If you recognise it, it's not mine.
"Oh man, Artemis is so going to kill me for this."
Wally was dying.
He knew that much.
"And don't even get me started on Mom and Dad."
He was going...
"Kid!"
Going...
"Just tell them, okay?"
Gone.
The blue blur, his uncle's face, everything vanished in a split second.
Whiteness.
Blackness.
Everything.
Nothing.
And then Wally realised he was in an empty room, and someone was speaking.
"Wally West, is there a Wally West here?"
Wally never really believed in God- he was a scientist, come on- but even so, he would have expected him to sound a little less... bored. Hesitantly, he raised his hand. "Uh...speaking?"
Suddenly, something was standing at the other end of the room. Wally couldn't tell if it was male, or female, or even human at all. In fact, the more he looked at it, the less it seemed to be there. It was only by tilting his head and looking at it out of the corner of his eye that he could really see it.
"Who are you?" he asked, trying to keep the thing in his sight. "Are you, like, God or something?"
"Sometimes. There are many perceptions in the universe," came the reply. The voice sounded like wind and rain and falling stone all at once, and it still managed to sound patronising.
Wally glared out of the corner of his eye, wincing at the headache he was getting. "Whatever. What do I call you then?"
What followed sounded like a burst of symphony, a collapsing tree, a roar, an aria. "...but I believe that the closest pronounceable translation in Earth tongues is Anpa."
"Anpa?" Wally asked sceptically, raising his eyebrow. Anpa nodded, solidifying into a vaguely humanoid figure. One minute it looked like the homeless guy who lived near his flat, the next like his Uncle Barry, then Batman, then Dick, then Artemis...
"Stop it!"
"You ask too many questions."
"I didn't say anything!"
"I didn't mean out loud." Before Wally could say anything, like asking him to stop with the cryptic comments already, Anpa made a sweeping gesture and the room dissolved. Instead, Wally was falling through the air, heading towards a desert. "This is necessary," Anpa whispered, but Wally was too busy freaking out to listen closely.
"What the hell, dude, I'm already dead!" he screamed, before realising he had come to a stop.
"Look."
Wally looked. And he saw, blurry and silent, like an old film...
...Artemis, falling to her knees, screaming silently...
...Dick, standing stolidly to the side...
...Flash, Impulse, looking shellshocked...
And Wally realised.
This desert was the closest thing he had to a graveyard.
The scene changed again.
...Dick, mask off, sitting on the roof of Wayne Manor, eyes dark and brooding...
...Artemis, curled up and sobbing...
...a memorial, of him, and somebody standing in his uniform...
"What's going on? Why are you showing me this?"
And Anpa turned it's head, and Wally was drawn to the huge, dark eyes which dominated the pale face. "That was Afterwards." Then Wally was falling again. "And this is Before."
..."Oh, man, Artemis is so going to kill me for this,"...
..."Dick! Give that back!" and Dick flipped away, waving the goggles triumphantly...
...A blur of love and friendship and life and then...
It stopped, in the mountain. Wally watched himself appear from the zeta tubes, tripping over his own beach kit, falling to the ground. And then she stepped forward.
Artemis.
..."Kid Flash. Never heard of you."...
Wally blinked away the tears in his eyes, and when he looked up, he was in the empty room again. "Seriously, dude, what was the point of that! If this is like, heaven, then it sucks! I thought it was all supposed to be green fields and hot chicks!"
"You have to die, Wally West."
"I know that. I am dead, I died, remember!"
"But you do not have to die."
Wally frowned. "What? You could've told me that before, you know. Would've saved some time."
Anpa probably rolled its eyes. "Perhaps I should explain this more thoroughly. Are you familiar with parallel dimensions?"
"Yeah, it was my first lesson in Sci-Fi 101," Wally deadpanned back.
"There are many worlds, and in each world, there is an almost identical manifestation of each individual from the worlds before."
"So...there's another Wally West out there, somewhere?" Wally asked, looking around the room.
"No. There is not another Wally West out there, somewhere. We are Nowhere."
"But you said there are different dimensions with...copies or something?"
"But I did not say that we were in a parallel dimension. We are Nowhere." Anpa's tone was back to being condescending, and Wally was back to being irritated.
"So where are we then?"
"Really, Wally West, we do not have time to discuss the basic arrangements of the universe. Time is running out."
"Running out for what?"
In the blurred glimpses Wally could see of Anpa's face, he could swear it was smiling. "Running out for you."
Wally threw his hands up in the air, trying to ignore the song instantly getting stuck in his head. "Would you just tell me what the hell is going on!"
"Very well." Anpa whirled round in a swirl of dust, and Wally felt a horrible lurching sensation, like the Batglare and a zeta beam and that one time Dick talked him into running down a huge hill and he tripped on a rabbit hole and went flying, all at once.
And he saw.
Like a door opening on a cinema screen, he saw an entire life.
A boy, growing up, living.
With super speed.
And he saw it all.
The screen paused on a picture of the boy, now a young man, running, dressed in the Flash's uniform.
And Wally knew. "That's... me."
"It is not."
"I mean, one of the other ones of me. In a different world... I'm the Flash?"
"You were."
"Wait, what?" Wally scowled, frustrated with the constant confusing answers.
"That Wally West is dying. He has a degenerative condition, which worsens the more he uses the power of speed."
