Big Damn List has Hal/Kyle, no tequila.
Title: Cloud of Ash
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, John Stewart
Prompt: 47 - HEART
Word Count: 5897
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The aftermath of sector 2815’s mysterious sunless planet.
Author's Notes: Follows HOURS, SHADE, and FIRE. Slash (Hal/Kyle).
Kyle - Shades of Sepia
The canvas stared at him, mocking in its bright white. Kyle almost thought he could hear it laughing at the utter and total lack of a mental image to transfer to its blankness. He couldn’t just sit there and stare at it, but every time he tried to go somewhere, do something, he found himself with an itch in his right hand and restlessness skittering through his veins. Trouble was, even when he sat - or stood, or knelt, or crouched - in front of the bright blank canvas, the restlessness refused to go away. The palette of paints had long since dried and cracked, and still the canvas was as clean as it had been when he’d started. In a fit of pique, Kyle squeezed solid black recklessly over the dried pigments and plunged his brush into it.
The first stroke across the too-bright canvas brought a rush of release, the darkness of the paint spattered with broken bits and pieces of lost potential. Kyle grimaced at the maudlin turn of phrase his mind had supplied and widened the streak, slashing the white of the canvas into two irregularly sized chunks. The colors dimmed by their coating of black slid across the slick surface, looking for all the world as though they were drifting, and a vivid picture bloomed behind his eyes.
”Blow the whole damn thing up,” Guy said. “Get rid of it.” He’d shown up in response to Kyle’s report to Salaak, arriving so quickly that Kyle was sure he hadn’t come all the way from Oa. He’d arrived, all confidence and smirks, and gone down to check out the planet. He’d returned with an expression of grim determination.
Disintegrating a planet was a far cry from incinerating its atmosphere; Kyle had to pull energy from its core, augmenting it with the power of Ion. Guy and Hal added their own power, but the bulk of it came from the planet itself; it was a neat little trick and Kyle might have been pleased with it under other circumstances. As it was, he was sickened by his own creativity. When the world was nothing more than a cloud of ash, he made his excuses and fled as quickly as he could.
Reds and greens mashed together to make brown, white lightened some of the black to a grayish sludge, and none of it was anything close to the cheerful array of color Kyle had had to begin with, colors that he could see simply by looking out the window. Following another impulse, he yanked the blinds closed, rummaging through the room until he found the fluorescent lamp. Its light was colorless, drowning out the remnants of sunshine that still managed to slip around the edges of the blinds. He set it behind himself, shining directly onto the canvas, and began painting the aftermath of a world’s explosion.
The canvas remained the only focus he could keep over the next several days. He knew time was passing, knew that there were other things he should be doing, but he couldn’t stop trying to get the image right. It wasn’t just the realism of the image itself, but which image properly represented the loss of the planet, and what other elements should be included. Not only the actual destruction of the physical world but the cultural loss of the people consumed by whatever force had smothered it needed to be visible on the canvas, and he couldn’t paint it clearly enough.
“I’m busy,” he said in response to Hal trying yet again to drag him somewhere.
“That’s ridiculous,” Hal said. “You can’t possibly be busy. This entire sector has been quiet for days, and the Guardians haven’t called for Ion either.”
“I’m busy,” Kyle repeated, mixing just a little more red into the brown on his palette. This would stand as both a tribute to the people who had fallen and a reminder of how badly he had failed. To be any less than perfect would be doing them a disservice. He didn’t question why he needed the physical reminder of what had gone wrong; it was to be both a memory and a warning so that it never happened again. He wouldn’t let it happen again. But first, he needed to show what had gone before.
“Doing what?” Hal said, irritation evident in his voice, even over the ring-generated phone. “As far as I can tell, you haven’t left that room.”
“I’m still busy.” Now he had too much red, but adding more green or brown wouldn’t help either. Kyle swept the mess off the palette onto the paint-sticky floor and started over.
“Get un-busy. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
Ignoring Hal was much more difficult when he was right in front of Kyle, standing between him and the latest nearly-rejected canvas.
“I told you,” he said yet again. “I’m busy.”
“You’re not busy. You’ve been strange ever since we got back.”
“Whatever.” Slipping around Hal wasn’t going to get him any peace, and painting in micro-strokes while dodging attempts to physically wrest him away from his canvas was not an appealing option. A few hours to placate Hal just might be enough to buy him a couple more days. He was sure he could get it right by then. “Where are we going?”
Hal threw a pair of pants at him. “Get clean and get dressed. It’s a surprise.”
In Kyle’s opinion, the worst part of the entire date was Hal’s incessantly manic grin. Hal had brought him to what might have been labeled an air show, flying planes that were generously labeled classic. Kyle had taken one look at what he was sorely tempted to loudly declaim as rusty hulks held together by a slapdash paint job before planting his feet firmly on the ground. It had done him no good whatsoever; now he was in the back of one of those antediluvian death traps with Hal in the cockpit. Under normal circumstances, Kyle would have felt secure, but Hal was piloting with absolutely no regard for either the safety of his passenger or the structural integrity of the plane.
“Put this thing on the ground! Now!” Kyle finally shouted. If Hal crashed this thing, he’d never finish that damn painting.
“Sure thing,” Hal called back cheerfully, and the plane plummeted like a rock.
“Land it! Land it! Not crash! Land!” Kyle kicked the seat, which had no effect on Hal.
“You’re so demanding,” Hal said, still grinning, but the plane righted itself and swooped almost gracefully towards the runway. Kyle pulled off the safety belt and wriggled out of the antique jet almost before it had come to a complete halt.
“Where are you going?” Hal had the audacity to come after him, grabbing his wrist. Kyle yanked himself out of Hal’s grasp and kept going.
“I don’t have time for this! If you want to dick around in these pieces of junk, do it on your own time!” How could Hal call him away for this?
Hal looked at him for a long moment, smile finally fading. An expression Kyle couldn’t read passed over his face before he stepped back. “You’re right,” he said. “I won’t bother you again.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” His voice was louder than he’d meant for it to be, but nobody was around to hear.
“You figure it out,” Hal said softly, and was gone.
For a moment, Kyle stared after him, unsure whether to go after him or not. Then he shook his head; he had to get the painting sorted out before he could deal with his personal life. His duty - and documenting the dereliction thereof he’d perpetrated - had to come first.
Guy - It’s All Coming Back To Me Now
“What are you doing here?”
Not exactly the greeting Guy Gardner had expected, but this was Hal Jordan he was facing, after all. “My job,” he replied, smirking just enough to get under Hal’s skin. “This the place?”
The question was redundant; the planet in question - wreathed so heavily in thick grayish clouds of smoke that Guy wasn’t entirely sure there was rock under there at all - fit Kyle’s description perfectly, not to mention the lack of a star for it to orbit.
