AN: So here I go again with a story. This one has been brewing in my mind for A LONG TIME. Although initially planned as a Razer/Aya story, it has morphed into something more. Although Razer will show up in the third chapter, it will be quite a while before he and Aya are reunited.
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. Duh.
Oa, Guardians' Council Room
"Green Lanterns do not get time off, Hal Jordan of sector 2841", Ali Apsa said, irritation evident in his voice.
"I wasn't really asking for your permission. I'm just telling you how it is", Hal Jordan replied, standing his ground. He looked up at the Guardians as they traded awkward looks between them.
"Are you defecting, Jordan?", the leader of the guardians asked dryly.
"Defecting? I'm not a soldier. And even if I was, even soldiers get shore leave now and then. After all that has happened, I think I deserve a vacation".
"How long of an absence do you anticipate?" Sayd intervened.
"I wish I could tell you. Until I feel like I can get my head back in the game" Hal answered truthfully.
Ali Apsa bristled.
"That has always been an issue with you Jordan. You treat your life like some sort of game. Wearing the Green Lantern ring is an honor you do not get to step down from. How can you..."
"How can we refuse our champion his simple request?", Sayd interrupted Ali Apsa.
"He is letting his emotions cloud his judgement and I suspect he's not the only one", Ali Apsa countered, squinting his eyes at his fellow guardian..
"You have no idea what I'm feeling otherwise you wouldn't be riding my ass all the time. This is how it's going to be. I'm taking some time off. I will return to my duties when I feel I am fit for duty. I am a Green Lantern but I am also a human being. And this human being is going home. For now. Here."
Hal Jordan removed his ring and placed it on the floor, walking away, leaving the guardians to stare in disbelief.
He came back shortly and picked the ring back up.
"I actually need this cause I don't have a ride, but don't worry. You'll get it in the mail"
"Jordan!" Ali Apsa shrieked but Sayd made a gesture.
"He is not a machine, Ali Apsa. Stop treating him like one", Sayd stopped him.
The guardian threw one last look at the human's departing figure, and relented, grumbling. Every time he talked to Jordan he felt like entering an emotional tug-of-war and Ali Apsa hated having somebody challenge his authority. Especially if that somebody was… a human.
"Very well, send instructions to the forge to create a new ring for sector 2841. Just because Hal Jordan gets to ignore his responsibilities, does not mean we are afforded the same luxury"
Earth
Its instructions were clear. Enter sector 2841 and find an individual that had the potential to become a Green Lantern. By some strange coincidence, the power ring selected Earth, the same planet that had already supplied sector 2841 with not one, not two but three Green Lanterns. It entered the blue planet's atmosphere and proceeded to scan the surface and compile a list of candidates, both male and female. Some of them worked in law enforcement, some were soldiers, others were vigilantes. Some were young, barely released from adolescence into adulthood, while others were seasoned veterans well into their middle age. All of them were brave, intelligent, cunning, dauntless and possessed the willpower to move mountains.
But that is exactly why they were ignored.
It begun its descent and pierced the clouds above San Francisco, heading towards unknown coordinates.
Middle of the night and the hospital room was shrouded in darkness. The medical equipment had LED lights, but they were hardly a worthy source of luminescence. Silence predominated, except for the rhythmic wheezing of the respirator attached to the humanoid form laying in a comatose state on the bed. The patient was young but unfortunate. No brain activity had been registered since her accident eight months prior, but the family was rich enough to keep her alive via ventilator for as long as it was needed. For as long as their denial lasted.
Nothing eventful ever happened in this room, except for the occasional check-up and the regular hygienic activities.
One of the window glasses suddenly broke and a small round object, encased in a ball of green energy entered the room. It hovered above the comatose girl for a while, before projecting a grid of green light over her, scanning the body. Scans complete and the power ring satisfied that the girl should absolutely no neurological potential and ergo would never come out of her comatose state, it carefully descended. It positioned itself on the right hand's middle finger. The broken window let a shrill air current in but nothing else happened as minutes passed.
The health monitors didn't pick up anything new from the pile of muscle and bone they were attached to... until they went of. The machines came to life just as the body started convulsing, shaking wildly, nearly propelling itself off the bed. Between the rattle of the bed and the noise the monitors made, silence was banished from the hospital room and replaced with a cacophony of sounds.
