legionmissions | WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD - Mod Plot [Mission Log Post]

Be careful what you wish for, Hal.

Aramaic appeared on the walls, casting the room in red light, and then shifted to English:

YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED GUILTY

The mirrors shattered and the walls of the room fell away, leaving them in a much larger space. A bright light appeared in the ceiling, cast down on them, something that was almost like an eye, casting the light of its judgment upon them. And where the mirrors once stood, after they'd shattered to dust, a figure waited for them on each side.

On Vance's side was his father.

"You killed me," he said. "I knew. I always knew you were a monster inside. And look at what you did -- you killed your own father. I was right all along." He shook his head. "But I'm not going to fight you. Even though you killed me, I'm not one of the ones you failed the most."

He stepped back into the shadows, and another figure stepped forward instead, a figure in a spiky suit. Blood poured from the vents in it and his head lolled to the side like he was a broken doll.

"We needed you," Penance gasped out, his voice ragged. "We needed you, we were your family -- but you left us. And then you didn't -- you didn't even look for me. You knew no one else would care enough to, after it happened, but you were just like everyone else. You left me to rot. When I needed you the most."

Blue energy crackled around him.

"And because of that, this is who I am. It's all fake -- the laughter, the pretending I'm okay. This will be what I always really am, deep down inside. Broken. For good. Because you didn't care."

Laira Omoto appeared on Hal's side, in her Red Lantern state. Red, liquid fire spewed from her mouth and she gazed upon him with the utmost hate. She had no words for him, only a venomous hiss and then a horrible screech, as the red poured out of her, sizzling as it hit the stone floor.

She wasn't fully gone right now though. Alongside the hate in her eyes was the pain -- like she had just enough intelligence to understand what she'd been turned into.

And had just enough intelligence to blame Hal for it.

Edited 2016-05-26 08:08 (UTC)

Me and my big mouth.

Hal's posture stiffened when the mirrors shattered and Laira appeared. The lost Lanterns were one thing; as badly as he'd wronged them, they'd still been alive in the end. He'd never be able to make it up to them, but at least they'd had the chance to make peace, and there was still time yet ahead for them.

Laira was dead. Even after she'd survived what should've been death at his hands, Sinestro had finished the job, and Hal hadn't been able to stop it from happening.

"I know it doesn't change anything," he said, swallowing past the sudden lump in his throat. "But I'm sorry."

Vance put up a shield around both himself and Hal when the mirrors shattered, just because he thought about it. It dropped once the glass settled.

And, also, out of shock at seeing both of the forms on his side.

He wasn't sure what this place was trying to get as a response from him, but it probably wasn't expecting the anger that flashed through him.

"You don't know much about Robbie," he finally said, looking up at the words. "Yes, he's a bit busted and cracked. Which one of us isn't? But he's not BROKEN. Robbie is one of the strongest people I know and he's come so damned far in breaking that brainwashing that made him believe he DESERVED to be in that suit." Vance took a breath, teeth clenching as he did his best to keep the lid on his temper. "I've had this conversation with Robbie before, you know. He hid himself away, buried himself so far down on purpose, to make it impossible to find him. I did look. I know I didn't look hard enough and maybe I could have found him. But as hard as I am on myself about it? I know damned well that he wouldn't say the things that you're saying. You're not him.

"As for you." He cut his eyes to the form of his father, tension through his shoulders. "You're right. There is a monster inside of me. It's not my powers, though. It's the monster you fed with every shouted word, with every punch, with every time you expressed your hatred for me and for Mom both. The same monster that grew in you when your father did the same things to you as a child."

Finally, Vance drew himself up to his full height, looking at his father as impassively as he could. "I'm sorry. Even though I know that it wasn't entirely your fault, I can't forgive you for what you did to me. For what you did to Mom, as much as she may hate me. The only thing I can do is make certain that that monster in side of me? Dies with me. The cycle ends here."

He looked up at the writing again. "You're right. I am guilty. I'm not perfect. I've done things that I regret, let down people who mean a lot to me. But I'm not going to let it weigh me down for the rest of my life. I get caught up in that guilt and people get hurt or they die. I chose my name for a reason."

Vance's confrontation seemed to be what the spell needed. His father simply stepped back and faded away. The light overhead dimmed slightly so it was only half as bright. Then, after a long moment of looking at Vance, as if considering everything he'd said, the spell that had created the vision reacted to what he was thinking. It adapted and changed.

