The Aura Eaters - icarus_chained (2025)

Chapter 1: Planetfall

Chapter Text

There was a faint sensation, almost like pain, as the ship hit the atmosphere of a planet. Pain didn’t entirely make sense. Even with the jolt, the fluid of the pod shielded his body from any impact. Perhaps it was only the sensation of gravity, after so long in the void of space. A stretched sensation on his physical form, to match the stretched, gaping burning inside him.

A burning that he reached towards, now. An ache that he grabbed with both metaphorical hands. If they were making planetfall, then now was the time. He’d only have one chance at this.

He was distracted, faintly, briefly, by the sensation … He knew this system. Not this planet, but this system. It had been … so long since he’d been here. But even dead, even devoured in his entirety, he would know the feeling of the world beside this one. Dead, now, silent. But … Familiar. Yes. The echoes sang to him.

A bubble of humour surged. They hadn’t quite brought him home to die, but … close enough. Oh, so very close enough.

There was a judder, as the ship manoeuvred for landing. The shields were up, the psychic baffles. Unless the people of this planet were more telepathically adept than Ma'aleca'andra itself, they wouldn’t sense the advance ships landing. These monsters were good at subtle invasion. But that … that was J’onn’s purpose, here. They’d made an error. His telepathic resources were almost completely expended (what a nice, gentle way to say that they had been eaten), but he wasn’t dead yet. They should not have put him on the advance convoy.

But he was expended. A husk of a thing. They’d kept the fresher food sources with the main fleet. The advance scouts would have to make do with what dribs and drabs they could siphon from all that remained of him. There was a cruel logic to that, too. If they were hungrier, they would perform their function more eagerly. They would scout the resources of this world all the quicker.

And J’onn … He was a husk. Eaten nearly to the core. But he had siphoned himself. From his own heart. He’d gathered … hopefully enough. Hopefully just enough energy.

He did not know this world. He had been a captive so long, a larder, that perhaps he did not know any world any longer. He wondered if even Ma'aleca'andra would look unfamiliar to him. But none of that mattered. Whether he knew them or not, he would try to offer them a chance. A warning. His power should reach beyond the psychic baffle. Draw … attention. Hopefully. If he had salvaged enough. No matter what this world was, what its people were, he would try to offer them a chance.

If … If for no other reason than to spite these monsters. Once more. One more time, before they ate the last of him. If he even offered one slight disruption to their plans, one stumble, then he could die at least faintly satisfied.

He laughed softly, jaggedly to himself. Ignored in his pod, of no use or care to anyone beyond the feeder tendrils embedded in his flesh. Such … Such a tiny hope. The smallest fraction of a dream. Not even to win, but just … to prove a nuisance in his last moments. Such pitiful crumbs of triumph left to him. Much as such pitiful crumbs of self. So died the last Malecandran. Devoured by scavengers, taken from the ruins of a dead world by hideous parasites. Saving his last shreds of power to … to offer some fraction of warning to some strange, alien world.

But. A world close to Ma'aleca'andra. Almost, almost home. So. Let’s give them all he had left, hmm? Let him reach in earnest.

If a nuisance was all he had the power left to be, then let him be all the nuisance he was capable of.

He didn’t know how much time passed before he felt it. Them. Some … Some outside force. He had been reaching blindly. It was hard to balance his efforts, enough power to reach beyond the baffles, but not so much that his sending would be detected. A delicate balancing act, and J’onn was weak. Near empty. The pain had not been gravity. He was so far extended now that the feeder tendrils had begun attempting to scavenge his flesh as well. Scraping the last morsels of power they could from him. He would not last much longer. The effort of sending had felt like a thin, stretched eternity. Near meditative, his mind a fading arrow flying outwards.

And, finally, finding something. Someone.

Several. Several someones. He had reached for defenders. The minds of protectors. Someone who would have cause to answer, even so strange a call as this one. Those who thought of their world, and what lay outside it, and sought to protect it. If the world was isolated, unknown, then his efforts might be doomed to fail, but it was likely they were doomed regardless. He had reached. And … found.

They were not telepathic, was the first thing he realised. Psychic, yes. He could sense … They carried their psychic energy differently. Not internally, a well, a resource, but externally. Fields, around themselves. Almost displays. They had neither the power nor the capacity to reach back to him as he did to them. That was … an issue. If they were empathic more than telepathic, then the invaders would have a feast. All of the fuel, none of the power or defences. This world …

But it made sense. Of course it made sense. Why choose a difficult target when you could choose an easy meal? Why else would the invaders have come here? They had not come to Ma'aleca'andra until the planet’s own wars had left it all but defenceless. These were not warriors, they were scavengers. Hungry parasites.

J’onn … was going to watch another world fall, wasn’t he? Unless they finished eating him first.

For a moment, perhaps an eternity, despair swamped him. Swallowed him whole. He felt himself drift. Felt himself lose touch, briefly, with those warrior minds. Felt a spike of alarm as his presence slipped away from them. A spike of … concern.

He nearly laughed again. Black amusement. Concern, for him. Far, far too late for that. Be concerned for yourselves. But another part of him was …

It was too late. Far too late. But it was … not unpleasant. To know concern before the end.

And it steadied him. Not hope. Not courage. But spite. A jagged, vicious flowering of spite. Another world. Another people. Thinking, feeling beings, ones capable of offering concern. Offering, not devouring. People, not monsters. J’onn could not save them. Perhaps no one could save them. But J’onn could warn them. He could …

He could be a nuisance. All the nuisance he had left in him. Right up until the end.

He gathered himself, the last shreds of his strength, and reached one more time. Sent … pictures. Memories. Anything he could. Trying to show the threat. To force understanding. I am here. Your enemies are here. Warn your planet. There are more coming. Warn your people.

He felt … alarm. Fear. A surge of warrior’s instinct. And … another surge of concern.

And they turned … not towards their own people. Not towards warnings or war. They turned towards him. Full of concern. Full of pity. Their minds, their emanations, those psychic fields, attempted to reach out down his link. Reassurance. Not for themselves, but for him. Hold on. They were coming.

That was … not what he’d intended. No. Warn the planet first. But they seemed not to listen. His warnings, wardings, seemed to only stir them faster. J’onn struggled vaguely. In his pod. For the first time in aeons, he attempted to struggle physically. If they came here, without warning anyone, to save him, then the scouts would capture them all, and the planet …

He writhed. He’d been too obvious, now. The balance lost. His captors had noticed him. Noticed the sending. Alerted to possible intrusion. Minds crushed down over his. Bludgeoning, strangling. He was going to lose the connection to the outside. J’onn roared, a telepathic howl, and desperately poured his remaining power into a spike. To them. The warriors. One last warning, before he was silenced.

Leave me. Protect your world. GO!

Then familiar, hateful minds crushed down around his. The mental static of the psychic baffles whined to crescendo. And J’onn … J’onn fell back. Away. Into himself. The hollow at the core of himself where he kept all … all that remained of him. Those last few precious shreds and memories. Ma'aleca'andra. M’yri’ah. K’hym. He felt the feeding tendrils flex within his flesh. The hunger and fury that surrounded him. And he had done … all that he could. So he fell.

And hoped … hoped that if this world fell, that he would be too far gone to feel it.

The next thing he was aware of, the next thing outside himself, was a … a crash? A wrenching, tearing sound. A sensation. The tendrils wrenched in his flesh, jolted, and J’onn startled upwards. Swam back to physical consciousness. Because that, whatever it was, was not part of the normal functioning of the scout vessels. J’onn knew every sensation of these ships to his core. He knew them better than he remembered any world. They had been the whole of his existence for … for time without meaning. The pods, and the ships, and the slow hollowing of his core.

This was neither normal nor good. For his captors, at least. It was far from the sound of a healthy ship.

But how? The baffles were still up. How would anyone have found …

But they weren’t. The baffles weren’t up. Not anymore. Something … Something must have …

The ship slewed sideways. Gravity. They were planetside. There was gravity here. The pods were grown from the walls, couldn’t be moved, but J’onn could. He was flung against the membrane of the pod. One of the feeder tendrils tore loose, a bright bloom of pain in his midsection. He gasped, the sound swallowed by the fluid, and then laughed. A new sensation! And a lessening of the ache, the hollowing. Physical pain was a fine trade. He’d take it.

Something ruptured close to him. There were … emanations. What had they called them? Those minds he’d touched? Auras. There were auras close by. The warriors. On. On the ship. One … One moving so fast …

So fast. Too fast to block with the baffle. If he’d started moving the moment J’onn started sending, then he might have already been inside the field by the time the invaders noticed. They might have already had the location, by the time the invaders noticed. The psychic baffles were designed to avoid notice from the outside. But if someone was already inside the field …

J’onn shook himself. Unfurled himself. Just a little. A faint reaching. He had nothing left, but they were so close. Despite himself, despite how much they may have damned their world by doing this, coming here, there was a part of him …

What a dream, to die outside the pod. Too much, far too much to hope. But.

They felt him. The faint feather of his sending. And one of them, the first of them, that first mind that he’d touched, swung around. Pointed itself, himself, right at J’onn.

Right … Right at J’onn. Directly. By the shortest possible route.

A figure … A figure smashed upwards through the floor of the pod chamber. Just erupted from below. It was … rather inelegant, J’onn thought dazedly. A Malecandran would have phased through the floor. Much neater. But the efficiency could not be denied.

The creature turned to him. Swept the pod chamber in search of him. The empty pods. The empty husks. And then … J’onn. Alive. More or less. Meeting his eyes through the membrane.

The connection was … electric. A creature, a free, thinking creature, that was not one of his captors. How long since he’d seen such a thing? Not a prisoner. Not food being loaded into a pod. A warrior. Free and still fighting. It was nearly too much. His captors were insidious. What were the chances that this was an illusion? A last cruel trick, punishment for his defiance earlier? Likely. Very likely. But it could hardly hurt more to die in hope.

The creature surged towards him again. So much speed, so much power. His mind was vulnerable, his aura untrained to defend against a true telepath, but physically. Physically. A match for any of the parasites. His eyes glowed red. Burned. And started … started searing a path through the membrane of the pod.

“Superman to Justice League,” the creature said. Sound, not telepathy. “I’ve found him. He’s … I think he’s the last thing alive in here. Hey. Hold on in there, okay? We’re getting you out. Just hold on a little bit longer.”

J’onn … J’onn had no answer to that. Absurd humour bubbled through him. Hold on? He had. For aeons, he had. Eaten all the way to the core. Amusing, to ask more from him now. But he reached out, aching and slow, and rested one hand against the membrane, just to one side of the burning path. Freedom. Even only a breath of it. One moment, outside the pod. For that, he would wait …

Well. Until he died. Which might be soon enough. But he thought he had enough moments left.

“You should not have come,” he sent carefully. Sent anyway. Because they should not have. “If they overwhelm you, all hope is lost. There are more coming. You should not have come.”

The creature, Superman, paused. The red blinked from his eyes, so that he could look at J’onn without harming him. One hand, bracing the pod, shifted. To rest opposite J’onn’s, only the thin, hard sheet of the membrane between them.

“You were trying to warn us,” he said quietly. “You were hurt trying to warn us. I felt it. Of course we were going to come.”

And his aura … his aura shone with honesty. The psychic field reached up, wrapped around J’onn. A gentle cradle of concern. Truth, concern. And J’onn …

No trick. In all these aeons. Not a single trick of his captors had ever splintered him faster.

He ducked his head. Hid his eyes away. And after the smallest moment, his rescuer returned to his efforts. His aura … softened, a little. Tucking carefully around J’onn. As if to hide him.

J’onn hunched, curled around himself, and turned to more practical concerns. Let that … Let it happen. If it could. He could not … He would not let himself hope. Let it happen if it could. For him, now, more definite concerns. Let’s return to being a nuisance.

They were close enough to shield, now. Even with the shreds of strength remaining to J’onn. They were here, within reach. Four minds, arrayed around him. And … not completely undefended either. Perhaps another reason why they had managed to power through the baffles. One of them, J’onn recognised, at least by reputation. A Lantern of Oa. His captors had always stepped so carefully around them, slinking through the shadows where they weren’t. Lanterns weren’t telepathic, not usually, but they were difficult to control. Misdirection was easier, but if given enough warning, raw willpower could force a Lantern through. And another of these warriors, a female, had something with her. An artefact, a technology, that radiated an aura of truthfulness. It could not shield her mind, not truly, but again, it provided warning of some of their tricks.

They were … They were not as vulnerable as he’d thought, maybe. Not. Not enough to hope. Oh, against the scout ship, perhaps, but the main force …

But they were not undefended. At the very least, this planet might put up enough of a fight that the parasites might judge it better to leave rather than take losses? They were running low on food. All J’onn’s people had been spent long since, save himself, and newer food sources were not as … durable. They were spent so much faster. The fleet might not have the power to fight a long fight.

But … by the same token. They were hungry. They might not have enough food left to leave. Not without taking at least some longer-lasting specimens with them. From what J’onn could sense, the auras, the psychic emanations of these people, would not be enough to sustain the parasites long. Not unless there were a lot more of them, or several much bigger ones.

No. No, they wouldn’t leave. Starvation … They were cowards, but starvation was a hard way to go. J’onn would know. They wouldn’t want a long, slow death. And these people were not telepathic. As physically powerful as these four champions might be, their minds were still vulnerable. If his captors had sent enough information to the fleet. Identified a foothold target. Rich pickings. At the very least, they would stay long enough to ‘stock up’. And if they gained enough ground, then …

Then this world would go the way of Ma'aleca'andra. Eaten, slowly, into silence.

There was not enough grounds for hope. Even. Even as hands reached, finally, past the membrane. As hands touched him. Living ones, gentle ones. Not to implant horrors into his flesh, but to pull them out. Gently. As gently as possible. J’onn didn’t care. He welcomed every burn and tear as the tendrils were teased free. He moved. Tore them faster. Tried to … tried to climb, swim, pull himself towards the opening now splitting the membrane. Tried to fall forwards on the flood of liquid pouring outwards.

The hands caught him, instead. Braced him. Pulled him. Guided him.

J’onn hit the ground. He thought the alien, Superman, might have caught him, might have caught him easily, but J’onn had pulsed out a refusal. Desperation. He wanted … He wanted to feel. Not hands, bearing him to whatever fate. The floor. Gravity. His own spent strength. He hit. His legs crumpled under him. They’d never had any hope of bearing him. Nor did he have any strength left for control. He’d lost the ability to shift, to phase, ages ago. They’d eaten too much of him. On purpose, to hold him. Them. All they’d stolen of J’onn’s people. They’d eaten freely and gluttonously at the start. They’d only started rationing when the numbers dwindled, and it turned out there were few psychic food sources of a Malecandran’s calibre to be found. J’onn. The last of them. They’d made him last.

As had he, admittedly. Not hope. Surely, after all this time, not hope. But something. Spite. Stubbornness. Something. He had held on. Held some precious things. Some memory of strength.

Long enough to … to feel his own weakness once more. And take a breath outside his pod.

“I’m sorry,” Superman said. Crouching next to him, soft and gentle and concerned. “I wish you had longer to recover. But we need to go. I … I need to carry you. I’m sorry.”

Sorry? Ah. He’d read too strongly into J’onn’s desperation. It was not revulsion. Nor fear, either. But … But J’onn did flinch, when hands slid around his back. Manoeuvred him. Not into a pod. Not back into a pod. J’onn knew. Could sense, clear as sunrise. There was no cruel intent in the aura around him. But his captors were good at tricks. And he could not help but flinch.

