[Fic] The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated, Part I Section 2
Title: The Celebrated and the Rehabilitated
Section: Part I: How We Got Here [Section 2/2]
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: ~7300
Notes and Warnings: This is the second part of Part I. The first part of Part I should be just under here; that has most of the notes on it.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Two years three months earlier
Rogues had retired before. That oldster Joar Mahkent might've been the first; he made more as an inventor than he ever did fighting Jay Garrick as the Icicle - "America," he used to say with a laugh, "the land of opportunity!" The art world finally took notice of Rainbow Raider after one particular caper involving a plagiarist, and now he was doing the lecture circuit with a controversial memoir and a portfolio that alternated between breathtaking works in monochrome and pieces that were now acclaimed as "avant-garde" instead of dismissed as literally colorblind. Captain Cold had done it once in his younger days when he was chasing a supermodel, and sworn never again after she tried to frame him. Captain Boomerang had some government deal worked up. Dr. Alchemy oscillated, and the Trickster swung back and forth like the door of a restroom stall.
But not a one of them had ever made plans for succession, and Sam Scudder thought it would be a pity for all of that painstakingly developed technology to go to waste. And who better to take up the orange and green than young Evan McCulloch? No costume of his own, no gimmick, just a sharp eye for reflection and refraction along with his sharp eye for sniping. Schooling not so good, but then neither was Sam's. Henching wasn't as big a business in Central as it was in other places, but sometimes the need came up for an extra pair of hands, an extra gun, and McCulloch had provided these on and off for years. And he earned his pay three times over when he said in passing things like what if you did this - and Scudder did it later, and it worked a treat.
And besides, McCulloch had a wife and a sick little boy to provide for. So it was almost like doing a good deed, wasn't it? Nice auspicious start to life as an honest citizen.
And Evan wouldn't try and hoodwink himself, looking back - he accepted the lot with pleasure. Scudder showed him the ropes, took him touring the mirror worlds. He was still hammering out the exact details of his exit plan, but once he did he'd have a new Mirror Master ready to introduce before the other Rogues could start to grumble. Their aspirations spun off into infinity, as happened when you put two mirrors facing. In his head Evan had paid off the house and the fund for getting Colin on his feet was ballooning. Scudder was calculating what innocuous items he'd patent to pull a Mahkent and fund a leisurely existence lounging on a tropical island where he'd munch figs and thumb his nose at the Flash. It worked for Lex Luthor (actually it didn't, but they didn't know that yet). They were about the same size, but not perfectly so, and Scudder offered to pay for the costume refittings at Gambi's as one last gift to his protégé.
Then the Flash died and everything deflated. You'd think they'd go hog-wild then, and they would've thought so too, but it didn't work that way. No spark, said Heat Wave, no panache, said Captain Cold, no joie de vivre, said the Weather Wizard. Because after all if they were just in this for the money they could've made a killing the Mahkent way. They hung around in the bar and knocked back endless rounds and the sprog with the falling-down pants who ran messages from the Trickster in Breedmore made it clear even he was inconsolable, so there was no question of springing him and getting themselves some laughs that way.
The Flash's aunt had come to Central City for the funeral. She stayed and went back to Picture News and wrote articles about what was going on everywhere, what the Justice Lords were doing, what'd become of the elections for Congress. After one article about Big Blue's literal deathglares these days she was suddenly "retired" and so, just as suddenly, was her husband. It wasn't "arrested," Evan reckoned, only on account of how her nephew was their martyr. When they bothered talking in public these days they talked about how this was for the Flash, how they wished the Flash could have lived to see this, and they couldn't have his Auntie Iris or for that matter his Uncle Barry running about underfoot saying pull the other one. Likely the same'd happened with that Park woman it'd turned out he'd been seeing as Wally West, the one who'd cried on camera. She was young, so it'd been a "leave of absence" for her.
Not to forget bloody Garrick. He was old and grieving and they said he'd disappeared in some superspeed anomaly and they said that was why they'd taken in old man Mahkent "for questioning," but Evan wasn't born yesterday.
Evan stopped going to Fourth Street. He had Maggie and Colin to think of. He wasn't the only one to think the whole ugly business boded no good; later he'd find that some of the others had vanished from Central before it all came crashing down in earnest (if some of them had run - after all, everyone had thought that smartarse Professor Zoom consulted his futuristic encyclopedia and said "Aw cripes" and sped his way back to the twenty-fifth century, maybe because they couldn't bear to think otherwise). He knew why he didn't run - he hadn't been caught yet, no need to draw attention, and could Colin take that kind of life? - but what he couldn't understand was why the rest of them didn't until the last minute. Later he'd try to see it their way: the prospect that six of the most powerful sods on Earth might be out for their heads was too much for ordinary planning to handle. Maybe the only thing they could think to do was go about their business and hope that if they didn't move they wouldn't be noticed, and that if they were noticed they'd have their last moments with something like friends.
Soon after they put away Auntie, the Lords turned even more of their attention to Central. At least Superman and Batman did. Those two were by far the faces you saw most often swooping about the city - maybe because however strong the grudge, they still had the rest of the world to beat into submission and even they couldn't explain to themselves why they'd have to bring all their force to bear on this solitary point. Superman and Batman were bad enough, especially with a riled and new-molded police behind them. Their first big moves were raids on the bar and on Gambi the tailor's. Both had only stayed open this long because of the unspoken understandings with the Flash - understandings that you only appreciated, only realized had been there, when you were facing hard-eyed capes that didn't understand them.
On that particular night, with a roomful of talents obliged to work together and work to their full potential, bringing in all of the Big Six to begin with wouldn't have been quite so farfetched a notion after all. The Pied Piper told him the story later: how Dr. Alchemy, thinking on his tiptoes, transmuted a barricade with layered lead and Kryptonite and the hardest elements he could call to mind. How the others backed up that barricade with whatever they could. How Scudder opened up the mirrors in the men's lavvies and began hustling people through. Evan didn't find any folk stranded in there afterward, so he must have been taking the time to get eggs out of the basket before he put in any more. That might've been his mistake.
Scudder had gotten all the civilians out, and all the henches, and most of the Rogues. He was in the mirror, reaching out, about to break the surface for Piper and Heat Wave, when the Martian Manhunter came down through the ceiling and shattered the glass with one blow.
Scudder screamed. Heat Wave turned his flamethrower on the Martian, who went up like a Roman candle and plummeted back out of sight. Scudder kept screaming from the shards. They rushed into the main bar and what seemed like only seconds later, not long enough for anyone to panic completely, the barricade gave. Dr. Alchemy flew across the room in the blast and crashed into Heat Wave empty-handed; not even the Justice Lords, all six of them, could find the Philosopher's Stone. Piper crouched in the corner and managed to get out the first notes of don't see me, don't see me as the Green Lantern shoved the others into an energy cage. Their eyes slid over him. He ran for it, still playing, hoping their telepath was busy putting himself out. Scudder hadn't stopped screaming.
Evan didn't know any of this at the time. He only knew what he scouted out through the mirrors, along with what was on the telly and then in the papers - what they let on the telly and in the papers. "Samuel Scudder, alias Mirror Master" was on the list of apprehensions next to Desmond and Rory. As the days-weeks-months rolled by more filtered in. They always made the front page in Central. The Turtle and the Fiddler and Rainbow Raider and Captain Cold and the Top and Abra Kadabra and -
The police came to their house once, when he was at the market. If he'd been there he probably would have panicked and hauled them all through a mirror and Christ only knew what would've fallen out from there. But when he came back to find the squad car already in front of the house he walked up and asked the officers what was going on with the calm of the assuredly innocent and the completely numbed. It turned out all they were doing was looking up the women in Captain Cold's little black book, just in case, and they'd traced Miss Maggie Campbell to Mrs. Margaret McCulloch. Because it was just in case it was only the police, and because she'd married someone else they didn't look as closely as they might. So they looked where they imagined a full-sized man might be hiding and they didn't find the mirror gear this side of the mirror, which Evan had concealed with the same thoroughness with which he'd used to hide his blow from thieving roommates before he kicked the habit. So it looked like, if he was sensible, he might be safe.
