Chapter Text
The morning came quietly — too quietly — like the apartment itself was holding its breath.
Gray light seeped through the blinds in dull, uneven bands, dust motes hanging motionless in the air as if even they had decided not to move. The rain had passed sometime before dawn, leaving the world washed out and cold, the kind of cold that clung to skin instead of settling in the air. Somewhere in the building, a pipe ticked once, then fell silent again.
Dick stood in front of the window with a mug gone cold in his hands, staring at the latch as if he looked long enough, it might explain itself.
The metal was scuffed, bent just enough to catch the light wrong. Not broken. Not clean. The damage sat in an uncomfortable in-between — too subtle to scream danger, too deliberate to ignore. Rain streaks had dried into pale lines down the glass, and for a moment, Dick’s reflection fractured across them, his face warped and unfamiliar.
The footprints were gone. Whatever moisture had tracked them in had evaporated, faded, vanished into the grain of the hardwood like they’d never existed at all. No smudge. No outline. Just floorboards that looked exactly the way they always had.
Too clean.
The latch still looked wrong — stressed, fatigued — but not enough.
Not broken enough to prove anything.
Not enough to justify a phone call he didn’t want to make.
Behind him, Jason hovered in the doorway, restless energy coiled tight beneath his skin. He hadn’t slept either — Dick could hear it in the sharpness of his breathing, the way his weight shifted too often, like his body was still waiting for the next impact.
“So that’s it?” Jason said finally, voice low but edged now, anger bleeding through the worry. “We just… what. Pretend it didn’t happen?”
Dick didn’t turn. The mug trembled slightly in his grip before he set it down. “There’s nothing to report.”
Jason let out a humorless laugh that bounced too loudly off the walls. “There were footprints, Dick.”
“And now there aren’t,” Dick shot back. “No signs of forced entry. No witnesses. No cameras caught anything. What exactly do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say someone was inside this building,” Jason snapped. “Because someone was.”
Silence dropped between them, thick and brittle. The hum of the fridge felt suddenly too loud, the clock on the wall ticking with slow, deliberate emphasis — like it was counting something down.
Dick dragged a hand over his face, exhaustion pulling at every movement. “It could’ve been a dream overlap. Charlotte had a nightmare. Ellie woke up crying. We were all exhausted.” He swallowed. “Stress does weird things to perception. Especially when you’re not sleeping.”
Jason stared at him, eyes sharp and unblinking. “You don’t believe that.”
Dick’s throat worked. “I believe we don’t have proof.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No,” Dick said quietly, voice tightening. “But it’s the difference between protecting my kids and dragging them through police lights and questions I don’t have answers to.”
Jason paced once, boots whispering against the floor, then stopped short. He wanted to push — Dick could see it — but something in his expression shifted. This wasn’t just stubbornness.
This was fear wearing control like armor.
At the kitchen table, Charlotte sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, hands folded neatly in her lap. She hadn’t said a word since waking up. Not when Ellie babbled at her feet. Not when Jason dropped a spoon in the sink.
Her gaze stayed fixed on the tabletop — anywhere but the window.
When Dick reached for a bowl from the cabinet beside it, she flinched, shoulders jerking like she’d been startled from a bad dream.
“Charlie?” he asked softly.
She shook her head too fast. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t.
Ellie toddled near the baby gate, patting at it with one hand, her expression unusually serious. “Lock,” she said again — not playful this time.
Then, when Dick took a step toward the window, her face scrunched up and she shook her head hard.
“No,” she added. Small. Firm. Absolute.
The word hit him like a blow.
Dick froze.
He looked at Charlotte — withdrawn, watchful, already learning which parts of the room to avoid.
At Ellie — suddenly wary of a space she’d never feared before.
Two children already adapting.
Already mapping danger.
His chest tightened painfully.
This was worse than a break-in.
This was fear settling in, quietly, learning the shape of their lives.
Dick turned away from the window and crouched in front of them both, forcing his voice steady even as his pulse thudded in his ears. “Hey,” he murmured. “You’re okay. Both of you. Daddy’s got you.”
Ellie leaned into his chest without hesitation. Charlotte hesitated — just a fraction — before doing the same, her grip tight, almost desperate.
Jason watched from the doorway, anger dimming into something colder, heavier.
Whatever had come through that window didn’t need to break the glass again.
It had already left a mark.
Charlotte didn’t like how the apartment felt anymore.
It wasn’t loud or scary the way bad things usually were. It was quieter than that. Like a room after someone left, when the air still remembered their shape.
