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This is a fan fiction piece I wrote some years ago. It features Nightwing and Wally West, right after CRISIS, when he decided to take up his uncle's legacy and become the Flash. I have an unfinished follow-up featuring Dick and Wally during the period when Dick stepped in as Batman while Bruce was healing from his Bane-beating.
I used to communicate with Scott McDaniel (former penciller of NIGHTWING and BATMAN; current penciller of GREEN ARROW) over on AOL, and I let him read this story. He told me that he'd love to draw it sometime.
Anything's possible, I suppose.
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Ready or Not, Part 1
by Frank A. Lauro
You can call it a lot of things, but swear to God, “showing off” should not be one of them, no matter how it looks. If anything, you should call it…confirmation.
I mean, okay, fine, I admit it -- I made sure to call Dick to the Tower when I knew the rest of the Titans were off on personal stuff or private missions or whatever took them to wherever they went when they weren’t making regular meetings. What I wanted was a moment alone with the best friend I’ve ever had who’s not linked to me through blood or marriage. I’d already shown Mom and Frances and a select few other folks so they wouldn’t freak out too badly when they first saw me in action on the home turf. That was practical. This is personal. He missed the first moment, when I made the most important decision of my life…so I want him to see me – I want him to see the result of that decision -- in complete privacy.
And I want to see him when he sees me.
‘Cause, see, I’m finally feeling like I’m over some of the guilt and the fear and the inadequacy. I’m almost, just a little bit, starting to feel as though I just might be able to do this. What I’ve undertaken here is something that none of us -- the kids, the sidekicks, the “junior JLA” -- has yet been in a position to attempt. What I’ve become is something that none of the others have really even had to contemplate becoming…at least for the reason that I’ve felt the need to set out to do what I’ve done. You ask me, that marks them as lucky. I would have given anything for this to have never happened -- for me to have gone on with the word “Kid” in my name until I was twice as old as too old to have it be appropriate -- but it didn’t work out that way. The moment came and I grabbed it and damn it, I was right to do so. If I hadn’t done it at that second, if Jay hadn’t been right there, I might never have done it at all…but I did, and I’m glad. From the moment I said the words, a universe away, I’ve felt a wave of approval smiling down upon me. I’ve felt consent in the lightning.
All I need now is for my best friend to say it’s okay. Then I’ll be ready.
* * * * * *
The Tower’s a little cold. That’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t usually notice, but this is, after all, an unusual day.
I ascend the stairs at just below Mach 1 -- no need to cause a sonic boom indoors, even though the suprastructure is reinforced to withstand that and more -- and take an extra moment at the speed my late uncle made sure I was blessed enough to employ. My best friend sits at the main conference table, poring over a pile of paperwork that would bore me to tears in less time than it would take him to gloss the first word of the first page.
I take a long look at him and almost chicken out and turn right around at the same speed at which I arrived -- a luxury for those few of us who can enter and exit a room with as ephemeral a presence as a mild breeze. It’s not just his furrowed brow or his sincere concentration on the bills and requisitions and affidavits before him -- earmarks of the countless responsibilities that he’s borne on our behalf for longer than I’d care to remember -- it’s the whole look of him.
See, a year or so ago, we quit the Titans. Dick and I. Together. At the same time, I mean. And his doing so is what made me able to go along with him; I agreed with his argument that maybe it was time to put away childish things, as they say, and become men. He ditched the short pants, I shed the coolest costume any hero ever had, and we both walked. If Dick hadn’t said the words, I doubt that I ever would have found my own within me. What I said that day was really just an echo of his own sentiment: Wally following the leader, as usual. Not that he led me wrong, mind you -- the call I made that day, like Dick’s, was the right one.
Which made things all the more awkward when he reversed his decision a month later.
Sure, the yellow cape and the elf boots were gone, as was the “Batman and…” in front of his name -- but Dick came back to the forefront with a new costume and identity. He slipped into some midnight blue, turned up his collar, fancied up his domino mask, and started calling himself Nightwing. Boom: new hero. Not too much of a Batman influence there, right? Riiight.
