Chapter Text
He was sitting at his desk, bent over to root through the deep drawer that (barely) contained his stash of snacks, when the blast ripped through the building and slammed him sideways into a cubicle divider.
Naturally, Bart's first thought was, Oh fuck. The second was a jumble of What, how, here, no. The third was less a conscious thought and more the realization that his eyes were open but everything was black, forcing him to clamp down fiercely on the resultant stirring of panic.
Shakily, he felt around; his phone had been crunched in his pocket, but he could see a sliver of light in the corner of the shattered screen. Okay, that meant it was dark because the lights were off and there weren’t any windows nearby. Gradually, though, his vision adjusted and he was able to make out basic shapes.
From over and around him, he shifted away pieces of desk dividers and chairs and...ceiling tiles?
He worked his jaw because his ears felt clogged and there was a painfully high-pitched tone, but it didn’t do anything except remind him that he’d just been thrown into something unyielding. Lucky for him, he could get his bearings faster than most people. Explosion.
His fifth thought was the fulcrum for what should happen over the next half hour, and it had been drilled into him over decades: Get up. Recon, assess, and execute. He fought through some dizziness on his climb to his feet, took two deep breaths, and flowed into speed—into relative time.
The filing cabinet that normally rolled under his desk had tipped over, the metal dented but mostly intact.
He found his suit ring hidden at the back by feel; the slick teflon expanded with a distinct odor after its long period of compression and disuse, and the smell lingered briefly on his skin as he slipped into it. At least that smell and feel helped ground him. He snapped his eye shield into place just as exposure to air finished curing the polymer.
Need light. As if on cue, the generator buried half a mile away must have kicked on, because pale green emergency lighting flickered on in the main walkways. Good enough.
The work area around him was half flattened, everyone’s personal items scattered and crushed. A desk closer to the center of the building was both a blessing and a curse; there was less glass to lacerate people, but also less ventilation and fewer good ways out. Seven other people sat in his desk section, but most had gone to a meeting on the first floor, and he wasn’t sure about his fellow interns. He wanted to find them.
Recon first, his training said.
He took off, running a standard survey pattern through the corridors, workspaces, open areas, and labs he knew after three months as an intern. The pattern crossed familiar paths, like from his desk to the bathroom, or to the closest kitchenette, or to the lab where he spent half his time. Those paths which still existed were rapidly filling with smoke that seared his lungs and tasted like wall plaster and burnt wires.
He sprinted through open spaces littered with debris that forced him to run up along walls crumbling in slow motion, beside sooty ceiling tiles barely clinging to their frames.
He completed a circuit of the entire building in just under seven seconds, slowed a little by rerouting around debris. The worst hit zone was the front of the building, near reception.
In the lobby, the twisted steel frame of some kind of vehicle—itself, half warped from heat and pressure, Jesus—was the biggest indicator of what happened.
The tall front windows had been pulverized, meaning microshards like fiberglass could be caught in the hot updraft. At least the windows being blown out meant some of the smoke and heat was dissipating, although it could still be lethal for anyone who stayed in the area long. He needed something over his mouth and nose.
Call it in now.
“Kid Flash to Watchtower. There’s been an explosion at Mass Cybernetics in Lowell; it was strong as hell and involved a vehicle detonation.”
He glanced down at one of the bodies by his feet, mouth drying up. “I need major help with rescue and recovery, putting out fires—everything. There are a lot of people still in the building.”
Left unsaid: I’m about to go do my thing.
It sounded like Connor on the comm. “Copy that, KF. We’ll get everyone we can down there ASAP. Stay in touch.”
Bart nodded habitually before taking his finger off the comm trigger. He knelt, partly to get out of the worst of the smoke, and winced as the splintered edges of the once-polished reception desk dug into his knees and gloves. Laura and Jacob had been, at most, marginally protected by the desk and hadn’t made it.
Two more people in the lobby, probably guests, were….also gone. He distanced himself mentally and physically.
As he knelt by Laura again, a shard of glass pierced his knee. The candy bowl from the desk had shattered during the explosion or when it hit the ground, its contents now congealed black caramel on the floor; a misshapen lump of coal sticking to the carpet. He draped what remained of Laura’s extra sweater over her body. He didn’t have anything for Jacob, so he moved on.
