DEF: Inspired by The Ballad of Barry Allen by Jim's Big Ego, requested by hearts and handgrenades the first person to request anything.

Vita: Ironically enough, she already had the first few paragraphs of this typed out because she loves this song but she wasn't gonna publish it XD. We don't own the song, the various Flashes, the Watch Tower or either Barry, Wally's or Jay's labs but we do own the east borough bridge of Metropolis because we made it up.


'J'Onn to Flash, your assistance is required in Metropolis, the east borough bridge is collapsing and Superman is fighting Solomon Grundy,' J'Onn explained telepathically.

'On it M.M,' he replied changing course so that he was headed to Metropolis instead of Japan, strange that J'Onn would call him out on something so simple, there had to be somebody else. Lots of somebodies, the Watch Tower was usually crammed full of hundreds of heroes, it didn't make sense to send out one of the seven.

He sighed as he entered American waters, he knew why of course, they were worried about him, about the Speed Force and what he could do. But they were still his friends, which meant they were worried about the man behind the mask, scared that they could loose their Wally like the Lords had, they almost had.

J'Onn knew how much his brush with the Speed Force was affecting him and wanted to help get his mind off of it, he could get that, he would do the same in a heartbeat, faster. They were his family, they were really all he had left, mom was gone, Aunt Iris was dead and Uncle Barry was lost in the Speed Force.

Uncle Barry, ever since he'd seen his Uncle again, he couldn't help but spot the glaring differences between the both of them. He'd had less than a week's rest since the Luthor incident but when you're the Fastest Man Alive, you've got time to think about the vast multitude of variations. What if?

Those two infinitely small words, they didn't mean anything drastic on their own but put them together and they could drive a man insane, especially if he had the time to ponder them. What if Uncle Barry hadn't 'died', how would he have handled the Justice League? Would he be treated like a child as well or would people actually listen to what he had to say, take him seriously?

What if he had gotten hit by the anti-matter canon full on, would he have been able to survive, to escape? Or would he have been too slow and died?

Metropolis was a disaster zone, as usual, he really wondered how their economy stay afloat, all those supervillains attacking every other month. He'd seen one of the estimated totals for one of Supes' fight with Luthor, he didn't even think Bruce made that much in a year.

The east borough bridge was missing a huge section out of the middle, already chunks as large as houses had fallen a hundred feet into the river below. He ran straight to the Metropolis side of the bridge where people were trying to get back to the city, okay, falling bridge or superhero supervillain fight, which'll kill me faster? Talk about a rock and a hard place. The people on the far side were safer since the point of impact had been closer to Metropolis, that meant the cracks were spreading through the Metropolis side.

He picked up three people at a time and ran them back to relatively safe ground, the whole thing was about to go but he still had about fifty more people left. He ramped up the speed to a bit lower than light and the world around him froze, he loved it.

Everything was so much simpler here, moving faster than the world around him, he didn't cause a breeze at this speed, no one could even see him, he was untouchable. He grabbed the last person, an old woman when he spotted another person, a girl falling off the bridge. He saw the fear in her eyes blossom over the course of five minutes, then her mouth open in a scream another five later.

She was just six feet away, it was nothing to grab her waist and walk with her back to safety, it was utterly fascinating to him. He was there before she even knew she was falling, he'd be gone before she sees him. She's still screaming, he can't hear her of course but he can see it in her too slow movements, it's nearly half an hour later before she realizes that she's safe. To her, the fall lasted all of ten seconds and it took thirty seconds to regain her senses, she's tough and familiar too, lush black hair, black eyes.

He knows he's seen her before, somewhere, but where? To the rest of the world time flies by to him, it keeps on dragging on and on and on. The curse of a speedster, always out of step with the rest of the world, Barry faced it and Jay before him, they all dealt with it differently.

He knew Jay liked to flip through old picture albums of his father with his kids, Barry preferred to mix dozens of volatile chemicals together and work to stabilize them before they exploded. They had both gotten their powers later in their lives, at a point where they could handle it, when they knew how to pace themselves. He got them at too young an age, he didn't know a thing about control, he didn't know how to slow down which was why he suffered the most.

He was the fastest Flash, he didn't know how to deal with the curse, how to make himself slow down again. He was always running at top gear, he only ever slowed down enough to be with normal people was because he was good at tricking himself. Whatever he thought was his top he could reach, he was good at blocking the past out, living in the present was what he was all about.

