Chapter Text
Jason rarely ever came 'home'. The manor, that was. Home was somewhere warm, with food he liked, and the book he was reading halfway through. The manor was nothing like those things. Still, he came home from time to time, just for a little reminder of how his life once was, or at least, a part of it.
Just the feelings, not the people.
2 a.m.
The sky was starless, and the moon was the only light source that was permitted to a Gotham-born. Oh, the gentle yet ephemeral moon—a beautiful lie that eased the minds of those who continued to wander endlessly in the dark.
Jason was walking along the endless empty hall that was burned into his old ghost's mind. The memories certainly helped when he needed some food in the middle of the night. It took him no time to reach where he needed to go, light on or not, it did not matter.
The new thing that day was how the kitchen was lit.
No, not the kind of lit that was expected from the owner of the house—candles and silence. The kitchen was warmly lit, with the calming sound of water running like a mother doing the dishes. Jason immediately reached for the gun on his waist, alarmed and disturbed by the unusual appearance of another person in the house at 2 in the morning.
His footsteps were silent. And the barrels of his guns were still cold.
Nothing could tell that he was there.
But the one in the kitchen did. He called, "Who is there?"
The voice sounded unfamiliar. Not Dick, not Tim, not even Alfred. Someone new.
Jason still revealed himself under the golden light in the kitchen, and in turn, the person in the kitchen turned around to face him.
The person was… someone Jason had met before. He did not or could not recall who he was.
Soft brown hair. That was the first thing Jason took notice of. No one in this house had that hair colour.
He looked around Dick's age.
His features were young, but captivating—straight nose, sharp jaw, plump lips. Pretty, Jason thought first, but in his own way, not like Bruce or Dick. Bruce's face was too striking, too fierce and domineering. Dick was friendly and kind with his ever-smiling eyes. That person, however, brought some new feelings to the young man like no others had.
A perfect mix of both a soldier and a lost soul who lost their wings.
Big, brown eyes like the eyes of a fawn, but instead of being innocent and gentle, it felt so terribly… sorrowful, like the eyes of a dying eagle watching the last sunset of its life. The comparison did not make sense to Jason, but he still thought of those eyes that way, anyway.
"Who are you?" Jason asked, first, still no less alarmed.
The person looked at him for a while, trying to make sense, trying to remember who he was, it seemed. How could he know, anyway? Jason was a dead man walking.
But the man, after a while, smiled and said, "Hello, Jason."
His name was uttered in a way that felt like it came from 'home'.
Jason immediately pulled out his gun and pointed at the man, but the unfamiliar man did not respond or react in any way that mattered.
Instead-
"You did not answer my question." Jason turned off his gun's safety switch. The click sound felt terribly deafening in the middle of the night. It was a warning, and anyone who could speak Jason's true name should also know he was not an empty bullet.
"You know me," The man slid the leftovers in a box across the counter towards Jason, and he calmly sat down to face the young man. "I'm one of Bruce's allies. Co-workers"
"From the League?" Jason tilted his head. "That still doesn't explain how you know my name. And that-"
It was not until then that Jason realized the man was wearing nothing but a loosely buttoned white shirt. It was likely Bruce's.
A, it finally clicked for Jason why the man was there in the kitchen.
"Oh, so you're one of the old man Bruce's flings." Jason finally lowered the gun. The safe switch, on the other hand, did not get turnt off. "In that case, is it rude if I ask which one you are? Certainly not the Big Blue, or anyone with dark hair and blue eyes. Not a woman. And certainly not Oliver. You are-"
The man smiled.
"Oh," Jason got the right answer, "The original Green Lantern."
"Good guess."
"So, you're sleeping with him? Bruce?"
"No," Hal frowned a little. Just a little.
"I'm not judging." Jason shrugged.
"… No, I just-"
And then Hal froze, confusion on his face, then he looked down at his hands. They were still covered in water.
"I don't remember."
He turned and grabbed a towel to dry them.
But Jason did not buy it. "What do you mean you don't remember?"
"Recently, I have, uh… I have been sleepwalking, sometimes…" Hal tried to explain himself, but it seemed like not even the man understood what was happening, "I just… I think I just woke up here, so I went to the kitchen and-"
Jason did not know much about the League, but he knew of the man's reputation, or a fraction of it—the people of that calibre were not his business to deal with.
Fearless. Unpredictable. Untamable.
A cosmic monster who was rightfully named "The greatest Green Lantern" to ever live. Certainly not someone a few bullets could handle. And certainly, not someone who should appear in Gotham in the middle of the night.
What a pain.
