A/N: So, I'm not gonna lie, apart from the letter, my expression was pretty much :3 the entire time I was writing this. I don't know what it is, but something about the West family and Wally/Linda and Irey/Damian puts me in a REALLY good mood, which is something I haven't been in for a while since the Pacific Northwest got hounded by snow and I haven't been to school yet and that's where my poor baby (an alto saxophone) is because I couldn't take him home with me on Friday, so I'm just all….. Bleh.
But then it's all speedster family and nothing hurts!
Disclaimer: Own Young Justice, I do not.
Essence decided it would be best to continue before anybody demanded that they be able to leave, before they had to see a sad future as well. But before she could speak a note appeared on the coffee table in the middle of the room.
Batman stood up and picked the letter off the table and began to read,
"Hello, people of the past, this isn't Red Hood, instead this is Arsenal. I just wanted to explain a few things as to what happens, so that it can be changed.
Firstly, Artemis and Lian were killed in a battle against Electrocutioner when he set off a device to destroy Star City. I had left Lian in the care of Artemis for obvious reasons. She could protect her.
I believed she would be safe. I was wrong. The house they were at was destroyed by forces outside our control. But, now that you know this, I can tell you to not leave them at the old Queen Manor, no matter how out of the line of fire it is. Hell, it would just be easier if the two were to stay in Metropolis, like Kyle- that's Kyle Rayner, Artemis's husband and Green Lantern- had suggested and everything would have been fine.
Please change the future, so that the me of a alternate time line will never have to know the pain of losing his daughter. Please.
Sincerely,
Roy Harper, Arsenal.
Everyone was silent at the end of the letter. Roy told them how to change the future so that less people would die and by God they were going to do it.
Wally chose that moment and looked over at Artemis, who had regained some of the color that had left her face and smirked, "Hey," she looked over at him, "at least you now know that you'll marry a Green Lantern, that's pretty cool."
In spite of herself Artemis snorted with a bit of laughter.
Ollie looked over at Essence, placing a hand around Artemis's shoulders, "Could we please begin the next moment?"
Essence nodded and turned to the couch that held the speedsters and Iris.
"Kid Flash, you are next. What is it you would like to see?"
Wally looked at everybody and smiled slightly, "I know that Roy's logic on his choosing of a sad moment was good, but I think I want to see something happy." He looked up at Essence, "A happy moment with my friends and family?"
Essence turned the knob once more and the picture began.
"…Happy birthday dear Jai and Irey, happy birthday to you!" People around a table sang as two teenagers, a boy and a girl with black and red hair respectively, blew out the candles on a cake in front of them.
A woman with shoulder length black hair turns to a man with red hair and a large grin and asks jokingly, "Will there be enough cake for everyone?"
He turns to her and laughs, "Probably not, after all, Jai may not have my powers, but he certainly has my metabolism."
Iris groaned and laughed, "Now you'll know how I feel when I have to feed you and your Uncle." Wally laughed, but Iris's statement shut him up. If it was already hard enough to find enough food for him to eat, how would he deal with a kid who also shared it?
Barry, however, was in serious thought. If Wally was able to have a kid, or two seeing as the girl shared similar features as Wally, would he and Iris be able to conceive?
The woman laughed, "That he does, it almost surprises me when he eats more than Irey."
A man next to them laughed, "You should see it when Irey is at the manor, Alfred nearly has a heart attack every time he sees her."
Dick grinned, "Hey, how about that? Older me is there with you."
Wally also grinned, "Well, yeah, if those are my kids, which I'm assuming they are, you would probably be, like, a godfather or something."
Artemis and Roy looked at each other and Artemis shook her head as Roy laughed, "Those kids are doomed." Roy said.
The woman with black haired turned back to the two teenagers and gasped slightly, "Wait, don't start opening presents, I forgot-"
The teenage girl was out of her seat and next to the woman in two seconds, holding a something out to her.
"Your camera, Mom?" The girl- Irey- smiled as she continued, "But, really, aren't we a little old for you to still be taking pictures when we open our gifts?"
A man with black hair spoke up, "Come on, Irey, I still take pictures when Hayden opens her presents."
Irey rolled her eyes, "Yeah, but come on, Uncle Kyle, Hayden is still thirteen. Jai and I are sixteen!"
Wally turned his head to the woman and muttered, "Quit reminding me." The woman laughed and agreed, "I know, I always feel so old when they say that."
