[Fic] The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated
Title: The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated
Section: Part I: How We Got Here [Section 1/2]
Rating: PG-13
Summary: DCAU, post-"A Better World." The Justice Lords have vanished, but the regime they've set in place hasn't. Lisa Snart, Axel Walker, Owen Mercer, Alvin Desmond and Evan McCulloch are part of a new generation of Rogues doing their best to save the world and save their loved ones. Wait, what?
Word Count: ~7500
Notes and Warnings: Beta read by xcoffeespoonx. Many thanks!
This part of the fic is so long, I've split it in two. Second part coming up momentarily.
I'd say I've gone full circle on this one, but I'd like to think I've still got a lot more distance to cover. See, what first got me falling sideways into Flash fandom was browsing through the other work of an author who'd written a Batman fanfic I liked and finding another one about a hapless DCAU Trickster on the run from the Justice Lords. Don't blame them, please.
Contains canon cherrypicking and attempts to patchwork it together, Hollywood lobotomy, psychic infidelity, Superdickery, doucheBattery, F-bombs, unreliable narrators, crack pairings, undue optimism, pretentiousness.
I've pulled in a lot from comics canon - both regular DCU and what I've read of the series tie-ins Justice League Adventures and Justice League Unlimited. I've also indulged in some, um, creative reinterpretation, particularly of characters that didn't appear in the DCAU. Feel free to bring up any WTFery so I can attempt to justify it, attempt to explain where I spun it off, or concede that it's all me.
By-no-means-comprehensive canon notes:
-In the JLU comics, the Mirror Master is explicitly Evan McCulloch complete with Scottish accent (as opposed to the unnamed soy latte-ordering guy with the American accent in "Flash and Substance," presumably Sam Scudder); he also has a wife and wheelchair-bound son.
-In JL Adventures, Professor Zoom appears on friendly terms with the Rogues (even if they aren't necessarily as friendly with him) and they recognize his face without the cowl.
-In the Superman episode "Speed Demons," Mark Mardon's brother appears, survives the origin story, is younger than him, and is named Ben instead of Clyde.
-Jay Garrick appears in the comics, but as far as I know there's no indication in the DCAU that Barry was ever the Flash. Wally does, however, mention that his uncle's flying in for Flash Appreciation Day.
Here goes!
"If the only reason Flash has to not just jerk the hearts out of these bloodthirsty maniacs is to keep his karma pure, well, that's just not enough. People are reformable, but even more we are all part of the moral ecosystem and you never know from where the next good act may come. We shouldn't judge people with deadly force, because our judgement isn't perfect. We all may need to be saved one day by the Golden Glider." - William Messner-Loebs
Part One: How We Got Here
Here
Eight days after the last known sighting of the Justice Lords, the Pied Piper returned from Apokolips. He returned haggard and grim-faced and accompanied by most of the others who had been at the resistance meeting last year, the ones who had disappeared into the boom tube he'd managed to play up while the walls crumbled in - most, but not close to all. Some were staying behind to keep an eye on the society that was still rebuilding from the unleashed remix of the Anti-Life Equation. Others didn't have such comforting reassurances to their names. No time to chisel headstones. If there was a better time to strike, better than while the Big Six were occupied God knows where, no one could see it anywhere in the distance.
Half-formed daydreamed if-only-if-only threads of plans came together at a safehouse outside Central City. Hartley Rathaway (it was only last year many of them had discovered Henry Darrow wasn't the name the Pied Piper was born with) presided as guest of honor, sole unapprehended charter member of the Central Rogues, and once-again senior partner in the Central resistance cell. He carried an elaborate trumpet over his shoulder, made of some uncanny alien engineering. They agreed: they'd take on Iron Heights right after Operation West Wind. That was where the Lords and their cronies kept the people they thought were actually dangerous, the ones they hadn't gotten around to lobotomizing; it would be under heavier guard. There were mirrors aplenty in Breedmore State Hospital, Evan McCulloch reported ("Right, Chilowicz?" Chilowicz nodded). They still seemed to think Sam Scudder had been the only Mirror Master, and that there was nothing left to worry about from that angle. On the other hand, reflective surfaces remained largely absent from Warden Wolfe's little fiefdom - maybe he was still working out his frustrations from back when Scudder was out and about and the authorities wouldn't let him do it on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment. Wolfe couldn't get rid of every one - there would be, if nothing else, the reflection in an eye for Evan to work with - but the squeeze would be much tighter and the prospect of evac would be more treacherous. Piper's newfound power might be able to crack the planet in half, but they couldn't treat it as a trump card - they'd have to try and live on a cracked planet afterward.
All cards on the table - the need-to-know that had kept them half-insulated in a tenuous semblance of safety was now everything they knew that could possibly be important. So for one thing Owen Mercer told them all what he'd only mentioned before in passing about the man in yellow who ran a giant hamster wheel in the basement of Iron Heights. Hooked up to sensors and tubes, electrocuted when he faltered, running fast enough to power the entire facility and then some, fast enough so that the yellow was all that Owen could make out. An explanatory plaque announced THAWNE, EOBARD, AKA REVERSE-FLASH, AKA PROFESSOR ZOOM. Wolfe had taken him down there once, informed by the Justice Lords that he was a delinquent metahuman - a minor-league speedster found in bad company. He'd explained to him that the man was there as penance for his crimes, finally being of use to society, and Owen knew a threat when one beat down his door and did the can-can in front of him.
"Oh, Eobard," said Al Desmond (this Al was Alvin, not Albert, who they liked to think would be pleased his Philosopher's Stone was in good fraternal hands). "I suppose he didn't escape to the future after all."
"You knew the guy," said Owen, "so if we let him out do you think he'd be the type to help, or kill everything, or stab us in the back because he thinks it would be funny? I mean, I'd like to be all warm and fuzzy and family values, but..."
"After whatever they've done to him? Who can tell?"
Axel Walker, leaning on the wall four feet up with his hair brushing the ceiling, mentioned that his dad was locked up for fraud and he might be at the Heights. He shrugged. "Just saying. Don't want everyone yelling at me if it turns out it means something."
"What kind of fraud?" said Lisa (Star on her driver's license, Snart on her birth certificate, Dillon in her fading dreams). Blaine Chilowicz towered behind her, still silent. This was his first time meeting most of the others. They'd learned that he'd been an orderly at Breedmore, and that he was hopelessly in love. "False papers? Hiding records?"
"Nah, book-cooking." Axel's feet twitched. More than two years after the first time he put them on, the airwalking shoes that had been custom-fitted for James Jesse were still too large for him. Layers of newspaper had been eventually replaced by memory foam that synched up with the ascent-descent signal sensors, but the limited resources that might conceivably have gone to making a pair from scratch were all put to use on more urgent matters. "Can't all be awesome."
Lisa turned to Piper. "That reminds me, Piper, you should know - your parents got arrested a few months back and they put your sister in a home. Sorry."
"The lass is well tended to," Evan put in. "We've made sure of that." It didn't make up for the rest of it, but at least you didn't need the Rathaways' scads of money to be well tended - a good thing, too, as those scads had been confiscated. He'd told them half an hour ago, on the same you'd-be-pissed-and-suspicious-if-I-didn't-say basis, that it was the Justice Lords' efforts to make a model city out of Central that had bankrolled his Colin's surgery ("So the trains run on time," Piper had roused himself to comment). Might be there had been some of that Rathaway money behind it.
"Oh," said Piper, in a voice of the utter calm that had gone through agitation and out the other side. "Huh. What for?"
"They said," said Axel, "what was the boringese? 'Receiving stolen goods.'" Piper's face went a ghastly tint. "'Cause they didn't turn over all the shit you sent them. They let that part into the news. Hey, you know why they didn't? And why were you sending them that shit? I thought they were like stinking rich, wasn't like they needed it, Robin Hood."
"I was paying off their investment," he said eventually, still pale, still too even. "The idea was if they wouldn't stop lecturing me on my wasted potential at least they could stop going on about the wasted money."
They talked some about what managed to filter through of the Arkham incident, eight days ago. The impostors in the Lords' old costumes - seven of them, one dressed up as the Flash. What did that mean? Evan talked about the mirror worlds where most people were left-handed and things were switched different ways from there. Sam Scudder used to talk about how he'd fallen into one where he was the hero and the Flash was the villain. "Wonder what it looks like now," said Owen. "Did he start reflecting lasers into people's brains, or did Superman get him first?" Could the Gotham cell break the doppelgangers out of wherever Batman had stashed them, get some answers? That was completely out of their hands, so they put it aside.
