Author's Note:
I'm not even sure where this came from—I was just lying in my bed, and *boom* the idea hit me: "The hardest thing in the world for Wally West to do was to trip..." It occurred to me that Wally is probably not a very clumsy guy—or at least that he can always catch himself too quickly to make a mess when he is clumsy. So this little fluff of a oneshot came to mind.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Justice League-related. Sadly, I do not own rights to Wally West... (I do, however, own Leonard and this oneshot.)
For Wally West, the hardest thing in the world to do was to trip.
Sure, he used to be quite clumsy as a kid. He was always running into things, or falling over his own feet. But ever since that day in the lab, and ever since he had become the Flash, tripping had become darn near impossible.
As irony would have it—Wally used to trip so often because he was too hasty in doing things. He wouldn't watch where he was going, and the next thing he knew, he was flat on his face. Now, he was too fast to trip. He always caught himself before he could hit the ground. And he couldn't stop it...
That was irony for you. Ha! He used to be clumsy because he was too fast; now he was too fast to be clumsy.
It was like a double-negative, except the double-negative didn't equal a positive.
Like an ugly Ultra-Humanite, or a crazy Trickster with bad hair. Or...wait. Was that just redundant...?
Anyway, however the irony or double-negative-icity acted, Wally West was just too fast to be clumsy anymore. Or, at least, he was too fast to be clumsy easily.
You see, at the office, when Wally was not living as the Flash, he had to try not to stop himself from being clumsy. If he began to trip, he had to force his mind (already on hyper-drive) to not make his body catch itself at super-speed. It was so easy to just make a split-second hop and skip to stay upright...but he couldn't allow any super-speeding motions to be seen at the lab in Central City.
So when the toe of his shoe caught on the stairs one morning, while walking into the building with Leonard, Wally nearly threw up his hands at super-speed. He almost moved his leg fast enough to regain his balance. He almost...and then he remembered Leonard's presence.
The question was: to be or not to be clumsy? He thought he could maybe catch himself before Leonard noticed, but he couldn't be sure...
Wally took the fall.
He had to pull his arm back to his chest when he realized he had been moving it to catch himself too quickly. It was the most painful second and a half that Wally could remember from the entire preceding week. Just watching himself fall...at super-speed...seemingly for forever.
He felt like such an idiot as he waited to hit the ground. He knew without a doubt that he could stop himself before ever touching the concrete with his hands. He knew this was going to hurt. Heck, he knew he could run inside and finish a third of the day's paperwork and run back outside in the time it was going to take for him to reach the ground.
It took so long to fall! And when Wally finally rammed his knee and elbows into the stairs, he almost felt relieved because he knew that at least the waiting was over. At least he could stop pretending...
Leonard laughed at him, saying something about Wally having such bad reflexes. Wally made himself laugh too, pretending the new bruises and scrapes didn't hurt, but he still felt stupid for falling when he knew he could have stopped it. The act had been a hard one to pull off, too; he almost got so bored during the fall that he just quit and threw out a leg at super-speed.
But Leonard didn't suspect a thing. That was the real victory of the morning. Wally was still in the clear—and he had the bruises to prove it.
Some days, Wally almost wondered why he bothered. He could probably catch himself before anyone even saw him move. But then, on other days, he knew that it was worth it to have a few more bruises and embarrassing moments if it meant that no one suspected him. None of his friends at work seemed to ever guess what he could do. One of his coworkers even thought he was clumsy! So maybe it was worth it to keep his secret identity intact.
But still...sometimes, it was the hardest thing in the world to trip.