Author's Note: Well, this is going to be a trainwreck. Trying to shoehorn The Zeta Project into even normal DCAU continuity causes snarls. I can only imagine that trying to get Orin to fit into the Flash universe will go pretty poorly, but I couldn't get the idea out of my head. I'm not the most knowledgable about the Flash universe, so this is going to be very much an experimental thing. Here's hoping it's passable.

In the beginning, there is Wally West and his wife Linda.

There are children. They are special in the way all children are special, with unique personalities and growing interests. Orin is eleven years old when they are born; they age rapidly and though they're all scared it will never end and they'll die, it eventually evens out and while they grow rapidly, they aren't going to end up with death by premature aging. They are precious to him, his little brother and little sister, marvels unlike anything he's ever seen. He knows that this isn't how kids are supposed to work, but he doesn't care so long as they're okay. He plays with them as if they really were the age they look, he helps them learn to ride bikes and they watch cartoons together. They aren't a normal family. They aren't a perfect family. But they're happy, two parents and three kids, a real family with bonds and love and jokes and fond memories.

They grow into their superpowers.

He is forgotten. It doesn't happen overnight. Life is not a movie, though his life veers close at times. At first he is happy for them. He worries for their safety and then figures his dad has it covered. He fears they'll get in over their heads fighting villains. Then again, their dad is part of the Justice League; it'd take a real idiot to take them on with that kind of backup in the wings. The thought that maybe his parents will shift their attention doesn't occur to him until he is nearly twelve and he enters a race. He is first, but barely. That's when the first hint of frustration hits. It's not until he gets home to find his dad and siblings out and on the news fighting crime, his mother engrossed in the TV, that he begins to feel his own uselessness.

He's used to his father's absence. The Flash is always out fighting crime. Though he tried to keep time set aside for them, he wasn't immune to the declining rate of superheroes and the rising rate of crime. He has been working harder and harder for years. It's nothing new to come home to a building without his father. What Orin isn't used to is his whole family being gone. His mother takes the others to the Justice League's Watchtower, where they train and meet exciting new heroes and old favorites. Tests are done to determine the Speed Force's effects on them, to check their health and their development. Iris zooms around cheerfully, and Jai becomes stronger with every day. They develop their abilities to the point he can't play with them despite the eleven year age gap he has over them. They don't want to play with him. He's normal. He's boring. Commonplace.

The years trickle by and things keep going south, little by little. He jokes and laughs off any questions his mother has about him, about the failing relationship with his siblings, about how he can barely look at Iris somedays. He pretends no teenager wants to hang out with their younger siblings. Orin makes quips about his parents missing his basketball games and races to his friends, who don't pick up on anything weird. He spends more time with them, playing video games and hanging out, avoiding his house and the never escapable feeling that he doesn't belong. Though he refuses to say it out loud, he feels increasingly out of place. This is a superhero's household. He has no place in it.

He was never close to his father in the first place, not to his memory. Orin was born before his parents were ready for a kid and though Wally regrets saying that where his son could hear it, he never corrected his statement. There is nothing to correct. Orin is a mistake. He can't face that so he doesn't. He pushes himself forward. He goes to parties, dances, football games, finds dates and makes good grades. The redhead tries to immerse himself in normal life so that he won't have time or energy to miss the things he's not getting. His orange-brown eyes reveal his anger only briefly, only when he's alone in his room and thinking about how his father fawned over those two at he dinner table. His real kids. His speedster and his superhuman. His family...

Somehow, no matter how hard Orin tries, the feeling of not belonging only intensifies. He thanks a God he doesn't believe in when his parents stop inviting him to their cutesy family outings. There were virtually no other kids of superheroes without powers; together they formed a group of ashamed failures and weaklings. Out in public all the chatter flowed between his father and Iris and Jai. Orin's attempts to make jokes and be part of the conversation were often lost in the stream of hyperactivity the three produced. He is always part of the background.

He is seventeen and he's not sure how he's going to make it to eighteen, frustrated and worn out with this constant feeling of loss, when salvation comes. The school gym was a crappy place to have a life changing epiphany. He'll take what he can get. There's pamphlets and booklets and cheesy DVDs with corny overly dramatic music videoes. He is enthralled. He is hyper with, instead of never ending pent up energy, real optimism for the first time in what feels like forever. He's always wanted to get out of his father's shadow, escape the tension and the isolation of home, break free. All he needed was a way to do it.

