Chapter Text
9 years ago
Wally West had been the first person other than Bruce and Alfred to know his secret. The first to ever truly know him.
But that didn’t mean their relationship was perfect.
Tonight was a perfect example of that.
The ambush hadn’t exactly gone to plan, and the gang Dick had been tracking for months were currently sneering at the four teenage boys they had tied up (with a ridiculous amount of ease to Dick’s embarrassment).
All it took was for one of them to get knocked out cold, a gun shoved at his temple, for the rest of them to surrender.
“So, what do we have here?” Emanuel Escabedo grinned down at them. Even if he hadn’t done his research, Dick would have easily singled him out as the leader of the group. Tall, muscular, vocally intimidating.
Cold grey eyes stop when they land of him. “The bat couldn’t be bothered to face me himself, and sends his little runt in his place? I’m actually offended.”
A few of the other gang members chuckled behind him. Somehow, the cold greys of his eyes became even icier. “I can’t even imagine how much he’s going to regret that once I’m through with you”
He turned to look at the older boys. “Do Green arrow, Flash and Aquaman know you little ones are here too, or did you sneak out to help little Robin here? Surely you should know it’s far past your bed time.”
Dick saw Roy roll his eyes as he let out an audible groan. The “kiddy” jokes got old a long time ago.
“I could say the same for you Emanuel,” Dick said in his usual annoying Robin voice. “You’ve been very busy with the cartel these past few months, but it’s high time you learnt your ‘elixirs’ aren’t welcome in Gotham”.
Escabedo reveals his perfect pearly teeth as he smiles mockingly at him. Well, it was comforting to know all the drugs this imbecile has been selling has allowed him to afford a good oral-hygiene routine. “The Escabedo cartel has been operating in Gotham’s Coventry district long before you were even born, little birdie. We’ve been feeding the starving for decades now. Did the bat even think before sending a child to interfere when we are stronger than we have ever been?”
“I wouldn’t stress about anything concerning my relationship with Batman. We are phenomenally in sync. It’s a family thing. A concept I’m sure you’re well acquainted with,” Dick smiled innocently as he head-gestured to the man leaning on the door frame on the far side of the room.
Escabedo visibly stilled when he released Dick knew who his brother was, pinning Dick with another bone-chilling stare. “You’ve been doing your homework, haven’t you?”
Even with the mask still on, Dick managed to glare back.
“Despite this little ‘hiccup’ you’ve caused in our plans tonight, you should be glad to know I’m actually very happy with your surprise visit tonight Robin. Thanks to you, I’ve now gained leverage over not one, but four justice league members.”
Dick felt his heart rate speed up unwittingly as the man’s gaze slid away from him to his teammates.
“We’ve been evading you and the bat for years now, but that doesn’t mean we never considered the possibility of coming across other leaguers, specifically those with unnatural abilities”
He walks over to Roy and gives the archer an unsettling smile.
“Archer,” he mumbled. “or more accurately, human, I should say.”
Roy only replied by giving Escabedo his signature scowl, keeping all traces of fear off his expression. Dick would definitely be giving him some kind of reward for that later.
Well, that is if they manage to survive until then of course.
It didn’t matter though, because the man didn’t seem interested in him at all, judging by the way he was eyeing the second oldest boy in the room, who was still unconscious from the blow to the head he had suffered when he blew their cover.
One of the men behind Garth grabs a fistful of ink-dark hair and forcefully yanks his head up.
“Atlantean,” he purrs, almost sounding impressed. “Very fascinating. I know Dulmacher has been wanting one of these for a very long time. How much do you reckon he’ll pay to get Aquaman’s precious protégé for one of his little dissections?”
BANG
Everyone’s attention snaps to the second youngest boy in the room, where the pillar he was tied to only moments ago had quite literally exploded, sending tiny wooden shards hurtling all over the room.
It was short-lived victory, as four men immediately pounced on Wally once they realised the teen was free from his bindings, effectively pinning each of his limbs to the ground.
