Chapter Text
Hal Jordan is dead tired.
So tired he has to stand there in the hallway, staring at his own door like it’s a riddle. It takes him a whole minute to remember which way to turn the key. Clockwise? Counterclockwise? He fumbles, curses under his breath when it doesn’t catch, tries again. Finally the lock gives, and he stumbles inside.
The apartment’s dark, quiet, bare. It's a cheap one-bedroom that's too close to the hangar, picked in a hurry after the divorce. He never meant for it to be permanent. Just somewhere to crash until he figured things out. A year and eight months later, he’s still here.
The walls are still naked. The couch he got second hand, still lumpy. There’s a mattress on the floor instead of a bed frame because he never got around to buying one.
He drops his bag, kicks off his boots, doesn’t bother with the light. The fridge hums loud enough to fill the silence.
He’s bone-deep exhausted, but that’s not new. Feels like he hasn’t been anything else in months. His chest pulses once, a sharp ache that makes him press his palm flat over his ribs. The healers on Oa had warned him this would happen.
The shower’s barely lukewarm, but it does the job. He strips down, tugging the chain from around his neck before stepping in. The ring on it glints in the bathroom light. A Simple platinum band with two small little lines of red and black woven around it.
He should’ve given it back. Should’ve dropped it in an envelope, shoved it across the table the day the divorce was finalized. It’s been twenty months and he’s still wearing it like it means something.
It doesn’t. Not anymore.
He’s not theirs. Not Clark’s, not Bruce’s. Just Hal Jordan, divorced idiot with a dying heart and an apartment that still smells like someone else’s takeout.
Bruce and Clark had gotten new rings. Once theirs had been almost identical, Bruce’s ring dark and Matt except for the red and green color woven around it, and Clark’s gold, green and black lines circling it. Now they just wore simple, plain colored bands. No green or red or black.
Keeping his ring feels wrong. Especially because Bruce and Clark are still together. Still married. Still a unit, even without him. Just like they had been before him.
But he can’t bring himself to let go. Just like he can’t stop pulling on one of Clark’s old Metropolis U shirts when he needs to sleep. Just like he can’t stop spritzing that cologne Bruce wears onto a pillow.
He’s not bitter. Not really. They’d tried. Counseling, schedules, protocols. They’d fought for it. So had he. And for a while it worked. It was good. Things between them were good again like they had been in the beginning.
Until it wasn’t.
Until the Corps kept him off-world more than it kept him home. Until he started missing dinners, family nights, anniversaries. Until “I’ll be back tomorrow” turned into weeks of silence.
He remembers the last anniversary too clearly.
An emergency mission. No time to send a message, no time to even think. Lanterns screaming across comms about an ambush, a shipment of hybrid Sinestro–Apokoliptian tech loose in deep space. Hal went because he always went. Because that’s what he does: fly in, hold the line, save who he can.
Except it went sideways, fast. Constructs pierced by corrupted energy. A blade that cut straight through the green like it was glass. He remembered the sting in his chest, like fire blooming inside his ribs. Remembered hitting the ground hard. Then nothing.
When he woke, he was on Oa in the healers’ ward. Weak as a kitten,his chest on fire. They told him he’d been out for a week.
A week.
Hal couldn’t believe it. Bruce and Clark were going to kill him. They must have been so worried. And they were probably pissed. His stomach twisted at the thought of them pacing the manor, Clark biting his lip, Bruce chewing through his bottomless supply of patience.
Healers crowded around his bed, faces grave. They said he’d been poisoned. They didn’t know what it was or where it had come from. Not Sinestro. Not Apokolips. Something new. All they knew was that it was tied to his heart, and they couldn’t predict what it would do.
The good news: he was stable, for now.
The bad: stable didn’t mean cured. Stable meant “don’t push your luck.”
Hal had smiled, cracked a joke, told them he’d push his luck anyway. That’s what he does. But when he was alone again, he’d sat there with his hands trembling, staring at the ceiling and thinking: I need to tell them. I need to tell Clark and Bruce. I can’t keep this to myself.
So the second he was cleared to fly, he rushed home. Heart pounding, head light, scared shitless but ready. Ready to face the storm. Ready to say the words: something’s wrong with me. I don’t know how bad it is. I need you.
He’d touched down on the balcony like he always did, Slipped into the bedroom, already rehearsing what to say. I missed our anniversary,I fucked up. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, but there’s more, there’s something wrong—
The bed was neatly made. The room too quiet. On his dresser: papers.
