Big Damn List has more Guy/Kyle non-fluff.

[nalanzu]

Ghosts! Sort of. Enjoy.

Title: To Have And To Hold
Fandom: Green Lantern Corps
Characters: Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, Hal Jordan, Saarek, Soranik Natu, various GLC members
Prompt: 055 - SPIRIT
Word Count: 10780
Rating: R
Summary: An encounter at an alien bar leads Guy and Kyle into a restricted area with some rather unpleasant consequences.
Author's Notes: Follows 66 - rain. Slash (Guy/Kyle).

"Yes, but is it poisonous?" Guy poked the ring, holding it above the glass the bartender had sworn was the house specialty.

Substance is not toxic to humans, the ring said, sounding as if it wanted to say something else.

"Score." The alleged house specialty was an unhealthy shade of cyanotic blue with grayish undertones. Kyle wasn't entirely certain it was edible at all, no matter what the ring said.

"You know, in my experience..." he started. It was the wrong thing to say; he knew it as soon as the words left his mouth, but the pleasantly fizzy pink liquid in his own glass had already twisted his tongue around more than he cared to admit.

"You ain't got experience," Guy said. "Not in this, anyway."

"I do so," Kyle returned hotly. He had done his fair share of interstellar barhopping, mostly while trying to either find his way home or recruit a new Corps (the first being an entirely traumatic experience and the second being the result of ill-advised naiveté that had nearly gotten him killed, not to mention the many aliens who'd died or been otherwise hurt as a result). And now his thoughts were wandering. He pulled them back just in time to see Guy down at least half the glass of chalky bluish gray liquid.

This being the seventh and last day of their week off, Kyle had a fairly good idea of how Guy and unfamiliar intoxicants mixed together, and he braced himself for the inevitable. The progression of events usually went something along the lines of Guy Gets Drunk followed by Guy Starts Bar Fight followed by Kyle Gets Bruised (Or Worse).

Clenching the hand under the table discreetly into a fist, Kyle was therefore thoroughly unprepared for Guy's actual reaction. He started giggling.

"Oh god." Kyle buried his face in his hands, his mostly empty glass tipping over to shatter on the floor.

Guy looked up at the sound and smiled, his face so open and warm that Kyle was caught and held by it. He couldn't help smiling back, and Guy's expression lit up even further. With one swift motion, Guy reached across the table and caught Kyle by the closer hand, pulling it towards him and stroking his thumb suggestively across Kyle’s palm.

Just as Kyle started to clasp Guy's hand in return, he became aware of an expectant hush in the room. He glanced around to see the entire bar - small though it was - staring intently at both of them. "Ring, what exactly are the effects of this... this compound on humans?"

His ring rattled off a multisyllabic chemical name before informing him that the substance reacted with the peculiarities of human biology to form a rather powerful aphrodisiac. Kyle resisted the urge to bury his face in his hands again, made easier by Guy’s iron grip. "Oh god," he said again.

"You usually don’t say that until after I get you home," Guy said, and his voice was just blurry enough that Kyle wouldn't quite have known he was intoxicated if he hadn't seen Guy drain the glass.

"Ring, stop translating Lantern Gardner's speech. Make his stop, too."

"Well?" Guy said, as if he’d asked a question which Kyle was failing to answer.

Kyle glared at the bartender. "You knew that would happen."

The bartender grinned and shrugged. "You didn't ask, and first-time patrons are fair game. Green Lanterns or not."

"Ass," Kyle muttered, and vaulted over the table. Whatever was in his glass hadn't fuzzed his head up badly enough to interfere with his coordination, and the bartender flinched back. Half the bar's patrons started getting to their feet, some of them suddenly sprouting blunt weaponry. A few of them had pointy bits, too, which was absolutely not what Kyle had wanted out of the evening. His ring sparked as he instinctively reacted to the suddenly charged atmosphere, and the tension in the room quadrupled.

“A joke is a joke,” the bartender said, clearly trying to defuse the situation, but protective shielding slid over the breakables on and behind the counter. Kyle started to try to explain that he had no interest in starting a fight, but he didn’t get the chance.

"You're wasting time, Kyle," Guy said, and he was smirking now, eyes glittering with pure unadulterated lust.

"You shush," Kyle told him, and Guy wriggled in his seat.

"Hit me, baby," he said. "Make it hurt."

That was so unexpected that Kyle froze. "What?" he said, and one of the other patrons took advantage of his distraction to swing a chair at his head.

Letting the chair shatter against a hastily-erected smooth shield, Kyle pulled Guy to his feet. Guy staggered and leaned against him, one hand reaching around Kyle's waist to squeeze his ass. "Guy, move your hand." He had to say it, even though he knew it wouldn't do any good, the green shield looping around to form an actual protective wall complete with turrets and stonework. As if the first chair thrown had been some kind of signal, the entire bar devolved into a riotous melee - from the looks of the place, this wasn't exactly unusual.

"I'm thrusting my massive--!"

The rest of whatever Guy was shouting was lost in the general sounds of the general destruction around them. Kyle gave thanks for small blessings, shrank the shield wall, and vacated the premises with as much haste as possible. Figuring that leaving the outpost entirely was probably in their best interests, he grabbed Guy from behind and aimed for the stars as soon as they were out of the building.

"Now," Guy growled before they had cleared the atmosphere, somehow managing to press himself even more closely against Kyle.

"Not now," Kyle returned, because Guy's grinding made it even harder to think than it already was.

"Now," Guy repeated, and Kyle closed his eyes and prayed for patience, or at least strength of will.

"Ring, where's the nearest uninhabited planet with a breathable atmosphere? And survivable temperature? Any size, as long as it won't kill us." The ring rattled off a set of coordinates, and Kyle went at the ring's top speed. He had just enough presence of mind to confirm that the planetoid was safe enough before landing and letting Guy have his way.

Some time later.

Kyle woke to cold rocks digging into his ribs and a human leech firmly stuck to his side. The sky overhead was a rippling slate gray, and he wondered for a moment where the ceiling had gone before remembering the bar from the previous night. “Hey, Guy.”

“Not the rabbits!” Guy sat bolt upright, shoving Kyle into a particularly pointy rock in the process. “Wait, where are we?”

“Rabbits? No, wait, never mind.” Kyle stood, kicking a rock for good measure, and pulled Guy to his feet. “We’re…” For the first time since awakening, he realized that he did not recognize their surroundings.

The rippling sky overhead capped a rectangular courtyard, surrounded by oddly regular hills on three sides and some kind of structure on the fourth. The trees dotting the end opposite the structure only added to the sense of artificiality - pale globes of light were strung through their branches, although there were no visible strings or cords. An erect stone disc bore far too much resemblance to an oversized gravestone for Kyle’s comfort, particularly since they’d been lying right in front of it. A row of stone lanterns - three in total - stretched across the courtyard in front of the stone. A gap in the row proved to be the source of the rocks that had been digging into his ribs.

