[Central City
February 10, 16:00 EST]
It was a slow news day. Iris and her cameraman, Denny, had reported on two traffic accidents earlier that morning near the city's center, then they'd run over to Leawood and covered the interview with the mayor about the postponing of the opening date for the new community center. Two hours later, they were in Chubbuck at Centrex Hospital following an anonymous tip that Dr. Groves, the impossible to reach defendant in a major malpractice suit being covered nationwide, was there for an appointment with the chief of medicine.
Around noon, Iris and her news van crew met up with one of the chopper teams in Petersburg for lunch at a newly opened restaurant and then it was right back to work. The helicopter team left to cover a pileup on the interstate, and Iris and Denny booked it over to Granite Peak National Park to cover the search for a group of missing campers. Three hours after that, the campers were found twenty miles from the perimeter of the park, and Iris' editor Pete was ordering them to Central City University where a large number of students were hosting a pro-Justice League demonstration. Then, they'd stopped by Breedmore Mental Hospital to report on the deplorable conditions of some of the patients there.
Iris and her mobile crew didn't get back to GBS until 4:00pm.
Alright, so the day was not so slow. Iris, however, would've killed to have just one bank robbery to cover. She'd been waiting all day for Captain Boomerang to rob Palladium's Jewelry Store or for Heat Wave to break out of prison. With the way her day had gone, Iris would've even taken the Trickster's antics.
It was almost definitely terrible for her to wish for awful things to happen just so that she'd have something interesting to report on, especially since the Flash was off on another planet. Barry had gotten Elongated Man to watch over Central for the past two days, and Iris honestly didn't want Ralph to have to deal with any of the Rogues.
When Iris reached her desk and collapsed in her swivel chair with a sigh, she made a mental note to give Sue Dibny a call and arrange a lunch date soon. She and the rich socialite were almost opposites personality-wise, but they'd always gotten along very well since the first day that Barry and Ralph had introduced them. Since Sue was also the wife of a superhero, Iris could talk to her about things that no one else would understand. It was very therapeutic. Plus, Sue was usually all smiles and cheerful personality, which was very relaxing to be around. Iris just needed some girl time and, although she was much closer to Hal's girlfriend Carol, Sue was always ready for a good time. Carol was currently busy partnering her company, Ferris Aircraft, with NASA to develop a satellite capable of communicating with Mars. The last that she had heard news about it placed the launch something like four to six years away.
Iris clicked the power button on her computer and rested her head on the desk while it booted up. She was ready for this day to be over already. Barry would be getting back home tonight, Wally was coming over in the morning, and Iris had the whole weekend off to spend with her two favorite guys. She smiled to herself and piled her red hair on top of her head to stretch out her shoulders.
"Need some coffee?" Denny asked as he passed her desk, unclipping his press badge and pulling off his GBS logo cap.
"That would be great," she groaned. "-if coffee worked for me anymore. I think I'm immune to it after all these years."
Denny rolled his eyes at her but collected her order anyway and disappeared.
Cat showed up a few minutes later, and Iris rolled her head to the side to peek at her coworker with one eye. The blonde news anchor glided over with a bright smile on her face, "Hey, Iris. Congratulations on the lost camper story. I thought you did a great job!"
Iris was glad that someone had enjoyed it. She and Denny had tromped through the woods for three hours following the park rangers and some of the search parties with nothing but a handheld camera. Iris had walked through nine spider webs. She'd be lying though if she said that it wasn't extremely rewarding to be there in person when they'd found the family.
"Thanks, Cat," Iris beamed, sitting upright and slowly turning the chair side to side with her toes. "I heard you got the Vlatava assignment this morning."
Cat's face fell, and she pulled up a chair to slump over on the opposite side of Iris' desk, "Yeah, and do you know who else is going to be there? Jack Ryder, Vicki Vale, Tawny Young, Lois Lane! I haven't even seen Lois since I moved here from Metropolis. And I think Godfrey's trying to worm his way there too. I can't stand him!"
