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At first, he lets it go. No, that’s not it at all, he’s the absolute worst at letting things go, he would fight tooth and nail until there was nothing of him left, if he believed he was doing the right, the necessary thing, or if he was fighting for someone he—
He doesn’t let it go, but he forces himself to not think about it.
Even though they’ve won, or done something vaguely resembling winning, there’s so much still left to do. All the destruction, the remains of the undead, people in need of help in the aftermath. So Carter sends a brief report, just enough to avoid having to listen to Waller reprimand him over the lack of communication later (there will be so many other things he’ll be getting reprimanded for, but all of that is a problem for after; all he cares about now is surviving the day without breaking down), and gets to work.
If he’s lucky, he’ll work until he’s too exhausted to think or even dream.
The kids are slightly wary of working with Teth Adam, but they get over it fast. So much more adaptable than everyone responsible for this mess.
And Carter, well. He doesn’t have a problem, exactly. It’s not like he didn’t empathize with the man before, even when their goal was to capture him. Now, he knows why he’s back. He doesn’t need to be told who called Teth Adam out of his stasis and all the way back to Kahndaq. Even before Adam tells them about the voice he heard, about being woken by a wizard, Carter knows. Who else would have done it? Who else could have?
There’s a flash of something like jealousy there, at the knowledge Adam was the last person to speak with Kent, the last one to hear his voice. But Carter is well used to never having as much of Kent as he would like to, so he brushes the feeling aside with ease.
He works, and wishes he could stop his mind from replaying over and over the helplessness of watching Kent die.
Everyone is busy enough to not try and pull him in any conversation that isn’t strictly about what has to be done next. Or maybe people can tell he isn’t ready to talk. Most of the time he tunes the others out unless they address him directly.
Half the time he does tasks that allow him to fly up where no one can reach him. Teth Adam could, but he’s not the kind of man that would try, thankfully.
Maybe talking, some kind of positive interaction would be a better distraction than staying alone with his own thoughts. But he doesn’t fully want to be distracted. Doesn’t want to forget the details of how Kent looked, how he sounded right before he knowingly walked to his death. It’s the last memory Carter will ever have of him, and he wants to engrave every detail into his mind, his soul, so he can never lose it. Not now and not when he dies and reincarnates as someone else again.
He’d always relied on Kent’s immortality, on him outliving Carter more than once. The thought of having someone that knew him so thoroughly still there and unchanged when Carter eventually was no longer Carter made losing himself again feel less scary. And then that bastard had to go and die before Carter. For Carter. Even though he knew death has never been permanent for Hawkman, not the way it is for most people, Kent included.
It’s a curious coincidence that his own thoughts are on the nature of death right when he hears Adriana and Maxine discussing exactly that. Or maybe not, with how the last few days have gone. But Carter can’t stop himself from listening in when he notices what they’re discussing. Because—
“—but readings show an unnatural dispersion of energy in the whole region. And it didn’t stop with Sabbac’s defeat.”
“The gateway to the underworld was torn open. That was what the crown was for—weakening the barrier between the lands of the living and the dead enough to let Sabbac through. And then he tore it open even more.”
“How do we stop it though? If the readings are right, it’s pulling in energy. That’s probably very bad.”
His mind is buzzing with sudden noise, and Carter can’t stop listening because—
“I don’t know that we can. It’s closing on its own, and in the meanwhile we can only hope it doesn’t pull any more souls into the underworld.”
“Souls?” Maxine sounds so young, even after everything she’s seen and lived through; Carter should do something to reassure her, to console her, but he can’t focus on that right now because—
“Or whatever you want to call it. The breach pulled Sabbac back when he was defeated, but it very likely pulled in anyone else who died here today.”
Because Kent didn’t just stop existing. He didn’t just get stripped down into metaphysical dust and scattered through the universe. He died right at the very center of the anomaly, the breach into the underworld. If the breach could pull souls in, if it pulled in anyone, it definitely pulled in Kent.
And Kahndaqi afterlife seems to be a lot more material than most. A real dimension rather than an abstract idea. A real dimension that still has the door connecting it to Earth wide open.
