Chapter Text
They run back to the containment bay and Wally skids to a stop so hard he nearly trips over himself. Dick is much more graceful about it but they’re both frantic.
Because.
Oh no.
The Baby.
She’s back inside that thing’s stomach. Floating around without a care in the world even though she looks like she’s melting.
Wally feels like he’s frozen, which, as a speedster, is not something that happens often. But he doesn’t know what to do. Because the baby is melting. And it’s his fault. He lost the baby and now she’s melting in that thing’s stomach and he doesn’t know what to do about it. They can see her through the translucent skin of the glowing green sack attached to the thing, curled up and breathing gently like she was doing nothing more than taking a nap. Even though her tiny feet and tiny hands were turning into goo.
Dick, his beautiful bird, doesn’t hesitate.
He presses a hand to the scanner that opens the cell and bursts through, Wally close on his heels.
He dives, prying open those terrifying jaws (seriously, Walls, don’t think about it) and fearlessly reaches in. The thing doesn’t react, doesn’t move. It must be sleeping. Wally is quick to anchor his legs with one arm so he can reach further in and props the jaws open with the other (he has to put his palm on the soft pallet behind the teeth even though it is so, so unpleasantly slimy, because the fangs on the thing currently trying to digest a baby are wicked sharp). He has an errant thought, something about them being lucky the beast doesn’t chew else there would be no baby, before he feels Dick pushing back.
He comes out empty handed. And covered in green gloop. Gross.
“I can’t reach her,” he says, grief lacing his tone. And he doesn’t like the blame that Dick seems to be putting on his own shoulders when it was all Wally’s fault in the first place. He lost the baby. He hesitated when he shouldn’t have. He needs to distract him.
“What now?” he asks, knowing that Dick will latch onto the need for a plan rather than wallow in guilt. Dick will know what to do. And if he doesn’t then he’ll know who to ask that does. He was always good at that.
Dick brushes a hand through his hair, grimacing when it comes back covered in more goo. He looks at the glowing green sack where they have clear sight of the baby. There’s a sudden glint in his eyes, even behind the lenses of his mask, that Wally feels queasy about. He hopes his sugar isn’t dropping.
And then Dick has a knife. And he moves towards the sack with it.
“What are you doing?!” Wally shouts, because really, what is he doing?!
Dick places a hand to the sack and it wiggles at the touch. Like a waterbed. Which is not an image Wally needed in his mind, thank you very much. He moves it in a way that pushes the baby to the outer edge and he positions the knife to the other side, blade ready to come down and cut through. And alright he could see where Dick was going with this now, but a little warning would have still been nice. Seeing a Bat with a knife in hand is never a good thing.
“Gotta cut her out,” the other mutters. “It’s the only way. And if this thing is just going to continue eating a baby, I don’t feel too bad about it.”
“Alright, alright,” Wally says, “I get it now. So why not just do it? What are you waiting for now?”
Dick side-eyes him. “It’s probably going to wake up when I stab it. I have to make sure I’m ready to grab her and run.”
“Hey now,” Wally says, slightly offended. “Running is my specialty.”
Dick levels the knife in his direction, “No Speed force.”
He scoffs, “I’m still plenty fast, Rob.”
Dick narrows his eyes in his direction and Wally feels the need to defend himself even though he doesn’t know from what yet. The moment is strangely tense and he doesn’t know how to feel about it. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Not knowing.
“Can I trust you with her?”
And, wow, ouch, Birdie. It wasn’t undeserved but it still hurt. He can be trusted with an infant. He can. He knew to be on the look out for her just- disappearing into nothing now. It wasn’t something he thought her capable of before, so excuse him for not keeping his eyes on her when he thought she’d just continue to lay there.
“Yes,” he answers firmly, more confidant than he actually feels.
Dick nods and deftly twirls the knife in his grip before he plunges. The space-whale-thing lets out an unholy screech. Wally is sure that it isn’t actually audible. But it is loud and hurts nonetheless. Dick wrenches the baby from its prison and rises. The thing writhes on the floor of the cell.
NO!
And he starts feeling clammy and faint but he doesn’t have time for that so he just shoves a handful of sugar cubes in his mouth and grabs the girl from Dick’s arms and books it.
NO!
Comes the inhuman cry made of ice and shadow and mourning and Wally feels nauseous but he pushes on and cradles the precious cargo in his hold.
BABY!
And the sound of the whale-thing’s shouting-not-shouting is gut-wrenching. It shouldn’t be this sad over losing a meal. Something is wrong. But he doesn’t have time to think about it. He barely has time to make it back to the med bay, shaking hands careful to hand off the infant to the awaiting medical staff before reaching for his emergency glucagon for the second time. At least his CGM is actually alerting him this time, the beeping an annoying trill in the background.
His vision starts to blur and his hands are going numb, shaking as he tries to pry a syringe from the secured kit in his suit and prime it. That was way too fast this time. He’s usually so careful. And the symptoms. He has the CGM because of how often his sugar drops without the symptoms. The sweating, the shakiness, the fatigue, the blurry vision- the- the everything. He’s feeling it all. And he’s feeling it bad.
A firm, warm hand wraps around his own and steadies it, helping him push the plunger and inject the glucagon into his thigh, familiar finger-stripes a welcome sight. Even if they were still grossly covered in green gut-goo.
“Again?” Dick asks softly.
He can only nod. It has to be something to with the way the whale-thing speaks. It doesn’t talk with vocal chords. Doesn’t use vibrations in the air to make sound in the traditional sense. It’s something more. Something other. Something close to the Speed force. Akin to it but more. Something that saps all the energy right out of him, like he’s run a hundred miles in a second. Over and over again. Usually only pushing the Speed force to its limits can do that. Pushing it for days on end, summoning lightning, and moving through objects and moving through time. Whatever force that thing was using, could do what usually took days to effect him in seconds.
