The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated

by TobyKikami

DCAU, post-"A Better World." When the heroes act like villains, can the villains be heroes? The Justice Lords have vanished, but the regime they've set in place hasn't. A new generation of Rogues does their best to save the world and their loved ones.

1. How We Got Here

Notes and Warnings: Beta read by xcoffeespoonx on Livejournal. Many thanks!

I'd say I've gone full circle on this one, but I'd like to think I've still got a lot more distance to cover. See, what first got me falling sideways into Flash fandom was browsing through the other work of an author who'd written a BTAS fanfic I liked and finding one about a hapless DCAU Trickster on the run from the Justice Lords. Don't blame them, please.

This fanfic contains canon cherrypicking and attempts to patchwork it together, Hollywood lobotomy, psychic infidelity, Superdickery, doucheBattery, F-bombs, unreliable narrators, crack pairings, undue optimism, pretentiousness.

While the base of this fanfic is the DCAU animated canon, I've pulled in a lot from comics canon - both regular DCU (especially the Flash) and what I've read of the series tie-ins Justice League Adventures and Justice League Unlimited. I've also indulged in some, um, creative reinterpretation, particularly of characters that didn't appear in the DCAU. Feel free to bring up any WTFery so I can attempt to justify it, attempt to explain where I spun it off, or concede that it's all me.

By-no-means-comprehensive canon notes:

-In the JLU comics, the Mirror Master is explicitly Evan McCulloch complete with Scottish accent (as opposed to the unnamed soy latte-ordering guy with the American accent in "Flash and Substance," presumably his DCU predecessor Sam Scudder); he also has a wife and wheelchair-bound son. There is a page in which, stumped on his son's chemistry homework, he calls up Dr. Alchemy, who is busy changing his own son's diaper.

-In JL Adventures, Professor Zoom appears on friendly terms with the Rogues (even if they aren't necessarily as friendly with him) and they recognize his face without the cowl.

-In the Superman episode "Speed Demons," Mark Mardon's brother appears, survives the origin story, is younger than him, and is named Ben instead of Clyde.

-Jay Garrick appears in the comics, but as far as I know there's no indication in the DCAU that Barry Allen was ever the Flash. Wally does, however, mention that his uncle's flying in for Flash Appreciation Day.

Here goes!

---

"If the only reason Flash has to not just jerk the hearts out of these bloodthirsty maniacs is to keep his karma pure, well, that's just not enough. People are reformable, but even more we are all part of the moral ecosystem and you never know from where the next good act may come. We shouldn't judge people with deadly force, because our judgement isn't perfect. We all may need to be saved one day by the Golden Glider." - William Messner-Loebs

Part One: How We Got Here

Here

Eight days after the last known sighting of the Justice Lords, the Pied Piper returned from Apokolips. He returned haggard and grim-faced and accompanied by most of the others who had been at the resistance meeting last year, the ones who had disappeared into the boom tube he'd managed to play up while the walls crumbled in - most, but not close to all. Some were staying behind to keep an eye on the society that was still rebuilding from the unleashed remix of the Anti-Life Equation. Others didn't have such comforting reassurances to their names. No time to chisel headstones. If there was a better time to strike, better than while the Big Six were occupied God knows where, no one could see it anywhere in the distance.

Half-formed daydreamed if-only-if-only threads of plans came together at a safehouse outside Central City. Hartley Rathaway (it was only last year many of them had discovered Henry Darrow wasn't the name the Pied Piper was born with) presided as guest of honor, sole unapprehended charter member of the Central Rogues, and once-again senior partner in the Central resistance cell. He carried an elaborate trumpet over his shoulder, made of some uncanny alien engineering. They agreed: they'd take on Iron Heights right after Operation West Wind. That was where the Lords and their cronies kept the people they thought were actually dangerous, the ones they hadn't gotten around to lobotomizing; it would be under heavier guard. There were mirrors aplenty in Breedmore State Hospital, Evan McCulloch reported ("Right, Chilowicz?" Chilowicz nodded). They still seemed to think Sam Scudder had been the only Mirror Master, and that there was nothing left to worry about from that angle. On the other hand, reflective surfaces remained largely absent from Warden Wolfe's little fiefdom - maybe he was still working out his frustrations from back when Scudder was out and about and the authorities wouldn't let him do it on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment. Wolfe couldn't get rid of every one - there would be, if nothing else, the reflection in an eye for Evan to work with - but the squeeze would be much tighter and the prospect of evac would be more treacherous. Piper's newfound power might be able to crack the planet in half, but they couldn't treat it as a trump card - they'd have to try and live on a cracked planet afterward.

All cards on the table - the need-to-know that had kept them half-insulated in a tenuous semblance of safety was now everything they knew that could possibly be important. So for one thing Owen Mercer told them all what he'd only mentioned before in passing about the man in yellow who ran a giant hamster wheel in the basement of Iron Heights. Hooked up to sensors and tubes, electrocuted when he faltered, running fast enough to power the entire facility and then some, fast enough so that the yellow was all that Owen could make out. An explanatory plaque announced THAWNE, EOBARD, AKA REVERSE-FLASH, AKA PROFESSOR ZOOM. Wolfe had taken him down there once, informed by the Justice Lords that he was a delinquent metahuman - a minor-league speedster found in bad company. He'd explained to him that the man was there as penance for his crimes, finally being of use to society, and Owen knew a threat when one beat down his door and did the can-can in front of him.

"Oh, Eobard," said Al Desmond (this Al was Alvin, not Albert, who they liked to think would be pleased his Philosopher's Stone was in good fraternal hands). "I suppose he didn't escape to the future after all."

"You knew the guy," said Owen, "so if we let him out do you think he'd be the type to help, or kill everything, or stab us in the back because he thinks it would be funny? I mean, I'd like to be all warm and fuzzy and family values, but..."

"After whatever they've done to him? Who can tell?"

Axel Walker, leaning on the wall four feet up with his hair brushing the ceiling, mentioned that his dad was locked up for fraud and he might be at the Heights. He shrugged. "Just saying. Don't want everyone yelling at me if it turns out it means something."

"What kind of fraud?" said Lisa (Star on her driver's license, Snart on her birth certificate, Dillon in her fading dreams). Blaine Chilowicz towered behind her, still silent. This was his first time meeting most of the others. They'd learned that he'd been an orderly at Breedmore, and that he was hopelessly in love. "False papers? Hiding records?"

"Nah, book-cooking." Axel's feet twitched. More than two years after the first time he put them on, the airwalking shoes that had been custom-fitted for James Jesse were still too large for him. Layers of newspaper had been eventually replaced by memory foam that synched up with the ascent-descent signal sensors, but the limited resources that might conceivably have gone to making a pair from scratch were all put to use on more urgent matters. "Can't all be awesome."

Lisa turned to Piper. "That reminds me, Piper, you should know - your parents got arrested a few months back and they put your sister in a home. Sorry."

"The lass is well tended to," Evan put in. "We've made sure of that." It didn't make up for the rest of it, but at least you didn't need the Rathaways' scads of money to be well tended - a good thing, too, as those scads had been confiscated. He'd told them half an hour ago, on the same you'd-be-pissed-and-suspicious-if-I-didn't-say basis, that it was the Justice Lords' efforts to make a model city out of Central that had bankrolled his Colin's surgery ("So the trains run on time," Piper had roused himself to comment). Might be there had been some of that Rathaway money behind it.

"Oh," said Piper, in a voice of the utter calm that had gone through agitation and out the other side. "Huh. What for?"

"They said," said Axel, "what was the boringese? 'Receiving stolen goods.'" Piper's face went a ghastly tint. "'Cause they didn't turn over all the shit you sent them. They let that part into the news. Hey, you know why they didn't? And why were you sending them that shit? I thought they were like stinking rich, wasn't like they needed it, Robin Hood."

"I was paying off their investment," he said eventually, still pale, still too even. "The idea was if they wouldn't stop lecturing me on my wasted potential at least they could stop going on about the wasted money."

They talked some about what managed to filter through of the Arkham incident, eight days ago. The impostors in the Lords' old costumes - seven of them, one dressed up as the Flash. What did that mean? Evan talked about the mirror worlds where most people were left-handed and things were switched different ways from there. Sam Scudder used to talk about how he'd fallen into one where he was the hero and the Flash was the villain. "Wonder what it looks like now," said Owen. "Did he start reflecting lasers into people's brains, or did Superman get him first?" Could the Gotham cell break the doppelgangers out of wherever Batman had stashed them, get some answers? That was completely out of their hands, so they put it aside.