They talked security, because after things started rolling they couldn't rely on the normal precautions for their noncombatants - for Rita Desmond and baby Peter, for Angie Snart, for Jerrie Rathaway, for Josh Jackam Mardon (the former Officer Jackam was doing indefinite time for sedition, and they'd be picking her up if they could), for Tony Gambi, for Mrs. Mercer, for Maggie and Colin McCulloch and for that matter Miss McCulloch and her Kirkcaldy orphanage... At least Billy Hong overseas had his own bodyguards owing to his status as a major Zhutanese spiritual figure ("We're leaving him with monks?" said Axel, appalled as he had once been appalled to learn that somehow somewhere the Trickster had become an honest-to-God father. "Mick wanted to be a monk once," said Lisa. "They can be tougher than they look."). And the Justice Lords could go to Zhutan in theory, and they had been to places like Zhutan in practice, but their reach around the world wasn't as all-encompassing as the iron grip they'd closed over America (because America had Metropolis and Gotham and Central City, and America elected Lex Luthor. "The electoral college elected Lex Luthor," said Piper, "so they make even less sense." "Aye," said Evan, "That's no Martian."). So that was someone they could worry about slightly less. Mirror tech Evan wouldn't have room to take on the job got passed around. He gave quick lessons - point and shoot. A child could do it. A child might have to.
When there was nothing more being thrown out they crowded into the bathroom for a mirror videoconference in which little was said and much was implied. The cells couldn't be told too much about each other's plans, or else one mole - one Martian Manhunter incognito - could blow everything apart. Kara waved. Nightwing nodded. "Goodbye," Captain Marvel told them, "and good luck." The gathering filed out. Some through the door, most through the mirror - those Evan chauffeured home. In some cases he needed to find the right reverse-images in the right locations, well away from bugs. Other cases like Owen's were complicated in a different way - he needed to readjust the hard-light images and synchronize them with the person coming out of the mirror in just the right way to fool the surveillance. Lisa and Chilowicz were last. He let them out of the bathroom mirror in their rent-by-the-hour motel room. Just before they moved out of sight he saw them already arranging themselves, his arm around her waist, as if the paparazzi awaited outside the door. Something might well be.
When he came home Maggie was puttering in their own bathroom, eyes on the mirror. He kissed her good night and checked on Colin, who'd kicked off the blankets in his sleep. Evan pulled them up and tucked them in and ruffled his hair to watch his dreaming smile. Then he lay in his own bed and tried to sleep the sleep of the just.
***
The Abel to His Cain
Six weeks earlier
"I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, um, 'All right, then, I'll go to hell.' - and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said, and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brought - brung - up to it, and the other wasn't... warn't..."
Ben Mardon lowered the book and looked up. On the floor, Josh fidgeted and tugged at the legs of the institute-issued pants. Across from him, his brother's face had half-pulled into what might be interpreted as a grin; it was a thin and blurry line between grin and grimace.
"What?" said Ben. "They let it through. It's classic literature. Like, um, Brave New World! And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! And... I should probably shut up now, right, Mark? ... right."
The word, one of many on the charts, was alexia. Ben didn't care for it. It sounded too pretty for what it was, like something you'd name your daughter. One time he'd gone to a comedy club with college friends and the routine had moved into the topic of costumed criminals: "Well what else," demanded the woman at the mike, "can you do with a liberal arts degree in this economy?" That line probably wouldn't pass self-censorship now - too sympathetic. The college friends were fellow Bachelors of Science, had all climbed further up the ladder by that point, and they cracked up. He remembered that particular joke out of all the rest because Mark did have a liberal arts degree, a BA in English Literature (the only member of his graduating class to turn to supervillainy, for your information, and their parents would only shell out for a state university so it was a large class). He'd done his senior project on Twain. Now...
He struggled through to the end of the chapter before closing the book. "Say goodbye, Josh."
"Bye, Daddy."
Mark's face contorted again as Josh waved and Ben wondered again as he took hold of the chubby hand if this was a mistake, if he couldn't understand why a toddler was in the room calling him a father. Ben had tried to explain the first time he brought Josh, but it hadn't come out very well. He'd kept stumbling, thinking of what they'd done to and said about Julie Jackam. She hadn't even known who Mark was when they conceived Josh, but after she publicly resigned from the police it made the perfect springboard for all their wild accusations. She'd dated the Flash before that, as Wally West the forensic scientist, and when someone found out they decided it meant she must have been a covert agent trying to get inside his defenses. Ben might've rolled his eyes and sighed at the media feeding frenzy and the ten tons of logic failures, but he knew who was vetting the media these days.
He was lucky. After all, you couldn't pick your family. Before all this started to happen, back when the Flash was alive, Mark had tried to kill him with a freak hailstorm. So when he visited, it was an act of charity and the Justice Lords couldn't look askance at that. They liked to think they were charitable too - Breedmore probably hadn't been cleaner since opening day, and now everything was sleek and up-to-date and the furniture all matched. The staff worked hard to do what they could. You could even visit the ward itself - who would escape nowadays? - but the cameras were out in force and you could be sure they'd think near everyone who'd want to visit bore watching.
"Bye, Mark. Be seeing you. And, uh, bye, Mr. Dillon."
The man who'd been the Top nodded from his side of the room. "I could finish reading to him. If you want."
Ben startled - this was the first time he'd heard that much initiative from any of the inhabitants of the ward - but he handed over the copy of Huckleberry Finn. Come to think of it, which he was doing now, it wasn't as surprising as it seemed - these days Dillon always seemed to be in the room when he came visiting.
Mark said nothing. The doctors said he could talk, a little bit, in short and uncomplicated words, with effort. He'd never made the effort with Ben, who was afraid he knew why, because what did reading to him and bringing casseroles once a week compare to -
"Ben, you've gotta help me. Open up! Ben!"
"That's ridiculous," Lisa of all people told him once. "What could you have done? You didn't have Kryptonite on hand, did you?" Maybe Mark didn't see it that way. "And wouldn't that all be... wiped out by now?" What they'd done to Mark wasn't the same as what they'd done to most of the others in the ward. He left the room, Dillon already picking up from the next chapter, and proceeded down the hall to Exhibit B:
Lisa was still in her own brother's room, at his bedside among the beeping monitors. As he appeared in the doorframe, she glanced sideways and jumped to her feet. In theory he had a roommate too - there was another bed made up, and sparse personal effects lined up (for a given value of "personal") - but, unlike Dillon, Ben had never actually seen him in there during visiting hours, and that little sign of individuality gave him a smidgen of hope. Leonard Snart, on the other hand, never left the room or the bed, and nobody could accuse him of being exciting company. Two years ago he wouldn't have been here, Breedmore wasn't that kind of hospital, but when they remodeled Central City and remodeled Breedmore they'd made this ward a model of Arkham Asylum - someplace you could dump the bad people who dressed up in costumes, because if they were running around in costumes doing bad things they had to have some screw loose. A model - or really, a prototype - of the new Arkham Asylum, too: somewhere you could dump the bad people once they couldn't hurt anyone anymore.
Lisa said, "Let's get out of here."
Ben tried to apologize for taking so long, but she swept by without any sign of the words catching her. The trustee waiting placidly by the door out of the ward said "Have a nice day." She snarled something at him and shoved past. He watched her go with unblinking eyes and a smiling mouth and maybe it was only Ben's desperation to see something in them that made him think he looked hurt.
"Sorry about that," he said, and followed her before he could see the man's lack of reaction.
After the lobby doors slid shut behind them he said "I think he's doing better."
"You think so?"
They didn't want them to get better, not really, not the people whose opinions mattered. He'd talked to the earnest physical therapist and the equally-earnest speech therapist, doing their best with what they had, but if tomorrow angels descended from on high and cured everyone in the ward, five minutes after they commuted back to heaven the Justice Lords would be beaming down from on high and undoing it double-time. Though maybe if they redid it after all that practice Captain Cold would be awake and Mark would still read.
"Yeah. I think... I think he asked for something."
"Oh," said Lisa, in the perfect tones of passing interest.
You couldn't pick your family. So Lisa could get away if narrowly with visiting her brother once in a while, sitting there and talking at him while the lines squiggled across the monitors, because she hadn't gotten along that well with him to begin with, even if their paths kept crossing. But as to why their paths kept crossing, she'd stopped going to see Roscoe Dillon more than a year ago, because someone came by and warned her: if you had a choice why would you choose to love someone once you knew he was evil? And sometimes not even not knowing would save you.
That night, after dropping off Lisa at the regular Metropolis airport, the jet landed at the facility airfield. Josh had fallen asleep during the flight and Ben carried him as he checked in at the weather station. His assistants filled him in: nothing that needed smoothing out. No droughts to be broken, no storms to be softened. All according to the schedule for optimum worldwide growth conditions. The newest said "So this is your nephew, Dr. Mardon? Isn't he cute as a button!" and enthused about how happy he was to be helping with something so important. A private jet, a generous monthly stipend from the Watchtower, the warm fuzzy feeling of doing good. Living the dream.
Mark, I know you thought I'd be stupid to use it to help people for free, but it didn't have to be either-or. We could've earned all the money you tried to steal. You could've been a hero and you could've... you could've not...
That night nearly two years ago a sudden storm had blown in from the blue. Mark had called it up as cover; he hadn't been thinking clearly or he would've realized someone would investigate the weather anomaly, especially since he was on the At Large watchlist and especially since it was over Metropolis. Ben almost didn't hear the pounding on the door over the thunder. He'd looked through the peephole and when that didn't show him anything he'd opened the door but kept the chain on. On the other side Mark screamed his name and struggled to force it the rest of the way. Ben didn't try to close the door, but he didn't take off the chain. No, he'd stood there as Mark cursed and begged until the police arrived, and Superman, and it couldn't have been over faster if the Flash had been there that time too.