“You, Nugget,” Dick says while guiding him to one of the medbay gurneys, “are not allowed back in that cell.”
Wally doesn’t protest.
It lost-
The Baby- Is gone again.
It can’t (He can’t. He. Not it. He.)
He’s tired. So tired. He needs to protect her. The last. The only. All the others. Melted. Gone.
He can’t. He can’t. He must.
He loses himself again.
It’s being drained of everything. Pooling everything into one spot. For her. For the baby.
It cannot fail.
It already has.
It hurts.
It’s growing weaker. It has no strength. (He. He has no strength.)
There is nothing here to eat. Nothing for either of them. It will feed her anyway. Even if it takes everything. Even if it takes all it has and more.
Wally is back on babysitting duty.
He doesn’t mind it. Really. Even though it is so, so boring. He feels guilty if he so much as blinks, though, so he keeps his gaze steadfast on the sleeping infant.
The one he’d almost lost.
She’s stable now, though. For the most part. The- melting, had reversed soon after pulling her out. Leaving them with a healthy humanoid bouncing baby girl.
Humanoid. Because while she looks the part, she definitely isn’t actually human. When they scanned her, all her organs were- wrong. And green? Maybe, apparently. Her blood is green, at least. When the medics drew blood for testing, it did not come out red like they assumed it would. No. Green. And that tickled something in the back of Wally’s mind. Something about- something being sad? Something being wrong?
He- couldn’t really focus enough to remember. He was much too busy keeping an eye on the squirt. Making sure she wasn’t dragged back into the clutches of the whale-beast (and something about that thought felt off but he didn’t know what).
Medics are bustling around them, creating a cacophony of background noise that could at least distract him a little bit. Something to idly tune into while baby-staring. They kept poking him too. Mumbling about ketones and potassium levels. It isn’t the first time he’s heard them grumble about his levels and it likely won’t be the last. At least he doesn’t still have that pacemaker. Then they’d really be all over him- making him sit still of all things so they could poke and prod him forever on end.
He is, very honestly, super tired of all that.
The baby blinks, opening her eyes, little fists rubbing cutely at her face as they scrunch from the light on over her head. It is a bit bright and he wonders if there’s a way to lower it. Before she starts crying about it, preferably. It takes less than a second to locate the dimmer switch over the little incubator they have her in and bring the lights down. Her face eases from its scrunch and Wally is faced with the full force of her big baby blues.
She was- adorable actually.
And then she starts crying and Wally really, really feels out of his depth. What’s he supposed to do? Why is she crying? He turned the lights down! Is she hungry? Thirsty? He doesn’t do babies! Why was he left on babysitting duty when he doesn't know what he’s doing?
Wally may be a super-human genius but that does not make him good with children!
One of the med techs approaches and picks her up and Wally can’t help but both feel relieved that someone else is handling it and also a tad jealous when the tech is able to soothe her so easily. He should be able to do that. He’s the one in charge of caring for her. He’s the one that should know how to do that.
The tech glances up from where she’s bouncing the still softly whimpering baby. She smiles at him with an edge of humor and it makes Wally want to pout. He could have totally handled that without her help. Eventually. He’s a superhero. He can hold a baby. Probably.
“Don’t have kids, do ya?” she asks, voice gentle and not unkind. Just a tad too amused for his liking.
She’s short and her frame is broad under black scrubs that mark her as a tech rather than a nurse or a doctor. Her face is lined with age, but the lines are kind- soft from years of smiles. She holds the baby with ease- probably something she’s done a million times before. Her hair is short and gray under the paisley pink bandanna she has tied around her head. He wonders if she has kids. If she has grand-kids. The badge hanging from her hip says her name is Diana. And isn’t that kind of funny.
He releases an exaggerated sigh.
He had to face the fact that he was hopeless with kids. Might as well do it with someone who knew what they were doing. He wasn’t above listening and learning. Especially when it came to babies. Those were humans! Little fragile humans! He didn’t want to break them just because he was too proud to ask for help! He knew when to shut up and listen, Batman!
“Is it that obvious?” he asks.
She shakes her head with a bit of a laugh and doesn’t answer. “Little one’s hungry, I think,” she says instead.
“How can you tell?” he asks, curious. He’d read something at some point about parents being able to differentiate the different cries their baby had to better able anticipate what they needed. It was fascinating at the time, but he hadn’t read further because it wasn’t relevant. Not at the time. Now it is.
“Well,” she says, still bouncing the baby (and really they need to come up with a name for her, even if its temporary). “She doesn’t have a smell, she its not a diaper change. She could just be cranky from waking up but it has been long enough for another feed, so it doesn’t hurt to give her a bottle.”
And then she sighs and looks uncertain. “The only problem is that we don’t know what she eats. What she needs. The doctors think she’d be okay with human formula, but-”
“But they aren’t sure,” he answers.
She nods and he latches on to that. Something he can do. Something he can solve. He can put his brain to proper use and help. It may not be in the way he’s used to with feats of speed and flashy heroics, but he’s more comfortable here anyway. He’s never been as good at the hero gig as his uncle anyway. He really can’t wait for Uncle Barry to come back and take up the Flash title again. It’s heavier than it looks.
“I can-,” he starts to say, starts to get up from the gurney he’d been trapped on, before the tech is blocking his way with a stern look.
“Oh no, mister,” she says and he really admires the fact that she isn’t afraid to scold him, but also he wants to get up. “Doc still has you on bed rest. So you’re gonna hold this baby and rest in bed.”