He’d picked them up, confused. Pages of legal text, neat black letters spelling out the end of his life as he knew it.
Clark walked in before Hal could get past the first page. Stopped in the doorway, eyes unreadable behind his glasses.
“Hal you’re back-“
Hal had held up the papers with shaking hands. “What the hell is this?”
Clark’s voice had been steady, but his face—God, Hal could still see it. Torn open. “We need to talk.”
They went down to Bruce’s study, the three of them. Hal waited for someone to bring up his mission, the week he’d been gone. He wanted them to ask. Needed them to ask. He would’ve told them everything if they had.
But it never did.
Instead, Bruce laid it out in that cold, clipped way of his.
We can’t do this anymore.
The words still echo like shrapnel in Hal’s skull.
We can't do this anymore.
And maybe they were right. They’d agreed on rules, protocols, safety nets. He’d broken them again and again. He left without warning, came back with excuses. He missed too much. Failed too often. He always thought he’d have time to fix it.
Time ran out.
So when the papers slid across the desk, Hal signed. Because what else could he do? He was the problem. He always had been.
The poison never came up. It wasn’t his to burden them with..not when it would seem like a lie a guilt. Not when it wouldnt do anything but make the situation worse.
The mirror fogs as he braces against the sink, breathing hard. His chest seizes, sharp enough to make him double over. He coughs once, then again, until something wet and metallic hits porcelain. He stares at the blood spattered in the basin.
“…That’s new.”
He laughs once, and rinses it down the drain. Pretends it isn’t what it is. Pretends his heart isn’t trying to kill him.
The apartment feels colder when he steps out of the bathroom, towel slung around his hips. He doesn’t bother with clean clothes. Just digs through the drawer until he finds it—Clark’s old Metropolis U t-shirt. He pulls it over his head. The cotton clings in all the wrong ways, hangs too loose on him now.
He should’ve thrown it out months ago. Should’ve stopped spraying Bruce’s cologne on the pillow just to pretend someone was still beside him. Should’ve stopped wearing the ring. But he hasn’t. Can’t.
The couch swallows him as he drops onto it, pulling his knees up, shirt stretched tight in his fists. The TV hums to life, a rerun of some sitcom .
For a few minutes, he lets himself sink into it. Noise is easier than thought. Noise drowns out the echo of Bruce’s voice in the study, Clark’s steady tone when he said we need to talk. Noise makes it easier to forget that the best part of his life ended in a stack of papers he didn’t even argue over.
His eyelids droop. He’s halfway to sleep when the comm in his ring crackles to life
“All hands. Justice League alert. Immediate deployment to the Watchtower.”
Hal groans into the couch cushion, dragging a hand over his face. “Figures.”
His chest aches. His whole body aches. He wants to stay right here, curled up in Clark’s shirt, pretending Bruce’s cologne hasn’t faded from the pillow.
But the world doesn’t stop needing saving just because Hal Jordan is tired.
He pushes himself upright, bones creaking, and reaches for the ring.
-
The Watchtower hums, Batman's voice cuts low and hard across the table as the holo-display flickers, outlining the fleet, the siphon array, the planetary threat. Hal tries to listen. Really tries. But the words slide past him like static.
He sits slouched between Guy and Kyle, both of them shooting him looks like he’s a ticking bomb. He ignores them. His eyelids feel like sandpaper, his chest one long dull ache, and he knows he doesn’t have the juice for this fight. But what’s he supposed to do? Raise his hand and announce, hey, my two ex-husbands, by the way, I’m too sick to hold a construct today? Yeah. Not happening.
Batman keeps talking, clipped, efficient. Superman stands beside him, arms folded, eyes scanning the data. The distance between them cuts sharper than any blade. Cold professionalism. No softness, no warmth. Not for him. Not even a glance his way once. It's been like this for twenty months now and he's still not used to it.
Guy clears his throat, loud. “You know, this is cake. Honestly, me and Rayner could handle it ourselves. Maybe it’s time some of the elders sat this one out, huh?”
Hal shoots him a look, halfway between gratitude and murder. Subtle as a brick through glass, but it’s an out all the same.
Guy plows on, grinning. “I mean, come on—we’ve been running circles around Jordan for years. Hell, we graduated from Jordan University. He should sit back, let us show you all what we can do.”
Kyle mutters low under his breath just loud enough for him and Guy to hear, “Not helping,” but doesn’t stop him.
