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1.
The first time was an accident. Zatanna didn’t know it was physically possible for her to use her powers to possess someone. She didn’t know it was theoretically possible for her to use her powers to possess someone.
Of course, no one had thought to take into account how her magical abilities would interact with M’gann’s psychic powers, or a prolonged exposure to the team’s psychic link.
No one had thought to take either of those things into account, practically or theoretically.
Magic had always been a part of Zatanna’s life. Always. Before she was practicing it herself, Zatara was. He used magic like he walked, like he breathed. Naturally. It was nothing for Zatara to use a spell to make shapes appear in the air to amuse her, or to wash the dishes, or to fix broken things around the house.
It had always been a part of her life, and for her formative years Zatanna had never stopped to think how magic worked. How one used magic to manipulate the surrounding world.
Once she started studying it for herself, Zatanna quickly learned that magic wasn’t natural. It wasn’t just a matter of wishing for something and making it happen. Magic took work. It took practice, skill, and talent. It was someone one earned rather than being freely given.
But Zatanna wasn’t thinking about that right now. She was focusing on the task in front of her. Because the team was fighting. Fighting, and losing.
Batman sent them on a mission to infiltrate one of the Light’s lesser bases, and before they had even an opportunity to figure out what was going on, they had been ambushed.
Zatanna lost track of where everyone was. The only reason she knew her team was okay was through the psychic link. She could hear random curses and updates coming through every few moments.
Suddenly, the wall next to her exploded, and Conner tumbled through with Wolf, the two of them fighting off four of the Light’s goons. All of them were huge, to the point that Zatanna thought they must have been exposed to Cobra venom, or something similar. Conner was throwing one assailant off of him, but the next was on him before he had a chance to recover, or ensure that the first stayed down.
Zatanna tried to keep an eye on him, but she was preoccupied with her own battle. The Light’s resident magician kept throwing curses at her, and it took most of Zatanna’s strength and focus to dodge them, and fight back.
Some time later--Zatanna wasn’t sure how much--M’gann burst into the area fighting her own battle. Her eyes were glowing bright green, and Zatanna felt the familiar ache in her bones that signified M’gann was about to blast the room.
All the air seemed to whoosh out of Zatanna’s lungs, and then suddenly the sorcerer she had been fighting dropped to the ground. M’gann’s five opponents did as well. M’gann’s skill and mastery of her abilities never failed to shock and awe Zatanna.
She took a moment to breathe and collect herself, but before she could even assess the damage, M’gann’s piercing scream came through the link and and rang in her ears.
“Conner!”
Zatanna turned. M’gann’s brain blast had failed to debilitate the four thugs fighting against Conner, and while he and Wolf were steadily holding their own against two of them, the other two had managed to sneak behind him and were about to successfully topple over the wall directly behind him.
Conner turned, but Zatanna could see everything that was about to happen in slow motion--he registered the wall falling, and scrambled backward to get out of the way. He was moving too slowly, and the concrete from the wall was falling too quickly. Conner turned again and pushed Wolf out of harm’s way. M’gann’s cry rang through the air and the link again, and Zatanna reached out for Conner, knowing she wouldn’t be able to cast a spell quick enough to stop the toppling wall or pull him out in time.
The air around them crackled.
She was suddenly looking out of Conner’s eyes. She couldn’t say how she knew definitively that she was seeing out of Conner’s eyes, except that she did. She could see herself standing stock still several yards away, swaying back and forth--empty. It was terrifying, and bizarre. She was thinking as Zatanna, but she was also inside Conner’s mind in a way that was much more shocking, more real, more intense than the team’s link ever allowed her to be.
The mind link was almost like an online group chat. She could see what everyone else was visibly projecting, but that didn’t allow her to see behind their screens to what they were really doing or thinking. This, however; this was different. Zatanna was inside Conner’s mind. She felt his fear, his fatigue, and the quiet resignation as he braced for impact.
Zatanna moved her--Conner’s--legs and the concrete crashed down barely missing him. She jarred back into her own body.
No more than five seconds had passed.
Around her things moved violently back into action. M’gann blasted the remaining Light cronies, and everything around them went absolutely quiet and still.
“What the fuck just happened?” Conner asked.
2.
There was a lot of conversation after that about what exactly happened, how it happened, could it happen again, should it happen again, etc. etc. Honestly, Zatanna stopped paying attention to a lot of it. Sure, she loved and respected J’onn, and did her best to always listen to him and be courteous, but when they brought Doctor Fate in, sometimes Zatanna just couldn’t help herself.
She fucking hated that guy.
