um, so, i'm going to begin this with i'm sorry. if you're new to this story, please ignore this author's note ! this goes out to all the viewers who read my story before i deleted all ... what was it, seven chapters? and i'm sorry for the three month unannounced hiatus, too. let me explain.
it was a day like any other. i had just gotten done writing over twenty thousand words for dannymay that week when i came across the next day's theme and, my brain being fried, couldn't figure out how to write it. and then, as i started becoming immune to my anxiety medicine, i began to doubt my ability to write at all. several times i read through the first chapter of this story and couldn't bear to finish; i was so utterly horrified at even the smallest typos. several times i considered deleting the story entirely and never touching it again. then i was prescribed two new medicines and had an entire summer of babysitting and lounging about that allowed my brain time to assess the situation. even three months couldn't lesson my hatred for the story. so, i decided to rewrite it! bigger and better. longer and more detailed.
again, i'm sorry for all of you that wish to continue reading but don't want to read through plot points you've already seen. the whole meeting is going to be placed in a different scene entirely and everything is much more sculpted than before, so hopefully you'll come to enjoy this version even more than the last. feel free to berate me in the reviews.
well, enough of my constant chatter. on with the new and improved ffak !
fit for a king
chapter one
welcome to elmerton
Barry Allen was tired.
He'd spent the better half of the night on patrol, crisscrossing throughout an endless maze of streets in search for lowly criminals that dare test the waters in Central City, a place that was most certainly his. He felt the same sort of protectiveness over the place as one would over their newborn baby, and so he'd went into a tizzy upon Joe West's order to pack up a suitcase and head to Illinois with him and Iris on a vacation that was more stressful than relaxing.
Therefore, when it became entirely evident that Joe was unquestionably not going to let him weasel his way out of this less-than-ideal situation, he'd done what any other city-renowned superhero would do: he worked himself to the point of absolute exhaustion. Maybe, just maybe, the criminals that promenaded along his streets would let up while he was gone if he took them all down the week before he left.
It made sense in his head, at least.
He'd spent the preponderance of his last few days with his vulnerable child running numbers through his head. If he went Mach 2.5, he'd be able to make it to Central City in approximately nine minutes and twelve seconds. It was irrefutable that he could go faster if he had the proper motivation (aka something horrible went wrong and it was of dire importance that he be there immediately), but Cisco Ramon and Caitlyn Snow had promised that it wouldn't come to that.
Their promise gave Barry little comfort. It wasn't that he didn't trust them with his life (and he did on practically a day-to-day basis), it was just that it's scientifically impossible to promise a future that is out of your control. And, unless Cisco or Caitlyn suddenly gained the ability to travel in time and stop certain events from happening, it was most definitely out of their control and therefore an easily breakable promise.
Then there was the matter of the Central City Police Department, or CCPD. He trusted them, too, but the line between human and mutated-something-or-other was very, very thick. Put simply, Barry was more capable than them, and that wasn't him being arrogant or big-headed; that was him accepting that he could run so fast that he could break through the barrier of time. Did the police force have that? No, no they did not. Not without him.
Despite his constant complaining, whining, and begging, his surrogate father absolutely refused to let him stay, making yet another entirely meaningless promise that Cisco, Caitlyn, and the entirety of the CCPD would be able to handle it while he spent some, quote, much needed time with family, unquote.
And so he sat in the passenger seat of a black Honda Accord, leg bouncing and eyes staring out at the Now Leaving Central City sign with a ferocity that almost seemed to be able to burn a hole straight through it. He would be having a heated conversation with Joe if not for the exhaustion tugging at his eyelids and the soreness of his throat from having so much air forced down it the night before, but, as it was, he couldn't seem to muster up the energy to do anything but glare angrily at the passing scenery and listen to the old jazz station Joe had put on the radio.
Despite his best efforts, Barry was losing the battle against sleep. He could feel it in his irregularly slowing leg and gravity-weighted eyes. It wasn't long before he was losing passages of time; mind blanking on everything but the soothing saxophone and Joe's gentle humming. No. He couldn't sleep. There was much to think about, to calculate, and to plan. Barry most definitely did not have time for sleep.
But the gentle rumble of the car was nice and the leather seats suddenly felt significantly comfier than they had when he'd first sat down. Barry's head fell only to shoot back up, his shoulders relaxed and tensed once more, and his leg hopped once before ceasing movement for several seconds, each moment longer than the last.
