Eighteen

Kate was not having a very good time. When she'd gotten into the Javelin with the others on her way to Atlantis to save Aquaman, she hadn't put two and two together and realized that that would mean going underwater. This was about as bad as it could possibly get for her claustrophobia outside of actually being crushed to death. Sure, they were inside the Javelin with air, but if anything went wrong…

If anything goes wrong, Green Lantern can use his ring to put a bubble around us, which will have air.

And if Lantern is knocked out?

We have rebreathers on the Javelin.

And if those fail?

He looked at her, squeezed her hand. You're spiraling.

We could drown, she argued.

We could, he agreed. But the chances are small. We have provisions. We have a well-armed ship. The likelihood of the Javelin going down, of getting a leak, is very small.

Kate took a breath, then another, trying to remind herself that, in this moment, she could breathe just fine.

"We're almost there," Diana said, interrupting her thought spiral. "Atlantis is just beyond that reef."

Kate tried to look up through the windshield to see the underwater city in all its glory, but all that did was remind her that she was, in fact, underwater. She set her gaze back into her lap.

"Don't expect them to welcome us with open arms," Lantern warned.

"Set the ship down here," Superman said. "Maybe we can slip under their defenses."

The moment the words were out of his mouth, the Javelin shook with the force of an explosion, muted by the earplugs in Kate's ears. Her heart skipped a beat, going a million miles an hour, and she gripped the edges of the seat hard, suddenly reminded of her terrifying ride in the Batwing on that fateful night.

"Too late," J'onn said. "They've already seen us."

Kate was forced to look up through the windshield to see what was going on, but whoever had attacked them could not be seen from her viewpoint.

The others stood up, so Kate did too, on wobbly legs, and finally saw the group of vehicles that had halted their progress, tiny vessels compared to the Javelin, but that didn't mean they couldn't do damage.

"If it's a fight they want, they've got it," Lantern growled, turning to make his way out of the Javelin, a shield of glowing green outlining his body.

"Wait!" Diana said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

He stopped, but reluctantly, and glared at her.

"Remember why we're here," she insisted.

Lantern looked like he was going to ignore her for a moment.

Kate stared at him, fists clenched, waiting. She wanted to say something, feeling the waves of anger and excitement for battle rolling off of him, but she didn't think he'd listen to her. She swallowed.

The tension in his body eased and he sighed. "Fine."

Kate sagged with relief.

None of us would have let him fight, J'onn told her silently.

I know, but it would've caused problems. I don't like problems.

Perhaps you joined the wrong profession, he teased as he handed her a rebreather.

She removed her helmet and fitted the tiny mask to her face. Her helmet, while it could do a lot, could not let her breathe underwater. It hadn't been built for that. She'd never thought about it before, had never imagined she would need the helmet to be waterproof, but now she wondered at the oversight. Batman didn't forget things. She slid the helmet back on, trying to ignore the discomfort of the rebreather, which was small enough to fit underneath a helmet, but felt strange pressed to her face. She took several deep breaths, reminding her body that she could still breathe even with the intrusion, then stopped and studied J'onn. You're not putting on a mask.

I do not need one.

Can you indefinitely hold your breath?

No, but… Suddenly the sides of neck shapeshifted, a subtle change but Kate could still see the slits that now sat on either side.

"Gills," she breathed.

He inclined his head.

She had an overwhelming urge to touch them. Then she got an image in her head of touching her finger to her own eyeball and how uncomfortable that sensation was, so she refrained from poking around J'onn's gills.

"Okay, is everyone ready?" Superman asked. He was looking directly at Kate.

Feeling, once again, like she was holding up the entire group, like she was the only one not worthy of being here, she nodded, swallowing.

You are worthy, and you are stronger than you were when we met, he told her. Perhaps after this is over, we should add swimming to your training. Or rather, sitting underwater in your gear with a rebreather on, until you get used to the feeling.

Kate did not relish the thought, but she saw the merit in it. In emotions rather than words, as they swam out of the Javelin once the door opened, she thought, As long as you're there with me. Then she blushed.

J'onn's mind caressed hers like a warm breeze. Always, he said.

"Hold your fire!" Superman shouted, his voice seeming to echo all around. "We come with an urgent message for your king!"

Kate blinked, distracted away from J'onn, though she stayed close to his side. She looked around, taking in the underwater canyon that they found themselves in, and the never-ending expanse of blue in all directions, which became darker and darker along the horizon. She shivered and tried not to focus on the crush of water all around her.

The sound of multiple explosions made her jump, and Kate squeezed her eyes shut automatically even though the sound was muted by her earplugs. Suddenly, using the rebreather for her oxygen seemed insufficient; she found it difficult to take a full breath.

J'onn pulled her to him and cradled her body in his arms, turning so that if anything hit them, it would hit him first, but that was unnecessary.

