The Future is X-Rated

Author: Dimitri Aidan

Rating: I might get up to R or NC-17 one day. We just have to wait and see.

Pairings: (Flash) Wally/Rex (War Hawk) mostly. Most of the pairings are past ones…because everyone is dead.

Warnings: Wally has a foul mouth. You would do if you were him though. I went for a darker, grittier Gotham in this, we have homosexual content, and sexual content implied, at the very least. Violence and 'mystery' and such.

Note #1: I like the episode once and future thing because I was a fiend for Batman Beyond. You have no idea… but my lovely friend, Losha, was kind enough to say 'that's gotta rain on your Wally/John parade something terrible.' Actually it doesn't. My theory is that Rex was conceived at some point as a bit of an accident and that John really loved Wally and Shayera has the hots for Hank. …stop looking at me like that! Hawk is cool! Damn it…

Note #2: Done on commission. Seriously, I'm getting chocolate. 'Losha (still being helpful) wanted to know what I thought of the whole 'Flash' dying thing. I, once again, reverted to selective denial and he offered me candy bars to write out how I'd thought it go.

Note #3: I swear to God I am starting no new stories after this! Everything else will be stored in my brain until a later date. I shall finish all three of my fics before I start so much as a new dabble. …In theory anyway.

Summery: Wally thinks dying sucks. Almost as much as waking up forty years in the future to find almost everything you knew gone, Batman still broody, and that guys named 'Stewart' still make you weak.

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Chapter One

In an instant

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Wallace West knew a few things about life that he always figured would be sure to get him from point A to point Z without much trouble. …Much trouble for himself anyway. The people he faced in his lifetime always seemed to have a hard time dealing with someone like him.

Not that such things were his problem.

One, people were born with only one promise in life: Death. It seemed morbid and dark and depressing and just too…Batman-like for someone like him but that was the simple truth, wasn't it? People lived to eventually die. Acknowledging that didn't make you a pessimist or a 'half-empty' person, it made you realistic and open.

When he took up the mantle of Flash and laid his mentor and hero to rest he came to see that all people died, no matter how 'beyond life' they seemed to him. Except perhaps Superman and that wasn't really a good thing in the long term.

Two feed off of one. Once you realized you were going to die eventually and have limited time you have to live to the fullest extent of your ability. Wally liked to think he believed that. Always going for broke and putting everything out on the line and saying whatever popped into his mind because, seriously, what was the worse that could happen? No regrets or 'could have dones' because…what did he had to fear from being honest and open? Death?

Death came to all. Better to go out with a clean conscious and a smile because he'd done everything that had ever popped into his mind, then wishing for things he couldn't change anymore.

Three was a facet of two. Never let alone get or pull you down with their talk of responsibilities and seriousness because Fuck Them, he was more serious than most people would ever know. He'd been in a world where he had died and all of his friends had gone complete shit-ape insane and it really didn't get much more serious then looking at your own tombstone.

Metaphorically of course. Or literally if you liked.

Four was simple enough; you might as well smile when shit sucks, because the world always sucks and there is no point in pouting all the time. Anyone who watched the news and saw half of the things he had seen while in the League would realize that things were always bad. That was just the way they were. Utopia was something Earth was not.

So that was it. His four easy steps to a mildly decent life. He figured he'd go out happy and excepting it and…well, he didn't think it would hurt so damn much.

He remembers dying in a fuzzy sort of way. Something to do with Cadmus. (Those government fuckwads who were convinced they'd try to take over the world, or some such bull.) He remembered snatch shots of people, hovering nearby and watching and praying and crying and feeling all…warm and fuzzy inside. For all the jokes they'd still miss him.

He remembered Shayera and John mostly. Not that the rest of the League weren't important but they…they were something else. John had been his best friend and even when everyone else was scolding him for fucking up John was there with a sardonic grin, prepared to let him bitch about it later. He supposed that in a strange way John might have been a father figure towards the end, or at least he imagined he had all the traits a good dad would have.

Wally wouldn't know, really. His parents had been iffy at best.

