The Flash

“You’re WHAT?!”

Bart Allen’s exclamation didn’t take Wally entirely by surprise, though Linda and he both jumped slightly. The young, red-haired man looked over the faces of the people across the table from he and his wife. Bart’s bushy brown hair all but obscured the time-worn visage of his mentor and guardian, Max Crandall, who sat next to the young boy, comfortable in the wooden kitchen chair. Jay and Joan Garrick sat to Bart’s other side. Behind all of them, Jessica Chambers sat carefully on the sill of a large bay window that opened out into the backyard of the West’s house. They were all dressed casually, and Wally smiled to himself. Anyone looking in on this room, he thought, would have no idea that five of the people present were superheroes.

“The word is ‘pregnant,’ Bart,” Wally said calmly.

Max put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, pushing him back into his chair. “Bart, control yourself.”

Wally glanced towards Linda and smiled. Linda smirked back. “It’s okay,” she said, looking towards the people on the other side of the oak table. “Just not so much with the sudden movements when the baby gets here, alright?”

“That’s…” Bart stammered, struggling to find the words to express what he was thinking. Finally he slackened and sat back in his chair.

“Congratulations, you two,” Jay said with a smile. “That’s fantastic news.”

Max nodded. “How long have you known?”

“About a month,” Wally replied, “and I’m sorry for not having gotten us all together before now. My schedule lately has been…hectic.”

“If you ever need anything,” Joan said, “you can always call us.”

Wally nodded. “Thanks. We’re going to try and be as self-sufficient as we can be, though.” He took a deep breath, and he saw Jesse smile to herself. “I’m retiring.”

Before Bart could speak, Max’s hand sprung off the tabletop fast enough to create a small breeze that moved Linda’s shoulder-length brown hair. Bart’s eyes were wide as he struggled to exclaim, “Mmmf MMMTT?!”

Wally laughed. “You heard me, Bart, I’m retiring. Linda’s going to keep working and I’ll stay home and take care of the baby.”

Jay’s brow furrowed, and he sat forward, his forearms resting on the table. He spoke carefully. “Wally…”

“I know, Jay,” Wally said, noticing the concern in the elder Flash’s tone. “We’re way ahead of you.”

“‘We’?” Max asked, removing his hand from Bart’s mouth.

“That would be me,” Jesse said, stepping into view of the other seated speedsters.

“Jesse’s going to be the new Flash,” Wally said. “Keystone and Central need a speedster, I know, so when I retire, she’s taking over for me. It won’t be for, oh, about eight months now, but still.”

There was an awkward silence. This wasn’t what Wally had expected, though, thinking about it now, he really wasn’t sure what he had expected. It felt to him like they disapproved. He began to say something, but the shrill ringing of the cordless phone on the table next to him cut through the silence before he could speak. Everyone jumped a little, and Wally snatched the phone, pressing a button and holding it to his ear. “Hello?”

The others watched as Wally listened to the voice on the phone. He sighed. “Okay. On it. Thanks, Phil.” He removed the phone from his ear and slid his chair away from the table. He looked to Linda, who looked back at him. “I gotta go,” he said.

Max stood quickly. “What is it?”

“Silent alarm went off over at STAR Labs. Lenny Snart’s breaking in.”

“Great,” Linda said with a sigh. “Be careful, and come back quick, okay?”

“You’re lucky quick’s my thing,” he replied with a smile. He kissed her and stood.

Bart jumped from his seat. “You need help?”

“No, I should be fi-”

“Greatlet’sgo!” Bart disappeared past Wally in a blur of red and white.

Wally looked at Max, who smirked. “Be nice,” he said.

“Right,” Wally said before disappearing in his own blur of red and yellow.

Leonard Snart would not have picked that name had he had a choice.

When he was younger, the kids at school were mean to him, calling him names. Lenny Fart had been a favorite, as had Snart the Fart, Farty Snarty, and other variations involving the word that rhymed with his last name. The names had carried on into high school, at least among Leonard’s less intellectual classmates, though they had always changed their tune about the young man once they met his younger sister, Lisa, a beautiful blonde with a skater’s figure and the talent to go with it.

