Author's Note: Thanks as usual for all the support! I made it through midterms week alive and am practically on break (only two more half days and then I'm free!) so I'm hoping to get out more than one chapter a week during break. I might not be able to reach that goal, but we'll see. Read, review, and enjoy!
Responses to Guest Reviews:
Guest – He really should soften up. He just needs to calm down and be happy. Everything else would be better after that. Thanks for the review!
Guestr – Yeah… that was actually a spur of the moment thing. There hadn't been any plans whatsoever for Wally to get himself kidnapped by Zoom, but then I figured, why not? And thusly, he was kidnapped. Thanks for the review!
Guestz – He did destroy a good moment. I totally could have pulled that out and made it super fluffy, but then Zoom attacked. Young Justice is Earth 16. Jay will probably be pulled back into the story sometime in the next couple of chapters. I'm trying to work that in to the story. I'm not going to put Wells (Earth 2) and Caitlin (Earth 2) into the story just because I don't want to give any spoilers. Thanks for the review!
HI – Thank you so much for the amazing review!
Zatannagurl – He does get kidnapped a lot in this one. Especially by Zoom. I'm not a huge fan of Ollie (Earth 1) either, although, hopefully I can give him some lovely speedster joy and get him to be a little happier with life. Oh, Wally whump is one of my favorite things :P My busy week is over and everything is done with and my midterms and done and I've gotten some good test grades back, so I'm feeling pretty good about my life right about now. Thank you again for your support during that time because the past couple of weeks sucked. Thanks for the review!
WWWWWW
Although he hated to admit it, Wally had passed out just before Zoom had jumped through some weird, portal type thing. He really hadn't been expecting the amount of pain that came with his back being jostled. It was like getting it broken all over again and he was really hoping that wasn't the case because that would mean even more time in that stupid wheelchair and he really didn't want to deal with that.
Groaning inwardly, Wally made sure his muscles stayed lax and his breathing even as he opened his senses and tried to get a feel for the room he was in. Sniffing delicately enough that no one would have even been able to detect the change in breathing pattern, Wally could smell lingering traces of mildew along with the tang of metal, and the crispness of glass. Shifting that last scent to the back of his mind to think on later, Wally continued to search the room with his senses. Next he let sounds wash over him: the hollow song of a little bit of wind moving through metal bars to his left, the nearly silent (even for him) ping of a light wind on glass surrounding him from all sides, and more glass across from wherever he was. He let his mouth fall open to taste the air, but that told him nothing more than he'd already known. Finally, he shifted his fingers and arms and felt his surroundings. The ground he was on felt like hard rock – not concrete, but almost… actual cavern rock like he'd feel at the Bat Cave. There were chains around his wrists and probably some more anchoring his ankles, but he still couldn't feel anything from the waist down. It was when he shifted his shoulders that he felt the pain. Even with all of his Bat training, he still couldn't help the small hiss that slipped out from between his teeth at the pain emanating from his back. That little run with Zoom had not felt good. At all.
As if his hiss of pain had summoned the monster, Wally could hear Zoom suddenly speed in front of him. Finally using his last (and most recent) sense, Wally opened his eyes and sped his vision over the room. He was in a glass cage and seated on rocky flooring. His hands and legs were cuffed to chains that dug into the ground and, after an experimental little tug, were quite firmly in the ground. There was another glass cage directly opposite, currently unoccupied with its chains flung against the far wall. Kitty corner to his cage there was another cage, but this time made of metal poles. And directly in front of him was Zoom himself, vibrating and standing eerily still. Blue lightning sparked off of him in little bursts. Wally would be lying if he said that he wasn't rather terrified. This man had taken away his ability to run, something that not even the Joker had been able to do. What else could this monster do to him? It was terrifying to even contemplate it.
After a moment of the two just staring at each other (at least, Wally was pretty sure Zoom was staring at him; it was hard to tell with that mask), Zoom turned away and spoke, "I've taken him." That voice was just as terrifying as the rest of the speedster and Wally felt himself shudder minutely at the sound, cringing away just a little bit. It made him feel all of five years old again and scared of his father, so he leaned forward and lifted his chin up, glaring at the older speedster with every bit of hatred he could muster up. At this point, there really wasn't another person Wally hated more than Zoom.
