PROLOGUE
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS, PT. I

February, 2008

𝕱OR THE PAST THIRTY-FOUR YEARS, Mrs. Vargas of Blue Valley Elementary's esteemed staff has been assigning her first-grade students the exact same homework task. A rite of passage for every child that passes through the school's halls, it is often the first homework assignment these children ever receive.

Draw a picture of home.

Mrs. Vargas, bless her soul, believes the task is easy enough to complete, for there are only so many kinds of families in Blue Valley, and these kinds of people, these kinds of children, breed the same kind of answers: a house, a fence. A heart, a home.

Occasionally, a pet. (Dogs, Mrs. Vargas has found, more than cats.)

The woman has hundreds of these drawings, perhaps even thousands. Her decades-long tenure at Blue Valley Elementary has been immortalised in illustration; her classroom is plastered with picture after picture, each one without fail depicting a house in bright, wax-crayon colour. Generation after generation has contributed to Mrs. Vargas' walls. The now white-haired woman has taught half the town, becoming a common thread in the tapestry of thousands of lives.

You can ask any Blue Valley native about that assignment—about their home. They'll smile fondly and reminisce, if only for a moment. In a town like this, everything and everyone eventually connects. Genealogy is not found in blood, but instead traced through stories told between friends and memories shared. Mrs. Vargas' first-grade class is one of these stories, these memories, and so is her assignment.

Draw a picture of home. First, you must know what—and where—home is.

The easy answer is your house—this is the answer Mrs. Vargas often expects when she asks that question, and it is the answer she often receives. There are only so many ways a child can draw a house. You know the sitch: a simple box with a triangular roof filled with loopy lines serving as tiles. There's a four-panelled window—or two—and a door, and maybe a picket fence if the child in question has artistic tendencies (or well-to-do parents.) There are always variations in colour—unrealistic ones—like blue walls, pink doors, purple roofs, but underneath the embroidery, the message can be found. This is home—at least, this is what I want it to be.

This is home. This is mine.

The assignment is easy. After all, it is for children. It is a simple question—where is home?—and it should have a simple answer.

Lark Lennox has many talents—singing, figure skating, saving the day. Somewhere in that litany is her ability to make things needlessly complicated.

She has never known when, nor how, to stop.

Technically speaking, home is the elementary school's titular Blue Valley, a small town of four thousand in north-eastern Nebraska about twenty-five miles out from Sioux City in South Dakota. Founded in 1862 by a Connecticut settler named Cornelius Blue, there wasn't much to say about Blue Valley. It was cut into two, nearly-even halves by a railroad constructed shortly after the town was founded; the railroad connected Blue Valley first to its twin, Claire—an agricultural township a half-hour away, founded a few years earlier in 1858—then to the rest of the state. Blue Valley and Claire, sisters stranded underneath the endless sky, held to each other by these tracks, those ribbon-like arteries pumping life through the plains that both towns had combatted in the process of their creation.

Of the two, Blue Valley was the town that still had its pulse; it was the heart of the county and, unlike its sister, it was not so obviously cursed. Claire, though mere miles away, had been plagued by vicious storms ever since its founding. Storm season was not something to spectate, or study, but instead something to survive. Until the year nobody did.

In 2000, a tri-state weather system cleared through Claire, killing hundreds of people as well as destroying thousands of dollars of farming equipment and crops—leaving nothing behind and no-one left to mourn. No tracks, no veins, no heart, could keep Claire alive. The storm had missed Blue Valley by inches, though, according to Lark Lennox, there was very little to miss.

In 2008, she rides her bicycle through town, its well-worn wheels eating up the distance between her family's flower shop and the housing subdivision set across the railroad tracks and up into the valley. The sound of the road beneath her is like a horse's hooves, a thud thud thud upon poorly maintained bitumen and the occasional divot in the path.

Her bicycle knows this route well—so does Lark and so do her knees, still scarred silver in splotches from the perils of the journey she has made so many times before. A knight on her dashing (second-hand) steed, she presses onward, peddling faster than she knows she should.

But this story has been told before, and Lark knows how it ends. As per usual, she is hasty to reach the happily ever after.

Desperate.

Blue Valley, a less-than-ideal backdrop for her fairytale, is suffocating. One end of town subsides into the very valley that gives it its name; the other is crept upon by the plains, that great stretch of grassed land that crawls for miles and miles under the static-filled sky. Though Lark's father—Lee Lennox, one of the Valley's two florists—has made his business in the language of flowers, he knows the names of each and every plant that calls the plains home. These names he has taught to his daughter. Another one of her talents is a near-eidetic memory and so, she recalls every single one.

