They lean on each other. It's what speedsters do.
Jesse, Wally, and Barry form a pack. When they hunt, Jesse and Wally take the lead. They split up, boxing their quarry in and chasing them down. Their stamina is relentless; even the most willful opponents tire. Before Jesse and Wally lose steam, they drive their panicking prey into the trap and Barry, lying in wait, bursts into view with leonine vigor. It's over before their opponents can reorient: cuffs click, vehicles grind to stunned halts, bullets sizzle in their muzzles. Shortly after the winded but triumphant pack leaders skate into view, soaked in adrenaline and glee. It radiates around them to the crowd of pedestrians and police officers, putting shoulders back and smiles on formerly tense faces. Even Barry isn't immune to their Speed-high.
The CCPD take over and The Flash fades from view, leaving Kid Flash and Jesse Quick to soak up the spotlight. The arrangement agrees with them: The Flash prefers a down-low profile; Kid and Quick relish the opportunity to share their joy with others. They deserve the subsequent adoration; they're responsible for the lion's share of the work. The Flash's final strike is the knockout blow, but it's dealt to a prey Kid and Quick dazed. The strategy is beautifully decisive, collaring ninety percent of their targets on the first attempt.
But ten percent of the time, their method fails.
Their guard is down from a successful string of captures when the call comes in: the Rogues' Gallery is back in town. It isn't long into their attack that the Rogues flip the tables on them and corner Wally, leaving Jesse stranded. Barry aborts the mission to spring Wally from his impromptu captivity and takes an icicle in the back for his trouble. Unaware of the shift, it's all Jesse can do to escape the Mirror Master. By the time they regroup at STAR Labs, two point four million is missing from Central City Bank. Barry's suit has an impressive tear; his back isn't happy, either. Grudgingly, they call it a night to regroup.
Except Jesse and Wally don't take the night off. Instead they go after the Rogues again, hoping to recoup their losses. They manage to collar The Top and have Mirror Master in a bind when Heat Wave and Captain Cold rescue their allies, giving Mirror Master a chance to escape. Raining literal hell upon them, Weather Wizard appears and drives them into a retreat. They skid into the cortex just shy of two AM, their suits partially melted from the pyroclastic assault.
Manning the night shift, Cisco shows up in the cortex as they're hanging up the suits, back in street clothes, and asks in a devastatingly calm voice why his suits are both damaged. Jesse and Wally exchange a look. With quiet apology, Jesse says, "Weather Wizard has gotten stronger."
Cisco's calm is almost a relief next to Barry's storm. No one needed to call him; channeling his eerie "I feel a disturbance in the Force" sense, he Flashes into view seconds after the dust begins to settle, kicking up the pot. Expression tight, he takes one look at them and demands to know why they went out on their own. Wally makes the mistake of trying to justify their actions and gets the full weight of The Flash's wrath. "They could've killed you," he thunders, "and God knows how many innocent people!"
"You're not the only speedster around here, Barry," Wally snaps back. "Jesse and I had it under control—"
Barry's eyes narrow dangerously. "Why didn't you wait? You had time. You could've waited. Instead you go out there and almost get yourself killed." It's clear that he's kicking himself as much as them. Why'd I give you a chance to get in trouble when I couldn't help? his crackling anger demands.
Cisco puts a de-escalating hand on Barry's shoulder. Jesse takes a step in before Wally can drive his proverbial horns into Barry's chest, two bulls locked in snarling combat. "You're upset," she acknowledges, gaze locked on Barry's, "but that doesn't give you a right to be a dick about it." She doesn't back down from Barry's glare, insisting, "We had a chance. We've always taken it. You're not there every time Wally and I stop a crime, or when Wally or I fly solo."
Barry's shoulders settle back, a quiet flush of enraged embarrassment overtaking his righteous anger. Wally steams, but the energy in the room simmers down, lightning unsnarling as the two speedsters see eye-to-eye once again. Wally says, "We didn't do it to leave you out. We did it because someone had to."
"I know." There's an aggravated twinge in Barry's voice, a self-mutilating apology. "I'm sorry."