“Would we be anywhere else?” Kyle’s voice had an uncharacteristically venomous bite, and Guy gave him a sharp look. He was staring down at the planet, though, and Guy figured destroying a world was enough to make anyone twitchy. Well, except for Parallax, who’d tried to disintegrate the universe, and then there was the Spider Guild, which had gone after entire suns, and - okay, destroying a world would make some people twitchy. Obviously, Kyle was one of them. Hal, on the other hand, had an air of suppressed glee. It was creepy.
“I’m gonna go make sure you two didn’t miss anything,” Guy said, and took off before either of them could reply.
The entire atmosphere turned out to be full of thickly choking smoke; whatever it was Hal and Kyle had done to the planet, the surface was charred beyond reconstruction. The smoke itself was damp, and had Guy not been encased in a protective shield, he would have been soaking wet within moments. White ripples in the black ash caught his attention until he realized they were pure salt, and that the water in the air had been the world’s oceans. “Way to go, guys,” he muttered. Smoke still seeped out of the ground in some places, and Guy set down to examine it more closely.
Despite the smoke, his ring told him the atmosphere was safe to breathe. Nudging a wisp of coiling dark smoke with the toe of one boot, he tested the air. It tasted of burning, in the millisecond before he nearly choked on it. “What part of that was safe?” he demanded of the ring. It returned an error message. Guy smacked it with his other hand, but it now told him that the remaining atmosphere was composed mainly of a long list of chemicals that didn’t seem to include free oxygen. “Safe my ass,” he said. The entire place made his skin crawl, and not just because he couldn’t see farther than a few feet in the murky fog.
The city in Kyle’s report was no longer standing; most of the stone itself had melted in the inferno. Only few lumps here and there were recognizable as once having been constructed by intelligent hands. If Guy had believed in ghosts - which he did, really, because it wasn’t like he’d never seen them before, and if this was the train of thought his mind was going to take, it was high time to get off the disturbing planet.
The taste of char lingered in his throat as he made his way up through the atmosphere only to come out at a completely different point than he’d anticipated. Reorienting himself by using the other two Lanterns as a beacon, Guy reached them in seconds. “Blow the whole damn thing up,” he heard himself say in greeting. It wasn’t what he’d intended, but the words were exactly right. “Get rid of it.”
Kyle nodded, the vicious twist to his mouth intensifying. It took all three of them to detonate the core of the planet and pulverize the pieces into dust, but by the time they were finished, Guy was sure that they were safe. There would be no record, nothing to tie them to this place. And no threat to anyone else, he reminded himself sternly. That was his primary motivation.
“I’m going home,” Kyle said to no one in particular.
“I’ll -“ Hal started.
“I just… I need some space, okay?” He didn’t wait for Hal to nod his assent before vanishing into the distance.
A grin and a shrug made Hal’s mouth thin into a tight little line, so Guy added an impudent little wave. More of a mock salute, really. “My work here is done,” he drawled, and made tracks for Oa.
Somewhere between Sector 1589 and 1590, Guy found his mood deteriorating. The destruction of the planet had left a bad taste in his mouth, figuratively speaking; he had no idea where it had come from or what it had been, or what the consequences for blowing it up might be. The last thing any of them needed was the Last Member Of Species X, sworn to take revenge on the Green Lantern Corps for destruction of their homeworld. Again.
By the time he’d reached Sector 1591, Guy had decided that Hal was to blame for the entire situation, or at least for not approaching the problem properly. If not for Hal, dealing with a mysterious planet dropping out of nowhere would have been much easier. “Idiot,” Guy muttered, and spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how he could get Hal restricted to Earth. Hal couldn’t do much damage on Earth, not surrounded by the rest of the superhero community. Some of them, at least, had proven themselves unwilling to put up with his shenanigans.
The rookies he’d abandoned to play with Hal’s inexplicable little ball of rock reassembling at the appropriate obstacle course several minutes earlier than the specified time did nothing to improve his mood, nor did the scramble to run the course in a full minute less than each student’s previous best time. Senior instructors could and usually did participate in the obstacle courses, tossing out various opponents or blocks for the students to resolve. When running the course for time, however, interference was generally avoided. Guy made sure each of the fifty students currently attempting to clear the course got at least one personalized trap in addition to the various large-scale hazards.
None of the students made anything close to the time he’d demanded, of course, and as he landed in front of them, the anger and apprehension was nearly thick enough to cut through. Really, though, they’d done a fantastic job in a less than optimal situation, and handled it quite well considering their lack of experience. Those of them displaying the most nervous responses bore watching, of course, as a Green Lantern needed to be above fear, but all in all he decided he was rather pleased.
“Well done,” he said, and smiled. The entire group edged backwards slightly, so he grinned. “Couldn’t have asked for better. Why don’t you take a 5k run to cool down, and think about where you can improve. Then go ahead and work on that, either alone or with a partner.”
None of them moved, and the anger had vanished entirely. Guy let the smile fade. “Go on, then,” he said pleasantly, and they ran. Odd behavior for a group of trainees, he thought, and left them to their exercises.
Salakk found him some time later, working with a set of weights. He’d had them constructed out of real material, and built the few frames that needed building, so that he could have a purely physical workout. There were times that the ring just didn’t feel right, and this was one of them.
“Honor Lantern Gardner,” Salakk said from above him, and Guy lifted the barbell back into place.
“What?” he said, sitting up.
“I’ve had some rather disturbing reports regarding your training protocol.”
“Oh yeah?” Guy took a swig from the water bottle near his feet and stood. Salakk looked up, expression less than pleased. “What reports?”
“Your theory of ‘whatever doesn’t kill ‘em makes ‘em stronger’ only works up to a certain point. Pass that point and you will not create viable Lanterns.”
“I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.” He had a towel somewhere in this little hole in the wall. After a moment of searching, Guy located the towel and used it to wipe down the equipment.
“They were under the impression that you would perpetrate some kind of permanently bodily harm upon them unless your instructions were explicitly followed.” Salakk’s continued unblinking stare was vaguely disquieting, so Guy stopped looking at him.
“I never said that. Were they still trainin’? I told ‘em to go home.”
“One of the trainees collapsed on the field. He insisted on returning as soon as he regained consciousness. Something about fixing their flaws?”
“They were still working on that?” The irritation that had built up during his workout dissolved in a warm glow. Guy smiled at Salakk. “Thanks for telling me,” he said, and went to find the trainees.
“Honor Lantern Gardner! Get back here! You are not to harass them further!”
Guy slowed. “But I’m not harassing them.”
“You’re off trainee duty as of this minute, Lantern Gardner.” Salakk didn’t sound as if he were joking, or as if this were a prank, so Guy stopped entirely.
“If you think that’s best,” he said. Salakk’s eyes narrowed. Guy made an adroit escape before the little alien started shouting; that was something that never ended well. If he looked hard enough, he was sure he could find a situation that needed his attention.
Guy didn’t have to search long for a crisis; Sector 2814, trouble magnet that it was, radioed in a distress call specifically requesting Guy. Without waiting to hear more, he took off.
John Stewart greeted him before he made planetfall, hanging in the Earth-Moon LaGrange point 2. “Guy.”
