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The swirl zips itself shut with a sharp crack, a sizzling sound, and silence. Hal stares at the empty space for a long moment, vaguely looking around at his new location as he says, "Welp, that happened," and scouts. He's in a city, he's not quite sure which one, they all look the same honestly, but he's not at Coast, Central or Metropolis, and there's actually a sun so its probably not Gotham, Bludhaven or an alien city.
He sighs and clicks his comms, it takes a long moment for it to connect, "Green Lantern to the Watchtower, is anyone there?"
His ring is running a little too low for comfort, which might become a problem soon, because it also takes a long moment for anyone to reply, Diana's voice rumbles over the tinny speaker, "Hal?" and he laughs.
"Woah, no real names in the field, Wonder Woman, but yeah, it is, I think we have a universe travel situation going on. Or maybe time travel. What year is it?" He actually recognizes a building, a shitty dive bar he and Ollie visited once, so he might be in Star. He begins to recognize more and more places, but they look older and there's a lot of new places too, so it just looks wrong.
Diana doesn't respond right away. He considers stopping by Ollie's first to see if it's there, but Diana says, "Hal Jordan, report to the Watchtower at once." and he very quickly realizes something is really wrong.
Two immediate instincts fight for dominance, the first one, that eventually wins out, is to listen to her, because she's his friend, and he trusts her, but the second screams at him to run, run far away, because something is wrong and Spooky's probably already organized twelve different contingencies Hal wants no part in.
"Uh," Hal starts uneasily, his battery is at sixteen percent, it'll get him to the watchtower but who knows what's after that? "Um. Okay, sure, that's fine, what year is it by the way?"
The call clicks, signifying that Diana has muted Hal, but she's probably tracking him. Hal sighs.
"Code access: Green Lantern 0-1."
The Watchtower even looks different, flashy upgrades and what looks like a wall that's been repaired multiple times, it would have been charming, if not for the fact that the entire trinity is waiting for him outside of the zeta.
Hal stares for a moment, "Uh, hey, what's up?" And it is definitely a time travel situation, if not also a universe travel situation, because Spooky has gray hairs, Clark almost seems.. not bigger, but maybe more wise, and Diana just always looks that way.
"Hal Jordan," Spooky starts, Hal beats back a wave of anxiety, "What is the last thing you remember?"
Hal blinks, "Uh, I was coming back home after a weird fight with an alien, me and Barry had plans for lunch and uh, this weird... spiral portal thing like swallowed me. Spit me out in Star I guess." Clark flinches at Barry's name, Diana frowns, Hal raises an eyebrow, already trying to figure out what that means.
"D'you know if I'm in the future or another universe entirely?" Hal asks, Bruce shakes his head and turns around, Clark and Diana follow him, gesturing for Hal to follow. Haltingly, he does. "Why did the whole squad come here to greet me? What year is it? Has anything changed? A lot changed in Star, I could barely recognize it, where are we going? When was the floorplan reorganized? I have no idea where half these doors lead." Clark smiles sadly at him, Bruce remains stoically silent as Diana splits off into a doorway and Hal freezes.
"Wally?" He asks, peeking his head further into the room, both Bruce and Clark stop walking, frames rigid, "Wally! I thought that was you! You've gotten so tall!"
He bolts into the room and brings the kid into a hug, the stupid fight that took him away from home took way too long, leaving him away from his visits to Kidflash and Barry, "Oh my god, did you get your own costume? That's sick! It's just like Barry's! Did you get your own name? You know I heard that the Nightwing kid was making a name for himself, should take after him. Speaking of, where's Barry at? Usually he's up here if not in central." Wally stays stock still the entire time, staring at Hal like he's a ghost, Hal's getting genuinely concerned.
"Hal?" The kid—not really a kid anymore, huh?—asks quietly. Hal frowns.
"Yeah. Are you okay?" He grabs the kid by the shoulders and looks him in the eye, tilting his head and checking for injuries, he blinks at a tattoo of a lightning bolt under his ear before he's roughly pulled away from Wally, Hal yelps and jerks out of Bruce's grip.
