"I can make them better", he insists. "You could be there for that. You could responsible for something other than carnage."
She inhales slowly. "And Hal?"
"Jordan will get what he has always deserved."
"What do you think that is?" She pushes. She's never known when to stop.
"You know what it is. What it has always been."
"I don't."
"Figure it out", he says. Always so smug, always so sure he's right. "You're capable of that."
She wants to slam her fist on something, and lash out until he gives her the answers that she wants, but he, also, has never known when to stop. Hal Jordan snapped his neck in two and still, he never relented, not for a single second.
Is this just a continuation of that? Would he even want to make the Guardians better?
Maybe. A part of her knows, yes, it is what he would want. He is as chained to that green light as she is, too blinded by startlingly yellow to realize how it guides his actions even now.
He was once the greatest Green Lantern of all. It shouldn't be such a surprise that he wants to reclaim the title.
But . . . she knows what stands in his way. Who stands in his way. John Stewart and Guy Gardner would never allow Sinestro to recover his former glory while they still draw breath.
She knows what's in his way. She knows from experience what he does when something's in his way.
Yellow is just as bright as green and she shines so brightly in that moment.
"I'm not going to let you hurt Hal."
"You couldn't stop me before."
"I can now. I will."
He sighs. It's not in disappointment, for once; more a mix of nostalgia and exasperation. "You can't stop this."
Neither can he. Blue fingers hold this pen, but far from its reach lies another. Far from its reach lies a new destiny, a new story that itches to be told.
He can't escape it. He never could.
"You could join this", he says, it writes. 
Autumn, willful as ever, terrified as ever, perseveres. "I told you, I'm not hurting him. I won't hurt anyone."
His voice is soft, in complete contrast with his touch ━━ those poisoned fingers grab her neck and squeeze. "It was supposed to make you better than this."
"I'm already better than you", she snarls. "What more do I need?"
He drops her, suddenly. "You need to let go. Jordan won't be saving you. Grayson will abandon you. Koriand'r will ki━━"
"You don't know them! You know nothing about them!"
"I know they will leave", he continues. "Everyone always does."
Except him. He'll leave her life, allow her to find some kind of peace, before he comes back and knocks it down . . . but he still comes back. As much as she is cursed to this endless loop, so is he. As much as she wants to tear a new page into the story, so does he.
As much as she wants to deny their similarities, etched into the cosmos . . .
"You have never won a battle against me."
"There's always a first time for everything."
"You have never joined me either."
(As true as it is false).
She looks up, slowly, carefully, and repeats, "There's always a first time for everything." 
Always a last time, too, doesn't she know that by now? She can take that outstretched hand and it can be the last time she does so. 
It's a familiar mistake to make.
Round and round they go, this endless mind game locking them into place. He taught her so, so well, even when he never meant to, even when he never noticed, and now they'll both pay the price for that.
They are obsessive, pathetic creatures, after all.


★


CONNECTIONS DON'T DIE. Rippling, swirling colors twist around them all, slipping beneath the skin and searing onto souls, unbeknownst to them all.
Well ━━ unbeknownst to most of them.
Her soul is alive. Her soul is shrieking. Her soul is, forever and always, tied to a demon from hell that desperately wants to draw blood.
Gar finds her, like always. She's glaring at him, the Spectre, the one enigma that nobody in the room can figure out. They all think he's behind it. They're all too terrified of what that would mean.
She can feel it all around her. The fear bleeds out of them, sweeping through the room like a dark cloud, letting that tension grow and grow. The last time they battled the thing that was Hal Jordan . . . not everyone made it back.
She can see it in the way Black Canary stands tensely next to Green Arrow, that they don't all expect to make it back this time either.
"What are you thinking?" Garfield asks her.
"Of making a very bad decision", she answers. And it would be so, so stupid of her, to run off and do this and tell no one.
So she tells him. 
"The Spectre is hiding something big", she says. "I wanna hide out what. I think I know how to."
"Have you told Dick and Kory?"
"No. Not gonna. They'd say it's 'too risky'", she says, adding somewhat affectionate air quotes to the words.
"Is it?"
Her shoulders slump. "It is."
And it's more than she can say in words. More than she could ever speak into existence; there aren't words for what she sees when the Spectre matches her glare. There aren't words to describe that shade of yellow, that terrible yellow that she knows.
Glowing beneath skin and burning in eyes and reaching out like a million knives ━━ Autumn had always sworn that sickly light like a weapon.
It looks like one on him, too. It looks like the end of everything.
Ergo: the bad idea. The terrible decision.
She knows that he's dangerous, even beyond being the Spectre, but she also knows he's hiding something and Autumn's still missing and Dick and Kory are radiating anxiety and she knows she is so fucking tired of her makeshift family being ripped apart.
First Deathstroke, then CADMUS, and now this? No, Rachel Roth will not stand by and let that happen.
Let God's judgment be cast down upon her ━━ she already knows she's going to hell. The voice of her father assures her of that every night.


★