Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The day Barry Allen woke up, it was raining.

He blinked against the sterile light of the hospital room, his lashes sticky and his tongue dry. His chest rose and fell slow—too slow—and the heart monitor beeped in a rhythm that made nurses frown and check their watches. His skin glowed faintly under the flickering lights, but no one mentioned it.

“Iris,” he rasped, and the name was enough to have her at his side, fingers trembling as they clutched his.

"You’re awake," she whispered, eyes glassy with relief. And he smiled. Soft. Kind. Familiar.

But thin. Like something wearing kindness like a well-worn suit.

Barry didn’t become the Flash.

There was no surge of speed, no blinding trail of lightning behind his steps, no trail of scorched footprints on pavement. He walked the same way, talked the same way, made the same terrible puns about molecular decay. He laughed at the same dumb sci-fi movies and cried at documentaries about dying coral reefs.

But he… changed. Little things.

His blue eyes weren’t just blue anymore—they shimmered like opals, hues shifting like oil on water, glinting softly even in darkness.

His breath came slower than humanly possible—ten seconds between each inhale, sometimes more. But his skin stayed warm. His heart still beat. The doctors couldn’t explain it.

And the static. It clung to him like a halo. Anything metal sparked when he was near. TVs fuzzed out. Radios garbled. Dogs barked when he passed by, their hackles rising. He apologized politely, always with that soft, thin smile.

It wasn’t right.

But it wasn’t wrong enough to stop.

A year had passed since the lightning. A year since Iris married Barry Allen. And now, finally, they were having dinner with her brother Rudolph and his wife, Mary.

"I just think we should wait," Iris said again in the car, her fingers tight around the steering wheel.

"Nonsense," Barry said, his voice light, airy. “It's high time I met your family properly. We’ve been married a year—I’m starting to think you’re hiding them from me.”

He smiled, and the dashboard lights flickered.

Dinner was nice.

The food was warm, the wine flowing, the conversation polite. Barry asked questions, listened intently, laughed softly. He complimented Mary’s cooking, even asked for seconds. He talked about his work at the lab. Iris watched her husband with a strange mix of fondness and unease.

Mary smiled. Rudolph forced it.

There was a weight in the room—like the moment before a storm. The static never left. The chandelier above them crackled now and then, the lightbulbs humming at odd intervals. Barry didn’t notice.

“Forgive us,” Mary said halfway through dessert. “We didn’t mean to keep it from you, but... we have a baby.”
Iris blinked. “You—what?”

“A boy,” Rudolph said, voice low. “Wally.”

Iris’s mouth parted in surprise. “You didn’t tell me?”

“We didn’t want to bother you,” Mary said quickly, her smile faltering. “Not after Barry’s accident.”

The baby monitor crackled. A soft cry echoed from upstairs.

“Oh—Wally’s hungry again,” Mary said with a sigh, pushing herself up.

“He’s always hungry,” Rudolph muttered under his breath.

Mary shot him a glare. “He’s a baby, Rudy.”

Barry stood. Three sets of eyes turned toward him instantly.

“I’ll go,” he said, voice still gentle. “It’s no trouble.”

“No—Barry, really, you don’t—” Iris started, but Barry was already walking, steps noiseless, breath slow.

“It’s really not a problem,” he said again, disappearing up the stairs. His footsteps were practically inaudible.

The nursery was dark, lit only by the soft blue glow of a nightlight.

The crib was simple. The baby inside was not.

Tufts of ginger hair. Big green eyes. Freckles. Chubby cheeks damp with tears. He whined, kicking his legs, fists curled in tiny trembling balls.

Barry stared.

For a moment, he did nothing.

Then slowly, methodically, he reached into the crib and lifted the baby with eerie grace. The static in the room surged, lifting the baby’s downy hair in wisps.

“Hungry, little guy?” Barry cooed, his voice almost musical. “Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”

He cradled Wally in the crook of one arm. Then, with the same soft smile, he raised his other hand and bit into his wrist.

There was no pain. He didn’t flinch.