Escabedo gave his nastiest smile yet when he looked at Wally, who was struggling against the four men keeping him down. He was a mess. His suit had been ripped in multiple places, exposing the skin beneath it and his face was glistening from the blood running from his nose – something that happened every time he tried to vibrate his molecules.
“Oh yes,” he droned, looking at Wally like he was a million-dollar cheque. “Kid flash. The jewel of the evening. Honestly, the demand for you in the black market is so high, I genuinely can’t decide what to do with you. Do you have any idea how much dough I could get from just a single strand of your hair? It contains all of that lovely DNA of yours. DNA that can be extracted, multiplied, weaponized . . .” he trailed off, watching in fascination as Wally’s glare hardened.
Quicker than anyone else in the room could process, the speedster managed to slip a leg out of the men’s grips, using it to kick another restraining him in the mouth. The man was thrown back from the force of the hit with a cry, using a hand to cover his broken jaw.
After that small victory, Wally’s struggling intensified ten-fold, his newfound determination further alarming the three remaining men trying to keep him pinned. Dick watched with wide eyes, hoping that somehow his teammate could hear the commentary of the fight in his head.
If he would just pin the biggest man on the right in a headlock with his legs, he’d finally have enough space to flip over onto his back and actually see what he was doing.
Before Dick could actually say anything, a thick arm suddenly curled around his waist from behind and yanked him back. On instinct, the boy wonder prepared to snap his head back in hopes to break Escabedo’s nose but found himself freezing in place when the cold tip of a gun was pressed against his temple.
“I’ve heard your leader over here is smarter than the lot of you put together,” he drawled as he pulled Dick to stand up with him, the intervention causing Wally to falter. The other men took advantage of the hesitation, all three of them managing to successfully wrestle the speedster until his back was fully pinned down to the floor.
But Wally didn’t seem concerned with that at all. Instead, he was staring at Escobedo’s hand with wide, frightened eyes.
Dick almost sighed. It seemed that they’d be needing another pep talk about revealing vulnerability to your captors. Everyone in the room could read Wally’s emotions like an open book.
“Such intelligence deserves better than to be splattered all over an old storehouse floor, am I right?”
The terror suddenly turned to panic, and Wally started trying to push the man on his torso off.
“I swear to god if you touch him-”
“I don’t want to kill him,” Escabedo interrupted softly. “There’s been an offer to exchange this little bird for an incredibly large amount of money. Enough to expand my empire to China.”
The sound of the safety lock of the gun being switched off echoed throughout the silent room, but that’s not why Dick suddenly felt cold.
“But if you do not behave,” the man said like he was scolding a naughty child, “I will not hesitate to kill put him down. I can get that money from elsewhere. But I must admit, my methods would probably be a more merciful fate than whatever Deathstroke the Terminator has planned for him”.
There was another tense silence as Escabedo stared down at Wally, waiting to see whether or not the speedster would try to rebel again.
He didn’t.
Not with Dick’s life on the line.
“Very good,”
Escabedo dropped Dick down next to the pillar again before grabbing the walkie-talkie on his belt. He told someone that they “are ready for it” in Spanish. A few minutes later, another man wearing a white lab coat and mask entered the basement, heading straight towards where the other men had successfully managed to tie Wally up again.
When Dick saw what the man was holding, he started to lose control of his calm façade.
Wally, who couldn’t keep calm to save his life, (literally), didn’t even flinch as the man crouched down beside him, unpacked some of his equipment and began cutting a strand of his bright red hair into a cylinder-shaped container.
Roy started yelling, and Garth who had seemingly just awoken, watched in bewilderment as he tried to figure out what the hell was happening.
“Kid fight back! Vibrate your molecules again NOW!”
The Atlantean immediately managed to connect the dots when the man grabbed another container and traded his scissors for a scalpel, prompting Dick to start yelling at Wally too.