He groans. “But I can totally fix the food problem! I just need to-”
She tsks, her bandanna swaying as she shakes her head. “Best I can do is a tablet. Maybe wheel any equipment closer to you, or wheel you closer to the equipment.” Her brown-eyed gaze is sharp as she points a stern finger in his direction, and the light southern accent she had before is more pronounced . “I’m willing to work with y a , here, let y a do more than y a probably should. But y a have to work with me, too, ya hear?”
“Uh, yes,” he stutters, “yes, ma’am.”
“Now,” she says, matter-of-factly, moving closer. “Don’t care much whether you end up with youngins of your own or not, heaven knows I left all that up to my sisters myself, but you, as a hero, have got to learn how to hold a baby.”
“I don’t follow,” he says tightly, panicking just- just a small teeny-tiny amount as she approaches with the baby. Trying to stall.
“Well,” and she’s readjusting the baby in her own arms until she’s expertly cradling her in one arm and reaching out with the other, moving them into place, “what’re ya supposed to do when ya gotta rescue one outta burnin’ buildin’, huh? Cain’t just throw an infant out the winder.”
Her accent grows thicker the more comfortable she is around him and it would almost be endearing if it weren’t for the fact that she was about to place a whole live baby in his arms and he was supposed to hold it. Yes, sure, he’d taken the baby from Dick’s arms when they pulled her from the whale-beast-thing’s stomach earlier, but that had been for, like, a second! Which is exactly how long it would take him to get a baby from a burning building! So really! This is all a moot point! And should stop! Right now!
And then there’s a weight in his arms and its both lighter and more solid than he was expecting. And he’s looking down into those pretty blue eyes, surrounded by inky black hair (and it reminds him so, achingly much of his beautiful bird) and- and he doesn’t know how to feel about it all.
Miss Diana readjusts his arms just a bit, tells him about supporting her head and how to keep her secure and comfortable, and then she’s stepping back with a smile and it’s just him and Baby Girl.
He’s seen movies. Read books. Where a mom or a dad holds their kid for the first time and instantly fall in love. This- isn’t that. He isn’t in love. Isn’t immediately, nonsensically, head-over-heels in paternal love with the kid. But he is mesmerized and feels just a little less panicky with her weight resting comfortably against his chest and in his arms. She’s so small. He doesn’t know how old she is, but he wonders for the first time. Wonders where she came from. What she is. Who she’ll become. Where she’ll go after this.
She blinks up at him and coos, little fist rising up into the air and he leans down, unconsciously wanting to get closer. Her tiny fingers uncurl and pat his cheek as she continues to coo. And his heart just melts- just a little bit.
Okay. So. It might not be love at first sight. But he can see a potential there. It scares him a little. A lot. He hasn’t thought about kids before this. Hasn’t talked about it at all with Dick. Dick’s been busy with his younger siblings. With Bludhaven. And he’s been busy with taking up the mantle of Flash for Uncle Barry. Busy all around the world. They’ve barely had time for each other, let alone time to talk about- about settling down. And he wants to- he really, actually does. He realizes this as he bounces Baby Girl just a tiny bit when she starts to fuss. He can hear Diana coo about him being a natural and it makes him blush. He wants to settle down. He wants this more than he ever thought he would.
And then Baby’s face starts to scrunch and she looks like she’s hurting and- right. Food. She’s hungry. Probably starving.
Diana hands him a tablet and, working one-handed from a medbay gurney, he gets to work.
*
A conversation is happening elsewhere...
“It’s not an alien. Not one we recognize at least.”
“Just because you don’t recognize it doesn’t mean its not an alien. Space is infinite.”
“Yeah, yeah, we still need to call in the JLD just in case though. If it’s not alien then it might be supernatural.”
“What if it’s both?”
“Both?”
“What? You think magic doesn’t exist in space?”
“That’s not-”
“That’s exactly-”
“You’re both idiots.”
Birdie is surprisingly good with the baby and it gives Wally mixed feelings. On the one hand, its a beautiful sight to see. On the other, he still hasn’t plucked up the courage to talk about it. Baby Girl has to have a place to go once they get everything figured out. If they don’t find her parents, at least. He knows Batman is likely to take her in, but the man already has way too many kids and she needs special care and monitoring and- Well. He’s been the one taking care of her, right? She knows him best. She’d be comfortable with him. Even if it scares him.
But first they have to find out how to feed her. How to care for her.
Birdie is playing with her, distracting her, while Wally does research. It makes him smile, a wobbly one, every time he hears her giggle and Dick cooing in return. They really, really need to have that talk. He can see in Dick’s eyes how enamored he is with Baby Girl. Which should make it easier. But he’s still scared. Scared of Dick saying no. Scared of Dick saying yes.
Before any of that can happen. Research. Both into how to care for her (his job) and where to maybe find her parents (Batman’s job). He knows the Big B-man is getting frustrated with the lack of leads, though. Dickie had come in to take a break from B’s irritation, hiding away with the excuse to check in on the both of them. They still have no idea where she or the whale-beast-thing came from. Like. What even direction they came from. Reviewing footage from outside the Watchtower revealed nothing. One moment there was nothing and then the next there was a whale. None of the Lanterns recognized either of the beings. The next step meant getting the magicians involved. Which Wally knew Batman was not particularly fond of.
Maybe they were demons? Alien demons? Space demons? Would Baby Girl only eat souls? Souls of the damned or souls of the innocent. He didn’t know how to feel about feeding an infant souls- damned or innocent. He would do it, though. Probably. Maybe. But he really wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything else she could eat instead, first, before he resorted to soul harvesting.
Wally is looking over her x-rays, trying to figure out what organs might have which function, when Dick lets loose a strangled gasp that has Wally’s neck snapping with how quickly he changes focus.
The baby is melting in Dick’s hands.
The baby. Is melting.
Alarm. Fear. Heart-stopping panic fill him all at once.
