Wally hurt all over. That was the first thing he became aware of; the second was that there was something over his face. There was a loud beeping to his right, and it kept getting faster. He opened his eyes and found that he was in a hospital recovery room. The thing over his face was an oxygen mask and the beeping was coming from a heart monitor.
The last thing he remembered he had been in the tree, listening to the rain and counting the seconds between the lightening and the thunder. Then everything went black. Had it worked? Had he gotten the same power as his uncle?
A nurse walked into the room. "Oh, hello," she said kindly. "I'm glad to see that you're awake." She came over to the bed and checked his vitals and the IV that was in his left arm. "Your aunt and uncle have been here almost the whole time you were unconscious."
"What happened?" Wally asked around the mask. He would have liked to take it off, but he didn't think the nurse, whose name tag said, 'Beth', would let him.
"You were in a tree and lightening hit it. You've been out for about three days," Beth explained. "I'll go tell your aunt and uncle you're awake. They went down to the food court to get something to eat." She left the room.
A few minutes later Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry walked quickly into the room. They looked tired and worried, but their faces lit up with relief when they saw him.
The next few days were a pattern of doctors, nurses, being told to stay in bed and visits from Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry. Wally had looked in the bathroom mirror the third day he was in the hospital. He felt sick when he saw the burnt skin on his back. He hadn't thought about the scarring the lightning would cause when it hit him. He was lucky it hadn't burned his face.
Wally got a hold of his aunt's phone later and looked up 'lightning strike scars'. That didn't help him feel any better. Most of those people had their skin blown off. The doctor told him he would have 'Lichtenberg figures', which was a type of scarring left by lightning. They just had to make sure the burns didn't get infected, and he would be fine. Wally didn't like to look at his burns. They were just a reminder of how stupid he'd been. Maybe someday he wouldn't mind the scars he would carry, but at the moment he hated them.
When no one was around Wally would try to run to see if his little experiment had worked. At first he thought it hadn't worked, but then to his joy he found that it had. He could run around the room seven times before the second hand on the clock could move once.
Wally didn't dare tell his aunt and uncle, not just yet anyhow. He was putting it off until he was home, which was today. He was glad he was getting out of the hospital; he had been terrified the whole time he was there that someone would realize he wasn't normal, but fortunately no one had.
They left the hospital that afternoon. One of the nurses had wheeled Wally out in a wheelchair. He didn't understand why. He could walk just fine, and he had told the nurse that. The drive home was pretty quiet. Wally could tell his uncle was going to ask him something. He was probably trying to think of the best way to ask.
"Wally, why were you in that tree when there was a storm?" It was Aunt Iris who finally asked the question.
Wally looked at his shoes and mumbled something that neither Iris nor Barry could understand.
"What was that?" Barry said curiously. The question had been nagging at him the whole time Wally was in the hospital, but he and Iris had decided not to talk to Wally about it until he was somewhat better, which he was now, so…..
"I was trying one of your experiments," Wally said shortly. He pushed himself down in his seat. He had not been looking forward to this.
Barry got very quiet. "Which one?" His voice was dead serious. He had told himself that it wasn't possible that Wally had found out, but he had known in the back of his mind that Wally knew.
"The one that made you Flash," Wally answered in a whisper.
Barry jerked the wheel and the car slid through two lanes of traffic. He parked on the side of the road and turned to look at his nephew. "Did you experiment on yourself?" He shouted.
Wally nodded, eyes fixed on the floor. He was trying not to cry, but he was quickly losing that fight. Uncle Barry had never yelled at him before, even when he had broken a few of his test tubes at the lab.
"Wallace Rudolph West, look at me!" Barry ordered. The dreaded full name was used. Wally must have found his notebook. He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid as to leave a notebook of how he had gotten his powers in his own home. Batman would have something to say about his lack of sense when it came to security precautions. He was burning that thing the second they got home.
Wally looked up and met his uncle's eyes. He could think of a million places he'd rather be than in that car at that moment.
"You never experiment on yourself. You never look through my papers and you never do anything like that again," Barry said. His voice had been calmer at first, but as he spoke it had steadily gotten louder.
Iris sat there silently, listening to her husband. How could Wally do this to himself? He had nearly been killed. Now Barry and Wally could both run at the speed of light, which led to a very unpleasant idea of Wally running around Central City, wearing a mask, fighting crime, saving people, and putting himself in danger.
Wally didn't say anything. He just nodded. Wally had known Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris would be mad, but he wasn't quite prepared for how mad. His uncle, who had never raised his voice was shouting at him. His aunt, who talked when she was upset, was sitting there staring at him with this quiet horror written on her face.
