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...
Chapter 2
Notes:
I'm so very sorry for taking forever to update this story - shockingly, my entire life basically spins around it, so no, I haven't forgotten about it, far from it.
Thank you so very much for the awesome feedback the first part got! You guys are wonderful and I hope you'll enjoy what's coming :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The healing was slow, Steve's bones taking their sweet time to grow back together and his cuts and bruises lingering as a reminder of the last battle that had changed the course of history and turned his life upside down, although not necessarily in that order. Steve had no answers still, and no one to ask the questions crowding his mind. Chief had told him that pieces of his plane were scattered over several square miles of fields and forests. Steve had not been wearing a parachute. He had been stark in the epicentre of an explosion that, had it happened on the ground, would have killed everything and everyone in a dozen-mile radius. He should have evaporated , and there was no logic or science to explain why he was still breathing.
More often than not, Steve chose not to think about it.
There were questions, after all, the answers to which were better left unknown. Not that it would have made any difference to him, he mused. Knowing wouldn’t change anything, and he wasn’t sure if it would give him the peace of mind he was seeking or not. Perhaps, there were better ways to find it. If maybe he gave them a try.
They returned to London a week later, the world still in the midst of celebrating the victory of all victories, and if the fall from the sky hadn’t broken all of his bones, Etta’s enthusiastic embrace when she met them at the train station nearly had.
“You are here!” she fussed, squeezing the life out of Steve and completely ignoring the crowds milling around them. “And you are alive !”
Standing next to them, Diana bit her lip, trying to hold back a smile, amused beyond measure.
You’re next , Steve mouthed to her over Etta’s shoulder, wincing but making no attempt to pull away. God knew they all deserved a moment of happiness after everything they’d been through, even though he wasn’t sure why Etta’s was all but squeezing the life out of him.
And as if on cue, his secretary let go of him and pulled Diana into a tight hug, one that Diana didn’t resist, her arms coming to rest around the other woman. He chose to ignore Etta's knowing looks and raised eyebrows, her eyes darting back and forth between him and Diana with what could only be described as glee, and the comments that were anything but subtle. He caught Diana's eyes, grinning like a fool. Were they really that obvious?
No wonder Sameer had been rolling his eyes the whole time and Charlie proceeded to blush profusely.
Steve chuckled under his breath, covering it with a cough as Diana untangled herself from Etta at last and they finally followed her toward the cabs lining the street through the peals of laughter and happy tears and relief so palpable in the air it felt like a blanket covering the city. It still felt surreal, like a dream that Steve didn’t want to wake up from.
---
On the first day of winter, he took Diana down to the seaside, deeming the fresh ocean air a nice change from the ever-present heavy smog hanging over London. The day was sunny, the sky bright-blue above them even though the wind blowing from the Atlantic was nothing but merciless, biting at their cheeks and pulling Diana’s hair out of the twist at the nape of her neck. She didn’t seem to mind.
They bought ice-cream from a street cart ( They have more flavours than one, you know ) and the look of utter bliss on her face, so pure and radiant it all but blinded him, made Steve want to get her an entire parlour just so that this joy would never end.
“Mankind is not perfect, but this? This is everything,” Diana mumbled around a mouthful of frozen goodness, her eyes closed.
And her smile was so majestic he wanted to take a picture of it. Wanted to capture this moment in time and make it last for as long as he breathed.
Steve shook his head. “I’m glad you got your priorities figured out.”
He touched his chocolate cone to her nose, making Diana squirm away from him, then leaned in to kiss it clean before planting another kiss on her lips. God help him, he had never loved her more.
Tucked away from the crowds of Brighton and this late in the year, the town of Hastings was a refreshing change of pace, nearly empty and so damn peaceful Steve could hardly believe it was real. They strolled through the ruins of an old castle, perched above the sleepy streets, the half-collapsed walls and turrets sticking from the ground like sharp, jagged teeth, vacant but for the two of them. And if the morning traffic was any indication, the rest of the town's population was probably in London, celebrating at long last.
He watched Diana regard with pensive apprehension the remnants of what used to be a palace and a fortress in the time when she was still a child. Her fingers brushed against the weathered rock here and there as if she was trying to find a physical connection to the era and the people long gone, read the history as if it was written in Braille on crumbling stones, seemingly oblivious to the harsh gusts of wind, snaking through the ruins. He wanted – so badly – to see what she was seeing.
Her wrist gauntlets were peeking from under the sleeves of her wool coat, and Steve knew without a doubt that there was probably a knife hidden somewhere on her body – old habits die hard and he, of all people, knew it pretty damn well – but this was perhaps the second time since they had met that Diana didn’t have her shield or her armour within arm’s reach, and he wondered if she felt any difference. If she was supposed to. This, more than anything, was the surest sign of how they were truly heading towards peace.
They strode down towards the beach in the afternoon, greeted by the roar of the ocean and the cries of the seagulls soaring over the surf, their boots sinking into the wet sand. He reached for her hand and Diana laced her fingers through his. She turned to him, squinting a little against the sun and the wind, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“We are together like that now, yes?” she inquired, an eyebrow raised.
Steve laughed and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek with his other hand. “Damn straight, we are.”
Ever since he had awoken somewhere in Belgium the morning after the war was done and over with, he kept expecting her to bring up going back to Themyscira, her homesickness always like an undercurrent of energy around her, each mention of the island laced with wistful longing. Had she decided to do so, he knew he wouldn’t blame her, and knew he wouldn’t try to stop her. Maybe this world was worth saving, after all, but it didn’t deserve her. That much Steve knew for sure.
However, he never asked, and Diana nver mention it, and foolishly, selfishly, he hoped against all hope that he was enough for her to stay. That he was enough , period. If maybe they never spoke about it, she wouldn’t want to leave. And Steve hated himself for it, just a little bit. Hated being an embodiment of everything that was wrong with his kind. And he also knew he couldn’t possibly feel otherwise for he wished so fiercely to have a chance with Diana at something he couldn’t put into words just yet. Something that he knew he’d fight all gods to protect, just like he knew he’d follow her to the of the Earth if he had to.
If she'd let him.
Later, in a small room that Steve rented for the night so as to avoid the hassle of London for a few more hours, Diana shrugged off her jacket and rubbed her hands together to warm them up after their walk, her cheeks flushed from the wind and her gaze going to the window overlooking the cliffs and the water below them now and then. And Steve wondered not for the first time if she was seeing the beach she had grown up on, the grey of the North Atlantic replaced in her mind with the bright turquoise of the sea guarding her ‘paradise island’.
He watched her lean fingers pull the pins out of her hair, allowing it to fall down her shoulders in a cascade of black waves, and maybe there was something to the theory that men weren’t inherently multitaskers because, in that moment, he could think of one thing and one thing only.
Diana turned to him, the late afternoon sun tangled in her hair, making it glow like a halo, a ghost of a smile on her lips, and he was very much aware of staring at her like a complete moron as he tried to come up with words. Any words, really. Nice day, don’t you think? Where would you like to go for dinner? He was a grown man, for heaven’s sake, not an awkward teenager. Surely, he could do better than that.
However, his mind was blank, filled with static like an empty radio station. And when she stepped towards him, her hands pushing into his hair, the only thing Steve could think to do – the only thing he could do – was kiss her, urgently, hungrily, like there was still gunfire raging outside their window, counting down the moments they had left.
“Captain Trevor,” Diana murmured against his mouth not without amusement, “are you not out of commission anymore?”
Steve drew back, panting, the world spinning so fast around him he didn’t know how to keep up. He bowed his head to rest his forehead against hers, his fingers curling around her hips as he drew her closer. “No, ma’am.”
Languid and soft in his arms, and so very real, Diana pushed her hands under the collar of his shirt and around his neck. He watched her eyes fall shut, her long fingers gripping the hair on the back of his head while he fumbled with the buttons of her blouse. (Jesus, why were there so many of them?!)
His fingers brushed against the lace bodice of her corset.
“Huh, this is…”
“Fashion,” Diana breathed out, and added, “It’s awfully uncomfortable.”
Steve’s lips quirked. “Well, then we should… ah, fix that.”
His mouth latched on her jaw and moved toward the sensitive spot behind her ear as he tugged at the thin strings keeping the tight garment in place, unlacing it without much grace.
“This thing is a crime against humanity,” he muttered softly.
Diana laughed, his face caught between her palms as she kissed the corner of his mouth, her hands falling to his shoulders to push his shirt down his arms, her nimble fingers sliding under his undershirt and pushing it up and over his head. A giggle rose up her throat at the sight of his rumpled hair, tamped down by the sheer force of need in his eyes.
And suddenly nothing was funny anymore…
“Diana…”
Her name slipped from his lips like a prayer.
The corset fell to the floor, followed by the thin undergarment she was wearing with it while her hands working on unbuckling his belt, making the edges of reality blur before Steve’s eyes. He gathered her to him, kissing her with fervour pulsing in his veins. And then he was spreading her on the sheets, the fading sunlight making her olive skin glow golden.
Naked Diana in his arms was everything, the touch of her hands sending sparks along his skin, shooting all the way through him. He kissed her again, deeply and thoroughly, searing the texture and taste of her mouth into his memory for eternity and every lifetime to come.
“Let me…” he whispered when she tried to pull him to her, his mouth trailing a path down her throat and along her collarbone - slow, deliberate kisses. His lips closed around a rosy peak of her breast as his thumb brushed over the other one. Diana’s breath caught, a soft sound forming into a moan that sent his mind spiralling into a place where she was the center of his entire universe. “You’re wonderful,” he whispered between the pecks, his hand skimming over her belly and slipping between her thighs, those two weeks he had spent barely touching her suddenly feeling impossibly long. “So beautiful…”
He could spend the rest of his life mapping her body with his lips and tracing each line of her with his hands and it still would not be enough.
A hand of her hip, he pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh, making Diana go still, his own body humming with need and want and something else, deep and primal. He glanced up to see her eyes drop shut, a sigh of surrender and acceptance falling from her lips, urging him forward, ready to drown in pleasure. Steve's pulse stuttered in response. Her hand curled around a fistful of sheets and the other one gripped Steve's hair when his mouth found the sweet spot, her back arching instinctively to accommodate his touch.
A hot swipe of his tongue conjured a breathless, Please – a demand, rather than a plea, and his thoughts evaporated in an instant, leaving nothing but shiny delight behind.
A low growl of approval formed in the back of his throat when she guided him where she wanted him most. “Steve…”
He felt her body grow tense. Close .
Steve pulled back, earning a sound of protest in response. He rose over Diana, punctuating his way up her belly and along her sternum with hasty kisses until his mouth found hers again, his hand curling around her wrist and pinning it to a pillow above her head. Wound like a spring, his entire being throbbing with raw wanting, he needed more, all of her, now .
Heavy-lidded and dark with want, Diana’s eyes fluttered open, finding his; a small nod, and Steve’s fingers dug into the flesh of her thigh.
The first luscious plunge into her was bliss, ripping through him like a bolt of lightning, zinging from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. He snagged her mouth in a long kiss, swallowing Diana’s quiet whimper, her hips rising in encouragement, already teetering on the brink. Steve arched into her, finding the rhythm, catching her effortlessly when the universe fell apart around them, her whole body clenching around his, teeth grazing over his shoulder – pain smearing into pleasure, leaving a mark that would stay with him for days; one he would find oddly appealing.
There was nothing about this place that bore any resemblance to Veld and the night before he had almost died. The air didn’t smell of mould and oil lamps and smoke, and there was no desperate urgency now, no aching need to feel wanted and loved. Yet, the silkiness of Diana’s skin under his hands made him think of the snow melting on her hair, and the way his heart kept tripping over itself every time she'd laughed. Of his hand curled over hers ever so gently as they danced even after the town square had emptied, his cheek resting against her temple.
It was a fragile and dangerous thing, this feeling that had started to blossom in his chest before he knew it was happening, the warmth he hadn’t allowed himself to feel toward another person in so long it felt more like something from another life more often than not. And now he couldn't help holding onto it, fiercely, willing that night to stay with them forever.
A shiver rippled along his body as his hips stuttered, the steady rock growing frantic and Diana’s nails digging into his skin as if she was trying to hold him in one piece. And then he was falling into the shimmering oblivion that shattered around them, exploding in a kaleidoscope of pleasure.
“Oh god,” he murmured, breathless, one hand still clutching her wrist, another tangled in her hair.
Diana laughed, the melody of it bouncing off the walls and lighting him up from the inside. She kissed him along his jaw. “Which one?”
Steve chuckled - a silly, happy sound, and nuzzled into her neck before pulling back just far enough away to look at her, her cheeks flushed and her hair fanned out over the pillow, black on white, thinking that he had never felt more alive.
“All of them.”
This is it , Steve thought, breathing her in, drinking up her smile with his eyes, his mind scattered. This is what it feels like to have all the time in the world .
---
Curled into him, half-draped over his body, Diana pressed a kiss below his collarbone before resting her head on his chest, his heartbeat a rapid staccato against her own as she waited for her breath to find itself again.
“Is it always like this? Between men and women?” she asked softly when the universe had settled around them, no longer exploding behind her eyes in a myriad of colours.
“Like what?” Steve’s fingers were threading idly through her hair spilled over her back, the touch of his fingertips on her her skin making it tingle.
She touched a faint scar crossing his shoulder, wondering absently about the story behind it. It was old, healed, a faint reminder of what had happened a long time ago. A story she didn’t know. And in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but wonder if the memory of it hurt still, if there was a mark it left on him that she couldn’t trace with her fingers but that needed to be found, hidden in the fabric of his soul.
“Like it’s too much and not enough, all at once.” Her voice sounded hollow even to her own ears, like it wasn’t hers at all but merely the echo of all questions she didn't know how to ask yet.
He stayed quiet for a long moment, allowing the ticking of the clock on the old dresser to be the only sound breaking the silence in the room, the air around them still and somewhat charged, the jolts of nearly electric current running along her skin with every breath she took.
“No,” he said at last, planting another kiss on the crown of her head. “No, it’s not. It’s only like that when—when something’s real. Some people live their whole lives never knowing this feeling.”
Her fingers flexed on his skin, as if trying to hold on to him. As if being wound around him with her entire body was not enough. She squeezed her eyes shut, allowing her other senses to take over, taking in the steady beating of Steve's heart and the warmth of his skin and the scent of soap and sweat clinging to them both, adamant to hold on to the sensation of being there, in this moment, with him. Diana had never wished for more than she had, always satisfied with the gifts of life and the gods looking after her, but this… this was new, and the fear of almost losing him was raw and fresh in her memory. There were still moments when their small world felt terrifyingly fragile, and there was nothing she could do against the overwhelming helplessness they brought.
It took her awhile to realize that she was not used to losing the people she cared about. The one lesson her mother and Antiope had never taught her for loss was an uncommon occurrence for them.
“I used to wish for it, you know,” Diana murmured when Steve didn’t add anything else. “The war. From the cliffs above the training grounds, watching my sisters learn how to fight, the idea of it looked mesmerizing. Powerful.” Her voice dropped, turning small. “I used to think that there was no glory bigger than the glory of a battle and no honour greater than the honour of yielding a sword.”
“I can see the appeal of that,” Steve muttered, the memories from the battle on the beach making him think of how much, at that moment, he wanted to be one of them, wanted to fly over the sand, landing strikes at the enemy with the precision of gods.
“I wanted more than that, I wanted--” she faltered for a second. “My whole life, my mother was telling me that I came to be because she wanted me so much. So what if…”
“What?”
“What if I wished so much for a war to come that it happened?”
Steve swallowed. “No, you couldn’t have,” he said without a moment of hesitation, shaking his head.
“You don’t know that,” she whispered into his chest.
“I do, actually.” His hold on Diana tightened, a little protective, a little possessive, and his lips brushed to the top of her forehead. He studied her, his eyes moving over the outline of her profile, her long lashes throwing shadows on her cheeks as her gaze remained fixed on something that only she could see. “You have the kindest soul in this whole world, Diana. You’d never bring any harm on anyone, intentionally or not.” A pause. “Unless they don’t know how to dance.”
She snorted and poked him in the ribs with her finger, earning a short laugh in response. The easiness of this moment, the lightness of the air around them left Diana with warm tightness in her chest that burned through her with a desperate need to hold on to this feeling until the end of time.
“Besides,” Steve continued, “if it was that easy – getting things just by wishing for them… Well, there’d probably be more people winning the lottery.”
Diana lifted her head, her brows knitted together in a slight frown. “What’s a lottery?”
“Oh… you buy a ticket and if you’re lucky, you can win a lot of money,” he explained, his eyes roaming over her features.
She tilted her head. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Some people think it will make them happy, I guess.”
“Does it?”
“Maybe. I don't know.”
She scrunched her nose. “That makes no sense.”
“Tell that to the poor sods that keep trying,” he said in a mock-serious voice, his fingers trailing along her cheek, her skin smooth and soft, the pull of her bottomless eyes luring him into the void like a siren’s call.
Gorgeous.
He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, and his mind empty. If he could just look into her eyes until his last breath, he would die a happy man.
It struck Steve then that he had never thought that they would get here, to this moment, to this feeling of consuming contentment that felt like a cocoon in the world that was made, ultimately, of chaos. Never understood how much he craved it, either - so badly and so achingly it had frightened him more than anything he had ever had to go through since the start of the war. More even than the prospect of running through a rain of bullets across No Man's Land or fighting an ancient god. That , Steve Trevor knew how to handle (maybe not the god part, but he could get there perhaps, with enough persistence). This thing with Diana, however, that was making his heart trip in his chest, leaving him breathless and more or less catatonic – now, that was a whole different story.
“So, I have to ask,” Steve started matter-of-factly when Diana arched her eyebrow quizzically and it occurred to him that he had probably been staring at her without saying anything for quite a while.
“Mm?”
“Those, um, twelve volumes…” He paused, twisting a strand of her hair around his fingers and trying oh so hard not to smile; he cleared his throat. “That’s a lot to… measure up to.”
She blinked and bit her lip around a smile, trying very hard not to laugh. Steve positively liked the look of it, of her eyes twinkling and of the smile waiting to spring across her features and light up her entire face. Liked it a lot, if he was being honest with himself. Even if she was laughing at his less than stellar—
“They were not entirely correct,” Diana promised him, shaking her head as she shifted closer to him. She wrapped her arm around Steve and tucked her face into the curve of his shoulder, their legs tangled together, skin pressed to warm skin. “Nothing for you to worry about.”
He chuckled, a low sound reverberating through his body and into hers.
Neither of them remembered about dinner.
---
Steve wasn’t sure at what point exactly the war had become his anchor, something that he understood better than the life before or after it, regardless of much he hated blood and carnage. In some twisted, weird way, it had made sense to him. Maybe it was true, after all, that a person could get used to anything with time. At war, everything was about tasks and missions, and in the end, if he got lucky, and if the gods or whatever powers-that-be were generous, it was worth the effort.
Or so he used to think to get himself through the hours and days and years of what felt like a never-ending nightmare. Sometimes, he even believed it.
Technically, on the other side of the ocean, there was still a place that he used to call home, where his memories lived to this day, if a little faded from time. Memories of barley fields and laughter and a green-eyed girl that had got him to make her promises that he had believed he would be able to keep, and a hole in his heart so big that he was surprised it hadn't turned him inside out when he had been left with nothing but fear of the future.
“Come with me,” he asked Diana one morning while she was making coffee ( I can’t believe this is a commodity in your world and Let me try mixing it myself ) in his tiny kitchen. He watched her hands move, adding a splash of cream, two spoonfuls of sugar (better three; someone had a sweet tooth).
She looked up at him, her puzzled smile soft in the early sunlight, “Come where?”
Steve shrugged, his hand pushing through his hair, a speech that he had oh so carefully mapped out in his head choking him, lodged in his throat. “America.” A pause. “Anywhere. You wanted to see the world…”
Anywhere you want. As long as you’re with me , he wanted to say, but the words died on his lips, selfish in their essence.
She was a goddess, for heaven’s sake! What could he possibly offer her? For all his claims that he was above average - and he still couldn't believe that he had said it out loud - for someone of her calibre, he was probably mediocre, at best. Hell, he probably wasn’t nearly that impressive to most of the world, either. And yet… and yet, there was nothing that Steve wanted more than to hear her laughter, listen to the sound of her voice in the dark, deep husk of her whisper hidden in the shadows telling him stories that sounded as magical to him as his did to her.
For as long as Steve remembered, he was drawn to the sky; to the vastness and endlessness of it, the freedom it embodied, and the feeling of exhilaration unfurling in his chest in the moments when he was soaring so far above the ground that the world didn’t seem real. Not unlike the space around him and the wind on his face. It was drawing him in, calling for him, and resistance was futile – he knew that much from the start. He used to joke that he didn't choose to be a pilot; rather, the sky had chosen him.
It kept choosing him, over and over again.
Until it had left him with a cold, uncertain feeling somewhere deep in his core.
Something had happened in the sky above Belgium. Something outside of his realm of imagination, and no matter how hard Steve tried to ignore it, it was still there, a nagging presence in the back of his mind. By logic and every law of physics that had ever existed, not only was he supposed to be blown up. He should have been pulverized, extinguished without a trace. An explosion that could have wiped out lives of everything and everyone for miles around its epicentre should have exterminated him like he had never existed at all. And if not that, if he had been simply pushed out of the plane by whatever luck or coincidence, the fall should have killed him.
The fact that none of this had happened was making his mind spin and his stomach clench, and more importantly, being here, now, watching the woman that had patched up the broken parts of him without even knowing it be amazed by something as mundane as a telephone felt like a second chance that shouldn’t be wasted. And maybe all he had was this small apartment and his heart – it’s broken but it’s still beating and I glued it back together and you almost can’t see the cracks anymore . And maybe Diana was celestial in every sense of that word and thus deserving of the moon and the stars and everything in-between, but maybe it could be enough. Maybe…
Diana took a sip of her drink, grimacing a little over its bitterness, or sweetness – learning the ways of his world was still a work in progress, and ' More' is not better in every case, Diana. She put her mug down and stepped towards him, Steve’s arms opening for her like he’d been doing it forever. Natural as breathing.
“And then what?” She tilted her face up to his.
“We’ll figure something out.”
---
England was a mess. Most of Europe was in shambles. The victory, however desired, had a bittersweet aftertaste to it – if the loss and devastation weren’t nearly palpable enough, the half-destroyed cities would clue anyone in on what a painful road the world had taken to find peace again.
Chief had left straight away, having nothing left to gain in this land that was already barely scraping by as it was.
Charlie had returned home, too; to a small town in northern Scotland that had little trace of the war that had taken over the world, thus bearing few memories of the years when his life hadn't quite belonged to him.
Of the three of them, Sameer was the only one who had chosen to stay in London, although the few times that Steve saw him after the signing of the armistice, he remained vague about his plans, waving off Steve's questions with a light-hearted I have all the time in the world to think of something . Steve never pressed.
And while Etta was bursting with curiosity that Steve, despite having years and years of experience of doing just that, was finding rather hard to dodge, she had never once brought up his own imminent departure, although it was obvious to him that she knew deep down that he was probably not going to stick around for too long.
She hadn't mentioned anything though, not to him at least. A few times, she had dragged Diana off for some quality girl time, as she'd put it, although it was hard to tell what kind of quality she was talking about. (“No, no, you’re on your own,” Steve raised his hands and even took a step back for good measure when Diana glanced at him for support the first time it had happened, trying to bite back his laughter). To his knowledge, they had gone shopping and out for high tea, and no one got in trouble, and no one got arrested or ended up in a sword fight, so as far as he was concerned, it had been a raging success.
“She thinks I’m a good influence on you,” Diana pointed out later, looking both proud and entirely unsurprised.
“I beg to differ,” Steve countered without hesitation, mock-serious. “Has she met you?” Eyebrows arched, he watched Diana's jaw drop in disbelief. “I mean, if anything, I am the one who's a good influence. Who taught you how to dress and dance and--” She caught his hand and pulled him to her, closing the distance between them and then she pressed her mouth to his, cutting him off mid-sentence. “Yeah, okay,” Steve muttered against her lips when she drew back, breathless and dazed. He framed her face with his hands and tilted it up, his eyes searching Diana's. “Etta’s right. I’m wrong. Where were we?”
If his now former secretary had fished anything of real importance out of Diana, he had no idea. Not that it mattered, in the long run.
“I take it London is growing on you,” he noted jokingly when Diana voiced her desire to stay there for a while.
“It has its charm,” she responded diplomatically, which, said on a dreary and rainy day, came out as a joke.
Steve wondered absently how much of this was her desire to help (not that there was much to do now that the god of war had been defeated and the recovery was more about time than anything else), and how much of it had something to do with her sensing his own hesitation to go back to that patch of land that had his name on it and the memories he never thought he’d have to unpack again. She never said anything, though, and he never offered an explanation. Never brought up the things that could have been but never were; those he didn’t quite want to touch for fear of having them collapse on him like a pile of granite blocks.
Those that made him feel haunted.
---
Diana’s nightmares started six months later. They were filled with black shapeless monsters that consumed her mind, setting the demons inside of it free, the void pulling her deeper still with each breath she took. She would often wake up panicking and out of breath, her mind stuck between restless slumber and uneasy wakefulness as the beasts clawed their way out of her head, trying to consume her whole. She didn’t know where the dreams had come from or how to make them stop, and this sudden development had left her more than a little disoriented.
“Diana?” Steve found her curled in the armchair one night, a book, that he was pretty certain she was holding upside down, in her lap. He grimaced against the light of the reading lamp and rubbed his eyes, awoken by the lack of the familiar warmth by his side. One that had been there a few hours ago when he had gone to bed. He stifled a yawn. “What are you doing?”
She glanced up and shook her head, her eyes tired and her smile a little too thin for his liking. But when she reached for his hand and her fingers curled around his, the comfort of her touch dulled the edges of his concerns, his worry ebbing momentarily.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Diana responded when he leaned in to press a kiss to her shoulder. “Go back to bed.”
“Come with me.”
“Soon,” she promised, dark eyes holding his gaze, soft and reassuring.
Steve nodded; squeezed her hand and padded back into the dark bedroom.
He was hardly one to judge, really. The war… it had left the kind of scars on him that were impossible to see and that took forever and a half to heal, his own mind playing tricks on him more often than he was willing to admit, leaving him stranded between two different worlds. He’d long lost count of the number of backfired cars that had sent him crouching behind garden walls and post boxes, his mind mistaking them for gunshots, his senses going into overdrive.
It took time and effort, and then some more time on top of that to stop living inside a nightmare.
All things considered, Steve wasn’t blind. Diana had stopped sleeping well. A bad dream, she’d say every time he asked, retreating into herself if Steve pressed for more. He didn’t want to push, choosing to believe that she simply needed time--
Until he woke up one night to Diana screaming in her sleep, and the moment he touched her shoulder to wake her, she had his wrist pinned to the headboard of the bed, her other forearm pressed against his throat and her eyes wild. He’d seen it before, in Belgium, when there was no stopping her, the power radiating off of her body in hot, palpable waves. Her breath short and her chest heaving, she could easily squeeze the life out of him in a blink of an eye.
He wasn’t scared, though; wasn’t even concerned at first, more surprised than anything else, his heart pounding in his throat in response to such rude awakening.
“Diana…”
The sound of his voice seemed to break the spell, snapping her out of whatever it was that had been holding her captive. She let go of him abruptly and scooted away, nearly tumbling out of the bed until she was backing away from him, her eyes wide in shock and confusion.
“Diana…” Steve started again, moving toward her. He kicked off the covers, the carpet soft beneath his feet.
“No,” she pressed a hand to her mouth, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he murmured, reaching for her, frantic.
“No, don’t.” She pressed her back against the wall when there was nowhere left to go, inching away from his touch, and Steve dropped his hand. “Don’t.” A sob clawed its way out of her throat. “I hurt you…”
“You didn’t,” Steve assured her quickly, his own panic rising inside him in tidal waves.
“I could have… I could have…”
She faltered and trailed off, her hand curling into a tight fist and her throat working although no words were coming out.
Steve shook his head and took a tentative step towards her. “No. Never.”
The air felt charged around them. He could almost feel her rapid heartbeat from a foot away. Diana inhaled sharply and let out a shuddered breath. He caught her gaze and held it, a steady anchor in the sea of madness. His hand brushed along the inside of her wrist, and then over her palm when she didn’t pull away, his fingers curling around hers. He pushed her hair back from her face, tucked an unruly strand behind her ear. “Look at me.” He cupped her face with his hands, thumbs brushing the frightened tears from her cheeks. “Diana, look at me.” Her lips were quivering, and his heart clenched with fierce, overwhelming protectiveness. “It was just a dream. Nothing but a bad dream.”
She was shaking her head again, but when Steve pulled her to him on a soft, “C’mere,” and wrapped his arms around her body that was trembling with adrenaline and shock, she didn’t protest, merely tucking her face into the curve of his neck. “It’s okay, Diana. It’s over.” He pressed a kiss to her hair, holding her against him until her breathing evened out and her body relaxed.
“Steve… I’m sorry,” she murmured.
“Shh. It’s over.”
He brushed his lips to her forehead and pulled her back towards the bed. She crawled back under the covers and climbed over, what by an unspoken agreement had become his side, to her own and Steve slid in behind her. His arm slipped around her waist, and Diana rolled over to face him, her hand on his wrist that she had held in an iron grip not a few minutes ago. She ran her thumb gently over the red palm-shaped mark she had left on it, her brows furrowed.
“You want to tell me about it?” he asked quietly, tugging her closer to him until she was nestled into his side, her head tucked under his chin and his heart beating beneath her cheek.
“No.” Diana’s fingers curled around a fistful of his shirt as she pressed her face into the soft cotton, allowing her eyes to drop shut again. “I love you,” she whispered almost inaudibly, something that Steve had to hear between his heartbeats so soft it was, the words making his pulse stutter one more, albeit for a whole different reason. “I love you so much.”
There was an edge to her voice, the kind of desperation that splintered his heart.
“Sleep,” he breathed out, tightening his hold on her.
He remained awake long after her breathing grew deep and even, staring unseeingly into darkness.
---
Two days later, Steve woke up in an empty apartment to find a note on the nightstand, pressed down with his watch lest the morning breeze filtering through sheer curtains on the window blew it away, knowing the moment he saw it that Diana was gone.
I’m sorry. Please forgive me .
To be continued...
Notes:
Yeah, by the way - it's all going downhill from here, angst-wise.
But fear not - it won't last forever. Just most of the time.Feedback is always much appreciated :))
Chapter 3
Notes:
First of all, I’m really sorry for taking forever and a half to post this. I did some travelling for something like a month and no writing was done in that time. I do plan to be more consistent with the updates as much as I possibly can :) And second, I’d like to thank everyone for being kind and for the love this story received so far. You’re wonderful!
Italics = flashbacks
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It was a universally acknowledged truth that noticing changes in others was much easier than seeing them in yourself.
It took Steve a few years to realize that something was off. A few more to get worried about it, the way anyone would get worried about the fact that the passage of time had not brought wrinkles to their face or a touch of grey to their hair. It was easy to brush off Charlie’s quips ( Not having to fight for your life is good for you, man ) and Sameer’s comments ( You’re just jealous ) for a while. And quite frankly, it was hardly a matter of concern for Steve in the years following the war. Not when he was too busy putting together the pieces of his shattered life.
After Charlie had moved back home, driven away by memories he didn’t want to hold on to, his letters remained fairly frequent for a while, although their bond was not the same anymore. Steve couldn’t blame him. As close as they had been at some point, the war was something one wouldn’t want to hold close to their heart for too long. If there was a part of the world where he knew he would find peace, he would start running in that direction in a heartbeat.
Sameer was still around, but he had pulled away as well, putting a wall between the past and the present, and his new life was so drastically different from what it had used to be that it was hard for Steve to keep up.
There was a knowing look in Chief’s eyes, one that made Steve’s stomach twist with unease. Like Chief knew something or could see right into Steve's very soul. However, he had never said anything, and Steve never dared to ask, fearful of the answer he might get. The prospect of being left in the unknown suddenly not at all unappealing. And then Chief was gone, too, sailing back to his homeland in hopes of finding a place he could call his own, torn-apart Europe no longer having anything to offer him.
And this was how Steve Trevor found out that he was terrible at moving on.
The ’20s came and went without his noticing, the post-war life taking shape around him, his hopes and dreams finally having a chance to come true. He hadn’t noticed most of it, what with being focused single-mindedly on making it through one day at a time until he lost count of them; until they had started to blur and bend around him, time no longer bearing any meaning.
The ’30s brought more hassle, the throb inside him finally turning into a dull ache could almost ignore if he put some effort into it. A decade and a half – that was how long it took him to stop listening to the conversations around him, his ears straining to catch the familiar husk of Diana's voice, the soft accent seared into his memory; that was how long it took his heart to stop wearing itself thin and his throat to no longer go dry at the sight of dark-haired women on the streets of London, and then Paris, and then Brussels afterwards, and wherever else he happened to be.
Steve Trevor was nothing but realistic. He had never blamed Diana for leaving. As much as it hurt to admit it, he knew better than anyone else that, aside from his endless affection, there was little he could offer her. But what value did it have, really? Which didn’t mean that it stung any less, making him feel like missing her was driving him mad more often than not. Understanding it was one thing. Acceptance, on the other hand… well, it turned out that accepting her decision was something else entirely.
Something that kept him so occupied that he barely even noticed that at the age of 51, he didn’t look a day older than 35.
Until he did.
Until he had found himself in the bathroom one night, staring at his reflection and unable to recognize the face looking back at him. The features were all in place, as familiar as ever, but the total sum of them wasn’t adding up. He touched his cheek, feeling the prickly stubble with his fingertips, and the man in the mirror did the same. His hair was supposed to be streaked with grey, the lines around his eyes were meant to be deeper. It scared him, and yet there was something comforting in being suspended in time. After all, this was what his life had felt like for the past fifteen years – frozen, as if time had stopped.
Ironically, he had never got around to fixing his watch. Couldn’t even look at it anymore after Diana had spent several months wearing it on her wrist every chance she could. It was bad enough that his clothes and his sheets smelled of her for so long that Steve had started to think at some point that he was losing his sanity, that maybe her very essence had seeped into his very skin to stay there for the rest of his life, his mind trapped in the endless loop of memories he wanted to hold on and to forget, all at once.
And so his once most prized possession remained shoved into the drawer of his desk as Steve tried, with little success, to ignore the twinge of sorrow in his gut whenever he laid his eyes on it.
This was not how it all was supposed to end.
When the Second World War rolled around, Steve accepted it with numb resignation, finally admitting to himself that deep down, he had never truly believed that killing the god of war was going to fix mankind. After all, gods or no gods, people were making their own decisions. And sometimes they had to pay for them.
---
London, 1919
“Dance with me,” Steve asked. He was standing by the stove in their sunbathed kitchen one morning, and Diana didn’t resist when he set down the spatula and pulled her to him, surprised and curious.
His arm wrapped around her waist and his hand curled around hers. His face was so close that their noses were almost touching, and the blue of his eyes was so mesmerizing it left her transfixed.
“But there is no music,” Diana pointed out, one eyebrow arched.
The corner of Steve’s mouth curled upwards, his fingers flexing on the small of her back. She could feel the warmth of his touch through the thin fabric of her shirt spreading all over her, the hardwood floor warm beneath their bare feet.
“Of course, there is.”
And before she knew it, he was humming something under his breath, a tune Diana had never heard before but the sound of which reverberated somewhere deep inside her, his body moving ever so slightly, and hers following suit. She could feel his heartbeat close to hers, could feel his breath on her cheek as she rested her forehead against his temple.
It was early still, her mind somewhat hazy around the edges, and her lips stretched into a smile on the will of their own. This was ridiculous, and silly, and it made no sense, and yet, she knew deep down that she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here, swaying to something that wasn’t even music, all because there was nothing quite like the contentment of being cocooned in the comfort of Steve’s nearness.
Diana looked up, her gaze skimming over his ruffled bedhead and the faint shadow of stubble dribbling from his cheeks. Solid and warm and alive in her arms, and so incredibly off-key that it was making her heart nearly burst with tenderness.
“Steve?”
“Mm?”
He was watching her quizzically, expectantly. His body was still rocking almost imperceptibly in place, and his half-smile was pulling her into a vortex of something that she wouldn’t be able to put into words even if she tried. It wasn’t meant to be defined, she thought absently. It was meant to be felt.
Unable to say anything, she reached to brush Steve’s hair back, smoothing it down at his temple, taking in his features, trying to memorize them with her fingertips.
“What have I done to deserve you?” he whispered, a little puzzled, a little mesmerized.
“It's not about what you deserve,” Diana murmured back, even though he clearly wasn’t expecting an answer.
She rested her cheek on his shoulder and closed her eyes. With Steve Trevor, she could dance for a hundred years - barefoot, in a cramped kitchen, with no music playing, and her soul would sing and soar every moment of it.
---
Themyscira, 1935
Themyscira was the same.
And yet it wasn’t.
Crossing the barrier around the island felt like a touch of electric static to Diana's skin that made the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. The chilly air blowing over the sea in man's world was replaced by the gentle breeze that smelled like everything Diana had missed in the time that she had been away. And then all she could see was the outline of the cliffs that she knew like the back of her hand, every nook and crevice of which she could wade through with her eyes closed.
This was the place she had called home for as long as she lived, a place that used to be her entire world, and she had rarely, if ever, wondered about what lay beyond it, always content with what she’d had. And how could she not be? How could anyone not be? How could anyone not appreciate everything that she'd had?
Looking at the familiar landscape and the turquoise waters surrounding her, Diana couldn’t help but feel a pang of longing in her chest. She had missed Themyscira the way one would miss something that was as much a part of them as their own blood flow and heartbeat, intricate memories woven into a canvas of everything that she was. And she realized with a start that when she had left this place nearly two decades ago, she had never truly expected to come back, half-fearful to face the people who undoubtedly thought of her departure as a betrayal, half-certain that she would never find her way back, through the barrier, to a place that didn’t exist for everyone else. Not in a sense that mattered.
Hence the drifter and not a motorboat – she knew that the navigation equipment would not work here; Steve had told her. His compass had gone ballistic when he was trying to figure out his location, and she didn’t want to get lost, even though some part of her wondered if maybe she'd be better off never finding her way here again. Maybe it would have been for the best, Diana had reasoned with herself, if Themyscira remained hidden; if it stayed a magical place where, as a girl, Diana had thought anything was possible and the world was a place full of wonders.
Her mother was waiting for her in the same harbour where they had said their sorrowful goodbyes all those years ago. Ones that had left Diana’s heart so heavy in her chest that she had thought back then that the boat would sink under the weight of her grief, taking her and Steve to the bottom of the ocean.
Hippolyta’s arms closed around her daughter the moment Diana stepped onto the wooden dock, fiercely and protectively, like Diana had been gone for a hundred years. Or like she had never left at all. And for a long moment, it felt like she hadn’t. Her mother’s face remained exactly the same as Diana remembered. Maybe it was in her head. Sixteen years was nothing but a blink for them, a moment to pass without anyone noticing. Yet, Hippolyta’s hands on her cheeks and the smile that she was trying and failing to hold back were giving away the cautious hope for her daughter’s eventual return that she had been harbouring in her heart all those years.
She drew back then and looked Diana up and down properly, taking in her unfamiliar clothing, her loose hair falling over her shoulders and the smile that mirrored Hippolyta's, trembling and teary.
“I’m back,” Diana said softly, somewhat scared of breaking the moment, and Hippolyta nodded slowly, as though also uncertain as to whether this was real or not.
Her eyes flickered over Diana’s shoulder like she had only now noticed the boat that swayed ever so slightly on the waves lapping against the gravel shore, like a whisper.
“You’re alone.”
The statement caught Diana off-guard for a second, and she glanced behind her for a moment as if to make sure that she hadn't accidentally led someone else to this place. If only because of sheer distraction.
“Yes,” she turned to her mother once more, her head tilted in puzzlement. “Should I not be?”
“Your friend…” Hippolyta started and stopped herself. She cleared her throat, her face turning into a familiar mask that was meant to keep her feelings in check. “The one you had left with.”
It wasn’t a question, even though Diana suspected that it was meant to be one. It made her flinch inwardly, as thinking about Steve Trevor always did, filling her soul with bitter sorrow and longing she had no right to carry within her. Not after she had chosen to walk away from him. However, if time was supposed to heal all wounds, it was sure taking longer than usual with her. Time was an odd thing, though. She was not used to being concerned about it in any way whatsoever, and yet the rest of the world seemed to be obsessed with it. Enslaved by it, even. Outside of this place, life was nothing but a race against time.
Diana didn’t know how they were doing it, even though sometimes she wanted so badly to understand it. To be part of that race and know what it felt like. There was something about a sense of belonging, or lack thereof, that simmered in the back of her mind no matter how much she tried to push it away. She wasn’t one of the Amazons, not entirely. Not the way she had come to exist, but she wasn’t one of Steve's people either, and even though it didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, Diana couldn't help but wonder sometimes just what exactly was her place in this world. Which ultimately left her with a sense of profound loneliness.
As for Steve… She had spent so much time teaching herself not to think about him that her mother bringing him up had nearly knocked the ground from beneath her feet. Of all people in the world, Hippolyta was perhaps the last one Diana had ever expected to give Steve Trevor a second thought, what with how their first meeting had gone. All the more puzzling was the flicker of regret on her mother’s face that mirrored Diana's. However, Diana chose not to comment on Hippolyta’s unasked question.
He was better off without her, without all of this, in the world that was his own.
In all the years growing up here, Diana had viewed herself and her people as protectors. Never once had it occurred to her that they could be dangerous to the innocent. And that night… that night sixteen years ago, she could have killed Steve. Could have snapped his neck without even noticing. She could still feel his pulse against her forearm, his breath on her skin as his eyes remained locked with hers, wide in surprise. But never scared. This was what had frightened Diana most of all. He had not been concerned about what had happened, trusting her completely. The way she used to trust him – blindly, with her body and soul, and everything in-between. What right did she have to put him at risk?
The only problem was that his absence had left a hole in her very being, and there seemed to be no way to mend it. Breath after breath, one day at a time. Diana hoped that he was having the kind of life he deserved. That he was loved and wanted and happy. And if she tried really hard, she could almost forget the way her heart still ached with every beat, her memories of their time together as fresh as ever, untouched by time.
“I kept the place the way it was when you had left,” Hippolyta said when Diana stepped into her chambers, her eyes taking in the same bed she had had for as long as she could remember, the same comforter thrown over it, her vanity table against the slightly sloped stone wall, and endless expanse of the sea outside the balcony door, so blue that it hurt to look at it.
Diana turned to Hippolyta. She took mother’s hands and gave them a squeeze. “I missed you.”
Hippolyta hesitated for a brief moment before pulling Diana into a tight embrace. “Welcome home, Diana.”
That night, Diana fell asleep to the sound of waves lapping against the rocks below the palace and the tears drying on her cheeks, unsure of what she was crying for – her relief over being able to come back to the one place where she was still wanted, or the fact that home didn’t feel like home anymore.
---
Life on Themyscira was the same, and yet it was as different as it could be.
Antiope’s death was still hanging over them like a gaping hole that threatened to suck them all into the void of anguish and despair, the kind of loss that would never go away. In the time that Diana had been away, Artemis had taken over Antiope’s place as the General of the Amazon army, but she was cautious to become a true replacement, mindful of the loss that had changed them all in ways they didn't know how to live with yet, the change subtle but present nonetheless. Centuries of training for a hypothetical threat had made the real one feel all the more ominous, looming before them – a when , not an if anymore.
They had asked Diana to step up, to help train the warriors now that she knew what was on the other side of the peace many of them had hoped would last forever. But tempting as it was, Diana wanted to be one of them, not stand above them in any way that mattered. Wanted it more than she ever had. She wanted to know that Antiope would be proud of her, not to take her place.
She was watching the training one day from the ledge above the training grounds, the late afternoon sun burning her skin and her breath still short from her own several hours of dodging arrows and deflecting blows hard enough to shatter steel. Her shield was hanging behind her back, her sword – not the ‘god-killer’, but one of the many that were kept in the Queen's armoury – resting at her hip while her eyes followed the movement of the other Amazons, graceful as an intricate dance.
She felt Hippolyta appear at her side rather than saw her, her mother’s glance also following the elaborately executed kicks and blows and artful maneuvers.
Diana’s fingers tightened on Antiope’s diadem that she was holding in her hands, tracing the star on the front, the smooth metal warm in the sun.
“I hope I am worthy of it now,” she murmured, more to herself than to Hippolyta whose eyes darted down almost on instinct.
“You always have been,” her mother said, proud and wistful in equal measure.
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth? About Zeus, and Ares, and me.”
She turned to Hippolyta, not curious so much as weary, the need for answers pressing down on her.
“The truth can be a burden, Diana. I didn’t want you to carry it the way I had to.”
Diana opened her mouth to protest, to claim that she had the right to know, had the right to be prepared for what had been waiting for her on the other end of the journey she had started on one moonlit night because she couldn’t resist the call of man’s world. A sense of betrayal was still running like electric current beneath her skin.
Would it have changed anything? Would the truth make her see the things differently?" She didn’t know, no matter how much she had tried to imagine it. Probably not. It would probably only complicate things in certain ways, but then there was an issue of honesty, of honour that was ingrained into her since birth. By her mother, no less. That part stung the most, perhaps, a dull ache that was making Diana question everything else she knew about the world, about the Amazons, about herself.
Still, she nodded, the unspoken words dying on her lips. What was done was done; all they could do now was live with their choices.
“Antiope would be honoured if you took her place,” Hippolyta noted, an unexpected edge in her voice making Diana’s mouth go dry. “Nothing would make her happier than you doing so, Diana.” A pause. “The question is, would it make you happy?”
Diana shook her head. “I am not Antiope. I don’t know if I’m suited for it.”
Hippolyta’s eyes remained locked on the warriors, trained to perfection. “It’s not what I asked.”
Diana turned to her, a slight frown creasing her brows. “I don’t understand…”
At last, her mother looked at her, unfamiliar uncertainty pooling in her gaze. “Themyscira is your home. It will always be your home. But they need you more than we ever will.”
The moment felt surreal. “I don’t belong in man’s world.”
It was odd to say it out loud, the truth that she kept turning in her head and rearranging like a puzzle that still formed the same picture in the end. Said to another person, it felt more final somehow. More real than it ever had been before.
Hippolyta’s features softened.
“Maybe so. But this,” her gaze dropped to the women below them, her voice breaking ever so slightly, “will never be enough.”
“I should go back there,” Diana looked away as well, feeling like they were walking on eggshells around something important but unsure what it was. Unexpectedly, she was scared to find out.
“Diana,” Hippolyta called after her, making her daughter stop and glance back. “He was meant to come back.”
The words landed on Diana like a blow that she was too slow to deflect, too dumbfounded to even try. Made her hand curl around the hilt of her sword and she took a breath before she spoke.
“You should know better than to believe in fate,” she shook her head.
Hippolyta studied her for a long moment. “You should know better than not to.”
---
Germany, 1945
There was no such thing as fate, that much Steve Trevor was sure of. If anything, he found the notion childish, if not entirely ridiculous. Fate implied that free will didn’t exist, that every thought, every step they made had been designed and predestined by something or someone beyond his comprehension, and the idea made him feel powerless. If everything was predetermined, if there was no way to break out of this cycle, then what was the point? What was the point of waking up in the morning, of going through motions? If there was no way to change things and fix mistakes, then what was the point of living?
Instead, he chose to find solace in the opposite. In making his own destiny as best he could, hoping against all hope that the nightmare the world had plunged itself into had a better outcome than what everyone was fearing. That they were not, in fact, doomed.
But while he was certain that there was no fate, there certainly was some cruel joke to his situation.
Oddly enough, the hardest part of not ageing was staying unnoticed, moving around before anyone could suspect anything, walking away and severing every bond he had formed in the brief moments when he wasn’t on the run from himself. Pretending to be someone else more often than not. Funny how he used to imagine that once the cannon blasts had stopped exploding across the sky, he wouldn’t need to be a million people at once anymore, and yet now it was all he could be for as long as he existed, however long that might be. Sometimes, it scared him, this half-living. Other times, he felt safe, protected from the heartbreak and pain by refusing to feel anything at all.
The real problem was getting some sort of new documents every now and then, moving up his year of birth, mindful of keeping the fake age close to what his appearance reflected. Sure, he could pass for a 35-year old at 40, but not at 50. And certainly not at 65. This was bound to raise some questions sooner or later, and the world was already jumping from one hysteria to another without so much as a second thought. The last thing he needed was to attract unnecessary attention.
It was the gas, Steve had figured. Must have been. How else was he supposed to explain what was happening to him? He pushed the words ‘gods’ and ‘magic’ out of his mind – not because he didn’t believe it could be the case (and how could he not, after everything he had seen and been through?), but because taking that road hurt more than he could handle at the moment.
And what did it matter, really? Knowing wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t make it any less insane in the world where being frozen in time was anything but normal. He wondered, if a little absently, with the apathy of someone who had accepted their life as it was, if knowing the truth would make any difference. If it would make him more accepting of what was happening, or if it would plunge him deeper into ever-consuming dread. There probably was no right answer here, and at some point, Steve had decided that he was not interested in looking any further. Not yet, at least.
Not that it was his priority right now, anyway.
It was about the Germans again, and he couldn’t help but see the awful irony of the situation.
The new war was brutal, and at times, it felt worse than the first one, even though he could probably chalk it off to the novelty of a new experience and the fading memories from a decade and a half ago that sometimes looked more like wilted flowers pressed between the pages of a book than a recollection of something real. Unfocused and frayed. Granted, he didn’t want to remember it, more than pleased to let go of whatever recollections of the days long gone that were still clinging to his mind like a thin film. But that was the danger of it, Steve had figured. People were prone to forgetting their mistakes. Maybe this was why the world was falling apart all over again.
Most days, he wanted to give up. Walk away and never look back. Most days, walking away felt like the only thing he could do. Knowing that it was something that he knew how to do best made it easier to breathe when his chest was tight and his throat was dry from fear and desperation.
He tried not to think of it right now, as he walked down the corridor toward the office of Commander Himmler, a man who was considered Hitler’s ‘right hand’, the German uniform stiff on his body and cold sweat trickling down his spine. This was no longer about winning – personally, he had long lost any hope for that, what with the world managing to corner itself into the kind of situation there didn’t seem to be an escape from – but about surviving. And if he was lucky, if his calculations were correct and the Commander was taking his usual lunch break with his second-in-command downstairs, maybe there was a chance that Steve could sneak a peek at the plans, or letters, or anything…
His father had passed away five years ago, several months before the war had broken out again, peacefully in his sleep, believing that the world he was leaving behind was a good place. At times, Steve thought that not disappointing him was the one thing that kept him going. At times, it felt enough.
He turned left, listening carefully for voices or footsteps, the doors on either side of him closed and holding nothing but silence behind thick wood panels. He could have been breeding goats right now, he thought, feeling the fine hairs on the nape of his neck stand on ends. He could have been doing anything else – god knew, he didn’t owe this world a single thing.
If he got caught now, if his story ended up not being plausible enough, he would never leave this building, this village, this damned land.
A quick glance over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being followed—
Something barreled into him from the side, pushing him into a dark alcove. Steve’s heart leaped into his throat, nearly choking him, a rush of adrenaline making him weak in the knees. Deaf from the blood roar in his ears, he reached instinctively for his gun, only to have it knocked out of his hand not a second later, a sharp pain spreading from his wrist and up his arm. It took him a moment to realize that something sharp and cold was pressed to his throat. A knife.
And the next second, it all faded away—
He knew that feeling, knew the smell that wrapped around him instantly like a cloak. In the darkness of the alcove, the air was heavy and thick, and with his eyes not yet used to the dimness, Steve felt like someone had pulled a bag over his head, which made him feel like he was suffocating. This was the same feeling he’d had on the streets of Paris and in the alleys of Madrid when he would catch a whiff of the same delicate scent that had lingered in his apartment and on all of his clothes for months after Diana had left. The very same one that had made him think he was losing his mind when he would chase after strangers only to find out that they were not who he was looking for.
Right now, he was once again feeling like someone had pulled him underwater, the air nowhere to be found, and the tip of the blade at his throat had oh so little to do with it.
Steve blinked, his vision adjusting to the semi-darkness and his heart slammed so hard against his ribs that he was certain everyone in a ten-mile radius had heard it, alarming and rapid, and like it was going to break through his ribcage that grew far too small for it by the moment.
A pair of black eyes stared back at him – the exact same eyes that used to hold his entire universe where the stars were forming constellations made of magic. His breath hitched in his throat. He blinked, desperate to shake off this odd trick of his mind. Of all the times, of all the places—
“Steve?”
The blade was gone and the hold on his arm he hadn't even noticed relaxed instantly.
The familiar husk of her voice rolled down him like a tidal wave pulling him into the depths of something dark and bottomless.
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out, her name dying on his lips before he had a chance to speak it. Her gaze was confused, her wild hair tied at the nape of her neck and the ever-present armour hidden under a nondescript coat. In the dim corridor, focused on his mission, Steve wouldn’t have looked at her twice.
Except it was the only thing he could do now, stuck in a déjà vu that was playing on an endless loop in his mind. None of this was real - couldn’t be real - and yet he couldn't give up on that hope.
Diana .
She took half a step back, pressed against the opposite was of the niche that was barely enough to fit them both and stared at him like she was seeing a ghost – a feeling that Steve could relate to all too well. He stared back, expecting her to disappear the way she would in his dreams, no more corporeal than a fantasy. Instead, she came into proper focus, all angles and edges in the shadows, her face unreadable, and the only thing he wanted to look at.
Questions swarmed in his head, forming and falling to pieces without registering with him, half-words dissipating in his mind as he struggled to draw in a shallow breath. Why here, of all places…
“I don’t…” Diana started, a frown forming between her eyebrows, her eyes scanning his face, the same lines that she used to trace with her fingers as if to sear the image of him in her memory for the centuries to come. Unchanged, even after all the years they had not seen one another. She shook her head, and Steve had to swallow a burst of sharp laughter that bubbled up in his chest – a bitter sound that would slash through the air between them and have this house of cards crumble before his eyes if he had allowed it to escape. “I don't understand...”
Well, to be fair, he didn't either.
He glanced down at his clothes, at his polished boots. His knuckles that Diana had slammed into the wall to make him drop his gun were starting to throb.
“Neither do I, believe it or not,” he found himself responding in a choked whisper, his vocal cords still refusing to cooperate. He swallowed, searching for words. For an explanation. “What are you doing here?”
His tone wasn’t unkind, but it was hardly welcoming, either, leaving Diana visibly taken aback. She tipped her chin, composing herself, and there was only so much Steve could do not to reach over and tuck a strand of hair that had escaped her hairdo behind her ear, his fingers itching to touch her, make sure that he wasn't making her up in his head.
“I came to help.”
At this, his lips curled into a humourless smirk that felt unnatural and sharp at the edges. We don’t need your help , he wanted to say. I don’t need your help . The last time she had come to help, she left him with a hole in his soul so big that it still threatened to turn him inside out with every breath he took. Talking to her now, being this close to something that he used to want more than anything in the world, breathing the same air as her was making him nearly tear at the seams.
The sound of footsteps around the corner broke the spell, snapping him back to reality. Steve inhaled sharply, his gaze darting around their hiding place as a dozen comments died on his tongue.
“Come on,” he muttered, slipping back into the corridor and making a beeline for the last room at the very end of it, guarded by massive doors, not needing to look behind to know that Diana would follow, swift and soundless as a shadow.
“What are we looking for?” she asked in a hushed voice the moment they slid into the room and he locked the door behind them, his own eyes darting around the Commander's office. Heavy mahogany desk. Bookshelves lining the walls. Dark-green curtains, thick enough to block out the sunshine, currently pulled apart to reveal a wide balcony on the other side.
Steve hesitated, his thoroughly thought through plan nowhere to be found, wiped away without a trace by the sound of Diana's voice.
“Um… maps. Phone call transcripts,” he muttered. “Notebooks.”
It took him so long to get here - several months of lingering close to Himmler, studying his habits, looking for a chance to do something, to find a way to help… He walked straight to the desk and checked the drawers. Locked. He grabbed a letter-opener from the pen-holder. It was a matter of a few seconds to break the locks, almost too easy. The man trusted his posse though, to a degree. They feared him too much to disobey.
“This?” Diana asked from across the room.
Steve glanced up, and nodded – she was holding a stack of blueprints of sorts. No time to go over them now but this was the only chance he’d ever get so they were going to take everything of value with them. They knew him, they had seen his face, and he was never coming back – might as well not bother to hold back. There was a phone book in the bottom drawer, and he reached for it. Two rolled up maps and a calendar with some markings that might require some decoding, too, but this, again, was a problem for later.
“Steve.”
“One second,” he muttered, flipping through a handful of papers and trying to focus. There was no need to loot the entire office if only he could find something that was actually useful.
“Steve, someone’s coming.”
That got his attention alright.
Across the room, Diana was standing with her ear pressed to the door, an armful of something that he hoped was of help cradled to her chest. Their eyes met, and she nodded ever so slightly, her eyebrows knitted together in concern. And now he could hear it too – faint voices, far enough away to be indistinguishable, but approaching quickly. Granted, they could be heading to one of the other half a dozen rooms but Steve wasn’t going to take his chances.
The gears in his mind shifted.
He crossed the room in two swift strides, and then cursed under his breath – the balcony would be an easy escape, however, there were two officers smoking in the back garden, and there was no way that someone escaping the Commander’s office would go unnoticed.
“Here?” Diana pointed at the window that faced the side of the house, and he gave her a curt nod.
“Can you take these?” he asked, his eyes darting toward the papers she was holding.
Without another word, she shifted the whole load into one arm and pulled at the window. It didn’t budge, the handle either stuck or broken. The voices grew louder. “Stand back,” she whispered, and then her elbow rammed into the glass before Steve knew what she was doing, letting the chilly March air into the room. It smelled like wet soil and snow, so cold it made his eyes start to water.
Shit .
Too much noise. This was not how this was supposed to go.
His head snapped up, the voices on the other side of the door sounding alarmed now. The doorknob jiggled, and he gave a silent thank you to whatever it was that had made him remember to lock it, ignoring the pounding and the loud discussion about whether or not anyone had a key.
“Just hold on to—” Steve started when Diana pushing a few shards of glass out of the way and looked outside, assessing the situation for a moment. However, ignoring his words, she simply stepped onto the ledge and then jumped before he had a chance to finish his thought, landing gracefully on the frozen ground below, somehow missing a patch of thorny bushes, bare this early in the season. Then she looked up at him, still standing in the second-floor window. “Or you can just do that,” Steve muttered and grabbed the gutter pipe with a free hand, hoisting himself up on the windowsill and sliding down along the wall without much grace, his own precious haul held close to his chest.
“Well, that was easy,” Diana said once he had reached the ground, just as all hell broke loose above them.
---
There was no stopping anyone this time around. No trying to, either, and the best Steve could do – the best anyone could do, really – was develop an escape plan. Hence breaking into the offices and hanging on to the snippets of conversations and hunger for any information he could use against the enemy. The idea came to him a couple of years ago, when it had become apparent that he couldn’t keep his own identity without turning into a lab experiment.
Steve pushed the door open and held it for Diana as she stepped into the small apartment he was renting on the outskirts of Berlin (one that was rented by a man called ‘Karl Werber’, to be exact). He tried not to dwell on the technicalities of their escape from Himmler’s mansion in one piece, his ears still ringing with the wails of sirens and the yells of men and his body still abuzz with adrenaline.
“How do I know it’s really you?” Diana asked as she watched him walk towards the desk, the silence of the room suddenly so loud it made his head hurt.
He tried to ignore her scrutiny and suspicion, her eyes boring into the back of his head. It was not a good idea to bring her here.
“You don’t,” Steve caught her gaze and held it, forgetting momentarily how to breathe. He set the papers down, the need to go through them falling down his list of priorities, not at all urgent all of a sudden. “I didn’t ask for any of this, and I don’t have to prove anything to you. Not anymore.”
“It’s not possible,” she said softly, more to herself than to him.
Then go , he wanted to say. Don’t believe it. I wouldn’t either.
Steve strode back to her, watching her hand close around the hilt of her sword. She didn't appear threatened though, and she did not stop him when he reached into the folds of her coat the same way he had done in 1918 on the stairs at the Imperial War Cabinet, searching for her lasso coiled at Diana's hip. He tugged at it, letting it unravel and then grabbed one glowing end of it, holding on tight even though it felt like it could burn his fingers off, so hot it was. Steve gritted his teeth for a moment, willing his voice not to break when he spoke.
“My name is Captain Steve Trevor, a former pilot with the American Expeditionary Forces, Serial number 8141921," he started, his eyes never leaving Diana's. "When you pulled me out of the water on the island of Themyscira, I thought I was dead and you were an angel.” She was still looking at him like she couldn't believe her eyes. His voice dropped, the burning in his hand forgotten. “You have four beauty marks on your left shoulder. When I told you that the Eskimo people had 50 words for snow and wondered why we don’t have as many for love, you said it was because love went beyond any words. Do you remember that?”
He was standing so close now that he could feel the warmth of her body and see the faint dusting of freckles over the bridge of her nose, her eyes dark and bottomless. And Steve was suddenly reminded how much he wanted to see her, the force of missing her and longing for her, and everything that he had spent years learning to ignore rushing back in like a sucker punch to his gut, knocking all wind out of his lungs.
Diana was looking back at him, and it was so hard not to touch her, not to pull the pins out of her air and let it fall down her shoulders, pushing his fingers through it the way he had done so many times before. Steve clutched the lasso tighter to stop himself from doing just that for he knew he would cease to exist if he tried.
“For years, I have been looking for you in every face around me,” he continued in a strained voice, “until they were nothing but a grey mass. Until I couldn’t tell them apart.” A pause. “Is this enough proof for you, Diana?”
He watched her watch him, her eyes roaming his features and taking him in as though she had never seen him before.
“It wasn’t easy for me, either,” she breathed out at last, and he almost missed it, the words drowned in the hammering of his heart against his ribs.
“Deciding to disappear in the middle of the night seemed to be easy enough,” he couldn’t help but mutter back, the bitterness of the words tasting foul in his mouth.
Diana leaned away from him, stricken. She pursed her lips into a thin line and raised her chin, holding his gaze, her eye narrowed ever so slightly. “I didn't know what else to do," she whispered, her voice breaking. “You don’t know what it was like…”
“Because you wouldn’t tell me,” Steve interjected, and shook his head, disgusted with his outburst. He felt so stupid, thinking that they were past this. That he was past this, after all this time…
“What if I had hurt you? What if I had really hurt you, Steve, what if I--” Diana cut off and swallowed, her breath hitching in her throat. “How would I live with myself if that happened?” She searched his face for a long moment, a storm of emotions crossing her features, vulnerable and unguarded. “I only wanted you to be happy,” she murmured when the silence grew so thick and heavy it could be cut with a knife.
Steve let go of the lasso which stopped glowing instantly. A dark coil at their feet.
“I was. And then you left.”
To be continued...
Notes:
This fic will actually pick up pace from here, so hopefully it'll be fun to follow!
Feedback is much appreciated :)
Chapter 4
Notes:
"I didn't meant it to be this long but here we are" - a thrilling saga.
Although I hope than an almost 10k chapter is not something you would mind :) Thank you so much for your love, I appreciate it beyond words!Italics = flashbacks
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“ You are a moron, Steve Trevor .”
There was a kind of exasperation in Etta’s voice that made it hard for Steve to disagree with her. He could see her clearly in his mind, shaking her head and maybe rolling her eyes at him for good measure, undoubtedly disappointed by his obtuseness. God knew he couldn’t blame her.
Yeah well, what else is new? Steve thought but chose not to say it out loud.
He glanced up at the yellow light spilling from his living-room window, the old receiver of a payphone squeezed between his ear and his shoulder as he shivered in the cold that the glass walls of the phone booth provided no shelter from. His senses were so on edge that he could practically hear the wind chassing the dust along the pavement outside. The fact that the phone even worked, when most things in this county didn’t, was a miracle in and of itself.
A shadow moved behind the curtains, and Steve’s stomach twisted into a knot, his gaze glued to the slight sway of the thin fabric. It was so damn easy to imagine Diana moving about his scantily furnished place, curious and maybe just as restless as he was. Which made him wish he’d kept it cleaner. Which made him scold himself for caring, because it wasn’t like it actually mattered in the present circumstances.
“Have you or have you not spoken with her?” he asked again, trying not to dwell on how oddly comforting it was to hear Etta’s voice again, a little relieved by the familiarity of it, a little ashamed of having not found the time to talk to her more often. As far as Steve was aware, Etta was not as closely involved with the war affairs now as she had been the first time around, and once he had pushed away the nostalgia over times long gone, he had found himself being relieved by that fact. She had done enough.
On the other end of the line, Etta huffed. Steve could hear her moving around her apartment – back in London, a few hundred miles and a whole lifetime away from where he was. “ I have not, but it’s what you should be doing. Instead of calling me at… half past midnight .”
He winced. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize it was so late--”
“ That’s not what I meant, Steve .” There was a long pause, and after a few seconds, he thought that they must have been disconnected, wondering if he should dial the number again or leave Etta be. Until she spoke again. “ You need to go there and fix whatever happened between the two of you. God knows you’ve been pining for her long enough .”
Steve let out a sharp exhale and rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t been…” He trailed off, too tired to argue.
“ Is she really there? ”
Unless I made her up, he thought. “I think so.”
“ Are you okay? ” Etta asked in a different tone, and the simple concern all but snapped him in half.
“Yeah,” Steve breathed out. “I better let you sleep. Thanks, Etta.”
“ Steve? ” she called out before he had a chance to hang up. “ Take care .”
The line went silent before Steve could say goodbye.
He let out a long breath and returned the receiver into its cradle. He hadn’t seen Etta in years but hearing her voice had stirred a long-forgotten feeling of belonging in his chest. Longing for things he had no right to miss. Not after he had essentially done to her and Sameer and Charlie what Diana had done to him, walking away when the alternative had become unbearable. This was not the first time he had wished that everything was different, but just like before, he was not certain if there was anything he could have done that would have made things better.
“I didn’t think you’d come back,” Diana said when he stepped through the door some pacing and a million half-formed thoughts and questions later, his insides clenching at the sound of her voice.
“This is my home,” Steve responded evenly as he shrugged out of his jacket that had proved to be entirely useless against German winters and hung it on a peg by the door, ignoring how dry his throat had grown in a faction of a second.
When he turned to her, Diana was studying the room around her. What little was there to attract her attention. And in that moment, Steve saw the place through her eyes – without the old books and photographs that used to fill his apartment in London. His grandmother’s clock wasn’t sitting on the mantelpiece, and her knitted quilt wasn’t draped over the back of the couch. And if it wasn’t for some spare clothes that Steve kept in the chest of drawers in the bedroom and several pieces of cutlery in the kitchen, no one would be able to tell that anyone lived here at all.
She didn’t look at him when she spoke, “No, it’s not.”
---
It was the light that awoke Steve a few hours later, a faint strip underneath the bedroom door. It didn’t really bother him, per se, but it was impossible to ignore. All those years of living on his own had made him too aware of another person’s presence this close to him. He suspected that he would feel that way around anyone, but the sensation was now amplified by the knowledge that the person was Diana.
Earlier, it had somehow been decided to postpone the inevitable conversation till morning, on account of how their day had been long as hell. However, Diana refused his offer to take his bed, claiming that the couch – old and lumpy and decidedly uncomfortable – would be more than enough for her, thank you very much. Steve insisted because she was a guest . When he had said that, she flinched a little as if he’d struck her, making Steve wish that he hadn’t opened his mouth at all.
He didn’t have it in him to argue after that, the mere idea of being separated from her by only a door was enough to leave him jittery, and twisting and turning in his bed that had suddenly gotten too big and too cold and too hard and—
Steve let out a long breath and rubbed his eyes, his head pounding from exhaustion and the million things that he couldn’t stop thinking about. He kicked away the thin blanket that was of little help against the drafts snaking in through the cracks in the window frames and climbed out of the bed, the floor cold under his bare feet. It felt odd to not be at ease here. Diana was right, this was not his home. Yet, it still was the only place where he didn’t need to pretend to be somebody else and, these days, that counted for a lot.
His hand paused on the doorknob, his heart tripping over itself momentarily. Maybe she just forgot to turn off the lights…
Diana was sitting by his desk near the window, very much awake. She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye when he stepped out of the bedroom and looked up, and for a long moment, they simply stared at one another across the space made of miles and decades and thousands of words they'd never got to say.
Her hair was down and falling over her shoulders in heavy waves, the thick wool coat that had been hiding her armour earlier draped over the back of the armchair in the corner. And even though the sleepwear that Steve had offered her was left untouched on the armrest of the couch – something that he was both grateful for and regretful about - she still looked soft around the edges. A little tired, too, and so much like what he used to wake up to every morning that it left him with a pang of fierce longing in his chest.
Steve’s hands curled into fists at his sides, fingers itching to touch her, run over every line of her body and learn her anew. He felt his cheeks grow hot, ashamed of his foolishness, and dropped his gaze, grateful for the dimness of the reading lamp and the ten feet of space between them.
Some things never changed.
It didn’t come as a surprise that Diana presence somehow hurt even more than her absence ever had; the dull throb somewhere deep inside him a familiar feeling that he had grown way too accustomed to for his liking.
He cleared his throat and shifted from foot to foot, antsy and on edge, too tired to focus properly on anything, but too wired to sleep. Maybe this was why she was up as well.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Diana hesitated for a moment and then looked down at the papers strewn over the desk before her – their earlier haul. “Couldn’t sleep,” she responded softly as though there was someone else she might have disturbed otherwise. “So I thought I would…” she trailed off with an uncertain half-shrug. “To be honest, I have no idea what I’m looking at here.”
It was late, and Steve's eyes felt full of sand and his head buzzed in that overly-exhausted way that he knew he was going to pay for later.
He should have turned around and gone back to bed right there and then. (He should have found her another place to stay, period.) Instead, he ran his hand over his hair, either smoothing it down or ruffling it up even more, and walked over to the desk, mindful of Diana’s shield propped against one of the chairs and her Lasso resting atop of it, trying hard not to look directly at her.
Like he could get blind if he stared for too long.
Like she was the goddamned sun.
Steve reached for another chair to pull it closer to the desk but then reconsidered, choosing to perch on the couch armrest instead, leaning forward to study the map spread before her, ignoring the encrypted transcripts for now. They might require some proper brain power to deal with; more he had at the moment.
This time around, having learned a lesson or two from the war that was meant to end all wars, Steve had a rule – no thinking about any of this at night. Trapped in a never-ending nightmare of fighting and running and living through one carnage after another had started to take quite a toll on him, the war wearing him thin. Losing sleep over something he had no control over was impractical at best, and downright stupid at worst, and frankly, he was getting tired of being stupid.
And yet, here he was, going against logic and the basics of self-preservation, aware of the danger of fatigue and yet neglecting it anyway. All it took was for Diana to make an appearance in his life again and turn it upside down like he had no say in it whatsoever.
Not that he ever harboured any illusion that he had. Not when she was involved.
“It’s a maneuver map. Russian. Supplied by the German intel, I believe,” Steve explained, finally taking a proper look at what they had managed to escape with. “You know, how they plan to move their troops and…” he paused and cleared his throat. Right, a warrior . “You probably know all about those things.”
Diana’s finger traced one of the many lines marking the position of borders along the front. “We do it differently,” she offered absently, her brows furrowed ever so slightly. Steve nodded, watching her while she was busy studying the map. Which made him wonder where she had been all this time. Which made him wonder, period.
“Yeah, so…” he started again, shifting his own gaze back to the map.
He explained to her that with the direction the war was heading, his main job at this point was finding information on the offence planned by the Germans, and clearing the civilians, particularly those doomed to end up in concentration camps, out of the way. Half the time they didn’t believe him. Sometimes they thought it was a setup, mistrusting of anything and anyone by now, too tired to carry on the fight. But there were lives that he had saved, and those meant something.
Officially, he was supplying the British with any scraps of information that he could get his hands on in hopes of making a bigger impact.
Unofficially, this was what Steve had been doing these past four years.
Come to think of it, his role right now was hardly different from the one he'd had during the previous war. The only difference between then and now was, perhaps, that he wasn’t flying a plane.
“Concentration camps?” Diana echoed when he finished, confused.
Not now .
Steve scrubbed his hand down his face, heaving a weary sigh. There was a lot about his kind that he wasn’t proud of, slavery and discrimination being high up on that list. But the camps were undoubtedly the most inhuman and inhumane thing that had ever happened to this world. And to say that he was ashamed to bring it up with someone who used to believe in goodness of all people was a monumental understatement. At times, he couldn’t help but think that they didn’t deserve to be saved by someone like Diana after all.
“I’ll—I’ll explain later,” he shook his head.
She didn’t press, but her expression remained determined. “Surely there is more that can be done,” she frowned, watching him pensively.
He rubbed his eyes, feeling the weight of the day press down on him. No, not the day. The past four years that had drained him to the core. “I’m only one man,” he said, his voice weary. Which wasn’t entirely correct, per se. However, his commanding officer didn’t know even half of it, deeming Steve as nothing but a spy, and thus eliminating any support in anything else that Steve was trying to achieve.
“Not anymore," Diana said decisively.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked quietly, meeting her gaze for the first time. “This is not your battle, Diana. You don’t owe us anything.”
She studied him for a long moment. “Because I can help. There’s always a choice, right? To do something or to do nothing. It was what you said," she repeated his own words back to him, something that Steve had long forgotten about. “I can do something.”
At last, he nodded. Then turned back to the map. “This is a new one because this area here is still marked as ours.”
“Here?” Her eyes followed the line he was pointing at, her fingers brushing briefly against his, and Steve jerked his hand away as though her touch burned him – something that didn’t escape Diana’s attention. She drew her own hand back as well and stared straight ahead. “Do you really hate me this much?”
The question felt like a sucker-punch, knocking all wind out of Steve, making his throat close up, the air between them thick and heavy.
“You’re hurt,” he blurted out.
“What?”
Steve’s gaze fixed on a long cut on the outside of her arm, running from her wrist halfway to her elbow, red and raw, no longer bleeding but looking awfully painful nonetheless. His brows knitted together. “How'd that happen?”
Diana turned her arm to look at it. “I… I don’t know. Must have been the glass.”
“I’ll get something to clean it up,” he muttered, getting up, somewhat grateful for the excuse to change the subject. The way the conversation was headed, he wasn’t sure he wanted to get to the end of it.
She shook her head dismissively. “It will heal.”
“It can get infected--”
“Steve.”
As if not hearing her, he crossed the room, which required no more than two steps to get to the kitchen where he kept his first-aid kit – a military bag with bare necessities, at this point. Some gauze and dressing pads, a strong-smelling antiseptic that burned like hell when it came in contact with skin and a handful of other things. He couldn’t remember the last time he needed to use anything more than a bandage. Maybe he needed to restock it properly, in the light of recent events, and—
His fingers clutched the bag as he tried hard not to feel this… this odd warmth in his chest. Ice breaking, his armour cracking, its jagged edges scraping the fabric of his soul.
She was still sitting at the desk – he might never be able to sit in that chair again without imagining Diana in it – watching him fumble with the zipper with an expression Steve couldn’t quite read. Something between endearment and exasperation and Can you please do as I ask for once? He chose to focus on the task at hand lest he overthink something that didn't require overthinking.
“Steve…”
“Allow me.”
He lowered down onto the armrest again and reached for her hand, turning her wrist gently and struggling to keep on breathing properly, although it was not the cut itself that had unnerved him – on the battlefield, he had seen things he knew he would need several lifetimes to forget. A person torn apart or turned inside out was not something easily erased from memory. Right now, though, it dawned on him that he had never once seen Diana hurt. Not anything beyond a bruise or a scratch that would disappear before his eyes.
Invincible.
Unbreakable.
A goddess .
It was like everything about this day was meant to be wrong somehow.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered when she tensed at the touch of the antiseptic to the gash on her forearm. “We need to… you wouldn’t want it to get infected,” he repeated, uncertain if it even mattered. Maybe she couldn’t be affected by any of that, to begin with.
Her fingers flexed a little while he cleaned the cut. He could feel her eyes on him and didn’t dare look up. Diana’s skin felt smooth and soft and warm against his calloused touch, her pulse tripping ever so slightly under his fingertips, and it was pretty damn hard to pretend that he couldn't feel it.
“It will be fine,” she said softly, and he wondered if she did it just to fill the pause hanging between them.
Steve wrapped a sterile bandage around it, fighting through a strong sense of déjà vu, his mind springing back to the day on Themyscira when it was he who had been bandaged in the healing caves underneath the castle. He remembered the scent of some oil, strong but not unpleasant, and a cool touch of an ointment that the woman whose name he never found out had applied to his cuts even though she probably didn’t have to. He had been a prisoner. They didn’t have to care.
“Now it will be.” He secured the bandage and pulled away from Diana, finding it hard to keep avoiding looking at her. Such a fool. “How did you find me?” he asked at last, unable not to.
Diana studied his handiwork for a few moments, not finding any faults with it, it seemed. “I wasn’t looking for you,” she replied after a while, and he couldn’t tell if he was disappointed or relieved by her words. Her eyes found his. “I didn’t think you’d want me to. I was looking—I saw Sameer.” That would explain it, Steve thought. “He said he hadn’t heard from you in a while.”
“It’s better if they stay out of it,” Steve responded, burning with a desire to know if Sami had been the one to bring him up in a conversation, or if Diana did. “All of them, they’re better off without being involved again.”
“And you?”
A wry smile flickered across his face before Steve could hold it back. “It’s not like I have anything else to do.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, but stopped herself and pressed her lips into a thin line instead. “Sami told me about Hitler.” Her gaze darted quickly toward the lasso. “I came looking for answers.”
And just like that, Steve remembered that Hitler was, in fact, expected to be at the mansion this week. Except his plans had changed last minute, which, ironically, played out in Steve’s favour – without the Fuhrer, there was less security around. The fact that they had managed to get out of there alive was all thanks to the fact that Diana’s initial plan had sort of failed.
“He’s not another relative of yours, is he?” Steve offered. The first joke he’d allowed himself, and he could have sworn that her lips quirked a tiny bit.
“It crossed my mind, yes,” Diana admitted, not without a hint of amusement.
His eyebrow crept up in genuine curiosity. “Is he?” Diana shook her head, and for a moment, he felt foolish – like he was the one being insane asking that question. As if he hadn’t seen her fight an actual god before. Steve cleared his throat. “Hitler is not Ludendorff. It’s more complicated than that.”
“Than what?”
“You thought that killing Ludendorff would change everything.” He stuffed his scant medical supplies back in the bag and zipped it shut, desperate to do something that didn’t involve looking at the woman sitting before him, aware all of sudden of the fact that he was only wearing a loose shirt and, well, underpants, feeling inappropriately underdressed compared to her. “It’s different now. Many have tried to come after Hitler but this war—it’s bigger than just one person. It’s politics. Japan is involved. Austria, Russia…” he trailed off with a shrug. “There are people who benefit greatly from this mess.”
“It wasn’t about Ludendorff the last time. It was about Ares,” Diana reminded him.
Steve glanced up at her. “But it’s not now, is it?”
She shook her head. “There must be something… something that can be done to stop it.”
“There is something. Helping is something.”
It felt like a lie even coming from his own mouth, and for a moment, he almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Who the hell was he to believe that he could stop something that millions of people and multiple countries couldn't?
Maybe there was no way out. Maybe they were all doomed to die.
“You never answered my question,” Diana murmured when he stood up once more.
“I think we need to have some rest.” Steve met her gaze. Held it, almost daring her to ask him again.
She didn’t.
Later, when he was dozing off at last, sometime before dawn, he could have sworn he heard the door open and close, half-scared and half-certain that she would be gone when he woke up. However, a few hours later, when the harsh sun streaming through the uncurtained window dragging him out of his fitful slumber and he stumbled into the living room, rubbing his eyes that felt like someone had scrubbed them with sandpaper, Diana was fast asleep, curled under her cloak on his old couch.
Maybe he had dreamed it up, Steve thought, watching her sleep, her breathing deep and even.
Or maybe he was still dreaming.
---
London, 1919
The light was grey when Diana woke up one morning, just after dawn, to the white noise of a slight drizzle pattering against the windowsill and the palpable absence of the familiar warmth next to her. She loved the rain, the soft rustling of it against the streets and rooftops, like a whisper; like the world telling her secrets that weren’t meant to be shared out loud. For all the luscious green perfection of Themyscira, the moodiness of the weather in man’s world fascinated her beyond words.
The room was veiled with shadows lingering in the corners.
Diana rolled onto her back, blinking sleepily, her hand brushing against the cool sheets next to her.
“Steve?” She rubbed her eyes, the fog of a dream she could no longer recall clinging to her brain like a thin film.
Another moment passed before he appeared in the doorway, sporting a raging bedhead, his smile brighter than sunshine, soft and all hers. Diana felt her own lips tug up at the corners in response as he crossed the cold room, walking toward her.
“Hey.” Propped on one knee, he leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Sleep. It’s still early.”
Her hand curled around his wrist. “Where did you go?”
“Coffee,” he grinned. “Want some?”
She tugged him down to her with the tiniest shake of her head. “Stay with me.”
Steve pushed a strand of hair from her cheek, his smile growing so tender it hurt to look at it, and then slipped under the covers, curling around her like a shell. He let out a breath, folding Diana into the curve of his body, his bare chest warm against her back and his breath tickling her neck. Perfect fit, he would joke every now and then, albeit in somewhat… different circumstances most of the time. She couldn’t agree more.
He tucked her closer to him, his lips brushing her shoulder. “Do you miss it?” His whisper was so soft Diana almost missed it. “Your home?”
She did. More than she was willing to admit even to herself. Her whole existence had been tied to Themyscira for as long as Diana breathed. It was in her blood and bones, maybe someplace deeper than that, even.
Turning her head slightly, she kissed the inside of his bicep that her head was resting on; traced her hand along his arm, lacing their fingers together. She looked up just enough to see the line of his jaw, his face obscured by the shadows. When Steve was this close, she could feel his heartbeat, barely able to tell it apart from her own. Warm and real and solid and alive.
“Sometimes.” A pause. “But this is where I want to be,” she murmured, feeling his grip tighten on her.
“Sleep,” Steve repeated against her temple.
And the rain kept on falling…
---
Berlin, 1945
The war was ugly and brutal, and at times, Steve couldn’t help but think that mankind had lost its human face completely, revealing something entirely monstrous underneath it. Half the time, he felt like they were taking one step forward and two steps back, every small victory leading to more destruction.
More often than not, it felt like they had already lost.
Steve knew that the Germans would come after him, and when they did few nights later, he was prepared.
He was done here anyway, it was time to do something with the information he had retrieved. The enemy decidedly did not like to share. And they certainly had no intention to let Steve get away with it. They had seen him, and he had no doubt that it took them no time to single him out among the other officers who had had access to the Commander’s office. After all, he was probably the only one who had never come back.
“Come on, quiet,” he urged Diana as they climbed down the fire escape while the SS officers pounded on his door, yelling for him to open it, the precious papers tucked under his coat and the rusty metal of the fold-out fire escape ladder rough against his palms.
“Who are they?” she asked in a hushed whisper when he landed on the cobbled alley road, drawing her back until their backs were pressed against the cold brick wall.
His eyes darted up and down the alley. They would not be able to cross the city, not with morning so near. The sky had already started to get pale-grey at the horizon, brushing against the rooftops. They would have to circle around and hope to fly under the radar of the ever-present patrols. And after that – France.
“Some guys you don’t want to meet in the middle of the night,” Steve muttered, his eyes darting towards the opposite end of the alley as he started to run in that direction. It wouldn’t take the officers long to break down the door and find the fire escape, but with any luck, he and Diana had a few minutes to put as much distance between them and the Germans as they could.
Behind him, the staccato of her footsteps was the only sound in the stillness of the night.
“But we could just…” she started, nearly bumping into him when Steve stopped at the end of the alley and peeked into the street, illuminated by a row of dim streetlights. “I could--”
Fight , he finished for her mentally.
“No,” he shook his head, glancing at her. “Better avoid that kind of attention.” He looked past her shoulder. The voices were already spilling from the upper floor and into the narrow space between the old buildings. “For now,” he added under his breath when Diana opened her mouth to protest. “Let’s go.”
If they could put a few streets between them and their pursuers, it could give them a chance to come up with an actual plan. There was nothing uncommon about night raids, these people clearly knew what they were doing, catching their unsuspecting victims off-guard. Unfortunately for them, Steve had seen it coming. He tried very hard not to think of everyone who did not.
“Steve.”
There was a busy street two blocks away from them, never empty even at this hour, especially with the bakeries and post offices that opened before dawn lining each side of it. In less than 5 minutes, the two of them could get lost in the crowd and be done with it.
Steve snapped his head up when Diana called his name just in time to see two black figures rounding the corner ahead of them, massive rifles clutched in their hands, their heads turning as they scanned the streets and porches, looking closely into every nook and crevice between the buildings. There were more of them than Steve had assumed initially, cold sweat trickling down his spine despite the winter chill.
Shit .
“Let me…” Diana started, her hand reaching for the sword fastened behind her back, her shield already clutched in her hand, eyes darting between the alley they had left a minute ago and the two men walking fast in their direction, fading in and out of sight as they moved from one street light to another.
There was no time for another plan, really. There were too many of them.
He turned to Diana, moving closer to her, his arm sliding around her waist. “Do you trust me?” Steve murmured and then drew her to him without waiting for an answer, his lips capturing hers, fingers curling around a handful of her cloak, holding her close. She stilled for a moment, surprised, and for a brief second, Steve was overcome with a sudden panic – mistake, mistake, mistake! – certain that he would be the first one to be tossed a hundred feet into the air. But then she leaned into him, relaxing into his touch; her hand found his cheek, fingers trailing along his jaw, slipping around to grip the hair at the nape of his neck.
The world fell away, shattering against the sheer force of Jesus Christ, finally! The German officers walked past them, their heavy boots hitting the pavement with enough force to leave dents in the cheap concrete. Through the blood rush in his ears, Steve heard faint laughter and a low whistle meant for the two of them, but by then, it hardly mattered. Diana tasted of warmth and memories, and sunny mornings on the banks of the River Thames and laughter and light, and he thought that he would walk through a thousand wars if he had to, just to have this moment, here, now, his fingers carding through her hair as her lips parted for him, deepening the kiss.
“I think they’re gone,” Steve murmured soundlessly a long while later, breathless and dizzy, leaning his forehead against her temple for a moment as his heart raced ahead and their breaths puffed out in small clouds.
“What?” Diana looked up, her gaze confused and slightly glazed over. Even in near-complete darkness, he could see the colour on her cheeks, and it was pretty damn impossible to resist the temptation to trace her face with his fingers, brush away that unruly curl that kept falling on her forehead. So he didn't resist it.
“They were looking for one man, not for a couple,” he breathed out, trying to gather his thoughts together once more. “They haven't seen you, earlier. I don’t think.”
Her hand dropped from his chest, his skin instantly missing the warmth of her touch. “I see.”
She drew back, stepping away from him, and looked away.
And maybe Steve saw too much into something that wasn’t actually there, but for just a moment, he could have sworn that a flicker of disappointment flashed across her features, gone before he was sure it had ever been there at all.
He didn’t allow himself to dwell on it.
---
One nameless village after another, infrequent phone calls with his commanding officer and the never-ending rain pelting down on them. The world looked like it was made of grime and sadness and blood and pain, a hopeless colour that left Steve drained and weary, feeling like he was a thousand years old. A few days on the road, and he was starting to feel like his bones were straining under the weight of the things he couldn’t fix.
“I’ll take the first watch,” Diana said from the other side of the campfire they had made one night, pulling him out of his thoughts.
There were close to Austria’s border, not more than a mile away from what used to be a village only yesterday. The air still smelled of fire and dust and everything that Steve chose not to think about when they had reached it even though the rain that had fallen the previous night had dulled the intensity of it. Tried not to think of life filling it before bombs wiped the houses off the face of the earth. Diana didn’t say anything as they passed it, keeping close to the forest in case someone had stayed back to loot whatever was left of it. Her expression betrayed her, however, grief-stricken for what she couldn’t stop.
“You barely sleep,” Steve noted – a question that wasn’t a question. On the other side of the dancing flames, Diana’s face was streaked with shadows, barely recognizable and entirely unreadable.
It had been a couple of weeks now – a couple of weeks of dancing around one another, pointedly not talking about what had happened between them after the first war. Of pretending that the past stayed in the past and ignoring that weird thing hanging between them – unsaid words, unasked questions, the things Steve wanted to know but didn’t dare bring up, half-scared that Diana would answer, half-worried that she wouldn’t. Pretending that the kiss in Berlin never happened.
It was odd enough that she hadn’t left. Not yet, at least. There was nothing in this godforsaken land for her, nothing worth fighting for. Steve kept asking himself what was it that kept him going, but the answer never came, and moving forward felt better than doing nothing at all. And so when Diana followed him, he didn’t question it. There was comfort to being around her that calmed storms raging inside him even though it hurt as hell half the time, too. He wondered if this was better or worse than not having her here at all, but he knew that this kind of thinking was a path that could lead him to madness. It was safer to steer clear of it.
“They never go away,” Diana said after a long pause, her voice so soft that the sound of it almost got swallowed by the crackling of the fire licking the dry twigs. “The dreams. The memories.”
Steve pushed another log into the flames, sending a burst of sparks into the chilly night air.
He looked up, wishing she would look back at him. Wishing that he could read her as easily as he used to, and somewhat grateful that he couldn’t, scared of what he would see. A reflection of his own life, perhaps.
“Don’t let them get you,” he muttered, staring into the fire, his voice hollow. He wanted to ask her more, get her to tell him what it was that had made her push him away the way she did. Wanted to take them both apart and put them together, but this time the right way, making sure that all the parts fit. Instead, he uncurled from his crouch and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree across from Diana, only now noticing that he was shaking from the cold. His eyes locked with hers. “It’s what they want, but you can’t let them win.”
“How do you make them stop?” Her gaze on him was almost palpable, making Steve’s skin prickle.
“You don’t.” He couldn’t lie to her. Never had before and wasn’t about to start now. “You become friends with them. And hope they’ll let you be.”
Neither of them slept that night.
---
Paris was in disarray.
Under the German occupation, it was a ghost of the place it used to be. There was some cruel irony, Steve thought, to how the last time he’d been there was with Diana as well.
In his mind, the trees along Champs Elysees were in bloom and the cool air was filled with the smell of roasted chestnuts sold on every corner. (“Why would you eat this?” Diana had asked when he had bought a bag of scalding-hot chestnuts for them to share, and Steve had laughed. “Just try one.” ) Her hand had been warm in his as they walked narrow back streets and climbed up the Montmartre hill, all the way to the Basilica of the Sacre Coeur, and their stolen kisses had tasted of promises and something bigger than the world itself.
“You know, people call Paris the most romantic city on earth,” Steve had noted, standing behind Diana on the balcony of the Basilica, his hands resting on the stone railing on either side of her as the wind kept throwing her hair in his face with every angry gust. Up there, it had been malicious and moody, and he moved closer to shield her from it and keep her warm.
Diana had snorted, her eyes scanning the rows of grey houses stacked along the winding streets like domino pieces. “I suppose it means that mankind doesn’t know what romantic is.” She had turned to him, one eyebrow arched, her face so close that their noses touched.
Steve had smirked, amused, before he'd leaned in to kiss her. “I suppose you can show me the difference.”
But that was then, in another lifetime, in another universe where they had made promises they meant to keep and the world had been a different place.
Now, the city of dreams was grey and bleak and faceless, filled with screaming and gunfire and blood. It no longer smelled of flowers, but of dust and fear and smoke. Now, Steve was running down the wide street – must have been running, his own footsteps inexplicably loud and resonating through his body, his lungs screaming for air - even though the whole world seemed to have skidded to a halt and his mind had turned blank. Like in a dream, he thought absently as his hands moved on a will of their own, pulling the trigger of the heavy rifle, the kickback from every shot pushing painfully into his shoulder, and then reloading it again and again until his fingers were numb. Like moving through water.
The plan had formed along the way. After 4 years, France was suffocating under German occupation, running out of supplies and hope. However, the German army was starting to get desperate in the past months, their progress not as rapid as it had been in the beginning, their losses greater than anticipated and the resistance of the opposing armies far more fierce than they could have imagined. In their attempts to hold strong on the front lines, they had let their guards down here, Paris being their weakest post – or so Hitler referred to it in one of the letters that was never meant to end up in the hands of a spy.
If they could liberate France, the whole defence strategy of the allies would change.
And there was only one person who could truly make it happen.
Steve slowed down, pushed aside by someone running behind him, the blood rush in his ears muting the screams and angry yells and the crumbling of the stone walls somewhere in the distance.
Mayhem. There was no other word for it.
He inhaled sharply, hungrily, and turned around, his eyes scanning the crowd in panic, soldiers and civilians, two armies with only one victory ahead of them. All or nothing this time. Paris was not giving up again.
And then he saw her… The lightning snaking along Diana’s bracelets, her eyes closed for a moment as though she was calling for something from deep inside her, a figure of utter stillness in the chaos that couldn’t stop moving, so bright it hurt to look at her for more than a few seconds at a time. Steve couldn't remember seeing her do this before, on the night when he had died, but he must have, he was thinking now. He must have because the vision was familiar in the way only a memory could be, his own fingertips prickling as though the air around them was charged.
Someone fired at her, and Steve watched the bullet fly and then disintegrate before it was a chance to reach her, her armour reflecting the light of the faraway explosion. She was a force, infinite power, a goddess made of light, and when she snapped her eyes open, the army closing in on her flew away like a pile of leaves blown off by the wind. The aftershock of it threw Steve against the wall, knocking all air out of him. He gasped, more surprised than hurt, and gritted his teeth, his slick with sweat hands gripping his rifle so tight that his knuckles had gone white.
He aimed and fired again, his mind empty and his hands moving on autopilot. If they could make it through the next second-minute-hour , then maybe all of this wasn’t in vain. Maybe they still stood a chance, after all.
If the French army was surprised by the arrival of sudden reinforcement, they didn’t seem to care, moving forward, determined and – for the first time in years – hopeful.
“Steve!”
A flash of something bright darted past him, Diana’s lasso knocking a soldier that had a barrel of his gun aimed at Steve’s head off his feet. Steve spun around and hit the man with the stock of his rifle, knocking him unconscious. Then nodded to her, a silent thank you , their eyes locking momentarily.
“Diana!” he yelled, trying to be heard over the sound of gunfire minutes later and jerked his chin towards the dome of the Pantheon looming ahead of them. “There!”
Almost done…
Almost…
Later, there were cheers and happy tears, and songs that Steve couldn’t recognize, their words morphing into a sound that expressed happiness, and somehow, it was enough.
He knew he had to make contact with the British, make himself known and accounted for, but the night was deep and black – he’d long stopped counting the hours, and the celebrations around him were intoxicating in the way that only undiluted joy could be. The city that had spent the past 4 years suffocating under the siege could finally breathe again.
“Steve…”
He turned around to see Diana make her way towards him through the mass of people, nodding absently at anyone who wanted to thank her but not slowing down, her eyes fixed on him. The crowd parted before her without even noticing they were doing it, and he watched her walk to where he was standing, her expression one of awe and relief. And then she was right before him, her hair wild and her chest still heaving as if she could barely catch her breath, and the streetlamps making the star in her tiara glow like it was made of gold.
She smiled at him, a little tentative, a little hopeful, the corners of her eyes crinkling. Someone tried to push a bottle of something that, judging by its smell, was meant to burn straight through a person’s stomach into Steve’s hand but he was caught up in being too damn happy to have Diana there with him to care.
And then her fingers were on his face as though she needed to make sure that he was real, and he was breathing her in, and Jesus Christ, he missed her so badly that if he'd let go of her now, he would probably turn to ashes right there and then.
“Are you okay?” Steve asked softly, bowing his head closer to her.
Diana nodded, almost imperceptibly, her nose brushing against his cheek. “Come with me.”
---
They stumbled into a room, tripping over each other’s feet and the threshold, Steve’s arms closing around Diana just in time to break their imminent fall. Her breath caught, a sharp gasp against his mouth, as her hands gripped the collar of his coat for support.
The corridors of the small inn that had opened its doors to the soldiers amidst the celebrations smelled faintly of tobacco and cheap cologne, but inside their room, it was all furniture polish and clean sheets and the somewhat stale air of a space that hadn’t been aired often enough. Steve didn’t care. All he could feel, all he could think of was her, and her mouth on his, and his hands on her body, and his heart hammered against the metal parts of her armour.
He broke the kiss, breathing hard, his chest heaving against Diana's, his thumb drawing slow circles over her cheek.
Her fingers curled around one of his wrists, her breath warm on his skin. Her palm on his jaw, she tilted her face up, finding his mouth with hers once more. The longing and urgency of her touch was setting his blood on fire.
“I’m sorry— I'm sorry for having left the way I did,” she whispered between kisses, voice hoarse and breathless.
“Don’t,” he muttered, the sound of his own words drowned in the loud thump-thump-thump of his heartbeat. “Diana…”
“You wouldn’t touch me,” she murmured, shaking her head. “All this time... would hardly even look at me.”
His hands framed her face and Steve rested his forehead against hers. “If I did, I wouldn't want to stop.”
“Don't stop.”
She kissed him again, hungrily, desperately. He could taste fear and the salt of her tears he hadn't noticed until now on her mouth, a need that resonated inside him, a longing that mirrored his own. His hands skimmed over her arms, sliding around her body of their own accord.
Jesus, he wanted her so badly.
“I’m sorry,” Diana repeated, pushing his jacket down his shoulders and tugging at the fabric of his shirt, Steve’s lips peppering her face with hurried, chaste kisses until there were no tears left; until he didn’t know where his breath ended and hers began.
His fingers slid over the leather and metal of her armour, smooth under his touch, softened by years of wear and yet as impeccable as the first time he had laid his eyes on it when they had first met, the memory so vivid it felt like no time had passed since then.
His jacket fell to the floor, Diana’s hands fumbling with the buttons of his shirt, frantic and awkward in her haste. A low sound of approval formed in the back of Steve’s throat, something primal and out of control, when her hands ran over his bare chest, her breathing ragged on his mouth, against his neck, everywhere on his skin. His attention tunnelled, his focus zeroing on nearly electric zaps of desire crazing through his body, the need to feel her, to be in her growing unbearable.
She murmured something in Greek under her breath, making another spark of heat flare up in his belly.
Steve pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh as his fingers worked to undo the clasps on her boots, removing them deftly. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Diana reached for him. Her hands closed around his cheeks and she lifted his face to hers, searching his featured as she pulled him gently to her, her eyes black and wild with want. Her mouth captured his, hands pushing through his hair, running down his shoulders and over his back.
“God, I missed you,” Steve rasped, nuzzling into her neck, her hair, the tender spot behind her ear, a zing of fire shooting up and through him mixed with pure elation over being alive. She turned her head, her nose bumping against his as she chased his mouth, her hands trembling slightly when she touched his face, making his breath hitch.
He remembered then, absently, that the battle that had brought them here had happened not a few hours ago, unable to shake off the feeling that it had happened in a whole different lifetime.
“I'm sorry,” Diana whispered, her fingers threading through his hair, and he could hear the unsaid words that were just as loud. Of devotion and fear that he also felt but didn’t know how to define.
He peeled her armour off and Diana let him, and in a moment of striking clarity, Steve couldn't help but notice how telling it was of her letting him in past her guards. Her body as well as her soul. And then she was beneath and around him, too much and never enough, his whole world consolidated on the sensation of every inch of her body pressed to every inch on his. He fitted his mouth to hers, swallowing her whimper that morphed into a moan, a fistful of sheets bunched in his hand, his fingers moving over her back and along her thigh, pressing it into his.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, dropping soft kisses along her neck when his hips snapped up, filling her, and her breath caught audibly in her throat, her whole body clenching around him and nearly undoing him in the best way.
“Don’t stop,” Diana repeated, her words falling against his collar bone. He watched her eyes drop shut as she arched into him, giving in to pleasure.
A few crazy collisions, and they settled into a rhythm as easy as breathing. Faster and higher, and over the edge, her hands digging into his flesh, guiding him and following him, breathless and shuddering in his arms. Perfectly here and perfectly his .
His awareness blurred, Steve’s hand slid down her side, along her abdomen. His thumb slipped between their bodies, finding the sweet spot, and she stilled beneath him, coming completely undone with a muffled cry into his shoulder, dissolving into the searing pleasure and taking him with her. A lightning of bliss tore through Steve as the universe exploded around him in myriads of colours, Diana’s name on his lips and her body wound tightly around him.
“Don’t go,” she murmured a while later, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to his neck when Steve tried to shift his weight off of her.
“I’ll crush you,” he whispered back, kissing whatever skin he could reach, waiting for his breath to find itself, his head spinning and his mind empty and every single bone in his body completely liquefied.
Diana laughed softly at that, turning to look at him, amused. He felt her hand on his face, moving along his jaw. “I doubt that,” she said. Which made his grin widen because she probably had a point there. Which made him think that maybe next time, it should be her pinning him down. Which seemed like a very nice idea, all things considered. Her fingers pushed his damp hair back from his forehead, trailing along his cheek. “I missed you, too, Steve.”
---
Outside the city was celebrating, bursts of laughter and cheers exploding on the streets, songs breaking out, the sound of them carrying from blocks away. The only thing, Steve suspected, that kept them from setting off fireworks was the general public aversion to fire in the sky, what with having endured years of just that. And he hoped, fiercely and against all hope, that this was the last time the world had to go through something this horrific, for so long a time.
Steve was sitting with his back leaning against the headboard of the bed, staring at his hands resting in his lap as if they held answers to all the questions in the universe when Diana walked out of the bathroom, his half-buttoned shirt hanging loosely from her frame.
(“Why would I do that?” she had asked him the first time he had suggested she wear a piece of his clothing instead of putting on her own garments.
“Well, it’s what people do, sometimes… after…” he squirmed, biting back his laugh.
“After they make love?” Diana offered helpfully, one eyebrow arched, and Steve chuckled and leaned in to kiss her.
“Yeah, after they make love.” )
“Steve?”
“What am I?” he asked in a hollow voice without looking up. The question that had been burning in the back of his mind for decades, all the more pressing now when he had finally allowed himself to slow down and take a breath. He had long stopped looking for an answer, fearful of what he might find but he had yet to learn to let go.
Diana stepped towards the bed and climbed onto the mattress, crawling to him over the rumpled sheets. She pressed a kiss to his shoulder and rested her forehead against it when he didn’t turn to her, her breath warm on his skin. “You’re Steve Trevor,” she whispered, resting her chin on his shoulder. “You’re loyal. Compassionate. Brave. The bravest man I’ve ever met.”
He could probably argue with her last statement, Steve thought.
When he didn’t respond, Diana shifted, moving closer to him and tossing her leg over his. For a long moment, she just sat in his lap, her hands splayed on his chest, with only the thin sheet draped over his thighs between them, and the ticking of the clock on the dresser oddly loud in the world that had shrunk to the few feet of space around them. She cupped her palms over his cheeks, and Steve had no choice but to look at her, her eyes dark and stormy. His hands slid up her back, pulling her closer, his fingers pushing through her hair.
“You’re my Steve,” she whispered, tracing the lines of his face with her fingertips – down his cheek, along his jaw, over his brow.
“If you’re planning on disappearing again, I’d prefer you to do it sooner rather than later,” Steve murmured.
She bowed her head, their faces nearly touching. Awfully close . “Do you want me to leave?”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, his eyes searching her features. “I have never wanted that, Diana. Not then, and not now.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing for you.” Her voice was quiet, her fingers tracing idle patterns on his skin. “I didn’t think--” Her lips curved into a wistful smile as their eyes met. “I didn’t think you would be so hard to get out of my mind.” She paused, her smile slipping. “I never meant to hurt you.”
He swallowed. In the dim light of the reading lamp on the nightstand beside him, she looked luminous, almost ethereal. Steve ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “Does it not bother you?”
Her brows pulled together, puzzled. “Does what not bother me?”
“That you’re…” He cleared his throat and then let out a humourless laugh. “That you’re you , a daughter of Zeus. A goddess. And I’m—I’m just a man, if even that.”
Her face softened. “You have never been just a man, Steve Trevor,” she whispered, brushing a feather-light kiss to his cheek. “And you should know better than to assume that there is anything that could make me love you any less." Steve watched her lips curve into a smile. "But maybe you could…” another kiss to the corner of his mouth, “… show me the differences…” a soft touch to his lips, “… between us. Just…” her voice dropped, “…to make sure.”
He could taste amusement on her mouth mixed with simmering heat rising inside them both. Could feel her melt into him, languid and soft, sweet weight in his arms. Her breath caught when he flicked his fingers, easily undoing the two buttons that kept his shirt in place, palms sliding underneath it. Steve tightened his grip on her, rolling them both over and tucking her beneath him, capturing the giggle that rose in her chest with a kiss.
Outside, someone started singing the French anthem, loudly and completely off-key, and when Diana’s arms wound around his neck, he thought he would fight a million wars, willingly and gladly, just so he could come home to her.
---
“Steve, what is it?”
Diana glanced at him standing by the window the next morning, the grey light of the overcast day filling the room. Her armour affixed on her body, as familiar and as comfortable as a second skin, she picked up her gauntlets from where they had fallen on the floor the previous night. His stillness drew her in, her gaze lingering on his silhouette against the rectangle of light as it followed the line of his shoulders and the taut muscles of his back, his hair still tousled even though he had tried to smooth it down at the sink earlier. To no avail, it seemed. The memory made Diana's lips tug up at the corners and her heart ache with tenderness.
“It’s quiet,” Steve responded absently, his shirt clutched in his hand, the whole idea of getting dressed seemingly forgotten for the time being. (Truth be told, she wouldn’t have minded if he wore only pants for as long as they both lived. Or nothing at all, for that matter. The man had an exceptional physique.) “I almost forgot what it could be like.”
Diana put the gauntlets down on the side of the bed and crossed the room, walking towards him, She slid her arms around his waist from behind, his bare skin warm against the exposed parts of hers. They had time now, she thought. A tiny bit of it, perhaps, but she was willing to make it count.
“It’s not over,” he added softly, as though reading her mind. She could almost hear him think. He let go of the shirt he was holding, allowing it to fall over the back of the chair and his hands closed around her forearms, thumbs running slowly over his wrists. “Not yet. I’m not sure how it can ever be.”
“I’m sorry about these,” Diana murmured, brushing a kiss to his shoulder where a few red marks left by her nails stood in stark contrast against his skin, running toward his shoulder-blades and along his ribs.
Steve turned to her, glancing down his back, his confusion turning instantly to recognition. He grinned at her, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m not,” he informed her, looking so ridiculously smug that she would have rolled her eyes, had she not been deliriously, unapologetically happy and barely able to contain it. “That was the part that I liked best, actually.”
She arched an eyebrow in response, struggling to keep a straight face. “I’ll remember that.” A pause. “Did you sleep at all?” Her voice dropped to a whisper, Steve’s breathing steady and soothing against her chest, and easily the only thing Diana wanted to feel.
He was awake before her, fatigue hiding in the lines around his eyes, behind the veneer of the smile that greeted her, the side of his bed cold enough to imply that it had been a while. And in the brief moment between sleep and wakefulness, with her mind trapped in that odd, undefined state, she was overcome with fear. You can’t save everyone , Steve had told her that day in Belgium, before she had crossed No Man’s Land, and in the light of everything that had followed, Diana couldn’t help but hear it as, You can’t save me .
She wouldn’t ever forget that she never did.
“You know, the last time we—” Steve stopped himself with a sharp inhale. "I woke up alone and you were gone.”
He shook his head.
“Steve…”
He let out a long breath and turned around in the circle of her arms, his hand anchored on her side and his fingers brushing her hair back from her face. She leaned into his touch as he ran his knuckles down her cheek.
“Look--” he started.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said. "Never again."
Steve swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I can’t ask you to stay.”
“You’re not. I can make my own decisions.” She tore her gaze away from his, her fingers tracing the faint scar just over his left collarbone. “This is new.”
He glanced down. “Things happened. It’s been a while,” he muttered
“I dreamed about you, every night, for years.” Diana let out a small laugh that came out as a rueful sound. “I would wake up to a rumble of an airplane and search for it, for you. Except the sky would remain dark and empty and still. Or to the sound of your voice calling my name.” Her thumb followed the line of his jaw. “I didn’t come looking for you, Steve, but I wanted to. More than anything.”
Things happened . She didn’t want to miss any more of them.
“We could give it another try,” Steve responded at last, reaching for her hand and twining their fingers together. His gaze searched her face. Diana was aware that he was more open with her than he had ever been with anyone before her, but the vulnerability that flickered across his features still caught her off-guard, affection unfurling in her chest. "If you'd like,” he added quietly.
Her face split into a smile so wide she thought it might crack in half. “ If I'd like?” she echoed.
A long time ago, Diana's mother had taught her that everything of value came with a price. There was pain in becoming a good warrior, loss in winning a war, letting go of some parts of yourself in growth. Whatever the price there was for being with Steve, she was willing pay it, a thousand times over.
He laughed – an open, infectious sound that lit her up from the inside.
When the bomb hit the building a few moments later – a parting gift from the Germans – and the force of the blast wave tore them from one another, the last thing Diana felt before the blackness closed over her was Steve’s fingers slipping from her grasp.
Not again .
To be continued...
Notes:
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Chapter 5
Notes:
You guys are so amazing! Thank you for all the love :) I do hope you’re enjoying the ride so far; I have some insane stuff planned for this story, so... I’m doing my best to keep the updates frequent, I promise!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The fire in the sky is the brightest thing Diana has ever seen. It hurts to look at it but she can’t force herself to turn away. She watches it grow bigger, brighter, consuming the darkness of the night. Trapped under several sheets of metal pressing her into cold concrete, she can’t breathe, can’t move, but it’s her fear that truly paralyzes her, the terror that keeps her captive.
Her chest tightens. She wills herself to wake up. Surely, this can’t be happening.
Above her, the air is frigid. It smells of acrid smoke and dust and snow. Somewhere to the right of her, Diana hears panicked yelling. Ares is close – she can feel him rather than see him and, for a moment, she remembers why she is here. Yet, the thought is short-lived, fleeting. Her gaze is locked on the fire far above her, and somewhere there—
A scream pierces the night, deafening, full of pain, inhuman. Nothing like anything she has ever heard before. The sound of it rips her soul in half, splinters her heart, tears right through her. It takes Diana a moment to realize that she is the one who is screaming, her vision blurred with tears and smoke. She can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t be.
“Let me do it. Whatever it is, I can do it.”
Steve's voice slices through her.
She closes her eyes and turns away, struggling to inhale, her chest heaving under her metal trap, her ribs protesting her every move.
“There’s more to the world than this, you know,” Steve told her the previous night, gesturing vaguely around them, his voice soft, mellow somehow. She had never seen him like that before.
He pulled her closer, running his hand along her spine, and her whole body responded to his touch. She smiled then, moving closer to him, his heart beating in earnest against hers while her fingers traced the lines of his body in slow, possessive touches. There were questions she wanted to ask, so many of them. And it wasn’t just her curiosity that was keeping her awake despite the weight of the day and the warmth of Steve's body lulling her to sleep – they needed to get some rest; she didn’t know what time it was, the very concept of tracking it still alien to her. But dawn wasn’t far away, and there was another battle on the other side of it. Yet, Diana didn’t want him to stop taking, didn't want their night together to come to an end.
She can still hear his whisper, feel the electric touch of his fingers to her skin – careful, gentle, but not at all unsure. Can feel his hands in her hair and the taste of his mouth on hers. And that bright dot in the pitch-black sky can’t be him, can’t be, can’t be…
---
Paris, 1945
Diana came to with a low groan, her body trapped under something rough and heavy. A sharp edge of a large piece of concrete was digging into her shoulder blade, making it hard to move. She tried to take a breath, but her ribs screamed in protest and she squeezed her eyes shut with a sharp gasp, waiting for the pounding in her skull to recede. Her ears were ringing, softening the sounds of the world. It was as though she was trapped underwater.
Someone was crying - a sorrowful, aching sound. The sound of a siren broke through the fog in her mind, but it was too far away, too—
Steve .
No.
Her fingers flexed, scraping over a pile of rubble that used to be a brick wall, a sob rising in her throat – pain and panic mixing together into something hot and consuming, clouding her senses.
“Steve…”
She strained her arms, pushing herself up, brick and stone falling back, making everything around her shake, echoing somewhere beneath her as the pile of what had once been a building shifted when she moved. Diana closed her eyes and opened them again, her vision clearing, the throbbing in her body slowly ebbing with every breath she took.
The dust hadn’t settled around her yet, stinging her eyes, clogging her throat.
She inhaled sharply and coughed, calling Steve's name, her voice hoarse and not nearly loud enough.
There were people gathering around, the sounds getting louder like a blurry picture zooming into focus.
She stood up and looked around, first in confusion, then more frantically, more urgently, trying to see past the destruction, shaky on unsteady feet.
A man with a crushed skull was the first thing that Diana's eyes landed on, a terrible thought making her chest constrict. But his hair was darker than Steve's, and even though she couldn’t see his face as there wasn't much left to see, she knew that it wasn't him. Relief mixed with guilt flooded her mind. Surely it was wrong to be glad about someone else’s death, but in that moment, she couldn't bring herself to care.
The police were already there, ordering everyone to stay back. More soldiers, too. They were calling for her, ordering her to come down, but Diana ignored them, too busy looking for—
Steve .
He was lying under a block of concrete, half-trapped underneath it, and it took her a minute too long to locate him, her mind swimming by the time she had finally spotted him.
Diana freed him without much effort, tossing a piece of ceiling aside like it weighed nothing at all, and fell to her knees next to him. She rolled him carefully over to his back, cradling his head in her lap, hands running over his arms, his chest, skimming over his skin, taking in the new scrapes and bruises, as well as the old scars that she knew like no one else.
“No. No, please…” Her trembling fingers touched his face, running over his dust-covered cheeks. “You can’t--” Her throat closed up. “Wake up, Steve. Please…” There was a bad-looking gash on his forehead, dark blood starting to cake over it, its metallic smell permeating her senses. “It can't be--no, please.”
A scream rose in her chest, pain clawing its way out of her body, but her throat constricted and it came out as a low, heart-wrenching whimper. The sound scattered over what had been a block of buildings only hours ago, swallowed by the grey dust hanging in the air. She tried to take a breath, and then another one, her lungs burning against the effort, making her feel like she was about to crack open and fall into more pieces than she was made of. There were only so many times one could be hurt until they could no longer repair themselves, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him again, not after everything they had been through.
“Stay with me. Please, stay with me.” She curled over him, her tears falling on his face, leaving streaks on his skin, cutting through the layer of dust and grime clinging to him. Her fingers pushed his hair back from his forehead, carefully, gently. “You can’t—we made a deal, Steve Trevor…” The words tumbled out of her mouth as she brushed a kiss to his temple, her voice nothing but a hushed, broken whisper laced with anguish.
How many times could she watch him die before she ceased to exist herself?
“And a deal a is a promise,” Steve echoed faintly, his eyes fluttering open with effort. “And a promise is unbreakable.”
Diana froze, her eyes snapping open. He winced, blinking away the dust and coughing, her palm on his cheek and his chest moving, struggling to take a proper breath.
“Steve…”
“God, what happened to—” He grimaced and raised his hand only to drop it back down with a pained hiss. “Have you noticed… that we never use doors anymore? It’s either windows or—” he coughed again. “Or this.”
Diana laughed, a short, choked sound, disbelief mixed with relief, and pulled him closer, her heart beating somewhere in her throat.
" Thank you ," she whispered in Greek.
“Ow!” Steve stiffened, his face contorting with pain.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Diana murmured, kissing his brow, her fingers stroking his face, his hair, unable to stop smiling through tears. “Don’t move. You shouldn't move." Her heart was pulsing somewhere in her throat now, her voice breaking as she spoke. "You're safe, you will be alright.”
“You know, we need to stop meeting like this,” he muttered, slipping into blackness again.
---
Steve was dreaming.
For the first time in two decades, he was dreaming not of blood and loss and despair but of a young boy with perpetually skinned knees and a gap-toothed smile whose hair was always tousled by the wind. There was a carcass of an old airplane on his grandparents’ farm, broken beyond repair but too heavy for the truck for haul it off to a scrap yard. The very same one that his father flew until he could no longer kick the life into it.
The airplane was rusty, the yellow paint peeling off its cabin and wings, and by the time Steve Rockwell Trevor was old enough to climb inside, all the controls had gone missing as well, taken out to replace something or other in his father's car or their tractor. Steve loved that plane more than anything else in the world - not just the sum of its parts that formed the wings and tail and the slippery fake-leather seat but all the places inside his head where the plane could take him. All the places that weren’t middle-of-nowhere rural Midwest where he was stuck every summer. The places that mattered .
Sitting inside that rusty thing that was good for nothing, not even to hide him from the rain, his feet too short to reach the space where the pedals used to be, Steve would imagine soaring into the sky and circling over the barley fields and the endless expanse of flat land, peppered with farmhouses and barns and herds of apathetic cows and sheep, all the way toward the cities on the horizon. He would touch the sky and let the sun decide his course. And he would be free.
He woke up slowly, his mind foggy, the dream clinging to his brain like a cobweb, keeping him on the brink between sleep and wakefulness. Not here, not there.
“Angel,” he rasped, his mouth too dry to speak, when his eyes focused enough to see a woman with black hair spilling over her shoulders sitting beside him, looking more like an apparition than a person made of flesh and blood.
Diana .
“They told me you might be delusional,” she shook her head, smiling softly.
“What…” he licked his lips and swallowed, trying to find his voice, his throat raw and every inch of his body aching. “Paris.” His heartbeat stuttered in his chest as his memories came rushing back in as his breath hitched. “Are you... are you okay? Are you hurt?” He tried to sit up, but the room tilted and swayed around him, a jolt of white-hot pain shooting from his shoulder and down his arm. Steve clenched his teeth, stifling a groan.
“Don’t move, Steve." Her hands were on his shoulders, pushing him back into the pillows, her face was hovering over his. "Steve." At the sound of his name, he stopped struggling. "I’m okay. Everything is alright.”
Slowly, he relaxed under her touch, soothed instantly.
She smoothed down his hair and stroked his cheek, her skin pleasantly cool against his flushed face. It was hard to stay concentrated, his mind still swimming, frayed at the edges. He took a slow breath, choosing to focus on Diana's touch.
“Where are we?” he asked quietly as she sat down on the chair next to his bed, his eyes darting from her face to the ceiling to her face again. He glanced past her shoulder and out the window, and back at Diana as his mind started to clear, somewhat.
He was in a hospital.
The realization sent a surge of panic through him, amplified by the unmistakable smell - disinfectants and dread. He hated hospitals. Even since he was little. Hated the nearly palpable despair that filled them, resonating in the pit of his stomach, and the ever-present anticipation of news that no one wanted to hear. But how-- He racked his brain, trying to put together the fragments of memories, the pieces of the puzzle not quite fitting together. His head was pounding and the whiteness all around him, mixed with the rumble of voices that buzzed like a beehive on the other side of the plain door was making him feel like he was about to get sick.
“London,” Diana responded meanwhile.
His eyebrow quirked in curiosity. “London,” Steve echoed. “And… how did we get here?”
She let out a short laugh, and it was pretty damn hard not to notice that even though she was putting effort into keeping the smile in place, her lips were quivering ever so slightly as worry pooled in her dark eyes. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a long time. Or like she had cried, and the observation made his own smile slip. Neither thought sat right with him.
“You probably don’t want to know,” Diana said, clasping his hand between her palms and kissing his fingers.
There was a tiny frown creasing her forehead, and his hands itched to smooth it away. To chase off the worry pooling in her eyes.
He missed her, too. Missed her on a visceral level, the way he tended to even when she was right there next to him, even when he wasn't fully aware of feeling that way. And seeing her now was the only thing that mattered, her gaze tired, but also kind and reassuring, anchoring him when the world around him was nothing but chaos.
Steve offered her a crooked smile. “I probably don’t,” he conceded. God knew he would find out eventually, but right now it felt like more than he could handle, if he was being honest with himself. “Are you really okay?” he pressed, searching her face.
Diana rested her cheek against the knot of their hands. “I am, I promise.”
She had swapped her armour for an inconspicuous skirt and blouse, and the feeling inside him was that of trepidation mixed with alarm. There was a gaping hole in Steve’s mind between the morning in Paris, filled with softness and the warmth of her body against his, and now, and he didn't seem to be able to look away from her. Losing her had become such a natural thing that it started to terrify him to the core.
He exhaled slowly. The fog in his head was still thick, his thoughts falling away before he had a chance to grab hold of them.
Later, he would find out that the bomb had wiped out an entire block in the centre of Paris, taking over two hundred lives and leaving three times as many injured. He would hear the details of the Germans' parting gift rehashed in the hallways; the details repeated over and over again until he couldn't stand to listen to them anymore. He would learn that if it wasn't for Diana, who had helped right after the bomb had hit the city, the damage would have been ten times worse.
But he had no way of knowing any of that right now.
His thoughts were a swirling mess in his head as he stared at her, comforted by her mere presence. And because he had no idea what else to do, he said exactly what he was thinking.
“I love your smile,” Steve murmured, his voice dropping to a whisper and his thumb running over her knuckles. “You have the most beautiful smile.”
“I thought I had lost you.” Diana whispered. “When I couldn’t find you, I thought…” She swallowed and pursed her lips together. “There was a man there. A dead man, and I thought it was you, and--”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He pulled their hands to him and brushed a kiss to her fingers. “A promise, remember?” There were words, perhaps, to describe how hollow he felt for doing this to her, for making her feel this way, but he didn’t know them, and all he could do was to hold on and hope that she understood. “What happened?” he asked after a few moments to break the silence that felt like it could shatter and cut them with its sharp edges if they'd allowed it to happen. “It’s a bit fuzzy.”
She relaxed momentarily and leaned closer to him, propping her elbows on his mattress, her features softening. “A bomb… You got lucky when one of the walls didn’t collapse, it sheltered you.”
“And, ah…” Steve’s gaze shifted to the newly noticed bandage running across his chest. He looked at her quizzically.
“Your collarbone is broken,” she added, which probably explained the way everything was so blurry around him and why the words that he meant to keep locked deep inside him were tumbling out of his mouth without his say in it. Morphine, he guessed. It made sense. “And you have--”
“A concussion,” another voice cut into their conversation.
Diana turned around, and Steve’s gaze shifted past her.
It wasn’t much of a surprise to see Etta standing in the doorway, a busy hallway bustling with commotion behind her back while she regarded Steve with mild exasperation. She was in her late 50’s now, if he was not mistaken, but her eyes were the same, sizing him up in that odd way that was somewhat apprehensive but not as shocked as he would expect, all things considered. And Steve wondered in the back of his mind just how long she’d been around, what exactly Diana had told her.
“I can’t believe you never said anything to me,” Etta threw her hands up, stepping into the room, and his lips quirked a little.
Steve found it hard to tell whether she was annoyed or thrilled.
Still. He gave Diana a reproachful look.
“I had to call her,” Diana said, nonchalant, ignoring his frown.
“You’re impossible,” Etta rolled her eyes, and just for a second, Steve thought she would smack him on the arm, the way she used to back in the day, in the moments when he was being a moron. He probably deserved it, if he was being honest with himself.
She didn’t, though. Instead, she gave him a long, contemplative once-over, more curious now than anything else.
“I didn’t think--” Steve started, still finding it pretty hard to keep his thoughts from scattering around.
“Obviously,” Etta interjected with a snort. She huffed through her nose, and shook her head, making Steve feel like a naughty child who got caught stealing cookies from a jar before dinner. “Well,” hands on her hips, she regarded him without much sympathy, “now that you’re awake and quite clearly not dying, your girl here needs to eat something."
“Oh, no, I don’t,” Diana started to protest.
“No, go,” Steve insisted, his eyelids already dropping and his brain feeling uncomfortably heavy in his skull.
“Poor thing was stuck here forever,” Etta added, and muttered, “God only knows what you’ve done to deserve such devotion.” And then, as an afterthought, “Not that I want to know anything about that .”
“Go,” Steve repeated, his grip on Diana’s hand loosening. He was too tired to get flustered over Etta's implication. He offered Diana a small smile. “I’ll be right here.”
---
Steve was asleep when Diana returned, her heart feeling lighter by the moment when her eyes fixed on his form; his chest rising and falling slowly under the blanket, his hair ruffled and his features relaxed. The early evening light coloured the room in different hues of purple, softening the edges of the world.
She lowered down onto the edge of his bed and reached over to brush his hair back from his forehead, careful not to wake him up. He didn’t stir, though. Didn’t so much as move aside from leaning a little into her touch, aware of her presence even in his sleep, and the smallest tilt of his head filled her with so much affection she could barely stand it.
Earlier, she didn’t have it in her to tell him that when she had found him, his chest was crushed, his pulse barely there, his body broken beyond repair. The wall that she claimed had saved him had actually crushed him under its weight.
When she had found him, he wasn’t breathing. His heart wasn't beating, either.
Until it was.
Until they were here and men in white coats who claimed to be the best healers around were promising Diana that he wasn’t in any danger. That there was nothing that they couldn’t fix about him. And she didn’t know what to make of it.
Until she was dialling Etta's number with trembling fingers, unable to find words to explain what had happened.
He didn’t need to know that. Diana wished she didn’t have any recollection of it either, the image of that moment still raw and fresh and frighteningly vivid in her mind.
You’re fearless , Steve had told her once, a long time ago. And at the time, she had laughed it off, insisting that everyone was scared of something. At the time, she hadn't quite figured out yet that the one thing that terrified her most was the chaos of his world. There were so very few rules – to life, to war, to anything, really. Diana was not used to experiencing loss. She was not used to how fragile lives were. And that frightened her.
A while later, Steve's eyes fluttered opened slowly; he blinked a few times, waiting for his vision to adjust. “Hey.”
Diana smiled. “Rest.”
“I’m not tired,” he slurred, making something warm unfurl in her chest.
“Liar.”
He chuckled. “Not with you.”
She refused to think about being one now.
“I found this.” She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out his watch.
It was in the pocket of his jacket that she had found in the rubble later on when she went looking for her shield and her lasso buried under a pile of brick and concrete, trying not to think of how breakable everything around her was; how there had to be bodies trapped under the collapsed building. There was nothing she could do for them now, but the pain of the loss was squeezing her chest still. Merely thinking of losing Steve was unbearable, and her heart ached for those who the deceased – the killed – had left behind.
Steve’s good hand closed around the watch, his thumb running along the leather strap and over its white face. “Still ticking.”
Diana leaned down to press a kiss just below his hairline, where the cut that had been bleeding so profusely a few days ago that she had feared it would kill him was nothing but a pink line that would turn into a scar before he knew it. His cheeks were covered with the shadow of two-day stubble, and he looked tired even when he was asleep, more world-weary than she had seen him before.
But so very familiar. So very hers .
All her life, Diana had known only one home – a place that held the memories dear to her heart. But no one had told her that home didn’t need to have walls. Sometimes it needed to have a crooked smile and a heartbeat and eyes so blue she’d find herself drowning in them, forgetting to hold on. Sometimes, it was that simple.
Still ticking , she thought as he drifted off again.
---
“At least here… I’m free.”
Steve’s jacket held the warmth of his body and smelled faintly of man and soap and smoke, and Diana wrapped it tighter around her shoulders as she watched Chief poke at the fire with a stick, sending flares of sparks into the cool night air. Chief’s posture was relaxed to a degree; as much as it could be in the middle of something that was tearing the whole world apart.
The Evening Hate was a very appropriate name for the midnight fire, she thought absently, equally dumbfounded and awed by the men’s ability to sleep when the ground was shaking beneath them. Charlie had wandered off to cool down earlier but Sameer was snoring quietly, and Steve’s breathing was deep and even, his face relaxed in a way she had never seen before.
Diana tore her gaze away from him and studied Chief, his face streaked with shadows.
“So you’re not afraid to die for this, then?” she asked, gesturing towards the tent behind her, curious.
He looked at her, his eyes glinting with amusement. “I will not die in this war.”
Diana’s eyebrows arched. “How do you know that?”
“I just do,” he shook his head, chuckling under his breath.
“What about them?” She nodded toward the sleeping men, her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and her head tilted to her shoulder.
People, she had learned quickly, were very easy to read. Even the notorious spy would let his guard down when he didn’t know anyone was looking. But this particular person sitting in front of her now allowed nothing to betray his thoughts, which left Diana intrigued and more than a little wary. Not alarmed, though – Steve clearly trusted him, and she was learning to trust him too. And yet...
Chief glanced at the swaddle of coats and blankets that moved slowly as his friends slept, his brows knitting together as his eyes lingered on Steve for a moment longer than they had stayed on Sameer. He looked Diana square in the face then, the gaze of his black eyes piercing right through her.
“None of them will,” he responded softly after a few moments, and she knew that he meant it. “I know who you are. What you are.”
“What I am…?” she echoed, not quite certain how to take it.
His chin jerked toward Steve. “He does, too. He’s just doesn’t know it yet.”
“How can he not know something that he knows?” Diana smiled, thinking that the man was teasing her.
Chief added another log to the fire. His face grew pensive. “Sometimes, it takes a lot of bravery to believe something that you don’t understand.”
---
London, 1945
The only time Steve had ever had to stay in a hospital was after his first tour, back in the States, when he had stupidly dislocated his shoulder and was sent to the base infirmary. The one thing he remembered from back then was the heavy smell of rubbing alcohol and antiseptic, mixed with body odour and stale food. It proceeded to haunt him for weeks on end after he had been discharged. It was like it had lodged itself into his throat and seeped into his skin, and no matter how many times he had bathed and washed his clothes, he couldn’t help but feel like he was carrying an entire ward on him.
It was all that now, but so much worse, too. It turned out that a person could only sleep for so long, and once the medication had started to wear off and the fog had lifted, Steve found himself bored out of his mind. Reading was giving him a headache, and the crackling radio at the end of the hallway was hard to hear. By the end of his second day at the hospital, being bedridden had started to drive Steve insane. And worst of all, they wouldn't allow him to shave. Apparently, patients were not trusted with any sharp objects – he didn’t quite understand the logic behind this decision - but even his barely edible lunch only included a fork and a spoon.
It was ridiculous to the point of utter absurdity.
“Get me out of here,” he begged Diana two days later.
“I will, as soon as you can stand without swaying.”
She gave him a pointed look, not appearing to be particularly affected by his pleas.
Steve flashed a grin at her. “I thought you liked swaying.”
She hummed as she adjusted his pillow. “Nice try.”
He hated the time when she wasn’t around. When the minutes stretched endlessly and the nights were unbearably long and his thoughts were so loud he could barely stand it. There was only so far a man could run away from himself, the feeling so much more dreadful in the confines of a small room with the walls pressing down on him.
Etta came over, too, although she was worse than Diana in that she didn’t want to tell him anything about the outside world. He’d heard the snippets of conversations between nurses about the Germans having left France for good, about the overall panic among the troops, about the shift in power, the allies gaining some leverage at last. However, they had all promptly ignored his questions when he asked them to elaborate.
“All I can do is stare at the ceiling,” he told Etta when she managed to kick Diana out of his room ‘to get some fresh air,’ taking her turn in babysitting him.
“Beats being dead,” Etta pointed out without much sympathy, making him smirk. “I can’t believe you never told me,” she said once more, and Steve flinched a little. “You can trust me, you know that, right?”
“I know,” Steve admitted. “It wasn’t about that. I didn’t want—” he cleared his throat. “It didn’t seem fair to put something like this…”
“You really are a moron,” she interjected, shaking her head. Then she glanced towards the door to make sure that no one was there, and dropped her voice. “Just so you know, the British Intelligence appreciated your invaluable input.”
Steve’s eyes widened. “The letters… Did you…?”
“Delivered where they belong,” she promised. The ones that Diana must have salvaged, he figured. “Just keep it between us. You’re not supposed to be thinking about any of this.”
His smile softened. “Thank you, Etta.”
“You always have to do it the hard way, don’t you?” she muttered with a hint of exasperation.
Man, he missed her, Steve thought.
On day three, Steve got a roommate, too. A 60-something Irish colonel called Hector who spoke exclusively in monosyllabic words or grunts and who slept most of the time – so much so that Steve didn’t even know what was wrong with him that he needed to be there at all. He tried to entertain himself by playing the guessing game but it grew old pretty fast.
Suffice it to say, he hated this place.
“Stay,” he asked Diana on a Friday night, feeling like a few more hours in this room, and he would start climbing walls.
Leaning against a couple of lumpy pillows, he was half-sitting in his bed, his fingers playing lazily with hers as he cradled his left arm to his chest in a sling to prevent his broken collarbone from unnecessary shifting.
“I think it’s against the rules,” Diana pointed out.
Steve caught her gaze and held it. “We can make our own rules,” he suggested quietly, letting go of her hand and wrapping his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him until their noses were almost touching and her eyes were the only thing he could see. Her breath was falling on his cheek, and Steve grinned when she failed to bite back a smile.
“You have an awful lot of those, don’t you?” Diana murmured, and his mouth went dry.
“Yeah, well, sometimes you have to--”
Someone cleared their throat loudly behind them, and Diana pulled away just as Steve's roommate shuffled into the room, walking towards his bed and deliberately not looking in their direction. He had ignored Diana entirely over the past two days, much to her general confusion and Etta’s outrage. Not that either of those things made much difference.
Diana bit her lip, and Steve tried to hide his chuckle behind a cough.
“And now Hector here is scandalized,” he muttered, his hand finding hers once more and his thumb running discreetly over the inside of her wrist where Diana’s pulse stuttered a little under his touch.
Her brows pulled together. “Why? We’re not doing anything.”
And what a shame that is , Steve thought – couldn’t help it, really.
“Because there’s a beautiful woman visiting me and not him,” he replied loud enough for Hector to hear, but the other man only snorted in response. “And maybe it’s making him a little uncomfortable,” Steve added softly, only for her.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” she inquired, clearly entertained.
“Well, um…” Steve shifted under the thin blanket and glanced away, the tips of his ears turning red. “I wouldn’t call it that ,” he responded vaguely, finding it hard to keep a straight face.
She laced their fingers together. “I’ll be back in the morning.”
“And bring my shaving cream,” he grimaced, scratching his scruff.
Diana smiled, her voice dropping when she spoke like she was telling him a secret, “I don't mind it... much.”
“I wish you didn’t have to leave. I already miss you,” he rubbed her knuckles with his thumb and kissed them.
“Tomorrow.” She ran her hand through his hair and leaned in to brush a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I will take you home tomorrow."
---
She did not come back in the morning.
Or in the afternoon.
And by the time Etta showed up in the evening – and after Steve had already learned just how dedicated the hospital personnel were to keeping people from getting out – he started to feel like he was losing his mind. His stomach was clenched into a tight knot and his heart about to shatter his rib cage. There was something disconcerting about the idea of her leaving him again. He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to imagine it, but it was next to impossible to shake off the idea. His mind was stuck, running through their conversation from the previous night, dissecting it piece by piece, turning the words inside out to see if he’d missed anything. Anything important . A sign.
She wouldn’t, Steve tried to reassure himself. She wouldn’t just leave because—
Because what ? Because he wanted to believe that she wouldn’t walk away from them again so badly that he was willing to talk himself into anything?
The thought made Steve feel sick and made the walls spin around him for reasons that had nothing to do with his damned concussion.
She had promised to stay, he thought desperately. She had promised…
And so when Etta stepped into the room at last, he was on the verge of jumping out of his skin.
“Steve--”
“Where is she?” he demanded, all too aware of the edge in his voice and not giving a shit about it.
“Look, if you would just--” she started, “—calm down, first of all.”
His shoulders slumped and he stopped his frantic pacing, freezing in the middle of the room as the world fell back. It was as though someone had pulled a bag over his head, making it hard to breathe and impossible to hear anything outside of his own mind.
“What happened?” Steve asked, barely hearing his own voice over his frantic heartbeat.
Etta’s eyes flickered towards the other man in the room before she grabbed Steve by the elbow and dragged him unceremoniously into the hallway and towards the fire escape staircase that seemed to be the only relatively secluded place in the entire building.
She pushed him through the door and shut it behind them, cutting off the voices of the doctors and other patients. And thankfully, the god-awful medical smell that was the real nightmare of the place.
“It’s the Germans,” Etta hissed as if someone could still overhear them. “Something’s—something’s up, they’re panicking.” She swallowed uneasily. “They’re burning down the camps.”
“Oh god.” Steve's insides dropped, all air wheezing out of him. “Did she go there?”
“Steve…”
“How did she even know--” he started but cut off abruptly when the realization dawned on him, nudged by Etta’s suddenly evasive gaze.
“Well…” she drawled. “How was I supposed to know that Diana would—Okay, I probably should have.” She admitted. “There was a letter… the British intercepted a letter, and I—I’m sorry.”
“I’ve gotta get out of here,” Steve muttered and ruffled his hair, running his hand over the 4-day stubble on his chin. Then he leaned closer to Etta and whispered urgently, “Please. I can’t stay here. Not when Diana is—out there, somewhere. I can’t .”
Etta shook her head vigorously and even took a step away from him for good measure, her eyes growing wide. “If I do that, she will kill me, Steve. Really kill me. With a sword.”
“I can’t stay here,” he repeated, half frustrated, half pleading.
“You have head trauma, Steve,” she reminded him. “What are you planning to do, exactly? Swim across the Channel? Do something smart that would get you killed?”
His shoulders slumped. “I mean, I don’t know--”
“Well, maybe you should start with that.” Etta's voice wasn’t harsh but it wasn’t particularly kind either, and her gaze was daring him to argue.
She had a point, Steve had to admit. He hated when she had a point. He huffed through his nose, his eyes drawn to the small window above them - the only source of light, too bright in the dim passage.
Etta’s expression softened and she let out a slow, steadying breath when he wisely remained silent.
“You trust Diana, right?”
---
He did. He trusted Diana more than he had ever trusted anyone. More even than he trusted himself. Trust had rarely been an issue between them. It was his goddamned inability to sit still that he didn’t know what to do with.
For the sake of the well-being of the patients, the hospital had limited the war news for their charges to a minimum, and the old radio was often tuned to one of the music stations that were of no help to Steve. He could feel the shift in the air, like something was stirring, but he couldn’t for the life of him put a finger on what had caused it. And whether good news was to blame or bad. And the time stretched painfully, one agonizingly long minute after another.
Even Hector who had no idea what had got Steve looking like a caged animal seemed to have softened towards Steve's company. Granted, it would only feel like a victory if Steve bloody cared.
As it was, however, he chose not to.
His broken bones ached dully, making him aware of every move he made, every breath he took, distracting in a way that he didn’t find welcoming. Pacing the room left him dizzy, yet he didn't appear to be able to stay still, restless and antsy and unable to think clearly. Nothing was right, nothing felt comfortable, and Steve regretted not convincing Etta to help him leave more than anything. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to help – hell, he had no idea where Diana was , but at least he wouldn’t feel so helpless and useless, and everything about him itched to go back home where even the walls offered comfort.
He was stretched on top of his blankets sometime after midnight the following night, staring unseeingly at the ceiling, his mind on fire, while his neighbour snored peacefully ten feet away from him when the door opened, revealing a familiar silhouette standing in a rectangle of light, making Steve’s heart trip over itself.
For a moment, he thought he was dreaming. It was late, the lights long out on the entire floor, and he had worn himself thin with worry, exhausted beyond comprehension.
But then Diana crossed the room in two swift strides, graceful and soundless as ever, and was lowering down to sit next to him. Steve met her halfway, sitting up and reaching for her, wrapping his arms around her, feeling so light with relief that he thought he would float away if he let go of her.
“Thank god,” he breathed out.
She was shaking ever so slightly, small tremors that reverberated into him, and she smelled of smoke and blood and all the things Steve didn’t want to think of. Yet, she was here, warm and real, and he couldn’t catch his breath because, until this very moment, some part of him believed that he would never see her again.
Steve kissed her temple and buried his face in her hair, breathing her in. The cold of the night was clinging to her skin, her armour, her lips, and he seemed to not be able to hold her close enough.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly once his heart was no longer lodged in his throat, nearly choking him.
She nodded and took in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you hurt?” Steve pulled back just enough to see her face, eyes roaming over her features. He smoothed down her hair and ran his thumb over her cheekbone.
“No,” Diana whispered, touching her fingertips to her cheek. “I shouldn’t have left… like this.”
“It’s okay,” he shook his head, smiling faintly before he pulled her to him again. “I thought you…” He swallowed, unable to utter the words that were coursing through his system like some vile disease. Now that she was back, the idea of her leaving for good seemed ludicrous, impossible, and he was suddenly overcome with shame over doubting her. Steve exhaled slowly. “I’m glad that you’re back.”
“They really wanted to do it, to burn everything to the ground,” she muttered into his shoulder, her voice breaking.
“Shhh.” He kissed her hair, his hand running soothingly over her back.
“The way they were talking about those people… They called them ‘meat,’ ‘disposable.’ They said--”
“Diana…”
“I don’t understand how...” Her words were barely audible, soft in the night, and he could feel her heart bleed like it was his own. Steve’s eyes dropped shut as he willed her pain away. “They were saying those awful things about real people, and they talked about them—How could they be so cruel? How could they… how could you be like this to one another?”
Steve let out a long breath and leaned back against the pillows, taking her with him, cradling her to him like a lost and scared child. He was careful to be quiet, less concerned about the comfort of his neighbour and more about losing this moment with Diana if the other man woke up.
He wanted to ask her questions about where she had been and what had happened and whether she really was alright because it frightened him to see her like this. He was all too familiar with the feeling that was taking over her senses now, the dumbfounded disbelief and shock that ever only appeared when a person experienced something truly unspeakable and ugly beyond belief. He had been there, more times than he could count, and knowing that he couldn’t make it go away for her, make it better somehow, frightened him. There were answers that no one wanted to hear, and moments no one wanted to relive, and maybe in another lifetime, they would be luckier to not have to go through either.
“Because it’s not Ares. It’s not gods that make us this way, Diana. Sometimes, it’s what we are,” Steve said softly, not sure if she was listening or not, the words finding it hard to claw their way out of his throat. “But there are good people, too. So many more of them, and they’re worth fighting for, you know?” She was crying now, soundlessly, his shirt damp with her tears, and all he wanted to do was keep apologizing over and over again. I’m sorry you only get to see us at our worst. I’m sorry we’re not as good as you thought we were. I’m sorry the world can be ugly sometimes, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry … “It’s over now. I promise you it’s over.” His bad shoulder screamed in protest when he tightened his grip on her, but he couldn’t bear the thought of letting go. “I can’t fix it all. I don’t think anyone can. But we’re doing what we can, and… you saved them all, you saved so many people.”
A shuddered breath stuttered out of her chest, her fist bunching the fabric of his shirt like she couldn't stand letting go, either.
“I don’t understand… I don’t understand why there must be so much pain, why you would choose to cause it to one another,” Diana's voice was soft and muffled.
In the darkness of the room dispersed only by a strip of light coming from under the closed door, everything looked smudged somehow, the sounds swallowed by the shadows. He could smell his soap and the sun of Themyscira on her skin, his thumbs running over her back, their faces almost touching. Steve swallowed hard when she lifted her face to his, acutely aware of every point where her body was pressed to his.
“We’re not perfect, but we’re not that bad,” he added quietly, more out of a need to fill the silence than anything else. It was hard to think when she was this close, so close he could no longer feel the numbing bone-chill settled deep inside him. “So long as we don’t give up on each other.”
For all he knew, they were not talking about the war anymore.
Her breathing evened out eventually, falling in sync with his.
“Don’t go,” he muttered when she stirred.
“I should let you rest,” Diana responded softly.
He chuckled under his breath. “I’ve been stuck here for five days. I think I’m done resting.”
She stayed quiet for a while, her fingers flexing around a fistful of his shirt with every inhale and exhale.
“I was thinking… about what you said, about wanting to know, and I was wondering if you'd want to come with me?”
Steve pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “Anywhere.” His fingers trailed up and down her arm. "Where are we going?"
“Themyscira.”
He went still when her response landed on him like a punch, knocking him off-balance, the unexpectedness of it leaving his mind reeling.
“Are you going back?” he asked in a strained voice, wondering what the right answer was. Was she planning on leaving regardless of his decision?
Diana lifted her head to look at him and then shook her head after a short pause.
“I don’t have the answers you’re looking for, Steve. But they might.”
To be continued...
Notes:
Feedback is much appreciated! Please let me know what you think ❤ ♡ You’re wonderful!
No big cliffhangers this time, but I'm working on chapter 7 now and it will blow your minds. Probably.
Chapter 6
Notes:
This is my favourite chapter so far, it was so much fun to work on, and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much :) You'll finally have some answers, and this part basically sets the rest of the plot in motion.
Also it's safe to say that short chapters are not my thing....There's some explicit stuff here so if it's not your thing - feel free to skip it. And, that's about it. Dig in!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Themyscira, 1945
There were two drastically different Themysciras that lived in Steve’s mind; the images of them clashing with one another.
One was of his lungs full of water, burning as he struggled to get free from the death grip of the stolen plane’s metal carcass, his mind on fire with panic and fear. Of hands pulling him up to the surface and of the face seared into his memory for a hundred lifetimes. Of sand and blood and trying to hold the rifle in his hands that was slippery with salt and sweat, his heart beating so hard and fast that the sound of it was swallowing the gunshots. Of the burning lasso that had stripped him of his will and pulled words out of his mouth he had sworn to never say out loud. Of thinking that he was never going to leave the caves with the glowing water alive.
This Themyscira had left him filled with trepidation and jittery nervousness, a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach making Steve’s pulse stutter.
But the other one… The other one was bright and colourful and filled with Diana’s stories of happiness and sadness and mischief, often whispered in the dark, under the cover of the night, in response to his eager, “Tell me…” A place made of dreams that went beyond his imagination. A place of Diana’s hopes and dreams, ones that held her heartbreaks and secrets. And he could almost smell the ocean and feel the breeze on his face when she spoke of it, mesmerized and transfixed by the unmasked affection in Diana’s voice, by the mental image of her as a little girl and then a young woman, always on the verge of breaking a rule, bending the world to her will.
“I was a handful,” Diana had admitted once with a small laugh.
“Really?” Steve had raised a skeptical eyebrow at her, earning a playful bump of her shoulder against his. “I would’ve never guessed.”
And now he was about to see a third version of the island – a combination of the two, he supposed. A whole new experience of its own.
“Your Majesty,” Steve cleared his throat when Diana stepped out of her mother’s embrace and Hippolyta’s gaze moved past her daughter and fixed on him, still lingering on the dock, not quite certain about the protocol in this situation.
He was suddenly overcome with the urge to bow, or at the very least curtsy, very aware in the moment of being surrounded by half a dozen Amazon warriors, undoubtedly the best ones there, considering that they were selected to escort the Queen herself. If anything, it came quite as a surprise that he hadn’t been tied up the second he had stepped off the boat. A good kind of surprise, but one that he wasn't sure he should be excited about just yet.
They didn’t look threatening, though. Curious maybe, he figured, but Steve had to admit that he wouldn’t be half as okay with their scrutiny and their gazes sizing him up without Diana’s reassuring presence and the smile of encouragement that she offered him as she beckoned him to join her. There was something about knowing that any of these women could behead him without batting an eye that made Steve more self-conscious than he’d ever been. More so even than the first time he had met them, all those years ago. It was one thing, after all, to end up here by accident, and something else entirely to come back by choice. The former, they couldn't hold against him, he reasoned. The latter, on the other hand--
And then there was the Queen herself whose expression remained unreadable. A mask that Steve attributed to centuries of social protocols calling for composure and self-assertion. However, there was a twinkle of something in her eyes, something akin to recognition, if not appreciation that he couldn’t quite place and that caught him by surprise. If he didn't know better, he would even go so far as to assume that she was acknowledging his decision to return here as an act of bravery, his past experience considered. And maybe it was just the light, or a great deal of wishful thinking on Steve’s part, but he could have sworn that her lips twitched ever so slightly when their eyes met, forming into a small smile that she didn’t quite manage to hold back. One that allowed the tightness in his chest to ease, probably against his better judgement but he was going to take it.
The Queen glanced at Diana then, for just a flicker of a moment, and nodded with an impassive, “Very well,” which Steve took as an official welcome to Themyscira.
Diana smiled at him, her hand brushing against his as the two of them followed Hippolyta and her guards back to the palace.
---
The village. nestled below the massive silhouette of the palace that seemed to have grown straight out the rock it was perched atop, was bigger than Steve remembered, more populated than the first time he'd travelled the streets of it, and more elaborately built than he could recall. His eyes followed the steady stream of women, ducking in and out of stone houses, their hands laden with baskets and pots and trays of food. And he wondered if his new perception of it had something to do with the fact that he was slightly less worried about his well-being this time around, less fearful of never leaving this place alive.
“You look rather… stunned,” Diana steered her horse closer to his and leaned over to Steve, undoubtedly finding his blunt gawking entertaining.
He tore his gaze away from a row of bright tents to the left of him that looked like a make-shift market place. “I’m starting to understand how you must have felt when you first came to England,” he confessed, feeling the nearly palpable curiosity of the women on the streets around them, each and every gaze seemingly glued to him as they paused whatever they had been busy with to acknowledge his presence. The attention was making him feel exposed and more vulnerable than he was comfortable with.
“You’ve been here before,” Diana reminded him, trying and failing to swallow her laughter, clearly amused by his overwhelmed expression.
Steve smirked. He loved the way she looked here – less guarded, more relaxed, and it made him wonder if Diana was even aware of this nearly instant transformation, which was not surprising, but no less notable nonetheless. In his world, even though she had an immense advantage over anything and everything in terms of strength and speed and endurance, she was on alert more often than not. Here, there was no need for that. No need to look over her shoulder and be wary of her surroundings.
The list of things he couldn’t give her was growing exponentially, it seemed, but Steve pushed that thought away, not willing to allow the grief of it to consume him. Not here. Not when Diana was smiling a way he had never seen her smile before, her joy over returning nearly palpable.
“As a prisoner, not a—a trophy ,” he pointed out.
“Is what you think you are?” Diana inquired, an eyebrow arched.
Steve flashed a cheeky smile at her. “Am I not?”
She laughed, causing something warm to unfurl in his chest.
The war had ended a few months ago, and even though Steve had assumed that she would insist on coming here straight away, Diana had wanted to stay back to see the resolution of it all, help however she could, and to a certain degree, he was relieved by it. The truth was, even though he knew that he would gladly follow her to the gates of hell and beyond if he had to, the idea of getting closer to answers that he was all too aware would change everything was equally thrilling and terrifying.
There were moments when he wanted to tell Diana that it didn’t matter, that he didn’t want to know, and part of him didn’t. The part that wanted to keep holding on to what passed for normalcy these days and forget everything else. However, it didn’t seem fair to them both. Whatever it was, whatever they could possibly learn here, he knew that she had the right to know it too, if only because she needed to be aware of what exactly she was signing up for with him. He chose not to think of how the truth might impact her judgement.
They were waiting for them on the beach, the Queen and her warriors, when their boat had broken through the barrier that surrounded the island, leaving the grey sky of the stormy Atlantic behind, greeted by the bright sun and turquoise waters and the air that smelled of jasmine on the other side of it. Like they knew that he and Diana would come. Like it went beyond any doubt.
Standing on the deck of the boat next to Diana whose gaze was glued to the approaching shore, Steve had reached for her hand and weaved his fingers through hers. “You’re nervous,” he had said – a statement, not a question.
She had shaken her head and squeezed his hand. “No, I’m not. Are you?”
“Should I be? Are they going to go for my throat?”
Diana had glanced at him, “Not straight away.”
“That’s reassuring,” he had hummed. And whispered, “It’s gonna be okay,” into her hair, uncertain whether he was saying it for her sake or his own.
And now he was being paraded – there was no other word for it – through the village. He couldn't help but feel like he could feel the gazes of everyone on the island on him, a little thrilled and a little unnerved by their attention, truth be told. It was still beyond him how the Amazons had remained hidden for the entirety of their existence, safe and sheltered. Which made him wonder what other worlds could exist right next to his own, just always out of reach.
Diana caught him watching her. “There’s nothing I can promise,” she said once more – an echo of their conversation from a few weeks back, when his broken bones had stopped bothering him as much, when the reality had clicked back into place, somewhat. She had explained to Steve then that if there was a chance that Ares had anything to do with what had happened to him, even though she wasn’t quite sure how, the Amazons would know more about it than anyone else. However, it wasn’t something that she could promise, grasping at straws herself. And the way her face would light up when she spoke about the island had caused Steve to decide, right then and there, to come with her, regardless of whether or not there was anything waiting for him on the other end of the journey.
“I know. You mentioned that,” Steve nodded, pulling a little on the reins to stay close to Diana, putting some distance between them and the guards. His smile softened. “I never asked you to.”
“It’s just… I wouldn’t want to have dragged you all the way here for nothing.” She shook her head.
Steve scoffed. “I wouldn’t call it dragging . I was the first one to hop on that boat, no? Besides, the weather in London was starting to get dreary.”
She smirked. “Well, it’s good to know that you can be so easily pleased.”
The back of his neck grew hot, half a dozen unbidden images of her pleasing him spinning up in his mind, but he chose not to respond to that in public.
---
Steve wasn’t quite certain where the rest of the day had gone. One moment he was being shown around and introduced to an infinite number of women whose names and faces had started to blur before his eyes no matter how hard he tried to keep track of them while also he also attempted to read their body language and take notice of social clues, endless corridors of the palace that he’d only seen from below before snaking before him like a maze. And then suddenly it was night, and he was alone in ‘his quarters,’ as Queen Hippolyta had put it when she asked one of her guards to escort him there. And once the door closed behind him – not locked, Steve made sure - it was suddenly so quiet that it almost hurt after the commotion of that day that had left his head buzzing.
The room was spacious, albeit somewhat impersonal, in his opinion. It was luxurious in every sense of the word and not a step but a whole staircase above the last lodging he’d had here. A tall window overlooked the village below that was gleaming with thousands of lights, and above it, the sky was jet-black and splattered with myriads of stars. Together, they made him feel like he was floating in space, suspended between constellations.
All those years ago, it was only jokingly that he had referred to Themyscira as ‘Paradise Island,’ and mostly because his own experience there had been far from heavenly. But he could see it now, see how it could suck you right in, the serenity of the place transfixing, addictive in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on just yet. It was everything that his world had never been, and it was no wonder that Diana was drawn here. The gentle lapping of the waves against the shore a mile away from the castle and the cries of the seagulls somewhat softened by the wind were the only sounds in the stillness of the night. The breeze felt warm and fresh on his face, carrying the smell of the ocean mixed with floral notes and the scent of lamp oils, and for the first time in a very long time, Steve Trevor felt at peace with himself.
Whatever Diana had thought they could find here, it was worth the trip; it was worth not feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders for however long it lasted.
She had been fading in and out of his line of sight all day before disappearing altogether, and Steve had no way of finding her now, short of asking someone for help. The idea left him a little more unsettled than he liked, and in the end, he decided to wait till morning, not wanting to wander the labyrinth that this place was on his own, and even less thrilled by the prospect of running into someone. None of the Amazons he had met today had displayed any signs of animosity towards him, with the exception of Diana's aunt, Menalippe, who had not appeared please by Hippolyta's decision to allow him to stay. Yet, quite a few of them remained guarded and skeptical about man's presence in a place where he didn't belong. Steve didn't want to give them any reason to be displeased with his lack of knowledge of their ways.
However different Diana appeared in his world, at least she wasn’t an entirely different species that stood out like a sore thumb, drawing all gazes to herself. Not for the same reason he did, at least.
They’d fed him, too, Steve had to give them that. Not long ago. He distinctly remembered being offered a plate of something that didn’t look familiar in any way; remembered eating without really registering the taste of food. Time felt warped here somehow, which he wrote off to the excitement of the day, his mind reeling with the newness of it all, making it hard to keep track of everything that had happened to him since morning. He pulled his watch out of the pocket of his pants. It was a little past midnight now; they had arrived less than 12 hours ago. And yet, it felt like he had managed to live a few months’ worth of life in that time.
He thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep, too wired for that, but the moment his head touched the pillow that smelled faintly of fresh linen and the sun his eyes started to droop, his head fuzzy in the comfortable, over-exhausted way that was like a blanket wrapped around his brain. And it was in that moment that he wondered if he had dreamed up this whole trip and the island itself. It wouldn't have surprised him if he had.
Steve closed his eyes and buried his face into the soft pillow, feeling the fog close over his mind. But it was when he started to drift off that the door to the room opened soundlessly. He would have missed it completely had it not been for the flicker of light from the hallway breaking through the darkness around him, pulling him back to the surface again. For a second, he thought that he’d imagined the dark figure that slipped inside, but then the sheets covering him shifted as someone moved across the bed.
The smell of the sea and something that had lingered constantly in the periphery of his attention during their time on the boat invaded his senses. Something like flowers and scented oil. And his heartbeat escalated by the moment.
Diana threw her leg over his thighs, her hands pressed into the pillow on either side of his head, and Steve reached for her without hesitation, his hands sliding up her back, along the leather of her armour and towards her shoulders, pulling her closer.
“Hey,” he breathed out, blinking the sleep away.
“Hi,” she whispered back, and bumped her nose playfully against his before kissing him properly, her lips soft and warm and eager. It took Steve a moment to realize that the low groan of appreciation was actually coming from him, and another one to register the fire that sparked inside him.
“What are you -- Should you be here?” he breathed out.
“Would you like me to leave?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper against his skin.
Steve swallowed, her fingers flexing on her skin, skimming over her shoulder-blades. “God, don’t even joke about it.”
“It is customary for guests to have their own chambers,” Diana murmured with a smile. “But no one is under the illusion that we’re not together, in that way." Her mouth moved to his jaw as Diana mapped her way towards his throat with small kisses, making it very hard for him to think. "I thought you wouldn't want to be alone.”
Steve framed her face with his hands, his eyes fastened on hers and his exhaustion nowhere to be found. “Okay, here’s an idea - we don’t talk about your family for a while, and then you can tell me all about them and how you guys do things here. How ‘bout that?”
She grinned at him, “Deal.”
And then she kissed him again, slowly and deeply, lips parting against his and luring him into the dark depths of consuming pleasure. Steve pushed his hands into her hair, tugging her closer, allowing her to coax a growl of need out of him, her mouth curved into a victorious smile against his.
He had missed her, missed being with her like that, the closeness not obstructed by anything but the need to savour every moment, every electric touch of their hands moving over one another’s bodies. Between his recovery and the war that had worn them out and several days on the boat in the middle of a stormy sea, it had started to feel like he hadn’t touched her in years. The wanting ricocheted through him, from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, settling in his lower belly and making his body hum with pure, unrestrained desire.
“I missed you,” Diana whispered as if reading his mind, her mouth hot on his skin, and he thought that he might evaporate in her arms.
Steve’s fingers strummed along her back, skimming over her armour. “This needs to go,” he murmured.
She smiled and pulled away, straddling his thighs as her hand reached for the clasps keeping the snug leather in place. He sat up too, his palm cupped over her face, his mouth fitted to hers, drinking her in, his heartbeat a rapid staccato and his want fully known. Diana’s breath hitched – an intoxicating sound - when his hand slid up her thigh and toward the skirt of her garment. She caught his wrist, guiding him to the familiar straps, allowing him to peel her armour off, unwrapping her one layer after another.
Hungry as he was, Steve chose to take his time, kissing every inch of exposed skin with deliberate precision until there was nothing left untended and Diana’s eyes were black and wild with need. Her armour fell to the floor without a sound and he lifted his arms to let her pull his undershirt over his head. She tossed it aside, her fingers smoothing down his rumpled hair.
“Don’t laugh at my bedhead,” Steve muttered hoarsely, his lips latching onto her collarbone and moving down across her chest, palms splayed over her back.
“I love your bedhead,” Diana promised.
She drew away, earning a low noise of protest in response, and then, a hand pressed to his chest, she pressed lightly, pushing him back. Steve complied, if a little hesitantly, lowering down and looking up at her quizzically, his chest heaving under her palm, aware that he was completely under her control and blinded by the exhilaration of that feeling. Diana leaned in, capturing his mouth with hers, her hair falling down like a black veil.
“Let me…” she whispered so softly he almost missed it, her lips moving down his throat, peppering a path down his chest with small, purposeful kisses.
“Diana,” he started, a plea and a warning.
“I love you,” she murmured, kissing his sternum, her fingers tugging at the belt of his pants – did he not take them off? He couldn’t remember.
Steve's eyes drooped shut. He sucked in a shaky breath, allowing her to do anything she wanted, anything at all. She whispered something in Greek - the words unfamiliar but the lilt of her voice unmistakable, nearly undoing him. The fire shooting from his core to the tips of his fingers was making his blood feel like molten gold, his mind spiralling into nothingness where there was nothing but him and her and a bliss the likes of which he never knew existed.
His awareness tunnelled, the desire achingly sweet in his veins. His need for more was more growing exponentially with every moment, each touch of her hands electrifying, and he was uncertain if it’d be worse if she'd stopped or kept going.
“Stay with me,” Diana whispered, rising up, and Steve looked up slowly to find her hovering over him as she watched him, her lips curled into a wicked smile.
His hands flexed on her hips, desperate and needy, and she leaned in, kissing him once more, swallowing a guttural moan that ripped from deep inside him when she shifted, taking him in on a single slide. His hips snapped up to fill her to the brim, her gasp ricochetting through every cell of his body.
For a long moment, neither of them moved, savouring the warm, languid sensation, their breaths ragged and short, and Jesus Christ, he loved her so much .
“You will be the death of me,” Steve muttered, his hand tangled in her hair and his heart pounding so fast he could barely breathe.
He tried to see her eyes, but it was too dark and he was too distracted by her body and the feeling of her everywhere around him, and he wanted…
She pulled away, hands flat on his chest, moving slowly above him, half-teasing him, half-adamant to make it last, bringing him closer with every rock of her hips and then going back to a more measured tempo. Her gaze locked on his, and in the silver moonlight, she looked ethereal, entirely unearthly. Steve’s fingers dug into the flesh of her hips, holding on to whatever he could reach, following her lead, the familiar dance of their bodies as easy as breathing.
Over the course of his life, he had wondered more than once what it was that pushed people to fight for peace, for their lives; what was the essence of self-preservation when giving up was so much easier, so much simpler in many ways. He knew it now, saw it on Diana’s face. Belonging. Solace in the arms of a loved one. It was worth everything. Her face streaked with silver light and shadows was blissful, happy, holding all the promises that transcended words. There was nothing he wouldn't do for this moment with her.
Close now, so close…
Diana's breathing grew short, her movements more erratic, and Steve’s grip on her tightened as he sat them up, Diana in his lap, a new angle leaving them both breathless. One hand on the small of her back, he buried his face into her neck as she wound her arms around him, his mouth finding that spot behind her ear that worked like magic. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, sliding over his back and gripping the hair at the nape of his neck, soft whispers peppered with his name and the words in languages Steve couldn’t understand making him shiver with every inhale.
“It’s okay,” she murmured into his ear, and the sound of her voice pushed Steve over the edge.
His release seared through him and into her, muttered words morphing into a groan when her own hold on him slackened. She went limp in his arms, muscles spasming with aftershocks as her lips danced over his skin with affection.
Arms wrapped tightly around Diana, Steve fell back on the sheets, taking her with him. Her hands were stroking his face as she was murmuring something that drowned in the deafening blood rush in his ears, his bones liquefied in the best way imaginable, and his mind spiralling into nothingness and delight.
“I love you,” her voice registered with him, faint but there, her fingers framing his face, her forehead pressed to his.
And Steve wondered, once again, if this kind of longing would ever fade, knowing somewhere in the back of his mind with certainty that the answer was no.
---
This would not be the worst way to go, Steve thought absently, white dots dancing before his eyes. He was stretched out on his back across the wide bed, the world nothing but a kaleidoscope of light around him. His breath was nowhere to be found, and he was quite certain that his heartbeat was loud enough to be heard by everyone for miles around them. (He refused to think of any other sounds that might or might not have escaped the confines of this room because at some point he had simply stopped caring.) Although the fact that no one had broken down the damned door and barged in was rather promising. He chose to take it as a good sign.
His eyes drifted shut and he swallowed hard, trying to gather his thoughts once more. Anything that would prove that he was still corporeal and not an abstract concept floating through space and time.
It would not have surprised him in the slightest.
There was an odd kind of irony to being back to the place that had taught Diana that men were not necessary for pleasure and having done everything they just did. It left him both chest-puffed proud of making it a good experience for her and humble in ways he couldn't quite begin to understand.
Steve could still remember her practical, unassuming tone when she had informed him of Clio's treatises and men's unenviable role in them on the night they had sailed back to his world all those years ago, an endless expanse of starry sky above them. It would be a lie if he didn't admit that her casual remark was one of the reasons why, in the course of their relationship, and even after Diana's comment had been reduced to a joke, he often chose to make their time together about her. That there still was a lingering fear lurking in the back of his mind that had found permanent home there no matter how many times she had promised him that there was no cause for it, making him more than a little adamant to prove to her that he was entirely and absolutely necessary. That he got his own pleasure in pleasing her, in knowing that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
He was only a man, after all. Diana had not been entirely incorrect when she had told him that men, by nature, were driven by pride, and at the time, it had not sounded like a compliment. There was certainly enough pride in Steve to make him feel a little offended when she had said that, but not enough to point out that she was wrong.
Definitely not enough to try and take charge when she decided to have her way with him tonight, more than happy to oblige, his heart and body hers for the taking.
“Am I dead?” Steve rasped when his ability to form coherent thoughts returned, somewhat surprised to feel the breeze spilling in through the open window, its touch cool against his heated skin.
Stretched alongside him, a lazy smile on her face, Diana giggled. She pulled a thin sheet over them and shifted to press closer to him. “Far from it,” she ducked her head to brush a kiss to his shoulder, his collarbone, earning a quiet curse in response. His eyes drifted shut as he exhaled slowly, struggling to find his bearings. His whole body felt like an exposed nerve, like even the slightest of touches could make him to spontaneously combust. Again – not the worst way to go.
“Where on earth did you learn that… that thing that you did?” Steve asked, finally finding it in him to crack one eye open, and then another, his lips twitching slightly.
Propped up on her elbow, her head resting on the heel of her hand, Diana was eyeing him with unmasked amusement and the kind of satisfaction that had a touch of smugness to it. And not without reason, too.
“That would be volume 11,” she informed him nonchalantly, her eyes twinkling.
Steve choked on his breath and let out a strangled groan that made her laugh.
Right. The volumes... on bodily pleasure. He should have known.
“Jesus…” He rubbed his eyes and then turned to her. “Can I flip through them?" he asked, hopeful. "At least some of them? Strictly for educational purposes.”
“Educational, huh?” Diana echoed, grinning. “How about I… ah, provide a demonstration?”
His cheeks grew hot, and even in the dark, Steve knew that it couldn’t have possibly escaped her attention, if the lazy smile that graced her features was any indication. She was unapologetic about her wants and needs, never hesitating to follow her desires. And he loved her even more for that, even though her ability to make him turn red to the tip of his ears made Steve feel like he was walking on thin ice more often than not, never knowing when he might drown.
“Please tell me I’m not going to get killed for doing what we just did with the daughter of the Queen,” he murmured, only half-joking, as his arm curled around her, his hand running absently over the base of her spine.
“I’m not sure it’s an offence, but let me go find out,” Diana responded with a feigned frown and even started to pull away from him with enough determination to make his heart skip a beat.
Steve caught her by the wrist and tugged her back to him, a flicker of panic flaring up in his chest. “Don’t… it’s not funny.”
He doubted that bedding the Queen's daughter would qualify as treason, but having seen what those swords and arrows could do, he was not willing to take his chances.
“Don’t you trust me to keep you safe?” she inquired.
“How can I trust someone whom I’ve been begging for mercy not half an hour ago?” Steve countered.
Her smile stretched out wider. “Fair point.”
He lifted his hand and ran the back of his knuckles over her cheek, his eyes searching hers. “I don’t… I don’t want you to think that you have to keep me safe, Diana,” he added softly, seriously.
She dipped her head to kiss him on the chest. “I know.”
Steve felt the curve of her smile against his skin.
“What?” he asked when she hummed, a low sound rising in her chest and reverberating into him.
She looked up, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Someone told me today that you look at me like I’m your sunlight when I’m not looking,” she responded, clearly pleased.
“That is not true,” Steve shook his head, his face solemn.
Diana tilted her head slightly, one eyebrow arched, “It's not?”
“No.” He slid a finger under her chin, his gaze holding hers. “That’s how I always look at you, whether you can see it or not.” He drew her to him, brushing a feather-light kiss to her brow.
“I'll remember that," she whispered.
Steve traced his thumb along her chin. “How else do you look at a princess?”
The corners of her mouth tugged up. “No one here calls me that.”
“Huh?" His brows furrowed. "What do they call you?”
“Diana. My mother… she had made sure that I always understood that being her daughter was a responsibility, not a privilege. That I was not above everyone else simply because of my status. I have always been more on display, my victories as well as my mistakes never going unnoticed.” Her fingers were tracing the line of an old scar on his shoulder as she spoke, her tone a mixture of wistfulness and contemplation. “Not then and not now," she added, making him wonder into which category their relationship fell. "It was an honour to be brought up the way I was, but it wasn't always simple.”
Steve ran his hand absently up and down her spine. “So, no special treatment then?”
Diana draped her arm over his chest and rested her chin on the back of her hand, watching him in the moonlight. “Maybe a little,” she admitted, her lips quirking. “But I was raised to be a warrior first and everything else second.”
He studied her for a long moment, his hand playing with a strand of her hair. “You’re staying, right? Here, with me?”
“Mm, would you want me to?” She pulled away from him just far enough to trail her hand along his chest and down his stomach, a feather-light touch that earned her a muttered curse and a sharp inhale as a spark of desire stirred in his belly.
“Oh god,” Steve breathed out. “I don’t think I can...”
She laughed softly and traced her finger over his cheek. “You’re tired. Sleep.”
He swallowed, struggling to focus his gaze on her face once more. “Not exactly what I meant.”
“I know.” She leaned in to kiss him, and when she started to draw back, he rose on his elbow, chasing her mouth and stealing another kiss.
“Stay,” he repeated, unable to keep a touch of panic out his voice, the idea of sleeping and waking up alone unsettling at best. Up until now, all of this felt like a dream, and he was suddenly overcome with the worry of waking up from it, without her. Irrational as it was, Steve couldn't stand the thought of parting now. To hell with social protocols, he thought, they'd spent enough time apart for the next hundred lifetimes.
“I will,” she promised, her features softening as she kissed him once more.
“Diana?” he started quietly a few minutes later, just barely clinging to a faint thread of wakefulness.
Nestled into him, their legs tangled together, she stirred, her lips brushing to the underside of his chin. “Mm?”
Steve's hand flexed on her shoulder. “Does it bother them that I’m here?”
She stayed quiet for a while, her finger drawing slow patterns on his skin. “Not the fact that you’re here," Diana spoke. "But your being here is a change that is… strange. Unheard of.” He could hear a small smile in her voice. “They are curious, some of them have never seen a person from your world before, especially a man.” A pause. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“Because I’m with you?” He stroked her hair absently.
“Because we’re not the enemy.”
---
There was an odd quality to being back. The island with its gently sloping hills and the village that seemingly rose from the rock both new and familiar, all at once.
To Diana, Themyscira had always been a solid constant, a stillness in the ever-changing chaos. There had always been comfort in that. The kind of comfort that she couldn’t find anywhere else. This was the place where she could catch her breath if need be, where she could regain her equilibrium and find herself again. Her place. Something that kept her anchored.
But with Steve there, she couldn’t help but feel the two of her worlds colliding, much like the way the stars were born when galaxies crashed into one another. All explosions and light creating something new and beautiful at the end of something that started off as utter chaos. Nothing had changed and yet everything was different, and she could feel her universe tilt and shift and spin backwards, the suddenness of it leaving her with a sense of vertigo.
In her mind, Themyscira belonged only to her, the way the memories of his past were Steve’s only. And then seemingly out of nowhere he was poking his nose into every room of the palace and asking endless questions about things that Diana had never considered being anything but mundane, making her look at the place that she had called home her entire life in a way she never had before. He had an affinity for her horse because he was the fastest apparently and was getting beetroot red from all the attention from her mother’s guards and the villagers that he was not accustomed to, somewhat unsure whether he should be flattered or disconcerted. All those years of trying to stay as invisible as possible, and he was on display all of a sudden, uncertain how to take it. The kitchen ladies were in love with him, Diana could see that much, and seemingly on a mission to fatten him up, she suspected. She even caught him more once trying to show them how to make an omelette or something of that kind.
Standing in the kitchen door with her arms crossed over her chest and her shoulder propped against the stone wall, Diana watched him explain something to the same women that had allowed her, as a little girl, to have dessert before dinner when her mother wasn’t looking, his voice too soft for her to hear what he was saying. And they were listening with intent curiosity, hanging onto his every word and eyeing him like he was a museum rarity. And already, Diana could hardly remember this place without him. It made no sense, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it, but watching him now, engaged in stirring something in a huge pot while making the cooks laugh at his jokes made Diana's chest tighten with a warmth and fondness she never knew she was capable of feeling. Never knew it even existed inside her.
Steve looked up then and spotted her, comically puzzled, a spoon in his mouth and a wordless What? spoken only with his raised eyebrows.
Diana laughed, unable to hold it back. It was incredible how only a few moments ago she had thought she couldn’t love him more, and yet…
“Correct me if I'm wrong, Diana, but this is not a social visit, is it?” Hippolyta asked a few days later when they were standing above the training field, Diana’s gaze darting between the vast expanse of the ocean beyond it and a small figure that was trying and epically failing to keep up with the warriors who had thousands of years of training on him.
Steve had asked her earlier if he could have a taste of what the majority of Diana’s life had been like before he had literally crashed into it, changing it in ways she never knew were possible. Besides, Diana thought as her eyes followed him now, it was highly amusing to watch him try to do what everyone else was doing. With enviable determination, at that, she had to admit when his presence among them was nothing but entertainment to them all.
“I wanted to…” she started, wincing a little when Artemis easily knocked Steve off the wooden platform like it was nothing, and he landed on the soft grass with a groan and a wince. The crowd around him erupted in good-natured laughter. “That will hurt later,” Diana murmured, struggling not to smile as affection pooled in her chest. She glanced at her mother. “I wanted you to meet him. Without soldiers. Without death. I wanted you to see him for who he really is. Wanted you to judge him on his own merits.”
Hippolyta’s eyes swept over the warriors. Diana knew that she never stopped looking for Antiope among them. Not even after all this time. Maybe not ever.
“You don’t need to seek my approval,” Hippolyta said, her voice carrying no accusation or reproach.
“He wouldn’t be here if you disapproved, mother,” Diana noted. She was certain that Hippolyta wouldn’t have let Steve set his foot on the island if she was against his presence here, not for her daughter, not for anyone else. Her eyes shifted toward Menalippe who was holding to the side of the field, her expression guarded and openly displeased. “She will never forgive him. For what happened on the beach. For Antiope.”
Hippolyta’s gaze followed Diana’s.
“She can forgive anything to anyone for you,” she replied without a trace of doubt in her voice. “Give Menalippe time. It hadn't been easy on anyone.”
It hadn't been, Diana thought. On her mother more than anyone. To lose a sister and a child in a span of a few days must have taken a toll on her even though there was nothing about her now that betrayed it. Still, Diana had felt a pang of guilt before, when she was leaving that first time, and she felt it now, for bringing back the memories that her people wanted to leave behind.
“I know.” For a long moment the silence between them was only interrupted by the clanking of swords and hollers of excitement and protest, softened by the wind. “Something happened to him,” Diana added quietly after a while. “On the night when Ares had died. Something that his people cannot explain. Steve was meant to die then. And once more, not long ago. His heart stopped beating.” She turned to Hippolyta. “When I had come back here, after the first war, you had told me something about him coming back for a reason… I thought you might be able to tell me more.”
Hippolyta flinched a little when Steve failed to deflect another blow, choosing to roll away from the attack. Her features softened momentarily.
“You look happy,” she noted without turning to her daughter.
“I am,” Diana admitted.
“I don’t want to take that away from you.” Hippolyta’s voice grew rueful. “That’s the thing about the truth, Diana… once it’s out, you can never take it back.”
“It’s not my life and not my decision to make,” Diana murmured. “And it can’t be worse than not knowing.”
Below them, Steve looked up and saw her, his hand rising to wave at her. She could see his smile even from over a hundred feet away, his eyes squinted against the glare of the sun... and then a moment later he landed face-first on the ground. He was going to regret this later, she mused, but there was something in seeing him try regardless that was beyond endearing. It occurred to her then that to Steve, this also must have felt like a clash of two realities that were meant to run parallel to one another but never cross paths.
They were together in this.
“He seems like a good man.”
A small smile tugged at the corners of Diana’s mouth. “Might be the best of them all.”
After a few long moments Hippolyta nodded, and the decision was made.
---
“No, really, what is it?” Steve asked a few hours later when they had found their way to the underground pools that gleamed faintly in the dark, blue light bouncing off the crudely carved rock walls around them.
