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Title: Green Slumber
Summary: What happens after death, no matter what planet you once resided on. OR five impossible routines Sinestro has had to get used to now that he's little more than someone who keeps the trains running on time. Totally AU one-shot. Heavily implied Sinestro/Hal, Abin Sur/Arsona, Bruce/Selina, Tim/Cass, Harley/Creeper.
Warning: Profanity, mention of body fluids and actions, sexual innuendo, HEAVY AU so if you don't like it then turn around. Also, this hasn't been betaed.
Dedication: To Rose Midnight Moonlight Black for coming back to FF and exchanging prompts and fics again. This one was based on her prompt "Do a cross over between DC and another fandom, any one you want." One cannot express in words what a giant challenge it was to pin down just one other fandom so… Let's take a look at what you get when mixing Green Lantern/Batman and Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland.

-:-
You know that placed between Sleep and Awake;
That place where you can still remember dreaming?
-Peter Pan.

He can remark on remembering that when he closed his eyes a little earlier (early being a sort of faint word between a minute and the end of eternity that coincides with the moments from beginning to end when a caterpillar becomes a bloody mess that reshapes and then breathes as a butterfly with big golden wings and green circles meant to seem like eyes) in that disgusting bed he had been confined to for the better part of his life, that he knew those eyes of his—that had been his—probably wouldn't open.

Still, Thaal Sinestro considered as his awareness jolted and his sight returned and he looked into the face of some smiling man that was probably a complete idiot; it is one thing to know a probability and another thing entirely to see that probability happen.

But that was over three hundred years ago, so what did it matter?

Answer: Absolutely nothing. He had too many things to do in a day now, let alone to think about philosophy.

Peerless.

In his years and years and years of getting used to how things worked in both Slumberland and Nightmareland (not dissimilar in their ways and only divided by a layer of atmosphere made of sulfuric kettle brewed smog and bottle store magician type mist—turn a certain way, spin on the heel and then back flip and you can get easily from here to there. A lesson he had to learn after taking the long way on a not-particularly-nice boat and crashing out of water and into a mountain) Thaal found himself in a position of a type of power he'd never had in life. He served two masters, but only at his leisure and always with the ability to up and leave one for the other whenever he wished, with little or no consequence. Should he change his mind, he could always go back.

More often than his would have liked in those hundreds of years, he did just that, but always ended up turning right back to where he was and then getting on with things that needed to be done.

He did so like things being in order from one day to the next—unlike the men and women that sometimes took his place. That Ivy woman that replaced him the last time he'd left for a spell liked to have things going smoothly one day and have a catastrophe the next. It suited the dream king (a full grown immortal that could never look a day over twenty-five and spent much too much time caterwauling from one high leap to the next when he wasn't busy in palace court) as he was used to such chaos when he was the Nightmare King's first-running to be heir to the dark thrown, but it did not suit Sinestro and he shooed Ivy out of his position almost a week sooner than he did that (insert hideous sneer and chortle for effect) Kyle Rayner of the East Winds when he moved in and started painting new constellations in honor of the Nightmare King's newborn son in the Slumberland skies.

Sinestro sighed as he got up out of the canopy bed one of his only friends had put in the room Sinestro called home. He would put on his bright, marigold and sick dandelion colored (and stitched; craftsmen hands had sewn in patterns like the veins in dead plants upon the cloth in slightly darker colors so they'd at times stand out, but more often stood silent and hushed) robes and then be off to do things that kept both nightmare and dream realms running as smoothly as they ever could.

This was preferable than just wandering around in the nothing outside the realms that was most certainly death at its very dullest.

Repetition.

"Took you long enough."

Sinestro glared fireblight eyes at the idiot that he been there to greet him when he'd awoken in the land of dreaming years ago and now hovered around the entrance to the blackwater room that sort of slithered between dreaming and nightmare. Hal Jordan, once a human that loved taking risks in large metal machines in the air, now one of the Four Winds that wrestled together on occasion (Hal was north wind, clothed in absinthe green with trimming blue that was almost Baltic Black, which meant he was cold to the touch, but playful and a sort of bringer of amusement to young humans after they woke up from a nightmare or a dream and were greeted outside their bedroom windows with the sight of fresh falling snow) at meetings between Slumberland and Nightmareland, waved a hand back and forth in a way of going 'tsk-tsk' without scolding.