“Where’s the crisis?” Guy was in no mood for pleasantries; his ring detected nothing that required his intervention, although apparently there had been a massive undersea riot spilling up onto many of Earth’s beaches. If John hadn’t called him for that, Guy wanted to know why he was wasting his time.
“It’s Hal,” John said. “He’s been acting off again.”
“Go pester Kyle.” Not that the relationship between Hal and Kyle was common knowledge, but Guy wasn’t blind. Besides, Kyle was already on Earth.
“He’s refusing to talk to me,” John admitted. “It’s odd for him, too.”
“You sure that ain’t just your sparkling personality?”
“This is not a joking matter,” John said, and Guy stopped grinning.
“Could have another alien bug in his brain, I guess,” he said. “What’s your ring say?”
“Error message. I think it’s related to the anomaly in 2815. Did you notice anything there?”
Something about John was setting off alarm bells, although Guy couldn’t have said exactly what. He folded his arms and leaned back. “Not that comes to mind,” he said. “I’m gonna have to check you too, Johnny boy.”
“Fine.” John hovered, without arguing, which did nothing to alleviate Guy’s unease. The scan came up normal, not that Guy had expected anything else, but the vague warning sensation did not cease. “Your turn,” John said.
“I don’t fucking think so.” Guy backed away from John, not quite dropping into a defensive crouch. “You want my help, we do this my way.”
“All right.” John nodded slowly. “We’ll do it your way. Where do we start?”
“You don’t start nowhere. I’ll handle it.” Something too quick to read hushed over John’s face before he smoothed his expression out.
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Guy,” he said. “Let me know if you need help.”
Guy watched him travel all the way home, just to make sure. He didn’t know why Hal and Kyle might be acting oddly, but his gut told him John was the bigger problem. First one, then the other. Cracking his knuckles, Guy Gardner set to work.
Hal - Little Hal Just Wants To Fly
Really, there was no sense to be had out of some people. Hal clicked off the phone and replaced it in its cradle. He wasn’t entirely sure why there had been a problem with the temporary removal of one of the jets - he hadn’t crashed it, he hadn’t damaged it, he hadn’t even technically flown it. It still had a full fuel tank, even. He’d just wanted to check the design against the schematics and see how it worked on the inside. Knowing how something worked always seemed to make things tick just a little better for John, and Hal had been curious.
He’d been asked to fly at least one of several antique planes at an airshow that week, and although he had no doubt of his skill to perform, it still would have been nice to learn a little more about the insides of the machine.
He hadn’t really learned anything he really wanted to know; he already had enough knowledge of the planes he flew to make them do what they were designed to and just a little bit more. But really, that was no call for outright hostility on the part of the airfield, he felt.
After the debacle a few days before with the odd planet the next sector over, Hal had felt the need to blow off a little steam. The eerie ghost planet would have unnerved most people, but Hal had found it more depressing than anything else. All that potential, wasted. He was pretty sure it was a good thing they’d managed to contain and destroy the malicious creature that had perpetrated such an act of horror, but the entire affair had left him with the feeling that his skin was too tight around his body.
A practice session against mindless beasties conjured by his ring did nothing to dispel his sense of restlessness, and as the evening wore on, Hal tried again to reach Kyle. The other man had been oddly quiet since the incident, and tonight was no exception. No matter what Hal said to convince him to do something other than hide in that little room, Kyle’s increasingly short-tempered replies left Hal out in the cold.
“See how you like it if I don’t talk to you,” he muttered at the ring, and then paused. “Very mature,” he told himself, and shook his head. If Kyle didn’t want to come along, Hal was perfectly able to find fun without him.
Putting the ring in his pocket eased the tightness across his skin a little, but four bars and the same number of drinks later saw Hal no more at ease than he had been when he started. If anything, he felt wound even more tightly. The fifth bar wasn’t the kind of place he usually solicited, not that he had ever made a habit of barhopping to begin with, but he approached it anyway. The neon sign above the door proclaimed the name of the establishment as “Kryptonite;” Hal wasn’t sure whether he was amused or irritated in response
People had spilled out of the bar proper onto the sidewalk in front in small animated knots, pressed up against the chainlink fence blocking off the street. Hal maneuvered through the crowd into the building itself, managing to not step on any toes in the process. The bar was no more than three feet from the door, in the middle of a long and narrow room. Pinball machines dominated the space to the left while a makeshift karaoke stage and a few small tables crowded the right. Trying to get the bartender’s attention was a lengthy process, but Hal eventually managed to move away from the bar proper with a beer in hand.
Halfway to the sidewalk, someone in the crowd deliberately jostled him, and Hal moved to step away from the offender. He walked right into an oncoming fist, but the crush of bodies around him prevented him from going to the ground. He balled his own fists in response and swung back, not entirely sure if his target had been the one who hit him. A rush of joy sang through him as the entire bar erupted into a brawl, and it wasn’t until the city police arrived to break up the fight that he realized he’d been laughing like a maniac through the entire thing. Making his escape from the cops was child’s play, and Hal slept perfectly for the first time since the incident.
The next morning saw the itching back under his skin, though, and when the first mutated sharkman crawled onto the beach, Hal almost cheered. A quick request for information told him that some kind of crisis involving Atlantis was going down, and that the fallout was essentially the equivalent of rabid dogs fleeing the ocean. More superheroes than not were on cleanup duty getting rid of them. Deciding that Kyle got no part in the fun and that John would be there already if he thought he would be needed, Hal made his way to the shoreline.
The monsters were huge by human standards, well over seven feet tall and correspondingly broad shouldered, huge ropy muscles flexing as they pulled themselves out of the water. Hal counted eleven at first glance, surprisingly quick on land.
“Clear the area!” he shouted into a constructed bullhorn. “Get inside a building, lock the doors, and stay away from the windows! Move it, people, now!”
Although Coast City had almost no steady population, a healthy number of tourists had always come to its pristine beaches, and today was no exception. The words of the local - and world famous - superhero set those people to running, the seeds of panic spreading. Hal swooped low above the water, searching for anyone who had yet to make it to shore, but there was no one left alive. The beach was the next area - most of the sunbathers and swimmers were far enough away that he thought they’d be safe, but there were always a few stragglers.
“Hey!” he shouted, diving towards the shark creature farthest from the water. “Hey!!” It paused, swiveling its upper body around to meet him, and he slammed into it. It hit the sand, rolling back towards the water, and Hal landed on his feet. “I told you to run!” he shouted again to the terrified family. They obliged, and Hal launched himself towards the next group.
The monster had its claws nearly buried in a teenage boy’s shoulder; Hal grabbed its ankle and viciously yanked, swinging the beast into one of its comrades. The monster turned on its own, soaking the sand in viscous reddish orange, but Hal had already moved on. The first eleven creatures had been joined by six more, and he netted them all in a low-flying sweep. They snarled inside the construct, swiping at each other, and he left the bag hanging mid-air once he was sure he had them all.