Baby Girl starts crying, the little fists she is waving in the air are turning into that same strange green goo they had been before.
Was the whale-beast digesting her from a distance?
“Walls,” Dick says, voice high with anguish and- what do they do?
They both watch, helpless, as little by little she starts to melt. She’s crying and nothing either of them do can soothe her. She’s turning green. Her hair is starting to fade, black strands growing white at the roots- like whatever is happening to her is draining her of color. Her eyes starting glowing. Green. Green, green, green. They don’t know what’s happening. They don’t know how to stop it.
Wally calls security to see if there’s any activity from the cell. Hoping that if they can figure out a way to stop the whale from eating her, somehow, remotely, then maybe they can stop it. Maybe they still have a chance to reverse the damage.
Security tells him that the beast is wiggling, of all things. Thrashing weakly. That it’s leaking. (Gross. ) But it isn’t making a sound. Then again. No one else had ever heard it make a sound before either.
Wally has a decision to make.
He’s the only one that’s ever heard the whale talk. The only one that has a chance at figuring this out. They don’t have any other clues. They don’t have any other options . They don’t know why she’s melting. They don’t know how to stop it. He needs to confront the whale. Make it stop trying to eat his Baby Girl.
Even if it kills him.
He looks over where Dick is still cradling the wailing baby girl. She looks like she hurting. Dick looks like he’s hurting too. He pulls his Birdie close, cupping his face to hide it from the rest of the medical staff frantically moving around them and pushes his domino up so he’s staring into those pretty blue eyes he loves so much. He sees Dick’s eyes flash with confusion, then realization, then resignation. The tears that had been gathering spill over.
How many times have they done this before? How many times have they put their lives on the line? How many times have they lost them?
When is the last? When do they stop dying? When do they stop coming back?
“Love you, Birdie,” he whispers, smiling even through the tears.
Dick chokes back a whine and presses his forehead to Wally’s. “Love you too, Nugget.”
Wally pulls the mask back down and gives him a quick, chaste kiss before dashing. He snags one of the speedster-specialized shakes they keep in the medbay fridge and downs it. He takes glucose tabs too, just in case. Then, prepared as he’ll ever be, he runs for the containment bay.
A call finally connects...
“What the bloody hell could be so important?”
“If you actually listened to the voice mails we’ve been leaving, you would know.”
“I don’t have time for that! I already told you lot I’m dealing with a potential inter-dimensional war! So if you don’t want a load of fecking ghosts invading, I’d suggest you be quick.”
“What do you mean ghosts invading?”
“Nevermind that! Talk or I’m hanging up!”
…
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Wally feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin. And it isn’t like the usual buzzing of the Speed force in his veins. This is an entirely different sensation. It feels like despair.
And fear.
He can see the- the thing through the window of the containment cell. It’s moving, jerking in small desperate spurts. Like it’s too weak to really move, but determined to do so anyway. And he feels- guilty? He feels- uncertain. It almost looks pitiful like that.
But he remembers what it eats.
He braces himself. It’s up to him to fix this. To save his Baby Girl. He’s the only one that can maybe understand. The only one that get any information from the beast. To get it to stop. It looks so- small now. Shrunken. He remembers that it was huge when it was first brought it. A giant amorphous blob that took up most of the cell. Now it’s the size of a small human aside from its glowing green stomach strewn out in front of it. The wound from Dick cutting it open to retrieve their girl is patched up but still sluggishly bleeding. Bleeding green. It keeps agitating the dressing when it writhes.
He presses his hand to the scanner and steps inside the cell.
Instantly he is hit with a wave of grief. There is a high pitched whine echoing around the chamber and he thinks if he stays in here for too long his ears will start to bleed. He is choking back tears from the sudden whirlwind of emotions being pushed into the atmosphere by the creature.
Something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong.
He knows there isn’t anything in the room making any tangible noise but he shouts anyway, fighting to be heard over the crashing waves of terror and shrill static of desperation. It’s haunting. And cold. And everything is loud enough to nearly send him to his knees.
“Stop!” he yells. “Stop eating her!”
BABY.
The beast yells back with wind and fear and frozen tears.
WHERE.
Wally can feel his sugar dropping already. Hands trembling and heart pounding. He chews a glucose tab and pushes on.
“You can’t have her!” he shouts back. “Stop eating her!”
DYING.
It says, intangible voice growing weak like eerie stillness that falls in the aftermath of an avalanche and the hollow feeling of an echo fading to silence.
DYING.
“Find something else to eat!” he roars, frustrated and feeling sicker by the minute.
BABY.
It murmurs now with the sad susurration of curtains in an empty room and the anguish of crackling ice breaking in waves on the shore of a deserted lake.
BABY DYING.
And then it clicks. Horrifyingly- it clicks .
The rush from a sudden epiphany is the only thing keeping him upright. They didn’t have to find Baby Girl’s parents. One of them has been right here the entire time . It seems so obvious now. They weren’t trying to eat her, they were feeding her. The distress when they took her away. It wasn’t about losing food it was about losing their child . They’d all been so quick to assume the worst; so quick to call this being an other and a thing , all because it looked so different from what they knew, all because they couldn’t communicate in a way they could all understand.
Some heroes they were- stealing away a child from their parent just because they looked different . All because the parent didn’t look like the child. Because the child looked “ normal ” and the parent didn’t.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. They were so used to wielding a hammer against nails, so used to using force against villains, they couldn’t see when someone needed help instead. They’d just swung.
And now the both of them are dying.
Wally feels like he’s dying with them. He might just be- the alarm on his CGM is now a constant, drowned out only by the reverberation of desolation emanating from the tiny pitiful form curled in around itself on the floor of the cell. He feels like he needs to rip his own heart out in reparation. He feels like sobbing. He’s sweating and shaking and he needs to get out. But he can’t leave them alone. Not after all the League have done to them.
