#AUGH always weeping about failsafe

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

I wanna se M'Gann snap. that sounds fun. and traumatizing (for her friends). Are the kids okay?

honestly YJTV s1e16 Failsafe really is just like "Alexa play The Kids Aren't Alright by Fall Out Boy" this is a one-shot that briefly delves into AU territory where Failsafe did, in fact, actually happen (and then, spoiler alert, fixes everything and gives a happy ending after all) so like. yeah.... it's rough for a bit

She doesn't know the names of these aliens, or even what their species is called. All she knows, ghosting through their ranks without being seen, is the names of her friends. Conner. Kaldur'ahm. Wally. Artemis Crock and Dick Grayson, who made her feel more human than anyone else has ever come close to. Artemis and Dick from Gotham, who weren't afraid of her, who believed so much in family that M'gann was almost a part of both of theirs.

M'gann is finished holding herself back. She is not frightened anymore. There's no reason left to be afraid. She walks into a command center and lets herself be seen, green skin and red hair and eyes that she lets glow because she doesn't care if she's normal anymore. She stares into the empty eyes of the creatures who killed her friends and she becomes something worse. The eyes, after all, are windows to the soul. For a Martian, someone like her, they're only the beginning.

If these aliens didn't know what she is before, the recognition becomes clear not only in their minds when she changes. M'gann has never been normal, but got good at looking that way. There's no one left to scare away with the body she was born in, except for those who should rightfully be terrified, and who she won't let run away.

It isn't like having feet, like she's used to, or like hooves, either. There's no Earthly word for what it is to walk forward on stilted, pearlescent legs and let her mind pierce through that of every monster on this ship except herself. But she doesn't need Earthly words, does she? Not for this. Not for the desperate pain and the charge she's carrying in her heart or the terror she feels from the creatures around her. The only thing she needs human words for are her friends' names.

The aliens were all but unstoppable before, to humans and Kryptonians and Martians trapped in humanoid bodies. Not so much to a white Martian with nearly no borders on potential she doesn't even understand. She hisses her hurt around her. The first words she speaks in six hours are said to the commander of the armies that invaded Earth, a planet she wouldn't care about if it weren't for her friends.

"This," she says, voice shaking, a small voice inside her trying to shake her awake, "Is for Artemis. And for Conner, and for Kaldur, and for Wally. For Dick Grayson and the pain you caused them." She holds the commander in her mind, cuts off the things that keep it alive. "This is for my friends." And her voice becomes very small and low. "This is for my best friend." Something snaps, inside the alien, something that she came here to break like she's broken.

She drops the alien, lifeless like the rest of them here because piercing their minds was meant very, very literally, a thought like a sword stabbed through what some might call their hearts. No part of her shakes because there's no part of her that can shake, anymore, and she's not afraid anyway. She doesn't mind the fear that radiated from each creature around her, the terror she felt that wasn't her own when they saw her as she is. That's what she wanted; the same thing her Team, her friends and her best friend felt before they died. It's only right and she doesn't care.

M'gann turns away and doesn't turn back into herself