“FIGHT BACK! DON’T LET THEM TAKE IT! ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?! FIGHT BACK! THAT’S AN ORDER!”
But Wally didn’t.
He just stared at the gun still in Escobedo’s hand as the scientist pulled off one of his gloves, and started skinning the back of his hand.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? GET OFF HIM!” Garth had joined the screaming, but even with all three of them shouting at him, Wally didn’t make a single move to stop the man from taking the samples.
Instead, he just squeezed his eyes closed, whether it was because of the pain or just the shame of being tortured in front of his teammates Dick couldn’t tell.
The gun was pressed back against Dick’s head, causing the boy wonder to immediately stop what his fingers were doing behind his back.
“Do you think I’m completely stupid? Keep tampering with the rope and I’ll shoot that one in the face” he gestured to Roy.
Dick reluctantly let go of the bindings he had been trying to untie and watched helplessly as the lab coat guy scaped a small scape of his best friend’s freshly peeled skin into a container.
Dick had to physically stop himself from tearing up from the pure terror he felt when he saw the next tool the man pulled up,
a pair of extraction forceps.
“Open his mouth”.
Two men crowded up against Wally again, one holding his temples firmly while the other pried his jaw open.
Roy and Garth’s yelling intensified, Wally just sat there unresistingly as some freak scientist was about to pull a molar out of his mouth, and Dick, with a gun pressed to his head, watched it all in horror.
The reality of his failure had chosen that exact minute to begin dawning on him. He was the leader, he was supposed to keep his team in line, to keep them safe.
How had everything gone so wrong?
More importantly, why wouldn’t Wally just fight back?!
Everyone in the room suddenly flinched at the sound of glass shattering. Dick felt his heart flutter with a cursed mixture of relief and dread when he saw the ever-familiar figure of his mentor burst into the room, immediately taking out the two closest men to him.
There were cries of alarm and fear, and Dick quickly used the distraction to finally escape his ropes and kick the gun out of Escabedo’s hand.
When Batman started heading towards him, he frantically shook his head and pointed to the group of men still surrounding Wally. “I’m fine! Get Kid Flash!”
Dick took all the rage and panic and fear that had been accumulating within him the entire evening, taking it out on the men restraining his best friend the second Bruce shoved them off Wally.
The rest of the fight was a blur.
It ended with every scumbag in the storehouse tied up, waiting for the GSPD, along with every form of DNA they had taken from Wally destroyed. Thankfully, Bruce’s timing meant they didn’t actually pull the tooth out of Wally’s mouth yet.
Dick shivered to think what would have happened if Batman had arrived just a few seconds later.
Bruce looked them over briefly, his gaze lingering over Wally’s skinned hand, and instructed them all into the Batmobile.
The drive was dead silent and awkward beyond belief, and Bruce was practically seething in anger.
The first thing that happened when they arrived at the Batcave was an individual checkup for all of them. Garth got an icepack for his head while the rest of them got their wounds disinfected and bandaged.
“What happened?” Bruce practically growled when he was certain they were all safe and relatively unharmed.
Everyone looked at Dick, who fought the urge to physically cringe.
The joys of being team leader.
“At approximately 6:30 pm I sent kid flash to scan a perimeter of the storehouse to ensure there were no patrolling-”
“No,” Bruce interrupted. “I don’t want the report. I want to know why you allowed your team to get close enough to get captured, when your entire mission was meant to be recon only.”
“It’s not his fault,” Everyone whipped their heads to Garth. “I was the one who was spotted and captured first. They threatened to kill me if everyone else didn’t surrender. It’s my fault”.
Batman glared at him consideringly, before turning that terrifying gaze to Wally.
“And you, why didn’t you run the second you vibrated out of your bindings the first time?”
Even with his mask still on, Dick could see a pink flush bloom on Wally’s cheeks. “I couldn’t just run! My team-”
“Should have been left behind. You know better than anyone of the dangers of meta-human DNA being distributed into the black market.”
