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“I wouldn't call it simple. You'll be attempting to siphon its power with your own speed trails. It'll take a massive amount of kinetic energy.”
The Watchtower, by nature, hung suspended in empty space, and in that moment every heart in the vicinity did the same. A tense atmosphere shrouded all present, watching the holographic images with bated breath. The space between words were staccato as Lex Luthor instructed the speedsters thousands of miles below.
The moment those last words were spoken, Dick faced Wally, who was already turning about toward the zeta tube. Dick reached out, latching onto his arm. Had he wasted another second, another word, Wally might already have been gone.
Wally stopped, looking back at Dick with a sorry pull in his brow. “Dick, I have to go. Barry and Bart need me, I—”
“I know,” he nodded. “Just…” Dick would be damned if he was letting Wally go that easily. With his grip around his forearm, Dick pulled Wally in for one all too quick kiss. Wally was eager to reciprocate, the both of them a little clumsy with it – there wasn't enough time. Pressing their foreheads together, knowing that he was on borrowed time, Dick swallowed and tried to find his voice. “Be careful, okay?”
“When am I not?” Wally replied with a smirk, only to receive a smack on the arm in response. “Alright, alright, point taken,” he chuckled. Pulling back, Wally flashed a brilliant grin, showing Dick a glimpse of the cocky teenager he'd fallen in love with years ago. “Catch you on the other side, babe,” he whispered with a smile, and in the next instant, was gone in a blur. The zeta tube announced his departure with a swirl of bright light before Dick felt the wind of his departure brush over his face.
Dick laughed, but the sound was hollow. “Catch you later,” he breathed.
“Recognized: Kid Flash. B03.”
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
Wally choked on his own voice, felt it grating like a handful of razors in his throat as he struggled not to scream. As soon as one strike of volatile energy faded, another would lash out and seize him, broken in between by his own body breaking down with every step. His heart was a live wire in his chest, charring the tender flesh around his heart. He remembered, vaguely, the night of the Summit, feeling like the vital muscle was going to implode in on itself at any moment. He remembered suiting up again for the first time in years when Bart first crash landed in this timeline, feeling that ache for days seeping from his chest and through every muscle in his body. He’d retired for a reason, but the life kept calling him back into action. And Wally, like any good soldier, answered the call.
Most of all, Wally remembered Dick at his side each time, holding him through the pain. He’d rub his back, push water and antacids at him until Wally would grumble and comply, and they’d snip at each other before falling sleep curled up on the sofa with the TV emitting soft blue light in the darkness of the apartment. Those memories were warm, safe, and just about as far from this cold and empty hellscape as he could get.
Wally would have given anything for that comfort right now. It was with a fleeting thought that he realized he’d never have it again.
“It's no good Barry,” Wally grunted as he pushed himself to keep up. Every blast from the chrysalis was a tsunami of voltage slamming into his body. His muscles spasmed, his heart seized – but still, he kept running. “Oh man, Dick is so gonna kill me for this. And don't even get me started on Mom and Dad.”
Barry’s eyes blew wide beneath his cowl as he slowed down to keep pace with is nephew. “Kid?”
Despite his bravado, despite his mock whining, his teasing façade, despite the front he was putting up; Wally knew. He looked to his mentor with all the gravity of a man who knew he was in his last moments. “Just tell them. Okay?”
Wally braced himself. Blinding light overtaking his vision as he heard the echoes of Barry shouting to him.
“KID!”
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.
They'd all boarded the bioship only seconds after Wally had gone ahead. There were no zeta tubes to the North Pole, the closest was in Norilsk, Siberia. Wally would have to zeta there and run the rest of the way to the chrysalis. They would never make it on time on foot. So, the bioship was their only option, flying it from it's docking station at The Watchtower, and down toward Earth. The trip was filled with worries, concerns, optimisms from the Team – Dick was silent. He sat up at the front, his eyes fixed on the white mass on the top of the globe as they descended. It took until they'd broken through the atmosphere and the thick cloud cover to really see the extent and power of the chrysalis. Dick bolted down the plank as soon as it opened, coming to a skidding stop in the snow. The team spilled out the hatch behind him, their eyes glued to the towering cyclone of volatile energy.
