He had fewer misgivings than the others after Luthor's assassination. Too often he felt that humanity is often falling short in governing their planet because frequently he and the others had to save them from themselves. He had forgotten for a time about that little girl he had found in the woods, but those searching for her, they were among the rare exceptions to his rather disjointed view of humanity. He had however had grown up and lost his civilization though kept one vow that none should ever share Mars' fate in regards to the Invaders. A human astronaut's curiosity almost led to him not being able to fulfill that vow and so he had journey alone to warn Earth, but they caught him.
He had to thereafter mentally gather heroes to team up to save Earth. However the one that impressed him the most in retrospect was Batman. He had no powers with exception his mental prowess and his peak physical conditioning. He did admire Superman and feel some camaraderie with the Kryptonian, but he never had his home world, he lost it without really knowing of it. J'onn on the other hand had a wife, a family, and more though the Invaders took all that away. He and the last of his race made their last stand yet as he already knows well is that is the only Martian left in the universe.
As for how his role would change in the wake of the Lords assuming stewardship of Earth, he would prefer anything other than having to go down there. He takes it upon himself to be the overseer to the Watchtower staffers. It is a monotonous task, but someone has to do it, it might as well be him because the others are often in their own distractions or symbolic gestures. He had also like others made changes to his look as his shoulders are broader plus he also now looks fully covered from top neck down. He also adopts the stripe pattern used by Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman.
Both Batman and Superman had done contrasting overhauls to the policing of their cities yet Superman is the only one of the two who still comes up to the Watchtower. Superman is always big picture plus Metropolis and Batman is 'content' with just Gotham, but he also rarely leaves the cave too. Likewise the other Lords took less activity aside from doing the token appearance act to either quell or reassure whoever appears to have doubts about the new order of looking after the world.
After two years, both his curiosity and his tendency to follow the other Lords' lead brought him to the Batcave where together in silence they initially watch the League in their ongoing fight with a Luthor in some kind of battle suit. The League still had their Flash and as already seen he Lords already saw, Luthor is still alive in that reality. An unspoken vote is put on the table and all appear to agree except Batman almost seems to warn them without warning them before a decision is made about luring the League here.
J'onn tells their League counterparts the false story, which they all appear to buy except the League Batman. J'onn almost had forgotten the way that he and the Batman he knew used to converse, a way still kept by their counterparts though he couldn't discern if his counterpart still did it. He could read that Batman still does it, but there are reasons for why Martians don't probe Martians. It would be even messier in their case aside from giving away from J'onn had really come to bring them to his reality.
"Have you read his mind?" thinks Batman.
His Batman and this Batman would not be what they are without their predilection to be wary even of themselves from other realities. The five aside from his other self and the other Batman follow him back without hesitation yet the suspicious pair still follows likely to look after their too trusting comrades. After crossing back, he and the seven find themselves in a white box that had put up in front of the gateway and then he turns to them before speaking with a slight touch of regret as well as sadness in his voice.
"I'm sorry."
He watches them succumb except for their Hawkgirl, but the Lantern he knows takes charge after there is some amount of surprise meets hesitation in his wife, the Hawkgirl of this reality. He and the others come up behind Lantern after he blasts his wife's counterpart. The other Flash had somehow been able to stay conscious long enough to see his teammate, his friend take a point blank blast, but the other Hawkgirl would live provided she got immediate medical attention.
She would be taken to Arkham's infirmary wing and kept separate from the inmates. As for the others they were put into special cell made to inhibit the individual hero's powers or in the case of the other Batman monitor his movements and his vitals. The sensors kept tabs on all their vitals, but Batman worries about another teammate death. Flash as the six of them knew could still affect their feelings and psychologies from beyond the grave.
Batman stays behind as a warden for the League, but J'onn understood why before the decision was made. It would be the others' first cross over, but this time it is second yet it a coincidentally timed one with the appearance of the grayish behemoth attacking the city.
The Lords' ability to function like a team was clearly lost to them yet there are slight efforts to make it look like a concerted attack against the behemoth aka the walking wrecking ball. It was also almost impossible to read the behemoth and that led to a few surprises including the look of horror he imagines was on his own face when the behemoth ignites the gas with just fingertips.