They talked security, because after things started rolling they couldn't rely on the normal precautions for their noncombatants - for Rita Desmond and baby Peter, for Angie Snart, for Jerrie Rathaway, for Josh Jackam Mardon (the former Officer Jackam was doing indefinite time for sedition, and they'd be picking her up if they could), for Tony Gambi, for Mrs. Mercer, for Maggie and Colin McCulloch and for that matter Miss McCulloch and her Kirkcaldy orphanage... At least Billy Hong overseas had his own bodyguards owing to his status as a major Zhutanese spiritual figure ("We're leaving him with monks?" said Axel, appalled as he had once been appalled to learn that somehow somewhere the Trickster had become an honest-to-God father. "Mick wanted to be a monk once," said Lisa. "They can be tougher than they look."). And the Justice Lords could go to Zhutan in theory, and they had been to places like Zhutan in practice, but their reach around the world wasn't as all-encompassing as the iron grip they'd closed over America (because America had Metropolis and Gotham and Central City, and America elected Lex Luthor. "The electoral college elected Lex Luthor," said Piper, "so they make even less sense." "Aye," said Evan, "That's no Martian."). So that was someone they could worry about slightly less. Mirror tech Evan wouldn't have room to take on the job got passed around. He gave quick lessons - point and shoot. A child could do it. A child might have to.

When there was nothing more being thrown out they crowded into the bathroom for a mirror videoconference in which little was said and much was implied. The cells couldn't be told too much about each other's plans, or else one mole - one Martian Manhunter incognito - could blow everything apart. Kara waved. Nightwing nodded. "Goodbye," Captain Marvel told them, "and good luck." The gathering filed out. Some through the door, most through the mirror - those Evan chauffeured home. In some cases he needed to find the right reverse-images in the right locations, well away from bugs. Other cases like Owen's were complicated in a different way - he needed to readjust the hard-light images and synchronize them with the person coming out of the mirror in just the right way to fool the surveillance. Lisa and Chilowicz were last. He let them out of the bathroom mirror in their rent-by-the-hour motel room. Just before they moved out of sight he saw them already arranging themselves, his arm around her waist, as if the paparazzi awaited outside the door. Something might well be.

When he came home Maggie was puttering in their own bathroom, eyes on the mirror. He kissed her good night and checked on Colin, who'd kicked off the blankets in his sleep. Evan pulled them up and tucked them in and ruffled his hair to watch his dreaming smile. Then he lay in his own bed and tried to sleep the sleep of the just.

---

The Abel to His Cain

Six weeks earlier

"I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, um, 'All right, then, I'll go to hell.' - and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said, and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brought - brung - up to it, and the other wasn't... warn't..."

Ben Mardon lowered the book and looked up. On the floor, Josh fidgeted and tugged at the legs of the institute-issued pants. Across from him, his brother's face had half-pulled into what might be interpreted as a grin; it was a thin and blurry line between grin and grimace.

"What?" said Ben. "They let it through. It's classic literature. Like, um, Brave New World! And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! And... I should probably shut up now, right, Mark? ... right."

The word, one of many on the charts, was alexia. Ben didn't care for it. It sounded too pretty for what it was, like something you'd name your daughter. One time he'd gone to a comedy club with college friends and the routine had moved into the topic of costumed criminals: "Well what else," demanded the woman at the mike, "can you do with a liberal arts degree in this economy?" That line probably wouldn't pass self-censorship now - too sympathetic. The college friends were fellow Bachelors of Science, had all climbed further up the ladder by that point, and they cracked up. He remembered that particular joke out of all the rest because Mark did have a liberal arts degree, a BA in English Literature (the only member of his graduating class to turn to supervillainy, for your information, and their parents would only shell out for a state university so it was a large class). He'd done his senior project on Twain. Now...

He struggled through to the end of the chapter before closing the book. "Say goodbye, Josh."

"Bye, Daddy."

Mark's face contorted again as Josh waved and Ben wondered again as he took hold of the chubby hand if this was a mistake, if he couldn't understand why a toddler was in the room calling him a father. Ben had tried to explain the first time he brought Josh, but it hadn't come out very well. He'd kept stumbling, thinking of what they'd done to and said about Julie Jackam. She hadn't even known who Mark was when they conceived Josh, but after she publicly resigned from the police it made the perfect springboard for all their wild accusations. She'd dated the Flash before that, as Wally West the forensic scientist, and when someone found out they decided it meant she must have been a covert agent trying to get inside his defenses. Ben might've rolled his eyes and sighed at the media feeding frenzy and the ten tons of logic failures, but he knew who was vetting the media these days.

He was lucky. After all, you couldn't pick your family. Before all this started to happen, back when the Flash was alive, Mark had tried to kill him with a freak hailstorm. So when he visited, it was an act of charity and the Justice Lords couldn't look askance at that. They liked to think they were charitable too - Breedmore probably hadn't been cleaner since opening day, and now everything was sleek and up-to-date and the furniture all matched. The staff worked hard to do what they could. You could even visit the ward itself - who would escape nowadays? - but the cameras were out in force and you could be sure they'd think near everyone who'd want to visit bore watching.

"Bye, Mark. Be seeing you. And, uh, bye, Mr. Dillon."

The man who'd been the Top nodded from his side of the room. "I could finish reading to him. If you want."

Ben startled - this was the first time he'd heard that much initiative from any of the inhabitants of the ward - but he handed over the copy of Huckleberry Finn. Come to think of it, which he was doing now, it wasn't as surprising as it seemed - these days Dillon always seemed to be in the room when he came visiting.

Mark said nothing. The doctors said he could talk, a little bit, in short and uncomplicated words, with effort. He'd never made the effort with Ben, who was afraid he knew why, because what did reading to him and bringing casseroles once a week compare to -

"Ben, you've gotta help me. Open up! Ben!"

"That's ridiculous," Lisa of all people told him once. "What could you have done? You didn't have Kryptonite on hand, did you?" Maybe Mark didn't see it that way. "And wouldn't that all be... wiped out by now?" What they'd done to Mark wasn't the same as what they'd done to most of the others in the ward. He left the room, Dillon already picking up from the next chapter, and proceeded down the hall to Exhibit B:

Lisa was still in her own brother's room, at his bedside among the beeping monitors. As he appeared in the doorframe, she glanced sideways and jumped to her feet. In theory he had a roommate too - there was another bed made up, and sparse personal effects lined up (for a given value of "personal") - but, unlike Dillon, Ben had never actually seen him in there during visiting hours, and that little sign of individuality gave him a smidgen of hope. Leonard Snart, on the other hand, never left the room or the bed, and nobody could accuse him of being exciting company. Two years ago he wouldn't have been here, Breedmore wasn't that kind of hospital, but when they remodeled Central City and remodeled Breedmore they'd made this ward a model of Arkham Asylum - someplace you could dump the bad people who dressed up in costumes, because if they were running around in costumes doing bad things they had to have some screw loose. A model - or really, a prototype - of the new Arkham Asylum, too: somewhere you could dump the bad people once they couldn't hurt anyone anymore.

Lisa said, "Let's get out of here."

Ben tried to apologize for taking so long, but she swept by without any sign of the words catching her. The trustee waiting placidly by the door out of the ward said "Have a nice day." She snarled something at him and shoved past. He watched her go with unblinking eyes and a smiling mouth and maybe it was only Ben's desperation to see something in them that made him think he looked hurt.

"Sorry about that," he said, and followed her before he could see the man's lack of reaction.

After the lobby doors slid shut behind them he said "I think he's doing better."

"You think so?"

They didn't want them to get better, not really, not the people whose opinions mattered. He'd talked to the earnest physical therapist and the equally-earnest speech therapist, doing their best with what they had, but if tomorrow angels descended from on high and cured everyone in the ward, five minutes after they commuted back to heaven the Justice Lords would be beaming down from on high and undoing it double-time. Though maybe if they redid it after all that practice Captain Cold would be awake and Mark would still read.

"Yeah. I think... I think he asked for something."

"Oh," said Lisa, in the perfect tones of passing interest.

You couldn't pick your family. So Lisa could get away if narrowly with visiting her brother once in a while, sitting there and talking at him while the lines squiggled across the monitors, because she hadn't gotten along that well with him to begin with, even if their paths kept crossing. But as to why their paths kept crossing, she'd stopped going to see Roscoe Dillon more than a year ago, because someone came by and warned her: if you had a choice why would you choose to love someone once you knew he was evil? And sometimes not even not knowing would save you.

