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Bart wasn’t stupid, contrary to very popular belief. He had a brain that formed thoughts, even if it was at one hundred times the normal speed for someone his age and he could think his way through problems if he tried. He wasn’t known for it but he tried.
Bart wasn’t stupid enough to delude himself into thinking this situation was a good one from any angle.
The dampeners were baked into the walls, a thin line of blue light that ran around the perimeter, eye-level if Bart was allowed to stand. The blue and the bursts of white from a bulb above, flickering just often and intensely enough to make Bart twitch, make his eyes do funny things, were the only things to illuminate Wally’s face from where he sat in the other corner, expression calm, always calm. Aloof and stern and whatever.
He looked fine. Bart could bet his whole life that Wally would continue to not blink until they got out before turning around to glare at Bart like it was his fault they were stuck here. It wasn’t, not that anyone would actually listen.
No, Bart got the short end of the stick because he was the one being forced to kneel, a stranger’s hand clasped loosely around the front of his throat so that a fingerpad pressed against his jugular and bobbed every time Bart swallowed. His own hands were bound and back, tied so tightly they were starting to hurt which was a problem dear old Wally would yell at him for later. Like Bart had any control over his circulation.
A fight got them into this mess. Technically, the blame was shared but if Wally would’ve stopped pushing, would’ve just listened long enough, then maybe they wouldn’t have been ambushed which-- and God, now that Bart was thinking properly through the shivering anger--how lame was it that they were ambushed? Their captors were ready, prepared for speedsters but it was like being slapped in the face with a fish if the fish was made entirely of turds.
They were talking again, behind and all around. If Bart could be bothered looking behind, he would count them. There was at least one holding him up by the throat, even if the grip was loose, but there were at least three others judging by the way their voices overlapped.
Bart’s eyes knew only Wally and bore directly into eyes hidden behind the cowl. He wished it was off, if only to read him better.
And yeah, predictably, Wally didn’t flinch when the man behind Bart moved. He was quick too, using a few fingers of one hand to tip Bart’s head back just enough to expose his throat while the other hand slipped something around it. Rope? He hoped not. It felt smooth, sleek. Almost comfortable, if it weren’t for the little metal nubbins along the inside that dug into Bart’s skin. Struggling made his head spin, made his vision swoop so badly he was momentarily nauseous. So he didn’t. Just stayed still and quiet in morbid curiosity, if only to see how bad this was going to be.
God, they were still talking. It’s like they wouldn’t stop.
“You understand?”
A meaty hand shook his shoulder and Bart nearly pitched forward to faceplant into concrete, which would’ve sucked so unbelievably badly. Staying on his knees felt way too hard for what it was. “Uh,” Bart got out, “yeah?”
He looked at Wally. Wally looked resolutely at a patch of air above Bart’s head, a little to the right. He even hummed, one of those lame bands he enjoyed so much. It felt unfair. It was unfair. He was agreeing to something he didn’t even--
Click.
Oh.
Bart’s jaw snapped shut quickly enough to tear a gash in the inside of his cheek as his body pitched forward anyway, white-hot agony racing from a point at the top of his spine and all the way down to every limb and vertebrae. His fingers jerked and strained, knuckles popping when they seized up and Bart could not breathe through it, could not think for hours and minutes and picoseconds.
And then nothing. Like it never happened at all.
He shivered and blinked, forcing open his jaw to let the blood dribble from his mouth to the floor, on which his cheek was pressed against now. Cold and wet, and he knew it was blood that was the wetness on his face, the blood of his mouth. It made sense. It was the one thing that made sense.
A great, ugly face, pale and pasty and lumpy like badly proofed dough, lowered to Bart’s level. Thin lips moved. Bart caught nothing and that wasn’t fair enough. “Huh?” he might’ve gotten out, more of a cough than a word. Not a word. Huh wasn’t a word.
Bart didn’t care for the ugly one. That mouth continued to move and make words that Bart couldn't care enough to string together, the ringing in his ears too intense to hear anything. His eyes were drawn to the splash of red in the corner. The red that was conspicuously not looking.
“Flash?” he mumbled, and heard it this time as an echo in his head. One shock and he was down like this, despite his whole body being a lightning rod. Sorry excuse for a speedster. Where was Wally looking?
And still nothing, which gave Bart the excuse he needed to tone his indignation up, audacity to level ten if he could just lift his head a little bit. One shock and he was down like this. How? Must’ve been the dampeners. Bart never took losing his speed well. Max would know.
He wished Max were here.
