Hey, what do you know, something I can actually post to secondbananas. I missed Preston, and he needs more love. Poor, forgotten character that he is. Standard disclaimers apply. Spoilers for Flash: Fastest Man Alive #13.

Roadside Memorial.

"That way you learn the best lesson, your heart, your soul, your life, compassion."
-Papa Roach, Between Angels and Insects.

Actually, he figures he should've realised a whole lot sooner. Like how about from the first day he met the guy.

But he hadn't because… well… because come on, it had been Bart. And Bart was weird and all (impatient, strange, easy-to-notice, hair-like-whoa! up-for-anything, never stopping because he didn't want to, not because of what anyone else said) but Bart wasn't a hero.

No. Not Bart. No way. Bart wasn't a hero, except for the ways in which he was.

Like the way which got everybody he knew dates with just the right people to the junior high dance. And the way which stopped Rolly from drowning in the rapids after some guy gave him one dare too many. Like the way in which he always seemed to be there whenever one of them needed a hand in something. Like the way Carol always seemed to idolise the guy for no apparent reason and…

Okay, sure. Maybe Bart was kind of a hero like that but…

But he wasn't…

He couldn't have been…

Except…

Maybe…

Oh, Crap.

Preston whacks his head against the window pane as they pull up at the latest station, and is pretty much resigned to the fact.

Bart Allen was Impulse. And then Kid Flash, and then the man himself. The Flash. The saviour of keystone city with a bigger rogues gallery than even the batman…

And absolutely no patience whatsoever.

And Preston hadn't even noticed. He hadn't even wondered for a second. It's actually almost embarrassing. He was Bart's friend and he never even knew…

'Is this seat taken?'

Preston has half a mind to say yes, or something, and be damned with being polite about it. he's not in the mood for people and talking but when he looks at her…

Well, first things first: she's pretty cute. Second things second: he knows who she is.

'Oh… uh, no. sure you can just… go right ahead. Sure.'

She sits down besides him, arranges her skirt too neatly on the chair – it's red, not black the way he'd kind of expected.

'It's Preston, right? I remember you from Manchester Junior High.'

'Bart's sister's friend,' Preston can't help but smile at her. She's taller now, and older looking, and even prettier if he might say so. But it's still the same girl who he barely knows except for one day at Junior High when Bart –and ohmigod he was Impulse and he'd probably ran halfway across America to fetch her! brought her round to see them and…

…And he wonders which Superhero she is. Looking at what he knows now, she really kind of has to be one.

'Yeah. That's me. Sorry about that. For one of the fastest people in the world he wasn't exactly fast on the uptake when—' her voice trails off, hand rising to her mouth. 'Um, I mean…'

Preston just smiles and shakes his head, seeing her shoulders relax as he does. 'Nah, it's cool. No secrets now, right?'

She lets out a breath and smiles right back. 'Yeah. No secrets…'

There's silence for a while as she gazes out the window. Not a really uncomfortable silence. Just kind of a quiet, shared one. Outside of the bus windows the light is going down. The next town they pass through will probably be lit with streetlamps. He doesn't have to ask her destination. He already knows they're both going to the same place. He even brought his own candles (red ones, with white stripes on them. He figured it was appropriate. Maybe she needs one; he'll have to ask her later.)

Still, he figures he should talk to her. It's still kind of a long journey yet and really, he's lucky to have met up with her here. There'll probably be so many people at the Flash Museum that it'd be hard to find anyone he knows. So he should ask her how she's doing, where she's been, what her secret identity i— no, not that. No way, Preston, just… grow some freakin' braincells, will you? and actually try to form conversation while he's still got someone with him who can remember Bart as well as he can (probably even better, really, if she actually knew who he was all along.)

It doesn't matter however, because she ends up being the first one to speak. 'I… haven't seen you. Since the dance, I mean. You must go to Manchester High School now.'

'Not any more. Virginia Tech. Well, I'll be starting next semester, anyway.' This is actually a really ambitious thing to say, because he hasn't even filed the papers yet and he's still not sure the scholarship would ever take somebody with a grade history like his. But still, it pays to hope, right?

