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You’re falling, blind and weightless—and then the force of gravity shunts you to your knees, hard and fast. There’s barely any time to register the shock of pain that rolls up your body, the hiss of agony wrenching through gritted teeth, the expletive exploding out of you.
When you open your eyes, you feel an odd sense of depth layered on your temples, something making the room tilt at an axis as you find your bearings. Someone is saying a name, but your hearing isn’t quite adjusted to the capacity of understanding.
Your eyes search the room for familiarity, but it’s like your sight is blurred and desperately recalibrating. Your head turns to make further reckoning of your surroundings, and you put a hand to your forehead, unmoored.
You pause, your hand midway to your face. It’s all you can do to stare at the spread of your palm, the fingers reaching for your face, fanning out wide to rub at the bump you’re certain is swelling at the crown. But this isn’t your hand.
Someone grabs your shoulder. You can’t help but startle audibly, and this draws something else tight and cold up your ribs, something harrowed percolating in your stomach.
This isn’t your voice.
“Wally?” A voice comes to you through the ether, and you round to look into a face sharpening in rapid quality. The veil lifts.
“Dick?” You ask, in Wally’s voice, the voice rough and scratchy but his—in your cadence. What the hell is going on? You lower the hand that is still suspended in air, yet to touch you, and look down to the heart line that roots out from between Wally’s index and middle finger, bisecting out into a thin, forked line.
You know because you remember reading his palm one drunken night, in your cups over a book the two of you had snagged from a crappy yard sale. This is Wally’s hand—not yours. And this voice—his—what is going on?
“Wally?” Dick repeats, and he’s hefting you to your feet that you’re finding in slow bearings. “What happened? You just ate it out of nowhere.”
“I—”—you begin, a million different avenues for conversation branching out before you—to tell the truth, to throw up, to pass out—but this could be a trick. A trap.
But Dick looks like the real deal, and this is the gym, you realize as you take a wheeling look around the room. If this is an illusion, someone’s certainly gone to the effort of making it a convincing act. You spin on your heel back to him.
Dick looks more committed to frogmarching you, well, Wally, to the infirmary. He speaks with slow deliberation—you realize that he hasn’t taken his hand off of you, in an attempt to keep you elevated.
“You need to sit down?” He asks, setting a keen, analytical look over you. “What happened?”
“Um.” Think, think, think—how to trace back the steps—a lightbulb blooms bright, slow and incandescent. You turn back from your frantic assessment of the room, looking back to Dick, who is still carefully watching you.
“What were we doing—thirty seconds ago? Before I fell?” You ask, and this seems to seal the deal for Dick, that something terrible has happened.
“Wally, I—”—Dick holds up a hand, but you jab out your own to stop him, recoiling at the speed you move with. Oh—figures. How on Earth does Wally live like this?
“Just—”—You reclaim your hand back, out of the personal space of Dick’s face, and he looks at you with no minor degree of alarm. “—Please just answer the question.”
“Okay,” Dick elongates the syllable, willing to appease his friend taking a momentary swan dive off the deep end, “We were wrapping up training to get a bite.”
“Uh-huh?” You press, still not getting used to the way that you speak in Wally’s voice.
Dick continues, shifting his weight to one foot as he makes marked analysis of the way your eyes run aground. “And you were asking me for advice on how you should ask them out.”
Your eyes snap up at this, a flare of helpless terror snaking through your stomach—you knew it was too good to be true.
“Ask who out?” You ask, and you have to repeat the question because the syllables are beginning to blur together—God, Wally makes it look so goddamn easy.
Dick’s brows pitch together as he looks supremely uneasy, as though you’ve hit your head—which, to all rights, it seems like you really have. “Look, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Ask who out?” You repeat, because sure, you’re trapped in Wally’s body, but you may as well know who he’s got his eye on. Especially, since it’s apparently not you, a notion that is making something sour rise in your mouth, churn radiantly bitter in your stomach.
Dick says your name and you go absolutely motionless. After a prolonged moment, he tacks on, “Who else?”
“Um,” you begin, because the horror is certainly dissipating and giving way to another type of glowing, unabashed joy. “Are you sure?”
“Okay,” Dick asserts with a degree of resigned finality, “Let’s go get you to the infirmary. I think you need it.”
You finally find yourself grateful for the speed that Wally has spent a lifetime honing to eased capability. Dick moves far too glacially, every movement so slowly telegraphed that you could run across the world in the time it takes for him to blink, the single flex of a finger, and he wouldn’t even realize. This is how he sees the world—it humbles and frightens you at once.