Iris agreed with her wholeheartedly. G. Gordon Godfrey was a menace. She didn't think that he had any business being on the air, but he had a cult following and ridiculously high ratings. Plus, it was difficult to view him indifferently when he spent his whole show attacking her husband and the rest of the Justice League. He'd gone through a phase last year where he targeted the original seven of the League and did a month long expose on each one individually. Iris had almost decked him in the face.
"Yeah, I understand Godfrey, but what's wrong with Lane and Vale?" Iris asked curiously. She'd worked a stint at the Daily Planet right after college and had thought that the raven-haired reporter was nice – insanely competitive, but nice.
"I'm not a match for any of them!" Cat's expression crumpled miserably.
"Not true," Iris said encouragingly. Cat Grant may not have been in the game as long as the rest of them, but she was an excellent reporter.
"Are you kidding? No one's going to watch me," Cat frantically gestured to herself. "-when they could spend the hour looking at Vicki. And Lois Lane's practically the Amazon of Metropolis. She's the only one that Superman will give interviews to."
"You just need a confidence boost," Iris smiled. And some anxiety medication. She didn't say that bit out loud.
"What I need is my own superhero," the blonde rested her head on her fist and made a face.
Iris stared at her quizzically.
"You know! I need to find a hero that's just starting out and make friends with him early on," she elaborated cheerfully. "That's how all the greats do it; Vicki's in good with Batman over in Gotham, Tawny covers the Lanterns, Lane's got Superman, and you have the Flash's cell phone number!"
Close. His cell number wasn't the only thing Iris had.
She blushed suddenly and tried to cover it by shaking her hair out around her face.
"And she refuses to use it to help GBS get the scoop on Flash."
Both women looked up to see Pete standing to the side of them, arms crossed and a humorless smile set on his face. Iris smiled right back at him and shrugged, "Only business, Pete. He gives me the first interview after his battles, and I give him the heads up on where the next one is going to be."
"Lucky," Cat hissed playfully.
Iris smacked her shoulder, "Right place, right time."
"Good job covering the university today, Iris," Pete nodded at her stoically. "The students are organizing another rally next month, and I want you to follow up on that one as well. We need more positive Justice League coverage to keep the station impartial. Godfrey's been in overdrive lately."
"No problem," she assured him readily. Iris was usually the 'go to' girl for the pro-JLA stories.
Pete nodded silently, rocking back on his heels calmly and taking a swig from his coffee mug. He turned his attention to Cat then and glanced at his watch in concern, "Shouldn't you be packing for your flight?"
Cat perked up then, jumping to her feet quickly, "Yes, sir. I-"
"Iris Allen?"
Iris was smiling at Cat and her boss when she heard the loud voice calling her name urgently. All three looked over to the side to see Black Canary standing in the middle of the room in full costume, surrounded by shocked and startled news workers. The tall, blonde superhero was pretending to scan the room for Iris as if she didn't know what she looked like, but she kept making meaningful eye contact with Iris.
The smile dropped from Iris' face.
She and Black Canary had met before, of course. The heroes that Barry trusted enough with his identity came by the house to visit often enough. That plus the fact that she was the advanced combat instructor for Wally's secret Team left the two women on good terms.
But there were only a handful of reasons that Black Canary would be here, and none of them were good.
"I'm looking for Iris Allen," Black Canary repeated urgently, still acting like she couldn't tell who she was.
Iris stood from her chair on shaky legs and tried to move forward. She stumbled slightly, but it gave Black Canary the excuse to drop the act and approach her swiftly. She grabbed Iris' arms to steady her and looked right into her eyes, "Are you Mrs. Allen?"
"Yes," Iris breathed nervously.
"Ma'am, there has been an emergency," Black Canary squared her shoulders beneath her signature blue jacket. "I need you to come with me, please."
Iris sent her boss a desperate look and took the coat that Cat scrambled to retrieve from her chair. She numbly jammed her arms through the sleeves and stared wide-eyed back at the heroine, "What happened?"
"Not here. We need to hurry," Black Canary rushed her through the halls of the GBS news station, into the stairwell, and down eight flights. She took Iris out a side exit and into an alley where a sleek blue motorcycle was concealed behind a delivery van. The whole run through the building had reduced Iris' nerves to a frenzied mess.