That night, after dropping off Lisa at the regular Metropolis airport, the jet landed at the facility airfield. Josh had fallen asleep during the flight and Ben carried him as he checked in at the weather station. His assistants filled him in: nothing that needed smoothing out. No droughts to be broken, no storms to be softened. All according to the schedule for optimum worldwide growth conditions. The newest said "So this is your nephew, Dr. Mardon? Isn't he cute as a button!" and enthused about how happy he was to be helping with something so important. A private jet, a generous monthly stipend from the Watchtower, the warm fuzzy feeling of doing good. Living the dream.

Mark, I know you thought I'd be stupid to use it to help people for free, but it didn't have to be either-or. We could've earned all the money you tried to steal. You could've been a hero and you could've... you could've not...

That night nearly two years ago a sudden storm had blown in from the blue. Mark had called it up as cover; he hadn't been thinking clearly or he would've realized someone would investigate the weather anomaly, especially since he was on the At Large watchlist and especially since it was over Metropolis. Ben almost didn't hear the pounding on the door over the thunder. He'd looked through the peephole and when that didn't show him anything he'd opened the door but kept the chain on. On the other side Mark screamed his name and struggled to force it the rest of the way. Ben didn't try to close the door, but he didn't take off the chain. No, he'd stood there as Mark cursed and begged until the police arrived, and Superman, and it couldn't have been over faster if the Flash had been there that time too.

When they were kids Mark used to beat up anyone (else) who tried to push him around. Mark yelled at their parents and ran away on a semi-regular basis until he ran away to college and never came back. Before he ever got his hands on the wand, Mark had stormed. As one of the officers was saying "Are you all right, Dr. Mardon?" Superman was hauling him off by the back of his collar and for the first time Ben saw his older brother terrified.

In the residential zone of the facility, Ben put Josh to bed. In his own bathroom, as he squeezed out the toothpaste, a different face with a green mask swam into view on the front of the medicine cabinet and began speaking with a Scottish brogue. He stood and squeezed toothpaste all over the sink and listened.

---

The Number-One Fan

Two years five months earlier

So the way it went down was, Axel knew a guy who knew a guy who knew this creepy tattooed chick who went by Smith. She could hook you up with the best IDs in Central that weren't run off by the DMV (maybe she ran them off on the same gear after hours, or something). He brought an extra wad of bills and got to pick the name (and lifted all his comics for the next couple months to make up for it, because the stories they were doing now were crap anyway). Smith lifted an eyebrow when she heard the name he wanted, but she did it. Then he looked up the visiting hours for Breedmore, and the visiting rules, and he did his best to follow the rest of them because if this worked it would be totally worth it. Then he took a taxi there from the mall and showed them the ID and said he was James Jesse's cousin, Joseph Jesse.

"You're eighteen?" the desk guy repeated, looking down.

"Yeah." He tried to glower like a couple of actual older people he'd met who were sick of getting carded.

"I guess it makes sense," the guy muttered, "in the blood," and had him wait while they went and asked the Trickster if he really had a cousin Joey. Axel wasn't worried about that part -he'd probably say yes, at least to figure out who he really was and why he wanted to talk. He was just starting to get a bit worried when they came back and ran down the rules and brought him into a big room with a bunch of other people clumping around on those giant beanbags in clusters around scratched-up rickety coffee tables. They showed him over to the Trickster, who looked up and chirped "Long time no see, Joey! I like your hair!"

Greatest rush ever, but it didn't last. The Trickster was awesome in what Axel clipped out of Picture News and taped off the TV - crowing with laughter, dancing in midair, fixing the Flash to the ground with giant wads of gum, waving for the camera (one time he'd yelled "Hi, Mom!" and Axel fell off the couch). In Breedmore he was boxed up and drugged up and acted okay with that, and Axel wanted to puke. But then he said he was pretty sure Mirror Master's birthday was coming up and would Axel mind running down to this bar the Rogues all went to and wishing Sam a happy one for him? Fuck yeah.

Paid off, too, because to pay him back for the time and trouble and the birthday cards smuggled in to be signed in a sprawling hand (he was off by three weeks for Mirror Master and mixed up Weather Wizard's with Pied Piper's but it was the thought that counted, Piper said), Trickster told him about this one storage unit where he kept backup gear and cash, and where to find the key. "Get yourself something nice, kiddo." And if there was one thing Dad taught Axel, it was what to do with a blank check. First things first he found the backup pair of shoes, the ones that looked like ordinary sneakers. When they tried to fall off he stuffed in some newspapers. He started flying lessons in the backyard. Crashed into Mom's shrubs and flowerbeds a few times but everyone just went on thinking that was him being him.

And he guessed he could've ditched Trickster after that, but he knew from the news the guy'd had stints in Breedmore before, and after he got out he'd gone back to having fun eventually. So maybe he'd get better again, even if he was staying longer than usual this time. And maybe in that case he'd take a liking to Axel, if he knew he'd been to see him while he was still a total loser. And maybe he'd make him a... sidekick? Nah, hero thing. Henchman? Minion? Nah, too small... he'd think of a word if it came up.

Besides, he liked getting to go to Fourth Street. Nobody kicking rad like the Trickster used to be, but pretty rad anyway. They didn't card him for beer and after he gave them whatever from the Trickster he got to hang around and listen in until they noticed he was still there.

Then suddenly on the news they were saying the Flash was dead. They were saying President Luthor shot him in the face. The fuck? What did the President have to do with anything? What was some bald square in a suit doing butting in? Next time he went to Breedmore, Trickster's eyes were red around the edges and his nose was red like Rudolph's and he carried around a jumbo box of Kleenex. When visiting time was up there was a pyramid of crumpled Kleenex on the rickety table. He said, between sniffles, "So that was his name. I always wondered. Wally West. It even alliterates! You mind doing me another favor?"

So that was how Axel ended up in a flower shop asking the girl behind the counter what kind was good for dead people. He ended up getting a big bunch of tiger lilies to go with it, because they were the closest thing to cool in the store that a freakin' flower could be and he couldn't imagine Flash digging the boring shit when he was alive and Trickster wasn't signing any cards this time ("They'll think I'm making fun of him and I'm not!"). And all of that went into the pile going up and up outside the Flash's aunt's hotel room. The Flash's aunt's name was Iris West, Iris West Allen after she got married, and when Axel looked back through his clippings he found her name here and there in the older articles before she moved. She was here and there in the online archives, too, for other papers. Give her credit - she hadn't sucked the Flash's dick any more than the other reporters (okay, no, that was just nasty).

Then suddenly on the news they were saying Superman lost it and stormed the White House and fried the President. Three guesses why and the first two don't count - they said the guy had his finger on the Big Red Button but Axel could think of something else big and red and dead. The Vice President flailed around on live TV on all channels. The tell-alls in the tabloids said the Oval Office still smelled like burning bacon. Wicked!

"Wow," said Trickster, "wow, didn't think Big Blue had it in him."

He said this blinking slowly, not worried, because he was a fucking moron. He was staying in the hospital and popping his pills because that's what Flash would've wanted, and because he was a fucking moron. He was such a fucking moron that when Superman came for him he still wasn't worried, and Axel was a fucking moron too because even after the standoff at the Rogues' bar and after on the news they were talking about all the arrests and after Iris West Allen put out an article about how Superman sure was doing the heat-laser thing on a lot of heads these days, he never thought about something like that happening until it was happening. Superman came barging in with Batman (fucking Batman!) and that put together was enough to have all the other visitors and visitees running for cover. Axel was halfway on his way out and got carried along in the current. He grabbed the doorframe as they went past and peered around it with a handful of other rubberneckers.

Trickster was saying, best as he could with Superman holding him feet off the floor and the cheap slippers falling off, "I dunno, I dunno, they never tell me anything!"

One of the doctors was still in there, way tougher than Axel thought or maybe way dumber. She was saying Trickster was doing good even if he hadn't gone all the way over to doing good things, he was really dedicated to getting better, he was taking his meds on the dot. Batman was standing there with his stupid pointy ears and saying in a you're-a-dumbass voice: how many times has he stopped taking his meds because he felt like it?

Trickster blinked and turned his head between them.

The doctor said, look, mister, I don't know how you do things on the East Coast but this isn't Arkham and we've moved past the age of Walter Freeman -

Superman turned his head and stared.

Axel bolted. Right out the front doors the split second after they slid open, right across Breedmore grounds, right down the street until he doubled over gasping with the cold air pulled in from the gasps tearing up the back of his throat and he wasn't crying, dammit, he wasn't. And then he straightened up and tried not to look any more like a runaway than he'd already looked like running away from Breedmore. He threw the Joey Jesse ID in a dumpster behind a Mickey D's and he took the bus home and turned on the stereo in his room loud enough to make the floor vibrate and he stopped paying attention to the news.