The people in the immediate area were safe, but the rest of the coastline had no warning of danger. Picking a direction at random, Hal sped north. There were no beasts crawling out of the rocky shores nearest the city, nor at the wooded shorelines farther away. He reversed directions, heading south instead, and was just in time to drag the biggest monster he’d seen yet off a small motorboat. It twisted in his grasp, slicing down the outside of his arm, but he didn’t let go. Using a construct to just smash it into oblivion suddenly seemed too impersonal; Hal dropped it on the shore, constructed a spear, and impaled it as it ran towards him.
A shadow at the edge of his vision caught his attention, and Hal moved to face it, materializing another spear as he turned. No less than seven mutated creatures had encircled him, and he realized he was smiling. They were huge and slow, compared to the speed he’d seen out of them earlier, and it was almost child’s play to duck and slash. The tightness across his skin eased, and he laughed at the absolute freedom of it. The last of them fell bare seconds before his theoretical partner in policing Sector 2814, John Stewart, landed a few feet away.
“Any left?” Hal asked by way of greeting.
“No,” John said, giving him a speculative look. “The rest of the outbreaks have been contained. Did you leave any of these alive?”
“Um.” He had to think about it for a moment. “There was the net, unless they -“ John’s headshake told him that none of the creatures had survived incarceration in close quarters. “No?”
“Something going on I should know about?” John asked, and it took another moment before Hal realized that John was talking about the spear Hal still held in one hand. He let it dissolve, sticky fluids falling to the sand at his side.
“Nothing I can think of,” he said, smiling. “I’ll get the cleanup.”
“Okay, then,” John said, expression still unreadable. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” Hal said, and watched as John left. Something about the other man made him profoundly uneasy, and he had no idea why.
The end of the cleanup operation was far too time-consuming for Hal’s liking, leaving his skin too tight again, and not even the prospect of the antique airshow he’d been looking forward to for weeks was particularly exciting any more.
“Hey, Kyle.” It wasn’t a particularly standard greeting, but the fact that Kyle was ignoring him was more than a little irritating. Hal gave up after a few minutes, resolving to just pick Kyle up the following day; he’d promised, after all, and forgetting was no excuse.
“I’m busy,” Kyle said, when Hal finally managed to make a visual connection with his ring. The windows were covered so thoroughly that not a hint of the bright afternoon sunlight peeked around the edges, which might have explained why Kyle himself looked as if he hadn’t seen natural light in weeks.
“That’s ridiculous,” Hal told him, graciously not reminding him of his promise. “You can’t possibly be busy. This entire sector has been quiet for days, and the Guardians haven’t called for Ion either.”
“I’m busy,” Kyle said again, staring at a gob of paint that resembled nothing so much as mud and poking it with a brush.
Hal’s patience evaporated. “Get un-busy. I’ll be there in half an hour.” Kyle had to remember that they’d made this date; if he couldn’t be bothered, Hal wasn’t going to remind him.
The object of Kyle’s apparent attention was a canvas smeared so thickly with paint that there was no clear image. Hal edged between him and it, although it wasn’t easy.
“I told you,” Kyle said, glaring, “I’m busy.”
“You’re not busy.” Hal looked around the room, and something occurred to him. “You’ve been strange ever since we got back.”
“Whatever.” Kyle put down the palette, fixing an unblinking gaze on Hal. “Where are we going?”
There was a clean pair of pants in the room, although Hal had to dig through a two-foot high pile to find it. He tossed it at Kyle. “Get clean and get dressed. It’s a surprise.” Maybe Kyle would remember once they actually got there.
“Was the airshow today?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” Hal did not grind his teeth at Kyle’s question; the other man could be flaky at the best of times, and now was clearly not one of those times. They’d all been under a lot of stress recently, and this was perfectly excusable. Kyle’s distinct lack of enthusiasm didn’t make Hal’s rationalization any easier. “Get in the plane.”
“What plane?”
“Not funny.” Hal slid the ring off his finger and placed it in the bag he’d be leaving on the ground.
“I mean it. There are no actual planes here. I’m not getting in one of those things.”
“So do I. Get in the plane, Kyle.” If worst came to worst, Ion was part of Kyle and he could use the energy to get them out of pretty much anything. It took a little of the edge away, but it was worth it to have Kyle flying with him.
“You’re kidding.”
“You’re embarrassing me,” Hal muttered. “Get in the goddamn plane.”
“This is ridiculous,” Kyle hissed, but he climbed into the copilot’s seat Hal had indicated.
Waving to the assembled crowd - not a huge number, but enough to appreciate the antiques - Hal followed him in, strapped on the safety belts, and ran through the pre-flight checklist. Every figurative light ran green, and he gave a thumbs-up to the viewers before getting the plane off the ground.
The pre-approved solo flight plan he’d filed had been designed with safety in mind - both his copilot’s and the people on the ground. Hal discarded the plan before they’d gotten off the ground, and pushed the plane to its limits. He knew exactly how much the aging structure could take, and how to turn those stresses into the best show possible. It would have been brilliant, if Kyle hadn’t started shouting at him to cut it out before he’d done a third of what he thought the plane could take.
“Put this thing on the ground! Now!”
For the second time that day, Hal reached the end of his rope. Kyle couldn’t possibly be afraid for his life - he was not only a Green Lantern, he was Ion, and besides, Hal was piloting the plane. There was no reason for him to complain. Hal smirked. If Kyle wanted the plane on the ground, Hal would put the plane on the ground as fast as possible.
“Sure thing,” he said over his shoulder, and cut the engines.
“Land it! Land it!” Kyle yelled, kicking the back of his seat. “Not crash! Land!”
Well, if you’re going to be picky about it, Hal mouthed. “You’re so demanding,” he said out loud. Getting the plane to land properly was one of the most difficult maneuvers he’d ever performed, but the plane landed with a modicum of grace and came to a halt precisely at the end of the runway. Kyle was out of the plane the second it stopped moving. Hal followed him again.
“Where are you going?” Kyle was still stalking away, so Hal grabbed his wrist.
“I don’t have time for this!” Without even breaking stride, Kyle pulled himself out of Hal’s grasp and kept moving. “If you want to dick around in these pieces of junk, do it on your own time!”
Between one beat of his heart and the next, everything that was wrong about the relationship Hal had been trying to maintain crystallized. If Kyle wasn’t willing to work for it too, then it wasn’t worth the trouble. “You’re right,” he said. “I won’t bother you again.”
Kyle actually turned around at that, a look on his face as though he’d been physically hit. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You figure it out,” Hal said. He spun on his heel and left, almost hoping Kyle would come after him. He didn’t, but Hal wasn’t about to go back. He grabbed his bag and his ring and left the show without another word.
He didn’t make it to his apartment; bare seconds before he reached his door, a report came through his ring.
“Hal Jordan of Earth.”
The Guardians so rarely intervened now; in his surprise, Hal nearly tripped over his own feet. “Yes?” he said.
“An uncharted black hole has taken shape in Sector 2814 and a passing convoy has been trapped at the event horizon.”
“I’m on it.” Hal cut communication and leapt for space.
