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A Road Paved In Gold

Summary:

“You’re here,” Diana breathed out, disbelieving.

He dropped his forehead against hers, “And you found me again.”

Steve Trevor didn't die in the sky in Belgium, but his survival came with a price he couldn't have ever imagined.

Notes:

Okay, so.... I've been playing with this idea for a while now. Not sure how long this story will be, but I have 2 chapters done and 2 more mapped out, so more than 4, for now. Hopefully they'll be a fun ride!

Since this is an AU story, please excuse the DCEU canon deviations :)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter Text

You were my beacon of salvation,

I was your starlight

- "Cradled in Love" by Poets Of The Fall

 

Prologue

Antiope pushed the doors to her sister’s chambers open without so much as a knock and strode in, each step deliberate on the stone floor – a privilege very few were granted.

Hippolyta didn’t even turn around, only her shoulders stiffened slightly in an acknowledgement of the intrusion as her eyes remained fixed on the fire in the hearth, the flames reflecting in her diadem and making it look like it was pulsing with light.

“I know what you are going to say,” she said before Antiope had a chance to open her mouth.  

Her sister stopped in her tracks and nodded, seemingly pleased with Hippolyta's words. “Good. Then I won’t have to repeat myself.”

Hippolyta turned around abruptly, her eyes blazing with anger and her voice strained with emotion that normally remained hidden behind her carefully constructed composure. A flicker of something as vulnerable as fear nearly stripped her of her regal veneer. “You had no right to go against my will!”

Antiope tipped her chin up. “She has the right to learn to defend herself.”

“She is only a child and this is not your decision to make, Antiope! She is my daughter!”

“She is more than that,” Antiope interjected, and Hippolyta flinched as if she had been slapped. “You think that keeping her in the dark will stop the prophecy from happening? What if it does and she is not ready?”

Hippolyta’s face hardened. “What if it doesn’t?” she challenged her sister. “What if the prophecy never comes true? A vessel from the sky is supposed to take her away. What does that even mean, Antiope?”

“All the more reason for Diana to be ready. You can’t keep her sheltered from the world forever.” Antiope stared at her sister, her jaw set tautly and her gaze hard, uncompromising. They had been here before, countless times. Ever since Zeus had made his wishes clear, mapping out Diana’s fate. They could ignore it as much as they wanted – Hippolyta could keep her eyes shut or look the other way all she pleased – but doing so was not going to make it go away. “She is meant for greatness, Hippolyta.”

The Queen pursed her lips together, regarding her sister sternly, one will against another. There was no winning here, they both knew it. One way or another, Diana would have to learn the hard ways of the world, be it through battle or through leaving the island, the only place she had ever called home. Hippolyta would lose her daughter regardless of her own wishes, and there was no compromising here, only heartbreak.

“I am not going to let anyone take her away.”

“That may not be your decision, sister,” Antiope shook her head, her voice filled with wistfulness.

Hippolyta pursed her lips into a hard, thin line, and then she nodded curtly, her own voice clipped when she spoke.“Then you should make her the best.”

It wasn’t until she saw the smoking plane tearing through the sky and plummeting into the ocean, not until she saw her daughter dive into the turquoise waters without a second thought, not until she was awoken deep in the night by her guards claiming that Diana had freed their prisoner and was leaving with him that she realized how wrong she had been about the prophecy all along. Until then, Hippolyta had been hoping against all hope and praying every day for Zeus’s words to be a mistake. She should have known better than to believe that.  

Diana didn’t need to be inside the vessel for it to take her away, and there was nothing Hippolyta could do about it. Never had been. There was no protecting her daughter from her fate.

Hippolyta only wished she knew it sooner.

 

Chapter 1

1918

It was a lie, after all. One's life didn’t flash before their eyes when they died. Instead, everything simply stopped .

Steve heard the gas capsules explode, one after another after another, dull pops filling the cabin of the airplane as the heat started to grow, licking at his skin, the fire glowing so bright it was unbearable even with his eyes shut, as his mind plunged into this nowhere place made of nothingness.