So here he is now, still not able to perceive me at this speed -- Mister Reborn, Mister Grown-Up, the first one of us to really do anything radical with his “sidekick” image…and he makes me nervous, which makes no sense. I mean, here I am, and I’ve done it. Dick may have rendered Robin a memory -- or at least an identity to be taken up by someone else, a new kid, a good kid -- but I’m the one who’s crossed the line we all used to talk about. I’m the one who’s “stepped up,” as we used to call it. Garth, Roy, Donna, and yeah, even Dick -- they all talked about it, hinted at it, bragged about it like any stupid kids would at 13, spandex or no -- but I’m the one standing here now in the uniform of the man who for years called me “sidekick,” who always intended for me to take over for him, who died saving the universe decades earlier than he probably expected to.
Arthur still out-swims sharks. Ollie still bulls-eyes gnats at a hundred yards. Diana still throws Darkseid around and deflects bullets from multiple automatic-fire weapons. And Bruce…well, he’s still Bruce -- scaring the hell out of Roy and sneaking up on me, for Christ’s sake. Of all the honest-to-god legends, even after the casualty count of this damned “Crisis,” only Barry is dead. He was the first of the pantheon to go, which makes me, in turn, the first of us “kids” to actually take up the implicit inheritance that we all accepted the moment we first let ourselves be called “Boy” or “Lad” or “Girl” or what have you.
And before I start running through the streets of Central City, or Keystone City, or hell, any city that knows what that red blur means…I’ve got to do this. Jay? He not only approves, but matches my mourning in a way that no one else alive truly could. My mom? She’s her usual Blue Valley housewife self, but she’s come to understand what Barry meant to me, and -- maybe for the first time ever -- sees this newest step of mine as something I need to do.
That leaves the frowning detective seated before me. All I have to do is slow down enough so he can see me. The rest, I’m thinking, will happen pretty naturally.
I resolve myself to get it over with, and the deep breath I take feels as though it takes up a full minute. In reality, it probably takes up less than a hundredth of a second. Either way, when it ends, I relax my molecules into real time. I even manage a smile.
* * * * * *
Dick’s head snaps around, I swear, before he can actually sense me. He does that sort of thing a lot, which freaks me out. What he doesn’t do a lot is look surprised, like he’s doing right this second.
“Wally?” he says, rising from his seat, looking me up and down, seeing the all-red costume and knowing instantly what it means. To his credit, he’s the first person to notice at first glance that it isn’t Barry in this outfit any more.
“Yeah,” I say, holding my arms out like a runway model. I even do a full, slow spin, and feel like a showy idiot about two hundred degrees of the way through. “What do you think?” I ask, after a self-conscious clearing of my throat.
Dick takes a step closer to me, seemingly ignoring the costume for a moment. “I haven’t seen you since we all got back from…” He stops in mid-sentence, frowns, bites his lip, and shakes his head. “I’m so sorry about Barry. He was one of the reasons we all decided to do what we do, Wally. No one will ever forget him. We owe him -- the world owes him -- our very existence.”
At Barry’s service, Jay gave an eight-minute eulogy. I fought back tears every second of the way, but I managed to hold it in the whole time. Dick’s four sentences make my vision blurry with moisture more quickly than I, of all people, am able to sense or control.
And Nightwing, formerly Robin the first, a decidedly non-superhuman individual, pulls me into me into a full embrace before I, the newly-designated fastest man alive, so much as see him move.
I lose it for a minute, the way I had wanted to at the service, the way I would have if Iris had lived to stand there with me and mourn the man who’d meant everything to us -- just the two of us -- as he’d meant to no other. And Richard John Grayson hugs me tight and lets me cry on the shoulder of his snazzy no-longer-red-and-green uniform, and he doesn’t shush me or rock me or rush me or try to tell me that everything will be all right. He just lets me fall apart and do what I need to do.
Best friends are like that.
I get it all out eventually, and ease away from him. He takes a half-step back, and I see that he actually looks a little wet in the face himself. Nonetheless, he sniffs it away with a jerk of his head and says, “I just hope you’re not wearing Barry’s underwear, too.”
And then we laugh like we used to when we were kids and Roy would make a fart joke while Donna was in another room. It’s an amazing feeling, coming as it does on the heels of what just happened…and it’s a sure sign that I’m in the presence of the man who knows me like no one else in the world does or could.
“I have no comment,” I finally get out, the laughter subsiding, “on the nature -- or even existence -- of my undergarments, Batboy.”
