A/N : This is my first Sky High fanfic so feel free to tell me things I miss. I have planed this to me a Speed/OC but I have coincided making it Speed/Lash so feel free to tell me your thoughts.

For the Sake of Friendship

Pictures of Long Ago

"Isn't this girl a little young for you?" My best friend asks playfully from his spot on the floor where he was digging though the boxes in my closet hoping to find his striped shirt. I lean down to see him holding a picture of a small brunette girl, not even in her teen years, standing in front of a lake waving at the camera. I smile remembering the girl and the time I shared with her.

"That's Kate." I say with a goofy grin on my face.

"Who?" Lash asks looking up at me, "I've known you my whole life. You never mentioned a girl named Kate!"

I smile at how upset Lash gets over this. "Remember when we were ten and I went to camp." He nods, "Well Kate went there with me. She was my friend at the camp."

"How come you never to me about her?" He asks looking up at me softly. I know that look, I've seen it many times. The look where he feels upset, but won't say anything about it.

"I didn't think it was important. Plus when I came home you were to busy trying to convince me never to leave home that I forgot about it." I say sliding off my bed and onto the ground.

"Did you love her?" He asks handing me the picture. I laugh.

"Lash I was ten! I still thought girls had cooties." I exclaim making him smile.

"Well I don't. Did you like her as a friend?" He asks after he stops laughing.

I think for a moment before saying, "Yeah, she was cool. She could phase though things, which was funny when she would lean against the wall and get frustrated and fall though."

He smiles, "What happened to her?"

"We left camp and I never called her."

"Wait," He says clearly thinking, "You knew a girl who liked you, gave you her number, and you never called her?"

"When you put it like that it makes me seem like a creep."

"No Speed, it makes you seem like a loser." He laughs. I reach onto my bed and grab my pillow which I throw at him. He just grins and tosses it back creating a new game.

It had been a few months since we got out of jail. I don't know why we went along with Gwen; oh yeah, she blackmailed us. She found our weakness, well more like Lash's weakness and fed off it dragging me along for the ride. But once I told Principal Powers our little story she made us a promise to help us.

My father was a super hero with the power to control electricity. He met my mother at a bookstore. He told me he had never seen a woman as beautiful as my mother. They got married and I was born. I can't recall a time I didn't know Lash. I wouldn't be surprised it I was at the hospital when he was born. You see my father and his mother often partnered up to fight crime. Like Lash and I they had been friends for most of their life.

One night when I was eight I remember my father got a call to go save the day once again but he didn't go because my mother was sick and he was taking care of her. I remember him calling Lash's mom and telling her to go without him. That was the last time we ever heard from her. She died that night at the hands of a villain named Dr. Venom. Lash was never the same after his mother's death.

Lash slowly withdrew from the world including me. When we would play together he wouldn't laugh or smile but I knew he was glad with my company by how on the way home he would rest his head on my shoulders. I was his rock and he knew I would always be there for him and I knew he would always be there for me.

When we where nine we got our powers. I got mine first. He would laugh as I would run around my backyard at top speed as the leafs from the tree would blow off. When he got his, he would reach up into the apple tree and pick up apples from the top while we sat under the tree reading our comic books. But I began to notice cuts and bruise on Lash's face and his new style of wearing long sleeves in the middle of summer.

When I went off to camp when I was ten I noticed the Lash had tears in his eyes when we were saying goodbye. When I got home, he threw himself into me and begged me never to leave him again. At the time I didn't get why Lash was so nervous but as I grew up I understood better. But as a kid I just assured him I would never leave him, which seem to clam him down.

When I was twelve, my parents both died. My mother was captured by Dr. Venom and when my father came to save him he killed my mother and then my father. I cried myself to sleep for a month, but Lash was at my house everyday cooking or cleaning or telling me that everything would be okay. I went to court and was granted the ability to live on my own thanks to all the money I received in my parent's death.

I was fourteen and we had just started when everything I had come to think about Lash in the previous four years changed momentously. It was about midnight when I heard a knocking on the door. I opened it ready to curse whatever it was that woke me up when I saw Lash leaning against the wall of the doorway. Bruises in the shapes if fingers around his neck, a cut on his forehead the was dripping blood, both eyes where black and his soft eyes were unfocused and spilling out tears.

I wrapped my arm around his waste causing him to gasp and I half dragged half-carried him inside. I lay him on the couch as he cried that he didn't want to go to the hospital and that he had no where else to go. I fix up his wounds the best that I could as he told me that his father had done this since he gained his powers. He told me that his father resented him because he had powers like his mother.

It was then I knew I had to get my friend out of that house. I came up with a plan and Lash, though reluctant and scared, agree. We told his father that I had super strength (He didn't know what my power was) and that if he didn't want me to pound his face into the ground that he would let Lash live with me but if anyone asks that Lash still lived at home. Afraid, his father agreed and that is how Lash because even more like my brother.

How Gwen found out about this little arrangement I don't know but she did. She cornered us in an empty hallway one day and told me that if we didn't go along with her little plan she would tell Lash's father about how I had super speed not super strength as my power. We both knew Lash's father would kill him if he found out about this. We had no choice but to agree to help her.

Which is why, when we ended up in jail, I requested a conference with Principal Powers. I could tell when she showed up that she had already made up her mind that I was guilty. But when I told her about Lash's abusive dad and how Gwen blackmailed us into helping her Principal Power's face seemed to grow darker and darker. Eventually she told me that we had the wrong approach to the situation but she understood why we followed Gwen. She promised that she would help us get out of jail and back in school. But more importantly she would not tell Lash's father the truth.

I smile as I hear the gentle breaths of Lash who, once again, fell asleep on my floor. Even though his room is right next door, he has a habit of falling asleep on my floor. I think he likes to know that someone will be there when he wakes up. That and he knows that I won't wake him up and send him back to his room. I drape an extra blanket from my bed over him and smile as I turn out the light.

A/N: Well there's the first chapter. I would love to know what you allthink of it...reviews are nice motivation for new chapters!