The Speedforce is nothing but movement, nothing but gogogo and nothing holds it's attention for long.
Really, it's lucky the Speedforce is so fascinated by humans. They're so resilient and never tell anything.
So the Speedforce goes, killing those who offer themselves with the illusion of heroism in their minds and sinking it's claws into those that interest it because no one knows the price.
There's a reason people go into a coma after the Speedforce chooses them.
When they wake up they have the urge to gogogo and their minds are in shards but they don't know that and the Speedforce has all the cards.
It laughs and laughs with coiling wisps of lightning between it's teeth, and bites to keep them in their place and demands one.
Only one.
Just one to shatter.
And, oh, how the humans deliver. They deliver and they deliver and the Speedforce grins, blood covered claws already waiting for another, and whispers gogogo to those who it let's live and they go.
They do, and they overload, and then they're with the Speedforce, and it just loves the human race.
Their minds are so easy to break and so easy to push together into a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't fit but works and the Speedforce cackles as it spins the person around and around in dizzying circles that make the mind bleed and break again.
This time, it's in smaller pieces, and, this time, some are lost.
It's quite fun, and when they leave, they leave with half of what they entered with, and no one's the wiser.
Everyone, that is, except for the Speedforce and the chosen ones.
You asked for this, the Speedforce laughs into their dreams, and says gogogo and they can do nothing but obey.
There's a reason why Zoom is so insane.
He wasn't, originally, but the Speedforce was soboredthat it took it's fun just a bit too far andoh-
Oopsies! Looks like it's lost all the pieces!
But, how he screamed!
He screamed and screamed and the Speedforce turned him around and around and reached in and broke.
Suddenly, he wasn't screaming.
The Speedforce smiled, dangerous and seductive, and said you want to be me?
And he agreed without a thought because he was dead in the mind and the Speedforce had control.
I think, the Speedforce mused. I'll go back.
"Oh Barry Allen," Zoom sang as he lurched to his feet, lightning under his feet and gogogo in his blood. "I'm coming for you!"
And the Speedforce smiled and laughed, because it loved Barry Allen but he died and left it alone.
The Speed Force won't let that lie.
So it played with Father Time, leaned in close to his face with blood on it's teeth and madness sparking in it's eyes, and said, I'll be taking this now as it rips his eyes from his head and said Take me to Barry Allen as Father Time dropped dead at it's feet.
What was another dead?
Barry Allen is younger and still fumbling his way through the urge to just gogogo until he dies when Zoom shows up, and he thinks, in the back of his mind where puzzle pieces too scorched and bent to be one, that he understands why he's like that.
But Zoom laughs that laugh that haunts Barry's dreams and stirs memories of running and running with no stopping and Barry knows it's not a man, it's the insanity in his grin and the way that he runs like he's just energy-
This is not a man, and fear shakes Barry Allen to his bones, because he knows exactly what it is.
"Hello Barry," Zoom says with the grin that's more of a baring of teeth. "Miss me?"
Zoom dances around young Barry Allen who's feet sing gogogo and goes too fast for any body to handle, and Barry can barely keep up.
"Little pig, little pig, let me in," Zoom shrieks, and Barry flinches when lightning crackles up it's legs. "I can smell you, piggy!"
Barry digs his heels into the ground and runs.
There's only one person who can help him now, and Barry doesn't even know if he can.
Zoom zips up beside him, snapping too-sharp teeth, and there's suddenly eyes in it's hands.
"I stole these from Father Time," it giggles, and shoves them into Barry's hands. "Take good care of them!"
Then it's gone.
Barry's communicator buzzes, and he only says, "Beam me up," when he can't look at silver eyes any longer.
Zoom is a monster but it's a monster that the Speedforce made by hand, and the original man stays silent, and the Speedforce terrifies the past and future and everything in between and-
Oh. It laughs greedily when young Wally West offers himself up, and says you'll do nicely.
Wally wakes up a ticking time bomb and with a mind that's better off dead and with his feet begging to gogogo.
"Uncle Barry," Wally West says as he swings his feet on the counter, "my head is weird."
Barry stops cutting cucumbers. "What do you mean," he asks, and prays that his nephew was spared the worst.
"I hear this voice laughing sometimes, but I don't know where it's coming from. And sometimes I don't know how to stop running, and I want to hurt someone all the time."
Barry sets the knife down and picks up his phone, hands shaking as he plays a video of Zoom cackling as he drops the dead body of an old man. "Does it sound like that?"
Wally nods. "Only more high. Like Mommy!"
