A/N: I was meant to start writing and posting these back in January, however life happened, and progress didn't happen, so now here I am, a little over two months late but finally kicking things off! This coming July, as I've done for the past two summers, I'll be leading a 100-day countdown story set across the Arrowverse (featuring Supergirl, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Arrow). I decided to do things a little differently this year. For one thing, the entire 100 days will be a single story spread over 100 days, one chapter to every day. And for another, the more planning I did, I saw the possibility and the need to lay in some ground work in the form of preludes.
Twenty-four prelude one-shot stories, six each to the four series (again, it was meant so that each month from January to June would have one of each show, but now… yeah ;)), posted every 5 (or 6) days.
The story this will all be leading to, Once More Unto the Breach, is an alternate universe story (not another Earth, ha :D), which will soon become evident enough. It's very possible you do not watch all four of the shows, but I highly encourage you to seek out the other preludes, as they will help to fill in this world I'm very excited to share with you guys!
Alright, enough chit chat, let's go! If you have any questions, send them my way and I'll be happy to answer them!
LOST WORLDS AND FOUND
Prelude to ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH
(9 of 24)
Location:
BREACH EARTH, DARK QUARTER
(ARGUS designation)
He had not run for his own sake, hadn't crossed that breach in some attempt to relocate himself. He'd done it to help another, and maybe for that, when the crew of the Waverider had tracked him down, they had brought him back to where he'd come from without giving notice at all that they had even met him. As far as whoever was in charge of them was concerned, he had never set foot on their ship.
Truth be told, he had lied to them. Not about everything, no. The reason for his crossing on to what he heard them call Main Earth, that had not been a lie. The existence of other worlds out there, other worlds that were also Earth but in different variations of it, was known about the people of his quarter… Quarter, that was another of their words, too… It was like some story people whispered about in corners, worlds of light, brightness, colorful wonders… nothing they really had where they lived. It was so unknown to them that they wouldn't have been able to conjure up the meaning of it or the possibility that there could be anything else, and for that the tales of other worlds was considered by many as little more than children's lullabies.
But J'onn J'onzz knew it was true. He knew, because he had come from another world, not another Earth, a whole other planet, before he ever found himself here on Earth, in the Dark Quarter. He didn't speak of it, of course. The last thing he needed was to isolate himself any further than he already was.
People were not cruel to him, but they also made it clear that they saw him as someone outside of them, and so for the most part he lived on his own, in a cave. He could make himself look like them, but when he had tried, they had looked almost insulted, and so he hadn't done it again. He stayed himself instead… almost himself.
He wasn't entirely forsaken. He had made friends in his years here, and more than that, some would come to him for assistance. They knew of his strength, his power, and in times of great need, how could they ignore the alien who might be able to help them? The one he had helped cross on to Main Earth was not one of those. She was a genuine friend, maybe the only one he had, which might have compelled him not to help her go somewhere he couldn't see himself remaining, help her go somewhere that would mean his losing his one great friend. But because she mattered that much to him, of course he'd had to help her, and how could he not, when her staying here might have cost her life, and that of her unborn child. She had been so desperate, and he could see plainly that her best chance might have been to go somewhere else entirely. The one she sought to escape was as much of a disbeliever of these other worlds as there existed in Dark Quarter, so then the solution had been clear.
He had found the way across, with time drawing shorter and shorter it felt, and one night he had gone to find her, to take her away. It was best no one knew too many of the details, even her. They had gone away and they had crossed. By some chance they had arrived when it was still night there as well, which he couldn't have guaranteed would be the case. He had taken the shape of another woman, similar in looks to his friend that they might have been sisters, down to the intense paleness of those born in the permanent night of Dark Quarter. He had done his best to camouflage them both so not to draw too much attention as they went, especially acquiring her a pair of sunglasses, which could not have been timelier.
The thing that had allowed the Waverider to track them down was that they had stopped at one point, when the sun had started to rise. His friend had been frightened at first, much as he'd tried to explain it all to her. But then as the world around them had taken on the glow of early morning, her face had relaxed into pure and unadulterated wonder. She would look at her hands, at her clothing, as though they were brand new again. He couldn't make her move away if he wanted to. She deserved this moment so much. And then the woman had come and approached them.