Penance took off his helmet and underneath, there wasn't a battered, dead-eyed, young man with a bald head and bleeding pinpricks on his face. There was a blonde, floppy-haired young man with a smile that reached his eyes -- the real Robbie Vance had left behind at home.

"Come on, man, this spell was meant to keep you out of some serious business," he said with a shrug. "You can't blame it for giving the old college try."

He raised both eyebrows.

"I really hope you know what you're doing," he said, and with that, he stepped back into the shadows as well, fading away.

Laira was still there, but the illusion was waiting. Waiting to see if there was a rejection of the guilt or not. Waiting to attack or fade away. It all depended on Hal.

Hal was never going to be able to reject the guilt. Even when he'd first learned that Parallax existed as a separate entity, that it wasn't all him all along, that didn't change the fact that he felt responsible. He'd let it get a foothold. He hadn't questioned the ways he'd been changing.

He'd still acted; Parallax had simply taken off his emergency brake.

"I'll never make up for what I've done. I know that." He exhaled slowly, spreading his hands. "But all I can do about that is keep trying. Be the Lantern I was, not the villain I let myself be. I can't undo what I've done to you, but I can keep it from happening to anyone else."

Who would have thought the biggest gut punch would be seeing Robbie, the Robbie he knew and had left back home in that suit?

Still, Vance shook his head and turned toward Hal, half primed and waiting for something to go wrong.

There were many ways to deal with guilt and regret. For some, they needed to reject it. Sometimes the guilt wasn't fair, wasn't a reflection of what really was. Sometimes people felt it despite not really being at fault, and it needed to be cast off as falsehood.

Sometimes it was real, and sometimes it was supposed to be there. Sometimes the only way to deal with it was to repent, move on, and try to become something better.

The spell apparently felt both ways of dealing with it were valid.

Laira's appearance shifted and changed and she was a Green Lantern once more, with clear eyes and no blood on her lips.

"You had better hold to it, Jordan," she said imperiously, and then her gaze softened. "Let no one else become lost."

There were people he needed to look after now, people he was fighting side by side with. People that needed his help.

"And let the lost become found."

They were out there. Lost ones. Waiting for someone to finally come for them. Waiting to finally come home.

"If you want to do what's right, guide their way with Green Lantern's light."

Laira faded away, and the light over their heads finally blinked out completely, leaving a strange dim twilight around them that didn't seem to come from any light source in particular. The mirrors reformed on the walls like a liquid but this time, Hal and Vance would see nothing strange, only their dusty reflections staring back.

There was the sound of stone sliding against stone and a door finally opened at the end of the long hallway.

That was the Laira he remembered - the Laira he wanted to remember, not the Red Lantern she'd become.

Until now, the last memory he'd had of her had been of the latter. This was better. This was the image of her he wanted to hold onto. If nothing else came of this entire venture, at least there was that.

(Except something else had better come of this venture, or he wouldn't have long to hold onto that memory before they were all Galactus food.)

He gave himself a few seconds, but only a few. No matter how many gut punches this place had to throw at them, they didn't have the time to indulge themselves for any more than that, and so he glanced over to Vance, then to the door down the hall. "Looks like that's our invitation."

"Would seem to be." Vance rolled his shoulders, shaking his head slightly as he looked to Hal. "Once this is done, if you need to talk? We can get a beer or something." He paused, then asked, "Uh. They do still have beer, don't they?"

Vance didn't drink much, but a beer wouldn't be a bad idea after all of this.

Once they were past the doors, the hallway made a steep drop into a chasm. There was an open tunnel across the way, making it look as if there'd perhaps been a bridge once that had fallen.

If they tried to fly with their flight rings or powers they would find it impossible. Magic.

There was a relief on the wall in front of the chasm with a carving of a lamb. Aramaic words were there. They shifted and rearranged to become English.

ONLY IN THE LEAP FROM THE LAMB'S HEAD WILL HE PROVE HIS FAITH.

If they tried to tiptoe out to see if there was an invisible bridge, they would fall. The only way to make the bridge appear was for one of them to take a leap of faith and will it into place.

"They still have beer," Hal confirmed. "Once we're out of this, I'll introduce you to the good ones."

