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This wasn’t, like . . . on purpose or anything.
This definitely wasn’t on purpose.
“You’re really small,” Bart observes, staring blankly at the person in front of him who is, in fact, very small, and is also staring blankly at him. He guesses that makes sense, really.
Since they have the exact same eyes and all, he means.
Although it’s not like he and Thad have ever really had all that much in common or anything, and they’ve definitely never really agreed on anything, and—
This is so, so grifin’ weird.
Bart drops into a crouch to peer more closely at this kid who isn’t Inertia yet, and the kid stares back at him. He is really, really small. Like . . . small. Irey and Jai are bigger, definitely. Traya and Damian are way bigger. So’re Otho and Osul, he’s pretty sure? Basically, like, literally every single kid he knows is bigger than this not-Inertia-yet one is.
So that’s weird too, yeah.
“How old are you right now?” Bart asks, squinting consideringly at not-Inertia-yet. Not-Inertia-yet doesn’t say anything; doesn’t shift or move or speak at all. He just keeps staring at him.
Bart wonders if not-Inertia-yet hates his guts yet. Probably, he guesses. Why wouldn’t he?
Also, hating his guts would explain why the kid isn’t talking to him and isn’t moving or anything and is just staying tucked back into the corner of the VR chamber Bart actually probably should not have cracked into, come to think, and—
He had a good reason to crack into the VR chamber, okay? Like—definitely he did.
Or, like . . . not, exactly.
Maybe it was more, uh—an impulse.
Little on the nose there, Bart guesses, even if nobody even calls him that anymore, and rests his chin in his hands as he waits for not-Inertia-yet to say, like . . . literally anything whatsoever. Tim always says if you stop talking and just wait, the person you’re talking to will usually feel compelled to fill the silence and be likelier to tell you stuff or let something slip.
Though that sounds real sprockin’ boring, and even a this-sized version of Thad is probably way more patient than he is, so like, maybe waiting him out isn’t gonna work.
Yeah, probably not, Bart realizes.
He should leave, he guesses. He’s probably just freaking out not-Inertia-yet, and not-Inertia-yet has, like, a thousand years or whatever of him-hating and all to get through, and messing with the timeline isn’t cool and all, Grandpa Barry has very seriously and thoroughly proven that, and definitely so has "Grandpa" Zoom. Like—very, very definitely so has Zoom.
And Thad . . .
Hm, Bart thinks, and stares a little more intently at not-Inertia-yet, and gets stared back at just the same.
He wonders how long he’s been here.
He wonders how long he’s still gonna be here.
Not-Inertia-yet looks about . . . six or seven, maybe. Maybe? Bart’s not, like, super-great with ages, but well, in his defense, a lot of people he knows are very weirdly-aged or weirdly-aging or, like . . . really just not the age they look or act or think like, like—at all, basically? Just between various other Flashes and having had friends like Kon and Slobo and all and also just his own personal ping-pong of both an aging and unaging experience, it’s all kinda nebulous in his head?
He’s technically nine-ish, Bart’s pretty sure. Like, after doing the math and all. But he definitely doesn’t feel nine-ish, and physically he’s more like nineteen-ish—again, but not at all like last time—and really it’s all so complicated that it’s not worth worrying about the details unless it’s, like, a secret identity situation or a weird temporal emergency or a magic-related technicality or whatever. So like, basically never.
. . . okay the temporal emergencies and magical technicalities do come up pretty often, but—
Wait. Right. He’s doing something right now.
. . . or, uh. Not doing something.
Timeline stuff really isn’t stuff to mess with, though, so being here at all is already an awful lot of “something” to be doing, and specifically something that Bart knows he needs to stop doing, like—immediately, pretty much. Like, even sooner than immediately. He needs to stop being here retroactively, in fact. The only acceptable way to ever actually mess with the timeline would be to just make coming here to begin with unhappen completely, in fact.
But not-Inertia-yet is really, really small, and Bart doesn’t know how long he’s still gonna be in this VR chamber.
So like . . .
It’s weird, sort of, looking at not-Inertia-yet before everything he’s done.
Looking at Thad before everything he’s done.
You got me killed once, Bart doesn’t say, and also doesn’t say anything about how many times Thad's tried to kill him on top of that, or the one time that he just . . . hadn’t, and had just walked away instead.
Bart doesn’t really understand why he’d done that, that time. Not with everything he’s done since, anyway, or really all that much of what he'd done before either.
Though Max was there, that time, so . . . yeah. Things were always different when Max was there.
Obviously, since things are different without Max here.
And who knows anyway, with Thad.
“Yeah, you’re definitely more patient than me,” Bart says, because Thad always has been; because this VR chamber is both way too big for him—since he’s supposed to do some more growing before it gets cracked, Bart guesses—and way too small for anyone.
It’s kid-sized, he means. Not big enough for an adult; not meant for an adult.
Bart is, technically, an adult himself. Like, physically and mentally and physiologically, more or less. And he’s not a big guy, for sure, but he was a whole lot smaller at fourteen.
And, well—so was Thad.
And right now he’s even smaller than that.
“I can’t sprock with timeline stuff. It always goes nass-up,” Bart tells the kid, except the fact that he even said that to a kid, no matter who that kid’s gonna grow up and be . . . a kid who right now’s all locked-up and stuck growing up in a VR chamber that isn’t even big enough for him to actually grow up in . . .
Yeah, Bart’s definitely about to sprock with timeline stuff.
So like—sorry if he breaks reality again or whatever, he guesses, and then he reaches out to yank off the last of the sensors and wires and grifing restraints all wrapped up around this tiny, blank-faced version of one of the worst people he knows. The kid doesn’t react. Doesn’t do a single thing but keep staring at him just as blankly as he has been this whole grifing time.
He’s gonna be the Thad that Bart knows, someday. He’s gonna be Inertia, someday.
But Bart cares about that about as much as he does the sanctity of the timestream, which is both “way too much” and “not at all”, so sprockin’ fuck it.