Work Text:
She gasped awake, her eyes darting around the room as soon as they opened, and she realized that she was in her own home. In her room, with her covers twisted around her legs and her hair stuck to her face and her back with sweat. Her curls had plastered themselves to her body and she realized that she was hot. That she was drenched in sweat. The kind of scared, sour sweat that came when she was faced with the nightmare of watching her planet shatter into a thousand pieces over, and over again.
She had her own apartment now. There was no one to go to down the hall. She couldn’t crawl into Donna’s bed or knock on Dick’s door. Neither Gar nor Vic were up late watching television or reading a book. Kory was alone in her apartment with the echoes of the past surrounding her – her own personal ghosts.
The screams of her people as the Psions rent Tamaran apart (even though, in her head, she knew that she would not have been able to hear them from so high above the surface of her planet) had stayed with her all these years. She remembered her mother and father’s embrace as they faced the end of their world. Ph’yzzon’s arms around her as they faced the destruction of the place they had once called home. Her own screams had been lost to her memory. As always, she put Tamaran above and before herself.
What a mistake that had been. Tamaran was in the same place it would have been had she not sacrificed everything for a planet that had forsaken her.
And yet, she still loved them. If she had to go back, she knew that she wouldn’t change anything. She would still do anything to save the planet and the people that would not do the same for her (no matter how much they said they loved and honored their princess).
Kory disentangled herself from the sheets and pushed herself up against the wall. She wouldn’t be going back to sleep.