Sorghastrum nutans (indiangrass), Andropogon gerardi (big bluestem), Panicum virgatum (switchgrass). To a young Lark, these sounded less like grasses and more like monsters, ones with thorn-sharpened teeth and claws determined to tear to shreds the safety of home. Lark was older now, better at staying on the path—ignoring the danger and darkness of the metaphorical woods, she instead sought the mythology that wended and wove through its trees. Still, the childhood fear remained. That tallgrass prairie was extinct in the rest of the state. The country, even; if anything, it was shrinking. But still Lark, with her imagination as endless as those plains, was convinced that they grew every year, creeping closer and closer to civilisation with the intent to consume it.

Not that there was much to consume. In Lark's opinion, all her town has that is appealing is the university. Blue Valley College was a technical school that attracted a few thousand students every academic year. Though not quite as expansive as other state schools (or as well-funded, for that matter) BVC still welcomed a steady stream of agriculturally and meteorologically-minded students. Lark's own mother, Aarthi, ran the numerical weather prediction and modelling research team at the school. She gave the occasional lecture too, drawing crowds from the states that comprised Tornado Alley and beyond.

Still, there were very few things that brought people to Blue Valley. Realistically, Lark could count such reasons on one hand. She decided some time ago that it wasn't just BVC's sought-out ag programs that drew people to her town, nor her mother's academic fame. It was the novelty of Blue Valley, a town stuck in time.

Blue Valley had seen some degree of modernisation over the years—like the new shopping mall just off Main Street, or the singular sporting complex that boasted Lark's beloved ice-skating rink. But those buildings, however shiny and new, were not enough to break the spell that had been cast upon the valley, the spell that kept everything as it was and not as it could be. The year could have been 1862; the world could have been nothing but plains, skies, and the solemn threat of storms.

For Lark Lennox, this was not nearly enough.

This was, however, home.

But it wasn't Blue Valley that Lark drew for Mrs. Vargas when asked, where is home? It wasn't Main Street; it wasn't the Blue Valley library, or the elementary school, or the high school, or any of the town's four petrol stations. It wasn't the sporting complex, nor was it the attached ice-skating rink. It wasn't even where Lark lived—the apartment above her father's shop, small but ever-saturated with the sweet scent of both the flowers downstairs and the spices in the kitchen that brought forth the beauty of the country her mother once called home.

Where is home?

Lark and her steed skid to a halt outside 163 Wells Road. In the first grade, she lacked the artistic ability to accurately portray the West family home (you know the sitch) but she had tried her best, which Mrs. Vargas had assured her was more than enough. Lark's portrayal was questionable, in the sense that the house she had drawn looked nothing like the house that stood before her now: her version of things saw the house painted blue. Lark considered this warped rendering—the West residence, though not painted the same shade her younger self had wanted it to be, was home.

If Blue Valley was not, as Lark believed it to be, frozen in time, then it was perpetually falling behind it—and so, the styles and stipulations of decades since past reached the small Nebraskan town years after the excitement of those trends faded. House number 163, as well as most of the houses in the Valley Side subdivision, was built in the image of a modern mid-century home, complete with oversized windows, exposed stone walls, and a sharply-angled roof. The back of the two-storey house opened onto a sprawling green lawn; standing here now, Lark could see it peeking around the corner of Mary West's gratuitously-windowed kitchen. Though Wally had recently traded afternoons in the grass for superhero training sessions with his uncle in Central City, Lark could remember every moment she had ever spent in that yard. Her mind took her back, as it often did—

—Back to the first barbecue the West family ever invited the Lennoxes to. It reads like a script:

EXT. WEST FAMILY HOME – BACKYARD – AFTERNOON

            The scent of beef burger patties wafts through the air. The parental units chatter amongst themselves, discussing work, the weather, the like. The focus is on the children. There is laughter, as ANDREW and BRANDON LENNOX pass a football between themselves. WALLY follows them like a puppy.

WALLY
Here! Over here!

            Wally tries and, being a foot or two shorter than both the older boys, fails to intercept the ball.

Lark could remember crying that night, the snotty tears of a five-year-old girl who couldn't get her way. Brushing those tears aside, she moves through the memories like individual frames of film, splicing together a movie she can bear to watch the whole way through.

Next, the New Year's Eve that prefaced Lark's sixth birthday. Rather inconveniently, Lark was born on January first, meaning that year after year her life was overshadowed by the resolutions of a billion others'. That year in particular, however, Wally had insisted that the Lennoxes come over to celebrate, counting them off at the door as if he had a Lennox family quota to meet: Aarthi, Lee, Andrew, Brandon, Lark.

Wally had also insisted that the fireworks that split open the sky in screaming colour were not in celebration for the new year and all it would bring—no, of course not! They had to be for Lark! Everything had to be for Lark.

Everything.