Instead of a replay of his happy moments and regrets, memories filled with laughter and those stained with blood, all he could see was Diana’s eyes locked with his, her lips curved into a soft smile, and the low husk of her voice wrapped around him like a blanket, making him feel safe for the first time in so long that he could barely stand it. He could feel her hands on his cheeks, framing his face, could taste her smile, hear the sound of his name sending ripple after ripple of shiver through his body, and it was not enough, never enough. His chest grew tight as if his heart was about to explode as well, seemingly too large for his rib cage, too heavy with tenderness and fear and longing and wanting for so much more than he had ever had. They both deserved more.

“NOOOOOO!”

The scream broke through the explosion, registering with Steve, loud and pained, and almost as much on the outside of his mind as it was inside of it - her voice – as the force of decompression lurched him forward, the cool air of the night touching his clothes, his skin seconds before they went up in flames.

Too late…

There were things in his life that Steve wished he hadn't done, and things he wished he’d done differently; his existence like a patch quilt of memories he wanted to hold onto and those that he’d rather let go. He was more than the uniform and his skills and the bravery he couldn’t always comprehend, scared of going too deep into why's and how's for fear of never finding his way back.

Another pop, and he was completely engulfed in flames, not feeling the fire so much as knowing that it was there, too bright to look at, too hot, too final. It was burning away everything that he was, everything that he had ever been or wanted to be, and… please let me live, let this not be the end .

And then he was falling into darkness, the frigid wind tearing at his clothes, tugging at his hair. His stomach flopped down and then lodged itself in his throat, making it impossible to breathe, or even remembering how to do it.

In the air force, when Steve was only trying his hand at flying, he and his buddies would sometimes take training planes after-hours and soar into the sky, doing loops and eights and barrels until they could no longer tell up and down apart. Until their hearts were hammering and their blood flowing in earnest, and the world was at their fingertips, tiny and yet so vast that Steve couldn’t breathe at the sight of endless fields and skies streaked with wispy clouds.

He was having the same sensation now, the thrill of free falling, his mind empty. If he could keep flowing like this for all of eternity, free from the weight of the world, he could be happy, he decided. Completely and utterly free.

And then…

…everything…

…stopped .

Steve opened his eyes and peered into the grey November sky hanging low over the trees, their branches scraping against the clouds that undoubtedly promised more snow later on. He blinked, blinded by the brightness of the day even though the sun was nowhere to be seen, disoriented and dizzy, grateful to be feeling the carpet of dead leaves beneath his body, the world spinning backwards around him.

He probably had a concussion, he figured, wincing. His head throbbed and each breath resonated painfully somewhere deep inside him. Broken ribs, most likely. Cracked at the very least. He tried to move in an attempt to assess the damage. There didn't appear to be any irreversible harm, much to his relief, although a concussion wasn’t out of question – even thinking of getting on his feet nearly made him pass out, black dots dancing before his eyes and his brain seemingly too big for his skull.

Steve rolled onto his side, hissing when his body protested against the move, and fairly certain he was going to throw up - so nauseous that simple action made him feel. He took a deep breath, and then another one, inhaling the pungent scent of cold soil and forest until his stomach had settled and his head stopped spinning. He pushed up slowly, mindful of the sickening sensation as his broken ribs grated against each other.

He’d had it worse before, Steve thought absently, when he’d been shot. At least this time, he was not at any risk of bleeding out to death, but bloody hell did it hurt.

Wincing, he pulled himself up to sit, his heart straining to keep up with his exertion.

And with that, the memories came rushing back. The German base. Ludendorff. The gas.

Diana.

He looked wildly around, the woods creeping in on him, dark and ominous. There was no break between the trees, no indication of where he was or where he should be going to get back to… to people, he figured. Another village. Anything . Without the sun, it was hard to tell what time it was, how many hours had passed since—

His thoughts skidded to an abrupt halt.

He remembered pulling the trigger, remembered a succession of explosions and the fire touching his skin--

The ground swayed beneath him when he pulled himself up, holding on to the trunk of a tree, fingers grazing against its bark, almost painfully rough to the touch. Legs weak and knees unsteady, threatening to buckle beneath him, Steve leaned heavily against an old oak, bare this late in the autumn. He was gulping air hungrily through his mouth like he might run out of it, his chest tight and his lungs burning as though he had spent too much time underwater.

