Nova Prime / Rich Rider (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iamresponding) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
legionmissions2016-08-31 03:43 pm
iamresponding) wrote in legionmissions2016-08-31 03:43 pm
Entry tags:
Work is the curse of the drinking classes
Who| Closed to Rich and Hal
What| The two get a very much-needed beer after "In Brightest Day"
Where| A dive bar on Earth
When| After In Brightest Day, before Tinker, Tailor, Hero, Spy
Warnings/Notes| N/A
At some point, Rich planned on getting a post-fight beer with Vance and some of the others, too, but he and Hal had something in common after this recent mission with the Lanterns: getting completely dickpunched by their proteges getting righteously screwed over.
And between Rich getting his face burned off and Hal having to resist brainwashing, they hadn't gotten through unscathed either. Rich's face was finally healed up and only a little worse for wear -- the skin-regenerating tech had messed up his old scar a bit and made it more noticeable, but other than that, his ugly mug was back to what it used to be.
It still had sucked.
So, a beer. Just the two of them.
"So," Rich said slowly, as the bartender passed him his Silverale. "That was a thing."
What| The two get a very much-needed beer after "In Brightest Day"
Where| A dive bar on Earth
When| After In Brightest Day, before Tinker, Tailor, Hero, Spy
Warnings/Notes| N/A
At some point, Rich planned on getting a post-fight beer with Vance and some of the others, too, but he and Hal had something in common after this recent mission with the Lanterns: getting completely dickpunched by their proteges getting righteously screwed over.
And between Rich getting his face burned off and Hal having to resist brainwashing, they hadn't gotten through unscathed either. Rich's face was finally healed up and only a little worse for wear -- the skin-regenerating tech had messed up his old scar a bit and made it more noticeable, but other than that, his ugly mug was back to what it used to be.
It still had sucked.
So, a beer. Just the two of them.
"So," Rich said slowly, as the bartender passed him his Silverale. "That was a thing."
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A thing wherein a couple of good kids nearly got lost to the dark side for good, where Rich had nearly gotten the full Darth Vader, burning pit of lava treatment (though of course, he already had the robot hand), where Hal had an uncomfortably long chat with the echoes of the soulsucking fear bug that used to live in his head, and a planet had taken a hell of a lot of collateral damage, even if they'd managed to beat back the enemy in the end.
So, you know. A thing.
"You've got a way with words, anyone ever tell you that?" As soon as the bartender slid his beer across the counter, Hal picked it up and downed a third in one go. He was still way too coherent to deal with this thing right now.
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Rich had the same idea. For a little while, he drank in silence. He drank a lot in silence, very quickly, and then signaled for another.
And then another.
It was only when they'd both had a few that Rich finally spoke.
"So how is he? Dipper?"
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It was definitely taking time, but Hal had been on the recovering end of a long mindfuck. He knew that you had to take it at the pace that worked for you, and anything else would just make things more complicated.
"What about Sam?"
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It was a nasty combo.
"But he's a strong kid -- stronger than I ever was at that age. He's working through it as well as someone can. He's still himself, still able to laugh and goof around. It's rough going but I think he's on steadier ground than Dipper to start with."
Rich looked into his nearly empty glass and sighed.
"What the hell happened, Hal? We should've -- we should've kept this from happening. Somehow."
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"I don't even know how it got this bad. If anyone should've seen it coming, it was me." That wasn't some macho, manpained attempt to take on all the guilt available, that was just a simple fact. Hal was the Legion's in on anything to do with Lanterns. Hal had more firsthand experience with the emotional spectrum than even most of the other Lanterns.
And Hal knew Sinestro better than most. Or at least, he'd thought he did.
"I figured if I could get across to Sinestro what the hell's going on, he'd cut the shit and we could call a truce. It wouldn't have been the first time the Lanterns put their differences on hold for after we make sure the universe doesn't end." Hal frowned and kicked back the last of his (third? fourth?) drink, waving at the bartender for another. "Instead, he decided to upgrade from 'give the good guys some shit and toughen them up' to 'kill everything.' It's like he wasn't even listening."
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Rich shook his head.
"The guy's a maniac. His people are maniacs. You can never trust psychos like that. And I say this as someone who's been an ally with a 'destroyer' or two. The people I've worked side by side with never lied to themselves that it was somehow righteous."
That was part of how he could deal with them, when they lived in such shades of gray. You always knew what they were about, knew where they stood. They never pretended to be anything other than what they were.
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Good riddance to bad trash, right?
"The way things like this go wrong is people are just bad people." Rich shrugged. "Which isn't a hard thing to be, you just have to indulge in those things you know you shouldn't."
Anger. Self-righteousness.
"Every hero or cop feels like they wanna clean up the universe sometimes, whatever the cost. God knows I have. But any decent person knows sometimes the cost is too high."
It was possible to be too violent while trying to do the right thing, too oppressive, too controlling.
Too terrifying, like the yellows.
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Rich probably had a point. Sinestro had screwed things up. He'd made his own bed, he was lying in it, and Hal had said as much before, when the Guardians had sentenced him to death after they started authorizing lethal force. He'd told Carol it didn't bother him, that Sinestro deserved it.
He'd probably been trying to convince himself more than her.
"It could've gone differently."
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He shook his head.
"I could've tried to be the supreme conqueror of Earth because I was sick of the other heroes infighting and wanted to establish some kind of multi-world regime that would prevent intergalactic crises. You could've broken free of Parallax and decided you had the right idea while possessed and kept doing evil."
