Fanfic - Guy/Tora Guy/Kyle 'You've Changed" Rated PG-13
Tora smiled at the anxious green lantern sitting next to her. She may have been dead for a few years but she remembered how often she was anxious and just let herself follow Bea’s or later someone else like J’onn’s lead on things. It was sort of funny at times she felt that J’onn was less alien than she was. Now she was in space on the lantern station again, Guy had brought her here for a nice red-skinned woman named Soranik to treat her injuries. He was lectured by the doctor for his presumption to bring her to be treated by the Corp’s leading medical specialist.
Anyways, it was a bit of a difficult scenario all around particularly now. She had never been that close with Kilowag, but the few associations they had at the JLI headquarters was enough for him to be willing to let her know the score. She felt a bit bad that her primary lament at G’Nort being considered M.I.A. was that she couldn’t simply call him over and scratch behind his ears and find out everything she needed to know about Guy and the Corps. She remembered while she was dating Guy, G’Nort telling her with his puppy dog admiration of Guy’s deeds outside of their earth-tied league. She wouldn’t mourn the loss of the canine alien as it was clear that if the ring hasn’t returned in some way shape or form that the lantern was still out there, somewhere.
When she first came back to life she was unable to face the depth of feeling Guy had built up for her while she was gone and how different he was from the man she cared deeply for. Now on her second trip to Oa she had an even clearer understanding of how things had gone. It helped that this time Guy had only enough time to bring her here for her wounds to be treated ‘by the best’ before he had to speed off to save some rookies from being knocked off.
Her poor man and she felt even worse for the one sitting next to her at the bar. The bar that the silly boy didn’t even realize the meaning of! Guy was always one for big displays of affection he always felt this need to compensate for what he felt were deficiencies on his part. Kyle was nattering on to her about how Guy had said -such- wonderful things about her and how he hoped she and Guy could resolve things. He asked her whether she was readjusted to her life enough again to think about relationships and she just had to interrupt him before this got worse. Taking a page from Bea’s book she placed her finger on Kyle’s lips in a shushing motion.
Kyle stopped and even quit with the fidgety drawing that he had been doing as he talked at her while she nodded earlier.
“I’m not getting back together with Guy, You should let him know how you feel.” She said smiling and then winking at him and taking her hand back.
“Wha- No, I’m not and even if I was he’s not and you are-“ Kyle was stopped by the finger returning.
“I’m going to tell you a story and you are going to listen to me. Understood?” Tora took a deep breath when he nodded.
“Guy is a man capable of a great deal, and you’ve been with him long enough over the years to know just how much he is capable of, perhaps you’ve heard stories, backhanded comments, jeers, accolades but these are from people who saw him from the outside, because most people did.” Tora frosted the counter top and then made the ice rise up and form the younger face and appearance of the Guy she first met, “This is the man I dated. He was flawed and perfect.” Then she let it shatter on the table, “and he is not mine anymore, I died. I will always love him, I just don’t feel it romantically anymore, and neither does he. That’s the problem with the impermanence of death around here. I came back, and I have had time to think on that now and find out about everything that has happened while I was gone. Guy grieved my loss but a part of him held me up as this ideal and when I first came back it would have been so easy to be swung away by it. My flawed man had defeated the impossible and grown up and I came back from the dead. “She hitched her breath here a moment and Kyle put a hand on her shoulder. She was glad Guy honestly deserved the kind of partner who could be this sort of presence in his life.
“ I stopped it though when I saw the two of you interacting, I had a momentary dose of reality, I realized I hadn’t even gone back to see my people, my parents since coming back to life. That there were so many other people on Earth I just hadn’t gotten around to seeing, that Guy was not the first person I went to see when I came back. That so much of who I am and what I want is on Earth, and Guy here on Oa amongst the stars is the best expression of who he is. When he is here he belongs. On Earth as I am certain you’ve seen his past haunts him following around. When Guy talks with you it reminds me of how we used to talk before I died. Mother talked to me about some moments she had with him since my death, and from what I gather he thinks being with someone he feels as deeply about as he had me, being with someone other than me with whom I’ve never been associated would somehow be like cheating or something. It’s ridiculous. I Died. I want him to move on, I want him to love a person who can be by his side out here and fit in. I can’t I am not a lantern, and it has taken me so long not to feel alien on my own world I cannot go back just like he can’t.”
Kyle ducks his head briefly and then peeking through his fringe at her asks, “I thought you were going to tell me about your Guy?” Tora smiled at him and looked up at the decorations in the bar, the way Guy had placed certain objects that were clearly Kyle’s around in what were clear compliments.
“Guy was never shy about telling people how he felt, except when he was. He was a social worker and school teacher before I met him. He talked about it sometimes with me in bed he disliked talking about what he did before while the others were around. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them never even knew. I know some of our team weren’t aware that Guy had a severe acquired brain injury and wasn’t just naturally whacked. I guess it is part of the division between heroes and villains they had caught in their mind. Heroes have to be in full control of their faculties, the height of mental acuity. They will overlook social graces but in the end the ‘crazies’ are the bad guys we need to catch.” Tora huffed. “He came by the head injury honestly protecting a bus full of children, he sustained damage to his motor cortex, which was part of the ‘manly gait’ that became associated with Guy at that time.”
“Guy’s swagger is the result of a brain injury?” Kyle boggled, he had never heard that.
“Not entirely.” Tora chuckled. “His swagger now is more balanced and precise than his ‘manly gait’ I assume he came to like the machismo associated with his manner of bearing.” Kyle raised an eyebrow.