Batman doesn’t even blink. “We need all hands on deck.” His gaze flicks to Hal for one brief, cold moment before looking away.
Hal swallows, smirks like it doesn’t sting. “All hands it is. Don’t worry, Gard. I’ll try not to hold you back.”
Superman cuts in before Guy can retort. “Ten minutes. Gear up and be ready.”
Chairs scrape back. Boots echo across the deck. Hal pushes himself up, head swimming, and almost makes it to the corridor before Guy’s hand clamps down on his arm. Kyle blocks the exit, jaw tight.
Hal sighs. “Can’t this wait ‘til after we save the world?”
“No,” Kyle says flatly
“You look as good as a wet paper bag that’s been ran over too many times” Guy says bluntly,
Hal gestures at the both of them to keep it down, he doesn't need anyone over hearing them. No one but them knows what's wrong with him and he doesn't want them to.
“Guy” Kyle sighs before looking at Hal “you missed your check ups on Oa..I was just coming down to get you for one Hal. You're not well enough for this type of threat”
And Hal knew they were right.
Hal leans against the wall, runs a hand over his face. He’s too tired for this. Too tired to keep deflecting.
He knows they’re right. He’s in no shape to fight today. Not with the way his health— his body has been declining.
At first it had been nothing..sure he had been in a coma but for the first few weeks after he was fine and convinced everyone was making a big deal out of nothing..and then a construct broke mid fight.
At first he thought whatever. Must’ve been off my game. Grief, sadness, too much in his head. Figured it’d pass. But it didn’t. It got worse, slowly.
Fever. Aches. Headaches that made him want to put his head through a wall. Puking. Couldn’t eat. No energy. Like his body forgot how to work.
The symptoms built up over time, until he had all but collapsed on Oa after a mission.
He’d been hooked up to everything they had for weeks. They ran every test,every scan they could. And all they could come up with was he was getting worse, going to get worse.
And the only solution they had? Telling him not to push it as they looked for a cure.
He was so good at that.
But to know his limits he had to push them right?
And pushing them, getting worse is how he knew damn sure today wasn’t going to go well.
Silence settles like lead. Guy’s mouth works, but no sound comes out. Kyle looks like a kicked puppy.
Hal forces a grin, weak and crooked. “I know my limits guys, I appreciate it I do and I promise I’ll let you drag my ass to Oa after. But you heard spooky” the nickname was still easier to say than Batman, than Bruce
“it’s all hands on deck and plus like you said” he slung his arm over guys shoulder “you two got this, if you’re as good as you say I won’t have to do much anyways”
Guy blinks at Hal’s grin like he’s trying to read the punchline to a joke he didn’t want to laugh at. For half a beat there’s nothing, just the hum of the Watchtower and the holo-map spinning overhead. And then Guy lets out this weird, strangled laugh.
“You absolute lunatic,” he says, and it’s half insult, half plea. He shoves Hal’s shoulder so hard Hal stumbles a step. “Fine. You can come. But I am riding your ass the whole time. You do one dumb thing and I’m hauling you back by your collar.”
Kyle’s jaw is still tight enough it might break. He steps closer, voice low and sharp. “You’re not to go off-grid on any of this. You hear me? You stay on comm. You keep to the plan. If your pulse goes sideways I don’t care how much lip you give me — I am ejecting you. Understood?”
Hal meets his eyes. There’s no humor there, only steel. He nods once, because God help him, the last thing he wants is Kyle’s disappointment translated into action. “Understood. I’ll be as boring as a retirement meeting. Promise.”
Guy snorts. “Boring? Jordan? That’s not in your brochure. But fine. Be a snooze and live to tell the tale.”
Kyle crosses his arms. “After this, you go straight to Oa. No arguments, no detours.”
“Yeah, yeah. Geeze Kyle, hope you talk to girls better than you do me”
Guy laughs out loud this time, but there’s water under it — real worry. “You’re gonna stop being a prick and not die on us, okay?”
Hal slides his hands into his pockets to keep them from shaking. “I’ll try. For you idiots.” He means it more than he should. “Now can we go save the planet?”
Guy claps him on the shoulder with all the warmth he can scrape up.“And if you die? I’m not naming my first kid after you. Or the dog. Whatever. Just don’t.”