Beyond what used to be the glass doors at reception were three more bodies in the big connecting hallway—people Bart didn’t recognize, and didn’t want to recognize. The I.D. badges on their lanyards or pulleys had melted.
He put his hands on his knees for a split second, suddenly choking on the smoke. Everything was burnt; everything was blackened. People were—
Why here.
—People needed his help. He needed to get through the worst areas fast and triage the rest.
The fire suppression sprinklers finally kicked on, startling and showering him with cold water, although a lot of pipes were broken. He’d have to watch his footing in areas with slick debris, but at least the water would settle some of the plaster and insulation dust mixed in with the smoke.
Connor came through again. “Tower to KF, is there an SCBA or at least a rebreather, if you stay out of the worst heat?”
Bart cleared his throat before replying, hoping it sounded less scratchy afterward. “No. But I can make some kind of mask, and I’ll be fine.”
“Then make the mask. We’ll bring more equipment.”
Although Bart acknowledged the order, he didn’t plan on going out of his way to heed it. He could handle the conditions and CO exposure until everyone else showed up, and his lungs would heal as fast as always.
He continued clearing the worst hit zone, which was the inner part of the blast radius.
Only one person inside the zone had survived. Given the man’s proximity to an unstable wall, Bart had to risk moving him, but every one of their usual pulls and carries would only cause further harm. Pick one, he instructed himself. The man’s side and front had been facing the explosion. Bridal, it is.
Outside, he slowed to a stop instead of skidding to one, laying the man down as gently as he could on the summer-dry grass at the very back of the parking lot, willing him to survive. At least if he slipped into shock, he wouldn’t freeze to death.
Bart looked back at the building, watching the flames licking up the sides of the remaining walls; the dark smoke coiling and billowing out the empty window frames. It was definitely too big and too hot to try extinguishing with a vortex.
The only above-ground power line near the building lay sparking on the pavement, but at the moment it wasn’t his top priority.
As he raced back inside, he propped open strategic exit doors (the few still standing) with chunks of concrete. He wanted to bring fresh air deeper into the hallways and give survivors something to aim at through the gloom, which was more worrying than feeding smaller fires at this point. He’d also try to increase the amount of smoke he drew out in his wake.
His heart leapt at seeing some first floor survivors crawling down the hallway, smart enough to move low. It wouldn’t keep them from further injury by debris, but it was a good start. They were still shouting and half-panicked as they tried to navigate with only dim emergency lighting.
The people moving too slowly, he just scooped up and rushed out. He rambled off something reassuring to the others and pointed them in the right direction.
He found six more people on the first floor who could be moved. One of the men was stumbling and had a bleeding head wound. He was a huge guy, too big to carry, so Bart grabbed him by the elbow to attach him to someone else who was ambulatory. “You’re going to be alright, Sir.”
Blinking, he realized he sounded more like Barry than himself. At least his secret identity would stay that way.
Pushing forward, he effortlessly dodged a woman’s flailing elbows as he tried to calm her down. She looked low priority for triage now, but that could change if she hyperventilated much longer. “I’m going to get you out of here, Ma’am.” Bending, he brought her up in a standard firefighter carry.
Outside, he noted a few new people had joined those he’d run out earlier. Some of the less injured were moving away and looked ready to bolt. He could understand why, given what people saw on the news every week.
But he also knew there wasn’t a second device—he’d checked everywhere, including the cars in the parking lot—and with only two storeys, further building collapse wouldn’t be an issue. What would be a problem was EMS having to track down people who’d run off more injured than shock and adrenaline told them, and loved ones coming to the scene because responders couldn’t check them off a list.
“Everyone, stay here,” he instructed. “Stay way back, no matter what, but you should stay here until EMS arrives to be counted and treated.”
He’d raised his voice to be heard and was a little surprised by how hoarse it came out—that, and it was getting harder to draw a full breath without coughing. No matter how fast he healed, he was sucking down lungful after lungful of burning chemicals.
Just like everyone else still in the building. Step it up, Allen.
The remaining first floor survivors couldn’t or shouldn’t be moved, except for three who also couldn’t safely stay where they were. There was too much debris to drag them all the way out. With practiced care, he slid each person onto flat pieces of doors and cubicle dividers, cleared a path as best he could, and dragged them into a structurally sounder area with better ventilation.