Diana had insisted they come here, saying that his bruised and battered body would thank him later, and Steve knew better than to object, finding the idea of healing after being tossed around like a rag doll undeniably appealing. That, and maybe the whole joined bathing thing, but that wasn’t exactly the point , or so he tried to pretend as he followed Diana down the already familiar steps to the caverns underneath the palace, their footsteps echoing under the domed ceiling.
Sitting neck-deep in the water now, his back resting against the rough stone wall of the pool and Diana’s against his chest as he cradled her close to him, he ran his hand along the surface, his fingers leaving a trail of blue light behind.
She chuckled softly, the sound of it reverberating into Steve and making goosebumps rise along his skin.
“It’s magic,” she responded, and he couldn’t tell if she was being serious or merely teasing him, both options equally possible.
“No, I mean, there’s got to be—are there some kind of microorganisms that do it?” he pressed, wrapping his arms loosely around her, seeping in her warmth, all velvet and silk against his skin.
Diana turned her head and kissed his bicep. “Does it matter?”
“My inquisitive mind can’t deal with not knowing,” Steve deadpanned, and she burst out laughing. “What?” Steve demanded, mock-offended.
“You come here and you still don’t believe in magic?” She shook her head, and her hair that was gathered in a messy twist on the top of her head brushed against his cheek.
“I believe in you,” he said. “Close enough.”
She glanced up, finding his gaze, her lips curved into a small smile. “That’s very generous of you, Captain Trevor.”
“Isn’t that what you said when--” he cut off, feeling his face grow hot, and cleared his throat, struggling to keep his rather self-indulgent grin at bay. She shouldn’t have looked as triumphant as she did, but, Jesus help him, the woman sure knew how to keep him on his toes without even trying. And how eagerly he was swallowing every bait and stepping into every trap. Steve let out a long breath and brushed a kiss to her hair. “You know, I've been meaning to ask--You think you want to stay here?”
“In the water?” she clarified.
“Not here here.”
“On Themyscira,” Diana said after a moment, running her fingertips along his forearm.
"We don't have to go back if it's not what you want," he added quietly.
She closed her hand over his and laced their fingers together. “No, we can’t. You can’t.”
“I can’t?” Steve frowned, trying to remember if it had been mentioned that his visit had an expiration date. Were they going to haul him off and toss him into the ocean eventually?
“Wouldn’t you miss your world?” Diana leaned back against him, relaxing into his embrace.
The tightness in his chest eased instantly. His lips curved humourlessly, and for once, he was glad that Diana couldn’t see it. What was there to miss? If he truly never returned, was there anything waiting for him? Death and destruction and uncertainty in a world where Diana's presence was the only light in his life that mattered. He couldn’t lose her, not again.
“You’re my world,” he whispered into her ear, his grip on her tightening like she could slip out of his grasp if he didn’t hold fast.
“I’m serious,” Diana pressed.
“Me, too.” He wasn’t sure that he was until the words came out of his mouth, and then suddenly, it seemed like the most logical, the most natural decision. So long as she wanted him, he didn’t care about the details. About where they lived or why. If she had asked him to move to the moon, he’d simply start packing, no questions asked. “If you want to stay, we’ll stay. It’ll probably be a while before using me as a punching bag will stop being fun for your…" Steve's brows pulled together. "Are you all related somehow?”
Her thumb was running over his knuckles. He heard the amusement in her voice when she spoke. “No.”
“Oh, well, for your friends and family , then.”
“How bad is it?” Diana asked, tilting her head to nuzzle into his jaw.
He grimaced a little. “I'll live... A person doesn’t need both of their kidneys anyway, right?”
“I’ll ask them to go easy on you,” she promised sympathetically, lifting her hand to touch her thumb to his chin.
“Don’t,” he blurted out, horrified. “I’d rather have bruised ribs than a bruised ego. Besides—”
“Diana.”
A woman – Aella, Steve thought, what with the names still blurring a bit in his mind – was standing at the mouth of the cave. Her voice gave Steve a start and he nearly went underwater in surprise, more self-aware and flustered than anything else, and unable to help it. His face grew hot when he realized he was virtually naked in the presence of a stronger. Even though that stranger had kicked his ass earlier today. More so because of that, even.
Diana straightened up and turned around, not particularly concerned, judging by her body language. If the other woman cared about the intimacy of the moment she had walked in on, she didn’t show it. Unlike the notorious spy who should have probably had a better poker face, naked or not, and Steve hated himself for the traitorous colour that was rising up his neck.
“The Queen wants to see you," Aella said to Diana. "Now.”
“What about?” Diana asked.
But to that, the other woman only shook her head – either unaware or choosing to let the Queen deal with it herself.
Nevertheless, Diana nodded and pulled herself up from the water. “I’ll be right over.”
She stepped out of the pool and reached for the sheet that was meant to serve as a towel, lying folded near where she had left her armour earlier, to dry herself off. Steve tried not to stare. The lack of any kind of self-consciousness that came so naturally to the Amazons was still catching him off guard even now, even after all those years. Even after being around Diana long enough to stop being surprised by it, or anything at all, for that matter. Least of all the issue of nudity and her ease about it. It still felt uncomfortable somehow to look at her lithe form in the presence of another person, despite knowing her body better than he knew his own.
Yeah, okay, maybe that was the problem, he thought.
Aella’s eyes flickered toward him.
“And your… guest,” she added, making Steve wish he’d gone through with the ‘waiting at the bottom of the pool’ plan as he had wanted from the start, concerned not so much about his nakedness, per se, as about the rather prominent bite mark on his shoulder, courtesy of Diana after they’d gotten a little carried away the previous night. This was exactly the kind of information that he didn’t want to share with anyone. Let alone with the people who might or might not be having some sort of family connection to the woman he was sleeping with. It was like walking blindfolded on a minefield, never knowing which step could be his last one. Here – literally so.
“We’ll be there shortly,” Diana promised nonchalantly, and after that, Aella finally left and Steve allowed himself to exhale at last. There was simply no way he would have gotten out of the pool otherwise, not with the other woman present. Still, his eyes remained on the entrance to the cave for another moment. “You need help standing up?” Diana smirked. “Steve?”
He snapped his head up, biting back a question about maybe having some doors installed here and there. “Hm? What? No.”
He scrambled up to his feet with much less grace than Diana a minute ago, and she handed him a spare sheet, already busy putting on her armour. For a long moment, he allowed his gaze to linger on her body, sliding slowly up her calves and along her infinitely long legs, following the movements of her hands, every motion easy and deliberate, like a well-choreographed dance as she affixed her bodice and skirt in place, the wisps of hair that had escaped her twist coiling at the nape of her neck.
God only knew how he had resisted the urge to touch her, trace his fingertips along her skin.
Diana looked up, a silent question in her eyes pulling him out of his thoughts.
“Is everything okay?” Steve asked, gaze darting toward the entrance to the cave.
“Yes.” Her features softened, and she stepped towards him when he still didn’t move. Her palm curled over his jaw as she kissed him, chasing his concerns away. “Yes,” Diana repeated, stroking his cheek with her thumb. “I would suggest you put something on now,” she added, smiling. “I don’t think my mother would appreciate this,” her finger trailed down his chest, making Steve suck in his breath and wish that an audience with the Queen wasn’t on the agenda, “as much as I do.”
---
Queen Hippolyta was standing by the fireplace when Steve followed Diana into her chambers, her eyes trained on the flames, her face a mask of dancing shadows.
“Long ago—long before your time,” she started without turning to Diana who paused behind her mother, “Zeus had left us a prophecy about a daughter of a god who was destined to change man’s world. She was meant to be taken away by the sky vessel to save mankind from destroying itself and bring peace to the world. At the time, it meant nothing to any of us. And then you were born, Diana. Magnificent and like no one who had walked this Earth before you. A daughter of a god.” She paused. "I knew then that the prophecy had come true, that you were meant for something greater than anything we could ever imagine."
Steve grew still.
He had never been to the Queen's chambers before, his eyes darting from Diana to her mother to the lavish furnishings of what looked like a study leading to a bedroom in the back, and back to Hippolyta again, his mind reeling. It took him a moment too long to notice Menalippe who was standing in the back, pointedly not looking at anyone in particular, her eyes locked instead on a tapestry on the wall, her gaze unseeing. She was, perhaps, the only person apart from Diana and Hippolyta who Steve could single out at a glance, and he figured that the almost palpable hostility radiating off her was the reason for that. Knew that there was part of her that would never forgive him for bringing death to her people, for being the reason why someone dear to her had been taken away.
He dragged his gaze away from her, lest she notice him staring. Who knew where that might go? So far, they had mastered the art of dancing around one another, and the sharpness of the sword that Menalippe had on her at all times made him glad to keep it that way.
“I didn’t think much about it until…” Hippolyta continued when no one spoke, and then trailed off, her jaw clenched against the words she didn’t want to say. Steve could feel the effort she put into looking straight ahead without turning to her daughter, the line of her shoulders rigid.
“But we didn’t leave by--” Steve spoke and cut off.
Semantics.
It was a ‘sky vessel’ that had brought him here. He figured that for gods, the details of his departure were just that - details.
Not that anyone seemed to hear him regardless.
“Captain Trevor was meant to come here. It had always been his destiny to end up on Themyscira as much as it was yours to leave, Diana.” The Queen looked so stiff it seemed like she could snap in half if anyone touched her, her voice tight. “He didn’t die on the night you had defeated Ares because he was not supposed to. Not yet.”
“I don’t understand…” Diana was staring at her mother, a frown lodged between her eyebrows and her mouth working soundlessly as she tried to put her conflicted thoughts into words when Hippolyta finally turned to her.
“Am I immortal?” Steve asked from behind her, the whole conversation so surreal that it sounded half-absurd, half-insane, the very notion of fate being used in this context entirely ludicrous. He had long learned not to take the legends of Diana's people for granted, but there was only so much that he could accept without losing his mind. Without feeling like the entire world was falling apart around him.
Hippolyta’s gaze shifted to him, and in that moment, Steve wished that it hadn’t. Wished that she would keep on watching the flames.
“No,” she shook her head. “You will go when your time comes.”
Which would be…? he wanted to prod, the question rolling on his tongue, but the words tasted foul in his mouth somehow, and the answer was something he decidedly didn’t want to hear. If there even was one. And so he clamped his mouth shut and pressed his lips together for good measure, his escalated heartbeat and the heavy smell of incense making him dizzy.
It made sense, he thought. As much as anything could make sense in a world where a thousand women living on a secluded island referred to gods like they walked among them. Like one could step into this very room at any moment. Which probably wasn’t that much of a stretch, come to think of it. If nothing else, Diana was the daughter of one, after all.
Although it hardly made Hippolyta’s words any less outlandish, any less impossible.
“So, what does it mean, exactly?” he asked warily.
Hippolyta raised her chin, her eyes assessing him. “You’re alive,” was all she said before turning to Diana, her expression closing off. “I suppose this answer should suffice.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Diana demanded, her face a mask, her voice barely betraying her hurt. One had to know her well to hear it.
Hippolyta’s eyes flickered toward Menalippe who still resembled a statue, her lips pressed tight. “I didn’t make the connection until after it had happened. And then you were gone.”
“But I came back, and you still said nothing.”
There were accusations and betrayal in Diana’s tone, and suddenly, Steve felt like an intruder, imposing on something that wasn't meant to be witnessed by anyone. Wished that he could disappear without a trace and let them finish the conversation without any prying eyes. Wished that he had never been part of it at all. Nothing, he suspected, that was going to be said from this moment on could make him unhear what he’d already learned.
“And you refused to speak of anything that had happened to you in man’s world,” Hippolyta countered, her voice even. “At the time… I thought it didn’t matter anymore.” Her features softened, the line of her mouth less sharp, and when she spoke to Diana again, her eyes flickered toward Steve. “You’re happy, you said so yourself. Must you question the will of the gods, Diana? Captain Trevor lived because you needed him to.”
Diana glanced at Steve as well, and then nodded, more in acknowledgement than gratitude for the information. Part of him expected her to argue - he could practically hear the wheels in her mind turn - but she said nothing and the pause started to stretch. Her hands flexed, balling into fists and then uncurling slowly. Whatever anger and confusion were coursing through her now, she managed to contain it. Steve refused to think of his own storm of emotions just yet.
“It’s late,” Hippolyta said after a few moments when the silence hanging between them grew too heavy. “I believe you had an eventful day.” And maybe Steve was only imagining it, but he had a distinct suspicion that she was speaking of his fighting misadventures, and hopefully not what had happened in the caves.
Come to think of it, he was in luck that Hippolyta had other people to carry her messages for her.
Diana nodded again and looked away from her mother. “Yes, we should… I will see you in the morning.”
“And, Diana?” Hippolyta’s voice called after them, Steve having already pulled the door open, and both of them stopped in their tracks. “I arranged for Captain’s belongings to be moved to your chambers. For everyone’s convenience.”
---
“Well, that was… informative,” Steve muttered when the door to Diana’s room closed behind them and he leaned against it, rubbing his forehead as if he could physically rearrange his thoughts, somehow having more questions than before the conversation with the Queen.
Diana walked over to the vanity table and started to unfasten her gauntlets, her fingers pulling at the buckles automatically with sure, practiced moves. He watched her in silence, her back rigid and her lips pressed together, the sharp outline of her profile seemingly etched from a piece of granite.
He felt his stomach curl into a knot.
“Diana,” he started when the pause grew so heavy between them he could barely breathe, his lungs feeling crumpled in his chest.
“There are moments when I feel like everything in my life is a lie,” she said after a long moment, her voice hollow somehow in way Steve didn’t recognize.
He grimaced a little and ran his hand over his hair, the Queen’s words running in his head on an endless loop, the meaning of them elusive still. Leaving Hippolyta’s chambers had had a sobering effect on him, making everything he had heard not so long ago sound entirely outlandish.
“Well, truth be told, the whole notion of fate…”
“No,” she interjected, placing her gauntlets down next to her hairbrush, still not looking at him, “I mean us. You and me. Is it real, what is happening between us, or are we just following that path because it was laid out before us?”
Steve’s pulse stuttered. He swallowed and then pushed off the door, stepping toward her and stopping again, trying to hear how it all sounded to her as he racked his brain for something to say and coming up empty. For the second time in less than an hour, he felt dizzy from the enormity of something that he didn’t know how to even begin to understand.
Of course, it was real. It was the realest thing that ever happened to him. The one thing that kept him anchored, grounded, making him feel like he belonged.
“I don’t know what brought me here, a coincidence or something that was predestined long before either of us existed,” Steve spoke at last, “but from where I’m standing, it doesn’t matter. It never did. I never had to fall in love you, Diana. Nothing… no gods could make it happen against my will.”
Diana looked up then, her bottom lip caught between her teeth and her face a storm of emotions – doubt, confusion, disbelief, all mixed into one until there was a hurricane raging in her eyes.
“Do you truly believe that?”
Cold fear trickled down his spine as he watched her, struggling to ignore the panic churning inside him, his heart pounding right out of his chest. “Do you not? You think it would have been different if you knew… from the start? You think it’s different now ? Now that you know…” he trailed off, feeling the floor sway beneath his feet.
“No, Steve. No, never,” she responded without hesitation. She ran an unsteady hand through her hair and shook her head, her eyes begging him to understand. “All my life, I trusted my mother before I trusted myself. I don’t know how to do that anymore, not after she kept the truth about my father and—and you.”
She rubbed her forehead, jittery energy radiating off of her.
“She used to tell me that without trust, the world was as good as dead,” Diana added quietly. “What does it say about the world that there hasn’t been an honest word spoken between us in so long?”
Steve heaved a sigh and ran his hand over his cheek, his skin prickly with stubble. “That something else keeps the world going, I guess,” he muttered, earning a weak smile, that disappeared before he knew it was there, in response.
Unease stirred inside him, the memory of Hippolyta saying that there were no rules to his life. He could, Steve realized, die at any moment, should some higher powers decide that he had served his purpose, whatever that was. Which, in retrospect, wasn’t that different from being at war. The only distinction now was that he appeared to be at war with himself.
It was a peculiar feeling, the overwhelming amount of new information making him numb to the ramifications of… whatever had happened to him. He wasn’t sure that he believed the Queen, the very idea of destiny sounding utterly ludicrous in his mind, but there was nothing else, no other explanation that he could hold on to. Nothing else to make sense of his life.
And then Steve remembered something else she had said.
“You told your mother that you were happy,” he noted, hoping he didn’t sound as giddy and pleased as he felt, his voice dropping and his smile getting less strained, less uncertain.
Diana allowed her lips to stretch out wider, the lines of concern on her face smoothing out, her expression softening. She trailed her fingers along the marble surface of her vanity table before turning to him, even the stiff line of her shoulders relaxing before Steve’s eyes.
“It has never been a secret, has it?” she said.
“Yes, but…” he cleared his throat, certain now that saying anything else would be begging for praise. There was nothing in all of creation that could explain this, them , and the fact that he somehow got someone like her to love him. It never ceased to amaze Steve, and he knew that it never would. His eyes skittered around for a second before fastening on hers again. “That story, the prophecy …” it felt odd to say it, and he wondered if she heard it, his skepticism that he simply couldn’t help, at least for now. “It changes nothing, Diana. For me, it doesn't change a single thing. I would have loved you with or without it, I know it. You’re still everything to me. You’re my whole universe.”
She glanced away and he stepped towards her, hands framing her face, lifting it until their eyes met again. “C’mere,” Steve leaned his forehead to hers for a moment before brushing a kiss to it. “I mean it, every word.” Her fingers closed around fistfuls of his shirt as Steve pulled her to him. He let out a slow breath. “Let’s go to bed, okay? It’s late and I feel like someone has beat me with a stick. Which I’m pretty sure is exactly what happened.”
A faint smile touched Diana’s lips. “At least I get to sleep in my own bed, for once.”
“I didn’t hear you complaining about sleeping in mine last night, or the five before that,” Steve countered, feeling the mood change, the air around them less charged by the second.
He helped her take her armour off, as familiar with it by now as Diana was. He slipped the long gown over her head, making her laugh – “I’m not a child, Steve,” - and stripped down to his undershirt and boxers before crawling into bed next to her, bone-tired. Diana rolled over to curl into him, her breathing already deep and relaxed, and Steve felt the tension lift off him. She kissed him before tucking her head under his chin, her body nestled into his.
“Are you alright?” she asked softly. “I know it was a lot—it was not what I expected to hear.”
“Yeah.” He wasn’t. He wasn’t sure what he was but okay was not the word for that. However… “Your mother is right though. Being alive should be enough, no?”
“It always has been for me, my love.”
“You really refused to speak of me?” Steve breathed out after a while, unsure if he actually said it out loud until she responded.
“I missed you. It hurt," Diana murmured, and then whispered into his shirt, “A universe, really?”
He pressed his lips to the crown of her head, finally allowing his eyes to drop shut. “All the stars and galaxies and everything else,” he confirmed, his mind slipping into a deep, dreamless slumber.
---
There had to be a map of this place, Steve decided the following day as he took another turn and instead of seeing the familiar staircase he was looking for, he ended up in yet another corridor. How big was this place, anyway? Maybe he could start on something while he was still here, map out the basics to avoid getting lost a dozen more times, and having to pretend that he was just ‘having a look around’ if someone asked. He was a spy, for heaven's sake, wasn't he supposed to be able to remember how to find his way around this place?
This morning, he had woken up to Diana already dressed and on the way out the door. Her hair had been pulled into a tight braid, and he had no idea how she managed to look so radiant and awake so early in the morning, when the sun had barely peeked over the horizon, the air still pleasantly cool, hours away from the stifling humidity he was surprisingly getting used to. Yet, she had been so beautiful it all but took his breath away, making him lose his train of thought momentarily.
“Stay,” he had murmured when she leaned over to kiss him a good morning.
Diana had smiled, brushing her hand through his hair. “Sleep. I will get someone to bring you food.”
“Or… we could eat it together,” he had offered, rising to chase her mouth and steal another quick kiss.
“I will see you later,” she had promised, pulling away from him, and Steve could probably think of a million other ways for them to spend this morning. But instead, he had rolled onto his stomach and buried his face into her pillow that smelled like sunshine and Diana. Her laugh was the last thing he had heard before he had fallen asleep again, warm in the early-morning sunlight and lulled by the whisper of the sea far below.
But that was a few hours ago, and breakfast had come and gone, and eventually, Steve had figured out that she was most likely taking advantage of being able to train properly while they were here – he had long proven to be an enthusiastic but rather useless sparring partner for someone of her calibre and, well, strength, experience, endurance and other things. The list could go on for quite a while. His own muscles still ached from the day before, and even though Steve was certain that no permanent internal damage had been inflicted, he decided to steer clear of the training field for the time being.
Hence trying to find the library that Diana had mentioned the other day and that he, after everything she’d told him about this place, couldn’t wait to sneak a peek at. Also, without her, Steve wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself, and after last night’s conversation, he had too much on his mind and an endless urge to block it out for now. The sharpness of Hippolyta's confession had dulled but a nagging feeling in the pit of Steve's stomach remained.
Diana had explained to him earlier where to find the library and the throne room, which he had requested out of sheer curiosity. However, it clearly hadn't been detailed enough.
Steve was starting to think of going back where he had come from, and maybe starting again – provided he could do that without getting even more stranded. And it wasn’t like he had much of a choice. Maybe he could swing by the kitchen as well, he mused. They always had some treats for him, and he appreciated the company even if half of the residents of the palace still looked at him like he was some otherworldly creature.
Truth be told, half the time he felt that way himself.
Frustrated, Steve decided that he would go back if he hadn't found anything in the next two minutes. And then he stopped short, caught off-guard when Hippolyta rounded the corner, followed by two women who walked half a step behind her in perfect formation. The three of them also paused when they spotted him.
“Your Highness,” Steve muttered, bowing his head on instinct and lowering his eyes. He took a step aside, moving out of the Queen’s way.
He expected a curt nod and an impassive greeting in response before Hippolyta was on her way. Instead, she stopped in her tracks, not quite surprised, but considering something.
“Captain Trevor. Is everything alright?” she asked after a moment of hesitation.
Steve glanced up. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her, deep respect for the ruler of these people was mixing with slight irritation over what she had put Diana through by keeping secrets that, morally, she had no right to keep. There was fascination, too, living alongside deep fear that she could say something to Diana that would drive Diana away from him. He was not, after all, royalty. Nor was he one of them, and even though few of the Amazons openly disapproved of their relationship, Steve doubted that he was someone they viewed as a proper match for their princess.
For a moment, he considered lying and telling Hippolyta that he was heading someplace or other. However, the idea of being called out on it – and he had a feeling that she would know instantly if he told her anything but the truth – was unsettling.
“Yes, I was just… I think I took the wrong turn somewhere,” he admitted in the end, doing his best to stand taller and look more composed than he felt.
Hippolyta studied him for a second, her calm gaze locked with his. She nodded curtly then, and Steve thought that this would be the end of their interaction. In all the time he’d spent there, she showed no hostility or animosity toward him, which was probably more than he could have asked for, considering that he inadvertently was the reason of the German attack that had led to the death of her sister and her daughter’s departure from the island.
Truth be told, Steve wasn’t sure he’d be this generous if he was in her shoes, and for that, he was grateful beyond words.
Yet, she expressed little to no interest in him, and aside from the previous night, they had barely said a few words to one another, outside the occasional greeting. Quite frankly, after he’d seen her stab and behead German soldiers on that beach, the memory of which was still painfully fresh in his mind, this particular arrangement was fine with him.
Which only made his surprise so much more profound when Hippolyta asked, “Do you have a moment?”
Steve doubted it was really a question.
“Of course,” he replied nonetheless and she brushed past him, leading the way.
Steve followed her down the corridor and through a set of tall doors into a cavernous room with a high ceiling and a massive balcony overlooking the village below and the endless stretch of brilliant water. He knew that it was impossible to see beyond the barrier that protected the island from the rest of the world, but had that not been the case, he was certain he’d be able to spot Italy, so clear the sky was.
The guards didn’t follow them inside, and for a long moment, it was just him and the Queen, looking at the island from several hundred feet above everyone else.
“I wanted to thank you. For taking good care of my daughter,” Hippolyta said just as he started to believe that the sole reason for her invitation was to show him the view. Granted, it was magnificent, but the curiosity churning in his stomach was making it hard to see it for what it was.
Steve shifted from foot to foot, not knowing how to take it. “I’m not sure I do. Diana doesn’t need anyone to take care of her. She is more than capable of doing it herself.”
“I know. But I appreciate it nonetheless.” He saw a faint smile cross her features, fleeting and gone before he knew it. “You don’t believe me,” Hippolyta added. “I don’t expect you to. There is a reason why my people and yours don’t coexist. Can’t coexist.”
Steve turned her words in his head, silent for a long moment. “No, I do believe you.” He wasn’t sure she believed him when he said that, though. “However, there’s more to the story than you told us. I believe that, too.” Was this kind of honestly going to cost him his life, he wondered. “You’re hard to read, you know. And I have spent most of my life learning to do just that to survive.”
Hippolyta didn’t look at him, her gaze glued to something down below on the beach. And when Steve followed it, he spotted a few figures galloping along the surf, the water spraying from under the hooves of black stallions. Diana among them, unmistakable.
“She was a happy child,” Hippolyta said, and he wasn’t sure for a moment if she was talking to him or to herself. “She had a happy life here, never deprived of anything. It might not look that way to you, but our people survived for a long time without the commodities of man's world, content if our own way." The Queen paused. "But I have never seen Diana the way she is when you’re around, Captain. It’s like you have ignited a light inside her that no one else could.”
I love her , Steve thought, but the words didn’t come out, too private to be spoken out loud. He swallowed, following the figure below with his eyes, leaned close to the horse’s neck, a tiny spot among half a dozen others, until they disappeared around the outcropping of rocks.
“Diana told me what happened to you, years ago. And recently, too. Told me that you could have died… should have died, but it didn’t happen. Nothing did, in fact.”
“Luck?” Steve suggested, not sure if there was a question in the Queen's words, a foreboding of something terrible settling heavily in his stomach. “I thought you gave us an answer to that mystery already.”
“Luck is for fools.” Hippolyta shook her head. “And gods can only be generous for so long. As for what I had said last night… The prophecy is real, and for my people, it’s not an empty sound, regardless of whether it means anything to you and your kind or not. But I want you to ask yourself this – what has been the common denominator in both instances when your life was supposed to end?”
She might as well have punched him in the stomach, all air wheezing out of him in an instant and the blood rush in his ears muting the roar of the waves down below.
Steve’s mouth went dry. “Diana.”
How did he not think of that? She had told him who she was, a long time ago, and yet the possibility had never once crossed his mind. Was he that blindsided by his feelings for her?
“Only a god can grant life, Captain,” Hippolyta said when Steve didn’t respond. “Diana is a daughter of one.”
She paused, waiting for the information to sink in, and once it did, the world shifted off its axis. Steve's fingers dug painfully into the marble railing of the balcony as he leaned against it, unsteady all of a sudden on the floor that swayed beneath him.
He turned to Hippolyta slowly, half hoping that she would laugh and tell him she was joking.
She didn’t.
“You mean, she has done it?” he asked dumbly. “ Diana has done it? She… has brought me back to life?” The words tasted odd in his mouth, not quite right, and Steve wished he hadn’t said them.
Hippolyta’s voice softened. “I think Diana wanted you to live so badly that she has found the power inside her to make it happen.”
Something else occurred to him. “Is this why I don’t age anymore?”
The Queen didn't respond at once, her eyes never leaving the sea. The riders and their horses were long gone, and now nothing was disturbing the peaceful bliss of the sun-drenched morning.
“You must understand that there has never been anyone like Diana, maybe never will be again. Her powers, the strength she carries inside her… I don’t think anyone truly knows what she is capable of. Not even Diana herself.”
Steve’s voice was raspy when he spoke. “Does she know? That she… that she’s capable of doing that?”
Hippolyta shook her head. “I wouldn't suppose so. Otherwise, she’d try to do more, save others. Do something that would have destroyed her.”
There was something about her tone, the way she hesitated and chose her words very carefully and her unmistakable concern, that made Steve sick to his stomach.
“Did it do anything to her? Helping me?” he asked softly, his whole body humming like he was going to pass out. Like someone suddenly sucked all oxygen out of the room. Out of the whole damn world. "Did it hurt her?"
Hippolyta stayed quiet for a few seconds too long, allowing only the rustling of the trees in the breeze and the gentle whisper of the surf far below the palace to fill the space between them. Steve knew the answer then, before she gave sound to it.
“I suppose you would know that better than me,” she responded when Steve was starting to think that the conversation was over. That maybe she’d figured that he’d put two and two together. That maybe she gave him at least some credit, after all, although the realization had a bittersweet tang to it. “Whether or not she’s gotten weaker.”
He swallowed hard, bile rising up his throat.
How could he be so stupid?
In Paris, she was power incarnate, anything but weak, but that bloody cut she’d gotten on the glass a few months back, the one that he had to tend to in his hole of an apartment in Berlin… it should have healed in minutes. Instead, she had worn a bandage for two days.
When they were in London, after that time when she had gone to Germany without him while he was still stuck in the damned hospital, it had taken the injuries that she'd come back with longer to fade than usual, cuts and bruises lingering on her skin for a few days instead of disappearing within hours. At the time, Steve didn’t think much of it. She was still no match to any human, his own healing painfully slow by comparison. He had even joked about how her bones probably couldn’t break at all, earning a smile and an eye-roll in response. Hell, any human would have died many times over if they had attempted to do what she’d done between the First World War and now.
But for Diana, it was not the same. For her, it had to have been different, had to have felt different.
He never forgot who she was – what she was – not for a moment. But she wasn’t made of glass and steel, her strength tamed around him enough to dim the memories of her ripping through armies like they were nothing. In his arms, she was simply a woman, soft and warm, often needing to remind him that he needn't be so delicate with her and treat her like she could break under his touch. Sometimes, he forgot to remember that her strength was inherent and crucial, that she needed that undercurrent of power surging through her to survive the things that she was putting herself through to save mankind when no one else could or would.
Did this mean that saving him broke her?
“What I do know is that those dreams she’s having,” Hippolyta spoke again when Steve didn’t say anything, not needing his answer, “they are not hers.”
He inhaled sharply. “Mine? Are they mine?”
I’m still doing it to her, hurting her .
“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, words rolling like dry pebbles in his mouth, choking him. “Why now? Why not last night, with Diana present?”
“Because it’s not about Diana, it’s about you, Captain Trevor.” Hippolyta pressed her lips together, as if debating whether or not to say more. “I’ve paid a very high price for keeping the truth about Diana’s father from her, and I’m not going to do it again. But this is your life and what you do with this information is up to you.” He could barely hear her through a storm of half-formed thoughts raging in his head. “The one thing I want you to remember, Captain, is that Diana would do anything to protect you.”
Steve’s hands clenched into fists, his knuckles white and his breathing shallow. He inhaled and then exhaled slowly, trying to get a grip on reality again.
“Would it be better... for her, I mean, if I…” he swallowed, hard, “if I wasn’t around?”
Hippolyta turned to him, her face grief-stricken and her eyes tired – the first real emotions she’d let slip since Steve had met her.
“Don’t do it,” she whispered. “Don’t break my daughter’s heart.”
Steve nodded, more to himself than to her. “I’m taking it as a yes,” he muttered, holding her gaze – a boldness he’d never allowed himself before. Not that he had that much to lose now. Jesus Christ…
“It’s not why I told you this.”
“Then why?”
“Because you deserve to know.”
“At this point, I’m not sure I deserve anything,” he breathed out.
She opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came out, and after a second or two, Steve turned away, his eyes on the brightness of the ocean, and the sun that made it look like someone had scattered a handful of diamond along its surface and they were glimmering so blindingly it hurt to look.
He tried to find comfort in the fact that at least Hippolyta didn’t lie to his face, but it felt like a small consolation.
To be continued...
Notes:
Thank you for the amazing feedback and all the love, I appreciate it beyond words!
Feel free to have a go at what you think will happen next...
Chapter 7
Notes:
This was supposed to be a filler chapter, merely a transition between the previous and the next one, and yet it turned out to be the longest one yet. Go figure...
Thank you guys for the amazing feedback and for sticking around! You're awesome and I can't thank you enough :)
And on that happy note, allow me to ruin everything...
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Themyscira, 1945
“Am I human?” Steve asked Hippolyta before she finished their conversation and left him alone in the cavernous room, staring out at the sea. The words had tasted odd in his mouth, the concept so wild he couldn’t believe he’d even thought of it.
“Of course, you are,” she had responded, surprised. “What else would you be?”
What else, indeed?
Steve was mulling over her question now, sitting on the sand circling an outcropping of rocks a few hours later and watching the sun sink into the ocean. Bright orange, it was making the water rippling beneath it look black. Arms resting on his propped-up knees and his toes digging into the soft white sand, he stared at the blinding sliver of light until it started to feel like he might go blind. Until it disappeared completely, and dusk began to settle around him, turning the sky pale-blue near the water and deep indigo above his head. And inside him, there was emptiness the likes of which Steve had never known before. Like a gaping hole, with him teetering on the brink of it. One wrong move, and he'd be falling into the abyss.
What else…
He was on an island surrounded by women thousands of years old. Women who might have witnessed the creation of the world as Steve knew it, strong and vigorous, possessing the qualities beyond anything he could ever imagine. Beyond anything he could understand even now, even after all this. Even knowing everything that he knew about them and how they came to be. He had seen them in battle, lethal and otherworldly. He was in love with a demi-goddess capable of bending the laws of life and death to her will, a surge of power coursing beneath her skin every time he touched her. Was it really that wild to assume, even for a moment, that he might be more than what he had always thought he was?
Did he want to be more, though?
Now, that was a whole different question.
“There you are.”
Diana’s voice pulled him to the surface before the vortex of thoughts threatening to suck him into a void from which there was no way out accomplished doing just that.
Steve looked up and saw her walking towards him across the strip of sand, smiling that soft smile of hers that made his heart squeeze in his chest every single time without fail. Like some kind of Pavlovian reflex, no less. There was no sword in her hand now, no shield behind her back, her steps easy, relaxed. A warrior still, but more than just that, too.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Thought you’d escaped,” Diana teased him, lowering down to sit next to him, the light breeze tugging at the wisps of hair that had unravelled from her braid and that were fluttering around her cheeks.
From this close, he could smell scented oil, grass, and something sweet on her skin. Could feel her warmth in the pleasantly cool evening that was a nice reward for making it through the stifling heat and humidity of the sunny afternoon. And mixed together, they were entirely intoxicating, making everything inside him ache.
“That’d be a very long swim,” Steve noted, turning to her, feeling the wind push his hair back from his forehead and snake through his shirt. “I just needed to…” he started and trailed off.
It was dark enough now that Diana's face was almost completely obscured, the light from the town not reaching this far out and the whisper of the surf swallowing all sounds save for the breath of the trees that rustled gently nearby and the cries fo seagulls echoing in nooks and crevices of the cliffs towering above them. How on earth did she know where to look for him Steve had no idea. He could barely navigate this place even in the daylight.
“Escape?” Diana offered, amused.
He chuckled and shook his head, trying to ignore a tight knot of unease in his stomach as his conversation with Hippolyta churned in his mind.
“Yeah, I guess.”
It was easier that way, when she couldn’t see him, when the night could hide the secrets that Steve knew his face would betray. The key here was to continue breathing like nothing had changed.
For a few moments, they simply sat there, looking at the waves that were nothing but a mass of black fringed with foam. And then Diana leaned close to him and rested her chin on his shoulder, her hand curling around his bicep, warm through the sleeve of his shirt.
“What have you been up to today?” she asked softly, her words nearly drowning in the voice of the ocean and her breath warm on his cheek.
“Not much,” Steve muttered, the things that he had been planning to tell her, everything that Hippolyta had revealed to him – because she needed to know, had the right to know even more so than he did, perhaps – choking him, lodged in his throat.
“I knew you’d get bored here,” she noted. He could hear her smile.
Steve turned his head, their faces nearly touching. “Not by a long shot. How could I?”
Suddenly, he wished that he could see her properly. Wished that the steady assuredness in her eyes would calm him, show him the way.
Diana brushed her hand through his hair, her fingers skimming lightly over the shadow of stubble on his cheek. “Is everything okay, Steve?”
He nodded slowly, and then once again, with more conviction. It was so easy to forget sometimes how effortlessly she could read him, if only because there wasn’t often any need for it, his thoughts, his life an open book; at least with her.
“Yes.” He placed his hand on top of hers.
“Then what is it?”
“How did you leave this place?” Steve whispered, his gaze skimming over the barely visible stretch of the ocean, its whisper lulling him into thinking that all was right in the world. He turned to her again. “And to go fight a war, no less,” he breathed.
“Did you not do the same?” she asked. “I had always thought that you, of all people, would know how."
"It's not the same," he objected. "It was not your war to fight, not your people dying senselessly." He shook his head. "I wonder sometimes if anyone else would have done the same thing... so selflessly. If I would have."
"Yes, you would have," she whispered, her voice soft but her tone bearing no hint of doubt.
"You can't know that."
"I know you."
He didn't know what to say to that.
“It’s peaceful here," Steve breathed. "Safe. You could've had everything if you'd stayed. You’re happy here.” He paused, his thumb running in circles over her knuckles. “I can’t imagine you wanting to leave again.”
Diana moved closer. Her lips brushed lightly to his chin before touching his mouth, feather-light. She leaned her forehead against his temple. “I can.”
---
Italy, 1945
Peace, as it turned out, was a fleeting and fragile thing. They might have stopped dropping bombs on one another, but at times, it felt like the war had never ended. Like it had merely paused to give them a moment to catch their breath while it gathered strength to surge forward. At times, it felt like the world would never stop needing to be saved. The conflict was not as open anymore as it had been in 1918, but it remained no less intense, all under a cloak of secrecy and darkness, hiding in plain sight. Obscured, but always there.
In an attempt to escape the never-ending battle for something or other, for what was good and right, Steve took Diana to Italy. And while she didn’t appear to see any particular romance in riding gondolas, claiming that if there was any love lurking in the dark, murky waters of the channels snaking between the centuries-old buildings, she didn’t want to have anything to do with it, they both immensely enjoyed strolling along the narrow, foggy streets of Venice, watching graceful swans from bridges that seemingly kept the place together, stopping the houses from floating away.
There was beauty in simplicity, in living in the moment - something that neither of them was used to. Not for a very long time. And the nearly overwhelming taste of freedom to do as they pleased, to live each day to the fullest only made the contrast between then and now all the more striking.
Steve bought bread from tiny bakeries tucked away in narrow alleys, and they fed it to the birds on St. Mark’s Square until their cheeks turned pink from the cold. They ate gelato despite the chilly November wind blowing in from the sea and drank hot chocolate sitting in tiny cafes that were half-empty because of the foul weather. They held hands to keep them warm and talked about nothing, the sound of their voices somehow more important than the words that were being said. He kissed her cold fingers and smiled because she was smiling at him, uncertain how a person could contain so much love within them without their heart bursting from the fullness of it.
And in her smile, he found his salvation.
A week later, they drove southward where the fog was less persistent, and the green of olive groves remained intact even though the trees were mostly bare this late in the year. They rented a house for several nights from an old woman who scolded them grimly for the absence of wedding rings, and for a moment, it seemed like she would turn them away. Ever a charmer, Steve smiled and offered her a few compliments while Diana struggled not to burst out laughing, standing next to him, and eventually, the old, bulky key travelled from the woman’s hand and into his. He could almost feel her judgement, her frown somehow making this experience all the more exhilarating.
“What was that about?” Diana asked him later when the door to the guest house, one of many scattered along the seaside, closed. Steve crouched in front of a fireplace to start the fire to warm the place up, poking at the logs until the spark caught on while she shrugged off her coat and draped it over the back of an old armchair.
“We’re not married, see,” he chuckled and shook his head, glancing at her briefly over his shoulder. “In these parts, it’s frowned upon… for an unmarried man and woman to spend the night together.”
Diana’s eyebrow crept all the way up to her hairline. “Is this why you called her divine and enticing ?”
Steve stood up and pulled her to him for a lingering, thorough kiss that left them both breathless, her hand curled over a fistful of his shirt.
“I figured you wouldn’t want to sleep in the car,” he muttered.
Diana draped her arms around his neck. “If memory serves me right, this was exactly why you didn’t want to sleep with me on the boat the night when we left Themyscira, either,” she noted nonchalantly. "Because we were not married, yes?"
A strangled groan formed in the back of Steve's throat. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to,” he started and stopped himself, very aware of the fact that his cheeks grew hot, and knowing that Diana noticed it, too, undoubtedly enjoying his embarrassment. “I was trying to be respectful. The lack of wanting had nothing to do with it. Because I did, I wanted to--” He took a breath and looked up, studying the white ceiling. “I need to stop taking now.”
He tried to step away from her, not quite certain what it was that was making him so flustered. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen all of her so many times he’d long lost count, and his desire was barely ever a secret. Least of all now.
“Now I feel bad about taking advantage of your virtue,” Diana shook her head with feigned dismay and sighed for good measure. She tightened her hold on him just enough to keep him where he was, before Steve had a chance to step out of her embrace, although it was her words that got him to meet her eyes again.
He cocked his head, his eyebrow quirked, walking right into a challenge so artfully placed.
“My virtue ?” he echoed, mock-appalled, his hand running absently over the small of her back.
“Don’t you remember? I had to practically beg you to share a pile of blankets with me,” she pointed out.
Steve's jaw dropped. “Beg? Well, if that’s what you want to believe,” he made a dramatic pause. “And I’m sorry, but if memory serves me right, I was the one--”
“Not to mention that night in Veld,” she continued smoothly, her finger running back and forth along the collar of his shirt.
“What about it?” Steve frowned, alarmed. “Because, once again, no begging was required.”
“You really want to talk about who did what?” she interjected with a giggle, and he pointedly clamped his mouth shut.
For a long moment, he simply looked at her, taking note of the mischievous glint in her eyes, the playful curve of her mouth, and the very obvious enjoyment radiating off her. And then he cleared his throat. “No, this is literally the last thing I want to discuss.” Diana laughed, and he felt his lips quirk in response, finding it hard to hold back his own smile. “You just made it sound like I was some innocent maiden. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being one,” he added diplomatically. “I just… wasn’t.”
“I know that,” she leaned in, rubbing her nose against his cheek before her mouth found his, capturing it for a slow, sensual kiss. Her hand moved up from his neck and tangled in his hair, her back arching into him. “I know all about that.”
“You want me to show you again?” he murmured against her mouth and she silenced him with her lips.
Blindly, Steve reached for the wall to turn off the lights, plunging the whole place into complete darkness, the stillness of the night only interrupted by the rustling of the wind in the trees outside and the sound of their clothes falling on the floor.
There was no way of knowing what tomorrow held. Or the day after that. Or the day after that one. They couldn’t, he had learned a long time ago, rewrite history, either. But they could make it, easily so. And tonight, Diana was his, her hands in his hair, everywhere on his body, her lips hot against his skin and her whisper making him forget himself. It was in the moments like this when nothing else mattered.
Sometimes, when she touched him the way she did tonight, Steve could no longer remember his life before her.
---
“What are you running away from, Trevor?” Billy, a skinny kid with a face so freckled he looked perpetually tan, had asked Steve one night when they had been granted a few rare and precious hours of free time before the drills were to resume the following morning. The whole base had decided to drown in beer, making up for the nights that didn’t belong to them.
“Dunno what you’re talking about,” Steve had snorted, taking a swig from his bottle and allowing the lukewarm drink to pour down his throat and settle heavily in his stomach in anticipation of the pleasant buzz in his head and the warmth that would make his limbs heavy, his muscles relaxed in that way that no longer felt familiar. Not anymore.
The normally half-empty cafeteria had been packed, every recruit who had managed to drag his sorry ass from the hangars and sleeping quarters crammed into the space meant for half the number of people. The conversations had been punctuated with outbursts of laughter and an occasional curse when someone spilled his drink or tripped over someone else’s outstretched legs. Not exactly Steve’s idea of a night off, but he didn’t mind it overall, feeling oddly alive and relaxed. Energized after a gruelling day that would have normally wiped him out. In the months that had passed since he’d first arrived here, he’d learned to appreciate small things and moments of freedom like never before.
Billy had shrugged and downed the rest of his own drink – and Steve had wondered which one it was, the kid’s eyes already suspiciously glazed over. Not the first one, for certain. Normally, in Steve's experience, at least five had been needed to warrant small talk about something more personal than ‘Got a sig?’
“You’re like a Devil in the sky,” the words had come out a little slurred, almost swallowed by the buzz around them and the clinking of glass. “Or like you have one chasing you," the young man had added. "What is it, Trevor?”
Steve’s mouth had twisted into a smirk, “Your dirty socks, for one thing.” He’d stood up, the legs of his chair scraping against the floor and had jerked his chin toward his mate’s empty bottle. “Want another one?” he had asked, ignoring the invasive question.
He’d thought about Billy’s question that night, lying on his narrow cot in one of the barracks, unsure if it was the heat that had been keeping him awake or his mind that wouldn’t stop spinning faster than he could keep up.
The truth was that it had never been about the from so much as about the towards , although towards what Steve wasn’t sure even now. Even after he had lived several lifetimes in his rather brief time on earth, the answer was still nowhere to be found. Happiness, perhaps. A sense of purpose that remained evasive for as long as he had been alive. He’d long lost the naïve delusion about making a difference in the world, about his actions amounting to anything that truly mattered - the wars had made sure to strip him of that - but a sense of longing for something big had never gone away, although it had dulled just enough for Steve to be able to see past it.
Sometimes, lying next to Diana at night as she slept, his gaze trained on the ceiling, he could still feel the echo of that old yearning for something he couldn’t put into words resonating deep inside him. With her, it had ebbed, retreating to the back of his mind, like she was taking the edge off it. Like she was the where , albeit not as constant or static as Steve had expected it to be.
Other times, the pull was stronger, the sensation of still being on the run burning through him, hotter than fire. The thing that had pushed him to chase the sky in the first place still simmering under his skin.
Steve found her one morning curled up in an old armchair in the living room of their cottage, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders against the drafts snaking through the old house. Her gaze was glued to the flames dancing in the fireplace, her hair spilling down her back. It was so early the room was nearly dark still, the small window overlooking the sea keeping the tentative light of the new day away. There was no surprise here though, as Diana rarely slept past dawn - old habits and all that.
After a failed attempt to coax her into coming back with him for another few hours of rest, Steve squeezed into the tiny space next to her, earning a delighted giggle in response and a feigned fight for more room, ignoring how tight of a squeeze the chair was. Until their limbs were tangled together. Until it was impossible to tell what belonged to whom.
“I don’t like sleeping without you,” he said softly, tucking the quilt around them and wiggling underneath it to cajole another smile out of Diana. He brushed a strand of hair from her face. “The bed feels too big.”
“But no one is stealing covers,” she pointed out.
“I’m used to fighting for them,” he countered eagerly.
“And your pillow,” Diana added.
He shrugged, “I don’t mind sharing.”
“No one is kicking you under the blankets,” she was struggling to keep her smile at bay, her head resting against the back of the armchair, watching him not without amusement.
“I’ve had worse things to wake up to,” Steve shook his head dismissively, and arched an eyebrow expectantly, his thumb running absently over her cheek.
Diana offered him a small, wry smile. “You were snoring.”
Steve’s eyes widened comically. “I was not!” he protested, appalled and defensive, his chest puffing at the audacity of her accusation.
“You were, too,” she insisted.
“Are you sure it was me and not you?”
She traced her finger along his jawline. He could see the firelight reflecting in her eyes as he watched her in silence, trying to hear the things she wasn’t saying. She was awfully easy to read sometimes, the amount of openness catching him off-guard now and then, what with his own life being so tangled in lies and secrets that he often didn’t know where to find the ends to unravel them. Not that he wanted to. There still were moments when being someone else was easier. Knowing that Diana could see him for who and what he was seemed to be enough.
There was a small frown lodged between her eyebrows now, but before he could pry for more, Diana dropped her forehead on his shoulder, her hand curling around his. She laced her finger through his, moving closer to him when his arm came to rest around her body.
“Are you okay, really?” Steve asked softly, brushing a kiss to the crown of her head, his voice less playful by the moment.
“Sometimes, I dream of my lasso snapping and my shield breaking,” she murmured into his skin, and his grip on her tightened in fierce protectiveness. “After the sword that I had thought could defeat the god of war himself had turned to dust in my hands, nothing feels strong enough anymore.” A pause. “The time… it runs differently here. It is not as infinite as I’m used to. It will take a while before I can forget—some things.” She lifted her head to find his gaze again. “It will take some getting used to.”
He could see that she wanted to add something else, could hear a subtle intake of her breath as she searched for words, but in the end, Diana merely leaned into him, allowing him to hold her. To offer her comfort that no words could, and Steve had no other choice but to push the questions swarming in his mind away. He had called her fearless once, only half-joking, if only because she was so much more and the notion of fear had never been something that could be easily attached to her. Surely, their petty, trivial concerns weren’t of any worry to Diana, he had thought. All the things he’d seen her do had left little doubt regarding the extent of her bravery.
“No one is completely fearless,” Diana had responded then, with a small shake of her head.
“What are you afraid of?” Steve had asked, watching her closely, caught off-guard by her words.
She had looked up from the book she had been reading and put it away, a shadow of something he couldn’t quite grasp before it was gone crossing her features. Something so achingly sad that it had splintered his heart in half the second he saw it.
“Of losing you,” Diana had said honestly after a short hesitation. “I had never seen death until Antiope bled out in my arms. Not a person’s death… it’s different when it’s just a story, isn’t it?” Her voice had cracked ever so slightly. “She was the closest friend I ever had. A second mother. Someone I trusted to be alive forever.” She had looked away from Steve, breaking the eye contact as if holding his gaze was suddenly too much to bear, and rubbed her forehead. “And then you—in that plane… I’m scared of losing everyone I love, Steve. Of being too late the next time something bad happens. Of being the one who gets to live when everyone else is gone.”
Steve had crossed the room, walking over to the couch where she had been sitting, and offered her his hand. Diana had raised her gaze to his, as her fingers curled over his, and he pulled her up to her feet, his blue eyes searching hers, willing her worry away as if he could fix it with the power of his mind. He had looped her hair around her ear, trailing his fingertips down her cheek, before he’d let out an unsteady breath, drawing her to him and wrapping his arms around her – a reassurance that he had needed as much as she had, if not more.
“You can never lose me, Diana,” he had promised.
“It may not be your decision to make.”
“It’s not your job to save me."
“Maybe so,” she hadn’t argued, leaning into him, “But I don't think it is to watch you die, either.”
He was still thinking back to that when Diana somehow, miraculously, dozed off, still crammed into the damned armchair and pressed to him, lulled by the warmth of his body. Arms wrapped firmly around her, Steve watched the fire go out, turning to red embers, and die in the hearth as he held her, his cheek resting on the crown of Diana's head. They all feared something, even gods. Maybe gods more so than anyone else, he mused, listening to her even breathing, if only because they’d have to live with those losses for much longer than the rest of them.
She didn't stir when he carried her back to the bedroom.
On the morning before they were to leave Italy, they climbed down the steep streets and countless stone steps toward the sea that was steel-grey and moody, the wind throwing sand and sprays of salt water in their faces. It crystallized on their cheeks whenever they dared to venture too close to the surf, the stones lining the edge of the beach dangerously slippery under their feet.
They were rather close to Themyscira, Steve realized with a start as his eyes moved over the restless water. Closer than anywhere else in Europe, perhaps. Watching Diana watch the angry waves, he wondered if they’d actually be able to see the island from here had it not been hidden from the prying eyes by gods who believed that mankind was not worthy of their protection. At least not enough to know where to look for it.
Diana's hair was gathered into a braid and the breeze was tugging at the strands that had escaped it. She turned to him after a long moment, her face scrunched and her eyes narrowed against the wind. “Do you believe that people can love each other until death?”
Steve brushed a wisp of dark hair from her cheek, his eyes taking in her expression that reflected the stormy sea before them.
“I do.”
---
London, 1947
London was starting to feel like home.
Steve had never expected it to, with its unpredictable weather, grey sky that seemed to keep the whole place captive for weeks on end, the smell of seaweed blowing in all the way from the English Channel, and the often-stale whiff coming off the River Thames. Crowded alleys and pubs, the jokes he didn’t always understand bouncing along the streets, cheap beer that tasted differently from what he was used to. A million other things that were alien to him in ways Steve couldn’t always grasp. Ones that made him feel like an outsider.
And yet, it felt more familiar than the rest of the world, somehow. Maybe it was because this was where everything had started back in 1918, a new life as he knew it. Or maybe it was because it was so different from everything that he was trying to forget that he was willing to take it. A clean slate, so to speak.
“We could go anywhere, you know,” he had said to Diana once, soon after they’d returned from Themyscira even though he’d assured her that he’d be happy to stay in London if she so wished.
There was an old globe sitting on the desk in his living room, once belonging to his father, but now little more than an antiquity. Diana raised a quizzical eyebrow at him when he pointed at it.
“Pick a place,” Steve shrugged.
She touched it, pushed it with her fingers until it was spinning so fast that the countries were nothing but patches of blurred yellow among the vastness of blue, and then shook her head.
“Belonging… it’s not about a place on the map.”
Steve didn’t object.
What did it matter, really? He doubted there was a corner in this world where he’d be able to forget Hippolyta’s words, pretend that they were never said. Pretend that they weren’t still wrapped around him like a vice, squeezing the life out of him.
It wasn’t until Etta had retired and chose to move to the south of England, away from the hectic hassle of the city, that their ties to the place had begun to feel loose, unravelling before their eyes, no longer an anchor so much as a chain keeping them tethered. The stifling air of familiar streets started to feel like it was suffocating them, his restlessness making him want to crawl out of his skin.
He pretended that it was the routine that had begun to get to him, the things that he’d been stuck with for too long that were wearing him thin now, and that moving away from them was the answer.
He pretended that it wasn’t himself that he was trying to run away from in a desperate attempt to forget .
---
Brussels, 1948
Steve woke up to Diana crying in her sleep, silently, her pillow soaked with tears. Her breathing was shallow, her shoulders trembling ever so slightly – the very thing that had pulled him out of his slumber while her own mind refused to let go of her, her fingers bunching fistfuls of sheets, holding on so tight that her knuckles had turned white.
His heart sank, his stomach coiling instantly.
It scared him when this happened. When there was nothing he could do, nothing he could fix, nothing to make it go away for good and shield her from the things that were hurting her in a way that no one else could see. When her pain was palpable and so real that it seemed to be taking all the space around them.
Diana had told him once that the most overwhelming grief was never loud. It lacked theatrics and expressiveness. Instead, it was silent, still even, barely betraying itself to the outsiders, aimed inwards. This was what it looked like now – like she was mourning a loss so deep that she was scared it might tear her apart if she’d let it be seen to anyone but her. Like the sorrow inside her was so strong she needed to physically keep it from spilling out and swallowing her whole.
“Diana,” he whispered softly, careful so as not to startle her, his fingers light on her arm. He pressed a kiss to her shoulder when she didn’t respond and called her again, “Diana…”
Slowly, unwillingly, her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at him, disoriented. “What…”
“You were—you were crying,” Steve murmured, trailing his thumb over her cheek to wipe away the tears, a hollow pit in his stomach threatening to turn him inside out. “A bad dream.”
She blinked in momentary confusion, nearly flinching away from his touch, and took in a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Shh,” he kissed her on the temple, mindful of how her chest was still heaving, how rigid she felt. “It was only a dream, it’s over”
I’m sorry, he thought. I’m so sorry .
“Steve…”
He smoothed down her hair, his fingers soothing on her face. She was looking at him, and he was suddenly at a loss, uncertain what to do, the words feeling empty and useless on his tongue, and not enough. Guilt and shame were churning in his stomach and making him feel sick.
“Let me get you a glass of water,” Steve murmured, but Diana shook her head, her fingers curling around his wrist, his own heartbeat too loud, almost intrusive in the stillness of the night. He moved to her and pulled her closer, folding her into the curve of his body until her warmth was the only thing he could feel, his heart hammering fast against her back and his face pressed into her neck. “Want to tell me about it?” he asked when Diana’s breathing evened out, deepening as she calmed.
She drew her knees up to her chest, curling in on herself. “I keep losing you,” her voice was muffled and so quiet he almost missed it, barely a whisper even in the complete silence. “Every time I close my eyes, you die.”
“No,” he whispered into her skin. “It’s not real, never will be.”
“It feels real.”
Steve closed his eyes, pushing the mental images away, his grip on her as tight as he could bear.
Hippolyta was right.
He had prayed and hoped against all hope that the Queen had been mistaken when she had spoken about Diana's mind being entangled with his. After all, it wasn’t an exact science. If anything, it had been merely her speculation at the time, or so Steve had wanted to believe, if only because there had never been anyone like Diana before. No point of reference or comparison, as Hippolyta had said herself. And for a while, it had truly seemed liked she was wrong.
For a while, everything had been good. So good that he could hardly believe that this had been his life, making Steve wonder what he’d done to deserve this kind of happiness – all-consuming, blinding, so perfect the enormity of it was equally exhilarating and terrifying.
Until his demons had come back the way they always did sooner or later.
Until they had sunk their teeth and claws into Diana, and there was nothing Steve could do to stop it, his fears running through her veins.
“She would stop at nothing to protect you, even from yourself,” Hippolyta had told him that day on the balcony overlooking the island, before she had left Steve standing alone there, the weight of her words so heavy he had feared the palace would collapse beneath him.
Whatever had happened to him the night when Diana had brought him back to life after the gas explosion had pulled him apart until there had been nothing left of him seemed to have forged some kind of bond between them that went beyond his comprehension. Steve was no scientist, not to the degree that counted, but he knew full well what was supposed to have happened to him. He had made that decision perfectly aware of the fact that it was meant to be his last one. And it had hurt so badly to say goodbye to her, to everything that he’d managed to dream up in the time that had passed since the moment when he’d first kissed her. It was worth it, though. It was supposed to be worth it. The lives he knew he would help Diana save would atone for his sins.
Diana was bigger than that, bigger than all of them, than the world itself. She was meant for something greater than anything Steve could ever imagine. If all he could do was give her a chance to truly save them all, it wasn’t that big of a sacrifice then. After all, he’d never aspired for anything that significant, to begin with. And what was his life, really? Who would notice if he lived or died?
Had he known how it would all end, would he have done it any differently? Steve had asked himself that, more than once, but the answer was nowhere to be found still, no matter how hard he looked for it.
It wasn’t his memories that plagued her, the way he had initially thought it worked, but the darkness simmering within him. All the things he’d done that he wished he could forget about. All the things that filled him with self-resentment so strong he didn’t know sometimes how he was supposed to live with them. Everything that made him question the logic of the universe for it made no sense that someone like him was given a second chance after the pain he’d caused - one that deserved no forgiveness - be it for the daughter of Zeus or not. Things he’d never told a single soul about. And those who had been there to witness them were long dead and buried.
All the things that he hated himself for had transformed into monsters that now kept Diana awake for fear of facing them, all because on a deep, molecular level all she wanted to do was to ease his pain.
“I’m sorry,” Steve whispered into her hair, his chest tight.
He had never told her about the conversation he’d had with her mother that day on Themyscira, while Diana had galloped along the pristine white sand below.
Couldn’t.
Didn’t know how to.
The words never came, and those that did were coated in denial and shame and fear of losing her, of Diana seeing him for what he really was. He waited, and hoped, and wished desperately for a revelation, a moment of truth that would make everything clear, each second feeling like a missed opportunity that he owed her – for saving him, having him, loving him.
But how was he supposed to keep living like this? How could he not do what was best for her?
There was something that Hippolyta had said to him that Steve hadn’t registered at first, but that had caught up with him after he’d had enough time to run over their conversation in his head, enough time to take it apart and put it back together word by word. She’d said that he had nearly died twice , but France… Diana had told him that he had been merely unconscious when she had found him, and maybe more bruised than he had liked at the time. He would have remembered if there was more to that story... wouldn't he? Surely her mother had been mistaken, and yet Steve couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a bigger picture that he couldn’t see.
Had Diana lied to him? She wouldn’t… would she? He had never brought it up, couldn’t bring it up for it would mean coming clean about everything else. But it plagued his mind nonetheless as he tried desperately to find answers in the tone of her voice, between the words, in every touch of her hands.
He wondered sometimes if it made any difference, if it made anything worse for her.
Selfish bastard…
“Steve?” she called.
“Hm?”
Diana rolled around to face him, looked up, finding his gaze in the dark, her eyes red-rimmed and something akin to panic pooling at the bottom of them. She lifted her hand, her palm curling over his jaw. “Make me forget,” she whispered.
Steve’s pulse stuttered. “I don’t…”
She pushed up, moving closer to him, hands on his face, in his hair. She slid into his lap, sweet weight in his arms, the sound of her whisper - a litany of Greek words peppered occasionally with his name - igniting the fire inside him. He could taste the salt on her mouth, on her cheeks, his own touch welcoming her traitorously, seeking the same comfort in her that she wanted from him. Steve pulled her close, hands skimming over her back and under the thin cotton of her sleeveless shirt, and she shivered, a sigh of appreciation falling from her lips when he touched her the way she wanted to be touched.
His heart was hammering against his breastbone as if trying to break free, half-formed thoughts sparkling alive in his mind and disappearing without a trace before he could get ahold of them. Diana pulled just far enough away to tug at the hem of her shirt, slipping it easily over her head. Her palms fell on his chest, her eyes locked with his in the dark, gleaming with the want that was coursing through her and into him, eclipsing all reason and logic and everything in-between.
“Diana…” he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in this throat, hand reaching to cup her cheek, thread through the veil of her dark hair cascading over her shoulders.
She leaned down, kissed him again.
“I need you,” she whispered, dragging her lips along his cheek, over his jaw, down his throat, her skin hot and electrifying under his touch. “I need to know that you’re real.”
He was more than willing to make them both forget.
---
She fell asleep afterwards, deeply and dreamlessly, curled into him with her arm draped across Steve’s abdomen, fitted to him curve for curve. Steve, on the other hand, remained wide awake for hours, staring at the sway of shadows on the ceiling, listening to Diana’s even breath, his fingers running absently over her hair, drawing soothing patterns on her skin.
Someone was talking very loudly in the apartment upstairs, not loud enough for him to make out the words but the hum of conversation was a distracting interference, keeping him on the verge of wakefulness. There was music playing somewhere, although Steve couldn’t tell if it was coming from one of the other units or from the street - people making the best of their weekend night vivid and alive before his mind’s eye. Someone laughed, the sound of it carrying oddly loud.
And yet, none of that was enough to drown his feverish thoughts, the memories of Diana’s hands sliding over his body with almost frantic urgency, her kisses that were hungry in a way that spoke of fear, and how she was holding on to him. Like he could disintegrate in her arms if she'd let go, each whispered word meant to be seared into them for eternity.
And all the while Steve hated himself for making her feel that way, for not being able to offer her any other reassurance than hasty, desperate kisses. And for needing her as much as he did.
When the sky turned pale blue and the shadows started to grow thin, Steve slipped out of her unresisting grasp, bleary-eyed and exhausted, and yet unable to remain still any longer. He was lucky that he had managed to doze off for a couple of hours, but he couldn’t think about it. Of the heaviness sitting on his chest.
He leaned down to brush his lips to Diana’s hair, careful not to disturb her. But even before he left the room, she had rolled over to his side, claiming the warmth he’d left behind, still fast asleep.
It was the smell of coffee and bacon sizzling on the skillet that lured her out of the bedroom a few hours later. Wrapped in a thin robe, Diana watched him move between the stove and the counter as he hummed something softly under his breath, his movements precise and effortless, almost graceful. The only thing that was making it look less like a well-rehearsed dance and more like, well, the opposite of it was his comical bedhead, her hands itching to card through his hair – although whether to smooth it down or to ruffle it up even more Diana wasn’t sure.
Steve glanced up from the skillet when she stepped into the kitchen, squinting in the morning sunlight as she pulled her robe tighter around her body and tied the belt – for his benefit, he knew. Not hers. Nudity had never been of much concern for her. However, the first – and last – time Diana had decided to forgo clothing in the kitchen, he had dropped a coffee pot on his foot. And, from where Steve was standing, it had not been funny at all. Not even a little.
The memory made his lips quirk. Not that any of that was his fault, he reminded himself, amused. Who wouldn’t forget everything and anything looking at her?
“Hey,” Diana smiled, her voice husky from sleep, as she ran her hand through her tangled hair, pushing it back from her face. “What are you doing?”
“Breakfast,” he announced, grinning. “Are you hungry? I mean, you should be, what with all the appetite we worked up...”
She snorted and shook her head, looking rather pleased with herself - and not without reason, too. Although the light mood didn’t last.
“Look, about last night…” Diana started, leaning against the counter next to him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. “I’m sorry.”
Steve put the spatula down and turned to her. His palm cupped over her face, he dipped his head to kiss her on the forehead. “Don’t. Don’t say that. It wasn’t your fault, never is.”
If anything, it’s mine .
“I woke you.”
“ That I didn’t mind at all,” Steve promised, his thumb running over her cheekbone. “Let’s eat.”
“Steve…”
His throat closed up. “I dream of it, too," he said, catching her gaze. "Of losing you.”
She shook her head. “Never.”
“See?” He offered her a weak, tired smile, his voice dropping as he moved to her. “It goes both ways.”
He piled eggs and bacon on the plate and handed it to Diana before pouring two mugs of coffee for them and emptying the rest of the skillet onto his own plate, grateful for the simple things that made even their lives feel normal now and then. Like food. Like catching her look at him with that small, secret smile that seemed to be carrying all the truths in the universe.
“Hey, can I… can I ask you something?” Steve started after a while, chasing the food around his plate without much appetite. It had turned out that the familiar comfort of making it didn’t extend to consuming it.
Diana scooped some eggs with her fork and nodded when he looked up, chewing thoughtfully.
Radiant in the early-morning sunlight, she was so beautiful it hurt to look. He wondered sometimes how much light one must contain within them to see all the death and pain and destruction that she had in her brief time in his world, and still look like she was the sun, her softness, her kindness no less affected by her experiences, by the things that would break just about anyone else. They intensified, even, glowing brighter for there was nothing else that could save them all.
Steve cleared his throat, not trusting his voice not to betray him. “If you, um… hypothetically speaking, if you had to choose between doing the right thing, and doing something that makes you happy, which one would you go for?”
An eyebrow arched, Diana put down her fork and picked up her coffee, watching him over the rim for a long moment. “And doing what makes you happy wouldn’t be the right thing?” She seemed intrigued, a smile playing on her face, her head tilted slightly to her shoulder.
“No,” Steve poked his fork at a piece of bacon with unnecessary concentration, all because it allowed him to have an excuse to look away from her. “It’s kind of the exact opposite of happiness. In fact, it could actually—be harmful to someone.”
She picked up her fork again, her shoulders rolling in a half-shrug.
“Then you need to do the right thing. It’s simple, no?”
God, of course, it was simple. It was Diana , for heaven’s sake. Diana who had decided to fight the god of war without thinking twice, all because there was no one else who could do it; who would risk her own life to save someone without expecting anything in return; who would leave her home because the world needed her more; who believed in the goodness of mankind despite everything she had seen.
Steve had never known anyone with a heart as big as hers, with a soul so full of love and compassion. She went against gods and armies like it was nothing, all because peace on the other side of those battles mattered more to her than her own life.
For her, this decision wouldn’t be a struggle. Had their situations been reversed, it would be a no brainer at all.
“Steve, what is it? Why are you asking this?” she prodded when he didn’t say anything.
Because I need to know that you will understand.
He stood up and picked up his plate, his food barely touched, to carry it to the sink, still avoiding her gaze.
“It’s, uh… nothing. Just a… a book I’m reading.” Lame. He hated lying to her. If nothing else, she didn't deserve it. “Something that got me thinking.” He exhaled slowly. “It’s easy… it’s easy to imagine that you would step in front of a bullet or sacrifice yourself for someone else until you have to do it, and then it’s—it’s more complicated than that.”
He had to tell her, he thought. He had to tell her the truth and let her be the one to choose what they should do. And yet he knew he wouldn’t say a word. Not because Diana wouldn’t forgive him for keeping something like this from her for years - which Steve knew he would have had no right to hold against her - but because he feared that she would. And he didn’t deserve it. Not when he had lied to her after he’d promised her that he would always speak the truth. Not after she had shown time and time again how much she trusted him with everything that she was, completely, unapologetically, and he still chose to betray that trust.
It was despicable, and he had never been more disgusted with himself.
The legs of her chair scraped against the floor when Diana stood up just as he turned on the water, noticing that his hands were shaking, his breath shallow. He heard the rustling of her robe as she approached him, and then her arms snaked around him from behind and she kissed the tender spot where his neck curved into his shoulder, his body growing still at her touch.
“You’ve done it already,” she whispered into his skin. “You’ve run through the bullets. You’ve sacrificed yourself.”
“I think it feels different… every time you face something like this,” he replied, trying to keep his voice from breaking.
“Well, you did all the right things last night,” she murmured, and he could hear a smile in her voice, as her fingers skimmed playfully over his chest.
Steve turned off the water and turned around, hands framing her face, pushing into her hair. Her eyes searched his, and in that moment, he wished for nothing more than a hundred years of mornings like this one. How easy it was to forget the darkness lurking in his heart when she looked at him with so much light.
Diana studied him for a long moment, taking in the shadow of stubble on his cheeks and his mussed hair, following the curve of his mouth and fastening on the deep blue of his eyes, stormy in the bright light of the warm morning. He looked tired, jaded in ways she hadn’t seen him in a while, and she reached over to smooth out the lines at the corner of his eye, her palm curling over his cheek for a second before brushing through his hair.
There wasn’t a part of his body she didn’t know as well as her own, but his mind was something else entirely. And right now something felt off. Something very fragile, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what was making it seem so.
“What is it, my love?” she asked quietly, her fingers curling around the back of his neck.
There was not a person in this world or any other she knew better than she knew Steve, but she was no fool. There were - and always would be - parts of him that remained out of her reach. Parts that even he didn't know existed, and the enormity of everything she would never truly understand about him scared her on a deep, inexplicable level. It wasn’t idle curiosity that was fueling her interest though, but the desire to know how to chase away the worry sneaking behind his eyes the nature of which she couldn’t grasp.
“I love you, you know that, right?” Steve murmured, tucking a strand of hair around her ear, and she felt her expression relaxing momentarily. Whatever it was that was troubling his mind had receded to a dim shadow, and Diana felt the lightness inside her respond in kind. He propped her chin on his knuckle, holding her gaze. “I want you to always know that.”
---
And so Steve stalled. He couldn't tell Diana the truth because there was no excuse for keeping it from her for so long. And he couldn’t walk away because the very thought was making him wish he had truly died in that airplane in 1918 for it would have hurt less.
Late at night, they would lie together in bed as they spoke about nothing in particular in the softest of whispers, his hands tracing the lines of her face like he needed to memorize the way she felt for the rest of eternity. And in those moments, it was so easy to believe that it was over, that whatever had been plaguing her mind was really and truly gone. That maybe they had both imagined it altogether. He wanted so fiercely for it to be true.
There were stretches of time – days, weeks, months even - when the demons would retreat and leave them be, and he would start to believe, foolishly, desperately, that none of it had ever happened at all. That the conversation with the Queen of the Amazons had been only a dream that was meant to start fading away any moment now until there was nothing left of it.
And then, out of nowhere, it would all come back, and Diana would wake up terrified out of her mind, unable to break free from the demons haunting her for days. It took Steve a few years to figure out that it was his inner turmoil that was at fault, that she was merely reacting to the storms raging inside him whenever his mind would helpfully twist itself into something unrecognizable, triggered by a memory, a smell, a sound. And once that realization had dawned on him, once he knew that it was less about the physical proximity as much as about emotional closeness, he couldn’t help but pull away from her. It hurt and confused her, and seeing the questions in her eyes that Diana didn’t know how to ask felt like he was being stabbed repeatedly in his heart. And in those moments, it would feel like the two of them were living in their own hell, unable to break through to one another.
He was torn between the need for her nearness that was giving him the solace he so desperately craved, and the desire to shield her from his darkness that he was inadvertently dragging her into. Tried to pretend that Hippolyta’s revelation wasn’t haunting him, an ever-present reminder of his selfishness; the consuming bliss of being with Diana, being around her, was often dimmed by how fragile and fleeting those moments were, always just out of his reach.
He wondered if she was feeling the same profound loneliness that filled him whenever he’d put space between them for fear of making everything worse; the same consuming helplessness that coursed through him on the nights the distance between them grew unbearable and he couldn’t find a way to cross it.
There was no way out, and he felt helpless and scared. And he hated himself all the more for doing this to her, for knowing that he was at fault, trying and failing to find what it was inside him that was triggering those things.
There was no other answer except the one that he already knew.
The thing was, he’d lived in this world without Diana long enough to know that he could do it, easily. If he walked away, right now, right this moment, the sun wouldn’t die and the universe wouldn’t implode. He knew that after some time he would even learn to breathe without feeling like his lungs were too small, squeezed by an invisible hand. In his 60-odd years on this Earth, he’d been through much worse than a heartbreak.
He knew that he would survive losing her.
The only problem here was that without Diana, he couldn’t imagine a life worth living.
---
Veld, 1918
“What else?” Diana asked, seemingly quite entertained by his tales.
In the fading light of oil lamp that was mere minutes away from going out, her arm was draped over Steve's chest, her chin resting on the back of her hand as she studied him waiting for the answer. Steve scrunched his face in mock-concentration, and she giggled.
“You think it’s so easy,” he said with accusation.
“I want to know,” Diana murmured with a lazy smile, her fingers carding absently through his hair, tracing the lines of his face, skimming over the faint scruff on his cheeks.
There was a lightness to him that she hadn’t seen when he was either imprisoned or running through a rain of bullets, the frown between his brows smoothed out. The lines near the corners of his eyes were deeper from the perpetual grin tugging at the corners of his lips, bringing up that twinkle in his eyes that she had only glimpsed in passing before. Diana loved it. Loved the way he looked at her, the way he was making her heart feel so full she feared it would leap right out of her chest.
Steve tucked his arm under his head and stared thoughtfully at the ceiling, his lips puckered comically.
“Well, we’ve already covered breakfasts, and newspapers,” he started slowly, making Diana want to lean forward and kiss that smile right off his mouth. “And more food that doesn’t make you want to actually die.” His hand began to trace slow patterns on her back. Her smile grew wider at his statement and she shook her head. “I’m not joking,” he added, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “That concoction that Chief made the other night was not food, I need you to remember that.”
“I will,” she agreed. “So, people eat a lot. Noted.”
“It’s one of our vices.” Steve chuckled. “You’re cold,” he murmured when she shivered a little, pulling the covers over them, tucking Diana closer into his side.
“No.” She dipped her head to brush a kiss to a spot right below his collarbone, pleased to hear a sharp intake of his breath. “I’m many things, but cold is not one of them.”
Steve cleared his throat, struggling to keep his thoughts from scattering away – a no small feat when she was touching him. “Well, that’s good news for me, I guess.”
He brushed her hair from her cheek. His thumb traced along her bottom lip, and Diana leaned into his touch, pressing a kiss to the palm of his hand, his eyes growing darker momentarily. It was so easy to get swept away by the pull of her until he didn’t know who he even was anymore.
“Tell me more,” Diana asked, relaxing into him.
Steve blinked and tried to find his breath again. “We have fairs. Um… carnivals.” He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. “A circus.”
“What is that?” She perked up with curiosity.
“Ah, it’s… like a performance.”
“Like theatre?” she offered.
“No, more… for fun, I guess.” Steve racked his mind for a better explanation. “It’s flashier. With… glitter. And animals.”
“Glitter and animals,” Diana echoed, a little skeptical, a little amused. “Sounds interesting.”
“And… we travel,” he continued. His hand curled around hers; he lifted it, kissed her fingers. “You’d like that. Paris… Paris is beautiful in the spring.”
“Where else?” Her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Anywhere. Everywhere.” Steve paused, studying her for a long moment. And then the light went out, the last drops of oil burned up. In the darkness that descended upon them, everything felt different all of a sudden, his doubts resurfacing, stirring something dark inside him. He swallowed. “What’s going to happen tomorrow?”
Diana pulled her hand from his grasp and smoothed down his hair. Her palm slid down his cheek and landed on his chest, right where his heart was beating rapidly. She craned her neck and brushed her mouth to his – a bigger promise that any words could convey.
“I will defeat Ares," she said. "And then we will go to Paris.”
---
Paris, 1950
And then all hell broke loose again.
And again.
And again.
Steve no longer had it in him to be surprised. The world was adamant to tear itself apart, it seemed, unable to stop. By then, he had seen enough to know that it would never stop for as long as they all lived, that the hunger for power would always push them to slaughter one another.
On a sunny morning a few years ago, when the radio in their kitchen had come to life with dreadful news, his mind had slipped back to the time when he’d first met Diana and how he’d thought that taking her to the front in Belgium had been nothing but indulging her whimsy while he himself was half-curious and half-wary of the woman who wielded a sword like it was nothing. How simple life had been when the evil was the doing of a god, he had thought. And how much more complicated it appeared to be when nothing and no one was to blame for the horrible decisions but the people who kept making them.
Diana had walked over to the radio without looking at him and turned it off, allowing the silence to settle over them, the rumble of the fridge in the corner the only sound hanging between them.
She had turned to Steve slowly, her face solemn.
“We don’t have to do it,” he had said quietly from across the kitchen. “ You don’t have to. You don’t owe anything to us.”
“It’s not the fault of the innocent that their leaders believe the wrong things,” she had shaken her head and rubbed her forehead, her gaze shifting to the window behind which the sun had been rising slowly over the rooftops, colouring them gold.
It didn’t care, Steve had thought absently. The sun would still rise even after they had all fallen to ashes, climbing over the horizon, day after day. And the magnitude of something this permanent was both comforting and deeply terrifying in equal parts.
“You don’t have to come with me,” Diana had said when she had looked at him again.
“I know,” he had nodded.
Just like he had known that he would. Just like he had known he’d follow her to the gates of hell and back if he had to - from the moment he had stepped into No Man's Land, it had been his only path.
“For as long as you’ll have me,” he’d had told her once, a long time ago.
“Always,” she had responded simply and without hesitation, this one word taking Steve's breath away more effectively than any declarations of love ever could.
He hadn’t questioned her reasoning since.
He’d been drawn to her from the moment he saw her on the beach all those years ago, like the planets orbiting the sun were pulled to it, whether they wanted it or not. Gravitational force and light, all that she was, and he wondered if he was going to disintegrate without them holding him together.
Another country, another city, another camp, the same death and destruction, the same loss that was palpable in the air. There was no question about whether or not they would be going.
“I’m sorry you have to see this,” Steve said, the burlap of the tents flapping in front of them in the wind, a sea of khaki green amongst pale yellow hills, men and women in dusty uniforms darting from one to another as he surveyed the familiar and yet so different landscape. It was hard to remember anymore when his life wasn’t about this – hard cots and stale food and hoping he would get to see the light of another day. “It probably looks like tearing each other apart is all there is to us.”
Diana slipped her hand into his and squeezed his fingers, her gaze taking in the dreadful view before them. “I know it isn’t.”
There wasn’t much anyone could do. No taking sides, either. Not for Diana when the people who didn’t ask for any of this were dying for nothing.
Endless months of tents and dingy apartments, of falling asleep and waking up to the sounds of machine guns and of news that Steve wanted to block out of his mind. Endless months of not knowing if they were going to wake up in the morning or if the town or village they were at would get wiped off the face of the Earth in the middle of the night. Endless months of trusting Diana to come back to him. Endless months of paralyzing fear that with every breath he took, he was chipping away from her strength somehow, putting her in danger by being, well, him – human, fragile, so very mortal, breakable in every sense.
And in the light of all that, it was hard to remember sometimes that they were helping people. Truly helping them, saving lives.
He would clean Diana’s wounds or help her wash the smell of death off her body when she was too tired to move, and kiss her skin in reassurance, and stroke her hair at night, curled around her as if he could shield her from the world. And all the while he would pray that he wouldn’t step on a mine and steal even more from her because while his life was nothing but a grain of sand in the universe, she actually mattered - to mankind, to the world.
“Thank you,” Diana whispered one night when he was certain that she was already asleep, her voice soft.
“For what?” Steve asked, wrapping the blanket tighter around the two of them.
Her fingers skimmed over his cheek, a touch so light he almost thought he’d imagined it. “For you.”
It was hard to tell if anything had changed since France, the question he’d asked Hippolyta before they had left Themyscira about whether or not the effect of saving him was irreversible remaining unanswered. Used to thinking that she was merely an Amazon, not a daughter of a god, Diana seemed to have noticed no difference in how fast she was healing. If she had, she had never mentioned anything to him, and Steve didn’t know how to bring it up without giving himself away. Sometimes, not knowing was eating him up on the inside; other times, he was glad to be left in the dark.
The day another war came to an end, he felt like something enormous lifted off of him. Like he could breathe at last, his relief so enormous he couldn’t believe it, the victory palpable on their fingertips.
But that was before the rumours came about the US recruiting former scientists that had made the war what it was. The ones responsible for thousands, millions of deaths caused by weapons they’d designed and the experiments they had conducted on the prisoners of concentration camps, the horrors of which went beyond human perception. Those cruel and insane things he’d seen Isabel Maru do were like child’s play compared to the level that her successors had managed to invent, every vile, every ugly side of mankind seemingly taking over the world.
It was a blow he had never seen coming that had knocked all the wind out of him and made the ground sway beneath him. The country he was so proud of, the country he had spent decades protecting had decided to forgo any and all moral qualms and close its eyes on the nightmares that countless people had been put through, all because the easy promise of safety had given them access to the most brilliant minds that cared nothing for innocent lives. He couldn’t believe it, refused to accept it, and the disillusionment was so strong it felt like the axis of the Earth had shifted.
He tried to understand it, see it through the eyes of the people making those decisions – as progress and innovation, and having access to the minds that were decades ahead of their time. But all he could imagine were people being taken apart and put back together, the look of disgust and disbelief on Diana’s face when those facts became known to her, the pain he’d seen and done his best to prevent. In his mind, this was siding with murderers, with the people who cared for nothing, would stop at nothing, and it was making him sick. Everything he’d ever believed in, everything he’d fought for was an illusion, nothing but smoke and mirrors. And what was the point, then? What was the point of fighting when it didn’t amount to anything in the end?
In the time that had passed since then, Steve tried to recall how he had found out about this – did someone tell him? Did he overhear it in a conversation that was meant to remain private? – but his shock and shame and denial blocked it out, blurring his memory of the moment and leaving nothing but contempt and disgust behind.
“Remember when you had told me that mankind was meant to be good? That Zeus had created us to be wise and compassionate and fair?” he asked Diana one night when it was hard to tell who was having whose nightmares, and the shadows lurking in the corners of their bedroom seemed to be hiding monsters waiting to come for their prey.
“Yes,” Diana responded, her hand tucked under her cheek as she watched him stare up at the ceiling. “Why?”
“Was just wondering where it all went wrong,” Steve breathed out.
And then it started again like he always knew it would. Another fight, another thing that needed to be fixed, more death, more blood. Humankind tearing at the seams because there was little else they were capable of, or so it felt more often than not.
He couldn’t do it, Steve thought with dismay. Couldn’t spend god only knew how many years being terrified out of his mind and imagining Diana dying before his eyes, because of him. The mere concept of it filled him with so much dread and primal, uncontrollable fear that he could barely stand it.
“Is this all there’ll ever be to us?” Steve asked wearily and pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the mother of all headaches starting to build behind his eyes when the news of another tragedy had settled in his head, the facts all sorted into their respective slots.
He could see it in her already, could feel the buzz of anticipation coursing through Diana's veins, hear the gears in her mind turn, planning, thinking. Before he knew it, she would reach for her armour, slipping out of her practical clothes and into the garments of a warrior, her sword sharp, her shield always close by. Swift and efficient, ready to save his people from themselves.
And then it hit him, the realization so simple he couldn’t believe it had never occurred to him before. Emotional closeness, his vulnerability… He was Diana's Achilles’ heel, much like she was his, and the only way for him to keep her safe was to walk away. That was something that Steve had known for a while now. The problem with that plan had always been his inability to leave because deep down, he knew that she wouldn’t want him to, like he wouldn’t have given a bloody damn had their situations been reversed. However, his own disillusionment was a powerful and dangerous thing churning inside him like something dark and venomous, and if he could get her to feel that way about him—
Steve swallowed as all pieces of the puzzle fell into place in his mind, perfect and frightening in its simplicity.
There was only one way to save her from him, and it was through disappointment and resentment, and he knew just the right buttons to push to make it happen.
Diana paused and turned to him, her brows furrowed in confusion. “What do you mean?”
“There will be no end to wars, Diana. People will always find something to fight over, to… be mad about. They will never not sate their hunger for power and revenge.” He shook his head, his heart beating fast and hollow against his ribcage. “Is this all you want your life to be?”
“And you want to give up? Do nothing?” she asked, incredulous. He didn’t have it in him to even turn to her, disgusted with himself for doing this, saying this.
“Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to…” Steve let out a slow breath, and suddenly those few feet between them felt like a bottomless void. “Don’t you want to not carry all of this on your shoulders? It’s not your job.”
When he finally managed to meet her gaze, she was looking at him like she didn’t know who he was. Like he was a stranger speaking a language she couldn’t understand.
“Do you really expect me to step aside and look the other way?” she repeated. “After everything? After we’ve seen how much suffering people are put through? Innocent people who didn’t ask for it, who are not to blame.” Diana’s frown deepened, disappointment and disbelief radiating off her in waves.
“Well, I didn’t ask for it, either.”
She nearly recoiled from him. “How can you say that, Steve? How can you ask that of me?”
“Because I can’t do it anymore,” Steve retorted. He scrubbed his hand down his face, feeling so world-weary all of a sudden it was unbearable. “Because it’s been too long and there has to be an end to this all.”
Because you’re not invincible. More than most but not entirely.
Because I can’t keep thinking of a thousand ways you can die when you’re doing things I can’t help you with.
Because I can’t sit and imagine you never coming back.
Because I can’t watch you wake up in the middle of the night screaming and knowing that I am to blame.
Because it kills me to think that I’m hurting you without being able to stop it .
Because I can’t....
"I don't want my life to be about brief moments of licking my wounds before we charge into another fight," he shook his head.
" Your life," she echoed. “Do you really want me to just walk away when I know that I can help?” she asked softly, watching him closely like she wanted to see all the way inside him, straight through his bullshit.
Part of him feared she might... while another part of him hoped she would.
I’m sorry, Diana. I’m so sorry .
Steve pressed his lips together for a moment, his expression resolved.
“Maybe we’re not meant to save everyone,” he muttered.
“Maybe we are not,” Diana agreed with the pointed stress on ‘we’, her arms folded over her chest. “But maybe I am.”
He flinched, and her face fell, regret washing over it.
Steve nodded slowly. “Perhaps, you’re right.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Steve, don’t… I didn’t mean it like that.” She exhaled slowly and rubbed her forehead, visibly conflicted. “If you don’t want to come along, don’t. We'll talk about it when I'm back. If it’s something that’s really bothering you, we could discuss it later--”
“And when would that be? And for how long?” he interjected. “See, that’s the thing with disasters – they never stop coming.”
“What is it that you want me to do?” she demanded with a hint of frustration, and his heart constricted.
He was looking at her, unwavering, hoping that his lungs wouldn’t collapse, his very soul splintering under her gaze. He already missed her so badly that it caused him physical pain, and each word was like a nail in his coffin. “Whatever you have to do. Don’t let me hold you back.”
Diana bristled momentarily. “Why are you twisting my words?”
Because I need to have an excuse to save you from everything that I am .
“Because you’re right,” he said evenly. “Maybe you can't walk away. Maybe you never will." He willed himself to hold her gaze. "But maybe I can. I mean, how long could this--this fairy tale. .. between us, how long did you think it would last?”
“What are you saying?” Her voice cracked – so slightly he’d almost missed it; anyone else would have, except Steve knew it all too well. She went still, watching him like she could no longer recognize him. Truth be told, he could barely recognize himself, either.
She’d be better off without him, and that realization was the best and the worst one that had ever occurred to him. It would be easier for both of them if she hated him, if she was disappointed in him enough to make ripping this band-aid off in one swift move possible. As painless as it could be, all things considered. If Hippolyta was right - and Steve had no reason not to trust her - he would be doing Diana a favour of a lifetime by ending this. Here. Now.
He should have ended it a long time ago. Bloody coward.
“Where did you think this was going?” he asked, gesturing between the two of them. “You and I.” Steve dropped his gaze, unable to face her shocked expression, and ran his hand through his hair in helpless frustration before dropping it to hang at his side. “How did you think this was going to end?”
Diana pursed her lips together, so visibly hurt by his words that he wanted to take them back right there and then, and beg for her forgiveness, and promise her anything she wanted to hear. Just as long as she stopped looking at him like that. Like she didn't know him anymore.
“I didn’t think it would,” Diana said quietly after a few moments.
“Well, maybe it should.” He met her eyes again, willing his voice to remain steady. “Maybe it’s better this way.”
“Is this what you really want?” she inquired, and then nodded slowly when he didn’t respond. “Then maybe it is.”
---
Gotham, 2017
Bruce Wayne was not used to not getting what he wanted.
Most material goods could be easily bought if he so wished, while people – well, people tended to want to be associated with him. Which, if he was being honest with himself, was nearly the same as buying them. Buying their loyalty and allegiances, and trusting them more than those won through friendships. And women… women rarely ignored his interest. Come to think of it, he was finding it hard to remember the last time he couldn’t obtain an object of his desire, whatever it was.
Except her. Except Diana.
Thanks for bringing him back to me.
Bruce had spent months turning her words in his head this way and that. That photo must have meant the world to her if she had been willing to risk everything to get it from Luthor. There were few people who had dared to go against Lex, and Bruce knew them all. Most of them were dead. He could barely imagine anything to be worthy of going through this much trouble for, let alone a memento.
It must have been the man standing next to her, then, Bruce figured. The one with the serious face, his eyes solemn but keen.
Him , she had written, not them . Not the other three flanking her on either side.
And it frustrated Bruce more than he was willing to let on. More than he was willing to admit even to himself. It was not quite jealousy – she had never been his to warrant that feeling, but envy towards a dead man who had nothing, not even life, and yet, who still somehow had more to offer Diana than Bruce could ever imagine.
“Enjoying yourself?” Diana asked, appearing next to him.
Bruce had to make an effort not to stare at the silver dress that was hugging her body in all the right places. Her hair was up, gathered into a knot on the back of her head, exposing her neck and making him want to strum his fingers along it. He forced his gaze up to find her eyes.
She arched an eyebrow at him and took a sip of her champagne, watching him with mild amusement over the rim of her glass.
Truth be told, he was bored. So much so that had she not been here and had coming here not been her idea in the first place, he’d have long snuck out and escaped to the far more comfortable solitude of his home where a smile plastered on his face wasn’t part of the dress code.
However, Diana rarely graced him with her presence these days, what with her life being busy enough as it was, divided between her work at the Louvre and keeping peace as best she could everywhere else. And appearing at this benefit was, technically, the right thing to do, he could admit that much. From the moral standpoint. And so he hung back, following her with his gaze as she made rounds around the room for lack of better entertainment and trying not to overthink her offer to join her here. He was funding half of the event, after all. Might as well have shown some interest.
“Immensely,” Bruce replied flatly, downing his scotch and putting the empty glass on the polished bar counter, the few ice cubes that didn’t have a chance to melt clinking softly as he did so.
“I told you it would do you good,” Diana hummed, sipping her champagne, clearly enjoying his pained expression.
It irked and thrilled him that she knew him well enough to be right about something like this. And even more so - that she would act on that knowledge.
“You did,” he agreed mildly.
She nodded, an eyebrow arched. And suddenly it was too much.
He wanted her too badly for too long. And maybe he had had a few drinks too many – god help him, he needed them to make it this far into the evening – but the next thing Bruce knew was that his hand was on the small of Diana’s back, turning her to him, his mouth claiming hers.
Bruce Wayne was not used to not getting what he wanted. Nor was he, for that matter, used to considering the consequences of his actions.
---
In the 60-something years that had passed since that fateful afternoon in the sunlit apartment in Paris when he had walked out the door after their conversation and never gone back, Steve Trevor had seen Diana Prince exactly twice.
The first time had been some 15 years ago when his life had brought him back to the city of love. Trying to work past the thoughts he had spent decades trying to bury in the farthest corner of his mind, Steve had an afternoon to spare before his flight to Madrid. It had been a sunny but chilly day in late April, and after grabbing a sandwich and a cup of coffee from a street vendor for lunch, Steve had found himself heading toward the Louvre, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket that had been far too thin for the weather, his shoulders hunched against the wind coming from the river.
It had been the first time he had come back here since the 1950s, the streets still holding too many memories that he didn’t want to dwell on for fear of tearing at the seams if he had allowed himself to reminisce of the days long gone.
The pyramids had been a new addition, something he hadn’t expected to encounter. They had fascinated him, the creativity of the idea and the way the light had been filtering through hundreds of glass panes, breaking into infinite rainbows inside the spacious hallway below the entrance even despite their clash with the original architecture of the museum. A reminder that there could be beauty found in letting go of the past.
There had been comfort to being there, to wandering galleries that had felt like a maze, only half-listening to the buzz of conversations in more languages than Steve could count floating around him. It hadn't taken him much effort to tune them out completely, to get lost amongst the strangers that didn’t care about his existence.
Steve wasn’t sure how long he’d been there before one of the curators had hurried past him, a stack of papers in her hands, the heels of her practical shoes clacking on the parquet floor. It had been her voice that had caught his attention briefly as she had called out, “ Madame Prince, attendez, s'il vous plaît! ”
Please wait , Steve had translated automatically, the name that had fallen from the woman’s lips not registering with him until he had heard the voice, a voice so deeply etched in his memory he would probably carry it inside him for several lifetimes, respond a few moments later.
“ Oui, Dominiquie? ” It had made Steve stop in his tracks, his throat closing up. “ Puis-je vous aider?”
Steve had turned slowly around so as not to attract any attention to himself, not certain in that excruciatingly long moment if he had wanted to be right or wrong in his assumption. He’d made this mistake before, after all, hearing Diana's voice only to find another person speaking. So many times, in fact, that he’d lost count of them.
However, before he could make a decision as to which scenario he would much rather face, it had been too late.
Standing some 50 feet away from him by a door marked as Réservé au personnel had been none other than Diana. Stylish black pants, a high-neck blouse, black heels, her hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck. She had been signing the papers that the woman who had just run past Steve had offered her, her eyes scanning the pages briefly before scribbling something at the bottom of each one, her mouth moving as she had asked or clarified something but it had been too soft for him to hear her speak. And Steve had craved it, longed to let the sound of her voice wash over him again.
For a long moment, he had simply stared at her like she had been an illusion, merely an apparition, taking in her small smile and her regal profile against the white wall, the irony of finding her here, of all places, on this completely random day not lost on him.
Then he had turned around and walked away from her for the second time in his life – before she'd had a chance to see him. Before he could have changed his mind.
And the second time, Steve saw her at a benefit gala in Gotham, on a cold November night in 2017. Standing by the bar across the room from him, a champagne flute in her hand, she was kissing a dark-haired man in a suit that probably cost more than Steve’s life, and the five before it, the man's hand anchored possessively on the small of her bare back and her silver dress shimmering in the light from the expensive chandeliers.
It felt like a sucker punch that left Steve breathless and completely paralyzed. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. In that moment, he could only stare.
Until it grew unbearable.
“Captain Trevor,” Amanda Waller appeared before Steve like a jack in the box, just as he had reached the bloody door, and before he had a chance to flee this place, this city, this continent, for all he cared, his heart quite possibly no longer beating and his insides coiled into a knot. How he had ended up here, how he had left the ballroom when his legs felt like they weighed a ton each he couldn’t recall.
He’d completely forgotten about their meeting.
If she noticed his distress (that Steve wasn’t bothering to conceal, because who the hell cared), she showed no sign of it. Meeting here was her idea, too. In public – smart move. Although, as she’d put it earlier, he needed to have a look at the ‘best and brightest’ of Gotham, for his own benefit more than Waller's convenience, whatever that was supposed to mean.
Steve was not so sure anymore.
Regardless, Amanda Waller gave him a pleased once-over and nodded, all business. “I’m glad you’ve made it here. Follow me, please. I believe we have something to discuss.”
To be continued...
Notes:
Okay, who saw that coming?
(I wrote this a month ago, long before JL came out, so... Just fyi.)
Feedback, comments, thoughts, yelling are much appreciated.
Chapter 8
Notes:
You guys are so wonderful ❤ Thank you for sticking around ♡
It’s quite a lot of fun to finally get to the present-day events of this story. Now, Justice League…. I have quite conflicted feelings about that film, which I’m not going to go into. However, I’m quit glad that it fixed the issue of bringing Superman back to life for me. This part, and the next one, were written before the film came out and Clark was already in them, even though I wasn’t sure how. Well, now we all do – hooray. That, and the character introductions were useful, I’m going to keep them. And Diana hitting Bruce for badmouthing Steve. Everything else – never happened.
This chapter takes place after the events of JL, but before they find that new manor in the end of the film, although we’ll get there. Right now, all we have is Bruce’s glass house.
Also for those of you who never saw Suicide Squad, or forgot what happened there: Amanda Waller gave Bruce the files on other metahumans, including Barry Allen and Arthur Curry. That particular scene is going to be referred to when they speak again.Aside from that, you’re good to go :) Have fun!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gotham, 2017
There were exactly two things in the world that Amanda Waller hated with a passion: asking for help, and dealing with Bruce Wayne. Combined, they were her worst nightmare. It frustrated her to no end that there was nothing she could do to stop him, seeing as how his ‘heroic’ endeavours weren’t technically illegal; nor could she control him in any way, which, at times, felt even worse. Amanda Waller didn’t like not being in control.
In her 20-year career in the US government, she had had the ‘privilege’ of meeting the worst of the worst – something she wasn’t particularly proud of, although it made her feel like she had the upper hand in just about any situation nonetheless. But she had yet to encounter another individual who could be defined as a human equivalent of a headache as much as Batman.
To say that she wasn’t overly fond of dealing with Bruce Wayne, whatever the circumstances, would be a major understatement, all things considered. And yet here they were, most of the Justice League, all spread out in the conference room below her office like an impromptu party. The only thing missing was, perhaps, a picnic blanket and an assortment of snacks.
Bruce was the only one who had been invited, but Waller should have known better. She wasn’t particularly surprised that Diana Prince came along, seeing as how they seemed to be co-running their club for the gifted and talented, although Barry Allen and Alfred Pennyworth were certainly an unexpected appearance. She had not been prepared for them, and being caught off-guard didn’t sit well with her. Bruce Wayne was enough of a wild card even without trying to make her trip over her own feet with every step she took.
Amanda Waller did not like this at all.
“No,” Bruce said the second she stopped speaking, and had they been in a different situation, she would have appreciated the fact that he even let her finish.
“We’re on the same side, you understand that, right?” Waller reminded him flatly. And there was something pleasing about not showing him just how much he was getting under her skin she thought, as he pressed his lips together with an annoyance that mirrored her own.
This man was impossible to reason with, in part because the idea of teaming up with anyone went against everything that he was. (Waller was surprised beyond measure that he’d decided to expand his team rather than keep on leaping from rooftop to rooftop by himself.) And in part, because disagreeing with any opinion that differed from his own was in his nature more than anything else. Certainly more than relying on common sense, it seemed.
Truth be told, she didn’t want it, either. None of this was something that Waller would have liked to deal with under any circumstances. She and Bruce Wayne were alike that way – neither one of them was good at playing well with others. On top of that, the man standing before her had a god complex and an affinity for breaking rules – everything that was an honest-to-god nightmare in her line of work. If it was her personal choice, Bruce Wayne would have never stepped into her office in the first place; not to mention the merry party that he had insisted on bringing along with him, either for moral support or to witness him deflect her jabs – she wasn’t quite sure yet.
The only problem here was that they needed each other, and Gotham needed them both. And Amanda Waller knew that he knew it, too. And they both equally hated it, neither one of them used to giving in.
Bruce let out a short snort. “And you want to spy on us?”
“I believe the press is doing a damn fine job there already,” Waller deadpanned, her eyes flickering towards a stack of newspapers on the cabinet, the headline of each of them featuring someone from his home-grown gang.
Superman’s return alone had been such a big deal it had managed to steal every front page of every newspaper in continental America for weeks on end. Barry Allen had made an appearance or two in the recent past, and while Diana Prince was a less frequent guest in their neck of the woods, she’d also made quite a name for herself. Arthur Curry and Victor Stone were not that much on display, either less involved or stealthier than the others, however even they hadn't stayed completely unnoticed. If Waller wanted to spy on them, she’d get a team to stalk every type of social media. Would be a no-brainer, really.
“What I want is information,” she added.
Bruce laughed at that, and even Alfred chuckled softly, drawing attention to himself for the first time since he’d entered the room half an hour ago.
“Right,” Bruce shook his head, and Waller pointedly avoided looking at Diana who was watching her impassively, waiting for her to open her cards. “Information. Why would I want to share anything? With you, of all people, Director. No offence.”
"None taken." Waller leaned back in her chair, her hands clasped together before her. “Because I can share back. Believe me, it’s something you might appreciate at some point. If memory serves me right, our partnership has proved being rather useful in the past.”
“It was a one-time deal,” Bruce reminded her.
He had refused an offered seat, choosing to keep standing, and while to him it might have looked like having some advantage in this conversation, Waller couldn’t help but think of him as a petulant child who would rather remain inconvenienced out of spite than do as asked for once.
“It doesn’t have to be,” she said simply.
Despite the present audience, she knew that, essentially, this was between the two of them.
She also knew that she had him then. Maybe not completely but his resolve was crumbling before her eyes, and she loved every moment of it. She knew that he had come here solely for the sake of rubbing how much they didn’t need her in Waller’s face, and however this meeting was going to end, this flicker of indecisiveness on his face was worth of her time, that much she was certain of.
“So let me get this straight,” Bruce started again, “you have found someone else with… special abilities. And you want them to work with us so they would give our inside information to you? Am I getting this right?”
“Not at all. They will be working with you like Mr. Allen here, for example.” Her gaze darted towards Barry. “And the information will be coming from you, Mr. Wayne. This is between you and me, and no one else.” She gave the other three a pointed look as if to say that they were not meant to be a part of this negotiation in the first place.
“What’s the catch then?” Bruce inquired, not quite willing to swallow the bait yet.
The man sure loved to overthink everything, Waller thought sourly.
“There is no catch. You need help. I am willing to provide the best person who can offer it.”
“Why? His morals are too high for your bunch of petty criminals?”
“No one is perfect,” Waller responded flatly and offered him a small shrug. “Sometimes they come with principles.”
Not to mention that there was no bunch anymore, just an array of people locked away for the sake of their own and everyone else’s safety, she thought grimly, the mere memory of the Suicide Squad making her face twitch as though she'd bitten into a lemon.
“We don’t need help,” Diana shook her head, speaking for the first time since she'd walked through the door.
Waller fixed her eyes on Wonder Woman, not quite certain if she meant it as they didn’t need help, or that they didn’t want it from her . Not that she cared. “Yes, you do, and you know it. Otherwise, none of you would’ve spent months looking for it. You’re stronger than most but you’re not invincible. None of you are. And certainly not the people you care about. Not all of them, at least.” She paused for emphasis. “Therefore, you’re hardly in a position to turn down any sort of assistance. You, of all people, should understand that, Ms. Prince.”
“Me, of all people ?” Diana echoed, an eyebrow raised. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Waller levelled her with an even look. “I would assume you know more than most about what can come next. Demons, aliens. Take your pick. Besides, you can’t swing your sword and keep an eye on traffic updates all at the same time.”
“Why?” Bruce asked, unimpressed.
Waller turned to him. “Because saving lives and multi-tasking don’t mesh well.”
“No. If this guy is so good, why do you want to… give him up?”
"Who said it was a guy?" Waller smirked.
"A girl?" Barry inquired, curious.
She ignored him, her eyes never leaving Bruce's.
“Because I have no use for him. Because, as per our agreement, I’m not working with metahumans anymore. And because I’m nice like that.” She paused, watching Batman's jaw twitch a little. “And you could benefit greatly from his expertise, trust me.”
“Trust you?” Bruce echoed, and Barry had to cover his chuckle with a cough.
Waller’s lips curved into a humourless smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “We haven’t always been on the same page, but have I ever given you a reason not to trust me, Mr. Wayne?”
“There’s always a first time for everything,” Bruce scoffed. “We don’t need anyone,” he repeated, his eyes darting towards Alfred. “I think we’re good for now, as far as traffic updates are concerned.”
Waller cocked her head. “And how willing are you to risk the life of the man who raised you after your parents died the next time the sky opens up and spits out something nasty? That, and how foolish are you to think that you can do it alone? This city is bigger than you think. And the world is even bigger than that.” She picked up a folder from the chair next to hers and put it on the desk, pushing it towards Bruce. “An ex-military, doesn’t like following orders but has an enviable moral compass. You’ll probably have a thing or two in common. Unless you have other leads, of course. Or maybe someone else you would like to bring back from the dead.”
Bruce’s jaw clenched, and this time Waller knew that this was it. Everyone else did, too. He didn’t move for a few moments, his gaze only briefly landing on the offered dossier. The eyes of both Alfred and Barry were on him now, and Diana shifted from foot to foot, never looking away from Waller who continued to watch the man standing before her, knowing that she’d found the perfect way to corner him into a situation from which there was no way out.
Well, he could walk away, of course. But what a stupid thing that would be.
“And why would he want to be involved, that guy of yours?” Bruce asked at last.
Waller shrugged. “Everyone needs a hobby. He doesn’t have one at the moment.”
Bruce gaped at her, and Diana Prince looked away, suddenly disinterested. “Are you seriously trying to sell me on the idea of putting our lives in the hands of someone who needs a hobby ? You’re kidding me, right?”
“Isn’t that how we all got here?” Barry scoffed.
Waller raised a curious eyebrow at him. “What was that, Mr. Allen?”
He buried his nose in his phone again. “Nothing. A cat meme.”
She nodded and turned to Bruce again. “No, I’m asking you to consider employing someone who has experience in espionage, not just stock market, fishing, and…” her eyes darted toward Diana, “antiques.”
“And competitive dancing,” Barry piped up.
Bruce shot him a warning look. Waller ignored his comment entirely. Alfred still hadn’t uttered a word. And if she had to guess, he was trying to weigh the pros and cons of her offer in his mind, quite possibly both hurt by the implication that someone else should be involved in what had always been his domain, and relieved. From where she was standing, patching up Batman's injuries didn't sound like a charmed life.
“Didn’t you just say that he wasn’t going to be a spy?” Diana inquired.
“I said he wasn’t going to be spying on you ,” Waller corrected her.
“All of this because you want information from us?” Bruce clarified again, eyeing her skeptically.
“I want us both to stop pretending that the other one doesn’t exist. We’re not helping anyone by doing that.” He all but scoffed, but Waller pressed on. “We’re not doing anyone any favours by staying on opposite sides in this battle.”
Bruce rubbed his chin, his gaze heavy now that he couldn’t simply walk out the door the way Waller was certain he had been planning to from the start. In his mind, she was sure, this was all meant to be a show, but look how the tables had turned.
They stared at one another for a long moment, and Waller thought that if he could incinerate her with his gaze, there’d be nothing but a pile of ashes left of her.
“Okay then,” Bruce let out a frustrated sigh in the end. “I suppose we should meet him first. Does he have a phone number?”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page after all,” Waller nodded curtly and pressed a button on the intercom. “He can come in,” she said when her assistant on the other end responded, trying to ignore the satisfaction of seeing a shadow of surprise pass over Bruce Wayne’s features. He’d probably assumed that they would need to track her new find down, their previous arrangement considered.
Oh, how much she loved surpassing his expectations.
Not a few seconds later, the heavy door opened and a man in his late 30’s walked in.
He glanced at Alfred and Barry without any particular interest, recognition sparking alive in his gaze when it landed briefly on Waller. He lingered for just a second longer than a first meeting warranted on Bruce before fixing on Diana. He froze then, all colour draining from his face.
Unperturbed, and unsurprised, Waller stood up from her chair and turned to Bruce.
“Allow me to introduce Captain Steve Trevor.”
---
She had to have known, Steve was thinking now. Amanda Waller had to have planned this from the start, and shockingly, that was the only thought that managed to anchor itself in his mind while the rest of them, half-formed and torn apart, were nothing but a tornado in his head. There were very few instances in his life that had felt like a metaphorical sucker-punch, leaving him breathless and gasping for air, but seeing Diana stand before him now, 60-something years after the last time they had come face to face, not aged a day, was more than that. It made him feel momentarily like he’d fallen into some kind of black hole that had turned his reality inside out.
Time had stopped - there was no other way to explain the million and a half emotions that swept through him in under one second, nearly knocking Steve off balance when their eyes met. Impossible. She was like an apparition, almost unreal, her gaze shocked and disbelieving, neither of them daring to so much as blink for fear of having the other one disappear. This was the last thing Steve had expected to ever have to deal with, the last place he’d ever imagined himself to end up. All the pain, all the aching that had reduced over the years to a dull throb in the centre of his chest, everything he had learned to ignore... in only one second, it all came rushing back in.
Thin jacket, practical black pants, her hair pulled into a ponytail – Diana was looking at him like he was a ghost, and Steve knew that his own expression mirrored hers. The room, the whole world, fell back as his heart climbed up all the way to the Olympic jumping platform, thirty feet above the water, took a run, pushed away from the springboard, and leaped forward and down, plummeting into his stomach where it continued to flutter frantically, successfully pushing anything and everything else out of his mind.
His breath shortened, and he wondered absently if the rest of Waller’s visitors could hear it, too, deciding that he didn’t give a damn about it in the end. In that moment, he cared for nothing except taking her in, after all this time, so different and yet achingly familiar. Unchanged. Here . So very real it hurt to think about it.
Diana’s lips parted as if she wanted to say something, ask something, but no words came out. Just silence, and the pounding of Steve's heart, deafeningly loud.
In the years that had passed since Steve had last seen her, he’d imagined this moment thousands of times, playing it out in thousands of different ways. Couldn’t stop thinking of some providence bringing them together again, knowing that he would never be able to walk away from her once more. And yet none of those scenarios had ever made him feel like the ground had been kicked from underneath him. In his daydreams, Diana had never looked at him the way she was looking at him now – with a mixture of doubt and denial. Like she wished that there was someone else standing in his place.
Steve swallowed and forced himself to tear his gaze away from her, fearful of keeling over if he didn’t.
Beside her stood a man who he recognized instantly – Bruce Wayne. There wasn’t a rat in Gotham who didn’t know him. Although, admittedly, he wasn’t quite as identifiable when his mouth was latched onto Diana’s a few nights ago. He had straightened his back when Steve walked in, squared his shoulders as if to seem taller than he really was, and there was something possessive in the way that he nearly stepped in front of her – something that almost made Steve laugh out loud because if there was anyone among the present company who least required any protection, it was her. The proprietary gesture rubbed him the wrong way, nonetheless.
Then a wave of white-hot anger washed over him, nearly making him see red.
Waller knew. She did this on purpose, and Steve couldn’t believe she’d played him so effortlessly; couldn’t believe how easily he had walked into this trap, frustration rising inside him, threatening to spill over the brim.
He took a steadying breath, acutely aware of the five pairs of eyes glued to him, and slowly unclenched his hands that had curled into fists on a will of their own. With effort, he dragged his gaze away from Bruce Wayne who was glaring daggers at him – be it for Steve’s name or his face but there was an odd air of familiarity between the two of them - and turned to Waller.
“No,” was all Steve could say after the brief round of introductions that barely registered with him.
Diana looked at Waller too, arms crossed over her chest. Defiant.
“I’m not working with him,” she said firmly.
Steve’s jaw dropped. He gaped at her, not sure for a moment that this was really happening. “ You are not working with me ?” And then he turned to Waller as well, “I’m not working with her .”
“And I want to know how this movie ends,” Barry muttered. He smacked Alfred on the shoulder with the back of his hand, “You got popcorn?”
“Is there a problem?” Waller asked, one eyebrow arched. One had to admire her ability not to give a shit. If it wasn’t for the slight tension in her shoulders, Steve would have thought that she was bored half to death by the entire affair.
“We don’t need anyone else, we’re good as we are,” Diana responded, her voice uncompromising, and something akin to smug satisfaction flashed over Bruce Wayne’s features, making Steve’s hackles stand on end.
“Really? Because a minute ago it was your idea to make a proper introduction,” Waller reminded her.
Diana’s lips pursed into a stubborn line, and if Steve wasn’t awfully busy trying to find a way out of this mess, he’d definitely take note of the thin ice that Waller was standing on, by the looks of it.
Steve shook his head. “You’ll have to find someone else,” he said impassively, managing to swallow that quiver that had snuck its way into his voice.
Waller looked at him. “We have a deal, Captain, have we not?” she reminded him very calmly and very coldly.
They had, and Steve was starting to regret it, quite desperately so.
And suddenly, there was a sense of camaraderie in the room – as if everyone realized in that moment how much they despised the position they had found themselves in. As they realized that Waller actually had them all in her fist despite everyone trying to pretend that this was not the case at all. Maybe this was why Bruce Wayne looked so damn pissed, and why Diana hadn’t stormed out of the room yet, taking the massive door with her like it was nothing. Although Steve would be a bloody bad spy if he hadn’t spotted the flicker of panic in Waller’s eyes as well, something that she probably wasn’t aware of herself, and it got him wondering…
“I don’t even know what you want from me,” he said flatly after a few long moments, when the silence grew sufficiently uncomfortable and rather unbearable.
Waller’s lips curved into the tiniest of smiles. “I’m glad you asked.” He tried to ignore the finality in her tone. Like she knew that he was trapped. Which, perhaps, he was, all things considered. “Mr. Wayne and his friends here believe in helping people in desperate situations. If I’m not mistaken, this is something you have an impressive expertise in, don’t you? They could benefit greatly from it, I’m sure.”
Steve held her gaze, too tired all of a sudden to keep carrying on with this charade. Amanda Waller was hardly the scariest person he’d ever met. Frankly, Adolf Hitler still held the top spot. And just about any telemarketer who happened to stumble upon Steve's number. Steve was pretty damn sick of dancing to her tune.
“You have the wrong guy,” he shook his head, still hoping that there still was a scenario in which he could simply walk out the door he'd come in as if nothing had happened.
“We’re not interested in forcing any of this on anyone against their will,” Diana added, quite pointedly keeping her eyes on Amanda Waller. On anyone but him, for that matter. Steve wasn’t sure if he was insulted or relieved by that, mostly for fear of combusting under her gaze if she’d so much as glanced his way again.
“There you go,” Steve muttered under his breath.
“That’s true, I practically volunteered,” Barry piped in, his eyes darting between Steve, Diana, and Waller like he was watching an elaborate ping-pong match.
Before anyone could say anything else, an older man who Steve had mistaken for Waller’s chauffeur, raised his hand like he was in a classroom, and Waller nodded, the diligent teacher that she was.
“Perhaps, a probation?” Alfred Pennyworth, as Waller had introduced him earlier, suggested, earning a searing glare from Bruce Wayne which he promptly ignored, completely unfazed, making Steve like him instantly. Well, more than the rest of them, at least.
Diana’s phone chimed just as Bruce opened his mouth to object, and she pulled it out of the back pocket of her jeans, manners be damned. This whole situation was too surreal for this to matter.
Steve? THE Steve???!!
A text from Lois.
Diana's pulse stuttered.
She glanced at Barry who was openly gawking at… was it really him?
Steve .
The name resonated in the pit of her soul with a dull ache that she’d spent years – decades – learning to live with.
Her stomach had folded in on itself the second she saw him, her lungs crumpling inside her ribcage, rendering the simple act of breathing nearly impossible. Her chest felt hollow and caved-in, and she could barely look away from him, his black jacket and dark jeans, so different from the way she remembered him. But his eyes were the same – the impossible blue that never failed to remind Diana of the waters around Themyscira, and the curve of his mouth was so familiar it was almost painful, his voice washing over her, longing building in her chest.
How was this possible?
She’d had this dream before, more times than she could count. She had dreamed of him nearly every day since he’d walked out of their apartment in Paris and never returned. Except it always ended differently – in her dreams, Steve's gaze was warm, not guarded, his embrace welcoming, and she couldn’t stop kissing him as something all-consuming blossomed and unfolded inside her. Something that must have been happiness. In her dreams, he always came back to her, needing Diana as much as she needed him. He would kiss her back, and she would wake up with tears in her eyes, aching for something that was so close and yet so far out of her reach.
This moment right now was nothing like that. Aside from the initial shock that she knew was impossible to feign, however good an actor one was, when they both seemed unable to stop staring at one another, Steve hadn’t looked at her once, his gaze somehow sliding past Bruce and Amanda Waller, barely registering the presence of Barry and Alfred. And she was this close to waking out of this damned place because she couldn’t …
Her phone chimed again.
Is it really him?
Lois.
It had to have been Barry who had told her, Diana thought absently. Except he didn’t know Lois… but he knew Clark. She reminded herself to kill ‘the fastest man alive’ later.
The very air in the room was starting to feel like there was not enough oxygen, the electrifying tension hanging between them almost palpable. Like the sparks were about to start flying.
And then Alfred’s voice cut through it, his words feeling like nails sealing her coffin shut.
A probation ?
This was not an office manager job, for heaven’s sake.
Diana opened her mouth to protest – because there was no way on Earth this could work. There had to be a way to make this sound logical without bringing up her past, as this was supposed to be a gesture of goodwill, and Waller had no power to force another person on them no matter her reasoning, when Bruce spoke again.
“Does this have anything to do with A.R.G.U.S.?” he asked, and Diana frowned.
Waller’s lips quirked for a second. “We’re working toward it,” she responded vaguely.
For a long moment, they simply looked at one another, and then Bruce turned to Alfred and Barry who, in turn, were waiting expectantly for further instructions. He glanced at Diana then, but there was nothing that she could offer him, her mind numb. Bruce knew who Steve was, he had seen the photo, and even though they’d never discussed it, although not for his lack of trying, she knew for a fact that he’d done his homework. And that the striking resemblance plus the same name… Well, he was many things but he wasn’t stupid.
And all the while, Steve simply stood there, motionless as a statue. So still she didn’t think he was even breathing, his eyes trained on Waller, his brows furrowed.
In that moment, she wanted so badly to climb into his head and see what he was thinking. If only because it would probably stop the flow of her own thoughts that felt like a tidal wave that threatened to pull her to the bottom of the ocean.
She prayed for him to walk away, turn around and never look back, while also begging all gods to let him stay, uncertain as to why, when he clearly didn’t want to have anything to do with them. With her .
“That, and I can share, too,” Waller added, seeing Bruce’s hesitation. His eyes narrowed slightly. “A beneficial agreement all over.”
“This is not a good idea,” Steve said, breaking the silence just as Bruce spoke: “It’s a deal then.”
They looked at each other, and Diana could nearly feel Alfred roll his eyes.
This was not going to end well.
“You can’t just agree to this,” she objected, making the men turn to her. “It must be a team decision.”
“Oh, democracy!” Barry perked up. “Who here is for bringing this guy into our club?” He jerked his thumb toward Steve and raised his hand.
After a moment of hesitation, Alfred did the same, and Diana wondered - not for the first time - how much of his findings had Bruce shared with him. Bruce huffed through his nose in disgust but nodded, too.
Diana turned away, her hands flexing on her elbows in what she hoped resembled a confrontational stance rather than an attempt not to fall apart, as if holding herself in one piece required physical effort on her part.
“Well, in that case--” Waller started.
“Wait, it has to be all-inclusive,” Barry interjected, his eyes glued to the screen of his phone as his fingers flew over it with inhuman speed, typing away with abandon. A few seconds later, his phone beeped. Barry grinned. “Vic doesn’t care, so that’s a yes.” He glanced up at no one in particular, his gaze merely swiping over the room. “And Arthur asks if we can have KFC for dinner.” He scrunched his nose. “D’you guys know if there’s a joint somewhere nearby?”
“Are we done here?” Waller sighed with exasperation she didn’t try to conceal.
“Apologies,” Barry muttered.
“Well, that’s two against five,” Steve spoke when they fell silent.
He squared his shoulders against Waller’s glare, unwavering.
“No, no, Arthur is in,” Barry explained quickly. “He’s just hungry.”
“I didn’t mean… whoever Arthur is,” Steve shook his head, feeling all five pairs of eyes on him, seemingly trying to burn a hole right through him.
Barry scrunched his face, confused. “Then who else is against?”
“Me,” Steve said, peering at Waller without much pleasure. “Can we have a word?”
She gestured to him to carry on.
“In private,” Steve added, as if it wasn’t obvious enough, his voice brimming with impatience. Why she needed this show was beyond his comprehension, but he was sick of it.
“I think we’ve already discussed everything there was to discuss,” she countered.
“In that case, I’m out.”
“In that case, our agreement is off,” Waller shrugged. “You know where the door is, Captain Trevor.”
Steve gritted his teeth but didn’t move, drowning in helpless fury.
“Looks like that’s a yes, too,” Barry nudged Alfred with his elbow after a few moments, and then looked up, “Sorry, Di.”
“Do whatever you want,” Diana muttered before turning on her heel and walking out of the conference room without so much as a goodbye, leaving them all in stunned silence.
---
If someone asked Steve to explain how exactly he had ended up in this mess, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it, no matter how hard he tried to trace it back to the damned day when he’d made the fatal mistake of picking up a call from a blocked number.
Amanda Waller knew how to convince people to do as she said, he had to give her that. A useful trait in her line of work. It wasn’t her methods, however, that had stirred the unease in Steve, but the fact that she knew things about him. Things that no one else was meant to know anymore. And the conversation had left him equally curious and perturbed, if only because his past was supposed to be long buried by then.
Curious enough to get him to come to this godforsaken city for a face-to-face talk.
She had made him an offer – to erase all information about him that still existed in the world in exchange for a favour , as she’d phrased it. He didn’t like it, but he’d come this far and felt foolish to back away now.
Had Steve known what that deal was going to be about, that he’d be nothing but a pawn in her elaborate game for power with Bruce Wayne, he’d have burned his phone, changed his name again, and disappeared somewhere where no one would know to look for him until Amanda Waller stopped being an issue. The funny thing about not dying – yet – was that he had become rather patient when it came to waiting for others to leave this world, should the need arise. He was intrigued, though, and desperate to finally be in full control of his life.
To say that the details of this arrangement caught him by surprise would have been the understatement of the century, and Steve had been alive long enough to be a good judge of that.
What it was that Amanda Waller and the rest of – what did she call them? The Justice League? - were getting out of this whole thing, he wasn’t sure, and quite frankly, didn’t really care. It was a no brainer to put two and two together, though – and a week around here gave him a good idea of what Bruce Wayne was like when he wasn’t wearing tailored suits and signing multi-million dollar deals. Which explained his alliance with Diana, Steve thought sourly. However, joining their little party was not Steve’s idea of fun. To be completely honest, he could think of a thousand other things he’d rather do with his time, as far away from this place as possible.
What he wanted more than anything was for this to be over.
And yet, here he was, in the back of an expensive car, colourfully cursing Amanda Waller in his mind. He needed her, and she knew it. Steve resented her for that, and himself for giving in.
His phone pinged softly with a new message, and he knew instantly what it was – the files on everyone in the League, as Waller had promised before Steve was whisked away by the overly-enthusiastic Barry Allen. Had he known from the beginning where this all would end, he’s start running in a different direction immediately, Waller’s offer be damned. After all, the concerns of the government had long stopped being of interest to him. He could still do it, Steve told himself. It would complicate some things again, but he could live with that. Surely, between that, and having to work side by side with Diana and her new… what were they called, he wondered. Romantic partners? Lovers ?
The thought was nauseating, so much so that he almost asked Alfred to stop the car so that he wouldn’t have to throw up on the expensive upholstery. Bruce Wayne wouldn’t appreciate that. It could also work as a great exit strategy, Steve thought grimly. Drop dead on the side of the road somewhere to avoid moving any further.
“You okay, man?” Barry asked him. “You look kinda pale.”
Sitting in the passenger seat, Barry had spent a chunk of their ride either texting or chatting a mile a minute, barely giving Alfred a chance to hum in response as a tune that Steve didn’t recognize was spilling from the radio. Come to think of it, he couldn’t quite remember how he had ended up here in the first place. By the time Waller had handed him over to the League, Diana was long gone, and Bruce Wayne disappeared shortly afterwards (and Steve was still working hard on trying not to imagine her waiting for him in the garage or something).
But now Barry was hanging between the front seats, looking quizzically at him, his eyebrows raised expectantly, waiting for some reaction.
“Yeah…” Steve cleared his throat and straightened up on the slippery leathery seat, somewhat aware of the fact that it wasn’t the right answer but unable to come up with anything else. “Barry, right?”
The guy grinned. “Sure thing, and this is Alfred,” he patted the older man on the shoulder, not without affection. “Bruce’s babysitter.”
“Mr. Allen…” Alfred started with a warning in his voice.
“Sorry. Butler .” With that, Barry turned to Alfred. “I didn’t know anyone still used that word.” And added, “Anyone not living in a 17th-century novel, that is.”
“Would you like me to stop the car so you could walk the rest of the way?” Alfred asked flatly.
Steve glanced out the window behind which the outskirts of Gotham were nothing but a sea of grey, blurring before his eyes as the rain continued to fall on them, angry and fierce. They did stop for food, too, and the bag now sitting on the seat next to him was filling the car with the smell of french fries and chicken – something Steve could definitely do without, if he was honest with himself.
“Where are we going, exactly?” he asked, cutting into the banter happening in the front of the car.
“Batca--” Barry started and cut off when Alfred shot him a look . “Bruce’s,” he corrected himself.
Right. The briefing, Steve recalled. Proper introductions. He’d just assumed that it would take place in Wayne’s office or something of that kind. Not his house.
“So, what’s the story?” Barry prodded again, and Steve got the distinct suspicion that the guy was about to get strangled with the seatbelt, sitting the way he was.
“What story?”
“With you and Diana?”
The mention of her made everything inside Steve coil into a knot, the memories leaving him with vertigo strong enough to make him feel like the whole world was spiralling away from him.
Diana…
This was going to be interesting.
“Why would you think there is one?” he asked with pointed nonchalance, mindful of keeping his voice as even as possible.
“Because you should’ve seen the look on your faces,” Barry snorted.
Alfred caught Steve's gaze in the rear-view mirror, half-curious and half-amused, and a little bewildered, too. “Because Miss Prince is the reasonable one. It is usually Master Wayne who indulges in storming out and slamming doors,” he explained with a small smirk.
Ignoring Barry’s unabashed anticipation for details, Steve shook his head and turned away, choosing to study the unimpressive landscape outside.
“There’s no story,” he muttered, not really caring if they heard him.
Not anymore.
---
Can’t be, can’t be, can’t be…
Diana twisted the steering wheel, her car swerving sharply and earning a handful of angry honks that faded away as another vehicle whizzed past her, disappearing in the late-afternoon traffic. She hit the brakes, bringing the silver Volvo to an abrupt stop at a curb somewhere in Chinatown, spooking a flock of pigeons pecking at something near the newspaper stand on the sidewalk, not knowing how she had ended up here and not certain where she was going in the first place.
Away .
Away from that windowless room.
From Amanda Waller with her cold, measured voice that sounded like she was incapable of any human emotion.
From Steve.
Diana’s hands were shaking when she peeled them off the steering wheel, her heartbeat rapid and frantic, the sense of ever-present composure that she’d mastered long before she had come to this world nowhere to be found.
Outside, a steady stream of passers-by was flowing past her car – well, Bruce’s car. One she’d borrowed this morning because she had somewhere else to be before he had called her, asking her to join him for the meeting with Waller. They were giving her funny looks, undoubtedly curious about the smell of burnt rubber and skid-marks left by expensive tires on cracked and patched asphalt.
And inside her, a storm, the likes of which she couldn’t remember, raged with such force and ferocity that she could barely breathe.
Diana squeezed her eyes shut, trying to push the image of Steve out of her mind - his confusion and shock, disbelief flickering across his features, his palpable denial – but it only made it worse. The blue of his eyes that haunted her for over half a century was all that she could see.
It had been so long that she had almost forgotten how much it hurt to think of him, like something was slicing her open from the inside. It took her years to learn to breathe without him, for her stomach to stop dropping whenever she’d see the same haircut or an army jacket on someone else, for her heart to stop fluttering in hope and anticipation. Until it had drained her. Until she was no longer reaching for his side of the bed in the night or waiting to see his face upon waking up in the morning. Until she had found it in her to move on and start healing as best she could, and the pain had finally ebbed.
And then Lex Luthor and the photo had re-emerged, knocking the ground from beneath her feet. She’d spent decades looking for it, unsettled by the idea of someone else being in possession of something this personal to her. She thought it would bring her solace.
Yet, when it had finally happened, when her efforts had finally paid off, Diana was once again faced with the simple truth – pretending that her past was dead and buried was one thing, but it didn’t change the fact that there were things in everyone’s life that couldn’t be forgotten or overcome. Steve Trevor was that for her, and several decades and half a dozen lovers couldn’t erase what they used to have.
Today had proven that, if nothing else.
And if she were honest with herself, she wouldn’t want to erase it either, the memories of her time with Steve bittersweet, but cherished deeply nonetheless. However, what she wanted to do now was to go back to that moment when her phone had started to ring this morning, Bruce’s caller ID flashing on the screen, and ignore it, let it go to voicemail and then erase it without listening to it even though she knew she’d never do that. Not when the world was teetering on the brink of falling into the void more often than not, her armour and sword always within arm’s reach.
Wherever Waller had found Steve and whatever her game was, was another story, and probably something Diana would have to think about at some point. However, for now, she was fighting the urge to catch the first flight to Paris to go back to her life, to the semblance of what passed for normalcy these days.
Diana sighed when her phone came to life once more. Lois again, she thought, allowing it to keep ringing. Or Barry. Or maybe even Bruce – she had been half-heartedly avoiding him since the night of the gala, not knowing how drunk he’d been when he kissed her and not certain if she wanted to find out. Either way, it could wait for a little while longer. She also made a mental note to get Clark to find a hobby instead of mulling over gossip. And Barry was in so much trouble for starting it.
She thought of Steve’s watch, tucked away in the nightstand drawer in her room in Bruce’s house, the very same one that his father had given to him over a century ago and that he somehow had left behind in his hurry when he had left her.
Still ticking.
---
“Who’s that?”
A man with a wild mane of hair and eyes so pale that Steve could have sworn they were transparent yanked the front door open before Alfred had a chance to so much as find the key, a loose shirt hanging from his massive frame that filled the whole doorway. He gave Steve a blunt once-over, his eyebrows arched quizzically.
“Fresh meat.” Barry squeezed between Steve and Alfred and pushed the KFC bag into the giant’s chest. “Here’s your food, Arthur.”
“Finally,” the man muttered, grabbing it and turning to follow Barry inside, seemingly no longer interested in Steve now that his attention was focused elsewhere and not at all bothered by the appearance of a stranger on the doorstep.
Bruce Wayne sure kept some colourful company around.
“Sorry, they didn’t have fish fingers,” Barry added, earning a heartfelt chuckle in response, their voices fading as they walked away. An inside joke, by the sound of it.
“’Course they didn’t, you genius. That’s the whole point.”
Steve didn’t hear anything after that.
That was the mysterious Arthur then, he thought as Alfred gestured for him to come in. Steve stepped into a wide hallway, and when the door closed behind them, it was like it had cut off the four of them from the rest of the world, the sound of the lock clicking into place oddly final.
There was no briefing, per se.
Instead, Steve spent most of the afternoon eating cold French fries and reading the files on each member of the Justice League – as much information as Waller could acquire, and he wondered what exactly was missing as there always was something – on a borrowed laptop, while trying, with little success, to wrap his mind around certain facts. Like the fact that the chatty kid he had shared the car with not a few hours ago could run faster than time itself. Or that the sullen man who he’d met earlier, and who was currently watching TV in the empty living room was, well, a cyborg . A result of a car crash and an experiment gone wrong. Steve felt a chill in the pit of his stomach at the thought of people who had gone through something similar in times of war when the Germans were obsessed with creating enhanced soldiers by testing their ideas on prisoners and innocent victims.
It was interesting how some things never changed, it seemed.
Time was supposed to dull his memories, make them fade around the edges, but some of them, he was starting to realize, were impossible to forget. That, and maybe they were not meant to be forgotten.
By the time Steve reached Arthur Curry’s file, it was dark and his head was on the verge of exploding. He purposely didn’t touch Diana’s dossier, and only briefly skimmed over Bruce Wayne’s credentials that listed primarily the mundane milestones – the date of death of his parents, the year he had graduated from school, then university, then another one, and such.
At least the man couldn’t set things on fire with his brain or teleport or do something else super-human. It appeared that being able to fund this vigilante business was his main shtick, and for some reason, it made Steve feel better about the whole situation. Not because he necessarily wanted Bruce Wayne to be lesser than the rest of the group (even though there was that, too, he was not going to lie to himself) but because he found the idea of not being the only person without any superhero skills and talents around here rather comforting. Well, there was Alfred too, but he wasn’t exactly expected to jump from skyscraper to skyscraper, apparently.
Which led Steve, once again, to the question of his involvement with any of this. They had nothing to gain from him, nothing they couldn’t get from someone else. Perhaps someone who wanted to be here. To be fair, he doubted they'd have trouble finding someone more willing.
When he had brought that issue up with Waller the first time they'd met, the first time he had asked her about the nature of her request, her response was vague at best. Something about his skills and experience. It had made little sense then, and even less now. If she thought that his past connection to Diana was going to give him some kind of upper hand – well, Steve had some seriously bad news for her.
He refused to think of how this all fit into Diana’s life. If she was happy with what she was doing – well, he was happy for her, too. After all, her contentment had been the whole point of letting her have the life she had wanted and deserved. He was hardly in a position to have an opinion on it, let alone to express it, anymore.
Earlier, Alfred had allowed him to set up in the study and even supplied him with a teapot and bottled water. However, while Steve appreciated the space, when the grey day turned into a gloomy evening, he couldn’t help but feel trapped in the dark room with its panelled walls and heavy drapes covering the floor-to-ceiling windows. The rain had stopped, or at least it had reduced to a soundless drizzle, and the clouds were hanging low and ominous over the lake stretching before him on the other side of the thick glass as emotional fatigue finally caught up with him.
Steve closed the laptop and heaved a weary sigh. His body ached from not moving for too long and his eyes felt raw from staring at the laptop screen. He squeezed them shut and rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to push away the mother of all headaches that was beginning to build in his skull. The whole day felt so surreal he was half-certain he was going to wake up any moment now and leave the madness of the past several hours behind.
It was time to get out of here.
“Captain Trevor?”
The voice made him snap his head up in alarm only to find Alfred standing in the doorway, watching him expectantly, and Steve wondered how long he had been lost in thought.
“Oh, hey.” He ran a hand over his hair and uncurled from the chair, barely resisting the urge to stretch and get the kinks out of his stiff body. “I, um… I think I’m about done.”
For today, at least.
Alfred nodded. “Would you like more tea? Maybe something to eat?”
A drink , Steve thought but swallowed that response. Stiff one. And a sedative .
He picked up his phone from the desk and tucked it into the pocket of his jeans, shaking his head. “Thank you, but I think I better get going back to…” he trailed off, thinking of the dingy hotel where he had been staying during this past week, with its tiny room and never-ending buzz of voices from other suites and the narrow street below. Never did he think he’d feel delighted and relieved at the thought of going back there, to that hole of a place, but the idea of getting away from this house, these people, Diana , was so overwhelming he wanted to run out the door, fearing that he would suffocate in these glass walls. He cleared his throat. “Any chance I could get a cab here?”
Alfred blinked, confused. “A cab? Hasn’t Agent Waller told you about the arrangement?”
An arrangement…
Steve’s inner alarms went off, resonating in the pit of his stomach. “What kind of arrangement?” he asked warily, his mind vividly supplying him with a mental image of a stone cell in the basement – old habits die hard.
Alfred glanced over his shoulder when someone laughed loudly somewhere in the house, breaking the ever-present stillness of the place, and then turned to Steve again. “Agent Waller and Master Wayne had agreed that it would be better if you stayed here. So you could get to know everyone, you see. And perhaps for your convenience as well. I believe the hotels of Gotham leave a lot to be desired, even the best of them.” He paused to let the information sink in as Steve stared at him. “Your belongings have already been delivered. I’d be happy to show you to your room whenever you’re ready.”
Steve heard the words, recognized them, but the combination of them made no sense to him whatsoever. He gaped at Alfred as if the other man had suddenly grown a second head and was now speaking a language Steve couldn’t understand.
And the only coherent thought running through his head was, You have got to be fucking kidding me.
---
London, 1919
“What about birthdays?” Steve asked, his hand trailing lazy patterns on Diana’s bare back, the tenderness of his touch making her heart ache.
Sprawled across the bed on her stomach, she allowed her eyes to drift shut, marvelling in the sensation of his closeness and the warmth of his body stretched out next to her, blissful and sated. Somewhere across town, there was a table at the restaurant that Steve had booked earlier this week that they had never made it to, distracted by each other and somehow managing to turn ‘dressing up’ into ‘undressing’. Now their clothes were strewn across the floor of the small bedroom bathed in moonlight streaming through the window that was taking up almost the whole width of the wall.
They would get hungry soon, Diana thought absently. However, the realization was short-lived. This was new still, this thing between them, and wonderful in every way. The closeness, the beauty of being given a second chance. The war was behind them at last, even though its shadow still hovered nearby, and Steve had healed, but she knew better than to take this blessing for granted. Every day, Diana gave thanks to the gods for bringing him back to her, for this consuming, impossible happiness that made her heart feel so full she feared it might burst in her chest.
Her lips curved into a lazy smile, “What about them?”
Steve propped up on his elbow and brushed her hair away from her neck. His mouth trailed slowly over her skin, and she had to remind herself to breathe. “Well… when is yours?”
Diana hesitated. “Our calendar is different…” she murmured, and added after making a mental calculation, “It would be March 22 for you.”
“March 22,” he echoed. “I’ll remember that.”
“Birthdays were acknowledged, but seldom celebrated,” she explained. “Being born isn't considered a personal achievement.”
“I beg to differ,” Steve whispered, planting another kiss to her shoulder. She could feel his breath on her skin; his lips brushed against the nape of her neck, the pleasant warmth spreading over her body at his touch. “I might have to show you how we do things here.”
Diana giggled. “Haven’t you already?”
The things that people did when there were no wars to fight had proven to be worthy of every battle she could ever imagine. Having this, with him, was worth fighting them all, a thousand times over.
He laughed softly, the sound of it reverberating through her, and Diana rolled on her side to face him, her smile growing wider at the sight of his rumpled hair and his crooked grin, his eyes crinkling as he beamed down at her, comically proud of himself, although not without reason. She knew what it was like to be loved, the concept of physical intimacy not new to her. But it had never been like this before, never with someone who was willing to give all of them to her without asking for anything in return. Which only made her want to give all of herself back.
No wonder parts of her body she hadn’t even known existed were aching quite pleasantly now, her heart still pounding fast in her chest.
“Did you ever want to leave?” Steve asked after a few long moments, watching her in the dark. His face turned serious, a frown appearing between his brows. “Your home, I mean.”
“I had to,” Diana reminded him as she tucked her hand under her cheek, studying his features, the way his face was lined with shadows.
“Yes, I know, but… did you ever want to?” he pressed, smoothing down her hair.
Did she?
This was not something she pondered often, if ever, the world beyond Themyscira as alien to her as she was to it. It wasn’t that she never wanted to leave but that she never needed to. Until recently, she couldn't imagine anything that man's world could give her that Themyscira couldn't.
“I was raised to believe that the island was where I belonged,” she responded. “Why do you ask?”
Steve pressed his lips together and let out a small sigh, “I feel responsible, I guess… for making you do it.”
Her features softened. “You didn’t. It was my decision to make, not yours, Steve.”
“Yeah, I know. I know, but…”
She pushed up on her elbow until his eyes were all she could see, strikingly blue even in near complete darkness, and never failing to take her breath away. Her palm curled over his jaw and she brushed her lips to his, a feather-light touch that left both of them short of breath. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be,” she whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth.
“You know, this is the fourth dinner reservation that we let go to waste,” he murmured with a small chuckle as Diana bumped her nose against his, the tension leaving him, chased away by her reassurance.
“We were otherwise engaged, no?” she noted, grinning, her head tilted to her shoulder, and he laughed, the sound of it lighting her up from the inside.
“This is also something that usually goes differently,” Steve said, shaking his head with amusement.
“Differently how?” she asked, her hand playing absently with his hair near the nape of his neck.
He considered her question, eyebrows furrowed contemplatively.
“Well, usually you meet a girl and take her out for a meal, and maybe a dance. Then you meet her parents, and get married and…” He trailed off, his fingers drifting along her side and toward her hip. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “As a rule, you don’t take a girl to the war.” He smirked. “With us… I met your family first, and then I did take you to the war. Which is the worst date idea ever, if you ask me.” Diana smiled. It felt odd to speak of it with lightness, and his voice caught ever so slightly, but they would get there, she thought. Put the war behind them for good. “And then we danced,” he continued. “And then we proved Clio wrong…”
“That we did,” she agreed, her gaze holding his and making Steve lose the train of his thought.
He cleared his throat. “The dinners, however, keep remaining rather elusive. Why is that, I wonder?”
Diana hummed and leaned back to lay down on the pillow. “Is there anything else we’re doing wrong?” she murmured, tugging him to her.
“Mm-hm, I can think of a few things we're doing right.” Steve leaned to kiss her neck, shifting his weight over her. “How about I show you?”
---
Gotham, 2017
“Why did you do it?” Diana asked, arms folded over her chest and eyes shooting daggers at Bruce who either wasn’t in the slightest perplexed by the confrontation, or was doing a damn fine job at making it seem so.
Or maybe it was the dim light of the reading lamp sitting on the desk in the study at the lake house that kept their faces half-obscured, smoothing out the sharp edges of feelings that neither wanted the other one to see. In the living room, or the hallway maybe, Barry and Victor were arguing softly over something or other, and she could hear outbursts of Arthur’s laughter every now and then, Alfred's voice softer in the background. There was comfort in those sounds, comfort in knowing that not everything in their lives was about battles and blood and loss. And Bruce knew it too, his half-hearted complaints about the noise in the house masked the relief of not being on his own anymore, she knew that much. Could see it in Alfred's eyes that had grown less concerned in the time since the League had come together.
Diana liked to remind Bruce now and then that all of this was his idea, earning a scowl in response. He never denied it, though. And he had yet to ask them all to leave.
Her phone was burning with unanswered calls and ignored voicemails that she knew she wouldn’t be able to put off dealing with for much longer. And she couldn’t wait to retreat to her own room, shut the door and try to tune out every single thought that was starting to drive her mad. For years, she wondered what it would be like to have Steve back, and now he was, but it was all wrong and she had no idea how to process it.
She needed time.
Yet, this conversation was the matter of the utmost priority, something that wouldn’t settle inside her until she knew .
Bruce shrugged and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants, the face of his watch catching the light of a reading lamp and winking at her.
“Thought it would make you happy,” he replied, cutting straight to the chase. She liked that about him, that there were no games between them – most of the time. That there was no need for unnecessary pretences. Again, most of the time.
He caught her gaze and held it, open and unapologetic.
As far as she could remember, he’d never made a secret out of being attracted to her and Diana had never made a secret out of not reciprocating the feeling. But ever since the gala, there was a new kind of wall between them, unsaid words churning inside them, ready to spill over the brim and drown them both.
They were good partners in battle, fighting for the right cause. She respected him as a warrior and a friend, and she didn’t want to lose that - didn't want to lose the understanding and kinship the likes of which she hadn’t experienced in a very long time. But that was all she could give him, and to Bruce, she knew, it wasn’t enough.
Soon, they would need to talk, before the words unsaid torn them apart.
Now though, she wished they had sorted it all out before her past had knocked them both off balance, although it didn't come as a surprise that life wasn’t as considerate as Diana wanted it to be.
“And why would it make me happy?” she asked, remembering the shakiness that had filled her in Waller’s office, as if Steve’s presence was charging the air around them, making electric current jolt along her skin, the fine hairs on her arms standing on end.
Bruce’s lips curved humorlessly. “Because you all but turned heaven and hell upside down looking for the photo, Diana,” he responded, probably expecting her to deny it, to argue. She didn’t. “Thought that having the original would be preferable,” he added, making an emphasis on the word ‘original’. “Besides, Waller was right, you know it.”
“When you said you wanted to find others like me, you were talking about people with… abilities,” she reminded him, more cross at herself than at him for finding this situation frustrating.
“Last time I checked, Agent Waller was very diligent with her homework,” Bruce pointed out. “Ergo, I’m going to assume that her new pet has something to him. Until proven otherwise, that is.”
Diana shook her head, irked by his wording. “He does not.”
“And you know that how?” A pause. “It's been a while, after all.”
“If she thinks that he does, she’s mistaken,” Diana insisted.
“This is what we’re going to find out.” Bruce fell silent for a long moment, his gaze hard, unkind even. “I thought you’d jump at an opportunity to have your boyfriend on the team.” No, not unkind. Hurt. The realization surprised Diana. “With all the fuss around breaking into Lex’s personal files, you'd never mentioned anything about trouble in paradise. Or that Steve Trevor was alive, for that matter.”
She pursed her lips together, bristled momentarily by his attitude. “Is this some kind of a game to you, Bruce? A joke?”
He stepped towards her, forcing her to look up, what with less than a foot of space between them.
“I don’t know. Is it?”
In another lifetime, Diana thought. In a different version of reality, perhaps… He was not a bad man. The only problem was that he wasn’t—
She caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and turned, taking an involuntary step back away from Bruce even though the space between them was sufficient enough to not be considered intimate.
“Steve.”
Steve was standing in the doorway, seemingly as surprised to find someone else here as they were to have been walked in on in the middle of a conversation.
For a long moment, the three of them simply stared at one another, waiting for someone to do something, anything . Bruce’s hands were flexing ever so imperceptibly. Diana’s gaze was locked on Steve. And Steve was making a mental note on the distance between them, which, in a room roughly the size of the last apartment he lived in, seemed nonexistent.
If he felt like he didn’t belong here before, like this wasn’t his place to be, right now it became blatantly clear that this arrangement wasn’t going to work. Not for either one of them. They didn’t need him, and he certainly didn’t need them, and Waller—he was going to figure out how to deal with her without dragging a century's worth of history back to the surface.
“I’m sorry,” Steve spoke first, breaking eye contact with Diana, his gaze darting toward Bruce before he looked away altogether as if the bookshelves lining the walls were the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Didn’t think anyone was--”
“You didn’t,” Diana interjected.
Bruce took a step away from her and cleared his throat. “I was just leaving,” he muttered and brushed past Diana, pausing briefly by Steve. “Welcome to the team, Captain. We need to catch up sometime soon.”
Steve held his gaze, unwavering, and then said, “We do.” He wanted quite desperately to find out what this man knew about him, and how he had learned it.
With that, Bruce was gone, his footsteps echoing in the hallway, and Steve wished he’d never left his allocated room, the USB drive he’d left here earlier and now came back to find be damned. He could feel Diana’s presence, her eyes on him; could smell what he assumed was her floral perfume permeating his senses and wrapping around him like a cloud, his skin tingling from her proximity. He could probably do nothing but look at her and breathe her in for as long as he lived, and it would’ve been enough. More than enough.
“Hey,” Diana breathed softly, and on some selfish, stupid level, Steve was relieved to notice that she was about as uncomfortable with this situation as he was.
His mind went blank.
“I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said dumbly when the ability to speak came back.
She shrugged. “It’s easier for all of us to stay here when we’re in town. Bruce… he may not always be willing to admit it, but he appreciates the company.”
Of course , he does, Steve thought, feeling his stomach coil into a knot. Of course , she’d be staying here. Where else? Jesus Christ, why didn’t he think of that?
A wave of white-hot jealousy swept over him, blinding in its intensity. Diana wasn’t his to claim, hadn’t been for a very long time, he reminded himself. He had no right to feel this way, no right to have a bitter aftertaste in his mouth from swallowing his response, and yet one thing he knew for a fact – he was not going to stay here. Wouldn’t be able to. If he did, sooner or later, he’d walk in on more than some sort of private conversation.
There were many ways to die, and there were moments when Steve felt like he was familiar with them all. Yet, seeing Diana with another man was, by far, the worst one he could imagine. This was not worth it. If Waller wanted him, they’d have to make it work some other way.
He nodded, dragging his mind back to the here and now.
It was hard to imagine Bruce Wayne as a man running a shelter home for lost souls, but there was more than altruism at play here, so, to a certain degree, it made sense.
“So I’ve noticed.”
Her lips quirked ever so slightly, curving into a faint smile that was gone before he was sure he even saw it. She leaned against the desk, hands gripping the smooth polished wood on either side of her thighs. “And what about you?”
Her voice was steady. Even. A little curious. This was easy, and it was the easiness that Steve hated the most. The easiness they no longer had any right to.
“Only for tonight,” he shook his head. “There was a mix-up, apparently.” He sounded like a moron. “I’ll sort it out with Waller tomorrow.”
“Oh.”
And maybe it was just him, and all that wishful thinking that Steve was trying to keep at bay, but for a flicker of a moment, Diana looked almost disappointed.
Not that she had any reason to be.
“Is it really you, Steve?” she asked quietly, studying him in the dim light, her disbelief reflecting his own – over seeing her, as well as over this farce of a situation in general. He wasn’t quite sure yet what threw him off more.
He held her gaze. “We can do the glowing Lasso routine if you want,” he offered, his voice low as he willed it not to betray him. “You would ask me all the right questions, and I would tell you every single thing I’ve ever said to you, and every single thing you’ve ever said to me. Words that were not meant for anyone else.” He paused. “Or we can accept the fact that there is only one man in this world who has my face and a clear recollection of what your delight looked like when you saw snow for the first time, back in 1918.”
The words tumbled out of his mouth, tripping over themselves as he spoke before Steve knew to stop them. A storm of emotions flashed across Diana’s features when he fell silent as she looked at him, acceptance finally clicking into place.
“It’s not your face that surprised me, but your association with Waller,” she said, composing herself. “You know, after everything you had said about not wanting to have anything to do with all of this.” She gestured vaguely around them.
Steve picked up a black USB stick from the desk, tossed it into the air and caught it effortlessly, desperately trying to divert her attention from the nervous jitteriness coursing through him that he was certain she couldn’t miss.
“What? You never met a hypocrite before?” he breathed.
“Then why didn’t you…” Diana began but trailed off when he glanced at her again.
“Why didn’t I what?”
Why didn’t you find me? She pressed her lips together, a shadow falling over her face at the unasked question, as the only possible answer to it dawned on her.
“It wasn’t this lifestyle you were trying to avoid then,” she said – a statement, not a question.
She looked away, her tone impassive, and there wasn’t a moment in the past 60 years where Steve hated himself more than he did right now.
He put the USB in his pocket and rolled his shoulders in a half-shrug. He chose not to correct her.
“I didn’t know what this would be about,” he muttered, desperate to fill the silence that had settled between them. “Waller isn’t exactly a sharing type. I had no idea it would have anything to do with you.”
Diana nodded, still focused on studying the empty wall in front of her .“Otherwise you’d have never come, undoubtedly.”
“Undoubtedly,” he echoed, and then cleared her throat. “Look, you don’t want me here, I get that. Can’t blame you. The last thing I want is to cause any more… discomfort, I guess. To you. Or anyone. I honestly have no idea what is it that Waller wants from your—” he cut off. “From Bruce Wayne. If I did, well…”
“And what is it that you want from her?” Diana interjected.
“What?”
“The deal. She said that you and her had a deal.”
Steve shook his head. “It’s nothing. Nothing for you to be concerned about,” he brushed it off. “None of this… none of this is about you, Diana. Or us.”
“I thought there was no us anymore,” she said softly.
“There isn’t,” he confirmed, and she nodded again, pushing away from the table this time.
“Well, I’m glad we’re on the same page here.”
“It’s what we do best, don’t we? Being on the same page?”
“Right.” A pause. He thought she was going to shake his hand or do something else of that kind. Something formal and cold and impersonal, now that they were here, in this odd place where they were neither strangers nor lovers, with a vast void stretching between them. Instead, she merely said, “Good night, Steve.”
“Good night,” he muttered to her back as she walked briskly out of the study, all but sucking in her stomach when she passed by him lest they accidentally touch, while Steve tried not to think of her heading to Bruce Wayne’s bedroom, wherever it was, for fear of losing his sanity.
He was so screwed.
To be continued...
Notes:
Feedback and yelling are much appreciated :)
Also I have quite a lot of backstory in my head, so if you want to discuss anything or have any question – let me know!
(I SO CAN’T WAIT FOR THEM TO GET BACK TOGETHER!)
I hope you're all enjoying this season, whether or not you celebrate anything, and I'll see you in 2018! :)
Chapter 9
Notes:
I hope you all had a lovely holiday season, whether or not you celebrate anything :)
I am terribly sorry for taking forever and a half to update. It was supposed to happen a week ago but it turned out that I have grossly overestimated my chances of having any writing done while I was travelling. Road trips and writing don't mesh, primarily because the laptop keep sliding off the dashboard.
(*Okay, I was asked not to joke about it. I was not writing while in the car)
In unrelated news, New Zealand is spectacular!I did manage to finish long reach, my Wondertrev Secret Santa exchange fic, but that was about it.
Anyway... Thank you for your patience :) Dig in! Have fun! And let me know what you think :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Funny how there was no such thing as forgetting. One could push something out of the way, bury the memories in the darkest corner of their mind, shut them out and pretend they didn’t exist, but it did not make them disappear. Not ever. They’d lay low, waiting for the right moment to come rushing back to the surface, shockingly bright and clear at times, knocking the Earth off its axis in their wake like it was nothing.
Funny, Diana thought, how one could never see it coming.
Steve .
He was back, pulling the rug from beneath her feet right when she had finally started to believe that it was no longer possible, that she’d seen enough to never be caught by surprise again.
And the memories… They were tricky, too. Stored so far out of her reach, they had remained intact despite her desperate attempts to scrub them clear out of her mind. Sunlit mornings, lazy kisses, wind-tousled hair and squinting eyes, the vibration running through his body when he laughed, the eyes so blue they reminded her of the sky over Themyscira. She’d never seen the sky that blue in man’s world, and part of her was grateful for it. For keeping a piece of her own world intact, for as long as it would last.
She remembered the low husk of his whisper, how his chest would rise and fall when he slept stretched on his back beside her, the dreams they’d shared the likes of which she hadn’t allowed herself to venture into since. Bliss. Sweet, endless contentment. Her heart nearly bursting with so much joy it almost hurt to feel it as the happiness seeped out of her soul, unable to contain it all.
Then there was the apartment in Paris and the sound of the door closing behind him, so final it had been almost like it had separated before from now . Diana remembered walking slowly towards it, somewhat in a daze. Remembered pressing her palm flat to the worn wood that could have used a lick of paint, acutely aware of its warmth and roughness against her skin. Remembered it blurring before her eyes as tears had come in earnest, the tightness in her chest growing unbearable as she had slid down to the floor, unable to find her breath, a hot lump lodged in her throat.
There were so many ways to lose someone, but this… this one was the cruellest of them all. She could hear fate laughing at their silly, naïve hopes for something that was never meant to be. Uncertain how they had ended up here, in this hollow, empty place that threatened to turn her inside out with grief, Diana had thought of how she’d been taught to fight and to survive and to defeat anything and everything that could come her way. Yet, no one had ever told her that there were more ways to lose a person than she could count, and not a single one to truly accept it.
She remembered Steve’s fingers in her hair and the sound of her name on his lips, and she remembered crying until there were no tears left - for everything that had been lost, for the emptiness that had yet to come, for impossible decisions, and for everything that should have been but never would be.
All the things that she wished she could forget.
It was those memories that pushed Diana out of her bed at the crack of dawn the morning after he returned, while the whole house was still sound asleep, the stillness around them amplified by the silence of the forest and their remote location. If nothing else, she had to give Bruce that. No one understood solitude better than him.
Diana kicked away the blankets and reached for her jeans draped over the back of the chair, a thin film of sleep still clinging to her mind. She twisted her hair into a sloppy knot as she headed for the door, the hardwood floor cool under her bare feet. Not a single creak.
It was only when she picked up her boots and her hand closed around the knob that it occurred to her that Steve Trevor – the Steve Trevor, her Steve Trevor - was currently somewhere in this house, and the thought made her heart skip a beat before sprinting into a wild race in her chest. This was the closest she’d been to him in nearly seven decades, and her stomach tightened momentarily. Funny how there were things that you simply couldn’t get over, no matter how much time had passed.
He might have left already, or not stayed the night at all, she told herself, and an unexpected disappointment at the idea jolted through her, a pang of sadness catching her off-guard. If he had, it would be for the best, Diana thought, but the idea didn’t sit well with her for reasons she didn't know how to comprehend.
Against her better judgement, she hoped that she was wrong, and creeping down the dimly-lit hallway now, she wondered which room had been assigned to Steve. Unlike the old Wayne mansion that she’d seen a few times, but had never been to on account of it having had burned down long before she'd known who Bruce Wayne even was, there were only a handful of bedrooms here. Enough to accommodate the members of the League when needed be, but not enough to get lost, per se. She tried to catch the sound of movement behind closed doors, but everything remained so quiet it was eerie, making her feel like she was the only person alive.
She’d had this dream before Diana remembered, if a little absently. One where she was the only survivor after the rest of the world had perished, failing to save it. One that always left her with a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, reminding her that it might as well be not a dream but a prophecy. One that it would often take her days to shake off.
Down in the Batcave – the name still amused Diana even though there was no better one for that place, all things considered – the lights were dimmed, the computers lining one wall running in standby mode, and the hum of processors and air vents the only sound filling the cavernous space. And then her footsteps on the grated bridge added to it, echoing under the high ceiling as she stepped out of the elevator and headed toward the nearest workstation.
She booted one of the computers, its screen coming to life, illumination her face. And then she typed ‘Steve Trevor’ into the search engine, her fingers moving swiftly over the keyboard, stumbling only once. Diana didn’t know how Bruce had access to just about any database there was - maybe short of the FBI. There were certain things she’d stopped thinking about a long time ago - but they sure did come in handy now and then. She wondered, then, why it had never crossed her mind to do that, to look for Steve. But then again, she had never had a reason to do it before, if only because his absence had never stopped hurting, and cutting old wounds open rarely was a good idea.
If there was anything she’d learned in this world, it was that.
However, it was different now. It was not a whim but—
What ? Diana shook her head, as if physically pushing away the answer she didn’t want to consider. Wasn’t she supposed to have moved on already? Wasn’t time supposed to heal?
She leaned in closer when the screen went still.
A handful of results had come up, but none of them were her Steve. Not that he was still hers, Diana reminded herself. A thought that she’d had plenty of time to come in terms with, but zero ability apparently. A little disappointed, but not surprised, she narrowed the search parameters down by excluding everyone who was of the wrong ethnicity and body type, but even that was of little help. Steve had spent nearly a century hiding from the overly curious by now, a century of learning how to blend in.
Diana rubbed her forehead, her eyes sore from too little sleep and her mind swimming from too much thinking. A spy like Steve would know better than to let himself be found, leave alone by someone like Amanda Waller. Which begged the question—
Which begged a hundred of them, and none of the answers, Diana knew, would be found in this dungeon of a room.
His surprise had been genuine. No one could feign the kind of shock she had seen on his face – like the world as he'd known it had shattered before his eyes, like someone had kicked the solid ground from underneath him – when he had first laid eyes on her not 24 hours ago. It was hard to believe that it had been less than a day. Truth be told, it was starting to feel like a lifetime, the uncertainty seemingly making the time run slower somehow.
Diana could ask him, of course. Yet, she knew that he might refuse to answer. Knew she wouldn’t actually do it, either. After all, what were they now, exactly? Strangers, at best. It hit her then, that up until yesterday, she had no way of knowing if Steve was even alive. All this time, she had merely assumed that he was.
The thought knocked the wind out of her, her fingers gripping the computer mouse until something inside of it cracked. And it was that sound that snapped her out of her stupor.
Diana closed all windows. The screen went black as she pushed away from the table and stood up, not sure how long it had been. It could have been 30 minutes or a few hours, the passage of time entirely warped, stretching and shrinking around her. What she did know was that she’d lose her mind if she stayed here, in this house, so close to—
It occurred to her then, that in all the time they’d known each other, their time as something in-between was so brief she could barely remember it. She knew how to be his lover – too well, for her comfort – and she knew how to exist without him, however unbearable that was. But this? The awkward dance they had done in Bruce’s study last night – it was like crossing No Man’s Land all over again, only this time, it was a minefield of unsaid words, or the words that should never have been spoken.
She grabbed her jacket and found the keys to one of Bruce’s cars, knowing he wouldn’t mind if she borrowed it for a few hours. And then she was speeding away from the glass walls and suffocating memories, her chest feeling less tight with every mile left behind, her grip on the steering wheel loosening eventually.
She needed to escape, the burning desire to be as far away from this house, this city, this moment in time so strong she could barely stand it.
There was a meeting with sponsors, a collection that needed to be unpacked and sorted out for the upcoming exhibition, and a pile of paperwork waiting for her in Paris, the routine of her life suddenly very appealing compared to what was happening here. She could change her ticket and head off right away. There was nothing for her to do here. She knew that Bruce could deal with Victor and Barry, and Arthur was going home any day now, too. She didn’t know where that left Steve, and part of her – the part designed to keep her sane – didn’t want to.
She took a sharp turn at an intersection, bypassing the city and heading southwest.
Steve Trevor’s life was none of her concern anymore.
“Traitor,” Diana said not without accusation a few hours later when Clark opened the door, bathed in the sunlight streaming through the windows behind him.
He flinched and stepped aside, pulling the door open wider to allow her to come in.
“Diana!”
Curled up on the couch, Lois perked up at the sound of Diana's voice, her face lighting up.
Lois all but leaped from her seat as Clark locked the door and ran his hand over his hair. “In my defence, Lois saw the message first.”
“Because he asked me to check if it was Perry,” Lois deflected without missing one beat and pulled Diana into a brief hug, brushing a kiss to her cheek.
“Because I was in the shower,” he countered, sheepish at the weak argument.
“Yes, thank you, that makes it better,” Diana noted dryly, and the tips of Clark’s ears turned pink. “Gossiping, Clark, really? Shouldn’t you have better things to do?”
“We’re journalists, it’s what we do best,” he grinned.
“What happened to fighting for the truth and making the world a better place?”
Clark flashed a smile at her. "That I save for my free time."
“Is it really him?” Lois interjected, watching Diana with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. “Is it--”
A shadow passed over Diana’s face, her smile fading. “Yes.”
Clark stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants and cleared his throat. “How many Steve Trevors are there, though?”
“Quite a few,” Diana admitted, her mind going back to those search results and the few hundreds of faces staring impassively back at her, “but none of them have his face. Or our memories,” she added softly, rubbing her forehead.
That, and she knew that Steve had been right the previous night – she didn’t need the Lasso of Hestia to know it was him. Her heart recognized him before her mind did. In Waller's office, she had known, instantly, that it was him, on a visceral level.
“Are you okay?”
“Hm?”
Lois turned to Clark. “Don’t you have that thing you need to finish for Perry? That urgent thing ?”
He blinked at her, confused. “Huh?” Her eyes darted pointedly toward the bedroom, one eyebrow arched. “Right." Clark cleared his throat. " That thing. For Perry. I better get back to it.”
“You didn’t have to do that,” Diana said, after he patted her on the shoulder before brushing past them and disappearing in the bedroom, the door closing softly behind him.
“Yes, I did,” Lois put the book she was still holding on the kitchen island and pulled Diana towards the living room. “Come on.”
“He can still hear everything,” Diana noted with a faint smirk.
“He is going to pretend that he doesn’t,” Lois responded.
Well, at the very least, this felt somewhat normal.
“How’s it been?” Diana asked, nodding in the direction where Clark had disappeared.
“Phenomenal,” Lois responded, her eyes inquisitive. “But I’m going to assume that you didn’t drive for several hours to talk about me.”
“I’m sorry, I should have called.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Lois shook her head, her voice soft. She lowered down on the couch, but Diana kept on moving until she was standing by the window, looking at the street outside, marvelling at how the world kept on spinning when her life was tearing at the seams. “How are you, really?”
“I never thought I’d see him again, but...” Diana trailed off. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much she had been waiting for it, hoping to hear the sound of his voice once again. And somehow, that realization was harder to come in terms with than Steve’s return. “It’s been so long.”
They didn’t know. Not everything. Not to the degree that mattered.
Bruce had figured out some things because of the photograph, but even he had only put a few scant pieces together, not seeing the whole picture. The others were merely aware of something in her past that Diana wasn’t fond of discussing. Lois knew more than most, but not the whole story, either. Not the things that were both too dear and too painful to speak of. And how would Diana even put something like this into words? About losing a love so great that it tore her apart. And even now, the shattered parts still didn’t quite fit the way they were meant to.
Some things were better off left alone, buried where no one could find them. Where she could keep them safe.
Maybe this was why she and Lois had clicked so easily. Lois knew loss.
Diana tried to remember how exactly they had ended up here - how they had taken the leap from her standing above Clark’s lifeless body and Lois looking up at her with haunted eyes, her face streaked with tears and her pain palpable in the air, to finding understanding where neither one had thought to look for it in the first place. What she did remember was that Lois had never wanted anyone’s pity, she had never wanted empty words of consolation or meaningless reassurance. She had wanted someone to understand .
Something that they all needed now and then.
“So what’s the plan now?” Lois asked after Diana filled her in on the basics and fell silent.
“I’m not sure why Bruce agreed… he didn’t have to. I mean, Steve--” she cut off and swallowed, his name tasting odd in her mouth. It had been so long since she'd spoken it aloud, and now suddenly she had to say it for the fifth time in two days. “I don’t expect him to want to… to do it.” She let out an unsteady breath, not trusting her voice not to crack. “What happened between us… It was because he didn’t want to be involved with any of this. With doing what the League does.”
“Things change. People change,” Lois said diplomatically. “You don’t know what happened in—how long has it been?”
“Sixty-seven years,” Diana muttered. They flew by in a blink, it seemed sometimes. “And yes, I don’t.”
Part of her didn’t want to remember Steve the way she did – his lopsided smile, how he used to look at her like she had been the finest thing in creation, how he had always known how to make her laugh, the way his hands had danced over her skin, making her feel so alive.
Lois studied her for a long moment. “What’s he like?”
Diana hesitated.
There was a time when she had thought that she knew him better than anyone else, better maybe than he knew himself. Yet, the last time they had spoken - prior to yesterday - she had hardly recognized him, the memory of that day painfully fresh in her mind. Their brief interaction last night had given her nothing. He could barely look at her, his voice strained, so unlike the soft tone she longed for. A stranger wrapped in the skin of someone who used to be her world. He looked odd in clothes that didn’t belong in the 1950s, too, and she probably looked alien to him as well.
“The same. But different.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure if it makes any sense.”
“More than you think,” Lois responded with a small smile.
“We didn’t have a chance to catch up,” Diana added dryly. “And probably never will.”
“Do you still--” Lois started and cut off when Diana’s expression closed off. She cleared her throat. “Do you want to? Do you want him to stay?”
Diana considered the question – something she hadn’t quite thought about or had to decide yet, too caught up in reacting to what was happening rather than trying to see it for what it was and make her own choices.
“I’m not sure he wants to stay,” she replied at last.
Lois’s features softened. “That’s not what I asked.”
Diana dropped her gaze, then looked out the window again. “I don’t think I want him to, either.”
Maybe if she said it enough times, she would actually believe it. Heavens knew she wanted to.
---
Bloody Waller with her bloody secrecy Steve thought, jumping in one place so as not to lose his balance as he tried to get dressed the way he used to in the army – in under 30 seconds, and impeccably, at that. If there was one downside to a civilian life, it was losing some skills that had been as much a part of him as the blood in his veins and his heartbeat.
It had been some 40 years since he had last needed to remember any of the training that he’d used to think had been seared into his very soul. Apparently, that was not the case at all - even the most finessed skills tended to dull a bit when they were not in use. He wondered sometimes if loving belonged on that list as well. If that was a muscle that needed to be in use to still work as it was supposed to.
His bags were still piled up in the corner, he’d barely touched them. Whoever it was who had packed them did a damn fine job, and Steve tried not to think about that, about some stranger going through his things, never mind that a toothbrush was perhaps the most personal of his possessions at this point. It didn’t sit right with him nonetheless, he wasn’t sure if it was because it had been a very long time since other people were making decisions about his life, or simply because he didn’t trust Waller. (That any of this was her doing he had no doubt.)
The initial plan was to get out of there before dawn, before anyone was up. However, he’d ended up staying awake half the night, tossing and turning in a bed that was too big and too soft, listening to the sounds of the house, the creaks and sighs as it settled, the branches scraping against the wall somewhere, too loud for his comfort. Tried to hear the others, too, half-grateful for not being to. He knew very little about Bruce Wayne, almost nothing outside of the information available to the public, but the man sure knew how to choose soundproof doors and walls, Steve had to give him that. It didn’t stop him from imagining things, though. From remembering the kiss between Bruce and Diana he’d been oh so unfortunate to witness, or thinking of everything else that had probably been happening in this house. Of Diana in another man's arms--
The idea made him sick.
At some point, he had rolled onto his stomach and buried his head under his pillow as if it had a chance of soothing his feverish mind. He had no claim on Diana anymore. No right to feel like a lovesick moron. This was supposed to have been over a long time ago. He had thought it was, believed it was, and yet, one look at her, and it was like nothing had changed, no time had passed at all. And that Steve had no idea how to deal with.
He had dozed off when the sky started to turn pale-grey. Through the haze of his slumber, he thought he’d heard footsteps outside his door, a faint creak of the floorboards. They had paused, like someone had been standing there, but it could have been just the house, or maybe he’d dreamed it. And did it really matter?
Steve had woke up with a start a few hours later to the sound of the garage door closing with a metallic clang that had made the outer wall vibrate, jolting him awake, faint remnants of a dream he couldn’t quite recall clinging like a cobweb to his brain. Not exactly how this day was supposed to take off.
Walking briskly down the hallway, torn between taking his stuff with him and coming to get it later - after he’d talked to Amanda Waller - because there was no way in hell he was going to stay here. Steve wondered if this place was the official headquarters of… what did Waller call it, again? The Justice League? As christened by reporters in search of an appealing and catchy soundbite, no doubt. Or was it just some sort of temporary accommodation for them all, offered begrudgingly by Bruce Wayne in the absence of better options.
And then, Steve cursed himself for already getting involved, his curiosity getting the best of him against his better judgement.
He paused when he caught a movement in the living room out of the corner of his eye to find Barry Allen sitting cross-legged on a leather couch, chasing something on the TV screen with the black controller. His eyes were glued to what looked like a battle scene of sorts.
A video game.
Steve followed the narrative for a few seconds, and then asked, “Who’s winning?”
“The bad guys,” Barry answered without looking away from the screen, his face scrunched in concentration.
And then suddenly the screen went black, the controller fell on the couch, and Barry was standing right before Steve, the air around them smelling faintly of ozone, like the aftermath of a thunderstorm. Steve didn’t even have a chance to so much as blink. “Vic’s better with that stuff,” Barry jerked his chin toward the entertainment system. “He can do it with his brain and he always wins. Which is cheating, if you ask me.”
Steve stared at the younger man for a long moment, completely at a loss for words. Yeah, sure, he’d read about Barry, about him being fast, but seeing it for the first time, and having him act like it wasn’t a big deal – which to him it probably wasn’t, come to think of it – was something else entirely.
“Right,” Steve nodded slowly after a brief pause.
Vic. Victor Stone. The Cyborg. Playing video games with his mind. Why the hell not?
He wondered then, if a little absently, if there even was such a thing as getting used to any of this.
Sure, there was Diana, but she was only one person, and given their history, accepting the reality of everything that she is had come naturally to him, all things considered. And she… she looked human . Victor Stone didn’t. Steve hadn’t quite made up his mind about Arthur Curry yet, although it was quite a relief that Barry at least seemed , well, normal. Most of the time.
And then, Steve reminded himself that he was, technically, one of them. To some degree. (Could longevity be considered a superpower, anyway?) And maybe there was no one else to help the world. Maybe this was what being different was about - changing what nothing else could change. However, whether it was a curse or a privilege, Steve wasn’t sure yet. The skills and abilities that none of them had asked for, but that they were responsible for, whether they wanted them or not.
He wasn’t quite certain if he belonged with them, though.
Not that he was going to find out.
“Yeah, it’s really impressive. You should see it sometime,” Barry carried on as he followed Steve down the hall. “It’s out of this world.”
“I’m sure it is,” Steve muttered, taking in a variety of paintings on the walls and trying not to think of possibly, maybe, running into Diana at some point in the next five minutes. Surely, she was still around here somewhere. He assumed.
“So, what’s your deal?” Barry asked, falling into step beside Steve.
“Huh?”
“Well, I’m fast. Arthur’s into aquariums, which is lucky because this place looks like one, with all that glass. Bruce has all the cool toys and such,” Barry shrugged. “Vic is sorta self-explanatory. I’m sure you now Di’s story.”
“I don’t,” Steve murmured, but was completely ignored.
“And you are…?”
“Old,” he cleared his throat.
Barry frowned. “And that’s useful how?”
“I have no idea,” Steve breathed out, just as bewildered, truth be told. “Hey, do you know--”
“Captain Trevor,” it was Alfred’s voice that cut him off when he and Barry reached the kitchen.
“Oh, breakfast!” Barry lit up at the sight of a pile of pancakes on the countertop, still steaming.
Steve paused in the entryway. The place looked slightly different in the daylight, large and open. It smelled of coffee and toasted bread and freshly squeezed orange juice. He swept it with a wide glance, taking in an assortment of state-of-the-art appliances and a table for half a dozen people tucked in the corner. Alfred Pennyworth was pulling butter and a jar of jam out of the fridge and setting them on the counter.
He was hard to form an opinion about. Although, it was the fact that he could easily keep Bruce Wayne on his toes, never letting him get away with any of his arrogant shit that made Steve like the man a fair bit, and respect him a great deal. Alfred, clearly, was more than just a butler and Batman’s sidekick, although what else there was to him, Steve couldn’t even begin to imagine. Yet.
There was no one else around, and in the half-second it took Steve to figure that out, he had failed to decide whether he was relieved or profoundly disappointed not to find Diana there. And then images of her and Bruce Wayne flooded his mind, making even the smell of coffee nauseating.
“Would you like something to eat?” Alfred offered, either not noticing Steve’s discomfort, or choosing to ignore it. Frankly, Steve was fine with either. “Or, perhaps, coffee?”
“Um… no, thank you, I’m good.” He glanced around while Barry dug into his food, liberally drowned in syrup. “Do you—is there a way to get a cab here? I mean, I don’t know the address…”
“Did you sleep well?”
“What?” Steve blinked. “Yes… great. Thank you. So about that cab--”
“You’re welcome to use one of Master Wayne’s cars,” Alfred suggested, putting a cup of coffee in front of Barry and raising his brows at Steve in a silent question, but Steve only shook his head again.
“That’s probably not a good idea,” he said.
“That’s not a problem,” Alfred assured him. “Ms. Prince does it all the time.”
Well, Ms. Prince is sleeping with him, which probably makes all the difference , Steve thought, forcing himself not to say those words out loud.
“Also, they’re the coolest cars,” Barry piped in around a mouthful of bacon and also managing to grin somehow.
“It’s okay, really. I wouldn’t want to risk stumbling into… any insurance issues.”
Alfred shrugged. “Suit yourself, Captain Trevor.”
Barry pointed his fork at Steve, “You’re missing out, man.”
Maybe so, Steve thought, but a sliver of dignity was perhaps all he had left, so maybe it was worth holding on to. Also, he wasn’t sure that given an opportunity, he wouldn’t want to ram one of Bruce’s undoubtedly overpriced cars into the first fence he saw.
So really, he was doing them all a favour by calling a cab.
---
Suffice it to say that failing to find Waller ended up being a major kink in Steve's otherwise brilliant plan.
“What do you mean, gone?” Steve asked.
Waller’s secretary, Charlotte, looked at him over the thin rims of her glasses, not particularly impressed by his impatience, or his presence in the waiting area of Amanda Waller’s office in general.
“As in – not here,” the woman responded with pointed patience that made Steve feel like he was a 5-year old throwing a tantrum in a candy store. Which, consequently, made Steve’s hackles stand on end. “Did you have an appointment?”
“No, I just needed--”
“I suggest you make an appointment,” Charlotte offered evenly, undoubtedly used to dealing with people far more intimidating than Steve, he figured. Either that, or working with Amanda Waller did the job of stripping her off any and all emotions.
He took a steadying breath. “When is she going to be back?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” Charlotte shook her head. “It’s confidential information. I’m sorry, what was your name, again?”
“Trevor. Steve Trevor.”