Footsteps precede a yawning Iris into the room. "Why are you still here?" she asks, walking up to him. Barry's expression visibly softens when he sees her, his ears burning brighter red as the full force of his outrage hits him. "Come back home," she adds, leaning against his arm. "It's late." An acknowledging nod at Jesse and Wally merits a, "Hey, Jesse—Wally."
"Hey, sis," Wally replies, arms folded, expression diplomatically unreadable. "Just having a speedster chat."
"Ooh, that sounds unpleasant," Iris murmurs, tugging on Barry's arm. "C'mon. Whatever you want to say, it can wait."
"Already been said," Barry admits, looping his arm around her shoulders to hug her. He steps back after a moment, turning to Jesse and Wally and taking a step forward. "Truce?"
Jesse hugs him first. "Truce."
Wally grunts, joining in, and Jesse feels the energy shift between them. Calming. Apologies exchanged and accepted. The tension relaxes from both of their shoulders when they step back, even though the lines don't ease from Barry's face. Speed-healing works miracles, but even it has fundamental limits. "Let's go home," he echoes Iris, lifting her bridal-style into his arms and spiriting them away.
Cisco blows out a breath, relieved and tired. "I'm gonna call it a night," he admits, holding up a hand, index and middle finger forming a V. "Peace."
Once Cisco is out of earshot, Wally sighs and pulls Jesse into a heartfelt hug. "Remind me again why we don't just split off," he grunts against her shoulder.
"He's a good man," Jesse says, raking her hands down Wally's back, drawing a slow-rolling shiver from him. "He cares. Loudly."
"You're a much better woman."
"I would hope so," Jesse teases, pressing a kiss that melts like a snowflake on his cheek. "Tonight was a setback. Tomorrow will be better."
"It is tomorrow," Wally says without lifting his head.
Jesse squeezes him before pushing him back lightly. "You know what I meant. C'mon, Wonder Boy. Iris had the right idea. Let's go home."
"Mm." Wally smiles contemplatively, anger draped over a coat rack, something for Tomorrow. "Let's."
. o .
They Care, Loudly, is their swan song.
It's an energy blast that shatters every bone in Wally's left leg when a meta aims for Barry instead.
It's a desperate crawl through a collapsing building, ferociously hot flames pressing in, relief making its way in when Jesse finds a tied-up and half-conscious Wally at the end of the tunnel.
It's Barry's dive under the pier when a meta drags Jesse down, fighting her tooth-and-nail fight with the aquatic meta until he can kick them free and to the surface, propelling her onto the pier before he scrambles up himself.
It's a lethal cold creeping over the three of them in a refrigerated prison before Barry huddles close and puts his arms around their shoulders, shivering hard enough to keep them alive until Team STAR Labs arrives.
It's Wally fearlessly, unapologetically throwing a David stone at Goliath Grodd and getting a spear plunged through his shoulder, giving Jesse and Barry the window they need to win.
It's a hug after a long heist, a coffee after a failed capture, a listening ear after a hard lesson.
It's "I'm okay" and "You're okay," too, but mostly, always, "We're okay."
. o .
Divide and conquer would be an excellent strategy, were it possible to implement.
Only one meta attains a degree of success: Reverse Flash has a vendetta against The Flash, and The Flash only.
But it's not just Barry's problem when the yellow-suited speedster arrives to put down another version of his lifelong adversary. It's Jesse's and Wally's, too. It's their concern when the Reverse Flash kidnaps Barry and their mission to bring him back alive before Reverse can inflict his sickening revenge.
Thanks to GIDEON, they're able to find out that this version of Reverse is much older than the last one, mid-seventies, still wearing a face of a man half his age, scarcely aging but in brutality. He's extremely volatile, given how many years he's been Without – Without Speed, Without Human Contact, Without a Lightning Rod. Reality puts a lump in Jesse's throat and a stiffness in Wally's jaw. They waste scarcely a minute with plans, hitting the streets and scanning everywhere.