The only thing that gets him out of the cell is the thought of his Baby Girl dying because he couldn’t move. Dying because he wasn’t fast enough.
He crashes through the doors and is caught by strong arms just before hitting the floor. Batman is there. Bruce. Dick’s father. He’s gentle where he slings Wally’s arm over his shoulder and takes his weight, practically carrying him away from the cell. A few medics are fluttering around them. Someone shoves a needle in his thigh and Wally can barely feel it.
“Mistake-,” Wally tries to say. He needs to tell them. Tell them that the Baby needs to get back to her parent. That they’d all made a terrible mistake with their assumptions. That the only way to fix it and save her is to give her back.
“Yes,” Batman replies, reprimand in his tone, clearly displeased with Wally’s self-sacrificial move. “You shouldn’t have gone in.”
“No,” he tries again, but he’s shaking and his vision is going dark around the edges and it’s a trial just to move his mouth enough for a single word. “We made-,” he huffs, trying to pull in adequate air to both breathe and speak, “mistake. They aren’t- bad.”
He flops a hand back in the direction of the cell, as forceful as he can make it when he’s about to pass out, “They’re- the parent.”
He can feel the slight falter in Bruce’s steps. Can feel when they quicken. He thinks Batman got it. World’s Greatest Detective and all that. At least he hopes Batman understands because the world is closing in around him and Wally doesn’t think he has the ability to tell them anything else. Not before a good nap at least.
He just really, really hopes he wasn’t too late.
Wally wakes up in the medbay and honestly? He’s getting really, really tired of this place. Yeah, sure, waking up here meant he was like, alive and stuff. But it was so, so boring. Like, even the walls were boring! Just plain- boring white! They weren’t even painted fun colors. Like fuchsia. Or chartreuse.
“You don’t even actually know what those colors look like,” Dick’s amused voice floats across his consciousness. “You just think that because they have fun names then they have to be fun colors.”
“And I’m right,” he mumbles, just enjoying the sounds around him and refusing to open his eyes and face those boring, boring white walls.
“They’re both eye-searing, babe,” Dick replies, falling into an argument they’ve had so many times before. “Chartreuse alone is horrible. And French.”
“What do you mean it’s French?” he asks, this was an entirely new angle to the debate and admittedly he was curious. Not curious enough to open his eyes, but still- “How can a color be French?”
“The color is named after a green, French, herbal liqueur produced by Carthusian monks in the mountains north of Grenoble.”
“Chartreuse is green?!” he exclaims, shooting up into a sitting position.
Dick is smiling at him, dimples showing on his cheeks and eyes squinting from the force of his grin and Wally can’t even be mad at him for tricking him awake when he’s faced with such a beautiful expression. How many times in the past had he thought, for various reasons, that he’d never see that smile again? It felt like a miracle each and every time, because he never knew which one would be the last.
“Good morning, Nugget,” Dick says, voice warm and content from where he’s sitting close to Wally’s medbay bed. His arms are cradling a bundle of blankets, one blue striped hand holding a bottle of glowing green liquid above it.
“G’morning,” he grumbles, collapsing back into his pillows, intent on willing himself back into unconsciousness so he doesn’t have to face the boring hours of being stuck in the medbay on bed-rest just yet. And then his brain registers several things at once and he’s sitting back up and staring at Dick with wide eyes.
“Is that-,” he says, the words coming out so fast he’s tripping over them. “Is she- Are they- Did you-?”
“Her name is Ellie,” Dick says, shuffling the bundle until Wally has a clear sight of the Baby Girl he’d become so attached to in such a short amount of time. She looks a little miffed at having her meal time interrupted, but settles back down when Dick gives the bottle back.
She’s alive.
“Ellie,” he whispers, taking her in. She seems stronger than before. More lively. “Did you name her?” he asks, kind of hurt that they’d all gone so long without naming her and then decided to give her one while he was asleep. He’d wanted to do that together…
Dick shakes his head and grimaces, a complicated expression overcoming his features. “Danny did.”
“Danny?” he was missing something. Something important.
Dick nods. “Her- parent.”
And several things click into place again. Ellie melting, realizing that the ‘beast’ they’d brought it wasn’t much of a beast at all, passing out after trying to talk to them. Hoping the others would figure everything out and save them both. One thing stood out though.
“Their name is Danny?” The alien-creature person? Had a? Mundane, regular human name?
Dick hiccups a laugh, the sound tinged with a strange sort of sadness and oh no- oh no, no, no. Did he not-? Did he not make it in time? “He’s just a kid, Walls.”
“He- what?” he says, at a complete loss. He doesn’t know enough. He doesn’t even know where to begin to ask what happened.
Dickie sighs and opens his mouth to explain but there’s a sudden disgruntled mumbling from the bundle in his arms and he pulls away an empty bottle with a small smile. He puts it on a nearby table and sighs.
“Scooch over,” he says, handing over the baby bundle that Wally carefully adjusts so he’s looking down into sleepily drooping blue eyes. He feels Dick settle in behind him, arms wrapping loosely around his waist and chin hooking over his shoulder. “It’s a long story,” he murmurs into Wally’s neck.
“Well,” he says, distracted by the delicate features of the tiny baby in his arms (way better then boring white walls), “I’m stuck on bed-rest anyway. Might as well hear it.”
It’s not all that long of a story, in the end. Apparently Wally had gotten the needed message across to Batman in time and Ellie had been rushed back to Danny’s side, melting halting the moment they made contact with each other. But Danny had still been shrinking and growing weaker and they didn’t know how to help. He’d gotten to the size of a small house cat, curled protectively around Ellie and unable to communicate with anyone that could understand him. They’d been at a loss about what to do next until Constantine had shown up, ranting and raving about how stupid they’d all been. How close they’d come from causing an inter-dimensional war .
