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Summary:

At the sound of her heels on the marble floor, the man whipped around, his face pale and his mouth a little slack, opening and closing without a sound.

She watched a faint frown appear between his brows.

"Diana?"

A hundred years after his death, Steve Trevor crashes back into Diana's life when she least expects it, and they finally-finally-get their much-deserved second chance.

Chapter 1

Notes:

Okay, look, I know I still owe you the last chapter and epilogue for A Road Paved In Gold. We'll get there, I swear. I've been having some creative difficulties there, but we'll get there.

In the meantime... I started working on this story soon after the plot first leaked, so... while it still requires some work (okay, quite a bit of work), a massive chunk of it is already complete. Yay! I'm still unsure about the chapter breaks but I'm expecting there to be around 25-28 chapters, approximately, although please don't hold it against me if it gets derailed at some point :P It's rated T for now, but I will change it to M once we get there.

Without spoiling anything, I'm just going to say that I kept a couple of things from WW84 and disregarded the rest (sorry, not sorry). No creepy possessions, obviously.

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

Chapter Text

Prologue 

Washington DC, 1984

Diana landed softly on the balcony outside of her apartment, her boots barely making a sound on the concrete ledge that circled the entire building. She didn’t want to disturb the stillness of the night that had fallen over the city.

She pulled at the balcony door — it was kept unlatched at all times to provide for more convenient comings and goings, should the need arise unexpectedly. It gave easily, sliding open without a sound, the inside of her apartment drowning in shadows. A place of comfort that didn’t feel like one, not anymore.

She lingered just outside, listening carefully, although what for, she wasn’t sure anymore. But nothing moved, nothing stirred, and the dissonance between that and the storm raging inside of her made her breath catch a little and her mind swim.

She stepped through the doorway and paused again, eyes moving over the dark shapes of furniture — a quilt draped over the back of the couch, a bookshelf pushed against the wall. Silent witnesses without a life of their own.

It was the silence that caught Diana off guard, more than anything else. As though someone had flipped a switch, bringing everything to a sudden halt.

After the fight was over; after the blood had stopped pumping through her veins in earnest and when the taste on her tongue was no longer of ash, it was the silence and stillness, so unnatural and abrupt, that had landed on her like a blow. The emptiness that the broken spell had left behind so consuming it threatened to turn her inside out.

She waited for the feeling to leave but it seemed to have followed her home, as well.

Steve’s watch was sitting near a framed photograph. His picture—a newspaper clipping meant to keep his name remembered—on the shelf above it, his smile bright and open and infectious. And like every other time Diana looked at it, her chest constricted with longing.

The Dreamstone had never brought him back, it had only allowed Diana to believe what she had wanted to believe. What she had wanted to believe for so long that she had been willing to accept an illusion for reality, her dreams for possibility, and sacrifice everything in order to hold on to them.

A fool.

A desperate, broken-hearted fool grasping at straws and letting a madman pull at her strings, using her like a puppet.

She moved inside, the air around her thick, making her feel like she was walking through water. There was a cup he had left on the table the morning she had taken him shopping. Yet, there was no smell of him lingering in the room—she hadn’t expected it to still be there, but the absence of it slashed across her senses all the same.

Her shoulder throbbed a little. The four parallel marks left by the swipe of Cheetah’s paw had stopped bleeding, but Diana was still aware of them, a little mad at herself for letting her guard down enough for the strike to land, a little grateful for the distraction from the gnawing ache eating her up from the inside.

The wound had started to close up already. In another hour, there would be no trace of it left, and just like everything else that had to do with Barbara Ann and who she used to be, it would simply become another chapter of Diana’s life that she knew there was no going back to.

She could see it now, small things she should have noticed before but was too swept away to pick up on. How all of their conversations seemed to be only about their shared memories, as though he had not lived prior to meeting her. How each time she had brought up his friends, he would only speak of the things she knew already. How he had seemed to brush off her words about visiting his family, his childhood home, as though it was nothing.

But it was not the case, Diana was realizing now. Each wish made on the stone created by the God of Lies had a twist to it. She had gotten Steve Trevor back except it had not been him, not really.

It had been merely someone — something — constructed out of her memories entirely. Everything he had said to her was something she had wanted to hear. The things she had seen in him were the things she had expected to see.

Diana’s gaze travelled over the room and landed on a photograph she had placed on the nightstand only yesterday. One that was meant to be of her and Steve, snapped by a passer-by in a park—because he had never seen a portable camera before, and she wanted so desperately to make him part of this world.

Where there had been two people before, Diana was alone now, her smile relaxed and happy but the person who had made it so nowhere to be seen. The spot beside her was empty, capturing instead a couple sitting on a picnic blanket in the background. (She hadn’t noticed them on the day the photo was taken.)

Her stomach clenched, coiling into a tight knot, stealing her breath away and leaving her feeling sick.

Not real. Never had been.

She could feel him still—feel the touch of his hands, the smell of skin when she would press her face to his neck. But even those memories, despite startling clarity in the middle, felt like they were brittle around the edges. The harder she tried to hold on to them and bring them into focus, the faster they crumbled.

With numb fingers, Diana picked up a pillow from the bed. One from Steve’s side. She pressed her face to it, inhaling deeply, but there was nothing but the smell of fresh linen on it.

She wondered then, absently and without much care, if there was anyone whose wish hadn’t come true with a catch to it. Or if everyone who had fallen prey to Maxwell Lord’s cruel scheme had had something dear to them twisted into something ugly and painful in a game set up by a maniac?

Diana dropped the pillow as if it burned her.

There was a shirt draped over the footboard of the bed. She reached for it, surprised to realize it was not hers. Instead, it was one of the few garments she had purchased for Steve the week prior. One she had picked because she had thought it brought out the blue of his eyes so nicely.

Diana trailed her fingers along its collar, soft cotton smooth against her skin.

The one thing that she hadn’t expected, hadn’t seen coming even after everything she had lived through it the first time she had lost him, was how completely and utterly gone a person could become in just a split of a second.

She had thought, back in 1918, that nothing could ever possibly hurt more than it had when she had watched Steve’s plane go up in flames, a supernova in the pitch-black sky ripping her in half from the inside. But now that this moment had come, his presence but a memory once again, and her heart was tearing at the seams once more, her chest so tight with grief she could barely take a breath for fear of ceasing to exist.

I can save today. You can save the world.

He had remained true to his word, on that wretched day sixty-six years ago. But close to seven decades later, Diana was no closer to the mission that Steve had put upon her than she had been on the day when he had climbed into that plane to give her the few more precious moments she’d needed to defeat the God of War.

The world needs you, Diana. You know what you need to do.

She repeated Steve’s words in her head.

(Or were they her own, spoken from the depths of her mind? She couldn’t trust anything he had said to her, for all of it was born out of her wishful thinking and desperation. Every smile he had brought out, every confession had been nothing but her desire for something she could never have.)

For the first time in her life, she wondered if it was true.

She has been raised to believe that the world needed her, them, the Amazons. That they were brought to life with a mission to make it a better place. But she didn’t see it anymore, and maybe she hadn’t for a long time.

Her hands curled around his shirt. She took a step back. And then another one. And then one more until she reached the far wall. She slid to the floor, the silent making of a sob trying to rip its way out of her chest, her throat tight and burning with tears that were still to come.

Diana dropped her head in her hands, her fingers still curled over fistfuls of the soft cotton, and buried her face in it as tears spilled at last. She could smell him still, not caring if the scent was there or if it was merely her mind continuing to play tricks on her in an attempt to save her sanity from spiralling into an abyss of despair.

She breathed him in, her tears soaking the fabric as she begged the night to give him back to her.

But this time, no one heard her.

 

Chapter 1

Paris, 2018

Steve lets go of her hands and steps forward, transfixed. The planes sitting on the dark airfield are nothing out of the ordinary to Diana, but to him—she can’t imagine.

This is what she must have looked like when she stepped off the boat that had brought her to this world and onto the busy streets of London, unsure where to look first or how to take it all in. She smiles, watching him as his gaze moves around slowly, his jaw a little slack in awe. She would have teased him about that, or about forgetting her in an instant if the look on his face wasn’t so endearing that it makes her heart hurt.

“You wanna choose?”

“This one!”

He steps towards one of the jets, reaching his hand over to touch the polished wing of the plane before him. A tug of concern arches through Diana’s chest, the memory from the past tugging at her heart. She pushes it away, pressing her lips around a smile, delighted by Steve’s excitement.

And then the plane explodes and a wave of heat is tossing her backwards as his voice calling her name pierces the air—

Diana woke up as a scream tore its way out of her throat, the heat of the fire chasing her all the way from the dream. Her skin was clammy with cold sweat, her hands twisted around fistfuls of the sheet that was tangled around her body, reminding her of the tanker treads that had once kept her from rushing after Steve, a hundred years ago.

With her heart pounding against the inside of her ribs, she forced her hands to unclench. Her throat was tight, each breath a struggle. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, willing the crazy gallop of her heartbeat to slow down.

That day, in the Air and Space Museum, there had been no explosion and no one got hurt, but it didn’t stop her mind from taking a good memory and tangling it into a knot with an older one, one that had shattered her world once.

Diana had stopped wondering if nightmares would ever let her be a long time ago.

She sat up slowly, rubbing a tired hand down her face before turning towards the nightstand where the clock read 4:27 AM. Two hours before she needed to be out of bed. On instinct, she turned to the other side of her bed, running her hand over the cold sheets, the pillow untouched. After the war, she used to reach for Steve in her sleep almost nightly, the ache of finding the spot empty making her want to fold in on herself and cease to be.

It had taken her decades to break out of a habit forged by only one night. In 1984, the instinct had returned, together with the disappointment that would settle in her stomach each time she had found no one there. Or, even worse, someone else there. Someone who was not Steve.

Diana pulled her hand back.

She sighed and pushed the covers aside, sliding onto the cool floor. She got dressed in the semi-darkness dispersed by nothing but the faint light from the street lights streaming through the thin curtains on her window, choosing to forgo turning on the lamp. She twisted her hair into a knot near the nape of her neck and picked up her phone from the nightstand. Sleep wasn’t an option, her mind too wired and restless despite the busy day behind her and the busier one ahead.

In the hallway, she paused, considering making herself a cup of tea. But the idea wasn’t appealing, the aftershocks of adrenaline rush brought on by her nightmare pushing her forward. A familiar sensation that had often brought her to the training beach on Themyscira, although for entirely different reasons. Funny how some things never changed. At the front door, she slid her feet into a pair of running shoes and grabbed her keys from the bowl on the table.

She took the elevator to the ground floor and walked past the empty concierge desk. Diana could hear the TV working in the small room behind it, but neither the whirr of the cables, nor the quiet ding of the elevator doors sliding open had disturbed Andre, the stately man in his 60s who often worked the night shift, for which she was grateful. She was not up for exchanging customary pleasantries when she felt so out of sorts.

She headed past the desk and towards the door at the back of the main foyer leading to the residential gym, the soles of her shoes squeaking quietly on the marble floors.

The gym was dark and empty at this time of day and would remain so for another hour, at least. Enough for her to find her peace of mind once more, for however long it would last.

She closed the door behind her and turned on the light.

There had been a time when Diana would have scoffed at the idea of one day missing Antiope’s gruelling routines that would rouse her and her sisters before dawn and chase them out of their beds and into the cool morning. Muscles aching and lungs burning, they would fight their way into a new day, their pride over belonging to something great not stopping them from sharing teasing comments about Antiope and Phillipus trying to run them into their graves.

These days, Diana would have gladly given up her immortality for another morning on that beach, the fog hanging close over the sea. For another day on the training ground, the smell of grass permeating her senses and the sound of a demanding voice rising above them: “Again! Do it again!”

This room was nothing like that, of course. It smelled of rubber mats and metal and that peculiar scent of recycled air pushed through the vents, not of sea and grass and sun-bleached rock. But the physical exertion was enough to switch off her mind, put the demands of her body first until the balance was restored and she no longer had to breathe around the longing sitting on her chest like a stone. One that she knew could never be sated.

In her days of close involvement with the Justice League a couple of years ago, when she had stayed in Bruce’s house when her presence in Gotham had been required, Diana would run around the lake, taking the path that snaked between the old trees. She preferred that; the soft ground beneath her feet, an obstacle course of rocks and roots sticking from the ground and sharp turns where nature wouldn’t allow for a straight passage.

It was nothing like Themyscira, but in odd ways, be it the early morning fog, or the peace that could only be found away from the hustle and bustle of a big city, or the proximity of water, it reminded her of home anyway. In that particular regard, Paris had never quite felt the same. 

But those days were gone, that partnership which had been born out of desperation having long unravelled. She had not set her foot in Gotham in over six months now, and though Barry texted her several times a week and she spoke with Clark and Lois regularly, it was not the same.

Part of her wasn’t sure if she wanted it to be. Diana wondered sometimes if it falling apart had anything to do with what had happened between her and Bruce, or if maybe the Justice League was merely never meant to last, to begin with. She would return to help them if they needed her, and she knew that they knew that. Just like she knew they would look for an excuse not to call her.

By the time the gym door opened again, this time to let a young woman in a pink top in, Diana was breathless and panting, a film of sweat clinging to her skin and her mind clear, her equilibrium restored.

She gave the small customary smile of acknowledgement when the woman’s eyes skated over her as she headed towards the door.

“You’re an early bird, Mademoiselle Prince,” the concierge smiled at her when Diana passed his desk.

She smiled back and inquired about his health. Small moments that reminded her that she was part of this world, connected to other people in small, intangible ways.

The elevator arrived and Diana stepped inside. She checked her phone, not surprised to find a few messages already waiting for her attention. One from a curator in Milan, inquiring about some items to be sent to the Louvre and the logistics of the process. Diana forwarded it to her assistant, making a mental note to follow up on it later. Two more were from an archaeologist in Cairo doing some work for the museum. Not her department but she requested to be in the loop, and they had no reason to refuse though she knew it had to have raised some curious eyebrows.

She skimmed over the attached document, intrigued by the finds but disappointed that they had nothing to do with the reason behind her involvement. A personal one that she was aware would be frowned upon if it was to become known. She would respond later, thank them, ask them to keep her posted as they proceeded. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a dead-end, after all.

The last message was from Barry, a dancing cat image—someone had put a sad-looking cat face on a person wearing a Batsuit. Maybe even an actual photograph of Bruce snatched by a curious onlooker while he was on patrol. Something that Barry had explained to her with great seriousness a couple of years back was called a meme.

It made Diana smile, despite everything. Despite even the pang of longing that seeing his name had brought on.

She stepped out of the elevator onto her floor and unlocked her apartment door, placing the keys back in the bowl.

She would call him later today, Diana decided. He always seemed to welcome it. Of them all, Barry was, perhaps, the one who missed their time as a team the most, and because it was her decision to walk away that had nearly ended the League, Diana felt partly responsible over having taken it from him, even if at the time, she hadn’t seen any other way.

She put the kettle on, leaving the phone on the kitchen counter, and headed to the shower. By the time she stepped out of the bathroom, the sun had begun its slow ascent over the rooftops stretching all the way to the horizon outside the small balcony in her bedroom. Whatever aftertaste of the dream that had been still lingering in her head even after an hour at the gym seemed to be gone, at last. And like the many other times it happened in the past, she chose not to dwell on it.

Your mind will always play tricks on you, Diana, her mother used to say when Diana was little, as a way of explaining dreams as well as nightmares. But as long as you remember who you are, they can’t hurt you.

She had taken consolation from those words, when she was little. Now, each time she remembered them, there seemed to be an ominous tint to them that she couldn’t quite see past.

After what had happened in 1984, she could no longer trust her mind at all. But that was done now, the spell broken, the truth restored. Maxwell Lord had died seven years ago, a heart attack that had caught him by surprise in the middle of a dinner that he had never gotten to finish. She didn’t like to acknowledge it, but the news had brought her a jolt of satisfaction. Knowing that that man could never try to bend the world to his will again had settled something inside of her, though it hardly felt like closure. Not yet.

By the time she returned to the kitchen, dressed for work, there were three more messages waiting for her. From Celeste, her assistant, this time, who seemed to have had as early a start today as Diana.

Diana made herself a cup of tea and sent Celeste a quick text, promising that she was on her way and that they would sort it all out shortly. If only she could say the same about her restless mind, but Diana kept that thought to herself.

The rest of the day was a blur of phone calls and reports and sorting out a collection that had arrived the previous evening so it could be put on display and opened for the public. There were questions to be answered and shipments to be arranged. She asked Celeste to book her a ticket to Rome and to pick up their lunches afterwards, revelling in the hectic pace that no one would suspect a museum, of all places, of maintaining.

The call from Bruce came that same evening, when the lights in the main galleries were dimmed and most of the staff had left for the night.

Diana was in her office catching up on cataloguing, a cup of coffee from the coffee shop across the street sitting by her laptop when her phone chimed.

She paused at the sight of Bruce’s name on the screen, surprised. They kept in touch, in a way. Often through brief texts when he wanted to alert her about something happening on her side of the ocean, whenever someone needed help and he was way too far to be of real assistance. A lot of the time, it was not necessary—Diana had her own ways of staying informed, but she never had the heart to tell him that.

Once or twice, she suspected that there was something else behind it all. That maybe he had other motives behind wanting to speak with her. But he had never veered off-topic, ending their conversations as soon as they ran their course and never bringing up anything personal.

In the end, she decided that that was it—a flimsy sort of bond that extended to nothing else but their secret lives.

Yet, try as she might, she couldn’t recall him ever calling her. Couldn’t imagine why he would want to do it now.

Briefly, Diana contemplated letting it go to voicemail, but it could be an emergency. The thought made her reach for her phone.

“Bruce,” she said, trying to keep her voice level.

“Hey,” he echoed on the other end of the line. “Is this a good time?”

For what?

She leaned back away from the desk, a half-filled form describing a 1500-year-old vase on the screen before her. He didn’t sound alarmed, much to her relief. Her heartbeat settled some.

“Yes, of course.”

There was a pause hanging on the line for a few moments, reminding her why they were not into calls, to begin with. You couldn’t notice those moments filled with uncertainty in text messages. When Bruce spoke again, it was not what she had been expecting, either, throwing her off once more.

“I found something you’ve been looking for,” he said.

Diana raised an eyebrow, though she knew he couldn’t see it, surprised that he would know what she was after when half the time she didn’t know it herself.

“How do you know what I’m looking for?” she asked.

He let out a small chuckle. Even from across thousands of miles, she could feel him relax.

“Small world. And ours is smaller still.”

“And full of ears, it seems,” she murmured. “What is it?”

“A pendant,” he said. “With a stone that is rumoured to have something trapped inside of it. I’m sure you know the details better than I do, I’m just a… delivery boy, if you please.”

Diana froze, her heart slamming against her ribs once, twice, three times. It could be the wrong one, a small voice in the back of her mind told her. She had been wrong before, and though disappointment had a bitter taste to it, she’d prefer to keep her hopes down for the time being.

Still, this was not the description that could apply to many things, she knew that.

“How did you find it?” Diana asked, straining to hear his answer past the roar of blood in her ears.

“Asked around,” Bruce replied, succinct as per usual. She could oh so clearly imagine him shrugging, as though to ask—how else? “It appeared that John Constantine was in possession of something just like it.”

His tone flattened some.

“And he just gave it to you?”

“Well, I had to ask nicely and attach a check to my request, but he didn’t put up much of a fight.”

Now there was amusement in his tone that made the corner of Diana’s mouth quirk a little.

“I mailed it to you, express courier should be arriving tonight,” he continued. She could hear him moving about, and imagined him pacing the Batcave, restless and unable to keep still. “I’m assuming you’re still at work?”

Diana glanced at her laptop, then at her coffee that had probably gone cold.

“What if I wasn’t?”

“It would be a shame. He would have to come back tomorrow.”

She didn’t like it. That someone would know what she was after felt intrusive somehow. That it had reached Bruce’s ears made her feel like she had slipped though she knew it was not her fault. Bruce Wayne had his own ways of knowing things, ways that she couldn’t and didn’t want to control.

Diana thought of the last—and only—thing that he had sent to her. Her eyes drifted to the safe in the wall on a will of their own. It had been a while since she managed to bring herself to take out the suitcase and look at the glass plate of a photograph inside. Each time she did that, it had made her feel raw and aching, so she had stopped, choosing to hold on to her memories of Steve instead.

And now this.

She wondered if Bruce knew why she had spent the past year looking for that pendant, but she knew that asking that was pointless. He either didn’t know, or he would lie, and without seeing his face, she wouldn’t be able to know which one it was.

“How much did you pay?” Diana asked, her voice practical.

“Don’t,” he breathed. “I didn’t do it for that.”

“You didn’t buy it for yourself.”

“You don’t owe me anything, Diana. It’s a favour, we don’t bill for those, remember?” A pause. “It should be arriving within the next hour. I just wanted to tell you it was coming.”

She stayed quiet, trying to convince herself she didn’t hear the hurt in his tone that he had fought hard to mask. It made her own frustration ebb. Bruce had his methods that she didn’t always agree with but Diana didn’t doubt that whatever he had done, he had good intentions behind it.

(Again, she was reminded of having never asked how he had found the photograph. And now here was something else that would make her feel indebted to him even if he would never accept her attempt to make them even.)

“Thank you,” she said, softly.

The pause hung between them, unsaid words and the conversation they had never had but probably should have. She doubted this was the right time to bring it up, though.

She wanted to ask him how he was doing, if he was sleeping enough, if he worked as much as she remembered and whether he was careful in the streets of Gotham. But it was neither her place nor her right to do so. So she pressed her lips together as the silence stretched between them.

“Sure,” he said, after another moment.

“Good night, Bruce.”

After the call was over, Diana leaned back in her chair. She let out a slow breath and rubbed her eyes as she tried to put her thoughts in order.

Thirty-four years ago, in 1984, the Dreamstone, the wishing stone that Maxwell Lord had used to send half of the world into utter chaos, had not been the thing behind Barbara Ann’s transformation into Cheetah. Not entirely. When the spell brought on by the stone had been broken, shattering the illusion of Steve’s return and reversing everything it had affected to the way it used to be, it had not reversed the creature that Barbara Ann had become back into her real self. She had fled, never to be heard from or seen again, the curse that had turned her into Cheetah keeping her hidden away from prying eyes.

To date, Diana had failed to track her down though she had made numerous attempts, at first in anger, hurt by the betrayal of someone whom she had considered a friend. Later, out of a sense of duty, blaming herself for what had happened to Barbara Ann and desperate to stop any pain that Cheetah’s thirst for blood was sure to inflict on the innocent.

We can’t save everyone, Steve had told her once. Diana had proven him wrong, that day, only to watch Veld be wiped out of existence less than 24 hours later, powerless to stop it. Had there been some game of fate at play there, taunting her?

Diana had thought of that day a lot, in the years and decades that had followed. Every what-if had run its course through her mind on an endless loop, from the orange smoke snaking around her legs as she walked through the dead village to the brightness of the explosions high up in the sky mere hours later that had managed to rip open her heart and leave it bleeding out on the concrete airfield. Of the many regrets she carried in her heart, that was the one she didn’t seem to be able to let go of. If she were to give up on Barbara Ann and stop looking for the answers that had set them both on that path, would anyone else care to find them?

And now the amulet that, she had learned through a long grapevine, was meant to help track what was lost—and Diana hoped that this included people who didn’t wish to be found—had finally made its way into her hands.

Well, it would, soon enough.

The thought made her heart constrict and she pushed the nervous flurry of anticipation away.

She had been wrong before. She had run into the proverbial brick walls half a dozen times over the past three decades, having to double back and start from the beginning. Bruce wouldn’t have sent anything to her if he didn’t know for a fact that it was authentic. But Bruce knew nothing about magic, and John Constantine had no qualms with playing a trick on Batman, given a chance.

Once again, she wondered how much Bruce knew. About her, about everything.

After his courier had delivered the suitcase with the photograph from Veld the year before, he hadn’t asked anything and she hadn’t volunteered any information past the brief Thank you for bringing him back to me, feeling fiercely protective of something that private. Both of them had chosen, by an unspoken agreement, to pretend that it had never happened at all instead.

Diana knew he had looked. Though she had been careful to keep as much of her presence in man’s world over the past century hidden away from prying eyes as possible — and had long grown quite adept at that — the fallout of the events in 1984 had been loud and scandalous enough to make it easy for just about anyone to connect the dots and put her on the map. Diana suspected that this was when A.R.G.U.S. and the likes of Lex Luthor might have taken notice of her.

She didn’t like that thought but it was too late to be concerned about it now. She didn’t care much for A.R.G.U.S., and Lex Luthor was merely a footnote in the book of her life. He was not likely to walk out of the Arkham Asylum a free man ever again.

Cheetah, on the other hand, belonged to a chapter that Diana couldn’t quite flip past without seeing it through properly first. And, all things considered, it was right about time that she finally put that story to rest.


The package arrived sometimes after 9 PM.

The night guard signed for it and summoned Diana to pick it up from the after-hours delivery area.

She took it to her office, a padded plastic envelope with the “express” markings and her name and address written in Bruce's blocky handwriting. That her three decades of search could end tonight still felt like an impossibility, and she didn't want to think too hard about it yet.

Inside the envelope, Diana found a small wooden jewellery box adorned with uncomplicated carvings. Something one could find at a flea market any day of the week. For all intents and purposes, it looked nothing like what Diana had expected something holding a powerful artifact to look like.

She set the envelope on her desk, her fingers trembling a little when she lifted the lid of the box.

The stone inside looked like amber — although she knew that it wasn't — and it winked at her when it caught the light of an overhead lamp. It sat on top of a thin silver chain that pooled beneath it.

Diana reached for it, pulling at the chain until she had the pendant hanging before her eyes. And maybe it was the light, or the exhaustion of a long day, or maybe even her wild hope to finally bring this journey to an end, but she could have sworn that she saw something move within it. Like water. Or smoke.

Constantine wouldn't have dared mess with Bruce on this if he knew who Bruce was buying the pendant for. But Bruce preferred to keep his personal affairs close to his chest. If the stone went up in flames in her hands like a Roman candle, she was going to have a few words with the sorcerer, Diana thought grimly.

Her phone chimed on the desk.

Got it? she read the text from Bruce that lit up the home screen.

She set the box down and picked up the phone, still holding the pendant by the chain in her other hand. Got it, thank you, she typed back before tucking her phone into the back pocket of her pants.

She was going to figure out how to use it, she mused absently, her fingers brushing against the stone as she turned it towards the light. Merely finding it was one half of what—

The lights in her office flickered, blinking in and out once, and then twice. At almost the same moment, the security alarm started to blare somewhere above her, triggered by the power surge, a piercing sound that slashed across Diana’s senses, making her grimace.

Something occurred to her then, making her swear under her breath and drop the stone back into the box on the desk as she yanked the door open and hurried into the dimly lit hallway. If the fire sprinklers came on as well, they would ruin numerous pieces of art not protected by glass casings. Not to mention the parquet floors.

The mental image was chased by another one—what if someone had broken into the museum? What if none of this had been about faulty wiring?

Diana dashed upstairs, passing the elevator that should have been deactivated the second the alarm came to life, and hurried towards the main entrance concourse. There were supposed to be half a dozen night guards on duty, but she didn’t know where they were, or if they were hurt.

The alarm cut off then, just as suddenly as it had come on, plunging the centuries-old building into such utter silence that it made her ears ring.

There was no water coming from the ceiling, much to Diana's relief, though the only lights were the emergency ones still, the system waiting to be rebooted.

She slowed down as she reached the final step leading into the concourse area, which would normally be bustling with life but was eerily quiet and dark at this hour. Her hand reached for the Lasso at her hip. She would have to make sure that everything was alright, that whatever had happened, the night guards had it under control, before she could go home.

The railing of the bannister was cool and smooth beneath her palm, polished by the millions of hands that had touched it over the years.

There was someone standing beneath the glass pyramid, pale moonlight slanting over them through sixteen hundred glass panels. A man in a thick overcoat, from what Diana could see. His back was to her and he was looking wildly around.

He didn’t look like a burglar, if she had to venture a guess.

For a second, Diana assumed he was a tourist who had somehow managed to get stuck inside after closing and was just as startled by the wailing of the alarm as she had been. It had happened before, once. A woman from Argentina had lost her way in the labyrinth of hallways and had been frantic when she was discovered, certain she would be locked in for the night.

At the sound of her heels on the marble floor, the man whipped around, his face pale and his mouth a little slack, opening and closing without a sound.

Diana stopped, the world tilting and sliding off its axis around her when their eyes met.

She watched a faint frown appear between the man's brows. 

"Diana ?" 

 

Notes:

Well, thank you for making this far :) Comments, feedback, opinions are much appreciated, as always. I'm only going to ask you to please be civil about it and avoid rudeness even if you disagree with the creative liberties that I took.

A special HUGE thank you goes to akajb for betaing this monster of a story and for supporting me every step of the way and for never trying to kill me even though I probably deserved it a few times :P

You are also very welcome to just come talk to me about WW84, what you thought about it or, you know, just about Steve and Diana - I'm certainly here for all of that! And I'm also on Tumblr as well!

If you missed my one-shot fix-it line of fire - feel free to give it a go :)

Please subscribe to this story to get notifications about it being updated, if that's something you're interested in. I really enjoyed working on this fic (it kinda really kept me sane during 2020) and I hope you'll like it as well. I mean, let's be real, we all need a lot of fix-it content at the moment.

Stay tuned!

Chapter 2

Notes:

Hey everyone, I just wanted to thank all of you for reading the first chapter of this story and for being so kind! I was a bit nervous about sharing it, but you have been nothing but wonderful and I do want to believe that you will enjoy what's coming next! I will expand tags/add other characters as they pop up.

Just a quick side note - I have Steve come back in 2018 for Reasons™ and I will bring this story to the present day, eventually.

On that note - dig in, have fun!

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

Chapter Text

Diana stared at him, the familiar face and the blue eyes and the sweep of hair over his forehead. She watched as various emotions chased across his features — confusion and surprise and relief — while her heart slammed against the inside of her rib cage with slow, dull thuds that made her dizzy.

She was suddenly back on the beach on Themyscira, watching Steve open his eyes after she had dragged him out of the water. In the throne room surrounded by her sisters as the Lasso of Truth glowed against his chest. On the boat under the ink-black sky, listening to the whisper of the sea. In Veld, where he had looked at her like she was the only person in all of creation.

And then she was at the gala in 1984, and his quiet, “... you can save the world.”

It felt wrong. It felt wrong and it hurt in places she never knew existed.

“Diana?”

His voice.

Steve’s voice.

The one she had tried so hard to hold on to for so long until it, too, was but a ghost trapped in her mind. So many ghosts. And memories. All the memories that should not have still been there, after all this time. A hundred years. A hundred years of missing him to the point of feeling an ache in her bones and living with it while everyone around her grew old and died.

And then the sick, dreadful feeling in the pit of her stomach when she realized that the Dreamstone had never given her what she had wanted the most.

More lies. So many lies.

The anger came next, roaring through Diana’s body like wildfire and leaving nothing but ashes in its wake. The same fire that had burned in her chest the night she had defeated Ares and had her go against Cheetah. The same one that she knew had come from Zeus, a gift and a curse in equal measure.

Whoever was doing this, they were not going to hurt her again. They were not going to take something she held dear and use it against her.

“Diana,” the man repeated, watching her with confusion. She needed him to stop saying her name, to stop sounding so much like her Steve, his voice making her heartbeat stutter.

But she was shaking her head, her breaths coming out in short, ragged gasps because he looked—

He was wearing the same German uniform that Steve had worn on the night he died. The same heavy overcoat she had taken off of him the night before then, her hands sliding over the fur on the collar before they had slipped underneath to push it down his shoulders, letting it fall at his feet. Except he had looked the same and real and hers in 1984 too, and she had been enough of a fool to believe that he had returned. That wishing for him to come back was all it took.

Even after that, she had continued to love him, but she would never let anyone use that love against her ever again.

The man took a step towards her, his lips slightly parted and his expression one of shock and desperation.

Immediately, Diana reached for her Lasso, letting it unspool at her feet before she sent it forward with a flick of her wrist as it came to life under her touch, the golden glow so bright it hurt to look. The force of it calmed her, the familiar hum of power pulsing in her veins.

It wrapped across the man’s chest twice. Confused, he glanced down at it and then at her as he stopped in his tracks, tethered by a magic so ancient even she had not yet been born when it lived in this world.

“Who are you?” Diana demanded.


Belgium, 1918

Steve Trevor was a liar. He was a murderer and a smuggler. And while he didn’t know when it was exactly that he had realized that getting out of this war alive was not in the cards for him, looking back, he could hardly remember ever thinking otherwise. Maybe he had never been that naïve at all.

He was not afraid to die. Never had been, not really. He wouldn’t have come to this place to try and fix something deeply broken if he was, and most of the time, there was comfort to knowing that. To knowing that whatever he had accomplished, however small, was not for nothing. 

In the darkest hours of the night when the world was too quiet to bear, so quiet he couldn’t sleep, or even when he was running across muddy fields while bullets whistled past his head, praying to whoever or whatever might be listening—it calmed him to know that his would not be a pointless sacrifice. That whatever he had done to help stop this madness that continued to tear the world apart around him, it was worth it.

It gave him focus. It gave him purpose.

You can do nothing, or you can do something, his father had told him a long time ago.

Try as he might, Steve could not remember the circumstances of that conversation, which felt unfair in an odd way that he couldn’t explain even to himself. Words that had changed his life, and he could not recall hearing them.

But it was exactly what had pushed him to enlist. It was what had made him reach for Maru’s book when he got a chance, and steal the German plane, and bring a Princess of the Amazons to the front. It was what had him running towards his death instead of turning around and returning to Diana when she had called out his name, the sound of it slicing him in half on the inside and leaving his soul bleeding.

Diana.

He wondered if she’d heard him when he told her that he loved her. If she would ever know how much she meant to him, and always would, even in death. But he didn’t dare glance back, not even for the last time, knowing that he would never be able to carry on with his plan if he did. He would want to run back to her and hold her and never let her go, the rest of the world be damned.

But he couldn’t do that. Someone had to destroy the gas before it killed millions.

Steve Trevor was not a vain man, but he was vain enough to want to do something heroic. Even if it was going to be the last thing he would do in his life.

The wind had picked up after darkness fell, the cold biting at his cheeks and snaking under the uniform that did little to protect him from the vicious bite of the approaching winter. The air was thick with the smell of exhausts, chased around by the spinning propeller blades ahead of him.

Steve climbed into the plane, pulling the German officer out of the cockpit and tossing him out before he sank into the pilot’s seat. Unbidden, his mind circled back to the words he had said to Maru mere hours ago, about the fire and everything going back to the ashes it had come from. The irony of the sentiment being more prophetic than he had meant it to be wasn’t lost on him. Under different circumstances, Steve would have laughed at it perhaps, but now, it only resonated with a pang of ache somewhere deep inside of him.

He was not afraid to die, not even in the horrific way he had sentenced himself to. But this was the first time when he desperately, achingly didn’t want to.

As the plane started its ascent into the black sky, he pulled out his handgun. The air was getting thin, the cold wind whipping through the cabin making him shiver. Soon, it would be hard for him to breathe, he knew. Then again, soon that would be the least of his concerns.

Steve closed his eyes and summoned the image of Diana’s face one last time, thinking of the way she had smiled at him last night in the flickering firelight and the quiet husk of her voice, whispering into his skin. That he would find something this wonderful right when his life was about to end was, perhaps, the cruellest joke of fate—if there even was such a thing—that he could think of.

He hoped against all hope that she would get to see the world the way she expected it to be—fair and just and full of wonders.

He hoped that she would find happiness and love she deserved.

Steve swallowed and opened his eyes. He looked back at the gas canisters stacked behind him.

And then he lifted his gun and pulled the trigger.


Paris, 2018

The Lasso wrapped twice across his chest, pinning Steve’s arms to his sides, its glow getting brighter and brighter until he could barely stand to look at it. Even through his clothes, it burned. It burned so hot he thought, for a brief moment of panic, that it would set his coat on fire even though the last time he had experienced its effects, it hadn’t left a mark on him.

And just like that, he was suddenly back in the throne room on Themyscira, arrows and swords pointed at him, three dozen pairs of eyes watching his every move. He had known then they would kill him without hesitation if he gave them even the slightest excuse—had known too that they had been looking for one, and he couldn’t fault them for that. Not after he had watched their people die at the hands of his.

The memory flashed before his eyes, so vivid he might as well indeed be there.

Except he wasn’t, of course. He was not on Themyscira. He was—well, he didn’t know where he was. Some gallery, if he had to guess. There were paintings on the walls, and statues, and above him—a pyramid made of glass. And there was only Diana now who was looking at him like she didn’t know who he was, her eyes full of grief and sorrow that Steve didn’t understand. And the Lasso was glowing so bright, burning into him without even touching his skin.

He felt his chest constrict as a shuddering breath stuttered out of it.

“Diana,” he murmured and licked his lips.

Steve Trevor did not remember dying. Or anything that had come afterwards, if anything was meant to come at all. What he remembered was holding up his gun and how badly his finger had been shaking on the trigger. He had hesitated then, for just a moment. It turned out it was a lie that one’s life was meant to flash before their eyes right before they died. The only thing that Steve could think of in that moment was Diana and the warmth of her skin and the way her smile made his heart near damn explode in his chest and how much he just wanted another second-minute-hour with her.

And then—nothing.

He was supposed to be dead. He should be dead. Was he? Was a dead man meant to feel his heart beating and his blood flowing?

“Who are you?” Diana demanded, her eyes wary on him.

Steve swallowed. He glanced at the Lasso once more and then lifted his gaze to hers again. “Diana, it’s me. What’s—What’s going on?”

She was shaking her head, her lips trembling.

“You died,” she said, her voice unsteady and thick with emotion. It echoed all around him. “Steve Trevor died in 1918. I saw it. I saw him climb into a plane—”

She cut off.

Steve could feel the magic of the Lasso flowing through him, making him lightheaded, his thoughts muddled. He remembered how the first time it had happened, when it was one of her sisters who had wielded it, the words had come tumbling out of his mouth as though he had no command over them. He wondered how long it would be before he was spitting out everything he had ever wanted to tell her, before they had both run out of time. Not long, he suspected.

“My name is Steve Trevor, Captain with the American Expeditionary Forces,” he said, watching a shadow of anguish flicker across Diana’s face. He wanted to come closer, wanted to touch her and comfort her and chase the hurt pooling in her eyes away. “You saved me,” Steve continued, his voice dropping a little. “Diana.” A pause. “You saved me when my plane crashed at—at your island. You pulled me out of the water. And I took you with me, when I left. To stop the war.”

Did they?

He glanced around once more, at the glass pyramid shooting into the black sky above them and the moon shining through the hundreds of panes. He turned to Diana again, his heart slamming hard against his ribs with every inhale.

“I watched you cross No Man’s Land. I watched you save people who had no hope left.” The words were coming out fast now, as though he was worried he would run out of time, once more. “We danced. We danced in the snow, do you remember that?” He paused when she lifted her hand and pressed it to her mouth. “And then we—then we—”

“The gas,” she said, stopping him. “You got on…”

It was Steve’s turn to shake his head now. “The plane. I know. I got on and tried to stop it, to give you time to finish—to finish what you’d come to my world to do.”

She was frowning now. “That is not possible.” 

She didn’t believe him. He could see it in her eyes, and he was awash with yet another sense of déjà vu and the memory of standing on top of the watchtower, Ludendorff’s lifeless body on the roof above them as Diana’s faith in everything she had known about the world crumbled before his eyes.

She had looked at him the same way then. For a different reason, but he recognized the look and the sensation of a void opening between them, cold and bottomless. It had hurt watching the warmth that had settled between them the night before evaporate without a trace as the cold settled in its place.

Then, it had propelled Steve forward, leaving him helpless against the urge to reach for her, touch her, try to reason with her. Because maybe people aren’t just good, Diana. Ares or no Ares, he had pleaded with her, he remembered that.

He wanted to move to her now, too.

He didn’t dare do it though, half fearful that she would push him away the way she had on the outskirts of Veld, accusing him of stopping her from saving the villagers when she could, half certain that any careless word or gesture would make this—this trick, or illusion, or whatever it was fade before his eyes until there was nothing but blackness left. Until he was dead the way he was meant to be.

Instead, he took a breath, his chest rising and falling beneath the golden glow of the Lasso.

“I know.” Steve swallowed, words pouring fast out of his mouth. “I know it’s not. I pulled the trigger. I swear to God I did, and then—and then I was here, and I don’t know—” he cut off. “What is this? Where are we?”

“Paris,” she said.

His frown deepened. Paris? But weren’t they in…

“Mademoiselle Prince?”

Steve snapped his head up at the sound of footsteps headed their way. In the same instant, the hold of the Lasso loosened and fell to the floor, the glow fading immediately before it coiled back at Diana’s side with a practiced flick of her wrist. Instinctively, he reached for his gun—except he didn’t have one. Not anymore. He’d had it on the plane, but he must have dropped it when he—when he—had he pulled the trigger? Steve couldn’t even say with certainty now that he had.

He glanced down, at his empty holster. And then back up at Diana who was looking towards the deeper shadows outside the pool of moonlight and out of the reach of small, dim lamps running around the perimeter of the room. He followed her gaze and saw two men in some sort of uniform step into the light, his back stiffening at the sight of the guns strapped to their hips.

They started towards Diana but paused when they spotted him.

“Monsieur?” one of the men addressed Steve, his eyes sharp and his voice, while level, carrying authority. “I need you to step back,” he demanded in French, and though he didn’t reach for his weapon, he looked like he wouldn’t hesitate if Steve gave him an excuse to do so.

Steve moved to lift his hands up, to show that he was not armed. His gaze darted towards Diana who kept glancing between him and the men, unperturbed and undisturbed by their appearance, her brows pulled together in an altogether different kind of confusion.

“Mademoiselle Prince, are you alright?” the second man asked meanwhile, reaching for some sort of radio device clipped to his belt. “Should we call—”

But Diana was shaking her head. “It’s alright,” she said, also in French, as she turned to Steve for the first time since the men arrived. She held his gaze for another moment, her expression unreadable, before she diverted her attention to the men once more. “He is with me.”

The men relaxed visibly, albeit after a moment of hesitation. They nodded in unison, before one of them grabbed the radio thing and said something into it, too quiet for Steve to hear. A garbled answer came moments later, but Steve failed to make that out, either.

“The alarm…” Diana began.

“We didn’t find anyone. No points of a break-in,” the man who wasn’t speaking on the radio explained eagerly. He glanced towards Steve. “It was probably triggered by the power surge. Perhaps a city emergency?” Diana nodded to that. “Francois and his guys are doing the outer sweep, we will make sure to…”

Steve tuned him out after that, choosing to focus on the woman standing before him.

For the first time since he had found himself under the glass pyramid, Steve wondered if this was all a dream. A fevered hallucination of a restless mind or maybe the ‘other side’ was nothing like what everyone thought it was. Maybe it was never meant to be a heaven or hell sort of thing, and not a black nothing, either. Maybe it was meant to be a dream one wanted to hold on to, for the rest of eternity.

If that was the case, Steve wasn’t surprised that his was about Diana.

The sound of her voice washed over him as she spoke with the men—the guards?—the soft cadence he would have recognized anywhere. He used her momentary distraction to take her in, his eyes sliding over her stately profile and the mass of her hair that he knew felt like silk to the touch, pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

If this was a dream, he sure as hell wouldn’t have minded if it never ended.

There was something strange about her, about everything, but the thought was fleeting. The men were leaving, at last, giving Steve another quizzical look. He braced himself for a round of questioning, all too aware of their weapons still—and the absence of his own. But then they were gone without a word, and it was just him and Diana and the smell of old books and something lemony hanging in the air. Something that made Steve think of his parents’ house and a wood polish.

Diana turned to him then, a slight frown still creasing the skin between her brows. He was overcome with the urge to step forward and smooth it out, the way he had the night before when she was speaking of her home. He didn’t move though, curling his hand into a fist against that impulse instead. He stared at her, and she stared back, distrustful in a way he could not recall seeing before.

For a moment, Steve expected her to reach for her Lasso once again.

She didn’t, and he was suddenly scared that this was the end of—of whatever this was. That she was going to melt into nothing before his eyes and he was going to be left alone in the room, under the pale moonlight, trying to remember the sound of her voice and the sensation of her touch and having nothing to hold on to but memories that were no more corporeal than a dream about the life with her he had weaved in his mind while Diana slept in his arms and the time was racing towards morning and the end of it all.

A memory flashed before Steve’s eyes, of watching her emerge from the orange gas that had destroyed Veld, her face stricken with grief and despair. Of her hands pushing him away from her, her voice breaking when she spoke. Stay away from me. You did this.

Was she angry with him still? Was she blaming him for loss of lives she couldn’t stop? Would she push him away again if he tried to touch her?

