beforeyoucanblink | Entries tagged with plot: thicker than water

And then there's a gas station ala Supernatural, again.

Bart never got to see the inside of it, before, which is just as well because there's not really much to see. It's about how you'd expect one in the middle of nowhere to look: slightly crappy and not many people around.

At least he'll be able to find out what state he's in, here. Or something.

"...Huh," observes Bart.

When he wakes up next, the restraints are off, and no one’s in the room. He sits up, cautiously, and the room spins and tilts but he’s up. He can move, and there’s no way he’s going to stay still now. There’s an IV in his arm, and he pulls that out roughly, ignoring the bleeding, and stands.

The hallways aren’t as deserted; there’s people in them, and most of them are faced towards his room, and sometimes they move and sometimes they don’t; he’s slipping and sliding in and out of superspeed without any control, but never out of it long enough for them to catch him. He won’t stay still for that.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, picks doors and more hallways at random. He hopes, somewhere in the haze, that one of them will open onto a bar, but none of them do.

And then there’s motion when everyone’s statues, and “You’re not supposed to be here.”

Bart’s hand catches the wall, almost accidentally, and he keeps it there for balance. “That’s why I’m leaving,” he says.

Thad crosses his arms, the movement oddly jerky. (And the people move, just for a moment. Subjectively.) “I’m not supposed to let you do that.”

Bart pushes on. He’s probably going in the wrong direction. He doesn’t know. “So why’d you leave the door open?”

“It was a test.”

“Did I pass?”

Thad snorts. “You can’t even find your way out.”

Wall, smooth; indentation. Door. He pushes at it; it’s locked. “Why are you here?”

Thaddeus hasn’t moved; he’s just watching, not interfering. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m your replacement. Grandpa,” he intones, “needed someone with a vision for the future.”

“What,” Bart says, “you mean years from now, when you look back on your life as a lab rat? Good luck with that.”

He doesn’t even realize Thad’s moved until he’s smashed Bart against the door. The bolts holding it in place collapse on impact, which is probably a good thing because there’s glaring sunshine and fresh air and trees once he stops seeing stars.

“He gave me everything!” someone’s shouting, loud enough to make his head pound. “He gave me everything, and you just threw it away!”

There’s probably something about strength and determination and sheer stupid force of will increasing in times of high stress. He can’t remember it right now. What he does know, however, is that somehow he stands up, albeit unsteadily, and throws a beautiful punch at Thad, neatly shattering cartilage.

“Dude,” Bart hisses. “Shut up.”

He’s not sure how he gets away; it’s a blur from start to finish, walking and not knowing where he’s going or how fast or where. But, eventually, hours or days or maybe even minutes later, there’s a road, and then a mostly-deserted gas station. And he enters.

So, a speedster walks into a bar. Have you heard this one before?

They 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.

The trouble with speedsters is their metabolism: in order to properly drug one, you have to either re-drug them often or keep them on a constant drip- or design something specifically to counteract the effects of a speedster’s metabolism. Originally, it was meant as a supplement, a little something to make sure whatever else they gave their speedster worked. But it turns out a little bit of this drug is all you need.

Of course, you have to be careful when dealing with experimental drugs. The first dosage they try on him is too much; it almost slows his heart to a dead stop. They’re better about it after that, though; just enough to keep him out of it.

Bart wakes up feeling like his insides were pulled out, run under a bulldozer, and shoved back in. Someone’s talking indistinctly; it’s rambling and accusatory, and sounds like it’s from a far away place, miles and years off, and coming closer with every syllable.

Bart cracks an eye open, finally, anchoring himself back down to earth; he can’t move, which is just as well because everything’s a little fuzzy and it’s taking everything he’s got just to keep his eyes focused. There’s a green sweatshirt in the room, a blur of blond hair. Lips moving, out of sync with the sounds; it’s giving him a headache. “-Oh,” he says. “You’re awake.”

He has things to say, a million questions and snarky comments, but somehow they all get twisted up on his tongue and come out garbled and unintelligible.

“He wants to talk to you,” the green sweatshirt says, arms crossed and impatient. “All you have to do is listen.”

All he can do is listen.

So he listens.

