Work Text:
Space is cruel.
No. That’s not accurate. Space is nothing. Space is nothingness . It is the absence of light, heat, color. An endless void that in its nothingness feels oppressively suffocating.
So space cannot be cruel, because it is nothing. But that is little comfort when Kara has been drifting through for weeks, months, years .
Her body has grown, stretching out farther in her pod. Her hair is longer. Despite the lack of food and water, even though it has failed to keep her in cryo sleep for the length of its flight, the pod keeps her nourished so that she doesn’t starve, doesn’t thin away or shrink. Instead she fills out a little, going through changes while confined within her floating prison.
It has pushed her towards madness. Time does not exist, and yet she grows and changes. Instead of the sweet oblivion of sleep, it is constant awareness of how her pod moves through the pitch black emptiness and never seems to go anywhere. Let alone her predetermined destination.
She is fairly certain the coordinates have been scrambled somehow. Erased by the impact of debris from her dead planet or shorted out by the frigid train of a comet hurtling by. At this point she can’t remember where she’s supposed to be or why she was going there except that everything is gone.
Just floating chunks of dead rock, stagnant and trapped in the space where her beautiful home world used to flourish before they destroyed it.
It would hurt to see it that way. But at least it would be something.
Instead all she sees is the nothing. That vast, endless nothing.
Space is cruel.
--
Sleep is torture.
There is nothing she can do to change that or keep herself awake constantly. Her eyes and her brain crave that illusion of peace, even though she knows it brings nothing but lucid dreams that would blend seamlessly with the bleakness of reality if not for the vibrancy, the existence of things .
Colors. Planets. Other pods, ships, animals. People .
The warmth of a sun. A breeze against her face. Phantom sensations her distorted memory trudges up to make the dreams almost an escape. Until the horrors come, slithering blackness that weave through the chaos of her imagination and subconscious’ latest fantasies.Spreading out and tearing it all down, a hungry nothingness that consumes.
It will consume her if she doesn’t wake. Sometimes she cries when she wakes. Sometimes she wants it to. Just drag her down into that void until she doesn't exist anymore either.
Sleep is torture.
--
A voice hums in the distance.
Sound is foreign and strange now when she isn’t dreaming.
But she must be dreaming, because there is sound. A sweet and gentle hum like a lullaby. Soothing.
Kara blinks, but consciousness fades out until there is only black oblivion. No nightmares, no frantic terrors that exist in the shadows of her mind and maybe in lurking in the emptiness of space.
A voice hums in the distance.
--
Color. Color is everywhere.
Swirls of pink, tendrils of blue. Splashes of red. It blends into the blue to cast a vibrant purple. Greens and golds curl and float in the distance. Stars sparkle like diamonds in the different colors, clouds rolling and churning.
Kara’s eyes struggle to take in the light, the rainbow brightness.
A voice is humming. No. That voice is singing now. It surrounds Kara, slipping into the pod chamber. A face hovers outside, beautiful and ethereal. Her hair is golden like a halo framing the paleness of her face and the ice-blue of her eyes.
All the fear and madness seems to fade in this strange oasis of vibrancy. The woman’s voice soothes away the endless night Kara has been trapped in for years, singing words that are foreign and strange but somehow Kara knows that here she is safe. Without conscious thought her fingers tap the code that opens up her chamber and immediately she is hit by the freshness of air.
The singing is louder, sweeter, clearer . Kara cannot focus on anything but how sweet it is, how pretty the strange woman is, how she needs to be nearer. There are no thoughts of how she is breathing, how she feels a breeze, or of where this place is. What this place is.
All she knows is the woman. Her face, her voice, her fingers gently stroking over Kara’s skin and hair and then arms pulling Kara in close.
Color is everywhere.
--
The endless night looms outside of this haven of color and cloud.
Kara lays in the Siren’s arms, pliant and content in the fog of her song. Somewhere in the back of her mind is a nagging thought. That something is wrong, that somewhere out there is a world she’s supposed to reach, someone she needs to find.
But that would mean leaving her Siren, and how can she do that when her Siren needs her? When everything is so simple and soft and soothing there in this haven, where she can give Siren the companionship that she needs?
It’s all so easy and safe here. Siren sings to her and protects her. Keeps the nightmares and the nothingness away. All Kara has to do is stay. All she has to do is let Siren touch her, kiss her, breathe in a little of her each day, take just enough to survive.
Siren says soon Kara will be like her, and the nothingness will never swallow her whole again.
A small price to pay.
The endless night looms outside of this haven of color and cloud.