But even so, despite the reputation that possibly had travelled lightyears to get back to Jason, to hear, to know, to praise, the man of pure will appeared to be anything but powerful and domineering, like what the tales about him had suggested.
He looked, if anything, harmless.
Jason took a few seconds to process the thought, to process who Hal was and who Jason was seeing in front of his eyes at that moment, and to merge the two figures together into one.
The young man said, "Calm down, Hal."
Hearing his name being called seemed to put some ease into the older man's mind.
So Jason continued, "Let's start again. Shall we?" Even Jason was impressed with his own patience. Maybe it was curiosity, among all else. "What were you doing before I got here?"
Hal took a while to think. His mind seemed to be clogged up. The man, naturally, tried to do what he had been doing beforehand to regain those lost memories.
"I came into the kitchen."
"To do what?"
"To wash my hands."
"Were your hands dirty?"
"… I think so." Hal raised his hands to look at them. "Not anymore."
Jason almost laughed, but he held it in. "And what made your hands dirty? Were you cleaning anything? Were you eating?"
Hal looked at Jason, and Jason could see some light was starting to return to the man's dull brown eyes, "I was- I was with Bruce."
Jason's heart throbbed.
"What were you doing with Bruce?" Jason frowned. But again, he eyed the man's shirt carefully and found no trace of blood or dirt on it. No traits of fighting. But then again, to a man of Hal's calibre, killing didn't necessarily involve any blood.
"…"
Hal went silent. And as Jason plotted for a quick escape to go check on the old man upstairs, or downstairs, Hal finally answered, "It didn't make sense…"
"What didn't make sense, Hal?"
The moonlight was gentle, getting ephemeral.
"We were in bed." Hal blinked, slowly, as he recalled. "But we… we are not… that."
Ah,
Jason exhaled in relief. Was it gas? Must've been. A scenario appeared in Jason's head about how Hal and Bruce had been working on a case together before getting affected by whatever bad thing Gotham had to offer that day. Maybe it was Poison Ivy's 'sexy gas', or something of the same nature.
But then again, everything was unpredictable in Gotham, and in this whole cursed universe.
Hal continued, "We were talking about… something. I cannot remember."
He again turned around to face the kitchen sink, "It was about… a funeral. I think?"
"But," Hal said, the utter confusion came back in his voice. "I cannot remember whose funeral it was."
And, he started to wash his hands again.
"I should've remembered. Why can't I remember? It doesn't make sense."
Hal didn't stop washing his hands. He did not stop.
"I knew that person. I must've known that person. That's why Spooky told me."
How long was he going to wash his hands for?
The sound of water running slowly turned eerie to Jason.
"Why can't I remember? Why can't I fucking remember who was dying? Who?"
And then Jason realised he should've asked another question.
"Who? Who was dying? Who- Just who was dying?"
How long had Hal been washing his hands?
Jason stood up, "Hal, stop."
And Hal did. His back froze. Time seemed to stop altogether.
"Oh, right, I remember now,"
The temperature dropped.
Slowly, the man revered as the Greatest Green Lantern ever to live turned around. His big, brown eyes were wide open.
Jason could see utter fear in his eyes.
Fear.
Utter, pure fear.
Breath-taking fear. Nerve-racking fear. Nightmare-inducing fear.
What could've made the man with no fear look like that? Jason could not know, he could not have understood, he was blissfully unaware of fear—cosmic, primal and haunting, the kind of fear that existed as a collective, the kind of fear that rendered any being useless on their knees.
"Everyone was dying."
What?
Jason saw a fragment of something fathomable to the mind of man through those two brown eyes, and his heart instinctively missed a beat.
Like a fawn looking at the abyss that was destined to swallow anything, anything at all whole.
"Hal Jordan?" Jason took a step back. His heart, his instinct, his mind, anything, everything was screaming at him to run, to get away and never turn back. But his legs did not obey any of those orders. Jason's body had chosen 'fright', and he was standing there like a deer in the headlights.
And the man of pure will, slowly but firmly, walked towards the fridge in front of him, again saying, "I remember now," with relief in his voice. "I was waiting for this to freeze."
Waiting for what?
Jason couldn't even get the question to form in his mouth.
Stand still and he might just survive til sunrise, his own mind told him.
So he stood there and saw Hal fetch something from the fridge' freezer compartment—long, but small, similar to a knife, but not.
An icepick.
Jason wondered what it was for, aside from the obvious name.
He needed not wonder long.
Hal used it to plunge into his own forehead. Swiftly and firmly.
Minimal blood, along with cerebrospinal fluid, oozed out from the hole in the middle of Hal's eyebrows, dripping down his nose, his chin, and down to the clean ground below.