Maybe that’s what all of them are like—Carter wouldn’t know. It’s not something that’s ever been an option for him. He has never particularly cared about what comes after for everyone else, if anything. Or he’s tried his best to not care. But now he cares very much about this one specific afterlife.
As he listens to Teth Adam reassure Maxine that the remains scattered across the city were only bones driven by demons under Sabbac’s control and not souls of the people they once belonged to, the haze that’s been hanging over Cater ever since the battle ended finally lifts. He finally knows what he has to do.
A bad plan is so much better than no plan. And this time it’s going to be Carter’s bad plan.
It raises no one’s suspicions when Carter asks, matter-of-fact as he’s trying to brush most of the concrete dust off his armor, how fast the breach is closing. (How much time does he have? How much?)
“I am no expert on magic,” Adriana tells him, “but it should clear up by tomorrow. The instruments in your ship can probably tell you more than I can, though, if they can still be salvaged. Or perhaps Teth Adam might know.”
Teth Adam is once again occupied with lifting and clearing away pieces of damaged buildings. Carter doesn’t interrupt because the task is important, and because the more he lingers (the more time he wastes), the higher a chance someone will notice or figure out what he’s doing and attempt to stop him. And he can not let anyone stop him.
Clearly it’s not as easy as just walking through a door. The breach is there, all around them, but invisible and untouchable, only perceivable with the most sensitive of the ship’s lab equipment, and even then it can only tell something isn’t right, but not what or how it works. It’s an impossibility.
That’s not something that will stop Carter, though. Things being seemingly impossible never do, and especially when it’s Kent’s life on the line.
After a minute of consideration Carter goes back to the palace. It’s empty, no one there to interrupt him. It’s at the center of the breach, or near enough. And since the breach seems to be operated by some form of magic, this is the best place to try.
The alien helmet is gone, of course. Even when it was there, when Carter held it and tried to use it, it never yielded to him. It overpowered his every sense, almost brought him to his knees just to touch it. And all the while Carter could feel that as much as it drew on his energy, no matter how agonizing it was to direct its power, the magic was never his. It worked, and did his bidding for a brief moment in time only because some trace of Kent still lingered in it; some connection not completely severed.
Maybe that’s a sign he should have noticed immediately—a sign that Kent wasn’t completely gone, just far out of their reach.
So at the palace, standing before the ruined throne, almost exactly where Kent died, Carter tries to reach for that agony of an entire universe of powers being conducted through him. He only felt it for a few moments, even if those moments felt like an eternity, and his mind was cushioned by most of it still being routed through Kent, even then. But it’s still not a sensation Carter will ever be able to forget.
Is that how it always was, for Kent? Carter’s asked him several times over the years, and gotten various dismissive but still ominous answers. He could read between the lines, and knew Kent better than most. He never exactly doubted that most people wouldn’t be able to bear the helmet’s power, but only now does he really understand.
So he reaches for it, and hopes very hard that enough of its magic remains to let him do what he must.
At first he isn’t sure he’s feeling anything at all. Maybe just the remains of all the unnatural energies released in the last day. He does his best with what little understanding of magic he’s gathered over the years, and it doesn’t feel like it will be enough. He wants to scream, curse, cry, fight. He can not let this one chance pass him by.
For a moment he thinks of asking Teth Adam for help. Surely, he of everyone would understand how far Carter is willing to go for someone he cares about.
Before he can decide if it’s worth risking the chance Teth Adam might try to stop him instead, Carter looks down. At the stairs, at the place where— The scene plays out before his eyes, again. Kent, right there, so close, and yet in that moment forever out of his reach.
The pull of magic slams into Carter without a warning.
Even though he came here for this, even though he knew what to expect, the sheer force of it still staggers him. He falls to his knees like he almost did during the battle.
Through the stream of power, or perhaps knowledge he can’t make the slightest sense of, he keeps his mind on the one thing that matters, that makes all this worth it.
