Seventeen

Kate had been studying Batman for some time as he sat at monitor duty in the Watchtower. She leaned against the far wall, invisible and silent in her suit. She was working up the nerve to move; she'd been leaning against the wall for the last ten minutes. Finally, she took a silent, slow breath, controlling her breathing, and stood up straight. Then she began to make her way toward him, one step at a time, being sure to place her feet carefully.

It took almost as long to reach him as it had to stand there staring at him. She was being so careful, knowing full well that he was a master of sneaking himself, so any little sound would give her away. She made sure each breath was silent and slow, that her footfalls made no noise upon the floor, that her movement didn't ruffle some tiny piece of his cape.

She was so close now that she could've reached out and touched him if she'd wanted to. She opened her mouth to speak, to surprise him—

"Is this the part where you say, 'Boo'?" he deadpanned, not looking at her.

She stared at him, open-mouthed, for a time. "How—How could you possibly—"

"You're not nearly as quiet as you think you are. Your stealth could use some serious work."

"But—"

"Your breath control is halfway decent, but I can still hear it every time you shift your weight. You breathe a little heavier with each shift."

She glared at him.

"Don't look at me like that," he said, though there was no inflection in his voice to suggest annoyance or anger. If anything, he sounded bored.

"How the hell did you even know I was glaring at you?" she demanded, ripping off her helmet.

"I'm Batman."

She glared at him some more, then sighed. "Fine. I'll try again later."

"Good," he said.

She smiled a little. Batman saying good like that was the closest thing to praise he ever gave. She turned away.

"I've been blending with the shadows since I was a child," he said.

She stopped to listen.

"Sneaking up on me is no easy feat."

"I know. I figure if I do manage to sneak up on you, I can sneak up on anyone."

"A worthy goal, though I doubt you'll achieve it."

She scowled. "I thought you were trying to encourage me."

"If you need my encouragement, I don't know what you're doing in the League."

Kate snorted a laugh and turned around to look at his back. "Hey."

"What?" he asked, still not bothering to look at her, his fingers typing away at something.

"Never change."

The clacking noise of the keyboard paused for a moment, then continued. Batman said nothing.

She smiled at the back of his head and left.

###

Kate had spent days acting like a bumbling idiot around J'onn. At this point, it was getting embarrassing, and she couldn't escape it because he was in her head most of the time. He'd asked if she wanted him to give her space, to put the wall up between their minds, but the thought of doing that, of being without him, immediately twisted her heart up into a pretzel. He had not suggested such a thing again.

She spent her days training her body and mind. Hawkgirl continued to randomly attack her outside of training, which taught her to keep on her toes, to be ready for anything at a moment's notice. When she wasn't training, she was learning the Martian language from J'onn, which had suddenly become much more difficult to focus on, though she tried. Or she was in the medical bay healing whomever had just come back from a mission. Superman had begun teaching her how to fly the Javelin, though he had not actually let her into the pilot's seat yet, which was fine with her. She certainly didn't want to damage the giant airship and have Batman on her ass about it for the rest of her life; he'd probably kill her in her sleep.

At night, she crawled tiredly into bed, her mind buzzing pleasantly from all of the new things she'd learned before she drifted off. J'onn would sit beside her on the other side, absorbed in a book. Sometimes he would read to her until she fell asleep, and sometimes he would set the e-reader down and she would crawl into his lap and kiss him until her mind went blank and her body grew hot. He learned how to touch her and where, learned that her neck was oh so sensitive, learned exactly how hard to pull on her hair so that she forgot who she was and surrendered her body to him, releasing tiny whimpers as he gripped her short hair in those vine-like fingers and trailed his mouth along her neck.

They did nothing else, having decided to take everything slowly, so it would sometimes take her a while to fall asleep after this, riled up and wet, skin warm and tingling pleasantly where he had vibrated against her in arousal.

Sometimes she slept through the night. And sometimes she woke screaming. But the nightmares seemed to come less and less over time, and when they happened, they only happened two or three times a night, instead of four, five, six times. She had stopped dreading closing her eyes, had stopped jumping every time someone other than J'onn accidentally touched her, though sometimes she still had to close her eyes and reorient herself, remind herself that she was safe in her body, that there were no tentacles burrowing under her skin.

She felt almost normal.

Then came the day when Kate found out that some submarine crew had been attacked deep down in the ocean by Atlantians.