“But-”
“You should never have even allowed them to touch you, let alone-”
“I didn’t-”
“The cloning process of DNA only takes a few hours. You couldn’t possibly hope to-”
“THEY WERE GOING TO KILL ROB!”
Everyone in the room stared, completely stunned that kid Flash had just screamed at Batman.
Even Batman himself seemed beyond words at that moment.
Dick couldn’t take it anymore, he shoved Wally back with an angry push.
“I told you to fight back! I ordered you to! And you just sat there and let them-”
This time it was Wally’s turn to shove him back. “Are you serious?! Do you actually think I would have done exactly what he told me not to do while he had a gun pressed against your head?”
“It’s your job to follow instructions! My instructions! I’m the team leader! If I say run away and don’t let the crazy dealers steal your DNA then you do it!”
“What the hell are you saying?! So I should have just left you to die?!”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying! You had a choice, you either choose to save me or you put millions of people at risk from whatever drugs or weapons they make from recreating your powers! How do you not get that? You’re so selfish! How could you even think about saving me when you have the safety of millions at risk? That sort of thing could change the world as we know it!”
“That’s enough!”
Kid Flash and Robin, who had become extremely close in proximity were suddenly pushed away from each other by Batman, who was glowering at his sidekick.
But that wasn’t new. He was always mad at Dick these days.
Dick took a deep breath and turned away, which was an even worse option when he saw the way Roy and Garth were looking at him.
It felt like everyone was turning on him.
“The mission always comes first” he parroted, turning back to his mentor. “You’ve drilled that into my head from the very beginning. Clearly, Kid Flash doesn’t understand that, and as his leader, it’s my job to make him understand. What are you so angry about?”
He was going to get the biggest ass-whooping for talking to Bruce like that in front of people later, but currently, Dick couldn’t care less.
He only felt his simmering anger drain away when he turned to his best friend again, who was looking at him like he couldn’t recognise him with red-rimmed, shiny eyes.
The sight made Dick’s chest feel like something was ripping.
Wally was crying.
He just made Wally cry.
The speedster hastily wiped his face, looking embarrassed and angry at the same time.
“The mission always comes first. Got it.”
“Wally no, I didn’t mean-”
“I have to go back to Central. Flash is probably wondering where I am.”
It wasn’t the first time Wally had run out of the Batcave because he was emotionally overloaded, except this time, it wasn’t because Batman had terrified him.
It was because Robin had devastated him.
“The mission always comes first”
Those cursed words echoed in his head as Dick followed Wally into the Conference room, the memory of their childhood argument flashing through his mind.
Part of him was shocked Wally even remembered that.
The other part was even more shocked he just used it against Dick.
But he knew he couldn’t be mad.
He had absolutely no right. It was a completely valid response.
Personal issues had no place here, they were heroes first.
The world needed them.
Dick didn’t know what he was expecting when Bruce called him in, but it certainly wasn’t this.
He stared at the holographic map that had been blown to full size above the watchtower monitor, studying the unexplained tremors on it.
“When did they start?” Tim asked.
“We’re not sure,” Barbara sighed, “After a close examination, the radiation signatures show that they’ve been there for a while, but have only significantly strengthened this morning. If it continues to increase at this rate, we could be looking at nuclear level diffraction.”
Despite the dooming speech, Wallace looked bored. Dick suspected the kid wasn’t stoked with the bats and the speedster collab. The second he had walked into the room, he had been engaged in a glaring standoff with Robin.
It was almost unnatural to see a Kid Flash and a Robin not get along. Although considering Dick’s own personal predicament, maybe it wasn’t.
“I don’t know; this looks more like a Bat problem, seeing as almost half of those tremors are in Gotham. What did you call us in for?”
Barbara sighed irritably. “Yes, and the other half of the signatures are either from Central and Keystone, both cities that are clearly marked as your turf kid flash, and after examining the damage done by the radiation in these sights thus far, we’ve made a distinct connection to the speed force.”