Superman pulled him close. Tucked J’onn in against his chest. A sharp spike of fury bloomed quietly in the man’s aura. A slow, steady seep.

“Superman to League,” he said again. Quietly. “We’re out. Bring it down.”

Not try to bring it down. Not make an effort. Leashed fury. Leashed surety. A simple injunction. Bring it down.

And as J’onn hit … free air. Outside air. A planet. As Superman flew them both out through the holes he’d smashed through the superstructure. It was a distinctly gratifying sight, to see a red blur, and hammers of green light, and a shining golden lash, tear the scout ship to pieces behind him.

Superman flew him to a snowy peak a little way away. They were in an isolated area. Naturally. The scout would have aimed for a remote location, the better to remain undetected until their survey was complete. Just in case of telepathy, or technology, that could track them. They hunted primarily telepathic species. It was a constant consideration.

The air was … cold. What a sensation. The pods could be cold, if the ships were low on energy, but not … not like this. The snow was wet, when Superman gently eased them down. Let J’onn stand, sort of. Still held against him, but with his own feet on the ground. They sank into the substance. An initial crisp crunch, then wetness as the weight broke the surface. Softness. Cold.

J’onn turned his face into the chest beside him. A moment. Just a moment. He’d never …

It had been too much to hope. For years. Decades. Maybe, by this stage, even centuries. They’d made him last a long time. He’d had the power to last. An near-endless supply of psychic energy. But even Malecandrans eventually ran dry. He’d thought … He’d thought to warn someone. One last act of spite. He had not dared believe …

It would end badly, of course. This world would fall. He would have to witness it. But.

One breath. One moment of free air. That … That was a thing.

Superman didn’t push him. Didn’t question or challenge him. He simply waited, a warm, steady figure beside J’onn, and held him carefully while he breathed. But … eventually. The other three minds. Auras. Landed gently beside them.

Superman hugged him slightly. Reassurance, as J’onn gathered himself. J’onn could feel … a fierce, instinctive, almost subconscious protectiveness from him. Nothing reasoned. Nothing based on who J’onn was or might be. Simply an intrinsic reaction to someone who was hurt. Some vaguely remembered part of him bristled at it. The rest was rather exhaustedly grateful.

“… Hey,” one of the others said softly. Part wary, and part concerned. The red blur. The one who’d found them. Almost at the speed of thought. “Are we … Are we all okay?”

It was a far more gentle prompt than any J’onn had endured in a long time, but it was a prompt. And fair enough. He lifted his head.

“Thank you,” he sent. Given his overall condition, he didn’t want to try speaking physically. Though his mental condition was not better, and arguably significantly worse. But it was instinct. His first language. “I am … better than I have been in a long, long time. Thanks to you.”

Especially as he took a moment to scan the wreckage. They had been … very thorough. More thorough than they had intended to be. There were shattered white forms strewn among the wreckage, and he could feel that there were not intended to be. They had not intended to slaughter. To shatter the ship, yes, but not end all life among the invaders. But these …

“They are drones,” he sent softly, feeling the depths of their perturbation. “You did not kill all of them. Their own … The parasites are structured around a central figure, an intelligence that controls the hive. Should they fail their tasks, they do not deserve to survive. The moment they were revealed and entered combat with you, their fate was sealed. Even had you successfully captured some, the Imperium would have killed them from within.”

“The Imperium?” the Lantern demanded sharply. “What’s the Imperium, when it’s at home?”

J’onn blinked faintly. “I do not know if they have a home,” he admitted. He did not care if they had a home, truthfully. And if they did, he hoped they had lost it. “They are … roaming scavengers. Parasites. In all the time I have been with them, I have never sensed so much as a thought of home. Only of food. They exist to eat. The centre of the hive, the Imperium, has more complex desires. But hunger reigns over all, even for it.”

They were not beings. They were a plague. An all-devouring swarm. They had intelligence, yes, but only to further their hunger. All their might, all their intellect. It only existed to better enable them to feed.

He was … He wasn’t rational. Not about this. How could he be? Vaguely, he remembered the ideals of Ma’aleca’andra, the principles that had been the difference between them and their pale, warlike brethren. How terrible, to let these parasites wipe out what all the efforts of the Pale Malecandrans could not. But the Pale Ones had not been eaten. They had been safe in their prisons, while Ma’aleca’andra was harvested in the wake of the destruction they had wrought. And in the wake of that. Of centuries of imprisonment. J’onn could not remember mercy, nor respect, nor anything but … but blind, seething hatred.

The parasites were not a people. He would not acknowledge it. They were a plague.

“… I’m sorry,” someone said softly. The woman. Diana, he saw, sensing the name at the core of her identity. She approached, and stooped slightly to catch his eyes. “We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. Forgive us. What is your name? May we know it?”

J’onn blinked. And blinked again.

“… J’onn,” he sent finally. And … slightly hesitantly. It was all that was left of him, one of three precious names he had secreted at his core. Four, if you counted Ma’aleca’andra. Some part of him was loathe to give it up. To hold it out, where it might be eaten. But there was no reason to deny these people. And … It would be good to die as himself. “I am J’onn J’onzz. I am from …”

He trailed off. Because. Because he saw it. In their minds. When he looked for the echoes, the knowledge. He saw … The remains of a world. A silent, empty planet. All that they knew of it. Which was nothing. Because … Because nothing remained. It had … It had all been …

“Mars,” he whispered. Aloud. Unable to hide the grief. “You … You call it Mars. It was … We were … It was Ma’aleca’andra. Once. But you call it Mars.”

They’d brought him home. Almost home. Enough to witness … the ruin that was left.

“Mars?” the Lantern asked. Still harsh, but almost hesitant, now. Careful. “There’s been nothing alive on Mars in …”

He didn’t say the number. J’onn heard it. Sensed it. All the precision of the Oan database. But the Lantern had the mercy not to say it.

They had … They had eaten him so slowly.

“It doesn’t matter,” J’onn said. Made himself. The shock was distant, all-encompassing. And irrelevant. “It was … a long time ago. What matters now is not my planet, but yours. There are more coming. This was merely a scout, given the dregs of fuel to spur them. The Imperium will have felt them be destroyed. And they are too hungry to leave without food. They will come. They will find a foothold. And they will harvest.”

Perhaps if it was mindless, an empty ravening, it would be easier to forgive. But the Imperium thought. It planned. And it ate.

“… What does that mean?” the red one asked now. Very warily. “Harvest. What does that mean?”

J’onn … J’onn looked at him. He had sent this already, some of this, snatches and sensations of it. That spike of desperation, when he thought he would be cut off. But perhaps their minds had shied from it. Disbelieved it, in pure self-defence. He could feel … The auras were important to them. A core foundation of their senses of self. Much as his people … He had salvaged all that he could. A core. They had eaten the rest. He was nothing now but the few shreds that were left. He could sense the distant horror for the thought of it. The instinctive, reflexive, protective disbelief. But he had neither time nor space to be gentle with them. It was too late.

“They eat auras,” he said softly. Mercilessly. “Psychic energy. My people were telepathic. Powerfully so. I have lasted … They travelled far on the fuel that we provided. But we are all gone now. I am all that is left, and I am well spent. They need more fuel. They cannot leave without it.”

The red one backed up. Instinctively. A physical step away. A runner’s instinct. The Lantern was more controlled, they were built on willpower, but he also raised his ring defensively. The woman, a warrior to her core, merely shifted her weight, bracing readily. And Superman …

He hissed out a breath, stunned and dismayed. And … looked at J’onn. Down at him. At the wounds. Where … Where the tendrils had torn.

“The pod,” he breathed faintly. “Those things inside you. They were …?”

J’onn breathed. The hollow at his core ached. But he was no longer inside it. And these people would not put him back.

The Imperium might. If this world fell. But it might not. A waste of a pod, to take back a source already spent. Especially when the auras of this world were so small.

“… They will look for a concentration,” he pushed out. Forged on, despite their horror and his own. “Your auras … Forgive me. I mean no offence. But by their standards, your auras are small. You will be spent quickly, perhaps only a few years. They will need a great many of them. The fleet has … They will find a concentration. Block it off, hide it. Harvest it dry. If they are not discovered, they will move on to another. They more they take, the stronger they become. If they get enough food fast enough, they will simply stay. Feast. Until … Until they are sated. And have enough stored to last them a longer voyage onwards.”

The Lantern shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, that doesn’t make sense. We’d have noticed. The Lanterns have a lot on our plate, but we’d damn well notice whole worlds going silent! Being eaten. How long have they … They’ve been doing this since Mars died? We would have noticed. The Guardians would have noticed!”

J’onn winced. Shuddered. Since … Yes. But he faced him down regardless.

“They go where Lanterns are not,” he rasped thickly. “And they are good at hiding. You felt it. If I had not saved the strength to draw your attention, you would never have noticed the ship. They hide. They … bend minds. Make them look away. The scout ship’s capabilities are weak, so they rely partly on isolation. But the command ship is much stronger. The Imperium is much stronger. I could not have reached out past those shields. I have seen … Yours is not the first world I have witnessed fall to them. They have had me for centuries. While I was held on the main ship, I could do nothing, even centuries ago when I was much closer to full strength. Only for the fact that I am too spent to be worth keeping, I would not have been here. And you would not have noticed them, until the foothold was already established.”

He had seen. Felt. So many times. He knew why it could not be believed, why it was too vast, too horrible, to be believed. But he had seen.

They chose worlds carefully. Powerful enough to feed them, but weak or isolated or distracted enough to be easily taken. Ma’aleca’andra had been splintered by civil war. Other worlds had hidden themselves, tucked themselves away from the universe at large, and died in silence when the first hunters to find them had eaten them all alive. Still others had been colonies of over-extended empires. The weak left to die at the edge of the herd. The Imperium was intelligent. And all its intelligence was bent to eating. Nothing more, and nothing less.

“You will have found them,” he continued softly. “The worlds they have eaten. They will have been colonies gone mysteriously silent. Worlds torn by war, until it looks as if they wiped each other out. Some of them you will not have found. Many were new, or young, or had chosen to hide themselves first, so that none would know if they fell. You have … If you check your database, Lantern. They have been doing this for a long time. Look for worlds that went silent after war. Colonies that starved themselves. If you see … I hope you do not. But if you see the interior of the command ship, you will find the remnants of those worlds in their pods. The most recent, at least. Malecandrans … Martians. We lasted longest. Most others last a few years or decades at most.”

The Lantern stared at him. Rage. Disbelief. Bottled anger. And … underneath them. The bedrock of all of them. A slow, seeping, primal horror. A dread. A knowledge. That J’onn … was right. If he looked, he would find them. He knew, already. J’onn was right.

“… Then how do we find them?” The woman, the warrior. Standing firm and steady, when both J’onn and the Lantern looked at her. “How do we find them, here, on this world, and how do we stop them?”

J’onn … J’onn flinched. Hunched around the ache. He didn’t know if they could. Not alone, not the four of them. And they were already the protectors of their world. He had reached for champions. There might not be many of even equal power that they could call on for aid. Oa, possibly, but that would take too much time. The Imperium would take the foothold supply and run. Thousands would be lost. A small price, perhaps, for a world, but …

But it didn’t matter. ‘Could’. It didn’t matter. It was already lost. So … So be a nuisance until the end.

“… They need a concentration. A large mass of auras. I can’t … My range is limited, and the Imperium has saved the bulk of their remaining power for itself. I won’t be able to track it unless I’m close. But the scout ship has been here for a while. So it will be close to here. A large … large mass of auras. Thousands or more. Preferably in a location easy to control. They can hide even the largest of cities, even from the strongest telepaths or furthest reaching technologies, but they are already low on food and power. They won’t want to expend any more energy than they have to. They are … They are hungry. They need a feast, to bolster themselves for further expansion. Large, powerful auras, or a large concentration of auras. Somewhere they can lock down and keep hidden long enough to feed.”

Superman stiffened beside him. Slowly, carefully. And the woman, Wonder Woman, Diana, J’onn skimmed their names now, straightened as well. Opposite him.

“… Gotham,” he whispered. Something wincing, frail, dismayed, shuddering through him. This creature that had ripped a ship apart with his bare hands to reach J’onn. “They’re going to Gotham.”

The Lantern balked, yet again. Blinked, bewildered.

“The hell city?” he asked, mildly incredulous. “Not to knock you or anything, Supes, but weren’t they like decimated by the quake way back when? I know they’ve been rebuilding, but … I mean, I know I’ve been in space a while, but I don’t think they’re back up to numbers to match Metropolis or New York or even Central. If we’re looking for a concentration …”

“No,” Wonder Woman said softly. “Kal is right. It is … It is a concentration of aura, not population. Gotham has no shortage of aura. And it is also … delicately positioned. If they seek a large feast, that few would notice missing …”

Fury stirred. Superman, beside him. His arm still around J’onn. That same fury from earlier, in the ship. When J’onn had flinched.

“I will notice,” he said quietly. Diamond hard. “And I won’t allow it, either.”

“No,” Wonder Woman answered coolly. “Nor I.”

The other two, the Lantern and the Flash, stared between them in consternation. And J’onn …

“May I?” he asked carefully. Turning, still in Superman’s arm, and raising one hand carefully towards his face. Forehead. Nothing to do with anything, but it helped many understand his meaning, if he gestured towards their head. “Show me. I will be able to tell if it is a viable target. I have … I have long experience. May I?”

Superman blinked at him. Startled. But nodded readily. And … focused. Showed …

J’onn let go again with a small gasp perhaps only a second later. The sensation was … rudimentary. These people were not telepathic, and had a different frame of reference for what they did sense via the auras. But even from that much …

“Yes,” he rasped thickly. “If they knew of this city. Found it. It would a prime target. Yes.”

No shortage of aura, she had said. J’onn could sense it. Even vague, through the memories of someone else. This place, this Gotham, was not short of aura. And J’onn had gleaned enough of its history from Superman’s (Kal’s, Clark’s) mind to know that it also fit a great many other of their criteria. A microcosm of their favourite targets. Worlds left out on the edges of great empires to die. Yes. If they knew of it, the Imperium would go for Gotham.

It would have already gone for Gotham. The moment it felt the scout ship destroyed. Knowing a Lantern was present. It had no time to waste. And neither did they.

“… If you are serious,” he said. Sent. Telepathy, once more. Let him die speaking his native tongue. “If you mean to fight them. Then we must go now. Call whoever you can call. But they would come the moment they felt the scout ship die. If Gotham is their target … then Gotham is already fighting. And we must go now.”

To die. J’onn couldn’t walk, couldn’t so much as stand on his own. And his powers were eaten. He could shield them, maybe. These four, if they stayed close. Even against the Imperium, maybe, for a few moments or so. But not much more than that. A century ago, maybe, but … he was bleeding. The tendrils had not just torn but eaten his flesh. Scraping out those last few scraps of power. He had nothing left to offer. Nothing he could do except die.

But … free. Fighting. For people who could think and feel and protect. A city cut out and left to die. In … In the shadow of Ma’aleca’andra. Of home.

An hour ago a last breath of warning had been all he’d thought he could offer. But now. A dream he would never have dared to dream. He need not die in a pod. He could die fighting. Maybe, at least some little bit, helping. Keeping … even one person. One. From the pods.

They would not win, but that was irrelevant. One disruption, that was all he asked. One snarl. One chance. To spite them, these monsters, even as he died.