"You know," she said to J'onn, "considering what my life is like now, you'd think I'd be used to things like this—finding out that Atlantis is real and still populated by fish people. But I'm really not."

He said nothing, though he smiled in amusement. It was the last time he smiled at her that way for days.

###

"I understand your concerns, Admiral," Superman was saying on the phone some feet away, "but lives were at stake. There was nothing else we could do."

"The admiral's right," Lantern grumbled, his arms crossed. "We never should've left the sub down there. Now it's in the hands of that madman" He, Diana, J'onn and Kate were standing nearby after he and the others had returned from rescuing the submarine. They'd had to leave it down there on the King of Atlantis' orders; he'd allowed the heroes to rescue the people, but had not allowed them to take the submarine back to the surface. Lantern was still fuming about it an hour later because it was a nuclear sub.

Frankly, Kate was on Lantern's side. She didn't know the Atlantians and didn't want to think about what they might be doing with that kind of power. To be fair, she didn't like that any country anywhere had nuclear weapons, not even the United States. She wished that the Atom Bomb had never been discovered.

"Aquaman's no madman," Diana argued quietly. "He's a king. He only wants to preserve and protect his own kind."

"So, who's gonna protect us from him?" Lantern asked, and walked away before anyone could give an answer.

Kate sighed, rubbing her arms. This is going to become a problem, isn't it?

Probably, J'onn said.

It did not take long for his probably to become a definitely.

Two hours later, Green Lantern stormed back into the Watchtower. Kate, J'onn, and Diana were standing in almost the same place they'd been two hours before, having been contacted by Lantern as he'd been on his way back up here.

"I knew we couldn't trust that fish man!" Lantern shouted. "The sub's been stripped and the plutonium is gone!"

"And you think Aquaman's responsible?" Diana asked skeptically.

"Who else, princess? We've got to go back to Atlantis and get some straight answers."

"If it's Aquaman you want, he's not in Atlantis," Superman said.

Kate jumped at the sound of his voice, wondering how long he'd been standing over there, watching the screens. She and the others came nearer to him, studying the breaking news that he'd just turned on.

"—According to eyewitness accounts, Aquaman then forced his way past the guards and into a closed session of the World Assembly. But as to why he's here or what he wants, we'll have to wait for further developments."

"Come on," Superman said, turning away from the news. "I don't know what he's up to, but I don't like this."

###

Kate closed her eyes and hid her head against J'onn's shoulder as they burst through the double doors of the World Assembly not fifteen minutes later. She had her helmet on, so ducking like that probably wasn't necessary, but she couldn't ignore an entire life's worth of head-shielding instinct just because she had a superhero costume on.

"Aquaman!" Superman yelled, and all the hubbub in the room died in an instant.

Kate hadn't even realized that everyone in here had been shouting until they'd stopped. J'onn set her down and she stood quietly beside him, watching, ignoring the urge to turn invisible as if this were a battle situation.

"I offered them a chance for peace," Aquaman told the Man of Steel, "and this is their answer." He gestured to the crowd of people in their seats, who had already gone back to shouting.

"Please," Superman begged, "these things take time."

"I've wasted too much time already," Aquaman replied, almost before Superman was done speaking. Without another word, he began to march out of the room.

"Wait!" Diana said, stepping in front of him with her arms out, hoping to deter him, hoping to come to some kind of understanding.

Aquaman was not to be deterred, and shoved her roughly out of the way.

Kate's fist clenched at the sight, angry at any man who pushed around women—even Wonder Woman. She was sure he hadn't hurt Diana, but it was the principal of the thing.

"A real Prince Charming," Lantern muttered, glaring at Aquaman's back, as if he'd read Kate's mind.

"Are you all right?" Kate asked Diana.

"Fine," she replied, also staring at Aquaman's retreating back. She sighed. "Now what?"

"We'll think of something," Superman said, and began to follow Aquaman out of the room.

The others followed more slowly, Diana and Lantern muttering quietly to each other in the back.

I really don't want to go to war with a bunch of angry mermaids, Kate thought, only half-joking.

Neither do I, J'onn said. I don't imagine anyone here does.

Except maybe Aquaman.

Perhaps, J'onn conceded. Then again…

A loud BOOM shook the building, causing the floor under Kate's feet to tremble. She heard enough of the explosion to register what it was, though it was muted from those special earplugs Batman had made for them all. She had half a second to register that something bad had just happened before J'onn lifted her up and flew straight for the doors out of City Hall.