Lisa, it seemed, had never had to endure the teasing that her older brother had dealt with. Lenny had been a small, lanky boy, never spoken to by others except for the ridiculing; Lisa had been cute and popular, with dozens of friends of both sexes all throughout school. Still, Lisa would defend her brother at school, as he would her at home whenever their father came home from the bar having had six or seven too many. He never forgot that, growing up, she was the only person, their grandfather aside, who ever treated them well.

Raising the purple gun in his gloved right hand, Lenny pulled the trigger. A beam of ice shot forth from the barrel of the gun, striking a uniformed security guard before the young man could react. The guard stood motionless, frozen in space, reaching for his gun but never quite grasping it. His eyes darted around frantically, and his skin turned a light blue color, almost matching the blue of his uniform. Lenny looked at the guard for a moment before lowering his weapon. For a moment, he thought of Lisa, of the kids in school, and of his rotten name. Leonard Snart.

Captain Cold. Now that was a name he could be proud of.

Cold sighed, a puff of white breath leaving his lips, and he holstered the cold gun. Reaching with a white leather-gloved hand into a pocket on his dark blue hooded jacket, he pulled out a map. Unfolding it, he looked around the room. He had never been to STAR Labs before, and it was not that he was unprepared. He had, by his own admission, rushed into this job without a lot of forethought. It was not his style to go into a place blindly, and while he had looked at the map before this moment, he still needed it to refresh his memory. The building was a puzzle of corridors and doorways that led everywhere and nowhere at once, and if he wasn’t careful, Cold realized he could wind up in a closet or out the front door. He was glad, then, that his costume had pockets. As he realized which way to turn, following the path he had outlined in red, he thought of The Mirror Master looking for a pocket on his own orange-and-green costume, and a smile crossed Snart’s face.

Taking a final, quick look at the map, Snart folded it and put it back into the pocket of his jacket with his left hand, unholstering his weapon with his free right hand. His pace quickened as he reached the end of the hall. He turned sharply to the left, glancing back over his shoulder as he did so. There was nothing there for now, but he realized that this would probably not be the case forever. No doubt when he had entered the building a silent alarm had been tripped, and a silent alarm in Keystone meant more than the police – it meant The Flash.

It was a fact that hadn’t escaped Snart as he had quickly planned this job. The Flash would arrive, probably sooner than later. What he felt then was not fear, but anticipation. There was no point, he reasoned, in being afraid of something that was inevitable. All he could do was wait for it to happen and then face it when it arrived.

After several turns and short corridors, Snart came to a large door. It bore a sign reading “TESTING LABORATORY 4-B.” The glass of the thick window on the door was fogged over. Snart wiped at the fog with the back of his right hand, which still held the purple cold gun tightly. Holding his breath, he looked into the room, squinting through the big blue frames of his glasses/mask. A table in the middle of the room was littered with orange-, yellow, and beige-colored chunks of ice. Snart eyed the table for a moment, his hand finding the handle to the door as he did. He tried to turn it, to no avail. He sighed, and the window became once again obscured with fog.

Stepping back, Captain Cold leveled his weapon on the door before him. He pulled the trigger, and the gun hummed to life, letting off a concentrated ray of white cold. The weapon was loud for something so small, but it did its job well. Half a minute later, the door was frozen solid. Cold lowered the gun, flipping open a pouch on his jacket and removing a small black object. Rearing back with his left hand, he jabbed the object into the wall of ice in front of him and pressed a small button. A red light blinked on the object, and Cold stepped backwards quickly, stopping several yards away from the ice wall. A moment later, the blinking red light became solid, and a second after that, the wall of ice exploded, raining chunks of ice and metal and insulation upon the ground.

Again Cold stepped towards the room, his spiked boots crunching the ice chunks. He stepped through, past the sport where, minutes before, a door had stood, blocking his way. Stopping in front of the table, Leonard Snart removed his glasses and forced a weak smile as he looked at the chunks of colored ice laid out before him.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

“And remember, watch out for the gun, okay?”

Impulse nodded. “C’mon, Wally, I’m not that stupid.”

“That’s open for debate,” The Flash mumbled to himself with a smile.

The younger speedster looked towards him. “What?”

