Author Notes: This is the first SuperMartian story that I'm uploading, so I hope you enjoy it. It's set right after Failsafe, and I know that was all the way back in season one, but this has been lying around in one of my notebooks for months and now I'm sharing it. Please enjoy and review.
Disclaimer: I do not own Young Justice. It belongs to Cartoon Network and DC Comics.
Escaping Nightmares
When Miss Martian finally stopped crying, she asked if she could just be alone for a little while.
"I'm okay now." she promised, "I just need a little time to collect myself. Just to calm down. Okay?"
Everyone understood. There were grim nods and gentle touches of reassurance as everyone began to exit the Cave. While everyone else was leaving, Red Tornado walked off to go check something on the Cave's computer system; and Superboy left the room with Wolf after casting one last worried glance at M'gann.
Once the others had left, Miss Martian sat back down on the metal slab she'd been lying on during the training exercise.
"It's all my fault." she whispered to herself, "All of it. They almost died… because of me."
She closed her eyes. She knew she shouldn't have been thinking about it; she knew she should have been trying to forget, but she could help it. Everything was still so vivid in her mind. Every emotion. Every sensation. It had all felt so real. It all still felt real.
The memories began to flash through her mind before she could stop them.
Artemis's skeleton suspended for a moment in the death beam from the aliens' ship. The snow and the freezing temperatures. She felt the scream that had escaped her lips as she looked on in horror.
The pain of the Bioship being disintegrated. The mental link being severed. The explosions and the rubble. The Hall of Justice had been barely more than ruins.
The heat of the flames as the mother ship exploded. The knowledge that Robin and Kid Flash – her teammates, her friends – were dying inside. There had been nothing she could do to save them.
And that look on her uncle's face as he had stabbed her. He looked resolved. Not angry, not even sorry. He knew what had to do and felt no emotion. The pain had done exactly what it was meant to do. It had shocked her into consciousness.
She felt a drop of water hit her hand, bringing her back to reality. She opened her eyes to see a single tear glistening on her green skin. She was crying. Tears ran down her face in silent streams.
"It's all my fault." she whispered again.
She couldn't stop the tears. She buried her face in her hands, hunched over. Trying to hide, trying to escape from all of the death and destruction that she had caused.
As she sat there in the shadow of her fear, she heard a voice call her name from the hallway.
"M'gann?" It was Conner.
She wiped her eyes. She didn't want him to see her crying again; to see her weakness, her lack of control. Not again.
"I just wanted to make sure you were okay." Conner said as he approached her.
When he was close enough to perceive the remnants of dried tears on her face, he stopped in his tracks.
"You were crying."
"Yeah." M'gann replied quietly, trying to betray as little emotion as possible.
He sat down next to her and asked, "What's wrong?"
"It's all my fault." she replied flatly, holding back another wave of tears.
"What? The exercise? That wasn't your fault."
"Of course it was my fault!" M'gann shouted, standing up. In less than a second, she whipped from despair to rage. She was angry now; there too many emotions swirling inside her mind to hold them in any more. The sadness, the rage, the fear, the guilt. It was all coming out at once.
"I couldn't control my powers!" she continued to shout, "I couldn't control my emotions! And I ended up almost killing everyone because… because I'm to weak to control the amount of power I have. How can you say that it's not my fault?" she had calmed down a bit by the end of her speech, and her voice had grown a bit softer.
Conner stood then, too.
"M'gann, you didn't know what was happening. You didn't know you were losing control. If you could have stopped, you would have. You mentally taking over the exercise was an accident. There was nothing you could do. You don't have to beat yourself up about it." he said.
"You almost died." she whispered, the tears welling up again, "The whole team almost died. Because I couldn't focus, couldn't control my powers. How can you not blame me for that?"
"Because you didn't do anything wrong." Conner said, reaching out and gently touching her arm.
It all came flooding back the moment his hand touched her skin.
The feeling when Conner had died in the training exercise. She couldn't sense him through her telepathic link anymore. His thoughts had just gone silent. His mind, his life had been extinguished. It only took a second, and then she'd just known. He wasn't there anymore. He was gone… and he wasn't coming back.
M'gann lost what little control she had left. She broke down crying, trying to hide her face from Conner.
But within seconds, he had his strong arms wrapped around her. He held her close as he repeatedly whispered to her, "It's okay. It's okay. It's okay."
She cried into his shoulder and let him hold her.
When she started to calm down a bit and wasn't crying as hard, Conner kissed the top of her heard lightly and whispered, "It's okay. I've got you."
After another minute, the tears finally ended. M'gann wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before pulling away from Conner's embrace. He released her without a fight.
She smiled up at him, trying to reassure him that she was okay. She knew he was worried. He was always worried about her.
"Thank you." she said sweetly, "You don't know how much I needed a hug."
He smiled slightly.
"You're welcome." he replied.
Then he reached out and took her hand.
"Come on." he said, pulling her gently in the direction of the door, "I know something else that'll help."
"What?" M'gann asked curiously.
"Just come with me."
She trusted him and let him lead her through the Cave. She held onto his hand the entire time.
Eventually they exited the Cave through the hangar and stood alone outside.
"Wait here for one second." Conner said, letting go of her hand and heading back into the Cave.
He came back out a minute later with a blue blanket folded over his arm. He spread it out on the ground. They both lay down and stared at the stars.
Conner told her about different constellations he knew. Where they were; who had named them; the myths that formed their complicated web of stories. All of it had been put into his brain by Cadmus, but he didn't mind. At least he didn't seem to mind.
After a little while, M'gann pointed out where Mars was, but she told him very little about her home-world. She kept most of the truth about her childhood to herself, telling him that she preferred to listen to him talk about the stars.
Listening made her feel a little better. She was still broken inside, though. From the training exercise, from the secrets she kept from her friends, from the fear of the power that was inside her.
The exercise was still at the forefront of her mind. She could still feel the stabbing pain and the heat from the flames and the fear that had engulfed her.
But she could also feel Conner's arm around her waist as he spoke and the cold October night air and the beauty of the star-filled sky.
She tried to focus on those things, to think about the present. She tried to force the images of the training exercise out of her head. She tried to remind herself that the whole thing had happened inside her mind. And she tried, more than anything, to remember what Conner had told her.
That it wasn't her fault.
But even as she smiled and talked and laughed, she kept hearing her own voice rasping in the back of her mind, telling her that she was responsible for all the trauma… All the pain…
And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't shake the feeling that she was losing control again and descending back into that dark, violent place. The place she'd run from months ago. But now she had to keep running.
Because in that broken place, it was all her fault.