But he couldn't be sensible. Not entirely. He worked nine-to-five these days, and at night he went walking between the mirrors with one of the filtered visors that let him look through them one-way. He learned to look deeper, more closely - and aye, some of that was looking for any bit of Scudder they'd left behind. This was how he learned how to find spy cameras, from the reflections in their lenses. He learned to look at the configurations there and figure if any of the larger reflections were in blind spots. It was more a thought exercise than anything, then.
When he looked long enough and far enough, he began to find the old Rogue boltholes Superman and Batman hadn't yet ferreted out - simple enough to figure which ones they had. He took out what he could of cold guns and flamethrowers, the Top and the Trickster's toys, and restashed them all between mirrors.
He began to find other survivors. Captain Cold's little sister Lisa had come to Fourth Street now and again on the Top's arm - he found her first in front of the show window of an ice cream parlor, sitting across from her sister-in-law with a trio of sundaes between them. Dr. Alchemy's otherwise-angelic twin used to dress as Mr. Element and come in for the high; he found him first in the glass-topped table in the Desmonds' living room, sitting next to his brother's wife in hollow-eyed silence. Her name was Rita and Alchemy had shown around pictures of her - she didn't patronize Fourth Street like Mags, hadn't even marched there nights to drag her husband home as Angie Snart had done. At that point you could tell Rita was expecting (the result would be named Peter, after the father of both Als, middle name Alvin. If the Lords hadn't been about it might well've been something a wee bit more direct). Right in front of them, resting on the table, was that gold chunk of rock - the Philosopher's Stone.
He found a man he thought might be Captain Boomerang, but once he knew for sure it was too late. The disguise was too good. If only he'd kept the old tools of his trade in sight of something reflective. Not too late for Boomerang's lad, though for a long stretch it seemed like it.
He found the sprog who ran messages for the Trickster. He'd grown some in the past months, but not beyond recognition. The gel was out of his hair and he'd pulled up his pants. He leaned forward, elbows on the counter, in a pose Evan had caught sight of many times before - people staring at themselves wondering just what fine mess their lives had turned into. Evan looked around. Turned out he lived in a swanky house with a terrified woman and a mailbox that said JENSEN-WALKER (Walker was his name, turned out, and Jensen was his mother's) and a light spot on the ceiling where a poster used to be.
He found the Pied Piper, who'd escaped notice simply by using the name he was born with. It was thanks to that shiny flute of his - he lived in a cheap bedsit, playing the saddest music long into the night. He hardly left those rooms and it was realizing this that drew Evan out of the mirror. He'd carried on with his charities at first, Evan found, but hard to carry on when any moment a Lord might decide to come in and praise their good work before dragging them under the great bleeding Doing Good umbrella - when a Lord might come in and realize the face on that ginger was the same as the one on the At Large list with the hair up under that daft cap. And what chance did his political rot stand nowadays when the Lords had decided they'd take care of the politics, that ordinary folk couldn't be trusted with them if they'd go and elect Luthor?
"This is exactly the time we need it the most," said Piper without taking offense at his calling it rot. "Because clearly, revolution is in order."
He thought of Piper the summer just before the man got back from his holiday on the hell planet, when the Justice Lords discovered Colin. There was an operation that could be done now - revolutionary, brilliant, and close on three mil. Even with the nine-to-five, the insurance would flee screaming into the night before it'd pay up for that. The Central City Orthopedic Clinic made a regretful note in the charts. Someone snooped and got hold of it and one of the Lords decided it made the perfect example of their benevolence. Another bit of carrot to be smashed beneath the stick. Good pap for the papers - Colin standing, smiling, his favorite old Flash toy in hand. Evan and Maggie stood behind him and smiled some more - at least Maggie smiled, while Evan grinned like he'd taken a whiff of Joker-gas. He hadn't the faintest how he kept from pissing himself or spewing on Superman, or how the lobotomizing nutter or his fellow flying-rat nutter or their passing Martian nutter friend didn't see right through his skull to him calling them all nutters. Might be they'd gotten used to dealings with folk who were trying not to spew.
He half-convinced himself he was grateful, so as to convince them when he told them so, and unconvinced himself when he got home. 'Course he wasn't grateful, he said when he told the rest - he could've paid for the thing himself, all three mil, if they hadn't put a stop to what he did best. Naturally there was more to it than that - after all when had Scudder ever had three mil, cash, in one place at once when he wasn't about to be laid out on the floor with a superspeed punch?
It had to do with knowing that if ever he could've thrown himself on their mercy and expected actual mercy the time was long past and a dot in the distance. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lords. If reformees like Raider and Icicle and sorry crackpots like Trickster didn't stand a chance, why would a man with real blood on his hands?
It had to do with Breedmore. With what he'd seen looking through silverware and nighttime windowpanes and the unmoving eyes of one man after the next. As clean as West laid out in his casket, and as dead.
It had to do with Scudder, partly, with whatever'd become of him because nobody - not him and not Lisa and not Mardon - ever saw hide nor hair of him in Breedmore. Maybe to do with the oddity he came upon scouting around the lower levels of Iron Heights - there, said Piper when he described it in relation, was about the location of the old Pipeline (ha ha) where they kept the costumes. The overlapped scattering of opaque and impassable fragments that, he guessed from all his time behind mirrors, looked like it could be about what might happen if one got broken right while you were headed through.
***
The Woman Outside the Refrigerator
One year ten months earlier
On the night of the Fourth Street raid, Lisa was performing with the Futura Ice Show in New York - scheduled far in advance, all the arrangements made, it wasn't going to be cancelled for a dead president or totalitarian takeover. Life ground on because what else could you do with it? She came back to the suite with Roscoe after a press session with Lisa Star, the Golden Girl, and her devoted coach. You'd think the reporters would all be busy somewhere else but they seemed eager for the fluff piece. When they opened the door they found Len in an armchair, glasses off and hood down, draining the liquid contents of the minibar. He knew they were there - they'd called two days before, "Wish you were here!" - and that was where, trying to think of a place to go, he'd asked Mirror Master to direct him.
Any other time, there would've been shouting - what have you dragged us into and do you know how overpriced those things are? There would've been grabbing and shaking. There might even have been a brawl that ended with half the room frozen and the police charging in and a massive bill in the morning. But that night Len said "The capes are on the move" and they went into a huddle on the couch.
"Shit," said Len, "shit, I blew your cover, didn't I."
Any other time, Roscoe would have replied with a sophisticated rendition of No shit. But that night he said "They would have come eventually." And because he'd known that, he already had a plan, which went into action prematurely and adjusted for one more.
The NYPD had to send for a special team from Central City to thaw her out after they broke down the door the next morning. When they asked if she had any idea where her brother and her boyfriend had gone, she said no with a clear conscience as she sat up with blankets around her shoulders and clutched the coffee a sympathetic officer handed her.
They asked her about Len. "We weren't... close," she said. "He was much older than me," she said. When they ratcheted up the interrogation she said, without trying very hard to ratchet up the sobbing, "He left me behind! He left me behind with... with Dad..." That the last thing he'd said to her was I'm sorry, Lisa helped her cry harder. All over again she'd wanted to go with him. She'd wanted to go with them.
The eventual verdict was she was a victim. An abused girl who'd become a broken little woman with an Oedipal fixation, taken in by the Top because he thought it would be funny to tweak Captain Cold by providing her with another dysfunctional father/brother figure. It helped that Len had frozen her. It helped that she didn't have a record. It helped that she'd never put on a costume outside the rink on any day besides Halloween; first and foremost it was the costumes they were after. It helped that they didn't know she'd known Roscoe Dillon and the Top were the same person, or all the times she'd been to the premier Rogue watering hole. Not that she wasn't relieved but she wondered why they didn't use a mindreader more often, since they had one. Maybe the mindreader had rightfully told them they had bigger things to worry about, bigger minds to read, if they were going to take over the world.
At the end of it they referred her to Ben Mardon, the Weather Wizard's little brother. He lived in Metropolis under Superman's auspices and they seemed to think he would tell her that her brother and her lover were incapable of higher emotions and it was all right to stop caring so much in return. They obviously didn't know Ben very well.
They caught Len and Roscoe two months later, in Argentina. They still hadn't split. Nobody said how much of a fight they put up, and she couldn't ask, so she imagined it had been a good one. She took a flight to Central City once she read nearly all the captured Rogues were now in Breedmore. Why Breedmore, she'd wondered, why not Iron Heights again? They couldn't think that would be more secure.
