Wandering Worlds

Part Two – The Stranger

"Listen well, love

Pay attention, the world is a windmill

It will crush your dreams, so pettily

It will reduce your illusions to dust"

O Mundo é um Moinho - Cartola

Chapter Six – The Absurd

She still can feel him everywhere. Sometimes, if she just close her eyes, and stays really still, it almost possible to turn back time, all timelines merging in one single moment. He prepares to make a noble, absolutely dumb sacrifice, but what are all his pretty follies and careful machinations to her? He could not trick her, not while holding her heart captive in his hands. Love is a condition that afflict and unites two, even if they were too afraid, at the time, of engage with it earnestly. She didn't doubt, or think twice, she could read the lie written on the curve of his smile, felt in the warmth of his gaze. It was quasi-comical back then.

This time, in her replay of that memory, when he compliments her hair, she doesn't let him go. She holds to him, in that moment, and suddenly forever.

Kory opens her eyes, and closes the book on her hands, the one she found lying on a bench in the training room, that, when she opened, hit her with Dick's smell and took her to what felt a lifetime ago and urged her to dream a new reality. Her people had a saying that if you can make a thousand people dream the same dream it becomes reality.

Still, she was nothing but one and, in the reality she was currently stuck in, she didn't have held on to him then, and now, he was gone.

The first week back to the Tower was harder than anything she had ever done. Harder than leaving her planet to kill a child, harder than accepting that all her life she had wronged her sister and enabled the mistreatment given to her by their parents. Although she is young herself, Tamaraneans can live for very much longer than humans. Can, but rarely do, for, in their culture, dying of old age is great shame, one should die in the battle ground, and never get old enough to become cynical. Therefore, Koriand'r was no stranger to grief, but what was strange and new and incomparable was the bond she had to Dick Grayson, and to that loss, she was completely unprepared for.

From their shrinking family, Rachel, their youngest in Conner's absence, seemed to be the most suited to deal with such absurdity. And in Kory's lowest days, she found herself overwhelmed with guilt for maybe relying on her so much, she has so young, her Rachel.

X'hal, she should be the one providing comfort!

Gar was so full of anger that sometimes was hard to recognize the sweet boy he had once been. Dick and her had only started tapping into the issues caused by those monsters at CADMUS, and now helping Gar through his accumulated trauma was just another thing she didn't know to do without Dick.

When had she become so dependent of a man that wasn't even hers to begin with?

When had feeling like a failure became such a familiar agony?

And how stupid was she to run from her responsibilities as a crown princess just to find herself turned into a widowed mother of two?

But the truth was that, Gar and Rachel, although being a lot of work, never made her feel trapped. Because she chose them. They were not pushed to her, not even entrusted to her, they chose her as much as she chose them, and it didn't matter if they weren't blood related or even of the same species, they were hers.

In the two weeks since they landed back home, even if it felt like a century and, at the same time, only yesterday everything was normal, the mundane of daily life consumed them like a hungry, insensitive monster.

Life, as cruel as it can be, does goes on, and so she'd have to follow or be dragged by it.

Donna helped her with the practical stuff, but Kory could see in her eyes that she was not going to stay. One thing was living in the run with her doing odd jobs and chasing adventure, just the two of them, another completely was raising kids with her in a place Donna hated. She was the one Bruce Wayne was in contact with, sometimes it felt every time Kory looked at her she was in conversation with that man.

Kory found out all the crazy things normal human people had to deal with and that Dick had been doing all this time without complaining or even commenting about. There were bills, and reports, and taxes, and keeping inventory and preparing meals, and being sure that no kid was missing utilities, and everyone was taking their meds on time, and doing there chores, and there was even the whole superhero job that they hadn't been doing at all lately but still loomed over them like an oncoming storm.

Once Donna was finally fed up, she'd have to deal with all of that alone and to say Kory was overwhelmed was the statement of the year.

And, because there is no complicated situation that can't have a layer of crazy, there was also the Stranger.

The living, breathing, jelly donut stealing mockery of her pain.

Thank X'hal he did get the message and tried to stay out of her way. She was grateful for his nocturne habits too, because if his face were the first she'd see in the morning every day she would scream.

