Daddy's Little Girl

Sometimes, it was good to do things slow.

Being a speedster was impossible to describe. You could draw as many parallels and comparisons as you want, but no one except a fellow conduit of the Speed Force could ever know what it was like to watch the world blur past you at impossible speeds, to feel that power coursing through your veins, to have every cell in your body vibrate with such energy that you could pass through solid objects, or become invisible to the naked eye. No one could imagine that, not really - not correctly - and anyone who thought they did was mistaken, grossly underestimating the wonders that Jay Garrick and his peers found themselves capable of.

The problem came when such speed, such wonder, such incredible power, became normal. It wasn't an addiction, it was more insidious than that. It was like sloth, a deadly sin that you lapsed into. If every task, every chore, every mundane facet of existence could be completed within the blink of an eye, why would you ever do anything different? Why would you walk if you could drive? Why would you drive if you could fly? Why would you fly if you could race there, over land and sea as if they were no different, up mountains and buildings, down valleys and highways, faster than human perception, faster than light, experiencing that buzz and wonderment all along the way? If you were a speedster, why would you ever move slowly again?

There was an answer, of course. Such questions always had an answer. For Jay Garrick, she was half-asleep in the other room, the intended recipient for the breakfast that Jay was slowly constructing, relishing each mortally-paced step and process. There was joy to be found in such tasks, to cook or craft or construct with your own hands, to feel a connection to what you were doing and what you had made. The whole world had become speedsters in a way, modern society built on instant food and instant gratification, on services and software and surrogates who could take care of every inconvenience for them. People didn't go to stores anymore, they browsed the internet and had everything delivered. People didn't fix their broken sinks or change their own spark plugs anymore, there were contractors and mechanics for that. Torn clothes? Worn shoes? A broken computer, or phone? People didn't even bother trying to repair those anymore, they just trashed the old and broken, and splashed out on a replacement.

Maybe Jay was just old. That was something he wrestled with, more and more as the days and weeks passed him by. The power that the Speed Force imbued him with kept him physically young - or at least, physically younger than he should have been - and on most days, that felt like a blessing. But the Speed Force defined what he could do, not who he was: and in that regard, Jay Garrick was slow and unchanging, a Baby Boomer amid the rise of the Millennials. The more things changed, and the more Jay struggled to adapt to them, the more obsolete he began to feel: the more he became those worn out old shoes, just waiting for that moment when the wear and tear was too severe, and he was thrown away instead of anyone having the patience to attempt a repair.

And so Jason made the most of it while he could. He made the most of life, and the little tasks and chores that made it what it was. He made the most of fatherhood, a challenge that already progressed at an alarmingly fast pace even without the Speed Force's help. He cooked by hand. He fixed his own sink. The cabinets affixed to the kitchen wall above him had been crafted, and assembled, and installed by his own hands - with a little help from the smaller hands of his daughter, of course, especially with the hinges and in the hard-to-reach corners. When his work demanded it, he took the time to stand at a tailor's, indulging in patience and in nostalgia for proper craftsmanship.

Jay never quite figured out shoes, though. No amount of indulgence, or nostalgia, or advanced space-age meta-materials could withstand the stress of being worn on the feet of a speedster. Perhaps that was the analogy to dwell on in all of this, perhaps that was the inevitability: that one day, Jay would go from being an old and comfortable pair of shoes to a pair too worn and broken to be of any use.

Hopefully not today.

Jay grabbed the nearby saucepan, the wooden spoon clanging inside like a rudimentary bell. "Sleep when you're dead!" he yelled, the raucous sound filling up the entirety of their home. "Grub's up, kiddo!"

She had been awake for an hour, laying in bed in languid repose, listening to her father putter around the kitchen like a man on a mission. He did this every year. Her birthday... the attempt to sneak it all in before she came out... her coming out, rubbing her eyes as she yawned, feigning surprise every time he did it... it was what made her life complete.


Herfive foot seven inch frame stretched silently in her queen sized bed as she listened to himset the table. The next sounds, silverware on bowls, spatulas inpans, made her smile broader. Sitting up, lithe arms reached up topull her jet black hair into a messy ponytail with the elastic on thebedside table. She was just about to crawl back under the covers whenthe keening of the makeshift bell and her father's bellow made hercover her mouth to keep from laughing. She called out, pretending tobe waking up. “Daaaaddd!!! I'm up... I'm up. Be out in a minute.”The whine was fake, but the warning was sincere. She was up andslipping on her sweats in no time and a moment later opened her doorand rubbed her eyes with the promised yawn. “Really dad... whycan't I just sleep in for my birthday? Maybe be served withcroissants and cappuccino in bed?” She laughed and walked on silentbare feet to the kitchen table where it was all set up as usual. Thedishes, food, even the flowers... a yearly tradition she lookedforward to like the sun rise on the first day of summer. “It'sperfect, Daddy. Thank you...”


Shewalked over and kissed his cheek with a double arm hug around hisneck as she rose on tiptoes like any child who adored their father.It had been just them for so long, he was not just her father, buther best friend. She couldn't honestly imagine a birthday morningspent any other way.