The explosion from the igniting gas throws him clear down the street yet the others fight on until it is just Superman against the 'Wrecker'. As he struggles to get back to his feet, it is all a reminder that he like the others is out of practice, more so by having spent almost all of the last two years like an overseer aboard the Lords' reality's Watchtower. Superman takes a significant beating before lobotomizing the wrecking ball, to J'onn its standard policy albeit slightly dated since many of their reality's villains were imprisoned, lobotomized, or gone underground.
This reality's press corps is virtually the same as theirs right down to this reality's Lois Lane. Some like the changes the Lords had brought even though nobody bothers to correct them when they assume this is the League taking a step up. However a few including Lois Lane as he mentally read object to what Superman had done to the city's latest attacker. The act is crossing the line for her in particular. After the fight, the five including J'onn went to this reality's Watchtower and found it much like they found the League, too like how they used to be, but some part of J'onn starts to wonder if that is the point of what they have seen, heard, or felt already.
Both realities have their taste of alien invasions between the Apokolipitians who Superman had dealt with in the past and the Invaders that destroyed his civilization. As they bulk it up, it goes from floating eye sore to a well armed battle station with the necessary defense measures. The recurring invasions as well as the near war during Luthor's presidency had been the thing to push the Lords to fully arming their Watchtower as J'onn had already seen. The new weaponry here and back home is top of the line. Back home any time anyone would ask how long could they expect this situation to last and the party line remains it is only temporary.
Not everyone believes that, not even J'onn, but he still had his duties to attend to whether the people of Earth did or did not approval of their methods anymore. Concerns with liking or popularity went out the window early on during the months after they took direct authority in the wake of Luthor's assassination. The other heroes that the Lords had sought to draw into directly working with them found it workable at first yet as the stewardship went on; they left to return to being solo.
A roster expansion had backfired clearly, but the Lords never found themselves on the receiving end of a united front to remove them from their new authority. J'onn could read it from the staffers occasionally or he should bother watching the news, which is rare for him. Always the fear, the worry, and more, but if that is what it takes to keep this world safe instead of failing it, like he failed with Mars, then the rest didn't matter though occasionally he thought of his wife.
He wonders if she would approve of him now, but he had a feeling that she would not be that different from Lois Lane in terms of her belief that this is wrong. The new weapons system back home had been in place for fifteen months and things had been quiet with the exceptions of civil disobedience such as the protest as Smallville University just before they left to come here. It almost begins to read like the Lords would have to protect the people from themselves though plenty were bound to disagree with that including Green Arrow who he met briefly during the failed attempt to expand the roster.
Their former allies from the failed roster eventually went off the grid and left the world in the hands of those who neither them nor the Lords. J'onn could not discount the wisdom of that decision even though he did find it foolish on their part. Superman found their behavior including Supergirl's to be squeamish and so if they had misgivings they had no business working with the Lords. J'onn was not alone in thinking it was a mistake to cut themselves off from their former costumed allies, but in the end, it would be the six of them who were looking after things at least until the cross over. The more J'onn saw of this world, the more he is left to wonder if they had made the right decisions since Superman killed Luthor, but of course hindsight takes the form of the world turning beneath him.
They had no staffers on this Watchtower so J'onn had to operate many consoles on his own after the others just wander around almost aimlessly except for Superman who had taken to staring out the window yet with a different demeanor than his from earlier. He and the others rallied behind Superman after the assassination, but most suspect Flash's death also had something to do with what happen too. He had seen Batman and Superman argue about the latter's interference in Gotham. He had seen how Wonder Woman took up a different look just as the others, but hers felt more extreme as she kept her hair to a short trim as if trying to forget herself as well how she felt about Batman.
Lantern went for the bald look and Hawkgirl took to wearing a body suit like the others except hers like Wonder Woman is almost only one color, a dark shade of brown. As for the headdress, it looks more like a helmet than a headdress. He is certain Flash would find all this abhorrent as he recalls the look on the face of this reality's Flash after seeing his Hawkgirl knocked out by a man who looks like his best friend. None could purge the memory seeing Flash shot on national television or in the case of J'onn watching Flash bleed out on the White House front lawn.
Each has their own scar from the loss of Flash, but for each it holds as well as carries a different meaning. In J'onn, it is becoming one of regret and revulsion as of late as this trip had only made it worse. The six of them had grown so emotionally distant in two years and it took this trip to truly wake him up to the fact, but the others had seen it too yet like he they probably helpless to undo it or change it. He thinks back to a conversation that he overhead between Lantern and Hawkgirl where they talk about how much they both really do miss Flash, his jokes, and more.