“Were those glowing a minute ago?” Guy asked quietly, and Kyle saw with a start that the lanterns were shining brightly. He couldn’t look directly at the light, but the sense of wrongness suddenly crystallized.

“No,” he said. “But they aren’t casting any shadows now.” A quick glance upwards showed that the overhead lamps weren’t either.

“Where did you say we were?”

“I… I have no idea. Ring?” When the ring failed to respond, Kyle looked down at his hand to make sure that it was still there. The ring was both on his finger and glowing a faint but reassuring green. Kyle poked it with his other hand. “Ring, where are we?”

“Lemme try.” Guy got no better results.

“Let’s get out of here.” Something about the courtyard was still bothering him, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. “We can get our bearings in space and head to Oa from there. We’re already late.”

“Yeah, okay.” Guy looked up, but his feet didn’t leave the ground. “The hell?”

“Oh, don’t tell me.” Kyle tried to will himself into the air, but it was as if the ring had no power. “Hell of a time to run out of juice.”

“Wouldn’t be glowing if you were out of power.” A railed platform attached to a pale green pole materialized out of Guy’s ring, but it was translucent and dissolved as soon as Kyle touched it. “You try.”

Creating the construct was more difficult than anything he’d done since first getting the ring. The constructed jet refused to gel at first, finally solidifying with a painful snap. Kyle touched the side; it seemed solid enough until he tried to move it, and then it dissolved into smoke. “Great.”

“Screw this.” Guy stalked across the courtyard towards a gap in the wall on the right. It led to a stone staircase angling sharply to the right again and then downwards; the courtyard walls turned out to be constructed of stone on the outside. The stones themselves were irregularly shaped and simply fit together to take advantage of their natural shape. Kyle wondered for a brief second why the wall didn’t collapse without some kind of concrete keeping the stones in place before shoving the irrelevant thought aside. After no more than a few meters, the stairway swerved sharply to the left and ended abruptly.

“Is that solid?” The bottom of the stairwell formed a perfect line with the outside of the courtyard, as far as Kyle could tell, but what had not been clear until they reached it was that nothing outside the courtyard was visible. All he could see past that line was an almost blinding white.

“Only one way to find out.” Guy reached forward and the bottom dropped out of Kyle’s stomach.

“Don’t touch it!” He couldn’t explain the sudden vertigo or the pain that spiked through his skull as the direct result of Guy’s nearly touching the doorway, but the closer Guy was the worse it got.

“What?” Guy paused and half-turned to face him. “You okay?”

“I… fine, but stay away from that light.” Guy frowned at him and reached out, glove fading. Kyle looked at him, puzzled, as Guy touched his upper lip.

“You’re bleeding,” Guy said, and his fingers were red as he pulled them away.

“I’m what?” The nosebleed had stopped as suddenly as it had started, and Kyle scrubbed away the remnants. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Let’s try the gate.”

The boxy shape opposite the standing stone hadn’t borne a resemblance to anything in particular the first time Kyle had looked at it, but as he walked towards it the silhouette became almost familiar. It looked like an open gate in an almost medieval wall topped by a peaked tile roof. The wall itself was white plaster and darkly painted wood over a stone base, and for a moment, Kyle paused to appreciate the aesthetics.

“Stop standing there and let’s go,” Guy growled, and Kyle suppressed a flinch. How long had he been still?

A dirt road was visible through the gate, curving to the right and leading away from yet another stone wall. The wall supported a tower of the same construction as the gate, but the image faded as soon as Kyle got within arm’s length of the opening. The same white light as before filled his vision, nearly close enough to touch and oddly hot.

“Stop,” Guy said from behind him, and Kyle froze. The barest hint of red was just starting to trickle from Guy’s nose, his face otherwise white. Kyle backed away from the gate, and the color returned. “Look at the sky.”

The rippling dark had faded to the same disquieting white, and the prospect of trying to jump off the outer wall was losing what little attraction it might have had. “Maybe there’s some kind of radio equipment in there,” Kyle said, looking at the tower. He hadn’t noticed it before, jutting towards the sky from the corner of the hill, but now it easily dominated the courtyard. Three levels of white plaster and dark wood supported a roof of glimmering gray tile, and he could see that a corridor connected the lower level with the gate.

“Probably not,” Guy said, but he started up the narrow stairway leading from the courtyard to the base of the tower.

“Or we could see farther from up there.” If nothing else, the tower’s height should give them a decent view of the surrounding area; it was the tallest object in the immediate area.

“Nothing to see,” Guy said, almost too quietly for Kyle to hear.

The door, when Kyle reached it, was locked, but it was fairly simple - if not particularly easy - to break the lock with a construct. A small entryway, barely large enough to justify its own existence, stood on the other side of the door, leading into a wooden-floored room empty except for a staircase in the center. White shone through the barred windows, illuminating a second door leading towards the gate.

“I’ll go up. You take the door.” Guy was bounding up the narrow stairs before Kyle could answer.

The door slid open onto a dark hallway. Kyle edged forward, constructing a flashlight that took far too much concentration, but the hallway was simply empty. It led straight to another wooden door, dust lying thickly across the floor. His footsteps kicked up a cloud, motes whirling through the uncertain light of his construct. The door itself must have been brown once, but now it was a fuzzy grayish-white. Kyle reached toward it and tugged. It didn’t budge, and it took a moment before he thought to slide it sideways - like every other door in this odd tower, it had no hinges. A shower of dust filled the air, and he sneezed.

The room behind the door must have been directly over the gate, Kyle reasoned. Pale light shone in through the barred windows on both sides of the low-ceilinged space, illuminating an odd assortment of items. Something about it looked odd, and he had to think for a moment before he realized that the room was not only free of dust but looked as if someone had been inside it only recently. The neatly folded bedding in one corner was wrinkled with use, and the writing desk next to it was stained with ink. An array of bottles in various colors and shapes filled the outer wall, some of them full or partly full of liquid, all of them glistening as if they’d just been scrubbed.

“The tower’s empty,” Guy said from behind him, and Kyle flinched. He hadn’t heard Guy’s footsteps. “What’s in here?”

“I think somebody lives here, but the dust…” None of the dust from the hallway had floated into the room, but it was still clinging to the inside of his nostrils. Kyle rubbed at his nose absently.

“What dust?”

“The dust in the hallway.” Across the room, a small three-legged brazier sat innocuously against the wall. Kyle crossed the floor and put his hand on the side; it was just barely warm, and he was suddenly aware of how cold the room felt.