Lark holds these memories like a card close to her chest and begins up the driveway of 163, pedalling her bicycle slowly as if the pavers are in fact a drawbridge she must remain balanced upon if she seeks to cross safely. The tower in sight, Lark dismounts her steed and guides it around the back of the house. The driveway fades into neatly-trimmed grass, but Lark feels the dip, the tire-treaded ditch where her and Wally's bikes have dug into the dirt a thousand times before.

Abandoning her trusty mount for but a moment, Lark approaches the glass door that opens from the kitchen into the back yard. She stops; through the glass she can see them. Mary and Rudy West at it once again—shouting at each other, screaming, as if no-one, not Lark Lennox, not their son in his bedroom upstairs, could hear them.

There is another memory in this backyard, one Lark usually keeps from the final cut—another barbecue, a few years ago now. Wally was ten, Lark nine; she was falling just a little bit behind him, as she always had.

EXT. WEST FAMILY HOME – BACKYARD – DAY

            MARY and RUDY are throwing a barbecue for the neighbourhood. Wally is on the patio just outside the kitchen, pouring pop for everyone. LARK is coming back from the upstairs bathroom. She stops in the open doorway between the kitchen and the backyard.

            Wally excitedly looks around at the barbecue turnout. Distracted, he forgets what he is doing and overfills a cup of pop, sending its contents spilling all over the beverage table. At this exact moment, Rudy turns and sees the mistake his son has made. Lark watches.

WALLY
I'm sorry!

            Rudy hits Wally.

Lark remembers Wally's face—how it flashed with pain first, then hurt. She remembers standing completely, utterly still as Wally, reddening with shame, rushed past, back upstairs, back into the safety of his bedroom.

He would never be safe. Not here, not in this house. If only Lark had had her powers back then—but she did not. So, helpless, she did nothing but follow.

This was not nearly enough.

Returning to the present, she remembers why she is here. Wally's voice over the phone, small and shaky: They're fighting again.

          Again? Lark asks—but this story has been told before, and she knows how it ends.

          Again, Wally repeats. Please come over.

She couldn't save him then. But she could now, and she will. Save him again and again, over and over until it sticks.

In Lark's head—and in her drawing—the West home is a dream, especially in comparison to her own. The Lennox house wasn't even a house; it was an apartment above the flower shop, a three-bedroom matchbox that barely fit the family of five. Until they both moved out of home, college-bound, Andrew and Brandon shared the biggest bedroom; Lee and Aarthi took the next-largest and then, Lark, being the only girl, received a room all to herself.

All to herself—it could fit her second-hand single bed and little else.

Lark knew she had to be grateful; she had to love what she was given, what she had. After all, she had been given so much. Her family was nothing but supportive, nothing but loving—her parents had put all their money towards her career in figure skating, and her brothers had wasted hours of their time to drive her to and from her competitions in Omaha.

Yes, their home was practically bursting at the seams, the epicentre of seeds, skating, storms, but it was about what happened within those walls, wasn't it? Not how much could (or couldn't) fit. All those early mornings, Lark stumbling sleepily down the hall to eat the breakfast her father had rose even earlier to make for her. All those late nights, coming back from Omaha laden with first-place medals and congratulatory bouquets. And the moments in between: homework done at the kitchen table while Maa made dinner. Stifled laughter and that subsequent solemn silence when Brandon tried (and failed) to smuggle his girlfriend into the apartment for the first time, caught in the act by his bemused younger siblings. Afternoons spent watching her dad construct his floral arrangements, telling him this looked good, that could be better, that colour was lovely, but this one was the best.

She had it all. She knew that. Lark Lennox has many talents—singing, figure skating, saving the day. Somewhere in that litany is her ability to make things needlessly complicated.

She has never known when, nor how, to stop. To stop wanting was an impossible task.

She wanted it all.

Lark had been to the West home—in all its two-storey, paved-driveway, grassed-backyard glory—multiple times before Wally even crossed the flower shop's threshold. When Mary and Aarthi finally organised for Wally to come over, Lark was embarrassed. At her young age, she should have had no concept of embarrassment nor shame, but even then she was acutely aware of others' feelings. And she was aware that Wally had a million things she didn't: a living room, for example. More than one bathroom. A dining table that could accommodate more than four people at once. A backyard that was more than just a few square feet of uneven cobblestones in a courtyard shared by all the businesses on this block.

And yet there were so many things Lark had that Wally did not. And nothing, no living room, no table, no number of bathrooms or backyards, could substitute for them.

Wally spent most of his summers away in Central City with his aunt Iris. Once or twice he had brought Lark with him. He had his reasons, all of them genuine—It's so boring in Blue Valley (true), Iris and Barry would love you (also true), I'd miss you if you didn't come (true as well)—but Lark had made her own conclusions. Lark was his best friend. Lark was his girl. Lark was the only person in Blue Valley that cared for him as much as he cared for her.