The next day in a frenzy he dressed up in the clothes Mom kept buying him and took a backpack full of the stuff he'd gotten from Trickster back to storage. He realized on the way home that if he really wanted to cover it up he should've at least wiped his prints or some shit, but he didn't dare go back for that. He should've gotten rid of the key too, but instead he hid it in the spare room full of Mom's old hobby crap she was meaning to get back to someday because some private dicks might go through the trash but nobody ever touched that. For the next couple days he pretty much grounded himself because he was scared to do much of anything else. One thing he did do was look up Walter Freeman, him and the lobotomies he used to tool around the country doing with icepicks.

At the end of the week, Batman and Superman finally turned up. At his house. With Dad in tow. With Superman staring at him enough to make Axel feel kind of sorry for President Baldy (except not, except Baldy knew what could happen if he pissed this guy off and he did it anyway and now everyone else had to keep paying for it!). And Batman saying that for future reference James Jesse had come over from Italy as a kid, him and his mom and dad, and when they changed their names to Jesse it was just for show business and not a legal thing. For legal things like IDs it'd stayed Giuseppe. And it wasn't the name you'd usually pull out of the Italian so all the distant-cousin Giuseppes that'd come over before and decided to have their names in English made themselves not Jesses but Josephs... Mom cried and Dad smiled a skeleton smile, like he knew it was a bad idea to be smiling right in front of capes who'd cooked the president like a turkey but couldn't turn it off, and Batman said "... Axel Walker," in a you're-a-dumbass-and-I-know-everything voice.

Superman said he was so young. He said it like this one cop once said "You're a bad seed, Walker."

They worked over his room, very cold, very clean - Superman just looked around and pointed at the boxes of clippings and Batman pulled them out and popped open the lids, and then they took down the rack of tapes and watched some of them on his TV. They even took down the old Flying Jesses poster he'd gotten off the Internet. At least they weren't talking about the Trickster's stuff in storage, Axel thought, or the key he'd stuffed under the crochet yarn, maybe they didn't know everything, and then he was scared that somehow Superman could see right through to the thought as it wriggled in his head. Later, after he read in the back issues of the papers that the whole of Smith's network had been taken down, he'd figure they must've traced him through Smith, and just through Smith.

They talked about whose fault it was, how much his parents hadn't paid attention, and what he might've picked up from them (if they were bad plants that popped out a bad seed, and maybe that was why later they or the CCPD dug enough to find what they needed to put Dad away), and whether it was because of the media making Trickster and the rest of them look cool, and Axel wanted to say Are you fucking kidding me, Flash's aunt's in the media and so's that chick he was dating, you think they'd make the Rogues look cool? but his mouth was just as much locked up as Dad's.

They didn't do anything worse to him, didn't cook his brain or stick an icepick in it, because he was so young and wasn't even old enough to drive (even if he hadn't let that stop him) and far as they could tell Trickster hadn't yet converted him to a remote-control minion (as if that was all he could've been - Batman was convinced Trickster couldn't have possibly given a shit about him, that it was all manipulation, as if! Like he could've manipulated his way out of a paper bag!) and he'd already seen Trickster being made an example of and they had bigger fish to fry (yeah, bigger fish like a zonked-out has-been in a loony bin). A whole city to clean up in the name of the Flash. Axel wanted to yell If he wanted it cleaned up that bad he would've done it himself! He was the fast guy, he had plenty of time! but his fat mouth stayed locked up.

---

The Good Twin

Four months earlier

The earliest thing Alvin Desmond remembered was Albert pointing at him saying something was his fault, and knowing it wasn't true. Their mother didn't believe him either. Mom never believed Albert when he blamed Alvin, and sometimes sitting up at night in the grip of existential crisis Alvin wondered why he'd kept trying.

But at some point Albert outgrew it. And at some point he put on a costume and started calling himself Mr. Element. Then he'd taken off that costume and put on another one and switched to Dr. Alchemy. Alvin read the articles on his exploits with morbid fascination. He was living his own life in the meantime, and living it quite well - he lived it all the way over to Star City, where he'd been transferred in his last promotion. He was climbing fast; sometimes talent did get you places despite stupidity in the world thick and plentiful as hydrogen, and thanks to... necessary adjustments, he didn't have his brother's reputation holding him back.

One day, though, when the news was slow and company policy meant he had to take a couple days off, he drove to Central City and went to his brother's apartment. He was about to knock when the door opened and a dark-haired woman came out. And that was how he met Rita Salazar. Rita was The One who Albert was going straight for (he backslid later, but she was remarkably accommodating). He didn't understand why you'd want to tie yourself down like that, but if you were going to do it you could definitely do much worse.

One thing led to another in a dizzying chain of reactions, a rolling snowball becoming a veritable avalanche. Somehow an argument about how Albert was wasting the potential of his super-rock ("Philosopher's Stone!" Albert protested. "And another thing, Al, why the pseudo-mysticism gimmick? We're men of science." "It's not mysticism if it works.") was followed a few hours later by raiding the storage, by Alvin dressing up in the old Mr. Element costume, and by following his brother to a bar on Fourth Street. Albert introduced him to the other Rogues. "You can't tell," he said, gesturing to the gas mask, "but he's the good twin." And it was probably bad to feel so great about that, about the way they nodded and waved at him, but what the hell.

That night at the bar was how he first met Eobard Thawne. He came around now and again; they didn't count him as a Rogue per se but he'd raced the Flash a couple times. Sometimes people called him "Professor" with a wink. Sometimes he wanted in on their plans, and they didn't shoo him away or freeze him out. He was a smartass through and through and some of them suspected he was the Flash himself in a yellow suit, except the amount of devotion to deception that would be required to fake their public brawls was mind-boggling. When Eobard overheard this theory he took down his cowl right there in the bar and ran a hand through his nearly-as-yellow hair and said, "In the future, we know the Flash was a redhead." Several people turned to look at the Pied Piper or McCulloch the mercenary before snickering at the idea of it and turning back. Alvin was a redhead himself - a recessive that cropped up now and again in the Desmond line, and would crop up in the future with little Peter - but you couldn't tell with the mask on.

Eobard moved loose and easy when he was in the bar, though in the footage where he fought the Flash he moved sharp and sleek. Either way, his eyes burned. He whistled tunes no one else knew. When he got excited he slipped into an accent like none Alvin had ever heard before, from whatever future-language named people Eobard. He shook Alvin's hand, said "You two are still remembered in the twenty-fifth century as masters of the elements," and smirked like there was something funny about it. He talked about connecting destinies. He had the kind of smirk that you wanted to wipe off his face by any means necessary. And -

"Hey. Al." It was the boy with the Trickster's shoes, floating at eye level, arms folded, trying to look intimidating.

Alvin took a moment to revert the stand of trees back from jagged hulks of Kryptonite. They were practicing next to a reflecting pool somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, where McCulloch had dumped them out. McCulloch himself was nowhere to be seen. From the other side of the pool there came the sound of boomerangs thwacking into other trees. In another half hour, they were scheduled to combine their talents to experiment with glowing green boomerangs.

It was easier to form Kryptonite than he'd expected. It was made of the same electrons and protons and such as anything on the conventional periodic table, but given its extraterrestrial origin and scarcity it wasn't as though he'd had experience with the natural variety. Albert had worked with Kryptonite, he remembered - he'd acquired a chip off the black market and examined its atomic structure out of scientific curiosity, then sold the sample onward. The Philosopher's Stone might have remembered how it went - saved the settings, as it were.

Wait, how did he know this?

Well, Albert must have told him.

"You know why you don't have a birth certificate?"

"What?"

"It's all on computers now. I checked - might want to stick some in someday."

"There must be a typo somewhere." Alvin shrugged. "A system's only as good as what you put in."

"Hell of a lot of typos then. I looked by name and date and -"

"Date?"

"You're supposed to be twins with Doc Alc, right? I looked on the day he was born, found his all right, and I looked a week forward and a week back 'case your mom took her sweet time or something. Zip. Zilch. Nada. 'Sides, I looked up the mugshot too and you don't look a fucking thing like him."

"You've never heard of fraternal twins, have you? ... what, are you saying I'm a plant? The Lords made me up whole-cloth? I met the Rogues a long time before all this. Al introduced me to the regulars." I used to hit on Lisa Snart. I used to bang Eobard Thawne in the men's room. Oh the look on Darrow's face - Rathaway's face - that one time he caught us at it! The poor conscientious soul asking if we had condoms! "Ask Lisa or McCulloch."

"He's listening." Walker scowled. "I wasn't just going to go up and ask with nobody around so you can turn me into gold and hock me on eBay. I'm not stupid."

