Miss Martian

For a very long time, J'onn J'onzz believed he was the last Martian left in the universe.

He had walked among humans for years, watching the planets turn and the seasons change, and not once had he heard the familiar telepathic hum of another Martian mind. He had built his life around being the last. He had made his peace with it. Or so he thought.

Then one quiet afternoon, in the calm after a great cosmic battle, J'onn felt something he had not felt in centuries.

A whisper. In his mind. In MARTIAN.

He froze where he stood. He turned slowly. And there, hovering shyly above a hill, was a young Martian girl with bright green skin and big curious eyes.

Her name was M'gann M'orzz.

But she was not a Green Martian like J'onn. M'gann was a WHITE Martian — a member of the warlike sub-species that had once tried to conquer J'onn's peaceful people, long, long ago. Across the galaxy, White Martians were spoken of with fear. They were the warriors. The conquerors. The villains in old Martian bedtime stories.

And yet here she was. Young, shy, hopeful. Trying, with every bit of her young heart, to leave the shadows of her people behind.

When she landed in front of him, M'gann bowed her head and changed her shape to look like a Green Martian. "Please," she whispered. "Please don't hate me."

J'onn looked at her for a long moment.

Then he knelt down so his eyes were level with hers, and he said, very gently, "Welcome to Earth, little one."

M'gann chose a human name. She called herself Miss Martian. She had learned about Earth, you see, from old television shows — telepathic broadcasts of bright cheerful sitcoms that bounced across the universe — and she thought human life was supposed to be one long happy episode of laugh tracks and milkshakes. She wore her hair in a bouncy ponytail. She baked cookies, even when she burned them. She said "Hello, Megan!" to herself in the mirror like the sitcom girl she had patterned herself after.

She was, in a word, JOYFUL.

And J'onn — who had been so very quiet for so very long — found his heart slowly, slowly, warming back up.

He became her mentor. He taught her how to control her enormous powers. He taught her how to read human emotions without invading human privacy. He taught her how to fly low enough that no one noticed, how to phase through walls politely, how to use her telepathy with consent and kindness.

He also taught her how to handle her hardest secret — that she was a White Martian.

For a long time, M'gann hid her true form. She walked the halls of Mount Justice with her Green Martian disguise on, fearing that if the Teen Titans or her other young teammates discovered the truth, they would push her away. The lie made her tired. It made her chest ache. But she was scared.

J'onn was patient. He never forced her. He just kept being there.

One day, in a moment of crisis, M'gann's disguise slipped. The other heroes saw her true white form for the first time — taller, paler, stranger. M'gann braced for them to recoil.

They did not.

They hugged her.

"You're still you," Robin said. "Why would we care what color you are?"

M'gann cried. She had not cried in a long time.

After that day, she was free.

To J'onn, M'gann was many things. A student. A friend. A bright bit of family in a life that had felt empty of family for so long. He was, in a way, like her uncle. In a way, almost like a father. He had no children left. She had no parents who had loved her well. They filled in for each other in the gentle quiet ways that good people do.

She, in turn, gave HIM things he had not realized he was missing. She made him remember Martian customs. She practiced the old greeting rituals with him. She asked him to teach her Martian songs, and even sang them back to him at night while he tended the small garden of red Martian flowers he kept on the Watchtower.

She forced him to see the universe with fresh eyes again. She pointed out things he had stopped noticing. The way clouds looked from above. The sound of rain on a metal roof. The way humans laugh.

As Miss Martian, M'gann became a great hero in her own right. She used her telepathy to coordinate her team during missions, the steady kind voice in everyone's head when things got chaotic. Her empathy was her greatest power. She could feel what other people felt, and instead of being scared of those feelings, she leaned in.

She was proof of something important. The legacy of Mars did not have to be war. It could be peace. It could be cooperation. It could be a girl with a green ponytail baking cookies for her friends.

Today, J'onn and M'gann sometimes stand together on the balcony of the Watchtower, looking out at the rolling blue Earth, the wind of solar plasma humming softly past the windows.

The story of Mars, they both know now, is not over.

It continues. In them. In every kindness they offer. In every choice for peace.

And the song of the Red Planet, which they thought had ended, sings on through two voices instead of one.