He needed to get out of here. It was cold, his body shaking from the chill snaking under his clothes and what Steve suspected was shock, if he had to put a label on it. His head was pounding, and when he touched his forehead, his fingers came away smeared with blood from a cut , the metallic scent of it permeating his senses now that he knew that it was there. He needed to find out what had happened.

And most importantly, he needed to make sure that everyone else was safe.

---

“Don’t do it, Diana,” Charlie’s voice was soft, laced with sorrow, his accent so much more prominent in grief. “Don’t go there.”

She chose to pretend not to hear him, her mind blank and her body moving on autopilot.

“Let her,” Chief shook his head, his eyes never leaving the back of her head – Diana could feel it almost as palpable as a touch, and it wasn’t the first time since they had met that she wondered if he could see inside her mind. “Closure goes a long way.”

She didn’t listen to the rest of it.

Once the smoke had started to settle, once the people had begun to shake off the stunned stupor over what had happened, she grabbed one of the horses and headed in the direction of the bright explosion she had seen a few hours ago. The image was seared in her memory like a scar, half-knowing that the others would follow her, half not caring if they did.

Chief was wrong, however, although Diana chose not to pause to correct him. There was no closure. Could be no closure. Not when something had ended so abruptly, so unjustly, so unfairly soon. She didn’t even get to say goodbye, and now her chest was aching with so much grief and devastation that she didn’t know how it was possible for one body to contain it all without exploding or folding in on itself until it had ceased to exist. With every step, every move, every word she spoke, Diana feared she would tear at the seams and the pain and agony simmering inside her would spill out and consume the lands around her.

It was early still, her breath puffing out in small clouds as she moved first in a trot and then in a gallop once they had left the airbase behind, speeding up along the narrow road.

It was awfully ironic, really, how there was nothing that could have prepared her for this moment. She could be lethal, she could destroy the root of all evil, but there was nothing in all those years of training that had taught her how to protect her heart from breaking. There was no sword that could deflect the blow that had shattered her very soul into a million pieces. No one had ever told her that the invisible wounds would hurt the most, or explained how she was supposed to keep on going when there was no force in this world or any other that could mend what had broken inside her when that plane had gone up in flames, taking Steve away from her.

Diana’s hands clenched the reins, her mind spiralling into the abyss.

Who knew that regret and remorse could be so bitter and angry, bubbling up in her chest, nearly boiling over the rim?

The first piece of the aircraft that she saw was a part of a wing, charred from the fire, its torn edges sharp and jagged like a row of bared teeth. There was another shred of metal about a hundred feet away from her, near the tree line, and black soot covering the ground. The air smelled of burned rubber and something else, something acrid that tasted foul on her tongue. And it was so quiet, so awfully quiet…

Diana pulled at the reins, and the horse turned in a semi-circle, jerking its head up and down, its breath puffing out of its flaring nostrils, confused by the abrupt stop. In her haste to get here, she didn’t think of how the explosion must have scattered whatever was left of the airplane for miles around.  

Her breath hitched in her throat, her eyes prickling, and in that moment, it was so easy to write it off to the cold and fatigue and not the fact that her very essence was shattering before her eyes.

“Steve!”

His name scattered across the valley, echoing in the distant hills, slashing her eardrums – a pained, desperate sound that carried the weight of the ache burning in her chest and making it hard to breathe.

There were lessons, Antiope had told her countless times, that one couldn’t learn from someone else; ones that Diana would need to learn for herself. Diana had always assumed that it was about her training, finessing the fighting techniques to the level of absolute perfection. It had made sense to her then – no one else could have learned to deflect the blows and master her strikes for her. However, right now Antiope’s words gained a whole new meaning, pressing down on her with the weight of loss that could easily grind her into dust if it so pleased. How much easier it was to live in a world that was black and white rather than tinted in shades of grey…

No one had told her that losing someone she loved wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen to her – the worst thing, she was beginning to understand, was being alive when her loved ones were gone and carrying emptiness inside of her, something black that threatened to turn her inside out.