“Would you like me to pencil you in as soon as there’s an opening in Agent Waller’s calendar, Mr. Trevor?”
“Captain,” Steve corrected her automatically, and cursed in his mind for how irrelevant it was.
“ Captain Trevor,” the woman repeated, her voice dripping with condescension. She arched an eyebrow at him expectantly for good measure.
Somehow, even sitting at her desk, she seemed to be two feet taller than him. It was probably her sharp suit, Steve thought. Or the fact that she was in her element, and he very much was not. Not since yesterday, at least.
He was starting to hate this city.
“I don’t suppose I can get her direct phone number?” he asked, barely holding back his impatience.
His previous contacts with Waller had been one-sided. Blocked numbers and burner phones, he assumed. She knew how to get a hold of him but never the other way around. It had been inconvenient before, but now it was turning into an actual nightmare. He needed to speak to her.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte replied evenly, quite clearly being anything but. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
Steve rubbed his eyes and let out a frustrated sigh.
In his haste to resolve this issue, it had never once occurred to him that Waller might not even be here to hear him out – and how naïve was that, really? - and discuss the matter that she, apparently, had decided for them both. He didn't want to stay in Gotham for another minute. He didn't want to have anything to do with the Justice League. And he didn't want to have anything to do with Diana.
“Would you please ask her to call me?”
“Of course,” Charlotte nodded.
He had the distinct suspicion that she wasn’t going to.
He nodded, though, and thanked her before heading for the elevators. Once he was out of earshot, Charlotte pressed a button on the intercom.
“Agent Waller? He’s gone.”
“ Good ,” Waller spoke from behind the heavy door separating her office from the waiting area, her voice cracking with static. “ I’m still not here if he returns .”
“Yes, ma’am.”
---
Steve stepped outside and squinted in the bright late-morning sunlight, his mind reeling. Of all the things he’d expected to go wrong, this had not been something he had even considered. Although, faced with this damned situation now, he wasn’t surprised that his plan hadn't worked out the way he'd expected. He couldn’t imagine someone like Amanda Waller sitting and waiting for someone like him to storm into her office, demanding an explanation. That, and he would bet every last cent that he had that she was there right now, refusing to see him.
He ran a frustrated hand over his hair and looked around at the stream of people moving up and down the street, not one of them caring about him. There was comfort in knowing that. He was here, but he wasn’t. Invisible to the world.
Stuck.
Steve didn’t know much about Waller, and what he did know didn’t paint a pretty picture. Her reputation preceded her. She was known for being ruthless, determined, unapologetic, and those were her good qualities. He didn’t want to jeopardize their agreement by taking the next plane out of this city. He needed her help, and she needed him, apparently, for reasons he didn’t quite understand yet. Except that he was a bargaining chip in some game with Bruce Wayne who had some kind of agenda as well, which might or might not be an issue in the long run.
He wondered, if a little absently, if he even wanted to find out anything about that, or if he’d rather get out of this mess as soon as possible and just let them deal with their issues without him.
Steve turned towards the line of cabs on the other side of the road, and then stopped.
As per his deal with Waller, he was supposed to join a team – which team, she had conveniently forgotten to mention. He wished he'd known to ask. It hadn't mattered at the time, though, so long as she was willing to hold up her end of the bargain. What any of that had to do with his living arrangements Steve didn’t know, but for now, he would still have to stay at Wayne’s house until he spoke with Waller. He wouldn’t put it past her to screw him over for something as small as moving to a hotel.
Shit.
In all his years on Earth, Steve Trevor had prided himself on his ability to adjust. One had to be good at it, he figured, especially in times of war, when nothing had been certain. And more importantly, in all the years that had followed when life had been chaos and his sense of self was nowhere to be found. What others viewed as a handy skill was a matter of survival to him. It helped, perhaps, that there was no settling for him, no normalcy that could trick him into thinking that his life could be anything but this wild race against time where there could be no winners.
And all the while, he continued to ignore how weary it was making him feel, how bloody tired he was of all this.
However, he was starting to realize that it was one thing to be used to change in general, to be adaptable without feeling like the ground was being kicked out from under his feet time and time again when he saw said change coming. And something else entirely when his world was turned inside out in a span of a few minutes, leaving Steve suspended in midair, unable to move, to breathe, to think. Not in a million years could he have predicted that his trip to Gotham would end this way.
If he did, he’d never have picked up the call from the private number on that fateful day three weeks ago. Never would have let a woman with a measured voice finish what she had called to say.
Steve looked up at the skyscrapers towering over him, the bright sun reflecting off thousands of glass panes. He shivered as the crisp October wind snaked under his jacket, half-regretting declining that cup of coffee a few hours ago.
Waller wasn’t going to be able to avoid him forever. After all, she was just as interested in Steve’s cooperation as he was in not being a part of this arrangement. And with any luck, they’d sort this out soon enough. One way or another.
His gaze landed on the line of cabs.
Until then, he decided, he might need to get his own car.
He was walking in from the main road running through the forest surrounding Bruce Wayne’s house after his taxi had dropped him off at the top of the driveway, hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket and shoulders hunched against the evening chill, when a movement near the lake caught his attention. An odd disturbance in the almost unnatural stillness of this area, which was somehow comforting and unsettling all at once.
He could see why Bruce chose the solitude of this place, and also how it might drive a person mad over time.
Steve paused in his tracks, mesmerized, as he watched Arthur Curry emerge from the lake, wisps of fog clinging to the water around him, making him look like a ghost. Like he was part of the body of water as much as it was a part of him.
After a short hesitation, Steve stepped off the gravel driveway and headed toward Arthur across the lawn.
“How was your swim?” he asked when Arthur was within earshot.
The other man ran his hand over his hair, pushing it back from his face, dripping wet. Steve took note of his bare feet and the intricate writings running up his arms and torso in a language so ancient no one understood it anymore, the ease with which he carried himself, although, admittedly, his size alone was perhaps enough to ensure that. At tall as Chief, Steve thought, an old memory jolting through him with a pang of sadness.
“Murky,” Arthur responded, unfazed. “But old habits…” he trailed off as if it was supposed to make any sense. “Adjusting?”
“Might as well,” Steve said, his gaze skimming over the lake and the dark forest looping around it, and the form of the house to their left, a few windows lit up.
“There are worse places to be,” Arthur shrugged and picked up a cotton shirt from the grass, pulling it on over his head.
“Is that why you’re doing this?” Steve turned to the other man, but in the dusk that had started to settle over them, Arthur’s face was impossible to read. Still, there was a hint of a smile on his lips, his unnervingly pale eyes studying Steve for a long moment. “Because being elsewhere is worse?”
“You were not here when those… things came. The end of the world would’ve been more merciful than their reign.”
“Yeah, Barry caught me up on some of that…” Steve cleared his throat, remembering the long list of casualties he'd witnessed himself. “I’ve seen things. Seen people walk away from them, too. Not everyone wants to die in a blaze of glory.”
Arthur’s lips twitched. He let out a short laugh and shook his head. The man was hard not to like, despite his rough demeanour. Hard not to appreciate his blunt honesty. It certainly felt like a step up from the mind games that just about everyone else seemed to be into.
If nothing else, the members of the League had managed to find other people who cared.
Sometimes, Steve thought, that was an achievement in and of itself.
“A reason as good as any,” Arthur said at last, starting towards the house. He paused after a few steps and glanced over his shoulder. “You coming?”
---
A glass of scotch found its way onto the desk in front of Bruce. The ice cubes clinked in the amber liquid as Alfred set it down before taking a seat in front of the monitors glowing in the semi-darkness of the Batcave.
“You don’t look happy, Master Wayne,” the older man noted. “Not that that has been a frequent occurrence in the past 30 years.” Bruce’s lips twitched into a humourless smirk. “Anything in particular this time, sir?”
Bruce picked up the glass and took a small sip before setting it down again. He tapped his fingers against the surface of the desk, his brow furrowed. “Mistakes.”
Alfred followed his gaze to one of the screens that was showing the live feed from the security camera mounted over the porch. The light was on, the door was open, and Steve Trevor was standing with his back to the house, his posture rigid. He looked left, then right, as if trying to see beyond the circle of light, eyes straining to find the black shadow of the forest on the other side of the house. And then he turned around and stepped into the house.
“Ms. Prince didn’t look particularly happy, either,” Alfred said. “If his presence bothers you so much, why don’t you make him leave?”
“Democracy. Apparently, we have it here now.”
“Well, that’s what happens when there’s more than one person on the team,” Alfred noted diplomatically, earning a stink-eye from Bruce.
“My bad,” Bruce muttered, receiving a raised eyebrow and an impassive look in response. He sighed. “Why did you vote in favour of him, Alfred?”
The older man leaned back in his chair. He linked his fingers together, rested them on his stomach and glanced at Bruce, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Wasn’t this whole thing your idea, Master Wayne?”
Bruce frowned. “How?”
“Bringing people with special skills together to fight against… whatever comes next. That was the plan, or am I wrong?”
“Steve Trevor has no special skills,” Bruce pointed out flatly.
“With all due respect, sir, but if being twice as old as me and looking twice as young is not special, I don’t know what is.”
“I was just surprised, is all.” Bruce rubbed his chin. His gaze flickered to the screen when the porch light went off, its timer running out. The feed went dark. “He’s a stranger, we know nothing about him.”
“They were all strangers two months ago, and look what you’ve accomplished together.” A fact, not even an argument at this point. “It’s not like you had to do anything you didn’t want to do, Master Wayne. You could have refused”
Bruce’s jaw clenched. “Waller.”
“And since when is her opinion of any concern to you? It’s never been an issue before.”
Bruce pressed his lips together before answering, “She doesn’t do anything without a reason. I want to know what her game is.”
Alfred raised an eyebrow.“So this is not about the team, then.” He paused. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry, sir.”
Bruce turned to him, confused. “About your vote?”
Alfred’s face softened. “About Ms. Prince.” When Bruce didn’t respond, Alfred stood up and headed toward the stairs. “Dinner will be ready in forty minutes. It would do you a world of good to leave this place once in a while.”
---
Italy, 1947
He was awoken at dawn by Diana pressing slow, light kisses to his chest, her hair tickling his skin and his body responding to her touch before his mind knew to do it.
“Morning,” she whispered, moving her lips up his throat and along his jaw. Steve’s breath caught in his throat momentarily. He exhaled slowly, savouring the anticipation of immense pleasure building up inside him, flaring up with every touch of her fingers, her lips.
“Have you slept at all?” he asked in a low, groggy voice, amused.
“Mm-hm,” Diana hummed noncommittally, her mouth reaching a spot behind his ear that made coherent thinking impossible. Her hands trailed over his skin doing something absolutely wonderful, something that was making him forget his own name and everything else in all of creation. “I dreamed of you,” she murmured, shifting to toss her leg over his hips, sweet weight in his arms.
Steve’s hands slid up her back, her skin warm and silk-smooth under his touch, pulling her down to him, kissing her properly. “I’m not sure I’m awake yet,” he muttered with a small chuckle against her mouth.
She laughed, soft around the edges in the early-morning haze. One eyebrow arched, she framed his face with her hands and caught his gaze. “I beg to differ.”
Yeah, well… She was not wrong. A hand on the small of her back, Steve rolled them over, spilling her on the sheets, burying himself in her, capturing the surprised sound that escaped her mouth with his. Deep longing and searing desire ricocheted through him with aching intensity. He nuzzled into her hair, arching into her, meeting her rock for rock.
Diana tilted her head, fitting her mouth to his, carrying him through waves of desperate, blissful pleasure. “I love you,” she murmured in Greek, the words he had grown to recognize over the years, her habit to slip into the language most familiar to her in the moments when there was no need for control.
It never failed to undo him in the best way, never failed to make his blood boil.
He found her lips with his, his mouth moving to leave a trail of kisses along her neck as the sun rose over the horizon, bathing the room in the golden light, and the tide was whispering to them in the oldest language of all. He was not dreaming, but he might as well be.
“Let go, Diana,” Steve murmured into her ear as they moved, losing themselves in one another and finding each other again. “Let go.”
---
Gotham, 2017
Steve’s eyes snapped open, the white ceiling above him looking grey in the pre-dawn light, and his breathing short, the remnants of the half-dream and half-memory making his heart beat faster and his blood flow like molten lava in his veins. He let out a slow breath, his chest heaving, a thin film of sweat clinging to his skin. Some memories, Steve had learned a long time ago, had a tendency to come back when he least expected them, knocking his carefully constructed world off-balance.
Wistfully, he thought that these days, it was only in the brief moments between sleep and wakefulness, when the veil between the worlds was thin, that he remembered what happiness used to feel like.
He pushed the covers away and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up, waiting for his breathing to even out. Egyptian cotton was smooth and soft against his skin, but his body felt like an exposed nerve, prickling with energy that hummed beneath his skin, making him want to claw his way out of it.
Steve closed his eyes and ran his hand over his face, pushing his fingers through his tousled hair. He rubbed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Decades of learning how to exist in this world anew, and it was undone so easily in just two days, chasing the comfort of whatever normalcy he’d managed to achieve away, his eyes sore from too little sleep and his mind on fire. It had been too long since he had to dance to someone else’s tune, and the inability to walk away from this situation frustrated him. Wasn’t it what he had been fighting for, for as long as he could remember? The freedom to make his own choices?
Then again, he needed to figure out what Waller wanted from him. Or how she even found him, for that matter. And maybe that was what he needed, a starting point perhaps. Not a place, per se, so much as a break from everything else, a chance to get some answers without raising any suspicion. Maybe he could stop running. Maybe he would finally get to the point of never having to do it again.
He could deal with Diana.
He could—
Steve sighed.
Maybe this was not the worst outcome after all.
The place was quiet, the commotion and the easy chat over dinner the previous night that had dispersed the stillness of the house nowhere to be found. His steps echoed in the empty hallway as he headed toward the sitting room in hopes of finding Alfred – the only person who seemed to be both informed and also willing to share that information. If Steve was going to be a part of this, whatever this was, he figured he might as well find out what he was being dragged into before it was too late.
It was the sound of cutlery clattering in the kitchen and the memory of the previous morning that got him to stop in his tracks and to change his course of direction as he turned and headed to the kitchen instead.
It hadn’t even occurred to him that it could be someone else other than Alfred there, or maybe Barry, until he saw Diana pull a cup from one of the cupboards as the coffee machine sitting on the counter beeped and turned off, the air around them filled with its strong, bitter smell. Strong enough to make his heart run faster before he even took the first sip.
Or maybe it was her.
He paused, uncertain as to what the protocol was, but before he could flee – something that felt like the most natural response – Diana closed the cupboard door and looked up, noticing him in the entryway, seemingly just as taken aback as he was.
“Hey,” Steve muttered and cleared his throat.
Diana hesitated, and then nodded. “Good morning.” A pause stretched between them, thick and endless. “Coffee?” she offered after a few moments, the first one to snap out of it. She reached for another cup before Steve could respond, and suddenly, running away was not an option.
“Yeah... thanks,” he murmured, stepping into the kitchen. He didn’t need his sanity that much anyway.
After all these years of holding nothing but a memory of her, it was odd to have a real person made of flesh and blood standing before him. No wonder he couldn’t help staring at her, half in awe and half in fear that she was going to disappear before his eyes like a billow of smoke.
Diana nodded, and then handed him the cup – black, no cream, no sugar – without his having to ask for it, making Steve wonder what else she remembered about him. Which, in its turn, made him wonder how many things he knew about her that were so deeply ingrained into his memory that he would carry them across several lifetimes. More than he was willing to admit, as she was always lingering in the back of his mind.
Like that, unlike him, she took her coffee with cream and sugar.
Or that she used to like wearing his shirts, claiming that it made her feel closer to him.
Or that she loved everything about the ocean.
Or that Steve loved everything about her. Couldn’t not do. The past nearly seven decades proved as much.
He took the cup from her, their fingers brushing briefly, causing him to nearly jerk his hand away as if her touch had shocked him with a jolt of electric static, his breath catching momentarily. He gripped the cup tight, the drink sloshing inside it.
Steve cleared his throat and muttered, “It’s hot,” on the off-chance that Diana had noticed.
She didn’t seem to. Or chose to pretend that she didn't.
Instead, she refilled the coffee maker and turned it on again, and then looked at him, her gaze assertive.
“You’re still here,” she said - a statement (albeit a surprised one), not a question.
He shrugged. “So it seems.”
“I thought you’d leave.”
“So did I.”
She tapped her fingers on the granite countertop and nodded once more, glancing away for a moment. Steve followed her gaze to the smooth surface of the lake outside the glass wall.
“There is no paper trail. Nothing on you, no proof that you’re still alive,” Diana spoke just as he’d decided that maybe he could take his coffee and leave. That the conversation had run its course. “It’s like you don’t exist. Haven’t for a very long time.”
She met his eyes again.
“You looked,” Steve said.
“I did.”
He nodded, feeling like one of those toys that people put on the car dashboards, that bobbed their heads up and down, unable to stop. Like his neck was unhinged or something. He wondered, then, if now was the first time she’d done it, or if she had tried to find him before. The thought made his heartbeat stutter and trip over itself.
“Is there a question in there somewhere?” he asked.
Diana leaned against the counter, arms folded over her chest. “Idle curiosity.”
Steve followed the outline of her regal profile when she glanced out the window again, looking like she was cut out of a piece of marble. She was wearing a plain white tank top, and Steve’s fingers itched to trace its straps, skim over the olive skin of her shoulders. From this close, he could smell something floral on her. Perfume maybe, or her shampoo, and it made him ache on the inside.
He took a sip of his coffee to divert his thoughts elsewhere. Anywhere . It was hot, burning his tongue and making it damn hard not to grimace. The taste was excellent though, which wasn’t that surprising, considering where he was. Which somehow was making this whole situation all the more irritating.
It was like this place was too good to be real. State of the art house, a bed so comfortable Steve couldn’t even sleep in it, and food that tasted like it was made for royalty – all belonging to a man who had enough money to buy half of this city but who chose instead to bring justice upon the guilty. It was like Steve was waiting for this bubble to burst.
And Diana…
He met her eyes when she turned to him again.
“I’m a good spy,” he offered with a wistful smile, as if it explained everything.
And maybe it did. After all, he had never particularly wanted to be found.
She held his gaze. “Always have been,” her voice was nothing but a whoosh of breath.
All these years later, and he still couldn’t understand the logic behind missing her more when she was standing right in front of him than when they were thousands of miles apart. His longing had never been sharper than in the moment right now, and the enormity of it was all-consuming. It was about perspective, he thought absently. Wanting something unattainable was easier than craving what was right before him.
“Are you really doing this?” she asked him, and when he glanced up again, she was studying him like she was trying to see past the layers of the proverbial armour he’d been hiding behind ever since he had carved her out of his life, forgetting to fill the gaping hole that she had left behind.
“Looks like it.”
“Because of Amanda Waller?”
The name made Steve flinch inwardly. “Because I need answers,” he responded vaguely.
“About what?” Diana tilted her head, her eyes narrowed quizzically.
“I’m not sure yet,” he admitted.
She was shaking her head, “I know all of this must seem like a joke to you--”
“You know me better than that, Diana,” he stopped her.
“Do I?”
Her words landed on him like a blow. One that he probably deserved, Steve thought, but knowing that didn’t make it hurt any less. They sucked all the air out of the room, too, leaving him all but gasping for breath.
“Look, I know this is not the most fortunate turn of—” Steve started and faltered. “I’ll find another place to stay. It’s just… all of this happened so fast, but I don’t want to—well, I don’t want to inconvenience anyone here. Like… you. And your--” he thought he’d choke on the word. What was Bruce Wayne to her, exactly? A boyfriend? A partner? A lover ? Oh boy… It was safer to stick to something safe. “Bruce.”
Diana’s eyebrow arched. “ My Bruce?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m sure I have no idea.”
“Right.” Steve cleared his throat. They were not going to have this conversation. He’d honestly rather climb into another airplane stuffed to the brim with explosives than discuss her love life. One that he wasn’t a part of. Just another point on the long list of his mistakes.
“Don’t do it on my account.” Clutching her mug, Diana stepped around him, heading for the door. “Don’t move out because of me. I don’t live here.”
Steve blinked, surprised. “You don’t?” His eyebrows pulled together as he turned around after her.
“I don’t,” she repeated. “I’m going back to Paris.”
To be continued...
Notes:
The next chapter is going to be a monster, and it'll be coming soon. Buckle up!
Chapter 10
Notes:
This chapter is 25k. Don't tell me I don't love you, guys :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gotham, 2017
“So, how does this work? Is there a blood oath or something?” Steve asked when he found Bruce Wayne in his study, rearranging his collection of books, a half-full glass of scotch sitting on the massive mahogany desk behind him. “A secret handshake?”
Bruce glanced at him, neither surprised nor particularly thrilled by the question. He scanned the shelf critically before turning to Steve. “That depends. What do you think you can bring to the team?”
Steve stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and arched an eyebrow at the other man, somewhat caught off-guard. “ You had brought me here. And you’re asking that now ?”
“I’m not asking for myself, Captain Trevor. What do you think you can bring to the team?”
“Why do you think Amanda Waller wanted me here?” Steve shot back, curious.
Bruce’s expression darkened at the mention of Waller, his mouth twisted as if he had bitten into a slice of lemon. And then it was gone as fast as it came, his face a mask of detachment.
The man was hard to read. Not impossible – no one was impossible, and Steve had certainly met people who knew the intricacies of putting a wall between themselves and others much better than Bruce Wayne could ever imagine – but he was generally used to an easier audience. Even so, Batman remained quite an enigma. Their personal matters aside, Steve felt compelled to find out what pushed the richest man in Gotham to run around in a bat costume when it wasn’t even his personal comfort that was disturbed by the people he was bringing to justice, seeing as how Steve was more used to people doing the exact opposite. Come to think of it, he was finding it hard to recall ever meeting anyone whose priorities lay with righting the wrongs above all else, for no gain of their own.
Except for Diana.
Guilt, he also knew for a fact, was the strongest catalyst of all to push one to do just that, as far as mere mortals were concerned. Steve had read the reports, of course. He knew about Bruce’s parents, about the robbery and how as a boy, Bruce had been robbed, too – of his childhood and innocence and believing, like many kids did, that nothing could hurt them, that there wasn’t a thing his parents couldn’t fix. Steve knew all that, and now he was wondering if saving the rest of the world was Bruce’s way of forgiving himself for not saving the two people who he had wanted to protect the most but had never managed to.
And that, Steve realized with a jolt of surprise, was something he could understand. Not in the same sense. Not in the same way. But they had all started somewhere, idealistic enough to keep trying. That was what had pushed him into the sky. That was what had made Diana step into the boat that had taken her away from the one home she’d ever known. And that, most likely, had been what had chased Bruce out of the comfort of his house even though he had probably known better than anyone that he didn’t owe anything to this world.
However, no one said that doing the right thing had to come with a pleasant personality.
Bruce’s lips curled into a humourless smirk. He gave Steve a pointed look and reached for his glass, taking a small sip. His eyes darted toward the liquor cart in the corner and then to Steve. A silent offer. Steve shook his head. Someone had to keep a clear head here.
“I would assume that Agent Waller has found the fact that you’re quite possibly immortal worthy of my interest,” Bruce mused, looking at Steve over the rim of his glass. Waiting.
“Is it?” Steve inquired.
Bruce shrugged. “If only all of us could look the way you do at… what are you now, 136? Your birthday cakes must be crowded.” He paused. “Did you know that you’re the last surviving veteran of the Great War, Captain?”
Steve did, but he never thought much about it. It felt wrong somehow. A title he didn’t earn. And maybe didn’t deserve.
“So, you know who I am,” he said evenly. “Did—ah, did Diana tell you that?”
He almost didn’t care that his voice cracked a little bit when the words tumbled out of his mouth.
The question tasted bitter on his tongue and he tried to push away the image of her having a heart-to-heart with Bruce Wayne, and the possible circumstances of that conversation. One that made him remember the times when she was telling him of Themyscira on the nights when neither one of them felt like sleeping. When they chose to cling to fragile wakefulness for fear of missing a moment of shared time, her fingers carding lazily through his hair, or tracing lines between his freckles like she way playing connect-the-dots, mapping oddly-shaped images on his skin.
That, Steve thought, was what he missed the most. The moments when he could feel the fabric of her very soul, wrapped around him tighter than her embrace.
Bruce's lips pressed into a thin line. “She’s been holding you very close to her heart for a very long time,” he said, which wasn’t an answer, and which somehow made Steve sick to his stomach – both the past tense of the statement, and the steady assuredness in Bruce's voice, an implication that she’d opened said heart to someone else eventually.
He should be happy, Steve thought. He should be happy that she was happy. That had been the point of leaving, hadn't it? To give Diana a chance to be what she was always meant to be.
Yet, what he felt was bitter disappointment and a dull ache deep inside him, in a place where happiness used to live.
His father had told him once that love didn’t have to be great to count, but it had to count to be great. Which made Steve wonder how exactly he was going to survive the next God-only-knew-how-many years when his own heart was beating in another person’s chest, and he had nothing but himself to blame for losing her.
Still, he nodded as if it meant nothing. And then he swept the room with a studious glance, taking in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and comfortable, expensive furniture, the selection of fine alcohol on the cart and the half dozen crystal glasses – everything he’d seen before but never had a chance to truly pay attention to. It was all so tasteful and dignified that it almost looked like this was a museum. If it wasn’t for the few pens and sheets of paper scattered haphazardly over the desk that were throwing this perfect picture off-balance, he’d think that the place was about to be photographed for a catalogue or something.
It probably was, knowing Bruce Wayne. The reputation of his vanity sure preceded him. Or at least as much of it as he wanted the world to see. There was a certain advantage, Steve figured, to being known as someone who only cared about himself for someone who wanted to hide the side of himself that actually had a heart. Steve doubted there was a person in Gotham who would ever suspect Bruce of being behind the person who was bringing peace to the city.
Hiding in plain sight.
They were all good at that, Steve thought absently. Just close enough to their true selves to remember who they were, but still out of reach. No wonder the League found comfort in numbers – they didn’t need each other to survive, but being different must have been lonely for all of them.
Maybe that was why Victor only slept in his father’s apartment a few nights a week. And why Arthur was stalling with his return home. And why Barry felt more himself arguing with Alfred about something or other than trying to navigate the outside world on his own.
And why Diana had found someone who wanted the same things as she to be happy with.
Steve wondered if a little half-heartedly where that put him. Was he still here instead of starting a new life under a new name because he knew that he could no longer hurt Diana, what with their emotional bond not being an issue anymore, or because he dreaded being a nameless face in the sea of millions other nameless faces? Was he standing here because he thought he could be useful or because he was tired of being useless? That it wasn’t Waller’s games that concerned him but, perhaps, becoming an invisible man once again.
He walked over to the bookshelf closest to him and scanned the spines pressed tightly against one another.
“You like classics?”
Bruce followed his gaze. “I do,” he said. “My father started the collection. Thankfully, most of it survived the fire.”
Right. The Wayne mansion. Steve had seen the skeleton of it, gaping black holes of shattered windows glaring at the world with disapproval.
“No one is immortal, by the way,” Steve added after a long moment. “Not even gods, let alone me.”
Bruce let out a choked sound, something between a chuckle and a snort. “I’m guessing it’s all about moisturizing then,” he said rather flatly. “Mind sharing your skincare routine, Captain? Is that how it works?”
“I’d start with not dying and go from there,” Steve suggested evenly, earning a displeased look in return. “And to answer your question, Mr. Wayne--”
“Bruce,” he offered.
“—I can fly.”
“I can fly, too,” Bruce countered.
“You can fly your fancy high tech toys that, let’s be honest, don’t even need you to do whatever it is they’re doing,” Steve shrugged, turning to him at last. “I can fly anything.”
Bruce’s eyebrow cocked, not quite impressed but getting there. “Do you think we might need to fly a Cessna in any foreseeable future?”
“I think you’ve seen enough not to dismiss the possibility.” A corner of Steve’s mouth curled into a smirk. “Also, your security system could use an upgrade.”
“So I’ve heard,” Bruce muttered. “Are you an expert?”
“Picked up a thing or two,” Steve responded vaguely.
Bruce gave him a long assertive look as though he wasn’t sure if Steve was kidding or being serious. Steve wouldn’t have pegged him for a trusting guy, to begin with. One wouldn’t build a multi-billion conglomerate and keep it running like a well-oiled machine if he wasn’t taking the world with a grain of salt, and a shot of tequila, for good measure. But this was different. This was personal.
Admittedly, Steve was only half-joking about a blood oath. He did wonder if that was in the cards for him, collateral of sorts.
Bruce studied him for a long moment as if trying to see the real Steve Trevor under the dozen layers of everything that Steve wore like armour for fear of losing himself completely. “Is there a word of truth in the dossier that Waller has collected on you?” he asked.
Steve shrugged, not surprised that there was a dossier. “I have no idea, I’ve never seen it.”
Bruce pulled a thin folder out of a drawer and tossed it on the desk before walking over to the window as Steve picked it up and flipped through the several pages that offered little to no useful information.
“Well, they got my year of birth wrong,” he muttered. “Shockingly, my name is correct.”
“Yeah, I figured you weren’t born in 1980,” Bruce noted, observing the dull October landscape on the other side of the thick reinforced glass. “Just like Diana wasn’t born in 1985, but sometimes you have to work with what you’ve got.”
Her name in Bruce’s mouth made Steve’s hackles stand on end. The way it sounded, so personal and possessive. A knee-jerk reflex. It might take him a few lifetimes to stop thinking of her as his , Steve thought. If ever, all things considered. He itched to know what Bruce knew about her, about them. About what had happened between them a hundred years ago, and afterwards, too. Wanted to know what she had kept to herself, what she had deemed too intimate to share. If there was anything she’d kept to herself at all.
Did Bruce know what her favourite colour was? Or her favourite smell? Or her favourite time of the day? Did they talk late at night when neither of them could sleep, their voices hushed, as if raising them could chase away the magic?
Steve pushed that image out of his mind and put the folder that contained nothing but the lies that he’d created himself back on the desk. It wasn’t about the past, after all, but about the future, and it was about damn time that he did something about it. Even if that something didn’t feel like the brightest plan at the moment.
Yet, while he didn’t entirely mind the idea of joining the League, there was still something that kept rubbing him the wrong way. “If you don’t want me here, which you quite obviously don’t, I know where the door is. I can show myself out.”
Bruce turned around, giving Steve a measured look. “What about Waller?”
“What about her?”
“The deal you’ve made--”
“Has nothing to do with you or anyone else here,” Steve interjected firmly. “Just like whatever she’s asked of you is between the two of you. I believe it’s got nothing to do with me, either. Per se.”
Bruce looked at him for a long moment and then nodded slowly. “Nothing personal then,” he said in a voice that implied that he didn’t believe it.
A stubborn determination to flee reared its head inside Steve. Did he really want to let this man play power games with the government at his expense? He might not have expensive cars or a house, the cost of which could probably feed a small country for a month, but that was the thing about people who had nothing left to lose – they didn’t really care. There was comfort to being that person, even if deep inside Steve hated the feeling.
“None of this is,” he offered, almost a dare.
Bruce nodded and set his glass on the desk. Empty. “I never said I didn’t want you here, Captain Trevor.” He paused as if waiting for Steve to return the favour and offer to move to a first-name basis. Steve didn’t. “With your experience and expertise… At this point, we can use as much help as we can get.”
“A sentiment not everyone shares, I’m sure,” Steve countered, desperately grasping for an excuse to leave, something that would make him reconsider his decision without feeling wholly responsible for it.
If he'd found it, he’d simply tell Waller that the plan hadn't worked out. That he wasn't the right fit for the team - which wouldn’t be entirely a lie. And maybe then they could renegotiate their agreement.
“How did you survive that explosion?" Bruce asked suddenly. "The gas alone would have killed you, even without the fire.”
“Just got lucky, I guess,” Steve responded evenly, not sure he'd share the answer if he had it. “Why are you doing this?” he asked when Bruce didn’t say anything.
“For the greater good,” Bruce shrugged. “And because I don’t like being manipulated — by the US government or anyone else.”
“So, it’s about payback?”
“It’s about defying expectations, Captain.” Bruce Wayne’s lips curled ever so slightly, the humour not quite reaching his eyes. He offered Steve his hand. “Welcome to the Justice League.”
---
People always said that leaving was the hardest thing in the world. Perhaps it was, or at least it was meant to be. Making the decision. Taking the first step from the familiar and towards the unknown. A twinge in the gut. A hitch in one’s breath. But those were momentary things, and once said decision was made, once you took that step, leaving was the easiest thing ever, exhilarating and intoxicating with possibilities. There was freedom to it, to the endlessness of what the world had to offer once you left your comfort zone behind.
Steve knew all of that first-hand; he had revelled in the sensation of starting anew more times than he could count, mindful of walking out of his old life before anyone could question the fact that he seemed to be frozen in time. Leaving was the price he had to pay for being alive.
He should have left, he was thinking now. It would’ve been so easy to walk out of Bruce Wayne’s house and never look back, to keep on pretending that nothing had changed and that Amanda Waller’s phone call hadn’t derailed his entire life; that seeing Diana again hadn’t knocked the ground from under his feet. He was good at that, at locking his feelings away where no one could ever find them. He’d had enough time to finesse that skill. At times, Steve felt like it was the only one he ever needed to survive.
He didn’t owe them anything. He knew it, and so did Bruce Wayne. And so did Amanda Waller, for that matter. And thus it looked to Steve like they were all playing an elaborate game of poker, bluffing with abandon to see who would blink first, and who would fold their cards for fear of losing everything. He wasn’t sure what the stakes were, but he had a distinct suspicion that they were high. He had nothing in terms of power, no influence and no money, well not enough to make a notable difference, but he’d lived long enough to learn how to make the best of his odds, and more often than not, that was comforting enough.
He knew that he didn’t want to be a pawn in their games.
Day after day, year after year, Steve had watched the world move forward, listening to the newspapers and the TV scream about progress, and all the while he wanted to laugh in their faces. The world hadn’t changed as much as it thought it had, not in the hundred years that Steve had walked the Earth. Sure, technology had evolved, the weapons had become more elaborate, and the focus of the society had shifted towards finding comfort rather than merely surviving. Yet, the wars remained the same – cruel and messy and destructive, and at the core, all everyone really wanted was to be happy. They were a simple species, after all, despite their flair for complexity and not being able to see their needs for what they truly were.
He knew this because he hadn’t forgotten anything, and that, Steve had learned, was his greatest power of all, for history forgotten was history repeated. He’d seen it with his own eyes, more times than anyone should have to. The least he could do was not make the same mistakes time and time again the way mankind did.
Leaving would have been the easiest thing to do, but somehow Steve couldn’t bear the thought of doing it.
And so he stayed, a little tired, a little curious, somewhat unnerved by Waller’s ability to unearth something he’d been after for several decades, and adamant to find answers to his questions.
He stayed, and he learned about the League, from the files and the members themselves. They reminded him, in a way, of the people he’d worked with before, the memories of whom had started to fray at the edges, but never faded away. They were the ones that he cherished the most.
He wanted to ask Diana if she remembered them, too. If she remembered the nights by the campfire, and Charlie’s singing, and Sameer telling him to shut up only for Charlie to start singing louder. Of the pungent smell of Chief’s pipe, the smoke puffing from between his lips, his voice often the softest, making the rest of them fall silent the moment he would speak. If the new people she was fighting alongside for the good things in the world gave her the same sense of déjà vu that was jolting through Steve whenever he would see Victor argue with Barry over something or other while Arthur watched them with mild amusement, neither involved, nor bothered by their bickering. Wanted to ask her if this was why she had joined them, why she had chosen them.
Yet, in the three days that had passed since she’d told him that she was leaving and since Bruce Wayne had welcomed him to his exclusive secret club, her presence was fleeting. Each morning Steve woke up certain that she was gone, too used to the idea of watching her slip away, by her choice or his. It didn’t matter anymore - a loss was a loss. And even if they did manage to say a word or two to one another, he didn’t think he even knew how to ask her about the times that felt so different from the lives they had now that they might have as well been a figment of his imagination.
The memories made Steve ache for the days long gone, when everything was simpler, safer, happier somehow, in part because he hadn’t seen the worst of the world yet and, in part, because he had another person to share his life with. He was trying to find a way to fit with the League now, even though he wasn’t sure yet that he belonged with them. Bruce’s question was still running through his mind now and then, and Steve seemed unable to push it away;, a nagging reminder of everything that made him less . What was he good at, really? Except for survival, he couldn’t come up with anything, and that was what they all excelled at, apparently.
But that was a thought for later, for after he’d spoken to Waller who seemed to have fallen off the face of the Earth. He had time. Maybe all of it.
He stayed. And he bought a motorcycle because he was tired of asking someone to give him a lift every time he wanted to get out of the house. Being dependent on others had never sat well with him – a character trait that he had never managed to get rid of.
At first, Steve had his eyes set on a sleek BMW, not unlike the fancy cars lined up in Bruce Wayne’s garage. The decision was a no-brainer, really. It would’ve been a nice car. A reliable car. A good choice, all things considered. And then he saw that bike, a black Honda, a little worn and in need of a few touch-ups, not unlike Steve himself. For all he knew, it was a match made in heaven. And all the while, Steve tried not to think of it as an anchor of sorts, like he needed to prove to himself more than anyone that he was doing this. That he was staying.
His father used to have a motorcycle once, one of the earliest models ever made. To Steve’s memory, its most definitive feature was breaking down when they least expected it, much to his father’s frustration and Steve’s delight – taking the old thing apart and putting it back together had been the best treat a boy could have asked for. He had inherited it when he'd turned 21 – one of the fondest memories Steve had of his youth. He hadn’t had anything of that kind since. Hadn’t realized how much he'd missed it.
“Couldn’t you at least pick up something from this century?” Bruce asked when Steve rolled his new mode of transportation up the lake house driveway.
“It is from this century,” Steve responded, unfazed, still too exhilarated by the purchase to be bothered by the opinion of a man who was so concerned about appearances that he probably picked his cereal based on the colour of the box rather than its flavour. “It just wasn’t made five minutes ago.”
Barry snorted, and then coughed to cover it when Bruce shot him a look. “It looks sick , man,” the Speedster breathed out in awe, patting the leather seat with affection.
Even Victor had left the confinement of the loft, drawn to the commotion – an almost unheard-of occurrence.
“You might need to keep an eye on the oil,” he said, studying the motorcycle with an expert eye, which was, perhaps, more words than he’d said to Steve since they'd met.
“X-ray vision?” Steve asked, impressed, a lopsided smile gracing his face.
Victor grinned. “Experience. Those babies are neat but they eat through a tank of oil faster than Barry goes through a bag of chips.”
"Fourteen seconds!" Barry informed them proudly.
Victor ignored his comment and added, “I had wheels like that my freshman year in college.”
Before the accident, Steve thought. It was easy, sometimes, to think of what they had gained with their abilities, and so hard to remember what they had been robbed of. Normalcy. Maybe Victor could look right through them all now, quite literally so, and maybe he could hack into any system in existence without even trying. But he could never ride a motorcycle again, most likely, or do other things that ordinary people would take for granted. Steve wondered, then, what Vic would have chosen if he had a say in his fate.
He looked up, noticing Diana watching them from the front door, her arms folded over her chest, either curious or on the way out and now caught in the excitement that she hadn’t anticipated as a bunch of boys fawned over a new toy, her lips curved into a tiny smile. She caught Steve looking at her, and he saw her take a breath as if she was going to say something, but then her phone started to ring, breaking the spell, and she stepped back into the house to answer it.
At that moment, Steve thought that he’d never wanted anything more than to know what it was that he'd never got to hear.
“This is the coolest shit,” Arthur’s voice snapped him out of his daze, and when Steve turned around, Aquaman was checking the gears and the handlebars like the bike was the finest thing to ever exist.
And was there anyone in a five-mile radius who couldn’t feel Bruce roll his eyes? Steve could practically hear him think – Really? I have the Knightcrawler! I have two jets! And you call some pile of junk "cool"? If nothing else, it was amusing that no one else seemed to care.
“If you drip that oil on the carpets, you’re cleaning it yourself, Captain,” Alfred said mildly.
Steve merely shook his head, chuckling under his breath. The bike was a small thing, but it was nice to have something of his own. Something that he had control over. It felt like a start – of what, he wasn’t sure yet, but he couldn’t wait to find out.
In the meanwhile, he was adamant to learn more about the mysterious A.R.G.U.S. that Bruce had mentioned during their audience with Waller and that she had brushed off with such deliberate nonchalance that it had set off Steve’s inner alarms. There were some things that his life had taught him, and being prepared was perhaps the most valued of the lessons. He had a rather strong suspicion that she wouldn’t tell him the truth even if he knew how to ask for it.
He could have talked to Bruce, of course, and the thought had crossed Steve’s mind, but there was a stubborn determination in him to save that option for after all else failed. After all, the trick to learning secrets was pretending that you already knew them, and allowing people to fill in the gaps. Hence, his desperate need for something .
“You should try Bruce’s password,” Barry suggested, sitting next to Steve in the Batcave one afternoon as he munched on potato chips. He was watching the other man type away with abandon, digging deeper and deeper into the system like his very life depended on it.
Come to think, maybe it did.
Steve paused and looked up from the screen. “Which is?”
He had only gained proper access to this place yesterday, and even though he tried to pretend that there was nothing special about computers — he’d seen the beginning of them, after all, and everything else that had followed was hardly as impressive as what the first IBMs had been like, those that were the size of a room. Similarly the Batmobile, or any of the other dozen high tech gadgets lying around, were causing his attention to scatter, his gaze roaming all over the place. He couldn’t help but feel a little bit like a 5-year old in a candy-shop-slash-Disneyland, it was so fascinating and intriguing beyond measure. Not to mention the car-slash-jet that he had yet to get his hands on.
It was almost a shame that he was too preoccupied with other things to actually allow himself to enjoy all the toys that the majority of people weren’t and would never be privy to.
Barry eagerly rattled off a string of letters and numbers, and Steve chose not to ask him how he knew this undoubtedly valuable and well-guarded information. This was the time to be grateful without questions.
“Thanks,” he nodded with a small smile.
However Bruce Wayne gained access to the deep web… well, Steve didn’t really need to know that, either. He was a spy, and he appreciated good intel of any form, no matter where it came from. And it wasn’t like he was hacking into a Pentagon in search of nuclear codes. Steve reasoned with himself that right now, the ends justified the means.
“So, you’re the Steve, then,” Barry said all of sudden after he stopped gushing about something gross and gruesome he had seen at work – not for real, of course. Just the photographs. The last time Barry had wandered into the coroner’s office – by mistake – he had nearly passed out. (Something that he was oddly proud of.)
Steve was still wondering how much the police knew about the young man when they'd offered him a job at the crime lab, if anything at all.
“The one and only,” Steve muttered, distracted, his eyes scanning the screen, not quite certain what he was looking for just yet, which seemed to be the main issue.
It would’ve helped, perhaps, if he knew what A.R.G.U.S. stood for.
“No, I mean… The Steve Trevor,” Barry pressed persistently. In a blink of a moment, he was straddling his chair, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly as he studied Steve’s profile. “Diana’s… How’d you meet? Are you… like her?”
Diana's name made Steve’s pulse trip over itself. He cleared his throat and reminded himself to… well, breathe. “I don’t think anyone is like her.”
Barry’s mouth curled into a small smile. “Well, duh… But she wouldn’t have… I mean… She almost ripped Bruce’s head off when he took your name in vain that one time. Therefore, it stands to reason…” he trailed off, allowing the pregnant pause to wedge itself between the two of them.
That got Steve’s attention alright. He let go of the mouse and straightened up in his chair, turning to Barry, acutely aware of his heartbeat that had escalated by the second, and grateful that super-hearing wasn’t one of the Flash’s gifts.
“She almost… Why?”
Barry blinked, and then shook his head, chuckling. “They say that wisdom comes with age, but apparently, sometimes age comes alone.”
“I’m sure there was a veiled insult in there somewhere,” Steve hummed, more amused than offended, as he rolled his stiff neck from side to side.
It was, he had to admit, quite nice not to have to filter every word he was saying. To be himself for once, without raising any suspicion or judgement. That was the one thing he had missed more than anything.
“I’m sorry, man, it wasn’t meant to be veiled.” Barry threw another chip into his mouth. “I know you’re him, I saw you when–”
“Mr. Allen, we spoke about not eating in here,” Alfred’s voice cut the young man off as he descended down the stairs, heading towards the workstations.
Barry made a face. “They’re just chips, Alfred.”
“Yes, I’m aware,” Alfred noted flatly. “As in – crumbs.”
The first time Steve had seen lightning zip along Diana’s gauntlets, the sight of it had stolen his breath away. It had been like a revelation, and he had known right there and then that it was something that he would never take for granted, something that he would never get used to, or treat like it was ordinary. Something that he would never forget.
The sheer force behind her powers was enough to send his mind reeling. A hundred years later, and he was still completely transfixed by the magnitude of everything that she was. No, he knew that she was strong, that she could toss a goddamn tank into the air like it was as light as a feather. But it was one thing to know , and another to see the physical manifestation of her strength, one that would literally make his skin prickle with electric static.
There wasn’t and would never be anything as magnificent.
And that was how Steve knew that he would most likely never get used to Barry moving faster than the speed of light. One second, the Flash was pouting at Alfred, and the next, he had the now empty bag of potato chips crumpled in his hand, looking no less smug than the Cheshire Cat, still savouring the last bits of his treat.
“Doesn’t using super speed to eat kind of negate the point of eating?” Steve inquired, amused.
Barry only grinned in response.
Unfazed, or way too accustomed to the circus that the house had turned into, Alfred turned to Steve. “Master Wayne instructed me to provide you with the security codes, Captain.” He handed Steve a printout with two neat columns of numbers.
Steve blinked, surprised. “That’s… very generous of him,” he replied.
“Well, he can always change them,” Alfred shrugged, struggling not to smile.
Bruce Wayne might have had many flaws, Steve had decided after a couple of days of living here, but his butler certainly wasn’t one of them.
“Never stopped Diana,” Barry muttered.
Alfred cleared his throat. “Ms. Prince is a woman of… many talents,” he said not without affection, and the corners of Steve’s mouth lifted on the will of their own.
He might not be able to ever understand the man’s fondness for Bruce Wayne — god knew, it went way beyond Steve's comprehension — but this? This was something he could relate to. Even if he wasn’t allowed to express it anymore.
“You going somewhere?” Barry asked, giving Alfred a curious once-over, taking in his jacket and shoes polished to perfection.
“Wayne Enterprises, if it still exists,” Alfred replied. “Master Wayne forgot the papers he needs for a meeting that starts in–” he checked his watch, “—fifteen minutes. Great.” He pursed his lips together. “Well, maybe it’ll teach him to be prepared next time.” A pause. “Then again, maybe not.”
Barry perked up, “Would you mind picking up something to eat on the way back?”
Alfred looked at him over the rims of his glasses. “Sure, why don’t I, in addition to being a messenger, become a delivery-boy as well?”
“Or we can order it,” Barry backtracked eagerly.
“You know how the phone works, Mr. Allen.”
He trailed off when the elevator doors slid open behind them with a soft whoosh, all three of them turning around to see Diana hesitate for a moment before she stepped out of it and into the Batcave, the sound of her footsteps on the grated bridge echoing under the ceiling.
Her gaze fixed on Steve as she walked over to him, all beauty and power and unstoppable determination.
“Knew I’d find you here,” she said in lieu of a greeting, nodding to Alfred and Barry.
“I thought you were leaving,” Steve replied, for lack of any better ideas, losing his ability to think coherently in an instant.
“I was.” She stopped near him and dropped a morning newspaper on the desk before him, flat across the keyboard.
Steve glanced at it — a bold headline that meant nothing to him running across the top, right under The Daily Planet , a few images splattered here and there — and then raised his eyes, meeting Diana’s gaze again.
“What am I looking at, exactly?” he asked. It wasn’t even a Gotham paper, as far as he was aware.
“The painting." She pointed at the photo under the headline, depicting one Darrell Quinn, an art benefactor from Metropolis, according to the caption underneath it, beaming at the camera. And behind him in what appeared to be an office of sorts was—
Steve’s eyes narrowed as he tried to take in the grainy image, somewhat disbelieving.
“But that’s–” he started as he looked up at Diana again.
“Yes, it is,” she nodded, her brows creased and her mouth a flat, displeased line.
He picked up the newspaper, “It can’t be—are you sure?”
“The signature,” she jerked her chin toward the photo. “Bottom right corner.”
“It’s been so long,” Steve muttered, nearly poking his nose into the photograph to see what she was seeing. “Could it be a forgery?”
“Not impossible,” Diana admitted after a short hesitation. “But I would like to make sure.”
“Wow,” Barry breathed out, his eyes darting between Steve and Diana when they fell silent. “It’s like you guys share one mind or something,” he said. “How do you, like, finish each other’s sentences?”
“Is everything alright?” Alfred asked, watching them with growing concern.
“Yeah... want to fill us in on the other half of the conversation?” Barry chimed in. “One that happened telepathically, I’m assuming.”
Diana glanced at Steve who offered her a ‘go ahead’ shrug, and then let out a breath. She leaned against the desk and folded her arms over her chest. “During the Second World War, there were military units, primarily German, that specialized in stealing everything of value,” she started. “Mostly gold and gemstones, but also art and items of cultural significance. Books. Religious artifacts.”
“Most of it was returned, eventually,” Steve added. “There are several organizations all over the world that do just that — track down the known missing pieces through private auctions and such. The statute of limitations on most of those cases has expired a long time ago, which makes it both easier to track the stolen items because people no longer fear facing the consequences, and harder because it’s almost impossible to retrieve them legally.”
“We came across a few items in the years following the war,” Diana continued. “But it was mostly by accident. The people who took them knew how to keep them hidden, knew their real value.”
“And those things… they required special knowledge,” Steve peered at the photograph one more time and shook his head. “Anyone can tell an old book from a new one, but with art… there are ways to make a painting look newer than it is, or that technique when they put a new painting over the original work without damaging it and then remove it later on to reveal the real piece.”
“That, and people used to be very careful about who they shared that sort of information with,” Diana said. “It’s very rare these days that you come across something like this,” she pointed at the newspaper, “by chance.”
In the silence that fell, she turned to Steve again, an unasked question in her gaze. Do you remember this? Do you remember ? He did. At that moment, he felt like he was pulled into through a wormhole of time and dragged nearly 80 years into the past, it felt so familiar.
“I knew it,” Barry blurted out, startling him, his eyes wide and shifting between them. “I knew it!” he repeated, practically leaping from his chair and almost falling in the process. “You,” he pointed at Steve, “and you,” his finger moved to Diana, “you two… I knew that you knew each other!” He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You guys! Unbelievable…”
“What’s going on?” Diana asked, a little puzzled, watching Barry with mild concern.
“Nothing,” Steve muttered and rubbed his eyes. “Barry needs to leave the house every now and then, that’s all.”
“I can’t believe it,” Barry breathed. He opened and closed his mouth a few times as if trying to come up with the words but finding none. “Also, I need to–” he cut off, a grin spreading over his face, so bright it all but set the whole place ablaze. “Arthur owes me 20 bucks.”
With that, the speedster disappeared in a flicker of light, leaving behind nothing but a faint whiff of ozone and the kind of static that made the fine hairs of Steve’s arms stand on end.
He groaned with exasperation.
“Do I want to know?” Diana asked him, an eyebrow raised quizzically.
“God, no,” he shook his head.
There was no way in hell he would ever want to voluntarily explain to Diana how exactly Barry had just won his lunch money. If nothing else, the mighty superheroes betting on them was so embarrassing .
“Ms. Prince, you’ll be late for your flight,” Alfred spoke, and thank god for that because Steve was starting to feel the heat creep up his face.
Diana straightened up. “I’m not going.”
“Of course, you’re not,” Alfred muttered, not surprised. “Would you like me to cancel it and see if we can get a refund? It might be a bit last-minute–”
She shook her head; offered him a small smile. “Thank you, Alfred, I’ll take care of it.”
“Well, in that case…” he fished the car keys from the pocket of his coat and started toward the elevator with a parting, “You’re welcome to use Master Wayne’s art reference books. Try the bookshelf near the window.”
“Thank you, Alfred,” Steve called after him and looked up, his eyes locking with Diana’s. “We’re going to need more information.”
Her smile grew softer, making him forget how to function properly. God, how was he supposed to not stare?
She nodded, “We’re going to need more information.”
---
The first time they had come across stolen paintings and other pieces of art was when they had returned to Paris for cleanup after Steve was discharged from the hospital in London, a couple of months before they had left for Themyscira.
The city had been half in ruins, and compared to London — which had managed to avoid major damage — Paris looked like the war was still raging on there, the destruction so startling, so devastating around them that Steve couldn’t help but expect to see German patrols on the streets. Yet, there had been excitement in the air, a pure, unadulterated happiness. As though freedom had been something physical, something palpable to the touch, and the contrast between loss and hope had sent his mind reeling.
It had been in the basement of one of the hotels in central Paris used as headquarters for the German high command that they had found numerous works of art stolen from the Louvre as well as a few smaller museums and private collections over the course of the previous few years. They had even discovered a few things from Italy and Switzerland. Everything that the Germans had deemed even remotely valuable was meant to become a part of Hitler’s private collection after the war or to be donated or gifted to the high-ranking officers, upon the decision of the Fuhrer.
All of the items had been piled haphazardly in a dark room without any regard for proper handling, and it had been a miracle that none of them had been damaged beyond repair. A few chipped frames and one broken vase — they had still deserved better treatment, but it could’ve been worse, all things considered. Much worse.
However, this spot had been only one of many, and numerous other items had disappeared without a trace, either taken elsewhere from the beginning, or grabbed when the army had fled France and other occupied territories, adamant to snag at least a consolation prize after losing the war.
Everyone had known about the looting, or, at the very least, had an idea that it had been happening. However, the problem had been that the war had left a large number of cities in several countries nearly wiped off the face of the Earth, the population homeless, injured. At the time, cultural heritage had hardly been a matter of primary concern — with the cut-off power, damaged water supply and near-starvation, no one had cared about spiritual values. People had simply wanted to have something to eat. The whole world had seemed to be in complete disarray, recuperating slowly from wounds so severe that it had been impossible to see the whole picture then. People had needed to heal first.
It wasn't until the matter had resurfaced world-wide a few years later when several pieces of art and quite a few paintings had been spotted at auctions and in private collections that it had become possible to address it properly. The countries had decided that they wanted to get back what was rightfully theirs, the degree of loss finally estimated as it should have been. And it had been too great to let those items simply slip away without a fight.
In the time that Steve and Diana had spent bringing Hitler’s faithful supporters who had escaped the first wave of arrests to justice, they had come across quite a few more pieces of value. Highly educated in history, literature, and art, Diana could easily distinguish an original from a copy, leaving even the experts of that time period baffled by the extent of her knowledge. Steve would watch her sort through piles of books and hoards of statuettes, carved artifacts and canvases, her fingers that could crush stone impossibly gentle, and pride would swell in his chest. She had kept saving them even then, probably without knowing that she had been doing it, allowing his people to hold on to something that the war had stripped so many of — identity, belonging.
He wondered if this was how she had ended up in the Louvre in the first place.
A few nights ago, Steve had finally opened Diana's file, which had been surprisingly scant, considering that she was the one who’d lived the longest of them all. The information gathered there merely stated her very much fake date of birth and that she was employed as a Curator of Antiques at the Louvre. It didn't even contain a list of hobbies and interests like the files that Waller had gathered on the other members of the League. Concise and efficient, it said nothing of who Diana really was. Of how kind she was to children and strangers. How kind she was, period . How her smile could light up the room and make everyone feel at ease. Nothing that really mattered was in that folder, and Steve had felt both profoundly cheated, hungry for scraps of information about her life without him, and relieved to know that Waller had never got her hands on what truly mattered.
He glanced surreptitiously at Diana who was now sitting in front of him on the other side of a massive desk in Bruce Wayne’s study, her head bent over a book, a slight frown creasing her forehead. And then once again, when she appeared to be too engrossed in her reading to notice him staring, just to make sure he wasn’t making her up. They had been cooped up here long enough for the darkness to fall outside, and for the stiffness to creep into his body. Diana turned the page, her gaze scanning lines of words before her. Steve's eyes darted up from his own volume once more.
The fun thing about trying to dig up information on something that had disappeared before the era of mass digitalization was doing it the old-fashioned way. And if Steve was completely honest with himself, he preferred it to getting stranded in the world wide web, even if it meant slower progress. Not that it seemed to be a popular opinion.
He looked up at her again—
“Is there something on your mind, Steve?” Diana asked evenly, catching him off-guard and making his face grow hot all the way to the tips of his ears. Apparently, he wasn’t as discreet as he tried to be. So much for being a spy…
Slowly, he raised his gaze just in time to catch a small smile playing on her lips as her eyes continued to move along the page, the line of her shoulders relaxed. If his blatant staring truly bothered her, he could see no sign of it.
A hundred years, and she was still making him feel like a never-been-kissed blushing schoolboy, which was ironic, really, because he remembered oh so clearly what kissing her was like.
Steve cleared his throat.
“I was just—I was wondering if this is what you do. In Paris.” He stared very deliberately at the book in front of him, the words swimming before his eyes; tried to keep his voice as nonchalant as he could muster. Her file didn’t go into her day job in great detail — Waller obviously wasn’t overly interested in it, and he couldn’t help feeling his curiosity bubble up to the surface. “Looking for stolen art?”
“Actually, no,” Diana responded, and when he looked up, their eyes met. “I curate a few exhibitions and take care of the Greco-Roman collection. Also, I do appraisals and take care of the acquisition of new items, and I supervise cataloguing. Among other things.” She paused, studying him from across the desk. “Although yes, I did come across a few pieces in the past that were procured through… questionable channels.”
“No need to be so modest, Ms. Prince,” Alfred chuckled from behind Steve’s back where he was flipping through Bruce Wayne’s collection of antique books, looking for something that could be of use to them. He glanced at Steve over his shoulder, before his eyes that glinted with amusement darted toward Diana. “She’s so much more than that. She runs the whole department.”
“You’re making it sound bigger than it actually is, Alfred,” Diana argued, tucking a strand of hair around her ear.
Alfred snorted. “Yes, because you’re just pushing paper around your office all day,” he deadpanned, and Steve smiled against his will at the sound of infinite pride in the older man’s voice. Alfred put another volume on the desk. “Never mind benefits and other functions and god only knows what else that you have to attend.” She only shook her head, I swear it’s not a big deal , her expression reading when she turned to Steve. And even rolled her eyes a little, making the moment nearly feel like something personal between the two of them. “And don’t forget about your extracurriculars ,” Alfred finished.
“I would argue that the Louvre is Di’s extracurricular,” Barry chimed in from across the room where he was sprawled in an old armchair, his legs dangling over the armrest. For the past hour or so, he had been entertaining himself by playing catch with the wall by tossing a stress ball against it, a pile of books left forgotten on the floor near him after he’d gone through them in under five minutes. “I mean, if we judge by the impact on the world–”
“Did that wall personally offend you, Mr. Allen?” Alfred inquired, interrupting him.
Barry caught the ball and held onto it this time. He beamed, choosing not to see the irony of how a stress ball was stressing out Alfred.
“You found anything?” Diana asked Steve, rolling her neck to stretch her stiff muscles.
She let out a long breath and rubbed the corners of her eyes, undoubtedly as exhausted by the daunting task as he was, and no less frustrated by the lack of results than the rest of them.
They had already had Victor dig deep for possible matches, but it had been nearly 80 years since the painting had been seen last, the mentions of it bearing no information on the possible owner since then. They were merely a confirmation of its still missing status.
Steve shook his head. “Maybe in the British Museum catalogues–” he started and cut off, a frown creasing his brows as he turned the page, his eyes fixating on a black-and-white image before him. He scanned it once again, more carefully now, taking in the details before turning the book upside down and pushing it toward Diana. “Look at this.”
She pulled the volume towards her, ignoring the plate of sandwiches that Arthur lowered on the desk between them, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. He glanced at the photograph over Diana's shoulder, his expression dumbfounded — Is this what the whole fuss is about? Steve was certain Alfred had been wearing it ever since he and Diana had filled the rest of the League in on what was happening — of them all, Bruce was the only one who appeared to be even remotely interested, if only because his own investment in art sort of called for a certain degree of knowledge on the subject.
Not that Steve blamed them — a painting stolen almost eighty years ago was hardly a matter of life and death, all of them having much more pressing issues on their hands. And, all things considered, this had nothing to do with the League, per se. Only with Diana.
He kept waiting for them all to disappear one by one, find something else to occupy themselves with. Yet, they were still here, hours later and bored, but still trying. Because it mattered to her.
If Steve looked around the room right now, he knew he would see all eyes trained on Diana, a leader even where there was no battle to lead them into, all of them drawn to her like cautious spring flowers would be drawn to the sun. Bruce Wayne might have started this. The League, for all intents and purposes, might have been his idea, but it was Diana they were looking up to, her encouragement they sought out in times of distress. If it wasn’t for Diana, Steve realized all of a sudden, none of them would be as eager to be here as they were.
Bruce walked in then with another book retrieved from his bedroom in his hand and paused at her other side.
“Van Huysum,” he murmured under his breath.
“Looks like it’s the one,” she echoed softly after a few moments, her finger tracing the line of a picture so old it was hard to make out the details.
Yet, it matched.
‘Vase of Flowers’ painted by Jan van Huysum, an artist from the Netherlands, in the late 18 th century was one of a number of works that he had done of flowers, many of which had similar names. Which, consequently, made it particularly hard for historians and collectors to keep proper track of them after van Huysym’s death, and after his finished pieces had ended up scattered over a number of museums and private owners.
According to the art reference encyclopedia that Diana was studying carefully now, this particular painting was taken by German soldiers from the Palatine Gallery in Florence, during the war. Its last confirmed location was Italy where it had appeared to be stored in 1944, although, after that, it seemed to have disappeared from the records. Since the early ’50s, it was believed that the piece had ended up in the hands of a private collector who had been careful enough to keep this treasured information under wraps.
Until now.
“It could be a duplicate,” Steve offered, still skeptical.
It was odd that the painting would resurface now, after all this time, and so randomly, too. An art expert like Darrell Quinn, as the paper had described him, would certainly know what it was, thus becoming an accomplice in the theft. The statute of limitations on this particular case might have been over, but there were ethical repercussions as well as international relations and a number of other things that could be dragged into the mix should someone decide to bring this issue up to the surface.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Diana said, thoughtful.
“Yeah, because you can just walk into some rich man’s office and ask to have a look at his collection of — possibly — stolen goods,” Arthur deadpanned, folding his arms over his chest.
“Well, to be fair, you probably could, Di,” Barry shrugged, snatching a sandwich from the plate and digging into it with gusto.
Alfred hummed in agreement, all of them now huddled around the desk, seven heads bent over a three-by-four-inch photograph.
“Or, you could go to that reception or dinner or whatever he’s hosting,” Barry added, chewing with purpose and determination, and six pairs of eyes raised to peer at him. “What?” he asked around a mouthful of food.
“What ‘reception or dinner or whatever’?” Bruce asked.
Barry shrugged. “It was in the paper. Some end of year… something or other. The boring stuff.” He sighed with pointed exasperation and rolled his eyes for good measure. “Have you even read it?”
“A dinner,” Steve muttered, already running his eyes over the article. No, he had never bothered to check it, either.
“…followed by an auction,” Victor finished, reading over his shoulder. “Held at the hotel that belongs to this dude, apparently.” He looked up. “How rich is he, again?”
“You could probably just walk in there,” Barry offered. “If it’s a public thing.”
“No, for something like this, you’d need an invitation,” Steve tapped his finger against the page, fighting the mother of all headaches that had started to build behind his eyes from the onslaught of information.
“Not the press,” Victor offered.
“No one here is the press, though,” Alfred pointed out.
Diana considered it for a moment. “Lois might be able to get me a pass,” she said. “She works for The Daily Planet . I could… maybe I could talk to whoever wrote this.”
“Are you really doing this?” Steve asked.
“Of course,” she responded without hesitation. Her eyes locked with his, her gaze determined. “I can’t not do it—After all we’ve seen, all the pain and destruction, the people have the right to get back what’s theirs, no?”
Steve wondered now and then how she could so easily strip those years of them back without even trying. A few words, the tone of her voice and he was back in the trenches, running after her through the mud, his fingers so cold he didn’t know how he kept hold of his rifle, slipping on the uneven ground but never pausing, not even for one moment. Not even because he had believed in the great cause after having seen and done what the war had put him through, but because Diana had, and Steve wanted so desperately for her to prove his cynicism wrong. Wanted so fiercely to give her hope.
Because it was the right thing to do.
Because the world had deserved better than what it had, and she could fix it. And she would. She would keep on doing it for as long as she lived, perhaps. And maybe this small thing wasn’t going to shift the axis of the Earth, but it was still worth the try.
Because this was Diana.
He’d stopped being surprised by the lengths she'd go for his people a long time ago.
Bruce cleared his throat. “If you need someone to come with you, I’d be happy to–” he started, but Steve’s huff cut him off. “A problem, Captain?” he asked coolly.
“Yeah, well… no offence, Mr. Wayne,” Steve rubbed his forehead and pointed out, “but you’re the opposite of inconspicuous . There isn’t a person in Gotham or Metropolis who doesn’t know your face.”
“That’s true,” Barry nodded.
“He kinda has a point,” Arthur agreed.
“If Diana is to go,” Steve continued, “the last thing she needs is to draw even more attention to herself.” He paused. “He’s right though,” he added, jerking his chin to Bruce.
“He is?”
“I am?” Bruce blinked, caught momentarily off-guard by the fact that Steve, of all people, went along with him.
“You are, actually,” Steve agreed, earning a raised eyebrow in response — from everyone around him. He could have sworn that Barry even whistled under his breath. Shockingly, though, the universe didn’t collapse around him when the words fell out of his mouth. Maybe him agreeing with Batman was not that shocking after all. “Look, I’m not saying Diana shouldn’t go alone, but… What if there is security? You know, from a practical standpoint…”
Bruce drew in a breath, composing himself. “Whether this painting is just a copy he has purchased for $20 at a flea market, or the original that he keeps locked up, it never hurts to have backup,” he said diplomatically, in a voice that Steve imagined him using on his investors.
“That man doesn’t look like a flea market type,” Alfred noted.
“You know what I mean,” Bruce said and turned to Diana again. “Don’t look at me like that. I know you can take care of yourself, but you know I’m right.”
Diana was drumming her fingers on the desk but didn't argue. “It’s in four days…” She looked up and scanned the men around her before her eyes fixed on Barry whose own eyes grew wide with panic — it would’ve been comical had he not started to practically shake.
“Me?” he sputtered. “Yeah, no. Formal wear and small talk — I don’t think so.” He shook his head with such vigour Steve thought he was about to get a concussion. “Sorry, Di, but that’s a hard pass. Not even for a very good cause.”
Diana's eyes moved to Arthur, which made Victor snort.
“What?” Arthur demanded, even though he didn’t look particularly excited by the idea of a suit and small talk, either.
“You don’t exactly look like the press , Master Curry,” Arthur responded tactfully before Victor had a chance to offer a far less generous jab.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not bookish and boring, man,” Barry interjected. “Think Clark, and take it as a compliment.”
“Charming,” Diana said flatly.
“Take Clark,” Bruce offered just as Arthur said, “Take Steve.”
Steve snapped his head up. His pulse stuttered. He had to have heard it wrong.
The room fell silent and so still that it felt like something had sucked all the air out of it as all eyes shifted to him, and for a brief second, time stopped completely.
He was certain that he could hear his own blood flowing in his veins.
“Probably not the best–”
Idea .
“Done,” Victor cut him off, drawing everyone’s attention to himself and a hologram hanging right before him, a growing list of names and numbers scrolling so fast that it was dizzying. His brows were furrowed slightly in concentration and his fingers were almost imperceptibly conjuring one image after another like magic.
“Wow…” Barry breathed out.
“What do you mean done ?” Bruce demanded. “Done what?”
“Their firewall is shit,” Victor chuckled and closed his fist, making the hologram disappear. “It was a no-brainer to add your names to the guest list,” he added, his gaze shifting to Diana and then Steve, and then back to her. “Not that press nonsense.” He paused and sighed, “Let’s be real, you two don’t look like reporters, either.”
“Victor…” Diana started not without reproach.
“We agreed I would stop hacking his systems,” Victor pointed at Bruce, who rolled his eyes. “What else am I supposed to do? This is the one thing I’m actually good at.”
Well, you could have asked , Steve thought, uncertain if he was thrilled or unnerved by this sudden turn of events. It was one thing to flip through a pile of encyclopedias that were published before Alfred was even born, but the thought of going on a mission—he really needed to come up with another word for field work because it wasn’t like they would have missiles whistling over their heads at some reception—sent his mind reeling. He was awfully out of practice, for one thing. And also Diana—
Shit .
He turned to her, about to protest because surely she understood that this was a bad plan. Her boyfriend looked pissed as hell, and while it was mildly entertaining, the last thing Steve wanted was to—Okay, if he was being honest with himself, there was smug satisfaction to all of this. Something he didn’t want to dwell on. He still didn’t want to cause any trouble, though. Not for some petty reasons. Not to her.
But before he could open his mouth, Diana’s lips quirked, forming into a small private smile that never failed to render Steve speechless. Now was hardly an exception, however puzzling it felt in present circumstances.
“Just like the good old times,” she said softly.
No, not at all, Steve thought.
In the good old times, he would wake up every morning next to her, with the weight of her arm draped over his abdomen and her face tucked into his shoulder. In the good old times, he would slip out of the bed and she would roll over to claim the warm spot without waking up, which inevitably made him want to climb right back under the covers for another hour, or five. It would mean having Diana reach for his hand without even realizing she was doing it until he’d lift the knot of their fingers to his lips to kiss her knuckles. It would be drawing a map of pleasure on her body with his hands and feel his blood boil at the sound of his name falling from her lips in a soft whisper. It would mean to be on the receiving end of her smile and to never hold back if he wanted to touch her, saying the words of love whenever he pleased.
This… this was like having a treat dangle before his face and knowing that he could never get it. And that alone was making him want to refuse steadfastly to play any part in this.
Instead, Steve nodded, not trusting himself not to say something utterly ridiculous. God only knew how many times he was going to end up with his big foot in his even bigger mouth between now and next week.
---
There had been many an instance in Diana’s life when she had found herself standing adjacent to the people around her, separated from them by one thing or another, a few feet of distance that she couldn’t cross. A daughter of the Queen, raised accordingly; the only child on an island full of adults; the only one not only discouraged but downright forbidden from learning the art of battle comprising the essence of her people. The lack of a proper explanation for it had made her feel even more alien to them all.
She was different, and this profound realization had been the first one that had managed to anchor itself in her mind a long time ago, back when the old gods had still ruled the Earth. A feeling that had all the more intensified when she had come to live in a man’s world where every step felt like walking across a minefield.
An observer more often than a participant, she watched people move in and out of her life as though she was not a part of that process. At times, it made her feel proud and independent, even though there were moments when her soul ached with wistful loneliness and longing for more. Other times, she felt like letting anyone get too close to her was bound to make her disintegrate when they left. Even now, after all those years, Diana still wasn’t sure if she wanted to blend in or to stand out, her mindset alternating between one and the other at the oddest of moments.
Like now when she was watching the fog creep from the forest surrounding the lake from her spot on the deck outside the lounge, while the house behind her was so quiet that it was making her feel like she was the only person left alive. The silence would be pressing had it not been for the slight rustling of the trees in the evening breeze, and she tried to decide whether she welcomed or dreaded the sudden tranquillity, so different from the usual noise permeating this place.
The air was cold enough for her breath to be puffing out in small white clouds. The sun, half-hidden behind the trees, hanging low over the horizon, offered no warmth. It would be dark in less than half an hour, and her leather jacket provided little comfort against the damp chill of the late autumn evening.
Arthur was leaving soon, Diana thought absently, although not without a promise to come back whenever they needed him, and Victor had moved back to stay with his father, craving his own kind of normalcy. So far, Barry was the only one keen on sticking around for no reason other than company, and she couldn’t blame him. Gods knew she was well aware of how heavy the burden of carrying a whole different person within oneself could be, and how the comfort of being able to share it with someone else, for however brief a time, could be almost overwhelming.
Her own life was waiting as well, the routine that made all the loss and destruction bearable.
And yet here she was, stalling, relieved beyond anything to have an excuse to postpone her return to France. All because—
Because Steve was the only person who had ever made her feel like one of his people, a part of the world where she didn’t belong for reasons that went beyond the fact that she was more than the rest of them. Because being with him had made her feel like she belonged, perhaps for the first time for as long as she remembered, and she craved it still. Because she could finally stop looking for his face in the crowds — a habit not time, nor other relationships in her life had killed.
Because there was a warm feeling unfurling in her chest, never absent but dormant for decades. Alive again. And there was a solace to it, despite her attempts to reject it.
She still loved him.
She always had.
She always would.
With Steve, she was truly at peace. Even after all this time. Even if he didn’t feel the same way anymore.
It scared Diana, the lack of control, the absence of any pattern. Being used to constant change was different from being thrown into it against her will. And yet, she was going to stay back even if heartbreak was the price.
There was a sound of shuffling footsteps behind her, and Diana recognized them as Barry’s even before he paused beside her without saying a word, his gaze sweeping over the expanse of the water, his shoulders slouched against the chill. She took in a shuddering breath and exhaled slowly.
“It’s awfully quiet,” she said after a moment.
“Vic went home,” Barry shrugged. “Arthur asked him for a lift to town because Bruce forbade him to so much as look at his cars.” There was a smile in the speedster's voice that bubbled up into a chuckle under his breath. “After Arthur almost totalled his Volvo, that is.”
The corners of Diana’s mouth tugged upwards. “So I’ve heard.”
As had the rest of Gotham, quite likely. Bruce was very fond of his cars and didn’t condone any recklessness unless it was his own. Hence, the ban on Arthur looking, touching, or breathing anywhere near his prized collection of vehicles.
Diana couldn’t remember the house being so empty and silent before. Not in her time, at least. She thought she would enjoy it, a moment of peace at last — she loved the League dearly, but after all the time when she’d had only herself for company, the sudden clamour around her could feel overbearing now and then — but instead it felt sad. Like something was missing. She wanted them back. And so did Bruce, she was sure.
Loneliness was addictive, there was safety to it, and Diana, of all people, knew it all too well. But so was companionship and openness, and however unaccustomed Bruce was to those feelings, he was in too deep to go back to his old ways now. And he knew it, too, which, Diana assumed, was the main source of his frustration these days.
“It was epic,” Barry added not without fascination that made her smile widen a tiny bit.
“Well, it’ll serve Arthur right,” she commented, more amused than reproachful.
“Don’t tell him that,” Barry blurted out, mortified. “I tried to, but thank god, I run fast.”
Diana chuckled and shook her head. “Noted.”
Arthur loved being told what to do about as much as Bruce loved other people messing with his toys.
“You okay, Di?” Barry asked after a moment of hesitation.
Diana turned to him and offered him a small, reassuring nod.
“Are you ?” she asked. “We all have different reasons for doing what we’re doing here. But I wouldn’t want anyone of you to feel like you’re obligated to help.”
Barry stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked down at the wooden floor of the deck before glancing up at her. “Are we talking about me, or Steve?”
“You,” Diana pressed.
If he didn’t believe her, he chose not to push the subject.
“’Course I am.” He turned to look at the water. The porch light came on behind them, timed to switch on at a quarter to six. “You know, up until recently, I couldn’t even imagine that my life might amount to anything. Anything at all, let alone something meaningful.” He looked at his shoes with a small rueful smile before raising his gaze again. “I didn’t quite fit even before I became a freak—”
“You’re not a freak, Barry,” Diana objected gently.
“—but now,” he continued, “the world doesn’t seem like such a lonely place. And if we get to save a life or two in the process…” He shrugged. “I say, it could be worse.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Besides, the view here is nice. When it’s not creepy, that is. Which is almost never, but still.”
Diana laughed at that. “Well, so long as the view is nice.”
“Look, I’m sorry about… about yesterday. That gala thing—”
“Auction,” she corrected.
Barry scrunched his nose. “How are they different?”
Diana pressed her lips around a smile. “They sell things at an auction.”
“Regardless.” He cleared his throat. “If you really don’t want to go with Steve. Like, really don’t wanna—I’d be happy to—I know that things are complicated between the two of you…” He left the rest of the sentence to hang between them, his cheeks turning pink, but didn’t look away from her, his gaze almost daring.
“Is that so?”
He let out a huff. “Come on, you gotta see the way he looks at you.” And added under his breath, “Which, of course, you don’t.”
“He doesn’t—” Diana started.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Barry stopped her. “We know that there’s some big bad story between you two, so we can skip you denying it and me trying to convince you because we… Well, first of all, because we spent the whole afternoon yesterday listening to you talk about the Second World War like you were there. Which you were,” he trailed off under her unmasked scrutiny. “But also because you do this insane dance thing around one another. Like, you keep that three-foot distance between each other at all times as if the world might implode if you, god forbid, came any closer. You move, he moves… I swear it looks choreographed.” Barry shook his head and rubbed his forehead, then glanced over his shoulder at the glass door and at Diana again. “Oh boy… We looked him up, okay? Vic and I, when he first came here, because… well, because you were weird, and you’re — generally — the most normal of us all.”
Diana was staring at him, too dumbfounded to speak.
“And he doesn’t exist,” Barry added hastily, misreading her silence. “I mean, of course, he does. He’s holed up in the Batcave right now, and he also ate the last of the peanut butter this morning, which was a bit of a dick move, if you ask me. But he doesn’t exist in the way that would make the mean government lady want to push him on us, you know.” He swallowed. “What we did find was a photo from, like, before the Great War of a dude at some airbase or something who looks remarkably like the guy downstairs. So it got us thinking… And that time when Bruce mentioned someone named Steve Trevor…” His voice dropped. “We sort of figured out that you guys knew each other before. That he was someone like you.”
“Like me?” Diana echoed, frowning in confusion. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the train of this conversation completely.
“You know,” Barry pointed up to the sky, which didn’t exactly clarify anything. “Like, strong and bulletproof and such. Is he?”
She blinked. “No,” she shook her head. “No, he’s not.”
“But he’s old,” he pressed.
She bit her lip to hold back a smile. “Not that old.”
“Okay, well…” Barry blinked. “Case in point…” he rubbed the back of his neck, uncertain if he should proceed, but then clenched his jaw and went on, “case in point — and it’s none of my business, of course, and it’s probably gonna sound stupid coming from someone, like, five hundred times younger than you — but if someone was looking at me the way you look at him, or the way he looks at you, I’d probably want to… to do something about it, I guess.”
He shrugged again, and before Diana could respond, there was a sound of commotion in the hallway, loud voices bouncing off the walls and spilling onto the deck through the open window. Diana could smell takeaway food, hear the bursts of laughter, and her chest squeezed tight with fondness.
The electrified tension hanging between her and Barry, and the words that had left her skin prickling, dissipated into nothing.
“I hope they got Chinese,” Barry muttered, starting towards the door.
“Barry,” Diana called after him. He paused and turned to her. “Thank you. For the offer.” She smiled. “And, between us, I think you’d look dashing in a suit.”
---
Steve loved Bruce Springsteen.
He wasn’t sure when and how exactly it started, but one day a couple of decades ago, he had found himself humming along with one of the songs when it had come up on the radio, unaware of even knowing the words until then. And yet there he was, in his tiny kitchen, waiting for the percolator to brew enough coffee to wake him up and drumming his fingers on the counter to the chorus. The old man never failed to lift his spirits, somehow. Over time, Steve got used to clinging to the familiar. There was consolation in how music could never really die.
Now, the same song was filling Bruce Wayne’s car, black and slick and so otherworldly-looking that Steve all but expected it to lift off the road and soar into the sky. And it struck him how wistfully comical the combination was, how much the music clashed with the technology exuding it. How much they didn’t belong with one another.
Yet, when he was fiddling with the controls earlier, filled with the nervous energy and not knowing what else to do with his hands, and the song popped up on one of the stations, he couldn’t bring himself to switch it to something else. It was hard to imagine Bruce Wayne being a fan of folk rock, although truth be told, Steve was finding it hard to guess any of Batman's tastes so wildly different the two of them were. And so he allowed the sound of Springsteen’s voice to fill the space between him and Diana whose fingers were curled over the steering wheel with easy familiarity, while her gaze remained glued to the road, distilling the thick tension between them. Somewhat. An intangible buffer.
Steve wondered if she could sense the contrast as well, and whether she minded it if she did.
He wasn’t sure how to ask, searching for words, struggling to get his thoughts together. He was desperate to break the silence, and scared of doing it.
Of all the things — possible and impossible — that could have happened in his life, he was thinking now, ending up here, in the place, in this moment of time was something he couldn’t have possibly imagined even if he had a thousand years to think it up.
They were driving to Metropolis accompanied by a steady patter of rain against the roof and tinted windows, the rhythmic dance of windshield wipers almost hypnotic. There were only two types of weather in Gotham, Steve had learned in the past few weeks — overcast and rainy, one merging seamlessly into the other. Endless metamorphosis.
Yesterday, Alfred had asked him if he needed a suit for the auction, and Steve had assured him that he had one. He had a suit. And an apartment, too. In London. One he hadn’t set his foot in for decades, but it remained in his name nonetheless, just so he wouldn't feel completely adrift. He had money as well. Not Bruce Wayne’s money, and not even Diana’s, but there were certain perks to being alive for almost as long as the stock market. He’d always been good at figuring out the odds.
Well, most of the time.
He glanced at Diana out of the corner of his eye, at her fingers tapping against the steering wheel to the music, and chose not to think about the odds.
Earlier, after they had picked up his suit from the dry cleaners' where Alfred had sent it the night before, Steve had assumed that they’d be going back to the lake house, but Diana had taken the road leading out of town instead. He figured she knew a place where they could change, and hoped that that place wasn’t the back of a two-door vehicle. Now, that would be the kind of excitement he was perfectly fine living without. Either that, he mused, or the black jeans and tight jacket she was wearing were her formal black-tie attire.
Frankly, she could pull it off.
Springsteen’s song ended and a commercial took its place.
Steve turned down the volume but chose not to turn the radio off completely. The idea of having to endure the company of his own mind and the silence hanging between them, the kind that made him hear himself think, was unbearable.
Aside from that, though, there was comfort to her presence, to the smell of her perfume clinging to his skin, to the small, kind smile that she offered him when he happened to glance her way. Lately, Steve had been starting to wonder if grief and pain could break a person into pieces so small that they would be impossible to put back together without losing something in the process. It felt that way sometimes, when his chest was so heavy, almost like someone had stepped on it.
Sitting next to Diana now, soaking up every detail he’d missed about her, was the closest thing to healing he’d felt in decades. For a moment, he even almost forgot about Bruce Wayne and his nearly palpable presence that seemed to hover behind Steve more often than not.
“Can I ask you something?” he spoke after half an hour of trying to ignore the fact that his very skin was all but tingling from her proximity.
Diana glanced at him. “Of course.”
Did you miss me?
Are you happy?
Do you love him?
He swallowed, his throat tight. Had to clench his jaw lest the words spill out of his mouth on the will of their own.
Do you still carry my darkness within you?
“What do you know about Amanda Waller?”
Diana hesitated, a frown wedging itself between her eyebrows. “Not much,” she admitted. “I’ve heard about her, but had never met her before the day when… when you came back.” She pushed her fingers through her hair, her other hand flexing on the steering wheel. “A while ago, she wanted to have a group of people with special abilities work for her, to clean up the messes she couldn't take care of herself.”
“A league of her own,” Steve muttered, not quite certain what it was that unsettled him so much all of a sudden, a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach and a revelation that kept slipping away from him.
“A league of her own,” Diana echoed. “This was before my time, but I’m aware that her plan failed, essentially. Although not before she had managed to gather dossiers on something like a dozen people who were labelled as meta-humans.”
“Barry?” Steve asked.
“Barry. And Victor,” she confirmed. “And Arthur, too.”
“Why do you think she'd failed?”
He could see why Waller would want to try — he was surprised no one did it sooner, at least to his knowledge. This was why he was so adamant to protect his own identity, to make sure he never ended up being a lab rat. Why the rest of the League was desperate to do so as well.
“She wanted to force them into being something that they were not,” Diana breathed. “You know full well that doing what we do must be a choice, not an obligation. It doesn’t—it doesn’t work that way.”
Steve nodded. “What happened then?”
“She gave the files to Bruce in exchange for help with covering up that incident. That’s all I know.”
“You don’t like her.” A statement, not a question.
“It’s not that I don’t like her…” Diana trailed off. “I don’t trust her.” She paused. “How did she find you?”
“I don’t know,” Steve admitted with a shake of his head. “I asked, but she never told me.” The world outside his window was nothing but a blurry smudge of grey. “She was the first one.”
“Amanda Waller had information on me, Steve.” Diana's voice cracked ever so slightly, although whether it was worry or frustration Steve wasn’t sure. He hated it nonetheless. “It’s how Bruce found out who I was. She, or someone else, had been watching me for I don’t even know how long.” Diana turned to find him studying her, his brows pulled together. “I help because I want to; because it’s what I do. But I don’t appreciate other people meddling with my personal business.”
“Is she?” Steve asked. “Meddling with your personal business?”
“I think she knows more than she lets on, about all of us,” Diana responded after a moment.
And if that wasn’t unsettling, Steve didn’t know what was.
He didn’t see Amanda Waller as a threat, per se, but she definitely had a card or a few up her sleeve, and that was enough to leave him feeling helpless and out of control. Steve hated that feeling.
---
Metropolis, 2017
The door swung open the moment Diana raised her fist to knock, revealing a tall man who seemingly filled the height and the width of it without much effort. Barely a second of hesitation before he broke into the brightest and the most excited grin at the sight of her, white teeth flashing.
“Clark,” Diana smiled back, stepping closer to kiss him on the cheek.
“Glad you made it,” Clark chuckled and pulled her into an embrace.
Clark Kent, Steve noted mentally, taking the other man in.
Superman.
Another, less obvious, member of the League, so to speak, who had his own domain and, apparently, rather low tolerance for Bruce Wayne’s rich-man bullshit. Steve decided that he liked him for that aspect alone, although it was his easy way with Diana that truly anchored this opinion. Clark had an open face and an infectious smile, admiration pooling in his blue eyes. The photographs Steve had seen didn’t do the man justice, never capturing the lightness that radiated off him, which Steve realized with a start, reminded him of Diana herself.
As if on cue, Clark’s gaze shifted from her and locked on Steve, making him remember skimming Superman's dossier and reading something about his X-ray vision ( which, god, was the most insane thing Steve had ever heard of ). He doubted, though, that with a gaze this piercing Clark even needed it. Maybe his decoy glasses weren’t that bad an idea after all, lest he incinerates everyone in his wake without even trying. ( And he could do that too, literally .)
“You must be Steve,” Clark said, offering him his hand. Steve perked up, curious. It was one thing that he’d heard about Superman, but the other way around? Interesting.
“Yes. Trevor.” He shook the other man’s hand, noting that Diana had already stepped into the apartment that was meant to be their pit stop for the next hour or so.
Half an hour ago, when they had pulled into Metropolis and Steve had finally asked her what the plan was, she'd told him that they were going to visit a friend. Although right now he wasn’t so sure if she'd meant Clark, or the red-haired woman who had her in a tight hug in the middle of the hallway. Possibly, both.
At last, the woman let go of Diana and stepped around her, her eyes narrowing a little as they took in Steve with apprehension and zero subtlety, making him feel like he was an exhibit in a freak show.
“Steve, this is Lois. Lois Lane,” Diana offered after a moment or two, the sound of her voice nudging her friend to also extend her hand to him. “She and Clark are… together.”
Yeah, Steve had figured that much.
“Hi,” he clasped Lois's hand, still not quite certain what he had done to deserve the kind of scrutiny he was under. His gaze darted toward Diana who had pursed her lips together to hold back a smile, slightly more amused than the situation warranted, perhaps. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Lois said, and Steve didn’t believe it for a second. Not with the way she was trying to dissect him with her eyes, her head tilted quizzically to her shoulder. “I’ve heard… almost nothing about you.”
He cleared his throat and shifted his suit, still in the clear dry cleaner's bag, into another hand. “That’s probably a good thing,” he muttered, earning a chuckle from Clark in response.
“Well, welcome.” Clark patted him on the shoulder and squeezed past the women and into the living room where he picked up the remote and turned the TV off before tossing it back on the couch. He glanced around, “The place is all yours.”
“Thank you.”
Diana draped her dress bag over the back of the couch, her expression softening until there was nothing but gratitude left, the sharp edges smoothed out into nothing.
Lois opened her mouth as if to comment, her gaze shifting from Steve to Diana, and he could have sworn he could hear the gears in her head turn.
He braced himself for an onslaught of questions.
“Well, we better get going,” Lois said instead, checking her watch. She reached for her purse and hesitated. “Are you sure… Clark could probably…” Her gaze darted between Diana and her boyfriend. “Go with you, maybe?”
“I thought you were on deadline,” Diana said, an eyebrow arched.
“We are,” Clark nodded, picking up his coat. “And Perry’s going to kill us if we don’t meet it.” With his hand on the small on Lois’s back, he steered her toward the door, grabbing her jacket from the peg on the way.
“It’s just a dinner,” Diana added, watching them with so much affection it threatened to spill over the brim, never bothering to hide it.
“Well, if you need something, call…” Lois started, glancing over her shoulder, not panicked, per se, but probably very much aware of about a million things that could go wrong in Diana’s line of… well, work. So to speak. “Or text.”
“Honey,” Clark nudged her into the hallway before tossing back a quick goodbye. “Have fun, guys.” He paused for a brief moment, his expression sobering. His gaze lingered on Diana, a thousand thoughts passing between them, none very pleasant. Experience rather than overreaction. “And yes, call.”
Steve offered him a small wave in response.
“Wow, your friend really doesn’t like me,” he muttered when the front door closed behind Clark and Lois, the lock clicking into place, and the silence settling over him and Diana interrupted only by the hum of the fridge and the soft ticking of the clock on the wall.
Diana shook her head with a small smile. She folded her arms over her chest. “It’s not that,” she said. “Lois is… curious. And protective, I guess.”
Steve flinched a little, unable to stop himself. “What did you tell her?”
“Almost nothing,” she repeated Lois’s statement. “Which is the problem, perhaps.”
Well, if nothing else, it had cracked the ice between them, Steve thought.
“Well, it’s very nice of them to let us use their home,” he said, looking around at the stacks of books piled everywhere, a few magazines on the coffee table, a worn-out couch with soft quilt draped over the armrest, and the pale sky outside the large window overlooking an endless sea of rooftops in Metropolis. “It’s good to have friends who care about you.” He looked around once more, taking note of the slight smell of the lemon furniture polish still hanging in the air. “What did you tell them? About tonight.”
“The truth.”
Of course.
Diana’s fingers flexed a little on her elbows. “Clark died six months ago,” she said when Steve turned to her again.
“You were there,” he muttered, remembering that particular report, supplied with half a dozen articles that featured grainy images, nearly unrecognizable but unmistakable nonetheless.
He imagined that they were taken by helicopters or droids. The black shadow of Batman’s suit, blending into the night; the red cape that belonged to Superman fluttering behind him as he flew across the port to meet Doomsday halfway; the glint of Diana’s blade reflecting the flashes of light. In his mind, Steve could see her charging at the monster without thinking twice, lithe form and power incarnate rolled into one. He’d have recognized her even if he didn’t know to look for her.
(Sometimes Steve thought that his photograph must be in the dictionary as the definition of ‘pathetic’.)
God knew it must have taken Waller and her team quite a bit of effort to clean up Lex Luthor’s mess. If it wasn’t for Diana, though, they would have all been exterminated, so maybe that wasn’t that big a price, after all.
“Yes. And so was Lois.” Diana paused, allowing her words to sink in. “It’s… interesting how you can bond with someone over the loss of a loved one.”
Steve’s mouth went dry.
Interesting was one way to put it. Devastating would probably be his choice of word. All the loneliness and longing behind her words, the echo of the time long gone — they were landing on him like blows, making it hard to breathe. He’d done that to her twice, had made her watch him die. Whatever had happened between them, however much it had hurt him to lose her, at least he had never had to see her body drained of life. He'd never been desperate for a chance to turn the time back and get those precious moments back.
He remembered—
He remembered everything about them. Every word, every moment like a pearl on a string, dear in its own way, unique and beautiful. But what he remembered better than anything else, with striking clarity almost, was how she would touch him sometimes as if she was scared that he might slip between her fingers. How she would look at him like she was striving to memorize him on the off-chance that she might never see him again.
Had the tables been reversed — had Steve been the one to see her die — he had no idea how he’d be able to live afterwards. How he’d be able to close his eyes without losing her time and time again.
“Well, he’s back now,” Steve muttered, not sure if he was talking about Clark or himself. Not sure if Diana knew, either.
She nodded. Her voice carried none of the wistfulness when she spoke again. “We should get dressed.”
---
The air smelled faintly of a vanilla-scented candle and the floral bath salts sitting on the lip of the bathtub.
Steve stared at his reflection in the mirror above the sink in the small bathroom cluttered with the things that people tended to accumulate when they felt secure, safe, at home — the most lived-in place he’d been in in over twenty years, perhaps. A stranger whose expression Steve could barely recognize stared back at him, seemingly just as surprised by the encounter.
By an unspoken agreement, Diana had wound up with the bedroom while he had ended up here, and now he wished that they could switch, if only so he could avoid dealing with the reflection of a man he no longer recognized and the silent questions to which he had no answers. He wanted to ask Diana if she felt that way too, if the familiarity of something unchanged was starting to wear thin on her as well. It was an odd feeling, he had to admit. Like knowing that the inside of him wasn’t matching the outside. Not that there was anything Steve could do about it.
He pushed back from the sink and looked away, reaching for his tie resting on top of the pile of clothes draped over the back of the chair. His hands moved on autopilot affixing it around his neck without effort as Steve tried not to think of anything beyond the next few hours, summoning the plans for the upcoming night as best he could instead. It was easier that way, easier to think of a mission ahead of him, a task that needed to be accomplished.
That was the best thing about the military, he thought absently. Clear goals, his body knowing what to do long before his mind had caught up. There had been no semblance of routine in his life lately, and even though Steve cherished deeply being his own master, he couldn’t help but crave structure and order now and then. Old habits…
The only difference was that he didn’t need to wear a suit back then. He shrugged his way into the jacket with a grimace. It already felt uncomfortably stiff on his body, like a second skin that didn’t quite fit. What a damn shame it was that the suit didn’t come with a whole different personality to match the new look as well. Yet, ironically enough, it was a good distraction to focus on to avoid pondering the fact that the woman he'd been in love with for the past century was somewhere close by, separated from him by two doors and fifteen feet and an abyss of memories that belonged to neither of them.
He wanted to be here, however. Instead of Bruce Wayne. Or anyone else, for that matter. With her, after all this time. Even if it didn’t really count. Even if he had no right to feel that way.
Steve checked his watch and glanced at the other guy in the mirror — an involuntary gesture that he regretted immediately. A century of regrets looked back at him. Even now, he still wasn’t sure how to deal with it.
“Diana?”
Half a minute later, Steve rapped his knuckles on the door leading to the bedroom. If they were planning to make it to the hotel before the auction began, they needed to get moving. It was one thing to be fashionably late, and something else entirely to be late enough to draw unnecessary attention to themselves — the last thing they needed tonight.
“Come in, it’s open,” she called back, her voice muffled.
Steve turned the knob and pushed the door open.
“You know, I was thinking about that case in Austria in 1949—” Steve started and cut off abruptly when he found her standing in front of a vanity table in nothing but black lingerie, putting on her earrings that winked at him in the light of the fading sun that had chose to make an appearance after several hours of a heavy downpour and was now flooding the room, colouring it golden. He could have sworn that Diana was glowing. “Oh… I’m sorry.” Steve looked away, feeling the colour rise up his cheeks and his heartbeat escalate by the moment. Heaven help him… He cleared his throat. “I thought you were…” Dressed . “I’m sorry, I’ll wait—”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Diana pause. “You’ve seen me like this, Steve.”
God, no, I haven’t. Not like this . Never like this .
Not when black lace was clinging close to her olive skin, thin as a whisper, making him want to trace its patterns with his fingers, see if it was as soft and delicate as it looked.
And now the image was seared into his mind. Probably for as long as he'd live.
Crap .
“Yes, but that was when—” Steve stumbled over the words that jammed in his throat. “We’re not—”
“Together?” He could feel her watch him for a few moments before she asked quietly, “What difference does it make? You can’t unsee something.”
Shit .
He swallowed, hard, his jaw working as he tried to come up with something to say. Anything. Anything to stop thinking about her—
Maybe unseeing wasn’t the problem, he thought. Unseeing wasn’t an issue. Maybe the problem was wanting more. More than he could have.
He dropped his gaze, suddenly very interested in his shoes polished to perfection while he tried to debate whether or not it was okay to simply bolt out the door without another word, never mind that he wasn’t fifteen years old and the idea was just stupid. Never mind that they’d slept together, for years . Okay, maybe he needed to stop thinking about that , too.
Funny how it didn’t really matter whether it was Diana who walked in on him naked, or the other way around — he was always the one with a frantic pulse and hot cheeks. Some things never changed, apparently.
Steve looked up, doing his damned best to keep from staring at anything below her neck. He met her eyes in the mirror, half grateful for that buffer to the intensity of her gaze, half hating it.
“It’s just how it is,” he breathed out.
“I see,” she murmured, tearing her eyes away from his, and Steve turned away, choosing to look out the window instead. At the flat roof of the building across the street where someone had forgotten a soccer ball that used to be orange but had turned pale yellow from staying in the sun long enough for it to burn away its colour.
Somehow, it felt like a better alternative to marching out of the room. Or disintegrating on the spot.
“You know, sometimes I feel like I have mankind figured out,” Diana spoke behind him, the plastic of her dress bag rustling as she unzipped it. “And other times, I think that I don’t understand it at all.”
“Welcome to the club,” Steve muttered.
The problem was, he wasn’t all that sure if the world really was worth the effort. Personally, he’d given up on trying to make sense of it a long time ago. Then again, maybe people were not meant to be understood. Maybe they were meant to be saved now and then, and the rest was only a matter of luck. That, at least, he was semi-good at.
“Steve?”
He snapped his head up to find Diana standing with her back to him, her head half-turned and the hair that had been spilling over her shoulders a few minutes ago pinned up, twisted into an elegant up-do. The zipper of her black cocktail dress was undone, running from just below her shoulder blades to her waist.
“Could you…” she started.
“Of course.”
He cleared his throat and moved towards her, crossing the room in two hasty strides, surprised that he had managed to avoid tripping over his own feet in the process. The sooner they were done and over with this, the sooner he’d stop feeling like someone had tossed him into a food processor, so violent his insides were churning, the intimacy of this situation making his head swim.
His hands were trembling slightly when he reached for the zipper, careful to touch only the shimmering material but not her skin, mostly for fear of combusting right then and there. The elusive pull tab slipped out of his grasp twice before he managed to grip it properly and slide it up with a soft whoosh .
From this close, he could feel the warmth of her body, could smell the floral notes of her shampoo and her perfume, and the ocean, and sunshine. Everything that was Diana for as long as he remembered. The very same smell that had lingered on every single thing that he owned for months after he’d left. At first, it had kept driving him insane, making him reach for her in the night, her presence so palpable that his heart had kept skipping a beat every time he'd thought he’d heard her move about his tiny apartment. And then it had started to fade, and Steve’s much-anticipated relief had turned into dread — he hadn't been ready to lose her completely, not when every other part of her was already gone.
Diana turned around slowly, her face mere inches away from his, inquisitive eyes searching his features. Steve's gaze dropped to the ruby-red bow of her lips. She reached for his necktie, adjusting it a little. A familiar gesture that made something tender ache inside him.
“You look good,” Diana said softly, her lips curved into a small, gentle smile.
“You look…” ethereal, divine, breathtaking . Steve trailed off, his heart pounding in his ribcage, threatening to burst. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and then uttered, “We need to go, we’re already late.”
Diana hesitated, a shadow of something akin disappointment passing over her face. And then her hands fell from his chest. She turned away from him and reached for her clutch purse. Steve watched her slip on her black pumps and check her reflection one last time.
“Diana?”
She paused, her hand frozen near her face, and glanced at him.
Steve swallowed, “You look beautiful.”
---
Déjà v é cu.
A moment lived.
It wasn’t the practicality of speaking every language known to humankind that never ceased to truly amaze Diana, but the ability to find in them all a word for nearly every feeling a person might experience — something that gave her comfort. Understanding of herself that she treasured beyond anything else.
The French were good at that, she had to admit; at finding the right combination of syllables to glimpse into one’s soul.
And this was exactly what she felt standing in the entrance to the ballroom of the Grand Metropolis Hotel that sparkled like a Christmas tree and feeling like she was transported to the past.
There was a beginning to everything, and Diana’s life as it was today had started nearly four decades ago in a room much like this one, where the light was trapped in massive crystal chandeliers and intricate jewelry — small prisms bending it into an infinite spectrum and spilling it around in sparkles and rainbows.
It had been in 1979 in Vienna, when she was invited to an event much like this one, and despite all the reasons that she'd had to decline the invitation, Diana had chosen to accept it, still not quite certain as to why. It had been there and then, during the cocktail hour, that she had met the curator of the British Museum who had been so profoundly impressed by he4 knowledge of art, and the history of its becoming that he had offered her a position of an Exhibitions Assistant on the spot. It had been there and then that Diana had finally seen that she'd had nothing holding her in Paris anymore; that it was nothing but the loneliness that had kept her there in the first place. That Steve wasn’t coming back — something that she'd known all along but wasn’t willing to admit even to herself.
She had accepted the proposal immediately, despite her distaste for London with its dreadful weather, and the memories she hadn't been particularly fond of, and the nervous flutter in her stomach at the change that had yet to come.
Diana wondered sometimes what would have happened to her had she not been in Vienna on that fateful day. Had she not taken that leap of faith and put blind trust in the gods of fate to lead her where she was meant to be.
The irony of being back to where she had started, at least in the proverbial sense, wasn’t lost on her.
“Wow,” Steve whistled softly under his breath, following Diana into the ballroom, converted for the occasion into an auditorium with rows of seats and a podium to display the bids. “It’s almost like they’re trying too hard.”
Heavy drapes on the windows and original artwork on the walls, servers in impeccable black uniforms and the glimmer of silver and gold were making the place look like the finest of palaces.
Her lips curved almost imperceptibly, Steve's reassuring presence anchoring her in this moment. She wondered if he was even aware of his hand on the small of her back — a gesture so easy and natural she’d miss it herself had it not been for the warmth of his touch that spread up her body in an instant, making her want to lean into him and seep in his presence.
Diana turned to him. “They need to sell the atmosphere before they can sell anything else,” she explained, not without mild amusement.
The corner of Steve’s mouth lifted, making something warm uncurl in her chest momentarily. “Okay, Ms. Prince, you’re the boss. Lead the way.”
It was a relief to be back in her element again, albeit one slightly less familiar than the battlefield but no less comfortable regardless. She knew these people, or at least their type. She knew how to navigate these waters, and the right words she needed to say. If nothing else, she’d long learned to appreciate the solace of belonging.
Close your eyes and imagine , Hippolyta would tell her when Diana was a little girl and the world was far too vast and wondrous to waste any time on sleep, the night seemingly holding as many adventures as her days. Close your eyes, Diana, and look into the darkness , her mother would repeat, stroking Diana's hair, her voice soft and loving, a safe place in and of itself. Let your mind take you beyond your wildest dreams . And Diana would do that, glimpse into the void of endless possibilities, see herself on the wings of the wind, dancing with the stars.
She’d imagined this, too. Imagined Steve returning to her like he’d done before, the past and the present colliding on the nights when nothing else could lull her to sleep and she craved to hear the sound of his voice so badly that it made her chest ache. Daydreams were hardly the most sensible way to fix the world, but they sure knew how to make her loneliness more bearable.
And Diana was wondering now if perhaps she was dreaming again as Steve followed her across the room, looking as sure and confident as if he’d spent the last century doing just this, day in and day out. A few times she even caught herself reaching for his hand, and had to stop herself from twining their fingers together, so easy it was to forget about the abyss of hurt between them.
“They will have cocktails first,” Diana explained softly. A program had come with their invitations, courtesy of Victor, but she didn’t need it — these events never deviated from the established pattern. “To allow the latecomers to arrive, and everyone else to meet and mingle, should they feel like it.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve nod. “The dinner will follow, and then the auction. It will close with the formal arrangements for the purchased items.”
She’d picked up a list of the pieces to be auctioned off when they had first arrived, skimming it briefly, not surprised but still mildly disappointed not to find the painting she was looking for on it. It had to be Quinn’s personal item then.
He nodded again. “Do you know anyone here?”
“A few people, yes.” Diana looked around, spotting familiar faces. An appraiser from Zurich she’d worked with a few times before; a collector from New York known for being more than a little snobbish; a Curator of the Modern Art Collection from the Museum of San Francisco. This auction wasn’t major enough of an event to draw a big crowd, but even so… “The world of art is smaller than it might seem.”
“That probably works for the world in general,” Steve noted under his breath, his gaze scanning the room sharp and assertive. Diana barely resisted the urge to smooth out a crease between his brows with her fingers. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I believe we should start with—Mr. Quinn!” Her gaze shifted past Steve’s shoulder toward the man walking toward them, a broad smile spreading over her face.
Darrell Quinn paused before them, taking them in with apprehension. His mouth opened and closed, his brows pulling together as he tried to place them in his mind.
“I’m sorry—”
“It’s Diana,” she offered her hand to him, and he grasped it automatically. “Diana Prince.”
A flash of recognition passed over Quinn’s face as she spoke, softening his features. “Of course, Ms. Prince, how could I—” He shook her hand again, with more enthusiasm. “A dinner, several weeks ago. I remember you. I’m sorry, this is… not like me.”
“The fundraiser, yes,” she confirmed with a nod. They had barely said two words to one another then, and she had been more concerned about not being dragged into a conversation that would be impossible to escape than anything else at the time, but it was a good starting point nonetheless.
“You were there with Bruce Wayne, if I’m not mistaken,” Quinn added, visibly relieved to have remembered that.
Beside her, Steve tensed. His hand fell from the spot on her back, and her body was already missing it desperately.
“You are, I’m afraid,” Diana countered without missing a beat, her voice even and mild. “Bruce and I merely happened to be there at the same time.”
“My apologies, Ms. Prince,” Quinn corrected himself. “I didn’t mean to…” His gaze darted toward Steve.
“Oh, I’m sorry… Mr. Quinn, this is Steve Trevor,” Diana introduced him smoothly. “My—”
She faltered, grasping for a word, and was saved by a server that walked by them with a tray of champagne flutes.
Quinn gestured to him to come over, passing the glasses to Diana and Steve before picking up his own.
“Well, to you and… yours , Ms. Prince,” he clinked his flute against Diana’s. “I hope you will find what you’re looking for tonight,” he looked at her over the rim of the glass before drinking half of it in one gulp. “Always a pleasure to see you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Of course.”
You and yours , she thought, watching the man crossing the room as he walked away from them.
“So, that’s him, huh? The infamous art thief?” Steve muttered beside her, following Quinn with his gaze. Being slightly shorter than Diana, Darrell Quinn didn’t have a problem disappearing in the gathering crowd.
“We’ll see,” Diana responded vaguely.
Darrell Quinn didn’t look like the type, and he had a reputation to uphold that made her doubt the possibility of his involvement. But then again, she knew better than to trust appearances.
Steve put his glass down on the nearest table without taking so much as a sip. Diana placed hers next to his. And then his hand was on her hip, drawing her to him, his head dipping close to her hers and his breath warm on her cheek, making her forget the world.
“There is a door right behind you,” he said softly into her ear. “His office is on this floor at the end of the corridor behind the reception. It could be a good place to start.”
Her hand curled around his wrist before Steve had a chance to pull away. She turned her face to him. The impossible blue of his eyes was all she could see and his heart was beating so close to her that she could barely tell it apart from her own. Diana’s pulse stuttered when his gaze dropped to her lips before Steve dragged it back up to her eyes.
“Steve…” she started and faltered, for the second time in five minutes.
It occurred to her for a brief moment that to an outsider, this probably looked like an intimate moment between two lovers, and the thought made her throat go dry.
“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling lightheaded from the smell of his aftershave and the warmth radiating from his body. “For doing this. For… for coming with me.”
“Like the good old times,” he echoed.
---
Gotham, 2017
All mistakes had a price attached to them, and Amanda Waller knew that better than, perhaps, anyone else in the world. Whether it was a life or a million of them, or a deadly disease that spread in the blink of an eye, or chaos caused by those who foolishly assumed that they were above justice — there was always someone who had to pay for it.
Her job, quite literally, was to learn to use the words cannon fodder and collateral damage like it was nothing, as freely as talking about the weather. Two and a half decades and a dozen career leaps later, and she had finally mastered that skill. After all, there was no one else to clean up the messes left by the criminals and superheroes alike.
However, there was one thing she still didn’t have: control.
Gotham wasn’t perfect — if she had to make a list, it wouldn’t even make the top hundred. However, it was her city, her home, her choice, and feeling like she was a marionette while someone else was pulling the strings was starting to get under her skin. Hence the Suicide Squad — she had hated the name, but they needed one. Until it had leaked into the press, and her life had turned into an honest-to-god nightmare of dodging questions that should never have existed in the first place.
Hence the itch to get her hands on the Justice League and to stop feeling like she was being tossed around by a tornado of people who thought that they knew what they were doing when it was clear that wasn’t the case at all. Waller knew that eventually, Bruce Wayne would get tired of leaping from rooftop to rooftop in a silly suit, and that Clark Kent preferred the farm life to the constant fight for justice, and that the rest of them would fall apart because there was nothing holding them together. Or at least that had been her impression until Wonder Woman came along.
A curse and a blessing all at once, and a massive kink in Waller’s plans. No one was going to listen to the Director of A.R.G.U.S. when they had a worthy leader to follow. Bruce Wayne could fool himself about his role in the team all he pleased, and maybe bringing them together had been his idea, but everyone knew who the League would follow if they got divided.
Diana Prince was all but made of virtue and goodness. Who could ever beat that? They were all a little bit in love with her, too — you could see it in the battle, in the easy way they trusted her without thinking twice. Waller had studied every morsel of the footage she’d managed to acquire — CCTV and personal cameras, blurred photographs and accidental evidence — equally fascinated and frustrated by it.
Diana Prince didn’t need the world, but the world needed her. The League needed her.
Hence the bloody agreement with the Batman when it was the last thing she wanted to be roped into. He was insufferable and impossible to work with, too unpredictable and lacking any respect for authority, but with him, Waller had some leverage. With Wonder Woman, there was nothing. The only problem here was, as it turned out, that Waller was fresh out of leverage. With the members of the Suicide Squad safely locked away, and the files on the known meta-humans given to Bruce, she had no negotiation points.
And then suddenly Steve Trevor had fallen into her lap like a Christmas present — another thing that had come with a price that she was starting to regret. However, she wouldn’t be Amanda Waller if she passed up an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Or to finally reach some sort of flimsy truce with the League and to shake Diana Prince’s world just enough to remind her that nothing was ever as constant and steady as they all wished it could be.
Frankly, Waller hadn't expected Steve to cooperate after her small ambush, but it didn’t matter now. Not really. She was going to hold up her end of the bargain, eventually. However, she doubted that by then, he would still care.
The door to her private dining room in the back of a fancy restaurant in the heart of Gotham that she always used if she wanted to dine in peace opened with a bang, giving Waller a start. It hit the wall, swaying slightly, the chatter from the main dining room wafting in through it — the exact thing she was trying to avoid.
She looked up from her Japanese salted salmon, more surprised than alarmed by the sudden disturbance only to find Bruce Wayne standing in the doorway, looking more dishevelled than Waller had ever seen him.
“A word?” he asked, in a tone that implied that it was hardly a suggestion so much as a command.
“Madam Waller, I’m sorry—” a panicked maître’d started, trying to squeeze past Wayne into the room.
Waller shook her head. “It’s okay. I’ll take it from here.” The last thing she needed was an audience.
The maître’d glanced at Bruce without conviction, and it was then that Waller noticed the other man that Wayne was holding by the collar of his jacket, his nose bloodied, red droplets staining the front of his shirt.
Interesting.
Waller nodded again, and the woman finally disappeared, although not without hesitation, closing the door behind her. She knew better than to intervene, thank heavens.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” Bruce said flatly, and the man he was holding glared at him — without trying to get free though, Waller noted, having given up by now apparently.
“Not at all,” she responded in kind, watching the colourful pair impassively. “Anything I can do for you, Mr. Wayne?”
“I thought we had a deal,” Bruce all but growled.
She leaned back in her seat, hands clenched together on the table, thinking how the glass of wine sitting by her plate was practically begging to be finished in one gulp. This was the first time in weeks that she didn’t have to stay in the office until midnight, and, of course, none other than this man had to find a way to ruin her evening.
“We still do,” she responded, more curious than confused now.
“Then what is this?” Bruce demanded, all but shaking a stranger in Waller’s face.
“I don’t understand—”
“I don’t care if you’re hiding from Trevor, but if you want someone to spy on me, maybe try to get something more… skilful next time?”
Waller pressed her lips together. “I appreciate your determination to think the worst of me—”
“I wonder where that comes from,” Bruce snorted.
“—but I have never seen this man in my life.” She paused, holding Bruce’s gaze steadily, unwavering. The stranger standing before her now could have easily been another face in the endless corridors outside her office, truth be told. She never bothered to get personally acquainted with everyone working for her, directly or indirectly, but the last time she had checked, she knew better than to involve an amateur to do a job meant for a professional. “Trust me, if I decided to arrange surveillance, you wouldn’t find out. Not easily, at least.”
Bruce frowned, glaring at her for a moment or two before turning to the man who didn’t seem particularly impressed or interested, save for the death stare that he returned to Bruce.
“Then who the hell is this?”
---
Metropolis, 2017
They would have ten minutes, Steve thought, as he lead Diana across the lavish foyer and past the reception desk with its massive granite countertop and several people having drinks in the lounge outside of the restaurant. Squared shoulders, steady footsteps — the key to not being caught, in his experience, was being good at pretending that he knew what he was doing. Fifteen minutes tops, he thought. Anything longer than that, and someone was bound to get suspicious.
“Here,” he steered Diana toward the last door on the left, their footsteps soundless on the thick Persian carpet that was so soft their feet were sinking right into it. Thankfully, it muffled the sound of their illicit exploits.
Diana raised a curious eyebrow at him.
“Victor,” he explained quietly. He glanced over his shoulder, relieved that no one was paying any attention to them, and turned the knob, pushing the door open. It gave in easily. “He showed me the plan of the building.”
Diana followed him inside and closed the door behind them, just as soundlessly. “That was nice of him.”
Steve pulled the heavy drapes on the windows closed lest someone notice the light and turned on the reading lamp, grinning at her from across the room. “I asked nicely.”
But Diana wasn’t listening anymore. She was looking past him, at the two by three foot canvas on the wall behind Steve, half hidden and out of the reach of light. Delicate lines and a heavy frame. As stunning as she had imagined it would be. The photographs in old books didn’t do it justice, not in the slightest. She walked around the desk to have a better look, her hand reaching to trace the carvings on the frame, assertive eyes taking in the details, looking for clues.
Steve straightened up and stepped closer to her, curious now, too.
It did look right. Very familiar in the way he couldn’t quite explain, save for maybe dealing with a few other works that had that special air to them. Like they were something holy.
“What do you think?”
Diana leaned in closer, her fingertips carefully tracing delicate strokes of the paintbrush as though it was a book written in braille and she was desperate to uncover its secrets.
“It’s the original,” she said softly at last, her eyes skimming the canvas nearly in awe.
“Are you sure?”
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust her. It was that the stakes were so much higher if she was right.
“Yes. There’s a definite technique that Jan van Huysum used that you can imitate but can’t copy exactly as it was…” she trailed off, glancing at him over her shoulder. “I’m sure.”
Steve nodded. And then again for good measure, suddenly forgetting how words were meant to work.
“That’s… great. I guess.” His gaze darted toward the canvas again. “So, what now?”
Diana pursed her lips together. “It doesn’t belong to this man,” she said, speaking of Darell Quinn.
“It doesn’t,” Steve agreed. “But you can’t just walk out of here with it.” He looked around Quinn’s office, the corners of which were drowning in deep shadows. “Besides, you don’t know—” he cut off when something across the room caught his attention. “Diana.”
“I don’t know what?” She turned after him as he skirted around the desk, walking over to the mantelpiece.
“Look.”
There, on the marble shelf, between a framed certificate and a bronze bust sat a picture of Darrell Quinn shaking hands with—
“Lex Luthor.”
She appeared beside him, silent as a shadow.
“But isn’t he…” Steve started.
“Far more responsible for Clark’s death than Bruce, yes,” she offered helpfully, her tone ice-cold. “Despite what Bruce thinks.”
Steve cleared his throat. “I was going to say in prison .”
She looked curiously at him.
“What? I did my homework,” he muttered.
And there it was again, that small smile that Steve couldn’t quite place. One that had no business existing in this version of reality where nothing seemed right and the only person he’d ever loved belonged to someone else.
“I’m sure you did,” Diana said with a shake of her head, and then a shadow of doubt passed over her face. “Perhaps, it makes sense… Lex Luthor,” she added when Steve frowned in confusion, “made quite a few sizable donations to the Museum of Gotham. It wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to assume that he and Mr. Quinn were familiar through, ah, art channels.”
“Maybe so,” Steve shrugged, then glanced around one more time, his face lighting up at the sight of a laptop sitting on the desk. “But we could try to find out for sure.”
“How?”
Diana followed him, watching him lift the lid and boot the computer. It was password protected, but as soon as the screen came to life, Steve plucked a USB drive from the pocket, sticking it into the slot, his fingers dancing swiftly over the keyboard.
“What are you doing?” Diana asked, watching him type in the necessary codes over his shoulder.
“Alfred gave me this,” Steve replied easily. “Something to bypass the installed firewall.” He glanced at her when the progress bar appeared in the centre of the screen. “If we’re lucky, I’ll be able to have a look at Mr. Quinn’s registered assets, and maybe even his finances. See if he’d purchased anything he shouldn’t have in the recent past.”
His eyes were glued to the laptop, willing it to hurry up. They were already pushing their time limits. Soon, someone might actually pay attention to someone missing, and Steve would very much prefer to avoid having to deal with that. Diana, however, paid no mind to his manipulations. Her gaze was locked on him, he could feel it in the pin pricking of the skin on his neck, the swarm of questions running through her mind almost loud enough for him to hear.
“I’m going to copy it, save it,” Steve added, thinking out loud. “So you can have a proper look later.”
He drummed his fingers impatiently on the mahogany desktop.
“Alfred gave you this,” she repeated softly, ignoring his comment.
“Yeah, I mean…” Steve shrugged, “we were talking… He thought it could be useful, I guess.”
She stayed quiet, watching him silently, her eyes full of what he could only describe as wonder.
“What?” Steve blinked.
“You know, every time Barry messes with the computers, he gets kicked out of the Batcave. After the one time when Victor trespassed on the property, Alfred personally reinforced the security system. Arthur is not allowed anywhere near the kitchen, most of the time. There was a small fire once,” Diana bit back a smile. “… and you got an encryption program, without asking?”
Bloody hell, she needed to stop looking at him like that. She needed to stop looking at him, period.
“Well, technically, it’s more of a decryption program,” he corrected her before he could stop himself because it really wasn’t the point . Christ… “He didn’t do it for me, Diana.”
“Steve…” she started.
The progress bar finally reached the 100% mark, and the screen lit up, revealing an image of sloping hills on Quinn’s desktop, snagging Steve's attention.
“Look, I’m not trying to—”
“No.” Her hand landed on his arm, and it took him a second to register the alarm in her voice. To look up and notice her gaze locked on the door.
Steve pushed up from the desk, and by the time he had straightened up, the adrenaline rush was already making his heart beat so fast that it all but threatened to leap out of his throat.
“Someone’s coming,” she whispered.
Shit .
Steve could hear it now, too — the thin hum of someone’s voice, muffled by the door and too quiet to recognize, but still there nonetheless.
Approaching.
Fast.
“Goddammit,” he muttered, his eyes darting around, his mind on fire. There was nowhere to go, not even a balcony to slip out onto. Unless they jimmied themselves between the books on the already packed shelves, there was nothing. That, or crawling up the fireplace chimney.
Shit, shit, shit!
Steve crossed the room in two quick strides and yanked the curtains open the way they had been when they'd first come in as Diana closed the laptop shut and turned off the light.
The footsteps were a few feet outside the door now, more a reverberation in the floor than a sound.
He took an involuntary step back, wishing that they could blend into the shadows.
Diana turned to him, her face nothing but a pale spot in the dark to which his eyes had yet to adjust. Steve felt her fingers curl over the sleeve of his jacket, slipping down toward his wrist where his pulse was hammering in a frantic staccato, and in that moment, he doubted that it had anything to do with the impending prospect of being caught.
“Berlin,” she whispered almost soundlessly, a whoosh of breath on his cheek.
Huh?
Her palm cupped over his cheek, her eyes dark and wide and uncertain. Steve heard her swallow, felt her eyes drop to his mouth. And then she bridged the distance between them, pressing her lips to his.
Berlin…
She tasted sweet, of chocolate and wine, which made little sense because she’d had neither of them, to his memory. Steve didn't bother contemplating that thought because what had still been left of his conscious thinking was washed away in an instant when after a moment of hesitation, Diana's hand slipped under his jacket and around his waist, pulling him closer to her. And just like that, Steve no longer cared about whoever was on the other side of that door. About the rest of the world either, for that matter. He kissed her back, desperate and greedy, feeling like a man lost in a desert who had found the source of water just as he started to believe that his time had run out.
His hands slid up her arms, a low growl forming in the back of his throat when a slight shiver ran down Diana's body at his touch. Steve stumbled backwards, taking one step and then another until his thighs bumped against the desk and he finally had enough leverage to gather Diana to him, hands splayed on her back, curling over the delicate fabric of her dress, the image of what was underneath it so vivid that it took him all of half a second to summon it.
Jesus Christ, now it was all he could think of.
Her fingers pushed into his hair, gripping a fistful of it near the back of his head, and Steve thought that there wasn’t a sweeter way to lose the remnants of one’s sanity than being kissed like this.
It took him a moment too long to register the sudden brightness around them as the light was turned on — an overhead light, too harsh and too merciless after the comfortable semi-darkness. Someone cleared their throat very pointedly.
After another moment, Diana pulled away from him, her breathing ragged and her eyes glazed over. One fist still clutched over the lapel of his jacket, she turned to the source of the sound, and Steve did, too, to find Darrell Quinn standing in the doorway, about as surprised to find them where they didn’t belong as Steve was by the interruption.
Twenty seconds, as it turned out, was what it took to completely derail one's reality.
“Ms. Prince?” Quinn's brows pulled together in confusion and disapproval. “This area is off limits for guests.”
“Oh,” Diana breathed.
“Told you we should have turned left,” Steve muttered, tucking a wisp of hair around her ear — an indulgence he couldn’t deny himself, and one he knew he was going to regret for he was already craving more, wishing to run his hands over every inch of her body.
Her breath hitched just enough for him to all but forget about the man standing in the doorway.
“My apologies, Mr. Quinn,” Diana smiled, stepping away from Steve, the circle of his arms feeling awfully empty without her. “We didn’t mean to… Perhaps we should…”
“You should,” Quinn nodded. Having shaken off the stupor, he walked over to the desk, unlocked one of the drawers and pulled a ledger out of it. His eyes darted from Diana to Steve. “You’re missing all the excitement.”
No kidding , Steve thought, his lips still burning with the taste of her.
“That would be a shame,” Diana agreed with a polite smile. She paused — a flicker of hesitation across her features replaced by determination — and went for the kill. “This is a very interesting piece you have here.”
Quinn glanced over his shoulder at the painting, his brief puzzlement replaced by recognition.
“A gift from a dear friend,” he said vaguely, locking the desk again and gesturing toward the door with his ledger. “If you would... Ms. Prince. Mr. Trevor.”
A brush of her fingers to his hand, and Steve was following her out of the room with Quinn close behind them, locking the door this time.
“Must be some friend,” he offered.
“One who appreciates beauty,” Quinn nodded.
“Surely you’re familiar with the painting's history,” Diana noted.
“The original — of course — but this is merely a copy. A good one, at that, but…”
“Is that so?” she mused, and gave Steve the tiniest shake of her head when he darted a quizzical look at her. “Would you be willing to part with it, then?” Diana asked, her tone measured, intentionally mild.
“Why would you want a reproduction, Ms. Prince? The Louvre doesn’t have much need for them.”
“Personal interest,” Diana responded. “I’ve always liked van Huysum’s works.”
Still, Quinn shook his head. “This one is not for sale, I’m afraid.”
Well, there was no surprise there. Steve wasn’t sure that he believed Quinn’s ignorance, but maybe the man really had no idea; that whoever had lied to him about the origin of the painting had done a good enough job for Quinn not to be bothered by displaying it in his office where anyone could see it. He was primarily a businessman, after all. One with a certain fondness for all things beautiful, but there were many a professional who had been fooled by skillful forgeries before.
Frankly, at this point, all Steve could think of was that Quinn hadn't called security on them. It would hardly be an issue, but he didn’t want to stir any trouble and draw any more attention to Diana and himself.
And that was when Steve realized with stunned clarity that something was missing, something he had completely forgotten about. He remembered, in that moment, that the security was the least of their problems now, if only because the USB stick with the custom-made crack program was still plugged into Quinn’s laptop, and that he was going to find it eventually. And once he did, he’d know exactly who had left it there, and their attempt to cover up their presence in his office wouldn’t be worth a dime.
Steve whipped his head around, panic rising inside him in hot waves.
If he didn’t get it, he was going to compromise not only them, but also Bruce Wayne, seeing as how that stuff had his name all over it. Literally. The man’s obsession with having his goddamned logo on everything that he owned was going to get them all killed one day.
The noise of the foyer grew louder.
He needed an excuse to go back. Something. Anything. Maybe he could say that he dropped something, forgot something—
He felt Diana’s hand slip into his, something cold pressing into his palm. A keychain.
“The car,” she murmured soundlessly, leaning close to his ear.
Steve met her gaze, and she gave him a small nod, and he wondered if she had, in fact, read his thoughts. He opened his mouth to ask her something, to say something, make sure that they were on the same page. Maybe he could jimmy the window open and sneak in that way, if there was no other choice.
She gave his fingers a quick squeeze, and then they reached the lobby, and she was excusing herself and turning towards the bathrooms behind the reception. Quinn paused as if to say something but reconsidered, following Diana with his gaze instead, not suspicious, exactly, but rather concerned nonetheless even though he was doing a damn good job trying to conceal it. Steve couldn’t fault him for it, his own mind also abuzz with questions, half-formed and chaotic.
Still, the older man smiled when Steve caught up with him, choosing to try and carry on with the show. For all it was worth.
“That’s a nice lipstick you have, Mr. Trevor,” Quinn noted with a chuckle.
Steve’s cheeks grew hot as he wiped his lips hastily with the back of his hand.
He mustered a grin. “Still trying to find my colour.”
Quinn let out a soft laugh, the tension broken at last. “Well, that shade of crimson is definitely yours.”
They parted their ways in the ballroom where Quinn headed for the makeshift podium and Steve paused near the last row of chairs as if looking for a seat before making a beeline for the lobby the moment Quinn turned his back to him. He walked briskly past the servers that had left the main room and the security guards in sharp suits hired for the event on account of the value of the presented objects, their postures so rigid their backs were probably killing them.
His hand gripped the keychain tighter. He glanced once over his shoulder, toward the side corridor that appeared to be empty, praying and hoping against all hope that Diana knew to get the USB drive. That she hadn't misunderstood him.
There was a time, a lifetime and a half ago, when he wouldn’t doubt her for a second, when there had been the kind of understanding between them that made words all but unnecessary. It was what had made them a good team in the first place, blind trust they were willing to put in one another from the get-go. A perfect union in every sense he could think of. And that was why losing her felt like losing a limb, or something even more vital. At times, it felt like he’d lost his heart.
The air was chilly and damp outside, clinging to his skin and crawling under his shirt when Steve stepped out the doors, making him shiver involuntarily, and the sky was dark and starless above his head. Steve was halfway across the crowded parking lot, trying to spot Bruce’s sleek Jaguar among rows and rows of other cars that looked exactly the same — like someone had stuffed one into a 3D printer and it had spat out a few dozens of them — when a sound that was disturbingly out of place in the night made him pause. Made his heart sink.
Police sirens were wailing in the distance, growing louder with every passing moment.
Steve stopped short, his eyes glued to the blinking red and blue lights, fading in and out of sight, undoubtedly heading their way.
There was nothing wrong at the hotel half a minute ago when he left, nothing—
Diana .
He turned on his heel and ran back, nearly slipping on the gravel that kept rolling from beneath the soles of his shoes.
Steve stopped at the foot of the staircase leading to the entrance, his mind racing.
He needed to get her out of there, and he needed to do it fast, and it also needed to be discreet.
There was another door around the corner that led directly to the kitchen. The knob turned easily when Steve twisted it and yanked it open, slipping inside. He was greeted by a few puzzled looks from the cooks and servers. However, they made no attempt to stop him, or ask any questions for that matter.
One of a few valuable lessons that the war had taught him — aside from that people seldom were who they appeared to be — was that the best way to fight chaos was with more chaos.
He rushed into the lobby, heaving a sigh of relief at the sight of a fire alarm mounted on the wall, small and inconspicuous, and so very useful.
He crossed the fifteen feet separating him from it in a few quick strides, reaching for it—
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” The sharp demand made Steve snap his head around to see one of the security guards headed his way, a wall of determination.
Bloody hell.
“Dammit,” Steve muttered under his breath, his fingers closing over the small lever.
“Get away from there!” the man ordered, his bark making several heads turn their way, which was a bad, bad thing.
His hand landed on Steve's shoulder, but instead of pulling him back, he pushed him face first into the wall, making stars explode before Steve’s eyes. His disorientation was short-lived though, and the next second he spun around, ignoring the ringing in his ears and the dull ache in his cheekbone that was spreading up his skull and making the walls sway around him.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, and he really and truly was, but when his fist rammed into the guard’s face there was a touch of satisfaction to it. A small payback. The man blinked at him in surprise, and then slid quietly to the floor.
His breath laboured (more from the adrenaline rush than exertion), Steve watched him collapse to the thick carpet. And then he pulled the fire alarm.
The siren broke out, so loud it was like something cut through his eardrums, making Steve wince, his hands reaching instinctively to cover his ears, and his head all but exploding from the earlier impact.
It took barely a moment, before the concerned murmur of voices added to it, growing louder and more frantic. Questions and fears were spilling out, hanging heavily in the air. Another moment, and people started to trickle toward the door, hurried steps and loud whispers, looking around in search of the source of danger while the staff tried to nip the outbreak of panic in the bud, their alarmed expressions fueling the confusion.
Steve pushed through the crowd, moving like a salmon up the stream as his gaze searched the crowd, his shoulders bumping against the shoulders of those who were trying to get out of the building. His knees nearly buckled from relief when he finally spotted Diana, her gaze skimming over the mass of bodies as she moved with them. She paused for a moment when her eyes locked with Steve’s.
His hand closed around hers when she reached him, more for the sake of not getting separated than anything else, and he tugged her toward the exit.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “The alarm—”
“Was me,” Steve mouthed, careful not to be overheard. “Come on.” Once outside, he didn’t pause to join in the puzzled conversations and led her straight towards their car near the rear exit instead.
“What’s going on?” Diana looked around, searching for the source of distress. “The police…”
He let go of her hand and passed the key back to her. A USB stick landed on his palm in return.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “There must’ve been some kind of protection on Quinn’s laptop. It triggered the distress signal when I tried to breach it.” He let out a breath, his chest still heaving. “I think.”
A police car came to a screeching halt near the entrance, escalating the growing panic of the hotel guests, some of them in bathrobes, murmuring with agitation as they waited to find out what had happened. For a brief second, Steve thought that he saw the mop of Darrell Quinn’s grey hair swimming among the spectators on the sidewalk, but it wasn’t something he had time to ponder.
“What happened to your face?” Diana frowned. She lifted her hand, reaching for his cheekbone, but paused with her fingers an inch away from his skin, and lowered it again.
Steve winced. “Collateral damage. Let’s get out of here.” He glanced around them, but they hardly stood out among nearly a hundred people hurrying toward their vehicles. “Is the painting really a copy?”
“No, it’s the original,” she shook her head. “I’m sure.”
He nodded. “So, what now?”
“I’ll buy it.”
Gravel crunched under their shoes as they walked. He finally remembered to stuff the USB drive into the pocket of his pants, anxious to know what was on it now. There had been something about Quinn’s voice when they'd spoken about the painting that bothered him, but Steve couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, turning their brief conversation this way and that in his head like it was a puzzle, hoping that maybe the picture would fall into place if only he looked at in from a different angle.
“Quinn said it wasn’t for sale,” he reminded Diana, thinking out loud more than anything.
She rounded someone’s silver BMW. “Everything is for sale if you offer the right price.”
Steve quirked an eyebrow at her.
“I could contact one of the organizations taking care of the stolen art, here in the States or in Europe, and start an investigation,” she explained. “Or I could do it faster and simply return it where it belongs.”
He felt his mouth tug up at the corners. This was it right there, everything she ever stood for. Everything that made this world a better place. Everything that used to make him want to be a better person.
“You do know that no one else in this whole world would ever care to do that, right?” Steve asked quietly.
“I could name a person or two,” she countered with a small smile, meeting his eyes in the dim light of the street lamps lining the perimeter of the parking lot, and he smiled back. Because—
Because even after all this time, she still believed in him even though he had stopped believing in himself a long time ago.
Would she still feel the same way if she knew the whole truth about him? If she knew about the things that Steve had chosen to keep to himself for fear of losing her? A liar, a murderer… If only she understood how her words had nearly hit home that day in the port, how often he'd wished he wasn’t a damn coward as well, too scared of admitting the truth even to himself. All he had ever wanted was to give her the world, and in the end, it had turned out that the best thing he could do was give her the world without him in it.
Steve looked away from her.
He wondered how long he was going to remember the way her hand fit in his, his skin missing her touch already.
Diana pressed the button to unlock the car, the headlights blinked at them in an impassive greeting.
And the next thing he remembered was being pushed in the chest by a wall of heat, his fingers curled around her wrist. One moment, all he could see was the impossible brightness of the explosion before them. And then everything went black.
To be continued...
Notes:
Thoughts?
(Apologies for any typos if I missed a few, I'm doing me best :))
Chapter 11
Notes:
Someone asked me for a 'before Easter' update and I hope this counts :)
Apologies for taking forever and a half, I was dealing with something. Hope you guys are still around! This chapter was meant to be a bit different but it turned out that it made me restructure certain things so please bear with me.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gotham, 2017
“A leaking gas tank, my ass,” Bruce muttered under his breath as he hung up the phone, his jaw set tautly and frustration radiating off of him in waves.
For a moment, Steve was certain that Bruce was going to chuck it against the wall in frustration. Instead, he stuffed it angrily into the pocket of his pants, his expression disgusted and dark.
“They had to come up with something,” Clark said, not sounding very surprised even though his brows were creased ever so slightly. “Something that the public would buy. It’s not like cars blow up on the streets of Metropolis every night.”
“How does that help?” Bruce demanded and shook his head. He turned to Diana. “Are you okay?”
“Never better, thanks for asking,” Steve replied from where he was sitting on the couch with his head tipped back, the late afternoon sun that was spilling through the glass wall and bathing the room in the warm light doing nothing for his raging headache.
Between a sizeable bruise on his shoulder, a black eye, and a cut on his forehead where his head had met the pavement, he could pinpoint at least a hundred spots on his body that weren’t supposed to hurt but did. Which, admittedly, was a small price for not being inside the car when it had been torn to pieces and gone up in flames. But, he decided to hold off his gratitude for when he could think straight without feeling like he was on the verge of throwing up with every breath he took.
The ‘walking MRI’ Cyborg had already told him that he had a concussion, and suspecting it had somehow felt slightly less nauseating — no pun intended — than knowing it for a fact. Wasn’t the first time. Wasn’t the worst thing that had happened to him. Steve still hated it with a passion.
Bruce ignored him, his gaze barely leaving Diana ever since they had walked through the door several hours earlier after Clark had come to pick them up and drive them back to Gotham, for lack of other options. (Apparently, Diana hadn't been overly enthused by the idea of flying them both back, what with Steve being knocked out cold.)
“If it wasn’t a leaking tank, then what was it?” Barry asked, his eyes darting from Diana to Bruce to Clark to Steve, eager and inquisitive, as Victor, Arthur and Alfred watched them solemnly.
“Perhaps, we’ve walked into something we should’ve stayed away from,” Steve answered, rubbing his eyes when the others remained silent.
“No shit,” Bruce muttered.
“They could’ve been after you,” Barry told him with a shrug.
“Then it would’ve exploded in my backyard,” Bruce countered rather unkindly.
“Bruce,” Diana started with a warning, but he shook his head and walked out of the room without another word as if being around them all was too much to bear.
She followed him to his study, pausing in the doorway, anger visibly simmering beneath her skin.
“Are you done?” she asked coolly.
“Are you done, Diana?”
“If this is about the car—”
“It’s not about the car,” Bruce interjected. He strode over to the liquor cart and poured himself a generous drink, the line of his shoulders so stiff it was painful to even look at. “I don’t care about the car. You could have died.”
Diana folded her arms over her chest. “I seriously doubt it.”
“You know better than to be so dismissive about this,” he said. “If you were ten feet closer. If you were inside the car." He huffed. "If your boyfriend is so brilliant, shouldn’t he have seen it coming?”
Her mouth dropped. “You’re unbelievable! Steve was the one who got hurt, and you have the audacity to keep acting like it was all his fault. Do you even hear yourself?”
Bruce took a sip, winced as it burned its way down his throat, and finally turned to her. “And what happens when it’s not a Jaguar that’s at stake but something bigger?”
Her lips pursed into a thin line. “If you want to say something to me, just say it.”
“The last time I did, you punched me into a wall,” he reminded her.
The memory flared up in her mind the way she’d rather it didn’t, hot and furious. “I thought you were done rubbing my loss in my face.”
Bruce snickered, his gaze hard. “Is it really a loss when someone doesn’t want to be found?”
“That is none of your business, Bruce.” Her voice grew cold, bordering on dangerous.
“It was none of my business when the team wasn’t involved,” he objected. “Tell me, if the sky starts falling down, who are you going to help — the world or Steve Trevor? Who are you going to save when you can’t save everyone?”
She stared at him, angry and disbelieving. “Are you questioning my ability to make the right decisions for the team?”
“I’m saying that there’s no knowing what you’ll sacrifice for a man who doesn’t even want to be here,” Bruce said, his eyes never leaving hers, throwing a dare at her. “ You didn’t want him here, either. What changed?”
She stepped towards him, and he tensed visibly but didn’t move, watching her approach until there was no space left between them.
“And you did,” Diana reminded him, each word measured but her voice quivering ever so slightly with barely contained rage nonetheless. “What changed for you?”
“We all make mistakes,” Bruce responded. “Ask your Captain Trevor. I bet he’s got a few under his belt.”
The implication felt like a slap.
“It’s not about the team, is it?” she asked quietly, having to put a great deal of effort into not lashing out at him, somewhat certain that it was exactly what he was waiting for. “It’s about you and me.”
“Is he going to risk his life for you? After walking away from you?” Bruce watched her eyes grow dark. “I’m not the one who did that so don't put that on me. And I’m also not the one who has spent decades looking for a picture . Tell me, whose judgement is clouded here.”
“Is this what you really think?”
His jaw clenched. “How long are you going to hold on to something that’s not there? That hasn’t been there for at least half a century? You can’t possibly still be—”
“Don’t,” she stopped him. “Don’t say anything that we won’t be able to walk away from.”
“You mean the truth?” he snickered.
And just like that, they were dangerously close to the line that neither could afford to cross if they wanted their partnership to survive, one way or another.
“I understand your concerns about the League, and I can assure you that I will never do anything to put any of them in danger. But this? This is my life. Stay out of it, Bruce,” Diana said coldly in a voice that allowed no room for argument.
He wasn’t scared of her, never had been, and in the past, she accepted it as them standing on equal ground — something that she had appreciated more than anything else in the world where she was often seen as either too much of a hero or occasionally not enough as a woman. But right now she wished that he was. Wished that he knew better than to keep pushing her boundaries because there was only so far he could go before there was no coming back for both of them.
A knock on the door burst the ice bubble of tension between them.
“Perhaps… tea is not the best idea,” Alfred noted from the doorway, his gaze shifting between the two of them.
“Perhaps not,” Bruce finished his drink in one gulp and put the glass down on the table so forcefully that it made the pens rattle in the cup. He stepped away from Diana without so much as a parting glance, which, quite frankly, she was grateful for.
When he left, choosing to take the stairs to the Batcave rather than wait the three seconds for the elevator, Diana let out a long breath and rubbed the corners of her eyes.
“You know, I’ve been through with making excuses for him for a very long time now,” Alfred spoke, catching her by surprise. Diana had been certain he’d left already. “And if you walk out of this house right now and never come back, I won’t blame you.”
She raised her eyes to him. “But?”
Alfred looked past her at the lake beyond the glass wall. “Master Wayne is scared of change more than anything. We all have our own kryptonite, Ms. Prince. We all do and say things we shouldn’t when we’re scared, and Master Wayne has a bad track record with losing people he cares about.”
“I care about him too, Alfred, but I can’t give him what he wants,” she said softly.
The feeling of loss was suddenly so overwhelming that she could barely breathe. There was no Steve anymore, his presence but a ghost of what they used to have. Her friendship with Bruce was splitting at the seams because, she was starting to realize, there was no common ground for them, in this situation. If by any chance the League fell apart, for whatever reason, it would be like having her world knocked off balance once more, and she wondered how many times she could rise from another such fall.
“I know, and he knows it, too,” Alfred said, his expression softening. “But knowing and accepting are two different things. The latter takes time.” He paused, and then added, “Captain Trevor is a good man and he obviously cares for you deeply.”
Diana shook her head. “It’s been over between us for a very long time.”
“Has it, though?” Alfred smiled, a little sad, a little wistful. “If it was, you wouldn’t care about what Master Wayne thinks.” He hesitated before asking, “May I tell you something?”
She nodded.
“In that woman’s office a few weeks ago, when Captain Trevor walked in… there was a moment when your face lit up like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “I believe that things between you are complicated, but over is not the word I’d use. It is none of my business, Ms. Prince, but if you’ll allow me—if he didn’t want to be here, I’m certain that he’d have left a long time ago.”
She didn’t say anything, just let his words wash over her.
Alfred checked his watch.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to start on dinner.”
“Alfred,” Diana called after him. He turned to her. “Thank you.”
When she returned to the lounge, Clark was the only one there, messing with the arrangement of the china figurines on the bookcase by the wall, probably because Bruce didn’t appreciate people touching them.
“Where is everyone?” Diana asked.
Clark looked up, leaving the decorations alone. “Steve went to nurse his concussion hoping, and I quote him, that it will kill him before the nausea does.” He smiled. “The rest of them decided to get out of the crossfire.”
“Bruce was upset,” she noted, trying and mostly failing to keep the edge out of her voice.
“He’ll get over it,” Clark hummed. He studied her. “Are you okay?” And added when a silent question appeared in her eyes, “I tried to ask Lois but there’s a girl code apparently, and breaking it is the worst crime of all.”
She smiled. “Lois is a very good friend.”
“And you’re good at doing this,” he pointed out.
“What?”
“Deflecting.”
Diana shook her head. “Only because I don’t know what to say.”
“How about you start from the beginning?” he offered, not prying but giving her an opening that she could take if she chose to do so.
“It’s a very long story,” she admitted.
“The middle is fine.”
“I don’t know where that is.”
Clark’s lips quirked. “What about the end?”
Diana looked away, studying the bookshelf and the rows of volumes on it because it was easier to do that than to look in Clark’s eye and see the things she wasn’t ready to deal with. “Bruce thinks I can’t be objective when Steve is involved.”
“Bruce thinks many things, it doesn’t make them true,” Clark shrugged dismissively. “What matters is what you think, Diana.”
She turned to him, searching his face although she wasn’t quite sure what for. “When the car exploded,” she said at last, “Steve tried to shield me. He knows better than anyone in this world that I am the last person to ever need it, and he still—” she bit her lip. “Because it’s what he does. It’s who he is.”
“We all do dumb things on impulse,” Clarks agreed, and she laughed, feeling the tension leave her body.
Diana loved that about Clark, the easiness to him that made her feel lighter. He knew better than the rest of them what it was like to be different, if only because it was the only thing they both had ever known. She had come to a world that had been alien to her, and he had learned that he hadn't been part of the world that he had always considered his own. However different, those experiences had left a mark on both of them.
As for Clark, she wondered sometimes if he was the same person now as before his death. If there was any big revelation to getting a second chance to do things right and fix his mistakes, but she didn’t know how to ask, fearful of being intrusive. And in part, scared of his answer as well.
“Steve seems like a great guy,” Clark added when she didn’t speak. “And smart. He knows just about everything there is to know about jets. And mechanics. And physics.”
“He was a pilot in the Great War,” Diana explained. “Not so much afterwards, though. Not after…” She trailed off, the words jamming themselves in her throat. There were, perhaps, losses bigger than time, things that one couldn’t get over no matter how much of it had passed. “There was an accident.”
Which was one way to put it.
She still dreamed of his plane soaring up into the ink-black sky, the only hope they all had taking away the dreams she had managed to weave the night before. She still woke up in the middle of the night with such emptiness inside of her that her whole body ached. It was always one or the other — save the one person she held most dear, or millions of others. How could they have chosen otherwise? But even after he had come back to her, after she’d found him again, the fear had remained. The very same one that lived with her still. Sometimes, it felt like she kept losing him every day since the moment they'd met, even after he had stopped being hers.
Clark was watching her, waiting, and it occurred to Diana then that in a century, Steve was the only person who had ever known the whole story, the only one who had met the real her. Before she was the saviour and a beacon of hope, as Bruce had called her once. She had come close to sharing it once, a long time ago, but the weight of the truth seemed like too high a price to pay for the promises she couldn’t make and knew they both wouldn’t keep. It didn’t seem fair, and it felt odd, too. Too personal to let someone else in. Someone who was not Steve.
She wasn’t ready. Not then and not now, but Clark was there, and he was willing to listen, and of them all, he was the one who could truly understand her because there was no way out for them both. They chose to live fully in this world over staying in the shadows, and there was no knowing if it was the right decision or not, except for the sense of belonging that it gave them, however frail it felt at times.
And so she gave him the abridged version, bare facts devoid of feelings and everything that used to make her blood flow faster. Funny how you could distill a hundred years of life down to a few sentences that sounded detached, almost flat, when in reality the story behind them was blooming and breathing, alive in its own way.
Clark stayed quiet when she finished, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window unseeingly, seemingly not noticing the forest several hundred yards away from the house and the stretch of grass leading towards it.
“His heart beats faster when he looks at you,” he said at last. “Or when he hears your voice.” He turned to Diana. “I’m not—I wasn’t eavesdropping, but sometimes I can’t help it.” His smile was sheepish, apologetic, although not pitying as Diana had feared.
She dropped her gaze, remembering suddenly that she had never even asked Steve if, maybe, he was with someone else now. If maybe all of this was a minor kink in his life.
“I’m not the one who left,” she said softly.
“You know, I wasn’t really dead,” Clark started, faltering, trying to find the words, to pull his thoughts together. “It was like sleeping, only I couldn’t wake up. Couldn’t remember myself, either. Like my life force was alive in its purest form.” Clark shook his head, uncertain if he was making any sense and there was something akin to awe in his voice over having experienced something so profoundly other-earthly. “I was dreaming, of the things I couldn’t have but wanted so desperately.” His face grew sombre. “I remember wanting to live more than anything, even though I didn’t quite know what it meant. I still remember that feeling so clearly sometimes.”
Diana’s brows knitted together as she took in his story.
“All I’m saying is,” he finished when her expression remained puzzled, “that some things are not always what they seem on the surface.”
“He knew where to find me,” she whispered, old hurt creeping into her voice.
“People change, circumstances change. Sometimes you need to step away from something to see the full picture, and sometimes taking that step forward again is the hardest thing.” Clark shrugged, and she knew that it was a very simple truth that was often impossible to accept. Did he know that Lois had said almost the exact same thing once? “I’m not taking any sides, Diana, and if I were, I’d take yours. You’re my friend. As it is, though, this whole situation has nothing to do with me, but… I can’t imagine a scenario in which a man whose pulse goes crazy around you would want to shield someone else from a bomb. I bet he wouldn’t try to shield me.”
“You don’t need it,” she told him.
“Not the point.”
“You don’t know Steve,” she added, feeling the warmth blossom in her stomach. “He might have done it still.”
Clark smiled and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his pants. “You know him well enough to have that argument.”
She had never felt more cornered even though she had no idea what he had cornered her into. Believing, perhaps. Back to square one because wasn’t that where it had all started in the first place? She believed in saving the world, enough to leave Themyscira with Steve, and he believed in her.
A very unsavoury curse appeared on the tip of her tongue. She clenched her jaw to keep it from slipping out.
In the end, Clark shook his head, chuckling. “Wanna come over for dinner sometime this week?” he asked, steering their conversation back towards neutral ground. “I’m on cooking duty. We could have a Taco Thursday or something. I hear that food is in short supply here. At least when Barry is around.” Which was never a secret.
“I think it’s called Taco Tuesday.”
“Who cares?” He hummed. “I could even go big and leave you and Lois alone with a bottle of wine to talk about everything that I’m genetically unable to understand.”
Diana laughed. “Don’t sell yourself short, Clark.”
“So, what do you think?”
“It sounds good,” she promised. “Very good. Thank you. I’ll let you know.”
He nodded, then glanced toward the hallway, and back at her. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes,” she said. Somehow. Someday. “I am.”
---
He hated bloody concussions. Steve was lying sprawled on his bed like a starfish feeling as if the room was swaying around him. He squeezed his eyes shut but it didn’t help. To make it worse, his stomach twisted again, and he snapped them wide open once more, choosing to focus on the chandelier over his head the way sailors were advised to focus on the horizon to reduce seasickness.
It didn’t help.
Now, broken bones he could understand but a slightly bruised brain was an awful inconvenience that didn’t even hurt, strictly speaking. It was merely a nuisance that was a pain to deal with.
Last night in Metropolis, he had come to with his head cradled in Diana’s hands, the acrid smell of burning plastic and paint, and the heat from the fire licking at his skin. Her face hovering over his had been pale, her eyes wide and frightened, glistening in the light of the raging flames.
It had reminded him, oddly, of the day she had pulled him out of the water on Themyscira in what had felt like a different lifetime now, so maybe there was some truth to how history tended to repeat itself in the strangest ways. Except it had been dark and cold, and Diana’s expression was a little panicked instead of curious. The warmth of her touch to his cheeks had made him shiver.
“Steve.” Her smile had been watery and weak, and he had loved it more than anything.
It had turned out that they had been far enough away from the car to avoid being seriously hurt, however, after getting unnecessarily familiar with the wall earlier, his skull had not appreciated being smacked into the asphalt. It had been a miracle that he'd only ended up with a mild concussion and not a brain hemorrhage, even if it turned out being a total bitch nonetheless.
Steve remembered the sirens of the firetrucks and the demands of the police for everyone to stay back. Remembered Diana hauling him up to his feet and the earth swaying a little beneath him as she wrapped her arm around his waist and put her hand on his shoulder, the fire reflecting in her eyes when he looked at her. Remembered needing to throw up but managing to avoid it, somehow, even though the blinking lights and the wailing around them had been making his stomach coil. She had smelled good, that had been the one thing that had anchored itself clearly in Steve’s mind, and she had felt reassuringly warm standing by him in the chilly night.
She'd had to call Clark to ask him to come and get them before texting Bruce or someone else from the League to tell them what had happened. Bruce had called her when they were on the way back to Gotham, with Steve sprawled in the back on Clark’s car, trying really hard not to die as the mother of all headaches had tried to pound its way out of his skull. He couldn’t hear what she had said, the sound of her voice in the periphery of his attention as they'd swam in and out of headlights on the highway.
He remembered her reaching between the seats to squeeze his hand, briefly. Or maybe he'd dreamed it, seeing as how the world had felt soft around the edges then, fading out at times.
Steve rubbed his forehead as if it could chase his headache away and winced. He’d been awake for close to 30 hours now, exhausted beyond comprehension, but also too wired to sleep. He pushed up to sit with a grimace and reached for the suit jacket hanging on the back of the chair. He found the USB stick and plugged it into his laptop.
A knock on the door startled him, and he looked up just as the door opened a crack, and then wider when Alfred saw him sitting at the desk.
“Thought you might appreciate this,” the older man said, setting a cup of tea and a glass of water before Steve and then pulling a bottle of Tylenol out of the pocket of his vest and placing it next to them.
“You’re a marvel, Alfred,” Steve smiled weakly, reaching for the pills.
“I’ll put it on my resume,” Alfred noted. “Shouldn’t you be resting, Captain?” he asked, his gaze flickering briefly toward the laptop.
“Can’t,” Steve shook his head. “I don’t think I’m supposed to, either. Besides…” He gestured vaguely toward the laptop. “Thanks for that program, by the way.”
“Did you find anything?”
“Not sure yet,” Steve admitted. “Diana might work it out, though. I think. I’m not quite sure what we were after, to be honest. The art… it’s her domain, not mine.”
A shadow passed over Alfred’s face. “Can I ask you something, Captain?”
“Sure.” Steve nodded, and then decided to never ever do that again.
Alfred’s frown deepened. “Do you have any idea what happened there?”
“No. Your guess is as good as mine.” He paused. “But it wasn’t a gas tank.”
The older man nodded. “Of course, not.” His jaw worked for a moment as if he was going to add something else, but reconsidered the last moment. “Well, you should get some rest, Captain,” he said, turning to leave. “It will do you good.”
“Thank you,” Steve called after him.
The idea seemed ludicrous, though. Somehow, the adrenaline rush was still making his hands shake just a little — the feeling all too familiar to brush it off like it was nothing. He shook two Tylenol pills out of a bottle and washed them down with the water before turning back to the screen. He tried to remember the people they had seen, the people they'd talked to, but the previous night was a blur in his head.
Maybe later, when the fog had lifted, he’d be able to remember something useful.
Steve rubbed his eyes and let out a weary sigh.
It took him a good couple of hours to go through every file on the USB, but most of them meant nothing to him. They might have well been in Swahili, so foreign the legalese looked to him. There were so many of them though, some — he figured — were transaction records, others looked like assessment reports but the items, if they were about art pieces at all, were coded. The numbers and figures could be referring to anything. For all Steve knew, this was all useless.
He knew that Diana would pursue the retrieval of the painting, but chances were that it would be the only useful thing to come out of their trip.
He closed all the windows, feeling a new kind of a throb blossoming behind his eyes, one that was rooted in frustration, and stood up. There was a nagging feeling in the back of his mind, a thought he didn’t quite seem to grasp, yet unable to shake it off, either.
That, or maybe it was exhaustion and concussion induced paranoia.
He needed to give the damned thing to Diana. She would know what to make of it, perhaps. This was her world after all, not his.
Steve grimaced a little. He’d spent the past few hours trying not to think of her going after Bruce this afternoon. Trying not to think of kissing her in Darrell Quinn’s office the night before, the taste of her so imprinted on his mouth he could feel it even now. Did she tell Bruce about it? Or about him seeing her half-naked in Lois’s apartment? Christ, like he needed to give the man another reason to dislike him.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, suddenly all too tired to care. It wasn’t personal, he knew that. None of that was. She only took him with her for lack of better options. There was no use in pretending otherwise.
Steve stood up and crossed the room, yanking the door open to go find Diana—
—only to see her standing on the other side, about to knock.
She lowered her hand and offered him a hesitant smile. “Hi.”
“Hey,” he echoed, caught suddenly off guard.
She had showered and changed since the last time he had seen her. He could smell something sweet on her, and her hair was still slightly damp and falling down her shoulders in heavy coils. Could she hear his heart beating? All this time, and he'd never learned how to be around her without feeling like he could hardly breathe.
“Is… everything okay?” His brows knitted together as he braced himself for the crisis du jour, unable to think of any other reason for her appearance at his door.
“Yes. Yes, it is,” Diana assured him. “I just… I wanted to see if you were okay.”
“Oh.” Speak of unexpected. “I’m good.” He nodded for emphasis and regretted it immediately. Again. “Alfred gave me something for the… uh, headache. So I’m… fine. Great. Never better.”
“Never?” Her eyebrow arched, a tiny smile making its return.
Steve felt the tension seep out of his body.
“Okay, maybe not never,” he admitted after a moment.
It wasn’t Diana’s fault that he was here, that he had no idea what he was doing. That he couldn’t quite cope with the fact that she’d moved on when he very obviously hadn’t. She didn’t ask for it and he couldn’t continue punishing her for trying to live her life — something that he had wanted her to do more than anything.
Steve cleared his throat. “I was actually—I was going to find you.”
“You were?” She looked surprised.
In the quiet hallway, their voices sounded oddly loud and out of place and he couldn’t help but drop his a notch. For a moment, he watched the thin fabric of her shirt move as she breathed, which got him thinking about her chest rising and falling against his as she kissed him. Which got him thinking—
He really needed that sleep.
“Yeah, I—” Steve practically shoved the USB drive into her hand. “I wanted to give you this.” God bless conversation pieces. “Thought maybe what’s on it would make more sense to you.” He cleared his throat again and wondered if she was going to ask whether he also had a cold in addition to a concussion. Heavens help him…
Diana took it, her forehead creasing thoughtfully. “Did you find anything?” she asked.
“I wasn’t really sure what to look for,” he said, a hesitant frown appearing between his brows.
“What is it, Steve?”
“Nothing, probably,” he shook his head. “I don’t know.” He let out a breath. “LexCorp is mentioned quite a few times, but it might not mean anything. Some of the documents have no time stamp on them so it’s hard to tell how far back they date. And… you said that Lex Luthor was involved with charities and art and whatnot.”
Her fingers closed around it. “Thank you. I will have a look.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For getting it.”
She nodded. “Of course.” Her eyes rose to the band-aid covering the cut on his forehead, just below his hairline. “Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”
She’d asked him that already. And so had Clark. And so had Alfred. And Barry, whose exact words were Dude, this is so sick! Are you gonna die? And it did sound like admiration of sorts but Steve wasn’t entirely sure.
“Been worse,” he shrugged dismissively.
“I seem to remember that,” she breathed.
“They can’t tell me anything I don’t already know,” he added.
She nodded again.
Silence settled between them, not uncomfortable but very present. His fingers itched to rake through her hair, he wanted to taste her again.
Bruce appeared at the end of the hallway, pausing when he spotted them, his eyes narrowed, his jaw set tautly. Looking past Diana’s shoulder, Steve held his gaze, his lips pursed tight, reminded once again that he was a barely wanted guest here, having no claim on the woman before him.
She had to have told Bruce about the kiss, and everything else. Diana was many things but dishonest wasn't one of them. And now the Batman was probably after Steve's head.
Great.
Not that he cared. He wasn’t trying to—he wouldn’t—
After a second, Bruce stepped into his bedroom, and Steve let out a breath.
“Steve?” A concerned frown was back on Diana’s face as she watched him, her head tilted quizzically. She glanced over her shoulder, but the hallway was empty and dark.
He dragged his gaze back to hers, suddenly very aware of how close she was. It took all of his willpower not to take a step back, knowing that she’d see right through it, and that she’d be hurt, and she was not to blame for his petty jealousy that he had no right to own.
“Sorry,” he muttered, running a hand over his hair. “I’m a bit tired, I guess. It’s been a long day… two days, actually. Maybe we need to sleep.”
Not ‘we’ together . Did she hear it that way? Just stop talking .
His face flushed, the heat creeping up his neck. What the hell was his problem? It was entirely and utterly unfair that while the other people living here possessed super strength or super speed or super everything, his one and only superpower seemed to be ending up with his foot in his mouth with enviable regularity. He needed to get the hell out of this house.
How did she manage to move on? And why couldn’t he?
Steve grimaced a little, but Diana didn’t seem at all concerned about his linguistic fails.
“Of course.” She paused. “And if you need anything…”
“Yeah, thanks. So I’ll probably…” He wasn’t sure where he was going with this while he tried not to think of where Diana was going to spend the next undefined period of time. Bruce’s room, most likely. Now that definitely wasn’t a mental image he needed. “It's nothing some rest won’t fix.”
Christ, he sounded like a bumper sticker.
“Okay, well…”
“Goodnight, Diana,” he breathed, stepping back into his room.
“Goodnight,” she echoed softly — the last thing he heard as he closed the door.
---
The only other picture that Diana had of Steve, aside from the prized photograph taken in Veld in 1918 (which was too fragile for travel and stayed indefinitely in Paris), was a snapshot taken by a street photographer in Florence on a gloomy day in the late 1940s during their trip to Italy.
The wind had been harsh and unforgiving that day, tugging at their hair and clothes, turning their cheeks red. The day had promised more rain as they'd walked up the narrow streets to Piazzale Michelangelo overlooking the expanse of the city, hands clasped together and fingers entwined for warmth and comfort. There, among the replicas of works of the famous sculptor, Steve had taken pity on a lone photographer who had chosen the wrong time to come looking for clientele, shivering in the too-thin coat.
In the photo, they were supposed to be looking at the camera, frozen near the railing running in a semi-circle around the small, picturesque square. However, just as the shutter had gone off, a flock of birds had taken off into the sky, startled by something. On instinct, Diana had turned after them, distracted, leaving them with the image of her with her face upturned towards the birds soaring toward the low grey clouds and Steve looking at her with a small, tender smile, his expression wondrous. Like he couldn’t believe that the moment they had shared was real.
She remembered that trip with striking clarity. Not the places they had visited or the things they had seen — even though she had fallen irrevocably in love with the Pantheon and had decided that she could wander endless halls of museums for hours on end, never tiring of them — so much as the feeling of deep, infinite contentment. Lazy mornings and slow days, the smell of the ocean and the cries of seagulls, cold hands and the taste of bitter coffee. Steve’s laughter. Kisses that would steal their breaths away. She had never been happier.
Diana had forgotten all about this photograph afterwards. She had assumed that Steve had it. After all, back then it had seemed to her that they didn’t need to bottle up those moments for later; that they would have each other for as long as they lived. She had found it again in one of Steve’s books when she had been packing for London to start her job at the British Museum.
It was old and faded now, frayed a little around the edges from being carried in her books or purses for close to half a century now, the grey sky above their heads yellowed from time. And yet, she was still looking up with the same marvellous expression, and Steve was still gazing at her like she was the finest creation ever to exist.
Alone in her room, Diana pulled it out. Her finger tracing his form, frozen in time.
It had been a while since she’d looked at it, choosing not to continually cut the old wounds open just as they started to scar. The solace of owning it was enough.
Studying it now, she tried to read their faces, see beyond the easy smiles, beyond the simplicity of the moment. Could they have known back then how their story was going to end? She wanted him gone now, her chest caving in every time he’d look away from her, or step out of her way as if he was scared to touch her for fear of being burned. And yet, she couldn’t bear the thought of it, of the final goodbye. There was never supposed to be one.
These days, she could no longer read him as easily as she used to before, and she was wondering now if she had simply forgotten how to do it, or if it was Steve who had grown a whole new armour to keep her away. He fit, though. He fit with the League; everyone — maybe short of Bruce — was fascinated by him. Even Arthur, who was the hardest one to impress. And even Alfred whose loyalty to Bruce always dictated his allegiances.
He fit in her life, too. In small ways. She liked hearing the sound of his voice in the kitchen talking to Alfred or bickering half-heartedly with Barry, or humming something under his breath, or deflecting Victor’s quips. It was easy and familiar, and her heart ached for more. For his smile that didn’t feel plastic, for the easy conversations they used to have without dancing around the words that never seemed quite right anymore.
She missed kissing him the way she had last night, without thinking, without caring. Missed having his hands on her body, sure and possessive in just the way she liked, knowing exactly where to touch her. Missed having what they'd had, and part of her wanted nothing more than to crawl into his arms and make him promise her over and over again that he would never leave her.
She wanted their dreams back, but she didn’t want to get hurt anymore.
Diana sighed and put the photograph away. It wasn’t even Steve’s choice to be here, Bruce was right about that. If it wasn’t for Amanda Waller, he wouldn’t be back, and that seemed like a flimsy bridge to put her heart on. He’d made his decision nearly 70 years ago. She only wished she knew how to live with it.
She booted her laptop and plugged the USB drive into it.
Three of the folders copied from Quinn’s laptop were mostly financial statements and income forms. There were some balance sheets regarding the hotel and a few letters she dismissed because they had nothing to do with his charity work or his art collection. Also on the drive were appraisal reports and purchase forms but cracking the codes that stood for individual items — a rather common practice used on the off-chance that they would fall into the wrong hands — would take some time.
She rubbed her forehead, feeling the exhaustion of the day catching up with her as the adrenaline rush that had carried her through the past twelve hours dissolved into nothing.
And then her gaze snatched onto a familiar name on the list before her. Diana’s brows pulled together, frustration rising inside of her in a tidal wave.
She pushed up to stand, pacing the room as she tried to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, albeit with little success.
For that, she was going to need something stronger than Google.
She grabbed her phone, pressing dial on one of the top contacts on her list as she headed out of the door and toward the elevator to the Batcave.
Lois picked up after the second ring.
“Hi,” Diana breathed into the receiver, prepared for the onslaught of questions to pour into her ear. And smiled when they did. “Yes, I’m fine. We’re fine, thank you.” She looked around the quiet house, her eyes darting towards the end of the hallway and the door to Steve’s room but she looked away just as quickly. “You have a minute?”
---
Themyscira, 1945
In the pale moonlight, the sand looked silver and soft, melting into the ocean as they made their way down the path leading from the cliffs. It was a different beach, not the one where Diana had dragged him out of the water and where so many of her sisters had lost their lives. This one was on the other side of the island, a quiet bay where the waves were tame and the currents less vicious.
“What do you think?” Diana asked, letting go of his hand as they stepped onto the sand.
Steve watched her chest rise as she inhaled the fresh, cool air.
He glanced up at the sky dotted with brilliant stars, so much brighter here than he’d ever seen before, framing the halo of the half-moon beckoning them to the horizon.
“Depends,” he said, revelling in the breeze coming from the sea after a stifling-hot day. “What do you have in mind?”
Without a word, Diana reached down to untie the straps of her sandals that were snaking up her calves and dropped them on the sand. She glanced at him over her shoulder and undid the clasps that held her armour in place.
Steve’s mouth went dry.
“You can’t—” he started hoarsely, his gaze drawn momentarily to the cliffs above them, certain that he was about to see the night guards there, but the white rocks remained empty, towering silently over them.
When he turned to Diana, her armour was already lying on top of her sandals. She wasn’t looking at him, but Steve had a distinct suspicion that she took special care of shimming out of her undergarments for his benefit as his eyes followed the lines of her lithe body.
“Yeah, I guess you can do that…” he mumbled, watching thin fabric fall to her feet.
She raised her eyes to meet his, and he swallowed soundly, allowing his gaze to dip down her body before he lifted it to hers again, all to find a wicked smile and every promise he’d ever wanted to see painted across her face.
Desire crazed through him like a strike of lightning, his mouth opening to protest when she turned around and started towards the water. She paused when her toes touched the waves and glanced over her shoulder.
“Steve?”
He took a breath and willed a smile into existence.
“I don’t have my swimwear on me.”
She grinned. “Good thing you don’t need it.”
He watched her wander into the ocean, and by the time the water reached her thighs, he was hopping on a spot as he tried to pull his shoes off, far less graceful than Diana could ever be. She never once looked back, assuming that he would follow, and Steve had no intention of proving her wrong. He pulled off his shirt, hesitating for another moment before parting with the rest of his clothes, unable to stop glancing at the cliffs as if half expecting someone to shoot an arrow at him before he so much as touched the Queen’s daughter.
His indecisiveness was short-lived, though. If that was how he was going to die, then so be it. He couldn’t think of a better way to go.
The water was pleasantly cool, raising goosebumps along his skin as he waded into it, allowing it to hug his ankles, his claves, his thighs. In the blackness all around them, not disturbed by the city lights that he was so used to, it looked like the sea was melting into the sky. The waves enveloped his chest and Steve pushed away from the sandy bottom, allowing them to cradle his body.
“Diana?” He looked around but saw nothing but the gentle sway of the ocean. “Diana!” The only sounds around him were the whisper of the trees up on the cliffs and the lapping of the waves against the shore. “Come on…" he muttered.
She appeared out of the water right before him, startling him and making his heart slam against his ribcage. He didn’t move though, his eyes glued to hers. She smiled and smoothed her hands over her hair, slicking it back from her face. With the droplets glistening on her eyelashes and that self-indulgent smile that he knew so well, she looked every bit the goddess that she was. So beautiful it almost hurt.
“Feels good, yes?” she asked, tilting her head just the slightest bit and placing her hands on his shoulders to keep them close.
“Mm-hm,” Steve hummed noncommittally.
She laughed softly. “The water.”
His arms slid around her waist. “Yeah, that too.” Steve looked at the cliffs again. “What if someone sees us?”
“Then they will pretend that they don't,” Diana whispered.
“Oh, boy,” he breathed out. It had been two weeks, and so far the reaction of the Amazons to his presence was mostly curiosity mixed with amusement, primarily over his surprise regarding their ways of life. But half the time he still waited to be dragged back to the caves, the memory of it stronger than he had ever thought it could be.
With her finger on his chin, Diana turned his face to her. “It’s just us, Steve.”
“I can see that.” His gaze dropped to her slightly parted lips, heat careening through him with a new force. “Just don’t want to get in trouble for doing this.” He dipped his head to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the side of her throat, sucking hard. He smiled when her breath hitched and her nails dug into his skin.
“You won’t,” Diana murmured, weaving her arms around his neck.
“Or this.” His mouth moved to the spot behind her ear.
She muttered something under her breath, in Greek if he wasn’t mistaken.
“You were saying?” he whispered, kissing the water off her skin.
Weightless in the sea, she wrapped her long legs around his hips and Steve lost track of his explorations, as well as his breathing. Her hand moved to his cheek, tipping his face to her, watching her eyes grow dark with want.
“Diana.”
She smiled, her thumb running over his cheekbone. God, I want you so much , Steve thought.
“I’ve always wanted to do this,” she confessed.
He blinked. “Do what?”
His grip on her tightened, her gaze dipping to his mouth, her hand gripping the hair on the nape of his neck. “This,” she repeated.
Steve’s eyes widened, his need for her pulsing in his veins like it had a life of its own. He knew that she was perfectly aware of what she was saying, what she was doing to him. She seemed to be enjoying herself quite a bit, too. And he was more than willing to let her. Now. Tomorrow. Forever.
Had there been a whole Amazon army somewhere above them, with their arrows pointed at him, it wouldn’t be enough to make him pull away from her in that moment.
“Goddammit,” Steve swore before crashing his mouth to hers and taking her under the water with him.
---
Gotham, 2017
In his several weeks in Gotham, Steve had wondered if the people here had to sell their souls for a glimpse of the sun, but now that it was shining brightly in the cold October sky, so piercing blue that it hurt to look, he couldn’t quite believe it. He stepped out of a café in the business centre of Gotham, a cup of coffee in his hand, and squinted in the sunlight, shivering a little. It was not cold so much as windy, the chilly gusts snaking under his jacket and raising goosebumps along his spine.
All the same, it was a good day to get out of the lake house, he figured.
He paused in his tracks when he spotted a black car parked near his bike at the curb, so clean and shiny that it was hard to believe that someone had driven it here across the gritty city without getting so much as a splash from a puddle on it. The very same car that hadn't been there five minutes ago.
Amanda Waller was leaning against its polished hood, her hands tucked into the pockets of her thick cashmere coat, watching him walk down the steps towards her. Steve’s stomach tightened with the half-foreboding and half-frustration.
If only he'd known that the key to finding her was not looking he’d have done it a long time ago.
He slowed down, his steps measured as he approached her.
Waller straightened up and gave him a once-over, seemingly interested in the not quite faded shiner under his left eye.
“Captain Trevor,” she said flatly. “I heard you were looking for me.”
Yeah, two weeks ago .
“I heard you were hard to find,” Steve responded in kind, the smell of his coffee suddenly not in the least appetizing.
“I’ve been busy,” she shrugged, either not noticing his irritation, or choosing to ignore it. “Anything I can help you with?”
“You lied to me,” he said, only barely keeping his voice in check. It would probably do him no good to yell at a government agent in the middle of the street, but there was also a chance that he might stop caring about it very soon.
Waller arched her eyebrows at him. “About what?”
“When you offered me that deal, you knew… you knew about—”
“Your ex-girlfriend?” she offered. “I didn’t lie about it, Captain Trevor. I merely never mentioned it.”
“A lie by omission is still a lie.”
“And no, I didn’t know about you,” Waller continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “I suspected it, but a suspicion doesn’t amount to much these days. It’s not like Diana Prince bares her soul on every corner, you should know that.” Her gaze was sharp, certain.
Steve stared at her.
She tilted her head, studying him for a long moment, and then turned on her heel and headed towards the square across the street. It was teeming with pigeons and businessmen on their lunch break, both equally disappointed by how deceiving the sun was, offering light but none of the warmth.
“Walk with me,” Waller said over her shoulder, and for a second, Steve contemplated hopping on his bike and speeding the hell away from there. If she needed him, she could damn well try to chase after him for once. And then he shook his head, dumped his untouched coffee into the trash bin and hurried after her.
“I want out,” he said, falling into step with her. She wasn’t walking fast, but he couldn’t help feeling like there was a destination she had in mind. That, or maybe she always walked like she was on a mission.
“Out of what?” she asked, and Steve grimaced.
She knew damn well what he meant. They both did, and Steve was tired of her games.
“Out of Bruce Wayne’s house, for one thing,” he said, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket as well and pulling his head into the collar when the wind greeted him in earnest. “You want something from me, come up with something else. The Justice League is not working out… for anyone.”
“No,” Waller said simply, and that one word made his hackles stand on end. “I need accountability and cooperation from them. They prefer Diana Prince as the leader, but she doesn’t live here, therefore the Batman is the one I have to work with, whether I want it or not. He wanted metahumans. You’re one, it’s that simple. Besides, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with this deal.”
“Oh, come on,” Steve let out a short, humourless bark of a laugh, then added softer. “The man hates me.”
“He lacks interpersonal skills,” Waller shrugged matter-of-factly.
“Which is not my problem.”
“Well, it is mine, Captain.” She glanced at him, her voice impassive. “I’m trying to keep this city in check and I can’t do it when a bunch of people who can tear it apart without breaking a sweat hop from rooftop to rooftop as they please, causing more damage than helping.”
“Is that what you said when your gang of criminals went rogue?” Maybe if he pissed her off enough, she wouldn’t want to deal with him.
Waller pursed her lips, and that was perhaps the first emotion Steve had seen her express that day. “That is exactly why I need to know what the hell is happening with the Justice League,” she said tightly. He could hear the notes of frustration in her voice.
Steve stared at the square before them, at the toddlers chasing birds and the office clerks picking at their food with plastic forks.
“And what if I just leave? Pack up my stuff and go? It’s a risky thing to have a person as a bargaining chip, Agent Waller, and I know damn well how to make sure we would never see each other again.”
“Then you won’t get what you came here for,” she reminded him evenly.
“Well, I can always just wait for what, 50-60 years? And then it won’t really matter anymore, will it?”
She seemed to have expected that answer.
“I could also make sure that your new friends end up in the S.T.A.R. Labs so we can figure out how exactly Barry Allen runs as fast as he does, and how Victor Stone functions at all.”
Steve’s chest tightened at her implication, his breath hitching momentarily. She wouldn’t—wouldn’t do it after everything they’d done to keep the world safe, would she?
Would she really risk destroying the League, or at the very least forever severing the thread of possibility for a peaceful coexistence with them for this kind of petty tantrum? Was not being in control of them worse than not having them at all? Steve thought that she was probably bluffing. She had to be. Where would she be if it wasn’t for them? But she was scared of them, too, and maybe she also hated them a little bit for the trust that the public put in them whereas she often faced nothing but contempt. It was a dangerous combination, indeed.
“I don’t even know those people,” he said as evenly as he could muster.
Waller stopped, forcing him to pause as well, her gaze hard and uncompromising. If she and Bruce Wayne were put in a staring contest, one of them would surely turn to dust.
“Then leave,” she said dismissively.
Steve stared back at her, willing himself not to look away first.
“I don’t understand what is it that you want from me.”
“From you? Nothing. You are merely a convenience, Captain, even though I have to admit that your longevity intrigues me greatly.” She turned, her eyes following a group of middle school kids who walked past them laughing so loudly they spooked a flock of hungry pigeons off the vacated benches. “All’s fair in love and war.” She looked at Steve again. “I’m sure you’re familiar with the notion.”
“We are not at war,” he said.