Diana stepped to him then, slowly. Steve didn’t move as he watched her take him in, her eyes moving over his face.

“Steve?” she asked, quietly.

He felt his shoulders slump, rounding forward. “Hey,” he breathed, his voice low and hoarse and tight in his throat. The realization that he had never expected to see her again was like a blow to his gut, making all air rush out of him.

Diana paused when she was close enough to touch him. She lifted her hand, trailing her fingers down his cheek the way she had the night before, the night when they… Although, was that the night before? Had it all happened only yesterday? He was not so sure anymore.

Steve bowed his head closer to her, revelling in the feeling of her touch. He watched her gaze skim over his stolen German uniform. She didn’t like the sight of it, he could tell, remembering belatedly that she was the one who had buttoned up his jacket, smoothing her palms over his chest afterwards before they had left the room to go and find Sameer and the rest of them.

Her other hand reached to touch his chest but stopped short, hovering for a moment over the polished buttons, her brows pulling together.

“I watched you die,” she whispered, lifting her gaze to his. “I saw you—”

She cut off and pressed her lips together. Steve watched her face crumple, and he moved to her immediately, helpless against the impulse to comfort her. He lifted his hands to her face, thumbs stroking her cheeks. Her lips were quivering, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“Diana,” he murmured, her name falling from his lips like a prayer.

A choked sound rose from the back of her throat. Her fingers curled over the fur collar of his overcoat as she drew him towards her. Steve ducked his head, resting his forehead to hers. She smelled the same, underneath something floral and sweet, and that alone made his chest cave in, sending his mind spiralling.

Her grip on his lapels tightened briefly before her arms were winding around him, leaving him wondering why they hadn’t started with this. He held her, her face tucked into the curve of his neck and the warmth of her breath against his skin making his heart stutter and trip over itself in his chest. And he wondered how on Earth he’d managed to walk away from this, on that airfield, whatever the cause.

Steve turned his head, brushing his lips to her temple. If this was a dream, it was, perhaps, the best one he’d ever had, he decided.

“I’m sorry,” he said earnestly, though whether he was apologizing for disappointing her or leaving her, or something else entirely, he wasn’t sure. Both, and more, he thought. “Diana, I’m sorry—”

“I know,” she breathed. “Me, too.”

They stayed like that for a long time. In the distance, Steve could hear a murmur of voices. Maybe those men that had spoken with Diana earlier, or someone else. He didn’t care, for as long as he got to hold her, solid and warm and achingly real, his heart beating all the way into her chest.

At last, Steve leaned back, about to ask what it was that she was sorry for—unable to think of a single thing, truth be told. But then another thought struck him, something that he should have asked sooner, but hadn’t. Maybe not surprisingly, all things considered, although part of him—the part that had stolen Isabel Maru’s book and then one of Ludendorff’s planes, the same part that had followed Diana across No Man’s Land even if no one else had dared to step foot out there—felt bad about not caring about it before now.

“Did you end the war?” he asked anxiously, his eyes flicking between hers.

She didn’t answer at once, and for a moment, Steve was afraid that he had said something wrong. Something upsetting because there it was again, that expression he couldn’t quite read, and he had never had trouble doing that before. In that odd moment, he felt like he was standing on thin ice—one wrong step and he would plunge into the frigid water below.

But then her expression smoothed out into something tender. She brushed her thumb over his chin, the making of a small smile working its way to her face.

“You did,” she said.

There was more to it, Steve could see it on her face. But she didn’t add anything else, and he didn’t know how to ask. He nodded then, not sure what else to do. And then, the lights came on around them, flooding the spacious room with polished marble floor and bringing the world suddenly into a sharp focus.

His hands stilled on Diana’s arms as he looked around.

“What is this place?” he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Not that it mattered, really. Diana was there, and he just wanted to be wherever she was, but he was curious enough to wonder nonetheless.

She was still watching him, he could feel her eyes on him. Could feel her slight smile, too. “The Louvre.”

Steve turned to her, feeling a confused frown lodge itself between his brows. “No, it’s not. Where did—where did that come from?” He gestured vaguely towards the glass pyramid above them.

He had been to Paris before. A war-torn city, crumbling under the weight of loss and despair. It had happened at least a year before the mission that had ultimately brought him to Themyscira, but Steve remembered it quite vividly still, grey streets and grey faces and the quiet resignation of those who had long given up on believing that there was still hope for them.

Back then, he had tried not to think too much of it, fearful of drowning in despair of his own if he ever allowed himself to fully contemplate the extent of what was happening to them all. They had driven across Paris, past the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre. And though Steve’s memory was spotty about those days, one dreary memory blending into another, he was certain he would have noticed a structure made of glass rising into the sky. It had been his job to notice things, for heaven’s sake.

Diana’s expression grew sympathetic, and he knew then that whatever was coming was going to hit him hard.

And it did.

“It’s not 1918, Steve,” she said, quietly. “Not anymore.”

“It’s not?” he echoed, alarmed. “What year is it?”

“It’s 2018.”

Notes:

I suppose we can all agree that they both need so many hugs, after everything they've been through.

Comments, feedback, observations, or just thoughts on Steve and Diana's relationship are always welcome and much appreciated!

The next update is super fun (well, they all are, hopefully ;)) so please stay tuned, and I'll see you next week!

Chapter 3

Notes:

Guys, you are so amazing! I just wanted to thank you all for your support and your wonderful comments and your interest in this story. You have no idea how much it all means to me :) As I edit my way through whatever is not edited yet, I just can't wait to share it all with you. Thank you for sticking around, I really want to believe you will enjoy what's coming next :)

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

Chapter Text

The next hour of Steve’s life was a blur, crushed under the impact of Diana’s revelation.

His life hadn’t been exactly uneventful. His plane had been hit by lightning once, miles above the ground. He had seen the northern lights in Alaska on a trip with his father. And he had managed to survive the war long enough to almost— almost —see the end of it. Yet, none of it had prepared him for the possibility of being somehow miraculously catapulted a hundred years into the future without a warning or explanation. Or anything, really. 

He thought, for a few desperate moments, that Diana must be joking, his mind struggling to come up with a reasonable explanation as to what had happened. Except there wasn’t one, not unless this all was the fevered dream of a dead man, and he would much prefer it to not be one.

Questions swarmed his mind; so many of them that it made Steve’s head ache.

But before he had a chance to so much as open his mouth and spew a thousand and a half of them at Diana, they were interrupted again. Another man in a pristine uniform appeared from the hallway and headed straight towards them. Ha gave Steve a curious look, his eyes skating over Steve’s clothing, but his attention didn’t linger. He stopped before them and leaned closer to Diana, the two of them conversing in French for a few minutes. Something about security and protocols and safety. Steve tried to follow, but, still dazed, all he could do was stare at Diana, more attuned to the sound of her voice than the words coming out of her mouth.

He chose to focus on her instead, and how she looked exactly the same as he remembered, but also very much not. His gaze trailed over her high cheekbones and the small wisps of hair near the base of her neck, too short to be scooped into her ponytail, and the sharp edge of her jawline. The way her lips moved when she talked made Steve swallow, hard. He tried to remember her in that moment the way he had the night before, her clothes, the way she smelled, the way her voice sounded, echoing off all the marble and glass so he could carry the memory with him even centuries after his death.

There was a quiet authority to the way she spoke with the man standing before her, her voice steady and sure. She carried herself with the same confidence he had seen before, but unlike the war room in 1918, the people here listened to her.

That realization made Steve feel fiercely, inexplicably proud.

He thought of her willingness to leave her home behind, her determination to get to the front, of how she hadn’t hesitated to step onto No Man’s Land, and of how kind she was to the people of Veld afterwards. 

The memories chased one after another in his mind, bright and remarkable, bringing up details Steve didn’t think he’d noticed at the time. Like how everyone’s eyes were on them when they’d entered the village. Or her smile afterwards when an old man had come over to her to shake her hand. And maybe it had been a century (really? God, how he was supposed to believe that?), and maybe the world was not the way Steve remembered it, but there was so much of Diana that hadn’t changed one bit that it all but took his breath away.

Now, she was standing close enough that their fingers were nearly touching. He could feel the warmth of her, and he wondered, briefly, if she would mind if he reached for her hand.

But before he could decide one way or another, the conversation between Diana and the security guard was over, the man confirming something with a nod. Steve tuned in just in time to hear her tell him to keep her informed and to contact the museum director promptly.

The man nodded again. “Mademoiselle,” he said at last, in lieu of goodbye. He hesitated for a moment before turning to Steve. “Monsieur.”

Steve lifted his hand to give a small half-wave, half-salute, uncertain what to say or do.

By then, Diana had turned to him and was looking at him in that peculiar way that Steve couldn’t figure out, which gave his stomach a twist of uncertainty. He wondered if she was going to step towards him once again, now that they were alone, missing her nearness even though they were barely a foot apart.

She didn’t reach for him again. Instead, Steve watched her bite her lip and glance around as if deciding something. He hoped he didn’t get her in trouble with… well, being here, where he didn’t belong, though once Diana had said that he was with her—Steve made a mental note to clarify later what she’d meant by that, if it still meant that they were together —no one had questioned his presence.

When her gaze found his once more, her expression seemed to have smoothed out.

She reached into the back pocket of her pants and pulled out a small rectangular thing that seemed to be made of glass and plastic, from what Steve could tell. She pressed a button, and the thing lit up, revealing what appeared to be a screen. Steve felt his jaw go slack, mesmerized.

“What’s that?” he asked, curious.

But she was only shaking her head and tucking the shiny rectangle back into the pocket of her pants.

“Diana…” he started again, his mind reeling from the utter surrealism of what was happening.

“Come with me, yes?” she asked, stopping him gently as her eyes searched his face.

Steve clamped his mouth shut and nodded. And then nodded again, emphatically, in case he wasn’t clear enough the first time around. He didn’t even care where she was planning on taking him, knowing that he would follow her into the pit of Hell if she so wished, no questions asked.

A small smile touched her lips. It was Diana who reached for his hand then, the same way she had done on the streets of London. Steve followed her up the marble staircase, watching her punch a code into a pad near a door that led out into the night. The air was cool against his cheeks, chilly wind tangling in his hair as he stepped onto the plaza in front of the museum. He followed Diana towards the gates and out onto a busy street bustling with life and lights.

Under different circumstances, he would have been more fascinated by it all. By all the cars and people and the music spilling from brightly-lit cafes. Now, though, Diana was all he could see, her hand clasped firmly in his, the warmth of her touch more reassuring than anything Steve could ever have imagined.

It was only after she had flagged a bright yellow cab and he climbed into a backseat, with her sliding in right after him, that he realized that she wasn’t wearing a coat. For a moment, he was mortified by not noticing it sooner, and even made a move to take off his own and offer it to her. But that would mean letting go of her hand—his eyes dropped to their interlaced fingers, his brows pulling together as he tried to solve that dilemma.

Later, he thought as he looked up to find her watching him. When they got out of the car, perhaps. He should ask. He would ask…

“Where are we going?” Steve blurted out.

He felt her thumb brush over his knuckles. “Home.”

He nodded once more, starting to feel a little ridiculous. But he decidedly liked her response. Home. He could use some of that.

He didn’t say anything else after that. The driver clarified something once or twice, making Diana lean forward towards the partition between the seats to respond, but Steve’s eyes never deviated from her, his heart slamming against the inside of his ribs with measured, hollow thuds as the city rushed by outside the car in a whir of lights.

When the cab slowed down and pulled to a stop, Diana fished a small plastic rectangle from a pocket attached to her shiny device and handed it to the driver. Mesmerized, Steve watched the man touch the plastic to a machine sitting near the gear stick, its screen lighting up as it beeped. The plastic thing was returned to Diana then and she pushed the door open before Steve had an opportunity to ask what any of that was.

After another glance at the strange machine, he scurried after her and into the street. Steve froze, barely avoiding colliding with an old lady walking down the sidewalk and earning a displeased scowl in response to his apparent clumsiness. He muttered a quiet apology and the woman scoffed as she walked away.

When he looked up at Diana, she was biting her lip around a smile, amusement dancing in her eyes. It was enough to make his head swim.

Belatedly, Steve remembered the plan to give his overcoat to her, but when he caught up with her, she was already standing on a stoop leading into a brightly lit building, her hand on the doorknob, holding the door open as she waited for him to figure out how to cross the sidewalk.

He clambered the stairs taking two steps at a time, half-convinced that she was going to vanish into thin air if he allowed himself to take his eyes off her for too long.

“Come,” she said, her hand reaching for Steve’s once again to pull him into the foyer. There was a concierge in a suit watching them from behind a desk near the front. Diana nodded at him. “Thank you for letting me in, Leon. I forgot my keys in the office.”

If the man was surprised by that or the fact that she was not dressed for the weather, he kept his comments to himself.

“Of course, Mademoiselle Prince.”

He offered her an affectionate smile before his eyes moved over to Steve, lingering on him for a moment or two. Steve didn’t care. He was too busy staring around, at the marble floors and elegant furniture and crystal chandeliers, at polished glass and elegant wood panelling on the walls. It all looked beautiful and expensive, and he was, perhaps unsurprisingly, reminded of the palace where the Amazons had taken him for questioning and how everything there had spoken of class and status.

That memory brought a cascade of others, like the burn of water in his lungs right before he had opened his eyes and seen her for the first time, and the bright red blood on the white sand, and the certainty that he would not leave that place alive. 

Steve took a breath and tried to quell the memories, choosing to focus instead on Diana and the way her hand felt in his. And how it almost—almost—made this whole thing about the future okay, though he still wasn’t entirely sure it was actually happening.

Later, Steve would remember following Diana into a shiny chrome elevator, one wall of which was a mirror and how it smelled really nice. He would remember the door sliding open into a wide hallway on the top floor of the building, the carpet soft beneath his worn boots when he stepped out. How she had led him into her apartment and showed him the kitchen and the living room and her office and asked him if he wanted something to eat or drink, to which Steve’s answer had been negative.

It would all come back later, eventually, once the shock of the day settled and his mind had a chance to catch up with everything he had seen and done and heard.

But right now, he didn’t remember much of anything between the lobby and the moment when he found himself standing in the bathroom, clutching the towels Diana had given him to his chest while she hovered in the doorway, uncertain, and he was suddenly at a loss for words.

Steve watched her, two feet and a hundred years between them. He could feel every moment of it then, the distance that couldn’t be measured even if he knew where to start and how to go about it.

“If you need anything…” Diana began before trailing off.

It was just a shower, he wanted to tell her. He had managed to infiltrate the German army in the middle of the carnage. Surely, he could figure out how her shower worked. He didn’t say any of that, though. He just said a quiet, “Thank you.”

She made a move to leave, but then paused once more.

“Leave your clothes here,” she added, pointing at the counter framing the sink. “I’ll come get them in a few minutes.”

Steve swallowed and nodded once again. And with that, she smiled and stepped into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

For a moment, he merely stared at it, listening to the receding sound of her footsteps as she walked away. And then, silence.

A shuddering breath stuttered out of his chest. Still clutching the towels to his chest, he turned around, his gaze moving over the marble countertop of the sink, white hand-towels and a cabinet in the corner. There was a clawfoot tub pressed against the wall across from him, with a shower curtain pushed to the side. It looked like something that Steve used to have in his apartment in London. Something that would have looked old and outdated, in another place, but that spoke, even to him, of wealth and elegance and style, here.

He smoothed his hand over the towels, marvelling in the softness he had never imagined possible. They smelled nice too, fresh and clean.

Steve looked up, finding his reflection in the mirror in front of him. He looked the way he had the morning before he and Diana had walked out of the room they had shared, leaving something that he had known even then they would never get back behind. Quiet promises whispered between breathless kisses, the world lying wide and open before them in the moments when they had allowed themselves to imagine no one else existed in it but them.

He was a spy. He was used to pretending to be someone he was not and taking on roles with an ease that reminded him of stepping into well-worn shoes. He knew how to blend in and adapt without missing one beat and behave as though he belonged in times when he decidedly did not.

But standing in this pristine room, stripped off every lie he had ever said and every mask he had ever worn, Steve felt more out of place than he ever had before.

The thought made his stomach twist and his heart clench, and he wondered if Diana could see it, too. The liar that he was.

He took a breath and set the towels down beside the sink, suddenly desperate to take off the damned German uniform that felt, despite being the right fit, like it was suffocating him. He took off his overcoat and placed it where Diana had instructed. He stepped towards the bathtub next and its polished chrome faucet winking at him in the bright overhead lights. It took him a couple of minutes to figure out how to work it, but for all the fuss about the future, her shower was not the most complicated thing about it, so far.

It was only after Steve took off the rest of his clothes and stepped under the hot spray that he realized how badly he was shaking. Mild shock, he thought as he cranked up the hot water until it was nearly scalding.

For a long time, he simply stood there, his hands trembling and his teeth chattering, reminding him of long nights spent in the trenches when each breath felt like it was taking the precious little strength he still had left. 

Somewhere in the periphery of his attention, Steve heard a soft knock on the door, and a moment later it opened. Through the translucent shower curtain, he saw Diana’s hands reach inside and pick up the clothes he had left on the edge of the sink, but she didn’t come in or say anything, merely closing the door gently after her.  

It was then that Steve remembered that he was naked. Which reminded him of the last time he had been naked around Diana. Which reminded him vividly of—

It seemed to have been enough to make his blood run hot, snapping him out of his funk and confusion—into another state of confusion. One that was, admittedly, easier to deal with. Steve forced himself to turn towards the tiled shelf and the row of various bottles lining it. He plucked the one that read Crème Douche and sniffed it, surprised and slightly pleased to find out that it smelled like something he had detected on Diana when he’d hugged her earlier. He decidedly liked that.

He picked up a washcloth and squeezed some of the floral-scented liquid on it, scrubbing his skin until it felt raw, desperate to wash off any and all remnants of the war and the two years he had spent living and breathing its vile nature. He scrubbed and scrubbed until it started to hurt and the sensation of there being a thin film of grime and dirt sitting just beneath his skin had ebbed.

By the time Steve was done, his skin was flushed and tender.

He turned off the water and pulled the shower curtain aside. The room was filled with sweet-smelling steam. Steve reached for the towel, drying himself off before he swept his hand across the fogged-up mirror. He ran the second towel over his hair and then smoothed it down with his hand. The man that stared at him in the reflection looked slightly more familiar, though he didn’t quite trust himself to accept it just yet.

Steve blinked, shaking the weird daze off. 

His fingers touched his chin. Diana had given him a toothbrush, but he wondered if she had a razor somewhere. After a brief moment of hesitation, he reached for the cabinet over the sink. He shouldn’t be snooping, he thought, with a slight pang of guilt. But, then again, he wasn’t really snooping. He just needed…

His gaze swept over the variety of jars and tubes and lotions, makeup and other lady things that had never not baffled him. He found sunscreen and a mouthwash at the end of one shelf. No razors, as far as he could tell at once. Without thinking, he reached for a bright-coloured box, his curiosity getting the best of him. 

Steve turned the box in his hands, and then his eyes widened as they snagged on words latex and durable and ‘ ribbed for extra pleasure’ . Hastily, he shoved the box back into the cabinet, his face growing hot. Which way was it facing? He wasn’t sure, he couldn’t remember anymore. He hoped he got it right. 

His gaze darted towards the door, as though expecting it to fly open just then. Would only serve him right if it did. 

It didn’t, and he closed the cabinet quickly, forgetting completely about the razor. 

Thank god Diana wasn’t there and he didn’t have to explain himself. 

Steve scrubbed his hand down his face and tried very, very hard to will himself not to think of the damned box and its contents. 

He knew he was likely going to do just that for the rest of forever. 

He took a steadying breath, the back of his neck burning.  

It was only then that it occurred to him that Diana had taken all of his clothes, and that save for the towel wrapped around his hips, he had nothing to wear.

After a moment or two of a mental debate, Steve stepped towards the door. The alternative, he figured, would be to stay locked in this bathroom forever. And while it was a nice bathroom—above average even, as far as he could tell—it didn’t seem like a reasonable option.

He reached for the knob and yanked it open—only to find Diana on the other side, her hand raised as though she was about to knock.

Startled, he took a step back, his other hand tightening on the towel knot that held said towel in place. Which was damn ludicrous, really. There was nothing she hadn’t seen already. The thought made the back of Steve’s neck grow hot all over again.

“Hey,” he said, softly.

“I was just going to…” Diana began, her gaze darting down to a stack of clothes in her hand. Something for him to wear, Steve figured. Probably.

He blinked.

“Oh.”

“Here.” She handed the whole pile to him, and he took it with one hand, still holding on to his towel. 

“Thank you,” he said.

“Is everything alright?” she asked, searching his face.

And he wondered how it was possible that after a handful of days together followed by a century apart, she still managed to see right through his façade. He wondered if she also looked at herself in a mirror after he had brought her to a world that had made little sense to her and had felt just as lost. He suspected she had, even if she would not tell him. Not even if he asked.

And he wondered if it scared her as much as it did him that their time apart had felt both inconsequential and monumental, all at once.

He wanted her to reach for him again, the way she had at the museum a couple of hours ago. To stroke his cheek the way she had then; the way she had in Veld.

She didn’t, though, her hands hanging at her sides and the pile of clothes that Steve held against his chest like a wall between them. 

“Yeah, I’m—” he started and glanced down. “I should maybe…”

For a moment, Diana looked like she was going to say something then, but in the end, she only nodded. And then he was retreating back into the bathroom and closing the door, not quite certain what had just happened, but not convinced it was a good thing. And then once the door was shut between them, Steve was no longer sure if he had seen what he thought he had.

He unfolded the clothes that Diana had given him, finding a pair of baggy, shapeless pants made of a soft material. They were not his pants, and even without trying them on, he could tell they would be a bit short for him. Unless everything was meant to be short in the 21st century. There was no underwear, the thought of Diana handling it making his cheeks redden. He hadn’t thought of that before he had allowed her to take his things. 

He pushed his embarrassment aside—there was nothing he could do about it now—and picked up the next item. It was a plain white short-sleeved shirt, with “I Paris” written in bold letters across the chest.

Steve wrinkled his nose, his brows knitting together in confusion as he studied the shirt. It was made of soft cotton and it smelled like something new. Something never worn before. He considered it for another moment, wondering absently why Diana wouldn’t simply give him his own clothes—admittedly, stolen—back.

His hesitation was short-lived though, before he was unwrapping his towel and pulling the clothes on, choosing to ignore the underwear issue for now. God knew he had other things to be concerned about. 

Then, after he hung the towels on the rack screwed into a wall, he pulled the door open.


The one thing that Diana remembered acutely after everything that had happened in 1984 was the sense of profound, consuming emptiness that the loss of the flimsy illusion conjured by a spell, and fuelled by her loneliness, had left behind.

Up until then, she had been sure that she couldn’t miss Steve more than she had in the months following the war when she would wake up in the bed in Etta’s guest bedroom and reach for him across the mattress only for her hand to brush over empty space and cold sheets. She had ached so much then she had thought it would turn her inside out, her guilt over surviving his war almost too much to bear.

When he’d come back in 1984, however incorporeal, it had felt like cutting an old scar open, the pain and hope and desperation bleeding out until she could barely breathe. And she had missed him even more afterwards, wondering as hot tears burned her eyes how many times could one’s heart be broken before it was no longer possible to mend it. She had spent two years sleeping with one of the shirts she had bought for a man that had not even been him, not entirely, sprayed with the aftershave she had imagined Steve liking.

And now he was back once more, and she could feel the old ache throbbing in her fingertips, rolling over her in waves of panic.

For a long moment, she stood in the middle of the hallway as she listened to Steve move about her bathroom, undoubtedly as perplexed by the entire ordeal as she was. Maybe more so. Diana’s heart clenched at the thought, at the memory of his expression earlier, when he had stood with the Lasso wrapped around him, relieved and earnest. Of the way he’d smelled—exactly as she remembered (of gunpowder smoke and winter and Steve). Of how warm his skin felt when she’d touched his face, the texture of his overcoat beneath her palms just right.

And she wondered how that one moment had erased decades in an instant.

All those years of running away from him and from herself, and she loved him still.

Loved him the way she had when he had slept beside her on the boat taking them back to his world, albeit not realizing it yet. Loved him the way she had when he had bought her ice-cream and when he had followed her across No Man’s Land and when they had danced as snow fell from the pitch-black sky. She had been mad at him and hurt and devastated when Ludendorff had dropped the gas bomb on Veld, but she had loved Steve for coming after her though he’d never known that.

There was no sense or reason behind the feeling that was for someone she had only known for a handful of days. A feeling that neither time, nor other lovers, had erased. One that continued to live on because, and in spite of, everything that had gone down between them; because, and in spite of, everything she had seen and experienced in the time that had passed since she had last seen him.

It was the sound of running water on the other side of the door that snapped Diana out of her stupor, at last. She gazed around, momentarily surprised to find herself standing in her apartment instead of an airfield, surrounded by German soldiers.

She took a breath, feeling restless and wired, willing her heartbeat to settle. She stood there for another moment, half certain that any second, everything would go back to the way it had been this morning. 

And then she moved back towards the bathroom, rapping her knuckles on the door a few times. Steve didn’t respond, but she pushed the door open just enough to reach for the clothes left near the sink all the same, catching only a brief glimpse of the outline of his body behind shower curtain, relieved more than she was willing to admit to know that he hadn’t vanished the second she’d let him out of her sight like she had feared he would.

She took his clothes and closed the door. It was then that it struck Diana that she had nothing to offer him in return—the only wearable items she owned were her own. And while the idea of offering her garments to him was entertaining enough to make a fleeting smile cross her face, she doubted that Steve would have an appreciation for her yoga pants.

What she did have though, were a couple of gift shop shirts—prototypes offered to staff when they made orders or changed designs. At the time, Diana had put them away never to think of them again, but maybe…

She glanced at the bathroom door once more, and then headed towards the utility closet at the end of the hallway where her washer and dryer were tucked away. She loaded everything except for his overcoat (which she hung on the rack by the front door) into the washer and turned it on. Afterwards, she took in a careful breath, her chest tight with things she couldn’t even begin to define, and pressed her fingers to the corners of her eyes. The world felt like a shaky, fragile thing, and she feared she might fall right off its edge. And she didn’t know how to hold on. 

Losing Steve once felt like having her heart ripped out of her chest. The second time, it had nearly destroyed her, leaving her hollowed-out. If it were to happen again, she didn’t think she could ever heal.

She had never told anyone the full story. Not even Bruce, though she knew that he was curious. Diana suspected that he had dug up as much as he could about her and the photograph that he had put an undoubtedly considerable amount of time and effort—and probably money—to locate. She wondered sometimes what it was that he had found. After all, she had put quite as much time and effort into keeping her private life private. They had never discussed it though, and she suspected they never would.

She hadn’t even shared it with Lois, though Diana had had multiple chances and reasons to do so.

The rest of the League, as far as she was aware, had limited knowledge about her past. And even though she loved them dearly and valued their friendship, it was something that always seemed to be a line that they didn’t dare cross, keeping away by an unspoken agreement.

She wondered if that was why they hadn’t lasted, or if there were bigger factors in play that she hadn’t even thought of that had torn them apart in the end. She wondered if that was one of her many mistakes. But, as always, there was no simple answer to that.

Diana took another moment to consider her impediment.

For so long, she had fought for a place in this world. For a sense of belonging, of knowing who she was and where she was standing. It was disconcerting to know how easily her carefully crafted balance had been thrown off its axis.

Restless, she again pulled her phone from the pocket of her pants. She ignored the missed calls and messages and emails from her assistant that she had been going to sort through before Bruce’s package had arrived, starting the domino effect that had upended her entire night. She found Clark’s number in her contacts, pressing dial before she could change her mind and then hanging up after one ring.

What was she doing?

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, searching for the quiet place inside of her. Something to steady and ground her.

Somewhere down the hall, her washer beeped, signalling the end of the cycle. Her eyes snapped open, her heart giving a dull thump-thump-thu— against the inside of her breastbone. 

By the time she moved Steve’s clothes into the dryer and turned it on, her mind seemed to have cleared, somewhat. There were no wishing stones to blame for this now, she thought. She hadn’t come across any questionable artifacts recently, and though there wasn’t a day when she didn’t wish for Steve’s return, she had long stopped begging gods for it.   

Whatever was happening, she was going to get to the bottom of it.

Unbidden, Diana’s eyes went towards the hallway and the door at the end of it where the water continued to run. She didn’t even notice how badly her hands were shaking until her phone came to life and she nearly dropped it, her heartbeat kicking up a notch from the suddenness of it.

Clark.

Diana hesitated for another moment, and then, after taking a breath, she pressed accept.

“Clark,” she said as a way of greeting.

“Hey,” Clark said back, and just the cheer behind that one word alone made her smile, something inside of her settling in a way she didn’t expect it to. There was a brief pause, and when she didn’t say anything, he asked: “I missed your call. What’s up?”

It had been a while since they’d spoken, a few months perhaps, but the relief of the easy familiarity between them—as though nothing had happened and nothing had changed—was almost too much to bear, the enormity of the comfort that his call brought overwhelming.

It made her eyes prickle. It made her wish she knew how to keep the League in her life without feeling like it was spinning out of control.

“I…” Diana started and faltered. 

“Are you okay?” Clark asked, after a moment.

She let out a measured breath, grateful and disappointed in equal measure for his call.

“Yes,” she said, rubbing her forehead. She paused and repeated, “Yes, I am.”

She hadn’t even thought of the fact that Clark was a living and breathing proof of miraculous resurrections, but now that the thought crossed her mind, it was all Diana could think of. The impossible made possible.

Could it be…?

She stepped back into the kitchen, trying to tame the restless energy now coursing through her system.

“Diana,” Clark’s voice was soft in her ear. There was a long pause, and it was so easy for her to picture his kind smile. “What’s going on?”

Something unbelievable, Diana thought.

She shouldn’t have called him. It was one thing to sink into a void of her memories when there was no one to see it, and something else entirely to let someone else in and turn her very soul inside out for them. Even after all this time, even after having convinced herself that she had put the past behind and moved on—a lie that stood all the more glaring now than ever before—she still felt fiercely protective of the hit her heart had taken on a cold night in 1918.

Her life in man’s world had been half a secret for as long as she could remember. Once the dust had settled and the memory of her crossing No Man’s World had begun to fade in the minds of those who had lived to tell the tale of it, it was as though part of her had started to fade as well.

She hadn’t thought of it much, truth be told, her attempts to get used to living in a world so different from the one she had been born into taking over; making her deem the need to change and adjust inevitable and necessary. But thinking or not, she was different. She had spent a century pretending to be one of them and would likely spend many more doing just that, but it would still never change who and what she was.

Steve—

Steve was the only person who had known the real her. Who had seen her standing tall and proud in her mother’s throne room, surrounded by her sisters she had fought alongside with. And he was also the one who had borne witness to her shock and confusion, her complete lack of comprehension of the norms and customs of his world. She had not felt more alive than she had with him; certainly not since then.

Maybe Diana was different, but from that standpoint, so was he.

And she wanted—had always wanted, Hera help her—to keep it that way.

In the years following Steve’s death, there had been moments when she had considered telling her lovers the truth. About herself, about what she was. Yet, each time she had come close to doing so, there was something holding her back. The entire time, Diana had assumed it was the fear of rejection that had held her back, without realizing that, in truth, it was the desire to protect something that she didn’t want to share with anyone but Steve. Not even if she lived for thousands of years more without him.

The pause on the line started to stretch.

She shouldn’t have called, Diana thought once more, as she pinched the bridge of her nose. She should never have—

“You can talk to me, you know?” Clark said, pulling her out of the white-noise storm of her thoughts.  

It was the sincerity of his offer that left her with a hot lump lodged in her throat. She knew that he meant it, too. That he hadn’t offered just so he could hear himself express his opinion afterwards.

Throughout Diana’s life, there had been long periods of time when she stood adjacent to everyone else, watching other people’s lives unfold from the sidelines. Particularly, after Etta—the last of her group of friends who had known almost as much about Diana as Steve had—had passed away. Sometimes, it had happened through her own choice. Other times—because she didn’t know how to allow herself to join in without feeling like she was betraying the memory of someone who never got to see and do everything that she could throw herself into so freely.

She could have said no, to Clark’s offer. She could have thanked him for the call, and maybe asked him something about his job, and then bidden him goodbye with a promise to talk again soon that they would both know she’d try to find an excuse not to keep.

But this was Clark, and Clark was not… If there was anyone in this world who could understand what it was like to be different in ways that no one could even begin to comprehend, it was him. Maybe he hadn’t walked the beaches of Themyscira or seen her at her rawest the way Steve had or watched someone he loved more than anything die before his eyes, but being from another planet was not that different from being from another world, Diana knew.

Of them all, he was most likely to understand and the least likely to judge.

And so she told him. Not everything—they would be speaking for days, she suspected. There wasn’t enough time—the shower had been running for a while now, and while Diana understood Steve’s need to try and scrub off the despair that the war had undoubtedly left on him, she reckoned he wasn’t going to stay in there for that much longer.

She began with the first war she had ever seen and the plane crashing through the sky and the night that had left her heart shattered over hard concrete. She told him about Maxwell Lord and his greed for power and the Dreamstone that had convinced Diana that the one thing she had wished for for decades was real only to rip it away from her, leaving her aching more than ever before, and how she had vowed to leave that part of her life behind then, for fear that she would break in ways that could never be mended.

What a fool she had been, to believe that, she thought.

She told him about finding Steve once more, tonight, convinced that he had been yet another ghost who had come to haunt her. A conviction she knew would be hard to shake off, had it not been for the night guards at the Louvre and Leon, the downstairs concierge, who had seen what she’d seen, confirming something that Diana feared to believe.

When she finally fell silent, there was another long pause on the line.

“Wow, Di, that’s…” Clark started and faltered.

“A lot,” she finished for him.

“Yeah,” he breathed. Diana could picture him leaning back in his chair, his hand pushing through his hair. “And you’re sure it’s him?”

Was she?

She wondered sometimes how her life would have turned out, if she had figured out that something was not right, in 1984. An empty question without an answer. She had been a different person then; she had no way of knowing if she would have made different choices without knowing what she did now.

But it made her heart give a twinge of sorrow all the same.

Diana paused, her mind going back to the moment at the museum when Steve had reached for her. When he cupped her face with his hands, thumbs brushing away her unbidden tears. The way he had done before—at the watchtower as he begged her to come with him to help save everyone while the world as Diana had known it continued to crumble around her; at the airfield before he had placed his watch in her hands and then run towards his death.

He had done it the night before that, too, their clothes strewn over the floor and the fire in his eyes burning brighter than the flames in the hearth behind him.

She thought of the Lasso burning bright on the darkened concourse, crowded with shadows and the desperation in his voice, pleading with her to believe him.

She had not bound him in 1984. A lot of things would have gone differently if she had, she thought.

“Yes,” Diana heard herself say. She waited another moment, biting on her lip. “But that doesn’t explain how.”

“Does it matter?”

“It did in 1984, and then he was gone. If this is—” she stopped and swallowed past a lump of panic in her throat. What if it was not forever, was what she wanted to stay.

She couldn’t bring herself to say the words out loud, though she suspected she didn’t need to.

Another moment passed. When Clark spoke again, Diana half expected reassurance. He was good at that, after all.

“Are you okay?” he asked instead.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, honestly.

“You know that we’re here for you, right? If someone is messing with you—”

“I know,” Diana said softly.

She did, in fact, know that, and that was something that she was endlessly grateful for.

“I supposed we’re both confused,” she added.

At that, Clark chuckled a little. “I imagine. A hundred years, huh?”

“That will probably take some getting used to,” she conceded, feeling the corners of her mouth curve into a smile. Behind the bathroom door, the water finally shut off. Diana straightened up. She needed to find him some clothes. “I have to go.”

“Call if you need anything,” Clark said, his tone suddenly not joking anymore. “I’m serious, Di. Any one of us.”

“I will,” she said.

“I mean it,” Clark pressed.

“I know. I do, too.” Her pulse stuttered over itself when she heard the shower curtain being drawn aside. “Tell Lois I said hi. I will call her next week.”

“Will do. We love you, Di.”

“Goodbye, Clark.”

Diana set her phone down on the counter. In her bedroom, she found two t-shirts and picked out the one she thought would humour Steve the most. She was relieved to discover a pair of sweatpants as well, hoping he wouldn’t mind wearing something with the word Paris on his behind for a while. There was nothing she could offer him in terms of socks or underwear, but it would have to do, she thought as she carried everything back to the bathroom. 

She was about to knock on the door to inquire if he was decent, when Steve yanked it open, appearing right before her in a cloud of steam, one of the spare towels she had offered him wrapped around his waist.

His skin was flushed from the hot water, his hair hanging over his forehead, which for reasons unknown to her, left Diana filled with odd, inexplicable tenderness. Though he had clearly tried to dry off his hair with a towel, it was still damp, dripping on his shoulders.

She was suddenly reminded of the day when she had walked in on him getting out of the pool in the caves beneath her mother’s palace, his expression surprised and perplexed by her apparent curiosity and casual nonchalance around his nudity. Admittedly, not much had changed. Looking at him now, Diana was overcome with the urge to move forward and brush the droplets of water off of his skin. Or kiss them away. 

Her fingers curled around the clothes she was holding.

“Hey,” Steve breathed out after a moment.

Diana glanced down, and then back up at him. “I was just going to…”

“Oh.”

“Here.” She handed the whole stack to him, and he took it with one hand.

“Thank you,” he said.

She retreated to the living room, feeling antsy as she waited for him to re-emerge from the bathroom. And then into the kitchen where she busied herself with putting on a kettle to make some tea, if only for the sake of having something to do with her hands.

Zeus help her, no training with the best of warriors to walk this Earth, however vigorous, seemed to have prepared her for this. After a century of living in man’s world, she had started to assume that there was little left that could still surprise her or throw her off guard. Yet, here she was, proven wrong by something she had never seen coming. Go figure.

She sensed movement behind her, and when she turned around, Steve was hovering in the doorway, his eyes moving over the space, his gaze lingering on appliances that, Diana realized with a start, he had never seen in his life.

When he’d finally completed a full sweep of the kitchen, he turned his focus on her, catching her as she tried to bite back a smile at the sight of him wearing that goddamned ridiculous shirt that tourists were so fond of and sweatpants that barely reached his ankles. She watched as his brows pulled together into a frown like she knew they would.

“So, this is… fashion?” he asked after a moment, gesturing at himself and making Diana press her lips together so she wouldn’t burst out laughing.

“Some might say,” she responded diplomatically. Her humour dimmed some after a moment. “I could give you your clothes back, if that’s what’d you prefer,” she offered. “They’re in the dryer, it shouldn’t be long now. I just thought—” you might not want to continue wearing them.

She didn’t say that, cutting off when he shook his head.

“No. No, this is good,” he said quickly, a shadow passing across his features. “Thank you. These are—” He ran his hand over his hair and made a face. “These are better. It looks ludicrous, but it’s not—”

Not something with bad memories attached to it.

Diana nodded, understanding his unspoken words.

“It suits you,” she offered, earning an offended look in return. “We will get you something different tomorrow,” she promised.

“Please tell me this is not how people in the twenty-first century dress?” he asked, looking down again at his shirt with a sigh. She had a feeling he was purposefully ignoring the stitched-on decoration on the back of his sweatpants, which only left her even more amused. 

“That would not be a bad thing, believe me,” she shook her head, smiling.

He looked like he was going to ask her to elaborate on that. But in the end, he didn’t. Instead, he gave her kitchen another wide sweep before he glanced towards the living room and hallway next—what he could see of them.

“So, this is where you live,” he observed.

“It is.”

Steve turned towards her. “And the Louvre?”

“I work there,” Diana explained.

He blinked. “You… work at the Louvre?” he echoed, dumbfounded. “The Louvre?” 

“Is that so strange?” she asked.

He chuckled and slid his hands into the pockets of his pants, his smile wistful.

“I went to stop that gas from killing people and the next moment I know, I pop up in the future and the woman who had no idea how a revolving door operated when we first met lives in Paris and works at the Louvre and has a kitchen that looks like something out of a science fiction novel. Strange doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.”

There was humour but also a touch of self-deprecation in his voice that made her chest constrict.

“You must have so many questions,” she said softly.

At that, the corner of Steve’s mouth tugged up into a wry smile. “A few thousand, give or take.” He cocked his head a little to his shoulder. “The first of them being… You look good for someone who is over a hundred years old. I’m taking it, clay doesn’t age.”

Diana smiled at that. “Well, it turned out that my mother hasn’t been entirely upfront about the nature of my… existence,” she said, shaking her head a little.

His brow quirked quizzically “Which is?”

“Zeus did bring me to life,” she explained and she leaned against the counter. Oddly enough, the old sting of bitterness over her mother’s lie didn’t come. “But in a more traditional way than what I was led to believe.”

She watched Steve process her response, figuring it out. Watched as his expression smoothed out into understanding, and then—into deeper confusion.

“You mean reproductive biology,” he said.

“Yes.”

His eyes widened at that. “Wait, but that means you’re…”

“A daughter of a god,” Diana finished for him.

“Immortal,” he said to himself, more than to her as he rubbed his chin. “That’s why you haven’t aged.”

She smiled. “To be fair, I was already a little older than I think I looked to you when we met.”

She expected a question about that, or maybe a joke about an older woman taking advantage of him. She was not surprised when instead he was smart enough to grasp onto something else.

“But if you’re a daughter of Zeus, and Ares was his son, then—”

“He was my half-brother, yes.”

Steve shook his head. “That’s…” he trailed off. “You killed him.”

“I did.”

“But you said—What did you mean when you said I was the one who stopped the war, then? Earlier, when I asked.”

“Because I couldn’t be in two places at once, Steve,” she responded, softly. “If you hadn’t done what you did, if you didn’t destroy the gas, millions of people would have died, regardless of whether or not I defeated Ares.”

“We did it, then,” Steve said quietly.

The way they had liberated Veld, Diana thought, her mind going back to sitting next to him by the fountain as people sang and danced in front of them with hope that was so palpable in the air she could almost touch it.

She felt something inside of her began to unravel at the memory—the starting point of everything that had gone wrong, eventually. She had failed to save them, in the end. She had failed to save Steve.

“Would you like some tea?” Diana asked, uncertain how to break the silence growing between them. “Or coffee,” she continued. “I could make you something to eat,” she added as she moved towards the fridge. “You must be hungry.”

Steve’s hand curled over her arm, stopping her.

“Diana.”

She paused and looked up, and like many times before, meeting his gaze had an effect of a sucker punch to her stomach.

“What happened next?” he asked. “After I—after everything.”

“I’ll tell you,” she promised, quietly. “Anything you want to know.”

“All of it,” he said quickly, as though she might change her mind.

“I promise.”

And a promise is unbreakable.

She didn’t say that, but she didn’t need to. He understood, she saw that.

Diana wondered if he believed her.

“You should eat something,” she offered again, but he was shaking his head again.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Then rest. It’s late.” Helpless against the urge to touch him, she lifted her hand to brush his hair back from his face, her fingers skittering down his cheek. “I will tell you everything, but you need to rest first, Steve.”

He looked like he was going to argue, his jaw working for a moment or two. Diana understood that. He had to be exhausted. The last several days they had spent together, before that night that had shattered her world and taken him away from her, had been draining. If she had to venture a guess, his life hadn’t been much easier for quite a while before then, too. But there was something dark and desperate in his eyes now, and after a moment, she understood it.

He was afraid. He was afraid that he was not going to wake up in 2018 tomorrow. That whatever fluke had brought him here could just as easily take him away and then he would never know what she had to tell him.

Diana’s hand dropped to his shoulder.

“I swear I won’t let—” she started and cut off when he tensed, flinching a little.

She drew her hand back, a frown appearing between her brows.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” Steve promised immediately.

She lifted her gaze to him.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No! No, you didn’t.”

She didn’t believe him, and saw in the change of his face that he knew it, too.

“My shoulder,” he admitted after a moment, and rolled it gingerly, a grimace passing across his features. “Must have banged it up when I—”

Blew myself up.

He didn’t say that, falling silent instead, the memory of it hanging heavily between them for a few moments.

“Diana, I’m sorry,” he blurted out. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you sooner. I’m sorry I—” He cut off again and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “I never meant for it to end that way. For us. For you. Leaving you…”

With you dead and me grieving for a century, Diana thought.

When she had climbed into the Armory in the middle of the night to retrieve what she had believed then to be the God-killer; when she had gone to get Steve and take him to the boat; when she had demanded he take her to the front—she hadn’t meant for it all to end the way it had, either.

There had been a time when Diana could barely comprehend the idea of regrets. She knew Steve had a fair number of them—some shared with her in a hushed whisper as the fire was dying in the hearth; others hidden so deep inside of his heart she had wondered then if he even knew a path towards them himself.