The girls' eyes snapped open to reveal a green glow… Her arms and legs flailed, her head jerked up and down and from side to side, neck muscles strained until eventually it was only mildly jittery. The girl tried to get her bearings, but was distracted by the painful sensation of pressure inside her throat. She yanked the tube from her mouth with a wet sloppy sound and started coughing loudly. She grabbed her throat with her hands, as she navigated from coughing to choking. No matter how hard she tried to gulp down oxygen, it didn't seem to be enough, her respiratory system just didn't want to collaborate with her. Maybe the body was to broken to work, maybe her nervous system couldn't adapt to a biological network. But she could move, and she could see and hear and feel tactile sensations. Maybe she couldn't make exactly sense of all the new kinds of information, but she knew she could perceive them.
So why couldn't she breathe properly?
She tried to calm down and focused on a memory from her past, a memory of a person. They way he would inhale and exhale in a slow, steady, soothing rhythm, the way she tried to count all his breaths in one cycle, his chest rising and falling when he was calm and at peace. Few moments as they were. She focused on that memory, trying to replicate the pattern of inhaling and exhaling. Eyes closed, mouth open, she felt her throat becoming less and less constricted. Air filled her lungs and she could now breathe a sigh of relief. That was it.
Razer wasn't even in her life anymore, yet he was still teaching her. Her breathing now steady, the girl made the first attempt to move her arms in order to prop herself up on her elbows. Motor control was still difficult, and simply sending a command to her individual limbs and spine to move wasn't really functioning as natural as it did when she had an artificial body.
She managed to move her arms quite effortlessly earlier, but that had been pure instinct. Making a conscious move with added pressure to the abdomen and lower back proved a more difficult challenge.
Sudden movement and noise from beyond the door spurred her into action. She glanced at the devices monitoring her life signs and thought with certainty somebody in the medical facility would've been alerted that a comatose patient had woken up. She used her ring to manifest a door block just as the knob began to shake, somebody clearly wishing to step inside.
She grabbed the IV drips and various cables connecting her body to the machines and ripped them out, ignoring the pain for now. She pushed up and off the bed and landed with a loud thud on the floor. That pain unfortunately was not as easy to ignore. On top of the impact, every muscle in her body ached, atrophied beyond reason after so many months in a stationary position. Given her first sensations in her new state, the girl was thinking that maybe organic bodies aren't "all they're cracked up to be" as Hal Jordan would put it.
She lacked the strength to get up and walk and even if that wasn't a problem, the concentration needed to make those simple movements would take too much time, as people kept banging on the door. But she did have a power ring…
With a burst of energy she smashed the already broken window entirely, taking bits of wall and plaster with it. She encased herself in a green transparent bubble and flew out the window. The door block dissipated into nothingness, and several hospital orderlies jumped into the room… to an empty bed and a smashed window.
Ferris Air HQ, Coast City
In the early hours of the morning, the Ferris Air headquarters was already bustling with activity, both on the runway, and in the main terminal. The first flights of the day departed around 6 am, which meant you had passengers roaming around the building since 4 am.
Carol Ferris was expected in the main Flight Control room to overview the first departures, but Carol Ferris was busy. Busy buttoning up her cashmere cardigan and locating her other Manolo Blahnik. Next to her, Hal Jordan beat her to getting his clothes on and was just zipping up his jacket. Carol Ferris threw him a dirty look, thinking it wasn't fair she had to redo her make-up and hair and he already looked spotless.
"I mean it Hal", she finally said. "This is the last time. This is the office where I work for crying out loud".
Hal just grinned in her direction and grabbed her waist, pulling her in for a kiss.
"You are most definitely putting me to work", he muttered huskily against her lips.
Carol was getting ready to call him on his smarmy bullshit but she was silenced by another deeper kiss. She felt her irritation just wash away as she melted into his arms.
It was incredible how a silly thing like having a quickie with her boyfriend in the office at 6 am in the morning could make her so happy. But she was. For these last few days she had been incredibly happy. Which of course meant that it couldn't last.
Hal picked up on her subtle change of mood. He gently cradled both sides of her face and whispered:
"Hey, I know that look"
"What look" she said avoiding his eyes.
"The waiting for the other shoe to drop look. I told you. I'm staying grounded for a while. And if I ever have to leave again, I won't just disappear like last time and leave you hanging. I promise".
"But you can't promise me that, Hal", Carol said pushing off from him.
She turned to her window and crossed her arms, her back tense.
"These last few days have been amazing. It's everything I ever wanted from you, from us. But I'm not a kid anymore, and a few days in heaven won't cut it. I want a relationship, I want commitment, I want us to move in together and somewhere down the line…" she hesitated.
