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J’onn had been fighting for a long time. First on his home planet, where he watched his brethren fall to unstoppable invaders, then on the planet he’d escaped to. Earth. He’d known it from afar as a haven for lost souls and such souls he had found upon its surface; Kryptonian, Themysciran, Gothamite, Speedster, Atlantean, and others. Lost sons and daughters that carried the burdens of their ancestors heavily in their minds, just as he did. Endlings brought together in strife, who found hope in each other and emerged stronger for it. The Justice League, they called themselves, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Among the friends he now called family, J’onn’s strength only grew. More fighting styles, new languages, and new forms all entered his repertoire. Martian Manhunter was a powerhouse of the Justice League and he would use that power to protect the blue-green planet he chose to call home.
Suddenly it had been decades since he had set foot on the red plains of the Martian surface and the memory of home rippled, as if behind some waterfall.
- - - -
There’s too many.
The League was gathered around the table in the briefing room onboard their Watchtower base. Holographic miniatures moved before them, reenacting the real time devastation that was happening below. They had been fighting for hours, searching desperately for a way to stop the destruction, but their enemy had outpaced them, wearing even Superman down to his last legs.
J’onn could hardly focus on the grim-faced discussion at hand. He was tired, physically and mentally. Each infected person he had come into contact with had been screaming as they were eaten alive from the inside. Bruce had called them parasites, undetectable until they made their sudden, gruesome appearance. An enemy who’s weaknesses seemed few and far between and who consumed, indiscriminately, the minds of their victims.
“There is a simple solution to this,” Bruce was saying, “from the few specimens we have managed to kill it is obvious that their hunger is what drives them. Without it, they die.” He crossed his arms over his chest, obscuring the already indistinct bat-symbol. “If we could isolate those already infected from their food source, the parasites would quickly burn themselves out.”
It was a good plan, a solid plan, J’onn thought.
“There are over 9 billion beings on the planet. We have no idea how many are already infected and as we stand here pointlessly deliberating, more fall to suffering with no one to aid them.” Diana’s eyes burned with anger and sadness and grief. None would contradict what had gone unsaid.
There’s too many.
Dread loomed, thick as a dust storm, as each hero realized they bore witness to the death of their home planet. J’onn’s own soaring fear left a sour taste in his throat. He could feel the planet below him dying, the screams of the infected warped and twisted over each other in his mind, the holographic images before him showed only pain and devastation as earthlings ran through the streets or tried to fight back against an enemy that would not yield. Thoughts buzzed through the air in the room, questioning, bargaining, denying, grieving, hoping faintly for something, anything, a sign, a god, a wish, a-
Suddenly, the noise was too much. J’onn turned and abruptly left the room. Whispered thoughts and muttered fears trailed him through the wall. The hallways were barren, but not quiet. Out here there was no protection from the unceasing agony of the people below; Their screams pounded through his head, almost bowling him over. Things had gotten worse.
There was a room, built for telepaths like him in times like these, when the constant noise grew too much. A break room of sorts, coated in a material that others’ thoughts couldn’t pierce. He half stumbled through the wall, and was embraced by a pocket of silence so deafening it felt like he had been wrapped in sand. He stood a moment, thinking, only to himself. The silence lay across his senses, cooling, calming, like the embrace of the night on his rusty homeworld.
Mars, he had not remembered it with such clarity in years. The red deserts and towering mountains. The cities that lay in the cave systems beneath. The exploratory adventures he had taken with friends, the ceremonies he had celebrated with family, the battles he had fought with them at his side against the enemy that would see their destruction. He had escaped, but at what cost? He had lived, while they had died, to be buried en masse, while around them their planet burned. And here he was again. His home was crumbling at the feet of an enemy it had no hope to defend against. It was too much and too late, there was no way to stop it. But…
- - - -
J’onn slipped into the vacuum of space. The Watchtower orbited high enough that he could see the curve of the earth fall away beneath him, giving way to the expanse of stars on the horizon. From here, the planet looked almost as it always did, peaceful, welcoming, safe. The screams of horrible suffering told a different story. Every fiber of his being told him to stay away, to run, downwards was only pain and death and grief unending, but J’onn was well acquainted with pain, he knew what it was to suffer and he did not wish to see another home burn alone any longer. He went down.
His feet touched the cool desert sand. The sky was dark, but he could still see the dunes rising before him. The pain was louder here, yet he knew that the nearest humans were many miles away. He shifted, the earthen form he had adopted would be difficult to maintain with so much of his energy being taken up by the task before him, best to shed it now. A light wind blew across the landscape, swirling sand past his Martian feet. J’onn looked up into the atmosphere, perhaps for a final time he thought, and slowly, agonizingly, reached out.
- - - -
They all felt it, that signature presence in their mind, soft, comforting, like the touch of a dying man, come home at last.