It annoyed the hell out of Sinestro and he was tempted to pick up one of the very large (an eagle of any sort could consider it a three-course meal) and slow moving snails moving about around them and toss it at the mischief maker's head, "You called me here less than ten minutes ago. I have other affairs to get to, so the point of your calling me this early would be most appreciated."

Hal hovered higher above the ground and by default, just above Thaal's head entirely, his backside sliding up and down against the doorway like a cat, his slight, ghostly green skin (Sinestro had seen Hal turn a sort of cherry blossom color just once, after they'd first met and, while it had been a sort of embarrassing situation for the both of them, it was the closest Sinestro would ever come to seeing Hal as he had once been colored as a plain, weak, simplistic human) such a contrast to the dark painted grain of the entrance, "Alright, alright. Cassandra needs a little help with those scissors you got from Abin a while ago. You know the weird, creepy ones."

Sinestro indeed knew what he was talking about, tucking a hand into his robe and then fishing out the 'creepy' scissors Hal spoke of and actually wavered further into the doorway at the mere sight of them.

Abin had given Sinestro the scissors after the first time he had assumed the role of caretaker to both black and white realms of the imagination. To the naked eye, they look more like fancy lobotomy spikes from the times of Queen Victoria, twined together with leaf printed brindle metal dyed red as blood. He had been instructed to never use them for simplistic things like arranging flowers to stand at the same length or to cut paper into pretty little shapes that the clowns in the deep end of Slumberland enjoyed tremendously—unless it was for the sake of another and dreadfully important.

Since then, Sinestro generally only used them twice a year and only for the Nightmare King's pseudo-daughter after she'd had her six-by-six month meals and needed help with the after-effects.

Prim and carefully sculpted eyebrows rose as Jordan led the way further into the Nightmare, puddles of black like living ooze from the depths of a Moor's lagoon avoiding Sinestro's every footfall and seeming to observe Hal as he flew above the ground with the ripples they made from what felt like the eternal heartbeat that always sounded in these areas of the dark, "Cassandra's next meal-time isn't for another two moons. What could she need a cutting for now?"

"Tim came 'a courting her after his lessons—you know, those pointless ones with the horses and reading about foreign affairs. Cass was happy enough to see him after the last time he showed up with that spiderweb umbrella to celebrate Cass scaring the hell out of that despot on Ranx when he fell asleep after war mongering for forty-seven hours straight. Dude was so freaked after what Cass put him through that he pissed himself—"

"Jordan, the point."

"Right, anyway, he came to celebrate with her and go do that thing that looks like fighting, but it's really more like dancing for adrenaline junkies. After they were done, he took a drink of some tea that the servants brought in for him during the celebrating and after he had some he offered it to her and she took it without thinking."

"And since it's neither milk or honey, she has plants growing out of her back, yes?" Sinestro filled in the blanks, hopping indignantly over a black puddle that didn't move away from him, but rather seemed curious unlike the other puddles. They were thinning out the closer they got to the Briar State (a small cluster of buildings built by the Nightmare King for Cassandra when she took up making nightmares and did them almost in absolute perfection; the buildings like crumbling penthouse apartments doused in dust, grime and dying mushrooms that protected the dark shadow of a field Cassandra actually slept in) and Sinestro could not have been more pleased about it as he really didn't care for getting the much bolder puddles of ooze cleaned out of his clothing.

Hal chuckled as he swished away from a few bricks that seemed offended by his merriment and tried to drop down on his head from a bridge between two of the ugly buildings, "Yep. Yellow and orange Zinnia. Tim's trying to get her out of hiding under that disgusting lake of hers so she'll be dry when you cut the things off."

Thaal sighed, lifting the trailing end of his robe before a stray nettle bush, with baby glovefoxes no doubt hiding inside, tried to make a grab at it and drag him in to get him screaming in the agony of thorns kneading his skin.

Trinity.

Once in Nightmareland, it is not exactly odd that he is summoned by the Queen of the Night herself to the black palace that is more like an extensively and neverending collection of tunnels and caves that cater to all the creatures of the night so they are only bothered by true light when they wander out into the nightmare valleys and oceans from late noon until the high moon rose to catch food that was not served to them on a silver platter (a lot of the denizens of nightmare preferred food that they could catch with their own claws and teeth like the predators all imagined lands knew they were).

