Jeremy Bertram ϟ Barry Allen (outrunning) wrote in thereincarnates, @ 2015-12-04 18:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | jeremy bertram |
Who: Jeremy Bertram (narrative)
What: Just once, he’d like get to work early; Jeremy’s daily commute is interrupted.
Where: New York City, a few blocks away from the office of Whistler, Inc.
When: Friday, December 4; morning
Long before Barry Allen had come into the picture, Jeremy Bertram had his routine down. He’d wake up three hours before he needed to be at work, shower, style his hair enough that it didn’t look like an electrified porcupine, and get dressed. He’d have a bowl of cereal, an apple, and his first cup of coffee for the day while he watched the news, then he’d brush his teeth, pack up his lunch and anything else he might need before he came home, and head out the door. He tried to always get to work at least fifteen minutes early, but most of the time it turned out to be more like twenty. It gave him plenty of time to settle in and finish his second cup of coffee before the office started getting crowded. By the time that work officially started, he’d be comfortable at his desk with all of his paperwork arranged neatly enough that he could find anything he needed.
Maybe you’d call him boring. It wouldn’t be the first, or even the fiftieth, time that Jeremy had heard that word applied to himself. Whenever he’d been dumped, that word had featured pretty prominently in the reasons why that he’d been given. That, and anal retentive, which he was fairly certain could really be considered a related charge. It had stopped bothering him by the time he’d left his twenties. When you were over a certain age, you were supposed to be settled, and boring. What Jeremy did worked for him. It was stupid to change something that worked for you just because some woman thought you ought to be more spontaneous. Spontaneous guys didn’t have a steady paycheck. Jeremy did. Jeremy was dependable. A provider. Good old reliable Jerry. If he missed the days where he could just run for hours without having to worry about any responsibilities, he didn’t think about them long enough to cut down on his productivity, and that was what mattered.
Then had come Barry, and with him a whole host of other problems.
The vigilante part, that Jeremy didn’t have a problem with. Shocking, to anybody who knew him, probably, but that was something that Jeremy could understand. He had these amazing powers, he should use them. So what if he hadn’t quite mastered the art of being the Flash, yet, that would come with time and practice, and time and practice was something that Jeremy didn’t mind dedicating. He’d found the freedom he’d always found when he’d been running, and it was even better the faster he went. There was nothing that Jeremy loved more about being a reincarnate than just running, as fast as he could, as far as he could before he absolutely had to stop. It was the kind of speed he’d only dreamed about, when he was doing school sports. Of course, he wouldn’t have been able to compete in them, then…
Sometimes, Jeremy wondered what his life would have been like if Barry had come around before he’d gotten that routine in place. Would he have made more room in his life for the things that were important to Barry, then? Probably. It was probably easier, becoming a reincarnate when you were younger, instead of after forty when you already thought you had your life all figured out. It wasn’t like Jeremy had gotten a choice about that, though, just a superhero suddenly in his head when he’d thought that all the excitement in his life was over for good. Barry had his good points, of course, but there were plenty of bad ones there, too, that weren’t exactly his fault. The being late, though, that one Jeremy thought he could lay squarely at Barry’s feet. He’d never been late before he’d become a reincarnate.
This morning, though, he was on schedule. The bus he’d taken let him off a few blocks from work, but the bus that would have taken him nearer didn’t line up as nicely with his morning schedule. Besides, it wasn’t like Jeremy minded the walk. If he could have run without giving away his secret identity, he would have been there almost too early. As it was, he’d be hitting right around that fifteen minute mark he liked for the first time since Barry had shown up. Maybe that meant that Jeremy’s life was finally starting to get back on track, the combination of being the reincarnate of the Flash and being just a normal guy who worked as an accountant in a tech firm balancing out at last.
Or it could have meant that he was about due for a disturbance.
Who in their right mind robbed a convenience store so early in the morning? Jeremy had thought it was the kind of activity that you reserved for night, but there were two guys inside the store with pantyhose pulled over their faces to disguise their features, one of them holding gun on the cashier while the other shoveled money into a bag. There was a crowd gathered outside, no one quite brave enough to go in and be a hero. He heard someone mention something about having called the cops, but Jeremy didn’t hear any sirens, and there was nobody in a uniform in sight. It was just a normal robbery. Nothing metahuman.
If he walked right by, nobody would judge him. He still needed to get to work. The world still spun on by, even when bad people, or just down on their luck people, were doing bad things. The police were probably on their way, and this wasn’t Flash time. This was Jeremy-the-accountant time, the time when he was supposed to forget all about being a superhero and just focus on what he needed to do to bring in that paycheck. He still had to eat, after all, and his boss would find any excuse to hassle him. Being late, again, was a pretty good excuse, especially how late he would be if he took the time to help stop a robbery. There was no reason why these people needed him, needed the Flash.
Inside the store, a gunshot went off. People screamed, but from what Jeremy could see nobody was actually down. Just scared. Still, if he’d fired once, the guy with the gun could fire again. Next time, the people inside might not get so lucky. Jeremy hesitated. It still wasn’t anything human. Running around stopping convenience store robberies was a good way to get the kind of attention that he didn’t want. The smart move would be to back off and let the cops handle it.
Jeremy sighed and tucked the briefcase with his lunch and paperwork against his chest. If he was going to help out, he’d have to run back and get his suit first. There was a reason that costume existed, and it was because his work clothes couldn’t stand up to that kind of speed. The briefcase would probably be fine, but it looked like he was going to be ruining another set of clothes. Glancing around to make sure that everyone’s eye was on the store instead of the crowd, Jerry tucked his head, turned around, and ran.
It looked like he was going to be late to work that day, after all.