Eleven

The first thing she felt as she stood looking out into space was a sense of loss. Loss for what, she didn't know, couldn't figure out for a few minutes, as thoughts about the Justice League tumbled about in her mind. Then she realized she was missing J'onn, his constant presence, always nearby in her small one-bedroom apartment. It wasn't as though he was very far away now, but she had told him not to follow her, and now she was regretting that. Slowly, she sent out a tendril in his direction, wondering if he'd heard that, but she ran into the wall around his mind.

Shocked, she spun around, searching for him. He was right where she'd left him, but faced the other way. J'ONN! she cried, spreading her consciousness across the surface of the wall, searching for a way in. She would have called to him aloud, but her throat felt constricted.

He spun around, as if sensing her distress even through the wall, and then flew straight toward her, lowering the wall at the same time. "It's all right," he said, both aloud and telepathically. "I was only giving you space to think without prying." He put his hands on her shoulders, squeezing, staring down into her face with concern.

She realized she was hyperventilating. "S-Sorry," she tried to say, but felt winded, like she'd just run a marathon.

"Breathe," he said. "Slowly. Remember what we do at night?" He demonstrated, breathing in deeply, down into his stomach, then held it for several seconds, then released it through his lips like blowing air through a straw.

She did as he instructed, once, twice, thrice. Her heart rate slowed, her breathing slowed. She felt embarrassed. "What just happened?" she whispered.

He probed gently at her mind, picking apart her thoughts and feelings analytically. "You panicked. You thought I was going to abandon you, that if you chose not to join the Justice League, you would never see me again."

She blushed and looked away from him, laughing automatically, a nervous habit. "I'm sorry. How ridiculous."

He hugged her.

She went stiff in his arms for only a moment, more out of surprise than anything else. She wasn't afraid of him, but hugging was new. In two weeks of knowing each other, they'd hugged only three times that she could recall, and this was the third time. They had touched each other constantly in the last two weeks, but never so outwardly as this.

Is this… incorrect? he asked awkwardly, hearing her thoughts.

No, she said quickly. I don't know.

I won't abandon you no matter what you choose.

You barely know me.

I know you better than anyone else on this planet.

She snorted. That's not saying much.

You're deflecting because you're afraid. Why are you afraid?

I don't want to lose you. You're my friend.

J'onn didn't move for a long, long moment.

Kate clung to him, worried she'd said the wrong thing. Perhaps he had never thought of himself as her friend. Perhaps she was only his burden to bear, a patient to help. Say something, she begged.

He pulled back enough to look at her face, and rested a hand on her cheek. I haven't had a friend in a very long time. Some lightness floated through him, a kind of hope at the thought that, even on this strange planet far from home, he might still make meaningful connections to others.

She smiled shyly. Maybe… you can make even more friends? she suggested, and glanced at the other members of the League who were standing around waiting for her to make a decision.

He took a breath. Perhaps.

"Well then," she said aloud, "I guess I'm joining after all."

###

Kate stood in front of the full-length mirror in her room at the Watchtower, having just put on her suit for the first time. It was heavy, which just made her embarrassed to be so out of shape that ten whole pounds felt heavy on her body. To be fair, it wasn't as though the general population walked around with weights all over themselves. Clothing wasn't supposed to be heavy; not even winter gear felt like this.

The worst part about it was that it was tight-fitting. That, plus the weight, made it feel like she couldn't breathe, which was kind of her worst nightmare. She hadn't even tried putting the helmet on yet because she felt like having something surrounding her head like that might set her off.

I'm right outside your room, J'onn reminded her. If you start to panic, I'll come in.

She took a breath and slid the helmet down over her head. Tentacles breaking through her skull, shattering bone, pushing into her brain. Her heart rate spiked and sweat broke out under her arms. She yanked the helmet off her head before it was halfway on. "Shit."

Kate, deep breaths. Remember, that helmet has a long visor, so your vision shouldn't be too impacted. The helmet doesn't connect to anything, so you can take it off whenever you want.

She took a few deep breaths, staring at herself in the mirror.

Try again, J'onn said.

She did, jamming it down over her head quickly this time. Then she stood, breathing heavily as the weight and feel of the helmet surrounded her head. Her claustrophobia screamed at her to take it off, that it was squeezing her head in a vice and she'd never be able to take it off at all if she didn't do it now. She ignored these orders and tried to breathe through them. J'onn, she begged, turning away from the mirror and towards the door to her room.