TBC
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: Hal Jordan, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, John Stewart
Prompt: 47 - HEART
Word Count: 5897
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The aftermath of sector 2815’s mysterious sunless planet.
Author's Notes: Follows HOURS, SHADE, and FIRE. Slash (Hal/Kyle).
Kyle - Shades of Sepia
The canvas stared at him, mocking in its bright white. Kyle almost thought he could hear it laughing at the utter and total lack of a mental image to transfer to its blankness. He couldn’t just sit there and stare at it, but every time he tried to go somewhere, do something, he found himself with an itch in his right hand and restlessness skittering through his veins. Trouble was, even when he sat - or stood, or knelt, or crouched - in front of the bright blank canvas, the restlessness refused to go away. The palette of paints had long since dried and cracked, and still the canvas was as clean as it had been when he’d started. In a fit of pique, Kyle squeezed solid black recklessly over the dried pigments and plunged his brush into it.
The first stroke across the too-bright canvas brought a rush of release, the darkness of the paint spattered with broken bits and pieces of lost potential. Kyle grimaced at the maudlin turn of phrase his mind had supplied and widened the streak, slashing the white of the canvas into two irregularly sized chunks. The colors dimmed by their coating of black slid across the slick surface, looking for all the world as though they were drifting, and a vivid picture bloomed behind his eyes.
”Blow the whole damn thing up,” Guy said. “Get rid of it.” He’d shown up in response to Kyle’s report to Salaak, arriving so quickly that Kyle was sure he hadn’t come all the way from Oa. He’d arrived, all confidence and smirks, and gone down to check out the planet. He’d returned with an expression of grim determination.
Disintegrating a planet was a far cry from incinerating its atmosphere; Kyle had to pull energy from its core, augmenting it with the power of Ion. Guy and Hal added their own power, but the bulk of it came from the planet itself; it was a neat little trick and Kyle might have been pleased with it under other circumstances. As it was, he was sickened by his own creativity. When the world was nothing more than a cloud of ash, he made his excuses and fled as quickly as he could.
Reds and greens mashed together to make brown, white lightened some of the black to a grayish sludge, and none of it was anything close to the cheerful array of color Kyle had had to begin with, colors that he could see simply by looking out the window. Following another impulse, he yanked the blinds closed, rummaging through the room until he found the fluorescent lamp. Its light was colorless, drowning out the remnants of sunshine that still managed to slip around the edges of the blinds. He set it behind himself, shining directly onto the canvas, and began painting the aftermath of a world’s explosion.
The canvas remained the only focus he could keep over the next several days. He knew time was passing, knew that there were other things he should be doing, but he couldn’t stop trying to get the image right. It wasn’t just the realism of the image itself, but which image properly represented the loss of the planet, and what other elements should be included. Not only the actual destruction of the physical world but the cultural loss of the people consumed by whatever force had smothered it needed to be visible on the canvas, and he couldn’t paint it clearly enough.
“I’m busy,” he said in response to Hal trying yet again to drag him somewhere.
“That’s ridiculous,” Hal said. “You can’t possibly be busy. This entire sector has been quiet for days, and the Guardians haven’t called for Ion either.”
“I’m busy,” Kyle repeated, mixing just a little more red into the brown on his palette. This would stand as both a tribute to the people who had fallen and a reminder of how badly he had failed. To be any less than perfect would be doing them a disservice. He didn’t question why he needed the physical reminder of what had gone wrong; it was to be both a memory and a warning so that it never happened again. He wouldn’t let it happen again. But first, he needed to show what had gone before.
“Doing what?” Hal said, irritation evident in his voice, even over the ring-generated phone. “As far as I can tell, you haven’t left that room.”
“I’m still busy.” Now he had too much red, but adding more green or brown wouldn’t help either. Kyle swept the mess off the palette onto the paint-sticky floor and started over.
“Get un-busy. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
Ignoring Hal was much more difficult when he was right in front of Kyle, standing between him and the latest nearly-rejected canvas.
“I told you,” he said yet again. “I’m busy.”
“You’re not busy. You’ve been strange ever since we got back.”
“Whatever.” Slipping around Hal wasn’t going to get him any peace, and painting in micro-strokes while dodging attempts to physically wrest him away from his canvas was not an appealing option. A few hours to placate Hal just might be enough to buy him a couple more days. He was sure he could get it right by then. “Where are we going?”
Hal threw a pair of pants at him. “Get clean and get dressed. It’s a surprise.”
In Kyle’s opinion, the worst part of the entire date was Hal’s incessantly manic grin. Hal had brought him to what might have been labeled an air show, flying planes that were generously labeled classic. Kyle had taken one look at what he was sorely tempted to loudly declaim as rusty hulks held together by a slapdash paint job before planting his feet firmly on the ground. It had done him no good whatsoever; now he was in the back of one of those antediluvian death traps with Hal in the cockpit. Under normal circumstances, Kyle would have felt secure, but Hal was piloting with absolutely no regard for either the safety of his passenger or the structural integrity of the plane.
“Put this thing on the ground! Now!” Kyle finally shouted. If Hal crashed this thing, he’d never finish that damn painting.
“Sure thing,” Hal called back cheerfully, and the plane plummeted like a rock.
“Land it! Land it! Not crash! Land!” Kyle kicked the seat, which had no effect on Hal.
“You’re so demanding,” Hal said, still grinning, but the plane righted itself and swooped almost gracefully towards the runway. Kyle pulled off the safety belt and wriggled out of the antique jet almost before it had come to a complete halt.
“Where are you going?” Hal had the audacity to come after him, grabbing his wrist. Kyle yanked himself out of Hal’s grasp and kept going.
“I don’t have time for this! If you want to dick around in these pieces of junk, do it on your own time!” How could Hal call him away for this?
Hal looked at him for a long moment, smile finally fading. An expression Kyle couldn’t read passed over his face before he stepped back. “You’re right,” he said. “I won’t bother you again.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” His voice was louder than he’d meant for it to be, but nobody was around to hear.
“You figure it out,” Hal said softly, and was gone.
For a moment, Kyle stared after him, unsure whether to go after him or not. Then he shook his head; he had to get the painting sorted out before he could deal with his personal life. His duty - and documenting the dereliction thereof he’d perpetrated - had to come first.
Guy - It’s All Coming Back To Me Now
“What are you doing here?”
Not exactly the greeting Guy Gardner had expected, but this was Hal Jordan he was facing, after all. “My job,” he replied, smirking just enough to get under Hal’s skin. “This the place?”
The question was redundant; the planet in question - wreathed so heavily in thick grayish clouds of smoke that Guy wasn’t entirely sure there was rock under there at all - fit Kyle’s description perfectly, not to mention the lack of a star for it to orbit.
“Would we be anywhere else?” Kyle’s voice had an uncharacteristically venomous bite, and Guy gave him a sharp look. He was staring down at the planet, though, and Guy figured destroying a world was enough to make anyone twitchy. Well, except for Parallax, who’d tried to disintegrate the universe, and then there was the Spider Guild, which had gone after entire suns, and - okay, destroying a world would make some people twitchy. Obviously, Kyle was one of them. Hal, on the other hand, had an air of suppressed glee. It was creepy.
