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A little surprisingly, Alan and Tomar-Re argued more about Sinestro getting together with Abin’s sister than Abin and Sinestro did.
“If they feel something, shouldn’t they see where it leads?”
“It’s not fair to her! He’s a Green Lantern!”
It made sense, given their own love lives on their homeplanet. Alan lived on a planet where he was not allowed to express attraction to someone of the same gender, and Tomar-Re had recently ended up a single parent to a hatchling. Really, Abin got it, but his need for his friends to stop fighting really distracted him from his anger with Sinestro for courting his sister behind his back.
They’d told him, sure, and Sinestro seemed like he was really serious about Arin, but still. That was Abin’s sister.
Kilowog set them straight, putting a stop to their little group’s bickering, but Abin didn’t really come around until he saw his sister with a Star Sapphire’s ring on her finger, and Arin and Sinestro announced their engagement. They were happy, and Abin was happy for them, but he knew it wouldn’t last.
“You know Sinestro’s not going to grow old with you,” Abin told his sister gently the first night since their announcement that it was just the two of them. “He’s already stopped aging.”
It was something Abin, Sinestro, and the friends they’d made on their first journey to Oa hadn’t known until they arrived at the Central Battery. The Central Battery’s gift to those who learned its oath was longevity. A Green Lantern would stop aging, and they would never die of natural causes. Charging their green rings ensured they would only go down fighting and not a moment sooner.
They’d been young then, and maybe a little dumb. They’d talked about it, the four of them, and they’d decided to take the plunge together.
A decade later, the implications of it all hit Tomar-Re hard, and Tomar-Tu was born from his mistakes.
Another decade later, Alan realized his friends on his home planet couldn’t keep up with him anymore, and he fell into a depression.
Now, Sinestro wanted to marry Arin, and Abin just couldn’t see it going well.
“I know,” Arin responded, and it sounded like she really did. “We talked about it, and we know it’s going to be hard, but we’re going to just deal with it when the time comes. I mean…”
She gestured at herself, and Abin couldn’t ignore the Star Sapphire uniform she was wearing. It was physical evidence that his best friend and his sister loved each other. He couldn’t stop them from loving each other, even if he knew this was going to go very, very badly.
It ended a lot worse than Abin expected, but it really wasn’t Sinestro’s fault. Not in the slightest.
He felt like it was sure, but Abin knew that wasn’t the truth. It was his own fault Arin was here, floating in Korugar’s atmosphere, dead. Dozens of Green Lanterns had fought in the battle, but Abin was the one who had ended it, and now his sister was dead.
The violet light surrounding her body flickered and died. Sinestro, face slack with shock, took her hand and slipped the Star Sapphire ring off her finger, only for it to dissolve in his palm. She was truly dead.
“Mom?”
In the sea of green, Abin hadn’t noticed a new Lantern among them.
“Don’t look, Soranik,” Sinestro said, but his voice broke when he said it, and his daughter rushed forward to see what had happened to her mother.
Abin never particularly liked coming to Korugar, but he stayed for Sinestro and Soranik.
Alan and Tomar-Re had lingered too, but they understood this was a family thing, and left Abin, Sinestro, and Soranik to grieve.
Soranik didn’t really understand what happened. Abin and Sinestro didn’t really know how to tell her. Hell, they didn’t even know how to explain it to each other.
“I looked through some of Korugar’s archaeological records when we first found out… You know,” Sinestro later told Abin. “She- That thing that killed Arin, it said the name Parallax. That’s not what it is, but it’s close. I swear that’s something I’ve seen before. I feel it in my ring.”
That was something Alan said, that he could feel something in his ring. Abin never knew what he meant by it exactly, but he knew it represented a sense of conviction. Abin could see a plan forming in Sinestro’s mind.
“Don’t,” he cautioned. “It doesn’t matter. That thing’s gone, and Arin’s dead, but Soranik’s still here. You have to focus on her.”
Sinestro looked a little guilty at Abin’s words, but Abin saw a new vigor in him, so he thought he must have needed to hear them.
That still didn’t stop Sinestro from falling into his archaeological work when Soranik left for her pilgrimage to Oa.
Sinestro withdrew to Korugar, and Abin withdrew to Oa, but they were still friends. Family, even if the woman who connected them was dead. When Sinestro needed help, he went to Abin.