“Ghosts?” Wally asks, incredulous, as he traces a finger over Ellie’s nose, memorizing the shape of it as she sleeps. “Does that mean-”
“It’s complicated,” Dick interrupts, saving Wally from trying to articulate a question he didn’t want to ask in the first place. “They’re both- different. Still half-alive.” He pauses, thinking, “But with the way Constantine talks about ghosts, I don’t think it would necessarily matter either way. They would both still- grow. Like people. Act alive in every way that matters. Being ghosts… being- dead- doesn’t mean they’re gone. Or stagnant, stuck in how they act and behave. There are lots of different types of ghosts and Ellie and Danny are both powerful and are more akin to, like- vampires or werewolves, than the spectral memories of dead people or whatever.”
“Or whatever,” Wally repeats, mostly just relieved that he doesn’t have to worry about losing Ellie again so soon. Or about never having truly had her in the first place.
Dick continues on, telling him about Constantine’s fit. How he’d been so, so mad because apparently Danny and Ellie are ghost royalty and the Infinite Realms, the place they come from, had been in an uproar when they disappeared. That he’d been searching for them so the world didn’t end and if they’d just bloody called him sooner instead of mucking about with unknowns, then it would have saved him an entire week of scouring the grossest depths of hell.
Nevermind that they didn’t even know they were dealing with a JLD problem until recently. Excuse them all for assuming that the being they’d found in space was, you know, a space alien .
Dick tells Wally about the green goo and how it acted as basically everything for ghosts. Blood, nutrients, air . Ectoplasm. It was what they were made of. What the entirety of the Realms was made of. And apparently there wasn’t enough of it in the atmosphere of the Watchtower for Danny or Ellie to recover properly. So Constantine had brought in some directly from the Realms. Ellie was being fed a mix of that and human baby formula. Danny was apparently floating in an entire vat of the stuff in another room in the medbay.
Ectoplasm, they learned, in terms of energy, was startlingly similar to the Speed force. Similar enough, at least, that when Danny had used Ghost Speak to communicate- which functioned on a wavelength that could usually only be heard when it passed through air laden with ectoplasmic energy- Wally was able to hear it. Even if the vibrations of it running through the Speed force instead of ectoplasm sapped all his energy reserves. Danny’s vocal cords were back to functioning now, though, so during the times he was awake he was able to talk to members of the League and the medical team just fine.
“He’s-,” Wally’s voice cracks with relief. “He’s okay?”
Dick sighs and buries his face into the crook of Wally’s shoulder. “As okay as he can be,” he replies, words muffled by the blanket he’d covered Wally with earlier. “He- He wakes up sometimes and freaks out. Trauma- we think, from wherever he was before he fled to space. A lab, probably.”
And that breaks his heart, just a little more. He’d already been hurt and traumatized and all they did- all they did as heroes, was throw him in a cell and take his child from him. Nearly killed them both.
“It takes seeing one of the heroes and Ellie, to calm him down, so there’s a rotation going so one of us is always with him. Ellie’s usually in the same room, but I wanted you to see her when you woke up. Knew you’d be worried.”
“Thanks,” he says softly, leaning back into the warmth of Dick’s chest. He feels incredibly guilty, though. What if Danny wakes up in the meantime and freaks out because Ellie isn’t there? What if he hurts himself in his panic and it’s all Wally’s fault for getting attached to a kid that isn’t his. What happens now?
“Should probably take her back,” he says, his words belied by the way he holds the baby closer. He doesn’t want to let go. He never thought he’d be like this, never imagined in a million years that he’d be so enamored with tiny baby fingers and delicate wisps of hair. He hadn’t thought about having kids before, wasn’t something that crossed his mind as a hero because of how dangerous it was. But now…
“Eventually,” Dick says, placing a small kiss on his neck- as if he can read Wally’s frantic guilty thoughts. “Danny has a while yet before he wakes up again. Kid knows how much you put on the line to save them, so I don’t think he’d mind too much either.”
“You called him a kid,” Wally states, trying and failing to ask a question he doesn’t really want the answer to. That’s been happening far too often lately. “But Ellie is his.”
“Yeah,” and he can feel the other’s frown on his neck and hear the grief in Dick’s voice. “He’s fourteen.”
And Wally sucks in a sharp breath. There aren’t many reasons for a fourteen year old to have a baby, and none of them are good. And the fact that he might have laboratory-related trauma also- isn’t good. “He’s barely older than-”
“Robin,” Dick finishes. “Yeah.”
Wally knows how much Dick cares about his younger siblings. How hard he tries to be good to all of them, even if he fails a lot of the time too. Damian is a particular soft spot for Dick, though. In that brief time that Bruce had gone missing- presumed dead - Dick had been the one to take him in. To take care of him. To parent him. His Birdie had done a lot of things during that time that he regretted (he was still trying to make amends with Tim, who was- rightly- still hurt from how he’d been treated) but Damian is sometimes still more kid than brother because of it all.
So to have this new kid, one barely older than Damian, show up so hurt and traumatized? For the kid to be hurt by their own hands? For the kid to have nearly died because of their negligence? Well, he knows it's probably eating his beautiful bird alive.
“Does he have parents?” Wally asks, both hopeful and full of dread. He doesn’t know how he’ll feel about any of the probable answers. “Guardians?”
“None that he’ll talk about,” Dick replies, and he can nearly taste the displeasure in his tone. “None that he’s asked about contacting. None that he’s willing to contact. He and Ellie are in JLA custody for now.”
