Totally Not A Date

[Supergirl]

Flying was pretty much powered by will power as well. There was no physical force propelling you or holding you back. It wasn't controlled by muscles or by wings. You simply flew. It probably upset a lot of physics experts, truth be told. And truth be told, Kara really didn't have much drive when she flew. It was a fun thing, an exciting thing, but she wasn't exceptionally fast. Oh, she could really move when she wanted to, but to really move quickly, like, save-the-day super fast, it had to be a crisis. Kara could be deceptively quick, much like her cousin, but it really had to be the worse of worse situations.

Not to say without that drive she wasn't fast, she still left most things in the dust and could easily keep up with most jet liners, but Wally was faster. Of course, buildings weren't in the way for her, but she could see the streak of golden light whizzing off ahead of her below. She smiled a little. In a way, she wanted to let him win, but truthfully, she didn't think she could beat him even if she wanted to. It'd be pretty close, thanks to her shortcuts, but without it being a crisis, Kara had nothing to drive her on. She wasn't competitive enough to really force herself on to win. She just liked doing this for the fun.

She flew down over the park, ready to drift down and land, but she fully expected Wally would already be there, probably saying something smug. Like asking if she'd stopped to fix her lip gloss or something, judging by his last comment. Wait, actually, that might not be a bad excuse...

[Kid Flash]

In an explosion of speed force lightning, the blur of crimson that was Wally West streaked back into focus on the grass below Kara. He looked around himself in momentary confusion before he realised that he needed to look up. Instantly his face split into a grin, momentarily overcome by the sheer coolness of having just had a high speed race across Batman's city with his new space friend. Central City, home, was a long way away, and he did miss it - he missed his family, his old friends, he missed Barry, and the goofball Rogues making crime fighting fun rather than grim and scary like it was here - but times like this reminded him of just how awesome his life really was, and right now he didn't have even the faintest flickering desire to change a damn thing.

"I hope you're hungry!" Wally shouted, hoping that his voice would be loud enough for her to hear from up in the sky, before realising a moment later that Kryptonians had super-hearing so he could probably have just whispered and she'd have heard him just fine.

He brandished each of his hands up towards her in turn, displaying the paper-wrapped contents of each, relying on her super-vision - that was probably what she called it, right? - to pick up on the details of what he was showing her. For a minute, his brain raced off on a tangent wondering about her x-ray vision, and if he was going to end up getting a harmful dose of radiation if Linda, Kara, Supergirl, whatever wound up staring or glaring at him for too long. It'd suck for her if she had to stop looking at his handsome face and charming smile for the sake of his heath and safety. Maybe he should invest in some lead-lined boxer shorts, just to make sure his baby-making prospects weren't going to wind up getting adversely affected.

"I stopped at a chilli dog guy on the way," he explained. Yes, he was showing off now, but come on. He was on a not-date with Supergirl, and he was Kid damn Flash. Of course he was going to show off and try to impress her. That was kind of the point. "You want the mustard, or the no mustard?"

[Supergirl]

"You're such a show off." Kara rolled her eyes and smiled at Wally as she touched down next to him, and took the chilli dog without mustard. He really was, but then again, he'd picked an easy competition for him. "Wonder who would win if I challenged to you an arm wrestle. Or a flying contest." She pointed out playfully, just reminding him that picking the one thing you were best at for a contest then winning wasn't anything special. "Oh! Or a laser eye competition!" She added with exaggerated thoughtfulness, obviously just messing around. She also ate the chilli dog, with surprising speed.

"Anyway, you wanted to hear about me, and well, this place isn't really the best. I'm not spilling all my secrets in public, you know?" She pointed out to the crowd gathering in the park, because you couldn't really have Kid Flash and Supergirl turn up without any comment. "So, what I'm saying is, finish up that chilli dog quickly and hold on tight, 'cause I'm taking us somewhere more private." She instructed, stepping forwards and scooping Wally up in to her arms.

"You're gonna love this part." She smirked at him.

[Kid Flash]

At that moment, Wally should probably be embarrassed. Linda, or Kara, or whatever wasn't exactly a tiny person, but she was definitely shorter than he was, and being scooped up into her arms like some overgrown damsel in distress wasn't exactly the manliest thing that had ever happened to him. Sure, he'd been carried by Barry, and by the Green Arrow one time, but that was because he'd heroically gone and got himself injured, and he was all beaten-up looking and unconscious at the time. This was awkward.

