Chapter Text
"We intercepted a craft three days ago. An escaped princess from Tamaran. She arrived wounded, but no one here can understand her."
J’onn spoke the words as the elevator plummeted deep into the underbelly of the Watchtower, past the armories and the auxiliary generators, down to the high-security quarantine sector. The transition from the high-tech elegance of the observation rotunda to the cold, industrial concrete of the lower hangar bay was stark.
Dick felt a jolt of recognition. The name hit him like a physical blow, a sudden, blinding rush of warmth that cut through the deep, aching exhaustion in his chest. A princess from Tamaran? "I might be able to help with that."
He kept his voice measured, matching the flat, disciplined tone Bruce used when introducing an asset, but his heart was hammering against his ribs. It was a rhythmic, frantic thudding that he knew Clark could hear. He didn’t care. The sheer impossibility of it was a current under his skin.
The containment cell was reinforced with translucent polymers and dampening fields. The chamber was vast, lit by harsh, white strips that left nowhere to hide. Inside, a woman sat on a simple bench. Even in repose, she looked like a coiled spring of pure energy. Her hair was a wild, flaming mane that seemed to defy gravity, and her eyes were solid pools of emerald green.
To the League, she was an enigma.
To Dick, she was home.
He stopped just short of the observation console, his hands resting on the edge of the metal desk. Dick smiled. It was funny, really. He knew Kory could break through those fields the second she truly wanted to. The dampening fields were calibrated for kinetic force, designed to absorb the heavy, blunt impact of a metahuman fist, but they didn't account for the thermal output of a royal Tamaranean. She was humoring them, playing the role of the captive while she assessed her surroundings.
"She’s been like this for days," Clark said, his earlier anger completely extinguished, replaced by a tense vigilance. The Man of Steel stood with his arms crossed, his brow furrowed as he stared through the transparent barrier. "If we approach, she lashes out. And every universal translator we have has failed."
"That’s because Tamaranean isn't just a language of sound," Nightwing said, a strange, wistful look crossing his face. He watched the slight rise and fall of her shoulders, the defensive tilt of her chin. "It’s a language of intent. Let me talk to her."
"Why should we trust you?" Hal asked. The Green Lantern stood near the back of the room, his ring pulsing with warning heat, a cocky smirk plastered across his face that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Because I'm the only one here who knows her name," Nightwing replied.
"She’s destroyed three containment units already," Clark said as they stood behind the observation glass. He didn't look at Dick, his eyes tracking the faint, golden aura that shimmered along her skin. "But for the last six hours, she hasn't moved. We can’t get her to eat or drink."
Nightwing looked at her and a soft, genuine smile broke across his face. It was one of the real smiles he had worn since he woke up on that bridge in Gotham. "She's humoring you," he said.
"Pardon?" Diana asked.
"She could take this entire station apart if she wanted to," Nightwing explained. He stepped away from the console, his movements fluid and entirely unfazed by the tension in the room. "She’s letting you keep her here because she’s curious. She wants to see what the 'mighty protectors' of Earth are actually like. So far, I’d wager she’s underwhelmed."
Or just whelmed. But no one in this universe will get the reference. The thought came and went, a tiny, bitter spark of the old Robin mischief that wouldn’t be understood here.
"Stay back," the Lantern warned. He took a step forward, his ring forming a faint green barrier between Dick and the door control. "She is dangerous."
Dick ignored him, walking right up to the glass. He didn't look at Hal, didn't look at the ring. He pressed his hand flat against the reinforced surface, the heat from his palm leaving a faint, circular mist on the cool polymer. He took a slow breath, letting his shoulders drop, and began to speak in the melodic, rolling tones of the Tamaranean language.
The sounds were heavy, yet carried the lifting, songlike rhythm of a world that was built on passion. He spoke of safety, of a shared sky, using the formal greetings of the royal court that he had memorized long ago.
Kory’s head snapped up. Her emerald eyes widened as she scrambled to her feet, her movements a blur of superhuman speed. She crossed the cell in a fraction of a second, the sudden movement causing the security sensors to wail a high-pitched warning. She pressed her hands against the glass opposite his, her expression shifting from feral suspicion to desperate hope.
She replied in the same tongue, her voice a mix of song and sorrow. The words poured out of her, a frantic, desperate torrent of syllables that rattled against the glass.
"What are you saying?" Clark demanded. He stepped into Dick’s personal space, his physical presence meant to dominate, his jaw tight as he listened to the strange, alien cadence. "We need to understand this conversation."
Dick looked back at them. The light from the cell caught the edges of his mask, turning the white lenses into blank, unreadable circles. "She is telling me her world is gone. That her own sister betrayed her."
He turned back to the glass, his voice softening as he spoke to her again. He didn't say the name she knew him by, because she didn't know him at all. In this universe, the boy from the circus had died or never existed long enough as a hero to meet her, and the princess of Tamaran had arrived to find a cold, empty satellite filled with strangers.
"You are safe," he said in her language, keeping his pronunciation precise. "I know of your people. You are not alone on this world anymore.”