“I think I found something,” Sinestro told him, walking into Abin’s apartment on Oa without so much as a greeting, but that wasn’t unusual for him, even if they hadn’t spoken to each other in weeks. “You know how Korugar has a long history of having Blue Lanterns?”
Abin hadn’t known that. He’d never seen a Blue Lantern on Korugar. He nodded anyway.
“Well, there was this big discovery a few years ago that there were just as many Yellow Lanterns on Korugar at the time known for having a lot of Blue Lanterns,” Sinestro explained, and Abin assumed there was some Korugarian history here that Sinestro thought he knew. He didn’t want to get Sinestro started on that, though, so he just kept nodding along. “And you know how we don’t know where the Indigo or Yellow Central Batteries are?”
Abin nodded, and he meant it this time. It was a well-known fact among Lanterns. Not even the Guardians knew. Young Yellow and Indigo Lanterns would often tag along with Green Lanterns on their journey to Oa to ask, and the Guardians could never answer.
“I think the old Korugarians knew,” Sinestro went on, pacing around Abin’s apartment. “One of the other archaeologists found these yellow crystals that messed with my ring, just like Yellow Lanterns do. I think it might be a lead.”
That caught Abin’s attention. “Did you want to ask the Guardians about it?”
Sinestro nodded. “I thought maybe we could investigate it first and then see if they recognized anything.”
It’d been some time since Abin had been on an adventure like that. He was a little more excited than he thought he would be, but maybe seeing Sinestro starting to bounce back from Arin’s death was sparking some life back in him too.
The inhabitants of the world they ended up on called the yellow ore aurem. Sinestro and Abin started calling the planet that too, the natives not having a word for it themselves.
There were no Lanterns here, they quickly realized. The Zoar people weren’t hostile, but Abin suspected there was plenty these people didn’t know about their planet. The Nidara were a little more helpful, even though they couldn’t talk, bringing Abin and Sinestro to caves filled with the yellow element.
It was only when Sinestro spotted another alien race scuttling about that they realized these weren’t caves. They were tunnels, and they went deep into the planet.
Deep enough that Sinestro and Abin’s rings started acting up. Deep enough to find a whole new world beneath Aurem’s surface.
Sinestro said something upon emerging from the tunnels, stepping into the planet’s hollowed-out interior, but neither his nor Abin’s rings would translate it. They were surrounded by this yellow ore now. It was a wonder they could still breathe.
There was so much of the stuff that Abin almost didn’t see the Central Battery in the middle of it all, yellow on yellow making the battery blend in with the cavern they found themselves in.
It was big, just as big as the one on Oa. It was shaped a little differently, but Abin still knew what it was when he saw it. This was the source of the yellow rings’ power.
“We found it,” Abin said aloud, and Sinestro said something too. He assumed it was something along the lines of what he’d said himself, but then Sinestro started walking toward it. “Wait, what are you doing?”
Sinestro paused, looked over his shoulder, and said something lengthy in Korugarian that Abin couldn’t understand at all. He looked at him expectantly, and Abin just had to shrug. He had no idea how to respond, and Sinestro seemed to take that as permission of sorts and kept walking.
“You don’t have a yellow ring!” Abin called after him, hanging back as the glow around the Central Battery grew the closer and closer Sinestro got to it. “What do you think is going to happen when you go up to it?”
Sinestro either ignored him or didn’t hear him, and Abin lost sight of him in the yellow light.
“I was just looking at it,” Sinestro said, sounding a little annoyed, when they left the cave, and their rings were back to translating their words.
“The spiders didn’t know that,” Abin responded, equally annoyed.
They hadn’t discovered the Central Battery, it seemed, or at least they weren’t the first ones to do it. There had been wardens there, some of those beings that had inadvertently led Abin and Sinestro to Aurem’s core, and a couple of bigger aliens. Thankfully, those bigger aliens hadn’t seen Abin and Sinestro at first and had only appeared to give chase once the two Green Lanterns had scrambled their way back to the surface.
“What should we tell the Guardians?” Abin asked as they began flying back in the direction of Oa.
“I don’t know,” Sinestro answered, frowning. “The wardens don’t seem to want outsiders around the Central Battery. I don’t think telling the Guardians would help anyone.”
His answer surprised Abin. He thought Sinestro would advocate for sharing the yellow Central Battery’s location so that young Yellow Lanterns would have a place to charge their rings. Then again, Sinestro had been an archaeologist before he was a Green Lantern. He probably had some sense of ethics when it came to this sort of thing. Abin just hadn’t seen that side of him much.
