In the Midnight Hour (2/7)
a Justice League story
by Merlin Missy
Copyright 2005
PG
A/N: Um. Yeah. This wasn't supposed to be a longer story. Sorry about that. If you care, it's almost entirely going to be an expansion of "Secret Identity."
Night, and he's so tired, he can't imagine being more tired because the Speed Force was in him or he was in it or both, and dude there are reasons he never sat still long enough to pass freshman philosophy and only some of them had to do with his now-terminal case of ADHD, and everything made sense inside the Speed Force and he knew who and what he was and it was totally unlike anything he'd ever done except maybe that time Joe had made him lick the paper during that one concert, but it wasn't really like that either.
So tired, and hungry, he can't explain to the others what it's like to be him, to always have this craving for more calories, more fuel, it's like running on a quarter tank the whole time and the next gas station isn't for two hundred miles and he's torn between gunning it and trying to pace himself for the best mileage but all he really wants is about ten sacks of White Castle right now.
Out of bed and he runs to this place he knows across town that's open all night and they know him and he gets a discount because he's in the suit and they like having the Flash as a regular and hey, cheap burgers, so he eats two while he's there and chugs the rest on his way back home, hoping maybe this time it'll stop the rumbling in his belly enough to get some damned sleep tonight but he doesn't have much hope because once his stomach-hunger is gone he'll be left alone with the rest of his hungers.
His mind is racing, just like the rest of him, so fast he went today, so very fast and it's not like anything he's ever done before not even once, it was like ... like ... (alien)
Wally stops.
He stands still. It's a struggle, not to move, but he holds still, not even vibrating in place.
It was like not being human, and he gets it now.
And he runs, ignoring the pain in his stomach 'cause the burger joint isn't really that good, and he runs because he gets it, gets it all now, knows what he's always known ever since the accident made him run faster than anyone else had ever run before, what the Speed Force told him before he forgot almost everything when Shayera (pretty, can't touch) grabbed his arm and pulled him back to Earth, and Wally understands that he isn't human anymore and hasn't been for years.
He taps his comm and waits impatiently to be beamed up to the wreckage of the Watchtower, and it coalesces around him like a sunrise, full of shorting wires and sparking soldering irons putting things back to normal or as normal as they're gonna get because Superman gathered the seven of them together after they saved (killed) Wally and told them he was disbanding the League and they all agreed even him.
He helps for a while, pushing stuff out of the way and loading what's left of the Ultimen into disposal units and he tries not to think about the sacks of flesh in his arms because then he will go crazy (crazier), is going crazy anyway because he was alive inside the Speed Force and everything outside from now on will be a little less bright and clear and good.
Kara smiles at him and he smiles because she's cute but he doesn't smile too much because she's Superman's cousin and Wally has already died once today and she looks tired as she picks up another console for Steel to get a better look at the underside of, and man, Steel looks banged up poor bastard, so Wally helps rewire the thing at superspeed (not as fast, never as fast again) so they can have a break.
And then Superman's voice comes over the comms and tells them to knock off for the moment and Wally knows why but he's not telling, not even Kara who's frowning, and suddenly he has even more free time and now Kara is squinting at him asking shouldn't he be resting 'cause Superman (Clark she wants to say Clark) said he'd been through a lot today so Wally makes an excuse and says he needs to go to the gym and work off some excess energy and he's not exactly lying.
Run run run, feel the smooth pressure of the station floors beneath his feet, gravity isn't like back on Earth not quite, and so he can run that touch faster and it's all about the wind moving past his face, he saw this special once about sharks when there was nothing on but the National Geographic channel and there were no naked chicks but the sharks were cool and they need the water moving past their gills to breathe and yeah, the wind's just like that, blowing past him like a hot fast dream and he runs and runs to breathe.