"Oh, no."

Jay was quick to thwart that hypothetical before it could coalesce, letting it melt like a snowflake on ground that was a fraction of a degree too warm.

"Under no circumstances am I to enter your room. You may be too tired to remember, but you were very resolute - and very thirteen - at the time, and it isn't something I can easily forget."

He let his makeshift summoning device fall to his side, freeing up a hand to rest gently on Jesse's shoulder as he leaned forward to plant a kiss on her forehead. They danced this dance so often. She made the same half-hearted protests, he recycled the same good-natured teases. Maybe thirty-two was too old to still be going through these motions, but he didn't care. The routine would overstay its welcome eventually, and he planned to make the most of it before the opportunities faded. Sometimes, he wondered if that was the way parenting was supposed to be, the constant experience of sand slipping through your fingers as your flesh and blood aged, and matured, and drifted further away. Or perhaps that was just how parenting felt to people like him, single fathers who understood how precious loved ones were, and knew all too well how agonising loss could be.

"Besides, you were past your beauty sleep quota."

With that, he pulled himself away, retreating back towards the kitchen, abandoning the pan on the counter top in favour of a pot of freshly brewed coffee. He smiled a little to himself as he poured, relishing the familiar shuffle of slippers against wood floors, one of the many indescribable and indefinable joys that came from his daughter still living at home. Speed Force bless Gotham apartment prices, he mused quietly, carefully topping up the worn and faded World's Best Dad mug that he still insisted on using every day.

He turned, two mugs of coffee placed carefully on the appropriate coasters.

"I don't need you and that smile of yours giving me any more potential boyfriends to scare off with a scowl and a shotgun. I barely have enough time as it is."

"Beauty sleep quota, Dad?" She rolled her eyes and went to the table. "No such thing on a birthday." She laughed and took the given coffee as he brought it. "And for the record, it wasn't a shotgun. I think Gerad would have been ok with a shotgun. But you told him the big folder on the table was his dossier with everything he'd done since starting high school." She laughed shaking her head at the incident over her first college boyfriend.

Taking a sip of the coffee, she added sugar and milk from the servers on the table. "I think I have been more than competent since then in the guys I see." She leaned back and took a moment to relish the moment. How much longer would her father indulge in such ridiculousness for her benefit? "Well, when there is a guy. Speaking of which, Janice from The Lady's Auxiliary hit me up the other night. Apparently she wants to set me up on a blind date." She laughed at the ridiculousness of the idea. "I told her I didn't know my schedule. Sooooo... I'm thinking it's time I got a real job. You can't support me forever, Dad."

She served food to his plate and motioned for him to sit down as she smiled. Since graduating from college, she had spent her following years puttering around the apartment and attending social engagements. Philanthropy was fine, but the endless fundraisers, balls, and teas were starting to bore her. She wasn't sure how many more days she could sit around and smile at people who spent the two hours they were together talking about nonsense things like the latest fashion or who was seen walking downtown with who.

"Since grade school," actually, Jay muttered to himself, burying the words in the rim of his own coffee mug.

His eyes contemplated his daughter for a brief silent moment, as she idly provoked him with the notion of blind dates and mysterious men. It was a game to her, banter between a girl and her father. Little did she realise that the scant information she had offered was more than enough for Garrick to connect the dots and find the anonymous individual in question. Social media had made such processes easier than ever, allowing him to skim over interactions and conversation histories without needing to even contemplate breaking any laws or encryptions. Anything more fell within the scope of his organisation's broad mandate: he was an employee of the Secret Service after all, and it was the agency's policy to safeguard families and loved ones from the kind of harm or danger that might adversely influence an operative. That protection extended to Jay's daughter, and if that gave him free reign to request a background check and financial history on whomever Janice from the Lady's Auxiliary felt was an appropriate beau for his little girl, so be it. It was a match made in heaven.

Of course, as far as Jesse was concerned, her father was nothing more than an overprotective corporate suit. It was a necessary evil, to withhold his proper employment from her, to mask the fact that behind the vineer of Queen Consolidated, and deep within the bureaucracy of the Secret Service, existed an organisation - Checkmate - to which he was beholden, and on whose behalf and in whose name he'd performed all manner of secret, shadowed, classified acts. He told himself it was a security consideration to hide it from her, for her protection as well as the organisation: but while that might have been the motivation in the past, now it was a habit as much as anything else. It was strange, the lies you became accustomed to living with. It made it feel like a small thing that every business trip was a fabrication, every answer to how was your day? was a fiction. He told himself that it was an essential part of fatherhood, the lies you tell your children to shield them from the truths they were better off not knowing.

"Aren't you a little young for a midlife crisis?" he offered back, setting down his mug, and reaching for a small ribbon-bound box from across the table. "I'm pretty sure I saw a magazine cover explaining that thirty-two was the new twenty-six, or something like that."