He has understandably mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, free real estate. On the other, it makes him really sad that Danny doesn’t have a good support system. Not all that surprising, though, really. It was rare in their world to have a good relationship with your parents, or for them to be alive at least. It you had one you were probably adopted. It’s just how it went. Awful, but common. He- maybe hopes he and Dick can offer some respite instead. Some comfort and safety where Danny didn’t seem to have any before this. A better future for him and Ellie.
He fills with dread again, however, as a new question makes itself known.
“Do we know anything?” he asks, again afraid of the answer. “About how Ellie…” he trails off.
Usually he is so, so full of words. So many words that they tumble over each other and burst out of him without care or forethought. He’s usually so full of so many words that he feels like he’ll explode if he doesn’t get them out. But now. They’re gone. He’s empty. Bereft. He feels cold and small, wading in the static that his thoughts have become. Jumbled and sad and guilty .
“She’s a clone,” Dick murmurs and those words should not fill him with such relief but they do.
He’s sure that Ellie’s creation was still entirely messed up and unethical and traumatic, but it was different. Different from the alternatives . It was a line not often crossed, despite all the other things their respective rogue galleries cooked up. He feels Dick’s arm squeeze around his middle, acknowledging how his tense back had relaxed at those words- a silent agreement of relief.
“Does that mean he can look more like Ellie?” he wonders. Ellie looked like your average human baby (he assumed, he’d never met many babies before this) and Danny- well Danny didn’t look like your average anything. “Or is her DNA mixed?”
“Oh!” Dick exclaims softly. “That’s right. You haven’t seen him recently. Being half-ghost he has two- or I guess three technically- forms. One that’s ghostly but still humanoid and the other that’s completely human. The third is what he- mutated into when we found him in space because he was injured and running on fumes and only focused on protecting Ellie. He looks human otherwise. Ellie is his clone, and his alone.”
Wally does not go into the implications that Ellie, being a baby girl, is Danny’s exact clone. Danny’s pronouns are obviously he/him and he’s not going to make any assumptions about anything else until Danny wants to talk about it himself. If he ever does. Wally, instead, focuses on something else.
“So,” he says as casually as possible, “does that mean he has black hair and blue eyes too?”
“Yeah?” and Dickie sounds confused when he really, really shouldn’t.
Wally does not watch what he’s saying with his next words and kind of regrets them the moment they fly out of his mouth. “Does that mean we’re going to have to fight Batman for custody?”
He is met with stunned silence and it’s making him more nervous the longer it stretches on. He still, still, hasn’t had the chance to talk this over with his boyfriend. He should have eased into the subject. Should have mentioned it in a way that wasn’t halfway phrased as a joke.
“You mean that?” Dick whispers, soft and reverent and he melts at the hope he can hear in his tone.
He leans back into Dick’s chest, smiling wide as he tilts his head to look his beautiful birdie in the eyes. “Yeah,” he replies, slightly giddy at the road paving itself out ahead of them now, “I mean it.”
And they have a lot more to talk about. A lot more to arrange and discuss and come to an understanding on. But for the moment, just for that moment, they rest and bask in each other’s presence. They think about the happy parts of what’s to come. What still has the potential to be their future, more concrete than anything they’ve ever had before. This wasn’t some far off what-if scenario, it was real and it was immediate and it was possible . There was a baby and a scared kid that needed looking after and Dick and Wally were willing to do whatever it took to look after them. The dynamics might get weird, with Ellie technically being Danny’s daughter and Dick and Wally wanting to take them both in, but they could figure it out. Superhero family trees were messy things anyway. This wouldn’t be any different. It would all be fine.
Later, they would talk about Wally wanting to retire from the hero world. About how tired he felt and how scared he was about dying. Dying again. They would talk about how he felt like a liability on the field because he just seemed to accumulate more and more health concerns the more he tapped into the Speed force. How he’d already had to have a pacemaker once and he was afraid of needing one again soon if he wasn’t careful. How scared he was when his sugar dropped in the middle of a fight.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t continue being a hero, it was that he didn’t particularly want to. Not when he had something else in front of him. Something he didn’t know he wanted so badly until it was right in front of him.
It would take several talks. Some arguments. And lots of reassurance that this wasn’t just a spur of the moment decision. That this is what he wants. That it’s not something he’s going to regret. That Dick won’t be ruining his life, somehow, by letting him go through with this.
He wants to settle down. Barry can handle being Flash again when he’s back. Just because he has these powers doesn’t mean he has to use them. Not when there are so, so many other heroes willing to step in and cover what he can’t anymore. If the world starts ending again, he’ll be on call. But otherwise, he’ll have a baby, a traumatized teenager, and a non-powered accident-prone vigilante partner to look after. That’s what he wants. He wants to move to Bludhaven so Dick and the rest of his family are close by. Zeta tubes may be convenient and he can run the continent in seconds, but he doesn’t want to have to do that. He wants to be able to plop the kiddos onto an unsuspecting Bruce’s lap and make a run for it when he needs a break. He wants Damian and Tim and Cass and Babs and Stephanie and even Jason to be a part of Danny and Ellie’s lives as they grow. A big happy batfamily. Barry and Bart can run just as fast, if not faster, than him if they’re needed or just want to visit.
He’ll find jobs and hobbies to occupy him when he needs it. If he’s really missing the hero gig he can take up a mission in his spare time.
For now though, for now, he leans back and cuddles his beautiful bird and his baby girl. Excitement at meeting and getting to know his other new potential kid simmering behind it all. Things could still go wrong. Danny could say no. Bruce could try to actually fight them on custody. Whoever had done this to Danny could target him again. Danny could say no. Danny could hate him.
But that was for future-Wally to worry about. Right-now-Wally could just bask in warm blankets, surrounded by his budding new family. And he could be happy about it, in the now. Even if it meant spending time enclosed in the boring white walls of the medbay.
An Epilogue of Sorts...