"Dinah!" she gasped, though still breathing rather easily. Iris was the wife of a speedster, after all. Barry had taught her how to marathon sprint. "Please! What happened?!"
Black Canary, also barely winded, ran to the bike and grabbed one of the two helmets lying on the seat. She flipped a switch on the inside and tossed it to Iris before taking the second helmet for herself and straddling the motorcycle. Iris jammed the helmet on and was yanked onto the bike behind Dinah just seconds before they went roaring out of the alley and onto the main road.
Iris, never one to be fazed by sudden acceleration and breakneck speeds, locked her arms around Black Canary's waist in a practiced death grip as the blonde crime fighter weaved through the impossibly small gaps in traffic.
Without warning, hidden speakers in Iris' helmet fizzled with static before Dinah's voice came through over the sound of rushing wind and the honking of irritable drivers stuck in evening rush hour.
"Can you hear me alright, Iris?"
"Yes!" she shouted into what looked like a microphone built into the helmet's mouth cover. "Dinah, what happened?! Where are we going?"
"I'm taking you to the Watchtower."
Iris felt her chest go ice cold in fear, "Dinah…"
She didn't get a reply for a few heartbeats.
"Iris, I'm so sorry. Wally never showed up at Mt. Justice today. Batman tracked his communicator to his house in Central and used the remote camera there to find him. Wally and his mother were both attacked at some point yesterday, and they're hurt very badly. Before I left to pick you up, Batman called Jay, Max, and Johnny to the house. We need to be at the Watchtower waiting for them when they get there."
Iris stared at the back of Dinah's helmet in horror. Wally? Her heart started pounding furiously at the thought of her beloved nephew in danger. "What happened to him? Is he going to be okay?! Who hurt him?"
"As soon as we saw that Wally was hurt, Batman ordered me to come find you and bring you to the Watchtower. I only saw him for a few seconds, but he was unconscious, and there was blood everywhere. I don't know any more than what I just told you, I'm sorry."
"Does Barry know? Is he back yet?"
"No. Mister Terrific told me that he's still outside the range of our communications, but he's still trying. We'll know when we get there."
Iris wanted to go to her brother's house and see what had happened for herself, but she wanted to be with her family more. If Wally and Mary were on their way to the Watchtower, then that's where Iris would be waiting for them. "What about my brother? Do you know anything about Rudy?"
"I don't. I only saw Wally and his mother, but Batman is investigating the rest of the house as we speak, and he will no doubt be coming to the Watchtower once he is finished."
Iris nodded nervously and remained quiet to let Black Canary focus. They reached the closest Central City zeta tube within minutes and abandoned the bike before being teleported into the League's orbiting space station.
"Recognize: Black Canary – 13, Authorized Guest"
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[Central City
March 15, 19:00 CDT]
It was 7:00pm before the doorbell to the Allen residence rang. Dick and Wally had just finished assembling the brand new desk set that Barry and Iris bought for him. They'd also gotten him new everything for his bedroom despite Wally's protests. Apparently, the therapist that Wally had agreed to talk to suggested that a new environment with new things would help him more easily accept that the abuse was over and that he could start his life over fresh. Dick knew that Wally hadn't wanted them to buy him anything and he felt guilty enough 'imposing' on them. Wally didn't seem to understand that his aunt and uncle wanted him to live with them.
When Dick arrived at Central earlier, Wally's aunt had let him in with a smile and told him that Wally was upstairs assembling the new furniture pieces. He was also told that Wally had instructions from his therapist that he was to seek no help during the task. Building the items all by himself was meant to symbolize the positive experience of creating something, and it would give him something to look at with pride once he was finished.
Dick had found Wally sitting on the floor in the middle of his new room surrounded by a hundred random desk bits. The redhead was glaring madly at a thirty page instruction manual while scratching at his head with a screwdriver, looking extremely aggravated. He'd looked up when he sensed Dick staring at him and exclaimed 'The directions are in Swedish!' while frantically waving the manual about.
So, Dick had caved and helped him. Between the two of them and Dick's handy holo-comp translator, it had only taken a few hours. By the end, they'd wound up with a pretty decently made desk and some rather aggressive bets over who could learn the most languages by the time they were thirty.