When he was done, he stopped with his hands on his knees to cough. His head was hurting.
The second floor posed different, mostly harder challenges—including fewer chances to pull people and more need to carry them. At least one of the stairwells looked stable.
Bart carried someone out. Back inside and up the stairs; down and out with someone bleeding over his shoulders. In. And out. Training and instincts propelled him.
The number of people at the back of the parking lot was growing, and he was relieved to see most of them were following his instructions. Some of the less injured were helping each other.
“Help’s almost there,” Connor announced in his ear, telling Bart to hold on.
Then, he found one of his mentors, Li Wei, face-down in the bathroom. A water line had ruptured and was rapidly pooling in the spaces between dense sections of debris. Bart moved the half-demolished panels of wood and plastic off the man’s back and checked to see if his nose and mouth were clear of the water. They were, but Bart didn’t know for how much longer. Grunting and sweating from the effort, he carefully levered the heavy piece of ceiling up and off, revealing the predictable crushing damage from the waist down.
Yeah, Li Wei needed treatment yesterday.
Bart bowed his head. The situation was worse than the first floor survivors. Moving him without a backboard or even a neck brace would almost definitely make things a hell of a lot worse.
Biting his lip, he looked around at his options—anything to reroute or dam the flow of water. He laid out heavy chunks of porcelain and concrete next to friend, then broke into the metal sanitary pad dispenser lying dented on the floor and stuffed those into the gaps. It would keep the man from aspirating water or worse until the EMTs could get to him. Hopefully.
It was a calculated risk. Bart was trained for this, had (too much) experience. He knew how to assess and treat what he could. He knew the most likely fatal injuries at this point would be blast lung and abdominal. So when he found his friend and fellow intern Katya in one of the worst hit areas of the second floor, he knew she wouldn’t survive.
He couched beside her anyway, ruthlessly compacting everything he felt into a tiny cube and pushing it away.
"Help is here, Ma’am.” He managed to play his part through a tightly clenched jaw. “Let’s get you out of here.”
She didn’t cry out as he worked his arms under her and lifted, but shock was typical and it would distance some of the pain. Outside, he laid her down near to, but slightly apart from, the other badly wounded. He didn’t want to scare the others, but he didn’t want Katya to be...all alone, either.
Maybe it was that awful thought which led to his biggest mistake; when he stood up, he looked down at her body on the grass. He stared at her horrifyingly burned face for a moment in standard time, overlaid by a picture in his mind from their lunch together yesterday. In that same moment of clarity, Katya’s less injured eye focused on his face.
“Bart?” She mouthed at him through charred lips. But it wasn’t really a question.
He sank to his knees. “Yeah,” he said quietly, because there was no point in denying it—least of all to a dying woman. “Yeah, it’s me. Just...give me a minute, okay? I gotta go get more people.”
Into the building and out again—except this time, he threw up in the corner of the stairwell. He hacked and heaved and spit up sooty mucus and bile, eyes welling up, and he did it at speed because he had to, because more people needed his help. He beat his fist against the wall before forcing himself back into autopilot.
More people. More smoke. More screaming in the dark interior spaces.
A nearby man grabbed his arm unexpectedly, yanking on it hard enough that Bart slid on the wet debris and went down, slicing his thigh. He pulled two weeping people out from under their desks, which were the only pieces of furniture still mostly intact in the surrounding rubble. He conscripted a woman with a cybernetic arm and a clear head to help dig another person out.
For everyone he came across who hadn’t made it, he allowed himself to close his eyes for a brief moment out of respect, and then he moved on.
He’d just laid another person on the grass—one of the last few he could manage without help—when over the rest of the noise, he heard two, then three fire engines wailing up the drive.
Thank God. More responders would be chasing them. He knew their response time was shaved down to the absolute minimum for normal people. Just, in this sort of situation, Bart slipped in and out of relative time too much to track how long it was for the rest of the world.
When the engines roared up, Bart dashed over to meet their crews, rattling off where the remaining survivors were, their conditions as he assessed them, and any salient details about the debris. He expected to run in with them, but talking over the squads’ shouting and the loud growl of the now idling engines scraped at his raw throat and made him start coughing again. It wasn’t a pretty sound.
He might’ve gone in with them anyway, but a familiar authoritative voice called his name. “K.F.!”
