Trigger warnings for torture.

Five

Kate stood with J'onn and Diana atop a skyscraper overlooking Metropolis. With Batman secretly off to fulfill his mission, and J'onn and Kate having to pretend he had died, they had all left the invaders' factory because "there was nothing else they could do there."

Are you sure we have to lie to everyone? Kate asked, feeling uncomfortable about this whole thing for the thousandth time in the past twenty minutes.

Unfortunately, yes, J'onn replied. The fewer people who know the truth, the better. The invaders can read our minds just as easily as I am reading yours. They won't hesitate to tear the others' minds apart to find any scrap of useful information they can. I wouldn't even have told you if I could have helped it.

Sorry for almost blowing the whole plan, she thought.

You didn't know. I would never have expected you to leave Batman there if you sensed he was still alive. You are too good for that.

She blushed at the compliment and did not reply, opting to peer silently down at the chaos below them. The streets were full of people running about like ants who'd had water poured down their anthill. They were up high enough that it was difficult for her to tell what exactly they were doing, but she could hear screams, breaking glass, the screech of tires on the roads as people peeled out or slammed on their brakes. She kept her empathetic powers as close to herself as she could, not wanting to be overwhelmed by their feelings of fear and hopelessness, but she still caught whiffs of it, like some acrid scent on a breeze.

"Perhaps Mother was right about mankind," Diana said. "They're nothing but untamed savages."

"Do not judge them too harshly," J'onn replied, also watching the goings-on down below. "They act out of fear." In his mind, he replayed memories of the initial attack of the invaders on Mars, the way his people had acted. Many had run away and hid where they could; many had tried to fight back. Others had reacted to the chaos by committing violence, much like the humans below.

Green Lantern and Flash appeared on the roof suddenly. Kate felt the rush of wind from Flash's appearance. She shivered; since she'd had to drop her winter clothes, now, instead of sweating, she was cold.

"Sorry we're late," Lantern said. "Had to stop and help some civilians."

"What'd you call us back for?" Flash asked.

"Superman's been captured," Diana told them, walking to the edge of the roof and pointing off into the distance, towards the large, stormy clouds being created by the invaders' factories. "He's trapped somewhere inside there with Hawkgirl."

Flash stared at the ominous clouds. "Whoa."

"And what about Batman?" Lantern asked.

Kate bowed her head obediently, partly to act as she was meant to, partly to hide her face lest she give anything away.

"He acted heroically," said J'onn. "To the very end."

"The Bat's gone?" Flash asked, shoulders slumping. Then he looked away, out at the city, overcome by emotion.

"He was a true warrior," Diana said quietly.

Kate said nothing, only kept her head bowed.

"This is not good," Lantern said, studying the clouds in the distance. "Definitely not good."

###

A little while later, Kate found herself with the others, hunched down behind some debris surrounding the burnt out crater wherein stood one of the invaders' factories—the place where Superman and Hawkgirl had gone down. J'onn was far away in his mind, reaching down through the earth to find them.

"I can't believe we're doing this again," Flash complained.

"If Superman and Hakwgirl are in there, someone's gotta rescue 'em," Green Lantern said, glaring at the red-suited man. He turned and looked back at J'onn. "You are sure they're still in there, aren't you?"

J'onn said nothing, still reaching through the earth.

"J'onn?" Lantern repeated.

"Give him a second," Kate said quietly. She grabbed onto the tendril of his mind he was spearing through the earth and went down, down, down with him. Then he broke through, and there were Superman and Hawkgirl. And beyond them, among the hive mind of the invaders, there was a general hum of excitement. Kate, still twined with that tendril of J'onn's mind, felt what he felt, heard what he heard, chanted over and over again throughout the hivemind: The Imperium. The Imperium. The Imperium is coming.

"Yes," J'onn said, coming back to himself. "Your friends are alive, but we must act quickly. The Imperium is coming."

"The who?" Flash asked.

