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Bart keeps the photographs in a shoe box under his bed. There aren’t many of them.
He remembers visiting Carol once. She’d gone upstairs to get something and left him in the den. He’d grown bored before she’d even made it out of the room. He’d noticed the photographs.
Carol’s parents. Birthday photos. Carol’s grandparents. Aunts and Uncles. Wedding photos. Carol’s brother, Carol’s sister. Holiday photos. Carol.
Documentation of decades and decades. Carol in a paddling pool too young to even stand up without help. Carol’s mother in her early teens. Carol’s brother graduating high school.
After that he’d started noticing other people’s photographs. Wally’s, mostly of Linda or Barry. Jay and Joan’s, recording almost a century together. Tim and Cassie and Cissie and Anita and everyone else in Young Justice except for him, Kon and Greta.
Most of the photographs in the shoebox are of Young Justice, in all its various incarnations. Only two actually have Tim in though. One as Mr Sarcastic, and the other is one Bart took himself. Bart’s just a blur in most of them, or appears several times. It was boring standing still so long. At least he has them, though, and at least he’s there. Red and white Impulse blur, huge shock of hair taking up half the frame and almost blocking Cissie from view. Cissie’s in almost every photograph, even though in the later one’s she’s in her civvies. Cassie is wearing a different outfit in each, slowly but surely evolving to her current one. Bart suspects it will continue to change. Kon with the stupid hair and even more stupid single earring, trying to look like he’s too cool to be interested. Bart keeps meaning to ask him if he’s still got the leather jacket. Slobo in the last one, bringing a lump to Bart’s throat.
The others seem to have forgotten about him, somehow, as though Greta being brought back to life cancelled out his death. Bart’s very happy Greta’s corporeal now, of course, but he still misses the old her too. She’s normal now, and left out.
Bart shuffles the photographs and draws another at random. It does nothing for his now maudlin mood. The only photograph he has of him and Max together, taken by Helen. Bart’s glad he at least stood still for that one, even if he’s pulling a dumb face and Max looks terminally bored.
The corner of the picture is stained. It’s another memory, preserved on the thin card. Two for the price of one. The day he realised Max was never coming back.
Bart swallows hard. He’d known that it would be next to impossible to get Max’s body back anyway. Even harder to oust its current resident. But looking at that picture, a few weeks after moving in with Jay and Joan, he’d come to a realisation. Max wouldn’t want to come back. He remembers the day Helen had learned everything. Max had told him about how he’d jumped through time. He’d been trying to reach the bright centre of the speed force. And now he was there.
Bart sniffs, but doesn’t cry. He’s spent those tears, and he’s learning to make his peace with it. Sometimes he wonders if anyone else worked it out. Max is dead. Tim isn’t the only person to have lost his father. Bart remembers XS making up a future for him and Max, telling him that Max would adopt him when he was thirty and they’d be almost indistinguishable.
Bart pretends to himself that Max did adopt him.
He pulls out another photograph. It’s the original Justice League. A photograph of a photograph, so not good quality, but it’s the picture that stood in their original headquarters. The picture that told Bart he wanted to be the Flash, the picture that made him want to form Young Justice and join the Teen Titans and be a hero in every way possible for the rest of his life. It’s the picture that never ceases to draw a smile from him.
Bart knows his grandfather would be proud of him, just as Max would. Maybe they’re not here to tell him that, but he thinks he doesn’t need to be told. It’s just as well, really, considering how rarely Wally says it.
Bart knows Wally is proud, and that Wally cares. He understands why Wally loses patience with him sometimes. He doesn’t blame Wally for the fact that nine times out of ten when they meet it’s because Wally feels he ought to be yelling at Bart. Those nine times it’s because he’s been skipping school, or something along those lines, while the break-from-the-mould tenth is usually a word of praise or support relating to the Kid Flash side of things. Since Bart cares far more about being Kid Flash than he ever will school - and he’s heard that Wally felt much the same way once upon a time - he knows which words to take to heart.
He has three photographs of Wally here, one recently ‘borrowed’ from Wally’s apartment. One is of Wally’s wedding, which has Bart in. Unfortunate ponytail. Oh well. Another is one Joan insisted on shortly after Bart became Kid Flash, with both of them in costume. The third, the one loaned without consent, is Wally and Barry, when Wally was Kid Flash. Bart puts the two photographs side by side, and his smile has returned full force now. In both pictures, the Flash looks stiff, and his smile isn’t completely sincere. In both pictures, Kid Flash looks very, very bored. There are only really two ways to tell the pictures apart: The Kid Flash boots, and the face Wally is pulling. Not Bart, Wally.
Bart is sitting in the centre of his bed, all of his photographs arranged around him. Young Justice and the Teen Titans. Max and Jay and Joan. Wally and Grandpa Barry.
Maybe there aren’t so few, after all. Okay, so he doesn’t have any baby photos. And he doesn’t have any of his immediate family. He doesn’t have any holidays, though he does have a wedding and a birthday. No professional portraits, and Bart doubts he’ll ever have any of those, but several amateur attempts at catching the moment, complete with thumbs in the corner and overexposure and all kinds of focus issues. Those are his favourites, with so many more associated memories.
There’s a knock on his door and he starts tidying the photographs at superspeed. The door opens before he’s done, so he’s not surprised to look up and see Wally there, even though he hadn’t known Wally was visiting. Bart realises the stolen photograph is still in full view. He dives for it, but Wally grabs the one with Bart in instead. It takes him a moment to realise he’s holding the wrong one.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask,” Bart says. “I...” He can’t think of a good reason behind his actions, other than ‘I wanted it’. He firmly believes Stealing Is Wrong, so transgressing his principles for personal desires gives Bart nasty little shivers up and down his spine. He can’t put into words just how much he needed that photo, and the worst part is it’s really only sinking in now that he stole it. Stole.
Wally picks up the photograph that had previously lain hidden in a cardboard box underneath his bed. He doesn’t ask how Bart found it, nor why Bart took it. He just compares the two pictures, and grins.
“I got you a present,” Wally says, taking Bart completely off guard. “Hang on.” He reaches through the open door and grabs a plastic bag that had been leaning against the wall, out of sight.
Bart takes the bag and holds it for a second, unable to stop himself glancing at Wally to make absolutely certain he’s got this right. He has stolen a photograph that almost certainly meant a lot to Wally, and now he’s being given a present. Wally’s patience runs out and he whips the bag away himself, leaving Bart holding the gift. At first Bart thinks it’s some kind of book, but it’s an odd size and quite heavy. He looks at Wally again, then opens it.
“I figures perhaps you might want somewhere to keep your pictures. Make sure they don’t get damaged,” Wally tells him. He pauses, but Bart spontaneously forgets how to talk. “You can keep the one of me and Barry,” Wally tells him, “just as long as you keep it safe, okay?”
Bart turns to Wally, eyes lit up like he stuck his tongue in a socket, grinning like he did the day he discovered he had birthdays, and finally manages to thank him past the lump in his throat. Wally just smiles and ruffles his hair, telling him to get on with it.
Bart’s voice is husky when he asks, “You... you wanna help?” and now it’s Wally who’s lost for words.