The Flash family went oddly still, their discomfort impossible to miss. Although he tried to be subtle about it, Dick still noticed when Wally’s hand reached for Bart’s head beside him, pushing him against his shoulder in a small comforting gesture.
Barry looked uncharacteristically serious, turning to face his fellow speedsters. “Max and I have been discussing the recent disturbances in the speed force, and we’ve decided it’s essential each and every one of us have an assessment of our temporal energies. The source of our power is a gift to us, and it is our responsibility to protect it and the world from it. To be able to do that, you all need to be okay.” He gives them all a very serious glower, as if he was hinting at something deeper, but didn’t say anything further.
“Wally. You’re first” Barry jerked his head toward Max, and watched as his nephew begrudgingly step away from Bart, who suddenly stopped him by grabbing his wrist. The younger speedster ignored his cousin’s questioning gaze and started walking towards Max. “I want to go first.”
Aside from a perplexed expression, Barry had nothing to offer in response, and they all watched as Max and Bart disappeared into an adjoining conference room.
And just like that, Dick, who thought his mood couldn’t possibly sour any further, had to suppress a sigh when the monitor announced Red Hood’s arrival at Watchtower. He pulled Tim out of the way moments before the doors were kicked open, watching with a spike of alarm as Jason walked in with blood smattered all over his suit and dripping off a gash on his forehead. If he was in any pain, he didn’t show it, striding towards Bruce with his classic poker face.
“This better be important. I was in the middle of something.”
“Doing what? Slaughtering another crime mob?” Damian quipped sarcastically.
Instead of snipping back like he usually would when Damian got smart with him, Jason gave him a steel-cold glare, unnerving more than a few people in the room with his hostility.
Dick felt his insides burn when that unforgiving gaze landed on Wally, who was looking at Jason with a blank face- no, almost blank face. He looked nervous . . .but also kind of dazed at the same time. The longer Dick stared at him, the more evident it became Wally looked like he was seeing through Jason.
“Wally” Dick couldn’t help but say sternly, almost desperate to sever whatever connection that had ignited. His best friend looked at him, his expression just as desolate as before.
Then Wally doubled over and violently gagged, vomiting on the floor in front of them all. Damian audibly yelped and jumped away, narrowly avoiding being puked on. There was a stream of gasps and sharp questions of concern from everyone in the room as they moved back from the mess. Wally didn’t look like he heard any of them, only moving the back of his trembling hand to cover his mouth and staring at the floor with glossy eyes.
Jason’s unceremonious “Jesus Fuck, what’s wrong with him?!” managed to help Dick tear his eyes away from Wally’s face, and to the floor, causing him to gasp with horror.
It wasn’t vomit. It was blood.
A wave of nausea suddenly washed over Dick as he took in the bucket’s worth of that sickening red substance, mixed with coagulated chunks of dark red flesh. It looked like Wally’s body had just tried to digest his own stomach before spewing it out.
Almost everyone else was trying to get some kind of response out of Wally, who only continued to shiver, his expression tainted in despair. Barry gently guided his nephew back, whispering something to him in a hushed tone.
“Get him in the med room, now” Bruce all but growled. He sounded angry.
Wallace was still staring at the mess, his stature as still and rigid as a plank of wood. Many of the other speedsters in the room were doing the same thing, trying and failing to comprehend what just happened.
“It’s fine, I’ll get it” Batgirl assured everyone. She reached for a small glass vile in her belt and carefully took a sample of the bloody substance before handing it to Tim and she continued cleaning. Red Robin didn’t hesitate, wordlessly stalking straight to the laboratory to begin an examination.
The watchtower monitors wired up, announcing the arrival of two other speedsters. It still amazed Dick – that the fastest members of the Justice League are always the ones to be notoriously late.