“We should tell them about how the yellow element messes with our rings at least,” Abin told him, and Sinestro agreed. The yellow Central Battery would be kept a secret.
Abin really didn’t think it would come back up, but he supposed he should have suspected something.
It was actually Alan who had called for help, not Sinestro, but Alan had always sort of been attuned to the green energy in a way that none of their friends were. Sinestro was in danger, he’d said, and Abin, Tomar-Re, Kilowog, and Alan had all hurried to Korugar in a heartbeat.
They were fighting in the sky over the city. Or, well, fighting wasn’t really accurate. Sinestro was mostly just trying to keep up a shield, but the Yellow Lanterns weren’t being slowed down by it much. There were only three of them, but even from a distance, Abin could tell they were tearing through the city below with the speed and power of a much larger group.
Lobo, Arkrillo, and Myglom, Abin would later learn their names were. The two big wardens of the yellow Central Battery he’d seen, and the leader of the spiders that lived in the tunnels leading to Aurem’s core.
It was a difficult battle, but the Green Lanterns now outnumbered the Yellow Lanterns, and the Korugarian people had weapons of their own that they could support them with, so the invaders were driven off without too much difficulty.
Kilowog, Tomar-Re, Alan, and Abin stuck around to help clean up, even though Sinestro said they didn’t have to. He seemed offput by their presence, and Abin figured out why pretty quickly.
The city felt different. This was the same one that Arin had lived in, so Abin knew it well enough. It was alien enough that he couldn’t tell what exactly was different, but there was just sort of something off about it. Maybe this is what Alan meant when he said he could feel something in his ring. It was like some extra sense was telling him that there was something there that he couldn’t see.
It was Kilowog who found graffiti and banners with the Green Lantern symbol on it. He didn’t hesitate to ask Sinestro about it.
“I’ve lost some faith in the Guardian’s vision for a Green Lantern Corps. There was this big archaeological find recently, and we found some records that said that the reason there were so many Blue Lanterns and Yellow Lanterns on Korugar was because we’d been enslaved by the Maltusians. You know, the Guardians’ species,” Sinestro explained, looking a little sheepish but keeping his head high and his voice strong. “I’ve been trying to follow in Arin’s footsteps and focus on using my ring to better Korugar. The graffiti and banners are my people’s way of recognizing it.”
Alan bumped his shoulder against Sinestro’s and smiled. “You could have told us, you know. I mean, it’s pretty terrible that the Maltusians enslaved your people, but I mean about trying to help Korugar. You know that I focus more on Earth than helping out in space. We could have swapped notes!”
Sinestro laughed at that and chattered with Alan a bit more. Tomar-Re joined, but Kilowog just shot Abin a silent look. The two of them were more involved on Oa and with the Guardians than the rest. They would have to talk to the Guardians about what their people had done to Sinestro’s world, wouldn’t they?
The Guardians claimed they didn’t know anything about what Sinestro had to say about their people on Korugar. Abin didn’t really believe them until Sayd pulled him aside to explain a bit.
Nemosyni, Koyos, Ganthet, and Sayd were the last generation of Maltusians, apparently. The four of them were all of the remaining Guardians on Oa except Appa Ali Apsa. Their fathers had been the ones to find the green Central Battery, and their mothers had left shortly after. It was likely it was them who had found Korugar, or they had more children who had found Korugar sometime later. It made Abin feel a little better, and he made sure to tell all of this to Sinestro.
Sayd was curious about what the past Guardians’ mates had done on Korugar, so she had Abin poke around some Blue Lantern and Yellow Lantern business not long after they’d spoken. This eventually led Abin back to Lobo, one of the Yellow Lantern wardens.
The Yellow Lantern thoroughly pummeled him when they’d fought, but Lobo didn’t kill him even though he could have. “The Green Lanterns would make a big stink if I killed you. It’d be bad for business.”
Abin’s eyes slid over the crates of aurum that Lobo had been dragging after him through space. He could guess what kind of business he was up to.
It took him quite awhile and a couple more encounters with Lobo to realize that Lobo was selling the yellow element to Korugarians.
It didn’t make sense. The Yellow Lanterns had attacked Korugar. Why did the Korugarians want a material that would harm the people who had protected them?