Lark was the only person who didn't make him feel worthless.

There was a reason, Lark's imagination aside, that the home she'd drawn for Wally to live in did not resemble the one he had.

Home is where the heart is, they say. So, perhaps, in the same way that Lark's home was not her apartment, Wally's was not his house.

Lark returns to her bicycle before Mary and Rudy can notice her and continues on her way. Her destination is Wally's bedroom—the tower—which sits at the west-facing end of the house, overlooking the yard. For as long as Lark can remember, a lattice has been attached to the exposed stone wall that followed 163's foundation to the sky. Along this vertical, ivy-choked path is the slanted roof just outside Wally's bedroom. Lark lets her bike rest against the wall and steps back to assess the journey ahead. Threaded with vines—Hedera helix, the common ivy—and threat of rotten wood, rusted nails, the lattice is a formidable opponent.

But Lark has bested better dragons, weathered evils worse and wayward. Besides, this story has been told before, and Lark knows how it ends. Slay the dragon. Climb the tower. Rescue the princess.

Save the day.

Mary and Rudy West are a dragon that cannot be slayed—not in a way that matters—so Lark must sneak around them instead, slip past the belly of the beast with stealth as her weapon instead of a sword.

Lark climbs, finding her usual hand-and-footholds in all their familiar places. She pulls herself onto the slanted roof outside Wally's window and takes a moment to compose herself. Then, she lifts the window and slips inside.

Wally is on the floor, his eyes squeezed shut and his earphones plugged in. In the relative silence of his bedroom—a silence that is interrupted only by the sound of the argument his parents are having downstairs—Lark can hear his music loud and clear.

Linkin Park—it's exactly what she would expect from her best friend. He'd been obsessed ever since he'd seen the first Transformers movie the year before; though his fascination with the franchise itself had since faded, he had retained his love for the film's soundtrack.

Lark sat down beside Wally and waited. In the split-second before he notices arrival, Lark finds an eternity. She spends this eternity in observation, her eyes glued to her best friend's face.

Lark Lennox has many talents. Amongst them is telepathy, though Lark's interest had never been in matters of the head but rather, matters of the heart. Empathy is what they call it, this special skill of hers. She has always been good at reading emotions and Wally West, ever her counterpart, has never been good at hiding them. Life was too short for that, and Wally was far too fast.

Not too fast for Lark. She saw everything, felt everything, knew everything—and her best friend was no exception. Every micro-expression Wally had, Lark had memorised; every emotion he felt, she felt too. She did not have his heart—in 2008 she did not yet want it, not in that way—but still she carried it with her wherever she went. This was for a reason: it was easy to get lost when it came to Wally West, to get distracted by his constant talking or his complete inability to stay still.

Wally found himself lost sometimes, in the weeks before summer (and his annual trip to Central) when the air at number 163 grew hot and thick with the coming change of season and the knowledge that, in his absence, his parents might actually remember they loved each other. In the moments after a training session with Barry, when he made a mistake—a mistake that could have cost someone's safety, or maybe even their life. In the mere effort of living life the way he did, the way he had to with his new powers.

How lonely it must be—how isolating. To be so far in front of everyone that he felt like he was falling behind. To be so fast on the path that he strayed from it and lost his way.

But that was okay. Lark knew his heart. She knew the way home.

          "Hey." Wally calls Lark back to reality, pausing his iPod first and then removing his earphones. Lark watches, luxuriating in her thoughts—then, she is reaching for her best friend, slipping her arms around his waist, holding him tight to her chest, refusing to let go. "Whoa, birdie. I'm not going anywhere."

This story has been told before. In Wally's version of things, he is the hero. He is the knight in shining armour. He doesn't need to be saved—he is the one that does the saving.

Lark, for all intents and purposes, would like that story. She could picture it, like pages in a book, colours printed bright and glossy. Lark, the girl in the tower. Lark, the princess. Lark, the happily ever after just waiting to happen.

But this story has been told before, and Lark knows how it ends. And she knows the truth—they both do. There are no pretenses between them; there never have been and there never will be.

This is the truth: Wally will always need to be saved. Lark will never hesitate to do so.

Over and over again, until it sticks.

          "You were the one who asked me to come over! Don't be acting ungrateful now," Lark says into his shoulder. Chest-to-chest, she can feel his heart. It beats in time to hers, thud thud thud—until he laughs, throwing her completely out of sync. "Don't laugh at me! You know I almost got hit by two cars on my way here?" A lie. It was just the one.

"Almost."

"Hello? It was still upsetting!"

"Your fault for not respecting the road rules."

"Your fault for living all the way across town."

"That goes both ways, dork." Wally pulls back just slightly, hand reaching to tuck a curl of Lark's hair behind her ear. "It's the same distance from yours to mine and vice versa."