Speaking of which, the Man of Steel had beaten Grundy, big shocker, and was helping with all the traumatized little peoples and the MPD were herding them to the city proper. He slipped away unnoticed, he was people person, ask anyone, he literally meant anyone, but today he wasn't up for interaction, he just wanted to walk.


"Ha ha! Yuh missed me yuh stupid monkey!" he taunted dodging through the bullets, he really hated bullets, they did so much damage for something so damn small. So many people died because of them, they caused so much pain, he hated them with a passion.

The Ultrahumanite growled and punched in some password into a hand held device, a hover bike flew in through the back door, slowed down long enough for Humanite to hop on, then sped away. Plaster rained down on his head as he navigated his way back out through the route he knew, he made it out with six point three eight five two seconds to spare.

Humanite was three hundred yards away and still firing his damn gun, he grimaced, whatever the crazy ape had stolen, he wanted it bad. He kicked it into gear, he closed the distance fast but the chase lasted much longer than he would've liked, he had to keep turning around to save people. Humanite might have superior tech but the power would always run out at some point, he could go longer than any machine ever could.

The hover bike kicked out at the town square, they were somewhere in Europe by now, from China to Europe in less than five minutes, nice tech.

"Why don't you ever give up, you incessant fool!" Humanite yelled shooting at him from behind the town chapel, he dodged each and every one. He thought about what Humanite said though, giving up was something he'd considered more times than he wanted to admit, Humanite stirred unwanted feelings in the speedster; guilt, anger, shame that's what those words brought up.

He felt guilty that he could ever have thought about giving up the Flash mantel, Barry never would've done it, Barry knew how many people put their lives in his hands. Even if he had never become Flash, Barry had always been helping people in the KeyStone PD, he wouldn't, couldn't quit. Barry was still fighting, he was fighting to get out of the Speed Force, back to the people who needed him.

That always led the second emotion anger, what would happen to Wally if Barry ever did manage to get back? He wouldn't go back to being Kid Flash, he was a hero not a sidekick, people looked up to him too, they needed him too. Barry had given up the mantel, he couldn't be Flash again, Wally wouldn't let him be Flash again because he was better at it. He was among one of the world's greatest heroes, he was up there right next to Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman, Barry had never done that.

Wally had saved the world from alien attacks, from superpowered clones, power hungry gorillas, multi-billionaire geniuses with a weird obsession with Superman and had single handedly taken down the worst villain in the history of the League. Barry had never come close to what he'd done, he was the better Flash, let Barry be Kid Flash.

And then the shame washed over him like a tsunami, what in God's name had possessed him to think like that? Barry was the real Flash, when he first decided to put on the suit, he had made himself a promise, 'If Uncle Barry ever comes back, he'll take over being Flash again.'

He had absolutely refused to give up hope, not once had he ever believed that Barry was dead simply because he'd gotten hit by the anti-matter canon too and he'd survived. So why not Barry who was so much better than Wally at everything?

How long ago had it been now? He couldn't tell, according to the calendars it was only six years now, but it felt so much longer, centuries, millennia an eternity since he'd seen his Uncle, talked to him, hugged him. Six years was so long and he was only twenty-three, in his mind he would live out several billion lifespans and with each one, he would start to forget.

He had already forgotten life before becoming a speedster and he was okay with that, he remembered vague flashes of memory and they were more than enough. He remembered the sour smell of alcohol on his father's breath, the angry red welts that covered his body, the tears in his mother's eyes every time she had to take him to the hospital.

His life as a child hadn't been the best but at least he had moved on, he had found strength in the image of Flash and later on, his Uncle. Those two people alone had managed to save him from a lifetime full of hatred and pain, he could never repay that debt.

"Because then you'd get away and what kind of Hero would I be if I let that happen?" he mocked snatching the gun away from Humanite's hands so fast he left a second degree burn.

He glared at the useless pieces of twisted metal that lay in his palms now, he really hated guns, they caused so much pain and he hated reminders of his past even more. There was another difference between Barry and Wally.

Barry refused to give up anything, his garage had been so full of junk that no one could get in, Iris used to be so mad, probably because Barry didn't even know what some of the stuff did. He didn't care, every time she threw something out, he would find two more things to take its place and on top of that, find the original and return it to its rightful place. It was another way he dealt with his powers, he kept mementos of every important thing in his life, or at least what he deemed important.

