Work Text:
"Hey, Birdie!"
Dinah hesitates, a reflexive shuddering of synapses and muscle. Then, she smooths out the motion to be almost imperceptible.
"Canary in a coal mine!"
She keeps walking, heels an aggressive rhythm on metal. A construct of light flashes in front of her. It's an octagonal stop sign from Earth, rendered green in an antithesis of its obligate red.
"What?" She snaps, refusing to turn to the man tailing her. It prickles her nerves to have him at her back, but she still refuses to give the freckled face of Earth's Green Lantern, Guy Gardner, the pleasure of her full attention.
"Easy, hon, just wanted to talk," he says, gliding through the air with a smirk she'd love to scream off his bones. He sees her expression and falters. His feet plant on the ground and he grimaces, almost petulantly. "Any chance I can get you in a room?" He asks and Dinah nearly punches him through the metal hull and into space, damn the repair bill.
"Go fuck yourself," She tells him and, when she ducks around his construct, she hears heavy footsteps behind her.
"Hey, hey, okay! That came out wrong. Hey! Just, like. Gimme a moment, huh? I'm trying to talk to you!"
"You're nothing but talk, Gardner." She tells him as she walks. "You're a yapping poodle."
"Oh, fuck off!" The footsteps stop and suddenly the worst Green Lantern of the Universe is floating in front of her and Dinah is ready to break stupid rules, like: "don't kill people, no, not even Guy, yes, I know what you're thinking, I am Batman, and I am also thinking it, so no murder or fun ever again."
"I'm trying to be a nice guy over here and--"
"Go. Fuck. Yourself." Dinah carefully repeats and watches as Guy's face turns a color to make his red hair look white. His eyes get bloodshot and his flattened nostrils flare. He looks like the world's ugliest bull and Dinah hopes he throws the first punch so that she has clemency in his emasculation.
Instead, Guy takes a deep breath and another and another. His fists creak.
"I'm trying," he bites out, teeth barely leaving each other, "to apologize."
"Oh?" Dinah scoff. The beast of a man in front of her twitches and shifts from one foot to the other. He cannot stay still.
"I'm--" Guy starts, and stops. He looks down at his hands and how they clench and the green light glowing off of them. "I'm--" he grimaces. "I'm sorry."
In the silence after that statement, Dinah watches Guy brace for impact, brace, brace, and then fidget. He chews his lip at the corner and his eyes flick to her, watching and assessing, before they flick to the ground. He scuffs his toe against the air.
"For what?" She prompts him, when he tries to chew a hole through his lip.
"For being a dick, I guess," he says. He rubs his nose aggressively with his knuckle until it's red. "I--yeah. I was--I've been a real piece of work. To you." He says and sniffs. "So…sorry, I guess."
"Just to me?" Dinah prompts. Guy tenses along all angles, every muscle coils. Dinah plants her feet.
"Fuck you, alright? I knew this was --stupid! Stupid Guy Gardner, huh? Fuckin' moron." Guy curls into himself like a dying beetle.
"I didn't say that." Dinah counters carefully.
"Didn't fuckin' have to," Guy growls and shoves his feet against the air to gain distance.
"Don't put words in my mouth, Gardner," she snaps at him. To her surprise, and possibly his own, Guy stops. His shoulders heave and she can hear his heavy, wet breaths.
"I'm a piece of shit," he says. "I'm a--I know I'm shit. Well, at this. I'm a fucking stud and a fucking hero, but. At this shit, I'm--" He stops. Dinah waits. "I used to be…smart--but, whatever." Guy shakes his head and knuckles his temple. "I was shit. To you."
"You harassed me," she supplies. He makes a face like a twisted up workout towel.
"Y-yeah," he chokes out. He's pale and a little more green than his light might allow. "I--I was wrong."
"Made me feel like shit," Dinah adds vindictively, just to watch him wilt further.
"Yeah."
"I don't forgive you," she says and Guy's face falls. Dinah watches it fall through a rainbow of emotions.
