[I do not own Teen Titans or any characters mentioned in this story. I am on a roll today- oh wow. I'm having so much fun diving back into this story. I love switching the characters and building the worlds, it's so much fun! What I'm planning to do now is go in a pattern to follow their adventures. But at least we have the introduction out of the way.]
Kid Flash stared deep into the makeshift fire he and See-More had made in their living quarters. After exploration, they found that they had been dropped in some post-apocalypse like area. Every building was terribly damaged beyond repair, vines hanging from the windows and bricks scattered about.
Kid Flash sighed at how useless he felt as he glanced over a See-More, who was mapping out where everything was to try and find a way out.
See-More was the one that had built them a fire, See-More was the one that had found them the only barely destroyed building where they were now, See-More was the one that had found them still somehow edible food in the stark laboratory building across from where they were.
Without his speed, Wally really was useless.
He laid back with a sigh, opting instead to just close his eyes and think about everything.
After some travel into the area, they'd discovered the place they landed was stark and bleak - no life for miles from what they could tell. Everything was abandoned, and most times, they could barely see more than a few yards in front of their faces due to a thick, smoky fog. The building they'd taken refuge in was previously a skyscraper, and See-More had reasoned it was the best spot to camp not only because of the only partially damaged state, but because it was the tallest for miles - they could easily find their way back. It had no floors, and they were sleeping on raw dirt, but the side where the wind and weathers seemed to be coming from was completely intact. The only reason they'd even traveled inland was because they'd come across an invisible wall of sorts. It barely let them through even a few yards from where they'd swam ashore before it made a humming noise paired with a hexagonal shaped blue mark that wouldn't allow them passage. See-More's comm had been blinking for hours - was still blinking - but no Wykkyd. No Wykkyd, no Jinx, no Mammoth, no Gizmo, no Billy.
Kid Flash kind of felt like an asshole.
All this time he was a real jerk to See-More. During his fights with the HIVE, he often like to point out the young boy, making fun of his figure, his voice, his height. Anything to throw him off his game like he did the others. He outright insulted See-More's closest friends when they'd gotten to shore, and he went so far as to completely destroy his home during his first siege against the HIVE Five's base.
And yet…
Here See-More was, helping Wally survive. Here See-More was, offering Wally half of all of the food he found, offering him shelter, offering him forgiveness for all the stupid shit he'd done. If it weren't for See-More, Wally would be dead by now. Wally can't find shelter, he doesn't have all this survival training that See-More seems to.
But he can't dare bring himself to apologize. He doesn't know why, maybe it's a masculinity thing, or a hero vs villain thing, but Kid Flash wants to apologize so bad, but it feels wrong to apologize to See-More. Maybe because inevitably, See-More deserves everything for his crimes. Maybe because See-More caused a fair amount of annoyance with the HIVE when they went on heists.
But Wally probably owed See-More his life, and he couldn't bring himself to even say he was sorry. How useless is that?
Wally's thoughts and inevitable stress lines were interrupted by the sound of hissing.
Kid Flash jumped nearly three feet in the air for a moment with a loud and panicked yelp, convinced that in their bleak and lifeless home a snake had slithered in unnoticed.
Wally then heard a chuckle and immediately wanted to sink into the ground from embarrassment. The hiss was not a snake, but a spray can that See-More held in his hands. See-More was also staring at Wally amusedly, trying not to laugh at the girlish shriek he had let out.
Eventually See-More revealed that the spray can bottle was actually spray paint, as he colored up and down on the walls.
Wally slowly walked over to him, slow, though it disoriented him not to be able to speed over.
"...You paint a lot?" Kid Flash asked, trying hard to break the ice between them and continue to distract himself from his own thoughts.
See-More let out a hum of agreement.
Kid Flash resigned to just sitting down cross legged a little ways away from See-More, giving the brown boy his space as he brought out nine other spray cans that See-More had found hidden behind rubble in the building.
Wally, for once, shut up. He shut up and he focused on the lines, on the color contrast and the science behind the art that See-More was making. Honestly, Wally couldn't help it. He'd grown up a nerd, and secretly, he'd always be a nerd. He had to make sense of everything he saw. It's one of the things that always intrigued him about art. You couldn't make sense of everything in art. Sure, there were color schemes and implied lines and whatnot, but you couldn't just...explain the emotion and the feeling behind so many great artworks.
Kid Flash got lost in the strokes and the drips of the paint until he wasn't even focused on the finished product anymore. Wally stared at the wall until the painting didn't even look like a painting, only formulas and guesses as to how See-More thought, what thought process he went through to know he needed to put that line right there. The buzzing of his head when he decided no, that's not the color I need, this second color is right. The colors dripped and deformed and morphed together in different areas, they contrasted and split apart in others, until Wally found himself looking at See-More through this painting. What did that color mean to See-More? Why did See-More put a circle in that position? What made See-More make one live wavy, and the others board straight? How did this curious boy think? Why did he think the way he did? Why did Wally think the way he did? How did they collide, contrast, mix like the colors he was staring at? Why- Why- WHY-
"Done." That one word finally broke Wally from his loud mind. Kid Flash had to shake his head to wake himself up. He backed out and away, away from the formulas and the worries and the questions, and he found himself gasping at the beautiful painting that See-More had left on the building, hopefully permanent.
He'd painting two flip side silhouettes of a boy. One on top, showed a boy colored in pinks and yellows and oranges, black tears dripping like oil from his eyes and spilling through his hands that tried desperately to catch it. It was only a silhouette, and all you could see clearly was the outline of everything, but Wally could see the boy. Like looking through a mirror cut through his stomach, the same silhouette hung upside down of the boy, but in all inky black, still crying tears, though the tears were colored a pink, yellow, orange, just like the above boy's skin. The colors came together to make a dripping pattern rather than a straight mirror line when the two boys met, the boys fading into each other and colliding together.
"...S-See-More this is...beautiful…!" Wally gasped as he stood up and walked closer to get another look.
"Uh...thanks." See-More said awkwardly, desperate to get out of the way of attention.
"...Hey," Kid Flash called as See-More went to sit by their fire again. "How do you...I mean...what- how do you know all this stuff? About the survival and then the paint and the mapping and...yeah…?" Wally asked oh-so-eloquently.
"...Was raised on the streets." See-More said clipped and quiet, obviously not wanting to go into detail.
And just as Wally broke the ice, he built himself up another wall of iceberg.
"Th...Thank you. For everything. I uh…I don't think I would've made it past the peer, if it weren't for you." Wally said stiffly, sitting across from See-More but staring still into the same fire.
See-More gave Kid Flash a funny look for a moment, scaring the wits out of the poor redhead.
"...Yeah...no problem." See-More said. No one had ever thanked See-More for anything he'd ever done. Especially not a hero.
It felt nice.
[I stopped it kind of suddenly, I know. I didn't know how else to stop it. I had SO MUCH FUN diving into Wally's nerdy head. I think a lot of people forget that his speed came from his nerdiness, recreating his uncle's accident and all. Read and Review!]