“Maybe not yet,” she noted. “You just never see it coming.”
“What is A.R.G.U.S.?” he asked because what the hell?
She smiled thinly. “All in due time, Captain. Have a good afternoon.”
With that, she turned on her heel and started towards her car while Steve remained frozen to the spot, his mind racing. Having his life on the line didn’t bother him as much. After all, it was how he had lived for over half of his life. But the other people—
Would she really turn them into lab rats? He didn’t trust her not to.
Ten feet away from him, Waller suddenly stopped and turned to him again, making Steve raise his head.
“To be honest, I don’t really care where you live.”
To be continued
Notes:
I so can't wait to show you what comes next!
Comments are love and I will adore you for them :)
Chapter 12
Notes:
Okay, so.... Some of you, by which I mean all of you, have been asking me to fix the relationship between Steve and Diana for months now. Well, guess what?
To be fair, I couldn't wait to get there myself. I hope you'll cry because I did and I don't want to have suffered through this on my own.
There's some explicit reunion stuff near the end. Just a warning if it's not your thing and you'd rather skip it, or if you're a minor, which I don't want to think about.
Well, I guess you're good to go :) Thank you for your love and patience!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gotham, 2017
The storm came two nights later, strong and vicious, nature lashing out at the world with frightening determination. The wind was bending the trees around the lake house in half while the thunder rolled angrily so close to the roof that it felt like it was going to shake it right off.
“Do not turn left,” Steve said into a headpiece as he watched the grainy image of a security camera on the screen before him.
“ There’s also a right ,” Victor’s voice sounded loud and clear in his ear.
“There’s a staircase straight ahead of you,” Alfred leaned closer to the screen across the desk, his fingers tapping impatiently against it.
Steve’s stomach tightened, his mind racing. The howling of the wind outside was making the Batcave feel particularly… well, cavernous. And yet, he still preferred it to the ground level of the house where the walls suddenly felt fragile under the raging gusts of wind and the heavy downpour that made him feel like they were drowning. Steve had no idea what was Bruce thinking, choosing to live in an actual glass box.
The distress call from the S.T.A.R. Labs in Gotham had come about an hour ago, and at first, it seemed like it was merely a power outage issue, what with the storm trying to practically flood the entire city. Until the maintenance crew had arrived to have a look only to find the building alight and half of the staff beaten within an inch of their lives and the other half holed up in every nook and crevice they could find. The Lab had been taken over by what appeared to be a group of people who Barry had described in a hushed whisper as ‘freaky’ — Steve found that detail particularly helpful.
Fast, strong, ruthless, and without a grain of humanity and consciousness to them, they were adamant to leave the place, even if it meant taking a few lives along the way.
“ Test subjects ,” Bruce grunted with disgust when they came across some sort of hibernation pods in the basement with life support systems hooked up to them. Steve could hear him running, his footfalls soft and almost soundless for someone his size. “ Someone was trying to create their own universal soldiers .” The words sounded sour in his mouth, like he'd bitten into a lemon.
“ Or meta-humans ,” Victor added somberly.
Steve exchanged stunned glances with Alfred.
New meta-humans…
And suddenly everything felt a thousand times more real — the intensity, the danger, the tight voices on the other end of their earpieces. Like the whole world had zeroed in on the handful of people trying to solve this puzzle while time slowed down to a crawl, so precious each moment was. So life-changing each of them could be.
Steve's mind jumped to Waller immediately. To their conversation a couple of days ago. She wouldn’t do it—she wouldn’t have had time–
How long could it take to drug and brainwash someone out of their mind? Maybe not long, but Victor had said that the place looked like it had been operating for some time. Located on the lower level of the S.T.A.R. Labs (an area that wasn’t even supposed to be in use) it could have remained hidden for a while, Steve was thinking now. A backup plan? Her Task Force X idea had failed spectacularly, costing her not only a chunk of her ego but also the trust of the people she was meant to protect. And the League, despite her attempts, was barely under her control.
If he was honest with himself and based on what he knew about that woman, Steve wouldn’t put keeping a whole new army on ice past her. Someone — Bruce? — had mentioned hibernation pods, and given the Labs’ access to resources and technology, Steve didn’t doubt that they could probably come up with a way to keep someone in a medically induced coma for as long as they needed it.
Until the storm had cut off power for however short a time and woken up the subjects.
But that was food for thought for later, something to consider when they had more time and hopefully more information. Right now though, they needed to get everyone out of the facility and try to round up the… whatever those people were.
“They are soldiers,” Steve muttered when one of the cameras snatched an image of two men in what looked like hospital scrubs walking along the corridor, their eyes glassy, their faces nothing but stone masks that carried no trace of emotion.
“Pardon me?” Alfred turned to him.
“Soldiers,” Steve repeated, his brows pulling together. “You can see it in their posture, in the way they move.” Like they were on the prowl.
He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad news. On one hand, it was one less question bumping around his head. On the other, though, they were trained to survive at all costs. They tended to be excellent at hand to hand combat and although that factored greatly into a certain degree of predictability that the League could use to their advantage, devoid of all other instincts, they could be lethal. Especially if they were stripped of other instincts as well.
He’d seen it before, in the Great War. Not a medically induced condition, but more like despair that had stripped men around him of their humanity. Like they weren’t going to stop at anything. They had reached their limit and had nothing to lose. Except they were not at war now.
The men paused in front of the camera and looked up, and for a second Steve got an unnerving feeling that they were staring straight at him. So much so that he even drew back involuntarily. And then one of them reached for the lens and the screen went black.
“Great,” Alfred muttered.
“Victor, is your father there?” Steve asked a little too loudly, getting a muttered curse from Bruce.
“ No ,” Victor responded promptly. “ Not this late. The only staff around are those burning the late-night oil.”
A loud noise of something like a file cabinet toppling to the floor cut him off.
And then Diana’s voice barked at Barry to duck, so close that it made Steve’s pulse stutter. More commotion followed dotted with grunts and yelling, although whose they were he couldn't tell. Arthur’s war cry cut in, which meant he was close to someone with a headpiece as he deemed being hooked to one of Bruce’s gadgets uncool. More screams. Rapid footfalls of someone running.
“Master Wayne?” Alfred said if a little tentatively, fearful of being distracting when Bruce least needed it.
Nervous energy mixed with adrenaline was throbbing in Steve’s chest, hot as lava. His hand was gripping the edge of the desk. Another peal of thunder rolled over their heads, making the whole house shake all the way down to the foundation.
“ We have half of them, out of about a dozen ,” Victor’s voice cut through the sounds that Steve was no longer trying to interpret. “ And the staff is safe in the back, but a few might need medical assistance . Those guys knew what they were doing. ”
“ Don’t hurt them ,” Diana’s order followed, muffled and too far away from them, and still as if on cue, Steve’s heart slammed hard against his ribs. “ It’s not their fault. They are confused and don’t know what’s happening .”
“Just another Friday night,” Alfred muttered, rubbing his eyes, the lines around his mouth deeper somehow, his concern no longer hidden behind the ever-present façade of mild disinterest.
The problem, however, wasn’t just how to stop the rogue subjects, but how to do it safely, seeing as how Diana was right and they were as much the victims there as the people they had turned on. But remembering that was all the much harder when someone Steve actually cared about was fighting against them on the front line.
His mind was still spinning, trying to put the information together. From the pieces he’d snatched here and there, it looked like someone was attempting to create new meta-humans by pumping people — who might or might not have volunteered for it on their own free will — with steroids and a chemical cocktail meant to increase their endurance and stamina and god only knew what else. During the process of transformation they had been, apparently, sedated either to reduce the pain of the process, or to avoid violent outbursts. But when the storm had hit the city, lightning had damaged several power lines in the area, shutting down the machines they had been hooked to and cutting off the drip of the sedative. The few minutes that it had taken the emergency generator to kick in were all they needed to wake up, drugged out of their minds, disoriented, and desperate to get the hell out of the place that had turned them into something that they couldn’t understand. There was nothing to them but heightened strength, fast reflexes, and an animal instinct to survive at any cost now.
The one thing that Steve wanted to know right now was if there was a way to really save them.
He thought back to Dr. Maru and her experiments, to the Nazi camps during the Second World War, and felt sick in the pit of his stomach. Funny how people had never truly learned not to play God. Their ways had grown more refined, but at the core so little had changed over the past hundred years that he was starting to wonder if they were going to keep running in circles for as long as they existed as a species, or if there was hope for them yet.
Steve jolted at the sound of a loud crack upstairs, and then a flash of lightning darted toward them, the breeze from the movement sending a stack of papers to the floor and the air around them was suddenly thick with static and the smell of the storm.
And then Barry was lowering Victor onto the concrete floor, grimacing with exertion as he struggled not to collapse as well.
“What happened?” Alfred asked as Steve instantly moved to crouch near the Cyborg, trying hard not to imagine the worst.
“Nothing,” Victor winced, his whole body twitching slightly all over. “I’m good.”
“No, he’s not,” Barry protested in between sucking in gulps of air, his face glistening with the rainwater. “The robot man is not meant to be thrown against walls,” he explained.
Steve turned to Victor, not quite certain what he was looking for. He was no medic, to begin with, and Victor… Victor wasn’t even human, biologically speaking. Whatever his injury was, it had to be internal, and to be completely honest, Steve wouldn’t know how to go about that even if he knew where to start.
“I’m good,” Victor insisted, frowning with his one human eyebrow and waving them off. “Just… need to… I’m fine.”
“Is it over?” Alfred asked Barry.
“No,” Barry shook his head frantically. “Diana said to get Vic out of the way.”
Her name set Steve’s inner alarms wailing. “Where is she?” he asked in a suddenly hoarse voice. “Barry, where is Diana?”
“She was with Arthur, last time I saw her,” the younger man responded if a little uncertainly. “They were almost done. There was like a storage room, kinda like a vault on the lower level, and we were trying to lure them all there, those… things.” He inhaled with a shudder. “And then one of them sorta decided to play Cyborg rugby.”
“He didn’t—” Victor winced.
“You stopped responding, dude,” Barry interjected and then looked up at Steve. “They should be here any moment.”
Steve nodded, not quite buying his feigned nonchalance, not when Barry was basically vibrating with either excitement or stress, or a combination of both. At least he didn’t seem hurt. Steve looked up at the screens. And froze.
Breaking into the Labs’ intranet was a piece of cake, what with Bruce’s advanced toys the origins of which he tried not to think too hard about. And helpful, too, as it allowed them to tap into the live feed of the security cameras mounted on nearly every corner. However, it wasn’t what snatched Steve’s attention now. It was the small red warning signal blinking in the corner of the screen.
Earlier, when the power had gone off, the emergency generators had kicked in. But right now he could see that for some reason, when the central supply had been restored, the generators hadn't turned off as they were meant to, and now the place was so overloaded it was a miracle that sparks weren’t flying.
Steve darted toward the workstation and swore as his fingers hit the keyboard.
“Captain…” Alfred started.
“I need to turn off the power,” Steve muttered, as if saying it out loud would somehow make it happen. He could feel three pairs of eyes on him, quizzical and worried.
“Ms. Prince asked not to—” Alfred began, stepping toward Steve.
“It’s a laboratory, Alfred,” Steve cut him off. “What do they have in laboratories?”
“Super cool tech,” Barry piped in from behind them.
“Illegal experiments?” Alfred offered, puzzled.
Steve shook his head without looking away from the screen. “Oxygen tanks.”
He heard Alfred suck in a breath.
“If there is fire…” Steve started, but refused to go any further, his imagination helpfully supplying him with a vivid picture he wasn’t sure he’d be able to erase any time soon. “Ms. Prince might just have to deal with being unhappy about this some other time—Dammit!” He smacked his fist on the keyboard in frustration. “It’s not responding. I need to—I have to—” He sprung up to his feet, his breath hitching. “They need to shut it off… Bruce!” he barked into an earpiece.
And it was then that he realized that he couldn’t hear them anymore. Couldn’t hear anything. Not even the ever-present sound of someone’s footsteps or breathing, heavy with exertion, on the other side. The channel was silent.
“It’s down,” Alfred said before he could ask. “The communication system is down. Must be the storm…”
“Victor—”
“I can’t.” Still sprawled on the floor, the Cyborg grimaced in what looked like pain. “I can’t connect to anything, not until I…” he trailed off with a wince.
“I could go,” Barry said quickly standing up, his glance darting toward the staircase. “I’m fast.”
Steve paused and turned to him, considering his earnest, eager face, his whole body still shaking slightly either from the energy coursing through him, or adrenaline, or cold. They needed to turn the power off as soon as possible, and of them all, Barry had the speed on his side.
“Do you know how to do it?” Steve asked.
Barry hesitated. “If you tell me…”
At that, Steve was shaking his head and running up the stairs, ignoring Alfred calling his name and taking the steps two at a time because he only had a matter of minutes, perhaps. And maybe Barry was fast, but if he did it wrong, he wouldn’t be helping anyone. He could kill them all.
Steve’s hands were shaking with adrenaline when he rolled his bike out of the garage and onto the dark driveway, its wheels skidding on the wet gravel. He’d tried Diana’s phone on the way out the door, not surprised to hear it ringing somewhere in the house — they had left in haste. And then Bruce’s in a burst of wild hope, but it went to voicemail, seeing as how they were all busy.
It was up to him then.
The rain was still falling in earnest, the wind throwing angry handfuls of water at the face shield of his helmet. The handlebars were slick and slippery in his hands, and he had to grip them tightly so as not to feel like he was going to veer off the road any moment. The wet asphalt glinted in the headlights of his bike while the world around him was nothing but blackness and he hoped desperately that he wouldn’t get lost in the maze of unfamiliar streets as he circled around the city.
Another strike of lightning pierced the sky, and Steve sped up, fearing the worst. If any of them hit the S.T.A.R. Labs, it wouldn’t stand a chance. Even now, he was half-expecting to see a blaze of fire on the horizon.
Instead, the S.T.A.R. Labs perimeter lights came into view, sooner than he had anticipated, the parking lot glistening with puddles.
He skidded to a halt, the tires of his bike sliding on the slippery ground and nearly sending him flying, and hit the ground running as he yanked his helmet off and tossed it aside. Frigid rain blinded him momentarily. Even from twenty yards away, the building was towering ominously over him.
This part of town was crowded with banks and business centres, bustling with life and commotion during the day. But this late at night and in the storm that was seemingly trying to eradicate the world itself, it was dark and silent save for the occasional bursts of thunder and the rusting of the rain. There was something unnerving about it, about the darkness around him and the echo of his footsteps on the pavement.
A few of the second-floor windows were lit up, but the front entrance was locked and his pounding on the thick reinforced-glass door remained unanswered. Steve could hear muffled sounds of a struggle coming from the inside, and police and ambulance sirens piercing the air behind him — Alfred must have tipped them off. Steve’s breath caught in his throat, panic building up inside of him like a tidal wave threatening to drown him.
He swore under his breath, expletives that even Charlie, known in his brave days as a cussing pro, would find impressive, and started toward the back of the building, desperately trying to remember the layout he had seen captured on the CCTV camera and the floor plans that he wasn’t sure if they could trust. The main breaker box controlling the power supply of the building was inside, but there was also a backup one, for emergencies, although Steve didn’t think that anyone could have possibly accounted for something like this when they were designing this facility.
He heard a glass break somewhere inside the building. His head snapped up automatically, and there was only so much he could do not to dash in that direction on instinct. Instead, he nearly fell, running into the Batmobile, black as the night itself, parked crookedly on the lawn.
Someone screamed above him.
Breathless, Steve stumbled in the dark, hands groping along the wall, and then all but threw himself at the breaker box when his fingers grazed against the metal. He could smell the smoke already, the metal door was hot when he touched it, but it was locked, too. He glanced around, looking for something to break into it with, but this far away from the street lights, everything was black and thick under the shadows around him. He was running out of time.
He flexed his fingers, curling them into a fist, and hit the lock once, twice, three times, the door bending under the force of his blows. At last, something gave inside it and he yanked the door open with enough force to nearly rip it off the hinges, his eyes scanning the switches wildly. When he touched them, they were hot, almost melting. He could see small sparks, too. Could hear the low hum of electricity running wild.
A moment of hesitation, and then Steve flipped a few switches, burning his fingers on the melting plastic. The whole building plunged into darkness. Everything went eerily quiet for a few long moments. All he could hear was the patter of the rain all around him, the heavy drops bouncing off his jacket, his hair plastered to his head.
And then the sound of broken glass pierced the night. A window above him shattered and something — someone — came flying out of it. Steve recognized them as one of the subjects immediately by his swift roll along the wet grass and the predator crouch he came up in. He looked up for a brief second and then his eyes fixed on Steve — a new target.
“Oh, hell,” Steve muttered when the man lunged at him, his teeth bared and his body poised for attack. They really didn’t have time for this.
The impact of the collision sent Steve into the brick wall, his breath knocked out of his lungs. He hissed in pain when his bad shoulder took the worst of it, pain jolting down his arm, and he pushed the soldier away. He stumbled as stars exploded behind his eyes, his hand groping along the wall for support. But the man wasn’t done. He was coming at Steve again. And bloody hell, these people were basically superhuman and he very much was not.
His hand shaking, he grabbed onto the breaker box door and yanked at it, slamming it into the man’s face. The man staggered unsteadily but not from the damage so much as in surprise. Not letting him gain his bearings, Steve swung at him, punching him square into a jaw and bracing himself for another attack. However, before he could so much as blink, a glowing lasso all of a sudden wrapped around the attacker's chest. The next moment Diana herself landed gracefully behind them, her eyes blazing and her expression fierce in the pale glow of the emergency lights, and pulled hard.
The man fell back onto the concrete pathway with a dull thud, swallowed instantly by the darkness and rain. He didn’t move after that.
Steve exhaled sharply.
They stood in front of one another as the pause stretched between them, separated by the veil of rainfall. His chest was still heaving, his hands flexing ever so slightly, curling into fists and uncurling again, his mind oddly empty. This was the first time he’d seen her in her armour since the ’50s and he couldn’t help but stare.
Diana glanced down at the man sprawled at her feet, which Steve found awfully ironic and more than a little hilarious, considering that it summed up the feelings of all League members towards her pretty damn accurately, albeit in a slightly more figurative sense. Then she looked up at Steve, a faint frown on her face, although he couldn’t tell if it was aimed at him or at the situation as a whole.
But before either of them could say a word, Arthur appeared behind Steve, his eyes locked on the man on the ground.
“Nice catch, Cap,” he noted gruffly, but not without approval.
“Wasn’t me…” Stave started, swallowing back a comment about how much more in his element the Atlantian seemed when he was drenched, his hand clasped tightly around his trident and his face all but joyous in the fight. He truly had found his calling with the League, it seemed.
Steve hoped he hadn’t speared anyone in that building, or they would have some serious issues with the authorities. Amanda Waller would not be pleased.
Another shadow leaping from the broken window effectively derailed the train of his thought, and then Bruce was standing over the man as well, his shoulders rising and falling with his heavy breathing. Steve could see a cut on his cheek, the rain washing away the blood, his eyes narrowed against the wind.
He glanced briefly at Arthur and Steve before his gaze was drawn back to Diana. “I guess we got them all,” he noted.
She nodded and lifted her eyes again, but by then, Steve already stepped into the shadows and disappeared in the rain.
---
“Does it hurt?” Alfred asked, more curious than concerned, which, given Vic’s history of surviving far worse things wasn’t much of a surprise, if Steve was honest with himself.
There was curiosity pulsing inside of him, too, so at least they had that in common.
Sprawled on the couch in the lounge, Victor looked up at him. “It doesn’t hurt,” he responded. “It’s more like… Like if you throw a laptop against a wall, you wouldn’t really expect it to work as well as before, would you?”
“I wouldn’t throw a laptop against a wall,” Alfred noted.
“Not everyone is that considerate,” Victor grimaced a little, and tried again, “Imagine your system failing.”
Alfred arched an eyebrow at him. “I’d rather not.”
“So how does this work?” Steve asked. Sitting across from the couch, he leaned forward, elbows propped on his thighs as he studied the Cyborg closely. He didn’t look any different, admittedly, but using his own analogy, a broken device might not either. Not on the outside. Only one of his hands was flexing ever so slightly as if he was squeezing an invisible stress ball. It made Steve wonder if it was something that Victor could control, or if it was another sign of some sort of technical malfunction.
Victor turned to him. “Nano-bots will patch me up. At least I don’t feel like I’m being electrocuted from the inside anymore. I’ll be good as new in no time.”
“Which is… how long?” Barry inquired.
“A few hours, probably.”
“Would you like some aspirin, Mr. Stone?” Alfred offered graciously.
Victor shook his head. “Thanks, Alfred, but I don’t think that’s how this works.”
“Well, then,” the older man straightened up. “In that case, I better go check if Master Wayne has any bones that need to be snapped into place. Ms. Prince,” he nodded at Diana who stepped into the lounge on his way out.
After a brief hello, she moved farther into the room. “Victor,” she smiled at the Cyborg, walking over to the couch. She studied him, her head tilted. “How are you feeling?”
“Like someone broke him,” Barry offered helpfully. He turned to Victor and poked him in a metal shoulder. “Hey, can we reboot you?”
Victor shrugged his hand off. “Can we reboot you ?”
“I’m not made of nano-bots,” Barry pointed out.
“My point exactly.”
“Are you going to be okay?” Diana asked, nipping their bickering in the bud.
Victor turned to her and nodded. “I am.” He paused. “It’s just—it’s easier to be here where my father doesn’t prod at me even though it’s nothing,” he added. And then he asked, “What about… those… whoever they were?”
Diana’s brows pulled together, and Steve remembered Arthur mentioning the Labs’ staff and the night security who had gotten a full dose of weird and had to be coaxed out of their hiding spots, not trusting that the people who had attacked them were detained and no longer dangerous. Several had to be sent to the hospital with concussions and or broken bones, none of them coherent enough to even begin to tell their side of the story yet.
“They are under observation for now,” Diana responded. “Once the drugs they are on wears off, they will be sent into a recovery therapy to see if they can remember what happened to them and who did it.”
“There was nothing in the S.T.A.R. Labs on them?” Steve looked up at her. “No records, no…”
“No,” she shook her head.
“I asked dad to check,” Victor spoke, his gaze darting between the two of them. “But he doesn’t have the clearance.”
“I bet we won’t have an issue with that,” Steve muttered, thinking of the magic that the Batcave contained.
Diana nodded. “Bruce will see if he can bypass their firewall, but there’s a chance that whoever was behind this was careful enough not to leave any trail.”
“So, we’re just making meta-humans now?” Barry asked, voicing what everyone was thinking.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Diana said diplomatically. “We don’t know that for a fact.”
“It was obvious enough last night,” the speedster pointed out.
“Waller?” Victor offered.
Steve scrubbed his hand over his face. “She is quite busy trying to sweep it under the rug right now,” he said carefully, mindful of not looking at anyone in particular. “She couldn’t control the Suicide Squad and she can’t control the Justice League. It is not unreasonable to assume that her trying to keep quiet about this is an attempt to keep her own record clean, but there is also a possibility that she might be tired of waiting and has decided to take matters into her own hands.”
“So that’s a yes, maybe ,” Barry summed up.
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” Diana promised. She turned to Victor again and leaned forward to place her hand on his cheek. “Thank you, for helping us last night.”
Victor nodded again, and even smiled, his voice softening. “Sure thing.”
“And if there is anything—”
“I’ll ask,” he promised.
She reached for his hand and squeezed it, encouragement and affection pouring out of her eyes. Then she looked up, her eyes locking with Steve’s.
“Steve, can we talk?” she asked.
He blinked, startled, as if there was another Steve in the room and she couldn’t have possibly be addressing him. His gaze held hers, a silent question in her eyes. Anticipation. Uncertainty. So far, they had been doing a damn good job dancing around one another without much actual communication, and he wondered what could have possibly made that change.
“Yeah. Sure, of course,” he said when the pause between them grew sufficiently awkward and cleared his throat.
“In private,” Diana added when he remained sitting.
Steve nodded if a little hesitantly, feeling like a moron for no particular reason that he could pinpoint, and rose from his seat to follow her.
“What’d you do?” Barry’s whispered theatrically to his back, but Steve barely registered the question.
He thought they would go to the study, or maybe the kitchen that appeared to be the most secluded place in the house, but instead, Diana headed to the garage where she pulled the driver’s door of a grey Volvo open, keys in hand. She paused when Steve stopped several feet away from the car, more confused than anything at this point. She raised one eyebrow in half-dare and half-invitation.
Oh, hell, it wasn’t like he had anything left to lose, and his curiosity was starting to get the best of him.
Steve slid into the passenger seat without a word and she started the car, the engine purring softly under the hood as they rolled out onto the driveway, gravel crunching under the tires.
“Were they the military?” he asked when they were on the highway, staring out his window and trying not to think of the thousand reasons for her to ask him to go somewhere with her for a talk , none of which seemed particularly good in his mind.
There was little they could say to one another that couldn’t be said in front of everyone else in the League, and he wondered if the trip was meant to make it less uncomfortable for either of them. If maybe she was going to ask him to leave, at last. Without talking around it and pretending that their situation was okay.
“It seems so, yes,” Diana responded, her voice measured.
Steve nodded. “Makes sense. If you want to create enhanced soldiers, it would probably pay off to use real ones for it.”
The idea made him sick, the things he had seen before vivid and clear in his mind. They had fought so hard for every grain and ounce of peace. He could still smell the blood on his hands, feel the recoil of the rifle ram into his shoulder, hear the echo of the gunfire so clear in his head, like someone was pulling the trigger not ten feet away from him. All this, and they were still here, in the midst of another war the people were bringing upon themselves for no reason he could think of. And every victory felt like merely a stepping stone leading to another battle, and another one, and another one. And there seemed to be no end to them.
Nothing was ever enough.
“Do you really think Amanda Waller is behind it?” Steve asked after a few moments.
Diana's fingers tapped against the steering wheel. “The question is — why would she be?”
“You said it yourself — she wanted someone like you to control, but she can’t control the League. I don’t see anything stopping her from trying to create an army of Terminators if she is so hell-bent on power.”
He saw Diana glance at him out of the corner of her eye. “I thought that having you here was meant to get Bruce to cooperate.”
“Bruce doesn’t seem like the type,” Steve breathed.
There was something that the Batman wanted from Waller, but Steve didn’t know how long they would keep up this charade without going for each other’s throats. When her team arrived at the S.T.A.R. Labs last night, just missing that narrow window of being useful, Steve had thought that it was not going to end well. He had wondered how close they were going to come to having another casualty or two, what with Bruce already being on edge and Waller marching onto the scene like she owned the city.
Diana bit her lip, two faint lines appearing between her eyebrows, but she didn’t say anything.
They didn’t speak again until she pulled up to the curb near an old apartment building not far from the business district of Gotham. A red-brick building with bay windows and high stoops that reminded Steve of the Beacon Hill area in Boston. He looked up, taking in the cheery curtains on said windows and potted plants on the windowsills and the general air of coziness that spoke of belonging, and felt a twinge in his gut. Nostalgia for the things he had never had.
He followed Diana up the stoop leading to the entrance and then to the third floor where she opened one of the doors and stepped into an apartment. The large window right across the door overlooked the street and a row of similar houses on the other side of the road. He allowed himself to have a look around, noting that the place seemed spacious but impersonal. There were no knickknacks on the half-empty bookshelf, plain blinds instead of curtains, and the air smelled faintly of dust. Clearly, it had been a while since anyone had bothered to open the windows to let some fresh air in. Or to live here, for that matter.
“What is this place?” he asked at last, overcome with curiosity.
Diana closed the door behind them and paused near the counter that was separating the small kitchen from the living area. She put the car keys on the countertop that, to Steve, looked like real marble. He was no expert, but the place seemed like a rare find.
“Clark stayed here when he was working on Lex Luthor’s case,” she answered, glancing around. “Bruce kept it after he—after Clark died so that Lois could take care of his things.” Okay, that would explain the boxes in the corner, Steve thought. “I think he’ll just wait for the lease to expire rather than bother dealing with it. I thought…” She trailed off and looked at Steve, her arms folded over her chest. “I thought it would be slightly more private than the house. It can get…”
“Hectic,” he finished when she paused, searching for words. “Okay, sure.” He shrugged and stared at her expectantly.
The slight frown of disapproval made its return as Diana gave him a measured look.
“What you did last night was reckless,” she said. Not angry, but there was a sliver of frustration simmering right under her skin, close enough for him to catch a glimpse of it.
“Driving in the rain? I doubt it,” he brushed her off. “I mean, statistically speaking…”
“You know what I mean,” she interjected, not falling for his attempt at deflecting. “The electric doors were the only thing keeping those people contained.”
“They didn’t stop that guy that leaped out of the window,” Steve reminded her, his heartbeat stuttering just a bit at the memory of the expressionless face and dead eyes staring at him.
“He was the last one. What if they—”
“But they didn’t,” Steve countered. “They shouldn’t have been created in the first place.”
“That is not the point,” Diana shook her head and levelled him with a gaze. “You could have been hurt,” she added softer.
“I wasn’t.” Steve stuffed hands into the pockets of his pants, wishing he knew where this was coming from.
She couldn’t argue with his logic and they both knew that they would drown in what-ifs if they ever allowed themselves to venture there. But there was something else that was bothering her that he couldn’t see yet. He watched her try to figure it out for herself, and the possibilities scared him.
“If we’re part of a team, I need to be able to trust you,” Diana said at last.
Steve glanced away from her. “You used to,” he muttered.
“You were not supposed to be there last night, Steve. If something happened to you—” She took a breath, her voice finding a disapproving edge, and his pulse tripped over itself. “We wouldn’t— I wouldn’t know to help you until it was too late.”
He raked his hand through his hair. “I wasn’t—” he started, trying to focus on the conversation and not her eyes watching him with careful anticipation and the fact that this was the first time in the past few weeks that they were really and truly alone without a mission or anything of that kind looming over their heads.
I don’t need help .
He exhaled sharply.
“You think I don’t understand that this,” he gestured at the two of them, his voice something short of bitter, “is not working? You think I don’t see it, Diana?” He grimaced when she glanced away. “I know that this is not about Amanda Waller or Bruce or anyone else. This is about something more and it will always be about—about—”
Us . He didn’t dare say it.
Steve pinched the bridge of his nose.
They should have discussed this a long time ago, he figured. They should have tried to maybe find a way to make this work before the situation escalated to a kind of crisis that could get someone killed.
“Look, I wasn’t trying to go against your decisions,” he tried again, fighting to keep his voice even. Surely, he could lay out the facts without being carried away by… her presence... and everything that she was. “I just… I saw what you couldn’t see, okay? The building’s power system was overloaded. The whole place was minutes away from going up in flames. And with the storm… If it did reach the critical point, someone escaping that place would’ve been the least of everyone’s worries, believe me. If I could get to Bruce or Arthur or you, one of you could have flipped the switch, but the communication system was down and Victor was out of commission, so…”
He felt frustrated, tired, helpless. And standing before her and not being able to reach for her filled him with such a throbbing ache that he felt it deep in his bones. Standing before her and not being able to even hold her gaze because it felt like a sucker punch was even worse, somehow.
Steve shook his head and stepped further into the room, allowing his gaze to wander. A distraction as good as any to keep his mind off Diana. She used to trust him, without thinking, without hesitation, and knowing that she didn’t anymore… well, that hurt almost more than anything else.
“What is it that Amanda Waller wants from you, Steve?” she spoke behind him.
A sharp, humourless laugh bubbled up in his chest, and the sound that escaped his throat was painful even to his own ears. “From me? Nothing. I’m just her means to an end. She wants to control Bruce Wayne and thinks that getting in his good graces will make that happen.” He paused, and then added, “She has some personal information about me, something she should never have found. She promised to erase it if I did something for her.” His lips curled into a bitter smile. “Of course, she conveniently forgot to mention a detail or two.”
“Do you trust her to keep her word?” Diana asked.
“I don’t know,” Steve admitted, turning to look at her again. “But I’d like to try and minimize the risk of Amanda Waller or whoever might come after her using those files against me.”
A faint frown creased Diana's forehead. “So, that was why you came here?”
It didn’t sound much like a question but he still answered. “Yes.”
“And why you stayed?”
Steve nodded.
She pursed her lips together. “I see.”
“I know this is not the most…” he started, “…desirable situation for you. And it was your boyfriend’s idea to agree to Waller’s offer — and trust me, I know that we both wanted him not to - but I guess we could figure out how to… maybe stay out of each other’s way without jeopardizing anything for the League.” He paused, and then added, “It’s the last thing I want, I swear.”
Diana’s brows knitted together in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m not trying to—to take over, or anything.” Steve took a breath. “Look, I was only trying to help. I want to help. I really do, and last night—”
“No, what did you say about Bruce?” she stopped him.
Heat crept up Steve's cheeks. Great, now they’d have to go into semantics.
He kind of figured out that whatever the nature of her relationship with Batman was, the League was either completely clueless or suspected something but didn’t know it for a fact. Either way, they didn’t seem to have a particular opinion on it. Not that he could blame Diana for wanting to keep her private life private and everything.
“I mean… whatever it is that you guys are.”
Smooth. Very smooth. Several generations of his spy predecessors were probably rolling in their graves now, watching him crash and burn from the other side.
Diana was staring at him like he was speaking in a tongue she could not understand.
She tilted her head. “We’re not anything. Bruce and I, we’re not — do you think we are together?”
Steve looked away. “I saw you. My first night in Gotham Waller suggested we meet at the hotel that housed that charity function to give me a crash course on the best and brightest of this city… Which was a smart move, actually. You know what they say about being invisible in a crowd.” Steve trailed off. “And there you two were,” he cleared his throat again. “I saw you kiss.”
Diana's face fell, the defensive lines smoothing out. “Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh’,” he breathed out.
“It’s not like that,” she shook her head. “We’re not… like that. We never were. That kiss was—”
Steve held up his hand, stopping her. “Don’t say it was a mistake.”
“It was not a mistake. It was nothing.” Her voice was soft but decisive, without a trace of hesitation, and Steve tried really hard to ignore a flutter in his chest. “It was one glass of champagne too many and an impulse that neither of us should have given in to.”
“Does Bruce know that?” he didn’t mean the question to sound so territorial. And yet…
“Of course.”
“—because he sure as hell doesn’t seem to,” Steve finished. "The way he acts around you. The way he is around you…”
“I can’t tell him what to think or feel,” Diana said. “Just like no one has that kind of command over me.”
“And you—you live in his house,” he added, as if not hearing her.
“So do you. So do other people,” she pointed out. “I am only ever in Gotham on League business. Staying at Bruce’s house is merely a matter of convenience.” God, he hated logic that he couldn’t argue with. She paused. “So, all this time…”
“Well, to be fair, I had no reason to think otherwise,” Steve admitted. His gaze skittered around “I just thought you weren’t too… demonstrative in your—” passion .
He choked on the word that opened the room to the kind of mental images that would drive him insane if he let them run wild. He had already spent too many a night thinking of her in another man’s arms only a few walls away from him.
“I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
He rubbed his eyes, wishing that they had never started this conversation at all. Wishing — shockingly — that he was at the lake house, listening to Arthur and Victor debate something or the other, to Barry arguing with a video game and Alfred telling them to please not put their feet on the antique coffee table, thank you very much . The list could go on and on and on. Anywhere but here, really, if only because he didn’t want to think of what Diana’s admittance meant and that wild satisfaction that it had stirred inside of him. One that he had no right to own.
“I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean to pry,” he added lamely, for lack of better ideas. “I… I respect your privacy, and if that was something that you wanted to keep to yourself…” he trailed off, all too aware of sounding more or less like a moron.
“You weren’t prying.” Her voice was soft. “And I told you that there was nothing happening between me and Bruce. I’d never lie to you, Steve,” she said earnestly.
A laugh that escaped his mouth was short and harsh, grating even to his own ears. Steve hated the sound of it.
“Like you never lied to me about the fact that I died in Paris?” The words came out of his mouth before he knew to stop them, and now that the wound was cut open again, he couldn’t help but keep twisting the knife. “On that day after liberation, when a German bomb had hit our hotel. That kind of thing?”
Diana froze, all colour draining from her face.
“Because you didn’t.”
He met her gaze, adamant. “But I did, didn’t I? I was dead when you'd found me.” He watched anguish cross her features like a shadow. “Until I wasn’t.”
In the silence that fell between them, he could hear the clock ticking on the wall in the kitchen and a car honking outside, and the whirlwind of her thoughts that she couldn’t structure into anything coherent spin through her head. And suddenly the air was so thick he couldn’t take a proper breath.
“How did you…” Diana started.
Steve looked away from her.
There was a snow globe sitting on the shelf right before him. He doubted that it was Clark’s. Probably some other tenant had forgotten it here a lifetime ago and no one who had come to live here afterwards had the heart to throw it away. It was small, the size of a tennis ball, and inside of it was a village — a church and several buildings sitting around a town square with a fountain in the middle of it. Steve stepped toward the shelf and picked it up. He shook it, setting a snowstorm into motion, white flakes circling above the buildings and falling on the roofs and the cobbled street and windowsills.
It looked so much like Veld that he almost felt the chilly November air biting at his cheeks as he and Diana sat on the edge of a fountain, watching the celebrations. Could hear the music spilling through the open café doors and Charlie’s unsteady voice that had tried to find itself again after all the time when Charlie had nothing to be joyful about. He could smell the chimney smoke and the snow, and in contrast to it, the touch of Diana’s hand to his when he had pulled her to her feet to teach her how dance felt hot as fire. There was wonder in her eyes, unadulterated curiosity the likes of which Steve couldn’t remember seeing in his entire life. And his heart had been beating so thunderously in his chest that he had been certain she could hear it, too.
“Your mother told me,” he said after a few moments, his eyes still glued to the dance of plastic snowflakes. “When we went to Themyscira.”
“My mother…” Diana echoed, confused. “I don’t understand. Why would she…” She paused, her breath hitching. Steve could feel her eyes on him, burning right through him, and he knew that he was cornered. That there was no way out this time.
He was so sick of lying.
He turned to Diana, meeting her gaze and holding it despite the fact that he could barely stand it, shame and guilt making him want to fold in on himself and cease to exist. She deserved more. So much more. More than the world itself. All the things he couldn’t give her because he was not enough, never would be — it was simple as that. But he could give her the truth, at least. Maybe he could make it count for something.
And so he told her everything. About his conversation with Hippolyta and how Diana’s mother had opened his eyes to his miraculous survival in not one, but two explosions that would have killed anyone else. About how Diana was the one who had made it happen and how it had come with a price neither of them had bargained for.
He had imagined the conversation thousands of times over the years, playing out his words in his mind, a smooth flow of the story that was meant to fix everything. But now that he was speaking the truth, the words kept jamming in his throat, squashed by the look of utter incomprehension on Diana’s face.
She was listening to him in silence, her eyes disbelieving and her posture rigid, shocked. He could hear her trying to put two and two together in her mind, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, her logic fighting a losing battle with her heart. He could see it all in her eyes, betrayal and hurt, not only by him but her mother as well, again. How many times could one person go through something like this before they couldn’t do it anymore?
Steve wondered what kept her fighting after all this time when he’d come so close to giving up more times than he could count. He feared that this might be the last straw. He loved Diana for her goodness and kindness and compassion above all else. But how much of it could still be there to keep her going after mankind had let her down over and over again for a hundred years?
He tore his gaze away from her, unable to stand the things that he was seeing, feeling exposed and all the more at fault for everything that had happened between them. For having done this to her and for still doing it. The air felt charged between them, thick and heavy. Like it was a living thing in and of itself, breathing and pulsing around them. Steve felt his skin prickle under her scrutiny when he spoke of the day when he had walked away from her, his voice not nearly as measured as he wanted it to be. And he knew the exact moment when she couldn’t stand looking at him as well.
“This can’t be…” Diana whispered when he fell silent. “My mother… she ought to be wrong, I couldn’t—I can’t —”
“You had told me you couldn’t shoot lightning from your gauntlets until a certain point, either. But you’re a daughter of Zeus, Diana. Is it really that much of a stretch to believe that you can grant life?”
She was shaking her head. “But why would she tell it to you, and not me?”
Steve paused. “She thought that it was my life, and my choice to make.”
“It wasn’t.” Her voice was laced with accusation and contempt now.
“She thought that if you knew, you would have tried to save everyone. And if you did that, it would destroy you,” Steve breathed.
“How could you not tell me?” she whispered and pressed her hand to her lips.
“How could I do it?” He turned to her. “You… you gave me my life back at the cost of—of yours, your strength. And all I could do in return was take from you, giving nothing but pain back?”
Diana’s brows knitted together. She rubbed her forehead. “How can you even know that it’s true?”
He had thought of that, turning possibilities this way and that in his mind. He had spent years thinking of it, hoping against all hope that Hippolyta was only half-right, the good half. The one that meant that he and Diana could be together for the rest of eternity without either of them having to suffer the consequences of this decision.
Steve ducked his head and closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, willing the right words to come. At last, he had a chance to do right by her. And he needed her so desperately to understand.
“Because I had the goddamned nightmares every night after the war. Everything that I’d done, everything that was done to me. All of it on an endless loop because I couldn’t scratch them out of my head.” He pinched the bridge of his nose until it hurt, until he couldn’t bear it anymore and had no choice but to look at her. “Every single night, Diana. Until you had come back, and then they were gone. Until you had started having them instead.”
She was staring at him in stunned silence.
“The things that you didn’t understand, but I did because I lived through them," he whispered, begging her to see it the way he did and knowing that she couldn’t. “How could I keep doing that to you?”
“You lied to me, Steve,” she started and stopped, pressing her lips into a thin line. He wondered what words of blame she was trying to swallow back. “You promised you would never lie.”
He felt his shoulders slump.
“What would you have done, Diana? If the situation was reversed, what would you do?”
“I’d talk to you,” she said forcefully, heatedly.
“Talk to me?” Steve echoed, a sharp pained laugh clawing its way out of his throat. “Like you talked to me that time when you snuck out in the middle of the night and disappeared for 16 years?”
Her face fell. “Is that why… why you did it? Because I—”
“Christ, no,” he breathed out and scrubbed a hand over his face. “No, it wasn’t—it wasn’t payback. I wouldn’t, no—” He took in a shuddered breath. “I didn’t know what else to do,” Steve admitted, his voice dropping in defiance. “But I couldn’t stand hurting you any longer. I couldn’t stand holding you back and thinking that if something happened to you, it would my fault.”
“But it still hurt, Steve,” Diana whispered. “Every day that you were gone.”
She might as well have slapped him.
“And if I'd told you? What if I had, what would…” he trailed off, not sure how to put it into words. Not sure if he wanted to hear her answer.
“I wouldn’t care,” she said simply and without hesitation. “I loved you. If what you’re saying is true, if my mother was right…” The words sounded odd and foreign on her tongue as if she was still try to believe him, not yet succeeding. “If I loved you enough to keep your heart beating, what would any of this matter? All I ever wanted was to be with you.”
Steve felt his body deflate.
It occurred to him then that they had both completely lost track of time. The soft light of the afternoon had turned honey-gold as the sun started to dip towards the horizon, flooding the room with the kind of warmth that he wanted to bottle up and hold on to, the old rug striped with shadows that painted an entirely new story beneath their feet.
All this time in this world, and the one thing that had never ceased to amaze Steve was that time stopped for nothing. Someone’s life might be falling apart, people’s joys and tragedies morphing seamlessly into one another, mind-shattering and breathtaking, but the Earth would keep on spinning, not pausing for anyone. Never allowing them to catch up.
“I know,” he breathed, feeling so drained all of sudden that his very bones ached with it. “Because if it was me, I wouldn’t care, either. But how could I keep doing that to you, Diana? How could I save you from myself if I stayed?”
“I didn’t need you to save me,” she argued, looking at him like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I needed you to want me.”
I did, I do , he thought, watching her, relieved to finally have the weight of this secret lifted off his shoulders, and loathing himself beyond comprehension for having done this to her. For the unshed tears in her eyes and the million what-ifs hanging between them.
“If you wanted to go, I would never have forced you to stay,” Diana said quietly. “I would never have made you do anything against your will, least of all be with me if you wanted something else for yourself. But you still should have told me. You had to tell me, Steve.”
He ran his hand over his hair. “What difference would it make?”
He flinched when the hurt lurking behind her eyes flared up with startling intensity.
“Well, maybe then I wouldn’t have had to spend nearly seventy years of my life certain that the only man I’ve ever loved thought that being with me was a mistake.”
There was no anger to her words, no resentment, no accusation, but Steve would have preferred them to the disappointment and weariness. To bloody acceptance.
All air wheezed out of him. “I never said that it was a mistake.”
“You said that we had nowhere left to go, that we couldn’t have ended otherwise. What else was I supposed to think?” She looked away from him, staring instead at the floor and the ornate carpet under their feet. “If all of this is true, if you were so adamant to leave then, why would you stay now?”
“I thought that you were with Bruce,” he responded softly. “I thought that you’d moved on and that none of this would matter anymore. You didn’t want me here, anyway.”
Her expression hardened when she lifted her eyes again. “Don’t put this on me, Steve. I waited for you. For years, I wanted nothing more than for you to come back to me. And all you have wanted since the moment when you walked through Waller’s door was to escape again. I merely didn’t want to be reminded of everything I wished for us to have but that we never did.”
“I don’t—” Steve rubbed his eyes. “I’m not trying to—it’s not what I meant.” He shook his head. “Do you think I wanted to be here and watch you be in love with someone else?”
“I’m not. I wasn’t.” She trailed off. They stayed quiet for a few moments — him running his thumb over the worn wood of the bookshelf because it made for a great avoidance technique apparently, and Diana staring at the wall because it probably beat looking at him. And then he heard her inhale shakily. “None of this matters, right?” Her voice was hard and clipped behind him. “You’ll get what you want from Waller and be on your way.”
Steve swallowed and turned to face her. “Yes.”
And then he would spend the rest of his days thinking of how spectacularly he had screwed up the one good thing that had ever happened to him and knowing exactly how much he had hurt the only woman he'd ever been crazy about. Who still, despite everything, was his entire world.
Diana nodded. “I see.”
His gaze skittered past her.
“You know, when you called me a liar and a murderer, it was spot on. It’s all I am. It's all I've ever been.” His voice dropped. He glanced out the window because the words came easier that way, when he didn’t feel as exposed as when he wanted to cross the damn room and kneel before her, taking back every hurtful word that had ever fallen between them. “You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know that I never deserved you? You’re a princess, for heaven’s sake. You’re a goddess, Diana. What did I ever have to give you?”
A car drove down the street, swerving to avoid a cyclist. A gust of wind picked up an empty coffee cup and chased it down the pavement. Even with the windows closed, Steve could smell wet soil and fallen leaves and the cold that was yet to come.
“It wasn’t your decision to make. Not like that.”
“I’m not going to stay at the lake house,” he murmured without arguing. Maybe it wasn’t his decision to make, but someone had to make it nonetheless. “I’ll find—I’ll find a place of my own and get out of your hair. I’ll figure out how to take care of Waller.”
Diana nodded again, lips pressed together.
“It’ll be better that way,” Steve added even though she didn’t look like she was going to protest.
He could barely look at her, shame and resentment eating him up from the inside. Everything that was good in the world, everything that was worth saving — it all lived in her soul, a little weathered and frayed after her time in man’s world but no less brilliant regardless. She deserved the stars from the sky, but he was only a soldier who never got used to living outside of war.
“Very well,” Diana said quietly after a moment.
This is it , Steve thought. He had finally hammered the last nail into the coffin of everything that had ever happened between them, the good things and the bad, the moments in time that had weaved the fabric of their lives. He had broken every promise he had ever made to her, except for the one to love her until his final breath, and even though his chest felt lighter somehow as the words spilled out, shared at last, it seemed like small consolation for what had yet to come. His relief over the fact that he didn’t have to watch her be happy with someone else was quickly replaced by the sad truth of not being the one by her side either.
Steve stepped away from the bookshelf and the snow globe, willing himself to bottle away the memory of Veld and every day that he’d spent with Diana since then as deep as he could. And then he tried to stop thinking of how his world was tearing at the seams all over again.
Diana turned around without a word, reaching for the car keys still sitting on the counter, and Steve followed her without another word. There was nothing else to say, and filling the silence just for the hell of it felt cheap. He bet that this wasn’t how she had anticipated their conversation would go.
At the door, Diana reached for the knob, twisting it, but the old lock jammed, refusing to turn. Behind her, Steve stopped abruptly not expecting her to pause, nearly stepping on her heels, so close to her now that he could hear her breathe. Could catch the smell of honey and flowers on her skin and the faint scent of the leather of her jacket.
Diana stilled, her grip on the doorknob so tight that her knuckles had gone white, unmoving and aware of his sudden proximity. And all he could think of was how much he missed unobstructed closeness to her. Not accidental, not the type that he tended to avoid, but her presence in its purest form.
“Did you mean it?” Steve asked quietly when several moments passed and yet neither of them moved.
She half-turned her head, looking somewhere past her shoulder. “Did I mean what?”
“That I was the only man you’ve ever loved.”
“What does it matter?” she whispered, still not looking at him.
His gaze followed the slope of her forehead, the flutter of her eyelashes, the line of her nose and down towards the curve of her mouth, taking her in. Allowing himself to do it now, knowing that it wouldn’t happen again any time soon. If ever.
He closed his eyes.
“Everything,” he said in a whoosh of breath that fell on her neck.
Diana turned slowly, still caught between him and the door, and looked up. He opened his eyes and found her gaze, deep and so damn beautiful that he forgot how to function. He could feel her search for words, studying him from up close — something she’d done thousands of times, but never like this. Like she was trying to reach for something deep inside of him. Steve’s heart had never felt this heavy in his chest, as though his very soul was bleeding.
She reached tentatively for his face, her thumb brushing against a small faint scar on his chin underneath the faint shadow of stubble, a thin pale line. Two wars and numerous battles, and he somehow had managed to cut himself while shaving. God, there was so much irony to it — he remembered laughing at it as he had held a towel to the careless nick that stung from the remnants of the aftershave on his skin and her smiling at him from the bathroom door, no less amused than he was.
“Diana.”
“I remember this,” she whispered. Her fingers stroked his cheek gently as blood roared through his veins. “I remember everything.”
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry…” Steve started and stumbled, a hot lump lodged in his throat and panic rising inside of him. “For not knowing how to fix this mess back then… and for not knowing how to do it now.”
The words were tumbling out of his mouth, frantic and hurried as if he was running out of time, and his heart was hammering so fast in his chest that he could barely hear himself speak. There were words, perhaps, that could make her understand and he was desperate to find them.
“I didn’t know what to do—I still don’t, but if I'd stayed… if I'd stayed, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. And if—if I'd told you everything... if I'd done that and you’d asked me not to go, I would never—” Steve swallowed, his mouth dry. His voice was tight and hoarse, and the touch of her hand burned his skin. “I thought it would be easier to make you hate me, I wanted you to hate me as much as I hated myself. But I can’t—if I could take it back, take it all back and redo the past, I’d do it right. Somehow, I’d find a way to do it right.”
Diana bowed her head when he fell silent, looking away from him, and Steve felt the ground swim beneath his feet. The urge to reach for her was unbearable.
“When you left, it felt like something tore me in half,” she said quietly.
“I’m sorry.” The apology fell from his lips again, earnest as it could be. “I missed you… every day, every moment,” he murmured, scared to touch her even though he could all but hear her heartbeat next to him, so close she was. “I wish I knew how to make it better, how to fix it all. How to…” His mind was running in circles, making him feel faint. “I never thought those things that I'd said than, that… that there was nowhere for us to go because the only thing I've ever wanted was to be with you. But not like that, not at that cost—”
She lifted her face to his, tilting her head, and then she closed the distance between them. Her mouth brushed to his, soft and familiar, effectively rendering Steve speechless.
“I’d do it again,” Diana whispered against his lips. “To have you with me, I’d do it a thousand times.”
She kissed him again, her lips moving slowly over his, breathing for him when there was no air left between them, their memories chasing one another and blossoming into something new. Her hand curled over Steve’s jacket, fingers pushing into his hair, and it was all the permission that he needed to kiss her back. His palm cupped over her cheek, his other hand on her hip pulling her closer still, and Christ, he missed her so much .
“Diana…”
“I never stopped waiting for you.”
“I’m sorry,” he murmured once more, not certain what else to say, his words punctuated by her lips brushing to his. I’m sorry . He might say those words for a million years and it still wouldn’t be enough, he thought. His hands curled over her wrists, pulling her hands down from his face and holding them against his chest. They were both breathless, dizzy. “Diana… you can’t…”
“Can’t what?” Her eyes fluttered open and she looked up. “Can’t love you still?” She freed one of her hands from his grasp and curled it over his jaw. “Why?”
Because you’re better than this , he was thinking. Because you deserve more .
This close to him, she was so impossibly beautiful that all he could do was stare, drinking her in.
“Because… I told you why,” Steve shook his head as if there was a chance in the world that either of them could forget the past couple of hours. “How can you say this after… after everything?” His voice cracked, and he sucked in an unsteady breath. He dragged his gaze away from hers and focused instead on her fingers curled over his and pressed right above his heart. “I lied to you. I hurt you. And I know my ‘sorry’ is not enough, can’t be enough…” he faltered, no longer certain where he was going with this. “Surely after all this time—”
“Steve.”
He wasn’t sure why he was trying to convince her to push him away when the only thing he wanted was finally right there at his fingertips, but he certainly deserved her rejection more than her grace and the kind smile that was making his heart ache.
“You are so much better than me,” he added quietly. “So much more . How can you—”
Her hand swept his hair back from his face, making him go still under her touch, her eyes searching his, studying him like she’d never seen him before.
“Because I’d choose it,” Diana responded at last, so softly that he barely heard her over the blood rush in his ears.
“Choose what?” Steve blinked, failing to follow.
It was getting decidedly hard to keep track of their conversation with her fingers brushing absently against his skin, making his pulse stutter with every touch. For all he knew, they could be talking about the weather, and he’d still be lost.
Diana’s lips quivered, a smile that didn’t quite come. “If someone had asked me, I’d choose to bring you back to me. I’d choose to take your pain away,” she said. “Of course, I would.” Her thumb ran over his chin again. “I would always choose you.” She hesitated when an afterthought dawned on her. “If you still want me.”
If he still wanted her?
She was looking at him with such tenderness that Steve was scared to so much as blink for fear of missing even a second of it, her skin soft and warm beneath his hands and her pulse a rapid staccato under his fingertips. He thought of the first time he had laid his eyes on her and how she had smiled at him in relief and wonder, so radiant that her expression had been brighter than the sun shining above them. Thought of every morning that he’d got to wake up next to her and every single thing they had ever said to one another. And he wanted more of all of that now, as much as his life could fit, be it another year or a thousand.
Steve nodded. And then again, frantically, confused by her implication — how could he not want her?
Diana tugged him closer by the lapels of his jacket to kiss him once more. It was hasty and breathless, and he could taste tears on her lips, although there was no telling who they belonged to. He thought he was dreaming.
“I love you,” Steve muttered against her mouth. “I love you, I've always loved you.”
Her breath hitched, a low sound forming in the back of her throat nearly undoing him in the best way. His hands slipped around her, snaking underneath her jacket to touch her the way he’d wanted for so long. He pressed her flat against the door, kissing her with reverence and urgency and some serious desperation. Lithe and languid against him, she wound her arms around his neck, her fingers gripping his hair as she dragged her mouth along his cheek, nuzzling into the soft spot behind his ear.
“ Diana .”
Her name fell from his lips like a curse and a plea, his fingers flexing on fistfuls of her shirt.
When she drew back for a shaky inhale, her eyes were glazed-over with want, meeting his briefly before she pressed her mouth to his jaw, moving it slowly toward his neck, her breath on his skin making Steve weak in the knees. Desire tightened in his stomach.
Her body pushed against his, and he took a step back, and then another one, and another one into the late afternoon light of the living room. And then her mouth was on his, plying his lips open and the crazy collision from a few minutes ago turned into something purposeful, deliberate. Diana arched into him, and for a long, endless moment all Steve could think was finally .
There was a time quite a while back, maybe twenty-something years ago, when he had stopped being able to summon her voice as clearly as he used to in his mind, when the taste of her had become nothing but a ghost in his memory and the way her laughter resonated deep within him had carried none of the weight that he had loved so. And he had wondered not without dread about the day when she would only remain in the periphery of his recollection, incorporeal. Kissing her now, though, feeling her respond to the slightest of his touches, Steve wanted to laugh at the idea of being even remotely capable of forgetting her even after a millennium in this world. Of ever letting go.
Suddenly, the touch of her hands was gone, and when he opened his eyes, half-panicked and dazed in equal measure, Diana had already let her jacket fall to the floor at her feet. He looked at her, a silent question in his gaze, a hesitation to allow her to change her mind, but she was stepping towards him and nodding and reaching to push his jacket down his shoulders and allow gravity to take it.
“Diana,” he breathed.
His hands on her hips, he drew her to him as the fear of this moment shattering before his eyes pounded in his mind. The only man I’ve ever loved . The words resonated within him with achy longing. Diana’s fingers brushed to his lips, skimming over his face as if she was reading him in braille. And then they dropped to his chest, dark eyes watching him.
“I still want you,” he said hoarsely, honestly.
Her gaze travelled over his face and down his body, palms running over his shoulders. And then she was tugging at his shirt and inching it up until Steve raised his arms over his head for her to pull it off and toss it aside.
She smiled, her hand smoothing his rumpled hair, but her eyes were hungry and wanting. Desire careened through him with all-consuming intensity. His awareness tunnelled, zeroing in on what little space there still was between them as he drank her up with his eyes, needing to touch her, to never stop touching her, but needing even more to capture this instant, its fragility slicing right through him.
This was the moment when they needed to pause and maybe talk everything through first. She had more questions, Steve knew, had seen it in her eyes earlier. There were words on the tip of his tongue too, waiting to be spoken. Yet neither of them stopped, and when her eyes found his, he forgot what he was thinking.
“Does this hurt?” Diana asked quietly, skimming her fingers lightly over the bruise on his shoulder that had faded from the terrifying purple to faint yellow, still tender but not nearly as bad as it had been before. A slight frown creased her forehead.
Steve shook his head. “No, just looks bad.”
She nodded and leaned down to press a kiss to it, her mouth moving to a scar above his collarbone, as gentle as she could be. Steve's eyes fluttered closed, his heart giving a hollow thud in his chest. Diana's lips latched onto the side of his neck, sucking hard on his skin, and he swore quietly, his fingers bunching the back of her shirt that was one layer too many between them.
Impatience surged through him, forming into a low grunt. He felt Diana smile against his throat. She found his mouth again, kissing every promise she could make right into him, her hands moving over his chest, tracing a map of his scars — a life lived with purpose. He let her, revelling in the familiar swell of belonging rising inside of him, his muscles flexing under her touch. His hands tugged at her shirt once again, more urgently, and she drew back just far enough away to peel it off before her hands cupped his face again.
“I love you,” Diana whispered, nuzzling into his cheek. She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I missed you.”
“I’m here,” he promised.
His hands slid up her sides, gliding over the smooth skin, palms flat over her ribs. And then they were moving, one stumbling step at a time, torn between desperate urgency and the need to make every touch, every kiss count. Steve hoped she knew where they were going because he sure as hell was too busy to pay attention, focused on her hands on his body and his on hers.
Her hand slipped around his neck, fingers burrowing into his hair and, god help him, he wanted her so badly that he could barely stand it.
Steve’s calves hit the mattress — how they reached the bedroom he had no idea and no time to think about it _ and he lowered down to sit on the edge of it, tugging Diana to him by the belt loops until she was standing between his parted knees.
“I have never not loved you,” he whispered, kissing down her sternum while his fingers worked on unzipping her pants and pushing them down her hips for her to step out of them. “I have never not wanted you.” His eyes dropped shut, his voice hoarse and low as he murmured against her skin, but he didn’t care. She was here. His, at last.
Steve took a shuddered breath and exhaled slowly, struggling to get his heartbeat and blood flow under control. This was not meant to be over before it even started.
Diana’s breath caught in her throat, a shiver drilling down her body. For a moment, he merely sat there with his forehead pressed to her abdomen, breathing her in, fearful of his heart bursting right out of his chest. Her hand carded through his hair, and Steve squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to remember this second for as long as he existed on this Earth.
Her hands slid down and under his chin to lift his head up to look at her, his face cradled in her palms as her thumb kept running over his cheekbone. Steve swallowed, hard. Heat flared up in her eyes, pouring into him and thrumming in his veins, and when he tugged at her hips, she slid into his lap, straddling his thighs. Her fingers dug into his shoulders for support as Steve’s hands gripped her waist to keep her close.
“If you want to stop—” he started.
Diana tilted her head, her lips curving into a smile as her gaze roamed over his features before locking with his. “Why would I want to stop?”
Steve nodded, absently and distractedly, completely at a loss for words. His gaze dipped. He reached to trace the strap of her pale pink bra with his fingertips, lace and silk clinging to her like a second skin, not even trying to stop his blood from rushing south.
Without a word, Diana reached back and unclasped it, letting it slide down her arms and fall to the floor. His mouth dropped a little in a way that went just slightly below dignified. He didn’t care, having to focus all of his willpower on not touching her, yet. His gaze travelled slowly from the smooth expanse of her chest to the juts of her collarbones, up the column of her neck, past the bow of her lips and until it found the fire of her eyes once more.
Diana leaned forward until her forehead rested against his and Steve had no choice but to hold her gaze.
“I have wanted you for so long,” she whispered, her nails scratching through his hair.
“ Angel.. .”
Her palm splayed over his chest, rising and falling with his breathing. She smiled, pressed a kiss to his cheekbone, his temple.
“I love you,” she murmured in Greek, marvelling in the freedom of being able to say it whenever she pleased.
Steve reached for the band holding her hair in a tight ponytail and pulled it off, allowing the waterfall of it to cascade down her shoulders, soft as black silk. He combed his fingers through it, pulling her to him. Her cheeks were flushed, lips swollen from kisses, the heat radiating from her making it hard for him to think. And he hadn’t even done anything but kiss her yet. Steve tilted her chin to press his lips to her, loving the taste of her, the way her mouth felt languid against his, how she arched into him when he traced his hand up from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck.
He kissed the underside of her jaw, moving his mouth to the spot behind her ear. Smiled at the small gasp and murmured curse that fell from her tongue when his hand traced the waistline on her panties. And then his explorations came to an abrupt halt when she reached for the button of his jeans. Steve sucked in a breath and caught her wrist before Diana had a chance to undo the zipper. If she touched him now—
He shifted her weight in his arms and turned them over, his palm anchored on her lower back, lowering her down on the bed and effectively distracting them both long enough for him to find his bearings. If she touched him when he wasn’t ready he would probably — most definitely, surely — disintegrate. Except Diana was kissing him again, and he was more than eager to give her that. And so he did.
When he pulled away, breaking the kiss to look at her, Diana was dazed and more than a little desperate, her chest heaving with each ragged breath.
“Steve,” she breathed, a plea and command rolled into one.
“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, dipping his head to press a hot kiss to her neck, making her breath catch in her throat and shudder out unsteadily when his mouth moved down, marking a slow path along her clavicle and across her chest.
He didn’t even notice her hands giving his jeans another push to slide them down to his thighs. He smiled, pausing just long enough to discard them and his boxers — an afterthought that didn’t really matter at the moment. And then he leaned over her once more to kiss a path between her breasts and down her sternum, pausing just below her navel to hook his fingers into the waistband of her panties and slide them down her legs in one swift motion.
When he looked up, he found Diana watching him, her eyes dark with desire.
“God, I love you,” he breathed, allowing his gaze to travel along her body from her ankles up to her slightly parted lips.
He had wanted her before. He’d wanted her pretty much non-stop since that night on the boat when they had left Themyscira nearly a hundred years ago, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember the last time he had wanted her this badly. To the point of a dull ache in his solar plexus and a slight tremor in his hands.
Steve bent forward, picking up from where they had left off a minute ago, tattooing a trail of kisses from her navel down, nuzzling into the silky skin between her hipbones.
“Steve,” she sighed, the sound of his voice scattering around them.
It died on her lips with a soft gasp when his mouth closed around her, her back arching, fingers curling around his hair. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her bunch the sheet with her other hand, her knuckles white and her breath nowhere to be found.
“Angel,” he murmured into her skin.
He was slow and thorough, and he knew exactly what he was doing. It might not have been a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but Diana was a goddess, no less. Knowing how to coax the sounds that she was making out of her left Steve stupidly pleased with himself as he worked her up with deliberate dedication, stopping just short of pushing her over the edge until a curse in a language he didn’t recognize fell from her lips and her fingers gripped his hair in a soundless command.
Steve chuckled and pressed his mouth to her in just the right way.
Diana's breath stuttered, an inhale morphing into a whimper. Her muscles shuddered beneath his hands, and Steve was rising above her, kissing whatever skin he could reach. There were words on her lips that he didn’t know, her skin slick with a sheen of sweat. He traced his tongue along her collarbone, teeth grazing gently against her throat. She smelled like sex and he was drunk on her, his own unreleased pleasure pulsing in his fingertips.
Barely coherent, Diana nuzzled sloppily into his cheek, kissing his jaw and pulling him down to her.
“Diana,” he groaned, one hand tangled in her hair.
“I want you,” she whispered almost inaudibly.
He swore, feeling her smile against his skin, her hands moving over him with impatience and urgency. She wrapped one of her legs around his hip, reeling him in — a demand that he couldn’t resist, not anymore. Steve shifted against her body, pressed a kiss to her temple. She sighed into his shoulder when he pushed inside of her, hot breath on his heated skin sending a shiver down his spine. I love you , he thought. I love you so much .
His fingers flexed on her flesh, moving along her thigh as he kissed her throat, trying to focus on going slowly for fear of making this end too fast. Beneath him, he could still feel the faint shudder of the aftershocks shooting through her, her muscles spasming wonderfully around him. Steve weaved his fingers through hers and stretched her arms above her head, pressing them into the sheets and feeling her grasp tighten in agreement.
“Look at me,” he said, desperate to see her. “Diana… Look at me.”
Her eyes fluttered open, hazy and heavy-lidded, hungry in a way that he liked best. Her gaze swept over his features and dropped to his lips, and it was just about enough to end Steve if he’d only let it. She pulled one of her hands from his grip and curled her palm around his neck. Her mouth found his, her hips rocking slowly beneath him to push him into motion.
Like earlier, Steve took his time, building up the heat between them until it was nothing but a hot coil somewhere deep inside of him and then easing away, moving above her as he whispered breathless confessions into her skin, peppered with promises and words of love until she was frantic and barely coherent and his own pleasure took over reason. He could feel her teeth grazing over his shoulder, nails digging in frenzy into the skin of his back as his pace picked up, the need to feel all of her so overwhelming it was unbearable.
He had dreamed of that; had dreamed of making her his again, the bliss of closeness shattered by the light of the morning and the emptiness of his bed, Diana's ghost a constant presence that made him feel like he was losing his mind. But she was real now, her voice and her touch electrifying, and everything Steve had ever wanted to say to her pouring out of him like he had no control over the words.
And then her body constricted around him, tipping him into a bliss of momentary rapture, her arms catching him, breaking his fall, cradling him close, her name on his lips like a prayer.
Steve drifted back to awareness slowly, Diana’s hand stroking his hair, her lips on his temple and his breath falling on her collarbone.
“I love you,” she whispered when Steve managed to drag his gaze to hers, looking no less pleased with herself than he had earlier.
He smiled and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “I missed you,” he breathed.
Her hand closed around his and she pressed a kiss to his fingers. “I’m here.”
---
Afterwards, in the soft evening light filtering through the window, Diana couldn’t stop thinking of his haunted eyes, the vulnerability that he had allowed her to see earlier. Like it was something that was spilling through a recently cut-open wound.
For Steve it had been a no easy feat, and she knew it. The past couple of hours proved that they still remembered the language of their bodies, slipping easily into the familiar patterns and the smooth touches — all moves rehearsed and repeated but never lacking nonetheless. He knew where to put his hands to make her forget the world, knew how to kiss her to leave her breathless, how to touch her to turn her desire white-hot and thrumming in her veins. Diana loved that he knew her better than she knew herself, her body coming alive in his arms.
Yet, after all this time she couldn’t help but feel a twinge in her stomach at the thought that at the core, they were strangers now. And she itched to make that feeling go away. She wanted him back, wanted him to be completely and utterly hers once more. The way she had wanted since he had walked into Waller's office; since he had kissed in Quinn's hotel.
Right now, stretched under the sheets beside her, Steve was watching her from all of two inches away, her head resting on his pillow and their legs tangled together, sweet weight and warmth and yearned-for comfort. She studied him back, taking in the tired lines around his mouth, his weary look, the tenderness in his gaze that made her breath catch in her throat. The eyes so blue that Diana couldn’t help but feel like she was drowning in them. No one had ever looked at her the way he did. In all of her life, Steve was the only one.
She lifted her hand and brushed it through his damp hair.
“I need a cut,” Steve whispered, smiling under her scrutiny.
Diana shook her head. “I like it.”
He ran his thumb along her jaw. His skin was a little calloused, rougher than hers, making her wish he would never stop touching her. “You okay?” he asked.
She nodded. Hesitated. And then craned her neck to press a kiss to his brow before resting their foreheads together, crowding his space. He didn’t seem to mind. “I forgot…” she murmured, feeling her eyes drop shut for fear of losing the sensation of this moment, “what it was like to be with you.”
“Must’ve not been very memorable,” Steve chuckled, a little amused, a little wary of her answer.
Her hand moved to rest on the back of his neck. “No, not that. I didn’t forget,” she said after a moment, searching for better words. “I stopped allowing myself to remember.”
“Diana…”
Her eyes opened slowly, “Because if I didn’t, I would lose myself in missing you.”
Steve’s smile slipped, his expression growing pained. She watched his jaw work, his lips moving without a sound, struggling against the question.
“Will you be able to forgive me?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” Diana admitted, and regretted saying it the second the words came out of her mouth as he went rigid beside her. From this close, she could almost feel his pulse stutter.
“Do you… do you want me to leave?” Steve uttered, his voice low, barely a whisper. “Because screw Waller,” he stroked a strand of her hair, but his hand was shaking and he drew it back. “If this is too much for you, I could—”
Diana brushed her fingers to his lips, silencing him, and then tilted her face up to kiss him. “No.” She shook her head and kissed him again, slowly and lazily, smiling when he responded without hesitation, his hand sliding around her waist to rest on the base of her spine.
She pulled away and lowered her fingers to trail the length of his clavicle. They needed to talk. She had questions still, things that she needed to know and answers that would make sense. Everything that he had told her about his conversation with her mother was having trouble settling in Diana's mind, so wild it seemed, and she had seen enough wild in her life to not be easily swayed. But right now his body was warm against hers, his chest rising and falling steadily, and she was deliriously happy and sated and finally at peace. He loved her. And she loved him. And somehow everything else had lost its importance. At least for the time being.
They would talk, she knew that. Eventually, they would figure out how to make this work, but right now she didn’t want to think about that. All she wanted was to trace the lines of his body as they basked in the lazy afterglow and promise him whatever he wanted, so long as he swore to never leave her again.
“No,” Diana repeated, her eyes searching his. “How can I want you gone when I just got you back?” She smiled, but it dimmed almost instantly and his brows pulled together in response. “I just—I need time,” she breathed.
Steve nodded. “Yeah… yes, of course. Anything."
She trailed her fingertips down his cheek. “And I want you, always.” Another nod, and she felt his body relax. “I love you and I’m done losing you, Steve.”
The shadow that had settled over his face remained intact. She could practically hear his thoughts chasing one another, bouncing against his skull.
Steve drew back from her and rolled onto his back, his gaze drifting up to the ceiling. He tucked his arm behind his head and exhaled slowly. His lips pressed tightly together like he was trying to swallow the words wanting out, his profile a dark outline against the pale rectangle of the window behind which the shadows were deepening.
“You’re doing it again,” Diana whispered, moving closer to him, seeking his warmth. She kissed his shoulder.
Steve glanced at her. “Doing what?”
“Pulling away from me.”
He didn’t say anything. She could feel his unease with her skin, his fear lurking behind the façade of contentment. It was like all the words they’d said to one another, all whispers punctuated by kisses, dissolved into nothing. He had meant them, she knew he had, but he was also scared of them. She thought back to the time they had spent together, before . Before everything had gone up in flames. Thought of how careful he had always been with his confessions, pouring his soul into every single one of them but wary of making promises he couldn’t keep.
She tried not to think of those that had fallen through the cracks of their relationship, ground into dust. Life, she had learned, was merciless like that, and promises were not unbreakable after all.
Diana propped up on her elbow and looked down at him, his eyes never shifting to her as she studied him in the dimming light. His chest was rising and falling steadily as he breathed, and two faint concern lines creased the skin between his brows. Everything about him was so familiar that just looking at him was erasing the time and space between them.
“You’re not less, Steve,” she said. “And I’m not more. We’re just… us. That’s why we work, why we always have.”
“We haven’t,” he reminded her in a whoosh of breath, and for a moment she was overcome with the fear of watching him slip between her fingers again.
“You know what I mean,” she shook her head. “We have both made mistakes. It doesn’t mean that we deserve to be punished for them for the rest of our lives.”
“But what if—”
“What if what?” she interjected. “What if the sun falls from the sky? What if I wake up tomorrow and decide that you’re not good enough for me, after all?” He flinched. “You think I don’t understand? You once told me you didn’t want me anymore.”
A shuddered breath broke out of his chest.
“And you told me that you couldn’t forgive me, which, trust me, I get because I will never forgive myself, either.”
“I didn’t…” Diana started and faltered.
It wasn’t that but she wasn’t quite certain how to put into words that it might take her some time to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. That it wasn’t about him, but about her as well. The art of healing one’s heartache was never taught in a fight. It was the minefield that she had to cross on her own. There was no armour in that war, no shields and no swords, and every step could chip away just enough of her heart for it to disappear for good before she knew it. She needed time, but in no way did that mean that she was willing to let him go.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” she whispered. “I…”
“I know,” he breathed, a small, humourless smile appearing on his face, the jagged edges of his voice slicing right through her.
He knew.
He’d been there before.
“There is so little I can give you,” Steve spoke after a moment. “You don’t need me to protect you. You’re stronger than anyone I've ever known, in every sense of that word. And it’s not just my ego talking — and believe me, I have a rather inflated one — but facts. You’re…” He paused. “You’re a goddess, Diana. You’re divine in every way I can think of, and I— If leaving was the one thing I could do for you, how could I not—”
“It wasn’t,” she stopped him. “You say that having this… bond with you,” the words still sounded alien to her ears, “was a high price to pay. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. You think I wouldn’t have done it knowingly?” Her voice broke just enough for Steve to turn to her. “You think I wouldn’t have pulled you out of that plane if I had a chance to do so? You think I wouldn’t have shielded you if I had seen that bomb coming?”
He glanced away from her and then back, seemingly unable to hold her gaze. “Do you feel it?”
She hesitated as if to have a better look inside of herself in search of something that she didn’t know was there only a few hours ago. But what she found there were tenderness and relief and unspoken prayers to all gods she had ever known for bringing him back to her — answered at last. All the things that had been there for so long that she had long forgotten what it was like to live without them.
“I feel... I feel scared because I don’t want you to be taken away from me, and it seems like that’s all that’s been happening since I've met you," she said softly. "I’m scared not because I don’t trust you, but because I don’t trust you not to break my heart again when you’re also the only one who can mend it.” Maybe it was good that he wasn’t really looking at her, after all. She wasn’t used to being this outspoken, either. Not for a long time now. The key to keeping said heart whole, Diana had learned, was to not bare it for anyone. “It frightens me to feel this way, but I don’t know how to make it be otherwise.”
She put her palm on his chest, flat over where his heart was beating steadily.
“Diana…” he started.
“I told you that I loved you. That I always will.” Her voice was soft, but his face contorted at her words nonetheless. Diana watched a storm of emotions sweep over his features. “Didn’t you believe me, Steve? Not once?”
“I believed that you believed it,” he ran a hand over his face. “You can’t know—”
She brushed her fingers to his chin and turned his face to her, catching his eyes and holding his gaze. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed. He was not used to letting anyone see him so exposed, she thought. Not even her because enough time had passed for old habits to get rusty and what was once a given had to be a choice again.
There were people in Diana’s life, people she cared about and who cared for her, but the loneliness that followed her across the past seven decades was all-consuming nonetheless. She didn’t know the whole story about him yet, the questions she didn’t yet know how to ask rolling on the tip of her tongue. But looking at him now she had a distinct suspicion that Steve had put a fair amount of effort into keeping whoever happened to pass through his days at arm’s length as well. She could feel it in the way he carried himself, in the tiny changes to his expression when he thought no one was looking.
They were small things she’d seen before, but time had put them into perspective. All those weeks when she was busy agonizing over him not loving her anymore, it never crossed her mind that he was thinking the exact same thing. That she had left him behind a long time ago, too. And maybe it had broken him in places that hadn't yet healed.
Her heart squeezed fiercely, tight with so much affection it almost hurt to breathe.
“How can I ever love someone else when I love you so much?” she whispered, her voice low and earnest as she tried to put into it everything that words couldn’t convey.
Her question wedged itself between them as Steve stared at her. She hoped desperately that it was the right thing to say to smooth out the worry lines that continued to crease his features. Her heart skipped a beat when a moment passed, and then another. And then—
“C’mere.”
He reached for her and Diana didn’t hesitate, moving to him. She settled into the warmth of his body and brushed her lips to his skin above his collarbone before tucking her face into the hollow of his throat. Steve wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. She could hear his heartbeat reverberating into her, could feel his lips press to her hair, and she squeezed her eyes, wanting to never stop existing in this moment.
“I thought… I hoped that you’d moved on,” Steve said a while later. “You deserve love, Diana. You deserve happiness.”
“I tried,” she admitted after a moment. “I have never stopped waiting for you, but I had stopped believing that you’d come back — after a while.” Her hand twitched a little on his skin. She drew it back, feeling his fingers comb through her hair. She kissed the spot right beneath his collarbone. “I tried,” she repeated in a whisper. “But no one made me feel the way you did… the way you do .”
Her words were simple, her soul bare.
“I’m sorry,” Steve breathed.
“Don’t be,” she said, lifting her head to look at him.
Never wanted to stop looking at him, either.
His lips twitched again, and this time there was a familiar spark in his eyes, one that made her chest constrict and her blood turn into molten lava. She felt his fingers strum along her spine. “No, I’m sorry for being…” Steve sighed, “glad, I guess, that it's never worked out. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here with me.”
Diana tilted her head, allowing her lips to curve as well. “Don’t be.” She studied him for a long moment. “Do you remember Veld?”
Vividly , Steve thought. There were a lot of things that he’d forgotten since then — some through the passage of time, others through the effort of not wanting to keep carrying the weight of them. But that night and her mouth on his and her body pressed beneath him was bright as ever in his mind, his own beacon of hope. The beginning of life as he knew it now.
He nodded, “Yes.”
She brushed her hand through his hair, her expression wondrous and tender. “You made me yours that night, Steve,” she whispered. “I have never belonged to anyone else since.”
“Not even—” he started and cut off. He cleared his throat.
“Not even when I was with someone else, no,” Diana said.
He rose up on his elbow, capturing her mouth with his. Smiled when she hummed her approval in the back of her throat and kissed him back.
“Are you tired?” she asked against his lips, her voice raspy and wonderfully breathless.
Steve cocked an eyebrow at her. He bumped his nose against hers and kissed her once more. “No.”
“Good.” Diana moved to toss her leg over his hips, allowing him to pull her on top of him, his fingers tunnelling through hair and tugging her closer. “We have some catching up to do.”
Notes:
Comments are love and I'll adore you for them forever :)
Chapter 13
Notes:
Hey guys, I hope at least some of you are still reading this :) Apologies for a break. I was dealing with some stuff and also I tried to finish the rest of the story before I went on with posting. Did I accomplish it? No, but I'm close, hence the approximate chapter count ^^
Thank you so much for you patience! I hope that you'll enjoy what I have in store :) Fair warning, I will go crazy on fluff in the next couple of chapters because I finally can.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gotham, 2017
Steve woke up to the glare of the sun beaming on his face through the drapes that neither he, nor Diana, had bothered to close. He grumbled to himself and burrowed his face deeper into the pillow, not yet ready to surrender to the mercy of a new day.
His mind was hazy and his body wonderfully exhausted; more relaxed than he had been in so long he couldn’t even remember. Tangled in the sheets that pooled around his hips and legs, Steve took in a breath and then exhaled slowly, his arm closing tighter around his pillow.
And then the fog lifted, somewhat, and even in his half-slumber, he became aware of three things. First, it was later than he would usually wake up. For the day to be this bright, it had to be at least a few hours past his regular rolling-out-of-the-bed-at-the-crack-of-dawn-after-several-hours-of-a-fitful-sleep routine. Second, this was not his bed. Even after his rather brief time at the lake house, he knew that the window was supposed to be on the opposite wall, comfortably far enough away from the bed for the sun to not be bothersome until early afternoon. And third — something was missing.
He scrunched his face and rubbed his eyes, blinking sleepily as he breathed in the smell of detergent from the pillowcase. He stretched under the sheets, his muscles pleasantly sore and—
The memories came rushing back in as if someone had flipped the switch.
Diana .
He could still taste her lips on his and feel the touch her hands sliding over his body, sending a flurry of sparks along his flesh as they moved together, skin to skin. Desperate and hushed I love yous whispered in the dark over and over again. His fingers in her hair and her nails scraping gently over his scalp, moving over his skin, as she held him close. Delight and rapture and bliss, peppered with affirmations of love and promises to never let go, and his name falling from her lips; the sound of which never failed to undo him.
Steve let out a long breath.
They had talked and made love and then, spent and sated, they had talked some more into the early hours of the morning as she'd lain draped over his chest, his fingers threading slowly through her hair and her voice the only thing that he wanted to hear. It had lost its edge eventually, slipping back into the familiar husk that was no longer laced with anguish.
Diana had told him about Paris and the Louvre, and how she had ended up there when her mentor from the British Museum had passed away, mindful of not overstaying her welcome lest someone take notice of her ageless state. About exhibitions she’d curated and the galleries bathed in bright sunlight, and her way of trying to fit into his world when nothing else seemed to work. There had been wistfulness and fondness in her voice, and endless affection for that part of her life. If saving the world was her first and foremost priority, then the museum was certainly a close second.
She had drawn patterns on his skin with her fingers and spoken of the things dear to her, places she had been and people she had cared about. Steve had asked her questions, curious and desperate to unfold the person she’d become without him, his own chest swelling with pride in response, which had felt odd and somewhat out of place — what claim did he have on her choices? And yet…
He had told her some things, too. Things that he had never told anyone. About his time with the British Intelligence that had been beyond happy to recruit him with his real history stapled onto fake dates and trying to dismantle the cruelty of this world from the inside. About leaving and coming back once his old commanding officers were gone and there was no memory left of him. About the things he had done to restore the good as best he could, fumbling sometimes because he hadn't always known how. Never had a knack for it the way she did, he had told Diana, only to have her say that there was more goodness to him than he could see.
Nothing had felt like enough but that job and the sense of purpose it gave him had kept him busy. Had kept him moving forward and helped keep his mind focused even though he had never stopped looking for her face in the crowd. (Diana had fallen quiet when he had admitted this, in a whoosh of breath.)
And how he had stepped away from it all one day when he could no longer stand seeing blood and death no matter what he had done. It had been getting remarkably hard to tell the good guys from the bad ones. And so Steve had chosen to make his own rules and become his own operative, and being a spy was a skill that had come in handy like nothing else.
Until Amanda Waller had unearthed him somehow, dragging him back to the surface once again.
There was more — more stories, more confessions and feelings that he never knew how to put into words. But there was only so many hours in the night, and talking was the last thing he wanted to waste them on. They would make time for it, later.
Diana had been the first one to fall asleep, curled into the side of his body, her head tucked under his chin and her leg draped over one of his. For a while, Steve had simply lain there, with the weight of her in his arms and her chest rising and falling evenly as she'd breathed. His mind had been pleasantly blank, at peace for the first time in so long that the feeling was nearly painfully alien, until he had drifted off, too.
But now the sun was up and the bed was empty and he decidedly didn’t like it…
Steve scrubbed a hand down his face and rolled onto his back with a sigh, turning to look at her pillow. The sheets smelled of her, of them, and that, together with the outline of her body on the vacant spot next to him made him smile. Like a moron perhaps, he thought, grinning wider. He stifled a yawn and looked around, noticing their clothes hanging from the back of a chair — Diana’s doing, undoubtedly. Last time he had checked, they were strewn all over the floor. The two of them most definitely had not been focused on keeping things neat the previous evening.
His slight worry was quelled instantly by the sight of Diana's garments in that pile — surely, she wouldn’t have left naked.
And thinking about her naked made him think of other things that they could do naked. Which made him wonder where she was and how soon he could get her to come back to bed for another little while.
No, make it a long while, he decided.
He sat up, wincing a little when the sunlight hit him square in the face. It took Steve a moment to hear the water running in the bathroom.
He swung his legs over the edge of the mattress and climbed out of the bed, padding across the room to the plain door that stood slightly ajar. He pushed it open further, stepping inside if a little tentatively, taking in the details he had missed the night before. A claw-foot tub that he was far more comfortable with, than the shower with at least a hundred settings in Bruce Wayne’s house, was sitting under a frosted window with a white curtain wrapped around it and billows of steam rising over it and curling along the ceiling.
He could see the outline of Diana’s body behind it, and the relief that swept over him was overwhelming. It was as though he was still waiting for all of this to dissipate before his eyes, turning everything that had happened between them several hours ago into smoke and ash that he couldn’t hold on to.
It didn’t.
He had a brief moment of hesitation, and then he stepped toward the bathtub, thinking that if she didn’t want company she would simply say so. He pulled the curtain aside and climbed in, careful not to slip on the wet surface. Diana’s back was to him, her face turned up to the spray of water. Still, she turned her head slightly to the side when the shower curtain moved, aware of his presence, her shoulders relaxing when she realized that it was him.
Steve adjusted the curtain behind him and stepped closer to her, and then it was just the two of them in a cloud of steam, cut off from the rest of the world by a thin sheet of fabric. He watched her smooth her hands over her hair before she turned to him, drops of water clinging to her skin and chasing one another down her cheeks, her chest, her arms. She smiled, and Steve moved to her, bridging the remaining distance between them.
“Morning,” he whispered, smiling back. “I thought I’d dreamed you.”
Which wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened, if he was being honest with himself.
“I thought I had dreamed you, too,” she confessed.
Her cheeks were flushed from the hot water, and her eyes were so damn radiant that his lips twitched for another second and then stretched into a smile so wide that he thought his skull might crack.
Steve reached for her face, tilting it up and brushing a light kiss to her mouth — an impulse he couldn’t resist, and didn’t have to anymore. His other arm circled her body, his hand resting on the small of her back, and Diana leaned into him, chasing his mouth when he started to draw back, her lips curved into a smile against his.
“No, all real,” he said softly, bumping his nose against hers and making her laugh, his voice just loud enough to be heard over the running water.
She pressed her palm to his chest, right over his heart that was beating in earnest and found his gaze with hers. Steve breathed out. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to just look at her and drink her in — all of her — down to the droplets of water on her eyelashes. He wondered if she could feel his unapologetically escalated heartbeat, endless wonder coursing through his system as he mapped her face with his eyes.
His fingers curled over her wrist and he pulled her hand away, lifting it up and kissing her palm, his gaze locked with hers.
Diana smiled and murmured something in Greek. Heat sparked inside of him, pulsing in his blood, and Steve remembered why, exactly, he had gone looking for her in the first place. She spoke Greek to him last night as well — like she'd done so many times before; words without meaning murmured into his ear. There was something about the easiness with which they spilled from her lips, so unlike the measured carefulness with which she used other languages, that never failed to undo him in the best way.
“I have no idea what that means,” he admitted.
Over the years, he had grown to recognize I love you, I miss you, I want you , and a handful of other terms of affection whispered into his skin, between chaste kisses, the meaning of the words not as important as the fire shooting through him at the sound of her voice. A few curse words too, if he remembered correctly. He wanted to hear every word in every language that she knew.
Diana's eyes crinkled in amusement, and it occurred to him that it wasn’t merely about her slipping into her native tongue when her guard was down and she allowed herself to just be. No, she was very much aware of the effect Greek had on him, and was enjoying it immensely.
He did not mind that in the slightest.
“I never knew I could love anyone so much,” she said, this time in English, as she leaned forward to press a kiss to his jaw, her hands sliding down his body to rest on his hips.
“I love—I love when you do that,” Steve breathed, his hands sliding up her shoulders and his voice hoarse.
She drew back to look him in the face, one eyebrow arched. “Speak Greek?”
He cleared his throat, willing himself not to get too excited, not wanting to end the moment of comfortable intimacy between them. “That, too,” he said diplomatically.
That’s what you get for falling in love with a goddess , Steve thought, taking a deep breath and doing his best to stay focused. How he still wanted her this badly after they’d spent hours last night reacquainting themselves with one another he had no idea. He was supposed to be drained in every way imaginable, and yet, here they were. His gaze flicked down to her mouth but he dragged it up. Admittedly, not without effort. She was so beautiful he could barely think straight.
“Diana,” he started, savouring the taste of her name on his tongue.
Her fingers flexed on his skin, her eyes searching his face. She smiled. “I missed you,” she said again. He had long lost count of how many times those words had been spoken since the previous afternoon.
His heart tripped over itself.
He leaned closer to her and whispered, “I missed you, too.”
She smiled and picked up a washcloth from the small shelf on the wall, and then pulled him closer to her under the spray of water, painting his skin with soapy foam. He let her, dropping his head occasionally to press a kiss to her shoulder, her neck, whatever he could reach, promptly ignoring her half-hearted You’re being distracting , her voice laced with affection and her hand trailing idly over his skin. He let her wash his hair, too, and kiss him again as the water drew rivulets on their bodies, his hands sliding over her with the easy familiarity that no time apart could have ever erased.
There was a mild undercurrent of tension between them still, their words tentative and new. Steve’s father had told him a long time ago that there was no point in dwelling on regrets. That one needed to learn from them and move on, and Steve had spent decades of his life trying to live that way. His old man had seldom been wrong. But he was looking at Diana now, her fingers pushing through his hair and lathering it expertly, her lips curved into a half-smile, and he couldn’t help but feel a pang of wistful longing for the wasted years and the heartache that he would never be able to reverse.
There was a lesson here too, but wishing that he had learned it sooner did nothing to take back the pain that he had inflicted on her. He only wished that they could go back to where they had left off, and if they did that, maybe there was hope for them still.
Steve blew off the itchy suds clinging to the tip of his nose with a huff, making a face. Diana laughed, making something warm and wonderful unfurl in his chest at the sound of it.
I will never stop loving you , he thought as she tugged him to her once again to rinse everything off, her hands moving over his head, his face, through his hair, across his chest. There was not nearly enough space for them in the too-small tub, and he couldn’t be more grateful for her proximity, wishing that he had woken up earlier to have had a chance to return the favour.
Maybe tomorrow. He silently vowed to make a joint shower a frequent occurrence.
Head ducked closer to her, still wrapped in a cloud of steam, he pressed his lips to her forehead, feeling her fingers curl around the back of his neck. Diana lifted her face to his, finding his mouth once more. The kiss was soft and languid, but somehow it left him breathless and dazed nonetheless. There were a million words he wanted to say to her and no way of saying them, so he opted for the second best thing and held her against him as his lips moved over hers until the water started to run cold.
Diana turned it off and reached around him to pull the curtain open. She stepped out on the mat and Steve followed, reaching for the towels on the rack, the two of them cocooned in the wisps of sweet-smelling steam. They dried off in easy camaraderie, his eyes darting towards her every few seconds, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He had a distinct suspicion that he was, in all probability, smiling like a complete moron. And he couldn’t care less.
She was the first to leave to go find her clothes, but Steve lingered, staring at her as she walked away, the droplets of water falling from her hair and sliding down her skin, and wondering how exactly they went from where they had been the previous morning to this state of blissful contentment like it was nothing. Like slipping into a pair of old shoes, except this was an odd way to think of a drop-dead gorgeous princess that left him with sore muscles and an insatiable hunger for more.
When Steve walked out of the bathroom a minute later, she was standing by the chest of drawers and brushing her hair, already dressed but still barefoot. He pulled his jeans on and picked up his shirt, slipping it on over his head. The last time he had felt this light was over half a century ago, and he didn’t trust the feeling not to shatter before his eyes.
He crossed the room, walking over to Diana. Hands of her hips, he leaned down to kiss the back of her head.
“Do we have to leave?” he muttered into her hair.
Diana paused. “What else would we do?” she asked, a smile in her voice.
He chuckled under his breath and dipped his head to press a kiss to her shoulder. “I could think of a thing or two,” he murmured as his arms slid around her waist.
Or more, if she gave him some time. Many more.
She smirked. “I’m sure you could.”
A memory of the previous night flared up in his mind, startlingly bright, considering the lack of proper sleep. Of his mouth trailing down her body as she whispered his name, her hand raking through his hair while he—
Steve inhaled unsteadily and forced himself to open his eyes. He needed to stop thinking about that now, especially if they were not going to… well, engage in any of those activities at this particular time. Which was a damn shame.
“Everyone will be looking for us,” Diana added.
He nuzzled into the soft spot behind her ear. “Let them,” he muttered dismissively, not caring about that one way or the other.
She turned around, her hands reaching over to frame his face. “I have a conference call with Athens at noon,” she said apologetically. Her palm slid to rest on the back of his neck, her fingers playing with his hair that was still damp from the shower. “But later…” She let the end of the sentence to hang between them, one elegant eyebrow lifted.
“You promise?” Steve pulled her closer to him, debating for a moment kissing her until later became now .
“I promise.”
And a promise was unbreakable.
He paused, and then said quietly, “I want you to promise me something else.”
“What?” Diana tilted her head, her smile slipping at the sight of turmoil that chased across his features. “Steve, what is it?”
He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the foul taste of the words rolling on the tip of his tongue. “I want you to promise me that if something—if anything happens to me again, you won’t… you won’t try to—”
“No,” she interjected before he could even finish.
“Diana…”
“No.”
She was shaking her head and staring at him like he was mad.
“Please.”
“How can you ask that of me?” Her voice dropped, hurt and incredulous.
Steve lowered his hands from her body. “How can I not?”
He felt helpless, stupid, fumbling for words that wouldn’t come.
His thoughts drifted back to the cold November night on the airfield in Belgium and his muscles aching and his lungs burning as he ran after the airplane that had been about to take off and destroy millions of lives. The wind had been biting at his cheeks, and when Diana had called out his name there had been nothing that Steve had wanted more than to turn around. Wanted to go back in time to the night before and the hushed whispers of their voices in the dark and the fantasy of their life together that he had weaved in his mind.
Instead, he had surged forward, taking advantage of her disoriented state. Knowing that if he had looked back just once, he would never be able to carry through with the plan that had made Charlie turn pale and Sameer swear colourfully under his breath when Steve had laid it out to them several minutes earlier.
They had been running out of time, and as Steve’s hands had closed around the rungs of the ladder attached to the plane, he'd thought that he was about to make a difference at last. And so, instead of going back to the woman he had loved with infinite devotion and holding her face in his hands and telling her time and time again how much she'd meant to him until his throat had gone raw, he had climbed into the belly of the airplane and pulled the trigger so she could finish the mission of her people. He had been only a grain of sand in the universe, while she was a beacon of salvation to them all.
He had done it then because Diana had been important. He was asking her now — to let him go if she had to — for the same reason. Except he didn’t know how to do it. Not when he wanted to be with her with an ache that was deep in his bones.
Steve pushed his hand into his hair and took a step back, unable to stand being this close to her and not touch her, but not sure that he was still allowed to. Not when she was looking at him like that, like—
“How can I not do it?” he repeated, gesturing at her, feeling foolish because for an articulate guy who had managed to talk his way out of some shitty situations more times than he could keep count of, he was remarkably at a loss for words right now. “I mean, you’re… you , and I am—”
“You’re what?”
He took a deep breath and looked away, hand reaching to rub his eyes. “You mean something, Diana. To the world, to—”
“And you mean something to me,” she interjected. “A lot. You mean a lot to me , Steve.”
“You know what I’m talking about,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Diana moved towards him without hesitation, and he let her, his need for her throbbing dully in his chest. Her hands reached for him, clutching the fabric of his shirt to tug him closer to her, sliding up his chest. Her eyes searched his face, and once they found his gaze, he couldn’t look away.
“I know that last night you told me that you loved me,” she said quietly. “You told me that you wanted to be with me and you took me to bed and you made me believe every word that you said. And I let you because I wanted to believe them, too. Did any of that mean anything at all? All the confessions, all the promises. Or were they just the words you thought I wanted to hear?”
Panic rose inside of him in a hot wave. She didn’t think that, did she? She wouldn’t… Not after everything…
Steve bowed his head until their foreheads were almost touching, his palms curling around her sides and sliding up her back. “Don’t say that. You know that’s not true.”
“Then don’t ask that of me, Steve,” she whispered, her voice soft. “Please don’t, I can’t—I won’t— ” Her thumb was stroking his cheek, running over his stubble. He hadn’t had a chance to shave yet.
“Diana…” He swallowed, his mouth dry.
“I want forever with you,” she said. “It’s all I've ever wanted, and now… How many second chances do we need to be given before we see them for what they are?”
She smoothed down his hair, her gaze roaming over his features, open and earnest, and he knew how much it cost her to bare her heart before him like that. After all this time, after everything they had been through, everything she had been through on her own. It must not have been an easy feat.
His throat grew tight.
“It has always been you, Steve Trevor.” Her voice was quiet but decisive. “It will always be.”
Forever. He liked the idea of that. He could live an infinite number of lives with her, share millions of moments, and never want anything else. Not for one second.
He touched his thumb to her chin. “Because of that prophecy that your mother told us about?”
Diana shook her head. “Prophecy or not, we make our own fates, for the gods that map our paths are tricksters who love to confuse and deceive people. But you came back to me. You came back to me time and time again. I have no way of knowing if what my mother told you is true, if it was something within me that made it happen, but if it was… if it is , there is no price high enough for what we have.” She paused. “Would you not do the same for me?”
“In a heartbeat,” Steve replied without hesitation.
“Then how could I not?” She tilted her head, watching the worry lines smooth out on his face. “Do you still want me?”
“Always,” he rasped.
“Then I am yours for as long as you’ll have me.”
He felt the corner of his mouth curl up into a smile. He twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. “That might be a while.”
Diana smiled back at him. “Not long enough,” she whispered.
Steve’s heart slammed against his rib-cage with enough force to leave him reeling.
He didn’t believe in gods — not all of them, at least, and not the way Diana did, his experience with Ares aside. Didn’t believe in fate, either. He had been raised to be practical and pragmatic, to rely on facts and experience rather than faith. It always seemed feeble to him, too incorporeal to take seriously. But how else could he explain how the daughter of a god from Olympus — the Princess of the Amazons — stole the heart of a lonely spy who had long lost his way in a world that had turned cruel and crumbled before his eyes?
There was no way of forcing her to make that promise, and god help him, he didn’t want her to make it either — he wanted as many years with her as could get, no matter what. Selfish bastard… he was stupidly, absurdly happy that she had chosen him. She had a chance to weigh her options through experiences that he wasn’t part of and see that he was, in all probability, not as above-average as he wanted her to think. And yet, she had still chosen him.
Steve exhaled slowly. “Yeah, let’s talk about that in a couple hundred years.”
Diana nuzzled into him, her fingers curling over the fabric of his shirt as though she thought that he might want to escape, adamant to hold him close — something that she most definitely didn’t have to worry about, not even a little. She murmured something in an ancient tongue that only her people remembered to honour.
Steve smiled despite himself. “What did you say?” he asked quietly, willing his body not to respond the way it tended to whenever she did that, the string of syllables sending a burst of heat through his blood.
Diana looked up, the soft smile on her lips nearly undoing him. “I’ll tell you later,” she said and bit her lip but it didn’t stop her smile from turning into an indulgent grin when Steve swallowed visibly, his mind painting vivid images he was quite eager to make come true.
He licked his lips, having to put an almost inhuman effort into staying focused. Surely, a conference call couldn’t be that important? His fingers flexed on her body, and she lifted an eyebrow in an unspoken question, looking downright smug now.
(He wondered if it dubbed as permission to start taking her clothes off.)
“So, you really want this?” he clarified, watching her eyes flick between his.
“Of course.” She tilted her head, surprised. “Steve, yes.”
He cleared his throat. “And we’re—”
“Together.”
She took his hand and laced her fingers with his, watching the fire ignite in his eyes.
Together. In that way .
He brushed his lips to her knuckles and then leaned forward, finding her mouth with his. Diana smiled, kissed him back. Her hand slipped out of his grasp to curl over his jaw, her back arching into him. Her tongue slipped past his lips and a strangled sound formed in the back of his throat — surprise and pleasure and approval. She was going to be the death of him, Steve thought absently, and he was too far gone to even care.
His hand slipped underneath her shirt, calloused palm splayed over the base of her spine. He dropped his head to trace a path along her jaw and toward her neck with his mouth, sucking hard on her skin when she threw her head back to better accommodate his touch, hands digging into his shoulders. They should have just skipped getting dressed altogether, he mused.
“Are you sure we have to—” Steve started against her throat, teeth grazing gently over her pulse point. He smiled when her breath hitched in her throat.
The loud grumble of his stomach cut him off.
“Christ,” he groaned when Diana laughed, and he dropped his forehead onto the slope of her shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut in frustration. The mood was gone in an instant. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, the sound of it muffled by the fabric of her shirt. “Speak of awful timing.”
“Let’s go take care of this,” she whispered, kissing his temple, her nails scratching through the hair on the nape of his neck.
Steve raised his head and shook it adamantly. “I’m fine.”
“Liar,” she whispered, catching his face between her hands, eyes finding his.
His gaze drifted instantly down to her mouth, swollen from kissing. “Yeah, well, I’m gonna give you that,” he said absently, staring unashamedly at the bow of her lips.
“Steve.”
“Mm?” He blinked and lifted his gaze, not even bothering to pretend to follow the conversation. He probably looked like a lovesick idiot to her. Not that he cared. This was too new and he ached for her for too long to care about anything except— “It was nothing. I’m not hungry, I swear,” he assured her heatedly — a little too heatedly — as he attempted to pull her closer again. “Now, where were we…”
Diana stopped him with her hand on his chest. “When was the last time you ate?” she inquired.
He scrunched his face, considering the question for a moment. “Before you whisked me away to…” he glanced around the bedroom, “take care of other things.”
“You need to eat,” she pressed. He turned back to her and tilted his head quizzically. “ We do,” she corrected.
She was right. She was always right and he conceded it with an exasperated huff, his grip on her loosening if somewhat unwillingly.
“Right, well… to be continued?” Steve asked softly, tracing an idle pattern over her clavicle with his finger. He looked up and reached over to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.
Diana’s smile stretched out wider, the corners of her eyes crinkling in a way that he loved. So majestic he could barely take it.
“To be continued,” she promised.
---
“Donuts!” Barry exclaimed, snatching one from the box and sending powdered sugar flying everywhere. He bit into it with a groan, “Gawd, this is good!”
Steve had never seen anyone chew with so much concentration. It was almost as if Barry’s very existence zeroed in on the piece of glazed dough. The ever-hungry speedster was so easy to please it was endearing beyond measure. Steve bit back a smile and turned to the coffee machine on the counter, desperate to chase away the fogginess of his sleepless night from his head. Trust Alfred to have it running since early morning. God bless Alfred.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at Diana who was watching the feast with amusement, arms folded over her chest and a gentle smile playing on her face. She caught him looking, and offered him a tiny nod in response to an eyebrow raised in a silent question. Without a word, Steve reached for a second cup, wondering how rude it would be to ask them all to take the food elsewhere so he could kiss her right there and then.
“You’re the best mom ever,” Barry muttered, tossing the last bit into his mouth and peering hungrily into the box again.
Diana smirked. “Actually, it was Steve’s idea,” she said.
Another donut in hand, Barry turned to Steve. “You’re the best mom—”
“Please don’t,” Steve interjected, horrified, and raised his hand for good measure.
Diana pursed her lips around another smile.
He slid a cup towards her. She picked it up and took a sip before breathing a soundless Thank you to him, the twinkle in her eyes effectively making Steve forget how to think.
Barry clammed his mouth shut, not offended in the slightest.
“Man, I miss this,” Victor muttered, studying the food.
Barry swallowed and turned to him. “Yeah, dude. That’s, like, the worst thing about your,” he waved a donut in Victor’s general direction, “situation.”
Vic gave him an incredulous look. “You think?” he asked flatly.
Arthur stepped towards the counter, curious and maybe a tad more suspicious than the moment warranted. “So, what’s the occasion?” he asked.
“These are just treats,” Diana countered without missing one beat. “Do they need an occasion?”
“And they’re also not as boring as—” Barry started.
“Careful how you finish that sentence, Master Allen,” Alfred warned him, walking in, a newspaper in his hand, and moving straight towards the kettle.
“—as some other donuts in this world,” Barry muttered. He turned to Diana. “Bruce was looking for you last night,” he informed her between the chews.
“I was busy,” she responded evenly, sipping her coffee.
Steve coughed into his fist, trying and mostly failing to keep a straight face. He was a spy, for heaven’s sake. He was supposed to be able to stay calm and composed under any circumstances, and his suddenly flushed cheeks were hardly an indication of that. Under any circumstances except these, apparently. Then again, this was hardly a life-and-death kind of emergency. He was allowed to be… distracted.
“Not too busy to get donuts, thank god,” Barry muttered.
“Yeah, we were just…” Steve started and faltered.
“Driving,” Diana added, clearly enjoying the colour rising up his cheeks that he hoped he could blame on the caffeine if anyone else noticed.
He turned away, knowing that if anyone caught him looking at her, it would be a dead giveaway. He was already having trouble holding back that shit-eating grin that kept spreading over his face every time he thought of everything they had done last night. And everything that they were going to do tonight. And probably every night for the next millennium or so — he wasn’t yet ready to plan past that.
Somehow, in the midst of telling Diana time and time again how much he loved her, he had failed to consider the issue of sharing their living space with half a dozen other people who tended to be curious out of their minds and not at all conspicuous or tactful about it. And one of whom wasn’t going to be overly pleased with the development in their relationship.
There was a brief moment of relief when he assumed that they were going to move on to another subject, and then he all but heard the realization dawn on Barry, whose eyes grew wide, darting wildly between him and Diana for a few moments. His jaw dropped in that cartoonish way that Steve had never before seen happen to a real person. (Whether or not Barry was one was a big question, though.)
And then his sugar-powder-coated lips split into a smile so wide that it threatened to crack his head in half. “Aw,” he drawled, nearly falling off the tall bar stool in excitement. “You guys.”
“What?” Arthur asked, confused. He looked at Victor, but the latter only shrugged his shoulders and turned to Barry, waiting for an explanation.
“Nothing,” Steve rubbed his eyes as Diana bit her lip, barely hold back her laughter.
Christ, he should have seen this coming. Why didn’t he see this coming?
“I can’t believe it,” Barry breathed out in awe.
“Can’t believe what?” Bruce asked, appearing in the kitchen with Clark behind him.
Diana gave Barry a pointed look.
The young man sputtered for a moment, torn, and then spun around on his stool and shoved the box into Bruce’s chest. “A donut?”
Ignoring him, Bruce swept his gaze over the crowd in the kitchen, moving past Cyborg and Alfred and the food and seemingly not seeing Arthur at all, which was pretty damn impressive considering that the Atlantian was taking up most of the space. And then his eyes locked on Diana who was leaning against the kitchen island, her shoulder touching Steve’s.
There was an almost seismic shift in the air when the understanding clicked. Steve’s eyes, fixed on Alfred at the moment, moved involuntarily to the man standing near the door just in time to see Bruce’s lips press into a thin line. There was resignation and defiance and hurt in his eyes, and Steve wondered if he had been looking at Bruce the exact same way only a few days ago.
If he was being completely honest, he hadn’t thought about the ramifications of what had happened between him and Diana last night until she had pulled up to the lake house with him in the passenger seat, the box from a bakery in the city balanced on his lap, and he was struck by the sudden awareness that he was about to parade a victory of sorts before a man who very obviously wanted to have what Steve had now.
He’d lie to himself if he didn’t admit that there was a certain degree of satisfaction to the feeling. After weeks of thinking that Diana had been sharing another man’s bed, his relief from knowing that it wasn’t true had been overwhelming, and there was a small and petty part deep inside of Steve that had rejoiced at it. Ironically, he had Bruce to thank for it, too. If he had said no to Waller’s offer all those weeks ago, Steve would have left Gotham the same night, never to be heard of again.
Before, he had thought he would feel smug about the whole thing, anticipated it even. But instead, he felt almost guilty and more understanding than he had expected he might, all things considered.
There must have been some change to him because Diana tore her attention away from her conversation with Victor that had started while Steve wasn’t looking and turned, her gaze finding Bruce who looked away from them immediately.
“I’m not hungry,” he muttered and walked out of the kitchen.
“What’s gotten into him?” Barry asked, craning his neck to look around Clark.
“He’s not much of a morning person,” Victor noted.
“It’s 10:30,” Alfred pointed out, glancing over his shoulder with a slight frown creasing his forehead.
“And we’re having donuts for breakfast,” Arthur added, plucking one from the box before it was too late, suddenly awfully pleased with that fact by the looks of it.
That seemed to have lifted everyone’s spirits. Still, Steve’s eyes lingered for another moment on the spot vacated by Bruce, his ears straining to catch any sound coming from the Batcave even though it ended up being futile.
Diana’s hand brushed against his and he turned to her, reading an unspoken question in her eyes, two faint lines lodged between her brows.
He smiled, and the tightness in his chest eased by the second. “You were right,” he said and jerked his chin towards the commotion and everyone speaking at once. The normalcy of it all that had snuck up on him unannounced, and suddenly he found himself in the middle of something he’d never expected to be a part of. Not after purposely running away from it for so long. He shook his head, trying to hold back a smile. “Two dozen was a good idea.”
And then it was mayhem, and because it was a Saturday and a late breakfast wasn’t out of the ordinary, and somehow everyone was around, the air filled with the smell of coffee and sizzling bacon and scrambled eggs and conversations about everything and nothing while everyone talked over one another without much care for being heard. Napkins and salt and butter and the remaining donuts were passed around and the coffee machine was refilled, twice.
Diana picked up her cup and walked around the table where Arthur and Barry were in a heated argument over something she didn’t want to get into until she reached Clark who was piling food onto his plate.
“Hey,” he looked up at her.
“Hey,” she peered at his meal choices with a smile. “What brings you here so early?” She glanced over her shoulder at the conversation that was only a step away from turning into a screaming match. “And don’t tell me that it’s the company.”
Clark grinned. “What if it’s the food?”
She scoffed. “Even more ridiculous. I know what Lois’s cooking is like.”
He found a fork in one of the drawers under the kitchen island. “She has an emergency article to finish,” he explained, poking at his eggs. “Although she asked me to say hi nonetheless. So, hi.” He observed the near fight happening at the table and Alfred’s disapproving expression and Steve’s open amusement, and shook his head. “How do you live here?”
“I don’t,” Diana reminded him. “I live in Paris.”
“And you come here to better appreciate the peace and quiet?”
She looked at the group before her fondly. “Just another perk of doing what we’re doing, no?”
“I hope the museum is paying for it,” he chuckled around a forkful of food.
“I file it as overtime,” she responded with a laugh.
“You’re in a good mood,” Clark observed, and her eyes moved involuntarily towards Steve who was chatting with Victor, completely ignoring the drama unfolding before them at the other end of the table. Her lips tugged up at the corners on a will of their own. “Oh,” Clark breathed, an eyebrow arched. “It’s like that now, huh?”
Diana’s first instinct was to deny it, to brush his comment off. After all, it had been less than a day, and the change in her relationship with Steve felt new and fragile and raw somehow. The fierce need to protect it at all costs that filled her chest was all-consuming as she tried to breathe around it. She wanted, at that moment, to hold onto the long-lost feeling of belonging for just a while longer, to not have to share it with anyone else.
She wasn’t going to keep them a secret, of course. If it had taken Barry all of two seconds to figure out what was going on, and she was certain that the rest of the team wouldn’t be far behind. For one thing, one look at Steve was enough to see that something was different, his smile wider than it had ever been in all the weeks that he had been here, and so radiant that it could never fool anyone. She had a strong suspicion that she looked no better than him, her very soul unfurling with every passing moment. A dead giveaway, no less. If nothing else, everyone was bound to notice them sleeping in the same room from now on. You couldn't keep secrets in a house full of people.
Her mind drifted back to something Victor had said to her before, about her knowing the world better than the rest of them and still looking awfully lost. And that time with Arthur last week when he had found her sitting on the deck and asked her if she'd wanted to talk. He had looked incredibly out of his element when he'd done it, and Diana knew that it was affection and loyalty that had made him go for that question instead of offering her a beer — something that he considered a fine enough bonding strategy. She had never said yes but it hadn't seemed to discourage him.
And then there was Alfred who had noted that she deserved her happily-ever-after more than anyone else, which, Diana knew, was a wistful sentiment on his part. Something that was almost like forgiveness — on Bruce’s behalf, she suspected.
They would see. How could they not?
Yet, if she was speaking to someone other than Clark, she would say no, try to change the subject. She loved the League dearly, but letting people into her heart had grown difficult as time had passed. She only had one, after all, and it was prone to breaking when she least expected it.
But Clark — Clark was different. He might not know loss the way she did, or even the way Lois did, but he understood how rare and precious it was to find someone who saw past their difference from everyone else. And how sometimes you needed to hold on to them with all your might so that they wouldn’t slip away from you. She could hear it in his voice, see it in the way he was around Lois.
Come to think of it, he and Steve had quite a bit in common there.
Clark was watching her, she could feel it. After a moment, Diana tore her gaze away from her Captain — lest her desire to shove everyone out of the way and kiss him senseless right there and then until they were both breathless and dazed overtook her — and turned to him, smiling, unable to pretend and shaking her head because there was no need for words.
“Careful there,” Clark noted with a muffled chuckle, still savouring his breakfast. “You glowing like that might burn us all.”
Diana nudged him playfully with her elbow and gave him a look, but didn’t have it in her to argue. She could feel it, too, the lightness the likes of which she could barely recall. There still were things she needed to think through, like her mother’s revelation about the side of her that she had never known existed — and having to learn those truths randomly and when she wasn’t prepared was starting to wear a little thin. But that was a consideration for later, one that she was going to store away like many others that had come before it until the time was right.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re really doing here?” she asked when he put his plate away and the debate at the table had settled into something more civil.
Clark’s smile slipped a little, a frown creeping onto this face. “I heard what happened here the other night,” he responded. “At the Lab. There was nothing in the press, though.”
Diana's jaw clenched at the memory. “Amanda Waller must be working hard to keep it from leaking out to the public,” she muttered, Waller’s name sounding sour on her tongue.
“You think she’s behind it?” he asked.
Diana shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t trust her. So far, every word she has said is only half-true, if even that.”
“Were they really trying to make meta-humans?” Clark pressed, and the disbelief and doubt in his voice mirrored her own. That idea seemed as outlandish to Diana as playing God — something that people never seemed to grow tired of even though they never managed to do anything but hurt one another in the process.
Her expression hardened. “Seemed like it. Victor’s father is going to try to get us more information, but he found no records so far. No proof of anything happening there at all, and the power outage that awoke them in the first place seemed to have erased the data on the chambers they had been kept in.”
Clark nodded, his lips pursed tight. “If someone is trying to design meta-humans, it can only mean one thing—”
“That they’re doing it for a reason,” she finished, dull anger flaring up in her chest.
Things happened, and sometimes they happened for a reason. And sometimes they led to creating people like Victor and Barry — something that Diana would personally be grateful for for the rest of eternity. But nothing good had ever come out of making enhanced soldiers. Out of turning people into more than they were.
“Whatever it is, it’s not happening,” Clark said firmly as though reading her thoughts.
Diana nodded somewhat absently, but her determination matched his. “It’s not.”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he promised.
“We will.”
“Keep me in the loop?” he asked. “Wish I was there.”
“It was a bit of a last-minute emergency,” she explained apologetically.
“Thank god,” he grinned. “For a moment there I thought that you didn’t like me anymore.”
Diana laughed. “You have your own domain to look after,” she reminded him.
He smirked. “Yeah, well, it’s nice to play with the team now and then.”
“You’ll always be a part of the team,” she promised.
Clark bumped his shoulder against hers. “And speaking of which,” he sighed. “I need to find Bruce.”
“He is probably in the Batcave,” she suggested.
Clark nodded and started to leave, but then stopped and looked at her. “I’ve never seen you like this,” he said. “The whole… happiness thing, it really suits you, Diana.”
She smirked and rolled her eyes just a little, thinking that she couldn’t remember seeing herself like this in a very, very long time, either.
Once Clark was gone and everyone was sufficiently distracted, she walked over to Steve who was putting his plate in the dishwasher and tugged at the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him into the hallway, away from the prying eyes and curious questions. He followed her without hesitation.
She glanced over her shoulder to make sure that they were alone, and when she turned back to him, he was already crowding her space, his arms circling her body.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” Diana smiled, tilting her face up to his. “Well, that wasn't so bad.”
Behind them, the kitchen erupted in boisterous laughter, voices rising in excitement over something or the other.
Steve leaned closer to her, ignoring them entirely, his mouth meeting hers half-way. “Not bad at all.”
---
Clark jogged down the two flights of stairs, choosing to forgo the elevator, his gaze scanning the place that was easily bigger than the above-ground area of the house. He took in the assortment of devices, the almost clinical feel to it, amplified somehow by the fluorescent lights above his head.
It was quiet except for metallic banging coming from the corner where Bruce was standing on a stepladder near the Knightcrawler’s massive body.
“Stop taking your frustration out on a car,” Clark said.
Bruce ignored him and hit the Crawler with a hammer again, the sound of it ricocheting off the walls and echoing under the ceiling.
“What should I be taking it out on?” he asked without turning.
“What crawled under your skin?”
“Regrets.”
“Pray tell, Bruce,” Clark folded his arms over his chest, eyeing him from below.
Bruce glanced at him briefly, but then only shook his head, “Forget it.”
“You can’t change her mind, you know that, right?”
Bruce paused but didn’t relent. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Like hell you don’t .
“You wanna try that again?” Clark slid his hands into his pockets and squinted up at the other man. “We are not as stupid as you might think we are.”
“What do you want from me?” Bruce grunted. He hit the Crawler again, the sound of it almost deafening, and swore quietly.
His tone made Clark’s hackles stand on end. “What is your problem?”
“What is it, indeed,” Bruce murmured under his breath.
“She is with Steve.” A beat. "Diana has made her choice abundantly clear."
His words made Bruce freeze, his body going completely rigid.
One didn’t need to be a genius to notice the way Bruce was around Diana — softer around the edges, almost mellow somehow. One simply needed not to be blind. There was a great number of things that Bruce kept close to his vest, but his feelings for her wasn’t one of them. He had a way of speaking to her, of listening to her more intently than the rest of them. It was like she calmed something inside of him with her very presence, and had the situation been different, maybe it could have meant something to them both.
But it wasn’t because the next thing they knew Steve was back and Diana’s eyes had been on him ever since. And it became very clear very fast to all involved parties that whatever could have happened between her and Bruce was never meant to be.
And now Bruce was hurting, and quite possibly hating himself for making the one mistake that had turned his world inside out and killed any hopes he might have had before they’d ever had a chance to blossom into something he could hold on to. And Clark felt bad for him. As a friend and a teammate, and as a person who was not unfamiliar with heartbreak. He was really, genuinely, sorry.
Yet, it still wasn’t a good enough excuse for Bruce’s behaviour earlier. None of this was Diana’s fault, and even less so Steve’s. From what little Clark knew about their history, he truly believed that they had walked through hell itself in every way he could think of. They deserved to have that beautiful thing that was unfolding between them now, regardless of what someone else thought or felt about it.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Bruce asked flatly. “Diana’s personal life is none of my—”
Clark bristled. “You said yes to the deal with Waller to piss her off because they were broken up, and now you’re throwing a tantrum because they’re back together?” He cut Bruce off and shook his head in disgust. “Can you not think about yourself for two goddamn seconds?” Bruce flinched but it was not enough to make Clark stop. He pointed toward the stairs for emphasis. “Have you seen her up there?” he demanded. “When was the last time she was this happy?”
He didn’t even realize that he had raised his voice until the echo of it hit him right back. He grimaced.
“This has nothing—” Bruce began.
“She deserves this, Bruce. Surely, she deserves it more than your mind games because she’s in love with him. She’s always been in love—”
“Are you done?” Bruce cut him off sharply, turning around abruptly, cold anger pooling in his eyes and his voice a dangerous growl. “Did she send you here to be her advocate?” Clark said nothing. “Thought so.” For a long moment, they merely stared at one another, and Clark thought, for a second, that the other man was going to charge at him. Instead, Bruce pressed his lips together and exhaled slowly, regaining his control. “I had someone following me,” he said quietly, almost unwillingly. “About a week ago. Not since then, though.”
Clark’s brows pulled together, anger seeping out of him instantly. He stared at Batman, confused. “Who?”
“I don’t know.” Bruce straightened up, looking down at Clark from the height of the Knightcrawler, a frown creasing his forehead. He climbed down and walked over to the workbench to toss the hammer into the toolbox. “And I asked, trust me.”
Clark turned around, following Bruce with his eyes. “I’m sure you did.”
“And he said that nothing that I could possibly do to him could be worse than what whoever hired him would do if he opened his mouth.”
“I don’t even want to imagine.”
Bruce shot him an irritated look but chose to ignore his quip. He rubbed his forehead. “Needless to say, I was intrigued.”
“Naturally. So, what happened?”
“I let him go, and I tried following him, but he…”
“Escaped.” Clark glanced over his shoulder toward the stairs. “Did you tell the team?”
Bruce shook his head with a sour grimace.
“Not even Diana?” Clark pressed.
“She seems to be otherwise occupied these days,” Bruce muttered.
He actually had wanted to tell her — was going to as recently as last night — but then it turned out that she hadn't been around. Not until this morning. Along with Steve Trevor who was still wearing the same clothes he had been wearing when Bruce had seen him yesterday. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together, and he had spent the past hour or so trying not to think about it.
“Besides, I don’t even know if it has anything to do with the League,” he added, going for a dismissive tone.
“When doesn’t it?” Clark breathed. He rubbed the back of his neck, pensive.
“He was following me as me, not the Batman,” Bruce pointed out.
“There’s no shortage of people who know the truth. Amanda Waller, for one thing.”
“Why would she do it?”
“Why would she put nano bombs in people’s skulls?” Clark countered. “You have to tell the team.”
After a moment, Bruce nodded. “I know.”
“I actually came to tell you that you can pick up whatever’s left of your Volvo,” Clark added, and Bruce looked up at him with interest. “The Metropolis police doesn’t need it anymore.” He paused. “It wasn’t an accident. They found traces of explosive residue all over the underbelly of the car. Although I don’t think they’ll put it into the official statement.”
Bruce smirked. “Been listening outside the police station windows again?”
“You’re welcome,” Clark shrugged.
“You could have called.”
“I heard about what happened at the S.T.A.R. Labs, too.” His small smile faded. “Talk to them. Something’s up.”
Bruce nodded, his face turning grim. “Something’s always up.”
---
The history of Diana’s people was full of tales of beauty and passion, greed and revenge, and impossible, consuming love that moved mountains and bound lovers to one another for all of eternity, their hearts forever beating in unison. Yet, fascinated as she had been with those stories as a young girl, Diana couldn’t help but look at them with a degree of skepticism. Surely they were exaggerated, weren’t they? The pragmatism of her mother, the steady logic of her aunt had made her look at those tales through the prism of practicality. Surely the ultimate happiness written in the stars could not possibly be real.
Now, stretched on her side next to Steve who was sprawled on his stomach across her bed, she thought of how meeting him had made her reconsider that notion. She knew now that it was possible, and her chest felt so full that she could barely stand it.
His eyes were shut, but he wasn’t asleep, she knew. The pattern of his breathing was not quite right despite being even and deep. He was merely regaining his bearings. Her fingers itched to push through his hair, trace the lines of his face, skim over his cheeks. Diana bit her lip, trying to stop her smile from spreading even wider, ridiculously pleased with herself for making him need some time to recover.
She wanted him. Even after the few hours in his arms that had left them both spent and perfectly satisfied with one another, she still wanted him so badly that it was making something inside of her ache. She had wanted other people before. Some, deeply and passionately, others, with longing for the love that had left her with a gaping hole in her very soul that threatened to turn her inside out with every breath she took. In those, she was seeking a semblance of what she had lost when Steve had broken her heart. Those people had meant something to her, too. Something, but not enough.
With Steve, however… With Steve, it was entirely all-consuming and throbbing in her blood like a second heartbeat. It should have gone away, she thought absently, studying him. They had been together for an extended period of time after the war. Wouldn’t their desperate need for one another have ebbed then? Or since then, for that matter? It had been so long. A whole lifetime for some, even. Yet, she couldn’t remember ever feeling otherwise about him since the first time they had lain together on the night when the world was quiet and dusted with snow.
No one had ever made her feel the way Steve did. No one had ever made her feel so wanted, and needed and cherished and utterly adored, and Diana craved it. Craved it from him. Always would, perhaps.
She wondered if he felt the same way. If they were going to wake up one day and not yearn for each other as hungrily as they did now, as they always had. If there would ever come a moment when she’d see him smile and not feel a sharp jolt of want shoot through her. If she’d wake up one morning and not long for his touch.
Maybe so, Diana thought. Maybe it was as inevitable as the change of seasons or the alternation of night and day. Maybe one day their desire for one another wouldn’t be so insatiable, so intense. But Diana loved it now, loved the nearly electrifying look he would give her sometimes that never failed to make her weak in the knees — seven decades ago as well as now.
Steve cracked one eye open, and then another, and then he grinned at her. And just like that, a spark of need surged through her like a bolt of lightning, stealing her breath away.
“See anything you like?” he drawled lazily, his smile cheeky.
She still wasn’t quite certain how they had made it through the rest of the afternoon. The dinner had been a fun affair, fueled by Barry’s incessant chatter and Arthur’s quips and Victor’s dry comments while Alfred attempted to keep it civil and then had to give up halfway through. And while Bruce had barely looked at her and his responses to any of them had remained monosyllabic, she was glad that he had joined them, choosing not to notice the tension hanging between them. Her own attention had been scattered, snatching bits of conversation here and there but not paying much attention as all she could think of was the man sitting next to her, close enough to make the kitchen feel a little too overcrowded for her liking.
Diana had excused herself right after they'd cleaned up after the meal, wondering how long it would take Steve to figure out that she was gone and do the same thing. Three minutes it turned out, was all it took him to end up outside of her door before she had been pulling him into her room, desperate to feel his hands everywhere on her body and trying so, so hard to be quieter than she wanted to be.
But that had been hours ago, and the house was still and silent now, and she was sated and happy, drowning in the blissful contentment wrapped around them like a cloud.
Diana laughed. “Maybe.” She leaned down to kiss his shoulder, her mouth lingering on his skin just long enough for him to go still and for his breath to hitch ever so slightly.
She smiled to herself, feeling his gaze on her, trailing over the outline of her body under the sheet. The words he’d said to her when they were making love floated back to her mind, making her skin tingle. Promises and confessions and her name repeated time and time again like a prayer. At this rate, they were not going to leave this room for a while — which, quite frankly, was more than fine with her.
Diana brushed his hair back from his face and kissed his forehead before stretching out beside him again, her head resting on the heel of her hand. Her eyes travelled over his features. She was very much aware of her own attractiveness, and the fact that Steve found her beautiful — he had told her that, too, repeatedly. But looking at him now, his hair mussed and his eyes dazed and his mouth curled into a lazy smile, she couldn’t help but think of how impossibly handsome he was. It was no wonder, perhaps, that as of late, her waking hours were consumed by the need to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him until they were both dazed and drunk on one another.
“You know,” Steve started after a few moments, studying her, “I kind of assumed that you’d go home — to the island, I mean — after we… after —” He left the sentence hanging between them, the guilt and grief still too thick to work their way out of his throat, a half-question that Diana understood nonetheless.
Her expression turned wistful, the way it often did when she thought of Themyscira.
The thought had crossed her mind, but it had been fleeting. She didn’t belong there anymore, hadn’t for a long time. If she were to go back, she wasn’t sure what good might come out of it.
Diana shook her head, her fingers tracing absently the seam of the sheet. “I couldn’t,” she admitted. “It reminded me too much of you.”
Steve blinked, surprised. “It reminded you of me ?” he repeated dumbly, his brows knitting together in confusion. “More than here?”
The tightness in her chest eased at the sight of his comically puzzled expression. She pursed her lips together around a smile. Hera help her, she loved this man beyond anything she could ever imagine.
Oddly enough, she couldn’t bring herself to go back for that very reason. It had been easy to stay busy in his world, one disaster always rolling straight into another, keeping her mind focused. But on Themyscira, there would be a shadow of him following her around the palace, his voice still echoing in the cavernous rooms, his presence subtle but real. She knew she would never be able to step into the kitchen without hearing Steve’s voice there as he tried to sneak a treat from under the watchful eyes of the cooks, or even wake up in her own bed without feeling his arm draped over her, or better yet — his mouth moving over her skin.
She didn’t know if she’d be able to exist there. Didn’t want the pity of her mother or her sisters, either. Diana had always been aware that there was a risk of bringing him to the island with her, but she could never have thought that it would be one of that kind. When he'd left, it had been so much easier to get lost in mankind, to start anew without feeling trapped.
She told him that, watching his face grow pained.
Diana reached over to smooth the crease between his brows with her fingers, tenderness for him tight in her chest.
“I wanted to be useful,” she said. “How could I have helped if I went back?”
He nodded without much conviction.
“Steve?”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.
“Don’t,” she shook her head again and leaned forward to brush her lips to his. “Don’t say that. It was not your fault. My choices are mine and mine only, and you have paid your dues in full.”
She started to pull away, and he rose on his elbow, chasing her mouth. “Thank you,” he murmured, finding her gaze again. “For this. For everything.”
“I love you,” Diana murmured, savouring the words in her mouth. It had been so long since she had been able to say them freely, without holding back, without second-guessing herself. He smiled against her mouth when she murmured them in Greek too, leaving her heart fluttering madly in her chest.
“Diana…”
Her hand curled around the back of his neck, fingers pushing into his hair as her mouth opened against his, deepening the kiss. She could feel his whole body respond to her touch, a low sound of appreciation forming in the back of his throat.
Her heartbeat stuttered momentarily.
Steve’s palm closed over her jaw, tilting her face to his. Diana curled her fingers around his wrist, his pulse fast and frantic against beneath her fingertips. He kissed her, and he kissed her, and when they broke apart, they were both breathless, and he was smiling, and so was she. And if there was a moment in her future when she wouldn’t want to do this every moment of her life as greedily as she did now, Diana couldn’t quite imagine it. Not yet, and not for a long time, perhaps. If ever.
Her gaze locked on Steve’s, she turned her face to press a kiss to the palm of his hand, watching the playfulness drain from his eyes as they grew dark in an instant. And at the sight of it, her own desire sparked again with such intensity that she had to remind herself to breathe. His gaze drifted down to her lips. She heard his breath hitch, feeling nearly intoxicated with the power to be able to inspire that kind of response in him. Without hesitation, he dipped his head towards her once more, planting a kiss on her chin and then slowly and very deliberately dragging his mouth across her cheek and toward her neck.
“Wanted to do this for so long,” he murmured.
She tilted her head back, feeling his smile when he nuzzled into her throat, and it would’ve been so very easy to pull him over her. To have him press her into the sheets and make her forget the world. Diana turned her head, fingers buried into his hair, and his mouth was right there, capturing hers and kissing her slowly. His hand slid beneath the sheet and around her body, palm splayed on the small of her back. She had wanted to do that for a very long time, too.
“I thought I'd worn you out,” Diana whispered, smiling when he pulled back for a breath.
Steve quirked an eyebrow at her. “Not a chance,” he hummed, his gaze dipping to trail down her body under the sheets and making it very hard for Diana to do the noble thing and let him rest.
They had time, she reminded herself as she inhaled slowly and willed the panic that kept building in her chest away. They had all the time in the world now.
With a hand on his shoulder, Diana pushed him effortlessly down to lie on his back, ignoring the wounded look of protest on his face and the indignant, “Hey!”
Steve pressed his lips together, as a displeased frown made an appearance on his face. Diana's heart flipped in her chest, her mouth curving into a smile at the sight of it, so much so that she couldn’t resist leaning down to kiss his pout away, her fears ebbing.
Immediately, his arm curled around her. And even though he was nowhere near strong enough to hold her there should she have chosen to pull away, Diana let him tug her closer until she was half-sprawled over his chest, pressed to him curve for curve.
“That’s better,” Steve breathed.
She brushed her lips to his jaw. “Do you think it will ever go away?” she asked softly, her voice swallowed by the darkness around them.
“What?” he murmured, tracing his fingers up and down her spine.
“The wanting.”
He stayed quiet for a moment. “Would you want it to?”
“No.” She lifted her head and kissed his chest, her tongue tracing the scar running from his shoulder toward his collarbone.
Steve inhaled sharply and cursed stiffly under his breath, his fingers twitching on her skin, and she smiled, pleased with herself.
He didn’t say anything for a few moments as his heart hammered away under her palm.
“I don’t think I’ll even want you any less than I want you now," he spoke. "Than I’ve ever wanted you. I can’t—Christ, I can’t remember not feeling that way about you, Diana.” He let out a long breath. His eyes were trained on the ceiling but his hand never stopped moving over the expanse of her back. “That night in Metropolis, in Clark’s apartment, when I saw you in those, ah… black…”
“Victoria’s Secret,” she supplied helpfully, watching him.
“Well, there were no secrets left, to my memory,” he mumbled.
“You liked it?” Diana asked him, amused.
Steve cleared his throat, the sound of it reverberating into her. “That’s not the word I’d use,” he said diplomatically.
She smirked, deciding to wear that set for him sometime soon. Very soon, perhaps. All of her lingerie that she suspected Steve would appreciate was in Paris, seeing as how this was meant to be a business trip. But there was at least that one and she knew he wouldn’t complain about the lack of variety. If memory served her right, he had been staring at her slack-jawed for a good fifteen seconds that night, his eyes sliding over her body, before he had remembered to turn away. And as unplanned as it had been, she had not minded his reaction in the slightest.
“Yeah well, you looked… I don’t think I even knew how to… breathe… or function,” he replied, turning to her. “All I wanted to do was cross that room and…” His voice trailed off, but there was no need for words, she could so very clearly picture about a thousand scenarios that could have followed, all of which ended with his hands everywhere she wanted them to be.
“I wish you had,” Diana whispered, her gaze searching his.
She couldn’t even begin to express how much she wished he had done that.
This was good though. This moment, the closeness, the warmth of his body against hers. If she was being honest with herself, Diana could barely remember not feeling that way about him either, the throbbing need pulsing in her chest, the time of uncertainty and confusion so far gone that it was all but a faint dream now.
Steve sighed. “Look, about Bruce…” he started.
“I’ll talk to him,” Diana promised, her fingers running absently over his chest, mapping the defined lines of his muscles. She didn’t seem to know how to stop touching him, still unable to quite grasp that this was real, part of her still searching for reassurance.
“He’s in love with you,” Steve said softly.
“He’s not—” she protested, looking up at him, but cut off when she saw him stare at the wall across from them.
“Takes one to know one,” Steve noted, his fingers threading through her hair.
Diana pushed up on her elbow and shifted to fold her arms on his chest, resting her chin on the back of her hand. She watched him in silence for a while. He had been hard to read when she had first met him, years of being a spy and having to pretend to be someone he was not while living the life of a hundred different people instead of his own had left a mark on him that had been near impossible to erase. A hundred years later, and he had finessed that skill to near perfection. Perhaps, it was not a bad thing for someone living his life, she mused. Someone who had to change and adapt. She only wished that he would let her in.
“Does it bother you?” she asked quietly. “That we’re here, in this house?”
Steve turned to her. He reached over to loop a strand of her hair around her ear, tracing his fingertips along her cheek. She was so beautiful it made his heart ache. He had thought sometimes, back in the day, and probably not without reason, that her smile alone could stop wars and heal the wounded and fix the world the way nothing and no one else could. He wondered if he’d ever think otherwise.
Yes, it did bother him. He believe Diana when she said that she loved him, that she wanted to be with him. Yet, Steve still couldn’t help but wonder what could have or would have happened between her and Bruce Wayne a week, or a month, or a year from now if he hadn't crashed right back into her life all over again. It was a small and petty thing to consider, and Steve hated himself for even imagining it when all she had done in the past 24 hours was show time and time again that it was him she wanted to be with.
It made him feel ashamed.
Steve Trevor was not a jealous man, and there was nothing to be jealous of, to begin with. But he prided himself on his strategic thinking. He had been taught to plan ten steps ahead. And there was a nagging voice in the back of his mind saying that given the right circumstances, she and Bruce wouldn’t have taken those steps away from one another, necessarily. If nothing else, Bruce had certainly thought so too, if the cold glares that he had offered Steve earlier were any indication.
“I think it bothers him,” Steve responded, which was, perhaps, the best non-answer he could think of.
“I’ll talk to him,” Diana repeated. She tilted her head to brush a kiss to his chin. “Bruce is… pragmatic. He will understand.”
Steve nodded and smiled, and her heart squeezed again. If she was going to react like this to every single one of his facial expressions, they were in trouble. Her gaze wandered over his features, taking in faint lines in the corners of his eyes, the bow of his mouth curved into a half-smile that she could never tire of kissing, the slope of his nose and the faint shadow of his stubble. The very same one that had left raw marks on her inner thighs earlier — something that Diana had found oddly appealing, regretful to know that they would fade almost instantly. She wouldn’t have minded if they'd stayed.
She bit her lip, and Steve’s eyebrows crept up as though he could hear her think, and just like that she could feel the familiar tension start to build between them.
They were definitely in trouble.
“You should rest,” she whispered, her hand pushing his hair back from his face.
“Not tired,” he shook his head stubbornly.
“We barely slept last night,” Diana reminded him.
The man did have admirable vigour and stamina, and she fully intended to catch up on every moment that they had spent apart. But right now, his eyes were drooping and she knew he was holding on with all his might to stay awake, and it wasn’t like she wanted him to actually keel over at some point.
“And I enjoyed every second of it,” Steve promised, all chest-puffed proud.
“You don’t need to prove anything to me, Steve,” she said. And added, smiling, “You already did that, if I recall correctly. Multiple times. And you were very convincing.”
He made a strangled sound in the back of his throat and squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing them with his fingers.
If she had told him that the colour rising up his cheeks and his inability to form coherent sentences was something that she found incredibly attractive, he would probably think that she was laughing at him. Maybe even scowl at her for good measure. Yet here she was, trying to figure out if there was anything better than his flustered face. And so far the answer was no, there really and truly wasn’t. Steve Trevor certainly was a man of contrasts. He knew full well how to make her world explode in brilliant colours, and then he would get shy about her pointing it out back to him, which only made her want to mention it again and again.
Biting her lip around a smile, she tilted her head, dubious, and he conceded with a small sigh. “This is real, right? Us. I mean, I had that dream before…” he scrunched his face and puffed out his breath.
She grinned and draped her leg over one of his, stretching over him to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to his neck.
“I didn’t catch that,” she murmured when he cursed again.
They had both changed in their time apart, and she had yet to learn the new him, but the small details about him remained the same, and she found herself being more than a little pleased about that.
“Goddammit, Diana…” he muttered with just a tiny bit of exasperation and a great deal of purpose.
And then he grabbed her wrist and rolled them over, pinning her to the sheets. She gasped in surprise, playfulness draining out of her eyes replaced with heat.
Steve ducked his head. “Not tired,” he repeated against the hollow of her throat.
Her eyes fluttered shut.
Very pleased, indeed.
To be continued…..
Notes:
Comments are amazing and I will love you forever for them!
Also, tell me what you think about WW84 spoilers and photos and everything? Because I am losing my mind!
(Who is screaming? No one is screaming...)
Chapter 14
Notes:
Hey, look who is still alive. I know it's been a while and technically I'm still travelling but I didn't want to make you guys wait for two more weeks or so, so here we go! It's a bit long (ha! What else is new?) but I hope it is not a bad thing :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Gotham, 2017
Slipping into their old patterns was the easiest thing. One day, the world seemed to be falling apart before Steve’s eyes and nothing made sense, and then suddenly, it was like the past several decades had never happened at all. There was a comfort to the familiarity, to knowing each other enough for the adjustment to the change in their relationship to not be grating, but there was also a thrill to discovering small details about one another that had come to be since 1952.
While Steve had remained the drifter he had always been, Diana’s life had ended up being stitched together from habits and routines that fascinated him to no end. She went running almost every morning, claiming that it helped her keep her head clear. There was a path circling the lake, and even though it had nothing on the trails covering Themyscira, she seemed to enjoy it well enough. Although, if Steve woke up before she left, she wouldn’t put up much of a fight if he tried to cajole her back into bed, most of the time. He couldn’t get enough of her — the sound of her voice, her laughter, the way her fingers would sometimes skim casually over his body and set his blood on fire. And it thrilled him beyond words that she seemed to not be able to get enough of him, either.
Even away from Paris, her work didn't stop, her mornings were often spent sending emails and making phone calls in more languages than Steve could recognize as she juggled effortlessly her duties as the Curator of Antiques with her life as the heart and soul of the League. If she had allowed it, Steve would be more than happy to spend his days simply watching her, the easy grace with which she moved about the house, the way she spoke to the dealers and her assistant and other Curators about something or the other that made his mind reel.
Steve had learned that she was the only one who could talk to Bruce when he was in one of his moods while the rest of the League wisely preferred to wait him out. That she could beat them all in just about every board game in existence. And that she could type texts faster than Barry (at his human speed), much to the frustration of the latter.
It took Steve all of three days to pick up on all of that, and when he oh so proudly laid out his observations to her, Diana called him ‘such a spy,’ which made him laugh until his stomach hurt.
The old things had come back, too. Those that had remained dormant in his mind — like what side of the bed she preferred to sleep on. The way she tended to reach for his hand without thinking. How she tilted her head when she was curious or puzzled. All the details that he had missed about her, the details that had made him ache on the inside for so long that he had started to believe he would wither and die from heartbreak.
She was his Diana still, the woman that he had loved for so long that he could no longer remember what it was like not to, but also so much more that Steve could hardly comprehend how one person could contain all the wonder and beauty of different worlds within them. A clash of times and contrasts. To him, she was still a Princess of the Amazons who had once got confused by a revolving door, but now she was also a woman who used emojis in text messages and easily understood pop culture references. She still read the works of the Greek philosophers, in Greek, for fun , but was also fond of The Lord of the Rings and the novels of Hemingway and Huxley. It was, he had to admit, a lot to wrap his mind around.
It was new, but also not, and he loved every moment of pulling everything that they were and all that they were meant to be to the surface, watching all pieces of the puzzle fall into place, a complete picture emerging before his eyes. She was open and honest and unapologetic about her feelings, and the onslaught of quips that Steve half-expected from the members of the League had never came, although he was tempted to ask if there was ever another bet going on, and that maybe he and Diana deserved to be in on it this time. Except it didn’t really matter because he had already won the jackpot, and who cared about the rest?
“It wasn’t permanent, you know,” Diana told him one night, tracing the lines on his skin with his fingers, her cheek resting on his collarbone.
“What wasn’t?” Steve asked, sleepy, too sated and relaxed to follow the conversation.
“I’m not weaker than I was before.” Her voice was soft, but he went still anyway, all but holding his breath and hanging on to her every word, suddenly very awake, his hand that had been idly tracing the line of her spine frozen just beneath her shoulder blades. “I thought about it, about what you said," Diana continued. "And I suppose it’s not impossible that my mother was right, but if bringing you back cost me some strength, it came back again, eventually.”
Steve didn’t say anything for a while, just staring at the ceiling, wondering if they had wasted all this time for nothing, if he had actually ruined nearly seven decades for them both, or if she only managed to heal properly because he was not around. There was no way of knowing that for sure, and he knew that dwelling on it would only cause pain to them both. But it was hard, so very hard, to not think of it.
She wouldn’t lie to him, and she wouldn’t have said that if she wasn’t sure.
Where it left him was another thing altogether.
As if the list of things that he would never forgive himself for was not long enough already.
Diana lifted her head and pulled just far enough away from him to look him in the eye.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, watching his inner turmoil chase across his features, anguish and regret mixed into something that had no name.
“But what if the next time—" Steve started, the damned habit of thinking ten steps ahead, because back in the day it was his only way to survive, rearing its ugly head again. He stopped and sighed.
She touched her thumb to his lower lip and smiled that divine smile of hers. “Then so be it.”
Steve didn’t speak of it again, vowing silently to himself to live forever if he had to. If that was what it took to keep her safe.
---
A few days after moving into Diana’s room, Steve woke up just after dawn, his eyes raw and his mind as foggy as the early November day outside the glass wall of her bedroom, pale wisps clinging to the remnants of frozen grass. It was early still, but Diana’s side of the bed was empty, and even half-sleep, he missed her desperately.
Steve ran his hand over his face, rubbing his eyes. He buried his nose into her pillow, hoping for sleep to claim him once more, but to no avail. At last, he blinked his eyes open, slowly and unwillingly, waiting for his head to clear. There was a sound that he had first mistook for the ever-present patter of rain against the glass, but when he turned his head, he found Diana sitting at the desk near the window, her fingers flying over the keyboard of her laptop.
For a few moments, he simply watched her, taking her in, all of her so achingly beautiful that he wondered half the time if he was dreaming. One of her legs was tucked beneath her thigh, and her hair was loose, falling down her shoulders in heavy waves. She was wearing nothing but her underwear and a tank top — a very thin one — and he decided that next to having her in bed with him and without any clothes whatsoever, this was the second-best view he could possibly wake up to.
And then she looked up and saw him studying her with sleepy eyes, and she broke into a smile so bright and wonderful that it made his chest constrict fiercely. And Steve thought, I could never love anyone more than I love this woman .
“Hey,” he croaked, stifling a yawn.
“Morning,” she whispered, seemingly no longer caring about whatever it was that had kept her so wildly occupied not a few seconds ago.
“Why are you up?” Steve grimaced a little. “S’early.”
And they'd had a late night. A very late night.
“Work,” Diana responded, amused, as she watched him fighting a losing battle with his exhaustion. “Go back to sleep, Steve.”
He rolled onto his side, claiming her half of the bed and murmured, “C’mere,” in that thick, sleep-laced voice that never failed to undo her in the best way, to his memory. He stretched and tucked Diana’s pillow under his cheek, watching her gaze trail along the outline of his body beneath the sheet slung over his waist, weighing her options. He knew that look. He liked that look very much. He particularly liked the things that often followed soon afterwards.
“I do have responsibilities, you know that, right?” Diana pointed out, an eyebrow arched and her chin resting on the heel of her hand propped on her desk.
“Mm-hm,” he hummed noncommittally, barely bothering to contain the smile that threatened to split his face in half. “At seven in the morning?”
“It’s past noon in Paris,” she countered, clearly enjoying his impatience.
He scrunched his face, struggling for an argument that could tramp her sense of obligation in favour of something, well, less productive but much more fun. It was far too early for that, though. Thinking, that is. His thoughts were tumbling aimlessly into one another without much direction or purpose.
And so, he opted for looking at her instead, taking in the glint in her eyes and the quirk of her eyebrow and the way her tank top was hugging her body just right, even though it did seem entirely excessive, all things considered.
How on earth he had managed to survive without her for so long was beyond him.
At last, Diana caved, never a fan of that game. She uncured from her seat and crossed the room, padding barefoot across the soft carpet and then lowering down onto the edge of the bed beside him. The mattress dipped beneath the weight of her body, and Steve moved closer to her, reaching for her hand. He kissed her knuckles, watching her watch him with that small secret smile of hers that never failed to make him feel like he was losing his ability to function.
And then he dropped the pretences too because resisting the temptation was too bloody much for this early hour. He pushed up to sit and tugged her to him until she was close enough for his mouth to brush against hers.
“Hi,” he said again.
“Hi,” she whispered, her eyes crinkling at the corners.
God, he loved her smile. That smile alone could end wars and bring peace to the world, he was certain.
His hand pushed into her hair, tangling in her curls, the strands soft as silk between his fingers, bridging what little space was left between them. Her response was immediate, her body leaning into his touch and, encouraged, Steve bit gently at her bottom lip, coaxing a low moan out of her. She sighed softly against his lips. A wave of heat seared through him, blinding in its intensity.
“Steve,” she started without conviction when his lips moved across her cheek.
“Hm?” His mouth latched onto the underside of her jaw, his thumb running slow circles over the back of her neck. “It’s too early to be out of bed and to wear so many layers.”
Her fingers curled around his wrist, although in protest or encouragement he wasn’t sure. She didn’t stop him, though, so he hoped it was the latter.
“There's only one layer,” Diana argued, amused.
“One layer too many,” he murmured, nuzzling into the tender spot behind her ear. “Let’s fix that.”
“Steve.”
She drew just far enough away to be able to find his gaze, her hand resting on his ribs and making the early-morning process of putting his thoughts together into something more or less coherent nearly impossible.
Still, he sighed, although not relinquishing the physical contact, his hand merely dropping to rest on her waist. “So, what’s this about?” Steve asked, his eyes darting towards her laptop that continued to glow in the dimness of the gloomy morning.
“A report and some shipment forms that needed my approval,” Diana explained, her fingers strumming absently along his skin. “Some emails I needed to answer, too. Pierre is worried about the exhibition we’re opening later this month.”
Pierre, her assistant. The very one who somehow always knew to call at the most inconvenient times — even more so than Barry who texted pretty much nonstop, making it often hard to tell whether it was an emergency or a new cat meme. Having been instantly added to his contact list was an interesting experience, Steve had found out very fast.
With Pierre, on the other hand, everything was an emergency. And maybe it was, but Steve had yet to figure out exactly how Pierre expected Diana to fix them all from halfway across the world. Steve was curious about that part of her life, though. He had seen Diana in many roles — a woman, a lover, a warrior. Yet the idea of her working at the Louvre — the Louvre — intrigued him immensely and he wondered what she was like as a boss and how she was different in that capacity from the Amazonian demi-goddess he was far more familiar with.
She was bossy, for sure. Had been for as long as they had known each other.
“Rightfully worried or panicking because you’re here and not there to supervise everything?” Steve clarified.
Diana laughed. “A little bit of both, I think.”
“Well, he’s a big boy.” He paused and frowned. “He is, isn’t he?”
She nodded, smiling. “He is. But some of those things are my job, not his.”
“He’s doing fantastic, I’m sure.” Steve's fingers curled around her neck to draw her closer, his mouth finding hers again as he thought, This is what every morning should be like for as long as I breathe .
His hand slid down her neck, trailing the length of her arm before slipping around her waist.
“Steve.”
“Mm.”
His mouth abandoned hers and started to inch its way towards her throat once more, his teeth grazing lightly along the sensitive skin as he moved closer towards the spot that worked like magic. Her breath hitched momentarily, and Steve smiled to himself, feeling her resolve start to crumble. His fingers traced along the hem of her tank top before sliding underneath it, searching for skin. Christ, he loved her so much it almost hurt in that impossibly pleasant way that he never wanted to stop.
“Steve,” Diana tried again, albeit without conviction, trailing off as her spine arched under his touch.
He inched her tank top up, and then some more, kissing his way down her neck and towards her collarbone and wanting nothing more than to pull her to him and stay in bed for another hour, or five. Or the rest of the day, for that matter. They could make good use of that.
Was the wanting ever going to go away? He had no idea. He had no idea how what he felt for her could ever fade. How much time could one person need for something this consuming to cease to be? Several lifetimes, perhaps. Until his very soul turned to ash. And Steve didn’t want it to. Didn’t want to not feel this burning for her, the need simmering beneath his skin, the elation that filled him at the mere thought of her smile. Didn’t want the pricking of his skin at the sound of her voice whispering to him in the dark to ever ebb.
He turned his head, pressing his mouth to the pulse point just under Diana's jaw, her blood throbbing rapidly against his lips. Pleased, he trailed his hand down her back and lower still, his fingers tracing the hem of her panties along the curve of her thigh, moving slowly closer to where she loved to be touched, both of them very much aware that once he got there her resistance wouldn’t stand a chance.
Diana muttered something he didn’t catch, desire pulsing in his blood.
“Steve.”
With a hand on his chest, holding him firmly in place, she pulled away and took a steadying breath, dazed — much to his satisfaction, but she also looked amused beyond measure by his rather confused look caused by the sudden lack of contact, it seemed.
“I wasn’t done,” he protested and tried to reach for her, but damn her Amazon strength that, with just a small nudge, had him on his back again.
“I have a meeting with the curator of the Gotham Museum of Art in an hour,” Diana said, steering the conversation in a different direction while she so very obviously tried not to laugh at the defeated look on his face. “To see if maybe we could do a collection exchange. They seem to be rather keen.”
“I can be quick,” Steve promised eagerly and heatedly and with as much conviction as he could muster, completely ignoring the second part of her statement. “And efficient. I can be very efficient,” he added when she tilted her head and arched an eyebrow.
He grinned.
“Don’t I know that,” Diana smirked and leaned over to kiss the corner of his mouth, her hand still holding him against the sheets. “But I prefer to take my time with you,” she whispered. “Tonight.”
Steve swallowed, watching the fire flare in her eyes, his own body responding to it in an instant.
“How about I take you out for lunch when I’m done?” she offered as a compromise, taking pity on his wounded expression and, well, some other parts of him.
“I’m not sure I can wait that long,” he admitted, his gaze dropping to the bow of her mouth and then further down to the expanse of her skin disappearing in the cleavage of her shirt. “I’m hungry now.”
She laughed and stood up, and it took him a whole two seconds to start missing her terribly.
“You’ll have to manage, I’m afraid,” she said, sitting back down at the desk.
Steve rolled onto his side and propped up on his elbow. “Hey, how come it’s always you taking me places?”
Diana glanced at him. “Because you don’t know the city.”
He made a face and ran his hand over his hair, trying to smooth it down and failing spectacularly. “Yeah, fair point.” He paused. “But how about I take you out for a change?”
Her eyes narrowed skeptically. “Where?”
The corner of his mouth curled upwards. “I have an idea.”
Diana turned off her laptop and closed it before crossing the room again until she was standing right before him, and Steve’s gaze travelled unashamedly up and down her legs.
“I’m sure you do.”
“Outside of this room, I swear,” he added, looking up. “Unless…” He let the sentence hang between them, his suggestive tone more than a little hopeful.
She shook his head, laughed, and leaned down to kiss him once more, her hand stroking his stubbled cheek. “I’ll come get you here at one, yes?”
Steve craned his neck to chase her lips. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Sleep,” she murmured, her face not an inch away from his. “I promise you we won’t have time for it tonight.”
He smiled. “Tease.”
“You started it.”
He had, and he regretted nothing.
Steve chuckled, pulling her pillow closer and inhaling her scent that still lingered on it as Diana headed towards the bathroom. “Yeah, well, wouldn't you?”
---
By the time Diana was out of the shower and dressed, Steve was already asleep again, sprawled diagonally across the bed with his face buried in her pillow. She smiled and walked over to the bed, more than a little tempted to wake him up and allow him to get her out of her clothes this time. So very tempted. They had done that before, and the memory of those moments stirred something warm in her belly, her whole body humming with the need for his touch.
However, she did mean it when she had said that some of the tasks her assistant was doing now were not entirely his responsibility, and had Diana been in Paris, it would have been a different story. Here, though, her resources were limited and time zones were an issue to be considered, and it wasn’t like she could take care of physically arranging the collection from another continent. Steve’s amusement regarding Pierre’s dependency wasn’t unreasonable and while, personally, Diana found it rather endearing, she did appreciate Pierre's hard work nonetheless. The least she could do while she was here was finish the negotiations with the Gotham Museum that had started months ago and were still nowhere near complete.
If nothing else, it made her feel a little bit better about still being in the States, even though there was, technically, no need for it and no reason for her to stay. Except for the man snoring softly into her pillow right now, tangled in the sheets, and her desperate need to hold on to this time with him, like this, for just a while longer.
She'd had other lovers, after Steve. A hundred years, while a little more than a blink for someone like her, was an awful lot of time, as it turned out. An awful lot of time for loneliness to settle deep in one's bones. Diana had never learned to breathe around the heavy feeling in her chest. She felt no guilt over her relationships. She knew she would have wanted the same thing for him if their situations were reversed — for him to be loved and wanted, and to never feel the world crumbling around him the way Diana had so often. Yet, as much as she'd cared for the people she'd shared her bed with over the years, never once had she been scared of losing any of them the way she couldn’t bear the thought of losing Steve. There was a sense of finality in going back to her life and her routines the way they'd existed before he'd come back, and she was not yet ready for that.
Lips curved into a smile, Diana crouched down near the bed. She stroked her hand through Steve’s hair, mindful of not disturbing him, and then pressed her lips to his forehead, breathing him in and trying to ignore the longing building up in her chest with all her might.
No one had ever had the kind of power over her that Steve wielded, and not once had she been so willing to give it to anyone so gladly.
His face scrunched at her touch, and she whispered a quiet I love you , unable to stop herself. Unable to stop saying it, period. Needed to say it for every day that she had spent missing him, the words murmured into his skin when they were making love and repeated again and again as they lay basking in the content afterglow.
And then, after a moment of hesitation, Diana stood up before she could change her mind and crawl back into his arms, the rest of the world be damned. She walked quietly out of the room, closing the door behind her and doing her goddamn best to ignore the pang of panic in her chest. It was still new, and half the time it felt like a dream, and she was terrified out of her mind to wake up and find out that he was still gone.
She got it now. Used to having him slip right through her fingers, she understood the despair lurking behind Steve’s eyes, a reflection of her own fears that made her want to avert her gaze because it was too painful to see.
There was no one in the kitchen, even though the coffee machine was on and the bitter smell of fine Arabica was hanging in the air. She was not surprised. Both Barry and Arthur liked to sleep in. Alfred often read in the study before breakfast if there were no urgent matters for him to attend to, such as patching up Bruce after a rough night, which, if she recalled correctly, was a fairly frequent occurrence. Diana's gaze lingered for a moment on her semi-transparent reflection. The temperature had kept going down steadily during the past week and the glass wall overlooking the dark, gloomy forest was fogged up at the corners. It was bound to snow in a week or two, she thought absently, and for once, the thought of the first snow didn't bring her comfort.
Diana reached for the cup holder, looking for the mug that she had claimed as hers when she'd first stayed here, trying to figure out if she could afford to have a proper breakfast. And then reconsidered when she noticed that the light over the staircase leading down to the Batcave was on.
Maybe she could stop by a coffee shop near the museum later, she decided.
Downstairs, Bruce was half-buried under the hood of the Batmobile, tugging and pulling at something that Diana couldn’t see. He glanced up when he heard the sound of her footsteps before turning his attention back to the problem du jour again, although it was more than enough for her to notice his weary look and the dark circles under his eyes. He was a morning person alright, when he had to be, but she still couldn’t help but wonder if he was already up, or still .
Diana crossed the distance between them and paused near the bumper of the car, peeking inside as well out of sheer curiosity.
“You need to sleep sometimes, you know?” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
“No rest for the wicked, or however that saying goes,” Bruce muttered without looking at her.
“You don’t have to take it to extremes,” she noted, smiling. “Is there anything bothering you, Bruce?” she asked when her comment went unnoticed.
“Why would you think that?”
He made a grab for a wrench from the toolbox sitting atop tubes and hoses.
“You haven’t been around much lately.”
In the past few days, every time Diana had tried to catch him for a proper conversation he had been either out, or on the way out, or very obviously trying to come up with an excuse to escape. If Diana didn’t know any better, she would have assumed that he was avoiding her on purpose. And quite frankly, his inability or unwillingness to even meet her eyes right now spoke volumes.
Bruce straightened up and turned to the workbench, looking for something among the assortment of tools spread out there, his back to her.
“Maybe you were too preoccupied to notice,” he said as he picked up a screwdriver.
“Can we talk?” she offered softly, watching the back of his head, then his profile as he leaned forward again, all without so much as a glance in her direction.
“About what?”
She didn’t waver. “The benefit in Gotham two months ago.”
His hesitation was brief, yet it didn’t escape her attention.
“What about it?” Bruce asked, his voice pointedly nonchalant, and then cursed when he dropped the screwdriver into the depths of the Batmobile, the metallic clang oddly loud in the suddenly quiet room.
Diana didn’t want to do it. Regretted not doing it sooner, unbidden guilt blossoming in her chest. She didn’t owe him anything, never had, but it didn’t mean that she couldn’t see that he was hurting and that it was her fault, one way or another.
“You know what,” she murmured.
This time, Bruce did look up, his gaze tired but sharp, his expression uncompromising, although she could see a flicker of doubt flash across it. Like he couldn’t quite decide if he should deny it or brush it off or pretend that he had no idea what she was talking about altogether. She braced herself for either one.
He chose neither.
“It was a kiss, Diana. Not a proclamation of undying love.” He pushed up to stand and picked up a rag to wipe his hands that were stained black with motor oil and dirt. “Alcohol and boredom are a dangerous combination. I should know. If nothing else, we are both aware that there is no such thing as undying love, to begin with.”
Everything about him was daring her to disagree.
She didn’t, even though she didn’t believe that it had been nothing. Certainly not for him. Hadn’t been for a long time. Her inability to reciprocate his feelings didn’t make her blind, although it might have made her look the other way more often than not.
“You seem to have made your decision,” Bruce added when the pause started to stretch between them. He moved closer to her until they were only inches apart and she could smell cold and whiskey and that rubbery scent of the Batsuit on him. “Is there anything that I can say that can get you to change your mind?” The question was rhetorical, but there was a desperate, hungry yearning behind his words.
She met his gaze, held it, wondering for just a moment—
It didn’t matter, though.
“No,” she shook her head.
Simple.
Honest.
He was wrong on another account, too. There was such a thing as undying love. It was real, and it was burning in her chest with such intensity that it was hard to breathe, and she never wanted for it to stop. Not even for a second. Just as she was certain that it never would.
Diana didn’t say any of that, though. Knew that she didn’t need to.
Bruce was a good man, and she cared for him deeply, but the matters of his heart were none of her concern, no matter how much he wanted them to be. They would have worked, she thought. In another lifetime, if the stars were aligned differently, they could have worked. Maybe. He was driven, his passion matching hers, and there were so many things that they viewed similarly. She had never considered it seriously, but she had toyed with the idea.
And then she would have probably hurt him when it turned out that he wasn’t enough. Zeus knew it had happened before.
“What if he never returned?” Bruce asked suddenly.
Diana felt her whole body deflate. “Don’t go there, Bruce,” she breathed, shaking her head.
He watched her for a long moment, and then nodded. “Why did you make it sound like he was dead, when…” he faltered not sure how to finish the sentence.
“I never said that,” she countered. “You assumed because of an old photograph.”
Because who wouldn’t? As a rule, his people didn’t get to live to be over a hundred years old. Not often. Certainly not without ageing. So why did she feel so foul about never correcting him? For allowing him to believe a lie?
“How?” Bruce pressed, and this time there was curiosity to him.
Because I love him , Diana thought, and like always, it made her soul unfurl until it took so much space in her chest that she could barely inhale.
“It’s complicated,” she responded. “And it doesn’t really matter.”
He nodded again and stepped away from her, choosing not to push, breaking whatever spell had kept them captive in a bubble of trust so that it burst before her eyes.
“Well, I’m glad…” he started and faltered once more. “If you’re happy.”
“I am.” Diana looked around the cavernous room before turning back to him.
Bruce cleared his throat. “Do you still love him? After all this time?”
She didn’t hesitate. “I do.”
“I’m glad.” He repeated and looked away. “You deserve to be happy.”
They remained silent for a few moments, both searching for words that didn’t seem to come.
“When I go home, he’s coming with me,” she said after a while.
Bruce stepped back to the workbench. “So, you’ll be a package deal, then?” he asked.
She smiled tentatively, not quite certain if it was a joke, but liking his wording for some reason. “Afraid so.”
His lips twitched a little, but the smile didn’t linger. “You should be careful with Waller. She is going to use him against you,” he spoke.
Her own smile faded as well, replaced by a slight frown. It wasn’t that she had never thought about that — she didn’t trust that woman and wasn’t going to start now. But it was one thing to merely have that thought cross her mind, and something else entirely to have someone else put it into words.
“The way you tried to?” she demanded, surprised by the sharp edge in her voice.
“Diana—"
“Don’t think that I forgot, Bruce. Don’t think I forgot that you tried to use him to manipulate me.”
Bruce winced, his palm running over the back of his neck. “I won’t. Trust me, I won’t.”
She squared her shoulders. “And if you do it again, I am going to walk out this door and never come back.”
He exhaled slowly, his eyes earnest. “I know, and I’m grateful that you haven’t already.”
“I won’t let Waller come anywhere near Steve,” she said.
His frown deepened. “She might not ask.”
Diana scoffed. “I’d like to see her try.”
“She’s going to have to go through all of us if she has to,” he noted.
She shook her head. “It’s a nice sentiment, but I’m sure it won’t come to it.”
Bruce’s jaw set tautly. “It is not a sentiment, and it will come to it. Because what do you think is going to happen if she can’t get to him?” he pressed on, and this time her brows knitted together, his voice cutting deep. “She won’t come for you, Diana, she’s not an idiot. And she won’t come for Steve because it’s suicide, and she knows it. So, it stands to reason that she will try to do it through the next best target. Barry. Victor. The rest of us.” He rubbed his forehead. “You think she’s above hurting someone for her own gain? She’s done it before and she’s very good at covering up her tracks.”
Diana’s lips pressed into a tight line. “I will never let it happen.”
He lowered his hand, his eyes weary. “It’s not your job to keep watch. Not like that.”
She was shaking her head. “What do you want me to say, Bruce? What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to understand what’s at stake here.”
“You think I don’t?” she snapped, furious. “You seriously think I’m that clueless?”
“I think you’re blindsided when it comes to Steve Trevor.” The jealousy in his voice caught her off guard. The jealousy he had no right to own. “He is your Achilles' heel, if you please.”
Diana bristled at his accusation. “And Alfred is yours, and Barry’s father is his. Lois. Mera. Victor’s father. Steve is not my weakness because he loves me and I love him, he never has been.” If nothing else, he had been the opposite, showing her the side of strength she had never known existed. “We all have people that we care about. It doesn’t make any one of them stand out among others.”
“But it does,” Bruce insisted. “Waller wants more from him than she’s letting on. She can’t not to. He’s 136 years old, for heaven’s sake! However that works…” He stopped abruptly, his jaw working for a few moments. “It’s all too—convenient. The timing, his sudden return after all these years…”
“Whatever it is, she won’t get it,” Diana said firmly, cutting him off, and Zeus help her, she felt sorry for Amanda Waller — if the woman tried to cross her path, Diana wouldn’t hesitate. “Never.” She bit her lip, then exhaled slowly, remembering why she was there and what this was supposed to be about. “Bruce…” she started.
“Don’t,” he interjected, lifting his hand up.
“You are deflecting.”
His face closed off instantly.
“Don’t pity me. It was a kiss. I have never expected anything from you, not then and certainly not now.”
“I’m not—"
He gave her a look and Diana cut off, not wanting to lie but also unsure what the truth was anymore.
“It’s better that way. For the team. For everyone. All of this,” Bruce gestured vaguely around them, “it’s bigger than you and I, and if he’s the one…” He trailed off. This was nonsense and they both knew it, but she was not going to argue, knowing all too well that they could drown in what-ifs if they allowed themselves to. “Just be careful.”
“I’m sorry,” Diana said softly, for not feeling the same way or for admitting it, or for losing her temper minutes ago, she wasn’t sure, but hoped he knew.
For hurting him.
There was a heavy feeling between them, and maybe she wasn’t completely ready to forgive him for his words, for the things he had done, but there was fear behind his motives, not malice, she knew that much. She wasn’t sure if it made it better, but it didn’t make it worse.
“Don’t be. It’s me who should be sorry for… well, a lot of things.” Bruce took a breath and then chuckled wistfully. “Your Captain Trevor is one lucky man.”
She felt the tightness in her chest ease. “I would argue that I am.”
The corner of his mouth twitched.
“Of course, you would.”
Her gaze darted toward the staircase, and then back to Bruce. “You really need to get some sleep.”
---
When Steve woke up again, the early morning fog that never failed to turn the place into a scene straight out of a gothic novel was gone and a sun that offered all the light but none of the warmth had crept over the treetops, flooding the bedroom with a soft glow.
He scrubbed his hand over his face and rolled onto his back, squinting around the room, half-expecting to see Diana at the desk or rummaging through the closet but not surprised when he found it empty. A pang of longing jolted through him. It had only been a few hours, and he already missed her to the point of a fierce ache in his chest.
There was a text from her on his phone, a quick good morning that she had sent an hour and a half ago, and Steve smiled, rereading the brief message several times. In his mind, he could easily see her typing it after she'd parked her car outside of the Museum or maybe in the elevator, and he hoped that she wished she was here instead as desperately as he did. He could think of a few ways for them to make good use of the morning.
Not that he expected her to cancel her life for him. It was not Diana’s fault, after all, that he had crashed back into her world with all the grace of a bull in a china shop. Nor was it her problem that he would much rather spend all his free time between the sheets with her making up for the lost years than do, well, anything else.
Not that Steve had nothing to do, for that matter, he reminded himself.
Over the past few days, he had managed to upgrade Bruce’s security system, which even Diana had had a hard time getting around when they'd tested it and he had learned — not without surprise — that she was quite spectacular at bypassing them when she needed. He was also planning to have a look at the firewall in the Batcave, as a part of his agreement with Bruce. God only knew what the Batman had on those servers, including the half-fake file he had on Steve.
Better safe than sorry, Steve figured.
Which, come to think of it, could be a project for the morning.
Maybe.
Except that it meant going down to the Batcave, which Steve was more than a little reluctant to do. It was the one place in the house where Bruce seemed to gravitate to the most. And ever since Steve and Diana… well, fixed things, there was a not so discreet undercurrent of tension between the two of them.
Sometimes, Steve could practically hear an endless array of what-ifs running through Bruce’s head. All the things that Steve refused to venture into for fear of losing his mind.
He could still try, though. It wasn’t like they could keep the awkward dance up forever.
At least, that was the plan when Steve finally made his way to the kitchen only to find Victor fiddling with the coffee maker. Barry was sitting at the kitchen isle, slouched over a bowl of cereal. He glanced up from his breakfast and offered Steve a small wave.
“Morning,” Steve said, pausing for just a second, curious. “It’s Tuesday,” he pointed out.
“Your point being?” Barry asked, shoving another spoonful into his mouth, his words garbled as he chewed.
“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
The young man shook his head. “They’re painting the lab. I’m allergic to that stuff.”
“Huh,” Steve blinked and turned to Victor.
“Don’t look at me,” Victor said. “I’m just hiding here. My dad’s been a bit overbearing lately, after what happened at the S.T.A.R. Labs.”
A faint frown creased Steve’s forehead. “Are you doing okay?” he asked, eyeing the Cyborg with apprehension.
He still wasn’t entirely sure how healing worked for someone like Victor, to begin with, but the young man looked fine, for a half-robot. Come to think of it, having self-regenerating tissue would be quite handy, perhaps. If nothing else, it was so much more convenient in their line of work than dealing with vulnerable human bodies that could be so easily incapacitated and that took weeks to heal.
It fascinated Steve to no end. That, and the mechanics of it. Jokingly, he had asked Diana the other night if he could take Victor apart to see how he worked and put him back together, and she'd laughed until she’d had tears in her eyes.
The memory made his mouth curve in a smile, a slight colour rising on his cheeks. He didn’t mean it, of course. Not in a literal sense.
“Yeah.” Victor turned back to the coffee maker, his lips pressed together. “Considering my definition of okay .”
Steve nodded. “Acting up again?” he asked, his gaze darting toward the machine.
Vic nodded. “Alfred asked me to have a look. I think it’s the power cord because everything else seems to be fine, but I can’t…” he frowned.
“Diana seems to be the only one who has a way with that thing,” Steve said and pulled a carton of orange juice from the fridge. He could get coffee later. Or he could also ask Alfred to throw the evil thing out and get something less temperamental.
Vic chuckled. “Yeah, Di’s a woman of many talents.”
“Dude,” Barry hissed theatrically, snapping his head up, his eyes comically wide. His pointed at Steve. “That’s his girlfriend .”
Victor rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean it like—"
“I know, it’s okay.” Steve patted him on the metal shoulder, smiling. And added, “She really is.” He started toward the pantry but then stopped and turned to Victor again. “Can I ask you something?”
Vic shrugged without looking at him. “Sure.”
“Does it, uh… does it hurt?” Steve gestured vaguely toward the metal parts of him, too curious to shut up now that the words were out of his mouth.
This time, Victor glanced at him, his lips curving into a faint smile. “No. Not anymore.” At the kitchen isle, Barry was hanging on to every word, his breakfast forgotten. “I know it did, when I… you know, in the beginning. But I don’t remember much of it, it’s all blurred.” He shook his head, and Steve wondered if maybe it was for the best, a blessing in disguise.
Once, back in 1917, he had been shot. A graze that had been more of an inconvenience than an actual injury that had left him with a scar on his left shoulder. He had been sent to a field hospital to have it checked nonetheless, and that experience was like nothing he had ever had before. He had seen people there with their limbs torn off by mines, people with half their faces melted off from the fire. The war had been a nightmare, but that tent? That tent had been pure hell. Steve had never seen so much pain in one place, so concentrated and all around him. It had been like a living, breathing thing, taking up the inside of the canvas tent and suffocating them all.
Steve knew that few of those men had lived, but of those who had — well, he could bet his very soul that they would rather not remember the days of unbearable agony. He certainly didn’t want that for Victor.
“Right now, it’s odd,” Vic added. “It feels… okay, but strange. I do have the whole ‘phantom limb’ thing going on where my leg or my back will itch and it won’t go away for hours, and that’s both the most and the least human thing about this whole…” He glanced down himself and then met Steve’s eyes. “Whatever this is. But no, it doesn’t hurt.”
“Man, this is the coolest thing ever,” Barry blurted out.
Victor looked at him. “Which part?”
“The—the ghost… whatever.” He lifted another spoonful of cereal to his mouth. “All of it, really.”
“You think?” Victor asked flatly.
“It does sound fascinating,” Steve admitted.
“And he can play video games with his brain ,” Barry added, for what felt like the hundredth time, to Steve’s memory.
“Yeah, that’s the biggest perk of being only half-human,” Victor deadpanned.
“Exactly!” Barry agreed, not hearing the sarcasm in the Cyborg’s voice.
“I guess having built-in weaponry could come in handy now and then,” Steve offered before Vic had a chance to come up with a retort.
“Yeah,” Victor nodded, “and also this.”
He pressed his spread-out fingers to the side of the coffee maker, his brows pulling together in concentration as if he was hooking to the machine’s mainframe. And then he curled his hand into a fist and smacked the whole thing with it. It sputtered for a moment, and after a few seconds, the main console lit up and the air filled instantly with bitter smell of percolating coffee.
“I could have done that,” Alfred noted, appearing in the kitchen at that exact moment.
“You’re welcome,” Victor grinned at him.
“Captain,” Alfred nodded.
“Alfred,” Steve echoed, amused.
He grabbed a cup from the holder but paused and looked over his shoulder, having to stifle a smile.
A speedster, a cyborg, a butler, bickering about something amongst themselves.
Somewhere in the house, an Atlantian was probably still snoring away — if there was one thing that Steve had learned about Arthur it was that he decidedly wasn’t a morning person. Not in the slightest. That, and his distaste for water jokes — the last time Barry had suggested that he tried talking to the river cutting Gotham in half, the very one that was known for the toxic waste floating in it, alongside two-headed fish, he had to make a very fast escape because Arthur did not appreciate the humour. Or the time when Bruce had asked him to part the water in the lake like in the Biblical story and Steve thought that Batman would be in for his first real flight.
And somehow along the way, while Steve was busy putting the broken pieces of his life back together and trying to find his heart again, they all had managed to crawl under his skin without him even noticing and found a home there.
In a few hours, he would see Diana again, and the mere thought of her made Steve's heart spring into a gallop. He had missed her, but he didn’t realize how much until he didn’t have to anymore, and being back with her left him with a sense of vertigo, the ever-terrifying sensation of free falling that he didn’t want to break.
How could less than a thousand lifetimes of this ever be enough?
---
Their first date after the war, after Steve had healed and they had returned to London, had been a dinner at a small restaurant not far from his apartment. He had booked it on Etta’s recommendation because he had never stayed in the city long enough to discover any places more sophisticated than bars frequented by Sameer and Charlie in between their missions. Ones that had supplied cheap alcohol and trouble above all else. Ones that hadn't been suited for a princess — he had chosen not to think of having taken Diana to one before (as Etta had reminded him helpfully).
They had been on a mission, he had told himself. It didn’t count. He hadn't been trying to…to make an impression, then. Mostly. Yet, he'd still yearned to fix it.