Just hearing it, half the weight on Bart’s shoulders sloughed off. If Drake was there, it meant the rest of the cavalry was too, or would be in a few seconds.
“Am I glad to see you,” Bart rasped as they approached each other. Normally they stood a few feet apart while in uniform, but he craved even a little bit of contact. Anything good; something not awful. So instead of stopping, he drew close enough for their arms to brush on one side.
“Squads fully briefed?” Drake asked.
Bart nodded, tensing his upper body in an effort to keep from coughing and mostly successful.
Drake put a hand on his shoulder. The way he squeezed it implied that Bart’s expression must be pretty bleak. The angle of his arm also served to hide their conversation from everyone else.
“You okay?”
“Not really,” Bart admitted. “I never would have thought, not in a million years….”
His gaze drifted to the gaping front maw in the still-burning remains of the building; to the bodies now being draped in sheets and cordoned off in the empty parking spaces. They couldn’t even put them on the ruined sidewalk. He’d spent 40 hours a week in that place for the past three months, and now the rebar skeleton extruded through the concrete like claws.
He looked back at Drake. “But I guess you never do. Worst kind of surprise.”
“Worse, still, because you know people,” Drake said, his tone matter-of-fact but underpinned by compassion. He was almost never cold, unlike his boss.
Bart gave a slight nod, trying to ignore the people part for now and grasping for objectivity. “There was a vehicle involved. I’m thinking high-order explosive, but it must have been small.” Or the whole building would’ve been flattened.
“Agreed. And...someone’s already taking credit.”
Bart’s head whipped up. “Who?"
“An anti-cybernetics group, biological purists calling themselves NoRo—no significant social media presence or an obvious forum. No indication of who their military connections are. I haven’t seen this level of in-person organizing, this level of paranoia since….” Drake shook his head abruptly. “I’m sorry. Nobody could’ve seen this coming.”
Bart shrugged the hand off his shoulder and took a step back. The touch wasn’t comforting anymore; now it just felt patronizing, and shaking it off was the bare minimum required to quell his flash of anger.
“Doesn’t fucking matter,” he spat. “There are still—” a bunch of dead people I know. “It still happened. And you know what’s worse?”
He felt his eyes narrow, aware they’d likely darkened as well. “The people who did it, they think cybernetics, think cyborgs like Vic, are the enemy. The same people who probably welcomed the real enemy to Earth fifteen years ago, and again, and again after that, because they don’t have a fucking clue.”
He’d raised his scratchy voice enough to prompt Drake to clamp a hand around his forearm in a fast, tight grip—one he couldn’t shake off. The warning was fair.
“People who commit acts like this never do,” his friend said evenly.
Bart’s head was really starting to pound, and his angry speech had pretty much shredded his vocal cords. Normally, feeling so tired and angry and frayed all at once would prompt a runthrough of his basic checklist: food, sleep, sufficient food, and suit integrity.
But of course it wasn’t any of those things. The last time he could remember feeling this way was after the Chile quake, and before that when Jaime was—and both those situations were different for a number of reasons.
Bart nodded slightly at Drake’s words and grated out, “I should do some crowd control.”
Drake returned the nod, releasing his arm. “Why don’t you take the public, stay out of the smoke? In fact, you should have medical clear you first. I’ll take logistics.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Bart said, knowing his lungs weren’t the only reason for his suggested assignment, and grateful. It was hard to give up the illusion of control, the drive to keep helping, but at the moment he couldn’t do much besides ferry supplies between stations or take the less injured to local hospitals. The most badly hurt were being hustled into newly-arriving ambulances or still being treated at the scene by fire crews and EMS.
When he glanced over at the largest triage spot, they were covering another body with a sheet—but he could see that Li Wei was still alive. Please stay that way, he thought desperately.
Note to self: Ask Jaime again how he does it, even as a GP. Also: Give Jaime the biggest fucking hug.
...His eyes snapped wide open.
“Sssshit, shit, shit,” he hissed, moving away from everyone else. Clearing his aching throat, or trying to at least, he tapped his comm. “KF to Blue, you there?”
He paused, hating the wait even more than usual, drumming the fingers of his other hand against his thigh—screw it, he should try to get ahead of it. “Hey, Blue, just—I’m okay.”