Or at least, it should have been, were it not for the fact that being in Kara's arms also meant that he was sorta hugged up against her chest a little bit, which was all kinds of distracting. The bad kind of distracting. There was part of Wally that wanted to think of it as the good kind, but nope, there was definitely nothing but bad about this. Knowing what bulletproof Kryptonian boobs felt like was not knowledge that was safe within Wally's head: not with his habit of blurting things out without thinking. All it would take would be one accidental comment, one slip of the tongue when Linda wanted to know if the outfit she's picked out was flattering and there'd be lasers, and bone breaking, and then Superman showing up demanding to know how he knew that sort of thing about his cousin.

Wally awkwardly flailed his arms a little, not entirely sure what to do with them. "Wait, wait," he interrupted, before Kara could blast off towards the sky, and he gave the his chilli dog a mournful look. So often, Wally ate to replenish his blood sugar, but this? This was supposed to be a treat, something to be savoured; but there wasn't the time. Goodbye, my friend, he thought to himself as the chilli dog vanished at superspeed. His hand crumpled up the napkin and tossed it, crackles of speed force lightning crimpling the edges as it sailed effortlessly through the air and into the nearest trash can.

"That's better," he said, turning his attention back to Kara. It took him a few seconds to realise that he'd subconsciously draped an arm around Kara's shoulder, which had legitimately been an oh god please don't drop me thing, but had probably seemed like some kind of super slick move on his part. Damn it, Wally! he rebuked internally. How come he was never this smooth around women when he was doing it on purpose?

"So, uh -"

Oh god, Wally. Don't say it. Don't say it. Don't -

"Your place or mine?"

...damn it, Wally.

[Supergirl]

"Neither." Kara answered without missing a beat, although apparently totally missing any romantic undertones to that question. "His." She answered, and before Wally had a chance to figure out what that meant, she shot off, flying both high and fast. Sure, Wally was faster on the ground, but Kara could get additional height, and she really was pretty speedy when she had a more objective goal in mind. "Oh, and Wally? Sorry, but this location is a secret." She added, reaching forwards, still managing to support him, and with a single hand pulling his mask down over his face so he couldn't see anything.

And then she was off, flying through the cold air as it whistled around them. Of course, she was pretty sure that Wally's suit insulated him, and she was fine, and this was the fastest way to get where they were going. Gotham disappeared behind them in an instant, Metropolis whizzed by, it wasn't long and all of America fell behind them...

...all in all, it still took her about half an hour of flight, but she floated gently down, and lifted up Wally's mask just as they touched down on smooth, white ground, huge crystalline structures lifting up all around them, towering up high in to a bright white light. They were inside, although how they'd gotten inside would be difficult to tell. The place was massive, and stretched off in all directions. It was also deserted.
"He calls it the Fortress of Solitude." She told Wally. "He said I could stop by whenever I wanted. Looks like he isn't home. Which works pretty well for us."

[Kid Flash]

His place? Who was -

Oh.

Oh.

The unceremonious repositioning of his mask caught him by surprise. It didn't really help much, either. Part and parcel of being a speedster was an innate sense of direction - an attunement to the Earth's magnetic field, or something like that. It wasn't as fancy as GPS or anything like that, but if a speedster was moving, they had a pretty decent idea of which way. Kind of an important part of navigating at super speed, else you very quickly wound up getting lost. He tried not to notice, he really did, but the fact that they were heading northwards, and the fact that everything got noticeably colder... he couldn't help it. When Kara finally deposited him on the ground, he knew that they were above the Arctic Circle, no matter how hard he'd tried not to realise that. But as soon as he'd tugged his mask off his face completely and left it dangling behind him, geography suddenly stopped mattering.

Like Kara needed to tell him this was the Fortress of Solitude. Wally had heard stories. Barry had mentioned it, though Wally knew his mentor had never actually been; never been entirely sure when it was. Barry's theory was that Superman lived on the moon. Guess you were wrong on that one, Bartholomew.

Everything around him looked so alien, because of course it did. A crystal fortress - and from the way things were shaped, it was one that had been grown, not built; you could tell from the way the crystal spires interacted with each other, the way they interlocked perfectly, the lack of impurities and distortions. Was this what Krypton was like? Was this Superman's little piece of home here on Earth?

He didn't get very far with that train of thought though.

Looks like he isn't home.

Wally felt his heart rate quicken.

Which works pretty well for us.

Suddenly, Wally kinda wished he'd left the mask on: having so much of his face covered by something that was already a deep shade of red would probably have been really useful right about now. He turned quickly away, trying not to let his mind wander back to the other thoughts from earlier he shouldn't have been having - oh god, were Kryptonians psychic, the way that Martians were? Can you read my mind? - and pretended to be absolutely fascinated by the weird crystalline console that he found beside him; which wasn't actually much of a stretch. How did it work? Were their circuits embedded in the crystals themselves? Quantum computing? Hyperatomic entanglement modulation?