"And vice versa," Lark mimics. "You could've run to me in less than half the time."

"Oh, even less than that."

"Quarter-half."

Wally grins. He's all smug satisfaction and strawberry-blonde hair—a dangerous combination, especially when Lark is involved. "A quarter-quarter half."

"An eighth-half?"

"Don't be stupid, Lark. That doesn't even make any sense! Eighth-halves don't exist."

"That's not what I meant. And I didn't even say that, actually, you're the one who said a quarter-quarter half. That's not even—"

"—Blah, blah, blah. You took so long to get here. Honestly, I could've been over to yours in like a second."

Lark scoffs. "Like a second," she imitates again.

"Even less than a second. A half-second. No, a quarter of a second. No—" Wally grins even wider, the very picture of shit-eating, "an eighth-half of a second."

Lark briefly regrets her choices. "Asshole," she says under her breath, but there's no real meanness to the word, no malice. "Why didn't you come over then, genius? Why did I have to come here?"

The question hangs in the air between them, a weight. Lark does not quite know how this story will end, but she has seen enough to make, as her mother would call it, an educated guess.

Wally will cry and he will come running to the Lennox family flower shop and the safety of the small apartment above. He will hide there, seeking shelter within the four walls of Lark's small, lilac-painted room. He will hear his father's 1998 Ford F-150 pull up outside. He will hear his father's voice in the shop below as he argues with Lee. He will hear his father's anger.

He will not run this time.

He will realise that no matter how hard he tries, he will never run fast nor far enough away.

"I have a reputation to maintain. Gotta make sure people see the babes coming in and out of here, you know?"

"Oh, yeah?" Lark snorts. She finally releases the other from the embrace, scooting back a little to sit with her legs crossed. "And how's that working out for you?"

"So well, pretty bird." Wally tried for something of a smirk, "But don't worry, I'll always make time for you."

"Gee, thanks. I feel so special."

Wally shrugs. "You're my girl. You know that."

"Yeah, yeah." Lark lets her hands lie in her lap. "Are you okay, though? I saw them arguing from outside. Things looked... intense."

Wally's expression flattened. "Things are always intense."

"What happened?" Lark tests him carefully, gently, like a bruise, like an ache. On the subject of injuries, she finds she doesn't need her powers to feel his hurt. She doesn't need her powers to see it. The left side of his face is red, the skin there slightly raised. The shape of the welt is familiar, and around the size of a palm.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Wal, c'mon—"

"Lark, drop it. Please. I didn't ask you to come over just so you could remind me how crappy it is to live here, okay? With them." Wally laid back again, sinking into the carpet like he wanted it to swallow him up. He closed his eyes, pressed his lips into a thin line. "You're meant to fix things, not make them worse."

Lark was silent. Her gaze fell to her hands as they lay in her lap, helpless. A moment of quiet passed, then two. Wally opened one eye.

"I didn't mean it like that, Lark. Don't go silent on me."

More silence.

"Lark, look at me." Wally was sitting up now, his back completely straight. He began to fidget with his hands, a blur at the speed of light, as if moving fast enough could turn back time and take back the words he'd said. Stupid, stupid, stupid, Lark could practically feel him radiate, a rhythm, a heartbeat. Sorry, sorry, sorry. "Pretty bird—please. I'm sorry, I'm just angry, and I know it's not your fault, I just, I dunno... But please, come on, say it's okay. I didn't mean it." Desperation laced his words like electricity, fast, flickering. He had to make it up, he had to make it right. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I shouldn't take it out on you, of all people I should know that, god. But it won't happen again. I'm sorry. Lark? Please forgive me. I know you're only trying to—"

"—I can fix it."

Wally went still, his mouth slackening. "What?"

"I can fix it," Lark repeated, surer this time. "I can make it all better."

"I don't..." Her best friend blinked slowly, confused. Wally West, at a loss for words? It was a rare (and satisfying) sight. "I don't understand."

"I can fix it—I can fix everything." Lark stood up abruptly. "If you let me."

"If I let you? What does that even mean?"

Where is home?

Home is Blue Valley, a small town in north-eastern Nebraska about twenty-five miles out from Sioux City, South Dakota. It was founded in 1862 by a Connecticut settler named Cornelius Blue and cut into two, nearly-even halves by the railroad he constructed shortly after its founding. It had a sister once—the agricultural township Claire founded a few years earlier in 1858—but lost her to a storm in 2000 that took everything and left nothing, and no-one, behind.

Where is home?

Home is the town that has faded half into the very valley that gives it its name and half into the endless plains that approach from all sides. Home is where the horror is, those long-fingered monsters whose names fill Lark's mouth like dirt fills a grave: Sorghastrum nutans, Andropogon gerardi, Panicum virgatum. Home is a town of just over four thousand. Home is a town frozen in time. Home is a world that is nothing but plains, skies, and the solemn threat of storms.

