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 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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