I had been an obedient girl growing up.
I did as I was told and I never made a fuss. That didn't change when Thanagar was invaded. The council had attempted to deflect and negotiate, but the Gordanians had been conquerors. From the time I was nine years old my world had been at war. Peace became both a ghost of the past and a far-away dream. War began to shape the way I perceived the world around me. I became aggressive, uncompromising, and war-like. I became restless.
I became an officer of the militia of Thanaldar when I was fourteen. People, including children, began disappearing. One of them had been my neighbor, a little girl by the name of Iriquil. She along with many, many others had all disappeared with little to no trace. We never found her. Those disappearances are a mystery that plagues me whenever I give it thought. I enlisted in the Thanagarian military when I was fifteen. Thanagar had been at war for six long years. I wanted to help end it. I started out as a simple foot soldier and in three years had worked my way to sergeant. That was when something changed.
I got tired.
We had been fighting a war for half my life and we weren't getting anywhere. If anything at all, we were surviving, but that was where it ended. I couldn't fight anymore. Not as a soldier at least. So, when I became Second Lieutenant I switched from active duty to the science division. Peace would not be achieved through surrender, we had tried negotiations and in exchange lost an eighth of our population. Fighting harder didn't work so the only way I could think of was to fight smarter.
It was there I met Captain Katar Hol, the head of the scientific division. He was one of the many great minds that had developed the Hyperspace Bypass Generator. It was supposed to work much like a modern Zeta Tube, but on a much larger scale. Entire fleets could launch blitz attacks and retreat with minimal loss. In that time… The captain and I… I don't know how we did it. Through the blood, and death, and the rage of war, we managed to find love. Something good to hold onto. We both felt hope we hadn't felt in years. We married when I was nineteen.
A year after, the hyperspace generator had finally been completed. Thanagar needed the edge desperately, so we pushed testing to the limits. But when we were in the final stages of testing; that was when something went wrong. The generator went on the fritz. Katar and I were caught in the ensuing beam. We were left stranded near Earth. We would've died out in the vacuum of space… Had the Justice League not seen and saved us.
The League was kind and offered us refuge for as long as we needed. We stayed for about a year, learning about the planet that hosted us, and searching for a way home. In the final days of the first year, was when we finally got the terrible news. Thanagar had lost. It's people all dead or enslaved. My home, my once beautiful home, with all its beauty, its people, lost at the hands of bloodthirsty warlords.
For the first time in my life, I mourned.
I will never be able to return to Thanagar, the utopian planet. My mother and father, my friends, all dead or lost forever. I could never go back. So, I did the only thing I could, I moved forward. Earth, this planet, would be my new home. This strange planet where so many people, like my people before, just wanted to live their lives to the very best. I wanted to help protect it. Katar and I officially joined the Justice League, debuting in the Imperium Invasion. At first I worried that people would reject us, I remember Superman telling us that Earth wasn't perfect, and that people who looked different sometimes weren't accepted.
They did accept us, for the most part.
I remember the aftermath of the battle, I remember a few children walking up to us, asking us if we were angels. I had no idea what an angel was. A little girl, with red hair like me told us that angels were people with wings sent from Heaven to help people. I told her that I didn't know where Heaven was, but I was here to help. I think they liked that answer. When I was a little girl, I never knew what I wanted to be. Then I never got the chance. I think I like the person I am now. I am two halves of the same heart Shayera Thal, and Hawkgirl. I am a science officer, a lieutenant, a wife, a war survivor, a Justice League member, and friend.