Art Is The Weapon

@brxghtestday said:  [TEXT] THEY WON’T LEAVE ME ALONE

[✉️ -> Kyle]: who? [✉️ -> Kyle]: the skeletons? the pumpkins? the ghosts? [✉️ -> Kyle]: what level of distress is this?

(✉️ ➡️ boss baby): i used it all up throwing pies in your face (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): thank you it is in no way based on how i spent my afternoon (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): great! then i’m definitely in (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): at least you’ve /got/ a career path. the last place i applied to blocked my number after the background check (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): wanna go to the bar where jess works so we can bother her?

         Kyle’s immediate answer couldn’t stay on his tongue for much longer. “Nope. No. Didn’t hear a thing.”

          He was in the middle of checking on everyone he knew within the radius of this freak Halloween event when he’d been chased by what he could only assume was the Halloween aisle of a Walgreens. He was just about done with this holiday he’d sworn off since he had one bad Trick or Treat-ing incident: his six year old self nearly fainted going up to the most decorated house in the neighborhood and being treated to it’s owner wearing a Ghostface mask. It wasn’t something he wanted to repeat ever again, and yet... Here he was, feeling the same old nerves creeping up into his bloodstream, making his heart beat five times faster than it probably should. 

(✉️ ➡️ boss baby): fought an alien? (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): saved a planet? (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): threw a peanut at a coke bottle from across the room and made it in? (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): oh thank god you’re telling me that was my last good guess (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): oh dude that’s sick!  (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): sure, but you’re buying. big money man, gotta be your treat! (✉️ ➡️ boss baby): also, i’m broke as hell

art credit!!

✨  for  a  random  text  from  my  muse || @brxghtestday

(✉️ ➡️ kyle ):so i’m taking a girl on a date and she’s an artist. she’s not a fan of the movies, but loves to paint. any suggestions? i know all of the hot photography spots, but i was hoping you might have some ideas in that lantern of yours. <3

The world is spinning around and 'round out of control again / The 7-11 to the fear of breaking down / So send my love a letterbomb, and visit me in Hell / We're the ones going home

         Slowly... Returning to society was happening slowly. 

          When he started noticing people weren’t haloed all the time by a yellow aura of pure fear just by him being around, he was starting to piece together that... Well, maybe he was just being paranoid. It was hard to admit to himself that he was just being stupid, but it wouldn’t have been the first time he wasn’t thinking all that right about his emotional responses. Hell, he still wasn’t sure what he was doing. And with no calls from the Guardians, he was worrying about a few things that were a bit bigger than a handful of human faces looking on in disgust.          And currently, he was worrying about which particular shades of paint he was running out of.

          With what little money he had left from a contract after paying his rent and buying enough food to last him the week (with a few places he knew he could stop in for cheap pizza with the mask on), he was out buying supplies. Recently, colors made their way back into his artwork, back into his life other than the whirlwind of emotions in the atmosphere. He was picking them apart carefully, trying to focus on the colors he wielded because those seemed a lot more important in the long run... The ones made of light and the tubes of concentrated pigment in his hand. 

wings // @brxghtestday​

When he was a kid, Simon used to tell his sister he was planning on growing wings one day. He’d been so sure that, with enough determination, he could trick biology into giving him a little something extra to get him off the ground. It had all seemed pretty harmless until he jumped off the roof of the garage, positive that the shock to his system would sprout him a pair of feathery things that would keep him from hitting the ground.

Needless to say, biology was a little harder to fool than Simon had anticipated.

He wound up with a broken ankle and a lecture, tears in his mother’s eyes as she switched between English and Arabic so quickly it made his head spin. (Though, in retrospect, the head spinning could have been due to the pain of the broken ankle, too. Who knew? Maybe it was a combo.) He remembered Sira’s anger, quieter than their mother’s and far too mature for a fourteen year old, remembered how she’d dragged him, crutches and all, into her bedroom as soon as he was home from the ER. You can’t do that anymore, she’d said. You can’t try to fly when I need you on the ground, okay? We gotta stick together. 

Fifteen-odd years later, and here Simon was, flying without wings. He might have felt bad for breaking his promise if Sira hadn’t broken hers first. She didn’t need him on the ground anymore, as it turned out.

Simon flipped lazily in the air, cross-legged as he hovered. “Are we going to see some action,” he asked, breaking the silence for the thousandth time, “or is this more of ‘sit and observe’ kind of mission? Because you know I’m bad at the ‘sit and observe’ kind of missions.” 

It was rare for Simon to go out on patrol with someone other than Jessica, but he felt like Kyle needed company and he was bored at home, anyway. He figured this would be good for the both of them. He just didn’t anticipate it being so slow, was all. “Hey. Wanna play I Spy?”

