'This'=Wally's thoughts
'This'= J'onn communicating with someone telepathically
This=Flashback mode (Is flashback technically a pun?)
Disclaimer: I own a Flash shirt, but i don't own the Flash nor the songs that he thinks to confuse J'onn
Wally West really hated those transporters now. Usually they didn't bother him all that much, but right now he was kind of disoriented.
Reason one was that he was starving and his metabolism would not allow him to forget for a moment.
Reason two was that as soon as he got to the space station he was shoved rather roughly forward.
Reason three was that Superman was staring at him like he hated him, and Wally thought he saw a tinge of red in his eyes. Seeing as Supes has laser-eyes this was rather worrying.
The thing that really threw him off was the girls though, they looked like they had been crying, and like they wanted to rip him apart. GL was being a marine and not showing any emotion other than rage in the background.
This was so the opposite of fun for Wally.
He was marched through the halls towards the holding cells and was abruptly shoved into one. He was sat at an interogation table and his cuffs were attached to it. Then they left him there, it wasn't long until he started getting bored.
Wally whistled and started looking at random things. Wally looked at the walls then the table, then his handcuffs and then at... his ring! Crud he had forgotten his ring, there was no way that they wouldn't be able to identify him if they took it and opened it.
Then again those things were really hard to get opened, and if you didn't get the catch fast enough it would just lock. Supes could probably just crush the ring though and pull the costume out of the wreckage. This was getting him no where, he felt like he needed to do something.
He wanted to try pacing, but he would probably wear a hole in the ground or something. He was also sort of tied to the table. Wally decided to try and sleep.
This turned out to be impossible, because he could feel someone's eyes boring a hole in the back of his head. He sleepily opened his eyes and rubbed them, he felt like crud. Wally started to mess with his ring, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to be doing, but Wally was bored out of his brain.
He wondered what he was going to do about this situation. He needed someone to figure out that he was still alive; he didn't want them to know who he was though.
Especially after what happened earlier, Wally cringed at the idea that he might be pitied.
He hated it when people pitied him, there were loads of people more deserving of pity and he just... Didn't like the feeling that people thought he was an event to be pitied, it didn't sit right with him.
Unbeknownst to Wally the people watching him on the security camera definitely didn't pity him.
Wonder Woman was up in arms, she shouted, "Leave me with him for a minute! I'll get him to confess!" There were tears in her eyes as she said this, and you could tell that she wouldn't be able to hold back on crying much longer.
Hawkgirl was angry, she seethed with anger and wanted to bash the door down and kill the man sitting there that might be responsible for Flash's death. The only thing that was keeping her from doing so was the fact that Green Lantern was pulling her back. Superman was trying to calm them down, but he was having a tough time with it.
Batman wasn't trying to diffuse the situation at all; he was standing at the computer with J'onn. Both were typing like nothing unusual was going on.
Wonder Woman walked over to the monitors and looked at the kid who was suspected of killing Flash. She didn't think he looked like the kind of person that would kill, but she should know by now not to judge a person based on their looks. The kid was messing with a ring he had on, this confused Wonder Woman, because she was pretty sure that he was supposed to have had his stuff taken away. "Batman, why does he have that ring?"
Batman looked at the monitor and took off towards the cell. All the while cursing police who didn't properly search a suspect they knew. Batman then cursed his own stupidity, he had seen that ring, there was no reason he should have left it on him.
With no warning Batman burst into Wally's cell, scaring the crud out of him.
"What the Heck!" Wally said jumping to his feet.
Batman bat-glared at him and Wally sat down, fast. Batman glared at him for another moment, and then said, "Ring. Now."
Wally twisted it on his hand a moment and then looked up at Bats' face. It was his cold unforgiving no-nonsense face, there was no way anything would keep him from taking his ring. Wally sighed and tried to awkwardly take his ring off of his hands. His efforts were impeded by the fact that he was still wearing hand-cuffs. He finally pulled it off and gave it to Bats who snatched it up and stormed out immediately.