What they discovered was that Zatanna could use her magic and M’gann’s psychic link to temporarily take control of another person’s body. This was awesome for a number of reasons, chief among them being that Zatanna could possess and temporarily take control of another person’s body, but it also left her own corporeal self essentially helpless. It was meant to be a last resort kind of thing.
Of course, the first thing she and M’gann did once they have a handle on how it should work in theory was test the hell out of it.
Zatanna clapped her hands and grinned. “Who wants to go first?” she asked.
No one stepped forward.
“Come on guys, really? None of you?”
Conner shook his whole body. “No thanks,” he said. “Once was weird enough.”
Zatanna looked around at her teammates until her eyes landed on Dick. She raised her eyebrow.
He rolled his eyes and stepped forward. Zatanna clapped again, and M’gann groaned.
“What?” Zatanna asked.
M’gann shook her head. “Don’t ‘what’ me,” she said. “You know what.”
Zatanna smiled innocently. “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the fact that you and Grayson over here can’t be within two feet of each other without making everything gross.”
Zatanna stared at her. “Are you really going to play the too much sex card? Because I lived with you and Conner for years and it was like living in a brothel.”
M’gann’s cheeks coloured slightly, but she didn’t say anything else. Everyone was silent for a long moment.
“Fine,” M’gann conceded eventually. “Just try to keep it in his pants, would you?”
Zatanna laughed outright. “No promises.”
M’gann linked the three of them up. Zatanna closed her eyes and reached within herself for her magic. She felt her power well up inside her, and she felt M’gann and Dick through the link. She reached out for Dick and opened her eyes--
She stared at her own body.
Zatanna didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing herself through other people’s eyes. It was completely different from looking at herself in the mirror, or seeing photographs or video footage of herself. For one thing, video footage didn’t come with a kick to the gut of want. She almost reached out to touch herself, before she realised she was feeling Dick’s attraction for her through the psychic link.
She knew--rationally, she knew--Dick was attracted to her. They had hooked up and dated each other often enough over the years that she would hope that he was. It was one thing to know that he wanted her because she could see it on his face and in his eyes, and because he told her. It was a completely different thing altogether to feel that attraction for herself. (She wondered idly if there would be any lingering feelings and if this somehow made her even more of a narcissist than she already was.)
As if from far away, she could hear M’gann complaining, but it was drowned out by her thoughts, Dick’s thoughts, and their shared emotion.
A hand clamped down on her--Dick’s--shoulder, and when she opened her eyes again she was in her own body.
M’gann’s was massaging her temples, muttering about inconsiderate jerks who couldn’t keep it in their pants. Conner, Kaldur, Wally, and Artemis were outright laughing. Dick was smirking at her.
Zatanna ignored them all, got to her feet, and held out her hand to Dick. He took it without hesitation, and she pulled him towards the bedroom without looking back. Her teammates’ laughter followed them, but Zatanna couldn’t bring it in her to care.
3.
Then there was the time M’gann baked some special brownies and Zatanna thought it would be a good idea to try and see if the link would let Zatanna possess M’gann in some kind of infinite feedback loop of psychic abilities and magic.
In her own defense it seemed like a good idea at the time?
By mutual agreement, they all tried never to speak of it.
4.
“You know what would be funny?” Zatanna asked.
“What?” Artemis asked.
It was two weeks after Artemis’ birthday. M’gann and Zatanna had finally made their way to Palo Alto to celebrate, after a mission had called them away.
“If I possessed you and we tricked Wally,” Zatanna said. It was possible she was slightly tipsy. The three of them had split a bottle of wine, and between the leftover fatigue from the mission, and her general excitement over seeing Artemis again, it had gone to her head a little more than it normally would.
“That’s a terrible idea,” Artemis said.
Beside her, M’gann perked up. “No, it would be fun!”
Artemis looked at the two of them like they were crazy. “I think the last mission finally did away with the last of your sanity,” she said.
“No,” M’gann said, clasping her hands in front of her. “Come on, Artemis, it’ll be fun.”
Zatanna nodded along eagerly.
Artemis rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said. “It won’t work, but fine.”
“What do you mean?” M’gann asked.
Artemis shrugged. “You’ll see.”
By the time Wally was due back thirty minutes later, Zatanna and M’gann went to hide in the bedroom, leaving Artemis in the living room.
M’gann set up the link between the three of them, and Zatanna reached out for Artemis with her mind. By now, she was entirely used to using M’gann’s psychic powers to possess another body. As always, there was the foreign rush of another person’s mind pressing up against her own. She wasn’t completely sure how M’gann dealt with that feeling all the time. Zatanna found it overwhelming, exciting, and exhausting in equal measures.