When they were kids Mark used to beat up anyone (else) who tried to push him around. Mark yelled at their parents and ran away on a semi-regular basis until he ran away to college and never came back. Before he ever got his hands on the wand, Mark had stormed. As one of the officers was saying "Are you all right, Dr. Mardon?" Superman was hauling him off by the back of his collar and for the first time Ben saw his older brother terrified.
In the residential zone of the facility, Ben put Josh to bed. In his own bathroom, as he squeezed out the toothpaste, a different face with a green mask swam into view on the front of the medicine cabinet and began speaking with a Scottish brogue. He stood and squeezed toothpaste all over the sink and listened.
***
The Number-One Fan
Two years five months earlier
So the way it went down was, Axel knew a guy who knew a guy who knew this creepy tattooed chick who went by Smith. She could hook you up with the best IDs in Central that weren't run off by the DMV (maybe she ran them off on the same gear after hours, or something). He brought an extra wad of bills and got to pick the name (and lifted all his comics for the next couple months to make up for it, because the stories they were doing now were crap anyway). Smith lifted an eyebrow when she heard the name he wanted, but she did it. Then he looked up the visiting hours for Breedmore, and the visiting rules, and he did his best to follow the rest of them because if this worked it would be totally worth it. Then he took a taxi there from the mall and showed them the ID and said he was James Jesse's cousin, Joseph Jesse.
"You're eighteen?" the desk guy repeated, looking down.
"Yeah." He tried to glower like a couple of actual older people he'd met who were sick of getting carded.
"I guess it makes sense," the guy muttered, "in the blood," and had him wait while they went and asked the Trickster if he really had a cousin Joey. Axel wasn't worried about that part -he'd probably say yes, at least to figure out who he really was and why he wanted to talk. He was just starting to get a bit worried when they came back and ran down the rules and brought him into a big room with a bunch of other people clumping around on those giant beanbags in clusters around scratched-up rickety coffee tables. They showed him over to the Trickster, who looked up and chirped "Long time no see, Joey! I like your hair!"
Greatest rush ever, but it didn't last. The Trickster was awesome in what Axel clipped out of Picture News and taped off the TV - crowing with laughter, dancing in midair, fixing the Flash to the ground with giant wads of gum, waving for the camera (one time he'd yelled "Hi, Mom!" and Axel fell off the couch). In Breedmore he was boxed up and drugged up and acted okay with that, and Axel wanted to puke. But then he said he was pretty sure Mirror Master's birthday was coming up and would Axel mind running down to this bar the Rogues all went to and wishing Sam a happy one for him? Fuck yeah.
Paid off, too, because to pay him back for the time and trouble and the birthday cards smuggled in to be signed in a sprawling hand (he was off by three weeks for Mirror Master and mixed up Weather Wizard's with Pied Piper's but it was the thought that counted, Piper said), Trickster told him about this one storage unit where he kept backup gear and cash, and where to find the key. "Get yourself something nice, kiddo." And if there was one thing Dad taught Axel, it was what to do with a blank check. First things first he found the backup pair of shoes, the ones that looked like ordinary sneakers. When they tried to fall off he stuffed in some newspapers. He started flying lessons in the backyard. Crashed into Mom's shrubs and flowerbeds a few times but everyone just went on thinking that was him being him.
And he guessed he could've ditched Trickster after that, but he knew from the news the guy'd had stints in Breedmore before, and after he got out he'd gone back to having fun eventually. So maybe he'd get better again, even if he was staying longer than usual this time. And maybe in that case he'd take a liking to Axel, if he knew he'd been to see him while he was still a total loser. And maybe he'd make him a... sidekick? Nah, hero thing. Henchman? Minion? Nah, too small... he'd think of a word if it came up.
Besides, he liked getting to go to Fourth Street. Nobody kicking rad like the Trickster used to be, but pretty rad anyway. They didn't card him for beer and after he gave them whatever from the Trickster he got to hang around and listen in until they noticed he was still there.
Then suddenly on the news they were saying the Flash was dead. They were saying President Luthor shot him in the face. The fuck? What did the President have to do with anything? What was some bald square in a suit doing butting in? Next time he went to Breedmore, Trickster's eyes were red around the edges and his nose was red like Rudolph's and he carried around a jumbo box of Kleenex. When visiting time was up there was a pyramid of crumpled Kleenex on the rickety table. He said, between sniffles, "So that was his name. I always wondered. Wally West. It even alliterates! You mind doing me another favor?"
So that was how Axel ended up in a flower shop asking the girl behind the counter what kind was good for dead people. He ended up getting a big bunch of tiger lilies to go with it, because they were the closest thing to cool in the store that a freakin' flower could be and he couldn't imagine Flash digging the boring shit when he was alive and Trickster wasn't signing any cards this time ("They'll think I'm making fun of him and I'm not!"). And all of that went into the pile going up and up outside the Flash's aunt's hotel room. The Flash's aunt's name was Iris West, Iris West Allen after she got married, and when Axel looked back through his clippings he found her name here and there in the older articles before she moved. She was here and there in the online archives, too, for other papers. Give her credit - she hadn't sucked the Flash's dick any more than the other reporters (okay, no, that was just nasty).
Then suddenly on the news they were saying Superman lost it and stormed the White House and fried the President. Three guesses why and the first two don't count - they said the guy had his finger on the Big Red Button but Axel could think of something else big and red and dead. The Vice President flailed around on live TV on all channels. The tell-alls in the tabloids said the Oval Office still smelled like burning bacon. Wicked!
"Wow," said Trickster, "wow, didn't think Big Blue had it in him."
He said this blinking slowly, not worried, because he was a fucking moron. He was staying in the hospital and popping his pills because that's what Flash would've wanted, and because he was a fucking moron. He was such a fucking moron that when Superman came for him he still wasn't worried, and Axel was a fucking moron too because even after the standoff at the Rogues' bar and after on the news they were talking about all the arrests and after Iris West Allen put out an article about how Superman sure was doing the heat-laser thing on a lot of heads these days, he never thought about something like that happening until it was happening. Superman came barging in with Batman (fucking Batman!) and that put together was enough to have all the other visitors and visitees running for cover. Axel was halfway on his way out and got carried along in the current. He grabbed the doorframe as they went past and peered around it with a handful of other rubberneckers.
Trickster was saying, best as he could with Superman holding him feet off the floor and the cheap slippers falling off, "I dunno, I dunno, they never tell me anything!"
One of the doctors was still in there, way tougher than Axel thought or maybe way dumber. She was saying Trickster was doing good even if he hadn't gone all the way over to doing good things, he was really dedicated to getting better, he was taking his meds on the dot. Batman was standing there with his stupid pointy ears and saying in a you're-a-dumbass voice: how many times has he stopped taking his meds because he felt like it?
Trickster blinked and turned his head between them.
The doctor said, look, mister, I don't know how you do things on the East Coast but this isn't Arkham and we've moved past the age of Walter Freeman -
Superman turned his head and stared.
Axel bolted. Right out the front doors the split second after they slid open, right across Breedmore grounds, right down the street until he doubled over gasping with the cold air pulled in from the gasps tearing up the back of his throat and he wasn't crying, dammit, he wasn't. And then he straightened up and tried not to look any more like a runaway than he'd already looked like running away from Breedmore. He threw the Joey Jesse ID in a dumpster behind a Mickey D's and he took the bus home and turned on the stereo in his room loud enough to make the floor vibrate and he stopped paying attention to the news.
The next day in a frenzy he dressed up in the clothes Mom kept buying him and took a backpack full of the stuff he'd gotten from Trickster back to storage. He realized on the way home that if he really wanted to cover it up he should've at least wiped his prints or some shit, but he didn't dare go back for that. He should've gotten rid of the key too, but instead he hid it in the spare room full of Mom's old hobby crap she was meaning to get back to someday because some private dicks might go through the trash but nobody ever touched that. For the next couple days he pretty much grounded himself because he was scared to do much of anything else. One thing he did do was look up Walter Freeman, him and the lobotomies he used to tool around the country doing with icepicks.
At the end of the week, Batman and Superman finally turned up. At his house. With Dad in tow. With Superman staring at him enough to make Axel feel kind of sorry for President Baldy (except not, except Baldy knew what could happen if he pissed this guy off and he did it anyway and now everyone else had to keep paying for it!). And Batman saying that for future reference James Jesse had come over from Italy as a kid, him and his mom and dad, and when they changed their names to Jesse it was just for show business and not a legal thing. For legal things like IDs it'd stayed Giuseppe. And it wasn't the name you'd usually pull out of the Italian so all the distant-cousin Giuseppes that'd come over before and decided to have their names in English made themselves not Jesses but Josephs... Mom cried and Dad smiled a skeleton smile, like he knew it was a bad idea to be smiling right in front of capes who'd cooked the president like a turkey but couldn't turn it off, and Batman said "... Axel Walker," in a you're-a-dumbass-and-I-know-everything voice.
