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Jared’s broken into his own home before. Growing up, he used to do it three-four times a week – sneaking back in from god-knows-where at all hours of the night, picking the lock with a switchblade the way he’d taught himself aged something like thirteen. He figures it’s about the same principle now, just replace a janky apartment in the projects with a Manhattan brownstone.
It may not actually be the most thought-out plan, but the JSA’s museum is having an open day or some such event Jared doesn’t have the stomach for, and getting in through a window in the back sure beats any accusations of scarring middle-schoolers for life with his early afternoon beer run. Staying on rent-free while he and Arnold work out the finer details of coming back from the dead does also involve staying in the Justice Society’s good graces, of that much he’s aware.
And that’s how, on rounding the corner into the alleyway behind the brownstone, Jared proceeds to run face-first into the solid wall that is Alan Scott’s back. His nose makes some concerning crunch-like noise on impact, and Jared only gets as far as congratulating himself on his astute powers of recognition before he’s being spun around so his back hits the brownstone’s brickwork and Alan’s looking down on him like he’s done him some personal wrong.
In effect, there’s nothing especially new about that. No, not about that. Alan towers over him like all the times before, but he makes for an odd sight milling around in his civvies in a New York back alley with a lit cigarette held in his left hand. Jared, near-lifelong smoker, lets out a breath like he’s just been slapped in the face.
“You smoke?” he says, instead of the million other thoughts racing through his mind like get your hands off me and watch where the fuck yer goin’. Just as well, it catches Alan off-guard too, the anger in his ice-blue eyes softening some.
“I quit in 1955 and 1986,” he counters, doesn’t miss a beat. “Did Jay send you?”
“Jesus Christ,” Jared mumbles, then starts laughing until he’s doubled over and out of breath.
“Are you done?” Alan eventually asks, which sets Jared off again.
It’s only a couple seconds later that there’s a rough hand slamming him back into the wall by his bad shoulder, the one that might’ve been missing its arm if not for the golden bandages keeping it all together. “Alright, alright!” Jared concedes, shrugging Alan off, “jeez, you wanna continue where we left off twenty years ago?”
“Twenty-eight,” Alan corrects him, paying no mind to the way Jared cringes at the reminder that he’s spent as many years dead as he has alive, “and no, you just– you always bring out the worst in me.” He sighs, frustrated. “Did Jay send you?”
“Why the hell would Jay send me anywhere? I’m pretty sure he wants to rehome me,” Jared says, and takes a moment to perfunctorily check on the structural integrity of his nose with the hand not still holding onto his beer for dear life.
Alan takes a long drag from his cigarette right then and there, no shame about it like he’s not single-handedly rewriting what little Jared had thought certain in life. “I’m supposed to show some newsreels from the GBC, and give a short speech as the Green Lantern.”
“An’ yer not even dressed,” Jared remarks, shaking his head. He’s gotten good at playing along at short notice, catches on quick despite himself. It doesn’t make him feel any less like he hasn’t suffered some sort of traumatic brain injury though, suddenly inhabiting a world where he and Sentinel hold conversations and he’s not quite treated like dirt for not being one of the good, cultured people the Fate mantle should’ve gone to. That one had gotten ingrained well and deep somewhere around their second meeting, all those years back.
“If Jay didn’t send you, what are you doing here?” Alan asks, arms crossed. He’s got a disconcertingly elegant way of holding onto his cigarette, no nicotine-stained fingertips like Jared’s got or the ever-persistent stink of smoke clinging to him. Not cigarette smoke at any rate, there’s always the ozone that precedes his powers.
Jared nods at the six-pack he’s just about risked it all for, and says, “beer run? I figured it ain’t the brightest idea to cut through the museum today.”
“There’s no back door, you know.”
The length of the building does stretch on undisturbed, and a long look even lets Jared learn there’s no windows any closer than the first floor either. Defeated, he sighs and slides down against the wall. There’s other avenues to try, and Arnold may even think of him and his valiant quest hard enough to trigger the spatial tangents some time soon, but it’s hard not letting it get to him with his current audience – another failure, small as it is. It’s all Alan’s ever seen from him.
“You never did tell me why you’re hiding from Jay,” he says, setting down the beer and patting himself down for his own pack of cigarettes shoved in some pocket or other.
“I’m not hiding,” Alan insists.