From the wound came not red, but gold—liquid and luminous, thick and glowing like syrup spun from sunlight. Wally whimpered louder at first, until Barry gently touched the bleeding wrist to the infant’s mouth.

The baby latched on instinctively. Suckled. Drank.

The light in the room dimmed, shadows rippling outward like the whole house exhaled.

Barry hummed. A lullaby no one had ever taught him. Something old. Something deep.

When Wally finished, Barry’s skin sealed back over, smooth and perfect. He kissed the baby’s nose. Static puffed Wally’s hair up in all directions. The baby giggled.

And Barry… Barry beamed.

“Good boy,” he whispered. “You’ll burn bright one day, little spark.”

He laid Wally back in the crib.

Within seconds, the child was asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of stars and static.

Downstairs, the air shifted.

Iris paused mid-sentence.

Mary sat up straighter. Rudolph’s wine glass trembled in his hand.

Something had happened. They felt it—like the echo of thunder five seconds after a flash of lightning.

Barry descended the stairs smiling.

“He’s fine,” he said. “Fed and content.”

The others stared. Thin smiles all around.

No one spoke of the hum in the walls, the prickling at the backs of their necks.

No one asked what had fed Wally.

No one would.

Not yet.

Chapter Text

The days after the dinner passed without event. For the most part.

Wally West was a happy baby. Unusually so.

He giggled at ceiling fans and smiled at strangers. He squealed in delight at the sound of paper crinkling and would burst into fits of laughter when the dog barked. He was alert—bright, engaged, warm.

But he was also… strange.

Mary was the first to notice. Not in the alarming way that calls for pediatricians or specialists. But in the quiet, creeping way that made her pause as she washed dishes, glancing at the baby monitor with a slow, uneasy breath.

Wally would sit in the center of his nursery and stare at the walls. Not at anything in particular. Not toys, not movement, not even shadows. Just… walls.

For hours.

Unblinking.

Unmoving.

“Maybe he’s just meditating,” Rudolph joked one evening, trying to fill the silence as Mary sat beside him on the couch, her knuckles white on the baby monitor.

“Babies don’t meditate, Rudy,” she said flatly.

The monitor crackled. Just faintly. Like static.

Then came the drawings.

Wally loved coloring books, even if he still gripped his crayons like fists. But the things he drew—They weren’t animals. They weren’t stick figures. They weren’t anything.

They were lines. Chaotic, overlapping lines in hues that never matched. Circles that spiraled into themselves. Shapes with too many angles. Sketches that resembled circuitry or constellations—or sometimes both.

Once, he drew something so elaborate and intricate that Rudolph had to do a double take.

“What is that supposed to be?” he muttered.

Wally had just smiled. A little too knowingly for a baby his age. He was only thirteen months old.

And the walking. That obsession came next.

He would pull himself up every hour, grunting, fingers grasping for stability. He didn’t want to crawl anymore. Not if he could help it. He wanted to stand. To run. To move like something was calling him forward from beyond the veil of babyhood.

Mary joked that he was impatient.

But deep down, it didn’t feel like impatience. It felt like preparation.

But most of all—it was the hunger. Or rather, the lack of it.

Wally still ate. Cheerfully, even. He liked mashed bananas, warm cereal, and little rice puffs he could grab himself. He loved milk. He giggled every time the spoon came near.

But he never cried for food. Not once.

Not even when it had been hours. Even when the bottle was left cold. Even when Mary expected shrieks at 3 a.m. from a growling belly.

Nothing. He slept like a stone.

It was as if—whatever Barry gave him that night—was still lingering in his stomach. Coiled like golden lightning. Keeping him warm. Keeping him full.

Like he’d been fed in some other, deeper way.

And everything else was just… bonus.

Back at home, Iris watched Barry in the kitchen, humming as he stirred his tea. The air around him shimmered faintly, like a mirage. The spoon never clinked. It glided.

He turned to her with that same soft smile.

“You’re staring,” he said with a chuckle.

She forced a smile back. “Just… watching you be you.”