Artemis’ presence was comforting. Not only because Zatanna had possessed her before, but also because it was Artemis. She felt Artemis mentally roll her eyes at Zatanna’s sentimentality, but it was for show. That was another thing about possessing someone: there was no hiding their true feelings, and a small part of her (another eye roll, okay, okay a big part of her) enjoyed seeing how her teammates really saw her. Especially when it was Artemis.
Before their internal love fest could get any further, the door opened, and Wally walked in.
“Hey, babe,” he said. Zatanna smiled at him through Artemis’ body.
“Hey hon,” she said.
Wally took two steps into the house and carefully froze. Zatanna tried not to tense up.
“Who are you?” Wally said. “Where’s Artemis?” His voice was ice cold and dangerous in a way that Zatanna had never seen him direct at anyone who wasn’t a direct threat. It was equally terrifying and impressive.
“What do you mean?” she tried. “I’m Artemis.”
She saw Wally’s eyes dart around the apartment quickly, assessing. Zatanna knew they two of them had multiple stashes of weapons stored, and although she didn’t know where all of them were, Wally did. He knew where most of them were, in any case, and she knew he was mentally working out how quickly he could get to one, and what would be the most effective plan of attack.
Zatanna felt Artemis’ pride and love burst through her chest, and her earlier comments made so much sense. She wondered what it would be like to be so in tune with another person that they immediately knew when something was wrong just from the inflection in her voice or the posture in her body.
Terrifying and impressive.
“I don’t know who you are,” Wally said, his voice still projecting calm, yet deadly. “But I know you’re not Artemis, and unless you start talking in the next two seconds, things are going to get ugly extremely fast.”
She felt more than heard Artemis’ enough in her mind and she blinked back to her own body. M’gann was hovering next to the door, clearly listening in.
“It’s fine,” Artemis said. “It was just Zatanna.”
Wally exhaled loudly. “Fucking hell, babe,” he said. “That was terrifying. Don’t do that again, please.”
She chuckled, but it sounded weak, even to Zatanna’s ears. “Sorry,” Artemis said. “They made me. I told them it wouldn’t work.”
M’gann and Zatanna walked back out into the living room, where Wally had his arms wrapped tightly around Artemis’ shoulders.
It didn’t seem so funny anymore.
“Sorry,” Zatanna mumbled.
Wally barely looked up from where he was wrapped around Artemis. The two of them clung to each other.
5.
Zatanna, Dick, and M’gann were monitoring the newbies as they went through one of the team’s new training exercises. Zatanna thought that as a team, they had certainly come a long way from the Fail Floor exercises the six of them used to do when they were just starting to work together.
Dick was sitting in front of the control panel screens as they watched Robin, Wonder Girl, and Bumblebee go through an obstacle course that was rigged up with booby traps.
They were talking back and forth every few minutes pointing out good techniques, and areas for improvement. It wasn’t until almost an hour into the exercise that Zatanna realised they had been conversing through the psychic link rather than speaking out loud. She snorted quietly to herself, thinking back to her first introduction to the team. Psychic conversations had become so commonplace that she failed to notice when they were happening.
She stretched her arms over her head and cracked her neck and shoulders, trying to stifle a yawn. She noticed Dick was hunched over as well, the muscles in his shoulders bulging attractively.
It really wasn’t fair that he had grown up so hot, she thought to herself. It was almost criminal how attractive he was. She fought down the urge to reach out and touch him. To trail her hands over his back and shoulders, pull his clothing off piece by piece. She thought about how nice it felt when he pushed her down onto a bed (or any other flat surface, really), and pulled off each article of clothing she was wearing one at at time. She thought about what it was like to tie him down, or to have him hold her down and kiss her, or the rush of power she felt whenever he followed her directions. Thought briefly what it would be like to make him do whatever she wanted him to.
On her other side, M’gann groaned aloud.
Dick and Zatanna turned to face her. “What?” they asked simultaneously.
M’gann massaged her temples. “Zatanna knows what she’s doing.”
Zatanna felt her cheeks heat up. It wasn’t often she felt embarrassed, but getting caught thinking sexy thoughts about Dick while they were working--okay, it was more common than she’d probably like to admit. But it was Dick’s fault what with his shoulders, and his arms, and his stupid, sexy face...
“Zee!” M’gann’s voice cut off her train of thought before it could get any further.
“Oops?” she offered, half heartedly.
Dick chuckled beside her, and when she turned to face him, he had the audacity to wink at her.
“Shut up,” Zatanna told him.
He grinned, then spoke into the console. “That’s a wrap, guys.” He began the shutdown sequence.
“It is?” M’gann asked.
“It is now,” Dick said, and grabbed Zatanna’s hand. “Meg, you can finish up here, right?”
M’gann groaned again, but nodded. Zatanna let herself be pulled along behind him.