And … to help. A thing he had not dreamed possible in centuries. Hands had freed him. Hands had pulled him from the pod. Had chosen to, despite all the fatal risk to their world to do so. It was … too much. Far too much to dream, to repay. But. He had breath, still. No strength, but breath. He was not dead yet. Perhaps, this one last time, the Imperium had made an error. And if so. J’onn would drag it with him to the grave.

To Gotham. For hope, for gratitude, and for spite. For … the memory of Ma’aleca’andra.

Let him die making a monster’s life difficult one more time.

Chapter 2: Shadowfall

Chapter Text

J’onn felt Gotham long, long before he saw it. He felt it … He felt it even through the Imperium’s psychic shields. Partly because he knew them, could reach past them. But partly because they bulged around the force of Gotham’s displeasure.

The city was fighting. Oh yes.

It was hard to parse what he was feeling. These auras were … less distinct, more interwoven, more tangled than the minds of his people would be. They bled together. Again, part of it was that he was reaching through the Imperium’s interference. But the city’s psychic signatures were interwoven. Leaved together. And … huge.

It could not fall. Even as they flew towards it, J’onn thought that. So much power. A food source of that calibre would allow the Imperium … tactics it had not been able to use since most of J’onn’s people were still alive. Not for long, even these auras would be spent too fast, but as a foothold supply. Fuel to attack the rest of the planet on. This city must not be allowed to fall.

They could not prevent it. But as long as they were dreaming of impossible things.

“Oracle,” a voice came suddenly over the comms. The red one. Flash, Barry Allen. He’d stayed close, stayed with them, on J’onn’s request. The Imperium was not like the scout drones. A single undefended mind running at this shield would be turned, easily. This time, the Flash had not had the chance to enter the field before the enemy knew of potential intruders. So he had stayed close. Uneasily. Impatiently. J’onn could feel the anxious energy it took to hold his speed back to match theirs. An energy, an anxiety, that threaded through his voice as well. “Oracle, this is Flash. Come in. If you can hear me, come in.”

J’onn sensed the confusion in the other three around them. Less at the call for help, they had been calling several allies, and more at … the urgency? And the choice of this particular ally. She was … stationary, from what he could tell. Unlikely to be of direct help.

“Oracle,” Flash tried again. And then … fell silent. As they finally flew (or ran) close enough to see …

It was strange to see it from the outside again. The Imperium at work. J’onn … He’d seen it in the memories of other prisoners. Through the eyes of victims, when he’d still had the strength and the courage to let his mind touch what was happening outside the ships. But he had not seen it with his own eyes since Ma’aleca’andra. Not since the fall of his own world.

Thick black clouds shrouded the city, to the point that it was barely visible itself. The first of the Imperium’s defence mechanisms. The shroud of darkness made it easier to ‘edit’ from the minds of others. Scenes of assault, invasion, had the potential to trigger enough of an instinctive, emotive response to break through, but a dark spot on your vision could be easily willed away. Planets with technology, planets monitored by themselves or by others, these shrouds added a layer of defence that allowed their telepathic baffles to work more easily. And, as a side benefit, they shielded the Imperium and its drones as well. They had an aversion to strong light, radiation. Not a weakness, simply a dislike. They sensed by telepathy. They hunted better in the dark.

So Gotham … There was hole, right now, where the city of Gotham should be. A shroud of darkness blanketing the city to invisibility. And, vaguely, through the darkness … flashes of light. Weaponry. Violence. But hidden. Shrouded. Drowned.

And beyond the sight, there was the sense. They were close enough now that the auras could pick it up as well as J’onn could. Malice. Hunger. Fury. Throttling intent.

From … more. This time. Than just the Imperium.

“Holy shit,” the Lantern, Hal, breathed. Halting, like the rest of them, hovering stunned in the air. The baffles kept trying to turn their minds away, kept sending wave after wave of suggestion that there was nothing to see, nothing to worry about. J’onn kept it from reaching them. But … even without him. If they’d known in advance what to expect, they might have managed anyway. Lanterns were made of willpower. And the shields were bulging.

“… Oracle,” Flash said again. Shaking himself. Strident, now. An urgency completely out of sync with his companions’ understanding of the situation. “Oracle, the League are outside Gotham. Right now. If you can hear me, please answer. We’re here. We’re coming. Can you answer me?”

The other three swung to look at him. Confusion, concern beginning to swirl. But then …

“… I’m a little busy at the moment,” a woman’s voice crackled wearily, warily, over the comms. “If you are here, you can probably tell?”

Flash’s breath punched out of him. Relief. He sagged, a paired spark of humour and terror running through him.

“I can see,” he agreed wryly. “We’re coming to help. Just four of us, so far, but we’ve put out a call. We have … We found a prisoner on one of their advance ships. He has information, and he can get us in past their shields. Can you … Where do we need to go? When we get in there. Where do we need to go?”

The woman, Oracle, hesitated. For a long, careful moment. J’onn, reaching out through Barry’s knowledge for the mind at the other end of the connection, felt … wariness. The fear of someone caught between two predators. There was no corresponding worry from Barry. No inkling that there even should be. The wariness was all one way. But, a bare moment later, she pushed past it.

“Come in over Brown,” she said finally. Resigned, more than relieved. “The southmost bridge. If you have fliers, tell them to stay low and stay away from the park. You’re heading for a hot zone. All the fighting is on the park and the south of the city. But if you have information, all our fighters are there. I’ll guide once you’re over the bridge. Try not to be noticed until after you pass whatever it is on, hmm?”

Barry laughed. Startled, pained. Fond. “We’ll do our best,” he promised. “We’re coming, Oracle. Hold on. Central owes you some favours. I’m hoping to pay a couple of them back right now.”

J’onn felt a tangle of emotion in response to that. A ball of hope and fear and grim readiness. But all she said, before returning to her own concerns, was ‘here’s hoping’.

From the rest of the League, there was a degree of bafflement. Startled realisation. And, from Superman … an odd note of hurt? Or perhaps jealousy. Hastily stifled.

“… Oracle is from Gotham?” Diana asked finally. “I didn’t know this.”

Flash winced faintly, and rubbed his neck. “Yeah,” he said, vibrating faintly in place. “Yeah, I don’t think anybody did. There was … a bit of a mess recently. Central, Blüdhaven, Gotham. Things came out. But.” He paused, and looked back out towards the city. Towards the wall of darkness and war. “But I don’t think that’s the issue right now. Shall we?”

One look, to see if they were as determined as he was. And then Flash was off. They were close enough that J’onn could shield him regardless, at this range. So he let go. Raced for the city.

And then rest of them, in his wake, poured forward as well.

Hitting the shroud was like being back in the pod. Not hollow, not eating at him, but pressing. Thick, cloying. A wall of malice and despair. J’onn hunched in Superman’s arms. Curled his hands into aching fists.

They were not noticed. He made sure they were not noticed. It was what had been asked, and that much he could manage. He threaded himself through the shroud and masked their entrance.

From … the Imperium. He masked it from the Imperium. But the moment they made it over the bridge, he felt the attention of something else. Multiple. A layered, intertwined, something else. J’onn half jolted. Half masked them again in reflexive instinct. The presence howled across him, them, regardless. Soaked into the air, the ground. A strange thing, a mixed, layered, intertwined thing. What he’d felt from outside, but so much stronger. So much clearer. Not one aura. Many. Layered together. And … one? Maybe two? Layered over all of them. One mind, that he could sense, read, but beneath it something else.

Something … primal. Something livid.

The auras were so intertwined here. Dizzying. He had reached for protectors first, the same as he had to reach the League. Reached out his mind to try and help locate their targets. But the city swarmed with protectors. Nearly every mind here was terrified and furious and angry. There were civilians, yes, innocents, children, but even some of them were armed. Minds humming with the angry determination of trapped animals, determined to fight or die trying. And … overarching it all. A web. Connected auras. Threads of … of empathic connection. Bonds. Between them. A unified force directing fury.

Ma’aleca’andra had not felt like this. Not at the first drop, the first descent of the Imperium. They’d been shocked. Horrified. Afraid. Willing to fight, yes, they had not survived monstrous civil war just to surrender immediately to an invader. But there’d been hesitance. Disbelief. Fear.

Not in Gotham. Not for more than a moment. The Imperium must have only descended less than half an hour ago, and already the city had swarmed to full fury. Already battle was joined. Not rout. Battle.

The command ship towered over the centre of the skyline, its silhouette a familiar, hated shape against the darkness. But the command ship was already surrounded. The flares of battle were concentrated there, as if it had landed and immediately been besieged. Most of the invaders’ ground machines were fighting in its vicinity, as if they’d not been able to go further. Fighting, and … perhaps losing? J’onn sensed fear. Not from Gotham, from them. The invaders.

Further out, the battle was mostly in the air. Their small fighting craft were doing much better than their grounded counterparts, and it was the clear the Imperium was attempting to use them to find and crush the centre of the resistance. These people, humans, could not fly, not as Malecandrans did, or even the League. Against the aerial craft, they were struggling significantly more.

But even there. Even as J’onn thought it. The nearest of the aerial craft, near enough that both the Lantern and Wonder Woman had braced themselves to have to deal with it, abruptly jolted sideways as fire and force exploded from one side. It wheeled, stricken but not downed, and two figures on a nearby rooftop, one holding a long, heavy tube, a weapon, linked arms and dove forwards off the roof to avoid returning fire. Even as Superman jolted forwards with a curse, one of them raised its arm and fired something into the building across the street. A line caught, and he swung himself and his heavily armed companion off into the maze of buildings. That large aura, the one covering everything … hazed over them. A psychic baffle. Masking their retreat.

It was … It was masking a lot. J’onn straightened, almost wobbled out of Superman’s arms. Clark tightened them reflexively around him, gentle and instinctive, and J’onn strangely felt a surge of frustration. Anger at his own weakness. Battle was in the air, sharpening his senses and frustrations after centuries of despair. There was … something here. That vast aura. It was doing things.

It was hiding things. Its people. The sort of tactics Malecandrans could use. The Imperium. Psychic warfare. J’onn dared not stretch his mind too far, the need to shield his companions paramount, but when he focused he could sense … Shadows. Misdirecting illusions. And shields. Hiding the movements of its forces under one large, psychic blanket. More generalised, more broad, than J’onn’s people would use. It wasn’t threads of telepathic influence, steering foreign minds away. It was one vast psychic field, instead, alternately flaring and eddying to direct attention. A blunt object, in some ways, compared to the more direct and subtle abilities of its foes. But … not ineffective, for that.

“… Nightwing to Clocktower,” came a voice over the comms Flash had linked them into. Superman jerked slightly at the name. “Two of the Chinatown fliers are hurt, but we couldn’t stay still long enough to finish them. League’s heading for the Old Town intersection, Oracle. Doesn’t look like any of our friends have clocked them so far.”

“Roger that,” Oracle replied tightly. “Flash. I’ve got you on general comms. What can you do, and what do you need?”

The League glanced at each other, darting down to street level and into the shelter of an alley to avoid the sightlines of the aerial craft. Hesitated. And J’onn …

He was awake. Fighting. Free of his pod. He was tired of being passive. Incapable.

He reached for her. The one he knew. He reached for her first. Carefully. Gently. She still flinched.

“I am J’onn J’onzz,” he sent softly. And said, too, where Superman’s comm would pick it up. “I am … My world fell to them long ago. I have knowledge of them. If you can direct me to the minds that need it, I can offer it to them directly.”

She quailed. A moment of petrified terror, a wall of desperation and fear and paranoia. An alien mind in hers. Her city laid bare before him. Asking for more. Information on who defended it. Asking … Asking her to betray them. Her whole being immediately and instinctively rejected him. A … An order of magnitude more violent than he had expected. Her mind locked down. Her aura shrank into her skin, hardening against his intrusion.

J’onn could breach that, if he wanted to. But the terror of her response stunned him.

And then. Less than a moment later. A hard, furious growl across the comms.

“Verbally,” it growled. “Unless time is that short, we’ll accept information verbally. And if you will invade any mind, invade mine.”

A bond flared in her mind, an empathic connection. Furiously guiding him toward itself. And J’onn felt …

An equal terror. Perfectly matched to hers. A protective fury. Fear and desperation and roiling anger. Determination. Grim, unbending focus. This was … This was the mind behind the aura. J’onn could feel it. Could sense it touching the city. Reading it. Monitoring it. Tracking the enemy within it. Calculations sleeted past. Costs weighed. Sacrifices. Grieving fury. The League was a threat. J’onn could see how they read the League as a threat. And now too much was surrendered to them. Even if they won the current fight, terror for the future loomed behind it. But ruthless pragmatism bore down. First, they had to win the current fight.

And … they would. Win. J’onn sensed the determination. The primal, atavistic determination. It was not a question. They would win, or die trying. When the threat was in the city. When it offered so total an annihilation. They would win or die trying.

“… I’m sorry,” he offered. Said, not sent. “I am … My people were … Forgive me. I have not spoken in centuries. Telepathy is instinctive to me. But I apologise for my intrusion. I am … They have killed me. All of mine. My only concern is their defeat. If that is possible.”

Silence answered him. Surprised. Wary. Clark squeezed him gently. A half-hug of reassurance, and sympathy. The horrors lurking behind that spare sentiment. Clark hugged him for it.

“… It is a wider invasion, then?” the voice asked finally. “Not just Gotham?”

J’onn shook his head tiredly. “Gotham first,” he said. “They’re trying to feed. Auras. Psychic energy. Their food sources have been used up. Ideally, yes, they will take this world. But they need enough food to bolster their reserves first. Your city … There is a great deal of psychic energy in your city. They intend to harvest it. Harvest your people. There are pods on the main ship, the tower. They will bring you there and feed on you, and use the energy you supply to spread their influence further.”

Another silence. Horror rippled outwards. J’onn sensed it. The network of empathic bonds. Other, more ephemeral ones. Alliances, listening on the comms. Horror rippled.

“What the fuck,” a new voice muttered lowly across the comms. Incredulous, and near affronted. An angry despair. “What the fuck? First a kraken, and now fucking psychic vampires from outer space? Seriously?”

A fourth voice, low and tight. Worried. “They’ve been escaping Ivy’s bottleneck. Not the big walkers, but squads and units here or there. We haven’t been able to keep track of all of them. If they’re taking people …”

“What happens?” the first voice cut back. The large aura. “What happens to the ones they take? What’s the end game?”

J’onn … J’onn squeezed his eyes shut. The command ship was right there. If he strayed too close, he would feel it. They would feel him. What happens, these people asked. Perhaps, in a little while, he would have the opportunity to show them. Perhaps they would all find out. But first. First. Fury soaked the city. Not fear. Not surrender. Fury. And that … J’onn could merge with that. Run on that. Yes.

“… They need food. Too badly to leave. They have been rationing for a long time, enough that they kept me long past … past my being any use. They cannot leave without a food supply sufficient at least to find another world to feed on. So they will take everyone they can. The auras of this world are small, compared to other psychic species. They will need the largest they can find of what’s available, and a lot of them. Anyone … Anyone they take, they will keep alive, for as long as possible and even longer, in order to drain their auras dry. They need … at least your city. Ideally, more. Ideally this world. But your city is their foothold supply. They’ll take it all if they can.”