He'd fought a maniac who thought he was God, a childhood bully with a body made of steel, and a really dedicated dude who had no powers but was somehow able to get his hands on a freeze ray. Yet, in the end, he couldn't win against his body's undeniable need for rest.
And so it was there sitting next to Joe in a black Honda Accord that Barry promptly fell asleep.
Danny Fenton was tired.
It was no surprise, seeing as he he'd been battling constant exhaustion since autumn of his freshman year. Two years had passed and he'd become no better at getting the rest that his body so desperately needed. He'd have to add "rest" right below "eat," "save the town from angry ghosts" and "take a shower" on his To-Do List.
He doubted he'd get to it. He hadn't even gotten to take a shower in five days and instead settled for a lot of Jazz's dry shampoo and a thorough lathering of deodorant.
Danny's poor self-care was the least of his worries, though. He had school, homework, and the giant, drippy, vaguely centipede-y ghost that he was currently in pursuit of to think about. He was also preoccupied with saving a mother and her screeching child from aforementioned centipede ghost. And gosh, the science project Ms. Tanya was talking about before he rushed out of the classroom with the bathroom pass. That too. When did I get so much stuff piled on my plate?
Danny focused on the scene ahead of him. The woman, clearly struggling in her floor-length dress, slid into an alleyway and came to a halt when she saw that the exit she was so desperately praying for was nowhere to be found. Rather, this alley ended in an aged brick wall and a rusty, unused dumpster. She turned on her heel and was met with the bus-sized face of her stalker and the horrible clicking of hundreds of needlepoint legs fighting to squeeze into a too tight spot.
She whirled around, toddler pounding on her shoulders and clinging to her shirt, and crouched beside the dumpster in visible distress and desperation.
It was then that Danny sped forward, landed lightly on the ground, and stared the creature down through strands of his overgrown, pearly white hair. He considered asking his mother to cut it that afternoon and instead settled on asking Sam. Maddie would be all too happy to take him up on that offer and he'd rather avoid the following queries of how his grades were and what he's been up to lately.
Oh, yeah. The centipede. It had approached quickly during his contemplations and was now right in front of him, giant blade-like pincers snapping desperately at his face.
He hopped backwards, swore under his breath at his own carelessness, and aimed at his target with one gloved hand. Ectoplasm became visible in vein-like lines underneath his jumpsuit and pooled at a microscopic cut at the center of his hand. It projected outwards and cut through one of the pincers, which fell in a glop at the centipede's foot before collecting into its previous shape and reattaching itself to the ghost's face.
The centipede came closer and Danny was quite suddenly aware of the heavy sobs coming from directly behind him. Time was up. He couldn't play around anymore.
A plan formulated quickly in his head. Ectoplasm traveled down his arm once more and assembled itself into the solid shape of a glowing green blade. He jumped, pushed himself upward through flight, and allowed gravity to take hold once directly above the centipede's head.
The blade, now longer than Danny, sliced through the ghost's body with a loud, resounding crunch that was similar to stepping on a big beetle. The head slammed into the concrete whilst the body sprayed pressured ectoplasm all over the back wall, the dumpster, and the screaming woman and child.
As the bleeding slowed, the head began to slowly gravitate towards the body similar to how the pincer did after reassembling. Danny wiped the centipede's ectoplasm from his eyes, let the blade seep back into his hand and travel up his arm in its liquefied state, and pulled the Fenton Thermos from his belt before the ghost could once again get its bearings (and its head).
Rays of blue and white encased the centipede; with a final screech, it and the surrounding ectoplasm disappeared into the canister. Danny capped the thermos quickly and spun on his heel to face the mother and son, who were still covered from head to toe in ectoplasm. Everything that hadn't been in front of the thermos, including him, hadn't been cleansed of the centipede's blood and remained dripping wet.
The mother's eyes were wide. He could hear her and her son's mismatched, fast heartbeats.
The toddler broke free from his mother's grip and ran past Danny, slipping and sliding on ectoplasm puddles as he went. His screams could be heard echoing throughout the alleyway even as he turned the corner. His mother, who was short of one shoe and breathing laboriously, chased after. She and her bobbing magenta hijab disappeared from sight.
Danny threw his hands in the air exasperatedly. "A thank you would suffice," he breathed, and as his arms fell drops of ectoplasm spilt from his body and onto the pavement. "Have fun getting that ectoplasm off your clothes. Only thing that works is the Fenton Stain Remover, I'll have you know."