"Dude!" He huffs, whirling around to face Bruce, who’s glaring at him so harshly Hal pauses.
“Follow. Me.” He grits out, grabbing Hal by the forearm and dragging him away, the only reason Hal doesn’t pull away again is because Wally’s crying.
He’s staring at Hal as thin streaks of tears fall down his face, this is bigger than he thought. What in the world happened?
He’s led through corridor after corridor and spots multiple people he hadn’t recognized, and a few he did, before he was physically placed into a chair in the lab, right next to a computer with Clark standing by the door, “So,” he starts, conversationally, Bruce scowls, “What was that about?”
“I’m going to check if you’re from this universe or not. Be quiet.” He orders, like he actually expects Hal to follow literally any orders. Hal huffs and rolls his eyes.
He grants Bruce around twenty seconds of uninterrupted silence, looking at a stain on the wall and vaguely wondering how it got there, “Why was he crying?”
Bruce’s jaw ticks as he stands up to take a blood sample, Hal smothers a smirk. He regrets it as soon as he has to power down and Bruce is not gentle with the needle, but Bruce looks so loosely irritated it's funny.
He swabs Hal’s mouth and takes a sample of some of his hair before Clark, who had been standing there awkwardly the entire time, leads Hal toward the cells. Hal baulks.
“The cells? Am I being held prisoner? Is this standard protocol for all time-travelers or am I just special?” Clark doesn’t meet his eye.
Okay then, this is a much bigger problem than he thought, because his ring whispers “Battery at 10%” in the back of his mind as Clark gently leads him into the cell and locks it behind him. At least the guy looks guilty.
“Look, Hal,” He starts, and Hal finally thinks that maybe he’s getting a damned explanation for any of this, but Clark cringes and says, “It’s for your own good, right now. I can’t explain any of it, but we’ll get you home.” and leaves.
Hal stares.
“Are you fucking kidding me!?” He kicks the glass, which hurts his foot more than anything else. He scowls and drops on the shitty, patted cell-esque bed and fumes.
Upon further inspection, the cell is still bare. In the twenty minutes he’s been left alone—twenty grueling, grating minutes—he has found a broken tile and spent at least five picking at it before it came off, revealing thick metal behind it, a loose thread on the padded bed, which he picked at until it became a hole, and therefore a safety issue, but it gave his hands something rebellious to do.
On the twenty first minute—not that he’s been counting, except he absolutely has been—soft footsteps echo down the hall and Hal snaps to attention, standing as a figure comes into view, “Hal?” the voice asks.
The Green Lantern asks, because they have to be a Green Lantern, the suit is a more modern interpretation, with a blocky mask but the trademark black, skintight suit, and the insignia on the breast.
“Did I get replaced again? What fucking year is it!?” Because that’s literally a kid! That’s somebody's kid and Hal has never seen him before and he’s a Green Lantern!
The kid pauses awkwardly, “Um. I think so, I never really met you but I became the Green Lantern after you… Nevermind, I’m Kyle. Kyle Rayner.”
Hal stares, “After I what? Did I do something? What year is it? Can you please tell me what year it is?”
Kyle swallows, “Uh, I don’t really think I can tell you much of anything, I just—never got to meet you. I wanted to say hi.”
This is actually a kid. Hal sighs and redirects, “Okay, fine, kid, hello, Kyle,” The kid looks like he wants to bolt, but Hal would literally rather face Spooky than be alone in this stupid cell for another second, so he asks, “How did you get your ring?”
“Oh,” Kyle looks down at his ring, which he’d been fiddling with, “It’s a… weird story.” He looks down the hall and back at Hal again, who stares expectantly at him, “I was just leaving the bar and, like, one of those little blue guys appeared and said, ‘good enough’ and gave me this, and told me to do whatever was necessary, and poofed. It was a weird day. Got myself checked right after but, everything's turned out pretty okay, I guess.”