Silence. Again, again silence. And then …

The shields screamed. The Imperium’s shields, the baffles around the city. They billowed outwards, blown by the sudden surge of …

Howling. All around him, the League flinched. Even Clark, even Diana. They flinched into warrior stances, bringing their arms and weapons to bear in stunned fear. Even … Even J’onn flinched. This was atavistic. Primal, in a way Ma’aleca’andra had shied from. Even the Pale Ones had shied from it. There was … a monster at their cores. White and green alike. And they’d shied from it. Gotham … Gotham did not.

Even the voice of the aura was not unaffected. He was restrained. Even now. Trying to calculate, trying to strategise. Reining down the raw fury to something functional. But he was far from unaffected. Half the surge had been his aura.

“They will take no one,” he snarled. Guttural. “No one. Gotham’s dead are Gotham’s dead. They cannot have them.”

The auras spiked in echo. All of them. Perfect unison. Not fear. Not even fury. Intent. Terrible, fatal, damned intent. Sheer statement. There was … taboo there. Worse than being eaten. They could be killed, they could be eaten. But they would not be taken. Never.

“… Then we need to take the ship.” That was Oracle’s voice. Tight. Practical. “It’s not about driving them off. If we miss anyone, and that ship takes off … We have to cripple it. If we fight too hard, they might try to eat and run. Fucking take away. We need to keep that ship on the ground.”

Ground the ship. Simple. Elemental. They’d … They’d turned completely. The mood had been defensive, before. A city invaded. Now …

It wasn’t beat them or die trying. It was die, to a body, to take them down. By whatever means necessary.

“Ivy.” The large aura. Clipped and cold. “If you dropped the infantry fight. Went structural. How long would you need?”

How long would you … J’onn felt the Lantern, Hal, stutter. Startled incredulity. What?

Yet another new voice answered. Ragged, harsh. Strained with effort. “They’re resistant to a lot of my pollens,” she snarled. “I’ve been holding them by main force. If I let this lot go, half the city will be swamped.”

“We’ll handle it,” growled another voice. Vicious and tight. “You’ve been having all the fun so far. Let them out and let our boys have a go. Kill that ship.”

J’onn stirred, finally. Shook himself into motion. Bewildered by the totality of their turn.

“There are complications,” he said hastily, before they could go too much further. “There a central power. They’re a hive. The figure at the centre is the Imperium. It is … intelligent. And it will have harvested most of their remaining fuel and power for itself. The psychic defences on the command ship are powerful. It may not be possible to breach it. I am … I can shield a few minds to some extent, but … That close. It knows me. And I am badly spent.”

To go that close. Back to the ship. The pods. To go that close. But … their fury was a rising tide, and J’onn had his own. Centuries of his own. Centuries of hate. His last breath to spite them. Yes. Without question, yes.

They didn’t … It wasn’t even fear. Oh, it lurked below. They weren’t stupid. And it wasn’t hope either. They were both irrelevant. It was simply …

Some things could not, would not, be allowed. And so.

He wanted to laugh, suddenly. He wanted to claw his way inside their auras. It had taken him centuries to get to this, this calm, lucid despair, this peace with whatever was necessary. They’d landed there immediately. No hesitation. We are doomed anyway. So kill the ship.

“… I haven’t felt anything so far,” ‘Ivy’ growled cautiously. “I’m fighting right under the foot. How close do I have to be before I feel it?”

Right under the … And a ‘bottleneck’. The fighting around the tower. Was she holding an entire army by herself?

And … she should be feeling it. If he focused, J’onn could feel the pulses of warding from the ship. Most of the Imperium’s power was on the citywide baffles, but the ship’s defences were fully active as well. If she was that close, she should be feeling it. Weakness. Disorientation. The desire to run away. Sickness, the closer she went to the ship. Too close, and active measures would be engaged. Sensations of crushing, burning. Suffocation.

He couldn’t … He couldn’t feel her, he realised. Sweeping the area around the command ship carefully. Fury pulsed through the area. From the ground. But it took … a long time, to find an individual mind. A strange, green mind. Slippery in his grasp.

“… If they’re aura-based,” the large aura said thoughtfully. “If their defences are telepathic. Your lack of an aura might give you some resistance. Maybe not enough to count on, but …”

“I don’t have to get that close,” she rasped. “My seeds … They’re in my park. They crushed … My children. The memorial. They’ve landed … I don’t need to be close. I just need time. They’re blocking the sun, what fucking sun we get in Gotham. I need time. I’ll have to go to the root. And I’ll need it not to take off while I’m working.”

Another silence swept out. Stained, thoughtful consideration.

“They won’t leave,” the large aura said softly. Surely. “If you ‘break’, appear to break, vanish and let them out, they’ll think they’ve broken the main line of resistance. That leaves the buffet open. They’ll come out to feed. And we do have … choice morsels. To tempt them into staying.”

A different silence. A thrill of … a different horror. And a different kind of fury.

“Batman,” she snarled. Guttural. As guttural as he’d been, while several people jolted. “What did we just say? What did we just—"

He cut her off. Gently enough. Fury still fountained. Livid grief.

“They want us alive,” he said quietly. “They need to feed. And the bigger the better. I can channel them down our gullet. Lure them out, into the right spots. Even if they take me, it doesn’t matter. They need me alive. As long as you don’t let that ship take off, it won’t matter.”

She snarled. Entirely wordless. Something else snarled after her. A sensation. In the ground. A fraction of that earlier howl. Over the comms, similar sentiments echoed.

“You’re a fucking bastard, B,” growled one voice.

Another, close behind him, hissed viciously. “If you fucking die for this, Bats, I will dig you back up and eat you myself. Never mind the Lady. I’ll eat you myself.”

Humour billowed. Batman. The huge aura. Soft and heartbroken and grimly, unmovably, determined.

“I expect nothing less,” he said softly. “Once Ivy lets that army go, we’re going to be outnumbered. We need to set up target zones. And as much as possible, we need to keep them from taking people. We don’t know how fast they can eat them. Flash. Justice League. Are you willing to help with that?”

They startled. Straightened. It was … easy to get caught up in the interplay of the auras here. The drama, perhaps. To let the tide rush you along, breakneck and heartbroken, and forget your own power, will, ability. But. They hadn’t come to stand idly by. They had come to fight alone, if necessary. If they were the only ones who could. They hadn’t expected to land in the midst of a battle already joined, and a battle more evenly matched than J’onn would ever have dared to hope. But that didn’t mean their intentions were forgotten.

“Where do you need us?” Superman answered calmly. Steadily. Quiet and simple intent.

“We’re all yours,” Flash echoed easily. “Like I said to Oracle, Central owes you some favours, for those antidotes. Whatever you need the fastest man in the world to do, you got it.”

“We will not let this evil pass,” Wonder Woman finished. Fierce and stalwart. A strange shudder went through them for it. Gotham. A strange shimmer of resignation and fear. But bitter humour bubbled under it, and a sort of fatalistic determination. Their auras hardened. One and all. Ready.

“Then I’ll ask Flash to help keep our people out of their hands,” Batman said calmly. “You have the speed to keep tabs on more areas at once. GCPD and first responders are working on evacuations to secure areas. Oracle will put you in touch. Rescue anyone you can, and keep them off that ship. Our fighters will comm you if they know anyone’s taken. The rest of you, the fliers. We don’t have a lot of capability in the air. I don’t know if their smaller ships can take people too. We need them destroyed or grounded. Preferably without killing anyone on the ground from debris, but if it’s that or … Needs must. Gotham will understand. Take them down.”

“Buddy, you don’t know us very well,” Hal growled. His ring shining with light. “The day I can’t take down some shitty-ass fighter planes without civilian casualties is the day someone picks my ring off my corpse. You might have a lot of wreckage in your harbour, but I think we can manage not to destroy the city over here.”

A pause, and then …

“Thank you,” Batman said. Too simply. Too honest. The Lantern flinched. Just slightly.

“Penguin,” Batman carried on. “Jim. Keep in touch. Tell me where you want me to pull them. And … Ivy. Let me know when you’re ready to break. Black Bat is near you. She can help get you out. Everyone else hold. Don’t draw attention yet. Wait for me and for Ivy. We need to give them a reason to stay.”

“How?” Hal muttered angrily. “You didn’t explain that part, dickbag. How exactly are you, specifically, supposed to get them to stay?”

Something … swept the auras. All of them. A bubble of humour, a vicious silver shimmer of amusement. And, under it. Fear. Protectiveness. Desperation. Black, black humour.

“Wait and see,” one of the voices said. Taunted. Lightly. “Just hold on. You’ll see.”

“Wait and see,” Batman echoed. Wryly and less provocatively. “You’ll know it when it happens. Once they’re on me, get in the air. They can’t be allowed to leave. Any of them. This is Gotham. They came here, so they can live or die here. But not a single one of our people gets taken past that boundary. Gotham’s dead are Gotham’s dead. We live or die here.”

A shiver. An oath. And J’onn …

It felt vaguely parasitic. A horror. It felt parasitic. But there was … there was something in the aura here. A shiver of … He felt different here. Perhaps it was only freedom from the pod. Perhaps it was the sheer totality of their turn. Despair to damned determination. The words sank. Soaked. Gotham’s dead are Gotham’s dead. And J’onn …

Ma’aleca’andra loomed silently overhead. A silent world. A dead world. J’onn was as close to home as he’d been since it fell. A dream far beyond any hope. So many had died elsewhere. Eaten dry, their last sight the membranes of the pod, their last sensations the agony of their fellows. Lost. Eaten. Alone.

They cannot have them, Gotham said. Our people. We will not be taken. We will die here.

J’onn was well eaten. Far past the bone. But. There were no tendrils in his flesh. He was not actively eaten. If the need for stealth was passing. If the League could mind themselves, at least to some extent. Then.

He didn’t want to hang in Superman’s arms while the rest of them fought. Old frustration, bitter, but the truth. He didn’t want to be helpless. He would need … time. As the lady Ivy said. He would need some time. He couldn’t walk. But if he had time, he could possibly fly.

It was only a matter of control. Mind over matter. It always had been. Ma’aleca’andra was a world of the mind. It had not saved them. It had, perhaps, killed them. But it was true.

He felt different here. Vicious. Electric. Charged. Not hopeful, but grimly determined. Perhaps that was parasitic. Riding their tide. But he felt …

Give him time. A little time. It had been centuries since last he flew. Phased. But perhaps, here, it might be possible.

Gotham shuddered. Citywide. Batman’s aura shrank, as if in horror. As if weakened. Psychic warfare. A feint. Ivy grit out a low growl, as something very loud happened in the park.

“Go,” she said. “Get their eyes off me for fifteen minutes. And do not die, or I will kill you.”

High above them, a star of light burst into the sky. A flare, some sort of signalling device. Drawing eyes towards one of the taller buildings. A shadow, atop it, against the darkness that shrouded the skyline. And then …

“Everybody roll up,” Batman said quietly. “Hide. Leave them to me.”

J’onn had known. Sensed. The size of this aura, relative to the others he had felt. Different, broader and more rudimentary than Malecandran telepathy. But … big, yes. Dark, rich. More than enough to draw the attention, the hunger, of the Imperium.

A hush fell across the city. A strange silence, as auras abruptly shrank. Rolled in, hidden under skins and inside bodies. A strange tension rolled out. And then …

The aura lifted. The vast aura that had blanketed the city as a whole. Slowly. Pointedly. A deliberate, distinctive motion. And two … wings. Two wings of psychic energy lifted themselves off the island, and arched themselves up into the sky. Radiating out from that single, tiny figure. Piercing past the baffles. Past the shroud of darkness. Miles wide, and now miles high. A flare, and a howl. Furious psychic intent.

“What the fuck?” Hal Jordan whispered. Gripping his ring hand with his other fist. “What the hell … What the hell is that?”

“Oh,” Diana whispered. Something else. Some frame of reference unique to her. “Oh.”

“Well,” the Batman said mildly. Thick, bitter humour curling under his tone, echoing across the silence of the comms. His eyes, his intent, fixed on the hulking tower of the command ship looming over his city. But under his wings, “Now that I have your attention. Can I interest you in a game of hide and seek? Or catch as catch can?”

A silence, and then, one of the Gotham voices: “Jesus. You are such a fucking dickhead, B.”

The Batman grinned darkly. J’onn could see it. Likely Superman could too. And then, wordlessly …

He tipped forward. Just … fell. Pitched himself off the building. And brought his wings sweeping down in the same motion. Swept them out. Flooded the city. His body fell into the vast sea of his aura, and he vanished.

And every force. Every alien force. J’onn felt the Imperium itself. That hateful thing. He felt it psychically lunge out into the city after him. Felt it hunting. Sweeping. Hunger all but dripping from its maw. All the vast and single-minded force of its intellect, bent on the largest single feast it had seen in years.

Eyes turned from the park. Without question. Any thought of where the force had gone that had been single-handedly holding it back was discarded. Because …

Because they were hungry. Because all their intellect was in pursuit of hunger. Nothing more, nothing less. Because they were not people, they were a plague.

And maybe. Maybe. J’onn had gone from the depths of despair to a vicious, ravening hope inside an hour. Realistically, there was still no chance. Given a true target, the Imperium would bring all of its true force to bear. Batman’s aura was huge, but how well it would stand against a dedicated telepathic assault was another question. How well he would stand physically against an army, when their entire force would be dedicated to hunting him. But … it didn’t matter. Could Ivy take the ship? Could Batman survive the onslaught? It didn’t matter. For the first time in aeons, J’onn … hoped.

Not a nuisance. Not this time. They would bloody it. Even if they died. Gotham whispered in his mind. Under his feet. Batman’s aura howled grim promises.

Gotham’s dead are Gotham’s dead. We die here.

And maybe. Just maybe. So do they.

Let’s … go together. And find out.

Chapter 3: Batfall

Chapter Text

The city erupted. Not quite literally, but not far from it. Without Ivy holding the line, and with such a tempting target, the Imperium’s forces flooded out into the city. The aerial craft, the scout ships and smaller fighters, were already up, and now turned fully to the hunt, but a massive wave of ground forces also flooded out from the park. The Imperium … it was not unintelligent. It had been holding a considerable number of forces in reserve until it understood what had been fighting it so successfully. With that problem apparently neutralised, or at least vanished, those reserves made their full presence known. The city … erupted. Walkers and ground drones flooded outwards. Ships howled overhead. And …

Resistance. Smaller. Frailer. More ragged. Rose stubbornly to meet them.

“Shit,” Oracle exhaled. “Okay. Major groups coming out onto Mortimer and Moench. Another group up by Gotham U. Not all of them are following Batman. Somebody’s going to have to head north. Most of their aerial units have redirected to Old Gotham after him, though.”

Flash glanced back at them, one quick nod, and vanished in a blur of speed, rushing to get civilians out ahead of the onslaught. The other three looked at each other, nodded once as well, and took to the air as a unit. J’onn … carried along alongside them.

J’onn winced faintly. It was less than ideal. He would slow them down, leave Superman unable to fight to full capacity. Right now, against this threat, he needed to fight at full capacity. But even as J’onn thought to offer alternative, Superman’s arms tightened around him. Before the thought more than brushed his mind. He caught J’onn’s eye and shook his head. Immediate, instinctive rejection.