But you realize that while you’re trying to run away from Dick’s encroaching arm, you’re also not trying to permanently establish Wally’s reputation as a head case. “No—no! I’m fine.”
And then this brings another thought to you—you’re fine. As in, the you within Wally. But, where are you? Where is—where is Wally? Actual, real Wally, who is no longer in the proverbial building.
Your mind flies to a memory that feels distant, as though it’s almost no longer yours, the real estate donated to distant proceeds. Of you and Kori in your room—talking about—
“Um,” you say to Dick, feeling a sense of what one might call impending doom, “Be right back.”
You find yourself running, the strain of exerted muscles heaving you out of the room, and the world around you becomes a fine blur as you beat a hasty retreat. You nearly clip your shoulder on the doorframe and stumble, the ricochet at this speed almost hurtling you straight into the wall—you catch yourself.
“Wally!” Dick shouts after you, clearly afraid for your well-being. But you need to retrace your steps, with immediate haste, before it’s too late.
The world is a fine shimmer that moves in absolute sedation. You dart past the unmoving figures of Jay and Roy on the couch, the lingering stare they exchange speaking more than any uncomprehendingly slow-moving word they say, slowed beyond your reckoning.
You duck past Gar making a phone call, finger looped around the analog cord that tethers him to the wall, whatever slick statement he makes lost to you as you search for your room. Everything is so slow, everything is so much.
And it comes up too fast, your door rising into view with stunning alacrity—so quick that you have to hold your arms out in case you collide into the wall again. You only barely skitter to a halt to slam into it with a low thud, so that you can hear two voices on the other side startle in alarm.
“What was that?” you hear Kori’s melodic voice ask.
“I think I—might know.” You hear your voice through the door, spoken in a rhythm that is not yours. Spoken in a flow that you would know blind, disconnected to the voice that makes your heart thump unsteadily in your chest.
“Let me see,” Kori rises to her feet from the other side, and it’s a short distance across your small room to the door. She manifests in the yawning doorway, and smiles down at you.
“Oh, Wally—”—the smile on her face is polite, but there’s a degree of concern beneath the cheerful veneer—“—How nice to see you. What do you require?”
You want to set eyes on yourself, make sure that you’re okay, confirm what you already know in the marrow of your bones. But Kori’s too tall, too impressive a figure for you to cast a glance around.
“I just—”—you crane your neck around Kori to no avail—“—I just wanted to stop by. Have a chat with—”—It feels odd saying your name aloud in this manner, in Wally’s voice—“—If that’s okay.”
She speaks in a lower voice. “Now may not be an ideal time, Wally. They are—”
She hesitates and you’re certain that Kori’s been experiencing some similar version of Dick Grayson’s Harrowing Experience 2.0. It seems like saying unwell would be too uncouth a word to say about a friend who is clearly demonstrating unwell behavior, so she tries to refrain from doing so.
But you won’t be dissuaded. And it turns out, you’re not the only one. You hear movement from the other end, hear your voice from behind Kori speak.
“Oh, no, Kori, I’m fine—”—you hear yourself say, a tad too pitched to be calm—“—Wally actually just needed to talk to talk to me about something next week.”
Kori turns to regard the person behind her, and you find yourself looking directly into your face, which is already searching for you with a dogged insistence you’re used to seeing elsewhere. And those eyes tell you what you already thought, already feared—they know.
“Hi, Wally,” Your face says back to you with marked cheerfulness, already inching past Kori, who reluctantly lets him slide by, “Good to see you.”
“Hi—”—It still feels weird, saying your name to yourself—“—Yeah, you too.”
Because it’s true, there’s a poignant relief that’s dousing over you right now, knowing that part of the puzzle is solved. Granted, the two of you have yet to figure out how to fix this, but knowing he’s here. Knowing that this is one step closer to being closed—it almost makes you forget the rest.
Thankfully, Wally assumes the lead, giving you an implacable look as he says in your voice, “Be right back, Kori—”—it’s kind of frightening how well he captures that meter of your rhythm so well. And then you’re following behind in mute pursuit, down elongated hall and around secluded corner.
You find yourself turning around, and it’s odd to see the nuance of your face as your arms cross over your chest, regaling you with an expression far too complex to be defined. Granted, you’re in a similar spot—there’s so much that’s happened in so little time, with so many answers still so far ahead of you. You’re at a loss for words.
And then you watch your mouth open and speak in a very unbearable Wally way, “Oh, to dear Wally Rudolph West—how shall I confess the manner I love you best?”