But a hundred years, however insignificant for an immortal, was a long enough time for her to accumulate quite a few mistakes of her own she would have liked to undo. Her failure to save him had always stood above them all, a glaring reminder that her own divinity meant nothing in the face of loss of those she cared deeply for. There had been many a night when she’d lain awake till the early hours of morning, asking herself if he’d lived had she not insisted they go after Ludendorff. If she’d followed him after he’d come looking for her at the watchtower. If she’d figured out the truth about Ares sooner.

If… if… if…

There was no way of knowing that, but it hardly alleviated Diana’s guilt.

She brushed her hand through his hair once more, pushing it back from his face. Her eyes searched his.

“Let me see,” she said.

Steve blinked. He frowned a little. When Diana’s gaze flicked towards his shoulder, he cleared his throat. “It’s nothing,” he repeated.

“Steve.”

“I’m okay, I swear. I’ve had it—”

Worse, he was probably going to say.

Diana thought of the light burning bright in the night sky above her, and wondered if that was where his mind went as well. He’d had it worse—he’d died. It was hard to beat that.

There was a change to his face then. Whatever it was that Steve saw in hers had him reaching for the hem of his shirt.

Diana moved closer, helping him so he wouldn’t jostle his injured shoulder more than necessary. Once it was off, Steve took it, holding it in his good hand. For a moment, her gaze lingered on the pale, faded scar beneath his collarbone. One that she remembered kissing once. There was another one on his bicep, still raw-looking – a remnant from the plane crash that hadn’t yet had time to heal. She was pleased to see it appeared healthy, courtesy of Epione’s balm, no doubt.

She examined a smattering of bruises splattered over his shoulder, her hand moving ever so gently over it as she felt for fractures and swelling. It wasn’t dislocated, thankfully. Only bruised, though she imagined it didn’t feel nice, either.

From this close, she could feel the heat of Steve’s body, see the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. He no longer smelled of gunpowder and dust and smoke. Instead, she caught the scent of her body wash on him. Of her shampoo. It pleased her more than she expected something like this would—as though he no longer belonged to the violent past that had brought them together. As though she had claimed him as hers.

Diana sensed him turn his head, his breath warm, falling on her cheek. She heard him inhale unsteadily, so close to her, the undercurrent of tension between them building and building until she could feel the fine hairs on her body stand on end. She only needed to tilt her own head slightly for their lips to brush. She knew he wanted her to.

Her fingers lingered on his skin for another moment, and then Diana took a step back, and only then she allowed herself to lift her face and meet his eyes again.

He looked confused, a frown lodged between his brows and hurt lurking behind his eyes, leaving her resenting herself for being the cause of it. As though the last thing he had said to her a century ago wasn’t a profession of love. As though she hadn’t spent the time since then missing him and longing for him and wishing for him to return. And here he was, standing in her kitchen, shirtless and barefoot, looking as lost as she had been when he had first brought her to his world.

Diana was suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all.

What the Dreamstone had done to her, how it used Diana’s memories and heartache against her in 1984 wasn’t Steve’s fault. He was not to blame for the grief she had had to learn to live with all over again. And it sure wasn’t his fault that something, somehow had brought him back to life, either.

“It’s not dislocated,” she said, at last, finding it in her to break the pause hanging between them.

A shadow of disappointment passed across Steve’s features. Whatever it was that he was expecting to hear, that was not it.

“I could’ve told you that,” he said, offering her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, which remained wary and assertive, studying her as though she was a creature he didn’t understand.

Suddenly, she couldn’t bear the thought of punishing him for her fears, however inadvertently. Couldn’t stand the distance between them, but not knowing how to cross it.

Funny how Diana had had enough time to imagine just about every scenario of their possible reunion, yet not one of them had gone as stilted and wrong in her head.

Steve started to put on his shirt again, and she moved towards him to help. She didn’t step away after that. Instead, she smoothed her palms down his chest, biting back an unbidden smile when he glanced down and rolled his eyes a little, still decidedly unimpressed by his attire.

And then he lifted his hand, catching one of hers and holding it pressed against his chest, his heart thumping into her palm. Even through the thin cotton of the shirt, Diana could feel the warmth of him. She watched him trace his thumb over her knuckles, his skin calloused. She thought of that night they had spent together, and how his touch ignited something inside of her that had never been there before. And how it had been burning in her chest since.

She looked up, her eyes travelling over his face, studying him while he studied her back. She must look different to him, Diana thought. Not only her clothes, but in the way she had learned to carry herself and speak and interact with the world around her. 

She wondered if he liked what he was seeing.

She turned her hand, curling her fingers around his and stepped back.

“Come with me.”

He followed her down the hallway, past the darkened living room and the bathroom. She paused at the door to her bedroom, dark, save for the silver moonlight filtering in through the curtains.

His gaze swept over the room – the bed with the headboard pressed against the wall opposite from them and nightstands on either side of it, a fireplace to the right and the slightly ajar door to the closet. A chest of drawers beside the light curtains that covered the door leading out onto a small balcony overlooking the city.

Standing beside him, Diana was overcome with a sense of déjà vu, her mind taking her to a moment a long time ago when Steve had paused in the doorway to another room, surveying it briefly before he stepped aside to let her in. There was no snow outside the window now, no voices singing below in celebration and the sheets on her bed were fine Egyptian cotton, but the memory of that night was stronger than anything she could see and touch right now. So much so that she could almost feel the faint smell of smoke and damp cold sneaking in between the window frames.

“Steve,” she called after another moment had passed and he appeared to be frozen in his spot.

He turned to her and glanced down at their still joined hands.   

“Diana, maybe I should—” he began, his gaze darting back towards the living room where a reading lamp was on and a couch was sitting in front of the second fireplace.

He probably should, she thought. She should find spare sheets and a pillow and a blanket and bid him goodnight. She shouldn’t have brought him here at all, come to think of it. Not until she knew what had happened, and how, and why.

Instead, she moved to him until they were standing so close that they were breathing the same air and she felt her sense of reason evaporate, replaced by consuming fear that she was going to wake up in an empty apartment, alone in her bed. That he was going to vanish into nothingness, like he had in so many nightmares she had had before.

Diana lifted her free hand, tracing his bottom lip with her thumb. “Sleep with me,” she whispered.

A shuddering exhale tumbled out of Steve’s chest. He ducked his head until their foreheads were resting together and closed his eyes.

“What about the, ah… the confines of marriage?” he asked, a faint trace of amusement in his voice.

She wondered just how much of a testament to his exhaustion was that he hadn’t pointed out the suggestiveness of her request.

She felt her lips curl up a little at the corners all the same.

“Never stopped us before, did it?”

He looked at her then, his eyes dark with heat, leaving Diana feeling like she was balancing on the edge of a knife. His gaze moved over her features, before dropping to her mouth the way she knew it would.

She didn’t fight the impulse to tilt her head this time, her lips brushing lightly against his. They lingered on the corner of his mouth for the moment that it took him to turn his head, kissing her back, his hand sliding to rest on the back of her neck.

“You look beautiful,” Steve murmured against her mouth after he drew back.

She smiled, her fingers trailing along his jaw. “You look exhausted.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “Yeah, well… I haven’t slept for a century, apparently.”

Diana stepped back and tugged at his hand.

“Come.”

She pulled the covers off and he climbed in. She hesitated for a moment, debating changing out of her dress pants, but then climbed in after him, choosing to forgo the sleepwear. Steve rolled onto his side to face her, his hand falling on the pillow between them, palm up. Diana folded her arm beneath her head, facing him, and slid her other hand into his, lacing their fingers together. She wanted to kiss him again, but there it was again, the small voice in the back of her mind, holding her off, cautioned against the risk of heartache.

“Sleep,” Diana said, softly.

He moved their hands towards him, kissing her knuckles. She thought that he was going to say something, but eventually, he simply lowered his head onto the pillow once more. He slipped off almost immediately, his hold on her hand loosening and his breathing evening out, growing deeper.

Diana studied him in the dark — the familiar planes of his face, the shadows caused by his lashes on his cheeks, his lips slightly parted and the thin coating of stubble along his jaw making her hands itch to touch it.

It was only in the moments before she also dozed off that she remembered the amulet that Bruce has acquired from John Constantine. She had completely forgotten about it, having never gone back to her office. As she remembered about it now, she realized that the power surge and Steve’s miraculous appearance seemed to have coincided with the moment she had touched it.

Which likely meant that if Steve was indeed real, it was not going to last.

Notes:

Well, this chapter was quite a rollercoaster of emotions. The next few chapters will be heavy on "Steve getting acquainted with the future" content (because it is the absolute best thing to write, I swear), and I'll try to answer at least some of the How's and Why's that have come up already. If that's your thing, please be sure to stay tuned!

Thank you for making it this far :) Comments and general yelling are always much, much appreciated!

And... I'll see you next week!

Chapter 4

Notes:

Hey everyone! Thank you for the love you're giving this story, it means the world to me! I really do hope you will continue to enjoy it :)

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

Chapter Text

Steve awoke to the bright sunlight slanting through the crack between the curtains and filling the room with more light than he wanted to deal with. He was sprawled diagonally across the bed, his face pressed into a pillow that smelled nicely of something fresh and sweet; something that stirred memories that he couldn’t immediately grasp.

He’d had a dream, the remnants of it still lingering in the back of his mind like a shadow, but try as he might, he couldn’t recall what it was about. Something good. Something that made waking up less than thrilling.

He blinked his eyes open, grimacing at the light, and craned his neck to look around.

The room was bright and large and decorated in pleasant pastels, the bed taking up most of it. The closet door stood half-ajar and through the crack, he could see clothes hanging within in a neat row. There was a book on the nightstand, its title in French. He squinted at it for a moment, trying to place it, his mind groggy and something about the emptiness of the place making him—

It all came rushing back then. Ludendorff and the gas; Diana on the outskirts of Veld, telling him it was his fault; pressing the watch into her hands and leaving her forever. And then appearing in 2018, somehow.

Slowly, Steve realized that was what he’d had mistaken for a dream, when he’d awoken. This new reality.

He surveyed the room around him once more, before casting his eyes down at the clothes Diana had given him to wear the night before. Not a dream, he confirmed, sitting up and pushing the covers aside. No way he would make this stuff up.

The details still felt fuzzy, the memory of taking the cab from the Louvre and then, eventually, falling asleep with Diana curled up next to him feeling like something he had dreamed up. Something he knew he had dreamed of before – on the boat, that night they had left the island.

Which made him wonder where Diana was and if there was any way to ask her a few questions to clarify a thing or two that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete lunatic.

Steve looked around once again, as though she may have materialized out of thin air, but the room remained empty, and for a moment, his stomach dropped in fear that maybe she had been some crazy illusion of a dead man and had long since gone, disappearing into nothing. It was only when he detected the faint smell of coffee coming from the hallway that his heartbeat settled a little.

He climbed out of the bed, wincing at the soreness of his muscles. It might have been a hundred years for Diana, but his body still remembered every moment of the fight with Maru’s men that had only happened some 36 hours before, for him. Give or take. He rolled his shoulder carefully, remembering her gentle touch as she’d examined it the previous evening. There was a ghost of a memory hovering in the periphery of his awareness of waking up in the dark with his arms wrapped around her body and his face buried in her hair, but he couldn’t say with certainty if that had actually happened or not.

There was a photograph sitting on the bedside table, a framed newspaper article beneath polished glass. It took Steve a moment to realize that he was looking at a photo of himself, a little blurry, the letters of the text faded somewhat. It made his heart twist in his chest, making him feel odd for not spotting it last night even though he knew he had been so tired he wouldn’t have noticed anything, even if he’d wanted to.

The parquet floor was warm beneath his bare feet as he walked towards the door and pulled it open, listening for signs of life inside the apartment. There was a slight, barely audible hum that Steve remembered from the previous evening as belonging to the refrigerator in the kitchen — a massive one that made him wonder how much exactly people in the future needed to eat. It had looked shiny and new, too, and reminded him of what he’d imagined space ships would look like when he was a child and read about them in a book.

The bathroom where he had taken a shower the night before was right across the hall from the bedroom — he hadn’t noticed that before, either. Steve passed what looked like a study, with a desk and an odd device sitting on top of it that looked like a half-open book, turned sideways, and two massive bookshelves rising all the way to the ceiling. It, too, was flooded with the morning sunlight. And just like the bedroom, it was empty.

He walked past the living room, choosing to believe that he would have time to have a better look at it later, and finally, he found Diana in the kitchen.

She was leaning against the marble counter running along one of the walls, a cup of tea in her hand and that flat black thing he had seen her use the night before in another, her finger moving over it, though Steve couldn’t tell what it was that she was doing with it. And he still didn’t know what it was, for that matter.

She had changed into tight pants and a loose-fitting shirt. Her hair was down, falling over her shoulders in heavy waves and making Steve itch to bury his fingers into it the way he had done before, and she was barefoot now. It was the oddest thing to notice that her toenails appeared to be painted pale beige.

She took a sip of her tea and put the mug down on the counter beside her, her fingers sliding over her black… thingy. In that moment, Steve didn’t even care what it was, content to simply stare at her forever, with the sunlight tangled in her hair and her features relaxed and serene. He thought of the first time he had ever seen her, hovering over him, the sun shining above them creating a halo around her head and making him wonder for a brief moment if maybe he had died and gone to heaven.

He had always thought that that would be the moment he would remember most vividly about Diana. But looking at her now, he was suddenly overcome with desire to sear this image in his mind and carry it with him for as long as he walked this Earth.

He stayed perfectly still, taking her in until, half a minute later, she looked up, finally noticing him.

“Good morning,” she said, a smile tugging the corners of her mouth upwards and making his stomach flop wildly.

“Morning,” Steve echoed, his voice suddenly hoarse. He cleared his throat and repeated, “Morning.”

“Did you sleep well?” Diana asked.

He had, strangely enough, Steve realized. He hadn’t expected to. Her question though made him acutely aware of the fact that on his last morning in 1918, he had awoken with Diana in his arms. Unlike today. Funnily, he hadn’t dreamed of anything then, either. He was remembering that now, too.

“Yeah, I…” He cleared his throat again. “It was good.”

Her smile widened, the corners of her eyes crinkling. 

He wanted to tell her that she was beautiful. He suspected that she knew that, and wondered how many people had told her just that over the course of a hundred years. Many, if he had to take a guess. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t deserve to hear it from him as well.

But then he remembered that strange moment last night and the proverbial wall going up between them, the shadow behind her eyes when she had looked at him after she had checked his shoulder. She had been the one to kiss him, true, and that should have soothed him. But it didn’t for reasons Steve couldn’t quite explain even to himself yet.

So instead, he jerked his chin towards the black thing in her hand and asked, “What’s that?”

Diana glanced down and then up at him. He could see that she was trying not to laugh.  

“It’s my phone,” she explained.

She turned her hand and opened her palm. A black glass screen stared back at Steve, perfectly smooth.

He lifted his gaze to her face, convinced that she was making fun of him.

“A phone?” he repeated, skeptically. “Then where’s the cord? And… and the receiver? And other stuff?”

Her smile widened, turning into something entirely majestic and making him forget about his initial question altogether. Based on the amusement dancing in her eyes, he suspected that he had just said something entirely ridiculous. 

He thought immediately of her demanding to know what women of his time wore into battle and whether a corset was a type of armour, feeling the colour rise up the back of his neck when it dawned on him just how out of his depth he was. More so than she had been a hundred years ago, perhaps. The enormity of it was making the world sway a little around him.

Diana pushed away from the counter and moved towards him.

“Let me show you.”

She brought her phone to life by pressing a small button on the side, the screen lighting up in vivid colour. Steve felt his eyes widen and his jaw go a little slack while she explained to him the basic principles of what they called mobile phones. Which, to his surprise, wasn’t really that much different from a radio, in essence. But that was where the similarities ended, as no radio he had ever seen before had been able to play videos or connect a person instantly to someone half a world away.

She walked him through making phone calls, and then something called texting, which was like sending a very quick letter that only took seconds to arrive. Then there was electronic mail, which sounded a little more complicated but also allowed for longer messages. By the time they reached voice-mail—which sounded pretty self-explanatory, except it wasn’t, not really—Steve’s mind was swimming.

Phones in the twenty-first century, as it turned out, were massive storage devices that also acted as a photo camera, and a video camera, and allowed people to keep track of news and connect with others simultaneously through what Diana explained was called applications.

Steve stared at her fingers that moved easily over the small screen, bringing up images and programs, unable to utter a word.

It was when she lifted her hand to tuck a piece of hair that had fallen over her cheek behind her ear that it occurred to Steve how close she was standing. Close enough that he could smell that flowery shampoo on her and feel the warmth of her skin. Something that derailed his train of thought momentarily.

“Steve?”

He blinked, zeroing in on the moment again, only then realizing that he was staring at her with his mouth agape. Her expression softened. His eyes drifted to her lips, unbidden, and he wondered if she was going to kiss him again. Like last night. If she’d mind if he kissed her.

His mouth went dry at the thought, his heart giving a dull, hollow thud against his ribs.

“Perhaps we should start with something simple,” Diana offered, smiling.

“No, no,” he protested quickly, snapping his gaze back up to her eyes and feeling the tops of his cheeks grow hot. “This is…” he trailed off and cleared his throat. “So, everyone has a phone like this now?”

“Pretty much.”

It sounded… overwhelming.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck.

“And you can take pictures with it?” he clarified, again. “Like a camera?” 

She bit her lip. “Yes.”

He shook his head, chuckling under his breath, and then scrubbed a hand down his face.

He tried not to think of all the other things that were probably as crazy. Like were their cars flying now? Could they control time? He ended up thinking of it all anyway, feeling a little dizzy.  

Diana watched him, and while he pondered where to even begin asking her more questions, hungry for everything she could tell him, her expression suddenly turned troubled and unreadable. Steve frowned, feeling his brows knit together.

The moment stretched between them, making him feel a gaping abyss between them. Him still stuck in 1918, and her—light years ahead of him.

He wanted to ask her if she could feel it, too.

“What were you doing when I came in?” he asked instead. “Were you on—” he searched his mind for the names of various programs she had given him. “On email?”

Diana pressed her lips around a smile. “No, I was texting my assistant to cancel my meetings for today.”

Steve paused. “Assistant?” he echoed.

“A secretary,” she explained.

This time, it was his turn to smile. “Someone who goes where you tell them to go and does what you tell them to do?” he teased.

She laughed. “Something like that.”

Like Etta. Steve didn’t say that.

Up until that moment, the ramifications of somehow travelling a hundred years into the future hadn’t occurred to him, not really. All he had thought about was that he was alive, and that so was Diana, and that even though everything had changed and the world as he had known it didn’t exist anymore, it still meant that maybe, just maybe, they finally had time. He was not yet clear on her stance on the matter, but there was just enough hope to make his heart beat faster.

Or maybe it was just her that did that. Either way, it was not a bad thing.

But it was hitting him now how long a century was. Steve’s last memory of Etta was her saying goodbye outside of the pub where they had come to find Charlie and where Sir Patrick had come to offer them his support in the mission against Ludendorff. He hadn’t yet considered the fact that Etta had been long dead. And Charlie, and Sammy, and Chief, all of them gone, and Steve didn’t even know how it happened or when.

And it was too much, too monumental, and he felt his chest grow tight from the tidal wave of grief that was too much for his heart to contain.

He could feel Diana’s gaze on him, and when he lifted his eyes, he found her studying him.

“Why did you want everything cancelled?” he inquired, desperately pushing the thoughts about his losses away for now, certain that something inside of him would break beyond repair if he had allowed that void of despair to suck him in before he was ready to deal with it.

“So I could spend the day with you.”

He blinked. “Oh.”

“We need to buy you some clothes,” she continued, smoothing the palm of her hand over his chest. She gave him a pointed once-over. “Unless you would rather prefer to wear this, of course.”

She laughed at what must have been the horrified look on his face.

“Clothes would be good,” Steve said, hastily, all too aware of her nearness and the warmth of her touch and the way her eyes were so full of life. 

She had smiled at him like that before, last night—the one they had shared back in his time. Afterwards, when they had talked, and when he was begging time to slow down and give him another moment-minute-hour with her. It certainly did not help that talking about clothes reminded him of the last time both of them wore none, together, which made the back of his neck grow hot once more.

“Alright, then,” Diana said quietly. “Why don’t you have some coffee while I get changed, and then we can find something to eat, afterwards? When we’re done?”

Steve nodded automatically. His eyes darted towards the coffee maker that seemed to be straightforward enough, even for someone like him, and then up at Diana. But by then, she was already walking away.


When Diana walked out of the bedroom, dressed in a pair of black pants and a plain long-sleeved t-shirt, her hair gathered into a loose knot at the base of her neck, Steve was standing in front of the toaster, face scrunched into a confused frown and a second cup of coffee—based on the emptiness of the pot—in his hand.

She paused in the doorway, allowing herself to study him before he noticed her.

That morning, she had awoken at dawn the way she always did—centuries of habit unbeatable even after a hundred years when there was no beach outside her bedroom window and no one was expecting her to rouse before sunlight. 

She must have shifted sometime in the night, sliding closer to him as Steve had been curled around her, his chest pressed to her back and his arm slung over her waist—a pleasant weight that had reminded her of another morning, in another time. Of slipping out of his embrace to start the fire in the hearth again, their room freezing cold, and of Steve pulling her back into bed to love her again because they had time.

Last night, Diana had stayed awake for hours after he had drifted off, half-certain he would be gone when she’d wake in the morning. Then, when she’d slid out of his grasp to take a shower, she had feared she would find her bed empty afterwards. And leaving him to go change minutes ago, she had wondered if she would walk into an empty kitchen.

But there he was, now studying her crockpot sitting on the counter with an expression so dumbfounded she couldn’t help but smile, her heart growing ten times its size in her chest. But she could already feel the looming dread of separation, her soul bracing itself for the impact of it.

Steve noticed her out of the corner of his eyes and straightened up. He had changed out of the borrowed sweatpants, she noticed, though he’d kept the t-shirt. 

His eyes travelled up and down her body, his jaw dropping just a little as his eyes lingered on her legs. It occurred to Diana then that he may not have ever seen a woman wearing pants before. Or, at least, he was not accustomed to it the way everyone else was.

If she had to venture a guess, she’d say that he liked what he was seeing.

“Ready?” Diana asked, trying to bite back her smile.

He snapped his eyes up, traitorous colour rising up his face. Considering that they had done more than just looking, before, she found his reaction more endearing than she expected.

“Ready?” he echoed, momentarily confused. “Ready, yes! Clothes. I’m ready.”  

He looked at the mug in his hand, uncertain what to do with it, and then put it on the counter. Diana tried not to laugh at the sight of him giving the crockpot another skeptical look.

She pulled on a light jacket while Steve put on his socks and boots. He hesitated briefly then, before sliding his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat. He glanced at her outfit and then himself, a slight frown finding its way back between his brows.

As a spy who was used to blending in, she thought, he decidedly did not like the idea of standing out.

He followed Diana out of the apartment and into the elevator, his eyes following the movement of her hand as she pressed the button for the ground floor. He looked a little dazed, more so than he had yesterday. She wondered if it had something to do with her kitchen appliances—she made a mental note to explain everything to him later, properly—or if it was something else. But she wasn’t sure how to ask.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, moving to stand closer to him.

Steve turned to her, his gaze finding hers.

“Is this real?” he murmured, his voice full of such desperation that it made everything inside of her ache.

It gave her a pause, too. Ever since she had found him last night, confused and perplexed, Diana had been wondering if he was going to dissipate like a billow of smoke right before her eyes. She had never once considered the possibility that he was thinking the exact same thing.

The realization left her feeling ashamed. She didn’t know how to comfort him, or what promises she could make—were there any that she could keep?

She reached for his hand, fingers brushing lightly against his knuckles before she slipped her palm into his.

“I want to believe so,” she whispered.

Steve ducked his head closer to hers.

“Diana, I—”

The door opened behind her with a ding, making him pull back with a jolt, his eyes trained over Diana’s shoulder. She turned around to find an older man standing just outside, eyeing them curiously as he waited for them to vacate the elevator.

“My apologies, Monsieur,” Diana said.

Steve started to pull his hand from her hold, but she gripped it tighter as she pulled him past the man and into the foyer. He glanced at her, and squeezed her fingers.

Diana paused near the desk of the day concierge. “Claude, this is Monsieur Steve Trevor, he will be staying with me,” she said, introducing Steve to the older man on the other side of the counter.

He smiled at her. “Of course, Mademoiselle Prince.” Then he turned to Steve. “Monsieur. Welcome.”

Steve nodded at him, and the tightness in Diana’s chest eased a little bit more. He is real, she told herself. He is here. She wondered if there would come a time when she would stop looking for proof of that.

There was a small voice in the back of Diana’s mind reminding her that this wasn’t over yet. That people didn’t come back to life simply because they were loved and missed and longed for. That there was an amulet sitting on the desk in her office at the Louvre that may be the key to answering all of her questions—but that was something that she wasn’t yet prepared to think of, not yet.

Then there was John Constantine and the connection between them that Diana didn’t quite understand, or like. If he was behind Steve’s resurrection, Diana couldn’t see his motives or reasoning. They barely knew each other. There had to be something, she thought. There always was, and part of her itched to jump into unravelling that knot of mysteries immediately. 

But there was also a part of her that was adamant to hold on to the miracle of having Steve back, consequences and the rest of the world be damned. Of having him look at her the way no one else had ever had, her name on his lips like a prayer, each time.

Once again, she wondered, the way she had in 1984, what would she be willing to sacrifice to keep him with her.

She feared that whatever choice she made, it was going to hurt them both in the end, one way or another.

They stepped into the bright sunlight, greeted by a gust of wind that brought a smell of freshly brewed coffee and pastries from a café across the street. Steve’s eyes were drawn to it immediately and to the people sitting on the patio outside even despite the chilly bite of autumn in the air as more people hurried up and down the street around them.

It occurred to Diana then that this wasn’t just the future for him. That this was the first time he was seeing the world without war in a way he hadn’t seen it in a long, long time. He hadn’t asked about that yet, not past them ending it part, but she couldn’t help but try to imagine what it must be like for him to experience all this. To see the result of something that he had died fighting for.

He turned to her, a shadow passing across his features. A hundred years was a long time for her to learn to read people, but try as she might, she couldn’t put her finger on what it was that she was seeing on his face. And then it was gone, leaving streaks of sunlight that highlighted his stubble and caught in his tousled hair.

He smiled at her, and Diana’s heart clenched fiercely with affection.

“So, where to?” he asked.

She led him towards where her car was parked half a block down the street, in the shade of trees lining the sidewalk. She pulled a key fob from the pocket of her jacket and unlocked it. The hazard lights blinked at them once in response.

She let go of Steve’s hand and, glancing around for traffic, started towards the driver’s door. It was only when she opened it and was about to slide in that she noticed that he hadn’t followed her. Instead, he was standing a few feet away, his eyes wide as saucers as he took her car in—a sleek, black sedan, equally elegant and practical in the city.

It dawned on Diana then that he had never seen anything like it before, either—sure, they had taken a cab from the museum last night, but he probably hadn’t been paying much attention to anything then.

He was certainly doing it now.

Steve looked up, meeting her eyes over the roof of the car.

“Is this yours?” he asked, in awe.

Diana tried to keep a straight face. “Yes.”

Instinctively, he looked up and down the street, noticing the other vehicles parked at the curb, his mouth dropping open a little. Her fingers, still curled over the door handle, flexed, itching to trail over the line of his jaw, drawing his attention back to her.

“And everyone drives cars like this?” Steve clarified as he turned to her again.

Diana thought of the cars parked in Bruce’s garage in Gotham and what Steve would think of them, if he ever got a chance to see them. Low, sports cars that bordered on art. The jet and the Fox and the Crawler, hidden in the Batcave. 

She had told Bruce once that she had known a man a long time ago who would have loved to fly one of his planes. Judging by the look on Steve’s face, the sentiment still stood true.

The thought made her smile.

“Something like this, yes,” she agreed.

“Wow, that’s…” He rubbed the back of his neck. He squinted in the sunlight, his gaze sliding over her car once again as he let the end of the phrase hang in the air. When their eyes met, he looked lost.

“We could walk,” Diana offered. 

“No. No, it’s…” he huffed out a breath and moved towards the passenger door, pulling it open. “No,” he repeated. “This is—this is good.”

She smirked and slid into the driver’s seat. “Well, if this is good, maybe I’ll let you drive later.”

Steve, who was busy figuring out the logistics of buckling his seat belt, paused and looked up.

“Really?”

Diana slid the key into the ignition and started the engine, aware of his gaze on her as though it was something palpable.

“We’ll see.”


The last car Steve remembered having been in was the one that Sameer had driven to deliver them both to the German High Command. A rickety thing that had smelled strongly of exhaust and made his teeth chatter on every bump, the leather seat forcing him to grip the door handle lest he slide to the floor each time Sami made a turn.

Last night, in the back of a cab, the only thing that had registered with him was a faint smell of vanilla and how roomy it had been. Enough for him to sit close to Diana but far enough away from the driver that it had almost felt as though they had been completely alone.

Now, in the passenger seat of Diana’s vehicle—one that she drove expertly down busy streets of a busier city—he couldn’t help but stare at all the buttons and controls on the dashboard. It smelled nice, too—like something fresh, and new leather, and Diana’s perfume. Something that had taken him all of ten hours to learn to recognize, he thought as he cast a look towards her out of the corner of his eye.

Though Steve wasn’t sure where exactly they were going, it wasn’t a long drive. And he spent a good half of it fiddling with the heater settings and the radio, and once, he even accidentally opened the roof window—why would you even need a window in the roof?!—and then pressed the other buttons frantically to get it to close.

Diana didn’t say anything, her eyes staying on the road the entire time, only deviating towards him once or twice. But when Steve glanced at her to check if she was bothered by his interest, she was smirking. He felt the heat of embarrassment rise up his cheeks, suddenly aware of how out of place he must seem to her here, in this time, in the world that was probably more hers than his by now. He straightened up, leaning away from all the screens and buttons and sinking back into his seat, his eyes swinging to the view outside the window for the first time.

If the city he had seen last night was sparkling with lights, now it was bustling with life, so vibrant and colourful he didn’t know how to process it.

At some point, his eyes snatched a man out of a crowd wearing faded jeans that were hanging so low off his hips that his underwear was showing. His hair was coloured in at least three different shades of pink and there was a silver hoop piercing his left eyebrow. Steve wasn’t sure if his jacket was intentionally meant to look like it had never been washed or if it was just filthy. But his own outfit stopped looking and feeling all that awkward to him all of a sudden.

He tried to remember the last time he had seen a place so… normal (black makeup and chains decorating someone else’s clothes aside), and came up empty. Had to be sometime before he was sent to Europe, he thought absently, but the images were muddled and unfocused in his head. As though the war had divided everything inside of him into before and after, and the before part was so out of reach now that he wouldn’t know how to find it even if he knew where to look.

Diana’s hand brushed against his, briefly, jolting him to attention.

Steve whipped his head around.

“It’s alright,” she said, glancing at him before her focus returned to the road ahead as they pulled to a stop at a red light.

“Hm?”

“It’s alright that you are curious, Steve. I don’t mind.”

“I don’t want to break anything,” he murmured.

She appeared to be amused by that. “You won’t break anything.”

He grabbed hold of her hand before she pulled it away and lifted it to his lips, brushing a kiss to her fingertips. She left her fingers interlaced with his until the end of their drive.

Diana parked the car under the shade of a tree, joining a long row of other shiny cars. She slid out of it gracefully, and Steve hurried after her, fumbling for a moment with the buckle of the seatbelt. When he joined her on the sidewalk, she pressed a small button on a black keyring attached to the car key and the lights blinked again. He figured it was how locks worked in the future, but didn’t ask, watching her glance up and down the street as she considered something.

She turned to him after another moment, and like every time she had ever looked at him, Steve’s heart twisted in his chest with longing so intense he could barely breathe past it. How could he be so in love with her after knowing her for only a handful of days was beyond him, but here he was, certain that he would gladly follow her to the edge of the world, if she so pleased.

“Where would you like to start?” she asked, moving closer to him, her eyes searching his face. “Food or clothes?”

Truth be told, Steve couldn’t recall the last time he had eaten. Probably the morning before he had died. By the time he and Diana had made it downstairs, his boys had already had their breakfast. The innkeeper had informed Steve that they had headed out to check on the horses, last thing she’d heard. She had been gracious enough to save him and Diana their meals. That glass of champagne he had had at the gala later probably didn’t really count.

He’d felt a little queasy and slightly nauseated the night before, certain he would have gotten sick if he had taken Diana up on her offer to get him something to eat. But he could feel it now, the gnawing feeling of hunger in his stomach, made worse by the smell of fresh bread wafting towards them from a bakery a couple doors down the street. So much so that it had left Steve nearly salivating over the loaves in the display window.

But then there were these clothes that he was itching to get out of, even if he was going to be forced to wear pants hanging lower than his underwear or anything with metal studs and chains.

Diana smoothed her hand down the lapel of his overcoat, which was, admittedly a good overcoat, but if he could get rid of it as well, he wouldn’t mind in the slightest.

“Steve?”

He glanced towards the bakery once more, and then at people around them, their hands laden with shopping bags.

It didn’t really matter, in the long run, he thought.

He turned to her.

They have breakfast, Steve remembered telling her. They really love their breakfast. And they love to wake up, read the paper and go to work.

He had no paper on him, and he wondered if the prospect of work was in the cards for him anytime soon, though he would have to figure something out, eventually. But they could have breakfast now. He had no doubt that she had had enough opportunities to experience what people did when there were no wars to fight in the time since he’d been gone. But they had never done it together, before. Not when there was no war waiting for them.

“Food,” he said decisively.

Diana smiled that pretty smile that touched her eyes. He was suddenly made aware that Butterflies in my stomach wasn’t merely a figure of speech.

“I should have guessed,” she murmured, her tone teasing.

A joke about not eating for a hundred years leaped to his tongue, but he managed to swallow it, cringing a little on the inside.

Steve glanced around, before turning to her again.

“Lead the way.”

They barely managed to take a few steps before the sound of artillery fire shattered the air, ricocheting down the street.

Notes:

Okay, I know some of you are new and don't yet know the extent of how mean I am yet. And the truth is - yes, I love evil cliffhangers. I really do love them and there will be quite a few of them in this fic, although I'm trying to contain myself. Truly, I am.

And speaking of being evil... As I'm doing my best to tie up all the loose ends and such, next I'll do an update for A Road Paved In Gold. Those of you who are following it, please feel free to refresh your memory :) Those of you who are not - have a look at it, if you feel like it.

Anyway, feedback is love, we writers thrive on it so please let me know what you think of this chapter :)

Again, thank you for reading. You guys have been so wonderful and I hope you'll stick around to see how this story ends!

Chapter 5

Notes:

Hey everyone :) It's really nice to be back to sharing this story again. A million thanks to you all for all the love and support you have been giving this fic, I appreciate it beyond words!

This story was mostly meant to be my lockdown distraction project. The 2020 lockdown, that it - who knows how many of those we'll have? And then suddenly unbeknownst to me, I developed some real feelings towards this fic. While I did an odd "Steve in the future" fic here and there, they were all one-shots and I never quite got to dive into his perception of the world in the 21st century as deeply as I'm doing it here. It is oddly fascinating to write him all wide-eyed and confused, and I know that Steve is the same Steve in all of my fics, technically, but I would probably legitimately die for this one. So yeah, I really do hope you will enjoy everything I have in store for you :)

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

Chapter Text

The first time Steve had flown during the war was also the first time he had been hit.

The missile had come from a thicket of forest far below him, one that was encircling what they had believed to be a destroyed and abandoned village. 

He had felt the shudder running through his plane, half of the left wing shaved off clean in an instant. The smell of smoke had come next, filling the small cockpit with an acrid scent that had made his eyes water and his throat burn. His hands had gripped the yoke so tight he feared he would never be able to unclench them again in an attempt to level the body of the plane, searching for a current of air that could take him towards the field he could see in the distance. If he made it there, he had known he would be able to land, somehow.

He had never made it that far.

With one last jolt, the nose of the plane had dipped forward, the wind whistling through the cockpit and making everything blur before his eyes. He could see the trees rushing towards him faster than he ever thought was possible, gnarly branches waiting to grab him and tear him and his plane to shreds.

That was when the panic had set in, fuelled by the distant staccato of firing guns, the flashes of exploding gunpowder like tiny fireworks below him.

They had known where he was going to crash, and they had been hurrying towards the forest, to finish the job if the fall didn’t kill him.

With a shaking hand, he had reached for his handgun, checking the ammunition. And then he had yanked at the yoke as hard as he could, trying to level the plane one last time as its belly grazed over the treetops in hope that he would manage to avoid nose-diving into the cold mud, made worse but a solid week of non-stop rain.

The plane had barrelled through the trees, branches scratching along the fuselage and catching on the sleeves of Steve’s jacket as he had tried to hold on for dear life and not get impaled in the process. It had started to get dark, the shadows growing thick close to the ground. In the distance, he could hear voices shouting, the noise of people making their way towards him, not trying to conceal themselves because they knew he had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. He could hear rapid shots getting fired, too, and on the other side of the forest was the front, the ground beneath the carcass of his mangled plane shaking with explosions of cannon.

He had all but rolled out of the cockpit, his legs shaky beneath him as adrenaline continued to rush through his system, blood roaring in his ears, so deafening he could hardly hear anything else. A deadly curse in a situation when a sound of a twig breaking beneath the sole of his boot could end his life.

They had been closing in on him, on them, the base camp that he had been trying to get to surrounded now, his progress towards his battalion painted bright red with blood.

It was in that forest that he had taken his first life, shooting a German soldier twice in his chest and then turning away from the man’s limp body and getting violently sick. It was in that forest that he had learned to recognize the sounds that different firearms made, all of them forever etched into his brain. He had never been more tired or more scared or more ready to give up than he was then, cowering behind a fallen log, his hands slippery with sweat on his handgun as he had tried to reload it, his fingers trembling and his lungs burning from exertion.

It had felt like a nightmare, only a thousand times worse because there was no waking up from it, no ending it. There was only the late-March cold sneaking under his too-thin coat and the fear running through his veins like poison and a never-ending chorus of shots being fired, a sound that Steve had continued to hear for days afterwards, ringing in his ears as though it had never stopped.

He had hoped that it was over, but now he was there again, hiding away from the rain of bullets, the smell of gunpowder coating the inside of his lungs. No escape, no salvation, no—

“Steve?”

Steve sucked in a breath, and then another one, following the sound of the voice.

He blinked his eyes open to find Diana’s face before him, her eyes wide and confused and worried.

He felt the cold hand unclench from around his stomach. His hands were shaking. He was shaking. A shuddering breath rattled out of his chest.

He was not in the forest in Germany. He was—

Steve swallowed and glanced around. He was in a small side alley, the street lined with shops where Diana had left her car bustling with life some ten feet away from them. He didn’t remember how he got there. The last thing he recalled was crouching behind a car as he had pawed at his side for the gun that must have been destroyed by the explosion in 1918, his heart hammering out of his chest…

He turned back to Diana slowly, the painful tightness in his chest easing, somewhat.

Her hands were on his face, stroking his cheeks, tracing the line of his jaw. She was saying something to him, a low murmur of comfort. Steve wasn’t even sure it was in English, and quite frankly, he didn’t really care.

“Diana…” he rasped, and stopped, swallowing again, his mouth dry.

She leaned closer to him, brushing her hand through his hair. “Shh. Breathe. Please breathe, Steve. Please.”

He didn’t even realize that he wasn’t, not really. That his breaths were coming in short, strained gasps, as though his windpipe was caught in a tight hold. That it hurt, everything hurt, the memory of being hunted like an animal burning something inside of him to ash even now. No human being was meant to ever feel that way. 

His skin was clammy, he felt a trickle of sweat run down his spine beneath his clothes.

Diana tilted her head, lips brushing over his temple, the tenderness of it almost enough to undo him.

“Someone was shooting—”

She shook her head. “A car backfired somewhere down the street,” she interjected, softly. Steve blinked at her. “Everything is alright.”

He took another breath and let it out, slowly, feeling the rush of adrenaline drain out of his system as quickly as it had arrived, leaving him feeling weak and exhausted and somewhat lightheaded. He curled his hand around her wrist, feeling the hammering of her pulse beneath his fingertips, his other hand coming to rest on her hip.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

She stroked his cheek, the way she had done the night before. The way she had done in Veld. Steve closed his eyes and leaned forward until his forehead was pressed to hers and there was nothing else. All he could breathe, all he could feel was her, and the damn night when his whole world had fallen apart around him for the first time started to recede into the faint memory it was meant to be.

“Don’t,” she murmured. “You’re safe. It’s alright, you’re safe.”

She brushed her hand through his hair once more, her palm coming to rest curled over his cheek. He could feel her relax too, tight tension seeping out of her body.

“Let’s leave, yes?” Diana offered. “Go home.”

Home, Steve repeated in his mind. There was no home now, only this odd place, and him, someone odder still.

He shook his head and glanced towards the street and the sunlight and the people sitting at the small tables outside cafes. He turned back to Diana. Her hand was still cupped over his cheek, the touch warm and soothing, smoothing out the edges of panic still scraping against his insides.

“No. It’s okay.” She was eyeing him skeptically. “I’m fine, I swear. Let’s do—” His eyes darted towards the traffic and late morning crowd. “Let’s do what we came here to do.”  

“Steve.”

God help him, he loved the way his name sounded when she said it.

He smiled with one corner of his mouth, though he suspected it didn’t come out quite as convincing as he had intended it to be, and turned his face to brush his lips against the heel of her palm.

“I’ll try to remember that we’re not at war anymore.” He considered their plan for a moment, his stomach rolling uncomfortably at the idea of eating, the smell of gunpowder still permeating his senses and lingering on his tongue. The smell of fresh bread that had seemed so alluring only minutes ago was now nauseating. He cleared his throat. “Just… maybe let’s do the clothes first.”

For a moment, Diana looked like she was going to protest, and he probably wouldn’t have fought her too much, Steve knew. But in the end, she glanced away momentarily and then back at him again. And then she nodded and stepped back, her expression smoothing out into something that he failed to interpret.

He followed Diana out of the side alley and back onto the wide avenue they had come from earlier, bracing himself for—for another car backfiring maybe. Or a German attack. Or… something, really. But the crowds on the street appeared to be harmless, albeit a bit noisy for his liking. No one seemed to be paying attention to them, either, and those who did, had their eyes lingering on Diana and not him.

Steve took a breath and willed himself to relax.

He walked after Diana into a La Galerie something or other—a shopping arcade filled to the brim with stores and people and music playing somewhere above them. And even though he didn’t understand the fashion and didn’t necessarily approve of colours so bright they nearly made his eyes water, he couldn’t help but feel like he had fallen back through time. Just like that, he was standing in the middle of Selfridge’s as he was introducing Diana and Etta to each other, the air around them filled with the scent of powder and perfume and all things new.

Everything from that moment on felt a bit hazy at the edges.

He watched as Diana sorted through hangers and piles of clothes, picking some and discarding others based on merits Steve couldn’t begin to comprehend and ignoring his apparent distaste each time he wrinkled his nose at the sight of this or that. If anything, she appeared to be amused by his reaction. He wondered if she wanted to comment on him trying to pick clothes for her, that day a long time ago. She hadn’t said anything though, instead ushering him into changing rooms, surveying him critically whenever he would step out from behind a door or a curtain, or, once, a partition.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Steve grumbled at some point, an hour later, after she had shaken her head in disapproval and sent him on to take off the shirt that, for no reason obvious to him, appeared to not be up to her liking.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Diana said from the other side of the curtain in a manner that told him that she very much did.

He pulled the curtain just far enough away to poke his head out into the common space of the changing area and glared at her.

“This is payback, isn’t it?”

“For when you had me try on two hundred different outfits at Selfridge’s?” she clarified innocently.

Steve opened his mouth to protest, and shut it again, yanking the curtain closed once more. He reached for yet another… something, just barely resisting tugging on jeans that felt stiff on him, though Diana had assured him that it was normal and the fit was right. Admittedly, they did look good, as opposed to some other things she’d had him try on. Most of the other stuff, on the other hand…

“That was not me,” Steve argued in a heated whisper as he slid one and then another arm into the sleeves of the proffered shirt. “That was Etta. And it wasn’t two hundred outfits.”

Diana hummed noncommittally. Even without seeing her face, he knew she was smiling.

“Do you think I would have held onto a grudge for a hundred years, Steve?”

“Well, you’re immortal, aren’t you?” he muttered, lowering his voice. “What’s a hundred years for someone like you?”

He wondered, for a moment, how he would spend his own immortality, if he ever got that lucky. Holding onto grudges didn’t feel like a productive pastime, in the long run. Did she feel time differently? Her memories taking a longer time to fade? Then again, if memory served him right, a bunch of Greek tragedies stemmed from nothing but holding grudges and bringing vengeance and being wrathful, and Diana was a direct descendant from the same gods who had spent lifetimes doing just that—

As soon as the thought occurred to Steve, he was shaking his head to himself, as he struggled with buttoning the cuffs, his fingers feeling oddly clumsy.