          Kyle had taken his time getting out into the skies. He wasn’t sure the world was ready to actually see the White Lantern, what that would mean for people’s perception of the Corps... Or of him. Without the mask, Oblivion had nearly... Well, obliterated his chance of having a standing secret identity. Those who remembered his face might only remember the torture that came with it, if they weren’t too deeply traumatized. He was getting out of the hole he’d dug himself finally, though he kept his presence pretty well above the New York skyline. If anything, the public below could mistake him for a shooting star, if they ever looked up.

          The company he found in Simon wasn’t unwelcome. He’d known the other Lantern almost from the moment he got recruited. He’d been his superior, his trainer, and he felt he had the seniority and the responsibility that came with it. He had to remind himself that Simon was in an entirely other league, like most of the rest of the Corps were. Their willpower shaped in different and wonderful ways, sometimes it was fun to just sit back and watch the cosmically sourced ‘magic’ happen.

          Even if it was just the two of them taking a sky-stroll. 

          “Uhh-” With the silence broken again, Kyle found himself stumbling for words, crossing his arms as he drifed along. “I guess it’s more of an observation. I don’t think there’s any reports of a galactic threat so... Eyes to the ground?” A soft shrug highlighted his own confusion. Why were they out here? Weren’t there enough heroes to do the job for them at this point? What drew him back to protecting this planet when he had a Universe he could be shooting through at the speed of light, helping other planets that had, surprisingly, more issues than Earth.

@brxghtestday​

Lorna hadn’t seen him since Malice brought out Oblivion. It was a pity, she’d liked the friendly guy who was willing to help find a relative stranger’s necklace in the water at the docks. Who’d been concerned about her being out all alone, no matter how misplaced that concern was. But every time she thought about finding him, guilt gnawed at her heart. The consequences of Malice lingered heavily like a fog that wouldn’t clear.

She couldn’t wallow in it forever though. It wasn’t her. Malice wasn’t her. But she had to take responsibility for what she’d done anyway. Finding him wasn’t the easiest thing, but she hadn’t really been sleeping much lately. Lorna didn’t want to examine if it was because of the nightmares or something else. No, what was important was that she found him. Kyle. He wasn’t exactly easy to find, evidently avoiding public as much as she was. But eventually, she found him. Alone in a cafe he seemed to frequent more than anything else lately. 

It was hard to ignore that gnawing guilt and anxiety in her chest as she approached and lingered a couple feet from his table. “Kyle. Hi.”

/

          If there was any place he was sure he wouldn’t be judged, it was just a few floors beneath his messy apartment: Radu’s Café.

          The landlord had been one of the first few to know his secret light-created spandex double life, and had kept his place secure even when he couldn’t pay rent for the few months at a time he was gone doing Corps work or League work. It was a place he knew he could sit down and relax, take in the sun streaming through the dirty windows, get a cup of coffee and get lost in his sketches. It was when he was here, with open air and ambient noise of life that he could clear his head. Even though every patron, even every worker, had violent colors swirling around them, he could just ignore it and get his thoughts out on the page. 

         Only.... His thoughts hadn’t been so clear for a while. They were all jumbled, sketchy, in full blacks and charcoals. He was working in negative space, and the colors just weren’t coming back to him. As much as he tried to push back the creative block, as frustrated as he was about how long this had been going on, he still couldn’t think of any other closures he might subconsciously need... Well, except for the entirety of New York City. But he wasn’t about to construct a giant ‘I’m Sorry’ banner across the sky. He was starting small, and that would have to do for the moment.

          But boy, he didn’t expect to see Lorna again.

“You really should be use to this. I like to be a surprise. You can’t run away if I surprise you. Or you know, slam the door in my face.” Jason deadpanned, staring down the Lantern’s fist before he lowered it. He wasn’t good at all of this: feelings admission. He was good at confrontation, letting harsh words drip off his tongue like acid. Jason had a lot of sharp edges, practically wrapped up in barbed wire on top to keep people out. There had been so many instances that he finally let the cracks in the walls show and it just resulted in nothing but pain. It was far easier to lash out instead and hurt those around him rather than let himself get hurt. He ran and ran, running away from situations and in that he realized there were some things he shared with his old man and the comparison to Willis alone made his stomach churn. 

This could be his out: use the excuse that Kyle was handing him on a silver platter and leave. Though, something stopped him. There was the way alone that Kyle was looking at him that made something twist up in his chest uncomfortably. His lips parted and he let out a sharp breath, “shut up. You didn’t even ask.” Was what finally ended up coming out.

There was a moment of silence on his end before he sighed and continued, “I knew it wasn’t you, idiot. Well, after he started talking, clearly. I know a thing or two about doing things when you’re not yourself. The Pit rage…isn’t pretty. Never has been. I’ve destroyed a room or…five while under the influence of it. It’s like this green fog that makes me forget anything and everything going on around me and I don’t know what happened until I’m back to me.” He scratched at the back of his neck and huffs out, “I’m just saying, I get it. So stop being an asshole and avoiding me. I’m here, aren’t I? That counts for something.” It counted for everything in his book, but Jason didn’t say that.