Barry chokes back a sob and pulls his nephew into an embrace, burying his face into his hair. It didn't spare him, he thinks in despair, and glares at the wide grin outside the window.
"Uncle Barry?"
"Yes, Wally?"
"Sometimes I can't run at all."
Somehow, that's worse, and Barry doesn't know how, but it is.
It is, and Barry doesn't know what the Speedforce is planning for his nephew but he has to stop it.
He has to.
Wally West becomes Kid Flash, and when he first fights Zoom, Zoom only laughs and laughs and beats him into the ground when he goes still and frightened.
"You aren't ready yet," Zoom says dismissively as Barry yellsWally!
Wally has to take the week off of school to recover, and when Wally asks why Zoom doesn't act like a normal person, Barry wraps an arm around his nephew's shoulders, and says, "Because it isn't a person."
Wally doesn't ask, because the set of Uncle Barry's mouth is straight and his eyes are watching the door as though it'll fly open, and Wally remembers the way his brain had started screaming to get away, shivers, and curls up into his uncle's side.
He doesn't ask again.
When Bruce asks why he's never caught Zoom, Barry's knees go weak.
"Because," he says, and stops. The Speedforce is murmuring in his ear, is charging his feet and igniting his gogogo need and he can't speak.
How could he explain just how terrifying Zoom is to someone who hasn't been torn apart and put back together by the very thing Zoom houses? How can he explain just how much he scares Barry?
He thinks on the eyes. Old, silver eyes that Zoom had stolen back one day, and recalls what it had said. I stole these from Father Time!
Barry swallows. "Because."
He can't. He just can't. The Speedforce is something meant to be kept secret.
So Barry turns and he does what the Speedforce trained him to do. Runs until lightning sparks and thunders and the gogogo is drowned out by the sounds.
Barry pretends that Zoom won't attack anyone right now, and keeps on running.
No one knows what Zoom wants, not even Barry Allen. Zoom does what it wants when it wants, and sometimes it just stands there and only stares.
It's like the Joker, some say.
It's not as bad as him, argues another.
It's worse, interrupts a third.
Only one is true.
Joker is, above all else, mortal. He will grow old and gray and still laugh but he has nothing on Zoom, nothing on the Speedforce.
Nobody acknowledges it except the rare few.
Barry Allen and Wally West aren't scared of the Joker because they know of something so much worse.
The Joker is, at the end of the day, only a man. But Zoom?
But the Speedforce?
It's something more.
Nobody acknowledges it but the rare few, who know that there is something worse than the Joker, and he can't even hope to compare.
There's only a few that acknowledge it.
They're the smart ones.
When Wally West is eleven, he meets Robin.
Gotham doesn't frighten Wally West. He knows of someplace worse, and his feet itch to gogogo.
"Y'know," Robin says beside him. "Most people are more scared."
Wally turns and gives him a smile that's crazy and twitching and too-big. "Why is that?
There's nothing that can scare Wally West. Nothing except Zoom and the Speedforce and losing the people he loves.
There's nothing that can scare Wally West because he survived hell and can take whatever anyone gives him and give it back tenfold.
He's had such terrible role models.
A shout for help takes Robin's attention away from the shards of Wally's ruined mind, and together they run.
There's a fine line between hate and love, and Zoom and Barry and Wally walk it every day.
There's a fine line between love and hate, and it's so tiny that it's not surprising that the Speedforce misses it.
It loves it's speedsters.
But it also hates them.
There's a fine line.
Barry and Wally cross it every day.
Some say it's not healthy, but Barry and Wally haven't been sane since the Speedforce looked at them and said yes.
They haven't been sane in years.
Why start now?
One day, in the middle of December, Zoom shows up in Gotham, lightning snapping at it's heels, but instead of killing, it just stands there.
Joker comes up, eyes wide behind his white white make up, and throws an arm around it's shoulders.
Zoom twitches but doesn't move.
"Zoom! My buddy, my pal. Do you want to terrorize some people?"
Zoom looks at him, a smile spreading across it's lips, and it nods once.
(Hours later, Batman and Robin and Wally and Barry walk into a safehouse, and the Joker is strung across the ceiling on Christmas lights, and written in his blood on the floor is We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! Here's your present!
Batman and Robin walk out.
Barry and Wally do not.)
They catch Zoom one time.
They both know it's because he let them, because he looked at Wally and said, "I'm your birthday present," before arresting himself.
They won't be able to hold him for long.
"What is your name," Batman asks, and Zoom laughs at him.
