Note: Sorry for the late upload, but the site was down from Thursday on, and I think it just came back for me (Saturday). Hello to my new readers! For anyone just coming in, I will (attempt to) post every Thursday. :)

Eight

They talked for an hour, moving to the couch once their breakfasts had been eaten, sitting on either end, cross-legged and facing each other. They asked questions about one another's cultures, about how things worked, about their families.

"Are there social differences between men and women?" Kate asked, forgetting to use the past tense.

But J'onn did not correct her or seem to mind. "No, not that I can think of. Men and women, and those that identify as something else, are all seen as equals in Martian society. Anyone can do anything they want."

"So, parenting is a shared skill?"

"Yes. Each parent takes equal responsibility raising the children. Why? Is it different here?"

"Well, it depends on where on Earth you're talking about, what culture." Kate frowned. "Even in 2024, there's still a lot of sexism. Women are still sometimes seen as nothing but, you know, baby-making factories. But it's a lot better than it was even fifty years ago. Of course, I can only speak for America."

"I should point out that Mars had its problems, as well," J'onn said, also frowning. "We weren't perfect. We seemed to reach the pinnacle of technological advancement and societal wellness, and then we simply stagnated. We became so fearful of a potential war, as if we were in the calm before the storm, that we stopped attempting to advance our science or our society at all. Certain topics of conversation were banned, areas of research cut off. We… lived in a bubble and pretended that everything would be perfect forever. And then… the invaders came, and because we had no military and no weapons, we were completely overwhelmed."

"You had no weapons anywhere?"

"Many of them had been destroyed for the sake of peace. It seemed… optimal at the time."

"What happened to the people who tried to talk about things they weren't supposed to?"

J'onn looked away. "I don't know. I never asked."

###

"Favorite color?" Kate asked some time later.

"Blue. I find it calming."

She glanced at his blue cape and boots and speedo, and smiled, and found her eyes growing heavy. She'd slept twelve hours at the hospital, but after the time she'd had, surely that wasn't long enough.

"And yours?"

"Hmm?" She blinked.

"Your favorite color," he said, and his deep voice was hypnotic, sending her to sleep.

"Orange," she said, which wasn't true, but as she felt herself sliding down the couch to properly lie down, all she could think of were his eyes…

In the dream, she was in the back of the Batwing again, but it was even smaller than it had been, and now the front seat was slowly moving towards her, to crush her to death. She tried to push open the top, but instead of glass, her hands touched the soft, squishy material that had made up the walls and floors of the invaders' factory. She began to panic, to hyperventilate. Even in her dream, she knew it was bad to hyperventilate—had been dealing with claustrophobia her whole life and knew all the ways she was supposed handle it, even if half the time, she couldn't. She tried to slow down her breathing.

She was not given the chance to breathe normally. She could feel tentacles crawling up her body out of nowhere, breaking through the seat she was sitting on to wrap around her. There was nowhere she could go to get away from them. She screamed and grabbed at them, trying to keep them away, but they wrapped around her stomach, her torso, her neck, and slowly squeezed, until she was suffocating. Then they pushed into her mouth and down her throat, pushed into her eyes as she choked, unable to scream in pain—

"Kate!"

She woke, yelling and disoriented, still half-asleep, her body heavy. She tried to stand up, but couldn't get her feet properly under her. She stumbled and began to fall. Something grabbed her. She screamed and thrashed, waking up more and more by the second. "Get off! Get off me!" She was maneuvered around and pushed down. And then nothing.

She sat and breathed, her heart pounding, her head incredibly woozy. It took another minute and a half to fully come to, her vision finally clearing all the way. There was J'onn, all the way on the other side of the room, staring at her.

"Nightmare," she said, the word coming out slurred.

"Yes," he said.

"Why did you… grab me?"

"I am sorry. You tripped on the table and you were going to hurt yourself." He motioned to the coffee table. "I only sat you down on the couch."

She put her face in her hands, scrubbing at it. "Is this going to happen a lot?"

"I don't—know, but I think it might."

She fell silent, only leaned into her hands, the world dark inside her fingers.

J'onn didn't say a word.

After a minute, she asked, "Did you have nightmares after… what happened to Mars?"

"Martians… don't dream," he replied hesitantly.

"Lucky you."