She finished topping his plate off with food and set it in front of him. She heard the murmur but ignored it like she hadn't heard it. That was the point, after all.

"Really, Dad? Have you been reading those tabloid magazines again? The new twenty six..." she snorted and rolled her eyes. "And it's not a midlife crisis. I thought you would be happy? I mean, you sent me to college for my administration knowledge. Yet all I do is Chair or Co-Chair a dozen fund raising groups, and sit on the board of half a dozen more charitable foundations. I thought you would be happy I wanted to go out and make money instead of finding ways to spend yours." She glanced at the box and smiled brighter, her elbows resting on the table as her fingers steeple to support her chin. "Of course, you spending your money on me is a completely acceptable use of finances. I will always help support those decisions." She laughed and her face lit up like it did when she was five on Christmas morning as she saw the gifts beneath the tree he had shoved from wall to wall and floor to ceiling for his little princess in her younger years. Her finger tips tapped in glee and anticipation joy as she wondered what wonderful little trinket his hands were holding for her.

"Your mother -"

Jason cut himself off, before his emotions did it for him. It was a milestone year, of a sombre kind. Jesse was turning thirty-two, something her mother never quite managed. As far as Jesse knew, it was something unforeseen, something unavoidable. Sickness. Complications. A medical explanation for why her mother had been stripped away from her while she was still an infant, too young to have memories of her own to hold onto.

The reality was far more complicated, and plagued Jay constantly. The two of them had been vigilantes: the Flash, and Liberty Belle the fastest man and mightiest woman alive, in their day. They'd served America, and saved America, more times than anyone had chosen to count, alone, together, and with the Justice Society. Then Jesse had come into their lives, and she had changed things. She should have changed things. If it had been up to him, Libby would never have left her daughter's side: but it was the eighties, and Jay was an old-fashioned guy whose attitudes were out of date. That was why, when the call came, Libby had gone, and Jay had stayed, and that was the life that fate had left Jesse with. Liberty Belle wasn't the only hero that had died that night, and the Flash wasn't the only one to lose someone: but as a result of it all, the Justice Society had lost each other, and themselves; and they had lost the public's faith and trust. Government and politics had seen to the rest, and so Jay had been left alone, with no one but his Jesse.

He frowned, rearranging his thoughts, choosing his words more carefully before he spoke, which he did a little slower this time.

"She would have wanted me to take care of you, to keep you safe, as best I could. Not just from harm, and from danger, but from hardship, and sadness, and struggle as well. All the money in the world, all the charities and fundraisers, the parties, the late nights, the breakfasts after?"

Jay's mouth tugged into a small smile.

"It's a small price to pay for the happiness of my little girl, and I'll happily keep paying it until you force me to stop."

The smile faltered slightly, Jay's eyes falling back to the gift-wrapped box. The paper and ribbons were new, but the contents? They'd been undisturbed for thirty-two years, hidden away from sight and memory. Confiscated, in point of fact, as a potentially dangerous accessory of one of America's now-illegal vigilantes. Jay hadn't even realised it still existed at first, and it had taken years of study and scrutiny to confirm that the mystically altered metal of Libby's pendant was now benign, before Checkmate had grudgingly agreed to return it to its rightful owner. Of course, Checkmate believed that the rightful owner was Jay; the husband of the deceased, after all. Jay knew better: he hadn't opened it, hadn't so much as peeked, waiting for a moment like now.

"This was your mothers," he explained, sliding the box gently across the table towards his daughter. "It isn't Tiffany, or Dior, but I always thought it was pretty, and your mother wore it all the time. She used to tell me that it was made from the same metal as the Liberty Bell. I don't know that I ever believed her, but I do know that she would have wanted you to have it."

As her father choked up, Jesse reachedover and took her father's hand. Her mother, as she knew, was deadfrom a horrible medical accident. No one's fault. She tried to getdetails when she was younger. But every time she brought it up, herfather cried. She had stopped asking years ago.


“You have taken excellent care of me,Dad. No single dad could have done better. Especially with aheadstrong young girl.” She laughed at the title her father hadused on her more than once. “And all the money in the world can'tkeep me from growing up. Though I admit I 'do' like the parties.”She laughed again knowing he was aware of her love of dressing up andshowing off.


When he mentioned the small box, shesat back with a slightly confused look on her face. She had hermother's jewelry and thought she had it all. This was a bit of asurprise. Though when he mentioned it wasn't a high end jeweler whohad produced it, she smiled and shook her head. “I don't care ifit's made of macaroni, Dad. If it was Mom's I will love it.”


Jesse pulled the box towards herselfand slowly opened it. A gasp of surprise and impressiveness slippedfrom her lips as she lifted it up and looked past it to her dad.“It's beautiful, Dad!” She smiled and tears filled her eyes.


Suddenly she stood up so fast that herchair tipped over. Before it hit the ground, she had lunged at herdad to hug him fiercely enough that his own seat threatened totopple. “Thank you, Daddy. You are the best!” She was crying andlaughing and holding him like he was the greatest man on Earth. Andin her eyes, he was.