At the sound of the doorbell, Wally and Dick raced down the stairs into the kitchen – at normal speed. Wally still had a little less than two days before he could use his powers, and he was absolutely itching to run. He and Barry had plans for a cross country sprint to Coast City tomorrow night to celebrate his recovery. Dick suspected that it was also a clever way to rid Wally of all this excess, pent up energy.
Iris was curled up on the couch watching the news when they passed the living room, and Barry was stretched out next to her, absently looking over a huge stack of file folders. Wally yanked open the kitchen door and grinned hugely to see Roy standing there with his motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm and three giant pots rigged together with rope and duct tape in the other.
"Roy!" Wally exclaimed happily at the same time that Dick said, "What is that?"
"Oliver's chili," Roy sighed, looking like he had mixed feelings about it. Dick blanched.
"That is not staying in my house," Barry spoke up ominously, suddenly standing behind them.
Wally dashed off to the cabinets to retrieve a bowl, "Wait! I wanna try it first before you jettison it off into space!"
"I wasn't going to bring it at first," Roy set all three pots down on the kitchen table with a heavy clunk and rolled his shoulder. "But Ollie called me over, and we had this talk and sort of made up. I didn't want to ruin it. It was weird. I figured, worst case, you could use this on some of your villains."
Barry stared at the chili pots with a thoughtful expression like he was imagining the possibilities.
"Still trying it first," Wally declared, lifting the lid off one of the pots and filling a bowl to the top. Before anyone could stop him, he popped a heaping spoonful into his mouth. Roy stretched both arms out towards him in horror, like someone about to witness a car accident but too far away to do anything about it. Dick gasped soundlessly. Although he had never tried the fabled chili himself, Dick had heard enough stories. Barry zipped to the fridge and snatched an entire jug of milk and a whole loaf of bread to help his nephew through the impending fallout.
All three watched Wally chew carefully with an odd expression on his face. He swallowed, frowning curiously at the bowl.
"That…is fantastic," Wally smiled at them, stuffing another spoonful into his mouth. Barry stared at him like he was missing his face.
"Not happening…" Roy frowned in disbelief.
"You've gotta try this," Wally handed Dick the bowl. "This beats Blue Valley's chili contest, hands down."
Dick looked down at the chili in his hands uncertainly. All the terrible things that he'd ever heard about the chili circled about in his head like warning sirens. But, Bruce liked it, didn't he? If Bruce could handle it, then he could handle it. Pfft. If Wally could handle it, Dick would be fine. Plus, there was no chance in hell that he was going to let the redhead issue a challenge like that without thoroughly demolishing it. He swiftly scooped up a huge bite of chili and ate it with a confident smirk.
Twenty minutes later, the three boys were up in Wally's new room with an action movie playing in the background. Wally was happily munching away on his ninth bowl of chili, Roy was inspecting and pointing out the various flaws in the newly assembled furniture, and Dick was lying on the floor, flat on his back, with a bag of frozen peas on his face. The gallon of milk and half a loaf of bread were positioned strategically by each of his hands.
"Man, this really clears out the sinuses," Wally marveled, sniffling lightly. Dick could hear the spoon clinking away at the bowl. "You think Ollie would give me the recipe?"
"If we're lucky, he'll take it to the grave," Roy remarked dryly.
Dick just laid there, his tongue, eyes, and throat still scorching. This would be the last time that he ever ate anything Wally gave him ever again. He could still hear the Flash and his wife laughing in his head. Dick could only guess at how long it would take for Batman to hear about this. Alfred was going to tease him for weeks.
"So, I hear that the Team's coming off of suspension pretty soon," Roy spoke again, sounding like he was leading into something.
"Yeah," Wally's voice sounded excited. "And two more weeks after that, I'm back on it. I feel kind of bad for Dick and the others though. They'll have to go three whole weeks without their biggest gun."
Neither Dick nor Roy rose to knock him down from his ego-driven delusions.
"Right," Roy agreed mockingly. Dick heard him clear his throat before speaking again. "Well…I was thinking about joining the Team for awhile."