He quickly changed his mind when another voice spoke into the air and a dimensional hole shimmered into existence, "Good. Do with him what you will – just don't let him go back to the Earth you took him from. For now, we will watch the other dimensions panic. This will cause dissension among them and will make it so their forces will not work together as well as they had hoped. The Dimensional Light will contact you soon." Vandal Savage. As the dimensional hole shimmered back into nothingness, Wally felt a growl grow in his throat, finally letting it escape as all signs of the hole disappeared.
Zoom turned back to him and, even though Wally couldn't see his face, he had the strangest feeling that Zoom was laughing at him. So he growled at the older speedster too, hating his predicament. That immortal couldn't give up already! He's chased Wally through three dimensions. He needed to take a defeat and go away. Wally decided then and there that it was Vandal Savage whom he hated the most. The man was a monster dedicated to breaking Wally and, as much as Wally was horrified to admit it, there was a good chance that he would succeed. If Savage kept at this game, he would eventually find whatever it is that would make Wally break. Everyone had a breaking point and if you kept pressing buttons, eventually you'll find the right one. There were only so many more buttons he could press. Wally was running out of options and that was making him feel cornered. He hated feeling cornered.
The point of being a speedster is being able to run and now, even if he wasn't chained in a glass prison, his legs were useless and he wouldn't be able to run anyways. He still had his Bat training though, which he just had to hope was enough to get back to Barry. Except, this was, as explained by Savage, not his Earth. If he couldn't walk, how was he supposed to get back to his Earth 1? He couldn't figure out how to get back to his own dimension with a wheelchair, friends, and a lack of homicidal speedsters. How was he supposed to do it here with Zoom breathing down his neck?
Zoom's voice snapped Wally out of his trance and made him shudder all in the same sentence, "I'm not going to kill you – not yet. For now, I'm going to keep you as my pet, my trophy. I defeated the speedster who's survived several dimensions and aided in taking down the Light. I did it. Me. Soon, the world – no, the worlds – will see that I am the best speedster."
"You'll never be the best speedster! The Flash will always be better than you! And if you somehow defeat him, then there are more out there, just waiting to take you down. Good always trumps evil in the long run." Wally hissed out, slightly weirded out at the fact that he could even hiss at people. He normally wasn't that kind of person – he left that for his brothers. But there was something about Zoom that brought out the worst in him.
And then suddenly Zoom was right in front of him, gripping his throat and smashing him against the wall. Wally gasped out in pain as his back was jostled yet again, clawing at the hand around his throat while his feet dangled uselessly below him, dead weights that only served to allow Zoom to tighten his grip further. Zoom started vibrating his other hand, bringing it closer and closer to Wally's shoulder, his soulless eye slits boring into Wally's emerald orbs as his vibrating hand came dangerously close to the red shirt pulled over Wally's pale, freckled shoulders. Wally stopped gasping for breath, just meeting Zoom's eyes with his own terrified ones. There was a moment's pause where Zoom stopped his hand just centimeters away from Wally's shirt before he plunged it in, slowing down the vibrations seconds afterwards so Wally would feel the hand practically rearranging his molecules.
Biting back a scream, Wally struck out, catching Zoom under the chin and snapping the monster's head back before trying to kick the older speedster. Inwardly cursing as he remembered his paralyzed lower half, Wally tried another hit to Zoom's head, but the second's long hesitation had lost him the moment of surprise and Zoom ripped his hand out of Wally's shoulder just in time to grip the hand that was about to land a blow on a pressure point. Growling, Zoom threw Wally across the room. Before Wally had even landed on the ground (jarring his broken back and the gaping wound in his back along with breaking a few fingers as he landed wrong), Zoom was out of the glass prison and vibrating in anger again. The two stared at each other for a moment again, Zoom just vibrating with rage and Wally panting through his pain and hatred. And then Zoom was gone, racing out of the room or cave or whatever it was. Wally just used his uninjured arm to run a hand through his hair. He settled against the glass wall he'd landed against and breathed deeply.
