Nothing like a sweet and delicious AU with slow, slow burn.
Title inspired by the song "It Has Begun" by Starset. Highly recommend that song, "Let It Die", "Carnivore", and "My Demons".
Enjoy!
One time disclaimer, applies to all the chapters: I don't own Supergirl or any of its characters, this is for my own personal enjoyment or whatever blah blah blah.
…
J'onn was amazed he was able to make it out of Mars' atmosphere without getting blown up.
Amazed. Disappointed. Uncaring. Maybe a combination of all three. He couldn't tell.
But the silence of space closed around him. Nobody was chasing him. The weapons that fired around him had ceased once he got out of range. Nobody tried to chase him in other ships. Perhaps they feared he would turn around and kill as many of them as possible.
He was no murderer, even though the White Martians deserved death and more.
The gods smiled upon him, even as they turned their backs on his people.
Everyone was dead. He knew that. Everyone he ever knew and loved were dead or soon will die.
There were small pockets of his people hiding in the mountains, in caves, like animals. Soon to be hunted down, burned to ash.
He hated himself for leaving. He wished he was dead and that anyone he knew and loved had taken his place. And yet, he stole a ship and fought his way off the planet's surface.
He was familiar with the ship's controls, even though some of the labels were in a dialect—Northern; he was from the Southern half of the planet—he could barely grasp even if he wasn't barely conscious.
M'yri'ah would've teased him about this. She would've told him he should have paid more attention to the finer points of linguistics. It was never his strong suit and she suggested that she teach him. But they never had time, between his work in law enforcement and her work in transcription. She would complain that they never had time.
But, of course, she wasn't there to tell him that. She was dead, like everyone else.
That fact hadn't had time to sink in yet, but, when it did, it felt like everything was too sharp and bright.
There was the silence of space, but also the silence of his mind.
He knew that if he reached out, through the mental links that could stretch from one end of the universe to the other, he wouldn't find his fiancée or anyone on the other end.
J'onn choked on a sob.
"H'ronmeer, save me," he whispered.
Every time he moved his right arm, pain spread from his shoulder down and throughout his body. He didn't want to look there. Or at the numbness on his left hip or the pain blooming from his abdomen.
He glanced down to see black and raw, flayed flesh.
That revelation set in quickly, turning the grief into something hard and nauseating. They burned him. While he ran for the ship, they were chasing after him, using their fire weapons at him. He remembered flashes of pain and stumbling from time to time. Nothing had really registered at the time it happened.
It was a mad dash, live or die.
But he was injured, all the same.
His clothes were likely stuck to the wounds.
He didn't want to think about what kind of pain it would be to pick out the pieces of cloth. He had to remove them before the burns started closing.
J'onn's mother was a healer. He remembered her books on burns. Infection, loss of feeling, permanent scarring, death. All possibilities if he couldn't heal himself.
Martians hated fire and were vulnerable to it. So they went through great lengths to either avoid or quickly treat burns.
But, it was likely the shock would kill him before anything else did. He could feel it now. The cold sweat, the sudden drowsiness.
He set course for the nearest inhabitable planet: Earth, after his shaking fingers messed up the coordinates a couple of time.
It would take months for him to get there and that was time he didn't have.
But he had a backup plan.
J'onn almost blacked out when he stood and hit the wound on his abdomen against the armrest. The ship was on autopilot. Now, he could sleep.
In the back of the ship was a single hypersleep chamber. And that would be his salvation while the ship took him to Earth.
He would sleep, in stasis, for months until the manual controls kicked in again when he got close to the Earth's atmosphere.
He wouldn't die, his injuries wouldn't get any worse, unless the chamber failed mid-flight. Then, he would likely die in his sleep.
So, he would either live or die peacefully.
After several false starts in syncing the timing mechanism to the navigation system, J'onn eased himself into the chamber.
For a brief moment, he wondered if someone had slept in the same pod before he did. He wondered who it was, if they were still alive. The answer was probably a 'no'.
The glass casing closed over him with a hiss.
The temperature dropped and a sweet-smelling gas poured in from a small vent near his head.
He closed his eyes as the hissing lulled him into oblivion.
…
Dreams didn't come to him, but he didn't want them to.
He didn't know what kind of nightmares would meet him when he did dream.
Numbness of hypersleep faded and the pain returned. Not that he was expecting to wake up with everything fixed. He knew the limitations of hypersleep, being kept in biological stasis. It meant nothing changed, for better or worse.
The wounds were still there, just as raw and unhealed as they were the moment he fell asleep. His eye flickered closed again, exhaustion sweeping over him.
A minute, maybe only a handful of seconds later, the ship shook—literally shook—him out of his stupor. He was also painfully aware of the bright flashing lights and frantic beeping.
The ship. Right. He was close to Earth. The autopilot likely shut itself off.
J'onn swore under his breath and forced himself out of the chamber, the pain cutting through the drag and pull of sleep.
He stumbled into the pilot seat, watching as a blue and green mass got bigger and bigger in the viewport.
Earth. Safety. Salvation. Or, at least, a place to die quietly.
The control panel beeped and flashed in warning.
He was about to reach the Earth's atmosphere.
So he sat and waited.
J'onn didn't realize how cold the ship's interior was until he brushed the Earth's atmosphere, getting caught in gravity's pull.
Then, things started moving fast.
Heat seeped into the cockpit, making sweat bead on his forehead, and fear clutched at J'onn.