Mostly he only talked to Donna, but lately Kory had seen him exchanging words with Rachel, and something not unlike jealousy brew inside her guts. If this was Tamaran she would be free to show her contempt, she's roar for that pretender to not even think of slithering into her daughter's heart, and if Rachel had been raised in Tamaran, she too would've known better.

But this was Earth, and if Rachel had forgiven her for trying to kill her, for crossing the universe only to do that, why wouldn't she forgive a man that, in truth, had committed no crime? That, just like Rachel, had lost all he ever knew to Trigon?

And what right Kory had to demand loyalty from Rachel in regards of a man that was stupid enough to get himself killed and leave her too?

Especially after the nightmares returned and the fear of being forced to leave started brewing inside her again?

At first she thought it was all trauma, just grief messing with her head. She killed a mother in her dreams, consumed some other woman's body and walked away as her children watched in terror.

In the dream, Kory could feel the thrill of the murder, every single cell of that puny human woman being forced to change into her stronger tamaranean ones. The joy of taking a life and taking space and crossing planes, all at the same time, and what disturbed her the most was, not only in the dream setting, but that in that reality, she did not regret it. When she'd woke up, and with the fear was the knowledge, that the thrill, the shameless, dirty murder of an innocent was the closer of joy she had felt since Dick's blood tainted her hands when she tried to stop his bleeding to no success and her vacillating powers abandoned her completely.

They haven't returned since, and she knew that, if before flying was impossible while she carried the guilty of abandoning her planet and her duty; now, there was no anger strong enough, no pride to light the fire, only the all-consuming void of grief.

She found him again after that dream robbed her of another full night of sleep. Once again, he was drinking in the middle of the night wearing someone else's clothing. Stolen booze, stolen clothes, stolen life.

Maybe she could steal something from him too.

Well, if she was fair, and she usually was, it wasn't his fault. If his story was true, and she had no reason to believe it wasn't, other than spite, he had no choice and nowhere to go. And Kory would know one or two things about that.

Still, right now, being fair was not in her plans. Kory just wanted to prove to herself that she could still feel good without having to resort to crazy dreams in which she killed mothers as some weak metaphor in which she defiled the life she created for herself. Her alieness destroying from the insides that woman's body, proving to her that truth was inevitable, that she did not belong. That no matter what new morals Dick Grayson tried to twist into her mind, nature was unescapable.

And, if to get that she'd have to fuck the Stranger again, so be it.

She didn't waste time with chitchat this time, Kory buries her knee on the upholstered stool beside his, grabbing his jaw with one possessive hand forcing him to look at her, or maybe forcing herself to acknowledge him, their faces inches from each other.

Kory waits. Her panting hot breath blowing the too-long threads of hair off his face.

He doesn't move.

She dives to kiss him and finds only air.

Her fingers weakly relax as he pulls his face away.

"What is it?" she practically spats. Even to herself her voice sounds bizarre. Eerie and crazy. Hysterical. On the edge.

"Are you okay?" he asks with that frown that she wished to ease with the points of her fingers and kisses of her lips on another face.

His concern is genuine, and that hurts, the strong grip of her fingers leave red bruises on his fair, too fragile human skin. To her absolute horror, unlike the persona she takes in her dreams, seeing the bruises she caused brings her no joy, especially in contrast to the pureness of his worry. Kory wants to laugh, she wants to cry, she wants to blow his face with her starfire so Dick will be really gone and no shadow of his will be able to reject her or expose her ever again.

The desperate sound she makes somehow convey some meaning because he lowers his eyes.

"I'm sorry, but this is not right."

She stays there for a moment, frozen. How she gets to her bed, Kory has no recollection, but she hopes it was alone, not just as much as she wishes her body disintegrated in front of his denial like a pile of salt under the rain.

So, Kory is not okay, and YES season 2 happened lmao.

You might find this chapter a bit repetitive, but that's what grief feels like to me, a repetition of the same crappy reality over and over again until, one day you find out that there is no choice but keep living. This ending was very obvious in this regard, Kory tries to do the same trick twice, and when it doesn't work she freaks out.

What you think part II will be about? This chapter has like, a ton of clues, but next time we go back to P!Dick's head and we'll see how he's dealing with all this mess.