If there was anyone in the world—hell, in the whole universe—made entirely of love and light, it was her. 

When they had first met, his first impression—one of the first, right after he had stopped staring at her because he had never seen anyone that beautiful before—had been that she was someone who felt very deeply. He didn’t know what she had seen and experienced and been through in the time since that night in 1918 when he had taken their future together away, quite literally incinerating it. It couldn’t have all been nice, though Steve hoped like hell that it wasn’t all bad, either. 

But he didn’t doubt that she felt as deeply and as passionately as when they had first met. And though he would never begrudge her resignation and disappointment, having experienced enough of both himself, he also was certain that she hadn’t changed that much. That it was kindness and fairness that she cared for above all else.

Though, in truth, that day in Selfridge’s had been… unorthodox, to say the least.

Steve sighed and looked up at himself in the mirror. He didn’t know how he felt about, well, anything. It was easy to allow Diana to decide which clothes he should try on and what looked good on him, his own judgement a little skewed. But now that it was just him, he couldn’t quite shake off the feeling of utter bewilderment.

If this was what Alice was meant to feel when she had fallen through a rabbit’s hole and into Wonderland, Steve was grateful that fairy-tales seldom came true.

In the reflection, he saw Diana’s hand curl over the curtain that served as the changing room door, but she didn’t pull it open, hesitating instead.

“May I?”

“Yeah—Yes,” Steve said, quickly tucking the shirt into the waistband of his pants. “Yes.”

She drew it open and stepped inside, crowding the already small space. Briefly, she met his eyes in the reflection, her features softening. When he turned around, she reached to adjust the collar of his shirt before smoothing her palms over his chest.

“It suits you,” she said, quietly, with a wistfulness that Steve failed to place.

He shifted from foot to foot. “Is everything in the future so tight?” he asked, eyeing his pants suspiciously once more. “Are you sure it’s the right size?”

Diana bit her lip around a smile. “I’m sure. And it’s not tight.”

“It looks strange,” he insisted.

“It looks good,” she repeated.

He glanced at her own trousers, and decided that he didn’t really mind tight on her. He was not sure clothes were supposed to squeeze everything, like this, but hers looked flattering. And, well… attractive.

He looked up to find Diana smirking at him, and he pointedly glanced away, pretending to be interested in the price tag attached to the sleeve. And then he frowned a little.

“What the hell is a Euro ?” Steve muttered. He lifted his gaze to her face, something finally downing on him. “I don’t have money to pay for any of this.”

“Well, I suppose I owe you for that time you paid for my clothes,” Diana said. He could see that she was trying not to smile, but even so, Steve felt a rush of colour rising up his cheeks.

“You don’t owe me anything—” he started, hastily, and cut off when he realized that she was teasing him. He cleared his throat. “There was also ice-cream,” he said, solemnly.

Diana laughed, the sound of it melting the sharp edges of uncertainty churning in his belly. “Then let me take you to lunch and we’ll call it even, yes?”

“These pants are still tight,” he muttered with defiance under his breath, squirming a little.

She let out a measured sigh. “They are not tight. And they suit you.”

Steve thought of the t-shirt that he had been more than happy to discard earlier, and the man with blue hair he had spotted on their drive, and what Diana had explained to him was called Hawaiian shirts when he had noticed a few sitting in one of the display windows. He looked past her shoulder, scanning the section of the store visible from where he was standing, his eyes growing wide when he spotted a mannequin wearing some sort of a pouch attached to a belt around its hips.

“Are you saying that that is normal?” he demanded, mortified, pointing at the item.

Diana turned, following his gaze. Her face froze when she realized what he was talking about. Steve felt her go completely still beside him, a faint frown appearing between her brows.

He lowered his hand, no longer giving a damn about the pouch or bag, or whatever it was. Before this moment, she seemed to have been entertained by his social faux pas and utter mystification with this thing or that. But now, Steve was sure that he had said something very wrong, though try as he might, he couldn’t understand what it was.

“Diana?” he asked quietly.

She turned back to him. For a second, there was something akin to utter incomprehension in her eyes, as if she couldn’t quite recognize him. She blinked, and it was gone, her gaze clear and bright, devoid of the anguish he had noticed only moments ago.

“Did I say something…” Steve started, his eyes darting towards the mannequin once more, but she was shaking her head and reaching for the clothes he had left on a bench. He touched her arm. She straightened up and lifted her face to him. Steve felt his mouth go dry. “Diana.”

“No,” she stopped him gently with a shake of her head and a hand on his chest. “No, you didn’t.”

Steve felt his frown deepen. He had never known Diana to lie before—in fact, back when they first met, she had often gone out of her way to speak her every thought, whether he asked for it or not—and while he wasn’t sure she was outright lying now, she certainly wasn’t telling him something.

She spoke again before he could figure out how to ask her about it.

Diana gestured at the clothes he was wearing. “Would you prefer to wear these?” she asked, as she looked over to the German uniform pants and the t-shirt he had been wearing earlier, before her gaze met his again. “Or…?”

“These,” Steve said quickly, relieved. “But what about—?”

There was a spark of humour in her eyes that eased the tightness in his chest that he hadn’t even noticed he was trying to breathe around until then. She plucked the price tags from the sleeve of his shirt and the back pocket of his jeans, folding them in her hand before she reached for the other items they had agreed on.

“I’m sure they will have somewhere for us to discard anything you want to leave behind,” she said. “Unless you’d rather keep them.”

Steve glanced at his pants and the boots that had served him well for the past year and a half. At the overcoat that had, quite possibly, kept him alive the winter before he had ended up on Themyscira, at the belt with the German insignia on the buckle. The uniform jacket and his old shirt were still sitting on top of the washer in her apartment. He wished he’d worn them, so he could throw them out right then as well. 

He looked towards her.

“No,” he said decisively.

Whatever this was, this odd time, he wanted to leave the past where it belonged—in the past.

Arms laden with his old stuff, Steve followed her between the racks and shelves and displays towards the counter at the front. 

It turned out, there was in fact a place for people to throw out anything they didn’t need anymore. Steve wondered how often people did that. Often enough, he figured.

From behind the register, a young clerk watched as Steve stuffed his clothes into a large bin near the corner, her eyes alight with curiosity. Her gaze darted between him and Diana, and he wondered, absently, what it was that she was seeing that got her so interested, but none of the questions he half-expected to be flung at them ever came.

He moved closer to Diana while the clerk folded the clothes piled before her and put them in bags, scanning each tag with a gun-like thing that had some sort of a red beam shooting out of it. He watched as Diana also handed over the tags that she had taken off the clothes and shoes he was now wearing, pointing to his outfit as she explained what the tags were for in perfect French to the sales clerk.

Steve was so fascinated with the gun-thing that he almost missed the moment when Diana pulled out her wallet and then handed the clerk a plastic rectangle with some numbers and her name etched on it. He remembered seeing it before—last night, in the cab.

He frowned a little, wondering if that was the mysterious Euro (did people in the future not use real money anymore?), but when he opened his mouth to ask, he noticed the clerk’s eyes were still darting towards him every now and then. Was it because a woman was paying for him? Or because even in the modern-day clothes, he still stood out like a sore thumb and the entire world could see it ?  

Steve closed his mouth, swallowing his question. He would ask it later, when he and Diana were alone and there were no curious eyes and no line waiting behind them for their turn to pay.

The machine that Diana touched with the small rectangle thing beeped, spitting out a long strip of receipt. The clerk put it into one of the bags, thanking Diana, and handed her all their purchases. Steve reached for them, nodding at the girl, more than eager to escape. When he glanced over at Diana, she raised an eyebrow at him, a hint of a smile playing on her lips, but he was heading towards the door already. Before she had a chance to change her mind and force him to try on something else.

If this was anything like her time with Etta at Selfridge’s, he couldn’t really blame her for enjoying getting back at him.

Now that most of their shopping was done, Steve started to pay more attention to the stores they walked by. 

“How do they not go bankrupt?” he inquired, his eyes growing wide in astonishment as they passed a store that only sold ties. “Who needs this many ties?”

And then one that only sold only belts, which made even less sense to him. None of the items inside had a pouch attached to them, but Steve wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

Once or twice, he caught Diana looking at him closely—searching for traces of his earlier episode , he figured. But each time he caught her eyes, she merely smiled and led them further into the shopping arcade. 

Their next stop was at a store that only sold underwear. At least there, Diana did allow him to pick out his own, probably because his face had flushed the moment they stepped inside. Which, really… she had seen more than his underwear, for heaven’s sake. That night when they—

Steve took a breath, willing his mind not to go in that direction. 

He cast another quick look her way, only to find her tapping away on her phone. Maybe she was writing an email to her secretary again? When he looked around, half of the people he could see were fiddling with their phones. Diana had told him that one could even play games on them, but, surely, they were not buying things and playing games at the same time?

Steve shook his head before he grabbed two packs of boxers from the shelf closest to the exit, hoping against all hope that he wasn’t messing this up. It was just underwear, right? Could he get it wrong? He glanced around the store and at all the different displays, and sighed. While he didn’t really understand the need for the variety of colours, most of it looked normal enough, as far as underpants went.

He added two packs of socks, just to get it over with. The moment he put it all on the counter, Diana appeared by his side. Another transaction involving the small plastic thing ensued. If the guy who worked the cash register—or what passed for a cash register in the twenty-first century—was in any way bothered by a woman paying for men's undergarments, he showed no sign of it. In fact, he looked rather bored, to Steve.

Another bag made its way towards him across the counter. Steve tried not to breathe a sigh of relief too obvious as they stepped out of the store.

“Are we done?” he asked, a little desperate.

If she pushed him into yet another changing room with more clothes to try on, he would likely crawl out of one of those small windows, he was certain.

When his eyes met Diana’s, he saw that hers were alight with humour. She looked down at the bags, checking the contents of each, her lips moving without a sound.

“I suppose this will do, for now,” she said when she looked up. Her gaze drifted past him. “Although…”

“No,” Steve said firmly, shaking his head emphatically for good measure. “Nope. No.”

“I think that coat would look nice on you,” she said simply.

He looked over his shoulder, following her gaze. 

There was indeed a wool coat in the shop window, dark grey, and about as long as Steve’s overcoat used to be. It was only then that it occurred to him that in his haste to get rid of his old clothes, he hadn’t considered the need for something warmer than a pile of shirts. While the shopping arcade was warm, the wind that had greeted them this morning when they had stepped outside had been chilly, raising goose-bumps along his skin as it had snaked beneath his coat. He knew that Diana didn’t feel the cold in quite the same way, but even she was wearing a jacket, albeit a rather thin one.

Steve turned to her to find her watching him with her eyebrow raised.

It was, admittedly, a nice coat, as far as he could tell.

“Last one,” he said with a warning in his voice, and the smile that sprung across her features, so bright and brilliant, nearly made him promise her to never leave this damned place, just so she would keep smiling at him like this.

Ten minutes later, clad in a coat that smelled good and hugged his shoulders closely, he followed Diana outside. He glanced around, realizing they must have exited at the other end, the street before him entirely unfamiliar.

He paused for a moment, a pang of worry flaring in the pit of his stomach, the memory of fear that had shot through his system earlier this morning feeling like a stain he couldn’t rub off on his skin. He could still feel the eyes of dead men staring back at him, emotionless and haunting.

It was disconcerting not to know what other memories were lurking in the back of his mind, waiting for their turn to torment him.

Steve took a breath and tried to remember the feeling of Diana’s hand on his cheek instead, the sound of her voice and the way it had washed over him in that alley. How it had made him feel safer than he had in a very, very long time. 

She hadn’t said anything yet, although Steve knew better than to assume that she had put it behind her.

He didn’t ask her where they were going now, the way he hadn’t all morning, trusting her to know what should be done. Just being around her felt like too much of a miracle for him to care where they were and what they were doing. But when Diana picked a smaller café, quieter and only half full, Steve knew why she had done it, grateful for not having to articulate the prickly sensation that crawled along his skin whenever he felt too crowded.

They picked a table facing the street and pushed the bags under it as they took their seats. The waitress came over with two folded menus and asked if they would like some water. Diana nodded, smiling, and thanked the young woman. Steve glanced around with surreptitious curiosity. There was quiet music playing somewhere above them, and no one seemed to be paying any attention to them.

He felt himself relax. 

He also realized that he was, in fact, ravenous.

He glanced around once more, and then picked up the menu, tripping immediately over Le Brunch written above the listed items. He asked Diana about it, watching her hide her smile as she tried to explain to him that a brunch was a meal between breakfast and lunch, usually consisting of a mix of breakfast and lunch foods, favoured by people who liked starting their day later than most. Or something to indulge in over the weekend.

“So,” Steve clarified, “it’s an excuse to eat breakfast food for lunch, basically?”

She bit her lip as the waitress reappeared briefly with a bottle of water and two glasses. 

Diana leaned forward, folding her arms before her. “Sometimes, yes,” she acknowledged when they were alone again.

Steve stared at her, baffled. Why couldn’t they just eat an omelette later in the day? Did they have to invent a whole new word for it? He didn’t say anything though, suspecting that, like with a lot of things coming out of his mouth, he would just make a fool of himself. She didn’t seem to mind his curiosity, even about the smallest things, but there was a point when it was bound to get bothersome, right?

He took a breath and decided that he was perfectly capable of picking something to eat without sounding like the man out of time that he was. And then his brows knitted together once more.

“What the hell is an ac acai bowl? he muttered, glancing at Diana over his menu, his jaw going a little slack as she explained. “Mushed fruit with more fruit?” he repeated, dumbfounded. “Why can’t people just eat fruit the normal way?”

“Because sometimes they think of it as a treat,” she replied.

“Have you tried it?” he asked, curious.

“Yes.”

“Is it good?”

“Yes, I think it is.”

Steve nodded, not feeling entirely convinced. It sounded like—like baby food. 

“Back in my day, you could choose between two starters and two main courses,” he grumbled under his breath. “And if you were lucky, there was one selection of dessert. And now—now you have things like… Toast à l'avocat ,” he read slowly, and then looked up at her, entirely perplexed.

Diana laughed, the sound of it enough to make feel light on the inside. Enough to make him forget about mushed fruit and men’s underwear made in strange bright colours.

She took pity on him then – Steve suspected he was beginning to look entirely miserable by then – and tried to explain to him what the mysterious toast was. And then ended up looking up a photograph of one on her phone and handing it to him across the table so he could take a look.

“What the hell... Why would anyone want to eat that?” he muttered, staring at the picture of some green mush, aghast. “And pay…” he glanced at the menu, wrinkling his nose, “15 euro for it. What’s a euro, Diana?” he asked, at last, the question that had been sitting in the back of his mind for two hours now.

She leaned back in her chair, her smile softening. “A currency.”

Steve blinked, lowering the menu. “What happened to the franc?”

“It ceased to exist when Europe adopted a single currency for some of its countries.”

“And the American dollar?” he pressed.

She pressed her lips around a smile, amused. “They still use it in America.”

Right. Of course. He should have thought of that. It was no wonder that Diana had dismissed his concerns about paying for things earlier, Steve thought.

He nodded, slowly.

“Okay, so what would that be, in American dollars?” he inquired, pointing at the damned green toast. It didn’t seem like something that people should have to pay for, period.

“About sixteen and a half,” Diana said.

“Dollars?!” he sputtered. “Sixteen and a half dollars ?! For this?” He pointed at the menu for emphasis, and then scanned the rest of it, making mental calculations as a strangled sound rose in the back of his throat. “People pay this much for food ?”

And then something else dawned on him, the thought having him diving under the table. He rifled through the bags sitting there, looking for the one with—

“Steve.”

He ignored her as he pulled a long strip of a receipt for their first haul and scanned it, feeling his heart sink and his stomach twist uncomfortably when he got to the bottom of it, his fingers twitching around it as panic continued to mount.

“Steve,” Diana said again.

This time, he snapped his head up. “You should not have—We have to return it all immediately!” he said, urgently. Just the thought of her paying this much money for his clothes was making him break into a cold sweat. What was she thinking? He glanced around, trying to remember which direction they had come from.

Should have been paying more attention…

He looked down at himself, cursing quietly under his breath when he realized that they would have to keep at least the shirt and pants he was wearing, and the shoes, too, since he had thrown out his old ones. But the coat—He tried to recall the cost of it, not sure if Diana had kept the receipt for it, but it had to be more than he used to make in a year, as a Captain in the American army, assigned to foreign duty.

Shit.

He couldn’t even imagine the amount of money she had just wasted—

“Steve,” she said once more.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he hissed, leaning closer to her, aware that people at the table closest to them were now paying attention but not giving a damn. If they were willing to pay sixteen and a half dollars for a piece of bread with green mush, they were insane anyway.

“It’s not expensive,” she said calmly, shaking her head.

“Not expensive?!” He thrust the receipt at her. “I will never be able to pay you back,” he added.

She pressed her lips together, shaking her head a little, and he scowled at her smile.

“Come on,” Steve urged her.  

He made a move to stand up and grab the bags, but Diana caught his hands in hers, pressing them together and holding them on the table between them. The warmth of her touch made everything inside of him come to a complete standstill, his heart skipping a beat when their eyes met. An unsteady breath stuttered out of his chest and he swallowed hard. There was more than one table looking at them now, but he didn’t care.

“A century is a long time, Steve,” Diana said after a moment, her voice low. “This world is not what it used to be. Things changed.”

Like cars, and clothes, and food, and—

Steve glanced around and noticed a couple sitting at a table in the corner, close together. Cups of coffee and a plate of pastries before them, but neither of them seemed to care. They were barely a few inches apart, talking quietly, all soft smiles. Every now and then, they would lean forward, their lips meeting in tender kisses. 

Steve jerked his gaze away, the back of his neck growing hot. So, some societal norms had apparently changed as well. He wondered what would happen if he leaned across the table and kissed Diana, right there, in the middle of a café.

He pushed the mental image away, willing himself to focus on figuring out what else he was going to need to adjust to. Maybe the sounds that cars made. And the money that people used. Suddenly, the clothes that he was starting to grow accustomed to were too tight and too stiff and too foreign on him, making him wish he had kept the uniform pants and his old boots that had once carried him across half of Europe.

Steve looked down at their joined hands, mesmerized momentarily by Diana’s thumbs running soothingly over his knuckles. Something that managed to make everything inside of him go quiet. He hadn’t even noticed how badly his hands were shaking until she was there to steady them.

He took a slow breath, willing his heartbeat to even out, feeling the flush of embarrassment rise up his cheeks for perhaps the ten-millionth time in the past few hours.

“You don’t need to pay me back,” Diana told him seriously. He lifted his gaze to hers. “Not for anything. And none of this is as expensive as it may seem to you.”

Steve didn’t let go of her hands—if it was up to him, he would never let go—but his gaze darted towards their menus still lying near their glasses of water.

“Ten dollars for a cup of coffee is not expensive?” he asked dryly.

That was a lot of money. That was, if memory served him right, almost as much as his apartment cost him when he lived in London. He wondered how much more money people were making these days. And how much Diana was getting paid at the Louvre. He swallowed the question though, sensing that it was not a polite thing to ask. Especially in public. Even if, from what he could tell, all the other patrons of the café had gone back to minding their own business.

Maybe he could ask her later, when they were alone.

Diana let out a small laugh, shaking her head at him. “I suppose you could find a better deal than that,” she admitted.

He let out a slow breath. It made sense, now that he had a chance to consider it. But it still felt overwhelming in a way he never knew existed, his mind reeling from the enormity of what was happening to him. Of what had happened. Last night, he had been scared of falling asleep in Diana’s bed and waking up in the blazing inferno that had taken his life a century ago. Now, he was even more afraid of her figuring out that he was not worth the trouble.

The thought made his blood run cold, the mere idea of facing this new world without her filling him with dread beyond anything he had ever experienced.

Steve looked up at her, half expecting her expression to be patronizing. But her gaze was kind and compassionate and understanding, reminding him suddenly that she had had to go through everything that he was dealing with now. Without him. A jolt of guilt careened through his chest, leaving a scorching trail of ash in its wake. He hoped she hadn’t been completely alone. And he hoped that people had been kind to her. God help him, she had never deserved anything less.

She let go of his hands when the waitress came over to ask if they were ready to order. Steve gave their menus another panicked look, and Diana took pity on him and ordered for both of them. A cup of tea for her, and a black coffee for him, and something that he hoped wasn’t green mush or pureed fruit. Though, frankly, he hadn’t bothered to pay attention to that.

For a few minutes, they sat in companionable silence. Steve wanted to reach for her hand again, but he didn’t. He simply looked at her instead, and she let him.

“You want to ask, about earlier,” he said quietly after their drinks had arrived.

She didn’t seem surprised by his comment. “Not if you don’t want to talk about it,” she said.  

He looked up at her in surprise. He never expected to be given a choice.

He had thought about that day and had dreamed about it for years, but he had never spoken about it, the violence of it sitting inside of him like a ball of barbed wire, all sharp edges and poison. There were many things he had done in the two years since he had been sent to Europe that he was so ashamed of that he could barely stand to think of them. He wondered if Diana would think of him less if she knew—if she knew it all. If she would be disgusted and repulsed by him if he told her the whole truth.

Steve dropped his eyes to the coffee sitting before him. He picked up a spoon and stirred it aimlessly even though he preferred it black and unsweetened.

There really was nothing but goodness in her. He thought back to her outright bafflement over the ways of war, and how insulted she had been by the inaction of his superiors and Steve’s own adamant desire to follow the rules, at the time. The memory of her face when he had found her on the outskirts of Veld, anguished and devastated, flared up before his mind’s eye.

She would hate him, he knew, if she found out how many Velds he had caused.

Another jolt of shame flared up in his stomach.

“I have them too, you know,” Diana said, after another long moment of silence.

Steve looked up to find her watching him, her hands curled around her cup of tea and her gaze tender. More tender than he deserved, for sure.  

“Have what?” he asked, warily.

“Ghosts.”

He opened his mouth, and then closed it again when nothing came out, his mind suddenly blank. The brief moment of relief that her words had brought was squashed almost immediately by another pang of guilt, making him ache all the way down to his bones.

He had never meant for any of it to end like this. When he had brought her into his world, it had never been his intention to leave her behind to fend for herself. He wondered what it was that haunted her. Was it Veld? Or him dying? Or something that had happened after he was gone? He wondered if she had ever lain awake at night, afraid to close her eyes, feeling safer awake than asleep, but even the mere idea of that was making his heart splinter and bleed.

Steve pushed the thoughts away before they shattered everything inside of him, but one thing remained true whether he liked it or not — even if her heartache wasn’t about him, he was to blame for it.

“Really?” he asked quietly, uncertain if he wanted to tell her about that first man he had killed. And the half a dozen others, that night alone.

“Really,” Diana murmured. “War leaves everyone scarred, human or divine.”

Steve didn’t like that. Someone like her, someone who was made of light, was not meant to carry a burden like the one that was sitting on his chest like a stone. Her life was supposed to be filled with love and laughter and happiness. He had suspected that it hadn’t always been idyllic, but hearing Diana confirm it felt like a punch to his stomach, all the same.

“I dream of them sometimes,” she added. “Of everyone who I failed to save.”

Was he one of those people?

He watched a shadow pass across her features, convinced that he had to be, at least at some point. 

The thought was entirely intolerable, slicing through him like a hot knife and making his breath catch. The café where they were was bright and warm and welcoming, but he was suddenly cold as though his blood had turned to ice. He didn’t know if she had loved him, then, though he wanted to believe that she had even if she never got a chance to say it. But even if she hadn’t, he still wanted to be a fond memory, not a dark shadow haunting her in her wake.

“I’m sorry,” Steve blurted out. “I’m sorry I—I never wanted to leave you, Diana.”

She glanced up at him in surprise. “Steve…”

“I wanted to be with you,” he forged on before he lost his nerve, his thoughts a jumbled mess in his head and the words he was searching for slipping right out of his reach. He tried to remember everything he had told her when they had laid tangled in sheets and wrapped around each other, whispering things that were only meant to be said quietly and in the dark, to someone one cared deeply for. Promises that he had fully intended to keep, only to break each and every single one of them, along with her heart. Probably. “After it was over, after the war. I never meant to—it was not meant to end the way it did.”

“I wanted to be with you, too,” she whispered.

Steve swallowed, wishing they were having this conversation elsewhere, feeling exposed with all the strangers around them. Yet, it felt imperative to not stop now.  

“My first mission,” he said, holding on to whatever was left of his courage with all his might and knowing that if he didn’t say something then, he likely never would. “My plane was hit right in the middle of enemy territory. They were shooting at me and at each other, and—” he cut off abruptly, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper, his throat so tight he could barely make a sound.

He looked down, fidgeting with his spoon, his brow furrowed and the echo of artillery fire lingering so deep in his mind he knew he would never be able to claw it out. He thought back to the sound from this morning that had pushed him back to that dark, terrifying moment, and his heart skipped a beat once more, a prickly sensation crawling along his skin. Earlier, he had wondered if Diana perceived time differently because she had an endless stretch of if before her. Now, he wondered how long he would need to put that day behind him.

He felt Diana’s hand cover his and looked up. Her eyes were searching his, her expression full of the same grief that Steve could feel coursing through his bloodstream.

He turned his hand, curling his fingers around her and brushing his thumb across her palm.

Their food arrived before he could say anything else, and even though part of him found the interruption frustrating, another part—a bigger one, if he was honest with himself—was grateful for it.

“Let’s eat, yes?” Diana offered, and Steve found himself nodding.  

He eyed his plate with suspicion, relieved to find none of the green stuff that she had shown him in the photo or anything else odd-looking. Just an omelette with mushrooms and cheese and a piece of baguette. When he checked Diana’s plate, curious, he saw a variation of what he had, and the normalcy of it made the tight knot of anxiety in his stomach ease.

He hadn’t told her everything, and he knew he would need to, eventually. She deserved to know — for his sake or her own Steve wasn’t quite sure, but she deserved to know. But she didn’t ask for more even after the waitress left, seemingly satisfied with his half-story for now, and he didn’t know how to bring it up again, so he chose to tuck into his food instead. Food that turned out to be pretty damn good.

At some point during their meal, Diana’s phone let out a high-pitched chime. She pulled it out of the back pocket of her jacket, eyes scanning over the screen, as she bit her lip around a smile.

“What is it?” Steve asked around a mouthful of eggs, unable to help himself. 

Diana lifted her gaze to his. “What’s what?”

“You’re smiling.”

Pressing her lips together, she shook her head and then handed her phone to him. Steve put his fork down and took it gingerly, worried suddenly that a thing this small and delicate could be broken quite easily as well.

On the screen, he saw an image split in half — one half showing a guy in a black mask with pointy ears that looked like some sort of bat costume, his jaw square and the corners of his mouth turned downwards in a displeased scowl. The other half was a picture of a cat whose mouth was puckered with displeasure in a similar manner. Above the picture, was a name: Barry Allen ; beneath it, one line of text: grumpy bat .

Steve glanced back at Diana. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s called a meme.”

“A meme?”

“It’s… ah, a joke that most people understand,” Diana explained. “The cat on the left is called Grumpy Cat because of its unusual features.”

“And the guy on the right is a Grumpy Bat because he is wearing a bat mask and looks grumpy?” Steve deduced. Diana nodded, amused. “And this is supposed to be funny?”

“I think it’s a little mean,” she acknowledged.

“Who is Barry Allen?”

“A friend of mine.” Diana paused, considering something. “I think you’d like him.”

“Is he the guy in the mask?”

“No, that’s another mutual friend of ours. Who would not find the comparison flattering, if I have to take a guess. Which is partly why, I suppose, Barry has found it entertaining.”

Steve felt his lips twitch a little as he handed her phone back to her. “Well, the resemblance is uncanny,” he admitted, and the smile that Diana flashed at him was so dazzling it made his heart stutter in his chest. “You know someone who wears a bat mask?” he asked then, intrigued.

“I know a lot of people,” she responded vaguely, and he lifted his eyebrows at her. “It’s a long story.”

Steve chuckled but didn’t press. He was sure that she had a lot of long stories, what with a hundred years in his world under her belt.

He picked up his fork again. “Speaking of long stories,” he started. “How did you end up in Paris? And working at the Louvre, of all places?”

Diana pushed her plate aside and picked up her tea. “You sound surprised,” she commented, looking at him over the rim of her cup. 

“No, not surprised, more—” he faltered, and when he managed to identify the feeling, it all but exploded in his chest in brilliant colours, so fierce he could barely breathe around it for a moment or two: “Proud.” Not that he had any right to be proud of something that he was no part of. “It suits you,” he added, softly.

She put the cup down, her fingers running over the handle absently.

“I worked at the British Museum for a while, in the ’60s,” she said after a moment. “A friend of Etta’s recommended me even though I didn’t have any official training, at that point. They needed someone to translate some texts.”

“And knowing hundreds of languages came in handy,” Steve offered.

She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Yes,” she agreed. “I enjoyed it more than I expected I would. I stayed with them for as long as I could without raising suspicions about…” She glanced down at herself.

He blinked at her, the realization dawning on him quickly. In all of his musings about immortality, not once had he considered the burden of having to hide it. Of course, she could not stay there for too long, not without someone noticing that she was not ageing.

“Right,” he said, feeling foolish, and cleared his throat. “What happened then?”

“I collaborated with the Smithsonian briefly, in the ‘80s—”

“Wait,” Steve interjected. “You lived in America?”

Of all the things that he had learned in the past sixteen or so hours, this one, so far, was the biggest surprise.

“For a while.” Diana’s gaze caught on his and she held it. “You told me I should visit, remember?”

He did remember.

The fire had almost died in the hearth and the night outside the inn was getting thick and quiet. Somewhere in out of the other rooms, he had been able to hear Charlie snoring. Diana’s body had been tucked into his, curve for curve, and he had known that they both needed to go to sleep and get some rest, but he hadn’t wanted to stop talking to her or touching her or making her laugh. And that was when he had asked her if she would like to come to America with him, after the war was over. (Back when he had still harboured some hope for seeing the end of it.)

Steve felt his face flush, the memory bright and intense and so vivid he could all but smell the woodsmoke and feel the smoothness of the skin beneath his fingertips. Of course, for him, the memory still only felt only a few days old, not 100 years.

He cleared his throat and busied himself with folding and unfolding his napkin, his blood roaring in his ears.

“Did you like it?” he asked, at last.

And there it was again, that odd expression on Diana’s face. Like she wanted to say something. Something important.

But she merely nodded. “I did.”

“Why did you leave?” he inquired, wondering if that also was a long story, and if it was a good one.

Just as Diana was about to reply, the waitress reappeared, this time with a small leather folder that she left between them before she started clearing the plates.

“Merci,” Diana said.

Steve watched her fish the familiar plastic thing from her wallet and slide it into the folder, opening it long enough for him to see that it was their bill. Long enough for him to get a glimpse of the grand total at the bottom as well.

He shook his head to himself in quiet bewilderment. A hundred years ago, he would have had to work for two and a half months to have that kind of money. To think that brunch could cost so much—

He turned to Diana to ask her again if it was okay. She had told him that all of it—the food and the clothes she had bought him—cost reasonably, and Steve was sure that she would not say that just to placate him. He had never known her to be a liar. But Diana was not paying attention to him, or the waitress that still lingered near their table. She was looking out the window, her eyes sharp and her body stiff and completely still.

Steve turned to follow her gaze in time to see three men pile out of a car parked near the curb on the other side of the street and head towards the entrance to a jewellery store. There was nothing particularly remarkable about them, at first glance, but for whatever reason, watching them walk inside, one after another, made his skin crawl. It took him a moment to realize that one of them had a gun, tucked into the waistband of his pants, and even someone as clueless as him knew that it probably meant trouble.

Diana seemed to have drawn the same conclusion at the exact same moment. He heard her subtle intake of breath.

“Stay here,” she said without looking Steve’s way. And then she was rising from the table. And then she was gone.

Steve waited for a heartbeat, and then another one, his eyes scanning over the crowd outside but there was no sign of her. The tension inside of him kept building and building and building until he could barely stand it.

That was when someone fired a gun—a real one, he suspected, not a car backfiring this time. His heart stuttered in his chest and dropped into his stomach, cold sweat breaking along his skin. Someone screamed outside, although he couldn’t tell if it was in pain or in panic. More shots were fired in quick succession, and his mind went spiralling into a black abyss.

He took a breath and tried to stay alert, tried not to slip into the past.

A loud gasp right near him gave him a start. Steve snapped his head up to find their waitress still standing next to him, her hand pressed to her mouth and her eye wide and horrified.

“Keep an eye on these, okay?” he muttered, jerking his chin towards the bags sitting under their table.

And then he leaped out of his chair and started running. 

Notes:

Okay, I know, the previous cliffhanger ended up being not what you probably expected, subversion of expectations and all, but this one is the real deal, I promise! Some badass action and teamwork and all in the next chapter and... generally a lot of goodies in the next chapter :) I hope you'll stay around for that!

As always, comments and thoughts are highly appreciated! On that note, what do you think of Snyder's cut coming out? I have to admit, I'm quite excited. Cautiously so, but still.

Also, how are you all holding up? My "neck of the woods" is in lockdown again, starting tomorrow. Hope it won't last too long, but you never know. Maybe I'll even manage to do some more editing... or will I? Hm... Anyway, I hope you guys are being as safe as you can be. Please take care!

And I'll see you soon :)

Chapter 6

Notes:

Hey guys, it's nice to be done with A Road Paved in Gold and working on this story full time. Just wanted to thank you all again for the incredible support that you continue showing to this fic, and all of my other works. Without you, I won't still be here.

I am currently sorting out the ending of this fic and boy oh boy, is it going to be wild. But... all in due time! This chapter has a little bit of everything :) I'm quite excited to share it and I think you'll enjoy it! Also, I expanded the character tags. There might be another one or two I'll add later but those should be enough for now. Don't be alarmed though, this story centers primarily around Steve and Diana :)

Have fun!

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

Chapter Text

There were four of them. The fourth one must have come from the back or from the side alley, because Steve didn’t remember seeing him go in. However, more importantly, they all had guns.

Crouching near the tinted window, Steve craned his neck, careful to stay out of their line of sight. His heart was pounding and his body was as tense as a coiled spring. Around him, people were scurrying away from danger; in the distance, he could hear a wail of sirens. Police, he hoped, but it sounded so far away it barely felt real.

Inside the store, he could see an older man standing behind the counter, looking pale. His hands were raised and trembling slightly. One of the men had a gun pointed at him and was saying something to him in a quick, demanding voice, his words muffled by the thick glass and made even less distinguishable because he was speaking so fast.

It was then that Steve noticed drops of blood on the tiled floor. His eyes followed them, a trail of crimson on white, to a young man sitting with his back against a wall, clutching at his shoulder and breathing heavily. He wore a vest with a shield embroidered on it and a holster around his hips, currently empty. Steve thought of the men who had approached him and Diana at the museum the night before, realizing that the guy before him had to be some kind of security, outnumbered and overpowered by the other four. One of the bullets they had fired must have hit him.

Another one, it seemed, had hit a glass display, shattering the front pane. Steve could hear the glass crunching beneath the men’s feet every time they moved.

Two of them were standing with their weapons pointed at the owner and the security guard while the other two were shoving rings and bracelets and necklaces into bags, sweeping them from their displays.

Steve almost missed a flicker of gold shooting across the store, but barely a moment later one of the men was suddenly flying through the air, Diana’s Lasso wrapped around his chest, pinning his arms to his sides. His expression going comically from surprise and confusion to frustration to brief panic before his whole body slammed against a wall and he slid down in a heap. The bag that he was holding fell to his feet, spilling its contents over the floor.

The older man backed away from the counter and then, as soon as the attention of both armed men was on Diana, ducked behind it for good measure.

Diana whipped her head around, her focus going immediately to the men who had raised their guns and were shooting at her in quick succession, the bullets ricocheting off her gauntlets as her lips pressed together into a tight, displeased line. 

Unbidden, Steve’s mind jumped back to that day in France and peeking out of muddy trenches and the look of fierce determination on Diana’s face as she stepped out onto No Man’s Land. He had never, ever, seen anything quite as magnificent. And maybe it was seeing Diana in her armour, fighting to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves, and maybe she was going to have this exact effect on him for as long as he lived, but he was helpless against the surge of pride blossoming in his chest. It took root in his heart, twining around his rib cage before spreading outwards to the tips of his fingers and his toes until his entire body was pulsing with it.

Mesmerized, Steve stared at her, unable to look away, half-forgetting momentarily why he was there and what was going on. His eyes followed the lithe movements of her body, the golden parts of her armour glowing in the sun falling through the large window of the storefront. So much so that he almost missed the moment when she lunged forward, sliding between the two men and snatching the guns from them.

Steve thought of her ramming her shield into the German bazookas and snapping their rifles in half as they were making their way towards Veld as he watched her clench her fists, the metal of the guns snapping without resistance. She opened her palms and the mangled weapons fell to the floor. One of the men was now backing away from her, but the second one bared his teeth and lunged at her, enraged and, by the looks of it, determined not to give up without a fight.

And that was when the last of them, the man who had been gathering the jewellery earlier, decided to make a run for it.

With Diana’s back turned on him and her attention focused on his other two companions, the man bolted out the door and directly past Steve. A bag of loot still clutched tightly in his hand, he sprinted down the street just as two police cars rounded the corner from the other direction.

Steve didn’t think. He twisted away from the window, leaving Diana to deal with the other three robbers and started after the man who was veering around the onlookers who were too slow to step aside. Someone shouted behind them in French, ordering them to stop.

He should have waited for the police, Steve thought. Or Diana. He definitely should have waited for Diana. But the thought of the labyrinth of narrow streets and back alleys where it would be so easy to disappear never to be seen again had him surging forward, frustrated at all the people who still didn’t have the sense to move out of the way. Or, at least, to trip the man ahead of him, saving him some trouble.  

The man he was following was undoubtedly in good shape. Or scared enough to push himself to keep going. But, unlike Steve who had spent the past couple of years running for his life, he was not someone used to teetering on the edge of the knife and treating his every breath like it was the last one. And he was getting winded, quickly.

Steve lunged forward when he was close enough, slamming hard into the man and sending them both down. The robber let out a howl of pain followed by a string of curses when his face smacked into the asphalt, rolling immediately onto his side to shake Steve off. A jolt of pain shot through Steve’s bad shoulder, white-hot and blinding for a moment, leaving him hissing and disoriented long enough for the guy to wiggle around and punch him in the jaw. The man’s nose was broken, blood gushing out of it. He was still holding the bag of stolen goods, his knuckles scraped and bleeding. 

Steve blinked, his ears ringing, as he tried to gather his bearings. The man clenched his teeth, his lip split and bleeding, and struck again with rage and precision. This time, however, Steve was fast enough to grab his fist. That seemed to anger the man even more. He wrestled his hand from Steve’s hold, aiming for another strike.

But it didn’t come.

Instead, he was yanked up and away. Surprised, Steve blinked and looked up to find Diana standing over him, her hand curled over the collar of the man's shirt as she held him immobile while he continued to spit out threats. Behind her, two police officers were running towards them, the alley too narrow for their car to pass.

“Got him,” Steve said, smiling for good measure and earning an eye roll from her. 

He scrambled up to his feet, reeling a little from the punch that seemed to have knocked his brain around the inside of his skull a little. A wave of nausea rolled in his stomach and he swallowed hard and squeezed his eyes shut as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, praying he was not going to lose his lunch— brunch —right there.

Steve took a slow breath, the dizziness and discomfort fading away slowly. 

When he opened his eyes, the police were walking the man away, his hands handcuffed behind his back. One of the officers was holding the bag of stolen jewelry. Diana was watching them, her eyes narrowed, but she turned back to Steve almost as soon as his gaze shifted to her.

“Are you alright?” she asked, moving closer to him.

And maybe it was the fact that he had just had his head slammed against the asphalt, or maybe it was seeing her in her armour which never failed to leave him feeling a little dazed, but it took Steve a moment to register her words. And another one—to nod, slowly.

“Yeah,” he said, absently. “Yeah, I’m—”

He cut off when he noticed her frown, two faint lines creasing the skin between her brows. Steve glanced down and saw a spatter of blood across the pale blue cotton of his shirt, a few specs having landed on his new coat.

“It’s not mine,” he said quickly and gestured towards the end of the alley where the captured man was being loaded into the back of a police car, its red and blue lights flashing. “I—I, uh, broke his nose. I think.”

The frown remained intact, her eyes now searching his face, making Steve wonder what it was that she was seeing that made her lips press together into a thin line.

“I’m fine, I swear,” he said, quietly, leaning a little towards her.

Immediately, she lifted her hand, brushing his hair back from his face. His cheekbone was starting to ache, the uncomfortable, hot feeling of something pulsing beneath his bone. The impulse to draw away from her touch was almost overpowering. He turned his face into her palm instead, his gaze holding hers.

“I’m fine, Diana,” he repeated, quietly, his breath catching at the sight of the haunted panic pooling behind her eyes.

His shoulder was throbbing and he wondered how badly he had messed it up when that guy slammed him into a sidewalk before it even had a chance to heal. Now that the adrenaline rush was starting to ebb, he also realized that his ribs weren’t feeling all that hot either. He was not going to mention that to her though, he decided. Not when she looked so concerned already.

“Steve.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He glanced down again, trying not to think past the uncomfortable heaviness in the back of his skull and the ringing in his ears. “I think I ruined this shirt. I hope they’ll charge him for that, as well.” 

She didn’t smile, his attempt to lighten up the mood falling completely flat. Steve didn’t like it. And he didn’t like the faraway look in her eyes and the shadow of anguish that chased across her features, either.

“Diana,” he called, ducking his head closer to hers. She blinked, her gaze clearing. Steve watched her take a breath and regain her bearings. He wondered where she’d gone, in that instant, and whether he actually wanted to know the answer to that question.

And then his brows knitted together quizzically. “Have you been wearing this underneath… everything? The entire time?” he wondered quietly, taking in her armour. He shook his head before she could say anything. “You know what? Never mind.” 

It was also then that he noticed that they were not completely alone. What he had mistaken for merely a back alley was actually a narrow street, with windows facing it and people peeking through them now, eyes wide. Wonder Woman, he heard someone gasp in awe, and he looked up involuntarily to see a young boy no older than seven peering down at them, his mouth hanging open.

The corners of Steve’s mouth twitched a little. He nodded to the child, whose eyes grew as wide as saucers.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Diana said softly, her thumb brushing along his cheekbone.

Steve cleared his throat. “I think you need to…” his gaze darted towards the alley exit and the flashing light of a police car. She followed his gaze, a slight frown making a reappearance. “Go. Deal with it,” he said before she could argue. “I’ll meet you back at the café.”

She regarded him skeptically. “Will you be able to find it?” she asked.

He arched a pointed eyebrow at her. “I’m a spy. We’re adept at finding our way around places.”

She smiled at that. A real one, that went all the way to her eyes and sent his heart into overdrive.

“I know you can find your way in and out of trouble, yes,” she conceded. “But what about avoiding it?”

Steve chuckled at that, unable to help it even if it hurt a little to smile. “Give me some credit.”

She moved closer to him then, her hand dropping from his face to fall to the lapel of his coat. (Steve hoped he hadn’t messed it up too badly when he fell to the ground, wincing inwardly at the idea of that.) For a moment, she merely stood there, fiddling with his collar. He didn’t say anything, and didn’t move away, choosing to merely watch her hands and the glint of her gauntlet in the sunlight.

When she lifted her eyes to his, he was certain that she was going to kiss him. Right there, with a bunch of random strangers watching their every move. His gaze dropped to her mouth, effectively wiping away his awareness of any discomfort in his body.

But then another moment passed, and another one. And, at last, Diana squared her shoulders, leaning away from him and breaking whatever spell had captured them for that moment.

“I’ll find you if you get lost,” she said quietly, and truth be told, Steve wasn’t sure if they were still talking about him making his way back to the café or something else entirely.


“I asked you to wait for me.”

“What was I supposed to do, Diana? Just sit there while you—"

“Yes.”

“No.”

She arched a pointed eyebrow at him, and Steve clamped his mouth shut, pressing his lips together stubbornly.

He was perched on a tall stool in Diana’s kitchen where they had ended up eventually—after Diana had explained to the police what had happened; after they had tried to question Steve but she had diverted their attention elsewhere, quite artfully so; after he had made it back to the café only to find her already waiting for him, dressed once again in her regular clothes, their bags piled up under the table exactly where he’d left them. The first aid kit was sitting on the counter between them while she worked on getting his scrapes and cuts cleaned up and disinfected after he had adamantly refused to go to a hospital. (“Who goes to a hospital with a split lip?” he had argued.) 

“That other guy would've gotten away,” Steve pointed out.