“Look!” Artemis cried as she pointed to the gradually ascending counter force that the three speedsters were creating, a whirlwind of orange. ”It's working!” Her voice quivered with hope, anticipation gleaming in her eyes. The rest of the team exchanged optimistic glances. Dick allowed himself at that moment to smile with that. Despite his nerves, Artemis was right. The chrysalis was shutting down, the Flashes were doing their work. It was almost over.
“Yes!” Jaime cheered off to the side – a little too slow to be reacting to Artemis. Probably the Beetle, most of the team had learned to tune out Jaime's one sided responses to the creature on his back.
Dick glanced back at the kid over his shoulder, a smile on his face. It dropped the moment he saw the young hero's expression. Jaime was frowning staring at the bolts of lightning bursting from the vortex. Dick wasn't sure if it was just the static in the air, but his hair raised on the back of his neck.
“Cease?” Jaime asked. “Cease what?”
Dick's stomach dropped. His attention shot back to the vortex. It wasn't orange anymore. Just red.
Within seconds, and they may have been the longest of Dick's life, the vortex dissipated. The snow dusting the frozen ground sent out a cloud, following the pulse of the energy fading out. When the snow cleared, the Flash and Impulse were standing and kneeling on the ground, trying to catch their breaths.
“They did it!” M'gann laughed, all gleeful and beaming as she flew toward the day's heroes. The Team ran after her, but Dick walked. Slowly. Eyes scanning the never ending white horizon. He walked through the group, entirely unaware of their joy. He walked past them, out toward the plain and the icy cliffs rising up.
M'gann went to Bart, and Kaldur went to Barry, helping the exhausted heroes to their feet. Kaldur smiled as he held Barry by the shoulders, the older man slumping on him for support. “Congratulations, you've sa-”
“Wait!” Artemis' voice cut through any celebration. Her eyes swept the plain before flickering back to them, brown orbs wide. Filled with dread. “Where's Wally?” It was audible in the quiver of her voice alone that it was a question she wasn't sure she wanted the answer to.
All eyes shot to Nightwing, a distant black silhouette stark against the grey world. Even from this distance, they could see the way his shoulders dropped, and his head turned as he searched for his partner. His best friend.
Barry stood on unsteady legs, walking out toward Dick. Kaldur moved to pull him back, to insist that he needed rest and shouldn't be pushing himself, but Conner held out his hand to stop him. No one said a word. The two heroes were soon only distant figures, a conversation not meant for their ears.
From where he stood, Dick squinted through the soft gusts of snow, part of him still searching for a spark of yellow amoung the lifeless white, and part of him knew he wouldn't find it. Wally could have been thrown from the blast. He could have fallen in a deeper pit of snow, dropped behind an outcropping of rock or ice, just hidden from sight while he caught his breath. Dick knew it wasn't true, but on a deeper level he couldn't. He couldn't, he couldn't, he couldn't-
“Dick,” Barry's voice called out quietly from behind him.
Dick turned slowly, the blood draining out of him, leaving his limbs numb. Barry’s approach was sluggish, heavy, almost hesitant in the way he held his hands out as if he were trying to placate a wild animal. Dick’s lungs shuddered. “Barry, I… Where’s Wally?” he asked as he cast another desperate glance around the icey plane. “I was… I was looking, I can’t find him,” Dick stuttered, more and more unnerved by Barry’s silence. “Did he make it up here? We were in the Watchtower, he heard that you two needed help and he left he… he could be somewhere, he might be lost he—”
Barry shook his head. “Dick, the chrysalis energy was too much, Wally couldn’t keep up. It was using him as a conduit, attacking him. He tried, but—” Barry’s voice broke horribly, the mangled sound dying in his chest. “Dick, he…”
There was cotton in Dick's head, a searing heat between his shoulders, his heart burning out of him. He already knew it. Tears were already spilling down, slipping down between his skin and his mask. “No....” he shook his head and swallowed hard, “no.”