Hal bites the laugh back and breathes in, the shallow ache in his ribs tightening. He steels himself, squares his shoulders. “Never said you had to”
They fall into formation — a ragged, glued-together family that knows each other’s bruises. Hal straps in, ironizing bravado back to full strength because that’s how he survives the world and it’s what everyone expects.
But as they head to the deployment bay, Kyle’s hand drops on his shoulder for a second longer than necessary. Guy throws one last, ridiculous salute over his head.
“Don’t be a hero that leaves the boring parts for the rest of us.”
Hal says nothing, but inside there’s a small, stunned, bright thing that feels dangerously like gratitude. He hooks his ring-finger under the band at his throat for a breath — an old comfort, a bad decision, a relic he can’t quite return — and then he moves
-
At first, it holds.
Guy on his left, Kyle on his right, constructs flaring bright against the sky. Three Lanterns locking shields, hammering back the tide. Hal’s ring hums like a living thing, steady, strong enough to make him believe for a few minutes that maybe this won’t kill him.
The enemy comes in waves. Hybrid troopers, warped silhouettes of Sinestro’s designs grafted with Apokoliptian steel. They move like machines but scream like men, and every one of them carries weapons tuned to cut through green light.
Hal keeps his will sharp, constructs solid. A fighter jet there, a wall of iron there, a drill that sends a cluster of them spinning. He keeps up. He always keeps up.
Until it shifts.
The siphon array lights up, turning the battlefield electric. A beam slams into Clark mid-flight. One second he’s cutting through the sky like a sun, the next he’s caught, body jerking, the weapon drinking him dry. His scream cuts through everything—through fire, through shouting, through Hal’s skull like a blade.
“Superman’s down!” someone shouts, but Hal doesn’t need the call. He sees it. He hears it.
Then Bruce goes under. Too many troopers at once, swarm tactics. He fights like a demon, but they pin him, blades pressing in, edges bright with the same corrosive glow that ate through Hal’s construct weeks ago.
Guy’s already on the ground, blood in his mouth. Kyle’s half-buried in rubble, his shield flickering. The rest of the League isn’t faring better. Diana’s chained in energy binds, Flash writhing under shock restraints.
Hal stumbles, knees buckling. His vision whites out. For a second, he’s sure he’s going under too.
But Clark screams again.
And Bruce—Bruce’s face flashes across his vision, bruised, teeth bared as the soldiers drive him down, down, blades pressing for the kill.
No.
Not like this.
Not them.
Hal claws his way back upright, lungs burning, heart hammering like it’s trying to escape his chest. The ring pulses weakly on his finger, warning him, begging him to stop.
He doesn’t stop.
He can’t.
Hal forces himself up. Every muscle screams, his chest already tearing with pain, but he raises his hand anyway. The ring flares, weak at first, then roaring to life as he drags every ounce of himself into it.
The construct surges into being—bright, searing, a storm of green willpower tearing across the battlefield. A spear that shatters the siphon’s core, a net that snaps Diana’s chains, a hammer that crushes the shock restraints pinning Flash.
The ring howls. His body does worse.
It starts with his nose—warmth running down his upper lip. He swipes at it, hand coming back red. Then his chest seizes, sharp and crushing, pain detonating through him. His heart’s hammering too fast, too hard, like it’s bursting open.
And then it does.
White-hot agony tears through his ribs. His breath catches on a scream he doesn’t have air for. Blood gushes from his nose, sprays when he coughs, bursts in his ears until the world goes muffled and wet. His eyes blur red, mouth filling copper-bitter.
He holds anyway.
He has to.
Clark drops free of the siphon, crashing to the ground, gasping, but alive. Relief flashes across his face, raw and wide. Bruce slams a blade through the last trooper pinning him, staggering to his feet. He’s limping, bleeding, but he’s already moving, already running toward Clark.
For a heartbeat, Hal lets himself believe Bruce is moving that way so Clark can catch him.
But Clark’s still staggering, still half on his knees. Bruce doesn’t even look Hal’s way.
The construct shatters.
Hal’s feet slip from under him. Then there’s nothing. No light, no balance—just the brutal realization that he’s falling.
From thousands of feet up.
The battlefield rushes past in a blur of green sparks. His heart spasms, another wave of pain exploding through him. He can’t breathe.
He falls and falls and falls, every second longer than the last. And then the ground rises up.
Impact slams through his body like a meteor strike. All air leaves him, chest bursting, bones rattling. His vision whites. He thinks Better him than them. He’s dying anyway.
Then the world goes black.