Diana pressed a piece of cotton doused with antiseptic to his cheekbone. He hissed through his teeth and scowled at her, but she held his chin in a firm grip, seemingly unsympathetic to his discomfort.

Should have known there was a catch to letting her treat him instead of a doctor, Steve thought sullenly. She’d had him take off the bloodied shirt, too. There had to be some sort of irony to him sitting shirtless in her kitchen for the second time in as many days, even though he hadn’t quite figured out what it entailed, exactly.

“He wouldn’t have,” Diana said evenly. “Don’t move.”

 Couldn’t if I wanted to.  

“Or someone could’ve gotten hurt,” he pressed on as she lowered her hand and examined her work.

Her gaze met his. “Someone did get hurt.”

“It’s nothing,” Steve argued for what felt like the thousandth time. His eyes darted towards the bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel that he was holding against his shoulder that had swelled and started to throb uncomfortably by the time they had walked through the door. “And this injury is old,” he insisted.  

Diana hummed noncommittally, even though he could see her fighting a smile, or maybe an exasperated roll of her eyes—he wasn’t quite sure. It made his heart flutter behind his ribs, all the same. Which made his stomach twist a little, in a good way.

“It’s inflamed now,” she reminded him as she started to put the bottles and tubes and the pack of cotton balls back in the first aid kit.  

“You couldn’t have been in two places at once.”

She went still, and Steve fell silent when he caught on, belatedly, to what he had said.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved. He watched Diana stare down at the grey bag, her hands frozen on a zipped, her brows pulled together and her jaw set tautly.

That was how they’d gotten here in the first place, wasn’t it? She couldn’t have defeated Ares and stopped the plane, back in 1918. And he couldn’t have stayed back and let innocent people die, not even if he had really, truly, desperately wanted to live to see another day. But it hurt. Steve could see that it hurt her, the impossible choice that had changed everything, and he was suddenly ashamed for bringing it up so casually, so callously.

Still not looking at him, Diana stepped away, but he darted his hand out to curl his fingers around her wrist.

“Wait, please,” he said quietly, her pulse a rapid thrum beneath his fingertips.

He tugged her back to him, and she let him, not trying to pull out of his grasp even though they both knew that he was not strong enough to hold her if she didn’t want it. She still wasn’t looking at him though, her gaze cast aside and her lips pressed together.

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I didn’t mean to…”

He swallowed and tried to imagine what it had been like for her to see that blood on his shirt. He couldn’t. Try as he might, he never had and likely never would understand it. He still feared for her, though he knew that she was near indestructible. He still felt responsible for her because he had been the one to bring her into his world even though she had now lived in it longer than he had. But she couldn’t get hurt the way he could, and he could never lose her the way she’d lost him. Steve had always known that they were different, but it had never felt quite like a gaping void until that moment.

He was certain she could feel it, too.  

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, running his thumb over the inside of her wrist.

Diana looked up. “I know,” she whispered, her gaze softening as it moved over his face.

On impulse, he lifted his good hand and brushed back a strand of hair that had escaped her loose ponytail and fell across her cheek. He drew back before he had a chance to go even further and pull her hair band off until her hair was falling down her shoulders. He’d want to touch it then, bury his fingers in it the way he had before, that night when they—

“I would never do anything to hurt you,” he went on, trying to stay focused.  

“I know, Steve.”

“And I’m sure your washing machine can—can fix the shirt,” he added, just in case she was upset about that as well.

This time, he could see the making of a smile working its way to her face.

“I can buy you a new shirt.”

He nodded, slowly. And then felt the corner of his mouth twitch a little.

“They call you Wonder Woman .”

Diana pressed her lips together. He could see her fighting back a snort.

“The media wanted something catchy.”

“I’m sure that’s all there is to it,” Steve deadpanned. “And that it’s got nothing to do with the fact that you can flip tanks and punch your fist through brick walls.”

“I haven’t done that in a while,” she noted, amused.  

“How long have they been calling you that?”

“A while.”

“Like, a couple of months?” he pressed on.

“Forty years, give or take.”

Steve felt his jaw drop. He blinked, and Diana laughed.

“I guess it caught on,” he cleared his throat, feeling the tops of his cheeks grow hot.  

“I suppose it did,” she murmured.

If he’d forgotten for a moment or two that he was sitting half-naked before her or that she was standing so close he could smell that fruity shampoo on her, he remembered it now, suddenly very aware of it with every cell of his body. His hand was still curled around her wrist. She’d never made an attempt to pull out of his grasp, and Steve wasn’t sure he wanted to let go just yet, either. He just wanted to look at her, and she let him.

His eyes moved over her features, taking her in—the warmth of her gaze and the gentle bow of her lips that he remembered the taste of so vividly and her high cheekbones that had reminded him of statues of gods long before he had learned she was one. Unbidden, his mind went back to the moment on the beach when he had opened his eyes and found her hovering over him, bathed in sunlight, droplets of water clinging to her skin.

He was certain now that he had loved her then, even if he didn’t know it yet. And loved her more in the throne room, bound by the Lasso. And more still in the days that had followed. And then he was gone, not even ashes of him left, and he had loved her anyway. And that he would continue to love her thousands of years after his bones turned to dust.

She should have seemed different to him, Steve thought. After all this time. And maybe she was, in a way. She had that fancy mobile phone now (and try as he might, he could not quite figure out why it had to be a phone and a photo camera, and a hundred other things at the same time), and she wore pants (that looked very good on her), and there was a reservation to her that he could not recall from their brief time together. But her smile was the same. Earlier today, she hadn’t hesitated before rushing off to help someone who had needed it. And then afterwards, when they’d come back to get their bags, she had found words of comfort for the waitress who’d been quite distraught over the entire ordeal.

Steve had no doubt that she had changed. Changed in ways that he might not see on the surface, not yet. But he also knew that at the core, even centuries from now, she would still be the Diana he had met in 1918, no matter what she wore or how she spoke or where she lived.

The pause stretched between them as the old clock on the wall continued to tick the seconds away.  

“Do you remember No Man’s Land?” Steve asked eventually.

Diana gazed at him in surprise. “Of course.”

He felt the corners of his mouth tug upwards. “Well, I mean, it’s been a hundred years.”  

She smiled, shaking her head a little. “I remember, Steve.”

“It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, his voice earnest. He turned her wrist in his hand, tracing his thumb over her pulse point. “Today, when you crushed those guns in your hands? That’s a close second.”

Diana bit her lip around a smile and rolled her eyes a little. “Flatterer.”

He felt the tension drain out of her, the tight coil of something letting loose.

“It’s not flattery if it’s true,” he pointed out.

“You’re good at changing the subject, I’ve got to give you that.” She smoothed her palm over his shoulder. “Does it hurt?”

“Only when I move it,” he admitted and rolled it, wincing when the joint protested it. “I was not trying to make it worse, you know.”

She hummed noncommittally. “Were you trying to make it better?”

Steve huffed. “I wanted to help.”

She sighed, and he was certain that there was a touch of exasperation to it, too. Was it odd that he loved even her exasperation?

Diana brushed his hair back from his forehead, gently tilting his head slightly to the side to survey what he was certain would turn into a black eye by morning. She was biting her lip again, even though Steve could tell it had nothing to do with his face.

“What?” he asked, a little alarmed.

When their eyes met, she sighed again. “I have to take care of something.”

Steve frowned. “You’re leaving?”

“Only for a day. Two, at most.”

He felt his brows knit closer together, his frown deepening. He considered the idea. Surely, he could survive just fine on his own for a day or two, or even longer, if he had to. He had lived through most of the war, and the future was—well, it was not as bad, obviously. But everything that he knew about this world was tied to Diana, and even though he had never expected her to babysit him forever, the thought of her going away so soon was unbearable.

“Does it have anything to do with…” he trailed off and gestured at himself.

“Maybe.”

Steve nodded, not sure how he felt about it.

“Can I come with you?”

Diana hesitated.

“I’d rather you wait here,” she said gently.

He opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself when he caught the look on her face. A memory sprung to his mind, of the wind tugging at his coat and swallowing his words and Diana’s pleading voice, Whatever it is, I can do it. Let me do it. The raw panic in her eyes earlier when she had seen the blood on his shirt and thought he had been injured. The way her voice had caught in her throat when she’d asked if he was hurt.

“Okay,” Steve said, before he could change his mind.

He wasn’t crazy about the idea of staying behind, especially on something that could have something to do with him and this whole… revival thing. But he would also be happy to walk away from any and all battles for good if it meant that she would never look so grief-stricken because of him.

Diana looked relieved, the small smile making its return as she trailed her fingertips over the line of his jaw. “Yes?”

He felt his heartbeat stutter. He let go of her wrist and brushed his thumb over her chin, his eyes searching hers. “If you want me to stay here, I’ll be here.”

“Yes, I do.”

He nodded again, feeling like his neck was about to come unhinged and, oddly, not giving a damn about it.

“Can you at least tell me what it’s about?”  

Her expression softened.

“I’ll tell you everything when I’m back. I promise you, Steve.”

And a promise is unbreakable. Steve wondered if she still believed that, if she still lived by it.

He didn’t know how to ask it though, or if he wanted to hear her answer.

“You have my photo near your bed,” he said, quietly.  

Diana smiled. “I’m aware.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

Her tone was light, though he suspected that there was no humour in her words.

He looked down, suddenly afraid of what he would find in her eyes. “It’s been a long time. A hundred years is a long time.”

“Didn’t feel long,” she whispered.  

He felt her hands on his cheeks, her palms framing his face and the scent of her wrapping around him as she leaned towards him. Steve bowed his head until their foreheads were touching and closed his eyes.

“Diana…”  

She stroked his cheek. “We’ll talk when I come back.”

“Okay,” he repeated and took a breath. “I’ll be here.”


Veld, 1918

Her cloak fell to the floor, pooling in a black mass at her feet. Steve’s overcoat following suit moments later. Diana’s hands slid under the hem of his sweater, pushing it up to slip it over his head, leaving his hair tousled. She didn’t hesitate, brushing her fingers through it to smooth it down, pulling him towards her. She liked the way he tasted, the way his hands felt as they moved over her skin and the shudder of desire that raced down her spine each time he whispered her name and the heat in his eyes that made her breath catch.

When he kissed her again, hot and slow, drawing every inch of sense and reason out of her, she thought of the tales of love and devotion the history of her people was stitched of, woven into a pattern that stretched like canvas across time. She had never truly understood why wars were started for passion, and won by it, too. She thought she did now, at last. Could feel it running through her body, thrumming along with her heartbeat faster and faster with every breath she took.

Steve slipped his hands into hers and laced their fingers together, holding them above her head as he moved over her, the heat pooling inside of her, her mind clouded with the haze of pleasure. He trailed his lips along her jaw before pressing an open-mouthed kiss to her throat. 

Her eyes slammed shut, spine arching against him. She wondered if he could feel her pulse stutter, if he could hear her heart beating. She stopped wondering when he breathed out her name, his voice reverent, like a prayer. 

And then she stopped thinking altogether...

Now she was draped over Steve’s chest, her head tucked under his chin and her hand running idly back and forth along the pale scar beneath his collar bone. One that she had kissed not so long ago, his heart a steady thrum beneath her palm. She loved it, loved the way his body felt pressed against hers, their legs tangled; loved the warmth of his skin and the rhythm of his heartbeat, and that he couldn’t seem to stop touching her, his hand tracing patterns over the expanse of her back.

Outside, the noise had died down eventually. The music was still playing, quietly. Diana could hear people talking and an occasional burst of laughter. Somewhere in a room down the hall, someone was snoring loudly. She thought she recognized it as Charlie, the corners of her mouth curving upwards. But the thought was fleeting and didn’t linger, like all things insignificant.

They had talked for a while afterwards, in soft, low voices that felt like a secret. About his family and hers, small things that had filled the silence, words punctuated with kisses. He had told her about the last time he had seen his parents, right before he had left for the front, none of them knowing if they’d see one another again. The day his father had given him his watch.

He had fallen silent eventually, his voice drifting off. If it wasn’t for his hand still running along her skin, Diana would have thought he had fallen asleep.

When she lifted her head to look at him, she found him gazing towards the hearth, eyes trained on the dying fire and glowing embers. She thought back to a moment on the boat when she had awoken in the night to him still sound asleep next to her, an endless sea of stars above them. She had been startled by the impulse to touch him then, to brush back the hair that had fallen across his forehead.

She didn’t fight it now, raising her hand to thread her fingers through his hair. At that, Steve turned to her and smiled, his expression still a little dazed. And she was helpless against the urge to kiss him.

He kissed her back immediately, deep and slow. Diana felt his hand slide into her hair and cup over the back of her head as his lips moved over hers, stirring desire in her blood. He had been tender, oh so tender with her earlier. Until she has told him to stop holding back. And then it had been fire. It still simmered beneath her skin.

When he drew back though, she was not disappointed. She stayed close, resting her forehead to his. He seemed to like that, bumping his nose playfully against hers.

“So, about Clio and those treatises on bodily pleasures…” he started in what she assumed was meant to pass for a casual tone.

Diana bit her lip around a smile.

“I suppose they got a few things wrong,” she admitted, trying very hard to keep her voice even.

Quite a few things, she amended in her mind.

Steve’s lips quirked. “Yeah?”

“You were not joking about spies being rather vigorous, either,” she murmured, touching her thumb to his bottom lip, delighted to see his eyes widen and the tops of his cheek grow pink.

Steve groaned in the back of his throat and rubbed the corners of his eyes. “I’m going to pay dearly for every single thing I’ve ever said to you, aren’t I?”

She rolled onto her side, rising up on her elbow. Her body was still pressed against his, and she had no intention of changing that. “I can think of a few things, yes,” she noted, knowing that it would get a reaction out of him, unable to help the grin that sprung across her face when his cheeks turned an even brighter shade of crimson.

He didn’t break eye contact though, smiling back at her instead. Which made her wonder if he knew how lovely it was—his smile, when he meant it; when it touched his eyes. When his gaze was no longer clouded with grief. It made her want to never stop saying things that would keep it right where it was now.

For a moment or two, they were quiet, Steve’s eyes moving over her features in the near dark as he played idly with a strand of her hair.

Eventually, his smile dimmed a little, a slight frown appearing between his eyebrows.

“This is real, isn’t it?” he asked after another moment, his eyes searching hers.

Diana smiled. “Why wouldn’t it be?” she inquired as her fingers traced the jut of his collarbone.

“On the boat, I dreamed about—” he cut off suddenly, the colour returning to his face immediately. “Not this,” he said quickly and cleared his throat. She trailed her fingers along his jaw, and made a mental note to kiss every last trace of shyness out of him later. And maybe he would be kind enough to return the favour and kiss every last trace of reason out of her as well. “I dreamed about you saving me,” he said, brows drawn together pensively. “Not just from drowning, but… saving me, from everything.”

Diana watched a shadow of anguish pass over his face, her heart giving a dull tug of longing in response—there was something he didn’t seem to know how to tell her, and whatever it was, she could feel it cutting through him like a knife.

“Steve,” she said, quietly. She brushed her thumb to his chin, his stubble prickly against her skin. His eyes, when they met hers, were bright and earnest and impossibly blue, making her breath rush out of her lungs. No one had ever looked at her like that, with so much devotion she could feel it like a touch. “I would not have minded if you’d dreamt about this,” she said quietly.

Steve’s mouth went a little slack and for a moment, he merely gaped at her, hungry and a little desperate, his eyes growing dark with need and sending a surge of heat that curled up her spine.

“Yeah?” he echoed, his voice low and hoarse, making her heart give a hollow thud against her breast bone. 

Diana smiled. “Yes.” 

His jaw worked for another second, but in the end, he clamped his mouth shut and swallowed. She arched an eyebrow at him, certain that she could feel his heartbeat spike beneath her palm as his gaze dropped to her mouth and he had to visibly make an effort to drag it back up.

“Hang on a second,” he muttered.

He pulled away from her and slipped out of the bed.

Diana sat up, watching him crouch in front of the hearth and add the last of the wood that had been left beside it to the few embers that glowed among ashes. He prodded them with the iron poker left leaning against the wall and added more kindling until the fire caught on, flames shooting up with an audible crack, their warm glow turning his skin the colour of honey, taut muscles moving beneath it. She remembered the way they felt under her hands.  

“Just a trick Chief taught me,” Steve said, glancing at her over his shoulder. He set the poker aside, pleased with the result. “A fool-proof one, apparently.”

Another bout of snores had them both looking towards the door.

“Charlie?” Diana inquired, amused.

Steve laughed as he uncurled from his crouch and stood up. “Yeah. That’s why he always gets his own room, lucky bastard. Not even Sami can deal with that. And believe me, Sami can sleep through anything.”

Diana's heart swelled at the sound of fondness in his voice.

When Steve was close enough, she reached for his hand, fingers curling around his wrist as she pulled him back into bed.

“Stay with me.”

“Didn’t want you to get cold,” he explained, reaching up to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear.

“I’m not cold.”

She caught his gaze and held it, watching the humour drain out of his eyes, replaced by something that made her heartbeat stutter.

She thought he would kiss her then. Wanted him to kiss her. Wanted so much more.

It was an odd feeling, and entirely unfamiliar, too. For as long as Diana could remember, she had lived in anticipation of a moment when she could prove herself. Having to stand back ever since she was born, watching her sisters finesse the art of battle while she had been kept at the sidelines; having to fight for her right to belong among them, always different in nature and in her status; having to show time and time again that she was worthy, not by birth but by how hard she worked to be one of them.

And here she was, hours away from completing the mission of her people; the enemy they had waited to come for them for so long within her reach. Earlier today, she had felt her blood flow and her heart beat faster than ever as bullets ricocheted off her shield and gauntlets. She had been able to feel a power course through her system the likes of which she had never known before.

Yet, here in this room, with this man, it was not the fight she yearned for. It was for time to pause and the hours of the night still stretching before them, and for everything beyond the battle.

Steve didn’t kiss her. Instead, he twisted a strand of her hair around his finger. She thought she could hear his fear thrumming in his pulse.  

“What’s gonna happen tomorrow?” he asked in a whoosh of breath that made her shiver.

Diana didn’t hesitate.

“I’m going to kill Ares. And we will stop the war.”

She watched a flicker of doubt chase behind his eyes, but he didn’t argue. He nodded instead, though he wasn’t looking at her, and she didn’t know what to make of it. Unlike the time when they were making love, she couldn’t seem to find a way to read him, now.

She leaned towards him, until their faces were nearly touching. “Do you believe me?” she asked.

He lifted his eyes to hers, his hand lingering at her cheek.

“I believe that only a miracle can stop this madness. And you are one, Diana.”

She leaned into his touch, turning her face to kiss the heel of his palm.

“You know, I spent two years wishing the war away,” he said after a moment. “But now… If I could go back in time, somehow, I wouldn’t change a single thing. Not even the war. Not if it meant not finding you.” He chuckled, humourlessly. He pulled away from her and scrubbed his hand down his face, dropping his gaze. “What kind of person thinks that?”

“It’s not a sin to want to be happy, Steve.”

When he didn’t respond, she reached for his hand, weaving their fingers together. When she looked up, she found him watching her.

“We’re together in that way now, yes?” she asked, quietly.

The corner of his mouth curled up, and then he let out a small laugh. “Yes,” he said, as he lifted their hands to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her fingertips. “Yes, we are.” 

He ducked his head, resting his forehead against her temple. An unsteady breath stuttered out of his chest, and Diana couldn’t help but turn her face, lips brushing against his brow.

“Will you come with me?” he asked. “When this is over, would you like to come to America with me?”

“Yes.”

He glanced up, a smile lurking behind his eyes. “You could meet my family.”

She smiled back. “Meet your family?”

“Hey, I’ve met yours. And mine is less likely to point weapons at you.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“Alright then,” she murmured and leaned forward, brushing her mouth to his, her heart a wild flutter against her ribs when she felt his smile against her lips. “After it’s all over, yes?”

“Yeah,” he whispered.

“You should get some sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep, I want…”

She felt his hand slide up her thigh and around her waist until it splayed over the small of her back. She let her hand thread through his hair, a low hum rising in the back of his throat when she deepened the kiss, white-hot desire shooting through her veins.

She leaned back, taking him with her, pulling him over her.

“Diana,” he breathed against the curve of her throat, his mouth travelling across her collar bone and across her chest and further down her sternum.

She closed her eyes and let herself fall.


Gotham, 2018

A wail of an ambulance siren pierced the cold night, drawing Diana’s attention to the red blinking dot far below for a moment. The sound died down seconds later, swallowed by a gust of wind.

Perched on a ledge near the rooftop, she observed the gleaming expanse of the city below. She had always liked Gotham better from afar, where you couldn’t see its unsavoury underbelly and everything that often made it a headline of every single paper in the city. She had wondered once or twice what it was that made it so appealing to Bruce that he had never left, despite having the means and reasons to walk away and never look back.

Her gaze moved from one dark building to another as she searched for movement or, perhaps, a familiar shape frozen in a pose similar to her own.

She could have called him, Diana knew. It would have been easier to find Constantine if she’d asked Bruce for help. But even with the phone in her hand and her thumb hovering over his name, she had hesitated. Part of it was because she knew he’d want an explanation and Diana suspected he would go looking for one if she refused to provide it. And part of it was because she never quite figured out where they stood with their relationship after she had awoken in his bed one morning.

She had slipped out of the house before he had roused, and neither of them had ever talked of what had happened between them or even acknowledged it. Which would have been fine, had it not been for that unspoken thing hanging between them since. One that made Diana search for words harder than she normally would, skirting around things that needed to be said. And one that would make it hard for Bruce to look her in the eye on those rare occasions when they ended up in the same room alone. To be fair, he had never tried bringing it up with her, either. Which left Diana feeling relieved. Which, in turn, made her feel like a coward and left an unpleasant aftertaste in her mouth.

But if there was a social protocol regarding asking one man she had slept with to help her figure out how to keep another man in her life, Diana was not aware of it. Hence, why she was out there blindly searching the night in hopes that she might get lucky in locating Bruce’s arch-nemesis on her own, while also hoping she wouldn’t run into Bruce himself. She was not sure how he’d take it if he knew she had come to Gotham without saying a word to him—not that she had to—but the entire situation was complicated enough without adding another layer to it. Diana didn’t want to tangle someone else in this all, not unless she had no choice but to do so.

She only wished Constantine was an easier man to locate.

A flicker of something in the dark below her had her senses prickling as she just made out the sight of a familiar beige trench coat. In the near-complete darkness, the red tip of his lit cigarette was glowing like a beacon.

Diana stood up, adrenaline spiking in her blood. She leaped forward, swallowed almost immediately by the shadows where the light of the night city couldn’t reach between tall buildings. She landed almost soundlessly on the wet asphalt, the soft thump of it swallowed by a mechanical noise coming from somewhere behind her.

Constantine paused in his tracks. In the pale light of a bare bulb hanging over some back door, Diana watched him blow out a puff of smoke.

“You’re not as discreet as you think you are.” He turned slowly, unconcerned, and tapped the ash off the end of the cigarette with his finger before sticking it back between his lips. He grinned and saluted at her. “Your Highness.”

“What did you do, John?”

“You might want to be more specific, Princess.” Constantine shook his head and heaved an exaggerated sigh behind which she glimpsed weary lines around his eyes. The lopsided smile remained intact though. As did, it seemed, his assumption that she was in a mood for banter. “Been a long week.”

In an instant, Diana lunged at him, her hand closing around his throat as she slammed him against the brick wall, his feet dangling above the wet asphalt. His half-finished cigarette fell into a puddle at her feet, the burning glow going out with a soft hiss.

“Answer me,” she demanded.

“Windpipe,” Constantine croaked, his fingers clawing at her hand. Diana pressed her lips together, displeased, and released him. He collapsed against the wall, unsteady on his feet for a moment of two, as he sucked in a hungry breath, and then another. “Blimey, you’re strong,” he muttered, voice hoarse, but the admiration in his tone and a crooked smile made Diana roll her eyes all the same.

Slowly, he straightened up and brushed the grime off his coat. He spotted his cigarette on the ground and let out a pained sigh, shaking his head with dismay for good measure with that very flare for dramatics that vexed Bruce so and made Diana regret letting him go.

Eventually, Constantine cleared his throat and adjusted his tie with the air of an awful lot of self-importance.

“Not that I mind when a woman goes for my jugular…” he added, flashing another toothy grin into the night. He pulled a cigarette pack out of the pocket of his coat and shook one out, sticking it in his mouth before he retrieved a silver lighter as well. Diana watched him click it a couple of times before the flame shot out, oddly bright in the dark alley. “Now, to what do I owe the pleasure? And believe me, the pleasure is all—”

“A week ago, you sold something to Bruce Wayne,” Diana interjected. “A charm.”

“Ah, that pretty little pendant. Yes.” Constantine took a long drag and then exhaled slowly, watching her through the haze of smoke. “You want one too, Princess? Sorry, no can do. It was one of a kind. I do have quite a wide variety—”  

“What did you do with it?”

It took him a second to catch on, his brows knitting together as the realization dawned.

“Wait, it was for you?” He grimaced. “Bollocks, I owe Batty an apology.”

Diana’s heart stuttered, blood roaring up in her veins. She thought of Steve’s smile and the warmth of his hand in hers, the thought of all of that being yet another trick landing on her like a punch to her gut.

“John,” she started with a warning.

He raised his hands quickly. “Nothing! Nothing, I swear. I didn’t do anything to it. He was asking around for it. I knew where to find it, so I kindly offered my services, is all. He’s not the most popular guy in certain circles, you know. I was just trying to be helpf—”  

“And?” Diana interjected.

“If I knew it was for you, I’d’ve offered him a discount, not demanded double its price. Maybe ask him to put in a good word for me as a bonus. With you, I mean.” He shrugged and gave her body a pointed sweep with his gaze.

It was then that Diana noticed that her hands were clenched in tight fists. She took a breath and willed herself to relax them, not trusting the sense of relief that Constantine’s words had brought on just yet. So much so that she dismissed his last comment entirely.

“Are you sure—”

He rolled his eyes impatiently. “Yes. Batty is an intolerable asshole, as we both know, but I’ve got a reputation to uphold and he’s not worth tainting it over some trinket.” He cocked an eyebrow, giving her yet another once-over. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

She turned to leave.

“Maybe I could help,” Constantine called after her.

Diana paused in her tracks. When she turned around, he had his cigarette pinched between his thumb and his index finger, studying the glowing end of it pensively. He looked up and smiled, hand reaching up to adjust his tie again. He smoothed his palm over it.

“What, a guy can’t feel generous once in a while?” he inquired when she merely regarded him skeptically.

“A guy can,” Diana said flatly, and Constantine smirked. She considered him, eyes narrowed in mistrust. “What would it cost me?”

“I’ll put it on Batty’s tab.”

Diana sighed.

Her eyes skittered around the alley, moving along the brick walls and exposed pipes, pausing on boarded-up windows. In the distance, she could hear a wail of a police siren. This was the world that had changed Bruce’s life forever, once. The same world to which Barbara Ann had been lost.

“I was going to use the pendant to locate someone. Someone who went missing 34 years ago.”

When she looked at Constantine, his smirk was still in place but his gaze had softened in a way she had never seen before.

“Did you find them?” he asked as he flicked the cigarette butt on the ground and stepped on it with the toe of his shoe.

She folded her arms across her chest. “No, I found someone else. Someone who was supposed to be dead.”

Constantine blinked and whistled quietly under his breath. “Not something I hear every day. And believe me, there are things—”  

“If you put some spell on it…” she began.

But he was shaking his head, and frowning, too. Diana didn’t like the sight of it. She knew how to deal with him when he was intentionally intolerable, but the man standing before her now seemed too unpredictable for her liking. 

“It closed the circle,” he said after a moment, rubbing his cheek. His eyes, when they met hers, were piercing, unnervingly so. “Did you touch it?”

“Yes. But I don’t under—”

“Do you mind if we…”

He didn’t finish, his voice cut off by a loud clap of his hands. Instantly, the alley was flooded with white light, so bright that Diana flinched away from it, squeezing her eyes shut and lifting her arm to cover them to shield herself from it.

When she opened them again, seconds later, she was no longer outside. Instead, she found herself in a cramped room with books lying around in stacks, some of them crammed onto narrow bookshelves. A table was pushed against a wall with papers and what looked like ancient parchments lying all over it, as well as coffee mugs. 

Diana wrinkled her nose at the sight of ashtrays sitting all over the room.

“You live here?” she asked.

“Nah, Zee hates this place.”

“I wonder why.”

They were still in Gotham. Diana could tell that from the skyline outside the small window. Could hear it too—the unmistakable soundtrack of police sirens, the monorail and voices morphing into a white noise that she had long grown accustomed to ignoring.

Ashtrays aside, the place was… neat, in a way. In the same manner that the Batcave was neat—though, to an outsider, it could seem like utter chaos, Bruce never needed more than a few seconds to find anything he was after. She shook her head, amused by the idea of drawing similarities between the two that she knew Bruce would never agree with.

“A bloke’s gotta have his own space,” Constantine muttered. He was pulling books from the shelves and flipping through them impatiently before returning each back in its place. “Besides, I gotta keep some stuff I need for… ah, business somewhere, right?”

When Diana glanced at him, he turned to her and grinned.

She shook her head. “If you say so.”

He moved to a stack of books leaning against a wall covered with faded wallpaper and pulled one out from the middle, as the rest of them toppled to the floor at his feet with dull thuds.

“So, you and Batty…” he started conversationally without looking at Diana.

She snapped her head up.

“Why would you say that?”

Constantine shot a quick glance at her. “No? My bad, must have gotten it wrong.” Diana’s frown deepened. “He just always seemed like—A-ha!”

Diana perked up when he paused, his palm splayed over the yellowed page as his eyes moved along the lines. When he shoved the book at Diana, she nearly staggered backwards.

“What am I looking at?” she inquired.

“Does this seem familiar?”

She studied the page and the words written in runes next to a drawing she failed to make anything out of. She turned the book sideways, but it didn’t make any more sense.

She lowered it down.

“I don’t understand any of this. Can you explain?”

Constantine sighed with pointed exasperation. He took the book from her.

“The pendant has some magic on its own, but ideally, it needs to be used as part of a spell or whatever. Thing is, I know for a fact that it had been in the possession of just one person for the past half a century or so. Doesn’t matter who, bloke’s dead anyway. So I kinda figured that whoever did this,” he pointed at the page, “didn’t have it—whenever.”

“In 1984,” Diana said quietly.

Constantine quirked an eyebrow at her. “Right. So… the spell was not finished properly. Until you—and I’m guessing you were part of it—touched it, thus completing it.”

Diana didn’t respond at once.

The Dreamstone. It must not have been meant to be used on its own. That must be why it had given Maxwell Lord so much power until he was akin to a god while also weakening him so fast. And that, she suspected, explained why destroying it had not returned Barbara Ann to her human self the way it had so easily undone her own wish.

The reason she had been looking for the pendant in the first place was because according to some historical texts she had come across, it was meant to help locate what was lost. She had figured that after failing to track down Barbara Ann over the past thirty odd years, it was worth a try.

But Diana had made a wish, too. And if Constantine was correct, closing the circle had made it come true, in the way she’d wanted all along.

“It likely didn’t work,” Constantine continued, either oblivious to her stunned state, or ignoring it entirely — Diana wasn’t entirely sure. “Without the pendant, that is. Or it backfired.” He shrugged and slammed the book shut before peering at Diana, one eyebrow raised. “Which was it?”

She thought of Steve’s hand in hers, in 1984, feeling so real. And then, of his clothes in her closet with the lingering scent of him on them but no man to wear them and the memories she had made with him feeling worthless and the feeling of emptiness in her chest so consuming Diana had thought it would swallow her whole.

For years, she had wondered if she’d have preferred to continue living a lie, given the choice, just so she wouldn’t have to lose him again. To this day, she still didn’t know what her answer would be.

She looked away from Constantine and shook her head, refusing to answer.

“What now?” she asked.

“Whatever do you mean?” he inquired, lighting up another cigarette.

“Now that the spell is complete… what does it mean?”

He shrugged. “Everyone gets to live happily ever after, yadda, yadda, yadda, the usual.”

“Is it permanent?” she pressed with growing impatience.

She could feel her heart beating faster, her breath hitching in her throat. Diana’s fingers curled into fists as she watched the man before her with more hope than she had allowed herself to feel in decades. More than she had felt with Steve asleep with his arm wrapped around her the night before, or in the moments when his hand was clasped around hers. Thousands of miles away, and he had never felt more solid to her than he did in the second that it took Constantine to respond, the life Diana had imagined for herself and her long-lost pilot flashing before her eyes.

She wanted so badly for all of this to be true she could barely breathe.

“Well, I mean, you can do a reverse one,” Constantine offered matter-of-factly as he stacked the books scattered all over the floor into a precarious-looking pile again. “Or you could—” He jerked his chin towards the sword behind her back and made a poking gesture with his finger. “No one’s immune to that.”

She narrowed her eyes a little, regarding him with suspicion.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

He puffed a cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth and smiled. How he managed to do both things at the same time, Diana had no idea.  

“Like I said, it goes on Batty’s tab.” He straightened up and gave her a pointed once-over. “Besides, you’re a sight for my sore eyes. Can never say no when a nice lady is in trouble.”

Diana scoffed.

And then her smile faltered as another thought struck her, hard and fast, leaving her mind reeling.

“Can you make it irreversible?” she asked, barely swallowing the tremor in her voice.

Constantine blinked at her. “Come again?”

“The spell, the one that I completed.” The one that had brought Steve back to her. After all this time… Her stomach churned at the memory of his form dissipating before her. “Can you make it irreversible?”

Just the thought of having him for good, without fear, without doubt, was making her dizzy. The real him, hers at last.

If he still wanted her, if he wanted to be with her. He had, once.

She felt her breath rush out of her, more frightened than she had ever been of losing this fragile sliver of hope.

Everything she’d ever wanted—

She pushed the memory of those words aside.

“Well, I mean…” Constantine started. He rubbed the back of his neck and offered her a cocky grin. “Is there anything I can’t do?”

“Can you?” Diana pressed.

“Depends.”

“On?”

She was starting to get frustrated with his non-answers.

“See, I’m a businessman, Your Majesty.”

“How much?” Diana interjected, growing impatient.

Constantine sighed. “Now you sound just like Batty.”

“How much, John?”

“I’m sure we can work it out,” he said smoothly. “As soon as you figure out it’s what you really want. You know, you can’t just go back and forth on those things. Hey, you still work in that fancy place with a lot of fancy toys that may or may not be useful in our line of business?”

She shook her head. “Not happening.”

He shrugged and slid his hands into the pockets of his coat, seemingly not at all taken aback by her refusal to let him run wild in the Louvre.

“As I said, we can work something out. But in the meantime—”

He lifted his hand and snapped his fingers. Immediately, the room was flooded with bright white light. And again, instinctively, Diana flinched away from it, squeezing her eyes shut.

When the light faded and she looked around, she found herself back in the alley where she had located Constantine earlier.

Alone.

 

 

 


To end this chapter on a higher note... while editing this part, akajb and I got to talking about the Grumpy Bat meme and she asked me if it existed. A quick google search revealed that it didn't, so we made it (because there is literally nothing writers wouldn't do have an excuse to procrastinate) :) Apologies for posting it in the body of the fic but it's easier to modify the size here. Quite a few of you found the idea of Steve being introduced to memes funny so... why not?

                                                     

Notes:

Sorry, I just couldn't help myself with that meme :)

I know a few of you might not be very happy about that one small detail. You know which one. I swear on my life this is a purely Diana/Steve story with quite a lot of, well, that kind of content, so worry not! Fun fact: I wrote the jewelry store robbery here without knowing there would be a jewelry store robbery in WW84, so... I didn't change it, but it is merely a coincidence and not a nod to the film. Just sharing bits of writing trivia :) s

Thank you for reading, I hope you'll stick around for what's coming next! As always, feedback, speculations or just yelling about how much you love Wonder Woman and Steve/Diana is much appreciated!
(Just please be kind even if you don't agree with the creative liberties I took, I swear it will all play out nicely)

More coming soon, stay tuned!

Chapter 7

Notes:

Hey everyone :) I come bearing gifts, namely another 10k chapter! Thank you so much for your support guys, you have been nothing but wonderful and I'm so grateful :) The next few chapters will be quite emotional (and yet funny) so feel free to brace yourselves, I cannot wait to share them.

Dig in and have fun!

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

Chapter Text

Paris, 2018

Steve awoke to a grey sky hanging low over the rooftops and a layer of drizzle coating the window, the city on the other side of it smudged and blurry.

For a long moment he simply lay there, listening to the muffled sounds floating in from the outside — cars honking and birds chirping and someone down the street calling out someone else’s name — amazed by the serenity of it and waiting, always waiting, for the rapid staccato of a machine gun or the sonic boom that always followed the explosion of a bomb as it hit the ground, his skin prickling and the fine hairs standing on his arms before he knew what was happening.

The lack of it, the absence of anticipation almost made him ache. He never knew that relief could be so… physical. Something he could feel with his skin. All the time he had spent trying to make it to the other side of the war, he had never really paused to imagine what that would be like.

He did now, and it was suddenly more overwhelming than he had anticipated.

Steve rolled onto his back and scrubbed a hand down his face, rubbing away the remnants of sleep still clinging to his brain.

For the second time in as many days, he had woken up in Diana’s bed without her. Yesterday, at least, she was still in the apartment. 

He listened carefully for another moment in a desperate hope of catching the sound of her footsteps, or her voice coming from the study, on the off chance she was back already. She had said it wouldn’t take long. He wondered what that had meant, specifically, kicking himself for not clarifying when he had still had a chance. She’d lived for hundreds of years. A few decades probably felt like nothing but a blink to her.

He hoped she hadn’t meant it in that way.

Steve craned his neck and looked around the room, and then, resigned, he sat up. His clothes were folded neatly on the chair where he’d left them. On the bedside table, a digital clock read 9:27 – most of the clocks and watches he had encountered so far were digital. Odd, but he kind of liked it. For a brief moment, he contemplated going back to sleep. It wasn’t like there was much else for him to do anyway, while he waited for Diana to return.

He sighed and dismissed the idea as soon as it popped up in his head, his mind too awake even with all the idle hours stretching before him with little he could do to fill them. Instead, he reached on impulse for the framed photo of himself sitting behind the alarm clock.

Why do you think? Diana had said the night before when he’d asked her why she had it.

Her words had made his stomach twist in a not altogether unpleasant way then.

Steve felt his brows knit together as his gaze moved over the short text underneath the photograph – something they’d likely gotten from Etta, he assumed. He hadn’t realized the previous morning that it was a posthumous recognition of his bravery during the war, an in memoriam notice in a local paper.

Which made sense, he thought. Of course, it made sense, why else would there be a picture of him in a newspaper, to begin with? He swallowed, feeling a little sick to his stomach. The idea of Diana going to bed and waking up every day with a reminder of his death beside her was wrong, somehow, leaving him with cold dread in the pit of his stomach. It didn’t feel like devotion anymore, not the way it had when he had first seen it.

He put it back and looked away, adamant to ignore it from now on. 

In the hallway, he could hear an old-fashioned clock ticking the seconds away. Suddenly, it was unbearable that Diana was not there. That Steve didn’t know when she was coming back. Her apartment, while stylish and comfortable and lovely, felt too large and too empty and entirely too lonely without her in it.

The thought made his chest constrict with longing, all the air rushing out of his lungs.

Steve pushed the feeling aside and climbed out of the bed.

In the kitchen, he poked at the buttons on the coffee machine, pleased to hear a quiet whir inside of it and smell the aroma of coffee that started to fill the space around him. He was pleased, and more than a little relieved, still a bit unsure if Diana would be mad at him if he broke something.

He wasn’t sure if waking up properly was going to make him feel better about her not being there, but seeing as how he could hardly feel worse, it was a fair shot, he decided. 

The previous night, before she had left, Diana had taken him to a place called a supermarket. Which, as far as Steve was concerned, completely lived up to its name. He had never seen such an abundance of food in his entire life. Wasn’t sure he had seen that much food in all of his life, even. And such selection, too.

He had spent a full half an hour standing in front of a display with something like twenty different types of milk, dumbfounded beyond measure by the very concept of oat milk and rice milk and skim, whatever that was.

“What’s wrong with a normal one?” he had asked in a mortified whisper, mindful of not being overheard.

(Though, despite his paranoia, no one had seemed to care.)

“Well, some people do it for health reasons when they develop an intolerance,” Diana had explained, trying hard not to smile. “Others choose not to have animal products in their diet.”

Steve had blinked. “They what?”

She had steered him away—he had yet to have her explain to him the idea behind drinking oats, and how would anyone even milk them?—and Steve had been grateful, still a little too overwhelmed. 

It had been worse than the clothes, in a way. He had expected the food to remain mostly the same, even a century later. Fashion, he could understand. Having more milk and cheese and types of bread than he could ever imagine possible had made his head hurt. Had made him feel lost and confused, and more than a little disoriented in that bright place with its loud music playing overhead and faceless people making announcements from the small loudspeakers under the ceiling.

She had also told him to pick whatever he wanted, but in the end, Steve had let her decide. He had spent the last two years of his life living off rations that would make dry clay taste like ambrosia. For all of his skepticism that afternoon, he wouldn’t have actually turned down that mushed fruit bowl thing, as he was sure it was still a step up from rations. And he sure as hell was not going to get fussy over the brand of cheese.

“Just no green mush,” he had murmured, leaning closer to Diana lest someone overhear him and casting a surreptitious look around.

And then he had caught a whiff of her perfume that made the back of his neck grow hot.

And then she had pressed her lips around a smile that had made him forget about everything else, even the disembodied voices encouraging people to buy eggs at half price.

Afterwards, back at her apartment, Diana had given him a crash course of the technology and appliances she owned. A bread-maker had given him a pause — “Why would you want to make your own bread when you can buy so many different kinds?” and he had yet to grasp the concept behind the workings of a microwave. The coffee maker had been easy enough, at least as far as Steve’s needs were concerned, but her smart fridge had made him feel rather dumb, by comparison.

Steve had a very vague recollection of listening to Diana speak of something that she had called television—something that was like a movie theatre at home, but in colour, and with sound, and with hundreds of things to watch that one could choose from. But by the time they had gotten to it, his brain had felt too overloaded with information.

And lastly, she had shown him something called a laptop computer that, like her phone, also had that internet thing. Something where, she had explained, a person could find information about nearly anything in the world, in all languages.

Steve wasn’t sure he believed her—it had reminded him of the moment in the caves beneath her mother’s palace where she had told him that her people could speak hundreds of languages.

Although, admittedly, that had proven to be true.

He was not sure what he was supposed to do here without Diana. She hadn’t told him if anything was off-limits, though he suspected that was not because nothing was, but because they were short on time.

He considered the television unit that was taking up most of the wall in the living room but decided against it. The small thing with buttons that Diana had used to show him how to turn it on and off seemed to be as smart as her fridge, and the abundance of technology that looked both confusing and very expensive was still making him a little nervous.

He was a spy, a soldier. He knew how to survive when bullets whistled over his head and how to sneak in and out of enemy territory alive. He’d had to pretend to be someone he was not—and he was good at it. 

This life? There was no pretending here. Steve wondered, with a pang of dread in the pit of his stomach, how long it had taken Diana to get used to living in his world as though it was her own. Was it different because it hadn’t been quite so sudden as it was for him now? Or was it like stepping into a pair of new shoes and nothing more than that?

A hundred years ago, he was acutely aware of how different they were, and yet, it had barely mattered. If he had made it, if Diana still wanted to be with him, he wouldn’t have cared, he knew that. Now, with the tables turned, he had assumed it would feel the same way, only the other way around. Diana’s time in his world should have brought them closer, but Steve couldn’t help but feel like the abyss between them had only grown wider, against all logic and reason.

He didn’t like the feeling and the twinge of panic that it brought on with it.

He pushed that thought aside and decided to focus on something more immediate. Like getting some food into his stomach, and maybe another cup of coffee. His gaze skated over the TV once again, pensively, but then he remembered the two bookshelves in the study, somewhat comforted by the idea that even a century later people still read books.

He made himself eggs and toast, pleased with the result, and even more so—with not setting anything on fire by accident. She had been nothing but kind to him so far, but he didn’t think she would appreciate him burning her home down.

Steve was in the process of pouring that second cup of coffee, intent on taking it to her study and checking out Diana’s collection of books, when a high-pitched, melodic sound broke the stillness of the morning. Startled, Steve snapped his head up.

A telephone. A cordless receiver left on the kitchen counter. It was far less baffling than Diana’s cell phone with its touch screen and email and everything right inside of it, but the ringing made Steve pause all the same.

He thought back to the time last night with him and Diana standing on her balcony, night air tugging at her hair and the light of the reading lamp inside making the golden parts of her armour glow. She hadn’t told him anything about the phone, or whether he should answer it. Or maybe she had, but he had completely missed it because he was too busy staring at her and trying to keep thinking straight.