“I’m gonna go make sure you two didn’t miss anything,” Guy said, and took off before either of them could reply.
The entire atmosphere turned out to be full of thickly choking smoke; whatever it was Hal and Kyle had done to the planet, the surface was charred beyond reconstruction. The smoke itself was damp, and had Guy not been encased in a protective shield, he would have been soaking wet within moments. White ripples in the black ash caught his attention until he realized they were pure salt, and that the water in the air had been the world’s oceans. “Way to go, guys,” he muttered. Smoke still seeped out of the ground in some places, and Guy set down to examine it more closely.
Despite the smoke, his ring told him the atmosphere was safe to breathe. Nudging a wisp of coiling dark smoke with the toe of one boot, he tested the air. It tasted of burning, in the millisecond before he nearly choked on it. “What part of that was safe?” he demanded of the ring. It returned an error message. Guy smacked it with his other hand, but it now told him that the remaining atmosphere was composed mainly of a long list of chemicals that didn’t seem to include free oxygen. “Safe my ass,” he said. The entire place made his skin crawl, and not just because he couldn’t see farther than a few feet in the murky fog.
The city in Kyle’s report was no longer standing; most of the stone itself had melted in the inferno. Only few lumps here and there were recognizable as once having been constructed by intelligent hands. If Guy had believed in ghosts - which he did, really, because it wasn’t like he’d never seen them before, and if this was the train of thought his mind was going to take, it was high time to get off the disturbing planet.
The taste of char lingered in his throat as he made his way up through the atmosphere only to come out at a completely different point than he’d anticipated. Reorienting himself by using the other two Lanterns as a beacon, Guy reached them in seconds. “Blow the whole damn thing up,” he heard himself say in greeting. It wasn’t what he’d intended, but the words were exactly right. “Get rid of it.”
Kyle nodded, the vicious twist to his mouth intensifying. It took all three of them to detonate the core of the planet and pulverize the pieces into dust, but by the time they were finished, Guy was sure that they were safe. There would be no record, nothing to tie them to this place. And no threat to anyone else, he reminded himself sternly. That was his primary motivation.
“I’m going home,” Kyle said to no one in particular.
“I’ll -“ Hal started.
“I just… I need some space, okay?” He didn’t wait for Hal to nod his assent before vanishing into the distance.
A grin and a shrug made Hal’s mouth thin into a tight little line, so Guy added an impudent little wave. More of a mock salute, really. “My work here is done,” he drawled, and made tracks for Oa.
Somewhere between Sector 1589 and 1590, Guy found his mood deteriorating. The destruction of the planet had left a bad taste in his mouth, figuratively speaking; he had no idea where it had come from or what it had been, or what the consequences for blowing it up might be. The last thing any of them needed was the Last Member Of Species X, sworn to take revenge on the Green Lantern Corps for destruction of their homeworld. Again.
By the time he’d reached Sector 1591, Guy had decided that Hal was to blame for the entire situation, or at least for not approaching the problem properly. If not for Hal, dealing with a mysterious planet dropping out of nowhere would have been much easier. “Idiot,” Guy muttered, and spent the rest of the trip trying to figure out how he could get Hal restricted to Earth. Hal couldn’t do much damage on Earth, not surrounded by the rest of the superhero community. Some of them, at least, had proven themselves unwilling to put up with his shenanigans.
The rookies he’d abandoned to play with Hal’s inexplicable little ball of rock reassembling at the appropriate obstacle course several minutes earlier than the specified time did nothing to improve his mood, nor did the scramble to run the course in a full minute less than each student’s previous best time. Senior instructors could and usually did participate in the obstacle courses, tossing out various opponents or blocks for the students to resolve. When running the course for time, however, interference was generally avoided. Guy made sure each of the fifty students currently attempting to clear the course got at least one personalized trap in addition to the various large-scale hazards.
None of the students made anything close to the time he’d demanded, of course, and as he landed in front of them, the anger and apprehension was nearly thick enough to cut through. Really, though, they’d done a fantastic job in a less than optimal situation, and handled it quite well considering their lack of experience. Those of them displaying the most nervous responses bore watching, of course, as a Green Lantern needed to be above fear, but all in all he decided he was rather pleased.
“Well done,” he said, and smiled. The entire group edged backwards slightly, so he grinned. “Couldn’t have asked for better. Why don’t you take a 5k run to cool down, and think about where you can improve. Then go ahead and work on that, either alone or with a partner.”
None of them moved, and the anger had vanished entirely. Guy let the smile fade. “Go on, then,” he said pleasantly, and they ran. Odd behavior for a group of trainees, he thought, and left them to their exercises.
Salakk found him some time later, working with a set of weights. He’d had them constructed out of real material, and built the few frames that needed building, so that he could have a purely physical workout. There were times that the ring just didn’t feel right, and this was one of them.
“Honor Lantern Gardner,” Salakk said from above him, and Guy lifted the barbell back into place.
“What?” he said, sitting up.
“I’ve had some rather disturbing reports regarding your training protocol.”
“Oh yeah?” Guy took a swig from the water bottle near his feet and stood. Salakk looked up, expression less than pleased. “What reports?”
“Your theory of ‘whatever doesn’t kill ‘em makes ‘em stronger’ only works up to a certain point. Pass that point and you will not create viable Lanterns.”
“I got no idea what you’re talkin’ about.” He had a towel somewhere in this little hole in the wall. After a moment of searching, Guy located the towel and used it to wipe down the equipment.
“They were under the impression that you would perpetrate some kind of permanently bodily harm upon them unless your instructions were explicitly followed.” Salakk’s continued unblinking stare was vaguely disquieting, so Guy stopped looking at him.
“I never said that. Were they still trainin’? I told ‘em to go home.”
“One of the trainees collapsed on the field. He insisted on returning as soon as he regained consciousness. Something about fixing their flaws?”
“They were still working on that?” The irritation that had built up during his workout dissolved in a warm glow. Guy smiled at Salakk. “Thanks for telling me,” he said, and went to find the trainees.
“Honor Lantern Gardner! Get back here! You are not to harass them further!”
Guy slowed. “But I’m not harassing them.”
“You’re off trainee duty as of this minute, Lantern Gardner.” Salakk didn’t sound as if he were joking, or as if this were a prank, so Guy stopped entirely.
“If you think that’s best,” he said. Salakk’s eyes narrowed. Guy made an adroit escape before the little alien started shouting; that was something that never ended well. If he looked hard enough, he was sure he could find a situation that needed his attention.
Guy didn’t have to search long for a crisis; Sector 2814, trouble magnet that it was, radioed in a distress call specifically requesting Guy. Without waiting to hear more, he took off.
John Stewart greeted him before he made planetfall, hanging in the Earth-Moon LaGrange point 2. “Guy.”