No matter how capable J’onn might be, and J’onn could, at the very least, telepathically shield himself from discovery, there was no part of Superman, Clark, that would countenance leaving an injured non-combatant to fend for themselves in a Gotham alley. J’onn … had the impression that that was the first, instinctive reaction. He would not leave anyone injured and alone in the face of an alien army, either, but … First. Kneejerk. Not in a Gotham alley. People died in Gotham alleys. People whole and well and who hadn’t been drained mostly to death before they’d ever arrived. So. No. He would fight one-handed, and make the best of it, but J’onn was coming with them, at least until they had somewhere slightly safer to leave him.

Gotham, it would seem, was not and had never been safe. And now …

Now it was proving unsafe for the Imperium as well.

Battle, once they cleared the roofline, was immediate and dizzying. The Justice League wasted no time whatsoever. Superman swept up into the path of two of the smaller craft, those red beams from the pod flashing once again, striking both. Diana, behind him, slammed forwards and seized one of the stricken vessels, dragging it screaming from the air. Superman grabbed the other, one-handed, and J’onn, clinging to his side, felt the brief pause as he scanned the sea with his hearing to determine a safe trajectory, before both warriors, in unison, pivoted in the air and flung the wounded ships away from the city, out over the ocean.

Out, as well, beyond the baffles. It was an active consideration. They were aiming to protect the city below from debris, and also to draw other outside forces in. To literally throw evidence out beyond the shields. Alert the world to the battle being fought behind the Imperium’s shroud.

It was well-thought, but unlikely to be effective. Not for this battle. The Imperium’s power was fully engaged, now, a significant portion of their saved energy pouring into it. This foothold had proven more than adequately stocked with food. The energy would be fed back and then some. With that in mind, it would tolerate no outside interference. Only a mind as well-defended as a Malecandran would be able to come within thirty miles of Gotham without bouncing off, confused as to what had drawn them here when clearly there was nothing to be seen. No. The gesture was not without value. If they failed here, those ships might warn the rest of the world of what was coming. But Gotham? No.

No one else would be coming through that shield. This city would live or die on its own merits.

And it was not without them. Merits. Resistance, first and foremost. Seeded to the core.

Someone, Oracle, had linked the League into the city’s communication network. J’onn could hear through Superman’s comm. And, given that there was little useful he could do for the moment, while he pooled the remnants of his power in his chest and hoped that it would be enough, J’onn listened. And attempted to map the minds below him to the voices in Superman’s ear. Attempted to map the battle below him.

“Penguin, I need some of your artillery down here. The Moench column has split, heading north for Miller and south for City Hall. You’ve got walkers heading your way, but I’ve got six on top of my goddamn head right now.”

“… Fuck. Moretti, get two of the fucking gun boats into Miller. Start sending them up the Finger, too. Gordon, the cache in the Grant Park utility tunnels has four rocket and two torpedo launchers. You probably don’t have time to get the latter set up, but maybe you can get them to fucking step on them or something. I’m not going to be able to get anyone down to you.”

“Oh, well. Fantastic. No worries. We’ve got this.”

“Nightwing here. We can make it. The fliers are up around B and the League.” Yes, they were. They were surrounding the League. “Three minutes and we’ll be over there.”

“Who the fuck’s got Chinatown, then?”

“Time to make some big booms, boys! Gotta keep them off Pammy’s back, right?”

“… Ah.”

“Harley’s got it handled,” Nightwing confirmed wryly. “We’ve got evacuation moving onto Brown behind her. Think some of Croc’s people have starting leading people through Novick Tunnel too.”

“If ‘Croc’ is the giant crocodile man,” Flash sang out. Only slightly strained. “Then yes, he is. Why has this city got so many underwater tunnels? Didn’t you guys have an earthquake?”

They … ignored that. Pointedly. J’onn focused on sliding across Superman’s back to allow the man to strike at a better angle. There was … There had been a game like this. Vaguely like this. On Ma’aleca’andra. A children’s game, where one, usually smaller, was the passenger, and one the pilot, and the aim was to act in unison. It was … harder than he remembered. He didn’t think he was doing particularly well. K’hym would have been yelling in his ear.

“Gotham U group’s splitting too,” a harsher voice growled. J’onn filtered through the auras, trying to find an active sensation. ‘Jason’, he thought. This one was Jason. “Half’s coming around the north end of the park. The other half’s heading for fucking Arkham.”

“… Fuck. Oracle?”

“Staff alarm sounding. I’ll give them two minutes to clear before I hit general alarm. Ivy and Leslie’s people should get everyone clear before it’s a free for all up there.”

“Freeze is doing time right now,” a new, contemplative voice said suddenly. A younger male. Tim. Robin. All but a child, yet doing his best to be calm in the face of the death of his city. “His equipment should be there too. Maybe let him out early? He won’t go for the staffers, and he’s good at area control. If we get him active, he can start blocking them off up that end.”

“Do it.” Batman’s growl. “Scarecrow’s up there too, though, so be careful.”

“… I think this might be a search pattern,” Tim went on. An audible frown in his voice. “They’re splitting columns. Quartering the city. More on the south side, because that’s where you were, but I think they might be sectoring off the city. Otherwise why send a group north at all? All the resistance is down here.”

J’onn straightened. Stiffened in Superman’s arms. His timing was … inopportune. Superman was currently doing his best to tear apart one of the larger scout ships, the Lantern beyond him on the opposite side, and J’onn sudden motion resulted in an explosion of hull almost taking his head from his shoulders. Instinctively, J’onn tried to phase, and then hastily smothered the urge again. No. No wasting power. He hunched back in against Superman’s chest instead, feathering a mental grimace of apology at his protector in doing so. His focus wasn’t there, though. It was on the city, and that astute observation.

“… Could be trying to block the bridges?” Nightwing offered, slightly out of breath. “The group in Chinatown’s heading for Brown, and Trigate is just past Arkham. Might be trying to hem everybody in either. Make sure none of the food escapes.”

“… No,” J’onn murmured. Out loud, suddenly enough that Superman twitched. And then leaned his head closer, so that J’onn could access his comm. Speak, if he wanted to. Which J’onn was not fully sure he did, but alarm was thrilling through him now. The boy was correct. “The baffles will keep people in. They’ll get to the bridges and get confused. Turn around. They don’t need to hem anyone physically. The boy’s right. The Imperium is not a warrior. It’s a scavenger. A predator. Its priority is feeding. And it can sense through its drones. As well as channel some of its crueller tricks through them.”

A momentary silence. And then …

“Fan-fucking-tastic. Thanks for that, Mr Alien. What the fuck does ‘crueller tricks’ mean?”

“What do the baffles mean?” Nightwing interrupted. “I saw people heading onto Brown. I didn’t seen anyone getting confused.”

J’onn paused. Swept his mind out. They’d come in over that bridge, he knew where to look for it. And he sensed …

“They’re … getting pinned,” he murmured. “On the bridge. There’s a mass of people there. They can’t get out, can’t get beyond the half way point. But every time it tries to pull them back, something …”

Something pushed at them. Shrouded them, blanketed them back. The Imperium tried to pull them in, and this thing pushed them back out. To the half way point. Exactly the half way point of the bridge, the point where the baffle’s influence started to overmaster it. And J’onn … couldn’t feel it. Whatever was doing this. Not directly. Only its effect.

Confusion pulled them back in. And fury, belligerence, survival instinct, promptly kicked back in, only barely under outside influence, and pushed them back out.

“Something’s keeping them from coming back into the city either,” he said distantly. “I can’t sense it. But they’re pinned between two influences. The Imperium wants them back here. And whatever that other thing is, it wants them …”

“Alive.” Batman. Again, Batman. After another fractional silence. “It wants them alive. It’ll keep them out there as long as that’s safer. Why are they sectoring? Beyond attempting to find me.”

J’onn blinked. Mentally turning back to him. Them.

“Mostly that,” he said tiredly. “Mostly to find you. As well any other large auras. Once it has a net spread, it can drive telepathic energy through it. Cut your aura up. See where the core of it shrinks to. Once your shield is lifted, it can identify other prime targets too.”

Because Batman’s aura was a shield. It hid him, yes. But it also hid everything else. That was, he thought, most of the purpose of it. And in flaring it, drawing the Imperium’s eye, they had allowed it to realise that. Realise at least part of what J’onn, too, had sensed.

That the psychic signatures of this city, the auras, were intertwined. Wrapped around each other. Hidden inside each other. And the Imperium, he thought, unlike J’onn himself, did not entirely have the means to understand that. It didn’t understand cooperative telepathic links. It was a parasite. Its hive were extensions of itself, only its own power permitted, and most of its prey had been … Like Ma’aleca’andra. Telepathic societies that prized, at least to some degree, privacy. Politeness. Gotham did not. They tangled inside each other. And while it was now aware of that, it did not really have the means to understand it.

So it would break it, instead. Strip it back. A massed, shared aura did it no good regardless. The pods held one being at a time, fed on one being at a time. They were chained together, yes, battery ranks, but they siphoned from the flesh, fed from single minds. The Imperium needed to identify who to prioritise. Individual bodies that would give it the largest yield. Quality, not quantity.

So it needed to shred the shield. Not destroy it, unless auras were far more fragile than either J’onn or the Imperium understood, but knock it back into its body. Reveal said body’s location. And reveal … everything else that had been hidden.

Silence greeted him. Thick. Cold. Not full silence, too many people were fighting, too many people were strained and ragged and scrambling for their lives, but … silence.

Then the city erupted. Again. The people on the bridge made it another hundred odd feet towards the far shore as something, a massed aura, blew the baffles outwards once again.

“They will not,” the rough voice growled. Jason. “If they want another aura so bad, I can show them one right fucking now.”

“Do not.” Batman’s voice, cold and slightly panicked. “This is exactly what we want. A methodical grid search soaks time and means they’re not focused on crushing resistance. Let them at it. Bring the rest of the fliers down.”

“And then what?” Hal Jordan, Green Lantern, asked suddenly. Grim and determined while he smashed fighter after fighter into the sea. “Not going to knock you, first things fucking first and all, but what’s the endgame here? If your lady stops that thing taking off, fine and good, but that leaves them with nowhere to go and us with a fight to the goddamn death down here. And if this is them searching, not fighting, I’m not sure I like our odds.”

… No. No, J’onn didn’t either. But he never had. He’d known where this was going from the start.

Let’s die together, Gotham whispered. Die here. And take as many as we can with us.

“… We’ll deal with that once we’ve grounded the ship,” Batman said. Soft and steady. A man offering nothing at all, and aware of it. “As you say, Lantern. First things first.”

A man ready. Resigned. Or … so it sounded. So the others took it, half bristling and half despairing. But J’onn …

He didn’t stiffen, this time. Didn’t jolt in Superman’s arms. That wave of resignation rippled across the city. Grim despair. And then stubbornness. Belligerence. Almost humour. Those auras tangled together, and braced themselves grimly against the end. But J’onn felt something. Faint, through iron control. He felt something else.

Deception. Just the tiniest whisper of it. Small and grim and protective and tired.

They would deal with it when they came to it. Maybe. Maybe they would. But Batman, he felt, sensed, the cheating touch of a mind against those unused to defending against telepathy. Batman already had a plan. And was … quite close. To enacting it.

J’onn closed his eyes. Reached inside himself. This … This was the point where he needed to stop being passive. This was the point to spend what little strength he had left.

First, though, he needed at least a slight distraction.

“Uh, Chief?” A completely new voice on the line, gruff and Gotham. “You, um. You might want to look at this?”

“I’m a little busy, Bullock,” Gordon grumbled exhaustedly. “Is it going to kill us in the next two minutes?”

“… I mean. Probably not. But those three walkers that made it past Central into City Hall? They’re headed for the Federal Building. And. Credit fucking to him. Mayers has a firing line on the steps to face them down. Renee has a bead on him. He’s there in person.”

Superman stiffened, this time. Jolted slightly. The name was known to him. A tangle of complicated emotions. Anger and pity and hope and despair.

“… Don’t tell me that,” Gordon whispered. “Harvey. Don’t tell me that. I’ve got to do something about it if you tell me that.”

“I mean, you don’t gotta,” Harvey answered lightly. “Could let them sort themselves out. Do everybody a favour.”

Superman grimaced, pained, but he was getting mobbed now. Lantern had been pulled away from him, and the aerial craft had, finally, identified J’onn as a weakness for him. Realised that he was fighting disadvantaged. Multiple fighters swarmed them, aiming for J’onn, forcing Superman to focus most of his energy on shielding him instead of bringing them down. Almost time. So very close to time. Superman had to dart up, away from the city, to try and clear them. Even as his attention was split down. Towards this strange, strangely personal conflict for him.

“Shit,” Gordon whispered. Emphatically. “Harvey. We can’t. You know we can’t. These things eat people.”

“Not a lot of eating on Mayers,” Harvey shot back. Still light. And resigned. “Chief. Why do we always gotta do things the hard fucking way?”

“I’m four blocks away,” Gordon responded. Exhausted. “Buy me two minutes, Harvey. Don’t fucking die. Four blocks. I’ve just got to make it four blocks.”

Bullock laughed. “I’m sure as shit not dying for Mayers. The fuck you take me for? But me and Renee don’t exactly got a lot to work with right now. I think maybe we can give you a minute. After that … Well. Back up would be good, boss.”

Pain seared across J’onn’s side. A hit had finally made it through. Superman cursed, and hauled J’onn fully in against his chest, his eyes flaring red to win them some space. Below them, J’onn felt a man and his partner getting ready to face down monsters. Outclassed. Far, far outclassed. About to die. And going anyway. Not for the sake of the man they hated, the man they were buying time to save, but for the sake of the man who’d asked it of them. Twined auras. Bedrock belligerence. Bedrock faith.

Faith was a little beyond him now. But he could manage belligerence. And … perhaps a little gentility.

J’onn took a breath. Took a moment. And then he grabbed his bleeding power with both hands, and faded. Slipped, intangible, out of Superman’s arms. The hero panicked. Reached for him. J’onn feathered a gentle rejection as he fell away. Flying or fading, he could manage one or the other right now. Not both. But it wasn’t like an impact would hurt him like this, and the rest he’d work out closer to the ground.

“Go,” he sent to Superman. Clark. Gently. “They can’t touch me like this. I’ll get out of sight. I think you can be of better use elsewhere. Other people are running out of time.”

The aerial battle was all but won, anyway. There was a reason the Imperium hunted where the Lanterns weren’t. J’onn wasn’t sure how long it had been, more or less than Ivy’s ‘fifteen minutes’, but not long either way. The League were powerful. A force to be reckoned with, when it came to physical battle. The Imperium would have felt its aerial forces dying. Which meant it must have allowed it. Sacrificed them, for the sake of the larger prize. The League could fly, but the inhabitants of this city, demonstrably, could not. It wouldn’t need fliers to drain them dry.

And once it was fed. Once the command ship was fuelled. It could make new ships, and new drones to fly them. All it had to do was find a large enough meal first.

The spokes of its net were spreading outwards. They’d been slowed, but not stopped. Nowhere, at any point, had they actually been stopped. Once it was happy enough with the coverage, these games would stop, and Gotham would see the true power and malice of the Imperium. Their aura blasted. Their defences stripped. And a vicious, psychic malice bearing down on them.

J’onn could not stop it. He couldn’t. Not a hope in all the universe. But that was beside the point.

A last blow. For Ma’aleca’andra. Not out here, not to these drones. To it. The Imperium itself. The rotten, raddled, hideous thing at the fleet’s core. The mind behind everything J’onn had felt and seen and endured over these last aeons. He would not hurt it. With the strength he had left, it would bat him aside without feeling a thing. But that wasn’t the point either.