Damn it Wally. Say something!

"So, uh -"

Actual words, Wally!

He gestured around him, letting his eyes follow the crystals upwards to the top of the lofty cathedral of alien glass.

"- is this what it's like on your world?"

[Supergirl]

Kara noticed that Wally had gone very red for some reason, almost the same colour as his costume, and smiled sympathetically.
"Don't worry, I know the change of temperature in here from the outside can be weird for some humans." She told him, assuming that he was just warm. He'd get used to it shortly, she knew. Maybe not everything else. He seemed a little baffled, staring intently at the crystals. Kara supposed it was culture shock. For Wally, this was probably the closest he'd ever get to setting foot on another planet.

She smiled a little sadly when he asked if this was like the real Krypton.
"Not really. I mean, this place was grown using our tech. A lot of our buildings look similar, although the Fortress is bigger than most. But it's so... impersonal. It'd be like one of your skyscrapers being built but being hollow on the inside. Ka-, I mean, Superman, he's tried to make it home, and added a lot to work with here, but it's still... just hollow. We weren't that different from humans, back on Krypton, you know? We went to school, we went shopping, we hung out, we went on the cortex to watch funny holos, and yeah, we personalised our stuff. So sure, my room might have been grown out of crystal, but only the same as your room was probably made of concrete." She finished, looking a little sad as she remembered it.

"I used to have pink walls, and this poster of Char-Ni. He was like, the hottest holostar, and some of those were classics, you know?" She paused, sadness over-taking her. "I guess even he's gone now. And the holos. I'll never be able to watch Sundown: A Bright Dawn again..." She said wistfully. "But hey, at least every copy ever of Transmorphers III got blown up too, right?" She paused again, and shook her head. "If you were a Kryptonian, that would have been hilarious." She told him.

"Sorry, my entire world blew up. Sometimes that's hard to deal with..."

[Kid Flash]

Wally didn't need to think. He didn't need his superspeed to know how instantly he needed to act. His steps weren't rushed, but they were swift, and before either of them could react to anything else, his arms were wrapped around her shoulders, gently pulling her into the most reassuring friend hug that he could muster.

"I'm sorry."

He wished there was some way he could squeeze even more heartfelt sincerity into those words. He should have known better. Who didn't know the story of how Superman was the last survivor of his world? Well, last-but-one now, it seemed. Here he was caught up in the excitement of scrutinising some incredible artefact from an alien world, forgetting the far more important remnant of Krypton standing right there next to him. Here he was, so fascinated to understand what was inside these crystals, and what they were all about, that he'd completely forgotten that what he really wanted to know about was Kara's insides. Not in a creepy alien dissection way, but like, the stuff inside that made her who she was.

"I can't even begin to imagine what that must be like for you."

After all, wasn't that the whole point of today? They'd met up so that Wally could have the opportunity to learn more about his new friend. The fact that she was from space, or that she had superpowers, or that her cousin was famous didn't change any of that. What she could do didn't matter; he could find that out any time. Who she was, though? That was the important part. How fast Kara could fly, how powerful her heat vision was, how the awesome alien technology in her cousin's super secret alien crystal fortress worked - he didn't need to know that. It was awesome and fascinating, sure, but it didn't tell him the kind of things that made her sad, or the sorts of jokes he needed to tell to get a smile back on her face. It didn't tell her what kinds of stories she liked, so that he'd be able to recommend movies, and books, and shows for her to check out - which holy crap, if she was from space there were so many things he could introduce her to, and leech off the happiness she felt experiencing them for the first time. It didn't tell him how she took her coffee, so that he could have hers waiting for her so that she'd remember at least one guy in Gotham gave enough of a crap to pay attention to the things she said and the things she liked.

Powers, technology, alien worlds - those weren't the things he needed to know about to be a better friend; and for a shameful moment, he'd allowed his curiosity to get in the way of him remembering and realising that.

A stray thought crept into his mind.

"If it's not okay for me to be hugging you right now... please don't break my arms."

[Supergirl]

Kara smiled softly as he gave her a hug, and she knew that his words were sincere. She felt bad for bringing it up as a topic, it was supposed to be a fun day, and she was trying to show off, truth be told. Show him the Fortress of Solitude, remind him she knew Superman, make up for losing the race, but being here with somebody she could really talk about it with overwhelmed her a little. Kal tried to understand, he'd lost his homeworld too, but talking to him about it didn't help much, as he never knew what it was like. Not like Kara did.

"The hugging is so okay right now." She told him sadly, hugging him back gently. Kara missed being able to give people tight, clinging hugs. If she did that here, she'd squish Wally like a grape. So instead she held back. The only person she could hug properly was Kal.