Kate was glad she was crouching already because, as she returned all of her mind to herself, she felt dizzy. A pebble by her boot spun and spun and she closed her eyes to stop looking at it.

"The supreme intelligence that controls these invaders," J'onn explained, and rested a hand on her shoulder as he spoke. "We have met before."

You are dizzy because you have never reached out so far with your mind, he explained quietly to her, as Green Lantern and the Flash spoke in hushed tones, wondering if they could trust him. He pretended that he did not hear them. Next time, do not follow me that far. You will have to learn how to reach farther without overexerting yourself. The dizziness will pass in time.

Kate took some deep breaths through her nose. You don't seem bothered that Lantern and Flash don't trust you.

No one trusts me here. I am used to it. I was imprisoned for two years because no one trusted me.

That's not true, she said, feeling hurt despite herself. Superman and I both do. We both came to rescue you.

You seem to be the only ones, J'onn replied, but she felt his small smile at her words all the same.

Give it time, she told him.

Time, he repeated wonderingly. Time when? Even if he survived this invasion and saved the Earth, then what? Clearly, he was not welcome here. And he could not go back to Mars, either.

Just, she began, and took a breath, the dizziness having passed now. She looked up at him and he turned his head to stare down at her, orange eyes gazing at her as if searching her soul. Just…

Just what? She didn't know what she wanted to say to him. Just stay? Just stay here and give it more time? Let people get to know him? Just don't leave her?

J'onn's eyes widened at that last thought.

Kate blushed down to her toes and tried to explain that she meant it in a friendly manner. She meant it in a way that suggested she wanted to get to know him better, wanted to know more about Martians and their culture, their language, their history. She tried to explain that she was fascinated by him, but—

"Okay, we're going in," Green Lantern said, standing up, with the others following suit. "Flash, create a diversion. Diana, watch my back."

"You want to rely on an amateur?" Diana asked, putting her hands on her hips.

Lantern only looked at her for a moment, then said, "Let's move."

J'onn was there suddenly, bending his knees, one hand on her back, the other arm sweeping her up. She locked her arms around his neck and he took off into the air.

Are you sure you don't mind doing this? Kate asked him, still hot under the collar from their misunderstanding.

I'm sure, was his only reply, but she could sense his sincerity, and it put her at ease.

Flash's distraction down below was loud and explosive but Kate could not see much of it as they flew past overhead. They landed feet away from one of the gigantic drills boring into the earth, its workings causing the ground to shake. And it was loud. Kate remained cocooned in J'onn's arms, for they were not done moving yet. She held her breath, willing her muscles to still. J'onn himself was like a marble statue, not exactly a comfortable seat. A moment later, when the sentry passed, they were off again, and then they were inside.

"Where are they being held?" Lantern asked.

"This way," J'onn replied, and turned down a side passage. He and the others landed, and J'onn set her down, making sure she had her feet under her before he went on.

A moment later, Flash joined them. "Hope I didn't keep you—"

Before Kate could even finish thinking that she did not relish being inside one of these places again, they heard the alien invaders up ahead, speaking in their strange language, their voices echoing down the hall.

Kate pressed her back to the wall with the others, grimacing at the squishiness of it, and watched J'onn poke his head around the corner.

He pulled it back again and turned to the others. "Wait here."

The group nodded silently, but Kate did not move her own head, too busy staring at J'onn, fearing what would happen next.

The Martian waited, looking at Kate.

With a start, she realized he was waiting for her to acknowledge his words. She gave a jerky nod.

He transformed in front of her eyes until he resembled one of the invaders, his skin turned a slick, sticky white.

Kate, nauseous, turned her face away as he rounded the corner. He spoke to them in their own tongue, they responding in kind, and—

"Intruders! There are intruders here!" he told them. Connected to J'onn's mind, Kate could interpret the language.

"Intruders? Where are they?" one alien demanded.

"Down that way," J'onn said, his voice grim.