She dismounted from her horse, a patch of frozen, brown grass crunching under her feet, and turned around, her eyes taking in the clearing and the hills rising behind the forest. It occurred to her for the first time then that Steve could have just as easily evaporated in the blast and there was nothing left of him for her to find. And this realization sent a jolt of anguish so sharp through her that it nearly left her keeling over, her hand still closed around a fistful of the reins as her horse reared back, frightened by the raw emotion radiating off of Diana.

In the folds of her cloak, she found the watch, gripping it tightly, struggling to breathe past a burning lump in her throat.

“There’s more.”

The voice didn’t surprise her, however, lifting her eyes up and finding Sameer looking at her with profound sadness felt almost like an intrusion, which made her look away quickly in guilt. She was not the only one who had lost Steve, her pain was not stronger just because it was hers . The only difference between Diana and the men who had followed her here was that she could have saved him, if only he’d let her; if only they'd had time.

She turned to Sameer again, followed his gaze towards another cluster of trees that apparently held more pieces of her fractured life, and nodded numbly, uncertain as to why she was so compelled to come here at all – it wasn’t like she could put them back together and pretend that nothing had happened. That was the one thing, it seemed, that she was not capable of.

Charlie slid timidly down to the ground, mindful of his horse’s temper, his features streaked with soot and lined with bone-deep weariness.

The Germans had surrendered, but the war, Diana was thinking now, would take some time to leave them all be.

She started towards the trees that Sameer had pointed to, desperate to find something, anything . A piece of fabric maybe, a button from the uniform Steve had been wearing under his heavy winter coat that morning. Proof that she had not made him up – it was like a burning inside her, a need to close her hand around something tangible that was a part of him in the final moments of his life, even if it was going to kill her all over again.

“Diana.” Chief’s voice stopped her in her tracks, not so much her name as the choked sound of his voice. Like someone had punched him in the chest. “Look.”

She glanced up, at him still in the saddle, his profile sharp against the grey sky, and then towards the trees lining the far end of the clearing, half-swallowed by the fog.

And there—

The ground shifted beneath Diana's feet, her breath wheezing out of her body.

She blinked and staggered forward, straining her eyes. Because it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be—

“Is that…” Charlie left the end of the sentence hanging.

Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he had never stopped speaking, but she didn't care to hear the rest. Diana took another step forward. And then another one. And then she was running across the field before the vision ahead of her disappeared, the nippy air biting at her cheeks and her lungs burning. Her cloak fell from her shoulders, landing on the frozen ground in a shapeless heap, black on grey, without Diana noticing. And no matter how fast she ran, it didn't feel fast enough.

---

It was a little-known fact, and the biggest flaw in the workings of the human brain, that it was next to impossible for a person to move in a straight line without a landmark or a compass, and Steve’s pockets were empty. His gun must have fallen out of his hand when he had pulled the trigger, his compass most likely lost in a battle earlier in the day. He didn’t know how long he had been walking, cold and dizzy and completely disoriented, the time blurring at the edges. Probably not more than half an hour, but his exhaustion was starting to settle in like a heavy stone pressing in on him.

And so when the trees finally gave way and spat him out onto the field where even the air felt different somehow, lighter in a way he couldn’t explain, Steve was tempted to believe that it was a trick of his imagination and nothing more.

He blinked, and a black horse appeared at the other end of the valley. Blinked again, and three more joined it. Steve leaned heavily against a tree, his chest heaving, and his breathing laboured, and the blood rush in his ears muting the world around him.

So tired. He was so unbearably tired.

If only he could just—

Steve took in an unsteady breath.

And then someone rammed into him at a full force, making him stagger and nearly fall backwards, sharp pain exploding in his shoulder and shooting down his arm.

“Ow,” he stiffened momentarily, his battered body protesting the unexpected assault, bones screaming in agony, and his arms were suddenly full of Amazon goddess, his name whispered over and over again in his ear.