They didn't need it to be more secure. Not with what they'd done.
There was only so long you could sit at a bedside before you admitted the force of your presence wouldn't make their eyes open. Roscoe was worse, in a way. She could pretend that Len would be fine once he woke up, even with the twin burn scars on his forehead, but it was much harder to imagine that Roscoe would suddenly grow new brain cells. Everything was blunted, everything was ground down. She didn't know if it would be worse if the man who'd taught her to spin was dead or if some part of him was still alive and trapped deep. "I'm sorry," said Roscoe, perfectly polite. "I'm sure it was important, I certainly remember that, but I'm afraid I don't quite grasp..."
The biggest sign of life in the ward was the Trickster's feet, idly swinging.
That was where she'd met Blaine Chilowicz. Back then he'd worked on the new Rogue ward. As she sat in the lobby with her face in her hands, he'd gone on his break and offered her a cigarette. When she turned it down, he offered a can of Soder instead. When she could handle it he answered her questions about how, yeah, everything was so quiet now. Most of them could take care of themselves - the big exceptions were Len and Mark Mardon and Mick Rory - but you could leave them in front of a turned-off TV and they'd stare at it all day. The administration was even thinking of picking trustees, leaving the inmates in charge of each other - that was how far it had gone. It wasn't all because of the... operations because a lot of them were also being drugged, orders from up high. But sometimes they still got these... haunted looks like they were getting an idea of what they used to be, even if they couldn't put it in words. Sometimes you saw tears spilling quiet down their faces but they couldn't tell you why. And yeah, it was all... pretty creepy. She wasn't alone, thinking that, but... And he closed his mouth on "it's all for the best" because he knew and she knew that couldn't be true.
She took a round-trip flight once a month for the next three months. Tickets, at least, weren't a problem - Ben visited even more frequently with little Josh in tow, his new job in weather control got him use of a plane, and he had no problem sharing it with her. She talked at Len, though she increasingly thought she might have more success talking to a potted plant (really. There were studies). She brought Roscoe books. Futura had dropped her, but she had savings and she found work in Metropolis - giving skating lessons to little girls and never telling them "Think of yourself as a gyroscope." She could get by. She visited Angie once in a while and once they visited Breedmore together. Angie was afraid that the ward door would lock behind them and Superman would drop in for another two lobotomies. Lisa couldn't tell her that was ridiculous because when she thought about it, it really wasn't.
Especially because someone came to see her when she was staying the night at Angie's apartment. Someone in a green uniform she didn't recognize. Someone checking up on her, saying things like I hope you're doing all right, I know this kind of thing can be devastating, I know you feel like everything's been pulled out from under you (and how the hell would you know? she kept herself from saying), I know it takes time to adjust, but you have to move on. Family's family, you can't pick that, but blood's thicker than water and, well...
If it had been smarmy, if it had been a voice that she could imagine giving the order to stuff a horse head into her bed, that would've been one thing. But the voice that dropped these anvil hints was frightened, and for her. She closed the door and told Angie that she might be right and let her know she'd be monopolizing the bathroom for the next hour.
And that was when, and that was where, Evan McCulloch got in touch with her.
She might've gotten Ben to extend the visit a bit longer, long enough to visit Roscoe and tell him goodbye herself, but that might be a risk too. So Lisa found herself drafting a Dear John letter on the flight back. Once they were on the ground, she handed it to Ben and asked him to stamp and mail it for her because she didn't think her resolve could stand if she looked at it for another second. It almost buckled anyway, but she told herself: she needed to look good, needed to look squeaky-clean, if she wanted her revenge.
She started dating again five months later, so if they were still spying they wouldn't think she was refusing to move on. She settled on Blaine, who was amiable and stoic and dumb as a post but smart enough to know it. He was nothing at all like Roscoe, so she wouldn't be tempted to make comparisons when they were so incredibly obvious from the start. They might think she was using him to get inside information (and the thought had occurred to her), except that he'd been transferred from the Rogue ward months before and quit Breedmore altogether to join her in Metropolis.
Sometimes she felt guilty, because they weren't working off the same script at all. He did mean well. He thought he could take care of her, thought he could put all her pieces together, thought he could give her what she wanted. And meanwhile she knew only one thing could do that but she kept on going to the movies with him, kept going for ice cream, kept acting like he had a chance in hell. To try to make herself feel better, she told him things that were in the general ballpark of the truth. Told him, for example, that sometimes she thought part of her would be stuck forever back when she'd been happy. He said, stumbling, that babe he'd do whatever it took to make her happy again.
Evan was getting pretty good with the hypnotics. Wiping recent memory would be a snap. So eventually at their appointed time she maneuvered Blaine in front of the full-length mirror in her apartment and told him: "Listen. I hate the Justice Lords. I won't forgive them for what they did to my brother and I won't forgive them for what they did to Roscoe and if I had a chance to kill them, I would. In fact, I'm trying right now."
He hesitated. Anyone would; she tried not to see too much in it. Then he said, "What can I do?"
Evan did her another favor and tracked Blaine after he left the apartment, in case he was going to turn her in and had prudently acted like he wouldn't. A few days later, she got the mostly-clear in the mirror. She started to think: What could he do?
***
How the Boomerang Came Back
One year seven months earlier
Mirror Master, of all people, was one of the first Rogues to be taken in, and Captain Boomerang, of all people, was the last - beaten only by the phenomenal dark horse that was Pied Piper. Not all the members of Task Force X held out as long as he did, but he proved to have a talent for running away. They let the papers publish stories on Task Force X, or at least how the old government fielded a team of notorious criminals escaping their just punishment and wasn't that horrible, and wasn't it great that the Justice Lords were catching up to them at long last. Wasn't it?
His main mistake was going back to Central City, but who would've expected him to do that? The people of Central thought he was already long gone in Bermuda or Bora Bora and weren't looking for him among them. He rearranged and dyed what hair he had and stopped wearing scarves and stewardess hats and got a job at a Taco Whiz. It worked out for him much longer than it ought to have. It worked out for him long enough for him to meet Owen.
It happened like this: Owen had given his blood for a research project. Mitochondria or something. The main thing he remembered about it was they paid him twenty-five bucks, which was more than the Red Cross's cookies and warm fuzzies. Someone in the government had coopted the samples and run their own tests and, once they found the DNA match with George Harkness, traced him to use as a bargaining chip. They weren't expecting him to be seventeen - even by the most generous estimates, this dated to before his father first came to America for that old toy company promotion. With everything hitting the fan they'd figured no point to hiding it anymore and handed over the MERCER, OWEN file as part of the severance package.
So there was this guy with an Aussie accent he was trying to iron out, coming into the theater every day and buying a ticket. Always during Owen's turn at the ticket counter - and when he mentioned it to the other cashiers he found the same guy had come in during other people's shifts and walked right back out.
After the first week Owen switched shifts with Jeff Bradley and confronted him as he left the theater in disappointment. He had a pretext, just in case - you've been coming here a lot, are you interested in a membership card? Discounts? Free jumbo-size Soder? But the way the guy froze up completely, Owen was pretty sure he was on to something.
"So, not that we mind all the patronage, but are you my long lost dad or something?"
"Um. Yeah." And he had the DNA test to prove it.
Later they told him he should've known. That the only reason he didn't figure it out was that he didn't want to. And looking back, Owen couldn't disagree, especially when they got to the boomerang lessons. Seriously, he wasn't one of those insular idiots who just assumed all Australians knew how to fling a boomerang. But at the time he'd wanted to think that another boomerang-flinging Australian in Central City wasn't that impossible.
The thought had drifted across his mind now and again. But wouldn't the guy be in Bora Bora by now? he'd thought right after, or But the timeline doesn't fit, does it? and pushed it aside as his dad complimented him on his throwing arm.
Maybe the boomerangs were what tipped someone else off. Owen never found out who phoned it in. It could've been anyone from Jeff to Dad's manager at the Taco Whiz to one of Mom's friends after she mentioned to them that Owen had found a father from Australia. Nobody was about to tell him. All he knew was two golden weeks later when he was visiting Dad at his crappy apartment, when they were sitting at the kitchen table with a couple of beers, someone came storming down the hall outside. Dad went white and lunged for the cabinet with the duffel of boomerangs. "Get behind me!"