“Where’s the crisis?” Guy was in no mood for pleasantries; his ring detected nothing that required his intervention, although apparently there had been a massive undersea riot spilling up onto many of Earth’s beaches. If John hadn’t called him for that, Guy wanted to know why he was wasting his time.
“It’s Hal,” John said. “He’s been acting off again.”
“Go pester Kyle.” Not that the relationship between Hal and Kyle was common knowledge, but Guy wasn’t blind. Besides, Kyle was already on Earth.
“He’s refusing to talk to me,” John admitted. “It’s odd for him, too.”
“You sure that ain’t just your sparkling personality?”
“This is not a joking matter,” John said, and Guy stopped grinning.
“Could have another alien bug in his brain, I guess,” he said. “What’s your ring say?”
“Error message. I think it’s related to the anomaly in 2815. Did you notice anything there?”
Something about John was setting off alarm bells, although Guy couldn’t have said exactly what. He folded his arms and leaned back. “Not that comes to mind,” he said. “I’m gonna have to check you too, Johnny boy.”
“Fine.” John hovered, without arguing, which did nothing to alleviate Guy’s unease. The scan came up normal, not that Guy had expected anything else, but the vague warning sensation did not cease. “Your turn,” John said.
“I don’t fucking think so.” Guy backed away from John, not quite dropping into a defensive crouch. “You want my help, we do this my way.”
“All right.” John nodded slowly. “We’ll do it your way. Where do we start?”
“You don’t start nowhere. I’ll handle it.” Something too quick to read hushed over John’s face before he smoothed his expression out.
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Guy,” he said. “Let me know if you need help.”
Guy watched him travel all the way home, just to make sure. He didn’t know why Hal and Kyle might be acting oddly, but his gut told him John was the bigger problem. First one, then the other. Cracking his knuckles, Guy Gardner set to work.
Hal - Little Hal Just Wants To Fly
Really, there was no sense to be had out of some people. Hal clicked off the phone and replaced it in its cradle. He wasn’t entirely sure why there had been a problem with the temporary removal of one of the jets - he hadn’t crashed it, he hadn’t damaged it, he hadn’t even technically flown it. It still had a full fuel tank, even. He’d just wanted to check the design against the schematics and see how it worked on the inside. Knowing how something worked always seemed to make things tick just a little better for John, and Hal had been curious.
He’d been asked to fly at least one of several antique planes at an airshow that week, and although he had no doubt of his skill to perform, it still would have been nice to learn a little more about the insides of the machine.
He hadn’t really learned anything he really wanted to know; he already had enough knowledge of the planes he flew to make them do what they were designed to and just a little bit more. But really, that was no call for outright hostility on the part of the airfield, he felt.
After the debacle a few days before with the odd planet the next sector over, Hal had felt the need to blow off a little steam. The eerie ghost planet would have unnerved most people, but Hal had found it more depressing than anything else. All that potential, wasted. He was pretty sure it was a good thing they’d managed to contain and destroy the malicious creature that had perpetrated such an act of horror, but the entire affair had left him with the feeling that his skin was too tight around his body.
A practice session against mindless beasties conjured by his ring did nothing to dispel his sense of restlessness, and as the evening wore on, Hal tried again to reach Kyle. The other man had been oddly quiet since the incident, and tonight was no exception. No matter what Hal said to convince him to do something other than hide in that little room, Kyle’s increasingly short-tempered replies left Hal out in the cold.
“See how you like it if I don’t talk to you,” he muttered at the ring, and then paused. “Very mature,” he told himself, and shook his head. If Kyle didn’t want to come along, Hal was perfectly able to find fun without him.
Putting the ring in his pocket eased the tightness across his skin a little, but four bars and the same number of drinks later saw Hal no more at ease than he had been when he started. If anything, he felt wound even more tightly. The fifth bar wasn’t the kind of place he usually solicited, not that he had ever made a habit of barhopping to begin with, but he approached it anyway. The neon sign above the door proclaimed the name of the establishment as “Kryptonite;” Hal wasn’t sure whether he was amused or irritated in response
People had spilled out of the bar proper onto the sidewalk in front in small animated knots, pressed up against the chainlink fence blocking off the street. Hal maneuvered through the crowd into the building itself, managing to not step on any toes in the process. The bar was no more than three feet from the door, in the middle of a long and narrow room. Pinball machines dominated the space to the left while a makeshift karaoke stage and a few small tables crowded the right. Trying to get the bartender’s attention was a lengthy process, but Hal eventually managed to move away from the bar proper with a beer in hand.
Halfway to the sidewalk, someone in the crowd deliberately jostled him, and Hal moved to step away from the offender. He walked right into an oncoming fist, but the crush of bodies around him prevented him from going to the ground. He balled his own fists in response and swung back, not entirely sure if his target had been the one who hit him. A rush of joy sang through him as the entire bar erupted into a brawl, and it wasn’t until the city police arrived to break up the fight that he realized he’d been laughing like a maniac through the entire thing. Making his escape from the cops was child’s play, and Hal slept perfectly for the first time since the incident.
The next morning saw the itching back under his skin, though, and when the first mutated sharkman crawled onto the beach, Hal almost cheered. A quick request for information told him that some kind of crisis involving Atlantis was going down, and that the fallout was essentially the equivalent of rabid dogs fleeing the ocean. More superheroes than not were on cleanup duty getting rid of them. Deciding that Kyle got no part in the fun and that John would be there already if he thought he would be needed, Hal made his way to the shoreline.
The monsters were huge by human standards, well over seven feet tall and correspondingly broad shouldered, huge ropy muscles flexing as they pulled themselves out of the water. Hal counted eleven at first glance, surprisingly quick on land.
“Clear the area!” he shouted into a constructed bullhorn. “Get inside a building, lock the doors, and stay away from the windows! Move it, people, now!”
Although Coast City had almost no steady population, a healthy number of tourists had always come to its pristine beaches, and today was no exception. The words of the local - and world famous - superhero set those people to running, the seeds of panic spreading. Hal swooped low above the water, searching for anyone who had yet to make it to shore, but there was no one left alive. The beach was the next area - most of the sunbathers and swimmers were far enough away that he thought they’d be safe, but there were always a few stragglers.
“Hey!” he shouted, diving towards the shark creature farthest from the water. “Hey!!” It paused, swiveling its upper body around to meet him, and he slammed into it. It hit the sand, rolling back towards the water, and Hal landed on his feet. “I told you to run!” he shouted again to the terrified family. They obliged, and Hal launched himself towards the next group.
The monster had its claws nearly buried in a teenage boy’s shoulder; Hal grabbed its ankle and viciously yanked, swinging the beast into one of its comrades. The monster turned on its own, soaking the sand in viscous reddish orange, but Hal had already moved on. The first eleven creatures had been joined by six more, and he netted them all in a low-flying sweep. They snarled inside the construct, swiping at each other, and he left the bag hanging mid-air once he was sure he had them all.
