Chapter Text
“I can’t keep doing this, Barr,” Hal croaked. He didn’t care how dramatic he was acting. He’d tried good humor, he’d let the pain turn him mean, and now honesty was all that was left. And honesty was fucking dramatic.
“Yeah, you can,” Barry said softly.
The Hal Jordan from a month before would have joked his ass off about Flash having to princess carry him through the Satellite yet another time— either that or he’d have died from the embarrassment.
At this point, the shame was gone, along with the need for humor. Hal was tired. He was broken. He was hurting so, so bad. And he didn’t have the strength to carry himself anymore.
“You’re Green Lantern, bud. You can literally do anything.”
“I don’t want to do any more,” Hal admitted. God, his throat felt like he had swallowed a handful of razor blades. He wished he knew how to sign, so he wouldn’t have to talk.
“I know, Hallie. You don’t need to do anymore right now. Just rest. You know we’ve got your back. Always.”
As they approached the infirmary, Hal felt himself tense, from his very core.
“Wait, Barr… Can we not do this? Just for right now.”
“Not do what?” Barry asked, stopping there in the hall. “What’s wrong, buddy?”
“I just… I can’t be a patient right now.”
Hal closed his eyes, trying to will away the pain absolutely flooding him from all inputs. Face, lips, tongue, throat, stomach… back, hips, shoulders, knees… feet, and every damn place on his body where he still had those inflamed lesions. It was all too much.
“I’m always a patient, Barr. I need a break. I can’t do this right now. I need a break. I need a break…”
His voice cracked and became breathy. He braced himself for pushback from Barry. Barry always only wanted what was best for him. So he’d want him to go to the infirmary. Of course he’d want him to go to the infirmary.
“Okay, buddy,” he surprised Hal by saying. “Where do you want to go?”
—
Hal didn’t remember saying he wanted to rest in the rec room. Somehow, he didn’t think that notion would have crossed his mind. But now that he was lying on the couch there, covered in blankets, some Western movie playing on low, he realized this was exactly where he needed to be.
And he wasn’t alone here. His head was swimmy… he was too tired to make out exactly what was going on, but there were other people who had been hanging out before Barry got him set up here.
He heard Wally and Donna making each other laugh, off in the corner. Someone was gently massaging his neck and shoulders. Someone about his size. Someone who smelled good.
Diana. Wait, how long had she been doing that? No, now there wasn’t a Western on TV, it was on a game show. And J’onn was trying hard to win it from beside him on the couch. And Diana was still there, this time laying a cool compress on his forehead. Someone else was massaging his knotted, aching legs.
Clark. Clark and his truly mind-blowing skills at being a mom. Hal would have proposed marriage to his teammate right then, screw Lois and her feelings. He would have, except he didn’t remember how to use his voice. Probably it would have hurt if he tried, anyway. So he let himself fall asleep.
The next time he opened his eyes, he realized all the people from before were still there. Wally and Donna playing a card game in the corner, Diana making him comfortable, cooling his face with a soft washcloth, Clark letting him rest his legs across his lap, J’onn and Barry sitting, chatting in the big comfortable chairs.
“Hnh?” Hal winced as his larynx tried to do its thing. Shooting pain. He nearly gagged. “How long’ve I been out?”
“One hour and twenty-four minutes,” J’onn replied. “You appeared to be having a mostly restful sleep, and clearly a much-needed one.”
“Weird… I thought I was out for, like, a full day. Wait, what are all you guys doing here? I’m sick, I don’t want anyone else to catch…”
“All metas, Hallie,” Barry pointed out to him. “You don’t gotta worry about a thing.”
“Oh… Cool.” He was too tired to say much more.
Except one thing.
“It’s… really nice to be around all of you again.”
—
He slept for another two hours on the couch, surrounded by a rotating cast of the JLA and Teen Titans members who he couldn’t infect. Finally, when he was conscious long enough for his pain to rise to where he wanted some relief, he asked Diana to help him walk to the infirmary.
Despite the risks, Bruce was there again. Of course. There to check his blood pressure (hypotensive) and his heart rate (tachy) and swab his throat for strep (positive) and influenza (positive). Bruce told him the lesions in his mouth were definitely thrush (only babies got thrush?) and that the ulcers eating away at the flesh of his feet were a particularly severe case of tinea pedis (athlete’s foot from hell). And he wasn’t only fighting four infections— his skin lesions from the weeks before were angrier than ever.