'Yikes Bats looked angry.
Oh god they're going to kill me or something this has gone way too far.
Ugh secret identity or not being convicted of killing myself?
I should just tell them.
But… I'm sure they'll figure out that's not me eventually.
Just give it a bit.
Yeah… That's not a totally bad idea.'
A while later Wally was sitting and needed to move, he just couldn't handle sitting still anymore.
So he leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs. This really didn't do anything for his boredom. He wished that there was a clock in here, he had absolutely no idea how long he had been sitting there, and he needed something he could pace his internal clock against. Usually he could just pace himself against other people or against a clock. He had neither right now.
Suddenly Green Lantern came into the room; he pointed his ring at Wally. Wally sat down on the bench and kept his eyes on the glowing ring.
John kept his ring on the kid. He didn't look nearly as scared as John wanted him. Wally West was going to jail for this, if it was the last thing that John ever did. Well if John was being honest with himself he'd realize that he didn't want this punk to go to jail.
He'd killed the Flash!
He wanted this kid dead. He knew better though, after the Justice Lord incident he knew that if he went down that path there would be no going back. So John just did what he was told. He undid the kid's cuffs had the kid stand up and march towards another interrogation room. The kid did as John told him and walked with his hands up.
John wished that the League could just mourn in peace, but they needed to plan the memorial service for Flash and John was having trouble figuring out what he wanted to say.
He wanted to regale the people at the memorial with memories of him and the Flash sitting around playing video games and days where they would take five minutes to bring down mirror master then grab some hotdogs. Flash would always eat 17 of them. He also wanted to tell the people at the memorial about the time that John had went to Henry's with Flash.
Henry's was the hang out for super villains in Central City and one of Flashes most notorious villains, the Trickster hung out there. Flash had talked to the Trickster and gotten him to turn himself in. From what Batman had said this was a normal occurrence for Flash.
He wanted to tell them all about the first time he had ever met Flash, the one he worked with at least. There had been a Flash before the one that was in the League. John hadn't worked with him much, when he had first met his friend; it had been almost a month after he had first been sighted. John had thought that the guy had just changed his costume, but Flash had corrected him.
John had heard that Sinestro was on earth again, this time he had touched down in Central city.
For now the Flash was distracting the guy. To take him down though, he would probably need Green Lantern's help. Green Lantern had worked with the Flash before, he was a good guy. He wasn't a Superman level hero, but he did a good job protecting his city.
"Hey Fishstick, you missed me!"
That didn't sound like the Flash that Green Lantern had worked with before. He had been funny, sure, but the guy took the job seriously.
"I thought you said that your Ring was the best weapon in the universe. You can't even hit me!"
"Shut Up! You imbecile, can't you just shut your trap for a moment!"
"Now C'mon, What fun would that be!"
John had flew towards the battle and caught sight of Flash running circles around Sinestro, who was looking annoyed and tired. Flash saw him and ran to the other side of Sinestro to distract him from Green Lantern's arrival.
"Hey Fishstick, I'll give you one free shot, I bet you can't even hit me when I'm standing still!"
Sinestro aimed at Flash and fired, at the same time that Green Lantern fired. Sinestro fell out of the sky and Flash somehow managed to dodge Sinestro's shot.
"Is he down for the count?" Flash said, ambling towards the place where Sinestro fell and Green Lantern had gone to get him.
"Yeh"
Said John as he looked at the Flash, his costume was different. "Is that a new costume?"
Suddenly Flash wasn't very cheerful looking."Ah no actually, It's a new Flash. Nice to meet you."
Flash held out his hand for a handshake and Green lantern knew that he would regret asking, but…"What happened to the old Flash?"
The new Flash looked sort of downcast for a moment, then said, "He died."
Green Lantern was shocked for a moment then he said, "What happened? Why didn't I hear about this?"
"Zoom caught up with him and to defeat him he had to get him to chase him into the speed force. I'm not sure how you didn't hear about it."