He had not led them away, but towards Kate and the others, where they hid around the corner.

Terror and betrayal flashed through Kate's mind as the invaders rounded the corner and found them all standing there. J'onn, she thought, staring down the barrel of a laser gun. How could you—

And then he was there too, behind the two sentries. He transformed back into himself, but intangible, and put his arms through their bodies. Then he went solid again, and Kate watched them die as his arms destroyed their insides. They made terrible noises, shuddering and shrieking. Then J'onn went intangible again and their bodies crumpled slowly to the floor.

Kate pressed a hand to her chest, her heart beating rapidly. She was shaking so hard her teeth chattered. "J-J'onn," she said.

He went to her, reaching slowly, until his hands were on her shoulders. I'm sorry, he said. I thought you knew what I was doing. Did you not trust me?

I was… confused, she said. I'm sorry. I should've had more faith in you.

All this, after she had just told him she trusted him. She felt him pull away from her a little in his mind. Felt him wish to shield his thoughts from her for the first time since they had met. He removed his hands from her shoulders, began to turn away from her.

She knew it was not the time, that they needed to move on, to save Superman and Hawkgirl and get the hell out of there. But she also knew that if she let this thing fester between them, their relationship—friendship, mentorship, whatever this was—would be altered forever. She threw her arms around him, holding tightly.

I'm sorry, she repeated. I'm sorry. I do trust you. But you're not the only one who's had to deal with others not believing you. My whole life, anyone who ever found out I could kill people by touching them, they… they look at me differently. They avoid touching me. They're afraid of me. It's never the same after that. I understand, J'onn. I do. At least that part of it. She would never understand what it was like to have her entire species wiped out, to lose a spouse and children, to be forced into a war against her will. But she did know what it was like to have people look at her like she was a monster, like she was something to be avoided. I'm not afraid of you, she told him.

He rested his hands on her back as she held him and took a deep breath, his mind calming, the icy wall he'd been erecting between them coming down again. In its place she felt warmth and gratitude. Then, quietly, into her hair, he said, "Come."

She let him go and followed him down the passageway. After several seconds, when the others had not yet moved, she stopped and turned to look at them. They were staring at her and J'onn, their eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them. Then they followed.

###

"We are close now," J'onn told them some time later, as they made their way down a sloping path.

Kate could see that it was a dead end up ahead, but she trusted J'onn to lead them.

He turned his head just barely in her direction at that thought: that she trusted him to lead them. A tiny flicker of a smile came and went on his face, and then he focused once more on getting them to where they needed to go. They stopped at the wall blocking their path and he placed his hand flat against it, closing his eyes and pushing his mind outwards.

Kate did not accompany him this time, electing to stay within the confines of her own mind.

A moment later, J'onn said, "I sense that they are somewhere beyond these walls."

Diana stepped up and placed her hands against the wall, pushing with all her might. Nothing happened. "It's no use," she said. "We'll have to find another way."

Briefly, Kate wondered exactly how strong she was. She assumed very, since anything she'd ever heard about Amazon women was that they possessed great strength, among other powers.

Green Lantern moved closer to the wall then. "Stand back," he told them, and aimed a beam from his ring at the wall, slowly, ever so slowly, cutting through it.

This is going to take forever, Kate thought, though she kept it to herself. There was no reason to voice her negativity out loud and bring down morale. Having worked in a hospital for so many years, she'd learned to try and keep a positive attitude, at least outwardly, even if she was spiraling inside.

J'onn sent his mind out again, searching for Superman and Hawkgirl. His thoughts strayed to the outside world, where, above them, the invaders were destroying the city. Soon, the Imperium would arrive. "We haven't much time left," he murmured, the worry obvious in his voice.

Kate warily touched his mind, probing for more information about the Imperium. She did it slowly, gently, giving him the chance to pull away, but he let her in, albeit with a warning.

It will frighten you.