Where is home?

Home is a house where Wally West refuses to flinch. Home is a house where Wally West refuses to flinch but forgets that just because he does not flinch does not mean that he will not hurt.

For Lark Lennox, this is not nearly enough.

Wally West is fourteen when he recreates the accident that gave his uncle Barry Allen, aka the Flash, his powers: superhuman speed, accelerated healing, enhanced endurance and reflexes. Lark Lennox, exactly fifty-one days younger than her best friend, is thirteen when she receives hers on the way home from school.

Telekinesis, telepathy, empathy, psionic field creation and—although she did not realise it at the time—the ability to warp reality when under extreme emotional duress.

Wally spent a week in the hospital following the lightning strike. It wasn't until the month after that his powers began to develop. Wally couldn't wait to use them; if the speed didn't already suit his electric (read: erratic) nature then it made it so, testing the limits of his newfound gift with trial after trial, race after race. Lark was given the honour of timekeeper, measuring his times as ceremoniously as she could with the old stopwatch they found in a drawer in his garage. Wally ran to Omaha first (4 seconds), then to the Thunder Basin grasslands at the other end of the state (8.5 seconds), then all the way to Central City (17 seconds, exactly.) He would have been faster, he said upon his return, if he'd double-knotted his shoelaces before he left.

Lark remembered that day, as clear as the afternoon sky. The sun had sieved its light through Wally's hair, colouring it copper, illuminating each strand from the inside out. He had threaded a hand through it as he tried to calm himself down, his breath short not from exhaustion but excitement, and his face had been lit with the biggest smile Lark had ever seen.

There were no smiles from Lark when it came to her own abilities. Unlike Wally, who saw his powers as nothing but a gift—albeit one he had inadvertently given himself, like an impatient child underneath the tree the night before Christmas—Lark was much more wary of hers, and of their consequences. She found them to be both a blessing and a curse. Even now, even with her ever-growing resentment of her hometown, she counted herself lucky she didn't live in a city as large as Omaha, or even Central over in Missouri: the day she received her powers, she felt the emotions of every single person in Blue Valley at once. Four thousand lives, minds, hearts—all burdens upon Lark, all begging to be carried.

Her abilities were like a seed sown in her chest. When they finally took root, they supplanted the space where her heart was meant to be.

She thought she was going to die.

Lark learned quickly how to tune out the emotions of others; it was a matter of focus, of listening only to her heart and, on occasion, the familiar pulse of Wally's. Soon after that was sorted came the psionic fields, like light. Pure energy, they were at first a pale pink like the astilbe flowers (Saxifrages) her father ordered during the summer to fill bridal bouquets; then, they grew brighter as Lark taught herself to give the fields shape, form, purpose. These days her psions were the colour of Prunus serrulata—cherry blossoms—and they bloomed just the same, bursting forth like spring from her fingertips when she sought to summon them.

From the moment the speed kicked in, Wally had his heart set on becoming the Flash—if not the Flash, then someone like him. Lark, though her interest was piqued, saw little longevity in the concept of professional heroism, as well as the possibility of her pursuing it. Unlike Wally, she hadn't asked for any of this. Any desire she might've had that had manifested her powers—any stray thought that activated the DNA that had laid deep and dormant in her body and otherwise undisturbed—came from a fear of becoming irrelevant in Wally's now superhero-centric life.

There's a scene Lark used to imagine, one that scared her then and scares her still.

EXT. PROBABLY. SHE DOESN'T WANT TO THINK ABOUT WHERE — NIGHT, BECAUSE THESE THINGS ARE ALWAYS LEFT TO THE DARK

            WALLY is a hero—known perhaps as the FLASH, or as another name he's found that serves him better. He faces LARK, his back to the light (a streetlight, a growing moon, a flashing siren) and, obscured by the angle and by his mask, she cannot see his face.

WALLY
I don't need you.

LARK
I don't know you.

            They never speak again.

There were talks now of Wally taking on the mantle of Barry's sidekick, tentatively naming himself Kid Flash. Wally, enamoured with both Lark's powers and Lark in general, begged her to join him. Lark had retorted, as who? Flashgirl? and he'd promptly shut himself up. He asked a few more times, enough to count on both hands, but Lark—for once a fortress when it came to Wally West and what he wanted—held fast. Eventually, he gave up. As far as her best friend was aware, Lark was willing to let her abilities wilt like flowers someone had forgotten to water. Flowers someone had forgotten, full stop.

Wally's speed, from the moment it became a factor, was inextricable to who he was as a person. They were like his limbs; he, ever the runner, couldn't survive without them. He always had to be moving, here, there, everywhere.