‘Kent Kent Kent’, he thinks. ‘Take me to Kent Nelson’.
The magic is beyond his ability to control. Instead of a tool it feels like a current about to swallow him whole. ‘Take me to Kent Nelson, you alien piece of junk’, he tries to project at it. He wants to add ‘you owe me’, but that’s not true. Kent is definitely owed the world thrice over for putting up with the helmet and the powers within it. For everything it’s taken from him. Carter isn’t owed anything. But he will claim that debt on Kent’s behalf if he has to. He’ll bargain, plead, threaten.
‘Kent Kent Kent’, is the one thing he focuses on to avoid drowning in the magic. And slowly the onslaught, not slows down, but levels out somehow. Carter stands up, fighting against the strain on his mind.
Another shove of magic, and he stumbles a few steps. Until he’s standing right where Kent died. The exact spot. The current of magic dips, a tide ebbing.
“No!” Carter shouts out loud, gripped by a sudden panic that this is it, that he won’t be able to call on the helmet ever again after it decides it’s fulfilled his request. “Take me to where he is now!”
The tide of magic crashes over him like a tsunami, so much worse than before. And through the blinding agony he feels a pull. Whatever it’s guiding him to is upwards, somewhere above the palace.
Carter can’t see, can’t open his eyes, but he grabs onto the invisible thread with everything he is. His wings unfurl and he leaps up blindly. He flies, follows the magic and hopes desperately that it’s guiding him where he needs to go. There’s no way to check, no way to know. Carter flies up anyway.
And between one moment and the next he’s somewhere else.
He almost crashes into ground when the power suddenly drains away. A ground that should have been much further down, with how high up he flew.
When he remembers how to breathe—and the air also feels wrong, somehow—Carter opens his eyes and looks around.
The world is on fire all around him. There are flames as tall as trees, and when he looks at any one of them for longer than a second, he starts seeing things move within them. It’s suspiciously difficult to look away.
Carter gets up, stretches his wings to check if nothing’s damaged.
When he tries to move from the spot he landed, he realizes the fires are definitely something else. Beyond working like sinister will-o'-the-wisps, they don’t radiate nearly as much heat as real fire. The flames don’t flicker as much either. Some of them look completely frozen. And all of them are dark somehow. They cast shadows in every direction, and those shadows move a whole lot more than the flames themselves.
Carter feels like he’s in a minefield, and any step he might take, no matter which direction in, will likely be his last.
Just as he despairs at his chances of finding Kent in all of this, he feels another invisible tug. Devoid of the rest of the magic, the sensation makes him feel nauseous, like he’s being pulled somewhere by his insides.
But the more he focuses on Kent, on finding him, the stronger the feeling gets.
He has an inexplicably strong hunch that trying to fly here won’t end well for him, so he takes a deep, hopefully non-toxic breath and starts walking. After the first few steps don’t end in disaster, he tries to stop tiptoeing and picks up the pace.
The more he focuses on avoiding the shadows, the longer they seem to stretch, so instead he thinks about why he’s there and nothing else.
Now that finding Kent is an actual possibility and not just a desperate, grief-fueled refusal to accept reality, Carter’s mind starts to wander around the details.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do when he finds Kent; he’s really hoping Kent will know how to get out. Then again, if he knew, he wouldn’t be needing Carter to come get him, so maybe that’s not the best bet. Just the same, they always solve problems better together. They’ll find a way.
And if they don’t— Maybe this isn’t so bad. The air seems breathable. As long as Carter finds Kent, he could stay here. Giving up the rest of the world feels, God, it sounds wrong, but he can’t deny it feels worth it, if he gets to stay with Kent. He knows Kent wouldn’t agree, and he himself would not have agreed normally. Both of them believed too ardently in their cause. In the necessity to give their all to protect the world.
But that was before he got to hammer hopelessly at an unbreakable shield, knowing in his heart of hearts what it would mean when it fell. Before he got to watch his favorite person in the world die.