He takes his time smoking, crushing what’s left of the cigarette butt underfoot once he’s done and rubbing it hard into the pavement with the heel of his shoe. He might be Green Lantern nowadays but Jared doesn’t think the rage that had made him Sentinel had ever run its course. To him, he’ll always be Sentinel – he of sharp edges and perpetual disappointment.
“I’m just no good with kids,” is what Alan finally settles on, complete with a glare that gets Jared to quiet down before he can as much as snicker.
It’s moments like these that Jared thinks he can nearly see the man underneath.
“Do you have a light?” he says instead, unwilling to risk this uneasy peace.
For the longest time, Alan just looks at him. He’s practically a stranger in a polo and slacks in the midday sun, too far away from the way they used to meet back when Jared had wanted to prove him wrong so bad and never had.
“Suppose I do,” Alan finally says, and the tip of his index figure becomes engulfed in green flames as he leans down and lights the cigarette carefully balanced at the corner of Jared’s mouth.
Up-close, that spark of green gives off more heat than a lighter ever could but it doesn’t burn as much as simply warm, and Jared doesn’t know what to do with the flush he’s sure is spilling over his cheeks at a gesture he’s unduly categorized as intimate. For too long now, it’s been only Arnold that’s gotten this close. Unwilling to meet Alan’s eyes, he takes a drag off his cigarette and nods his thanks. Whatever Alan perceives it to be, he’s gone back to smoking too and the silence’s as amiable as they ever get.
Naturally, Jared breaks it first chance he gets.
“What was that about earlier? Me bringing out the worst in you?” Jared asks, glancing up to where Alan’s still leaning against the wall. He doesn’t know if he’s looking for closure – if the unhealing wound Mordru’s left on his back tells him anything, it’s that closure’s not in the cards – but Sentinel has been a constant of his time as Fate, and Jared still harbors some trace of sentiment brought on by the strangeness of his return no matter how he’s tried to hide it.
“You knew that already,” Alan says, seemingly conscious of the fact that he’d spent four consecutive years trying to kill Jared with fire.
“I never did anythin’ to you, as far as I know,” Jared points out, scowling. “Hell, I never did anythin’ to anybody! Don’t tell me yer still hung up on the artifacts, I hear Khalid’s had no trouble with any of that shit.”
Alan goes through another cigarette before he thinks to answer; and Jared waits it out, figures he’s got nothing better to do even with the six-pack getting lukewarm and the dwindling supplies of his own smokes. He sits up though, feels they ought to be on equal ground for this one.
“You remind me of myself.” Alan says it like he’s had to push the words through a clenched fist, like the effort drains him. Maybe he thinks he owes Jared the truth, maybe it’s weighed on him all this time.
Always on the offense, Jared doesn’t know what he’s meant to do with that measure of honesty. “You used to break into cars for a living?” he asks, and the look Alan gives him – a gleam of green in the blue of his eyes – shuts him right up. “No, not the place, I know. Go on.”
They’ve spent so long at each other’s throats, it’s hard not to have grown familiar with Alan’s tells. That’s all the reassurance Jared’s got that he hasn’t blown it yet.
“I was told– I was always told that this kind of work requires careful upbringing. A precision of aims, a–” Alan cuts himself off, grasping at the words from a memory worn thin with age.
“A guy that didn’t grow up like I did,” Jared summarizes, bitter still but not only on his own behalf, “or you did.”
“I’ve always denied certain parts of myself,” Alan agrees, “I’ve worked hard to change the way I talk, walk, carry myself but you’re just– you.”
Jared doesn’t flinch though it’s thrown at him like an insult, it’s not the worst he’s heard, not even the worst he’s heard from Sentinel alone. “I ain’t got much choice,” he says.
“But you understand.”
He doesn’t know if this is what closure’s like after all. He doesn’t feel any different. “I do,” Jared says. He extends a hand, his left because he’s still wary of how the bandaged one might sting. “Pals?”
Alan looks down at the rings on Jared’s fingers, hesitates, then shakes his hand all the same.
“If I get you inside,” Alan starts, “you need to keep quiet about the smoking.”
“Done!”
Jared smiles, as wide and genuine as he ever gets, only for his face to fall when Alan steps halfway through the wall like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “Oh, no fucking way. What if my magic immunity acts up an’ I get stuck in there? Get the hell–”
“Do you trust me?” Alan asks, awash in a green blaze.
“Not at all, no,” Jared says, and grabs his beer. “Alright, let’s go.”