Hal stares, mouth agape, there are several things wrong with that story, he starts with the easiest, or, most absurd at least, “...A Guardian came to earth?”
And Hal thought his story had been pretty weird, “Wait— you, Kyle, what do you know about Oa?”
Kyle winces and Hal feels abject horror wash over him, “Dude. Do you know literally anything?” And he grows increasingly concerned as Kyle shrinks in on himself.
“I know how to.. Use the ring, I guess,” and to prove this, he creates a simple construct of a miniature racetrack, with cars running through it, “it took a bit to figure out how to charge it, though.”
“Oh my god, did they even explain anything to you? Were you even assigned to this sector? This is like against every protocol ever, how are you still alive?”
Kyle bristles, “I do fine! It’s your fault I didn't get a manual or anything!” He blurts, and immediately covers his mouth in surprise, “Oops,” Hal stares, “I didn’t mean to say that.”
“...What do you mean?”
“Uh,” Kyle stutters, looking back down the hall as if Mother Theresa is going to come castrate him for his sins, “I—I think I need to go…” and Hal feels very conflicted.
“Kyle,” He says rigidly as the kid starts to back away, he has to physically reign himself in to try and keep the kid here, “Kyle, what do you mean, it’s ‘my fault?’”
Hal is absolutely sure the kid is about to bolt without saying a word, but he rushes out “I’m so sorry! I’ll be back later—” As he quickly backs out of the hall and out of view. Hal deflates and rests his head on the glass of the cell.
He’s left alone for another hour after that, so he busies himself with thoughts as he anxiously watches his battery dip lower and lower. So, something obviously happened, he doesn’t have enough information to figure out the reactions about Barry yet, and Wally well and truly could have become his own hero by now.
More specifically, something happened with Hal, those glares were not trademarked Batglares, but rather something personal, he can tell because one can only go so long working with a guy without figuring him out and Bruce did not like Hal for whatever reason. Clark seemed distant, not unfriendly but certainly not familiar, which was almost worse than Bruce not liking him, mostly because Bruce doesn’t like anyone but Clark usually likes everyone.
Diana was silent and stoic, not all too different from her typical self, but she seemed hard, closed off, and not at all friendly-curious clay-goddess or something.
Even disregarding this, there’s still Wally’s reaction to him, and Kyle’s accidental confession… Hal’s fault Kyle didn’t get any guidance on being a Green Lantern… Whatever happened, it’s not painting a pretty picture.
It’s around an hour and thirty later when the hallway finally opens again, while Hal’s ring has been quietly pleading with him to charge it and Hal’s continued persistence that he can’t. Even if he wasn’t in a cell in the Watchtower, his power battery is in another timeline, and Ollie stops in front of the glass.
At some point, the main lights had flicked off, leaving the backup ones on, lighting the hallway door far from his cell and a few dim lights on in the glass, but Hal can still see him.
He’s old, Hal notices first. He’s got crows feet and deep, permanent bags under his eyes, looking at Hal with a bone-deep tired gaze. He’s forgone his domino and silly hat, leaving his beard tied with a thin green band.
“It really is you.” He says after a moment, Hal doesn’t move from where he’s propped up on the shitty bed, he muses asking Ollie to get him a comforter or something.
“In the flesh.” He says instead. Ollie just looks sad.
There’s another moment where they just examine each other, with Ollie looking at him with such loss, Hal wonders if his self here is actually dead, eventually Ollie sighs and says, “I’m just here to tell you this is your universe. I can’t tell you much, standard time travel protocol… I think I’d like to tell you what happened, but I don’t know if it would actually change anything,” He falls silent, Hal stares.
“Can you just… tell me about you? It’s been a long time.” Ollie asks quietly, Hal feels ice settle in his gut as he watches his friend recede further into himself, so starkly different from the loud, obnoxious idiot he knows, back lit by the light.
