searching for solace

[bossymarmalade]

"I’m sorry Ambassador Green Lantern, but you cannot do that."

"Watch me." Kyle replied, his easy tone masking a surge of emotions so strong they were making his entire being tremble.

The Leader - this ‘Aell’aj’nah’zeah’ - spoke evenly and sadly, clasping her hands in front of her. ”Then I am disappointed. The Green Lantern Corps has let down the cause for peace. You no longer care about good triumphing over evil. Is that what you’re saying, my dear Green Ambassador?”

"Whatever you say, lady." Kyle stepped into the crystalline shuttle pod, powering it with his own will as The Leader authorized the pod to leave her mothership. The Green Lantern was leaving no matter what; and in good faith, The Leader had no intention of stopping him.



Carol looked from the pod to Aell’aj’nah’zeah, and flew into the air as the bay doors opened. ”I’ll go with him, see if I can’t talk any sense into his hard green skull,” she suggested, waiting for Aell’aj’nah’zeah’s blessing before flying off. Truth was, Carol wanted off this ship, maybe more than Kyle did. She came aboard with a suspicious mind and a skeptical heart. Aell’aj’nah’zeah spoke of love constantly - but right from their first contact on Zamoran, the Star Sapphires didn’t feel it.

The crystal pod landed on a planetoid, where Kyle abandoned it, looking up to see Carol cutting a virulent violet swathe through the atmosphere. She landed beside him and shook her head, smirking. ”You’re an idiot, you know that?”

"I do know that,” Kyle grinned back at her, as his Ambassadorial robes switched back into his Green Lantern uniform. Kyle shook Carol’s hand enthusiastically for lack of any other way of expressing his gratitude to see the Star Sapphire. His buoyancy was short-lived. ”It’s just - I couldn’t - I had to - agh. I just need to do this, and then—”

Carol let go of Kyle’s hand, and laid her fingers on his arm. Her fingers were warm and comforting and human. ”I understand, Kyle.”

His eyes underneath his mask grew wide and he nodded, swallowing hard. “Thanks Carol. Now, lets go find her.”

———————————————

36 hours ago….


Kyle knew he wasn’t much cut out for this whole ‘Ambassador’ deal. This sort of position involved lots of long talks and verbal negotiations and planning and organization. He felt lost in a sea of high-level alien politics. When The Leader received footage of the countless brutal battles being fought on multiple planets, she would broadcast them, unedited, to her entire ship. Sometimes Kyle found himself wishing he was down there, where he actually would actually understand his purpose - fighting alongside his comrades.

But Kyle did learn a lot during his time on the crystal ship. For one, both him and Carol noticed fairly quickly that this Queen Komand’r was really just playing lip service to The Leader. The Tamaranean had no real intention of negotiating peace, unless it was synonymous with complete imperialism over the entire Vega System. Komand’r was hungry for power, not compromise. She was playing The Leader for a fool.

During the brief peacetalks with Komand’r, Kyle didn’t bother asking her about Mar’i. By the way his friend had been taken from Earth by force and now seeing Komand’r’s goals, it wouldn’t benefit Mar’i any to inquire. But Kyle did have access to Tamaranean records, after he bullied that wizened Remynd’r into relinquishing them. When he wasn’t bored out of his mind during negotiations, he was poring through the records, searching through literally billions of names and millions of platoon rosters for Mar’i.

He didn’t sleep. Both him and Carol learned quickly that sleep meant their subconscious dragging up the sight of that…mindless terror spreading out from the corner of the universe. It was worse than nightmares, and Kyle needed himself fully functional, not waking up and crying out for Zee.

He had set goals. And these goals were of cross-purposes:

Stop this new evil that had somehow found its way into the universe, as it started with the Vega System and worked its way out. It wasn’t that Kyle lost hope; but he needed to warn Oa and Earth before it was too late.
Stop the war, so the Vega System had a chance of survival before the evil gobbled them up. The war footage showed entire battalions falling prey to a black poisonous substance that seeped into their bodies, turning on each other in the frenzy to get it out. Unfortunately, it seemed the Tamaraneans only saw the ensuing chaos as a bid for gaining power over the rest of the Vegan system. Useful.
Find Mar’i. Highest priority; and yet in the light of everything else, it seemed like even if he did find her, the greater evil would still kill her, him and everyone else. But at least she could be reunited first with Roy and Lian and killed all together, instead of dying pointlessly in some alien trench? Sure. Why not. It was romantic, at least.
…

"You found her yet?" Roy asked Kyle, his eyes deadened, no spark or light without Mar’i there to provide it. "You promised. But you’re just hanging with this crystal princess in her nice safe ship, cabrón. Good job, sitting around and wasting time. Yuh. I figured you’d fail us.” And Roy turned away from him — and Kyle jerked awake, pulled out of his brief dream by a light humming noise. It vibrated out from the pendant resting on his neck. Zee’s pendant. Opening the sphere, a new message had bloomed on the paper.

In Zee’s quick slanted scrawl, it read: “I keep blowing kisses to the stars hoping it’ll have you home sooner. Stay safe.”

"Stay safe," Kyle repeated resentfully, and he plucked the tiny piece of paper from its shell and ate it. It tasted like a Communion wafer.

That was when his ring picked up on a pinpoint life-generated power source from a nearby planetoid. It was Kyle’s first actual chance to locate Mar’i, and damned if he was going to take it.

——————————-

So Kyle and Carol trawled the planet, although it didn’t take long to find her. Like recognized like, after all - and Kyle’s ring honed in pretty quickly, finding her in the middle of a heated battle with a large swathe of Gordanian assassins. Without pause, Kyle and Carol jumped into the fray, assisting her with defeating the Gordanians - even as their hard skin cracked and they spewed out black gunk, collapsing to the surface in a gelatinous gibbering heap of flesh and black goo.

So the war footage was accurate. But Kyle wasn’t going to think about that now. ”Green Lantern Gorius, hello, hi, hey,” he called out and flew closer. “I’m Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, Sector 2814. I know this is your sector, but I’m here to find someone. I’m under Oan jurisdiction,” he added, just in case she was a stickler for policy. “I hope you can help me out.”

The female Psion looked up, dark blood and gore spattering her face, her eyes alight with green as she stared at the human Lantern - one of her own Corps. She did not see blackness in his eyes, and her stooped shoulders relaxed. Gorius straightened out of her battle stance and pressed two fingers to the Green Lantern crest on Kyle’s chest.

"And I’m looking for my egg-sister, Lantern Kyle," Gorius replied, eyeing the Star Sapphire before looking back at her fellow Corpsmember. "Perhaps we can look together."

"Hell yeah we will." Kyle nodded at Gorius without any further question. It was settled. He looked over at Carol - ‘I’m with you,’ her expression said. So the three rose into the air, green, violet and green.

"Let’s do this, Lanterns."