Superman said he was so young. He said it like this one cop once said "You're a bad seed, Walker."
They worked over his room, very cold, very clean - Superman just looked around and pointed at the boxes of clippings and Batman pulled them out and popped open the lids, and then they took down the rack of tapes and watched some of them on his TV. They even took down the old Flying Jesses poster he'd gotten off the Internet. At least they weren't talking about the Trickster's stuff in storage, Axel thought, or the key he'd stuffed under the crochet yarn, maybe they didn't know everything, and then he was scared that somehow Superman could see right through to the thought as it wriggled in his head. Later, after he read in the back issues of the papers that the whole of Smith's network had been taken down, he'd figure they must've traced him through Smith, and just through Smith.
They talked about whose fault it was, how much his parents hadn't paid attention, and what he might've picked up from them (if they were bad plants that popped out a bad seed, and maybe that was why later they or the CCPD dug enough to find what they needed to put Dad away), and whether it was because of the media making Trickster and the rest of them look cool, and Axel wanted to say Are you fucking kidding me, Flash's aunt's in the media and so's that chick he was dating, you think they'd make the Rogues look cool? but his mouth was just as much locked up as Dad's.
They didn't do anything worse to him, didn't cook his brain or stick an icepick in it, because he was so young and wasn't even old enough to drive (even if he hadn't let that stop him) and far as they could tell Trickster hadn't yet converted him to a remote-control minion (as if that was all he could've been - Batman was convinced Trickster couldn't have possibly given a shit about him, that it was all manipulation, as if! Like he could've manipulated his way out of a paper bag!) and he'd already seen Trickster being made an example of and they had bigger fish to fry (yeah, bigger fish like a zonked-out has-been in a loony bin). A whole city to clean up in the name of the Flash. Axel wanted to yell If he wanted it cleaned up that bad he would've done it himself! He was the fast guy, he had plenty of time! but his fat mouth stayed locked up.
***
The Good Twin
Four months earlier
The earliest thing Alvin Desmond remembered was Albert pointing at him saying something was his fault, and knowing it wasn't true. Their mother didn't believe him either. Mom never believed Albert when he blamed Alvin, and sometimes sitting up at night in the grip of existential crisis Alvin wondered why he'd kept trying.
But at some point Albert outgrew it. And at some point he put on a costume and started calling himself Mr. Element. Then he'd taken off that costume and put on another one and switched to Dr. Alchemy. Alvin read the articles on his exploits with morbid fascination. He was living his own life in the meantime, and living it quite well - he lived it all the way over to Star City, where he'd been transferred in his last promotion. He was climbing fast; sometimes talent did get you places despite stupidity in the world thick and plentiful as hydrogen, and thanks to... necessary adjustments, he didn't have his brother's reputation holding him back.
One day, though, when the news was slow and company policy meant he had to take a couple days off, he drove to Central City and went to his brother's apartment. He was about to knock when the door opened and a dark-haired woman came out. And that was how he met Rita Salazar. Rita was The One who Albert was going straight for (he backslid later, but she was remarkably accommodating). He didn't understand why you'd want to tie yourself down like that, but if you were going to do it you could definitely do much worse.
One thing led to another in a dizzying chain of reactions, a rolling snowball becoming a veritable avalanche. Somehow an argument about how Albert was wasting the potential of his super-rock ("Philosopher's Stone!" Albert protested. "And another thing, Al, why the pseudo-mysticism gimmick? We're men of science." "It's not mysticism if it works.") was followed a few hours later by raiding the storage, by Alvin dressing up in the old Mr. Element costume, and by following his brother to a bar on Fourth Street. Albert introduced him to the other Rogues. "You can't tell," he said, gesturing to the gas mask, "but he's the good twin." And it was probably bad to feel so great about that, about the way they nodded and waved at him, but what the hell.
That night at the bar was how he first met Eobard Thawne. He came around now and again; they didn't count him as a Rogue per se but he'd raced the Flash a couple times. Sometimes people called him "Professor" with a wink. Sometimes he wanted in on their plans, and they didn't shoo him away or freeze him out. He was a smartass through and through and some of them suspected he was the Flash himself in a yellow suit, except the amount of devotion to deception that would be required to fake their public brawls was mind-boggling. When Eobard overheard this theory he took down his cowl right there in the bar and ran a hand through his nearly-as-yellow hair and said, "In the future, we know the Flash was a redhead." Several people turned to look at the Pied Piper or McCulloch the mercenary before snickering at the idea of it and turning back. Alvin was a redhead himself - a recessive that cropped up now and again in the Desmond line, and would crop up in the future with little Peter - but you couldn't tell with the mask on.
Eobard moved loose and easy when he was in the bar, though in the footage where he fought the Flash he moved sharp and sleek. Either way, his eyes burned. He whistled tunes no one else knew. When he got excited he slipped into an accent like none Alvin had ever heard before, from whatever future-language named people Eobard. He shook Alvin's hand, said "You two are still remembered in the twenty-fifth century as masters of the elements," and smirked like there was something funny about it. He talked about connecting destinies. He had the kind of smirk that you wanted to wipe off his face by any means necessary. And -
"Hey. Al." It was the boy with the Trickster's shoes, floating at eye level, arms folded, trying to look intimidating.
Alvin took a moment to revert the stand of trees back from jagged hulks of Kryptonite. They were practicing next to a reflecting pool somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, where McCulloch had dumped them out. McCulloch himself was nowhere to be seen. From the other side of the pool there came the sound of boomerangs thwacking into other trees. In another half hour, they were scheduled to combine their talents to experiment with glowing green boomerangs.
It was easier to form Kryptonite than he'd expected. It was made of the same electrons and protons and such as anything on the conventional periodic table, but given its extraterrestrial origin and scarcity it wasn't as though he'd had experience with the natural variety. Albert had worked with Kryptonite, he remembered - he'd acquired a chip off the black market and examined its atomic structure out of scientific curiosity, then sold the sample onward. The Philosopher's Stone might have remembered how it went - saved the settings, as it were.
Wait, how did he know this?
Well, Albert must have told him.
"You know why you don't have a birth certificate?"
"What?"
"It's all on computers now. I checked - might want to stick some in someday."
"There must be a typo somewhere." Alvin shrugged. "A system's only as good as what you put in."
"Hell of a lot of typos then. I looked by name and date and -"
"Date?"
"You're supposed to be twins with Doc Alc, right? I looked on the day he was born, found his all right, and I looked a week forward and a week back 'case your mom took her sweet time or something. Zip. Zilch. Nada. 'Sides, I looked up the mugshot too and you don't look a fucking thing like him."
"You've never heard of fraternal twins, have you? ... what, are you saying I'm a plant? The Lords made me up whole-cloth? I met the Rogues a long time before all this. Al introduced me to the regulars." I used to hit on Lisa Snart. I used to bang Eobard Thawne in the men's room. Oh the look on Darrow's face - Rathaway's face - that one time he caught us at it! The poor conscientious soul asking if we had condoms! "Ask Lisa or McCulloch."
"He's listening." Walker scowled. "I wasn't just going to go up and ask with nobody around so you can turn me into gold and hock me on eBay. I'm not stupid."
"Aye," McCulloch called from somewhere behind him. "I know you well enough, but after what the lad's turned up I'd like to hear your answer."
"Fine. I suppose I have to tell you. The certificate's not there because I took it out."
He remembered slipping through a tunnel in the ceiling. Remembered transmuting the paper to gas particles and wafting it into the waiting envelope. But the computer...? He remembered he had a bright-eyed college student with him. A master hacker. The boy died later. Hit by a car in a completely unrelated incident. Wasn't that sad?
"I destroyed all of my old records." It had been done before. The Riddler had once done it in Gotham, and the audacity and mystery of his total wipe had made the news even in the Midwest, though it had been a slow day. Alvin could certainly do it without the accompanying bombast, especially since no one had a reason to look for him and find the absence. Until now. "If there's no proof of my existence, the Justice Lords won't look for me. I know how hard they've made life for Lisa and Kid Boomerang. And besides..."
"Besides what?" said Walker. He was starting to look somewhat mollified.
"Besides, I already have, let's say, a secret identity. I've been using it for years."
"Solid?"
"Very. I... didn't want to be associated with Al, in those days."
It had to be done. He'd known it had to be done if he was ever going to live apart from the Other Al. So he'd used the classic dead-baby trick back when it still worked and got himself a birth certificate and a Social Security number (new ones) and built up the documentation from there. And that was the name on his apartment in Star City, and that was the name on the company payroll. And that was the name he was being reasonable in not telling them (though McCulloch probably knew it already).
And that was the name he was grateful to have after the Flash died. After Luthor died. After Eobard disappeared (did he think this was the funny part?). After Albert was arrested. After the spectacular fall of Green Arrow. After he woke up one morning with the Philosopher's Stone shining in his hand. He should have some idea how it got there. He didn't.