The people in the immediate area were safe, but the rest of the coastline had no warning of danger. Picking a direction at random, Hal sped north. There were no beasts crawling out of the rocky shores nearest the city, nor at the wooded shorelines farther away. He reversed directions, heading south instead, and was just in time to drag the biggest monster he’d seen yet off a small motorboat. It twisted in his grasp, slicing down the outside of his arm, but he didn’t let go. Using a construct to just smash it into oblivion suddenly seemed too impersonal; Hal dropped it on the shore, constructed a spear, and impaled it as it ran towards him.
A shadow at the edge of his vision caught his attention, and Hal moved to face it, materializing another spear as he turned. No less than seven mutated creatures had encircled him, and he realized he was smiling. They were huge and slow, compared to the speed he’d seen out of them earlier, and it was almost child’s play to duck and slash. The tightness across his skin eased, and he laughed at the absolute freedom of it. The last of them fell bare seconds before his theoretical partner in policing Sector 2814, John Stewart, landed a few feet away.
“Any left?” Hal asked by way of greeting.
“No,” John said, giving him a speculative look. “The rest of the outbreaks have been contained. Did you leave any of these alive?”
“Um.” He had to think about it for a moment. “There was the net, unless they -“ John’s headshake told him that none of the creatures had survived incarceration in close quarters. “No?”
“Something going on I should know about?” John asked, and it took another moment before Hal realized that John was talking about the spear Hal still held in one hand. He let it dissolve, sticky fluids falling to the sand at his side.
“Nothing I can think of,” he said, smiling. “I’ll get the cleanup.”
“Okay, then,” John said, expression still unreadable. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” Hal said, and watched as John left. Something about the other man made him profoundly uneasy, and he had no idea why.
The end of the cleanup operation was far too time-consuming for Hal’s liking, leaving his skin too tight again, and not even the prospect of the antique airshow he’d been looking forward to for weeks was particularly exciting any more.
“Hey, Kyle.” It wasn’t a particularly standard greeting, but the fact that Kyle was ignoring him was more than a little irritating. Hal gave up after a few minutes, resolving to just pick Kyle up the following day; he’d promised, after all, and forgetting was no excuse.
“I’m busy,” Kyle said, when Hal finally managed to make a visual connection with his ring. The windows were covered so thoroughly that not a hint of the bright afternoon sunlight peeked around the edges, which might have explained why Kyle himself looked as if he hadn’t seen natural light in weeks.
“That’s ridiculous,” Hal told him, graciously not reminding him of his promise. “You can’t possibly be busy. This entire sector has been quiet for days, and the Guardians haven’t called for Ion either.”
“I’m busy,” Kyle said again, staring at a gob of paint that resembled nothing so much as mud and poking it with a brush.
Hal’s patience evaporated. “Get un-busy. I’ll be there in half an hour.” Kyle had to remember that they’d made this date; if he couldn’t be bothered, Hal wasn’t going to remind him.
The object of Kyle’s apparent attention was a canvas smeared so thickly with paint that there was no clear image. Hal edged between him and it, although it wasn’t easy.
“I told you,” Kyle said, glaring, “I’m busy.”
“You’re not busy.” Hal looked around the room, and something occurred to him. “You’ve been strange ever since we got back.”
“Whatever.” Kyle put down the palette, fixing an unblinking gaze on Hal. “Where are we going?”
There was a clean pair of pants in the room, although Hal had to dig through a two-foot high pile to find it. He tossed it at Kyle. “Get clean and get dressed. It’s a surprise.” Maybe Kyle would remember once they actually got there.
“Was the airshow today?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” Hal did not grind his teeth at Kyle’s question; the other man could be flaky at the best of times, and now was clearly not one of those times. They’d all been under a lot of stress recently, and this was perfectly excusable. Kyle’s distinct lack of enthusiasm didn’t make Hal’s rationalization any easier. “Get in the plane.”
“What plane?”
“Not funny.” Hal slid the ring off his finger and placed it in the bag he’d be leaving on the ground.
“I mean it. There are no actual planes here. I’m not getting in one of those things.”
“So do I. Get in the plane, Kyle.” If worst came to worst, Ion was part of Kyle and he could use the energy to get them out of pretty much anything. It took a little of the edge away, but it was worth it to have Kyle flying with him.
“You’re kidding.”
“You’re embarrassing me,” Hal muttered. “Get in the goddamn plane.”
“This is ridiculous,” Kyle hissed, but he climbed into the copilot’s seat Hal had indicated.
Waving to the assembled crowd - not a huge number, but enough to appreciate the antiques - Hal followed him in, strapped on the safety belts, and ran through the pre-flight checklist. Every figurative light ran green, and he gave a thumbs-up to the viewers before getting the plane off the ground.
The pre-approved solo flight plan he’d filed had been designed with safety in mind - both his copilot’s and the people on the ground. Hal discarded the plan before they’d gotten off the ground, and pushed the plane to its limits. He knew exactly how much the aging structure could take, and how to turn those stresses into the best show possible. It would have been brilliant, if Kyle hadn’t started shouting at him to cut it out before he’d done a third of what he thought the plane could take.
“Put this thing on the ground! Now!”
For the second time that day, Hal reached the end of his rope. Kyle couldn’t possibly be afraid for his life - he was not only a Green Lantern, he was Ion, and besides, Hal was piloting the plane. There was no reason for him to complain. Hal smirked. If Kyle wanted the plane on the ground, Hal would put the plane on the ground as fast as possible.
“Sure thing,” he said over his shoulder, and cut the engines.
“Land it! Land it!” Kyle yelled, kicking the back of his seat. “Not crash! Land!”
Well, if you’re going to be picky about it, Hal mouthed. “You’re so demanding,” he said out loud. Getting the plane to land properly was one of the most difficult maneuvers he’d ever performed, but the plane landed with a modicum of grace and came to a halt precisely at the end of the runway. Kyle was out of the plane the second it stopped moving. Hal followed him again.
“Where are you going?” Kyle was still stalking away, so Hal grabbed his wrist.
“I don’t have time for this!” Without even breaking stride, Kyle pulled himself out of Hal’s grasp and kept moving. “If you want to dick around in these pieces of junk, do it on your own time!”
Between one beat of his heart and the next, everything that was wrong about the relationship Hal had been trying to maintain crystallized. If Kyle wasn’t willing to work for it too, then it wasn’t worth the trouble. “You’re right,” he said. “I won’t bother you again.”
Kyle actually turned around at that, a look on his face as though he’d been physically hit. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You figure it out,” Hal said. He spun on his heel and left, almost hoping Kyle would come after him. He didn’t, but Hal wasn’t about to go back. He grabbed his bag and his ring and left the show without another word.
He didn’t make it to his apartment; bare seconds before he reached his door, a report came through his ring.
“Hal Jordan of Earth.”
The Guardians so rarely intervened now; in his surprise, Hal nearly tripped over his own feet. “Yes?” he said.
“An uncharted black hole has taken shape in Sector 2814 and a passing convoy has been trapped at the event horizon.”
“I’m on it.” Hal cut communication and leapt for space.
TBC