“You didn’t hear this from me,” Lobo said when Abin finally asked him about it, “but the greenie there ain’t exactly doing my idea of protecting.”
The fear that spiked through Abin’s chest was even more intense than anything Lobo could inflict upon him. He’d seen this before. He’d seen it in Arin, and now it was happening to Sinestro.
He couldn’t be certain it was the same thing, but he recognized the signs. Arin had made contact with a Central Battery, and she’d come back changed. She’d tried to protect Korugar, and she’d nearly destroyed it. Sinestro had come into contact with a Central Battery, the yellow one, and he’d come back changed. He’d said he was trying to follow in Arin’s footsteps and help Korugar. Abin had assumed he meant Arin’s work before that terrible day, but now that he saw the pattern, he couldn’t shake the thought that something was very, very wrong.
He flew to Korugar immediately and needled Sinestro away from the planet so he could confront him about it. “Did you ever learn anything about Parallax?”
Sinestro looked kind of surprised, but not overly so. “I was looking for it when I went up to the yellow battery, remember?”
“We couldn’t understand each other, remember?”
Sinestro looked a little embarrassed. “I thought names would be the same without translation.”
Abin might’ve just not heard him. Both options were equally real possibilities. “Did you see it? When you approached the battery?”
“I’m not sure. It wasn’t anything like when I charged my ring on Oa for the first time,” Sinestro answered. “It was… I wouldn’t call it scary. The fear was there, though. It was like there was so much of it that I couldn’t feel it. Why do you ask? Did you learn something?”
Abin had, but he didn’t want to share it quite yet. “I’m worried you’re- I’m worried you’re like Arin.”
Sinestro looked surprised, and then yellow flashed in his eyes, and before he was nailed with a green blast of energy.
“Abin!” Sinestro called out, just as surprised that he attacked Abin as Abin was. Abin stared at him, and the yellow continued to dance in his eyes until Sinestro’s face hardened into something sharper. “You want to stop me from helping Korugar.”
What? “Sinestro, something’s affecting your mind. Like Arin.”
“The Predator was obsessive,” Sinestro said, and that was how Abin knew it wasn’t really his friend talking. He’d never heard that name before, Predator, even if some inkling in his mind told him that was the right thing to call the being he’d fought all those years ago, the one who had told them Parallax’s name and set Sinestro on this path. “I’m still in control.”
“I don’t know if you are,” Abin said, and then they were fighting.
They’d fought before. They roughhoused when they were younger, and they’d trained under Kilowog’s guidance many times over the years. This was the first time they’d truly fought, though.
They started with their rings. Sinestro was a little more clever with his constructs than Abin was, but Abin’s constructs tended to be stronger than Sinestro’s were. They were pretty evenly matched there, so the fight slowly melted into something more physical. Sinestro was scrappy in a fight like this, too, but Abin had been on Oa for years now. He had enough of Kilowog’s lessons rattling around in his head to get the upper hand over Sinestro.
His friend had one more trick up his sleeve, though. “Are you going to kill me like you killed Arin?”
That was more than enough to make Abin pull back. There was real fear in Sinestro’s eyes, even if his words were cocky. There were hints of yellow there, too, telling Abin this wasn’t really Sinestro, but it was still his friend staring back at him. Sinestro was right. He had killed Arin, but Abin didn’t think he could kill Sinestro, too.
And then Abin’s world exploded into indigo.
Abin had a trigger event before. Many years ago, when he’d gotten the green ring. This was a lot like that, floating in a sea of color, flashes of some impossibly massive being. It was the same kind of being that had seized Arin, and the same kind of being that was influencing Sinestro, so Abin knew it wasn’t benevolent, but he couldn't help but feel awed by its power. It was so… all-encompassing. It filled him, making the compassion in his heart erupt until his green uniform was replaced by an indigo one.
Yellow bled into the corners of his vision, and when all the light died down, Sinestro was still staring back at him, a yellow uniform replacing his green one. He still had his green ring on his hand, a yellow one now nestled beside it, and Abin realized he had a trigger event too. A second-trigger, specifically. Just like Abin had.
Had he triggered because of Parallax’s influence, or because he was truly afraid Abin was going to kill him, too? Abin didn’t know, and he hated himself for it.
“I’m sorry,” Abin said, slipping his green ring off his finger, and he fled before he could know if that was really Sinestro he’d been fighting.
He hadn’t seen the bolt of yellow energy flying at his back until it was too late.