Chapter Text
Hal is not the universe’s luckiest guy.
You’d think he would be, considering he has a magic ring that lets him do basically whatever the fuck he wants (almost). That seems like the jackpot of luck right there. And maybe it is – maybe Hal used up all his life’s luck to get that ring and that’s why everything else around him turns to shit.
Yeah, that’s probably it.
So he’s in Coast City, right, and it’s supposed to be his day off. Sort of. Green Lanterns don’t really get days off, in that if adventurous aliens decide they want to play hooky on earth, he has to politely escort them back to their home planets. But he’s not been assigned to another tour off-world yet, and he isn’t scheduled for the flight deck either, so he’s sitting in his underwear on his cast-off couch watching shitty reality TV and eating massive amounts of junk food.
It’s basically the perfect day.
Until.
Until his phone goes off, and he’s got someone on the other end that he’s not expecting.
“Hey, Dick,” he says as he mutes the TV, where Carole Baskin has just been introduced on Dancing with the Stars and isn’t that just some shit? “What’s up?”
“Are you in Coast City?” Dick’s voice is clipped and he’s ignoring Hal’s half-assed pleasantry, which means something is wrong.
“Uh, yeah, what can I do for you?”
“You’re not going to like this, but I need you to do it anyway.”
Hal frowns. “You’re not really selling me on this.”
“It’s just… Bruce is in Coast City.”
“I see,” says Hal, even though he doesn’t.
“For a case.”
“Right.”
“And things did not go according to plan. He stopped answering his comm and his tracker has moved in an unexpected direction.”
Uh oh. “And what does that have to do with me?”
“None of us are there. This was supposed to be a quick in and out operation so he didn’t bring any of us along, and Superman is off-world for that treaty with the Nethargians…”
“Wow, you’re right, I do not like where this is going.”
“He needs an extraction.”
Hal sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Okay. You want me to waltz in on Spooky’s top secret operation and probably fuck it all up for him? I mean, you do realize that he’s probably got this under control, right? Can you seriously tell me he’s never gone dark on comms with you before? Because he does that to me all the damn time.”
“I know it seems like overkill, but I just… there’s something wrong, Hal, I know there is.”
“You know there is,” he mutters, but he’s already getting up and pulling on pants, casting around the room for a shirt. “You know he’s gonna kick my ass for this, right? It’s gonna be all, ‘Jordan, I didn’t need your help, you ignorant moron.’”
“He won’t say that.”
“Wanna bet?”
“’Ignorant moron’ is kinda redundant, he’s more creative than that.”
Hal closes his eyes for a moment. “I hate all of you.”
“I owe you for this, I promise. I’ll send you the coordinates to his tracker.”
So Dick does, and Hal is cursing him the entire time he’s flying out to Coast City’s industrial district. Bruce’s tracker, predictably, leads to a warehouse, one that looks rough from disuse. Trust Bats to end up in the creepiest warehouse in every goddamn city he visits.
Hal isn’t normally a stealth kinda guy. Not because he can’t be stealthy, mind you, he’s just not often given the opportunity. Most of his battles are sort of head-on collisions of the extraterrestrial nature, so, you know.
But that’s not what this is about, and Hal has this idea that maybe if he just gets a view of the situation from the sidelines, he’ll discover that Bruce has everything under control and he can leave before anyone notices he’s there.
There’s a hole in one of the walls of the warehouse, and it’s almost too small, but Hal is nothing if not persistent and he gets through.
He emerges behind a large shipping container and peers around the side.
There’s five guys and they’re arguing, not loud enough for Hal to make much out, but he hears an angry “Wayne” tossed around, and frequent gestures to the back of the warehouse out of his sightline. It’s almost funny how Bruce can manage to piss off just about everyone he meets. That’s some kind of talent.
Hal sighs. He’s gonna have to intervene. Bruce is gonna throttle him. Well, tough shit, he thinks as he thumbs his ring.
Half a second later, the men are trapped in a glowing green box.
Hal flies up from behind the shipping container and gives a lazy salute. “Sorry for the inconvenience fellas, just seem to’ve misplaced a certain billionaire, he’s about, oh, this high, black hair, a suit that costs more than all of your apartments put together?”
Judging by the way the men start pounding on Hal’s construct, they don’t think he’s very funny. Fuck ‘em.
“So, he’s just back this way, right? I’ll grab him and be on my way. Oh, don’t worry, I didn’t forget about you, the cops’ll be here in just a few minutes to pick you up.”
The far side of the warehouse, where the men had been gesturing before, contains a door that, Hal presumes, leads to some long-abandoned office. He’s whistling to himself a little as he lands in front of the door. It’s unlocked, which is evidence of how dumb these people are, because who the fuck leaves their hostage in an unmarked room? Even if you don’t realize you’ve just kidnapped Batman, it seems like a sloppy move.
Also – Batman hasn’t managed to just walk out of here? That kinda tickles Hal, and he’s definitely going to be a dick about it.
He walks through the door. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Wayne, the cavalry has arrived,” he says with a grin, and then he stops short.
Bruce’s arms have been looped around an exposed pipe and his hands have been cuffed. There’s cuffs on his ankles, too. But that isn’t what makes Hal’s gut drop like a stone, makes his heart skip five or ten beats.
There’s blood. Everywhere.
Bruce’s shirt is soaked in it, and his pants too, probably, though he can’t see since the fabric is black. There’s blood covering the floor around him and for one godawful second, Hal is pretty sure he isn’t breathing.
That kicks Hal’s ass into gear, and he’s at Bruce’s side in a second, kneeling beside him in all that blood and feeling for a pulse.
