Continuity: The gloroious nineties! More specifically Guy Gardner: Warrior #25 from 1994. Man was the art horrible...
Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously. DC's.
Author's Notes/Warnings: Inspired by The Fray's "You Found Me", this fic deals with much angst and UST between Guy and Bea. It's not a pairing I ship, not really, but 1) it's canon, 2) they would work on a short-termed relationship. As in, just for the time Tora is dead. Then they can be back at each other's throats. It's rated T because of cussing, there's a couple of F-bombs in here.
In the end everyone ends up alone
Losing her, the only one who's ever known
Who I am, who I'm not, who I want to be
No way to know how long she will be next to me
o-o-o
Guy couldn't take his eyes off the statue. It was tall, at least fifteen feet, and made of glistening ice. It was beautiful, majestic; the way the sun shone through its translucent form, formed small kaleidoscopes of color that danced around the full-lit room.
He had been staring at it for the past hour without moving. He didn't have any awareness of time flowing by; for what he cared, it could have been an hour as well as a month since he had arrived there. It must have been rather cold, too, considering the place he was in, but he didn't mind the small clouds of iced up air as they escaped his mouth in slow disconcerted breaths.
Before entering the awe-inspiring salon, his brain had tried very hard to examine the shocking piece of news from all possible angles and find a sense in all of it. When he was faced with the incontrovertible truth coming out of Queen Olaff's lips and that stunning work of art, he had to give in to reality. Now, all he felt was numbness and dread.
It was slowly creeping on him that Ice was dead. Gone forever. And he hadn't been there. He couldn't even remember where he was. Some God forsaken place in the middle of the Amazonian jungle, trying to figure out some alien voodoo that apparently had been implanted inside of him since day one. His mouth twitched in an ugly grimace at the memory.
And she had been here, proving once again to the world just how much fortitude and braveness could be found in her, in a sweet innocent girl with powers belittled and deemed unworthy of the oh-so-great Justice League of America. Those idiots couldn't even save her.
A single tear started to make its way down his cheek. He let it be, thinking instead how the statute, as beautiful as it looked, didn't do Ice full justice. The pose was fierce, grave and heroic, the pose of a warrior, but her eyes had been left empty. Common ice couldn't replace the warm crystal-like sparkle always present in Tora's eyes.
He sunk to one knee, unable to bear the heavy burden of grief that was chewing at his chest and at what he thought was left of his heart. As his insides were screaming with sorrow, he mourned the woman that let him love her silently, one tear at a time.
He didn't noticed when the woman entered gingerly the room, stopped dead in her track as she noticed him and then called out at him with a shaky voice.
"Guy?"
The man turned slowly his head, trying to focus his blurred gaze on the newcomer. The woman had wild green hair and that alone would identify her as Fire; he didn't know many other greenheads.
But there was also something different about her, she looked paler and skinnier than usual. Under her puffy red eyes were dark rings, indicating a lack of sleep and an abundance of tears. She wasn't wearing any kind of skimpy outfit, rather a sober green-shaded dress which looked like it could have used a washing and an ironing; she probably had been wearing the same dress for days.
"Bea?" Guy was sincerely surprised and slightly annoyed. Since the whole bunch of them losers didn't have any balls to actually tell him about Ice, he had at least expected to be left alone to mourn her properly. "What are you doin' here?" He rose to his feet.
"I—I've been running non-stop between here and the JLA Embassy since… since Tora's funeral. There's more bureaucracy to take care of after a member's death than one would expect." Her voice was flat and hoarse, even as she smirked sadly at these last words, and she guiltily avoided looking into Guy's eyes.
"Then I've been helping Tora's mother and only now I manage to find the time to come here and pay my respects." The last three words were said with her chin lifted up defiantly and a forward look, as if daring Guy to come between her and Ice just this once more.
Guy gestured towards the statue behind him with a hand, stepping aside as she brushed past him and knelt almost in the same spot he was before.
Seeing Bea, one would easily forget that she was raised in a fervent Catholic family. But in times like this it became clear to everyone, even Guy, how great of a deal it was for her. She prayed with her hands united in front of her bowed head for ten minutes straight, without ever opening her eyes or shifting.
She muttered "Amen" under her breath, and then rose to her feet. Only then did she fully eye Guy, taking in the tribal red and blue tattoos and the numerous new scars.
"Seems like you had it rough, wherever you've been."
"I've had it worse." He still didn't want to talk to her. He stood with his arms folded across his chest, defensively.
"Believe it or not, we were slightly worried when you disappeared."
"Yeah, so worried that you couldn't find the time to tell me about… about this?" He looked at her through narrow eyes.
Fire's eyes narrowed equally menacingly. "This may shock you, but you're not the centre of the world. You have no idea how hard it has been for everyone, to have to bury someone so close to us, barely a month after what happened to Superman. Also, Booster was badly injured and we thought we would lose him too." Her hand clutched into a fist against her heart. "So, yeah, we were a little busy, sorry!"
"And so I have to discover what happened to Ice through a fucking public service announcement hosted by the bugface?" he almost shouted.
Inside Fire's eyes something flickered, a green shadow of a flame that Guy had learned to associate with a loss of temper on her part.
"Watch your language and just consider yourself lucky that the Queen let scum like you even enter her kingdom," she growled.
"'Cause I could dirty this hollow place just with my nasty outsider presence, right?"
"Pretty much."
"Then why are you allowed to be here?"
Fire ignored him, moving her eyes towards Tora's face instead.
"They didn't get her eyes right." she stated with a grimace.
Guy let down his defenses and took a step forward, standing just beside Bea.
"I know."
Bea hugged herself, her eyes filling with fresh tears.
"It's just so unfair." she whispered. "I miss her, oh God, I miss her."