Sinestro often liked visiting Nightmare Kingdom because it suited his temperament. But, walking up the steps to the entrance that eventually lead into the main hall that trailed over a sort of crest upward made into piping and groves that then crested into a marble fountain with statues carved into rabid, spitting cats and bats hanging below boughs of a metal pewter birch tree that dripped more black water into the pool, he considered that he could only be comfortable in it because he had, according to Abin, shown up only after the old Nightmare King was exiled (nasty terror, sharpened yellow teeth grinning against his red lips at each meeting between the previously warring kingdoms; he'd killed the former Slumberland King's second son before that king threw him out at the end of the war and took his place, bringing his second son back to their reality after he'd made a deal with the former's king's wife so she could continue to live in Nightmare, but not be royal—which was fine) in disgrace, barely a reflection of himself. Had he shown up earlier he would never have left Slumberland like every other dream being, for fear he'd be eaten by the Killer Croc that nested in the bottom of the Nightmare Ocean, or ripped apart by the Bane of existence that was a hulking giant who made valleys and mountains quake in his presence.

Thaal had seen the old tapestries and he couldn't help but agree with Abin about that.

Blinking at the reflections in the water, Thaal let his eyes wander from the roots of the metal tree and over to a large black cat that hadn't been there the last time he had visited Nightmareland less than a week before.

The statue blinked bright blue eyes and Thaal leaned back a little, frown creasing the lines at the edges of his mouth, "Prince Damian, the Queen called for me. Would you be terribly bothered to take me to her?"

Blue eyes stretched and widened and moved upward with the head they were held inside as the body of the cat thinned out and stretched upward, four paws from perching on the solid stone shifting two upwards like a mongoose ready to strike down a cobra before they folded over themselves as it was proper for a being such as the prince. His black fur smoothed into something not-quite silk and not-quite cotton that covered him regal and dark, which he prided himself in as it made him into a smaller reflection of his father. That cat smile remained as the prince stepped from his perch and over the water a few feet from Sinestro, which the yellow clothed man really hated even on a good day.

"Not at all, Sinestro. But you're not going to like it when you get there."

"And why is that?"

Damian's smile stretched tighter, white teeth flashing pretty as he lead the way down the main tunneling that lead to the Throne Room—temperature that wouldn't have bothered Sinestro in life clipping and chaffing at his red skin that created leather oil kind of bumps from his finger tips to the undersides of both arms and legs that was so embarrassing Sinestro gripped at the cuffs of his robe, tightening the clothing so it would make it difficult to make the bumps more noticeable to the little brat as he hopped onto the railing (moon rocks brought in from a selection of very infuriating Nightmare dealers that had circlet designs carved into the rails that could clip deep into the fingers of anyone that was stupid enough to grab them if they fell down because of loose rocks and ice baubles scattered everywhere leading further into the throne room) that divided the tunnel in half, arms waving outward like it was such fun to enter into the mouth of darkness (it was for him, certainly).

"My Father and his kitty cat queen," snark and derision dressed Damian's words at the mention of she who Lord Wayne loved dearly, but was not the boy's own mother and served barely in his opinion of a stepmother, "Are having difficulty in the naming of fledglings they found on our border. New arrivals that need to be trained and they need someone to break the tie on the titles they picked for a girl and a boy."

Sinestro gave a groan that was far more like a whine. He knew it would be something tedious, but he was hoping for something less-so than the naming of new Nightmare children. Being a consort and a witness to christenings were fine with adults—Sinestro had gone through it himself when he woke up after death and had trouble remembering what he had been called; Abin Sur and Arsona had decided to anoint him Goldeneye like they were his parents (not difficult to understand as they took care of him, helped him get used to his new surroundings and kissed each other behind closed doors and half-drawn curtains when they thought people weren't within close proximity) until he woke up three weeks after his temporary name was given and didn't need it anymore once "Thaal Sinestro" imprinted on his psyche and he remembered much—but with children it was exhausting.

"Save me some trouble and I will owe you a favor?"

Damian grinned and he raised his hands further outwards like a magician revealing a trick; a cluster of bats above them hissed at his movements and swooped down close to Sinestro's right ear that, had he been a much lesser being, would have made him crouch low for fear of getting bitten or scratched and made to foam at the mouth and attack anything that moved.