“Nothing,” he replied into his head set. “Just…follow my lead. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Wally blinked, and the STAR Labs building appeared on the horizon, growing ever larger with each passing millisecond. “Slow down,” he said as he and Impulse neared the sprawling complex.

A crowd of people (Wally presumed the STAR staff, as there were no police cars visible – he figured they were leaving this one to the costumed professionals) were scattered outside of the building, and the two speedsters circled around the building slowly. All of the entrances were sealed, save for one, a service door which stood wide open, its lock encased in ice and broken off. They stopped in front of the door, and Impulse moved to enter. Wally put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Wait.”

“What?”

“We have to walk in.”

“What?”

“Snart usually ices the floors. It may look clear now, but trust me, aside from this entryway, any floor he’s been over in this place will be coated with ice.”

Bart looked at Wally, then back towards the doorway, and finally back at Wally. “And you know this because…”

Wally chuckled sharply, catching himself quickly and stopping. He took a deep breath. “Slip and fall on your butt enough times and you pick up a few things. That’s not something you want to do in front of one of your rogues, let me tell you.”

The brown-haired boy smiled. “Smooth move.”

“I haven’t even told Linda that story, alright, there’s just some embarrassment you don’t share with your wife, so if you could not mention it to her…”

Bart’s smile became a smirk, and he nodded. “Right.”

Wally eyed him for a long moment. “Bart, I mean it.”

“I know,” he replied quickly, “I won’t say anything. Calm down.”

The fastest man alive sighed. “Let’s go.”

The two heroes stepped off towards the door, and Wally entered ahead of his younger cousin, walking in silence. Bart continued to smile to himself. “Wally?”

“Yeah?”

“How many times did you fall?”

Wally sighed and replied quietly. “Four or five.”

It would be harder to get out than he had originally thought, Snart realized. In his haste to plan the break-in, he hadn’t planned on having the weight of his acquisition with him. A bag over the shoulder would not be enough to carry what weighed more than the average person. Luckily, Snart had found a wheeled cart in the lab, which he had frozen his acquisition to, and which he was pushing now down the hallways towards his exit. It would slow his escape, certainly, but with his cold gun at the ready, he still felt confident. He would succeed; he had to, for her sake.

The wheels of the cart slid across the iced floor of the hallway, which crunched quietly under the spikes on Cold’s boots. He rounded a corner, the cart nearly crashing into the wall, when he saw two figures ahead of him. The taller of the two was clad in red from head to toe, while the shorter, younger one had big hair and wore a costume of red and white.

At the sight of Captain Cold, Impulse jumped. “There he is!” he exclaimed and nearly lost his balance, catching himself quickly with The Flash’s help.

Snart approached the two speedsters slowly, his weapon trained on the two of them. The Flash and Impulse had stopped in their tracks, and were standing side-by-side now, effectively blocking the exit. “Heya, Kid Flash,” Snart said caustically.

“The name’s Impulse, idiot,” Bart replied.

“I think he meant me,” Wally said quietly. Looking past the boy, he eyed Captain Cold. “Snart.”

“You brought help this time,” Cold replied, still approaching the two standing speedsters. “Good to see you finally have someone here to catch you when you fall.”

“Funny guy, Lenny, funny guy. You’re gonna wanna go ahead and put back whatever you’ve got frozen to that cart.”

“I would,” Cold said, stopping a few feet away from the two younger men, “but I really can’t. Sorry.”

The three men stood in silence for a moment. Wally didn’t notice the same contempt in Cold’s voice as he normally did. It made something feel off to him about the situation.

Impulse looked expectantly at Cold, then at The Flash. “What’s going on,” he whispered. “Shouldn’t we do something?”

“We’re standing in his way, aren’t we?” Wally whispered back. “Just be patient.”

“Great,” Bart mumbled with a sigh.

Wally stared at Captain Cold, glancing down at the cart quickly before looking back at the blue-and-white-clad man. “What’s going on, Lenny?”

“It’s my sister,” Snart replied, motioning with his free hand down at the contents of the cart. “This is Lisa,” he said.

Wally’s eyes scanned down onto the cart. The colored chunks of ice told the rest of the story. “Oh.” The speedster stammered slightly. “Oh, wow.”

