Archive of Our Own ^beta

Bart arrived back home from the year 3000, opening the door to find the entire house empty, no stuff, no max. After realizing his grumpy mentor was no where to be found, young speedster was at first excited about being home alone. He could do whatever he wanted! But quickly he realized without any of his stuff in the house he couldn’t play any video games or do almost anything. First thing that came to his mind to fix this issue? going to his friend, Preston Lindsay’s house instead!

Preston was rightfully shocked to see Bart playing ‘starship battle drone’ on the console in his living room. “Bart? You came back? I thought you were going to live with your mom forever?” Preston asked, there was mixed feelings of confusion and delight about his best friend was back in Alabama (since Bart was supposed to be a million miles away or something like that.) “Didn't work out,” Bart shrugged eyes on Preston’s tv, only glancing at his friend.

“This is great!! It’s like you didn’t even leave! I can’t believe it!” Preston stood in front of the screen while Bart strained to look past him. “Believe it, move- awgh” Bart started, but wasn’t that mad about loosing his game anyways. Just putting down the controller, hearing Preston call to his had in the other room. “Dad! Can Bart stay for dinner?”

“Unless he has any other plans, i don’t see a problem with it,” Preston’s dad replied while picking up the landline phone from the wall. “I’ll just call your uncle max to tell him you’re staying over for a bit-“

uh oh. bart looked around, trying to quickly make a plan for that call to NOT go through. picking up one of the discs from the ground, tossing it at super speed to slice the cord connecting the phone to the wall before anyone could see. “Hello? Hello?? Huh, lines must be down somewhere..” Preston’s dad looked at the phone with his eyebrows furrowed together before continuing. “Oh well, you boys have fun.” (phew..)
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The next day, Preston practically dragged Bart to go back to school with him. Allen was a semi popular kid in the school thanks to his antics but still, the young speedster was honestly a bit nervous to see everyone (especially carol after everything..), but they all seemed glad to see him again (and he only had a brief awkward interaction with carol).unfortunately, he couldn’t get through 2nd period before disaster struck once more.

“Bart? You’re back?” the assistant principal, Randal Sheridan stopped him in the middle of the hall. Bart had spoken to him 2 or 3 times before and he was a pretty solid guy, but this time it felt different.

“Yes, I'm back, apparently it’s a national Holliday, so can we just let it drop?” Bart rolled his eyes, but not really at Sheridan, more just at the school as a whole. Bart didn’t really want to be in school right now though, he never did, but now the whole ‘missing max’ thing was sort of on his mind..

“Not hardly, you aren’t supposed to be here,” the assistant principal started, seeming a bit worried, though Bart only muttered “tell me about it..” before Mr. Sheridan continued “no, I mean it, i’m the one your uncle max saw yesterday to sign you out of this school, permanently.. something about looking towards your future?”

The kid looked a bit stunned for a moment before saying “..figure of speech?” As if that’d save it. “Bart this is serious,” the assistant principal started, looking over at Bart who’d looked away and dragged a hand down the side of his face as if he had a headache or was trying to find an excuse, “if you’re not supposed to be in *this* school you’re definitely supposed to be somewhere else.”

“No.. no, here’s fine, max.. he could explain it-“ “good to hear, I’ll run it by him after school, you still live at the same address right?” Mr. Sheridan cut Bart off, all bart could do was wish he could eat his words and
Mutter, “..some of us..”
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After the last bell, impulse ran to find the flash over in California, then later Jesse Quick all the way over in New York, trying to find someone who knew where max was, he even checked with Robin just in case, but he was busy. He needed to find max quickly or mr.Sheridan would find out- Oh snap, Mr. Sheridan was going to come to the house right now! he’d said it in the hall but had kind of forgotten he was on a time limit.

Impulse sped back down to Alabama, putting his civilian clothes back over the suit in a fraction of a second before skidding To a halt. He fixed his pushed back hair, and ran at a slightly more normal speed down to find the assistant principal, if he saw the house empty then- well- Bart didn’t think that far! But he knew it’d be bad. He found Mr.Sheridan walking down the sidewalk, going in the direction of Bart and Max's now deserted home.

Bart sprints (at normal speed) up to Mr. Sheridan but when he gets up to his side he can’t get a word out before the councilor speaks."Oh, there you are Bart,-“ he started though Bart blurted out “you CANT go to the house” while the 2 of them walked. His interruption. “Mind telling me..why?” He sounded like he didn’t believe him, ok, ok great.

“He’s.. got the flu! So you probably shouldn’t bother him, a- and also diarrhea, so, like… you really shouldn’t”

“Wow really? The flu and diarrhea?”

