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AUTUMN'S BEEN LOST BEFORE. She spent years wandering a labyrinth of emotion and memory, a twisting maze designed to drive her insane. She found her way out of that. She could find her way out of this. Where there is a will, there is a way.
She's just lacking on the will part at the moment. A soul can take only so much before it cracks and Autumn feels like hers shattered into a million pieces centuries ago.
The man in front of her does not help matters.
"I'm sure we can come to an agreement", Sinestro says.
Autumn doesn't reply. It looks like him and it speaks like him, but Parallax has had such a long time to know them all. Sinestro is in front of her. Sinestro is dead. Sinestro is responsible for it all. She can't figure out what is real anymore, what is an illusion meant to drive her into the depths of insanity, what is the truth that's already dragged into her madness.
She doesn't think it matters much when it comes to him. Illusion or reality, the sight of him will always hurt.
She can close her eyes but that yellow light bleeds forward. It always bleeds forward. Maybe it always has ━━ isn't that the way the story's written? Autumn, drenched in red and yellow, yellow, yellow? Sticking to her skin, curdling her blood, cracking her bones... it all comes back to yellow, in the end.
Yellow like the sun.
She feels it, sometimes, even in this place. Lost between madness and memory, it has a habit of blazing in, scorching her skin, and she runs from it every time.
She is not Hal. She is not that brave. She is a cruel and cowardly thing.
She meets Sinestro's gaze. She looks at the monster and finds it more a mirror than a terror.
"No", she says. "There won't be agreement."
Take her apart. Rip her limb from limb. At the end of it all, she's still Autumn Alita ━━ she's still unable to let go of her past.
And her past would never let her betray Hal Jordan.
There's no surprise in those cat-like eyes. It's an old story, remember? It's one they all know.
There is a disappointment in them, though. It could have been there from the beginning, edited out of her memories to make way for something cleaner, something that she could grasp onto.
It feels new. It feels ancient.
"It's a new day", he says. "You don't have to be left behind."
"Again. Left behind again."
Curiosity sparks, but doesn't he know? Old stories and old idioms come to mind, but he pushes on anyway. "What do you mean by that?"
She doesn't move. She always moves. "You left me. You abandoned the Corps and decided that meant abandoning me too."