That thought he shook off like a dog did water. Old man wouldn't be able to offer anything. Max would make him meditate and that was infinitely worse than being ignored.
Bart swallowed, thick and metallic, blood, saliva and maybe a tear or two. God, what was happening to him? Wally’s fault probably. Definitely Wally’s fault.
“Screw you then,” Bart spat and he really did spit, all that blood and saliva in a glob on the ground. “What’s so interesting about the wall anyway?”
No answer once more and Bart nearly spat again, this time trying to aim for Wally who was at least five feet away (there was a movie about that he might’ve watched once) and then the click and--
White all around, blinking spots and dying sunrays and the jerk of limbs that wanted to move and and were moving with nowhere to go except the ground. He couldn’t vibrate, couldn’t do anything but bruise like a pear and oh, his blood was absolutely, positively sizzling. He heard it too, boiling into nothing while it roared in his ears and his cheeks were wet, his lips were wet and he could not move. A speedster and he was still and locked and quiet, like a bar of iron.
Relief came, not with numbness but the movement.
Bart twitched and flopped onto his side to cough the stuff in his mouth out. It splattered and some of it bled back into his shoulder as he shook and trembled and could not breathe, not properly. Bart was angry and hurt and possibly scared now and seriously, what exactly was Wally looking at?
“Flash , ” he said again, more insistent. “ Flash .” Nothing. Bart may as well have not spoken at all. Something sparked behind his ribcage. “Quit that. Don’t--don’t ignore me.”
The ugly one was talking. Again. Not Wally, though, who was still stuck and staring at something more interesting than Bart being tortured. Which sucked. Which really, really sucked. And what was it that was so important? What did they even want from Wally? What was so big that Bart had to lie in his blood and pain and wait around until Wally looked at him?
No one was going to tell him, obviously. Not while Bart stared at the blue lining of the wall and wished and hoped and prayed it came all the way undone and fizzled out. Bart wanted to breathe. Bart wanted to think. Bart wanted his mouth to stop filling up with blood and for his body to stop trembling so much. A shift, a tiny movement, towards his right.
Click.
He was never prepared.
Bart’s back arched clean off the floor and his fingers snapped against it, bones cracking against the concrete in a hollow noise that filled Bart’s ears. If he could open his mouth, he would curse or scream or cry or do it all at once, eyes blown wide and streaming crimson fire. They would pop. His eyes would pop from the heat and pain and he could not stop it, could not turn his gaze or close his eyelids or breathe or--
Something was smoking. Something was burning. A thick smell, fatty and flavoured and Bart was going to--
He turned and it came out before he could process, a thick stream of bile and breakfast launching out of his throat along with the blood. He didn’t choke. Someone thumped him or kicked him or hit him on his back, up the curve of his spine, and he convulsed with the contact, hacking up the rest of the vomit which dribbled down his cheek. It was gross. Bart could cry.
Bart found his cousin, blank eyes at the spot on the wall he could not part with and Bart did not know, could not figure out what Wally got from this. Was it fun? Did Bart deserve this, in some twisted way?
Wally could not hate him. Wally wouldn’t run with Bart if there was hate. Wally would not look at him.
He should try again. He did. Mouth hinged open with the acid on his tongue as he tried to talk, though it came out hoarse and like a gasp-sob, not substantial enough to get Wally’s attention. He tried again, and this time could choke out enough sound to say, “ Hey.” It was hoarse and wet and didn’t sound like him at all.
It was not Wally who knelt by him. A stranger with pale eyes was who reached out, fingers clammy on Bart’s jaw with his face softened into a coo. Bart could not bite. He could not even spit. He only lay in this pile of sick and blood and everything pulled from him, and trembled so fiercely that his ribs clack-clacked against the ground.
It was those fingers that pushed Bart’s hair aside in some sort of comfort, even if it made his skin ache to feel, hypersensitive and starving all at once, because his eyes were locked on Wally and Wally was so, very still. Wally could be dead, if it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of his chest, the occasional shift in posture and repositioning of his head.
He didn’t want to look at Bart. He never wanted to look at Bart. No one did.
The ugly thing in him twisted and smarted, trying to break through his ribcage. But the fingers withdrew before Bart could lift his head and spit or bite or speak again, be Bart again, because there was that click and the spine-tingling terror that followed and he didn’t want to--
Something in his mouth was sweet.
Chocolate or those hard candies Max kept in the bottom of the fruit bowl, the ones that clicked against teeth when Bart tried to bite down on them. Hard enough to crack molars so he had to suck until they were gone, dissolved in his tongue.