"I don't really know what it's like. It's... so much is gone, you can't really process it. Most days I just miss my family, but then some days, a little thing, a tiny memory pops in to your head, and you realise it's gone forever. Like, there was this chair, well, I guess you'd call it a bench, in one of our parks, and it was really old, and the crystal was a bit cracked, and it kind of looked like... uh... well, put it this way, all the immature kids found it hilarious. And I just... I remember things... like that. Details so... tiny... but gone forever. And there's nobody left who even remembers rolling their eyes at all the teenage boys sniggering, thinking they were the first ones to discover it, even though people had been laughing for generations. Just... such a tiny moment in a tiny park on one street of one city of an entire world, but it's gone. Gone forever."

Kara suddenly realised that she was seriously rambling and shook her head, attempting a smile.

"C'mon, I'll show you some cool stuff, before I leave you thinking Krypton is all crystal weiners and bad holomovies."

[Kid Flash]

Wally never really knew what to say even at the best of times, and now was most definitely not the best of times. It wasn't even the memory that Kara shared that made it sad. It was kinda sweet, you know? Kinda reassuring that no matter where you were in the galaxy, if kids saw something that looked like a penis, it was funny as hell. Missing something like that... it wasn't even human nature apparently, it was something more fundamental than that. Sometimes, the big things were just too much to process, too much to conceive. It was the small comforts, the small details, the small victories that made all the difference. To have lost every single tiny thing that made your life, and your home, and your world what it was? Wally couldn't begin to comprehend what that must feel like.

"I would totally have laughed at that," he admitted, wishing that his voice had more of the gravity that Barry or Green Arrow managed to pull off when they talked. "You can roll your eyes at me, if you like. I'm sure I'll do something to deserve it eventually."

There was only one thing for it, Wally decided. Kara had lost everything that made Krypton feel like home. That was terrible. Tragic. Irreversible. But Earth was full of it's own weiner benches, it's own crappy movies, it's own little heart-warming quirks. If it took every waking moment of every day from now until Kara got fed up of having him around, Wally would drag her around introducing her to each and every one of them. It would never replace Krypton, Wally knew that... but maybe he could make it so that the big gaping hole that Krypton left behind wasn't quite so empty.

"And don't go insulting bad movies. About 90% of what I watch is objectively terrible. That's what makes it so fun. Besides, how are you supposed to stuff your face with popcorn and nachos, or make out with the cute girl you talked into watching it with you if you're gonna get all engrossed in a story that is actually good?"

It took precisely 1.38 seconds for Wally to realise what he had just said, and realise it was probably for the best if he never spoke again. Ever.

[Supergirl]

"Zod, you sound like half the boys on Krypton." Kara shook her head with a small smile, completely oblivious of course to any romantic subtext. Welcome to the Friend Zone, Wally West, your stay will last for all of time. However, he did remind her of some of the dorky guys back on Krypton, and their love of terrible movies. "I used to like the holos that were actually, you know, good. Like, there was this one about a girl in our version of high school, and she fell in love with this guy, only he turned out to be this immortal guy, like this kind of cursed immortal monster. I don't think you have anything like it on Earth, but it was awesome!" She told him, before giving him a small smile.

"And yeah, I bet you would have." She teased back about him laughing at the weiner bench. "And I bet you will." She added about rolling her eyes. "But for now, c'mon. I'll stick some of the crystals in, see if I can't at least show you what Krypton used to be like. Maybe give you an idea. There's a crystal around here on Argo City, I know that. Just some thing from the tourism board, really, but I guess for Kal it's the only way he can see the world he never knew." She explained, missing her calling him 'Kal' this time.

"Plus I know you just want to geek out over the computers here anyway. They literally run on crystals. I mean, you humans think iPads are the latest thing. Wait until you see Kryptonian technology." She teased.

[Kid Flash]

Oh please, Wally wanted to say, his mind all too eager to argue back, and prove that he wasn't some technologically backwards caveman, the way he must have seemed to Kara. I've met Batman. Heck, I've met Booster Gold. I know what super advanced technology looks like.

But he didn't say that. For starters, he was still working the make sure she likes me angle, and he was pretty sure that being petty and argumentative wasn't a step in the right direction. There was the whole be nice to her, she's sad thing as well; it was bad enough feeling all helpless when Kara went and made herself feel sad on her own, but actually being directly responsible for that himself seemed like a pretty hideous prospect.

Mostly though, it was the offer itself that kept his mouth firmly shut. Oh hey, Wally, would you like to see what it looks like on an alien planet? Would you like me to plug in one of my space crystal DVDs and show you stuff that pretty much no one else on Earth has ever seen? Yeah, that was something worth being quiet for; though it didn't stop the frantic, emphatic nodding that Wally had responded with.