“Did I mention malaria??”

Mr. Sheridan pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes closed for a moment before looking over to Bart. “You don’t really think your hiding anything from me do you?”

“No…yes.. I don’t understand the question.” Bart responded while the palms of his hands pressed into his face.

“Doesn’t matter. I'm afraid I know the answer” the vice principal sighed, a tad irritated by Bart’s insistent attitude. It only increased when Bart stepped in front of Mr. Sheridan trying to physically stop him. the 2 of them were just next to the mailbox.

“Can’t we do this tomorrow?” Mr. Sheridan walked past him.

“Not with something more important than you seem to think is. I don’t know what’s going on exactly but if I don’t see your uncle max when I open this door, were marching straight to the child welfare office” that didn’t sound like a good thing.

Bart followed Mr. Sheridan up the steps. He watched as his hand held the door handle. For just a moment Bart thought Max would be there behind the door, somehow superspeed hole quick enough from wherever he was. Everything felt a lot more real after the door opened, like something pressed down against his shoulders. This wasn’t one of Max's tests, this wasn’t the simulation, this was real. And it felt a bit too real for Bart while he stared past Mr. Sheridan into the empty living room.

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Mr. Sheridan sighed and looked to his left to see Bart standing there staring into the empty house as if it was his first time really noticing Max wasn’t there. The look of confusion was not lost in the boys eyes and after a few seconds of silence there was a sigh from beside him. “I know this can be.. difficult for you to understand Bart, but you need to-“ Sheridan had a sorry look on his face as he took barts hand, but he was cut off when the speedster phased through it and retorted. “No!”

Bart blinked a few times, realizing what he did “I mean, uh.. I got to go to the bathroom” Bart made up an excuse with an awkward grin before running into the house and closing the door in the vice principals face. Bart quickly locked it and this of course was followed by a very upset school faculty member pounding on said door, yelling at Bart that this was ‘not a game’. Aw man, everything was reminding him of max..

Bart ran a hand through his hair and slid down to the floor, back to the door he’d locked. What was he going to do? The other speedsters were probably too busy with their own stuff, Preston’s house was out of the question since he was probably going to get caught, and he couldn’t stay here since he’d DEFINITELY be caught!! What had he gotten himself into.. if only.. no, there was no time to dwell on it here. He had to do the one thing he knew how, the one thing he was made to do, run.

Instantly, the boy was in his in his hero costume and bolting out the back door. Bart wasn’t exactly sure where he was going, something Max has been trying to teach him for the past few months he’d been in the 20th century, where he was going, or to think about it. Whatever, it was the same thing right now- or, it didn’t matter, Impulse wasn’t sure, just going, phasing through whatever was in his way until everything around him was nothing more than a blur of colors.

As soon as impulse stopped phasing through things and crashed into an alleyway panting for air, he didn’t know how long he’d been running, had to have been at most an hour and a half. Even though his attention span was shot and usually he couldn’t do anything for more than a minute, running was different, he could run forever, well, until he looses track of his phasing and slams into something like he did just now.
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Bart ran his hands through his hair,sliding down against a brick wall.. what was he going to do? If the others couldnt help when he was looking for max, they wouldn’t be able to find some place for him to stay..he felt like Wally hated his guts, mom was in the future, max was missing, he didn’t even know where grandma iris was anymore… he couldn’t tell his friends, news had probably already spread that he was missing if it really had been that long since he started running.. if he went to Preston again Preston’s dad would probably call the school or the ‘child welfare office’ thing Mr.Sheridan was talking about, Bart wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but it didn’t sound good, anything with ‘office’ in it either meant it was boring or that he was in trouble, neither of which anyone liked.

impulse , knees up against his chest as he started to partially phase through the wall behind him (which he didn’t realize he was vibrating through). He didn’t know what city he was in, he didn’t want to check either. He was alone, he’d always be alone after this, max was the only one who’d wanted to take care of Bart besides his mom, and Bart had been so.. he shouldn’t have gone to the future, he should’ve just stayed with max- or maybe the other way around. His eyes were blurry and unfocused as he stared ahead, but he finally snapped out of it When he felt tears gather in his goggles, taking them off to wipe his eyes.

Bart wasn’t sure where to go from this. He might just have to carry on..nothing else to do.. he got up from the wall, talking a deep breath. He always heard people say that when someone was freaking out but it didn’t Feel like it helped.

It.. was fine, it was going to be fine. He just needed..to..listen? Yes, that sounds right. He needs to listen to max, even though he’s not here, he needs to.. well wait, what would max say to do? Keep saving people.. he guessed. He also guessed he had a lot of work to do looking out at the grimy city.
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