What if it didn't work? What if one of the engines exploded from the stress and consumed him in flames?
He struggled to keep the ship level as it descended.
If he got the angle wrong, he would die. It would all be over. The last surviving Green Martian would be dead.
The controls shook and shuddered in his hands as he pulled up, trying to save himself. He was going to burn up on reentry if he didn't pull up from the nosedive his ship was tilted into.
He grit his teeth, growling in pain and effort as slowly, slowly, the ship leveled off.
Now, he just had to hope his ship didn't break up and explode on impact with the planet's surface.
Color, landscape scrolled through the viewport and he could see flashes of the Earth's surface. He didn't have much time to appreciate it.
And then the belly of the ship hit the Earth with a sound of metal on rock, shaking J'onn to his core.
It skipped once, twice over the ground, sliding into the dirt for a long distance before coming to a stop.
And everything was still.
With shaking fingers, J'onn removed the restraints and stood. Smoke was trailing from the back of the ship and into the cockpit, so he knew he couldn't stay inside there for long.
J'onn limped out of the ship and into the light of day. Earth's hot, dry wind greeted him and sunlight shone right in his face.
The sun was closer, brighter. He could feel it on his skin, in each of his cells. He felt stronger, like he had awoken from a long sleep, even as his wounds sapped his strength.
It was hotter here than it was on Mars. J'onn wasn't sure if he liked that or not.
Uncomfortable, but J'onn still had to resist the urge to fall on his knees and kiss the ground.
He made it. He was alive and on Earth and he did it.
J'onn rounded his ship to the shadier side and sat down. His wounds cried out with each movement, but he grit his teeth through it.
It was quiet, save for the hiss and crackle of cooling metal, and the reality of his situation dampened his mood.
He didn't know what to do now. Civilization of any sort was likely a long distance away and there was no way he could know which direction he was supposed to head in.
Wandering in an unfamiliar place while wounded was a recipe for disaster.
He dug his fingers into the dirt. The sand was a lighter color here, not as red.
And the sky was so blue. He knew that Earth had a blue sky, but he didn't realize how bright and blue it could be.
He wasn't sure how long he would be allowed to enjoy it.
J'onn took in as deep a breath as he could without pain and let it out.
Okay. So he was on Earth. Now what?
His eyes flickered closed for a moment when he forced himself back to something akin to alertness.
He couldn't go to sleep now. He wasn't in the hypersleep chamber, which was likely damaged in the impact.
Instead, he leaned forward, wincing, and rested his elbows on his knees.
A plan. He needed a plan.
But there was this noise, just barely detectable by his ears.
It might have been the rushing of blood in his ears, but it didn't sound right.
No, that was definitely something different.
He looked out, searching for a source, squinting against the glare of the sun. Just before he accepted the fact that he was likely entering some kind of madness, something caught his eye.
There were dark shapes in the distance, one in the sky and a few on the ground.
He just watched as they got closer and closer. He could see the dust being thrown up by the land-vehicles. That seemed pretty real to J'onn. Not a hallucination.
The object in the air got louder and louder and he realized that it was a vehicle with metal blades slicing through the air.
A detached curiosity, instead of fear of the unknown, took over him.
So, the things in the ground and in the air were likely human vehicles. They likely detected his entrance into the Earth's atmosphere and were coming to investigate.
Five land-vehicles and humans poured out, yelling and snapping at each other in a language he couldn't understand. The air-vehicle hovered at a distance, probably to monitor him and his movements from afar.
It was smart strategy: surround the unknown, make sure the unknown didn't try anything.
And at that moment, J'onn J'onzz remembered why Martians never left Mars to visit Earth. Sure, some adventurous few would go down, disguised as humans, to do some 'sightseeing'. And they would return to tell everyone about how primitive and angry humans were.
But the last time anyone from Mars went to Earth was over a century ago. J'onn wasn't entirely sure what to expect.
The instinct to shapeshift and hide his true form from them came too late. They had seen him and his ship. They knew that he was not from Earth, that he was different.
And if he knew anything about Earth, he knew that, more often than not, humans feared what looked different from them.
So, he probably should have expected an armed mob.
They surrounded him quickly, barking words that made no sense to J'onn. They seemed less primitive than what he had heard, but they were still angry. These humans were angry and afraid. It came off of them in waves. J'onn didn't need to look into their minds to see that. Not that he wanted to look in their minds.
He didn't know what he would see or if he could see into their minds. It was a crime to look into someone's mind without their permission on Mars.
He was afraid, too. He was defenseless and he was surrounded. Maybe he could bend those rules, if it meant that he would survive.
J'onn held up his hand, keeping the other close to his body, trying to keep some space between him and the humans.
"Don't hurt me," he said, "Please don't hurt me."
There was more yelling, more words he couldn't understand, more weapons pointed at him.
Of course, they didn't understand him. It was worth a shot.
They charged him and he didn't fight back. He didn't have the energy to do much of anything. If he was to die there, so be it.
He just lay there as they closed in on him, wrestling him to his feet again and dragging him to a nearby vehicle.
One of the humans brought the butt of their weapon down into J'onn's ribcage. J'onn wheezed, a new pain blooming over his skin.
Before he could think to lash out and make the human pay for what he did, the human struck him across the brow and the world went blissfully dark again.
…
It has begun…
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Cheers!
~Tiara of Sapphires