'Even if you forget about it, when you find the souvenir, you'll remember something, anything. And that's all I want Walls, I don't want to forget anything, even if that thing is that Cap. Cold goes commando.'


"What are you doing up here? Your shift ended more than half an hour ago," Diana remarked resting a hand on her hip. He cursed in his head, he hadn't counted on Diana being this high up on the Watch Tower, frankly the only one he expected to run into here was Supes, no one else ever used the level twenty five training room.

"I completely forgot the paperwork for one of the cases I'm working on," he lied ducking past the Amazonian princess and flying past her before she could ask any more questions. He didn't want anyone knowing about his late night training sessions, well relatively since the Tower circled the earth more times than he cared, technically it could be anytime. The Luthiac Case as he labeled it, had been ten and a half days ago and the rest of the team were still paranoid about it.

He himself could care less, he'd known the consequences going in and he had been fully prepared to die, the Bat had rubbed off on them. The training rooms only went to twenty, the one he'd just used was only accessible by the Original Seven, it was the one Supes used. Occasionally Wondy or J'Onn would use it to test themselves, maybe GL and Shy but he never did, until ten and a half days ago.

He was a sensitive person, what people thought about him really affected his fragile self esteem, sure he put on a don't care attitude but he cared more than anyone knew. His teammates doubting him had led to him doubting himself and thus numerous trips to Supes' training room.

The room was programmed to simulate everything from underwater to outer space to Akropolis and designed to test superspeed, strength and everything else that was expected of the man of steel. He wasn't supposed to go near the thing really, he was the most human out of the Seven other than Bruce, the force exerted by the robots in those simulations could kill him all too easily.

But being Wally, he used it after the Luthiac thing to test himself, to make sure that he could still control his speed and that he would never be able to hurt his friends. He sighed as he slowed to a walk just outside his room on the high tech tin can, he rarely ever stayed in it but sometimes he needed to get away from all the craziness of Central. Don't get him wrong, he loved his powers, he'd done a lot of dangerous and stupid things to get them and was just lucky he was alive.

Jay and Uncle Barry had gotten their powers by accident, Jay from falling asleep in a lab and Barry from being drenched in supercharged chemicals, both cases turned out relatively fine. Wally, however, had caused his powers.

Growing up with a man like Rudy West wasn't easy and he had needed something to cling to, pto prvoe that life really was worth it so he'd chosen Flash. Both his parents, Rudy as well as Mary, had shown their disgust over his pathetic obsession, 'Get your head out of the clouds boy, d'you think you'll get superpowers one day? Stop dreaming about the impossible'.

Well he'd proved them wrong, he'd met the Flash and found Barry's notes on the chemicals and conditions necessary to replicate the scenario. He'd gotten it perfect that night and the only thing missing had been the lightening but as luck, or maybe something more, would have it, his little lab was struck by lightening just as Barry's had been. It had been painful, the most painful thing he'd ever experienced to this day but when he woke up in a puddle of chemicals, he was vibrating so fast he was halfway through the floor.

He'd always loved his powers, valued them more than anything else but Barry didn't, the older speedster had told him that sometimes he wished he'd never gone into his lab that night. He said that having the weight of so many lives was not something he'd bestow upon anyone much less his ten year old nephew.

He'd always been so sorry that Wally'd found his old notes, that now this little kid had to live his life in slow motion. While time rushed on for the world around him, it seemed so slow to him. A life where you constantly had to remember not to go too fast, to control yourself and yet still going too fast for those around you, too fast to love and be loved in return.

The one difference that would forever separate them though, was the simple fact that Wally had chosen this. He had chosen to escape time and live in a twilight zone where the world around him moved in slow motion, it was the only way he could ever get away.

He was afraid, he was afraid of putting down roots, of getting too attached and then watching everything he'd worked so hard to build fall to pieces around him. He preferred to keep love to himself, to watch as everyone he cared about tried to play catch up while he did his utmost to run. He had always been a runner and now there wasn't a person in the multiverse who ever had a prayer of catching him.

So he would run, run until the hurt died, until loved died because he had chosen to live a life where time dragged on, where everything seemed so slow. He wasn't Barry Allen no matter how much he wished he could be. He was Wally West, the third Flash, the only intentional Flash and the only one who liked time dragging on.


DEF: The request was to write Barry/Wally but Jay just slipped in every so often, props to the first Flash!

Vita: The first request is done, review and tell us what's next.