Work Text:
The funeral was sad.
Wally, heart aching, dazes in and out. His vision blurs between his reality and the endless that pull in millions of different directions, but he always ends up here.
He sees flashes of it — the procession in, his old teammates becoming his pallbearers. The coffin, sleek and made of walnut, is decorated with a wreath of white lilies and yellow chrysanthemums, the same arrangement standing lonesome at the front. There’s a hole in the ground waiting for him there, at the end of an aisle. An unfamiliar man stands next to it, like an officiant ready to marry him and his final resting place.
Except he’s not at rest. There’s no corpse that lays in that coffin because his body is current here — well, here being hard to define because it’s scattered throughout space and time and transcendence, but it remains to be said.
He’s not dead.
It doesn’t stop the train of mourners, this revelation that’s unknown to the people who’ve gathered here to grieve him.
When he fuzzes back in to watch, he’s hovering somewhere up the front with a clear view of everyone and the casket, resting on the contraption. There’s an obscured headstone, glossy and granite grey with a simple epitaph carved in. Just his name, his birth and death date and Jesus was he young.
A blink passes and then he’s staring at a slack–faced Artemis, eyes watering like she’s holding back the tears. Maybe she cried too much, or too little, but Wally furrows his brow — or thinks he does, because he doesn’t know where the muscles and blood and skin have scattered off to.
His lips, formed in his mind, move with condolences and comforts when a tear mark tracks down her cheek. Somewhere in the distance is a drone of funeral customaries but he elects to ignore it, instead reaching up a phantom hand to wipe away her tears. There’s no movement, no smearing of it, but Artemis’ hand spears through his own to wipe it away.
She can’t see him, but it’s almost peaceful. He can imagine it’s his eyes that she’s looking into, that it’s his hand holding hers and sitting next to her. But it’s not, and he knows that they didn’t have enough time together.
He sighs and his exhale doesn’t move the air, leaning forward to press a kiss to her forehead and swallowing against the dull pain that begins to press into his soul. One day, he thinks, they’ll meet again and she’ll feel him once more.
It doesn’t make it easier, but it’s a small consolation to him Wally wishes he could pass on.
He phases in again. Different spot this time — he’s sitting on the ground between his parents’ knees, a little kid again. He aches for his mother to run a hand through his hair absentmindedly, letting him watch TV late on school nights before his accident. For his father, to give him that gruff approval once more whenever he succeeded in academia.
Sometimes they weren’t the best parents, but it didn’t mean he loved them any less. He should know, of all people, that love is hard — if his father raged at Wally for choosing his uncle to bond with over him, then it was Wally’s fault. He should prioritise his own blood. That’s what his mother used to tell him.
He didn’t completely agree, but now he sees merit in it. Because behind him, his parents mourn their only child who slowly drifted from them, the cavity widened by his hand and their own throughout the years.
Guilt begins to stir in his chest. There would be a breathlessness, he thinks, if he had lungs — they would be constricted, choked by thorns of displaced tenderness. Maybe that’s why, when he still had a voice, he chose to plead one last love for his parents, rather than his uncle Barry or aunt Iris or even Dick.
The scene shifts until he’s sitting next to his uncle and aunt. They’re both messes — bloodshot scleras, the skin under their noses raw and flaking, purple smudged beneath their eyelids. Wally wishes to reach out and comfort, to crack a joke about dying and how it’s not all that bad. But he can’t because he has no vocal cords on this plane of existence to vibrate and speak with.
So he reaches over and grasps his aunt’s hand, looking over to where the celebrant is speaking with his hands, that sombre look in his eyes that speaks of a solemnity appreciated. It’s hard to hear what he’s saying — something about a life robbed, a life well lived — over the sniffles and muffled weeps around him.
And that’s really when he realises that the body he sees in his periphery is not his own. Wally didn’t even realise he was merged with someone so he pushes his consciousness forward, and sees with his omnipresence that it was Bart.
Poor kid looked wrecked. Youth is aggrieved by the sad tug–down of his mouth, the quivering lower lip and the clasped white hands. Wally wonders if he’s felt grief before, no matter how much they barely knew each other.
He wonders if he’ll take up Wally’s position. Or if it’s tainted by a ghost, one Bart knows is there but can never save. One that cannot pass on, as much as they would all wish he could.
Maybe he’ll change it for the better.
Wally feels sad now. There’s too much black around here, and the sun is too bright and burning and he wishes he could feel it. He feels the few atoms clinging around his conscience dance around, as if they’re being fried simply from the rays. A couple dart out of his reach, and he feels even more weightless.
He’s pulled to somewhere else now. He’s standing behind Dick, but his vision is starting to get broader and broader and it’s terrifying. So he can see his best pal’s face fully, and how he’s one of the few people openly sobbing.