"Dad, what -"
As the armored police kicked down the door he let fly and they opened fire and Owen opened his mouth to scream -
What he remembered of what happened next was slow and fast at the same time. He remembered pushing Dad down, remembered the lazy spin of the boomerangs, remembered thinking Dad wasn't going down fast enough, wasn't going to be out of the way in time, remembered the bullets inches away, remembered throwing out his arms and -
He remembered looking up at the bare lightbulb on the ceiling. Remembered the feel of a bullet rolling loose in each hand. His hands didn't hurt. Something soaked the back of his jacket, spreading. The smell of beer and blood. Someone yelled "No!" Someone yelled "The fuck?" Someone moaned, "Oh Lord, Owen!" Something big and black rose up and blotted out the light.
When he woke up, he was handcuffed to a hospital bed and Batman was staring at him.
Batman hated his guts. He knew that from the beginning. "You've got your speed," said Mirror Master once, "and you're a ginger. Might be he took you for West back from the grave, and took it personal when he was wrong."
"Maybe he's pissed because he couldn't stop the Flash from getting shot," said Axel.
It didn't really have to be any of that, though. Maybe he just had a hateon for anyone who didn't hate all criminals like he did.
It was Batman who kept staring at him when he asked where Dad was, finally told him his father was Captain Boomerang and he was an idiot, and grilled him until he felt like a lump of charcoal.
It was Superman who once stopped in the doorway and stared at him too, until Owen thought he could hear his brain sizzle.
It was Supergirl, Kara, who snuck in and sat down with a file and bothered to explain. She was the one who told him how this one time Captain Boomerang was caught in the wake of the Reverse-Flash's time travel and got snapped like a rubber band even further into the future, where he ended up dating one of the guy's distant relations before he found his way back. Then his girlfriend had Owen and sent him back in time with a note pinned to his bassinet because the thirtieth century wasn't doing so hot, but her time machine overshot so he landed in Central City a few years early. Someone found him and took him to a hospital where they puzzled over the note, and when nobody claimed him the Mercers stepped up to the plate. And that was that. She even gave him the note they'd finally dug out of the files. He couldn't blame his mom: it made perfect sense if you had any idea who Captain Boomerang was. Dad had called her Mel and that was the name she signed on the note. Her last name, according to Kara, was Thawne, like the Reverse-Flash. Mel Thawne.
That was another theory, one Dr. Alchemy came up with: Batman figured since he had evil on both sides of the family it was only a matter of time before he started dressing up and robbing banks.
And it was Kara who told him the Martian Manhunter had tossed his mind like a salad while he was out, because fucking Batman insisted. They didn't have anything on him, really, besides wanting to be with his dad ever since his adoptive one had taken off like a jet, so he'd be okay. Eventually.
He wondered how they knew all that, especially the time travel part, but then he remembered the Martian Manhunter could toss Dad's mind just as easily and wished he hadn't wondered.
Then Batman came back in and stared Kara out and laid down the law, the law which he'd just pulled out of his ass. Owen was going to go on living the life of a productive citizen. He'd be taking a guided tour of Iron Heights with Warden Wolfe, so that he could see where he'd end up if he acted up. He would be watched, and attempting to avoid surveillance was grounds for investigation. He was forbidden to associate with the criminal element and speaking of which, he was not allowed to see his father. His father was in Breedmore, which he was only being told so that he couldn't get away with going there on accident.
"Why the hell not?"
Batman stared at him another long while before saying, "Security."
"That's bullshit."
"Those are the terms."
Owen wondered if the Martian was still listening in and if it was a crime to imagine strangling Batman with his bare hands as clearly as he was now.
If Kara hadn't hooked him up with the resistance, he didn't know how long he would've held out before going postal and giving Batman a reason to smirk from on high in smug superiority. But at least in La Resistance he had something to do that he could pretend would do something about it. They had a guy who could make Kryptonite, a guy who could pop out of any mirror in the world and possibly the universe, now a guy who had a hotline to the Anti-Life Equation - Owen had no idea what that was but it sounded asskicking. They had other old-guard heroes like Kara and Captain Marvel and Black Canary and Zatanna who thought the Big Six were off their rockers.
Maybe they had something like a chance.
***
The Number-One Fan (Redux)
?
He'd had the handful of beautiful years running with the Flash and they were nearly all he could've hoped for.
Saint Wallace West, the second Flash and the one that stuck in people's minds, martyred with a halo of his own blood and brain. Reader to orphans, rescuer of kittens. The greatest hero who ever died.
He tried. In the end. He couldn't stop it.
Please believe me.
Primary sources: ancient footage of the Flash's smile, the Flash's laugh, the Flash fending off his enemies with the key to the city; digitized archives of the Picture News; an original print copy of The Life Story of the Flash, by Iris West Allen.
On his first run backward, the statue outside the Flash Museum had a birthday and a deathday. Still too late. He thought: at least they should have a working cosmic treadmill in there. He went inside and stayed longer than he'd meant. They had the Flash Museum in the past-past, too. He knew that. He still wanted to see what they had in the now-past, while he was there.
There was an exhibit for the New Rogues, Under Construction and Coming Soon. The New Rogues had played a part in The Life Story but really they were past the Flash's time. He moved on to the Old Rogues. Ah, the Old Rogues. History had rehabilitated them. There was much worse in the world you could do in costumes and masks than form a merry band of miscreants for the Flash to bounce off no harm done. The Museum recognized that by then, though the statues still scowled. In memoriam. Had he twenty-first century currency, he would've bought a drink from the food court and raised it to the statues in toast.
Their names were in the Life Story, most of them. Lesser martyrs - Snart and Rory and Bivolo and Mardon and Dillon and Scudder and Harkness and Jesse -
He'd read the dedication and the acknowledgments. Snart and Rathaway and Mardon and Chilowicz and McCulloch and Mercer and Walker and Desmond - ah, Desmond.
Al Desmond, elemental genius. According to the Life Story, the starring role in the Strange Case of Dr. Alchemy and Mr. Element (ever-thorough, the Museum in that past had a statue for both side-by-side above a plaque of explanation). At the start it had been an interesting footnote. In the halcyon middle, another pleasant surprise. He hadn't expected such good company, not from that particular quarter. Such pleasant surprises were almost enough for him to put out of mind what happened to people to make them martyrs.
At least not Al. You can't kill my Al. You can't break his brain. He still has breakthroughs to make! Prizes to win! Accolades to be showered upon him!
And you can't kill Malcolm Thawne. He still has to get married. He still has to have a daughter with his name attached. He still has to bring her up. I know my genealogy. I'm still here. I'm still here!
End of the line. The Reverse-Flash. Professor Zoom. Yellow on red. A time traveler from the twenty-fifth century. He'd always wondered. So he read -
He read the name that had definitely not been in the Life Story: Eobard Thawne. And right when he started trying to frantically rationalize (a cousin, a nephew, a grandson), he saw the face that had most definitely not been in the Life Story: indisputably his.
He read the tail end of the plaque before everything got too blurry: His current whereabouts are unknown.
The Life Story said this too. Iris Allen wished him peace, wherever he was.
Two ways to have a breakdown: laugh or cry. He'd laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and -
Two things to do: fight or flight. He'd hopped the cordon onto the treadmill and recalibrated and flown where he'd meant to go just as people began to shout. If this was how it would be, he might as well enjoy the ride. Better that than pitiful flailing in the current of the timestream, trying to reverse its course.
Here was the thing: he knew the Flash would never die, not before schedule, and he knew the schedule. No matter the deathtrap. No matter the nefarious plot. Shine on you crazy diamond, as the Pied Piper once played. Shine on you bright fast-burning star.
What a beautiful life it had been.
Wally they're going to kill you Wally you have to run I'm not joking Wally -
Run! Run!
Why would I ever hurt him? I was his biggest fan -
- the lightning oh the lightning -
I didn't mean to mock I didn't -
Not fit to speak his name, not fit -
You have to run! You have to run!
***
The First and the Next
Approximately one thousand years later
Hands clasped. "Ready?" Rapid-fire nodding.