The only thing that made him question this assessment of John was this tiny crush he may have had back when he was younger. And he didn't mean 'Flash' young, he meant Kid Flash young, when the new Green Lantern had been something of a…well, he'd had a crush.

Joining the League had brought it back (it had been pesky, because he'd been in a very intense phase of denial at the time) but really knowing John had cooled it off. John was great, really and truly, and a guy like that he would have been dumb to pass up but…

He wasn't stupid, contrary to popular belief. John was Shayera's and so whatever romantic type feelings were thoroughly crushed, burned, and then scattered throughout the void that was space. Still, it was all very Freudian.

Even more so when you considered how he'd thought of Shayera. She was far from the 'calm patient' pictures people painted of the ideal mother, but for him that's what she'd been. Like John she was always at his side, usually with sharp words and an equally sharp smack, but Wally had never had any illusions that she didn't care about him. She was strong and short tempered but she'd always treated Wally differently from everyone else, taking her under the preverbal, and literal if needed, wing.

Even when she'd betrayed them and ever fiber of his being had screamed to not trust her he found himself more than willing to vote her back into the League and, though he was loath to admit this, he'd spent a very long time brooding over her decision to leave. It had hurt, badly, to lose her. Things hadn't been the same and then they'd opened up the League to everyone and their grandmother and it had quite literally thrown Wally's entire world out of whack.

Even hanging out with John wasn't the same. Wally had grown used to Shayera at John's side, smiling faintly and balancing out the Lantern's sarcasm with her blunt sense of humor.

Mostly he remembered them at his…bedside he supposed, watching over him. Talking to him, trying to sooth him through the pain.

Because Christ, had there been a lot of pain. It had been like…having his skin peel back, layer by layer, all day long combined with some kind of acid flowing through his veins and a million tiny ants crawling over him while someone tried to tear out his insides out through the pores of his skin. The only time he hadn't hurt was when he was asleep or too doped up to really recall his own name.

Not that he was complaining about that.

Still sometimes hurting was better than sleeping because he had these…nightmares. Terrible nightmares that he swore were tearing his mind apart and he knew he'd woken up coughing up blood on at least one occasion.

About this time it occurred to him that he was going to die. He hadn't really thought about it before then, being completely unable to maintain a coherent thought for any legitimate about of time, but waking up and vomiting blood had kind of put things into perspective for him. He was sure experiences like that would do that to most people.

The thing he remembers best is the end. Or at least he thought it was the end. He had been curled up on the bed, head in Shayera's lap while John sat in the chair he always had pulled close, holding his hand. They'd…been sitting. No talking. Just sitting.

It was amazing how much could be said just by being there. Neither one was much for touching people; John and Shayera were both kind of withdrawn from the rest of the world. Still they'd both been there with him, for however long he was there and that meant more to him then he could even put into words.

He regretted not being able to tell them how much having them there meant to him, them more than anyone else. Sure, Bruce and Clark and Diana and J'onn came around and probably spent nights with him as well but it wasn't…the same. They cared for him now, because he was dying, but John and Shayera had cared for him all along.

He thought he'd died. He'd closed his eyes and the world went dark and there were no nightmares or pain. He had to be dead.

He opened them again, what felt like mere heartbeats after closing them. Still no pain. Odd. Also missing was the light tickle of feathers on his skin. His brow furrowed. Shayera was gone? Sure, she couldn't be there all of the time but…well.

A strange feeling of loss gnawed at his stomach. Still, they couldn't be with him all the time. Christ, what was he, twelve? He didn't really need anyone holding his hand did he? It'd just…been nice. Though, speaking of his hand, calloused fingers gripped his own lightly. He was used to this but…it felt strange somehow. Not quite right.

"John?" There was a sharp intake of breath to his right. Someone moved and the hand holding his own dropped away. He had to bite his lip to keep from protesting.

"How do you feel?" The voice was oddly familiar but…dry. Cracked around the edges. He opened his mouth to give his customary 'I'm dying, how the hell do you think I feel' response a second before he realized that he really didn't hurt.

