Thanks for all the positive support and comments! Here is chapter two, as promised:
Wally wasn't sure if it was the pain that woke him, or if his resurface to consciousness awoke the pain for him. Either way, it hurt.
He groaned and tried to sit up, eyes scrunched closed against bright lighting. There was a throbbing in the back of his head, like some unholy cross between a jackhammer and a flamethrower had been implanted into his skull. Tentatively, he reached for the source of the pain, his hand finding- hair. His cowl had been pulled back, no longer covering his face. His hand trailed down, hitting metal: a cold band around his neck, an inhibitor collar. A wave of choking, crippling dread washed over him, his shattered mind trying to piece together what had happened. Concrete. A purring, mocking voice. Searing pain in his shoulder. Sportsmaster. M'gann's leg, bleeding. An explosion.
The wave of dread was followed by a sea of confusion, questions swimming around his head- were the others okay? Had they been caught too? Did the Shadows know who he was? How long had he been unconscious? Where was he?
Wally then realised his last question could be answered surprisingly easily.
Open your eyes, stupid. He thought, then rather wished he hadn't.
He was sitting on a soiled mattress in the corner of a drab, grey room. A cell. Wally took a moment to admire the decor. Concrete walls. Concrete floor. My, was that plaster? No, safe choice with a concrete ceiling too. Lovely complementary stains on the walls, he especially liked the ambiguity in the brown ones. Was it blood or spilled coffee? Brain fluid or just a damp patch? Urine- the smell really going in favour of this option- or a non native, rare kind of mould? One could only dream.
It was little touches like those that really made a cell more homely. And what a nice, ambient atmosphere, brought to life so well by the fluorescent strip lights on the ceiling- oh, and how quaint: they even flickered. A heavy metal door, simple, yet refined, the composition of the room balanced by bare pipes running along the walls. An original feature, you say? The rust encasing those pipes sure seemed to think so.
Overall, Wally would describe the room, in full realtor fashion, as "a rustic recluse, charming with lots of character, yet in need of some slight refurbishment."
He had nearly finished his examination of the room, eyes almost fully adjusted to the light, when movement in the far corner of the cell caught his eye. A girl, around his age, staring right back at him.
"You're awake." She said shortly, her eyes narrowing.
"...yeah."
Really outdoing yourself here, Wall-man, Wally thought to himself.
Am I awake? Yeah, I guess so. Maybe I'll just answer everything with yeah. How are you? Yeah. What's your name? Yeah. Wanna get blown up, stabbed and knocked unconscious? Yeah, why not? Sounds like a party.
The girl stared at him for a moment longer, then went back to what she had been doing before: picking an arrow from a stack to her left, and carefully filing the edge. After several minutes with only the sound of metal eating metal to break the silence, she held the arrow up to the light, the sharp edge a hair's width from her eye, then placed it carefully in a quiver on her right. Then she repeated the actions, arrow after arrow.
What was she doing here?
Her appearance gave away few clues: a mane of blonde hair tied in a ponytail, olive skin and, judging by her clothes, an apparent preference for green. A fellow cellmate wouldn't explain the arrows- or the compound bow on the wall beside her, but she didn't look much like standard Shadow stock.
Wally thought he'd better ask.
"So, blonde... What are you in here for?"
The girl stopped sharpening her current arrow and held it up, inspecting it, before looking past the green fletching to the speedster.
"I was assigned here to make sure you didn't cause any trouble."
Wally blinked. Shadow, then.
"That means you're, like, guarding me, huh?"
"I prefer the term babysitting."
Annoyance flared in Wally like a forest fire. He was standing, storming over in an instant-
"That is so not what I am, you-"
He had almost reached the girl when his left foot was stopped, pulled out from under him, and he hit the floor with a thud, her boots beside his fingers. Wally looked up, the girl was standing now, an arrow drawn back in her bow and aimed right between his eyes.
"Back off. Now." She growled, teeth gritted.
Sheepishly, Wally obeyed, finding the cause of his fall as he retreated back to the mattress: a chain set into the wall, attached to a shackle on his ankle.
This day just keeps getting better, he thought sourly. At least there was someone who could answer his questions, although chances were, archer girl was too angry to humour him.