Hence, a dinner.
Steve remembered red-checkered tablecloths and flowers on each table and an actual menu with a selection of options— something that he had been so unaccustomed to that he could barely bring himself to pick something. He remembered smiling like a moron because he hadn't seemed to be able to stop doing just that for weeks, and Diana’s inquisitive gaze when he had tried to come up with a sensible enough explanation as to why any of that had even mattered when they were already sharing not only all their meals but also a bed since the day she had found him in that field outside of the airbase in Belgium — something that he couldn’t quite put a finger on himself. He remembered the awestruck and curious look on her face and thinking that they had been doing it all wrong.
Okay, not wrong but the wrong way around, and it had both amused and scared him, the newness of it and the lack of… rules, perhaps.
He had taken her to bed before he had taken her out for dinner — and no, sharing a bland stew by a campfire on the night they'd stayed with Chief didn’t count as one. He'd loved her before he'd truly known her. He'd almost lost her before they'd had a chance at anything. But then again, nothing had ever been normal about them, so maybe it hadn't been much of a surprise that he'd struggled to find his footing. Maybe it had been about making their own normal all along, or so Steve had been thinking as he'd watched Diana watch him in the faint light of the dancing flame that night, a tender smile on her lips and a life full of wonder stretching infinitely before them.
But that had been a long time ago. A whole century, to be exact, even though Steve still remembered that night with striking clarity. They had managed to make their own rules, eventually, that seemed to have worked much better than anything he had ever learned prior to meeting her, social conventions be damned. Diana hadn't cared much for appearances and gestures then, and Steve had seen no sign yet that it had changed. She wanted him and she wanted to be loved, and those were the things that he could give her so easily and gladly that he was nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste.
“Okay, you have to be able to reach the handlebars comfortably,” Steve was telling her now, on a cold November afternoon nearly a hundred years later, as his hands curled over Diana’s, her skin warm against his palms.
He had spent the past half hour going in great detail over the anatomy of his motorcycle and showing her the switches and clutches and levers, making her repeat his words back to him so he'd knew that she'd got it right. It was slightly more nuanced than a car, and even though she preferred manual transmission to automatic, as he had learned, and the principle here was very similar, Steve wanted to make sure—
“ This is your idea of taking me out on a date?” Diana asked, not without amusement.
Sitting behind her, his chest pressed against her back and the hair that had escaped the loose bun on the nape of her neck whipping against his face, Steve let out a short laugh. “Don’t tell me this is not fun.” And then, unable to resist the temptation — because when was he ever? — he dipped his head and kissed the back of her neck.
“You’re being distracting,” she warned him, but there was a smile in her voice.
“I learn from the best,” he noted, and she laughed. “Okay, so…” He cleared his throat.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” she said, turning her head slightly to the side.
Truth be told, this morning when Steve had promised her that he had a plan, he didn’t exactly have one. He'd just thought that he would figure it out by lunch. It didn’t bother Steve one way or another that she seemed to be the one to always choose where they went — which was her bedroom more often than not (which was something that he had no business complaining about). However, there was a burning need simmering inside him to do something for her, break out of their routine, however non-invasive it was. It had been so long since he could have Diana all to himself, even for a short while, that he craved it beyond comprehension.
Neither he nor Diana had walked through the past century without emerging on the other side with more than a little bit of cynicism clinging to their bodies like a second skin. He had expected that from himself, what with the first war having effectively stripped him of the delusions he might have had when he was younger, and the subsequent ones leaving him with a hard shell around his soul to protect it from further pain. But seeing it in Diana — albeit much less pronounced and bitter than his own — was still something that Steve wasn’t quite prepared for.
The fact alone didn’t bother him so much as it saddened him. There were many things that he had always desperately wanted to shield her from, and knowing that he had failed on all accounts felt like a punch to the gut that had left him breathless.
In addition to that, time was starting to take a toll on him as well. There were moments when Steve ached to know what his expiration date was, exactly. Queen Hippolyta had made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t immortal like her daughter, and there were many a night when he lay awake scared of closing his eyes for fear of never opening them again because there were no rules to his life.
God only knew what Diana had gone through on her own, what demons were lurking in her mind, haunted by memories of pain and loss.
There was nothing that Steve could do to fix it for her.
However, he could try to coax the old Diana out of her hiding. He had never expected her to remain the same, much like he knew that he was a different person — there was no point in fighting the inevitable. But their old selves, brittle and frayed at the edges, were still there somewhere, deep down, buried under a layer of disappointment and pain and fear.
And so when she had come back to get him around lunchtime, he had given her knee-length skirt a skeptical look and suggested that she change into something more practical. Intrigued, Diana had obliged without arguing. And then he had driven them to the Gotham harbour, nearly empty this late in the season with the chilly wind blowing in off the water and the angry waves crashing against the stone and concrete below, and had said that it was time for her to learn how to drive a motorcycle.
All things considered, it definitely wasn’t the worst idea he had ever come up with.
And there it was, a familiar glint of surprise in her eyes mixed with something that made Steve’s chest fold in on itself. A feeling that was most certainly worth dying for. He wanted—
He wanted so badly for her to never stop being surprised. He wanted her to never, ever stop wondering.
The air was cold, biting at their cheeks and noses even though Steve was more than a little certain that Diana only wore her jacket because it was a social convention, to stop strangers from gawking at her. A dozen rather puzzled seagulls were floating on the water coloured gold by the sun that no longer bothered pretending that winter wasn’t near, casting odd looks in their direction, and he felt his blood flowing in his veins like it hadn’t in a very long time.
“Are you hungry?” Steve asked as Diana fiddled with the controls on the dashboard.
“Yes,” she admitted, glancing at him. “A little.”
“Well, maybe you could drive us somewhere later,” he offered, and she smirked. “Ready?”
Diana nodded, and he caught a glimpse of another smile that took root in his chest, spreading all the way into the tips of his fingers and his toes before springing into full bloom across his face and he was beaming like the lovesick idiot that he was. God, he was so crazy about her that his heart was about to burst.
Steve leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her shoulder, sliding his arm around her — not to be thrown off the bike if she started it too abruptly, and also because he wanted to never stop touching her. He ran his hand across her stomach. “Okay, let’s do this.”
It took her a few attempts, but Diana got it right after a minute or two, waving him off with, “I got this, Steve,” as she brimmed with that stubborn determination to figure things out on her own that he loved so.
And then… and then there was swerving, and the wind tearing at the folds of their clothes and slapping wisps of her hair against his face. And laughter. And a time or two when Steve thought that they would fly through an embankment and straight into the frigid water — and if they did, it would probably be worth it. The bike stalled; Diana had to restart it half a dozen times before she got the hang of it, and when she came too close to the end of the pier, Steve had to grab the handlebars over her hands and steer them back to safety.
He could feel her excitement flowing in his own veins like it belonged there.
And suddenly, none of this felt like a questionable idea anymore.
The past few days had felt surreal, too good to be true even. It was almost like someone had climbed into his head and pulled everything he had dreamt of and prayed for and made it real. Maybe even better than anything Steve could ever have imagined.
However, he wasn’t delusional about this honeymoon phase lasting forever. Soon enough, their lives would have to fall back into some sort of rhythm. Diana had a job, and he had one hell of a task cut out for him if he wanted to work with the League. Waller’s radio silence bothered him more than he was willing to let on and he itched to find out what was causing it. He needed to know what they were up against before it was too late, and that thought was a constant presence in the back of his mind.
But it wasn’t ending today, and hopefully not tomorrow; and right now, neither of them needed to think about any of that. Not for a little while.
“I gotta admit, you weren’t half bad,” Steve said when the sun started to inch towards the horizon and the shadows around them began to grow longer and Diana finally brought his bike to a stop with a jerk.
“Not half bad?” she echoed, incredulous and mock-insulted, as Steve propped it on a kickstand and slid off, missing the warmth of her instantly.
Diana climbed off too and stepped to him, pulling him to her by the lapels of his jacket. Steve didn’t resist, his lips stretching into a smile the moment before they met hers.
“You were good,” he murmured against her mouth, drawing her closer to him by her hips.
One of her hands slid up his chest and curled around the back of his neck, her body alive and languid against his. He could taste the thrill of the past few hours on her tongue, feel it in the way her fingers slid into his hair as she kissed him.
“A natural,” Steve added, smiling.
Diana hummed in agreement and then stepped back. She reached for his hand and weaved her fingers through his. They walked towards the end of the pier, listening to the cries of the seagulls nearly swallowed by the furious roar of the waves and the singing of the wind. Before them, the ocean was stretching endlessly all the way to places somewhere out of their reach.
Diana paused before the railing and peered into the distance. Steve could feel it thrumming in her blood, that longing for something that she couldn’t quite put into words.
He let go of her hand and moved to wrap his arms around her from behind. He pressed a kiss to the back of her head before resting his cheek against her temple, his gaze following hers. The wind was ferocious here, but the view was breathtaking — fierce and powerful, the ocean smelling of salt and seaweed and places they couldn’t see. He could certainly understand the appeal even if they were a few seconds away from being blown away.
“You were right,” Diana said after a few moments. She ran her hand along the sleeve of his jacket until her fingers reached his wrist, curling around it, her touch soothingly warm. “It was fun.”
Steve chuckled. “Hey, I promised you a good time.”
“You always do, and you always deliver,” she responded matter-of-factly, and his skin flushed at the implication she didn’t even bother to hide.
The Diana he knew back in the day was far less likely to engage in suggestive banter, but Steve had to admit that he rather enjoyed it now. Even if half the time it ended with his heart racing for dear life and him struggling for words, the quick-thinking and articulate spy that he was.
Much to Diana’s immense amusement.
“You know, we could have just stayed in your bedroom,” he pointed out, and she laughed, the warmth of it making his very soul unfold in his chest, taking all the space around where his affection for her had been living for as long as he'd known her. For a while, they simply stood there, watching seagulls diving towards the water and soaring back into the sky as he held Diana close, her body nestled neatly into the circle of his arms and his heart hammering against her shoulder blades. “Do you miss it?” Steve asked after a few minutes. “Themyscira?”
The name of the island still rolled with difficulty from his tongue. Their time they'd spent there remained one of Steve's most cherished memories — not so much the heavenly island as the look on Diana’s face when she was there, the easiness to her, her body language relaxed and at peace with herself. There was nothing there to warrant any worry, never had been. And yet, Steve couldn’t help but wonder now and then how their lives might have turned out if they'd never gone there at all.
A pang of shame shot through him, hot and burning, making him want to claw it from under his skin. The island was Diana’s home and she loved it, and she longed for it even when she didn’t want to admit it. He had no right to take it away from her. Yet, if his conversation with the Queen had never happened—
A sigh flowed from his chest. He wouldn’t have to run away from something he'd never known existed.
“I do,” Diana said after a moment. “But I know they are well. It is enough.”
She turned to rest her forehead against his cheek, and Steve reached absently to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Do you ever wish that we never went there?” she asked, as if reading his mind.
“No,” Steve responded, surprised that he actually meant it. “I wish that some things had turned out differently. I wish that your mother was wrong.” He took a breath. “But no, I never regretted going there. You missed them, and I wanted answers.”
Be careful what you wish for , he thought.
“I did,” she admitted, her finger circling absently over the juts of his knuckles. “But I wanted you more.”
He stayed quiet for a while, watching the water, inhaling the ocean. Diana had always been drawn to it for as long as he could remember, the wistfulness in her gaze whenever she would look at the waves crashing against the beach never escaping his attention.
I wanted you more .
“Are you cold?” Steve asked softly, tightening his grip on her.
“No,” Diana shook her head, her hair brushing against his face.
He smiled. “Right. A goddess. So above our trivial human concerns.”
“Doesn’t mean that I don’t like you holding me,” she told him.
“You know, I…” Steve started and faltered. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry and his blood pounding fast in his ears. He could say anything now and it wouldn’t matter. She wouldn’t know the difference. Still, when he regained his ability to speak, he went for the truth, “I saw you once. In Paris, at the Louvre. About a decade and a half ago.”
His heart was thudding in earnest by the time he fell silent, to the point of making him dizzy.
Diana stayed quiet, and a hot wave of panic rose inside of him, making him momentarily want to turn back time and swallow the words before they had come out of his mouth.
They had never taught him that. When they had been schooling him to be a spy, no one had ever told him that there was nothing as disarming and terrifying as loving someone with everything that he was. To the point of wanting to spill his soul to them each time he spoke.
“I know,” Diana said so softly that he almost missed it. “I saw you, too.”
Steve’s brows pulled together and he glanced down at her, wanting desperately to read her face, but she remained staring straight ahead.
“You—you did?” he asked.
Surely, he had to have heard her wrong.
“It was April and we had just opened a new exhibition the previous week. You were standing in front of a Monet painting and looking at it like you were trying to find answers unknown to mankind since the creation of the universe,” she said quietly. “And I thought… for a moment, I thought that you'd come back for me.”
Steve felt his body go rigid, and when he spoke, his voice came out hoarse and raw.
“Diana…”
“I didn’t think that it was really you,” she admitted, her fingers running absently over the back of his hand.
“You didn’t?” he echoed.
Diana shook her head. “I used to see you often after you left. I’d notice a man with the same haircut or hear someone speak in your accent, and think…”
Her voice caught, and she trailed off. Steve pressed his lips to her temple. She turned in the circle of his arms, her hands snaking under his unzipped jacket to rest on his waist. She might not have felt the cold the way he did, but her cheeks were pink from the wind, and cool to the touch when he reached to loop a piece of hair around her ear.
It fell right back across her face moments later.
“I went to an art show in Geneva once, shortly after I moved back to Paris,” Diana continued, taking his hand in hers and intertwining their fingers. Her eyes were watching his thumb running over her knuckles. “There was a father with a young girl, his daughter, on the plaza in front of the gallery. She ran over to him and he caught her in his arms and put her on his shoulders. She was laughing the whole time. From the back, he looked so much like you that I was certain…” Her other hand twitched on his side. “Until the moment he turned around, I thought it was you.”
Steve could see it in his mind — a sun-bathed square and the light reflecting off the windows, flocks of bold pigeons, and toddlers chasing after them between congregations of tourists with cameras. And amidst them all, a woman frozen in a spot. He recalled the way he'd felt when he had seen Bruce kiss her at the benefit and how it had been akin to having someone stab him in the heart and twist the knife for good measure.
Whatever that encounter had been like for Diana, it couldn’t have been good.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, bowing his head closer to hers until their faces were almost touching.
“I hoped that it was you, and prayed that it wasn’t,” she said, her gaze drawn back to the waves, and for once, Steve wished that he couldn’t see her expression. The anguish chasing across her features was unbearable. “That day, I was so jealous I couldn’t recognize myself. More than I’ve ever been before.” Her lips twitched humourlessly. “Which is ironic, considering the history of my people.”
“And here I was thinking that you were above something that mundane,” Steve muttered.
Diana turned to him, the concerned lines around her eyes smoothing out, her lips curving into a proper smile.
“You’d think so, but in truth, no one feels deeper or more passionately than gods.” She sighed. “I knew that it wasn’t you when that man turned around, but before then, I stood there and watched them. And I thought that there was nothing that I wanted more than for you to be happy. But even more than that, I wanted you to be happy with me .”
Steve took in a shuddered breath and looked up from the knot of their hands. He found her gaze.
“I’m happy with you, Diana,” he said quietly, his voice earnest. “I’ve never been happier than when I am with you. Then. Now. A million years from this moment.”
It was a silly thing to say. Silly and sentimental and like it had come straight from one of those tacky greeting cards that people gave to each other because their own words didn’t seem enough. The words that, if someone else had said them, would have grated on his own ears. The words that, if said in front of Sammy and his friends, would have made him a laughing stock for weeks on end. Steve didn’t care. He wanted to be tacky and sentimental, he wanted to sound like a cliché. If that was how he felt, then so be it.
Diana’s features softened and the teasing comment he half-expected never came.
“I tried to find you, in the 1960s, after Etta passed away,” she said after a moment. “I thought you’d come to her funeral, and when you didn’t, I tried…”
Steve grimaced a little. “I’m pretty damn good at hiding.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I—” he cleared his throat. “I didn’t know about Etta until it was too late.” The memory was bitter and painful, aching still in his chest. Of all the things he would never forgive himself for, losing track of the people he loved was one of Steve's biggest regrets. “I spoke with her daughter, about a month after…” He shook his head. “I went to say goodbye to Charlie, though. You should have seen how mad he was at me for—” his lips tugged upwards at the corners at the memory. “Well, for losing you.”
Diana let out a small laugh. “I can imagine. Sameer was just as mad.” She ran her hand back and forth along his side, her touch warm even through his shirt. “I saw him in Paris a few times, and the man had a foul mouth in as many languages as I could count.”
“All about me?” Steve chuckled.
Diana’s eyebrow arched. “Of course.”
“I went to his show once, when he was touring in Belgium,” Steve confessed. “He beat me with a bouquet that he received from one of his devoted admirers.” She laughed again. “Said it was a much better use for it. And called me names, too, that I’m not going to repeat in the presence of a lady, and told me to go find you.” He let out a breath. “I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it.”
“You didn’t,” she murmured, lifting their hands up to her mouth and pressing a kiss to his fingers. “You were hurting.” The wind picked up and then died down just as suddenly, an odd calm settling over them. “Although I still wish you’d listened to him.”
Steve did, too. Wished he’d listened to Etta when she'd called him a moron and some other unflattering words. Wished he’d listened to Sammy when he'd told Steve to get his ‘sorry ass back to Paris and stop being an idiot’ — direct quote. Wished he’d listened to Charlie whose lungs had been collapsing the last time they'd spoken and who had still managed to make Steve feel like he was the one who had drawn the short straw. The latter probably should have clued him in, but the wound had still been raw and bleeding, and he'd chosen to let it scar rather than poke at it.
“I miss them,” he said.
“I miss them, too,” Diana sighed.
They spoke of their friends some more, trading old stories and filling in the gaps that each of them had. Steve had never met Sameer’s grandkids, and Diana knew little to nothing about Charlie who'd seemed to be the most adamant of them all to cut ties with the past for fear of falling into the pit of despair that the war had dragged him into all over again. Steve had missed Etta terribly, but keeping open communication had been a tempting getaway to coming back and he'd been scared. Diana had, though. She'd never forgotten, and he gave her a story from before they'd met for each one that she had from after he’d left.
“Does the League ever remind you of them?” Steve asked when they both fell silent, realizing that he was practically shaking from the chill by that point, his toes numb cold stones in his boots.
“Sometimes,” she smiled. “I think the League is far less reckless than your boys.”
Amused, he shook his head. “I beg to differ.” And added, “I think that if they'd all met, they’d have liked each other.”
She let out a small laugh. “They would have,” she agreed, leaning into him.
“Do you remember Veld?” he asked after a moment, his voice low. “The night after the liberation? Dancing?”
She tilted her head, curious. “Yes. Of course.”
“Remember how I told you that I didn’t know what life without the war was like?” She didn’t say anything, but her eyes were searching his, waiting for him to continue. “I still don’t think I do. Probably never have.”
Diana let go of his hand, her gaze never leaving his, and it was as hard for Steve to look at her now as it had been when she had first asked that question and he'd come up empty.
She put her hands on either side of his face, and her mouth formed into a small smile that made something snap inside of him.
“I love you,” she said quietly, her right thumb running over his cheekbone. “I will always love you.”
His gaze dropped from her eyes down to her mouth and the temptation was too strong to resist. He leaned forward and kissed her, her lips warm against his. She pulled him to her, weaving her arms around his neck and allowing his hands to slip underneath her jacket and around her waist, palms roaming over her back, her shoulder-blades, everywhere he wanted them to be, drawing her closer to his chest until he could feel her heartbeat as clearly as his own.
She gasped against his mouth when one of his hands slipped beneath the hem of her shirt, startled by the cold of his touch to her skin. A low groan formed in the back of her throat, her lips parting against his and sending a shiver of a different kind down Steve’s body. He didn’t hesitate, kissing her the way he wanted to kiss her every moment of every day that they had been apart, frantic and almost panicky, needing to put into his touch everything he knew not how to express with words.
Diana was the one to break the kiss, pulling back a little, her eyes dazed and dark with want when they found his, knocking what little air Steve still had left in his lungs out of him. She was breathing hard, her chest heaving against his, and although it had never been about pride with them, he was stupidly pleased to know that even after all this time he was still able to kiss her senseless, quite literally so.
“Take me back home, Steve,” she whispered, and it came out as a demand, her voice hoarse, her exhales puffing out in small clouds between them.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “I thought you were hungry,” he reminded her, his fingers running back and forth along the base of her spine beneath her shirt.
Diana’s hand flexed, curling around a fistful of his shirt under his jacket.
“I am.”
---
Funny how some mistakes seemed designed to keep biting one in the ass for as long as one lived, apparently.
There wasn’t a day when Amanda Waller didn’t regret forming the Suicide Squad — she'd got nothing out of it and lost more than she wanted to admit — and yet it was the one thing that somehow seemed to haunt her no matter how much she tried to put it behind her.
If she'd known to set her attention on the Justice League earlier, a lot of things could have gone very differently. She would never have wasted her time on petty criminals, for one thing. Yet, here she was, still trying to clean up the mess in Midway City while dodging everything else coming her way and seeing no way out.
And on top of that, she had managed to grossly miscalculate her steps with the League as well, which felt like a cherry on top of the crap cake of the situation she was in. When she had first found the photograph and discovered that Steve Trevor was alive, he'd been meant to be her trump card. Instead, she was left with nothing to bargain with. Bringing him in had been the biggest mistake of all. One that she couldn’t fix now. Not unless she learned to run back in time like the Flash, she mused darkly.
There had been nothing in his scant and undoubtedly half-fake file on his personal relationship with Wonder Woman. And as far as Waller was aware, Diana Prince had never been in a romantic relationship in her time in this world at all. She should have known better.
At the time, Waller had been counting on half-gratitude from a certain demi-goddess in hopes of getting in her good graces, and half-shock to shake up the seemingly established peace in the League. God knew, she needed to get the upper hand with them for once, and briefly, Bruce Wayne’s reaction had been almost worth it. Her own superiors had been breathing down her neck for months now, urging her to gain control over the half a dozen people who could tear this city apart without breaking a sweat and with no consequences whatsoever and, if nothing else, her continued failures in that regard were starting to drive Waller up the wall.
Yet, what she'd ended up with was rejection and animosity, driving her further away from her goal than she had ever been. And she needed to fix that ASAP. There was only so much her superiors would put up with before they decided to get someone else involved, someone who, in their opinion, might be better suited for the task. But Amanda Waller had not spent several decades of her life doing her damned best to keep peace here to simply hand over her victories to someone else and walk away.
The problem was, she was running out of time.
Ice cubes clinked softly in her glass when Waller lifted it to her lips and took a small sip, aware of the burning trail the alcohol would leave in her throat. It was almost midnight and the hallways outside of her office had been quiet for hours. She couldn’t bring herself to leave though, not yet. She needed to find a way to get Steve Trevor to cooperate — of them all, she suspected, he was the only one without a personal grudge against her. Or, at the very least, it was not supposed to be a big one. She needed to get him on her side, find a way to work with him. If her intel on the nature of his relationship with Diana Prince was correct — and she suspected that it was, based on both of their reactions the day Waller had brought him in — then he was her best hope.
And if that failed… Well, there should be a way to make him compliant, she figured. They did, after all, have an agreement, which essentially made him the property of the Government of the United States, but she didn’t want to use that against him unless she absolutely had to. Which, truth be told, was more likely to happen than not.
Waller chose not to think of how his girlfriend might take it yet.
A knock on the door gave her a start, making her hand jerk so that a few drops of amber liquid spilled onto the papers spread out in front of her.
“Yes?” Waller snapped, frowning at the slight nervous uptilt in her voice.
The door opened a crack and a tech whose name she had never bothered to learn poked his head into her office. “Director?” He adjusted the glasses that kept sliding low on his nose.
“Yes?” she repeated coolly.
“We have a problem.”
She almost laughed at that. Of course, they did. When was the last time they didn’t have one? It only seemed like a logical ending to her already shitty day. She stifled her reaction though, her frown deepening momentarily.
“What is it?” she demanded when the man didn’t say anything else.
He crossed the room, walking over to her desk and extended his clenched fist to her and opened it. On the palm of his hand were a few small pieces that looked like—
Waller pressed her lips into a tight line.
“Bugs,” she muttered.
The man cleared his throat. “These were found on the first level. We are scanning the whole building now.”
“How?” she snapped, eyes drilling into the tech who seemingly shrunk under her glare.
“We are checking the security footage—” he started.
“Nobody leaves here until the building has been cleared,” Waller stopped him.
He nodded. “Yes, Director.”
When the door closed behind him, Waller leaned back in her chair and let a long breath through her nose, trying to calm the blind rage rising inside of her.
“Bruce Wayne.”
---
“Thank you.”
Perched on the kitchen counter and wearing nothing but her panties and Steve’s button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up halfway to her elbows, Diana watched him rummage expertly through the freezer, searching for the stash of ice-cream that she knew Alfred always kept for her visits.
Her gaze followed the defined lines of his arms, the taut muscles of his back, lingering on the dimples that disappeared into the waistline of the jeans riding low on his hips. She bit her lip, trying to swallow a smile, and vowed silently to try and get him to be shirtless — or, better yet, naked — more often. Why on Earth was he even allowed to cover a body like that was beyond her.
She had always found Steve attractive but missing him had somehow intensified it to a point where she could barely keep her hands off of him. Their relationship had never been about physicality, per se. Their connection running deeper than just the sex. Diana was in love with him, she cared about him in a way she had never cared about anyone else. She missed him achingly whenever they were apart even for a brief period of time. However, it didn’t hurt that she found him handsome as well, his body reminding her of the pictures of ancient gods from the books that filled row upon row of shelves in the library on Themyscira. Lean muscles and easy grace.
And right now, she certainly enjoyed what she was seeing.
Steve glanced up at her, his eyebrow quirked and his face puzzled. His hair was tousled comically after the past few hours that they had spent reminding one another unapologetically and with as much fervour as they could muster just how really and truly well they fit in every sense Diana could think of.
“Huh?”
“For today,” she clarified, her hands gripping the edge of the counter, her legs crossed at the ankles. “I don’t believe I said that. I should have.”
He grinned at her. “I believe you did.”
“Not in words,” Diana pointed out, her head tilted ever so slightly.
“Ah-ha!” Victorious, he pulled a pint of ice-cream from the back of the freezer — Alfred’s attempt to keep the other members of the League from so much as looking at it, which Diana found amusing to no end, considering that they all knew better than to even try. “You were very convincing in other ways,” Steve promised, moving towards her.
It was past midnight, the house around them dark and quiet. For fear of disturbing anyone else, they had chosen to forgo turning on the overhead light, sticking instead to the smaller lamp over the stove that cast a warm glow around them while the corners of the kitchen remained drowning in shadows. Hunger, as it turned out, was a force to be reckoned with, and while skipping dinner in favour of far more exciting activities wasn’t anywhere near Diana’s list of regrets, a late-night snack seldom was a bad idea.
Steve stopped in front of her, his elbow brushing against her leg, and just like that the familiar warmth stirred in her belly as it often did even at the small touches that punctuated their routines. It amused Diana beyond measure that he would barely even look at her in the presence of the other members of the League because it was ‘unprofessional’ to be ‘personal’ in front of them, which, consequently, only made her want to put her hands all over him even more.
But there was no one else here now, Alfred and the rest of them fast asleep. And when Steve was within her reach, she draped her arms around his neck and reeled him closer still, watching his eyes widen as she did so.
He was a damn good spy, and even though she might have been a little biased in her assessment, Diana was certain that she had never met anyone better. With or without her, he had still singlehandedly obtained the intel to stop the Great War. With or without her, she knew that he would have still gone against the orders of his superiors to save the lives of innocent people. With or without her, she was sure, he would have still climbed into that airplane. He wasn’t just good. He was excellent.
And yet, there was something intoxicating in knowing that he could barely ever hide his feelings when it came to her. In seeing the desire in his eyes even when he didn’t mean for it to show.
“Oh, other ways,” Diana echoed. “Yes, of course.”
“I like the other ways,” he promised her. “I like them a lot.”
“Good to know,” she murmured, touching her mouth to his, reminded pleasantly of the moment several hours ago when he had peeled her clothes off her body only to reveal the same black set underneath them that she'd worn on the night they had gone to Metropolis, thin lace clinging so close to her skin that it had been hard to tell where one ended and the other one began.
Diana had watched him stare at her, slack-jawed and more than a little desperate, drinking her up as his eyes moved down her body and then back up, his rather undignified gaping making her want him even more. His need had been so raw she could feel it in her core. And she had promised herself then to wear something like that more often. Every day, if she could. If only to have Steve look at her the way he had earlier tonight. She was quite adamant to make it happen for as long as he would let her.
“So, about that story that I was trying to tell you when we were so rudely interrupted,” he started, drawing away from her. One hand still resting on her hip, Steve pulled open a cutlery drawer near her left thigh, fumbling for spoons.
“You mean, when our clothes fell off?” Diana teased, one of her arms still slung over his shoulder.
“Hey, an interruption is an interruption,” Steve brandished a spoon in her direction, and she laughed. “And they didn’t just… fall off.”
“Yes, I remember you being very diligent with removing those that didn’t,” she told him with as much seriousness as she could muster.
“God,” Steve exhaled and rubbed his eyes. “Don’t,” he said, pointing at her. “Don’t do that.”
“What?” Diana asked innocently, her fingers running absently along the base of his neck.
“You know what,” he grumbled.
She raised her hands up, biting her lip so she wouldn’t burst out laughing. She took a breath. “Okay, I’m sorry. Please, keep going.”
He regarded her suspiciously, but then only shook his head.
I have never loved him more , she thought, watching him, her lips pressed together around a smile.
“So, a week after I get deployed and come to London, I go to this bar around the corner from my place,” Steve continued from where they had left off when something far more appealing had become a priority. “The kind of place where you go looking for trouble.”
He twisted the lid off the ice-cream tub.
“Were you looking for trouble?” Diana asked, curious.
He chuckled. “No, I was looking for a drink and didn’t know any better.” He passed a spoon to her. “So, I walk in, and there’s a brawl over… At the time, I had no idea what it was over, to be honest, but it was messy and loud, and apparently, it was all the fault of one particular man who no one could find.” He let out a short laugh. “You know why? Because he was hiding under a woman’s skirt.”
Her spoon reaching for the ice-cream, Diana paused and looked at him. “You’re joking.”
“Honest to god truth.”
She blinked, the mental image wild in her mind, and then laughed, having to clasp her hand over her mouth not to wake anyone up.
“And that was how you met Sameer?” she asked.
Steve smirked and offered her a half-shrug. “And that was how I met Sameer. The bravest man I’ve ever known was hiding under a skirt. And doing damn fine down there.”
She was shaking her head now. “Lucky Sammy.”
“Poor woman,” Steve corrected. “She turned out being the owner’s wife, and he was not pleased with any of that. Not the fight and certainly not a strange man getting closely acquainted with his wife’s undergarments.”
“I can’t believe this,” Diana muttered.
She knew about their first mission together, knew the story of them meeting Chief, and a million small moments in-between, but this… How had Steve failed to mention something this impossibly entertaining before was beyond her.
“As it turned out, I was the only person there not after his head,” Steve added, trying to swallow back his own laughter. “Sammy lost a game of cards and couldn’t pay up, and talking his way out of it didn’t work out, so…”
“What happened?”
“I had to grab him and run, or they’d probably come for his blood.” There was a fondness in his voice that made Diana’s chest constrict. “We were inseparable ever after.”
He had to be feeling it too, she was thinking now. The dread and exhaustion of watching everyone he had ever loved die. A slight crack in his voice when he mentioned their names, the wistfulness in his gaze. She saw them too, for they reflected her own.
“You do know how to find trouble, Steve,” she noted nonetheless, her heart full and her chest tight with affection.
He grinned at her. “You should know.”
Diana hummed, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. She was not going to argue with that, all things considered.
“This is delicious,” she said, taking a bite of the ice-cream.
Gods bless Alfred for remembering about her weakness. He didn’t have to, and she would never have asked — not at Bruce’s home where he already allowed his comfort to be disturbed for the sake of the League. Which only deepened Diana's gratitude towards the older man.
“I’m glad you’re so easy to please,” Steve noted.
Her eyebrow arched. “Am I, now?”
He scooped some ice-cream with his spoon and lifted it up to her lips. She licked it clean without breaking eye contact as she watched his smile slip and his eyes turn dark. Her stomach tightened, heat starting to simmer in her veins. His hand that still rested on her side flexed, fingers digging into her skin through the thin cotton of her shirt.
Diana’s hand curled over the side of his neck. She uncrossed her ankles and pulled him to her until he was standing between her parted knees. The warmth of his mouth against her cold tongue sent a shiver down her spine, a low sound of appreciation rising in the back of her throat. He tasted of vanilla and caramel and want, and she was drunk on it, on the feeling of him, on the heat of his body under the palms of her hands.
“ You are trouble, angel,” Steve murmured.
“Sorry,” she breathed.
“You’re not.”
She smiled against his lips. “I’m really not.”
His hands clenched the fabric of her shirt, tugging her closer, and Diana thought absently that this was exactly how they had ended up without any dinner in the first place. Or lunch, if she recalled correctly. Somehow, somewhere along the way, Steve Trevor had turned entirely into her sole sustenance, and she was in no hurry to have it any other way.
Her hand closed over his jaw, tilting his face up, her body responding to his touch on its own volition.
“Diana…” he started, a warning in his voice, when she buried her fingers in his hair, bowing down to kiss him properly.
“There’s no one here—"
“Ohmigod!”
A yelp caused Steve to jerk away from her so fast that they both nearly tumbled down to the floor, his hand flailing to grab the marble counter to catch his balance. His blood flowing in earnest and his heart thudding in a panicked frenzy, he turned to the door to find Barry standing there, his mouth agape.
He was wearing flannel pyjama bottoms with a yellow duck print and a loose Lord Of The Rings t-shirt, a pair of massive headphones sitting on his head like a perfect finishing touch. His eyes were cartoonishly wide as his gaze slid over Steve’s bare chest and the endless expanse of Diana’s legs peeking out from under the hem of the shirt that she had barely bothered to button properly, at which point his face turned scarlet red.
He looked away quickly. “Oh, my god,” he repeated. “I’m so sorry.”
“Barry,” Diana started, her smile sheepish and apologetic.
“I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “I didn’t hear you.” He yanked the headphones off, and by now even the tips of his ears were crimson. “I—I didn’t think anyone was here, this late.”
“Really… sorry about that,” Steve added, the colour creeping up the back of his neck.
“No, no, it’s cool.” Barry’s gaze darted for a second towards them, and then snapped away just as fast. “I was just—I thought I’d have a snack because there’s no such thing as a bad time for a snack.” He paused, looking mortified, “Except there is, apparently. And it’s not good for you, anyway. I think. Eating late, that is. So…”
“It’s not—” Steve looked towards Diana, his eyes pleading. “We were just—"
“Never mind,” Barry interjected, nodding more to himself than for their benefit. “I’m just gonna…” He started toward the balcony, then stopped abruptly. “Wrong way.” Diana had never seen anyone put this much effort into avoiding looking at something. The Flash turned on his heel. “I’ll see you later.”
“Barry,” Diana tried again, her voice kind, but he was already gone in a whoosh of wind that left a faint smell of ozone and a few sparks of electric discharge behind.
Steve let out a sharp breath and scrubbed his hands over his face, pushing his fingers into his hair. His shoulders slumped forward.
“I’ll go talk to him,” he said.
Diana’s hand curled over his arm. She shook her head, finally tearing her gaze away from the dark doorway and turning to Steve. “I don’t think he’s going to talk to you now. Better give him some space, perhaps.”
A flash of doubt rippled across his face as he debated her words, and for a moment, she thought that he was going to argue, but then he stepped back towards her. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, watching her features soften.
“Do you think we broke him?” he asked, his voice miserable and his face matching Barry’s red suit.
“He’ll be fine,” Diana promised, shaking her head a little and trying very, very hard not to laugh. “I’ll talk to him in the morning.”
“No, I’ll do it,” Steve sighed.
Her eyebrow quirked. “Because you’re a man?”
His lips twitched a little. “Because he has a hero-worship thing going on for you,” Steve explained. “He probably won’t even hear a word you say. He’ll just… stare.”
She rolled her eyes a little. “That is not true.”
“Just—just trust me on this,” he shook his head, feeling her hand rest on the nape of his neck.
“It’s not like he doesn’t know about these things,” Diana whispered, scratching her nails through his hair.
A strangled sound formed in the back of Steve’s throat. “Oh, god…”
“He has a girlfriend…” she continued, then paused and corrected herself, “A lady friend . Iris. He is not very fond of discussing his personal life.”
“And now he is all too aware of ours. Besides, it’s not the same,” Steve muttered, wincing. “Hell, it’s like walking in on your parents—" He stopped abruptly and dropped his forehead onto her shoulder with a groan. Another mental image that he didn’t need. “Not that we’re his…” he added, mortified. “I need to stop talking now.”
He scrunched his face and Diana rubbed a soothing hand over his back.
“We weren’t doing anything,” she pointed out. Yet , she thought but decided to keep it to herself.
“We were,” he protested. “Sort of.”
“It was only a kiss.”
“I don’t think it matters,” he said, his voice muffled and pained.
Diana pressed her lips to the crown of his head.
“Steve.”
He looked up at her, his cheeks still flushed.
“I think we need to take this party back to your room,” he offered. “Just to be safe. In case someone else wakes up to get a glass of water, or… I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyes.
She bit her lip, studying him for a few moments and he felt his stomach drop.
“What?” he asked, lowering his hand.
Diana’s eyes flicked between his.
“I have to go back to Paris at the end of the week,” she said.
He blinked, momentarily confused by the sudden change of subject. Weren’t they just about to discuss some sort of obligatory therapy for the Flash? He could even think of a few ways to foot the bill to Bruce.
Her words sunk in slowly.
Paris .
“Oh.”
It wasn’t like Steve didn’t see it coming.
Diana had spent every morning over the past week going through her emails and making phone calls and arranging video chats, digging through electronic catalogues that her assistant kept sending her — damn him — and signing forms and permits and other things that Steve didn’t entirely understand. She had a whole life to go back to.
The only problem was that Paris was far away from Gotham. Very far away, in fact.
Was she even coming back?
For a moment, he imagined being here without her, in this house that looked like an aquarium — according to Barry, who appeared to have a strong opinion about glass walls — having to endure the heavy silences that tended to hang between him and Bruce.
The prospect was dreadful.
Maybe he should just leave, too. Find a place in the city—
For one unbearable moment, Steve remembered with startling accuracy what waking up without her for the past several decades had been like, his chest aching from missing her already.
“There is an exhibition coming up,” Diana added, watching him, and he tried not to let his disappointment show, knowing that he was failing spectacularly. “Pierre would have a heart attack if I’m not there. And there are also some other things that I need to take care of, on top of that. Like the recovered painting. I requested for it to be sent to the Louvre for proper assessment before we return it to where it belongs.” Her fingers smoothed down his hair before her hands came to rest on his cheeks, framing his face. “And I also thought that maybe you and I could use some alone time.”
Steve stared at her. “Alone time?” he repeated dumbly.
Her gaze darted toward the dark hallway. “I love them, but it can be a little hectic here, no?” He nodded absently, his eyes never leaving her face. Diana turned to him. She traced the line of his jaw with her thumb. “Would you like to come with me?”
“To Paris?” he clarified.
She smiled. “I mean, you don’t have to—"
“Would you want that?” he interjected before she went any further. She could have asked him to move to Neptune, for all he cared, and he would have followed her gladly and without a single question asked. “Would you like me to go with you?”
Diana’s smile widened, blossoming into something entirely majestic.
She nodded. “I would like that very much.”
To be continued…
Notes:
Welp, this was fun and I hope you enjoyed this part! I promise you there will be actual plot soon lol I just want to enjoy fluff for a while :))
(Can you blame me?)Comments are always awesome and I will love you forever for them!
Chapter 15
Notes:
Hey guys, guess who is back :) I cannot believe it took me this long to update this story, but it is very much not abandoned or discontinued, so fear not! In fact, I more or less had the first draft done sometime before I wrote i am still running for the Christmas exchange event and I've been tinkering with it on and off since.
A few things before we begin:
1. First of all, I'd like to thank each and every single one of you who's been following this story for the past year and a half, and especially those of you who will stay around for the following 10 parts. Your support and patience mean the world to me!
2. A special thank you and a massive shoutout to akajb who heroically betaed all the new stuff and who's been helping me polish the already posted stuff to make it more presentable and neat :) (so feel free to read from the start!)
3. Since this fic is more or less done, minus some fixes here and there, I hope to avoid having breaks this long again :) Provided there is still interest, of course.
Also, I've been sort of, half-heartedly working on something new and I cannot wait to share it as well, so this one definitely must get out of the way before I can do that. Fingers crossed?
Okay, dig in and I hope you'll enjoy it!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The mud in the trenches was ankle-deep and so frigid that his feet felt stiff as stones; his boots weren’t warm enough for this cold. He had to keep moving, though. He had to keep running because if he didn’t—
The night was so dark that Steve could barely see more than two feet ahead of him, angry rain slapping against his face like a million needles digging into his skin. He was out of breath, his lungs burning, his muscles aching so badly that he didn’t know if each step would be his last one. He glanced over his shoulder at the piercing blackness all around him, punctuated sporadically by the muzzle flashes of blasting firearms somewhere on the other side of the field, his stomach sinking with each outburst of rapid staccato of field artillery.
He could picture the bombs and bullets flying towards him, exploding in the air over his head and putting an end to this wild rat race, knowing that some deep, wretched part of him would welcome it, gladly.
Steve gulped the air, feeling like he was drowning. Another step, and his foot caught on something, and he was flying down and into the mud. A root perhaps, or a rock, he thought, until he tried to pull himself up to his feet only to realize that it was a body of someone less lucky than himself he had tripped over. The body that wasn’t the only one there. All around him, was a sea of dead, drowning in the trench that he couldn’t get out of, in this hole in the ground that had turned into a mass grave.
There was no one left alive, he realized, turning around and around in a circle until he couldn’t tell where he had come from and where he was meant to go.
Once again, he was fighting a losing battle.
And then a hand grabbed him by the ankle, and unseeing eyes stared at his face. They didn’t want to let him go, and Steve realized with striking clarity that he had always been one of them. All of them nothing but cannon fodder. He had known that all along, even though he had refused to accept it until now.
They had all been dead long before they stopped breathing--
He jolted awake with a start, gasping, his heart beating so fast he could barely inhale and the remnants of the dream still clinging to his brain like a thin film, making it impossible to separate it from reality. His hand moved to his chest as if to calm his frenzied heartbeat as he stared wide-eyed at the ceiling watching the dance of the shadows from the tree outside of Diana’s room in Bruce Wayne’s house, eerie and ominous in the dead of the night.
He tried to take a breath, but it was as if an invisible hand had closed around his lungs, refusing to let go.
Beside him, Diana stirred. “Steve?” Her voice was soft and laced with sleep.
Without looking at her, he pushed up to sit, the sheet pooling around him, soaked with sweat. He buried his face in his shaking hands, running his fingers through his hair and trying to find his bearings. A breath, and then another one, followed by a slow exhale as he attempted to start counting in his mind like they were taught, still paralyzed with fear.
Dead.
Like those men.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his chest too full and somehow hollow, all at once.
He felt Diana move beside him, her hand on the base of his spine. A touch that made Steve go rigid as if it burned him. His breath caught in his throat once more and he waited for her to pull away, relieved when she didn’t.
She brushed her lips to his bare shoulder. “What is it, my love?”
He could feel the warmth of her skin close to him, reassurance and comfort seeping through her hands and into him, chasing away the chill that had found a home in his chest.
Was this how it was for her, he wondered. When she dreamed of his life, was this what she saw, too? Did she feel his shame and disgust and self-loathing? God, how could he have done this to her…
Steve felt bile rising up in his throat. He swallowed hard, his hands curling into tight fists just so he wouldn’t scream. And then the same invisible hand squeezed around his throat, pushing all air out of his lungs, and his mind spiralled into a bottomless abyss of fear. He dropped his head, struggling to inhale, but his windpipe was shut, his body frozen. Even in the dark, there were black spots dancing before his eyes, the blood rush in his ears rendering him deaf.
Dead.
He did not remember dying. Not when his plane went up in flames. Not when the Germans dropped that final bomb on Paris and he just happened to be in its way. There was no light, no golden gates, no angels singing on the other side.
He was not a religious man even though his mother had been for as long as Steve could remember. Yet, even despite his cynicism, he used to harbour a certain hope for something that went beyond the heartbeats. For redemption of sorts, if you please. Did this mean that he had gotten none of it? Or did it mean that there was nothing after one’s final breath, just blackness and nothingness and the void the likes of which his kind couldn’t even begin to imagine? And how would he know the difference when his time came?
Diana pressed a kiss to his temple and then took his face in her hands and turned it to hers, her eyes dark and worried and confused. He saw her lips moving but it took him a moment to figure out what she was saying.
“Breathe, Steve. Please, breathe,” she was repeating, her hands stroking his cheeks, his hair.
Did she see what he’d seen? Did she know all those things, see all that death?
How could she even look at him, knowing what she knew? How could she bear to touch him, be with him?
His windpipe constricted, his heart lodging itself in his throat. Steve’s fists were clenched so hard that his knuckles had turned white. Her voice kept fading in and out, and he didn’t know if he wanted to hold on to it or to let go.
He was going to be sick—
“I’m here,” Diana whispered, pressing her lips gently against his forehead before resting their heads together. “Breathe, Steve. It’s over, you’re safe. You need to breathe.”
He inhaled with a shudder that reverberated into her body, his eyes drifting shut, giving in to the soothing comfort of her touch. He swallowed, the queasiness in his stomach ebbing slowly.
The dream got it all wrong. It always did. Those men were dead - Steve had seen them and chose to look past them more times than he could count - but so should be he, and they all knew it. They wanted him with them, and Steve feared that they would keep coming back until he joined their lifeless army, so they could stare at the pitch-black sky for the rest of eternity together.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed soundlessly, not trusting his voice. Not trusting himself to touch her, his hands clenched tightly around the sheet and his skin slick with cold sweat. “I’m sorry, Diana. I’m sorry…”
“Shh,” Diana breathed out. She stroked her hand through his hair, her palm curling over his jaw to tilt his face up, her gaze searching his features.
Steve wondered what she was seeing, what she could unearth that he never dared to look for. The darkest parts of him that he knew no one could love struggled to get out and take over, and it terrified him beyond anything he’d ever experienced. He couldn’t lose her, couldn’t keep losing her, couldn’t—
His shoulders sagged under a weight that he couldn’t see, couldn’t even put into words, and she gathered him to her, whispering words that didn’t matter as much as the tone of her voice and the circle of her arms around his body. It wasn’t until the steadiness of her closed around him that Steve realized how badly he was shaking, tremors running through him in waves as if he was still drowning in the mud under a merciless October rain. Like he had never really come back.
How would he know otherwise?
“I will never let anything happen to you,” Diana murmured, cradling him to her, holding him so tight that Steve wasn’t sure where he ended and she began. Her skin was smooth and warm against his, her heartbeat even and steady beneath his cheek.
“Diana,” he breathed, needing the sound of her name to anchor him. To make her real.
It had been a while since this had happened. So long, in fact, that Steve had managed to forget the all-consuming desire to crawl out of his own skin that tended to accompany this sort of state of his mind, all so he could stop feeling this dread and self-hatred. So he could shake off the worst parts of himself and start anew.
Funny how it could never work that way, no matter what he did or how much he tried.
He wanted to pull away, then. To put some space between them lest he taint her with everything that he so despised about himself, but Diana held on tight, and he had never been more grateful for it. Steve curled his arms around her, revelling in the feeling of her fingers combing absently through his hair, her lips brushing against his skin every now and then as if she needed the reassurance as much as he did. Her chest was rising and falling slowly beneath his cheek as she breathed, and despite everything, despite the storm raging inside of him, Steve had never felt more at home.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Diana asked, softly, when his breathing evened out and his body relaxed into hers, so much so that his vision started to cloud with the blur of exhaustion.
Steve’s grip on her flexed, his gaze trained on the wall across from them, white and bare. He stared at it until his eyes began to hurt.
“Why did I get to live and they didn’t?” he whispered, thinking of all the death he had seen. Villages torn apart. Women, children, the elderly. Lifeless bodies looking like shapeless ragdolls when his troops marched past the carnage, averting their eyes because it was the only way for them to keep on moving. The innocent who didn’t care for the games that put an end to their lives. “Who decides that?”
“Steve…”
“Does this ever feel unnatural to you, knowing that you’ll outlive everyone you’ll ever know?”
“Don’t do this to yourself, my love,” she murmured. “Please, don’t.”
He allowed his eyes to drift shut, but his mind kept fighting, trying to avoid slipping back into the place from which there was no return.
“What if it was a mistake? What if I was supposed to--”
“No.” Diana buried her face into his hair, whispering into the crown of his head, “No, Steve, how can you say that?”
“I’ve done things,” he rasped. “And if you knew, if I told you--”
“—I would still love you, because and in spite of them. I will always, always, love you.”
“You don’t know that, Diana.”
“I do.” There was a certainty in her voice that made his breath catch. “You don’t get to pick and choose the parts of someone that you love, and I would never do it, even if I could. I love them all, the good ones and the ones that torment you so, for they are what make you who you are. All of you.” Her fingers were moving idly through the hair at the nape of his neck. “There is nothing you can tell me, and nothing you can do that would make me love you any less than I do now.” There was a smile in her voice when she added, “Gods brought you to me, Steve Trevor. You can’t argue with gods.”
Steve felt his own lips twitch ever so slightly. “Now, I’m not an expert in the history of your people, but isn’t most of the Greek mythology focused on exactly that? Defying the will of gods?”
“And it is also about the devotion that can transcend time and space and everything in between. Even death. It burns bright and passionate for eternity, and it is a blessing and a curse, but it is real and it’s bigger than anything else in all of creation. It is the force that drives us, that drives everyone.”
“Do you think…” he started and faltered, searching for words and struggling to put them together. “Do you think I love you less because… because I’m not… like you?”
“No.” Her response was immediate and decisive. “No, Steve. Don’t you see? There is no more, and no less. You love with all that you have and it’s enough, it always will be enough. It’s not about winning or losing or proving anything to one another. It’s about giving the best of yourself, and I have never met anyone who loves as fiercely as you do. So how could I ever think that?”
“I have failed them, Diana,” he said, quietly. “I have failed them all.”
He didn’t know exactly who he was talking about – the people who had died from his hand, the people he couldn’t save, or the people he had loved and left behind because it was easier that way, even though it was the hardest decision he’d ever made. Knew that Diana didn’t know, either. The line was so blurred that half the time he couldn’t even begin to understand it himself. What he knew was that for every good deed he’d done, there were a dozen acts of cruelty that he would never be able to redeem, and that was something that Steve didn’t know how to live with, more often than not.
His own mistakes were a heavy enough burden, but those that cost other people their lives were something else entirely. He’d wondered sometimes if he was so adamant to fix the messes of others because he was searching for redemption for his own sins, and if that reasoning was faulted to the point where he was only making it worse.
When the words came, he didn’t stop them even though his voice kept catching and faltering and trailing off. The things that he had sworn to never speak of, and that he had never told to another person kept pouring out of his mouth, coming out so fast they got lodged in his throat, tripping over one another, and he had to work around it, to keep pushing forward.
He told Diana everything he had done, every ugly and vile and horrible thing that had haunted him for a hundred years. Everything he had done and who he had done it to. Every order he had followed blindly because he didn’t know any better. Everything he could have stopped but didn’t because it was easier and simpler and less complicated to look the other way. Everything that was done to him when he was too powerless to put an end to it, and the war was too cruel a place to keep trying. There was no forgetting and no running away from something that was etched into his very being for the rest of his existence, and the more he tried, the more it felt like a permanent mark meant to stay with him as a reminder of how wretched his soul was.
Steve talked until his throat felt raw and the images flashing through his mind grew too much to bear, and his thoughts started running in circles and getting all mixed up and he could no longer tell the real memories apart from the nightmares that kept coming back. Until his body started to shake and his fingers curled around a fistful of Diana’s shirt in need to hold on to something that was real.
She didn’t interrupt him once, but when he fell silent at last, she turned her head a little to press a kiss to his hairline, and the small act of acceptance made his eyes start to sting. There was more, he wanted to add, but thinking about the past had drained him. There was more, and he didn’t know how long it might take to live through each horrific detail all over again, but what he shared was enough. Enough for her to see, and to decide for herself if he was still worth saving. If he was still worth the effort—
“You’re a good man, Steve,” Diana whispered, cutting in through the jumbled mess of his thoughts. “Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes good people make the wrong choice, but no blame should be assigned blindly. You taught me that. You taught me that no one man should be faulted for the things that mankind inflicts on itself.”
“No innocent should be punished for crimes they didn’t commit,” he breathed out. “I am not innocent, Diana. I just told you--”
He half-expected her to argue with his words, but she didn’t. She said something else instead. “You saved millions of lives. I have been there. I saw it. How can you think that those things don’t count?”
Did it cancel out his wrong-doings, though? Was there anything that could? There was a part of him that wanted to know if maybe he kept sabotaging his own happiness over and over again because he never believed that he truly deserved it. It did sound about right, even if Steve wasn’t sure that he wanted to admit it, not even to himself.
“They did,” he admitted. “I’m just not sure that they are enough.”
“We can’t save everyone,” she repeated the words that he had told her a hundred years ago, and the pointlessness of them made him flinch.
“You have.”
“I’ve tried,” Diana corrected him. “But even I didn’t always succeed. No one should carry the burden of a responsibility this grand.”
Doesn’t stop you, he thought, but when he tried to say out loud, no words came out.
Steve closes his eyes, the wounds he was certain had long healed bleeding again where he couldn’t stop them. He had lived for one hundred and thirty-seven years, but he had never allowed himself to be this exposed, so vulnerable and open and at the mercy of another person. He didn’t doubt that Diana carried enough forgiveness and grace in her heart to see past the broken parts of him, but it wasn’t until her arms wrapped tighter around him that he realized that he had been waiting for her rejection all along.
It never came, and the relief that filled him was all-consuming.
“I love you,” she murmured into his skin after a moment. “I always will. There is nothing, not even death, that could stop me from loving you. It means something, yes?”
His thumb running circles over her ribs through the thin fabric of her shirt, Steve took a shaky, unsteady breath. “It means everything.”
“Then we can start there,” she said, softly. “Sleep.”
He wanted to protest, scared beyond comprehension of going back to that place inside of his own mind that he knew would one day claim him and never let go, but turning his very heart inside out had left him worn to the bones. So much so that he could no longer keep his eyes open, his thoughts bumping around aimlessly in his skull.
And before he knew it, he drifted off.
---
Steve woke up a few hours later when the grey dawn started to creep into the room through the glass wall. He blinked sleepily, nowhere near as rested as he wanted to be after their midnight snack encounter with Barry and his brain turning on him out of nowhere. Yet, his mind was oddly wired and awake, like someone had flipped a switch.
The memories of the previous night wafted into his mind, but he pushed them away, choosing to focus on the fact that it was over.
It had been a while since something like this happened, and it threw him off more than Steve was willing to admit even to himself. Time, as it turned out, didn’t heal all wounds. It merely made it easier to pretend that they weren’t there.
He distinctly remembered falling asleep with his face tucked into the curve of Diana’s neck, breathing in the sweet smell of her skin that he couldn’t seem to be able to get enough of, but sometime during the night they must have shifted, and now it was he who was wrapped around her, his heart beating into her back and his arm draped heavily over her waist. It was early then, Steve thought absently. She was usually the first one awake and up – much to his dismay. Aside from those days when neither of them felt like leaving the bed at all, perhaps.
Still, something was different, and he tried to put his finger on it.
His heart was beating evenly, and his breath was deep and steady, and when he nuzzled into her hair, the thought crossed his mind – he had never been more content than he was in that moment.
It wasn’t that, then. Not the heaviness of his guilt and shame that still lingered in the back of his mind, subdued by Diana’s kindness.
Steve kissed her shoulder and then disentangled himself carefully from her, mindful of not disturbing her, before slipping out of the bed. He padded across the room and toward the glass wall behind which the snow was falling in dime-sized flakes, so thick he could barely see the steel-coloured water of the lake fifteen yards away.
He stared at it for the longest time, mesmerized and so transfixed that it felt hypnotic.
And then there was a rustling of sheets behind his back, and a few moments later, Diana was slipping her arms around his waist, the length of her body pressed to the length of his – the only thing Steve wanted to feel for as long as he breathed.
“Good morning,” she whispered, kissing the back of his neck.
His fingers cured over one of her wrists clasped on his stomach, his thumb running over her skin.
“It’s snowing,” he said, watching the dance of the fat snowflakes, his lips tugging upwards at the corners.
He reached his other hand out and pressed it, palm-flat, against the glass that fogged up around his fingertips instantly, nearly ice-cold to the touch. And when he pulled it away, it looked for a moment like the snow was falling right onto his open hand.
“It won’t stay,” Diana said. “It’s too early in the season for that. Too warm.”
“Even so,” Steve echoed. “It’s been a while.”
“Steve?”
“Hm?”
“Are you alright?” she asked, and even though her voice was soft and tender, her words were laced with concern.
Steve took a breath. It was too bright for there to be a decent reflection of them in the glass, but he found her face nonetheless, both of them translucent and pale and looking like ghosts. He smiled, watching her smile back.
“I am,” he responded after a moment. “Thank you. For last night. For everything.”
She nodded, her hair falling down her shoulders in thick waves that tickled his shoulder blades as she did so, and then murmured something in Greek, so softly Steve barely caught it.
“Whatever it was, I like the sound of it,” he responded with a small chuckle.
“I will never leave you,” Diana repeated, in English. “It’s early,” she murmured, then. “Come back to bed.”
He shook his head, grimacing a little. “You go. I don’t think I can sleep.”
She kissed the spot under his ear. “We don’t have to sleep.”
That caught his attention alright, and Steve’s heart stuttered momentarily. He turned around and found her mouth with his. She sighed against his lips and kissed him back, pressing her body to his – a demand and a promise all at once – as her arms wound around his neck.
I want you. I love you. I missed you.
It was the easiest decision he’d ever have to make – to allow her to pull him close, to unbutton the shirt she had never took off last night in search for her skin, and to shed the few items of clothing they wore between the two of them. To let his hands fly over her body that responded to the slightest of his touches before her mind knew to do it. To follow her back to bed and love her over and over again until the world fell away around them and there was nothing left but the words of affection whispered into flushed skin and between breathless kisses.
He couldn’t undo his mistakes, Steve thought as he started to drift off afterwards with Diana’s body wrapped around him and their chests rising and falling in unison, his fingers threading idly through her hair. But he could make it right this time around. Maybe she was right and having all the time in the world could feel like a curse, but, perhaps, being together was their salvation.
---
When Steve woke up again, the bed – and the room, for that matter – was empty, and the morning was in full swing. Diana’s cell phone was sitting on the nightstand, plugged in to charge, but her laptop was gone and their clothes were no longer strewn all over the floor. She wasn’t in the shower, then. He grimaced and ran a hand over his face before climbing out of bed, surprisingly more rested than he could have hoped to be after a nearly sleepless night and an… eventful morning.
Outside, the snow had stopped, and just as Diana had said, it had already started to melt, revealing black patches of ice-cold dirt and tufts of frozen grass underneath.
He thought back over the things that he spent several lifetimes trying to keep hidden, but that his mind unearthed as easily as if it was only yesterday that he had been crawling along trenches filled with blood and death and despair. And how different the snow looked then. He wished, once again, that in trying to make up for all the pain he had caused and his search for redemption that there would be a way for him to find peace with himself.
There is nothing, not even death, that could stop me from loving you, Diana had said last night. Her grace and acceptance still felt like a miracle, like every prayer answered.
He wondered if it was enough for him to forgive himself. Perhaps, it was good enough place to start.
The steam that smelled of Diana’s body wash still lingered in the shower. It couldn’t have been long since she’d taken hers, Steve thought as he stepped under the hot spray of water, his pleasantly sore body welcoming the sensation. He didn’t realize that he was smiling the whole time until he wiped the condensation off the mirror afterwards and saw a man who was no longer running from himself looking back at him.
Much to Steve’s dismay, Diana was not in the kitchen, as he expected, or the study, and the house was particularly quiet, especially for a morning. He did find Barry in the lounge though, engrossed in daytime TV that would undoubtedly make anyone else’s brain hurt. When Steve appeared in his line of sight, however, the young man stopped chewing on his Lucky Charms and even dropped the spoon into the bowl for good measure as his eyes grew comically wide.
“Hey,” Steve said, smiling.
Barry swallowed visibly, and Steve remembered how Diana said that because of his abilities he would sometimes look like he was practically vibrating with excess energy. Like he was ready to bolt off and run a marathon, should one come up without notice. Steve could see it now.
“I’m sorry,” Barry sputtered. “About last night. I swear I didn’t mean to—I didn’t hear you guys there, or I would never--” He looked around nervously before his gaze fixed on Steve again. “I wasn’t… I wasn’t spying or anything.”
For a second, Steve merely stared at him, trying to piece the words falling out of his mouth together until the realization dawned on him. Another memory from the previous night that didn’t sit quite right with him, although after everything that followed it felt like something that happened a million light years ago.
He shook his head. “You don’t need to apologize. I was actually…” He had planned on talking to the kid either way, might as well do it now. Steve sighed and lowered down on the coffee table in front of Barry. “I was actually going to say sorry. It wasn’t like—we thought that everyone was asleep.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Barry muttered, having a considerably difficult time looking directly at Steve.
“We weren’t doing anything,” Steve pressed.
“You were kissing,” the speedster pointed out.
“Yeah…” Steve winced, feeling the colour creeping up the back of his neck. “That. But nothing else. We’ve never done anything else.”
“Never ever?” Barry’s eyebrow crept up in slight amusement, and the next second his face turned scarlet. “I didn’t mean it like--”
“Nothing outside of Diana’s room,” Steve amended quickly, which only made it worse. He rubbed his eyes and let out a sigh, feeling like he was sinking in quicksand. He felt his cheeks flush as well. So much for making it better. “Look, we didn’t mean to scare you--”
“You didn’t.”
“—or startle you.”
“Maybe a little,” he admitted.
“Sorry about that,” Steve repeated. “And it won’t happen again.”
Barry nodded, only half convinced by the looks of it, but Steve chose not to press or push the matter any further. God knew, it wasn’t going to end well if he tried.
“So,” he cleared his throat, going for a change of subject. “Diana said you have a girlfriend--”
At that, Barry leapt to his feet. “Nope,” he shook his head, starting toward the kitchen – at a human speed, although Steve still had to practically jog after him to keep up. “No, no. No, she’s not—it’s not—we’re not--” He shoved his bowl into the sink and turned on the water. “She’s… just there. And I’m here.”
Steve watched him for a few moments as he rinsed the bowl, his hands moving nervously and a tad erratically like he was trying to get a grip on himself but never quite getting there. Diana mentioned that Barry could be shy, but she never said that he was endearingly so.
At last, Barry put the bowl on the rack to dry and shrugged without turning to Steve.
“Besides, she kinda doesn’t really know that I exist,” he added with feigned nonchalance. “I mean, she sort of does, but not like that, not like--”
He stopped abruptly, a puzzled frown creasing his brows. Steve was certain that Barry didn’t mean to look quite so wistful, and he had to press his lips around a smile. How the whole League got under his skin when he wasn’t looking he had no idea.
“You could talk to her,” Steve offered, leaning against the counter, the marble cool against his elbows through the cotton of his shirt. “You know, maybe ask her out.”
Barry snorted and rolled his eyes for good measure like he’d never in his life heard anything that ridiculous.
“What?” Steve asked. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“She could hear me.”
Steve stared at him.
Barry sighed. “A Friends joke? No?” Steve’s brows furrowed. “Never mind… You’re aware of pop-culture, right?” he asked as an afterthought. “I mean you’re old…ish,” he caught himself. “Old-ish, not old. Older than some people, but younger than … some other people.”
“What other people?”
“Dead people,” Barry mumbled, looking away.
Steve cleared his throat. “Just… be yourself.”
Barry looked up and stared at him for a long moment. “That is actually the stupidest advice ever,” he said at last, shaking his head. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
Steve had to bite his lip so as not to burst out laughing.
“Because that’s exactly what Clark said,” the young man went on. “I mean, how is that relevant when Clark’s self is so much different from my self? How am I supposed to know that all selves function the same way? He’s Superman,” he added emphatically, as though anyone could ever forget that.
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Steve tried to cut in.
“And don’t get me started on Bruce,” Barry went on, ignoring him. Seemingly unable to stay still, he grabbed a cup from the shelf and marched over to the coffee maker to fill it to the brim. (Steve didn’t have the heart to point out that maybe he should steer clear of caffeine.) “He’s got looks, and money, and he doesn’t have anxiety. Have you seen the women he is going out with?”
Better not, Steve thought. Seeing as how my girlfriend had a chance of joining their ranks.
The thought made him wince a little, and then look around the kitchen as if Bruce might be hiding in one of the cupboards, listening to his thoughts. There was some semblance of a truce between them, it seemed. It wasn’t Steve’s fault that Diana chose him. Or that she never chose Bruce, to begin with. Her decisions were not up to him - and yet there still was the feeling in the air like something was about to go off every time he and Bruce were in the same room for too long.
“You’re up,” Diana’s voice pulled him back to the present.
Steve snapped his head up, breaking into a smile when she stepped into the kitchen.
“Where’ve you been?”
“Hey, Di,” Barry muttered from behind his mug.
She was wearing a loose-fitting long-sleeved t-shirt and leggings, her hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail and her cheeks were flushed from the cold. Running, he figured. It helped her relax, she’d told him the first time he spotted her on the path across the lake, manoeuvring between the trees. When the physical needs of her body prevailed over everything else, it was easier to switch her mind off.
Back when he was in bootcamp, Steve was sometimes so tired he could feel it deep in his bones. When that happened, he was incapable of thinking either, his body moving and functioning purely on autopilot. Later, when the war came, not thinking hadn’t been an option, and he wondered then, if maybe this was why he felt so world-weary by the end of it.
This was a new development for her, something she’d picked up when he was out of the picture, and Steve was keeping a mental list of those, if somewhat unintentionally. She liked different music now, too. Different food, and not just because of its expanded variety. She held herself differently from when he’d last been around her. There wasn’t a person on this planet that he knew better than Diana – not even his friends, long gone – and yet, even with her, he kept peeling off layer after layer only to discover new ones underneath.
She smiled back and stepped toward him, but stopped with her hand hovering a few inches away from Steve’s cheek, as she seemed to have reconsidered touching him lest they give Barry a stroke. He was already looking very pointedly at anything but the two of them.
Instead, she leaned against the counter next to Steve – close enough for their shoulders to touch, but most definitely not in any way that could’ve been seen as intimate. Not in an offensive way, at least.
Steve was starting to wish he’d gotten some coffee as well.
“What are you two up to?” she asked, her hand reaching to pick a plump strawberry from the bowl in the middle of the kitchen island.
“Steve’s teaching me how to charm a girl,” Barry answered eagerly, and Steve groaned.
“Is he, now?” Diana turned to him, an eyebrow arched.
“Well, he should know,” Barry gestured toward her, and then his face flushed. “I didn’t mean it like…” he added quickly.
“What makes you think that it wasn’t me who—what did you call it? Charm?” she tested the word on her tongue. “That I didn’t charm him?”
“That is too much information,” Barry declared. “On top of too much other information…” His cheeks reddened even more.
“I’m sorry about last night,” Diana leaned towards him across the counter, her smile kind and apologetic.
“No, no,” Barry shook his head vigorously, unable to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry.”
“We shouldn’t have--”
“It’s cool!”
“Barry…”
“Look, you’re sorry, I’m sorry, everyone is sorry,” he sputtered, staring into his cup. “Let’s not talk about that ever again, k?”
“Very well,” Diana agreed. She straightened up and glanced at Steve who was about as beetroot-red as the Flash, and smirked.
He scowled at her, and turned to Barry. “She’s right. She did it.”
“You know what,” Barry picked up his coffee. “I think I’m gonna take this elsewhere.”
“Barry,” Diana turned after him.
“See ya,” he waved without looking at them once.
“I think that went well,” Steve muttered.
Diana hummed, and he smiled and moved to her, his arm slipping around her waist and bridging the distance between them, his fingers anchored at the base of her spine as he did so.
“Hi,” she murmured, turning to him.
God, he loved her smile.
“Hi,” he echoed, kissing her.
“Is he okay?” Diana asked, her glance darting over her shoulder when she pulled back.
Steve sighed. “I think so, yeah.” He grimaced. “We might consider not leaving your room half-dressed from now on, though,” he added.
She smirked. “What did you tell him?”
“That we were hungry.”
“No,” she shook her head. “About--”
“Oh, about charming you?” he drawled, offering her a self-indulgent lopsided grin.
Diana arched her eyebrows. “You said you did it?”
“No, actually I remember you doing all the heavy-lifting,” he said. “Literally. You know, when you dragged me out of the water. After that, I stood no chance.”
Her arms slid around his waist, her eyes searching his face. “What else do you remember?” she asked softly, smiling in that secret way that made him forget how to breathe.
“That I spent an obscene amount of time thinking of taking your clothes off,” Steve admitted before he could stop himself. It was almost as if she had her Lasso wrapped around him, it was so hard to keep the words from tumbling out of his mouth.
Diana laughed.
He dipped his head to her ear. “And some other things.”
“I’m sure you did,” she said, amused.
Steve’s smile slipped. “I’m sorry, about…”
“Don’t,” she shook her head and drew back to look at him. She cupped his cheek with her hand, her thumb running over the shadow of his stubble. “Don’t say that, Steve.”
“I scared you.”
“I wasn’t scared. I was worried,” she corrected him. He dropped his gaze but she leaned close until he had no choice but to meet her eyes. “There is nothing you can’t tell me. And when the time comes… if it comes,” she added, “I will listen, and I will love you more than I ever have before.”
He didn’t say anything, just looked at her until his world shifted back to its proper axis. His hands on her hips, he drew her close until there was no space between them, and then dropped his head into the crook of her neck. She smelled faintly of her shower gel and the winter, and underneath it all, of him, of them.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She turned her head to press a kiss to his temple.
“Always.”
“Miss Prince?” Alfred’s voice behind them made Steve raise his head and pull back.
Diana turned around.
“Miss Lane,” Alfred handed her a cordless phone. “She said she couldn’t reach you on your cell phone.”
Dianan stepped out of Steve’s arms. “I left it in my room. Thank you, Alfred. I’m sorry for the trouble.”
“None at all,” he assured her.
Alfred and Steve watched her circle the kitchen island, heading for the coffee machine, her side of the conversation consisting mostly of Yes, Of course, I see, and Hm, repeated in no particular order.
“I booked you on the same flight to Paris as Miss Prince, Captain,” Alfred said after a moment, turning to Steve. “You should receive an electronic confirmation soon.”
“Oh.” Steve looked at him, caught off-guard for a moment. “You didn’t have to, Alfred. I would’ve done it.”
The butler shrugged dismissively. “Miss Prince mentioned it. It took no time at all.”
“Thank you,” Steve nodded.
“You know, we’re very fond of Miss Prince,” Alfred started.
Steve smiled a little. “Is that your way of saying that you’ll smother me in my sleep if I hurt her?”
Alfred cleared his throat and pushed his glasses up his nose. “I wouldn’t put it that way,” he noted diplomatically.
“I would,” Steve said. “And I wouldn’t blame you for it, trust me.”
“Good.” Alfred’s features softened, his expression going rueful. “Miss Prince has spent a long time taking care of the world, even when it didn’t think it needed it. I think it’s about time for her to not have to do it on her own.”
“Thank you, Alfred,” Steve repeated.
“As I said, it was no trouble.”
Steve shook his head. “No, not for the tickets.”
Alfred offered him a small smile. “You’re welcome, Captain.”
He left with a cup of tea for Bruce, which, Steve thought, was a nice change from Bruce’s usual diet of whiskey and insomnia.
Diana finished her conversation, leaving the phone on the counter, and turned to him, a mug clasped between her palms. God help him, he could spend the next lifetime and a half just looking at her.
“Everything okay?” he asked, eyes darting towards the phone.
“Everything’s alright.” She leaned against the kitchen island, propped on her elbows, and took a sip of her coffee. “I’ve been meaning to ask… The other day, Clark invited us to join him and Lois for dinner sometime. Would you like to do that?”
Steve leaned forward, too. “So your friend can lynch me?” he clarified, only half-joking.
Diana laughed. “She’s not going to--” She shook her head. “Clark is a very good cook.”
“Well, if that’s the case,” Steve drawled.
She reached across the marble surface and covered one of his hands with hers. “After Paris, yes?”
Steve turned his hand, curling his palm around her fingers, his thumb running over her knuckles. “After Paris.”
---
Arthur left the next day, taking the snow that had fallen the previous morning as a sign – his job in Gotham was done, and his people needed him more than anyone else. Now was the best time to leave before the weather got so foul that half of the flights were permanently cancelled.
Diana knew that there was nothing that she could do about it, nothing that she wanted to do about it, for that matter, if she was being honest with herself. It was comforting to know that whatever they were doing here, whatever the League was for them all, it wasn’t the centre of their lives. That while she felt like she belonged here more than anywhere else, and while she loved them dearly, there still was another place in the world for them all. Would never have wanted it otherwise.
She didn’t like goodbyes, though. The wistful nostalgia that they carried never sat well with her, a reminder of how many of them in her life had been permanent and irreversible, even when they were not meant to be. The losses that she couldn’t forgive herself for, and the words that never got to be said still living deep inside of her.
Diana thought back to the years she had spent… not alone, exactly, but not quite belonging either, and she hoped with all her heart that none one of her new friends and teammates would ever have to feel the depth of this kind of loneliness. The very same sensation that could feel like a blessing and a curse at once. If you never allowed yourself to get attached to anything, then nothing could hurt you - while that was true, was the emptiness in one’s heart worth it?
From her spot near the kitchen door, arms folded on her chest, she watched Steve laugh at something that Victor said, already so immersed in her world that she wouldn’t be able to claw him out even if she wanted to. Watched Arthur slap Barry on the back with enough enthusiasm to nearly send the Flash flying across the hallway except Bruce broke Barry’s impending fall, his jacket already on, ready to take Arthur to the airport. Watched Alfred repeat for the third time that if they didn’t leave right this moment, Arthur was going to miss his flight, and whose fault would that be?
She watched them all, thinking that she didn’t want to belong anywhere else.
And then Steve looked up at her and grinned, and it was like pure sunshine exploded in her chest, the glint in his blue eyes making her breath catch. She’d known him for nearly a century, and yet he never failed to make her heart skip a beat and her mind go blank for just a moment, too busy capturing and bottling up the image so she could hold it close for as long as she lived.
There was no telling what was waiting for them on the other side of this journey. Next week, or tomorrow even. In a few days, they were going to go to Paris and she would take him to her favourite places. She would draw a whole new map of the city just for the two of them and erase the past. She would hold his hand as they walked crowded streets and promise him time and time again that she would love him until her last breath and seep in the warmth of his skin and the wonder living in his eyes. She would bring him back to the world of her own and share it with him until there was nothing left unsaid and undone between them.
Eventually, she hoped, she would stop waiting for him to slip through her fingers again when she least expected it.
But tonight… tonight she was going to kiss all sense and reason out of him. She was going to love him until they forgot themselves. She would promise him time and time again that she was his, that there was no one ever but him for her as the night exploded in all colours of the universe around them.
And she would stop being afraid.
“You know that he’s coming back, right?” Bruce said, stepping towards her, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his pants.
Diana’s gaze darted to Steve, a pang of panic jolting through her for the brief moment that it took her to realize that Bruce was talking not about Steve but about Arthur who, at that moment, let out a bellowing laugh that bounced off the walls around them.
“I know,” she breathed, thinking that it would be a while before she got used to having Steve back. Truly got used to it. And that she would miss Arthur.
“As much as I wish he didn’t have to,” Bruce added under his breath, a slight frown creasing his forehead.
“You know it’s hardly possible,” she murmured. “We might never stop needing them. The world might never stop needing them.”
Not tonight, though. And hopefully not tomorrow, but another crisis was somewhere around the corner, she was certain of it. With what had happened in the S.T.A.R. Labs and Waller breathing down their necks, Diana was more than a little certain that they would meet again soon enough. Certainly long before they would get a chance to start missing one another. There was no way around that.
“One could only dream,” Bruce muttered and headed toward the door before they were at risk of being stuck in traffic.
Diana tried to pretend she didn’t notice the ominous tone of his voice that crept under her skin and found home in the pit of her stomach – heavy and cold and uncomfortable.
It was only a few hours later, when her head was resting on Steve’s sternum and his fingers were threading absently through her hair and their breathing had yet to even out, that she had finally allowed her mind to drift off, lulled by the warmth of his body and the pleasantly sated state of her own being, her skin still humming with the memory of his touch. There was no need for her to think of anything else tonight.
Quietly, he spoke of the time he had spent in Egypt in the ’80s, more by coincidence than on purpose, his voice soft and laced with fondness and good humour.
(There were still so many gaps to fill, and she was hungry for every morsel.)
She drifted off in the middle of a story about a camel that ate his hat.
---
Pierre Girard was as professional as he was frantic for as long as Diana had known him.
Of all the assistants she had worked with, first at the British Museum and then at the Louvre, he was, without a doubt, the best she’d ever had. In his mid-30’s, with an Arts degree under his belt and at least a decade of experience, he was diligent, scrupulous, and as tenacious as one in their line of work could be. He had an excellent work ethic and a flair for perfectionism, and ninety percent of the time, Diana trusted him beyond measure to take good care of the department in her absence.
Today, however, the other ten percent resurfaced with flying colours.
From the moment when she opened her eyes a little after dawn until almost noon, she had received at least a dozen texts and about as many emails from him of varying degrees of urgency. There were issues with the collection that was meant to arrive from Zurich – half of it was missing (Not missing, Pierre, she typed patiently. Delayed. I spoke with them. It will be there on time) and one of the vases in the shipment that did arrive had a crack on the side that he couldn’t find any documentation on, meaning that it was going to be blamed on them if he didn’t confirm its legitimate and historical nature.
He didn’t seem particularly consoled by her reassurances though, even after she had explained that it was Friday and there was nothing that could be done until Monday regardless, and by then, she would be there to deal with those matters in person. For a moment, Diana debated the professionalism of suggesting he have a glass of wine to calm down, but decided against it. Zeus only knew how he’d take it.
There was paperwork waiting for her, an exhibition that needed to be packed and stored away, and a new one arranged, and the normalcy of it all caught her unaware while she wasn’t paying attention. With everything that had happened in the past few weeks, she craved the simplicity of her routines more and more with each passing moment, and was adamant to reclaim her balance, at last.
However, to get back to it, they might need to actually get to Paris first. And to do so, leaving the house might be a good start.
Diana’s phone dinged again. Another text. She chose to ignore it until after they got to the airport and got through passport control. If she had to serve as a mediator between Pierre and another department or one of the assessors who could no longer stand being hassled for nothing, she and Steve were never going to leave at all.
Her gaze swept around the room one last time to make sure she didn’t forget anything before she stepped through the door and closed it behind her. Inexplicably, it felt like a silent goodbye, but she chose not to dwell on it, eager to leave the past few weeks behind and move forward.
With Steve.
However, it wasn’t Steve who she found in the hallway but Bruce with the travel bag and car keys in his hand. He looked up when she approached, a flicker of something that Diana couldn’t quite put her finger on flashing briefly across his features, disappearing before she was even sure it had been there at all.
Her gaze lingered for a moment on the bag sitting on the floor at his feet.
“You’re leaving?”
Bruce checked his watch and shrugged. “So are you.”
She studied him for a moment, taking in the weariness that she didn’t know what to make of - the exhaustion that she’d seen before but chose to look past for it was never her place to have a say in his lifestyle and habits and choices. She doubted that now was the right time to start doing it. There was an odd undercurrent of tension between them lately and she didn’t want to make it worse. They had never been together but at times, it felt like Steve’s reappearance in her life had severed whatever bond she used to share with Bruce, making him draw back into his shell, and she didn’t know how to feel about it.
To be completely honest, Diana couldn’t envision many scenarios in which they could go back to the way they were.
She still cared about him, though. Always had, despite their conflicts, and seeing him like this left her with a pang of sadness in her chest.
“Just a trip to New York,” he explained, his voice softening. “Business, not the League.”
Diana nodded. “You don’t sleep well,” she noted quietly.
“Been busy,” he brushed her off with pointed nonchalance, and she decided not to press the subject.
“Bruce.”
He sighed. “Look, we’re on it. The system in the S.T.A.R. Labs was scrapped, but not completely. Victor managed to extract the backup files but they’ve been encrypted. Smart move, but an obvious inconvenience for us. Your--” he stopped himself and cleared his throat. “Steve has been working on running them through a decryption program. It might take a while, but as soon as we have something, I’ll let you know. I promise.”
She nodded again. “Very well.”
There was another pregnant pause between them.
“What about Waller?” Diana asked after a moment.
“What about her?”
Her brows pulled together. “Do you think she’s behind it?”
He considered her question for a few seconds. “I wouldn’t put it past her,” Bruce admitted. “But, even if she is, she’s smart enough to walk out of this mess unscathed and leave no trace behind. She knows better than anyone how badly it would affect her if she’s caught.”
“Be careful with her, Bruce.”
He smirked. “She’s not as scary as she thinks.”
Waller might not have been scary, but she was not as reckless as he thought, either, and Diana was about to remind him not to underestimate her when Steve stepped out of the lounge. He paused when he saw her and Bruce, unsure as to whether his interruption was welcome – the same way as he didn’t quite know what to do with himself when the three of them were in the same room.
Diana wondered if either of them was aware of it.
His gaze darted toward Bruce’s travel bag, a silent question in his eyes.
Diana smiled – all the encouragement that he needed to cross the distance between them. Her glance flicked toward Bruce whose lips flattened into a thin line. Recently, she had noticed, he and Steve had mastered the art of looking at one another without actually looking at one another – something that intrigued her greatly.
As soon as Steve was close enough, Diana reached for his hand, weaving her fingers through his – a gesture as easy as breathing. Instantly, she felt the tension leave his body as he moved to stand closer to her.
“We need to get going if we want to make it,” Steve said, running his thumb over her knuckles.
Diana nodded and turned to Bruce. “Are you coming with us?”
“Hm?” He looked up from his phone and then lifted his car keys. “No, I need to make a detour first. Alfred will take you.” He picked up his bag and reached for the door. Then hesitated and looked at Diana. “Have a safe trip.” It didn’t escape her attention that he was addressing her alone. “I’ll see you--”
“Soon,” she promised smoothly.
“Is everything okay?” Steve asked when the door closed behind Bruce and his steps faded away as he circled the house heading toward the garage.
Diana looked up at him, the concerned lines crowding her expression for the past few minutes smoothing out. She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him.
Bruce knew where to find her. He knew that she would come back immediately if they needed her, but until then… Until then it was just her and Steve, and she couldn’t wait to put the rest of the world behind them for as long as they could make it last.
“It is,” she said. “Are you ready?”
---
Paris, 2017
The first time Steve set his foot in Paris was back in 1916, a year before the US troops were sent to support the British. Back then, the war was nothing but an adventure on the other side of the pond; one full of victories and excitement, not yet laced with blood and death and despair. Steve was one of a few - a select group to be trained the art and intricacies of espionage - sent to infiltrate occupied France and Belgium to gather the intelligence no one else could obtain otherwise.
Dressed in a German uniform that felt stiff and foreign on his body, he had walked the streets of what used to be considered the most beautiful city in all of Europe and felt his stomach twist at the sight of torn-down buildings and poverty and misery. That was the Paris that he was all too familiar with - the underbelly of the enemy, as ugly as it could ever be. He wished for victory, for the surrender, for the end of this all, but more than anything, he used to wish for people to stop being so vile to one another. He wished he could unsee or forget the unimaginable things happening all around him. The war, he had learned, left an imprint on you long before you saw blood.
The Paris of the 21st century was something so drastically different from his first memory that it all but stole Steve’s breath away. Yes, they had lived here briefly after the Second World War, before he oh so carelessly ripped the life they created to shreds. Yes, he had been here a handful of times afterwards. Yes, the essence of it remained the same – he could still very easily find his way to the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe or the Tuileries Garden. But after running into Diana at the Louvre a decade and a half ago, he had avoided this city for fear of finding his way to her once again and not being able to leave.
As it turned out, Paris had grown and flourished into something unbelievable since then.
From the cab that they took from the airport, he watched the streets that were both achingly familiar and also as different from what he remembered as they could be. Even this late in the year, when the weather was as terrible as it often was in London, when the rain would beat down on the streets like ice-cold needles most days and the winds would blow in from the Channel, it looked flashy, sophisticated. The feeling that he had been gone for much longer than fifteen years crept along his skin, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
His head felt heavy from the 8-hour flight and the change of time zones, his mind groggy. Only a late afternoon here, it was past midnight in Gotham and Steve stifled a yawn, choosing to focus instead on the warmth of Diana’s hand in his and the smooth texture of her skin against his rougher palm while the cab driver navigated the labyrinth of busy streets.
But that was an hour ago. Between then and now, they had reached her place and were greeted by a doorman whose whole face broke into the brightest smile that Steve had ever seen on a man at the sight of Mademoiselle Prince – something that Steve found very hard not to smile at as Diana introduced him as her guest who would be staying with her. The elderly doorman whose name on a tiny plate sewed to his jacket read Marcel, nodded eagerly, his eyes barely leaving Diana.
Steve suspected that given a chance, the man would kiss the ground she walked on.
“They do worship you here as the goddess that you are,” he said when the elevator door closed behind them, stepping closer to her.
Diana pulled him the rest of the distance by the lapels of his jacket to kiss him deeply and slowly, all the way up to the top floor.
“Thank you,” she whispered, smoothing her palms over his chest. Her eyes found his, relief and gratitude in her gaze. “For being here.”
I’d follow you to the edge of the Earth, Steve thought, but before the words found their way out of his throat, the elevator stopped and the doors slid open with a soft ding, spitting them out into the hallway with four doors and potted plants sitting between them.
Diana led him through the one straight ahead, turning on the lights as she walked in.
The building was old and beautiful, located stark in the heart of what was known as Old Paris – a mere block away from the Seine and a 15-minute walk from the museum where she worked, as Diana had told him. He took in the marble floors and chandeliers on the walls in the foyer and in the lobby outside her door, his mind jumping for a second to their old apartment in a slightly less fancy neighbourhood that looked nothing like this. Not by a long shot.
She had excellent taste, Steve thought absently, following Diana across the hallway, past the kitchen and into the living room as she pointed to the doors leading to her office and the bedroom with the bathroom down the hall. The building had to be at least two hundred years old, or even older than that, he figured. Inside, the cozy, antique furniture and original moulding and the fireplace the original purpose of which was to keep the place warm in the winter were living side by side with the state-of-the-art appliances in the kitchen and an expensive entertainment and security system. The windows were large, letting the early evening light spill in, breaking it into a pattern of shadows on the parquet floor and flooding the space with a golden glow.
Something told him that it wasn’t a designer that picked out the rugs and curtains and the art hanging on the walls. Everything about the place felt like it had Diana’s touch to it.
It looked…. It looked like home. Like a place where she belonged. Elegant and chic, but warm and welcoming, too.
Her world.
Steve’s heartbeat stuttered for a fraction of a second as he took in his surroundings. While he had spent the past half of a century trying to push the world away as best he could, severing any strings that had him attached to people and places without thinking twice, she had built a life for herself that was stretching before his eyes now, right here at his fingertips and yet out of his reach.
It left him longing once more for everything he had missed.
Diana took off her jacket and draped it over the back of the couch. She put her phone on top of it, and turned to Steve before his mind had a chance to wander off even further towards the regrets he had no way to amend. She moved to him and wove her arms around his neck.
Steve’s pulse tripped over itself again, but for a different reason now as his hands reached for her hips.
“So, what do you think?” she asked, glancing behind her shoulder for a moment, and there was a slight note of uncertainty in her voice that left Steve completely and entirely bewildered.
Did she really think he might not like it? That it would make a difference to him?
Steve tugged her closer and nuzzled into her temple.
“I think that I’m crazy about you,” he murmured, feeling her smile.
“Come with me,” Diana whispered, pulling at his hand.
Steve followed her to the bedroom, dim in the fading November light and crowded with shadows. He allowed his gaze to wander, taking note of a vanity table and the two nightstands framing the bed that was taking up most of the space, a small desk near the floor-to-ceiling window and a built-in wardrobe with brass handles, all drenched in the final light of the setting sun.
His eyes drifted back to the bed as Diana turned to him and he reached for her, unable not to.
“Yes, I like this idea,” Steve said softly.
He drew her closer, but when he dipped his head to kiss her, she placed a palm on his chest, holding him effortlessly right where he was.
“You need to sleep, Steve,” she said gently.
He blinked, confused, and shook his head. “I’m fine.”
He attempted to pull her close again but to no avail, annoyed by her obvious enjoyment over his struggles.
“You’re exhausted.”
“Am not,” he protested without missing one beat.
Diana pressed her lips together around a smile. “You can barely keep your eyes open,” she murmured.
“I don’t need to keep them open,” Steve promised reverently and trailed off when she tilted her head, one eyebrow quirked curiously, waiting for him to elaborate. He considered her expression for a moment or two, and then exhaled, giving up what obviously was a losing battle. “Okay, you have a point.”
There was a yawn crawling out of his throat that he did his best to hold back nonetheless. It was a bloody long flight, though, and his body felt stiff and out of sorts after spending most of the time crammed into a narrow seat. It was a first-class seat, mind you, and he was not the one to complain. But Diana was right. He was tired to his bones, and they had barely slept the previous night, too, caught up in still getting used to having each other again.
Her features softened and as soon as Steve’s grip on her eased. She closed what little distance was still left between them, her fingers trailing along his cheek before she leaned in to give him a lingering kiss.
“We have time,” she promised, pulling back.
Her hands moved swiftly as she pushed Steve’s jacket down his shoulders while he looked at her, taking note of the light caught in her hair and an easiness about her that he had he only seen before in the moments when they were making love, when all her guards were down.
She missed her home, Steve realized, and his heart filled with bittersweet longing. All this time of Earth, and he didn’t have a corner to call his own. Diana was and always had been the only home he’d known for as long as he could remember.
The realization – something that he knew for a very long time but never put into words – left his mind reeling. He allowed her to usher him under the patterned quilt, his body singing in relief when he finally got to stretch out on the mattress, his eyelids lead-heavy.
Steve wrapped his arm around one of the pillows as Diana lowered down to sit next to him.
“See?” he muttered, inhaling the smell of detergent and her from the pillowcase. Everything here smelled like her, god help him. It was like heaven. “All good.”
She smiled. “Rest.”
“Not tired,” he repeated stubbornly even though they both knew that he was basically keeling over.
The nervous energy that had been coursing through his system ever since they had left the lake house seemed to have drained completely out of him, leaving nothing by heavy exhaustion behind.
Diana laughed, and the warmth of it jolted through him, intoxicating.
“Just because you say so doesn’t make it true, Steve.”
“Stay with me,” he asked, twining his fingers through hers and kissing her fingertips, his eyes already drooping.
She stroked his hair tenderly until he gave in, allowing his eyes to drift shut.
“Sleep,” Diana repeated, leaning close to kiss him on the forehead.
“Stay,” he breathed, a moment before he dozed off.
When Steve woke up a few hours later, the room was dark. Behind the window, Paris was gleaming with hundreds of thousands of lights stretching all the way to the point where the horizon was melting into the ink-black sky. If he didn’t look too closely, it was hard to tell which one was which.
It took him a moment to figure out where he was and how he got there, the sleep clinging to his mind like a thin cobweb. He rubbed his eyes, pushing the fog out of his head and looked around, noticing pale light streaming in from the hallway. He noted that the reading lamp on the nightstand was turned on now. It wasn’t when he’d drifted off.
On top of that, he distinctly did not remember getting rid of his clothes, but now he was stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, although he wasn’t going to question it.
And then the hallway light went off and Diana appeared in the doorway. She smiled when she saw that he was awake, that soft, content curve of her lips that Steve loved more than life itself.
“You should be asleep,” she whispered, crossing the room, changed into a tank top and pyjama shorts.
Steve stifled a yawn. “What time is it?”
“A little past midnight.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “Why are you still up?”
“I’m not.”
She turned off the lamp and slipped under the covers.
Steve reached for her, gathering her to him until their bodies were fit together like two pieces of a puzzle, all curves and angles tucked into one another. He nuzzled into her neck, breathing her in, warm and solid and there.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” Diana murmured, kissing him.
“Did you take my clothes off?” he asked.
“Couldn’t stop myself,” she responded with a grin.
“Figures,” he murmured “You should’ve woken me. I could’ve helped you.”
She settled into him, relaxing into his body lulled by the comforting warmth of his skin against hers. Still barely awake, Steve traced the length of her spine, very aware of the way she responded to the smallest of touches by shifting even closer to him. It never ceased to amaze him - and never would - that a century later, she was still as attuned to him as she had been in their first days together when everything was fresh and new between them. Still as insatiable as they both were then, too.
“Sleep,” Diana breathed, draping her arm across his abdomen. “I’ll exhaust you soon enough.”
“Promise?” Steve smiled, twisting a lock of her hair around his finger.
“Yes.” She pressed a kiss to his chin and rested her head on his chest. “I promise.”
---
As far as morning people went, Diana was a poster child of one. Having grown up on Themyscira and lived through Antiope’s merciless training regimes, there had been no idleness or boredom in her life for as long as she remembered, the minutes and hours of her existence stitched together into a canvas that stretched across the world as she knew it.
In all the time she had spent in man’s world, Diana rarely broke that habit. There had always been something to do, somewhere to be, something to take care of. If it wasn’t mankind falling prey to its own vices, then it was her job, and it if wasn’t that, the world never stopped spinning, always throwing something or other at her. She could count on one hand how many times she’d allowed herself to stay in bed past sunrise even when there was nothing calling for her attention.
Today though, it was different. The cold November sun had crept over the horizon over an hour ago, flooding the city outside the bedroom window with soft, inviting light. Yet, she didn’t so much as move, watching Steve’s chest rise and fall slowly as he breathed, her gaze gliding slowly over his features, taking note of the curve of his mouth that she never wanted to stop kissing and the line of his nose and the way his eyes moved beneath his eyelids as he dreamed.
Still barely changed after all these years.
There was a very fine net of lines around his eyes – from smiling with his whole face when he thought that no one was watching. The chiselled cheekbones and a strong jawline, shadowed with stubble. He did need a haircut, she mused, barely resisting the urge to stroke her hand through his hair, feel its smoothness between the fingers, but reluctant to disturb him.
She still couldn’t believe that this was happening, that Steve was here, back with her again.
For however long they could make it last, it was just the two of them. No members of the League knocking on her door at any time of day and night; no Bruce still pointedly avoiding her gaze while they tried to rebuild a relationship devoid of what-ifs; no imminent crisis that needed to be dealt with that very moment. Her heart had stopped squeezing fiercely every time Steve was out of her sight for more than an hour. Now, there were only minutes stretching before them that Diana couldn’t wait to fill with whatever he wanted to do, wherever he wanted to go.
“You know that I can feel you staring at me, right?” Steve muttered groggily, his voice thick, as he blinked his eyes open slowly.
Lying beside him with her temple propped against the heel of her hand, Diana smiled. “I remember you saying last night that you weren’t tired,” she reminded him coyly. “Insisting, even.”
He chuckled. “Must’ve overestimated myself,” he noted, his voice light.
This time, she didn’t resist reaching for him, brushing his hair back from his forehead. Steve caught her hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of her wrist, making her pulse stammer against his lips. Diana grew up listening to the stories of the greatest love known to the world, seeping in the tales with her very skin, but never once did she think that one could love the way she loved him – to the point of aching in her chest, the feeling so consuming it all but swallowed her whole.
“What day is it?” Steve asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He glanced toward the window and grimaced in the too-bright light.
“Sunday.”
“What happened to Saturday?” he frowned.
Diana hummed and leaned over to brush a light kiss to his lips.
“I have something for you.”
Steve’s eyebrows arched, his gaze swiping unashamedly over her body. “Something good?”
Heat flared up inside of her, her memory helpfully offering up the promise she’d made last night, the one that she fully intended to keep. Time and time again, perhaps. She could, Diana thought with a smile, pencil a few days of nothing but alone time for them into her planner should they decide so.
But later. Right now, she had something else she needed to take care of.
Ignoring his attempt to slide his arm around her and pull her to him, she rolled over and opened the top drawer on the nightstand by the bed. Her fingers closed around his watch, its strap even more worn now after all the time that she wore it on her own wrist after he was gone. The only tangible proof that she had of his existence when the memories that she cherished the most felt like nothing but a dream.
Diana turned around and opened her hand.
Steve’s smile slipped, his eyes growing wide at the sight of it in her palm as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Like a ghost from the past. Another one. She was all too familiar with the feeling.
“You have it,” he said after a moment, reaching for the watch gingerly – like he was scared that it would turn to dust in his hands. Diana watched him trace his fingers along the strap, over the glass covering the face. Over a hundred years of history contained within one small object. “You’ve had it all this time. I thought I’d lost it,” he muttered under his breath.
She shook her head. “You left it behind.” And then, “I should have told you sooner.”
Steve looked up at her, meeting her eyes. “No, no. I just—I can’t believe you kept it.”
“Of course, I did.” Tenderness filled her chest at the sight of his small wondrous smile. “I would’ve… I would’ve sent it to you if I knew where to find you.” She couldn’t help smiling a little too when he chuckled.
“I do remember asking you to take care of it,” he murmured.
“It was all I had left of you,” she said softly, ignoring the pang of sadness in the pit of her stomach.
She debated mentioning the photograph that Bruce had found, but it wasn’t as personal as the watch. He might not even remember it being taken at all, for all she knew. With everything that had happened prior to that, and everything that had followed, those few seconds were such a small moment in time that she would never have faulted him for pushing it out of his mind.
She could take him to the Louvre for a tour next week and show it to him. It would make a good surprise.
“Still ticking,” Steve breathed out, glancing down, and then at her once more. “Thank you.”
He put the watch on the pillow between them and reached for Diana, his hand slipping around her neck and burrowing into her hair as he drew her to him. His mouth found hers and he kissed her, slowly. It was laced with need and desire and everything that he had trouble putting into words; and gratitude more than anything else. Not for the watch, per se, she figured, but for holding on to him, even after all this time.
Diana pulled away and rested her forehead against his, a smile on her lips, her nails scratching gently through the hair at the nape of his neck. “You’re welcome.”
Steve swept his thumb over her cheek.
“I wrote to you, you know?”
Surprised, she drew back to look at him. “You did?”
“Yeah.” He traced his finger along the line of her collarbone, and then glanced down. She watched a small smile appear on his lips that he tried to distil with a dismissive shake of his head. “Something like two dozen letters over the years. I never sent them, of course.”
“What did you write about?” Diana asked, curious.
He made a face and looked past her, a little amused and a little self-conscious about the admittance. She was thrilled by his confession, but even more so by the fact that even a century later, she could still make the colour rise up his cheeks. Could leave him flustered about nothing.
He didn’t have to say that. If Diana never knew about the letters it would’ve made no difference, but it never ceased to amaze her how willingly Steve would give himself to her, baring his soul without being asked. She knew it was a no easy feat for him, never had been - his life had left enough scars on him to make sure of that - and she loved him all the more for trying.
“Everything I wanted to tell you but couldn’t,” Steve said, at last, still not looking at her. “Everything I never got a chance to say. Apologies. Some things about my life. Where I’d been, what I’d done. And how much I love you.”
Propped up on the elbow and facing him, Diana watched him study her room for a long moment, her gaze following the line of his profile.
“Do you still have them?”
Steve turned to her. “Yeah. Yes, I think I do. But not with me.”
“Tell me then,” she asked.
He let out a small laugh, shaking his head. “All of it is old news, I’m afraid.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she insisted, smiling. “I want to know.”
He was looking at her somewhat skeptically, uncertain whether she was serious or not, his brows furrowed ever so slightly. Diana could barely resist the impulse to smooth them out with her fingers, to kiss the playful doubt from his face.
She was tempted – so very tempted – to bridge what little space was between them and seal the idea of spending the rest of the day in bed, finding ways to coax those written words out of him that he wouldn’t be able to resist. But he was going to get hungry soon - if he wasn’t already, and he needed sustenance if she planned to keep working them both as hard as she had up to this moment.
Besides, some sunlight would do them both good, she figured.
“Over breakfast, yes?” she pressed, an eyebrow arched.
“Breakfast,” Steve echoed, visibly enthused by the idea.
“But first – shower.” Diana kicked off the covers and slid out of the bed, only pausing in the doorway to glance over her shoulder, her hand resting briefly on the doorframe. “You coming?”
He didn’t need to be asked twice.
---
As it turned out, after several weeks spent in Gotham, her fridge was painfully and utterly empty, save for a few bottles of condiments that were of little use with nothing to put them on, and a few sorry-looking carrots that looked equally useless. Diana’s eyes swept the shelves as she made a mental list of the items to be shopped for later, or so Steve assumed as he watched her, not even bothering to try and contain his smile.
He suspected that this was, perhaps, the first time she had allowed herself this kind of oversight, and he was pleased with the distraction that he had caused. Stupidly pleased, if he was completely honest.
When she suggested finding something outside, Steve merely nodded.
“I know just the place,” Diana said, pulling him out the door.
Truth be told, if she’d asked him to follow her to the gates of hell itself, Steve still wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. He’d walk after her without much care for the plan for the day - or the rest of their lives, for that matter - just as long as she was with him.
After the doom and gloom of Gotham, Paris, with its late autumn sunlight – a pleasant surprise after the rain that fell the previous day - and the smell of fallen leaves and roasting chestnuts felt like a breath of fresh air. The breeze from the river was chilly, though, tugging at their clothes and snaking under their jackets, making the occasional passers-by tuck their faces deeper into the scarves and collars of their coats. Yet, Steve enjoyed it. Enjoyed it far more than he was willing to let on, not sure if it was the change of scenery or the chance to not think about Amanda Waller and S.T.A.R. Labs for a little while.
He wrapped his arm around Diana as they walked and she wound both of hers around him, their legs bumping awkwardly together every now and then. It was hardly practical or particularly comfortable, but he couldn’t care less, revelling in the closeness of her. The freedom, the distance from the ever-present company of the other members of the League, felt enthralling. Like they were suddenly living in an entirely different world.
He knew that Diana’s life was bound to catch up with them sooner rather than later, but right now, this morning, it was just them and her laughter and the smile that he would die for without hesitation if he had to. And just being.
It turned out that she did, in fact, know where to take him - Le Petit Chef, a small café a couple of blocks from her place that Steve was quite certain was already operating when he last lived in Paris in the 1950s. Back in the day, it probably aimed for sophistication, but following the new trends, it now teetered between vintage and hipster, what with its mismatched chairs around old tables and a couch and a wide bookshelf lining the back wall.
This close to the Latin Quarter, the place was packed, even on a lazy Sunday morning – mostly students with laptops and yawning tourists, too restless to sleep in when they had so much to see and do. Steve’s eyes scanned the crowd, taking in the easy normalcy of the lives of people who never knew any different – a little wistful, a little relieved. Contrary to popular belief, there was no glory in watching people die en masse. All things considered, he was more than a little happy to know that at least two generations had no idea what it was like to live stark in the middle of a war.
They found a place out on the patio – a little less crowded than the inside of the café. The day was cool but the sun was glorious and it would’ve been a shame to miss it.
“Since when do we have twenty breakfast options?” Steve muttered, studying the menu, not oblivious to how Diana had to press her lips together so she wouldn’t burst out laughing. He looked up, baffled by the variety of choices.
He could still remember the days when they had exactly two of them – eggs, scrambled or sunny-side up. And you had to be either grateful for them, or get out.
He frowned when his gaze snatched an unfamiliar item. “What the hell in an acai bowl?”
Biting back her smile, Diana ordered for both of them when the waitress came with their coffees, upon Steve’s request and permission. Not the mysterious bowl, he hoped, but it also didn’t really matter, come to think of it. Whatever it was, he’d had it worse - that he knew for a fact. Besides, it was such a small thing now. Diana was here, with him, smiling at him every time their eyes met across the table and making him grin like a complete fool. A lovesick fool. The food options were so far down his list of priorities that Steve couldn’t even see them.
The waitress returned with their food, placing the plates before them. (Nothing he didn’t recognize, thank god.)
“Tell me,” Diana asked again, stirring her coffee with a spoon when the girl left.
And so he did, trying to recollect the words that came so much easier when he was putting them on paper rather than trying to say them aloud. Words that he could whisper in the dark but that felt odd and raw in his throat in the light of day. His regrets and apologies and small things that made waking up in the morning and moving forward worth it. How he wanted to come looking for her but never had the courage to do it, fearful of being turned down. How it was tearing him apart that he missed her to the point of an ache all the way in his bone marrow.
Steve filled in the gaps in the stories he had already told her, remembering details along the way that he had long forgotten, certain that Diana had noticed the slight tremor in his voice as he spoke and grateful to her for not drawing attention to it.
It had been so long, and yet there were things that he could recall so clearly he could hardly believe it. Places and people and moments resurfacing in his mind like images on developing film.
About reading a book a wondering what she’d think about it, and if she’d read it, too.
About meeting the people who reminded Steve of his friends, gone by then.
About waking up with Diana’s name on his lips, like a prayer, and the tight feeling in the centre of his chest when he’d habitually reach over only to find the spot next to him cold and empty. And the day when that happened for the hundredth time, the longing never growing any easier.
A million small things he could only tell Diana. Memories and thoughts no one else understood.
He only noticed how badly his hands were shaking when he fell silent, after a long while, the buzz of life around them slowly making its way into the periphery pf his attention.
“What are you thinking?” Steve asked her after a minute went by.
Her chin resting on the heel of her hand, Diana was watching him from across the table with contemplative amusement that did little to hide the storm of emotions in her eyes.
“That I can’t wait to take your clothes off,” she responded, tossing his own words from a few days ago at him and breaking the spell that old memories cast upon him.
Steve sputtered, choking on his coffee that had gone cold by now, and coughed, bright colour rising up his cheeks. He glanced around but the only other occupied table on the patio had an elderly couple sitting at it, their heads bent over the map of Paris and their focus nowhere near his conversation with Diana.
He turned to her to find her grinning at him, knowing that she’d done it on purpose and appreciative of the distraction that made tight tension leave his body. Knowing that she’d meant it, too. Far be it from her to say something she didn’t mean. That, and the time they had spent in bed recently, as well as a while back, was enough of an indication of her sincerity. Another kind of heat jolted through his belly. They were close enough to her place to make it happen again in under fifteen minutes…
“What are you really thinking?” Steve asked instead, noticing something troublesome lurking behind her eyes.
She arched an eyebrow suggestively, but the moment had passed and her smile slipped.
“That I wish you’d sent them,” Diana said, quietly.
Steve’s gaze drifted away from her. Part of him wished he’d done it, too, but he couldn’t see what good would’ve come out of it. Not when the wounds that he had inflicted on them both were still open and tender to the touch.
He didn’t say that, though, just turned to her again.
“And?”
This time she allowed her forehead to crease in a slight frown.
“Whatever is happening in Gotham, with S.T.A.R. Labs and… everything,” she glanced away, her eyes following the stream of people and cars moving up and down the street only a few feet away from them. “It’s not over.”
This sobered him in two seconds flat. “I know,” Steve breathed, rubbing the back of his neck.
Diana looked at him again. “But it will be,” she said with certainty, determined. “And when it is… Would you like to come live here with me?”
He blinked at her, surprised, the shift from the playfulness of their earlier conversation to the reality they’d left behind for the time being to this so sudden that it left him with a sense of vertigo.
“You don’t have to,” she added quickly, mistaking his confusion for refusal. “If you’d rather not, I don’t want to assume…” She trailed off. “I wouldn’t expect you to--”
“Diana.” He stopped her.
She met his eyes, a little hesitant.
Steve reached across the table and took her hand. He turned it over, his thumb running over the centre of her palm, where her skin was warm against his touch. He smiled, watching her features relax under his gaze. A moment passed, and then another one. He could spend a thousand years just looking at her, and that alone would have been enough to live for.
It was simple to slip back into their old patterns, the things they’d done before that never quite aged, but this was still new, he realized. Their lives different from what they’d been before. They still needed to find a proper way to fit them together, somehow. And he wanted desperately to do it right this time. He wanted that more than anything.
Diana’s lips curled up at the corners, forming into a smile, and something warm and glowing all but burst in his chest.
There was only so much he could do not to lean across the table and kiss her doubts away.
“I want to be with you,” Steve said quietly, his eyes flicking between hers. “For as long as you’ll have me, I want nothing more than to be with you.”
She squeezed his hand back. “That might be a very long time.”
“Good. If you’re sure--”
“I’m sure,” she stopped him, decisively.
He leaned over and lifted her hand to press a quick kiss to her fingers, and then let go of it when the waitress came to clear their plates and leave the check. Steve squinted in the sunlight, his gaze darting towards a vintage car that cruised down the street. One of the early models that he might have owned at some point that was now considered the peak of luxury, its age and history considered.
“What about Amanda Waller?” he asked.
“What about her?”
“She might have different plans for… the League. For me.”
It didn’t bother him much. The woman was hardly a threat, no matter what she thought of herself but god only knew how much trouble she could cause to the rest of them. It unnerved him that she had managed to dig her way this deep into his life.
Diana shook her head. “I will never let her come anywhere near you, Steve.”
“I’m not scared of her, if that’s what you think,” he let out a sigh. “And I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.” His voice was firm, but not defensive. It wasn’t his pride or ego, but merely a confirmation of the fact that they both knew – he was more than capable of taking care of himself.
Diana nodded. “I know. I’m not trying to, but I’m not going to lose you when I finally found you again. Not to that woman, nor to anything or anyone else.”
He didn’t doubt that she meant it.
“You’re not going to lose me,” Steve promised, his voice earnest. “I swear to god, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Not very far, at least,” she hummed, and he couldn’t help but smile. She stood up and offered him her hand. “Come.”
“Where are we going?” Steve asked, weaving his fingers through hers as he followed her between the empty tables and back out on to the street.
“Does it matter?”
He shook his head, smiling. “No.”
He refused to think about Gotham or Amanda Waller for the rest of the day, following Diana down the street and into narrow alleys, her voice pouring in his ears, the words that washed over him and travelled right through him. An idle conversation about nothing in particular that he still wanted to bottle up and remember for a thousand lifetimes.
He’d forgotten how much he loved this place, the history seeping through the walls and rising into the air, the charm and easy sophistication that came here naturally somehow, without anyone trying. They stopped for lunch when they got hungry. They bought a loaf of bread in the bakery to feed lazy ducks in the park. They picked up groceries, and the simplicity of something this easy and comfortable left Steve’s mind reeling. He’d forgotten that, too. Belonging rather than drifting.
Watching Diana pick produce and debate between brands of milk, he felt his chest ache with how much he wanted this, all of this, no matter the cost. Surely, they deserved their happiness. She did. He knew that she did, and if he was the one who could give it to her, he would do so willingly and gladly and for as long as she’d let him.
Later that night, when the night was still and quiet outside and Diana was nestled into the curve of his body, Steve’s lips stretching into a smile with a will of their own. “Did you really think of taking my clothes off when we were at that café, earlier today?” he asked.
Diana made an amused sound in the back of her throat and brushed a kiss to his chest. “I think about that a lot,” she confessed.
He laughed and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “Good. Because I think about that a lot, too.”
Notes:
So.... what do you think?
I've been sort of indulging my fluff-craving self ever since Steve and Diana got back together but we're going to have some plot, too, I promise! I mean, there's like 150k more material so you probably won't be bored.
In the meantime, comments, thoughts and general yelling are very much appreciated :)
Chapter 16
Notes:
Hey folks, a couple of things :)
First, thank you everyone who is still around! You're real champs and I love you!
Second, it's been brought to my attention that AO3 has apparently never sent a notification when I posted chapter 15, so on the off chance that you missed it, please make sure you check it out first. Those of you who read it - please proceed and have fun!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Diana woke up just as the sun peeked over the horizon to Steve’s mouth trailing along her skin, slowly and deliberately and with the familiar determination, her body responding to his touch before her mind knew to.
“Steve,” she sighed, her eyes fluttering open but it was so hard to focus, to push through sensations taking over reason.
He hummed into her belly and glanced up at her with that cheeky grin she knew all too well.
“Morning,” he murmured, tracing his tongue around her navel.
She cursed under her breath, not realizing that it wasn’t even in English until he chuckled, inching slowly further down.
“I have to…” She faltered, her fingers burying in his hair without making any attempt to steer him off. “Steve, I can’t… I have—I have to be at the museum soon.”
“Not for another hour,” he countered, his thumb drawing idle circles over the jut of her hipbone.
“I can’t be late,” she whispered, giving in to the heat pooling in her belly and spreading over every cell of her body.
“Forty-five minutes then,” he didn’t relent.
“I need to—Steve,” her eyes dropped shut when his mouth closed over her. “I have to…” She trailed off, forgetting where she was going with it because she couldn’t—couldn’t—
Her fingers twitched in his hair.
“Thirty,” he murmured with a smile.
She stopped thinking after that.
He wasn’t going to make her late, Steve thought, coaxing another curse that morphed into a moan out of her. But he sure as hell was going to make her wish that she could stay, make their eventual reunion later in the day hungry and drenched with desire. Give her something to think of and look forward to…
He certainly would, Steve thought as Diana brushed a quick kiss goodbye to his lips on her way out, running awfully late. He didn’t bother containing his grin.
Falling into a new rhythm was the easiest thing ever. It was like all of a sudden, the past decades fell away and they picked up right where they had left off years ago; a little awkward, a little uncertain but familiar to the core nonetheless.
Diana was concerned that he would get bored, and given a chance, Steve figured that he probably would. Eventually. As it was, though, he couldn’t remember the last time he allowed himself to pause, to take a breath and have a look around instead of trying to outrun himself. To escape the time that he was stuck in, knowing that he needed a reason to keep going, lest his mistakes and regrets drag him into the dark pit of despair from which there was no way out.
Even in Gotham, when his life as he knew it suddenly skidded to an abrupt halt, taking a turn he never saw coming, he couldn’t help but feel one disaster or another breathing down his neck. There was always something to do, some place to be, and people to pay attention to, which felt overwhelming at times even though he grew very fond of them.
Gotham didn’t feel like a break so much as a detour. Paris, on the other hand, was a different story altogether. There were no rules here, no limitations, no expectations; no fear of being walked in on – something that Steve, personally, found the most consoling aspect of their trip.
Diana took him to the Louvre the first week after their return, having to bite back her laughter at the flock of co-workers that surrounded him in a heartbeat, charmed by his flawless French and easy smiles, and the fact that he had managed to melt the heart of the ever-reserved Mademoiselle Prince. Steve chose not to correct them and point out that Diana was the one who made him feel like he was truly living again, allowing the flow of unceremonious questions to wash over him, mildly panicky over the amount of attention, and yet amused by it at the same time.
“You’re quite an attraction, I must say,” Diana hummed when they were left alone at last.
“Yeah, I remember full well being one,” Steve glanced over his shoulder, checking for a stray curator lingering nearby, before he turned to her.
She bit her lip around a smile, a memory flashing before her mind’s eyes. So long ago, but as clear as if it only happened yesterday. She remembered her gaze sliding over him with unmasked curiosity when he stepped out of the pool in the cave on Themyscira, her head tilted slightly. Remembered thinking that the drawings in the anatomy books she’d studied didn’t seem to have depicted men quite accurately.
“Who could resist?” Her voice dropped to a low husk that sent his heart into a gallop.
Steve hummed. “It’s not like you don’t have men here,” he mused, looking around again but this time his gaze met only the sombre faces staring at him from a dozen canvases on the walls.
Diana laughed. “Rarely this young, never this dashing, and most often not interested in ladies.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “You think I’m dashing?” he asked innocently, and there it was again flaring in her eyes – a temptation to call it a day at 10 in the morning and spend the rest of it doing something entirely more delightful.
And knowing that he still had that effect on her, even now, after all this time, was intoxicating.
He followed her down the wide halls, past tourists with pensive faces and fancy-looking cameras hanging around their necks and guided groups and kids filling out some sort of observation cards as they studied paintings and statues, their faces scrunched in concentration. He found himself trying not to smile. There was an odd quality to being here with Diana, seeing this world through her eyes. Odder still, to have people greet her by her name, her effortless way of navigating the labyrinth of corridors and endless rooms, where anyone else would have gotten lost already.
She belonged, and it filled him with inexplicable pride that Steve didn’t have the right to own, but that still made something warm unfurl in his chest. He reached for her hand and squeezed her fingers, choosing to merely shake his head in response to her quizzical look.
He got to meet the infamous Pierre as well. A lanky man in his 30’s whose feelings for Diana were a mix of utter adoration and endless exasperation. He seemed to carry the same sort of nervous energy as Barry, albeit somewhat less concentrated. Charmed against his will, Pierre seemingly couldn’t help teetering on the brink between seeking Diana’s constant approval and the desire to get things done his own way.
He shoved a stack of papers at her the second she appeared in his line of sight, disregarding Steve’s presence altogether. Steve watched him try to explain something about two different conflicting collections to her and a shipment that still hadn’t arrived, and asking if she could please make the relevant phone calls, what with her being the head of the department – all without stopping for breath once. No wonder he kept sending her messages at all hours of the day and night, Steve thought, biting back his smile. He watched Diana listen to the man with mild amusement at his apparent exaggeration of how drastic the situation was, laced with affection for this conversation, this life, this moment that made her one of them even if it never lasted as long as she wanted it to.
He was happy that she had Pierre, that she had them all, a small world that Steve knew she treasured more than she would ever be willing to admit even to herself.
“He thinks you’re distracting,” she told him when Pierre left with a huff, muttering something about deadlines and a waste of time and pure nonsense under his breath as Steve pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh.
He turned to her and grinned. “What do you think?”
She moved closer to him and tilted her face up to brush her lips briefly to his. “I’m going to hold my judgement.”
He was, though. A distraction. And he knew it, and it wasn’t right.
After that, Steve gave her space. Gave her a chance to slide back into her old routines, knowing that she needed it for the moments when normalcy was only a dream, if nothing else. She loved her job. He could see it in the care she was showing to the items, in the way her face lit up even when she spoke about something trivial. It was good to see her slip back into the comfort of it.
He tried not to think of how hard it must have been for Diana to find her place in this strange and crazy world when he had left her, although the guilt of it still throbbed like a poorly healed wound deep in his chest.
And so instead of bothering Diana while she dealt with the matters of the museum, he would walk the streets of the city that carried both fond and bittersweet memories for him, trying to get to know it anew. He would catch up with Barry or call Victor to ask about the progress on the S.T.A.R. Labs investigation, although there seldom were any news, what with Waller being adamant to keep it under wraps.
He would go to the Louvre sometimes and wander its endless halls, occasionally catching a glimpse of Diana, content to know that she was there without either of them having to crowd one another. Every now and then, he would sneak her away for a cup of coffee at the café across the street when she had a break, or bring her lunch when it wasn’t an option.
Steve wondered if she’d be happier if this was all she had, or if she’d get bored too, her heart seeking more than this seemingly simple life could offer her. People always said that a person could never truly appreciate what they had until it was gone, but he figured that losing what mattered to them the most wasn’t all that necessary. To Diana, knowing what death and hatred could be like was enough.
“Would you ever quit?” he asked her one night, the question slipping from his tongue before he knew to stop it. “The…” he stumbled over the words, “the ‘being the saviour of the world’ part?”
“Would you ever want me to?” she asked back, watching him closely, which was an answer in and of itself.
Steve shook his head. “No.”
He would never do that to her. Not because he wouldn’t want to – god help him, after all the battles they’d been through, all the losses and heartbreak, the only thing that Steve truly wanted was to never deal with slaughter and carnage that his people put upon themselves time and time again - but because it would never be fair to take it from her. To take away something that was thrumming in her blood like a second pulse. Something that was an integral part of her.
Like he knew that there was nothing she would ever want to take away from him, change about him.
She was scared, too. Steve could see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch. They had come too close to losing one another enough times to be scarred by those memories for the rest of their lives, but he would never demand that she put behind her something this important. Not even at the cost of his own peace.
---
“I did as you asked and you were right, Lex’s name is all over Quinn’s business,” Lois’s face on the screen of Diana’s laptop was grainy and dark in the dim light of the reading lamp in her living room all the way across the world in Metropolis. “Which, technically speaking, is not illegal, as far as everyone is concerned.”
Diana felt her brows knit together. “So, he was involved?”
Lois rubbed her forehead. “Their affiliation seems to have been rather superficial. There was a public transfer of funds,” she added before Diana could ask, “but it was filed as sponsorship .” She tapped her pen against the notepad sitting before her, her eyes scanning the notes. “Two years ago, Lex housed a reception at Quinn’s hotel. Annual executive dinner. Both of them were present at the reopening of the Metropolis museum after the renovation, however, there is nothing connecting them beside that. Which, if you ask me, doesn’t mean anything .” She paused and raised her eyes. “What are you looking for, exactly? ”
Diana drummed her fingers against the desk, feeling her jaw set tautly.
That was the problem, she thought. She had no idea what she was looking for, but finding a picture of Lex in the same room where she found a painting that went missing over 80 years ago set off something inside of her that she couldn’t quite put her finger on just yet. It could be nothing, of course. Nothing at all, and maybe she was wasting Lois’s time right now, as well as her own. But the fact that Lex’s name popped up at all in conjunction with this case seemed like too much of a coincidence, even though Diana had no idea where to start unravelling the knot.
What she did know, however, was that she didn’t want to get Bruce involved yet; not until she knew for a fact that there was a connection. If there was a connection. It didn’t matter anymore, of course. Lex Luthor was locked up in Arkham Asylum, but the last thing she needed was to fire up Bruce’s personal vendetta against that man, whatever the reason.
“I’m not sure yet,” she admitted with a sigh. “But I appreciate the information.”
“Of course,” Lois’s features softened. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help without going any deeper.”
“Don’t,” Diana shook her head, a small strain in her voice. “I don’t know what we’re dealing with here, and I would rather not have you attract any attention to yourself.” She paused, her eyes flicking towards the clock in the corner of the screen. “Am I keeping you up at 3 in the morning?”
“No,” Lois rubbed her eyes tiredly. “No, it’s not you. It’s the deadline I have to meet in… 4 hours. I just saw that you were online and--” she stifled a yawn. “I’m sorry, long day.”
“Thank you,” Diana repeated, smiling. “For doing this, and for the call.”
Lois folded her arms on the desk before her and leaned closer to the screen. “ How is Paris? ” she asked, far more interested and alert instantly, her expression one of unmasked curiosity.
“Paris is--”
“Hey, honey, have you seen my…” Steve interjected from behind Diana before she had a chance to finish what she was going to say, and when she turned around, she found him standing in the bedroom door wearing nothing but a towel around his hips, his hair damp from the shower and the few droplets of water that fell from it glistening on his skin. “Oh.”
He trailed off when his gaze found Diana sitting at the desk by the window and he realized that they weren’t alone, strictly speaking. And while she was wearing nothing but his shirt, Lois couldn’t see that. With him, though—
His eyes widened when the realization dawned, his grip tightening around the knot on his belly that was keeping the towel in place. Diana bit her lip, watching his cheeks grow red in two seconds flat. For a long moment, he could do nothing but gape at the screen, and she could practically hear the gears of panic turn in his head. He swallowed, trying to find his voice, or perhaps regain enough composure to bolt out of the room. She wasn’t quite sure which one.
“Hey, Lois,” he uttered at last.
“Hi, Steve,” Lois waved dutifully.
“What are you--” Diana began, but he shook his head.
“Nothing,” he said quickly, glancing around for a second and then backing out of the room. “I’ll just, um…” he poked his thumb behind his back and cleared his throat. “Right. Bye… Lois.”
After a moment, Diana turned back to the screen, a smirk on her lips. She shouldn’t have enjoyed the moment as much as she did, and yet…
“And I’m taking it Paris is good,” Lois noted, watching her with overt amusement. “Honey?”
Diana glanced toward the hallway once more and then shook her head, unable to dismiss the flutter in her chest and the smile that threatened to split her face in half.
She thought back to the taste of Steve’s mouth and the way he would sometimes look at her when she wasn’t watching, the warmth and weight of his body pressed to hers when they slept, always touching one way or another. The sound of his voice washing over her, chasing away the memories of the time when it was only her and empty walls and nothing but loneliness keeping her company. Replacing them with those of him making her breakfast and lingering kisses and the electrifying sensation of his hands on her skin that was nearly too much to bear.
“Paris is very good,” Diana admitted.
“I have never seen you like this,” Lois said after a moment, her voice soft. “It suits you.”
“What?”
“That smile. Happiness.” She paused. “Are you happy, Diana? ”
“I am,” Diana breathed. “Very. You should go get some sleep.”
“And you should get—well, I’m sure you’re getting it,” Lois hummed, her eyebrows arched pointedly. “I hope I haven’t interrupted anything."
“No. No, you have not,” Diana let out a small laugh. “Tell Clark I said hello.”
“Will do."
A goodbye and a promise to talk again soon later, the screen of her laptop went black for a moment before switching back to the assortment of icons on the desktop. She closed it and stood up, crossing the room to go look for Steve.
She found him in the bathroom, sitting on the lip of the bathtub, still wrapped in the towel – a view that she enjoyed beyond measure, really - his face only a slightly paler shade of crimson than what it was a few minutes ago. He looked up when she entered the room, pausing in the doorway to allow her gaze to travel over his body, taking in the defined muscles of his arms and chest, sliding over his abdomen with a fondness she knew didn’t escape Steve’s attention.
Quite a lovely view indeed.
Steve grimaced.
“A little heads up next time?” he asked. “Not all of us like prancing around naked.”
Smirking, Diana stepped toward him, and when she was close enough, he reached for her, pulling her to him and burying his face in her sternum with a sigh. She smoothed her hands over his shoulders, his skin warm against her palms.
She hummed. “And what a shame that is.”
“Don’t. Start,” he grumbled.
“Never heard you complain when I--” she pressed on, not sure if she should be enjoying this as much as she was, but unable to help it, either.
Steve’s hands flexed on her hips, his grip on her tightening. “In private. When we’re alone,” he interjected. She felt his face scrunch as he squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m never going to live this one down,” he muttered.
“I’m sorry,” Diana murmured, sweeping her fingers through his damp hair and curving down to press a kiss to the crown of his head, taking note of how she definitely liked having him smell of her shampoo. As if he was part of her, she thought, smiling.
He exhaled into the fabric of her shirt, his breath warm on her skin. “You’re not.”
“No, I’m not.” She let out a small, choked laugh and assumed that the sound that rose from the back of his throat was meant to indicate displeasure.
“Does it not bother you that an alarming number of your friends have seen us like… like this?” He nuzzled into her belly.
“Two is not an alarming number.”
“That’s exactly two more than necessary,” Steve countered.
“They haven’t seen anything,” she reminded him.
He groaned in response.
Diana chuckled and slid her hand lower, gripping the hair near the nape of his neck and tugging at it, just enough for him to lift his face up to her, the reverence in his eyes all but taking her breath away. So much so that it frightened the deep part of her that was acutely aware of the power that he wielded over her, however unwittingly. The force of it like nothing she had ever seen, and the pain that it could cause if he’d choose to use it against her.
She stroked her hand down his cheek, watching him watch her for a few moments as her thumb drew circles over his cheekbones, both of them wrapped in the remnants of sweet-smelling thick air after his shower.
“You are very nice to look at,” she informed him.
“Well, that changes everything, then,” he deadpanned.
She smiled. “We’re going, yes?”
It took Steve a moment to remember what she was talking about, and then he nodded. He leaned forward to kiss her stomach and then gave her hips a small squeeze before looking up at her again.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
It was their second weekend in Paris, and despite her better judgement, Diana chose to take some time off from arranging the collection that had been finally assembled in one of the storage rooms, and drive them to Versailles before the weather turned foul.
She hadn’t been there in quite a while and Steve had never visited, and even though Pierre had summoned her to the museum at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning because of some mix up – something that wasn’t nearly as urgent and catastrophic as he made it sound because they still had a week and a half before the opening, and the mix up was merely a case of a mislabeled item – she was adamant to make something of their Sunday, at least.
Steve didn’t argue.
Unlike Bruce’s aggressive cars that existed to impress and threaten and remind everyone about his wealth and status, her Volvo was sleek and smooth, practical and convenient more than anything, and hungry for speed when they finally reached the road leading out of town. They would have time in Paris, she knew. She missed it and she loved it more than she ever thought she would, and there was eagerness in her to create new memories now that she had Steve back. To wipe away the past decades of longing for what she couldn’t have.
But it was starting to feel like a routine, too. Today, she wanted to break out of it.
The day was warm, almost unnaturally so for early November, the low sun bright and welcoming. Diana rolled down her window, allowing the air smelling of wheat and fallen leaves and something that had an unmistakable tang of autumn to it to rush inside, tugging at her hair, cajoling a smile out of her.
Her gaze remained steadily on the road before them as she guided the car smoothly around the curves, but Steve’s barely shifted away from her, making her skin prickle.
“I get it now,” Diana said with a smile after a while.
“Hm? Get what?” he asked.
“When you say that you can feel me looking at you.”
He chuckled and finally turned to look out of his own window. “I never said I didn’t like it.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and smirked.
She could feel him, too, his presence like an electric charge in the air making the hairs on her arms stand on end. Apart from his actual physical presence and being able to touch him and love him whenever she pleased, she missed that feeling the most, that odd sense of peace that she had always felt around him. The way her soul longed for him even when Diana forbade herself from thinking of him.
Who knew that missing something like that was even possible?
He reached for her hand resting on the gear stick and brushed his thumb along her knuckles before lifting it to press a quick kiss her fingers.
“We could do this sometime,” Diana said when he let go.
“What?”
“Go somewhere, just us. Like this.”
His brows furrowed. “Isn’t this what we’re doing now?”
“No, I’m working now,” she shook her head. “We can’t really leave. Besides…”
“Gotham,” Steve finished for her, a strain in his voice.
Her lips flattened into a thin line. “Yes.”
“Is this what the call with Lois was about?” he asked. She was surprised it had taken him this long to bring it up.
“Well… until you walked into the room – yes,” Diana noted, amused.
“God,” he muttered and rubbed his eyes. “I swear you’re doing that on purpose.”
She let out a small laugh. “Maybe.”
He turned to her. “Want to tell me about it?”
“We both think you’re fairly handsome,” she responded smoothly.
Steve made a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Not that.” And when she darted a quick look at him, his cheeks were flushed again.
That was the thing about him, she had learned. He knew that he was attractive and desirable and far above average in every sense that she could think of, and, given the slightest chance, he would gladly point out all those qualities. However, if someone else did that, if she so much as mentioned his handsomeness or dared to offer him any other kind of compliment, he would get shy and flustered in a way that made her heart ache with tenderness. It was as if having attention turned to him made him feel like he was losing control.
And she loved it.
She wondered sometimes if he even noticed that. If he knew that there was one thing that being a spy had robbed him of when he wasn’t looking – the comfort of being seen.
Diana bit her lip. “Maybe later,” she said at last. “It doesn’t matter now.”
Steve nodded and didn’t press.
There was something in Lois’s words that left her with a deep unease, even though, try as she might, she couldn’t figure out what it was, save for the heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach that she could write off to foreboding. She didn’t like it. Sooner or later, they would have to deal with that mess, and if her experience was any indication, it would most likely be sooner rather than later.
But not now. Not today. Today belonged to her and the man sitting next to her as they cut across endless outstretch of fields on either side of the road.
Today, they would have lunch in one of the towns strewn around the region like jewels, waiting to be uncovered. They would walk the halls of the palace, enjoying lavish luxury which never failed to leave Diana enthralled and the gardens surrounding it, and follow the maze of footpaths that millions of people had walked before them. They would watch the sunset from one of the galleries, surrounded by sunlight, and she would kiss the breath out of him, because she could.
Today, being together would be enough.
---
Veld, 1918
Some people thought that the worst thing about the war was hunger and raids and never knowing what tomorrow might bring, and the never-ending guessing game of death and wondering if they’d ever see their loved ones again.
To Steve, the worst thing was losing hope. Forgetting what anything else even looked like, not seeing anything beyond blood and smoke.
A month before he was sent to investigate Ludendorff, a feeling of such dread and despair settled inside of him that he could feel it eating him up with every breath he took. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in victory anymore. It was that after all those years he didn’t know how to.
And then Diana happened. And in a day and a half, she managed to breathe a whole new faith into him. It was delicate and fragile, but real nonetheless, and he was desperate to protect it at all costs. Suddenly, his heart was beating in earnest again and there was a new meaning to what they were doing. For him, yes, and for every innocent life that could still be saved from this unspeakable slaughter. But also for her because he wanted her to be right. He wanted her to see the world the way she thought it was supposed to be – good and kind and just.
He roused slowly when the first rays of sun broke through the blanket of clouds, colouring the bleak world in gold. His muscles ached pleasantly, his body spent in the best way Steve could think of. He scrubbed a sleepy hand over his face, only then realizing that the spot beside him was empty.
The snow had stopped some time after they fell asleep, and now Diana was standing by the window and looking at the silent world on the other side of the glass, still fast asleep after a night of celebrations. It was so quiet that if it wasn’t for the slight creak of old wood as the house lived a life of its own around them, he would’ve thought that he had gone deaf.
Her armour was on, but her gauntlets and tiara were resting on top of her shield, lying on the chair in the corner, her boots sitting underneath it. Grace and force and power. He allowed his eyes to travel over her frame, taking in the way her hair curled at the ends in thick coils and the straight line of her back, her face impassive but concern lurking in her eyes already. As if she saw something that he couldn’t.
Steve thought of her languid in his arms, pressed beneath him with her own arms wrapped around his body and the sound of her voice consuming all of his being. They had talked, and laughed, and memorized one another, and whispered the things that could only be said in the dark. And in those moments, he found a peace he didn’t know still existed within him.
But now in the harsh light of day, however dim it still was, he was at a loss, not certain what to say, what to think. Maybe if he woke up with her still curled around his body – the way she fell asleep – he would know, but not now, not like this. Not when there were no rules because there couldn’t be any rules about her. Not even if he lived to be thousands of years old.
Diana turned to him then and smiled, and the brightness of it took his breath away. There was a promise in her eyes, and so much spirit and hope, that it was like looking into the future beyond anything he could ever have imagined and seeing his very soul.
“Morning,” Steve murmured, his blood feeling like it had caught fire all over again.
“It’s so quiet,” she said.
It occurred to Steve that by this point, the only things she had seen of his world were one of the busiest cities there was and the chaos of the war. No wonder the quiet moment of peace seemed so alien to her.
He smiled. “Everyone’s still sleeping,” he said. “It’s early.”
“It’s not that early,” she countered.
“I wish it was,” his voice dropped. “Come here.”
She did, sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, and when Steve kissed her again, he could taste the future that he wished for, could feel it thrumming beneath his skin and running through his veins, everywhere inside of him, waiting.
Diana stroked his cheek, her fingers warm even in the room that had cooled over the night after the fire in the hearth had died down.
Today, they would find Ludendorff, and they would stop him, and then—
“We’ll have time,” he whispered against her lips as he pulled her to him, his hands moving over the buckles of her armour. “We will.”
---
Paris, 2017
Draped across Steve’s bare back in front of the fireplace in her living room, Diana traced her fingers slowly along the lines of his muscles, following the movement of his ribs as he fought to find his breath again. Her chest was rising and falling slowly against his shoulder blades to the sound of rain pattering against the roof and windows and the heat of fire licking at their bodies.
“I love you,” she whispered softly. “I will still love you even when all the stars turn to dust and no memory will be left of them.”
Steve shifted beneath her, and she pulled back as he rolled over onto his back to face her, still searching for his bearings in the aftershocks of pleasure. His eyes were slightly dazed which left Diana awfully pleased with herself.
He smiled. “And I you.”
A few hours ago, a storm had come hard and fast, heavy clouds rolling from the east and chasing away what little was left of the afternoon sun. By the time they reached Paris, it was pouring so hard that the wipers were useless against the heavy rainstorm that was seemingly set on drowning them all. The whole world looked like someone had overturned a bucketful of frigid water onto it, sheets of rain slicing at everything with frightening dedication.
In the half a minute that it took them to race from where Diana had parked the car to the foyer of her building, they were soaked to the bone and dripping water on the marble floors and her chest was so light with unexpected exhilaration that she could barely take a proper breath. In the elevator, Steve shook his head like a dog, sending droplets flying everywhere, and she laughed. And then he looked at her from under his dripping hair, his eyes dark, and suddenly nothing was funny anymore.
Maybe one day Diana would figure out how he was doing this to her with a single glance or a crooked curve of his lips, like a spell he was casting at her without knowing. Steve moved to her, and when she shivered at his touch, it had little to do with the bone-deep cold.
“You know, when I asked you to lie with me, earlier, I didn’t mean let’s collapse on the spot,” she noted evenly.
“Oops.” Steve grinned at her. “You might want to be more specific next time.”
Diana propped her head on the heel of her hand, watching him with unashamed amusement and a touch of fondness. “I have a perfectly comfortable bed, you know.”
“Oh, that I do,” he assured her. “It’s a very good bed. Above average even.”
She felt something warm unspooled in her chest as a smile broke fully across her face.
In all honesty, Diana couldn’t remember trying to steer him in the direction of the bedroom, consumed by the fire that flared up inside of her when Steve drew her to him, murmuring her name as his mouth trailed along her neck and his fingers busied themselves expertly undoing the buttons of her shirt. Couldn’t remember much past his breathless I want you, period.
She shifted closer to him, pressing to his side. Her leg curled around one of his under the quilt that she had pulled from the couch, more for Steve’s benefit than hers, as she leaned forward to press a kiss to the scar running above his heart. A memory from Themyscira, if she recalled correctly.
He might have been right about some things, about them being different now from the people they had been when they parted their ways over half a century ago. She wondered sometimes if she’d still want to be the person she was back then. If the touch of cynicism that man’s world had marked her with was something that she wanted to carry inside her.
And yet, despite all that, there were things she could remember so easily that it was hard to tell sometimes that any time had passed at all, as if she’d only imagined it. The texture of his skin. The patterns on his heartbeat beneath her palm. The sound of his breathing as he slept, so soothing she didn’t know she’d missed it until she had him back. The way he responded to her touch, and the eagerness with which she responded to his.
Diana traced her tongue along his skin, smiling when Steve inhaled sharply and swore under his breath.
“Want me to stop?” she murmured.
His breathing stuttered. He swallowed, audibly, and said hoarsely, “No.”
She hummed, pleased and drunk on everything they had done in the past couple of hours, her mind swimming.
Diana puffed a breath into his chest and kissed his skin before looking up.
“What?” she asked when she found Steve studying at her with that odd, unreadable expression that she caught on him now and then. One she couldn’t quite grasp.
“I look at you sometimes, and I can’t remember myself,” he said quietly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, his fingertips trailing along her cheek. The slight edge in his voice made her pulse trip. “I don’t think there are words to express how much I love you.”
Diana smiled, slowly, lazily. “Didn’t stop you half an hour ago,” she told him, resting her chin on the back of her hand sitting on his sternum.
Steve blinked at her for a second and then dropped his head back against the thick carpet, his huff morphing into a groan. She could practically feel the heat rise up his face, which made her smile stretch out wider.
“That’s different,” he said, almost indignant.
“Different because we were--” she started, leaving a pointed pause to hang between them.
“Diana…” he muttered, half-warning and half-curse.
She bit her lip, enjoying the moment more than she should, perhaps. “So, you can make love to me but can’t talk about it?”
Steve closed his eyes and let out a slow breath.
It was too easy sometimes, she thought absently, a little more amused by his reaction than the situation warranted. She watched his face reflect every aspect of his inner turmoil and the struggle raging in his head, and was suddenly overcome with such consuming tenderness toward him that she could barely stand it. Like her heart might burst from the fullness of the feeling. This was the man who was willing and eager to make even the smallest of her fantasies come true with enviable determination, but who would stammer when speaking of it outside of the bedroom… Or, well, outside of the moment, she amended in her mind, considering they didn’t even make it to the bedroom this time.
What the two of them had… Diana never thought of it as just sex, in the general sense of the concept. Not the way she had viewed it with her other partners in the past. With Steve, there was more to it - always had been, even when it was fast and rough and happened in the back of her car or in a secluded corner of the restoration room on her lunch break when she had meant to give him an excursion but they got very distracted, very quickly.
It was about connection and trust and devotion, yet she could never resist the temptation to speak of it bluntly, knowing it would conjure that delightful blush that she found so endearing.
(She was going to remind him of that later.)
“It’s not that,” Steve started. “I’m not—I can talk about it.” He ran his hand over his face and glanced at her again, clearly cross. Diana pressed her lips together around a smile, watching him as an ocean of affection pooled in her chest. “You can take a guy out of 1918 but you can’t take 1918 out of a guy,” he grumbled under his breath, and she smirked. “I can’t just… I mean, what I was trying to say…”
“What?” She dipped her head to kiss his collarbone, her breath on his skin making him lose the train of his thought.
Too easy.
“That I have no idea how I lived without you all this time,” he uttered at last with a shuddered exhale.
“You don’t have to anymore,” Diana whispered, watching his eyes grow dark with want, her voice gaining that lilt that she knew tended to make his blood turn to molten desire in his veins. “I am not going anywhere.”
Hera help her, she loved him so much it made her very soul ache.
Steve traced the back of fingers down her cheek, his knuckle sliding under her chin to tilt her face up. He pulled her closer, rising to find her mouth with his. For the thousandth time this night, a thought thrummed in the back of her mind – I’m yours, for as long as you’ll have me.
His lips parted against her, deepening the kiss as he gathered her to him, fingers tangled in her hair, her body half draped over his. She felt his fingers dance over the length of her spine, heat spiking in her blood, a low hum of desire making her arch into Steve’s touch—
A high-pitched shrill pierced the charged air.
Diana pulled away from him, startled, her hand pressed flat to his chest. She dropped her forehead to his shoulder with a groan and a quiet swear in Greek when she placed the sound.
“What the hell is this?” Steve croaked, momentarily disoriented.
“My phone,” she said. And muttered, “I’m going to kill him.”
“Who?”
“Bruce, I assume. No one else would call me this late on the weekend without any regard for my personal time.” There was no frustration in her voice, but it had lost the soft husk of need from the few minutes before.
“Answer it,” Steve said, resigned. He rubbed his eyes and added when she didn’t move, “It could be an emergency.”
“It better be,” she muttered darkly, which made his lips quirk.
He brushed his thumb over her chin. “I’m not going anywhere, either,” he promised.
By then, the ringing had stopped.
Diana reached across him for her pants lying on the floor near the couch and pulled the phone out, her brows knitting together at the follow-up text message, short and dry, and still somehow capable of sending a trickle of cold down her spine.
“Diana?”
She looked at Steve who was propped up on one elbow, watching her with growing concern.
“It’s the museum,” she said, still frowning. “Something triggered the alarm.”
She pushed the blanket aside and reached for the rest of her clothes, but then paused and glanced at him.
“It’s probably nothing,” she added in response to the furrow that creased his forehead. “It’s a very old building, and so is the wiring. Every time we upgrade the security system, it takes time for it to adjust.” She grabbed her bra from where it had landed on the couch earlier. “I just need to—I have to go there. To make sure…” Her voice trailed off.
There was a flicker of hesitation on his face, more questions too, and then he sat up as well, looking around the room for his own discarded garments. “I’ll come with you,” he said decisively.
“You don’t have to,” she shook her head.
“I don’t think I could say no to a night stroll in Paris,” Steve noted. He grabbed his jeans, mostly dry now, and looked around for the rest of his stuff.
A small smile flickered across her features, the tightness in his chest easing. “It’s vastly overrated,” she assured him.
He chuckled. “I don’t mind checking it for myself.”
Diana stood up in her bra and panties and padded into the bedroom to grab a shirt that wasn’t missing any buttons – unlike the one that was currently draped over the armrest of the couch, courtesy of Steve’s impatience. She didn’t bother to turn on the light as she rummaged through a drawer in the gleam of streetlamps streaming through the window while trying to focus more on the frustration over being interrupted, than the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach – a gnawing concern that she couldn’t quite ignore.
It had happened before, she reminded herself. It had always been nothing, a mistake.
And yet…
Back in the living room, Steve had managed to locate his socks and was crouched by the fireplace putting out the flames. His hair was sticking out comically in every direction, and that small thing made her ache with so much tenderness she didn’t know how her heart could contain it.
“You should stay,” Diana repeated, shimmying into her pants. “It’s likely a false alarm.”
He shrugged. “Then it won’t take long.”
She twisted her hair into a messy knot and secured it at the nape of her neck, smiling. “It’s cold outside.”
“Can’t say that’s ever stopped me before,” Steve told her as he stood up and grabbed his shirt from the armchair, pulling it on. His head appeared in the collar, his smile slipping. He hesitated. “Unless you’d rather I waited for you here.”
Diana paused.
There were so many things she would have rather done tonight, all of them involving Steve and none – their clothes. She wished she could spend the next few hours telling this man who would willingly give his whole world to her if she so wished how much she loved him, over and over again until her throat was raw, desperate to make him see that she meant it, every word and every confession and every promise. Just how lucky must one be to find what they had?
Her chest constricted, and Diana forced herself to keep breathing around it. She shook her head, smiling a little despite the frantic flutter of worry in her stomach. If she told him to stay, she knew he wouldn’t argue. He didn’t offer this to be chivalrous, or to prove something to either of them, she realized, watching his earnest face as she waited for her decision. He simply wanted to be with her, even if it meant running a possibly pointless errant late a night.
She pulled her jacket on and reached for his hand.
---
At the rebellious and exciting age of 15, Steve broke into his school at night. On a dare, of course – to prove to himself and a handful of other kids that he could do it and that it wasn’t a big deal. He knew for a fact that a small window in the custodian’s office was broken and couldn’t be locked. All he had to do was push it open carefully, and that was it.
Truth be told, the whole experience was less than thrilling. Long before the age of alarms and security guards, there was no excitement to this adventure, save for the fact that it allowed him to escape a downpour raging outside that night and maybe gained him a degree or two of admiration from his friends for the next couple of days.
However, he had never forgotten the odd feeling he’d had walking down the dark corridor that night, surrounded by empty rooms, his footfalls echoing in the corners. For once, all he could hear was the sound of his breathing and the loud ticking of the clock in the front room. He wasn’t scared – there was nothing to be scared of, it was just an empty building – but he had that unsettling sensation in his chest all the same. Like reality itself was warped in that place when no one else was around.
Walking down one of the hallways of the Louvre as the time neared midnight, their footsteps soft and almost soundless on the parquet floors, he found himself consumed with the same feeling. It wasn’t completely dark, what with the night lights glowing dimly along the walls on both sides of them, but it did give the portraits a sinister look as their eyes followed him and Diana, and the shadows lurking around were making him strain his ears for whatever might be hiding in them.
“So, you said this has happened before?” he asked, walking beside Diana down the stairs toward the lower level that housed the offices of the curators, storage spaces, a laboratory and other staff facilities.
Diana nodded. “Yes. There was one time when part of the basement got flooded during the storm, short-circuiting the power. We had a mice problem a while ago when several cables got chewed up and it kept setting off the security alarms on the second floor.” Her voice was quiet but it still kept ricocheting off the ceiling, echoing in the distance. “Sometimes the staff accidentally trigger something.” She glanced at him. “It’s not unusual.”
“You’re worried,” Steve noted.
“I’m concerned,” Diana corrected him. “Just because something never happened before doesn’t mean it can’t happen.” She squeezed his fingers. “Thank you. For being here.”
He swallowed the answer that would most definitely have been along the lines of ‘I would follow you to the dark pit of hell if you’d asked me’ if he’d allowed it to slip. There was nothing wrong with it, per se. Steve wasn’t in the slightest bit ashamed of saying those words. He had said them. On multiple occasions. And he meant them every time. Now just wasn’t the best moment for being sentimental. Not when there was an uneasy frown on her face and a tightness in his stomach, intensified by the quiet darkness around them.
Instead, he squeezed her hand back and nodded.
“Anytime.”
Diana had told him already that they had two dozen night guards present at the museum after hours. After the premises were cleared each evening, and there were no visitors and unauthorized staff left in the building, there was no need for more than that. The state-of-the-art security system was supposed to be more than enough to keep the priceless collections safe.
None of it seemed complicated, although if it was Steve’s choice, he didn’t think he would want to be spending the darkest hours of the night in the company of grim men and women staring at him from old paintings, their eyes following him wherever he went.
It struck him how different the light and airy halls looked at night. Almost ominous.
Diana paused at the door labelled Sécurité and turned the knob. It didn’t give in, and when she rapped her knuckles on the thick wood panel, nothing happened either. The room on the other side remained silent.
“They must be doing their rounds,” she explained and beckoned Steve to follow her. “Come with me.”
In the two weeks that they had been there, Steve had yet to actually see her office. Somehow, their attention was always steered elsewhere – he would either meet her upstairs or somewhere in one of the galleries on the upper floors. The staff level was far less fancy, more concrete and bare walls than beauty and history.
He whistled quietly when she swept her fob card over the lock and led him into a room with glass shelves lining the walls and a massive desk facing the door. She crossed to it and booted her laptop while he gaped around in awe, trying to figure out how she managed to stuff seemingly half of the museum – Greek and Roman items, primarily, he noted - in this small space.
She glanced up at him and smiled.
“Don’t touch anything.”
“Roger that,” Steve echoed, staring at the two swords behind the glass pane that looked very much like the one that she had wielded in battles, although with a touch of rust on them. He turned to her. “What are you doing?”
Bent over the laptop, she was typing fast, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I have access…” she started.
They both turned to the sound of footsteps behind the door that they had left half-ajar. Diana straightened up, going completely still as Steve turned fully to it, taking a small step back and further away from it. He was all but holding his breath as the door opened wider, revealing a man in his mid-60’s. He carried a flashlight in his hand while his other one was resting on the handle of a gun tucked into the holster on his waist.
His expression cleared the second his eyes landed on Diana, who relaxed visibly as well. It was only then that Steve noticed the uniform and a name tag on the guard’s shirt, his own heart stuttering for a second before it settled back into its proper rhythm.
“Jean-Luc,” she smiled, slipping habitually into French. “You started me.”
“Mademoiselle Price,” the man beamed at her. “My apologies. A little late to be working?”
She shook her head, her expression growing serious. “The alarm--”
“Ah,” Jean-Luc turned off the flashlight and stuffed it into his pocket. “It was nothing, we checked every floor. The new upgrade…” He grimaced as if it was a foul word. To them, it probably was, Steve thought as his eyes darted between the man and Diana. “I called Dr. Morris.”
“There is no need for her to come in,” Diana assured him. “I will sign this off before I leave.”
The guard nodded. “I will let her know. Thank you.” Then his gaze shifted to Steve who had been watching the whole scene with a mixture of fascination and curiosity, as though noticing him for the first time. It never quite ceased to amaze him how Diana managed to make everyone look at her like she was the sun, himself included. The man gave Steve an assertive look, one eyebrow quirked curiously. “Monsieur Prince?” he suggested, smiling.
Steve offered his hand to him. “Steve Trevor,” he introduced himself, barely able to bite back his laugh. “I am--”
“We’re together.” Diana stepped around the desk.
“Ah,” the man repeated, his features softening. “Well, I guess I…”
She gave Steve a small nod and squeezed his arm for a moment before she followed Jean-Luc out of the office. “Why don’t you show me…”
Her voice faded off, swallowed by the hollowness of the corridor, and Steve was left alone.
He turned around and found two skulls with gaping mouths staring at him from one of the shelves, frozen forever in a silent scream. They made him think—
They made him think of things he would much rather not remember. Axes, on the other hand… He stepped toward the display and away from the human remains, reading the description cards. History encapsulated, he mused. His gaze swept over the brief information, and he made a mental note to ask Diana if anything here carried the same historic weight to her as it did to everyone else, considering that she was older by at least a few centuries than the majority of the displayed objects.
One would probably look at all of this differently from that perspective.
“I told you it was nothing.” Diana’s voice made him straighten up and he turned around to see her walk through the door.
“Thank god for that,” Steve said, offering her a small smile. Now that the issue was resolved, he could see that the line of her shoulders had relaxed, that her back was no longer rigid and her body wasn’t braced for attack. “Also… ah, correct me if I’m wrong, but it really does seem like you don’t bring your boyfriends over here often,” he observed, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and watching her expectantly.
She smirked, pausing near him, a hand on his shoulder as she also studied the display before them. “As far as everyone here is concerned, I have never been on a date in my life.”
He looked at her. “You know that is entirely implausible, right?”
“If you say so, Monsieur Prince.”
He grinned and tucked a strand of hair that escaped the loose knot around her ear. “For the record, I liked the sound of that,” he told her. “Say something in French,” he asked, his voice dropping. “I love it when you do it.”
Diana let out a small laugh. “You hear me speak French all the time,” she pointed out.
He shook his head. “No, to me.”
“Oh.” She leaned closer to his face, her hand sliding under his jacket, and whispered into his ear. “Je t’adore.”
“Goddammit,” Steve muttered and turned his head to press his mouth to hers, turning around to properly gather her to him, tasting the need that hadn’t been entirely sated earlier even though they had spent quite some time working on just that.
“Wait,” she drew back, dazed. “I have to show you something.”
He cleared his throat when she stepped out of his arms. “Should we maybe lock the door for that?”
Diana did not dignify that with an answer. For a moment, he watched her punch a code into a keypad on a black safe mounted in a wall in the corner. It beeped with a soft click of the lock sliding out of its slot. And then she was pulling a briefcase from inside of it and setting it on the desk in front of him.
“What is this?” Steve asked.
“You’ll see.”
She lifted the lid, and five solemn faces stared at Steve, their gazes and the story behind them like a sucker punch he never saw coming. One that knocked all air out of him.
He took in Charlie’s slight frown, Chief’s pursed lips, his eyes nearly hidden in the shadow cast by his hat, and Sameer’s raised chin, his eyes full of well-deserved pride. Steve’s gaze paused on his own image - the man he no longer was and could barely recognize on the grainy glass plate. And then, at last, it moved to Diana, standing sure and certain right in the middle, where she belonged.
Looking at the photo brought back the smell of gunpowder and smoke and cold dirt, and shivering in clothes that weren’t warm enough while knowing that there was no coming back from where they were headed. He felt his boots slip on the mud, saw the watchtower collapse before his eyes, his ears once again ringing with the cheering of the crowd when the last of the snipers had been taken down.
Never had his heart been as close to leaping straight out of his chest as it had been back then; in the moment of their first victory.
Steve traced his fingers along the glass, careful not to touch the five figures for fear of having them dissipate before his eyes.
“You found it,” he murmured.
Diana moved closer to him and rested her chin on his shoulder, her hand hovering for a second over his form on the photo before she drew it back.
“Bruce did,” she said quietly. “I’ve never got around to asking him how.”
“Back then, I thought it was the best day of my life,” Steve confessed.
Diana smiled. “The best? Surely you had days in your life when you weren’t being shot at.”
“Come on,” Steve chuckled. “Just seeing you charge across No Man’s Land was something out of this world. It was an almost religious experience… which, come to think of it, it kind of was, considering that you’re a goddess.” She rolled her eyes, but he continued. “Then we liberated the village. We danced. We, ah…”
“Oh, that part,” she smiled. “Yes.”
He shook his head and turned to her. “I mean it, Diana. You gave people hope for the first time in years. You gave them something to hold on to when they had nothing left. Nothing. You had only seen a fraction of that war, but living the way those people did, for years-- It may not have meant a lot to you, not in the same way, but to us…” He paused, his eyes searching her face. “That memory can’t be easily surpassed.”
“I meant a lot to me, too,” she said.
He nodded. And then his brows knitted together and he turned back to the photograph, a new kind of apprehension in his eyes.
“So, the photograph…” he repeated absently. “You have it.”
Diana rubbed the small of his back. “We have just established that, yes.”
“No.” He looked up again. “That means that Waller doesn’t.”
Her smile slipped. “Of course, she doesn’t—What are you saying?”
“This?” Steve pointed at the suitcase. “This was her bargaining chip in our deal.”
Diana frowned. “I don’t understand…”
“Yeah, well, neither do I.” He ran his hand through his hair and then rubbed his cheek back and forth. “She has my records, Diana. My medical files, everything that existed before the war. Everything that I made sure wasn’t easily discovered. And trust me, I took every precaution to ensure that it was near impossible to track them down. Track me down. Yet, she did it. Somehow, she knew what to look for.
“But the thing that convinced me that she wasn’t bluffing when she first tracked me down was the mention of this photo.” He tried to keep up with his own thoughts, but the memories from the past several weeks kept bumping into one another in his head, making it hard for him to make sense of them. “See, my records were, technically, public knowledge up to a certain point. And, technically, the copies could still be in archives that I don’t know about but not this, not--” He stepped away from her and started to pace her office. “There was only one copy of that photograph.”
It wasn’t making any sense. He’d looked. He’d looked for it because it was a matter of safety, and that was something he didn’t take lightly. (He didn’t think she would, but he should have, perhaps. Should have known Diana better than that.)
“So, this means she has nothing on you,” Diana said, watching him, her arms folded across her chest.
“It’s not that simple,” Steve breathed out.
“Why?”
He stopped in the middle of the room. “She still has other information on me. But it’s not just that.”
The moment felt like some sort of alternate reality where he was trapped without a chance to get out.
“What is it, Steve?”
He took a breath and then exhaled slowly. “I spoke with her. In Gotham, before we—before you and I--” He cut off. “After what happened in Metropolis, in Quinn’s house. And she said that if I didn’t do as she asked, she would come for Barry and Victor.”
Diana went still. “She won’t,” she said firmly, her voice uncompromising.
But she couldn’t know that, Steve thought. She lived in Paris, not in Gotham. She was not going to move there to keep an eye on the League day in and day out, and she was not going to bring them here, either. Amanda Waller might have been a pain in the ass but she was wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t go after Steve because then Diana would come for her, and even someone like the Director of A.R.G.U.S. with her fixation on accountability and control wouldn’t be willing to have Wonder Woman as her number one public enemy.
Threatening Barry and Victor, on the other hand, was just as effective, if not more so, because Diana couldn’t and wouldn’t be around them at all times. She wouldn’t be able to protect them when she was half a world away. They could be fast and strong and knowledgeable, but they weren’t as invincible as Diana and Clark, and with the right strategy, they would be perfect targets.
Steve had no doubt that Waller was good at strategizing.
He didn’t tell Diana that, though – in part, because he didn’t want to say the words out loud, and in part, because judging by her expression, she had figured that out on her own already.
Instead, he nodded. Maybe they could both pretend that they knew answers to every question for just a while longer.
“Why do you keep it here?” he asked, nodding toward the briefcase, noticing the Wayne Enterprises logo.
Bruce. How on Earth--
“It’s fragile,” Diana explained. “And I like looking at it now and then when I’m here. When I need a distraction.” She stepped toward him, her face open, and he wanted so badly for this heaviness to lift off of him as well. She ran her hand across his shoulders. “Amanda Waller is not a threat to us.”
Steve nodded again. Maybe if he pretended that he believed her, it would actually be true sooner or later.
“I was going to ask you,” she started, changing the subject. “Will you come to the opening with me?”
“The exhibition?” he asked, choosing to play along for now. They would have to come back to this conversation, but none of that needed to be sorted out tonight.
“Yes.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Will I have to wear a suit?”
Her hand curled around his shoulder. From this close, her eyes were so luminous it hurt to look.
“Yes.”
“Will you wear a dress?”
“Yes,” she smiled.
“Will you let me take it off afterwards?”
Diana laughed. “Yes.”
“Well then,” Steve drawled theatrically. “You’ve got yourself a date, Mademoiselle Prince .”
She leaned forward to brush a kiss to his mouth. “Let’s go home.”
---
The phone call caught Steve in the bakery a couple of days later, stark in the middle of debating between three different kinds of baguette. Who needed so many types of bread?
All things considered, though, this was perhaps the first time in over half a century when he had nothing to do, nowhere to be. And even though Steve knew that sooner or later he would grow restless with the idea of sleeping in and alternating the rest of his time between consuming French pastries, walking the streets of Paris, and generally not being preoccupied with anything in particular, he found himself quite enjoying it for now. It was a relief to find out that he was still capable of simply living.
Truth be told, he couldn’t remember the last time when running out of bread was the biggest problem in his life. He could definitely get used to it, he thought.
When the phone rang, he broke into a smile at the sight of Diana’s name and the photograph of her that he took several days ago – beaming at him from across a table in the small café two blocks from the museum, so radiant he couldn’t help but capture the moment, needing to encapsulate it forever – glowing on his screen.
“Hey,” he breathed, his eyes still scanning the rows and rows of freshly baked loaves.
“Hey,” she echoed from the other end of the line, her voice pleased and relieved in equal parts. The way it tended to sound whenever they would speak after spending some time apart. Like she was still surprised that she could do something as simple as dial his number and he would be there.
Steve could hear someone else speaking in close proximity to her, and the image of Diana walking down one of the halls of the Louvre sprung up in his mind. He had told her once that she belonged there not as a curator but as another work of art, making her roll her eyes a little at the cheesy line while she tried to hide her smile. But he did mean it, even though, admittedly, it sounded better in his mind.
Some spy he was...
“Where are you?” she asked, cutting into the imagery that Steve managed to spin out in a matter of seconds.
“That bakery down the road,” he explained, pointing at the loaves that he liked and having the man behind the counter nod and ring his order. “I’m going to swing by the store on the way back. It thought maybe I could cook something tonight. Are you in the mood for anything special or would you like it to be a surprise?”
Diana was an excellent cook, although that didn’t come as a surprise. There wasn’t anything that Steve could think of off the top of his head that she wasn’t good at, but even though his own culinary skills were much less sophisticated and refined, he still took pleasure in occasionally messing up her entire kitchen – their kitchen, he reminded himself. The thought made his lips curve into a smile on a will of their own.
She wasn’t meant to work late tonight, if he was not mistaken, and unless some emergency came up, she’d be home by six. He could stop by the market, Steve thought as he went through his mental shopping list. And maybe get that wine that she loved on the way back--
There was a pause on the other end that took him a few moments to register, and when he did, his smile slipped.
“Diana?”
“Can you come over?” she asked, and this time he heard the tension in her voice that kept her words clipped. Even her footsteps sounded forceful somehow, uneasy.
“What’s going on?” Steve paused at the register, absently putting several banknotes on the counter. He grabbed his bag and declining the change with the small shake of his head, heading for the door immediately. “Where are you?”
His fingers flexed on his phone as if gripping it harder would make him hear her better. If he had her strength, he’d crack it in half.
“The museum,” Diana said. He heard a soft swish of her fob card followed by the faint creak of hinges and a click of the lock sliding into place. And then silence. “I was wrong.” She took a breath, and he realized that he could barely hear her through the roar of blood in his ears. “The other night when the alarm went off,” she exhaled and Steve could oh so clearly see her rubbing her forehead as she paced the space of her office. “Something did go missing, after all.”
“What?” he asked, his throat dry. And then added before she could answer, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”
Notes:
Welp, I promised you more plot :)
Thoughts? Theories? Speculations?
Please let me know what you thought of this part, or just come and yell something incoherent about WW84. Or anything, really. We're all excited, I know!
Chapter 17
Notes:
Hey everyone, thanks again for your continued support, you're awesome :) Hope you'll enjoy what's coming up, it's going to be a wild ride!
I also want to hope that all of you who are subscribed got the notif this time :P I keep bugging AO3 and I'll continue doing so if you still have issues. Sorry about that!
Welp, dig in!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Paris, 2017
Nearly a century ago when Diana’s mother told her that there was a lot that she didn’t understand about man’s world, Diana assumed – foolishly and naively – that she merely meant the ways of the people. How they spoke and dressed and carried themselves. Things that were not all that different from that of her sisters, yet somehow drastically alien in ways she had least expected. At the time, Diana thought that getting used to unfamiliar garments and strange food would be her biggest challenge. That bringing peace – what she had gone there to do – would be the easy part.
Yet, it turned out that she couldn’t be more wrong.
She got used to wearing their clothes and eating their food and speaking like they did. She learned to carry herself the way it was expected. Fitting in when she knew she was different was another story, however. Somehow, looking like them and speaking like them had never felt enough.
People deemed her a hero, but she couldn’t fault them for the underlying fear that walked hand in hand with their admiration. Being wary of the unknown was in their nature and there were times when Diana wondered what could tip the balance the wrong way and make them turn on her. She had not been around for the downfall of Superman, but she was there to pick up the pieces. She knew what it could be like for her. He was a saviour but also an outsider, and so was she. One wrong step, and she would become a pariah.
And she and Clark were, as far as Diana was concerned, only the tip of the iceberg. She wondered sometimes what people would think if they knew just how many things that came from places they couldn’t begin to imagine lived among them. Or how many items that didn’t belong in their world were scattered around. Items that carried power beyond hers or Kal-El’s. A few kept in Diana’s care, no less.
Until one of them was gone.
Which was her priority for the day when Pierre found her in the restoration room with a heap of papers that required her signature, messages to sort through and arrangements to discuss. By the time he paused for breath, Diana’s head was swimming.
“I don’t think Gerome will agree to push it back even more,” Pierre was saying forcefully, as if personally offended by the fact that she kept postponing the meeting with one of their restorers, when Steve appeared in the doorway.
“Tell him I’ll call him myself and explain everything,” Diana responded, unfazed. Her gaze flicked briefly to the painting sitting on the easel between them, just as fascinating as the first time she saw it, what with its journey through history and the trail it had left behind. The one that had been recovered from Darrell Quinn and sent to the Louvre to finalize the formalities of its discovery. “I need you to arrange an appraiser for tomorrow, I will sign off any fees for urgency.”
Pierre’s eyes darted towards it as well. “Is this ours?” he asked skeptically.
“No, it’s not,” she shook her head. “I will be seeing to it getting returned to where it belongs myself, but I need to you call Adeline and have her come in first thing in the morning. Tell her it’s my personal request.”
The man pursed his lips together and nodded curtly. “The opening--” he started.
“We will talk about it later,” she stopped him gently but firmly, her glance shifting for a second to Steve who was watching the exchange with great curiosity. “Please make sure you let Gerome now that I will speak with him shortly.”
Pierre glanced at Steve, too, lips flattening into a thin line, which never ceased to amuse Diana. Between Steve being an American – not the most beloved nation among the French – and the guy who was hoarding a significant chunk of her attention lately, it appeared that her assistant was viewing him as a rival for her time, of sorts. And while the female population of the museum could be easily charmed into not holding either of those things against him, Pierre undoubtedly considered him a rather unsavoury choice on her part.
He opened his mouth as if to object or pour another hundred questions onto Diana, but then reconsidered and merely huffed instead as he stomped out, the air of the utmost significance trailing after him like a comet’s tail.
“He really likes me,” Steve observed, trying to bite back a smile as he stepped through the door.
His hair was wind-swept and his cheeks were flushed from the cold, but he was smiling at her even though there was worry lurking behind his eyes. He sounded concerned on the phone, and rightfully so, but she still yearned to wipe the touch of unease off his face, her heart clenching momentarily.
She moved toward him and pulled him fully into the restoration room that was already crammed with paintings stripped of their frames, an assortment of pots and figurines, and roughly a thousand other things sitting on workbenches along the walls as well as a statue of Aphrodite waiting to be taken care of taking up most of the space. It smelled of oil paint, dust and that distinctive scent carried by old things. And, aside from her office, it was Diana’s favourite place in the museum. There was a comfort to it that she couldn’t explain.
Except now it was filled with her own nervous energy, losing the layer of contentment that she had always associated with it.
She closed the door behind them, making sure that the hallway on the other side of it was empty and thinking that she would much rather be talking to her associates or discussing the upcoming exhibition with Pierre or even fending off the curious questions of her intrigued fellow curators down in the cafeteria - or maybe even locking the door and finishing what she and Steve had started this morning before she had to leave, her soft To be continued whispered against his lips – than discussing what she was about to bring up.
Anything but this.
Steve looked around. “Where’s everyone?” he asked. “This place is usually teeming with old people in blazers that went out of fashion when my grandma was still alive,” he observed. “Which is saying something.”
She didn’t so much as smile, the joke falling flat between them.
“Diana.” He caught her wrists before she had a chance to move away from him and tugged her close to him, his eyes searching her face. He ran his hands up her arms, along the slick silk of her blouse. “Hey.”
She felt her body relax. “Thank you for coming,” she said.
Steve brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. “What’s going on? You sounded worried on the phone.” His eyes shifted past her shoulder and to the painting behind her. “Is this…”
Diana followed his gaze and nodded. “Yes. The Gotham Museum finally sent it here. I will take care of the paperwork and have Pierre contact the authorities in the Netherlands to arrange the shipment.”
His thumb ran soothingly over the inside of her wrist where her pulse stuttered for a moment before settling at last. “Okay, so I gather it’s not what went missing,” Steve noted, turning to her again.
“No, it is not,” she agreed and stepped away from him, and this time he didn’t stop her. “I should have known,” Diana muttered, rubbing her forehead.
She walked over to the workbench, feeling Steve’s gaze follow her. Feeling his curiosity and worry thrumming in his veins. But he didn’t appear to be willing to push, wary, perhaps, of what he might hear. And rightfully so, she had to admit.
She looked up at him.
Caught up in the bliss of having Steve back with her, she had not yet gotten around to mentioning her carefully guarded secret to him yet: that for years she had kept things here that didn’t belong to the Louvre. Things that no one at the museum knew about. That she had created a small collection of her own – artifacts that came from her people to man’s world before she was even born; artifacts tracked down through private auctions and acquired in battles; objects that were safer in her possession than they were with people who didn’t understand their power; things that could have been used against mankind with disastrous consequences.
Diana kept them in the glass cabinets in her office, in the reserve storage rooms, tucked safely away where no one would think to look for them – swords cast from unbreakable iron, infused with the magic of gods, statuettes made by her people before Ares came for the world of men the first time, a shield with carvings in a language so old even she had never heard of it. Things that she treasured more than some people could ever imagine.
And those that they would never know to fear.
“It is called the Claw of Horus,” Diana spoke after a few moments, meeting his eyes again as she leaned against the workbench, her arms crossed over her chest. “It is a war gauntlet made from the Nth metal during the reign of Ramesses II in the 19 th dynasty of ancient Egypt.”
Steve blinked. “The Nth metal?” he echoed, his brows knitting together in confusion.
“It’s from another planet,” Diana explained and grimaced a little when she heard how it sounded. How it must have sounded to him.
Truth was, she didn’t know how to cushion this for him. When she came across the gauntlet a while back, she had been just as stunned by it, by everything it was capable of. By the very nature of its existence.
That it came from elsewhere should have been the least surprising aspect of it, perhaps.
After all, Clark did, too. She was the daughter of Zeus. Barry could run back and forth in time and Arthur belonged to a race that could breathe air and water alike. How Victor operated, Diana couldn’t even begin to understand, the intricacies of his nature brought to life by the power of one of the ancient Mother Boxes was beyond her wildest imagination. They should have all stopped being surprised by anything a long time ago, or at least should have stopped being so shocked every time anything of that sort came up, but they hadn’t. Steve hadn’t. He couldn’t. Because alien meant unknown, and unknown meant dangerous. And she knew that in his world, dangerous could mean so many things.
She knew this all too well now. And she wished he didn’t have to.
Still, Steve nodded for her to go on.
The first time Diana had faced the power of the gauntlet, it belonged to a madman who had too much money and lacked any knowledge of what he had gotten himself into or what kind of weapon he was wielding. He was beyond reason, drunk on the desire for control and the greed for bending the world to his will. Under the power of the Lasso of Hestia, he had admitted to Diana that he had found the Claw of Horus following the breadcrumb trail of legends going back to the times when the Pharaohs ruled the world. That he had paid for the truth to those who could piece them together.
At the time, she had deemed it too destructive an item to risk anyone else finding it; with the proper understanding of its nature or not.
Diana clasped the edge of the workbench of either side of her thighs. “It draws power from the magnetic core of the Earth and can negate the property of gravity,” she continued, her words measured and steady. Before her, Steve rubbed his forehead as if trying to physically assemble the words in some sort of order as she spoke. “The full extent of the properties of the Nth metal is not fully understood, but it can speed up healing and protect one from physical harm. Needless to say, it can be a powerful weapon should one choose to use it for destruction.” She paused, both bracing herself for what was to come next and allowing him to digest the information she’d already spat out at him before dropping the next bomb. “Whoever wields the gauntlet can, potentially, harvest enough power to defeat… well, anyone.”
Steve stared at her.
“Even… you?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Diana replied carefully. “Or Clark.”
That was, indeed, a rather disconcerting scenario. She’d be a fool not to admit it, and the idea made her chest tighten with unease.
As far as she was aware, Clark was practically indestructible. She had seen him in battle, fought alongside him and deemed him her equal in speed and strength and endurance. Steve had yet to witness Superman in action, but he knew what she was capable of, had seen her fight against things that had no place in man’s world and defeat them. And now she was telling him about a weapon that could be effectively used on someone nearly as strong as she was; one that she didn’t even understand.
It was no wonder, perhaps, that he was looking at her with growing concern.
Diana’s features softened, the panic that had been churning in her stomach since the moment she had walked into the locked storage that morning and found one of the crates empty seeping out of her body, replaced inexplicably by relief. She had spent decades doing this on her own, torn between two worlds while not belonging fully to either one of them. But not anymore, and the affection and gratitude toward the man standing on the other side of the room, watching her with unwavering faith in his eyes, that filled her all of a sudden was almost too much to bear.
In the years that had passed since the night when she left Themyscira for the first time, following the call she could not resist, Diana wondered if maybe it was loneliness that her mother was speaking of, when she told her that there were things about man’s world that Diana didn’t understand. The longing deep inside of her that nothing could fill.
If that was true, she wished she had known it sooner so she would have held on to what she and Steve had and never let go.
“Okay,” Steve breathed. He pushed his hand through his hair as she struggled not to smile, if only because it hardly felt fitting. “Okay,” he repeated, and looked around them. “Why isn’t this a code red kind of thing? Shouldn’t—shouldn’t everyone be on high alert to find it?”
Diana shook her head. “The Claw of Horus doesn’t belong to the museum.”
Steve blinked. “It doesn’t belong—Oh.”
She saw the exact moment when the realization clicked, his expression going from confused to impressed to puzzled in a matter of seconds. And understandably so. She loved that about him, his ability to connect the dots in an instant without missing anything, even if the full picture didn’t make complete sense to him. Even if it wasn’t something he wanted to see.
“There are quite a few… items here that don’t belong to the Louvre,” she explained, pre-empting his questions. “Things that your people might not understand or ones they would want to use against one another, given an excuse. I understood the risks of using the museum for my personal advantage. However, it was, ultimately, the best place to store them without raising any suspicions.”
“Because of the security,” Steve mused.
“Yes,” Diana nodded. “Because of that, and also because no one would think to connect them to me or to look for them here.”
There was practicality to this decision. Steve was right, security was one of the factors. But beyond that, she knew how to mask something as an exhibit item and make it appear entirely harmless to unsuspecting eyes, tucked safely into a glass display that she knew many would pass by without sparing it a second glance. What started as a testament to her memories with Sameer’s flask and Chief’s old pipe and the letters that Etta had sent to her over the years – small things that she needed to keep close to her heart to remind herself where she had come from - had turned into something bigger when the fate of mankind was at stake.
Diana always knew that these things were safer with her than anyone else.
And they had been. Until now.
Steve tilted his head, studying her. “Are you sure it’s not on display somewhere? I mean, if it was in storage, someone could—”
“No,” Diana stopped him, shaking her head. “No one could check it out without my approval, and even if they did, officially, there would’ve been a record.”
It was, admittedly, what she had hoped had happened. That someone mistakenly took something out of the reserve fund and replaced an existent display, mixing up the paperwork. However, she had spent a few hours combing the exhibit rooms for any misplaced and mislabeled items, hoping against all hope that when she did call Steve, it would be about getting him to have lunch with her, and not about another crisis that required her immediate attention.
He didn’t take the news easily – she could see it on Steve’s face, in the tight line of his lips and the stiffness of his shoulders. There was an air of a caged animal to him, amplified by the locked door and the crowded, suffocating room. Not that she could blame him. But there was an undercurrent of subtle frustration to him, too. One that Diana couldn’t help but feel prickling her skin as well. She had missed him to the point of a dull ache in her bones and now they finally – finally – could do everything that they had been deprived of for so long. They finally had a chance to catch their breaths and just be, and it had lasted for all of a week.
She knew it would happen. Of course, she did. If it wasn’t the gauntlet, then it would’ve been something else – there was always something else - and it would have still felt too soon even if they had had years to get used to finding each other again. Being forced to deal with this now was like having some cruel gods of fate laughing in her face, at her naiveté.