He walked to her, kissed her forehead. His lips were warm. Too warm.

“Always will be,” he whispered.

But Iris had seen the way her plants wilted faster in the windowsill when Barry stood near.

She’d noticed the way their clocks always lagged behind—just a few seconds.

And sometimes… just sometimes… she could hear something.

A low hum. Not quite thunder. Not quite static. Something in between.

In Central City, the lightning had changed a man.

But in that nursery, it had fed a boy.

And he was still growing…

Chapter Text

Wally was five the first time it really unsettled them.

It was a bright spring afternoon. The sun slanted through the living room windows, dust motes drifting lazily in the beams. Wally, as usual, was running through the house like a little whirlwind of ginger hair and freckles, giggling at the shadows cast by the furniture, when he fell hard on the corner of the coffee table. His knee scraped against the hardwood floor. A thin trail of blood trickled down.

Mary gasped, rushing toward him. Rudolph muttered under his breath. “Again with the floor.”

By reflex, they swooped in, fussing, disinfecting, dabbing. Cartoon band-aid carefully placed. Sterile wipes, antiseptic, the whole ritual.

But Wally didn’t cry. He didn’t even whimper.

He just… stared at his knee. Blank. Mesmerized. Like he was watching something no one else could see.

“Wally, honey, are you okay?” Mary asked nervously, her voice trembling just a little.

“Yes,” he said softly. His green eyes gleamed faintly in the sunlight, an unnatural depth for a five-year-old. “I’m fine.”

He stood, brushed off his pants, and went back to chasing the sunlight across the walls.

Mary let out a shaky laugh, trying to mask her fear. Rudolph just shook his head, muttering about five-year-olds and scraped knees.

By the third day, they peeled off the cartoon band-aid, expecting maybe a little scab, maybe some healing—but there was nothing. Not a mark, not a twinge.

Wally’s knee looked perfect, untouched, pristine.

“You see?” Mary said, trying to sound cheerful. “All better. Just like that.”

But deep down… both Mary and Rudolph felt a flicker of unease. Something about the speed and the quietness of his healing unsettled them.

Later that week, they recounted the story to Iris during a casual coffee. A shiver ran down her spine. “You know, I… I remember a time with Barry. I swear I saw him cut himself with a knife once, right in the kitchen. Blood. Everything. And then… I blinked. And it was gone. Like it never happened. He was just humming and chopping vegetables again.”

Mary and Rudolph exchanged glances.

Mary’s voice was quiet. “It’s… maybe he just healed too fast?”

Iris frowned. “It wasn’t like that. It was instantaneous. I mean, literally—my brain registered the cut and then, poof, gone. Just like that.”

Meanwhile, in the living room, the afternoon light pooled across the carpet, warm and golden. Barry sat in the armchair, Wally perched comfortably on his lap, tiny fists gripping his father’s hands. The quiet hum of static lingered in the corners of the room, barely perceptible but undeniable—like the air itself was charged.

Wally’s green eyes met Barry’s, unblinking. And then, almost instinctively, he lifted a tiny finger to his mouth. He latched onto it, suckling gently.

Barry’s thin smile deepened—not quite a smile, really, but more like an edge of contentment. He watched the boy calmly, humming softly. The same finger Wally had suckled was the one Barry had accidentally cut when preparing dinner a week earlier. It had been gazpacho. Only Barry’s smile had enlarged just a tiny bit when the cold steel of the knife pricked his skin.

With a delicate hand, Barry tapped Wally’s scraped knee—the one from the small accident that had left Mary anxious for three days. A faint vibration pulsed through the boy, a rhythm almost imperceptible to anyone else, like the heartbeat of the universe in miniature. Pain was no longer a part of their world. How could it be? Any injury, any cut, any bruise, healed faster than the brain could even register.

And yet… there was something.

A thrill. A strange, quiet exhilaration that shivered through the nerves, a thrill of vulnerability and sudden restoration.

Barry leaned closer, his crystalline eyes catching the sunlight in tiny prisms. “You feel that, don’t you, little spark?” he murmured. “That… zing? That little rush?”