A boy with shaggy black hair and piercing blue eyes looked up from talking to the other boy- Jai- and said, "You're not old, Mrs. West, you're only what…" He looked to Jai, who replied,
"Thirty-three," he said grinning at his mom.
Iris looked at Wally with a slight glare, "Young man, do you know what that means?"
Wally shook his head, but he had a feeling she was going to tell him.
"You had those children when you were seventeen. Seventeen! I thought your uncle and I raised you better than that!"
Wally looked to Barry for help, but he too was looking at him with a look of disappointment.
"Can we continue watching, before you both rip my head off? It hasn't happened yet!" Wally pleaded with his aunt and uncle.
The boy with shaggy hair nodded his head, "Yeah, I mean, Conner is older than that, and he doesn't complain about how old I am."
A man, who could only be an older Conner spoke up, "Yeah, but Chris, you're more like my younger brother than a son, so I don't have to complain. It would be like Dick complaining about Damian over there," he gestured to the boy Irey had just sat back down next to, "giving him grey hairs."
The Conner in the room looked more at the screen. He, too, was raising a boy that wasn't his, and…Was he wearing glasses?
"Which he has," Dick muttered under his breath, Conner grinned, being the only one to hear.
"Alright," Wally spoke up, "we're all old farts, especially Jay and Barry," Wally grinned at the two men standing against the counter and glared at him. "Well, mostly Barry."
Barry looked at him, "And how exactly am I older than Jay?"
A young man with brown hair and gold eyes next to him snorted, "I don't know, maybe because you're about to become a great-grandfather?"
Barry blushed and looked at the young man, "Shuddup, kid." Everybody laughed.
The Barry in the room however was staring wide eyed at the screen. He was not only a father in the future, but almost a great-grandfather. How was that possible?
Iris was thinking around the same lines as her husband. How was it possible for them to be grandparents in that time frame if they weren't even parents yet?
Wally laughed and was across the room in no time, pulling the young man into a headlock, "Yeah, Bart, don't tease the old man, he might hit you over the head with his cane!"
Everyone in the room, sans the Bat and Barry, who was grumbling about unloving nephews, was laughing. It looked like sixteen years of raising twins wouldn't change Wally that much, something they were happy about.
Bart tried to pull out of the grip, "C'mon, Wally, gerroff!" He failed miserably.
Wally laughed and the woman with black hair finally said, "Alright, boys, you know the rules, no powers in the kitchen and no roughhousing."
Both men groaned, "But he started it!"
A woman- undoubtedly Iris- glared from her place at the table, "We don't care who started it, Linda is finishing it. Now if you would both pretend to be the responsible adults you are, we would like to get on with the party."
Wally released Bart and slapped him on the back and went back to Linda's side.
Linda turned on her camera and looked at Jai and Irey, "Alright, you can start opening your presents."
The opening of presents went by in a whirl of paper and bags, the twins sometimes stopping to show something to their mother.
"Dad," Wally turned to his daughter and was by her side in under a second.
"Yeah, Princess?"
Irey made a face at the nickname and handed him something. A necklace with small, clear stones dotting the whole thing.
"It's from Uncle Roy, Jason, and Kory. Look, Uncle Roy said that the stones come from a cave in south east Bali and that it's really rare."
Ollie turned to his ward and grinned, "Looks like you're still traveling the world, with," he picked up the first note from off the table and read, "'an alien princess' and who appears to be a Gotham-ite. You sure know how to choose them." Roy looked at the note and shrugged.
'Anything to keep my mind off Lian, most likely.' Roy thought to himself.
Wally looked at the necklace wearily when Dick spoke up, "It's not going to kill her, Wally. Roy and Kory would never let Jason do anything like that. And he certainly wouldn't try to kill a teenager, who, in case you've forgotten, is the same age he was when he was killed."
"Wait," Wally spoke up, "I'm confused-"
Artemis interrupted, "That's news to me."
Wally glared at her before continuing, "Dick just said that this Jason guy was killed. How can he still be alive if he had been killed?"
A note appeared on the table next to the others, Batman picked it up and read it:
Superboy pretty much Falcon punched the whole of reality, add a little magic from the Lazarus pit, courtesy of Talia al Ghul, and here I am.
-Red Hood
Everyone looked at Conner, who had a confused look on his face, for a moment and then turned their attentions back to the television screen
Wally waved his hand at his friend, "Yeah, yeah, yeah whatever." He turned away from his daughter and to his son, "Did the wayward Robin send you anything?"
