Chapter Text
“It’s here. It’s gotta be here.”
Alan moves a couch cushion out of the way and then another, methodical like he’s dusting for fingerprints. He might as well be.
“Goddammit, I’m telling you it ain’t here,” Ted insists, opening and closing the same drawer he’s been on for the past half hour. If he’s feeling the same itch Alan is, the feverish annoyance skittering up the back of his neck, he’s clearly chosen to handle it with some amount of decorum.
“Do you know how much it costs to--”
“Says the CEO.”
Emboldened, Alan drops to his knees like he’s been pushed and peers under the couch. “Don’t you start,” he says, mild, “you know damn well they’ve blacklisted--”
“What in the world are you guys looking for?”
That’s Jay, having just now chosen to manifest in the midst of this cavalcade. Leaning lightly against the doorway, he’s got all the boyish charm of the freshman Joan had fallen for all those years ago and none of the straining weight the Flash had forced on his shoulders. He’s looking good, two years after the fact. Alan, who can’t or doesn’t care to relate, attempts to shove his arm under the couch and gets for his troubles a handful of what feels an awful lot like some sort of stale, prehistoric sandwich.
“Ted, Ted, Ted,” he says, only potentially stuck and verging on suspiciously sweet, “Theodore, my dearest friend, do you happen to know what the hell am I touching?!”
A flash of green, the faint crackling of a certain ring and Alan’s hand phases through the couch, offending item held tightly.
It is, in fact, a sandwich.
Ted bursts out laughing, loud and belly-deep and hysterical enough to give in to the necessity of wiping away a tear from the corner of his eye. “Man, I guess that’s where Hooty put it,” he concludes, as if it explains a single thing in the universe. There’s a moment of accidental silence that follows, an unwilling reminder of times long gone. The sandwich combusts in Alan’s hand and burns to a crisp in the span of a second.
“Well,” Alan decides, picking himself up, “I still wanna find it.”
It’s practice alone, if not familiarity, that’s left Jay quiet. “What are you looking for?” he asks again and here is a slight chance that he’s grown tired already. He’s surely remembered. “We should get going soon,” he adds, half afterthought, like he’s been considering simply settling down and reminiscing. They’re not that old just yet, Ted would say.
On that subject, he and Alan exchange a look. They’ve been at it since 10 AM. Five hours. They’ve searched every room in the brownstone, every secret passage, every cabinet and hiding place they could’ve possibly thought of, all aided by a construct skeleton key. Perhaps, it’s time to come clean.
“...Cigarettes,” Ted admits and he moves with the sole intention of elbowing Alan.
“We thought we’d left a pack--”
All youthful excitement gone, Jay seems to have aged approximately a hundred years -- by the estimation of interested parties -- since his arrival. “Oh.” He frowns, which is both rare and foreign when it comes to one Jay Garrick. “Oh, no. Absolutely not. I’ll have no smoking whatsoever on this trip, thank you very much. We’re taking Joan’s car, remember?”
For the sake of honesty, Alan does not.
“Ah, jeez. Come on, even doctors recommend it,” Ted points out in what’s most likely his best closing argument.
Jay makes a Face -- capital F, evidently patented. It’s the sign of a man who’d forgotten his suffering until the very instant he’d been thrown right back into it. “No? They don’t?” he says, downright baffled. He turns to eye the baggage littering the hallway behind.
“I mean, not Charlie,” Alan allows, though he’s taken good care not to get to know more reputable doctors than Charles McNider, who -- coincidentally -- personally holds Alan in no great regard.
---
The matter fails to get solved in what Jay might classify as a timely manner. Consequently, Ted and Alan find themselves shepherded to the tiny car waiting out front, the make and model of which Alan can’t rightly determine due to a distinct lack of knowledge and a lifetime spent being driven around by Doiby, now departed to sunnier shores. Namely: space. The very idea continues to wound, Alan’s been left to fend for himself on the subway for a number of years now, lest flying be deemed too on the nose. Back to the immediacy of the present, it’s Joan Garrick’s car that offends him equally.
“I’m thinking we can probably switch every couple of hours? I’ll drive ‘till we leave the state, at least,” Jay says, always the man with the plan, as he drags Alan’s various suitcases and Ted’s backpack along. Neither thinks to help.