'That's good. I… that'll be cool. Let me guess, you're doing…'

'Videogame design. Um, yeah. They might be offering out a scholarship, so if I do well enough in my exams…' When she smiles at him for that he discovers that she's still really pretty, despite a total lack of makeup, and blushes just a little bit.

'Bart would've liked that.' She takes a deep breath. 'I'm sorry, I forgot…'

'I knew him too. Yeah, but… I never knew this. Kinda a shock to find out through the news, you know?'

'I would imagine,' she smiles a little. 'I found out through Robin.'

'Robin… you talking about the kid with the…'

'Panties. Yeah. That's the one. No panties, though.'

'Oh… man, that's…' Cool, he doesn't actually say aloud, and he can't believe Bart knew all those people and…

And they sit that way and talk for a while, about just about everything they can remember. It's easier than he thought it would be, even though he hardly knows her. They talk about the dance, the one time they met. About which high schools they're going to and what they'd like to major in. About where their friends went after junior high. About who had stayed the same and who had changed. Like Bart. Yeah, he changed most of all, in ways neither of them could ever imagine.

It's kind of… nice. To sit and remember, and he'd hated being alone with his thoughts for the last three hours of travelling, anyway. Back in Manchester Junior High, Bart had never let anyone's thoughts stay alone in their heads for long. He could always think of something to say, however stupid that something might be.

Of course, eventually, Preston gets to the question he just can't keep himself from asking, and the one she's probably been waiting for.

'And, so you were one of… you know… them?'

'In the same team as Bart? Yeah,' she lifts a hand in front of her, casts a brief glance at the other passengers (old man, old woman and some teenager with a bad hairdo who clearly isn't going to Keystone), and mimics the firing of an arrow in a bow. She gives him a faint smile and half a wink. 'Not anymore though. Not for years, in fact… don't tell anyone, okay?'

Preston nods before he can stop himself and knows he means it through and through when he promises: 'Uh… sure. Cross my heart.' He'd kind of been expecting her to be someone he knew better but… Arrowette…

Yeah. That was pretty cool. He can see Bart being friends with someone who went with a codename like that.

It's barely half an hour later when something at the front of the vehicle shudders. They both look up, blinking in surprise.

'Uh… excuse me, everyone, we might have a small problem here.'

It's dark out here. Really dark. There aren't any streetlights for as far as he can see and it's going to get even colder in a few hours. That kind of worries him a little, since both of them are in short sleeve shirts and neither seems to have brought a coat. It's going to be a really long night if they can't get the damn bus started.

He'd tried to lend a hand, at first. But then he figured that fixing car engines wasn't the same as programming a videogame, so he hadn't really been much help and went back to where Cissie was standing…

…And kicking angrily at the back wheel of the bus.

'Um… that's not gonna make it work.'

'No,' (kick) 'But it'll make…' (kick) 'Me feel…' (kick) 'Better!' (kick).

…Damn that girl's got a mean right-leg sweep. He figured it came with being a superhero., powered or not. He doesn't want to risk getting in front of it so he hangs back for a little while, waiting until she stops kicking, leans against the vehicle and shudders.

'Uh…Cissie?'

She's crying.

Duh. Of course she's crying. Because this is Bart's night Impulse's and Kid Flash's and the Flash's and… God, Preston doesn't think he'll ever get used to that. And they're going to miss it because of some stupid fucking break down.

'Hey, Cissie… it's okay.'

'No. No, it's not okay!' He said the wrong thing there. Totally the wrong thing, and when she looks at him, her eyes are burning. 'Don't you get it? It never has been this whole thing! It's all screwed up, Preston, all of it!'

'But… they'll send another bus soon, cool? Or maybe they'll manage to fix this one and… we'll get there. It's going to be fine.'

He's lying through his teeth now because… yeah, they're stuck in some god forsaken wilderness (well it looks like wilderness, in the dark,) with a broken down vehicle and the memorial will probably be over in a few hours. They're never going to get there in time, and he knows it. The four hours of travelling he's already had don't mean squat.

And that really, really stinks.

'You don't understand. It's not just that…' If anything at least she's stopped kicking. She stands at the end of the vehicle with her arms wrapped tight around herself and a glare like thunder in her eyes. 'Things haven't been okay, Preston,' her voice is colder than he's ever heard it and makes the air chill just a little bit. 'Not for any of us. They haven't been okay for years and…'

And now she's shuddering again.