He wasn't sure who he was talking to; she was already long gone. Not even Danny's superhuman hearing could pick up the pitter patter of her footsteps. He supposed that talking to himself was all that kept him grounded after defending ungrateful citizens.
After his breathing returned to a generally normal pace, he turned and registered the mess his fiasco with School Bus Bug had resulted in. Danny uncapped the thermos and clicked the button on the side.
Eerie alleyway silence met his expectant ears.
He clicked the button again. And again. Finally, after a tiny unsatisfactory whir, the black screen on the side beeped and helpfully informed him that the thermos was FULL. He should've known that a giant man-eating bug would take up most of the storage space. Even so, he found himself huffing angrily.
A droplet of ectoplasm fell from a strand of mottled hair into his left eye. "Ow! God, ow, that burns. Today is not your day, Fenton." He tried rubbing it out first, and when that proved to only make it worse, he used his brain and realized that someone who could turn freaking intangible could just use that ability to get the ectoplasm out of his eye and, by default, off of his entire body.
So he did, and the ectoplasm sloshed to the ground with a disgusting squelch noise that, even in his two years of being a ghost, he hadn't gotten used to. The smell still lingered though – kind of like old pennies and the school swimming pool – and, all things considered, he thought that this was probably an upgrade from his previous dry shampoo/deodorant thing he had going on.
And that was all the time he had. Somewhere, distantly, the Casper High school bell was ringing and signaling the end of a generally normal day. If he didn't bring the Hall Pass back to Ms. Tanya immediately, he'd surely be in more trouble than he was already in for missing a good twenty minutes of class time. He'd come back with an empty thermos and clean it up sometime in between dinner and patrol.
Danny switched into what he had called "astronaut mode" and now called "floating" due to Sam and Tucker's constant complaints. After two years of late night ponderings and borrowing documents from his parent's lab (which he read in the light of his own ghostly glow in an oak tree within Amity's park perimeters), Danny had come up with a decent understanding of how his own body worked. When the chemical reaction of his original form to ghost form occurs, aka his "going ghost," his blood cells are overtaken by ectoplasm, which, at its lowest state, is entirely unaffected by gravity and therefore results in his floating. Originally, when he'd first figured out how to toggle his ectoplasm's resistance to gravity (beforehand, he could only float in his ghost form) he'd called it his "astronaut mode" as a nod to his undying love of space. Sam and Tucker had quickly gotten tired of the name and urged him to settle on something a bit simpler.
Flying hadn't taken nearly as long to understand and control. It was simple, really: all he had to do was release energetic particles in the opposite way of his trajectory. Well, when he said it like that, it didn't sound very simple, but it became easier, like riding a bike or … well, riding a bike pretty much covered it.
And so, with the science of his own ghostly body taking up the forefront of his mind, he flew up and over Elmerton's buildings and towards Amity's shinier, cleaner ones. One short journey to the school roof later, he went intangible (something he was still trying to fully understand) and flew right through the bathroom ceiling. Danny listened for any heartbeats in the close vicinity of the door and, when he was certain that no one would be privy to his transformation, he let the chemical reaction that was his ghost half backtrack and be reabsorbed into the Ghost Zone. There. Human. And, if he didn't get the Hall Pass that he'd hidden behind a urinal back to Ms. Tanya: Dead. He opened the bathroom door and headed in the direction of the Biology classroom at a brisk pace.
Barry awoke to the smell of cigarettes and the honking of a horn. Around him, unkempt buildings and shabby houses sat amongst overgrown grass and cracked sidewalk. The place looked deserted; other than the rusty truck behind Iris that was so readily hitting the horn (despite them being at a red light) there was nobody around. Iris' car, in turn, was behind Joe's car, where Barry sat in the passenger seat (seeing as he lacked in the "having a car" department) and tried to drown out the constant honking by turning up the radio. Joe, upon seeing that he had awoken, began to ramble about his brother-in-law and niece. Barry took to staring out the window and studying the area rather than properly listening.
They must've been in the bad side of town, where criminals and other evil-doers alike live amongst genuinely nice people who just so happen to be struggling with finances. Barry pondered over why Joe would take this specific route to get to the Gray's house. They seemed to be doing a lot of twisting and turning throughout the ruined streets; why didn't they just go straight into the suburbs?
Unless…
"You have reached your final destination."
They pulled into a crumbled, trash-strewn parking lot, where only one beat-up, paint-chipped, dented car sat. Joe had gone silent. The radio transitioned into complete static.