The only problem was that quiet wasn't really a setting Wally had. It was less of a mute button, and more of a pause: something that left his stream of consciousness to buffer and buffer until he finally hit play, which usually led to an explosion of rambles racing their way out under high pressure. Right now though, his half-effective efforts had at least managed to impede his tirade of words, slowing it enough so that he could actually unleash a coherent string of sentences.

"So are they actually crystals?" he found himself asking. Of all the things he could have had questions about - Argo City, life on Krypton, friends, family, anything - that was what he went with? "Or is it more of a non-crystalline solid, like nanostructured glass or something? I read a research paper from STAR Labs a few years ago, that had this whole crazy theory about using a femtosecond laser to permanently etch a pattern inside a glass structure, to modify the refraction pathways into a sort of five-dimensional code structure. They theorised that an object about the size of a -"

on't say penis. Don't say penis. Don't say penis.

"- candy bar would be able to store something like three hundred and sixty terabytes of data, which is..."

He trailed off, hands gesturing around his head to simulate the explosion of his mind being blown. He stopped half way through making the corresponding noise, suddenly catching on to the way that Kara was looking at him. An embarrassed grimace took control of his expression.

"I'm kinda being a science dork right now, aren't I?"

[Supergirl]

Kara laughed lightly, and smiled softly, as if she was resisting the urge to ruffle Wally's hair.
"Aww, Wally, don't ever change, you're so adorable." She told him with a big smile. "'Three hundred and sixty terabytyes', 'femtosecond lasers', it's so cute when humans try to understand our technology." She smiled to herself, obviously amused. "You know how if you were to show a USB stick to a Medieval Knight, no matter how hard you tried, you'd never be able to explain what was going on inside of it in any way he could grasp?" She asked, although she felt a little guilty for making the comparison. "Our crystals are grown. They store knowledge because they remember it. You can't make them and you can't replicate them. They come from Krytpon and Krypton alone. Anything else... the human language hasn't invented words to explain yet." She smiled. She felt a little guilty, like she was being patronising, but well, Kryptonian technology was ridiculously advanced to humans for a reason.

"Sorry. Look, it's easier if I show you." She floated up to one of the crystalline control panels overlooking the Fortress, certain that Wally would just speed after her and be behind her in a moment, and took a deep breath, before inserting the crystal that she had spoken of. There was a brief pause, and then the appearance of a flickering hologram that enveloped them both. It wasn't quite picture perfect, nor did it seem real, but it seemed to be something else. The vast crystal city of Argo stretched around them, but this wasn't an isolated fortress like they were stood in. Every building had character, every street had life, it might have been alien and strange, but these were still people living their every day life. And the senses seemed to come with the hologram, you could feel the alien air, smell the alien scents, despite the hologram flickering and never quite seeming real, somehow, it seemed more than real.

"The crystals are grown. They grow from crystals before them. This isn't a primitive recording. It's a memory." Kara explained. "The crystals remember. Sure, we edit and we change, but what you're seeing is the memory of a planet long gone. My home. My city." The streets flickered by, showing vast structures, a beautiful crystal stadium, a bustling port full of advanced aircraft, looking like spaceships. "Actually, this crystal is from the tourism board, so you're just seeing the nice spots. It wasn't really like this. They just edit together the best bits." She explained with a small, sad smile. "But, well, it's the best I've got. Kal's ship came with a crystal designed to grow all of this, but even its storage was limited. It didn't have room for every crystal about just one city."

[Kid Flash]

Oh.

So there it was. You couldn't possibly understand, Wally. That old familiar sentiment. The because you're only human qualifier was new, but the rest was the exact same thing he had heard so many times. It was the way that Barry escaped from having to explain himself to his sidekick. It was the way the Justice League had dismissed his skills, dismissed his knowledge, dismissed his understanding. You're just a kid, Wally. You're just Kid Flash.

Part of Wally wanted to argue back. Part of him wanted to quote one of his favourite scientists. Richard Feynman had always argued that if you couldn't explain a scientific concept, the fault was yours: you didn't understand it well enough yourself. Science was a fundamental concept, a constant truth to the universe. Given enough time, and someone who wanted to understand, you could explain anything. There was no concept that was beyond the human imagination: you just to understand the concepts well enough to walk someone through a step at a time, and have the patience to even try. But Kara didn't. Maybe she couldn't. Maybe she was like those people who knew how to plug a USB drive into their computer, but didn't have a clue how they actually worked. Or maybe she just thought he was too stupid, too beneath him, not evolved enough for the effort to be worth it. You're only human, Wally. It was the same feeling he got every time someone emphasised the Kid in Kid Flash.