Preston has no idea what to do. He never does with things like this –pretty girls and tears just aren't his forte. When Ayana used to cry, she never really needed comforting. When Carol used to cry, Preston had always left it to Bart or something. And when Bart…

Okay, Bart never actually cried.

He can't deal with this.

But he tries to anyway. And when he carefully touches her shoulder and she doesn't shove him off again, or kick at him like she was kicking at the bus, he figures he must have done something right, so it's not as hard as he thought it would be, to make her turn around the rest of the way and bury her head into his shirt.

…Which wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting but… okay.

He can handle this one, right?

Whoever said that superheroes weren't allowed to cry anyway?

'I keep thinking about it, and… I saw his picture, in the paper. Just a few weeks ago when they found out his identity. I had to look twice, I just… I couldn't be sure. It wasn't Bart. Not anymore. Except it was.'

'Yeah…' Preston understands that, even though he's not sure how. They've been sat here for a while now, besides the wheel –no talking, just quiet.

He remembers seeing that article, too. He remembers the stony look on the Flash (Bart)'s face, in a picture that almost looked like a mugshot, and the way it just totally hadn't matched with the boy Preston remembered from videogame Saturdays and after school detention and trips to the mall where Bart just couldn't stay still no matter how many ice creams he'd eaten, always asking stupid questions, like whether or not the cameras were 3D and where the Omnicoms were kept.

He'd never asked Bart what an Omnicom was. He figured if she asked Cissie, she wouldn't know the answer either.

'I remember the dance,' Cissie whispers, now that her voice seems steady enough for her to talk again, even though her face is still half buried into him. 'And I remember dancing, with him. And… the newspaper. I just kept thinking that it wasn't Bart. That wasn't the boy I danced with at some stupid, pointless junior fling. That wasn't the kid who… who brought me all the way there from [insert location making stupid jokes about railway lines and the Impulse express, and…' Her head presses lightly against his shirt, and he somehow manages not to flinch. 'But that guy in the newspaper wasn't Impulse, Preston. Not anymore, and… and damn it, this is so stupid…'

She pulls away a little bit, now and… he's actually sorrier about that that he'd expected to be.

'It's not,' Preston says that far too quickly for her to believe him, but right now, she doesn't seem to care what he believes.

She talks a little more after that. And the conversation gets weirder, now, because she starts by telling him about a giant mutant rampaging around a local school. An old uniform with glitz and sparkle and a mother who wanted her to be a hero. She talks about Impulse -Bart– saving her from some kind of freaky giant mousetrap and about the first call her mother got from the child welfare agency and the time Wondergirl's mother came and took her away and saved her from having to be Arrowette any longer.

And then she tells Preston all the stuff he'd wanted to know about Bart Allen since he heard that he was dead. About videogames and supermobiles and vibrating his head inside of things to see whether or not they exploded. About the thirty-first century Bart came from (and that bit really throws him for a loop because all of a sudden it really makes sense that Bart never knew that cameras weren't 3D). She tells them about powers and villains and wars and comas and deaths and legends and time.

And it doesn't matter that she's talking about superheroes and saviours and folks he's never even known, and it doesn't matter that most of what she's saying is flying right over his head. (Like a lightning bolt.) Because it's all her memories, his memories too, and it's all Bart the way they both knew him. Stupid, crazy, off on a loop, up-for-anything-Bart-Allen.

It's like listening to an epic, poured out of the head of an eighteen year old girl. Like listening to the world's greatest story in some humongous videogame it'd take a lifetime to even start programming. And Preston has to keep telling himself that everything she says is real. It happened to her. It happened to Bart.

And it's the coolest story he's ever heard.

'I hate him…'

Preston's been sitting there quietly, listening to the story for such a long time and ignoring the complaining rabble of the other bus passengers nearby, that when she says that he isn't surprised. He's starting to be angry too, (or maybe he's been angry since the moment he found out who he really was). Angry for all the adventures he's missed and all the glory Bart got for being brave and impulsive when really – duh! What else could he have been? Angry with Bart for never telling him all the things that Cissie just did. 'I hate him for changing, Preston. I hate him for leaving but that… that's silly, right? After all, I left first. I was the first of them to give up and Bart never did, no matter how much everything changed him… there's been so many. So many have died and… and there's Slobo, and Superboy. And… and I don't hate any of them.'