He's hurt, first. He wanted forgiveness. Then he's resigned and angry. He didn't expect to be forgiven. Then the loathing and the rage. Dinah braces for it, but Guy just takes a shuddering breath and blasts off into space.
"Stupid, fucking, Guy Gardner," he mutters.
It's a strange interaction that she adds to her private journal of "if I could get another degree on the Justice League, alone, I'd be very rich."
"I was a social worker," Guy offers out of nowhere and Dinah gives him a look.
They've been civil since his attempt at an apology, but Dinah doesn't trust him. A civil Guy Gardner is another man's well meaning but offensive drunk. "Well, case worker. That's how I met Hal," he says. "I wanted to--I wanted to help him. I think I did. But, my head." Guy knocks his knuckles against his head like he's asking for entry.
Dinah grants him a glance and a hum. Guy shuffles his feet.
"So, I." He stops and looks down. And then he hits himself on the head, three times. Hard.
"Hey!" Dinah reaches out, but she doesn't touch.
"I'm trying to," Guy stops and opens his mouth. He hits his head again and he still hits it hard. "My brain is--it's not so--it's fucked. Fuck it. Hey, I'm sorry. Alright? I don't--you don't have to forgive me or nothing. I'm not. I was a caseworker, you know? I don't--my brain is fried but. I, sometimes--I remember." He's trying, she realizes, as he babbles. As he knuckles his temples and scratches his face.
"Stop, it--just stop." She holds up peaceful hands to gentle him. "Take it easy." It has the opposite effect as Guy seems to coil tighter, breath hitching. "Breathe." Dinah says.
"No, no, I need to!" Guy hits his head again. He's looking frantic. His fingers are clawing into his hair and he's staring at the join of the wall and the floor. "It wasn't right!" He hits his head again. "I was a caseworker! I know this stuff! I'm--I can do this!"
"Hey," Dinah gentles her voice. She shoves her own distaste for the man aside. She imagines him as a patient in crisis. "Hey, breathe, you're okay."
"Don't!" Guy spits between reedy pulls of air that whistle. "Don't coddle me! I'm fine!"
Dinah hums and steps back and waits. She watches the man heave breaths and pull at his hair as he screws his eyes up in concentration. It looks painful and humiliating. He's red and pale and green. He's shaking as the meltdown runs its course and leaves him looking nauseated and exhausted.
He winds up vomiting in a corner, not even in a potted plant. Just vomiting on the ground. Dinah knows he's in an altered state when he doesn't even say anything. Guy just leans against the wall with his eyes closed.
"I have an opening Wednesday," Dinah says.
The man's eyes are hazy and bloodshot and swollen when they find her.
"What?"
"To talk." She says, slowing her speech and evening her cadence. He eases, seeming to follow her. "You know?"
"Oh!" His face is a different kind of pink. He bites his lip against the relief warring with doubt behind his eye.
Dinah is still pissed. She will never not be pissed. And Guy will never not be an asshole. But, maybe, there is a chance, here.
"You don't--I don't need you to," he hesitates, "do that. You don't." He looks at the vomit and creates a construct to clean it up with a grimace. "I'm a mess, Birdie."
"Don't call me that," she says, "Call me Canary."
"That's a birdie."
"It's my name." She tells him.
"Yeah," Guy exhales his agreement like he was holding his breath. "Yeah. Canary."
"Wednesdays at three," she says, "and that's three Greenwich Mean Time."
"Who uses Greenwich Mean?"
"An international team of super heroes, that's who."
"Aw, b--Canary, you think I'm super?" He bats his eyelashes at her and like that, she's annoyed again. He's such an asshole.
"Knock that shit off, Gardner." She crosses her arms and stares him down.
"I was only just--right, yeah," Guy glares at the ground, "sorry, yeah. I'm trying to do better. I'm trying."
"Wednesday." Dinah decides. "Three." She turns to leave, ignoring the almost helpless way Guy is looking at her.
There is a chance he can change. There's a chance that he needs help. This could go very poorly, and Dinah is more than willing to scream him out of existence if she needs to. But, there's also a chance for something positive in this. And a canary in a coal mine is always about a chance.