“My best friend. My ally, who’s saved my life more times than I can count. And I shatter him as recklessly as I shatter our friendship.”
PROMPT: reunion + healing. leave it to barry to carry guilt for something he did in a dream (it’s not abt the dream)
@halbarrysecretsanta gift for @galaxy---ghost!
[ID in alt + below cut]
Fancomic of a reunion between Barry Allen and Hal Jordan, page 1.
Panel 1: Barry and Hal sit atop a building, both in hero uniform except for Barry’s cowl pulled down. The city lights illuminate them from below against a starry dusk sky. Hal says, “Glad we can finally catch up with each other like this.”
Panel 2: Hal turns his head in Barry’s direction, revealing bright green cracks forming at the corner of his eye. “Must be nice to slow down for once, huh?” he says.
Panel 3: Closeup of Barry’s eyes going wide, noticing the fractures on Hal’s face.
Panel 4: Closeup of Hal’s eyes, green cracks spreading across his mask. The faint outline of his pupils glance up at Barry.
Panel 5: Barry looks stunned in return.
Panels 6-9: Sequence of the cracks spreading from Hal’s neck to his chest and arms, all the way down to his hand. Barry tentatively reaches out to place his hand on top of it, thumb rubbing the fracture on one of Hal’s fingers as if trying to smooth it out.
Panel 10: Barry turns his head away, the top half of his face cut off by the panel. “Yeah,” he says stiffly.
Page 2:
Panels 1-2: Hal is in silhouette, viewed from behind. He looks down at their hands before looking back up with a smile. “Someone’s clingy.”
Panel 3-5: The sequence of panels are outlined like cracked glass. Barry’s hand stills on top of Hal’s but he can’t bring himself to let go. He squeezes it instead. “Sorry,” he says. A close-up of his eye glances up, filled with guilt.
Panel 6: Hal looks back at Barry, the panel taking up most of the page and shattering like a broken window. In half of the shards, Hal is the same, present in GL uniform with the sky darkening behind him. In the other shards, Hal resembles the version of him from Barry’s nightmare, skin burnt and mottled with green cracks all over his body in the same place as what Barry had been seeing.
Current Hal starts to say, “You miss me that much?”
Nightmare Hal says in faint, cracked word bubbles, “It killed me, but you wouldn’t know that ‘cause you weren’t here. As usual.”
Current Hal continues to say, “C’mon, it hasn’t been THAT long.”
Page 3: Sequences of flashbacks fill the page like shattered glass. All the figures’ faces in each panel are obscured.
Panel 1: Parallax gestures with his arms out in a grandiose manner, green light swirling behind him. Barry’s narration box reads: “Hal…”
Panel 2: Barry’s Flash statue stands upright with a streak of green from Hal’s flight making a path right past him. The memory invokes the time Hal visited Barry’s statue after Barry’s death.
Panel 3: Barry looks down at his hand grimly, his whole body vibrating. Hal is right behind him, giving him a small, supportive smile. The memory invokes the time Barry came back to life with Hal comforting him as he tried to readjust.
Panel 4: Barry and Hal are sitting at a bar construct in the sky as Hal smiles at Barry with a hand on his shoulder. The memory invokes the time Hal gave Barry advice and reminded him that every second is a gift.
Panel 5: Barry’s POV of looking at his own hands, sharp-taloned and weathered by the Speed Force. His suit is singed off up to his wrists and sparks fly off his skin. Past his hands is Nightmare Hal’s dismembered body, broken up into fractured blocks. The memory invokes the time Barry shattered Hal in Knight Terrors. Barry’s narration box reads: “I could never miss you enough.”
Page 4:
Panel 1-2: Flash-forward to Hal and Barry on the roof, a close-up of Barry’s hand on Hal’s as before, except they both resemble the ones from the nightmare. He lifts his hand off of Hal’s. The panels are outlined like cracked glass.
Panel 3-5: The panels are outlined in green. Barry forces a smile, looking up at the sky instead of Hal. “You wish,” he says. The next panel zooms in on their hands which have returned to normal. Barry’s hand now sits next to Hal’s, but it’s vibrating tensely against him. A close-up of Hal’s eyes glance down at it.
Panel 6: From behind, Hal stares up ahead pensively. Barry is silhouetted, head tilted downwards.
Page 5: A series of 3 present-day panels overlay a backdrop of sequential panels. The background panels are framed like a broken window, each fracture a panel.
Present-day panels:
Panel 1: Barry’s hand vibrates tensely when it gets nudged by Hal’s pinky. Hal and Barry’s hands resemble their hands from the nightmare, with Hal’s hand fractured with green cracks and Barry’s hand sharp and weathered. A panel in the background reveals a shot of Barry looking down in trepidation at Hal’s touch.
Panel 2: Hal’s hand reaches over Barry’s hand, fingers going beneath his palm. The cracks in Hal’s hand are fading. Barry’s hand is also starting to return to normal.
Panel 3: Hal’s fingers interlock with Barry’s. Hal and Barry’s hands have fully returned to normal, without cracks or injury.
Background panels, from left to right: Nightmare Barry balls his hand into a fist before it gets swept away in a motion of lightning. Nightmare Hal’s hand is severed, the open wound blotchy, bright red, and solid without bone. The ring on his fist gradually pulls him together, veins stretching out to connect the pieces. Present-day Hal holds Barry’s hand as Barry slowly, tentatively reciprocates. The previously weathered fingers of his suit have rematerialized.
The background panels circle a cracked opening in the corner, framing a shot of Barry. He looks at Hal with wide, glowing eyes. Confusion, fear, and hope cross his face.
Page 6: A splash page of Barry and Hal sitting atop the building, angled from below. Hal holds their hands up, their knees tapping together. He smiles, responding simply, “I missed you too, buddy.”