"You don't want to know my name," he says, and looks directly at Barry and Wally from the other side of the mirror. "Does he?"
Wally releases a shaky breath, and Barry clenches a fist.
"I can sense you," Zoom says, and that's enough-
Barry rushes into the room and slams Zoom into the wall, ignoring Batman's attempts to get him to stop.
"What did you do to Wally," he snarls, and Zoom laughs and laughs and laughs before coming close.
"I tore him apart a little more than you, Barry," it says his name like it did when he was chosen, and Barry trembles before the familiar terrible insanity.
"How do you think Speedsters can time travel," Zoom hoots, and Barry backs away, eyes wide because suddenly he needs to gogogo and he knows Wally needs it too, needs it like air in his lungs, but they both stand their ground. "I killed Father Time!"
"What did you to Wally," Barry croaks, and nobody's trying to stop him anymore. Nobody's ever seen him this pale or this scared.
Then again, Wally's involved.
"The most basic thing I gave you," Zoom hisses, and Barry can't be still any longer. He bursts into motion, and Wally's right beside him, hearts saying gogogo.
Zoom watches them go, eyes wide and yellow.
When Barry was put under mind control and no one could get him to snap out of it, J'onn had to save him.
So he went into Barry's horribly shattered mind.
He screamed and collapsed, and Barry kept on smiling smiling smiling and playing to the beat of a song only two know.
"I'll get him," Wally says quickly, and bolts to his uncle's side.
"What did you see," Batman asks, and J'onn only shakes his head.
"Something... Beautiful in its savagery," J'onn says, and they both look over and Wally shrieks out a word.
"Speedforce!"
Suddenly, Barry's back and holding his nephew close, eyes scanning for threats that have him shifting into a running stance, and J'onn looks ready to be sick.
"I'm sorry, Uncle Barry, but you-"
"No, nothing! You don't say it's name!"
And Wally West and Barry Allen turn into even more of enigmas.
Batman narrows his eyes. He's never liked enigmas.
When Barry was fifteen, he thought there was something else out there, something made of energy.
He never wanted it to be real. At least, not in this way.
Wally's next to him, leg crumbled beneath him and eyes unfocused, and Zoom stands above him.
"Tsk, tsk," it says, just as mocking as last time. "Barry, I thought you'd gotten better."
"The last fight was five minutes ago," Wally snaps, and Barry wants to shout at him to stop because the cold fury makes Barry flinch back.
"So it was," Zoom says, strolling up to Barry's nephew and slamming a foot into his broken ribs. "Perhaps you'd like another one?"
Wally's starting to sob from the pain, great heaving cries, and Barry can't take that.
"Stop," he screams, and Zoom, amazingly stops."Please just give us time to recover."
Zoom snorts, but flashes away in a blur of yellow, and Barry crawls over to Wally, biting his lip to keep in his own sounds.
"Wally, are you okay," he demands, and Wally, all of thirteen years old, glares at him.
"Obviously not!"
"Right. Um," Barry grabs a couple sticks to make a splint for Wally's leg, and Wally flops on his back to stare at the sky.
"Happy anniversary, Uncle Barry," he says quietly, and Barry hums a thank you as he sets Wally's leg.
When Wally's fifteen, he can't run.
Batman decrees that running is killing him, and that he's off the roster for heroes.
Wally only thinks one thing in this haze of disbelief.
Zoom.
He and Barry share a glance, and then go wait in a spot Zoom seems to like.
It shows up right on time.
The Speedforce is unbearably happy that they're waiting for it.
"Hello," it says, curling a dead man's tongue around the words, and smiles it's dagger blade smile at the way it's speedsters move back.
Then it notices the strange shiver running up Wally's leg, and the smile turns into a grin that makes Wally scoot back even more.
"Oh," it purrs. "I suppose my little gift finally kicked in?"
Wally's face turns red as he shoots to his feet. "You did this! You have to fix it," he yells, and it's lip curls as Barry forces him back down.
"What Wally meant to say is that Wally having his speed is very important to him, and he should greatly appreciate if you fixed it." Barry ends it with an uncertain smile.
Zoom considers giving it back. The ability to gogogo, to follow the instinct and run is something it knows Wally loves.
But it simply smiles again and disappears.
Wally's scream of rage follows it, and Zoom doesn't fight the smile coming up on its face.
Wally's stunted. He can't move, can't run, can't follow the one thing his body asks for, can't gogogo like he's been wanting, can't do anything-
Wally sits at his house, staring at the wall.