Kate took several deep breaths to remind herself that she was not really choking on tentacles. There was nothing wrapped around her. She shivered and sweated as she sat there, feeling overly hot, like it was a sweltering summer's day and she'd left the heater on inside. She tried very hard to calm down and not cry.

She cried anyways, great gasping sobs that she could not control.

J'onn came very, very slowly toward her, though she hardly noticed his approach. "Kate," he said, his voice strangely raspy. Emotional.

She shrank from his touch.

He stopped, arm still outstretched before him, but there was a gaping chasm between them now and it seemed neither one of them knew how to cross it. He sat down cross-legged on the floor and looked up at her where she sat on the couch. "When I was a boy, my father once took me to see the Starweavers during their great mating ritual."

Kate was so taken aback by his words that she stopped crying so hard. "Wh–What?" She laughed despite her tears, the sound coming out ugly and full of phlegm, but she didn't care. "Your father made you watch… animals mating? Was that common?"

A small smile played on his face. "Insects. Something like Earth's fireflies, but entirely bioluminescent, and electric blue. They live for only a few weeks, and during that time, they congregate in large swaths to mate, and then they lay their eggs and die. During the day, their glow is difficult to see, even in such large numbers, but at night, they look like living stars."

Kate could imagine it, though she wished she could see it, this swirling constellation of flickering blue across the sky. "It sounds beautiful."

"It was."

"What do you call them in your own language—the Starweavers?"

J'onn spoke the word.

Kate repeated it.

He blinked.

She smiled at him. "If you don't use your native tongue every once in a while, you might… forget it. I think that would be a shame."

J'onn said nothing, merely tilted his head and studied her.

"Your father, what was his name?"

"M'yrnn."

Kate repeated the name and committed it to memory, as well as his wife's, M'yri'ah, and his daughters', K'hym and T'ania.

"How do you feel?" J'onn asked.

"Better, I think," she said, realizing she'd stopped crying. She took a deep breath, holding it for a moment, then released it slowly and slid down off the couch, sitting on the floor and leaning her back against it. J'onn sat a foot away. If she leaned forward, she could reach out and touch him easily. Hesitantly, she did, offering one hand out to him.

The muscles around his eyes tightened, but he slowly reached out his own hand and took hers.

Electric shocks shot up her arm as they touched, but she didn't think that had anything to do with trauma she'd endured. "Is this okay?"

"Yes."

"I'm just trying to get used to being touched again."

"I understand."

They sat on the floor together, holding hands and talking quietly for a long time, until Kate's eyes felt heavy again. She fought the sensation, afraid to go to sleep, afraid of what might be lurking in the corners of her mind.

"You really should get more rest," J'onn murmured, noticing her heavy gaze.

"I don't want to," she whispered.

"I know. I know you're afraid. But if you let the fear control you, then you let it win."

She sighed and stood up, staring at her bedroom door for a long moment. "Will you…" She swallowed, unsure of how to ask the question in a way that made her intentions clear. "Will you come sit with me… until I fall asleep?" She blushed to ask it because it sounded so childish, like she was three and afraid of the dark, and he was her father, come to save her from the monsters under the bed.

"Of course," he said, standing up, and his demeanor was so calm that she felt her embarrassment fade.

She went to her bedroom and lay down, and he trailed along behind her on silent feet, and sat down on the edge of the bed after she got in. Then he reached down and tucked the blankets around her shoulders as if she really were a child, and it made her feel infantilized. "You don't need to do that," she said quickly.

His face softened. "I know, but…" He looked away, as if trying to find the words. "It just seemed like something comforting. Perhaps I was wrong."

Now she felt bad. "No, you weren't wrong. I just…" She scrunched her face, trying to explain. "You're helping. You are. And I am… so grateful to you. I always will be. But I don't…" She sighed. "I just don't want to be treated like… like I'm broken. I know I'm the one who asked you to come sit with me, but…"

"No," he said, looking down at her. "No. I would never treat you that way. You are not broken. And neither am I." He slowly, slowly placed a hand on her face, looking at her with such attentiveness that she knew he was waiting for her to tell him to stop.

She didn't.

They sat that way for a long minute, and she closed her eyes and felt the warmth of his palm against her cheek, waited for it to seem like a threat. It didn't. "Stay here," she whispered. "In case I have another nightmare. Please?"

"Yes."

She smiled, opening her eyes. "Maybe you should go get a book first, if you're going to sit in here."