Barry placed his hands on Dick's shoulders. His voice was hoarse, chocking on emotion. “He wanted... me to tell you-”
Dick dropped his head, teeth gritted as he struggled to breathe. “Barry, please don’t,” he pleaded, as if holding off on speaking of the inevitable would make it not true.
Barry gritted his teeth, sucking in a harsh breath through his clenched jaw just to keep from breaking. “He loved you. So... God, so much, Dick.”
That was it, then. Barry didn’t say it, didn’t actually speak the words into existence, but Dick knew. He just couldn’t form thoughts around it, the concept of – that just slipping through his mind like trails of smoke, and his head was the burning building. Collapsing. Too hot to be standing in the middle of a frozen tundra. Dick closed his eyes, taking in a trembling, open mouthed breath. “Was he in pain?”
Barry grimaced. “Dick, I don't-”
“Was he in pain, Barry?” Dick snapped.
Barry sighed, lungs trembling. “Yes, he was in pain.”
Dick nodded slowly. He could take this in stride, take in the details, form some sort of understanding around this. “And... a-and what did he say? What was the last-” he choked off.
Barry hesitated again, and even behind his mask Dick could see the grief and concern in his gaze, wondering if it was best to tell him. Finally, he took in a deep breath. “He said…'Dick's gonna kill me for this,” Barry began slowly, watching for Dick's reaction. A mangled laugh burst from the young man's lips. “‘Don't get me started on Mom and Dad.... Just tell them'. That was it, Dick. I’m sorry, he just... disappeared.”
Dick's mouth formed a hard line. Taking harsh breaths through his nose, he struggled to understand – not how. Try as he might, the answers from Barry weren't connecting. He knew he didn't want to know how. He wanted to know why. Why.
Really, neither mattered. Neither were going to bring him back.
Dick ripped his gaze away from Barry, turning against the wind to face the empty tundra. The snow pelted against his skin, like he was being rendered apart by needles, falling away piece by piece. He swept the landscape, desperately searching one last time to look for a figure in gold and crimson against the endless white. But there was nothing there. There was nothing left. It hit him like a comet — he didn't have his best friend anymore. Dick exhaled, a light fog drifting from his lips and disappearing just as fast – the inhale wouldn’t come. Dick struggled, choked, tried to breathe in a world without Wally West in it, but the inhale just wouldn’t come.
Barry’s hand came up to rest on his shoulder from behind. “Dick…”
That was all it took. With the force of an avalanche, Dick collapsed.
It was all the Team could see from their vantage point in the white distance. Just Barry holding Dick by the shoulders, and five seconds later, Dick dropping down to his knees. The entire conversation was lost, the words that brought Dick to the ground inaudible. Conner was the only one who could hear. With a tight jaw, he looked back at the Team and slowly shook his head. In that moment they all understood. Bart knew already, of course. The kid hadn't lifted his head since Barry walked away. Couldn't look anyone in the eye. M'gann's hands flew to her mouth, stiffing a gasp and a quiet sob. Conner tentatively put an arm around her shoulder, not wanting to be bold. Kaldur's face dropped, passing a hand back over his head. Jaime was too busy watching Bart to really do much of anything. In that way, they all processed this unspoken information. Not a single person had said it, but they all knew. Wally was dead.
Artemis, though – she didn’t react, didn’t even take her gaze off of Dick’s crumbled form. She took only two dreamlike steps forward before racing off across the ice toward her grief stricken. She skidded to her knees beside him, blonde ponytail whipping around her with the freezing wind. Barry had taken a knee in an attempt to comfort him, but stood back as soon as Artemis came crashing down.
Artemis threw her arms around Dick, one hand holding his head to her chest as she buried her face in his hair. Dick was heaving between sobs, couldn't fucking breathe from it. The cavity in his chest screamed out, empty and raw. With Artemis there, he couldn't hold it in anymore. Dick roared, his voice cracking, echoing off the ice for miles, trying to call back the love he lost to the Arctic.