There’s some guilt somewhere in there, that he’s rendering Kent’s sacrifice meaningless by coming here. But then, Kent could have let it be him. He knew dying wouldn’t really be the end of Hawkman. Now, well. Carter doesn’t know how long he would get with Kent, how time moves here, if it moves at all.
The sudden certainty that he wouldn’t be able to leave this place even if he died, wouldn’t reincarnate the way he would back on Earth slides into his mind like something he’s always known. Right next to the fact that if he does die here, his visit here will become a lot more permanent. Annoyingly, the magic of this place, or whatever power is providing these answers, isn’t giving him any clues on how he might get out. Just that it will no longer be possible, if he bites it.
That’s— Well, an eternity with Kent sounds better than an eternity without him. So long as Carter can find him.
It’s so strange, thinking of forever after his whole existence has been woven through with the knowledge that the only permanent thing is how nothing will ever be permanent, not for him.
Hopefully this won’t be either. He’ll find Kent and get out. He has to believe that, and not just because the pull gets weaker when he starts to doubt.
The ominous flickering of the shadows gradually blurs together into something that feels a little like motion sickness. Carter just keeps walking, and not paying attention to how the ground feels far too brittle and unsteady under his feet.
Eventually the pull guides him right into one of the fiery pillars. He hesitates for a moment, and before his eyes the flames thin and he can see Kent within. He looks like he’s trapped in some kind of vision, not reacting to anything around him.
Carter doesn’t stop to think before he rushes forward and calls his name.
By the time he’s close enough to grab Kent’s forearms, Kent seems to wake up somewhat. He doesn’t shake off Carter’s hands, even though Carter knows his grip is far too strong to be polite, but he does look at him and not some invisible-to-Carter nightmare in the middle distance.
“Oh, this—this illusion might be the worst torture I have encountered here so far,” Kent says, and his voice is raspy, like he hasn’t spoken for days, weeks, and has half forgotten how to.
“What, you’re that unhappy to see me?” Carter asks, tries to make it a joke, but it falls flat, doesn’t sound nearly funny enough.
It’s something he knew was possible, maybe even likely—that Kent would not appreciate him risking his life just to find him after everything. After his speech on how glad he was to be finally done. But this is surely not where Kent planned to end up when he made that decision; a decision Carter didn’t agree with. Plus, what’s done is done. Kent can just suck it up and help him get them both out.
“Quite the opposite. So it will be that much worse when this illusion shatters and I lose you again.” Kent sounds both entirely reasonable, like he’s explaining some unquestionable fact, and devastated. Like ‘that much worse’ means unending agony.
“Jeez, tell me how you really feel,” Carter says, and again, doesn’t hit the levity he was aiming for. He doesn’t know how to feel about this strange show of emotion. Strange not because Kent has ever pretended he doesn’t feel things, but because it sounds like losing Carter is some torture he couldn’t bear. After all the battles they’ve gone into together, he should be long used to the fact that one day Carter will die. A day that should have come long before Kent himself did.
And Kent’s expression as he looks at Carter…
He looks both ecstatic and agonized. Like someone burning in the depths of hell and knowing it was absolutely one hundred percent worth it.
Exactly like that.
As if saving Carter, who could have reincarnated anyway, was worth death and eternal suffering. Or at least eternal migraine brought on by the unstable flickering of magic all around them (Carter really hopes that means they still have time to get back out through the breach).
Oh hell, Carter is so stupid, has to have been blind to only be seeing it now. Kent died for him, after everything else they’ve been through together.
And Carter, Carter spent almost their entire acquaintance in a parade of ‘maybe’s and ‘what if’s, and times he almost crossed a line. But he never did. Him, who never backs down from anything without a goddamned divine sign, backed down every time.
You’d think that he would be used to the idea of losing things, of losing people, losing his own life, over so many lifetimes. And he usually is, when it’s about everything else. But not when it came to Kent. Kent was somehow an exception. He was supposed to be permanent in ways others aren’t. And even without that, Carter was never ready to take that last step, to risk losing him. And he never considered that maybe Kent was just as afraid of crossing that line, for the same reasons he was.