"Do you realize you could have been killed?" Barry asked. "When Iris and I got there your heart wasn't beating. Another few seconds, and you would have had brain damage or be dead." He hadn't let himself think about that while they were in the hospital, waiting for Wally to wake up. If he hadn't sped home as fast as he dared, Wally wouldn't be sitting there.
"Yes," Wally sniffed.
"You don't play with something like that," Barry continued. He honestly didn't know what to say. Wally had never done anything like this before. He was always well behaved, and then this had happened. This meant Barry and Iris were going to have to step up and do something to insure there were no repeats of this kind of situation. Barry took a deep breath. He needed to calm down and think. It wouldn't do any good to sit there on the side of the road and chew Wally's head off.
"Have there been any side effects?" he asked. Barry was almost scared to know the answer.
Wally nodded. If he spoke he was sure he would start crying.
"Are you fast? Wally look at me," Barry said shortly.
"Yes," Wally whispered. He didn't bother to try to stop his tears. Everything seemed to be hitting him at once. What had he been thinking? He could have died over something as stupid as that just so he could get powers. He was going to have jagged scars all down his back for the rest of his life, but it had worked so he might as well use the powers he'd gotten.
Barry sighed and ran a hand through his hair. There went any opportunity for Wally to have a normal life. It just went out the window, along with any chance of him not putting himself in danger again. Wally had done this for a reason, and it sure wasn't so he could get anywhere he wanted in the blink of an eye.
Barry pulled an energy bar out of his pocket and handed in to Wally. "Eat this. Your metabolism is a lot faster now, so you'll have to start eating more or you'll pass out. You're grounded for the next three weeks."
He pulled back into traffic. He couldn't talk about this anymore, and he didn't want to think about it either. Iris clearly felt the same way. He was a little surprised she hadn't said anything. She usually would have backed him up when Wally did something he wasn't supposed to. Not that he had ever climbed up a tree in a thunder storm with chemicals planning to use himself as a human lab rat, but still the rule stood. They faced everything together.
The rest of the ride home was spent in a very uncomfortable silence. Silence excepting Wally's crying that is. He was obviously trying to stop, but he wasn't doing a very good job of it. He sounded as if he was just making himself hysterical, which ended in hiccups by the time they got home.
They walked in the front door. Barry shut the door and stood there for a moment. Only a week ago everything had been perfect. They had just gotten home from the pool. Wally didn't swim very well, and Iris and Barry had talked about signing him up for swimming lessons next summer or finding an indoor pool to take him to over the winter. Had that only been seven short days ago.
"Wally, go to your room," Iris ordered gently. She went to the kitchen and started dinner.
Wally was glad for a reason to leave. He quickly went upstairs and shut the door.
Barry followed Iris to the kitchen and sat down on a stool at the island. Neither one of them said anything for a few minutes.
"Are we going to talk about this?" Iris said, not looking at her husband.
Barry took another deep breath. Sometimes there were days that just needed to be over with, and this was one of them. He knew Iris was mad at the situation, not him. He got up and went to his office and got the notebook from his desk. He walked back to the kitchen and picking up a pair of scissors, he began to cut up the pages. A paper shredder wouldn't be thorough enough.
"After Wally's grounding is up, I'll take him out to Jay's and Joan's place and we'll show how to control his powers," Barry said shortly.
"And then what? We both know why he did this. Someday he's going to put on a mask and go running after his hero," Iris snapped. She shut a cabinet door too hard and the dishes inside trembled.
"That someday is going to be sooner rather than later," Barry said more to himself. The news out of Star City and Gotham City had been full of nothing, but Green Arrow's and Batman's new protégés. Speedy wasn't much older than Wally and Robin was two years younger.
Barry flinched at the idea of Wally out on the streets fighting crime, fighting the good yet never- ending fight that broke heroes if they were a second too slow.
"You're not thinking of letting Wally out with a mask, are you?" Iris cried in horror at the suggestion. She could barely handle Barry putting on a mask, but she wouldn't allow Wally to.
"I'm thinking that Wally will try it by himself. He's clearly willing to wait for a chance to do something stupid when we're not around," Barry answered.
"So what are we supposed to do? Lock him in his room for his own safety?" Iris snapped.
"No, that wouldn't do any good. He can probably vibrate his molecules through solid objects," Barry said off-handedly.
"Barry!" Iris shouted. He was taking this too well; on the surface at least. "What are we going to do? What kind of childhood can he have? What if someone finds out?" Iris said and began to cry. "We almost lost him once. I can't go through that again."
Barry pulled his wife into a hug. "No one will ever find out. I'll keep him safe, I promise."
runninghome
Wally laid on his bed on his stomach. He stared at the floor. He didn't regret his decision. He was going to be a superhero. Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry clearly thought being a superhero was okay. Otherwise Uncle Barry wouldn't be running around the city in a bright red costume that screamed: 'Shoot at me!'