"And I'm already dead. What's your point?"
Silence.
Instead, there was a flash of light, and when Wally blinked the black spots from his eyes, a man in a familiar red suit was lying crumpled on the floor. He ran over, supporting him as he sat up, holding his head. "Ow."
"Uh, hey," Wally said, trying to get over the sheer weirdness of seeing his own face looking back at him.
"I'm Wally West. Where am I? Who are you?" the Other Wally asked.
Suddenly, Wally realised he still had his Kid Flash mask on. "Um... Just call me KF."
The Other Wally seemed to accept this, and staggered to his feet. "I was... dying..." he murmured in confusion. Then he glimpsed Anpa. "Wait, what? What's going on here?"
Wally shrugged. "I'm actually pretty unclear on that myself," he said, looking towards Anpa. It stood to the side, as if it was waiting for Wally to do something, or figure something out. While the Other Wally started trying to vibrate through the walls (good luck with that) Wally started to think.
All the stuff Anpa had shown him, Afterwards, Before, the Other Wally's life... There had to be a reason.
You have to die, Wally West...
...But you do not have to die.
Wally looked at the Other Wally again, and then at Anpa. "Wally West has to die," he said.
The Other Wally looked up. "Dude, I'm already dead! That speedster disease I had killed me...right?"
Wally ignored him, instead attempting to look at Anpa. "Wally West has to die, to destroy the chrysalis, to save the world."
"That is correct."
Wally smiled. "But it doesn't say which."
By now, the Other Wally was looking really confused. "What are you talking about?"
Wally stood opposite him. They were exactly the same height. "Look, I know this is confusing, but there are all these parallel worlds, and you're from one, and I'm from another, and in my one, I died, and you died in yours." Slowly, he pulled off his mask, revealing his face. "Hi, I'm Wally West, Kid Flash, and I died saving the world."
The Other Wally stared at him for several seconds, mouth opening and shutting silently.
"I don't have that speedster condition thing, so... This sounds crazy, but you see the creepy dude over there? I think he can switch us, make it so that you die in my world, saving it, which is pretty badass, you've gotta admit, and I go to your world and that way there's still the Flash."
The Other Wally blinked at him. "So... you live?"
"Yeah. In theory."
"And instead of dying in my world, I get to save your world? Properly save the world?"
"Yeah. In theory."
The Other Wally hesitated for several seconds, probably thinking exactly the same things Wally was (this what it means to be a hero), and then held out his hand. "Take care of the world for me."
Wally nodded. "I'll do my best."
The Other Wally took a deep breath. "Okay."
And then he was gone.
Wally felt a sudden emptiness in his chest.
"Now you," Anpa hissed urgently. "Accept your life, Wally West."
The film of scenes, snapshots of his life rolled past his eyes again.
..."Hi. I'm Wally"...
"Dick. Dick Grayson. Nice to meet you"...
...a birthday cake, candles flickering...
..."Shut up, Kid Mouth!"...
..."He hit on teacher and got served?"...
..."Wally, this is your Uncle Barry"...
...Conner holding back Artemis as she tried to strangle Wally, M'gann levitating her bow away from his hands to give it back, Robin cackling and backflipping away as Wally attempted to hide behind him, Kaldur dousing them all with a huge splash of water...
..."I should have done this a long time ago"...
...energy firing into him from the chrysalis, killing him...
..."Today is the day"...
Wally opened his eyes. "I'm going to forget about all this, aren't I."
"Yes."
"One thing, then."
While Anpa waited, Wally reached up to his head. Sure enough, his goggles were there. Clenching them in his hand, reassured by the familiar shape, he closed his eyes in a silent goodbye, to everyone.
Dick. Barry. Artemis. I'm sorry.
"I'm ready."
And Anpa stepped into his line of sight, and its face was beautiful and terrible and everything in between. It raised its arms, chanting in a language which sounded like everything Wally had ever heard and everything he hadn't.
And the world dissolved around Wally.
And everything hurt.
He tried to cling on to their faces, but they slipped away, one by one.
Bright blue eyes, but whose eyes were they?
A beautiful girl with long blonde hair but no name...
Wally West was dead.
Wally West was gone.
Wally was alive.
He knew that much.
Opening his eyes, he saw half of the Justice League staring down at him, and they did not look happy. Their faces were streaked with dust and tears.
"Hey, guys. What's up? Who died?"
Wonder Woman slapped him.
"Hey!"
Once they'd explained what had happened, how he'd collapsed after a mission, his condition had killed him, and now he was miraculously alive again, Wally apologised. They ran tests, and the condition had completely vanished. He was cured.
They all went out to a restaurant to celebrate his recovery, despite some joking- or probably joking- protests.
"So we're stuck with him?"
"Be nice."
"Yeah, we'll kill him off later."
"Dude! I just died! Give me a break!"
"What's that?" Green Lantern asked after a while, pointing to the small red thing Wally was fidgeting with. Wally opened his fist to reveal a pair of battered red goggles.
"I don't know."
A flash of blonde hair in the corner of his eye made him whip round in his seat. A young woman, a stranger walking past outside stared at him for a second, then continued. He turned back to his friends, looking at the little goggles again.
The right word came to his mind suddenly, like a memory from a dream.
"I think... it's a souvenir."