"Aye," McCulloch called from somewhere behind him. "I know you well enough, but after what the lad's turned up I'd like to hear your answer."

"Fine. I suppose I have to tell you. The certificate's not there because I took it out."

He remembered slipping through a tunnel in the ceiling. Remembered transmuting the paper to gas particles and wafting it into the waiting envelope. But the computer...? He remembered he had a bright-eyed college student with him. A master hacker. The boy died later. Hit by a car in a completely unrelated incident. Wasn't that sad?

"I destroyed all of my old records." It had been done before. The Riddler had once done it in Gotham, and the audacity and mystery of his total wipe had made the news even in the Midwest, though it had been a slow day. Alvin could certainly do it without the accompanying bombast, especially since no one had a reason to look for him and find the absence. Until now. "If there's no proof of my existence, the Justice Lords won't look for me. I know how hard they've made life for Lisa and Kid Boomerang. And besides..."

"Besides what?" said Walker. He was starting to look somewhat mollified.

"Besides, I already have, let's say, a secret identity. I've been using it for years."

"Solid?"

"Very. I... didn't want to be associated with Al, in those days."

It had to be done. He'd known it had to be done if he was ever going to live apart from the Other Al. So he'd used the classic dead-baby trick back when it still worked and got himself a birth certificate and a Social Security number (new ones) and built up the documentation from there. And that was the name on his apartment in Star City, and that was the name on the company payroll. And that was the name he was being reasonable in not telling them (though McCulloch probably knew it already).

And that was the name he was grateful to have after the Flash died. After Luthor died. After Eobard disappeared (did he think this was the funny part?). After Albert was arrested. After the spectacular fall of Green Arrow. After he woke up one morning with the Philosopher's Stone shining in his hand. He should have some idea how it got there. He didn't.

---

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Two years three months earlier

Rogues had retired before. That oldster Joar Mahkent might've been the first; he made more as an inventor than he ever did fighting Jay Garrick as the Icicle - "America," he used to say with a laugh, "the land of opportunity!" The art world finally took notice of Rainbow Raider after one particular caper involving a plagiarist, and now he was doing the lecture circuit with a controversial memoir and a portfolio that alternated between breathtaking works in monochrome and pieces that were now acclaimed as "avant-garde" instead of dismissed as literally colorblind. Captain Cold had done it once in his younger days when he was chasing a supermodel, and sworn never again after she tried to frame him. Captain Boomerang had some government deal worked up. Dr. Alchemy oscillated, and the Trickster swung back and forth like the door of a restroom stall.

But not a one of them had ever made plans for succession, and Sam Scudder thought it would be a pity for all of that painstakingly developed technology to go to waste. And who better to take up the orange and green than young Evan McCulloch? No costume of his own, no gimmick, just a sharp eye for reflection and refraction along with his sharp eye for sniping. Schooling not so good, but then neither was Sam's. Henching wasn't as big a business in Central as it was in other places, but sometimes the need came up for an extra pair of hands, an extra gun, and McCulloch had provided these on and off for years. And he earned his pay three times over when he said in passing things like what if you did this - and Scudder did it later, and it worked a treat.

And besides, McCulloch had a wife and a sick little boy to provide for. So it was almost like doing a good deed, wasn't it? Nice auspicious start to life as an honest citizen.

And Evan wouldn't try and hoodwink himself, looking back - he accepted the lot with pleasure. Scudder showed him the ropes, took him touring the mirror worlds. He was still hammering out the exact details of his exit plan, but once he did he'd have a new Mirror Master ready to introduce before the other Rogues could start to grumble. Their aspirations spun off into infinity, as happened when you put two mirrors facing. In his head Evan had paid off the house and the fund for getting Colin on his feet was ballooning. Scudder was calculating what innocuous items he'd patent to pull a Mahkent and fund a leisurely existence lounging on a tropical island where he'd munch figs and thumb his nose at the Flash. It worked for Lex Luthor (actually it didn't, but they didn't know that yet). They were about the same size, but not perfectly so, and Scudder offered to pay for the costume refittings at Gambi's as one last gift to his protege.

Then the Flash died and everything deflated. You'd think they'd go hog-wild then, and they would've thought so too, but it didn't work that way. No spark, said Heat Wave, no panache, said Captain Cold, no joie de vivre, said the Weather Wizard. Because after all if they were just in this for the money they could've made a killing the Mahkent way. They hung around in the bar and knocked back endless rounds and the sprog with the falling-down pants who ran messages from the Trickster in Breedmore made it clear even he was inconsolable, so there was no question of springing him and getting themselves some laughs that way.

The Flash's aunt had come to Central City for the funeral. She stayed and went back to Picture News and wrote articles about what was going on everywhere, what the Justice Lords were doing, what'd become of the elections for Congress. After one article about Big Blue's literal deathglares these days she was suddenly "retired" and so, just as suddenly, was her husband. It wasn't "arrested," Evan reckoned, only on account of how her nephew was their martyr. When they bothered talking in public these days they talked about how this was for the Flash, how they wished the Flash could have lived to see this, and they couldn't have his Auntie Iris or for that matter his Uncle Barry running about underfoot saying pull the other one. Likely the same'd happened with that Park woman it'd turned out he'd been seeing as Wally West, the one who'd cried on camera. She was young, so it'd been a "leave of absence" for her.

Not to forget bloody Garrick. He was old and grieving and they said he'd disappeared in some superspeed anomaly and they said that was why they'd taken in old man Mahkent "for questioning," but Evan wasn't born yesterday.

Evan stopped going to Fourth Street. He had Maggie and Colin to think of. He wasn't the only one to think the whole ugly business boded no good; later he'd find that some of the others had vanished from Central before it all came crashing down in earnest (if some of them had run - after all, everyone had thought that smartarse Professor Zoom consulted his futuristic encyclopedia and said "Aw cripes" and sped his way back to the twenty-fifth century, maybe because they couldn't bear to think otherwise). He knew why he didn't run - he hadn't been caught yet, no need to draw attention, and could Colin take that kind of life? - but what he couldn't understand was why the rest of them didn't until the last minute. Later he'd try to see it their way: the prospect that six of the most powerful sods on Earth might be out for their heads was too much for ordinary planning to handle. Maybe the only thing they could think to do was go about their business and hope that if they didn't move they wouldn't be noticed, and that if they were noticed they'd have their last moments with something like friends.

Soon after they put away Auntie, the Lords turned even more of their attention to Central. At least Superman and Batman did. Those two were by far the faces you saw most often swooping about the city - maybe because however strong the grudge, they still had the rest of the world to beat into submission and even they couldn't explain to themselves why they'd have to bring all their force to bear on this solitary point. Superman and Batman were bad enough, especially with a riled and new-molded police behind them. Their first big moves were raids on the bar and on Gambi the tailor's. Both had only stayed open this long because of the unspoken understandings with the Flash - understandings that you only appreciated, only realized had been there, when you were facing hard-eyed capes that didn't understand them.

On that particular night, with a roomful of talents obliged to work together and work to their full potential, bringing in all of the Big Six to begin with wouldn't have been quite so farfetched a notion after all. The Pied Piper told him the story later: how Dr. Alchemy, thinking on his tiptoes, transmuted a barricade with layered lead and Kryptonite and the hardest elements he could call to mind. How the others backed up that barricade with whatever they could. How Scudder opened up the mirrors in the men's lavvies and began hustling people through. Evan didn't find any folk stranded in there afterward, so he must have been taking the time to get eggs out of the basket before he put in any more. That might've been his mistake.

Scudder had gotten all the civilians out, and all the henches, and most of the Rogues. He was in the mirror, reaching out, about to break the surface for Piper and Heat Wave, when the Martian Manhunter came down through the ceiling and shattered the glass with one blow.

Scudder screamed. Heat Wave turned his flamethrower on the Martian, who went up like a Roman candle and plummeted back out of sight. Scudder kept screaming from the shards. They rushed into the main bar and what seemed like only seconds later, not long enough for anyone to panic completely, the barricade gave. Dr. Alchemy flew across the room in the blast and crashed into Heat Wave empty-handed; not even the Justice Lords, all six of them, could find the Philosopher's Stone. Piper crouched in the corner and managed to get out the first notes of don't see me, don't see me as the Green Lantern shoved the others into an energy cage. Their eyes slid over him. He ran for it, still playing, hoping their telepath was busy putting himself out. Scudder hadn't stopped screaming.