A few moments later, a beautiful voice sounded through his earpiece. While hushed and obviously trying to be discreet, the worry in Jaime’s voice was still achingly clear. “What do you mean you’re okay, what are you talking about?”
“There was um...something happened at work.” Bart winced. “An explosion.” He heard Jaime’s sharp inhalation, could picture the look of shock on his face fast melting into fear.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine,” he hedged.
Jaime’s reply was almost immediate; professional and efficient. “I’m on my way. Get checked out.”
They knew each other too well. “I’m fine,” Bart tried to reassure, aware that if their positions were reversed, it wouldn’t work on him, either.
Jaime must have been close to an exit when he answered his comm, because Bart heard the sound of plasma engines throttling up to full burn.
“I swear to God, mi amor, I can hear what you sound like—get checked out.” He pressed, with a lot less equanimity than before.
Involuntarily, Bart closed his eyes; Jaime was scared enough to call him my love on what could’ve easily been a team channel. “I will,” he agreed gently. “I’ll see you soon.”
Longingly he thought, get here soon, but he couldn’t say it without worrying Jaime more.
When he turned around, his dizziness made itself known. Given his symptoms and exposure, he could probably, definitely, use some oxygen. They could all agree on that. He also needed to find a Leaguer to clear him, preferably before Jaime got there.
And he’d do all that, but first, he needed to talk to someone else.
“It’s good to hear your voice, man,” Victor sighed out in answer.
Bart’s shoulders slumped. “You too, dude. More than you know. ...Hey, don’t take this the wrong way,” he said hoarsely, “but I’m really glad you’re not here right now. You should stay in Miami,” he advised. Trying to keep Vic away from the scene was most likely futile, but he’d be a bad friend if he didn’t try at all.
If Bart was taking it hard, Vic would be devastated. He knew everyone at the company; had partnered with them for years.
“I’m already en route,” Vic said evenly.
Bart rubbed his hands over his face, sliding his fingers up under the eye shield. The (stupidly) added soot made his eyes sting and caused him to start sneezing, because apparently hacking coughs weren’t enough. Shit, there was no way his airway would be healed enough before Jaime touched down.
“Were you in the building?” Vic asked, concerned.
He sneezed one last time, nostrils burning. “Yeah. I got everyone out that I could.”
“I know you did,” Vic replied immediately, and the certainty in his tone...it helped a little.
Bart’s attention was caught by the police SUVs blocking off the drive. A helicopter was already hovering over them. “Look, I’d better get back to crowd control. When you get here, just...I’m sorry. It’s bad. Really bad.” His voice wavered.
“...I heard.”
“Okay.” Bart nodded to himself. “Take care, man. Kid Flash out.”
He looked around for Cassie or Ed, or another Leaguer with more extensive medical training. Everyone he could see was deep into helping the regular EMTs. As soon as one of them had a break in the action, he’d get their attention.
In the meantime, he helped to set up more of the police barriers already at the scene, filling in the gaps with as much yellow caution tape as he could. It wasn’t easy to block off an area of this size, and he gave the local precincts credit for trying. Running at a quarter speed, he hadn’t been at the task more than 30 seconds when Jaime came to life in his ear again.
“I’m at the Houston Zeta. Did you—”
“I’m trying,” Bart hastened to reply. You’d think Jaime would know that the talking was hurting his throat. Then again, if he ever stopped talking, Jaime would think—so yeah, talking was good.
He looked around again. “All the Leaguers and EMS have their hands more than full, so...can you just this once?” It broke the rules, asking Jaime to treat a significant other.
Jaime’s voice was tight when he finally replied. “Get some oxygen and sit down near EMS. KD says we’ll be there in four.” The words were followed by the rushing sound of a Zeta before the comm cut out.
Four minutes. Tortuously long to wait.
Rolling his neck, he looked over at the chaos around the most critical cases, then toward the large canopy and mobile field hospital they were setting up to help the less seriously injured. He walked, for once, over to them.
Standing next to a canopy pole, Bart waved once. “Hi. Anyone know where a guy can find some O2?”
The closest doctor turned around, staring at him with wide eyes. “Oh my—Kid Flash. Oh, my Lord.” Then she visibly snapped back into medical professional, reminding him of Jaime. “Sit down over here, gloves off.”
He smiled at her. “That’s okay, I can just take it to go.”