“I don’t know if anything I’ll say would be new to you,” He laughs oddly, “But sure, I guess. Um, I was on my way home from this Oan mission about an elusive network we’d been trying to shut down and we had finally caught up enough for there to be a fight, we won obviously, but I was cleared to leave a little early, and like just outside of this sector I was—I don’t know, swallowed by this weird spiral portal thing, it must have been some type of optical illusion because I could have sworn it had teeth but I found myself in Star not a minute later…”
He goes with the story of him coming here because its the freshest one on his mind, but after he talks about his newest escapade with Barry, likely years old for Ollie but Hal was still riding the dopamine from it, and then he talks about Guy’s newest act of rebellion and how the guardians still claim he’s the favorite for whatever reason, and then about how old Bruce looks and they laugh about it. Ollie talks about Dinah, how they’re officially married now and there was a huge health scare at one point, where he keeps the details vague enough to make Hal suspicious, and how Roy is his own hero now and keeps telling Dinah about his continued failed courtship of one of the Bats—not Spooky, Ollie tells him—who then tells Ollie about it, and it feels almost normal again.
Then Ollie leaves and Hal is left alone in the dim light in the prison cell and he thinks for a while.
He accidentally drifts off at some point, eventually being alone in a dimly lit white cell makes you sleepy, Hal guesses, and he’s awoken by a faint tapping on the glass, a green glow and a voice whispering “Hal? Are you awake?”
He blinks the fog out of his eyes and glances at the kid, who is in fact tapping the glass, holding a power battery in his other hand and he perks up when he notices Hal’s eyes open, “Hal!” The kid quietly exclaims.
“...Kyle?” He asks after a moment, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, wow this bed sucks ass he really should have asked for a comforter.
The kid nods excitedly and his uniform abruptly vanishes, leaving a black haired maybe twenty something year old in a loose jacket and blue jeans, “Hi! I’m not supposed to be here but I realized you probably didn’t have your battery, and if I was in the future where everyone hates me I really would not want to be stuck with a dead ring.” He says quickly gesturing towards the battery as Hal stares blankly.
Before Hal gets the time to question that Kyle continues, “I’m going to unlock the cell so please don’t explode me again, have you been given food at all? I could probably sneak you to the cafeteria—your arrival put most of the Justice League members on edge but it’s like four A.M., nobody but Batman would be here and I called Red Hood to make sure he wasn’t—”
“—hold on, hold on, pause, kid,” Hal interrupts, shaking his head as he tries to process literally any of what the kid just said, “First of all, what? I thought you said we didn’t get to meet, what in the world do you mean ‘explode you again?’ And how did you get in here if you aren’t supposed to be here… why are you here, too, actually?”
Kyle pauses, rubbing his neck nervously, “Um. I just told you,” He gestures to the battery again, “I guess I could explain some of it. Okay, so, Coast City got vaporized and you went all coocoo, blew the nest and dismantled the entire Green Lantern corps, and got all but like a single of the rings, which I got, and you tried to come take it from me and we like fought, I guess, maybe… mostly you were just beating me up but you did explode me at least once, I actually gave you the ring, cause I really didn’t want it and you made a good case but then you exploded me again so I had to take it back, anyway we’re here, do you want to go to the bathroom or something?”
His body feels a little too big for him and he might vomit as he stares at Kyle in horror, who watches him curiously. Kyle starts to unlock the cell when Hal swallows thickly and says, “Wait.” holding a hand up.
Kyle pauses, Hal tries to bring himself together, “Hold on. Jesus Christ,” He clutches his head and breathes for a moment, “What the hell do you mean Coast City gets vaporized?”
“Oh!” Kyle starts loudly, grimacing and looking back down the hall anxiously, “Um, sorry,” he says, way quieter, “You’re family was out on a trip during the attack, but there were seven million casualties, it happened so long ago for me that I completely ignored what it might mean for you, I’m sorry, Hal.”