“I’m sorry,” Diana muttered, but when she started to pull away, Steve tightened his hold of her, half in relief, half needing to do so lest he collapse to the ground.

“No,” he muttered, recovering enough from the surprise of having her there to bury his face in her hair that smelled of smoke and earth and the salty air of Themyscira. And in that moment, he feared that if he let go of her for even a split second, he’d fall apart. As if she was the only force keeping him in one piece.

“Steve…” she whispered again, pulling away just far enough to look in his face, her fingers touching his cheek, his brow, his chin ever so gently, pushing his hair back from his forehead, her eyes gleaming and her lips quivering like she didn’t know whether to smile or cry. Steve certainly could relate to that. “But how…”

“I don’t know,” he rasped, their eyes meeting and his gaze holding hers. An anchor and the only thing he wanted to see. “I really don’t know, I--”

“You’re here,” Diana breathed out, disbelieving.

He dropped his forehead against hers, his heart beating somewhere in his throat.

“And you've found me again. Look at that…”

He brushed her hair from her cheek, and she laughed through her tears – a short, surprised sound, happiness mixed with fear. Something that he was way too familiar with, half-certain that she was going to evaporate like a billow of smoke any moment.

She clutched the lapel of his jacket and dropped her forehead on the slope of his shoulder, her body shaking ever so slightly, and something told him that the late autumnal chill was not to blame for it. He kissed her hair, and the ground swayed beneath him, tilting sideways.

“Oh…”

Diana’s arm slipped around his waist for support. “Lean on me,” she looked up, her eyebrows creased with concern, but all he could see was the impossible beauty that made his heart stutter for all the right reasons, concussion and whatever the hell was broken inside him be damned. To see that face again, he’d fall from the sky a thousand times over if he had to. He’d keep falling for as long as he lived, if she so wished.

Still, the haze in his mind was troubling, and Steve’s fingers flexed on the soft leather of Diana's armour as he held on, hugging her tight against him and hoping against all hope that he wouldn’t fall face-first to the ground in front of the girl he liked ( woman he loved , but that was beyond the point). There was only so much embarrassment a guy could handle in such a short span of time. God knew, they’d have another chance for that. Certainly a better setting than freezing woods in the middle of nowhere in Belgium. He could do better than that.

“Steven,” Chief’s voice was relieved and breaking a little with something that could be so easily mistaken for affection when the rest of the group caught up with them. Diana’s horse was tied to Chief’s saddle, and while Sameer was grinning for all he was worth, Charlie politely looked away as if he had walked in on something private, a wistful smile on his lips. Breathing hurt, thinking hurt even more, and moving was agonizing, but Steve had never felt more alive, and somehow, it was the only thing that mattered.

---

Another nameless village, another cramped inn, a smudge in his memory between being practically hoisted up onto a horse behind Diana (and her soft, Hold onto me ) and walking through the door. Every time Steve tried to piece together the moments in-between, he was coming up blank.

Stripped down to his pants, he was sitting on the edge of the bed while Diana prodded and poked at him, armed with a bag of something she’d gotten from Chief, one with herbs and balms and whatever passed for medical care when there wasn’t a single field hospital for miles around them, Steve's I’m fine protests promptly ignored. And really, who would go against a princess of the Amazons? He figured it was akin trying to stop an oncoming train with just his bare hands and chose not to bother.

In addition to cracked ribs – cracked, not broken, although, to Steve, it didn’t make that much of a difference, seeing as how the discomfort was the same – he ended up with a messed up shoulder that apparently got this close to being dislocated. Diana pressed a cloth soaked in cold water to an impressive-looking bruise that had started to spread over the injured joint to stop the swelling; told him to hold it there as she pushed his hair back from the cut on his forehead, frowning slightly as she reached into the bag of Chief’s "magic tricks".

His mind had cleared a bit, his focus sharper than it had been a few hours before; as sharp as it could be in a dark room on a gloomy afternoon – surprisingly the only place he wanted to be, all things considered. The voices were drifting in from the dining room downstairs, people celebrating the end of the nightmare their lives had turned into years ago. A grand celebration, not the small victory Veld had toasted to the other night – oh god, was it yesterday ? No, two days ago. It was hard to keep track of time.