“There is no dust in the hallway,” Guy said, and Kyle forgot about the brazier.

“It was full of…” His voice trailed off as he pushed past Guy only to see that the hallway was just as clean as the room. “There was… Let’s get out of here. There’s nothing here we can use.”

“Damn cold in here,” Guy muttered, and Kyle was intensely grateful that he wasn’t imagining everything.

“Yeah,” he said, and slid the door shut behind them. The tower wasn’t much warmer than the room had been, although Kyle was sure he didn’t remember quite this level of bone-chilling cold when they’d first come in. “What’s in the tower?”

“Stairs and empty rooms.” Guy left the door to the entryway open, and Kyle reached behind him to shut it. “I couldn’t see anything from the windows except this place.” It got warmer as they went down the stairs into the courtyard, and Kyle walked to the center of the open area before speaking.

“Damn.” Before he could say anything else, Guy grabbed his shoulder and pointed at the window.

“Did you see that?”

“See what?” The window led into the room they’d just left, the room with a single door and dust that wasn’t really there and might have had someone living in it.

“In the window,” Guy said, just as something bright flashed from between the bars and Kyle heard a sharp popping sound. “Get down!”

Something warm was spreading over Kyle’s shoulder, and he reached for it with his other hand, but a second shot rang out and Guy dragged him in an uneven line towards the far end of the courtyard, towards the huge gravestone.

“Move it!” Guy was behind him now, staying between him and the shooter, but his construct shield was pale and insubstantial. Kyle threw a glance over his shoulder and the light in the window flashed again. A red line scored along Guy’s side, but he didn’t so much as flinch. A shape slowly coalesced in the window and Kyle knew with unshakable certainty exactly where the next bullet was aimed. He poured his will into the ring, creating what should have been an impenetrable wall, and tried to push Guy to the side.

The bullet ripped through the construct, melting it in its passage, and Kyle could almost track it as he failed to move quickly enough to stop it. It buried itself in Guy’s chest just as they reached the gravestone, and Kyle had just enough momentum to drag Guy behind it.

“No, no, no, no.” He was barely aware of his frantic litany, hands shaking as he pulled Guy’s vest and shirt aside. Blood welled up, pumping out in a horrible rhythm. The ring was no help; everything he made went to pieces and faded before he could use any of it, and finally he just pressed his hands over the wound, trying to stem the flow. “Stop, please, Guy.” It was so red, so bright, and when the flow eased he was at first relieved. “Guy?”

It was at that point that Kyle realized that Guy’s heart was no longer beating, and something in him switched off. His hands were steady as he finally created a successful construct to apply pressure to the no longer bleeding wound and started CPR. There was no response. The sound of further shots ringing out registered only faintly, as did the footsteps crunching on the frozen ground behind him.

“Kyle!”

The voice was familiar, and Kyle belatedly recognized it as Hal Jordan, but he didn’t have time to answer Hal’s questions. He had to take care of Guy. The slap came as a surprise, and he fell silent.

“There’s nothing more you can do,” Hal said gently, and Kyle almost hated him for it. “Let me take you home.”

There was no sign of an alien and Kyle didn’t ask what Hal had done with it. He didn’t want Hal touching Guy, either, not even with the ring, although constructing a protective box - coffin, his mind supplied - was both more difficult than it should have been and easier than he was expecting.

“Let’s go,” Hal finally said, and Kyle found that he could fly under the ring’s power after all. The planet vanished behind them, and he resisted the urge to smash it to pieces.

The bitter cold did not abate as they moved towards Oa, and the next thing Kyle saw was a white ceiling. Heat lay over him, beautifully warm, and for a moment he had no idea where he was. Pain lanced through his shoulder as he tried to turn his head and memory crashed back. “Guy?”

“Hey, there.” The crimson-skinned face that appeared over him belonged to the Corps’ resident medical expert, and she gave him an easy smile. “How do you feel?”

“Where’s Guy?” Kyle struggled to sit up, and succeeded. His shoulder was weirdly stiff, and he could see a bandage out of the corner of his eye.

“Easy there. You’ve got a bit of a dent.” Soranik was still smiling gently. “What do you remember?”

“I…” Kyle rubbed his eyes. “There… we found…” It was so blurry. “There was a tower, and a courtyard, and a sniper. “

“Lantern Jordan found you both on a restricted planet, Kyle. How did you get there?”

“I’m… not sure.” The clearest part of his memory was the bar they’d visited on the last night, and just trying to find somewhere safe to let the effects of the alien chemicals wear off.

“You had traces of…” Soranik went on for a few moments about what she’d found in his bloodstream, and Kyle waited impatiently for her to finish. Once she did, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Where’s Guy?” Kyle asked again. He thought he remembered that Guy had been shot, and that he’d been unable to save him, but that was ridiculous, because Guy was too good of a Lantern to let himself get killed on a tiny little backwater hunk of rock that didn’t even have a proper name.

“Oh, Kyle.” Soranik’s eyes were far too compassionate, and Kyle pushed her aside as he stood. The room tilted for a moment and then steadied, and he moved toward the door. “Kyle, wait.”

“No,” Kyle said, although he wasn’t sure which of Soranik’s statements he was denying. “No.”

“Sit down.” She steered him back towards the bed, and Kyle let her push him carefully downwards. “I’m so sorry.”

The emptiness he’d been trying to hold back settled into him, and Kyle closed his eyes for a brief moment. I let it happen again. Never again. “I see,” he heard himself say.

“Are you all right?” Soranik looked worried, eyes searching his face for something and not finding it.

“Thank you.” He was calm; he couldn’t have wept or raged even if he’d wanted to. There was simply nothing left, nothing to burn. “Is there a-“ Despite his resolve, he couldn’t stop his voice from catching, and changed his question. “Did I miss the memorial service?”

“It’s this afternoon,” Soranik told him. “You’re free to go, but I’d like to give you a thorough examination before you do.” Kyle nodded; he had no objections, and perhaps agreement would be enough to clear the worry from her eyes.

Following the physical, Soranik gave him a conditional clean bill of health; the condition was that he check in on a regular basis. He agreed again, and she returned his ring. He felt a dull flare of surprise that he hadn’t realized it was missing, but it didn’t quite penetrate the numbness. The wound in his shoulder closed under the ring’s influence, knitting itself together at a speed that was no longer quite human. He let it work for a moment, and then manifested his uniform.

A twitch from Soranik almost piqued his curiosity enough to ask, but she was staring at him with narrowed eyes and he was fairly sure he didn’t want to know.