At all. He felt fine.

"What the hell?" He blinked again and for the first time things came into focus. He was looking up at the ceiling of…a room. Everything was cast into shadow, but he could see slats of lighter shadow on the wall. He was sure a window was opposite of it.

"Ughn." He grunted before shutting his eyes again. Then: "I'm hungry."

A dry chuckle. "I heard you might be. Just…stay here."

Wally nodded then cracked open an eye just in time to see a door open. A beam of light filtered in from what he assumed was the hallway and illuminated the figure sanding in the doorway. Wally took the guy in quickly, for how else could he do it, and found himself blinking even as the guy slipped out and shut the door again.

He'd looked like John.

Only…well…he was white. Not pale like Wally, but most people didn't have that fantastic natural geek pigment working for them, but…white.

Which meant he couldn't, by the very nature of such things, be John.

Unless somebody was fucking with his head (wouldn't be the first time) and had screwed up. He decided that if John came back Black he'd chalk this up to a head game and go back to 'sleep'. After all, he had a whole world of body numbing pain to get back to.

God his life blew.

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Terry looked up from the crime that was Calculus and eyed the man who'd just come into the room. He looked excited, a rare emotion for Rex. Popsicle must have woken up. Which, Terry knew, wasn't a nice thing to say or even think but…well. He didn't see the fuss.

The old man and Richie had been working non-stop on a cure to whatever had made them put the guy on ice fifty years back for the past…fifty years like he was really important but, and maybe this was just Terry, he couldn't really get why.

He'd read the files on Flash and he wasn't that impressed. Okay, he'd been at it longer than a lot of other people and he'd saved the world more than most people and his 'death' had caused a few members of the old League to lose it but it seemed like a lot of trouble over one goofball of a man.

Rex had been watching over him ever since they thawed him out two weeks ago. …No, that wasn't accurate. Rex had been watching over Flash since he was a child and listening to stories told by Green Lantern and Hawk Girl since birth. …Maybe that explained the fascination some. What those two could have told Rex was beyond him but it must have been something to make the normally stoic man so happy.

Terry looked back at his homework before shutting the book. Visiting Mr. Popsicle would probably be more entertaining than math.

"He's awake." The old man said without so much as looking up from his newspaper. "Call Richie and Virgil."

For a moment neither he nor Rex moved, trying to figure out whom exactly was being ordered around this time. Bruce, since he signed Terry's checks and had played a big role in raising Rex, seemed to think of them as butlers as something. Terry had said it once and Bruce had snarked back 'Alfred was never half as annoying as you two, even when he was lecturing me.'

Bruce looked up then rolled his eyes in that long-suffering way of his. "Rex, please."

Rex nodded and, with a slight eyebrow raise in Terry's direction, headed off to find a phone. Bruce pushed himself up under the careful eye of his guard dog. He began walking in the direction of where the man was and, for lack of any other orders, Terry grabbed the man's cane and followed.

The walk was short but he could tell Bruce was winded, to say the least of the matter. Still he walked with his back straight and, not for the first time, Terry could see Batman in him. He guessed that was the point; showing Flash that not even fifty years could take Batman from Bruce Wayne.

Bruce pushed the door open and walked inside, apparently trusted Terry to turn the light on. Which he did. Bruce had sat in the chair next to the bed and the red-haired man blinked at him before looking over at Terry. Then he looked back at Bruce, head cocking to the side.

"Where am I?"

"Wayne Manor." Bruce said, sitting back in his seat. "You know I've never been one for lengthy explanations so I'll be blunt. Cadmus poisoned you with a two-facet substance. One a psychical level it literally ripped apart your DNA, slowly…unraveling you at the seams. One a psychic level it connected you with a telepath who tried to break down your mind to gain some of the secrets the League had managed to keep hidden.

"Beyond that they hoped that seeing you in that state, because it would have taken an estimated four months for you to die naturally, would drive the League to become the Lords, thus giving them license to take us out. There was, more or less, nothing anyone could do except watch. We tried to find a cure of course but the closest we ever came was slowing the effects, which wasn't what we wanted to do. It was J'onn who came up with the idea of putting you into stasis until an actual cure could be found. You've been that way for thirty-five years."