He listens to a familiar voice made of angry conversations and uncomfortable dinners and jagged cuts of glass and chemicals. It’s soft, and gentle, and concerned, and it tells him it knows him, it loves him, it knows his parents didn’t. It never wanted this to happen, been searching for him so long, none of this was an accident. He could do so much, be so much more.

Does he recognize it.

He can’t talk, can barely move. He nods his head.

“That’s enough for now,” his grandfather says.

When he sets foot through his Door, Bart pushes the bar and Jenny out of his head and regroups: Thad knows his name. It obviously means something, but he has no clue why or what. (Unless his parents are looking for him. But his parents aren’t looking for him, and why would they have a speedster?)

So he needs to find Thad. Find out what’s up. Speedsters aren’t exactly easy to find when they don’t want to be, but:

He can try.

--

He starts by asking around; Thad struck him as the type of kid who lives on or near enough to the streets. Maybe he’s been hanging around the area for a little while; it’s worth a shot. It’s all he’s got, for that matter.

He gives out a description: about his height, blond hair, seventeen or so, goes by the name of Thad. When that doesn’t work, he expands his horizons. Homeless shelters. Foster kids. Schools. Popular local hangouts. Have you seen him?

He’s about to give up, let whatever’s going to happen happen without interference; he can deal with it when it comes. Then, somehow, he finds himself at the pizza place again.

And there he is. Glancing at the streets, jittery, fingers tapping against his jeans. Bart storms over to him. “What the hell was up with that? Who are you? What are you doing he-“

He should’ve been paying attention. Fingers, jittery, hypodermic needle in his hand. He moves just a split-second too late to do anything, hand out to catch himself, he’s tired and everything’s too much effort, he’s

(Thaddeus Thawne hoists the dead weight in his arms. “Get the hell out of my life,” he says, broken, frustrated, and takes off before anyone who might have seen can react.)

This is not an evil lair.

Evil lairs are caves and underground facilities, with guards and guns and traps. This is one of many rooms in a mansion, security tight but no barbed wire, comfortable and homelike. It’s filled with posters and dressers and a closet and a chair, and it’s decorated in green and black.

There aren’t any pictures in the room, at all. But that’s not evil.

There’s a kid in that room that’s not an evil lair: he’s blond, and seventeen, and he belongs here; he believes that with all of his heart. He is the success, he is everything his (boss) family worked towards.

But he’s a replacement. He’s the second; someone else could’ve belonged here whole-heartedly, and for a while he considers keeping this information to himself. But he has to tell, because that’s why he belongs here.

And so he sits on his bed in the room that’s not really an evil lair, and he talks, and he listens, and then he leaves, light off and door locked.

At superspeed, everything’s quiet. There’s only you and the rhythm of your feet hitting the ground and your heart pounding in your chest. It’s like entering a world of your own; the only people who can know about it are you and a farmboy somewhere in Kansas.

…And:

The ‘Wait up!’ is like a battering shot; it shatters everything.

(It’s not as poetic as it seems; trust us.)

So, two speedsters meet in an alleyway. One says “Who the hell are you?” The other says “I was just about to ask you the same question”. And then, because speedsters are scientifically proven to run on their stomachs, they adjourn to a pizza place.

It’s not like talking to Tommy, because that was really easy. This is awkward and unnerving, because the other kid’s wearing a green sweatshirt that looks weirdly like his, and their table fills with silence while they both figure out which of the many questions to ask.

Bart’s the one who breaks the silence, this time: “So what’s your name?”

“It’s Thad.”

Thad doesn’t stay still, anytime. He constantly drums his fingers against the table, tap tap t-tap tap, going in and out of superspeed unobtrusively. The table’s going to have a hole in it by the time they’re done talking. “So what about you?”

He hesitates. You have to take a leap of faith, sometimes; he’s not sure what makes him think now is the time, but: “It’s Bart.”

Thad’s fingers slip into superspeed, unnoticed. If his world just shattered, he doesn’t show it. “Allen?”

Bart’s hand tightens convulsively. “Wh,” he says. But Thad’s gone already.

Crap.

As he slides out of his chair to chase Thad, he knocks over his water glass. It shatters on the ground, unheeded.

(Well, maybe just a little bit poetic.)