I'm already frightened, she said. But maybe if I know what's coming… I can figure out how better to fight it?

Wishful thinking, he told her, but showed her his memories all the same.

What she witnessed didn't just scare her—it horrified her. The invaders had been bad enough on Mars before their leader had shown up. Afterwards, they were a thousand times worse, and much more organized. And the Imperium itself… The regular invaders were nothing but worker bees, buzzing along, doing their jobs. They had some inborn penchant for cruelty, but nothing like their leader. The Imperium seemed hell-bent on mayhem and pain.

Kate pulled away after briefly seeing a memory of it torturing and killing a child slowly, over the course of hours, while J'onn lay, broken and battered and held at gunpoint, powerless to stop it. It had not been his child, but the torture and murder of any child was absolutely sickening.

She turned away and wiped at her eyes, feeling ill.

J'onn lay a hand on her shoulder. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have shown you that. My mind got away from me.

Kate glanced back at him, her fists clenching with anxiety. She stared at Lantern's ring beam, willing it to cut faster. It took several minutes, but Lantern eventually got through the wall, which fell away with a loud, heavy crunch as it hit the floor. Through the hole cut out, they peered inside and found Superman and Hawkgirl hanging upside-down from the ceiling, encased in some kind of white material. It looked like rock, like stalactites had grown down from the ceiling around their bodies, covering up to their legs and trapping their hands.

Hawkgirl groaned, seemingly partially awake.

"Great Hera," Diana said, and hopped through the hole and into the room, as did the others.

Kate went into the room with them, but stayed back and sent out an empathetic link to the two heroes hanging upside-down, her eyes closed. She opened them a moment later, confused. "Something's happened to them. I can't reach them with my empathy. I can't feel them."

"Agreed," J'onn said, who had also stayed back. "Something is not right." He had not expected to find the two of them so soon, had felt them much farther on.

Hawkgirl and Superman's eyes opened then, and they were red.

Behind Kate, the hole in the wall sealed itself.

Green Lantern went to it and pressed his hands against it. "It's a trap!"

The room began to fill with yellow gas.

Kate tried to hold her breath, but even as she inhaled one last time to get a big enough breath to hold, she breathed in too much gas and felt immediately woozy. It made her forget to keep the air in her lungs, and she breathed out and back in again. She held her head in her hands as the room spun, then fell heavily to her hands and knees. Pain spiked through her left wrist at the landing. J'onn, she thought, and lifted her head blearily to try and find him through the yellow haze.

"Lantern," Diana croaked, coughing. "Your ring."

J'onn reached for Kate, one arm outstretched, and even as she fell fully to the floor, prone, she reached out one arm toward him as well. Their fingertips brushed. And then Kate was gone.

###

Kate awoke with a start at some loud, roaring sound. Her head pounded with the beat of her heart and she could hardly open her eyes, but she managed to crack them just enough to see the storm raging outside above her head. Where was she? She could hear voices, but she was still so out of it that she couldn't quite understand what they were saying.

"All hail the Imperium!"

Well, she got that, and shook herself, trying to wake up more, remembering what had happened, where she was. "No," she groaned.

But, despite her protestations, the Imperium came anyway. It appeared amidst rolling fog, a purple, undulating, bulbous mass with tentacles sticking off of its sides.

Looking upon its form, knowing why it was here, sent Kate into a state of complete panic. She strained against her bonds, though to do what, she wasn't sure. Even if she got out of this hold, where would she go? They'd kill her in an instant—though would that really be a bad thing? Life under the rule of the Imperium would be hell.

In her terror, she reached out for J'onn, seeking comfort, but was met with an impenetrable wall, hard as iron. She pressed herself against it, begging entrance, but if he even felt her there, he did not acknowledge her.

J'onn J'onzz, said the Imperium, its voice a mental projection, sounding deep and male. It's been a long time. It—he—sounded so casual, as if he and J'onn were old friends.

