Favoured of X'Hal
Komand'r of Tamaran.
Komand'r of Tamaran, wanted by the Centauri Empire, by the Gordanian Empire, even by her own empire.
And all for what?
Not herself, she knew that.
Not everything was for herself.
She was a patriot. She loved her homeworld.
Ironic that she should have been its downfall.
There was a song, for children, on Earth, wasn't there? About a clock. A grandfather clock: It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born, and was always his pride and joy. But it stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.
The same with Komand'r. Forever anathema to her people, and all because of what? That she was born the day the Gordanians came.
She should have been crown princess.
She should have been the heir apparent.
She should have been so many things.
So many things she wasn't.
It grated her that for so many years she had to tolerate Koriand'r being worshipped like X'Hal herself, while Komand'r was the subject of so many condescending glances.
It grated her that Koriand'r had all the freedom, with that air of perturbed innocence – and only to rub salt in her wounds. That Koriand'r should so sweetly enquire, 'Sister, why can you not do such-and-such? Why are you so despised?'
When all along that Janus-faced chit with those eerie green eyes (why was she thinking of Earth poetry now? O! beware, my lord, of jealousy: It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat that it feeds on.) – when all along that scheming minx knew.
Knew Komand'r was nothing more than the victim of obsolete superstition.
Knew she had taken Komand'r's rightful place.
Knew she had taken everything that Komand'r ought to have possessed.
And she kept silent.
Because she wanted it for herself.
Because she wanted it all for herself.
Nothing for Ryand'r.
Nothing even for Karras, who had been a loyal childhood friend.
Steadily Komand'r had felt a pariah, as though intruding on a cosseted, smug sphere of life. She was convinced she had to leave.
She did not belong on Tamaran, where she had to raise herself.
No k'norfka. No babysitter to watch over her while Myand'r and Luand'r played dress-up as king and queen.
No friendship. No loyalty. No love.
Komand'r of Tamaran had never had anything to call her own.
None of the ornate tiaras, or silver bracelets.
None of the magnificent, iridescent gems.
She had watched countless times, devouring with hungry eyes the expensive jewellery that adorned Koriand'r's trembling frame, when it belonged on her.
Oh, yes, it would have been suited to her. Suited to her sophisticated form, rather than that of a nervous girl who would never quite grow up.
Still, she was afraid, sometimes, of Koriand'r. Of passionate catfights when Koriand'r had lashed out with savage attacks upon her person.
Aerial assaults.
It haunted Komand'r, that she should be so… worthless. And for such flimsy reasons that collapsed deflated as soon as they were uttered.
You are a cripple.
You are a curse.
You are… different.
Different? Yes. Certainly. Eyes flashing a defiant purple, hair dark against the terracotta landscape – the orange earth – the air tinted tangerine by the tempest-tost dust.
All she had ever wanted was to sweep aside the hierarchy that had fettered Tamaran through the centuries.
To create a new civilisation that would rise out of the ashes, like the mythological flamebird on that devastated planet which had once been the futuristic Eden of Krypton.
She suppressed sarcastic laughter. Could she do that, without possibility of ever becoming Grand Ruler?
Then it had occurred to her, a wondrous flare of inspiration.
If the Gordanians had been her bane at her birth, they should now be the trampoline launching her into the distant stars – the stars she could never reach, so crippled.
The Gordanians.
That would be fitting.
She arranged it all. Arranged it nothing more than a child, just eleven years old, five Earth-revolutions older than Koriand'r.
Of course she had been a special child. She had a certain clarity of mind masked by the abrasive rebelliousness that came to her so naturally. She was one of the most gifted pupils the Warlords of Okaara ever had.
They admitted that, at least: Myand'r had been determined each of the princelings – and that unwanted brat – should have the ability to defend themselves, if the Gordanians ever, X'Hal protect us, breach the armada.
And as a child she had carefully plotted, with the most infamous of enemy generals, how to take Tamaran in a stranglehold.
A stranglehold that would both leave Tamaran reeling for her taking, and ensure that Koriand'r was one loose end tied up.
The hostage demand had been excellently executed – she had been so close to savouring victory – when she realised that she, queen among queens and angel among angels, had been double-crossed herself.
They sold her out.
Her people.
Her allies.
Her enemies.
Who was who, she did not know.
But Tamaraneans and Gordanians alike, they had set themselves against her.
Had placed her in an abject slavery.
The Psions came. The Psions, with their terrifying instruments of cold steel – their impersonal probing – the agonising waves of crackling energy engulfing her body…
And she had found herself more powerful than ever. For once, biologically speaking, she and Koriand'r were on par.
Trained by the Warlords, granted starbolts and that sought-after flight by the Psions.
Favoured by X'Hal.
Komand'r of Tamaran.
Her unfeeling intellect would have constructed a scheme to subtly manoeuvre the Gordanians themselves.
If she had the time.
But no. Koriand'r had smashed those lofty ambitions, like just another bauble of a princess.
Koriand'r had killed her guards.
Koriand'r had escaped.
And left Komand'r open to attack.
She had fled into the vacuum of space.
Had wandered a thousand planets seeking solace.
Solace?