But here, now, he already knows what losing Kent in a more irreversible way feels like. Has already lived with that loss, for however short a time there was between the battle and Carter’s desperate attempt to change their fate.
And he has found Kent again. He’s feeling a boldness he has never felt when it comes to this. But walking through the literal underworld has changed his outlook, and so has the way Kent is looking at him now.
Carter lets go of one of Kent’s arms and curls his fingers around the back of his neck instead. He leans forward until he can rest his forehead against Kent’s. That point of contact feels more real than anything since he flew through the breach.
And now, touching skin to skin, he also feels the last traces of the helmet’s power, something he didn’t even know he was still carrying until he felt it leave, transfer to Kent. He must feel it too, because he inhales sharply and goes tense under Carter’s hands.
Maybe that’s proof enough that this isn’t a mirage.
Before Kent can say anything, Carter closes those last few inches and kisses him. Slowly, almost chastely, because God, he’s wasted so much time, waited far too long to miss a single moment of this.
He commits every detail, every facet of sensation to memory. Hopes, as he feels the warmth of Kent’s palm against the side of his face, that this memory will overwrite the one he was so sure would be his last one of Kent.
“I can not believe you made me wait until death did us part,” Carter half whispers when they finally part. They’re still so close, still breathing each other’s air, even if the only scent that exists in this place is smoke.
“You—” Kent starts, but he seems at a loss for words. He leans back far enough to look Carter over, his gaze turning sharper by the second. “You shouldn’t be here,” he finally says. Of course he’s going to address that first and the kiss never.
Carter doesn’t try to argue, because he has far too many years of experience with how easily they are able to drag each other into pointless arguments.
“Yeah, okay, thank me for coming to save you later, we don’t have that much time right now,” is what he says instead.
“You’re here to save me.” Kent repeats, and it doesn’t sound like anything but a simple fact. Carter knows him too well to not notice that glint in his eyes. It spells out ‘the fuck you are’ or whatever more polite version with that same meaning Kent might use.
“Well, I’m here to find you. The getting out part is a work in progress.” Carter smiles as he says it, helplessly charmed by the unimpressed expression on Kent’s face that he didn’t expect to see ever again. “That’s the part you’re better at, anyway. So, where to?”
Kent takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. But he doesn’t look away from Carter for even a moment, like he’s afraid he’ll disappear if he does. “The Rock of Finality.”
“Wait, the exit is where all the demons hang out?” That’s not where Carter got in through, but he doesn’t understand the questionable physics of this dimension at all. He definitely trusts Kent to know more about it than him.
“‘All the demons’ are most likely still indisposed.”
That sounds possible. Or at least Carter really hopes they’re all licking their wounds after getting their collective asses kicked.
“Well, lead the way, then,” he says. There’s no more magical pull leading him anywhere—maybe because there’s nowhere he’d want to be more than at Kent’s side—and without it he’s utterly lost here.
After a moment of hesitation Kent turns and does start to walk in what seems like a random direction. He doesn’t let go of Carter’s hand, though, and neither does Carter. He has the excuse of not wanting to risk getting separated in this place at the back of his mind, in case Kent says anything at all about the two of them holding hands. Kent, though, seems to be just as unwilling to put a stop to the hand-holding.
So they walk, hand in hand. The fiery scenery seems to move past much faster than they’re going. Carter doesn’t know whether that’s something Kent or this place itself is doing, but he tries not to think about it. Either way, it’s hopefully helping them get where they’re going sooner.
It feels like no time has passed at all when they reach a place that seems made more of stone than flame. Just as promised, no demons await them. The place feels more than simply empty. It feels void of everything so much so that Carter is surprised there’s any air to breathe.
There is a door, or more like a huge stone gateway there, exactly as Kent said. Unfortunately it’s very much closed.
“‘Passage requires sacrifice’,” Kent reads out slowly. Apparently he managed to memorize more of the ancient Kahndaqui script than Carter, when working with Adriana.
Sacrifice. And the gate is closed. Carter trails his fingers across the words in the stone. It looks brittle, but feels as unbreakable as Nth metal.