Dick’s guffaws shrink to snickers as well. “Not like I really wanted to know or anything, Flash-in-the-Pan.”
At that, I stand a little straighter, my voice a bit more serious. “Flash-For-Real now, brother,” I say. “I’m doing it. I’m going back to Central and I’m telling them I’m ready.”
Dick cocks his head a degree. “And are you?”
A few years ago, I would have gotten pissed off at that question, jumped to the conclusion that he was shooting me down, and hauled ass out of the Tower. Probably might even have wound up running to Frances for comfort, and we all know where that always leads. But I’m not quite that much the hothead anymore. I know what he’s doing by asking me that. He’s not doubting what I said. He’s making me say it again and affirm it for the record.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m ready, Dick.”
What I then think but don’t say is: And I need to hear you say that you agree with me before I dare to show the lower half of my face to Captain Cold and Mirror Master and Weather Wizard and the rest of those bozos; before I say the words to that first newscaster who notices that I’m shorter than the Flash we all knew and loved; before that first time Superman stops over in Central City to see how things are going. I don’t say a word of that, even though I figure that that’s the reason I came here today at all.
I say nothing further, because my best friend sees to it that I don’t have to. He simply extends a hand, as formal as can be, not a hint of condescension or playfulness on his face. “I wish that you hadn’t had to come into it this way, Wally,” he says, “but you’re as ready for this as any of us would have been had things gone differently. Maybe even more ready.”
I take his hand, and he shakes it. He holds on a little longer than he might have if we weren’t alone in the Tower.
“You’re the Flash,” he says, the words cementing the idea in my mind just as I knew they would. “It’s what Barry would have wanted. Wherever he is, I know that he -- and Iris -- are proud of you. And they’re the only people I can think of who could be more proud of you than I am, right at this moment.”
I won’t cry again, even though he mentioned Iris. I’m actually too busy feeling good about myself to be anything but warmed by the image of Barry reunited with Iris, looking down on me, maybe even with the pride that Dick suggests…and showers me with at this very moment.
“So,” he says, releasing my hand and snapping to, in an almost military fashion. “Can we still count on you as a Titan, or will you be leaping right into the arms of the Justice League?” His tone is only half-serious, but it occurs to me that it’s a valid question, and one I haven’t even really considered.
“Well, I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t really see me as League material. Do you?”
Dick raises an eyebrow. “Question is, do you?”
I laugh out loud, but he doesn’t. “Hell, I dunno, man. Let’s see if I can do this at all in the yellow boots instead of the red ones, okay? One thing at a time.” I nod to the backlit four-foot painting of me -- in the yellow threads -- adorning the wall between similar representations of Changeling and Starfire. “Might wanna ask Joe if he can re-do the colors on the costume up there.”
“And cover up the red hair,” Dick says.
“Exactly. Don’t want our Titans looking out of date, now, do we?”
“We certainly don’t,” Dick says, clearly satisfied with my roundabout answer to his question.
Neither of us says anything for a moment. I smirk and shuffle my feet a bit.
“Well,” I say, “Time to get back home.”
“Oh, well, yeah,” Dick says, scoffing a bit. “Wouldn’t want that to take more than a pico-second, right?”
“Hey, never happen, bro,” I say. I can tell him about what's happened to my speed later. “Call me for the next regular meeting, okay? I’ll be here.”
Dick nods, then barely catches me with a shout of my name before I dash off.
“Wally,” he says again, more quietly now that he has my attention. He takes a breath, opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. “I’m glad you were first.”
I let him see the smile spread across my face, but there’s nothing I can say to that without feeling like I ruined the moment…the very one I came here for today.
And when I screech to a halt in Central City a little over an hour and a half later – the trip took longer since I had to pull a six-year-old kid out of a nasty eddy in the Illinois River -- I’m still smiling.
I’m finally the Flash.
My best friend says so.
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Copyright 2003 by Frank Andrew Lauro. All Rights Reserved. Nightwing, Flash, Robin, Kid Flash, (Teen) Titans, Mirror Master, Captain Cold, Abra Kadabra, Captain Boomerang, Superman, Justice League, Changeling, and Starfire are all owned by DC Comics, a subsidiary of Time-Warner, Incorporated.
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