I work at a tree lot and today, I was talking to a friend who works with me. He's one of my closest friends' little brother and I've known him for years, but today was the first time that I realised how much he looked exactly like Wally. And god, he sure does eat like a speedster. At least he unintentionally reminded me to update, but I apparently sell trees with Wally's doppelganger, and it was frustrating me all day because after having that thought, all I wanted to do was get home and write some more.
On that note, I think this chapter might be satisfying to a few of you. Hope you enjoy!
Wally was pissed.
He had never known how frustrating it would be to not be able to touch his best friend when his best friend needed a touch to ground him the most. He had always taken small moments like that for granted, and right then there was nothing that Wally could do and nothing that he could have done. He had been forced to sit back and watch as Dick got sick on the floor, shook and shivered and cried and muttered nonsense and didn't look at all like himself. Wally really didn't know who he had been looking at.
There was something wrong with Dick. Wally knew that much was certain. But he had been so angry with Dick before, angry that Dick was ignoring him and then depressed that Dick was ignoring them and then guilty because Dick was no longer ignoring him, was pissed at him because he had caused someone's death, that he had paid no attention. He had paid no attention, creating the one thing that he probably feared the most.
He was such an ignorant hypocrite.
Wally was at a loss - that was, until the white coats entered. The nurses. A bulky man and a stone-faced woman holding a pill bottle. Dick stilled for a second, but then he started bucking, moving, rolling to the corner of the room, murmuring and whimpering for Wally. And Wally could only watch, gaping, protectively moving in front of his best friend as if that would do anything. It seemed to, at first. Dick seemed to physically calm down, no longer twitching, only gulping in air as if every breath would be his last. Until the nurses moved unfalteringly through Wally. That was when Dick started to panic, breathing out Wally's name, and the female nurse stilled disapprovingly. The man looked at her.
"Maybe we should increase the dosage."
The woman scowled. "He was due for it, anyway."
And Wally was even angrier. He felt like he was on fire with fury, and he yelled at them, going so far as to try and grab for the man's coat as he moved to hold Dick down. The woman shook three pretty little tablets into her palm and multiple larger pills of assorted colours.
"Stop!" Wally screeched, because that wasn't right, but to no avail. He didn't know what was in that medication, but he would bet a pretty penny that it was nothing good. He would bet another pretty penny that it had something to do with Dick's sporadic behaviour as the acrobat pressed himself desperately against the floor, as if the ground would suddenly give way and swallow him up.
Wally wondered briefly if Dick wanted to disappear as much as Wally wanted to appear.
Wally could only watch as they forced Dick down and held his jaw so tightly that Wally didn't doubt there would be bruises. He was standing behind the adults, could only see the bony bend of their spines and Dick's bare feet as he kicked uselessly, but he could still hear the gurgle of Dick's mouth as the pills and tablets were forced down. He felt sick, as if he were the one getting pills shoved down his throat, because like hell if his stomach wasn't swirling in nausea and a lump wasn't forming in his airway.
He thought that Dick might have tucked the pills beneath his tongue, behind his teeth, like he did many missions before. But when the woman stepped back, Wally could see that he hadn't as she dragged Dick up by his jaw and yanked open his mouth, examining every crevice, before abruptly dropping him. He crumbled in a moaning mess as the adults left the room with a loud bang of the door.
When Wally shakily stepped forward, the room suddenly more blurry than it had been before, and called Dick's name softly, all he got in response was a traumatised gasp of air as Dick squeezed his eyes shut and curled in tighter on himself.
There was nothing that he could do to help Dick right then. If anything, Dick would be more horrified at Wally's presence than anything else. He wasn't right in the mind. Wally knew that then. His best friend was ill.
But he could try to fix it. Even if it was only trying.
That was why Wally stormed back to the house. He didn't know what he intended to do, but his grief and his thoughts occupied only by memories of the Dick he knew from before sent him hurtling back into the Allen household within seconds, but not where he normally would appear. What faced him wasn't the dining room table, or the kitchen cabinets. It was his old hand-me-down television set from his late grandfather. It was his bed with its still unmade sheets, as if everything were perfectly good and normal, but all it gave Wally was the echo of a haunted feeling.
He hadn't dared venture back into his room. He couldn't handle the thought that everything might have been packed away and forgotten, or sold, or worse. Worse like the way that it actually sat, as if Wally were about to burst through the front door at any given moment and say something witty that Barry could actually hear before racing into his room, where Dick would already be sitting with a bowl of chips and an hour the way into their impromptu Modern Warfare binge.
Everything was just how he had left it, when he had still had the intention to go back.