He had known there was something about her right away. He couldn't read her mind, like she was stopping him. She never tricked them. She came to them and she said it plainly. She knew where they were from. J'onn thought for sure she would want to bring them back, and if it were only him he wouldn't have had too much of a problem, but his friend…
Later the woman would tell him it was his thoughts in that moment, radiating so strongly off of him as they did, which turned the tide for them… because she heard him. And for that, she had helped him find proper shelter for his friend. She might have offered him to stay as well, but somehow she had understood his purpose here was merely that of getting his friend in need to where she needed to be, that he intended to go back where he'd come from, to Dark Quarter. So he said his goodbyes to his friend, and he followed the woman to her ship. He had remained in the guise of a Dark Quarter woman even as he embarked on the Waverider, met the rest of its crew. He sat in silence as he was taken back across the breach and to the place he had come from. The woman who had found him had taken him down to the surface in a smaller ship, cloaked into invisibility, setting down just outside his cave.
As he stepped out, he turned back to the small ship, he expected to see a ripple in the air that would show it disappearing back to where it had come from. Instead, he could still see an opening amid the darkness all around him, one rectangle of light, back inside the ship. The woman remained standing there, looking back at him. Why wasn't she leaving?
She stepped off the small ship, the door closing, which showed only in the uncloaked interior of the ship disappearing out of sight until it was completely gone. Now it was just him and her standing just outside the cave. She stared at him for a while – at her, the woman he had made himself to look like – without saying a word, but finally she spoke, and when she did he almost fell to his knees. She spoke to him in his own tongue, in the language of his people, his world. She spoke it so well she could have been from there, but it was impossible, wasn't it?
"What is your name?" she asked. He was so stunned he couldn't have spoken even if he'd tried. "How did you come to be here?" she asked after he didn't speak for several seconds.
"Who are you?" he finally managed to say. "How do you speak my language?" She had a small sort of smile, and then in the next moment her shape began to change, from the dark-skinned human to what he had to understand was her true form. Even in the darkness of his world, he could see the green of her skin, and this time he did fall to his knees, shifting as he did, so that when he reached the ground, he was as he appeared to the people of this quarter again, and for the first time in all his years on Earth, there was another of his kind before him. "My name… My name is J'onn J'onzz," he said, looking back at her. She approached him, crouching to sit with him.
"I am M'gann M'orzz," she told him. A moment later, she regained the shape she had previously held, and he got the impression she had grown accustomed to living as a human, which he in no way reproached her. "How did you come to be here?" she asked again, this time in English once more. He decided then to adopt a human shape as well then, the image in his mind being of the man who had first found him here on Earth, who had first shown him kindness. Tall, dark-skinned, too.
He told her what he had told the man, years ago. Fleeing his home world and the crisis there, he had experienced difficulties as he neared Earth, and his ship had done its best to land without incident. What he had discovered, or at least understood, in the years since he'd first told this tale, was that the Earth he had been approaching had not been this one, but rather the one he'd just brought his friend to, the one M'gann seemed to have found, too. But as he'd been coming in for his crash landing, somehow he must have triggered the breach, and it had sucked him in, on to Breach Earth, and on to Dark Quarter. If not for the man whose form he now assumed, he might not have lived through his arrival.
On this, it seemed, the two of them had a common thread. She, too, had crash landed, back on Main Earth, though nowhere near the city beneath the breach. Her ship had crashed in Africa, in the M'Changa province of Zambesi.
She shared her tale with him, as one might with a long unseen relative. She had been injured in her crash, and those who had found her, as surprised as they might have been by her appearance, had brought her back into their home, and they had tended her, as best as they could, seeing as she was unconscious and clearly not of their species. Her first sight, as she woke again, was of a bent backed old woman sat by her bedside, looking on to her with such kindness in her eyes, she knew at once, deep in her soul, that she could trust her. They did not speak the same languages, but they found they could communicate well enough if they tried. Even so, as days and weeks passed, she was able to pick up on the woman's tongue, learning the language. After a while, her shape seemed to mimic that of the people she saw around her. The old woman was in no way afraid of her or her abilities. If anything, it allowed for M'gann to move beyond the woman's home, dressed in such a way that she could have been one of them.