Jai grinned and showed him the box of what looked like a video game. "Yeah, this." He began to explain the game to his dad, occasionally looking over his shoulder to where Irey was supposed to be. "Dad, you might want to turn around." Wally looked up to see everyone holding back laughter.
He turned around to see that Irey and Damian were no longer there. "Where'd they go?" He asked, looking at the other party attendees.
A girl, also about sixteen with black hair and darkish skin giggled and pointed at the door, "They went outside; Damian wanted to give her his present in private."
Chris chuckled, "'Bout time too, he's been talking about nothing but this since, like, two weeks ago."
The girl laughed and nodded.
Wally, unlike the rest of the guests, who were all laughing at his poor ability to see that his daughter was clearly in a relationship, ran to the backdoor, but not before Barry grabbed the back of his shirt.
"Not so fast, kid. She is sixteen, how many relationships were you in when you were sixteen?"
Dick laughed quietly and said, "One, and it took him two months to realize she was cheating on him with the new guy." Dick nodded his head over to where Kyle was standing and he blushed.
Dinah was the first to put the pieces together. Wally and Artemis had dated and she had cheated on him with the man she would eventually marry and have a daughter with. She didn't know whether to be happy about the two actually dating or disappointed that she had cheated on him…
"I had no idea they were dating, keep in mind."
Wally looked at everyone, noting that none of them were rushing to go save his precious daughter, not even his wife.
"Linda, you can't possibly be happy with her," the word caught in his throat as if it were the worst word he would ever have to mutter, "dating him?"
She shrugged and looked out the window, "I don't know, Wally, she's happy and I know he'll take care of her."
Wally made an noise in the back of his throat, "But- he…He was- assassin!"
Dick rolled his eyes, "Yeah, because I haven't spent the last six years showing him that you don't have to kill, or anything."
Wally gestured at his best friend, "See, the kid has only had the 'no killing rule' under his belt for the last six years!"
"Wally, get over here and look at this!" Iris called, having had enough with her nephew.
He walked over, as slowly as he could possibly stand, and looked out the window that Linda, too, was looking out and didn't like what he saw one bit.
Damian and Irey were lying on his coat in the grass and he was pointing up at the sky, her head resting on his chest.
Linda put her hand on his shoulder and turned to begin cleaning up.
Wally looked out the window one last time, noting the smile on his daughter's face, and muttering, "I still don't like it."
The screen went black as Barry, and almost everyone else, was shaking his head at his nephew's antics. Then again, if he ever had a daughter, he probably would like her dating either.
Bruce, however, was thinking about what Wally had said about Damian. If he truly was Talia's son there was no doubt that she would have trained him to kill. The thought that the boy had only been sired to bring havoc into his structured life began to grow.
Essence turned to Superboy, looking him in the eyes and he pointed at himself. She nodded and he thought for a moment.
He looked over at Wally. He liked the idea of seeing his family, he already knew that he would take care of a boy who was his brother, although he wasn't too sure how much they were actually related and decided he, too, wanted to see his family.
Conner looked up at Essence and spoke, "I want to see a good moment as well, something with my family." He then looked over at Superman and thought more, "That is if I have one."
Essence turned a dial once more and the blue turned into a warm light.
A/N: Longest chapter by far. I hope you all liked it. It may not be what my best can be, seeing as I'm in my mom's freezing cold office, because school was once again closed and I was starting to get cabin fever. Now I just wish that I could be at home, curled in my spot next to a bay window.
Also, I noticed that my timing is off. Apparently, right now Young Justice is in 2010, not 2011. So, just change that in your heads, that this takes place well after Secrets.
Anyways, I hope you guys like the chapter, and am once again thankful for all the alerts/faves/reviews and will hopefully get more in the future.
Song of the chapter: Vienna by Billy Joel
(Not really relating to the chapter, just what I listened to)
~Sela
(lol, I just realized that I never explained that Jai and Irey have accelerated aging, that caused them to be mentally and physically eight years old when they were only chronologically one year. So in the moment they were really only nine. Oops, poor Wally, getting disappointment stares even though he's not a teenage daddy. And the part about Barry almost being a great-grandfather was that Bart, (I refuse to go into the Allen Family history, you can look that up yourselves) is about to become a daddy with Rose Wilson, Ravager, as the mommy.)