His shoulders sagged a little, but thankfully Kara was too caught up in activating and explaining her little holographic vista to really notice, and Wally managed to recover himself enough that nothing would show outwardly by the time she looked back. The hologram... okay, so that was pretty sophisticated, more than just projected light; and it completely filled up their surroundings, layering all of the extra experiences that your mind expected on top of the visuals. There must have been emitters embedded in the crystal walls, little fans or thermal induction gizmos to simulate the air movement; and was he really smelling things, or was the Fortress of Solitude just projecting those sensations into his mind, giving enough of a starting point for his memory to fill in the blanks?

He knew better than to ask though, and his mind silenced all of the questions he found his mind whispering. Was the gravity the same? How long was day and night on Krypton? Was there any axial tilt to cause variable seasons, or were the conditions more constant all year round? What differences did orbiting a red giant instead of a yellow dwarf like the sun? Was it warmer? Colder? How had the plants, and animals, and architecture adapted to the increased radiation output? How -

"Do you have any holograms of plants, or animals?" he blurted out; apparently that question was more insistent on being asked. He shuffled a little as he worked out how best to qualify his reason for asking, and tried his hardest to seem apologetic rather than sad or put-out. Maybe she had the Kyptonian equivalent of a book of farm yard animals; something suitable for his inferior intellect. "Even a dumb human like me should be able to appreciate the contents of a Kryptonian zoo."

[Supergirl]

"Aw, c'mon Wally, I didn't mean it like that." Kara replied, slightly abashed and shame-faced when Wally called himself a 'dumb human'. She really hadn't. It was just that human terms didn't really have the right words or right basis to explain Kryptonian technology. Kara actually was very scientifically minded, despite her, at times, seemingly scatter brained attitude, but to explain it all to a human would take weeks in the shortest, because she'd have to go right back to their very most basic fundamentals that differed from human technology entirely. "It's just... not something I can explain in a conversation, y'know? Kryptonian technology has a totally different foundation to Earth technology. To explain it would take weeks of scientific lectures if I even could..." She told him.

"Like, you asked about how much data a crystal could store, right?" She asked. "Well, a single crystal grew this entire place." She waved her arms around at the Fortress. "And all the technology inside. And still had enough left over data to fill additional data crystals around the Fortress on every subject that Kal's parents thought he might need, right down to the holo we just watched." She told him. "So that's the entire structure of a Fortress and the energy resources to build it, and enough data to fill it and educate a baby to adulthood on his homeworld. And that's just the basics of what's here. There isn't even a scale that can be measured on in your language. I'd have to start by teaching you at least a hundred Kryptonian words." She tried to explain, wondering whether she was digging herself deeper or actually helping matters.

"But I do think one of these crystals has the Kryptonian nursery rhyme, Baa Baa Balloonie on it, let me see if I can find it..." She smiled sheepishly, hoping that she was helping but worried she was making things worse.

[Kid Flash]

So it wasn't just his species and his civilization that was inferior, but their language too. Peachy.

It all sounded like excuses and back-pedalling. It would take weeks? Really? Wally had read every book in his house within the first afternoon of having superpowers. He'd cleaned out the school library within the first couple of weeks. He'd had to start getting hard copies of research papers, because computers just didn't scroll fast enough to keep up with the rate he read at. He already understood physics at a post graduate level: that was why he was on this whole fast track scholarship, trying to get him into a university to start earning a degree before it all became too ridiculously easy. He was at the point where he had to intentionally mess up here and there on homework assignments to avoid raising suspicion; just the same way he had to with sports, and with everything else in his stupid life. He had to go around letting everyone think he was a dork and a loser, because if he ever tried to just be himself, it was too spectacular to be considered normal. Here he was, finally in the presence of someone he could be himself around, and the idea of seeing him as an equal, of trying to make him understand, was apparently too much hard work for her to even contemplate. Which was stupid. Give him twenty minutes with Superman's magic crystals, and he'd probably know enough to start correcting her when she got the details wrong.

And really? Only a hundred Kryptonian words? If Kara could speak fluent English inside of a year, why did she assume that someone faster than her couldn't learn her language just as quick. Heck, one time Wally had been stuck home alone and bored, and had decided to teach himself Spanish just for the hell of it.

Soy más inteligente de lo que piensa, Kara.

But whatever. It was too far beyond him, and even trying to explain was an utter waste of time. He wished he wasn't so used to it; but sadly it was pretty much status quo for Wallace West.