He comes home that night and spreads the mass produced propoganda across his desk, looking at each of his options - the police force, the army, the navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the National Firefighters Association, and the National Security Agency. He sees the light at the end of the tunnel at last. There is a world out there that can make use of this useless non-superpowered child, that can train him, mold him into a useful force. They can take him and iron out the flaws. He can do something to help people. He can do something to make people's lives better, that doesn't involve tights and his face on the paper. Fame isn't for him, but the altruism is still there in him, beating through his veins like a second blood. This is his path. This is how he's going to spend his life.

He curses out loud when his little sister zips in. Even as he yells "OUT!" it's already too late. The little snitch is rushing towards the living room with everything gathered up in her hands. Her brother is secretive and withdrawn. This is the only way she finds out about anything he does. He will later realize she's just worried, that she just wants to make sure he's okay, but in this moment he's merely angry.

"Stay out of my room you twerp!" he snaps, refraining from swearing only because his mother is present. "Mom, make her act half her age-"

He freezes when he sees his father's face, and the pamphlets in his hands.

Orin inhales, slowly, drawing himself up to full height and looking at the familiar stranger he calls his father. He thinks he's in trouble when he calls Linda in. He knows he's in trouble when he shoos Iris out for five seconds. This would be a great moment for a trademark West comeback, a quip, some kind of snarky remark to help diffuse the tension that is suddenly rising up from the depths of their family. He catches a glimpse of the terror twins (as he calls them) in the hallway behind him. Orin's desire to be taken seriously keeps him from yelling at them. Not that they'd ever listen anyway.

"What the hell is all this?" His father asks. The dam of tension is beginning to overflow. Orin can see a vague reflection of himself in his father's green eyes. It's haunting, how inexplicably angry and almost betrayed looking he is. "You want to go out and get yourself killed?"

"Wally-" Linda starts, ever the mediator, but her son is no mood for this peacekeeping nonsense.

"I want to help people. I thought a 'hero'," and he says the word in a way that emphasizes the unmade air quotes around the word, "would understand that. Especially considering you've been regularly committing child endangerment for years."

Under other circumstances that would be a joke. Wally would laugh. Orin would smile faintly. They'd go back to talking about the latest villain or hero or whatever they were using to try and pretend there wasn't this gaping hole where their father-son relationship used to be. And Orin has done that. He has channeled his stress through passive aggressive jokes and smiles and tried to forgive everything - the birthdays his father wasn't there, the rules he had to follow the others didn't, and the constant knowledge he would never be good enough. He has forced himself not to care that his father hasn't had a real conversation with him in months. He has made himself sit through countless dinners and awkward movie nights trying to be a part of this man's family, and damn it he will be rewarded with whatever career he wants and if this green eyed spandex wearing pretty boy says otherwise he can kiss Orin's ass.

Linda steps between them. It's a futile action.

"You don't have any training-" Wally starts, to his son's unending commentary.

"It's called Basic Training. Google it sometime in between news crews."

"-and you don't have any powers-"

"Batman called, he wants his respect for you back-"

"-you're only seventeen-"

"Oh, but eight year old dual sidekicks were so very safe," he sneers, and that's when it all begins gushing out. All the anger, all the loneliness, all those times he watched his father and siblings play while he sat ignored on the sidelines. "Your moral and ethical code is so complex and contradictory I'm amazed it doesn't collapse in on itself-"

"I never wanted them to come along! They do it anyway, so I try to keep them trained and halfway safe-"

"You're such a hyprocite! The thirteen year old dolts who still watch cartoons get to face down full scale villains, but a seventeen year old can't even contemplate fighting civilian threats? Are you high?" he half shouts. "I deserve a choice in my own career! I've earned it! They never had to earn anything!"

Linda facepalms as the situation spirals out of control. "Orin, Wally, please. Please, don't do this."

"Screw you," Orin mutters, rolling his eyes. That is what really sets his father off. His bersek button has always been Linda.

"You will not talk to your mother like that!"

