Fifteen

"The facts are clear," one of the judges said some time later. "John Stewart is guilty."

Shit, thought Kate, half-standing up out of her seat, then sitting down again. What was she supposed to do, in front of everyone?

"Do you wish to make a statement before we pass sentence?" asked the female judge.

Kate did not hear John's no, but she could see him bow his head, and that was obvious enough. She would have put her face in her hands if not for her helmet. She understood that John felt terrible about what he had supposedly done, but… watching him simply give up—give in—was horrible. What if the others were right and something fishy was going on?

"Very well," said one judge. "The sentence is termination, for you and your advocate."

Before Kate even had time to panic, something rose up out of the murky waters below the central platform, some kind of white half-sphere with a flat bottom. The sphere split apart at the top and its two haves slid away. Kate tensed, expecting… something, some monster to appear, only to realize that this platform was… just a platform. Only it wasn't. She watched as John and Flash were forced inside of it; John went much more willingly than Flash.

The walls of the sphere began to close up again, trapping the two men inside of it.

Kate did not like this at all, and had a sickening feeling that she knew exactly what would happen to them once those walls closed completely. This was their termination, one way or another. They were about to die. Without thought for her own safety, she stood and screamed, "No! Stop!" But the walls of the sphere continued to close around the men.

"Stop!" she screamed again, and began to run down the stairs. "You can't! Please!" Things had escalated so quickly, so suddenly. She'd expected the others to have found something by now, or for the trial to have gone on much longer. But this wasn't an Earthly trial with Earthly U.S. laws. Here, the judges were also the executioners, and their words alone were law.

"Who is speaking?" one judge demanded, casting his strange eyes out towards the crowd of witnesses to find her.

"Me!" she shouted, finally down at the bottom of the stairs, as close as she could get to the central platform.

"Guards, arrest this woman for interference and throw her in with the other two. We will have no dissension here. Our word is final, and all must know it."

Shit. Fuck.

Kate willed her suit to become invisible, thinking to play a game of cat and mouse with the guards. Maybe it would distract everyone long enough to—

Overhead came the sound of shattering glass, and Superman's voice rang out across the courtroom. "Stop!"

Thank God, Kate thought, and sat down heavily right where she was, her knees trembling. She did not even watch Superman take out the guards or rescue Lantern and Flash. She was too busy trying to get her shaking under control.

"How dare you!" one of the judges roared.

"John's innocent!" Superman shot back.

Then, a few seconds later, the room erupted into shocked gasps, and oohs and ahhs.

Kate did look up then, to see what the noise was about, and followed everyone's gazes out the window. There, hovering in the sky in all its deep blue glory, was Ajuris-4.

"Ajuris-4 was never destroyed," Superman explained. "It's right where it always was. It was all an illusion. A frame-up, as they say on my planet."

Kate blinked, reaching for J'onn, about to ask him to give her the quick run-down on exactly what they had discovered on that moon.

She was interrupted by Lantern's angry shout of, "You!" as he lunged for Kanjar-Ro.

J'onn, who had been holding the little man, quickly got out of Lantern's way.

Kate stood up to get a better look at what was happening.

"Why'd you do this to me?" John demanded, holding Kanjar-Ro by the front of his outfit. "Why?"

"For… for money," the little man said.

Kate was not surprised.

"Whose money?" Lantern shouted.

"The Manhunters'."

Kate's eyes narrowed and she found herself scanning the room for any of those big red androids. She did not see any, but did catch the Guardians of Oa silently leaving the courtroom. They'd come in a few minutes after John's Lantern friend had tried to act as character witness. In Kate's estimation, they hadn't done a very good job of things and seemed to only make matters worse. Now they were leaving in unison, which was… suspicious.

J'onn landed before her as the other League members began to chase after the Guardians. "Come," he said, opening his arms.

Kate allowed herself to be picked up and she and J'onn went after the others, only a moment behind.

Flash tried to stop them first, but the Guardians went right past him as if he wasn't worth their time. Superman stepped in then, a much more outwardly formidable opponent. "What's going on?" he asked the group of little men who glowed with the power of, well, Kate assumed whatever it was that made Lantern glow green. Actually, she'd never thought to ask him what was up with his magical ring, and, as far as she could see, the Guardians weren't wearing rings.