It was Steve who told her once, a long time ago, that it was her patience with the mistakes of mankind that was making her good at what she was doing. She kept believing in them, she kept trying where anyone else would have long given up. There had been admiration and awe in his voice when he said this that had made her breath catch in her throat. And he would know, she had thought then. What with holding on for so long during the war that had brought them together and believing in the ultimate victory when everyone else had given up. He certainly would understand that.
And maybe he was right. Maybe she didn’t feel frustration with mankind often, but she was feeling it now, the desire to shut off the world until she stopped feeling like it was spinning out of control. She wanted more. She wanted lazy mornings and idle conversations about nothing and revelling in the comfort of predictability.
She was worried, too, and not without reason. Worried about the power that the Claw of Horus could unleash. But, more than anything else, she simply wanted the man standing before her to not have the expression of someone who was already pondering another end of the world, bracing himself for the battles to come.
Not yet.
“And you think it happened that night?” Steve asked, pulling her out of the deep tangle of her thoughts.
Diana pushed off the workbench and started to pace the cluttered space, feeling restless in the confines of this room.
“I think so, yes,” she said after a few moments, pausing near an empty easel. “It couldn’t have been gone for more than a few days, or I would have noticed. Nothing else is missing.” She hesitated and then walked over to the desk in the corner where her laptop was sitting on top of a forgotten manila folder.
Steve followed her, his expression more curious than panicked now, all things considered. He trusted her, she was aware of that. She knew, if she said that something was gone, that he would know for a fact that she had checked every corner and every crevice before she even considered the possibility of it being missing, but they both also couldn’t help but hope that she was wrong. Zeus knew, she did.
Diana booted the laptop and typed her password swiftly, her fingers moving fast over the keyboard. The screen went straight to a split grey image of a dozen security camera feeds.
“I checked them before I called you,” she said when Steve leaned over her shoulder to have a closer look. “Three of the feeds have a five-minute delay.” Her frown deepened, eyes locked on the screen like it was at fault for this mess. “Someone had to have tampered with them. It can’t be a coincidence.”
“It can’t be,” Steve agreed.
She didn’t believe in coincidence. Knew better than that. Had lived long enough to learn that lesson.
“The guards?” he suggested the obvious.
She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s an inside job. I’ve known those people for years.”
“I haven’t,” he countered.
Diana hesitated. “Perhaps it won’t be a bad idea to check,” she conceded. Her teeth dug into her lip, fingers tapping impatiently against the desk. “We have a good enough system in place, but it’s not something that someone with a certain degree of determination wouldn’t be able to work their way around,” she admitted.
“I’m taking it they don’t try often,” Steve muttered, hand pushing through his hair.
“No, not to my memory.” She paused. “Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever kept anything as… valuable here before.”
Steve nodded, acknowledging her point. He ran his hand absently along her shoulders, feeling her relax somewhat under his touch.
Diana looked up at him, her forehead creased in concern. Her eyes flicked briefly to the screen as if it kept drawing her gaze like a magnet, before she locked them with Steve’s. “We have to find it.”
---
Over the years, Diana had met many people who were outright baffled by her career choice. Some thought that working at the museum was all about pushing papers around and blowing the dust off the old vases. In one word – boring. Others wondered why she was hiding herself from the world in the endless labyrinths with nothing but portraits of dead people for company. Both assumptions amused her greatly, although she never bothered to contradict them even though they were vastly inaccurate.
There was comfort in the history surrounding her; some predating Diana herself, some created long after she was born. Her mother had told her once, a long time ago, that art was a sort of language that everyone could understand. That everyone wanted to understand, seeking to connect with those that came before them.
Diana never truly grasped it until she found herself living in the midst of it, listening to it speak to her in words that were older than time. She found comfort in the smell of old books and faded colours of the paintings and the frozen poses of statues that seemed to be carrying a whole different world within them. What others viewed as unappealing was an entire exciting universe to her, waiting to be explored.
As for hiding herself – well, she was already doing that. Whether it was in a museum or elsewhere didn’t really matter.
Her hand pushed the door open and it creaked in protest before giving in, the hinges begging to be oiled. The parlour crowded with everything from old furniture to an array of trinkets to boar heads mounted on the wall was as dark as it always appeared to be, even in the brightest of afternoons, and especially now that the night had fallen upon them. Diana stepped inside, the floor creaking beneath her feet, and looked around, searching for the things she might not have seen since the last time she had gone there.
She always wondered why the smell of the museum was so drastically different from the smell of an antique store, when both of them contained nothing but relics of the days long gone. Perhaps the difference was that people cared for the items in her charge while those that were displayed here were either no longer needed or forgotten altogether.
“Long time no see,” the voice greeted her from the far end of the shop that was tucked in a narrow alley stark in the heart of old Paris. “I thought you’d forgotten me, Mademoiselle Prince.”
Diana felt her lips tug ever so slightly at the corners, her shoulders relaxing when the recognition hit.
“How could I ever forget you, Gustav?” she asked, heading towards him, her footsteps dull on the hardwood floor. “You own my heart.”
“You always say that, and I believe you every time,” Gustav chuckled, stepping from behind the counter.
Small and wiry, in this light he could have easily passed as a 40 or 60-year-old, and Diana never saw him in proper light. She wondered a couple of times if Gustav even knew what sunlight was, or if he was forever buried in his own treasure trove. He had things here that were most likely museum rarities, destined to never be discovered.
Diana ran her fingers over a statue of some god carved from a solid block of wood, polished with hundreds of thousands of hands that had touched it as it passed from one owner to another more times than she could imagine, perhaps. Her thoughts sprung back to that morning and Steve’s face when she had told him about what had happened and the cold fear that had been blossoming in her stomach since then. She hadn’t mentioned to him how frighteningly powerful the Claw of Horus had felt when she tried to stop the man wielding it from destroying half the world and putting the other half on their knees, but the memory kept gnawing at her, awfully vivid even now.
In the hands of an amateur, it was dangerous. In the hands of someone who knew what they were doing it would be fatal, she knew that. And she hoped against all hope that they would never have to see it.
“What brings you here, princess?” Gustav asked, pausing in front of her.
Diana leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, and he smiled.
“Thought I’d stop by, say hello,” Diana shrugged.
The man laughed. “Right. Like you’d have ever done that.” He levelled her with a curious glance.
She let out a breath and felt her smile fade, harsh reality smacking her unceremoniously on the face.
He was right, she was not here to gawk at another oddity that someone chose to pawn off for some reason or other, but because she needed information. The thing about Gustav was that he was closely familiar with the underbelly of Paris – due to his line of work and, Diana suspected, a certain appetite for intrigue attributed either to those with sheltered lives, or the ones who had it in their blood.
“You know me too well,” she admitted. “I was wondering if you’ve heard of something I’m interested in.”
Gustav arched an eyebrow at her, a little amused, a little intrigued. “Anything for you, my dear.”
“I’m looking for something.”
“Must be something… interesting if you came to look for it here.”
“A gauntlet,” she responded.
“A gauntlet?” he echoed. “A metal glove?”
“You could say that, yes,” Diana nodded, amused.
He shook his head. “Sorry, princess. Haven’t had anything like that lately.” His gaze shifted past Diana’s shoulder and towards the door, and then he beckoned for her to follow him behind the counter. “There is something you might want to know, though.”
---
Steve dragged his gaze away from the screen of Diana’s laptop and rubbed his eyes that were starting to feel like someone had rubbed sand into them. He rolled his neck, stretching the kinks out of his stiff muscles. It was starting to get dark, which probably didn’t count for much this late in November, but the fading light gave him a certain feeling of the passage of time and that he had nothing to show for it, and it was something that nagged him more than he was willing to admit.
He wasn’t surprised when it turned out that there was no Wikipedia page on the Claw of Horus, or the Nth metal, or what exactly went down in Ancient Egypt when the gauntlet was first forged. Or anything useful prior to it, for that matter. What little useful information he had managed to find, in addition to the scraps of details that came from Diana felt like nothing at all. The rest of what he had come across were very misleading and inaccurate facts about Wonder Woman and her true persona – something that Steve couldn’t help but sneak a peek at to entertain himself when he had started to feel like he was losing his mind. That, and the uncomfortable pain in his back from barely moving for close to seven hours.
He was definitely going to mention to Diana later just how far off were the speculations about her real identity and maybe coax a smile out of her. He had learned that she was quite amused by the charade that she had started unwittingly all those years ago. One that began with her crossing No Man’s Land to the endless amazement of the onlookers. Something that had turned into an inside joke between her and Clark, apparently. Steve’s own lips had twitched quite a few times as well while he had listened to them trade stories a few weeks back.
Alas, funny as his findings were, they still weren’t exactly what he was after.
Steve leaned back in Diana’s office chair and scrubbed tired hands down his face. The good news was that nothing had happened so far, and so whoever had managed to apprehend the gauntlet hadn’t used it yet. Which, ultimately, felt like sitting on a proverbial time bomb that threatened to go off any second. That was, arguably, worse than having to deal with the aftermath of someone using the Claw, he mused. At least then they wouldn’t be waiting for an ambush.
He had spent the morning going painstakingly through the security footage of that night, but all he had to show for it was a thorough knowledge of the guards’ routines and the faces of a few people who had left after hours, neither of them carrying anything that could hide an item the size of a forearm. All there was, were the five minutes that looked like a mere system malfunction, but having happened with three cameras at once it seemed doubtful.
Steve rubbed his eyes again and reached for his phone, trying to remember just when exactly he ended up with Alfred Pennyworth on speed dial, and yet there he was.
Alfred picked up after the second ring. “Captain Trevor. What a pleasant surprise.”
Steve couldn’t help but smile. “Irony suits you, Alfred.”
“Don’t tell me you’re homesick,” Alfred countered.
I am home , Steve thought.
“I just… wanted to check how everything is,” he said vaguely. “With S.T.A.R. Labs and all.”
Alfred cleared his throat. “Agent Waller is hard at work covering it up and making a lot of noise about nothing,” he said dryly. “The official statement is that there was a gas leak.”
“Because a gas leak would make people do that ,” Steve muttered, disgusted but not surprised.
He understood why Waller was covering her ass and why the newscasters weren’t exploding with the sensation of this magnitude – imagine that, someone was crafting their own superheroes in the basement, literally! – but he hated it anyway. She didn’t understand the dire consequences of such actions but he had lived through them enough times to know that hiding the truth wasn’t going to get her anywhere. At the very least, people would be pissed. And if they didn’t figure out who was behind it, someone could, would , get hurt. Again.
“People believe what they want to believe,” Alfred noted philosophically . “I’m taking it you’ve settled in fine.”
It was an odd feeling, Steve had to admit. He had his own hangers in Diana’s closet – their closet – and a drawer in the dresser in the bedroom that was still half empty, but he was working on amending that, and a shelf in her cabinet in the bathroom even though he had told her that it wasn’t necessary and his shaving cream didn’t require that much space. He thought, feared , that after spending so long doing anything and everything humanly possible to avoid growing roots, it would feel strange to do this. That he would feel out of place.
In reality, it was the easiest thing ever. He loved waking up next to Diana with his face buried in her hair. He loved the faint smell of her perfume that lingered on his clothes because he kept them next to hers. Loved the easiness between them. The way he fit so seamlessly into her life, like they had been doing this forever. He revelled in this feeling and wouldn’t have it any other way, not for the world.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Steve responded, having to bite back a chuckle.
“And Ms. Prince?”
The sound of her name was sobering. “We’re good,” Steve said although not without a slight lilt in his voice now. “Hey, Alfred, you guys still have that software for restoring wiped security feeds, don’t you?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Did something happen, Captain?” the older man asked.
“Not sure yet,” Steve answered vaguely, which wasn’t a complete lie – at this point, he honestly still had no idea what they were dealing with here, and while it was all but making him climb the walls in frustration, at least he could claim ignorance with a clear conscious.
Alfred hesitated. “Yes, we still have it,” he said. “But you can’t access it remotely, Master Wayne made sure of that... for security purposes.” He cleared his throat. “After Ms. Prince did it without permission.”
Steve swore softly under his breath.
“Captain?”
“Sorry.” Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “That’s… unfortunate.”
“Is there anything I can do ?” Alfred asked.
Probably, Steve thought. But when he’d asked Diana yesterday if she wanted to fill the League in on anything about what had happened at the museum, she told him that she wanted to know what and who they were dealing with first. For now, he was going to respect her decision.
“No, Alfred, thank you. I appreciate the offer.”
“Well, tell Ms. Prince we miss her.”
Steve nodded even though there was no one to see him. “I will. We’ll see you soon.”
He hung up after a quick goodbye and let out a long breath. Another option down the drain. Well, not entirely but it might as well be, and he wanted to start somewhere. Anywhere.
There were many occasions when he saw playful Diana, determined Diana, the one with the fire in her eyes that could burn him alive if she so wished. The curious one that he loved so for the hope spilling out of her. His favourite was the one that was sprawled across his body, sated and happy, all soft words and lazy smiles and so much love personified that he could feel it beating in his pulse.
The woman standing before him yesterday morning was none of those things. Her shoulders were tense, her back rigid, and Steve could practically hear the gears in her head grind as she mulled over something that was turning her into someone Steve could barely recognize. And he wanted to fix that, badly; wanted to make the frown lines smooth out on her face and her smile grow easy again.
He switched on the reading lamp and turned to the frozen frame showing the corridor leading to the storage room where one of the reserve collections was kept. It didn’t matter how many times he scrolled back and forth – no one came anywhere near it between the time when the last staff member had signed off for the day and the moment when the alarm went off.
He didn’t know how long he sat there staring at the screen when the front door opened with a soft click behind him, the sound of it oddly loud in the silence of the apartment. The echo of Diana’s footsteps bounced across the hall.
Steve turned around when she stepped through the office door, carrying the jacket that she had shrugged off in her hand, two faint lines creasing the skin between her eyebrows. For all he knew, they were stark in the middle of some kind of apocalypse, but his first reaction was still a smile and a mental note of how bloody stunning she was, albeit slightly tired. His second reaction was the fierce sense of protectiveness that flared up in his chest. A determination to fight God himself if he had to, to chase that worry out of her eyes.
There was nervous energy radiating off of her. The restlessness that he could understand all too well. He had long abandoned the illusion of her being immune to the wide spectre of human emotions simply because she had fewer things to be afraid of than his kind.
His mind went back to the time when they first met, to the fearlessness with which she had quite literally marched into his world and demanded justice when all they were interested in was elaborate games where pawns died left and right. He remembered determination and something bordering on recklessness. She knew what she was doing, she knew what needed to be done, and she charged into battle without thinking twice.
The Diana that he knew now was still all those things, but so much more, too. Time had stripped her of her blind faith in the goodness of mankind. Her decisions were calculated now, each step thought through. He knew better than to assume that she was fearless, that she presumed she would always win, that she was invincible. A loss would do that to one, Steve thought. He knew full well that she might not be fearing the same things his people did, illness and death not quite something she contemplated much, but one could only see so many people die before they lost their faith in life itself. She feared time. And above all else, she feared losing him.
And right now, she feared something that she couldn’t properly understand because she seemed to have always hoped that she might never have to.
“Hey,” Steve breathed.
Diana draped her jacket over the back of another chair and stepped toward him. He never looked away from her. She slid into his lap, straddling his thighs and Steve reached for her, one hand on her hip, another splayed on the small of her back.
“Hi,” she murmured, and with that sound, he could feel the tension draining out of her body. “What is this?” she asked, pulling his specs sitting on the bridge of his nose off and trying them on.
He had completely forgotten he was wearing them.
Steve chuckled, shaking his head a little. “I’m an old man,” he reminded her.
“Didn’t seem so old last night,” she hummed, an eyebrow raised, watching the heat flare up in his eyes.
He snatched the glasses from her and put them on the desk behind them. “Go on, make fun of a senior citizen.”
“I’m older than you,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, well, didn’t seem so old last night.”
Diana smirked. She swept her hand through his hair and leaned forward to brush a kiss to his lips before tucking her face into the curve of his neck, her breath warm on his skin.
“This is good,” she whispered.
He wrapped his arms around her. “What is?”
“Coming home to you.”
Steve trailed his hand up and down her spine. Felt her muscles relax against his body.
“It is,” he agreed. His voice was soft when he spoke again, “You’re scared.”
“I am,” Diana admitted.
Last night, she had woken with a silent scream in her throat and a film of sweat on her skin, her heart racing frantically in her chest. For one long, blood-chilling moment, Diana was certain that they had got him – the soldiers, Ares, Waller. Anyone that could take him from her.
She had sucked in an unsteady breath and turned her head only to find Steve sleeping soundly by her side, his chest rising and falling evenly and his lips parted slightly. Alive . His eyes had fluttered open when she shifted, moving closer to him, bleary and not nearly as awake as she was. But he registered her presence, reassured by it, and reached for her, tucking her into his embrace in his sleep. She had drifted off with his chest pressed to her shoulder blades and his arm anchored safely around her, thinking that she would stop at nothing to protect this.
She expected an easy Don’t worry , or a habitual, It’s gonna be okay , but those were not his promises to make. Diana honoured his honesty above all else, so when he whispered, “We’ll figure it out,” it felt like a relief.
Steve tugged at the band holding her hair in a tight ponytail at the base of her neck. It spilled over her shoulders in heavy waves and she smiled. In Gotham, she found herself missing her job and the easy familiarity of her daily routines, but it was different when it wasn’t an empty apartment waiting for her at the end of each day but a man she loved beyond comprehension.
Steve’s fingers tunnelled through her hair. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“Hey, since when did you pick up smoking?”
Diana huffed in amusement. “I didn’t. I just spent a few minutes with someone who entertains the habit.”
He hummed. “Want to tell me about it?”
“Later,” she murmured.
“Okay,” he didn’t argue. A pause. “I spoke with Alfred.”
That got Diana’s attention. She lifted her head and looked at him, eyes roaming over his features.
“I didn’t tell him anything,” Steve promised quickly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “But Bruce has a program for reconstructing deleted footage. I thought you might want to give it a shot.”
“I suppose it won’t hurt,” she said after a moment.
“It can’t be used remotely,” he added. A smile worked its way to his face. “Not after you used it last time without asking.” She rolled her eyes the way he knew she would. “Probably not unless you want to tell them everything and just have Alfred run it for you.”
Diana bit her lip and glanced away, her fingers scratching absently through the hair at the nape of his neck.
Steve ran his palm up and down her thigh. “Hey.”
She turned to him again, thoughtful. “I don’t want them to worry about something that they can do nothing about,” she said at last.
“You think it’s still here?”
Diana rubbed her forehead . “I think it’s not something that you can easily get through airport security.”
“Look, we were supposed to go back this coming weekend anyway,” Steve said. He traced his thumb along her jaw. “I could change my ticket, go earlier and have a head start on this, and you’ll fly in on Sunday as planned.” His blue eyes were earnest and assured. “I could leave as soon as tonight.”
Tonight ?
Her heart skipped a beat.
“No,” Diana shook her head. “Not tonight.”
He didn’t argue. “Okay, not tonight.”
He smiled.
She loved his smile, loved the way the corners of his eyes creased when he meant it, his whole face lighting up like sunshine and making her weak in her knees. This man had seen the world shatter before his eyes more times than anyone should have to, and yet he was still looking at her the way he did – with hope and trust and infinite affection. There were things that Diana might never forgive herself for, mistakes she wished she could avoid. But Steve would, in a heartbeat. He would see past everything that haunted her and still love her. There was no end to the marvels of the world indeed.
Gustav had told her something earlier, about someone who was asking about odd things, unusual things that no one had ever heard of before. Their community was small and rather private, made of people who knew each other’s names and recognized one another’s faces, and something like that would never go unnoticed. Gustav had never met that person himself, couldn’t even tell Diana if it was a man or a woman, but the grapevine worked like magic, and maybe it was nothing, but she didn’t believe in coincidences.
Upon Diana’s request, Steve was keeping tabs on auctions and private collections on the off chance that someone would decide to sell the gauntlet - a necessary measure until they figured out their next course of action.
Yet, she had a strong feeling that they wouldn’t find anything there no matter how hard and how long they looked. It was something else, some one else. Someone who didn’t belong. And what bothered her most wasn’t the fact that someone did it, that someone managed to bypass the museum security like it was nothing, but that she couldn’t even begin to imagine who would possibly even be aware of the existence of the Claw of Horus. After all, the only person who seemed to have known more about it than she did – to her knowledge – had died the night she apprehended it, and dead men can’t talk.
And she was going to say all of this to Steve shortly, but they deserved a few minutes of normalcy first – before reality kicked in again. Before she poured new information onto him and he changed his ticket to the earlier flight because he was right, and they couldn’t afford to waste any time.
“Are you hungry?” Steve asked, watching her. His fingers closed around a fistful of her shirt and he tugged at it a bit to draw her attention back to him. “I ordered something. Thai.” His gaze flicked past her shoulder to the clock on the wall – antique, like nearly everything that Diana owned. “It should be here any minute now.”
She nodded, feeling her pulse settle into a more measured rhythm. “That would be good, yes.”
I love you , she thought as she leaned forward to rest her forehead against his. I love you so much I can barely breathe .
---
They ate and spoke about nothing – the weather that was supposed to turn at the beginning of next week and the final touches she and Pierre had added to the exhibition that was meant to open this Friday, her assistant quite possibly sleeping in his office despite Diana’s attempts to usher him home at a reasonable time every night. She never told Steve that she used to do that too, used to work into all hours of the night because there was little she had to come back to. Just empty walls and memories and ghosts she couldn’t escape. She suspected that he knew it, though. He was good at reading people. At reading her - even now when Diana thought that she had mastered the art of not letting anyone in.
They ate and she told him about a play she wanted to see, and he asked her if she remembered the first time he took her to the theatre – the tickets were a gift from Etta and neither of them knew how she pulled it off. In many ways, it felt like an entirely different life, not only because of the passage of time, but because of who they were back then. She loved who they were now more, though. A little jaded and worn around the edges, but so much more appreciative of this wonderful thing that was happening between them.
Long ago, Antiope had taught Diana that the battle was meant to sharpen one’s senses and harden one’s skin. That each scar was like another layer of armour, making it harder to hurt them. The body’s natural response to pain. Each cut a reminder to keep the distance. Diana always thought that it worked for the wounds of the heart as well, but she and Steve were the opposite of that. The opposite of a scar. There was softness between them she had never known before, something that she didn’t expect to find, what with all the disillusionment and heartbreak they were both carrying inside of them, and she loved it so.
Loved the way his eyes would light up when he looked at her, how animated he sounded when he was speaking about something seemingly unimportant, all because he was speaking to her. For the first time in over half a century, Diana found herself making plans that went beyond work events and trips to Gotham. She was looking forward to Christmas and taking some time off to spend it uninterrupted with Steve. Zeus help her, she was looking forward to a trip to a department store sometime soon because they needed more hangers for the closet and maybe some new towels, too. And if someone told her a year ago that shopping for towels would be something that she would be willing to clear her schedule for, Diana would probably smile politely at them and consider this idea entirely nonsensical.
And then Steve smiled at her from across the table, a tiny smudge of sauce on his cheek, and she forgot just how hard they were working to push the serious talk to later and thought , I love you more than I ever knew I could .
Later, as he was rinsing the plates while she collected and threw out empty food containers, Diana told him about her visit with Gustav, voicing her concerns over what she had learned, all too aware of the tremor in her voice.
He listened carefully as he stacked their plates and cups on the rack and dried his hands with the dishtowel, pensive and quiet. There was a frown on his face when he turned to her, his brows knitted together, and Diana couldn’t stand it. Not when she could step toward him and kiss it away, smooth his worry lines with her fingers and making him forget.
Now, she was lying draped over his body, head tucked under Steve’s chin and arm slung over his abdomen. His chest was rising and falling against hers, his breathing deep and slow, and had it not been for his fingers combing idly through her hair, Diana would have thought that he had fallen asleep.
“I love the sound of your voice when you say my name,” she whispered.
“Diana,” Steve said dutifully, smiling.
“I love the sound of your voice no matter what you say,” she added.
“I love you,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head.
She rose on her elbow, reaching over to trace her thumb over his chin. “I love your smile. It makes me want you even more.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Still?” Which was a valid enough question after everything they’d done to occupy the past few hours.
She hummed, turning her head to press a kiss to his clavicle, her lips curved into a smile.
“Always,” she murmured, her eyes searching his. Steve brushed her hair from her face, trailing his finger over her cheek, along the ridge of her cheekbone. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” Diana asked quietly.
“You know I will.”
---
A muted football game that no one was watching cut to an emergency broadcast just as Steve’s gate opened for boarding, a pleasant voice asking the passengers to please proceed to the waiting lounge. A man pushed past him, muttering a quick apology, but Steve ignored him, his eyes trained on the screen mounted on the wall showing yellow police tape fluttering in the wind, flashing ambulance lights and faces contorted in soundless panic. Someone was running while the police tried to cordon off the area but why, he couldn’t tell.
He snatched the words subway and collapse from the crawler at the bottom of the screen, but it was moving too fast and the panic was building up in him in hot waves and making it hard to concentrate.
One of the airport staff breezed past him, heading toward the counter at the gate and Steve caught her elbow.
“Can you turn the sound on?” he asked urgently.
The woman frowned, her eyes darting between the screen and his face, pausing only briefly at the image but not nearly as affected by it as Steve was.
“Is this your fight?” she nodded toward the line of passengers, passports and boarding passes ready, trickling slowly toward the jet bridge. “You have to proceed to the gate.”
Steve ignored her and reached for his phone.
He had spoken with Diana half an hour ago, after he went through security and passport control. She had asked him to call her when he landed and told him that she loved him, more than once. The glow of her words was still simmering beneath his skin, and it calmed him some. However, now his calls were going straight to voicemail. It wasn’t surprising. She was either already at the site helping, or heading there – wherever there was.
He tried again.
“Hey, it’s me,” Steve breathed when her voicemail picked up once more. The camera snatched a bloodied face of a man who was being loaded into an ambulance, and for a moment, it filled the whole screen, his eyes panicked and shocked, his features contorted with pain. Steve doubted he would ever forget that image for as long as he lived. “You’re probably busy, but please stay safe and call me when you can.” His fingers flexed on the phone, gripping it tight. He closed his eyes. “I love you.”
“Monsieur?”
He turned to see the same woman who he stopped earlier waving at him, beckoning him to come over. He looked around and noticed that he was the last person left in the lounge. Everyone else had to be seated already then, uninterested in the tragedy happening somewhere in the city.
The woman’s expression was growing mildly frustrated over the delay he was causing.
“Monsieur…” she glanced down at the sheet listing the passenger names, “Trevor? You have to--”
But Steve was no longer paying attention to her. He was already walking briskly back where he had come from, ignoring her persistent voice calling after him.
---
It took him several hours to get back to Diana’s apartment, what with having to wrestle his bag from the air company that didn’t seem to care that he was having a ‘family’ emergency, combined with half of the city having been cordoned off by the police, traffic frozen on narrow streets.
In that time, Steve had learned that a water supply pipe had burst in one of the north-east suburbs of the city and part of a metro tunnel had collapsed under the increased pressure, trapping several train cars and at least a hundred people under tons of metal and concrete and water.
He knew there were casualties, knew that a lot of people had gotten hurt. Knew that the hospitals that took them in were overcrowded and that quite a few people were still missing, the flooding preventing the rescue team from being able to reach the most damaged area. Every news and radio station was covering the incident, but the stream of information never seemed to be enough, dry facts that barely registered with him. He knew that Diana was somewhere there, and he wanted to go and help, do something instead of sitting in the back of a cab stuck in traffic that had to be redirected around the zone of the accident.
He wondered if it would have been faster to walk.
They wouldn’t let him anywhere near the train, Steve was aware of that. He wanted to go there, but the logic of it didn’t hold. He was neither a cop, nor a paramedic, nor anything else other than Wonder Woman’s boyfriend – something that filled him with a ridiculous sort of pride, but that he probably wasn’t meant to flaunt no matter how much he wanted to.
When he finally walked through the door, her place was quiet, drowning in the shadows of early dusk. For a second, Steve thought that Diana was still out there, helping, but the smell of acrid smoke and blood and hot metal was hanging in the air, brought in on her sword and armour, no doubt. It had to have been over then, he thought absently.
She would never have left if they still needed her.
Steve’s chest tightened.
“Diana?” he called out from the darkened hallway.
The living room was empty, and so was the bedroom, he noted. He set his bag down on the floor by the door and walked past the kitchen without looking – it was dark and so still no living being could be there.
He found her in the bathroom, sitting in the bathtub with her arms wrapped around her knees and her hair falling down her back, its ends soaking in the water. He tried not to think of endless despair that seemed to have planted itself on her face. Not now.
“Diana,” he breathed a sigh of relief, moving towards her. He had to step over her boots and around her armour and gauntlets spread across the floor.
She looked up, confused momentarily, as if not certain that she was truly seeing him in the dim light streaming through the frosted window above the tub.
Steve sank down on his knees near the bathtub, trying to chase the hot tightness out of his chest. There were a million questions swarming in his mind like a beehive that he couldn’t get to settle down, a million things he wanted to know about what had gone down in that tunnel, the lives she had saved and those she hadn’t.
He pushed them aside for the time being.
“Hey,” he murmured, a slight tremor in his voice. He gave her a quick scan for any injuries, however temporary. And was relieved to find none.
“You didn’t leave,” she whispered.
“I saw the news,” he explained, his hand reaching to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
Diana shook her head. “There were children, Steve.”
Her voice broke, splintering his heart, and he swallowed.
He had heard it before, that note of utter anguish that he couldn’t bear for all the pain that it carried. Remorse and regret and guilt over being too late and not fast enough. Steve could feel them pulse through her, radiating off of her in waves. There were no dramatics to it, only raw emotion aching like an open wound.
Steve thought for a second of being on board the plane heading back to Gotham and her alone in the dark apartment, tearing at the seams from another tragedy that she couldn’t prevent, and it all but made something inside of him snap in half.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his fingertips still lingering on her face.
He didn’t want to think of that just yet, of the lost lives and the irreversible damage and a million things he couldn’t even begin to imagine because he hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen it with his own eyes. He wanted to make sure that she was alright first.
“Do you know what day it is?” Diana asked quietly, pulling him out of his thoughts.
“Wednesday?” Steve replied, puzzled, racking his memory for—
He froze, his mind darting back to the date on the ticket, on the screens all over the airport. He was so preoccupied with his concerns over the Claw of Horus and then later over Diana and what had happened when the metro tunnel had collapsed that he’d completely forgotten that it was ninety-nine years ago today that he climbed into that plane and blew himself up in the sky above Belgium.
The cold of the night washed over him, terrifying in how vivid the memory was.
“Diana…”
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and he swore quietly under his breath, caught off guard by his own stupidity. The one thing that defined his life as Steve knew it now, the one thing that was a near-constant presence in the back of his mind, and he chose today, of all days, to forget about it.
He pulled away from her and stood up, reaching for the switch to turn on the light over the mirror. And then he shrugged out of his jacket and took off his watch, placing it on the lip of the sink before shedding the rest of the clothes, letting them fall on top of hers. The water was tepid when he stepped into the tub. He lowered down behind Diana and reached for her, palms moving gently over her skin.
She turned her head slightly to the side, and he paused, waiting for her to stop him if the company wasn’t what she wanted.
She didn’t.
Steve leaned forward and brushed her hair to the side, pressing his lips lightly to the base of her neck, then her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he repeated softly, not sure if he was talking about not being there with her when she was helping the trapped and the injured, or for forgetting. Both, perhaps.
There was a tang of blood and dust clinging to her hair, and her skin smelled of something that he could only describe as desperation. His jaw clenched involuntarily in helpless anger over not being able to fix this for her.
A moment had passed, and then another one, and then her tight grip on her knees loosened and she relaxed into him, coaxed into the comfort of his embrace. The tub was barely big enough to fit them comfortably, but Steve didn’t mind it. Didn’t care much, either. He leaned back, taking her with him, sweet weight and warmth cradled against his chest, nestled between his parted knees, her temple pressed to his cheek.
“I was worried,” he said softly. “I know I needn’t be, but I can’t—You can be bulletproof and the most indestructible person in the whole of creation, and I would still never not worry about you.”
“You missed your flight,” Diana murmured.
Steve trailed his fingertips up and down her arm. “There’ll be another one.” He felt a smile creep into his voice, for a moment. “I didn’t want to go without you anyway.”
“I almost forgot,” she whispered. “These past few weeks with you were so good that it slipped my mind. It never did before.”
He sighed. “It did mine.”
“I wish I could forget it, that wretched day,” she admitted. “I don’t want to remember it.”
“Can’t say I do, either,” Steve echoed.
Not that there was much to forget. The one thing that Steve remembered was running after the plane and then his finger on the trigger of the gun. If it hurt, if it felt like anything at all, the memories of it were buried so deep inside of him that he could no longer reach them. He wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse, but it never sat right with him that Diana had a much clearer recollection of that night, of the instant when his plane went up in flames.
Of the two of them, she was the one who least deserved to carry the weight of that moment .
He wanted – childishly – to take it back from her, somehow. Claim the memory as his own.
Diana ran her hand over his wrist, stirring the water around them. He could feel the tension seeping out of her body, slowly. They stayed quiet for a while, listening to nothing but faint voices and the sounds of life coming from the street below - people talking, cars honking, a police siren wailing in the distance. Each one with a story to tell.
“Steve?”
He snapped to attention at the sound of Diana’s voice, his arms tightening around her.
“Mm?”
She half-turned her face up to his. “I want you to promise me something.”
He hummed and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Anything,” he whispered into her skin.
“Promise me that you will never ask me to stand back and do nothing if something happens to you.”
The air wheezed out of Steve’s lungs and his hands that were moving idly over her skin froze mid-touch. He inhaled unsteadily and looked down, wishing that he could see more of her face than a sliver of her profile. Wishing he could look into her eyes and try to find the fear he could hear in her voice.
“I can’t lose you,” Diana whispered.
The thought struck him them, stupefying in its simplicity, and just as frightening.
Steve knew that keeping him alive was costing her, but he had to admit that he had never thought of what it would be like to her if he died – truly and completely and irreversibly. If he had truly died in 1918.
He had never thought of that – because he really and sincerely didn’t want to, and thankfully, didn’t need to, but he was thinking of it now. Was thinking of the people who would never come home to their loved ones today. Of all the death that he had seen in his life and how none of it was beautiful or poetic. It was ugly and awful, and it left nothing but torn-apart lives behind.
He thought of what if would’ve been like the other way around, if he ever had to watch her die. If she’d asked of him what he was asking of her.
Steve wondered who else she had lost. There was Etta and Sameer and Charlie, but he knew that there were other people, too. People she cared about. People she had let into her life knowing that they wouldn’t stay as long as she’d want them to. She had told him that he was the only man she’d ever loved, and Steve believed her – damn, it was one hell of an ego boost to hear her say that, and who wouldn’t feel that way? He was only a man, after all. But he was wondering now, if maybe she had never allowed herself to love because a loss was a loss, each of them leaving invisible wounds on her where they couldn’t heal, and there was only so much a person could take. Even a daughter of a god.
What right did he have to ask Diana to put herself through it again? What right did he have to take that away from her?
Diana loved him. He was, without a doubt, the luckiest man to ever walk the Earth. He also knew that said world seemed to be hell-bent on shattering her faith in all things good with enviable determination. The least Steve could do was not let it succeed.
Back in the days when he had first faced the horrors of the war, he had known a fair share of people who feared death above everything else. The fear of never seeing the light of a new day was the force that pushed them forward, kept them fighting. And while the concept was indeed terrifying to him as well, in and of itself death was easy. It took all but a moment and no effort to die. Living, on the other hand, was a whole different story. Living was hard, but it was worth it. Oh, it was so worth it.
“I promise,” he said. “I swear.”
Diana picked his hand up and ran her thumb over his knuckles before pressing her mouth to his skin.
She weaved her fingers through his and turned to look at him. “I love you.”
Steve felt his lips tug upwards at the corners, eyes roaming over her features. He could live a million years and never tire of hearing her say that, a slight lilt of emotion in her voice each time she spoke those words. Of that note of wonder laced through each sound, her face open, her gaze earnest.
He had seen her with the members of the League, with her colleagues at the Louvre, and had seen the way she carried herself around them – somewhat affectionate with the former, always nice and perfectly polite with the latter. Steve couldn’t blame them all for having a bit of a crush on her. She cared deeply about people and it showed in the smallest ways that they couldn’t miss. Yet, she always made a point to maintain the distance between herself and the rest of the world, to keep it at arm’s length, protecting everyone she knew as well as herself.
Steve couldn’t blame her for it. He had spent years doing just that – first out of necessity, then out of habit, and lately – out of fear. Whether it was why he had made a good spy, or a sad side effect of it, he would probably never know. He hated seeing those things in Diana, despised his kind for stripping her of her hope and turning it into cynicism instead. Didn’t like the guarded apprehension in her eyes that she couldn’t help.
But not with him, never with him.
Steve half-expected her remarkable self-control to extend to their relationship as well, certain that after everything that had happened between them, after he had broken her heart despite promising to himself that he never would, she’d find it hard to let him back in, and god help him, he wouldn’t have blamed her. Yet, there was no hint of self-consciousness in her when they were alone, her soul open and his for the taking.
He wasn’t blind, he knew it took effort, and he loved her all the more for trying. He never expected them to simply pick up where they’d left off, but this was the closest thing to it he could think of, and his gratitude for it was never-ending.
Now, unable to resist the temptation, he dipped his head to find her mouth with his, his heartbeat stuttering for a second when he realized that once again, he was the one who needed to keep up.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly when Diana drew back and rested her forehead against his cheek, her fingers trailing absently along his forearm.
“I’m glad you stayed,” she confessed.
“I couldn’t go,” Steve said honestly.
“I know.” She glanced up at him, her voice gentle. “I’ll talk to Alfred tomorrow. If you’re staying here, we might as well have a head start with the footage. I trust his discretion.”
“I can take care of it,” Steve offered.
Diana paused, and he thought that she was going to protest. If they were going to find a balance to their dynamic, she was going to have to trust him to take the lead every now and then, but Steve was more than willing to let her do it on her terms. He was in no rush.
He braced himself for a polite no – she had always liked being in control, but even more so now, after spending quite a bit of time having to rely only on herself.
But instead, she simply said, “Thank you.”
The water was starting to cool down.
Steve picked up a washcloth from the ledge over the bathtub and reached for the bottle of body wash, the one she liked best. It smelled of something floral and, faintly, of the ocean. He loved the way it clung to her skin and quite often to his own clothes. He grew to recognize her perfume, but it was this scent that he associated with Diana the most. The one that spoke of comfort.
He squeezed a bit of liquid onto the washcloth and worked it into a lather before touching it to her shoulder. He traced the length of her arm, leaving a trail of suds behind. She smiled and he dipped his head to kiss the side of her neck, the hand moving slowly over her skin as he revelled in the comfortable intimacy of being with her, close to her, right where she needed him.
“You know, it is technically my birthday,” he noted casually. “My second birthday, that is. Then there’s a third one…”
She ran her hand up and down his calf. “That is quite an above-average number of birthdays, Captain Trevor.”
A strangled groan formed in the back of Steve’s throat. “God… Never mind. Why did I even—”
She half-turned to him, “I never said it was a bad thing.”
“You are making fun of me,” he accused.
“On the contrary,” she objected. “I was merely agreeing with you.”
Steve huffed and chose not to dignify that with an answer.
“So, what happened today, was it—" he started a few minutes later, a question that had been rolling on the tip of his tongue since the moment he walked through the door.
“No,” Diana responded, shaking her head before he could finish. “It was a… human error.”
“Yeah, we’re good at those,” Steve muttered.
He didn’t ask if she was sure about the gauntlet not being at fault. She would have said so otherwise.
“You’re good at other things too,” she said, squeezing his knee.
He took notice of how the edge was gone from her voice.
“Thank god for that,” he said solemnly, and she hummed with amusement.
He found every spot where the grime of the day had touched her body and where her armour had left faint marks on her skin, those that on anyone else might have turned to blisters. He had never had anyone let him take care of them before, not like that. Not even when he and Diana were together before. Steve found it soothing beyond measure, the way it spoke of her trust more than any words ever could.
They didn’t say much to one another as he washed her hair, massaging the shampoo into her scalp and then rinsing it out, his fingers moving more expertly than he gave himself credit for. Silently, he vowed to make this a regular occurrence from now on, loving the easy comfort of something this simple.
When that was done, when there was no physical trace of the day left on her, Steve moved her hair aside and pressed his mouth to the curve between her neck and her shoulder.
“I love you,” he whispered into Diana’s skin and wrapped his arms around her once more. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to hold her. And, much to his relief, she let him.
They stayed in the bathtub until there was no tension left in her body and her hands stopped shaking, and his started instead when even the warmth of her skin wasn’t enough to keep him comfortable.
Reluctant to break the moment, Steve ran his hands up and down her shoulders.
“Your teeth are chattering,” Diana pointed out, smiling.
“They’re not,” he protested, indignant, when she slipped quite effortlessly out of his grasp, earning a disappointed grunt in response. “No, don’t—"
She glanced at him over her shoulder, “Quite loudly, too.”
He raised his hands, conceding her point, disgruntled, but not arguing. And then he pulled himself up and climbed out of the tub, stepping onto the mat, careful not to drip the water on her armour. He reached for one of the towels on the rack and turned around to wrap it around Diana who followed him, before grabbing another one for himself.
He dried himself off and wrapped the towel around his waist before turning back to her. Diana was still standing before him, hands holding hers in place, watching him. When their eyes met, she smiled, making his heart slam hard against his ribcage.
Steve moved toward her. “Let me…” he started.
“Oh, you don’t...”
He reached for her towel, hands moving gently over her body to dry her off as well. “I know, I know, you don’t need me—I just—"
“Steve,” she stopped him.
He paused and looked up to find her looking at him. She reached for his face, palm cupping over his cheek, her thumb running over the prickly stubble coating his skin.
“I don’t need you to wield my sword for me, or fight my wars,” she corrected, shaking her head a little. “Or dry my hair,” she added with the tiniest hint of a smile. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t need you.”
He smiled and tugged at her towel to pull her closer. “I like taking care of you,” he said as he looped a piece of her hair around her ear.
“I like that, too,” she confessed.
He had a distinct suspicion that it wasn’t a common occurrence. The woman he had always known tended to put the needs of others before her own. Steve doubted that it had changed in the past several decades.
Admittedly, he didn’t know much about her dating history, just that there were people in her life that she was intimate with in ways he didn’t necessarily want to imagine. Didn’t know how to ask and whether he had the right to do it, or even if he wanted to know, for that matter. But it didn’t seem to him that she had let them close enough to show a vulnerable side of herself.
Steve dumped his discarded clothes into a hamper and followed Diana to the bedroom where he watched her reach past a stack of her own garments and straight for one of his shirts, pulling it on over her head. He smiled, not even bothering to hide it, and wondered if this was the right time, all things considered, to tell her that he had never seen anything sexier. She’d probably laugh at him, and the comment would sound quite ridiculous indeed, he thought, turning it this way and that in his head.
“What is it?” Diana asked when she saw him watching her as she gathered her hair into a loose knot at the base of her neck.
God, I’m so crazy about you , Steve thought.
His lips twitched but he swallowed the sentiment and asked, “You hungry?”
She wasn’t enthused by the idea of eating so, while she put her armour away, he made tea, which still went untouched, growing cold on the coffee table.
Somehow, they ended up stretched out on the couch in the living room, Diana’s body wedged between him and the cushions, curled into his side, their legs tangled and Steve hand running absently over her damp hair as the intricacies of Casablanca unfolded on the TV screen. It was too quiet to follow the plot properly, but neither one of them bothered to turn the sound up, or turn it off altogether, for that matter, swallowed by the sweet nostalgia.
Steve remembered seeing this film when it first came out, back when movie tickets cost about 30 cents and the seats in the theatre were hard and stiff, leaving patrons with an inevitable backache. However, having grown up with far less than that, he could never bring himself to complain.
“I forgive you,” Diana murmured after a little while, pulling him out of his thoughts.
Steve’s brows knitted together. “Hm?”
He glanced down and stared at the crown of her head, wishing she’d look up at him, wanting to see her face.
“That night in Clark’s apartment in Gotham, you asked me if I could ever forgive you for leaving,” she said. “I can. I have.” She paused. “There is nothing I won’t forgive you. To be with you, I would do anything.”
His throat went dry.
“Diana…”
“I thought about those things that you had said to me when you left,” she continued as if not hearing him, “about not being able to live like this. I did.”
Steve swallowed. “I didn’t mean them. I told you—"
“It doesn’t make them any less true,” she interjected softly. “And I want you to know that I understand. I watched you die, Steve. Don’t think I don’t know what it feels like for you every time I go where you can’t follow me.”
He scratched his fingers lightly through her hair. “I don’t think it ever stopped me from trying before.”
“I don’t think it did,” she agreed, and then sighed. “You know what I’m saying.”
“I do.” He swallowed. “Diana, I would never—I will never ask you to walk away from what you do. From who you are. I need you—I need you to know that.” He took in a shuddered inhale. “Before… I merely didn’t want to be a burden.”
The words left a foul aftertaste on his tongue.
He’d thought that before, but speaking his thoughts out loud gave a kind of finality to them that he didn’t like.
He didn’t doubt that Diana wanted to be with him. She had told him so and he believed her. She was not a liar. But there was still an inadvertent panic jolting through him now and then. Maybe one day, he wouldn’t feel it so sharply. Maybe one day, he would stop being scared.
“You were never a burden, my love,” Diana whispered, her palm pressed to his chest, warm even through the fabric of his shirt.
Steve stayed quiet for a few moments. “I like it when you call me that,” he confessed.
“Because it’s what you are.” She lifted her head to look at him, her palm closing over his cheek. She smiled at him, a little tired, endlessly tender. “My love.”
“Really?” His brows pulled together in comical confusion. “I always thought you meant it in a more… metaphorical sense. You know, like how when I call you honey . I don’t mean it in, ah—a sticky way.”
Diana snorted, amused, and nuzzled into him, “Such a charmer.”
Steve chuckled.
She fell asleep before the credits started to roll. Steve smiled when he noticed it, watching her shoulders rise and fall steadily, his hand running absently up and down her arm. Tomorrow, she would have to go back to where people lost their lives today and do more, help more, give more and ask for nothing in return. He knew that, even though she had told him nothing. He’d seen it before. Was aware of her patterns.
Now, though, she deserved her rest.
Steve turned the TV off and considered his options. He could wake her up and usher her to the bedroom. He could wiggle from beneath her and carry her to the bed, although that would probably rouse her as well. For a moment, he debated the merits of the couch over the comfort of the bed, but in the end, he merely reached for a quilt draped over the armrest and tossed it over them, his own eyelids drooping by now, his body relaxed against the warmth of hers.
Diana stirred but didn’t wake up.
He drifted off shortly afterwards thinking of how a century ago she saved his life, and how she hadn’t stopped saving it since.
---
If someone had asked Steve what his takeaway from his time as a soldier was, he wouldn’t think about his experience with firearms or being able to pilot just about anything that could fly, or his days as a spy and the moments spent as someone that he was not.
Oddly, but not quite surprisingly, his mind would surely jump to his ability to fall asleep whenever, wherever, in a matter of minutes. Be it a narrow cot in the barracks or the freezing ground in the trenches, slouched in the seat of an airplane or, well, on a couch that was a great couch overall, but that wasn’t exactly meant for overnight stays. One of the perks of civilian life was, he wanted to believe, that he normally didn’t have to do that.
He awoke shortly after dawn, just as the sun peeked above the horizon, flooding the living room with soft light.
He roused to awareness slowly, noticing a few things as he did. Firstly, Diana’s bed didn’t have cushions that tended to slip from underneath his body. Secondly, there was a kink in his neck that was going to get very painful very soon. Thirdly, Diana wasn’t with him. And lastly, it wasn’t her absence but her voice that awoke him. Coming from the kitchen, it was loud enough to be heard, but not enough for Steve to make out what she was saying.
He tossed the quilt aside and stood up, wincing at the soreness in his muscles, and padded barefoot across the room. He ran his hand through his hair and over his face, chasing the remnants of his sleep away. A cup of coffee would be nice now. Or two. And then he might try to coax Diana into bed, maybe. A proper bed, that is. She had to work today, but perhaps she wouldn’t mind being late, just this once.
The memory of the previous day was still painfully raw in his mind, the desire to replace it with something better running strong in his blood. The need to make her forget.
He peered into the kitchen where Diana paced between the stove and the window. She was still wearing his shirt, her hair down and curling at the ends, a slight frown lodged between her brows. It was probably work, he figured. They’d been calling her at all times of night and day lately, something about agreements and catering and the sponsors.
To Steve’s knowledge, it was seldom a reason to be concerned, and he was about to step back and give her some privacy to resolve whatever matter came up this time, and maybe take a shower while she finished the conversation. But that was when Diana hung up. She raised her eyes and noticed him standing in the doorway, and Steve couldn’t help it. He smiled because, god help him, was this not everything he had ever wanted?
“Hey, remind me to never do that again,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of the living room. He rubbed the back of his neck. “The couch, that is,” he added and grimaced a little, trying to cajole a smile out of her. “I’m too old for it, and you were right, your bed is perfectly comfortable—"
Diana didn’t smile back and he trailed off. His smile fading, his brows pulling together as he took in her expression.
She pushed her hand through her hair, teeth digging into her lip.
“Diana, what’s wrong?”
She glanced at the phone still clutched in her hand. “It was Bruce.”
“Oh. Okay.” He paused, waiting. It shouldn’t have been that unexpected – after all, he’d only spoken with Alfred the other day - but it was. And he didn’t like it. “Was it about the S.T.A.R. Labs? Did they… find whoever did it?”
“No, it wasn’t about that,” she shook her head, and Steve found himself wanting to go back to a few hours ago, when he was still asleep on the couch that was not quite meant for it, and Diana was still pressed to him curve for curve, and the worst thing that he had ahead of him was a slight discomfort in his tight muscles in the morning.
“What is it?” he asked.
She took a breath.
“Lex Luthor. He escaped from Arkham Asylum.”
Notes:
I've warned you we'll be having more plot, and I'm quite stoked for it :) And, of course, I couldn't help adding some angst into the mix. Sorry, not sorry. And I threw some comic lore in as well, hopefully I explained it well enough if you've never come across that storyline.
Comments and feedback are always highly appreciated :)
Also, feel free to yell about the WW84 trailer that just came out. I know we're all excited.
Chapter 18
Summary:
... in which Diana and Steve join the Mile High Club
(I regret nothing)
Notes:
Hey folks, I hope you all had a great holiday season! Still trying to get back on track with my life and with writing, but with WW84 getting closer, I'm more and more determined to hopefully speed things up with thins story :)
(I really, really hope you are all getting notifs for this!)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Barry had asked them all once whose powers they’d choose if they could switch with someone in the League, or with whom they would like to trade with for a little while.
They were having dinner at the lake house, a few nights before Waller had called Bruce in for the meeting and the avalanche of events that Steve’s return had caused was set into motion, and the mood was easy and relaxed, the conversations flowing smoothly. Even Bruce had cracked a smile or two, which, at the time, had felt like an achievement. Diana hadn’t commented on it, though. Ever since the night when he had kissed her at the charity gala, their relationship had felt odd. Not awkward, but more like a ticking bomb about to go off, and she chose to tread carefully so as not to set it off with a careless step.
Barry’s question had perked them all up. Alfred had paused his conversation with Victor and Arthur had looked up from his plate. A heated debate ensued, and Clark, who was not even present at the table, seemed to be a strong contestant for the most desirable powers. Even Alfred had weighed in, despite normally staying out of this sort of discussion, much to Diana’s amusement – she would never have pegged him for someone who would want to join the ranks of the superheroes, knowing what he did about Bruce’s lifestyle, and openly disapproving of certain parts of it.
Suggestions and speculations had been tossed around, with a bet or two placed on hypothetical scenarios. Bruce hadn’t appreciated his wealth being the deciding factor for at least a few of them, and Arthur had claimed that he would never have relinquished his trident.
Diana had stayed out of the debate, perfectly content with who she was. Instead, she had watched them with a quiet pleasure and affection, allowing their words to float past her, grateful beyond words for these people who had found their way into her life. It was rare luck, she thought then, to be this blessed, this lucky. How rare and how wonderful it was to find kinship this deep, and after the years she had spent on her own, there was nothing that she treasured more.
But that was a couple of months ago, and if someone asked her now, she would probably gladly trade her sword and her lasso and everything that came along with them for Barry’s ability to run through time so she could go back to the moment shortly before dawn when she had woken up, warm and drowsy, and ridiculously comfortable despite having barely moved for hours. Still pressed into Steve’s body, her head was on his chest that was rising and falling slowly as he breathed. Content.
Back to the moment before her phone had started to buzz somewhere in the pocket of her jacket. She had never gotten around to checking it the previous night, first thinking that Steve was heading to Gotham and not wanting to speak to anyone else, and then having him back and not needing to do it. Before she saw Bruce’s name flashing on the screen and found some seriously bad news waiting for her. Before she knew that he had already sent his jet for them, knowing that she would want to return to Gotham immediately. Back to the moment when the world was still and her heart was at peace.
There was no trace of peace left in her now. Instead, she was pacing the length of the cabin of Bruce’s business jet; too restless to sit still, too wired to be able to think clearly. The jet was spacious enough, made to comfortably accommodate at least a dozen people, but it made Diana feel claustrophobic and trapped nonetheless, uneasy in the confined space where she could do nothing but wait.
She paused by the screen mounted on the wall that was showing the map of their route and estimated time remaining, the seconds ticking away far too slowly for her liking. Her fingers clenched into fists. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, forcing her hands to relax.
“You’re worried,” Steve spoke, walking over to her.
He ran his palm back and forth over the small of her back and Diana leaned into his touch, soothed despite herself. Despite the storm of her inner turmoil.
He had spent the past hour making a nice show of pretending to read a magazine he had found in the business lounge, but she could feel his restlessness, too, throbbing in his veins and making the air around them charged with anticipation and unease.
She, at least, knew what they were dealing with. He didn’t, and she knew it left him disoriented.
“I am,” she didn’t argue.
“Well, at least you’re here.” He tucked a strand of hair that had escaped the loose twist behind her ear. “I thought Pierre was going to tie you up and hold you hostage.”
Diana smiled, unable to help it. “I think he would have, if it crossed his mind to try.”
She hadn’t yet told Steve – who had spent the morning packing and calling Alfred about the footage reconstruction – that there had been a brief moment after she had broken the news to Pierre when she had thought that he was going to have a stroke. Diana was fully aware that her assistant was perfectly capable of handling the opening of the upcoming exhibition, but when a sudden ‘family emergency’ came up, he had looked like she was throwing him under a bus.
She took pity on him (all while wishing with all her heart that the catering and the RSVPs that had not been received yet were an epitome of her concerns) and promised him that he could call her anytime. Something that she knew she was going to regret, perhaps. Probably very soon.
Steve let out a small laugh and shook his head. “I bet he would have loved that. Did he blame me?”
“On the inside, maybe,” she conceded.
He caught her gaze and held it.
“Okay, so… if it’s not work, what is it?”
She should have known that playing casual wasn’t going to fly with him. He was too damn perceptive for his own good.
Diana rubbed her forehead.
“The gauntlet,” she admitted. “That it went missing a few days before Lex Luthor escaped from the prison… It can’t be a coincidence, Steve.”
Steve’s brows knitted together, his fingers flexed almost imperceptibly, still anchored on the small of her back.
“Wait, you think he has something to do with it?” he asked. “But he was in that place—”
“The Arkham Asylum."
“Yeah.”
“It’s a psychiatric hospital, and… truth be told, I doubt that people like him ever need to do the dirty work themselves.”
Lex Luthor might have been thinking that he was a man ahead of his time - a visionary and a dreamer with ambitions larger than life itself - but Diana had spent a century dealing with men exactly like him. Drunk on power and greedy for more, never satisfied with what they had. Half the time it was not even about the money, but about control. About submission. She knew that they seldom learned from their mistakes or wrongdoings, blinded by their egos, and if her brief acquaintance with Lex was any indication, it was not likely that escape was his end goal.
If she was right – and she hoped with all her might that she was not – and it was Lex who had orchestrated the break-in, then they were up against something horrific. It wouldn’t be just the power that the Claw of Horus could offer that he was after, but revenge – against her, Bruce, Clark. Waller, perhaps. Everyone who had gotten in the way the first time around, landing him in the Arkham Asylum in the first place. Men like him were fueled by their own wretched idea of justice.
She stepped away from Steve, trying not to think just yet of how cunning someone wounded and wronged might feel. Or how their instinct would likely be to hit where it would hurt the most. And Bruce was right, Steve was her weakness. If Lex was to come after them, he would come for the person she loved more than anything else in the world, with or without the gauntlet. But she couldn’t think about it just yet. Not when her head was starting to feel like it was about to explode.
“Diana,” Steve called, still standing right where she had left him.
She looked up at him.
He looked worried but not about himself. He was worried about her, which was absurd, but she understood it. Worried about the people who might end up being collateral damage in the games of a madman. But his face was open, earnest, his heart hers for the taking, and the look on his face made something clench fiercely inside of her.
Diana thought of the promises they had made to one other, whispered into flushed skin between hasty kisses, in the moments when they had meant every word that they spoke. Promises to love forever and to never, ever, leave.
She moved to him. “I might be wrong,” she said, clinging to the sliver of hope that still lived in the back of her mind.
Lex Luthor was a man she could handle. Lex Luthor as a superhuman with an endless source of power? Quite frankly, that was something that Diana didn’t want to imagine.
Steve nodded but he didn’t reach for her, even though she knew he wanted to. Instead, he slid his hands into the pockets of his pants. Diana tried not to look too disappointed.
“But?” he prompted her. “I feel like there’s a but coming.”
She sighed.
“You saw his name on the documents we got from Darrell Quinn,” she reminded him. “I asked Lois to have a closer look.” She couldn’t help but smile when his brows arched in approval, wishing she had told him about this sooner, but it had never felt significant before. “It appears that Lex has been involved with Quinn for years, mostly charity and sponsorship, but other things too.”
“Didn’t you think that Quinn wasn’t involved?” Steve frowned a little, two faint lines creasing his forehead.
She nodded. “I still do.”
“But you think that Lex used him,” Steve finished and rubbed his neck, catching on. “Makes sense, actually.”
“What?” It was Diana’s turn to furrow her brow in confusion.
“When he was arrested after that incident with…”
“Doomsday.”
“Right. His assets had to have been seized,” he explained. “Darrell Quinn said that the painting you recognized was a gift. It’s probably not unreasonable to assume that if Lex saw his eventual downfall coming, he would create a safety cushion of sorts. Long-term insurance, if you please. I don’t doubt that he has a bank account or a few that Waller never got her hands on, but also with his physical assets—say, he gave away some of his most valued possessions planning to come back and collect them later. No one would suspect a man who willingly donated those items of stealing them back. Or reclaiming them some other way.”
Diana listened to him, his voice measured and sure. He couldn’t know any of that for sure, but his theory was solid and seemingly well-thought through. She wondered if this was what he had spent the past couple of hours pondering, which, in turn, made her wonder what else was on his mind.
To her, Steve was, first and foremost, the man that she loved, the one who made her feel cherished and adored and treasured beyond anything she had ever experienced. The man who made her smile without even trying, who made her laugh, who knew everything there was to know about her and still accepted her without judgement or prejudices. Which made it easy to forget sometimes that he was also a spy, had been since before Diana knew him. A spy with a sharp mind who could keep cool and analytical under pressure. Who, not yet knowing much of the world he’d been shoved into by Amanda Waller, was more than likely to offer an opinion none of them would think of simply by thinking outside of the box.
By playing her games, Waller, in all probability, had given the League the best person to work with.
And if that wasn’t a definition of irony, Diana didn’t know what was.
“I wouldn’t peg him for someone who thinks through the consequences of his actions,” she murmured.
Steve shrugged. “Haven’t met the guy, but if he was smart enough to cook up a whole new monster from scratch, he would probably be smart enough to consider the possibility of failing. And taking some precautions.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily call it from scratch .”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
And Steve was right. Lex was resourceful. If he wanted to get his hands on the Claw of Horus, he would find a way and someone greedy enough to do it for him. Up until this moment, Diana had been certain that the gauntlet was still in Europe, maybe even in Paris, in the possession of someone who might not even know what to do with it. She had assumed that it wouldn’t be easy to transport something like that unnoticed by the authorities. But here she and Steve were, on a private plane. They could have fit a lot more than a war bracelet here if needed be.
That certainly complicated things.
There must have been something on her face, more concern than she had thought she was showing, because Steve stepped toward her, crowding her space. So close that she could feel his heart beating without even touching him.
Diana was the first to reach for him, palms sliding flat up his chest. She was still not used to having him back. Even several weeks later, it still felt raw and new, stealing her breath away and making her pulse stutter when she least expected it, making it hard to focus on anything else. When the time came, and the fight became inevitable, it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t be a distraction in a battle - never had been - but he was now, and she loved it. Loved the closeness and the way he watched her, giving her time to open up and come to him on her own terms. Ever the patient one.
She moved her hand to rest on the back of his neck and then, unable to resist the urge, leaned forward and kissed him the way she had wanted to kiss him that morning, in the soft light when she had first awoken. The way she would have kissed him if Bruce’s call hadn’t pulled her out of the haze of contentment and into the harsh reality.
He responded eagerly, without hesitation, his tongue slipping between her parted lips, making her yearn for so much more. Need lurched through her, the suddenness and intensity of it making Diana’s breath hitch. Her fingers curled over a fistful of his shirt, a low hum of approval forming in the back of her throat. She shivered when one of Steve’s hands slipped under the hem of her blouse, pressing into her skin and making her heartbeat stutter once more.
He was the first to draw back, breathless, his chest heaving. He kissed her cheekbone, her temple, his fingers flexing on her skin.
“For what it’s worth, you still have me,” he breathed, only half-joking.
“It’s worth a lot,” Diana said, her fingers fiddling with the collar of his shirt. Her eyes flicked toward the map on the screen next to them. “We move so slowly it’s maddening,” she muttered.
Steve followed her gaze, his fingers still anchored on the base of her spine beneath her shirt, moving along her skin back and forth.
“Would it be faster if you flew?”
She turned to him, confused for a moment. “Oh, you mean—Maybe,” she admitted, and smiled. “But probably colder.” Steve arched an eyebrow at her, and she added, “For you.”
He chuckled. “We should try that sometime. Skip the passport control lines and all that.”
Diana scratched her nails through his hair at the nape of his neck. She rested her forehead to his. “Two weeks. Less than two weeks was all we’ve got, and we’re right back to where we started.”
He twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. “We’ve had it worse,” he reminded her, although it hardly sounded like an enviable achievement.
“We’ve had it better, too,” Diana countered. “What was our best streak?”
“A few months,” Steve murmured. “Remember Greece?”
“I do.”
In his opinion, Greece was the closest thing to Themyscira to exist in his world, and so he had taken her there to see if he was right. Diana had loved it, the history hanging in the air and filtering through every crack in the old walls; cobbled streets and the food that somewhat reminded her of home, even though it felt like a dream now. She couldn’t quite bring herself to believe that they had, in fact, had some time to themselves once. Enough of it for them to find their balance again.
Steve cleared his throat. “We’ve got some time now,” he noted matter-of-factly.
Diana tilted her head, her lips twitching as she pressed them together around a smile.
“I don’t think Bruce would appreciate if we…” she trailed off, an eyebrow arched.
“Well, we could, ah… play Go Fish or Charades for the next four hours,” he conceded smoothly.
She laughed. “Charades?”
“Hey, the British Intelligence didn’t pick me to be their spy for nothing,” he protested, offended by her amusement.
“They picked you because you’re good at Charades,” she echoed, skeptical.
“No, not because I’m good at—” Steve huffed and rubbed his eyes. “You know what? Never mind.”
He let go of her and stepped away, but Diana’s hand darted to curl around his wrist. She drew him back to her, fingers burying in his hair, turning his face to hers until his eyes were all she could see. His gaze dropped down to her month. She watched him drag it up to meet her gaze once more, and not without effort, too. Could see the heat in his eyes that made her shiver.
“I didn’t say no,” she whispered.
Steve kissed her then, sure and purposeful. And suddenly, nothing was funny anymore.
“Come with me,” he murmured against her lips.
He twined his fingers with hers and took one step toward the couch lining one wall of the cabin, and then another.
This time, Diana followed him without protest.
---
Gotham, 2017
It was Alfred who answered the door after one of Wayne’s chauffeurs brought them to the lake house at close to 2 in the morning. Steve stared at Alfred’s dark-blue robe and slippers, realizing that in all of his time there, he had never seen Bruce’s butler wearing anything but pristine, perfectly tailored suits and pressed shirts. Quite frankly, he wouldn’t have been surprised if Alfred wore them to bed as well. It was absurd, of course, but the robe did catch him off-guard.
“Ms. Prince,” the older man said when Diana stepped into the foyer. “It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” Diana smiled at him. “Did we wake you? It’s late, I’m sorry. Perhaps, we should have gone to a hotel—”
“Nonsense,” Alfred stopped her with a shake of his head. “It is no bother at all. And we’re always happy to have you. Your old room is at your disposal for as long as you need it.”
She nodded and squeezed his arm. “Thank you, Alfred. For the plane, and the car.”
A black limousine had been waiting for them on the tarmac when they had landed an hour ago, sleek and shiny like it had never encountered a puddle in its life. Steve had whistled quietly under his breath as he followed Diana down the steps and towards it, shoulders hunched against the angry wind that had greeted them the moment the door opened. No one could accuse Bruce Wayne of not being classy.
“You’re welcome. The jet was Master Wayne’s idea,” Alfred pointed out, but his features softened.
“I will make sure to thank him,” Diana promised. “Is he around?”
The butler shook his head. “Patrolling. He should be back soon.” Alfred’s eyes moved past her shoulder and fixed on Steve who had set his bag on the floor near Diana’s suitcase and closed the front door behind them. “Captain Trevor.”
Steve flashed a smile at him, surprised by the amount of comfortable familiarity of the moment. Diana… Diana was home, so to speak, but it had been a while since anyone else knew him for who he really was. Not since the last of his war friends had died. And Steve realized that he had missed it, the simple reassurance of being recognized and accepted. Maybe Bruce wasn’t his biggest fan and maybe Alfred’s loyalty lay with the man he had raised, but it was not nothing. For all Steve knew, this was the start.
“Alfred,” he greeted. “Good to see you.”
Alfred nodded. “How was the flight?” he asked.
“It was…” Steve started and faltered.
It wasn’t curiosity. It was the small talk that people tended to play into because social conventions dictated so, but he still felt the back of his neck grow hot. He doubted that Bruce’s butler wanted to know just how spectacular a good chunk of said trip was, exactly.
It was, hands down, the best flight Steve could think of, and not only because the pilot had let him mess around with the controls before they took off, when Steve’s curiosity had gotten the best of him.
He cleared his throat and busied himself with unnecessarily rearranging their scant three-bag luggage.
“Good,” he muttered in a voice that he hoped passed at least somewhat for even. “Yeah, it was good.”
He ignored Diana’s knowing smirk, praying to all gods that Alfred didn’t notice it.
All three of them turned around when Barry shuffled out of the kitchen, dressed in a Superman t-shirt and red sweatpants, a bowl of… cereal? in hands. Steve’s lips twitched and he pressed them together.
Barry’s face lit up the second he spotted them.
“Hey, Di,” he smiled as he skidded to a halt.
One didn’t need to be good at reading people to see how much the Flash adored her. And that the feeling was very much mutual.
“Hello, Barry.” Diana stepped toward him and leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. She ran her hand up and down his arm. “I missed you.”
And maybe it was just the light in the foyer but Steve would have sworn that he saw Barry blush a pretty deep shade of red. He bit his lip to resist the urge to ask her to go easy on the affection, lest she send poor speedster into cardiac arrest.
“I bet,” Barry grinned. “But I missed you, too.” He showed a spoonful of food into his mouth and glanced past her. “Hey, Steve.”
Steve gave him a small wave.
“Did Clark lend you this?” He gestured at Barry and the giant S spread across his chest.
The young man glanced down at his outfit. “Nah,” he grunted around a mouthful of his snack. Chewed. Swallowed. Looked down again, his eyebrows pulled together. “I don’t think it’s his size,” he added, completely missing the joke. His eyes darted between Steve and Diana. “Sorry we interrupted your honeymoon.”
Steve felt the heat creep up his cheeks. “It wasn’t—” he pinched the bridge of his nose. “It wasn’t a—a honeymoon.” He turned to Diana for help but she only raised an eyebrow at him, curious to see where he was going.
If only he knew...
“Either way, you probably kept busy,” Barry noted dismissively. And then it was his turn to turn scarlet once more, his eyes widening in horror when he realized what they were talking about, and in Diana’s presence, no less. “I didn’t mean it like…” he stammered hastily.
“So, have you moved in?” Steve asked quickly, in an attempt to direct the conversation elsewhere and save them all from this honest-to-god nightmare.
“Huh?” Barry blinked at him.
Steve gestured vaguely around and shrugged.
“Oh, here, no,” Barry shook his head. “But Bruce’s never around,” he explained eagerly. “And Alfred is lonely.”
He even moved closer to Alfred for good measure and added some artful sympathy to his gaze.
“I am certainly not,” Alfred said, turning to the young man. “We spoke about this, Master Allen.”
“It’s okay, Alfred,” Barry patted him on the shoulder. “We all get lonely now and then, it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I’m not…” Alfred started but stopped abruptly and resigned to merely rubbing the corners of his eyes. Evidently, they had had this conversation before and he was not inclined to go there again. He glanced at the bowl in Barry’s hands instead. “Late dinner or early breakfast?” he inquired.
“A midnight snack,” Barry grinned. “I’m a growing boy.”
Diana laughed. “You sure are.”
Alfred turned to Steve, clearly choosing to ignore Barry from then on. “About our earlier discussion, Captain,” he began, and Steve felt his smile slip. “I started the process, but it might take some time.”
Steve glanced at Diana whose brows creased ever so slightly.
He turned back to the older man. “Thank you, Alfred, I really appreciate it,” he said sincerely.
“Wait, what process?” Barry piped up, his eyes darting between the three of them.
Diana shook her head. “Tomorrow,” she promised.
Barry’s puzzled expression remained intact but he didn’t argue.
Alfred nodded. “It is quite late indeed,” he said.
“Alfred, do you think I should—” she began, glancing toward the staircase leading to the Batcave.
“No,” he said decisively. “If there was an issue, we’d know. Master Wayne should be back soon. I think what we all need is to get some rest. You have had a long day, Ms. Prince, and based on our past experience with Master Luthor, our hands might be full in the near future.”
Diana’s eyes flicked to Steve briefly. “Yes, that might be best,” she agreed.
“I will see you in the morning,” Alfred said, his tone allowing no room for argument.
“No, really, what process?” Steve heard Barry ask in a loud whisper as he followed Diana down the hallway.
Her room was dark and quiet, illuminated by nothing but the faint glow of the perimeter lights filtering through thin curtains on the glass wall overlooking the lake. This far away, out of the reach of the city lights, the blackness outside was nearly all-consuming.
It took them a total of ten minutes to get ready for bed as they moved easily around one another, following their familiar routines.
Stripped down to his boxers, Steve slid under the covers that were soft and crisp and clean. Egyptian cotton, if he was not mistaken. But they didn’t smell like Diana’s sheets, and it made him miss Paris something fierce. He exhaled slowly when his head touched the pillow, the relief of being able to lie down almost overwhelming. Diana pulled the pins out of her hair, letting it fall in a black waterfall down her back, and climbed into the bed from the other side. She rolled onto her side to face him, her eyes moving over his features, but didn’t move any closer.
Steve turned his head to look at her, taking in as much of her features as he could make out in near-complete darkness.
“That’s too far away,” he whispered, longing for her to the point of an ache in his bones.
His hand fell on the pillow between them, palm up, and Diana reached for it, weaving her fingers through his.
“It still feels so new,” she murmured softly. “I’ve known you for a century, Steve, and it still feels like it only has just started.”
He considered her words.
“Do you think it would’ve been different if I—if we had stayed together?” he asked.
“No,” she replied immediately and without hesitation. “It would have always felt this way.”
He wanted to ask her if she was worried about Lex being on the run and maybe cooking up another monster in some bunker. Or about Bruce being out there alone and if her suggestion to go join him was because there was strength in numbers and they all needed that more than anything else right now. That, and maybe a miracle. He wanted to say that he was sorry that she had to miss the event at the museum that he knew was really important to her, because his people kept screwing up.
Instead, he said, “It’s always felt like that to me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, either,” Diana smiled.
Steve ran his thumb over her knuckles. “You think it’s ever going to wear off?”
She squeezed his fingers and shook her head a little. “Not even after a thousand years.”
He tugged lightly at the knot of their hands and whispered, “C’mere.”
She didn’t resist this time, moving across the mattress and into his embrace. Not even after a thousand years … He felt his lips curl into a smile. This was the kind of sentiment that he rarely allowed himself to feel, or speak out loud, for that matter. But coming from her, it made him wonder absently how a century of his life on this Earth could feel like such a long time, but a thousand years with her somehow didn’t seem like quite enough.
Arm wrapped around Diana, her hand resting on his sternum, Steve pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing in the fresh scent of linen and soap clinging to them after the shower they had shared. He allowed his eyes to drop shut, his body and senses soothed by her presence, and her heartbeat thumping against his skin.
“Diana?”
“Hm?”
“D’you think you could get me a good deal on a Wonder Woman shirt or something?” he asked quietly.
Her quiet laughter was the last thing he heard before he drifted to sleep.
---
Even after all his years as Batman, Bruce had yet to decide what nights were worse – those that left him battered and bruised and beaten up within an inch of his life, or those that felt like a complete waste of time on account of nothing happening in the city. Not even some petty robbery to make pulling on his suit worth it.
Although most of the time, either scenario was a decent enough distraction to keep his mind from straying where Bruce didn’t want it to be. All his life, he knew exactly what he wanted, and how to get it. His response to the proverbial Money can’t buy happiness had always been Everything has a price . And almost everything had, indeed . And, truth be told, happiness hardly had a fixed definition. And then, his arrogance had been shattered by a man who should have been dead for a hundred years and the look on Diana’s face when he walked into Amanda Waller’s office.
She had never promised him anything and Bruce wasn’t delusional enough to think that they really had a long-term shot at anything substantial. The League aside, they lived in two different worlds and if he was honest with himself, he was not likely to put more effort into their relationship - had it ever happened - than in any of those that came before it.
Yet, willingly or unwillingly, he wanted her, and he was quite certain that Diana was very much aware of it. And if her long-lost Captain hadn’t made a surprise appearance, Bruce was more or less sure that something would have happened between them eventually. Maybe.
How foolish he was to assume .
As it was, she was in Paris catching up on years of something he wasn’t even sure could be defined with words, while Bruce spent most of his nights perched of some roof like a gargoyle, trying oh so very hard not to picture what she and Steve Trevor were engaged in, exactly, and knowing that he would quite possibly sell his very soul without thinking twice if only it allowed him to swap places with that man. To be on the receiving end of her smiles and the casual brush of her hand whenever they were close enough to touch.
Ridiculously, when the news of Lex’s escape broke out last night, followed by a detailed report on the injuries sustained by the Arkham guards that got in his way, it felt almost like a relief. Or it would have, if only it wasn’t for a pin-prickling sensation that Bruce couldn’t quite shake off. Like someone was watching his every step, yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see who it was, and it made him even more paranoid and anxious. He backtracked once, twice, until he knew he wasn’t being followed, yet the feeling persisted.
By the time the Batmobile had finally rolled into the garage, it was close to 3 in the morning and Bruce’s earlier alertness had morphed into weariness that was pressing down on him like a pile of bricks. The one thing he wanted at that moment was to wash off the rubbery scent of the Batsuit from his skin and fall into bed for twelve hours, hoping for a dreamless sleep.
He killed the engine, plunging the cavernous space into a nearly uncomfortable silence. He lifted the door and climbed out of his car, choosing to ignore the tightness in his back, his hand reaching to pull his cowl off, finding it oddly suffocating tonight.
The lights were dimmed in the house for the night; however, when he looked up, he saw Alfred walking down the stairs. Halfway down, he stopped when he spotted Bruce.
“Thought I heard you come in, Master Wayne,” Alfred said, his voice carrying across the distance between them, clear under the high ceiling.
Bruce ran his hand over his hair, not certain if it was helping to smooth it down or making it worse. Not that it mattered, strictly speaking.
“You shouldn’t have stayed up,” he noted, heading towards one of the workstations to turn the alarm back on.
Steve Trevor had upgraded it before he and Diana had left for France a couple of weeks ago, and as much as Bruce hated to admit it, the man clearly knew what he was doing. But even so, it felt flimsy somehow, in the face of a maniac with a flair for dramatics and a taste for petty vengeance running around Gotham. He wasn’t scared of Lex Luthor and his antics, but he didn’t trust the man who had stopped at nothing before, and probably wasn’t going to start using his brain now.
Still, there was a certain satisfaction in seeing the indicators on the screen go from red to green. Somehow, even the tightness in his chest eased.
Alfred slid his hands into the pockets of his robe. “I wasn’t planning to,” he said evenly in a voice that spoke volumes of his attitude towards Bruce’s life choices. “But Ms. Prince has arrived.”
Bruce, who was in the process of taking off his gloves, paused halfway into the task. He didn’t look up.
“I see.”
“Together with Captain Trevor,” Alfred added.
Bruce nodded.
Of course. They were a package deal now and he might as well get used to it, but there still was a pang of disappointment in his chest. A reminder of losing something that he never even had.
Maybe that was the problem, he thought absently. Not knowing how it could have or would have worked out if only they had a chance to give it a try. Maybe he would have cared less if he had already taken Diana to bed and his yearning for her had been satisfied. Maybe he wouldn’t have cared at all if he wasn’t left wondering, and knowing that he would never know for sure.
At the very least, he could pretend that this line of thinking made sense.
Slowly, he pulled his gloves off and dropped them onto the nearest desk.
“Any luck tonight, Master Wayne?” Alfred asked, knowing not to push.
Bruce shook his head. “No, but I didn’t exactly expect to run into him in a corner store. He is probably holed up somewhere, lying in wait.”
“You’d look ridiculous in a corner store wearing this.” The older man gestured at Bruce’s bat suit with a wide swipe of his hand.
Bruce’s lips twitched.
“But who’s to say I don’t know how to make an entrance?”
“I don’t think anyone has ever said that,” Alfred pointed out. “Master Stone will be coming in in the morning,” he added. “Have you spoken with Master Kent?”
“No,” Bruce started towards him. “But seeing as how our last encounter with Lex ended for him, I’m sure he knows what’s going on here.” One last glance over his shoulder, and he turned off the lights, plunging the Batcave into a semi-darkness dispersed only by the glow of a few screens. “Is Barry here?”
Alfred nodded. “Yes, and on account of that, our pantry is empty.”
“You’re not really worried about food, are you, Alfred?”
The older man looked seriously at him when Bruce paused a few steps below him. “No. I am worried about Master Luthor’s intentions towards all of you. It’s like you said, Master Wayne, your last run-in wasn’t something to be desired for. It stands to reason that he might try harder this time.”
Now that Lex knew what he was up against, Bruce finished in his mind.
Alfred was right, but he chose not to say it out loud.
---
Steve woke up at the crack of dawn, his head heavy and his eyes full of sand. He couldn’t have been asleep for more than several hours, and it felt like he’d only drifted off minutes ago. The day outside the massive window was grey and gloomy, wisps of fog crawling along the surface of the lake and the low overcast clouds promised rain, or maybe even snow later in the day. Even looking at the trees swaying in the frigid wind outside made him shiver.
He blinked blearily and rubbed his eyes, stifling a yawn as he rolled onto his back. He reached for Diana on the other side of the bed with the intention of tucking her into the curve of his body and hopefully falling asleep for another hour or two. However, the spot next to him was empty, the sheets cold.
Steve blinked his eyes open properly, his mind alert. He frowned and lifted his head, craning his neck to look around the room that was half-drowning in the early-morning shadows.
For a brief moment, he hoped that maybe Diana was in the bathroom, about to return and crawl back into his arms. That plan, however, shattered before his eyes when he spotted her standing by the dresser wearing black jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, fastening the strap of her own watch around her wrist.
For a moment, Steve found himself transfixed, his eyes moving over her body, so familiar in just about every way he could think of and yet something he was not likely to ever get used to, or take for granted, for that matter.
Since when did she wear a watch? Yes, she used to wear his, he remembered, but this was different. This was the woman who didn’t think that letting a small thing tell her what to do, or when. He wondered what had caused the change, a quick jolt of regret flaring up in his chest over missing it.
And then she turned to him, perhaps noticing him staring at her in the mirror, and smiled. And just like that, everything else melted away.
“Steve.”
He liked that. Liked the way his name rolled off her tongue, familiar and a little possessive.
“You gotta stop doing that,” Steve murmured sleepily.
He had a long and pretty detailed list of things that he strongly detested. Like lukewarm coffee and cold showers and mosquitoes, and everything he had to go through in boot camp – like 5 am wake-up calls and 10-mile runs. However, waking up without Diana in bed next to him was pretty close to the top of it. Steve had had 67 years’ worth of mornings without her. Frankly, he’d be perfectly fine with it never happening again for as long as he breathed.
He ran a hand over his face, desperate to clear the web of weariness still clinging to his brain. “What’s going on?” he asked, alarmed momentarily by the possibility of something having gone terribly wrong while they were sleeping.
“Nothing.” Diana shook her head, her voice soft, easy. She walked over to the bed and knelt before it, leaning closer to him. “I have an errand to run.”
Steve’s eyebrow quirked. “No,” he shook his head, feeling his mouth curve into a grin. “You have to take your clothes off and come back here.” He patted the spot next to him with his hand for good measure.
She bit back a smile and reached over to sweep her fingers through his hair. “Sleep. I’ll be back before breakfast.”
He felt his brows knit together. “What’s so urgent that it needs to be done before breakfast?”
“I’ll tell you later,” she promised.
“Or… you could tell me now.”
Her hand slipped down to curl over his cheek, her eyes found his. “Do you trust me, Steve?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. Always .
She smiled softly. “Then sleep. I will explain when I’m back.”
Steve nodded. And then once more. If it was something serious, she would have told him, he reasoned.
Diana leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I love you,” she whispered into his skin.
He thought of how easy it would have been to wrap his arms around her and pull her into bed with him, to bury his face into the curve of her neck and feel the flutter of her pulse against his cheek. There were comfort and familiarity and devotion to every touch they had shared, and in the light of the storm heading their way, he craved nothing more than to hold on to the sliver of normalcy while they still had it.
But then she was pulling away from him and standing up, and he found himself missing her terribly even before she had left the room. When the door closed behind Diana, he thought absently about getting out of the bed and following her. Surely, she wouldn’t have minded him running errands with her, whatever that might be at 7 in the bloody morning. He blinked, watching the door. And then again, slower, his eyelids heavy, and by the time one of Bruce’s cars rolled out of the garage with a soft purr, he was already fast asleep.
---
Amanda Waller was scared. Really and truly, down to her bones, terrified. She was not used to the feeling, and putting the predicament that she had found herself in aside, the feeling stirred uneasiness in the pit of her stomach.
In all of her time as the Director of A.R.G.U.S., she had made plenty of mistakes, from small miscalculations that went unnoticed to missteps that had led to her graceless downfall in the eyes of her superiors. Surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, the Suicide Squad fiasco hadn’t been the worst idea she had ever had, and truth be told, given some time, she could think of stories far more impressive than what had unfolded in Midway City when all hell broke loose. It was just the most recent of said bad ideas. Or at least, it had been, until the attention of the press had switched to whatever went down in S.T.A.R. Labs. Now, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to point their finger in her direction for lack of a better idea.
And it wasn’t even her fault, for God’s sake. For once, she could claim with the clear consciousness that she had nothing to do with whatever had happened to those ex-soldiers. Yet, it had happened in her city, right under her nose, and she’d be damned if she would let any information leak to the press, because if it did, there was no coming back from it. They would eat her alive.
Well, the good thing was that Waller knew exactly how to patch up all of her wrongdoings and get back in the good graces of her superiors again. If she brought in the Justice League, if she was the one to get them to cooperate with the government voluntarily and willingly and on their own accord – more or less, at least – she knew that many of her faults and missteps would be forgiven and forgotten. After the Capitol building collapsed around Superman, the public had been getting exponentially more and more anxious about having superheroes on the loose. Superheroes who were just as likely to destroy them, as they were to save them.
And frankly, she had seen enough to not trust Batman and his merry company not to screw it all up. The only thing that distinguished him from Joker and his like was some flimsy sense of morality that Waller didn’t believe could hold in the face of real threats. She couldn’t afford for the League to turn on the world the first chance they got, and she didn’t trust them to keep maintaining their integrity when choosing the dark side was so easy.
Her first mistake with that task was that she had assumed, naively so, that it would be an easy one to accomplish. That the promise of good publicity and thinly veiled threats were going to do magic and pave her way straight to their eager cooperation. She thought that dangling Steve Trevor – who was blatantly breaking his agreement with her, damn it – in front of Wonder Woman’s face would make Waller a hero in the other woman’s eyes.
She should have known better.
And, as of right now, she could expertly acknowledge that her second mistake was underestimating them.
Which was how Amanda Waller had ended up being pinned against the door of her office at the A.R.G.U.S. headquarters, with Diana Prince’s hand around her throat and her world blurring around the edges from fear and shortness of breath.
There were not many days in the past two decades when Waller had wished she had stayed in bed and let the world keep on spinning, but today was starting to look like a strong contestant for the top spot, climbing with each passing moment.
It wasn’t often that she was scared, and on the rare moments when a twinge of fear would make itself known in the pit of her stomach, she knew how not to show it. Not to express any sign of vulnerability lest she give the other party an upper hand, a weak spot for an attack. But quite frankly, she couldn’t care less for the pretences now.
It had started out with a phone call she had received from Bruce Wayne an hour ago, asking for an audience. Against her better judgement, Waller got curious. He rarely wanted anything from her, and he never asked , in the past, and that should have been her first clue. The second one, one that she shouldn’t have ignored, had been the switched-off alarm system when she had entered the building, but she had foolishly written it off to not being the first person at work for once, and, to be completely honest, Waller was too happy to have spent the night in her own bed and not at her desk to care.
In retrospect, she shouldn’t have been surprised to find none other than Diana Prince in her office – inside of her office – when she pushed the door open, the order for her assistant to go get her coffee, pronto , already on the tip of her tongue. Earlier, when her alarm didn’t go off, and her coffee maker didn’t start as programmed - and when it did, she managed to spill the cup of what was meant to make her day better on her beige pantsuit, Amanda Waller chose not to expect much from the day.
So far, it seemed to be delivering splendidly.
Diana, who had been standing by the window and watching the traffic flow outside, turned around when Waller walked in.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Just like that. The tone of her voice – like she assumed that Waller was there to dance to her tune, no questions asked, and maybe even curtsey a little – made Waller’s hackles stand on end.
“How did you get here?” she asked, choosing to forgo the pleasantries.
“If you want to keep people out, you might want to consider a better security system,” Diana responded evenly.
She looked different in regular clothes, Waller noted absently. Unusual, when you knew what to look for . When you had already seen what she was capable of and knew what was hiding behind the façade. Waller was far more used to blurry images of red and blue armour rimmed with gold than the flesh and blood person with sharp eyes and regal posture. Much like the last time they had met, Waller almost expected Diana to be, well, more .
(In the future, she would know to never make that mistake again.)
An eyebrow arched, Waller studied her guest for a moment. “Alright, let’s talk,” she agreed, choosing to cut straight to the chase. She had a long day ahead of her and whatever this was, she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with it, period, so the sooner she got the conversation out of the way, the sooner she would be able to contact the security department and have someone fired for letting a stranger break into her office in broad daylight. “Do you have a specific topic in mind or just the general state of current affairs?”
Diana regarded her for a few moments, as if surprised to meet no resistance. Amanda Waller – 1, Wonder Woman – 0. Not that anyone was keeping score.
“I believe we have some things to discuss,” Diana said.
“Then you should have called and made an appointment, like everyone else.”
“I believe I did.”
And maybe it was the early hour and the lack of proper sleep, but Waller could have sworn that there was a smile in the other woman’s voice even though her expression betrayed little emotion.
She couldn’t help but wonder how it worked between her and Steve Trevor, the whole relationship thing. Did it work? Waller found it hard to imagine it, to imagine the person standing before her being anything but the woman who could tear down buildings with her bare hands and create sonic blasts with her magical gauntlets, whatever that was all about. She could hardly see Diana as anything human, let alone anything… well, in love.
“I wasn’t expecting you. If I remember correctly, it was Mr. Wayne who requested the meeting.”
“Bruce is busy,” Diana shrugged.
Waller walked over to her desk and set her purse down. Diana unnerved her. She was a wild card, more so than the rest of them. Loyal and noble and all things perfect, she was the least likely to be swayed into being under someone’s control, especially the US government, Waller suspected. What Diana might need to discuss with the Director of A.R.G.U.S. was a mystery, and no matter how much Waller tried to guess, her mind kept coming up blank.
Which left her even more frustrated than the whole break-in situation, and the latter was bad enough.
“You don’t seem like the kind of person who runs his errands,” Waller noted.
“I’m not,” Diana responded. “The call was a favour.”
Waller didn’t say anything, choosing to merely stare at her. Her stares tended to have a spectacular effect, making her subordinates fidget and squirm under her heavy scrutiny. Making it possible for her to ask questions and obtain information without having to say a word.
Diana Prince didn’t appear to be affected.
“The S.T.A.R. Labs,” Diana began, nonetheless, when another moment had passed, but Waller had still said nothing. “Was it you?”
“Which part?”
“Did you authorize the project to make those people into—”
“Someone like you?” Waller offered helpfully. “No, I did not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t care.” She could feel the mother of all headaches starting to build in the back of her skull, and her workday hadn’t even started officially yet. Wouldn’t for another hour. “Go ask Cyborg. He’s the one who’s been lurking in our system for the past two weeks.”
Would it be too unprofessional to pull out the bottle of bourbon that she kept hidden in the bottom drawer of her desk and pout herself a glass at 8 in the morning? A cup of coffee would also do, but it didn’t seem like it was an option.
Waller’s lips twitched a little when she saw that Diana had raised a curious eyebrow at her, clearly impressed. “What? You thought we wouldn’t notice systematic data breaches? Give me some credit, Ms. Prince…” She paused. “Is that what I’m supposed to call you, or do you prefer Wonder Woman?”
“I don’t care what you call me,” Diana said, her voice cold. “You want us to trust you, but you give us nothing to trust. I have no reason to believe a single word you say, not after everything you’ve had done, Director.”
Waller pursed her lips together, studying her. Interesting how the whole League was under Wonder Woman’s heel without seemingly giving a damn about it. Interesting how Diana didn’t seem to care much for it one way or another, either. Was she really fine with Wayne’s leadership? Waller couldn’t imagine that, not from what she knew about Bruce and his less than pleasant personality. Couldn’t see someone like Diana Prince take orders from him. Or was it because her priorities lay elsewhere?
“I told you the truth, I have no idea what else you want from me.”
“Nothing.” Diana squared her shoulders and folded her arms over her chest. “We don’t need anything from you. In fact, we don’t need you .”
“You do, I’m afraid,” Waller pointed out. “The world is scared of you more than not. How long do you think it will take them to go for torches and pitchforks if I stop putting out the fires you leave in your wake?”
“That is not true,” Diana shook her head.
Waller let out a short laugh that came out as a humourless bark, sharp and grating even to her own ears. Oddly loud in the near-empty building. “They denounced Superman, don’t you remember?” She paused. “But of course, you don’t, because you weren’t here.” Another pause as she watched Diana’s brows pull together. “People are scared of what they don’t understand, and they may not know how much you help, exactly. How much you do for them even when they can see it. But they sure as hell see how much havoc you all could wreck for no reason other than waking up on the wrong side of the bed.”
“How can you want to be a leader when you have no faith in your own people?”
“And you have too much of it,” Waller countered. “For someone who is not even one of them. You don’t know the first thing about accountability. But if you choose to live in this world, you should learn to play by its rules.”
For a moment, it felt like someone had turned off the sound around them. The room was so quiet and so completely still as they sized each other up across the ten feet of space, that even the traffic noise outside faded into the background until there was nothing left. Just the charged air and palpable hostility.
“The League will never agree to your terms, and you know that,” Diana was the first to speak.
“They will if you ask nicely.”
“Why would I do it?”
“Because none of you wants to be feared, believe me.” Waller tilted her head. “And I can make it happen, should I choose to do so. Have you ever considered that?”
Diana frowned.
“What’s in it for you? What do you gain from fear?”
“Let’s just say, I have nothing to lose.” Waller shrugged. “Unlike you, Ms. Prince.” She paused, feeling a flutter of smug satisfaction in her chest when she managed to find a thread to grab onto. “How is that war pilot of yours doing?”
It wasn’t a threat, per se, but it wasn’t an idle warning either.
Waller did, in fact, have little to lose, if only because she didn’t trust them either. Didn’t trust them not to turn on each other and destroy everyone around them in the process.
Yet, she still didn’t expect what happened next – didn’t expect Diana’s body to move at lightning speed, slamming into her and throwing her against the door with a dull thud that made the stars explode before Waller’s eyes. Didn’t expect Wonder Woman’s hand to close around her throat, allowing just enough air to pass, but barely so. Didn’t expect her legs to kick against the air, not able to touch the floor, or Diana’s eyes to bore into her, barely contained rage burning in them hotter than fire.
Which brought her to a moment of striking realization – she was never going to underestimate any of them again.
And then, there came the burning when something Waller couldn’t see curled around her wrists, holding them together. Struggling for breath, she could swear she saw a faint glow light up Diana’s face, but she didn’t know if she could trust her own eyes. Not… like this.
Panic came when her lungs started to scream for a proper inhale. Her eyes widened in fear. Being at the complete mercy of this woman, not being able to look down, sent her heart into a wild sprint. She tried to swallow, tried to--
“What…” she started, terrified.
“The Lasso of Hestia compels you to tell the truth.” Diana’s voice was low and measured, but Waller could see how much effort she was putting into it, into keeping it from raising, and it terrified her beyond anything she’d ever experienced. “Tell me, are you behind the experiment in the S.T.A.R. Labs?”
“No,” Waller croaked and licked her dry lips. “I’m not, I swear.”
After a moment, Diana loosened her grip enough for Waller’s feet to find the floor again, but she didn’t let go. “Do you know who it was?”
“No,” Waller repeated.
“What about Steve Trevor?”
Waller stared at her, thrown off. “I’m sorry?”
“How did you find him?”
Each moment of hesitation resulted in waves of searing pain that throbbed in her wrists and spread up her arms. So hot…
“Tell me,” Diana demanded, watching Waller struggle with words.
“Lex Luthor,” Waller rasped, at last, wincing. The pain lessened the moment she started speaking, but still there, still burning. “You were under surveillance for a while. Several years.” Shit, she couldn’t, shouldn’t, spill that. Yet, she couldn’t not say it. “Lex Luthor had… had the footage of you, information. When he got arrested, we seized the files. Everything he had owned. There was a photograph, a scan of a picture taken during World War I, of you and four men.” She swallowed, watching disgust and disbelief flash over Diana’s face. But not surprise.
“We checked and found out that two of them were dead, but the other two…” The burning, the buzzing in her ears were making it hard to think straight. “The Native American was impossible to track down, the facial recognition scans came up with nothing, but the other one, Steve Trevor… There was no death certificate, he simply disappeared.” Waller was breathing fast now, half-horrified and half-mesmerized by her inability to hold back. “And then a match came up, he was caught on a CCTV camera in Madrid six months ago.” She swallowed again. “He had forged documents, a fake birth certificate. Driver’s licence. But it was him.”
The man had created a whole life for himself from scratch, and if Waller hadn’t been busy fighting her wars with the petty criminals of Gotham and struggling to keep her own position afloat, she would probably have taken a moment to admire it. Sincerely.
“You know the rest.”
Diana stepped back, and it took Waller all of her strength and willpower not to collapse on the floor. She leaned heavily against the door, her wrists still bound and the furious storm in Diana’s eyes still raging in full force.
“Why is he of interest to you?”
“He’s not. He wasn’t ,” she couldn’t help but amend herself. “I wanted Bruce Wayne to cooperate.” She winced again, willing the pain away. “And you, all of you.”
“Wasn’t?” Diana echoed, disregarding the second half of her statement.
“I want to know how he lived,” Waller blurted out and grimaced.
“Stay away from him.” Diana’s voice was low and dangerous and every bit as terrifying as the entire encounter.
Yet, something flared up inside of Waller as well. Frustration. The unfairness of this all. She was, after all, only trying to keep her city safe. Trying to do what was best for everyone. They were on the same side, she and the League. They fought the same battle.
“He and I have a contract. He owes me,” she said, raising her chin and looking Diana square in the eyes even though it terrified her to do so. “He is a military man, like it or not. I could have him court-martialed for insubordination.”
Diana moved toward her and Waller sucked in her breath instinctively, pressing her back hard against the door and trying to ignore the knob that dug painfully into her side.
“If you come after him… if you come after any of them, I will destroy you.”
It wasn’t a threat. It was a promise. And one that Diana fully intended to keep, too. Waller could see it in her eyes, and she knew not to mistake it for a bluff.
She felt the lasso fall from her wrists, which meant the end of the conversation, she presumed. The burning subsided instantly, and when she dared to glance down, expecting to see welts on her wrists, her skin appeared to be unmarked.
“You can’t protect them forever,” Waller said, regaining her own will again, as anger welled up in her chest, just as burning as that damned rope had been moments ago.
“I don’t need to protect them forever,” Diana said evenly, never breaking eye contact. “I only need to protect them once.”
That was—well, that was a threat.
“You’re not a murderer.”
The words were out of Waller’s mouth before she knew to stop them, and that was when she saw just how much she had underestimated Diana Prince. Wonder Woman was a protector, always had been, but she was also a warrior who had killed before, and would do it again, and again, for as long as she walked this Earth, to save those who needed saving. But, prior to this moment, it had seldom been personal. And Waller’s tactical mistake was making it so.
Diana stepped around her, reaching for the doorknob when Waller moved unsteadily out of her way, relieved. But Diana paused, halfway out of the door. She turned her head slightly to the side without actually looking back.
“Don’t make me one.”
---
Steve woke up with a start a couple of hours later, his face buried in Diana’s pillow and his mind slightly less hazy than before.
It took him a moment to realize where he was – Bruce’s lake house, not Diana’s apartment in Paris – the memory of the previous night slightly blurred around the edges. And then another moment to remember her leaving earlier, and the smile on her lips that he wanted to kiss senseless until she forgot her own name.
He rolled onto his back and rubbed his eyes. A shuddered exhale tumbled out of his chest. The day outside was no more inviting than it had been hours ago, and Steve felt goosebumps prickle his skin.
Diana promised to be back before breakfast. He wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly, but his watch read 9.30 and he figured that he might as well go check if she was here. Their bags appeared to be unpacked, his clothes neatly stacked on top of the dresser for Steve to put them away. He smiled, glowing warmth blossoming in his chest. She had to have done it before she left.
The house was quiet when he finally emerged from the bedroom fifteen minutes later. The lounge was empty, and so was the deck, which, given the weather conditions, was not at all surprising. Steve peeked into Bruce’s study through the half-open door, but no one was there, either. He chose to take it as a good sign – if the world was indeed falling to pieces there would surely be more commotion. Last time he checked, it was a rather busy ordeal.
Steve headed to the kitchen next, thinking that Barry or Alfred might be there, although interested mostly in finding coffee, and maybe food. Yesterday on the plane, they were a bit too preoccupied to eat, and too tired to do it afterwards, and now the delicious smells wafting from there combined with the promise of an actual breakfast made his stomach grumble.
However, it was not Barry or Alfred but Bruce who he found standing by the coffee maker, waiting patiently for it to work its magic. Bruce who looked up before Steve could reconsider and maybe step back into the hallway and come back later, which made for an impossible escape.
There was an odd sort of energy between them, had been since the day he had moved into Diana’s room. Not hostility, per se, but for a guy who had a poker face fused to his skin, Bruce appeared to be astonishingly transparent when it came to his feelings for Diana. And while Steve knew that she loved him and that she wanted to be with him , it was of little help against the territorial possessiveness that was, in all probability, ingrained into his very DNA and that started to simmer just beneath his skin in an instant.
That, and Steve suspected that Bruce now felt the way he did when he thought that she and Batman were together.
Needless to say, it didn’t bode well for proper team bonding. Steve wished that he knew how he was supposed to have a relationship with the man owning the house where he was sleeping with the woman said man was quite probably in love with. The very same man who wasn’t, Steve imagined, very happy to have him there.
“Morning,” Bruce said.
If he had ignored him, Steve would have pretended that he forgot his phone in the bedroom and escaped the heavy uncomfortable silence that was bound to wedge itself between them. As it was, he had no choice but to walk into the kitchen and nod his own hello.
“Coffee?” Bruce asked, and, all things considered, it was the closest to a peace offering that had ever been spoken between them.
Steve nodded, “That’d be great, thanks.”
Without another word, Bruce reached for a second cup.
“I’m sorry we have to interrupt your—”
Steve thought that he was probably going to go up in flames if Bruce said honeymoon . There were entirely too many people on this planet – and in the house, for that matter – who were way too aware of his private life.
“—trip,” Bruce finished.
To busy himself, Steve poked into one of the drawers, looking for a teaspoon. “Well, to be fair, I wasn’t really doing much of anything, and Diana wouldn’t have come if she didn’t think that it was necessary.”
Bruce nodded. The coffeemaker beeped and turned off. He poured two cups, and handed one to Steve, black and strong. If Barry was here, he’d add half a carton of milk to his own cup, which never failed to make Alfred raise an eyebrow and make a dry comment about how that wasn’t a respectable way to drink coffee. How it was practically an insult to coffee. But Steve preferred his the way Bruce did, apparently. The kind of stuff that could burn right through the lining of his stomach.
He sipped the coffee, allowing himself to study the man standing a few feet away from him. Now, they didn’t know each other well enough for Steve to make any kind of assumptions, but during the brief time that had passed since he had met Bruce, he had never seen him look less than impeccable.
Right now, though, Bruce’s eyes were bloodshot, his hair rumpled and a shadow of stubble was gracing his cheeks that were normally clean-shaved. If Steve had to guess, he’d say that it had been a while since Bruce had a decent night’s sleep. He had always struck Steve as a man who knew the value of his comfort, and if Lex’s escape was the reason behind his haggard looks, then maybe they were in more trouble than Steve realized.
Either way, it was not good.
“Long night?” Steve asked, unable to resist the urge, and gestured at Bruce’s wrinkled shirt when the other man arched his eyebrows quizzically.
“You could say that,” Bruce muttered, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, he gave Steve a speculative once-over as if weighing something in his mind. And said when he made the decision, “There’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about, Captain.”
“Steve is good,” Steve offered.
Bruce hesitated, seemingly surprised. Then nodded and set his cup on the counter.
“You asked me a question and I don’t believe I have answered,” he started, hand running over his face. “In addition to being a public servant, Amanda Waller is also the Director of the Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-Humans.”
He paused, allowing the information to sink in.
Steve froze. “A.R.G.U.S.”
Bruce nodded. “Yes. It operates under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security and is more discreet than… Waller’s day job. Essentially, A.R.G.U.S. is a covert sub-branch of the US military meant to oversee the activities of metahumans. That is, to say that they do anything and everything to contain and cover up things classified as superhuman. They were essentially in charge of the Suicide Squad, for however long that lasted.”
“So, when you saw me and asked if this was about A.R.G.U.S.—”
“After her little club of psychopaths had fallen apart and before she had found you, Waller had approached me regarding supervision over the Justice League, on the government level.” Bruce ran his hand over his hair. “Naturally, I told her to go to hell.”
“Naturally,” Steve muttered and Bruce’s lips twitched.
“She is right, to a degree. The world is scared of everyone who is different. They wanted to launch Clark into space when they first found out who he was, and maybe it wasn’t entirely unreasonable. You weren’t here when he came back—” from the dead . “He was confused, disoriented. He was out of control. If something ever makes him forget who he is again, god only knows what consequences we would face. Amanda Waller doesn’t trust the League, and maybe it’s not uncalled for, but I don’t trust her, either.” He grimaced with mild disgust. “However, ever since the Suicide Squad, she has been trying to find some sort of middle ground, a way for us to cooperate that would make her intervening look like assistance. Someone to oversee us who is not her. Someone we would trust.”
“Like a liaison,” Steve breathed.
“Yes,” Bruce agreed. “Someone impartial but who we could all trust. Someone with enough experience and insight and an ability to think outside the box.”
“You think she was going to have me do it?”
“I thought so. Maybe still do.”
“She never mentioned any of that,” Steve countered. “And I am not impartial. If anything, I am the opposite of that.”
He thought of Diana. Thought of how there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, nothing he would stop at to help her, or to be with her. He was, perhaps, as far away from being impartial as anyone could ever be.
“Maybe so, but you’re loyal. You have a military background. You were a spy, for god’s sake.” Bruce let out a long breath. “Well, I don’t need to tell you all that. Waller hit a jackpot with you.”
Steve’s brows pulled together as he tried to make sense of all the information coming his way faster than he was able to process it. “Why are you telling me this now?”
On the other side of the counter, Bruce turned to him and splayed his palms over the cool marble surface.
“Because I don’t think she is done with you. This might be something to look out for if she tries to manipulate you and it wouldn’t be fair if she had the upper hand.”
“Does Diana know?”
“She knows what A.R.G.U.S. is. But not my speculations, no.” Bruce shook his head. “I might be wrong.”
“But you don’t think you are.”
It wasn’t a question.
Still, Bruce considered his words before responding. “I think that’s what I’d do if I was in Waller’s shoes. And she is smart.”
Steve rubbed his forehead. “Well… Thank you. For telling me this.”
Bruce nodded. He looked like he was about to add something else, and Steve wondered what that might possibly be, but then his gaze shifted past Steve’s shoulder and he clamped his mouth shut, his whole face closing off instantly. Steve turned around just as Diana walked into the kitchen. His heart skipped a beat when her features softened the second she spotted him.
“Hey,” Steve breathed.
“Thought I’d find you here.” Diana smiled. She glanced past him. “Bruce.”
Bruce gave her a small jerk of his chin.
“Coffee?” Steve offered, and she nodded.
She didn’t kiss him the way she would have if they were alone, but when she moved past him, her hand brushed habitually over the small of his back and, frankly, he’d take that. The gesture was easy and natural and almost like an afterthought, and so much more intimate than any other display of affection could be in given circumstances.
So much so that Bruce looked away, albeit subtly.
“So, how’d it go?” he asked after the minute it took Diana to fix her own drink.
Steve glanced at him, puzzled, and turned to Diana, who gave Bruce a measured look that he couldn’t quite read, before her gaze found his once more.
“I went to see Amanda Waller,” she explained.
Steve stared at her, his jaw slack. “You what?”
An errand, he thought. He assumed it had something to do with picking up the bread for breakfast or dry-cleaning – things that the word errand usually implied. Not a crack-of-dawn meeting with the head of the American intelligence assigned to deal with superhumans.
He felt his brows furrow, questions bumping around in his head.
“She had nothing to do with what had happened at the S.T.A.R. Labs,” Diana added after a few moments.
“She told you that?” One of Bruce’s eyebrows quirked skeptically. “I mean she does have a great track record with being honest,” he noted flatly.
Steve glanced into his empty cup.
“I don’t think she had a choice,” he muttered.
“She did not,” Diana admitted. She sipped her coffee. “Thank you for making the call,” she added, looking at Bruce. “She would never have met with me without full security present otherwise.”
Bruce shook his head. “She’s not scared of you.”
Diana levelled him with a look. “Yes, she is. And she has every reason to be.”
He frowned. “I thought she was supposed to be on our side.”
“There aren’t any other sides left, Bruce.”
Steve watched the exchange like it was a ping pong match, wondering what exactly he was missing in this conversation.
He would ask Diana later. He had learned a long time ago to respect her choices and boundaries, and right now, her demeanour didn’t invite a conversation. She didn’t owe him anything, regardless of their relationship. If she saw a need to meet with Amanda Waller, he was fine with it. Bruce’s involvement didn’t bother him either, but there was something that she wasn’t telling them about what had gone down between her and Waller. He knew how to recognize unsaid words, and the sense of foreboding that they had left was nearly all-consuming.
But that was something to worry about later. Right now, he didn’t like the tense line of her shoulders and the charged air between them. So he moved to stand close enough to her to practically feel her proximity with his skin. Diana turned her head slightly to the side, acknowledging his presence.
“You need to eat,” Steve said quietly.
Tension seemed to seep out of her body immediately. Maybe not all, maybe less than he would have preferred, but the change was instant and his own heartbeat evened out in response.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Bruce muttered under his breath.
“Who shouldn’t have done what?” Barry asked, shuffling into the kitchen. “Man, do we have to do this so early?”
“It’s almost 10 in the morning,” Steve pointed out, amused and glad for the distraction.
“Well, I had a late night,” Barry countered.
“You didn’t have to,” Alfred noted, following him.
Before Barry could respond, there was a blur of movement and a dull thud outside, and then Clark was standing on the patio, his cape swaying around his calves. He rapped his knuckles on the glass door and Bruce moved to open it.
“Front door not good enough for you?” he asked as Clark stepped past him into the kitchen, bringing the smell of cold and rain with him, droplets of water clinging to his hair.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Clark grinned.
Diane smiled at him. “Clark.”
He leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. “Funny how we never meet for something like barbecue.”
She laughed. “We should start doing that.”
Greetings and handshakes were exchanged, while idle news was tossed around the spacious room. Alfred moved on to start making breakfast and Barry inevitably gravitated towards the fridge as well. It took him a whole of two minutes to remember something.
“Hey, Clark!” he called out from across the kitchen and pointed fondly at his pyjama shirt sporting the bright yellow S on the front. “We match!”
Bruce groaned. “Just don’t wear that on missions,” he muttered.
“No one’s gonna see it under the suit,” Barry objected.
“You’re just jealous,” Clark said offhandedly to Bruce.
Bruce glowered at him. “Like there’s anything to be jealous of,” he shook his head.
Diana’s hand brushed against Steve’s and he turned to her, his hand reaching for hers to squeeze her fingers briefly. He wanted the others to leave, wanted to be alone with her and have her tell him what had caused the frown that she wasn’t able to hide, even though she was trying. Wanted to hold her face between his hands and tell her how much he loved her over and over again until his throat was raw. Wanted… more because when she had told him yesterday that all of this was happening too soon, too fast, he didn’t quite get it. He was feeling it now, familiar vertigo that he couldn’t stop.
But Barry was saying something, and Clark was replying, and Alfred was asking him to please be careful with his cape near the stove, and there was so much normalcy to it even though there was nothing normal about them being here that it left Steve’s mind reeling. He craved it more than anything, even in the moments when he couldn’t help but feel like everything was falling apart around them.
“I love you,” Steve mouthed soundlessly, making a smile brighter than the sun break across Diana’s face.
“I saw that,” Barry said, pointing an accusing finger at Steve. He wiggled between Steve and Diana to duck into a cupboard beneath the counter. “Stop it.” He glanced up at them in turns. “You make the rest of us feel inadequate.”
“Your singleness is your own doing, Mr. Allen,” Alfred reminded him without much sympathy.
Diana pressed a hand to her mouth to stop the laughter bubbling in her chest from spilling.
Barry stood up and turned to Clark. “See what I have to deal with?”
“You know how phones work,” Bruce pointed out. “You’re glued to one most of the time.”
“Leave him alone.” Diana moved towards Barry and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. “Come on, let’s help Alfred.”
“No need, I assure you. The last time I was foolish enough to accept it, it didn’t go well,” Alfred said dryly.
“I promise to not… speed anything up,” Barry assured him quickly.
Diana glanced at Steve and winked. His lips curved into a smirk. Yeah, he’d prefer to be in Paris now, in her kitchen and with Diana wearing nothing but his shirt, and the sunlight tangled in her hair and hours of uninterrupted time stretching before them. But, if this was their second best option, he was going to take it gladly.
The doorbell rang when they were almost finished, plates empty and stomachs full.
“Must be Mr. Stone,” Alfred said and started to get up.
“I’ll get it,” Clark rose to his feet and disappeared down the hallway before Alfred could protest.
A few moments later, he came back, followed by Victor whose metallic body was hidden under a pair of sweatpants and a loose-fitted college hoodie. Had it not been for the glowing red eye, he wouldn’t have looked that much different from the rest of them.
Diana stood up. “Victor, it’s good to see you.” She took his face in her hand and gave him a critical look. “You look good.”
He grinned. “For a dead guy, yeah.”
She laughed and leaned in for a hug.
“And the fun is over,” Barry muttered, shoving his second helping of eggs into his mouth.
Victor flipped him off behind Diana’s back.
Clark pressed his lips together around a smile.
“We’re not here to have fun,” Bruce said, looking at the speedster over the rim of his cup.
“And that,” Barry pointed his fork at him, “is exactly what your problem is, Bruce. You don’t know how to have fun.”
“Well, if we’re all done—” Alfred started, standing up, undoubtedly itching to kick them all out of the kitchen in order to bring it back to its surgically pristine state.
He was cut off by a ping from Bruce’s phone.
Bruce pulled it out of the pocket of his pants, everyone’s eyes on him as his brows knitted together.
“Sir?”
“It’s the security footage from Paris,” Bruce muttered and Steve looked up from his second cup of coffee, his stomach tightening momentarily. He glanced at Diana, but her own eyes were trained on Bruce as well. “It’s been decoded—”
He stood up abruptly and swore colourfully under his breath, his grip on his phone so tight that his knuckles had turned white.
The room went completely silent save for the soft hum of the fridge.
Alfred leaned forward to look at the screen over Bruce’s shoulder. Head tilted slightly, he arched an eyebrow curiously.
“I didn’t know Ms. Kyle was still in business.”
Notes:
Welp, this was one action-packed chapter, and I hope you liked it. The closer we get to the end, the less reluctant I am to finish this fic, it's been such a big part of my life these past two years, but... oh well.
Comments, feedback or general yelling are always much appreciated :)
I'll do my best to give you the next part as soon as I can. But in the meantime, feel free to check out the first chapter of my holiday story i'll be the moon that shines on your path (The second part will be coming up soon as well!)
Chapter 19
Notes:
Hey folks, with WW84 just around the corner, I'm trying to get as much of this baby out as I possibly can. Hopefully, I'll post it all before the film comes out because I've got some other stuff waiting for you already! (Three new stories, in fact!) That being said, please feel free to harass me if I start slacking out on updates :P Sometimes a kick in the butt can go a long way, as far as motivation is concerned.
Dig in and have fun! Got some fluffy and angsty goodness for you!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“So, let me get this straight,” Barry started, enunciating every word, his eyes trained on Bruce. “Your girlfriend went to Paris and stole a metal glove that kills people from under Diana’s nose. Did I get that right?”
“A gauntlet,” Diana corrected him.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Bruce snarled, but no one seemed to notice.
“Not this week, anyway,” Alfred added.
Bruce glared at him. “Thank you, Alfred.”
“Anytime, sir.”
They were down in the Batcave, crowded around one of the workstations where the grey, grainy image on the computer screen was showing a woman dressed in black who stood in a painfully familiar corridor of the Louvre, looking somewhere past the camera. Her hair was peeking out from under a mask that featured… cat ears?
Standing to the side and looking at the frozen frame from behind Diana’s back, Steve leaned forward and rested his chin surreptitiously on her shoulder for a moment. A silent, I’m here. Without turning, Diana reached back and found his hand with hers, her thumb drawing circles on his palm.
“What’s her deal?” Barry asked, jerking his chin toward the screen.
Bruce sighed. “Her name is Selina Kyle, she’s a…”
“Thief,” Clark offered when he hesitated.
“That’s one way to put it,” Bruce conceded flatly.
Victor cleared his throat. “Based on her line of work, it’s the only way to put it.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Ms. Kyle is a woman of… many talents,” Alfred added quite fondly.
Steve glanced at Alfred, taking note of his small smile, which left Steve rather curious, and then over at Bruce who appeared to be more shocked than angry, as one would expect him to be in given circumstances. If Selina Kyle was indeed a woman of many talents, like Alfred had claimed, one of them was apparently making Bruce feel quite unsettled.
In the brief time that they had known each other, Steve had seen him concerned, annoyed, angry, irritated. Come to think of it, there had been quite a bit of irritation involved. Yet, Steve couldn’t recall a single instance when Bruce seemed even mildly... nervous before. And that, he had to admit, was somehow more fascinating, at the moment, than the fact that Bruce appeared to be closely acquainted with the person who had stolen the ancient war gauntlet from one of the most secure museums in the world. Far more fascinating, in fact.
Clark puckered his lips. “What’s with the cat ears?”
Bruce gave him a pointed once-over. “What’s with the cape?”
“Part of the costume,” Clark said.
“There you go.”
Steve let go of Diana’s fingers and straightened up, clearing his throat. “Hey, if you know her, maybe you could give her a call and ask her to just, I don’t know, give the gauntlet back?” he offered.
Bruce’s face closed up, his jaw taut. “We’re not really on speaking terms, most of the time.”
Barry tore his gaze away from the screen. “Okay, so… what’s with the bracelet?” he asked no one in particular.
“A glove,” Victor said.
“A gauntlet,” Diana corrected again. She glanced at Steve and took a deep breath. “It’s a weapon, a powerful one.”
“Of course, it is,” Barry muttered under his breath.
Bruce shot him a look and the young man mimed zipping his mouth shut.
With grim faces, they listened as Diana spoke, repeating the same story she had told Steve a few days ago, explaining the origins and the powers of the Claw as best she could. For a while, everyone remained silent. For once, not even Barry interrupted her with questions even though Steve suspected that they all had plenty.
Truth be told, he did too. Still. Hearing the story for the second time did not make it any less outlandish, wild even. And here he was starting to think that there was nothing left in the world that could still surprise him. His eyes moved from face to face, taking in slight frowns and pursed lips and tautly set jaws, rightfully worried, and his own concerns stirred in the pit of his stomach.
His eyes darted toward the image of Selina Kyle once more, and then he walked away from the group and paused in front of Batmobile parked at the other end of the Batcave. He stared at the aggressive vehicle, sleek and practical, without really seeing it as he felt himself slip into spy mode, familiar and as comfortable as a second skin. His body was tense and coiled like a spring, ready for whatever was coming before his mind knew how to even begin to process it.
There was a comfort to the feeling, a familiarity that reminded him that he hadn’t lost touch with that side of his life just yet. Maybe never would. But it brought back memories, too. Memories he didn’t want to relive in this lifetime or any other, and Steve wondered in the back of his mind – and not without a twinge of concern – if it was going to get better now that he had different people to build new memories with. Or if his old life would continue haunting him for as long as he lived.
Diana’s voice carried to him across the space between them, bouncing off the stone and metal around them. Steve loved it, love the way the words rolled off her tongue, always measured as if each was meant to count, none ever wasted. Loved the slight husk of her cadence and the way it sounded when she whispered his name into his ear as his lips danced over her skin. It was sure and steady now, despite the gravity of the situation.
The League might have come together for Bruce, and none of them would ever deny it, but they stayed for her. Every time Steve thought about it, the centre of his chest filled with fierce pride that he had no right to own but that brought him satisfaction nonetheless.
A pandemonium of questions erupted the second she fell silent.
“A pharaoh? Like, a real one?” Barry repeated at least half a dozen times as it appeared to be the only thing that he had managed to pick up.
Steve turned to him to find the speedster looking mildly shell shocked.
“As opposed to what, a fake one?” Victor huffed.
Barry poked a finger into his metal chest. “Hey, it’s a legit question!”
Victor waved him off. His eyes found Diana’s. “What do you mean, the magnetic core of the Earth?” He frowned.
“What does this have to do with Master Luthor?” Alfred inquired before she had a chance to answer and all eyes turned to him.
Steve walked back over to the group and paused near Diana who was standing with her back straight and her arms folded across her chest. She glanced at him, and he offered her a small smile that did little to smooth out the worry lines on her face, but he chose not to take it personally.
“We don’t know,” Steve said. He rubbed the back of his neck and jerked his chin toward the workstation and the monitor that was still displaying the recovered footage, with the woman responsible for this mess stark in the middle of it. “We were kinda hoping that this would help.”
As if on cue, everyone turned to Bruce.
“No,” he said firmly.
“It wouldn’t hurt to call,” Alfred suggested.
Bruce shot him a warning look. “No,” he repeated.
Alfred remained unfazed. “Maybe she would even pick up this time.”
“Alfred.”
The old man raised his hands but didn’t press any further.
Bruce’s gaze flicked toward Diana, but instead of saying anything he only pressed his lips together into a flat line.
“Do we know how it happened?” Clark broke the silence. Six pairs of eyes shifted to him. “Lex. How he got out of Arkham? I can’t recall many precedents of that sort.”
“It happened two nights ago,” Bruce explained, an expression of mild disgust crossing his face like he had bitten into something sour. “After the lights went out for the night. As of right now, it’s unclear who was helping him, but there had to be someone. Four guards are at the hospital now, one of them in a critical condition. There is a chance that we might get something from them, but…” he trailed off.
He clearly didn’t harbour any hope for that, Steve thought, watching him, quite fascinated by how carefully Bruce was controlling his emotions, and how they were spilling all over his face nonetheless. This was not the nameless, faceless burglars or pickpockets that he was used to dealing with, or so Steve heard. This was personal, and dangerous, and the last time the League came face to face with that man – well, face to face with his experiment – one of them ended up in a grave.
Unlike Bruce, Clark was an embodiment of composure. His shoulders were square, his face open. If he took Lex’s escape as an insult or a challenge, there was no sign of it, and for that Steve was grateful. Bruce seemed like the type of guy who would ram a car into a brick wall for dramatics and jump into cross-fire for just the same reason. Perhaps it was a good thing to have one of them balance the other out.
He was not certain where Diana stood in that particular equation.
According to her, Bruce blamed himself greatly for what had happened to Clark, and if Steve had to guess, locking Lex up felt like some sort of redemption for him, if a belated one, at that. After all, it could hardly bring the dead man back to life. If nothing else, there was a certain degree of satisfaction to it – something that Steve understood all too well. And now they were back to square one, and if Steve was being honest with himself, he couldn’t even begin to guess how this situation was going to play out.
“He has not shown up at his house or tried to use any of his cards,” Bruce continued. “Nor was he caught on the CCTV cameras.”
“And you know this how?” Barry inquired, curious.
“I have a police scanner,” Bruce said flatly, his expression blank.
Barry blinked, not sure whether to believe him or not.
“Of course, you do,” Victor muttered.
“So, we’ve got nothing,” Clark summed it up.
Bruce shook his head. “Lex is not the kind of guy to make a show out of escaping one of the most guarded prison facilities in the country and then go into hiding.”
“Which would actually be smart,” Victor pointed out.
“I don’t think smart is what he is going for,” Bruce muttered.
“The word you’re looking for is payback,” Alfred said.
No one disagreed.
“He has to have money,” Bruce added, his eyes sweeping over the group. Steve noticed that he was pointedly avoiding looking in the general direction of the workstations. “Offshore accounts, perhaps. Money prepared exactly for a scenario like this one. Lex is a lot of things… always has been,” Bruce grimaced a little, “but he is not an idiot. In the general sense of the word,” he muttered under his breath.
Steve and Diana exchanged a look.
“What?” Barry demanded, eyes darting between the two of them.
Diana cleared her throat. “The painting found in the possession of Darrell Quinn… We think Lex gave it to him with the intention of getting it back later, when he needed something of value. If that is true, he might have been planning this for a while.”
“Like a safety cushion of sorts,” Steve added.
“His name is all over Quinn’s papers.”
Bruce scrubbed his hand over his face. “Great. He has god knows what within arm’s reach and we won’t know what it is until it’s too late.”
Steve suspected that Lex would likely use an alias, too. This was exactly the type of thing that he really and truly hated. The type of situation that, to his memory, had cost people their lives more often than not, leaving those who stayed behind sick to their stomach over their own helplessness.
You couldn’t be prepared if you didn’t know what you need to be prepared for. It reminded him too much of his time in the trenches, his feet frozen in his boots that were stuck in cold mud, making his progress painfully slow, and never knowing which grenade would be his last.
He had seen people die before his eyes, drowning in their own blood, and not one of them ever saw it coming.
“Is he behind those creepy things at the Lab, too?” Barry asked almost matter-of-factly.
They all looked at him.
“What?” He frowned. “Like it’s that wild?”
“They’re people, not things,” Diana noted. “And we don’t know that.”
“They didn’t seem like people that night,” Barry grumbled.
“Wait, what about Waller?” Victor turned to Diana.
“No, it wasn’t her,” she shook her head, but didn’t add anything else.
Oddly, no one pressed for details.
“But can’t we just, like, ask them?” Barry asked.
“They don’t remember anything,” Victor explained, shaking his head. “They’ve been kept separately to avoid having them agree on a story to tell, but even so, they give the same answer. Waller’s people have been all over them for weeks now, but they’ll have no choice but to let them go eventually if they get nothing out of them. They can’t keep them in custody forever.”
“Your dad told you that?” Bruce asked.
Victor tapped a finger against his temple – metal on metal. “I have my own ways.”
“I suppose I should go take care of Mr. Curry’s flight,” Alfred said after a moment. “It seems like we are going to need all the help we can get.”
No one stopped him when he left.
Steve wasn’t sure how long they stayed there, tossing ideas around only to have them bounce off the walls and break against logic and reasoning. Hours, for certain. Plans had been drawn and discarded and reworked again and again until they could no longer remember where the initial idea was meant to go or how it was supposed to be executed.
He had lost track of time. At some point, someone – he suspected Barry – had ordered pizza. Ten boxes. Alfred brought coffee for everyone but didn’t stay, disappearing once again up the wide staircase leading to the ground level of the house. Diana left after a while to make some phone calls to Paris but then came back, Steve’s heart shifting back into place every time his gaze fixed on her talking to someone on the team. He watched her speak with Victor, taking note of her easy way with Barry, and her apparent affection for Clark. One didn’t need to be a spy to see the certain strain between her and Bruce, but they felt like a team right now in every way Steve could think of. A unity.
He wondered if the feeling was going to hold after Lex Luthor had been dealt with. If it was meant to exist in the first place outside of one crisis or another.
Which made him feel, oddly, like an impostor. He was not; he knew that they didn’t think so either, could see it in the way they listened to him, actually hearing what he was saying. He chalked it off to not being there from the start, not sharing the same experiences with them. It was hard to ignore the feeling that something was missing.
He thought about Bruce and their conversation earlier that day about Waller, and wondered once more if the other man was right. If she really was looking for someone to become the link between the League and the government. He knew all too well that she was not going to stop coming for them. People like her never stopped until they were stopped, and one day someone was bound to get hurt in the process.
It was hard to get his scattered thoughts together when he felt so… all over the place. Too much was happening at once, and he had only so much focus to spare. He would have to sort it all out once the dust had settled and they weren’t facing some impending doom anymore, but Bruce had got him thinking. There was no denying that.
Steve ran his hand over his face. Diana would kill him for even considering Bruce’s idea. Working for Waller—hell, he was getting mad at himself for thinking about it, too.
She had found him some undetermined time later, sitting in front of one of the computers, trying to—
Okay, he wasn’t sure what he was trying to do, exactly. Hadn’t been for a while, truth be told. The facial recognition system that ran through the Gotham CCTV cameras had yet to find a match for Lex, but Steve knew that it meant nothing. A baseball cap and his face turned downwards went a long way as far as those things were concerned. Right now, every cop in the city was looking for him. Steve didn’t expect him to make it easy on any of them.
Diana’s hands landed on his shoulders from behind, palms sliding down his chest as she leaned closer to him. The smell of something floral and sweet invaded Steve’s senses, wrapping around him like a cloud of comfort.
“Admirable dedication, Captain,” she whispered into his ear, a smile in her voice. “You’ve been at this for hours. Find anything?”
Steve caught her hand and turned it to kiss the inside of her wrist, her pulse a rapid flutter against his lips. He glanced up. “Hi.”
Diana smiled down at him, gaze skating over the glasses he was wearing. Steve could hear a quip dance on the tip of her tongue. Yet, what she said was: “Hi.”
He shook his head, his hands curling around her wrists. “No, nothing yet. What about you?”
She sighed, her smile fading as two faint lines appeared between her eyebrows.
“We are not going to find Lex Luthor until he wants to be found,” she said with a displeased kind of certainty that left Steve without a counter-argument because she was most certainly right. He didn’t see it happening otherwise, either.
“He might want to take some time. Get everyone on edge.”
She didn’t argue though he knew she didn’t much like his theory. “Perhaps.” She hesitated for a moment, then straightened up, pulling out of his grasp. “Come with me,” she asked softly.
Steve glanced at the screen once more, taking note of the time and was surprised to realize that it was past 11 PM. It was easy to lose track of time down there, in the cavernous room without windows. He looked at the couch in the corner where Barry was slouched, nose buried in this phone, his eyes glazed over. Clark and Victor were talking quietly, standing by a glass display with one of Bruce’s old Batman costumes, but Bruce himself wasn’t around. He had disappeared a while ago, but Steve couldn’t for the life of himself remember when that happened.
When he turned to Diana again, she was already halfway up the staircase. She didn’t look back, clearly expecting him to follow, and he scrambled to his feet, yanking his glasses off and leaving them on the desk as he hurried after her, half-jogging up the stairs to catch up.
“Where are we going?” he asked as he reached for her hand and grabbed hold of it. Absently, he wondered where Alfred was and if Arthur was actually coming.
“Bed,” she said without looking at him. “It’s late.”
“But it’s not that la—Oh.”
Steve cleared his throat, as it went dry at the sight of her small half-smile.
She pulled him into their room, closing the door behind them. It was dark, but neither one reached for the switch on the wall. He couldn’t believe that they had spent nearly the entire day down in the Batcave and yet they had nothing to show for it. Not that that was Steve’s primary concern at the moment.
Outside, the lake was black and ominous, its surface as smooth and reflective as a large mirror. It was quiet here, too. Downstairs, he had tuned out the ever-present hum of the air circulation system, the drone of the computers and the buzz of the conversations filling the air, but here the silence was almost deafening, so much so that it felt like someone had turned the whole world off.
“Steve?”
He turned to Diana and she moved into his arms, her hands framing his face, pushing into his hair, dark eyes roaming over his features. Steve leaned in, crowding her space until there was no air left between them and his heart was pounding straight into hers.
“Hi,” he repeated, feeling the corners of his lips curve upwards.
She smiled back, her fingers scratching through his hair. Unable to resist the temptation any longer, Steve dipped his head and pressed his mouth to hers. Like thank god. Like finally. Having been thinking of nothing but Lex Luthor for hours on end, Steve didn’t know if he’d be able to put this whole day behind him so easily. Boy, was he wrong.
Diana kissed him back, eagerly and without hesitation, a small sound of appreciation forming in the back of her throat and nearly undoing him in the best way.
“Been thinking about doing this for hours,” she whispered hoarsely against his lips.
He could feel her smile against his mouth.
“You have?” Steve echoed. “Gotta say your poker face had me fooled. I was certain that you were focused on the crisis at hand.”
Her smile spread out wider. “I can multitask.”
Desire flared up inside of him, white-hot and consuming, a strangled sound escaping his lips. Steve swallowed past it, his heart seeming to have lodged itself in his throat. Her hands fell to his chest, sliding down along the cotton of his shirt, heat burning in her gaze. He wanted to touch her all over, wanted to kiss her until she forgot her own name.
“Good thing I pretty much always think about doing this, too,” he breathed.
He reached for the elastic band and pulled it off, unravelling her tight braid. Diana moved her head a little to shake it out, her nose brushing against his cheek. Her breath fell on his skin, and even something as seemingly unessential as that made his blood rush south in an instant. Steve combed his fingers through the black mass, silky against his skin, and lifted her face to his.
“Won’t they wait for us to come back?” he asked, tracing his thumb along her jaw.
Diana pressed her lips together around a smile. “They’ll know better than to come looking for us.” Her eyebrow quirked pointedly, and he wished that it wasn’t this dark, that he could see her better. “Although—”
She slipped out of his arms and took a step away from him, and then another one before Steve could process what was happening and grab onto her. She kept on moving until her back was pressed against the door. There were a few feet of space between them now, which was a few too many, and he missed her terribly already.
“We could go back, I suppose,” she said slowly, her finger running absently along thin silver necklace around her neck. From under her eyelashes, she watched him watch her, head tilted ever so slightly to her shoulder.
This was not their first night together in 1918 when she was – briefly - fascinated with the workings of his belt buckle and frustrated over the number of buttons on his shirt. It wasn’t even seventy years ago when they were still learning each other. This Diana before him knew what she was doing, perfectly aware of the effect she was having on him. Steve suspected that she understood exactly just how much he wanted her, taking pleasure in the power she wielded over him. If nothing else, it was written all over his face, as he didn’t even bother trying to hide it.
Her fingers traced the collar of her shirt and dropped down to the top button, pausing for only a moment before undoing it. Steve’s eyes widened, heart slamming against his ribcage – a little harder, and it would have burst right out of his chest. He forced himself to stay focused. Still, when the second button was undone revealing even more skin he felt all air rush out of him.
Diana smiled and raised an eyebrow at him.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Steve asked.
He slid his hands into the pockets of his pants so as not to reach for her. He wanted to touch her so badly it made him ache.
“Enjoying what?” Diana asked innocently. “We were talking about… ah, work.”
He grinned and shook his head, his smile slipping when she reached the next button, fingertips trailing slowly along her skin, her eyes never leaving his face, clearly pleased with what she was seeing. He caught a glimpse of black lace beneath her shirt, which got him thinking of the set she was wearing the night of the auction in Metropolis. Which got him thinking about the time she wore it for him. Which got him thinking—
Steve allowed his eyes to dip down and slide over her body. Life was simpler in certain ways back in the time when they first met, he could admit that much, but one had to appreciate the present-day affinity for tight clothing. He certainly did. His eyes lingered on her legs. He had never made a secret out of his fondness for them, though it wasn’t just that. It had never been just her body that he wanted.
“Hey, I’m just trying to be professional here,” Steve said evenly, barely able to keep a straight face, his voice low and hoarse despite his attempt at a joking tone.
“Steve?”
He snapped his gaze back up.
There was so much fire in her eyes now it was a miracle the whole house wasn’t ablaze. She was beautiful. So beautiful he forgot momentarily how to think.
“I don’t suppose there is much we can do tonight,” she said, reaching for the knob behind her back, her hand curling over the polished brass. “But if you do want to go back—”
He couldn’t bear it any longer. This was fun and all, but he was going to implode if they stayed apart for another moment. Steve swore under his breath and moved towards her. His hands pushed into her hair, his body flush against hers, trapping her between him and the door.
“Christ, Diana…”
She was the one to close the space between them, pressing her mouth to his. He kissed her hungrily, the weariness of the past hours that had settled over him melting away. Steve heard the sound of fabric tearing, the remaining buttons running down the front of her blouse spilling onto the floor, not sure which one of them did it. He would buy her a new shirt. He would buy her a hundred if only she stopped holding back right now.
Diana gasped against his mouth when his hands skimmed over her skin, her breath catching in her throat. Steve pressed her back against the door and she arched away from it and into him, fingers bunching the fabric of his shirt. He was tempted to pause for as long as it took to ask her to tear it off of him. Maybe later, he thought. Maybe tomorrow. Right now he needed to remember where the bed was and how they could get there.
“Steve—”
“For hours, huh?” he mumbled, his chest heaving against hers.
Diana smiled and hummed noncommittally, a sound that morphed into a moan when he ran his fingers along the base of her spine and then traced the curve of it up to her shoulder blades.
“What else did you think about?” he asked, dipping his head to press his mouth to the spot behind her ear and kissing his way along her jaw.
She gasped when his hands slid down and under her thighs to lift her up, her legs wrapping around his hips. She wound her arms around his neck and, for a moment, all Steve could do was stare at her, her eyes dark with want and her lips parted slightly.
And then she leaned down, her voice wonderfully breathless against his mouth. “Let me show you.”
---
In the past, finding Selina was a matter of not looking for her. It had always felt as if something was throwing them in front of one another, and if Bruce didn’t know any better, he would almost believe in the providence of sorts. The truth, however, was much simpler than that – Gotham wasn’t big enough to keep people like them apart for too long.
Until one day it got too small, to the point of suffocating them both.
That was why he didn’t want to go searching for her. That was why he was a little bit disgusted with himself right now, freezing in the rain what was only a degree or two away from turning into snow as he tried to track down someone who didn’t want to be found.
Restlessness crawled under his skin, making him listen harder even though the sound of his own footsteps was all he could hear, making him glance over his shoulder more than he normally would despite the street remaining dark behind him. For all he knew, Selina wasn’t even in town, maybe not even in the country. God only knew where she might have ended up between the last time they saw each other and now. He had long stopped keeping tabs on her for their mutual sake.
That she got tangled up with Lex Luthor’s mess left him pissed. She was smarter than that. Better than that, for that matter. Even the unsavoury nature of her lifestyle called for better judgement than that, for heaven’s sake.
The rain grew more persistent, and Bruce wished that he was wearing his Batsuit instead of his coat, that had ended up too thin for the weather. At least the suit was water-proof.
He wished he hadn’t come. It had been hours and this wild goose chase was starting to feel like a waste of time. All because of Diana. He grimaced at the thought. She hadn’t asked for it, but he was so damn desperate for her approval and one of those smiles that she was dispensing so freely to Trevor. He should be happy for her, Bruce thought. Clark was right, she was like a different person now; luminous in a way Bruce could never have imagined before. If he was a bigger person, a better person, he would put his feelings aside and be glad that she had gotten her long-lost love back.
Instead, he bitterly wished that Steve Trevor remained dead the way Bruce had thought he was, and that it was his company that Diana was spending her nights in. If that was the case, he wouldn’t be forced out of the comfort of his house on a night when even petty criminals stayed away from trouble, chasing a ghost he didn’t want to deal with in the first place. She wasn’t in love with him, never had been, and yet here he was trying to please her again because somewhere along the way it ended up being a priority in his life.
Bruce cursed quietly and paused in his tracks.
He had no business being in a dark alley in the middle of the night, foolishly thinking that nothing had changed in the past year and that Selina was still picking pockets for fun, just because she could. Just because she wanted to prove to herself that she was the best. He had long stopped arguing with that logic. If he paused for one moment to even try to think logically, he would start with—
Bruce rounded the corner and stopped abruptly. Lost in thought – and a little bit of paranoia – he hadn’t noticed he had been circling back to his car. His initial relief over the idea of putting this ridiculous night behind was slammed against a wall of recognition when his eyes adjusted to the deeper shadows of the alley and he saw that he wasn’t alone.
Selina was leaning against the passenger door, cashmere coat hugging her body, arms folded over her chest. Her lips twitched when she saw him freeze to the spot, although he doubted that there was any good humour behind that smirk.
“Bruce,” she greeted him in a low drawl, all too familiar for his comfort. Bruce scowled, mostly at himself and his pulse that stuttered traitorously. She pushed away from his car and straightened up. “After all this time… To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket.
Some things never changed.
---
The wind picked up some time after midnight, whispering in the vents and making the bare branches of the trees growing around the house scrape restlessly against the walls. With half a dozen people hanging around the place at all times, it was easy to forget now and then how remote the lake house was from the noise of the city. How quiet it could get. Until it wasn’t.
Steve wondered sometimes how Bruce could stand the isolation, and whether his choice was a reflection of his character, or the other way around. The stillness never failed to make him nervous, pushing him to think of something lying in wait, watching them from the darkness. The hassle of the city posed a different sort of threat, what with the crowds that made him feel like he was suffocating, but if he had to choose, he preferred it to this eerie silence and the endless stretch of forest for miles and miles around them. His blood was no longer freezing in his veins at the sound of a car backfiring or explosions of fireworks, but old habits die hard, apparently. This place, somehow, was as discreet as it was exposed.
Right now, though, he loved it. Loved the quiet peace and the soft sound of Diana’s breathing being the only thing cutting through it, her chest rising and falling slowly against his. She wasn’t asleep, her fingers trailing absently over his chest in a pattern only she understood, but they hadn’t moved or spoken in a while, content in their silence. He loved that they could have this, the blissful sensation of just being, without the need to fill it with empty conversation.
His body felt drained, completely spent, but his mind was wide awake and on fire. Like one of those dreams where someone was chasing after him, but his feet were leaden, making it impossible for him to take another step. He was fairly certain that if something forced him to move beyond combing his fingers through Diana’s hair, he’d fail spectacularly.
Earlier, she had whispered You feel so good into the crook on his neck, the words barely breaking through the incoherent haze of pleasure wrapped around his brain. It was a miracle he had heard her at all. Now the memory made his lips twitch. A hundred years later, and he was still ridiculously, stupidly proud of not being unnecessary as far as her experiences went and of being able to show that even though he wasn’t like her, strictly speaking, he was still enough.
Mine, he had murmured in response, his words punctuated with chaste kisses as his lips danced over her face, her shoulders, the curve of her neck. You’re mine, Diana.
Steve pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, and her hand froze on his skin.
“You were right, no one came knocking,” he chuckled under his breath.
“They would have if something happened,” Diana murmured, kissing a spot just below his collarbone, a smile in her voice. “Good thing we can keep ourselves busy.” She raised her head from his chest to look at him, one eyebrow arched suggestively.
He laughed, the sound of it morphing into a groan. “Have some mercy.”
The smile broke across her face. “I don’t remember you complaining earlier.”
“I am 137 years old,” he pointed out.
Diana lifted her head to rest her chin on the back of her hand lying on his sternum, watching him with unmasked fondness. “I don’t remember that being an issue, either,” she pointed out, amused.
“Yeah, well, just trying to stay on top—” he started, twisting a strand of her hair around his finger.
She grinned. “You are good at that, yes.”
“—of my game,” Steve finished, feeling the heat shoot through his system.
He flashed a self-indulgent smile at her, the glint in her eyes chasing the remnants of his fatigue away. He lifted his hand and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear before stroking her cheek with the back of his fingers.
“Are you alright?” he asked when she turned into his touch and kissed the palm of his hand. He lost his train of thought momentarily, only knowing that once he was able to move again, they were going back to figuring out the whole staying on top thing. He certainly had an idea or two he wanted to put into practice. Probably.
Diana’s smile dimmed. “I am,” she said after a moment, her eyes searching his face in the dark.
Steve couldn’t see her clearly, but he could feel that there was something else there, something in her voice telling him that there was more than she was willing to let on.
“But you’d rather be out there, patrolling,” he suggested.
She shook her head, rising to settle next to him, propped on her elbow. “There is nowhere else I’d rather be,” she said sincerely. “Besides, if Lex Luthor is waiting for us to come to him—If it’s a trap, then not looking for him will perhaps lure him out and make him come looking for us instead.”
“Give us an upper hand,” Steve mused. “Throw him off-balance.”
Plenty of battle tactics were about the subversion of expectations of one’s opponent, and many of those battles were won because of that, and he hoped against all hope that Diana was right. That everyone was right about not making the first move. Hoped they were not going to regret it later.
“That’s the idea,” Diana admitted.
“But?” he prompted when he heard a but coming.
A small smile made its return. She shook her head a little. “I don’t think patience is my strong suit,” she confessed, and Steve let out a quiet laugh.
“A woman who left her home to go fight a war that wasn’t even hers, the one who charged across No Man’s Land without a moment of hesitation?” He quirked a pointed eyebrow at her. “You wouldn’t say.”
Diana rolled her eyes, but he could see that she was struggling not to laugh as well, which felt like a victory, no matter how small. He didn’t want her thinking about the mess that was waiting for them, not tonight. Not for the next little while, if he could make it happen.
Steve lifted his hand and stroked his thumb over her cheekbone. “You should sleep,” he said when common sense took over.
The last couple of days had been hectic enough for both of them, and even though Steve firmly decided to leave his own thoughts about Lex Luthor and, well, everything else on the other side of the door, it didn’t mean that those things ceased to exist simply because he was doing his best to pretend that they had. Getting some rest probably wasn’t a bad idea, all things considered, even if it was the last thing he wanted to do when the alternative was so much more attractive. When it was smiling at him in that glorious way that was making it hard for him to breathe.
“Me?” Diana smiled, resting her chin on the heel of her hand. “What about you?”
“What about me?” Steve blinked.
Diana swept her hand through his hair, the tips of her fingers trailing along the stubble on his cheek. She watched him quietly for a few moments, and all Steve could think about was that he had never loved anyone the way he loved her, to the point of feeling dizzy with exhilaration.
Her lips twitched just a bit. “Well, we’re together,” she noted, trying very hard not to smile. “And this is a perfectly good bed.” She paused, but Steve only stared back at her, his mind blank. “I don’t suppose there’s anything stopping you from sleeping with me.”
Steve scrubbed his hand down his face and pressed his lips together so as not to laugh.
He looked at her. “I suppose it can be arranged,” he conceded after a moment.
He was tempted to mention the other night, a long time ago, when she had asked him to sleep with her and the duality of her request – and say that he was more than happy to take it either way. Wanted to ask if she really remembered every single thing he had ever said to her because he sure as hell did. But when Diana leaned forward, all he could think to do was rise on his elbow and meet her halfway, lips brushing to hers and kissing her smile.
“Will you tell me what went down between you and Amanda Waller?” Steve asked when he pulled back, surprising them both, if her startled expression was any indication.
Diana’s brows pulled together. The name of the Director of A.R.G.U.S. was sobering, and he half-regretted bringing it up and shattering that small cocoon of contentment that they had managed to weave around themselves in the past couple of hours, all the more comforting with the foul weather raging outside. Wished that they could stay in that cocoon forever, although he would settle for twenty years or so, to start with. Yet, there was a burning need inside of him. One he didn’t know existed until the question had slipped out of his mouth, but once it had, it was all Steve could think of.
Earlier, he had pushed his thoughts of that encounter out of his mind, not wishing to bring in up in front of the rest of the League, but there was nothing stopping them from discussing it now. Even if the cost of it was the slight frown on her face and the uncomfortable tightness of foreboding in his chest.
Eyes never leaving her face, he ran his thumb over her chin when she remained silent. “Diana…”
“She found you because of me,” Diana sighed.
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
She traced her fingers along his collarbone, her eyes cast down, but she didn’t move away, and he was glad, grateful for her closeness.
“The photograph from Veld… Lex Luthor found it when he was gathering information on meta-humans,” she said, her voice measured and her words careful. “Waller discovered it when he got arrested and they gained access to his personal files. Thinking that I might not be the only one still alive a hundred years later, she dug deeper. Bruce suspected it too, when he first came across the file, but I told him he wouldn’t find anything. I don’t think he bothered looking.”
“You told him that I was dead,” Steve muttered, speaking more to himself than to her.
She looked up, her eyes finding his. “No, Steve. No, of course not. I never said that. I wouldn’t.” She paused. “I merely never corrected his assumption when he assumed that you were, not wishing for him to keep digging into my life. And yours.”
He nodded. “I guess I can see why Waller would get curious,” he admitted.
“She knew that you and I shared history, but didn’t know the extent of it. I don’t think anything that had happened between us ever made it into archives.”
“I sure hope so,” he said pointedly, cajoling a small smile out of her. He brushed her hair back from her face. It was still an odd thing to consider. Someone going methodically through his life, thinking that they had the right to do it. He expected to be angry over the idea, but mostly he was just glad that he had gotten rid of the most obvious trail that had followed him across time. “There was always the chance that I might have seen you and walked out of that door without another word, but she was willing to take that risk.”
Diana rolled her shoulders in a small shrug. “I’m assuming she thought that she had nothing to lose.”
He peered at her. “Does she now?”
Her expression grew serious. “She is not going to use your files for her gain,” she said firmly, not a hint of doubt in her voice. “If she ever planned on doing that, she does not anymore.”
Steve stayed silent for a while. Then he let out a long breath and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You shouldn’t have done that.”
Her frown deepened, her face growing confused. “Shouldn’t have done what?”
He dropped his hand onto the sheets between them. “Threatened her. I know she’s not a good guy here, but that’s—that’s not you.”
Diana froze. “Not me?” She pushed up to sit, staring at him in disbelief, bristling visibly at his words. “And who am I, exactly, Steve?”
He stared back at her, feeling frustration well up in his chest. At her for not seeing this the way he did; at himself for being the reason of it; at Amanda bloody Waller for—more things that he could think of.
“You’re better than that,” he said at last. “Better than—”
“Than what?” Diana demanded. “She was the one who threatened you, who threatened Barry and Victor — did you not tell me that?”
“I did, but—” he started.
“Then I don’t understand what part of me protecting the people I care about is not me,” she interjected. “You know people like her. You have known people like her your whole life, people who would stop at nothing to get what they want. How is this different from me stopping Ludendorff from wiping off half of the world? How is this different from anything that we do here?”
“Because you are better than her, Diana,” he said, his voice rising. “Because I don’t want you to put yourself on her level for me.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line and exhaled slowly through his nose, searching for composure. For better words that would make her understand that there was nothing that terrified him more than watching the vile and ugly parts of his world plant their seeds in her soul.
All those years ago, her mother had been right when she had told Diana that his people didn’t deserve her. Steve never felt more convinced of it than he did right now. They didn’t. They never had.
“You’re the one who put me on a pedestal,” Diana said quietly, shaking her head, and for once, there was fear in her voice. He watched her fingers flex as if she needed to hold on to something. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t ask for it.”
She still wasn’t looking at him, and he wished she would.
Steve rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t—it’s not—” He huffed out a breath of frustration. “I don’t want to be the reason for—for you being someone you are not.”
“You don’t know who I am anymore, Steve. You weren’t here to see who I became after you chose to leave.”
She might have as well have struck him. Steve felt the air wheeze out of his lungs as white-hot shame flared up inside of him, making his face grow hot.
Anguish chased across Diana’s features when she saw him flinch. She turned away, her back to him like she couldn’t stand looking at him. Steve watched her draw her knees up as silence fell between them, heavy and hurtful.
For a long moment, he made no attempt to reach for her, her words running on an endless loop in his head, and he wondered if he was ever going to forget them. If there was a way to erase the memory of accusation in her voice. What a fool he was to think that they could put his terrible mistakes behind them once and for all.
He didn’t doubt that she wanted to forgive him, but he was starting to wonder if she ever could.
He watched her push her hand into her hair in silent frustration. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, all too aware of the thudding of his heart somewhere in his throat, and wondering how it was even possible to cut each other so deeply with nothing but words. How many scars had they had already left on one another? And how could the night that had started out with so much affection have taken a turn for the worse so suddenly?
At last, Steve sat up too, hesitant to touch her. He was close enough for her to know that he was there, and when Diana made no attempt to move away from him, he leaned forward to press a kiss to her shoulder before resting his forehead against the base of her neck.
She was right. He had not been there—a mistake Steve knew would regret for as long as he lived. They might have known each other for a century, but there was still so much they didn’t know about one another it made his mind reel, the years apart like an abyss between them. He wondered, not for the first time, if they were ever going to catch up. Diana had told him she had forgiven him, and he didn’t doubt that she’d meant it. Or wanted to, at least. But he could still the hurt behind her words, the lingering aftertaste of his betrayal.
“If I could undo it all, I would do so in a heartbeat,” he said, after a moment.
She didn’t respond.
“What are you so scared of?” he asked quietly without moving. His eyes fluttered closed, his senses zeroed in on the two of them, focused on nothing but the warmth of her body and the way she relaxed ever so subtly at the contact.
“That you’ll leave again,” Diana breathed, her head bowed down.
“I won’t,” Steve said. “I told you I won’t. I swear to god, Diana, there is nothing that can take me away from you.”
She said nothing, and he pulled away to sit next to her, her face a pale outline against the shadows crowding the room.
“You don’t believe me.” His words came out as a statement rather than a question.
“It’s not you I don’t believe.”
He stared down at his hands, the old hurt that had flared up at her words simmering down. The truth was, he knew that she was right. He knew that he couldn’t blame her. She had spent decades battling through ugliness and violence and the absolute worst that the world had to offer, and just because she hadn’t given up yet didn’t mean that he could blame her for still waiting for the other shoe to drop. He wanted her, and knew that she wanted him to, but somehow it only made that wonderful thing between them feel all the more fragile.
“I don’t want you to be someone you’re not because of me,” he repeated, but the fight was gone from his voice.
She hadn’t looked at him once. He could feel the heat that had built up between them in the past couple of hours seep away without a trace, replaced by a cold, harsh reality that he wasn’t yet ready to deal with. Steve kicked himself mentally for having started this conversation at all. For not waiting till tomorrow, or maybe ten years from now, just to be safe, foolishly thinking that the darkness could smooth out their rough edges. Instead, they seemed to have used them to cut each other open.
“Waller is mad.” There were disgust and resentment in Diana’s voice. “She put nano-bombs in people’s skulls and didn’t hesitate to activate them just to make a point.” Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw her fists clench tight. “I’ve made my choice. I know what I want. She might have found you but she will not come anywhere near you again. I will not let her use you against me or anyone else.”
He didn’t respond, all too aware that if their situation was reversed he would have done the exact same thing. There might have been more blood on his hands than a thousand years of good deeds could ever wash off, and Diana might have come to his world to bring peace, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t fault her for protecting those she cared for.
Steve hung his head, his pulse throbbing fast in his veins, his mouth dry and his thoughts a garbled mess in his head. He thought of Bruce’s words earlier and the loophole that he mentioned that could keep everyone happy, but he couldn’t bring himself to voice that idea, half-hating it somewhere deep inside. Knew that she would, too. He wished they could go back to the moments of lazy kisses and slow smiles and whispered confessions, away from the cold abyss that he hadn’t seen coming and couldn’t see the end of.
Diana shifted beside him, moving closer, and when he turned to her, she was reaching for him. Her hand slid up his face and through his hair and down again to rest on the back of his neck. She leaned in and pressed her forehead to his.
“I’m scared of losing you, too,” Steve murmured, his voice low and hoarse. “I’m afraid that one day you’ll want more than I can give. And that’s not much already…” He shook his head.
“Steve…”
He took in a breath. “So if you think—if you want to maybe take it slow—” He was babbling. He was babbling because even with her right there, her skin smooth and warm beneath his touch, he couldn’t help feeling like she was slipping right through his fingers. And it terrified him. “Anything you need.”
“You make me happy, my love,” she whispered, stopping him gently. He watched her eyes flutter shut. “You make me so happy that I forget what not having you felt like.”
He stroked her cheek with his thumb, his throat growing tight. “I’m crazy about you. You know that, right?”
Diana lifted her gaze, her lips curled ever so slightly at the corners. He tried to look past the remnants of fear and devastation in her eyes. “You’re very convincing, yes.”
Steve sighed. “I trust you, too. Just for the record.”
“I don’t trust her, and I don’t regret what I’ve done.”
“Okay,” he said simply.
Her nails scratched along his scalp. “Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Steve wasn’t sure which one of them kissed the other. Had no idea if she had moved or it was he who pulled her into his lap either, but suddenly she was there with her arms woven around his neck and her mouth fused to his, desire laced with devotion and need to make the other understand coursing between them.
Diana muttered something in Greek against his mouth, and he had no idea what it was. Not a protest for sure. Perhaps one of the many expletives she seemed to be familiar with. He would ask later. Right now, he wanted nothing but to kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her, and she didn’t seem to mind.
They didn’t speak much for the rest of the night.
---
It was the pale light of the cold autumnal sun chasing away the gloominess of the day before that awoke Diana several hours later. The first thing that occurred to her when her mind sharpened enough to pull her out of her slumber was that she planned to close the curtains before she and Steve had fallen asleep but must have forgotten.
It was quiet, save for the light breeze outside tugging at the branches of the trees. Whatever time it was, it couldn’t possibly be late. Still, she couldn’t recall the last time she had slept past sunrise, not in recent years for sure. It was almost as if the fight had drained her, the angry words that they had flung at one another. Ones that rang true. And those that followed, meant to make up for the wounds that she and Steve had left on one another.
Then again, they also did stay up most of the night afterwards, she recalled, quite happy to remain wrapped in one another and the promises whispered in the dark until exhaustion claimed them, at last.
Now Steve’s body was curled around her, his arm slung possessively around her waist and his chest rising and falling slowly against her shoulder blades, the warmth of him making Diana dozy. She felt her lips curve into a smile and turned her face into her pillow, aware of the futility of trying to fall back asleep, too awake and alert for that already, but still adamant to hold on to those moments of peace before the pleasant remnants of her drowsiness wore off.
And it was then that she realized that it wasn’t the light of the early morning that awoke her but the faint buzzing of her phone on the nightstand.
In the back of her mind, she wished that she had left it somewhere across the room, somewhere she wouldn’t be able to hear it, but concern took over before regret could. She opened her eyes and looked around the room, registering her surroundings and their clothes strewn all over the floor. Her gaze caught on the now-ruined blouse forgotten at the foot of the bed, the torn-off buttons scattered around like small white pearls.
Smirking to herself, Diana rose up on her elbow and reached for her phone. Behind her, Steve shifted when she moved. He tightened his grip on her, and stretched over her and caught her hand, interlacing their fingers together before she picked up her phone and drawing it back.
“No,” he muttered sleepily and tucked their hands against her chest, his face buried in her hair and his grip impressively strong. It didn’t matter that she still could slip out of it without effort, Diana couldn’t help but love the intent behind it anyway.
“It could be something important,” she whispered, sinking back into the comfort of his embrace despite her better judgement, revelling in the weight of his body pressed against hers.
Steve brushed his lips to her bare shoulder, inching his way slowly toward her neck. “If it was important they’d just burst through the door.”
“It’s locked,” Diana said. For that exact reason.
“Oh.” He nuzzled into her neck, a smile in his voice. His lips pressed to a spot behind her ear. “Good.”
She pulled her hand from his grasp and thrummed her fingers back and forth along his forearm, tempted to allow herself to disappear into an all-consuming bliss that she never wanted to end. All these years later, and she still couldn’t quite figure out how it was war and destruction that gave her something as wonderful as this man who made her feel like she was alight from the inside. How something awful could turn into happiness beyond anything she could ever have imagined.
He was right about something else, too. If something bad had, in fact, happened, locked door or not, someone would have come knocking. Their tactfulness only went so far, and the thought soothed her. Behind her, Steve stretched and draped himself languidly over her, tugging her closer, his breath on her skin making Diana’s chest constrict. His fingers trailed idly along her skin, leaving goosebumps in their wake, his intentions clear.
She shifted against him, rolling on her back to face him. Her smile stretched wider on a will of its own at the sight of his spectacular bedhead, her fingers itching to either smooth it down or mess it up even more - she wasn’t sure. Oblivious to her thoughts, Steve smiled back, a little sleepy, a little playful, completely hers. Diana’s heart squeezed fiercely with tenderness.
She reached for him, her palm sliding along his cheek, his stubble somehow both soft and prickly against her skin. Without wasting another second, Steve dipped his head to press his mouth to her neck, seemingly beyond excited to have better access to it.
“Morning,” he murmured against her throat, his voice still hoarse with sleep but his lips moving with precision and purpose.
“Good morning,” Diana breathed and thought, I could have a thousand years’ worth of mornings like this and it would still never be enough.
His hand drifted down her sternum and toward her hip, his lips moving slowly across the valley of her chest with steady determination.
Desire stirred up in her belly, turning her blood into molten lava of need. After missing each other for decades, it was, perhaps, no surprise they both felt quite insatiable with one another now. Perhaps, she didn’t want it to be any other way, not for a while.
Diana swept her hand through his hair. “Have I not worn you out?” she teased, struggling to stay focused and trying to figure out how much time they had before their absence became downright indecent. They had things to take care of, after all, and she had a distinct suspicion that this was the kind of issue that wouldn’t go away on its own.
Steve glanced up at her and grinned, lopsided and cheeky, leaving her wanting to kiss that smile of his. To never stop kissing it. “Not possible.”
She bit her lip against a pang of guilt, but his touch quelled it without much effort. She had spent a century protecting this world from itself, willingly and gladly and without wanting for anything in return, and she wasn’t planning on stopping. It wasn’t about pride or a sense of superiority, nor was it about proving anything to herself or her mother or her people. It was about devotion and purpose and peace and doing the right thing in the face of all wrongness that she would never be able to look away from.
There were parts of her that Diana was certain were made of nothing but scar tissue, her heart included. Parts she was proud of and wistful about in equal measure. Lately, she was starting to feel them again. The numbness inside of her coming to life. Did she not deserve these moments of happiness after all she had been through?
His mouth on her sternum, Steve traced the curve of her thigh with his fingers, moving dangerously close to having her pick up her phone and text everyone that they would both be otherwise occupied for the rest of the day, Lex Luthor be damned.
His name fell from her lips as nothing but a whoosh of breath. Steve hummed without stopping his explorations as he pressed a kiss just above her navel. Diana’s eyes fluttered closed—
Her phone vibrated again.
She opened her eyes. They would come here if it was urgent, she reminded herself, but even Barry knew not to bother her without reason so persistently. It had to be important, then.
She caught Steve’s face in her hands. He looked up at her, confused, his eyes hungry. She had never been this close to throwing caution to the wind—and her phone against a wall— and letting him have his way with her. Clearly, he either hadn’t heard her phone or had made nothing of it. To be honest, she couldn’t blame him for either.
He blinked, waiting for her to let go. Diana bit her lip, torn for a moment. And then steered him off of her and back onto his side of the bed.
Steve’s eyes widened. “Wait, wait, wait, no!” he protested, adorably panicked, his eyes darting back to her body under the sheet. “I wasn’t done,” he finished in a sad voice.
Diana pressed her lips together around a smile, more amused than she was willing to admit by his attempt to tug her closer again, even though pushing against her hand on his shoulder was probably akin trying to move a brick wall. She had always admired the man’s determination.
Her hand slid up his shoulder and curled over his cheek as she leaned in to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Later. I promise,” she whispered, and he swallowed audibly.
With a sigh, she picked up her phone from the nightstand. A missed call and two texts, all from Bruce. She frowned, her finger moving over the screen as she scrolled through them. Meanwhile, using her distraction to his advantage, Steve leaned down, his mouth latching onto her collarbone.
“It’s Bruce,” Diana told him, turning her head to the side to give him better access to her throat, sound reasoning be damned. The fingers of her other hand scraped through his hair to keep his attention at least somewhat where she needed it. “He found something.”
Steve hummed noncommittally, a little too preoccupied to care.
She hesitated for another moment, urging herself to remember the feeling of his touch, and then took a deep breath and slipped out of his grasp and out of the bed.
“Oh, come on…” he groaned as he landed face-first on her pillow. He looked up and she smirked at him over her shoulder. “That’s mean.”
Diana laughed. “I’ll make it up to you,” she promised.
Steve’s gaze dipped down her body as he stared unabashedly at her. For a moment, she contemplated giving him something to look at. She liked having his eyes on her. Loved the way it would make her body feel hot all over. Enjoyed knowing that he desired her as much as she desired him, and that time hadn’t seemed to have erased that.
His gaze drifted up slowly. He grinned at her when their eyes met, unashamed by his gawking. “You sure you don’t want to come back to bed?” he asked innocently.
She watched him for a long moment, barely resisting the urge to climb back into his arms and love him again and again like she wanted to, until the black hole that his absence had left inside of her was gone without a trace. One day – one day very soon, Diana vowed silently to herself – there wouldn’t be a tragedy to prevent or an exhibition to curate or phone calls to return, and they would do just that.
But today was not that day.
Diana shook her head, smiling, and stepped toward the bathroom. “I don’t trust you to behave.”
“To be fair, I wasn’t planning to behave,” Steve called after her.
She glanced at him and tilted her head, one eyebrow arched. “That I do believe.” She paused. “Are you joining me?”
His brows pulled together for a second in comical confusion, and then realization dawned, and he tumbled out of bed with much less grace than she knew he was capable of, caught up in his own eagerness and still half tangled in the sheets.
That was not something he needed to be offered twice.
---
Steve figured they would find Bruce in the Batcave, and when Diana headed straight there he wasn’t surprised, following her down the stairs without argument even if it meant forgoing coffee. And, maybe, if they could get this over with fast and there was nothing else on the docket, he and Diana could—
He didn’t allow himself to venture any further than that.
However, when they reached the bottom of the stairs, the place appeared to be empty, the fluorescent lights casting an eerie white glow that gave the whole place a bluish hue.
Steve’s gaze skittered around, taking in the ever-present glow of the screens and the gadgets strewn across the desks in various degrees of completeness. The prototypes that Bruce never stopped working on because there was nothing like making something better than it already was. Steve was about to suggest they go check elsewhere when something caught his eye. It turned out that they were not alone, after all. Sitting at Bruce’s computer and staring intently at the screen was a woman with short dark hair, her expression curious but not troubled.
Diana noticed her at the same moment, her brows knitting together and slight tension creeping into her body.
The woman looked up when she noticed them out of the corner of her eye, her lips curving into a smirk.
She swung around on Bruce’s chair to face them and crossed one leg over the other, her head tilted to her shoulder as she studied them with an unmasked interest that, Steve figured, would make a lot of people uncomfortable.
“Bruce told me he had people over,” she said after a moment. Apprehensive, her gaze darted between the two of them before it fixed on Diana. “You must be Diana. He mentioned you.” Her eyes drifted over to Steve next, a spark of curiosity flaring up in her gaze. “And you… he said nothing about.”
“I’ll do my best not to take it personally,” Steve noted.
The realization hit hard and fast and when he least expected it. Even without the mask covering half of her face and the lack of cat ears and the clothes that didn’t hug her like a second skin, as he had seen on the security footage, Selina Kyle wasn’t hard to recognize. As the shock settled, Steve wondered absently if she’d be flattered or insulted if he told her just that. After all, the costume was meant to keep her identity secret.
Then again, no one else probably knew to look.
Her lips stretched into a wider, more genuine smile. “You shouldn’t.” She took note of the space between him and Diana, which was nonexistent, and his knuckles touching the back of Diana’s hand. “Oh, I see. That explains it.”
She stood up then, languid and lazy. It didn’t escape Steve’s attention that her eyes darted around as though to check for emergency exits and a possible retreat strategy. She didn’t look like she felt threatened, but old habits—
“I’m Selina,” she said and offered him her hand, and he had to bite his tongue around I figured. “Selina Kyle.”
He shook it on autopilot. “Steve Trevor.”
Her grip was firm. Solid. She didn’t offer her hand to Diana, though. Only a nod.
“Is Bruce around?” Diana asked, not bothered by the breach of social protocol.
“Shower, I believe,” Selina said. “It’s been a long night.”
Steve decided that he didn’t want to know the details.
“I’m sure he’ll be here any—” Selina started.
“I told you not to touch anything,” Bruce’s snarl cut her off.
Her smile slipped, and Steve barely resisted the instinct to look away, so private the scene unfolding in front of them felt. And he had a distinct gut feeling that this was a bad idea. His own relationship with Diana probably complicated things within the League whether they wanted it or not, and it was a good relationship. This, right here, was something ugly, something full of pent-up anger and unresolved pain, and he feared that if things got bad, all this tension, all this hurt could backfire for everyone involved. Badly.
“Do you work for Lex Luthor?” Diana asked, studying the other woman impassively.
“She doesn’t work for anyone but herself,” Bruce muttered under his breath.
Bruce might want to keep a second liquor cart here, strictly for situations like this one, Steve thought.
“Do you mind?” Selina arched an elegant eyebrow at him, and Bruce raised his hands, gesturing for her to continue. She turned to Diana. “I got a request several weeks ago. An email, believe it or not. Doesn’t happen often.” If she was going for a joke, it fell flat. She didn’t seem to be bothered by it, though. “They were asking me to procure an artifact.”
“To steal it, you mean?” Diana clarified.
“To get it any way I could,” Selina countered. “If it was for sale on the black market or from a private collector, I’d buy it and charge them ten times what I paid for it.”
“No wonder our economy is thriving,” Steve breathed, earning an appreciative grin from her.
“As it turned out, it was being kept at a museum,” she went on. “Whoever it was, they wired half of the fee to my account when I said yes with the other to be transferred once they had the item.”
“Who was it from?” Diana asked, her brows knitted together.
“John Doe with a generic account that was deleted immediately after my response,” Selina said, effectively squashing their hopes for any clues. Bruce’s jaw clenched in disappointment. “I tracked it to a coffee shop in Sao Paulo which, technically, means they could have been sitting in a hotel across the road from my apartment and using some high-end router.” She shrugged.
“Why would you track it?” Steve inquired.
“To cover my bases,” she explained. “If something went wrong, I would have preferred to know who and what I was dealing with.”
“Well, I hope you’re happy to know now,” Bruce murmured – a remark that remained disregarded.
He looked away when Diana shot him a sharp look.
“What happened next?” Diana asked.
Selina shrugged. “I did some digging, found out where the object was. The rest was… interesting.” She smiled. “I’ve never had to sneak into a museum before.”
Diana’s hand twitched ever so slightly against his, and Steve all but heard the comment or two that she had to swallow – for the time being, at least.
“Did you know what it was?”
“No,” Selina shook her head.
“Like hell you didn’t,” Bruce growled.
“I didn’t,” she pressed forcefully. “I knew it was valuable. To be some sort of a museum rarity it had to be. That was all I needed to know. The rest is rarely my business.”
Diana regarded her without much pleasure. “What did you do with it?”
The other woman looked her square in the eye. “I was supposed to leave it in a private deposit cell in the Bank of Gotham. They sent me a code, in a text message from a blocked number. An hour after I delivered the item, the second half of the payment dropped into my account.”
Bruce huffed. “Who was the sender?”
“A private bank in the Cayman Islands. Do you think they are stupid?”
He bristled. “You don’t want to know what I think. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“It’s good to see that some things never change,” Alfred cut into what was a step away from becoming a blood bath, by the looks of it. He walked over to them, pushed some papers sitting on the desk aside and set down a tray before handing a mug of coffee to Bruce – and God knew, he looked like he needed it – and a cup of tea to Selina.
“Thank you, Alfred,” she smiled and… patted him on the cheek, a familiarity that wasn’t allowed even to Diana, Steve was willing to assume. Not that Diana was likely to try. “You’re wonderful.”
Steve pressed his lips together, trying to keep his smile at bay and expecting Alfred to brush her off, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked rather pleased with the compliment and even slightly flustered, probably because Selina seemed to have meant it.
Alfred glanced at him and Diana then. “Ms. Prince, Captain Trevor, if I’d known—”
“It’s okay, Alfred,” Diana stopped him, smiling kindly.
“We’re good,” Steve echoed, even though some caffeine would have come in handy at that moment.
“Well, in that case….” Alfred started and trailed off.
“Why is everyone yelling?” Barry demanded as he strolled towards them. “Have you guys not heard of indoor—” He cut off and skidded to a halt when he spotted Selina. “Oh.” And then his eyes widened. “Oh.” His face lit up. “You’re that cat lady!”
Bruce choked on his coffee, having to put down the mug as he coughed, lest he spilled its contents.
The speedster was observant, Steve had to give it to him.
Selina gave Barry a pointed once-over before turning to Bruce. “Are you recruiting on playgrounds now?”
Barry’s cheeks flushed. “Hey, I’m older than I look!” He protested, indignant. “Maybe not as old as Di.” His finger shot out to point at Diana. “She’s practically ancient, and her guy here—”
“Mr. Allen?” Alfred stopped him. “A word of advice?” Confused, Barry looked at him and nodded reluctantly. “Should you ever choose to elevate your love life to a better status, I would recommend not referring to any woman as ancient, regardless of the context. Ever. You can’t go wrong with avoiding that word in general.”
“I didn’t mean it like…” He sputtered and glanced at Diana, turning a darker shade of crimson. “I didn’t mean it like—”
“It’s fine, Barry,” she promised before he launched into a half-hour explanation of what it was that he had been going for. Despite the gravity of the situation, Steve was certain that she was barely holding back her own laughter. He bit his lip, genuinely feeling bad for the guy.
It wasn’t like he didn’t have a point.
Barry cleared his throat and turned away, choosing to focus his attention on something else, his cheeks still burning. “Anyway...”
Bruce regarded Selina grimly. “I don’t believe you.”
She turned to set her cup back on the tray. “I don’t care.”
At that, Steve glanced at Diana, one eyebrow raised.
There was a certain degree of irony, he thought, that in this situation, when the whole world might be teetering on the brink of destruction – again – the truth was the one thing that they didn’t have an issue with.
It took her a second to understand what he was trying to say without saying anything at all. The pause stretched between them, the decision completely in her hands.
Then, after a brief hesitation, she nodded. “Very well.”
She cast another look at Selina, giving her a pointed once-over, before heading towards the elevator, not seeming particularly enthused when she left, but not arguing either.
It took her but a couple of minutes to go upstairs and come back with the Lasso in her hand. However, in that time Victor had made his appearance – something that couldn’t go unnoticed. If Steve had to guess, there probably weren’t many instances in Selina Kyle’s life that left her somewhat slack-jawed. She certainly seemed like the type to forgo an outright sense of astonishment. Then again, Victor tended to have quite an effect on people. All things considered, she was taking their merry company remarkably well.
Diana walked over to her. “Raise your hands please,” she asked, stopping before the other woman.
Selina turned to her, only then noticing the Lasso in her hands. Her eyebrows crept up and her lips curved into a knowing smile.
“Oh, you like that.” Still, she obliged, lifting your wrists up. She glanced at Bruce. “You know, tying me up to keep me here wasn’t part of the deal.” And then, to Diana. “Will it hurt? Because I wouldn’t mind—”
“Selina,” Bruce cut her off, a warning in his voice.
Steve cleared his throat, feeling the back of his neck turn red. He had lived through the sex revolution, had seen everything there was to see, but he still never quite got used to people being so casual about it with strangers.
“Only if you lie,” Diana responded as she wrapped the lasso several times around Selina’s wrists. “Speak the truth and it won’t.”
The Lasso started to glow, faintly at first, and then brighter and brighter until it was almost too painful to look at.
Selina gasped and tried to step back and pull away, but to no avail. Not with Diana’s hands holding the loose ends of it. Her eyes widened, the veneer of her nonchalance shattering. “What the hell is this?” she demanded, her voice cracking just enough to betray her fear.
“The Lasso of Hestia. It compels you to tell the truth,” Diana explained calmly as the other woman stared at her. “Do you know Lex Luthor?”
“We’ve met,” Selina said. She licked her lips nervously, her eyes darting between her bound wrists and Diana’s face every few seconds.
Diana glanced at Bruce, briefly, before she focused on the other woman once more. “Do you work for him?”
“I don’t work for anyone.”
“Did you know what you were stealing from the Louvre?”
“Only that it was of value, maybe expensive. Maybe for another reason.”
Diana tilted her head, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Do you mean us any harm?”
“No,” Selina said through her teeth.
“Do you work for anyone who means us any harm?”
“No.”
Steve noticed that Selina’s fists were clenched so tight that her knuckles had gone white. He knew that it wouldn’t help against the burning but she couldn’t help it. Like he couldn’t either, on the occasions when the Lasso had touched his skin. The human body was funny that way.
He was only bound against his will once, nearly a century ago in the throne room on Themyscira, the Lasso clutched tightly in Menalippe’s hands and burning right through his shirt. At that moment, he had been sure that they would kill him right there and then, if not with that glowing rope that filled his brain with fog, then with their swords or a rain of arrows. He had tried to go still and rigid against the pain then, too, even though it didn’t work, the only relief was through the words of truth tumbling out of his mouth, each lessening the burning across his chest.
The second time he had experienced the effects of this powerful weapon – and there truly was no other word for it, if he was being honest – was on that night in Berlin when Diana requested the proof of his identity, but he was too angry with her, too hurt and too confused, and too mad at both of them at that moment to take note of the effects of the ancient magic.
After that, years later, Diana had bound him once upon his request, under entirely different circumstances, and the way it felt was nothing like he had ever experienced, although now wasn’t the right time to remember that night.
He took in an unsteady breath.
Diana glanced at him but said nothing, although he wondered if she knew what it was that he was thinking of now.
“Do you plan to betray us?” she asked Selina.
Selina’s gaze darted toward Bruce. She winced. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“Well, at least she’s being honest,” Victor muttered.
“Do you know where the Claw of Horus is now?” Diana went on.
“No, I told you,” she shook her head. “I left it in the deposit box the night I came back to Gotham.”
There was a moment of hesitation before Diana’s hand reached to free Selina’s hands.
Barry’s arm shot into the air. “I’ve got one.”
Everyone turned to him. After a second, Diana nodded for him to go ahead.
He cleared his throat and wiggled his finger between Selina and Bruce. “What happened between you guys?”
“Bruce has commitment issues,” Selina responded immediately. “Although he’s always been good in—”
“That’s enough,” Bruce cut her off.
He marched over to where the women were standing and yanked the Lasso off Selina’s wrists. He hissed and let go of it when it burned his hand, and it coiled itself promptly back in Diana’s hands, steadily losing its glow. Diana walked over to stand by Steve, and he reached to brush his fingers against hers.
“Well, that was informative,” Barry breathed, rubbing the back of his head.
“A little too informative,” Alfred noted dryly.
Bruce’s gaze swept the room and the people standing around them. He turned to Selina who was rubbing her skin, even though it remained unscathed. “You have to help us.”