He rose from the bed and left her for a moment, and her cheek felt cold. When he returned, he was holding that erotic romance book he'd been reading earlier.

She laughed softly. "You just really need to know what happens, don't you?"

He smiled, tilting his head endearingly. "Yes."

"Well… enjoy," she said, and then rolled over onto her side and closed her eyes, and tried to sleep. And tried not to think about J'onn reading erotica three feet away from her.

###

This was how it went for the next two days. Kate slept in fits and starts; even if she didn't have nightmares or flashbacks, she found it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep, as if her body could not fully shut down. As if it kept expecting to be attacked. When she woke, it often took her a minute to remember where she was and what had happened. Then, she would lay in bed quietly for a while, and when she was ready, she would call out softly for him.

"J'onn?" she asked, on the morning of the second day.

"I'm here," he said.

"What book are you on now?" she asked. He'd been devouring all the books on her shelves since yesterday—and not just her smutty ones.

"Twelve."

She sat up and stretched. "Are you sure you're actually retaining the information?"

"Yes."

"Well, readers the world over are jealous of you."

"I consider this… homework," he said. "I'm trying to study humanity."

She blinked, rubbed her face. "You should use my laptop. Look at the news—or maybe don't. You'll think we're all terrible people if you do. Go on YouTube. Uhh… TikTok. Whatever. Browse Wikipedia by random article or something."

He looked up from his current book. "I have no idea what any those things are."

She laughed. "I'll show you after breakfast."

###

After breakfast—and a mental note to buy more fruit—she set him up with her laptop and a whole bunch of websites to check out. "So, this is how you move the mouse around," she began, wiggling her finger on the trackpad.

"Yes, thank you," he said. "We had computers on Mars, or something very like them."

Blushing, she stepped back. "Sorry. I don't think you're an idiot, I just don't know… what you had and what you didn't."

He gave her a gentle smile. "I know that."

"Good," she said, and went off to the bathroom to shower.

It was only when she got out of the shower that she realized she'd forgotten to grab a fresh towel from the closet beforehand. In an effort to make her life seem more normal, she'd decided to gather everything up to do laundry later, but had forgotten to restock the bathroom with towels. She stood in the shower, dripping water, and glanced around. There wasn't even a hand towel hanging near the sink. She cringed at the idea of putting her clothes on while wet. Ordinarily, this wouldn't have been a problem, since she lived alone. She could've simply walked out naked and grabbed a towel, no big deal.

Now, though…

Sighing heavily and feeling like she wanted to peel her skin off from embarrassment, she carefully opened the door just a crack and put her mouth to it. "Um… J'onn?"

"Yes?" he asked, and she could hear him moving closer to the bathroom door from wherever he'd been.

Physically cringing, feeling like she was reenacting some scene from a stupid romcom movie, she said, "There are literally no towels in here and I need to dry off. Can you go and get me one from the—"

"I know where they are," he said. His shadow disappeared from the crack in the door and then he reappeared again a moment later. She could see the blue of the towel. Carefully shielding herself behind the door, she snaked her arm out and snatched it from him, then slammed the door shut. "Thank you!" she called through it, her heart pounding.

There was a pause before he said, "You're welcome."

She came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, dressed and with her hair towel-dried. Immediately, she went and grabbed her spare hand towel and washcloth and set them up in her bathroom. She took a deep breath and went back to the living room. "Sorry about that," she said.

"You don't need to apologize," he said.

She smiled.

"You also don't need to be so embarrassed."

And even as he said it, she blushed from the words and turned her face away.

"Kate," J'onn said, "Martians don't sexualize the body the same way humans do. I can assure you even if I'd seen anything, which I didn't, it wouldn't have meant anything to me."

Kate closed her eyes, tried not to laugh, but failed miserably. She started quietly, but then guffawed once and that seemed to set her off. By the time she was done laughing, her eyes were watering. She glanced at J'onn and the utter confusion on his face only made her start all over again. In between giggles, she said, "You really know how to make a girl feel special, don't you?"

His face cleared of its confusion, and he gave a small smile and looked away from her. "Your mind is a lovely place," he said. "I do think you're a beautiful woman. I just don't… look at your body the way a human would."

Her giggling cut itself off and she blushed again. "Well… Thank you." What else could she say to such things? Her mind cast about for something, and what she did said surprised her. "My car. It's still up by the military base. Do you… think you could fly me up there? And then we could drive it back?"

