Legacy

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Summary: What if Bart never became Impulse again? After the Apokolips war (by about ten years), the world needs a new Flash and the JLA, constructed of the men and women that once made up Young Justice, has one chance to get their man - who just happens to be Bart Allen. Unfortunately, Bart has his own, average, mundane lifestyle… [My first multi-chapter epic YJ thingy. Um. Yeah. 0o]

Genre: Action/Adventure/Romance

Chapters: ???

Written from: November 16 to November 18, 2001

Request: I'd love feedback and I'd even welcome flames at this point. Please review this and tell me what you think. :]

Distribution: youngjusticefanfic and www.fanfiction.net [and if anyone out there actually wants to post this piece of literary junk somewhere else, please notify me some way]

Message Type Thingy: Help me…my brain hurts…y'know, I think Raena-san has it easy. Her Muses HELP her write fanfics. Mine don't. (Ryan [the red-haired, black-winged Russian fairy] is both my antagonist in life and my alternate personality [yes, Ryan is a guy. Yes, I am a girl. No, don't ask.]. Chibi-Kurt and Chibi-Spyke, though kawaii and loveable, spend most of their time questing for Chibi-Kitty and Chibi-Jean or playing card games. And then there's the aLiEn tiGEr. He's sweet =.^= and fluffy - so he inspires my WAFF fics. Not that anyone cares. …) Oh, and if Raena-san is reading this…PLEASE write more on Darkness: Aingeal Plumach. [I spelled it right! Yay for me!]

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~III~

Susan Hollidae, also known as the Secret or simply as Suzy, crossed her legs in front of her and hummed a soft song to herself. Lyrics were forgotten in the haze of past years, half-words floating around in her mind; the music alone had remained ingrained on her memory, unforgettable and everlasting. Staring out the wide glass windows of the Watchtower, she tilted her head to one side, long blonde hair whispering and shushing as it fell along her back. Stars glittered iridescently in the thick black velvet of space, Earth's milky-blue marble surface shimmering up at her. She knew the others were gone by now: Kon and Cassie off to do whatever it was that parents of a two-year old did; Lobo and the Supercycle god-knows-where in the vast emptiness of space; Anita off to calm her father down ("Really, Daddy," Suzy could just imagine her saying, "it wasn't a deep gun wound."). And Cissie, back to Earth, faced with the mundane task of tracking down Bart. Which, of course, left Suzy in the JLA Watchtower with a brooding Timothy Drake, who was acting more Batman-ish now than she would have liked.

Switching back into her mist mode, her outline blurred and turned foggy, the colors of her outfit fading into a blurry tan shade. Thin wisps of smoke trickled off of her arms, neck, hair - virtually every part of her, only to be wiped away like a clean slate, out of the air. Footsteps, instead of being sharp and defined, were dulled and softened, the heels of her boots striking the metal floor gently. She was no longer as comfortable being a mist-constructed being as she was when she was 'solid,' but it was her turn to check the Watchtower's exterior for any possible alien parasites and/or damages done to the shield.

The decompression chamber hissed open for her, the thick doors locking shut tightly behind her. The frontal doors, the ones opening out to space, opened slowly, revealing tantalizing bits of space to her blue eyes, the view widening as the doors opened fully with a groaning sigh. Mild irritation flaked at her as the vacuum tugged insistently at her and, pulling back a little against the tugging, she carefully walked down, pushing off, out of the chamber. The outer hull's doors remained open, and would so stay until the time she came back in. Clutching the metal devices she was to carry with her in temporarily solid hands, she trailed along the hull, holding one of the objects along it. Scanners beeped and whirled, data quickly filing across the tiny screen. "So far, so good," she muttered to herself, eyes flickering along the enormous windows rimming the Watchtower.

There.

Timothy was typing furiously away at a computer console, his black mask crumpled up beside the keyboard. Black hair fell haphazardly in front of his dark blue eyes and he pushed it out of his way absently, continuing with his chore. A smile brightened Suzy's face and she paused in her activities, grasping the other one of the two metal boxes she was carrying, floating up to the window closest to him. He was a good ten feet away from the window, and his attention was focused entirely on whatever the computer was feeding to him, so she decided against rapping her hand against the window. Instead, she flipped the second box on, holding it to her cheek, near both her ear and her mouth.

"Dark and silent, can you hear me?" she teased and, judging by his uncustomary startled expression, the communication system had worked. He turned his head around, the thin black headset he was wearing revealing -how- he had heard, and he smiled a tiny, crooked smile. "Good." As he turned back to the computer, she resumed her chore, skimming through the data. "You mentioned something after the meeting, about us needing to talk. What is bothering you?"