"We don't have time for this," the lead Guardian told Superman, and floated past him.

But the others had caught up and now all of them stood, blocking the Guardians' path out.

"Where are the Manhunters?" John Stewart demanded.

"Headed back to Oa."

"Back to Oa? They've been there before?"

"Yes," said the lead Guardian, slowly, hesitantly. "We… created them there."

Kate pulled her head back in surprise.

"Say what?" Flash demanded.

The lead Guardian looked incredibly dismayed. "It was before the Lantern Corps. We thought robots would make good peacekeepers, but they were flawed. They couldn't understand the subtle gradations between good and evil."

"Why didn't you decommission them?" Superman asked.

"We reprogrammed them for lesser duties—tracking, hunting, guarding. They didn't seem to object."

"Not out loud, anyway," John muttered.

The lead Guardian lowered his head in shame.

###

There was no time to think or argue. Kate went with all the others to Oa, riding in Green Lantern's bubble through space, because there wasn't any other option—except to leave her on Ajuris-5, but she would never have allowed that.

I don't know what will happen when we get to Oa, J'onn told her silently. You must be careful.

Like I'm not always careful, she said, the words coming out more snappishly than she'd intended because she was nervous.

He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, unaffected by her tone, understanding the emotion behind it. You weren't so careful when you got the attention of the judges at the trial. You would have done anything to save Green Lantern and Flash.

That's different, she said.

Yes, he agreed. That is what makes you a hero. But here, now, I don't know what we're… He took a breath. We're headed to war, like when we first met, and we were fighting the invaders. This is like that. It's much more dangerous, and the rest of the League may be too busy fighting off their own threats to save you from—

You're acting like my father again, she told him. I'm not an idiot.

He closed his eyes, turning his face away.

She faltered. S-Sorry.

No, you're right, he said. I'm being overprotective because I… because… His words petered out but his meaning was clear, his mind full of thoughts of his wife and children, his people. Everyone he had lost. He was warning her, worrying for her, because he could not stand the idea that he might lose her too, and out of everyone headed off to war, she was the most vulnerable, the most likely to die.

She wrapped her arms around him, though the suit and helmet made it uncomfortable. She didn't care; she didn't care that everyone was probably staring at them or giving them the side-eye.

He did not care either and put his arms around her, as well.

They stood that way for a long time, their thoughts and emotions all jumbled together, some mix of worry and fear and agitation, appreciation and respect and love.

Love?

Kate pulled her head back to stare up at J'onn, wishing she didn't have this big stupid helmet on, and despite their current circumstances, her heart skipped a beat—

"We're here," Green Lantern said. "Everyone get ready."

And so, Kate pulled away from J'onn and tried to steady herself, and she turned around to look at Oa, and saw an absolutely horrifying sight. There were hundreds of Manhunters swarming the area, and the little guns along the perimeter of this place weren't enough to stop them all.

Kate hadn't asked exactly where they were going, so she didn't know if this place had a name. She only knew that this was the stronghold of the Guardians, the place where the Battery was accessible, though it was deep, deep underground, in the center of the planet.

Before she was ready, before she even knew exactly what they were doing, she was up in J'onn's arms and he was ordering her to go invisible, which she did. Then she was quickly put down and he flew off to join the fight. The fight against hundreds of androids. The air was so full of them she could hardly see anything, so she stood there, frozen, and sent her empathy out in a wave, trying to keep tabs on anything living—

Her empathic powers hit the Battery, which was, according to Green Lantern's little lecture he'd given on the way here, made up of the life force of every living thing in the universe.

She blacked out instantly.

When she awoke, it was almost as if nothing had happened. She lay there for a moment, getting her bearings, expecting to feel a pounding headache or grogginess. She felt fine, and it seemed she'd only blacked out for a few seconds, not even long enough to fall over. But something had changed inside her brain so that she knew now to avoid touching the Battery with her powers at all costs or she'd only black out again, and she wasn't sure what sort of damage it would do to her brain the more she did it. She couldn't know for sure, but she assumed that mentally touching something that contained the life force—and emotions—of every single living being in the universe was simply too much to handle, to process.

