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Jan. 15th, 2009 10:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beforeyoucanblinkThey switch him to a normal sedative, due to unforeseen complications. (They also have to stop taking blood and tissue samples, because his blood’s coagulating at a snail’s pace and he’s been bleeding for almost a day now. Not even touching what extended use could do to his ability to superspeed. Little unforeseen complications like that.) But they keep him on the bed, restraints on his wrists and ankles so he can’t go anywhere, and his grandfather comes in and talks to him, sitting down on the edge of the bed like he’s telling Bart a bedtime story.
He tells the story of Bart Allen. As all good stories are, it’s woven of lies and just enough truth to make them believable, but he’s too tired to sort out which is truth and which isn’t. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s not.
(once upon a time) There was a child, a perfect child and daughter. Like many children, she grew up and fell in love, with a man her father didn’t approve of. She left with her husband and later her baby boy. She refused to let her father see his grandson except when absolutely necessary, a bargaining chip to get what she needed. So the years passed.
Then, one day, the child, grown and older, was bundled off to the grandfather’s for a project. And there’s an accident, and light, and darkness. For three months, darkness. The grandfather fought with his parents, so he could take proper care of the boy, but they refused. They won. When the boy woke up, they took him far away.
And they grew tired of him. They made him leave, because they decided they didn’t want him anymore. He did whatever he could to get by, stole things and traveled the world, never staying in one place for long. His grandfather heard what his parents did, searched long and hard for him, found him, and brought him back to take care of him.
Does he understand this?
(He’s tired, still. He’s tired and his thoughts keep slipping in his head, fractured like puzzle pieces, and he can’t hold them together for long enough to make sense, and he just wants to go back to sleep.)
“Yeah,” he says.
He tells the story of Bart Allen. As all good stories are, it’s woven of lies and just enough truth to make them believable, but he’s too tired to sort out which is truth and which isn’t. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s not.
(once upon a time) There was a child, a perfect child and daughter. Like many children, she grew up and fell in love, with a man her father didn’t approve of. She left with her husband and later her baby boy. She refused to let her father see his grandson except when absolutely necessary, a bargaining chip to get what she needed. So the years passed.
Then, one day, the child, grown and older, was bundled off to the grandfather’s for a project. And there’s an accident, and light, and darkness. For three months, darkness. The grandfather fought with his parents, so he could take proper care of the boy, but they refused. They won. When the boy woke up, they took him far away.
And they grew tired of him. They made him leave, because they decided they didn’t want him anymore. He did whatever he could to get by, stole things and traveled the world, never staying in one place for long. His grandfather heard what his parents did, searched long and hard for him, found him, and brought him back to take care of him.
Does he understand this?
(He’s tired, still. He’s tired and his thoughts keep slipping in his head, fractured like puzzle pieces, and he can’t hold them together for long enough to make sense, and he just wants to go back to sleep.)
“Yeah,” he says.