This is torture. It's horrible. He can't move the way all speedsters need to, and nobody understands that. They just say don't run, Wallyand all Wally wants to do is scream I can't just do that!
Speedsters are made to move, to run, to be faster than Time and sound, to be there one moment and gone in the next.
Wally groans and lays down on his bed, a weight on his chest and heart saying gogogo like always, only this time he can't get to his feet and do it.
Everyone says it's only powers, Wally, it's fine.
They don't understand that it's a part of him.
Wally's miserable, Barry can tell as easily as the rhythm in his feet, and he knows he can do something about it.
Let him run.
Zoom laughs and runs around and around him, saying, "Where's the kid, Barry," with lightning in it's eyes and fire in it's wake.
Barry doesn't answer, and he has to take the week off after.
Nobody understands that being a speedster isn't a choice. It's not something you just - can turn off.
Superman can. He turns into Clark Kent at the end of the day, and can practically cancel his strength with how careful he is.
Speedsters...
Everything's relative. Barry's older than a hundred. Wally fifty.
And Zoom... Well, let's just say it's older than everything.
Being a speedster isn't something they can control because the Speedforce chose them, broke their minds with claws and words, made them move and move until they started to be a special sort of crazy before it sent them back.
So Barry shows up at his nephew's door with the Kid Flash costume, because there's only another person so understands.
And it isn't Zoom.
There's a kind of insanity that speedsters have. It's not like what the Joker had, and it's not traditional insanity either.
No, it's something different, something so much more dangerous, because they're normal even when they slide all the way and the pieces of their mind shake and shake and they want to laugh and run and destroy.
When Wally was younger, he confessed to wanting to hurt someone all the time, and he still does. He wants to smile and grin and be the wind like his body shouts he should be, and he thinks that Gotham would welcome him and try to break him even more.
Robin - Dick, now - says that sometimes Wally's smiles remind him of the Joker, and Wally grins a bit wider and carefully doesn't think about all the ways he would break his best friend and get away with it, and says, "Guess you'll have to keep an eye on me then!"
It's a warning and a plead.
He doesn't want to hurt people.
Barry does Flashpoint to save Wally. He's made peace with his mother's death, as much as it saddens him, but Wally is withering away in front of him, and Barry thought that if he saved his mom then the accident wouldn't happen and the Speedforce wouldn't look at his nephew and say yes because of the domino effect.
It worked. Wally West is a happy teenager who's never went over the speed of what's normal, and for once Barry doesn't have to gogogo and he sees that Wally doesn't have to either.
For the first time in years, Barry doesn't have to run.
And for the first time in months, Wally can stand without struggling, can smile without it cracking and being far too wide, and Barry can shout for how much of makes him happy.
Wally West is a normal boy.
But-
But then he notices everything else.
Wally is fine, Wally is perfect and healthy and not dying but Bruce Wayne is dead. Superman never existed. Dick Grayson wasn't saved and is now in an orphanage. The people of Atlantis are rising and the Amazons are doing the same.
And there's a man in yellow who runs and laughs and Barry goes to Gotham. He's never thought that he would beg to be broken, beg to be sent to the place that terrifies him, but he does, and the Speedforce looks at him and says, silky and dangerous and says, I remember you.
Barry is torn from his body and shredded as the Speedforce screams You don't leave me! I own you, you don't leave me!
Barry wakes up with blood bubbling at his lips and his heart beating gogogo and he hates it but it's familiar.
Thomas Wayne asks him why he woke up yelling and vibrating, and Barry stares at him, eyes wide and smile shaky and twitching, and says, "I'm not sure."
When Barry runs into Zoom, lighting zaps him as the thing races towards him, crazed laughter spilling from his mouth, and he says, Hello Barry. Where's little Wally?
He says it with the voice of the Speedforce, and that is what makes Barry run.
He runs and he runs, and just as the realizes just what he did, he's swallowed by the time stream, and the only thing he's thinking of is Wally Wally Wally, and when he reaches the moment he saves his mom, he doesn't hesitate.
He knocks himself to the ground and shrieks, "This won't save Wally!"
He goes limp, and then Barry's gone.
He saved his nephew from the horrors of that world.
He just hopes he can save him again, even with his restless feet and shattered mind.
Wally doesn't know what he did, but Zoom isn't happy. It's snapping and snarling and saying, "Barry Allen, Barry Allen, Barry Allen-"
Wally's knees are weak.
"What-" he stops to clear his throat. "What did he do?"