You feel your hands folding over your eyes, the relief, the joy fleeing from you with your dignity. Perhaps the earth will yawn wide and swallow you whole. “Okay, I can explain that—”
”Should an arrow strike down stars from the sky, none shall compare to the sparkle of your eye—”—Wally continues forward brazenly, all the more traitorous he does it in your voice—“—I’d spend a long, squandered while—”
“Okay, okay, I get the gist—”—You groan, feeling your shoulders crumple in on themselves—“—It was just something fun Kori and I were doing to hype myself up—”
“—Should it mean I have the privilege of your smi-ile—”—Wally drags out the syllable and it sounds positively sinister in your tone. You’ve never felt the urge to strangle yourself more, to curse yourself for having a body swap at the most inopportune moment.
“—Your speed gets the job done, and it puts you a bar below none—”—It seems that he’s certainly flying close far too close to the sun, so you throw out the only means of defense you have.
“—So where were you planning to take me?” You interrupt, and you watch as he draws up short in a very caught way that only a certain speedster would convey it. Then a slow, sleek smile spreads.
“Maybe you should’ve stuck around to get the intel,” Wally says. “I did.”
“So this is how you treat the people you want to take out?” You demand, feeling something frustrated rise out of you at the embarrassment coalescing over you in waves.
“Most people I want to take out don’t write five page love ballads for me.” Wally shoots back slyly, using your eyebrows to jump playfully up your forehead. You have a whopper of a migraine blooming over the crown of your head, and it’s not just from the great brain robbery happening right now.
“I didn’t write five pages.” you grimace. “It was like, five stanzas—also, how did you remember it so fast?”
“Good memory,” Wally grins, “Besides, like I could ever forget?”
“I’m glad you’ve found some joy out of this,” you grumble back, looking down at the shoelaces that Wally has neglected to re-tie over your own feet. “I’ve been over here hitting walls and watching Jay and Roy fuck each other with their eyes.”
“How could I not?” Wally leans forward with your face, “I’m definitely going to have this recited at our wedding.”
Something in you flushes hot and pleased at this, but you’re still fighting the final vestiges of anger. “Not if I murder you first.”
“And hurt this beautiful body?” Wally asks in mock horror, fear wreathing over your expression. “Not gonna let that happen.”
“I’m the one with the super-speed right now,” You threaten without any real ire. “I’ll never forgive you for this.”
“Come on,” Wally leans forward with a smug smile, “I’ll take you out to eat.”
“…Where?” You demand after a long, protracted second—the grin says he’s got you where he wants you.
“That nice bistro that opened up downtown.” Wally returns—damn, he’s good. “The one with that specialty cake you’ve been telling me about?”
You pause, knuckling your fist up to your mouth in thought, in what you're certain is a manner that Wally West would not—but hey, nothing’s perfect right now. You angle your eyes down at him, smiling up at you in a way that makes you look like the cat with the proverbial canary.
“Once we figure this out,” You gripe, though the irritation is leaching out of you like a sieve, “You’re taking me straight there.”
“Your wish,” Wally grins broadly, “Is my command.”
You didn’t expect this to be the means by which you both held hands the first time, as he reaches out to graze a slow, lingering touch up your palm, searching for fingers that wrap easily around yours. But something feels decidedly correct about it, in all the inanity of the circumstances, so you don’t fight it.
“Okay,” You say, “Let’s get the fuck back in our bodies so you can take me on that date.”
He seems quite excited to roll out the red carpet for you.
Zatanna chuckles next to Raven as she admires how the two of you practically skip out the door of the lounge together. She can’t deny that the two of you paint an adorable picture together, as you set off to celebrate the inauguration of a beautiful relationship.
“I can’t believe you actually did it,” Zee grins conspiratorially as she reclines in her seat. “Kinda genius, calling me in—”—She slides her eyes over to meet Raven’s that lance back —“—So that it couldn’t be traced back to you.”
“Dick and Kori were too slow about it,” Raven replies in a monotone that just barely skirts the surface of emotion, “They’ve been giving them advice pushing them in the same circular dance for months now. Something had to be done.”
“I’ll say that’s one way of solving it.” Zee chuckles, rich and slow. “Think they’ll ever figure out you swapped them?”
Raven almost seems mildly insulted at this. “Never, so long as you keep your word.”
Zatanna holds up her hands in proof of her solemn oath. “Hey, you won’t hear a peep out of me. What can I say—I love love.”
Raven watches the two of you through the open door, catches the way that you lean your head on Wally’s shoulder, the way his arm drapes around you. A slow smile tracks over her face.
“Me too.” She replies, as the two of you depart together, hand-in-hand.