#ffoba

i will always be thankful for reading it <3

Thank you...honestly that's one of my personal favorites of my short stories so that means a lot :) I keep meaning to get back to the next chapter of that one when I have time.

Sure! Thank you and sorry I'm a bit late getting back to you.

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Bart tries not to talk about the future. Well, or maybe it should be the past for him.

Tenses and chronology are the first things to go when messing with time travel. It’s just asking for a headache, honestly.

It’s not like it’s a secret.

Not really.

Secrets are things that matter, that have effects. That future, Bart’s past, is never going to happen. He made sure of it. So, by extension, it doesn’t have effects. It has quite literally no matter left, even at the molecular level. 

Just because it did happen--for Bart, to Bart--doesn’t mean it has to matter for anyone else.

And, yeah, he does get that other people here don’t necessarily think like that. People here in the past (present) get to do things like care without consequence and just because things mattered for Bart then means they can matter to other people now.

Bart gets that. Really, he does.

It just…he kinda doesn’t, too. In Bart’s world (old world), things didn’t work like that. Which means, consequently, Bart doesn’t really work like that. And some of the things people bother with caring about--especially when it comes to Bart--just really seem like too much of a hassle.

Besides, it’s kinda depressing for them anyway.

So, Bart tries not to talk about the future.

.....

Absolutely! (Sorry I'm late answering this). Also, thank you so so much! I'm seriously so glad you like ATFO and Flash Facts!!!!! That really does just mean a lot to me! thank you for the nice message.

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The thing about Bart that the Rogues have come to accept is that Bart doesn’t really…explain things.

Or maybe he does--it’s just with side mentions and half-truths that might technically count as “mentioned” but not in a way that actually tells you anything.

And, yeah, that was probably obvious from the first moment they met Bart or re-met him as Impulse and spent the next month having to recategorize every little thing they’d ever known about him all to be greeted with the fact that it really, really should have been obvious a long time before then.

It was just…

Well, it’s Bart.

Side mentions and half-truths.

It’s not like it’s a problem, per se. The Rogues themselves aren’t shining examples of loose lips and upfront communication. They’re still criminals--who ain’t entitled to their own little secrets? 

And it isn’t like the kid means a lot by it. They’re pretty sure it’s habit by now, maybe some kind of fucked up survival instinct that taught him to keep things close to the vest and if you gotta say something, don’t tell much. Or it could be just Bart with that strange brain that sees the world way too fast and forgets about letting the rest of them catch up sometime.

So, Bart doesn’t really explain things.

And it’s fine. It’s not like the kid’s gotta lay out every little thing to them. If it’s important enough, they’ll find it out eventually, anyway. Or at least Len will find it out for them. 

But, sometimes it does mean that certain details slip through the cracks where the Rogues are left to figure it out on their own.