He could hear singing, and laughter, and the weight he had been carrying inside him started to lift off of his chest.

Steve cursed under his breath when she touched a strong-smelling salve to his cut, pulling away instinctively.

“I’m sorry.” Diana’s palm curled over his cheek and she blew on the cut before her gaze shifted down and locked with his. “I don’t think any stitches are required.”

Her shield was propped against the wall, her black cloak draped over the back of an armchair in the corner. She’d told him what had happened to the sword, how in the end, it ended up being nothing, meaning nothing, and her voice broke ever so slightly with the enormity of the revelation.

“You really did it, Diana,” Steve said, his voice nothing but a whoosh of breath. “You saved the world.”

Her hand dropped from his face and curled around his hand, a soothing thumb running over his scabbed and bruised knuckles. Head tilted slightly to her shoulder, she studied him for a long moment as though she’d never seen him before, a wondrous expression that Steve Trevor had never been on the receiving end of on her face, which made it hard to think straight.

You did it, Steve. The gas…” she trailed off, shook her head, and maybe he was the one with head trauma, but Diana was obviously having as easy a time figuring out how they ended up in this moment in time as he was.

Steve opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out. Not that a suicide mission could be compared to her killing an actual celestial being – the fact that everything she had been telling him from the start was real he still hadn’t quite processed – but it felt small and silly to keep the conversation going. He doubted that either of them could win this argument.

If there was one thing that the war had taught Steve, it was that no victory was a small victory, and what Diana had done had, by far, dimmed the rest of their efforts. However, what made him bite his tongue in the end was knowing that she didn’t do it for praise and honours and pretty words that didn’t mean nearly as much as the tears of joy on people’s faces. The kind of gratitude that couldn’t ever be expressed in words because no such words existed.

“Wait, I think there is something here...” Diana reached for Chief’s supplies again, but Steve pulled his hand away from her and rose on his feet, reaching for his shirt that he couldn’t remember taking off that was lying on the other side of the bed.

“It’s just a scratch,” he muttered, wincing his way into the sleeves. “Maybe, I should just…”

“Steve, what are you doing?” She looked up, confused.

He ran his hand through his hair, unable to look at her.

Bad idea.

His shoulder screamed in pain, and Steve hissed through his teeth, very aware of Diana’s scrutiny, the confines of the tiny room suddenly suffocating as the heaviness of unsaid words pressed down on them, squeezing all air out of his lungs. When he tried to inhale, his body refused to cooperate.

It was truly terrifying how loud silence could be sometimes. In all his years as a pilot, Steve had long grown to prefer the angry raging of gunfire to the stillness of the proverbial brewing storm. Silence always left him unsettled, antsy, the need to fill those moments with the sounds of life so overwhelming it hurt. Right now, there were words tumbling around his head, rolling on the tip of his tongue – words he didn’t know how to say because they made little sense even in his mind, blurred memories that he could barely piece together.

“What you said in that village, after Ludendorff had set off the demonstration…” He took in a sharp, shaky breath and finally met her eyes, a furrow of misunderstanding creasing her brows. “You were right. We were all the problem. Still are, perhaps. I—I don’t know if you’d have been able to stop it, to save those people but it was not my call to—to get in your way. And I am sorry for that, Diana. For--for thinking that I had the right to interfere." He shook his head. "They deserved that chance. And… after everything that had happened, I wouldn’t assume you’d want me to--” he gestured vaguely around, wondering absently if there was another spare room here or if he'd have to go look someplace else.

“Stay.” Lithe form and majestic grace, Diana uncurled from her sitting position, her expression puzzled and more than a little troubled. One step towards him, and her hands winded into Steve's hair, feather-light on his cheeks, so close and so real and everything he had ever needed. “I thought you were gone,” she whispered, tracing the line of his jaw with her fingertips, her voice breaking. “I thought I would never see you again. Thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, uncertain what he was apologizing for, exactly – getting into that plane, the borrowed time he had taken from them by making that decision, or for bringing her into his world in the first place. Knew she didn’t know, either, and this thing between them felt wonderful and fragile, and he wanted nothing more than to freeze this moment in time and just be . “I’m so sorry, Diana. I…” he faltered and swallowed hard, his mouth dry all of a sudden.