She shook herself, glancing warily in the Battery's direction, and made her suit go invisible again. Then she sent out another empathic wave, though she avoided going anywhere near that thing. She took a breath, trying to concentrate. The fact that the androids weren't living made it easier; she couldn't say they had no emotion, because she wasn't sure what else could possibly make robots want to kill anyone, but apparently android emotions did not register to her powers, so she couldn't feel them. This was good because it meant keeping tabs on the League members was much easier than it otherwise would have been.

There was J'onn. She felt him first, so used to his mind and emotions already that she found them quite easily.

There was John Stewart, and there was Flash, and there was Superman.

There were a few of the Guardians, and… Her empathic wall moved closer to the Battery, feeling more Guardians, but she skittered quickly away from them, her mind growing dangerously fuzzy.

Kate winced as Flash was hit in the head with something and went down. She began to make her way to him, though it was slow going. Most of, well, everyone, was up in the air, but there were some Manhunters on the ground, seemingly patrolling. This area, this strange metal place in the middle of seemingly nowhere compared to what little else of the planet Kate had seen as they'd come in, was flat and empty, with nowhere to hide. Of course, she was invisible, but she assumed these androids had perfect hearing, even with all of the noise of battle. She had to give all of them a wide berth or risk a confrontation, and with only a month's worth of training under her belt, she wasn't sure she was ready for that.

By the time she made her way to Flash, he was awake and holding his head. Several explosions had gone off; Kate had seen them, though her earplugs had kept her from hearing them. She became visible in front of the red-suited man as she knelt down. "Flash, let me."

He was up on his feet before she'd finished kneeling and was staring down at her in surprise. "Oh, it's you," he said, sitting back down woozily, holding his head again. "You scared me."

"Sorry," she said, and reached out a hand, her glove folding back away from her hand. "Um, sorry again, because I have to touch your skin and the only place you're showing any is your face." She hesitated, being sure she had his permission before she touched him.

"J'onn won't punch me into a paste for this, will he?" Flash asked, grinning, then grimaced in pain.

Kate snorted and placed her fingers against his jaw. She felt his concussion and sucked it into her body, exchanging his pain and dizziness and damage with her own life force. It took a moment or two longer than most things like this did, only because she wanted to be sure that he had no lingering brain damage she'd missed, and then she pulled her fingers away. The energy drain was small, for which she was grateful, because she had no idea how many more people she'd have to heal before this was all over. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Great. Like a million bucks," he said. "Thanks." He stood up so fast that his body blurred and pulled her to her feet. "Listen, are you good?"

"Me?" she asked, surprised. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Good," he said, and disappeared.

She stood there blinking, then shook her head and tried to focus back on the battle. In the time it took to heal Flash, several others might have gone down. She made her suit go invisible again, made the glove come back to cover her hand, and closed her eyes, sending out another empathy wave. Everyone seemed fine, at least everyone far enough away from the Battery that she could safely sense them. Hawkgirl and the other Lanterns had shown up while she'd been busy with Flash, and they were full of vigor and fire and bloodlust. She moved away from them, checking on J'onn; he was fine. Superman was fine. John was…

Where was John?

Kate did another sweep of the battlefield. Flash, J'onn, a Guardian, Superman, Hawkgirl, a Guardian, Kilowog, the other Lanterns she didn't know the names of, more Guardians… But where was John Stewart?

Carefully, carefully, she eased her way towards the Battery, searching for him, but the closer she got, the more she felt like she was about to pass out, like there was some big, looming creature reaching down for her from out of the sky, its giant hand hovering right over her tiny body, ready to swat her. She pulled away, wishing she could pull off her helmet to rub her head.

There was another explosion then. She lifted her head to look and saw that it was coming from the central chamber, deep inside the planet where the Battery was. John, she thought.

A moment later, something happened for which she had no explanation, and even as she stared at it, she didn't understand what she was staring at. Perhaps this had been why she'd had the feeling that some gigantic creature was looming over her, for there was some kind of humongous green… thing emerging from the central chamber, from down deep inside. It had a face, but one she couldn't place, and it looked so…

Was this some kind of manifestation of the Battery itself, perhaps a defense mechanism? She didn't dare reach out to it with her powers, instead opting to stand there and stare; what else was she to do? Then, as quickly as it emerged, it began to disappear, to get sucked back down. Whatever it was, it protested with a long, drawn out, "Noooo!" And then it was gone.

