A/N: I just can't seem to stop writing these damn Flinx one-shots. Why won't someone STOP ME?!
Oh, yeah, cause y'all love them.
Ambrosia
Of the things I've lost upon becoming a Hero, I miss colors the most. Moving at light-speed can have its advantages, but no one really cares to know the drawbacks. After all, who could complain? I can within ten seconds be in ten different countries, and have immense tactical presence in battles. I've also made strides to be an independent fighter, without team or accomplice.
It's not really like anyone could keep up with me anyways.
I'm Kid Flash, fastest boy on Earth, second to only two people, both a lot older than I.
These facts which bolster my morale (lies told to keep me from faltering) still cannot change the fact that I no longer notice the small things. Everything is so blurred in my sight most of the time that when I stop and look around, things are still hazy. I'm always thinking of the next place to be, of the route to take, how fast to go, and what I'll do when I get there. My mind is always working, faster than any computer yet made. It's not that I'm more intelligent than other people; it's a side effect of the Speed Force that manifests within me.
Isn't that something? I'm surrounded by the most intelligent people on the world, and several from other planets, galaxies, and realms of existence. They're gifted in ways I could never imagine, with talents I can't even begin to fathom; and I'm the Plain Joe who got hit by lightning and got lucky. I'm not smart, I'm not strong, but I'm fast, if that counts for anything in the great karma of life.
I even sleep fast. In ten minutes, I get the kind of rest it takes a normal person ten hours. It makes for some very long nights, much of which I spend running. It helps me to think to have my feet in constant motion. Like a shark, sometimes I think that if I ever stop moving, I'll die. At the very least, someone will realize that I'm a clumsy oaf and nothing like the sleek speedster the newspapers love to report on.
Neither am I the lady-killer they like to talk about.
I flirt, because there's very little else that can occupy my time. I've no real friends, trained as I am to elude all questions about my identity and my downtime activities. I've no girlfriend, lest she become suspicious and ask questions, again, the same reasons why I've no friends. Even my family, other than my aunt and uncle, cannot know of what I do. It makes for a very isolated life.
However, in the long one, I wouldn't stop doing the right thing. Not for any color in the world, nor for the scent of a rose. I might not be able to appreciate the finer things in life, but I can protect them with the entire ethos I've created for myself.
It was a typical run, on a not so typical night. Old acquaintance of mine, Beast Boy, who'd I met during a team to team meeting between the Justice League and the Doom Patrol, called me up last week, asking me to do a favor. Some big bad from the way back had risen up again and was starting some big bad trouble, as big bads often do.
The favor? Patrol Jump City, the Titan Town, and haven for teenage heroes and villains, and some not-so-teenage. Keep the small bads small, and make sure the peace remains peaceable.
All goes well for about...oh, an hour. Then, I hear an alarm from the west side of the city. Two beats, then one long, meaning the alarm is for the museum, though why villains always feel the need to hit the most guarded places, I've no idea. Still, I wait a token ten minutes, for them to get really into the whole "We're safe, grab stuff!" mode, before I go rocketing off to start some trouble.
Trouble indeed, though even now I don't know why she affects me the way she does. I'm running, pausing for a mini-second (roughly .0001 second) and I see something entirely surprising.
Pink.
In a world of gray, I see a flash of something that captivates me instantly. Forgetting the crime occurring, I'm instantly at her back, and it's as if time has frozen. I know it hasn't, that I'm moving too fast, both physically and mentally, but I can't seem to slow down, not yet. She's smiling down onto a necklace, and I know instantly that it's something she feels she needs.
Her eyes, so brilliantly colored, are glittering with the same vulnerabilities I hide with humor and cockiness. A moment in her life, where she's naked from her soul down, and I enter her life just then? It's a coincidence that I believe made me fall in love instantly. Even through the trails and tribulations of her progression from evil to good, I still see the girl standing there in that museum, smiling at jewels and imagining what it will allow her to do, thinking that this is her turning point.
It was a turning point, but not for her alone.
Brushing my nose against her hair, a shade of red so pale that I almost instantly imagine roses swaying in the wind, I force myself to go back to the mission. Protect the museum and it's antiques at all costs, even the infatuation of a villainess, which she clearly is as I step back.
I hide in the speed force, moving too quickly to be seen, let alone tracked, and watch as her cohorts start to steal, yet she stands there unmoving still. Making no move to take the object of her desires just yet, and almost without control, I'm forced to do the same.
Maybe she's a hostage, forced to oblige?
Maybe she's confused and making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons?
Maybe, just maybe, she was forced into this life by hard circumstances?
The reasons for her villainy a mystery to me, even now, I could only watch as she finally gathered her senses and made a move for the artifact. My limbs free from this horrible limbo and I begin to run, as I always do.
I've incapacitated her friends within seconds, and in a fit of inspiration, retrieve the simile for my instant captivation for this witch, a rose, and present it like a prince. "You're better than this," are the words that slip from my lips as I stand at her side. I didn't intend to say that, had thought a dozen smooth lines to introduce myself, but that's what came out.
She took a step back from me, her large slanted eyes, again, so unique a color, flash at me in irritation. "Who are you?" She demands in a voice forceful, yet silky smooth at the same time.
"I'm Kid Flash," I step closer, her scent drifting to my nose, a welcome distraction in this haven of mustiness from another time. "And you're better than this."
And maybe, for the first time in a long time, I realize so am I. I'm better than this complacent comfortability that has long controlled my existence.
I'm better because I've met her.
I see the colors again, and it's because of her.
If no one really understands that, it's their own blindness, never mine.