J'onn's face went carefully blank; she'd spent enough uninterrupted time around him now to tell the differences in the tiny microexpressions he allowed to peek through, the muscles around his eyes and mouth, the lines or lack thereof on his forehead. "It would be much faster," he began, "if I simply contacted Superman and had him—"

"Would you stop trying to shelter me," Kate said loudly, feeling exasperated, the words coming out much angrier than she had intended them to.

J'onn studied her for a moment. "Fine. I will do as you wish."

She sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"I just… want to be normal."

"I understand—"

"You're incredibly forgiving," she said, eyeing him suspiciously.

"Would you rather I not be?" he asked flatly.

She barked out a laugh. "No. I guess not."

"You must remember: I know what happened to you. It happened to me too. I just…"

"Feel responsible?" she guessed. "Even though I told you it wasn't your fault?"

He studied her some more.

"I don't have to read your mind to know you feel that way," she said. "It's been obvious from the moment it all happened. Besides, isn't this how all superheroes feel? They all destroy themselves over the ones they couldn't save?"

"You're a nurse," J'onn said quietly. "Don't you do the same thing?"

"Yes," she whispered. "And it never helps."

"And yet… it's impossible to stop."

Kate reached up slowly and put a hand on his chest. "You saved my life multiple times. You don't owe me any more than that."

He said nothing, only stared down at her.

It was the first time she realized just how tall he was, towering over her—and she was average height; he must be nearly seven feet tall. Yet, he made her feel so comfortable. She wished she knew what he was thinking. In all her lack of sleep and the excitement of having someone new in her apartment, she'd almost forgotten that she'd lost her powers. Now she wanted them back desperately, for those orange eyes revealed nothing. She took a deep breath and released it as a sigh. "Come on," she said. "Let's go get my car."

###

This flight wasn't nearly as difficult as she had thought it might be. It took only a few seconds to ready herself to be picked up, and then she was fine the whole way there, though he did have to stop and put her down several minutes in to let her get the blood back into her arms from holding so tightly. The worst part about the whole thing was that she was bored. Without her telepathy, or even simple empathy, she could not communicate with him easily over the wind.

When they did finally get to her car, right where she'd left it off the side of the road, she got in and immediately sighed in relief. "Thank God," she murmured, gripping the steering wheel in aching fingers. They were cold from the flight, and in pain from holding so tightly to J'onn.

The Martian went intangible as he stood outside her car door and, instead of walking around the car to the other side, opening the door, and getting in, he simply went through the car—and through her.

Kate blinked at him, then laughed. "I suppose if I could phase through things, I wouldn't bother using doors, either."

He gave a small smile.

She started her car and they began the long, long drive home.

After several minutes in silence, J'onn spoke up. "The trees are beautiful here."

She smiled. "They are."

They drove in silence for another minute.

Kate turned the radio on but kept the volume low.

J'onn tilted his head at the music then went back to staring out the window.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked him.

"Trees."

"The ones from home, I'm guessing?"

"Yes. I am… saddened by what has become of Mars. It was once so beautiful. Now, after five-hundred years, it has been covered in that red dust. The planet was so destroyed that it became a desert, all of its vegetation lost."

"I'm sorry."

"As am I."

Kate felt some kind of uncomfortable knot settle in her stomach. Since coming back to her apartment, she and J'onn had been cooped up in there, recovering quietly. Truth be told, she would've been perfectly willing never to step foot outside for the rest of her life. But now, out here, winding down a mountain road, she was forced to remember that the outside world existed. Eventually, she would have to go back to work. In fact, she should probably call her boss and explain what had happened, ask for official time off.

She was sure she'd get it; she was often given special treatment due to her powers. Her apartment so near the hospital—and one with its own parking garage for her car, no less—was a direct result of saving someone's life. The man had been incredibly wealthy and had demanded that he repay her somehow. She'd insisted she did not need anything but he hadn't taken no for an answer. In desperation, she had asked for a nicer, bigger apartment, all expenses paid, and somewhere closer to her work.

She'd gotten it, to her complete shock. It was only a one-bedroom, but still much more comfortable than the tiny studio she'd had before, and she never had to pay rent. It turns out that the man whose life she'd saved owned her entire apartment building, as well as several others in Metropolis.