Kate smelled smoke before she saw what had happened: Aquaman lying crumpled on the ground, curled around himself, smoke rising from the pavement, a chunk torn out of it from whatever had hit it. From whatever had exploded in the Atlantian's face.

"Put me down!" she told J'onn quickly.

"The attacker may still be here. I will not put you down until I know it is safe."

"I have to save him!"

"Just wait, please." J'onn's voice was heavy with desperation, his mind flashing with memories of his wife and children, the rest of his people.

J'onn, she said, you cannot stop me from doing my job. I am a Healer. You weren't like this on Oa with all the Manhunters.

No, not outwardly, he admitted. But letting you run around during that battle nearly drove me mad.

"Letting me?" she repeated.

He made a sound in the back of his throat. I apologize. I—

Just let me down, she said impatiently.

He did.

Kate rushed to Aquaman's side where Superman already knelt, half-ready to pull the king into his arms and rush him off somewhere. "Let me," she said quickly, and commanded her suit to reveal her right hand.

Superman did not object, merely watching silently.

She pressed a hand flat to Aquaman's back where he lay crumpled and face down, one arm underneath him, and closed her eyes. Though she was not really a nurse, she had spent countless hours over the years reading medical textbooks, watching videos, learning all she could of the human body. She could heal people without that knowledge, had done it several times in the beginning, but it had always taken longer and seemed to sap more of her life energy than it did after she learned more about how the body worked. Aquaman's body was… not as human as she would've guessed, and healing him now was not a simple affair. The explosion had caused damage to several internal organs, broken bones, a concussion. From the outside, he looked almost perfectly normal, but his insides were shattered. It would take a lot of her own energy to get him to a place of stability.

She took a deep breath and began, though it was a bit like walking through a maze with her eyes closed, bumping into bones and organs that were not where they would have been in a human. She'd healed J'onn before and had not consciously thought about the fact that it had not been difficult to find his organs or bones, but she'd been telepathically linked to him from the moment she'd met him—aside from those two weeks in her apartment. She had to assume that some inherent knowledge of Martian anatomy had rubbed off on her without her realizing it.

But she knew nothing of Atlantians.

A minute—two, three?—later, she opened her eyes again, feeling a pang of worry and fear. "This isn't working. Nothing I try takes. It's like… like trying to pour water into a sieve. As long as I'm touching him, I think he'll live, but I can't give him any more life force or take any more of his injuries, and none of the ones I've healed so far are really… healed. I've never experienced anything like this before…" She looked up from studying Aquaman's still form to find Superman, J'onn and Diana all crouched around his body with her. She glanced around, over their heads, and spotted Lantern nearby, seemingly patrolling the area, probably trying to figure out who had shot at the King of Atlantis. She glanced back down at her hand, still placed on Aquaman's back. "If I take my hand away, I don't know what will happen, and I can't keep pouring energy into him forever. I'd die."

"I think I can help," came Batman's voice over her earpiece, built into one of the earplugs. Actually, both earplugs were also earpieces, in case one was damaged, but only one was active at a time.

Kate looked up at the sound of his voice and, judging by everyone else's reactions, he'd been speaking to all of them at once.

"Meet me at Metropolis General," Batman said.

Without another word, Superman lifted Aquaman into his arms and took off. The others followed quickly, Diana calling Lantern to get his attention, J'onn scooping Kate up. This position, cradled in J'onn's arms as he carried her through the skies, was so normal to her now that she could almost fall asleep during these rides, although she was far too anxious for Aquaman's safety at the moment to even think of sleeping. What if he died on the way to the hospital because she was no longer pouring energy into his body?

There is no point in thinking that, J'onn said quietly. You must try to stay positive.

You're trying to logic me out of my anxiety? she asked, somewhat amused.

Yes.

You know it doesn't work like that, right?

Yes.

She laughed, a short bark. Well, as long as you're aware.

###

"Follow me!" Batman ordered the moment they touched down in front of the hospital; he'd been pacing at the entrance for who knew how long.

They followed along behind him, Kate's heart rate speeding up in anticipation, praying to god that Aquaman would be all right. She'd been monitoring him with her powers since she'd taken her hand off of his chest. He was alive, but only just, dangling on the precipice. She hadn't spoken a word to J'onn or anyone else since they'd taken off after their short conversation about her anxiety.