“Sure, yeah.” Ted shrugs, easily indifferent, if a touch amused at Jay’s efforts.
He heaves the last of the suitcases into the trunk with some difficulty and takes a moment to breathe. “Jesus, Alan, what have you got in there?” Jay manages. He’s lanky, always has been, and a runner’s body is better suited elsewhere. A chronic politeness has landed him here.
Alan thinks on that.
“The lantern? Couple shirts. The usual,” he offers.
“The lantern?” Jay splutters, wide-eyed, “Alan, you brought the lantern? I thought we said-- but the-- I mean--” He lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, as if government agents might be lingering unseen in the empty street, circling so-called heroes long past their glory days, “No powers, okay? We barely made it the last time.”
“How am I supposed to charge my ring, huh?”
By the time Ted starts laughing again, Jay looks like he’s talking himself out of an anguished scream.
---
“So, I hear Carter’s insane now.”
Traffic in New York City is torture on a good day. At rush hour, it’s downright murder. Jay’s gripping the steering wheel with some force, finds it nearly grounding in current circumstances, and it’s only the shock of an exceedingly casual statement that makes him glance back at Ted. For his part, Alan’s looking too. They’ve both settled in the backseat for no apparent reason, though tenure with the JSA often has the side-effect of leaving motives unquestioned.
“Insane how?” Alan ventures.
“Like, he thinks he’s an Egyptian prince,” and when that’s enough to capture the interest of present company, Ted carries on, “I ran into Rex the other day and we caught up for a while, right? Drinks an’ all that. So, he says to me that Carter’s gone cuckoo since the trial, apparently he’s been bugging Rex for some kinda pills to stay awake for ages or somethin’.”
“And he thinks he’s an Egyptian prince,” Jay repeats, just to clarify.
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
Alan determines that to be a perfectly logical course of action -- or, he’s otherwise delighted by the novelty of a friend gone off the rails, the distant exhilaration of himself not being the culprit for once. “We should pick him up,” he says. Jay’s hand tightens on the wheel and it’s possible that he only narrowly avoids slamming into a gaggle of innocent bystanders by the crosswalk. He wouldn’t but it’s the murderous urge that counts.
“No, please, he’ll bring his wings and there’s no space--”
---
The Shiera Hall Museum of Ancient Antiquities -- isn’t that the same thing twice? asks Ted -- has certainly seen better days. Amongst peeling paint and an odd accumulation of feathers on the doorstep, banners announcing a new exhibit go barely noticed. In clear disagreement with the decor, the sign on the door marks the museum as closed.
Jay, who’s been thoroughly outvoted, takes the initiative and rings the doorbell. It produces a sort of screech that appears to echo. Instantly, it occurs to him that he’s never once visited their former chairman here.
Or at all, really.
It seems a grievous oversight now.
Ted and Alan linger by the car in the afternoon sun. It’s a scorching summer but far away from alleys, capes and masks, the two of them look abruptly out of place in shorts and polo shirts, harmlessly informal. They’re big men, likely to stand out anywhere but here, two years after the unthinkable, the possibility of being seen strikes them all at once. If Carter ever deigns to answer the door, it’ll be the first time anything resembling a reunion of the--
“Um,” Jay breathes out.
A couple of panicked glances between friends is what the figure in the doorway provokes. It might be Carter in name alone. Beyond an Egyptian headdress that’s quite clearly the genuine article, he’s wearing a costume-store… skirt and very little else. There’s eyeliner involved, carefully applied around blue eyes.
“Greetings,” Carter says in an especially concerning accent, partially because it isn’t and has never been his. For the moment, confusion reigns. He seems unlikely to step aside and let anyone in. Somewhere behind his imposing silhouette, the strange shapes of stranger artefacts stretch on in the darkened museum and static-y chanting fades in and out. They’ve interrupted something, Alan thinks and doesn’t particularly want to stick around and find out what.
Not until Ted pushes to the front, at least.
“Hiya, pal,” he starts, undeterred by insanity or supernatural intervention, “So, Jay here thinks we all need some, uh, whatchamacallit-- bonding time and we’re goin’ on a little road trip. I thought you’ve been looking kinda lonesome. Wanna come with?”
“When?”
Ted looks back at what he would affectionately call the gang. “Right now?”