"Uh, what's your name?" Wally asked, opting for small talk. The girl had resumed her arrow sharpening, and she simply answered with a shrug. A no-go then.
"I guess... You know my name, right?" This time, the blonde girl looked up from her arrows and locked eyes with his.
"West." She said, confirming with a single nod. Wally's heart flopped- they knew who he was, his parents were probably in danger-
"You're not... You won't hurt my family, right?"
Archer girl had gone back to filing and didn't look up when she answered.
"Not up to me." The tension in the pause that followed prompted an elaboration on her part. "So long as you do what they say, there should be no reason for them to attack relatives."
It would have to do, and Wally only hoped it wouldn't come to that. The League would find him before, the League would rescue him- and the team, had they been captured as well?
"Did you... You and the Shadows, did you catch the others too?"
He waited, breath baited, for a reply.
"I can't tell you."
"Are any of them hurt- are they okay?"
"I can't tell you."
"You don't know or you aren't allowed to say?"
"I can't tell you."
"How long was I unconscious for?"
"I can't tell you."
"Where am I?"
"I can't tell you."
"Who's in charge of all this?"
"I can't tell you."
"What are you going to do to me?"
"...I can't tell you."
Wally hissed, with impatience and annoyance, but also- and he hated to admit it- fear. Archer girl continued to work on her arrows, methodically sharpening each to a gleaming metal point, seemingly unaware of his pent up state. After a minute, he had calmed a little, and became aware of a stinging sensation in his shoulder, where Sportsmaster had sliced him with that knife. He reached over to touch it, expecting to feel bare skin and the crust of scabbed flesh, but his hand meeting something soft instead.
Confused, Wally turned to look at his shoulder, pulling away the ripped edges of his costume to see neat layers of bandage covering his injury. He frowned.
"Did you do this?" He asked, and archer girl glanced up at him, her eyes flicking from his shoulder to his face. She nodded.
"Oh." It was all Wally could say. Any words he would have used slipped back down his throat; this wasn't what Shadows did. Shadows were villains, they didn't patch up their injured victims, they kicked them to the ground and left them to bleed. They didn't look after unconscious prisoners, tend their wounds while they were helpless, weak. There was just one thing he could possibly say, something he doubted any hero had said to a villain, much less a Shadow:
"Thanks."
Archer girl stared at him, blinked twice, then moved her concentration back to the arrows, and Wally swore her filing was twice as fast as it had been before.
About half an hour had passed in wordless silence before nature began to call to Wally. He fidgeted on the mattress, there wasn't a toilet in the cell, would they expect him to just... go? Another minute passed before he worked up the courage to ask archer girl.
"Uh, is there a toilet, somewhere, I can use... maybe?
As was her way, the blonde girl did not reply. She did, however, put down the arrow she was working on, stand, and walk over to him.
"You kick me and I'll break your leg." She stated, then crouched and unlocked the shackle on his ankle. Wise as he was, Wally did not kick her, rather let her open the steel door and lead him through, a hand vicelike on his uninjured shoulder. They walked a short distance down a narrow corridor- similarly decorated to the cell, he was pleased to report- until they came to another steel door, set in the wall on the right. The girl pushed him inside.
"Two minutes." He was told, and then the door closed and he was alone. The bathroom was functional at best- two small cubicles, two sinks and a broken hand dryer. After relieving himself, Wally caught his reflection in the grimy mirror as he washed his hands.
It didn't look like him. The Wally that stared back at him had wild, unkempt hair and a hollowness under his cheekbones, a swathe of dark purple under each eye- ironic, to think he could have been sleeping for days. But his reflection most certainly wasn't healthy, and as his stomach grumbled, Wally realised he hadn't eaten for as long as he'd been unconscious. He was low on fuel, but this might be his only chance to escape.
A sharp knock on the door snapped Wally out of his thoughts and into the real world.
"Ten seconds, or I'm coming in there." Warned the voice from outside. It was now of never.
Frantically, Wally scanned the bathroom for anything he could use as a weapon. Taps, doors, basins, dryer- everything was a fixture. Five seconds. There was nothing, but he still had a chance. Wally ducked behind the door just as it burst open, archer girl storming in. She had a split second to register his presence before his fist connected with her jaw, followed by a swift uppercut that forced her a step backwards.