“That’s not your usual uniform,” she said, and he glanced down despite himself to see Guy’s vest. He almost changed it back, but the subconscious choice was appropriate.

The sight of Honor Lantern Rayner wearing Honor Lantern Gardner’s uniform at the memorial service for the same raised more than a few eyebrows - or their equivalents - but there were no objections. Green Lanterns paid their respects to the dead in their own ways, and for once Kyle was grateful that the sheer diversity of the Corps meant that almost no one would question him.

Salaak drew him aside after the service, his alien face set in an oddly warm expression. “I realize this is not the best time, Lantern Rayner, but there is a situation requiring your attention.”

“Even a minute’s too much to ask around here.” Guy’s voice was as clear as if he were standing right next to both of them, and Kyle looked around for the source. Someone had to be playing a prank, and it was in remarkably poor taste.

“Lantern Rayner?” Salaak had gone from sympathetic to suspicious in a matter of seconds, transition so smooth Kyle suspected the sympathy was nothing more than a mask. He couldn’t have heard the voice, or there would have been a very different reaction. Salaak might not have liked Guy, but he wouldn’t have permitted such blatant disrespect to pass unremarked.

“You didn’t hear…” He shook his head. “What’s the situation?”

There was nothing out of the ordinary - Kyle went to the sector in question, assisted the Lanterns there, and returned home. Soranik was none too pleased to see him in the medical bay bare days after he’d been discharged, and she made that fact very clear.

“Explain to me again how you managed to let a spiderform close enough to do this much damage.” She hadn’t used any anaesthetic (which he was sure was intentional), and she was pulling much harder than he thought was strictly necessary.

“There were a lot of them,” he said, wincing just slightly. It didn’t really hurt that much, but Soranik glared at him anyway.

“1688’s report said you sustained these injuries during an unnecessary pursuit.” She sounded casual, but the slight twist to her mouth said she was baiting him on purpose.

“1688 has had his ring for a grand total of three weeks,” Kyle snapped back. “I hardly think he’s qualified to determine whether or not the pursuit was necessary.”

“She.” Soranik tugged at the thread with considerably more force and Kyle twitched. “1688 is female.”

“Fine. She. She’s still only had the ring for three weeks.”

“She has good instincts,” Soranik said mildly. “As do most Green Lanterns.”

“I’m the one with experience here, and in my opinion, it was necessary to prevent the spiderforms from returning and setting up another colony.”

“Uh huh,” Soranik said, and cut off the last thread. “Leave those in until I take them out. Spiderform venom has some unpleasant side effects, but the antitoxin in the stitches should counteract it.”

“I could have done this with the ring,” Kyle muttered, pulling his shirt down.

“Leave the patching up to me this time. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to hold your own guts in, I’m sure.” She handed him his vest, and he shrugged it on. The gashes over his ribs really hadn’t been that deep, except for the last one; the spiderform had gotten a lucky strike and it had found a gap between his bones.

“Aye, aye, ma’am.” He flashed her a smile; it was getting easier all the time, and he was finding that he was less likely to be subjected to dubious looks - or worse - if he smiled.

Nine days and four assignments later, Salaak showed up at his door at the crack of dawn. Kyle stumbled downstairs on far too little sleep and waved Salaak inside.

“As you know,” Salaak started.

“Well, that ain’t good,” Guy’s voice said. It was starting to become normal; what was now the most stressful part of hearing his dead lover in his head was not answering it when other people were around. Hearing voices no one else could when one was not actually a meta of some sort was usually a bad sign, and Kyle wasn’t about to give the Corps a reason to take the ring away. It was all he had left. “He always says that when he wants somethin’ you ain’t willing to give,” Guy continued, and Kyle hissed at him to shut up. He hadn’t said it quietly enough, for Salaak paused and gave him a curious look.

“Sorry, just tired.” He had a smile somewhere; with a few seconds searching, he dredged it up and offered it in apology. “You were saying?”

“The number of new recruits has increased significantly in the wake of recent events,” Salaak said smoothly, “and the number of experienced Lanterns available to train them is not sufficient.”

“No,” Kyle interrupted. “I’m not qualified to train rookies,” he added into Salaak’s surprised silence.

“It is part of your duties -“

“I won’t do it.” He couldn’t have said what prompted his adamant refusal, only that the thought of rookies going out with only his training between them and whatever they might face engendered a reaction very like panic. It was completely irrational, but he could not be trusted to properly prepare anyone else when he’d failed so miserably himself.

“Your current posting does require flexibility,” Salaak said after a measured look. “Furthermore, it would be disruptive to the schedules of those around you to send you where you are needed.”

“Thank you.”

“I have one further question.” Kyle had had the impression before that if Salaak had a tail, he’d be lashing it, but never so vividly.

“Yes?”

“Do you plan on reopening this establishment?” The glance around Guy’s bar left no doubt what Salaak thought of it, but it was also clear that he was trying to be polite.

“What’s that look for? Kick him through the window.” Guy would have had his arms crossed for that statement. Kyle resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose; Guy probably wouldn’t really have suggested defenestration in response to a simple disparaging look from Salaak. It had happened often enough, after all.

“Well?” Salaak asked, somewhat impatiently.

“Yes,” Kyle said. “I’m just not sure when.” The thought of opening the bar for business again was only marginally less distressing than closing it forever; it had been Guy’s project for as long as Kyle had known him, and either option felt wrong. Dishonoring Guy by taking over his baby was a step up from dishonoring him by shutting it down, but it would take some time before he felt ready.

“I see.” Salaak vanished without further conversation, and Kyle was free to sleep.

Weeks later, Kyle still had not managed to open the bar for business; Salaak was getting impatient with the delay, since there was nothing in the bar itself that justified Kyle’s refusal to unlock the doors. He couldn’t use the dream as an excuse - the dream that he’d had every night, that he was starting to see in flashes during his waking moments. Salaak would have thought he was compromised and taken away the ring, and Soranik’s opinion of his mental state - derived from her continuing irritation with his string of injuries - notwithstanding, the ring was the only thing he had left.

The dream started the same way it always did; it had started the day Kyle had decided to reopen the bar, the day he’d stopped hearing Guy’s voice. The courtyard shimmered in the dark, edges warped and twisted, and he could see its energy flowing towards the tower. Bright lines slid around the edges, coalescing at the gate and the stairs, ensuring that no one could pass through the openings. Now, he could see how impossible it was to escape on the ground, and only in hindsight could he see how tainted the structure really was.