It was enough to sting Hal’s eyes with tears as he sat shivering on the exam bed. Tired of being unclothed here. Tired of being looked at. Tired of pity. Tired of bleeding. Tired of being Hal Jordan.
God, since when had he been such a fucking crybaby? There was just about no one left in the League who hadn’t seen or heard him snivelling like a toddler. Carol had held him while he cried his stupid eyes out, on at least two occasions now. Even Tom Kalmaku had been subject to a hint of the pathetic stress tears.
Hal didn’t cry when he was ten and they put Dad’s ashes in the ground. He didn’t cry when Mom had gotten enough of who he was as a person two years after that, and sent him away. He didn’t cry when Mom finished the job of orphaning him, eight years ago. He’d kept it together, over and over again.
But Diana’s arms were around him, and his clothes were off, and he was cold, and he hurt— Lord, he hurt— and she was warm and strong and soft, and she was here— And he was sobbing like a naked infant against her shoulder.
He wanted to say he was sorry. He tried, but his mouth was hurt too badly for the words to make sense. His diaphragm spasmed out of control. Sure, he had the willpower to stop it— but he was too tired to try. Too tired to do anything except press his face against his friend’s hair and let her hold him, let her stroke his head, let her soothe him, let her witness the worst he could ever be.
It didn’t take long till he was spent. He didn’t have much strength to sob for long. That kind of thing was hard on the chest muscles, hard on the abdominals. He was so weak. By the time he raised his head, and rubbed his eyes, and wiped away the sticky, salty, disgusting mess his face had become— he saw that he was alone there with Diana, and Bruce was gone. Hopefully he left at the beginning of Hal’s stupid meltdown.
Bruce had seen a lot when Hal was septic. He’d seen Hal’s wounds all disgusting and inverted. He’d changed out bags of urine. Most likely, he’d been the one to run the catheter. He’d dressed Hal’s open lesions and he’d cleaned up his vomit. He deserved a break from this scene. A man could only be expected to put up with so much.
Diana offered him a cup of water. When he took it, he watched his hands shake. He tried not to think about it. Just focused on the cold sensation, how it soothed the agony that the thrush had brought on his mouth.
“Here, just relax…” Diana said, as she held what looked like a compress in her hand. She lay her other hand gently on his shoulder, coaxing him to lie down on the exam bed. She’d lifted it so that his head could be up— so that the congestion wouldn’t flood his face. God, she was so kind. Way too kind.
“Just breathe, Hal,” she told him, laying the cold compress over his swollen eyes.
“Thanks, WW,” he rasped, finally finding the strength and coordination to speak. “I’m sorry for… for everything.”
“I’m sorry we haven’t healed you, my friend.”
“You’ve been trying, Diana… you’re still trying.”
“And we… Bruce and I… we made an error that nearly cost you your life.”
“That’s not even a little bit your fault. You’ve gotta know that… You know that, right?”
Diana squeezed his hand. It felt nice to have his eyes closed, to have her here.
“I know we did our best,” she said. “And that we’ll keep doing our best. But I understand if you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you guys more than anyone in the world. You saved my life. You didn’t make me septic. My immune system did that. You guys saved me from sepsis. I know you’re trying everything you can to fix all this that’s happening with me. You’ve done more than most people ever would for their friends. I don’t know what more I could hope for.”
Hal thought he heard a bit of a sniffle in Diana’s soft laugh. She gave his hand another gentle squeeze.
“Well, we’ve consulted with Dr. Mid-Nite again, and we have a new treatment plan we’d like to try. If you’re ready to hear, I could ask Bruce back in?”
“Poor Spooky. I scared him off with my whole crybaby routine, huh?”
“I think he just wanted to give you a moment. You’ve had to share a lot.”
“I don’t mind sharing,” Hal said. “It’s all here for everyone to see.”
“Not without your saying so, Green Lantern,” she said, stroking his forearm.
Damn it. He choked up again.
“Bring in the ol’ creep,” he said, trying to smile. “Let’s see what’s next in store for me.”
—
Hal had to admit, the idea of yellow light for therapeutic purposes gave him the shivers. But if purple made his lesions grow and inflame and heal inside-out, then it seemed to make sense to give yellow a chance.
“You realize this goes against literally everything I’ve ever learned as a Green Lantern,” Hal said.
The compress had warmed up from his fever, and his head hurt. Diana offered him another, but he declined for now.