“Do you have everything?” Dick asks, hovering in the doorway, fretting like a regular mother hen while Danny rolls his eyes. “Notebooks, pens, highlighters, snacks?!” his voice rises in pitch with each word on the list, unwarranted panic seeping through.
Wally might find it funny- he’s seen Dick more composed staring down death itself as Nightwing - if he wasn’t so nervous himself.
After months and months of recovery and recuperation- it was Danny’s first day at school. First day back, at least, since everything had gone down. This would be new for all of them. A new school and city entirely for Danny and a new experience watching their kid march off into the world for both of them.
“I’m fine, Dick,” the kid says, exasperated with the coddling. “You checked my bag, like, a million times already. I have everything I need. You need to chill.” He says the last bit with a tiny smirk, blowing frigid air in Dick’s direction. They’d learned quickly that Danny was a sassy, snarky thing. Wally loves it.
Dick pouts but doesn’t say anything more, a happily babbling Ellie in his arms now playing with the snowflakes that have suddenly manifested in the air. He does use his free hand to ruffle the hopeless mess of Danny’s hair in retribution, though.
The kid shakes loose and sticks his tongue out at Dick and Wally feels himself melting at the domestic scene. Doesn’t matter how many times he seen it, it still feels new and beautiful. The car keys jingle in his hand as he steps away from the car and gets closer, wanting to say good-bye again even though he’ll be back just as soon as he drops Danny off at school. More kisses to Ellie’s forehead never, ever hurt.
When he gets close enough, Dick manages to sweep them all up in a hug, Danny groaning but letting it happen good-naturedly anyway. He thinks the kid has really warmed up to them, gotten braver and used less of his snarky coping mechanisms around them. He’s letting them in, little by little, and learning that he can lean on them as adults. That he can trust them. That family doesn’t have to hurt. And people can be kind.
Dick lets them go with tears in his eyes and a dozen more reassurances that everything will be fine. He’s a worry-wort but Wally loves him just the way he is. Danny, for all his protests, doesn’t seem to mind much either, preening at the attention and care . They both step away, moving toward the car- when something miraculous makes them stop.
“Da!” Ellie says, making grabby hands in- in Wally’s direction. “Daa! Da!”
And Dick is now full on sobbing over their baby girl, trying to choke back wails and scrambling for his phone at the same time. He’s mumbling something about this-is-the-cutest-thing-I’ve-ever-witnessed-I-need-to-film-this-now in between sobs. Danny is by Dick’s side, cooing down at Ellie and congratulating her on her first words.
Wally is frozen to the spot.
They’d talked about it. With Danny mostly. About how to handle Ellie’s parentage. Danny admitted that while he was attached to Ellie and felt responsible for her, he didn’t exactly feel ready to be a dad at fourteen. He was fine handing the title of parents over to the both of them, in regards to Ellie at least. He was also fine with Dick and Wally being his legal guardians, but reserved the right to call either of them dad. Said it felt weird, which they both agreed to and understood. Danny had been nervous and fidgety but after that he’d said it wasn’t… out of the realm of possibility that he might, maybe, eventually, see them as full parental figures. Dick and Wally had both been thrilled that they might be trusted with that kind of relationship eventually, but they didn’t push.
But this. This was new. This was- something. This was- beautiful. He wants to melt.
“Da!”
And he smiles down at Ellie and says, “Hi, Baby Girl.” And he relishes in the excited squeal it elicits from his- his daughter.
Never in a million years would Wally have thought he’d feel like this one day. That he’d be a Dad. And proud of it.
Eventually he had to collect himself. If they didn’t hurry then Danny would be late for school and they couldn’t have that on the first day. What kind of responsible parent would he be then if he made his kid late?
“Alright,” he says, discreetly wiping tears away from the corner of his eyes, “time to go. For real this time.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Danny says, sighing as he readjusts his backpack straps and heads toward the car. But not before pressing a kiss to Ellie’s cheek, and after a moment of consideration, a quick hug against Dick’s side.
Wally grins and gives them both a kiss to the forehead, promising to be back- in a flash . Dick rolls his eyes and lets him go with a grin. He’s finally managed to get his phone out and is trying to coax Ellie into saying Da again, but she just coos and tries to knock the device from his hand.
Wally and Danny load up, both getting buckled and settled. But before Wally can pull out of the driveway, Danny asks him to wait, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he rolls his window down. Dick is still waiting in the doorway of the tiny little house they’d bought just on the outskirts of Bludhaven- not quite suburbia but not quite city-proper either.
He waves to Dick and, visibly confused, Dick waves back.
“Get ready,” he murmurs and Wally doesn’t know what he’s getting ready for but he braces himself none-the-less.
Then he shouts, “BYE DAD!” at an unsuspecting Dick, starts rolling his window up and tells Wally to gun it. And he does without a second thought, delighting in the absolutely stunned look on his beautiful bird’s face that he can see in the rear-view mirror.
“Been saving that for just the right moment,” Danny says smugly, cheeks red as he settles back in his seat. “Weaponized affection.”
And Wally can’t help but laugh for half the ride to school. His family is a little weird, yes, but he loves them and wouldn’t trade them for the world.
There were bad times. And sad ones. And Dick came back hurt more often than he came back whole when he went on a mission. Danny still had trust issues and terrible nightmares. Wally often doubted his decision to retire- not because he missed being a hero but because of a misplaced sense of duty and obligation. But there were good times too. Happy times, like this one, where his world was filled with laughter. Where everything hurt just a little bit less.
When he’d first spotted that strange creature floating in the vast nothingness of space, he’d never imagined that this is where it would lead. That this is where he’d be at the end of it all. Through all the melting and the terror and the shaking. He was here- kids unmelted, no one in terror, and his hands are firm around the steering wheel.
He doesn’t regret a thing.