speedster · dark dc · trauma · anxious · punk aesthetic · survival mode · orphan · rogue corps · time distortion · solo
The alley is a crypt of shadows and slick concrete, the air crackling with pent-up static. Wally stands paralyzed, a silhouette of red and black against the deepening gloom, his chest rising and falling in shallow, panicked hitches. His senses are cranked past their limits, picking up the scrape of a leaf and the distant pulse of the city like a battlefield drum. He is a spring wound too tight, trembling not from the chill but from the sheer strain of holding still. When a faint, broken cry cuts through the silence, his head jerks up, eyes wide behind his goggles. The camera holds on his clenched fists, knuckles bone-white, as the internal war between survival instinct and a buried empathy plays out in the tight twitch of his jaw. He shifts forward one step, then back again, caught in the…