“I guess it’s my time at that.” When he sees Kent’s expression, he adds, “You had yours already. Sorry, but we take turns, that’s the rules,” before Kent can start that argument. Like that’s ever stopped him.
“No! You won’t reincarnate if you die here.” Kent looks like he expects that to be new information, something Carter didn’t already know by some shady magical means.
“Wasn’t it you that said something about looking forward to the peace and quiet of death? Maybe I’m starting to see it your way.” He wishes he wasn’t making light of what Kent told him then, before that battle, but a part of him feels just a little bit vindicated to let him see what it’s like from the other side.
“This is a hell,” Kent stresses, despairing, and the ‘you fool’ is implied quite strongly.
“Oh, really? I didn’t notice,” Carter says. And, well, that’s not completely a lie. It’s hardly hell when Kent is with him, is right next to him. He could have stayed in this place, if it was the only way to stay with Kent.
Now, even though he’s afraid, he knows he’ll take staying here even without Kent, if it means Kent gets to leave. To live.
He can hardly believe it took them so many years to get here, for Carter to realize what the way he feels about Kent means. It seems so clear now. And hey, better late than never, even if late includes a trip to a hell dimension.
Carter takes a deep breath and tries to think about how this is going to work. There’s only the one inscription visible on the gateway, but maybe there’s some way he can convince Kent to tell him more. Maybe here sacrifice is some specific magical thing that Kent knows about.
Before he can figure out how to get Kent to tell him something he’ll absolutely not want to tell, Kent pulls him forward by the hand that’s still linked with his. Carter had forgotten about that. And then he forgets about it again when Kent kisses him almost angrily. Oh, maybe very much angrily.
There’s every chance he’s doing it to distract Carter, but he doesn’t care. If this ends up being the last time Carter gets to do this— He kisses back, knowing he must come off too desperate. He’s wanted this for what feels like a lifetime, and if it’s both the second and last time he gets to have this—
He stumbles when Kent pushes him against the gate without breaking the kiss. He stumbles, and doesn’t let go of Kent, can’t bear to let go, and then he’s—
Falling—
He’s falling, arms still wrapped around Kent. It takes a long weightless moment until he remembers to spread his wings, tighten his hold on Kent and slow their descent.
When the kiss breaks and Carter breathes in, he knows just by the way the air feels that they’re no longer in that underworld. Looking around tells him the place they’ve ended up looks very much like Kahndaq.
Carter has no idea if Kent has enough magic without the helmet anywhere in sight to fly on his own or not, but he doesn’t bother asking. He just holds on tight and brings the both of them down to the ground, or rather a structurally sound looking roof, together.
When they touch down, for a moment he regrets how well connected to his mind the wings are—instead of folding up, they fold forward instead, wrapping around Kent and keeping them both trapped in their embrace. Almost like they have some idea how much Carter doesn’t want to let go.
Eventually he has to, though. They lean back just far enough to look each other in the eyes.
“I’m not gonna lie, I have no idea why that worked,” Carter says, because everything else on his mind feels too honest and too fragile to speak out loud.
Kent frowns, like he’s actually thinking about it. Of course he is. That’s probably as good a confirmation as Carter will get that Kent didn’t know that would happen. “I—hmm. The afterlife.”
“I don’t know why I doubted you’d have the answer.”
“No idea,” Kent drawls, and oh, it's only been a day, but Carter has missed that sly smile so much.
“So what is it?”
“‘Passage requires sacrifice’ or ‘Sacrifice allows passage.’ One of the two.”
The mirroring text. Of course it’s that. Carter thinks about it for a few moments. It would probably work for Kent, with the dying to save someone. It doesn’t feel like Carter has sacrificed anything at all, only gained something he desperately desired.
Then he shrugs and decides it doesn’t matter why it worked. It worked. So he kisses Kent once again, just because he can. And when Kent leans into the kiss, Carter knows he would do it again just for this one moment.
They most likely don’t have long before the others find them, anyway, so he’s gotta make every second count. No more wasted time.