Her breathing sped up as tears came rolling down her cheek and neck, leaving gleaming streaks on her distraught face.
Guy shuffled his feet, not sure what to do. He hesitantly put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. He could do little to hide his own tears.
They stood like that for a long time, connected by that simple touch. Guy was afraid to let go, as he didn't know what would happen next. Plus, it felt nice and familiar, almost like being back home after so much time that you forgot how it was like.
Fire suddenly noticed his hand on her left shoulder out of the corner of her eye. She wanted to shrug it off, but somehow she couldn't find it in herself to do it. Must have been the sleeplessness getting finally at her. She felt so tired. She just wanted to curl in a heap on the floor and drift off.
Bea sighed and removed Guy's hand from her shoulder only to hold it between her hands. That was even stranger, she thought, but it didn't feel as bad as she had imagined. Guy looked puzzled but didn't complain.
"I can't believe I'm actually saying this," Fire shook her head, not really looking at him. "But thank you."
For what, she didn't say, but Guy didn't need to ask.
"It's gonna be pretty hard from now on," he stated matter-of-factly.
As Bea's previously did, Guy's eyes travelled away from her face and to the large sculpture in the room with them.
Fire too fixed her eyes on it, feeling the warmth of Guy's rugged hand in hers. He was dead right, she still didn't know how the hell was she supposed to do without Ice.
Wait. She wasn't on her own in this. Maybe, just maybe…
She placed his hand over her aching heart before realizing it.
His reaction was abrupt and violent. He jerked his hand out of hers, stepping away with a disgusted look on his face.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he asked, furious.
"Just asking somebody close enough to understand me, to help me get through this." Bea's answer came unexpected to both of them.
"Last time I checked, helping friends in need didn't involve coppin' a feel at their boobs," he retorted.
"I was just… I'm not trying to seduce you, if that's what you're implying," she sighed annoyed. Irrationally, she thought how nice it would have felt if Guy had held her close to him. It was cold and she wanted to feel his warmth again.
"Right, you just can't help being a whore, can you?"
It took her a moment to actually understand what he had just said. When the meaning of the words finally sunk in, Bea's frame trembled as her whole body erupted into green flames.
"How dare you, you dirty ape!"
"I wouldn't do that, I learnt some new tricks while I was away, sweetcheeks." And he started to morph into his "Warrior" self.
Fire was just momentarily thrown back, but recovered quickly and flew towards him. From an hovering position she threw fireballs at him, without making even a dent in that weird alien skin of his.
"I don't care what Tora said, you are the worst excuse of a human being ever to walk this planet, Guy Gardner."
"At least I was always myself with her. Can you say the same, Bea?"
Fire stopped, not really sure about what he meant by that.
"What do you mean?"
"Didja ever told her ya wanted to fuck her since day one?"
Fire winced and stared at him for a long moment. Then she darted towards him, like a green bullet, and tackled him to the ground.
She punched him with flaming fists over and over for numerous times, sitting on top of him.
"GONNA. FUCKING. KILL. YOU." The words came out all plastered together in a raging scream, forgetting for a moment the sacred place they were in.
Guy didn't seem impressed, he took in every single blow like feathers brushing over his skin. Inside, though, he was boiling with a fury stirred awaken by the simple thought of Tora and Bea together. He knew he was right to feel a threat in Bea ever since he met her. He had always thought that she wanted more from Ice than a simple friendship, but now the evidence was before his eyes in the form of a green flamed madwoman.
That bitch wanted into his woman's pants, he realized, and he let no one into his woman's pants.
With a quick movement, made possible by his new enhanced strength and the fact that she had pretty much lost it, the tables were turned and now it was Guy who was pinning Bea to the ground, his right forearm pressed hard against her throat and her wrists tied in a tight grip above her stomach by his other hand.
Fire choked under him, hastily breathing in small chunks of air.
"You… never… deserved… her…" she managed to wheeze out.
"Who the fuck are you to judge?" Guy snarled down at her as he pressed harder.
"I… loved… her…" Fire gasped for air, her eyes rolling in their sockets.
"WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I DIDN'T?" Tears rolled down his cheeks, mixing with the sweat streaking down his temples in big round beads. He wanted to hit her, throw her across the room, kick her, hurt her as she was hurting him.
Instead he let go of Fire's throat and leant back on his heels, taking his head in his hands. Bea stared at the ceiling wide-eyed, trying to catch her breath for a moment. Then she scrambled to a sitting position, without phasing out. She massaged her neck, clearing her throat a couple of times.
"I was never good enough for her, that I know too damn well." Guy's voice was faint and croaky. "But you weren't either." He scowled at her, his emerald eyes reproachfully fixed in her white-out eyes. He looked like a riotous child, who, after being caught doing something bad, tries to get away with it by putting part of the blame on someone else.
Bea hugged her legs, her face a mask of incredible sadness. "I know," she muttered resting her chin in the void between her knees. "But I always tried my best."
The stayed like that for an extremely long and awkward moment, the thoughts of both focused on the same topic. Good and bad memories came to mind, times spent together with the woman at the centre of both their hearts. The laughter, the tenderness, the bickering, rushed over them like a warm rain of melancholic memories. The irreparable loss and the gnawing hole in the middle of their chest stung unbearably painfully.
Instinctively, they shifted closer. Bea rested her flaming head against Guy's chest, as he wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
"So, we call it a truce?" Fire asked, twining her fingers around his free hand.
"'Tis fine by me," Guy murmured, drawing small circles on her shoulder with his thumb.
"We can stop trying to kill each other, then?" She arched her head back, looking up at him with a tentative smile.
"For her," he smiled back.
They kissed and it was sweet and innocent, just like the figure that for a moment shone before their closed eyelids, smiling at them warmly.
It would never be easy, for neither of them. But together they knew they could make it a lot less painful.