“You take the door, I’ll take the stairs.” The words were never quite the same, but Guy smiled brightly at him every time. No, Kyle wanted to say. We should stay together. But the words never came, and even if they hadn’t separated, it wouldn’t have changed what had happened. The dream after that had different shapes - some nights, Guy simply vanished and Kyle searched until he woke, calling and calling and hearing only silence. Some nights, Kyle found himself stuck in the gatehouse, unable to move or make a sound, while Guy made a perfunctory search before flying away. On the worst nights, the sniper came as he had before, but Kyle could see the cruel smirk as the sniper fired again and again and again.

“There’s nothing up there,” Guy said, voice wavering in and out. Kyle turned to see him fading, and then the gatehouse melted away.

“This is new,” he tried to say, but the words stuck in the throat he no longer had.

“Kyle!” It was Guy’s voice, urgent and more real than anything that had happened in weeks.

“Guy!” he shouted back, but the dark dissolved into the guest room above the bar and Hal leaning over him.

“Hal,” he said, looking worried, and Kyle couldn’t help it. The last few seconds suddenly struck him as utterly inane and he started laughing, which only made Hal’s frown deeper. “Are you all right?”

The laughter drained away as quickly as it had come, and Kyle tilted his head to get a better angle. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been assigned as your new partner,” Hal said, a bit hesitantly. “And we have an assignment.”

“Can I shower first?”

“I…” Hal just blinked, and Kyle took the opportunity to slip past him towards the shower. He left the door open while the water ran.

“What assignment?”

“Uh.” Hal shuffled back and forth through the doorway, eventually settling on leaning against the doorframe with his back to the shower. “There’s a star in sector 629 that’s been destabilizing; the fourth planet was inhabited, but the evacuation is nearly complete.”

“Okay.” Shower finished, Kyle shut off the water and stepped out, toweling the water out of his hair. “What are we doing out there?”

“The star’s been more and more active - we’re supposed to make sure the last colony ships make it out of the system and keep any damage to a minimum, if we can.”

Towel hung neatly on the rack, Kyle ringed on his uniform. Hal glanced at him as if to ask, “Are you ready to go?” and did a double take, words catching in his throat with a sort of strangled grunt.

“What?”

“Your uniform is, um, different,” Hal said after a full minute of working his mouth. Kyle had nearly forgotten that he’d ever worn anything else, and he fingered the vest.

“Yes,” he said softly, and Hal closed his mouth.

Sector 629 wasn’t more than a few hours away at top speed, but Kyle didn’t speak. When they had reached the star in question and Hal had found the last ship preparing to leave the system, he found himself grateful for the silence.

“You take care of the ship,” Hal said. “I’ll keep an eye on the star.”

The dream rocketed to the forefront of Kyle’s mind so strongly that he almost grabbed Hal to prevent him from leaving, but he managed to simply nod in reply.

When he reached it, the ship proved to be massive - it held the last remnants of the planet’s population as well as many of their cultural artifacts, according to the panicked and somewhat irate transmission. He tuned it out and looped slowly around the trajectory - there was nothing obstructing the path yet, and the star appeared stable. He stuck to the back of the ship like a burr, watching the star for any signs of activity.

“I’ll take the stairs if you’ll get the door,” Guy said, smiling disarmingly.

“No,” Kyle whispered. “Not here.” He brought up a hand to rub his eyes and found himself turning to face Guy. “All right,” he heard himself say, and he could only watch as his hand reached out to open the door.

Heat flared over his shoulder, and he turned to look. The tower was on fire, flames spreading across the wooden walls so quickly his eyes couldn’t track them. Before he could react, the ceiling crashed inwards, the force of the impact pushing him through the wall. When his eyes cleared, the trail of steam from the colony ship surrounded him and the buzzing in his ears resolved itself into Hal’s voice.

“Kyle! Please respond! Are you all right?”

“I…” The ship buckled and twisted under the pressure of its own atmosphere, its structural integrity compromised by the massive breach in the hull. It ripped itself apart as Kyle watched, unable to channel a coherent thought through the ring.

“Kyle!” Green and black flashed in front of his eyes, and the last vestiges of the dream finally released him. Hal hovered just slightly above him, glaring. “What the hell was that?”

“I…” The courtyard flashed in front of his eyes again, and Kyle shook his head to clear it. He had to destroy the planet if he wanted to keep his ring - that much was becoming clear. He could not be trusted to function with it invading not only his dreams but his waking life, and he would not give up the ring. “I have to go.”

“Wait!” Hal reached for him, but it was ridiculously easy to evade his grasp, and Hal didn’t even try to hold him with a construct. Kyle sent a flare of power arcing towards the sun and it responded with a blinding flash. By the time the flash faded, Kyle was long gone, racing towards the restricted planet.

The closer Kyle got to the courtyard, the stronger the images became, but he was focused enough to ignore them now. There would be no further distractions. The small planetoid was exactly as he remembered, the courtyard clearly visible on the surface as soon as the planetoid came into view. Its energy glowed a sickly yellowish orange, flickering through spots of almost leprous white, and Kyle paused. Simply destroying the planetoid wasn’t enough; the energy would linger. The bright star illuminating the planetoid caught his eye, and he smiled.

A cascade reaction deep within the star’s core would cause the star to explode and consume the planet in the process, burning off its energy and cleansing its aura. “Ring, how can I catalyze a supernova?”

Several minutes and an argument with the ring over whether or not protocol allowed for the deliberate destruction of a star later, Kyle stood on the surface of the planetoid, in the center of the courtyard. This time, the ring worked perfectly, and he formed a multi-pronged hook. It spun off towards the sun, faster than he could see, and he waited for it to reach the star’s corona. Just as it reached the edge of his vision, something blocked his construct.

“NO!” He poured more power into it, trying to force it beyond the barrier that should not exist, until his construct snapped under the strain. The shock reverberated all the way back towards him, its vibrations increasing until the entire planetoid shook and he lost his balance. The ground beneath his feet vanished as he fell into utter blackness.

“Move it!” The room above the gate had been empty, and yet a sniper had materialized and was taking potshots at the both of them. Guy hadn’t heard the first shot until he’d seen the hideous blossom of red on Kyle’s shoulder, and then instinct took over. The huge rock at the far end of the courtyard was their best chance at cover, with the rings not working properly, and he shoved Kyle towards it, trying not to move in a straight line. A second shot rang out, and a third, and then he lost count. Kyle froze in front of him, a maddening few inches from safety, and turned around. Guy started to physically push his partner forward, but Kyle’s eyes narrowed and he shoved Guy downwards.

The sharp report echoed through the trees. Guy knew with absolute certainty what its trajectory was, and that he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Falling, he reached through the ring with every ounce of will he could summon and sent a blast of power arcing towards the gatehouse. The structure shattered into smoke and ash, a vaguely humanoid body tumbling limply downwards, but the bullet passed through his construct as if it were intangible. Guy hit the ground and twisted, coming up in something resembling a crouch. Kyle was still so close to the headstone, not that it mattered at this point.