Whatever snarky remark Jesse Quick had prepared to snip at Wally died in her throat once she saw him properly as he was escorted past her, then to the half-cleaned mess on the floor.
“Geez Wally, what the hell happened?!”
Dick left it to someone else to explain, instead focusing on what Bruce was muttering to Barbara.
“I’ve had my suspicions that the situation may be more serious than I thought. This just about confirms it.”
“What are you talking about?”
Dick stared at them both inquisitively, anticipating an answer they were both unwilling to give.
His family’s unwillingness to cooperate with him immediately triggered him to put his guard up. Something was wrong, and they didn’t want to tell him.
Something they only do when they think a bat family member was going to be emotionally compromised and difficult to control if they knew the truth.
“Robin, a word”.
Bruce left to talk to Damian, sliding past Dick without a second glance. Irritated, Nightwing chose to crouch down to his ex-girlfriend, helping her clean up.
Dick was by far one of the best detectives out of all the Bats. But his family, in all its fractured fragmented whole, in all its complexity, was made of unforgiving liars and manipulators. Damn good ones, all of them taught by the very best. When it came to them needing to interrogate each other, it felt like a never-ending loop of madness until someone gave up.
And a Bat giving up was extraordinarily rare. Practically non-existent with how stubborn they all are.
“What was he talking about? Is something wrong with the speed force? Is that why Wally’s sick?”
Barbara, all too clever, already knew what he was trying to do.
“I can’t say anything right now, ok? You need to trust me on this. Go check up on him, see if he’s ok. This . . .,” she gestured to the mess, “isn’t normal”.
Dick sighed, but listened and started heading over to the med bay. She was right. It wasn’t normal.
But Wally wasn’t normal.
Who were they to judge a meta-human’s physiology?
This could be nothing.
Or it could not be nothing.
Who was he fooling. Obviously this wasn’t normal. Something was definitely wrong with Wally.
He bumped into Barry on the way there, who kindly informed him that Leslie was looking over Wally and doing some testing.
“Leslie? I didn’t realise she was here today”
Barry looked a little sheepish. “She wasn’t. I went down and grabbed her from Gotham”
Oh right. Speedster.
Sometimes Dick still wasn’t used to all the things they could do.
“Is he okay?”
Barry’s little smile faded.
“We don’t know yet. We think so, Wally’s a tough cookie. He’s survived much worse than this.”
There was no doubt about that.
“Is he alone in there?” Dick asked.
“Yeah, he’d probably like it if you were there to keep him company” The smile was back, and Dick tried not to lean into Barry’s touch when he laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.
Flash was suddenly gone, leaving Dick to pep talk himself into entering the room.
This was absolutely ridiculous. He had no reason to be nervous. He and Wally had known each other forever. They had fought countless times since Dick was ten and made up every single time without fault. They were so close, they practically owned a part of the other’s soul.
And Wally’s confession . . .
their last conversation kept threatening to replay in his mind, only to be stopped by Dick doing everything in his power to block it out.
He hadn’t had any time to even think about what Wally had just revealed to him. If he allowed himself to process it all, Dick would have to look back on every memory they had together. Every touch, every fight, every beautiful childhood memory they’ve shared, and rethink it all.
There was no way he was ready to do that yet, despite all the weird thoughts he’s been having about Wally himself as of late.
Even so, he knew it was the last thing that should be on his mind. Wally had always been there for Dick.
When his apartment had been blown up, Wally had sprinted over and broken every bone in his hands trying to find Dick in the rubble. Without even asking, he took Dick back to Keystone and told him to stay the night. That was only one of the millions of times his best friend had been there when no one else had been.
Wally was always there for Dick,
And now it was Dick’s turn to be there for Wally.
Wally didn’t need any of this unnecessary drama. He needed someone he could trust. Someone to lean on.
He needed his best friend.
Dick took a deep breath, pulling himself together, before opening the door.
He didn’t see Damian coming down the hallway, holding a meta-human collar in his hands.