If There's A God…
*** Somewhat inspired by the song "If There's a God" by Star64. (which can be DL'd@ http://www.star64.org/star64-if_theres_a_god.mp3 In otherwords, this was an excuse to write a brief history on Jade.***
Jade sat on the rooftop of the condemned apartment building she was temporarily staying in, eyeing the sun setting over the New York skyline. She was, as always, sucking the life out of a cigarette that was returning the favor to her lungs. The idea of getting some kind of cancer had never worried her before, as the powers gifted to her by that stupid little ring would have healed any damage as soon as it started to form. Of course, she had no plans on stopping now. She was perfectly healthy, and it'd be a long time before the smoke took a toll on her body.
No, the cigarettes weren't going to kill her. That honor would be reserved for whichever member of the new Green Lantern corps got their hands on her. The Justice League in itself didn't concern her. They weren't the type to go around sentencing death on anyone. But the Lantern Corps had an established reputation for doing so to errant members. Sinestro, Malvolio… They'd failed in their attempts to destroy Parallax in either time line, but the attempt had been clearly motivated.
The updraft of air current was cool and crisp, stirring through her hair and forcing her by contrast to recall the smell of the wind coming off the sea at Coast City. How many sleepless nights had she spent at the old lighthouse after Hal had 'died' the last time around?
She wanted to say that Hal had ruined her life. Meeting him had certainly drastically altered the course of her existence, there was no question. Before she'd met Hal, she'd been a brutish lone wolf, with no care for anything other than survival. Hal, as she'd first met him, was the full embodiment of everything she despised about so called 'heroes.' Yet, somehow, she'd had a civil conversation with the man – the first civil conversation she'd had since… ever, really. It had been enough to cause her to offer her help to Parallax when his attempt at rewriting time had pulled her off course on her return trip to the present, trapping her in his time for two years. She hadn't spent the full two years with Parallax. She'd spent a large part of that being a space pirate. It wasn't really until he came to ask for her help in finding the Zoi that would stabilize the sun's dying core that everything sunk in. And it had been only moments before he'd martyred himself in the core of the star that she'd realized she actually thought of the man as a… friend. That moment of discovery and immediate loss had left her useless to the universe in general for weeks. She carried out his last request, delivering his final words to the Justice League, then gone to Coast City to do something she'd never done before. Grieve.
It should have been over, then. She should have been able to realize her mistake in trying to believe it was possible for Frankie Rayner to have friends. But Strangefate, in what was little other than a move to give her a baby-sitter, had pulled Hal's spirit to their dimension, into the past, where he had grown up as Harold Murdock, gaining a ring similar to hers, but red. As much as Jade had tried to convince herself that Murdock really was the true amalgamation and a citizen of her universe, she just couldn't accept that, and drug Murdock across dimensions and time to witness the death of Parallax. It had jarred his memories into place. And that had been the death of Hal Murdock. And instead of staying with the man, Jade took off again. Only to find out several weeks later that Strangefate had deemed it necessary that the recovered Hal Jordan die, as he'd somehow become an anchor to their universe in his time as Murdock. He was going to send the White Witch to do it. Thinking of Wanda seducing then murdering the man didn't sit well with her. Hal was her friend. If anyone was going to kill him, well, she'd decided it'd have to be her. She was the most efficient murderer she knew, after all, and knew she could make it painless. She hadn't expected Hal to surrender himself to his fate. She also hadn't expected to bring his body and spirit to Strangefate's sanctum to be told that he had no use for the spirit, that Jordan had 'simply had to die.' So she'd made the lighthouse a graveyard twice over, this time with the real body of Hal Jordan.
Like a plague, he returned again, as the Spectre, further pulling her in by saving her very soul from the demon Mephisatanus. He alone understood her. And she alone understood that Hal Jordan hated Parallax more than the entire rest of the cosmos put together. She alone knew that the guilt of destroying the Corps that he loved so dearly still plagued him, even though he'd been forgiven by God Himself.
That should have been the last time she saw Hal die. But it wasn't over, even after his soul had passed that far into the afterlife. Somehow, the young Hal got thrown forward into his future. And Jade had had to break the whole, ugly story to him. Young Hal, of course, had refused to go back. Jade didn't blame him. But Parallax was a temporal necessity. Jade threatened to fight him, defeat him, and force him back. But fighting Hal, even that young Hal, wasn't something she could do. She wasn't sure it was the right thing to do. She left it to fate to decide. And things fell out in Hal's favor. So it was she that returned to Hal's past, and with the help of the Enforcer, she fulfilled his destiny for him. Became Parallax. Destroyed everything that had been accomplished by saving her soul. Destroying the few friends she'd managed to make. Destroying even that small reconciliation that had been made between herself and Kyle Rayner.
And instead of dying in the sun, she'd kept her ring, and siphoned off her Parallax powers, as well as the ring's temporal powers, returning to Earth. And trapping herself there, by arranging for the ring to fall into Kyle's possession.
Which left her where she was sitting now. On the roof of a building, staring up at the stars whose light had finally broken through the atmosphere with the departure of the sun. Rubbing the cigarette out, she lay back, letting the starry night fill her vision. For a time, the course of her life had overlapped the ghostly course of what might haven been Hal's life. Both of them, for a time, another speck of light in the vast empty blackness. Neither of them had belonged there… And now Jade was alone, with nothing to show for her attempts but total alienation.
Not even her god.