It was, perhaps, not appropriate for him to answer, he thought. But what if it was an emergency? She was Wonder Woman, after all. He was aware that it was not a widely known fact, but he knew, and so it was not impossible that someone else did, too. Or maybe it was Diana herself, calling to check up on him.

The thought made Steve’s heart stutter and lurch into a sprint. The desire to hear her voice was almost unbearable.

He tried to remember if she had taken her small phone with her. He didn’t remember seeing it last night, or anywhere in the apartment that morning. She probably didn’t really need it to call him, though. There could be regular phones, where she’d gone.

If this was her, and he didn’t answer, she would likely get worried, Steve reasoned with himself. And he didn’t want to worry her—he suspected he’d already given her a few moments of concern as it was.

The last thought propelled him to pick up the phone and press the big button. 

“Really, Di? You’re going to ignore my calls and texts and miss the Justice League get-together — the second one, by the way — but you pick up your house line?” a young voice said before Steve could utter so much as a word. A guy, speaking a mile a minute. “Rude.”

Steve pulled the receiver away from his ear and looked at it, before saying carefully, “Hello?”

There was a pause on the line.

“Sorry, must be the wrong number.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Are you looking for Diana?” he offered.

Another pause.

“Yeah. Is she there?”

Steve looked around, as if to make sure. “No, she’s—um, out.”

“And you are?” the stranger inquired.

“I’m… I’m Steve. Steve Trevor. I’m—” he cut off, not quite sure how to proceed, and cleared his throat.

“Why are you answering Diana’s phone?” the man asked suspiciously.

“Diana is not home,” Steve reminded him.

“And what are you doing at her place?”

“Um, I’m…” Steve looked down at his coffee cup

There was an audible intake of breath.

Are you her boyfriend? ” the voice asked, filled with so much excitement that Steve could practically feel it.

He blinked. Her boyfriend? He stumbled over the new terminology. Technically, he was a male, though boy would probably be pushing it, especially after a hundred years. And they were friends, he wanted to believe that. They had been friends before they had become something else, so perhaps—though Steve suspected the gleeful voice on the other end was inquiring about more than friendship.

“Well, we…” he began, not sure how to proceed. It didn’t feel right to discuss it with a stranger before he talked about it with Diana herself. “I’m a friend.”

“But you, like, live there? With her?”  

“I’m staying here,” Steve admitted honestly—it didn’t feel like much of a confession, and it was true.

“Wow,” the guy breathed out. “She always hides her boyfriends.” And then, “The guys are not gonna believe this.”

Steve felt a frown form between his brows.

The way the young man phrased it, it definitely sounded like boyfriend was meant to be something intimate. How many of those was Diana supposed to have? More than one at the same time? Steve looked around once more, as though a random man could be hiding in one of her cupboards. Unbidden, jealousy flared in his stomach, white-hot.

He remembered, suddenly, that box of condoms he had seen in her bathroom cabinet. He doubted she kept it for herself. 

He hated the idea. The mental image of her in someone else’s bed, someone else’s name on her lips, was making his stomach twist and making him wish he had skipped that breakfast. But a hundred years was a long time. It was unlikely that someone like Diana would stay alone for the rest of her life, mourning someone who was not coming back. 

Steve pressed his lips together and pushed the thought aside.

Still, he had to resist the impulse to check the pantry for a possible boyfriend .

He was about to ask who the mysterious guys were that the young man had mentioned when something else occurred to him. Something that he should have done sooner, perhaps.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” he finally thought to ask.

“Oh, oops! Sorry, my bad.” Steve could practically hear the caller wince. “I’m Barry Allen, the fastest—” He cut off. “I’m Di’s friend. Just a friend, I mean. I swear.”

The name sounded familiar, snagging Steve’s attention as he disregarded a string of ramblings. It took him a moment to place it. And then the corner of his mouth twitched, curving upwards.

“You’re the one who sent a picture of an angry cat to Diana’s telephone,” he said, oddly pleased by something that felt like a real connection to this place, this time.

“Grumpy Cat,” Barry corrected him. “Di showed you?”

He sounded genuinely thrilled about the idea.

“She did,” Steve confirmed. “I thought it was funny. And very clever.”

“And she liked it, too?”

Steve thought back to the moment at the café and the sunlight caught in her hair and the gentle smile that had made his heart beat differently, at the time. It was hard to believe that it had happened less than 24 hours ago.

“She seemed amused,” he offered, somewhat uncertainly, wishing he remembered her exact reaction and not just how heart-stoppingly beautiful she had been, and how he could barely focus on anything else when she was around.  

On the other end of the line, the young man let out a long, tragic sigh.

“Tell that to Bruce,” he grumbled.

“To be fair, you were comparing him to a pissed-off cat,” Steve reasoned.

“Huh.” Barry paused, and added quieter, as though speaking to himself. “Maybe he doesn’t like cats.”

Steve pressed his lips together and decided not to point out that that was not what he had meant, per se.

“Look, can you tell Di to call me back?” Barry asked, after a moment.

Steve glanced around, his eyes moving over the counter and the dining table. He spotted a notepad on a small decorative table in the hallway. “Yeah, sure.”

“Cool. Just tell her that Vic’s birthday is coming up and if she continues to ghost us, we’ll stop asking her to hang out—Actually, no, we won’t. Don’t say that. Just tell her about the birthday party, but tell her not to tell Vic I said that because if she calls or shows up, it should be a surprise. And say that Clark will fly in, but maybe not, because it’ll depend on Lois and her shift at the Planet, but the rest of the League will be here. And Bruce will host, if we want to hang out. Well, he probably will. I haven’t asked yet.”

He stopped then to catch his breath while Steve stood with a pencil poised over the page.

“You got that?” Barry asked, after a moment.

Steve tried to figure out if he caught all the names. Someone named Vic had a birthday coming up and the grumpy man was going to host, probably, and something about some league. He wondered if it was about baseball. Was Diana into baseball now? She didn’t really seem like the type, if Steve was being honest with himself. But it had been a century. Maybe more had changed with her than he had first assumed.

“I think so,” he said, hesitantly.

“No, wait. You know what? Don’t say any of that. Just tell her to text me, ‘kay?”

Steve paused. “Sure.”

Text Barry, he scribbled on the notepad.

“Cool. Bye.”  

And then the young man hung up.

“Bye,” Steve muttered into the silence on the other end of the line.

For a few long moments, he simply stared at the receiver in his hand, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Then, for another moment or two, he expected it to come to life in his hand again. When it didn’t, Steve shook his head and padded back into the kitchen. He set the phone down and picked up his coffee, lukewarm now, but he didn’t care.

In the study, a few minutes later, he walked past the bookshelves and Diana’s impressive collection of books, the plan to check out some of them forgotten. Instead, he took a seat at her table, pulled her laptop computer towards him and turned it on the way she had shown him. There was something that Barry had said that had lodged itself in his brain like a splinter. When the screen came to life, he clicked on the thing that she’d told him could help him find things.

And then he’d carefully used the keyboard to peck out Justice League into the search engine before pressing enter .


Washington, DC, 1985

Diana never found out how the newspaper ended up on the desk in her office.

Later, she would go back to it and assume that the department assistant must have left it there because it mentioned the benefit that Diana and a few other members of staff had attended the week prior. One that had a whole spread dedicated to it and an article full of big words to seem more clever.

She never made it that far the first time around, her attention snagged on a smaller story on page 3. A mutilated body found on the outskirts of a village in Colombia, not far from the coast, accompanied by two grainy photos. Her eyes moved over the text that was brief and lacked any useful details, leaving Diana frustrated, a spark of restlessness coming to life in her belly.

She studied the photos for the longest time as she tried to convince herself that it was merely a coincidence. That the long slash marks crisscrossing the man’s body bore no likeness to those she had seen only a year ago, in the wake of Cheetah’s rampage across the city.

Diana smoothed her palms flat over the page and willed herself to ignore the coppery taste that rose in the back of her throat and the familiar pang of regret that she had grown to associate with betrayal.

Following the downfall of the wishing stone machinations and the subsequent fallout that had led to a collapse of his business, Maxwell Lord had fled the country. Diana had no doubt that one day he was going to resurface with yet another scheme meant to bring him wealth or power, or both. She didn’t care for Maxwell Lord. He didn’t owe her anything, and going after him was not going to bring Steve back. All it could do was give her a momentary sense of revenge that she knew full well would turn sour the second her anger faded and reason took over.

The thought of Steve made Diana’s chest constrict, her breath catching in her throat as her air pipe closed up.

It had taken her months to stop hearing him move about her place as though he was there, her heart rate spiking as she waited for him to step into the room. Months more to get rid of his clothes that had stopped bringing comfort and had turned into a cause of heartache instead. Unlike his watch, which she would still wear occasionally, she found that his clothes reminded her even more acutely of her loss every time she opened her closet. 

She wondered if she should have stopped missing him so desperately, after all this time. But reason and logic were of little help when she lay in bed at night, her fingers curled into tight fists around sheets and her thoughts so loud she could barely stand it.

Barbara Ann was a different story, however. Unlike Lord, she was still dangerous. And try as she might, Diana couldn’t quite get rid of the feeling of responsibility for what had happened to her. For setting Barbara Ann down the path of destruction.

And now someone else was dead, another innocent person who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. A death that could have been prevented if Diana had acted faster, if she’d stopped Cheetah before the latter had a chance to disappear, desperate to hold on to her damned wish.

Diana pushed away from the desk and stood up, feeling a storm brewing inside of her.

The first time she had tried to track down Cheetah, the trail had quickly grown cold resulting in Diana treading blindly around a mountain range in the south. That time, it had taken her weeks to give up on her search. Driven by purpose and guilt, she had been reluctant to walk away, even if each day had felt more and more futile. It had felt, then, that she was being led around, toyed with, even though she had seen no proof of it.

And she hadn’t had any new leads since then.

Diana pressed her lips together into a stubborn line.

She had to try again.

Two days later, she was in Colombia, breathing in rich, perfumed air thick with humidity after the rain that had fallen the night before. She ignored the curious looks given to her by the villagers, the hushed whispers behind her back, the looks of half admiration and half fear, determined to stay focused on her goal.

She had long learned that there would always be people who would admire her, and those to whom she would appear to be a threat. The fear of the unknown was, after all, at the core of human nature.

There had been a time, in the years following the first war, when the feeling of disconnection from the world that she was now part of would leave her trapped, and so isolated it had felt like ice coursing through her bloodstream. Now it was easier to look away than wonder why being someone who was meant to be a bridge to understanding could feel so lonely.

There had been no sighting of Cheetah, but that was no surprise—the locals called her a demon, an evil spirit haunting the woods, and claimed that no one who was unlucky enough to cross its path had ever lived to tell the story. It would come for cattle and children, dragging them off to where no one would ever see them again.

“El diablo,” a frightened woman whispered, casting a wary look towards the thick lush of the jungle.

They told Diana it had stayed dormant for generations, but had returned now, ever-hungry. Three of the men had gone missing, only one body ever found, they said in a hushed whisper. The police had refused to set foot into the forest for fear of never coming back.

Diana listened to them carefully, cataloguing the details in her mind. Dates and time periods, stories passed on from generation to generation—those that were laughed at by the young ones until someone didn’t come back home from a day in the field or a trip to the river. And then no one was laughing anymore.

Sometimes, they told her, they could see a pair of eyes glowing between the trees.

No one agreed to take Diana to where the last body had been found—she didn’t push, leaving them to their rightful fear. She couldn’t fault them for it any more than she could fault them for being wary of her.

When the forest closed around her, Diana sensed him before she saw him. A presence where no one else should be, like a ghost hovering in her periphery.  She ignored him, for a while, as she continued to make her way forward, listening carefully for anything out of place.

It was only after Diana stepped out into a clearing, overlooking a crest of a beach and the blue sea beyond it that she paused. She inhaled deeply, helpless against the tug of nostalgia as the smell of the ocean filled her lungs.

“I know you’re here,” she said after a moment and turned to her left just in time to see Chief stepping out into the clearing to her right.

“I knew you’d come,” he said, his tone mild but his eyes were alight with mischief that made Diana wonder if he had somehow planted the thought in her mind to travel here.

She pushed the idea aside, filing it away to contemplate later though not dismissing it entirely. With him, one could never be sure.

It was good to see him, regardless. Even now, all those years later, seeing Chief brought on a pang of bittersweet nostalgia tugging at loose threads of old memories in her mind. It was only the two of them now, Diana thought. Would be only the two of them for a long time.

She wondered, not for the first time, if any of them had ever known that Chief was more than he seemed. If the ever-observant Sameer had noticed something; if Charlie had ever made a comment that had hit close to home; if the curious Etta had spotted something that hadn’t quite fit. Steve, Diana was not sure about. He had known that she was more than she had appeared to be, even if he never figured out to what extent. Part of her wanted to believe he had sensed something about Chief as well, though he would have told her, wouldn’t he? That night, tangled in sheets and wrapped around each other, they had spoken for a long time, swapping stories and weaving a canvas of dreams. She wanted to believe he would have told her then, if he’d known, even if it didn’t really matter now.

Diana took a breath past the stiffness in her chest, pushing her longing aside. This was no place for that kind of sentimentality.

“She is gone,” Diana said. Not a question, though he nodded all the same.

“She is hidden by magic like you’ve never seen before,” Napi said, conversationally. If Diana didn’t know better, she would have mistaken it for boredom. But what she heard underneath it all was concern.

Neither of them was of this world, but they tried not to upset the balance of the universe, the way it was meant to be. What Barbara Ann had become was not natural; she didn’t belong. And Diana knew it bothered Chief even if he didn’t want to show it or speak of it.

Diana nodded, feeling a frown form between her brows. She should have tried harder a year ago, she thought, bitterly. Those men that had died would have still been alive if she hadn’t given up when she had.

It was then that she had understood what it was that had felt so off as she’d made her way through the forest — there had been no sense of threat prickling at the back of her neck, no feeling of malevolence or of the touch of old magic she knew she would recognize immediately.

She was too late.

“You are chasing ghosts again.”

Diana looked towards Chief, not surprised by his observation, although not entirely pleased by it, either. Before, wearing her heart on her sleeve had been the only way she knew. Now, it felt almost invasive. As if someone was peeking through a keyhole in a door that she preferred to keep locked.

“She would not have become what she is if it wasn’t for me,” Diana said quietly, all the same.   

Napi shook his head. “That’s not true, and you know it. You cannot blame yourself for every misgiving and mistake of mankind.”

She met his gaze, looking him square in the face. “It’s not the same. It’s not like it was with Steve.”

Surprise flickered across his features — they had crossed paths a few times over the years, yet neither of them had ever brought up that night before. Which made Diana wonder if he expected her to act as though the past had never happened.

“He could have died that day even if you had stopped the plane,” he said, after a moment.

She had thought of that. That maybe Steve’s time had come and there was nothing more to it, and nothing less—but the mere thought had felt like a hot knife slicing all the way through her. It had never felt fair, but she had no right to dismiss the idea, either. Who was she, even as a demi-god, to question fate?

“Did you see it?” she asked, watching Chief closely. The question that had lived on the tip of her tongue all these years. One that she could never bring herself to ask, until now. “You told us you had not seen your own death that day, but the others?”

He smiled wistfully at her. “Why do you think no one asked when I said that? People say they want to know how and when they are going to go, but no one really does.”

Perhaps, they don’t, Diana thought but it didn’t escape her that he hadn’t actually answered her question.

Not for the first time, she wondered about her own mortality—distant but possible, regardless. She tried to imagine if Steve would have wanted to know, if it would have even made a difference, but there was no answer to that. She thought of the taste of his mouth and of his hands sliding over her body with such ease, as though he had been born to do just that.

Even if he had known the exact hour and minute of his demise, Diana thought, he would likely have never changed a thing about that night on the airfield all the same.

“She is going to kill again,” Diana said, at last, surveying the forest around her again.

Chief nodded. “She is under a spell she doesn’t understand and has no power against. Her actions are not entirely her fault.”

“She chose it, Napi. She had a chance to go back to her true self.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “And yet, you’re here.”

Because she could do nothing, or she could do something, Diana thought.

She met his gaze, holding it. “Other people are not to blame for it, they shouldn’t have to pay the price. Someone has to stop her.”


Paris, 2018

Diana landed soundlessly on the small balcony outside her bedroom, the moonless night and thick shadows that had gathered over the city after sundown masking her arrival. She could feel the pricking of cold on her skin, though it didn’t bother her as much as it would have a human. Could smell the rain in the air, as well, though it had long since stopped, it seemed, the world wrapped in the kind of silence that only followed a storm.

She glanced around, but few windows were still lit up, the city asleep as it should be. The tranquillity was deceiving, she was aware of that, but she loved it, all the same.

Diana pushed the door open and stepped inside. She was used to keeping the balcony door unlocked for just this reason, the freedom to come and go as she pleased still giving her a jolt of thrill even now. A small boundary of normalcy that no one could stop her from pushing. More shadows crowded around her, her vision adjusting quickly. The comfort of being home brought her a peace she didn’t know she was desperate for until that moment.

Comfort and—it took her another second to recognize the feeling stirring in the centre of her chest—anticipation.

For a moment, a pang of panic arched through her, the fear that had nearly had her stay back two days ago rearing its ugly head. The fear that she would leave Steve behind and then come back to an empty apartment, again. That he would disappear like he hadn’t been there at all, once more.

Her gaze landed on him then, before the thought had even fully formed in her head.

He was sprawled across her bed, his arm curled protectively around what looked like Diana’s pillow. Even in the dark, even with several feet of space between them, she could hear him breathing. Could see his shoulders rising and falling slowly.

Her heart twisted in her chest, her fingers flexing and curling into fists until she willed herself to relax them again.

There was a glass of water on the bedside table, half-full. Not hers, she knew. The framed photo of him—the one she had kept because she didn’t have many pictures of him, not even from Etta—shoved aside to make room for a book.

The Maltese Falcon.  

Diana felt her eyebrow arch, her lips twitching against her will. Undoubtedly fetched from her library, she thought. She didn’t remember the last time she had read it but she recalled enjoying the twists of the plot. She wondered, briefly, if Steve had picked it because of the mystery part, or because it had been released not long after his death and was less likely to contain too many references unfamiliar to him. She wondered if he liked it.

She made a mental note to ask him later, startled by the idea of having loved him for so long while knowing so little about him. Everything she had learned from his friends and his family over the years had felt monumental once. Now, with him alive and real and back in her life, it felt like barely a drop in the ocean, all of a sudden.

Her chest constricted once more. Diana took a breath around the flurry of her heart.

She stepped away from the bed and set down her shield and her sword, then unclipped the Lasso of Hestia from where it was coiled at her hip. She would put them away later. She took off her greaves and her gauntlets next, and peeled off the armour that, at times, felt like a second skin on her body. The very same armour her mother had once worn to free the world from the poison reining in men’s hearts. Diana found a tank top in the dresser and pulled it on instead, revelling in the feeling of soft cotton against her skin, so different from the stiffness of tight leather.

She glanced at Steve, smiling a little when she realized that he had never even stirred while she had moved about the room. 

Near the campfire, on the night when they had caught up with Chief, he had slept lightly, sliding into wakefulness at each rustle—Diana had noticed him blink sleepily a few times at her and Chief before dozing off again. But she had heard Sameer tease him the next day about being able to sleep through anything, even artillery fire. And that night in Veld, Steve had proven him right, much to Diana’s amusement. He hadn’t roused when she had awoken the next morning, turning carefully in the circle of his arms so she could study him in the pale grey light of dawn, her fingers mapping the planes of his face.

(He hadn’t awoken until the smell of breakfast cooking had wafted into the room through the crack under the door. Diana wondered if maybe she should mention that to him, sometime.)

She approached the bed, her footstep soundless. Carefully, she pulled the pillow from Steve’s grasp and climbed under the covers. Immediately, without waking, he reached for her, and the easiness of the gesture made something soft and tender and fragile inside of her ache.

She wondered if he had missed her while she was away. If he had missed her as much as she had missed him. As much as she had missed him all those years.

Her heart constricted, leaping against her breast bone once, then twice. He was wearing boxers, but nothing else, and his skin felt so hot against hers she wondered if his touch was going to leave a mark.

She reached for him, hand combing through his hair to brush it back from his forehead. Her fingers skittered down his cheek, over the prickly stubble coating his jaw. She tried to remember if this was how she had memorized him on that morning, a hundred years ago. But while there were memories from that time that were as bright and vivid as though they’d only been made yesterday, this particular one seemed to be slipping out of her grasp each time she reached for it.

Steve awoke then, blinking his eyes sleepily as his vision adjusted.

“Diana,” he murmured, his voice low and hoarse.

She smiled. “Hi.”

“You’re back.”

She wondered if he was actually awake. He didn’t seem surprised, nor did he appear confused about finding her in bed with him, with only a breath of air between them and one of her hands pressed flat against his chest, right over his heart that seemed to be beating straight into her.

“I am,” Diana said, all the same.

He nodded, his eyes fluttering closed.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked sleepily.

Diana’s pulse stuttered. She thought of John Constantine and his messy apartment and the easy grin on his face that hadn’t quite reached his eyes that had remained more worn out than Diana had seen in a long time. The easy conviction in his voice when he’d confirmed that he could make whatever magic had brought Steve back permanent and the surge of hope in her chest that had left her breathless.

She trailed her thumb over Steve’s chin. “Yes.”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat and opened his eyes. His gaze finding hers in the dark, his hand moving up her back and leaving a trail of heat even through her tank top.

He nodded again, and without hesitation she moved closer to him, tucking her face into the curve of his neck. She was suddenly so drained she could feel it in her bones, in every cell of her body.

She could smell her soap on his skin and perhaps the aftershave he had picked up, but underneath it, he still smelled like Steve and it struck her as something impossible. How could he still smell exactly the same as she remembered? How could she still carry the memory of it—sometimes she would pretend she could still smell it on her sheets in the moments when she missed him the most.

Diana squeezed her eyes shut against the hot burn of tears, her throat growing achingly tight. Though it was not until she felt Steve tense against her, suddenly alert, that she realized that she was crying soundlessly, tired and wrung out, relieved and yet more frightened than she could remember.

“Diana?” he whispered into her ear, the sound of his voice slicing the invisible scars open all over again.

She thought he was going to ask her something—questions that she didn’t have answers to, things she could not explain even to herself. She couldn’t lose him again, she knew. Couldn’t stand the thought of it. But whether she knew how to be with him after running away from herself and her memories of him for so long, Diana couldn’t tell either, and the realization was devastating.

He didn’t add anything else though, merely tucking her into the curve of his body, his hands moving soothingly over her back.

She cried until she had no tears left, and Steve held her, whispering words of comfort to her until finally, worn out, she fell asleep.


When Steve awoke the next morning, the sun was peeking over the rooftops, having chased away the gloom of the day before. He was alone in bed, and for a moment he wondered if he had dreamed up what had happened several hours earlier. If maybe Diana had never come back and then cried herself to sleep while his heart had splintered at the seams over and over again from grief and helplessness.

He scrubbed his hand down his face and looked around, searching the edges of his memories. He was quite certain he had drifted off with his arms wrapped around her and her face tucked into the hollow of his throat. But he had dreamed of that the night before, too. Or something of that effect, albeit without the crying. He had dreamed of her every night since he’d met her, come to think of it. Even in Veld, when she had slept woven around him—as though reality alone was not enough.

The mental image made everything inside of him grow hot. He pushed it aside and rubbed his eyes again as he tried to get his thoughts straight—

And that was when he saw her shield propped against the wall and her greaves left under a chair, the golden parts gleaming in the sunlight streaming in through the glass balcony door. He blinked, only then catching the muffled whisper of the water running in the shower.

Steve stared at the bedroom door that stood slightly ajar, overcome with relief. He remembered her telling him that it wouldn’t take her long to deal with whatever it was she had needed to deal with before she’d leaped up and disappeared into the night. Yesterday, he had missed her as if someone had cut off one of his limbs but he still hadn’t expected her to be back quite so soon.

He was glad that she had, though. And more than a little concerned about what it was that had upset her so much.

He hadn’t asked and she hadn’t said anything, but he remembered her anguish as though it had been something physical taking up the space between them and all around her. The memory of it made his heart give a dull tug.

He climbed out of the bed and pulled on a shirt and, after a moment of hesitation, a pair of pants. They might have slept in the same bed both nights she had been with him in Paris, but now he was suddenly very much aware of the fact that for him, it had only been four days since they had made love in the fire-lit room in Veld, but for Diana, it had been a century. And that was… well, a long time. Something that he should have thought of earlier, perhaps .

He hadn’t because he had been too swept away in the enormity of it all, all the newness and confusion and Diana herself. But he could feel every bloody second of it, now. A very long time, indeed.

Steve thought of Barry’s comments, and made a mental note to tell Diana about the phone call.

The clock on the bedside table read 8:43 AM. In the time of war, this would have been considered sleeping in, all things considered, but Steve was not entirely sure if this was early or late, by 21 st century standards. He considered simply waiting for her in the bedroom and then asking what had happened—he wondered if she was going to share, or merely tell him to mind his own business.

The idea stirred unease in his belly and, wanting to take his mind off of it, he chose to focus on doing something useful instead.

In the kitchen, he started the coffee and then, remembering that Diana had ordered tea with their brunch the other day , turned on the kettle as well. She had a whole cupboard with teas, Steve had discovered yesterday. And she liked chocolate spread, apparently—he had felt bad for snooping, even in her kitchen, so he had stopped there. (After he had tried the spread, that is.) But he was so hungry for more information about her, all the things he had missed or had never learned because their time together had been too fleeting that it almost felt like a physical pain.

If she sat him down and simply started telling him everything about herself, he was certain he would never want her to stop.

By the time Diana walked into the kitchen ten minutes later, wearing a sleeveless shirt and those stretchy pants that she seemed to favour, her hair falling loose over her shoulders in slightly damp waves, the coffee was ready and Steve had already pulled the makings for breakfast out of the fridge. There was a cup of tea waiting for her. Black. He might not be entirely sure what a jasmine tea was, or something called oolong, but he was good at making a decent cup of black tea—Etta had taught him well.

Diana paused when she saw him, and for a moment, Steve couldn’t help but wonder if he’d done something wrong. He glanced at the coffee pot, ready for him to fill his cup, and then at the eggs and cheese and deli meats spread over the counter, the butter ready to be dropped on the skillet. She hadn’t asked for breakfast, and admittedly, he was not a particularly gifted cook.

Maybe he should have asked.

Steve looked up at her. He should have, right?

He was about to open his mouth and apologize when he noticed that the corners of her mouth were quivering ever so slightly as she struggled to fight back a smile.

“What is this?” she asked, observing what Steve realized belatedly looked like a very messy affair.

He cleared his throat, feeling the tops of his cheeks grow hot—it had been a while since he’d made breakfast for a woman. No, scratch that. He had never done it before, and with the guys in the barracks, it had never been about being neat.

“Breakfast,” he said, feeling a little dumb. “I made you tea,” he added quickly, as though it would compensate for the mess.

“Thank you,” Diana said.

Their fingers brushed against each other as Steve handed the cup to her, and she pulled her hand away quickly. For a moment, he thought that she was going to drop the cup, just to avoid touching him. She didn’t, but he was certain he hadn’t imagined it. He felt his brows knit together.

And that was when he remembered—

“Barry called,” Steve blurted out. “Yesterday.”

The cup clasped between her palms, Diana looked up at him. “Did he, now?”

He could have sworn she was amused by the idea.

“He was looking for you,” Steve went on. “Said he couldn’t get you on—” he gestured vaguely towards the hallway, or maybe the bedroom. “On your cell phone.”

“I didn’t have it with me,” she said.

He nodded and leaned against the counter. “Yeah, he wanted to tell you that someone named Victor is having a birthday next week, and that the bat guy will host it and that Clark might come, too, but that would depend on something happening with some planet.” He paused. “There was more, but you better talk to him. He speaks very fast.”

“That he does,” Diana admitted.  

She was pressing her lips around a smile now, laughter dancing in her eyes.  

“Anything else?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Steve felt the heat rise up his cheeks but he didn’t break eye contact.

“He asked if I was your boyfriend,” he said, watching her closely.

She cocked her head, her gaze locked on his and her voice tinged with humour when she spoke. “And what did you say?”

“I didn’t—I think he just assumed.” Steve’s gaze skittered around. “Because I answered your phone when you weren’t home. I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. What—ah, what a boyfriend is.”

“I see.”

She nodded but didn’t add anything else.

Steve waited.

“A boyfriend, or a girlfriend, is a romantic partner,” she explained. “Someone a person is in an intimate relationship with but is not married to.”

Well, he had figured as much, Steve thought.

Though he still was not sure if it had anything to do with him, or ever had. They had never—well, they had never talked about it. He had known, then, that he wanted to be with her.  A hundred years later, he still did. And it frightened him not to know where Diana stood, as far as the two of them were concerned.

But he didn’t know how to ask, so he settled for the next best thing.

“And do you…” he started and faltered, not quite sure how to proceed. “Do you have one?”

She tilted her head, studying him for a few moments.

“Am I in a romantic relationship?” she echoed. “No. Don’t you think I would have told you, Steve?”

He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, not sure what he could possibly say to that. Would she? He truly didn’t know. Although he suspected she would not have found sharing a bed with him acceptable, otherwise. Not even for the sake of old memories and nostalgia.

He pushed the thought aside, suddenly ashamed of it. The Diana he had met in 1918 had been many things but never a liar. However she had changed since then, he doubted she had become one. She was not telling him something, Steve could see that much, but he was certain that she had never lied to him once.

Although her answer still didn’t clarify the one thing that he’d been dying to ask ever since he had spoken with Barry—

“Barry… he mentioned something called the Justice League,” Steve forged on instead. “Said you were missing out on… ah, visiting them. I—I looked them up on your…” he faltered. “On your computer thing.”

He thought she was going to be cross with him over it. She had made it explicitly clear that he was welcome to familiarize himself with whatever technology he was curious about, but that was different, in a way. Looking her up, on the internet, well, that was—that was personal, wasn’t it?  

Instead, Diana smiled. “You did?”

He thought of her struggling with the concept of a revolving door, all those years ago, and wondered if she found the idea of him using her laptop just as baffling.

He didn’t allow himself to ponder it any further, lest he embarrass himself even further.

“Are they like you?” he forged on. “The people that you fight alongside with, are they…”

He trailed off, feeling his brows pull together, not quite sure where he was going. Divine like her? Strong like her? Different—he knew that much already. 

“Not quite,” Diana said. “Only Arthur and Clark were born that way. They are not quite of this world.”

Steve searched his brain, but failed to connect the names with the faces he had seen earlier.

Last night, he had spent a few hours reading articles about the Justice League and watching numerous videos on something called YouTube until his eyes started to feel like someone had rubbed sand all over his eyeballs. Everyone in the media referred to Diana as Wonder Woman, like the guy in the alley, and the rest of the team also had secret identity names, from what he had gathered. Cyborg and Batman seemed quite self-explanatory, as far as their appearances were concerned. The other three—he didn’t want to make assumptions.

Briefly, he had wondered which one of them was the talkative Barry Allen.

“Aquaman and Superman,” Diana added by way of explanation, noting his confusion.

“Now you’re just saying random words,” Steve muttered and rubbed his eyes.

Her smile widened, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

God help him, she was so beautiful he had no idea how to breathe around her sometimes.

“Alright, and the others?” he prompted, deciding that he would ask her to simply find a picture and tell him who was who later, like she had done with the green toast.

“Bruce is human,” she explained.

“The bat guy?”

She bit her lip around a smile. “He likely wouldn’t be overly pleased if you called him that to his face. But yes. The Justice League was his idea. However, he is merely a man. One who has always wanted to do the right thing for those who need help.”

Steve nodded, ticking off another box in his head.

“And the other two?”

Diana folded her arms over her chest. “Barry and Victor. They have… gifts the exact nature of which is complicated.” She explained to him about some laboratory being struck by lightning, which had essentially brought the Flash to life. And then the car accident that had resulted in the creation of the Cyborg. There was science and some sort of reason behind both those things, but each time Steve tried to wrap his mind around it, the details kept escaping him.

“Wait, which one is from,” Steve pointed at the ceiling, “another planet? The robot one? He goes home often?”

Diana shook her head. “That would be Clark. Superman,” she corrected. “The American government—and the world, later on—labelled them as metahumans. People with extraordinary abilities,” she finished.

“The internet calls you all superheroes,” he offered.

“That is not a scientific title, though. And he doesn’t actually go anywhere. He works at the newspaper called The Daily Planet. I’m assuming, Barry was talking about his workload there.”

Steve blinked at her, feeling like his mind was reeling to the point of making him dizzy.

“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “And you’re a team.” 

Diana paused. He watched a shadow pass over her features, failing to quite read it.

“We were,” she acknowledged.

“Are you not anymore?”

Steve’s brows furrowed. He tried to remember if he’d read anything about that. But even if he had, the information he had consumed over the past few days was so overwhelming he probably wouldn’t have remembered either way.

Diana put her tea down and then folded her arms over her chest. “I stepped away from it, after a while.”

Steve watched as she studied the tiled floor. Perhaps, it was invasive to keep pushing, but he didn’t seem to know how to stop. “Why?” he asked.

She sighed.

“It’s complicated.” Diana rubbed her forehead and then lifted her gaze to his. “They know that I will always be there for them if they need me.”

She was not saying everything, Steve could tell that. She was not saying much of anything, truth be told. But he didn’t know if he would be crossing a line if he continued to push. He might not know the new Diana well, but he was a spy. He knew how to read people, and right now, what he saw on her face, in her eyes, was a story that seemed big and sad.

“Why were you crying last night?” he asked softly.

“I didn’t think you’d still be here when I came back.”

Her words caught him off guard, giving him a pause. “You asked me to,” he said, incredulous.

“I know I did,” she nodded.

But… There was a but coming, yet for the life of him, Steve couldn’t figure out what it could be.

“What am I doing here, Diana?” he asked before he could stop himself.

It was her turn to look up at him in surprise.

“Besides making breakfast for me?” she clarified, a small smile creeping into her voice.

He ignored it.

“You can’t stand me touching you unless you do it first. You let me comfort you but won’t tell me what has upset you. You’ve kept my photograph for a century and we sleep in the same bed but we don’t—” he cut off, mortified by how wrong it was coming out. “I didn’t mean it like—you don’t owe me anything, Diana. I would never assume, not about…” his eyes darted helplessly towards the hallway and the bedroom as he scrambled to get his thoughts together.

“Steve.”

He turned back towards her and took a breath.

“That was not what I meant,” he said decisively. “I would never ask for anything that you don’t want.”

Her features melted into compassion. “I know.”

“I just want to understand…”

“I know,” she repeated. “This must all seem overwhelming to you.”

He rubbed his hand over his jaw and huffed out a humourless laugh. “That would be an understatement,” he muttered.

“I will explain everything, I promise. I’ll tell you everything you want—”

She was cut off from whatever she was about to say by the shrill of her cell phone—a sound that Steve realized with a jolt he had already grown to recognize.

Diana paused.

“You should get it,” he said, quietly.

“It’s alright. They’ll leave a message.”

He nodded.

A few seconds later the ringing stopped, but just as she opened her mouth to pick up where they had left off, it started again, seemingly more persistent than ever.

Steve barely suppressed a groan of frustration.

“Is everything in the future so disruptive?” he asked, wrinkling his nose.

Diana smiled. “Afraid so.”

“You should check what they want, it could be important,” he muttered, as the ringing started for the third time. Maybe the world needed saving, he thought.

She found his gaze.

“Won’t be long.”

He nodded, and then leaned against the counter and ran his hands down his face, his heart lodged somewhere between his ribs. His cheeks were still burning, and suddenly, Steve felt even more lost and out of place than he had in the past several days.

He wasn’t sure how long he just stood there, surrounded by coffee and cheese and bowls he had pulled out of the cupboards, no longer hungry. A few minutes, perhaps.

“I’m sorry.”

Diana’s voice had him lowering his hands again just in time to see her return to the kitchen. She was frowning a little, her gaze distracted.

Steve felt a tug of worry in his chest.

“Is everything alright?” he asked, immediately.

She lifted her eyes to his, her hand reached absently to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. “Yes. Yes, it is. It’s the museum. I just… I need to take care of something.”

He nodded.

“Of course.”

He watched her face soften. “I’m sorry. We’ll talk, I promise…”

But Steve was lifting his hand to stop her and shaking his head before she could finish.

“Don’t apologize,” he said, meaning it. “You don’t need to apologize for your life. It is I who should be—” He cut off, before asking, hopefully, “Can I come with?” 

She looked up at him again, lips parting for a moment in surprise, and then curving into a small smile.

“You want to come to work with me?” she clarified.

“Not to meddle or anything,” Steve said quickly. “I just…” He glanced around. “I was here all day yesterday, and I mean, you have great books and all—”

“But you were bored,” she finished for him.

“Not quite bored ,” he hedged, grimacing a little.

Overwhelmed, he wanted to say. Lonely, knowing that she was doing her thing and didn’t need him for it, and wondering how long it would be before she came back. A little trapped too, unsure if he’d be allowed to come back inside if he chose to have a walk around the block—that concierge downstairs seemed friendly enough, but Steve still wasn’t sure what social protocols were for such things. 

Also, he didn’t have a key.

And the conversation with the chatty Barry that had left him more than a little thrown.

And yes, she had those great books and he could play all kinds of music on that massive thing in the living room—he’d tried it, last night—but he couldn’t bear just sitting here again, thinking about it all. About the things that she was likely to tell him once they had a chance to talk without interruptions, and whether they were things he wanted to hear.

She bit her lip around a smile, and it took Steve a moment to realize that she was teasing him. He felt the flush rush up his face all over again. So much for being a spy and knowing how to be a step ahead of everyone else.

What was it about her that seemed to short-circuit his brain? Well, aside from the fact that she was smart and drop-dead gorgeous and seemingly adamant to always keep him on his toes—

Yeah, that would actually explain it. Frankly, he had never stood a chance.

“Of course, you can come with me,” she reassured him.

Steve glanced towards the food spread all around them.

“Ah, this…”

Diana followed his gaze. “We’ll get something on the way,” she said decisively. “You can make me breakfast tomorrow.”

Steve looked back at her and nodded, too dazed to say anything in response to that

Notes:

This chapter was super fun to work on, and while I don't yet know what to expect from Snyder's cut, at least I know that we'll be getting more Barry and that is something to look forward to, right? That being said, I will continue being mildly pissed that we haven't gotten Steve interacting with the League on screen... yet. Fingers crossed?

Anyway, a small PSA while I'm at it: I think I can officially say that I'll be updating this story every other week, on Thursdays. I was able to post the first several chapters weekly because they were already edited and ready to go. Nothing past chapter 8 is edited yet and I'm still writing the ending, and well, I can do both only so fast. But don't worry, it's all happening and I hope you'll enjoy it :)

As always, feedback, comments or just general ramblings are much appreciated :) (Also have you seen the new WW84 bloopers? Thank you booksthief for sharing! There is so much giggling happening there :))

Thank you for reading and I'll see you soon!

Chapter 8

Notes:

Hey guys, thank you for your patience and for your support! You've been nothing but absolutely wonderful and I hope that you will enjoy everything I have in store for you :) There is some serious cuteness happening in this chapter and I hope you'll like it!

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

Chapter Text

They took a cab to the Louvre.

As a rule, Diana preferred to walk the eight blocks, revelling in the thrill that only early mornings could bring, with their promise of a new day and endless possibilities. Today, though, she had received two texts and an email from her assistant before they even stepped out of the door and she suspected Celeste would not have bothered her before 8 without good reason.

Diana took care of those from the back of the cab as the driver navigated the morning traffic, and crafted another email while she was at it. Every now and then, her gaze drifted towards Steve who was staring out his window, his jaw a little slack in awe. And each time, her heart would constrict in her chest, the warmth she could barely remember feeling blossoming behind her ribs.

He didn’t try to take her hand the way he had that night he had returned. Not even after she put her phone away. Part of her wished he would.

She made a mental note to add a couple more items to her calendar about things she needed to take care of today, but her mind was wandering, unfocused. It was far more engaging to watch Steve take in the city outside the car. 

By the time she paid the driver, she had already received three more texts—something that made her smile. The people she worked with were anything but not dedicated. Yet, if there was anything that her many, many years on this Earth had taught her, it was that urgent things seldom were as urgent as they seemed. And so, when she and Steve climbed out of the car across the road from the Louvre, she typed a quick text to her assistant— Almost there, will see you in 10 —and then steered him towards a café on the corner.

“I promised you food,” she reminded him, answering Steve’s silent question when he looked at her and lifted his brow quizzically.

The place was spacious and almost full even at this hour—mostly office workers and sleepy students grabbing their breakfast.

Diana walked purposely towards the displays showing a variety of sandwiches and pastries and the cash registers where two young girls were taking orders while a couple of guys prepared them, knowing that Steve would follow.

She joined the line that, thankfully, was moving fast, not bothering to hide her smile when she caught him staring at the abundance of items before him, his brows knitted together in an entirely adorable concentration.

While she debated if she should offer a suggestion or two, or let him decide for himself, seeing as how she had ordered lunch for them both the other day, her phone buzzed with a new email. Diana unlocked it and skimmed the message. She was still deciding if it could wait another half hour when she felt Steve straighten up beside her.

“What’s that?” he asked quietly, leaning closer to her, his fingers brushing over her elbow.

She looked up and followed his gaze. Food seemingly forgotten, he was now looking at a couple at the table by the window, his eyes glued to a tall glass of blended coffee adorned with a mountain of whipped cream, sprinkles and chocolate sauce sitting in front of the girl.

Diana smiled. “Coffee.”

Steve’s brow furrowed skeptically. “Doesn’t look like coffee,” he admitted as he turned to her, his face only a few inches away from hers. “It looks like—like a cake. Why would you need all that… stuff with it?”

And there it was—the way he said it, the genuine confusion that was so Steve she could barely stand it. He was looking at the drink the same way he had once looked at her, in the cave beneath her mother’s palace, while Diana had tried to explain to him that her people were meant to bring peace to all of mankind.

She felt all air rush out of her body, leaving her head swimming. She paused, just looking at him for a moment, and another one, as she tried to get control of her breathing again. If she’d still had any doubts about whether he was her Steve, this moment right then would have ground them into dust.

Diana clutched her phone tightly, fighting the urge to lift her hand and touch him, to trace the lines of his face the way she had the night before.

“Would you like to try one like that?” she asked at last, as they shuffled another foot towards the counter.

Her question seemed to have caught him off-guard. He turned to her and cleared his throat. “Can I?”

Her phone buzzed again. She ignored it.

“Of course.”

He glanced toward the girl again, debating his options. Diana watched him, nearly hearing the wheels turn in his head. From this close, she could smell his aftershave, and something else. Something subtle and familiar that made tender parts inside of her ache.

When he turned to her again, his expression was one of almost comical determination as he squared his shoulders a bit.

“Yeah, okay. I think I’d like that one, um… the big one, with… everything.”

She ordered a blended monstrosity and a breakfast sandwich for him, and a cheese croissant and a flat white for herself, having to put every effort into breathing around the tightness in her chest as she watched Steve watch the girl on the other side of the counter prepare their order. And there was only so much Diana could do to keep from reaching over and brushing back a piece of hair that had fallen across his forehead, the way she had done quite a few times before.

A few minutes later, a smiley guy handed Diana their food in a take-away bag and slid their drinks towards them across the counter. She didn’t even bother to hold back her grin when Steve’s eye widened a little.

He plucked a long straw from the holder, like he’d seen someone else do minutes prior, and stuck it into a pile of whipped cream, adorned with caramel sauce before he followed Diana out the door and into the cool morning that had yet to decide if the sun was in the cards for them today.

She paused just outside the threshold, watching him try his drink cautiously, a light breeze from the Seine tugging at her hair that was pulled back into a sleek ponytail.

Steve took a sip and scrunched his face.

“This is not coffee, this is just a lot of sugar,” he said, after a moment.

Diana bit her lip around a smile. “There is coffee in there somewhere, too,” she said. “Do you not like it? We could get you something else.”

“No,” he said quickly, and even took half a step away from her for good measure, as though fearing she might snatch his drink from his hands. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it, only that it was sweet.”  

As if to make his point, he turned on his heel and started to walk back towards the crosswalk. She shook her head, but followed him without argument.

“Besides,” he continued a little self-deprecatory when she caught up with him, “You’re talking to a man who has only eaten rations and baked beans for the past two years.”

There was something about his voice that gave her pause.

“The war is over, Steve. Long over,” she said softly.

“Maybe so, but it existed just a couple of days ago for me. Either way, there’s not much I can find less palatable than beans and stale biscuits. This?” He took another pointed sip. “This is like the food of gods.”