She looked up, their eyes meeting again, and the sheer force of something behind her gaze all but knocked Steve off his feet. She wiped a tear from her cheek with her palm, her lips curved into a small relieved smile. “Stay,” she repeated.

---

It was the glare of the sun that awoke Steve the next morning, beaming on his face through thin lace curtains, a faint murmur of voices outside, and a nearly palpable gaze roaming over his features.

“You’re staring,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and thick with sleep.

“And you were snoring,” Diana responded.

He cracked one eye open with as much indignation as the situation allowed to find her watching him with an amused glint in her eyes, her head propped on her hand. And in the morning light tangled in her hair, painting it with streaks of gold, she looked very much like the angel that had pulled him out of the water… had it really been only a week? It felt like another lifetime.

“I was not,” he protested nonetheless, albeit without much conviction. How was he supposed to know?

“Yes, you were,” she shook her head, trying and failing not to grin. And added, “I noticed on the boat. And… that other night.” Her eyebrow arched pointedly.

Steve stared at the ceiling for a long moment before noting philosophically, “No one is perfect.”

Diana laughed – the sound like sunshine that made his heart trip over itself and soar straight into the sky, and maybe he was dead after all, because how else could he explain this moment, and her, and being so blissfully content it felt unfathomable? Like a dream he had had a time or two since he'd met her, one that he couldn’t quite remember but that was still lingering in the back of his mind. Quite frankly, had it not been for the slight throb in the back of his head and an uncomfortable protest of his ribcage every time he inhaled, he’d be tempted to write this off to a delusion of some sort, too good to be real.

“You’ll heal,” she said – an observation, not an assumption – as her fingers left a ghost of a trail along his skin, touching softly the bruise on his shoulder and the crisscross pattern of scars on his chest, her eyes brimmed with questions Steve knew they would come back to eventually. Although not now, perhaps.

“That’s the plan,” he agreed, unable to suppress a shiver that ran through him.

“You’re cold. Let me start the—” Diana began, completely misreading the situation and pulling away from him, but Steve caught her hand, kissed the back of her fingers, marvelling in the feel of her smooth skin against his calloused palm, lean and delicate and deadly in so many ways. Certainly, unsafe for his heart.

“No, stay,” he murmured, and then his eyebrows pulled together as he gave her a curious once-over. “What are you wearing?”

Diana glanced down at a wispy cotton nightie wrapped around her frame, so thin it was negating the point of having anything on at all. Long sleeves that were a tad too short for her and strings at the collar that she left untied, revealing a glimpse of tanned flesh that completely derailed the train off Steve's thought until it reached the end of the tracks and dove right off the cliff.

Her expression was confused for a flicker of a moment, hands reaching instinctively for the strings. “The innkeeper gave it to me,” she said, looking up at him again. “Is this not what women wear to bed?”

Steve swallowed and cleared his throat. “No, it is. It really is.”

“What?” she demanded, watching him struggle.

He chuckled and pulled her down to him, his fingers threading through her hair. “It looks good on you,” he whispered as her lips brushed against his, allowing him to feel her smile. It was funny in that odd and surprising way that she’d never looked less like a lethal goddess than she did right now. If it was up to Steve, he’d have her wear nothing but this very nightie – that he was fairly certain had been in high fashion in his grandmother’s times – for as long as they both lived.

“How hard did you hit your head?” she murmured, kissing the corner of his mouth.

“Tease.” He turned his head, capturing her mouth, his pulse stuttering for a moment and then sprinting into a race as her fingers thrummed along his neck.

“You scared me,” she murmured, a frantic edge in her voice.  

“I’m sorry.”