Kate blinked, stunned. And in the few seconds she had to wonder what the hell had just happened, another spout of green light shot from the central chamber, this time followed by fireworks.

Kate sat down where she was, her mouth hanging open, watching silently as every Manhunter left alive began to flee. The other League members still had their wits about them, and it did not take long to dispose of the androids, who seemed to have lost the will to live and did not put up much of a fight. A little while later, a green-skinned, blue-caped Martian came to kneel down beside Kate where she still sat, staring up at the sky.

"What… the hell happened?" she asked him.

Silently, J'onn conveyed all that had transpired: one Manhunter had willingly walked into the Battery and absorbed its powers, or tried to. John Stewart had stopped it, had sucked the creature into his ring and dissipated it.

Amazing, Kate thought. It walked into the Battery like it was nothing, yet I can't even touch it with my empathy or I black out.

"You touched the Battery with your mind?" he asked, so surprised that he spoke aloud. "And you… passed out?"

"Yes. I think I only blacked out for a second or two, but… I definitely never went near that thing with my powers again."

J'onn closed his eyes and she felt his mental touch in her consciousness, brushing along every thought, reaching back into dark corners. He was searching for any damage done. She let him search, though she was sure he wouldn't find anything.

He did not, in fact, find anything, and so went back to explaining why the android who'd gone inside the Battery hadn't been immediately obliterated. Androids have no emotion. The Battery cannot affect them that way.

I guess that… makes sense, she replied, and then started to laugh because somehow this all just seemed so outlandish to her. Sorry. The… giant green… android monster dramatically yelling, 'Nooooo!' as it died sort of makes it all seem ridiculous. Maybe I'm having a breakdown because I was just in a war. I don't know.

Come, he said, and helped her to her feet. We're going home.

God, it's over already? she asked. We were only fighting for… five minutes.

J'onn stared at her.

What? she said, eyeing him.

We've been here for hours.

"What?" she demanded, aloud.

"We've… been fighting for hours," he repeated, then she felt him poke around inside her mind again. He frowned.

A spike of fear shot through her. "What's wrong with me?"

"It seems the Battery may have affected your perception of time, among other things. I didn't notice that at first because that wasn't the sort of damage I was looking for. I think you may have only physically blacked out for a few seconds, but going through your most recent memories indicates that you were dissociating through most of the last several hours." He sighed. "Honestly, that may not have anything to do with the Battery at all; that may simply have been your mind trying to protect itself."

Kate stared up at him. We've been here for hours? she repeated.

Yes.

She stood and wracked her brain, trying to remember, but there was seemingly nothing at all between waking up after touching the Battery and seemingly a few minutes later when Flash had hit his head and she'd gone to heal him. "I… Did—Did I heal anyone while I was… dissociating?"

"Yes, several people. You seemed… normal."

Kate put her face in her hands—and ran into the helmet. She groaned in frustration. Can you just take me to… wherever we're going? I need to think.

Of course, he said, a note of concern in his tone, and picked her up in his arms.

###

They'd been home—back at the Watchtower—for hours. Kate knew she should get some sleep. She checked her watch again: 1:59am. She sighed and threw herself back onto her bed, laying sideways across it with her legs dangling off the side. She couldn't sleep; she was still too worked up about the fact that she'd lost hours of time to that Battery. No matter how hard she tried, she could not remember anything during those blank hours. It was as if they'd never happened. For one wild moment, she'd entertained the idea that J'onn might have lied to her about how long they'd been on Oa, but she knew he hadn't.

She reached out with her mind, searching for… J'onn? His mental barrier had been up, but he'd felt her there and let her in immediately.

Yes?

You're not, uh… busy, are you? She couldn't imagine he would be at two o'clock in the morning, unless he'd been tasked with monitor duty.

No. Give me a moment. Fifteen seconds later, he phased through her door like a phantom, see-through. "You should—" he began, then cut himself off, becoming solid again.

"I should what?" she asked, sitting up.

"Nothing." He gave her a small smile. "I'm not your father."