She turned around with a pained look. She felt like actually saying she wanted to be the mother of his children would make her sound overly prosaic. Not to mention like a domesticated housewife with no purpose in life. But it was the truth. Hal had only been on shore-leave for a couple of days and here she was planning their future together. But, and she would never ever ever in a million years tell him this, she had been in love with him since she was a teenager, and had already planned their wedding and picked out the baby names years ago. She was already there and waiting for him to play catch-up. If he ever would...
Hal ran a hand through his hair and sighed. Of course he knew she wanted everything with him. She wanted to be the endgame.
"Carol, I…" Hal began but was interrupted by the ring of a telephone.
She left his side and picked up the phone weary. Hal could make out a slightly panicked male voice at the other end, though he couldn't hear exactly what he was saying.
"What!?" Carol yelped, confusion and fear mixing in her tone. She glanced in Hal's direction and threw him a strange look.
"Is she ok?" she asked the person at the other end and glanced away.
That got Hal's attention. Was somebody in trouble? He came next to her and tried to listen in on her conversation. Just then Carol said:
"No, don't call anybody till I get there. Just… just wait for us"
Carol slammed the phone down and let out a frustrated breath.
"Come with me" she said to Hal as she rushed out the door.
"What? What's going on?" Hal asked breathlessly, following in Carol's footsteps. "Who's she?"
"We have an unidentified woman on one of the landing strips"
"A Jane Doe? What? How did she get there?"
"Maybe you can ask her that yourself." Carol said sharply and stopped to look him in the face.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"She's asking for you. She's asking for 'Hal'. That's all she can say apparently"
Carol started walking again but Hal remained where he was, racking his brain to understand what chick from his past would be crazy enough to come searching for him and wind up on a landing strip. There were quite a few.
Carol came back and grabbed his arm to drag him along.
The two exited through the back of the building and turned to the secondary landing strip. There were fewer aircraft in the area. They saw in the distance a couple of airport workers forming a circle around a person. The closer they got, they could make out her appearance: early to mid twenties, disheveled, frightened and wearing a hospital robe that fluttered with the current. The workers made way for Hal and Carol.
The girl looked sickly, in her tattered white hospital robe. Her skinny legs were clearly visibile and she had huge dark circles under her green eyes. She looked like she could faint at any second and when she saw Hal, Carol would've been ready to bet money the girl would collapse. Her eyes grew impossibly large, her knees wobbled and she let out a strangled sigh. Hal looked her up and down and he was 99 percent sure he'd never seen her before in his life. However, given his line of work, a strange girl appearing out of nowhere asking for him barely cracked his Top 100 Weird-Shit-O-Meter.
He stepped forward and took off his jacket.
"Hey. I'm Hal Jordan and you look very cold", he said in an appeasing tone, holding out the jacket to show that he didn't mean her any harm.
The girl was staring, opening her mouth several times but no words coming out, only pained gasps. Hal reached her and wrapped the jacket around her, rubbing her arms gently to warm them up.
"There, that's better. Now what is your name?"
Again she looked like she was trying to say something but all she could do was make unintelligible noises. Hal was taken aback by the haunted look of recognition in her eyes, she did look at him like she knew him, more than that… like he was somebody important to her.
"Ha..l.." she finally managed to get out.
"Your name is Hal too? Your parents sure pulled a number on you…"
The girl grabbed his hand in a vice grip just as he said the word "parents".
"Hal Jordan" she whispered, this time with perfect pronunciation. Robotic you might even say.
A mental cog started turning, in spite of the forces of reason acting against it. Now Hal was staring just as intently at the girl, trying to make sense of the familiarity he felt all of a sudden towards her. He glanced downward at the hand that was holding his and that's when he saw it...
A power ring. She knew him and she had a power ring. She knew him...
Considering the possibility had left him breathless, the shock of it travelled from his brain to his toes and made him freeze up, incapable to ask the question. Not a question, just a name.
Carol came up from behind him.
"Miss, let's get you inside, take care of you and get you to a phone", she said.
She grabbed the young woman gently by the shoulders and nudged her in the direction of the airport. The girl was to weak to resist, but followed Hal with her eyes as she moved passed him.
"Aya…" he let out with a breath. He turned around and practically yelled his friend's name. "Aya!?"
The girl wiggled out of Carol's grasp and turned to lock eyes with the pilot. Then, staring straight into his eyes, she slowly nodded.
Hal rushed over and threw his arms around the girl. She held the back of his shirt in her tiny fists and cried into his chest, as they both knelt to the ground, overcome by the emotion their reunion was causing. Carol looked on confused and worried. Hal was muttering something holding Aya's head close to his chest:
"I don't care how… I don't give a good goddamn..."