He didn't know how much more of this he could take. He was sick of getting taken and not knowing whether there would be people coming to rescue him. He wanted to be home in his dimension where he knew people would come save him. He had the Team and Artemis and Flash and the other speedsters and the Justice League and even the Rogues if they were feeling up to it. Here, he didn't even have the people at STAR labs because he wasn't even on that Earth. This was the fourth Earth he'd been to. How many more would he go to before this little horror show was done with? How much longer would he have to wait? How much longer could he wait before these other dimensions killed him?
Shaking the melancholy thoughts from his mind, Wally leaned further against the wall and started setting his broken fingers. People would rescue him. They would. He knew they would. He hoped they would.
OOOOOO
Oliver didn't know what to do. He hadn't even processed what was happened before there was a blur of warm lightning and he was pushed to the ground. And then there was a rush of blue lightning and he was left sitting on the ground staring up, startled, at an empty wheelchair. Wally had just pushed him out of the way and gotten kidnapped by a speedster in the process. Oliver hadn't even known there was another speedster. He also hadn't known that the other dimensions had made contact, that they could make contact. He'd also forgotten (admittedly, probably on purpose) that there was another him out there. Oliver noted that he might actually be in a little bit of shock. It had been a long time since he'd felt this out of it, but there was a lot going on right about now. He felt justified in being so freaked out.
That was when it really hit him. That other speedster had just taken Wally. Wally had sacrificed himself to save Oliver, getting kidnapped by the blue speedster. And he'd just been about to accuse the ginger speedster of trying to hurt Barry. Speaking of Barry, the brunette speedster was going to kill Oliver. The people in those other dimensions were probably going to do their best to kill him too despite being in another dimension. That was something that Oliver really didn't want to wrap his mind around. Other dimensions. It wasn't that he didn't know they were there, or didn't believe that they were there; he just wished they weren't. He hated himself for it, but he wished life was back at the point where the people he faced were normal people with a lot of training, like him. Now there were metas and alternate universes and time travel and Lazarus pits and real life monsters that would make little kids weep in their beds. He knew there was a problem with the world when he considered normal to be two highly trained fighters dressing up in costumes and fighting with ancient weapons on the streets of Starling.
Cursing at himself for losing track of time and sitting there for so long, Oliver stumbled (rather thankful that Barry couldn't see him at that moment) into a standing position and mechanically moved the wheelchair back into the building, figuring that a lone wheelchair in the parking lot would raise some questions. Then he squared his shoulders and headed down towards the basement where the dimensional screen was and where Barry was.
It took him less time than he wanted it to for him to end up in the basement room. It only took seconds for the occupants to notice him and then the other Oliver (Ollie, his mind supplied; he'd asked to be called Ollie) stood up from the machine he'd been leaning against with the smallest of scowls on his face. Oliver noticed that as he had been out talking with Wally, some more people had joined the DC side of the dimensional screen (this was all just too abnormal for him). The other Barry (DC) stood up too, one second sitting down and the other in a standing position. He was the first to speak, his voice tight with what sounded like worry, "Where's Wally?"
That was when Barry (Earth 1) stood up and faced Oliver, a panicked expression on his face. This was all getting too confusing. The two Barrys were acting exactly like each other and they were both worried over Wally who could be a threat and they wouldn't even know it because they were all reeled in by his little sob story. But then Oliver thought of how Wally had pushed Oliver out of the way even knowing that he couldn't run and could probably barely fight. The emerald archer finally found his voice and said, "Wally's been taken. I don't know what happened. One minute we were talking and the next Wally was pushing me out of the way and there was this blue lightning and then Wally was gone."
There was complete, utter silence for a moment as everyone just stared at him. And then Ollie was punching the wall, curses escaping his mouth as he hit the wall one more time before rounding on Oliver, "What were you doing? How could you have possibly let him get kidnapped?"
"It wasn't exactly like I chose it! The other person was a speedster – they were moving too fast for me to have done anything either way." Oliver growled at his doppelganger, more than a little fed up with the entire situation.