Jay Garrick and Bart Allen stepped onto the treadmill.
Section: Part I: How We Got Here [Section 2/2]
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: ~7300
Notes and Warnings: This is the second part of Part I. The first part of Part I should be just under here; that has most of the notes on it.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Two years three months earlier
Rogues had retired before. That oldster Joar Mahkent might've been the first; he made more as an inventor than he ever did fighting Jay Garrick as the Icicle - "America," he used to say with a laugh, "the land of opportunity!" The art world finally took notice of Rainbow Raider after one particular caper involving a plagiarist, and now he was doing the lecture circuit with a controversial memoir and a portfolio that alternated between breathtaking works in monochrome and pieces that were now acclaimed as "avant-garde" instead of dismissed as literally colorblind. Captain Cold had done it once in his younger days when he was chasing a supermodel, and sworn never again after she tried to frame him. Captain Boomerang had some government deal worked up. Dr. Alchemy oscillated, and the Trickster swung back and forth like the door of a restroom stall.
But not a one of them had ever made plans for succession, and Sam Scudder thought it would be a pity for all of that painstakingly developed technology to go to waste. And who better to take up the orange and green than young Evan McCulloch? No costume of his own, no gimmick, just a sharp eye for reflection and refraction along with his sharp eye for sniping. Schooling not so good, but then neither was Sam's. Henching wasn't as big a business in Central as it was in other places, but sometimes the need came up for an extra pair of hands, an extra gun, and McCulloch had provided these on and off for years. And he earned his pay three times over when he said in passing things like what if you did this - and Scudder did it later, and it worked a treat.
And besides, McCulloch had a wife and a sick little boy to provide for. So it was almost like doing a good deed, wasn't it? Nice auspicious start to life as an honest citizen.
And Evan wouldn't try and hoodwink himself, looking back - he accepted the lot with pleasure. Scudder showed him the ropes, took him touring the mirror worlds. He was still hammering out the exact details of his exit plan, but once he did he'd have a new Mirror Master ready to introduce before the other Rogues could start to grumble. Their aspirations spun off into infinity, as happened when you put two mirrors facing. In his head Evan had paid off the house and the fund for getting Colin on his feet was ballooning. Scudder was calculating what innocuous items he'd patent to pull a Mahkent and fund a leisurely existence lounging on a tropical island where he'd munch figs and thumb his nose at the Flash. It worked for Lex Luthor (actually it didn't, but they didn't know that yet). They were about the same size, but not perfectly so, and Scudder offered to pay for the costume refittings at Gambi's as one last gift to his protégé.
Then the Flash died and everything deflated. You'd think they'd go hog-wild then, and they would've thought so too, but it didn't work that way. No spark, said Heat Wave, no panache, said Captain Cold, no joie de vivre, said the Weather Wizard. Because after all if they were just in this for the money they could've made a killing the Mahkent way. They hung around in the bar and knocked back endless rounds and the sprog with the falling-down pants who ran messages from the Trickster in Breedmore made it clear even he was inconsolable, so there was no question of springing him and getting themselves some laughs that way.
The Flash's aunt had come to Central City for the funeral. She stayed and went back to Picture News and wrote articles about what was going on everywhere, what the Justice Lords were doing, what'd become of the elections for Congress. After one article about Big Blue's literal deathglares these days she was suddenly "retired" and so, just as suddenly, was her husband. It wasn't "arrested," Evan reckoned, only on account of how her nephew was their martyr. When they bothered talking in public these days they talked about how this was for the Flash, how they wished the Flash could have lived to see this, and they couldn't have his Auntie Iris or for that matter his Uncle Barry running about underfoot saying pull the other one. Likely the same'd happened with that Park woman it'd turned out he'd been seeing as Wally West, the one who'd cried on camera. She was young, so it'd been a "leave of absence" for her.
Not to forget bloody Garrick. He was old and grieving and they said he'd disappeared in some superspeed anomaly and they said that was why they'd taken in old man Mahkent "for questioning," but Evan wasn't born yesterday.
Evan stopped going to Fourth Street. He had Maggie and Colin to think of. He wasn't the only one to think the whole ugly business boded no good; later he'd find that some of the others had vanished from Central before it all came crashing down in earnest (if some of them had run - after all, everyone had thought that smartarse Professor Zoom consulted his futuristic encyclopedia and said "Aw cripes" and sped his way back to the twenty-fifth century, maybe because they couldn't bear to think otherwise). He knew why he didn't run - he hadn't been caught yet, no need to draw attention, and could Colin take that kind of life? - but what he couldn't understand was why the rest of them didn't until the last minute. Later he'd try to see it their way: the prospect that six of the most powerful sods on Earth might be out for their heads was too much for ordinary planning to handle. Maybe the only thing they could think to do was go about their business and hope that if they didn't move they wouldn't be noticed, and that if they were noticed they'd have their last moments with something like friends.
Soon after they put away Auntie, the Lords turned even more of their attention to Central. At least Superman and Batman did. Those two were by far the faces you saw most often swooping about the city - maybe because however strong the grudge, they still had the rest of the world to beat into submission and even they couldn't explain to themselves why they'd have to bring all their force to bear on this solitary point. Superman and Batman were bad enough, especially with a riled and new-molded police behind them. Their first big moves were raids on the bar and on Gambi the tailor's. Both had only stayed open this long because of the unspoken understandings with the Flash - understandings that you only appreciated, only realized had been there, when you were facing hard-eyed capes that didn't understand them.
On that particular night, with a roomful of talents obliged to work together and work to their full potential, bringing in all of the Big Six to begin with wouldn't have been quite so farfetched a notion after all. The Pied Piper told him the story later: how Dr. Alchemy, thinking on his tiptoes, transmuted a barricade with layered lead and Kryptonite and the hardest elements he could call to mind. How the others backed up that barricade with whatever they could. How Scudder opened up the mirrors in the men's lavvies and began hustling people through. Evan didn't find any folk stranded in there afterward, so he must have been taking the time to get eggs out of the basket before he put in any more. That might've been his mistake.
Scudder had gotten all the civilians out, and all the henches, and most of the Rogues. He was in the mirror, reaching out, about to break the surface for Piper and Heat Wave, when the Martian Manhunter came down through the ceiling and shattered the glass with one blow.
Scudder screamed. Heat Wave turned his flamethrower on the Martian, who went up like a Roman candle and plummeted back out of sight. Scudder kept screaming from the shards. They rushed into the main bar and what seemed like only seconds later, not long enough for anyone to panic completely, the barricade gave. Dr. Alchemy flew across the room in the blast and crashed into Heat Wave empty-handed; not even the Justice Lords, all six of them, could find the Philosopher's Stone. Piper crouched in the corner and managed to get out the first notes of don't see me, don't see me as the Green Lantern shoved the others into an energy cage. Their eyes slid over him. He ran for it, still playing, hoping their telepath was busy putting himself out. Scudder hadn't stopped screaming.
Evan didn't know any of this at the time. He only knew what he scouted out through the mirrors, along with what was on the telly and then in the papers - what they let on the telly and in the papers. "Samuel Scudder, alias Mirror Master" was on the list of apprehensions next to Desmond and Rory. As the days-weeks-months rolled by more filtered in. They always made the front page in Central. The Turtle and the Fiddler and Rainbow Raider and Captain Cold and the Top and Abra Kadabra and -
The police came to their house once, when he was at the market. If he'd been there he probably would have panicked and hauled them all through a mirror and Christ only knew what would've fallen out from there. But when he came back to find the squad car already in front of the house he walked up and asked the officers what was going on with the calm of the assuredly innocent and the completely numbed. It turned out all they were doing was looking up the women in Captain Cold's little black book, just in case, and they'd traced Miss Maggie Campbell to Mrs. Margaret McCulloch. Because it was just in case it was only the police, and because she'd married someone else they didn't look as closely as they might. So they looked where they imagined a full-sized man might be hiding and they didn't find the mirror gear this side of the mirror, which Evan had concealed with the same thoroughness with which he'd used to hide his blow from thieving roommates before he kicked the habit. So it looked like, if he was sensible, he might be safe.