Evan didn't know any of this at the time. He only knew what he scouted out through the mirrors, along with what was on the telly and then in the papers - what they let on the telly and in the papers. "Samuel Scudder, alias Mirror Master" was on the list of apprehensions next to Desmond and Rory. As the days-weeks-months rolled by more filtered in. They always made the front page in Central. The Turtle and the Fiddler and Rainbow Raider and Captain Cold and the Top and Abra Kadabra and -

The police came to their house once, when he was at the market. If he'd been there he probably would have panicked and hauled them all through a mirror and Christ only knew what would've fallen out from there. But when he came back to find the squad car already in front of the house he walked up and asked the officers what was going on with the calm of the assuredly innocent and the completely numbed. It turned out all they were doing was looking up the women in Captain Cold's little black book, just in case, and they'd traced Miss Maggie Campbell to Mrs. Margaret McCulloch. Because it was just in case it was only the police, and because she'd married someone else they didn't look as closely as they might. So they looked where they imagined a full-sized man might be hiding and they didn't find the mirror gear this side of the mirror, which Evan had concealed with the same thoroughness with which he'd used to hide his blow from thieving roommates before he kicked the habit. So it looked like, if he was sensible, he might be safe.

But he couldn't be sensible. Not entirely. He worked nine-to-five these days, and at night he went walking between the mirrors with one of the filtered visors that let him look through them one-way. He learned to look deeper, more closely - and aye, some of that was looking for any bit of Scudder they'd left behind. This was how he learned how to find spy cameras, from the reflections in their lenses. He learned to look at the configurations there and figure if any of the larger reflections were in blind spots. It was more a thought exercise than anything, then.

When he looked long enough and far enough, he began to find the old Rogue boltholes Superman and Batman hadn't yet ferreted out - simple enough to figure which ones they had. He took out what he could of cold guns and flamethrowers, the Top and the Trickster's toys, and restashed them all between mirrors.

He began to find other survivors. Captain Cold's little sister Lisa had come to Fourth Street now and again on the Top's arm - he found her first in front of the show window of an ice cream parlor, sitting across from her sister-in-law with a trio of sundaes between them. Dr. Alchemy's otherwise-angelic twin used to dress as Mr. Element and come in for the high; he found him first in the glass-topped table in the Desmonds' living room, sitting next to his brother's wife in hollow-eyed silence. Her name was Rita and Alchemy had shown around pictures of her - she didn't patronize Fourth Street like Mags, hadn't even marched there nights to drag her husband home as Angie Snart had done. At that point you could tell Rita was expecting (the result would be named Peter, after the father of both Als, middle name Alvin. If the Lords hadn't been about it might well've been something a wee bit more direct). Right in front of them, resting on the table, was that gold chunk of rock - the Philosopher's Stone.

He found a man he thought might be Captain Boomerang, but once he knew for sure it was too late. The disguise was too good. If only he'd kept the old tools of his trade in sight of something reflective. Not too late for Boomerang's lad, though for a long stretch it seemed like it.

He found the sprog who ran messages for the Trickster. He'd grown some in the past months, but not beyond recognition. The gel was out of his hair and he'd pulled up his pants. He leaned forward, elbows on the counter, in a pose Evan had caught sight of many times before - people staring at themselves wondering just what fine mess their lives had turned into. Evan looked around. Turned out he lived in a swanky house with a terrified woman and a mailbox that said JENSEN-WALKER (Walker was his name, turned out, and Jensen was his mother's) and a light spot on the ceiling where a poster used to be.

He found the Pied Piper, who'd escaped notice simply by using the name he was born with. It was thanks to that shiny flute of his - he lived in a cheap bedsit, playing the saddest music long into the night. He hardly left those rooms and it was realizing this that drew Evan out of the mirror. He'd carried on with his charities at first, Evan found, but hard to carry on when any moment a Lord might decide to come in and praise their good work before dragging them under the great bleeding Doing Good umbrella - when a Lord might come in and realize the face on that ginger was the same as the one on the At Large list with the hair up under that daft cap. And what chance did his political rot stand nowadays when the Lords had decided they'd take care of the politics, that ordinary folk couldn't be trusted with them if they'd go and elect Luthor?

"This is exactly the time we need it the most," said Piper without taking offense at his calling it rot. "Because clearly, revolution is in order."

He thought of Piper the summer just before the man got back from his holiday on the hell planet, when the Justice Lords discovered Colin. There was an operation that could be done now - revolutionary, brilliant, and close on three mil. Even with the nine-to-five, the insurance would flee screaming into the night before it'd pay up for that. The Central City Orthopedic Clinic made a regretful note in the charts. Someone snooped and got hold of it and one of the Lords decided it made the perfect example of their benevolence. Another bit of carrot to be smashed beneath the stick. Good pap for the papers - Colin standing, smiling, his favorite old Flash toy in hand. Evan and Maggie stood behind him and smiled some more - at least Maggie smiled, while Evan grinned like he'd taken a whiff of Joker-gas. He hadn't the faintest how he kept from pissing himself or spewing on Superman, or how the lobotomizing nutter or his fellow flying-rat nutter or their passing Martian nutter friend didn't see right through his skull to him calling them all nutters. Might be they'd gotten used to dealings with folk who were trying not to spew.

He half-convinced himself he was grateful, so as to convince them when he told them so, and unconvinced himself when he got home. 'Course he wasn't grateful, he said when he told the rest - he could've paid for the thing himself, all three mil, if they hadn't put a stop to what he did best. Naturally there was more to it than that - after all when had Scudder ever had three mil, cash, in one place at once when he wasn't about to be laid out on the floor with a superspeed punch?

It had to do with knowing that if ever he could've thrown himself on their mercy and expected actual mercy the time was long past and a dot in the distance. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lords. If reformees like Raider and Icicle and sorry crackpots like Trickster didn't stand a chance, why would a man with real blood on his hands?

It had to do with Breedmore. With what he'd seen looking through silverware and nighttime windowpanes and the unmoving eyes of one man after the next. As clean as West laid out in his casket, and as dead.

It had to do with Scudder, partly, with whatever'd become of him because nobody - not him and not Lisa and not Mardon - ever saw hide nor hair of him in Breedmore. Maybe to do with the oddity he came upon scouting around the lower levels of Iron Heights - there, said Piper when he described it in relation, was about the location of the old Pipeline (ha ha) where they kept the costumes. The overlapped scattering of opaque and impassable fragments that, he guessed from all his time behind mirrors, looked like it could be about what might happen if one got broken right while you were headed through.

---

The Woman Outside the Refrigerator

One year ten months earlier

On the night of the Fourth Street raid, Lisa was performing with the Futura Ice Show in New York - scheduled far in advance, all the arrangements made, it wasn't going to be cancelled for a dead president or totalitarian takeover. Life ground on because what else could you do with it? She came back to the suite with Roscoe after a press session with Lisa Star, the Golden Girl, and her devoted coach. You'd think the reporters would all be busy somewhere else but they seemed eager for the fluff piece. When they opened the door they found Len in an armchair, glasses off and hood down, draining the liquid contents of the minibar. He knew they were there - they'd called two days before, "Wish you were here!" - and that was where, trying to think of a place to go, he'd asked Mirror Master to direct him.

Any other time, there would've been shouting - what have you dragged us into and do you know how overpriced those things are? There would've been grabbing and shaking. There might even have been a brawl that ended with half the room frozen and the police charging in and a massive bill in the morning. But that night Len said "The capes are on the move" and they went into a huddle on the couch.

"Shit," said Len, "shit, I blew your cover, didn't I."

Any other time, Roscoe would have replied with a sophisticated rendition of No shit. But that night he said "They would have come eventually." And because he'd known that, he already had a plan, which went into action prematurely and adjusted for one more.

The NYPD had to send for a special team from Central City to thaw her out after they broke down the door the next morning. When they asked if she had any idea where her brother and her boyfriend had gone, she said no with a clear conscience as she sat up with blankets around her shoulders and clutched the coffee a sympathetic officer handed her.

They asked her about Len. "We weren't... close," she said. "He was much older than me," she said. When they ratcheted up the interrogation she said, without trying very hard to ratchet up the sobbing, "He left me behind! He left me behind with... with Dad..." That the last thing he'd said to her was I'm sorry, Lisa helped her cry harder. All over again she'd wanted to go with him. She'd wanted to go with them.

The eventual verdict was she was a victim. An abused girl who'd become a broken little woman with an Oedipal fixation, taken in by the Top because he thought it would be funny to tweak Captain Cold by providing her with another dysfunctional father/brother figure. It helped that Len had frozen her. It helped that she didn't have a record. It helped that she'd never put on a costume outside the rink on any day besides Halloween; first and foremost it was the costumes they were after. It helped that they didn't know she'd known Roscoe Dillon and the Top were the same person, or all the times she'd been to the premier Rogue watering hole. Not that she wasn't relieved but she wondered why they didn't use a mindreader more often, since they had one. Maybe the mindreader had rightfully told them they had bigger things to worry about, bigger minds to read, if they were going to take over the world.