J'onn is torn back from the recall to an alert transmission from the prison where this reality's Luthor is being kept. He apparently escaped again with a hostage, which could only make this situation worse in some way. He phases through the consoles down to Superman and the others suspicious draw closer to them. It is decided they will all go, but for once in months J'onn is afraid for a second time. The first had been during the fight with the behemoth and now this the second is the fear of what he'll do to this reality's Luthor. Hawkgirl had spoken her mind to everyone for the first time in months specifically in warning Superman against doing what they did back 'home'.
It felt certain that Superman heard her just like they all did, but he had no intention of following or listening because he been more like a leader than an equal since they over back home. He looks back briefly to all the consoles and it took him back memory wise to when he used to do all that by himself from time to time. Then they all went back planet side to handle Luthor's escape, but it turns out the League had gotten back and set a trap for them. Similar to the one J'onn knows he led them into after his first cross over. He halfway curses his own inability to see through the trick, but then biology and psychology preempt his frustration because Martians can't as well don't read other Martians.
He remembers a conversation between Lantern and Hawkgirl before all this happen where Lantern admits missing Flash on this particular day and Hawkgirl talks about him probably making some ridiculous joke or some other funny. Lantern knows when she's got his thoughts figured out. Much later he is operating the monitor stations, which is also something he had not done due to the immense staff on his Watchtower; he had to admit he misses the rounds with the technicians.
His introspection is cut off by an alert that Luthor has broken out of Strikers and taken a hostage so the five of them go down to intercept only to realize they were duped, he was tricked, but he had already done this kind of trick on the League.
He recovers first yet is unable to prevent Hawkgirl from getting the reluctant ring blast from her husband's counterpart yet his own catches her on the fall. J'onn saw clearly how far he gone from being like his counterpart and yet he chooses to fight the other J'onn after both transfigure into a species that both had known about yet none of the others would recognize it. The two entangled by the other continue like this until each Lord notes the League Superman is not among them and shortly to follow each gets a blast from the presumed power disruptor that this reality's Luthor had built for the purpose of probably testing it on the League. However the Lords' crossover had altered its purpose.
As J'onn painfully transfigures back first to his current look then to his natural look he is left to face only the sound of his own thoughts. He works out that Batman had a hand in their return, but it was not just him, no something else happen after they left that made Batman break again.
This isn't our reality, what happens here was never ours to decide, and Batman, you were right at least on that count. Now we will face a world without powers and I will face a world with only my own thoughts to trouble me.
He joins the other four as they taken away from the scene of their latest fall. Their cells didn't require any special designs because without powers they could not engineer their one escape and besides if they did where would they go?
J'onn had not seen his natural face in a long for he had worn that new look for almost all of the last two years and then his memory trips back to just before his first crossover.
"You are talking about helping them… but would they accept it? Our kind of help."
It had become clearer to him that Batman had seen the possibilities of where this intervention of theirs would lead, but he let the Lords cross over anyway though he would stay behind as a warden because it would be 'fatal' to leave 'them' unguarded. In the eyes of most of the Lords, the League reality is a mess that needs fixing, but it was never their place to interfere because this is not their world. It may look like it, smell like it, sound like it, even the Oreos might taste the same, but that absolves nothing.
Luthor's device could easily been used to de-power the Lords and the League, but it was only used against the Lords. Undoubtedly they crossed a line to convince him to do that and Luthor had probably suspected the Lords' true nature while they masqueraded as the League. He agreed, but he probably got something out of the favor. Whatever happens after that is on the League and it made him feel no better about putting them in that position yet that this is lesson of these kinds of calls, one must live with the consequences of what one has done forever.
He had already lived with the consequences of Mars' devastation by the Invaders under the command of the Imperium and what happen after the Lords took power following Luthor's assassination. Now he would have to live and face consequences of interfering here. He didn't blame Batman for sending the League back, he did the right thing, and the Lords had lost their way long ago though it took this to make J'onn consider then acknowledge the truth of the idea.
A/N 1: J'onn's epiphany is meant to end his persisting indifference and the loss of his powers is meant to 'punish' him through humility.
A/N 2: Hindsight realization is that Batman had already given some insight into how the 'intervention' would turn out. Likewise the disintegration of teamwork is a thought I had based on how rapidly Doomsday was able to take them down, at least until Lorder Superman lobotomized him.