"Wally said this location was safe. He said that the evil speedster was not a threat at the moment. Why does this keep happening to him?" The other Barry (DC) muttered, pacing across the room and literally wearing holes in the ground.
Barry (Earth 1) faced back towards the dimensional screen, concern lighting up his features, "Hey, B, it's going to be alright. We're going to get Wally back and he's going to be okay. I don't know where Zoom went or what he wants, but -,"
He was cut off by Barry (DC), or, Oliver guessed, B, saying, "Wait, wait, wait. Zoom? The evil speedster who broke Wally's back was named Zoom?"
"Yeah…" Barry trailed off, obviously not sure where this was going.
B groaned before putting his head in his hands and speaking through his gloves, "This better not be the Zoom from our dimension. I can't imagine any speedster from our dimension would want to go after Wally after what happened to the last one to go after him, but still."
"What happened to the last speedster who fought Wally?" Oliver demanded.
At the same time, Ollie asked, "Zoom sounds familiar to me, but I'm not remembering him as much as I should."
Oliver's question was completely ignored as some other hero with a bat painted across his chest started talking, voice deep and scratchy and more intimidating than Green Arrow could ever hope to be, "Zoom. Hunter Zolomon. Father was a serial killer who killed his mother. He was a profiler for the FBI and later for Keystone City police. He got his powers by attempting to steal the Cosmic Treadmill from the Flash museum, causing an explosion in the process. That explosion gave him the ability to manipulate the speed at which he could move in time, giving off the impression of a speedster's abilities. Current location: unknown." The man was like a walking encyclopedia. How did someone know that much about villains off the top of their heads?
Barry spoke next, his voice thoughtful, "No, it couldn't have been him then. This person was definitely a speedster. I don't know how I know, but when I was fighting him, I could tell. It was almost like… like I could feel him. I don't know if that makes any sense."
B was nodding, "That makes perfect sense. It's another little ability of ours. We can sense the Speed Force in others. I wasn't sure if you'd gotten that far yet because it took me forever to figure out how to do that. I was always pretty good at regulating my inner speed whereas Wally was always better at regulating the speed around him in order to focus his speed. We think that's because of his extra senses, but we really aren't sure. There's a lot about speedsters that not even speedsters understand." The two Barrys shared a smile and Oliver couldn't help but glance at Ollie and wonder how the two could possibly work together that well already.
The man with the bat on his chest spoke again, voice still that deep growl, "If he's not from our dimension that means he's from yours. That means that Wally is probably still in your dimension. Find him."
The man looked like he was about to sweep away, but Oliver wasn't having any of that. He lowered his voice into his familiar Arrow growl and asked, "Who are you?"
The man turned to look at him, eye slits narrowing (which really shouldn't be possible) before speaking resolutely, "I'm Batman." And then he really did sweep out of the room, cape swishing into place behind him.
Oliver could only stare at the man that Wally had compared him to the first time they met. He wasn't sure if he should be insulted or proud to have been compared the Batman. On the one hand, that hero was every bit as terrifying to his enemies as Oliver wanted to be, but on the other hand, that hero was just as terrifying to his comrades and his civilians and Oliver didn't want that. The other man in green with a circle and two straight lines on his chest spoke next, "Batman's just being an extra jerk because he's worried about Wally. Wally used to be his partner and he just wants the kid to come home. But, jerk or not, he's got a point. We need to find a way to track Zoom. He has to be somewhere on your earth unless he's figured out how to go from dimension to dimension on his own. We'll help as much as we can from over here, but there's not a lot we can do from another dimension. You guys are pretty much on your own."
And somehow Oliver knew that the man in green was including him too. All Oliver wanted to do was go back to his own city, but, his fault or not, Wally had gotten kidnapped while he was with Oliver, even going so far as to sacrifice himself for the archer, and Oliver would not let the debt go unpaid. He would find Wally.
Author's Note: I am so sorry about this chapter. I feel like everything in Oliver's point of view is awful. It just fought me the entire way and I just don't think this ended up being that good. Let me know if I did anything wrong and if you have any suggestions. Thanks for reading!