Because they would get out of this. Weaponized optimism was a Green Lantern's specialty.

They passed through the doors, stopping at the chasm. That much ought to be easy, between flight rings and Hal's ability to just make a bridge or whatever else might get them across -

Ought to be, but nothing seemed to be happening as he focused his will, and after a moment, he frowned and looked up at the words.

"Hey. I think I saw this movie once."

"Just going to warn you now, I'm a light-weight. Usually was the designated driver, back in the day." Back when he and his teammates went out. Once they were all old enough to drink, at least.

Mostly, it had been because of his father that he didn't drink much. He figured there were others that would understand that.

Then the chasm appeared and Vance was hit by one hell of a feeling of déjà vu. "Pretty sure it was a lion's head in the movie," he agreed, taking a moment to try to bring up his TK. And wasn't entirely surprised when he couldn't. "Wanna bet it's not going to be as easy as Indy had it?"

It wasn't.

It had to be a real leap of faith. Only one of them had to do it to make the bridge appear, but it definitely wasn't there to start with.

"If it's easy, it probably wasn't worth doing in the first place."

Hal had a knack for finding the hardest way to do just about anything, really.

He stepped close to the edge, looking down into the chasm. Long way down. Nothing to catch, nothing to break the fall. But wasn't that how these things were supposed to go? Having a safety net didn't prove anything.

For a moment, he considered warning Vance - but there hardly seemed to be a point, when their powers weren't working and there was nothing he could do if it didn't work anyway. There was exactly one way this could end well, and that was something neither of them could do much about.

All they could do was believe.

So without preamble, Hal jumped.

Vance had been thinking about the best way to handle things and wasn't coming up with much. There didn't seem to be a good way to get across the chasm without their powers.

He was about to say as much to Hal when Hal...jumped. Vance's heart leaped up into his throat, too shocked to do anything more than shout, too slow to reach out and catch the other man.

Hal landed on what seemed like nothing, and then the shimmering glass-like form of a bridge appeared there, for Vance to walk on as well.

It wasn't that it was there all along. Hal made it appear.

Edited 2016-06-03 04:51 (UTC)

Hal's knees bent a bit to take the shock as he landed, before he straightened up and folded his arms across his chest, looking over the bridge that had appeared.

"Well. I'm glad I haven't disqualified myself by not having been to church or temple in years."

"If going to temple was a requirement, we'd both be shit out of luck." Vance did remember seeing Hal mention, somewhere, that he'd been raised Catholic and Jewish. So the mention was hardly surprising. "So it's just as well that it's not."

He took a moment to put his foot out and test the bridge before walking out onto it and toward Hal. "Which does make me wonder what their requirements are for going through this."

After they reached the open tunnel on the other side of the bridge, down the tunnel a bit, there was a massive wall blocking it off, filled with the Hebrew alphabet repeated several times over on what looked like stone buttons.

On one of the walls were the words:

WHAT IS THE TRUE NAME OF ONE THAT WALKS THE PATH OF RETURN?

It was something that probably would have made no sense to many.

Unless they knew that, in Judaism, someone who was penitent for their sins was called baal teshuva in Hebrew, a "master of return."

Oh.

Hal winced. "Okay, maybe here's the part where we screwed ourselves over by not going to temple."

Vance looked at the words, frowning deeply in thought. He examined the letters before he began pressing the right buttons. "I'm not exactly observant," he said after a moment, working through the words "But, given everything, this is something I have a bit of experience with."

Not in the same way that a lot of Jews meant, maybe, but that didn't mean that he wasn't walking the path himself.

After he hit the last letter, there were clinking sounds and then the wall blocking them slid away into the side of the tunnel, revealing a long walk in the dark.

Hal stepped forward, eyeing the path ahead of them.

"Let's see if I'm allowed to play flashlight again." He lifted his hand, trying to pull some energy together and light up the path for them to see.

If powers still weren't working, of course, a little thing like the dark wasn't going to stop him from pressing forward, regardless.

"I hope so. I always hate not being able to see where I'm going." Doubly so this time because, if Hal's powers weren't working, Vance wouldn't be able to use his own powers to locate obstacles in front of them.

WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD - Mod Plot [Mission Log Post]

cw: blood and gore

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lemme know if this doesn't work for Vance

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