"What are you thinking about?" J'onn asked her.

She told him. Told him about her work, about her apartment. "I don't know how I'm supposed to go back to work like nothing happened," she said in a near-whisper. "I don't have my powers anymore, which makes me all but useless. I'm not really a nurse; they just gave me that title so they could pay me. And even if I did have my powers, I have to touch people to heal them, and right now I… I can't do that."

"Do not give up hope," he said. "It will get better with time. It's only been two days."

It was odd to think about that. It had only been two days since she and J'onn had been tortured by the Imperium, since the city—the world—had been under siege. But all of it felt so far away already, like it hadn't been real. Yet, she was left with the mental scars to prove it.

Scars…

Kate glanced at J'onn, ran her eyes along his arms. Saw nothing. "The Imperium," she began. "Did it… Did it do any permanent damage to you? I mean… did it leave any wounds?"

"No. It would be very difficult to leave a lasting wound on my body no matter what you did to it, unless you rendered me incapable of shapeshifting."

"That's good." She shivered, trying not to think of that horrible creature digging its tentacles around inside his body. Inside hers.

"So, you heal people for a living?" J'onn asked.

She blinked, dragging herself up out of terrible memories. "Um, yes. I figured with a power like mine, I might as well use it for good."

"So, you're a superhero after all."

She released a short laugh. "No. You guys are the superheroes. I just work at a hospital. I can't even fly."

"Batman and the Flash can't fly either. Does that make them lesser heroes than Hawkgirl or Superman?"

"Of course not. I just meant…"

"You meant to downplay your strengths because you don't see yourself as others see you."

"No, I don't. Because I'm not. Everyone else was there, too, and none of them ended up horrifically traumatized by what happened."

"No one else was tortured, and even if they had been, they've all been heroes far longer than you. They've already had their first breakdowns, been given their first battle scars. Just because you are new at this doesn't make you less than."

She sighed heavily, realizing that there was no point in arguing. "When did you become so wise?"

"I am very old."

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He was smirking at her just a tiny bit.

She laughed.

###

Her phone had been dead when she and J'onn had gotten to her car so she'd put it on the charger she kept in here to start to get the battery back. Halfway to the city, it rang. She glanced at the screen: Mom.

"Oh no," she groaned, and pulled over to the side of the road. "I have to get this. She's probably freaking out."

J'onn said nothing.

Kate picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Katie!" her mother cried, sounding close to tears already. "I've been trying to reach you for days! We thought you were—"

"I'm not dead, Mom," Kate assured her. She thought fast. "I lost my phone, but someone found it and turned it into the police and I just got it back."

"Well, that was… fortunate."

Kate cringed. It hadn't been a very good lie; most people in Metropolis who just found a phone lying around wouldn't do the right thing.

"Listen, your father and I have been worried sick," her mother went on. "All this stuff on the news… Metropolis under attack. Everywhere under attack. Were you hurt?"

"No, I promise," Kate said, feeling sick for lying. But what was the point of telling the truth and only making her mother worry more? "I'm fine. Everything is fine."

Tentacles breaking through her skull—

She put her hand over the phone and breathed, laying her forehead against the steering wheel and closing her eyes.

Her mother went on, jabbering in her ear, like any worried parent.

Kate opened her eyes and saw movement in her periphery. She jumped; she'd forgotten J'onn was there.

His hand, which had been reaching out, stopped. He stared at her, his eyes soft with sympathy.

"Mom, I swear I'm okay," she said, trying to keep the trembling out of her voice. She allowed J'onn to touch her shoulder and breathed easier, taking comfort in the warmth of his hand.

"All right," her mother finally said. "Well, call me more often. And come to see us! We miss you!"

"Okay," Kate replied, trying to sound cheery. "Love you! Bye!"

She hung up, then sighed heavily and went back to resting her forehead on the steering wheel. She wanted to bonk her head against it and smiled a little at the mental image of her horn honking in short toots as she bounced her forehead against it over and over. Her smile fell almost immediately. Without looking up or opening her eyes, she said, "You heard all of that?"

"Mm."

"I couldn't tell her the truth. It would just hurt her."

"Yes," he said softly.

"You think I did the right thing?"

"I think that I would do anything to keep my loved ones from pain," he replied solemnly.

She sat up and nodded, then started the car and continued the drive home.