Zoom's in his face in a second. "He tried to steal you away," he growls, and Wally flinches back, arms trembling.
"So I'm going to steal from him."
Oh shit, ohshitshitshitshit it's holding a knife-
The doors bursts open, and suddenly Uncle Barry is there, lightning at his feet and dirt kicking up behind him, and Wally can breathe again.
You tried to steal him from me. You tried to steal yourself from me.
Wally holds back a frightened noise at the voice.
"Let him go," Uncle Barry says, and Zoom laughs and laughs, decaying skin shaking with the force of it.
Nononono, Barry Allen, it hisses.You don't get to make commands. I do. And I say-
The pain explodes and Wally bends over and screams.
That Wally is going to die much sooner!
Zoom's voice is shrill, and Wally looks up at Uncle Barry, terrified, and his uncle looks back.
Consider this your punishment, Barry Allen.
Then, Zoom's gone, and Wally can barely move his legs.
Wallace Rudolph West is declared paralyzed when he is eighteen, barely a week after he was saved by the Flash.
It's the worst day of his life.
Time is so slow. It's so short and so long, but most of all it's slow.
Uncle Barry's held Father Time's eyes in his hands, has looked Zoom in the eyes as he ran to the past - speedsters truly know just how much time is relative.
But at least, before, Wally could run the time away. Could run and run and not notice how little time had passed because he was going too fast and listening to the thump-thump-thump of his feet against the ground and the gogogo beat of his speed. Time was relative then, too, but it wasn't torture.
This-
This is torture.
Five years could go by in five minutes, and Wally can't do anything to make it go faster.
"Hey, Wally?"
Wally blinks, and the world snaps into normal time, and he turns to Dick.
"Yeah," he asks, and wonders how he could look anxious and eager at the same time.
"Do you... Are you thinking of having a roommate?"
Wally tilts his head, starting to pinch his leg before remembering that he can't feel anything down there. "No. Why?"
Dick rubs the back of his head, and refuses to look Wally in the eyes. "Because I was thinking I could move in with you?" He says it uncertainly, like he doesn't even know how Wally will react.
Wally blinks again. "Wait, really? Hell yeah! Move in right away!"
Dick's face melts into relief, and Wally flails his arms happily, already starting plans, and this will be the best thing ever.
Uncle Barry doesn't think that Dick moving in will be the best thing ever.
"Wally, I was going to haveyoumove in with me," Uncle Barry says nervously, and Wally shrugs. The wheelchair is being particularly uncomfortable today, so he's on the couch with Uncle Barry pacing in front of him, wringing his hands in worry.
"It's already been decided," he says, and swings his legs up to lay down on his stomach.
"Wally," Uncle Barry starts, and he starting to get faster, turning more per minute, and the beat in Wally's head says gogogo with each step he makes.
"Uncle Barry,"Wally returns, and smiles at him. It's the smile only Uncle Barry gets, one that's tired and small but genuine, and Uncle Barry smiles back. "It'll be fine. You'll see."
Uncle Barry sighs and throws himself onto Wally's legs, then frowns and adjusts himself so that Wally's legs are on top of his. "I'm just concerned," he says quietly, messing with the laces of Wally's shoes.
"Don't be," Wally laughs, and flips himself over so that he could see his uncle. "Everything will be fine. Dick will help me when I need it, and I'll - I'll make sure that he doesn't die."
But not the way I want to, he thinks bitterly, and Uncle Barry squeezes his ankle in sympathy.
"Yeah. I'm just - what do you when you need help and Dick's off world or on a mission," Uncle Barry asks plaintively, and Wally only chuckles.
"That's why you're here, and why everyone else is too." Wally grins, and Barry smiles, and Wally thinks that maybe everything will be okay.
Zoom shows up while Dick's away, lightning crackling up it's legs, and Wally backs up his wheelchair until it hits the wall.
The bread falls to the floor.
"What's this,"Zoom gasps, voice glitching out from mortal to otherworldly, and Wally grits his teeth, glares, and prays that Uncle Barry will be here soon.
"A crippled speedster? What a surprise!"
"Yeah, no fucking thanks to you," Wally snaps, and then he's on the floor, useless legs just falling behind him, and Zoom leans in close, close enough that Wally could see the true thing behind the body.
"Crippled speedsters are useless," Zoom breathes, and Wally closes his eyes.
He's going to die. It's inevitable.
Nothing can stop the Speedforce from doing what it wants. Not even Father Time could do it.
Wally takes a shaking breath, and waits as the hand laying on his back starts to vibrate.