It all came down to choice.
"That's how evil works, Hal. There's always a 'could've.' If someone's evil, there's always the good they didn't choose. The fact it exists, that they had that option and turned away from it, is what makes 'em evil in the first place."
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But this was Sinestro, and something in Hal couldn't quite accept him as a lost cause.
He sighed, and took a sip of his drink, and tried to come up with a better argument than yeah, but he could be so great if he'd just stop being an idiot about things.
It wasn't coming.
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"You were really close, weren't you. Like I am with Vance. With my old friends from home."
Or maybe it was more like Starlord, someone he'd fought and bled with on the battlefield.
He could understand that, why it would be so hard to cut someone off entirely, cut them out of your life like the infection they were.
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You know, before he then derailed Hal's life completely by siccing Parallax on him. Details.
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He was starting to think that Hal maybe didn't have the healthiest attitude towards Sinestro.
(And the sky was blue and grass was green and water was wet and the pope was Catholic...)
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Okay, so that made things sound a little worse.
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Rich put his drink down on the bar and rounded on Hal to face him firmly.
"He got Dipper all traumatized with brainwashing, and tripped Sam off into getting traumatized with the red ring -- because the only reason he got it in the first place was he was apparently facing down a yellow that was a child murderer that zeroed in on him and Dipper -- and he tried to brainwash you again."
He gestured with a hand.
"He did all that. And you're sitting here thinking about the 'could'a would'a should'a' that he's purposefully ignored."
His expression changed from being arch to being gentle again.
"He's a monster, Hal. And the thing is, it wasn't all this that made him one. He was a monster from the very first moment he hurt you and put Parallax in your head."
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Sinestro had been regarded as one of the greatest Green Lanterns for good reason, even if he'd gone off course towards the end. If he could come back to that, be the mentor Hal had admired instead of the villain he wound up becoming -
Then, Hal wasn't sure, but he couldn't give up on him.
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Rich shook his head in disbelief.
"If he got it together, what? He'd turn himself in for multi-murder and spend the rest of his life in the deepest darkest cell someone could find to put him in? Because that's the very best he deserves."
If he sounded mad, it wasn't really at Hal. He was mad for Hal. He was mad for Sam and Dipper, too.
"What is there to 'get together'? We're not talking about some mixed up kid taking a gap year to 'find themselves.' This is a guy who decided he was going to break a 14-year-old boy you cared about just to have something to rub in your goddamn face."
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Hal shook his head. "Maybe he will, maybe he won't, but I know he's capable of it."
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He actually said the exact words.
"Of course he can -- anyone can -- but he's not going to. No one that does that to a kid is going to second guess anything they ever do. No one who infects someone who's supposed to be their friend with a mind-altering fear parasite is going to second guess anything they ever do."
What in the Blue Blazes was going on with this? If this guy was Hal's archenemy, why was he talking about this like someone talking about a bad relationship? Like he was...battered. It reminded him a little of --
Oh.
Oh.
Hurt was hurt. He'd seen hurt in the eyes of a friend before. He knew what it did to people, especially on a repeat basis.
He also knew that explaining what he thought he was seeing in a way Hal would accept wouldn't be easy.
"Who else does he have to hurt for it to make him a lost cause, Hal? What else does he have to do to you to make it wrong enough?" Rich shook his head. "And why do you think so little of yourself that you don't see he's already done too much?"
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Not that Hal could blame him for being angry. Hal was pissed off about all of it, it was just that -
He'd known Sinestro at his best, and he didn't want to think that man was gone, for good. If he gave up on that, then he was giving up on quite possibly the only person he'd ever felt understood him completely.
How was he supposed to explain that?
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"Why? Why are you holding on so tight to that whole thing? It's healthier to just...let it go. He's just another perp. Just another psycho who chose to take a wrong turn and doesn't care enough about anyone else -- yourself included -- to turn back."
He frowned, thinking about his own friends. He thought about Gamora, killing a bunch of people he'd ordered her to interrogate just for the hell of it. He thought about all the times she'd been violent towards him. Maybe it wasn't entirely her fault, thanks to the Phalanx, but that didn't mean their usual rapport was all that healthy, either.
So, as much as it killed him, as much as he'd loved her, he'd let her go. Because maybe he didn't think the most of himself but he still knew he'd deserved better. He'd wanted more out of life.
"What is it you're looking for from him, that you want from him, that's worth more than what good people could put in your life? Because it is worth more. You're still looking to him for what could be when he hurt an innocent kid and almost took something you already had -- something better."
Rich didn't know Dipper that well but the kid obviously cared about Hal. Looked up to him and admired him. Liked him even though he sometimes clearly thought he was a little ridiculous.
Any kind of real affection and caring from Hal's real friends was worth more than anything that psycho was capable of.
"And if you really are looking for something there -- why do you seem to think he's the only one you can get it from?"
That was how these things worked, right? People just needed to hold on, think someone would change, because they felt like they couldn't do better, or get something better elsewhere.
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"We went through a lot, before he went off the deep end. And I know how good he could be. I can't just give up."
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An image. A lot of people projected an image of decency.
"And it's not your damn job to save him from himself. It's his job. His responsibility. And it's not going to happen. He doesn't deserve you bending over backwards trying to get him to stop."
You're too good for him, Hal.no subject
The next drink arrived. Half of it was immediately demolished.
Maybe was about the most Hal was committing to, at least tonight.