For Lark, her powers grew to be like the space they consumed: her heart. Hidden deep inside that endless, dirt-packed dark; heavy, but desperate to be heard. Heavy, but desperate to be held.

She couldn't deny her heart. And there was that fear, perhaps an irrational one, that bottling up all that power, all that potential, as Wally put it, could lead to some kind of thermonuclear explosion of empathy. Those were also Wally's words, thermonuclear being an uncharacteristically long one. He liked his words short and without too many syllables—whatever was quickest to say—but he'd taken his time in explaining his pro-heroism arguments to Lark.

WALLY
What if you blow up?

LARK
... What if I blow up?

WALLY
Yeah!

LARK
I don't like how excited you sound at the possibility.

WALLY
Think about it! What if not using your powers makes them all build up and stuff and then you explode? Like a thermonuclear explosion of—

LARK (pointedly)
Stupid?

WALLY
No, not stupid. What do you call it, again? Your powers?

LARK
Empathy.

WALLY
Like a thermonuclear explosion of empathy!

LARK
You know, Wal, I don't think that's how empathy works.

Lark had argued that maybe empathy, no matter how explosive, was a good thing: the world could use more empathy, always and forever. Wally had given her a look—one of those looks that made him look stupid but, a double-edged sword, made Lark feel stupid at the same time—and so, she began to practice in secret. The four walls of her bedroom became both the staging ground and the single witness to her powers, and the only surface she ever intended for the pink light of her psionic fields to touch.

Wally would have tried to help her if he asked, probably after having a thermonuclear explosion of his own, but she decidedly did not ask—tried was the operative word, and if Lark knew anything about what they had become, at the ages of fourteen and thirteen, it was that she and Wally for once were nothing alike. Their powers could not have been further from each other in application. Wally, in his training, had to learn direction. In hers, Lark had to learn discipline. Control.

From a video recording of an interview Martian Manhunter had given in 2006 regarding the ethics of his own telepathic abilities, Lark had learned what to do and what not to—what was hers to control and what wasn't. Sometimes when she was distracted, she couldn't help but slip into the mind and heart of another, but she learned quickly to leave those thoughts untouched, those feelings undisturbed.

Control. It was all about control.

After this lesson came telekinesis, the challenge of lifting an object from its place and guiding it gently through the air to another. Lark mastered this easily enough. Between school and skating she learned eventually to lift herself, levitate, a bird without wings imitating flight.

Telepathy. Telekinesis. Lark counted them off, not expecting what came next: transformation. This was a nicer, neater way to define the elephant in the room—reality, and the warping of it.

It was after a long practice at the Moylan Iceplex in Omaha, the only sporting complex in all of Nebraska that had an Olympic-sized ice-skating rink and therefore Lark's home club. As far as anyone was concerned, the session had been a success: Lark had finally landed the quadruple toe loop jump. Known as the 4T, all Lark needed now was to be able to perform the element in competition.

Finished for the day, she was skating towards the edge of the rink when she heard the click click. The noise had been prevalent throughout the day, but Lark hadn't spent any time thinking about it; ever since she woke that morning, before the sun, her attention had been elsewhere. First it had been with her brothers, and the sleep-deprived argument that had had over whose turn it was to drive Lark to Omaha; then, it was with her coach, a Russian expatriate named Daria who was known for the equal sharpness of her tongue and her coaching method. Then it had been, triumphantly, on her success on the ice.

If she could pull a 4T off in competition, it would be a world record.

But when Lark took off her boots, any and all satisfaction she might have had at performing the jump was gone. Across the toe plate of her left skate was a crack, vicious, exact.

It looked like a smile, cruel and chrome and bright and taunting. Lark could feel it in her throat, like it had been slit. It wasn't the possible injury she might've sustained that made her panic, nor the permanent damage she could've done to body—or, for that matter, her skating career.

It was the thought of those skates. How expensive they had been. How long it had taken her parents to save up for them.

Lark took up court in a corner of the Iceplex's womens' locker room, allowing herself a few minutes to sulk and sob. Her father was born secular, and her mother had weighed science and her family's Hinduism against each other, not wanting to waste her precious time on balancing the two. The former had won, leaving both the Lennox parental units with no particular religious beliefs to pass onto their children. Consequently, not one of the three ended up pious in any sense of the word—that said, Lark was prone to superstition when it served her, and this moment of defeat only cemented the belief her career in skating had been cursed from the start.

Her family simply didn't have the funds. Not for the training, not for the coach, not for the fees or the travel or the costumes.

Thinking of the costumes in particular made Lark cry even more. Once upon a time, give or take a decade or two before Lark's time, homemade costumes had been perfectly acceptable in competition. But as the culture of figure skating evolved, so did the expectations.