She laughed. "Were you about to tell me I should be asleep?"

He cleared his throat. "No."

She gave him a look, smirking, then sighed. "Actually, I was hoping you could help with that." Ever since she'd joined the League, he'd stayed away from her at night, as if those two weeks alone in her apartment had never happened. No longer did he talk to her quietly until she drifted off; no longer was he there when she woke, sweating with fear, in the middle of the night. She'd learned to self-soothe, to take deep breaths, to focus on her body and the feel of the bed. She could usually go back to sleep fairly quickly now… but it made her sad that he had stopped spending time with her at night. For the first time, she let those feelings out, let them drift across the space between them and settle into his mind. What with all the training she'd been through from the moment she'd gotten here, she hadn't had time to dwell on this before now, so it had never come up.

J'onn's face changed when her emotions hit him. His eyes widened slightly for a moment and he stared at her with regret. I'm sorry, he said. I didn't mean to make you sad. I only thought… He took a breath, thinking. I tried to give you the tools you'd need to get through the nightmares yourself, and once I thought you had them, I wanted to give you the chance to do so. You told me one night in your apartment that you did not want me to infantilize you.

So, he'd stayed away because he thought that was what she might want. Her heart twisted with equal parts gratitude for thinking of her wishes, and a sense of utter, embarrassing longing. A wish that he never stay away at night again. She tried to withhold that feeling as he had taught her, tried for half a second to put up a wall between them, to shut him out, but she did not want to shut him out. As embarrassed as she was, she wanted him to know. She turned her head away, her face on fire.

Slowly, he came to sit beside her on the edge of the bed. "I should have explained why I was staying away."

"It's okay," she whispered. "I thought maybe it was… awkward for you. I didn't want to ask, in case you didn't want to."

He gave a half-smile, staring into his lap. "It seems we both must work on our communication skills."

She said nothing.

He offered her his hand.

She took it, feeling warm.

"I'll stay with you at night. Unless, of course, I am needed elsewhere in the Watchtower."

"Of course," she agreed hastily.

She got into bed properly and he went around the other side and sat in bed with her, leaning his back against a pillow.

You stopped giving me lessons in Martian, she said.

I didn't want to overwhelm you given how much training you've been going through.

She eyed him. It seems you've been assuming a lot about what I want or don't want without actually consulting me.

"Yes," he said aloud. "I'm sorry." He breathed. "You've been through so much in such a short amount of time. I was… trying to give you space, I suppose. I can see now that that was the opposite of what you wanted."

"Well, I could've said something."

He smiled. "And blushed all the while."

Her face heated. "I blush about everything."

"Yes," he agreed. "Especially when it concerns me."

Kate wanted to curl into a ball and disappear.

He did look at her then. "No, I'm sorry. I was only teasing you." He reached out hesitantly.

She let him touch her face, closed her eyes at the warmth of his palm. She remembered that small moment they'd shared when she'd been having an anxiety attack over her suit and helmet, and afterwards they had, for the briefest of moments, acknowledged that there was something beyond friendship going on between them. Neither of them had spoken about it since. She didn't particularly want to speak about it now, either—did not want anything to change between them. She'd already had too much change in her life in such a short amount of time.

"What have you been reading lately?" she asked him. She'd given him access to her library card and had also given him her e-reader when she'd made one of her trips down to Earth before she'd moved into the Watchtower full-time. She wondered how many hundreds of books he'd already read in the month since.

"Right now, I'm reading a detective novel," he said.

She smiled. "Have you figured out who the murderer is yet?"

"No, but I'm sure I will before the author reveals who it is."

Kate felt her eyelids growing heavy. She tried to keep them open, wanted to talk to J'onn more, as they hadn't had alone time like this in a long while, but she was exhausted.

"Go to sleep," he murmured. "I'll be here when you wake. Perhaps I'll request you get the day off from training tomorrow, considering everything you went through today."

"Even if I don't remember most of it?" she asked, yawning.

"Even then," he said.

Half-asleep, she scooted closer to him in the bed and pressed her forehead against his thigh where he sat beside her.

Some emotion, surprise mixed with warmth, bloomed in J'onn's chest. He put a hand on her head, petting her hair.

She made a small noise of pleasure, then fell asleep.