“Alright,” Carter agrees, deadpan and sounding a great deal more like himself, though traces of the accent remain. “I’ll pack.” He melts back into the shadows of the museum and the door swings closed once more. It’s startlingly easy.
The fact of the matter is that Jay might be vibrating. “Anyone think this isn’t a great idea and Carter maybe needs help? Medical help?”
“Nah,” Alan and Ted decide simultaneously.
They share a smile.
When Carter returns in no time at all, he’s carrying a haphazardly thrown together suitcase, various articles of clothing halfway to spilling out of it, and he’s managed to trade his stroke-inducing getup for a more demure combination of knee-length shorts -- remnants of his archeology days -- and sunglasses. Ted wolf-whistles, just for the fun of it.
More acutely worrying, the road trip’s already running late and gets further delayed at Jay’s insistence that Carter opt for a shirt.
An old argument ensues and despite Alan’s threats to abandon ship, plus various rebuttals that he can’t drive at any rate, Carter undergoes a Hawaiian shirt, shoves his wings in the back and climbs in the passenger seat long before the dust settles. Ted gets in next, lounging while he’s still got the chance.
“Whaddya think, pal? Some kinda green fire tornado’s likely to bring the whole place down, huh?”
“Yeah,” Carter grunts.
“Might wanna step in then.”
Carter glances out the window with something approaching apathy and finds no real cause for alarm in the way Alan’s caught fire and Jay’s started vibrating at higher frequencies. “I swear to god I’ll freakin’ walk all the way back to Gotham!” comes Alan’s voice, muffled, before Jay’s sliding back into the car and slamming the door shut.
“Everyone ready for our next adventure?” he asks through a strained smile.
A minute later, Alan joins them once more. “You don’t have to wear a shirt, if you don’t want to,” he says, patting Carter’s shoulder. He smells faintly of ozone.
---
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Alan would like to let the record show that the road to hell is, in fact, mostly... hell. The itch under his skin has returned in full force and five hours in, the realities of a cross-country road trip are gradually dawning on their small group.
Furthermore, and this being the worst offence, no one had wanted to listen to Irene Miller’s show when they’d momentarily been in range of WXYZ Radio.
Las Vegas is a lifetime away and Alan, who does not make a habit of smoking but would very much enjoy an urgent cigarette right about now, cannot see his survival as a guaranteed part of these two weeks on the road. “Jay,” he says. It’s not some misguided attempt at a last hurrah, he doesn’t think--
“Jay,” he repeats. “Jay, Ted and I have unionised and we demand a break.” He’s neglected to exchange more than two words with Ted since they’ve entered Pennsylvania, it seems as good an excuse as any.
The war hadn’t been unkind to the public perception of Mystery Men. There had been glory and paid appearances and photographs with the president and magazine covers -- the whole shebang, the brief taste of fame Alan doesn’t feel he’d ever wanted but hadn’t rebelled against either. Then, it’d all fallen apart. No wrong move, as far as he can tell, not as much as the very country they’d sworn to protect had merely developed a taste for blood and the world had turned against them. He doesn’t mind the quiet and the lack of sleepless nights but there must be some irony to what Jay’s deemed the perfect means of rekindling old friendships.
If they were ever there.
“We stopped an hour ago,” Jay eventually mumbles.
“I didn’t need to go to the bathroom then.”
Alan glances at the empty Coca-Cola bottle at his feet. It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. Ted’s already put away a couple beers, sheer routine for the likes of him. “Carter?” he asks, just in case it brings more supporters to his sudden cause.
“You will address me as Katar Hol,” Carter says with very little care towards what Alan had asked. Similarly, his accent’s chosen to make a surprise return.
“Isn’t--” Alan glances out the window and back again, perplexed, “isn’t that your name?”
“No, no, he said it different,” Ted intervenes.
To Alan, Katar Hol is rather synonymous with Carter Hall and certainly much harder to wrap his head around. He regrets his earlier indignation. Perhaps Carter had deserved to be exposed to the full range of Jay’s shirt-related protests. At the very least, the need for a medical professional might not have been too far off.
“Yes, it is the name Egypt, my ancestral home, hath bestowed upon me--”
“I thought you were from Long Island?” says Ted, presumably before he can help himself.
Alan watches his chances of a bathroom break vanish into thin air.