Kate heard Lantern activate his ring and felt the water shudder as most of the missiles hit the shield he put up.

Kate, invisibility! J'onn commanded. And go! Somewhere out of the way.

She called on the suit's power and a moment later was invisible. J'onn released her from his arms and she swam away, the suit propelling her faster than she would ordinarily be able to go. This must have been what Batman had told her about when he'd first given it to her, that the suit would give her extra speed and strength, and both would become more powerful the more she trained.

She swam far away from the action until she was up against one of the canyon walls, then turned to watch. If she needed to get to one of her teammates to heal them, she could push herself off the wall for added speed. She felt awkward floating in the water like this, though. It was difficult to tense her body when her limbs were not held down by gravity. She wondered briefly why the suit itself, heavy as it was, wasn't dragging her towards the bottom of the ocean, but she didn't have the time to think about that in detail, her eyes flicking between each member of the League, her empathic powers spread out like a blanket in all directions.

Superman took two Atlantians down quickly. J'onn became intangible and let one of them drive straight through him to crash into the canyon wall a moment later. Diana was being chased by one but based on her emotional output, she seemed to have things well in hand. Green Lantern went to help her.

Kate winced as they were hit by blasts a few seconds later, though they recovered quickly. A large mothership drew closer then, looming large over the two of them and sending wave after wave of laser fire at them, and several more individual Atlantians in their smaller vehicles.

"Shit," Kate muttered, staring, waiting. She jumped at a large sound like—she didn't know, an avalanche, maybe?—and flicked her eyes in the direction of the noise, only to see Superman tearing a huge chunk of rock off of the top of one of the canyon formations. She felt the strain of his muscles as he pushed at the piece of rock twenty times his own size, and yet nothing inside his body broke from the effort. Kate should not have been surprised—he was Superman, after all—but it still impressed her. The medical side of her brain wanted to take blood and skin and muscle samples from him…

Superman drove the gigantic piece of rock through the mothership's underbelly, across the whole length of it. Seconds later, it made a horrible sound, like a dying whale, and tilted onto its side, crashing into the ground at the top of the canyon.

Kate did not have time to stare at the wreckage.

"This way!" Superman called, and swam off, the others following.

J'onn swam slower than the others, waiting for Kate to catch up, then he pulled her to his chest and held her tight, and propelled himself through the water faster than she would've thought possible without the use of his arms.

He sent an image into her mind of his body as it was now, his legs and feet becoming a fishtail, like a merman's.

Whoa, said Kate, smiling like he'd just done something awesome, like a backflip. To her, his shapeshifting was awesome.

"There it is!" Lantern called up ahead of them, and Kate turned her head over her shoulder to see the city of Atlantis below them.

From this distance, as she looked down at it, she thought it looked like a snowglobe, a beautiful city under a dome, like glass. Something about its cold lights and spires did not look inviting to her. Despite the lights that lit up its buildings like little ice sculptures, it looked… dark and foreboding.

Kate only had a few scant seconds to decide on this first impression before the sight of the place was ripped away from her, J'onn performing some quick and sudden maneuvers in the water, as if he were avoiding something attacking them. "What's happening?" she yelled, burying her helmeted head against his chest again.

"Depth charges," he replied, his voice amazingly calm given the circumstances. But he'd always been that way, his voice hardly ever giving inflections of any kind so that when he did, it was shocking.

The first bomb went off and Kate felt it in her whole body like she was laying atop the world's strongest subwoofer. The explosion rattled her bones and her brain, and she found herself free-floating; J'onn had been hit too, obviously, and his limbs had lost their strength and released her. She shook her head a little, wishing not for the first time that she could use her powers on herself to sense for wounds. An explosion like that, so close, could cause massive internal damage. She was sure only the suit had kept her from dying immediately.

More explosions went off then, one after another, and no suit of Batman's make or natural superpower could keep any of them upright at that point. Kate felt each explosion rip through her, rattling her bones, squeezing her organs. It wasn't pain so much as some… deep, horrible pulsation that robbed her body of its ability to move. She found herself hitting the ocean floor, her face smashing against the inside of her helmet, which did hurt, and she wanted to pull the helmet off and rub at her nose, but her arms wouldn't move. She knew she should feel more panicked about the fact that she was paralyzed but her mind seemed muddled. When they came to take her away, she couldn't muster the mental capacity to care.

###

When she awoke, for she seemed to have passed out at some point, she was kneeling on a hard floor with her hands cuffed behind her back. Someone was talking, though she couldn't quite make out the words. Her shoulders ached from the position of her arms and her knees ached from the floor. She didn't even know how she was upright if she'd been placed like that while still passed out. Then she realized she was leaning against someone.