Section: Part I: How We Got Here [Section 1/2]
Rating: PG-13
Summary: DCAU, post-"A Better World." The Justice Lords have vanished, but the regime they've set in place hasn't. Lisa Snart, Axel Walker, Owen Mercer, Alvin Desmond and Evan McCulloch are part of a new generation of Rogues doing their best to save the world and save their loved ones. Wait, what?
Word Count: ~7500
Notes and Warnings: Beta read by xcoffeespoonx. Many thanks!
This part of the fic is so long, I've split it in two. Second part coming up momentarily.
I'd say I've gone full circle on this one, but I'd like to think I've still got a lot more distance to cover. See, what first got me falling sideways into Flash fandom was browsing through the other work of an author who'd written a Batman fanfic I liked and finding another one about a hapless DCAU Trickster on the run from the Justice Lords. Don't blame them, please.
Contains canon cherrypicking and attempts to patchwork it together, Hollywood lobotomy, psychic infidelity, Superdickery, doucheBattery, F-bombs, unreliable narrators, crack pairings, undue optimism, pretentiousness.
I've pulled in a lot from comics canon - both regular DCU and what I've read of the series tie-ins Justice League Adventures and Justice League Unlimited. I've also indulged in some, um, creative reinterpretation, particularly of characters that didn't appear in the DCAU. Feel free to bring up any WTFery so I can attempt to justify it, attempt to explain where I spun it off, or concede that it's all me.
By-no-means-comprehensive canon notes:
-In the JLU comics, the Mirror Master is explicitly Evan McCulloch complete with Scottish accent (as opposed to the unnamed soy latte-ordering guy with the American accent in "Flash and Substance," presumably Sam Scudder); he also has a wife and wheelchair-bound son.
-In JL Adventures, Professor Zoom appears on friendly terms with the Rogues (even if they aren't necessarily as friendly with him) and they recognize his face without the cowl.
-In the Superman episode "Speed Demons," Mark Mardon's brother appears, survives the origin story, is younger than him, and is named Ben instead of Clyde.
-Jay Garrick appears in the comics, but as far as I know there's no indication in the DCAU that Barry was ever the Flash. Wally does, however, mention that his uncle's flying in for Flash Appreciation Day.
Here goes!
"If the only reason Flash has to not just jerk the hearts out of these bloodthirsty maniacs is to keep his karma pure, well, that's just not enough. People are reformable, but even more we are all part of the moral ecosystem and you never know from where the next good act may come. We shouldn't judge people with deadly force, because our judgement isn't perfect. We all may need to be saved one day by the Golden Glider." - William Messner-Loebs
Part One: How We Got Here
Here
Eight days after the last known sighting of the Justice Lords, the Pied Piper returned from Apokolips. He returned haggard and grim-faced and accompanied by most of the others who had been at the resistance meeting last year, the ones who had disappeared into the boom tube he'd managed to play up while the walls crumbled in - most, but not close to all. Some were staying behind to keep an eye on the society that was still rebuilding from the unleashed remix of the Anti-Life Equation. Others didn't have such comforting reassurances to their names. No time to chisel headstones. If there was a better time to strike, better than while the Big Six were occupied God knows where, no one could see it anywhere in the distance.
Half-formed daydreamed if-only-if-only threads of plans came together at a safehouse outside Central City. Hartley Rathaway (it was only last year many of them had discovered Henry Darrow wasn't the name the Pied Piper was born with) presided as guest of honor, sole unapprehended charter member of the Central Rogues, and once-again senior partner in the Central resistance cell. He carried an elaborate trumpet over his shoulder, made of some uncanny alien engineering. They agreed: they'd take on Iron Heights right after Operation West Wind. That was where the Lords and their cronies kept the people they thought were actually dangerous, the ones they hadn't gotten around to lobotomizing; it would be under heavier guard. There were mirrors aplenty in Breedmore State Hospital, Evan McCulloch reported ("Right, Chilowicz?" Chilowicz nodded). They still seemed to think Sam Scudder had been the only Mirror Master, and that there was nothing left to worry about from that angle. On the other hand, reflective surfaces remained largely absent from Warden Wolfe's little fiefdom - maybe he was still working out his frustrations from back when Scudder was out and about and the authorities wouldn't let him do it on grounds of cruel and unusual punishment. Wolfe couldn't get rid of every one - there would be, if nothing else, the reflection in an eye for Evan to work with - but the squeeze would be much tighter and the prospect of evac would be more treacherous. Piper's newfound power might be able to crack the planet in half, but they couldn't treat it as a trump card - they'd have to try and live on a cracked planet afterward.
All cards on the table - the need-to-know that had kept them half-insulated in a tenuous semblance of safety was now everything they knew that could possibly be important. So for one thing Owen Mercer told them all what he'd only mentioned before in passing about the man in yellow who ran a giant hamster wheel in the basement of Iron Heights. Hooked up to sensors and tubes, electrocuted when he faltered, running fast enough to power the entire facility and then some, fast enough so that the yellow was all that Owen could make out. An explanatory plaque announced THAWNE, EOBARD, AKA REVERSE-FLASH, AKA PROFESSOR ZOOM. Wolfe had taken him down there once, informed by the Justice Lords that he was a delinquent metahuman - a minor-league speedster found in bad company. He'd explained to him that the man was there as penance for his crimes, finally being of use to society, and Owen knew a threat when one beat down his door and did the can-can in front of him.
"Oh, Eobard," said Al Desmond (this Al was Alvin, not Albert, who they liked to think would be pleased his Philosopher's Stone was in good fraternal hands). "I suppose he didn't escape to the future after all."
"You knew the guy," said Owen, "so if we let him out do you think he'd be the type to help, or kill everything, or stab us in the back because he thinks it would be funny? I mean, I'd like to be all warm and fuzzy and family values, but..."
"After whatever they've done to him? Who can tell?"
Axel Walker, leaning on the wall four feet up with his hair brushing the ceiling, mentioned that his dad was locked up for fraud and he might be at the Heights. He shrugged. "Just saying. Don't want everyone yelling at me if it turns out it means something."
"What kind of fraud?" said Lisa (Star on her driver's license, Snart on her birth certificate, Dillon in her fading dreams). Blaine Chilowicz towered behind her, still silent. This was his first time meeting most of the others. They'd learned that he'd been an orderly at Breedmore, and that he was hopelessly in love. "False papers? Hiding records?"
"Nah, book-cooking." Axel's feet twitched. More than two years after the first time he put them on, the airwalking shoes that had been custom-fitted for James Jesse were still too large for him. Layers of newspaper had been eventually replaced by memory foam that synched up with the ascent-descent signal sensors, but the limited resources that might conceivably have gone to making a pair from scratch were all put to use on more urgent matters. "Can't all be awesome."
Lisa turned to Piper. "That reminds me, Piper, you should know - your parents got arrested a few months back and they put your sister in a home. Sorry."
"The lass is well tended to," Evan put in. "We've made sure of that." It didn't make up for the rest of it, but at least you didn't need the Rathaways' scads of money to be well tended - a good thing, too, as those scads had been confiscated. He'd told them half an hour ago, on the same you'd-be-pissed-and-suspicious-if-I-didn't-say basis, that it was the Justice Lords' efforts to make a model city out of Central that had bankrolled his Colin's surgery ("So the trains run on time," Piper had roused himself to comment). Might be there had been some of that Rathaway money behind it.
"Oh," said Piper, in a voice of the utter calm that had gone through agitation and out the other side. "Huh. What for?"
"They said," said Axel, "what was the boringese? 'Receiving stolen goods.'" Piper's face went a ghastly tint. "'Cause they didn't turn over all the shit you sent them. They let that part into the news. Hey, you know why they didn't? And why were you sending them that shit? I thought they were like stinking rich, wasn't like they needed it, Robin Hood."
"I was paying off their investment," he said eventually, still pale, still too even. "The idea was if they wouldn't stop lecturing me on my wasted potential at least they could stop going on about the wasted money."
They talked some about what managed to filter through of the Arkham incident, eight days ago. The impostors in the Lords' old costumes - seven of them, one dressed up as the Flash. What did that mean? Evan talked about the mirror worlds where most people were left-handed and things were switched different ways from there. Sam Scudder used to talk about how he'd fallen into one where he was the hero and the Flash was the villain. "Wonder what it looks like now," said Owen. "Did he start reflecting lasers into people's brains, or did Superman get him first?" Could the Gotham cell break the doppelgangers out of wherever Batman had stashed them, get some answers? That was completely out of their hands, so they put it aside.
