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The beach is beautiful.
The sand is white-gold, the sea a turquoise blue, the hot alien sun pouring out all the energy several billion Tamaraneans could absorb. There are thick perfumes hanging in the air, burned incenses mingling with natural flowers. The forest that rises where the beach ends is thick and verdant and almost like home. Truly, if any place on Earth could be called Paradise, for all the naked eye could tell, this island was named wisely.
Koriand'r loathes it. Her fingers tighten on the basket of woven gold, the crystal decanter. Gently, gently. They must not break.
Beside her, full crimson lips part, the teeth behind them revealed a wine-stained pink, as they cut through a plump, perfectly ripe olive. Shear the toothsome part away, and spit the pit far into the waves, where it vanishes. "Delicious."
The queen holds up her glass, and thick wine, the red of Earthling blood, rushes into it. Kori is learning which battles to fight. The art of self-restraint. Her father would be so proud. (He wouldn't, of course. All her people would be shamed beyond measure to see how far she has been reduced.)
Her back burns in the golden sun. It is not the starlight that hurts her; starlight never could. When the queen's mouth opens wordlessly, Koriand'r places into it another smooth fruit from her basket, purple and heavy with oil. Wine-stained teeth snip closed almost before her fingers have withdrawn. Again, the meat is devoured, the pit discarded.
"You must be hungry, child," say red lips. It is accurate statement and command all in one—she is hungry, but if she were not it would still be required that she become so. "Eat," the queen smiles, and her wrists burn.
Blinks, and finds her mouth is full of olives, the oily flesh bursting heavy on her tongue, pits grinding to shards under the power of her jaw and her nearly-impervious teeth. Her hand rises to cram another fistful in, dumb insistence, and she swallows urgently, just barely opening the space.
The whole basket, she gulps down, until her stomach rolls and her lungs burn, but at last, at last there is nothing left to eat, and she finds herself bent double, palms in the sand, gulping down air as desperately as the olives and fighting not to retch.
As a girl, she had trainers who could bring her to her knees. Beaten, exhausted, she would fall, and gasp for air, and then she would stand again, and demand they teach her the technique that had brought her low, or if it was not skill but strength and stamina, she would merely face them again, and again, with the power of X'Hal's favored daughter thundering in her veins…
A strong, slender hand slides up the back of her thigh, cups the hard round of muscle at the top. "Good girl," whispers its owner. The matching hand lifts the decanter from the sand where Koriand'r must have let it fall, and there is the sound of the stopper being flicked free with a thumbnail and let to roll unattended across the sand. "You'll need to wash that down, won't you?"
A sloshing sound, and then against her lips the touch not of cool crystal but warm flesh, and then the sweet-burning burst of pomegranate washing over her tongue to carry the olive taste away, cloying and heavy as the hand sliding over her hips.
The red mouth retreats for a second, then comes back, and she is borne down onto her back on the hot sand, and she cannot—
She wakes with her arm buried in the wall. The crumbled dust of the stuff Roy calls sheet-rock hangs in the air and threatens to choke her, and her bedclothes are dirty with it.
She focuses on that with all her might, on the mess, on the way splinters of the damaged beam are digging into her wrist. Not on the dream. How real it was. How it was real.
Someone moves, a footstep and a rustle of clothing, and she has a starbolt summoned and fired before she has time to think.
"Holy crap!"
It is—it is Roy's voice, rising from the floor where he flung himself in time. If his reflexes were any worse, she would have killed him.
Instead she has killed her bedroom door, but as they are leaving in the morning and never coming back, she doesn't care.
He lies there, on his belly, palms braced against the ground but not rising, watching her intently—he would rather be helpless before her than risk drawing her anger in the process of rising, she realizes, and the thought is good and comforting with its reminder of her power. But there is a taste of ashes to it, as well, for it is against the way of her people to use cruelty against allies, or fear against friends. That is Superwoman's way. "I was coming to see if you were okay," Roy says, "but I think the answer is clearly no."