It was so sweet, overwhelming and loud to muffle the fuzz in Bart’s head. He blinked at the blue around them all, deep, dark blue, soft blue that reflected off the bright red Flash suit into deep violet. He was shivering and his teeth felt like cotton, hands maybe non existent but something hurt very deeply. It was in his bones and skin and muscle and maybe it was that lightning everyone Bart loved was given.
Wally was there, right in the corner. When Bart tilted his head to look and try catch a glimpse of that lightning bolt, he saw nothing. No spark or movement. No vibration either.
His lips parted and they moved to speak, even as no sound came out. He tried again, slurred and distant, strained with the ache in his neck and spine. Everything hurt now that he thought about it. He wasn’t sure why. “Wally,” he called and was barely able to lift his cheek an eighth-inch off the ground. “ W-Wally.”
He was right there, out of reach. Five feet away if Bart could guess. Untouchable unless either of them moved and Bart couldn't, so why…
Wally looked up, far over Bart’s head, frozen in time. His jaw was clenched, tight enough to see a muscle twitch every other second. He was angry. What for, Bart could not remember, which never ended well. Bart would need to figure it out before it became a problem.
But.
But there were other voices in the muck and muddling speech he heard around him, above him, and Bart could not keep up and still knew that he did not recognise the ones talking. Wally’s jaw ticked again, the most restraint Bart has ever seen from him, and then a click.
Oh.
Bart was on fire.
It was flame that licked up his body, his limbs and chest and neck and face, and engulfed him so completely that Bart couldn’t move. It was flesh he smelled cooking, although that made no sense either. How many others could be there in the fire with him? Surely Wally would move for them.
Something warm trickled down the corner of Bart’s mouth when his body unlocked and he could twitch and tremble once more now that the inferno had receded. He was breathing and it ached in his chest and heart, head still fuzz and cotton with nothing and no one to tell him where he was.
Concrete floor. Hands that would not move. Blue light. Wally in the corner, still and tense like a rubber band.
Bart hoped, hoped, that the fire was not his fault. Hoped Wally did not consider him beyond saving.
“Can you--” he said and coughed harshly, felt a stab of agony in his throat loud enough to momentarily blind him, “can you help?”
Wally didn’t twitch. Did Bart not ask loudly enough? He couldn’t hear the flames, though they had to be roaring now around him. He heard them and they were so close. Practically rattling against his skull, pushing smoke behind his eyes. His brain was going to explode with the pressure.
“ Wa-lly. ” Bart’s voice was high and thin and a wisp of nothing at all. But it carried in the air and he knew it did because Wally’s mouth twitched downwards into disapproval, into anger, so he heard it. He was just ignoring Bart. “Th’ fire. Wally, the fire .”
Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing.
The fire raged on right by Bart’s ears and ate his skin alive. Wally would not move. Wally would not move because Wally hated him.
His breath caught halfway up his windpipe. It came out stuttering and soft, a wheeze of agony. Bart twitched once, full body, painful, horrible, and was still long enough to try and look around.
No one left to save. Everyone but Bart was sitting or standing, clear-eyed and okay. Bart was being devoured by fire still because Wally didn’t like him. Wally never liked him. And Bart did not know what to do. Didn’t know what he already did to mess up so badly that no one wanted him anymore.
Bart should ask. He couldn’t. There was fire in his throat and it gurgled blood into his mouth which dribbled down between his teeth and lips. It was all that he had left, aside from the ash and the burning smell. Metal blood and the red suit in the corner. The ache around his neck. Bart was so, very alone.
Click
“--hey! Hey, c’mon kid. Open your eyes.”
A hand on his cheek, slap-slap-slap. Insistent. Annoying. Bart groaned and turned away. His mouth was sweet, like candy.
“ IknowIknowIknow . It’s okay. Come back to me. Eyes open, Bart,” he snapped, so angry already even though Bart was only sleeping. “Wake up. Help’s coming but I need to know what hurts. Bart! What hurts? Can you tell me?”
No, he might have said. Everything was fluff and and softness that ached. His mouth didn’t feel real. Where were his fingers?
“Okay.” Hand on his cheek, gentle, cupping. Speedster-warm, a finger brushing his cheekbone. His voice cracked. “ Okay. Okay, you’re okay. Bart, you’re okay. You hear me? You’re gonna be fine. You--”
He stopped talking. Or maybe he didn’t. Bart wouldn’t know. Not anymore.