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Ashen Stars	By : KMac Category: DC Verse Cartoons > Green Lantern: The Animated Series Views: 1223 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Do not own Green Lantern: The Animated Series, because if I did it wouldn't have been cancelled. I make this for love, not money.

Chapter List
- 1-Mouth Full of Ash
- 2-Heart full of Stars
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Heart full of Stars
Red construct dagger in hand, Razer grimly approached Aya, there before the beginning of all things. Blinking away tears of weakness, he cried out, dredging up every erg of outrage, fear, and self-loathing into the will to strike her down. The raised dagger dissolved in his hands before he could drive it home, with nothing in him that could sustain it. She turned about at his cry, calling his name before striking out at him. Aya, no! Please, I didn't mean it... I could never hurt you... not again. The blast from her dark hands burned through his armor like tissue, and seared into his chest. Grotz it hurt... but not as much as seeing her turn away had hurt. Mercifully, everything grew dim... Was this, finally, the welcome end of his pain...?
...Aw, nartz. It wasn't, or at least not yet. He could feel himself drifting in this dark space, consciousness and pain both slipping slowly from him. Faintly he heard voices nearby. From the timbres, it seemed to be Jordan and Aya. Why hadn't the human helped him with his attack? Wasn't that the reason Hal so urgently summoned him? As he further faded, cold began to battle the pain, and with the cold and growing peace that stole over him, came visions... memories playing themselves out behind his eyes. He saw Aya in the spider prison nightmare again; but this time he could see that her freeing him wasn't an act of cruelty towards him, but of loyalty to her friends; the same loyalty she would gladly bestow on him. She never meant the things she'd done to cause him hurt, he knew that now.
Ilana used to chide him for being the center of his own universe, and never considering that sometimes he was just a bit player in someone else's life story. How he missed that gentle wisdom. Even now, could he dare admit to himself that his grief for her was fading, like the scabbed-over sorrows he felt for his parents? Now, as he was dying, he finally consigned Ilana's memory to his past, and embraced the aching regret that whatever he and Aya might have been... would never be. A great burden lift from his soul, and Razer lived again that sweet almost-moment on Volkreg, when he had given her the flower. If... he ever had a chance again, another moment to just hold her close, breathe her in and drown in the depths of her eyes, he would kiss Aya. He swore it to himself.
How much of a fool was he not to see she was a living soul? Did he believe his instincts were so perversely bad that a collection of metal plates, algorithms, and wires could capture his heart, no matter how pleasing the shape? There was something real inside that component shell, and past the dulcet voice; a spirit that never gave up on him, even when he himself had. It irked him that he had to hear it from that marred Guardian hag before he could make himself truly believe it...
But wait, had he...? He had! It never registered before, but he had seen what must be her true form, not once, but twice. In the spider prison when she led him to help the others, she was a spark of Green energy, emerald lightning crawling along the prison's circuits. He'd seen it again, that disastrous day when he'd denied her his love. Her Spark fled the Manhunter's broken shell to inhabit her normal form again. A machine could never do something like that, not even the most sophisticated AI computer. She literally disembodied her essence out of any housing, into a free-acting force unconnected to any artificial device. What was that, if not life?
In all the time they tried to bring her back to her true self, his feelings towards her had only strengthened. He argued that she be treated with mercy, even as it seemed that she wrought destruction far exceeding anything that he blamed himself for. When they asked her to stop her crimes, she only told them they were wrong about what was happening. In the end, though, despite those numberless crimes, he could not bring himself to harm her; he would forgive her anything, even this slow, empty death.
He sensed someone nearby, and small hands took gentle hold of him. He opened his eyes with difficulty and saw Aya there, her eyes still disturbingly dark. However, there was something profoundly different in her expression. She looked... remorseful, and worried. "Aya..." he breathed.
"Yes, my love," she answered, sorrow evident in her voice. His heart leaped with painful joy in his chest, in response to those longed for words. He coughed, and his eyes slid shut again. They'd done it; they finally got through to her. Now I can die in peace, Razer thought, and once more knew the meaning of regret. Was it not a cosmic joke that one of them only spoke of their love when the other was nearly gone?
She talked of medicine, and he wished he could laugh, because no medicine could help him. He could smell his own charred flesh, and feel the organs inside him failing one by one. She put him into Hal's safeguarding and then pulled them away from the First Event, and back into their own time. When the structure shook as the rift shuddered closed, all he could think of was the feel of her love and protection around him. "You will be alright, Razer," she said. His hearing must be failing, because her voice no longer had that bitter edge to it. "You must be alright!"
He wept inside from the pain in her voice, when he felt something come over him. A light... a heat... energy... he could not put a name to what he was feeling, playing on his broken body and sinking deep inside to knit him back together. The cold and pain fled before the healing force, leaving him hale and well, if somewhat drafty from the rents in his armor. "I will be," he said, seeing her look as she should, "Now that you have come back to me."
Then all he could do is react, as his love's salvation changed nothing about the greater threat around them. She had only one way for her to stop the madness she created, and willful as ever she carried it out. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered changes in her manner of speaking. She sounded older, as if she'd gained a maturity that only pain and bitter experience could bring. He wished more than anything that he could know how those changes would affect things between them... but it was too late. Holding her in his arms, he lost her once more; she dissolved into stardust until there was nothing left to hold. He bowed his head, as all about them her Manhunters succumbed to the cursed virus.
He left Malthus with the Green Lanterns on their triumphant return to Oa. As they travelled, he listened as Jordan told him the truth he'd discovered about Aya's actions, and while it relieved some of the guilt he harbored for his inability to act, nothing could fill the hollow emptiness her absence created within him. Salaak gave him a Red battery the Corps confiscated from the attempted invasion, and with it, Razer restored his armor. It was easier than stealing a new one and it gave him grim amusement to think he once more possessed Atrocitus's personal battery.
When the Greens went to debrief with their masters, he took the time to catch his breath, alone. Surveying the state of his battered heart, he could see this day had truly changed him. The heavy burden of his guilt and grief for Ilana was gone from him now. Saint Walker told him there would come a time when this would happen, and he had angrily rejected the thought, in the mistaken belief that it would be a betrayal of her memory. He could see now that it was not, but only proof that he still lived on. Yet, to what end? He had no vengeance to drive him, no burning hate inside, and nothing to which to return. What was there for him to live for?
He gazed at the pale orange clouds floating by, and felt how his body still tingled from her healing, or perhaps the stardust still clung to him. He ached for Aya, but it didn't feel the same as the day he found Ilana had perished. There was no sense of finality to this ending. As if there was a chance... a feeling as Aya had said, that she was out there somewhere, waiting for him to find her. He couldn't explain it, this feeling, but the more he dwelt on it, the stronger it became. This was not the end of their stories. It couldn't be.
He had a promise to himself to keep. His friends would want to go with him, but they had their duties. He had only one; finding Aya. She had repaired his broken heart, and brought him new life. He would spend whatever he had left of it in search of her, and when he found her, he would never, ever let her go.
Now that was something to live for!
-fin
Notes: (My Writing Jam - Elo "Time")
This album about time travel just fit both parts of this story so well, from the robot girl near the beginning, the distopian middle, to the parting exhortations of Holding Tight To Your Dreams.
"...Look to the stars, for Hope burns bright!"
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Ashen Stars