No more fear. No more flinching. Death was sure. But Ma’aleca’andra would die fighting.

Superman stared down at him. A picture hung in the air. The first gentle touch, the first hope, that J’onn had known in so many, many years. Torn. Divided. Too many people to protect. Not enough strength to shield them all. But that was easily fixed. No need to choose. J’onn’s course was set. And there were brave men and women aplenty to fight for.

He fell below the roofline. Below the street, phasing into the mess of cavities and pipes and concrete below the city. Waiting, trying to judge it. A gap big enough to become tangible again in, and short enough that the rest of the fall wouldn’t incapacitate him. His core ached. Burned with ripped exertion. It was harder to juggle than he’d hoped. But he saw. Felt. As he fell.

He felt Superman squeeze his eyes shut, grief and pain and a small, faint thread of annoyance. And then turn, and fly to save a man and woman, about to die to save their enemy.

Gotham reached up to catch him. J’onn’s body slipped back into the physical realm, plummeted down into her embrace. He landed hard. Breath slammed out of him. Wounds broke open. The most recent, the one from the battle above, had not even begun to close. He was a broken thing. A splintered husk, worth little of anything now. But he … He laughed. Even as breath punched out of him. In his head, if not his body, he laughed. Light and intangible.

Freedom, perhaps, felt much like death. Or perhaps vice versa. He had no hope of living past this day. It was … a marvellous feeling. Bright and airy and free.

No more fears. No more concerns. Just a target. And as much strength as he could scrape together to reach it.

He … felt something. Lying broken and easy and calm in a Gotham sewer. Light and ready for death. He felt something. Someone. A shudder under his body. A shiver across his skin. His mind. Not … Not Batman. That aura still fought above him. Something else. The thing under Batman’s aura. The thing from the bridges, maybe. That force of raw belligerence.

Though oddly gentle, if so. Delicate, around the shreds of his mind and his soul. He didn’t feel a swarming. No rage, no devouring. Only … a nudge. Gentle. Inexorable. Right under the crooked remnants of his spine.

Up, it seemed to whisper. Not yet. The enemy lives, yet. Get up. Eat them. Get up.

And, well. Who was J’onn to refuse so gentle an instruction?

He’d timed it for the critical moment. When things, plans, came together, when artifice stripped away, and only raw malice left behind. He was only barely back on his feet when he felt … several things. Almost instantaneously. Bundled together.

The first was the Imperium. That hateful thing. It obviously felt the extension was far enough, that its target was comfortably within its net. All previous was a prelude. Necessary sacrifices to put its pieces in place. Now … Now the truth. Plain and hideous and hateful.

Telepathic intent screamed out along the lines of its forces. Raw psychic power ripped out across the city. Not baffles. Not to hide. The opposite. An assault, designed to reveal. Howling lines of hunger webbed across the city, rending and tearing. The League … The League fell. He felt them, felt them topple out of the sky. He’d known. They had … They were powerful. But they were not defended from what the Imperium could do. Not when the pretences were gone, not when it was fighting, not merely hunting. Only the Lantern stayed in the air, raw stubborn keeping him airborne. Superman and Wonder Woman plummeted.

It wouldn’t kill them. Superman was already low to the ground, bringing down the walkers threatening the Federal Building. Wonder Woman had further to fall, but it would dent her not at all. J’onn sensed alarm, terror. People rushing to defend them. Fortunately, for the drones to channel this pulse, they had to fall still as well. The Imperium could not capitalise on this immediately. At least not physically.

But physically had not been the aim. And that … that was the second thing J’onn felt.

Gotham’s aura flared around the lash. Under it. Not just Batman’s, though he was the shield, the cover over the rest of them. All of them flared. This thing ripped out, this psychic howl, and Gotham billowed in answer. Accepted the blow, took the hit to their core, and howled back. Not even deliberately. Reflexive. Raw instinct. They howled back.

But the hit had landed. J’onn felt it. Something fractured. Staggered, under the hit. Batman didn’t shatter. Didn’t tear, didn’t go down. His aura stayed stubbornly extended, much as the Lantern had stayed stubbornly airborne, but the blow had landed. A spike of pain, bewilderment, stabbed out across his aura. And did so directionally. A point of origin. He was too overwhelmed to disperse it across his aura.

The Imperium’s intellect, it’s seeking intelligence, swung around. It was intelligent. In this limited sphere, for this limited purpose, eating, it was intelligent. And it hunted telepathic species. It knew how to look for a mind, once it had induced it into betraying itself. It knew how to tag and tether and bring one down.

Other auras flared defensively, even as the Imperium’s forces turned. J’onn couldn’t hear the comms anymore, but he could feel their minds. Their auras. Their intent. Half of Gotham spun defensively in the same moment. Rushing to protect him. Huge auras. Not to a level with Batman, not city-sized, but J’onn felt at least two covering multiple block-sized areas. Two minds he’d touched. Jason, and Penguin. Both of them flared, and started turning towards the wounded, and now hunted, Batman.

But this … this had been the aim. J’onn felt it. That tiny moment of deception. Grim, exhausted determination. The need to protect. And … something else. A need pointed outwards, not at them, not at his people, but at something else. The Imperium. Something clawed beneath Batman’s aura, something familiar, a presence, and Batman took that fatal hit in stride. As if it had been the aim.

He gathered himself. Walkers and the few remaining fighter craft turned his way, and Batman ignored them. He spoke, and his own auras, people, flinched back. Startled. Angry. Batman ignored those too. And, instead, lifted his wings.

Not angry. Not a flare of panicked challenge. Not a belligerent response to being wounded. He raised them deliberately. Nearly coldly. Staring right down the barrel of the Imperium’s power and malice. Batman, suddenly revealed, suddenly pinned, flared his aura with calm, contemptuous composure, and leapt forward. Not away from his pursuers. Not back into the shield of his people’s protection. Into the maw, instead. A sweep of night, towards the park. Into all the Imperium’s telepathic might.

Panic erupted in his wake. Fury. Not at the Imperium, at him. But the Imperium was not one to look a gift sacrifice in the mouth. It slammed its power down behind him, as he raced into its maw. Not the gentle baffles of the city’s edge, sowing confusion and manipulating minds. Hard boundaries, agonising boundaries. The sort that only …

That only Ivy, so far, had successfully ignored. Ivy. Who was still within them.

Was it a plan? Was it a plan that could succeed? Or just damned defiance? But. Either way. J’onn could breach that shield too. And significantly more subtly than anyone else.

Fly or phase. But he needed both. And he only had to be strong for a very, very finite amount of time. So. Spend it all, all at once. He shoved his bleeding core back into his bleeding body, and let himself fade from the world once again. This time, heading up. And in. Towards the ship that had been his world for hundreds of years. It was almost funny. Free only hours, and already flying back. But.

Not to be eaten, this time. To die, yes, but not to be eaten. One blow. Let him just land one.

And he felt … Flying intangible across Gotham. Flying silently in Batman’s wake. Into the park, the green heart of the city. He felt something under him. A mind. An aura. An awareness. Not Ivy, though he felt her too, seething in the soil below the park. That other presence instead, the gentle, vicious thing that whispered up. Get up. Eat them. She followed in Batman’s wake too.

And she was hungry. That was … That was what it felt like. Not angry. So far past anger, into the calm lacuna beyond. She was waiting. A vast presence below the city. Simply waiting.

For a breathless moment as he flew into the park, J’onn felt pressed, a thin shadow drifting into the charged space between two vast, inimical things.

Ahead of him, Batman had made it to the ship. To its front door, or at least the main loading ramp. To the Imperium’s … almost confusion? He made no attempt at stealth, nor any at combat, either. He simply emerged from the trees and walked to the door. And the Imperium wasn’t one to look a gift sacrifice in the mouth, but nothing …

Nothing, so far, not one single thing, had suggested that Gotham so much as knew what ‘surrender’ meant.

Drones rushed out to meet him. J’onn dipped below the ground again, hid intangible beneath the soil as he shadowed the man. Ivy, beneath him, was livid. And also vast. He felt … threads of something, reaching out around her. Her awareness of the scope of her power. Her feelings on what Batman was doing were very, very far from opaque. Strangely, in this moment, the aura that had felt so vast only minutes ago now felt very, very fragile. Batman grunted as the drones struck him. The Imperium wasn’t going to let him simply walk inside. Not because he might strike at it, but because it would not allow him that much pride. He grunted, his wings skewing sideways a little as he was seized. Bludgeoned. Imprisoned. And beneath the ground, two vast presences did not surge. Not yet. Not yet.

He had … He had better have a plan, J’onn thought. Not simply because Gotham needed a plan. But because three forces, not one, would eat him if he didn’t.

Though only two of the three were aware of it. The ship …

Memory crawled across J’onn’s skin. Phantom feeder tendrils writhed beneath it. It took every scrap of courage or … or the gentle promise of death, for J’onn to managed to drift up into those confines once again. To allow himself. He had been free. Free to die on a mountain. Open air. Cold. The wonderous sensation of cold, wet snow around his body. He had been free. He could have died there. He could have chosen … anything else. Anything else. He did not have to return here. To die here. In this place that had eaten all that he loved.

But he hadn’t even thought it. He nearly faltered on realising it. He hadn’t once considered running. Hiding. Superman would have let him. Any of them would have let him. All they’d asked was how to find it. Knowledge, not action. They would not have demanded he come with them. And he had not even realised it. His only thought had been how close he would have to get to sense the Imperium in this state.

He had … fallen far, perhaps. Ma’aleca’andra had been peaceful. Until the Pale Ones, and then the Imperium, but their ideals had been peaceful. Gentle. Many had run. Hidden. But he hadn’t even thought it.

He’d thought, instead, of vengeance.

Such a legacy. Such a pitiful creature to be the last Malecandran. Of all of them that could have survived. M’yri’ah. K’hym. The. The best. And instead it was J’onn J’onzz. The most base, corrupted remnant. All but a Pale One himself.

But. But that was all right. Because that problem would sort itself shortly too.

The drones dragged Batman up into the main deck. Not the pod chambers. There was at least that mercy. For J’onn there was that mercy. He feared … He feared it would not a mercy for Batman. For the human who had simply walked in here. On purpose. Had J’onn not been plain enough what fate would befall him here? But J’onn could feel the man. He had been right. The Imperium had been right. There was not one single solitary shred of surrender in him right now. It wouldn’t, J’onn thought, have mattered how plain, how graphic, he’d made himself. The man would walked in here anyway.

Now all that remained was to discover why.

After. After. A presence approached. Familiar. Hundreds of years familiar. And J’onn … He clung to his power with everything he had. Clung to the control needed to remain intangible, to remain undetected. Because … Because he wasn’t bound. He wasn’t pinned and fed upon and helpless. He was … He was weak, he was shattered, he was all but dead, but he was free. For the first time in aeons. He was free. And here was his enemy.

The Imperium was such a loathsome thing. Such was the voice of hatred, J’onn was aware, but he could not restrain it. Of all things, do not ask him to restrain that. The creature, the figure at the centre of the hive, was hideous. Not for what it looked like, but for what it was. Though it was, perhaps, also ugly. To Malecandran eyes, very much so. Possibly to human ones as well. Or perhaps it was simply a figure of such horror that it could never have hoped to be seen as beautiful.

It loomed over Batman. He had been dragged before it. Stared up at it, now. Impassively. Gotham did spite so very, very well. Tiny rebellions. No matter what it had looked like, he wouldn’t have allowed so much as a raised brow. J’onn felt that. He wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. And J’onn …

Adoration surged. Just a remnant of it. And fury. What are you doing, you foolish man?

“So,” sent the Imperium. That voice, that presence, oily and hateful across their minds. J’onn had to throttle himself. Throttle his hatred. Not yet. Not yet. Let’s see if the man had a plan. “You offer yourself to us, then? You understand the futility of resistance?”

Batman’s aura … twitched. Just. Just a little. He still had it out. It still trailed behind him, two wings the length of a city. They moved, like a muscle ticking in a jaw. Twitching and then flattening. Restraining the first, instinctive response to such a question.

“… What do you want?” he growled softly. The only answer he would allow himself. “You come here. You invade my city. What do you want?”

As if J’onn hadn’t told him. As if he hadn’t told all of them. There was a weight to the question. A strange hope and a strange despair. But J’onn had told them. Did he come all this way, surrender, just to ask a question that had already been answered?

And one that was answered again. Viscerally. Tendrils lashed out. Not the remote tendrils of the pods, the extensions of the ship, bio-technological imitations to expand its reach. No. The Imperium’s own tendrils. Its own form, its own flesh. The vampiric heart of its fleet. Its tendrils lashed out and buried themselves in Batman’s flesh. He shouted hoarsely. Almost more startled than pained. And then … then in earnest. Then agonised.

“We wish to feed upon you,” it said dispassionately, while J’onn froze paralysed between memory and rage. “You. Your world. We will feed upon you. It has been a long time since last such a feast was laid before us. We will drain your city. Store the best of you below to fuel our advance. And then we will eat your world. You are …” Its tendrils flexed, his aura writhing beyond them. Almost puppeted, his wings jerking as it leaned close, fascinated. “You are flavourful. Strange. We have subsisted for so long on scraps. We will eat you. All of you. Your whole world. That is what we want.”

He had … He had told them. Perhaps he should have shown them, as he showed the League. Perhaps he should have pushed forward, when the woman, Oracle, had flinched from him. Should have ignored it, should have shown them anyway. Should have forced them. Would it have spared them this? But. But he couldn’t. Her mind flinching beneath his. He couldn’t. Wouldn’t. And now this man hunched eaten before him.

He moved. Jerked forward, helpless, instinctive. Still intangible, but no longer invisible. It felt him. The Imperium. It sensed his presence at last.

And it laughed. As it saw him. As he staggered out into its presence, the nightmare that had eaten all his years. His hopes. His world. His wife and daughter. It laughed at him.

“Did you not show him, Malecandran? Did you not teach them the fate of your world? But no matter. We can teach them for you.”

Rage choked him. Hatred beyond reason. Beyond any rational thought.

“You will not,” he spat, thick and strangled. He could not stop it. He had nothing left to stop it. But it mattered not the slightest. He would try. Die. To keep one person from the pods. This person from the pods. He would die.

But Batman …

He moved. He’d gone to his knees, sheer agony. Their feeding hurt. Burning at your core. And this. The Imperium itself. It hurt worse. It made it hurt worse. Batman had gone to his knees. But he moved, now. Not to stand. But a hand came up, and gripped the tendril buried in his chest. Clenched around it, a hard knot of flesh and bone and pain.

“He wasn’t lying, then,” he rasped. Thick and agonised. Looking at J’onn, faint apology, and then the monster that ate him. “He didn’t lie about your intent. You’ll kill our world. Everyone on it. You’ll eat them. You admit it.”

The Imperium stared down at him. Again, almost bemused. And then amused.

“You thought he lied?” it asked mildly. “No. We have no reason to hide what we are. You will be the first. You will give me the power to crush your city. And then your city will give me the power to crush your world. And what we do not eat now, we will take and eat later. We are not wasteful. You and yours will feed us for a long time yet. As the Malecandrans fed us before.”

Hatred surged once more. Maddened, unreasoning. J’onn nearly lunged. But.

The Batman stared up at it. This conqueror, this devourer, this monster. This creature with its mouths already buried in his flesh. And what he felt …

Unlike J’onn, what he felt wasn’t hatred. It wasn’t rage. It wasn’t fear.