It could not be found across half the universe.
No bar on a moon in the Omega Quadrant could let her drown her sorrows.
No black hole in the Draconis Nebula could suck away those memories that flashed before her eyes in overpowering waves of fear.
Scorned.
Reviled.
Nobody knew who had betrayed Tamaran, but they had heard of this accursed child of Tamaran, with her strange outlandish countenance.
That was when she came to the Centauri Empire, a territory so crowded with lost souls that she was not at all out of the ordinary.
It was there that her ruling desire of pretty trinkets took over.
Such an obsession was not to be unexpected. It was a delayed effect of the shock of Koriand'r's usurpation, of the shock at her Gordanian capture, of all the indignities she had suffered at the hands of the Psions.
It was also the chink in her armour.
After that fixation got the better of her, she was again on the run.
Not for being a fugitive, for which the Gordanians hunted her.
Not for attempted murder, the most plausible excuse that the Tamaraneans could concoct.
For petty larceny.
That was when Koriand'r made contact, through word-of-mouth passed on by space travellers.
They would exclaim, 'So you are the sister of Princess Koriand'r? I have heard of you—' and pale.
They would pale.
Komand'r wanted to leave then, she wanted to scream at the nightmares that plagued her – the nightmares she could never cast aside, unlike the one she called sister.
Instead she stretched out her hand and received the holocron.
Heard Koriand'r's words in the guttural tongue Tamaran called its lyrics.
Heard Koriand'r's over-dulcet:
'I forgive you, sister, because it is through blood, as through the blood of X'Hal herself, that our beloved homeworld will be redeemed and enriched. I am on Sol's third planet, and it is nothing like the barren wasteland of Vega's twenty-two worlds. My sister – here the people are not as our own: they are not gifted with the glories of our birth. Therefore I fight for them, Komand'r, as their Shim'Tar; or so Donna's sister-tribe put it.'
Donna. That was one of the many names Koriand'r uttered, those foreign names in strange tongues. All those names.
Donna.
Wally.
Vic.
Gar.
And the one Koriand'r submitted to – the one she called leader – the one who went under the appellation Robin –
She couldn't restrain a gasp when she saw those masked eyes.
There was an air of the swashbuckler about him.
And he was Koriand'r's.
Another reason why she should go to Earth.
If not just to find more about Koriand'r's new life, then to ensnare the exotic creature.
It had ended in disaster.
Not entirely, though. The Centauri gaolers treated her with a hint of respect, because even deposed tyrants may someday rise again to former glory.
And there in their prisons she had examined all she learnt of Koriand'r.
X'Hal's blood, Koriand'r had not changed. Not through any amount of suffering.
She went under a new alias: the English translation of her name – one word, concurrently arrogant and ambitious and self-consciously proud: Starfire.
And Starfire – or the Koriand'r she would always be to her sister – was still incredibly naïve. To trust with such eager openness, even after the Gordanians had tortured her beyond imagination.
It was a surprise to learn that Koriand'r could speak English – apparently the predominant lingua franca of Earth. She must have had physical contact with one of their kind – Komand'r shivered; she couldn't think of what kind.
She herself infiltrated the lair of a criminal mastermind – the masked sociopath known as Deathstroke – and from him gained her understanding of Earth's culture. An urbane, sophisticated understanding – nothing like what Koriand'r took from Robin, nothing like that pathetic set of teenage hormonal imbalance.
And the Centauri Empire couldn't hold Komand'r for long. Yes. She knew that too. All she had to do was bide her time, maybe in Smuggler's Run, and then news would come of Koriand'r.
The next she saw of Kory was eighteen months later.
Naturally.
Komand'r of Tamaran had known she must do this. It was for the good of Tamaran.
Yes: for the good of Tamaran. It had been desecrated in those long years she'd gone.
Ryand'r was nothing more than a presumptuous boasting boy.
'I am the true king, Komand'r – and you, you are nothing more than an outcast who should have stayed rotting among the Gordanians. You are not my sister. You don't deserve to be my sister. Go back, Komand'r, no longer of my blood.'
She noted with a wry smile that he spoke like the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt – the self-proclaimed god-kings, servants of Ra. Another titbit she had picked up from Deathstroke's mind.
But the braggart had soon paled before the threat of the Drenthax fleet. The confusion and panic they inspired – panic which they should, she thought, have been accustomed to – was enough for her to stage a coup with Karras's unwilling help.
The Jewel of Charta would have been enough for her to smite down her foes – to make Tamaran once more a living legend.
When, stupid little fool, Koriand'r insisted on thwarting all her meticulous stratagem.
Didn't she see that this was for the good of Tamaran? Didn't she say that it she was a necessary sacrifice?
No. Koriand'r did not. Koriand'r believed in true love. Koriand'r already had a betrothed on Earth.
Komand'r wanted to scream. The betrothed should have been hers. Once more Koriand'r had taken hers.
Galfore and his army – with Karras at the head, Judas-like – could not hold her.
This time she drifted, a wanderer, a nomad – there was a lonely thrill in that solitude, with nothing but the cool sub-zero temperatures rubbing against her.
