Work Text:
This is ridiculous. He should not be here. He should just check to make sure Scott is still breathing and leave with his dignity mostly intact, but he vaguely recalls from his time on Earth that one was expected to bring gifts while visiting someone in the hospital.
So here he is, feeling more awkward and out of place than he ever has before, staring at a row of plush effigies of the Justice League. Scott was friends with the blue one right? With the insect. He remembers hearing about this during his time on the League.
Not from Scott, though.
Scott doesn’t really talk to him much.
He is fine with this. He never knows what to say to Scott either.
He rides the elevator up. There are several humans on it and he tries to take up as little space and look as unthreatening possible.
He is certain he fails if the way the humans scurry off at each floor is any indication.
He frowns, clenching his fists. He doubts that helps matters much but it is better than punching the walls like he so desires.
Finally, at last, he arrives on the proper floor.
He doesn’t remember the room number. He grabs the nearest human wearing a uniform to request the information.
She points a shaking finger towards a desk underneath a sign saying “Information.”
It figures he would not notice this sooner.
Soon he turning down the hallways, two lefts, a straight and a short right as instructed til he reaches a door with number that matches the number on the slip of paper in his hand.
Barda is sitting by her husbands side when he arrives. He is awake. It is only the tiniest of blessings that his head is turned away.
Orion, Prince of New Genesis and no one’s coward, squashes the urge to flee and enters the small white room.
“I have brought a gift,” he says in voice that is too loud. He hands over the squishy superhero to Barda because Scott’s wrists are bandaged. She places it on a table covered in flowers and more plush toys. There is already one of the bug-man on it. It’s much bigger than the one Orion just purchased.
“I will get coffee,” Barda says in voice that is too bright. “Stay with Scott.”
Orion knows an order when he hears it. He lowers himself with care into the flimsy plastic seat Barda just abandoned. She kisses his husband softly and looks back twice before shutting the door behind her, leaving the two men alone in stifling silence.
They remain that way for several minutes, Orion sitting stiff and still, Scott turned away from his fellow Prince.
“I see you have been visited by many,” Orion says to break the silence. It is not effective. His words only cause Scott roll over further, pulling his injured wrists to his chest as if to hide them.
There’s another, smaller table by his bed. There is not much on but a book, a small flimsy paperback in poor condition. “The Wind’s Twelve Quarters,” Orion reads out loud as he picks it up. “By Urusula K. Le Gu-“ Scott snatches the book away. “Highfather’s beard! You did not have to grab it so!”
Scott ignores Orion, clutching the block of brittle yellow paper as a if he were drowning and these pages were the only things keeping him afloat. He takes one ragged breath, the another, and another, until he is breathing evenly once more.
“Sorry, man, it’s just sorta personal,” Scott says.
“What is it about, if I may ask?”
“Eh, just a buncha short stories. Mostly sci-fi. Doubt you’ll be interested.” Scott’s voice is too bright, his sudden smile too strained. Orion should know belter than to pry further.
Should being the operative word here.
“If they are uninteresting then how could it be personal?” Orion asks, allowing an edge of bitterness to seep into his voice.
“It’s personal means its none of your damned business!” Scott snipes, shoving the book under a pillow and throwing himself on top.
“I am a Prince of New Genesis and the Highfather’s son, as are you! That makes it my business!” Orion is furious. Here he is, trying to reach out his hand to his brother and he keeps pushing him away!
Then he notices the blood seeping through Scott’s bandages.
So does Scott. “Oh shi-“ he says, staring at his wrists in horror. He takes a deep breath. Orion is not sure how he is remaining so calm when he is the one who is bleeding. “Okay. Look.” He fixes his steady gaze on his panicking brother. “Go to the nurses. Tell them I tore my sutures. Can you do that?”
Orion nods and stomps off to find a nurse and repeat Scott’s words. When she proves reluctant to aid Orion’s ailing sibling in a timely manner he resorts to picking her up and carrying her to Scott’s room.
When Orion returns, nurse in tow, Scott lowers his head into his still-bleeding arms and lets out several impolite Earth epithets. Such ingratitude.
Fortunately the nurse becomes much more amenable once she has a patient in front of her, carefully lowering Scott back onto his pillow and making him raise his arms above his heart. She fishes out the book that started all this and tosses it on the bedside table.
She keeps up a steady stream of chatter as she works, uncaring of either man’s lackluster response as she sets about gluing Scott back together like a broken vase while Orion tries to stay out her way.
Eventually, inevitably, she asks about what Orion has privately come to call The Book. “So you like Le Guin, hon?”
“Mm-hm,” is Scott’s less than enthusiastic response.
“I only know this one story of hers. Had to read it for school. Omelas, I think it’s called. You heard of that one?”
“Yeah,” Scott says, letting out an entire syllable with vowels and everything this time.
“With the little kid in the closet and everything. Don’t know how its supposed to work, torturing a kid just so everyone else could be happy. Don’t know why nobody does nothing. Just leaving the poor thing to suffer like that just so they don’t have to. Ain’t worth it in my opinion.
“Ah, there you go hon!” The nurse abruptly finishes, snipping off the last of the fresh clean gauze and wrapping it around Scott’s wrists before bustling out of the room leaving the two men in silence.
Orion remains in the corner of the room he squeezed himself into to let the nurse let the nurse have space to do her work. He is afraid to move, to speak, fearing what would happen if he made a sound.
It is Scott who speaks first. “It’s not your fault you know.”
Orion wants to hate him for always being the better man but he cannot seem to feel anything except a deep weariness of in his soul right now.
“Personally, I blame dear old Dad. He’s the one who agreed to the damn trade.” There is bitterness in Scott’s voice, and a deep rage Orion would have previously though impossible for the carefree Mister Miracle.
“It is not the Highfather’s fault. Darkseid is the one who set the treaty,” Orion says, attempting to defend the man who after all has always been so kind to him.
Scott scoffs, but says nothing in return for several minutes.
Then, unexpectedly, “Did he ever talk about me? The Highfather, I mean?”
“Rarely.” Orion replies. The fate of the child that was the price of peace was an unpleasantness rarely acknowledged on New Genesis.
“Did he,” Scott pauses before deciding to finish the sentence. “Did he ever mention what my name was? My real one? The one I was born with?”
“Scott Free is not your true name?”
“Nah, it’s what Granny used to call me cause I was always escaping all the time,” Scott says. “Ah well no biggie. Names’re just words anyways.” He smiles.
It does not reach his eyes.
Orion tries to remember if it ever has.