As she grew accustomed to her new home – her savior insisted for her to consider it that – she learned a lot, but she also provided what she could. She could not stand to merely be allowed to live here without giving something in return. Her purpose in the village didn't reveal itself right away, not until a threat came to them that required for her to shed the persona she had taken on, showing herself for what she was, only so far as it was required, in order for her to rid those who would threaten the people who had taken her in. Though she had been successful, she had been afraid that in the end, her revealing herself would force her to find a new home. Instead, the people she had protected welcomed her. From that day on, she lived in the village as herself.
For the years that followed, she continued to act as protector, and anyone who might have sought to cause trouble for her people would think twice before crossing her. These were what felt like the best times. But then the old woman had fallen ill. She was not long for this world.
Sitting at her bedside, not unlike the woman had done for her after she'd crashed, she listened and watched as her savior removed the necklace from around her own neck and told its history. And then she bid M'gann lean forward until it could be clasped about her neck. In the old woman's heart, she believed she was the totem's rightful heir. The woman had no children of her own, none that had lived to receive the legacy, but this in no way belittled her belief that M'gann would do right by the duty. Before the old woman died, M'gann vowed to her that she would do just so.
J'onn could see as well as anything, by her being here with him, that she had not remained in the village. M'gann told him that she did return, whenever she could, and that even from a distance she kept tabs on what was happening back there, allowing her to return should she be needed. She had been called away from Zambesi by chance, and she had held their trust long enough that they knew she would always seek to protect them if they needed her. Distance did not alter the vow she had made.
Nonetheless, she had left them, after word of her acts and her abilities, those born to her and those earned through the totem she wore about her neck even as she spoke with J'onn J'onzz, had reached ARGUS, following the passage through the village of a few runaway breachers, they had recruited her to join the crew aboard the Waverider. She didn't specify what had made her want to say yes, to leave the village and sail off aboard the ship, but he didn't question her either. The rest of the story went without saying, as it led to their encounter on this night.
"Tell me something, J'onn, why choose to return here instead of staying on Main Earth with your friend? We could have arranged it." Something in her voice told him maybe she already knew his secret, if not the answer to her question. He bowed his head, almost in submission. "The face you showed me before, the face you show these people here, it is not your face any more than this one here is, is it?" He didn't speak, neither did she. Even if she didn't sound as though she wanted to attack him for it, he still felt shame in his heart. "You hide, you wear our face," she stated. He didn't deny it.
He didn't have to explain himself, it just sat there inside his head, boiling down to one word… Atonement.
It was true, he could have made the jump back to Main Earth and stayed there, could even have gone seeking a different quarter, one where he might have felt the light of the sun on his face, somewhere not so dependent of the fire which pained him in order to see. But maybe he didn't deserve the sun. Maybe he was right where he should be. He led a simple life here, one where he could live a better life than the one he'd left behind, all the while wearing a face that would remind him constantly of how he had ended up where he had ended up, and why.
"Very well," M'gann rose back to her feet. J'onn looked up again, watching as the inside of the small ship showed itself again. M'gann climbed inside, turning back to him. "If ever you grow tired of your exile, you know how to find us."
"If ever you need my help, I will give it gladly," he spoke in return. She smiled, nodding, before moving out of view into the ship. Even as it became invisible to him once again, he could almost feel as it rose back into the sky and sailed off to rejoin its waiting ship and crew, to return to its task.
J'onn was alone now in his cave again, and his shape returned to that of the green. After a moment, he shifted again, to the white he had left behind before he ever came here, the one that had left him with such a shame that he had run, a traitor, unable to live another day as he had once done. He could hardly bear to look at it, and within moments he was green again.
In the small town below his cave, the fires of morning started to dot the settlement. It wasn't as though the sky would lighten to tell them the time had come to wake, and yet they knew. In one of those homes, a man would find his wife missing. He would search for her, never knowing where she had gone, or with whose help. And if there was anything right in the world, in time, he would just stop seeking her altogether, and they would all go on with their lives.
J'onn J'onzz had little to provide for the people in town, but he had done something that day that had made him feel more alive than he had done in a long time. He looked back up to the skies, deep and dark, where the small ship had disappeared. Maybe… maybe someday he could feel he had earned the right to leave this place, maybe sooner than later.
THE END
Check out the next prelude, coming April 20th!