Batman led them to what looked to be a regular hospital room with multiple beds for patients, though it was empty of other people. However, in one corner of the room next to one of the beds, there sat a very large cylindrical tank of water with tubes and things dangling off of it, hooked to some kind of machine nearby.

"Put him in here!" Batman said.

Superman dutifully placed Aquaman into the tank of water, sliding him in gently until the King was fully submerged and seemed to float on his own.

No one moved for several seconds, waiting for something to happen.

"Kate, try to heal him now," Batman said.

J'onn lifted her up to the top of the tank and dangled her there. She thrust an arm into the water—cold and smelling of salt—and pulled her suit away from her hand, placing it against Aquaman's shoulder. She closed her eyes, searching out his injuries again, and began to heal him.

She started with his injured organs first, healing lungs and intestines, then the concussion, then his shattered bones. She could tell it was different this time. The healing stuck and she no longer felt like she was trying to catch water in a bucket full of holes. "It's working," she murmured quietly, still concentrating on his injuries. "It will… take a bit. The closer the person is to death, the more injuries…" She trailed off, focusing, ignoring the ache in her shoulder from the strange angle as J'onn continued to hold her body above the water. Healing a heart attack was one thing. Usually that was as simple as pulling at the clot blocking an artery. It took but a moment. But if someone had several injuries at once, or metastasized cancer, something more intricate or widespread, it took more time and more care.

As if from far away, she heard Superman tell Batman, "I never would've thought to put him back in the water."

"Salt water," Batman said.

Kate tuned out their voices, ignored the ache in her shoulder and side from her twisted position—it was either this or get in the cold water with the king—and continued to heal.

Several minutes later, mentally drained, she said, "Okay," and groaned in discomfort as she pulled her arm out of the cold water. The suit had protected her from the cold everywhere but her hand, which was now quite chilled. Much more uncomfortable, however, were her shoulder and middle from staying twisted around for so long.

J'onn set her down on the floor and she massaged her shoulder, grimacing, but it was difficult because of the suit. J'onn gently stilled her hand and continued the massage himself, his superstrength allowing him to push through the suit material with ease, which was sort of worrying, although she couldn't think about that much right now. As he continued to massage her, she resisted the urge to make a very inappropriate noise of appreciation in front of everyone else in the room, but J'onn heard the thought and she felt his amusement in her mind.

"He's not waking up," Diana said, going to stand closer to the tank and peering in at Aquaman.

"I don't know when he'll wake," Kate replied. "I only made sure he wouldn't die, but once his natural healing kicked in, I stopped. I've never healed anyone who could heal themselves before and I didn't want to interfere with his own powers."

Kate did not know exactly what J'onn had done to his fingers, but he'd changed them to make this massage feel amazing. Not that she'd been massaged very often in her life, given that she hated to have most people touch her, but still. She found her chin drooping down towards her chest.

Feel better? he asked silently.

No, she lied, because she did not want him to stop touching her.

He knew she had lied and smiled, and his hands and fingers continued to squeeze her shoulder.

She wanted him to massage the other one as well, but not here and now, in a hospital room while waiting for Aquaman to wake up. In fact, she wanted his hands everywhere…

"He's coming around," Superman said, interrupting those tantalizing thoughts.

Green Lantern approached the tank, turning away from the window he'd been staring out of since they'd gotten there. "Good. Now maybe we can get some answers." He banged a fist against the tank and yelled, "What did you do with the plutonium?"

Kate flinched and reached a hand out towards him, unable to help her next thought, which was an imaginary sign against the tank that read, Please Do Not Tap On Glass.

Aquaman immediately responded to the banging, awakening entirely and pulling himself up out of the tank as if he'd never been injured. "Plutonium?" he repeated at the top of the tank once his head had breached the surface. Then he dropped down to the floor.

"From the submarine. You stole it."

"My orders were to leave that vessel where it lay," Aquaman said.

"And you expect us to believe that?" Green Lantern demanded, getting into his face.

"Believe what you want," the Atlantian replied, looking disinterested more than anything else. "Someone tried to kill me and I need to find out who." He pushed past Lantern and began to walk out.

"Wait," Batman said. "I can help. But you're going to have to trust me."

Aquaman stopped and turned to look back, eyeing the Dark Knight for a moment. Then he nodded.

Batman turned to Kate then and said, "You're not gonna like it."