Wally hummed, a soft, contented noise, his lips still around Barry’s finger. His knee twitched slightly under the rhythmic taps.

“That’s why,” Barry continued, voice soft but precise, “you should pretend sometimes. Pretend to get hurt. Let it happen. Feel the thrill. Don’t be afraid of it. It’s… natural. Exciting.”

Wally’s wide green eyes sparkled like the first rays of dawn over water, the tiniest grin tugging at his freckled cheeks. He leaned forward, tapping Barry’s finger with his tiny hand, and a faint static buzzed through the air, tiny arcs dancing along the edge of his hair.

Barry chuckled softly. “Exactly. That’s my boy. Curious. Brave. Smart. Never stop exploring it. Never stop feeling it.”

Barry tapped again. Wally’s knee twitched once more, and the boy sighed, almost like a tiny electric current had run through him. Painless. Thrilling. Perfect.

And Barry just smiled—soft, thin, infinitely calm—like someone who had seen the universe fold itself once and knew exactly how to fold it again.

Chapter Text

The morning sun bathed the sidewalk in warmth as Rudolph and Mary held Wally’s little hands, walking him to kindergarten.

Unlike most five-year-olds, who screamed or clung desperately to their parents, Wally chirped with delight.

“School’s going to be fun!” he said, hopping along the pavement. “I’ll make lots of friends!”

Mary smiled nervously, squeezing his hand. “Yes, sweetie… but… don’t run too fast, okay?”

“I won’t!” Wally chirped back, already bouncing ahead.

Rudolph let out a small, reluctant laugh. “He’s… so eager. It’s… weirdly impressive.”

Mary nodded, eyes following Wally as he practically skipped to the classroom door. There was something almost… pristine in the way he moved, a confidence no child his age should naturally possess.

Inside, the classroom was cheerful—bright posters on the walls, rainbow-colored bins for crayons, and sunlight spilling across colorful rugs. Wally’s eyes widened. He was immediately drawn to the vibrant colors, nearly as brilliant as the shifting hues of Barry’s eyes.

He settled at a small table, and by the end of the first hour, it was clear he was no ordinary kindergartener.

“Wally, that’s a very advanced way to solve that puzzle,” his teacher, Ms. Halloway, remarked quietly, watching him arrange blocks in precise, intricate patterns.

Wally shrugged, smiling faintly. “I like figuring things out. It’s fun.”

By recess, it seemed every child wanted to be near him. His laugh was contagious. His little jokes—tiny, perfect little jokes—had the kids rolling in giggles.

Then came the older boys.

They approached with the swagger of someone who thought fear was their birthright.

“Give me your lunch money, or else,” the leader sneered. His two friends smirked, arms crossed.

The smaller kids shrank back, clutching their backpacks. Wally didn’t flinch. He tilted his head, his green eyes wide and blank, a thin, mischievous smile playing at his lips.

“Did your brain just die, little kid?” the leader snapped.

Then— a blur.

It was subtle at first—a shimmer in the sunlight, almost like a reflection on water. Then a tiny tug in the air, a movement almost too fast to see. The three older boys suddenly toppled forward in perfect unison—their shoelaces mysteriously tied together, sending them sprawling.

The playground erupted in laughter. Wally’s classmates gawked at the spectacle, jaws dropping, but none of them could explain what had just happened.

The leader scrambled to his feet, reddening with embarrassment.

“This isn’t over!” he shouted, but the children’s laughter drowned him out as he and his friends fled, tripping over one another on the way out.

Wally glanced down at his hands as if checking them for some invisible dust. Then, just like that, he cracked a joke about the playground’s “slippery grass,” and the children laughed again, utterly distracted from the strange, unexplainable blur that had just occurred.

He smiled faintly to himself, a little edge of triumph in his green eyes. On the sidelines, teachers whispered to each other, trying to rationalize what had happened.

Somewhere deep in Wally, a small, golden current pulsed. There was a thrill in it—small, quiet, unspoken—and Wally liked it.