The prince's left fingers all curled into a fist, except his pointer finger which glowed bright mauve and began to create the vague figure of a young boy around Damian's own age (whatever that would be to the naked eye as to a human he'd look ten if he were a day and to the rest of Nightmare kind they assumed he was at least fifty) with bright orange hair that breezed around like a show with each step Damian took on the railing, and blinked steel colored eyes at Sinestro within Damian's palm, "This boy came blundering in through one of the thorn labyrinths in the form of a muscle-head before Jason punched him in the face once and he turned into the little boy you see here. Jason reported that the kid had dark bruises decorating him when he was cowering in a pile of thorns trying to get away from my dear brother. Father suggested teaching him to be a guard between our kingdom and Grayson's, and to call him Abuse; Selina wants him to learn healing and call him Colin."

"The Queen wins; give the child a small chance at normalcy here. And the other one?"

The left hand closed and the right hand copied the earlier action, except for glowing a silver white color and showing a little girl who could have passed for Asian, save for the fact that her eyes didn't have the right shaping and her skin type tilted more toward a sunlight deprived Caucasian; blue eyes kinder than Damian's looking around the tunnels and her short hair held up from her shoulders by her Thriving Ivory colored hair ribbon, "She washed up from the beach and I have a feeling she's a left-over from semen and vaginal fluids when humans sleep together at ocean resorts. She doesn't have a belly-button and barely understood what Lady Kate was doing when she put a shawl over her to keep her decent from sight of my cousin's court. Father wants to observe her for a little while then leave Drake to figure out what to do with her; maybe call her Annie. Selina thinks it would be smarter to leave her at the seaside with Lady Kate and Lady Bette to become accustomed around women and clothing first and call her Sand."

"Your father seems more certain about what to do with her—being more objective around the fairer sex, as he is. Call her Annie, let her spend time with Timothy as he is actually fairly good with the hard cases."

The doorway to the throne room came into sight as Damian closed his other hand, lights going out and ceasing to illuminate the expansive wooden frame etched with faces of forgotten devils, forsaken virtues, and smoky eyes glaring down at anyone brave enough to draw close. Booming noise thudded against the doors and Sinestro stopped Damian with a raised hand before the boy tried to knock.

Rummaging around in his cloak, Sinestro was pleased to find his scratch paper for note taking and a small quill that he scratched against the white for less than ten seconds to word simply, 'Boy: Colin. Girl: Annie. Good luck, majesties. –Thaal Sinestro.'

Quite frankly, he didn't feel like listening to either the bat winged Lord or the cat tailed and eared Lady bitch about why their choices might be better.

He handed the paper to Damian but didn't leave before the boy swore on his own blood that he would actually give the paper to the king. Once Damian slipped through the door, Sinestro waited for the booming that was without a doubt the King and Queen verbal sparring ceased and then made to try and find his way back towards Slumberland without possibly getting eaten by one of the much larger bats that had a tendency to carry Jason around the air space of the castle so he could conduct target practice.

Leaving by crossing the half-crippled red bridge just within the perimeter of where fairies went to die seemed to be the better option. Their bone yard was usually empty in that hour.

Four Corners.

"Why are they naked this time?"

Lord Richard (Dick to his friends, which included basically anyone that could smile or give cheek to his face) continued to grin as many of the Slumberland court's ladies and gentlemen he often hung around with in daylight hours shifted around the edge of the expansive terrace balcony of the dream palace. Both their eyes followed the two figures that were running on two legs, and then on all fours and then back again at various intervals as the one leading the direction of the chase screamed profanities of "Go a-fucking-way!" and "Why can't you just go dry hump those stupid eunuchs if you want to give your prick some good exercise?!" and, par for the course, "I am NOT having sex with you!"

The one actually giving chase just continued laughing as he occasionally managed to land the tip of his fingers on the woman's rear or shoulders or lick the shell of her ear or trip her up when she tried leaping into the deep pools of crystal clear water so she could disappear (as long as Sinestro had been dealing with this particular chore; that had been an obvious goal of the yellow goblin at the former royal's heels—making sure that the chase didn't end prematurely since it took so long for him to get it going after being without it for months at a time) into the sunken grottos they lead to that also cracked into the base of the castle which had many, many rooms to fly from window out of.