She narrowed her eyes at him, wondering what he had in mind…

###

Kate took a calming breath as she watched J'onn get wheeled out of the hospital on a bed in the guise of Aquaman. She'd almost elected to stay behind with the real Aquaman and Green Lantern, but she couldn't bear the thought that something might happen to J'onn and she'd be too far away to heal him before he died.

I'll be fine, he assured her for about the tenth time.

Yes. The same way I was fine when I went to heal Aquaman after the explosion.

You were fine, he said.

Kate trailed along behind the moving bed, invisible. I was, but it still terrified you.

You'll be closer than anyone else if something goes wrong.

J'onn was right about that. Kate had insisted she stay near him in case something happened so that she'd be close enough to hopefully prevent his death. She could save someone presumably no matter how close to death they were, but if they already were dead… She shook her head, trying to blot out the images of a pale and lifeless Martian. She stood at the emergency entrance to the hospital, off in the corner away from the doors, still invisible, and waited.

It took almost exactly thirty seconds from the time that J'onn was wheeled out on a stretcher to the time that the explosion went off. Kate knew because she counted. The sound was a muted roar in her ears from the earplugs, but the light of it momentarily blinded her. She threw her arms up around her head automatically, then squinted, blinking furiously.

Ignoring protocol—that she stay well back until she knew it was safe, something she was sure everyone knew she would ignore—she sprinted straight for J'onn. Before she even reached him, he was already up off the stretcher and helping some of the civilians who had gotten hurt in the blast. So the assassin had missed him.

Thank all the gods in existence, Kate thought.

Batman reached them a moment later. "You okay?" he asked J'onn.

The Martian turned to the Dark Knight, his visage as Aquaman falling away. "Perfectly."

Kate ordered the glove around her right hand to move away and placed the hand on his arm just to make sure, poking around empathically, sensing for pain or injury. There was nothing.

J'onn turned his head toward her for just a moment, acknowledging her, then looked back to Batman. "Superman is down. His mind has gone fuzzy."

"Come on," Batman said, and ran off.

"I'll stay here," Kate told J'onn, though it pained her to say the words. "Some of these people got hurt in the blast. But tell me if you need me to heal Superman."

"Yes," J'onn replied, and flew away.

Kate watched him go for one moment, feeling a knot form in her stomach from the anxiety of being away from him while dangerous things were happening. But she was a healer and these people needed her. She spun around and closed her eyes, reaching out with her powers, feeling for those with injuries, and got to work.

###

Ten minutes passed in which Kate went around to everyone from which she felt pain and offered to heal them. It was lucky that whatever it was had touched down where it had, far enough away from anyone that no one had died or suffered major problems. She was turning to the next patient, her mind focused on medical knowledge—injuries created from explosives, collapsed lungs, shrapnel—when she saw a green blur fly past her.

She looked up in surprise. "Lantern? Lantern!"

Green Lantern stopped and turned, seeing her down below him, and went back for her. "Did you see Aquaman?" he asked immediately.

Kate blinked. "What? No. I've been healing these people." She looked around the crowd as if expecting the King of Atlantis to appear out of nowhere. "I assume he… escaped."

"Yeah," Lantern said, and rubbed his jaw, looking pained.

Kate reached her hand out toward him. "I can…?"

"Oh. Uh, yeah."

She placed her fingertips on his cheek, sensing the pain, swelling, and bruising associated with a punch to the jaw, and healed it in a moment.

"Thanks," Lantern said. "Where are the others?"

"Come on," Kate said, and ran off in J'onn's direction, following her mental link.

"It would be faster if we flew," Lantern pointed out.

"Right," she said, stopping.

He cast a green bubble around them both that lifted them into the air. "Where to?"

"That way," she said, pointing, and the bubble propelled itself forward. A minute later, they were hovering over the others.

"... We've got to warn Aquaman," Superman was saying.

"Too late," Lantern said, lowering himself and Kate to the ground. "That royal pain in the neck's already gone." Annoyance flashed through him, then embarrassment. "I couldn't stop him."

"Hera help him," Diana murmured, looking off into space.

Kate looked around, taking in the scene. An exploded van that was on fire, a bunch of… gold coins all over the ground, like someone had dug up a buried treasure, a person she didn't recognize in a strange suit…? "What happened?" she asked.

J'onn filled her in quickly on everything that had happened while she'd been healing the civilians back at the hospital.

Kate grimaced. "So, it was an inside job. Someone from Atlantis."

"Yes," J'onn said.

She shook her head. "We have to find him."