She noticed it the moment she stepped out of her bedroom.
The hallway felt… different. Not colder. Not darker. Just touched.
Charlotte padded carefully across the floor, bare feet silent against the wood. She kept her eyes down, counting the seams between the boards the way she sometimes did when her thoughts got too loud. Three steps. Four.
Five.
The window waited at the end of the room.
She slowed without meaning to.
Her chest tugged — not pain, not fear — more like the pull you felt when you forgot something important and didn’t know what it was yet. The closer she got, the stronger it became. A hum under her skin. A pressure behind her eyes.
Charlotte stopped a few feet away.
The air near the glass felt heavy. Not thick — full.
She swallowed.
It wasn’t bad.
That was the strangest part.
When she thought of bad things, they felt sharp. Loud. Like stepping on broken glass. This wasn’t like that at all. This felt… sad.
Empty. Lonely in a way that made her throat ache even though she didn’t know why.
Like someone knocking without hands.
Charlotte hugged her arms around herself.
She didn’t want to touch the window. She didn’t think she was supposed to. But her fingers twitched anyway, lifting just a little — close enough that her skin prickled, like standing too near static.
For a heartbeat, she thought she felt something push back.
Not pressure.
Recognition.
The hum under her skin sped up for a second — not louder, just faster — then settled again.
“I’m not scared,” she whispered, unsure who she was saying it for.
The feeling lingered — then softened, like it was listening.
The curtain shifted, just slightly, though the air was still.
Charlotte backed away quickly, heart pounding now, and retreated to the living room where Ellie was stacking blocks with fierce concentration and Jason sat nearby, pretending not to watch her too closely.
She didn’t say anything.
She didn’t know how to.
Later, after breakfast dishes were forgotten and the TV murmured low, Charlotte curled up on the floor with a piece of paper and a marker. Drawing helped when words didn’t work.
Her hand moved without thinking.
A window. A stick figure outside it. One arm lifted, palm pressed flat to the glass.
She paused.
Then added lightning — not jagged and angry, but curling around the figure like it belonged there. Like it was part of them.
She stared at the picture, something twisting in her chest.
Jason crouched beside her without a word.
“What’d you draw, kid?”
Charlotte shrugged, suddenly unsure. “I don’t know. Just… how it feels.”
Jason studied the page longer than she expected. His jaw tightened, but his voice stayed light. “That how it feels to you?”
She nodded.
“Is it scary?”
Charlotte shook her head. “No. Just… sad.”
Jason didn’t answer right away.
He folded the paper carefully and set it on the counter, out of Dick’s line of sight. His hand lingered on it for a second longer than necessary.
“Hey,” he said gently. “You did good.”
Charlotte looked up at him. “Am I in trouble?”
Jason huffed softly. “Nah. But you might be smarter than the rest of us.”
She didn’t know if that was a joke.
But as she glanced back toward the hallway — toward the window — she felt it again.
Waiting — quiet, patient, and unbearably sad.
Jason waited until Dick took the girls to the back bedroom.
It wasn’t planned like a betrayal. It was instinct — the same one that made him wake at unfamiliar sounds, that made his hand drift to a weapon without thinking. The same one that had kept him alive when trusting people got you killed.
He moved fast.
The cameras were small. Discreet. Easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them — one above the front door frame, one angled toward the window, another tucked near the hallway corner. No feeds routed through Dick’s devices. Jason’s. Only his.
Then he made the call.
Not a name. Not directly. Just a careful, anonymized inquiry sent through channels. Dick would never touch.
Seeing unusual residual patterns. Possible non-corporeal contact. Speed-adjacent signatures. Any similar cases lately?
He didn’t like how quickly the response came.
Yes.
And you’re not the only one asking.
Jason closed the laptop, jaw tight. The apartment felt smaller all at once, the air pressing in like it was waiting for something to happen.
That was when Dick walked back into the living room and stopped dead.
His gaze went straight to the corner above the window.
Then to the faint reflection in the glass.
Then to Jason.
“What did you do?”
Jason didn’t pretend. “Installed cameras.”
The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut. Dick’s heart was still pounding too fast for a room that hadn’t moved.
“You went behind my back,” Dick said quietly.
Too quietly. “In my house.”
“Our house,” Jason corrected. “And yeah. I did.”
Dick’s shoulders squared. His voice
hardened. “You don’t get to make those calls. Not about my kids.”