At the end of it they referred her to Ben Mardon, the Weather Wizard's little brother. He lived in Metropolis under Superman's auspices and they seemed to think he would tell her that her brother and her lover were incapable of higher emotions and it was all right to stop caring so much in return. They obviously didn't know Ben very well.

They caught Len and Roscoe two months later, in Argentina. They still hadn't split. Nobody said how much of a fight they put up, and she couldn't ask, so she imagined it had been a good one. She took a flight to Central City once she read nearly all the captured Rogues were now in Breedmore. Why Breedmore, she'd wondered, why not Iron Heights again? They couldn't think that would be more secure.

They didn't need it to be more secure. Not with what they'd done.

There was only so long you could sit at a bedside before you admitted the force of your presence wouldn't make their eyes open. Roscoe was worse, in a way. She could pretend that Len would be fine once he woke up, even with the twin burn scars on his forehead, but it was much harder to imagine that Roscoe would suddenly grow new brain cells. Everything was blunted, everything was ground down. She didn't know if it would be worse if the man who'd taught her to spin was dead or if some part of him was still alive and trapped deep. "I'm sorry," said Roscoe, perfectly polite. "I'm sure it was important, I certainly remember that, but I'm afraid I don't quite grasp..."

The biggest sign of life in the ward was the Trickster's feet, idly swinging.

That was where she'd met Blaine Chilowicz. Back then he'd worked on the new Rogue ward. As she sat in the lobby with her face in her hands, he'd gone on his break and offered her a cigarette. When she turned it down, he offered a can of Soder instead. When she could handle it he answered her questions about how, yeah, everything was so quiet now. Most of them could take care of themselves - the big exceptions were Len and Mark Mardon and Mick Rory - but you could leave them in front of a turned-off TV and they'd stare at it all day. The administration was even thinking of picking trustees, leaving the inmates in charge of each other - that was how far it had gone. It wasn't all because of the... operations because a lot of them were also being drugged, orders from up high. But sometimes they still got these... haunted looks like they were getting an idea of what they used to be, even if they couldn't put it in words. Sometimes you saw tears spilling quiet down their faces but they couldn't tell you why. And yeah, it was all... pretty creepy. She wasn't alone, thinking that, but... And he closed his mouth on "it's all for the best" because he knew and she knew that couldn't be true.

She took a round-trip flight once a month for the next three months. Tickets, at least, weren't a problem - Ben visited even more frequently with little Josh in tow, his new job in weather control got him use of a plane, and he had no problem sharing it with her. She talked at Len, though she increasingly thought she might have more success talking to a potted plant (really. There were studies). She brought Roscoe books. Futura had dropped her, but she had savings and she found work in Metropolis - giving skating lessons to little girls and never telling them "Think of yourself as a gyroscope." She could get by. She visited Angie once in a while and once they visited Breedmore together. Angie was afraid that the ward door would lock behind them and Superman would drop in for another two lobotomies. Lisa couldn't tell her that was ridiculous because when she thought about it, it really wasn't.

Especially because someone came to see her when she was staying the night at Angie's apartment. Someone in a green uniform she didn't recognize. Someone checking up on her, saying things like I hope you're doing all right, I know this kind of thing can be devastating, I know you feel like everything's been pulled out from under you (and how the hell would you know? she kept herself from saying), I know it takes time to adjust, but you have to move on. Family's family, you can't pick that, but blood's thicker than water and, well...

If it had been smarmy, if it had been a voice that she could imagine giving the order to stuff a horse head into her bed, that would've been one thing. But the voice that dropped these anvil hints was frightened, and for her. She closed the door and told Angie that she might be right and let her know she'd be monopolizing the bathroom for the next hour.

And that was when, and that was where, Evan McCulloch got in touch with her.

She might've gotten Ben to extend the visit a bit longer, long enough to visit Roscoe and tell him goodbye herself, but that might be a risk too. So Lisa found herself drafting a Dear John letter on the flight back. Once they were on the ground, she handed it to Ben and asked him to stamp and mail it for her because she didn't think her resolve could stand if she looked at it for another second. It almost buckled anyway, but she told herself: she needed to look good, needed to look squeaky-clean, if she wanted her revenge.

She started dating again five months later, so if they were still spying they wouldn't think she was refusing to move on. She settled on Blaine, who was amiable and stoic and dumb as a post but smart enough to know it. He was nothing at all like Roscoe, so she wouldn't be tempted to make comparisons when they were so incredibly obvious from the start. They might think she was using him to get inside information (and the thought had occurred to her), except that he'd been transferred from the Rogue ward months before and quit Breedmore altogether to join her in Metropolis.

Sometimes she felt guilty, because they weren't working off the same script at all. He did mean well. He thought he could take care of her, thought he could put all her pieces together, thought he could give her what she wanted. And meanwhile she knew only one thing could do that but she kept on going to the movies with him, kept going for ice cream, kept acting like he had a chance in hell. To try to make herself feel better, she told him things that were in the general ballpark of the truth. Told him, for example, that sometimes she thought part of her would be stuck forever back when she'd been happy. He said, stumbling, that babe he'd do whatever it took to make her happy again.

Evan was getting pretty good with the hypnotics. Wiping recent memory would be a snap. So eventually at their appointed time she maneuvered Blaine in front of the full-length mirror in her apartment and told him: "Listen. I hate the Justice Lords. I won't forgive them for what they did to my brother and I won't forgive them for what they did to Roscoe and if I had a chance to kill them, I would. In fact, I'm trying right now."

He hesitated. Anyone would; she tried not to see too much in it. Then he said, "What can I do?"

Evan did her another favor and tracked Blaine after he left the apartment, in case he was going to turn her in and had prudently acted like he wouldn't. A few days later, she got the mostly-clear in the mirror. She started to think: What could he do?

---

How the Boomerang Came Back

One year seven months earlier

Mirror Master, of all people, was one of the first Rogues to be taken in, and Captain Boomerang, of all people, was the last - beaten only by the phenomenal dark horse that was Pied Piper. Not all the members of Task Force X held out as long as he did, but he proved to have a talent for running away. They let the papers publish stories on Task Force X, or at least how the old government fielded a team of notorious criminals escaping their just punishment and wasn't that horrible, and wasn't it great that the Justice Lords were catching up to them at long last. Wasn't it?

His main mistake was going back to Central City, but who would've expected him to do that? The people of Central thought he was already long gone in Bermuda or Bora Bora and weren't looking for him among them. He rearranged and dyed what hair he had and stopped wearing scarves and stewardess hats and got a job at a Taco Whiz. It worked out for him much longer than it ought to have. It worked out for him long enough for him to meet Owen.

It happened like this: Owen had given his blood for a research project. Mitochondria or something. The main thing he remembered about it was they paid him twenty-five bucks, which was more than the Red Cross's cookies and warm fuzzies. Someone in the government had coopted the samples and run their own tests and, once they found the DNA match with George Harkness, traced him to use as a bargaining chip. They weren't expecting him to be seventeen - even by the most generous estimates, this dated to before his father first came to America for that old toy company promotion. With everything hitting the fan they'd figured no point to hiding it anymore and handed over the MERCER, OWEN file as part of the severance package.

So there was this guy with an Aussie accent he was trying to iron out, coming into the theater every day and buying a ticket. Always during Owen's turn at the ticket counter - and when he mentioned it to the other cashiers he found the same guy had come in during other people's shifts and walked right back out.

After the first week Owen switched shifts with Jeff Bradley and confronted him as he left the theater in disappointment. He had a pretext, just in case - you've been coming here a lot, are you interested in a membership card? Discounts? Free jumbo-size Soder? But the way the guy froze up completely, Owen was pretty sure he was on to something.

"So, not that we mind all the patronage, but are you my long lost dad or something?"

"Um. Yeah." And he had the DNA test to prove it.

Later they told him he should've known. That the only reason he didn't figure it out was that he didn't want to. And looking back, Owen couldn't disagree, especially when they got to the boomerang lessons. Seriously, he wasn't one of those insular idiots who just assumed all Australians knew how to fling a boomerang. But at the time he'd wanted to think that another boomerang-flinging Australian in Central City wasn't that impossible.

The thought had drifted across his mind now and again. But wouldn't the guy be in Bora Bora by now? he'd thought right after, or But the timeline doesn't fit, does it? and pushed it aside as his dad complimented him on his throwing arm.