He came through it, arms outstretched, and placed them on her shoulders.

Ordinarily, this would have comforted her, but she couldn't feel him properly through the padding of the suit. Her panic rose and she quickly ripped the helmet off of her head, feeling like tentacles were wrapping around it, and wrapping around her chest, as well. "I… can't… breathe," she said, forgetting in her panic that she could communicate with him telepathically.

"You can," he said. "You're just hyperventilating again. Slow down. Deep breaths."

"I can't… breathe deeply… in this thing. It's… too tight." Tears sprang to her eyes. She dropped the helmet—though J'onn caught it before it hit the floor—and began to pull at the suit, peeling it away from herself like a wetsuit. Finally, after struggling with it for several seconds, she managed to get it off of herself and stood in her bra and underwear. (Batman had shown her, with extreme disinterest and a flat voice, that the top part of the suit had a built-in bra, so wearing her own wasn't necessary, but since this was the first time she'd ever put it on, she'd worn one anyway.)

Immediately, she went to the bed and lay down, curling up into the fetal position. She knew from experience that laying on her side like this, with her knees up, helped her breathe more deeply when she felt like she couldn't get enough air into her lungs. With each full expansion of her stomach, she breathed slower, more calmly.

J'onn came over to the bed and sat down, placing the helmet beside him. "You were doing all right before the helmet."

Kate said nothing.

"Perhaps you should get used to just wearing the helmet by itself first."

Everyone expects me to become a productive member of the League, she thought. I can't even put on the outfit. I… I feel a child.

J'onn was silent for a time, mulling things over. The first time I ever killed someone, he thought after a while, I felt sick for hours. I threw up when it first happened. After that, I was sweaty and shaking for what felt like eons. There was no time to stop and process what I had done. There were others after me and I had to keep going to survive. But I found somewhere to hide for the rest of the day instead of fighting because I knew I could not kill anyone else that day.

Kate looked up at him, studying the side of his face, the strange shape of it. Strong browbones, sharp cheekbones. The tiny slit on the side of his head that functioned as his ear. There was a matching one on the other side that she couldn't see, but she knew it was there.

It took a long time, he went on, but I eventually learned to cope with… war, and all that came with it. He looked down at her and smiled, a strange expression to have, considering the topic of conversation. If I can learn to kill without throwing up, you can learn to put on the costume without panicking.

Kate sighed heavily and sat up. "Give me the helmet."

He handed it to her.

She put it on her head. Then she sat there with her shoulders up by her ears for a long time, body tense, hating the sound that her breath made inside this thing.

J'onn took her hand.

She squeezed it and he squeezed back. Slowly, she relaxed her body and began to look around the room with the helmet on. J'onn had been correct; her vision wasn't stunted. She could still see most everything in her periphery. "Am I muffled when I talk?" she asked.

"Yes, but I can understand you."

"How ridiculous do I look, sitting here in nothing but my underclothes and a helmet?"

"You don't look ridiculous at all," he said, but there was a tiny curling of amusement in his mind as he looked her over.

"I can feel you laughing in your head."

"All right. You do look a little silly."

She got up off the bed and went to stand in front of the mirror. Taking herself in, she burst out laughing immediately and spun around to face J'onn, still laughing.

He was trying to hold in his own laughter, not wanting to make her feel bad.

"Come on," she said. "I look like some kind of stick insect with a skinny body and a giant head."

He did laugh then, which only made her laugh harder, until they were both crying from mirth.

She took off her helmet to wipe at her eyes, taking deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. "I've never heard you laugh before. Not like that."

J'onn wiped at his own eyes, still smiling. "Well… I've had precious little to laugh about in the last five-hundred years."

Kate felt a stab of grief and opened her mouth to say something, to try and explain that it wasn't a bad thing to laugh, even with his family dead—that they'd be happy he was laughing again. However, her brain chose that particular moment to make her realize that she'd been in nothing but bra and panties for several minutes. Various emotions flooded her mind and body, mainly some combination of embarrassment and lust. She tried to pull them back and shove them into her head behind a wall, but it was like trying to catch smoke with her hands. The emotions bled through and easily leaked into J'onn's mind. She stood there, now so mortified and afraid that she wanted to cry, and said absolutely nothing.