“Dammit, Kyle!” Guy scrambled to his partner, turning him over carefully. The bullet had passed through Kyle’s ribs and lodged somewhere inside; Guy could just barely reach it with the ring, but he couldn’t grip it to pull it out. “What the fucking hell were you thinking?”

“It’s okay,” Kyle whispered, reaching up with one visibly trembling hand. Incredibly, he was smiling. Guy took Kyle’s hand in his, squeezing it tightly, and redoubled his efforts to fix the damage. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Like hell,” Guy growled, but Kyle’s eyes were closed. “Don’t you dare give up. Don’t you dare.” The flow of blood slowed and finally stopped, and the twisted bit of metal finally slid out of the wound, far too late. Guy pressed it into Kyle’s limp hand, and laid that hand over Kyle’s chest. Someone had fallen from the gatehouse, and Guy was about to get some answers.

The alien lay on the ground where it had fallen, humanoid in shape although its skin was an oddly cyanotic blue. Guy grabbed it and hauled it upright, searching for signs of life. “What the hell was that, you asshole?” It didn’t so much as twitch, and the ring confirmed that the alien was in fact stone cold dead. Guy shook it for good measure and threw the body through the gate with all his strength. It landed just inside the gate, and Guy stalked towards it with the intent of incinerating the body.

“Guy!”

The voice was as familiar as the ring, but he wasn’t in the mood to put up with Hal Jordan. “Fuck off, Jordan. I’m busy.”

“What’s going on?” Hal landed lightly, with perfect grace, between Guy and the alien. “What happened?”

“That thing happened.” Guy pointed at the alien, furiously. “And I’m gonna destroy it.”

“Wha-is it dead?” Hal twisted around to look at the alien, confusion creeping over his expression. “Where’s Kyle?”

“They’re both dead, and I’m gonna make sure this thing can’t come back.” Guy started toward the alien again, but Hal put out a hand to stop him.

“It… It won’t help.” The sorrow in Hal’s face was somehow obscene; what right did Hal have to look at him that way? Hal hadn’t even really known Kyle, not like Guy. It had been Guy’s job to watch his partner’s back, and he had done a piss-poor job of it.

“Yeah, whatever.” The alien was dead, anyway. Guy made an about-face and went back to the headstone. “Got any fancy way to get out of here?”

“Uh, the usual,” Hal said. Guy could feel the other man watching him. Whatever had been affecting the rings before was gone now; creating a construct to carry Kyle home for the last time went exactly as it should have. The peaceful smile still on Kyle’s face was suddenly infuriating, and Guy solidified the construct into opacity so that he wouldn’t have to look at it.

“You’ve got a -“ Hal started, reaching for his vest, and Guy touched his side. He’d been hit; a line of red, already darkened and clotting, met his fingers.

“It’s fine,” he said, and lifted the construct into the air. The little planetoid was much closer to Oa than Guy had thought; it seemed like no more than a moment before they were navigating its atmosphere, and even less time before Hal was explaining to Salaak what had happened while Guy suffered through Soranik poking at his ribs with something pointy.

“I would prefer Lantern Gardner to make his own report,” Salaak finally said, after Hal answered a sixth question with hesitating uncertainty. “That is a restricted area.”

“I don’t know how we got there,” Guy said, pulling his shirt down.

“With these toxins in your system, I’m not surprised,” Soranik muttered, holding a small vial of red liquid. He hadn’t even noticed her drawing blood; when had she done that? “You should be more careful of what you ingest.”

“Yeah, you say that now.” For a brief second, Guy saw Kyle standing in front of the door - the other man seemed more substantial than anything else in the room. There was something odd about the image, but it wasn’t until Kyle had vanished as quickly as he’d appeared that Guy realized Kyle had been wearing an exact replica of his vest and boots. “What the fuck.”

“Lantern Gardner,” Salaak said sharply. Clearly he hadn’t seen Kyle, or there would have been a very different reaction.

“Look, I don’t know. We woke up, the rings didn’t work, and some idiot started shooting at us from a window. That’s it.” Guy eyed the door, but Kyle didn’t reappear.

“What happened to your assailant?” Salaak was all but twitching impatiently now.

“Deceased.” It must have been shock, Guy decided, much as he hated to admit it.

“Where are its remains?” Salaak pressed, somehow managing to loom despite standing at least two feet shorter than everyone else in the room.

“Still there? I don’t know.”

“Guy, I didn’t see anyone else when I got there,” Hal interjected, flicking little worried looks between him and Salaak. “Just you and Kyle.”

“What?” Guy couldn’t bring out any further words for a moment. “You were standing right in front of it! All gray-skinned and ugly. Three arms.”

“There wasn’t anything there,” Hal repeated. “I scanned the area.”

“That’s ridiculous. I ain’t lying.”

“Could the toxins -“ Hal started, and then fell silent.

“You think I was hungover enough to hallucinate some kind of creature killing my partner? Is that it? Screw that.” Guy pointed towards the other room. “He’s in there, and -“ A subtle alteration of the tension running through the room brought him to a halt as he realized exactly what Hal had - however accidentally - implied. “Like hell you just accused me of shooting Kyle.”

Hal’s backpedaling might have been almost amusing under other circumstances, but Guy was in no mood to listen to the other man stammer out an excuse. He stalked out of the med center, slamming the door behind him. His bar was closed, a sign on the window claiming that it would reopen as soon as he damn well pleased, and he slammed that door as well. A semi-permanent construct shielded the windows and the door as soon as he could think of it.

“Lantern Gardner.” Salaak’s voice came over the ring, accompanied by a little holographic image.

“What,” Guy snapped, trying to keep his voice as level as possible.

“The memorial service is scheduled for tomorrow morning,” Salaak said mildly.

“And the investigation?” Guy asked.

“Lantern Natu has determined the veracity of your statements. As the restricted area is well known for its anomalous occurrences, I see no reason to doubt your account of events.”

“Right.” Guy paused, and Salaak took the opportunity to sign off. He checked the constructs again, ensuring their solidity, and turned out the lights. The sense of confinement in the dark was almost overwhelming, and he barely stopped himself from smashing out a window.

“You bastard,” he muttered, removing the ring before he did something with it he’d regret. “You gave up. How could you just give up?” He smashed the nearest chair into a table, reducing it to splinters, and threw the pieces aside.

"You bastard," he said again, and stalked up the stairs. There was nothing he could hit without breaking it, and if he started to demolish the bar, he wouldn't stop until it was no longer standing. He paced the hallway on the second floor, not wanting to see anyone else or be seen. The thought of the memorial service in the morning was like some kind of horrific joke - he kept waiting for the punchline, kept waiting for Kyle to show up at the door with a grin and no apology.