"Or what, you'll stop coming to my games? You'll miss my orchestra recital? Oh, no, let me guess, you'll quit hanging out with me?" His fists are balled tight enough to turn his knuckles are white. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised! You've never been there for me! You hate everything I do, don't you? You think I expected your support? Everything I do is always wrong and everything your real kids do is always so damn perfect! But you can't stop me from doing this-"

"As long as you live in my house-"

"My birthday is one day before the NSA takes in new applicants! Don't worry, Flash," he spits, now not even vaguely trying to act mature or dignified, "I'll be gone and you and your perfect family can forget I ever fucked up your life!"

He bolts out of the house after that, slamming the door behind him. He knows his mother will stop his father from coming after him and making things worse. He knows tomorrow they will all avoid the elephant in the room that he has made himself into. He even has a vague sense that he's going to look back and regret his angry, stupid, self righteous words. Some subconscious part of him knows his father loves him. That part gave up trying to make itself heard a long time ago. Now there is only years of anger, unresolved issues, teenage pettiness, childish selfishness, all the flaws of a typical villain written across his face and his heart. He doesn't know how he ended up like this or why it's all come crashing down, but he'll survive. He'll make it through. He always does.

He crashes at a friend's place, and is barely ever home for the remaining two months of the school year. Come summer he is fully devoted to making himself look like the ideal NSA applicant. On his birthday his father isn't present and his siblings walk on glass around him no matter how many jokes he tries to spin out of everything. He kisses his mother on the cheek the next day, deliberately ignores saying anything to his father, tells the twin terrors not to burn down the house in the six hours it takes to be screened, and prays with everything he has that he makes the cut.

The process he goes through, of running around like an idiot, climbing a wall, running an obstacle course, filling out paperwork and rambling through a thirty minute long interview process - these are things he barely remembers. He recalls a black man named Rush with a wide smile clapping him on the back after they were through and they collapsed in the waiting area together, eating salsa and chips someone had brought and praying their names would be called at the end of the day. He recalls a Korean woman, the recruiter, talking to them about dedication and wash outs and the statistics of those involved in Basic Training. And he vows he will not wash out. Washing out means facing his father, facing all the stupid things he said, facing apologies and making them and he'd rather die than go back home. He doesn't say that; he makes a joke about another recruit's rainbow underwear and tries not to let his nervousness show.

When his name is called he makes a whooting noise and kisses a surprised Rush full on the mouth in sheer joy. He'd have kissed the recruiter, but she held up her hand, displaying her wedding ring, and by then his comrades are backing away slowly from him. Since he has no dignity left, he high fives a random person and fumbles with his cell phone in his haste to get it out. His mother congratulates him, sounding choked up, and he promises to get her a NSA mug. She manages a weak laugh. She's the parent he's closest to, but he's still hurting her. He doesn't know that then. He thinks she's just taking his father's side. She'll see. They'll all see. Today is the start of something great. He tells her he loves her and hangs up.

He smiles at the sun, at the sky, at nothing, at everything. He packed up his things and they are already at his friend's house, in preparation for him moving out. If this hadn't worked he'd have spent the summer exhausting his other options and hanging out with his friends pretending everything was okay. But he doesn't have to. He made it. Out there is a world with nearly nine billion people. Somewhere in the mix-mash of jungles, cities, deserts, suburbs and forests, there is a place for him. There is a team that needs him, a mission he can help with, a niche he can fill. He's going to find it, and he's going to show them all what he can do.

It's a new beginning at last.

Bits of TZP canon I'd like to note are relevant: the fatality rate for police officers and NSA agents is fairly high in that canon's continuity owing to a sharp increase in the availability of heat and laser based weapons, and I'd like to think that's why Wally has a knee jerk NO NO NO reaction here. If the man has a weakness, it's his love for his family. And although I'm not sure I wrote Wally arguing very well, we all have moments of anger and stupidity, right? He's only human. He wants to protect his son. It's a parent thing. Also I'm not taking Orin's side; he's being immature and not very honest through this whole thing, but this chapter is my attempt to describe things from his point of view, his side of the story.

Also note that in TZP Orin never, ever references his family and it's only the creators of the show who ever referenced him as Wally's son, so I'm trying to fill in some pretty big gaps in canon here. The fact that he never calls home or takes any vacations sort of hints at what's going on, though...