At twenty-two, you were sent to fight a war on another world. You’d kissed your husband goodbye — Conner, your anchor, your light — and held your infant son one last time before boarding the ship. You promised you’d come back soon. You promised you’d come back whole.

But fate — or perhaps the gods themselves — had other plans.

After surviving the black hole — the underworld of the stars — your ship drifted through the quiet sea of space, searching desperately for a way home. Maybe Earth. Maybe Themyscira. Anywhere that could bring you closer to them again.

You walked back and forth through the narrow corridor of the ship, boots echoing softly against the metal floor. Beyond the glass, the universe stretched endlessly — constellations swirling like waves, galaxies pulsing in colors you didn’t have names for. You exhaled, fogging the window for a heartbeat, your reflection overlapping with the stars.

Every thought circled back to them — to Conner’s laugh, to your son’s tiny hands. You’d been gone for so long, and the weight of that time pressed against your chest like gravity itself. You just wanted to go home. To see them. To hold them again.

You turned your head, glancing over your shoulder — maybe to shake off the ache, maybe because something in you felt it — and for a split second, you thought your mind was playing tricks on you.

But there he was.

Conner sat calmly on a floating meteor just beyond the viewport, the cosmic light framing him in shades of gold and blue. His leather jacket fluttered in the quiet vacuum, and he was cleaning his sunglasses like this was the most normal thing in the world. Then he looked up, and that smile — that familiar, infuriating, perfect smile — spread across his face as he slid the shades back on.

— “Don’t you miss me?”

The sound of his voice hit like an echo in your soul — too real, too close, too impossible.