Groaning, she forced herself upright and saw that she'd been placed beside Diana, whom she'd been leaning on. Her head pounded as she woke more and more and she hissed in pain and automatically tried to put her face in her hands. This was when it truly registered that her hands were bound behind her. This was when she began to panic, making small whimpering sounds without being able to stop them.

J'onn? she tried to call out, but this was a mistake. She grit her teeth and bit back a loud groan as more pain pierced her head, this time sharp as a needle instead of a throbbing ache. Something was wrong with her head. Her breath quickened in even more rising panic as she was forced to recall those two weeks after the Imperium had shoved its tentacles into her brain. Breaking skull, feeling the squish of it through her gray matter—

"Quit making those pathetic sounds!" someone above her snapped, and then something hit her in the face.

Pain exploded through her, starting from the place where the object had rammed into her and radiating downward. She screamed, a long and horrible sound that filled her ears. Her face felt like it was on fire, and with each pound of her heart, pain pulsed through her. Distantly, she thought she smelled something burning.

All around her, she heard shouting and the sounds of a struggle, but it was all she could do to remain conscious. She fell onto her side, wishing she could cradle her face in her hands, but they were still bound. Unbridled rage, though not her own, coursed through her body, which only added to her panic. Tears of pain and fear flowed freely. More shouting, more struggling. Then something hit her in the head and she was gone again.

###

When she awoke she was horribly nauseous and confused. Opening her eyes to the light of the world hurt fiercely and her face still felt like it was being held down over an open flame. She tried to move, tried to curl into a ball against the pain, but she couldn't. She couldn't move her arms. Panic surged through her body, adrenaline giving her the strength to at least look around and see what was happening, though she had to move her head very slowly or risk vomiting. She tried to speak but all that came out was a croak. Moving her lips hurt like she'd been sunburned to a crisp and now they were blistering.

"Kate, can you hear me?"

She knew it was J'onn's voice even despite the strange distortion and ringing in her ears. She had a concussion, most likely. She tried to tell him that yes, she could hear him, but the act of opening her mouth to speak made her want to scream and/or throw up. She sagged, expecting to fall down, before remembering that her arms were trapped above her head.

"Kate, you need to take some deep breaths."

She groaned.

"Kate, please," J'onn said, and despite all the physical pain she was in, she could feel his panic, his terror.

Something else was going on right now.

Kate cracked open her eyes again and tried to see what was happening.

"It might be better if you don't look," he warned her.

Something became known to her ears: a roaring, rushing sound, like a waterfall. "What…" she managed to get out, before giving up on speech entirely. Tears of pain leaked from her eyes. She tried to keep her face from twisting like faces do when one cries, tried to keep herself calm.

"Kate, deep breaths," J'onn reminded her. "This is very important. Deep breaths, and when I tell you, hold your breath." Now there was panic in his voice, as well. "Breathe."

She was in far too much pain and too confused to be truly afraid, which she supposed she should count as a blessing. She shuffled her feet and wondered why they felt so strange and weighted down. Perhaps they were weighted down. Perhaps they'd shackled her legs, though she didn't hear the clink of chains, only that loud roar.

"Kate!" J'onn snapped, losing his patience. "Breathe!"

She complied as best she could, taking in a breath, then another and another. She looked down at her body, trying to figure out why it felt so heavy, and finally saw what was causing J'onn's rising panic: water. So much water, filling whatever chamber they were in. She did not know why it had taken so long for her to notice—she assumed because of the concussion. By the time she saw the water and registered it in her brain, it was already up to her chest, and rising rapidly.

"Kate, deep breath, and hold it!" J'onn yelled from across the chamber. "Hold your breath!"

Kate looked up sharply, her head spinning from the movement, and stared at J'onn where he was pinned to the wall. The others were here as well, but she only had eyes for him. The water was up to her neck, her chin.

"Deep breath!" he yelled again, and then took one himself.

She did as she was told, and goosebumps of sheer horror rose across her whole body as the water went over her head. They were all going to drown. She tried not to think at all, tried to shut down her absolute panic, tried to slow her heart rate, but self-preservation was a very difficult thing to overcome. She pulled uselessly at her shackles, heart pounding, head swimming.

J'onn! she cried out in her mind, wanting to feel him one last time, wanting him to know—

Her head exploded with pain. Trying to communicate telepathically with a concussion had been a horrible idea, almost as bad as the pain she'd felt after the Imperium had destroyed her telepathic abilities for those two weeks. The pain was so bad, so blinding, that she automatically inhaled, gasping. She choked as water went up her nose, down her throat—

—Tentacles. Tentacles in her face and her head. J'onn screaming in pain. Tentacles forcing their way into her arms, breaking skin and bone, ripping—

She could not stop trying to breathe, wanted to scream, her mind split open in pain, both physical and emotional. Her lungs burned, her face burned, her chest felt so tight she thought her heart would explode. Then she was falling, her vision going dark. She was falling through a great empty void…

Down…

Down…

Down…