It made Kate want to spit at the creature. She watched as J'onn was lifted up to the platform where the Imperium hovered, his bonds released. The Martian stood before his old enemy, and, though Kate could only see his back, he looked so calm to her, his stance relaxed. He said nothing, and if he thought anything into the Imperium's mind, she did not hear it.

Two of the Imperium's lackeys touched J'onn's shoulders with strange sticks, sending electricity arcing through him. He cried out, his body spasming.

Kate screamed, pulling at her bonds again. "Stop! Stop!" Her mind may have been locked out of his, but her empathetic powers were strong as ever, and psychic pain lanced through her brain as the shocks went on and on. When Kate felt pain empathetically, it was not the same as feeling it in her own body; it was more mentally and emotionally taxing than anything else. However, seeing her friend spasming and twitching, screaming in pain, made it feel different. She wanted so desperately to take the pain from him, but she had never been able to heal people without touching them.

She watched in horror as J'onn transformed, his body reverting to its original Martian form, unable to hold its new shape under such duress. The shocks stopped the moment he was a true Martian again. The invaders pulled their sticks away from his body and he fell, with a groan, to the floor, twitching as a few last arcs of electricity made their way through him.

Kate stared and stared at him, pulling at her bonds, her body bathed in sweat. She blinked as her vision blurred and couldn't tell if she was crying or if the sweat had run into her eyes. She tried to reach out to him again mentally, to see if he was even conscious. She could feel him breathing, knew him to be alive, but she wanted to know more than that. She wanted to protect him and hold him and take him far away from here.

Their minds touched; he was too tired now to hold the barrier up between them. No, he said, his voice barely a whisper in her ear. Go.

I won't leave you, she whispered back, unsure of whether or not the Imperium could hear them.

Much better, said the Imperium, speaking to J'onn. You have defied us for centuries.

J'onn rose on shaking limbs, speaking telepathically now, projecting his mental voice outward for all to hear. And I will never bow before you or any of your kind.

Then we will personally see to finishing what should have been accomplished long ago: the elimination of the last Martian.

"No," Kate whispered, but even her struggling stopped then, for she felt as if she were watching a train wreck—too terrible to witness, yet she could not tear her eyes away. And as the Imperium's disgusting tentacles reached for him, she attempted something she had never attempted before. She tried to heal J'onn without touching him. She tried to spin a web of protection around his body, to keep him from harm.

No! he told her. Leave me!

I will not! she cried, ignoring his fear for her safety, and dug herself into his mind like a tick. She had risked everything to go and rescue him from that facility, and already, her life had changed. But she was still a healer to her bones, and she would not leave him to face his death alone, not if there was even the slightest chance that she could stop it or buy him time. And, underneath, somewhere hidden, there was another reason she did all of this, some undeniable attraction, some connection between them that she would never get the chance to explore if he died here.

Then her mind went completely blank as pain traveled up, up her body, through her arms, her stomach, wrapping itself around her in white-hot tendrils. She screamed and thrashed and tried to escape, but the pain was relentless. And through the bond she had so foolishly established with J'onn, she heard him screaming also, his mind just as blank, torn open by this torture. The Imperium had shoved its tentacles into his body, up his arms, through his stomach, and was now pushing its way into his neck, his face…

Into his brain.

Kate screamed until her throat went raw, every nerve in her body standing on end, her brain on fire. Never in her life had she felt pain like this. This went far beyond anything she had experienced in her time as a nurse, healing people's hurts day to day. Even some of the most horrific pain she had taken from people had never felt like this, for she was not being violated as she felt it. But this… this was happening to both of them in real time, and the Imperium was experiencing some kind of sadistic pleasure in it.

It knew that she felt it also. It knew and kept going.

And Kate could not escape it, and she could not shield J'onn as she had so wished to. Now, she only shared his pain, and screamed in agony until her body gave out, giving her the only exit it could. She slumped against her bonds, her head bowed low, unconscious.