He let out a small sigh, pinching at the bridge of his nose. "Don't worry about it, forget I asked." He tried to offer a small smile and a shrug, but neither of them were particularly convincing; his heart just wasn't in it. So much for actually getting to know each other better; at least he had some sense now of what Kara must have thought of him all along, though. God, what must she have thought of him when he seemed like just a dweebish nobody? Just some unevolved monkey from a planet of primitives, probably.

He tried to push past it though, turned his attention back to the Fortress's vaulted ceiling. "So that's all this is? Some giant Kryptonian version of Wikipedia?"

[Supergirl]

"Oh come on, Wally, don't be like that." Kara sighed, feeling that frustration of somebody who was only digging herself deeper with every step. "Look, humanity has been around for, what, in anything resembling its current form, maybe 10,000 years at best? Krypton culture was literally billions of years old. We'd been around so long our sun had grown gigantic and blown up, remember? That's billions of years of technical advancement. The origins of our technology are older than your dinosaurs. Everything we did was built upon billions of years of foundation. And the only person in the entire universe left who could teach anybody about it? Is me." She pointed out. "And I was pretty good at science, okay? It was my top subject in school. But... to teach somebody who wasn't part of that culture, I don't... I literally don't know where to begin. Everything is just part of an integrated system that has evolved over billions of years..."

She sighed, and looked sadly around the Fortress as Wally asked what it was.
"No, not really. It's more... I don't know, a basic guide, the best that Jor-El could put together to teach his son about his home. I know it seems impressive, but if you knew the real Krypton... my real home.. It's just... It's not the same..." She sighed sadly, before shaking it off.

"Hey, do you want to see some science that's easier to explain than the crystals?" She asked, trying to brighten up and offer a smile. "Trust me, you'll like this."

[Kid Flash]

"Linda... Kara... just don't, okay?"

It wasn't arguing, wasn't even frustrated; just tired, and resigned.

"I get it. You're from super-advanced civilization that is lightyears beyond anything Earth will ever be. Our most sophisticated science is the kind of stuff that you had mastered before you were even in kindergarten. It's like being trapped in the stone age, and all our backwards technology is little better than hitting things with rocks. You're so advanced that us feeble, dumbass humans don't even have the words to understand your high and mighty Krypton tech, let alone the capacity."

Exasperation crept into Wally's voice; he flung his arms out, pent up energy sending him pacing and turning about the room, never quite sure if he could bring himself to look at Kara. She just didn't get it, did she? It wasn't even arrogance or ego - she was just so damn certain that humanity was too ass-backwards to measure up that she'd written them all off as inferior. It didn't matter who Wally was; she didn't know a damned thing about him, and yet she was 100% sure that he was stupider by an astronomical margin, because of course he was. Everyone on Earth was.

If that was how she felt, then what even was the point? You're so adorable. It's so cute when humans try to understand our technology. It was like she was talking to a child. No matter what he tried to say, he'd still seem like a two-year old talking about farm animals and choo-choo trains. How did you build a friendship on that, when everything you did was quaint, and stupid, and a billion years too simple?

"You'll fit in great at Brentwood," he heard himself say. He'd probably regret the words later, but whatever. "You've got the whole thinking you're better than everyone else routine down to a fine art."

Wally turned away, slowly shaking his head.

"Don't worry," he added quietly. "I'll show myself out."

[Supergirl]

"Wally, wait!" Kara pleaded, flying down in front of him. Not that she had to. He might have been dramatic, but no, he couldn't see himself out, not without Kara opening the doors or flying him out. The Fortress of Solitude was anything if not secure anyway. "You're not listening are you?" She said, half heart-broken and half angry. "I can't teach you because I'm not a good enough teacher!" She told him. "I don't think I'm better than anybody! I'm not good enough to teach you! I'm not good enough to teach Kal either! Don't you understand!?" She pleaded.

"My planet is gone, Wally. Everybody I ever knew. Every person I ever saw. Every member of my family, every friend, every enemy, every person I ever passed on the street... Out of everybody, everybody I ever knew, saw or met or heard of, the only survivor is me." She told him, but her anger faltered as she said it, the realisation crushing her and becoming a genuine, heartbroken sadness. "Can you even imagine what that's like? Everything Krypton was... is all on me. I'm just some stupid teenager! Why me!? Why should I be the only survivor!? You can't honestly believe I was the most deserving person out of my entire world to survive... And you want to learn about it all... a-and I can't do it. I don't even know where to start."

"Could you? If you were the last survivor of Earth, if everybody you ever knew was gone, could you teach somebody from a totally different culture, who had never even seen your technology before, all about it? Somewhere that operated on totally different scientific principles? Who didn't even have words for the concepts you used? Maybe you could Wally! You've always been smart. So maybe you're some super genius and you could. But I can't! I'm not good enough! I'm not smart enough! My world is gone and I'm meant to carry on its legacy and I just... I can't." She sobbed, tears flowing now, even if they were still at least partially angry.