Dick sat bolt upright, the frozen peas tumbling forward onto his lap, "What?!"
Wally started choking on the chili, staring at Roy in shock, "Are you serious?!"
"Only for a while," Roy clarified with a frown. He'd moved to sit cross-legged on the floor facing them.
"Why do you want to join up with us?" Dick asked suspiciously. He cocked an eyebrow at Roy and scrutinized him closely. "You're Justice League now."
"Weren't we just the Junior League?" Wally pointed his spoon at Roy distrustfully. "Having play dates in our little clubhouse, remember?"
Roy rolled his eyes at them, giving a long suffering sigh, "I'd like to get more experience working in teams. I don't get many group missions from the League, and I don't want to screw it up because I've only ever worked partners or solo."
The reasoning was weak. Dick examined his big brother closely, noting his uncomfortable pose, averting of the eyes, and…there it was. Roy's tell. The archer was tapping his palm with his middle and ring finger, just like he would be tapping his bow if he had it in hand. The motion was always a tell that Roy was being evasive.
He wasn't telling them the whole reason.
"You've worked with the Team before," Wally pointed out. "There was that time we were protecting Dr. Roquette in Gotham and the New Orleans thing with Sportsmaster. Or, Dick's super secret circus mission that I wasn't allowed to go on."
Dick threw his head back with a sigh, "There is no way you were ever going to be coordinated enough to be in the circus."
"I don't need to be coordinated," Wally insisted. He suddenly put on a cheesy grin and arched his back to thrust out his chest, "I could've been: The World's Most Ridiculously Handsome Teenager!"
Dick made a big show of outwardly scoffing at the idea while his heart quickened its pace inside his chest. 'Yes he could have', he thought while admiring Wally's pretty eyes wistfully. Ugh – stop it. Not the time. He mentally shook himself.
"Wow," Roy deadpanned. "Had you paid attention, you would've heard me say that I needed more experience, not that I've never had any."
Then, just for a second, Roy's eyes flickered over to Wally and then away again. Wally didn't see it; he set his empty bowl off to the side and stretched out on the floor. Dick, however, did see, and then Roy's declaration made sense.
He wasn't joining part time to gain teamwork skills. Roy was doing it so that he could watch out for Wally, because coming so close to losing his little brother had scared him. Dick could understand. He honestly had no idea how he was supposed to work alongside Wally on Team missions without constantly worrying about whether or not the redhead was hurt. He didn't know if he would be able to properly focus on mission objectives if Wally wasn't right there next to him.
"Well, I'm fine with it," Dick said suddenly, offering no more questions or accusations. After all, he was completely on board with an extra set of eyes watching out for Wally. However, Roy's addition would probably cause some bad feelings with Artemis. Maybe if he had Wally to focus on, Roy would forget about his ridiculous mole hunt for a while.
Wally looked over at him out of the corner of his eye but turned his gaze back at Roy, "Of course we're fine with it; we've been after you to join since day one. So, when are you going to join?"
Roy took a sip from his water bottle, trying to appear casual about it, "I've got some cases in Star that I'm going to be busy with for a while, but it'll be soon after that."
Yeah, Dick thought laughingly. It would probably be around the time that Wally was back. Coincidentally, of course.
They all heard Wally's aunt calling him downstairs then. The speedster hopped to his feet and opened the door to leave, an odd shudder visibly wracking his spine. He hung back for a second, sticking his head back in the doorframe, "I'll be right back. Don't let Roy change his mind. We're making him sign a contract."
Once he was out of sight again, Roy turned to look straight at Dick, "What was that?"
He'd obviously seen Wally's slip up, too. Dick sighed and jerked his thumb towards the rest of the house, "Stairs. They still freak him out a little."
It couldn't be easy for Wally to block out the memory of bleeding to death on the stairs in his old house.
"Alright," Dick snapped his eyes over to Roy. "What's the real reason you want to join the team?"
"Out of the two of us, you've been with him the most often," Roy responded immediately. Well, at least he wasn't trying to lie to Dick about having ulterior motives. "You can't tell me it doesn't worry you that he's not acting traumatized at all. That's not normal."
