Title: Privacy
Characters: Just Bats and Flash this chapter
Word Count: 1,108
Rating: PG-13 for language
Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be, and no profit if being made from this story
Summary: Wally West gets taken to the Watchtower for questioning. Before the events of star-crossed, so no one knows each other's secret identities. Also, before whenever Batman figured out Flash's identity.
A/N: I think this may be my favorite chapter yet :D
~JL~
Wally was confused.
So confused, in fact, that he honestly couldn't remember a time he had ever been more confused in his life; and considering his life, that was quit the achievement.
Why was he so confused?
He was currently being held in the bat-interrogation room, located in the watch tower, being giving a truly epic bat-glare, located on non-other than its name sake's face, all the while being told they had iron clad evidence that he was part of some shadowy organization, location unknown, old Bats had been chasing for around a year now.
Oh, and the evidence? Video evidence.
Wally was just about to ask if the guy they'd obviously mistaken for him in the video was sporting a goatee when his brain finally decided to register a distinct lack of monologing coming from Batsy.
Over the course of the countless long, tedious, boring league meetings he'd been subjected to, Wally had learned the subtitle art of tuning Bats out when his talking exceeded five minutes. So, while he had caught the thing about them having freaking video evidence of him doing some wrong, he honestly had no idea what Bats had been saying for however long he'd been zoned-out.
And now, Batman was silent.
That didn't bode well.
After glaring at Wally for a full, highly uncomfortable minute, the Dark Knight silently rose from his chair, walked over to ,what Wally had personally named, the "freak-out the interrogatie with all the awesome evidence we've collected" TV set in the corner, and turned it on with a faint clicking sound.
On the screen, three young men entered a room that looked suspiciously like the main Chemistry lab back on campus. The three young men, who he now recognized as himself and two fellow classmates, started making their way towards one of the lab stations when, suddenly, a bright light appeared in the corner of the room. In a matter of seconds, the light filled the small screen of the TV set then dissipated, leaving only the scene of Wally sprawled on the floor on top of the two other boys.
He remembered this happening.
And that, oddly, was the most disconcerting thing about this whole situation.
He'd fully expected to watch a doppelganger of himself breaking ninja-style into some shady warehouse to steal something or another.
Because honestly, that happened more often than Wally was strictly comfortable with.
Instead, he was faced with a video of his normal, handsome self saving a couple of fellow students from certain doom.
He'd been able to throw himself on top of Josh and Shiroma just before a cloud of shrapnel and debris would have ripped them all to shreds.
When the authorities had come and watched the footage, they had labeled him a hero. Wanted to give him a medal and everything. Wally had refused, of course, insisting that it was what anyone would have done in his situation. He was trying to keep a reasonably low profile after all.
But still, last time Wally checked humility wasn't exactly a sign of nefarious deeds.
So what about this video had pinged Bats' "evil is going down" radar?
Apparently Wally's look of mild confusion wasn't the reaction Old Batsy was hoping for, 'cause after the video had ran its course he then proceeded to replay the tape in super slow-mo.
Still nothing unusual as far as Wally could tell. Even on the slower setting.
They walk in, explosion starts, he, quite heroically, throws himself on top of the others just in the nick of-
Oh.
Bats had drawn a reasonable conclusion about there being something up with Wally West.
He really had messed up.
~JL~
Bruce sat back and watched as the video began to play. He'd seen the tape at least a hundred times by now, looking at it from every angle to make sure he hadn't missed anything.
He hadn't.
On the screen, three college students were entering the main chemistry lab at CCU. One of these students sporting a flaming mop of red hair. Then, as the trio approached the nearest work station, the room suddenly exploded in a dazzling flash of light.
By all rights, all three would have been dead if not for the quick actions of one Wally West. And that, right there, was the problem.
Quick
Bruce could tell from the kid's face that he still didn't see what was so wrong with his actions. So, nice guy that Bruce is, he played the video again. Frame by frame.
With the new, slower pace the video was taking, it was simple to see the moment Wally moved to cover his friends before the light from the explosion overwhelmed the screen.
And… there it was.
Wally's mouth dropped in a silent "oh" as he seemed to come to the same conclusion Bruce had two weeks ago when he'd first managed to get his hands on the footage.
"You reacted to that explosion fast. So fast, in fact, that I have about twenty different models that say you reacted faster than what should be humanly possible."
Bruce's tone was light, conversational even.
"Well, what shouldn't have been possible unless you knew there was going to be an explosion beforehand, that is."
Bruce paused a bit, letting the gravity of the situation sink in, before continuing.
"So, I'm going to tell you my current theory. I think you planted those explosives, or, at the very least, let someone into the lab to plant them. Maybe nobody was supposed to get hurt, maybe they were. I don't know."
Bruce shifted his body forward, squaring his shoulders slightly as he did so. The picture of menacing.
"But what I do know is that you went back to that room, knowing the bomb was about to explode, to save those two boys."
Bruce relaxed back into his chair, letting his tone soften as he did so. He was still just dealing with a kid. A good kid who had probably just gotten mixed-up in something so big he didn't know how to get himself out.
After all, sociopaths, like the people who worked for the organization Bruce was investing, didn't go back to save bystanders that got snared in their traps.
"I think you're a good kid at heart, so you've still got a shot of getting out of this without ruining your life."
Bruce slipped a relatively small, by bat-standards at least, file folder onto the table, opening it as he did so to spread the pictures and police reports held inside in front of Wally.
"All you need to do is tell me everything about the Odium."
~JL~
Post Note: How will Wally get out of this? As always, expect sporadic updates in the future.
- With love, Gilded