"Oh, and for your information, I never mastered any of your technology on Krypton. It doesn't exist there. Heck, I struggle here! It's so different from ours. And yes, it's far less advanced, and I'm sorry if that offends you, but it is. But that doesn't mean I had a clue how to use it. I grew up around this..." She held her hands out to the crystals. "Do you think I had the first clue what to do with a plug socket? Or a CD? Or a cell phone? Do you have any idea how many times I nearly burned down Ma and Pa's house because I didn't understand the oven? I don't understand any of this world!"

"And there's one final thing you have to learn about Kryptonians. Just because we were more advanced technologically didn't mean we were better than humans." She added, looking ashamed. "You know my cousin? He's... he's the best person I know. And do you know why? It's not because of his powers. It's not because of the planet he was born on. It's because underneath all of that, he was raised a human, by human parents. He's better than anybody from my world. He's a better person than I will ever be."

"So you're right. I'm a bad person. I'm the last survivor of Krypton, the last person with any real memories of it, and I know what you're thinking, and you're right." She told him. "My people chose the wrong person to save. There was a million, a billion.... people more worthy than me. And they sent me instead. And I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry you're stuck with me. I wish I'd died with my planet and instead you were here talking to one of our scientific geniuses, or somebody with a plan for helping revive Krypton, or at least honour it's memory. But instead you have a dumb teenage girl who can't even keep her friends. And I'm sorry."

[Kid Flash]

"Kara..."

Damn it. She had to go play the last survivor card. Make it seem like he was the jerk here, instead of Miss my entire race is billions of years smarter than you. The tears made it worse. Jay Garrick may have earned his superspeed while attempting to purify heavy water, but for Wally the salty water of tears was his Kryptonite. He wished he could cling on to his righteous anger somehow. He wished he could fire out a salvo of retorts and rebuttals as if they were weapons, unleashing a distraction that would buy him enough time to escape. Instead, he felt as if his whole skeleton had been replaced with lead.

"You're not a bad person, Kara. And I don't think the wrong person got saved - what the hell? What the hell kind of asshole do you think I must be if that's your assumption? It's just..."

He drew in a breath, mustered up all the resolve he could to look Kara dead in the eyes.

"I don't care about the tech, alright? It's hard to explain. I need to learn the basics first. I get that, and I'm happy to. I am a quick study, I read as fast as I run, and I am a massive nerd for that stuff. So yeah, you not being able to explain the stuff in a way that I'll understand it... it's a shame you can't today, but like, big deal? I didn't understand how Kryptonite at first, until I read up on exotic energy radiation from crystalline structures. I had to go spend, like, three whole days studying the groundwork before I could have a conversation with Martin Stein about how his Firestorm Matrix works. Maybe I seem like I'm impatient or in a hurry, but I'm not. I just do everything fast, y'know? So if it takes a month, or a year, or ten years... I still wanna know. And I'm not gonna stop wanting to know just because you told me it's too hard for me to understand. That's like... a red rag to a bull."

He winced at the inadvertent idiom, wishing there were some way he could convey the same sentiment without it being so unaccommodating to the offworlder.

"What bugs me? What -" He hesitated before using the word, but it was the right one. "- upsets me, is that you only just met me, and you already think I don't measure up. I have spent my whole life being the nerdy, scrawny kid from Kansas. I am the Kid Flash, y'know? My name is Wallace. My whole existence is being a consolation prize; being the inferior, disappointing alternative. I'm the friend that is there for people when their boyfriends are jerks. I'm the guy who is smarter than most of the adults I meet, but they take one look at me and they write me off because I'm just a kid. I'm the speedster that saves people and has to see that tiny flicker of disappointment in their eyes that they didn't get rescued by the real Flash. It must be so overwhelming for you, your cousin being so... super, and feeling like you don't measure up. You've only had a year of that, with only one guy... that's my whole life. And just -"

His voice cracked a little, he glanced away, fighting the way his eyes tried to mist over. Wasn't gonna cry. Kara'd already called dibs on that.

"You lost your entire world. You're entire race. Everyone who understands you, who gets where you came from, who can relate to you on an equal footing... they're all gone, and all you're left with is me. I like you, Kara, and you seem to really need a friend - I want to be that. 7 billion people on Earth, and yet most of the time it feels like the loneliest place in the universe. But I am never going to be Kryptonian. I am never going to be able to measure up to that. I am always going to be only human."

Wally sighed, slumping completely.

"I've met the Atom, Kara... but after what you said to me, I'm the one who feels small."