They track Barry down almost three days after Reverse took him, mid-night. Reverse is there and puts up a fight, and a spectacular one. Both Jesse and Wally trade and receive blows as Reverse puts up a spirited defense of his quarry.
Jesse and Wally both know how much success means to Reverse: Barry's connection to the Speed Force is stronger, more direct than either of their own, and stealing it is a surefire way to boost one's own reserves. After all, Barry doesn't run more slowly because he lacks Speed; he runs more slowly because it's too heavy for him to carry. He's not just full; he's supersaturated. Plenty to give, rubbing off on Jesse and Wally whenever they touch, but far too little to satiate an insatiable speedster's demands.
Duly motivated themselves, Jesse and Wally take him down. Discarding his knocked-out carcass to one side of the warehouse, they divvy up the tasks. Wally stands guard, and Jesse plays point, hunting through the labyrinthine warehouse for Barry.
A husky "Jesse" calls her attention to a discarded pile of crates. She rounds the corner and recoils.
Barry lies on the floor, half-conscious. There's a steel collar around his neck, chaining him to a wall. The fingers on his right hand are bent crookedly, clearly broken; a series of stab wounds pepper his chest, marks of Speed-taking. His breathing seems labored, and Jesse realizes that the collar itself is too tight, digging into his neck enough to chafe the skin red, even through the suit.
Anger burns in her chest, but she keeps it caged, enough to snap the chain from the wall. She doesn't dare risk the same with the collar around his neck; a misstep could prove fatal. Helping him up, she feels him groan and slump, struggling to stay upright. Enlisting Speed to do the heavy-lifting, Jesse gets her arm firmly under his shoulders and Flashes them to Wally's side.
"Let's go," she says, getting a better grip under a sagging Barry as Wally nods and grabs Reverse by the back of his neck.
Wally tosses Reverse unceremoniously in the pipeline; Jesse lays Barry down on a gurney before the Speed Force momentum has faded. Standing nearby, Cisco drops a thick stack of papers and Caitlin breathes sharply, "Barry." Before Jesse can get a word in, they spring into motion, Cisco running off to get something while Caitlin steps up, already working on a rapid-fire assessment. Barry, breath whistling, answers slowly.
"Hand," he rasps, holding it up, and Caitlin doesn't balk, just nods, nods apologetically, permissively. "Please," he entreats. "Cait. Please."
It hurts to hear him begging.
Caitlin nods, shifting closer, lip caught between her teeth. Before she takes his hand in hers, Jesse blurts out, "Let me."
Caitlin looks over at her, surprise and confusion in her features.
"I'm fast," Jesse reminds her, vibrating her hand pointedly. "It'll –" hurt less, she doesn't dare say. She doesn't know. Can't know.
Barry just whines, "Please." Jesse understands the urgency; anticipating pain is excruciating. Get it over with.
Caitlin steps back and asks, "Do you know how?"
Jesse swallows a nervous laugh. "Theoretically? Yes." Stepping up, she looks Barry in the eye. "I'll be quick."
"Always are," he rasps, placing his left hand on her arm supportively.
She exhales deeply, taking his hand in hers.
Wally skates gracefully into view as time slows down for her, his blistering rage a warm backburner to her own heart-pounding focus. She doesn't look up to see if Barry's watching, if their own speeds are synced or if he's still frozen in real-time. She just takes each mangled finger and resets it, carefully, brutally efficiently, gasping when she finishes and slips back into the noise of real-time.
Barry groans loudly, reaching for a pillow to scream into immediately after, his high, piercing wail audible through the thin fabric. Jesse feels sick with it, with the literal jolt of bone resetting and the knowledge that she caused him further pain. Stepping back, she lets Caitlin take over. Wally, dazed, watches her, the rage simmering down.
"Jess?" he asks, and she steps up and lets him hug her, lets a single sob into his chest before silencing the rest.