Hal breathes in and breathes out, thankful that he’d long since powered down and he didn’t have the suit on, just his normal clothes, he pulled his shirt up and wiped his face, cold sweat lining his entire body. “Um—sorry, it’s not your fault—right?” He glances at the kid, who straightens up and makes an X with his arms, the handle of his battery falling to his elbow.
“No! Promise, you killed the people responsible. All of them. I’m not even kidding—like everyone involved in the operation got murdered, brutally, worse than the Corps—actually I’m going to shut up now.” And he thankfully does.
About twenty seconds later Kyle asks, “Can I unlock the cell now?” and Hal laughs shakily.
“...Sure, kid,” and within a few minutes they’re both walking down the dim hallways of the Watchtower towards the cafeteria. Hal does recharge his ring, whispering the oath because it feels wrong in the quiet atmosphere, “Why are you doing this for me?” He asks eventually, it’s been gnawing at him.
Kyle grabs a simple protein bar from what should be the speedster section, but it only has Wally’s name on it, Hal makes a sandwich, “Um, I guess it's because you're my idol. Or, well, you before Parallax. Don’t get me wrong, Parallax you is still pretty cool but nobody else seems to like Parallax so idolizing you from before is easier.
“Right after I got the ring I heard a lot about you, mostly because I was the only lantern and everyone and their mom thought I might have known what happened but after it became obvious I had no idea what was going on they just saw me as a kid, I guess, took a while for anyone to take me seriously, I’m not even supposed to be up here really, Wally invited me after you hugged him. Scared him real bad, it was almost funny.” And he steals another protein bar, Hal wonders what his relationship with Wally is, if they’re best friends like he and Barry were. He doesn’t think he wants to know what happens to Barry.
“Parallax?” He prompts, taking a bite of the sandwich as Kyle tears through a second bar, jolting again.
“Oh! Right, Parallax is the name you chose when you went rogue, not quite sure why…” he looks at Hal, Hal tries to dredge up whatever memory might be attached to the word.
“Um, I don’t really remember but I think it's an Oan myth or something, and you like villain-me?” He’s still reeling from the information that there is and will be a villain him. His breath catches at the realization but Kyle talks and it keeps him grounded, trying to eat the stupid sandwich.
“Uh, well, you see,” Kyle starts awkwardly, avoiding Hal’s eyes as his ears turn pink, “You were really cool—with all of the rings you were like super powerful and all I had heard about you up until I met you was that you were a hero, and you were awesome, and, yea, you were fucking insane dude, like you kept talking to yourself while also demanding ‘what was yours’ but you’re still Hal. Though, I guess compared to this you, it's a little easier to hold a conversation.” he smiles and Hal huffs a laugh.
“Dude I guess I might be insane here but you’re sounding pretty insane, didn’t I like… um,” He abruptly stops, stomach roiling at the thought, “Um, nevermind. You sound like a serial killer apologist.”
The sandwich feels tasteless and texture-less in his mouth and he forces it down, he doesn’t feel all that hungry anymore, Kyle laughs “I guess I am, my life has been pretty insane after I got the ring—maybe even a little before it, I was a freelance artist before the blue guy found me. I don’t think I’d trade it for anything, I didn’t have all that much before, just my girlfriend and my freelance art, it was kind of hard to live off of.”
“Hm, you’re an artist? That’s fun, I bet you and John would get along, have you met yet?” He asks, nudging the sandwich around when suddenly the normal lights flick on, illuminating the room and shattering the calm as Kyle shoots up.
“Aw crap! It’s five, we should get you back to the cell—Red Hood would probably be able to vouch for me but I’d hate to get my access revoked! Wally’d never let me live it down.” And he's grabbing Hal’s shoulder and hustling them back towards the cells.
He sleeps on it and it's a little easier the next day when Bruce (and Clark, tagging along) collects him and he’s all but cuffed next to where Bruce works in the lab. The longer he looks the more he imagines that Barry’d absolutely love it here, it’s like a scientist's wet dream with all of the screens and technology Hal’s never even imagined.