“After Chillblaine killed her*, STAR Labs collected what was left of her,” Cold said. “They wanted to ‘test’ her, to see what effect the freezing was having on her ‘metahuman physiology.’ It took me this long just to find the facility they were keeping her in.”

(*DC’s The Flash #113)

“But Lisa didn’t have any-”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Snart said with a snap. “They think just because you put on a costume and call yourself ‘The Golden Glider,’ you’ve got powers.”

“What do you want with her,” Impulse chimed in. “Going to try to bring her back to life or something?”

“I just want to bury her,” Cold replied soberly.

Again the three men stood in silence. Snart could see that, while the younger one obviously wasn’t too quick on the uptake, The Flash was thinking things over. Slowly, he moved his right hand to his side and holstered the cold gun he had had trained on the two heroes. “Here’s the thing,” he said. “There’s a couple of guards back the way I came that are still alive. They’re encased in ice, but they’re not frozen solid, though I would guess they probably can’t take much more of the cold before they’re gone. Just so you know, while we’re standing here, talking about this, they’re back there, dying.”

A third long silence. Wally had kicked into super speed, his mind racing as only it could. His eyes moved around the slow-motion room, from Cold’s desperate face – he was nearly stone-faced, but Wally had run into him enough to know that something was bothering him – to Impulse’s silent confusion, and finally to the body of Lisa Snart, frozen, in pieces, on a cart. His eyes rested there for a relative ten minutes, and as he stared, he thought of his uncle Barry. Aside from considering what his mentor would have done in this situation, Wally felt a pang of something, nagging at the back of his brain. With a blink, the room sped up around him, and the scarlet speedster sighed.

“Okay, Snart,” Wally said. “Listen to me and hear everything I’m going to say to you here, okay? This is one time and one time only, and if I find out you were lying to us in any way whatever, I will hunt you down and you will be back in Iron Heights so fast…”

“What?!” Impulse turned sharply towards his older cousin. “We’re just gonna let him go?”

“He’s not stealing anything – except for that cart, but that’s an acceptable loss – and he hasn’t hurt anyone yet, at least not if we act fast.” The Flash turned back to the costumed rogue. “Where are they?”

“Follow the trail of ice, you’ll find them,” Snart said.

He pushed the cart towards them, and The Flash and Impulse moved to one side of the hall. As Cold passed the scarlet speedster, he stopped. “I can’t guarantee what’s waiting for you when you get outside,” Wally said.

“I can hold my own,” Cold replied. “And I won’t kill anyone. You have my word.”

Wally nodded, and Snart moved past them. “Come on,” Wally said quietly, and he and Impulse started walking down the hall in the opposite direction.

After they turned a corner, Impulse sighed. “I can’t believe you’re just letting him get away like that.”

“Obviously Max hasn’t gotten you to the part about ‘the greater good’ yet.”

“But isn’t it our job to stop the bad guys?”

Turning another corner, The Flash and Impulse came upon the two guards, encased in ice and screaming for help. Wally turned to his cousin. “Our job is to make sure these two can go home to their families.”

Jay swallowed the sip of tea, lowering the white ceramic cup, setting it on the table. “So he got away,” he said flatly.

“Bullet points? Yes,” Wally replied. The other speedsters had left the house, leaving Wally and Linda alone with Jay and Joan Garrick in the younger couple’s kitchen. The four sat around the table. Wally tipped back a bottle of water, finishing the last drops of clear liquid. He crumpled the bottle, replaced its lid, and tossed it into the orange recycling bin that rested on the floor a few feet away. “Bart seemed pretty weirded out about it.”

“I can’t say I blame him, Wally,” Jay replied. “I know you have your reasons for doing it…”

“For doing what? I didn’t do anything—”

“That’s exactly the point,” Jay interrupted. “You let a known felon get away.”

“He hadn’t done anything wrong, Jay,” Joan said, putting her hand on her husband’s.

“He broke into S.T.A.R. Labs! He attacked the guards!”

“Non-lethally,” Wally said. “And only when they came upon him, he didn’t go looking for them.” He glanced to his left. Linda sat with her hands on the table, cradling a cup of tea in her palms. She looked back at her husband, her expression nearly blank.

“I can’t believe you’re justifying this for him,” Jay said, and Wally looked away from Linda towards his older predecessor. Jay’s voice had a bite to it that Wally had never heard before. “Or are you just justifying it for yourself?”

