And now for something a little more serious. After recent events concerning one of my favorite DC love triangles, I came up with this little gem. Enjoy!
Chapter 4: Kyle's Serenade
The warriors Bar (the favorite watering hole of Oa's non blue members of the Green Lantern Corps) was packed that night. Everyone was drinking and celebrating the recent repulsion of the former leader of the guardians of the Universe, Krona.
But not everyone was happy.
"Kyle…you are ten different kinds of idiot, rolled into one stupid package!" Hal snorted.
"I know!" the despondent lantern bit back.
"You had a good thing going! And while I agree that you needed to eventually tell her about the Star Sapphire thing…" the other lantern pointed out.
"I know that too!" Kyle snorted.
"Telling her that she was a place holder until you got over Jade was rubbing salt in the wound! It was callous and stupid! What were you thinking? I'm no great shakes in the relationship department, but even I know that saying something like that is relationship suicide!" The senior corpsman rolled his eyes
"I KNOW! I don't know what possessed me to tell her that! It was like some higher power made me do that just to watch me, the universe's butt monkey, suffer!" the junior lantern snapped as he watched Kilowog dance across the room with a lampshade on his head.
"You know what you have to do right?" Hal asked dryly.
"I know. Just let me down a few more shots of liquid courage so that I come up with an idea of how to apologize. Hopefully in a way that won't earn me some quality time with the defibrillator of death!" the cartoonist moaned, downing a huge gulp of the house ale.
It was several hours later that the last of the lights went out in the corps dormitory (built for the members whose home planets were too far away to make flight feasible).
Soranik Natu, Green lantern medic, was in the middle of a very pleasant dream about roasting her would be significant other over an open fire. She was just getting to the good part (where she unleashes the wrath of Parallax on the stupidest member of the honor guard) when she heard a loud and off key interruption.
An earsplitting guitar rift played for a good fifteen seconds that inspired the Korugarrian to untangle herself from her sheets and stumble toward the balcony door, which she threw open with a resounding clatter.
The sight she saw made her jaw drop. Kyle Rayner was floating several hundred feet from her window. Behind him were over a dozen Caribbean clothing clad construct cones of himself (one was wearing a long floral skirt and fruit hat) and playing a variety of mismatched instruments. The orchestra included a bassoon player, a clone wielding a set of snare drums, a saxophonist, another with a guitar, and three playing harps.
With a flick of his wrist, the band began to strike up a surprisingly catchy beat.
"My head is schtuck in the cwouds! She begsh me to come down: Says, 'Boy, quit foolin' around'! I told her, 'I lovesh the view from up here 'Warm shun and wind in my hair! We'll watch the world from above ash it turns to the rhythm of love…" the forlorn lantern warbled drunkenly.
His intoxicated butchering of the song was interrupted when a green shoe flew out of a window above hers and slammed into the singing lantern's face.
WHACK!
"YEOUCH!' Who threw that?" Kyle snarled.
"I did!" Guy Gardner snarled as he descended from above, still clad in a sleep shirt and a night cap.
"Oh boy!" Kyle winced, noting the fury on the other lantern's face that looked almost potent enough to summon another red ring.
"Guy, Buddy! Pal o' mine! You won't hold this against me, will you? I was trying to tell Soranik how much of an idiot I was!" Kyle blanched, remembering how violent Guy was when he got pissed.
"I think she, and all of the other people you woke up, figured that out for themselves." The football player sneered, cracking his knuckles.
"You wouldn't hit a man wearing glasses, would you?" the junior lantern/honor guard gulped weakly as he materialized an emerald pair of Groucho bifocals over his face.
The enraged lantern's answer was to tackle Kyle out of the air, turning them into a whirling ball of fists, feet, and drunken idiocy.
They tumbled down into the alleyway below with a mighty crash.
Then silence.
When she saw Guy hover back up to his apartment several seconds later, and Kyle nowhere in sight, she wrestled with her inner medic whether to help him or not. You could almost see the proverbial angel and devil on her shoulders. One clad in the attire of her father's corps, the other dressed as a white lantern.