Green Lantern realized that it had probably been while he was off earth taking care of some business on Oa. Flash was silent for a minute before saying,"Sorry, but I've got to go."
He started away before Green Lantern spoke up,"Wait, if you're not the Flash who are you?"
Flash smiled and said,"Well I'm the Flash now."
John sort of wondered who the first Flash had been to his friend; he thought maybe the first Flash had been his father. John didn't really want to think about that though, or who Flash might have left behind.
Wait a minute could Flash have been a father? How was it that John had no way of knowing?
He had been the guy's best friend in the League and yet he knew nothing about him. Heck he didn't even know how old he really was. What could he say at the memorial that wouldn't show exactly how much John didn't know his friend?
He was a good guy? Everyone knew that, you didn't have to work with him every day to learn that about him.
Amazingly Flash might be even more of a mystery than Batman, he never really gave information about himself. John needed to know who he was.
Times like this were when John was happy that the League had Batman, he no doubt knew everything there was to know about Flash's secret identity. It was creepy, but John wanted to know who his friend really had been.
Wally finally made it to the interrogation room where he was forced to sit down and his handcuffs were cuffed to the table. Wally leaned back slowly and looked for a clock; he really needed to calm down.
He still wasn't sure what he should do about the whole imprisoned for his own murder thing.
He didn't want anyone to know who he was, it wasn't a good idea. They would always be bothering him on days that he needed to study and then they would visit his apartment when he turned off his earpiece.
He was also sort of annoyed that he couldn't even take a day off without his team thinking that he'd died. Seriously people relax, they were probably still able to track him right? No of course not he'd turned the entire thing off last night.
Wally suddenly knew what to do; he could quickly turn his comm. link on and quickly leave a message before they realized that he was actually in the Watchtower. He needed to get back to the holding cell before he did that though. All the holding cells had a small blind spot on the floor in the middle of the area covered by cameras. Wally knew that it had been purposefully done, but he couldn't remember the reason now.
He waited and waited and waited, there was still no Batman to interrogate him, or Diana and Shyera to beat a confession out of him. He wished that they would do something at least, he was so bored, and he was still hungry.
Suddenly J'onn came into the room, and Wally started to recite the makeup of certain chemicals and the table of elements in his head. J'onn sat down on the other side of the table, and his eyes started to glow. Wally wanted to think about how this was really bad, but he forced himself to concentrate.
'Glucose is a single-unit sugar that can be hooked up with other sugars.
If glucose is joined with another sugar to form two units, it becomes a disacharride, such as maltose (malt sugar), or lactose (milk sugar) and sucrose, also known as table sugar, cane or beet sugar.
From a chemical standpoint, glucose consists of 6 carbon atoms, 6 oxygen atoms and 12 hydrogen atoms.
Hmm glucose, I could use some glucose.
Hyperactive metabolism and all that, because I'm the-
No I'm not going to think that.
Got To Focus.
I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves, everybody's nerves. I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves and this is how it goes bum bum bum…'
J'onn grimaced and wondered whether or not he was supposed to delve deeper into his mind, then again he wanted to know what this person was keeping secret from him.
'I'm not meant to fly,
I'm not that naïve,
I'm just out to find,
the better part of me,
I'm only a man in a funny red sheet,
digging for kryptonite on this one way street,
and it's not easy to be me…(1)
I want a Theme song, but no, nobody writes the Flash a theme song, hmm.
I've got time to think about the beauty of a thousand variations
Of the beating of a wing
Of a hummingbird suspended in the aspic of the world
Moving slower than molasses
As I'm off to catch the girl
Who is falling off the bridge(2)
Hmm that's pretty good, it needs more-waitno not-good not-good not-good not-good…'
At this point his thoughts became too muddled and fast to understand, but J'onn already knew. "Wait, no I'm not the Flash!"
The amount of desperation in his voice confused J'onn, why didn't Flash want them to know he was alive?
'Flash? Why don't you want us to know you're alive?'
'It's not like I don't want you guys to know that I'm alive, it's just that I don't want them to know who I am.'