He sat on the edge of her bed for a long moment, eyes closed, breathing, and kept his own thoughts close to himself so that she could not read them. Slowly, he opened his eyes and looked up at her. "I don't know… what we are," he began slowly. "You said we were friends, and we are, but I believe there's… something more underneath."

She blushed all the more to hear him say it out loud, the parts of herself—of themselves—that she had tried to hide.

"You don't need to hide those feelings from me," he said quietly. "I'm not a monk. I do have… desires of my own."

This was absolutely not what she'd been expecting. None of this had been a problem before now, because before now, she'd been far too much of a wreck to ever think of him this way, beyond an occasional pang. Cooped up those two weeks in her apartment, she hadn't even given thought to touching herself late at night; she'd been too exhausted and too overwrought. Now, it was as though all of her initial attraction to him, first felt from the moment they'd met, had come roaring back at top speed.

And he could hear it, and feel it. He knew it on an intimate level because their minds had remained open to one another from the moment she'd regained her powers. That was another thing she didn't understand. How could she be so open with someone she'd met such a short time ago? Had their shared trauma really bonded them this closely?

"You really do overthink things," he murmured, standing up.

"Hi, Kate Stanton, welcome to my brain," she replied faintly.

He smiled at the floor. "Do you overthink things this much when you save people at the hospital?"

"What?" she asked.

"Your job at the hospital. When you heal people, are you thinking this much? Do you panic?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because if I panic, something bad could happen. I have to focus solely on healing, on ensuring I only take the pain and injury, not the patient's life force."

"This is how you must be if you join the Justice League," he told her. "You must become the Healer, solely focused on the task at hand, whatever that is. Do you understand?"

"Yes," she said, and did.

When you put on the suit, he went on telepathically, you must focus on why you're doing it. The suit protects you and gives you some power you wouldn't ordinarily have. So does the helmet. They are not constricting you; they are part of you. They become extensions of your body. And he repeated, Do you understand?

Thoughts of tight spaces and tentacles began to creep in around the edges of her mind.

No, said J'onn, and moved closer to her, and put his hands on her face, his eyes boring into hers, glowing. To me. Focus on me. I'm right here. The suit and helmet are extensions of your body.

Kate felt his fingers on her skin like fire, wanted them everywhere. Wanted his mouth, wanted—

Repeat it, J'onn commanded.

The suit and helmet are extensions of my body, she thought, trembling under his touch.

Good. Again, out loud.

She opened her mouth to speak the words but she was exuding lust and longing and she knew that he could feel it and that scared the shit out of her.

"You do not ever have to fear me," he said gently. "Acknowledge your attraction to me and then let it go and say the words. Do not let your emotions rob you of your focus."

She blushed.

"Say the words," he told her softly, smiling.

"The suit and helmet are extensions of my body," she whispered.

"Louder. With conviction."

She said them again, louder, pushing past the awkwardness.

"Good."

They stood that way for a time, simply staring at one another. J'onn kept her face cradled in his hands.

"I'm sorry," she began to say, but he was already shaking his head.

"Please," he said. "I haven't… No one has…" He drew in a breath and released it slowly. "I am… flattered."

"I don't—want this to change anything," she said quickly. "I… I want to keep being your friend. It's just… you know, if you were human, you wouldn't be able to read my mind. So, it's not… the same. You wouldn't know that I…" That I find you all kinds of hot.

His eyes widened ever so slightly, then he smirked, then he schooled his face back into careful neutrality. "I understand," he said. "I promise we are still friends. This changes nothing."

She sighed in relief. "Good." And she meant it. She couldn't seem to help this attraction she had towards him, but she didn't want it to ruin their friendship. She didn't want their relationship to change, to twist, to become awkward. "I'll… try to stop thinking of you that way."

"That's… not necessary," he said. "If you think it will help you, then do so. But don't do it just to spare my feelings. I…" He smiled a little. "I enjoy it."

He shared a memory with her then, a memory of their terrifying ride in the Batwing after he'd been injured. Through his eyes, his body, she felt herself sitting atop him in the jet, felt him put his arms around her, sensed her own enjoyment of his arms around her. J'onn had been surprised at that. Surprised and… flattered, just as he'd said a moment ago. It made him want to keep holding her. It felt good to be wanted after five-hundred years of being utterly, completely alone.

Kate blushed again and looked away, smiling. "Well," she said, and trailed off awkwardly.

"Well," he replied, his voice warm and solid and amused.