She couldn’t help it — she laughed.

“Careful with the brain freeze,” she warned him as he enthusiastically slurped half of the cup in one gulp.

“The wha—Oh!” Steve’s face contorted into a grimace and he pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “What the hell?” he choked out.

The light turned green, and Diana’s fingers curled over his elbow as she guided him to the other side of the street while he continued to take small, shallow breaths while waiting for the unpleasant sensation to pass.

“Slow down,” she said, letting go of him, and trying very hard not to laugh.

He gave her a look of mild accusation. “You couldn’t have said that earlier?”

But she only hummed noncommittally, not sure when was the last time she had felt so light.

He followed her across the wide plaza, past the wrought-iron gate and towards the main entrance. Most days, the staff used one of the side doors, depending on where they needed to be, out of convenience, if nothing else. But she suspected Steve would appreciate seeing the main concourse in the daylight, even though the thought of bringing him back to where she had found him some mere five days ago made Diana’s heart flutter in her chest. Something that made her want—instinctively and unreasonably— to drag him the other way, as though stepping foot there could make him disappear again.

She quelled the feeling, pushing it aside, frustrated with herself for being so ridiculous.

When the steps behind her seemed to have suddenly fallen quieter, Diana paused and glanced back to find Steve slowing down as he looked at the pyramid, glistening in the first rays of the morning sun as it finally made a cautious appearance from behind the thick clouds.

She stopped, too, watching him take it all in — the old and the modern, centuries of history that the walls of the museum had seeped in over time and the brilliance of fractured light that was painting small rainbows across the paved courtyard.

Diana felt her breath catch, the sight oddly symbolic. The past and the present collided into something unimaginable, just like the man before her.

After half a minute, Steve shook his head as though snapping out of whatever had caught his attention and hurried after her, the spell broken.

Diana swept her key card at the electronic lock and pulled the glass door open. Behind her, she heard Steve snort a little when his eyes landed on the double revolving doors, her own lips twisting into a smile at the memory she knew he was reliving as well.

The escalators were still shut down from the previous night so she turned towards the spiral staircase leading to the lower level that would, eventually, take her to the staff area and her office. After a moment, she heard Steve follow her.

Downstairs, she gave a nod of hello to the guard on duty who responded with, Good morning, Mademoiselle Prince . His gaze, Diana noticed, swept sharply over Steve, lingering on him for a moment or two. But he didn’t say anything like she knew he wouldn’t, and then he discreetly looked away.

“Wow,” Steve breathed out when he caught up with her as his gaze swept over the spacious entrance area, up towards the tip of the pyramid and the fractured light that was streaming through the panels and painting the floor of the main concourse with intricate shadows.

Diana’s heart swelled behind her ribs. She felt her throat tighten for reasons she couldn’t quite define. She watched Steve come to a halt and tip his head back, and wondered if he remembered that that was the first thing he had said to her, all those years ago, on the beach.

She paused to let him have a look around, at all the space and light, the echo of their footfalls louder than she was used to when the place was packed with people and voices and anticipation that Diana loved so, always finding their excitement almost palpable. But she liked this, too. Liked the look of wonder on his face—although it was not the same one as when he had first seen the iced coffee, she thought, amused.

She loved it all the same. Loved the unmasked awe that she had seen so little of before, one that was no longer clouded with weariness and despair about the war. And she craved it.

She made a mental note to take him someplace unusual to eat sometime this week. Maybe that small Chinese place she liked with menus that were not even translated to English or French.   

“You were here a few days ago,” she reminded Steve, her tone teasing.

“I was not…” he cleared his throat as his gaze found hers, the earnestness of it landing like a blow on her soul. “I was not paying attention then.”

The implication was loud, hanging between them— Because you were there, because I didn’t need to pay attention to anything else. He didn’t say it but he didn’t need to.

“It looked nothing like this, during the war,” Steve added quietly after a moment, giving the concourse a wide sweep of his arm.

Without thinking, Diana moved towards him and reached over to wipe away the whipped cream he had on the tip of his nose.

“You were wrong,” she said, softly, as her eyes searched his. “You were wrong when you said I don’t want you to touch me.”

She watched something in his eyes change, causing a spark of heat to surge through her belly. Watched his gaze drop down to her lips as though he couldn’t stop himself. And she wondered what he would do if she closed what little space was still left between them and kissed him the way she had wanted to kiss him every moment of her life since she had found him right here, on this very spot, several days ago, the past and the heartache be damned.

There had been moments in the past century, long stretches of time even, when she had managed to convince herself that she had moved on from her feelings for him. Long enough to believe it, too. But here he was, his eyes bright with curiosity and affection, erasing the time and the scars he had left on her heart, making Diana want more. Making her want to reach over and take everything she had been yearning for all that time.

But she also remembered what he had said to her only a few hours ago, the hurt and confusion in his gaze that she had never meant to cause.

Perhaps, she should not have said what she had. Not until she explained everything to him—about what had happened in 1984, and John Constantine, and all the choices that were now up to Steve to make.

He didn’t move. Didn’t step away from her. The moment stretched between them. If Steve cared that they were not alone, he didn’t show it. She watched his gaze sweep over her features, her heart knocking hard against her chest.

“Diana!” The voice cut across the concourse, snapping her out of her thoughts.

When she turned towards it, she saw Celeste, her assistant, walking quickly towards them, the sound of her smart heels on the marble floor echoing against the glass panes.

“I’m sorry for bothering you so early,” Celeste started in rapid French as she adjusted her glasses. “But Sebastian called from Madrid. See, there is some documentation missing. I swear we sent it over and I tried explaining it to him. I even offered to mail the duplicates by express post—they would have received them by this afternoon—but he insisted that he needed to speak with you, and I—”

“It’s alright,” Diana stopped her gently, allowing Celeste to draw in a breath.

The young woman nodded, gratefully, and adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose once more. It was seemingly only then that she noticed Steve standing there, his eyes darting between them.

“Celeste, this is my friend, Steve Trevor,” Diana introduced them.

Lips currently puckered around his straw, Steve simply nodded.

Diana turned to the other woman. “I’ll be right over,” she said.

“Right.” Celeste adjusted her glasses again, and this time, there was also a quizzical quirk of her brow. “Of course. I’ll see you in a few.”

And then she was gone, although not before offering Steve one last curious look, making Diana suddenly very aware that she was not going to hear the end of this now.

“I have to…” she started, as she turned to Steve.

He nodded. “Yeah, of course. You should…” he cleared his throat. “Go deal with… all of that.” And then, “So, that is your secretary, huh?”

When the smile broke across her face, Diana didn’t even bother hiding it.

“Yes,” she said.

She handed Steve’s sandwich and a handful of napkins to him. Their fingers brushed when he accepted them, leaving Diana with a tingling sensation where his skin had touched hers. 

“Eat your breakfast, have a look around,” she instructed him. “The museum will open in about an hour, but until then, it’s just you here.”

“And if anyone assumes I broke in here?” he inquired, his eyes darting towards the guard who was doing his utmost best pretending he was not paying any mind to them, but there was a spark of humour behind his blue eyes when he asked that.

Diana pressed her lips around a smile. “Tell them you’re with me. And if you need anything or if there is any trouble, ask someone to find me.”

They should have gotten Steve a cell phone, she thought, kicking herself for not thinking of that sooner. It was, perhaps, a real testament to how comfortable she had grown in this life, in this world that she could hardly remember the last time she had met someone who didn’t have one, by default.

His brow furrowed. “Should there be trouble?” he asked somewhat warily.

The corner of her mouth curled upwards into a smirk. “There shouldn’t be,” she shook her head. “As long as you stay away from it.”

“That was a hundred years ago,” he protested defensively.

That was less than a week ago, for you, Diana thought. She didn’t say anything though, merely shaking her head as she walked away.

Halfway across the concourse, she stopped and looked back, as though something had pushed her to do so. Steve was still standing where she had left him, his face turned up as he watched the dance of light above him.

Diana felt her heart constrict and then unfurl in her chest. For a moment, she was tempted to turn around and go back to him. To take his hand and take him back to her apartment, to turn off her phone and speak to him at last, tell him everything that she had wanted to tell him for so long until there was nothing left unsaid between them. A century of loving him and missing him and living with the longing inside of her that all but tore her apart at the seams—and it only took her a handful of days to forget what it was like to not have him within her arm’s reach for so long.

The urge was so strong it felt almost like a physical ache. How long had she waited for this, trying to remember the cadence of his voice, holding on to memories so small that anyone else would have forgotten them decades ago?

Her phone buzzed in her hand, pulling Diana’s attention back to the here and now.

She glanced at Steve once more and saw him walking purposely towards a garbage can to throw away his now empty coffee cup.

With that, she turned on her heel and headed into the depths of the museum.

The phone call came as she neared her office. The lead archaeologist from the dig in Egypt started hurling questions at her before she even managed to say so much as hello. She checked the time while he spoke, his rapid French punctuated with occasional yells across the site in the background. With the heat, they had to be at least an hour in.

By the time he paused to take a breath, Diana was walking into her office. She set her bag down on her desk and looked longingly at what would likely be her lunch, at this rate.

“Slow down, Gerome,” she said, sipping her coffee. “We discussed all this two days ago.”

They continued their back and forth for another fifteen minutes, with Diana going in detail over the last phone call she had had with the man and him trying to argue that it had never happened.

At some point, Celeste poked her head inside and Diana waved her in to accept some papers that needed going over.

“I know you’re under a lot of pressure but we can’t afford another extension on the time frame, I’m afraid,” Diana said during a lull in the conversation, and Gerome immediately sprung into another long explanation as to why it was simply impossible to meet. Diana circled around her desk while she listened, her eyes skimming over the notes on the calendar. “You know it’s not up to me. We have an agreement,” she reminded him when the man on the other end of the line lunged into another bout of explanations.

At last, they seemed to come to an understanding. Diana told the archaeologist that if he was having any more trouble with anything again, he was to call her immediately. (She was certain that he was going to take her up on that offer before lunchtime.)

She put the phone down, torn between exasperation and odd fondness that the normalcy of her work always brought on. Something that never failed to steady her, help her feel the solid ground beneath her feet. She tore a piece off her croissant, suddenly ravenous, and flipped through the leather-bound planner on her desk, skimming over the list of meetings and conference calls and deadlines. She scribbled a note about the call she had just had with the intention to ask Celeste to follow up on the issue later this week.

There was a stack of paperwork with colourful post-it notes sitting on the corner of her desk; notes in her assistant’s neat handwriting explaining what was what and if there were any deadlines to adhere to.

Diana made a mental note to deal with them later that morning as she booted her laptop, remembering those emails she had drafted an hour earlier that she still needed to finalize and send off. She reached absently for her coffee and it was only then that she noticed the box she had received from Bruce with Constantine’s pendant sitting behind a penholder.

She paused, feeling her heart kick into a different gear, a jolt of fear arcing across her chest.

How could it have slipped her mind that this thing was still here?

After a moment of hesitation, Diana reached for it. She popped the lid open, the crystal winking at her in the overhead lights. Even without looking too closely, she could see something that appeared to be moving inside of it, like smoke. As though the thing was alive. Carefully, Diana picked it up by the silver chain until the pendant was dangling before her eyes, mindful to not touch it. Constantine had told her that the spell was now complete, that it couldn’t be reversed simply by touching the amulet, but she knew better than to trust magic. Or him.

Her gaze darted towards the closed door and the silence on the other side of it.

It was suddenly unbearable that Steve was not there. Her chest constricted with the need to see him and to reassure herself all over again that she hadn’t dreamed him up.

She took a breath and willed her heartbeat to steady, having to put a conscious effort into not bolting out of the room to find him. Even with the panic coursing through her veins, she was all too aware of how entirely ridiculous that impulse was. Bordering on insane, really.

Diana placed the pendant back in the box and snapped the lid shut, feeling an odd relief wash over her when she did so. She stood up and walked over to the safe mounted into the wall. She was going to do some research of her own, make sure that what Constantine had told her was the truth.

But that would have to wait a while. And in the meantime…

She punched in the code and the heavy door opened with a soft, almost soundless click. She placed the box inside, atop a stack of papers. For the longest time, she had kept the photograph from Veld in there as well, until finally moving it to her apartment a few months ago. Now she wished she hadn’t, wished she could pull it out of its case and have another look, desperate for something that could anchor her.

Diana pushed the safe door shut and reached into the pocket of her pants for Steve’s watch. She had meant to give it to him this morning, before they had gotten interrupted. But it had felt wrong to rush it, then. To make the gesture seem like an afterthought.

Her thumb swept over the glass face, searching for the familiar comfort of it. He hadn’t asked about it, and she wondered if he’d forgotten, too overwhelmed by all the newness around him to care, or if he had assumed she no longer had it, having left it behind as she’d moved on with her life.

The idea was entirely intolerable.

She traced the length of the leather straps, softer and more worn after being carried in her bag, the pockets of her pants and dresses, on her wrist even. Every day for the past hundred years.

She wondered if he would have said what he had said to her this morning if he knew that.

A series of rapid knocks on the door had Diana snapping her head up.

“Yes?” she called out.

Celeste cracked the door open and poked her head inside. Her gaze darted towards the phone on Diana’s desk.

“It’s Madrid,” she said apologetically.

Diana took a breath, more grateful for the distraction than she was willing to admit. She slipped Steve’s watch back into the pocket of her dress pants.

“Thank you. I’ll take it.” 


Diana dealt with Sebastian from Madrid and the missing paperwork, smoothing out the sharp edges of frustration in the man’s voice with reassurances and a promise that the Louvre had done everything according to their agreement. She asked Celeste to email him the electronic copies of everything and to call Gerome in the afternoon in regards to his schedule.

There were calls to answer and a department web page that needed an update and a grant proposal to draft, and in between all that, a million and a half other things that never stopped piling up each time she missed a day. 

She didn’t see Steve for the rest of the morning. But she heard of him when she went to the staff room to get a cup of tea. The two curators fell silent the moment she walked in. Diana was fairly certain she had heard her name in conjunction with American and charming just seconds prior. She pressed her lips together, swallowing a smile, and made a mental note to ask Steve later what in the world had he done to charm anyone in the brief time since they’d parted ways.

She spent the rest of the morning examining a new shipment of artifacts and cataloguing them—a job that she preferred to phone calls and negotiations.

When she finally took a break, sometime around noon, she found Steve in one of the galleries on the second floor. He was standing in front of a painting with his head tilted all the way to his shoulder and a look of utter concentration that Diana found beyond adorable.

“I never understood this one, either,” she said as she paused next to him.

“I mean…” Steve started and trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards splattered colours and vague shapes. “He had to be trying to say something with this, right?”

Diana bit back her smile.

“People tend to overthink art,” she said simply. “It doesn’t always carry a deep meaning. Sometimes, the artist was just passing time.”

Steve straightened up and turned to her, seemingly unconvinced. He shook his head, his expression smoothing out when his gaze met hers.

Diana smiled. “You must be hungry. Let me take you out for lunch.”

She led him past the now-crowded concourse and towards one of the side entrances that was far less busy. She wanted to ask him about his morning and if he had seen anything he liked. They had never spoken about anything like this, art and such—they hadn’t spoken about many things, she thought—and she wanted to know if he took a likeness to the same pieces she did, still searching for a way to bridge this abyss of time between them, somehow.

But the museum was loud, the buzz of voices following them out and onto the street overflowing with office workers, students and tourists alike. And those were not the type of questions meant to be shouted, she reasoned.

She led them towards a restaurant a couple of blocks away, a small Japanese place tucked away in a narrow alley, frequented mostly by the select few who had taken the effort to find it.

Diana placed their order and lifted her gaze to Steve who was studying their surroundings with such unmasked curiosity it made her heart feel so full she could barely breathe. She could all but hear him catalogue it all—from the traditional designs that she was certain he had never seen up close before, to the dishes being served to the other patrons, to the fact that the staff had greeted her like the regular that she was.

She wondered what he thought—she had no doubt he would let her know when he was ready, but looking at him now, Diana was suddenly reminded of her own open-mouthed reactions to nearly everything a century ago. It had been so long since she had been genuinely surprised by something that the realization resonated with a pang of wistfulness in her chest, making Steve’s unapologetic scrutiny all the more endearing.

She loved it. Loved the way he would tilt his head when he was confused by something, and how his eyes would brighten when she explained it—like the coffee this morning, or the way keyfobs operated, later. Loved that small frown that would crease his brows, and that he needed her, like she had once needed him—in small ways that, she knew, would mean everything, in the end.

His eyes widened when the server arrived with their plates and a large platter of sashimi that she placed in the middle of the table—Diana had figured he would like it better if he could try a little bit of everything.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Steve muttered when he noticed the chopsticks left near their plates.

Diana laughed at that, unable to contain it.

“It’s not that complicated,” she said, picking up her own to show him how to hold them. “See?”

He quirked an eyebrow at her, his expression more perplexed than she had ever seen it.

Without thinking, she reached over, her hand curling over his to show him the placement of the fingers.

“Like this,” Diana said, quietly.

She felt Steve grow still, his hand flexing a little on chopsticks to hold them the right way. When she turned to him, his face was a mere inch away from hers. She smiled, feeling a surge of heat in her stomach when his gaze swept over her features, and he swallowed.

“Yeah, I think I got it,” Steve said, and cleared his throat.

Diana nodded and drew back, watching him carefully pick up a few pieces from the platter, his brows knitting together as he scrutinized them and then glanced around at the other tables. She pressed her lips around a smile and pulled a few pieces of sashimi onto her own plate as well. Her phone buzzed in her pocket but she ignored it, for now.

The server appeared by their table again, setting down the cups of green tea. Steve nodded a thank you at her.

“This is not bad,” he admitted after a few minutes.

Diana propped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her linked fingers. “I thought you might find it interesting,” she said, smiling.

“What’s the red stuff here?” he asked, gesturing at the stuff in question with his chopsticks as she picked up her tea.

“Well, technically, fish eggs,” Diana offered, trying not to laugh when his face twitched and turned a little greenish.

“Why would—” he gazed up at her, aghast. He dropped his voice. “Why would anyone want to eat that?”

She shook her head. “Don’t overthink it. Just try it.”

Steve gave her a skeptical look, and then pointedly reached for safer salmon.

Diana bit her lip but didn’t comment.

“So, what does a director of a department at the Louvre do?” he asked sometime later, about halfway through their meal.

“More paperwork than I like,” Diana admitted, and he chuckled, shaking his head a little. “I curate collections, apply for grants, supervise digs that we sponsor—usually remotely, but sometimes I travel, too.”

“Update the catalogue,” Steve added, and she arched an eyebrow at him. “That young woman said something about a catalogue, this morning,” he explained, the tops of his cheeks turning a little red as though she had caught him doing something he shouldn’t—like spying on her.

“Celeste. And yes, that, too.” Diana folded her arms on the table. “Among a few other things.”

He smiled and leaned back in his chair.

“And you save the world in-between all that.”

Diana felt her heart squeeze and unfurl in her chest. “On occasion, yes.”

“You never told me how you ended up here,” he reminded her. “In Paris and…” he trailed off with a shrug.

She remembered their interrupted conversation now.

Indeed, she had not.

“The first time I came to Paris was with Etta, a few years after—” you died. She didn’t say that. “It was different from what it is right now, but still beautiful. I liked it.”

It was the first place where she could breathe. The first place that hadn’t been haunted by her memories of Steve—so much unlike London, where she used to see him around every corner, in every man with sandy-blonde hair. The place that she had loathed but had been unable to put behind, fearful of severing the last thread that connected her to him. Fearful of forgetting.

Paris had made her believe that she could put her loss to rest, eventually. And that, more than anything, had frightened her beyond comprehension, at the time.

Diana didn’t say any of that.

“I told you already that I worked briefly at the Smithsonian, in the 80s,” she continued, choosing her words carefully, and Steve nodded, engrossed. “After I left there, I took a break, travelled for a few years.”

Which was one way to put it, she thought. She had run—from her heartache and heartbreak and more ghosts; from everything that had happened with Maxwell Lord and Barbara Ann; and from the loss she had hoped she would never have to experience again. She had put half of the world between herself and the place that had cracked her open once more before she could function again.

She would have to tell him all that later, she knew. But not now, not out of context, and they didn’t have time for the full story anyway.

“I did some work with appraisals and translation for private auctions for a while,” she said. “The Louvre tracked me down to help out with some documentation, with artifacts they had trouble identifying. Afterwards, they offered me a full-time job. I started as a curator, seven years ago.”

“And then ended up working so much they had no choice other than to promote you?” Steve supplied.

Diana smiled.

He was not that far off, truth be told. She was good, yes. She knew history and linguistics better than anyone they had ever employed. In addition to that, she seemed to have a natural knack for the job. But she had also needed a distraction, something to occupy her mind. Something to keep her from going back to her empty apartment and the loneliness she would sometimes feel pressing on her chest, squeezing all air out of her lungs.

It had been easier to keep busy—still was—than to succumb to the grief from which there was no escape.

“Something like that,” she admitted.  

Steve nodded, his fingers fidgeting absently with a napkin.

“Do you like it?” he asked, tilting his head as he searched her face.

“I do,” she admitted.

He nodded again. “Good. That’s good… With Etta, huh?”

Diana’s features softened.

They didn’t have time for that now, she knew, but even without their plates cleared, they lingered as she told him more stories—birthdays and milestones, small moments that she still held dear. Things that had saved her from losing herself in the moments when the world had felt like a bleak, merciless place.

About the time Etta taught her how to bake, and the monumental disaster it had been, at first. About going to Sameer’s first play and the endless happiness in his eyes afterwards. About how proud Diana had felt in that moment, and how much Sami wished that Steve could be there.

She watched Steve’s expression turn to one of wistfulness and longing, the same feelings that she felt as well each time she thought of them all—Etta and Sami and Charlie and Chief. He asked her questions, and she let him, feeling the hunger for more in his eyes as though it was coursing through her own veins.

“You have to go back?” he asked eventually, after Diana’s phone buzzed for the third time and she had no choice but to pull it out and check her messages.

“Afraid so,” she said, looking up at him apologetically. “You could go back to the apartment if you’d like. Take a cab…” she trailed off when he shook his head.

“I’d rather stay with you,” he said immediately, with an honesty that made her breath hitch.

She expected his face to flush at that and was surprised when it didn’t. Sure, they had made love only a few nights ago, as far as Steve was concerned. And sure, he probably remembered every inch of her body fairly well, but it didn’t stop him from being a bit shy each time he deliberately, or accidentally, spoke of his feelings. Something that Diana was starting to grow deeply fond of.

She had noticed it over the past few days, and it made her wonder what else she hadn’t known about him. For so long, she had lived with the idea of him, certain there had been no secrets left between them; nothing she hadn’t seen or experienced. But then she would notice something like this—something that she attributed to him having been a spy and having to control his every word and every emotion. Or how he took his coffee—black. Or what side of bed he preferred—the one closest to the door. And it would remind her of how brief their time together had been a hundred years ago.

For some reason, it made her long for him even more.

“Very well.” She pulled out her wallet. “There are a few things I need to take care of. It shouldn’t take long.”

But, of course, it never was only a few things.


Steve had never been to the Louvre before.

To Paris, he had been exactly twice. Both times on a mission. Both times briefly enough to have nothing but a very vague recollection of the experience. In his mind, it was a grey, grim place where desperation lived in every nook and cranny. But so were most of the places he had come across during the war, one blending into another, with pain and grief being the main common denominator he still remembered feeling with his very skin. Something that had continued to cling to him like a film of grime he couldn’t seem to scrub off even days later.

The Paris of the future was nothing like it, and he tried very hard not to wonder what the rest of the world looked like in 2018. If there was a single part of it that he would recognize. What about his home? How much could a place change in a hundred years? A lot, he suspected. And not only in technology and cars, he knew.

The previous afternoon, after he had watched every single clip about the Justice League and Wonder Woman he could find on the internet, he had typed America into the search engine. But the results had been… overwhelming, to say the least. Articles on environment and politics and international affairs. Pictures of people in big, busy cities. Everything looked so alien and bright it made his head hurt. He had made a mental note to ask Diana more about it later, about her time in the states, but by the time the morning had rolled around, he had completely forgotten about it.

He had spent the morning wandering the wide, spacious hallways and the galleries filled with light. If Diana had had any objections to his impulsive request to spend the day at the Louvre, Steve had found no sign of it. He had wondered though, how much of it had been boredom that had left him feeling caged in at her place the previous day, and how much was simply the desire to follow her wherever she went. The same desire that had pushed him to climb out of the trenches and into No Man’s Land after her.

Eventually, the place had filled with patrons and groups of tourists speaking just about every language Steve was aware of. He had found a few notable pieces he had heard of before and then got distracted by digital displays that looked like the television from Diana’s apartment but that could tell him things or show him directions when he touched the screen. Steve had spent a good quarter of an hour poking at one of them until he had noticed that a line had formed behind him, people waiting to use it as well, that had him flushing and apologizing profusely before he had made a hasty escape.

He had discovered audio-guides next, which, he had thought, was pretty genius. Like having his own tour without having to tag along with one of the groups he had seen everywhere.

In that time, he had seen Diana exactly twice. Once, Steve had spotted her talking to one of the curators—he had learned that they were the people with name tags or plastic pockets they wore on strings around their necks.  

The second time had been when he’d rounded the corner, searching for a bathroom, no less, and saw her stopping by a group of school kids on a field trip to speak with them and answer their questions. Steve had skidded to a halt to stare at her in, he suspected, the exact same awe as the children that had surrounded her, drawn to her lifeforce that no one seemed able to resist.

And he had tried, once again, to juxtapose the woman before him with the one who couldn’t figure out the workings of a revolving door only a few days ago or how to wear a dress. He had seen her use all the smart technology things and act like she belonged more to this world than Steve ever had, sure. But then he’d watch her tuck an unruly piece of hair behind her ear or smile until her eyes crinkled at the corners, and she would be the same Diana who he had taught to dance, the time and gaping abyss of everything they didn’t know about one another disappearing without a trace.

He had wondered, like he had before, who had taught her all these things. (Had it been Etta and his boys? In the beginning, maybe.) And he had hoped that whoever it was, they had been kind to her. She deserved kindness, above all else. She deserved to be loved.  

Steve wasn’t sure how long he had stood there, but by the time he had resurfaced from his thoughts, the school group had moved on and Diana was gone.

After lunch at the place with the fish eggs—and Steve still had some serious questions about that —he had picked up a map from one of the stands scattered throughout and had followed one of the suggested paths, just to try something different. He wasn’t sure what Diana had meant by “a few things” and “not long” but it wasn’t until the place had emptied and all the doors had closed for the night that she made an appearance again.

By then, the sky had turned deep indigo-blue, the darkness falling quickly, and Steve had moved back to the concourse again. The upstairs rooms and hallways that had felt so light and airy during the day had grown quiet and crowded with shadows, unsettlingly so.

He was watching a football game on the cell phone of a guard on duty—after the latter had asked Steve if he’d seen the recent one and Steve had shaken his head no, choosing not to specify though that the last game of anything he had seen had been in 1915. Red Sox playing against Phillies that he still remembered as though it had only happened yesterday.

Steve was following the tiny men on the small screen, trying to keep up with the stats and scores and assess each team when the staccato of footsteps had him lift his head to see Diana walking across the concourse towards them. His interest in football evaporated immediately when she offered him a smile and a curious quirk of her brow.

He could see the question in her eyes, but when she spoke, it was a simple, “Ready to go?”

Steve nodded.

“You have a good night, Mademoiselle Prince,” the guard said.

“Good night, Paul.”

After a round of profuse thank-yous, Steve followed her outside, shivering a little against the chilly wind blowing in from the river. He watched as Diana tapped the screen of her phone and then pressed it to her ear, as her other hand flagged a cab that swerved across two lanes, before slowing to a stop beside them under the cacophony of displeased horns. It was only when Steve slid inside after her that he caught something about “menu” and “for two” that he figured out that Diana was probably ordering food for them.

“I’m sorry I made you wait,” she said after she hung up, her face going in and out of pools of light as the cab drove down a wide avenue.

He liked the semi-darkness of the backseat and the quiet music coming from somewhere he couldn’t see and the blur of light outside, and how the sharp edges of everything seemed to be smoothed out.

“You didn’t,” he said, honestly. “I liked it. Besides, we sort of established already that you have a busy life.”

He watched her bite back a smile, though he was not entirely sure because of the shadows chasing across her features.

She asked him about his day then. He told her, her questions never-ending once he started speaking. What he had liked and what he had seen and if there was anything she could explain better. He was surprised how much he had managed to fit in the fifteen minutes it took them to reach her apartment building again and didn’t even realize that the car had stopped until the driver pointedly cleared his throat and Diana was apologizing and reaching for her wallet.

At the concierge desk, there was a paper bag waiting for them. One that smelled so delicious that Steve’s mouth started to water even before they stepped into the elevator, reminding him that it had, in fact, been getting quite late. But it was not what made his stomach twist, in a not entirely unpleasant way, but that when the doors slid open on Diana’s floor and she pulled the key from the pocket of her jacket, he couldn’t help but feel like he was coming home.

Once they stepped inside her place, she turned on the lights. Her phone beeped with yet another something —Steve had yet to tell the difference between all the sounds it made and Diana handed him the food before heading towards the study to deal with whatever it was that demanded her attention.

For a moment, Steve simply stood there, the bag in hand, listening to the familiar lilt of her voice as she explained something or other in French. He could probably do just that for the rest of forever and die a happy man, he thought, feeling his heart clench in his chest. He sighed. If there had been any doubt in him regarding his feelings for her, that moment would have eradicated each and every one of them in an instant.

It was his grumbling stomach that propelled him towards the kitchen eventually.

He shrugged off his jacket, draping it over the back of a chair before diving into a cupboard to get two plates. He retrieved two carton boxes from the bag, and then two more, and, just as Diana walked into the kitchen, he pulled two sets of chopsticks from the bottom.

Steve gaped at them, feeling his jaw drop a little.

“Oh, come on,” he muttered. He looked up, his gaze lifting to meet hers. “Do people in the future eat everything with sticks now?”

Diana laughed, an infectious sound that made his head swim a little.

“They’re part of the order,” she explained, shaking her head. “We can just use forks.”

“Oh, thank god,” he breathed.

He watched her open one of the boxes. Unable to resist the urge to peek inside, Steve saw some noodles and probably meat. It all smelled a bit strange but very good, all the same.

“Do the people in the future cook?” he inquired while she found forks and knives.

Diana smiled. “I like to cook when I’m not pressed for time. But it is also very easy to have good food delivered to you, if you don’t feel like doing anything by yourself.”

That… made sense, actually. He was surprised to suddenly realize that just about every meal they’d shared so far, they’d eaten outside of her apartment. But there was a stand with spices on the counter by the stove that looked like it was more than just a pretty decoration. Her pots and pans looked rather used, as well. He had noticed that when he made his breakfast yesterday. He could, in fact, very easily imagine her creating some high cuisine dishes just for the hell of it. Something that his subpar skills couldn’t even begin to compare to.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” he muttered, chuckling under his breath.

“I had to learn after a few… unfortunate incidents,” she clarified, wrinkling her nose, and like with everything else, Steve found himself desperate for the story behind her revelation.

And suddenly, he couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Diana, what did you mean, this morning, when you said I was wrong?”

She paused. Slowly, she set the wine glasses she had been in the process of retrieving down on the counter.

“Would you like to eat first?” she asked, quietly, as she turned to him.

Steve swallowed. What had been, moments ago, hunger pangs was now a nervous flutter in the pit of his stomach. “No, I think I’d like to understand what’s going on here.”

“Very well.” She nodded as she leaned against the counter, her arms folded across her chest. “Something happened thirty-four years ago. In 1984, when I was working in the Smithsonian, the museum had come in the possession of an item called the Dreamstone. An ancient artifact designed to grant people their wishes.”

“Wishes?” Steve echoed, dumbly.

Whatever he had expected, this… well, this was decidedly not it.

“People’s deepest desires,” Diana added.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” he offered, warily, uncertain if he should have stopped being surprised by anything by now, or maybe if he simply needed to accept the fact that he never would. At least, as far as Diana was concerned.

She shook her head. “It was. The Dreamstone was created by the God of Lies. Every wish it granted had a twist to it, a price you had to pay for the illusion it created.” Steve watched two faint lines appear between her brows. Emotion she couldn’t contain. “Over millennia, it had been used to destroy things. Destroy people, civilizations. And it never stopped because there was always something that people desired at all costs.”

“Did you wish for something?” he heard himself ask before he knew to stop himself, knowing deep down what the answer was going to be and not wanting to hear it.

She held his gaze. “I did.”

“What did you wish for, Diana?”

She didn’t hesitate.

“You.”

Her answer landed on him like a sucker-punch.

“I don’t understand…” he started, his voice hoarse.

“This is not the first time you came back, Steve.”

Notes:

*insert dramatic music here*

Hey, you've been asking me for that talk since chapter 2 and we are finally there! Well, almost. I truly cannot wait for these two to get over their issues and get together at last, dammit. There is so much naked time coming...

Also, who here saw the new Justice League already? I have to admit that I enjoyed it more than I expected. Please talk to me about it - what did you like? What you didn't like? Anything that came as a surprise? While I think that it could have, and should have been shorter (akajb and I had a theory about that lol), I think it did some decent work with the character development, and the plot overall was slightly less ridiculous than in Whedon's version.

And comments about this chapter are much appreciated, as always :) I will love you forever!

Thanks for reading! Please stay around for that conversation in chapter 9 and... well, a lot of other stuff!

Chapter 9

Notes:

Hey guys! It's that day again :) I know I left you hanging with the last chapter ending - and frankly, I regret nothing 😈
Again, thank you so much for your support and your amazing comments, it means the absolute world to me that you continue to enjoy this story :) Also, I'm happy to say that we're getting close to some of my favourite parts of this fic... 🤫🤫 Just saying!

Anyway, the big TALK! I'm a bit nervous and it was a complex scene to write, but I hope it worked out well, and there is some stuff in this chapter that I absolutely love.

Okay, here we go.

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

Chapter Text

Steve stared at her. And then stared at her some more, waiting for her face to split into a smile. Waiting for her to laugh and tell him that it was a joke, before she continued on with her tale about the wish-granting rock.

But she didn’t, and Steve felt the ground sway beneath him a little when he realized that he could stand there for a hundred years, and it still wouldn’t happen.

“I don’t—I don’t remember.”

“You wouldn’t.” Diana rubbed her forehead, her shoulders rounding forward with a weariness he was not accustomed to seeing. “As I said, the Dreamstone could only create a lie and nothing more. An illusion that felt real — oh so real, for a while. But it was not the real you. And then it was gone.”

Steve raked his fingers through his hair, only then realizing how badly his hands were shaking. “What happened to it?” he asked. “The stone, that is.”

“It was destroyed to stop the chain of events that would have harmed humanity greatly. The way other civilizations had been harmed before.”

Civilizations.

The enormity of her confession made the world swim around him. He had a feeling there would be many of those moments before the night was through.

“Which events?” he asked cautiously. 

Diana hesitated. He could all but hear her search for words, a frown appearing between her brows.   

“There was a man named Maxwell Lord who had made promises he couldn’t keep and ended up owing a lot of money to a lot of people,” she said after a long moment. “To save himself, he stole the Dreamstone from a museum and made his own wish about harnessing the power of it. In doing so, he ended up nearly bringing the world as we knew it to an end.”

You can’t make everyone happy, Steve thought. Someone was always going to get the short straw.

“No, you can’t,” Diana murmured, and it was only then that Steve realized he had spoken the words aloud.

“How did you stop it?” he inquired, knowing without a doubt that she had to be the one to have done it.

Diana lifted her gaze to his.

“I had to destroy it — the stone. There was no other way.”

“And…?” Steve gestured at himself.

“And with it, every wish was also undone.” She paused, and then amended, “Well, all but one.”

Now it was his turn to frown.

“Which one?”

“My friend, Barbara Ann, has never returned to… who she used to be.”

He wanted to ask more about that — was about to — but there was something else lodged in his brain like a bullet. Something—

“Wait, hang on. So all this time, this whole past week, you thought that I was just… what, a trick? A figment of your imagination?”

She smiled at that, for the first time since the conversation began. A lovely thing that made the corners of her eyes crinkle and that would have made Steve's head swim, if it wasn’t already.

“No, I knew you were… you,” she promised him, gently.

“But you thought that I could just go—” he pressed, making a poof! gesture with his hand. “Is that why you said you didn’t know if I’d still be here when you came back last night?”

Her smile dimmed, anguish chasing behind her eyes. “Yes,” she said softly.  

He loved that about her. Her honesty and that he could trust her to tell him the truth without second-guessing her, not even for a moment. The only downside of it was that he was feeling like someone had pushed him off a cliff and he’d been falling for the past twenty minutes without anything to cushion it.

“Can I?” Steve asked cautiously, making another poof! gesture with his fingers.

She didn’t respond at once. “No, I don’t think so,” she finally said but there was no real conviction to it.

“But you don’t know,” he murmured and scrubbed a hand down his face.

Well, that didn’t sound very optimistic, did it?

Diana bit her lip, rubbing her forehead as she considered something. (He was starting to get used to figuring out her expressions again, part of him wondering what it was that had made her close off and retreat into herself each time he couldn’t interpret one immediately. Like he used to, before. He doubted the story was a happy one.)

“Let me show you something,” she said, pushing off the counter and past him.

Steve followed her into the living room, watching her fumble for a moment with her jacket that she had left draped over the back of the couch until she pulled a small box from a pocket. She snapped it open and he peered inside, curious, finding a stone that looked like amber winking at him.

Diana pulled it out of the box by a silver chain until the pendant was hanging between them. Steve could swear that he could see something moving inside of it, like smoke swirling. He blinked, and it was gone, a solid piece of rock staring back at him. He squinted but then shook his head. It had to be a trick of light.

He looked up quizzically at Diana. “What’s this?”

And that was when she told him a fascinating tale about her trip to Gotham and a man named John Constantine and a ritual that, unbeknownst to both of them, had dragged Steve from wherever he had ended up after his plane had exploded back to the world of the living when she had touched it. Something that he knew he was going to have to ask her to explain to him again later, maybe more than once, because he was having a very hard time processing it all, at the moment.

“Wow, that’s…” he started before faltering, after she fell silent.

“A lot,” she offered, quietly.

Steve let out a short laugh—a sharp, grating sound that made him grimace.

“That’d be an understatement.” He ran his hand down his face, rubbing his eyes. He was used to living a lie, to being someone else, to adapting, for sometimes his very life depended on it. But there was nothing that had prepared him for this. Any of this. “Is that why you left America? Because of what happened with the—with that wishing stone?”

“In part, yes,” she admitted. “But I was used to moving frequently enough by then, before people could notice that I was not… quite like them.”

Like not ageing, Steve thought. Or figuring out that there was a local superhero living right under their noses.

He hated the idea of being the reason for uprooting her all the same.

“I just… How can you even stand to look at me after what happened?” he murmured, his gaze trained on her soft beige rug as his insides churned badly enough to make him wonder if he was going to be sick.

That someone— something —would take the best thing that had ever happened to him and twist it, bend it into something unrecognizable, torment Diana with it…

How was he supposed to—

Steve felt all air rush out of his body.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Diana go completely still.

“None of that was your fault, Steve,” she said. “It happened because I cared for you, because I…” Steve looked up when she fell silent, watching her try to work something out in her head. “If I knew to try and stop that plane before it was too late—”

But he was holding up his hand to stop her and shaking his head.

“It had to be done, Diana. You know that. Someone had to go up, or everything we’d done would have been in vain. They’d win. Maru and...” he trailed off. 

My life for millions of lives of innocent people. But he didn’t say it aloud.

Diana was frowning again, and though she didn’t argue, her lips pressed into a tight, displeased line. He could see that she didn’t like it. Though, in truth, he would not have liked it either, if their places had been reversed.

“There’s something else,” she said, after a moment, and Steve looked up at her in alarm. Something that must have been written all over his face because her smile made a return then. “It’s a good thing. I think.”

“Okay,” he said carefully.

That was when she snapped the box with the amulet shut and placed it on the mantel, above the unlit fire. Steve eyed it suspiciously for another moment, as though expecting it to spontaneously combust or something. Diana had said it was safe now, just a piece of rock, essentially. But he wondered if he trusted her assessment on that entirely.

He didn’t even notice her leaving, but by the time he managed to tear his gaze away from the box, Diana had walked over to the coffee table and was now bent over a briefcase he had never seen before, snapping the clasps open and lifting the lid. She straightened up and motioned at him to come closer.

It took Steve a moment before he realized what he was looking at, exactly. Before everything inside of him came to a complete stand-still. There was a glass plate sitting inside it, an old photograph that looked so familiar and yet so alien at the same time.

He felt his heart kick hard against the inside of his ribs. Charlie, Chief, and Sameer, standing proud and tall before the demolished clocktower that Diana had nearly ground into dust. Steve’s eyes lingered for a moment on his own face, barely recognizable now—even though it had only been a week since he’d popped up in 2018, it felt like decades had passed and the thread connecting him to the person he had been on the day the photo had been taken was nowhere to be found. He tried not to dwell on how much the idea unsettled him.

And then there was Diana, right in the centre, the force driving them all.

Steve sank down onto the edge of the couch and turned the briefcase towards him.

Gingerly, he reached over, tracing his fingertips over the smooth glass and trying to wrap his mind around the fact that while first, they had survived him, in a way, now he was sort of surviving them.

He looked up at Diana who was studying him. He watched her features soften when their eyes met.

“This is from the day you crossed No Man’s Land,” he said, a little dumbly. “How do you have it?”

“A friend helped me find it,” she explained. “I couldn’t stand the idea of it being in someone else’s hands. Or forgotten to time.”

Steve nodded, his attention shifting to the picture once more, and then back to Diana again.

“They would have loved this whole story, you know,” he noted. “Magic stones and time travel.” He chuckled ruefully and pushed his hand through his hair. “Hell, they would have loved it so much.”

There was a moment then when it looked like she was going to say something, an odd expression chasing across her features making all of Steve’s senses go on alert. He saw her hesitate, debating something or other. 

“They would have,” she said in the end, leaving him disappointed and convinced that that was not it, not what she had really wanted to say. “They missed you so much, Steve.”

He nodded, feeling his heart splinter. He had missed so much of their lives. What a cruel irony it was that now they were going to miss some of his.

“So, what’s going to happen now?” he asked, after a pause.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” he trailed off and gestured at himself, not quite sure what he was asking, exactly.

Maybe tomorrow, or a few days from now, once he had a chance to wrap his mind around everything she had just told him, he would be able to be more specific. But there was also a restlessness burning inside of him, making him jittery, that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The need to know something, anything, beyond the next few minutes.

“John—Constantine,” Diana corrected herself, “said that the spell that brought you back should be permanent. But if you’d like, he could make sure that it can’t be reversed. No matter what.”

Steve looked up, his gaze finding hers, as he tried to ignore his heart that felt like it was pounding right out of his chest.

“He could do that? How?”

Diana folded her arms over her chest. “Well, he’s a sorcerer.”

Steve felt his jaw grow slack again.

“Like, with magic?” he clarified.

“Yes.”

He stood up, unable to sit still. To stay still, period.

A magician. Figures. Of course, she would know one. She was a goddess, for heaven’s sake. The daughter of Zeus. She was friends with other super… people. Who else did she know, he wondered. Maybe other gods. Were there any others? He would not have been surprised.

He didn’t even realize that he had started pacing until another thought brought him to a halt.

He stopped and turned to Diana who was watching him with a trace of amusement in her gaze—the seriousness of the situation aside, she seemed to be quite enjoying his bafflement.

“And why would he do that?” Steve asked.

“Because I’d ask him,” she said simply.

Steve stared at her, suddenly at a loss for words, completely and utterly. His brain felt like someone had doused it with gasoline and set it on fire; each time a thought started to form, it would go up in flames before it had a chance to fully materialize.

“You don’t have to do it for me. Or because of me,” Diana added quietly after a long moment, without looking at him. “I just wanted you to know that it was an option. To put your mind at ease, if you think…”

She left the sentence hanging between them.

So I would stop being scared of disappearing, Steve filled in for her in his head.

It took him another second to figure out that she had terribly misunderstood his hesitation. Did she think he didn’t want to be with her? Was she even offering that? When she said she cared for him, did she mean—

He thought of those moments in the alley when that car backfiring had sent him into a tailspin of panic until he could barely remember himself, her quiet whisper that had anchored him, steadied him, pulled him to the surface. He thought about her patience while she had explained even the most mundane things to him, answering his every question, no matter how ridiculous, and the kindness that Steve could feel with everything that he was. And the way her lips felt on his that first night when she had kissed him.

But then there were also the subtle moments of her moving away from him when he came to stand too close, her hand drawing back when their fingers brushed by accident and the quiet grief in her eyes that he couldn’t quite place, until now.