'Why?'
'Secret identity's are important, if people knew who I was then they'd treat me differently, and besides, when someone knows your identity they can hurt your family.'
'We would not tell anyone.'
'Well I know that, it's just important to me. When my uncle was the Flash, his secret identity was found out by his nemesis, Zoom. He almost killed my aunt before my uncle caught him. That was right before my uncle died.'
'Why do you feel that we would treat you differently Flash?'
Wally sighed; his annoying friend had somehow remembered that.
'I… My life hasn't been as great as they think, and I don't want them knowing that, because here I can be someone who's the class clown without them always psycho-analyzing everything. I like to live more in the moment, and I feel like if they know stuff, then they'll judge me based on my past.'
'We would not judge you, no matter what you did'
'That's not what I mean, umm here.'
Wally brought the memories to the forefront of his mind; most of the memories were very painful.
Several of them were of his dad.
One was of the time he had been taken out of his home.
Another one was the time that his mother had called him; she had wanted to meet with him. Wally had been 14 at the time, and he had said no. It had been a hard decision but, he hadn't been able to deal with that, so he'd swept her under the rug and forgotten her. It wasn't his proudest moment.
Some of them were times that Barry had gotten injured. He had been so new to his powers the first time it had happened, he had though Barry would die.
One of the memories was the accident. He didn't have scars from it due to his accelerated healing, but it had been a terrible experience.
Another was Barry's funeral. The last was the first time that he had put on the suit, the feelings there had been mixed, but he had known he was doing the right thing.
J'onn looked at Wally; even though he had just lived through his most painful memories Wally still had a small forced smile on his face. J'onn thought a moment, and tried not to analyze all of Wally's personality based on his past, he couldn't. He saw the painful need for acceptance in him, and his smiling as a way to keep himself from frowning. J'onn then realized that that wasn't what it was, Flash was happy with how he was, and how things were for him.
He had an aunt who loved him and whom he loved; he had a career that he was working towards. He had friends which always had his back, and he was able to help people. That was the most important thing, that he was able to help make other people's lives better. Flash was happy, and he didn't want anything to change that.
J'onn nodded to Wally, then smiled. Wally smiled back, and this time his smile was real.
Wally was still sort of worried that J'onn would rat him out. He could think about that later though, as at the moment, he was trying to relax enough to quickly contact the league.
"Hi guys I'm not dead, in the middle of a lecture, I really can't talk now, got to go."
"Wait, Flash!" Said someone hurriedly, Wally thought it sounded a bit like GL.
"What happened?" Wally needed to get off the line NOW. They were no doubt tracking his signal and within the next minute they'd realize that he wasn't even on earth.
"Look I saw the news, I'm not dead. I really need to go before people realize that I'm late, I'll contact the League later. By the way, I'm turning my earpiece off don't think that I died or something."
Wally turned off his communicator immediately and took a deep relaxing breath. That was difficult. John had wanted to keep him on the line, to track his position probably. League would want visual confirmation that he was alive. Ah well, that's not something they would get until they released him.
1-He doesn't know the words by heart, why would he it's not like it's a Flash song.
2-Ballad of Barry Allen, if you haven't heard it and are a fan of the Flash then google (shut up auto-correct, you know google is a word) it, it's awesome
AN So... What do ya think, Lemme know in Reviews. I appreciate them all, if only because they incite me to post more frequently. Oh and this might end up AU it already is sort of. I want them to end up figuring out Wally's identity, there's enough evidence there that they would have to be idiots not to figure it out. Okay and Wally's origin, It's not based on the comics (Maybe loosely) I just wanted Barry to have like existed as Flash in this world, and Wally is annoyingly scared of having his identity discovered so i used that. I'll explain what happened more in the next chapter (like where GL went, what Batman was doing, their reaction to Flash calling them)Please Comment, review, ect. thanks for reading :)
A/N: On 10/28/12 I edited this chapter and plan to soon repost it, I hope you all like the new version, there isn't much changed, but I think it's a bit better thought out.