“No, you need to sit down. I’m not saying that because I’m a fan—although my daughter is. It’s because you look bad and you sound worse.” She said, herding him in.
Without knowing exactly how, he found himself taking a seat in a folding chair. He looked first up at her, and then at the other people in chairs or on cots beside him, most of them connected to portable oxygen tanks. He was pretty sure he’d met the person on the far end before, and the reminder of where he was and who else was injured hurt worse than his body.
He leaned away when the doctor touched his cheek with some kind of cleansing wipe. “Oh—just, you know I can’t take my ‘mask’ off, right?” Bart said, finger-quoting, then coughed for a few seconds.
She pinned him with an unimpressed look—“As if anyone doesn’t know who you are underneath a tinted eye shield”—and resumed wiping away the soot around his nose and mouth. Like he was a baby who’d just spit up.
Bart almost rolled his eyes. Thanks, Jay, for having been both my legal guardian and also a totally not-anonymous celebrity. But still getting mad at me when—
“Costume mask on, oxygen mask on,” the doctor agreed, slipping the strap over his head. “I’m Doctor Reynolds, by the way.”
“Hi, Kid Flash. Just so you know, it’s called a suit,” he said inside the oxygen mask.
"Sure." She pulled off one of his gloves for him and started taking his pulse. “Try to relax. It’s okay if you need to cough.”
“It’s gonna be fast for sitting still. Like, 130,” he told her, causing the mask to slide up a little on the bridge of his nose. Without looking up from her watch, Dr. Reynolds pulled it back into place. It was weird to be sitting there talking with a normal doctor and not someone from the League.
“Headache? Shortness of breath?” She asked like she already knew the answers. Of course she did.
“Yeah. And all the other stuff.”
Now she looked back at him, frowning. “Do you know about carbon monoxide poisoning?”
Opening his mouth, he paused to do some quick mental calculations.
“So there’s a guy in blue armor—” he coughed, “who’s gonna walk in here in about a minute. Could you please not say anything like that in front of him?”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. She must have been good at deciphering things said through a mask.
“Doctor-patient confidentiality?” He appealed.
All she did was hold up her stethoscope. “How do I get in your suit?”
“You’re gonna have to listen through it.” It was possible for her to activate its stealth mode, but since he was already covered in black soot, it would hardly be noticable.
The doctor shook her head but set about listening to his lungs while he restlessly looked around again.
His eyes settled on the ruined building, at the place where his desk would be. He was Bart, sitting in the parking lot at work, but he was also Kid Flash helping at a disaster site. It made him feel...fractured.
“You have a couple tears in your cos—suit. May I?” The doctor caught his eyes and then fingered the one on his side, making Bart squirm. “I don’t see any lacerations, just some long cuts. You’re lucky.”
Yeah...just normal cuts and bruises now.
Dr. Reynolds pulled away. “How long were you in the building?”
He chuckle-coughed once, humorlessly, unable to help himself. He could still deflect. “Not long. I’m pretty fast; you might’ve heard.” It came out appropriately subdued.
“Well given your resting respiration rate, you must have inhaled a substantial amount of carbon monoxide and other toxic gasses, so I’m a little surprised you’re sitting here talking,” she said, professional concern on her face.
He smiled. “I heal fast, too.”
Dr. Reynolds didn’t return the smile, but she did slowly nod. “I’m starting to see that. Even so, I strongly recommend that you go to a hospital for treatment. Smoke inhalation’s no joke. You must know that.”
He raised a hand to rub at his face again and bumped the oxygen mask.
The doctor shook her head, relenting. “At least five more minutes on the O2 and we’ll talk again.” She turned away to attend to other patients. More were trickling in.
Bart closed his eyes tiredly—then flicked them open again because he didn’t like what was predictably waiting there. He glanced down at his ungloved hand, pale against the dark soot color of his suit. He could still discern the blood flecked across his sleeve.
After what felt like an age, the sound of plasma engines landing hot finally signaled the arrival of the one person he most wanted to see. He twisted his head around. A dozen meters away, Blue Beetle retracted his wings and their eyes met—relatively speaking. Bart sucked in a deep breath of his oxygen as Jaime hurried toward him.
“Blue,” he greeted, his voice breathy from relief rather than smoke. His hand moved to the front of his oxygen mask, ready to pull it away—when armored fingers slapped over his own.