Speaking of costumes, he needed one. Wally didn't want it all red like his uncle's. Maybe red and blue?...No. He'd figure it out later. He had bigger problems at the moment. What was he supposed to say to Aunt Iris and Uncle Barry?
He had known when he was in the tree they would have stopped him had they been there. That was why he had waited until they weren't home. He'd known what he was doing was wrong, making everything worse. It was one thing to do something wrong and not know it was wrong, but knowing it was wrong and doing it anyway got him in a lot more trouble.
There was a knock at the door. Wally didn't really want to come out of his room, but that wasn't going to fly, not with how much trouble he was in. He'd lost his aunt's and uncle's trust and with that he also lost any or all privileges.
"Yes?" Wally answered.
Aunt Iris opened the door. "It's time for supper," she said shortly. Her eyes were a little red and she didn't look too happy.
"Aunt Iris?" Wally asked in a whisper.
"Yes?" Iris stopped in the door way.
"Are you and Uncle Barry going to send me away?" Wally asked. He was terrified of losing his home. He'd been trying not to think about it.
Aunt Iris looked surprised. "Of course not. We love you, and you're part of our family," she said.
Wally relaxed and at once began to down play his fears. "Who wouldn't love me? I'm wonderful."
Iris laughed half heartedly. "Come on. Supper is getting cold, and if we leave your uncle down there too long, there won't be any left for us."
That was the first time Wally realized that it was so easy to put on a mask and pretend that he was confident and unafraid. He didn't want anyone to see when he was sad or scared. He could smile when he was sad, so there was no reason he couldn't laugh when he was afraid.
Wally followed his aunt downstairs. Dinner was very quiet that night. Wally got the feeling Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris had been fighting, and worse he knew the fight was his fault. They wouldn't have been upset if he'd gotten struck by lightning and gotten super powers. Wally almost smiled at how ridiculous that sounded in his head. It looked like that was what his life was going to be like from now on.
After finishing supper, Wally was about to go to his room, when Uncle Barry called him back to the table. He should have known he wasn't going to get off that easy. His uncle's anger rant in the car didn't qualify as a talk about what he had done wrong, plus there was the little fact that he had super speed now, so that was just going to make this unpleasant lecture longer than it would have been otherwise.
"We need to talk about a few things," Barry began seriously. "And not just about what you did."
Wally looked fixedly at the table.
"First of all, you can't tell anyone about this. Are we clear?" Barry asked.
Wally nodded. For once he didn't feel like talking.
"Before you experimented on yourself, did you tell anyone who I am? I need you to be completely honest with me."
"I didn't tell anyone," Wally answered. Who would he tell? The only people he really trusted were his aunt, uncle and a few friends, but he wasn't stupid. He knew better than to go running around telling every kid on the block that his uncle was the Flash.
Barry sighed in relief, and Iris calmed down as well.
"How did you get into that safe? And where did you get the chemicals?" Barry asked. He had a pretty good idea of both, but Wally had to admit to what he did. He wasn't going to get out of this so easy. He had to know what he did was wrong, and it wouldn't be tolerated.
"I guessed the code was yours and Aunt Iris's wedding date and I…..stole the chemicals from your lab at the station," Wally answered. This was torture. He didn't think his uncle was going to give him the third degree.
"Wallace!" Iris said in horror. Didn't Wally see where stealing led? His father was in jail for murder because he'd started stealing.
Wally didn't see how this could get much wore. He wanted to run out of the house, but that wouldn't do any good. He'd still be in trouble.
Barry's face hardened. There was no way he was going to let Wally end up like his dad. Now that he had super powers, Wally would be able to steal with no trouble at all, and he had already had a great role model for that. "If you ever steal from me or anyone else ever again, I will spank you. Are we clear?" Barry didn't like punishing Wally, but he couldn't just do whatever he wanted. He didn't like grounding, because that made home a place someone was forced to be. Barry would change Wally's grounding so that he had to go with Iris and him everywhere.
Wally nodded. He hadn't liked to steal, and he wasn't ever going to do it again. Plus the threat of getting spanked wasn't something he wanted to put to the test.
Barry wasn't done yet. "I told you earlier that your metabolism is faster. So is your mind, and if you're not careful, you can start talking at the speed your mind is moving. That will be a dead giveaway. You'll have to watch yourself when you're in a hurry. It's easy to go into an abnormally fast run."
"I'm going to take you out to Jay's place. He was the first Flash, and he taught me to control and use my powers," Barry said. What was he doing? He honestly had no clue what he was supposed to say. This situation wasn't exactly in any parenting book. He and Iris were new parents, and they were figuring this out as they went. Hopefully they didn't ruin Wally's life along the way. "From now on you'll have to be more watchful, when you're around other people."
"Why?" Wally asked.