Who could say they have ever seen the blood of Green Lantern? Of Hal Jordan, nonetheless? Certainly not many.
Amidst the insanity unfolding in front of Jason's eyes, a serene voice could be heard. A voice of someone oh so familiar to Jason.
"Hal?"
The icepick fell to the ground, accompanied by a deafening sound.
"Spooky?"
The once-revered Hal Jordan looked like a child being caught doing a bad deed—lost, guilty, with his hands soiled not with dirt but with blood. His own blood. His brown eyes—reddened with blood—slowly moved around like a frightened fawn, looking for the source of the voice. It took Hal a while, but he could finally locate Bruce himself.
The man was standing at the door of the kitchen in his robe, calm, clean, shaven, not a bit of dirt and ash on his body. Jason had been worried for nothing.
"I have- I have a nightmare, again." Hal tilted his head, and blood was oozing out more and more, but the man did not seem to notice his own pain. He tried to walk, but it seemed like his brain was still too shocked that it had forgotten how to walk. Fortunately, the Dark Knight quickly walked over to keep Hal Jordan steady on his feet. "Was I… sleepwalking?"
Hal asked, seemingly having no recollection of ever talking with Jason, or that Jason was even there at all.
"Yes, you were. Let's get you back to bed." Bruce nodded, and the man of pure will easily went limp in Bruce's embrace, arms around the other man's neck, head resting on Bruce's chest.
It did not stop there.
Hal answered, a slight smile on his lips, "Oh, thank you, Spooky! What will I ever do without you?"
The eerie uncanniness crawled up Jason's throat.
Bruce stroked his waist, gently and sensually, as he answered, "Not very well, I presume." That was when Jason could see clearly the marks under the Green Lantern's shirt, on his neck, on his collarbones and on his thighs—bitemarks, hickeys and bruises in the shape of a hand.
It looked violent. It looked like there was a struggle.
A shiver ran down Jason's spine. Jason's looking at Batman then, but he felt like the man was glaring at a skinwalker; he felt like he did not know who the man standing in front of him was.
And then Hal laughed, his laugh was innocent and carefree like it came from a child, "Hahaha- oh hahahaha- Oh Bruce! Oh my Bruce, you're my lifesaver! My hero!"
"Kiss me, will you?" Hal asked, his brown eyes covered with a thin layer of fog. The normal Hal would've never asked for that.
There was no hint of self or even sanity left behind those eyes, and along with it, the person Hal Jordan truly was.
Despite it all, and against one's own morality and will, Bruce listened to the plea and kissed the man who had gone insane.
It was disgustingly tender, as well.
Their kiss was mixed with blood and brain fluid; there was nothing innocent or romantic about it. Jason was made a witness to see something he was not meant to see.
A secret, perhaps. An abomination, maybe? A sin, most likely.
It made Jason want to puke.
After the kiss, Hal Jordan—no longer Green Lantern—fell asleep right there, in Bruce's arms like a child getting tired with immovable faith that his parents would carry him to bed. And Bruce was going to, as he lifted the grown man like he did not weigh anything more than a few feathers.
Hal Jordan seemed to have lost a lot of weight.
Bruce looked at Jason, for the first time that day; there was a hint of shame in those eyes, but no regrets, and certainly, no intention to stop.
Jason spoke, "I can just shoot your brain off right now. Tell me one reason why I shouldn't?"
The gun felt heavy in Jason's hand, the safety switch was off, and the barrel was too cold for Jason's comfort.
"I am helping him."
"You're taking advantage of him."
"You have no idea of what you're talking about."
"But I know you're not doing it out of kindness. I have known you long enough, B, and I never would've thought you'd stoop this low for some warmth around your dick."
"Jason." the Dark Knight warned and gritted his teeth, but then again, he wouldn't be defending himself if he truly believed that he had done nothing wrong, "Get what you want and go."
Batman was hiding one hand behind his back. Jason knew he shouldn't be making any bets in the turf of the Bat, then. So he backed off—hands off the guns.
"You disgust me." The younger man said. "I hope he kills you later."
"He wouldn't. He needs me."
What a terrible liar, Jason thought.
Bruce left with ease. And Jason stayed in the kitchen that day. The icepick was still on the floor, and along with it, Hal Jordan's blood.
A box was presented to Pandora, along with a warning from the Gods. Despite it all, Pandora still opened it.
Jason wondered when the end would come.
Two days later, Hal Jordan was seen soaring through the sky of Earth again.
Laughing, talking, making jokes.
Like the Hal Jason had seen beforehand was just ghost that haunted the manor.