This couldn't be it. This could not be their apartment building. Barry remembered stopping at their house when he was young and gawking at the high ceilings, polished floors, and huge balcony. This, however, was the opposite.
In front of them sat a tall, dilapidated brick building that looked as though it would topple over at any given time. The remnants of poorly scrubbed-off spray paint decorated the broken, weathered bricks like confetti. A rusty hole-ridden sign announcing the No Smoking rule was leaning against the building and was surrounded by dozens of mocking cigarette butts, one of which was still smoldering a bit.
Joe put the car in park whilst Iris pulled into the parking space next to them. She came to a stop and rolled down the window, gesturing wildly for Barry to do the same.
Joe pulled the key from the ignition before he could comply, so instead he opened the car door as to aid her. Everything was momentarily silent save for Iris' humming engine.
"What are we doing here?" Iris queried, staring down her father.
"We're going to see my family," replied Joe in an easy, though transparently fake, voice. His hands shook a bit as he reached over to open the car door and step outside.
"You're joking." When Joe didn't respond, she sent Barry a horror-struck look. "You're not joking."
"I told you that they were having financial issues, sweetheart." The trunk clicked as he opened it and rummaged about, setting suitcases and pillows aside.
Iris stepped out of her car but left it running, still hoping desperately that this was some kind of sick joke brought about by both her and Barry's complaining preceding the trip. "You never said that they'd lost their house! This is… I mean…" She trailed off, visibly at a loss for words.
"I told you yesterday." Joe had found his bag and he'd slung it over his shoulder, hardly glancing at his daughter.
"Dad, you know Barry and I stopped listening to your 'trip' rants as soon as they started getting repetitive. A bit of a better warning would have been nice."
Joe hummed, pulled his companion's bags, blankets, and pillows out of the trunk, and slammed the door closed. A loud beeping noise momentarily echoed throughout the empty parking lot before he turned on his heel and headed testily for the double doors, sidestepping over odd stains and cracked pavement along the way.
Iris huffed in a frustrated manor and went to turn off her car, checking to make sure that it was locked multiple times before heading towards the dropped bags. Barry proceeded to sit in Joe's car, running things over in his sleep-hazed mind.
It was difficult to think about.
Damen Gray, the leading tech expert in Axion's R&D Division, had lost his job. Barry was sure of that. He faintly remembered Joe mentioning it at dinner one time, though it was a simple sentence in the sea of words that had came out of Joe's mouth in the past week. This led to the Gray duo losing their home, That is, if Valerie was still in the picture, which was dependent on if Damen got fired recently or earlier in Valerie's childhood. If she was still young when he'd lost his job, Valerie would most likely be put into a foster home. If not, well, she'd be coming home to a beat up apartment building in…where were they? He formerly believed that they were still in Amity, but perhaps they were in one of the neighboring towns instead. It would make sense, seeing as Amity was a fairly large city that was booming with tourism and would most likely cost more to reside in. He had been asleep when they'd pass the town sign, surely.
Barry did, however, know what street they were on, as announced by the faded, lopsided sign sitting on the corner of the parking lot.
Alright, so here were the facts: Damon Gray had lost his job and now lived on Elm Street in a cheap apartment building. It wasn't much to go by. Maybe if he—
Iris knocked on the car door and Barry jumped in surprise, letting out a noise that was most unmanly.
"You coming or are you going to just sit in the car for a week?"
Barry sighed. He'd gotten lost in his head again, as had been happening quite often lately. He pushed the car door fully open and stepped outside, where the stench of cigarette smoke mingled with the warm breeze and tainted his lungs.
Iris dropped Barry's bag into his arms without warning, and he buckled a bit under the weight.
"Maybe it's not so bad inside," Iris said, wringing her hands and waiting for Barry to confirm something he hadn't the slightest idea about.
He straightened and studied her with a quirked eyebrow. "I think you're the one that wants to sit in the car for a week.
Iris nudged him with her shoulder playfully, though a smile failed to show itself on her lips. "Shut up."
Barry grinned. He was worried, too, but he had to put on a show for Iris' sake. It was one of the many things he'd begun to learn since being struck by lightning. He had also learned, after rigorous training with Cisco that consisted of him being electrocuted a bit if he couldn't trick the lie detector into thinking he was telling the truth, how to good and properly lie.
And so it was there, standing in that beat up parking lot, that Barry pushed down his own fears and worries and urged Iris towards the doors, where Joe was getting things worked out with the receptionist.
It was going to be a long week.