"Fuck this, I ain't going. I ain't going for you. You gave up. You gave up and walked away, and I ain't gonna forgive you for that."

He couldn't stand to stay upstairs, couldn't stand to sit around the bar. There was a sense of something vaguely wrong that he couldn’t pinpoint, like something itching just under his skin. The next round of pacing brought him to the stairs, and Guy took them down two at a time. Underneath the bar itself were far too many things he never wanted to see again (Kyle's sketchbook, an old coffee pot missing its handle, the second set of keys that Kyle had forgotten again), and a dusty bottle of something green. He had no idea what was in it.

"Ring, is this poisonous to humans?" he asked, and got a reply in the negative. It smelled like motor oil and tasted worse, and by the time he should have been speaking at the memorial service the bottle was half empty and Hal was pounding on his door. Guy told him to fuck off in the rudest terms possible and checked the constructs again - they were still there and glowing a happy green. The next clear memory he had was of the underside of the bar and several smashed tables, accompanied by a raging headache and the indefinable phantom itch under his skin that would not go away.

“Are you still hungover?” Hal’s voice demanded far too loudly, and he swore at the ring to reduce the volume of the transmission.

“No,” he answered, just to be contrary. “I’m cleaning.” The statement would be true at some point in the near future; it didn’t strictly count as prevarication. “And why do you care?” Everything ruined could be burned; he leveraged himself off the floor, ringed earplugs, and started dragging it all together.

“Because we have - what are you doing in there? Open the door.”

“I don’t want to open the door,” Guy said, still in no mood to be cooperative. There was no reason the bar should look off, and yet it did. “Busy,” he added. There had been too many tables in the bar anyway; it all made a nice heap in the center of the much emptier room along with the junk from under the bar itself.

“Guy!” Hal sounded frustrated, and the mental image of the expression he must have had made Guy smile.

“Hold yer horses,” he said, and let the door open. Hal walked in just as Guy lit the trash pile on fire and stopped dead. Guy automatically glanced over to see what Hal was looking at, and saw Kyle inside the bubble. He was almost startled enough to let go of the bubble, but Kyle was wearing the vest and boots again, and Guy was fairly sure he wasn’t real. “Fucking hell.” Sure enough, Kyle vanished as soon as the flames touched him.

“What are you -“

“I told you I was cleaning.” Clever manipulation of the air flow through the construct could accelerate the burning process and keep the flames burning hotter than they normally would, and Guy wanted this over as quickly as possible. It was a pain in the ass.

“Usually cleaning doesn’t… involve… How long is this going to take?”

“Why?” Pushing Hal’s buttons was far too easy, and he had to convince himself that it was probably not a good idea. “You got somewhere to be?”

“Um.” Hal was looking between him and the contained fireball, obviously trying to figure out what to say. “We have somewhere to be.”

“We?” There was nothing but ash left in the bubble now, and Guy took it out back for disposal. Hal shadowed him, a cautious few steps away.

“It’s just temporary,” he said, and Guy realized what he should have understood several minutes ago.

“You’re my new partner.” Buttons indeed - Salaak was pushing his, but he wouldn’t be manipulated. “Fine. Where are we going?”

The expression on Hal’s face was priceless - he was trying to act perfectly smooth, but surprise and suspicion that Guy wasn’t arguing kept creeping out. Guy let out a short bark of laughter. “I’ll be right out. Tell me on the way.”

That only deepened the suspicion, but Hal stepped outside. Guy joined him a few moments later, feeling marginally better than he had been. “Damn green shit,” he muttered, apparently too quietly for Hal to hear, for the other man didn’t react.

The assignment was easy enough; beat some heads in that needed beating and find the missing ring of the sector’s former Lantern. The only odd moment came as they were leaving the planet in question, and Guy looked down to see the courtyard. The itch under his skin intensified, and he nearly dove back downwards, but when he looked again it was gone.

“Did you see something?” Hal asked, and Guy shook his head.

“Trick of the light,” he said, and Hal seemed to accept it.

The second time he saw the courtyard was after his third assignment with Hal; he rounded a corner on Oa and nearly walked through the gate. After that, the courtyard showed up with disturbing frequency - sometimes he would catch glimpses of it out of the corner of his eye from above some innocent planet, and sometimes he would see it from the ground. Every time he saw it, the sense of dissonance increased, but he couldn’t figure out what wasn’t right.

“Fuck off,” he said to it on the day it decided to impersonate his bar. “You’re a stress reaction. Just fuck off.”

“Talkin’ to someone?” came Kilowog’s voice from behind him.

“No,” he said. “What’s up?” He wasn’t about to go into his bar while it was doing an impression of the alien tower where his lover had been killed.

“I got a batch of rookies,” Kilowog started.

“You always have a batch of rookies,” Guy pointed out. “That’s your job.”

“Yeah, well, I got a bunch of brand spanking new poozers who can’t sort their elbows from their asshats, and another group as just need some fine tuning. You busy?”

The bar stubbornly refused to go back to the way it was supposed to look, and everything else was starting to look oddly flat around it. Guy rubbed his eyes. “Which one you want me to take?”

“Fine tuning,” Kilowog said, and grinned.

Guy’s rookies were waiting in one of several training grounds, and some of them had the audacity to look relieved when Kilowog told them they’d be working with Honor Lantern Gardner. He smirked at them, and the relief faded.

“All right, listen up,” he said once Kilowog had gone. “You think you know what you’re doing? You have no idea. There are things out there that will chew you up and spit out the pieces, but by god, by the time I’m finished with you, you might give them a hard time going down.”

“That’s what you said last time,” came a very familiar voice, and Guy crossed his arms over the twinge in his chest. Kyle was not standing in the bunch of rookies, no matter what two of his five senses were telling him.

“Split into pairs. You work against each other. The last pair standing passes.” It wasn’t strictly true - there wasn’t much that would get a rookie punted from the training program at this late stage - but they didn’t know that. “Points deducted for permanent damage caused to opposing teams,” Guy added.

The rookies stared at him in several approximations of bewilderment, even after he erected a hugely complex construct. “What are we-“ one of them started.

“Inside. Now.” He left a blinking door open until they’d filed inside in pairs, then sealed it off. “Last pair standing!”

“Would you have fallen for that?” Kyle was leaning over his shoulder, looking all kinds of ridiculous in Guy’s vest. “I wouldn’t have.”

“You were never trained properly to begin with,” Guy shot back.

“Oh, sure, like that was my fault.”

“You had John, me, and Alan,” Guy told him. “No excuses.”