Wally was spinning around slowly, taking in the entire state of the room, when he heard the scrape of something sliding against worn carpet and the soft thunk of an object being nudged by his foot. Startled, he backpedaled quickly into his dresser, his elbow colliding harshly with the small round knob of his underwear drawer. The mirror leaning precariously on top rattled.
The object sitting innocuously on the ground was an old game that he had dug up from the depths of his closet the last time that Dick had been over. Resident Evil 6, a gift from the billion-dollar acrobat for Wally's 11th birthday. Wally clearly remembered his excitement that day, when Dick had shyly handed it over as a peace offering because they had an argument the day before over something that Wally couldn't remember. Wally hadn't even questioned where an almost 10 year old had gotten it, and it was the first time that they had stayed up all night playing video games, where Wally pretended not to be scared and Dick pretended not to notice that Wally was pretending not to be scared.
And he had just touched it.
Speaking of which, he had also touched his dresser. Jumping back from that, Wally gave it a good once over. It had been a hand-me-down from Wally's grandfather, as had most things that Wally owned, since Wally's father hadn't cared enough to buy Wally actual belongings. Cautiously, skin radiating with excitement, heart thump-thumping in his chest, Wally opened the top drawer, relishing the feel of the cold metal knob sliding under the pads of his fingers. He reached his arm inside.
His hopes were dashed when his knuckles hit the bottom of the drawer, and when Wally peered into it with his eyes, he could clearly see the neatly folded shirts that his hand had gone straight through. Desperate for a touch of fabric, he swept his arm across the entire bottom of the drawer, and was rewarded when his fingers brushed the thread of wool at the very back. He quickly pulled out the deeply buried shirt, only to reveal the ugly handknit sweater that Iris had tried, and failed, to make appealing.
Hand-me-down, check. Homemade, check. Narrowing his eyes at the rest of his drawer, Wally cradled the sweater close to his chest. 'No' to everything bought.
He gently folded the sweater again and put it on his bed covers, which he couldn't touch, never thinking that he would ever have liked the itchy unravelling wool that had been Iris' Christmas creation. It was mind-bogglingly cliche.
If Wally still had superspeed, his limbs would have been vibrating in excitement. As it was, he was still shaking, his palms curiously sweaty despite the fact that Wally truly doubted that he had any working sweat glands, or sweat glands at all - maybe it went with the illusion of being solid. His heart was in his throat and he was so enthusiastic that he air-raced over and down the stairs, the memory of how his feet used to pound on the carpet reverberating in his ears, as he forgot that he could simply teleport to the ground floor. He burst into the kitchen. Barry was there, making a sandwich, and Iris had Legally Blonde turned all the way up in the living room.
He decided that there could be no harm in talking to himself. He needed some way to get rid of his energy, after all. "Guys! I can touch stuff! Isn't this freaking great?" he exclaimed as he skidded in front of the television, pretend-blocking Iris' view. "I almost forgot what metal feels like, and it's so smooth it's like, soft, or something. Have you guys ever noticed that? And dude, Iris, I have never been so grateful for an ugly cliche sweater in my entire life. You know, either itchy doesn't exist for dead nerves, or I'm special. I'm going with special. Makes me feel better about myself."
Wally didn't so much as pause before he transitioned into explaining away his plan. He was still angry, there was no denying that. He was happy that he could touch objects, but his happiness for feeling a sensation again was overrun by gladness that being able to move items made his plan to help his best friend a hundred times easier.
Dick had tried to get people to believe that Wally was real, and ended up in an insane asylum. It was Wally's turn to give it a shot.
"So, I'm going to start with my plan now, alright?" he said loudly, looking over in Barry's direction. "Soon enough, you're going to be making a second sandwich for me as a peace offering. Put it on my grave. Maybe I'll smell it or something," he continued plainly. Barry didn't react. Wally began walking upstairs, practically shouting, as if he could be heard over the sound of Reese Witherspoon being laughed at in a bunny costume. "Ready, set, action."
"Step 1," he narrated as he hopped into his room. "Collect necessary supplies." And so it went. Wally literally bulldozed his way around recklessly for whatever it was that smacked him in the face or caused him to trip. The pencil that he got for his birthday in German class, Resident Evil 6, his sweater, Barry's old tuxedo, curtains from his grandmother, the Solar System diorama that he made in sixth grade, and so-on-so-forth. Each and every one were gifts to Wally specifically, or made by him personally. They were things that belonged to Wally by permission of someone else, things that Wally had owned while he had been alive. He dumped all of them outside of his door, continuously poking his head onto the stairs to check that no one was walking up them.
"Step 2: Arrange them accordingly," and when he was done with that, all of the ragtag objects organised into a neat mess, "Step 3: Summon the adults." He grabbed the cheap eagle trophy that he had gotten for Student of the Week in seventh grade, examined its flaking bad golden paint job, traced his outlined name on the plaque, and chucked it from the stair balcony.