It was enough, and Wally bolted out the door, turned right down the corridor and ran as fast as his feet could carry him. Granted, he was far slower with the collar blocking his powers, but Wally considered himself a fast runner anyway, he definitely didn't see the girl having a chance of catching up. He didn't, until his vision went white and his brain ceased to function. The speedster crashed to the ground, crying out in pain as the inhibitor collar shocked him repeatedly, making his limbs twitch as he lay face down on the ground.
A gap in the electric shocks allowed him to get onto all fours, about to stand when a booted foot swept under him, striking his solar plexus and flipping Wally onto his back, where he gasped like a fish out of water. Archer girl stood over him, a black remote in one hand, the other hand a fist. A trickle of blood ran from her mouth, she wiped it away with the back of her hand. Wally tried again to get up, but the collar delivered another electric charge. He hit the ground again, his limbs weak, but he wouldn't give up.
A third time, Wally managed to struggle to his knees before the electricity ran through him again, locking his limbs and sending him back to the floor.
He was barely conscious as the girl pulled him off the ground and hooked her arms under his. She dragged him back to the cell, put his limp body down on the mattress and locked the shackle around his ankle again.
Then she stood up, walked back to the stool, picked up an arrow and began to sharpen it.
Wally awoke some time later, the stomach ache having turned into a cavernous pit beneath his lungs. He sat up, finding a bowl of some sort of porridge, a bottle of water and an apple. It wasn't the takeaway meal he had been craving, or the buffet style lunch he had undoubtedly been dreaming of, but it would do, and Wally fell upon the food like it was the last he'd ever see.
Maybe it was.
After scraping the bowl clean and devouring the entire apple, stalk and all, the speedster's eyes focused on the girl in the corner. She was down to sharpening the last four arrows and had paid him little attention while he had been eating. Wally leant back against the wall- ouch- his ribs punishing him for the movement. Archer girl had kicked him hard. Really hard, and Wally thought about the contradictions in her actions. Why would she bandage his wounds and feed him, then use the collar's remote to fry his brains?
Well, countered what may or may not have been Wally's conscience. You did punch her in the face. Twice. And then you ran away.
It sounded awful, but it was a fair point. The redhead looked back at the girl in the corner and he saw the blue-purple shadow of a waking bruise, the skin swollen tight over her jawline. He had done that, to a girl probably no older than him. Thoughts swirled around his head, tiny strings connecting his feelings but leaving him tangled amongst them.
It's not like she's the first- I've fought other kids before: the Terror Twins, Icicle Junior- but they've never been so... morally ambiguous. Also, they were trying to kill me, but that's not the point. She looked after me, maybe not in the most sensitive, caring way, but she helped me and I hit her. All of a sudden Wally felt guilt where his heart should have been.
"Is there something I should know?"
The voice cut through the strings in Wally's mind and he jumped, his eyes flicking up to the archer girl. She was staring at him with the strangest expression.
"Uh... What?" He asked, confused.
"You were muttering to yourself." The blonde explained. Wally felt his face go just a tiny bit pink. "Anything you'd like to share?"
"No, no, it was nothing... Just, uh, daydreaming."
Archer girl raised an eyebrow, but did not pursue the matter. She went back to sharpening her last arrow.
"Well, actually-" Wally started, and she glanced back up again. He licked his lips. "About... Uh, about before... I'm sorry. I'm sorry I hit you."
Then, bowing his head, Wally broke eye contact, the words lingering in his mouth, bittersweet. He began to fidget with the rips in his costume when he felt the heat of the blonde's glare on the back of his neck. But a minute later when he finally looked back up, she had gone back to sharpening the arrow. Another minute of silence as archer girl inspected the final arrow, placed it in her quiver and shouldered both it and the bow. Wally shrank away slightly when she approached him, but it was only to pick up the empty bowl and water bottle, before she went to leave. The girl paused in the doorway, then turned and said:
"Your friends- they're okay. They managed to escape, you were the only one that got caught."
Wally's relief was an enormous drain, letting the oceans of bottled up guilt and worry seep away until only drops were left. He opened his mouth to thank her, but she had gone, the last words of farewell slipping through the door before it closed-
"Get some sleep."
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