“I guess bedroom talk about his medical information wasn’t quite what you expected?” Tora asked.
“Guy always made it seem like in the bedroom all you did was-“ Kyle covered his mouth and looked at Tora who was chuckling again.
“Of course he would.” She laughed. “he wouldn’t see a therapist, what he could remember from being a counsellor was that you should talk these sorts of things out, and I was the one person he trusted enough to talk about these things with. I wouldn’t be telling this accounting of events to anyone, and if you make me regret telling you this and use it to hurt him, space and lantern rings or not.” She let the air grow chillier and some frost to catch Kyle around the collar. Kyle looked solemn and slightly worried when his inventive green construct couldn’t make her frost disappear. Point made she let the room return to its previous temperature and clamped down on her powers, which were so much stronger and easier to control now than before.
“The next part that was damaged was his ability to regulate his emotions, so he had these extreme highs and lows, he couldn’t do otherwise. Our first date was a disaster and he tried so hard I loved him for it, you knew he tried because of how he felt and how you could see it. He was as alien to the team as I was two foreigners to the expected behaviour of a hero. I was shy and reserved and Guy was so much himself. He couldn’t hold back, when he was loving he was extremely so, and caring almost to the point of caricature. When angry he just let it all loose, he couldn’t stop not the same way you or I could. There were some ways, and we worked on those. The additional head traumas indicative of a heroic career path were just worsening things, after you get a head injury your brain doesn’t just right itself the same way. It’s like tapping the shattered vase held together with glue eventually some pieces are just not able to fit back in. “
Kyle tried to cover the watering of his eyes Tora rubbed his back and looked around the bar before changing her mind about suggesting a drink.
“Why tap a vase?” Kyle asked.
“That was how he explained what the doctors had told him to me, I looked it up myself later but I think his explanation was best though I shortened it some, the original had some more emotional affectations of his thrown in there and the example may or may not have been given after something that happened to a particular vase I liked at JLI headquarters.” Tora grinned at the memory of that silly vase. Kyle picked up on it and smiled too and began to draw Tora outright snickered when she saw a cartoon Guy sticking out his tongue trying to make his big hands glue together a broken vase. She knew Kyle had just drawn that from his mind of what he knew about Guy, and she recognized how well he did in a scant few minutes, even the detail of Guy doing it by hand rather than using his ring to make it a far simpler task.
Tora lured Kyle back into small talk and then back to the subject of Guy in recent years and their interactions. She liked him, he would make Guy happy and that was something she wanted to set in motion before she left for Earth again. She wondered if Bea felt like this when she did those undercover checkmate assignments she was describing to her at their last visit. Find target, relate to target and then achieve mission. It was an important mission too. The happiness of the man she loved was at stake.
~_~_~_~_~
Guy staggered into his quarters only to find his bed with people in it already. He raised a glowing green fist that lit the room and there was a fully dressed Tora and Kyle lay tangled in his sheets. Tora saw Guy and with a coy look patted the bed between her and Kyle and set a look on him she hoped he would remember. He was so different from the man she used to date that she almost worried he wouldn’t know those little looks and motions anymore. Except he just shrugged and his uniform faded leaving him clad in only green boxers and the fist disappeared.
“Are you okay?” He asked her in a short whisper.
“I will be, and so will you.” She said in a soft tone patting back his hair. Guy rubbed a crease on Kyle’s brow, poor kid had trouble sleeping, he knew about that it was something they had shared.
Tora then put her hand over the hand that Guy had used to soothe Kyle, the gesture an explanation. Guy looked at her and she kissed his forehead and asked “How do you feel about him.” Her tone wasn’t questioning it was if she already knew the answer. Guy tried to take everything in and put it into words that made sense. It had been a long time since he had been like this about another person and some parts of this he had thought were the fault of his mind at the time. He looked at Kyle lit in the soft glow of his ring.
“he’s Kyle.” Guy said his emotions clear in the emphasis on the name of his friend.
Tora’s eyes had that snowflake sparkling thing they always got when he understated something in a way she found funny. He shrugged, his tired limbs wanted nothing more than to lie down and perhaps have the weight of someone he loved between them.
He looked between her and Kyle and suddenly got it. He made a light growl at her she swatted him on his behind then stood up from the bed and folded her arms. He shook his head and turned his back to her and wrapped his arms around Kyle. She left the room with a jaunt in her step.
Kyle made a little happy noise and Guy snickered and kissed him behind the ear and whispered, “You were awake this whole time and I know it.” Kyle’s lips tugged upward and he made a sleepy mumble to Guy “prove it”. Tora was getting her favourite chocolates every Christmas forever. Guy worked at giving Kyle as good an experience as every bedroom tale about him and Tora he’d told the man, true or embellished. Exhaustion and need for sleep could wait. The next morning Guy found out Kilowag had brought Tora back home to Earth. When Kilowag returned it was with an ugly blue vase with opaque snowflakes on it. Inside was a simple post-it and a container of superglue he kept the post it in their bedroom drawer and the vase glue still inside on display in his bar on a shelf behind a statue of him and Kyle standing back to back.
Kyle never commented on the post-it and Guy was glad.
“You’ve changed”
Guy smiled, damned straight. He worked hard for every last one of them and he would work not to lose sight of that again otherwise he could miss something precious. He kissed Kyle and closed the drawer having found what they needed, a leer in Kyle’s direction and it was all over.