'Maybe 'cause you don't have to…' she looks up at him when he says that. he can still see her eyes, sharp and blue in the darkness. 'I mean… he's… he was Bart, you know?'

Cissie manages a smile. 'Yeah. Old, reckless, impossible Impulse. I figured nothing could ever stop him.'

'Hey that's what I thought, too. And I never knew about the Impulse thing. I figured…' he kicks a stone across the concrete road. 'I thought he liked all the attention, but now that I think about it, how could he, right? I mean, he didn't want us to know…' he feels only slightly bitter when he says that because if Bart couldn't trust his friends who could he? 'Superheroes have to keep a low profile and… so I guess I was wrong about that all along. Bart didn't want to be popular he just…'

'Was, yeah. Bart Allen was. Impulse had a tougher time in the heroes community,' Cissie smiles when she says that. 'In short –I think he drove most of them insane. Especially Wally, I mean…' she stops, and he doesn't press her for explanation. She's probably told him too much as it is.

He wonders how many people want her dead too.

He wonders how many more people Cissie-formerly-Arrowette has yet to watch die.

'I know it sounds silly. But… I want things to be how they used to be. For all of us. I want… I want Wondergirl's wig and… and Superboy's stupid, awful spandex. And… and I want Suzie to be Suzie, because that's the name I gave to her. And Bart…' She's quiet for a moment. ' Preston, I just wanted to see him, one last time. I just wanted to tell him…'

Preston nods. He was right, then. They were here for the same thing. '…So did I.'

He's not sure why he kisses her.

It just seemed like a good idea. At the time. She looks like she needs it and he feels like…

Well. Like being impulsive.

It hardly matters why, anyway. So long as she's not shoving him away and screaming at him or pulling an arrow out of nowhere and staking him to the nearest rock, he figures she's okay with it. And it's not like kissing Jenny Bialecki, or Ayana, or anyone else for that matter. And it's like he'd ever imagining what kissing a superhero would be like.

He sure never expected it to hurt this way. He never expected it to burn.

He never expected to have a mental image of Bart, grinning deep in the back of his mind while he did and oh-so-UNsubtly cheering him on.

After a while, they join the other passengers in clambering back onto the broken down bus, amidst a myriad of apologies from the driver. No sense standing outside in the cold.

They light two of the candles at the back of the bus, and nobody begrudges them it. It's too cold to begrudge them it. And the boy with the punk hair who Preston thought didn't care about anything stops for a second to give them a look. When Preston wonders why he's looking at them, he opens his jacket.

The shirt underneath says "Manchester High, Class of '96".

Preston gives him the last candle. The old people stop chattering to themselves. The driver mutes the radio, and a memorial of just six people and three candles, takes place on a roadside headed for Keystone city, miles from anywhere in particular.

Two hours later, Preston thinks she's asleep, and he might not be too far off himself. They still haven't moved from this spot in the lay-by. The last of the candles burned our an hour ago, and no other vehicles have passed them in hours.

It really is going to be a long night.

But that's okay. Preston can deal with that. Besides, it's not nearly as cold as he expected it to be. Not with Cissie using his shoulder as a pillow, anyway, and he wonders whether or not this is going to matter in the morning, when the lights come back and the next bus arrives to take them the rest of the way to Keystone.

He thinks about Bart. Not Impulse – just Bart. And Rolly. And Carol. And Evil Eye. He remembers all those times that make more sense now he knows one of them had super speed. He remembers Bart overdoing the marshmallows because he wouldn't slow down and having to give him the Heimlich manoeuvre, even though he didn't really know that one.

He remembers…

'Cissie?'

'Mm?'

It looks like she's not entirely asleep just yet but she's still not quite awake enough to register her own actions.

'…Bart never even had a sister.'

Preston feels her smiling against his shoulder and then he hears her whisper a barely audible: 'You might be surprised…'

Not too long after that, she falls asleep again.

Fin.

Reviews and concrit are appreciated.