But he couldn't be sensible. Not entirely. He worked nine-to-five these days, and at night he went walking between the mirrors with one of the filtered visors that let him look through them one-way. He learned to look deeper, more closely - and aye, some of that was looking for any bit of Scudder they'd left behind. This was how he learned how to find spy cameras, from the reflections in their lenses. He learned to look at the configurations there and figure if any of the larger reflections were in blind spots. It was more a thought exercise than anything, then.
When he looked long enough and far enough, he began to find the old Rogue boltholes Superman and Batman hadn't yet ferreted out - simple enough to figure which ones they had. He took out what he could of cold guns and flamethrowers, the Top and the Trickster's toys, and restashed them all between mirrors.
He began to find other survivors. Captain Cold's little sister Lisa had come to Fourth Street now and again on the Top's arm - he found her first in front of the show window of an ice cream parlor, sitting across from her sister-in-law with a trio of sundaes between them. Dr. Alchemy's otherwise-angelic twin used to dress as Mr. Element and come in for the high; he found him first in the glass-topped table in the Desmonds' living room, sitting next to his brother's wife in hollow-eyed silence. Her name was Rita and Alchemy had shown around pictures of her - she didn't patronize Fourth Street like Mags, hadn't even marched there nights to drag her husband home as Angie Snart had done. At that point you could tell Rita was expecting (the result would be named Peter, after the father of both Als, middle name Alvin. If the Lords hadn't been about it might well've been something a wee bit more direct). Right in front of them, resting on the table, was that gold chunk of rock - the Philosopher's Stone.
He found a man he thought might be Captain Boomerang, but once he knew for sure it was too late. The disguise was too good. If only he'd kept the old tools of his trade in sight of something reflective. Not too late for Boomerang's lad, though for a long stretch it seemed like it.
He found the sprog who ran messages for the Trickster. He'd grown some in the past months, but not beyond recognition. The gel was out of his hair and he'd pulled up his pants. He leaned forward, elbows on the counter, in a pose Evan had caught sight of many times before - people staring at themselves wondering just what fine mess their lives had turned into. Evan looked around. Turned out he lived in a swanky house with a terrified woman and a mailbox that said JENSEN-WALKER (Walker was his name, turned out, and Jensen was his mother's) and a light spot on the ceiling where a poster used to be.
He found the Pied Piper, who'd escaped notice simply by using the name he was born with. It was thanks to that shiny flute of his - he lived in a cheap bedsit, playing the saddest music long into the night. He hardly left those rooms and it was realizing this that drew Evan out of the mirror. He'd carried on with his charities at first, Evan found, but hard to carry on when any moment a Lord might decide to come in and praise their good work before dragging them under the great bleeding Doing Good umbrella - when a Lord might come in and realize the face on that ginger was the same as the one on the At Large list with the hair up under that daft cap. And what chance did his political rot stand nowadays when the Lords had decided they'd take care of the politics, that ordinary folk couldn't be trusted with them if they'd go and elect Luthor?
"This is exactly the time we need it the most," said Piper without taking offense at his calling it rot. "Because clearly, revolution is in order."
He thought of Piper the summer just before the man got back from his holiday on the hell planet, when the Justice Lords discovered Colin. There was an operation that could be done now - revolutionary, brilliant, and close on three mil. Even with the nine-to-five, the insurance would flee screaming into the night before it'd pay up for that. The Central City Orthopedic Clinic made a regretful note in the charts. Someone snooped and got hold of it and one of the Lords decided it made the perfect example of their benevolence. Another bit of carrot to be smashed beneath the stick. Good pap for the papers - Colin standing, smiling, his favorite old Flash toy in hand. Evan and Maggie stood behind him and smiled some more - at least Maggie smiled, while Evan grinned like he'd taken a whiff of Joker-gas. He hadn't the faintest how he kept from pissing himself or spewing on Superman, or how the lobotomizing nutter or his fellow flying-rat nutter or their passing Martian nutter friend didn't see right through his skull to him calling them all nutters. Might be they'd gotten used to dealings with folk who were trying not to spew.
He half-convinced himself he was grateful, so as to convince them when he told them so, and unconvinced himself when he got home. 'Course he wasn't grateful, he said when he told the rest - he could've paid for the thing himself, all three mil, if they hadn't put a stop to what he did best. Naturally there was more to it than that - after all when had Scudder ever had three mil, cash, in one place at once when he wasn't about to be laid out on the floor with a superspeed punch?
It had to do with knowing that if ever he could've thrown himself on their mercy and expected actual mercy the time was long past and a dot in the distance. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lords. If reformees like Raider and Icicle and sorry crackpots like Trickster didn't stand a chance, why would a man with real blood on his hands?
It had to do with Breedmore. With what he'd seen looking through silverware and nighttime windowpanes and the unmoving eyes of one man after the next. As clean as West laid out in his casket, and as dead.
It had to do with Scudder, partly, with whatever'd become of him because nobody - not him and not Lisa and not Mardon - ever saw hide nor hair of him in Breedmore. Maybe to do with the oddity he came upon scouting around the lower levels of Iron Heights - there, said Piper when he described it in relation, was about the location of the old Pipeline (ha ha) where they kept the costumes. The overlapped scattering of opaque and impassable fragments that, he guessed from all his time behind mirrors, looked like it could be about what might happen if one got broken right while you were headed through.
***
The Woman Outside the Refrigerator
One year ten months earlier
On the night of the Fourth Street raid, Lisa was performing with the Futura Ice Show in New York - scheduled far in advance, all the arrangements made, it wasn't going to be cancelled for a dead president or totalitarian takeover. Life ground on because what else could you do with it? She came back to the suite with Roscoe after a press session with Lisa Star, the Golden Girl, and her devoted coach. You'd think the reporters would all be busy somewhere else but they seemed eager for the fluff piece. When they opened the door they found Len in an armchair, glasses off and hood down, draining the liquid contents of the minibar. He knew they were there - they'd called two days before, "Wish you were here!" - and that was where, trying to think of a place to go, he'd asked Mirror Master to direct him.
Any other time, there would've been shouting - what have you dragged us into and do you know how overpriced those things are? There would've been grabbing and shaking. There might even have been a brawl that ended with half the room frozen and the police charging in and a massive bill in the morning. But that night Len said "The capes are on the move" and they went into a huddle on the couch.
"Shit," said Len, "shit, I blew your cover, didn't I."
Any other time, Roscoe would have replied with a sophisticated rendition of No shit. But that night he said "They would have come eventually." And because he'd known that, he already had a plan, which went into action prematurely and adjusted for one more.
The NYPD had to send for a special team from Central City to thaw her out after they broke down the door the next morning. When they asked if she had any idea where her brother and her boyfriend had gone, she said no with a clear conscience as she sat up with blankets around her shoulders and clutched the coffee a sympathetic officer handed her.
They asked her about Len. "We weren't... close," she said. "He was much older than me," she said. When they ratcheted up the interrogation she said, without trying very hard to ratchet up the sobbing, "He left me behind! He left me behind with... with Dad..." That the last thing he'd said to her was I'm sorry, Lisa helped her cry harder. All over again she'd wanted to go with him. She'd wanted to go with them.
The eventual verdict was she was a victim. An abused girl who'd become a broken little woman with an Oedipal fixation, taken in by the Top because he thought it would be funny to tweak Captain Cold by providing her with another dysfunctional father/brother figure. It helped that Len had frozen her. It helped that she didn't have a record. It helped that she'd never put on a costume outside the rink on any day besides Halloween; first and foremost it was the costumes they were after. It helped that they didn't know she'd known Roscoe Dillon and the Top were the same person, or all the times she'd been to the premier Rogue watering hole. Not that she wasn't relieved but she wondered why they didn't use a mindreader more often, since they had one. Maybe the mindreader had rightfully told them they had bigger things to worry about, bigger minds to read, if they were going to take over the world.
At the end of it they referred her to Ben Mardon, the Weather Wizard's little brother. He lived in Metropolis under Superman's auspices and they seemed to think he would tell her that her brother and her lover were incapable of higher emotions and it was all right to stop caring so much in return. They obviously didn't know Ben very well.
They caught Len and Roscoe two months later, in Argentina. They still hadn't split. Nobody said how much of a fight they put up, and she couldn't ask, so she imagined it had been a good one. She took a flight to Central City once she read nearly all the captured Rogues were now in Breedmore. Why Breedmore, she'd wondered, why not Iron Heights again? They couldn't think that would be more secure.