There was the time she came across a solitary Green Lantern in a bar in the Omega Quadrant. He was obviously at the reminiscing stage of intoxication.
'I trusted her,' he mumbled; 'I loved her. She was… she was the most beautiful alien I ever saw across galaxies and…'
'Excuse me,' Komand'r had said jauntily. He was an Earthling. He might know about Kory. Even know, even in the midst of her hatred, she wanted to know about Kory.
'Excuse me,' she said in her most polite English – it was easy to someone who'd picked it up from Slade William Wilson. 'But you're talking about…?'
The Green Lantern looked up with unfocused eyes.
'You're the Tamaranean?' he enquired dully. 'You might have heard about the Gordanian-Thanagarian feud. Especially since they're after you as well.'
'I have.' She sat down, her legs buckling. Even now the topic was a touchy one. 'So… I'm guessing you were involved with one of them? The Thanagarians? I've heard they're uncaring.'
'Hro Talak. He took my girl.'
'Ah. Talak.' She'd met him once – when he and Galfore were discussing politics on an interplanetary visit. He had made his disdain of a backward planet like Tamaran obvious – That's why, Koriand'r, I want Tamaran to flourish. But no. You are blind to the rise and fall of nations: blind in your besotted infatuation with the Boy Wonder.
'Talak,' Komand'r repeated. 'I know him. Always made those speeches justifying executive action. "For Thanagar to live, so-and-so must die." That guy.'
'And,' continued the Green Lantern, ignoring her, 'in this very pub… That's how we spent Christmas, you know. I wanted to have a traditional turkey dinner… but we went bar-hopping… First kiss in this bar itself…'
The pieces clicked together in her brain.
This was the John Stewart. Katma Tui's fiancé – who'd left her for some Thanagarian hussy, all brassy curls and simpering smiles.
'You're a superhero, aren't you?' she cut in. 'With the Justice League?'
'Some League it is. We couldn't even stop our team-mate going rogue.'
'You'll have heard about the Teen Titans?'
'How can I not have?'
'And what d'you know about my— about the one they call Starfire?'
John glanced at the Tamaranean. She didn't look like the mental image he had of their species.
'I never thought much of her as a heroine,' he said firmly, completely sober now. 'Never. She's not a fighter. Not like' – his voice trembled – 'not like… my Shayera…'
Komand'r was satisfied.
Indeed she had heard of this Shayera Hol (née Thal). Following the death of her husband Katar, a decorated and dedicated policeman, she herself, a promising young ensign, had fallen for her superior, Commander Talak and risen to the top. When sent on an infiltration mission to Earth, Lt. Hol had immediately made a fool of herself over a Green Lantern patrolling Sector 2814.
Already she was thinking about politics.
Thanagar… Gordanians… Adam Strange on Rann…
If she could start a conflict between Earth and Rann… Tamaran?
Or how about…
The 'Rann-Thanagar War' sounded hopeful.
Komand'r grinned.
If everything worked out…
Things were looking up.
Komand'r of Tamaran.
Probably the worst Empress of Tamaran ever.
Ryand'r was dead.
Karras was dead.
Myand'r and Luand'r were dead.
Tamaran was dead.
The Gordanians had killed her family.
Galfore and Karras perished in battle.
Koriand'r, thrice widowed, had left her Earth lover Nightwing – cold comfort to Komand'r.
Because now her people were a wandering people, as she had been those years ago.
Koriand'r would continue the lineage. Koriand'r was the mother – Mar'i Grayson, her daughter was called.
A daughter. Tamaran had once been a matrilineal society, and it was reverting to those old ideals now.
Whatever happened, Komand'r knew she could never love a person.
She was already married to her homeworld.
Koriand'r of Tamaran.
Komand'r of Tamaran.
Which was the favoured of X'Hal?
A/N:
Borrowing heavily from both comic and animated canon, I fudged quite a lot of facts here, but I hope I remained faithful to the essential nature of the characters.
I wrote this because I felt Sisters and Betrothed presented Komand'r as a one-sided kleptomaniac and egoist, a poster child for sibling rivalry. I don't think so: I've always seen her as a victim of her culture.
I messed up with the continuity, I'm afraid. I've never got my intergalactic history straight. Is my feeble attempt good enough?
As for why Komand'r – for the uninitiated, that's Blackfire's Tamaranean name (and it's spelt T-A-M-A-R-A-N-E-A-N, not T-A-M-A-R-A-N-I-A-N) – is a pariah, well, I took some things from the comics and some from the show. Yes, she was born the day the Gordanians invaded, and she couldn't fly – but she's also markedly exotic on TV. (In the comics she was pretty much like all the other redheaded '80s Tamaraneans, with the huge feline eyes et al.) The Curse of Kordax, it's from Aquaman. Ever wondered why he was abandoned? It's 'cause he was blond.
And if anyone's wondering about how Komand'r picked up English… I figured that since Ron Perlman was credited in Sisters anyhow, what if Blackfire learnt the language from him? Her provocative suaveness could be attributed, maybe (I'm veering off-topic here) to residual memories of Adeline Kane-Wilson… perhaps?
I'm not a fan of Blackfire/Slade, but it's possible, and certainly plausible, so, why not?