She looked up at him. “I don’t have to do anything, Bruce,” she said calmly. “I don’t owe you a single thing. Not anymore.”
“It’s not about me.” His jaw set tautly, his gaze heavy. “Whose fault is it that all of this is happening in the first place?”
Her mouth dropped open. “Are you serious right now? Do you really want to start assigning blame? Because I’d be happy—”
“I’ll pay,” he interjected.
Wrong thing to say. Even Barry winced, watching Selina’s face harden, tuning into a stone-cold mask. When she spoke, her voice was measured, ringing ever so slightly with barely contained fury. Steve suspected this wasn’t the first time Bruce had said something that severed the thread of civility between him and that woman.
“I think I would prefer to remain the one thing that you can never buy.”
It was Bruce’s turn to grimace. When she turned on her heel and headed towards the elevator, he didn’t try to stop her.
“What’d you do to piss her off?” Barry inquired once she was gone, breaking the uncomfortable silence that had settled around them, and it was hard to tell whether the question was rhetorical or not.
“What didn’t he do?” Alfred muttered all the same, shaking his head and regarding Bruce without a trace of fondness.
Bruce turned to the two them, “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” he asked pointedly.
“Nope,” Barry shrugged.
“Not at the moment, no,” Alfred responded dismissively.
Steve leaned closer to Diana and whispered into her ear, “He has found something alright.”
---
“I thought you left.”
Diana stepped onto the deck bathed in the late November sun, her every breath puffing out in small white clouds. She squinted in the sunlight that seemed all the much brighter after the pale fluorescent glow of the halogen lamps down in the Batcave and inhaled the cold smell of the pines that were framing the lake stretching out before them. There was a frost on the grass and the air smelled distinctly of snow, even though no trace of the snowfall a few weeks ago was left on the ground.
She took another deep breath, feeling the chill snake down her windpipe and coat her lungs from the inside. Not an altogether unpleasant feeling.
A hundred years in man’s world, and she never ceased to be amazed by the change of seasons, of weather that wasn’t frozen in a state of perpetual summer. She missed her home, sometimes to an ache deep in her very soul, but there were things that she knew she would miss dearly had they been taken away from her. Many of her sisters never knew any different, and never would see the foliage turn golden and then green again, and she wondered, absently, if one could miss something they never knew.
“Bruce has my car keys.” Selina wrapped her jacket tighter around her body and shivered in the frigid wind but didn’t look away from the water that was impossibly still and so smooth it looked solid. “I suppose I could have hotwired it. Or maybe one of his cars. You know, to get on his last nerve.” She looked like she was contemplating the idea for a moment as Diana paused beside her. “Then again, you and your Captain Blue Eyes seemed to have that covered.”
Diana glanced at her, an eyebrow quirked in surprise. “Excuse me?”
The corners of Selina’s mouth turned upward ever so slightly, but there was no humour there. “One needs to be blind not to see that Bruce would rather have you keep his bed warm rather than… what was his name, again?”
Diana’s gaze shifted back to the lake as her hands curled around the metal railing circling the deck. “Steve. I’m sure you heard his name fine the first time around.”
“You are a peculiar one, indeed,” Selina mused. “You don’t believe me,” she said after a moment, without a hint of accusation in her voice. “None of you do. Even after that rope thing—whatever it was, you still don’t believe that I’m telling the truth.”
“I have no reason to,” Diana didn’t argue. “Bruce told us about your—”
“Hobbies. I’m sure he did.” She didn’t sound surprised or offended. “What else did he say?”
“Why did you come if you weren’t going to help?” Diana asked, ignoring the question.
“If a man forgot to return your calls for five years and then suddenly came to seek you out in the middle of the night, wouldn’t you be curious?” Selina turned to her, genuinely interested.
“Depends on the man,” Diana responded honestly.
Zeus only knew what she would have done if Steve came looking for her sometime in the past sixty-seven years. Would she care about his motives? His reasons? Would she listen to him or walk away if she knew that it wasn’t her that he came for? Those were the questions she had no answers to. Never would.
Were Bruce’s feelings really that transparent, she wondered. No one ever said anything to her, but they didn’t need to. Alfred had to have noticed. He never made a secret out of more or less hoping for a certain development in their relationship even though he was tactful enough to refrain from being overt about it. Clark was observant but he would never speak of something like that. Not unless Diana asked. She hoped the rest of them remained oblivious.
Bruce was a good person despite his adamant attempts to make it look otherwise. She respected him as a fighter and cared for him as a friend. But she was desperately and madly in love with another man, had been for so long that she could no longer remember what it felt like not to carry him in her heart. It wasn’t a matter of choice. She had made hers a century ago, and she would make it again and again for as long as they both lived. Not that Bruce ever asked. Not that she gave him any reason to. There was hope in him, though. But it was easier for Diana to pretend that she couldn’t see it when her feelings for someone else were on display.
“I don’t know anything,” Selina spoke. She’d been standing there long enough for her cheeks and the tip of her nose to turn pink. “If I knew I would have told you. Believe it or not, Bruce is a friend.”
“Is he?”
“He is not the enemy,” she amended. “Is it not the same thing?”
“You’d be surprised,” Diana murmured.
The line was thin but it was there nonetheless. It was about loyalty, and the lengths people would go for a friend but not someone who merely wasn’t their foe. Whatever the history was between Bruce and this woman, Diana was certain that they had been on the same side of that line at some point. She knew her way around the house. She clearly cared for Alfred and he cared for her. And despite the interrogation she had been put through, she all but felt at home in a situation where others would panic. She clearly knew about the secret side of Bruce’s life, and that spoke of trust more than any words ever could.
But somewhere along the way, something went wrong and whatever held them together had fallen to pieces. Now the question was whether or not it was a good idea to mix it into what they were already dealing with.
Selina exhaled slowly. “Whatever I have done, I have never intentionally hurt anyone.”
Diana nodded, choosing to hold her judgement for the time being. “Would you still steal the Claw of Horus if you knew what it was?”
Selina’s lips quirked. “I would have covered my tracks better.”
Diana smiled, despite herself. She was hardly in her right to have an opinion but Bruce sure knew how to get in trouble. Still, she turned to face the other woman. “Why?”
Selina shrugged, clearly amused. “To avoid this conversation, maybe?”
“No, why are you doing it?”
“For fun.”
Diana regarded her pensively. Bruce had said that Selina Kyle meant no harm, and Diana believed him. He could lie to Barry and Alfred and Clark and the rest of them, but he was not in a habit of lying to her even if his reasoning was flawed. She believed that he had meant what he said. Didn’t mean that it was true, though.
“Surely it’s not the only way to have fun,” she noted after a moment.
Selina turned to face her properly, her head tilted to her shoulder. “Bruce is leaping from rooftop to rooftop in a bat suit. Whatever it is that you and the rest of all you people do… do you think you are in a position to judge?”
“It’s not about the thrill,” Diana said. “Not for everyone.”
“Then maybe you’re doing it wrong.”
Notes:
So... hope you liked it :)
Thoughts, comments and yelling are always welcome! Or come talk to me about WW84!
(Why is this thing so long? Agh, still 6 chapters to go!)
Chapter 20
Notes:
Hey folks, I'm still alive. Sorry for another break between postings, but... *gestures at everything* The past couple of months were not particularly inspiring, or inspirational, or anything of that sort. I am, however, desperate, to finish this story, if only because I already have two more multi-chapters I can't wait to share :P
I suppose we all had a tough couple of months and I hope that you're all taking care of yourselves and doing your best to stay safe, from whatever "plague of the month" you're dealing with right now.
So, here's some entertainment for you :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Trouble came calling in the late afternoon, and like many things expected and predictable, it still caught them completely off-guard.
Diana was in the kitchen with Steve, sharing a sandwich that he had made for himself while she had been speaking with Selina Kyle. One that he had immediately cut in half to share when she had finally stepped inside. It was only then that she realized, belatedly, that caught up in the wild craziness of the day, they had skipped both breakfast and lunch, and they all needed sustenance.
Something had shifted between them last night. Something that Diana couldn’t quite put her finger on yet. It felt like a flutter in her chest, like something unfurling inside of her, the feeling both new and somehow familiar, all at once. It was as if their argument had stripped them off the remnants of their armour until there was nothing left for them to hide behind.
After their fight and everything that had followed, after he had promised her over and over again to never, ever leave her, Steve had been the first to drift off to sleep, sated and spent and with a smile on his face that had made her breath catch. Diana had stayed awake for a while afterwards, watching his chest rise and fall slowly under the sheet, her fingers moving absently over the jut of his collarbones, the line of his jaw, his hair, his face.
And she had thought – I have never loved this man more.
They ate in silence until there were only crumbs left on their shared plate, and Diana thought absently of how he used to perceive breakfasts as a testament to normalcy. How sometimes even the smallest things could have peace to them.
A memory sprung up in her mind, from a long time ago. One of Charlie calling Steve a glutton, claiming that the latter could eat a horse when he was hungry – quite literally so. She remembered laughing then at the way Steve’s face had grown hot, at him threatening to spill some story the mere mention of which had made the face of his friend grow pale, and had left Sameer breathless with laughter.
She wished she had known then to hold on to those moments more tightly. To bottle them up better so she could keep them in her heart forever.
Wished she had learned not to doubt the endless array of tales that had rained on her during those early days in man’s world. Steve did, in fact, have an exceptional appetite.
“So, what do you think?” he asked evenly, as he carried their plate and cups to the sink, not needing to mention Selina Kyle’s name for Diana to know exactly what he was talking about. It was the casualness of his voice that told her that he had been dying to bring this up for ages.
Diana’s eyes darted toward the hallway and in the general direction of the Batcave on their own accord. Even though their morning guest was already gone, her presence lingered like the proverbial elephant in the room that everyone was adamant to ignore, no matter how impossible it was.
“Bruce certainly has a peculiar taste in friends,” she remarked diplomatically.
“Bruce sure has a type,” Steve noted, casting a sideways look her way.
Diana hummed, arching an eyebrow at him. “Thieving and evasive?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of stubborn and unbothered at giving Bruce Wayne, of all people, a piece of their mind,” he countered, turning to her.
Normally, Diana wouldn’t see any similarities, but when he put it like that...
Selina Kyle definitely knew how to make a lasting impression. And if Diana had to assume, she was aware of it and never shied away from using it to her advantage.
The woman was hard to read, nearly impossibly so, seemingly adamant about remaining as closed off as a person could ever be. Even more curious was the fact that Bruce didn’t fight it. He did not seem thrilled about it, though.
“Does this make her your type, too?” Diana inquired, trying not to smile.
Steve stepped toward her, and like always, his proximity and the easy curve of his lips left her with a tug in the pit of her stomach. He reached over to tuck a strand of hair that had escaped the loose bun at the nape of her neck behind her ear before his palm settled on her hip.
“Nah, with me it’s just you.”
“Flatterer,” she murmured, her thumb brushing over his bottom lip.
Steve grinned. “Hey, you asked,” he pointed out. A sigh tumbled out of his chest, his small smile dimming. “So, what now? We haven’t exactly gotten anywhere with her.”
Diana’s fingers ran along the collar of his shirt, her brows creasing in concentration. “Well, I suppose we could—”
She was cut off by the commotion that erupted downstairs, the voices seemingly exploding all at once and speaking over one another. She stepped away from Steve, hating the feeling of being yanked once more into the present, where sunny mornings had no place to be, while his hands slid off her body, albeit reluctantly.
“Something’s wrong,” she muttered as she walked briskly out of the kitchen. Steve followed her into the hallway and down the stairs leading to the Batcave without a word.
“What happened?” she demanded when they reached the lower level where the red alarm sign was blinking on the central monitor over her shoulder, the security feed playing behind it. She couldn’t immediately tell if it was live or merely a replay of it.
“It’s the S.T.A.R. Labs,” Victor responded stiffly.
He had at least half a dozen holograms hanging in front of his face, morphing into one another and changing shapes, as he scanned the facility through remote access. Something was happening so fast it would have left anyone else with a spell of dizziness.
Bruce was staring at the screens before him with a frown, his face hard.
Diana didn’t like it. Didn’t like the tense line of his shoulders and the stiffness of his back, either. Didn’t like how much more personal all of this was to them than she was willing to admit. Lex Luthor’s involvement had changed everything, and she wondered for the first time if he came for the gauntlet because of the power it carried within, or if he merely wanted to taunt her like he did Bruce, and stealing from her something that could be used as a weapon against them all was merely a convenient bonus.
A payback for her stealing from him.
“You think it’s Luthor?” she asked, turning to Bruce.
“I don’t think it’s random,” he responded.
“Pretty ballsy of him to do anything in the middle of the day,” Barry commented, his eyes darting between the monitors and the images summoned by Victor.
“It’s Saturday,” Victor said as, with the slight flick of his fingers, the holograms disappeared. “Even with someone working outside of their usual hours, it’s a safe bet.” He looked at Diana. “There are five people in the building, but the card reader is tampered with, I can’t tell who they are.”
Bruce glanced at her, too, his expression grim. “Better check it out. Could be nothing.”
“Or it could be a trap,” Steve pointed out.
Bruce’s gaze shifted to him, and then back to Diana. “I’ll tell Clark to meet us there.”
She nodded.
“Victor,” she turned to Cyborg, “you should come with us.” Her eyes moved to the speedster standing next to Steve. “Barry, stay here, you’ll be backup if it’s not nothing.”
“I don’t think—” Victor started, gesturing at himself. Even wearing loose jeans and a sweatshirt, he still couldn’t hide the metal plates adorning his face, his polished steel hands reflecting the glow of the monitors. “Barry should go instead.”
“Sure thing,” Barry agreed eagerly, his enthusiasm in the face of danger making Diana’s lips tug upwards at the corners. “Just… back up for a moment to that part where this might be a trap—”
“No.” Bruce shook his head. “Victor knows the facility inside out. If Lex is playing his games, we might need that.” He jerked his chin toward the Batmobile waiting patiently for them to suit up before sizing Victor up with a measured look. “No one’s gonna see you.”
Victor didn’t argue with that.
Once Bruce disappeared to get changed, Diana turned to Steve who was watching the exchange with an expression she couldn’t quite read.
His eyes met hers.
“Do you need me?” he asked, his gaze flicking toward the screen and then locking with hers once more.
Always , she thought. I always need you .
But this was not the nature of his question, and hers was not the answer he needed to hear. Panic closed around her throat like a cold hand, squeezing all the air out of her lungs. They were a team now. They had always been a team, and he didn’t need her patronizing him. He didn’t need her to keep him in a glass box. He was a soldier, and she feared that if she made her attempts to protect him known, he would resent her for not trusting him, for thinking that he was lesser than her in ways that mattered. Diana would never disrespect him like that.
But it was one thing to know that she had to do the right thing by him, and another to actually do it.
“You know, if you just pull the hood real low…” Barry’s voice trailed off behind her as she tuned him out.
She moved closer to Steve, searching his face that was open and earnest, and she knew in that instant that he would accept anything she would tell him without hesitation, without questioning her decisions or doubting her motives. Like he’d always done. Like he would do for as long as they’d be in one another’s lives, perhaps.
“No,” she shook her head. “Not this time.” Steve nodded. A soldier who was used to following commands. There was no disappointment in him, only concern – for her and for what she was about to walk into. Diana wrapped her arms around herself, her fingers curling tight over her elbows. She glanced over her shoulder at where Barry and Victor were arguing about something in hushed voices. “What we need is for you to tap into the CCTV feed,” she said, looking at Steve once more, and he nodded again. “If it is Lex, and if he leaves before we get there, we’ll need to know which direction to follow.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.
Diana pressed her lips together to hold back a traitorous smile, so out of place at that moment.
Steve slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans.
“You think it’s serious?”
She considered his question for a moment. “I think Bruce might be right. It might be nothing, but it’s too big a coincidence.”
He shook his head. “No, what do you think?”
Diana cast a quick look at the still blinking alarm and bit her lip. “I think there’s only one way to find out,” she muttered, finding his eyes with hers.
“You might want to suit up for that,” Steve noted, giving her a pointed once-over, one eyebrow lifted.
There was worry pooling behind his eyes that she knew was beyond his control. She might be able to tear buildings apart with her bare hands as she pleased and he might trust her to keep safe in the face of anything, but there were things that one simply couldn’t help feeling about someone they cared about.
Even so, Hera help her, when he was looking at her this way, she knew that she would rather do the opposite of suiting up.
The unease stirring in her chest quelled Diana’s need to close the distance between them. If this was Lex, he was too bold for her comfort, too confident, and maybe too arrogant even, and she hoped – she prayed to all the gods she could think of – that they had time to gain their momentum.
She leaned forward and brushed a light kiss to his lips, Barry and Victor be damned. “I’ll be back soon,” she promised, pulling back to find his face slightly flushed.
Steve cleared his throat.
“Take care,” he said without reaching for her even though she saw that he wanted to.
“I will.”
“You have got to stop being so... cute,” Barry’s voice cut into their conversation. Diana turned to him and he grimaced in disgust, gesturing at the two of them. “So… lovey-dovey.”
Steve chuckled. “Who says lovey-dovey anymore?”
“Hey, I’m trying to use the old people language,” the speedster protested, offended.
“You might want to stop trying,” Victor suggested, patting Barry on the shoulder with enough force to nearly send the latter flying across the room. He met Diana’s eyes. “You coming?”
She nodded, choosing to not point out to Barry that he could have asked Iris out months ago, and that suffering from unrequited love — that might not be unrequited once he did something about it — was his own doing. But maybe later, when they were not on a deadline.
Her fingers brushed against Steve’s as her last goodbye before she followed Victor up the stairs and out of the Batcave.
“Hey, you wanna get pizza or something?” Diana heard Barry ask Steve behind her back, but by the time Steve answered she was too far away to hear his response.
---
Steve felt Diana’s absence in the pinpricking of his skin and the tug of longing somewhere deep in his chest.
He hated waiting.
Half an hour had passed. And then an hour. And then two. He kept the communication channel open but they didn’t ask for help and the news was blissfully devoid of any reports on an ongoing massacre anywhere in Gotham city. It should have been a relief, but instead, Steve couldn’t help but feel that he was about to climb out of his skin from worry and impatience.
If this was how they were going to do it from now on, with Diana being out on the front lines and him keeping the home fires burning, he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to handle it. A hundred and thirty-six years was a very long time, long enough to do some proper soul searching and get his priorities straight. His ego could hardly be considered an inflated one, but he was very well aware of his virtues and not ashamed of them. Patience, however, had never been one of them.
After receiving no objections and taking it as unanimous agreement, Barry went ahead and ordered pizza. Steve’s stomach was in knots though, and when offered some, he politely declined. It wasn’t fear, per se. He knew that Diana could take care of herself. Knew that they all could. And maybe it was ridiculous and downright self-indulgent of him to assume that his presence might have made any difference, all things considered. Between a goddess, an alien and a cyborg, with a billionaire who had twenty years’ worth of experience thrown in the mix for good measure, they were probably as prepared to face any kind of battle as they could be. Rumour had it that they were a decent team.
No, it was the not knowing that made him feel like climbing the walls of the Batcave, with its pale light and concrete walls what were starting to feel like a massive coffin pressing in on him. It was the waiting for something that he couldn’t predict. And it was starting to drive him insane.
At some point, he had climbed under the belly of the Knightcrawler with Bruce’s toolbox, remembering that Bruce mentioned something or other about fuel leaking and that he hadn’t yet got around to checking it out properly. Steve could do that. He could check the fuel hoses and everything else there was that could be checked. He could do this stuff in his sleep. Truth be told, there was comfort in concentrating on something familiar, his hands moving on a will of their own, knowing what to do before his mind did.
He found a loose valve and tightened it. Checked the hoses, too, and changed the air filter that was due for a replacement anyway.
If his mind wasn’t as scattered, he’d actually take his time to admire this beast that was truly more of a work of art than a vehicle. Like nothing he had ever seen or could imagine. Steve had yet to see it in action but he had heard enough about it to be mesmerized already. Bruce Wayne was a lot of things, not all of them flattering, but no one could accuse him of not being fond of his toys. Like the jet waiting patiently on the lower level of the Batcave, so different from the planes that Steve was used to from his early days in the Air Force. It was a weird feeling but, even now, the antique models that belonged in museums still felt like home to him, even though he hadn’t touched one in a very long time.
Still, tinkering with something was as good a distraction as any.
That was where Alfred found him sometime later, under the Crawler, a thoughtful cup of tea in his hand.
“Thank you,” Steve smiled at him, climbing to his feet, more grateful for the thought than the tea itself.
“Trying to keep busy?” Alfred asked, as he observed the massive vehicle.
Steve reached up to run his hand through his hair but stopped and lowered his hand when he noticed the oil stains on her fingers, his eyes searching for something to wipe it off. “Yeah, well….” He grabbed a rag from the workbench. “Trying to be useful.” They remained silent for a few moments as Steve scrubbed his hand clean as best he could. “Hey, Alfred, you’ve met Lex Luthor, right?” he asked.
Alfred pushed some tools aside to clear space for the cup he had brought.
“You could say that.”
“What’s he like?”
The older man straightened up and pushed his glasses further up his nose. He considered Steve’s question. “He is brilliant, in his own way,” he said at last, which came out as an admission that he wasn’t particularly happy about. “And like many brilliant people, he turned out being quite troubled.”
Insane , Steve corrected in his mind. A lunatic with a lot of money and an insatiable hunger for power. Add to that his unwillingness to share Gotham with another rich guy, and… in a weird way, it actually explained how they ended up stuck in this mess.
Steve cleared his throat. “What about Bruce’s… um, friend? Is she—she’s not around anymore, right?”
“Ms. Kyle had a prior engagement she needed to attend to,” Alfred answered without actually saying anything.
“Right. Of course.” Not that it explained much. Or anything, for that matter. “So…” he started matter-of-factly, “What’s their deal?”
The butler regarded Steve pensively for a long moment. “Remember how you and Ms. Prince had a falling out and hadn’t spoken to one another since before I was born, Captain?” he asked.
“That… that is an interesting way to put it,” Steve muttered, tossing the rag that had made little difference to his oil-stained fingers into the toolbox.
Alfred smiled, but it was wistful. “Sometimes people do foolish things when they are confused.”
“Sometimes people don’t have a choice.”
“There is always a choice, Captain Trevor. You might not always like the options but there is always a choice.”
“What happens when all options are bad?”
“You learn to live with the repercussions of picking one, whichever one that might be,” Alfred shrugged. “If I may, Captain…”
Steve nodded.
“I haven’t known Ms. Prince long enough to have a good frame of reference, but she used to have an air to her like she was constantly looking over her shoulder, searching for someone. She seems like a different person now that she seems to have found it.” Alfred looked around the cavernous room, and Steve wished he could see what the older man was seeing that made him look so weathered all of a sudden. “Gets one thinking, I guess.”
“You think Bruce is still looking?”
“I think he might want to open his eyes first,” Alfred said dryly.
Steve wondered if it counted that Batman managed to see Diana, but that wasn’t a question he needed an answer to.
He was about to ask what Alfred knew about Selina, too curious not to, when he heard the metallic clang and the low hum of an engine that carried the smell of exhaust with it as the heavy gate behind him and Alfred lifted and the Batmobile rolled inside. Steve turned around to look at the black slick car, his heart skipping a beat or two. Beside him, Alfred went still, his brows pulling together ever so slightly as he watched the vehicle slow down and stop.
The doors lifted open simultaneously on both sides of it and Bruce and Victor emerged, unharmed but grim, their mouths set in identical tight lines.
“I suppose your venture wasn’t very fruitful,” Alfred was the first one to speak.
Bruce pulled his cowl off, his face a grimace of displeasure. “No, it was not.”
Steve's gaze darted past him. “Where’s—”
“She flew on her own,” Victor spoke before he had a chance to finish the question. “She and Clark will probably use the door.”
“At least someone does that,” Alfred noted under his breath.
“What happened?” Barry appeared beside them in a flurry of wind that sent a handful of papers sitting on one of the desks to the floor. “Where’ve you been?”
Victor’s eyes darted towards the slice of pizza in the speedster’s hand. “That is your idea of being backup?”
“For your information, it’s called stress eating,” Barry retorted defensively. “You guys have been gone for hours. Tell them, Alfred.”
“Nothing happened,” Bruce shook his head, ignoring them entirely.
“So, it wasn’t Lex?” Steve asked, eyes flicking between him and Victor.
“Oh, it was him alright,” Victor said. “Remember the test subjects that had been kept in the lab?”
“Hard to forget,” Steve muttered.
Victor’s frown deepened.
“It appears that when Waller decided to cover up the investigation to save her face, or more accurately, her ass, in front of the public, she went above and beyond to keep the details of what had happened that night from the press,” Bruce said. “So when Lex went to retrieve them, he had no idea that he wouldn’t find anyone there.” He tugged at the collar of his suit with a grimace. “Yeah, by the way, it appears that he’s behind that one too, after all.”
“How do you know it was even him?” Barry inquired.
“The way the building was broken into…” Victor glanced at Bruce. “Clark detected some energy lingering around the source, which he couldn’t understand. Nothing else was touched, no one was hurt. But in some places, the metal was cut like it was butter and someone had used a hot knife.”
They all looked up when they heard voices coming from the ground level.
Diana and Clark, Steve thought.
The hum of the elevator followed, and several seconds later Diana stepped out of it, already changed into dark jeans and a long-sleeved t-shirt, her hair pulled back. Steve felt a shuddered breath stutter out of his chest at the sight of her, at the sight of the small smile that graced her lips when she spotted him. Clark was behind her, red cape fluttering around his calves as he stepped onto the grated floor and the doors started to close behind them. He muttered something to her and Diana nodded, pensive.
She paused by Steve, hand brushing briefly against his. From this close, she smelled of the cold air. If they were alone, he’d bury his face in her hair until the freshness clinging to her was all he could breathe. As it was, he merely moved another inch closer to her. If she knew that she was being a distraction in such a drastic matter, she would scold him. Or kiss him senseless.
Maybe he should think about that later.
Barry looked impatiently around the room. “Okay, so if Lex was there where’d he go?”
Steve rubbed his cheek. “The facial recognition didn’t catch him,” he said. “The program has been running on the CCTV feeds from ten blocks around S.T.A.R. Labs from the moment you left, but there’s a lot you can get away with by keeping your head down.”
“We don’t think he used the street,” Diana told him.
He stared at her, confused.
“It’s an old building,” Victor explained. “There’s a tunnel underneath it that is a part of the underground infrastructure of Gotham – old metro lines, abandoned sewage tunnels and such. I don’t even know what else. It goes deep and runs for miles. I’m sure not even the city officials know exactly what’s down there. You can go down there and never come back, it’s like a labyrinth.”
“Weren’t they all sealed years ago?” Bruce asked, his frown deepening by the moment.
“I don’t think it’d stop someone who could rip a metal door in half,” Barry pointed out, mulling over the new information.
“He’s got a point,” Clark nodded as he ran his hand over his hair in frustration.
“That would explain how he’s stayed in the city and remained undetected,” Steve said.
Truth be told, it was smart. Beyond smart.
Steve’s mind drifted inadvertently back to the war, to how the tunnels beneath Paris and London and Berlin had been used by spies to move freely across those cities. How they provided shelter from the bombing and how the nooks were perfect for hiding during frequent raids. How one could get lost there, too, and never be seen again. How some people did go down there, never to come back.
He figured that getting the blueprints of the underground communications network built some time in the last century wouldn’t be that big a deal. One just needed to have a clear idea of what they were looking for and access to the archives. And having access to them – having access to even a part of them – would allow Lex to move around the city without anyone suspecting anything.
If Steve had doubted Alfred’s description of Lex as brilliant before, he didn’t anymore.
“So, we know for a fact that Master Luthor was behind the unauthorized experiments?” Alfred inquired.
Clark turned to him. “He does have a certain track record with those.”
Barry took another bite of his pizza. “At least it wasn’t a trap.” He shrugged. “So, what’s the plan?” He asked, his eyes jumping from Bruce to Victor to Diana to Clark without pausing on anyone in particular for more than a second, the nervous eagerness radiating off of him in waves.
“Go down there,” Bruce said after a moment, his voice decisive. “Find him. Or lure him out.”
“We don’t even know what he’s up to,” Steve pointed out.
“Does it matter?” Bruce demanded. “He’s a fugitive from law—”
“Yes, and a dangerous one, too,” Steve interrupted. “And you want to just walk into a lion’s den knowing that it’s exactly what he’s waiting for? For all we know, the attack on S.T.A.R. Labs was a ruse to lure you out, to make you go after him and get you to come to his territory where he would have an upper hand. And with a gauntlet that can channel the power from the core of the damned Earth, that’s one hell of a hand.”
“Yeah, that,” Barry nodded and pointed a finger at Steve.
“We talked about not eating down here, Master Allen,” Alfred reminded him, although his words lacked their usual sternness.
Bruce ignored them both, his eyes boring into Steve now with an anger and intensity that hadn’t existed there before.
“Or, he can be thinking that no one knows where to find him and we might have a chance of actually catching him by surprise,” he countered. “Those tunnels have always been more of an urban legend than an actual place. He might be thinking that no one knows they are even real, or that people are not stupid enough to go wandering down there.”
“Except for us,” Barry piped up, earning an eye roll from Victor. “What? Isn’t that the plan?”
“If Lex is there, he can probably put two and two together and figure out that we know about the one running under the Lab,” Clark said, his expression pensive.
“There have to be other people, too,” Diana added, making all eyes turn to her. “He couldn’t have done all of that on his own.”
Steve nodded. “And either way, it’s a closed space where he has god only knows what weaponry at his disposal. Chances are, we’ll end up trapped there.”
“Now that’s reassuring,” Barry muttered.
“Whether he is waiting for us to come or thinks that we have no idea where to look, he will have to come out of his hiding eventually,” Steve finished. He rubbed his chin, feeling Diana’s gaze on him. “He is still here, after all. One would think that after escaping the prison he would want to leave Gotham as soon as possible.”
“Because it was never about escaping,” Alfred said. His eyes darted between Bruce and Clark. “It’s always been personal.”
Bruce turned to Steve and regarded him grimly.
“So you really suggest we just sit and wait?” he asked.
“I say that going down there without knowing what we’re dealing with is suicide,” Steve responded.
Bruce pursed his lips together, his eyes never leaving Steve’s face. “Just because sitting and doing nothing is the one thing you can to do best, Captain Trevor, doesn’t mean it’s the right course of action now,” he said coolly.
The room went still and completely silent around them. On the right, Steve heard Victor inhale sharply. Even Barry stopped chewing, going completely still.
“Bruce,” Diana started with a warning.
“You know nothing about what I can do,” Steve said quietly, feeling the eyes of everyone on them.
“Steve is right,” Diana said firmly, her eyes trained on Bruce, and while Steve appreciated her attempt to put the conversation back on its track, there was something about Batman’s face, something about his eyes that told him it wasn’t working. “We can’t afford to make any rash decisions.”
Bruce turned to her. “Is he right because he is right, or because you are sleeping with him?”
Steve’s body moved seemingly on a will of its own, before his mind even registered what was happening. A sound of bone hitting bone resonated through him, pain shooting from his wrist and up his arm. Bruce staggered on impact, caught off-guard and more surprised than hurt for a moment. Steve’s fingers curled into a fist against the dull ache that came seconds later, his chest heaving. Bruce straightened up, hand reaching for his jaw. It wouldn’t be long before a bruise blossomed across his skin, and the thought left Steve with perverse satisfaction.
“Don’t ever speak to her that way again,” he said quietly, his voice low and dangerous.
Bruce rubbed his jaw and winced. “Or what?” he asked, a dare that Steve was oh so tempted to respond to, very much so.
“ Stop! ” Diana was standing between them in a second. “That’s enough!” She turned to Batman, but her hand remained on Steve’s chest, not so much to hold him back but to reassure him, calm him.
He wasn’t sure it was working, although it was sobering to have her between them, ironic as it might be. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t lunge at Bruce without her being a buffer keeping them apart. He couldn’t see her face, couldn’t know what her expression was like, but it was enough to make Bruce straighten his back and move back ever so slightly, a bead of blood pooling at the corner of his mouth.
Everyone’s eyes were on the three of them, probing and wary, but no one moved.
Blood throbbed in Steve’s ears, his heart pounding so fast he could barely stand it.
“Perhaps we need to take a break,” Alfred was the first to speak, breaking the sudden spell around them.
And just like that, Steve shook off his stupor. He sucked in an unsteady breath and stepped away from Diana. She turned to him when his movement caused her hand to side off his chest. And then he turned on his heel and walked out of the Batcave, grateful that no one tried to stop him.
Diana looked at Bruce. “You had no right,” she said stiffly before she walked away as well.
When she was out of his earshot, Barry turned to Bruce, and for once there was no trace of humour on his face. “You know that if he leaves, she’s going with him, right?”
---
Steve smacked his palm against the glass wall and clenched his teeth against a jolt of pain.
Wrong hand.
He swore under his breath and hung his head, leaving his palm pressed flat against the cool glass that did little to calm the storm raging inside of him or clear his head.
He was still seeing red, furious and ashamed, not only angered by Bruce’s words but also humiliated by his implication that, if Steve was honest with himself, was lurking in the back of his mind as well. Maybe not now, not as much as it used to, but hearing the words out loud, existing outside of his head, gave more weight to the thoughts he didn’t want to exist.
Steve didn’t care if everyone in the League thought that he was some sort of extension of Diana, merely yet another one of her limbs. Couldn’t care less because he knew it wasn’t true, even if he felt that way sometimes, too. Perhaps it was inevitable when one loved someone as much as he loved her.
He knew what he was capable of, and she knew it, too. And it was enough. But what angered him was the implied assumption that his relationship with Diana was clouding her judgement, making her take his side even when she didn’t agree with him.
Did they really think that? Had they been questioning her decisions since he made a reappearance in her life because they were no longer sure if they could trust her anymore? Surely they knew better than that. Didn’t they?
He squeezed his eyes. A shuddered exhale tumbled out of his chest, fogging the cold glass before him.
The door opened and closed quietly behind his back. Steve opened his eyes and straightened up but didn’t turn, watching Diana move across the room in the reflection before him. A moment passed, and then her arms slid around his waist. She hugged him close and pressed a kiss to his shoulder, her breath warm on his skin through the fabric of his shirt.
“I’m sorry,” Steve murmured, ashamed of his outburst, and even more so of not regretting it.
“I’m not going to make excuses for Bruce,” she whispered. She rested her cheek on his shoulder. “He had no right to cross that line.”
The anger was back, simmering just beneath the surface.
“No, he didn’t.” One hand still pressed against the glass, Steve ran his other one back and forth along her forearm. His fingers curled around one of her wrists. “Do you do it?” he asked quietly.
“Do what?”
“Do you take my side because we… because of us?”
She kissed his shoulder once more and buried her nose into his hair near the nape of his neck. “You think I would?”
“No,” he sighed, shaking his head. “No, I don’t.”
They were both biased. And yes, even in a fight he would scan the crowd for her first before he would help someone else. And yes, dammit, Diana might be inclined to listen to his arguments more attentively. But they were both more than the collection of moments they spent alone with one another and the words of love whispered in the dark. She was, first and foremost, a warrior, a protector. He was grateful, endlessly and wholeheartedly, for everything that came next, but their relationship didn’t define them. It never had.
Steve’s mind drifted to the night on the airfield in 1918 and Diana’s voice behind him, calling for him to come back to her. He had wanted to. There was nothing that he had wanted to do more, but he had known that he would never forgive himself for putting his wishes first. And even though part of Diana hated him for making that decision, he also knew that she always understood.
They worked because they kept the other one in check - because of it, or maybe in spite of it, Steve wasn’t sure. He didn’t know and didn’t care. So no, he didn’t think that she would stand by his side simply because she loved him. If anything, the opposite was more likely.
They worked because they were never afraid to call each other out on their mistakes, both quick to apologize or make amends when they were due. But even so, it didn’t change the fact that he still didn’t want the rest of the League to see her that way. He took pride in what Diana meant to those people. A pride he had no right to own but couldn’t help feeling nonetheless. He didn’t want her to be questioned and doubted because they thought that her personal relationship was affecting her judgement and tipping the scale in her lover’s favour by default.
Not that there was anything he could do about it, per se. And that was the most frustrating part of all.
Steve let out a long breath, his eyes trained on the darkness outside, searching for something that wasn’t there. He turned around. Diana’s grip went loose, her hands sliding to rest on his hips as she moved closer to him. His fingers curled around her shoulders and he leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead before resting his own against it.
“I’m not as sure as you are,” Diana said softly.
He smiled. “You wouldn’t do it,” he repeated, “but I appreciate the doubt.”
“Charmer,” her own smile blossomed across her lips. She tugged him closer by the belt loops of his jeans until there was no space and no air left between them. “We don’t have to stay here, Steve.”
He pulled back, searching her face in the dark – somehow, neither of them had bothered to turn on the light, and at this moment, Steve wished that they had. “I don’t understand—”
“We could go to a hotel, or back to Clark’s old apartment if you prefer,” she suggested. “We don’t have to stay in this house, not after... They would understand.”
“No,” he shook his head. He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and sighed. It was a tempting offer, one he would jump at happily under different circumstances. “It’s not about me. It will be better, if something happens...” he trailed off and offered her a noncommittal shrug.
Was that what Bruce would have preferred, though?
Diana took his hand and ran her thumb over his knuckles that looked raw and tender even in the faint light of the perimeter lamps shining from the outside, and felt about as great. Steve grimaced a little and stiffened when her thumb trailed over his skin. He had had his fair share of fistfights over the course of his life, most of them ludicrous and petty, all feeling like an adventure more often than not. But it had been a while since the last time it happened and he was out of practice, and the dull throb in his wrist was a sobering reminder of that.
“This looks painful,” Diana murmured. She lifted his hand up and brushed a gentle kiss to his knuckles.
The corners of Steve’s mouth twitched and tugged upward, forming into a small smile. “Yeah, well, you should see the other guy.”
His words made her laugh.
She opened his hand and turned it palm up, and then cupped it over her cheek, her own hand resting on top of it. He stroked the ridge of her cheekbone with his thumb and she smiled that majestic smile of hers at him, the one that never failed to leave him with a wild flutter in his chest and his mind completely devoid of thoughts, save for just one. I love this woman more than I ever thought was possible .
Diana turned her face to kiss the palm of his hand. Her eyes found his in near-complete darkness, and Steve couldn’t resist leaning closer to her, craving her nearness. His chest still felt tight, and if Bruce Wayne walked through that door now and made another thoughtless remark, Steve wasn’t sure he wouldn’t try to swing at him again.
“I may not always agree with you, but I will always choose you,” she whispered.
And it was like her words had tugged at a thread inside of him and something began to unravel in his very soul.
“I know.”
“Do you?” she asked, pulling back just far enough to search his face.
“Yes, of course,” he started and faltered.
She wasn’t questioning his honesty, he realized, but rather making him truly hear her. He had said the words of love countless times in the past few weeks, desperate to make sure that she didn’t doubt him for even a moment, wishing to catch up on years of not being able to do so. And he meant them, every single one of them. But he could see how the earnestness of their confessions conditioned them both to accept them without question. How maybe sometimes they needed to know that they were being truly heard.
Steve closed his other hand over her cheek, framing her face between his palms, and nodded. “I do.”
The turmoil of the day was still churning in his stomach, making him feel sick and dizzy in equal parts. He thought back to the time over a hundred years ago when he first enlisted to be a pilot for the US army. He had thought that they were all fighting for the days when no one would have to feel the same dread that had been churning in his stomach and making his blood run cold.
He wasn’t so sure anymore. There were very few moments when he allowed himself to believe that they had achieved what they had been fighting for, or anything at all. But the truth was that the war had never truly ended; it just turned into something covert and hidden over time. Something that no one knew how to fight because few were aware it was even happening.
But now Diana was right before him, both of them breathing the same air, and it dulled the sharpness of the words that had been tossed around not so long ago. On impulse, he bent down and kissed her, and it was chaste and quick and not nearly enough, but she was smiling against his lips and he knew that he would turn heaven and hell inside out if he had to, to have her never stop smiling at him.
“Okay, so, what do you think?” he asked, pulling away because there was still some unfinished business they needed to take care of and he could focus better without touching her, which led, inevitably, to thinking of doing other things to her. “I mean, you went there. What did you see?”
Diana stepped away from him. Immediately, he could feel her restlessness. She rubbed her forehead as she considered his question.
“I don’t know Lex Luthor well,” she said at last. “But I’ve known men like him. Men drunk on violence and a sense of their superiority. Not only did we put him in prison, but we also cut into his plan to use enhanced soldiers on innocent people once he returned. I wouldn’t expect him to be pleased with it.”
“So, in other words, he is pissed,” Steve clarified, coaxing another smile out of her.
“Yes, he is,” Diana confirmed. Her smile slipped. “He was careless, Steve. He didn’t bother covering up his tracks. Quite the contrary, it was like he wanted to be followed and found. He’s growing impatient, careless. And once he is too restless, he’ll become dangerous. More so than he already is.”
Steve frowned.
“Maybe he simply didn’t think that he would have to leave alone?” he suggested.
“Or maybe we angered him,” she offered. “You should have seen the place. That basement was all but torn apart. Enraged people often don’t see reason, and Lex Luthor was not only unreasonable. He wielded a weapon the likes of which don’t exist on this planet.”
Steve’s mouth tightened. “He’s used the gauntlet.”
It wasn’t a question. He recalled the others telling him something about doors being ripped off, about Clark detecting traces of some odd energy.
Diana nodded. “I think so, yes.”
“He knows how to use it, then.”
She hesitated. “Perhaps. But, does he know how to harness its power?”
Steve had no answer to that. He scrubbed a tired hand over his face and walked over to the dresser to turn on a reading lamp that flooded the room with a soft, honey-coloured glow. And then he regretted it immediately because it made him feel exposed to the darkness behind the glass wall, so piercing that it hurt to look.
He kept it on anyway.
He turned to Diana. “You think it’s bad.”
“I do,” she didn’t argue.
“Do you think we should seek him out before he comes for us?”
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away from him, her eyes trained on the blackness of the lake a mere twenty feet away from them, a slight frown lodged between her brows.
“I think that whatever choice we make, it is going to be the wrong one.”
---
Bruce stuffed his hands deeper into the pockets of his pants and hunched his shoulders against the wind, but refused to go back inside, not even to get his jacket. It had rained again earlier, and the air was thick with the smell of wet soil and rotting foliage, making him almost wish for the freshness the snowfall might bring. Clark and Victor had left, he was certain of it, but the house felt overcrowded, nonetheless.
Maybe because Barry, who often made it seem like he was everywhere at once, was still around, his voice carrying outside even through the closed door. Or maybe it was because Bruce couldn’t help but want his solitude back.
Any moment, he expected Alfred to step out onto the deck to tell him that Diana was leaving, too. That she had had enough and couldn’t stay here any longer, regardless of their situation with Lex Luthor. If she did, Bruce wouldn’t blame her. She had made her feelings about Steve Trevor abundantly clear more times than he could count. Bruce should have known better than to poke at them so thoughtlessly, and he certainly knew better than to insult her the way he did earlier.
His jaw ached dully every time he moved it or spoke. Her Captain had a good right hook, Bruce could admit that much. Decent precision, too. And hotter blood than Bruce would have given him credit for as well. By morning, there would be a sizable bruise taking up half of his face, he thought absently.
When the door opened behind him, he recognized Clark from the shadow that approached him, his cape swaying as he walked. Still here then. Bruce took in a deep breath, his eyes scanning the lawn and the lake that was barely visible in the night.
“Alfred is making dinner,” Clark was the first to break the silence a minute later. “Thought I’d let you know.”
“I’m not hungry,” Bruce muttered, his stomach in knots.
“Heard your old friend made an appearance,” Clark noted, this time with a hint of amusement in his voice.
“Don’t start,” Bruce grimaced. “I’ve already heard all about it today.”
“How’s Selina doing?”
Bruce cast a quick glance in the other man’s direction. “You know her?” he asked as impassively as could.
“We’ve crossed paths,” Clark responded vaguely. “Professionally, if you please.”
“What’d she do in Metropolis?”
“Same thing as here, I suppose.” They stayed quiet for a few moments. “Barry is onto something, Bruce. You know that, right?” Clark paused and added, “She doesn’t need us.”
Bruce clenched his jaw and winced, working it for a few moments until the discomfort ebbed. “I know.” He didn’t want to, though. The thought echoed with a sharp pain somewhere in the centre of his chest. “What about you, Clark? Do you need us?”
Clark smirked. “Everyone needs a hobby.”
“So you’re saying that we’re some charity case to you?”
“Don’t overestimate yourself,” Clark chuckled, shaking his head. “If I wanted to do charity, I’d volunteer at a soup kitchen. What I’m saying is that there is no shame in needing help now and then, or in asking for it,” he added seriously. “But this is different. You’re stepping into something sacred for Diana. And she has only so much patience for your doing that.”
Bruce let out a long breath. “I’m not an idiot. I see the way she looks at him, the way she is around him. I never knew she could be like that, you know?” Without turning, he saw Clark nod out of the corner of his eye, and Bruce pushed a frustrated hand through his hair. “I don’t know where I was going with this,” he muttered.
“She loves him,” Clark noted.
“She does.” Bruce touched his jaw gingerly, thinking that maybe he needed to find an ice pack for it. Then again, the frigid air could do the job just as well.
They had had a chance, he figured. He and Diana, when they’d first met. If he had acted sooner, if he had known not to dance around her for as long as he had, foolishly assuming that they had plenty of time. If he had listened to Alfred who had nagged him for weeks do something about it and call her, find an excuse to see her again. Maybe if he had known then what he did now. Maybe if he had told Waller to go to hell when she’d called him with the offer, or if Trevor hung up on her when she had tracked him down and had never come to Gotham. There was an endless string of what-if weaving into an intricate pattern in his mind, none of them making the tightness in his stomach any less uncomfortable.
Bruce could think of a thousand things that had to fall into place to bring them all to this moment. If even one of them got changed, he had no idea how the situation would have played out. Maybe there would never have been Justice League, to begin with.
But one thing Bruce knew for certain – he could have lived for a thousand years and become the best version of himself, and Diana would still never love him the way she loved Steve Trevor.
“He’s not going to stop, you know,” Clark said, at last.
It took Bruce a moment to figure out that they were no longer talking about Trevor.
He glanced at Clark, “I’m aware.”
“Don’t underestimate him, is all I’m saying.”
Bruce rubbed his eyes. “When did I ever…”
“Not to rub it in but remember that time at the docks—”
“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” Bruce grumbled.
Clark scoffed. “Who’s joking?” He stepped away and glanced at the sky. “Let me know when things get hot.”
Bruce turned to him. “Not staying for dinner?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“Maybe some other time. Got a date,” Clark grinned and took off into the sky, leaving nothing but a sharp whoosh of air behind.
---
If anyone asked Amanda Waller what had set her on the path that had led to her becoming the Director of a secret government organization, one that was nothing but a pain in the ass for as long as she could remember, a pleasant work environment and excellent health benefits wouldn’t make the top of her list. And neither would the steady business hours, by the looks of it.
The time was nearing midnight when she managed to finally turn her laptop off and leave the office. Her husband was going to give her a cold shoulder once more, she thought as she made her way to the elevators, for missing dinner. The fourth dinner this week. And her son’s Little League practice. Again.
She almost wished that she could go back to her office and have that glass of whiskey that she’d been thinking of ever since the distress signal had come from the S.T.A.R. Labs that afternoon, sending her agents into a frenzy and leaving her with a massive headache and a mountain of paperwork to sort through. She wasn’t surprised to receive a report about a Batman’s sighting around the area, but by the time her people had made it there, the Justice League had already cleared out of the building. The confused janitors and the professor who hadn’t left the confines of his office since that morning were of little help, which did nothing to cede her growing frustration.
She needed to bring in Lex Luthor and she needed to get the League under some sort of control, and she was starting to feel like she was running out of time. As if there was an invisible clock ticking above her head, counting off the seconds till her superiors decided to replace her with someone more efficient.
Her husband did not understand that.
The parking garage beneath the headquarters of A.R.G.U.S. was lit by dim fluorescent lights, scattered too far apart to provide decent enough illumination. The door leading to the main building squeaked lightly when Amanda Waller pushed it open, stepping into the cool space that smelled like gasoline and damp basement. Her footsteps echoed under the low ceiling and the dark corners, the sound scattering around her and bouncing off the thick concrete walls.
She wished that she had parked in the lot outside, but it had been full by the time she had returned from her useless visit to the S.T.A.R. Labs, her assigned spot taken. At the time, with the frustration that was simmering beneath her skin and making her want to take it out on anyone convenient, she had chosen not to bother, lest she actually bite someone’s head off. Not the best move when she was already walking a thin line.
She wished she did bother now. Wished she didn’t have to be in the dark sub-basement with its corners drowning in shadows and only a handful of cars still left around. As she was making her way to her car parked a few rows from the door to the main foyer, Waller thought for a moment that she had heard more than one set of footsteps, her stomach giving that small, uncomfortable tug that made her queasy. Yet when she paused and looked around, all but holding her breath for good measure, the place appeared to be empty and still, and the only sound that she could hear was her own escalated heartbeat.
Waller hurried over to her car, the shadows and the low ceiling closing in on her.
She fumbled for her keys, searching for them in her purse, and then promptly dropped them on the concrete floor when she managed to pull them out because her hands were shaking. She forced herself to take a breath.
It was her damned encounter with Wonder Woman the other day that had gotten under her skin, leaving her more shaken than she was willing to admit, the burn of that bloody rope still fresh in her memory. Waller reminded herself that Diana Prince had no reason to return. That, and they had a pretty damn amazing security system here—
She looked up and froze, her mind going completely blank.
Lex Luthor was leaning leisurely against the hood of her car, that small smile playing on his lips that made a chill run down Waller’s spine.
She tipped her chin up, adamant not to let her fear show, and pressed her lips into a tight thin line.
“Amanda,” Lex greeted her like they were old friends. “I think it’s time for us to get to know each other better.” He pushed away from her car and took a step forward. “What do you say?”
---
The Claw of Horus was a work of art, intricately crafted by people who had put their will and might into a weapon that was meant to outlive hundreds of generations of their descendants. It caught the faint light around them and reflected it, shining brighter than the sun itself.
And right now, it was wrapped tightly around Lex Luthor’s hand that was clenched around Steve’s throat, squeezing tighter with each passing moment. There was madness in Lex’s eyes. Madness and hunger for pain and revenge. He had been outplayed and he wanted retribution, and he didn’t care who he was making pay for what had been done to him.
“This yours?” he asked Diana, lifting Steve higher into the air.
Diana refused to look at Steve’s face, at his hands clawing at the gauntlet to try and loosen its grip, his teeth gritted against the effort. If she looked at him, it would be the end of everything.
“Are you going to just stand there?” Lex mocked her, feigning concern.
Anger flared up inside of her, burning white-hot. She lunged at him, blind with fear for the man that was slowly becoming nothing but a rag doll in the hands of a maniac.
Lex smiled wider, pleased. As if in slow motion, Diana watched him clench his hand sharply around Steve’s neck. Heard the bones snap with a sickening crunch.
No .
Diana watched a brief flicker of recognition in Steve’s eyes before the light went out of them and he collapsed in a heap at Lex’s feet, his face turned to her, staring unseeingly straight into her soul. A scream pierced the air, inhuman and full of such anguish that she thought her heart might burst.
Forgetting Lex, Diana dropped to her knees in front of Steve, cradling his lifeless body to her.
“No. No, please, you can’t. Steve, please, you promised…” Her hand was shaking when she ran it over his hair, his face, willing him desperately to come back, but he remained limp in her arms. “Don’t leave me.” She curled over him, unable to breathe, to think. A sob clawed out of her throat, her tears falling on his cheeks. “I love you, please don’t leave me.”
He was dead. He was dead and there was nothing that she could do, no magic tricks left up her sleeve. He was wrong about her being able to bring him back. Her mother had been wrong when she had told him that decades ago. How could they all be so foolish? Diana was meant to keep him safe, was meant to keep him with her for the rest of eternity. He had promised… he had promised to her that he would never leave. Not again, she couldn’t do it again.
A shadow fell over her, sharp and invasive, and Diana’s arms tightened protectively around Steve’s body, her breath coming out in short, shallow gasps.
Lex was looking down at them with disgust and disdain, the gauntlet on his hand reflecting the sunlight.
His eyes fixed on her face and he tilted his head, studying her with mock pity, his gaze empty and devoid of compassion. “Couldn’t save him, could you? As magnificent as you are.”
Diana awoke with a start, a silent scream lodged in the back of her throat and her skin covered with a film of cold sweat.
Steve…
Her eyes snapped open, roaming around in panic, taking in the ragged shadows painting an intricate pattern across the ceiling and the dark shapes of the furniture lining the walls of her room in Bruce’s house on the lake. (He had given it to her thinking that she would enjoy the view.)
The air was cool against her heated skin, the expensive sheets tangled around her body. The house was silent and still, and there was no one else around save for the warm presence behind her. Steve, his chest rising and falling against her shoulder blades, while his breath fell softly on her bare shoulder.
He stirred when she shifted and rolled around to face him in the dark, blinking sleepily at her when he found her looking at him.
“Diana?” His voice was low and hoarse.
She could feel the warmth radiating off of him, could smell her soap on his skin and the places where he was pressed against her moments ago missed the contact already. He looked at her, sleepy and worried and very much alive and here with her.
A dream. It was only a dream.
Diana watched a faint frown appear between his brows, but he made no attempt to reach for her, touch her, and she was grateful. With her whole body feeling like an open wound, she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to stand it if he did. She shook her head even though he didn’t ask anything and pulled away from him. She sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress as she took a breath, and then another one, her heart beating frantically against her ribs. So fast that it was making her dizzy. Making her feel like she was going to be sick.
It had felt too real, so painfully real-
Diana felt the mattress shift behind her and slid from under the sheets and out of the bed, unable to bear the thought of being touched, not yet, though she knew he wanted to.
The floor was cool beneath her feet, her skin prickling with goosebumps. She didn’t feel the cold like people did, not exactly, but this wasn’t it. It was the same kind of fear that had been gnawing on her insides for weeks, since the night when Steve had told her about her mother’s revelation, and her own doubts that came with it. Doubts she knew she would never be able to quell.
She had failed to save Steve before. If something happened to him—what if her mother was wrong? What if—
When Diana turned around, she found him wide awake and propped up on his elbow, watching her, a silent question in his eyes. Her chest tightened with tenderness and a million other things that she had no words to express them. She was not unfamiliar with the fear but she didn’t know how to not be scared of losing something that meant the world to her. More than the world.
She bit her lip and ran her hands through her hair, over her face, desperate to shake off the foul aftertaste that the dream had left her with. Bruce was wrong, she thought. Steve was not her weakness. But he was right about something else – Steve was her weak spot. She wanted – selfishly - nothing more than to lock him up someplace safe and keep him to herself for as long as they both lived. To protect him from the world, from every bad thing she had seen and everything that had yet to come their way. Knowing that she couldn’t do it was making Diana sick to her stomach, for she knew that he would never forgive her for trying.
When she looked up again, Steve was tossing the covers aside and climbing out of the bed as well.
She reached for him when he stepped close to her, her fingers trailing down the stubble on his cheek and to the pulse point beneath his jaw, just to make sure. It hammered fast and steady against her fingertips. Her heart constricted with relief and she drew her hand back, as though he could dissipate before her eyes if she wasn’t careful enough. It left her terrified to close what little distance was still left between them even though she wanted nothing more.
She was glad when he did it instead.
“Hey, what is it?” Steve whispered, moving to her and crowding her space until he was all she could feel.
He touched her face, lifting it up to his, and when his thumb brushed over her cheekbone and it came off wet. She hadn’t even realized that she was crying.
“Diana…” he started, and the lilt in his voice all but undid her.
She was shaking her head again, her throat tight and unbidden tears burning her eyes. She had spent decades reliving the loss of him and having no one understand it, but now he was here, and it was the greatest gift she could have asked for. And she still didn’t know how to accept it without feeling like he kept on slipping right through her fingers every time she looked away.
Steve leaned closer to her. “I’m sorry.”
She inhaled shakily and swallowed past a lump in her throat. “Don’t say that.”
She didn’t want him to be sorry, didn’t want him to think that any of this was his fault or that she would have it any other way, given a choice. No, she needed him to know how deeply she cared for him, despite, or because of, everything that had happened between them. Maybe both.
Diana lifted her hands and pressed them flat to his chest that continued to rise and fall slowly and steadily, his heart beating against her palm.
“Do you want to tell me what it was?” Steve asked quietly.
“No,” she whispered.
She didn’t want to think about it, about the way his life had drained out of him before her eyes and there was nothing left but an empty shell of a man she used to know. She looked up at him, desperate to make him understand, and when he opened his arms, she stepped into them, tucking her face into the hollow of his throat and allowing him to hold her, soothed by the beating of his heart against her.
“You can tell me,” he murmured, kissing her hair, his hand running over her back, over the thin fabric of her shirt. “You can tell me anything, Diana. I just—I want you to know that.”
“I don’t know how,” she said softly, breathing him in.
Steve pressed another kiss to the crown of her head. “I don’t want to be doing this to you.”
It took her a moment to realize that he had completely misunderstood what had happened. “You’re not doing anything, love. There are things that I feel that you have no control over.”
“I know.” His hand ran up and down her back once again. She could all but hear questions rolling on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t press for more. An unsteady exhale stuttered out of his chest, reverberating into her as he tightened his hold around her. “I’m not going anywhere. I need you to know that, too.”
“I know,” Diana echoed and looked up to find his gaze.
He brushed her hair back from her face, his eyes searching hers. She could all but hear the wheels turning in his head, searching for the right things to say, helplessness bringing a panic to his gaze that she wished she could erase. She wished she could make it easier for him as well as for herself, and yet here she was, having no clue as to how to do either.
Steve leaned forward and rested his forehead to hers. “I love you,” he murmured.
The corners of her mouth tugged upwards, curving into a small smile. There was something about the way he was saying it, the reverence in his voice that made her feel so cherished and wanted and adored that she could barely stand it.
“Steve, I—” Diana started, grasping for words.
She was cut off by the sudden blare of an alarm that pierced the air, so loud that it made her flinch. Steve snapped his head up, startled, and nearly leaped away from her, looking wildly around. Diana reached for him instantly, fingers curling around his arm, her own heartbeat spiking momentarily.
“Diana—”
“It’s alright,” she said.
He turned to her and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “What the hell is that?”
She took a breath and forced herself to drag her gaze away from the door, on the other side of which, she knew, a pandemonium was about to erupt, searching his face for a moment.
“Lex.”
Notes:
Only a few chapters left and we'll be done :) I cannot believe it's been almost 3 years since I started this story (It was never meant to drag on for this long, by the way :P)
Also, it's my birthday week, so please comment and share your thoughts and opinions and insights :) It's all I want, I swear! (Though if anyone has a Ferrari or a villa in the Maldives you no longer want, I'd be happy to take them off your hands, obviously.) But on a serious note, take care and please be kind to yourselves.
xo
Chapter 21
Notes:
Hey guys, I just wanted to thank those of you who are still around for your support, it means everything :) We're almost done, I promise. Only a handful more chapters left :)
Also, some of you asked me not to do something, and I kind of did it anyway. But, everything in this story has a purpose so, please bear with me.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
There were a lot of things that Steve remembered about his first war. More than he wanted to, for sure. Things that had left him with bittersweet memories of courage and fear and bravery beyond anything he could ever imagine. Things that were haunting him still, stuff that he thought no one should have to live through in this life or any other.
However, what really stuck with him was the level of self-preservation that would kick in when he least expected it. Sleeping while standing up, running faster than his body seemed to be capable of, enduring heat and cold and hunger – it was a matter of survival, and an essential one, at that.
Now, on a cold November night in Gotham, he remembered what it was like to wake up in an instant, alert within seconds, his mind sharp despite the frantic hammering of his heart. Something was wrong, but he refused to think about it just yet. Not until he had to. Right now, he needed to focus on the task at hand, namely – find a shirt and a pair of pants, his hands going through the motions with military efficiency.
Across the room, Diana was putting on her armour. “No point in bothering with anything else, I suppose,” she had said a minute ago, her movements as practiced and as easy as his.
Steve paused for a moment, watching her, their unfinished conversation still hanging between them. He wanted to crawl back into bed and pull her there with him, to put his arms around her and say something that would make her smile. He wanted to fall asleep with her body cradled against his. Instead, there was the wail of the alarm and the darkness outside the window and god only knew what else on the agenda.
He sighed and walked across the room, still barefoot. He fastened the last clasp near the base of her spine that affixed the armour firmly around her body. A practiced gesture done so many times before.
Diana turned around, a silent question in her eyes. She didn’t say anything, though. For a second, Steve’s palms lingered on her waist but he didn’t allow his mind to wander. Instead, he reached for her hand and then picked up a thin leather strip from the dresser and wrapped it expertly around her hand before snapping one of her gauntlets in its place around her forearm.
She didn’t need his help, Steve was very much aware of that. She could do it herself, and she could probably do it faster on her own. She let him help anyway, her eyes cast down and following the swift motion of his fingers.
“You’re good at this,” Diana said softly, a smile that didn’t match the gravity of the situation in her voice.
“I think I’m better at taking them off, but, you know… later,” he muttered, offering her a half-grin in an attempt to mask a flurry of worry in his chest.
She was the first one to look up, and when Steve lifted his gaze, she was studying him with an odd mixture of pride and panic in her eyes.
Lex Luthor was only a man. Even with the magical war gauntlet, he was still just a man, and there were six of them to take him down. Steve had had worse odds. His mind jumped back to that one bar fight in Brussels at the beginning of his service, shortly after he had met Sameer, when it had been the two of them against two dozen drunk and armed men. Somehow, they had managed to escape with only a black eye (Sameer’s) and an expanded array of swear words under their belts.
Steve didn’t dare bring it up though, all too aware of how rarely it was that simple, and being a mortal didn’t necessarily mean that one would be easy to defeat. Diana already knew that.
He reached for the second wrap, but she stopped him, lifting her hand to cup it over his cheek and turning his face to her. Her thumb stroked his stubble, eyes searching his.
“Like good old times, huh?” Steve attempted a smile that didn’t quite get there.
She moved closer to him until their faces were almost touching. “I love you.”
His throat grew tight. For a moment, he just stared at her, unable to look away, and then he tipped his head and pressed a kiss to her forehead. A corner of his mouth curved upward when he drew back.
“It’s gonna be fun,” he promised. “I bet it’ll take you five minutes to end it all and then Barry will whine that we pulled him out of bed for nothing.”
At that, Diana laughed, although without much conviction, and shook her head. She took the wrap from him. “I’ll finish this. You should probably….” She trailed off, her eyes dropping to his bare feet.
Steve cleared his throat. “Right.” He grinned at her.
By the time he had found his socks and pulled on his shoes and grabbed his jacket from where it was draped over the back of the chair, Diana’s greaves were on, the Lasso coiled at her side. With her shield and sword in hand, she looked every inch the goddess that she was.
Steve paused. The light reflecting off her diadem winked at him. In that moment, he couldn’t imagine a single thing in this world or any other that she couldn’t conquer. The sheer power of her very essence was a force to be reckoned with; equally breathtaking and lethal.
The tightness in his chest eased enough for him to take a proper breath, at last, his world shifting back to its proper axis. He didn’t like the idea of dealing with Lex Luthor any more than he liked posing as one of Ludendorff’s men, or sneaking into the German High Command during World War II. Or a million and a half other things that felt like walking the line between life and death. But he didn’t doubt Diana, not even for a moment, and that thought alone made a comfortable kind of calm settle over him.
With any luck, they would be back in an hour or so, and he would tell her in great detail how watching her wield her sword like it was an extension of her arm, graceful and deadly in equal measure, never failed to take his breath away. And maybe some other things, too, he decided.
He refused to think of the dream that she had but had never told him about.
The alarm cut off as suddenly as it started when they reached the steps leading down to the Batcave.
Downstairs, everyone appeared to have had the same idea as Diana. Bruce was wearing his bat suit, sans the cowl. Same went for Barry who was fidgeting with his mask in his hands. Even Victor abandoned the pretence of normalcy that the loose jeans and jerseys allowed him, his metal body gleaming in the fluorescent light. Of them all, only Alfred looked like his ordinary self, wearing the robe that Steve had seen a few nights ago atop dark blue pyjamas. Somehow, the older man was the one who looked out of place. Then Steve glanced down at his own clothes and decided that, essentially, that made two of them.
“What’s going on?” Diana demanded, and four pairs of eyes turned to them instantly.
Bruce raised a finger to his lips, and that was when Steve noticed a voice coming from the loudspeakers. Something that he had taken for a conversation between the members of the League was actually a man speaking, his voice, previously drowned by the wailing of the alarm, suddenly clear.
“…so I assumed that after you missed our rendezvous earlier today, it would be only polite to reschedule, wouldn’t it, Bruce?”
Steve’s brows pulled together. He watched Diana approach the screens, pausing next to Bruce whose eyes were locked on one of them.
“Lex,” she said impassively.
Bruce nodded curtly.
“I know your friends are listening,” Lex continued, his voice filling the space, uncomfortably loud and echoing under the high ceiling of the Batcave. “So how about this? How about you all swing by and we can make a night out of this?”
“Can he hear us?” Barry whispered loudly.
“No,” Victor shook his head, his hands moving ever so slightly as if he was flipping through an invisible book as he scanned the matrix of the systems connected to the Batcave, his expression pensive. “But he bypassed the firewall.”
Steve’s frown deepened. “That’s not possible.”
Victor glanced at him. “He didn’t hack it, per se. But he found a loophole.”
“Where is he?” Diana turned to them.
“City Hall,” Bruce responded. He jerked his chin towards one of the screens showing the feed of the CCTV camera, dark and grainy, but unmistakable, nonetheless.
Barry scrunched his face, puzzled. “Turning himself in? The area must be teeming with the police.”
“Perhaps not at this time of night?” Alfred offered.
Bruce shook his head. “No, Barry is right. Something is not right here.”
“There is only one way to find out,” Victor noted.
Diana turned to Bruce. “Clark?”
“Will meet us there,” he explained.
“…and don’t think that I will wait all night,” Lex’s voice filled the silence that fell between them. “You don’t think that I have no other matters to attend to, do you, Bruce?”
“So, what’s the plan?” Steve asked.
He walked over to the workstation and peered at the monitors, finding the one that was hooked to one of the cameras at the City Hall square – grey and grainy, it showed a man with short-cropped hair standing in a pool of pale streetlamp light. He didn’t look like much. Didn’t look like anything at all, really, and yet there was a gnawing feeling in the pit of Steve’s stomach that something was off. That he wasn’t, in fact, handing himself in, so much as luring them into a trap.
By the grim expressions of the people around him, he knew that they had also figured out as much.
“We need to evacuate the area,” Diana was the first one to speak.
“It’s a business district, no one should be there this late at night,” Victor said.
Bruce shook his head. “We’re not taking any risks. Lex is up to something.” He looked at Diana. “Five blocks?”
She nodded and glanced at Steve who nodded without hesitation. He hoped that Victor was right, and there was no one left there to evacuate at half past midnight. What bothered him more was that Lex had managed to bypass the firewall that was supposed to be impenetrable. That had been impenetrable until now. It spoke of planning and resources, and in Steve’s book, neither of those things boded well for anything.
Which got him thinking what else that man might have up his sleeve. Which left him with the gnawing foreboding in the pit of his stomach.
“What about Arthur?” Barry asked when Bruce started to pull his cowl on, already on the way to the Batmobile.
“If he didn’t miss his flight, it will land tomorrow morning,” Alfred responded.
“We can’t wait,” Bruce said over his shoulder.
“He’s gonna hate this,” Barry muttered. He pulled his mask on and smoothed it over his head. “He hates missing out on stuff. So, what’s the plan?” he repeated Steve’s question.
The plan was fairly simple – to go there and see what Lex Luthor wanted. To seize him and turn him over to the Gotham police. None of them mentioned that they all knew it was going to be more complicated than that. The CCTV feed picturing Lex appeared to be the only one still active in a several-block radius – he must have disabled the rest of them, effectively rendering them blind. Powered down, they were of no use to Victor who could have accessed them otherwise, serving as their eyes.
God only knew what was waiting for them there.
That neither of them expected this scenario to play out without a hitch was obvious but whatever their concerns were, no one spoke of them.
“I’m coming with you,” Steve said softly, leaning closer to Diana. “Alfred can take care of the evacuation.”
She looked up at him, her expression changing almost instantly from a decisive determination to a haunted panic he seldom saw in her eyes.
This was different, Steve realized. This was not the two of them laughing, and making love, and trading stories and confessions under the cover of the night, wrapped in each other’s arms and cut off from the rest of the world. This was not them walking hand in hand along the streets of Paris, dry foliage crunching beneath their feet, their faces pink-cheeked from the cold. This wasn’t even them trying to find the stolen artifact.
No, this was real. Life as Diana knew it more often than not.
She wanted him to stay back. Deep down, Steve knew that if she asked him to, he would. He also knew that she was not going to, not when she knew that it would kill him to watch her do her thing from the sidelines. The words he could all but hear swirling on her tongue were not going to be spoken. It was easy, in a way, to slip back into the relationship that they had both figured out decades ago. Well, maybe not easy, but it was simple. The steps of an old dance; familiar and rehearsed and repeated multiple times before. Muscle memory, if nothing else.
This? This was not. They had to learn how to do this again, work together the way they used to all those years ago when fighting by each other’s side came as easy as breathing. When they had no one to rely on but one another.
Steve wondered if she knew how much he missed it.
He watched Diana open her mouth to protest, could almost hear the wheels turn in her head, trying to come up with a reason, any reason, to have him wait for her here. Safe. He wouldn’t have blamed her if she tried.
But in the end, she only nodded. There were different ways to let someone in, and Diana was very clearly trying to do it as best she could, given the circumstances. It was an effort, an effort beyond anything he had expected from her, and he was grateful for it.
His hand brushed against hers as he mustered a small smile. “It will be alright.”
Diana nodded once more, her fingers squeezing his. “It will be.”
“Are you done making the rest of us feel inadequate?” Barry asked, walking past them. He shook his head, his expression mock-disgusted.
“It only takes one phone call, Barry,” Diana turned after him.
“Yeah, yeah….” The young man waved her off.
“Leave them,” Victor said, a corner of his mouth curling into a grin.
“Are you ready?” Bruce asked, one foot already inside the Batmobile, ignoring the banter entirely.
Steve let go of Diana’s hand.
She nodded, her eyes still locked with his.
---
That he ended up in yet another dark alley so soon after his last traipse through the dingy underbelly of Gotham didn’t surprise Bruce. He had spent so many nights in the past twenty years fighting off the smell of rotting garbage that he’d long since stopped taking it as some sort of personal insult. Some joked that he knew every rat from the sewers, and there were moments when he could hardly argue with this less than flattering comment.
Right now, though, it was the reason that had brought him here that filled his veins with fiery rage. So much so, that by the time he had pulled the Batmobile to a stop in the narrow passage between the old buildings framing the plaza before City Hall, there was fury pulsing in his ears, his teeth gritted together.
“You okay, man?” Victor asked, casting an odd look at Bruce from the passenger seat.
Bruce forced himself to unclench his fingers curled around the steering wheel.
Lex Luthor was hardly scraping the surface of sane in the rare moments when he was in his right mind, and that was hardly the case right now. All the pent-up guilt and self-loathing that had been eating up Bruce for months on end were currently bubbling up at the surface, looking for a convenient release. Lex Luthor sure as hell was it.
Deep down, Bruce always knew that it would come to this, sooner or later, and yet the reality of it still caught him off-guard.
“Let’s just get this over with,” he muttered through his teeth as he pushed his door up and climbed out into the freezing night, a veil of mist that threatened to turn into full-on rain hanging around them.
He didn’t turn to see if Victor followed him.
His jaw started to ache from Steve Trevor’s annoyingly precise swing, a dull throb just below the surface that he wished he could claw from under his skin. As if his fuse wasn’t short enough as it was. He wished he’d taken that Advil.
His boots squeaked a little on the wet pavement as he walked closer to the alley opening.
Some two hundred feet ahead of him, Gotham City Hall was towering over a circular plaza lined with street lamps, their dim light casting misshapen shadows on the ground. Above the plaza, the massive building acted like a giant guarding the city, one that looked like it had existed for thousands of years and would live on for thousands more.
Bruce’s eyes narrowed when he spotted Lex Luthor sitting on the steps leading up to the main entrance, hidden behind a row of thick columns. For a man who had spent the past several days hiding in underground bunkers after escaping from an asylum, Lex didn’t appear to be particularly concerned about being spotted in the middle of the city. That fact alone made something snap loose inside of Bruce, the anger that had been brewing in his blood since their last encounter unfurling in his chest.
His fists tightened as he watched Lex study the metal glove that hugged his right forearm, flexing his fingers a little now and then, the light of the streetlamps reflecting off of its golden surface.
“That’s it?” Victor asked, pulling Bruce out of his thoughts, and when he turned, he found the Cyborg study their enemy du jour, entirely unimpressed.
“Don’t underestimate him,” Bruce muttered.
His eyes darted around, taking note of the dark windows and deserted streets around them. If nothing else, Lex certainly got points for picking a part of town that inevitably ended up being empty and forgotten at night. Government bodies and private businesses lined the streets on both sides of City Hall and turned into a ghost town after dark, the impression amplified by the silence that had settled over the area. This late, they were not likely to be interrupted, not even by a stray car, lost in the maze of narrow alleys snaking around the old business district.
Behind him, a whoosh of air and a soft thump announced Diana’s arrival.
She stepped forward, pausing between Bruce and Victor, her eyes also sweeping over the plaza, taking in the shadows gathered out of the reach of light.
“He is not hiding,” she observed, and there was something about her voice that told Bruce that she viewed it as bad news.
“He’s the one who called for the rendezvous,” Victor pointed out.
“Whoa, is this the thing?” Barry breathed out, materializing beside Bruce in a rush of wind that brought a faint scent of ozone with it. He peeked over Bruce’s shoulder, eyes wide with curiosity. “It’s shiny.”
“He’s not hiding because he thinks he has already won,” Bruce said quietly.
Diana reached over her shoulder to pull out her sword. “We’ll see about that.”
“And what about her?” Victor asked, jerking his chin in the general direction of Lex, and for a moment, none of them knew what he was talking about.
It took Bruce a second to zero in on the figure huddled on the side of the steps, just barely within the reach of the light. And another one to recognize Amanda Waller’s familiar frame. From this far away, he could not read her face, but her arms tied behind her back were a dead giveaway of her involuntary participation in this meeting.
Beside him, Diana swore in Greek under her breath.
“He’s not alone,” Victor added after another half a minute.
“Yeah, we kinda see that,” Barry muttered, nodding towards Waller.
“No.” Cyborg shook his head. “Rooftops, all around us. Multiple heat signatures.”
“Alfred?” Bruce called, speaking into his earpiece. “Status on the evacuation.”
“The area should be cleared,” Alfred responded immediately, sounding concerned. On the other end, Bruce could hear his fingers tapping on the keyboard.
“It’s not,” Victor pressed.
“Snipers,” another voice said quietly. “Or something of that sort.”
Of course, Steve Trevor would know.
Bruce tried not to notice how visibly relieved Diana appeared to be when her precious Captain hopped off his motorcycle and walked over to them, his eyes sharp. Pretended he didn’t see the slight brush of hands and how Steve leaned into her and whispered something into her ear.
“At least two on every roof,” a voice came from above. “And here I was thinking you’ve changed your ways, Bruce.”
“Get out of here,” Bruce grunted. He didn’t even need to look to know that Selina was perched on the rusted fire escape clinging to the side of the brick building, annoyed by her presence, and more so by that pang of relief deep inside of him. He didn’t want to want her to be there, dammit.
“Well, that would explain why he feels so bold,” Diana muttered.
“Something’s wrong with that thing,” Victor said quietly, eyes trained on the gauntlet. “I can feel it, it’s like… like it’s running interference with something inside of me.”
“Should we reboot you or something?” Barry piped up.
“Hey, Bruce!” Lex drawled, standing up, his voice loud and clear, carrying across the plaza. “I know you are here… somewhere,” he added, a manic smile appearing on his lips. “I mean, the drive isn’t that long.”
“I’ll take care of the snipers,” Steve said to no one in particular, hand reaching for his handgun.
“Piece of cake,” Selina echoed.
“I told you to get out of here,” Bruce repeated, walking briskly back to his car. He rummaged through the trunk, appearing with the crossbow, his blood running so hot that he feared he might melt it with his hands.
She ignored his snarl, her eyes on Steve, one eyebrow lifted.
“You take east, I take west,” Steve said after a moment of consideration, his head tipped up.
“Do I look like a GPS to you, darling?” she scoffed.
“Left and right. Is that okay?” Steve’s lips quirked as Bruce slammed the trunk shut.
“Clark—” Diana started.
“Will have to join later,” Bruce interjected, walking back to them. “Stuck in traffic probably,” he muttered - a joke that fell flat. “Alfred?”
“Stay away from bullets, Master Wayne,” the older man said grimly in Bruce’s ear.
---
Diana’s eyes followed as a metal rod shot through the air. It disappeared in the dark above them, and the next moment, Bruce was gone with it. One parting glance over her shoulder, her eyes finding Steve briefly, and she leapt into the air, feeling the rush of cool air on her face.
Despite the earlier turmoil stirring in her belly, it was a relief to be here, to know that one way or another, all of this would end by the end of the night. Lex Luthor didn’t scare her, but his arrogance rubbed her the wrong way, making her hackles stand on end, and Diana wanted that smug smile gone from his face. Despite her concerns about Steve’s involvement and the desire to keep him safe at all costs, knowing that he was around calmed her heart. It reminded her of what it used to be like, working together. Of how she always knew that she could trust him and rely on him without hesitation or a hint of doubt.
The sentiment extended to the members of the League completely, more so than she ever thought it would – trust came hard to her these days. However, Steve was Steve, no one would ever compare.
She didn’t even think about Amanda Waller when she landed right in the middle of the plaza next to Bruce, her eyes trained on the man standing before them, his eyebrow raised slightly.
Her gaze swept over the gauntlet, the memory of her past encounter with its force flashing through her mind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Barry and Victor join them, flanking Bruce on either side as Lex watched them with unmasked amusement.
“Well, well, well, look at this,” he chuckled, eyes moving from face to face until they locked on Bruce’s. “Branching out, I see.”
“Cut the crap, Lex,” Bruce muttered, and the dangerous warning in his voice made Diana tense.
This was not a rescue mission to him, but a personal vendetta against the man who had put Bruce through months of emotional hell and then had the audacity to come and rub it in his face.
Her hand tightened on the hilt of her sword, her body bracing for an attack—
A man dressed in black fell at her feet, landing on the ground in an unmoving heap.
“Found this over there,” Arthur said casually, stepping forward to stand next to her, his chin jerking towards one of the backstreets. And then, for a moment, his brows creased as he turned to Diana. “Wasn’t one of ours, was it?”
She shook her head a little, feeling her lips curve into a small smile. “Arthur.”
“You made it,” Barry said, his voice a theatrical whisper.
“You assholes can’t do anything right without me,” Artur grumbled. He glanced at Diana. “No offence.”
“None taken,” she smirked.
He leaned closer to her and whispered, “You know that there is some cat lady prancing over the rooftops, right?”
Diana’s eyes flickered ever so briefly toward Bruce. Arthur’s eyebrow crept up in confusion. He opened his mouth to ask a question that she was certain didn’t have a definitive answer when Lex clapped his hands once, twice, three times.
“It’s like the whole party is here,” he observed. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think that someone broke into my files to collect the whole set of metahumans—Oh wait, this is exactly what happened.”
There was a manic glint in his eyes and nervous energy to him that she didn’t like. Beside her, Victor tensed, and she remembered his earlier comment about the magic of the gauntlet interfering with the workings of his mechanical parts.
It was then that she noticed the slight vibration in the ground beneath her feet, a buzz that reverberated into her feet, shooting up her spine.
Her eyes flicked briefly up, but the dark forms of the buildings around them remained still and motionless, hidden from her sight. She shifted her gaze to Amanda Waller cowered at the base of the stairs, her eyes wide and wild.
“I guess the only person missing here is…” Lex looked up, capping his hand over his eyes as he peered into the black sky. “Wait, is it a bird? Is it a plane?” His lips stretched into a thin smile. “It’s Superman,” he sing-songed.
Diana saw him then too, they all did. They watched as Clark made a wide arc, and then shot down, aiming for the still grinning Lex Luthor.
“Finally, everyone is here,” Lex announced with a short laugh.
His hand curled into a fist, the light bouncing off the gantlet.
The sonic boom of the impact had her shielding her face from the force of the blast wind that sent everyone but her and Arthur flying. Behind her, Barry groaned when he landed on his back, the echo of the collision ringing in her ears.
When she lowered her arms, Arthur was standing beside her, his trident poised for the attack. What she saw next did not surprise her, but her heart sank, nonetheless.
Lex Luthor remained standing where he had been a minute ago, whereas Clark had been tossed into the outer wall of City Hall, the stone façade crumbling around him, his face contorted in disbelief and discomfort.
When Lex saw her watching him, he grinned. “Well, this was almost easy.”
Diana took a breath and surged forward.
---
The rusty rungs of the fire-escape scraped Steve’s hands as he climbed up, his muscles straining against the effort, but his mind remained pleasantly blank, fully focused on the task at hand. It was easy to slip into combat mode, the memories from the time long gone taking over, pushing him forward.
By the time he had reached the roof, his lungs were burning, his breath coming out in short, shallow exhales, and the wind that greeted him when he landed softly on the flat surface fresh on his face.
He could hear the voices below, could hear them in his earpiece, hoping to catch Diana’s familiar cadence, but they did not feel like an interference. On the other side of the plaza, a row of similar houses was shrouded in darkness, and he had to put it on good faith and a great deal of gut feeling that Selina Kyle knew what she was doing. And that she could be trusted, for that matter. This far away from the light of the street lamps, the darkness was almost absolute, and he wished that he had thought to bring night vision goggles. Or better yet, that he had Victor’s ability to read heat signatures.
Yet, it didn’t change the fact that his blood was flowing in earnest and his heart was beating faster, and for all his talk about a simpler life with the woman he loved, he had indeed missed the thrill of a good fight.
The first two men went down without any effort on Steve’s part. He knocked them out and bound their hands behind their backs, tossing their weapons out of their reach. The third one put up a fight, leaving Steve with a bleeding lip and a metallic taste in his mouth, his fist that had already seemingly filled its punching quote for the day when it had landed on Bruce Wayne’s face several hours ago throbbing after another round of quick jabs.
He almost missed the moment when the building shuddered beneath him, like an earthquake, too busy incapacitating yet another one of Lex’s henchmen. Yet the tremor was too strong to ignore it entirely.
He looked over the edge of the roof, his eyes widening at the sight of Lex Luthor tossing Superman away as if the latter was nothing more than a rag doll. Chest heaving, Steve scanned the plaza, finding Diana, the sight of her leaving him awash in relief, however brief.
And then there was a hand on his shoulder that spun him around, followed by a blow, and then another one. Steve’s breath wheezed out of him. He was certain that he had heard the very distinctive sound of one of his ribs cracking, but this was hardly the time to pause and contemplate that unpleasant possibility.
The next few minutes were a blur of grunts and punches. And when his opponent was finally face-down on the cold roof with his hands zip-tied behind his back and Steve had a chance to wipe away the blood collecting in the corner of his mouth, his attention was too far gone to remember the almost impossible image of Lex Luthor wielding a power beyond anything known to man.
At least, for the time being.
The sound of gunfire came next, making his ears perk up, followed quickly by a loud curse in his ear, but Steve couldn’t recognize the voice through the throbbing of blood rushing through his head. And then it was cut off just as quickly.
Below him, pandemonium had erupted, his eyes following the swirl of red and gold for a long moment, Diana’s Lasso glowing brightly in the night, its shimmer amplified by the light drizzle. There were now more people now there, as Lex’s goons had joined the fight. They were nothing against the League in terms of strength, but they made up for it in numbers, persistence and tenacity.
“Victor, how many—” Steve started.
“Four more on your side,” Cyborg responded immediately. “Three down in the alley here, if you could… Shit!”
“On it,” Steve said. “You alright?”
There was nothing but muffled noises on the other end of the comm for a few moments, but Steve’s feet were already moving in the direction of his next target. And for the first time, he wondered where the hell were the police, but the thought didn’t linger, his calves aching and the handle of his gun slipping in his hand. He knew now that rib was broken alright, but he would have to pause and think about it some other time.
When an explosion coloured the sky orange, the force of the aftershocks making the roof dance beneath his feet, it took Steve a moment to recognize it for what it was. And then another one followed, and another one. Loud laughter erupted in his ear, Lex’s voice faint but clear.
“Thought it was getting too crowded here,” he mocked.
Someone with the comm must have been close to him, Steve thought.
The distraction allowed him to take down the next man without much effort, and he was grateful for the adrenaline rush pumping through his blood. A much-needed boost to carry him through the rest of this mess.
“Status,” he demanded, heaving himself onto yet another awning, fingers clawing against the weathered stone.
Everyone seemed to be speaking at once, a cacophony of words that he couldn’t make any sense of.
“What the hell—” Bruce demanded, cut off by a growl of exertion.
“Get down!”
Diana.
Steve snagged a few words. Explosives and Three and Diversion.
Well, Lex Luthor sure knew how to have fun, Steve had to give him that.
“We have to—” Clark started.
“Go!” Diana snapped, and even like this, her voice was the one thing that Steve wanted to hear. “Arthur…”
“On it.”
With the last of the henchmen down now, Steve started to climb yet another fire escape, but this time down, at last. His breath was short and ragged, his hands slipping on the metal rungs and his broken rib aching with every move he made that wasn’t thought through carefully. He gritted his teeth when he reached the end of the ladder, the five-foot drop to the alley below him not at all inviting.
“Trevor!” Bruce barked in his ear, making Steve wince.
“Yeah.”
“Go with the Flash,” Diana said.
Steve landed gracelessly on the wet pavement, cursing under his breath when a jolt of sharp pain shot through his ankle. He had no time for that.
“Copy that.” He straightened up and trotted awkwardly towards the dim light coming from the plaza. “Where to?”
“The docks, to the south-east—” That was Barry, speaking rapidly.
“I know where it is,” Steve interjected, safe under the cover of the shadows. He peeked out of his hiding spot, eyes scanning the space before him. “Meet you there.”
“Aquaman, Cyborg, you take the north-west. Superman…”
Steve tuned them out after that.
He had managed to circle around the massive City Hall, but now his bike was on the other side and he was running out of time. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a blur of red and blue soaring into the sky. Had to be Clark. He didn’t pause to think about it. They all knew what needed to be done, his own task clear in his head.
He was halfway to his destination when something popped up in the periphery of his vision. Someone.
Amanda Waller was still crouched where Steve had last seen her, her eyes wide with a primal, consuming fear. She didn’t appear to be hurt, at least not badly, but he couldn’t be sure from his spot some thirty feet away from her.
Steve’s eyes moved to the side, finding Diana in the middle of the plaza, her sword and shield in her hands, her gaze locked on Lex Luthor standing unharmed before her. Around them, several men were sprawled on the ground. For a second, Steve thought that they were all Lex’s goons but then he caught a glimpse of a familiar cowl.
Bruce.
Steve’s jaw clenched, a flutter of panic coming to life in his chest. She could take that lunatic down, he knew that, but he did not like the thought of Lex intentionally driving the rest of the League away, separating them from one another.
Steve could hear the quiet wail of the police sirens now, but they were too far away, and he doubted they were coming this way. Not with three bombs having been set off not five minutes ago and their hands as full as they were.
Diana’s eyes moved almost imperceptibly to Amanda Waller, and it hit Steve then. She couldn’t use her full power with the civilian around, one that could get hurt.
“Steve?” Barry’s voice came up in Steve’s ear but he ignored the speedster, his mind reeling.
If he could get Waller out of the way, it’d give Diana an opening to take down Lex without endangering anyone. She could do it. He knew she could do it, he had seen her go against worse things than a man with a metal glove. Without risking anyone’s life—
His feet started to move before the thought formed fully in his mind. Crouched low to the ground, grateful for Lex having his back to them, Steve all but crawled to where the Director of A.R.G.U.S. was sitting on the cold steps, his gaze trained straight ahead. He couldn’t afford to look at Diana, not now. Not when a distraction could be deadly. (He wanted to though, badly.)
Waller’s eyes widened when she saw him, and Steve pressed his index finger to his lips, indicating for her to keep quiet. He sliced easily through the duct tape holding her wrists behind her back with his pocket knife and yanked her up to her feet, taking note of how unsteady she was. How her whole body appeared to be shaking. He doubted that it had anything to do with the cold.
“Go,” he mouthed, pushing her to keep moving.
He could see a flicker of lightning shooting around Diana’s gauntlets, a sign of the storm to come.
For a moment, he allowed himself to look at her, find her eyes, feeling his lips tug slightly upwards because heaven help him, she looked every inch the goddess that she was, and he simply couldn’t look away.
She gave him a slight shake of her head, and Steve watched her fingers adjust on the hilt of her sword.
He nodded curtly, about to step back and retreat, to go help Barry like he was supposed to—
A push in the back had him stumbling into the plaza.
---
Steven Rockwell Trevor watches a bird soar across the vast expanse of pristine blue sky, so bright that it almost hurt to look. The summer day is hot but the breeze that smells of freshly mowed grass makes it a lot more tolerable than it would have been otherwise. It touches his cheeks and ruffles his hair. His blue eyes follow the bird until it turns into a tiny dot and then disappears.
Last night at dinner, his father took his prized watch off and let Steve study the white face beneath the thick glass and the circle of numbers. He had asked him what Steve wanted to be when he grew up.
Steve hadn’t had an answer then but he has it now. He watches the sky and thinks that he wants to change the world. Wants his life to amount to something.
People can fly now. Steve reads about the first successful flight in a newspaper and his heart thuds with excitement in his chest. The photo on the front page is smudged and grainy, and he can’t make out the faces of people crowded around the metal bird but he knows that they are smiling. Looking at them, he smiles too.
WHen the time finally comes, boot camp is an adventure. The drills are exhausting and tedious and they leave him with sore muscles for weeks on end, his body covered with bruises in places he didn’t think could bruise, but the evenings in the barracks are exciting. Cards and beer and talking about war. It is easy to imagine effortless victory when the realities of brutal carnage are nothing but fantasies for them all.
This is the first time he is far away from home for this long and the feeling is intoxicating. He writes to his mother every week even though there is not much to say, his days are too much alike and she can’t understand the things that make his blood flow faster. He misses the quieter life, simpler life but he doesn’t want to go back. He misses his father, gone too soon, but the watch that is permanently strapped to his wrist dulls the ache of loss, somewhat.
The plane rattles and shakes beneath him the first time Steve sits behind the yoke, and, for a moment, he is scared. He thinks that the whole thing is about to fall to pieces beneath him and he will drop to the hard-packed dirt below. He holds his breath and waits, but nothing happens. At last, the engine settles into a softer, steadier, purr.
He smiles; his hands close tighter around the yoke.
He is ready.
His first flight feels like nothing he has ever experienced. There is trepidation coursing through his veins but as the ground and the buildings scattered over the camp below grow smaller, his lungs expand and exhilaration fills his veins. He cries out in delight, nearly losing control of the rattling machine but this far from everything, it doesn’t feel frightening. It feels like a dream.
Steve is not allowed to fly for the rest of the week for being so reckless. He is lucky to not be kicked out, his sergeant tells him.
News of the impending war first appears two years later, and while it is all they can talk about in the barracks – that, and an ongoing card game that they have to hide from the officers – it doesn’t feel real. Europe is so far away it feels like a whole different planet, a world out of their reach.
Steve laughs and nods and jokes about how even Titanic couldn’t reach it, and maybe the newspapers are blowing everything out of proportion. But something stirs in his chest every time the subject comes up. Something that doesn’t have a name yet. He tries to ignore it.
Then the war breaks out in earnest and though it still doesn’t feel real, it is not funny anymore. Somewhere across the ocean, real people are dying. Real people with dreams and hopes and expectations.
Steve waits. He waits for the news to come that it was a misunderstanding, after all. That they are signing the peace treaty and going back to their lives and their homes and their families. He grew up playing war with his friends. He pretends to be dropping bombs and shooting other planes from the sky when they do the drills because there is no harm in pretending. He still can’t imagine doing it for real.
He waits but nothing changes. They call it The War To End All Wars, and he hates it. He doesn’t see how fighting can end fighting, but then again, none of this makes any sense. He thinks of his father and something he said to Steve a long time ago. You can do nothing or you can do something. Steve no longer remembers what they were talking about but the words have stuck with him. He misses his father but he is glad that he’s not here to see the world tearing at the seams.
He knows he will go there, join the fight even though America is not part of the war yet, not officially. He sees people leaving every day, though. Not many come back.
Steve doesn’t want to go, doesn’t want to become another name on a long list. But he has to. He knows he won’t be able to live with himself if he stays. It’s inside of him, a calling he can’t resist, something he can’t get from under his skin. He wonders if he is making a mistake. Looks at the people who stay and is overcome by a fit of sudden jealousy, but by then it is too late. He has joined the American Expeditionary Forces and there is no going back.
The war is nothing like what Steve ever imagined it would be.
It is worse.
So much worse.
It is ugly and vile and cruel in so many ways that he can’t wrap his mind around them. By then, it has been going on for over two years. He is sent to France and the first week in the trenches strips him of whatever naiveté he’s still been carrying inside of him. He can’t imagine living like this for more than a day. Some of these people have been doing it from the start. They are broken beyond repair and he can barely stand looking at them. He knew what he was doing when he chose this path, but he also didn’t. He doesn’t want to become one of them, but after a month he can feel the dread start creeping in.
He tries to tune out the world outside of the present moment. Things done to him, things he does to other people, things he sees – he tries not to remember them. Tries not to register them fully. He can’t survive this if he allows himself to feel. He meets Sameer in a bar in Paris. And Charlie. And then Chief. His life still feels like a never-ending nightmare but it is a relief to have friends.
As word gets out about him being a pilot, they pluck him from the trenches and train him to be a spy. He is fluent in French by then, his German is not as good but it is only a matter of months before he is ready. He doesn’t believe that he is but it’s not like a war could wait.
His mother passes away while he is in Europe and he doesn’t learn about it until it is too late to make it to her funeral. Steve doesn’t think they would have let him go, but if there was any possibility, he would have at least tried. He has a few of her letters but when he moves to be stationed in London and work with the British Intelligence, he leaves them in his room, unable to burn them or throw them away but not wanting to bring them with him. That part of his life is over.
The spy life is more civilized than the trenches. Steve gets a small apartment in London and a secretary who he suspects considers him helpless. He can’t help but smile every time she finds him exasperating. Between his boys and Etta, it feels like he has a family again. It is easier to fight the darkness closing in on him when he has something to fight for.
Missions come and go. When he is asked to infiltrate General Ludendorff’s troops, he doesn’t think much of it. Everyone knows that the key to ending the war lies with the Germans, one way or another. Maybe he’s going to be lucky enough to make a difference at last.
He doesn’t expect to end up at the gas factory, doesn’t plan on coming face to face with Isabel Maru, doesn’t plan on stealing her notebook. Everything snowballs from there, his heart hammering madly in his chest as he begs his plane to go faster, higher, away. They have never come closer to having some answers. He needs to make this work.
When his plane is hit, Steve thinks that there is some awful irony to dying in the sky, the only place that has made him feel like he belonged. And then he crashes into the ocean, and he realizes he’d rather choose the sky. The water fills every crack and crevice of the metal carcass. He forgets about his pursuers when it wraps around his body, inching up fast. His leg is stuck under the torn metal, his arms pinned to his body by the bent frame. He is trapped.
When the water closes over his head, he looks up at the bright sun shining above the surface and thinks that it will be the last thing he will ever see. Panic rises inside of him in waves as his lungs start to fill with seawater. Panic not over dying but over everything he will never get to do.
The world is black and silent, and then suddenly it’s not. His lungs explode and his body jerks as he coughs out the salt water that makes his throat feel raw. He blinks his eyes open. His head throbs, his body weighed down by his soaked clothes. The sun is shining in his face and his eyes sting from the salt water. Someone is above him, watching him. A woman, a very beautiful woman. He thinks, for a moment, that he is dead.
She is not alone, but he is not either. He has to give it to the German army – they are persistent. When the women leap down from the cliffs above the beach, all Steve can do is stare. The fight is fast and brutal and bloody, and the warriors in leather armour win almost without effort. There are casualties, and he is overcome with shame. He had never meant to bring death on them.
Steve doesn’t have time to contemplate this guilt when they turn on him as well. He can’t blame them. The woman who dragged him out of the water speaks for him, but looking at the fierce faces around them, he is not hopeful.
He is more confused than scared, though. A part of him still believes that this is a dream. There is a rope wrapped around his chest that glows bright and burns through the fabric of his shirt. His mind turns foggy but he can’t understand why. He looks around and dozens of stern faces stare back at him, their eyes grim, their lips pressed tight. They study him like he is an oddity; he is not stupid enough to tell them that that’s exactly what he thinks of them.
For the second time in as many hours, Steve thinks that he must be dead but it doesn’t add up, either. Bad as his situation is, in his understanding, Hell still must be worse than this. Yet being bound and interrogated can hardly be called Heaven, either.
He chooses to focus on…. What did they call her? Diana. The daughter of the Queen. The one who saved him. His mind is reeling and he swallows uneasily. Looking at her helps. She is his anchor in this sea of the unknown. When they ask him questions, he tells the truth and hopes for the best. None of this is under his control and that is what makes him feel so uneasy.
When Diana comes to break him out of his confinement in the middle of the night, Steve knows that it is probably not a very good thing. He is worried that if they are caught, he might actually get killed instead of being treated and sent to rest in the caves. He shouldn’t trust any of them, but of them all, he trusts her the most.
He can’t make up his mind about her. She is beautiful and fierce and fearless and an excellent warrior. His heart skips a beat when she climbs into the boat after him, her mother and the guards left behind on the rocky shore awash in the pale moonlight. He doesn’t believe that this is not a trap until the island is swallowed by the darkness and she turns around to face him, and it is only the night and the gentle rock of the boat on the waves that binds them together. His heartbeat settles at last. He likes her smile, likes the sound of her voice. He tries not to think too much about either.
Diana is the first to fall asleep on a pile of bags and blankets, her back turned to him and her breathing deep and even. Steve suspects that her bed in the palace is more comfortable than this, but she doesn’t complain. Something warm stirs in his chest but he ignores the feeling. He almost died at least a dozen times in a span of a few days. His mind is playing tricks on him, surely.
Steve doesn’t believe her. Doesn’t believe that the God of War is walking the Earth and wreaking havoc and making people turn on one another. He doesn’t, but he has made a promise to take her to the front, and it has been a very long time since his word was worthy of anything. For reasons he can’t explain to himself, he doesn’t want to disappoint her. Doesn’t want to see disapproval in her eyes again. He has no idea what he is doing and Etta is making big eyes at him, Charlie is laughing and only Sameer, who is charmed beyond measure, seems to get it, behind the veneer of humour.
He doesn’t have it in him to try and explain.
Steve’s heart drops into his stomach when Diana climbs up the crudely made ladder and steps onto No Man’s Land. He saw her people die under a rain of bullets. For a moment, he waits for her body to fall back into the trench, shredded into nothing by the enemy’s fire. And then a moment passes and it doesn’t happen. And then he is climbing out of the trench after her, his mind oddly blank. He can’t imagine not following her. The thought scares and exhilarates him, at once.
Later, the town square is filled with people who have long lost hope. He watches them dance and laugh and drink sour beers, and an odd kind of comfort settles over him. He thinks back to the days in the camp, to his first flight, to the life that felt as unreal then as it feels like a fantasy now. Thinks that he wouldn’t want to trade this moment here and now for anything else.
He glances at Diana from the corner of his eye. She is watching the villagers celebrate their freedom, her mouth curved into a small smile. There is something different to her, he thinks. Peace that has not been there before. He doesn’t think she truly understands what she has done for them all, and he can find no words to express it. One day, he hopes, he will.
The steps creak beneath their feet as they climb to the upper floor of an old inn. The grateful innkeeper gave him three rooms – one for him and Sameer, one for Charlie and Chief, and one for Diana. He can’t thank her enough. The building is old and drafty; it smells of chimney smoke and cooking oil and dust. After sleeping on the cold ground last night, Steve thinks it is pure heaven. His muscles ache and the thought of sleeping in a real bed, no matter how stiff and old, is overwhelming.
He pushes the door open and steps inside before making room for Diana to pass. It’s been a long day. He should leave her to her devices, he knows, and go get some rest. Diana turns around and he forgets how to think. He doesn’t remember closing the door behind him, doesn’t remember crossing the room, but suddenly she is right there and it’s all that matters. Her lips are soft on his, tentative but sure. His chest constricts. She is so beautiful it hurts—it hurts to feel so much. More than his heart can bear, it seems.
He tells her that and she smiles, her nose scrunching, and that is how he knows that she means it. He wants to never stop kissing her.
Steve has been with a woman before. Women. He knows what he is doing. Yet, his hands are shaking ever so slightly when they move over her body, along the lines of her armour and under her cloak. He wants to make it right, wants to make her first experience with a man a good one. She is a princess, and more, and he is just a soldier, and there is not much that he can give her, but he can do that. At least that.
Afterwards, the fire is out in the grate and the room is shrouded in darkness. The air is cool against his heated skin, but Diana’s body is warm and pleasantly heavy, pressed to his, their legs tangled together, and heat thrums in his blood still. Steve turns his face and presses a kiss to the crown of her head, his fingers combing through her hair.
They talk and laugh and trade stories. Diana has a lot of questions and he wants to tell her everything. He has to remind himself to speak slower but there are too many words and not enough hours in the night. He doesn’t think about tomorrow or the day beyond that. For the first time in his life, nothing beyond this room matters.
He falls asleep with his body curled around her back, his chest rising and falling against her shoulder blades. He is more at peace than he has ever been, but his dreams are not. For once, Steve is not scared of dying but he is terrified of not living and he doesn’t know how to chase that feeling out of his chest. So he fills the hollow spaces between his bones with hope.
He wakes up at dawn.
Diana is already awake but only half-dressed. She walks over to the bed when she sees him watching her. He thinks he must be dreaming. It’s still early and she doesn’t protest when he pulls her to him again. Last night, he fumbled with the hooks and clasps holding her armour close to her body. He is hardly skillful now but it’s easier the second time around. They push the morning away till the sun is properly up. Steve wishes they had more time.
Outside, the air is fresh and cold, a stark contrast to the comfort of the room in the inn. Chief glances at them and smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Steve keeps a respectful distance away from Diana but it doesn’t stop Sameer from giving him a knowing look. Then again, he had to have noticed that Steve never came to sleep in their shared room last night. Charlie blushes but maybe it’s the cold. No one says anything and Steve knows that it’s their profound admiration and respect for Diana that stops them. Had he been alone, he’d never hear the end of it.
He doesn’t care. He wants to take her hand and to kiss her in the middle of the town square. He does neither because they are on a mission now. This is a different world from the one that they shared only a few hours ago.
His plan goes terribly wrong. Steve is not surprised. This is war. Nothing is ever truly right but when Ludendorff fires gas at the villagers something snaps inside of him. Life they could have saved – all gone. Diana is devastated when she emerges from the billows of orange smoke that he can’t step into. She is devastated and heartbroken and mad. He has seen her happy, determined, curious, frustrated. He can’t stand seeing anguish on her face. When she blames him for the deaths, he knows that she is right. One way or another, she is right.
That everything ends on an airfield does not surprise Steve. It feels like coming full circle and ending up back where he has started.
He wonders if he’d be more shocked to learn that Diana has been telling the truth all along if he had the time to think it through. But time is what they don’t have. He hates leaving her, hates making a choice that is not really a choice.
Dying is so much scarier when he has something to lose.
Once, a long time ago, Steve asked his father how he was supposed to know that he was in love. He was 12 and fascinated with a girl living next door. The first one that didn’t look to him like an alien species. The memory feels like something from another lifetime now. His father had laughed and said that if he has to wonder then he is not in love.
He is not wondering now. He is in love with Diana’s strength and her goodness and her heart and the faith that she has in his people even after everything she has seen. He is in love with the lines around her eyes when she smiles and the sound of her voice when it drops to a whisper. He is in love with the way she watches the snow and speaks with his boys. He is in love with her kindness and determination and hopefulness. Probably because he has lost his own a long time ago.
He wants a thousand lifetimes with her but they only have minutes and he is at a loss for words because they have to matter. They have to be right.
In the end, his heart is all he has to offer. His heart and a sliver of time. It will have to be enough, somehow. He trusts her to make it right even if he is not here to see it.
The distance between them grows. Steve feels it like it’s a physical cord that stretches and stretches and stretches until it snaps, and then something is missing and it is not coming back. He is not scared but he wishes that things could be different.
When it gets hard to breathe and his head fills with fog, Steve reaches for his gun. His heart is pounding fast but his hands are steady. He thinks, I’m sorry. He thinks, Please forgive me.
Aside from that, his mind is blank.
He closes his eyes and summons Diana’s smile. I love you, he thinks for the last time.
And then he pulls the trigger.
---
Shit, was all that Steve had time to think before Lex Luthor spun around and then the next moment, his hand was around Steve’s throat, lifting him up in the air and then slamming him hard into the cobbled surface with enough force to leave an imprint in the ground.
The pain exploded in the back of his skull, and when his head connected with the stones, it felt like it was cracked open. A white-hot jolt seared from his wrist and up his arm, and then he was up in the air again, his teeth clenched tight. Steve caught a shadow of another person, someone they had missed, hovering in the background but there was only so much attention he could spare before he stopped thinking altogether.
“No!”
Diana.
Dark dots dancing before Steve’s eyes, he dropped his knife he’d used to cut Waller’s ties and it clattered against the stones, his fingers clawing instinctively at the gauntlet in vain attempts to get Lex Luthor to ease his grip.
The other man smiled at Steve, studying him for a moment with a curious tilt of his head. Like a dog studying a new toy.
He turned to Diana then, still holding Steve in the air.
“I’m sorry, is this yours?” he asked in mock surprise.
And then with a slight twist of his wrist, he snapped Steve’s neck.
Notes:
Yeah, I know. I'll fix it... most likely.
What do you guys think of WW84 being pushed back again? IMHO it was inevitable but... *sigh* At least I'll kick this fic out of the way by then?? I hope??
Also, any thoughts on Snyder's cut of JL movie? I want to be cautiously optimistic. While Whedon's version was objectively bad, I still loved the team dynamic and would love to have a better version of it. And more JL content.I do hope you enjoyed this part. I'm feeling quite nostalgic about having to say goodbye to this story soon. As always, feedback is welcome. Personally, I quite liked writing Steve's life flashing before his eyes :)
Chapter 22
Notes:
Hey everyone. How are you all holding up? You know, considering *gestures at everything*
On July 15, it was 3 years since I first posted this story. It was not meant to get as long as it is, but hey, sometimes it just happens. I just wanted to thank everyone who is still around and who still supports this fic. You're the absolute best and it means so much to me :)
Won't bother you with long a preamble here, considering how the previous chapter ended. Dig in, have fun!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A scream pierced the night – the sound of a heart cracked open and the pain bleeding out.
It took Diana a moment to realize that it was coming from her. That the sound full of primal despair was clawing its way out of her throat.
Everything around her stopped. She could hear Bruce bark something into his earpiece, could hear the words of the others, too, crackling with static. But they were muffled and far away and entirely, completely, unimportant.
Diana tried to inhale, and then once more but her chest felt like it had caved in, her lungs crumpled, and her vision blurred. Her sword and shield fell to the ground with a loud metallic clung. She didn’t even notice.
She dropped to her knees and reached for Steve, pulling him half into her lap, cradling his head to her chest and trying not to notice the unnatural angle of his neck. She couldn’t breathe. Her hands were shaking when she ran them over his face, through his hair, over his chest. He was heavy and limp in her arms, his eyes staring unseeingly at the night sky above them.
“Steve.” His name fell from her lips, shattering the stillness around them. “Steve,” she begged, curling down over him to press her lips to his forehead. “No, please, you can’t… you can’t leave me, you promised me—No. Please, no.”
She clung to him, her hands wet and slick with his blood, her fingers moving over his skin, his clothes. All she could smell was blood and she couldn’t stand it. Couldn’t stand the thought of this being her last memory of him. Not the slight curve of his lips from only two hours ago when she awoke him by accident, tangled in her dream and his first instinct was to smile at her. Not his tousled bedhead and the faint smell of her soap clinging to his skin. He refused to use anything else; she figured for the same reason that she slept in his shirts. There was a closeness in sharing those things, a comfort that went beyond anything she could imagine.
A sob shuttered out of Diana’s chest, pained and broken, and she squeezed her eyes shut, rocking slowly in place, with Steve cradled close to her.
It had started to rain again, heavy droplets hitting the puddles around them left behind by the storm that had rolled over the city earlier, one concentric circle merging into another, and another,and another. But all she could see was Lex's hand squeezing the life out of Steve, her mind going back, back, back as she tried to reach the moment where she could have and should have stopped it.
He wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be with Barry, but Diana should have known better. Shouldn’t have trusted him to leave when she had asked him to. The man who stole Isabel Maru’s book from under the crazy woman’s nose when he was told to only observe and report was not going to stay on the sidelines. She had been too focused on something else to remember that. But she should have never forgotten that, and the price for doing so had been watching the life drain out of his eyes and screaming his name, knowing that she was too late.
A lie. It was all a lie. Her mother was wrong. She couldn’t keep him safe, couldn’t—
“Touching,” a voice above her said, and Diana looked up, overcome with the sudden, sickening sense of déjà vu.
Perhaps, she hadn’t woken up properly yet. Perhaps, this was still some twisted dream that she had gotten stuck in, a trick of sorts that was holding her captive in the prison of her mind.
Lex Luthor was standing ten feet away from her, watching her hold on to Steve with a curious tilt of his head. His eyes were narrowed ever so slightly like he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing, the light of the streetlamps reflecting off the gauntlet on his right hand, his fingers flexing almost imperceptibly every now and then.
Diana could tell that he was enjoying this.
“Wonder Woman and a plain, mortal man,” Lex mused, his voice carrying clearly through the rustling of the rain. “There is something poetic to it, don’t you think, Diana Prince ?”
She was not surprised that he knew. He had the files on her, after all, and yet her name in his mouth was like a slap to her face. Like something that he had no right to say, to use so casually. He had no right… No right to speak to her, no right to address her with such blatant familiarity. Something inside of Diana stirred, the gears in her mind shifting into a new position. The remnants of her self-control that she had displayed earlier while this man had toyed with them dissipated into nothing.
Lex paused, watching her.
“I’d think that Superman would be a better match for you. Never mind that annoying journalist that he is so fond of,” he went on when she said nothing. “Alas, the matters of the heart are not meant to be understood. I don’t suppose you would be so kind as to explain to me why? I mean… let’s call it idle curiosity.”
He was, Diana realized with horror, finding all of this entertaining.
She exhaled slowly, shakily. Her fingers unclenched and she let go of Steve.
“You will pay for this,” she said quietly, the heat of fury churning beneath her skin.
Lex smiled, and for a split second, the whole world went completely still. At that moment, she felt no panic, no fear, no pain, just an empty void that opened in her chest, threatening to turn her inside out if she’d let it.
And then she lunged at him.
It took a second for Diana’s feelings to come back, this time dialled up to eleven. There was a fire surging through her veins, rage burning in her chest. Like the others did before him, Lex was going to pay for hurting someone dear to her.
For a split second, Diana had a moment of startling clarity where time seemed to slow down to a crawl and as she moved towards him, she could see the lazy curve of his smile, the relaxed line of his shoulders and the emptiness in his eyes. The light was trapped in the raindrops clinging to his clothes and his skin. At a different time, it would be almost mesmerizing. She thought she could hear his heartbeat even, his thoughts, and the flow of his blood, while her own had turned into a molten lava of pain.
Diana’s teeth clenched at the sight of the smugness on his face. It didn’t occur to her to pause and pick her up her sword and her shield, or to reach for her lasso. None of it mattered.
Lex raised his hand, idly, slowly, and Diana ran into an invisible wall, the force of the impact tossing her back, her body hitting the cobbled ground with a hollow thud that knocked all the wind out of her lungs. She hissed through her teeth, surprised rather than hurt, and quickly kicked up into a crouch, poised for an attack.
“You thought this was going to be this easy?” Lex asked, half-disbelieving, half-mocking.
Diana rose slowly to her feet.
“You think you are above all men—”
“You know, it’s ironic that you don’t agree,” he interjected, as he raised his hand, admiring the intricate carvings that adorned the gauntlet in a language that even Diana had never heard of. He looked at her again. “Because everything points to that, yes.”
“Why?” she murmured.
Lex smiled wider. “Because I can.”
Steve was dead. He was gone—And the wretched man taunting her now, like this was just a joke to him, had killed him.
Her eyes locked on the man before her, and Diana took a step forward, and then another one. Without breaking eye contact, she picked up her sword and affixed her shield behind her back. The Lasso that had remained coiled at her hip unravelled when she reached for it, unspooling onto the ground at her feet. She could feel the throb of power rising within her, growing stronger with each breath she took.
Lex Luthor’s outline before her looked smudged through the rain, growing in and out of focus as the wind picked up, tossing angry fistfuls of water around.
This time, when she charged at him, he wasn’t fast enough. They always made the same mistake, she thought absently as the Lasso wrapped around the Claw and her sword connected with it with a loud clang, bouncing off without leaving a mark. Her body strained against the impact she hadn’t expected, forcing her hand to curl tighter around the hilt to keep it from falling out of her grip. They always underestimated her.
Lex drew his hand back, pulling at the Lasso and yanking her closer to him. Diana could feel the grip of the Lasso on his forearm grow weaker, as though the energy coursing through the gauntlet was clashing with the ancient magic of her gods. Lex felt it too, a triumphant grin appearing on his face. She let go of it, catching him by surprise when his pull met no resistance and he stumbled back on the cobbled ground beneath his feet, slippery from the rain that kept on growing stronger.
Diana’s hand curled over the grip of her shield.
“It’s over, Lex Luthor,” she growled through her teeth.
“It won’t be over until I say it’s over,” he snarled and lunged at her.
The next few minutes were a blur. She heard the gauntlet smack against her shield once, twice, but she couldn’t remember raising it; she felt the surge of magnetic power gather around them, making her feel like gravity itself had changed, but had no time to process it. Her foot came into contact with Lex’s thigh and then his chest, drawing sharp gasps out of him. Her vision tunnelled, zeroing in on the man who was looking at her with a hateful snarl, willing to stop at nothing to the world succumb to his will.
At one point, Diana found herself once again on her back with the gauntlet reaching for her throat the way it had Steve’s, but then with a twist of her wrist and a jab and a grunt of exertion, it was Lex Luthor who was lying on the ground, slammed into a cold puddle by the weight of Diana’s body, the tip of her sword pressed to his throat and the rain washing the blood off his face.
“I said it’s over,” she uttered, breathing hard, her muscles spasming from the effort.
She yanked the gauntlet off of Lex’s hand and tossed it aside. It fell to the ground with a metallic clank and rolled into the shadows not touched by the pool of light. She didn’t give it a second thought. Not now. Hand closed around Lex’s throat, she twisted around and drove him hard into the ground. Lex’s head met the stone and he cried out in surprise and pain, his fingers clawing at her wrist. Wet and slippery, they kept sliding off the metal gauntlet wrapped around her forearm.
“Let go… of…me…” His eyes narrowed, teeth gritted. “This is…not—”
“You know not what you have done,” she breathed, her chest heaving, not from exertion but with anger.
He blinked at her, confused at first, and then terrified, his eyes widening when Diana raised a clenched fist above him.
It swung down fast, aiming to cause as much pain as he had caused her—
“No!”
—and then it stopped before it reached its target, hitting something soft instead.
Diana let out a ragged breath and shifted her gaze, confused for a moment to find Clark’s hand wrapped around her curled fingers merely an inch from Lex’s jaw. His grip was firm, his knuckles and the pads of his fingers white and it was then that she realized that she was continuing to push down and he was struggling to stop her.
Her eyes tore away from his hand and trailed up his wrist and along his arm, past his shoulder until they found his face, his eyes looking at her from beneath sopping wet hair plastered to his forehead. His jaw was set tight, his whole body poised to hold her back. He wouldn’t last long if she put her full strength into pushing him away and they both knew it.
He met her gaze. “Diana, don’t,” he uttered between laboured gasps of breath. “He’s breathing.”
Her eyebrows pulled together. She glanced down at Lex squirming up at her. Of course he was breathing, that was exactly the problem—
“Steve. He killed Steve.”
“No,” Clark was shaking his head. He pushed her further away from Lex the second she allowed her attention to shift. She looked up at him again. “Steve’s alive.” His eyes darted past her shoulder. “He’s got a heartbeat.”
She stared at him for another moment, his words slowly making their way through the fog in her head.
“Go,” Clark urged her. His eyes flicked down to Lex sprawled on the ground, no match for him without the Claw of Horus. “This one’s not going anywhere.”
“Steve,” she breathed.
She bolted up and across the plaza, her heart pounding out of her chest and a silent prayer to her gods running on an endless loop through her mind.
He was still lying on his back, but his eyes were no longer open and trained on the black sky. They were closed, his eyelashes fluttering as the rain continued to fall on his face, washing away the blood from the gash above his brow. Diana lowered down beside him, scared to touch him. Scared to so much as exhale for fear of shattering the moment of wild, desperate hope. He was breathing, his chest rising and falling slowly.
Breathing .
She reached for his face, her other palm pressing flat to his chest where his heart was thudding away in earnest, sure and steady. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, taking short, shallow breaths, her relief too overwhelming to bear.
More footsteps sounded from behind her back, and a police siren came to life in the distance. Diana ignored them all, focused on the man sprawled on the ground before her. Alive . Her eyes swept over his body, looking for more damage. Earlier, she hadn’t bothered to consider it but she had seen Lex push him, had seen Steve take that awkward fall—
“What happened?” Arthur asked, his voice booming through the cold night air.
“Get rid of this,” Bruce said, although she had no idea what he was talking about and didn’t care to look.
“What about—”
“The police are on the way.”
Diana tuned them out as her hand reached tentatively to brush Steve’s wet hair back from his forehead. He flinched a little at her touch. His eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, eyelids heavy. He blinked against the drizzle falling on them and scrunched his face in discomfort, taking a moment to find her face hovering over him.
“Angel,” he breathed, his lips curving up at the corners.
A half-laugh, half-sob rose in Diana’s throat. Her heart stuttered in her chest that was tight with relief and fear and utter disbelief.
Steve rarely called her anything but her name. Any term of endearing never failed to land on her like a punch to the stomach, leaving her gasping for air. She thought back to the time when he had told her that, after she had pulled him out of the water on Themyscira and how when he had opened his eyes, he had thought that he was dead and she was an angel, saving him from eternal damnation—a story whispered in the dark when he was half-asleep, his fingers tangled in her hair.
Was he thinking that now?
“I told you to stay with Barry,” she said, her voice trembling. Not angry, but close.
Stubborn man. She would never have allowed this to happen in the first place if she had known that he hadn’t left with the others like she had asked him to. Would never have let Lex to so much as lay his finger on him, let alone hurt him. She should have known better.
Diana was mad at his recklessness, frustration burning in her chest. She was grateful beyond words that he was alive because she wanted nothing more. She was scared, too. Scared of how fragile the world felt sometimes. And Zeus help her, she had never been more relieved in her entire life, her throat so thick with emotion that she didn’t seem to be able to find her breath, and her helplessness against the things that were beyond her control was overwhelming.
She was sick of losing him.
“I don’t think I did,” Steve admitted. He glanced past her and tried to sit up but his whole body constricted in protest.
“Don’t.” Diana’s palm pressed into his chest. “Don’t move.” She stroked his cheek as she tried and failed to find her bearings again, her heart racing so fast in her chest she feared it might leap out of her ribcage. “Where does it hurt?”
He grimaced. “It’s kinda easier to say where it doesn’t.” He swallowed, a small frown appearing on his face. “What happened?”
She had watched a man drunk on power and his own invincibility snap Steve’s neck like it was a toothpick. She had seen Steve’s life seep out of his eyes before she had a chance to do anything to stop it. She had thought that her own heart would split in half when his body had hit the ground, and had almost wished that it did because the thought of staying behind again, alone, was unbearable. There was an almost animal panic still coursing through her, making it hard to think clearly, to breathe.
Diana didn’t want to say any of these things. Didn’t want to remember them, either.
She slid her arm carefully under his shoulders, mindful of not jostling him too much before Victor or Clark could scan him for internal bleeding and any other injuries she couldn’t pick up. Something was wrong with his arm, she could see that, but her hands were shaking, and she didn’t trust herself not to hurt him if she tried to have a better look.
There were very few instances in Diana’s life when she wished to be more than she was, but this one was certainly one of them. If only she had the gifts the others had. If only she had the vision that could see through fabric and flesh, hear the rhythm of his heartbeat. Slowly, she moved closer, shifting until Steve’s shoulder blades were resting on her knees, his head supported by the crook of her arm. Her hand slid down to rest on his chest, flat above his heart. Every second, she was afraid that the even thumping of it would disappear.
She curled over him, leaning down to press a kiss to his hairline. Felt him relax against her. Her eyes squeezed shut, the rain masking her unbidden tears.
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Nothing happened.”
---
When Steve came to, it was dark and his body ached in places he had never known existed – dull pain that blossomed in the centre of his chest and pulsed in his fingertips with every breath he took. Groggy, he blinked at the ceiling, his mouth unpleasantly dry.
The familiar and unmistakable scent of antiseptics told him that he was in a hospital, and the realization sent his senses into high alert. God, he hated hospitals.
He shifted, uncomfortable. His whole left side throbbed but he failed to determine the source of it, if there even was one. It was as if every inch of him was a bruise, tender to the touch. Steve’s eyes fluttered shut once more, his mind foggy, as he willed himself to go back to the pleasant oblivion of not feeling any of this.
It didn’t work.
Slowly, he turned his head, the room around him coming into focus.
Diana was standing by the window, a sharp outline of her body black against the pale-yellow light of a streetlamp filtering through the glass. It was still raining, the rivulets of water creating intricate shadows that chased one another on the wall across from him.
A wave of calm washed over him, her presence like a balm to an open wound, as his body relaxed into the sheets that smelled, not unpleasantly but still unfamiliarly, of sterility. He sighed, and at the sound of it, Diana turned around. With the light behind her, he couldn’t see her face, but her shoulders slumped forward the moment she saw that he was awake. Steve could almost hear the tight stiffness of unease seep out of her body to the point where even the air started to feel light around them.
“Hey,” he croaked, attempting to smile, but he wasn’t sure it worked.
Nothing felt good, and it took him all of two minutes for the discomfort to grow a tad frustrating.
Maybe he was, indeed, too old for all this, Steve thought absently.
Diana moved towards him, a dark form in the dark room. For a moment, he thought that she was going to reach for the light above the bed, but instead, she lowered down into the chair next to him. He was glad when she did, preferring the comfortable semi-darkness to the sharpness of fluorescent lights that would have made his eyes hurt.
“Hey,” Diana echoed, taking his hand in both of hers, her voice soft.
“What happened?” Steve asked, his eyes sweeping over the room before fixing on her face and the slight frown lodged between her brows that even the shadows couldn’t conceal.
It was coming back to him, slowly. Amanda Waller. Lex Luthor. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw Clark being tossed aside and the fire of explosions lighting up the night sky. Steve wondered, absently, if the commotion in the hallway outside his door to his ward had anything to do with it, but the thought was fleeting, because thinking was taking too much effort and he had very little strength to spare. He might have to come back to it some other time, Steve decided the moment before he forgot about it entirely.
His heart skipped a beat, his stomach twisting uncomfortably when the familiar metallic taste of panic rose in his throat, and he forced himself to focus on Diana, on her eyes moving over his face with concern he wished he knew the cause of. It helped. Just barely, but it still helped to have her there to ground him, to be his anchor.
Except she was looking at him in that funny way he couldn’t quite read, that made something unravel inside of him. It was a way she had looked at him before that felt so raw he almost couldn’t bear it.
“Diana…” he started.
She shook her head and leaned forward to kiss his fingers sandwiched between her palms.
“Everything is alright,” she said, and he didn’t believe her for a second.
“Don’t tell me I missed it,” he breathed, trying to smile once more in hopes of coaxing a smile of her own out of her.
“Missed what?” Diana asked, confused.
“Did you fly me here?” His voice dropped a bit. “I would hate to have slept through that .”
She blinked, at a loss for words momentarily, and then her features started to relax again.
She shook her head. “Clark did. I needed to…” She glanced down and trailed off.
Steve noticed then that she had swapped her armour for a pair of black pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, her hair once again pulled back and twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. The armour would have probably stood out here more than she was willing to allow, he thought, watching her watch him. He was starting to suspect that there was some sort of drug in his system because everything looked softer around the edges somehow. That, or maybe he just loved staring at Diana.
His fingers twitched in her hand and she kissed them again.
“Are you okay? Lex — ”
Her face hardened, her lips pressing together into a thin life as if she had bit into something sour. These days, Steve had noticed, she rarely allowed for her feelings to be this on display for everyone to see. Yet there were instances – like now – when it was beyond her capabilities to hold them back. When the force of them was beyond her control.
“Waller and her team are taking care of him,” she said before he finished his question. “Everyone is alright.”
It didn’t feel like enough.
Steve wasn’t sure what time it was, or how long he had been here, but the soldier in him wanted details, wanted a complete debrief (Bruce was probably good at those, and Steve made a mental note to ask him for more information later). But as a man whose woman had just gone up against something very bad, even more he needed to know that she was alright. Not the members of their team, not the civilians that had undoubtedly become collateral damage in the games of a maniac, or even Amanda Waller herself who, the last time Steve had seen her, had been in a rather sorry state.
It felt like an awfully self-indulgent and selfish thought, but he didn’t care. Goddess or not, he needed Diana to be safe. And that was never going to go away, he was starting to realize. She could fight a million battles and win them all, and he would still be scared out of his mind to watch her swing her sword with the precision of someone who had been doing so for millennia. Even though he knew better. Even though she was the daughter of the god of all gods.
He took an unsteady breath that made his chest constrict when his ribs protested it and he gripped her fingers tighter with his own.
She did look fine, though. More than fine. She most certainly didn’t look like she had just fought someone who had tossed Superman around like a ragdoll – something that Steve suspected the League wasn’t going to forget any time soon. They seemed like the type to remember stuff like that.
She looked beautiful. Even after a fight, even in a goddamned hospital room in the middle of the night, she looked so beautiful it almost hurt.
He looked at her some more, searching for signs of… something, distress maybe, anything she wouldn’t want to put into words, until the tightness in his chest started to ease. If something was wrong, Diana would have told him. The rest could wait, he decided.
Steve squeezed her hand once more, his eyes moving over her face.
“Are you okay?”
Her phone chimed in her pocket, but Diana ignored it. “I am now,” she said.
He cleared his throat. “Wanna catch me up on… everything?” he asked, carefully lifting his left arm for emphasis.
Diana swept her fingers through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead, and even a touch that small felt like heaven.
“Your wrist is sprained,” she said after a moment. Yeah, that would explain the brace, he thought, his eyes darting toward it for a second but his attention didn’t linger. The last time he had a fractured bone or a dislocated joint, it hurt like hell. He didn’t feel much of anything now, which reinforced his assumption about some drugs being involved. Not that he minded, all things considered. “You have two broken ribs,” Diana continued. “And this…” She touched her fingers very gently to his left cheekbone that Steve, mercifully, couldn’t see, “might not feel good for a while.”
“It doesn’t feel very good now,” he admitted with a small grimace.
“You needed stitches, too,” she noted.
He vaguely recalled meeting a brick wall with his forehead, and the memory alone all but made the stars explode behind his eyes. From an impact like that, he was lucky to need stitched and not a lobotomy. Pettily, he hoped that he had at least left a dent in the bloody wall. It deserved it.
He grinned a little, not able to help it. “Hey, you’re the one who said that scars make a man look dignified. A life well-lived, remember?”
“Are you saying that you were merely trying to play into my ideas of attractive masculinity?”
He closed his eyes and then winced when it made the throbbing in the back of his skull grow worse, adding a queasy feeling in his stomach to the fun list of everything that he wished he didn’t have to deal with.
“Can’t blame me for trying to impress a pretty girl,” he breathed, opening his eyes slowly again.
The wave of nausea receded.
“You might have a concussion, too,” Diana added, not falling for his light tone and reminding Steve that she was not that easy to fool.
“I’ve had it worse,” he tried to brush her words off nonetheless.
Because he really and truly had. And once he could string his thoughts together, he would happily tell her some horror stories about field hospitals where the chances of survival and losing limbs to blood infection had been about the same.
Maybe he could even save that for some romantic night, to make his reminiscences more special.
His humorous mood evaporated when a shadow of anguish chased across Diana’s face, and he kicked himself mentally for being such an idiot. Of course, he had it worse. She had been there when he had it worse. She had seen it all. He, of all people, should know better than to be so callous about the memories of something clearly very painful to her.
“Diana…” he started but she was already standing up and moving away from his bed, looking like a caged animal in a room that was too small and too dark and too crowded with ghosts.
Suddenly, Steve wished that she had turned on the lights, after all. Wished he could see past the shadows hiding her face.
He didn’t ask for it though, resigning to simply watch her as she walked over to the second bed, empty at the moment. Watched her rub her forehead, her chest rising and falling with each measured breath as she tried to regain her composure. Which, if he looked closely, he could almost see tearing at the seams.
“Diana,” he tried again.
She squeezed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t believe that you did it when I specifically asked you to go with Barry.”
“You can’t have the rest of the team babysit me all the time,” Steve said quietly, not liking the way her words stung.
However, when she raised her gaze, she looked so stricken he wished he had said nothing at all. He winced, and for once it had little to do with the dull ache in places he never knew existed.
“I’m not trying to—”
“You don’t trust me,” he stopped her.
“I don’t want to lose you!” she snapped.
An eerie kind of silence fell between them, still ringing with the edge in her voice even after she had stopped speaking. For the first time, Steve wondered if there was a resolution to this situation, or if they were going to keep on running in circles until they had tired themselves out.
“What do you want me to say?” Steve asked softly. “Did you really expect me to walk away?”
“Yes.” She rubbed her eyes and turned away. “You’re a soldier. You, of all people, should know the importance of following orders.”
His lips twitched humourlessly. “And you, of all people, should know that I don’t have a good track record there. If all I did was follow orders, you and I would never have met.”
He hated the distance between them. All four feet of it. It felt almost unbearable to not touch her.
She didn’t say anything, and he shook his head. “Lex would’ve killed her, Diana. He would have killed Amanda Waller, or he would have used her to stop you from stopping him.” He swallowed. “As long as he had her, he had leverage over you. Over this whole… mess. Get her out of the way, and all bets were off. He was yours to deal with, without any more casualties.” He waited for her to look at him. “I saw my chance and I took it.”
Diana pressed her lips together. He could practically hear her swallow the curse word or two threatening to slip from her tongue.
“It is not the point,” she said sternly.
“Did it work?” Steve asked. “Did you get Lex?”
“Yes.”
“Then it was worth it—”
“Your heart stopped beating, Steve,” she interjected angrily. “It was not worth it.”
He stared at her, her words ringing in his ears like an echo bouncing off the inside of his skull. He didn’t remember that. He didn’t remember… much of anything. It was cold, so cold that he would have felt it in his bones if it wasn’t for the adrenaline rush that made him feel like he could jump over buildings and punch his way through concrete. He didn’t remember making the decision to pull Amanda Waller out from the proverbial crossfire before it turned her into a cannon fodder, but he remembered the moment when he knew that it needed to be done.
The rest of it felt soft to the touch and blurred around the edges.
She bit her lip and stared at the cheap linoleum at her feet, her face so pained he could barely stand looking at her.
“Diana…”
“You don’t know what it is like,” she breathed out softly.
He didn’t, Steve knew that much. He didn’t, and he knew that it was not likely that he ever would. She had been injured before, he had seen blood and bruises on her skin. There was a pale, barely visibly scar on her shoulder from when she was hurt so badly that even her divinity and the blood infused with magic were not enough to make it go away. So badly that anyone else would never have stood a chance. But she was right. He didn’t know what it was like to watch the life drain out of her. He didn’t know what it felt like to feel helpless in the face of not knowing how to stop death itself.
And he was tempted – his bloody nobility be damned, he was so tempted - to tell her to walk away now before it was too late, to ask her to leave before he broke her heart beyond repair. God knew he had outdone himself there already. And the absolute worst thing, that made him sick to his stomach, was that he could promise her to love her for as long as she lived, and to do anything and everything humanly possible to make her happy, but he couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t break her heart again.
They both knew that.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said instead because he was a selfish asshole. Because he wanted her so much that the idea of spending a minute of his life without her was akin to ripping his heart out of his chest with his bare hands.
She was shaking her head now, her arms folded over her chest.
“Diana.”
She looked up.
Guilt washed over him. She didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve to go through a century of watching everyone she cared about die only to wind up with someone who was just as fragile, albeit in a somewhat different way. Regardless, she couldn’t possibly not consider it. Couldn’t possibly not understand what she was getting herself into. Steve knew her better than that.
Yet, he also knew that he could never have stayed back, not when someone needed help. Not even the woman who was the embodiment of every annoyance and frustration and trouble in his life lately. A life was a life, and it was not for Steve to decide who deserved to see the light of a new day. And he’d be damned if he ever wound up being the reason that someone didn’t get that chance. Not ever again.
He might not be strong or fast or bullet-proof, but he had taken enough lives that he could no longer stand to watch others die from the sidelines. He knew it, and he knew that Diana understood it, too, even if she hated it. It was what bound them together in the first place, it was what she loved about him – she had told him that; had told him that in the moments when his self-loathing was too much for him to keep moving forward. The goodness in him that he didn’t always see past his sins. His desire to amend his mistakes.
They were too far gone to walk away from this.
She cursed in Greek under her breath, her frustration nearly palpable in the air between them.
Steve let out a small laugh. “I’m not a stubborn mule,” he protested.
“ That you understand,” she muttered.
“I knew that having you teach me insults in Greek would come in handy one day,” he noted.
Diana glowered at him.
“C’mere,” he said quietly.
She did, crossing the room and lowering down onto the edge of the bed next to him.
He took her hand, tugging her towards him until her face was so close to his that her eyes were all he could see.
“I wasn’t trying to…” he started and stopped, swallowing, not sure that he wanted to say those words out loud. He let go over her hand and reached for her face, his fingertips trailing down her cheek as his eyes searched hers. “I want you. This. A thousand lifetimes of this,” Steve whispered, his thumb running back and forth along her jaw. “I need you to know that I would do anything to be with you, Diana.”
An unsteady sigh stuttered out of her chest, her hand twitching on the sheets near his shoulder.
“But I had to help,” he continued, helpless against the fog in his head that made the words scatter whenever he reached for them. He swallowed. “I couldn’t stay back when something bad was about to happen. I had to do it.”
He had never felt so exposed, so desperate to get her to understand, see the things the way he was seeing them. It wasn’t about Amanda Waller and Lex Luthor. He would have run across that plaza for anyone, a friend and a stranger alike. There was a time in his life when following orders was all he did, when he looked the other way because he was told to, when he let people die because he didn’t know any better. He couldn’t bear the thought of doing that again.
Not even at the risk of losing his own life.
This thing that had happened to him - whatever it was that kept his heart beating and his blood flowing, be it Diana’s love literally running in his veins or a glitch of nature or a divine intervention beyond anything he could even begin to comprehend - was his chance at redemption. Maybe the only one he would ever get. He needed it, one way or another. He needed to know that what had happened to him wasn’t for nothing.
Diana’s hand curled over his good cheek as she leaned closer still until her forehead was pressed to his and Steve no longer knew where her breath ended and his began.
“I know,” she murmured.
“You’re angry,” he said, his thumb still drawing patterns over her cheek.
“I am,” she admitted. Steve’s chest constricted, his body stiffening, and Diana added, “Not at you. At—” She bit her lip, shaking her head again.
“I love you,” he said, his words as sincere as they could ever be. “I have never loved anyone the way I love you, and I would never, ever do anything to hurt you.”
She drew back and sighed. “And now you’re the one who is hurt,” she said.
Steve’s hand slid down to rest on the back of her neck. “Had it worse,” he repeated, and this time, she smiled. It was small and not very convincing, but it made his heart sing nonetheless. “Don’t go,” he asked, his eyes flicking between hers.
She nodded. And then once more, as though she needed the reassurance as much as he did.
The hospital bed was too narrow and entirely too uncomfortable for the two of them when Diana kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the mattress. It was just barely wide enough to fit them both without one of them toppling down to the floor. Steve didn’t care. His injured wrist resting across his sternum, he lifted his good arm and she ducked underneath it, settling habitually into his side. He was grateful for the proximity even when the jolt of pain shot across his ribcage.
“Sorry,” Diana murmured, shifting her weight off his ribs.
“S’okay,” he said, tightening his hold on her. “I’m okay. Stay.”
She tucked her head under his chin, her cheek pressed to his collarbone through the fabric of his shirt. He was still wearing his own clothes, Steve had noticed. They must really be busy if they didn’t bother with his attire and getting him into one of those ugly hospital gowns.
He felt his eyes flutter shut, his fingers running idly up and down Diana’s shoulder. At some point, he reached for the elastic band holding her hair in place and pulled it off, dropping it on his pillow, his hand combing through the thick mass of her curls that were still slightly damp from the rain. There was no one else here, no one to see her the way very few were allowed to, and he revelled in the sensation of her nearness, and the peace that it brought.
They stayed quiet for a while, lulled into comfortable silence by the buzz of voices in the hallway that felt both very close and infinitely far away. Until her chest started to rise and fall in sync with his and her tight grip on him had relaxed.
“Did you do it?” Steve asked after a long moment. “When I… did you…?”
“I don’t know,” she said into his chest, her breath warm on his skin even through the fabric of his shirt.
He opened his eyes slowly and let out a long breath. “Thank you.”
And then he told her how she kept him alive, how she kept him going even when he wasn’t in imminent danger. How there were so many ways for him to die and she had saved him from each and every single one of them, again and again and again. Had been saving him from the day they had met.
He had already told her the worst of the things that he had done, things that he knew would keep haunting him whether he lived for a decade or a thousand years. Things that made his heart feel so heavy he could barely stand straight sometime. But it was not the same as explaining his yearning for absolution.
When he fell silent, Diana lifted her head, her eyes roaming over his face in the semi-darkness, and he was so tired that he could barely focus on her features.
“I love you,” she murmured, her face so close to his that Steve felt her words before he heard them, the reverence in her voice making his breath catch.
He swallowed, hard, almost dizzy from how fast his heart was thumping against his already assaulted ribs, as if they hadn’t had enough as it was. He wanted to thank her – for listening, and for doing everything she had done for him, and for loving him despite all the things that he hated himself for, but no words felt big enough for that.
“Diana…”
“I will always love you,” she said.
“Will you stay?” he asked quietly when he found his voice again. “Hospitals… I’m not very good…”
Diana touched his cheek, her fingers stroking his stubble. “Of course.” Her hand swept through his hair and he found himself leaning into her touch, his eyes drifting shut again, a sigh rising in his chest. “Sleep,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere, Steve.”
If either of them noticed that her hands were shaking, they chose not to mention it.
---
Steve awoke a while later, disoriented and confused. His body ached. It felt like every inch of it throbbed, reverberating into his skull which pounded dully with every beat of his heart. He breathed out slowly, feeling somewhat sick. Concussion. That would explain it, he thought absently and without much conviction.
He felt like shit.
He had been dreaming too, but he could no longer remember what of, the memory of it nothing but a dark cobweb clinging to his brain. There had been a hand squeezing the breath out of him. Someone who wasn’t Lex Luthor, Steve knew, but he had woken up before he saw the face of the person that it belonged to.
Outside the door, he could still hear voices and the very unmistakable sound of stretcher wheels on polished linoleum. He couldn’t have been out for more than an hour, then. Maybe less than that.
“Steve?” Diana lifted her head off his shoulder. Her hair was still down, framing her face.
He blinked sleepily up at her.
“Angel,” he breathed, wondering if he was still dreaming. Not impossible.
Everything felt wrong, somehow, out of place. His ribs protested every move he made, his wrist started to ache under the brace, making Steve want to claw the discomfort from under his skin. The back of his head was pulsating unpleasantly, his skull feeling twice the size it should be. He hated feeling like this, so broken. There was no glory to battle wounds, no pride. There was only exhaustion and the desire to make it all go away.
Diana pressed her palm to his forehead, then his cheek, checking him for signs of fever. Steve felt her relax against him when she found none, even though a slightly concerned frown seemed to have made a permanent home between her eyebrows. He hated being the reason for it, but she looked so lovely that all he could do was stare.
She made a damn good distraction, he could admit that much.
“Do you need anything?” she asked quietly. “Should I get someone?”
Steve licked his chapped lips. “No.”
He could probably use a painkiller—or a whole bottle, for that matter—but the thought of her leaving even for a few minutes was unbearable. He hated the idea of staying alone in the bleak room that smelled of everything that was making his stomach turn.
“No,” he repeated, shaking his head a little when she made an attempt to draw back. “Don’t go.”
She looked conflicted, debating her options. For a brief moment, he was certain that she was going to ignore his protest, see past the veneer of his deliberately nonchalant voice – not that he was even trying to sound convincing – but there must have been something in his eyes. The same haunted panic, Steve figured, that he could see reflecting in her own.
She hated the idea of leaving him as much as he despised the thought of it.
Diana nodded slowly and swept her hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. Steve felt his eyelids grow heavy, almost unbearably so, her touch so much easier to focus on than the discomfort in his body. He was too tired, too groggy, and barely awake to say anything when she nestled back into his side, very careful not to put excessive pressure where it could hurt.
“Sleep,” Diana murmured; but he could hear the smile in her voice.
He dozed off, lulled back into drowsiness by the warmth of her body, with her fingertips still stroking his cheek.
---
Steve awoke once more hours later, when the grey dawn started to creep into the room through the cracks between the blinds that someone – Diana? – had closed sometime during the night. He didn’t remember it happening, and was certain that he would have woken up, but it didn’t seem like something worth mulling over.
Diana was asleep, as was his arm that was trapped beneath her, the tips of his fingers tingling slightly. Steve didn’t care, too relieved to have her with him still. He felt… well, not better, exactly, but most certainly not worse, and that was comforting in its own way. The ache in his wrist had ebbed, diminished to a dull throb that he could almost ignore if he put his mind off of it. The discomfort in his cheekbone had receded as well, and if he didn’t know any better, he would have assumed that he was dealing with a bad hangover rather than yet another one “crossing the line and coming back” experience.
He made a mental note to never word it that way in front of Diana, certain that she was not likely to appreciate his flippant attitude.
Sameer would have loved that. He always called Steve a lucky bastard, even despite a nick here and there. And Charlie would have grimaced and muttered something unsavoury under his breath that Steve would adamantly, and despite reason, take as a compliment.
Sometimes, in the moments when he least expected it, he missed them something fierce.
Diana stirred in her sleep, tightening her hold on him, but didn’t wake up when Steve turned and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head.
“I love you,” he murmured into her hair.
She still smelled of ashes and hot metal and dust, and it made his stomach turn and his heart clench uncomfortably, his mind suddenly flooded with the memories of things he didn’t want to remember. Not now. Not when he had almost moved past the feeling like someone had tossed him into a food processor and turned it on at the highest setting. And Diana was there, warm and real, folded into his side, her breathing deep and measured, calming him in more ways than he could name.
Steve’s mind started to cloud.
He was going to regret not changing his position, he thought absently. His arm was going to feel like it had fallen off altogether in a few hours.
Diana sighed in her sleep, wonderfully real.
He honestly didn’t care about much else.
---
It wasn’t the late hour or the sunlight flooding the room that awoke Steve again hours later, but a persistent whooshing sound and a pressure on his upper arm that pulled him out of his slumber. Groggy, he blinked and groaned in protest, willing the blinds to fall shut, or the sun to go away, whichever happened first. He tried to roll onto his side and away from the blinding glare that was falling on his face, threatening to burn right through his retinas.
“Don’t move,” a voice ordered rather impassively.
Steve turned to the right, his eyes landing on the curtain between the two beds occupying the room that, to his memory, had been pushed aside last night. Right now, he could see an outline of another person behind it.
He turned to the left and found a stocky woman in pale blue scrubs standing by his bed as she tried to check his blood pressure, a tight inflated cuff wrapped around his bicep. Hence the whooshing sound that awoke him, Steve thought, trying to gather his thoughts into something more or less coherent. With little success, as it turned out.
His eyes landed on the badge on the nurse’s shirt that read Liz. She appeared to be in her late 40’s, her hair pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head and her brows knitted together, although not unkindly. She was watching the number on the meter without any particular concern.
It was then that Steve realized that Diana wasn’t in the room.
“Where’s—” he started, his voice scratchy from sleep and his eyes moving around the small space even though there was hardly anywhere to hide. Unless she chose to fold herself into a small nightstand.
“Your girl?” Liz finished, checking his vitals and was scribing something in his chart. “The… leggy one?”
That was one way to put it, Steve thought. Now he wouldn’t be able to think of anything but Diana’s legs.
(Not that it was a bad thing to think about, but he would have preferred her to be around.)
“Had to send her away,” Liz continued, not missing one beat. “No overnight stays unless you’re terminal,” she added without looking up.
Well, at least he wasn’t dying. That was good news, all things considered.
He wondered, if a little absently, if the hospital knew what had happened to him. Could they? Was there any trace left inside of him, pointing at him actually crossing to the other side, however briefly? He had read once that the people who got struck by lightning and survived would often have intricate scars following the pattern of their veins. Did he have a mark left on his body somewhere to account for the moments that his heart had stopped beating? Was there anything in his blood? On the tissue of his organs? And if there was, would anyone understand it?
Liz put his chart into a slot at the foot of his bed and moved behind the curtain to tend to whoever his new neighbour was, Steve’s attempts charm her into letting him go bouncing right off a proverbial brick wall.
When Liz yanked the curtain shut after her, Steve huffed out a breath and allowed himself to relax into the pillows.
This was going to be interesting.
The small TV mounted on the wall under the ceiling was on, albeit muted. It was showing a report on protests in the Middle East but the crawler at the bottom of the screen mentioned Lex Luthor’s escape several days ago and his subsequent return to the Arkham Asylum a few hours back. Barely a footnote to the events of the night. There was something unnatural about that.
Steve felt his eyebrows pull together as he watched another story unfold before him, the world already moving on from something that had nearly wiped this city off the face of the Earth. Amanda Waller must have been working hard hiding the magnitude of what had happened several hours ago and covering up the League’s involvement. None of the explosions that Lex had used as a diversion appeared to be linked to him, at least publicly, although the newscaster present at one of the scenes had mentioned that the situation was under control and the police would release the official statement soon.
When the camera swept over the rubble, teeming with firefighters in bright yellow gear, he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of red and blue in the back, but the image changed before he was sure he had seen anything at all.
Whatever Waller’s angle was in this story, Steve wasn’t sure he liked it, but he chose to think about it later. Like maybe once his brain had found itself again. It was not a priority right now, and quite frankly, he was sick of worrying about Amanda Waller.
Around lunchtime, he called Diana, but her phone went straight to voicemail. He called again without leaving a message just to hear the recording of her voice asking him to speak after the beep, the familiar husk of it making him feel warm on the inside; making him wish she was there with him.
He suspected that she was helping with whatever went down in the city last night, helping whoever needed help. There were no casualties, he knew that much, but the police and the fire department might still need assistance dealing with the aftermath of the attacks, and one thing Steve knew about her, was that Diana wasn’t going to stay on the sidelines. None of them would.
I hate not having you here , he texted her after a little while.
I hate not having you here, too , she responded half an hour later.
Where’s your ‘here’? he asked.
Bruce’s .
His fingers hovered over the screen. He wanted to ask what they were up to and if everything was alright, his mind way too awake and entirely too wired even with the trace of a headache pulsing behind his eyes.
I miss you , he typed instead.
Honest and simple.
I love you , she sent back.
He stared at the screen, grinning like an idiot. He didn’t even notice when his roommate woke up and changed the news channel to some finishing show.
Maybe this wasn’t so bad, he thought in the end. Sure, his wrist ached uncomfortably and his ribs protested every move he made that wasn’t thoroughly thought-through and his head didn’t feel quite right, but he was alive. He was alive, and he had the most beautiful woman in the world telling him that she loved him. There were plenty of people in this world who definitely had it worse.
---
By late afternoon, Steve had sworn to himself that he would never, ever get sick again. Not even with a common cold. He was determined to never sneeze for as long as he lived. Nothing that could put him in close proximity to any hospital, ever. Doing nothing, as it turned out, was the most mind-numbingly boring thing in the world and his entertainment was limited to counting the ceiling tiles and looking out the window at the piece of grey sky he could see.
That, and the bloody fishing show where nothing ever happened. Carl, his neighbour who was recovering from appendicitis surgery, wasn’t much of a talker, either. He had fallen asleep after lunch, thus providing pretty poor company.
Steve had spoken with Barry, who had passed on to him a handful of get-well wishes from the other members of the League. He had also spoken some more with Diana, too, but by the time she actually walked through the door early in the evening, just as the light had started to fade, Steve was already plotting his escape – probably via the back stairs during the dinner rush.
He was half-sitting in bed when she stepped through the door and his heart did a somersault in his chest when he saw her.
“You look better,” she said softly, crossing the room.
“Please get me out of here,” Steve asked in a dramatic whisper, mindful of waking up his new not-quite friend.
Diana lowered down on the edge of his bed and leaned forward to kiss him, her hand brushing through his hair until it cupped over his jaw. He didn’t miss the undercurrent of urgency in her touch, in the way she tilted his face up to her, that seemed to have ebbed when his good hand curled around the back of her neck. If she was going to leave him here again, he was going to lose his mind.
“I missed you,” Steve said against her lips, relieved but not surprised to feel the tightness in his chest start to lift.
She drew back, her fingers touching gingerly the left side of his face that he knew didn’t look pretty – the bathroom mirror was as honest as it was brutal. They needed to do something about those fluorescent lights that made everything look so much worse than it was – if his reflection didn’t lie, he looked like he had been run over by a train, and the faint frown that appeared between Diana’s brows as her gaze swept over his features told him that it probably wasn’t that far off.
“It looks worse than it feels,” he said honestly.
She knew what the war was, but she hadn’t been with him in the field hospital, hadn’t seen what it could be like, and quite frankly, the past sixteen or so hours of his life felt more like a luxurious resort than a hospital stay. A sprained wrist and a few bruises here and there were nothing. Aside from being bored out of his mind.
Steve only hoped that she had it in her to believe him.
“It doesn’t look very good,” she noted, and he wished he had the cover of night to hide the things he didn’t want her to see. Everything seemed to be so much sharper in daylight.
Her fingers were still lingering on his face, and he turned into her touch, kissing the palm of her hand, his eyes locked with hers.
“I’m fine, I swear,” Steve promised, and added quietly but firmly, “I’m not staying here.”
“You are not,” Diana agreed, and he blinked, surprised to not have to put up more of a fight on this. “I have already asked them to prepare your discharge papers.”
“Oh.”
He stared at her, and she smiled, her features softening. She leaned closer to him again and bumped her nose against his, her fingers playing idly with his hair near the nape of his neck. He wanted to kiss her again. Wanted to never stop kissing her, but on the second bed, Carl had started to snore, and Diana drew back with a small laugh.
Steve shook his head. “Déjà vu.”
She glanced at him, confused.
“Remember that hospital in London?” he asked.
The time after the bomb fell on their hotel in Paris. He didn’t need to say that.
“I’d rather not,” Diana muttered.
Steve sighed. “Let’s just get out of here.”
---
Her hands were shaking.
Diana couldn’t remember the last time her hands were shaking, and it unnerved her in ways that frightened her beyond comprehension. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly as she navigated the busy streets of Gotham. Sitting beside her, Steve was looking out the window. Swimming in and out of headlights, streaked with shadows, his face looked more battered than it was, and her chest caved in, a hollow pit opening in the center of it.
She felt her jaw tighten, the muscles of her face working without her saying a word.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve turn to her, even though her own gaze remained glued to the black asphalt stretching before them. She reached for the gear stick, her hands and feet working on autopilot as she changed speeds. His hand closed briefly around hers, squeezing her fingers for only a moment. Enough to reassure her, but not enough to be a distraction. She wished she could reach for his hand and grab hold of it and never let go.
It was dark when she pulled the car over outside the lake house, relieved not to have to think anymore about veering off the road, what with the rain and her mind so crowded he could barely stand it.
The place was half-dark, with only the front windows alight.
Perhaps, it was not a good idea to come here, Diana thought belatedly. Perhaps, after Steve’s confrontation with Bruce, they should have stayed at a hotel instead. It was hard to believe that it had only happened yesterday. Deep down, she couldn’t help but feel like they had all aged a hundred years since then.
She was about to suggest going back to Gotham, but Steve was already pushing the door open and climbing out into the chilly November evening, his hair ruffled by the wind blowing from the lake.
There were things she wanted to say to him, words rolling on the tip of her tongue that were getting harder to swallow with each passing moment. Words of love, and confessions and promises to never let him go, to keep him safe for as long as she breathed. Everything that she feared she would never get to say to him when she was clutching his body in her arms last night and couldn’t find his heartbeat.
She had never felt so exposed and her heart ached from it.
Steve turned to her, a tiny frown creasing his forehead when he saw her still standing by the car.
“Diana?”
She let out an unsteady breath that seemed to have caught in her throat mid-exhale.
Earlier today, when she was helping with the aftermath of the explosions with Clark and Barry, it was easy to concentrate on the tasks at hand. On making sure that no one was still trapped under the collapsed buildings, that there were no remnants of explosives left lying around and that there weren’t any more bombs that didn’t go off but still could. It kept her senses sharp, her mind focused. It gave her a sense of purpose that she had held on to in a desperate need to find her footing again.
There was satisfaction in helping, in getting the job done and knowing that they had made a difference. There was comfort in knowing that everyone was safe, at least for the time being.
The damage, however unpleasant, wasn’t fatal to anyone. There were a couple dozen people in the city hospitals with minor injuries or in shock, all of them expected to make a full recovery. She had made sure to check on that. The three of them had worked in a companionable rhythm while Bruce spoke with Commander Gordon, mindful of being exposed to the public in broad daylight. And all the while, she had felt Steve’s absence like a gaping hole in the middle of her chest that made her long for him like never before, panic that he may no longer be where she had left him that morning almost too much to bear.
Yet, it was easier, somehow, to have something else to think of.
Now that it was just the two of them and she had finally allowed her mind to wander, it was like a tight vice had closed around her chest making it impossible for her to breathe. Now that there was nothing else to be worried about, his body on the ground glistening in the rain was the only thing she could think of, her mind flooded with an all-consuming grief and never-ending what-ifs. Diana was not used to feeling powerless, but her fear for him was rendering her frightened and helpless and she didn’t know how to deal with it.
None of the teachings she had been put through had taught her that, and it made everything inside of her constrict with panic.
Now that there was no imminent threat to focus on, the reality of her life was suddenly almost too much to stand.
Had it been someone else, anyone else, she would have walked away. Would have been tempted to put some space between them to figure this all out and find her balance again, find a way to keep her heart intact. She had done it before, without hesitation, in the moments when she started to realize that she was getting too attached, her soul too bare for her comfort. But she couldn’t do that, not to Steve. Not after they had both fought so hard for what they had now, with him looking at her the way he did and her heart finding a whole new rhythm when she was with him. And knowing that , knowing that she was helpless against her desire to be with him, brought its own kind of fear.
Steve was watching her, waiting, his brow furrowed in confusion, and she wondered what he was thinking. What words he was imagining in place of those that she wasn’t saying. Diana felt something snap loose inside of her at the sight of his expression. She reached for his hand, her palm warm against his, and smoothed down his hair with her fingers.
“Come,” she tugged him towards the house. “You shouldn’t be in the cold.”
Alfred opened the door when she rang the bell.
“Captain Trevor,” he said, giving Steve a measured once-over, his eyes pausing ever so briefly on the bruises on Steve’s face before they dropped down to take in the brace peeking out of the sleeve of Steve’s jacket. After a moment, the tight lines around his eyes smoothed out and he nodded, stepping aside to let them in. “It’s good to have you back.”
Steve let go of Diana’s hand and smiled at the older man. “Thank you, Alfred. Can’t be happier about it myself.”
Alfred’s eyes flicked between the two of them. “Would you like to have something to eat? There was no dinner, per se…”
Steve stopped him with a shake of his head. “Thank you, but I think the green Jell-O has killed my taste buds.”
Alfred turned to Diana, one eyebrow raised. “Ms. Prince?”
“We’re good. Thank you, Alfred. I appreciate the offer.” Her eyes darted down the hall. “Bruce…?”
“I believe Master Wayne is down in his… shop,” Alfred responded. She had to press her lips together so as not to let her smile show. Unlike just about everyone else, Alfred never referred to the lower level of the house as the Batcave , apparently thinking that it was below any Wayne to be so attached to a place with such a name. “Master Allen is in the lounge, enjoying something he called Resident Evil . If one can enjoy something like that, that is.” He adjusted his glasses. “Master Curry has retired early to his room. Jet lag.”
He looked like he was going to add something else, his ever-present façade slipping for a moment, and beneath it, Diana glimpsed something akin to vulnerability. Something that Alfred had never allowed to show. She wondered, then, what kind of toll all of this was taking on him.
It was different with Bruce. Diana knew that helping him was Alfred’s choice, not an obligation put on him, or something that he was tricked into. Something that, she suspected, he would be doing even if Bruce expertly told him not to. But this was different. The League was different. Suddenly, he had a house full of people she knew he cared about, and although she saw that he appreciated the fact that Bruce didn’t have to face the hardships of his secret life on his own any more, it must have felt overwhelming to him, nonetheless.
And for the first time, Diana was not sure if they had the right to ask that of him.
“Let me know if you need anything,” Alfred said after a moment.
Diana knew it wasn’t what he wanted to say, not what was bothering him so, but she chose not to push, equally disappointed and relieved, and a little guilty about both.
“Thank you, Alfred,” she said again and squeezed his arm, watching the older man’s eyes soften.
He gave them another small nod, pretending not to look too closely at the stitches on Steve’s face. She offered him a kind smile, pretending that she didn’t notice him watching them as they walked away.
She had long learned that there were many things that she could protect people from, but heartache was not one of them. And right now, she didn’t even know where to start.
---
Steve followed Diana to her room.
It was an odd feeling, to be relieved to be here. He knew from Alfred, that the lake house was Thomas Wayne’s present to his wife and that Thomas and Martha had used it as a summer house a long time ago. And while Steve could understand Bruce’s attachment to it, he couldn’t grasp how someone like Bruce Wayne, a man obsessed with privacy and the need for solitude, could stand all the glass and exposure, no matter how remote. No matter the sentimentality attached to this place. Couldn’t imagine Bruce’s inner alarms not going off at the sight of the forest surrounding the property or the silence that would settle over them at night.
No wonder the place had a state-of-the-art security system, although even that didn’t always feel like enough. Whenever they had the curtains open at night, Steve couldn’t help but feel like they were being watched from the dark.
Apparently, paranoia had been one of the fun mementos that he had brought home from the front with him.
However, tonight, after spending a night in a place drenched in pain, anguish, and despair, there was comfort even to the glass walls and the eerie darkness outside them.
Diana closed the door behind the two of them. He turned to her, taking note of the nervous energy radiating off of her, nearly palpable to the touch. He was used to that with Barry who seemed to be almost vibrating more often than not, but with Diana—
She let go of his hand and stepped away to set her phone down on the dresser. It didn’t escape Steve’s attention that she seemed to have trouble looking at him, and his heart twisted achingly behind his ribs. She was harder to read now, unlike those early days together when she was like an open book, but in this moment, her face was betraying so much that he was scared to even guess what was going on in her head. It was like her feelings were spilling over the brim against her will, and the magnitude of it was frightening.
“Diana…” he started.
She looked up and offered him a watery smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Here, they couldn’t hear Alfred rummaging in the kitchen or the blasts and gunfire of Barry’s video game (why on Earth anyone would be so fascinated with made-up wars was beyond Steve, but he had long stopped trying to grasp it). Here, it was just the two of them, cut off from the rest of the world.
And all of a sudden, he was at a loss for words.
“Are you sure you’re not hungry?” Diana asked.
He shook his head. “I was not joking about the green Jell-O,” he said, his own smile only a degree more real than hers. “Wouldn’t be surprised if one day we start using it as a weapon of mass destruction. I swear, half the people who end up in a hospital bed get well twice as fast just so they can get away from the stuff.”
The joke fell flat between them, and he grimaced. He didn’t mean to be dismissive and brush off what had happened the night before, but he didn’t necessarily want to stew it in, either. She had told him that her bringing him back didn’t have a lasting effect, but he still hated the idea, hated knowing that she was losing a part of herself because of him, however temporary. If they started down that path, there was no coming back, and Steve didn’t think that he wanted to know what kind of people they would be at the end of that journey.
If nothing else, he knew himself well enough to understand that he would start losing his mind if he allowed himself to venture there and stick around for a while.
He sighed and stepped towards her, half-expecting Diana to try to put the distance between them again.
She didn’t.
“I could get you some tea,” she offered, reaching for him now that he was close enough to touch. She smoothed her palms over his chest, her brows pulling together ever so slightly when they brushed over his brace.
He watched her lips press together.
“I’m fine,” Steve promised. Quite frankly, the painkillers, while doing a spectacular job, were making him somewhat queasy and the idea of food did not sound particularly appealing. However, he chose to keep that small fact to himself, not wanting to give her another reason to worry. “A shower would be nice, though,” he added.
Diana’s fingers trailed along his brace.
“Alright,” she nodded.
She started to move away from him, but Steve reached for her, winding his good arm around her waist and drawing her close again until she was so close that they were breathing the same air; that he could feel her heartbeat. He needed to touch her. Wanted to reassure himself that they had made it through this nightmare in one piece, a little battered but otherwise unharmed, and still moving forward.
Encouraged by her lack of resistance, he allowed his hand to slip beneath her jacket and under the hem of her shirt, running his fingertips back and forth along the base of her spine.
Her breath hitched as she arched a little, her hands flexing on his hips.
“Come with me,” Steve asked quietly.
Diana looked up, her eyes finding his, and this time, there was an amused glint in her gaze. One eyebrow arched, she clarified: “To the shower?”
He bowed his head closer to her, until their foreheads were almost touching and her breath was falling on his chin. It wasn’t about sex or physical intimacy, although, god help him, there was barely a moment in the past few weeks when he didn’t want her with a painful intensity. At times, it had still seemed to him that she was going to slip right between his fingers, that he was going to wake up in an empty bed and realize that it had all been a dream, and the only time when the fear of losing her wasn’t eating up at him was when she was wrapped in his arms and he had other things to focus on.
Things that made the years they had spent apart fall away.
Right now, though, it wasn’t about that. It was about closeness and comfort and learning that there was no longer anything that they had to deal with on their own. About showing her that he was scared too, not knowing how to even put it into words.
“I just don’t want to be alone,” he murmured.
After a moment, Diana nodded and repeated, “Alright.”
She stepped back from him and shrugged out of her jacket, dropping it on the bed. She moved back to him, her hands sliding underneath his jacket and over his shoulders, where it slid easily down his arms when she pushed at it, catching it before it fell to the floor and placing it on top of hers. She reached her hand out to take Steve’s, twining their fingers together.
He was too tired to be surprised. Or, perhaps, he shouldn’t have been. Perhaps she needed this as much as he did.
In the bathroom, Diana paused before him, her hand hovering over his chest for a moment before she allowed her fingertips to skitter over the fabric of his shirt – over his chest and down his shoulder and along his forearm. Two faint lines appeared between her eyebrows, and Steve barely resisted the urge to smooth them out with her thumb, the way he did sometimes when she looked so serious it was almost comical.
“Does it hurt?” she asked quietly.
He shook his head. “No. Not really.” They had given him a painkiller before he left the hospital, and provided a prescription that Diana had picked up at the pharmacy on the ground floor in case his discomfort got bad. “It might,” he added, watching her. “It probably will, later. But it’s okay now.”
The one thing that Steve most certainly was grateful for in this day and age was the medical care that he couldn’t have even imagined the day when he had fallen from his bicycle, aged 8, and ended up with a broken clavicle. He remembered the shock of the initial pain and was aware of a barely noticeable bump he only knew was there because he knew where to look, but the rest of it was soft around the edges, a memory too old to still hold on to, and not pleasant enough to bother.
Diana nodded absently, seemingly unconvinced, but didn’t push for more.
She stepped closer to him, and he had to remind himself to breathe, the lovesick fool that he was. Her fingers danced over the shell of the brace but didn’t linger, moving down his abdomen and sliding beneath the hem of his shirt. She hiked it up, and Steve dutifully lifted his arms to allow her to slide it over his head, careful so as not to hurt him.
“Sorry,” she murmured when his chin got caught on the collar.
“S’okay,” Steve muttered, his voice muffled.
Diana let out a small laugh and smoothed her hands over his rumpled hair that was sticking out in every which way when his head finally emerged.
And then he heard her inhale sharply in abject horror when her gaze fixed on the bruises splotched over his skin, purple and blue and raw-looking. He hadn’t made anything of it when he had first seen them spreading over his ribs in all their unpleasant glory. His heart was beating, after all, and to Steve, it was the one thing that had mattered. He should have known she would see it differently.
“Diana…”
She was shaking his head, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. Her hands moved very gentle over his skin, tracing along the old scars and over new markings, so delicate that in that moment Steve could hardly believe that those were the hands that could crumble concrete like it was soft clay.
He would bet his very last cent that the world couldn’t even begin to imagine how gentle she could be.
“I should have stopped this,” Diana breathed, the remorse in her voice slicing through the air between them.
“My choice, remember?” he said, watching her eyes move over his left shoulder, then his ribs. He wished he could make it better for her, but knew it was hardly possible. If she was hurt, he’d hate it too. He’d hate it more than anything. “It was my choice.”
A pause.
“Diana, look at me,” he asked quietly.
She did, the anguish pooling in her gaze almost unbearable.
His good hand slid around her to rest on the small of her back as he shifted closer to her, blue eyes locked on her black ones.
“I’m okay,” Steve promised, his face open, his voice earnest. “This is nothing, I can’t even feel it. Most of it,” he amended when she arched an eyebrow slightly. “It will heal.”
She wanted to argue, he could see that much. Could almost hear what she was thinking – that it was not the point, and that healing didn’t diminish the impact of her having to watch him die. And she’d maybe even call him something unflattering again. Steve wouldn’t have blamed her for the latter. Instead, she smoothed her palms over his chest, her hands brushing very carefully over his ribs. She sighed, and Steve felt the tightness in the pit of his stomach ease at last. A wordless compromise that they would both have to live with one way or another.
He didn’t resist the urge to lean forward and kiss her then, fingers flexing on the fabric of her shirt.
Diana kissed him back, the need simmering just beneath the surface making Steve dizzy. Making it very easy for him to ignore a sting in his split lip that did not appreciate this idea. For Diana, he suspected, he’d ignore more than that.
Her mouth moved down towards his chin, along his jaw. “You really do need that shower,” she murmured into the curve of his neck, and when she leaned back to look at him, her face was solemn but her eyes alight.
He chuckled, and then laughed, pushing his hand into his hair. “Yeah, well, not all of us can smell like a summer meadow even after a fight.”
She grinned and brushed her thumb over his cheek, “And a shave.”
Steve turned his head into her touch, kissing the heel of her palm. “One wish at a time, Princess,” he murmured.
Diana rolled her eyes a little, her fingers moving absently over his clavicle. “Charmer.”
He smiled. “You’re a goddess,” he pointed out. “I gotta have something working for me.” He cleared his throat then. “And um, speaking of which…”
His eyes darted to the shower cubicle in the corner and then down to his injured arm, his brows pulling together.
Diana followed his gaze.
“I’m not quite sure—” Steve started. “I’m not supposed to take it off.”
“Don’t go anywhere,” she squeezed his arm briefly before disappearing behind the door.
“Couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he muttered under his breath.
When the bedroom door opened and then closed behind Diana, Steve stepped out of his shoes and pulled off his socks before padding barefoot towards the sink and the massive mirror hanging over it, his toes curling on the cool tiled floor, the touch of it pleasantly soothing. The view in the mirror on the other hand? Not so much.
In the hospital bathroom earlier that day, he’d had the pleasure of discovering a massive bruise taking up most of his left cheekbone and his lower lip slightly swollen but his eye surprisingly not as bad as Steve imagined it would be. He had already made his peace with that. But the hospital mirror was a small thing that, he thought, was probably meant to hide the worst of what people might not want to see. Bruce Wayne had spared no expense when it came to outfitting his house, and the man staring back at Steve right now in the reflection grimaced when he took in the damage that Diana had ended up being exposed to a few minutes ago.
Gingerly, Steve touched his good hand to the tender spot under his left eye that was slightly puffy still and would remain that way, he knew, for at least a couple more days. A pang of pain shot through his ribs when he leaned forward and closer to the mirror to have a better look, and Steve straightened up with a wince, his teeth gritted against it. Somehow, a sprained wrist appeared to be the least alarming of all his sustained injuries, it seemed.
He turned when the bathroom door opened again, and Diana reappeared with a roll of cling wrap in her hand—a roll that Alfred would normally use to cover leftovers. He raised an eyebrow, curious and skeptical in equal measure.
“Should I be worried?” Steve asked but she only hummed noncommittally.
He allowed her to wrap that thing around his brace and secure it with strips of duct tape, her hands working expertly as though it was something that Diana did every day, her brows furrowed in concentration. Steve watched her work with careful precision, his lips pressed around a smile. It wasn’t often that he got to just look at her, taking her in as he pleased. More often than not, Diana would look back at him and smile, and effectively render him speechless, his mind suddenly blank.
Now, though, she was too preoccupied to notice him staring. And so he did it because he loved looking at her. He still couldn’t believe that she was real, and here, and his .
His fingers itched to reach and tuck a piece of hair that had escaped her ponytail around her ear. Or better yet – to pull the band off and let her hair spill in luxurious waves over her shoulders like he had last night at the hospital. To do something that would chase away the worry lurking in the bottom of her eyes, that she didn’t know how to hide.
Diana nodded a little to herself when the wrap was secure and sealed around his brace to her satisfaction and straightened up, leaning back from him. Steve observed the results of her work.
“I feel like a piece of leftover turkey,” he noted.
She huffed. “Well, maybe you’ll think twice before doing something reckless next time.”
“When did that ever stop me?”
Her lips twitched, the corners tugging upwards despite her trying to look displeased with his attitude.
Steve lifted his hand to trace his thumb over her bottom lip. “There she is,” he murmured, his voice low like he was worried to scare the moment away.
Without another word, Diana stepped back from him. Her fingers curled over the hem of her shirt and she lifted it up, pulling it over her head. She draped it over the lip of the bathtub and kicked her boots off next before she stepped toward the shower cubicle to turn on the water, the sound of it filling the space around them. She walked back to Steve then, her hand hesitating for a moment on the buckle of his belt as she looked up at him, an eyebrow raised expectantly.
“I can do that,” Steve said.
She shook her head. “No, let me.”
He could do it. Even with one hand, he was more than capable of undressing himself if he needed to. But he also knew that it wasn’t about his capabilities or limitations. Last night, Diana had lost control over everything in a way she wasn’t used to. He meant what he had said earlier – it was his choice to do what he did. None of what had happened was her fault.
Yet, knowing it and accepting it were two entirely different things, and they both understood that. They could not go back in time now and take different steps and make different choices and win back the second or two that could have changed everything.
But he could give her this. She needed to take care of him, needed it on a visceral level, and he chose to let her.
He nodded, and she unzipped his jeans, pushing them down his legs. His boxers followed suit, and Steve stepped out of them, leaving them on the tiled floor.
There was a crude patchwork of bruises trickling from his hip and down his left thigh from when he had tried to break his fall after Lex Luthor first hit him, sending him flying across half of the plaza. The memory flared up in his mind, too bright for comfort. Steve took a slow breath and pushed it away, for the time being, choosing to focus on the woman before him who stood up once more.
“Always at a disadvantage,” Steve muttered, glancing between his naked self and Diana’s still half-clothed body.
She smirked, tilting her head slightly. “Are you, now?”
His finger hooked through the belt loop of her pants and he tugged her closer, his thumb running along the waistband, just barely touching her skin. He tried not to think of how her breath audibly caught in her throat, but couldn’t stop his gaze from dropping down to her mouth.
“No, I’m really not,” he murmured, dragging his eyes back up. He tugged at the belt loop once more. “Take this off.”
She did.
He followed her into the cubicle, wisps of steam curling between and around their bodies. Diana stepped under the spray, turning her face up to it, eyes closed. For a long moment, Steve merely watched her, his eyes moving over the line of her shoulders, the curve of her spine, her bronze skin, following the movement of her hands as she smoothed her wet hair back from her face. Eventually, he moved to her, his good arm slipping around her waist from behind, his chest pressed to her back, his bad arm hanging at his side.
“How long will it be till you’re sick of me being so damn breakable,” he muttered, words he wasn’t sure he meant to speak out loud.
Her fingers skittered back and forth along his forearm. “You really have no idea how much I love you, do you?” she breathed.
Steve felt his lips twitch, curving into a small smile. “It’s only been a hundred years, I’m still getting used to the idea,” he noted.
There was something about her at that moment that reminded him of a tightly wound coil. Steve had seen it in the tense lines around her eyes several minutes ago, even when she smiled. He could feel it in every muscle of her body now, so rigid that it felt like she was cut from a piece of granite, so different from the soft curves that he was used to.
He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to Diana’s shoulder, marvelling in her closeness and the feel of the hot water against his sore body. His eyes dropped closed.
“I love you, too,” he murmured, his mouth lingering on her skin.
A sigh stuttered out of her chest, reverberating into him. “You frightened me,” she spoke, her voice so soft it nearly drowned in the sound of the running water.
His arm flexed around her, tightening his hold. Steve pressed his lips to the back of her head. “I know, I’m sorry,” he said.
For a long while, they merely stood there, his heart beating against her shoulder blades and his fingers running idly over her ribs that moved slightly as she breathed. There was no need for words.
At last, her muscles began to relax, tension seeping out of her with every measured exhale. She shifted, putting some space between them, and turned around to face him, drops of water glistening on her skin and clinging to her eyelashes. And once again, his mind went back to the moment when she had pulled him out the sea, ever a saviour.
There was still unease to her gaze, albeit a lot less pronounced than before, and he chose to take it as a good sign.
This was when he could ask about the demons haunting her. He could wait, too, giving her a chance to open up on her own terms. He weighed his options and went for the third one. Reaching around Diana, he picked up a washcloth from the rack that housed an assortment of bottles. The logistics of having to deal with soap as well, while having only one functioning hand eluded him for a second, his brows pulling together when the issue dawned on him.
Smiling, Diana took the washcloth from him.
“Let me,” she said, reaching for one of the bottles.
She squeezed some pleasantly-smelling substance on the washcloth and moved closer to him. Her fingers skimming over his skin, tracing his scars and the lines of his muscles. She lifted her other hand and smoothed the washcloth over his clavicle, leaving a foamy trail behind, her touch so gentle that it made his own breath hitch.
She was as thorough with this process as she had been careful with undressing him earlier. Steve watched her with quiet affection, feeling his body relax under the slow movement of her hands, soothed by the comfortable intimacy of the moment and hoping that the lake house had ample supply of hot water.
He wanted this shower to never end.
Diana’s hand pressed lightly into his good shoulder, and he turned around dutifully, allowing her to continue on with her task as she pleased. Being bathed by a goddess – now that was something beyond his wildest dreams and imagination. Who was he, a mere mortal, to protest?
He felt the washcloth paint its way over his shoulder blades, down his spine. Diana rested her other palm on his side, and he covered it with his hand, running his thumb slowly over her knuckles.
“I don’t have to do it, you know,” Steve spoke after a while. She paused briefly, just enough for him to know that she had heard him. “You do, but I don’t,” he added when she didn’t say anything. “The… saving the world stuff. If you’d rather I stopped—”
“I can’t ask that of you,” Diana interjected softly.
He turned his head slightly to the side. She was standing very close to him now, so much so that he could feel the warmth of her skin with the whole length of his body.
“You’re not asking,” he said. “I’m offering.”
Diana’s arm slipped around him, palm splayed flat over his abdomen. Steve felt her lips glide over his shoulder where the spray of water had washed off the suds, her other hand that was still holding the washcloth frozen just below his ribs.
“Whether or not I’m involved with the League, it has nothing to do with us,” he added when she remained silent, his fingers running idly along her forearm. “We will be together regardless. It has never been a matter of choice between any of this and being with you. And if it was, I’d choose you.”
“You’re a soldier, Steve,” she murmured into his skin. “I would never take that away from you. I would never have the right to do it.”
“There’s nothing to take. The world needs you. It doesn’t need me.” He paused. “Not in the same way, at least.”
