Christmases Past for remdragon8 (I hope you like it. It has been quite a while since I've written fanfic so I'm a little rusty. Happy Christmas.)
Christmas was Wally’s favorite holiday.
As a kid, he loved to wake up early in the morning and run downstairs to see what was under the Christmas tree, especially when he opened his presents to find Flash memorabilia. The Flash was his favorite superhero. The whole family, including the Garricks, who were close family friends, would show up later in the day. They’d all sit around the living room eating and opening presents. The whole family would laugh at the sheer enthusiasm on Wally’s face whenever he opened up a present that happened to have a Flash insignia on it. Uncle Barry laughed especially hard. He wouldn’t understand it for a couple years, but when he finally figured out why exactly Barry thought his excitement was so funny, he didn’t even mind. He was too star struck to care.
After Wally became Kid Flash, he loved Christmas even more than before. It had all the food of Thanksgiving and all the presents of a birthday. Oh and the family company was good too. As always, they’d sit around the living room eating, laughing, and opening presents. Only now Uncle Barry and Wally usually had to leave halfway through to go take care of some Scrooge that thought he’d try to ruin Christmas. They’d come back and Christmas dinner would be waiting, even more satisfying than before. Nothing tastes better than eating a feast right after saving Christmas…well, their high speed metabolisms probably helped with that. Wally swore that nothing could possibly make his Christmases better.
Of course that was until he met the team and Artemis. If you had told him that the snarky archer girl would become part of his annual Christmas tradition, he would have laughed in your face, and then hit on you if you were a girl. But never the less, it happened, they were together by the first New Years with the team, and by the second Christmas, she had become an integral part of his life. She’d come over to his house to help decorate and put ornaments on the tree and then the next day he’d go to hers and do the same. When they finally moved in together, come Christmas time, they’d always return home, spending Christmas Eve with Paula and Christmas Day with his family. That was, at least, until Aqualad and Nightwing’s plan brought his world crashing down around him.
Christmas was Wally’s favorite holiday.
It was only March, not even a quarter of a year since the last time they celebrated Christmas, yet everything seemed so different now. Artemis was gone. Dead to the majority of the team, and Dick had decided to throw her into a situation where she could die for real. For all anyone knew, Aqualad could be a double spy. He blew up Mount Justice after all!
Possibly the weirdest occurrence of all though, was that he now had a first cousin once removed from the future that was stuck in the present. Everything was changing so quickly, and Wally wasn’t quite so sure he liked all of the changes.
He could only hope that this would all be over by the end of the year. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Bart; the kid had a lot of spunk. But if he had to choose, he’d much rather have his spunky ex-archer than another speedster. To his credit though, it wasn’t the 13-year-old’s fault that all of this was happening. He just had really bad timing.
Wally sighed and looked over at the boy who was talking to Jay and Joan, making animated gestures with his hands. He seemed to have won those two over within a couple hours of moving in with them. Something about the young redhead reminded Wally of himself when he first started the team. He had been so careless back then. But something told him that Bart wasn’t quite as fun-loving and innocent as he seemed.
Wally had dropped by on his way back from seeing Nightwing to check on them. He stood, said his goodbyes, received hugs from everybody and saw himself out. Bart would have been a great addition to their Christmas traditions if everything was still the way it used to be. If anything, Wally just wished that he could turn back time to when things were simpler. To when taking down baddies was fun. To when the team still felt whole, back before anyone had to die for The Cause.
At least he still had the Flash family to fall back on. They were able to make things seem not quite so bleak. The way things were now, they were what kept him going.