He shifted, drawing her closer, warm and real and—

Wrong move. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

With a groan, he gripped a handful of Diana’s nightie and pressed his face into her neck when his body resisted the movement, cursing it mentally, although not that surprised – he’d tumbled from the sky not a day ago. It was a miracle he wasn’t paralyzed. (It was a miracle he wasn’t dead , for that matter.) Not being ready to move on to the best parts of life yet should be the least of his concerns, perhaps.

“I’m probably going to be out of commission for a while,” he muttered, kissing along her jaw.

Diana’s palm found his cheek, a thumb running over his prickly stubble, her face so close he could feel the flutter of her eyelashes on his skin. He could probably spend the rest of his life in this moment and nothing would be better. “You’re here,” she whispered. And somehow, in all the madness they'd been through, that was the only thing that made sense. “I have something that’s yours.”

The static in his mind cleared a bit when she reached for the nightstand and picked up something that, upon closer inspection, turned out to be his watch. The very same one that he had pressed into her hands before all hell broke loose.

His dad gave it to him when Steve was 12, saying that time was the most precious gift, and that it was Steve’s duty to make sure to find some for the things that really mattered, as best he could. For years, Steve hadn't thought much of those words, treasuring the watch as a precious gift he knew had meant a lot to his old man. A gift for his service – no wonder Steve followed in his footsteps. It was funny how some things took a while to truly gain their full meaning, and the importance of time was no exception to the rule. Ironically, he hadn’t realized it until he had had none left, and the memory of the night that he had believed would be his last one left him with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

And a twinge of guilt, too. This watch had been his most prized possession for as long as Steve remembered, one that he kept intact and running all through his training and his missions and that one time he had nearly lost his very soul at poker, and he probably wouldn’t have even thought about it if Diana wasn’t holding it in front of his face. Speak of priorities….

He stared at it for a long moment, its hands frozen, small gears inside of it silent. He’d never not heard it before.

“Would you hold on to it for me?” he asked Diana, his eyes never leaving the watch.

“But it was your father’s,” Diana protested.

“Not for good, just for a while.” He turned and reached over to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear, having a very distinctive feeling that they were no longer talking about the watch. “I think you’d take good care of it.”

“You are a very strange man, Steve Trevor.”

She scooted closer to him, lowering her head down on his pillow, their heads touching, her eyes studying the pale face, the thin hands, the leather of the strap so worn-out it was as soft as a piece of fabric, albeit strong and resilient as ever.

Steve chuckled, his own gaze following the outline of her regal profile – the line of her nose that seemingly came straight out of some ancient Greek painting, a tinge of colour on her high cheekbones, the delicate curve of her lips moving soundlessly as she read the engraving on the back of the watch.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he breathed out, more to himself than to her. “Here, let me…”

Steve took the watch from her and fastened it around Diana’s wrist. It was too bulky for her, too big and slightly loose, and undoubtedly inconvenient with her wrist guards that were currently sitting on the table in the corner. He didn’t expect her to wear it, but there was something impossibly mesmerizing about seeing these two different worlds collide.

She turned her wrist this way and that, testing the weight and the feel of the new and unfamiliar object.

“It has stopped.”

“I can fix that.” In Steve’s memory, the seconds, and minutes, and hours of that day had blurred into one endless moment of aching uncertainty and bone-chilling fear, but if his calculations were correct, his watch had stopped ticking at the exact same moment when his plane had gone up in flames. A constant reminder that he was equally tempted to keep and to erase, for fear of being held back by it for the rest of his life. “I think I can.”

Diana looked up at him. “It’s really over,” she said, pensive. “No more wars left to fight.”

And what a weird concept it was, Steve thought. Through all the fighting and trying and the sacrifices, deep down he had started to lose hope. He could hardly remember the world before the war, the fragments of his life feeble and faded, somewhat out of his reach.

“From where I’m standing, it’s a good thing,” he noted.

“It is.” A pause. “So what do we do now?”

The question almost caught him off-guard. No longer used to seeing past one day at a time, when tomorrow was hidden in the fog and the future was obscured and uncertain, he’d long forgotten how to dream of more.

Steve ran the back of his fingers over her cheek, his mind instantly flooded with a thousand things he didn’t dare think of for so long. “Anything. Anything we want.”

To be continued...