Jason stepped forward, just enough to meet him head-on. His jaw worked like he was holding something back. “Someone broke a latch. Left child-sized footprints. Your daughter is drawing figures at the window and saying the air feels wrong. That’s not nothing, Dick.”
“You think I don’t see that?” Dick snapped.
“You think I’m not already doing everything I can?”
“Then why are you pretending it didn’t happen?”
Dick’s jaw clenched. “Because panic helps no one.”
“Denial helps even less.”
The words landed like a slap.
Dick turned away, dragging a hand through his hair. “You reached out to someone, didn’t you.”
Jason didn’t answer.
That was answer enough.
“You went to her,” Dick said. “Or someone like her. Someone I didn’t choose.”
“I went to someone who understands weird,” Jason shot back. “Because you’re too busy pretending this is a lock-and-key problem.”
“This is my family,” Dick said, spinning back, anger cracking through now. “You don’t get to decide how I protect them.”
Jason’s voice rose, raw and fierce. “I’m not undermining you as a parent. I’m backing you up because you’re drowning and pretending you’re not!”
“I am handling it.”
“No,” Jason said, pointing toward the hallway. “You’re managing it. And there’s a difference.”
Dick stepped closer, eyes flashing. “You crossed a line.”
Jason didn’t back up. “I crossed it because someone already crossed yours.”
The room vibrated with it — all the things neither of them wanted to say.
Dick’s voice broke, just slightly. “You don’t trust me.”
Jason exhaled hard. “That’s not it.”
“Sounds like it.”
Jason’s hands curled into fists. “You’re acting
like this is about control,” he said, each word deliberate, dangerous. “It’s about survival.”
Silence.
From down the hall, Ellie babbled — soft, unaware. Charlotte’s footsteps followed, hesitant, like she could feel the storm without hearing it.
Dick’s expression shifted then — anger bleeding into something worse. Fear.
“You don’t get to scare them,” he said quietly.
“I’m trying to keep your kids alive,” Jason snapped back.
The words hung between them, heavy and unfixable.
Neither man noticed the faint shimmer at the edge of the window.
Not the way the air rippled once — like something listening.
The Speed Force warped around him, no longer roaring—shuddering.
Wally stumbled mid-run, catching himself as the current twisted unevenly beneath his feet.
The colors bent too sharply now, snapping back like overstretched wire. Something was wrong.
No.
Something was clear.
He wasn’t haunting them.
The realization cut through the chaos with painful clarity. He hadn’t followed them. Hadn’t lingered. Hadn’t crossed over.
He was bleeding through.
Moments of emotional intensity tore thin places in the space between here and there—fear, desperation, love pulled taut enough to bruise reality itself. He wasn’t choosing when it happened. He was slipping through the cracks they didn’t know they were making.
The handprint—
Wally’s chest tightened as the memory surfaced.
It hadn’t been deliberate.
He’d panicked.
He remembered it now: the echo of Dick pacing the apartment in the dark, checking the locks again and again like repetition could keep the world intact. The girls asleep—small, safe, unbearably fragile.
Don’t scare them, he’d thought.
Don’t touch anything.
But the Speed Force had surged.
And so had he.
“I didn’t mean to,” Wally whispered, his voice splintering and folding back on itself. “I just— I needed to know you were real.”
The current pressed tighter, light peeling from his arms in flickering strands. His edges blurred, threatening to unravel completely.
He slowed.
Focused.
He could feel them now—not clearly, not fully—but enough. Dick’s tension thrummed like a live wire. Jason’s anger burned sharp and protective. Charlotte’s awareness brushed against the world like she could sense where it hurt.
And Ellie—small and bright and loud in all the ways that mattered.
Wally reached again.
Not with panic this time.
With intent.
He pushed everything he had into the attempt—not to cross, not to appear, not to be seen. Just to touch. To anchor himself to the truth that they were still there.
The glass didn’t crack.
It vibrated.
A low hum rippled outward, deep and resonant, like a struck bell. The Speed Force screamed in protest, light flaring violently—but the connection held for half a heartbeat longer than before.
His bones rang with it.
In a Blüdhaven apartment, a glass on the kitchen counter rattled once.
Just once.
Then the sound was gone.
Jason froze.
Dick looked up.
Silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
The connection snapped shut, and Wally collapsed to one knee as the storm swallowed him again. He sucked in a breath that wasn’t air and laughed weakly, exhaustion trembling through him.
“Okay,” he murmured, pressing his hand to the ground as the Speed Force raged on.
“Okay. That’s… something.”