It was grief. A wall … a wall of grief. Without source or explanation. Enough to stop J’onn in his tracks. Enough to stun him. Batman’s hand flexed gently around the tendril in his chest.

“Then,” he said softly. Sadly. Something … strange. Happening to his aura. Around his aura. Beneath it. “Then we cannot let you leave. And we cannot let you live.”

The world fell still for a moment. A stretched fraction of eternity. Almost a crystal, that second before it shatters. Poised between forces, and destined to be torn between them. There was J’onn, a hollow husk. Batman, a sacrifice on his knees. The Imperium, the vast monster arrayed above them. And then. From below. Two vast presences. Two vast furies.

The ground shuddered. The park. The city. And on the wave of Batman’s grief, two Ladies unleashed their judgement.

Chapter 4: City Rise

Chapter Text

The ship lurched. Heaved. J’onn had never felt the like before. The ship was the size of one of the tower cities on Ma’aleca’andra. It didn’t move, not unless it decided to. But alarms blared, and the drones, and Batman, and the Imperium itself staggered sideways.

Batman grunted, partly in agony, as his slide was arrested by the tendrils embedded in his chest. He clawed both hands around them, taking his weight on his arms instead of his wounds. But his expression, when he raised his head, was a smile. A bitter, grieving, savage smile.

“What have you done?” the Imperium sent. Demanded. Hauling him close by those same tendrils. Those same wounds. “What is this? What have you done?”

Batman smirked darkly. “Not a thing,” he rasped. Ragged and triumphant. “I’m not the ace this time. I’m the distraction.” A pause, while that smile slipped, and went sad. “And … the proof of intent. One last check, before … Before.”

“Before what?” the monster snarled. But too late. An answer was already presenting itself.

J’onn half startled, phasing partially into the floor, as the ship abruptly dropped. The entire ship, the whole massive structure. Only a foot or two, but it was enough to bring the floor up to J’onn’s chest where he’d hung intangible. And a foot or two more than an object this size should ever move unattended. The drones were knocked sprawling, though the Imperium had lifted itself into the air in a hover, dragging Batman with it. It didn’t matter. In the next moment …

The world filled with howling. Noise. Cacophony. Alarms, yes, and the command ship’s alarms were partly telepathic. Howls of alarm. And rending sounds. Crashes and groaning and tearing. And a piece of the hull, the size of one of the city buildings outside, ripped from one end of the command deck. Torn out by …

Roots. Vines. Tendrils. Brown, titanic tendrils. Significantly larger, J’onn thought, though he didn’t actually know, than plants were supposed to be on this planet.

For a moment, a split second, even the Imperium stared at the sudden, gaping hole in shock. The massive, twisting limbs beyond, feeding tendrils significantly larger than its own. It felt stunned. As bewildered as J’onn had ever dreamed to sense it.

Then more tendrils punched inwards. Punched upwards. The ship groaned, a deep, terrifying, nearly subaudible scream of strain, and it became obvious that these things, these plants, were tearing their way up through it from beneath, and that their single goal was to rip it apart. To rend it piece from piece where it sat, now sunken several feet deeper into the soil of the park. They were … still sinking. As if being pulled down. As if being devoured, slowly, inexorably, by this monster of the park.

“How dare you,” Batman murmured. Softly. Ruefully. And J’onn would have been confused, but he sensed … sensed the doubling of the words. Sensed that they weren’t Batman’s own. He sensed the voice they truly belonged to, the voice speaking in Batman’s ears, through his comms. Batman let him. No. Let them. The Imperium. Focused his mind purposefully to let them listen in, to let them hear her, while also echoing the words out loud, a second or so behind. Allowing his voice and his mind and his aura to be her mouthpieces.

“How dare you,” Ivy whispered, low and vicious. Far below them, from the heart of the park. Her words, if the comms were still linked, echoing out across the city. “How dare you come here, to my city, my park. How dare you stand on the bones of my children and speak of eating. Did you think that blotting out what remains of Gotham’s sun would keep us in check? Do you think that I have not fed this city on nothing but pain and soil watered in blood before? How dare you. How dare you. If you enjoy the dark so much, I’ll drag you down and water Gotham’s roots in your blood, so my children can bloom in daylight.”

And the ship groaned, as if to emphasise the point. The vines dragged down, flexed on her word, and somewhere in the ship something gave way with a splintered roar. The command deck buckled again. J’onn flew higher instinctively, even though it couldn’t hurt him. Pure instinct. Primal instinct. There was something below that could eat them.

And not blindly. Not unintelligently. She was doing more than grounding the ship. She was targeting the baffles. The shroud of darkness. The defences. She meant to rip away the Imperium’s shell and leave it bared to all this world. Choke down its darkness. Tear away … the pods. The pod holds were below them. Most of them were spent anyway, their remaining energy already devoured and flowing through its form, but without the ship to channel its power …

It recognised that as well. Possibly from J’onn, from the spiralling realisation it sensed in his mind. Its power slammed outwards. A crushing wave of psychic force, pointed downwards, while it still had the intact channels to do so. J’onn felt his grip on his form, intangibility, gutter and waver, and bent all his will to holding fast. No. It wouldn’t drop him. Not now. He was Malecandran, and it would not drop him now. Not here. Not at the last gasp.

Ivy didn’t drop either. She screamed. J’onn felt her screaming in Batman’s ear, felt the human’s heart pound furiously in his chest at the sound. But her scream wasn’t only pain. It was fury. Rage past all care for pain, for survival. She didn’t drop. And her vines crushed inwards. A green claw reaching up from Gotham’s heart to crush her foe.

It needed power. It needed power to beat her, enough force to overwhelm her. Crush her mind before she could crush its ship. It needed. It needed food.

All of them … J’onn thought all of them realised it at once. Him. The Imperium. Ivy.

And Batman.

He stared up at it. His hands still wrapped uselessly, helplessly, around the tendrils embedded in his chest. He knew before its attention ever swung his way. J’onn felt it. Felt the giddy rush of the man’s …

Humour. Black, black humour. And defiance. Bedrock, unyielding defiance. Even in the face of the maw.

J’onn moved. Without thought. Without any conscious decision at all. He would not allow it. Not ever, ever again. He would not watch one more person, not one more thinking, feeling being, fed into this maw. He’d come to stop it. To save even one person. And look. Here one was.

Something split inside him. A wet, fatal wound. Not physical. Not his flesh. His mind. Power from nothing. Reserves so far past fatally spent. But his form solidified. Changed. Enough arms to cage every tendril. And enough force to crush them. The opposite of intangibility. Let’s take a leaf from Gotham’s vine, and become tangible enough to crush.

The Imperium howled at him. Battered him, surged in and tore at his mind. J’onn laughed. Dizzily. Delightedly. Something did snap. Something wavered. Ah. No time, then. Tear it free. Crush its limbs to death and tug them free. Save one person.

Drones staggered up around them. Beyond them, too. J’onn felt it calling. Felt it summoning its forces back to the ship. Below the ship. Find Ivy, kill her. Corner J’onn, Batman. Kill them. Or. No. Not kill. At least not Batman. It needed him. More than anything left on this world, it needed to feed on him. That huge aura was all the power it would need to survive. To destroy. Corner J’onn, yes. Finish him off, before the wound at his core could manage. But save Batman, and eat him.

It was … so angry. It was personally wounded. J’onn. J’onn had personally wounded it. At last. At last. One last blow. But it had never endured defiance like this. Never faced defeat like this. Someone had crippled it’s ship. Defied it to its face. Injured it. It was near maddened. Frenzied with hatred. It battered at him with every weapon it could bring to bear, even physical ones. It flailed its limbs at him, the heavier ones for locomotion, not feeding. J’onn’s form was so dense now that they bounced off. That wouldn’t last. His core was haemorrhaging. He was going to lose control in a second. The blows would land. The Imperium would kill him. But right now, its limbs were bouncing off, shrugged away, and J’onn felt nothing beyond blind triumph for its hatred.

“We will kill you!” it howled into his face. Clawing itself closer. “We should have killed you aeons ago. Worthless Malecandran! We will kill you!”

“… No.” A soft voice, behind J’onn. A tired voice, unutterably weary. “No, you won’t.”

And Batman’s aura … not flared. It didn’t lift, didn’t surge, didn’t expand. He was kneeling behind J’onn, arms tucked to his ruined, bleeding chest. His aura didn’t flare. Instead it … softened? Parted, not the wings, but … the aura itself. Opened up, revealed a thousand tiny holes and ragged tears. Wounds. And through them. Through those tears. From the depths below the city. A vast, gentle, terrible thing emerged.

Hunger. Rage. Anguish. Love. She was … It covered the city. Soaked it, emotions leeching up from the stones. J’onn felt the vastness of it. Her. Not hidden, now, not shielded beneath stone and concrete and Batman’s aura. She clawed upwards. Reared. Taller than even Batman’s wings had arched, a pillar above the city. A vast silver fury.

And … here. In this room, the command deck. This smaller, splintered space, already torn by Ivy’s rage. She reached through Batman. A seed of herself, inside his aura. Not parasitic. Not a feeder tendril. A union, instead. A tether bleeding pain and love from both ends. She gathered around the wounds in his chest, and her fury was unspeakable. And. Familiar.

J’onn had … felt an echo of it. Once. A long time ago. When he felt … When he felt the last spark that was his daughter. K’hym. Fade away. Under this monster’s maw.

But she had strength where he had not. Gotham. She had all the strength that had been drained from him over centuries. She did not lie in another pod, helpless save to scream at the sensation of her child’s death. Her aura arched across the city. Bloomed inside Batman’s. And promised nothing but annihilation.

The Imperium stared at her. Just. Stricken blank by the sensation of her. This … This monstrous presence out of nowhere. This threat that fountained from nothing. It wasn’t alone. J’onn felt the terror across the city. But the Imperium … It had never been faced with such defiance. It hunted those already wounded. Isolated, trapped. Cut down and left to die. And Gotham was all of that, yes. All those things. But there was freedom in death. Past the point of fear, when all remained was to do and to die. Their defiance seemed endless. And they had … surprising power. To back it up.

J’onn felt the moment desperation crested inside it. It was not a warrior. It was a scavenger, a parasite. It had no capacity to fight. But it could not flee. Ivy had seen to that. It could not flee.

So it defaulted, as always, to the only true instinct it possessed. It tried to feed.

It heaved him sideways. Flung him from its path. His strength had bled out, finally, as Gotham appeared. He hadn’t the ability to stop it, his form collapsing back to his truest shape and density. The husk, still bleeding. He hit something. Bounced off it, something cracking ominously inside his body. He barely noticed, barely felt it. His mind was still bound to the monster lunging across the deck.

Towards Batman. Always, towards Batman. The first and greatest food source it had identified on this world. With his power, drained all at once, perhaps it could challenge this creature ranged above it. J’onn’s power had faded in enough time for it to salvage several feeding tendrils. Not intact, mangled and crushed in his hands, but functional enough to do the job. It lunged. Straight towards that massive silver aura, that seed inside its target, but it only had one instinct. It had only ever had one instinct. If it was going to die, it would die eating.

It didn’t make it. J’onn raised his head in time to see Batman flinch, to see him bring both arms up defensively across his chest, but it wasn’t needed. The Imperium never reached him.

Gotham devoured it. Before it could.

J’onn …

He had felt a hundred thousand lives eaten. Centuries on that ship. This ship. The pods a few decks blow. He had felt …

They had all been slow. After the first, when it first glutted itself after Ma’aleca’andra. After that feast, they had all been slow. Stretched, elongated, burning deaths. Inch by inch, drop by drop, a haze of endless agony across the ship. Minds eaten, slowly and steadily, until even the brightest of them welcomed the end. K’hym had … She’d sighed as she died. A tiny breath of relief. M’yri’ah had simply crumbled. They’d been … They’d been slow.

This was not. Rage flooded outwards. Not just here, not just the ship. Across the city. The drones. The walkers. All the Imperium’s extensions of self. That vast silver presence scythed across them. Tore … Tore out the aura. The power. The sense of self. And simply …

Devoured it. Just. Ate it.

The core took longer. Fractionally, as J’onn had learned to measure these things, but longer. The Imperium … It had time to feel it. The … The reversal. The burning. The abrupt hollowing of its core. Not leeched out. Not burning and torturous and inch by slow inch, but all at once. This was not eating for sustenance, not rationing scraps across aeons. This was retributive. Perhaps that made it worse. Eating not for survival, but for …

But it was survival. Not for Gotham, perhaps, but for …

Her city. Her people. Her world. The Imperium ate worlds. And … children.

J’onn watched her eat. Felt her eat. At a strange distance. A vast, hollow remove, distant and remotely curious. He should … He’d thought he would feel more. Those … Those few times he’d imagined, not even remotely hopeful, what it might be like to watch the Imperium die. Those dreams had died a long time ago, barely even remembered, but J’onn had thought that he would … feel something. Something, anything. But all he could muster was a faint horror. And a faint satisfaction.

She turned to look at him, when she was done. He was hollow. Eaten all the way through. He just looked back. Just. Lay there. And looked back.

If she ate him, it would be a faster death than any that had ever been offered to him. Not least because there was nothing left. But he wasn’t worried about it. He wasn’t afraid. He’d passed that point some time ago.

She feathered over him, a silver whisper, and …

Nudged. Gently. Under his possibly-broken spine. That same gentle whisper again. Up. Get up. Not to kill, now. Not to eat. But just … to get up.

“I’m sorry,” Batman said softly. Appearing beside him, ragged and tired. Bleeding, from his chest and from his aura. Slightly eaten, and slightly broken. His gloved hands were covered in his own blood as he ran them carefully over J’onn’s form. Trying to feel where he was broken. “It wasn’t that I didn’t listen to you. I just. I had to check. You might have been lying. I had to check.”

His aura was soaked with grief. A great wound at its core, where his city filtered up. Not from feeding. Not from the Imperium. It felt … self-inflicted.

J’onn reached for him. Strangely, distantly fond. Like Superman. Clark. That same faint fondness. These strange beings, that tried to spare a husk long dead.

“… It ate my world,” he whispered. Not admonishment. He didn’t want the flinch that resulted. He understood. Not himself, not anymore. He’d had no thought beyond vengeance. But Ma’aleca’andra. His world. His people. They would have checked too. This wasn’t … He didn’t want to hurt, just to explain. “My family. Everything. It ate everything. I never … I never thought that I would survive long enough to see … to see something eat it back.”

To see something eat it back. It was … such a thought. Such a thing. He’d lived to see it. A … A horror and a triumph beyond anything he would ever had dared to imagine. Because it should not have been possible. A maw greater, vaster, than the Imperium. That should be a horror, to know such a thing existed. A hunger, not for food but for vengeance.

But. But the Imperium had eaten his world. And. Not just for vengeance. This thing around him. She hadn’t only eaten for vengeance.

She had devoured for love, too.

Batman stared down at him, careful and stricken. And then he … then he rested both hands, carefully, gently, on J’onn’s chest. Over his heart. Hands on the membrane of his pod.

“You’ll live longer than that,” he rasped roughly. “Tell us how to help you.”

J’onn … something broke. Crumbled wetly. He was already splintered in every way possible, mind and body and core, but something new broke. Or … something old. Carefully papered over. A thing he’d hidden at his core a long, long time ago. He reached blindly. The man in front of him, and … No reason. No reason at all. But the other man too. Clark, dazed and horrified and reeling from Gotham’s … from Gotham. J’onn reached for him. His mind tore again, the effort too great, but he reached anyway. Touched him gently.