So many of the girls Lark competed with were the very picture of American figure skating, the types you saw in the quarterly newsletters and sporting magazines: small, blonde, white, rich. They arrived at every event in their costumes—always brand-new, always custom-made, always single-use—with their hair pinned with the precision of a sharpshooter and their makeup seamless, professional. Lark knew she had to be grateful; she had to love what she was given, what she had. After all, she had been given so much.

Time, love, support.

She did, however, wish she had been given money. Her skating cost upwards of twenty thousand dollars a year. This was money her parents did not have; her father was a florist and her mother a research scientist, for God's sake. Now, Aarthi did come from money—an astrophysicist mother and psychiatrist father, both retired—and her parents were more than happy to sponsor Lark, but there was only so much Lark felt comfortable asking for. Her grandparents' money covered the general expenses—travel costs, Daria's fee, and most of Lark's time on the ice—but it fell short of the costumes.

And that was half the sport. Lark was a skilled skater, there was no argument there; though there wasn't exactly an abundance of competitive teenage figure skaters in the Midwestern United States, in her cohort Lark was unparalleled in skill, unrivalled in technique. All she lacked was presentation.

Now, she also lacked the skates. Which, she thought miserably, was the other half of the sport.

How much would they be to replace? Three hundred? Four? Five? Lark didn't have that kind of money. No-one in her immediate family did. Between school and skating and the stress of juggling both, she had no time for a job, so it wasn't a cost she could cover on her own, and—well, she knew she could ask the Wests, who were comfortably upper-middle class, but the last thing she wanted was for Wally's parents (and Wally himself) to see her as a charity case. Or, even worse, a parasite.

What she wanted, more than anything, was for those skates to be as they were when she bought them—brand new.

And then they were. Just like that.

Lark used this new gift—this ability to change things, to mend them, to make them better—as unselfishly as she could. In this way, she could have all that she wanted without subjecting the financial burden such material possessions would otherwise place on her family. She could fashion herself beautiful skating costumes, bejewelled and in bright colour, just like what the other girls at her competitions had. She could make her skates unbreakable, so her parents would never have to spend money on replacement blades again.

Lark could still remember the first costume she made with her powers. She had transformed all the materials from flowers in her father's shop. Jasmine for the diamantes, tulips for the trim, orlaya for the fabric. Jasminium, tulipa, Orlaya grandiflora. She had spent all week drawing up the design, sketching the costume on every spare piece of paper she could find in her room.

This was one of those memories she often returned to—how happy she had been. How much easier it was making the costume with her mind instead of by hand from the cheap, synthetic material she used to have to order online. How beautiful she had looked in the mirror. How satisfying it had been to place each diamante, one by one. How those artificial jewels had glimmered in the light of her psionic field, reflecting fragmented petal-pink like a mirror ball across the walls of her room. How full she had felt at this embellishment, this embroidery.

How lovely the world could be if Lark could sew it from scratch—if she could stitch every seam not with her hands but instead her head.

Her heart.

Lark sews the world from scratch now, creating everything anew. Later, Wally will tell her how her eyes, usually brown, usually warm, turned scarlet—lambent, as if lit by a glow within. He will tell her how the pink light swept through his room like the tornado that took the town thirty miles west and never gave it back. He will tell her how it was bright at first, pretty. Like the flowers in the shop. Like her. Then, he will tell her how quickly it changed, like something lurking beneath the surface of a lake, twisting shadows through the murky water. He will tell her how this all came from her fingertips, a bright and blossoming light that became wretched, wilted, wicked, its rot spreading swiftly throughout the room—smothering it, swallowing it whole.

What he won't tell her is how terrified he was.

Wally has but a moment before everything starts to change. The room begins to unravel around him, like a fraying thread tugged, pulled and pulled and pulled back into the vast fabric of the universe. The floor disappears beneath him, lost to something he cannot comprehend, and only one thing remains: Lark.

He slips his hand into hers and doesn't let go.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

this part of the chapter has been republished and extended. thank you to everyone who's gone to the effort of reading it twice—i really appreciate it.

at this point in time, wally and lark both have their powers but wally hasn't yet become kid flash.any and all feedback is appreciated. this feels quite long-awaited (for me at least, since i've had this story stewing for a year or so now) so i hope it satisfies! my biggest focus when it came to writing this chapter was establishing the themes of heart and home, and how, when it comes to lark, they're tied inextricably together.

          a lot of people seemed surprised that wally's father was abusive when i first published this story part. though we don't see it in the show—honestly, i think we only see wally's parents once—in the comics, his parents are canonically abusive. my version of wally is mostly based on his depiction in the show, but it does take some influence from the comics. hence, the similar family situation.

(and yes, berenstein readers... the script format returns!)