They talked security, because after things started rolling they couldn't rely on the normal precautions for their noncombatants - for Rita Desmond and baby Peter, for Angie Snart, for Jerrie Rathaway, for Josh Jackam Mardon (the former Officer Jackam was doing indefinite time for sedition, and they'd be picking her up if they could), for Tony Gambi, for Mrs. Mercer, for Maggie and Colin McCulloch and for that matter Miss McCulloch and her Kirkcaldy orphanage... At least Billy Hong overseas had his own bodyguards owing to his status as a major Zhutanese spiritual figure ("We're leaving him with monks?" said Axel, appalled as he had once been appalled to learn that somehow somewhere the Trickster had become an honest-to-God father. "Mick wanted to be a monk once," said Lisa. "They can be tougher than they look."). And the Justice Lords could go to Zhutan in theory, and they had been to places like Zhutan in practice, but their reach around the world wasn't as all-encompassing as the iron grip they'd closed over America (because America had Metropolis and Gotham and Central City, and America elected Lex Luthor. "The electoral college elected Lex Luthor," said Piper, "so they make even less sense." "Aye," said Evan, "That's no Martian."). So that was someone they could worry about slightly less. Mirror tech Evan wouldn't have room to take on the job got passed around. He gave quick lessons - point and shoot. A child could do it. A child might have to.
When there was nothing more being thrown out they crowded into the bathroom for a mirror videoconference in which little was said and much was implied. The cells couldn't be told too much about each other's plans, or else one mole - one Martian Manhunter incognito - could blow everything apart. Kara waved. Nightwing nodded. "Goodbye," Captain Marvel told them, "and good luck." The gathering filed out. Some through the door, most through the mirror - those Evan chauffeured home. In some cases he needed to find the right reverse-images in the right locations, well away from bugs. Other cases like Owen's were complicated in a different way - he needed to readjust the hard-light images and synchronize them with the person coming out of the mirror in just the right way to fool the surveillance. Lisa and Chilowicz were last. He let them out of the bathroom mirror in their rent-by-the-hour motel room. Just before they moved out of sight he saw them already arranging themselves, his arm around her waist, as if the paparazzi awaited outside the door. Something might well be.
When he came home Maggie was puttering in their own bathroom, eyes on the mirror. He kissed her good night and checked on Colin, who'd kicked off the blankets in his sleep. Evan pulled them up and tucked them in and ruffled his hair to watch his dreaming smile. Then he lay in his own bed and tried to sleep the sleep of the just.
***
The Abel to His Cain
Six weeks earlier
"I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, um, 'All right, then, I'll go to hell.' - and tore it up. It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said, and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brought - brung - up to it, and the other wasn't... warn't..."
Ben Mardon lowered the book and looked up. On the floor, Josh fidgeted and tugged at the legs of the institute-issued pants. Across from him, his brother's face had half-pulled into what might be interpreted as a grin; it was a thin and blurry line between grin and grimace.
"What?" said Ben. "They let it through. It's classic literature. Like, um, Brave New World! And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest! And... I should probably shut up now, right, Mark? ... right."
The word, one of many on the charts, was alexia. Ben didn't care for it. It sounded too pretty for what it was, like something you'd name your daughter. One time he'd gone to a comedy club with college friends and the routine had moved into the topic of costumed criminals: "Well what else," demanded the woman at the mike, "can you do with a liberal arts degree in this economy?" That line probably wouldn't pass self-censorship now - too sympathetic. The college friends were fellow Bachelors of Science, had all climbed further up the ladder by that point, and they cracked up. He remembered that particular joke out of all the rest because Mark did have a liberal arts degree, a BA in English Literature (the only member of his graduating class to turn to supervillainy, for your information, and their parents would only shell out for a state university so it was a large class). He'd done his senior project on Twain. Now...
He struggled through to the end of the chapter before closing the book. "Say goodbye, Josh."
"Bye, Daddy."
Mark's face contorted again as Josh waved and Ben wondered again as he took hold of the chubby hand if this was a mistake, if he couldn't understand why a toddler was in the room calling him a father. Ben had tried to explain the first time he brought Josh, but it hadn't come out very well. He'd kept stumbling, thinking of what they'd done to and said about Julie Jackam. She hadn't even known who Mark was when they conceived Josh, but after she publicly resigned from the police it made the perfect springboard for all their wild accusations. She'd dated the Flash before that, as Wally West the forensic scientist, and when someone found out they decided it meant she must have been a covert agent trying to get inside his defenses. Ben might've rolled his eyes and sighed at the media feeding frenzy and the ten tons of logic failures, but he knew who was vetting the media these days.
He was lucky. After all, you couldn't pick your family. Before all this started to happen, back when the Flash was alive, Mark had tried to kill him with a freak hailstorm. So when he visited, it was an act of charity and the Justice Lords couldn't look askance at that. They liked to think they were charitable too - Breedmore probably hadn't been cleaner since opening day, and now everything was sleek and up-to-date and the furniture all matched. The staff worked hard to do what they could. You could even visit the ward itself - who would escape nowadays? - but the cameras were out in force and you could be sure they'd think near everyone who'd want to visit bore watching.
"Bye, Mark. Be seeing you. And, uh, bye, Mr. Dillon."
The man who'd been the Top nodded from his side of the room. "I could finish reading to him. If you want."
Ben startled - this was the first time he'd heard that much initiative from any of the inhabitants of the ward - but he handed over the copy of Huckleberry Finn. Come to think of it, which he was doing now, it wasn't as surprising as it seemed - these days Dillon always seemed to be in the room when he came visiting.
Mark said nothing. The doctors said he could talk, a little bit, in short and uncomplicated words, with effort. He'd never made the effort with Ben, who was afraid he knew why, because what did reading to him and bringing casseroles once a week compare to -
"Ben, you've gotta help me. Open up! Ben!"
"That's ridiculous," Lisa of all people told him once. "What could you have done? You didn't have Kryptonite on hand, did you?" Maybe Mark didn't see it that way. "And wouldn't that all be... wiped out by now?" What they'd done to Mark wasn't the same as what they'd done to most of the others in the ward. He left the room, Dillon already picking up from the next chapter, and proceeded down the hall to Exhibit B:
Lisa was still in her own brother's room, at his bedside among the beeping monitors. As he appeared in the doorframe, she glanced sideways and jumped to her feet. In theory he had a roommate too - there was another bed made up, and sparse personal effects lined up (for a given value of "personal") - but, unlike Dillon, Ben had never actually seen him in there during visiting hours, and that little sign of individuality gave him a smidgen of hope. Leonard Snart, on the other hand, never left the room or the bed, and nobody could accuse him of being exciting company. Two years ago he wouldn't have been here, Breedmore wasn't that kind of hospital, but when they remodeled Central City and remodeled Breedmore they'd made this ward a model of Arkham Asylum - someplace you could dump the bad people who dressed up in costumes, because if they were running around in costumes doing bad things they had to have some screw loose. A model - or really, a prototype - of the new Arkham Asylum, too: somewhere you could dump the bad people once they couldn't hurt anyone anymore.
Lisa said, "Let's get out of here."
Ben tried to apologize for taking so long, but she swept by without any sign of the words catching her. The trustee waiting placidly by the door out of the ward said "Have a nice day." She snarled something at him and shoved past. He watched her go with unblinking eyes and a smiling mouth and maybe it was only Ben's desperation to see something in them that made him think he looked hurt.
"Sorry about that," he said, and followed her before he could see the man's lack of reaction.
After the lobby doors slid shut behind them he said "I think he's doing better."
"You think so?"
They didn't want them to get better, not really, not the people whose opinions mattered. He'd talked to the earnest physical therapist and the equally-earnest speech therapist, doing their best with what they had, but if tomorrow angels descended from on high and cured everyone in the ward, five minutes after they commuted back to heaven the Justice Lords would be beaming down from on high and undoing it double-time. Though maybe if they redid it after all that practice Captain Cold would be awake and Mark would still read.
"Yeah. I think... I think he asked for something."
"Oh," said Lisa, in the perfect tones of passing interest.
You couldn't pick your family. So Lisa could get away if narrowly with visiting her brother once in a while, sitting there and talking at him while the lines squiggled across the monitors, because she hadn't gotten along that well with him to begin with, even if their paths kept crossing. But as to why their paths kept crossing, she'd stopped going to see Roscoe Dillon more than a year ago, because someone came by and warned her: if you had a choice why would you choose to love someone once you knew he was evil? And sometimes not even not knowing would save you.
That night, after dropping off Lisa at the regular Metropolis airport, the jet landed at the facility airfield. Josh had fallen asleep during the flight and Ben carried him as he checked in at the weather station. His assistants filled him in: nothing that needed smoothing out. No droughts to be broken, no storms to be softened. All according to the schedule for optimum worldwide growth conditions. The newest said "So this is your nephew, Dr. Mardon? Isn't he cute as a button!" and enthused about how happy he was to be helping with something so important. A private jet, a generous monthly stipend from the Watchtower, the warm fuzzy feeling of doing good. Living the dream.
Mark, I know you thought I'd be stupid to use it to help people for free, but it didn't have to be either-or. We could've earned all the money you tried to steal. You could've been a hero and you could've... you could've not...
That night nearly two years ago a sudden storm had blown in from the blue. Mark had called it up as cover; he hadn't been thinking clearly or he would've realized someone would investigate the weather anomaly, especially since he was on the At Large watchlist and especially since it was over Metropolis. Ben almost didn't hear the pounding on the door over the thunder. He'd looked through the peephole and when that didn't show him anything he'd opened the door but kept the chain on. On the other side Mark screamed his name and struggled to force it the rest of the way. Ben didn't try to close the door, but he didn't take off the chain. No, he'd stood there as Mark cursed and begged until the police arrived, and Superman, and it couldn't have been over faster if the Flash had been there that time too.