She considers insisting otherwise. Pointless. "No," she agrees. "But I will be. Just…give me some time."
Roy nods, and then pushes himself to his feet. The maneuver lacks the fluid beauty of Richard's movements, but it is one smooth and efficient motion, far more elegant than she would manage, were she to be left without the power of flight. It is astonishing, watching people who have learned to live unable to defy gravity, the negotiations they make with it without even noticing they do so. And they are comfortable with it, unmortified by their inability. Kommand'r never was, all through their childhood; she developed her own workarounds for some of the things she could not do, some of them rather ingenious, but she always knew she should be able to fly. Even at her best, she moved like the cripple she was.
And now she is whole. Whole, and made Father's heir, and it is Koriand'r who is broken and exiled and who has lost. She sent Blackfire running for her life, her resources plundered, and yet still for the first time in their lives she has lost to her sister.
Perhaps that is what brought on the dream.
"Can I get you anything?" Roy asks in the doorway.
Olives, Kori thinks, and red wine. But if she ate them it would only be so she could vomit them up again, and she has already discomfited her friends enough for one evening.
"Did you need something?" she asks instead.
"No, I just…" He'd heard her nightmare, she realizes, and rushed in. She wonders if she cried out, or if he responded merely to desperate, ragged breathing. "I'll get back to packing up," he says. Pulls the scorched door not quite closed behind him. She might mind the loss of privacy, except the door currently has a hole through it anyway.
She collapses back against her pillow at once; the sheet slides against her skin and the dream returns at full force, slamming into her and making her stomach roil. Her fingers have gone through the side of the mattress.
She bit the queen, in reality. Wasn't strong enough to do real damage, not to her, but she sank her teeth into the intruding tongue all the same. And was soundly whipped for it, of course, but she had made her meaning plain. This touch was not welcome, her will was not broken, and just because Superwoman could make her bite where the witch-queen commanded, didn't mean she would not bite sometimes of her own will.
But not in the dream. When she finally brought herself to sleep, after the high of the fight and of finally getting her chance wore down. She slept, and the nightmare came.
This is not as uncommon as she would have pretended to any questioner, even Greywing.
She glances at her wrists—bare, always, because even the brush of loose sleeves can make her tense, now, and anything that binds sends her into a fury, and it does not matter that she wore wristbands every day of her life before her freedom was stolen from her; she will never don such a thing again—and then into the mirror. There are no scars on her face; Diana wanted to keep her pretty. The scars at the hinges of her wrists are thin, tiny things, left long ago by the Citadel's shackles—the bonds the Psions used were carefully padded to prevent the experimental subjects doing themselves any harm that might prejudice their data, and the Amazons had no need for the sort of bonds that might leave scarring. Not on the skin.
Kori dug at the flesh beside those welded cuffs as though she thought she could loosen them that way, until she was commanded to stop, but those wounds were shallow and left no scar.
There was one glorious day, not very long after Diana took the throne, where the rogue sorceress Circe invaded Themiscyra and overwhelmed the spell so that it was her orders the hundreds of slave-girls could not help but follow, and then she issued only one: to do as they wished. Starfire brought down the Temple of Hera that day, screaming her rage and pride, attacking any Amazon that got in her way.
If all her fellows in bondage had done the same, they might have taken the island, and Circe would have had the time to unseal the silver shackles one by one and set them all free. But some had felt the Lash too recently to take advantage of the command, and too many of the rest were cowards. For every woman who had crept up behind her particular tormentor with a knife and stabbed until the blood ceased to flow, there had been two weeping, one asleep, and another eating whatever she liked best. Many of them were purely decorative and would have been little use in a fight anyway, except as brief distractions, but if Kori had been able to rally her fellow Furies they could have taken the tyrant herself, and then the rest would have been mere mopping-up. But the idea had come to her too late, and proved impossible anyway. Some of the others were even loyal.
