Chapter Text
Wally’s been glitching in place for what feels like an eternity.
He’d been one with the Speedforce, drifting along the timestreams and through realities, and then suddenly, he was here. Back in his body, back in his brain, back in his suit and ready to run another day. His eyes are shut and he wonders where he is. Is he back where he was last, or somewhere entirely different?
He opens his eyes and looks around, seeing a strange room and green light surrounding him. He tries to take a step forward, but as soon as he lifts his foot and shifts his weight, he’s right back where he started.
“What?” He asks himself, and he takes a quick step forward.
He makes it this time, and he relaxes for a moment, but then he blinks and he’s back where he was.
“Reality shifting?” He murmurs, his brain working to figure out what’s happening to him.
He blinks and resets a few more times, timing the gaps between resets. The times aren’t linear, however. Sometimes the times stretch a little longer than the last, sometimes the resets are fast, and through them all, Wally can hear a low rumble and groan coming from the hall at the side of the room.
It sounds like a massive stone moving along the ground, grinding as it goes.
After a few resets, the gaps are long enough that Wally can actually start to move around properly.
He examines the light surrounding him. It doesn’t give him much room, only two steps out from him on all sides, caging him in. When he tries to touch it, something repels his hands. It doesn’t matter how fast he moves, the forcefield simply stops him in place.
Wally frowns, the world resetting almost as soon as he makes the expression.
And that’s what’s happening, he realizes. It’s not just him who’s resetting. He can hear the slightest hitch in the grinding of the stones, right before he opens his eyes.
The whole world is resetting.
Which means… What?
He strains his ears, trying to listen for any other indication of what might be happening outside the room he’s stuck in.
And distantly, he hears a cry.
The world resets, and Wally finds himself right back in the middle of his cage, eyes closed and listening as the stone starts to grind again.
But now he knows that someone else is here. It’s not just him. He’s not alone here, and that means that maybe whoever is here with him can find a way to get him out, if he can’t get out on his own.
He keeps trying, testing each part of his cage methodically, corner to corner and edge to edge between resets, but the cage appears to be completely impenetrable. He’s able to search for longer and longer, seconds stretching out to half a minute before he starts to hear more from the hall.
A metallic screech sounds just before the reset, and Wally can hear something underneath it, a cutoff cry that is pained and all-too human. Then the screech goes longer, then longer still, and finally there’s a beat of silence after the metal.
And then there’s a splash and a horrible scream.
Wally only hears it once, but once is enough. He knows whoever is in this place with him is in pain.
The next sound is a whoosh as things fly through the air, and the world resets a few times there, one whoosh, then two, then finally three, and then a man sprints into the room like hell is on his heels.
Wally meets his eyes for a fraction of a second, and then a sword shoots out from the wall and stabs the man through the gut.
“No!” Wally cries, but the man doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t even look down at his wound. He simply shuts his eyes and crumples to the ground to lie there, motionless.
The world resets.
And while Wally is still grappling with what he just saw, with the realization that every reset, every time darkness rushed over his sight, this man has been dying, there’s a sudden loud wail that rises even over the sound of grinding stone.
The world resets.