Bruce very briefly explains his active part in figuring out how to get him to his correct time, things including spatial-warps and temporal-residue or some shit, Hal really wasn’t paying attention, so he nods with a smile and grants him a few minutes of silence.
The longer he goes without seeing his friend the more on edge he feels about the whole thing, so he pushes any thoughts of his possibly-maybe-dead best friend out of his mind and dives at the closest distraction, “So, I’ve been thinking,” He starts and Bruce’s eye twitches, “I get that Coast City… is gone, yeah, but I really don’t think that’d be enough to make me go insane.”
Bruce sighs and Clark looks alarmed, really, Hal has been thinking about it. He’s not secretly hiding or shoving down any desire to single-handledly dismantle the entire corps or beat up his closest friends, and sure, he’d probably be batshit reckless or insanely depressed after his entire city gets demolished, but he’s not violent. Not like that anyway.
“How much did he tell you?” Bruce asks resignedly, talking over Clark’s apprehensive “...how—”
Hal huffs, “All of it? Most of it? I don’t know, just that my city’s gone, I killed the guardians and dismantled the Corps and named myself after some stupid Oan myth… I dunno if I can speak for me right now, but I know I’d never do any of that shit.”
He adjusts on the shitty wheeled chair he was given… Seriously, an undetermined amount of years into the future on a multibillion dollar space station and he’s still subject to shitty office chairs? And Clark tenses, Bruce keeps typing away.
“I mean,” Clark eventually starts, and continues when Bruce’s ministrations don’t falter, “You took Barry’s death the hardest, so I don’t know… Maybe it was just too much.”
Hal freezes on the shitty office chair, it squeaks loudly. Bruce doesn’t acknowledge either of them but Clark just looks sad, “Oh.” Hal mumbles after a long, long moment.
That makes more sense, he has to admit, it leaves the room silent for too long.
Clark eventually wanders off and Bruce makes to leave as well, instead of leading him back to the cell he pauses by the door, glancing sidelong at Hal, “He did it to save the world.” And before Hal can answer he his cape whisks out the door and Hal’s alone in the lab.
This place is a fucking maze.
He’s trying desperately to find the stupid fucking Zeta tube or literally any exit that he can zip out of but he literally has no idea where he is. He’s nearly bumped into at least ten separate members, most of which he didn’t recognize. At one point someone spots him and starts calling out Kyle’s name, and they’re both confused after he dips out of view.
He takes another wrong turn and some-fucking-how ends up in someones personal quarters, probably Wally’s if the Flash bedsheets and art of the figure say anything. He very intentionally ignores the Green Lantern poster and finds an exit. He considers saying goodbye to Kyle or Wally or at least telling the kid he’s sorry, but that would take too long and Hal might actually explode if he spends another second in that cell.
He doesn’t know how he’s going to get back as he slips out of the artificial heat of the Watchtower and into the almost unnatural cool of space, but he figures there’s someone still alive he can try to talk to.
He rounds the Watchtowers walls and shoots off into—
—“Ow!” he yelps as he’s dragged into a planet's atmosphere and all the momentum slamming him into the cold, dry rock.
“What the hell?” He exclaims into the dull, empty horizon of wherever the hell he is. What the hell happened? Did he accidentally fly too close to the celestial body? He hadn’t even seen it—it is really hard to accidentally fly into a planet in space.
He groans and pops his back, activating the ring and floating higher and higher, examining the empty body, it’s a moon to a nearby dead planet, far from the Solar system, he must’ve missed it or something. He shakes his head and continues flying back home—he’s cutting these trips too close! His ring tells him he isn’t too late for the meetup after all so he boosts his speed and hopes he gets home in time.
Barry’d kill him if he made him wait again.
Oddly, as he zips past the Watchtower, past Coast City and towards Central, he feels as if he’s forgetting something. He spots Barry looking vaguely irritated in front of Big Belly Burgers with a ginger teenager and decides it couldn't be that important if he forgot it, he powers down and greets his best friend.