He blinked then frowned. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm not." Bruce snorted. "I don't joke. I don't have a sense of humor."

"That you're admitting to." The redhead muttered before going rigid. "Oh fuck. No way this is… Bruce? You're old."

"I prefer distinguished."

A slightly hysterical laugh was the response to that. The man pulled his legs up to met his chest before resting his chin on his knees. Terry half expected him to start rocking back and forth and muttering to himself. He didn't though.

"That's nearly fifty years. What the hell took so long?"

"It was devised by Lex Luthor, which made it difficult in and of itself. Beyond that curing you before the telepath had died would have meant you were still mentally vulnerable. The telepath has…died recently so it was safe."

"Oh." He nodded his understanding before reaching up and raking a hand through his hair. "Oh shit. Shitshitshit.Thirty-five years. I can't…this is worse than time travel. I can't…I can't go back."

Bruce shook his head. "No you can't. Wal-"

"Where is everyone? I know I was never mister popularity or anything but I'd expect…someone." He began to tremble and Terry arched an eyebrow. Ah. Here was the insane rocking. "Not that you aren't great and all but…I…am I shaking?"

"Yes." A voice right behind Terry made him yelp before turning to glare at the man behind him, who just smiled slightly before going serious. "It might be lingering nerve damage. We reversed most of the damage the virus caused to your body but I'll have Backpack do a scan on you. It could just be your power reacting to your emotions."

Flash's eyes had gone so wide they looked like they might roll out of his head. "Richie? Virgil? You…and…I need a drink. Highly alcoholic if you have it."

Virgil smiled wryly. "Do you have ID?"

Richie struck his partner solidly in the back of the head then smiled. "No drinking. Doctors orders. How do you feel?"

"Like I just woke up fifty years in the future but am still mysteriously twenty-four."

Richie nodded. "That sounds about right."

Flash didn't look quite as confident. He turned back to Bruce. "Question. There was a guy in here, before, who looked like John but was clearly not John-"

"Rex." Bruce interrupted. "John's son."

"He's white." Virgil choked and Richie blinked slowly. Terry scratched the back of his neck. Tact was obviously not this guy's area of expertise. If Flash noticed he didn't give any indication. "So John and Shayera…they got back together? He can't be Vixen's kid… I figured they had but I was-"

"They spent so much time together with you that it kind of…clicked." Virgil explained, moving around Terry to get into the room. Terry thought it best to just…hang back. This wasn't his business.

"Oh. Glad to be of service then." He seemed to brighten at that. "So where are they?"

Silence. Terry had experienced a few different kinds of silence in his not quite twenty years and this was, without a doubt, one of the worst silences ever. Bruce seemed to almost…deflate, Virgil looked at the ground and Richie's eyes drifted to the hem of his shirt, which he was tugging at almost nervously. Flash's brow furrowed in confusion as his eyes darted around to stare at each man in turn. Terry sighed, looking away as well.

Right at Rex, who was leaning against the wall. Terry hadn't know the older man was ever there but…well, there he was. He pushed off of the wall and walked into the room.

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Wally looked up at the guy…John's son. John and Shayera's son. Wow. There was a concept to make his head hurt. A lot. Thirty-Five years. Jesus…

Rex? What an unfortunate name for a kid…

He was tall and broad, like John had been, with an intense look that was pure Shayera, fierce and aware of all things. He was…intimidating. At least that was what Wally was going to attribute the fluttering in his stomach to.

"They're dead."

Wally's world, which had already been tittering dangerously on the edge of 'fucking crazy', took the final leap over the deep end. He was pretty sure his mouth dropped open and a strange sound, like fiercely rushing water, roared in his ears, like…he was underwater or something.

But Rex wasn't done yet. Damn it.

"Almost everyone is. The Watchtower…failed."

Wally passed out.

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Methinks that could have gone better.