“Keep it on.” Jaime’s whole body was tense, holding onto a dozen things he clearly wanted to say but couldn't at the moment. He must have compromised with himself: “It’s really, really good to see you.”
“Hi,” said the doctor, suddenly standing right beside them, acting suspiciously like someone who knew they were interrupting something important. “I’m Dr. Reynolds. You must be the ‘guy in the blue armor.’ Blue Beetle, right?”
“Uh, yeah. It’s...nice to meet you.” Jaime said, inching closer to Bart until their knees brushed. Out of the corner of his eye, Bart saw other people gawking at them with varying levels of intensity.
Dr. Reynolds turned to Bart. “You want me to fill him in?”
She was nice. He’d still rather she not. “Nope, no, I’m good, thanks. In fact, my friend and I will just—” He finished by sticking his thumb out to the side, then realized that with two of them on his case, he probably wasn’t going anywhere yet.
“You’re not going anywhere yet,” Jaime confirmed, then after a beat, “except the ‘Tower med bay. How long has he been on oxygen?” He asked Dr. Reynolds, who looked to Bart for permission. He nodded.
“About eight minutes. ...So I take it you have some experience with this, know what to watch for? Is there someone there who can handle respiratory therapy?”
“Yeah. This is all part of what we do,” Jaime said with confidence.
“All right. At least two more minutes on that,” she told Bart, a little smile unfurling on her face, “and I’ll release you into the custody of your ‘friend.'”
Okay, her tone and raised eyebrows were just excessive—maybe accurate, but excessive.
Still, shifting on his chair let him lean just a little into Jaime, who shifted his own weight back in return. Bart sighed out of his dry mouth and briefly touched his temple to the warm metal plates at Jaime’s hip. The bridge of his nose itched. Every mucus membrane in his body was getting more dehydrated by the second. His eyes and nose stung, and his head ached.
Every bit of discomfort was more than worth it. He didn’t know how many people he helped out, and he should keep it that way. Then he couldn’t subtract when the official numbers started rolling in.
“You should go check in with Drake,” he told Jaime, reluctantly.
“He can wait two minutes,” Jaime replied. He walked over to a big water cooler and returned with a full paper cup, a bendy straw, and a bunch of the wipes Dr. Reynolds had used to clean his face earlier. He handed it all over to Bart, who slipped the straw in under the mask and almost moaned (bad idea) at the lukewarm water. He drank half of it in one long draw, hoping it wasn’t the wrong thing to do.
Jaime had ripped the paper wrapper off one of the wipes. Bart noted hesitation before Jaime handed it over and knew what he’d wanted to do instead—had maybe briefly considered doing.
One more minute, he reminded himself. He started wiping off the rest of his face and his bare hand, which had been touching his suit and hair.
Oh man, his hair. Normally his modifications to the half-cowl kept it swept back out of the way, but now it was falling over his cheeks and eye shield in heavy, greasy chunks. And under that, he could tell the backs of his ears were filthy, but he couldn’t exactly get to those.
“Do you think you could scrounge up a change of clothes for me?” He asked Jaime, just loudly enough to be heard over the mask; even if he was too quiet, Khaji Da would pick it up.
It wasn’t an unusual request for two friends out of uniform, but in their suits, with people watching them…they’d had the discussion about not being each others’ public liabilities long ago.
“Sure. I’ll go find something,” Jaime said, but he hesitated even longer this time.
“Or not, it’s fine,” Bart amended hastily. “I can wait ‘till I leave.”
“There are civvies on the Watchtower….What is it?” Jaime asked when Bart looked at the ground.
The thought of heading up to the ‘tower created an unhappy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"I’m not trying to skip out on medical stuff—I promise. I just don’t want to go somewhere that...continues all of this.” He gestured around them. "I don’t want the whole team watching me. ...For just a little while...I don’t want to be Kid Flash,” he realized, finishing in almost a whisper.
Jaime reached out in an instinctive, aborted movement, and then the Blue Beetle casually put a hand on Bart’s shoulder instead. Like a comrade.
“There’s a regular clinic and a hospital not far from here.”
Bart shook his head quizzically. “C’mon, we both know that by the time they got down the triage list to me, I’d have healed already.”
Jaime blew out a frustrated sigh.