“I need you,” she said.
His heart stuttered, tripping over itself behind his ribs.
For a moment, Steve allowed himself to imagine what it could be like to walk away from all of this. To tell Amanda Waller to go to hell and just follow Diana to Paris. To sleep as much as he wanted, to cook her dinners and have the kind of life that he had thought he would eventually have before the war, when there was still room for dreams in his life.
It was a nice image. They could make it work, Steve thought. They hadn’t always been about fighting for what was right. He remembered those other times well.
And then he imagined sitting in her kitchen and twiddling his fingers impatiently, waiting for Diana to come home. Imagined watching the news and wondering if she was in the centre of one battle or another, Wondering if she was hurt. Imagined having to put away her dinner because she never made it home in time, and not even be within his right to be upset about it because even his damned selfishness didn’t go that far.
The peaceful life was a good thing to dream of, but in reality, he knew that it would take him all of two weeks to start feeling like he was losing his mind.
Steve swallowed, biting back the swear rising in his throat. He opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out. He couldn’t lie to her. She was right. When wasn’t she? This life was all he’d known for so long that it was running in his veins, thick as blood.
“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to be with you,” he said softly after a moment. “I just—I need you to know that.”
“I do.”
He turned around and Diana moved to him, arms snaking around his waist. She nuzzled into him, her mouth moving from his shoulder to his neck, seeking comfort more than anything – and always so very careful with his battered body. He wrapped his good arm around her, holding her tightly, her breath hot on his skin.
Mellow against him, her body no longer felt charged with tension.
Diana pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw and murmured something against his skin, the words rolling easily and effortlessly from her tongue. Steve felt the heat rise inside of him.
“English, please,” he whispered into her ear, smiling, his hand moving lazily over her back, thinking that he ought to pick up on more Greek.
“I have lost fights before. I have lost lives before,” Diana muttered into his neck. “But I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”
Steve felt his throat close up, thick with emotion.
He drew back just enough to be able to see her and bowed his head until his forehead was pressed to hers. “I’m not going anywhere, Diana. I swear to god I’m not going anywhere.”
It was a weak promise, one that he had no right to give, and they both knew it. He thought that she was going to argue, but after a moment or two, Diana just nodded, although if it was in agreement with him or merely to acknowledge his words, he wasn’t sure. She lifted her hands to his face, smoothing her thumbs over his stubble, lean fingers moving slowly over his skin.
“We made a deal,” she said, her lips curving into a small smile.
“We did,” he agreed.
And a deal is a promise, and a promise is unbreakable , he thought.
At least some of them were.
She moved away then, and Steve let her, watching her set the washcloth back on the rack and pick up a bottle of shampoo instead. He obliged without a word when she squeezed some onto her palm and turned to him, one eyebrow arched, and despite himself, he laughed.
His own attempt to be of any assistance to Diana with only one functional hand had failed terribly, his frustration earning him a giggle from her that caused his pulse to stutter and then a smile so brilliant that he all but forgot how to breathe.
There was nothing that Steve enjoyed about being tossed around by some megalomaniac with a God complex like he was nothing but a toy, but he liked the aftermath, he could admit that much. He most certainly did like this.
Once she’d washed her hair as well, Diana reached over and turned the shower off, the sudden silence around them odd to Steve’s ears. She pushed the glass door open and stepped out onto the bath mat. He followed her, wisps of steam still clinging to their bodies. She reached for one of the towels hanging on a rack and wrapped it around herself. Picked up another one and turned to Steve to brush it over his body, the movement of her hands careful and measured.
Again, he couldn’t help but think of the contrast between Diana the warrior and Diana the lover, and it couldn’t be more striking.
“Thank you,” he murmured, looping a piece of damp hair around her ear as he watched her unwrap the film from around his brace.
Diana glanced up at him. “You’re welcome.”
He wondered if she knew that he wasn’t talking about her help right now. Not really.
Soft towel wrapped around his body, he followed Diana back to the bedroom. If he felt tired before, he was feeling completely drained now, relaxed from the hot water and the comfort of her presence, some sort of numbness taking over his mind. If she wanted to take charge, he was more than willing to let her.
She dove into the closet and emerged from it with a pair of his boxers. Steve bit his lip, swallowing a comment that was more suited for a situation when no clothes were needed at all. Maybe tomorrow, after he’d had a good night’s sleep and no longer left more dead than alive, and the thought was oddly uplifting.
He allowed her to help him put his underwear on.
“A shirt?” Diana asked, straightening up.
Steve shook his head. “No, this is good.”
She nodded. Her fingers skimming lightly over the bruising on his ribs, a slight frown appearing briefly between her brows as if she was trying to find her own X-ray vision to see how bad it all was, but she didn’t say anything and Steve chose not to ask.
He watched her peek into the closet again, pulling one of his button-ups from the hanger. She pulled it on, rolling up the sleeves a few times so the cuffs wouldn’t hang low over her hands, and picked up her towel once more to wring her hair out properly.
“Diana,” he called, his mouth suddenly dry.
She looked up.
He swallowed. “Are we good?”
A shadow of confusion passed over her features, brows pulling together when she failed to grasp the thread of the conversation at once. Then recognition dawned.
She let the towel fall on the bed and stepped towards him. Her hands reached for him, framing his face between her palms.
“Of course,” she murmured, her thumbs running over his cheeks. “Of course we are.”
She leaned forward, finding his lips, the kiss soft and languid as her hands moved into his damp hair and down over his shoulder. His hand slid to rest on the small of her back, pulling her closer, allowing himself to get lost in the moment because he missed her, and didn’t even know until this moment how much. His chest was heaving when she drew back – too soon, for Steve’s liking.
“I almost lost you,” Diana whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth, her breath hot on his skin. “It scares me to think of that. I only just got you back.”
He ducked his head close to hers, their faces almost touching.
“So much of my life was spent losing you,” she said, leaning back just far enough for their eyes to meet. Her hand smoothed over his hair. Steve watched her take an unsteady breath. “I need—” she faltered, a sigh rising in her chest. “I need to stop being afraid,” she finished, her voice dropping to a whisper.
Steve nodded reluctantly. The feeling was all too familiar – he had spent enough of his life being scared of losing people he cared about, that he forgot what not feeling it felt like, the heaviness of it pressing down on him making it hard to breathe. Yet, her words still stung.
He hated it. Hated knowing that he couldn’t fix this for her, and hated being the cause of it even more.
Yet another thing they needed to learn to deal with, one way or another.
Diana’s nails scratched through the hair on the nape of his neck, her eyes searching his face. “You need to get some rest, yes?”
Steve was not going to argue with that. There was no point in trying to tackle everything that had happened over the past 24 hours right now. Now when it still felt so raw and new and almost incomprehensible.
He climbed under the covers, stretching out on his back, expensive sheets pleasantly cool against his skin. He let out a long breath, feeling his eyelids grow heavier with each passing moment, the pleasure of relative comfort almost too much to bear.
He blinked sleepily, stifling a yawn. It wasn’t even that late, Steve thought absently. Somewhere in the house, Barry was still wide awake, fighting monsters in the safety of knowing that none of them were real, while Bruce was probably stuck under his jet or poking at the insides of the Batmobile, the normalcy of it staggering.
Through the half-open door, he watched Diana brush her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, his gaze moving over her shirt-clad body, with her long legs stretching from under the hem. When she looked up, catching him staring at her, he patted the spot next to him with his good hand and whispered, “Come here.”
She turned off the lights and padded across the dark room, a glost in his pale shirt. The mattress dipped under the weight of her body when she slipped under the sheets and crawled closer to him. There was a rustling of fabric as she settled and a soft sigh when her head touched the pillow. Steve turned his head and found her studying him in the dark, her arm tucked under her cheek.
Because it was so dark, and he was too tired and too groggy from whatever they had given him earlier at the hospital to help with the pain, he said exactly what he was thinking.
“I don’t want you to be afraid.”
Diana lifted her hand, reaching for him. She stroked his cheek, her eyes searching his even though Steve could barely see her properly.
“You make me very happy, Steve Trevor,” she said after a moment, her voice dropping like she was sharing a secret. A confession that, despite everything, made him feel light as air.
“Even when I look like someone has used me as a punching bag?” Steve clarified.
It hurt to smile, his swollen lips protesting the twitch of his muscles, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
She traced her fingers along his jaw. “I like taking care of you.”
“I like having you take care of me.”
“Although, I do not like seeing you hurt,” she admitted.
That was a sentiment he shared wholeheartedly.
“Not much fun on my end, either,” Steve muttered, his words slurred and unfocused.
Diana shifted closer to him, settling into his side like she had done the previous night, his good arm coming to wrap around her. Her leg slung over one of his under the covers and her arm draped over his abdomen, she exhaled slowly,
“You make me happy, too,” he breathed. Or thought that he did.
She hummed noncommittally, relaxing into him, soft and warm against his body.
He must have said something, after all.
He fell asleep before he had a chance to make sure.
Notes:
Welp, only a few more chapters left. I'm not sure I'm ready.
As always, feedback and general yelling and key-smash are much appreciated.
Just wanted to leave a small PSA here - I'm all for discussions and constructive criticism, the keyword being constructive, so I'm asking you to try to be kind about it. We're all dealing with a lot right now, and fic is something that I write because I'm deeply invested in these characters and this universe, so if you could please try to avoid being rude or aggressive, I would really appreciate it.
That being said, I really hope you enjoyed this chapter and will hopefully like the final ones :)Also, feel free to check my WonderTrev week 2020 stories, if you've missed them: time of our lives , over the mountains and under the stars and connect the dots
Chapter 23
Notes:
Hey guys, just wanted to thank you all again for sticking around and reading this story for... over 3 years now. Wow. We're getting close, I promise! Soon, I'll be bugging you with something else :)
(Yeah, that's a threat)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The morning greeted Steve as the bright light of the cold autumnal sun reflected off the waters of the lake and streamed through the glass wall that was still fogged up at the bottom where the rays had not yet reached. It felt uncomfortably harsh to his eyes.
He groaned in protest and blinked at the ceiling, trying to find his bearings, confused momentarily about where he was. His shoulder throbbed, pain trickling along his arm and under the brace on his wrist that felt uncomfortably tight. Steve ran his hand over his face, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, and looked around.
The previous night was a blur, and he didn’t trust his memory of it. He vaguely recalled waking up sometime after midnight, the dull ache in his broken rib too much to bear. Remembered Diana whispering to him in the dark, the soothing words that were not as important as the sound of her voice or her hand stroking his hair until he had drifted off once more. But it all felt fragmented and out of place somehow, and he wondered if maybe he had dreamt it, after all. Either was equally possible.
His gaze swept over the room, a sigh stuttering out of his chest. Diana was not there. The sheets still smelled like her, like sunshine and something floral, but it was a weak consolation in the wake of her absence. Steve wondered what time it was and tried to remember if she had mentioned last night where she was going but all he could recall was the warmth of her body pressed to him as he slept, filling him with a sense of safety.
He sat up with a grunt, his ribs unhappy but the discomfort bearable. His phone sitting on the bedside table was dead, and now that he was thinking about it, he couldn’t remember the last time he had bothered to charge it. It had been long enough for it to give up. However, sitting next to it he noticed a note, Diana’s familiar handwriting gracing a piece of notepad paper.
Be back before you know it. Rest. I love you.
Steve smiled. He reread it a few times, eyes following the easy curve of the letters, before setting it back down.
If anyone had ever told him that one day he would be grinning like a lovesick moron over a two-line message, he would have laughed them in the face. Then again, if anyone had ever told him that he would fall madly in love with a goddess and that she would love him back just as fiercely, he wouldn’t have believed that either. Go figure.
He dressed gracelessly, wishing that Diana was there to help him with the buttons. And zippers. And laces. At least he could grimace his way through the daunting process without having to worry about her concerns, Steve thought, wishing that he didn’t feel like he had been run over by a tank. A few times. What little was still left of his dignity had apparently been shot in the head and left behind on that goddamned plaza two nights ago. He hoped that he could at least get a cup of coffee for his troubles.
The house was quiet when he stepped out of their room, the space bathed in the early morning sunlight that left streaks of shadows on the polished floors.
For a moment, Steve thought that maybe no one was around, but then his eyes caught two dark forms in the hallway by the front door, tucked away where the light could barely reach them.
Bruce Wayne stood with his hands buried deep in the pockets of his pants, his shoulders slumped slightly forward, and his gaze cast down. Before him stood Selina Kyle. Steve couldn’t hear the words that were being said, but even from twenty feet away, he could see the small smile on Batman’s face and the curious tilt of Catwoman’s head. And truth be told, seeing Bruce look slightly out of his element was an indulging image indeed.
And then Selina lifted her hand and placed it on Bruce’s shoulder as she leaned forward.
Steve didn’t stay to see the rest. He looked away, feeling his cheeks flush, and ducked into the kitchen before either of them spotted him, the moment suddenly too private for him to bear witness to it.
Arthur was sitting at the table, a plate piled with food before him. He looked up from it when Steve walked in, giving him an appraising look, his eyes lingering for a moment too long on Steve’s face, and another one on the brace wrapped around his wrist.
“You look like shit, Trevor,” he noted around a mouthful of eggs.
Steve swallowed a smile. “Hope that’s not something you say to your wife first thing in the morning.”
Arthur regarded him before biting into a sausage. “My wife’s prettier than you are.”
And from what Steve had heard about Mera from Diana, she was also the only person capable of successfully keeping the King of the Seven Seas in check. Having met Arthur, Steve was beyond curious to make acquaintance with his better half.
“Had it worse,” he noted dismissively, choosing not to take the other man’s comment close to heart.
“Is the cat lady gone?” Arthur asked, waving his fork in the general direction of the hallway.
“Just about.” Steve pressed his lips together. “I think it’s Catwoman.”
Arthur blinked at him, his fork frozen halfway to his mouth. “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is that you don’t repeat that to her face,” Bruce cut in before Steve could decide if trying to explain that particular nuance to the Atlantian was worth the effort.
Arthur hummed, unfazed. “Wasn’t gonna.” Before mumbling under his breath, “Wouldn’t want to have my face scratched.”
His gaze shifted from Bruce to Steve and back to Bruce and whatever it was that he saw it made him bite back his next comment. He cleared his throat and pushed his chair back, legs scraping along the tiled floor as he stood up.
“I think I’m gonna go find Barry,” he muttered. He looked like he was going to add something else but then he merely picked up his place and disappeared down the hallway.
Steve wished he’d stay.
His relationship with Batman was tense on the best of days, before they had started throwing punches. What it was now he had no idea, and he wondered absently how the scene he had witnessed a few minutes ago was fitting into this mess. Clearly, the situation and Bruce’s feelings for Diana weren’t as black and white as Steve had first assumed, but in all honesty, he also didn’t think he wanted to dwell on it if he could help it.
Except he still wasn’t sure where it left him and Bruce, exactly.
He was about to follow Arthur’s example and find a way to escape when Bruce moved towards the coffee maker. He glanced at Steve.
“You look like shit.”
Steve hummed. “Yeah, so I’ve heard. It looks worse than it feels.”
He chose not to point out that the other man didn’t look much better either. If nothing else, Bruce appeared to be utterly exhausted, his eyes red-rimmed and the shadow of the two-day stubble coating his cheeks hiding the swelling from Steve’s fist meeting his jaw. Although the cut running across his cheek was someone else’s doing, Steve thought.
A corner of Bruce’s mouth twitched, his lips twisting into a smirk. “Coffee?” he offered.
After a moment of hesitation, Steve nodded. Might as well see this through.
“Thanks.”
Bruce handed one mug to Steve and reached for the second one for himself.
“I guess I owe you an apology,” he said after a moment. Steve looked up at him, surprised. “For the other night,” Bruce added as he rubbed his chin, his eyes cast down, and he heaved a sigh. “I crossed the line. I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
“It’s not me you should be making amends with,” Steve said, his palm curled over his mug.
“Diana.” Bruce nodded. “We spoke.” He cleared his throat but didn’t say anything else.
Steve didn’t press for more. If she wanted to tell him how that conversation went, she would.
“What you did the other night, for Amanda Waller—” Bruce began after a moment, his words measured.
“—was something I would have done for anyone,” Steve interjected.
He didn’t expect gratitude, not from Amanda Waller and not from Bruce Wayne. The woman was a psychopath, to put it mildly. The things he had heard about her would be enough, he suspected, to make someone else look the other way if they had been in his place. She was ruthless, unpredictable, and dangerous in every way he could think of. Steve didn’t like her, and he didn’t trust her, and objectively, the League would have been better off with her gone—one way or another.
The only problem was that he had done that before. Followed orders and looked the other way, turned his back on something ugly because someone told him to do so. That was the pain and loss and grief that would haunt him for as long as he breathed, lurking in the back of his mind, occasionally hidden but never forgotten. Nameless lives that didn’t deserve what had come for them. Maybe Amanda Waller didn’t deserve another chance, but Steve was not going to be the one to rob her off it. He could barely live with what he had already done. He couldn’t imagine making his worst choices all over again, if only for his own selfish reasons.
Not that he was going to explain any of that to Bruce who was watching him curiously right now. Steve wasn’t sure that Bruce believed him, but he didn’t argue.
Steve wondered, then, if there would ever come a day when he would regret his decision.
He chose to not think of it until that moment came. He would cross that bridge when he had to.
“You are good,” Bruce said suddenly. “At what you do. You’re really good, Captain.”
“Steve,” Steve corrected him automatically. Somehow, coming from anyone but Alfred who appeared to not fancy first names much, the formality sounded almost ludicrous.
Bruce didn’t seem to have heard him.
“Ever since Amanda Waller unearthed you from wherever you had been hiding all this time, I was hoping that you wouldn’t be. I was hoping the League wouldn’t need you.” It was perhaps the least flattering thing Steve had ever heard in his life. But, coming from Bruce Wayne, it also seemed to be the sincerest one, too, which intrigued Steve greatly. “But you are, and we do.”
He didn’t look particularly thrilled about it, Steve noted. For someone who was used to being right, wrong judgement wasn’t the easiest thing to admit. In another situation, Steve would have probably felt a smug satisfaction over this confession, from a man who he still was mildly jealous of, if only on the small, petty level where his ego resided. Like he knew he would always be jealous of every partner Diana had had in the time that they were apart, even those that Steve would never know of.
With Bruce, it was worse, and more personal, on more levels than Steve could think of, but he also would never forget that Diana didn’t choose Batman. She chose a lonely spy for whom she had always been a beacon of hope, and maybe, because of that, the complacency over Bruce’s confession didn’t come.
Which felt, surprisingly, like a start.
“But you need Diana more,” Steve said, guessing where Bruce was going. A statement, not a question.
“Yes,” Bruce agreed easily.
“I would never ask her to leave the League, if that’s what you’re worried about. Would never ask her to choose between me and all that you do,” he said.
Bruce regarded him for a moment, and this time, there was unmasked doubt in his eyes. Like he was still expecting Diana to say her farewells any moment now and never come back. Like he had been expecting her to do that ever since Steve had appeared in her life again.
“I don’t think you would need to ask,” Bruce said carefully. He took another sip of his coffee, and only then did it occur to Steve that this wasn’t an idle chat, but an honest to god fear that had found a home under Batman’s skin.
Steve shook his head. “What Diana does is not up to me. She is her own master, you should know that.”
To be fair, he suspected that more often than not, stopping a freight train would be easier than changing Diana’s mind about something. Right now, however, they were not talking about the League. Not really. This was personal, and however delicately Bruce tried to dance around it, Steve doubted that they could undo what had happened and pretend that nothing had changed.
Bruce’s eyebrows lifted.
“I will not speak for her,” Steve added. “She does what she thinks is right. I was not here to see why she joined the League, but I see why she chose to stay. Diana has a lot of respect for you—all of you. It would not be smart of you to lose that over—”
Jealousy. He didn’t say that, shrugging a little instead.
Bruce smirked. “You know, I don’t think anyone ever called me an idiot quite so… politely.”
The corners of Steve’s mouth tugged upward and he hid a smile behind his mug as he sipped his coffee. “Well, some might say that I’m a man out of time.”
He meant what he said, though. Diana was fond of them, her affection for each member of the League running deeper than they thought or could imagine. She was proud of them too, of what they were doing and of being part of the team, that pride shining brighter than the sun when she spoke of them. However, Bruce’s concern wasn’t entirely unreasonable. He might have brought them together, but she was the one for whom they had stayed, and Bruce knew that, they all did. To lose that would mean losing everything they had built, and while Steve would never have gotten in the way, he didn’t think it would be up to him to stop her if she chose to take Bruce’s accusation close to heart.
“I wouldn’t have blamed her,” Bruce said after a moment, as if reading his mind.
Deep down, Steve knew he wouldn’t have blamed her, either.
“She is a much better person than you give her credit for,” Steve said simply.
“I don’t think that’s possible.” Bruce stared into his mug for a long while before raising his eyes to Steve.
They drank their coffee in silence for a couple of minutes.
“What’s going to happen now?” Steve asked eventually. “To Lex Luthor.”
“Solitary. I think Waller will make sure that Arkham Asylum triples its security and adds an extra lock on Lex’s door,” Bruce said, although he didn’t sound very convinced, if the small frown that he tried to mask was any indication. Either not trusting her, or not trusting Lex. Bruce checked his watch, his brows pulling together for a moment, and then he looked up again. “We’ll debrief when everyone else is here.”
Steve nodded.
“As far as everyone is concerned,” Bruce added, “Lex had nothing to do with the explosions. To drag him into it would be to reveal too much—about the Claw of Horus, about Selina—and for Waller to come across as incompetent in keeping her city in check would be the end of her career. Lex will be punished for his escape but not anything else. She wouldn’t have it otherwise.”
Steve felt his jaw clench. He glanced away, trying to quell the anger rising inside of him. A hundred years later, and nothing had changed. Those at power still pulled the strings and played them all however they pleased.
“Waller’s decision?” he asked.
“She has her hands tied,” Bruce shook his head, his expression one of disgust.
“That does not sound very good for the League,” Steve mused.
Bruce shrugged. “We were there. She won’t dig her own grave by going against us now. Not even she is devoid of that sliver of gratitude.”
Steve didn’t argue, but he was not convinced.
Bruce glanced into his empty mug and then raised his eyes to Steve.
“I suppose you and I can figure out a way to play nice with one another,” he said after a moment, which, to Steve’s mind, was the closest thing to a truce offering he might get. Bruce smirked a little when he held out his hand. “For the greater good.”
Steve thought of a thousand words he could have said to Bruce Wayne right now. He thought of how there would most likely always be a foul feeling between them, even after a while, even when they would be convinced that all their disagreements were dead and gone, and every now and then it would flare up and make them both see red. He thought, for just a moment, what it would be like to walk away from this all and never look back, and was tempted to say just that.
Instead, he gripped Batman’s hand and gave it a firm shake.
“I’d like that.”
“Captain Trevor,” a voice came from behind, as Alfred appeared in the kitchen, a plate that must have been Arthur’s—empty now—in his hand. “It’s good to see you up and about.”
He paused, his eyebrow lifting ever so slightly when he saw Bruce. “Master Wayne.” For a moment, his eyes moved between two men. He looked like he was going to say something, but what came out was, “Would you like to have some breakfast?”
Bruce reached for the pot to refill his mug. “I think I’m going to take this downstairs to finish something—Thank you, Alfred.”
The older man nodded. He turned to Steve when Bruce walked out of the kitchen, his steps echoing in the corners and bouncing off the panelled walls.
“Captain?”
“Hm?” Steve turned to him. He set his empty mug down on the counter and rubbed his forehead. “No, thank you, Alfred. I’m—” An idea struck him then. “Actually…”
“Have something on your mind, Captain Trevor?”
Steve nodded and muttered, “A visit to an old friend.”
A sip of scotch, the good kind, burned its way down Amanda Waller’s throat, making her grimace. She had never been a supporter of day drinking — or morning drinking, for that matter — but desperate times called for desperate measures, or however that saying went. In the aftermath of Luthor’s escape, the Arkham Asylum was under investigation and she had to take it on good faith that, this time, he would be locked away for good.
Good faith and a great deal of security improvement — she doubted that only one of them would do the trick.
Thirty-six hours after the showdown in front of City Hall, and she was still nursing a headache the size of Texas and had her heart clenching every time a car backfired outside — both things maddening in their own way. Amanda’s fingers curled tight around the glass as she debated finishing her drink in one gulp or pouring it out and going back to trying to tackle the aftermath of Lex Luthor’s antics with a clear(er) head. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure which way it would be less of a nightmare.
Unsympathetic, her superiors were on her case about the details of the stunt that Lex had pulled. They wanted an investigation and they wanted to keep the incident buried as deeply as possible, for it was throwing serious shade on both A.R.G.U.S. and the Department of Homeland Security, and she didn’t know how to do both. Not when Justice League was involved. She was beginning to feel like she was failing, again. It was, perhaps, no surprise that her head was pounding and that the egg-sized bump on the back of her skull had nothing to do with it. How they wanted her to sweep the explosions under the rug she had no idea, but it was in her best interests to figure that out. Pronto. Preferably before lunch.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Catwoman was back in town. Just as Amanda had started to believe that maybe Gotham had gotten too small for someone like Selina Kyle, who did not like to be bored. How Amanda was supposed to even begin cleaning up this mess was beyond her.
Perhaps, day drinking was justified, after all.
When her intercom buzzed and her secretary told her that she had a visitor, Amanda realized that she was too tired to keep deflecting the blows coming her way. At least it wasn’t one her superiors, she mused. As they didn’t bother with announcing themselves. Or knocking, for that matter.
Waller set her glass on the liquor tray sitting on the cabinet behind her desk and swivelled around in her chair just as none other than Steve Trevor walked into her office. Perhaps the mess that Lex had caused could wait a few minutes.
“Captain Trevor,” she said dryly when the door closed behind Steve. “What a pleasant surprise.”
His eyebrow quirked.
“What a surprise,” she amended. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She took him in, her gaze sweeping over the bulky wrist brace peeking from the sleeve of his jacket, the bruise adorning his left cheekbone and, if she was not mistaken, there were stitches peeking from under a sweep of his hair. She didn’t need to ask or wonder what the hell had happened to him, her own slight limp and the sizable hematoma that she had yet to explain to her husband a good enough answer. At least for the time being.
“We need to talk,” Steve said.
“I don’t suppose you came for a thank you?” Waller cocked her head, watching him speculatively.
Thanks to the blow to her head when Lex had seized her, her memories of what had followed were slightly blurred, which felt equally merciful and infuriating. She did remember Steve Trevor cutting the binds on her wrists though, feeling his breath on her neck as he did. He had helped her even though he didn’t have to. She suspected he wasn’t thrilled about it, either. And so far, Waller couldn’t decide if it earned him some points or made him weak in her eyes.
If he did, in fact, come for tearful gratitude, he was in for some serious disappointment.
Steve walked over to the bookcase lining one of the walls, his eyes scanning the spines of the books.
“No offence, but you don’t strike me as an overly grateful person,” he muttered, without looking at her.
“None taken,” she said flatly, leaning back in her chair as she watched him, wishing she had finished that drink. “Does your girlfriend know that you’re here?”
It would be unfortunate if Diana Prince was the next one to burst through her doors, wielding her sword and that rope thing, determined to rescue her long-suffering beau. Entertaining as it sounded, Amanda didn’t have the time for it. If she could avoid thinking of or seeing the Justice League altogether until dealing with Luthor’s mess was done with, she’d be quite happy.
“Have you read all these?” Steve asked, ignoring her question.
“She doesn’t,” Amanda nodded to herself. “I supposed she wouldn’t have been thrilled.”
Her own memory of her one-on-one encounter with Diana Prince was still uncomfortably fresh in her mind. The nights following it, she had kept waking up with a burning sensation around her wrists, unable to tell her dreams from reality and scared that she would find her skin blistered and peeling off her bones. There was never a mark on her upon waking, of course, but the unease over not being in control of her own mind had not quite gone away.
Amanda was not used to being scared. Not of the superheroes and not of those they opposed, but the memory of being completely at a mercy of something that she had no understanding of frightened her more than she was willing to admit, even to herself.
Which made her wariness of Steve Trevor all the more irritating. She did not want to consider this man a threat, regardless of who he was rolling in the sheets with.
“They’re not going to fall for any of your tricks,” Steve said, turning around. With the light filtering through the window behind her, he looked more worn out than she had first thought. It wasn’t the brace, or the bruises. There was something in his eyes… Something that only someone who had spent a century stuck in a perpetual fighting mode would bear.
“The Justice League,” she echoed, lips pressing together into a thin line. “Did Bruce Wayne tell you that? Are you here on his request?”
Wouldn’t that be hilarious?
Steve’s lips twitched without humour. “Come on, you gotta understand that they are not going to dance to your tune, no matter what you do.” He paused, watching her. “You know as well as I do that you will gain nothing from being enemies with them.”
Her eyes narrowed as she studied him across the expanse of her desk. There was a report still waiting to be written on her laptop and a meeting she was already late for, and a million and a half other things that she needed to take care of if she wanted to go home before midnight tonight. She didn’t have time for this, for a lecture from a man who had been running from himself longer than she had been alive.
“Is this why you’re here, Captain?” she snorted. “To make peace?”
“We’re not at war, Director,” Steve pointed out.
“Maybe not from where you’re standing,” Waller replied.
“Then maybe you should take a step back and get a better look.”
“Need I remind you that you have a contract with the US Government and that failure to comply can lead to drastic consequences? For everyone, I must add.”
Steve, who was fiddling with a miniature Statue of Liberty that someone had given Amanda at some point, and that had been gathering dust on the shelf since then, put it down. He chuckled, shaking his head a little as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“And who exactly would benefit from it?” he asked.
She sighed, the mother of all headaches starting to build behind her eyes, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Why are you here, Captain?”
“Diana told me about the photo. About Lex Luthor and how you had tracked me down.”
Waller figured she would. Diana Prince’s reputation preceded her, and while Amanda didn’t necessarily appreciate Wonder Woman’s adamant desire to keep peace at all cost, knowing full well that just a little bit of instilled fear sometimes did a much better job, she respected it nonetheless. She also suspected that someone who fought for the truth would not keep secrets from her lover.
She didn’t say anything, merely watched him, waiting.
“What I want to know is why?” Steve said after a moment.
“A hunch,” Waller said honestly, surprising them both, if Steve Trevor’s lifted eyebrow was any indication. “How are you alive, Captain Trevor? After all this time, looking like…” She trailed off and waved her hand at him.
“To be fair, today’s not my best day,” he chuckled under his breath.
“Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Really? I heard quite the opposite.”
“From Wonder Woman, I presume?”
“I don’t think Diana has ever called anyone coy,” Steve noted, the lightness of his voice, the easiness with which he said Diana almost grating to Amanda’s ears. Possessiveness mixed with affection. In her time of being aware of Wonder Woman’s existence, Waller had never attributed those things to her.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to start doing it now.
When she had first seized Lex’s files, the whole point of her quest was to be a step ahead of Luthor — whatever that meant — as he wasn’t particularly cooperative, even at the worst of times. It didn't surprise her, but she was intrigued nonetheless. When it turned out that Steve Trevor was alive and well, all things considered, she merely wanted to ruffle some feathers and stir the peace within the League, throw them off because nothing else could, it seemed. She had not been planning on reuniting Diana Prince with her long-lost boyfriend, and had she known what she was walking in on, Waller would have thought twice before handing Trevor over to the Justice League.
So much she should have and would have done differently, if only she could turn back the time.
“You’re good at deflecting,” Waller noted, more to herself than to him.
He would have made an excellent agent, had their paths crossed differently, she thought. It was no surprise, the man’s war records were an ode to his excellence.
“They didn’t make me a spy for my looks,” he shrugged, unfazed.
“Not for your modesty, either,” Waller said flatly.
The corner of Steve’s mouth curled upwards.
“I looked for you because I thought that you were like her — ”
“There’s no one like her,” he interjected.
“—and if you were, then maybe they were others, too. You know, pulling one thread and unravelling the whole picture.”
“I don’t think you’re going to believe me if I say that there is no one else.”
Waller regarded him without much pleasure. “This is no longer about me. Not anymore, hasn’t been for a very long time. It’s about politics and accountability. The Justice League is a ticking bomb waiting to go off. Every single one of those people is capable of wiping out half of the planet if they so wished.” Steve opened his mouth to protest but she raised her hand and continued, “There is a very fine line between admiration and fear, Captain. You have seen what it can be like, what kind of power can people wield over those they want to control.”
“No one in the League wants to control anyone,” he shook his head, his expression disgusted.
“My job is not to coddle metahumans,” Waller interjected. “My job is to make the people of America, and the world, for that matter, feel safe. I don’t believe they do, seeing as how the Capitol building blew up around Superman on national television.” She paused for emphasis, waiting for her words to sink in. “What if Victor Stone decided to crack the nuclear codes just because he can? What if Diana Prince tripped and accidentally knocked a building down — ”
“Don’t be absurd,” Steve snorted.
“What if,” she continued, “Superman forgot himself again? You were not here, but Metropolis still remembers. I don’t believe they’ve finished fixing the damage he caused.”
He didn’t say anything, merely watching her, his eyebrows pulled together.
Amanda Waller didn’t care if she was selling this pitch. For once, she was being open because she was sick of hearing those same words coming out of other people’s mouths.
“I’m not talking about total control,” Waller finished. “I’m talking about cooperation.”
“It’s not the way they see it.”
She shook her head. “If you came here to negotiate a better deal, you’re wasting your time. And mine.”
Steve glanced down at his brace before saying blandly. “Actually, I came to find out if my medical leave is covered.”
Waller pressed her lips together into a thin line. “This is not over, Captain Trevor. Your heroics the other night change nothing.”
“You’re making a mistake,” Steve said, his voice tired, before he sighed and headed for the door.
“It can’t work any other way,” Waller called after him but he never turned back.
Diana pulled the glass door open and stepped out from the warmth of the lake house and onto the back deck, the cold wind tugging at her hair and whipping it against her cheeks. The wind was snaking under her jacket, although not altogether unpleasant against her skin. She stepped off the deck and followed the path that had been long trodden across the lawn.
In the dying light of the early dusk, Steve was standing on a patch of grass bordering the thin strip of sand that circled the lake, his eyes trained on the still water that reflected the dark wall of trees on the far shore, barely distinguishable now that the sun was gone and the sky was growing darker with each passing moment. His good hand was tucked into the pocket of his pants, his hair tousled.
She slowed down, her footsteps soundless on the dirt path, and like almost every time her eyes had landed on him since the moment he came back, she was overcome with unadulterated wonder. The same feeling that had her watching him sleep when she couldn’t find her own rest, as if her mind still couldn’t quite grasp the reality of the two of them coming full circle and finding one another again in a world where it was so easy to get lost.
Her heart squeezed fiercely in her chest, a familiar pang that made her wonder if she was ever going to look at him and not feel like she was still dreaming.
Behind her, the house was alive with conversations flowing in every room and food cooking in the kitchen, the liveliness of it an almost overwhelming contrast to the devastation that they had had to deal with only a couple nights ago. It was no surprise, perhaps, to find Steve here, away from all the noise of people milling around and talking over one another.
Diana stepped towards him and slipped her arms around Steve from behind, turning her head to press a kiss to his neck.
“Hi,” she murmured into his skin, feeling him relax against her instantly.
“Hi,” Steve breathed, turning his head slightly to rest his cheek against her forehead. He clasped his good hand around her forearm, his thumb running over the sleeve of her jacket. “Where’ve you been all day?”
Diana felt the corners of her lips tug up slightly. She nuzzled into a spot behind his ear. “Saving the world.”
He chuckled, the sounds of it rumbling out of his chest and reverberating into her body.
“Figures. Always having fun without me.”
“I have plenty of fun with you,” she whispered in his ear, smiling at the slight hitch of his breath. At the way he cleared his throat to cover it, undoubtedly grateful that they were alone.
“As long as you have more fun with me…” He trailed off, his voice amused.
“Always,” Diana murmured. “Are you cold? It’s freezing out here.”
Steve ran his fingers up and down her forearm.
“Not anymore.”
She tightened her grip on him, mindful of his broken bones, and kissed the side of his throat again. He smelled like Steve again—his aftershave and her soap and something that she remembered all the way from Veld. Steve. So unlike her much-hated memory from two nights ago when it was mostly rain and dirt and blood on his skin, and none of the things that she found comfort in.
“Good.”
And it was, she realized. It was good to hold him and not be afraid of losing him, a thought that disappeared when he was so close she could feel his heart beat against her chest.
Diana rested her chin on his shoulder, her gaze following Steve’s that was still glued to the lake.
“I spoke with Bruce today,” she said quietly.
“Yeah?” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “How’d that go?”
“Well enough.”
It had been odd, she could admit that much. It had never felt that way between them before, so… personal. The League certainly never left any room for the kind of tension that she had felt this morning, and Diana had yet to figure out how she felt about it. There were the mistrust and doubt and hurt that neither of them had the right to feel, but it was his implication that they couldn’t rely on her judgement that stung more than she imagined it would.
Bruce was a complicated man, she had always been aware of that, but she had also assumed that they were already past the part where they would feel the need to test each other and go for cheap jabs to see how far they could push before the other would snap. It saddened and disappointed her to realize that she had been alone in her assumption all along. He had aimed to hurt when he had accused her of not being impartial, and it had worked, and she hated to think of how deeply it had cut her.
All of this, fighting together, working together, was meant to build their trust towards one another, not drive them further apart. Perhaps, ignoring his feelings when Diana first realized there was something there beyond having a common goal and striving for companionship and understanding had not been the right way to go about it, but it still gave Bruce no right to speak the way he had the other night. To her. And to Steve.
She couldn’t imagine it being the end of them, though. They were friends and partners before everything else got in the way. She knew they were both willing to give their friendship another chance. She only hoped that it would not be in vain.
“Are you okay?” Steve asked softly when she didn’t elaborate, and the pause began to stretch between them.
Diana’s mouth moved to his neck again. Hera help her, she missed him. The past several hours suddenly felt centuries long. “I am,” she said honestly, feeling the tension seep out of her body. His hand moved along her forearm until he was tracing idle patterns around her knuckles, his touch cool against her skin. How long had he been here? “Remember Clark’s apartment in Gotham?” she asked. “The one where we…” She let the end of the sentence hang between them.
Steve hummed. Even without seeing his face, she knew he was smiling. “Vividly.”
She smiled, too. “I asked Bruce to keep it and change the name on the lease to mine. You and I could stay there when we come over for the League business. I understand that this house is not… ideal.”
Steve didn’t say anything for a few moments, mulling over her words. She could all but hear him think, gears turning in his head. Somewhere behind them, inside the house, a burst of laughter erupted, muffled somewhat by the distance.
“You didn’t have to do it on my account,” he said at last.
“I didn’t,” Diana told him. “I did it for my own selfish reasons.”
He laughed, and she was somehow once again caught wondering how it was possible that the sound of it was making her weak in her knees. Heavens, she loved it.
“I find that hard to believe somehow,” he told her.
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I like having you all to myself.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
He turned his head enough to brush a kiss to her forehead, and Diana felt her face split into a smile so wide she feared her head might crack in half.
“Good thing I like having you all to myself, too,” he confessed.
Her arms tightened around him. Now that was an idea…
“We should go inside,” she said after another minute. “You’ll catch a cold.”
Steve sighed. “Just needed to clear my head.”
She pressed a kiss to his shoulder, his skin wonderfully warm even through his shirt.
“I went to see Amanda Waller today,” he added when she said nothing.
Diana knew that.
She wanted to ask him about it. When she had dialled his number sometime after lunch having left this morning before he had even woken up, his phone had gone to voicemail. She had tried the house then, only to learn from Alfred that Steve had gone to Gotham, his phone left forgotten on the kitchen counter. The mere idea of him anywhere near that mad woman had made Diana feel sick to her stomach.
She remembered Waller’s face from where she had cowered on the ground behind Lex Luthor, the rain pounding down on her. Waller had been scared – the emotion so loud she might have as well been screaming about it. Diana also recalled feeling little remorse for her, something that had surprised her deeply. She was not prone to indifference towards suffering, no matter the circumstances. She blamed Waller, she realized. For what had happened. For the sound of Steve’s neck snapping that Diana was going to remember for as long as she breathed.
What could he possibly have needed from her was beyond Diana, and before she knew it, panic was rising inside of her in hot waves.
She quelled it, although not without effort. Trust didn’t come easy, not when Diana knew how fragile everything she cared for in this life could be, but this was Steve. She trusted him more than she had ever trusted anyone… than she should have trusted anyone.
They were still figuring things out. It wasn’t easy—the adjustment to having someone in her life and the permanence of it. Someone who she loved deeply and without reservation, who filled her heart with so much joy that it could barely contain it all.
She pushed the thought away. They didn’t need to deal with any of the questions still lingering between them right this moment. For now, being here with him was enough.
“Is everything alright?” she asked nonetheless, unable not to.
Steve let go of her arm and rubbed his forehead. “Yeah… yeah, it is. I actually…” He cleared his throat. “I wanted to see if she was okay. You know, after—”
He shook his head.
“She only sees what she wants to see, Diana. One day, someone is going to get killed because of it, and she will be none the wiser.”
The disgust and disappointment in his voice didn’t surprise her.
Diana had seen enough not to argue. She could understand where his worry was coming from even though she didn’t know how to ease it. There was only so much she could do, only so many words she could say, before they lost all their meaning, turning into empty sound. It was one thing to protect people when they needed it, but trying to save them from themselves was something else entirely, and she had long given up on trying to figure it out, faced time and time again with the futility of such tasks.
One day, Amanda Waller would step over the line with her hunger for power and the foolish assumption that life was about control, and someone would have to be there to gather up the broken pieces. Diana didn’t know if it was going to be her or the Justice League or someone else entirely, but the idea was dreadful nonetheless.
“We do what we do in hopes that it won’t happen,” she whispered into the curve of Steve’s neck.
Steve nodded absently, but there was no conviction to it, and she had no words left to try and instill hope in him. Or in herself, for that matter.
Diana had thought of that, too. Thought of how some people could only learn from their own mistakes, and if Amanda Waller learned nothing from what had happened in Midway City months ago, there was hardly any point in trying to prove to her that they were fighting on the same side now. She was never going to see it that way without the League belonging to her, and there was nothing that that woman could say or do to make them relinquish their power.
Which left Diana fearing that this war between them might never stop. Feared that her threat might not be enough, either. That Amanda Waller might want something from them, from her, and would come for Steve because Bruce was right. Steve was her weakness that she would do anything to protect.
“What are you thinking?” she asked quietly after a while.
By now, the sky had turned dark grey and the two of them were almost completely swallowed by the shadows gathering around them, and had it not been for the lights shining in the windows on the lake house behind them, the blackness around them would have been absolute.
Steve exhaled slowly, his palm closing over her hand, his touch pleasantly warm even though the tips of his fingers were icy.
“Last night—no, the one before,” he started and faltered. She felt him take a breath, his chest expanding against her hold and then deflating once more. “You asked me if I remembered what happened.” Diana could hear him swallow, fingers flexing over hers, and she had a distinct suspicion that she didn’t necessarily want to hear what was coming next. “I did… I do. It felt like—like the kind of emptiness that almost hurts. One moment, it was all there, and then suddenly there was nothing, and for a brief moment, while there was still a spark of life left, you’re aware of it. You can see inside of yourself and there is nothing but this—this void.”
Her eyes dropped shut and she rested her forehead against the back of his head. She had never thought of it that way, never heard one speak of dying with such frightening clarity. Her throat closed, not just from his words but from the sound of his voice, the way it was catching as if it was an effort to push the words out of his mouth. She forced herself to keep on breathing, to remember that it was over and that he was back with her.
And she vowed silently to keep his heart beating for the rest of her own existence.
“Steve…”
“I have never been so scared.” It was a confession that didn’t come easy, she knew that much. “You know, not even when we were running across No Man’s Land and bullets were whistling past us and I thought we’d never make it because nobody ever did.” There was a fond wistfulness to his voice that would have made her smile under different circumstances. “I’m not scared of dying, Diana, but I’m terrified of losing you.”
You can never lose me , she thought, her eyes squeezed shut so tight against the unbidden image that she could barely stand it. She had to remind herself to loosen her grip on him lest she break another one of his ribs, and Zeus knew that they could do without that.
“I love you,” she murmured, her breath on his skin making him shiver.
“I love you, too,” Steve said without hesitation, and this time, she heard the smile in his voice.
I’m sorry , she wanted to say. There were promises on her lips and confessions and pleas to never, ever leave her. Not in this life and not in any other. Things that made her chest feel so full that she feared there was no space left for air.
“Are you ready to go back?” she asked.
“Mm? Yeah, I guess.” He turned around without letting go of her hand, his cheeks flushed from the wind. He looked past her at the rectangle of the illuminated glass door and grimaced. “You’re right, it’s damn freezing out here.”
“No, not the house,” Diana shook her head. He lifted an eyebrow, confused. “I mean, yes, of course, but...” She smoothed her hand over his chest and then swept it through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead, dark eyes searching bright blue ones. “We have the gauntlet back. Lex Luthor is no longer a threat and knowing about his involvement with what had happened at S.T.A.R. Labs means that the investigation is over. Our work in Gotham is done.”
She watched the realization dawn on him, her words clicking in his mind. And then a smile so bright she could barely look at it broke across Steve’s face, lighting up her very soul.
“Paris?” he clarified all the same.
Diana laughed, her fingers scratching lightly through his hair at the nape of his neck.
“Paris,” she nodded.
He chuckled a little under his breath. “Yeah, I’m ready to go back.”
She grinned. And leaned forward—
The door got yanked open unceremoniously behind them. “Get a room,” Arthur snorted, his voice clear in the night.
Diana moved away from Steve, although her hand remained resting on the back of his neck and turned to the Aquaman who was filling nearly the entire doorway, both in width and in height. She tilted her head, one eyebrow lifted, and pressed her lips around the smile that threatened to spring across her features. It was incredibly hard to appear cross at his crude implication—even if it wasn’t entirely incorrect.
Arthur looked away, his cheeks growing hot momentarily. He cleared his throat. “Dinner’s ready. Better come now if you want some, while there’s still something left. Before the fastest man alive eats it all.” He rolled his eyes a little at the fastest man alive .
“Thank you, Arthur,” Diana said, and he nodded and disappeared without another word, leaving the door half-open behind him. She turned to Steve who was smirking at Arthur’s back. “Hungry?”
“Starving,” he admitted, looking at her.
“Better go then.” She weaved her fingers through his and squeezed them. “Barry won’t be waiting around.”
Steve laughed. “I don’t think even Bruce is rich enough to keep Barry fed to his satisfaction.”
Diana stepped toward the house but then stopped and turned to him again, causing him to pause in his tracks, nearly stumbling into her. She reached for him, her hand curling over his jaw as her mouth found his. Steve kissed her back, immediately and without hesitation, a low hum of approval forming in the back of his throat and sending a jolt of heat into her belly.
She kissed him until both of them needed to come up for air, and then she drew back and rested her forehead against his, their breaths puffing out in small clouds between them in the chilly air.
“Now we can go,” she murmured, watching him break into a wide smile.
Arthur left three days later, the matters of his own domain calling. The night before, they had all cooked together (despite Alfred’s protests), the kitchen feeling cramped and warm and welcoming for the first time in months. From her spot at the counter, Diana’s eyes had moved from one member of the Justice League to another, taking note of the easy smiles and relaxed postures and jokes tossed around without care. No more straight backs and rigid shoulders and looking like they expected the world to end any second.
She had to admit that she liked it this way.
It was not often, to her memory, that their conversations didn’t revolve around one crisis or another, that they were not mapping out plans and strategies or arguing about tactics and motives. It was as if their voices were softer now, their words slower. No fear that they might run out of time. Like they were a completely different group of people wearing familiar faces, their jabs and jokes old but the simplicity of the moment new and almost scary in how fragile it felt.
She tried not to think of how it might not last as long as they’d want it to, how something else would happen before they were ready, but in the end, she chose to soak up these hours of them as just friends as best she could.
Her gaze landed on Bruce who was deep in conversation with Barry whose hands were moving with dramatic animation, his eyes wide and his excitement nearly palpable. Before it shifted to Victor and Arthur caught up in a good-natured argument, their voices rising above the commotion but still not loud enough for it to signal a confrontation. Stirring something on the stove with his good hand, Steve was chatting with Alfred, who was positioned near him with a cutting board and a pile of vegetables.
If she didn’t look too closely, the scene looked almost like a carefully choreographed dance where everyone knew their steps and never missed a beat.
Diana’s heartbeat stuttered for a second and she sucked in an unsteady breath, her eyes lingering on her pilot. She had long stopped trying to pretend that she ever wanted to look away. In that moment, the difficult parts of fighting the good fight and keeping the peace as best they could were most certainly worth it.
Even Clark had stopped by last night to say his goodbyes before real life and the Planet swallowed him whole again. She had tried not to chuckle at how Arthur had had his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his pants as he’d tried very hard to pretend that they weren’t real friends now.
He had given up the pretence minutes later to wrap Superman in a one-armed hug.
“Is this not, like, cannibalism for you?” Barry had asked at some point during the dinner, brandishing his fork in the general direction of the seafood salad on Arthur’s plate.
Arthur had plucked a shrimp from it and tossed it into his mouth, his eyes boring into the speedster. “Ask me again, kid, and I’ll eat you.”
Victor had guffawed and bumped his shoulder into Barry’s. Barry, red-faced, had shoved a spoonful of food into his mouth and started to chew with great concentration, the tips of his ears burning.
Diana had bitten her lip around her smile, trying not to laugh. Even Bruce was chucking under his breath, his eyes amused as he had watched the scene before him. Sitting next to her, Steve had laughed under his breath when Alfred had made a comment about how they would need to clean up after themselves if they were going to start maiming one another.
She had turned to Steve, catching a glimpse of his smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“I’m new here, but are they always like this?” he had whispered, leaning towards her.
“Actually, they’re on their best behaviour now,” she had observed, impressed. At least the food wasn’t flying around yet, and no serious threats had been thrown about either, the conversation still civil and pleasant enough.
Steve had snorted and shook his head, and she had remembered wistfully the dinners they had shared with his boys, on nights much like this one when the possibility of tomorrow felt like the future they had been fighting for all along. When it was Sameer cracking jokes and Charlie telling him to get over himself and Chief watching them with that patient expression of his, like he knew all the secrets the world could hold.
Her hand had slid under the table and squeezed Steve’s knee. He had lifted his eyes and smiled at her, and Diana thought for what felt like the millionth time, Please don’t let me lose him again.
The next day, in the harsh light of the morning, while the mood was still light, the ruefulness was nearly tangible in the air, what with Arthur’s bag sitting in the hallway and his trident propped against the wall. When Victor asked him about customs, he merely shrugged and said that it travelled as a pitchfork and that technically, agricultural tools were not prohibited on planes, provided they were declared and checked in properly, his eyes landing very briefly on Bruce, his lips curved in a smirk.
When Arthur drew Diana into a hug, she didn’t hold back, squeezing him with all her might.
“Promise to visit,” he asked, pulling back.
She laughed and framed his face affectionately with her hands. “We might stop by.”
“And look after them,” he clasped her shoulder and jerked his chin toward the rest of the League congregated nearby.
Diana glanced over her shoulder, her lips curving into a smile, before turning to Arthur again. “They can handle themselves, I’m certain.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Alfred remarked dryly, and Arthur laughed.
“See? Alfred gets it.”
“It’s not like we need constant supervision,” Barry mumbled, and Bruce cleared his throat, covering his own laugh.
This was good, she thought. Not needing them here, together, was good, because it meant that the world was not in an immediate need of saving. It felt good to know that they each had their own way to go before they would need to come together again. She would still miss them, though. She’d miss them more than she had ever imagined she could.
That night, Victor returned to his father’s apartment, their relationship still rocky but slowly mending. He promised Diana that he would call, and she believed him. Of them all, he needed the League the most; needed the sense of belonging, and she hoped with all her heart that he would find peace with himself, one day. And if not, that he knew that they would all be there to pitch in whenever he needed it.
“I am proud of you,” she said sincerely before he walked out the door, his body hidden under the bulky clothes to hide all his sharp edges, both literal and metaphorical.
His features softened as he smiled, the vulnerability of a young man who had had to grow up too fast peeking out from under the veneer of someone who had to be tough in this world. A lovely smile that warmed her heart so.
“Come back soon,” he grinned, trying to cover his sudden embarrassment with a heartfelt moment.
She laughed. “I hope I won’t have to.”
And then it was her and Steve the next morning that was grey and gloomy with promises of snow that would be there to stay, the air smelling of the storm. It would have Gotham buried under the crust of ice for the next four months and make the winter feel like it would never end. Diana was not looking forward to that, grateful all of sudden to be going back to Paris that never felt quite so dark and forbidding, to her memory.
She walked over to Bruce who was standing in the hallway, his hands tucked into his pants pockets and his face pointedly blank like none of this meant anything. For a moment, a twinge of sorrow jolted through her—at the thought of this house quiet and empty, of the sleepless nights spent downstairs in the Batcave because it was a better alternative than facing his demons and the silence during meals.
That thing between them still felt tender to the touch, like a wound that needed to heal before they went on prodding at it again, but it did not change the fact that Diana cared for him deeply. As a friend and team partner and a person who, ultimately, was the reason that she had gotten her happiness back. Even though she didn’t think he would appreciate her gratitude for that.
And then she remembered the phone call last night, one that Bruce had gone to take in his study, and the uncharacteristic softness of his voice as he spoke, so unfamiliar to her.
Diana had never asked, and he had never explained anything, but if she had to guess, it was Selina Kyle on the other end of the line. Maybe loneliness wasn’t in the cards for him, after all. Maybe the next time they saw each other, the longing in his eyes wouldn’t be quite so raw.
“Well, I guess this is it,” she said, pausing before him. “You are finally getting what you wished for.”
“Peace and quiet?” he chuckled, shaking his head. “I don’t think Barry is going to be that easy to get rid of.”
At the sound of his name, Barry poked his head out of the kitchen. “Hey, I heard that.”
“I meant for you to hear it,” Bruce called back before turning to Diana again.
“You have a problem, Bruce,” the younger man shook his head before he disappeared.
“Yeah, the people in my house who don’t live here,” Bruce muttered under his breath, and Diana had to press her lips around a smile. He cleared his throat. “I’m sure he’ll get bored in a day or two.”
She chose not to point out that he would miss them all even if he wasn’t willing to admit it out loud. It was written all over his face, his voice more wistful than she’d ever head it. Loneliness was addictive, but so was companionship, and Diana hoped with all her heart that he would no longer deprive himself of it on purpose.
“Thank you,” she said after a moment. “For the jet. For everything.”
Bruce shrugged. “Figured you wouldn’t want to declare a dangerous artifact.”
That was the plan, at least. The Claw of Horus complicated things, but they all agreed that it was safer locked up at the Louvre again—somewhere where no one would be able to find it this time, she was going to make sure of that—than anywhere else. After all, it had stayed in her care long enough for Diana to prove being its worthy keeper. Hence Bruce’s plane taking them back to Paris, the gauntlet stored safely away from prying eyes and dangerous curiosity.
As far as Diana was concerned, Amanda Waller was not aware of what had happened that night, of what it was that had made Lex as powerful as he had been, and they all preferred to keep it that way. The woman was causing enough trouble for them as it was, there was need for her to be informed about magical items in their possession.
“Thank you,” Diana repeated.
Bruce ran his hand over his hair, suddenly shy in a way that she was not used to. Diana could see that he longed to say something, ask something, and she wondered if there was going to be a time again when they wouldn’t dance around words that were better off unsaid.
Bruce cleared his throat. “Do you need a ride to the airport? Because Alfred could…” He trailed off when she shook her head.
“Clark is coming over to get us,” she said, and added, smiling, when he arched a curious eyebrow at her, intrigued, “I promised a double date to him and Lois before we leave. We’re having lunch together.”
Her eyes moved past Bruce and he turned to follow her gaze to the lounge where Steve was standing deep in conversation with Alfred, oblivious to their scrutiny. Whatever it was that they were talking about had him engaged, his expression keen. The bruises on his face had faded somewhat, looking far less conspicuous now than they had a few days ago. He was holding his jacket in his good hand, his injured wrist held gingerly close to his chest.
For a second, Diana’s mind drifted back to pulling him out of the water on Themyscira a century ago, surprised and disbelieving.
It was like she had never stopped being fascinated by him since.
Bruce’s lips twitched a little. “I see,” he said, turning to her. “Well, it sounds… dreadful, to be honest.” He shuddered dramatically.
Diana smirked and shook her head. “I’m sure we’ll manage.”
“I’m sure you will,” he muttered under his breath. And then he lifted his eyes to meet hers. “Are you coming back?”
She blinked, surprised, her eyebrow pulling together at the implication. Why wouldn’t I? she wanted to ask. And then she recalled nearly marching out of this house a week ago, fuming and furious. Recalled feeling like these glass walls were not enough to contain her anger at the hurtful words tossed at her and how they had tried to jab one another where it would hurt the most.
Truth be told, she couldn’t blame him for doubting her future intentions in regards to the League.
Diana’s smile softened. “Of course,” she said. “Of course, I’m coming back, Bruce. Whenever you need me, I will be here.”
He nodded. And then nodded once more, at a loss for words, by the look of it.
He looked like he wanted to say more, but loud honking from outside cut him off before he could so much as open his mouth.
She glanced at the door and then turned to watch Steve walk towards her, Alfred a step behind him and Barry joining them all with a sandwich in his hand. The picture felt incomplete without the rest of them here, but she tried not to dwell on that thought. One way or another, they would see each other soon enough.
For thousands of years, living on the island, she was spared the need to ever say goodbye. A blessing that Diana had never known to appreciate. And then she had paid for it by seemingly doing only that for a hundred years straight, living in man’s world. Saying goodbye to people she cared about, sometimes for a little while, often for good. Of all the things that she had to get accustomed to, Diana thought, this one had ended up being the hardest.
She took a breath, reminding herself that she would indeed be back. That if she was lucky, she would have these people in her life for many years to come. Her gaze moved from Bruce to Barry to Alfred, who were watching her quietly, and her heart squeezed with a pang of longing and then unfurled in her chest, settling into a new rhythm.
And then she reached for Steve’s hand and silently thanked her gods once again for the one goodbye that she didn’t have to say anymore. Not for as long as they both lived.
Notes:
Alright, well, we're basically at the finishing line now :) I really want to try to get this story posted before WW84 comes out. Do you believe in me?
And while you're waiting, feel free to check out my new one-shot popsicle blues if you missed it! It's funny (I think?)
Also, please come talk to me about the new WW84 trailer! Did you like it? What are your expectations from the film? I'm nervous, not gonna lie.
Chapter 24
Notes:
Hey, kids, how are you all doing? I hope you are all taking very good care of yourselves.
I'm still kind of on track with (hopefully) posting the rest of this story before WW84 is released. A million thanks to all of you again for your support and not giving up on me or this story! (And yes, something else is already very much in the works, so... ;))A couple of things:
1. I kind of forgot that there is also an epilogue in this fic so, technically, you'll be getting 26 chapters, #26 being said epilogue. I hope that's good news :) I promise it's not crazy long, just wrapping up some things.
2. There is a pretty lengthy love scene in the chapter because I gotta send them off with a bang, literally speaking - excuse my immature sense of humour. I hope I kept it tasteful, but those of you who are not comfortable with adult/explicit content please skim/skip the first scene.Okay, you've been warned. Proceed at your own risk, and enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Paris, 2017
When Diana and Steve reached her apartment it was late, and cold, angry rain was pattering against the roof and windows, making the entire city gleam in the light of the streetlights scattered along the street.
She unlocked the door and pushed it open, reaching habitually for the switch to turn on the hallway light, and Steve followed suit. He set his bag down next to Diana’s suitcase and closed the door behind them, locking it. It was a relief to be back. A relief the kind of which he could no longer recall. He had a key, he remembered. His very own key to the only place in the past hundred years that he had allowed himself to call home.
Steve didn’t expect to miss it - they had been gone for only a little over a week, after all. But, to his surprise, he did. Missed the smell of the furniture polish and the wax candles on the mantelpiece in the living room, that spot near the kitchen door where the parquet floor creaked a little, the unfinished book he had left on the dining table, and what he had mentally claimed as his spot on the couch. Small things that marked this place as somewhere he belonged.
It was, Steve realized, the closest thing to normalcy he had had in so long that he was almost scared to breathe for fear of chasing it away.
Diana turned to him. He watched her drop her keys into the bowl sitting on the cabinet by the door and move to him. One step, and then another. She reached for him without hesitation, stroking his cheek with her fingertips, her eyes moving over his features, looking at him like she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
“Are you okay?” Steve whispered, watching her in the dim light of the hallway lamp that somehow only made the darkness outside so much thicker.
“It’s good to be back,” Diana breathed.
She pushed his hair back from his forehead, and he leaned into her touch, turning his head to kiss the palm of her hand, wonderfully warm against his skin.
“Diana…”
He watched her swallow hard, her throat moving, before she closed what little distance was still left between them, her arms winding around his neck. Steve felt her let out a shaky exhale, her whole body shuddering with it as he wrapped his good arm around her and bowed his head, tucking his face into the hollow of her neck. She smelled of leather and rain and, somehow, the sea, and he breathed in deeply until his heart found its pace again.
There was something about her voice, the edge in it when she spoke, the way it caught just enough for him to hear the difference. He could feel that very edge now as he held her against him, his injured arm hanging at his side. That feeling like they had been suspended in the air ever since the night when it all went down with Lex, holding their breaths. Like this was the moment when they could finally exhale, and it hurt to do it, their lungs crumpled from a lack of proper use.
On the plane, they ended up talking about the League and about the Louvre and the things that were waiting for her upon her return — a collection that she needed to take care of, paperwork piling up on her desk, the messages that she only half paid attention to and a million other small things that managed to fill the space between them. Yet, neither had mentioned the elephant in the room, the reality of needing to heal from something that had left the invisible scars on them both.
He wasn’t scared for her the way she was scared for him, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t scared at all.
“It’s over,” Steve murmured into her neck, feeling her fingers thread through his hair, her breath hot on his skin. “It’s really over.”
After a moment, Diana leaned back from him and nodded. Her hand skittered down his arm and over the brace still wrapped around his wrist; Steve watched her teeth dig into her lip, a faint frown creasing the skin between her eyebrows. He tilted his head, resting his forehead against hers, his good hand anchored on the small of her back under her jacket.
Her palm moved to press over his chest. Steve watched her eyes drop shut as his heart thudded in earnest against her touch. She had done this on their first night together, back in 1918, after they had made love, listening to his heartbeat like it spoke to her in ways that were beyond Steve’s comprehension. And he had let her, placing his own hand atop of hers.
It was different now, like she was still reliving the loss of him over and over again. And suddenly, he couldn’t stand it anymore, couldn’t bear being so close and not—
His nose bumped against hers, nudging her face up, and then once more when she smiled a little as their lips met. Steve kissed her like he wanted to kiss her on the plane. How he wanted to keep kissing her for as long as they both breathed.
Diana sighed against his mouth, kissing him back, her fingers curling over a fistful of his hair, and a spark of desire shuddered through him so immediate and strong that he nearly keeled over under the force of it. A low groan rose in the back of his throat. Underneath her jacket, he traced his hand up Diana’s spine, and then back down, his fingers slipping under the hem of her shirt, searching for her skin.
He felt it then, the small change that made her body stiffen when he tried to pull her closer, and the heat in his veins turned instantly to ice.
Steve broke the kiss and pulled away, dropping his hand from the small of her back and looked away.
“Steve?”
Diana’s chest was heaving against his, her fingers flexing on his sides, but all he could think of were the nights when he would fall asleep with her body folded into his and then wake up a few hours later with her curled on the edge of the bed, as far away from him as the mattress allowed without her actually toppling to the floor in her sleep. Of all the kisses that she had stopped before they even started. Of all the moments when she stepped subtly out of his embrace and the distance that had made him stop reaching for her.
In the days after the showdown with Lex Luthor, Steve had yet to wake up with Diana still in the room.
He huffed a breath through his nose, feeling his face burn and unable to so much as look at her.
His gaze moved to their luggage sitting at their feet, the box with the gauntlet, safely locked for good measure, resting on top of her suitcase, as he tried—desperately—to focus on something else. Anything else. Anything but the hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“It’s been a long day,” he murmured. “Maybe we should…”
Was that how it was going to be between them now? Averted gazes and unsaid words and dancing around one another lest they accidentally touch? Pretences in order to avoid conversations that neither one wanted to have. He couldn’t bear the thought of living with the wall between them that had been growing taller with each passing day now. Couldn’t bear second-guessing everything they had said to one another and turning each word inside out in search of hidden meaning that he had missed the first time around.
Was he a fool to believe that their relationship would never change? That the past several weeks were setting up a pattern?
How many times would she have to save his sorry ass before she got tired of it? Before she realized that he was too much bother?
Steve pushed the thought away and drew back, desperate to put some space between them while he could still stand to do it. She was his home, the only home he had known in over a hundred years.
“Steve,” Diana said again.
He shook his head and tried to step around her and further into the apartment, uncertain in that moment if they were still going to share a bedroom, or if maybe he could be a gentleman and offer to take the couch in her office and spare Diana the need to have to bring it up. It was so easy to imagine her being relieved with his offer—
What the hell was he supposed to do if he lost her?
“We should probably unpack,” he muttered.
She moved to stand before him, blocking his way, her fingers curling over the lapels of his jacket like they had on the streets of London a hundred years ago when he was oh so adamant to deliver the notebook with Maru’s secrets to his superiors and time was running out and the tale of the God of War trying to corrupt mankind was just that — a tale.
She was holding him now like she had held him them, her grip tight, and all Steve could think of was how little had changed since then, after all that time. So much and yet so little, he amended in his mind.
“What’s wrong?” Diana asked quietly, moving closer to him. She traced her thumb over his chin and along his jaw; he could feel her trying to find his gaze. “Steve. Tell me.”
His shoulders slumped. He dragged his eyes away from their bags and bowed his head, choosing to focus on her hand still clutching his jacket, lean fingers curled over the black leather. So much for subtlety; some spy he was. Steve grimaced inwardly.
“Just tired,” he muttered.
“Liar,” she whispered, smoothing her thumb over his cheek.
There was a smile in her voice that made his chest expand, so much so that it almost hurt. They were long past the point of lying to one another, but her accusation, however light and half-joking, felt like a sucker punch that rendered him unable to inhale properly, filling him with deep shame.
Steve took an unsteady breath.
“Tell me,” Diana repeated quietly.
His hand flexed where it was still resting on her side.
“I don’t want you to think that we have to…” He faltered and swallowed uneasily. “Not if you—if you don’t want...I never presumed…”
“I don’t understand.”
She was shaking her head now. If he had actually found it in him to stop being such a coward and look at her, he was certain that he would find her frowning.
“You’ve barely touched me since—” Steve’s eyes flicked down to his brace before he forced himself to look up at her, her expression confused for a second, before his words registered in her mind. “Not that you have to,” he added quickly. “I mean, I swear to god—”
“You are injured,” Diana interjected softly.
“Just barely,” he argued.
“There’s nothing barely about nearly dying.”
She was watching him with a mixture of concern and exasperation.
“I beg to differ. In fact, I should tell you sometime about that day in Brussels in 1917 when Charlie—” Steve stopped when he realized that he was babbling. A corner of his mouth curled upward. He cleared his throat, feeling the colour rise up his cheeks for a different reason. “So, it wasn’t because…”
“I couldn’t bear to hurt you,” she breathed, eyes searching his.
“You haven’t,” he said.
“Oh, but I have,” Diana reminded him, her eyebrow lifting.
Steve blinked. She pressed her lips together, trying not to smile as she watched the realization dawn on him.
He remembered it then. Of course, he did. Small half-moons from her nails on his skin, that bite mark that he had worn quite proudly once on the inside of his thigh for at least a week until it faded away, the imprints of her fingers on his flesh where she couldn’t hold him close enough, her strength not as tamped down with him as it would be with someone not aware of it. Everything that spoke of the trust and openness between them. He never minded, knowing that she would never really hurt him, and he had worn those marks as badges of honour.
Did she not remember how gentle she could be, though? How careful her touch was sometimes, making him feel like she expected him to shatter under her fingertips. How easily she allowed him to make her feel cherished, yielding her power and giving him full control without hesitation.
The back of his neck grew hot.
“I… uh, do not mind that,” he said, tugging her closer still until there was no space left between them and they were breathing the same air, the relief of her revelation so damn overwhelming Steve all but felt weak in his knees.
It had never occurred to him that this was something that bothered her.
“I do,” Diana murmured. Her fingers skimmed along his brace. “Not with this.”
There was uncertainty in her eyes now. She didn’t trust herself. All this time, Steve had feared that he might not be enough for her. It had never, not once, crossed his mind that maybe she thought she was too much.
“You could never, ever hurt me, Diana,” he said quietly, earnestly. She didn’t look convinced, a slight frown forming two faint lines between her eyebrows, making him want to smooth it out, chase her worries away. He swallowed, giving her a small shake of his head. “We don’t have to—”
She leaned forward, cutting him off with a hand on his jaw and her lips brushing against his.
“Silly man,” Diana murmured, kissing the corner of his mouth.
Steve’s breath stuttered out of his chest, caught somewhere in his throat. “And yet you still like me,” he murmured, his fingers digging into her hip.
“And yet, I do.” She didn’t argue, instead nuzzling into the prickly stubble on his cheek. “I cannot believe you don’t know how much I always want you, Steve.”
He turned his head then, finding her mouth with his and kissing her properly. There was no hesitation to her now as she surged forward with an urgency that surprised and pleased him in equal measure. Her tongue slid past his teeth and into his mouth, a noise of appreciation rising in her throat when he pulled her even closer. Diana combed her fingers through his hair, and Steve was so focused on the taste of her and the feel of her that he didn’t even notice her other hand moving purposely over his back and down his shoulders with fervent desperation, sliding between them to run over the front of him—
He broke the kiss, inhaling sharply when a jolt of white-hot need shot through him and squirming away from her touch.
“Diana…”
“Too much?” she murmured, removing her hand but making no attempt to step away from him, the palm of her other hand still resting on the back of his neck and their heads bent close.
He chuckled, which came out shaky, and exhaled slowly, trying to stop his blood from rushing south too soon, too fast. He closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again to find her watching him, waiting.
“I guess you now know how much I want you,” he confessed, a little self-conscious, even though he had no reason to be. They had done this before, more times than he could count.
Maybe she had been right when she had said he was better at making love to her than at talking about it, after all.
And still…
Diana hummed, smiling. “Lucky me.” She drew back, her hands sliding under his jacket that was merely draped over his shoulders and pushing it off. She caught it before it hit the floor and then reached for Steve’s hand, the heat in her eyes almost too much to bear. And suddenly, nothing was funny anymore. “Come with me.”
He followed her to the bedroom, dark, save for the pale light of the streetlamps filtering through the sheer curtains. She let go of his hand and walked over to the bed. Steve watched her arrange the pillows against the headboard for him. She straightened up, eyeing the result with a slightly critical frown, her head tilted. He expected her to turn on the reading lamp on the nightstand, but she didn’t, and he used her momentary distraction to close the distance between them, his good arm sliding around her waist.
Desire was simmering in his veins and throbbing through his body with every hollow heartbeat. He thought of the fire burning in the grate in Diana’s tiny room in Veld. It was like he had spent a century carrying it within him and it was still blazing in his blood, as bright as it was all-consuming.
“I have never wanted you more,” Steve murmured into her hair, brushing a kiss to the back of her head.
Her fingers wrapped over his wrist. She half-turned her head, and he caught a glimpse of her smile. “More than that time, with the Lasso…?” She trailed off when he ducked his head and pressed his mouth to the spot behind her ear, her hand flexing around a fistful of his shirt sleeve.
“More and more each time,” he said.
She turned around then, leaning toward him.
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” he said softly.
“I know.”
Diana’s fingers unclasped the straps holding his brace in place, removing it carefully, although if Steve had to rip it off, he probably would have. Her hands curled over the hem of his shirt next.
“It’s okay,” Steve murmured when she hesitated.
He lifted his arms and she pulled it off, fumbling a little when it got caught on his chin, making her laugh.
“You know, this is the least sexy thing ever,” he noted, chuckling under his breath.
Once free, she let go of the shirt, allowing it to fall to the floor. Her lips twitched at the corners, her fingers running idly back and forth along the scar under his collarbone, her touch feather-light, making him yearn for more.
“I beg to differ.”
“Flatterer,” Steve muttered.
Diana pressed her lips around a smile and reached for his belt. She unbuckled it swiftly and unzipped his jeans, pushing them down his hips and over his legs. He stepped out of them and she reached for his boxers next before she was standing before him again, her eyes moving over his body, not in blatant curiosity like she had done in the cave below the palace on Themyscira, but with a purpose that turned his blood white-hot.
Steve ducked his head close to her, his mouth finding hers, kissing her with a fervour he couldn’t recall feeling in so long, it felt like a spark of fire born in his belly and spreading over every nerve of his body.
Her hand on his hip, Diana pushed against him gently without breaking the kiss, and he took a step back, and then another one, and then another until his calves brushed against the edge of the mattress. Breathless, she drew back, turning the kiss into something chaste. He could feel her smile against his lips. Wanted to make a joke about the unfairness of being naked when she wasn’t, too, but when she drew back, he could only stare.
Diana picked up his brace again. “Should this go back on?” She looked up at him. “So we won’t…” she trailed off.
Get distracted , Steve thought. She had a point, perhaps. He was already finding it hard to think straight. It was only going to get worse from there on, he suspected.
He looked down at his left hand and flexed his fingers as he rolled his wrist a little, testing it. There was tightness in his muscles that hadn’t been used in days, but the swelling was gone, and truth be told, he would prefer to have both of his hands at his disposal. At least for the next little while.
He shook his head. “No, it’s alright.”
“Are you sure?” She didn’t appear to be convinced, her lips caught between her teeth.
He touched his thumb to her chin as the fingers of his good hand curled around a fistful of her shirt, tugging at it. “Yeah, I am.”
Diana smiled and pulled it off dutifully, dropping it to the floor without care.
Steve felt his mouth go dry. He lifted his hand, tracing the strap of her bra, allowing his fingertips to skim over her shoulder and across her chest. It didn’t bother him that she was wearing more clothes than him. It bothered him that she was still wearing any.
He lowered down on the edge of the bed and wrapped his good arm around his thighs, pulling her to him. Diana didn’t resist. He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her belly. “This is not going to work if you’re so overdressed,” he muttered into her silky-smooth skin, brushing another kiss to her sternum.
Diana laughed quietly and pushed her hand through his hair, tugging at it until he looked up at her. He raised an eyebrow expectantly, trying to bite back his own smile.
“Very well,” she conceded, moving out of his grasp. He opened his mouth to protest, his brows furrowed from the sudden lack of contact, but she only shook her head, confused. “I will do it.”
It was faster when she did it herself, Steve could admit that much. Not that time was the problem. He watched her clothes fall to the floor, landing on top of his, his eyes devouring every inch of exposed skin. They could live for ten thousand more years, and he would still never, ever, tire of looking at her, touching her, kissing her.
As the final touch, Diana reached for her hair-tie and pulled it off, allowing her hair to spill over her shoulders. She ran her hand through it, and he found himself itching to do just that, as well. Steve felt his jaw go slack as he drank her up with his eyes, aware of his rather undignified gawking and not caring one way or the other. She moved toward the bed and he scooted back against the pillows as she climbed onto the mattress next to him, the bed dipping under the weight of her body.
He caught her hand when she was close enough and pulled her into his lap, her thighs bracketing his and her palms flat on his ribs.
“Hi,” Steve smiled.
“Hi.”
God, he loved her voice. He loved it when she was looking at him like this, like there was no one else left in this word. Steve had no idea what it was that she was seeing on his face, but she appeared to like it well enough.
“Is this alright?” Diana whispered, her hand smoothing over his ribs still splotched with purple bruises.
“Yeah. Yeah, more than,” he promised, his hands sliding up her thighs and around her back. “In fact, I’d be happy to tell you how alright it is, in great detail,” he added, his voice dropping. “Just… in a little while, okay?”
Diana smirked. “Hopefully not too little.”
Steve swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. “No, definitely not.”
She leaned forward, and so did he, meeting her mouth halfway for a lingering kiss. He pushed his hand into her hair, bringing her closer still, his fingers combing through thick waves, hungry for the taste and feel of her, skin pressed to skin. He traced his fingertips along the length of her spine from the base of her neck and down the curve of her back, and Diana arched into him, a noise of approval rising low in her throat. He felt her teeth graze along his lip, her hands moving through his hair, over his shoulders, down his chest—
Steve broke the kiss, breathless, his hand darting to catch her wrist before she reached any further. He drew it away, lifting it up to his mouth. His gaze locked with hers, he pressed his lips to her palm, moving to the inside of her wrist where her pulse was thrumming madly.
“Not yet,” he murmured, in response to the silent question in her eyes.
If she touched him, he was going to lose his mind. God, the way she was looking at him—no one had ever looked at him like that. Her eyes were dark with want and so consuming he felt like he was drowning.
He watched her gaze drop to his mouth. She dragged it back up, although not without effort, and nodded. She pulled her hand from his grasp and reached over to frame his face with her palms, turning it up to hers.
“Diana,” Steve breathed, her name falling from his lips on its own volition.
She smiled that majestic smile of hers, and the heat that had been building up inside of him turned into a blaze.
“I love you,” Diana breathed into his skin, his lips moving from his temple to his cheek to the corner of his mouth, her touch feather-light and almost too much to bear, making him want to beg for more.
Steve smiled, curving his neck to press a kiss to the side of her throat, his hand sliding over her back and along her thigh and between them. She gasped quietly, the sound of it turning into a moan when his fingers reached their destination, running slowly over the sweet spot, a shiver shooting down her body and ricocheting into him.
“Steve…”
“Don’t move,” he pressed another kiss under her jaw, his other hand anchored on the base of her spine holding her where he needed her. “I just want to—I want—”
A shuddered breath stuttered out of her chest, her hand curling around the back of his neck. He slid his fingers over her again, earning another soft moan in response, her eyes fluttering closed. It was an effort, he knew that much. She wanted more, yearned for more. But she trusted him to do it right, to get her where she wanted to be.
Steve ducked his head, kissing her shoulder, his touch slow and deliberate. There wasn’t much he could give her tonight – less than he wanted to, for certain. But he would give her all he had, and pray to all gods, hers and his own, that it would be enough.
His hand started to move with deliberate purpose, his thumb circling slowly over her while his fingers searched, set on a quest of their own. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her fingers graze over the wall near his head until she found the headboard, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles turned white. A string of quiet curses in Greek fell from her lips, her breathing shallow and ragged against his cheek.
“Language, Princess,” he smiled into her skin.
She choked out a laugh that morphed into a low whimper when he brushed against a sensitive spot, her breath catching once more.
“Steve—”
“Let go,” he said, moving his fingers just right. “Let go, Diana.”
She did.
A shudder ran down her body, taut muscles spasming as she arched into him, her fingers digging almost painfully into his shoulder, moving down his arm to hold on to him as her world kept spiralling. Steve removed his hand, earning a small noise of protest in response, and wrapped his arms around her. He kissed the slope of her shoulder, his mouth moving toward the hollow of her neck and up to the underside of her jaw, a soothing hand moving over the expanse of her back as he waited for the aftershocks of her release to subside.
Eventually, Diana’s breathing slowed down, her body relaxing against his. She drew back to look at him, dazed and sated and happy, her cheeks flushed, and something inside of him constricted at the thought of being the reason for it.
Steve lifted his hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “God, you’re so beautiful.”
She smiled, her chest still rising and falling rapidly and leaned down to rest her forehead against his. Her fingers were trembling when she touched his face, smoothing them through his hair, around his neck, her whisper drowned by his own heartbeat. He wasn’t even sure if whatever she said was in English. Not that it mattered.
When she kissed him again, tilting his face up to hers, he responded eagerly, his lips parting for her, his body wound tight with desire. This time, when Diana reached between them to stroke her fingers over the length of him, Steve groaned against her mouth but didn’t stop her. Couldn’t even if he had wanted to—not that he wanted to. His hand twitched on the small of her back, pressing into her flesh, heat rising inside of him in tidal waves.
She broke the kiss and said something to him, but the blood hammering in his ears stole her voice away. His eyes fluttered open when she shifted against him, bracing herself against his good shoulder and the headboard, rising above him.
“Diana…”
“Okay?” She paused, giving him a cautious cursory glance, and he panicked, thinking that she was going to leave, to walk away when they—when he—
He nodded, and then nodded once more, a little frantic. She smiled, almost delirious, and slid down, taking him in in one slide. His hips snapped up, bucking against her, a jolt of sharp pleasure searing down his spine. His fingers were still tangled in her hair, and he tightened his arm around her waist, bringing her closer still as he tried to stay focused, somehow—for a little while—
Diana brushed his hair back from his face, and he looked up, marvelling in the sensation of her body against his—sweet weight and slick heat, each touch searing into his skin.
“I’m yours,” she whispered, and he didn’t even realize at first that she said it in Greek, and that he understood it without having to think about it. A spark of recognition flared up in his mind, triumphant, but then she started to move above him, slowly, and he lost the ability to think.
The relief of being with her was almost entirely all-consuming. Steve tucked his face into the curve of her neck, his hands now anchored on her hips, guiding her measured pace as he whispered words of love into her skin, her name falling from his lips like a curse and a plea. She craned her neck to press a kiss to his hair, her breath hot against his scalp, making him shiver. Making his fingers dig deep into her flesh because he needed to feel all of her, now.
“Don’t stop,” he uttered hoarsely, the tight heat inside of him making it hard to breathe, to think. “Diana, please—”
He couldn’t hold off any longer, he couldn’t—
He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder, barely coherent as the waves of pleasure washed over him. In the back of his mind, he registered the shudder of Diana’s body in his arms as she reached her own release, her fingers digging into his sweat-slick skin as she tried to hold on.
Her pace slowed down to a lazy rock as he clutched her tight against him, bringing them both to stillness as they spiralled back down, caught in the haze of aftershocks. She turned her head and kissed his temple, her fingers carding idly through the damp hair at the nape of his neck. He smiled against her collarbone at the slight tremor of her muscles under his touch, kissing his way along the heated skin and then looked up to find her eyes with his.
“What did you say? Earlier, when we—” he trailed off. Relaxed now that the tension was gone, Steve leaned back against the headboard, sinking into the pillows and taking her with him. “I didn’t—I don’t think I got it.”
Diana bit her lip, trying to hold back a smile. She framed his face with her hands, thumbs stroking his cheeks, tracing idly along her jaw. “I said that I love you, more than anything. That I will love you for as long as my heart beats.” She paused, and then a smile so bright that it hurt to look sprung across her face, her eyes crinkling at the corners. “And that you’re a ridiculous, ridiculous man, Steve Trevor.”
Steve’s jaw dropped. He blinked at her, momentarily confused. “What—Why?”
She laughed a little then, shaking her head as if his question only proved her point.
---
It started to snow.
It started sometime between Diana untangling herself from Steve’s grasp to use the bathroom and then finding something to eat, and them both getting promptly distracted from the late-night dinner in favour of something far more exciting. The drizzle that had greeted them when they had landed in Paris several hours ago had turned into dime-sized snowflakes falling from heavy, thick clouds and landing on rain-slick roofs and windowsills.
She had lived through a hundred winters since the first one that had caught her by surprise amidst the carnage and fighting, but the snowfall never failed to take Diana back to that small town in the middle of a war-torn land where her heart had learned to beat at a different pace. Part of her hoped it never would.
Now, lying on her stomach across her bed, she was watching Steve who was stretched out on his back beside her, his chest rising and falling slowly. His good arm was tucked under his head, and he had his eyes trained on the ceiling streaked with shadows. Her gaze drifted idly over his face, taking in the faint laugh lines at the corners of his eyes and his slightly parted lips as she willed herself to capture this moment of complete and utter contentment, pleased to note that the frown that she had longed to chase away earlier was nowhere to be found anymore.
And then he turned to her and smiled. And that one smile was all it took for the fire to flare up in her blood again, searing through her system with such intensity that it made her heart stutter madly in her chest, desire welling up in the pit of her stomach.
Hera help her, she loved him so much.
Diana felt her own lips curve up at the corners. She rose up on her elbows, leaning forward to brush a kiss to his shoulder.
“That was good, huh?” Steve breathed when her mouth moved to his collarbone.
She smiled against his skin. “Very good.”
Her lips found his next, her palm curling over his jaw. They kissed slowly, lazily, his fingers tangled in her hair and the heat simmering just beneath the surface. She loved the way he tasted, the way he smelled like soap and sex, the way his skin felt beneath her touch.
Diana was the one who pulled back at last, with one final peck on his lips. She rolled onto her side next to him, propped up on her elbow, her head resting on the heel of her hand. For a few moments, she merely watched him, and he let her, as if he knew that she was still trying to find her balance.
After a couple of moments, Steve lifted his hand to stroke his knuckles over her cheek. “Let’s never go again without doing some variation of what we just did for—” he faltered, his eyebrows knitting together. “How long has it been?”
“Five days,” she informed him, trying to bite back her smile, his confusion comically adorable.
Steve’s frown deepened. “Five days? Are you sure?” She nodded. “Felt longer,” he noted, still dubious. “Did it not feel longer to you?”
Diana laughed. “It must have been your idle lying around.”
“Tease,” he huffed accusingly.
She reached her hand to let her fingers skitter along his ribs, over the bruising that had yet to fade, remembering, somewhat belatedly, that laughing together and making love and sharing the type of confessions that one only whispered when their hearts were open and their souls bare did not change the fact that something bad had happened only a few days ago. Something that had nearly taken this very moment away from her. That she nearly lost him again, his life slipping right through her fingers.
“Are you okay?” she asked with a small sigh when Steve caught the sight of her frown.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I am, I swear,” he pressed when she didn’t appear convinced.
Her fingers skittered over his bad wrist. “And this?”
Steve rolled it carefully, and without effort. It didn’t appear that whatever they’d done had caused any further damage to it.
“All good,” he said, as he looked up at her. “Diana…”
She raised her eyes to him, searching for something she couldn’t quite put into words.
She could see him debating something in his mind.
“I’m not breakable,” he said after a few moments, repeating his words from earlier, the making of a smile working its way to his lips. “Not that breakable.”
Diana didn’t push. This wasn’t the end of it for them. It was easy to believe that nothing could go wrong in the world when he was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his skin and the beating of his heart without even touching him. And when her body still hummed with pleasure and her blood flowed in earnest, searing-hot in her veins, and when he looked at her the way he did right now.
But Diana knew better than that. There would be more missions. On the other side of this night, there would be things she knew she couldn’t even begin to imagine, and if she allowed herself to venture into the wasteland of that sorrow now, she would never come back.
“I know,” she agreed instead, and he grinned, a little self-indulgent – and rightfully so, making the heat stir in her belly once more. She brushed her thumb to his chin. “What are you thinking?”
His features softened. “That it’s good to be home,” Steve said, and she tried to ignore the wild flurry of hope in the place where she suspected her soul resided.
This place had been her home for a while now, long enough for her to feel like she was starting to grow roots. There was comfort to knowing that there was a small place in the world where she could be both Diana Prince and Diana of Themyscira, Princess of the Amazons without having to draw a line between those personas. Where she could be at peace with herself without putting effort into it. Her one safe haven.
Yet, until this moment, she hadn’t even been able to imagine the delight of having someone to share that with, completely and without holding back.
“It is.” She traced her fingertips along his jaw. “You should rest, it’s been a long day.”
“You sure?” His gaze trailed over the outline of her body under the sheet. “Because we could…” He left the sentence hanging suggestively between them. “You know, with jetlag and all that.”
Diana laughed. She leaned closer and pressed a kiss to his brow. “I’m not going anywhere, Steve,” she murmured into his skin. But by gods, was that one tempting offer. “Sleep.”
Steve’s forehead creased when she drew back, frowning at the half a foot of space between them as if confused to find it there.
He looked up at Diana. “I can't sleep like this,” he said.
She arched her eyebrow at him, amused.
Steve sighed. “Have some mercy on an old and injured man, will you?”
She bit her lip, trying to keep a straight face. “Now you’re old and injured?”
He flashed his boyish smile at her, the one that broke across his whole face. “Hey, a guy’s gotta use what he’s gotta use.” He faltered, and she watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat as the playfulness morphed into longing. “C'mere,” he asked, his voice dropping to a murmur.
Zeus, the things he was doing to her…
She shifted closer to him and settled into his side, her leg draped over one of his and her head tucked under his chin. Steve wound his good arm around her, bringing her closer still until she couldn’t tell where she ended and he began. Diana felt his lips press to her hair, soothed instantly by his closeness.
His skin was still splotched with fading bruises as he had not healed completely yet, but his breathing was deep, measured, and she allowed herself to relax into him. Earlier, he was wrong. Terribly wrong. She had never been trying to push him away, but she had always been aware that she could hurt him, and she knew that if she touched him, she would never want to stop.
Diana let out a breath, her fingers tracing absently over his chest. “Is this good?” she asked.
“Couldn’t be better,” Steve murmured, combing his hand idly through her hair.
“Sleep,” she repeated, her eyes following the dance of snow outside the window.
He was right. It was good to be home.
---
When Steve woke up the next day, the world was so white outside the balcony door that it hurt to look. His body was sore, but not unpleasantly so, and his eyes felt like someone had rubbed sandpaper all over them – the delights of the jetlag that had finally caught up with him. He was decidedly getting too old for that, he mused, although that particular joke had started wearing thin some seventy years ago.
That, and their late-night exploits, which probably contributed quite a fair bit to his exhaustion, too. The memory made him smile and he made a mental note to try and talk Diana into doing something else equally exciting – as soon as his brain stopped feeling like a pile of scrambled eggs in his head. He blinked his eyes open, grimacing against the light. The clouds were still low, hanging close to the rooftops. From his spot, Steve couldn’t tell if the snow had stopped, but if it did, there was more to come.
He ran his hand over his face and turned his head, half expecting the bed to be empty. Instead, his eyes landed on Diana who was sitting against the headboard, his shirt hanging loosely from her frame and her slim laptop resting on her thighs, her fingers moving swiftly over the keyboard. Her brows were furrowed slightly, although it was with concentration, not concern, and his heartbeat stuttered momentarily. The way it always did these days whenever he saw her.
Inadvertently, his gaze trailed over the length of her legs stretched before her atop the covers, his mind helpfully supplying the memory of them wrapped around him only several hours ago—
Steve looked up and found her looking at him, her fingers still and her expression amused. Unfazed about being caught staring, Steve grinned at her, and a smile broke across Diana’s face, so brilliant it dimmed the brightness of the day spilling around them.
“Good morning,” she said.
“Hey,” he croaked, his throat tight from sleep. He rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon,” she informed him.
Steve blinked at her, his mouth dropping a little. It had been years – decades – since he allowed himself to sleep half a day away. Or wanted to. Or even considered it, for that matter.
Diana smirked.
“I have exhausted you,” she observed, running her hand through his hair to brush it face from his face.
Steve huffed. “No such thing,” he argued, his chest puffing in half-pride and half-indignation even though both of them knew that she was right. Enthusiastic as he might be, she was still a goddess. His goddess, Steve reminded himself, and his heart unfurled in his chest at the thought. His eyes shifted down to her laptop. “You have to work today?”
Diana shook her head. “No. Just a few things I need to take care of…” She trailed off and tilted her head, studying him. “Are you hungry?”
He was. They had had breakfast at Bruce’s yesterday and a snack on the plane, and then their attention got diverted to much more pressing matters that made them promptly forget about sustenance, the plate left untouched on the nightstand. However, now that she mentioned it, Steve realized that he was ravenous. In his hundred and thirty-six years on this Earth, there was nothing he could think of that was less appetizing than army rations, eaten fast so as not to taste them. But right now, the hollow tugging in his belly would have made one of those meals feel like the most exquisite feast.
The thought was amusing and dreadful in equal measure.
He nodded. “Yes.”
Diana closed the laptop and set it on the bedside table before turning back to him. “Let’s go eat then,” she smiled.
---
The city was cold and still, as if frozen in time, as they walked back to her apartment from the museum one night a few days after Christmas. Diana’s hand was pleasantly warm in his and their breaths were puffing out in small white clouds. It was then that Steve decided that the time had come to finally broach the subject that had been on his mind for weeks. Something that he couldn’t stop thinking about ever since he and Bruce had had their conversation almost a month ago, no matter how hard he tried.
He had spent the past few weeks going meticulously through Diana’s extensive library in an attempt to stop his frustration over his temporary physical limitations from getting to him. He had rearranged her spice rack, too. He had tracked auction items for her and once, during a particularly lazy afternoon, he had even polished her shield – something that amused Diana more than she was willing to let on when she had come back home that evening to find him with cleaning cloths, baking soda, and vinegar. Steve chose not to take it too close to his heart, finding solace in the fact that her shield had never looked better before. Probably. Chose not to tell her that he was planning on doing her sword next. There was only so much daytime TV a person could endure before they got sick of it.
He had been shot before – twice during the first war, and once during the second… Hell, he had been dead before, but somehow a couple of cracked bones and some bruises were driving him up the wall more than anything else that he had experienced before. The irony was a cruel thing indeed.
Steve Trevor was decidedly not a man who enjoyed being idle. It was like an itch under his skin that he couldn't quite get rid of. Objectively, Steve had known that sooner or later he would get sick of doing nothing. He had just never thought it would happen that soon.
The investigation in Gotham regarding Lex Luthor’s escape was as good as finished, as far as Steve was aware. Amanda Waller was far from forthcoming about the details but with Bruce’s extensive connections and high-class technology combined with Victor’s abilities, they had managed to stay on top of it as best they could.
If the Director of A.R.G.U.S. had any questions regarding what actually went down between Lex and the League that night, she had wisely decided to keep them to herself. None of the official reports submitted to Amanda Waller’s superiors contained anything about the gauntlet or the real reasons for Lex Luthor’s wrath. To everyone else, he was merely an unstable man who had gone after the people who had put him behind bars with his bare hands (and half a dozen hired henchmen). If nothing else, Steve was certain she didn’t want to stir any need for more paperwork. In the weeks following that incident, she hadn’t tried to contact Bruce or anyone else in the League, but if Steve was honest with himself, it felt more like the calm before the storm than anything else.
However, after mulling over this mess for a few days, he decided not to think of it until they had to.
With the Claw of Horus labelled as a ‘restricted artifact’ and safely locked away in one of the vaults in the basement of the Louvre, it didn’t seem likely that anyone would use it against humanity any time soon. He had to give it to Diana – she certainly knew how to keep things hidden. Had it not been for Selina Kyle, the gauntlet would have most likely never seen the light of day for decades to come.
Steve had also learned that Diana tried to keep an eye on things like that, objects that were more than what they appeared to be at first sight. Artifacts containing magic beyond anything that people could understand. Keeping peace at all cost, Diana had told him half-jokingly, but once he had a chance to ponder her answer, he saw more truth to it than she probably knew there was.
“I was thinking…” Steve started one night, a couple of days before New Years, keeping his voice as nonchalant as possible as he scanned the spines of the books lining shelf after shelf of the bookcase in the living room.
He had not known, but he wasn’t surprised, that her literary tastes were as sophisticated as the rest of her. No, she was well familiar with popular media and could easily pick up references about any film or book that had come out in the past half-century, but her own collection consisted primarily of classics and highly acclaimed novels, the controversial works of the present and past centuries sitting side by side with volumes written by Greek and Roman philosophers, most in their original language.
“Have you read them all?” Steve had asked her once, when she had found him debating between Kipling and Salinger.
His heart had given a little twinge when he had spotted quite a number of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs sitting on one of the shelves. Nearly the entire collection bought, Steve suspected, because he used to be so fond of him.
“Most,” Diana had said before he had managed to find words to comment on that discovery. Her arm slipping around his waist as she traced the spine of some smart-sounding novel in Italian.
He had glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Snob,” he scoffed, and she had laughed.
He had settled on Dickens then.
Now, he was staring unseeingly at the same row of books, a little askew now that one was still missing, sitting half-finished on his bedside table.
“Should I be worried?” Diana asked, smiling.
Crouched by the fireplace, she was poking at the logs, waiting for the spark to catch, to disperse the chill of the evening that had settled upon them in the past few hours. It was snowing again, had been since the late afternoon, the angry wind whistling in the chimney and rattling the windows in their panes. Winter was finally starting to feel like it was there to stay.
Not that he minded. Half the time, when the weather was as foul as it was right now, it took him no effort at all to talk her into spending the whole day in bed.
Steve traced the book title etched into its cover without registering the words. He cleared his throat.
“I spoke with Bruce,” he said, turning around to her.
“Okay, now I’m worried.” The fire finally caught, and Diana added another log to it. When she glanced at him, there was humour in her eyes.
“A few weeks ago, actually. Back in Gotham.” He grimaced, aware that he was starting to sound like a moron, and rubbed the back of his neck.
When he fell silent, she turned to him properly, her brow pulling together.
“Steve, what is it?
He kind of hated bringing this up but—
He took a breath. “It’s about Amanda Waller.”
Diana’s lips flattened into a thin line, her expression turning into one of utter disgust.
“What about her?”
“She’s not going to give up, Diana,” he said simply, watching her frown deepen, a million protests forming on her lips. “She is not going to keep coming after the League, not when the stakes are that high. You and I both know that.” A pause. “But I don’t believe that she will hold her end of the bargain, regardless of what Bruce says or does.”
Diana stood up and leaned the iron poker against the wall, not really caring much about the fire anymore.
“What are you saying?”
Steve let out a breath. He looked at her, the gaze of her black eyes uncompromising. There was a stillness to her that spoke of the intensity of the storm raging inside of her. The sheer force behind her when she was like this was the one most terrifying thing he had ever seen.
“I know that all of this is smoke and mirrors now, this deal with her,” he went on, trying to unscramble the thoughts that had been bumping around his head for a while now into something more or less coherent. “But maybe I could—”
“No.”
“Diana….”
“No,” she repeated, shaking her head.
“Just—just listen to me for a second, okay?” Steve pressed on. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, letting out a long breath. “The government wants control over the League, that is not going to change. If it is not Amanda Waller, then it will be someone else. Next week, or next month, or two years from now, someone else will come and god only knows what they’ll do. You know that,” he repeated, and she looked away from him as if she couldn’t stand seeing his face anymore.
“It’s better to deal with someone we already know,” he went on. “Waller wants oversight. She wants an illusion of control because it’s what the people above her demand. We all know damn well that illusion is all it can be, but if we go with a proposal of our own, it’ll give us the upper hand…”
“Don’t,” she warned him, raising her palm.
“The League needs a government liaison, Diana,” Steve insisted. “And sooner or later, it’ll get one, whether you guys want it or not. It’s either that, or they’ll come for you, one by one, deeming you a threat to national security. If I did it, if I actually worked with her—”
“You can’t be serious, Steve,” she cut him off, her voice strained.
It wasn’t the anger that he had mistaken the edge in her voice for, but fear he realized, mixed with something like barely contained panic. Unaccustomed to it, he could hardly tell one from the other.
He swallowed, his eyes moving past her and along the intricate carvings running along the edge of the mantel over the fireplace, trying to unravel the story they were telling; delicate ornaments that reminded him of something that he couldn’t quite place his finger on. Somehow, it was easier to focus on something that wasn’t Diana and her ever-inquisitive gaze.
“If I was…” he began, struggling to carefully choose the words. “I can do it. I know how. I know all the ins and outs of the system. If I became one of her operatives, I would have a chance eventually—” He cut off, his jaw working for a few moments. “If we had some leverage on her, if we had one foot in the door, she would leave the League alone. No more ambush meetings, no more threats.”
Diana was staring at him like he was speaking a tongue she couldn’t understand, her forehead creased in confusion. The fire had picked up alright, ablaze in the hearth, but Steve still felt a trickle of chill run down his spine.
“Did Bruce come up with this asinine plan?” she asked after a moment, clearly angry now.
“It was a… mutual idea,” Steve conceded, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants. The way she was looking at him, he was starting to feel like a kid who got caught eating cookies before dinner.
She shook her head. “I don’t believe this.”
“Diana.”
“You cannot be serious,” she repeated.
“I’m offering you a solution that could actually help the League,” Steve surged forward. “I want to help.”
“You will be helping,” she pressed. “You are.”
He didn’t say anything.
“If Amanda Waller wants to scheme with Bruce, it’s her business. If Bruce wants to play games with her, it’s his choice. But I can’t lose you again. I won’t lose you again, not to that woman. I don’t want her to so much as breathe in your direction, let alone make decisions for you—”
“She won’t make decisions for me,” he shook his head. “I won’t let her.” He huffed out a breath of frustration through his nose. “You think I don’t know all this? You think I don’t understand that she will try to take advantage of us all the first chance she gets?”
“You don’t know what she’s capable of,” Diana muttered, wrapping her arms around herself and looking away, her lips pursed into a thin line.
“You don’t know that, either,” he interjected firmly, his voice uncompromising. “I have done this before. I had been doing just that for years before I even met you. Does it count for nothing?”
Diana pressed her lips together. “That is not what I meant.”
He rubbed his eyes. “And in the time when we were apart—I was not sitting behind a steel door, waiting for someone to come and rescue me, Diana.” He was shaking his head, more than a little chagrined by her lack of trust in him. “Would you be okay with this idea if it was about someone else? Would it make more sense to you if I wasn’t volunteering to take on that role? Because if it’s me you doubt...”
“Don’t,” she stopped him, her voice rising a notch. She let out a long breath and rubbed her temples. “Don’t twist my words. You know full well—”
“I know full well that I ran across No Man’s Land after you,” Steve said. “Because I trusted you, even though, at the time, it felt more like a death wish. I know that I stood by you when you needed me to even when it didn’t make sense to me.” He paused, and when their eyes met, his voice dropped. “I know that some of the biggest mistakes in my life were not believing you when I should have, and I don’t want to be holding on to those regrets moving forward.”
Admittedly, he was not the one who had to watch her life drain out of her eyes, and the mere thought made him sick to his stomach, but the simple truth was—
“If you don’t agree with this plan simply on account of my involvement, then it’s not the plan you have a problem with,” he finished.
She looked taken aback, stricken even, and for a moment, he almost wished that he could take his words back.
“You really think my opinion of you is so low?” Diana whispered.
He flinched. “Look, I can’t fly or dodge bullets or heal in five minutes flat, but this is something I know I’m good at.” He scrubbed his hand over his face, feeling the fight drain out of him. “You’re right, I don’t know Amanda Waller but I know myself.”
He stepped towards her, suddenly very aware of the ticking of the clock on the wall and someone laughing outside, the silence around them so thick that the crackling of the fire was almost thunderous.
“She’s done nothing but use and manipulate us all from the start.” When Diana spoke, her voice was even, but he didn’t miss the undercurrent of fury beneath her words. At Waller more than him, perhaps, although it was hard to say for sure. “She knew about us – about you and me – and she used it to her advantage. She is insane, greedy and drunk on her own power, and you want to march right into another trap of hers.”
He dropped his gaze, studying the ornate carpet as he tried to come up with an explanation that didn’t distill to a very real and very terrifying truth – he had so very little to offer them. He wasn’t super fast or super strong and he couldn’t lift cars or shoot lasers out of his eyes. On that night when the League went to deal with the incident in S.T.A.R. Labs and he had to stay behind before they were far more capable of dealing with the issue, he had felt so useless that it was laughable.
The contrast between what he remembered of working with her and what it was right now couldn’t be more drastic, and it left him at a loss. Apparently, the one thing that he could do was bounce back to life because a goddess loved him so fiercely that she couldn’t let go. He had money but not Bruce’s kind of wealth, and as resourceful and experienced as he was, he doubted that he could ever measure up to anyone else on the team. Not in the physical sense, at least, which often was the one thing that mattered.
There was so very little that he could offer them already, but this was something. This could actually snap the ties holding their hands behind their backs, bureaucratically speaking.
Steve wanted, almost desperately so, to be more than just Wonder Woman’s lover. And he had no bloody idea how to make Diana understand that, not when she was who she was. Not when she couldn’t possibly know what it was like to be someone like him.
“I know you’re capable. You don’t need to prove anything,” she said softly, as if reading his thoughts, and he winced a little. Was he really that transparent? “Not to me, not to anyone.”
“I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone.” He sighed. “I’m just—I’m trying to be my own person, and I want you to stop thinking that you have to fix my life for me.”
A weak, watery smile touched her lips. “Far be it from me…”
“So, you believe that I could do it?” he asked, running the tips of his fingers up and down her shoulders.
“Of course I do, Steve. You know, I do,” she whispered, her mind still trying to work this all out. “It’s not you,” she shook her head. “It’s… This woman will stop at nothing, and you want to work with her—”
“Well, not with her, strictly speaking,” he admitted.
She snapped her head up when his words clicked. “You want to spy on her.”
Steve allowed his lips to quirk ever so slightly, without much humour to it. “Rumour has it, I used to be good.”
She cursed under her breath, and quite impressively, too. Charlie would have been proud.
“You’re not thrilled, I gather,” he murmured.
“How can I be?” She rubbed her forehead. “I can barely stand having you more than ten feet away from me, and you want to do something that could put you in danger. Real danger.” Diana bit her lip, still looking in the general direction of his collar.
“It felt quite real during the war,” he reminded her, and she flinched.
“And was it not enough?” She met his gaze at last, and the resignation in it was like a sucker punch.
What I do is not up to you .
It went both ways, he figured. Together they might be, but each of them still was their own person. She expected him to respect her boundaries, but knew that she would have to do the same in return. That she wouldn’t have the right to ask for less than that, and he could see it was killing her. It wasn’t even about his plan, but that he had thought to suggest it at all.
“She’s got my files,” he said quietly. “My real files that, right now, she can use against me as she pleases, and I need to know that she will not do it.”
“There are other ways—”
“There are, but those other ways won’t solve the issue between the government and the League,” Steve pointed out, practically feeling another curse form on the tip of her tongue. “Diana.”
Another half a step, and she leaned into him, quelling whatever frustration was still simmering within her with his touch and his arms around her.
“Look, we’re either both in, or we’re both out,” he told her as she unfolded her arms that had been crossed over her chest and weaved them around him, tucking her face into the crook of his neck. “I’m not gonna go against you on this one. But can you…” he cleared his throat, his hand running absently up and down her back, and he didn’t resist the urge to brush a kiss to her temple. “Can you think about it? It doesn’t have to be tonight. Or even this week. Just… sometime, maybe.”
“Maybe,” she said, although Steve suspected it was less in agreement and more a way to get him to stop talking about it.
Diana pulled just far enough away to look at him, her hand smoothing over his chest before it moved to rest on the back of his neck.
“You can’t lose me. You will never lose me,” he sighed. “I just… I don’t think I can do nothing. Not like this.”
“I know.”
There was already resignation behind her eyes, and if Steve had to guess, he had won this round. Shame that it didn’t feel much like winning.
They’d been here before.
He thought she was going to add something, try to come up with another argument. Instead, she tipped her head and kissed him, slowly and deeply and like she was trying to pour the words she couldn’t quite find into that kiss, urging him to see it her way, desperately wanting him to understand.
By the time she drew back for breath, Steve had forgotten about Amanda Waller.
---
They fell into their old routine with ease.
If bringing Steve to Paris for the first time felt surreal, almost too impossible to be true, having him there with her now brought Diana comfort beyond anything she had ever experienced. It was only now that she allowed herself to believe that he was back, that this was real, and that he was not likely to dissipate into thin air before her eyes.
A few days after their return from Gotham, she walked into the bathroom to find him standing in front of the fogged-up mirror, trying to dry his hair with a towel one-handed, another towel wrapped around his hips. And she wondered if there was a moment in the foreseeable future when the image of him in the world that she had considered to be only hers would ever stop bringing everything inside of her to a standstill. If she would ever not be surprised by the sound of his voice or his presence, that was seemingly taking up more space than he should.
Funny how she only realized just how much she had missed him all those years when she didn’t need to anymore. When he was the first thing that she saw every morning when she woke up and her name on his lips was like music to her ears.
Steve paused when he saw her walk in, her reflection a barely distinguishable smudge. He looked up and lowered his hand, confused to see her staring at him without saying anything.
“What?” he asked.
But she only shook her head, pressing her lips together and trying very hard to keep on breathing past the burning lump in her throat.
Neither of them had remembered about Christmas until a brightly decorated tree appeared in the lobby downstairs, twinkling with colourful lights and adorned with an assortment of ornaments. It had made Steve pause in his tracks just long enough for Diana to catch a flash of surprise and something akin to wistfulness in his expression. She didn’t ask, didn’t push, but later that night she had suggested that maybe he would like to go somewhere for a few days, just the two of them. This close to holidays, her hectic pace at the museum had slowed down to a crawl. There was some paperwork and a few shipments left to be taken care of, and an annual staff event to attend in a couple of weeks. But afterwards, they could go to Italy, or Greece, or maybe Switzerland. She wouldn’t have minded spending some time in a chalet, only leaving the bed to eat and stroll along the streets of some small town.
Steve declined though, smiling when he drew her to him, and said that he had yet to get sick of the first place in many, many years that he had the pleasure to call home. Not even for a beach, or the Swiss Alps.
In the end, they got a small tree, just big enough to fit in the corner of the living room, and a string of fairy lights. And then Diana unearthed something that had been hidden for so long that she had almost forgotten about it – a box that Etta had left for her containing a collection of knick-knacks, a book of poetry and several handmade ornaments crafted by her mother when Etta was a little girl. Until now, Diana had no use for them, her chest growing tight each time she had thought of how easily things often outlived a person, but as she watched Steve go through the small collection of Etta’s treasures, she wondered if somehow the other woman knew this day would come. Even then, years ago…
“I can’t believe you kept all this,” Steve muttered under his breath, his fingers gentle as they moved through the contents of the box. “It would’ve meant a lot to Etta… if she knew.”
Diana’s gaze drifted to his father’s watch that had replaced the modern one he used to wear when he first came back, fastened around his wrist. She moved to stand close to him and rested her chin on his shoulder. “Of course, I did.”
He opted out of the auction in Madrid that she had on her agenda, his memory of the last one they had attended together uncomfortably fresh in his mind – so much so that he had paled a little when she had brought it up, and Diana had tried very hard not to laugh, tempted to tease him.
“I prefer to think of it as the first time we kissed in this century,” she noted matter-of-factly just to make him sputter a little. Which he did, and she grinned.
But for her, it was work, her own commitment non-negotiable, and the only reason she wanted him there was to hold his hand and feel him close. She suspected there wouldn’t be a moment anytime soon when she wouldn’t want either of those things. If ever.
She took him to the staff Christmas party though, and this time, Steve didn’t protest, thrilled by the idea of the canape bar and being fawned over by the elderly curators. Diana tried to pretend that she didn’t hear hushed whispers behind her back, words muttered in French about his eyes (so blue!) and her smile ( so radiant!), a little amused and secretly pleased to feed them all some gossip, surprisingly not bothered by being the talk of the whole department for a reason other than her excellent translation skills ( beyond brilliant! )
Steve made his way around the room, charming her colleagues without even trying, a flute of champagne in his hand and his eyes drifting to her across the room every few minutes, making it oh so very hard for Diana to stay focused on her conversation with head of the Restoration Department, his assistant and a visiting curator from Rome. All she could do was hope as hell that smiling and nodding every now and then was the right course of action, her skin prickling a little every time Steve’s gaze landed on her.
When she finally managed to escape the urgent attention of someone or other an hour and a half later, he was hanging around the snack bar, looking almost unbearably delicious himself.
“You were right, this is fun,” Steve popped an olive into his mouth and smiled when she approached him, switching to English for the first time that night, his voice low and his words meant just for her. He brushed his thumb to her cheek, his eyes searching hers. “It’s—”
“What?”
“It’s different. You are different.” Before adding when Diana raised an eyebrow at him, “Good different.” His gaze swept the room around them once more. “I’m glad you have this,” he told her. “It suits you.”
“You have been here before,” Diana pointed out with a smile, palms smoothing over his chest, pleased by his comment, nonetheless.
He shook his head. “Not the same.” A pause. “They really love you here.”
It wasn’t his words so much as the tone of his voice that made her chest constrict a little. It wasn’t a mere observation, not when it was coming from Steve. Not when he could see for himself that she had a place in his world like he had always wanted her to.
Diana smirked. “You’re quite a success yourself,” she noted, struggling to keep a straight face. She glanced around. “They’re positively charmed.” She turned back to Steve and stepped closer, sliding her arms around him and tucking her hands into the back pockets of his pants to bring him against her, not oblivious to how his eyes darkened momentarily with want. “Maybe I should bring you in as one of the exhibits,” she mused.
Steve tucked a piece of hair framing her face around her ear and then wound his arms around her as well, his fingers anchored on the small of her back, his touch warm through the silk of her dress.
His eyebrow crept up, a mischievous glint in his gaze. “You mean, pin me to the wall and—” He cut off suddenly, his face turning crimson.
She bit her lip and leaned close to his ear, enjoying every moment of this. “Don’t give me ideas,” she whispered.
“Diana,” he started and faltered again. He swallowed hard when the picture formed fully in his mind, his hand twitching on her back and his breath nowhere to be found.
This was never not going to be delightful, she decided.
Steve gave her a reproachful look. “You’re a terrible influence,” he pointed out, not without accusation, his expression more than a little desperate.
And who could blame her when it was so easy?
She watched him struggle to regain his composure, undoubtedly hating each and every person in the room with a passion for keeping him from being able to touch her all over, if his flustered and flushed face was any indication. Quite frankly, at this moment she shared the sentiment wholeheartedly.
Steve licked his lips and bowed his head closer to hers. “Can I take you home yet?” He asked quietly, entirely and completely disinterested in socializing by this point.
She allowed her lips to stretch into a slow, lazy smile as she brushed a kiss to his jaw – an innocent touch to the onlookers that made his breath catch audibly, and she became acutely aware of every part of his body pressed to hers – and then stepped back.
“Soon,” she promised, reaching around him to pick a canape from the plate.
With the way he was looking at her, they were not likely to make it to the car.
Diana walked away, aware of him watching her every step and feeling his gaze on her with every inch of her skin as she vowed silently to never miss another staff event, not for the world. Provided she had a date.
---
Diana hated the idea—somewhat because the mere thought of Steve being anywhere near Amanda Waller, working by her side and under her command, was making her sick to her stomach, but mostly because she had no arguments against it that weren’t deeply and unapologetically personal. When they had spoken of it two nights ago, going over every aspect of the plan that Steve wanted to pitch to the other members of the League, he had deflected her objections artfully, his reasoning solid and compelling, his voice unwavering.
At the time, she had agreed with them all. He had clearly thought it through, had considered every possible outcome and every bend of the road.
It had calmed her then, made her see his point and accept his justifications. If Amanda Waller wanted to control the League, there was no better way to do it than through someone they could trust. Someone who would be on their side instead of waiting for them to make a mistake so that fingers could be pointed and blame assigned. Someone who would be objective without being overbearing. And there was no one else in the entire creation who she trusted to do a better job than Steve.
His plan was good. Not only good but, knowing Steve, he would make the best of it in ways she knew she couldn’t even begin to imagine. She had seen it before, more times than she could count. Diana didn’t doubt for one moment that if anyone could make this work, it was him.
But that didn’t mean that calling Bruce the following morning to lay out Steve’s idea to him had been easy. Harder still was not blaming Bruce for apparently putting this thought into Steve’s head in the first place, her voice measured and a little clipped, bordering on cold as she willed herself to bite back accusations.
If she had said no, if she had asked Steve to drop the subject and never bring it up again, he would have done it in a heartbeat. She saw it on his face and in his eyes as he had watched her while he spoke. One word from her, and he would never bring up this plan ever again, Diana knew that much. That was why she couldn’t do it. That was why he was sitting before her laptop right now, in a group call with the League – everyone except Arthur who couldn’t be reached on such short notice – while she paced restlessly behind him, unable to stay still.
The League might have been Bruce’s child, but agreeing to something like this had to be a collective decision. A unanimous vote. Diana knew full well what they would do, though. As she listened to Steve repeat the same words he had said to her before, presenting the arguments that she had discussed with Bruce earlier, she knew that they would say yes.
Amanda Waller was dangerous in ways Diana wasn’t willing to think of, and she doubted that her threat was enough to get that woman to back off. Someone had to give. Diana hated that it had to be them, and she was not subtle about that.
Twice, Steve looked up from the screen, trying to catch her eye. And twice, she pretended not to notice, fearful of losing her own reasoning if only their eyes met. If he looked at her the way he did, making the world fall away and reminding her of what exactly was at stake here, she wouldn’t be able to stay impartial then, and she needed to be.
He had been right in his accusation, too. Had this been about anyone else, she would have gladly jumped at the chance to pacify the Director of A.R.G.U.S. and get her off their backs. However, with Steve’s safety on the line, Diana felt like she could barely breathe, her hands curled into fists, nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms so she wouldn’t reach over and slam the laptop shut and beg him to never put himself in danger again until he gave her every promise she wanted to hear.
“Are you out of your mind?” Barry was the first one to speak when Steve fell silent at last.
Diana exhaled.
She was not the only one who found his proposal insane, then. It was a small relief, but it eased the heavy tightness in her chest nonetheless, her lips curving ever so slightly. Trust Barry to jump straight to the point.
“Are you sure about this?” Clark asked, ignoring the speedster’s comment.
Steve rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think we have many options left,” he noted, offering them a chance to object.
No one did.
“But that’s working for Amanda Waller,” Victor repeated as though the rest of them somehow missed that part, his human half of the face frowning.
His gaze moved past Steve’s shoulder to where Diana was standing just behind him, arms folded over her chest, searching for her reaction. Steve glanced up, too, but she only dug her fingers deeper into her elbows.
She was not going to speak of her concerns.
“With her more than for her,” Steve corrected. “She is as much an interested party here as we are. More so, even. She has been looking for a way to keep an eye on the Justice League ever since you all came together. Maybe even since before then. She wants to control metahumans. It’s just her luck that you guys formed such a convenient alliance.”
“I just don’t see why she would be even interested in this offer,” Victor said, “if she wanted you to be part of the team in the first place.”
“She didn’t,” Steve shook his head. “I was meant to be a bargaining chip from the start. Something she wanted to use to rattle you—some of you—up.”
He didn’t look up again, but the pit of Diana’s stomach went cold with fury regardless. That her life was toyed with so effortlessly was unforgivable.
“You mean—” Barry started.
Clark looked past him as well. “Diana.”
She pressed her lips together. This was too personal, and she couldn’t stand the thought of Waller being able to see this deep into her soul. From one photograph, at that. She might as well have stripped her heart bare.
“So, what’s her gain then?” Barry piped up.
Steve shrugged. “Control.” He grimaced a little. “Or at least some form of it.”
Diana sighed. “Bruce?”
Batman leaned closer to the screen, elbows propped on the desk in the Batcave.
“Steve is right,” he said. “Between the pressure from the public and the demands of her superiors, it won’t be long before Waller is desperate. And desperate is dangerous.” His eyes flicked to Diana. “I’m surprised she didn’t offer something of this kind earlier, but if I have to guess, it wouldn’t have been long before she came up with the idea of a liaison between the Justice League and A.R.G.U.S. herself. If we offer it first, it’ll give us a chance to play out a surprise factor and thus gain better leverage.”
Clark gave Steve a curious look, “And you’re willing to do it? Work with her?”
Steve nodded. “I’ve done that before, sort of.” He didn’t go into the details, but they knew them. They had all read his file – a modified version of it, but still. “It won’t be any different from how it would’ve been if I had joined the League, except that if Waller accepts our proposal, I will become a buffer between you and the US Government. I think I can handle some meetings and a couple of field reports a month.”
“Are you cool with that, Di?” Barry inquired.
They all looked at her then.
“We all have to agree,” Diana responded without actually answering the question.
Clark frowned a little, not fooled by her even voice. She looked away lest he spoke to her, her eyes finding Victor’s face in the corner of the screen.
“What about Arthur?” Victor asked.
Bruce shook his head. “Couldn’t reach him.”
“He’s gotta have a phone,” Barry muttered, half-impressed and half-horrified.
“He lives at the bottom of the ocean, you genius,” Victor scoffed.
“Waterproof cases, duh!”
“And he’s supposed to charge it how, exactly?”
Barry blinked, at a loss for words.
“Are you done?” Bruce interjected impassively, and his mild tone nearly made Diane smile. It wasn’t that long ago that this kind of conversation would have driven him up the wall.
“What makes you think Waller will even agree?” Clark asked as he rubbed his chin. “She’s not stupid, she’ll see right through it. By letting one of us be the link between A.R.G.U.S. and the League, she’ll have her hands tied.”
“Because she doesn’t have many options left, either,” Steve explained. “She should know by now that you would never let her oversee you on her terms. Right now, it’s not about what’s real and what’s not. She needs to show the results or her own position at A.R.G.U.S. is at risk. She won’t want to compromise it.”
In the silence that settled then, Diana could hear the old clock ticking the seconds away on the mantel in the living room, the pause stretching as they allowed the information laid out before them to sink in.
And amidst it all, her chest constricted and then expanded with pride, her throat tight all of a sudden. The League had never worked with Steve before, not really. They merely trusted her judgement and their own blind faith when it came to his presence among them. Until now, they had perceived him as her partner more than anything else, she knew, but Diana could see it now. Could see them listening to him and assessing him on his own merit, looking at him as his own person.
And the feeling that filled her at the sight of it was all-consuming.
“I’m in,” Barry said after a few moments. “I still think this plan is bonkers,” he clarified, “but if it would take the mean lady off our backs, we should give it a go.”
A mismatched choir of Yeah, me too followed suit.
“Diana?” Clark called.
This time, she turned to Steve and looked him in the eye, struggling to quell her fears. His gaze was warm, open, certain. He had never looked at her with anything less than adoration, even in moments of utter exasperation. But right now, she could see a purpose to him, too. Purpose and determination similar to what had once pushed him to defy the German army all on his own when no one else would know how.
You can either do nothing, or you can do something .
Who was she to try and defy his will?
“Yes,” she said.
The tight lines around his mouth smoothed out, and it occurred to her then that all this time he was waiting for her to change her mind. A corner of his mouth lifted. For a second, she thought that he was going to say something, but in the end, he simply nodded.
“I will talk to Arthur,” Bruce was saying meanwhile, his tone practical now that they had moved past the negotiation part and needed to keep soldiering on. “If he’s game, we’ll set up a meeting with Waller.” He looked at Steve. “You might need to be here for that.”
Diana walked over to the window. Outside, the street was grey and cold. She tuned out the voices behind her back as Steve and the rest of them made plans, discussed details, her eyes fixed on the people below huddled against the chill and the patches of ice on the sidewalk, her mind numb.
So much had changed since the day she had met Steve, but so little, too. She thought of him standing before her in the cave on the island, telling her that going back to the war wasn’t about wanting, but about what needed to be done. She wondered, absently, if he had felt then as hollow as she was feeling now, powerless against something big, something that neither of them could control. She didn’t see it that way back then. But there was no other way to look at it now.
So little had changed, indeed.
When she looked up a few minutes later, the call was over, the room around them quiet. The screen of her laptop was black, and Steve was standing by the desk, watching her, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pants, his blue eyes luminous in the pale afternoon light.
“Well, that went well,” he noted, offering her a small smile.
A shuddered breath stuttered out of Diana’s chest, catching somewhere in her throat.
“You know that Waller might not agree,” Steve added, and she wondered what it was that he was seeing in her eyes.
She shook her head and sighed. “She will. You are right, she has no other choice. She could keep on the charade and try to force us into cooperation on her terms, or she could choose the easy path and say yes. I think she has done it the hard way for long enough.”
He crossed the room, stopping right before her.
“Diana.”
She looked up, feeling her shoulders slump forward as though her body deflated.
He moved closer, and, still feeling like a tightly wound spring, she welcomed the comfort of his presence. He reached for her, his hands running up and down Diana’s arms as he bowed his head close to hers until they were breathing the same air.
“We can pull the plug any time,” Steve said quietly, reaching to twist a piece of her hair around his finger. “I told you I wouldn’t do anything that upsets you, and I meant it.”
She smoothed her palms over his chest, her fingers closing over fistfuls of his shirt and her eyes trained on the hollow dip between his clavicles.
“I know.” She swallowed. “I only just got you back,” the words tumbled out of her mouth in a whoosh of breath.
“And I’m here to stay,” he promised her, his voice earnest.
She watched his Adam’s apple bob in his throat, the irony of how Steve was both their weakest link and their best hope to keep the conflict with Amanda Waller at bay not lost on her in the slightest. If there was a chance that she could keep him in a glass box, protected from the world, she would do so in a heartbeat. But the mere thought of him cooking dinners and twiddling thumbs as he waited for her to come home for the rest of their lives was laughable, impossible.
This was the man who was determined to single-handedly stop the German army if he had to, the man who had followed her into battle more times than she could count even when victory seemed impossible. He was a soldier through and through and it was not within her right to try and change that—much like she knew that he would never try to take her very essence away from her for his own comfort.
At last, Diana nodded, slowly. And then once more, and finally lifted her face up, her eyes finding his.
This was what she had wanted, wasn’t it? When she dreamed of his return, this was what she had longed for—to be together, to work together, to fight side by side like they used to. She could not foresee Amanda Waller or the circumstances of his return, but those were details that changed nothing. Deep down, she still wished for nothing more.
“I know,” she whispered.
A smile worked its way across Steve’s features.
“Like the good old times,” he told her. “Stir some feathers, cause some trouble. It’ll be fun.”
And this time, Diana smiled, rolling her eyes a little. And then laughed. And then kissed him, her palm curled over his jaw. He responded eagerly, kissing her for all he was worth until they were both breathless and dazed, and the edges of the day had smoothed out into nothing.
Her chest heaving against his, Diana rested her forehead to his.
“When do you need to go back?” she asked, playing idly with his hair at the nape of his neck.
Steve scrunched his face. “End of the week, probably. Bruce will call.”
Her hand went still on the back of his neck, her thumb tracing the ridge of his jaw.
She sighed. “Well, I guess we better pack.”
Notes:
Boy oh boy, the closer we get to the magical words The End, the more emotional I get. (Or, it could be just this very long lockdown that's happening where I live)
As always, feedback is much appreciated, and I will love you forever. Also please feel free to share your thoughts/speculations/expectations from WW84 and/or Snyder's Justice League. I'm always here to talk about my faves. And thank you again for reading!
ETA Who else is pissed about yet another WW84 delay?
Chapter 25
Notes:
Hey guys, guess who is still alive :) Gosh, I cannot believe it has taken me so long to post this story, considering it’s been done for ages. I don’t have an excuse, I’m just terrible at being organized.
Anyway… This is technically the last chapter. There will be a brief and entirely self-indulgent epilogue that I will share in a couple of weeks, but for all intents and purposes, this is pretty much it? I guess? It took me over 20 months to write this fic, a few more to edit it, so… for quite a long time this story had been pretty much the centre of my life and I'm feeling a bit emotional about saying goodbye to it. It taught me a lot, as a person and as a writer. I met some absolutely remarkable people because of it and for that, I will always be grateful.
And of course, I wanted to thank you all--those who stayed around from the start, those who joined this journey half-way through, and those who just discovered it. I am so very grateful for all the love and support you have shown, and it means more to me than I can express.
Well, I’m rambling… So how about you just go and read this chapter and I hope you will enjoy it :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
To say that Amanda Waller was not thrilled to find Steve sitting across from her, sandwiched between Bruce and Diana on a grey, cold morning would have been an understatement.
As it turned out, the A.R.G.U.S. headquarters was nothing like her polished office with its thick carpet and her secretary at the door. It was a bunker on the outskirts of Gotham equipped to the brim with top-notch tech that, from Steve’s experience, was rivalled only by that owned by Bruce. Steve tried not to gawk, but the idea of getting his hands on it in some not so distant future was more appealing than he was willing to admit under Waller’s displeased scrutiny.
Still, she listened as Bruce spoke, laying out their offer to her, her eyes darting between him, Steve and Diana. If the idea to make Steve the Justice League liaison had crossed her mind before, she clearly didn’t appear to be thrilled by it now. She knew that she was losing control over them — although one might argue that she had never had any — and she most certainly did not like the feeling of it.
She asked questions, too. Threw counter-offers at them. Argued with their terms and boundaries. Steve didn’t hesitate to argue back, pointing out the clauses of the agreement that he didn’t like or that swayed too much, in his opinion, in Waller’s favour. She was not pleased with that, either, and truth be told, he’d be lying if he didn’t admit that it gave him a certain degree of satisfaction to keep a person who was very used to being in complete control on her toes.
Sitting on his right side, Diana was as still as an obelisk, watching the back-and-forth. Her face was neutral, but her eyes remained intent, and for once, Steve was glad not to be on the receiving end of one of her stares. Judging by how Amanda Waller had shifted in her seat a time or two, her eyes now trained pointedly on Steve and Steve alone, she also wished she wasn’t.
Waller felt trapped, and unhappy about it. Steve could see it in the set of her jaw and her slightly narrowed eyes. She was not used to feeling either of those things, not in this place where she was practically god. There was some part of him that wished that the rest of the League was there with them to watch her squirm, the tension around them so thick in the air that he could probably cut it with a knife.
Amanda Waller had terms of her own, too. She might not have been as prepared for the meeting as they were, but she knew how to think on her feet.
The extent of her command, for instance. She wanted complete transparency and full subordination. She wanted to know where each of them was at all times, on mission or off. She wanted Steve to be one of her agents, on top of his involvement with the League — and that one was non-negotiable.
They already knew that, had seen it coming. Bruce artfully amended those conditions, bending them in the League’s favour — Steve already had plans on how they could bypass them should the need arise. Waller raised a curious eyebrow at him as he spoke, outlining their own level of comfort with her involvement in their lives, but said nothing. After a few moments of tense silence, she nodded curtly, and Steve tried very hard not to smile. It hardly felt like a victory — and he was signing up for a government job, for crying out loud! — but until this moment, he hadn’t truly believed that she would listen to them at all.
He was going to work with Diana again, and not covertly for a change, and he loved the idea of it. If being caught off-guard by their proposal bothered Waller, she didn’t let it show. Steve had to give her that much. The woman had a poker face like nothing he had ever seen, and while their mutual dislike was thick in the air, he found himself feeling something akin to respect.
He barely resisted the urge to look at Diana, for he feared that his feelings regarding this new arrangement would be all over his face, and this was not the time, nor the place for his glee. Later, he decided. They could celebrate later.
“I have my own agents, you know that, right?” Waller had said flatly at some point. “Agents that are trained to work for A.R.G.U.S. Agents that, unlike you, I must add,” her eyes bore heavily into Steve, “have not spent the past sixty years hiding from their girlfriends.”
It wasn’t an argument, and they all knew it. She merely needed to establish her position in this negotiation even though she had nowhere left to go and no desire to do it even if there was. Steve could see that the past few weeks had taken quite a toll on her, what with Luthor’s escape and her lack of progress with the League. She would have accepted any of their conditions if that meant getting her superiors off her back, he thought.
His lips quirked ever so slightly, and for the first time in the past four hours, he had her full and undivided attention. “Are any of them trained to work with the Justice League?” he inquired.
“Are you?” she shot back, tilting her head.
He could practically hear a snide comment rolling on the tip of her tongue, but one look at Diana was enough to force Waller to swallow it.
“He will be,” Bruce said, his voice final, uncompromising.
And that was it.
There were no handshakes, just a brisk nod from Director Waller indicating the end of the meeting.
And just like that, everything had changed.
---
Steve received papers and forms to sign the next day, complete with instructions on how to apply for a security pass and a list of contacts he would be needing to do his job. He had gone through the contract and sent it back with his amendments.
“You’re mean,” Diana noted as he was signing the envelope.
He looked up and grinned at her. “How many times do you think I can send it back until she snaps?” he asked.
She smirked. “What happened to the courteous and gentle man who I once pulled out of the sea?”
He couldn’t help but laugh, finding himself oddly thrilled about the whole thing. Of all the things that he had lived through, the military was the last thing that he had ever expected to miss.
A request for a personal meeting came next. To brief him on his position and introduce him to his superiors and his team. Once that was done, he would officially become an A.R.G.U.S. agent, and the Justice League liaison.
In the light of all the events that had led up to this moment, it felt almost anti-climactic, although he decided not to be disappointed with that.
---
Paris, 2018
Months later, and Diana still could hardly believe that she wasn’t dreaming. That Steve was back, and that he was hers, and they had years and years of life together to look forward to. The pain and anguish that had stayed with her for decades were still there; a hollow feeling in her chest that would make itself known when she least expected it and make her blood run cold, making her pause in her tracks so she could find her bearings once more.
And then she would see Steve’s razor on the counter by the sink, or a half-finished puzzle in the morning paper sitting on the table in the kitchen, or his shoes by the door, and it would feel like being swept away by a tidal wave of relief, the feeling always leaving her breathless.
Sometimes, she would wake up in the middle of the night, her heart racing, disturbed by the dream she couldn’t recall, still scared in a half-daze that she had imagined it all. The way it had happened more times than she could count while they had been apart. And then she would roll over only to find Steve peacefully asleep by her side, his chest rising and falling slowly. She would watch him sleep and she would thank her gods again and again for bringing him back to her.
They had settled into a new rhythm that felt both new and familiar, all at once, the change just out of her reach whenever Diana tried to grasp it. Yet, somehow, her life couldn’t be more different from what it had been only a few months ago, suddenly bursting with colours.
She liked working with Steve. Liked the comfort of his presence that never failed to settle her heart when she was agitated, and the way the other members of the League listened to him when he spoke, her chest nearly cracking open with fierce pride. This was a man who could make her laugh like no one else in all of creation but whose mind was sharp and focused when they were on a mission. A man who stopped at nothing until peace was restored, his demeanour resolved and unwavering. She loved his strategic way of thinking, and his experience that proved invaluable even a hundred years later. But more than that, she loved the way he had stepped into the team — like he had belonged from the start.
He had told her once that the cost of things had changed far more than people’s minds. Looking at the world that way, she found it hard to disagree.
In Paris, between missions, they were getting acquainted with one another again, and she allowed herself to indulge in that process.
She had learned that Steve loved sugary cereals and a mean steak and would wrinkle his nose whenever Diana would unearth Brussel sprouts from the freezer. He was a good cook but didn’t enjoy it much, preferring to either cook together with her or order something. He was a music snob. Diana had never seen him more overjoyed than when he had found an antique turntable in one of those hole-in-a-wall stores scattered around the city because “music sounded better on vinyl.” She pressed her lips around a smile while he fiddled with it and chose not to comment that the records he had purchased with it were all modern. It didn’t seem to matter.
He loved movies with Cary Grant, and had seen all episodes of Poirot at least three times. He loved sleeping with his arms wrapped around her — a sentiment that she shared wholeheartedly. An early riser, Diana had learned not to start serious conversations or ask questions requiring actual thinking before Steve had a cup of coffee, or better two. Her offers for him to come join her on a run along the Seine at the crack of dawn were often met with a grunt and a pillow flipped over his head. Often, it made her want to crawl back into bed and wake him up in a different way. Often, she did just that.
They talked a lot, too. About films and books and music, filling in the gaps and adding to what they already knew. They made plans and allowed themselves to dream, and for the first time in a century, Diana knew exactly what she wanted from her future — a luxury that she had never allowed herself to imagine.
She had had a moment of wild panic, in the beginning, that changing her life so drastically would bring a certain degree of unease. She had tried and failed to do that before, and the fear of it had left her with a tightness in her chest. But living with Steve, being in love with him, had somehow turned out to be the easiest and most comfortable thing in the world.
She loved being aware of his presence, finding peace in hearing him move about their apartment or humming something under his breath while he worked, the sense of peace it was giving her almost overwhelming. Loved knowing that she didn’t need to see him to feel his nearness, or that calling out his name would conjure not a ghost but a real man, his eyes bright and his smile making her weak in the knees.
He called her princess when he was in a playful mood, and angel when they were making love, or when he was too tired to care, but it was the way he said her name — with wonder, like a prayer — that made Diana’s pulse stutter each time without fail. A hundred years later, and she still couldn’t believe sometimes that he was hers.
Of all the League members, she had noticed that he got along best with Clark and Victor. Barry amused him, and she suspected that Steve felt about the speedster the way she did — affection mixed with tenderness and a dash of exasperation.
Arthur intimidated him, his booming voice and massive frame combined with his habit to speak his mind freely and without reservation, were hard to look past in search of his big heart. Their tentative relationship amused Diana to no end. Once or twice she had told him that if he didn’t hesitate to walk into the German High Command without invitation then maybe he shouldn’t be scared of a member of his own team, to which Steve had glowered and said that none of the Germans wielded tridents.
“He does have a point,” Lois had agreed when Diana had shared that particular observation with her. “Although they would have looked very weird with tridents, don’t you think?”
Bruce was a work in progress, but while the others could be easily won with conversations about sports (Victor), pop culture (Barry), or Steve’s involvement in the war (Clark), it was his sharp mind and spy instincts on their missions that had softened Batman’s heart. The ease with which Steve kept Waller off their backs had earned him a curt nod of appreciation — something that Diana knew wasn’t easily given. She always looked away when Bruce caught her watching them lest he sees her smile.
A few months later, when there were no urgent items on Steve’s agenda and her work with the Louvre had settled into a measured pace, they went to visit Arthur, just as she had promised him they would.
Sitting at a heavy, crudely assembled wooden table in a small tavern in a small village in the middle of nowhere, she watched Steve talk up a storm with Mera while Arthur smirked into his beer, his hair a wild mane and his plain shirt hanging loosely from his massive frame. Animated and engrossed, they spoke of politics and battle tactics and the League, and Diana tried very hard to fight off the tightness in her chest, like her very soul was unfurling.
She had known the man for a hundred years, and yet there were still moments when everything about him would catch her off-guard.
At some point, Arthur leaned over to her across the desk, equally amused, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “He always like that?” he nodded towards Steve.
Diana bit her lip and lifted her own mug to her mouth to hide her smile. “Sometimes,” she responded vaguely. He should have seen Steve and Victor talk about football.
Arthur snorted, giving his wife and Diana’s boyfriend another side-eye. “Think he’d be up for taking on my ruling duties for a weekend or two?” he mused.
“I heard that,” Mera rolled her eyes at him.
Sheepish, Arthur busied himself with finishing his beer, the back of his neck flushed from something more than just alcohol and his eyes pointedly averted.
“Not my fault that stuff’s boring,” he muttered under his breath.
Steve looked up at Diana and grinned, his blue eyes warm with affection, and her heart soared all the way into the stratosphere.
---
Amanda Waller’s name on the screen of Steve’s phone had never become a welcome sight, but after a while, Diana’s jaw had stopped clenching and her hackles no longer stood on end each time the Director of A.R.G.U.S. needed to reach him.
As it turned out, they couldn’t have asked for a better person to act as a liaison between A.R.G.U.S. and the League, and Diana couldn’t quite tell if it pleased Waller or infuriated her. Steve was a quick learner with a sharp mind who knew when to obey the rules and when to bend them in his favour. Working alongside Diana, he was fast and efficient, and if the Director’s tautly set jawline and frown were any indication, Steve was as proficient with the paperwork as he was with weaponry. It pained Waller not to have a reason to pull the plug on their new routine, which amused Diana greatly.
She tried very hard not to be smug about it, although it was Bruce who was getting a real kick out of the whole situation — if only Waller knew how much pleasure he was getting from her inability to prove him wrong, she would never have agreed to their offer. Or so Diana suspected.
She chose to withhold her verbal judgement on the matter.
Steve came back from his first solo mission late at night.
It was April, four months after he had commenced his role as an operative of A.R.G.U.S. and Diana’s own evening ended up being split between a conference call with a museum in Milan and preventing an armed robbery of a jewelry store afterwards. It was past midnight when she landed with a soft thud on the small living room balcony, jimmying open the lock that was never closed properly for this exact purpose.
Despite the late hour, her mind was wired, wide awake. It took her a moment to register the light that appeared to be on in the kitchen, and then another one to hear the noise of someone moving around there, the sound of it amplified in the stillness of the night.
It startled her, kicking her heartbeat into a rapid staccato in her chest. She set her shield down, leaning it against the couch. Her fingers tightening on the hilt of the sword as she stepped toward the soft glow of light coming from the hallway, following the sounds of someone going through the cupboards.
Steve was pushing the buttons on the coffee maker when Diana stepped into the kitchen. He caught her movement out of the corner of his eye and turned, pausing for a split second when his eyes landed on her. The brief moment of surprise shattered as a smile broke across his face, his eyes crinkling at the corners, making something snap inside of her, her relief at seeing him almost too much to bear.
She had refused to think of every bad thing that could have gone wrong in the past week and a half and her not being there to keep him safe. But he was here now. He was here, and he was fine, and—
“Steve.”
“Hey.”
She wasn’t sure which one of them moved first, but one moment she was standing all the way across the kitchen from him, and then her sword fell to the floor with a dull thud and he was suddenly right before her, gathering her in his arms. His sigh stuttered against her chest as she buried her face in the curve of his neck and inhaled the scent of dust and wind and sunlight lingering on his clothes and clinging to his skin.
“Hi,” Steve breathed softly, holding her firmly against him, his heartbeat thudding through her like it was her own.
He kissed her hair and turned his head, finding her mouth next. Diana sighed against his lips, her fingers curling over the back of his neck as she kissed him back eagerly, hungrily, like he was oxygen and she was out of breath.
Eventually, Steve drew back. Smiling, he bumped his nose against hers, his chest heaving as he searched her face, his eyes more than a little glazed over after their kiss. She felt her lips curve up at the corners, pleased to still be able to inspire that reaction in him. Zeus help her, the way he looked at her…
“This is new,” Diana murmured, stroking her thumb over a week’s worth of beard coating his cheeks, soft but new and unfamiliar.
“Didn’t have time to take care of it,” he chuckled. “Didn’t expect you to be armed, either, or I’d have made sure I was more recognizable,” he added, amused, his eyes flicking briefly to her sword lying on the floor.
Diana’s gaze swept over his face, and she swallowed a comment about being able to recognize him in a dark room, blindfolded, if she had to.
“I didn’t expect you tonight.”
His eyebrows crept up, curious. “Well, I could leave now, but...”
He made a move to step away from her but her fingers curled over fistfuls of his shirt, pulling him back. She pressed her mouth to his once more, a lingering kiss that had left them both dizzy and breathless and more than a little disoriented. One that had made her mind swim, and by the time she pulled away, she had forgotten all the questions that she had wanted to ask him about his time away, those that she didn’t dare bring up during their brief phone calls.
Heavens, she’d missed him so badly.
“Diana…”
“You’re ridiculous, Steve Trevor,” she whispered under her breath, her palms sliding over his shoulders and her breath nowhere to be found.
He snorted. “Yeah, well, you knew what you were getting into,” he murmured, and she laughed.
“That I did.” She didn’t argue.
“Exciting night?” he asked, pushing her hair back from her face and looping it around her ear. His fingertips skittered down her cheek. Diana didn’t stop him when he reached for her tiara, pulling it off and setting it down on the table.
She lifted her hand and pushed his hair back from his face, allowing her fingertips to trail along his hairline.
“It is now,” she offered him a small smile, and he grinned.
She could see questions in his eyes, too. Concerns that he didn’t know how to put into words. It had been odd and disconcerting to be apart even for ten days, and she wanted desperately to promise him that it would never happen again, having to bite her tongue because they both knew that that was not a promise either of them could keep.
“Hey, I—um, I got you something,” Steve said suddenly.
“From a war zone?” Diana clarified.
However, she didn’t stop him when he pulled away this time, walking back to his duffle bag sitting in the hallway by the front door. He picked it up and carried it to the kitchen, setting it down on one of the chairs. She watched him unzip it and move his stuff around while he looked for—
Steve straightened up, pulling a bundle of envelopes, tied together with a string. And then another one. At least three dozen letters bound together, the top ones having her name on them.
“Made a pit stop,” he muttered, not looking at her, and even though he tried to keep his voice casual and nonchalant, there was a slight edge to it. As if his mouth had suddenly gone dry, his jaw refusing to cooperate as he spoke.
All the letters that he had written to her over the years, Diana realized, her mind going back to the time they had spoken about them months ago. She took one bundle from him, holding it carefully as if the letters would turn to dust in her hands.
“Steve—”
He ran his hand nervously through his hair. “I mean, you said you wanted them… that time, remember? So I thought…”
Diana lifted her face. “I do. Thank you.”
“You don’t have to read them,” he added, rubbing the back of his neck as he made a face.
Her smile softened. “I want to.”
Steve nodded. And then nodded once more. “Just… maybe not right now.”
He reached for the letters and she let go when he pulled them from her hands, setting them down on the table next to the other bundles.
“Not right now,” she agreed, searching his face.
He moved to her then, his hands curling over her hips. “Did I miss anything important?” he asked, his expression relaxing a bit and a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
There was heat in his eyes now, the kind that made her breath catch in her throat.
Diana leaned away from him, her hand still gripping his shirt. She stepped back toward the bedroom, pulling him with her and thinking how the tiara was only the start, and how overall, she was more than willing to let him take the rest of her armour off, as well.
“Come with me and I’ll show you.”
---
Technically, Steve was not supposed to make a pit stop. Technically, he was supposed to be heading straight to Gotham for a mission debrief and to file a report. Amanda Waller was not going to be pleased with his detour and the few days of delay. In fact, he was certain that he was going to wake up to quite a few angry missed calls. Steve was fine with that. It wasn’t the first time that he had bent the rules, and they both knew that it wouldn’t be the last.
It felt good though, he could admit that much. It felt good to do something, to work the way he used to. He didn’t always appreciate having Director Waller as his direct supervisor, the clash of their personalities and interests being one hell of a pain in the ass. He didn’t appreciate certain limitations and the line of subordination, but he liked working with the League. Liked working with Diana, and even on this mission, without her, there had been a degree of exhilaration to being in the field again, and not as a rogue operative, at that.
There was freedom to it, as well, and a sense of purpose that he liked that came from knowing that he was making a difference. It had been odd to feel at home in yet another war zone, and Sameer wouldn’t have missed the chance to point out the irony of it had he been around to do that. It made Steve wonder what kind of person would miss something like this, something so dark and destructive, but he chose not to dwell on it. Chose not to think of the broken parts of himself that might never mend.
One way or another, it beat looking the other way and doing nothing. And no one had promised him that it would be easy. No change was, not even a good one.
However, the main difference between his old life and a new one was that he had a place to call home now, and the enormity of that feeling was overwhelming. A place and a person to come back to. A person who was currently draped over his chest, warm and pleasantly heavy, while he combed his fingers idly through her hair, still seeing stars behind his eyes. If Waller was going to penalize him for coming here because he had spent ten impossibly long days missing Diana with an ache in his bones, then so be it.
Steve lifted his hand and tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear, his fingertips brushing along her cheek, his lips curving into a small smile. God help him, he missed her so much.
Diana stirred at his touch, turning her head to tattoo a trail of kisses along his collarbone, feather-light but making him yearn for more.
“Thought you were asleep,” Steve murmured.
She hummed into his skin. “Still catching my breath.”
“Maybe I should go away more often,” he mused, biting back a smile.
Diana looked up, an eyebrow raised. “That’s not what you said an hour ago.”
He let out a small laugh. He had said a lot of things an hour ago, the mere memory of each and every single one of them making his blood run hot.
“Do you… uh, do you want to remind me what I said, exactly?”
She craned her neck and nuzzled into his, moving her mouth towards his jaw. “Tickles,” she whispered, ignoring his question.
“I’ll get rid of it first thing in the morning,” Steve promised when she pulled back, her eyes roaming over his features until they paused on his mouth and then lifted to his eyes.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” Diana pointed out, a lazy smile stretching across her face. She rested her hand on his sternum and set her chin on top of it, watching him with unmasked fondness.
“The beard still goes, but now I’ll feel bad about it,” he chuckled. “I wish you’d been there with me,” he confessed after a moment, twisting a piece of her hair around his finger.
Diana paused, her smile slipping. A faint frown appeared between her eyebrows as she watched him closely, as if trying to find whatever it was that she had missed earlier. “Did something happen?” she asked.
Steve shook his head. “No. No, it went well. I just… I missed you.”
He watched her relax. Watched a slow smile work its way back to her face. Watch her eyes light up contemplatively. “I noticed that.”
His eyes travelled over her body under the thin sheet. “Yeah?”
Diana bit her lip. “Mm-hm.”
“Maybe I should go away more often,” Steve repeated.
She rose up on her elbow, leaning to brush her lips lightly against his. “Show me,” she whispered.
His palm curled over her cheek. “Show you what?” he asked dumbly.
Leaning into his touch, Diana turned her face just enough to kiss the heel of his palm. “Show me again how much you missed me.”
He felt his lips quirk into a smile, his gaze dropping briefly down to her mouth. Maybe he should never go away again. Maybe they should never leave this room, for that matter. He’d be perfectly fine and happy with that.
He tipped her head up, finding her mouth with his, and whispered against her lips, “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
---
The next morning, Steve found Diana in the kitchen, the sunlight streaming through the sheer curtains on the windows tangling in her hair.
She was sitting at the table and reading one of his letters, her eyes moving over the page. He spotted a stack of untouched envelopes sitting in front of her, before his eyes moved to several open ones slightly off to the side.
He paused in the doorway, suddenly not at all convinced that this was a good idea, giving them to her. They were hers, in a way, but there were things in them—parts of himself that he had never shared with anyone before. Not even with Diana, and she knew damn near everything about him. Writing them had seemed like a good idea, at the time, in part because he needed to pour his thoughts out on paper before they ate him alive from the inside, and in part because he had been convinced that she would never lay her eyes on them.
Two days ago, making a detour to stop by the storage facility that housed his few measly possessions that couldn’t fit in the bags that he had been taking wherever he went had seemed like something that needed to be done. A page that he needed to turn in order to keep on moving forward, hopefully reaching the next chapter of his life. And, hell, from where he was standing, that chapter looked pretty damn amazing.
Which, consequently, made Steve wonder if bringing up the past was a good plan. Maybe they’d be better off if it had all stayed where it belonged — in a dusty box that hadn’t been touched in two decades. Maybe they should have—
Diana looked up, spotting him hovering in the periphery of her vision.
“Hey,” Steve murmured, offering her a small smile. He ran his hand over his hair.
“Steve.”
“How long have you been up?” he asked, stepping into the kitchen and trying to keep his voice casual. Trying not to stare at the stack of paper sitting near her right elbow, the words he could no longer remember with accuracy already a part of her. Trying to quell the surge of panic rising in his chest.
She turned to him and lowered down the letter she’d been holding, her eyes sweeping over the envelopes before her, a slight frown wedged between her brows.
He wanted to know what she was thinking, desperately so. If he had confessed to something she didn’t want to know. If there was a way for him to take it back. If only he had thought this through beforehand, he kicked himself mentally. But even more than that, he wanted to go back in time and wake up with her still in his arms and the previous night fresh in their minds. Maybe if they’d done that, he’d be able to put a smile on her face instead of the furrow of concern.
“The address,” Diana said after a few moments, her index finger tracing his handwriting on one of the envelopes. “They all have the correct address.”
Steve sighed and moved towards her, crouching in front of her and folding his arms across her lap.
Diana looked down at him then, her eyes searching his. And whatever it was that she saw made her features relax, which made the tightness in his chest ease some, although it never went away completely.
“I kept an eye on you,” Steve admitted, studying her, his fingers itching to reach over and touch her hair, brush it from her cheek. He swallowed. “Not always voluntarily.” She raised an eyebrow at him, and he explained, “Sameer gave me two of them. Just in case, you know—In case you… in case you needed something. I wanted to know that you were alright.”
He let out a long exhale through his nose and ran his hand through his hair, over his chin, realizing belatedly that the beard was still intact. His heart was pounding so hard against his ribs he suspected it could leave him with a fracture or two.
“I wasn’t going to send them,” Steve added after a moment, his eyes darting towards the envelopes. “But it was easier to pretend that writing them made sense when I went through all the right motions, you know. Signing, sealing…”
“Steve.”
He didn’t realize that he was no longer looking at her face, that his gaze was trained on the dip between her clavicles because there was confusion and questions in her eyes, and the old guilt was churning in the pit of his stomach again. It was hard to look her in the eye when he felt that way, when everything felt raw and tender to the touch, and he feared he’d see rejection and reproach in her gaze.
She reached for him, hand brushing through his hair before she cupped her hands over his cheeks and lifted his face up until he had no choice but to meet her eyes again.
“I wish you’d sent them,” Diana whispered, her thumb running over the ridge of his cheekbone.
His heart slammed against his ribs once more with a hollow thud.
“I wish I’d known how,” he echoed. “I messed up, Diana. I messed up when I left, and I messed up when I didn’t know how to come back.” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Christ, how he was supposed to look at her when she seemed to be staring straight into his very soul? “And, let’s be honest here, I’ll probably mess up again.”
Diana’s lips stretched into a smile. She trailed her index finger down his cheek and along his jaw. “I can see that.”
Steve let out a laugh that came out shaky and unsteady, and shook his head. “The beard goes, I promise.” He covered one of her hands with his, holding her palm against his cheek, his eyes earnest.
“I wish you’d told me sooner,” she breathed, although he had no idea which one of his confessions she was talking about, or even whether he wanted to know.
There was pain and the weight of suffering and shame hiding between the lines, the ink faded from age and the clammy air of the storage room. People and places that no longer existed anywhere but on those pages. His feelings for her spilled out in ink because she had not been there to hear him, nor would he have ever found it in him to bare his soul so completely without the buffer of paper and hundreds of miles between them.
He could feel those miles disappearing before his eyes.
She leaned forward, and Steve dropped on his knees before her, straightening up to meet her mouth half-way, his fingers sliding into her hair, framing her face. Last night had been drenched with hunger and desire and the need to find one another all over again, but right now he kissed her with reverence and devotion, trying to pour every word he had never managed to find within himself but that he desperately needed her to hear into his touch.
“It tickles, I know,” he murmured almost without sound when she drew back, her hand still hovering over his cheek.
Diana laughed that wonderful, throaty laugh of hers that sent a jolt of desire down his spine, and wound her arms around his neck.
“Thank you,” she whispered into his ear. “Thank you for coming back to me.”
---
The knock on her office door came on a Tuesday afternoon two weeks later while Diana was busy cataloguing the new arrival of artifacts — a task she could have easily delegated but rarely chose to do so, taken with its calming qualities. She had excellent organizational skills and was exceptional at negotiations, but it had been the history that drew her to this line of work, the past that she wanted to stay connected to — perhaps, because her future seemed so infinite sometimes — and Diana never wanted to stray too far from that path.
She lifted her head when a quick rap on her door pulled her out of her thoughts, and the next moment it opened a crack and Pierre stuck his head inside, his expression half-exasperated and half-confused.
“There is someone here for you,” he said, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.
Diana’s eyes darted towards her planner.
“I don’t think I have anything—”
“She said it was personal,” Pierre interjected.
Diana hesitated for a moment. She was rarely interrupted by anyone who wasn’t employed at the museum, and her assistant would have surely told her if her surprise visitor was one of the other curators. She thought briefly of a handful of shipment forms that needed to be signed off on and a conference call with Milan that she needed to approve. There was a new exhibition to plan and a report to complete. But technically, strictly speaking, she could spare a few minutes.
“Very well,” she nodded to Pierre as she closed the catalogue form and stood up from her desk. “Let her in.”
For a second, Diana’s mind jumped to Selina Kyle, and then, very briefly, to Lois, coming to Paris for a surprise visit. However, the woman who walked in when Pierre stepped aside was neither of them, and even though it should not have surprised Diana, the appearance of a complete stranger in her office caught her off-guard nonetheless.
The woman was tall and poised, dressed in a pair of black jeans and a leather jacket, her dark hair pulled into a no-nonsense ponytail and a motorcycle helmet tucked under one of her arms. Her gaze swept over the glass cabinets lining the walls of Diana’s office, not in surprise but in appreciation, Diana noted. And then her eyes fixed on Diana herself.
“Diana Prince?” the woman clarified, as if the plate on the door was not convincing enough.
Diana nodded to Pierre who was still hovering behind her visitor and after a moment of hesitation, his eyes darting between the two women, he retreated. Diana walked around her desk, offering her guest a polite smile and holding out a hand.
“My pleasure. And you are?”
The woman shook the offered hand, her grip firm and sure. “We need to talk.”
Diana's eyebrows crept up. She stepped towards the door and closed it, ensuring their privacy, before she turned back to her visitor.
The woman’s gaze swept around the room once more before her eyes locked with Diana’s.
“My name is Kendra Saunders, and I believe that you have something that belongs to me.”
---
The conversation was still running on an endless loop through Diana’s mind when she stepped into her apartment that evening, no less intrigued now that she had some time to digest the information than she had been while she listened to Kendra Saunders relay her story several hours ago.
Steve was in the kitchen, the air around him filled with the smell of cooking food. Roast, if Diana was not mistaken. With grilled vegetables.
She set her purse on the table in the hallway and paused, watching him as he chopped vegetables for a salad while humming something under his breath. So at ease it gave her heart a small twinge. He was never more relaxed than when he was at home, and Diana was never more herself than when she was with him, the longing building up in her chest when she least expected it. She figured it would be a while before they were completely used to the reality of having each other again.
Tomorrow, he would be leaving for Gotham again, to meet with Amanda Waller and to run some tests with one of Bruce’s prototypes — a modified jet that Bruce had spent the past several months working on, with Steve’s advisory, no less. And if that were to take more than a few days, Diana was planning on joining him over the weekend. She hated sleeping on her own, hated how cold the sheets were without him and how empty the bed felt. Alone, she rarely managed to catch more than a few hours of fitful rest. An eight-hour trip, in her opinion, was a good enough solution to remedy that.
Steve looked up then, finally noticing her, and smiled, making Diana reconsider her plans, just for a second, to take the rest of the week off to go with him.
He wiped his hands on the kitchen towel and moved towards her, meeting her halfway.
“Hi,” he murmured, sliding his arm around Diana’s waist and dipping his head to brush a quick kiss to her lips. “When did you get here?”
“A minute ago,” Diana murmured. She smoothed her palms over his chest. “Didn’t want to distract you, you seemed quite preoccupied.”
Her eyes swept over the bowls and pans and dirty cutlery lying on the cooking counter.
Steve smirked. “Yeah, well… everyone needs a hobby.”
“Everyone needs to eat,” Diana corrected him, and he laughed.
“Touché,” he conceded as he moved closer, gathering her in his arms and kissing her again, properly this time, leaving her dazed and happy. “Hey,” he breathed when he drew back. “Are you hungry?”
“Some,” Diana admitted.
Steve nodded and stepped away from her. “Dinner’s in 30.” He walked back towards the fridge. “Everything alright? You seem… well, now you’re the one who seems preoccupied.”
She watched him pull a bottle of wine from the fridge and pick two glasses from the rack.
“I had an… interesting afternoon,” she responded after a moment as she followed him, peeking curiously into one of the bowls sitting on the counter.
Steve glanced at her. “Good interesting?”
“Interesting interesting.”
He poured the wine and offered one glass to her.
“A woman came by to see me today,” Diana explained in response to his curiously arched eyebrow. “She claimed to be a direct descendant of the people who forged the Claw of Horus,” she added, and Steve paused, turning to look at her.
“You’re kidding me.”
She wished she was, but it was perhaps the surreal feeling that the conversation with Kendra Saunders had left her with that somehow made it all the more real. The woman’s claim had not been an easy one to accept and Diana was not eager to simply hand over a weapon of mass destruction to a stranger who, for all they all knew, intended to use it against the world.
However, the gauntlet was adorned with ancient carvings in a language that had been dead since before Diana’s people had found refuge on Themyscira. And Kendra Saunders wore a pendant with the exact same symbols that, if Diana had to guess, wouldn’t have been easy to come across completely by accident.
She sipped her wine while Steve processed the information. “Let me guess,” he said after a couple of minutes, “she wants it back?”
“Among other things,” Diana responded.
She was planning on checking the woman's story, but if it was true, if Kendra Saunders was indeed who she claimed to be—
Steve blinked at her. “Huh?”
Diana twisted the stem of her glass in her hand. The idea behind the Justice League was to gather together people with extraordinary gifts to keep the world safe. If that woman could control the power trapped held within the gauntlet and use it for protection instead of destruction—
“Diana?”
She looked up. “Hm?” She shook her head. “Sorry, I just—”
“You’re thinking of bringing her up with the League,” Steve prompted
It did not surprise Diana that he had caught on so easily.
She took another sip of her wine. “I might need to make sure that she’s telling the truth first.”
He pondered her words for a few moments and then nodded. “Does that mean you’re coming with me to Gotham?” he asked, his eyes lighting up with hope.
Diana smiled. She set her wine down on the counter and moved towards Steve.
“No.” Her arms slid around him and she tilted her face up, her eyes searching his. “But I do plan to make our time together count while you’re still here.”
He grinned at her, that boyish grin that she loved so.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Notes:
I’m hoping I tied most of the loose ends here :) Though I am open to questions if you have any!
Those of you who are not familiar with the Justice League comics - Kendra Saunders is Hawkgirl who is quite an important member of the Justice League in some storylines. Though I hope that because she only appears briefly, it’s not very confusing :)
As always, feedback is much appreciated!
Also, since this story is pretty much done - that epilogue is coming, I swear! - and if you are interested in more Diana/Steve content, I just started posting a new multichapter where the lights are which is sort of a WW84 fix-it but also it ignores most of what happened in WW84. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, please have a look! It was my lockdown project and I’m very proud of it. (And while we’re at it, feel free to check out my WW84 one shot fix-it that also ignores most of WW84 - line of fire. Yeah, shameless self-promotion, I regret nothing.)
And thank you again for sticking around for so long, you’re the absolute best :)
Chapter 26
Notes:
Welp, as promised, the very last bit of this story is here. Again, as promised, it is entirely self-indulgent because I was not yet ready to say goodbye to this fic with just the previous chapter. I really do hope you’ll enjoy it though :)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Epilogue
Gotham, 2018
Diana’s eyes swept over the form of Wayne Manor, looming before her, massive and grandiose despite the crumbling façade and areas that remained charred black — remnants of the fire that had destroyed it years ago. It looked poised even with the expansive scaffolding wrapped around its left wing and a dozen workers in bright orange jackets busy with turning the place into a sound structure again, the quiet of the late morning interrupted by a cacophony of hammering, drilling, and voices echoing around.
Shielding her eyes from the sun, Diana tilted her head, her eyes taking in the empty sockets of windows-to-be and new bricks that had replaced those that had crumbled away with time or under the influence of elements, the air around her thick with the smell of fresh cement and plaster and sawdust.
It had a long way to go still, but Bruce’s team had made sufficient progress in the few weeks since Diana had seen the place last. She could feel his relief, too. Not only was he bringing his childhood home to life, the guilt over his parents’ death not as prominent in his eyes anymore, but she knew that housing the League in a place as small and private as the lake house was impractical and more intrusive than Bruce was comfortable with. It certainly wasn’t a suitable long-term location.
That, and he clearly enjoyed the process, Diana mused, casting a sideways look at the man standing next to her, his gaze pensive as it took in the progress.
He stayed quiet as she spoke about Kendra Saunders, adding the details that she had learned about the woman since their encounter the previous week.
“And you’re being serious about this?” Bruce asked when she fell silent, turning to her.
Diana shrugged. “You were the one who decided to gather people with extraordinary gifts together to fight for all that is good in the world,” she reminded him.
“Yeah, I just didn’t expect you, of all people, to take it so close to heart,” he smirked. And then he handed her a hard hat. “And for the love of god, put this on.”
“Worried a brick will fall on my head, Bruce?” she teased but obediently put the proffered item on, feeling oddly joyous over it.
Bruce glowered at her. “Not even my insurance can cover injuries caused to one of the esteemed curators of the Louvre. Or Wonder Woman herself, for that matter.”
Diana smirked.
“I will try not to cause any trouble.”
“We will have to put it to vote,” he went on, shifting back to their conversation. “If she is interested and if she is a right fit…”
Diana nodded. “Of course.”
He stayed quiet for a few moments. “You want to trust someone with a weapon of mass destruction,” he noted, as if Diana hadn’t thought of it herself.
“But imagine what it would be like if it was used for good?”
In a sense, they all were weapons, powerful enough to harm thousands. Millions even. This was not about their nature, nor was it about their pasts, or the things that they had gone through to end up here, in this moment of time, doing what they were doing. Each of them had the power, and, if she was being honest with herself, enough reasons to turn on the world and lash out. Not doing so was a choice, a decision that they had all made, unable to live with the idea of taking a different path. And Diana loved them all the more for the strength that they had shown by doing so, by not following the footpaths of Lex Luthor and the likes of him.
Perhaps, there had never been hope for Lex Luthor, after all.
But it was different for the people who chose to join the Justice League — because they needed one another, and because they couldn’t bear the thought of standing back when they could change the world for the better. Not even after it had hurt them.
The roaring sound of a motorcycle engine cut through her thoughts, and she turned around, watching a black dot appear from around a bend in the road, growing bigger with each passing moment.
Bruce followed her gaze before turning to Diana again.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow when everyone is around. Maybe noon? I’ll get Arthur on the phone,” he offered, and muttered, “provided he’s not busy talking to fish.”
Diana nodded absently.
She watched Steve’s bike zip along the road, expecting him to turn towards the lake house where Alfred was waiting for them with lunch. Instead, he turned onto the gravel lane leading towards the manor, pulling up at the end of it just as she started walking towards him.
He slid off his bike and pulled off his helmet, setting it on the passenger seat behind him, his hair sticking out in every which way. Habitually, he tried to smooth it down with his hand, but it seemed to have the exact opposite effect. Her lips stretched into a smile, curving upwards at the corners as she approached.
“You’re early,” she said.
Steve smiled. “It ended sooner than I thought it would,” he said, it being his meeting with Amanda Waller in Gotham. He lifted his hand and tapped his finger against her hard hat. “Looks good on you. Can I get me one of these?”
She’d forgotten she was still wearing it.
Diana took it off and glanced over her shoulder towards the manor. “Another ten yards, and you will be legally obligated to wear one,” she noted, turning back to Steve again.
He laughed. “I’ll take my chances.”
He moved to her then and she stepped easily into his arms, tilting her face up to kiss him, certain in that moment that she could never, ever tire of this. Steve’s palm curled over her cheek, his skin smelling of leather and wind, and Diana’s heart swelled against the inside of her chest. It was as if her ribcage didn’t have enough space to contain the wild flurry of the joy inside of her.
He pulled back and traced his thumb over her cheekbone.
“You done here?” he asked, eyes darting toward the massive form of Wayne Manor.
“I am,” Diana nodded. “Do you want to have a closer look?”
Steve squinted in the sunlight and shook his head. “I have. I’ve been here longer than you,” he reminded her. “Guess I could do without construction dust for a while.”
“Fair enough,” she conceded.
“Do you—” He glanced at his bike and then at Diana. “I thought I’d come ask if you needed a lift?”
Her eyes moved from the manor to his motorcycle and then towards the lake house peeking out from behind the trees about a mile down the road. She considered her options, and then shook her head, reaching for Steve’s hand instead, grabbing it with both of hers.
“Let’s walk.”
An odd calm settled over her, the warmth of Steve’s hand in hers and the sun on her skin easy to focus on. For the first time in a very long time, there was no crisis looming over them, no immediate danger that needed to be defused and eliminated, just the future stretching before them, free for the taking.
Tomorrow, they were going to have a meeting and decide whether expansion was in order. Diana knew already what decision they would make. They would have lunch and they’d talk, and she would point out that the house that Bruce had been working rigorously on could fit at least a hundred people, and that Bruce should be interested in filling it. Arrangements would have to be made, paperwork to be filled — she could already hear Steve groan over the latter, and the mental image made Diana’s lips stretch out wider.
Walking beside her, Steve gave her a sidelong glance. “What are you smiling about?”
Diana pressed her lips together. “Nothing.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t press.
There was no need to think of it just yet, she reminded herself.
Today, they were going to have lunch with Bruce and Alfred, and they would talk about anything but the Justice League. They would watch heavy clouds roll from the east and open up, pouring buckets of rain on them, the downpour so heavy they wouldn’t be able to see the other side of the lake, and she and Steve would have to borrow one of Bruce’s cars to get back to the city, the rain rendering his motorcycle useless.
And later that night, she would forget herself in Steve’s arms, falling asleep with the sheets tangled around them and peace in her heart.
Soon enough, Diana knew, she would have to put on her armour again and they would fight side by side, flanked by the other members of the League, united in their purpose. But for today, the promise of good food and pleasant conversation and simply being was more than enough.
---
Greece, 8 months later
Steve Trevor didn’t remember dying in 1918. There had been no bright light on the other side, no tunnel, no life flashing before his eyes before he had slipped into the oblivion of death, for however brief a time.
But he was wondering now, a hundred years later, if it was that fleeting dance with death that had given him the ability to see the world in such bright contrast and such vivid colours. There was the sea stretching outside his window now, so impossibly blue he couldn’t stand to look, melting into the sky where white wisps of clouds chased one another. There was a drop of white-washed houses descending towards the water and bright-red flowers on the windowsills, with specs of green and orange here and there—of orange trees in massive clay pots.
He had spent the past few days so mesmerized by it all, by the tranquillity of this place, that his head was still spinning, making him wonder if he had in fact died and gone to… well, maybe not heaven, but some other nice place.
Diana had laughed when he’d told her that, the sound that made his heart beat faster and his soul sing.
“Could a dead man get a sunburn?” she teased, her eyes crinkling at the corners and making Steve helpless against the urge to lean forward and press a kiss to the bow of her lips, tasting the sea and the sun and a million things in between.
Well, she’d had a point there. He was never going to forgo sunscreen ever again in his life.
Still, the sensation remained—and he was drunk on it, desperate to hold on to it for as long as he could. To seep in the sun—such a rare occurrence in Gotham he had forgotten what it was even like. A rare visitor in Paris, too, at this time of year.
He stepped around the bed, and just then, his phone started to ring.
Steve’s eyes darted towards the thin curtain swaying at the balcony door and Diana’s form on the other side of it. He grimaced at the sight of Waller’s name on the screen, tempted to let the call go to voicemail. He was on a much-deserved vacation, and she knew it.
He sighed.
Tempting…
He pressed accept and lifted the phone to his ear. “Director,” he said, dryly.
If she was going to interrupt his time with Diana, he was not going to pretend to be happy about it, though Steve suspected that Waller didn’t give a damn one way or another.
The call didn’t surprise him. There was no such thing as a break in their line of work, but the unfairness of it usually was short-lived, quelled by the sense of duty towards things bigger than his personal needs. It helped that Diana understood—perhaps better than anyone.
As he listened, absently, his gaze drifted towards Diana once more. She was wearing cut-off shorts and a white tank top, her hair down and spilling over her shoulders. Unlike him, she seemed to be impervious to sunburn, though Steve tried not to hold it against her.
And for the millionth time in the past year, he wondered how he had gotten so lucky. To have her in his life. To love her and to be loved by her. One might say that those things could not have been in the cards for a liar and a murderer and a smuggler, but god help him, there was nothing that Steve wouldn’t have done to erase the past and forgive himself for his sins as long as Diana loved him.
Tomorrow, he knew, they were going to take a boat and sail to one of the smaller islands. They would wander the narrow streets of a village with the name he would never be able to pronounce and hold hands and duck into the small shops to hide from the heat. He was going to buy her ice-cream and taste it on her lips.
And tonight, before even all that, he was going to love her with the windows open and the light breeze skating over their heated bodies and the future stretching all the way into forever before them. And he would hold her like he meant to never let her go.
If Amanda Waller ever stopped buzzing in his ear, that is.
Steve rubbed his eyes, making sure to make small sounds of acknowledgement every now and then. The good thing about the Director of A.R.G.U.S. was that she rarely wanted to hear anyone else speak but herself.
He was not going to complain about that.
It had been eight months since his appointment as the Justice League liaison, and while there were still moments when he wanted to slam his door on the way out of her office—and she was probably waiting for him to do just that, as well—they had managed to find balance. To figure out how to work around one another while avoiding crossing paths as much as it was possible.
Thinking back over the experience, it was nothing like anything he had ever imagined his life to be. Yet here he was, certain that he wouldn’t want anything else. Not for the world.
Okay, that wasn’t strictly true. If it was up to Steve, he and Diana would never leave this place. This island. This tiny apartment. He would be beyond happy if they had never even put their clothes back on for the rest of their lives but that last one was neither here, nor there, really.
Diana loved Greece. She had told him that it reminded her of Themyscira in ways she couldn’t explain. He never made her try, but he loved the soft smile that crossed her lips when she stood ankle-deep in the water at sunset, or the excitement in her eyes at the sound of Greek being spoken all around them. He had yet to understand her fondness for the local food, but by god, there was so much serenity to her here he simply wanted to bottle it up, put it in one of those snow-globe toys and give it to her, to hold on to it for as long as she breathed.
“Are we clear on that, Captain Trevor?” Waller’s voice drifted into Steve’s ear.
He grimaced, realizing that he had completely tuned out the past ten minutes of their conversation.
“Yes, Director Waller,” he responded obediently all the same.
She was likely going to email him the brief of whatever it was that she needed from him, anyway, he reasoned with himself. And he was on vacation. He was allowed to be distracted and love-sick and desperate to get off this call.
He could have sworn he heard Waller roll her eyes.
She hung up without goodbye.
Steve huffed out a breath, not surprised. Then, he found Bruce’s number, knowing that whatever was up, Batman would know. (They just knew better than to bug Diana while she was away.)
He spoke with Bruce, left the instructions on what to do, as far as A.R.G.U.S. was concerned, and asked the other man to keep him posted—but preferably not before the next week. He called the office as well, spoke to his team, to his CO, just to be safe. By the time he finally hung up for good, he was tempted to toss his phone from the balcony and into the sea.
Steve stepped towards the narrow door and pulled the curtain aside, moving out onto the narrow ledge.
Diana was standing with her hands curled over the railing, her eyes trained on the water stretching all the way into the horizon. With the sun high up in the sky, blindingly bright, Steve couldn’t even tell where the sea ended and the sky began.
He moved to her without hesitation, sliding his arms around her waist from behind and dipping his head to drop a kiss onto her shoulder, breathing in the delicate scent of her skin—coconut and lemon and everything he loved so.
She straightened up and leaned against him, melting against his chest. He couldn’t help but hold her closer.
“Everything alright?” Diana asked, half-turning her head, her fingers skittering absently along his forearm.
“Waller,” Steve said impassively. He rested his cheek against the side of her head.
“You’re on vacation,” Diana reminded him, a smile in her voice, cajoling a laugh out of him.
“Hey, you stopped that robbery two days ago,” he told her. “Technically, that was work, too.”
She laughed at that, the infectious sound that made his heart twist in his chest. He tightened his hold on her and let out a slow breath.
The world was still out there, waiting for them. It hadn’t stopped spinning because they had come to a halt, and he knew that there would always be something and someone greedy and someone in need of help. But it could wait. He knew it could.
He curled his hand over hers and wondered if there was a chance he might convince her to skip the trip to the museum that she planned for the afternoon and just stay in and—
He grazed a kiss to her hair and breathed in, taking in the smell of the sea and the cries of seagulls and the long, long stretch of the beach below.
“Is this what people do when there are no wars to fight?” Diana asked, after a long moment, her fingers running in circles over his knuckles.
Steve chuckled.
“This, and other things,” he said, the familiar words slipping from his lips with ease.
He glimpsed her smile as she asked, “What things?”
“Well, they have breakfast. They love their breakfast,” he added as she laughed. “They love to wake up and read the paper and go work. They get married, grow old together, I guess.”
Slowly, Diana turned in the circle of his embrace. Her arms slid around him as she tipped her face to his, her gaze searching Steve’s with humour mixed with something else, something that made his breath catch, dancing behind her eyes.
“What is it like?” she asked as he lifted his hand to brush away a strand of hair that fell across her cheek.
Steve bowed his head closer to hers, until they were breathing the same air and she was all he could see.
His lips twitched a second before he pressed them to hers on, “There’s only one way to find out.”
The end
Notes:
Aaaaaan this is it :) Gosh, I truly cannot believe this is over. But I am also glad that I managed to finish it. In my mind, I’m opening a bottle of champagne (In reality, I’m having iced-coffee but it’ll do)
Again, I would like to thank you all for sticking around and for all the support this story received over the years. You all have been nothing but absolutely wonderful and for that, I will always be grateful.
A special massive THANK YOU goes to akajb who helped me edit this entire monster. This story wouldn’t have been what it is without her.
Preempting a possible question - there will be no sequel. I don’t know if anyone was going to ask for it, but I am really and truly done with this universe. I think this story is long enough to exist as it is. I do, however, have more content to share to please keep an eye on that :) Also a side note - a few of you asked for babies and more family stuff but… All writers have things they just don’t like writing. I hate to disappoint those of you who are after that kind of content but I don’t write kids/pregnancies/marriage. It’s just something that I am deeply uncomfortable doing. You want angst/action/adventure - I’m your person :)
Well, I suppose this is it? I am now going to work on where the lights are full time :) Please check it out if you haven’t already and if you enjoy fluffy/angst/hot moments between Steve and Diana. The fun stuff is just getting started there!
Again, thank you everyone for joining me on this journey, and hopefully, I’ll see you guys around!