It shattered on the hardwood behind the living room couch. Iris yelped and spun around, staring at the broken shards with wide eyes as Barry raced over. "What-" he began, before pausing. The two of them were silent as Wally's uncle moved to gently pick up the one part of the trophy still intact - its base, where Wally had traced his name moments before.
Wally's heart thump-thumped in anticipation.
"Did you-" started Barry as he turned to Iris. She shook her head before he finished.
"It wasn't anywhere near the railing. I kept it on Wally's desk," she said, voice admiringly steady though her eyes were wide with fright. Barry didn't hesitate a second in climbing the stairs.
"Who's there?" he demanded loudly, as Iris whispered to be careful. Wally shuffled nervously, holding his breath, feeling as if he were about to burst, as Barry reached the second floor.
The man completely froze as his eyes fell onto what Wally had laid out. Wally hurried to fill in the gap. "I'll clean it up later," he said weakly.
Barry began backing up, the opposite reaction from what Wally had intended, but wasn't able to get very far until he bumped into his wife, who had noticed from the lack of action that there probably wasn't an immediate threat. "God, God, Iris, somebody is trying- there's-" he gasped, and Wally was alarmed to see tears in his uncle's eyes. Iris was, too, though Wally couldn't decide whether that was from Barry's tears or from Wally's display.
"'Dick'," she said, reading the large letters that had been formed out of the random objects from Wally's room. She was trembling. Barry said nothing, just leaned heavily against the railing as if he were about to puke onto the living room below.
"Please don't call Ghostbusters," Wally hurried, out of ideas on what to say, even though he wasn't required to say anything at all.
Wally knew that he was definitely related to Iris when she said, "Out of all words to be spelled out on our floor, of course it's that one." Barry gave a weird huff of breath that Wally really couldn't identify as any particular emotion as the man hung his head, fingers clutching tightly at the wooden rail. He squeezed his eyes shut before finally pushing back from the stairs and turning back to Wally's creation. Barry was breathing heavily.
"Wally?" he asked hesitantly, and Wally was staring with apt suspense for a few more seconds before realising that he should probably have been doing something. He practically dived into the pile of objects as Barry began to turn away to look at Iris. The two adults jumped as Wally's possessions suddenly bent out of pattern, seemingly on their own. Iris finally started to cry as Barry ignored the liquid trickling down his own cheeks for favour of searching in vain around the room. He stepped forward and picked up Iris' sweater, rubbing his thumb over the wool. Iris cried harder.
Wally kneeled forward and took the other sleeve of the sweater that had been laying limp, lifting it from the ground. Barry's breath stuttered. "Wally? Jesus, Wally, are you really there? Oh Christ, I'm so sorry, so, so sorry."
"It's okay," Wally soothed, though it really wasn't.
There was silence for a few moments, the sweater quaking with Barry's shudders, whether from shock or fear Wally didn't know, until the speedster slowly stood up. "I need to talk to Bruce," he said as he passed Iris. At the top of the stairs, he pressed his ring and transformed into his costume before speeding away.
Wally quickly envisioned the nearest zeta tube and appeared in the alleyway just as Barry crashed into a trashcan. He briefly wondered if he should have found out a quick way to say goodbye to Iris, just in case she started talking to herself thinking that Wally was there, but figured that there was no time as Barry stepped into the telephone booth. Wally followed, and seconds later Barry was stepping out of the zeta tube into the Watchtower with an intent look on his face.
"Flash, 04," the machine droned. Wally watched, still perched beneath the beam, as the few faces within immediate hearing range turned their heads to watch in silent anticipation. One of the few faces included Bruce, who stilled in his movements of shuffling files in front of a large computer to watch Barry approach. Wally figured, by everyone's suddenly quietness, that Barry's presence was unusual, and Wally winced thinking about how he must have been the cause of that.
"We need to talk," Barry said sternly, almost coldly. He must have been trying to steel his features in order to force Bruce to hear him out before making a judgement on Barry's news. That was when Wally decided to step out from beneath the tube, intending to eavesdrop on the oncoming conversation.
If he had thought that the room had been awkwardly still before, it was nothing compared to when the machine belatedly declared, "Kid Flash, B03."
With the half of his brain not completely shocked, Wally figured that the computer must have been able to easier pick up on his lingering, probably disconnected, particles when they weren't mingled with other easier, discernible, connected particles. That particular fact would have been far more useful earlier.
Bruce took Barry's stare in stride and addressed Red Tornado, who was in private conversation with Dinah on the other side of the room, by saying, "The computer's glitching."
Barry held out his palm as Red Tornado started to move. "No, stay. That's what we need to talk about."