Barry felt better with Wally asking questions than him sitting there staring at the table. Had he been too hard on Wally on the way home? No. Wally needed to know how serious what he had done was. But all the same, Barry should have given himself time to think before he started shouting.
"Because we don't know if anyone at the hospital realized what happened to you. If they did, then we have a problem. You could be attacked," Barry explained. The idea of people coming after Wally because of his super speed was terrifying.
"Do you know what to do if someone tries to take you?" Iris asked. She was surprised they hadn't asked Wally this before. The ten year old had been put in a situation where calling the police was not allowed under any circumstances. He needed to know that the police were to be trusted.
"Call for help, and try to get away," Wally said shortly. Everyone knew that. He didn't much like to think about that kind of stuff happening. It was too scary.
"Good, but what would you do if you knew someone was following you?" Barry asked. He didn't want Wally to be scared of every person he met, but he needed to at least be on the lookout for this kind of thing. He was a target now whether he saw it or not. Being aware of this could mean the difference between life and death for him.
"Try to lose them in a crowd. If that doesn't work, I'd stay near other people, I guess," Wally said. He wasn't at all sure of his answer.
Barry nodded. "After you learn how to use your powers, it won't be hard to lose someone without them seeing what you are." He was avoiding the other thing he and Iris had to talk with Wally about. He would rather Iris do all the talking, when it came to that.
Barry caught Iris's eyes, and she nodded her understanding.
"There's another thing we need to talk about," Iris said. "Your father's trial is coming up. The prosecution and the defense are both asking you to testify for them," Iris said gently. They had been putting off telling Wally about this. It was so hard to know what to do.
Wally was quiet for a few moments. "The defense is for my dad and the prosecution is against him, right?" he asked.
Iris nodded. "Yes." The justice system wasn't the easiest thing to understand, but that at least made sense.
"I can only speak for one of them?" Wally asked. He wanted his dad to be punished for what he had done, but he also wanted to see him again.
"Yes. You'll be asked a lot of tough questions and whatever side you are on, the other side will try to discredit what you say," Barry explained. He personally didn't want Wally to testify at all, but that got into a lot of complicated stuff that ended with Wally being forced to testify, and Barry really didn't what it to go that far.
"Dad and the others should go to prison. I'll tell them what Dad told me about the robberies, and the man he killed," Wally said finally. If he was going to be a hero someday he couldn't let his dad get away with what he had done. It wouldn't be fair to that man's family.
The three of them were silent for what felt like a long time. Each of them were wrapped up in their own thoughts.
"There's one more thing we wanted to ask you," Iris said breaking the quiet. "You don't have to decide tonight or for a while yet. We just want you to be thinking about it," she paused. "Your uncle and I would like to adopt you." Iris and Barry had been talking while Wally was in the hospital and decided that Wally was so much part of their little family that they might as well make it official, providing Wally didn't hate the idea.
Wally was a little surprised. He was going to say, 'yes', when a few thoughts struck him. "What about my mom?" he asked.
"We contacted her. She said she would like to see you again, but she thinks it would be best for you if she gave up custody," Barry said. Saying it like that sounded so heatless, but it was the only way to explain it.
Wally just nodded. That hurt a little, okay a lot, but his mom hadn't wanted to leave him, just his dad. Besides she wanted to see him, which counted for something, right? There was a difference between her just giving up custody of him and never wanting to see him again, and her giving up custody of him was because she was trying to do what was best for him. The next question he had to ask wasn't going to be very fun, but nothing about this day had been very good to begin with.
"Do you want to adopt me because of my powers and because I know Uncle Barry is Flash?" he asked. He didn't think his aunt and uncle were like that, but he knew better than to put too much faith in people. They would just hurt him when he wasn't expecting it. Plus he knew who his uncle was. That made him a serious problem if they thought he would tell. When his dad first started stealing he hadn't liked for him to leave the house, and he had demanded to know what Wally had said to anyone he had talked to.
"Of course not," Iris answered. She was a little horrified that Wally would even think that of her and Barry, but he was used to people acting for their own benefit, so why should he think any different of them?
"Iris and I decided we wanted to adopt you while you were in the hospital, before we knew you had gotten your powers. We wouldn't make you stay if you didn't want to be here," Barry explained. Iris said there was family in Keystone, who would be willing to take Wally, but Barry didn't much like that idea. He got the impression that they would only take him, so they wouldn't look bad or feel guilty. Barry was a little hurt that Wally thought he and Iris would use him for his powers, but what did he expect? His nephew had been living with a man who would have no doubt would have taken advantage of Wally's super speed.
Wally sat thinking about that they had said. He wanted to stay here. They loved him, even though he had stolen from Uncle Barry. They didn't hate him for that or think he was like his dad. He looked up at his aunt and uncle. "I would like you to adopt me."