Kory tilted her head, her green eyes scanning his face with clinical intensity. She didn't look at the suit or the mask; she looked at the way his posture balanced, the open, unguarded way he held his hands. The static in his mind that J'onn had complained about didn't exist for her. She was reading the heat of his blood, the specific, rapid rhythm of his heart.
"You speak the tongue of Tamaranean ," she said, her voice dropping into a lower, resonant register that vibrated through the glass. "But you carry the scent of the blue world. Who are you, warrior? How do you know the paths of my home?"
"I am a friend," Dick replied, using the closest Tamaranean approximation for an ally of the blood. "I am called Nightwing."
Kory’s fingers flexed against the glass, her nails leaving tiny, white scores on the polymer. "Nightwing. The rebirth hero. It is a title of shadow, yet your eyes are full of the sun."
Dick felt a lump in his throat that wouldn’t move. It was terrifyingly easy to look at her and see the girl who had flown him into the clouds above San Francisco, the woman who had held his hand through the darkest nights of his youth. But this Kory had none of those memories. Her face was harder, the lines around her mouth tight with the fresh, bleeding trauma of a ruined empire.
"She is asking for a demonstration of intent," Dick said aloud, switching back to English without taking his eyes off her.
"What does that mean?" Diana asked, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword.
"It means she doesn't trust the glass," Dick said. "And she shouldn't." He reached down to his utility belt, his fingers finding the override sequence he had extracted from the Star City database. The security locks on the Watchtower were advanced, but they still operated on a standard military architecture.
Before Clark could move to intervene, Dick’s fingers moved in a blur across the manual release pad beneath the observation screen.
The heavy polymer door hissed open, the pneumatic seal releasing a cloud of cold, pressurized air.
"Get back!" Hal shouted, his ring flaring with an immense, green light that filled the corridor with geometric shields.
Kory didn't hesitate. The moment the barrier vanished, she lunged forward, her movements faster than human sight. She didn't strike. She gripped the edges of the localized atmospheric vent in the cell’s side, using the leverage to pull Dick toward her. Her hands were hot, like iron that had been left in a forge, her fingers digging into the reinforced fabric of his shoulders.
She pressed her lips firmly against his.
The League stood in stunned silence. Oliver stared blankly, his arms crossed over his chest, his face still pale from the earlier argument. Hal rubbed the back of his neck, his ring dimming to a dull, confused flicker as he looked between the two of them, completely bewildered.
The kiss was short, a sudden, fierce pressure that tasted of ozone and the metallic tang of the Watchtower’s recycled air. To the League, it looked like an assault or a bizarre alien ritual. To Dick, it was the oldest trick in the book.
Kory pulled back slowly, her emerald eyes shimmering with a sudden, overwhelming influx of language, syntax, and human emotion. She didn't drop her hands from his shoulders, her grip remaining firm as her brain re-indexed the entire structure of the English language.
She looked at Clark, then at Diana, her gaze sharpening into something regal and terrifying.
"Your tongue, it tastes of iron and salt," she said, her voice clear, though her syntax was a beautiful, jagged mess of English and the formal phrasing of her home. She turned back to Dick, her thumb brushing against the edge of his jaw.
Dick kept his breathing steady, though his lungs still burned from the smoke of Blüdhaven. "Princess," he said softly. "What happened?"
Her expression clouded, the vibrant orange of her skin seeming to dim under the harsh fluorescent lights. "Tamaran is ash," she said. "The Citadel came with ships that swallowed the stars. My sister, Komand’r, she traded our soul for a throne. I was a gift to the slavers. I broke my chains in the deep void, but the darkness followed me."
She stepped out of the cell entirely, her bare feet clicking softly on the cold concrete floor. She ignored the League completely, her focus locked on Dick like he was the only fixed point in a spinning universe. "Earth is what my people call a Hollow," she said, turning her head toward Clark. "A world that remains silent while the stars scream. We asked for your help when the first ships arrived at our perimeter. You did not answer."
"We didn't know," Clark said, his voice dropping into that heavy, defensive rumble. He took a half-step forward, his hands open to show he carried no weapons. "We never received a signal. Our long-range arrays have been clear for months."
"Because the darkness that took my home does not send signals," Kory said, her voice rising with a sudden, fierce heat that caused the air around her hair to distort with thermal waves. "It eats them. It is a rot that spreads through the trade lanes, and it is coming here. The one who broke the crown of Tamaran, he has found the scent of this Green Lantern world. He follows the light."
Hal’s jaw tightened. He looked down at his ring, which was now tracking a massive spike in localized radiation from the upper atmosphere. "What kind of rot are we talking about?"
"The kind that doesn't care about your rules," Dick said, stepping between Kory and the rest of the team. He looked at Clark, then at Diana, seeing the sudden, grim realization settling over their faces. "You wanted to know why I’m here. Maybe this is why. You’re so busy trying to manage the peace that you aren't ready for the war. But she is. And I am."
Kory reached out, her fingers closing around his hand. Her palm was dry, hot, and the tiny spark of starbolt energy that always lived under her skin sent a familiar prickle against his glove.
"We fight?" she asked, her emerald eyes looking into his mask.
Dick squeezed her hand, a lopsided grin returning to his face despite the sheer weight of the world on his shoulders. "We fight, Princess.”