"Leave him to rot! He broke our hearts!" Yellow lantern Soranik sneered.
"That may be true, but doesn't everybody deserve a second chance?" White lantern Soranik responded.
"Not mister 'I don't want to live in the past.'" Her darker half retorted.
"People make stupid decisions when their hearts are broken. Can we begrudge him the fact that his loves were murdered?"
"Yes! There are no excuses for doing that to us! He led me on for years, not telling me that he still carried a torch for the green skinned bitch!" the yellow clad one barked, gesturing to the woman who's shoulder she was perched on.
"You make a point. He should have been straightforward from the beginning. But, can we truly call ourselves the best medic on Korugar if we leave him there?" the white Soranik pointed out.
"…"
"So, we are in agreement? While we can't forgive and forget, we'll at least offer him our help as a medic. Could we look at ourselves in the mirror if we did otherwise? We'd be as bad as father." The white lantern prodded as the original Soranik fingered the brand on her cheek.
Decision made, she summoned her uniform and descended on the Alley below like a red skinned Florence Nightingale. She scooped what was left of Kyle Rayner out of the dumpster Guy had thrown him into and hauled his sorry carcass up to her apartment to patch up.
It was several hours later that the formerly drunk lantern woke up, experiencing the facet of life that laid many people mightier than him out flat: a hangover.
"Someone turn off the sun!" Kyle moaned as he pulled the covers over his head.
"Sorry. But that's not gonna happen." A familiar melodious voice chirped.
"Oh god! Please tell me that last night was an embarrassing nightmare!" the honor guard whimpered pitifully as his own voice pounded into his skull.
"Nope. And for the record: I'm feeling generous after you humiliated yourself last night. So I'll give you…a half hour to recover before I rip you a new one for pulling that stunt, leaving enough of you to give me an explanation!" the medic smiled sweetly.
Thirty minutes and five seconds later, Soranik dragged Kyle's still shivering/whimpering form out of her bed, plopping him in front of her dining room table.
She sat down across from him and tried to look intimidating. The effect was ruined by the pink bunny slippers and fuzzy purple bathrobe.
"So…why did you do it?" she asked.
"Because…I was an utter moron."
"I don't disagree with you, but can you go into a little more detail?"
"First Alex, then Jade." He said flatly.
"How about using more than four words?" she deadpanned.
"Alex died horribly. I was off being a hero when Major Force broke her in half. Then Jade sacrificed herself to stop Alexander Luthor Jr. from tearing the universe a new one. Both times I wasn't there. When I started a relationship with you some time after that, I originally intended for this to be just a transition thing. Just until I got my life back together. But something happened. Even though part of me would always carry a torch for her, I fell in love with you. Something about you brought me back from the brink." He muttered.
"I see…" she said, looking at the ceiling.
"The whole reason I did that last night was to try to apologize. I know we can never have what we once had: but I want us to at least be friends. You're too important to me just to cut out of my life because of a moment of dumbness." The hung over lantern said sadly.
"You're right about one thing. After that revelation, we won't have what we had, not for a while anyway. You're a good man Kyle. Even though we won't be lovers, we can still be friends. And who knows what the future might bring." She winked saucily at him.
Several days later….
"It's quite unusual for a person to ask finding their true love twice." The same Star Sapphire who showed him the vision of Jade said dryly.
"What can I say? I'm a complex guy. Can you do it or not?" Kyle asked.
"Yes. Just don't expect the vision to change. The heart knows what it wants." Miri said.
The blue skinned woman pressed her fingers to her temples. Waves of pink energy slithered through the air, congregating above her head and weaving into a familiar face.
"Well, well, well! What do you know? I guess those blue lanterns were right all along. Things do work out in the end!" Kyle chuckled as the pink visage of Soranik smiled down on him happily.
Some might call it an end, others a beginning, either way things were bound to get interesting.
Hope you all enjoyed this poignant piece. This plot bunny had been ticking in the back of my mind ever since I heard about this development. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it.