"Well do you really want things to just stay this way?"
"Maybe this is how things were always going to be. The way we're supposed to end up."
"I don't believe that. I refuse to believe that." Wally looked down at his reflection in the mug, then back up again. "Please. I have to go back. I can't stay here. I don't belong here."
Clark walked over and put a big hand on Wally's shoulder.
"If this is just about Bruce..."
"It's not. Not really."
It was the truth. Whatever Bart wasn't saying, sitting silently beside him, whatever evils in this world had turned everything hopelessly upside-down... all of it.
"Okay, then."
"So... who?"
Clark stepped aside, and turned to a dark figure that had materialized in the corner, with a long black trenchcoat and a golden medallion glowing on his white-shirted chest, a black fedora shading white eyes that pierced through the shadows of it.
Like a living character from a pulp novel, sprinkled with endless mystery and enough vague metaphorical advice to give Confucius a headache.
"It is I he refers to, Wallace West. Ever a Stranger, but perhaps, a friend."
no subject
on 2006-07-09 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
on 2006-07-09 02:35 am (UTC)This is going to be totally awesome!
no subject
on 2006-07-09 02:44 am (UTC)Can't say much. Brain dribbling out ear.
I...write...more...next...chap...
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on 2006-07-09 04:09 am (UTC)And I love how Clark is just like, "hey, Wally, you're alive again!" Man, he must've finally gotten used to capes dying and coming back.
(no subject)
Posted byno subject
on 2006-07-09 04:18 am (UTC)Don't worry Wally, I'm sure it's just one of a thousand alternaties that the author is going to toss you into. You'll find the real Bruce eventually.
(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted by(no subject)
Posted byno subject
on 2006-07-09 06:04 am (UTC)*YES*
Oh god, and Bruce is kinda freaky and all....not-Bruce. And Ibn and, and....
Jeebus. My brain hurts. But I want more. Gah.
(no subject)
Posted byno subject
on 2006-07-09 08:07 am (UTC)Ever a Stranger, but perhaps, a friend.
I flailed. A bit.
(no subject)
Posted byno subject
on 2006-07-09 06:06 pm (UTC)Awww...Bart... :( *hugs Bart*
And Bruce! What are you doing?!
Don't worry Wally...it will all be fine. I hope...
The appearence of the Stanger made me smile. I love how you utilise the DC universe to the full when you write. Anyone could pop up!
(no subject)
Posted byno subject
on 2006-07-11 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2007-01-28 12:21 pm (UTC)