They didn't need it to be more secure. Not with what they'd done.
There was only so long you could sit at a bedside before you admitted the force of your presence wouldn't make their eyes open. Roscoe was worse, in a way. She could pretend that Len would be fine once he woke up, even with the twin burn scars on his forehead, but it was much harder to imagine that Roscoe would suddenly grow new brain cells. Everything was blunted, everything was ground down. She didn't know if it would be worse if the man who'd taught her to spin was dead or if some part of him was still alive and trapped deep. "I'm sorry," said Roscoe, perfectly polite. "I'm sure it was important, I certainly remember that, but I'm afraid I don't quite grasp..."
The biggest sign of life in the ward was the Trickster's feet, idly swinging.
That was where she'd met Blaine Chilowicz. Back then he'd worked on the new Rogue ward. As she sat in the lobby with her face in her hands, he'd gone on his break and offered her a cigarette. When she turned it down, he offered a can of Soder instead. When she could handle it he answered her questions about how, yeah, everything was so quiet now. Most of them could take care of themselves - the big exceptions were Len and Mark Mardon and Mick Rory - but you could leave them in front of a turned-off TV and they'd stare at it all day. The administration was even thinking of picking trustees, leaving the inmates in charge of each other - that was how far it had gone. It wasn't all because of the... operations because a lot of them were also being drugged, orders from up high. But sometimes they still got these... haunted looks like they were getting an idea of what they used to be, even if they couldn't put it in words. Sometimes you saw tears spilling quiet down their faces but they couldn't tell you why. And yeah, it was all... pretty creepy. She wasn't alone, thinking that, but... And he closed his mouth on "it's all for the best" because he knew and she knew that couldn't be true.
She took a round-trip flight once a month for the next three months. Tickets, at least, weren't a problem - Ben visited even more frequently with little Josh in tow, his new job in weather control got him use of a plane, and he had no problem sharing it with her. She talked at Len, though she increasingly thought she might have more success talking to a potted plant (really. There were studies). She brought Roscoe books. Futura had dropped her, but she had savings and she found work in Metropolis - giving skating lessons to little girls and never telling them "Think of yourself as a gyroscope." She could get by. She visited Angie once in a while and once they visited Breedmore together. Angie was afraid that the ward door would lock behind them and Superman would drop in for another two lobotomies. Lisa couldn't tell her that was ridiculous because when she thought about it, it really wasn't.
Especially because someone came to see her when she was staying the night at Angie's apartment. Someone in a green uniform she didn't recognize. Someone checking up on her, saying things like I hope you're doing all right, I know this kind of thing can be devastating, I know you feel like everything's been pulled out from under you (and how the hell would you know? she kept herself from saying), I know it takes time to adjust, but you have to move on. Family's family, you can't pick that, but blood's thicker than water and, well...
If it had been smarmy, if it had been a voice that she could imagine giving the order to stuff a horse head into her bed, that would've been one thing. But the voice that dropped these anvil hints was frightened, and for her. She closed the door and told Angie that she might be right and let her know she'd be monopolizing the bathroom for the next hour.
And that was when, and that was where, Evan McCulloch got in touch with her.
She might've gotten Ben to extend the visit a bit longer, long enough to visit Roscoe and tell him goodbye herself, but that might be a risk too. So Lisa found herself drafting a Dear John letter on the flight back. Once they were on the ground, she handed it to Ben and asked him to stamp and mail it for her because she didn't think her resolve could stand if she looked at it for another second. It almost buckled anyway, but she told herself: she needed to look good, needed to look squeaky-clean, if she wanted her revenge.
She started dating again five months later, so if they were still spying they wouldn't think she was refusing to move on. She settled on Blaine, who was amiable and stoic and dumb as a post but smart enough to know it. He was nothing at all like Roscoe, so she wouldn't be tempted to make comparisons when they were so incredibly obvious from the start. They might think she was using him to get inside information (and the thought had occurred to her), except that he'd been transferred from the Rogue ward months before and quit Breedmore altogether to join her in Metropolis.
Sometimes she felt guilty, because they weren't working off the same script at all. He did mean well. He thought he could take care of her, thought he could put all her pieces together, thought he could give her what she wanted. And meanwhile she knew only one thing could do that but she kept on going to the movies with him, kept going for ice cream, kept acting like he had a chance in hell. To try to make herself feel better, she told him things that were in the general ballpark of the truth. Told him, for example, that sometimes she thought part of her would be stuck forever back when she'd been happy. He said, stumbling, that babe he'd do whatever it took to make her happy again.
Evan was getting pretty good with the hypnotics. Wiping recent memory would be a snap. So eventually at their appointed time she maneuvered Blaine in front of the full-length mirror in her apartment and told him: "Listen. I hate the Justice Lords. I won't forgive them for what they did to my brother and I won't forgive them for what they did to Roscoe and if I had a chance to kill them, I would. In fact, I'm trying right now."
He hesitated. Anyone would; she tried not to see too much in it. Then he said, "What can I do?"
Evan did her another favor and tracked Blaine after he left the apartment, in case he was going to turn her in and had prudently acted like he wouldn't. A few days later, she got the mostly-clear in the mirror. She started to think: What could he do?
***
How the Boomerang Came Back
One year seven months earlier
Mirror Master, of all people, was one of the first Rogues to be taken in, and Captain Boomerang, of all people, was the last - beaten only by the phenomenal dark horse that was Pied Piper. Not all the members of Task Force X held out as long as he did, but he proved to have a talent for running away. They let the papers publish stories on Task Force X, or at least how the old government fielded a team of notorious criminals escaping their just punishment and wasn't that horrible, and wasn't it great that the Justice Lords were catching up to them at long last. Wasn't it?
His main mistake was going back to Central City, but who would've expected him to do that? The people of Central thought he was already long gone in Bermuda or Bora Bora and weren't looking for him among them. He rearranged and dyed what hair he had and stopped wearing scarves and stewardess hats and got a job at a Taco Whiz. It worked out for him much longer than it ought to have. It worked out for him long enough for him to meet Owen.
It happened like this: Owen had given his blood for a research project. Mitochondria or something. The main thing he remembered about it was they paid him twenty-five bucks, which was more than the Red Cross's cookies and warm fuzzies. Someone in the government had coopted the samples and run their own tests and, once they found the DNA match with George Harkness, traced him to use as a bargaining chip. They weren't expecting him to be seventeen - even by the most generous estimates, this dated to before his father first came to America for that old toy company promotion. With everything hitting the fan they'd figured no point to hiding it anymore and handed over the MERCER, OWEN file as part of the severance package.
So there was this guy with an Aussie accent he was trying to iron out, coming into the theater every day and buying a ticket. Always during Owen's turn at the ticket counter - and when he mentioned it to the other cashiers he found the same guy had come in during other people's shifts and walked right back out.
After the first week Owen switched shifts with Jeff Bradley and confronted him as he left the theater in disappointment. He had a pretext, just in case - you've been coming here a lot, are you interested in a membership card? Discounts? Free jumbo-size Soder? But the way the guy froze up completely, Owen was pretty sure he was on to something.
"So, not that we mind all the patronage, but are you my long lost dad or something?"
"Um. Yeah." And he had the DNA test to prove it.
Later they told him he should've known. That the only reason he didn't figure it out was that he didn't want to. And looking back, Owen couldn't disagree, especially when they got to the boomerang lessons. Seriously, he wasn't one of those insular idiots who just assumed all Australians knew how to fling a boomerang. But at the time he'd wanted to think that another boomerang-flinging Australian in Central City wasn't that impossible.
The thought had drifted across his mind now and again. But wouldn't the guy be in Bora Bora by now? he'd thought right after, or But the timeline doesn't fit, does it? and pushed it aside as his dad complimented him on his throwing arm.
Maybe the boomerangs were what tipped someone else off. Owen never found out who phoned it in. It could've been anyone from Jeff to Dad's manager at the Taco Whiz to one of Mom's friends after she mentioned to them that Owen had found a father from Australia. Nobody was about to tell him. All he knew was two golden weeks later when he was visiting Dad at his crappy apartment, when they were sitting at the kitchen table with a couple of beers, someone came storming down the hall outside. Dad went white and lunged for the cabinet with the duffel of boomerangs. "Get behind me!"