"It isn't very important," he conceded, eyes glued to the computer screen, voice made hazy by the distance, the metal, and the fact that she needed to hold her end of the communication tightly to her face with a blocking hand in order to hear at all. "I was simply wondering where you were for the first ten minutes of the meeting. You were late, you were hiding something, and you kept avoiding looking at me. Care to explain?" A lengthy silence passed, spanning several seconds or several minutes: she wasn't sure which.

"I went to see Mrs. Harton," she said, finally, voice solemn and quiet. "She was at the hospital, outside the room Jonathon - the boy - died in, and she was crying more than anyone I've ever seen cry before. I took her Between, to see her son. He hadn't died too long before, so his soul hadn't completely crossed over." Timothy said nothing in the brief pause; he knew that this was personal, now, to her, and he could never truly understand the complexities of the Abyss, or Between, or whatever it was that she was connected to. "She was so happy. It was like an hour passed there, but it was only a second in time, and I didn't care. She…he…they…God, I wish I could have brought him back." A hum of static shuddered through the line and he heard her sigh. "When I brought Mrs. Harton out from Between, she looked at me and asked me who I was. So…I told her. She started crying again and she told me…" Suzy swallowed, eyes stinging painfully. "She told me that he idolized the JLA. That he wanted to be like you - he wanted, more than anything, to be Robin. And that he thought I was 'cool' and that the JLA, in general, was 'the absolute best!'"

Silence.

"I'm sorry." She closed the line, and there was a clicking sound as the communication line in the Watchtower closed.

He sent a prayer up to God, murmuring softly, and waited until he knew Suzy had entered the Watchtower once more before he started working again. It was comforting, knowing he wasn't alone.





The sun was setting in Manchester, Alabama, sinking below the horizon amidst a brilliant show of fiery hues, turning the sky into a melting rainbow. The scent of someone's freshly-mowed yard drifted lazily through the air, mixing with the bolder smell of tangy smoke drifting up, out of a brick fireplace. For a moment, Bart entertained himself with the thought of how shocked Max would have been ten years ago, if the former Impulse had actually slowed down and paid attention to the details. As grown-up and calm as he was now, a grin spread across his face just imagining the look on Max's face. The one that showed how much Max wanted to glue him to a chair.

But, of course, that had been ten years ago, and Max had been missing for four years now. He had time-hopped again, as far as Bart knew, and there was a faint hope, every morning, that the older man would return. Or however it would be.

Shaking his head, running a hand through his tangled auburn hair, he turned around, unconsciously vibrating through the wooden back door into the main hallway, and directed himself toward the kitchen. The smell of butter-saturated popcorn drifted cheerily from the squat microwave as the annoying, steady beep-beep-beep of it alerting him that it was done cooking thrummed out. He punched the 'open' button and, reluctantly, the microwave door swung open slowly.

Five minutes later found him sprawled across the beaten, soft sofa, grading papers in his lap while trying not to get any buttery grease on the kindergarteners' homework. Licking his finger absently, he studied another drawing and immediately identified it as a dog chewing on a bone. "I've been teaching kindergarten too long," he murmured with a smile. "I'm getting way too good at figuring out stick pictures."

It was hard to give anyone a low grade, even after three years of teaching, so it was relieving that neither his afternoon, nor his morning class had problems with the work. Otherwise, he was a bit afraid that he'd let a child graduate to the first grade when he or she should stay behind. Besides, it was difficult for a kindergartener to get held back. Stick figures were the norm.

It took him around five minutes to finish grading. As much as he didn't use his speed anymore by choice after the encounter on Apokolips, he still fudged a little. Just a little. Enough so that he wouldn't miss his beloved cartoons - after all, one is never too old to indulge in Animaniacs and Looney Tunes.

"Just another peaceful, average day," he said to himself with a satisfied smile, stacking the graded papers on the coffee table and tossing the empty bag of popcorn into a trashcan by the television set.

And with that, he settled himself in the sofa, flicking the button on the remote to turn the TV on.

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[Ooooo. Mundane-y. Right. *^.&* Okay, now it's 'pointless-notes-by-the-author-after-the-fanfic' time! First off, yes, Lobo still has the Supercycle. And he's not Slo-bo anymore - he's Lobo. (As much as I've grown oddly attached to the name Slo-bo, I just find myself handicapped writing him with that name in Legacy.) Name-wise - not physically. I -am- still a Robin/Secret fan, so that was my little indulgence up there, as well as explaining the whole 'oooo-what-did-Secret-do?' thing in the last chapter. And the Bart scene? I liked writing it. I really did - and, though I don't know why, I like Bart as a kindergarten teacher.

Additional Disclaimer: Warner Bros., and thusly AOL, owns Animaniacs and Looney Tunes. Just so I don't get sued by Wakko or anything. *^0^*]

[oh! to be continued]