To Sinestro's near right, just underneath a bough of deep, flaming red willow leaves that looked for the life of them ready to drop, but probably never would, Lady Ivy looked pissed right down to her core temperatures and the water kept cool in her stomach for the saplings she would plant around the palace later in the month seemed to bubble with the heat of her own wrath. Her fingers clutched bright green against the edge of the brace stones circling the balcony that was both for safety and for birds and other such creatures' safe landings; severe attitude towards the Creeper (a right proper name for a goblin, even if most of his time was spent teaching new wood sprites and weather nymphs had to stitch their spells and wears to please the king) making Ivy's own mate, Lord Dent to her right-that face of his half grave itself and half amused where she couldn't see it without a full turn of her head-nervous.

"Oh, Lady Quinn just finished teaching our new acrobats how to spin webs between the tower mushrooms and Easter Lilies and dropped off to take a bath in one of the palace garden's more secluded ponds," Richard answered simply as Harley (Harley of the warren of the hare, and certainly not her anointed name of Harleen, to her friends, to the fledglings and to Lord Wayne's little ones, but never to the court royalty since the loss of her own, misaligned, crown) give a shrill cuss that made Sinestro's ears draw back as she climbed up a candy-striped toadstool when Creeper got in front of her and stole a kiss on the cheek, "Creeper happened to be hiding in the pond twenty feet away with the water shrubs and convinced the palace rabbits to steal Harley's robes and use them as nests in their burrows. You can fill in the blanks from there, Thaal. It's not terribly difficult to think what I called you here for."

Thaal did and he sighed like a dog that had just recognized the word 'bath' coming out of its master's mouth without any sort of escape route.

Fishing around in one of his looser pockets, fingers digging for a red string that held closed his silk purse, Sinestro pulled out the white bag no bigger than one just fashioned to carry a small amount of gold coins. After untying the red knot in the cord of the purse, he tipped the contents into his hand and was granted a softened black walnut shell that protected a red berry.

Tucking the purse back into the recesses where it would remain again until the next event this sort of thing happened, Thaal's black thumbnail clipped into the berry and Dick was pleased to see silk strands stretch from it, claw outward and then within seconds the red gentleman was holding the type of almost skin-tight robes that Quinn preferred to wear (just black didn't suit her when she was a widow and Lady Ivy and Queen Selina pestered her relentlessly if she just wore red, so mixed colors were her lot in life) and he handed them off to Lady Ivy once she noticed what Thaal was doing.

She thanked him curtly and stepped from balcony, to the tree branches in nearest vicinity and he watched in irritation as Creeper started shouting, "Hey, that's no fair, lady! It's only been an hour—where's the fun in just spoiling our fun now, eh!" Large oak trees that adored Ivy holding the goblin up by the ankles and providing the spectators and flasher show when he didn't stop squirming and didn't cover himself with his hands straight away.

Star Points.

Night inside of Slumberland was peaceful and quiet, in a sort of general way, and Sinestro was bone tired when he stepped into his room as the last traces of silver light sunshine disappeared at the will of the solar nymphs (Sinestro never understood humans liking of the things—their ranks as they flashed above the sky line, after all, included Sergeant Kilowog who looked like an overly mutated version of a skinned boar and some type of squirrel type creature by the name of Ch'p who never stopped talking and made Sinestro want to drop and cargo vessel on top of him just to hear the 'splat!') and removed his robes, just barely managing to place their weight precisely on its hook.

His hair had gotten messy by the time he was done with his rounds in the kitchen that never failed to include Guy Gardner and Harvey Bullock's next write up of meal times, and when Sinestro breathed out to make himself move towards his bed, the feel of stray hairs tickling his eye line and nose was almost a welcome reminder of being near to sleep.

The sounds of clicking glass, however, interrupted his more pleasant of the day's thoughts.

His teeth showed as he was about to snarl, scream at who was ever in his room to get the hell out, when he looked up and found Hal Jordan hovering a few inches shy of Thaal's body, steam wafting, completely inviting looking tea held in both hands that smelled absolutely wonderful.

The inhale he had taken to shout escaped Thaal delicately and serenely as Hal handed him his own teacup, the brunette human's head moving forward for a moment to nudge Sinestro's nose with his own, cheeky and not hesitant in the least, before taking Thaal's spare hand and leading him into the bedroom.

Sinestro never could quite bring himself to mind Hal always doing this sort of thing at the end of his work days, and never really thought of it as routine, considering it differed here and there with whether or not they went to sleep straight away, chatted vaguely about the events of the earlier hours or Jordan convinced Thaal to play ridiculous bedroom games he had a feeling were completely made up on the spot.

"The tea tastes nice this evening, I swear."