He wasn’t home.
But he wasn’t lost.
And next time—next time—he wouldn’t panic.
The apartment should have been calm.
Late afternoon light slanted through the windows in soft gold bands, dust motes drifting lazily through the air. Charlotte sat at the table coloring, her crayon moving slower than usual. Ellie toddled nearby, dragging a stuffed giraffe across the rug with determined grunts. Jason leaned against the counter, half-listening to the hum of the building settling around them.
For a few fragile hours, nothing happened.
Then—
BEEP.
The window alarm chirped once, —sharp and sudden, the sound needling straight into Dick’s spine.
Dick’s head snapped up. Charlotte’s crayon skidded across the page, leaving a jagged line. Ellie froze mid-step, then dropped into a squat, hands pressed flat to the floor like she was bracing.
Jason moved first.
He crossed the room in three silent strides, hand already at his side as he checked the window. The latch was intact. The glass unbroken. The street outside looked exactly as it should—cars passing, someone walking a dog, nothing out of place.
“Sensor glitch?” Dick asked, but his voice lacked conviction.
Jason didn’t answer yet. He reset the alarm, eyes scanning every inch of the frame.
Nothing.
They were still standing there when the motion sensor in the hallway tripped.
A soft click.
A brief chime.
Empty.
The hall yawned back at them, untouched. No movement. No shadows out of place. The nursery door stood half-open, just as it always did.
Ellie whimpered, backing toward Dick until her shoulders brushed his leg, shaking her head. “No,” she said firmly. Then again, louder. “No.”
Charlotte had gone very still.
Her gaze drifted—not to the hall, not to the window—but to the space between them, like she was listening to something no one else could hear.
“It feels like before,” she said quietly.
Dick’s chest tightened. “Before what?”
She swallowed. “Like the house remembers.”
That did it.
The lie he’d been holding together with sheer will finally cracked.
Dick dragged a hand down his face, exhaustion carving deeper lines into him than the day had any right to leave. His eyes swept the apartment—locks, windows, walls—like he was seeing them all for the first time.
“Something’s happening,” he said.
Not angry.
Not defensive.
Just tired. Honest.
Jason looked at him for a long moment. No smugness. No victory. No I told you so.
He just nodded.
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “It is.”
Outside, the city kept moving.
Inside, the apartment held its breath.
The apartment had gone strangely still.
Not the heavy silence of fear, not the brittle quiet of waiting—but something held, suspended—like the air just before a storm realizes it’s coming.
Charlotte sat at the table, her crayon forgotten in her hand. Ellie leaned against Dick’s leg, fingers knotted in his jeans, her thumb tucked anxiously into her mouth. Jason stood near the counter, arms folded, watching both of them with the kind of focus he usually reserved for incoming fire.
Charlotte spoke without looking up.
“Dad?”
Dick’s attention snapped to her instantly.
“Yeah, kiddo?”
She hesitated. Then, carefully—like she was afraid the words themselves might run away—
“Do you know someone who runs really fast?”
The room went cold.
Dick froze mid-breath. Not startled—paralyzed. Like his body had recognized something his mind wasn’t ready to name.
Jason felt it too. A sharp drop in his gut, instinct screaming that’s not a coincidence.
Charlotte finally looked up.
“There’s red light,” she said softly. “And wind. Like… like when a storm’s coming, but it doesn’t hurt. He tries not to be scary.”
Ellie whimpered once, pressing closer to Dick.
“Fast,” she murmured. “Fast.”
Charlotte nodded, encouraged. “Yeah. Fast. And sad.” Her brow creased, small fingers curling into her sleeve. “He feels lonely. Like he’s knocking but doesn’t know how loud he’s allowed to be.”
Dick’s throat closed.
Memories hit all at once—laughter too loud for enclosed spaces, footsteps that never quite stopped moving, red blur streaking across rooftops with a grin sharp enough to split the night open.
Jason’s voice came out low, almost a warning. “Dick.”
Dick didn’t look at him.
He stared at Charlotte like she’d just spoken a name he’d learned how to carry in silence.
“…Does he say anything?” Dick asked quietly.
Charlotte shook her head. “Not with words.”
Then, after a beat: “But he wants you to remember him.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
When Dick finally spoke the name, it barely made it past his lips.
“Wally.”
The apartment lights flickered.
Just once.
Not violent. Not broken.
More like a breath being let out.
Somewhere deep in the walls, glass gave the faintest tremor—not cracking, not shattering.
Listening.