“Picky, picky, picky,” Kyle scoffed back. “Your rookies are cooperating down there.”

“Rat bastards,” Guy muttered, and ringed a bullhorn to carry his voice through the entire construct. “There’s a two hour time limit! If more than one pair is left, you all fail!”

“Battle Royale method?” Kyle asked cheerfully, again looking more solid than everything else; the rookies below and the training ground had the feeling of a two dimensional photograph, as if there was no depth to anything, and he didn’t think it was a problem with his vision.

“Okay, that’s it. You ain’t real.” The figment of his imagination had the temerity to look wounded. “You’re in my head. You don’t get to reference shit I don’t know.” This had to stop - whatever was causing these random hallucinations had started on the restricted planet, and that was where his answer would be. Given the odd flatness to everything around him, he didn’t consider requesting assistance.

“Ring, information on restricted area -“ he paused. He wasn’t sure where, exactly, the restricted area had been, and rephrased to ask where he’d been.

“No information,” the ring returned.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s a restricted area.”

“No travel in a restricted area has been logged.”

“Where was Honor Lantern Rayner killed?”

“Error.”

“Don’t you error me, you piece of junk. Give me a map of everywhere I’ve gone for the past week.” The ring obligingly put up a three dimensional map of Oa, with several threads leading off planet and back. “Past two weeks. Three.” The threads intensified into a dense scribble, until he finally located the one he wanted. “Delete everything except this one.”

If he was right, the rookies currently doing their level best to incapacitate each other without doing any actual damage didn’t exist and it wouldn’t matter if he left them where they were. If he was wrong, then he’d been compromised to such a degree that he shouldn’t be wearing the ring at all, much less training rookies. He left them there without a backwards glance, finding the trajectory outlined by the ring and following it back.

The ring’s memory fuzzed out several times, but Guy was able to extrapolate the path he’d taken and pick it up again each time. When the map vanished for the last time, the little planetoid with its courtyard was barely visible, and Guy resisted the urge to point to it with a demand that the ring tell him what it thought he was seeing.

Cold seeped through his vest as he landed in the empty courtyard. The tower and the gatehouse were intact, as if he’d never been there, and there was no sign of the alien on the ground. “Well?” he asked, although he couldn’t have said whether he was asking his ring for an explanation or the courtyard for closure. The ring chirped once and fell silent.

“Well?” Guy asked again, and the courtyard fell into nothing.

He woke to the white ceiling of the med center, with no sense of intervening time, and more confused than he was willing to admit. “What the fuck,” he said quietly. Working on the assumption that someone around had to know more than he did, he made for the door.

“Lantern Gardner,” said a quiet voice. It took Guy a moment to place it.

“Saarek?” The other Lantern had been standing in the shadows. Guy didn’t know him particularly well, only that he allegedly spoke to ghosts.

“I am glad to see you are feeling better,” Saarek said politely. “Have you healed sufficiently?”

“Healed?” Guy asked. He wasn’t sure where, exactly, he’d been before the med center, or what had happened that he might need healing.

“There was a nasty gash along your ribs,” Saarek explained.

“That’s weeks - what day is it?”

“You and Lantern Rayner have facilitated the removal of a rather tricky spirit leech,” Saarek said, clearly avoiding the question. “The planet was restricted due to its presence, as my duties had not permitted me the time to purge it.”

“Spirit leech?”

“It was at its most vulnerable when preparing to devour a soul,” Saarek said, and Guy gave up trying to get any straight answers.

“Thank you, Saarek,” he said, and edged towards the door.

Saarek actually chuckled. “The leech creates hallucinations,” he said. “It cannot absorb a soul from a living body, nor one that has died of external causes. Had either you or Lantern Rayner performed any action within the hallucination that had led to your deaths, however, you would have been ingested.”

“It would’ve eaten us,” Guy said. He would have thought that by now he would have run into pretty much every way to die, and yet he seemed to keep finding new ones.

“Correct.” Saarek inclined his head slightly.

“And you’re the reason it didn’t.”

“Among others.” Guy knew modesty when he saw it; any assistance had been incidental.

“There was a rescue mission, wasn’t there.” That was humiliating; he and Kyle were supposed to do the saving, not need to be saved. He scrubbed his hands through his hair. “Wait.”

Saarek had vanished while Guy wasn’t looking, which was a very Batman-like trick and completely unfair when Guy still had questions. He stalked out the door and nearly ran over Soranik Natu.

“Oh, you’re awake,” she said, looking less than pleased.

“You got a problem with that?” Unless she was going to give him answers, he saw no need to be polite.

“Not at all.” Soranik looked at him for a moment before producing a very practiced smile. “Your timing is rather fortuitous.”

“Saarek wouldn’t tell me what day it was.” He could have just asked the ring, he supposed, but he hadn’t thought of it.

“Worried about how late you are?” Soranik’s smile was gone. The woman had an incredible smirk; pity she didn’t use it more often.

“Yes,” he said, just to see how she’d answer. “Where’d Hal go?”

“Hal Jordan? He hasn’t been here. You were due back at nine this morning. You’re only thirteen, fourteen hours late, by the way.” She pushed him back inside the room, poking at him with various constructs. He couldn’t tell what any of them were, and it occurred to him to wonder if she was possibly playing pranks on all of them with her massively complicated equipment. Maybe some of it didn’t actually have a purpose.

“Lucky me,” he said.

“You are lucky.” The constructs vanished. “Lantern Rayner will be several days late.”

The bottom dropped out of Guy’s stomach. If none of what had happened after they’d reached the courtyard had been real, then - “Kyle’s not dead?”

“Is that what you saw?”

“Natu…” He couldn’t articulate anything else past the morass of emotion pressing into his throat; anger, relief, and hope all jammed together.

“You were both hit with some kind of crude projectile weapon; in your case, the damage was fairly light. In his, there was a rather deep hole that leaked a considerable amount of vital fluid before Kilowog and Saarek got to the two of you.” She opened the door, a clear invitation to leave.

“But he’s all right?” Relief won out, and he could speak.

“He’ll be fine.” She led him down the hallway. “See?”

Guy peered through the door to see a sleeping Kyle, pale but neither dead nor a ghost wearing Guy’s uniform. Granted, it was difficult to tell whether he was wearing anything at all under the blanket, but odds were that it wasn’t a green vest.

“You’re free to go,” Natu said from behind him. “Or stay. Salaak wants to see you in the morning.”

Guy nodded, and she was halfway down the hallway when he turned around. He slipped quietly through the door, leaving it ajar, and ruffled Kyle’s hair. “Still got a few things to learn about interstellar barhopping, kid,” he said softly, and grinned.

FINIS