"Dad, what -"
As the armored police kicked down the door he let fly and they opened fire and Owen opened his mouth to scream -
What he remembered of what happened next was slow and fast at the same time. He remembered pushing Dad down, remembered the lazy spin of the boomerangs, remembered thinking Dad wasn't going down fast enough, wasn't going to be out of the way in time, remembered the bullets inches away, remembered throwing out his arms and -
He remembered looking up at the bare lightbulb on the ceiling. Remembered the feel of a bullet rolling loose in each hand. His hands didn't hurt. Something soaked the back of his jacket, spreading. The smell of beer and blood. Someone yelled "No!" Someone yelled "The fuck?" Someone moaned, "Oh Lord, Owen!" Something big and black rose up and blotted out the light.
When he woke up, he was handcuffed to a hospital bed and Batman was staring at him.
Batman hated his guts. He knew that from the beginning. "You've got your speed," said Mirror Master once, "and you're a ginger. Might be he took you for West back from the grave, and took it personal when he was wrong."
"Maybe he's pissed because he couldn't stop the Flash from getting shot," said Axel.
It didn't really have to be any of that, though. Maybe he just had a hateon for anyone who didn't hate all criminals like he did.
It was Batman who kept staring at him when he asked where Dad was, finally told him his father was Captain Boomerang and he was an idiot, and grilled him until he felt like a lump of charcoal.
It was Superman who once stopped in the doorway and stared at him too, until Owen thought he could hear his brain sizzle.
It was Supergirl, Kara, who snuck in and sat down with a file and bothered to explain. She was the one who told him how this one time Captain Boomerang was caught in the wake of the Reverse-Flash's time travel and got snapped like a rubber band even further into the future, where he ended up dating one of the guy's distant relations before he found his way back. Then his girlfriend had Owen and sent him back in time with a note pinned to his bassinet because the thirtieth century wasn't doing so hot, but her time machine overshot so he landed in Central City a few years early. Someone found him and took him to a hospital where they puzzled over the note, and when nobody claimed him the Mercers stepped up to the plate. And that was that. She even gave him the note they'd finally dug out of the files. He couldn't blame his mom: it made perfect sense if you had any idea who Captain Boomerang was. Dad had called her Mel and that was the name she signed on the note. Her last name, according to Kara, was Thawne, like the Reverse-Flash. Mel Thawne.
That was another theory, one Dr. Alchemy came up with: Batman figured since he had evil on both sides of the family it was only a matter of time before he started dressing up and robbing banks.
And it was Kara who told him the Martian Manhunter had tossed his mind like a salad while he was out, because fucking Batman insisted. They didn't have anything on him, really, besides wanting to be with his dad ever since his adoptive one had taken off like a jet, so he'd be okay. Eventually.
He wondered how they knew all that, especially the time travel part, but then he remembered the Martian Manhunter could toss Dad's mind just as easily and wished he hadn't wondered.
Then Batman came back in and stared Kara out and laid down the law, the law which he'd just pulled out of his ass. Owen was going to go on living the life of a productive citizen. He'd be taking a guided tour of Iron Heights with Warden Wolfe, so that he could see where he'd end up if he acted up. He would be watched, and attempting to avoid surveillance was grounds for investigation. He was forbidden to associate with the criminal element and speaking of which, he was not allowed to see his father. His father was in Breedmore, which he was only being told so that he couldn't get away with going there on accident.
"Why the hell not?"
Batman stared at him another long while before saying, "Security."
"That's bullshit."
"Those are the terms."
Owen wondered if the Martian was still listening in and if it was a crime to imagine strangling Batman with his bare hands as clearly as he was now.
If Kara hadn't hooked him up with the resistance, he didn't know how long he would've held out before going postal and giving Batman a reason to smirk from on high in smug superiority. But at least in La Resistance he had something to do that he could pretend would do something about it. They had a guy who could make Kryptonite, a guy who could pop out of any mirror in the world and possibly the universe, now a guy who had a hotline to the Anti-Life Equation - Owen had no idea what that was but it sounded asskicking. They had other old-guard heroes like Kara and Captain Marvel and Black Canary and Zatanna who thought the Big Six were off their rockers.
Maybe they had something like a chance.
***
The Number-One Fan (Redux)
?
He'd had the handful of beautiful years running with the Flash and they were nearly all he could've hoped for.
Saint Wallace West, the second Flash and the one that stuck in people's minds, martyred with a halo of his own blood and brain. Reader to orphans, rescuer of kittens. The greatest hero who ever died.
He tried. In the end. He couldn't stop it.
Please believe me.
Primary sources: ancient footage of the Flash's smile, the Flash's laugh, the Flash fending off his enemies with the key to the city; digitized archives of the Picture News; an original print copy of The Life Story of the Flash, by Iris West Allen.
On his first run backward, the statue outside the Flash Museum had a birthday and a deathday. Still too late. He thought: at least they should have a working cosmic treadmill in there. He went inside and stayed longer than he'd meant. They had the Flash Museum in the past-past, too. He knew that. He still wanted to see what they had in the now-past, while he was there.
There was an exhibit for the New Rogues, Under Construction and Coming Soon. The New Rogues had played a part in The Life Story but really they were past the Flash's time. He moved on to the Old Rogues. Ah, the Old Rogues. History had rehabilitated them. There was much worse in the world you could do in costumes and masks than form a merry band of miscreants for the Flash to bounce off no harm done. The Museum recognized that by then, though the statues still scowled. In memoriam. Had he twenty-first century currency, he would've bought a drink from the food court and raised it to the statues in toast.
Their names were in the Life Story, most of them. Lesser martyrs - Snart and Rory and Bivolo and Mardon and Dillon and Scudder and Harkness and Jesse -
He'd read the dedication and the acknowledgments. Snart and Rathaway and Mardon and Chilowicz and McCulloch and Mercer and Walker and Desmond - ah, Desmond.
Al Desmond, elemental genius. According to the Life Story, the starring role in the Strange Case of Dr. Alchemy and Mr. Element (ever-thorough, the Museum in that past had a statue for both side-by-side above a plaque of explanation). At the start it had been an interesting footnote. In the halcyon middle, another pleasant surprise. He hadn't expected such good company, not from that particular quarter. Such pleasant surprises were almost enough for him to put out of mind what happened to people to make them martyrs.
At least not Al. You can't kill my Al. You can't break his brain. He still has breakthroughs to make! Prizes to win! Accolades to be showered upon him!
And you can't kill Malcolm Thawne. He still has to get married. He still has to have a daughter with his name attached. He still has to bring her up. I know my genealogy. I'm still here. I'm still here!
End of the line. The Reverse-Flash. Professor Zoom. Yellow on red. A time traveler from the twenty-fifth century. He'd always wondered. So he read -
He read the name that had definitely not been in the Life Story: Eobard Thawne. And right when he started trying to frantically rationalize (a cousin, a nephew, a grandson), he saw the face that had most definitely not been in the Life Story: indisputably his.
He read the tail end of the plaque before everything got too blurry: His current whereabouts are unknown.
The Life Story said this too. Iris Allen wished him peace, wherever he was.
Two ways to have a breakdown: laugh or cry. He'd laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and -
Two things to do: fight or flight. He'd hopped the cordon onto the treadmill and recalibrated and flown where he'd meant to go just as people began to shout. If this was how it would be, he might as well enjoy the ride. Better that than pitiful flailing in the current of the timestream, trying to reverse its course.
Here was the thing: he knew the Flash would never die, not before schedule, and he knew the schedule. No matter the deathtrap. No matter the nefarious plot. Shine on you crazy diamond, as the Pied Piper once played. Shine on you bright fast-burning star.
What a beautiful life it had been.
Wally they're going to kill you Wally you have to run I'm not joking Wally -
Run! Run!
Why would I ever hurt him? I was his biggest fan -
- the lightning oh the lightning -
I didn't mean to mock I didn't -
Not fit to speak his name, not fit -
You have to run! You have to run!
***
The First and the Next
Approximately one thousand years later
Hands clasped. "Ready?" Rapid-fire nodding.
Jay Garrick and Bart Allen stepped onto the treadmill.