She's still shaking against him when Cisco reappears, a small, handheld saw in hand. "Ever had a cast removed?" he asks. "Same principle. Stronger stuff. It's for The Boot, in case it locks up, but it should work on this—"
So it does. Barry lets out a gasping exhale, heaving in a deep breath immediately after, almost hyperventilating with his urgency to make up for lost air. It makes the same hot anger as before rise in Jesse's chest – Reverse did this to him, Reverse deserves to suffer for this – but it's hard to hold onto in Wally's arms, his own rage like a fire, consuming and quelling the need for her own.
Within an hour, Barry looks more like himself. He's exchanged his suit for a pair of STAR Labs' sweatpants and an SL sweater, shielding the fading stab wounds from view. His hand is still splinted, but he moves with a renewing sense of strength, Speed Force like a thin pulse under his skin. Both Jesse and Wally offer a blood transfusion, hoping to speed up the recovery, but Barry just shakes his head tiredly and sits on the edge of the gurney.
"How'd you find me?" he rasps, voice still sore-sounding.
"We looked everywhere in the city," Wally says grimly. "And then some."
Barry nods, like it explains everything. "Thank you," is all he says.
Wally hugs him, his Speed Force blanketing Barry's for a long moment. "Good to have you back. You scared the crap out of us."
"It's one of his many talents," Cisco chimes in, visibly more relaxed than he was an hour before.
Barry lets out a soft little hum. "Where's Reverse?" he asks.
Wally pulls back. "Pipeline."
Barry arches both eyebrows, looking between Wally and Jesse. "You – caught him?"
"Don't sound so surprised," Jesse teases quietly, reaching forward to squeeze his left hand. "You trained us well."
Barry huffs. "I didn't teach you anything you didn't already know," he corrects gently.
Jesse sighs and reaches for him, hugging him as tightly as she dares. "Don't scare us," she insists seriously.
He reaches up and presses his hand against her back, slow and hurting but healing, too. Somehow, in spite of everything, still sharing his Speed-warmth with her. She can't force him not to, no sooner than she can ask him to stop breathing. It's what he does. It's what they do.
"I'll try not to," he assures.
It has to be good enough.
. o .
Memories are beautiful things. They forget pain. And they remember pleasure.
It's nights like these that make Jesse so grateful this is her life.
Wally and Barry are like kids on a playground, two speedsters tangoing across the open grassland adjacent to Central City. Barry might be slower, but not by much, and what he lacks in Speed he makes up for in dexterity, cutting sharp turns that have Wally skating to an ungraceful halt. They chase each other round and round, ostensibly training but mostly just having fun, burning off some steam at sunset before their night job beckons.
Jesse slips into the conversation, introducing herself first to Barry – "slowing down, big guy?" – before tackling Hers Truly.
Wally hits the ground with a whoomph, laughing loudly. He rolls them over so he's pinning her, hands above her head, and she smiles up at him, innocence personified. "Hi," she says, leaning up to kiss him. "He's getting away," she adds, nudging Wally's hip.
Barry waves, standing so far away it's barely clear, and Wally takes off like a bat out of hell, zipping so fast even to Jesse he's just a blur of yellow light. They zig and zag and burn grass, tamping fires before they gain a foothold, round and round and round they go. It would make anyone else dizzy to watch the yellow and red streaks chase their own tail.
To Jesse, it's confirmation of a fundamental truth: their lightning blends well together. Her own, tinted just slightly silver like Wally's, just slightly gold like Barry's, burnishing in the light, is a cheerful intermediary. When she joins in, they can't catch her without almost catching themselves, tangled in each other's shadows.
"Sure this is training?" she asks, catching breath that wants to come, drinking the night air for all its worth. "Feels more like recess."
"Never said training couldn't be fun," Barry replies with a big smile.
It hits Jesse that 'fun' applies to him, too. His experiences with speedsters weren't like hers: he knew evil speedsters before he ever came across good ones. He knew Reverse before the idea of catching Speed Force was even a whisper in Jesse's imagination. He knew Zoom before she could possibly have helped him fight him. He didn't start out with a small, in-built coterie. He started off alone.
Looking at him, at Wally, hunched over their knees and happy, she knows why they didn't split off.
It's nice not to be lonely.
She takes off, and together, they follow.