When they were kids Mark used to beat up anyone (else) who tried to push him around. Mark yelled at their parents and ran away on a semi-regular basis until he ran away to college and never came back. Before he ever got his hands on the wand, Mark had stormed. As one of the officers was saying "Are you all right, Dr. Mardon?" Superman was hauling him off by the back of his collar and for the first time Ben saw his older brother terrified.
In the residential zone of the facility, Ben put Josh to bed. In his own bathroom, as he squeezed out the toothpaste, a different face with a green mask swam into view on the front of the medicine cabinet and began speaking with a Scottish brogue. He stood and squeezed toothpaste all over the sink and listened.
***
The Number-One Fan
Two years five months earlier
So the way it went down was, Axel knew a guy who knew a guy who knew this creepy tattooed chick who went by Smith. She could hook you up with the best IDs in Central that weren't run off by the DMV (maybe she ran them off on the same gear after hours, or something). He brought an extra wad of bills and got to pick the name (and lifted all his comics for the next couple months to make up for it, because the stories they were doing now were crap anyway). Smith lifted an eyebrow when she heard the name he wanted, but she did it. Then he looked up the visiting hours for Breedmore, and the visiting rules, and he did his best to follow the rest of them because if this worked it would be totally worth it. Then he took a taxi there from the mall and showed them the ID and said he was James Jesse's cousin, Joseph Jesse.
"You're eighteen?" the desk guy repeated, looking down.
"Yeah." He tried to glower like a couple of actual older people he'd met who were sick of getting carded.
"I guess it makes sense," the guy muttered, "in the blood," and had him wait while they went and asked the Trickster if he really had a cousin Joey. Axel wasn't worried about that part -he'd probably say yes, at least to figure out who he really was and why he wanted to talk. He was just starting to get a bit worried when they came back and ran down the rules and brought him into a big room with a bunch of other people clumping around on those giant beanbags in clusters around scratched-up rickety coffee tables. They showed him over to the Trickster, who looked up and chirped "Long time no see, Joey! I like your hair!"
Greatest rush ever, but it didn't last. The Trickster was awesome in what Axel clipped out of Picture News and taped off the TV - crowing with laughter, dancing in midair, fixing the Flash to the ground with giant wads of gum, waving for the camera (one time he'd yelled "Hi, Mom!" and Axel fell off the couch). In Breedmore he was boxed up and drugged up and acted okay with that, and Axel wanted to puke. But then he said he was pretty sure Mirror Master's birthday was coming up and would Axel mind running down to this bar the Rogues all went to and wishing Sam a happy one for him? Fuck yeah.
Paid off, too, because to pay him back for the time and trouble and the birthday cards smuggled in to be signed in a sprawling hand (he was off by three weeks for Mirror Master and mixed up Weather Wizard's with Pied Piper's but it was the thought that counted, Piper said), Trickster told him about this one storage unit where he kept backup gear and cash, and where to find the key. "Get yourself something nice, kiddo." And if there was one thing Dad taught Axel, it was what to do with a blank check. First things first he found the backup pair of shoes, the ones that looked like ordinary sneakers. When they tried to fall off he stuffed in some newspapers. He started flying lessons in the backyard. Crashed into Mom's shrubs and flowerbeds a few times but everyone just went on thinking that was him being him.
And he guessed he could've ditched Trickster after that, but he knew from the news the guy'd had stints in Breedmore before, and after he got out he'd gone back to having fun eventually. So maybe he'd get better again, even if he was staying longer than usual this time. And maybe in that case he'd take a liking to Axel, if he knew he'd been to see him while he was still a total loser. And maybe he'd make him a... sidekick? Nah, hero thing. Henchman? Minion? Nah, too small... he'd think of a word if it came up.
Besides, he liked getting to go to Fourth Street. Nobody kicking rad like the Trickster used to be, but pretty rad anyway. They didn't card him for beer and after he gave them whatever from the Trickster he got to hang around and listen in until they noticed he was still there.
Then suddenly on the news they were saying the Flash was dead. They were saying President Luthor shot him in the face. The fuck? What did the President have to do with anything? What was some bald square in a suit doing butting in? Next time he went to Breedmore, Trickster's eyes were red around the edges and his nose was red like Rudolph's and he carried around a jumbo box of Kleenex. When visiting time was up there was a pyramid of crumpled Kleenex on the rickety table. He said, between sniffles, "So that was his name. I always wondered. Wally West. It even alliterates! You mind doing me another favor?"
So that was how Axel ended up in a flower shop asking the girl behind the counter what kind was good for dead people. He ended up getting a big bunch of tiger lilies to go with it, because they were the closest thing to cool in the store that a freakin' flower could be and he couldn't imagine Flash digging the boring shit when he was alive and Trickster wasn't signing any cards this time ("They'll think I'm making fun of him and I'm not!"). And all of that went into the pile going up and up outside the Flash's aunt's hotel room. The Flash's aunt's name was Iris West, Iris West Allen after she got married, and when Axel looked back through his clippings he found her name here and there in the older articles before she moved. She was here and there in the online archives, too, for other papers. Give her credit - she hadn't sucked the Flash's dick any more than the other reporters (okay, no, that was just nasty).
Then suddenly on the news they were saying Superman lost it and stormed the White House and fried the President. Three guesses why and the first two don't count - they said the guy had his finger on the Big Red Button but Axel could think of something else big and red and dead. The Vice President flailed around on live TV on all channels. The tell-alls in the tabloids said the Oval Office still smelled like burning bacon. Wicked!
"Wow," said Trickster, "wow, didn't think Big Blue had it in him."
He said this blinking slowly, not worried, because he was a fucking moron. He was staying in the hospital and popping his pills because that's what Flash would've wanted, and because he was a fucking moron. He was such a fucking moron that when Superman came for him he still wasn't worried, and Axel was a fucking moron too because even after the standoff at the Rogues' bar and after on the news they were talking about all the arrests and after Iris West Allen put out an article about how Superman sure was doing the heat-laser thing on a lot of heads these days, he never thought about something like that happening until it was happening. Superman came barging in with Batman (fucking Batman!) and that put together was enough to have all the other visitors and visitees running for cover. Axel was halfway on his way out and got carried along in the current. He grabbed the doorframe as they went past and peered around it with a handful of other rubberneckers.
Trickster was saying, best as he could with Superman holding him feet off the floor and the cheap slippers falling off, "I dunno, I dunno, they never tell me anything!"
One of the doctors was still in there, way tougher than Axel thought or maybe way dumber. She was saying Trickster was doing good even if he hadn't gone all the way over to doing good things, he was really dedicated to getting better, he was taking his meds on the dot. Batman was standing there with his stupid pointy ears and saying in a you're-a-dumbass voice: how many times has he stopped taking his meds because he felt like it?
Trickster blinked and turned his head between them.
The doctor said, look, mister, I don't know how you do things on the East Coast but this isn't Arkham and we've moved past the age of Walter Freeman -
Superman turned his head and stared.
Axel bolted. Right out the front doors the split second after they slid open, right across Breedmore grounds, right down the street until he doubled over gasping with the cold air pulled in from the gasps tearing up the back of his throat and he wasn't crying, dammit, he wasn't. And then he straightened up and tried not to look any more like a runaway than he'd already looked like running away from Breedmore. He threw the Joey Jesse ID in a dumpster behind a Mickey D's and he took the bus home and turned on the stereo in his room loud enough to make the floor vibrate and he stopped paying attention to the news.
The next day in a frenzy he dressed up in the clothes Mom kept buying him and took a backpack full of the stuff he'd gotten from Trickster back to storage. He realized on the way home that if he really wanted to cover it up he should've at least wiped his prints or some shit, but he didn't dare go back for that. He should've gotten rid of the key too, but instead he hid it in the spare room full of Mom's old hobby crap she was meaning to get back to someday because some private dicks might go through the trash but nobody ever touched that. For the next couple days he pretty much grounded himself because he was scared to do much of anything else. One thing he did do was look up Walter Freeman, him and the lobotomies he used to tool around the country doing with icepicks.
At the end of the week, Batman and Superman finally turned up. At his house. With Dad in tow. With Superman staring at him enough to make Axel feel kind of sorry for President Baldy (except not, except Baldy knew what could happen if he pissed this guy off and he did it anyway and now everyone else had to keep paying for it!). And Batman saying that for future reference James Jesse had come over from Italy as a kid, him and his mom and dad, and when they changed their names to Jesse it was just for show business and not a legal thing. For legal things like IDs it'd stayed Giuseppe. And it wasn't the name you'd usually pull out of the Italian so all the distant-cousin Giuseppes that'd come over before and decided to have their names in English made themselves not Jesses but Josephs... Mom cried and Dad smiled a skeleton smile, like he knew it was a bad idea to be smiling right in front of capes who'd cooked the president like a turkey but couldn't turn it off, and Batman said "... Axel Walker," in a you're-a-dumbass-and-I-know-everything voice.