Dick had noticed, and it was worrying him. Wally was acting exactly the same as he did before this whole mess. Outwardly, he seemed fine, but Wally was such a superb actor that that fact meant very little.
"I'm joining the team because Wally is going to beat the psyche evaluation that he needs to pass in order to be cleared for combat." Roy spoke clearly and calmly. Dick already knew this. Wally was going to be able to manipulate his examiner without any trouble. "And we both know that he's a time bomb. If he ends up with PTSD and has a breakdown in the middle of a mission, I want to be there."
Dick nodded silently. It was pretty much what he'd figured. He just wanted Roy to know that they could be on the same side in the coming weeks.
Wally came back upstairs after a minute, looking vaguely anxious and lost in thought.
"Everything okay?" Dick asked, his eyebrows turning downwards.
"What? Yeah…" Wally folded himself up on the ground again. "She just needed to know something for my school."
He fell silent for a long minute then, staring down at his hands, "Can I get your advice on something?"
Dick nodded his agreement, and Roy's expression turned very serious.
"My dad wants to see me," Wally said in a strange tone. Dick felt a hard lump form in his stomach. "Uncle Barry told me yesterday. He said that I don't ever have to see my dad again if I don't want to, but they're moving him from the normal holding cells to isolation sometime tomorrow. So, I need to decide what to do."
"What?!" Roy growled furiously. He slammed one fist into the floor and leaned forward to jab one finger at Wally sternly. "You tell him to go to hell! He lost the right to ever see you again."
Wally nodded along with Roy's words silently like he agreed with him, but Dick knew that there was something very wrong if Wally was having trouble saying anything but 'no' to the request.
"If you did go to see him," Dick began, trying to ignore the incredulous and slightly hostile look that he got from Roy almost immediately in response. "What would you say to him? What would you want to ask?"
Wally really thought about that for a moment. He frowned in concentration but shook his head helplessly after a time, "I don't really have anything that I wanna say to him."
"Then why is this an issue?" Roy asked irately. Dick resisted the urge to throw something at him. He knew that the older boy wasn't angry about Wally's confusion over what to do. Roy was livid that Wally's father would have the audacity to ask such a thing. "Let the League lock him up in their basement, and let's forget about him."
"I don't want to see him," Wally tried to defend his position. He opened his mouth several times to speak but seemed to be having difficulty putting what he had to say into words. "But I feel like I should. I mean, what if talking to him could give me some closure? See, that's it right there! I don't want to look back in a few years and have 'what ifs'. What if I went to see him? What if…he had something important to tell me? What if I ended up having something that I really needed to say to him, but didn't realize until I was standing right in front of him? I just don't want to wind up with any regrets."
Dick reached out to place a hand on Wally's knee, trying to calm him down. The redhead was beginning to blend his words together into superspeed. He looked at Wally quietly until he got his attention, "What if he does more damage to you?"
"See? This is why I can't decide," Wally pressed both hands to his face and rocked back until he was lying on the floor. Dick heard him groaning in frustration and felt his own heart tug at its bindings helplessly. He wanted to make this easier for his best friend, but didn't know how.
"Wally, I don't think this is something we can help you with," Roy sighed, finally letting go of his anger enough to speak rationally. "I'm sorry. You're asking what to do because you're concerned about regrets, but the only thing that Dick and I are thinking about is your well-being. I'm not going to be able to tell you that you should go ahead and stroll right into the same room as that piece of garbage."
Dick watched Wally miserably. Roy was right. They couldn't help him, but it didn't stop Dick from wishing that he had something better to tell him.
Wally didn't say anything to that. He dropped his hands from his face and just stared blankly up at the ceiling.
It took precisely two seconds for Dick to fly into full fledged panic mode. His vision blurred fractionally, and he started imagining splotches of blood blooming across Wally's chest. His memory brought forward images of Wally lying motionless on a staircase, and Dick had to shut his eyes and focus on controlling his wildly hammering heartbeat to make them go away.
He leaned forward and shook Wally a little harder than he'd meant to. The redhead looked at him in mild surprise but sat up anyways. Dick calmed down immensely at the sight of Wally moving again, "Hey, why don't we change the subject? This isn't doing us any good."
