jla_watchtower | Beep Beep Zip Tang.

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Beep Beep Zip Tang.

The Flash is on the job - pondering a vacation from said job.

He's feeling a bit burned out lately, but he has no idea what he'd do if he took time off.

He's heard a few reports about some funky orb going around, so he's trying to find it and corral it for study.

He comes across it sooner than he expected, and he's not quite ready for what it's going to show him...

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The temptation is there, since he can't really sleep at night without seeing it anymore. It'll make her feel better, it'll make HIM feel better and...

NO. Dick's kid isn't going to be a murderer.

He rolls with the kick, but reaches out to snag her ankle and cinch it into an armlock.

"Christ, woman, did you even LIKE your father?"

There's a grunt from her as she's pulled off-balance, but her other hand reaches for a razor-sharp batarang, flinging it at his head with every ounce of rage and fury she can muster. "More than you'd ever know!" The movements are controlled, but her words are unfettered by discipline.

It tears off one of the bolts on the side of the head, along with a few locks of hair.

And that earns her a hard bunch of speed-force punches to the thigh he's holding onto.

"Then if you EVER disrespect him like this again, by trying to become the same kind of filthy murderering piece of crap that your entire family has fought against all their lives, I'll put you in your mother's wheelchair!"

She crumples back into the snow with a harsh, guttural expulsion of pain from her lungs.

And she stays there. Breathing hard. Staring up at him. He can't mean that. Can he?

Either way, he's got her attention.

He looms, and he's angry.

"You can hate me if you want. You can blame me for how badly I failed you, your mother, myself, your grandfather and the rest of the goddamned world, and I won't argue with you."

His voice is a bit more haggard, now, and his eyes are showing his age.

"I can think more thoughts in a second than you can manage in an hour, and everything that goes on in my head is shaded by that one horrible failure. EVERY MINUTE of EVERY DAY, there's my best friend, the one guy who always had my back, looking at me with those stoic eyes and that knowing nod, scolding me for everything I do wrong, and lingering so I never feel good about what I do right."

He swallows back bile. "He's scolded me a lot. He hates what I've become, and he'd hate the road you're on, but I'm not going to let him hate what you become. Never. I don't care if I have to treadmill back from the end of time. You will never be a killer."

His lips curl.

"Or the same thing happens to you that happened to every last one of the Rogues. The same thing that's happened to all those Arkhamites who can't escape anymore. The same thing that happened to the Joker once I finally realized I was going to hell and it didn't matter for me anymore. All it took was a little self-taught anatomy to learn the exact right place on the human spine that severs all motor functions to the body."

Fists clench.

"None of those bastards are escaping anymore. They won't kill anyone else ever again. And if you turn into one of those evil pieces of shit that thinks it's okay to take someone else's life just because you're angry... well, I'm sure your father would agree with me that you're better off paralyzed from the neck down than you are ambulatory and lethal."

The tone is as cold as the mountain air.

"That's your choice, Mary. Do right by your parents, or answer to me. It's that simple."

The cold is seeping through her kevlar. The bitter wind turns the welling liquid in her eyes to ice as she stares at him, rendered mute by his confession and his promise. Confronted by the bitter and gruesome image of his recent actions against the happier memories of her youth.

Rage has turned inwards, becoming a deep gnawing horror that claws at her from the inside out. It's reflected in her green eyes now as she lifts her good leg, intending to backpedal from him. To where, she doesn't know -- she's on a goddamned mountain, for Christ's sake -- but the thought of staying in his presence right now terrifies her.

"You ... you did all that ... "

His arms cross. He can keep himself warm, but he's hoping the cold will break her down a bit.

"Yes. I'm not proud of it, but it's saved a lot of lives. Are you gonna be one of the good guys, Mary?"

No sense telling her it can be reversed just as easily until she gets the point.

She's done her fair share of kneecapping; of being a little heavyhanded with the lowlives on the street trying to pick up runaways and become their pimps. They deserve it though, don't they?

The conflict roils within, threatening to engulf her whole. The snow may as well be sapping her will to live, much less the warmth of her body.

She can't reconcile the images in her head, of the man in front of her now and the man she knew back then. It just isn't right...

With another labored motion, she scrambles away, the cold numbing her injured leg before she turns her back to him and vomits into the pristine snow.

A deep breath.

"Now maybe you have some sense of how I feel. How I've felt every day since it happened. Since he died right in front of me and I couldn't stop it. I just pray you don't have to watch it happen to anyone you love, for as long as you live."

She's kneeling in the snow, drawing a gauntleted arm roughly across her face. Still facing away from him.

She's shaking now, and it's not just because of the cold.

The tears are like shards of ice on her skin.

Instantly, she's back on the rooftop they left not long ago, but their positions are the same, the distance between them now preserved.

"It's too late for me. But I'll die before I let you go down this same road."

It's like getting a ton of bricks dumped on her head all at once. The bricks that constituted the walls she made. Walls of her own making, in mourning for what she lost and what she can never regain.

Her throat feels clogged, and at the same time hoarse. Finally, she gets the words out, though they sound different to her ears, as though the voice isn't her own. She feels twelve again, hurt and lost and uncertain.

"Take me to him." It's not a command. It's a plea.

Wally takes a deep breath. A long exhale.

Then, they're at his gravesite. Tombstone is not as elaborate as he deserves, but certainly more than he'd have wanted.

He swallows hard once they've arrived, stepping back a bit to let his daughter talk to her daddy.

His head bows, and eventually, his own tears start to form.

"I'm trying, man," he whispers. "All I have left to do."

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Beep Beep Zip Tang.

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