Wally’s heart feels funny. His mind’s self swallows, and his atoms draw closer together in an effort to follow the path of his ghostly hand. It rests atop Dick’s shoulder, a heavy weight he wishes the other could feel, and mirrors the one Babs has on his other.
Dick is so young. Nineteen. And he’s already lost his parents, a whole way of life, a brother and now a brother–in–arms. The way the life goes, he’ll be attending more funerals in a decade than most people will in a lifetime.
Now Wally wants to cry. His throat constricts and even though he doesn’t need air to live anymore he feels lightheaded. His very existence flutters and trembles, like a moth before it disintegrates.
Which is how he doesn’t realise that he’s moved once more, nothing more than a dust mote but a million times smaller, one that floats in the air above his own funeral. Barry’s up there, delivering a eulogy with morose instability and the way the sunlight catches on his blond hair reminds Wally of golden days.
There rushes forth glimpses of the past — they click through his mind as if moving pictures, like in the old movies, all janky but in an endearing way.
He’s confronted with a childhood memory: toddler Wally, with a shaggy mop of red hair stumbling around on chubby legs while his parents watch on in delight and his aunt grins and the polaroid shutter cracks through his mind.
Another: meeting the Flash for the first time, the absolute wonderment and giddiness of hugging his favourite hero that consumed his entire existence for as long as he could remember, much to his parents’ dismay.
He catches this one before it dissolves: blowing himself up with chemicals in a deranged attempt to gain the same powers as the Flash. Crazy, that his aunt’s new boyfriend held such a powerful influence over him that he risked death to become even a fragment of him.
Flashes of parental arguments and arms thrown up at midnight and hoarse voices twitter around him, and the deep sense of victory when he gained permission from all the adults, overbearing as they were, to use the lightning in his veins.
Then comes the burning of speed, the way he feels the hunger gnaw and eventually consume him. It was frightening then, and it’s frightening now, the way he grew so used to the acidic pain in his stomach. And now it’s gone, and he’s sad that it’s gone — not because he liked it, or misses it, but because he was so used to it.
Introductions splash across his vision — first time meeting Robin, with his wicked smile and stupid wordplay, Aqualad’s kind stoicism that contrasted both his and Robin’s sparkling energy. And then came Superboy, all anger and teenage boy charm, and Miss Martian, all bubbles and teenage girl crush, and Artemis, all sarcasm with teenage angst and challenge he loved.
Then comes the end. All the missions, all the fight and bite and adrenaline, all the injury and hurt and screaming. It all feels like nothing now — yes, a life well looked back on, but a life well lived?
When it all stops, they’re lowering down the coffin. He stands right in front of it, peering into the hole that perfectly fits the box, the darkness that greedily engulfs stray rays of sunlight.
Wally almost believes he’s inside of it.
He’s too terrified to check inside and be met with his face, peaceful in the sleep of eternity. Skin too pale, freckles too stark, lips too blue.
Wally can feel himself slowly go. The last of his particles are slipping from his tenuous grip.
But there’s still so much he needs to say. And he’s scared, more so now than when the chrysalis energy was tearing him apart, because that was straight pain and acceptance that he was going to die.
This was new, and he had no idea what was going to happen to him now. Something was pulling him, calling his name but he couldn’t hear the words, just knew that it was.
It was honestly nice. It felt warm, but he still claws to this world, clings to the people he loves and pleads that they can feel him.
Something soothes his feelings. He’s still terrified, feeling one by one as his atoms leave, disappearing from his mind, but it’s calming down.
If he had breath it would be slowing down now. The fear crests, then melts into nothing until all he feels is sad and guilty and tired.
His vision blurs, and he drinks up the last of what he can see — colours of hair and skin and the way the soft cries of grief slowly grow softer and softer until it’s like waves fading on the shoreline.
Wally thinks he’s ready. He doesn’t want to go, knows he’s needed more here — with them — than he does wherever he’s going, but it’s okay.
He accepts it. That they’ll move on, even if it’s hard, but they’ll survive without him. And they’ll still see him in all the things he’s touched, and changed, and all the people he’s met will carry him on in them.
Now is the time he wishes he had a body — he took a corporeal form for granted. He wishes he could breathe and sigh and smile and laugh, to touch and stroke hair and tell them that it’s ok, it’s time to go, he can’t put it off anymore.
So he lets it take him.
It coaxes him with gentle fingers, collecting his final pieces one by one, and he manages one last, tiny smile — he’s so sad and tired and guilty about leaving, and it’s so much worse than any pain he felt in his lifetime.
But he lets it go, because he’s allowed to, and it feels nice to feel free.
With one, little last exhale, he joins the warmth and light that calls him home.