Carefully, Bart stood up. “Ten full minutes,” he said, turning off the oxygen valve and stripping off the mask. The aid station was getting busier as more people were transferred from the front lines. He turned to face Jaime directly so as to conceal their conversation. “I know how I sound, but I feel okay. No CO symptoms, except for the headache,” he allowed. “Can we just—go somewhere else? Not the ‘Tower, not my apartment here,” he entreated.
“Home?”
The word evoked a brief moment of longing, but it was overpowered by the knowledge that too many of their possessions were inextricably linked to their hero IDs. “...Later. Right now, I just want to get out, away, from all this. There’s too much at home that’s part of it.”
Jaime’s face was impassive under the armor. He turned and walked a few yards away. Bart waved once to Dr. Reynolds and mouthed a thank you at her, then trailed after him uneasily.
“Blue Beetle to Drake. Kid Flash and I are taking off. Not sure where yet, and we’ll be off comms for a while. You’re gonna have to work without us.”
Bart closed his eyes and let his head fall back, relieved.
“Copy that,” Drake said to them both. “We’ve got it covered. And KF...you did a great job today.”
“More like a fucking amazing one,” Jaime muttered, making Bart smile despite himself.
When he glanced around the parking lot, his heart sank like a stone again. He felt guilty and ashamed for leaving when there was still so much to be done. Maybe they should stay another hour.
Jaime reclaimed his attention with a gentle prompt. “Any ideas on where you want to go?”
Somewhere without expectations. “I don’t know. Probably grab a change of clothes, but after that...just follow me?”
“Only if it’s at walking speed,” Jaime threatened without heat. “Crawling, for you.”
“Sure, Grandpa,” he joked, but it came out flat. “Walking speed, it is.”
He knocked it down to professional marathon speed, which on flat ground, he could keep up forever, shitty breathing or not. Jaime flew above him, making Bart wonder if Khaji Da was putting in extra effort to keep them aloft at less than 25 kph. The armor didn’t exactly have flaps.
Their path through town was fairly random by necessity, as he kept to the quietest streets possible to avoid an audience. Although the route zigged and zagged a little between blocks, he made sure it continued steadily away from the site.
Fortunately, it took them past a Goodwill store. Bart signaled his intention to Jaime, then used his speed only long enough to grab some sneakers, jeans, a tee, and a flannel off the racks. He made a mental note to pay the store later before he popped outside around the back. Jaime, hovering about five meters up, narrowed his eyes like he was judging something—probably Bart using his speed—but didn’t speak.
Look, Bart wanted to change clothes as soon as he stopped running, so unless Jaime had his wallet tucked into a very private place inside his armor, there wasn’t really an alternative.
Rolling up the sneakers inside the clothes and tucking them under his arm for the time being, Bart kept going, cruising down side streets. He still didn’t know where he was headed or where he wanted to be. Definitely far enough away that he couldn’t hear the sirens or smell the smoke...but it couldn’t be halfway across the state, either, considering his whole body felt like crap.
The problem was, every couple blocks there was another busy street ahead, forcing yet another awkward detour. Bart wanted to leave, to get out, and the more these figurative and literal roadblocks tried to stop him, the more determined he became. So he simply kept running, trusting his feet like he always had—and deeply grateful to Jaime for going along with his plan or lack thereof.
He crossed another intersection, springing over some bushes on the other side like an Olympic hurdler.
“Oi, hold up,” Jaime called out to him.
“I’m not going that fast,” Bart protested.
“No, not that. C’mere.”
Bart spun on the balls of his feet and jogged back to where Jaime had fallen off his tail. He stopped beside him to look at the road sign, which indicated an alternate turnoff for the state forest with the really long name.
“What about up there, the state forest? It’s pretty far ‘out and away’ for still being near the city.”
Bart tried to picture it, an amalgam of the many times he’d run through forests in this part of the country. Tall straight trees rising around them in all directions and big boulders scattered in between. The smell of dirt and green things, some probably sunbaked, some fresh.
Jaime continued. “It’s really big, and probably not too crowded this time on a weekday.”
“That sounds good. I want to be alone right now.”
“I know,” Jaime said simply.
“But—with you.”
“I know,” Jaime repeated, just as gently as the first time.
Bart nodded. “...Let’s check it out.”