Maybe the boomerangs were what tipped someone else off. Owen never found out who phoned it in. It could've been anyone from Jeff to Dad's manager at the Taco Whiz to one of Mom's friends after she mentioned to them that Owen had found a father from Australia. Nobody was about to tell him. All he knew was two golden weeks later when he was visiting Dad at his crappy apartment, when they were sitting at the kitchen table with a couple of beers, someone came storming down the hall outside. Dad went white and lunged for the cabinet with the duffel of boomerangs. "Get behind me!"

"Dad, what -"

As the armored police kicked down the door he let fly and they opened fire and Owen opened his mouth to scream -

What he remembered of what happened next was slow and fast at the same time. He remembered pushing Dad down, remembered the lazy spin of the boomerangs, remembered thinking Dad wasn't going down fast enough, wasn't going to be out of the way in time, remembered the bullets inches away, remembered throwing out his arms and -

He remembered looking up at the bare lightbulb on the ceiling. Remembered the feel of a bullet rolling loose in each hand. His hands didn't hurt. Something soaked the back of his jacket, spreading. The smell of beer and blood. Someone yelled "No!" Someone yelled "The fuck?" Someone moaned, "Oh Lord, Owen!" Something big and black rose up and blotted out the light.

When he woke up, he was handcuffed to a hospital bed and Batman was staring at him.

Batman hated his guts. He knew that from the beginning. "You've got your speed," said Mirror Master once, "and you're a ginger. Might be he took you for West back from the grave, and took it personal when he was wrong."

"Maybe he's pissed because he couldn't stop the Flash from getting shot," said Axel.

It didn't really have to be any of that, though. Maybe he just had a hateon for anyone who didn't hate all criminals like he did.

It was Batman who kept staring at him when he asked where Dad was, finally told him his father was Captain Boomerang and he was an idiot, and grilled him until he felt like a lump of charcoal.

It was Superman who once stopped in the doorway and stared at him too, until Owen thought he could hear his brain sizzle.

It was Supergirl, Kara, who snuck in and sat down with a file and bothered to explain. She was the one who told him how this one time Captain Boomerang was caught in the wake of the Reverse-Flash's time travel and got snapped like a rubber band even further into the future, where he ended up dating one of the guy's distant relations before he found his way back. Then his girlfriend had Owen and sent him back in time with a note pinned to his bassinet because the thirtieth century wasn't doing so hot, but her time machine overshot so he landed in Central City a few years early. Someone found him and took him to a hospital where they puzzled over the note, and when nobody claimed him the Mercers stepped up to the plate. And that was that. She even gave him the note they'd finally dug out of the files. He couldn't blame his mom: it made perfect sense if you had any idea who Captain Boomerang was. Dad had called her Mel and that was the name she signed on the note. Her last name, according to Kara, was Thawne, like the Reverse-Flash. Mel Thawne.

That was another theory, one Dr. Alchemy came up with: Batman figured since he had evil on both sides of the family it was only a matter of time before he started dressing up and robbing banks.

And it was Kara who told him the Martian Manhunter had tossed his mind like a salad while he was out, because fucking Batman insisted. They didn't have anything on him, really, besides wanting to be with his dad ever since his adoptive one had taken off like a jet, so he'd be okay. Eventually.

He wondered how they knew all that, especially the time travel part, but then he remembered the Martian Manhunter could toss Dad's mind just as easily and wished he hadn't wondered.

Then Batman came back in and stared Kara out and laid down the law, the law which he'd just pulled out of his ass. Owen was going to go on living the life of a productive citizen. He'd be taking a guided tour of Iron Heights with Warden Wolfe, so that he could see where he'd end up if he acted up. He would be watched, and attempting to avoid surveillance was grounds for investigation. He was forbidden to associate with the criminal element and speaking of which, he was not allowed to see his father. His father was in Breedmore, which he was only being told so that he couldn't get away with going there on accident.

"Why the hell not?"

Batman stared at him another long while before saying, "Security."

"That's bullshit."

"Those are the terms."

Owen wondered if the Martian was still listening in and if it was a crime to imagine strangling Batman with his bare hands as clearly as he was now.

If Kara hadn't hooked him up with the resistance, he didn't know how long he would've held out before going postal and giving Batman a reason to smirk from on high in smug superiority. But at least in La Resistance he had something to do that he could pretend would do something about it. They had a guy who could make Kryptonite, a guy who could pop out of any mirror in the world and possibly the universe, now a guy who had a hotline to the Anti-Life Equation - Owen had no idea what that was but it sounded asskicking. They had other old-guard heroes like Kara and Captain Marvel and Black Canary and Zatanna who thought the Big Six were off their rockers.

Maybe they had something like a chance.

---

The Number-One Fan (Redux)

?

He'd had the handful of beautiful years running with the Flash and they were nearly all he could've hoped for.

Saint Wallace West, the second Flash and the one that stuck in people's minds, martyred with a halo of his own blood and brain. Reader to orphans, rescuer of kittens. The greatest hero who ever died.

He tried. In the end. He couldn't stop it.

Please believe me.

Primary sources: ancient footage of the Flash's smile, the Flash's laugh, the Flash fending off his enemies with the key to the city; digitized archives of the Picture News; an original print copy of The Life Story of the Flash, by Iris West Allen.

On his first run backward, the statue outside the Flash Museum had a birthday and a deathday. Still too late. He thought: at least they should have a working cosmic treadmill in there. He went inside and stayed longer than he'd meant. They had the Flash Museum in the past-past, too. He knew that. He still wanted to see what they had in the now-past, while he was there.

There was an exhibit for the New Rogues, Under Construction and Coming Soon. The New Rogues had played a part in The Life Story but really they were past the Flash's time. He moved on to the Old Rogues. Ah, the Old Rogues. History had rehabilitated them. There was much worse in the world you could do in costumes and masks than form a merry band of miscreants for the Flash to bounce off no harm done. The Museum recognized that by then, though the statues still scowled. In memoriam. Had he twenty-first century currency, he would've bought a drink from the food court and raised it to the statues in toast.

Their names were in the Life Story, most of them. Lesser martyrs - Snart and Rory and Bivolo and Mardon and Dillon and Scudder and Harkness and Jesse -

He'd read the dedication and the acknowledgments. Snart and Rathaway and Mardon and Chilowicz and McCulloch and Mercer and Walker and Desmond - ah, Desmond.

Al Desmond, elemental genius. According to the Life Story, the starring role in the Strange Case of Dr. Alchemy and Mr. Element (ever-thorough, the Museum in that past had a statue for both side-by-side above a plaque of explanation). At the start it had been an interesting footnote. In the halcyon middle, another pleasant surprise. He hadn't expected such good company, not from that particular quarter. Such pleasant surprises were almost enough for him to put out of mind what happened to people to make them martyrs.

At least not Al. You can't kill my Al. You can't break his brain. He still has breakthroughs to make! Prizes to win! Accolades to be showered upon him!

And you can't kill Malcolm Thawne. He still has to get married. He still has to have a daughter with his name attached. He still has to bring her up. I know my genealogy. I'm still here. I'm still here!

End of the line. The Reverse-Flash. Professor Zoom. Yellow on red. A time traveler from the twenty-fifth century. He'd always wondered. So he read -

He read the name that had definitely not been in the Life Story: Eobard Thawne. And right when he started trying to frantically rationalize (a cousin, a nephew, a grandson), he saw the face that had most definitely not been in the Life Story: indisputably his.

He read the tail end of the plaque before everything got too blurry: His current whereabouts are unknown.

The Life Story said this too. Iris Allen wished him peace, wherever he was.

Two ways to have a breakdown: laugh or cry. He'd laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and -

Two things to do: fight or flight. He'd hopped the cordon onto the treadmill and recalibrated and flown where he'd meant to go just as people began to shout. If this was how it would be, he might as well enjoy the ride. Better that than pitiful flailing in the current of the timestream, trying to reverse its course.

Here was the thing: he knew the Flash would never die, not before schedule, and he knew the schedule. No matter the deathtrap. No matter the nefarious plot. Shine on you crazy diamond, as the Pied Piper once played. Shine on you bright fast-burning star.

What a beautiful life it had been.

Wally they're going to kill you Wally you have to run I'm not joking Wally -

Run! Run!

Why would I ever hurt him? I was his biggest fan -

- the lightning oh the lightning -

I didn't mean to mock I didn't -

Not fit to speak his name, not fit -

You have to run! You have to run!

---

The First and the Next

Approximately one thousand years later

Hands clasped. "Ready?" Rapid-fire nodding.

Jay Garrick and Bart Allen stepped onto the treadmill.