/

          Kyle managed out a scoff, but no witty retort. He was too tired, too defeated to try managing anything other than an exasperated breath at the very obvious implications of Jason’s actions. His eyes couldn’t meet his, couldn’t stop staring at the crumpled papers on the floor and scattered visions of his other half (or... Maybe just a part of him now. He was still trying to figure that part out.) He didn’t want to face the consequences of what could be his actions, or... Or whatever this was turning into. Questions raced through his mind faster than he could process an answer, faster than he could put a voice to them before Jason started to talk. 

          He flinched. Just a touch. He didn’t ask, he had nearly cut off all communication from the outside world because he just... Assumed. He should’ve known better, costumed crime-fighters tended to be a stubborn bunch. Hell, Jason had come back from the dead. You don’t get too many chances to give a middle-finger to the afterlife no matter how involuntary the return was. You don’t get many chances to be heroic without being almost assigned your position in the Universe. Kyle slowly looked up as the other continued, managing to sit back on his feet. The rage... The napalm he could always taste. He knew it well, even if he didn’t know the extent. He was empathizing... He was being vulnerable in a way that Kyle rarely got to see.

          And it made a small smile spread across his cheeks. 

Kyle was nervous. Dick might not have been the World’s Greatest Detective — his family liked to point out that, in spite of his training, he probably wouldn’t even make it into the top ten — but he could read body langauge easily enough, and Kyle’s wasn’t exactly subtle. He was trying to mask it, to be sure, trying to come off as relaxed in a way that he definitely wasn’t, but Dick could see the frayed nerves underneath.

And it wasn’t as if he didn’t know why. There’d been a blackout, a being of rage and anger and everything bad all rolled into one package wearing Kyle’s face. It had terrorized the city, and maybe parts of it had been him. Maybe it was hard not to blame yourself for that. Maybe most of the people who saw him were a lot less willing to give Kyle a break than Dick was. 

“Always do,” Dick joked, trying for a lighter tone because it was what he always did, because it made it a little easier to breathe. He expected Kyle to take him up on his offer, to tell him he wanted to talk about anything else, but he didn’t. And Dick was pleasantly surprised at that. His smiled, gave a nod that was meant to be encouraging, let his eyes stay glued to Kyle’s.

Glancing to the couch, he nodded again and settled onto the cushion. “You don’t have to explain anything you don’t want to, but… I’d rather hear it from you than from somebody else. You know?”

          Kyle managed a bit of a genuine laugh, still held tight by the breaths he somehow couldn’t catch. But Dick Grayson had made him laugh, the son of a bitch. “Yeah, well... Probably better that you missed this one, dude, it was not a good look for me.” Even so, he was about to pour his guts out to the guy who was somehow thoughtful enough to come to his shitty Greenwich apartment just to make sure he was still alive. (More than alive, Kyle thought to himself. Not quite death-proofed but more than alive somehow.) 

          Another heavy sigh closed his color-changing eyes. How was he going to word this when he hadn’t been able to do it with his comrades in green arms? He wondered if someone without powers, without the chance to have them, could really understand. But that’s not what it was about, was it? No one was going to understand but him, not fully anyways. Sympathy and empathy were the only two things he could count on, if that at all. He’d just have to keep an eye on that subdued aura circling the head of his friend.

          Alright, Rayner. Deep breath. You can do this.

          “It’s uh... It’s better to tell someone. You know, in case someone starts an online Lantern hate forum-” His own way of making light fell flat on a croaked throat, clearing it with a bit of a rough cough before continued, leaning forward to stare at the stained carpet, busying his hands with the white ring. “There’s... There’s this character I made as a kid, you know, when I was kind of this angsty tot. I remember the first time I drew him, total Saturday Morning big bad lookin’ guy. He was kind of my vent character, I guess. When I felt pissed off and powerless, I always drew him making my problems disappear. Self inflicted art therapy.” His hands stilled as he watched them fiddle, a white pen forming in his grip. “Eventually, I gave him a name, and a real purpose, when I saw that there were superheroes among us. He was the conqueror of the universe, no one could stop him... So he was Oblivion.” 

(✉️ ➡️ condiment king): [UNSENT] you think? how is /neither/ of you sure? (✉️ ➡️ condiment king): okay. good. we have an understanding […] (✉️ ➡️ condiment king): will you tell jason i’m good at shovel talks

[ ✉ ⟹ ground control ] : Yeah, for sure

[ . . . ]

(✉️ ➡️ tnemidnoc gnik :) ): no she just gave her a cruelly early bedtime (✉️ ➡️ tnemidnoc gnik :) ): frankly she’s like ursula (✉️ ➡️ tnemidnoc gnik :) ): like what kind of fairy godmother says: i hope you figure it out in 30 minutes or less bc you need to get your ass back in bed? (✉️ ➡️ tnemidnoc gnik :) ): at least i’m giving you wings!  (✉️ ➡️ tnemidnoc gnik :) ): and i can turn jason into a bee too and tell him to buzz off (✉️ ➡️ tnemidnoc gnik :) ): my plan is perfect