Superwoman's star-spangled younger sister had met Starfire alone in the temple of Aphrodite, before she could wreck that as well, and their fight had been great and terrible and Kori had been winning, her training and ability to press through pain overcoming the younger princess' greater strength.
And then the control had come back, because Circe had been left without support, to face the queen alone. No one of all those whom she offered freedom had helped her stand against Diana, and she had been defeated. Superwoman's will had crashed back over Starfire and brought her and everyone bound alike to their knees, and Donna Troia had ground her heel into the back of Kori's neck and dragged her out of the temple by her hair.
Kori had promised herself, that day, that she would never again taste defeat simply because she was too proud to make alliances. She had reached out to those of her fellows who had also been animated by wrath, making the subtlest of plots to act as one on the next opportunity, and strike with all they had. Someone had betrayed the plan, of course, in cowardice or magical compulsion, but Kori had borne her stripes knowing that even a few still prepared and in agreement was worth days of punishment.
All for nothing. Circe had escaped, eventually, with her life, but never repeated that particular attempt—Kori blamed her for it, but she blamed the slaves more, for failing her and wasting their only opportunity. So they had remained bound. None had known a moment's freedom until Superwoman had been wrapped in chains and all her magics sundered. And then having allies among the Furies had been useful, but inadequate. None of them shared her goals beyond the moment of freedom, and they soon parted ways.
The bracelets of submission had meant Superwoman need not fear their disobedience even far from under her eye, that she could have full use of them long before they were truly broken to her will. Kori loathed their memory.
But hateful as the cuffs were…they compelled action, only. Starfire could have borne that much—if not gracefully, then at least…philosophically. With a warrior's resolve. She could have put it behind her, by now—the enemies she'd slaughtered might not have been her enemies, but most of them would willingly have seen her killed for nothing more than where she stood on the battlefield, and she did not regret their deaths. Still does not.
Those humiliations, those years of constraint, she could have put behind her.
The intrusions upon the sanctity of her body, she could have set aside—never forgiven, but discarded.
Superwoman's true transgression went beyond either of those.
It is the last that clings, and claws, and will not release her. That chokes as surely as Superwoman's hand on her throat, as surely as a whispered command to draw no breath but at my word.
For that was the true secret of Diana's power over those she claimed as her own. The cuffs were nothing, toys—sealed to the wrists of several hundred women like herself, and some few men. A petty magic, by the measure of Themiscyra. The whip that hung coiled at the war-queen's side was the true artifact, the cursed treasure woven for the Amazon Princess' hand from a girdle once worn by a goddess embodying this worthless world.
Its virtue was this: whenever she laid her Lash along your back, for as long as it took the welt to heal, you could be forced to accept her truths as your own. So when Starfire had felt its stinging weight and was commanded rejoice or be grateful to have such a benevolent mistress, she was joyous, and she was grateful. Warmly, boundlessly…
It did not stop the hate. The longing for freedom, the desire to burn the grossly misnamed Paradise Island to cinders, raze every palace and temple and scatter its inhabitants' bones in the rubble. It did not stop them but neither could they stop it, the helpless adoration and servility, and willing two opposite things was agony.
Worse: while the desire to submit was magical, absolute and unalterable, taking its strength and form from a great external power…one's own will was utterly malleable, and could easily, so very easily relieve the pain of conflict by simply ceasing to resist. Weaker spirits surrendered to that fact, eventually, before or after their minds disintegrated. Broke, and let themselves be molded around the unshifting steel of Superwoman's desires, until the lie was true. Until they became no more than worshipping dogs at her feet, happy to have cast off the burden of their freedom.
Starfire had not. She had clung tooth and nail to her hate, her pride, her will, and it had cost her dearly, perhaps—"Your mind will shatter under the strain," Diana had murmured to her, once, after a lashing, voice heavy as syrup, fingertips soft along her heaving ribs. "Give in to it. You belong to me, Koriand'r."
She had known, with an immoveable certainty, that it was true. And she had known it was a lie.