Wally smiled at him gratefully and nodded, "Thanks, guys. I'll figure it out tomorrow."
"C'mon," Roy got to his feet and moved over to the TV, which had been ignored for the most part. He reset the movie that was playing and turned off the lights in the room, settling down in the swivel chair that Dick and Wally had puzzled together. "Let's watch this stupid thing already. I wasn't paying attention at all."
"Conner said that it was pretty good," Wally spoke up optimistically, referring to the movie marathon that the benched members of the Team had focused on in lieu of missions.
"Conner does think that empty station static is a good show," Dick laughed, able to breathe normally again. Thankfully, it looked like no one had noticed his distress a few seconds earlier.
"He hasn't done that in a while," Wally protested in defense of their half-Kryptonian friend. "Took me forever to get him to stop."
They gathered all the blankets from the hallway closet and Wally's room and spread them out on the floor like they used to when they were younger. The three of them sprawled out and settled in to watch the movie.
It was pretty good, Dick had to admit. But Wally had conked out towards the end, and Dick found his best friend to be much more enjoyable to watch. He'd thrown a blanket over his legs and had his back to the foot of Wally's bed, watching the redhead stretched out next to him. He was transfixed by the steady rise and fall of his chest. The TV's glow made his skin look almost luminous and his hair appear to be a much darker shade of red.
Wally looked peaceful, but Dick had his eyes open for nightmares just in case. He had his head propped up on one fist and was smiling down at the speedster contently. A pleasant, warm feeling was spreading out from his chest and heading all the way down to his toes.
It lasted about five seconds. Dick happened to glance up at the movie for a second to see what was going on when he saw Roy staring straight at him. The older boy's expression was unreadable, but he had clearly seen Dick watching Wally sleep. Dick stared back with wide, terrified eyes. Roy's blue eyes flickered to Wally for a second, then back to Dick for a moment, and then back to Wally. His mouth stretched into a smirk after that, and he looked like someone triumphantly placing the very last piece in a difficult jigsaw puzzle. Roy looked at Dick knowingly for a long moment but broke eye contact without a word and returned to watching the movie.
Dick looked back down at Wally dejectedly. What the hell did he think he was doing? He rolled over so that he couldn't see his best friend anymore and shut his eyes tightly, doing his best to ignore Roy and the movie. He needed to stop thinking about Wally like that. There was too much going on right now, and what Wally needed the most was for everything to go back to being as normal as possible. He didn't need Dick messing up their friendship because he couldn't control his crazy hormones for longer than five minutes at a time. He still stubbornly fell asleep thinking about Wally though.
He dreamed about Wally too until something woke him up about six hours later.
Dick opened his eyes groggily and was momentarily caught off guard at the sight of his two friends both sitting upright from their positions on the floor. Roy and Wally had their heads turned and were staring at the door where the light from the hallway was spilling in through the cracks. Dick sat up as well and rubbed at the corners of his eyes, about to ask what was going on when he heard footsteps downstairs and muffled voices speaking rather loudly.
The TV was turned off now, so the room was almost pitch black. Even so, Dick could still make out the confused expressions on his friends' faces. What the heck was going on? They all listened silently, trying to pick out snippets of conversation.
Barry was talking, that much Dick could make out, but he wasn't talking to his wife. The Flash's voice was raised like he was angry, and it sounded like he was yelling at someone, though Dick couldn't hear a second person speaking.
Footsteps started coming up the stairs rapidly, and Dick's training kicked in immediately. His muscles tensed for a fight, and he felt around under Wally's bed for the utility belt that he'd stashed there just in case.
The doorknob turned then, and Barry opened the door, flooding the room with blinding light. Dick blinked quickly to adjust and was startled to see Wally's uncle standing there with a cell phone pressed to his ear and an absolutely livid expression on his face.
Wally was on his feet in a second, looking worried. Dick could understand. The last time he'd seen Wally's uncle this angry was…
"Wally," Barry said grimly, his jaw clenched so tightly that Dick could hear his teeth grinding together.
"Your father's missing."