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The Flash legacy does not start with a lightning strike.
It starts with the fumes of heavy water vapor, knocked over while Jay Garrick took a smoke break. The vapor activates his latent metagenes, and he’s fast, but he isn’t able to reach his top speeds until he later finds a connection with the Speed Force.
And even a century before, Max had been a messenger for the Blackfoot Clan, and after an ambush, in his shaman friend’s last breaths, he invoked an ancient tribal magic that gave the messenger superhuman speed.
It was Barry Allen whose powers were inadvertently caused by a lightning strike. S.T.A.R. Labs is hit and the strike causes the chemicals he was working with to splatter on him and mix together to give him his connection to the speed force, even if none of them would know about the speed force for a long time afterwards.
Jesse Chamber’s speed came from an equation, originally found by her father inscribed on an ancient Egyptian tomb.
Wally West’s powers did not come with a lightning strike specifically. Using the note he secretly gathered from his Aunt Iris’s boyfriend Barry, he recreated the chemical formula that caused the Flash’s powers and gave them to himself.
Ace’s connection to the speed force was sent back in time by his own future self, the last action that future version ever committed, to be bestowed upon his younger self.
Don and Dawn Allen were born with their father’s ability to use super speed, but it wasn’t until later in their life that they actually began to use it- mostly due to the fact that metahumans were exploited by the government of the future.
Most speedsters weren’t just born with the ability to use their speed, to tap into the speed force. All of their powers came to them long after they were born, years into their lives, when the speed force was ready for them. Even if they were born with it, the power was either only used later in their lifetime, or did not manifest until later in the timeline.
Bart Allen had been born intertwined with the speed force. His very being revolved around it, like it was a 3rd parent. There was no waiting until later in his lifetime, there was no manifesting it later, there was no chemical reaction or mathematical equation or ancient magic or a future self to send it back or heavy water vapor mixed with a metagene.
And there certainly was no lightning strike.
Bart Allen, within their 17 years of life, has come to the conclusion that there is no him without his speed. Bart Allen doesn’t exist if not for the speed force, even if the speed force was kind of out to get them a lot of the time. They’ve been stripped of their power enough times to understand that every hyper and chaotic part of themself is only there because they never had a chance to grow up without the speed force pressing down on top of them, holding them tight in its grasps.
The first time he didn’t have the speed force sitting on his shoulder, the world halted. Everything else turned . . . fast, instead of them being fast, and it was horrible because they couldn’t keep up. They hated it and it sucked and everyone else hated it too because they hated them not being fast like they should be. Bart was known for his speed, people had never seen him without it before that moment, and all of them hated how he was without it.
It didn’t take long after that for Bart to understand, even though it took far longer than it should have because of his power being gone. He still knows it now, what it means, why people looked at him the way they did at school when he was left with nothing but himself.
Bart knows now that they really aren’t anything without their speed. They aren’t fast, or hyper, or their special brand of annoying. They aren’t a hero, or a good student- they aren’t any of that, and he knows that a lot of people hate and dislike him for how he is with his speed, but he knows that at least some people like him for it compared to the whopping 0 that like him without it. They know that they are annoying and hard to deal with regardless, but Bart would at least like to be useful if people are having to put up with their presence.
Every other speedster can manage without their speed. Every other speedster has lived a big portion of their life without the speed force thrumming under their veins and connected to each and every action.
Bart didn’t get that. Impulse has been fast from day one, and without that speed, he’s nothing. Nothing at all. They know that. Some people have figured that out, but Bart won’t let anyone else figure that out. They won’t let people see just how useless they are without their speed.
Sluggish and slow days still find them, even when they have their powers, but Bart isn’t useful or worth the time when they aren’t fast, so they train themself to work through it. It doesn’t matter if he feels slow, if the world feels like it’s slipping through their fingertips, because people don’t want Bart because they’re slow. People want Bart because they are fast, because they can get the job done quickly, because the world needs someone fast to help them.
People don’t want someone slow.
(Bart wouldn’t want himself if he was slow, either.)