It’s there – sluggish and weak, but there. Some of the blood is coming from his head – he’s been hit pretty hard with something. There’s duct tape wound around his mouth, and that’s covered in blood too, from his nose, which is probably broken. Hal tears open the button-down shirt on a suspicion and, sure enough, there’s cuts all over his abdomen, like someone took their goddamn time carving him up.
“Holy shit,” he breathes, nausea causing bile to rise up in his throat. Not the time, not the time, keep your shit together, Hal, Bruce needs you.
Hal looks back up and is shocked to see that Bruce’s eyes are open.
Bruce is staring at him, blearily, but he isn’t quite focusing. He’s trying to track Hal’s movements, that’s obvious, but he’s definitely having a hard time. Hal is going to chalk it up to the wound on his head – there’s no way he took that hit without getting a serious concussion – but there’s something else, and he can’t quite put a finger on it. Then he takes in the dilated pupils and for one very brief moment wants to go back out into the warehouse and beat the shit out of Bruce’s assailants.
He takes a deep breath and takes stock of the situation instead. Bruce has been drugged, beat half to death, and has a head wound. He needs treatment, but it can’t be the Watchtower or the Batcave – Bruce was kidnapped as a civilian, so he’s gotta show up in a civilian hospital.
First things first – get him there safely. Which means getting him out of his restraints. Hal constructs bolt cutters and snips off both sets of cuffs with minimal difficulty, beginning with Bruce’s ankles.
When he cuts the cuff off of Bruce’s left wrist, Bruce’s arm falls and he groans slightly into his gag. Shit. He hasn’t taken the gag off yet. Hal’s fucking this up spectacularly.
“Hang on, it’s okay, I’m gonna take the tape off, alright? Let’s get this off of you, that’s it, easy…”
His nonsense is probably only making himself feel better, not Bruce, but he can’t seem to stop. He unwinds the duct tape from Bruce’s head, wincing as it pulls out some of his hair by the root. Bruce doesn’t seem to notice.
He noticed when Hal jostled his arm, though.
Hal keeps that in mind as he pulls the rest of the tape off. There’s a piece of cloth poking from between Bruce’s lips – he pulls on it, and Bruce starts to retch. He pulls and pulls and pulls and finally, he gets it out and holy Christ, it had been shoved all the way back in his throat, he was literally choking on it.
Bruce is coughing, his body spasming, and that’s gotta hurt so Hal puts a gentle hand on his shoulder, pressing him against the wall so his movement is minimal. Bruce doesn’t seem to notice, seems to have lost track of Hal’s presence entirely. What little bit of lucidity he’d had before is gone, and Hal isn’t sure if that’s better or worse.
The coughing subsides, and Hal still hasn’t forgotten about the arm.
Hal feels along Bruce’s left forearm and – there. There’s give in his arm where there shouldn’t be – it feels like a clean break, though Hal can’t be certain without an x-ray. That’s probably not Bruce’s only broken bone – he’s going to have to be careful getting him out of here.
He’s not sure how Bruce will react to being moved, if he’ll react at all, but Hal isn’t stupid. Bruce is highly trained, extremely dangerous, and very paranoid. There’s a non-zero chance that he’ll lash out if Hal surprises him and end up hurting himself in the process. So, even though Hal can’t be sure that Bruce understands or registers anything he’s saying, he tries anyway.
“I’m going to move you, Bruce. I’m going to get you on a stretcher and to the nearest hospital. It’s probably not going to feel very good, but it’s going to be okay, alright? I just need you to stay relaxed.”
Bruce’s eyes flick back to his face while he talks, but he gives no indication he’s understood. Well, it’ll have to do.
Hal wills a stretcher into place on the floor nearby.
Then he reaches for Bruce, sliding one arm behind his shoulders and one under his knees. He uses the Lantern Force to lift him as gently as possible, to avoid jostling him as much as he can. There’s a sharp intake of breath, but Bruce doesn’t react otherwise, which is probably the best possible scenario here.
It seems to take an eternity to get him over to the stretcher. But that isn’t the hard part. The hard part is going to be laying Bruce down, stretching him out and securing him without hurting him. Even with the Lantern Force, it’s not gonna be pretty.
He lays him out on the stretcher as gently as he can, but stretching him on his back causes Bruce’s face to blanch. He wrenches to the side, which has Hal throwing his arm across him to keep him on the stretcher. He allows him enough movement to vomit, though, which was apparently his end-game. He throws up onto the dingy warehouse floor and chokes on his own spit and Hal thinks he’s going to throw up too, just from seeing this.
Eventually Bruce collapses back onto the stretcher, and Hal wastes no time willing glowing green straps to hold him in place, a large one over his chest and abdomen to stop the bleeding from his cuts. He gently stretches Bruce’s legs out, which don’t seem to cause much additional pain, thank God. Once Bruce is thoroughly strapped and immobile, Hal lifts them both into the air and flies them as fast as he safely can toward St. Anthony’s Hospital.
It takes less than five minutes to get Bruce to the hospital and through the door, setting him down as gently as humanly possible onto an actual stretcher while hospital staff stare at him in shock.
“He’s been beat, drugged, hit in the head, and his left arm is broken. Also, might have a broken nose,” says Hal. And, well, Hal isn’t usually in the habit of delivering people to the ER – that’s not something he has to do much on Earth – so he isn’t really sure what comes next. He watches as the doctors and nurses around him leap into action, getting Bruce secured on his new stretcher and wheeling him away.
Feeling hopelessly out of place and frustratingly useless, Hal takes off for his apartment.
He’s gotta call Dick.