And let their names filter up. Those last, precious names. The ones he’d clung to with every shred of self he’d had left. All … All this time. Every shred.

M’yri’ah. K’hym.

“My wife,” he whispered. Trying to explain. The. The yearning. “My daughter. My …”

Batman flinched. To the core. A ragged, stained aura, full of ancient wounds, and still bleeding. He … understood. Yes. J’onn saw it. He understood.

But he reached down anyway. Brought one hand to J’onn’s. Curled them carefully together.

“They’re waiting,” he said softly. Stiltedly. “They’ll … They’re waiting. They will wait. You don’t have to … They’ll wait. They’ll understand. I … In a few minutes, half of Gotham is going to pour in here, and they’ll call me a hypocrite. You’ll see. But you don’t have to go yet. I … I won’t keep you if you want to. But maybe they … maybe they would want you to … to bring them something …”

He couldn’t finish. Couldn’t frame it. But J’onn could hear the shape of it in his mind. The two graves, and the old man, the second father, who’d just as stiltedly offered the same advice.

They’re waiting. And maybe they’d want you to bring them something more than pain.

Which was … Perhaps that was not wrong. K’hym. K’hym especially. She had died in those pods, all her hope, all her innocence, all her joy eaten. Wouldn’t she want him to bring her some? The memory of snow. The warmth of a hand on the membrane of the pod. Something else. Something more. Memories to share.

Did he have strength for that? He nearly laughed. He didn’t know. How much did he have left that wasn’t eaten? But he felt …

Clark. Reaching out. Confused and desperate and instinctive. Yes. I’ll show you. I’ll give it to you. Yes. I’ll help you find it. And … Gotham. That silver presence. Less kind, less warm. But just as instinctive. Pouring strength, since he’d doubted it. She couldn’t heal. That had never been part of her. But she had strength, endless and bloodied, and she offered it readily. Yes. Get up. They didn’t kill you. And then … more confused. Tangled. There is more. Beyond the blood and the eating. There’s more. They didn’t kill you. You can find it.

Tangled. Tethered in Batman’s aura. The city’s aura. Bewildered adoration.

There is more. And you’re alive. You can find it.

Would it matter? So much of him had broken. This last fight. So much was broken. Survival might be … just a little bit beyond him. But. One more time, he supposed. Just one more time. Who was J’onn to refuse so gentle an instruction?

“… You are, you know,” another voice said tiredly. Dropping down into the command deck from that great rent in the far end, a rustle of leaves and vines. Ivy, splintered and wounded herself. Stalking towards them. Towards Batman. Exhausted by him. “You are such a fucking hypocrite. I’m so glad I can’t fucking feel you. How many others had to feel you dying?”

That blow … that blow struck true. All the way to the core. J’onn felt the tremor in the hand around his own. As well as … the tangled auras of this city. The empathic joins. Threads from Batman’s aura out across half the city. How many … How many had felt him dying?

And there was something else as well. A phantom in the exhausted mind next to his. Two graves again. Two people Batman had felt dying. And … a third. More complicated.

Yes. That blow had struck true.

Ivy picked her way over to them. Stood beside them. She was … smaller than J’onn had expected. Frailer. She had torn down what entire worlds could not. A howling voice of vengeance, dragging the Imperium down into the earth. But … behind that. Beyond it. She was small.

And exhausted.

“I hate you,” she said softly. Tugging Batman in against her hip. Holding him in against her side, where he knelt bleeding. “I hate you so much. If I thought there was any point to it, I would kill you right now.”

Batman closed his eyes. Leaned against her side.

“I had to know,” he said, just as tired. “Before … Before. I had to know.”

“Why?” she asked. Part furious, part pleading. Part brokenly exhausted. “Do you think we need your permission? Do you think that she, that I, would not slaughter without your say-so? That a goddess only jumps at your command? Fuck you. The arrogance of man. You didn’t have to do anything. You could have stayed out of it. Stayed safe. And left the slaughter to those who have no qualms about it, and no need for your blessing.”

A long silence. A ragged silence. Strained over old wounds. Gotham hovered. She was vast. As vast a maw as J’onn had ever seen. But here, for some reason, she felt almost anxious.

Then Batman sighed, and rested his head against Ivy’s hip.

“You don’t need my blessing,” he said tiredly. “I know it. You don’t need my permission or my command. But I … I think. I trust. That if I asked, if I gave you a reason, that you would hold back. Keep from destroying them. And that … That makes it my responsibility when I don’t ask. When I choose not to. When I choose … to let them die.”

Her chest heaved. She looked skywards. Up, out away from him. Towards the tear in the ship, where pale daylight shone once more through a haze of rain.

“God,” she whispered. “God, you just have to make it … Do you at least exhaust yourself as much as you exhaust the rest of us?”

He smiled slightly. A faint curl of his lip. “Every damn day. But. It was the right choice. I … I know that. Our lives or theirs. We couldn’t win, and they wouldn’t stop. It was the right choice. And I’ll stand by it. When the League come. The world. I’ll stand by it.”

Her fists clenched. Rage shook her entire body. Then she closed her eyes, and pressed her palm gently to the side of his head.

“Monsters fucking all, hmm?” she asked bitterly. “Is that where you think this is going? You fucking idiot. You never fucking stop, do you? But no. No, absolutely not. You’ve tried my patience more than enough for one day. Sleep now.”

A tendril, a seed along her arm, burst softly in his face. A cloud of powder. He sucked in a startled breath, his eyes flaring wide with alarm and almost betrayal, and then … Then he slumped. Instantly. He’d already been weakened. Wounded and half-eaten. He dropped. Slumped against her leg and slid down. Unconscious. She stooped to catch him, and eased him the rest of the way.

And J’onn stared at her. A vague, hollow shock, while she eased the man’s bleeding body down beside him.

She looked back at him, after a second. Brushing wild, russet hair from an exhausted face, and reaching casually into Batman’s belt to start pulling out medical supplies.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said tiredly, while she set to work patching at least the worst injuries. Not just Batman’s. J’onn’s. “You don’t fucking know him. You have no idea. Or. I suppose maybe you do, now. A little. I’m sorry. He wouldn’t let me die after my children either. We will help you, if we can. But I won’t let your League take him. The only reason he’s ever been fucking monstrous at all is to keep us alive. So if they want a Gotham evil after this, they can come for the original, and take their fucking chances. Not him. They don’t get to fucking touch him.”

That fear. That terror he’d sensed spiralling under every decision they’d made today. The woman, Oracle, snapping closed in the face of him, to keep from betraying her city. That resigned terror when Wonder Woman vowed not to let evil pass. They were afraid. And J’onn had felt no matching intent from the League. The opposite, nearly. A desire to defend, a personal desire to defend, from at least three of them. Clark, listening now, not by comms but with his own hearing, felt nearly horrified at the thought of hurting anyone. But. J’onn was only hours on this planet. He understood the Batman’s need to check a little more now. He didn’t know where the divides lay. He didn’t know what fears might be justified.

But. For this case. This ‘monstrosity’.

“… If the evil was killing the Imperium,” he said quietly. “Your actions, and Gotham’s. Then they can take me too. I … I did not believe it was possible. To die fighting was the extent of my hope. But I have hated them for centuries. My people, like your Batman, would not have slaughtered them. It is, perhaps, why we died. But I … I am the worst thing that might have survived my world. Had I been able, I would have eaten them too.”

It was a horror. Of course, of course it was a horror. So great and terrible a maw. But.

The body lay a little way away. A puddle of hate and broken tendrils. And it had eaten his wife. His daughter. He’d felt it eat them. Felt them fade. Felt their relief to be fading, to escape the agony, to let go. It had eaten them. He could not have returned the favour. Not himself. Not without horror. But.

It had died knowing the horrors it had visited on them. Feeling them. Devoured in its turn. It had died eaten. And it was, it was a horror. But it was satisfying too.

She paused in her ministrations. Paused with her hand carefully on his side, where he was bleeding. She wasn’t telepathic. She wasn’t even empathic, lacked the aura of the others of her world. But this … she did not need to feel this to know it. Understand it.

“… Are they here?” she asked quietly. “Your people. Family. Are they below?”

Are they—

J’onn squeezed his eyes shut. Grief ate him. A wet tear past all his defences. He turned his face into the floor.

“… No,” he sent. Not said. His voice had died completely. “No. The pods are for food. The Imperium had no … no use for waste. They. They would have been. Discarded.”

Discarded. Floating somewhere, waste vented somewhere along the trail of dead worlds. Lost. Abandoned. He felt the silent loom of Ma’aleca’andra. The distant presence of his own. He had come home. Been brought almost home. But his family …

And he felt … felt the detonation of her fury. Ivy’s. Gotham’s. For. For him. For them. Something swarmed beneath it. A thick, ravening grief, the weight of Gotham’s own dead. A terror, a horror, of the dead being taken. But the howl of fury was for him. For … M’yri’ah. And K’hym.

“… I don’t know what you do for your dead,” she whispered. A rasp of desperate rage and pained offering. “I don’t know what you need. But. You have avenged them. And if …. if you want. If you need to make something. A marker. We can place it with our own. Gotham guards her dead.”

Gotham guards her dead. Her own. J’onn could sense, vaguely, how … how great an offer that was. To guard dead not her own. But he …

He couldn’t. Acknowledge. Not. He wasn’t … He wasn’t able.

So far past anything he’d hoped. He wasn’t able.

And that, too, she seemed to understand. No shred of telepathy whatsoever. She understood anyway. He felt a palm pressed gently to his cheek. A faint echo of that howling, bloodied sympathy for the man lying unconscious at his side. She brushed gentle fingers across his forehead.

“Later,” she said quietly. “I know. Do you need me to bring you back to the League? They’re not getting near Batman. None of us will let them. But if you need to go back to them, I’ll find someone to take you. And if not … We’ve patched up the inhuman before. I can’t promise the best job when we don’t know what we’re working with, but we can patch wounds at least. Enough … Enough for you to choose later. When you have the strength.”

J’onn laughed faintly. To his own shock. Just. A wet chuckle, punching out of him. Healing was … so far from anything that concerned him. So far from what might be possible. He wasn’t concerned. But.

He reached out again. A wet splinter in his core, a distant agony. Irrelevant. He reached for Clark one more time. Just. Just to reach. He knew Clark was listening.

“I need to rest a while,” he sent carefully. Skirting carefully around … so many things. Not carefully enough, probably. He felt the surge of concern and sympathy and grief. Was baffled by it. Brushed fondness carefully back. “I believe I am safe here. I … Might we have time? Might we all have time? I think. I think a great many people need to be safe.”

That would pay some of the debt, maybe. To buy a little time. If he could.

But a second later, Ivy’s comm crackled in her ear. She startled. Bit off a curse, her hand flying to her ear. J’onn listened in.

Not. Not Superman. Surprisingly. Not Clark. Diana.

“This is Wonder Woman,” she said, clear and careful and calm. “On behalf of the Justice League, we would ask permission of the Goddess Gotham to aid her people in the clearing and recovery from this assault on her shores. If that is something she is willing to grant, we will gladly stay and help. But if it is not, as it appears the threat is gone, we will withdraw, and leave her people to repair in peace.”

… Goddess. Was that what she was? Was that how you made so vast a maw? But he felt her. Still towering, still silver. Still revealed. He felt her turn, curious, to four auras within her bounds. She was not … She wasn’t hostile. Curious. Ready to defend. But not hostile. And, to their credit, none of the four flinched from her examination. Or only very slightly.

“… You know what?” One of the familiar voices, rasping and tired. Penguin. “You know what, how about we shelve that. Hmm? We’ll sort the carcasses later, and the rest we have in hand. How about you go away and come back later. We … Fuck it. Thanks. Thanks for the fucking help. Thank you. But how about you go away and come back later.”

Oracle spoke up too. Just as tiredly. “You have my number,” she said softly. “Don’t worry about the clean-up. Gotham’s good at picking our pieces up. I … As Penguin says. Thank you for your help. You know how to reach me if you need me.”

It was a gentle enough dismissal. Extremely gentle, considering, well. Gotham. But it was a dismissal. J’onn felt Clark flinch. Felt his grief.

But the Justice League were honourable. The first gentle hands J’onn had known in centuries. They had come to help, not to hurt. And they took that dismissal with careful sympathy.

Well. And terror.

“As you wish,” Diana answered lightly. “Should you need our aid again, you also know how to contact us. Thank you for your defence of our planet.”

Ivy barked a laugh. Just. Had it wrenched out of her. Amusement. Livid fury. The vast silver shape of Gotham trembled over them as well.

“… It’s not really a choice anyone’s making when we’re the first on the chopping block,” Penguin said wryly. “But sure. No problem. Happy to do our fucking bit over here. The next time there’s an alien invasion, maybe they could not land in Gotham. Now. Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but could you all please fuck off? We’ve got dead to count.”

“The alien will be safe with us,” Ivy added, looking down at him. Her words as much for him as for them. “He’ll recover, as much as anyone can recover. You needn’t worry. Gotham doesn’t eat civilians.”

Viciousness. Black humour. A little cruelty. But J’onn didn’t blink. There was still a gentle nudge under his spine. And of everyone who might have survived Ma’aleca’andra, he was the worst.

“There is little left to eat on me,” he murmured wryly. “But I thank her for her restraint.”

She smiled at him. Ivy. A faint, tired, startled thing, like the drizzled daylight through the shattered hull of the Imperium’s ship. She smiled, and patted carefully at the bandaged wound in his side.

“Yeah,” she said. “They needn’t worry at all. You’ll fit in just fine, won’t you.”

Possibly. Again, once again, far more than J’onn could be concerned about. So much more than he had ever thought might be possible. But he feathered reassurance to Clark regardless. He remembered the man’s face as J’onn phased out of his arms. The grief, the terror. He whispered a promise on the last, truly last dregs of his power regardless.

Thank you, he whispered. A weight … A weight of everything behind the sent words. I am safe. I believe I am safe. I … If I have the strength, I will see you again. And. Thank you.

The first gentle hands in centuries. The only reason J’onn had had the power, the freedom, to be here. To see … To see his world avenged. There was no word for the debt, no way to see it repaid. But at the very least, J’onn would scrape some semblance of strength together, and make sure to see them again. Clark. To see Clark again.

Ivy rose carefully. Still stooped, still tired. But she rose, and with a wry twist of her mouth bid those vast vines tangle closer once more. Bid them writhe up from the floor and … Cradle. Gently. Both J’onn and Batman.

“Come on then,” she said. “You’ve got an appointment with Dr. Leslie Thompkins, the pair of you. And I need to get that idiot there and tied down before he powers through my pollen again.” She paused, and touched J’onn’s arm gently. “You are safe. And … think on the rest. We’ll clear this ship. Carve it from the earth. Think what you need. For the fallen, I think Gotham will grant it.”

And J’onn … He hadn’t let the grief swamp him in years. Had wrapped the core of his rage around their names instead, and nursed it deep in the heart of his being. A burning core to keep him alive, keep him going. Keep him trying. Not to win, not to survive, but just … to inconvenience the monster. To find some way or moment to hurt it. Some fraction of a second to make its life difficult. But now …

Now the monster was eaten. Now his people were avenged. Now he had helped. At least some little bit, he had helped.

So. For the first time in more than a century, he closed his eyes once more.

And let the grief eat him.