Superman said he was so young. He said it like this one cop once said "You're a bad seed, Walker."
They worked over his room, very cold, very clean - Superman just looked around and pointed at the boxes of clippings and Batman pulled them out and popped open the lids, and then they took down the rack of tapes and watched some of them on his TV. They even took down the old Flying Jesses poster he'd gotten off the Internet. At least they weren't talking about the Trickster's stuff in storage, Axel thought, or the key he'd stuffed under the crochet yarn, maybe they didn't know everything, and then he was scared that somehow Superman could see right through to the thought as it wriggled in his head. Later, after he read in the back issues of the papers that the whole of Smith's network had been taken down, he'd figure they must've traced him through Smith, and just through Smith.
They talked about whose fault it was, how much his parents hadn't paid attention, and what he might've picked up from them (if they were bad plants that popped out a bad seed, and maybe that was why later they or the CCPD dug enough to find what they needed to put Dad away), and whether it was because of the media making Trickster and the rest of them look cool, and Axel wanted to say Are you fucking kidding me, Flash's aunt's in the media and so's that chick he was dating, you think they'd make the Rogues look cool? but his mouth was just as much locked up as Dad's.
They didn't do anything worse to him, didn't cook his brain or stick an icepick in it, because he was so young and wasn't even old enough to drive (even if he hadn't let that stop him) and far as they could tell Trickster hadn't yet converted him to a remote-control minion (as if that was all he could've been - Batman was convinced Trickster couldn't have possibly given a shit about him, that it was all manipulation, as if! Like he could've manipulated his way out of a paper bag!) and he'd already seen Trickster being made an example of and they had bigger fish to fry (yeah, bigger fish like a zonked-out has-been in a loony bin). A whole city to clean up in the name of the Flash. Axel wanted to yell If he wanted it cleaned up that bad he would've done it himself! He was the fast guy, he had plenty of time! but his fat mouth stayed locked up.
***
The Good Twin
Four months earlier
The earliest thing Alvin Desmond remembered was Albert pointing at him saying something was his fault, and knowing it wasn't true. Their mother didn't believe him either. Mom never believed Albert when he blamed Alvin, and sometimes sitting up at night in the grip of existential crisis Alvin wondered why he'd kept trying.
But at some point Albert outgrew it. And at some point he put on a costume and started calling himself Mr. Element. Then he'd taken off that costume and put on another one and switched to Dr. Alchemy. Alvin read the articles on his exploits with morbid fascination. He was living his own life in the meantime, and living it quite well - he lived it all the way over to Star City, where he'd been transferred in his last promotion. He was climbing fast; sometimes talent did get you places despite stupidity in the world thick and plentiful as hydrogen, and thanks to... necessary adjustments, he didn't have his brother's reputation holding him back.
One day, though, when the news was slow and company policy meant he had to take a couple days off, he drove to Central City and went to his brother's apartment. He was about to knock when the door opened and a dark-haired woman came out. And that was how he met Rita Salazar. Rita was The One who Albert was going straight for (he backslid later, but she was remarkably accommodating). He didn't understand why you'd want to tie yourself down like that, but if you were going to do it you could definitely do much worse.
One thing led to another in a dizzying chain of reactions, a rolling snowball becoming a veritable avalanche. Somehow an argument about how Albert was wasting the potential of his super-rock ("Philosopher's Stone!" Albert protested. "And another thing, Al, why the pseudo-mysticism gimmick? We're men of science." "It's not mysticism if it works.") was followed a few hours later by raiding the storage, by Alvin dressing up in the old Mr. Element costume, and by following his brother to a bar on Fourth Street. Albert introduced him to the other Rogues. "You can't tell," he said, gesturing to the gas mask, "but he's the good twin." And it was probably bad to feel so great about that, about the way they nodded and waved at him, but what the hell.
That night at the bar was how he first met Eobard Thawne. He came around now and again; they didn't count him as a Rogue per se but he'd raced the Flash a couple times. Sometimes people called him "Professor" with a wink. Sometimes he wanted in on their plans, and they didn't shoo him away or freeze him out. He was a smartass through and through and some of them suspected he was the Flash himself in a yellow suit, except the amount of devotion to deception that would be required to fake their public brawls was mind-boggling. When Eobard overheard this theory he took down his cowl right there in the bar and ran a hand through his nearly-as-yellow hair and said, "In the future, we know the Flash was a redhead." Several people turned to look at the Pied Piper or McCulloch the mercenary before snickering at the idea of it and turning back. Alvin was a redhead himself - a recessive that cropped up now and again in the Desmond line, and would crop up in the future with little Peter - but you couldn't tell with the mask on.
Eobard moved loose and easy when he was in the bar, though in the footage where he fought the Flash he moved sharp and sleek. Either way, his eyes burned. He whistled tunes no one else knew. When he got excited he slipped into an accent like none Alvin had ever heard before, from whatever future-language named people Eobard. He shook Alvin's hand, said "You two are still remembered in the twenty-fifth century as masters of the elements," and smirked like there was something funny about it. He talked about connecting destinies. He had the kind of smirk that you wanted to wipe off his face by any means necessary. And -
"Hey. Al." It was the boy with the Trickster's shoes, floating at eye level, arms folded, trying to look intimidating.
Alvin took a moment to revert the stand of trees back from jagged hulks of Kryptonite. They were practicing next to a reflecting pool somewhere in the Canadian wilderness, where McCulloch had dumped them out. McCulloch himself was nowhere to be seen. From the other side of the pool there came the sound of boomerangs thwacking into other trees. In another half hour, they were scheduled to combine their talents to experiment with glowing green boomerangs.
It was easier to form Kryptonite than he'd expected. It was made of the same electrons and protons and such as anything on the conventional periodic table, but given its extraterrestrial origin and scarcity it wasn't as though he'd had experience with the natural variety. Albert had worked with Kryptonite, he remembered - he'd acquired a chip off the black market and examined its atomic structure out of scientific curiosity, then sold the sample onward. The Philosopher's Stone might have remembered how it went - saved the settings, as it were.
Wait, how did he know this?
Well, Albert must have told him.
"You know why you don't have a birth certificate?"
"What?"
"It's all on computers now. I checked - might want to stick some in someday."
"There must be a typo somewhere." Alvin shrugged. "A system's only as good as what you put in."
"Hell of a lot of typos then. I looked by name and date and -"
"Date?"
"You're supposed to be twins with Doc Alc, right? I looked on the day he was born, found his all right, and I looked a week forward and a week back 'case your mom took her sweet time or something. Zip. Zilch. Nada. 'Sides, I looked up the mugshot too and you don't look a fucking thing like him."
"You've never heard of fraternal twins, have you? ... what, are you saying I'm a plant? The Lords made me up whole-cloth? I met the Rogues a long time before all this. Al introduced me to the regulars." I used to hit on Lisa Snart. I used to bang Eobard Thawne in the men's room. Oh the look on Darrow's face - Rathaway's face - that one time he caught us at it! The poor conscientious soul asking if we had condoms! "Ask Lisa or McCulloch."
"He's listening." Walker scowled. "I wasn't just going to go up and ask with nobody around so you can turn me into gold and hock me on eBay. I'm not stupid."
"Aye," McCulloch called from somewhere behind him. "I know you well enough, but after what the lad's turned up I'd like to hear your answer."
"Fine. I suppose I have to tell you. The certificate's not there because I took it out."
He remembered slipping through a tunnel in the ceiling. Remembered transmuting the paper to gas particles and wafting it into the waiting envelope. But the computer...? He remembered he had a bright-eyed college student with him. A master hacker. The boy died later. Hit by a car in a completely unrelated incident. Wasn't that sad?
"I destroyed all of my old records." It had been done before. The Riddler had once done it in Gotham, and the audacity and mystery of his total wipe had made the news even in the Midwest, though it had been a slow day. Alvin could certainly do it without the accompanying bombast, especially since no one had a reason to look for him and find the absence. Until now. "If there's no proof of my existence, the Justice Lords won't look for me. I know how hard they've made life for Lisa and Kid Boomerang. And besides..."
"Besides what?" said Walker. He was starting to look somewhat mollified.
"Besides, I already have, let's say, a secret identity. I've been using it for years."
"Solid?"
"Very. I... didn't want to be associated with Al, in those days."
It had to be done. He'd known it had to be done if he was ever going to live apart from the Other Al. So he'd used the classic dead-baby trick back when it still worked and got himself a birth certificate and a Social Security number (new ones) and built up the documentation from there. And that was the name on his apartment in Star City, and that was the name on the company payroll. And that was the name he was being reasonable in not telling them (though McCulloch probably knew it already).
And that was the name he was grateful to have after the Flash died. After Luthor died. After Eobard disappeared (did he think this was the funny part?). After Albert was arrested. After the spectacular fall of Green Arrow. After he woke up one morning with the Philosopher's Stone shining in his hand. He should have some idea how it got there. He didn't.