Stop fighting me, the command would come, and the desire not to fight would follow it, in an overwhelming tide, but no matter how it obscured all dissent, it could not erase her will to fight. Only she could do that. And she had not. She had not, not with anything that mattered. She had learned to pretend, to stop showing signs of struggle, to obey promptly, because open defiance earned more stripes, more pressure to make her mind come that much closer to crumbling.
And because, if she had made herself useless enough, it would have won her the freedom that was death, and she never despaired enough to wish that.
She never feigned well enough, either. Her anger she barely tried to hide, and especially whenever her back had healed and there was no love to mask it, its target was often plain, but Superwoman regarded that impotent hate with all the smiling indulgence owed a snarling kitten.
And every command, every false truth Superwoman ever pressed into her mind lies there still, like the mat of thready scars across her back. Healed-over, quiescent, no longer paining or working against her, no longer seeking to bend her to their pattern, but present, inescapable, perpetual. The want, the loyalty, the gratitude, the joy in losing herself—none of them genuine, but all of them real. Part of her. Lived. Fought against, but experienced. She remembers how real those desires were.
No longer can she trust her own feelings. Every day she wakes with the belief that today it will be better, today she will be healed of her weakness and Superwoman's vileness will be only a hideous memory, but every day she is mistaken. The compulsion is past but the pain it left is still too near.
She recognizes the blankness that lies over Greywing's face, the mask that is one's own flesh. Remembers the sense of him that she captured along with his language all those years ago when she captured his lips to borrow his words, and he did not resist: the feeling of a locked room, long barricaded, full of sealed crates covered in dust. Even now that she has nothing to hide, no one to conceal her true self from like a treasure, even though she was never nearly as good at such secrecy as he—it clings to her. The fear. The need to examine her every reaction for acceptability before she lets it show itself to the world.
And of course she never actually does so; even when she was actually trying she never managed to restrain everything. Restraint isn't in her nature, and she never broke (she does not scorn Dick for breaking, not really; she was a woman and he was a child, and there is every difference there) enough to make it so. But she jerks with guilty terror, every so often, when she feels a smile rise unconsidered to her lips or lashes out carelessly.
And how she could ever confuse Arsenal with a threat she can't imagine, because even if he had the power to hurt her—well, he could manage it, especially if he put some planning into it and her guard was down—even then, Roy is…Roy. He would only betray her if there was a certain, absolute benefit in it that outweighed the loss of her aid and the risk of her enmity, and he has never failed to acknowledge her power, even when it was not her own to wield.
She trusts him to stand guard while she sleeps; there is no mere emotion she could show that he could possibly use against her more easily than that. And yet.
Even worse are the moments when long habit makes her break into her own joy, her own calm, her own fondness with a lance of rage and doubt, sends her questioning, Is this real, is this my own, or is this what she wants me to feel? Remembers in the next instant that she is gone, there are no fresh stripes on her back, her mind is her own; there is nothing to fight against. But by then the moment is lost.
She no longer trusts her own feelings. And yet they are all she has. All that is hers, that cannot be taken. That has never been taken.
No matter what had been taken from her, what had been forced upon her, no matter how her sanity had ruptured under incompatible truths, this remained: My will is no weaker than yours, and my kingdom vast. You, and your speck of an island—you will never own me. And one day, I will have my due.
And I shall be a better and a greater queen than you could ever dream .
It did not matter what gods had chosen or shaped Diana, what strength lay in her arm or magic in her weapons. Koriand'r was the chosen of X'Hal, Sun-Maiden, the uncorrupted fire, and a whole world looked to her, and she was as far above Superwoman as the stars from the Earth.
She may be marked. She may be dirtied, beyond repair, with her temper hotter than it ever was, prone to fly into a rage at the smallest slight, and her heart quailing like a coward's at small gestures or at her own joy. But she is free.
And she will have what is hers.
No matter who has to die. No matter how many cities must burn.
Koriand'r has been a nightmare already. There is nothing to fear from evil, especially one's own.