The back of a hand struck Jay’s arm, and the older man turned to see his wife’s wrinkled, scowling face. “Jason Garrick!”

“Joan…” Wally spoke softly. The silver-haired woman looked at him, her expression softening from the hard look she had given her husband. “It’s okay,” Wally said. “We can sit here and argue the right and wrong of it, but none of that changes the fact that I did it. I’m not trying to justify anything, Jay. I thought for a relative hour about it beforehand. The decision was mine, and I stand by it. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”

“I’m not disappointed in you, son, I just…I guess I don’t understand it.”

“I know,” the red-haired man replied. “Do you trust me?”

“Of course.”

“Then trust me.”

Jay’s eyes wandered away from Wally, and Joan nudged his side with her elbow. Jay sighed with a smile. “I do.”

An awkward silence ensued. Joan finished her cup of tea, placing the empty cup next to Jay’s on the table. “We should probably be going,” The older woman finally said. “Jay’s got a JSA meeting in New York tonight.”

“Right,” Wally said.

The four stood from around the table and made their way towards the front door of the Wests’ house. “We’re glad you two could come over,” Linda said, finally breaking her silence.

“Of course,” Jay said warmly. He hugged Linda. “Congratulations again.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

Joan hugged Wally and smiled up at him. “Don’t let him get to you,” she whispered to him.

“I know,” Wally whispered back. “Thanks.”

Joan moved to hug Linda, and Jay looked at Wally, extending his hand to the younger man. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks, Jay.” He took the man’s hand and shook it firmly. “Are we running this Sunday?”

“We’ll see. Call me later this week.”

“Okay.”

A few minutes later and the Garricks were gone. Linda walked back into the kitchen and silently collected the empty tea cups from the table. She crossed the room, past Wally, towards the sink.

Wally followed her, stopping a few feet next to her. He leaned against the counter and looked at his wife. “Hey.”

She looked at him. “Hmm?”

“You alright?”

Linda’s weight shifted on her feet. She looked away from him as she spoke, her hair hiding her face from him. “Fine,” she said.

With a nervous chuckle, Wally spoke wryly. “Wow, if that’s not the ‘fine’ that means you’re not fine, I don’t know what is.”

“I’m fine, Wally, really.”

“Okay.” He paused. “’Cause you were pretty quiet there for a while. During that whole thing.”

“Yeah, well, I guess, I really wasn’t sure what to say.”

Wally paused again. “You agree with Jay?”

Turning to him sharply, Linda snapped, “I don’t know what to think, Wally!” Her exclamation took Wally slightly. There was a desperation in her voice that he hadn’t heard in a long time. She looked at in, a sense of pleading in her eyes. “I really don’t. I mean, not really understanding why you did it aside, is what you did even legal? There’s a little thing called ‘aiding and abetting’ that I’m not entirely familiar with, but that I think might include ‘standing there and letting Captain Cold get away.’”

“I’m sure it doesn’t mention him by name, sweetie…”

“Wally!”

His smile sinking, Wally realized his mistake. “Okay, so no more with the jokes right now.”

Linda sighed. “I mean, really, did you even think about that?”

Wally took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “Honestly? No.”

They looked at each other for a long moment, neither saying anything. Wally wanted to tell her what had gone through his mind at that moment, standing in that hallway with Impulse and Cold, but he honestly was not sure of what it had been. A connection had been made to Cold’s situation, and Wally had felt sympathy for him, though he wasn’t entirely sure of where that sympathy stemmed from. He wanted to tell Linda something, anything to put her at ease. Instead he stood there and looked at her. “I did what I thought was right, Linda.”

Linda wiped her hands, damp from washing the used teacups, on a dishtowel. Dropping the towel onto the counter, she eyed Wally, her expression flat as she moved towards him. “I know,” she said.

“I’m...I don’t want to have to apologize for that.”

“You don’t have to.”

He forced a smile at her, and she smiled half-heartedly back at him. The two embraced, and as he hugged his wife, Wally did not feel the knot in his stomach dissipate. He closed his eyes and hugged her more tightly.

The End...

Next Issue: The offer. Guest-starring the JLA.

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