“And your immune system has been modified against everything it has ever learned,” Bruce said. “The modified yellow healing ray is an immunosuppressant. It should calm your system’s response against your healthy cells.”
“What’ll it do against the unhealthy stuff? Y’know, like bacteria. Viruses. Fungi. All of which seem to think my body is some kind of jungle gym for them right now.”
“It will lower your defenses,” Diana said. “Likely no more than they are already lowered. Your immune system is already ill-equipped for fighting invaders, Hal. It’s sending its greatest share of its warriors to fight against your own sebaceous glands. Dr. Mid-Nite is doubtful that the diminishing effects on your immune system will be any worse than the ones you currently face.”
“So, no more skin lesions, but I’ll still be a human petri dish?”
“Hal,” Bruce said softly. “There isn’t currently any outcome where your immune system goes back to normal. The damage done by the xenovirus against your DNA is not reversible.”
“So I’m like this forever, huh?”
Hal’s stomach felt sick.
Yeah, he knew it. He knew it in his gut, before they said anything. But Bruce’s words echoed heavy inside his body. No way out. No way back. Changed for the worse, forever.
“…Am I gonna get to be the Green Lantern again?” he asked.
He didn’t plan to say that. It made him sound like a helpless kid, asking the adults for reassurance.
“You know it, Hal,” Diana said, with a surprisingly heartening smile. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
God… did he sound that corny when he said stuff like that? It was a wonder anyone put up with him.
“We can get your inflammation under control,” Bruce affirmed. “After that, it’s a matter of avoiding infection as best you can. Doesn’t your ring even have programming for that?”
“She does,” Hal replied. “Although some things sometimes, uh, slip through the cracks. Like the virus that did this in the first place.”
“No one’s immune system is perfect,” Bruce said.
“Except Clark’s.”
“Almost no one’s,” he agreed. “You will be more susceptible to infections. But the yellow ray should allow your lesions to heal, Lantern.”
“And you promise this isn’t some Sinestro trick?”
“Even if it were, you have time to think it over, and to talk to Mid-Nite himself. We can’t start the treatment until you heal from your current infections.”
“Speaking of which, let’s get you feeling better,” Diana said.
—
No purple healing ray anymore. No special sped-up healing. Medicine the old-fashioned, civilian way.
Topicals for the autoimmune lesions and the foot infection, oral antibiotics and antivirals and antifungals and antipyretics, a gross-tasting mouthwash and a couple dozen injections into his angry wounds. A dozen adhesive bandages on his inner thighs, belly, and backside. Gauze in his briefs for the places the bandages wouldn’t work.
He tried not to tear up as they applied the bandages… but at this point, it just felt so nice to be cared for. To be loved.
Once they were done dressing his wounds, he felt too tired to move again. Too tired to even put the rest of his clothes back on. Diana lay a heavy blanket over him and turned the lights down in the infirmary.
“Rest well, Emerald Gladiator.”
“Wait, I can get back to my room,” he wanted to say. Thought of saying.
But the truth was, he was warm and comfortable, and he was exhausted from pain and from his own emotions, and the infirmary suddenly seemed very cozy, and Spooky was still here…
“Don’t you have someplace else to be? Not catching a zillion diseases from me?”
“You’re not the only one who deals in fearlessness, Jordan. I’m not worried about the flu.”
“Strep…” Hal added.
“No fear,” Bruce replied.
“Hah. I am pretty corny, huh?”
“Now you realize.”
“Are you staying here because you feel guilty? About what happened?… I told WW it wasn’t you guys’ fault.”
“I’m here, Hal. That’s all.”
The blanket really was very heavy. Pressing into him. Pushing all his thoughts away.
“That’s all?”
“Nothing more. Wonder Woman is right. You should rest.”
“Okay…” Hal said, feeling sleep closing in. “You’re a really good friend, B.”
“Not better than the kind of friend you deserve, Hal. You deserve that and more… You deserve to be well, but this is the best we can do.”
“It’s more than enough, Spooky. Tell Diana and Dr. Mid-Nite… tell Barry and Ollie and Clark… tell J’onn and Dinah… tell Roy and Wally and your kiddo… tell everyone I said thanks.”
Then the lights went off behind his eyes. Sometime soon, he would open them to yellow light and not feel anything like fear. He’d feel strong. He didn’t feel strong now. That was fine. His friends were strong for him, and they would watch over him. That was good enough for him. With their strength and kindness around him, he could rest.