Part of him wished he could go back to the sweet oblivion of foolishly assuming it had merely been her surprise that had had her acting that way.

Was she always going to look at him and see something warped and unnatural that had hurt her some thirty-odd years ago?

He didn’t doubt that Diana cared for him. One would have to be blind not to see that. But that didn’t mean she still loved him, the way he knew he would always love her. His reappearance could have invoked a sense of nostalgia in her, bringing back the memories of the people that, perhaps, only the two of them remembered now. He was a connection to a part of her life that Steve suspected few were privy to. Nothing more than that.

It then hit him that she hadn’t even been trying to get him back, hadn’t asked for his return. He was merely a by-product of her attempt to accomplish something else entirely.

The thought sliced through him like a white-hot knife.

“What about your friend?” Steve inquired before his mind spiralled in the direction from which, he knew, there would be no coming back as he willed himself to stay focused.

Diana looked up at him in surprise. He watched two faint lines appear between her brows, confusion pooling in her gaze.

“I’m not sure I…”

“Your friend who never reversed back to—whoever she was,” Steve pressed on. “If that… magician guy makes the spell that revived me irreversible, wouldn’t that mean that she'll be trapped in her wish forever?”

The change in Diana's expression was immediate as the realization dawned. Steve could tell that she hadn’t considered that, and now that his question was out there, it wasn’t as simple as she had thought, perhaps. If a magical spell could even be called simple, but Steve decided not to go there just yet.

“I don’t know,” Diana admitted, her frown deepening. “I did not think of the connection.”

Steve ran his hand over his face. “I just… I don’t think I could do that, the spell or whatnot, knowing that someone else would have to pay for it. You don’t know if being stuck in—in her wish, forever, was her choice, in the end.”

“I don’t,” Diana said as she lifted her gaze to his. 

Steve sensed that there was more to that story. 

He wasn’t sure how long they had been talking until the antique clock let out a soft chime on the mantle and he looked up, surprised to see that it was midnight. He could feel it now, too, the exhaustion had that settled deep in his bones; the long day and the weight of everything Diana had revealed to him. As though he had aged a hundred years in only a few hours.

“It’s late,” she said, as though reading his mind. He turned to the sound of Diana’s voice. There was a weariness to her too, reminding him of how she had been carrying this all inside of her. “We should probably…”

“Maybe it would be better if I—” he started, gesturing towards the couch, and cut off when Diana’s face blanched, her expression so stricken he couldn’t bring himself to finish. Not even when she looked away. He cleared his throat and nodded. “Yeah, let’s call it a night.”

In the bedroom, Steve stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, tempted for a brief moment to keep all of his clothes on, just for the hell of it. But it felt childish, at best. And downright insane, at worst. It was not like he was at a risk of any unwanted advances.

If anything, the entire ordeal had to be more confusing to Diana than it was to him, all things considered.

Steve could hear her moving around in the bathroom across the hall, the water running as she brushed her teeth. He tried very hard not to imagine her taking off her blouse and dress pants to change into something more comfortable—and ended up fantasizing about just that for a solid five minutes anyway, his face more than a little hot when she re-emerged again, wearing one of those thin tank-top things that she seemed to favour for sleep and a pair of shorts. Her hair was loose and falling down her shoulders. That he knew what she looked like underneath her clothes sure as hell wasn’t helping, either.

He wondered, briefly, if it was too late to make a hasty escape.

The mattress dipped beneath her weight as Diana climbed into bed, and Steve shifted ever so slightly closer to his end, suspecting that he was going to topple to the floor one way or another in the near future.

She turned off the lights, and for a long time, the two of them simply lay there, side by side, with at least a foot and a half of space between them, staring at the ceiling and enveloped in near-complete silence.  

It was only then that Steve remembered that they hadn’t eaten, their dinner forgotten in that takeaway bag that Diana had put in the fridge. He wasn’t hungry though, not with his stomach in knots.

He took a breath and let it out slowly, aware of her closeness to the point of having the fine hairs on his arms standing on end.

“Was it different?” he asked quietly after a while, surprising himself. “That time when you thought I—Was it different?”

Even in the dark, he could see Diana turn to him, and was helpless against the urge to look at her, too.

“Of course,” she whispered, eyes sweeping over his features. “This is you now. How can anything compare?”

Steve swallowed, his fingers curling over a fistful of sheets.

He was, suddenly and untimely, reminded of lying the exact same way next to her on the boat the night they had left her island. Her unmasked curiosity about the propriety of sleeping together, even in the most innocent way there was, her casual comment about pleasures of the flesh that had kept him awake with vivid images for half the night, and the clinical practicality in her voice when she had called men unnecessary for anything other than procreation.

Which, in turn, brought on a cascade of other memories—the feeling of her body wound around his in their bed in Veld and the softness of her skin and his desperate determination to make himself absolutely and unquestioningly necessary. And the quiet husk of her whisper in his ear, afterwards. Words laced with satisfaction and amusement when she had told him that Clio might have been wrong, after all.

He felt his breath rush out of his lungs and willed himself to stay focused before he—Before Diana noticed anything, as he hoped against all hope that mind reading was not among her many, many gifts. He shifted a little under the sheets, trying to remember how to think of something else. Anything else, really. Anything that wasn’t—

“Steve.”

He jerked to awareness, indeed nearly sliding off the mattress in the moment of wild panic before it occurred to him that she must have said something, or asked something, and he had missed it entirely.

“Hm?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,” she whispered. “I wanted to speak with Constantine first, and then today—”

“No,” he interjected, quietly. “Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to apologize for.”

He expected her to press the matter, but she didn’t, her finger running absently along the hem of the sheet.

“Why did you—ah, step away from working with the Justice League?” he blurted out, half in need to know, the curiosity burning inside of him ever since her revelation, half desperate to stop thinking about her fingers and all the places where they had touched him, before.

Diana lifted his gaze to his.

“What?”

“That guy, Barry, he sounded like a friend. Like someone who really cares about you,” Steve explained, which was, perhaps, a bit of a stretch in judgement, considering he didn’t really know much about any of them. Not beyond the blurry videos, at least. Or Diana, for that matter. “But you said you’re not with them anymore, not the way you used to be.”

Diana stayed quiet for a long moment, her eyes trained on the framed black and white pencil drawing on the wall across from the bed.

Steve waited.

“It is easier that way,” she said, at last, her voice so thick with unmasked ruefulness that Steve could barely stand to hear it. “Easier not to get attached when I knew—” She took in a shuddering breath. “I spent a century watching everyone I care about grow old and die. And it never stops. It is easier to keep the distance.”

His fingers twitched on the sheet as he fought against the impulse to reach for her, comfort her.

“On the night you and I left Themyscira, my mother had told me that there was a lot I didn’t understand about the world,” she continued, after a moment. “At the time, I assumed she was talking about the ways of your people, how to survive in a world so different from my own. Then, I thought she had meant the truth about Ares and my divinity. The truth about my father. But now, I think she meant this life on the sidelines, always standing adjacent to everyone else because I don’t belong and never will. The weight and isolation of it.”

Steve felt his throat close up, her words cracking something open inside of him, leaving his heart bleeding. He thought of Sameer’s boisterous laughter and Charlie’s dry humour, Etta’s fond exasperation and the mischief in Chief’s eyes, and the bond between them all that had burned inside of him like a beacon of hope. Of course, Steve couldn’t know what it was like to be divine, or all-powerful, or immortal, but he knew that his life wouldn’t have been the same without even one of his friends.

And he knew for her, it was not just those friends that she had lost, and his heart bled for each and every one of her losses.

He opened his mouth to tell Diana just that—but the words felt small and wrong, coming from him. He suspected he couldn’t imagine even half the things she had seen and experienced since that night in Belgium. What right did he have to give her any advice on how to live her life?

“I’m sorry,” he said instead. “I never meant for it to be like this for you, when I brought you with me.”

She gazed up at him in surprise. And there it was. It was only a ghost of a smile, but it was so lovely it made something inside of him constrict with longing all the same.

“You didn’t bring me with you, Steve,” she countered. “I came of my own will.”

“Yeah, but—” He started to argue and then clamped his mouth shut because really, what was there to say? He thought back to the Diana he had met in 1918 and the bull-headed determination driving everything she did then. He could have, he suspected, tried to dissuade her until he was red in the face, and he was certain she would have still climbed into that boat with him and followed him to the front.

“If anything, I brought you back,” she added.

He couldn’t help but chuckle a little at that.

And then he thought that he saw Diana shift a little, certain that she was going to reach for him, touch him.

The thought made heat surge right through him, his gaze dropping immediately to her lips. His mouth went dry in an instant, and he could very easily imagine his brain outright short-circuiting just because he was looking at her.

Steve forced himself to drag his gaze back up and cleared his throat. “We should probably…”

“Yes,” she said after a moment. “Perhaps we should.”

“Good night, Diana,” he said before rolling onto his side, his back to her.

“Good night,” she breathed behind him.

He didn’t know how long he stayed awake, listening to her quiet, even breathing and certain that there was no way he’d be able to sleep. But then the next thing he knew it was morning, the digital clock on the bedside table reading 6:30 and Diana was gone—her side of the bed was empty, as was the apartment.


1917

Steve’s first mission as a spy could have easily been his last one.

He knew why they had picked him; singling him out from a mass of other soldiers, other pilots and marksmen who, like Steve, had left their lives behind to come here to try to make a difference. He knew it was because he was good at following orders but also at bending them to his needs and getting away with it. It was because he could smooth-talk his way out of any trouble, when it suited him. He was reckless and didn’t hesitate to put his life on the line, but had a good enough sense of judgement to not take unreasonable risk.

He wondered, sometimes, if they knew why he was all that, and more. If they knew about every sin that he was desperately seeking redemption for. But they had never asked and Steve had never volunteered to bare his soul, choosing instead to bury every shameful and vile and awful thing he had done so deep inside him that no one would ever know to look for it.

What they didn’t know—or maybe knew but didn’t care for—was that it wasn’t all about honour or loyalty or bravery, quite on the contrary. It was about survival and instincts, and the fear that kept pushing him forward because each time he looked around, at the world that was being torn apart by the war, he couldn’t stand the thought of having to live like this another day. Another minute, even. It was the fear of sinking as low as some of the people around him, of giving in to such despair that he would no longer remember himself.

The British Intelligence had been desperate enough to seek him out and make their offer, and Steve had been crazy enough to agree.

Whether or not he had gone into it for the right reasons he knew he might never know, but after a year of watching people die—his people, the men he laughed with one day and mourned the next—he couldn’t bear standing on the sidelines and waiting for his turn to catch a bullet.

His first mission—long before going undercover to join Ludendorff’s army; long before tracking his connection to Isabel Maru; long before stealing a plane and crashing in the sea outside of Diana’s Paradise Island—had been to procure the German war maps from the High Command set up in South-Eastern Poland. His rite of passage, so to speak.

No one had said out loud that Steve would either get lucky, or be captured and executed by the Germans on the spot, but he had a fairly good idea how it was going to end for him if he made one wrong step.

“Just… let us know, if you need any help,” Sameer had told Steve before Steve’s hasty departure.

He did that by setting a car that belonged to one of the generals on fire, thick smoke rising into the sky and creating just enough distraction for him to escape as gunfire rang in his ears. He’d received his first gunshot wound, too—one that had left him with a scar running across his bicep. How he had lived through that first year without becoming a name on a tombstone was beyond him.

By the time his stolen plane tore through the invisible protective shield around Themyscira that kept it hidden from the outside world, one year and a dozen missions later, Steve had been certain there was nothing that could surprise him anymore.

Oh, how wrong he was.

By the time Steve Trevor climbed up into the plane stocked with the deadly gas, minutes away from blowing up himself and his future with Diana, he’d known that he knew nothing about life, after all.


Paris, 2018

“You want to try and find Barbara Ann,” Diana repeated, speaking more to herself than to Steve.

“Hey.” He looked up from the box with packets of sugar sitting between them that he had spent the past ten minutes absently arranging and rearranging. “Rumour has it, I used to be good at that. Finding people, digging out information, doing what spies did.”

Diana smirked into her cup. “Yes, I seem to remember that.”

That he was suggesting this didn’t surprise her. But it did, too.

Their relationship the past couple of days had felt… tentative, perhaps, was the right word. Like walking on thin ice. Each step calculated, each word carefully chosen. And the more he tried to seem casual about it all—which he was, she could see that—the more obvious it was, the more her heart twisted in her chest as though she was witnessing something delicate die right before her eyes, having no idea how to save it.

Diana hadn’t known how he would take the truth. Her confessions felt wild even in her mind, and she had lived through everything she had shared with him. That he would need time to process it was natural. It had taken her years to come in terms with many of the things that he had no choice but to take in stride, right now. In fact, he already was dealing with the onslaught of newness and confusion better than she had expected.

But that was not to say that it was easy for him. She knew it was not.

Then again, he was right. He was a spy. Being adaptable was something that he excelled at.

But this was not a mission. This was life. That, and he had a personal stake in it, too. She suspected it wouldn’t feel quite the same as merely doing his job. 

Diana could still remember the resignation in his voice when he’d said How can you stand to even look at me, his voice had been laced with so much self-loathing that the memory of it still floored her. She’d wanted to reach for him that night, to be with him—she wondered if he would have rejected her, if she’d tried—but then the fragile moment between them was gone, leaving nothing but uncertainty behind. An uncertainty that had never gone away.

She was so used to being prepared for anything. But she had not been prepared for that.

“What the hell is Stevia?” Steve muttered, frowning a little as he stared at the fine print on the tiny packet in his hand.

“A sweetener,” Diana responded automatically.

He looked up at her. “I’m not sure I know what that means,” he admitted.

She pressed her lips together as she tried to breathe around the affection that blossomed in her chest, twining around her heart like a vine.

She had spent her morning in the basement, cataloguing the new items they had received over the couple of days that she had been gone, happy to have an excuse to escape the hustle and bustle of never-ending phone calls and paperwork that she knew would catch up with her eventually. She hadn’t cared, content to have traded a screen and a keyboard for the smell of dust and the feeling of old clay and bone beneath her fingers. History that had lived almost as long as she had—that was something that she had never stopped marvelling at.

There were many things that Diana missed about Themyscira. She missed the smell of the ocean following her wherever she went, rich and familiar. She missed her sisters and the early mornings on the beach when the fog was still clinging to the soles of her feet. She missed her mother—more than she thought she would, what with the heartache of Hippolyta’s secrets that Diana still felt so sharply.

But more than anything, she missed the way her people held on to their heritage, honouring it in a way man’s world never did theirs. The way they had learned from their ancestors and their losses. A hundred years was a blink of an eye for someone like her, and Diana had already seen people forget history that she could still recall so clearly, making the same mistakes over and over again.

It made her wonder more than once if her divinity was not at all a gift but a curse, forcing her to relive the same fights, the same struggles again and again, never able to put them behind her for good.

Maybe that was why she found it easier to connect with a piece of broken pot than with most people she met, she mused.

She’d still been in the conservation room scribbling notes and descriptions in her notebook when Celeste had tracked her down a few hours later to tell Diana that the American she had brought over the other day was waiting for her, thus effectively sending Diana’s heart into an immediate tailspin of panic.

Her heart hadn’t stopped hammering until she had stepped into her office, having already cycled through every single worst-case scenario in her mind at least twice. There, she had found Steve standing in front of one of the many glass displays taking up the three walls, his brows furrowed in almost comical concentration as he’d studied an old bronze breastplate.

He had not, much to her relief, appeared to be in any danger or distress.

(It had made Diana wonder how long she was going to wait for the other shoe to drop. For something to come and snatch him from under her nose.)

“Steve,” she had breathed, only then realizing that the whole way back, she had been bracing herself for… well, not this.

He had turned, and Diana’s stomach had twisted again, albeit for an entirely different reason this time.

He had slid his hands into the pockets of his pants and had offered her one of those smiles that never failed to make her feel warm all over, and said, “I was wondering if you’d have a moment to talk.”

Diana had grabbed her purse and led him outside, past Celeste who had been doing a very poor job of pretending she was not paying them any mind, past the crowds milling in the hallways and galleries and into the chilly October afternoon where the sun offered all the light but none of the warmth.

She had found them a table outside of a small busy coffee shop, allowing Steve to study the menu with a great interest before he had settled for a cup of plain black coffee. And it was once their orders had been placed, that he had offered to find Barbara Ann Minerva.

“It’s like sugar,” Diana finally explained, answering his questions about the sweetener as she watched him with amusement while she sipped her coffee.

“There are three types of actual sugar here,” Steve muttered, squinting at the packets as the cool wind ruffled his hair, making her itch to card her fingers through it. He looked up, baffled. “Is that not enough?”

“People are looking for, well, healthier alternatives.”

He blinked at her before finally setting the box back in the middle of the table.

“I’m just saying,” Steve pressed on, suddenly forgetting entirely about the sugar. “Every single one of my missions was successful.”

Which was… a bit of a stretch, Diana thought, though not without fondness. She had learned a detail or two from Sameer and Etta over the years, about how often they’d had to literally, or metaphorically, grab Steve by the collar the second before he jumped over a ledge in a rush of bravery or recklessness or a combination of both. How often he had come within an inch of his death, only barely escaping it.

He was not wrong—every one of his missions had indeed been successful, except for the one, the one that has brought him into her world, that had had him falling from the sky in a smoking plane. It did not undermine his achievements, or how brilliant he was, but it did give Diana a pause, having her try to hide her smile behind her cup.

“They mention me in history books,” he added.  

“You Googled yourself,” she said. A statement, not a question.

She should have guessed he might. He had Googled her, after all. (And she knew for a fact that Barry especially was quite fond of looking for praise on social media—much to the amusement of the rest of the members of the League.)

Steve’s eyes widened a little when her comment registered with him, and he flushed bright red.

“No, I—” he started and faltered. Diana had never seen him struggle so much with words before. She suspected he had prepared most of his pitch, but clearly not this part. She felt a little ashamed to be enjoying it way more than she should have. “I looked up that night,” he explained carefully after a moment. “I wanted to know—uh, to know what happened, after…” He trailed off, and she realized that he was watching her closely, trying to read her reaction.

After he had died, she finished for him in her mind, her smile dimming.

Diana nodded, and he relaxed visibly.

“I’m not offering for me,” Steve added quickly. “Not because of what you said, about the spells and stuff. I really think I could help. Even before Ludendorff, I spent months gathering intelligence on another mission. It was how they knew about the gas at all, and I know it was a long time ago and some things are different now, but—”

Diana’s expression softened.

“You don’t need to sell your skills to me, Steve,” she stopped him gently.

He paused, fiddling with his spoon in his fingers, and cleared his throat. “Right, well…” He glanced around, taking in the people, cataloguing the details—she could all but hear the wheels in his head turning. “I mean, what am I supposed to do?” he asked, at last.

Diana looked at him in surprise. “Do?”

“Well, you have a job,” he pointed out as he turned to her. “And you are saving the world with your super friends the rest of the time. And I just—Don’t get me wrong, the television thing is,” he faltered, and she wondered what he would say if he wasn’t trying to be diplomatic about it, “interesting,” he finished after a moment. “And it’s great to be breathing again and all. I just…”

It was just that for someone like him, it was not enough. Couldn’t be.

He was a soldier, a spy. He wouldn’t tolerate idleness for long—she should have seen this coming, and that she hadn’t was, perhaps, a true testament to how scattered her thoughts had been this past week.

Then, of course, there was the question of them —something that neither she, nor Steve had brought up yet but something that Diana could feel hovering between them all the same, nearly palpable.

And, he was right. Diana had chosen to walk away from Barbara Ann; but before then, she had spent years looking for her. One thing she hadn’t done was ask for help, unless she counted that one encounter with Napi, which, in all honesty, she didn’t. Maybe it was about the change of perspective, this time. People might have stopped dropping bombs on one another in the night, but Diana suspected that in a greater sense, the war might never end. And perhaps this wasn’t all that different from a mission, in the end.

Just like that, Diana was once again in the caves beneath her mother’s palace, illuminated by the glowing water, with Steve standing before her, clearly uncertain what to make of her unabashed scrutiny. And his words— You can do nothing, or you can do something.

A hundred years later, he would still choose to do something.

Could she really begrudge him the need to be what he was, at his core?  

Diana folded her arms on the table and smiled. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if you tried.”


If Steve expected all he’d need to do is click a few keys and flip a few pages and he’d find Barbara Ann Minerva simply because he had set his mind to it—well, he was deeply, profoundly, utterly wrong.

The day he’d offered his assistance in locating her friend, Diana had shown him the research she had done over the years—books and digital files of carefully gathered and documented sightings and encounters. Newspaper clippings that led, directly or indirectly, to whom could have been Cheetah. She had collected everything she could find on the Dreamstone and the path of destruction it had left in its wake as it made its way across the world until Diana had destroyed it. That, and any other artifacts known for similar qualities—most of them nothing but legends, not unlike the infamous Pandora’s Box or genies from Middle Eastern folklore that granted wishes in exchange for people’s souls.

Steve had even discovered some files on the pendant that had, supposedly, brought him back to the world of the living. Something that had given him pause, making him pay extra attention as he’d read the scant few pages that offered nothing that Diana hadn’t already told him.

He had spent an initial few days poring over her findings, marvelling at her scrupulous attention to detail and her admirable cataloguing skills and yet feeling entirely overwhelmed, at times wondering if he was going to drown in this all without ever figuring out how to navigate her findings. Or where to start his own search.

That, and half of the materials were in languages he didn’t speak—he should have considered that, perhaps. But, he hadn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Diana had said with an apologetic smile when she had found him staring dumbly at a manuscript in what Steve had later learned was Romanian.

He had only shaken his head, too dumbfounded and momentarily at a loss for words to come up with a coherent response.

Well, he was just going to have to deal with that.

But that was not to say that he had nothing to show for the two weeks that followed.

For one thing, Diana had gotten him identification papers. An American passport with a visa allowing Steve to live and work in France—he already knew that she held both American and French citizenships though this was the first time when he’d wondered about the legality of it—and a birth certificate that showed his real birth date, but with the year bumped up a century. For convenience, Steve suspected.

He had tried to ask her how she had made it happen, but she had been vague, merely saying that she had her ways. He had made a mental note to press for more later, too curious to let it go. Though it made sense that she would need to change her own documents every now and then, lest anyone suspect foul play and start asking questions. 

She was thinking, he realized with a touch of amazement, like a spy.

He now also had a social security number, a driver’s license, medical insurance and a bank card in his name attached to one of Diana's accounts.

Steve had balked at the latter at first, everything inside of him protesting the idea of living off of her.

“Nope, I can’t—I can’t be using your money, Diana,” he had declared firmly, and even pushed the shiny little piece of plastic away for good measure, as though it could burn him.

“Why?” she had asked, an eyebrow raised and her eyes alight with humour.

“Because you’re… because I…” He had huffed out a sigh of frustration and scrubbed his hand down his face, glowering at her a bit for good measure. “Because it’s not mine.”

She had cocked her head, and he could see that she had been trying very hard not to smile, which had only fuelled his own frustration—she’d been keeping him on his toes from the moment they’d met, and only getting better at it.

“How is it different from me simply paying for your clothes or for food?” she had reasoned.

It wasn’t different. It was worse, but he had failed to find a way to explain it to her—even in his head, his arguments had sounded less than reasonable. Something about a man being a provider and, well, being raised in the late 1800s. The Diana he had met in 1918 didn’t care much for social norms and things like that, and Steve suspected that while she had learned to blend in and not voice every thought that came to her mind the exact second it happened over the past hundred years, she was not likely to see the situation quite the way he did.

So he had chosen not to respond at all, though he suspected that his expression had spoken volumes because she had pressed her lips around a smile, shaking her head a little.

“You’re right, it’s my money,” she had conceded after a moment. “I’ve had a hundred years to earn more than enough to live comfortably. And if I want you to spend it for as long as you need it, it’s my say.”

Begrudgingly, he had tucked the card into his pocket, choosing not to dwell on how much she had seemed to be enjoying the moment for reasons he couldn’t quite understand. All these years later, and she was still impossible to argue with.

It had also gotten him thinking about what he was supposed to be doing with his life, in a broader sense. Past the Cheetah issue and all that. Diana had a job that she liked and was good at. Steve was a soldier and a spy and a pilot. Mankind still had planes. And wars, too, for that matter. Steve had decided that having one stint with the first two had been enough, but the pilot part…

Well, he was going to have to figure it out, eventually. A hundred years’ worth of wealth or not, he was not going to live off of her forever.

He had also learned to drive Diana’s car. Which was, arguably, one of the best things that had ever happened to him.

“Holy shit,” he had breathed out, jerking her car to an abrupt stop at the end of his first lesson—abrupt enough that they had been both yanked forward and her hand had darted towards him, pressing into his chest before he’d slammed into the steering wheel despite the seatbelt, dutifully buckled.

“You don’t need to go so aggressive on the brakes,” she had said.

Steve had only stared with his eyes wide.

“Holy shit,” he had repeated.

At that, Diana had leaned back and smiled that dazzling smile of hers that had kicked his heartbeat into a new gear but for a different reason.

“I knew you’d like it,” she had noted. And then she had laughed until he was laughing with her. 

He had gotten his own cell phone, too. One Saturday morning, Diana had taken him—dragged him, really—to the same shopping arcade where they had gone to purchase the clothes for him, a couple of weeks earlier, and Steve had spent a solid quarter of an hour staring at several rows of devices that, to him, all looked virtually the same.

In the end, he had pointed at the one that was just like Diana’s and a smiling young man had set it up for him, giving Steve a long and winding speech about passcodes and fingerprints and a facial recognition thing to lock and unlock it—stuff that had sounded, ironically, like something from a spy novel, no less. The thought had nearly made Steve snort.

He had looked up to share his observation with Diana who had been waiting patiently for him and the clerk to finish and had found her biting her lip, as though she knew exactly what he had been thinking.

Steve had tried to pay as much attention as he could, yet by the time they had stepped out of the store, his new phone tucked in the back pocket of his pants, Steve was certain he had forgotten everything he’d heard, feeling a little dizzy and overwhelmed.

For a week afterwards, Diana’s had been the only number he had stored in his phone. For all the seeming confusion, it had turned out to be pretty simple to navigate, once Steve had spent a couple of hours getting acquainted with it. It had brought a certain sense of comfort to him, too. He liked knowing that he could call Diana, or text her, and she would respond almost immediately, any time he needed her.

After a week—and after he had set off a smoke alarm, trying to cook dinner—Steve had added a phone number of a pizza place two blocks from Diana’s apartment as well, before his experiments had a chance to end tragically. Steve Trevor was many things, ambitious and optimistic certainly being among them, but even he knew when to admit his defeat and throw in the towel. Diana could make her own pasta from scratch. He was… not as gifted.

It was also during those first few weeks that he got to learn things about her that he hadn’t had a chance to find out before—in part, because their time together had been so brief and fractured in 1918 it would never have been possible, and in part, because she’d developed some of the routines after he had... been gone.

He was as careful and as meticulous in cataloguing these changes as she was with her research. And, he suspected, her life as well.

On most days, she would get up at dawn, like clockwork. There was a fitness center on the ground level of her building, and she liked to spend an hour or two there before work, or to go for a run in a nearby park. Usually, by the time Steve managed to drag himself out of the bed, she was already back, starting coffee in the kitchen or taking a shower. He loved how loose and relaxed she appeared to be in those moments, as though managing to shake off the weight of the world she seemed to carry on her shoulders the rest of the time.

She loved to cook and did it well—and she never burned anything.

“Anymore,” Diana had corrected him, laughing, when Steve had shared that particular observation with her. He had only huffed at that, having a very hard time imagining her be anything but perfect at whatever she put her mind to.  

She got phone calls at all hours of the day and in more languages than Steve could recognize, never once stumbling—something that he found particularly admirable, if somewhat impossible. Most were for work, though not all, and it was those that intrigued him the most. But he didn’t quite know how to ask without coming off as offensively nosey.

She always had at least a few pints of ice cream in her freezer, her favourite being chocolate, and she could easily polish off a tub without noticing while watching a movie, or after a particularly intense battle. He didn’t really know why he found her fondness for ice cream particularly endearing, yet there he was, helpless against a tug of affection.

Just like the Diana he had known before, she never hesitated to express her opinion on something, but she could get quiet, as well, withdrawing into herself. It was in those moments that he could see how little she had changed, and also how much. In ways he didn’t know how to comprehend. Sometimes, it frightened him so much — the void of time and missed moments together — that it felt like it could consume him.

She loved old movies and classical music although the radio in her car was perpetually tuned into a station with contemporary songs that he often couldn’t help but wrinkle his nose at, making her laugh each time. She worked a lot, though she would never call it a lot, Steve suspected, and while she was a computer whiz—a term he had looked up on the internet—she preferred to handle the artifacts and catalogue them herself, as much as she could.

She loved routine because so much of her life had none of it, and remembering the war, that was something he could understand and relate to. He wondered how much of her life still felt like she was fighting on the frontline.

They still slept in the same bed, though Steve wondered who was benefiting from it, exactly. To him, it felt like slow torture more than anything else, and nearly every time he woke up at night, he’d find her nearly falling off the mattress on her side while he did his absolute damned best not to fall off on his. Though once, Steve had awoken with his body pressed against Diana’s, his arm wrapped around her waist and his face buried in the mass of her hair. Drowsy, he had allowed himself to enjoy it for a second or two, hovering in the blurred world of neither awake nor asleep, before mortification had kicked in and he had scooted hastily back to his side, praying to all gods he could think of that Diana’s sleep hadn’t been disturbed and the reaction of his body that he couldn’t control had remained unnoticed.

Another time, it was her who had rolled into him at night, and Steve had awoken with her body fitted against his, her face pressed into his shoulder and her arm draped over his abdomen. He had closed his eyes again, breathing her in, revelling in the soothing warmth of her. He hadn’t dared move so as not to wake her, letting sleep claim him again. Alone in bed the next morning, he had wondered if he’d merely dreamed it.

Yet, each time he decided he was going to move to the couch in the living room, something always stopped him. Part of him feared, perhaps not unreasonably, that by doing so, he would sever the last flimsy thread of connection between them.

By an unspoken agreement, they never went to bed at the same time. And whoever woke up first—usually Diana, though Steve had beaten her to it once or twice—would never linger. He wondered if that was supposed to feel normal, natural. It didn’t, to him. And while she had been the one to keep him at arm’s length at first, now Steve was finding himself putting some space between them, looking away first when their eyes met, taking an extra step here or there so as not to touch her by accident.

It was as if the mere idea of someone— something —taking the best thing that had ever happened to him and twisting it to use it to hurt Diana was like a wall, and it seemed like the more he wanted to understand how to tear it down, the less he knew where to start.

He had a nightmare once, too. One that had yanked him out of his slumber as the acrid smell of gas burned the back of his throat, his heart hammering straight out of his chest and a soundless scream clawing its way out of his mouth. Just like that, he was on the outskirts of Veld moments after Diana had walked into the poisonous cloud of orange gas.

“Steve?”

He had jolted at the sound of her voice, turning his head to find Diana watching him, as concern pooled in her eyes, and momentarily, he had been disoriented, uncertain where he was and when. And why.

“What did you dream of?” she had asked softly after a moment.

Steve had swallowed, hard, his mouth dry and his chest heaving. He could have sworn that he could still taste that gas, feel it burn his eyes and seep into his lungs. He had sucked in a shuddering breath, feeling a little dizzy and more than a little sick.

“Veld. The orange gas,” he had murmured, hoarsely.

He had remembered it then. The way she had pushed him away when he had tried to reach for her. Get away from me! The anger and resentment in Diana’s voice . It’s not just the Germans that Ares has corrupted, it’s you, too. All the lives that could have been saved if he hadn’t stopped her from killing Ludendorff right there at the gala. Would it have changed the final outcome for him, for both of them, if she’d done that, he had wondered absently.

Steve's gaze had swept over her features as he had waited for her to remember it, too. And to recoil from him the way she had done then.

Instead, Diana had shifted closer to him. Even in the dark, he could see her eyes searching his as she reached for him, her hand threading through his hair, smoothing over his face.

“It’s over,” she had whispered, her fingers skittering along the line of his jaw. “The war is over, you’re safe, Steve.”

He had leaned into her touch, his eyes dropping closed as he had willed himself to focus on her, shutting off the rest of the world. He had wanted to ask if she’d ever dreamed of it, too. Of any of it, the death and the horrors he had dragged her through. Whatever she had experienced since then.

He had fallen back asleep with her hand still on his cheek and her voice filling the night, words of comfort whispered in the dark.

She hadn’t asked him anything the next morning, although some part of him had expected her to. He hadn’t said anything either.

She was endlessly kind to him though. And very patient. More patient than he had been towards her, in his time, Steve thought. She answered every single one of his questions and teased him incessantly about the things she had learned about him from his friends.

At times, everything felt so right that Steve could almost forget for an hour or two about all that was very wrong between them still. But most of the time, he felt profoundly lost, disconnected from his new life and uncertain as to how to change it.

He suspected she didn’t have an answer to that, either.

Then, three and a half weeks after Steve’s miraculous return, Diana went to Gotham to celebrate the birthday of Victor Stone, the Cyborg.  

And Steve finally had a breakthrough with his search. 

Notes:

It's a bit wild to reread those parts before posting when I am so far ahead in my writing, it just boggles my mind every time. There is still so much story to tell? And I'm excited about it all?

Thank you for still being around and for making it this far.

As always, your thoughts and opinions are highly appreciated :) Comments give authors life!

Please stay tuned for more, I promise it won't disappoint :)

Chapter 10

Notes:

Okay, I'm not going to say much of anything here because this is the chapter we have all been waiting for so I don't want to waste your time. Go ahead and have fun!

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

Chapter Text

Gotham, 2018

The door was yanked open the second Diana pressed the doorbell, revealing not Alfred like she expected, but Barry.

“Hey, pizza is he—” he started and cut off.

A shadow of surprise crossed his features before his face split into the widest smile Diana had ever seen.

“Di!” he exclaimed, beaming at her for all he was worth and making something tender in the centre of her chest ache with affection. “You’ve made it! Yo,” he hollered over his shoulder. “You’ll never guess who is here!” He turned back to Diana. “I thought it was the pizza guy, but you’re so much better than pizza.”

Still, he seemed to be unable not to glance past her, scanning the wide Wayne Manor driveway with an intensity he reserved mostly for food. And sometimes comic books. Which made Diana wonder, with a touch of amusement, if he had meant his last comment. (She made a mental note to maybe tease him about that later.)

Diana smiled and stepped into the foyer. “It’s good to see you, too, Barry,” she said as she wrapped her arms around him in a firm embrace, feeling the younger man clutch her back fiercely for a few moments and make her heart knock hard against her chest.

She had debated the trip until the last possible moment, choosing to neither accept nor decline the invitation, even though Barry has spent the past week pestering her about it nearly daily, first in subtle hints, before later descending into cajoling through various memes. She had plenty of excuses that she knew no one in the League would argue against—including her job and an unexpected conflict bordering on war in the Middle East that had yanked her away for a couple of days earlier that week. Not to mention the ever-present wall between her and the rest of them that no one seemed to know how to act around.

But it had felt both cowardly and selfish not to come. Not when she knew how much it would mean to Victor to have them all there, the way they used to be—even if he would never say so out loud. Not outright, at least, she suspected.

A pang of guilt arched through her chest at the thought. She had spent many a night in the past year wondering if she had made a mistake when she had decided to put some distance between herself and the rest of them. But the guilt didn’t trump the fear of watching them die one day and ripping her soul to shreds because she had allowed them in her heart. Though Diana knew, by now, that it was too late for that sentiment. She hadn’t walked away soon enough.

A burst of laughter erupted behind her and Barry—whoever was there, they didn’t seem to have heard Barry’s guess who’s here comment. And if the booming laugh was any indication, Arthur had made it on time, for once.

Diana drew back from the speedster, a wave of warmth rising in her chest.

“Is Victor here yet?” she asked.

Barry perked up. “No, Bruce is keeping him occupied at the lake house until everyone is here. So we could do the whole Surprise! thing.” He waved his hands over his head for emphasis.

Diana pressed her lips together, trying to hold back her smile.

“Wait, are you…” Barry started again, peering behind her once more. His face puckered comically in confusion. “Are you alone?”

She arched an eyebrow at him and pushed the door shut behind her. “I’m sure your food will be here any minute,” she noted, though it was doubtful he was at a risk of starvation regardless. She was certain that Alfred had learned to stock up the pantry to cater to his needs by now.

“No, I mean…” Barry trailed off, his voice dropping a notch as his eyes widened. “Your, um…” he tried again and faltered, his face scrunching as he searched for words—which was rather uncharacteristic for him, and a teasing comment was on the tip of Diana’s tongue.

It took her a moment to figure out what he was trying to say; who he was asking about. And then her stomach twisted, when the realization caught up with her, at last.

Steve. Barry was talking about Steve.

It was odd for the two worlds that had never existed in the same realm to her, to finally collide, in a way. Steve Trevor had stayed a locked-away memory for so long that it felt disorienting to have him be more than just that.

The thought of Steve brought on a jolt of wistful ache behind her ribs.

She was suddenly, and overwhelmingly, curious what else he and Barry had talked about, besides the League and the terminology that seemed to have confused Steve so, regretting not pressing for more information when she’d had a chance.

And then her curiosity dimmed, giving way to something else. 

Steve had appeared almost relieved when she had mentioned going to Gotham, his reassurance that he would be just fine while she was away hasty and forceful—as though he had been worried she might change her mind.

They had fallen into a semblance of a pattern over the past few weeks, learning to work around one another, to exist in the same space. But there was an apprehension between them that Diana didn’t quite know how to navigate, the unsaid words not unlike No Man’s Land — riddled with mines, each step a risk neither of them was willing to take.

A hundred years ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated to spill her thoughts and feelings without thinking twice. For years after his death, it had been all she wanted to do, if only she’d had a chance. Now, she didn’t even know which one of them was pushing the other away. And the more she tried to understand it, the wider the gaping void between them felt.  

Diana hadn’t checked in with him after her plane had landed, figuring they could both use a bit of space. But her desire to speak with Steve, to reassure herself that he was alright, that he hadn’t vanished into thin air the moment she had walked out the door, was almost more than she could bear.

As if on cue, her phone buzzed in the back pocket of her pants just then, making her heart skip a beat.

She made a quick calculation in her mind. A force of habit, really. It was past midnight in Paris though, and while it was not unlikely that Steve would be up and possibly needing something from her, Diana doubted it was him. She reached for her phone, all the same, her heartbeat slowing down immediately when she found an email from a fellow curator that could easily wait until morning.

She lifted her gaze up to find Barry watching her, part-flustered and part-curious.

“I mean, do you have a boyfriend now, Di?” he asked in a theatrical whisper.

She bit her lip, fighting off a smile.

“I think I need to go say hello,” she noted diplomatically, tilting her head towards the lounge and the voices coming from there—Clark, she assumed. Perhaps, Alfred. And then more laughter.

“’Cause if you do,” Barry continued hastily, the tops of his cheeks turning pink, “that’d be awesome, you know.”

She felt her throat grow tight, inexplicably, touched by the sincerity in his voice.

None of them were below teasing each other on occasion about one another’s private lives. Yet, what she was seeing in Barry’s eyes now was not that. It had been a while since she had seen genuine, unguarded earnestness. Who knew she would be so unprepared for it?

Barry swallowed visibly, fidgeting a little as he stood before her—not the first time she saw that energy of his seemingly spilling over the brim, but, perhaps, the first time it was happening on her account.

Diana opened her mouth to respond, not quite sure what she was going to say, at first. But then she was interrupted by a rapid succession of quick knocks on the door. One that had Barry whipping his head around and staring at the door as though he had never seen one before and had no idea what he was supposed to do with it.

“That must be your pizza,” Diana prompted him, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, yeah,” Barry muttered, still lingering. She waited. “I never told anyone,” he added after a moment, and mimed zipping his mouth shut, for good measure. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

Diana’s heart swelled in her chest.

She leaned forward, her lips grazing briefly over his cheek, as she whispered, “Thank you, Barry.”

When she pulled back, Barry gazed up at her with utter fondness, leaving her half certain that he might tear up a little right there and then. But then another impatient knock came, effectively diverting his attention away from the moment between them.

Diana left him to deal with the delivery person and headed towards the end of the hallway, where the voices were coming from, her eyes moving over the new carpets and the wood panelling on the walls of the hallway.

While there had been a handful of times when she had fought alongside the Justice League over the past fourteen months, it had been a while since she had come to Gotham—and made it all the way to Bruce’s house, at that.

The last time she had been by, the place had been teeming with construction workers, with piles of bricks and cement trucks all over the front lawn. For a period of time, there had been intentionally grotesque images of crumbling walls and ripped-up floors sent to their group chat — mostly by Barry— accompanied by dramatic emojis, but there had never been a final reveal and she found herself pleasantly surprised by the end result.

Where the lake house was an embodiment of “glass and concrete”, sporting sleek furniture and high-tech appliances, the Wayne Manor boasted a classical look that Diana was certain was not much different to one from Bruce’s childhood. Old-fashioned lamps and thick carpets and dark, rich colours coupled with polished hardwood floors and heavy doors she suspected Thomas Wayne would have approved of.

Diana paused in front of a painting she knew was an original James Lambert, and wondered not for the first time if restoring his childhood home had given Bruce as much peace as working on it had given him purpose.  

“Diana!” Arthur’s booming voice filled the room the second he spotted her.

He pulled her into a bear hug, and she smiled, shaking her head a little as she hugged him back. He was not drunk yet, but if she had to venture a guess, he was headed in that direction, judging by the gleam in his eyes and the empty tumbler in his hand. Perhaps, tonight was the night when she and Clark would finally settle that secret bet of theirs about whether the Aquaman was even capable of getting drunk, or if he was as impervious to alcohol as the two of them were.

“It’s good to see you, Arthur,” she said, sincerely, as she drew back.  

“Thought you’d forgotten all about us,” he grumbled, not without a hint of accusation.

“I’m sure Barry will never let that happen,” Diana pointed out.

Barry, who in that moment walked into the room with at least ten boxes of pizza—half of which, Diana knew, he was likely going to consume himself—peered around the stack in his hands.

“I heard that,” he called out.

“I think you were meant to,” Arthur snorted.

“And you love our group chat,” Barry added.

“Never said I didn’t.” Shaking her head, Diana moved towards Clark.

“I’m glad you could make it, Di,” he said, smiling, as he enveloped her in a tight embrace.

She smiled. “How could I miss it?”

Like Barry, Clark’s eyes moved over her shoulder, searching, though when their eyes met again, he merely arched an eyebrow in a silent question—something she knew he was very curious about. He was not going to bring it up here though, Diana was certain of it, so she merely shook her head a little, undoubtedly igniting Clark’s puzzlement even more.

She chose not to ponder it too deeply, her eyes moving towards Alfred who was standing by the lit fireplace, his hands folded behind his back.

“Alfred,” Diana smiled.

“It’s always a pleasure to have you around, Miss Prince,” the older man said, his lips curving into the soft smile that Diana knew he reserved for her, and her alone.

She had clearly underestimated how much she had missed them all these months, Diana thought, as she tried to breathe around the fondness that seemed to have taken up all the space behind her ribcage. Not merely their teamwork, but this. Just them all being themselves.

“What in the…” a bewildered voice started behind her, and when she turned around, she saw Victor step into the room, with Bruce following right behind him.

“SURPRISE!” Barry yelled, nearly dropping the pizza boxes as he tried to throw his hands up in the air.

Arthur groaned audibly and dropped his face into his hands.


Diana lost track of time after that—and of everything else, for that matter. More greetings and embraces were exchanged, followed by a very off-key rendition of Happy Birthday that had Victor threatening to leave and never come back. But the look of surprise on his face and the fondness in his voice made her chest constrict fiercely, and the smile that seemed to never leave his face from then on had left her throat tight with emotion.

By the time Victor made it to her, Barry and Arthur were already digging into their food, ignoring Alfred’s dry suggestion to maybe go fetch plates first. Something that the two had promptly ignored.

“Thank you for coming,” Victor whispered in her ear when she’d wrapped her arms around him.

Diana drew back and framed his face with her palms. “Of course, I wouldn’t miss it.”

He chuckled, shaking his head a little. “Missed you, Di.”

She smiled. “I missed you, too.”

“Yo,” Barry called out around a mouthful of food. “While you’re getting all sentimental over there, the pizza is getting cold.”

“Also, he’s gonna eat it all if y'all don’t hurry up,” Arthur added, chewing with gusto.

Barry’s face flushed. “Hey!” He poked the Atlantean in his chest. “That only happened once!”

“Four times, if memory serves me right,” Alfred said dryly, although not without a touch of amusement.

Barry’s jaw dropped, his expression deeply betrayed.

“Killjoy,” he muttered under his breath, the colour rising up his cheeks.

Diana’s smile widened of the will of its own, as she shook her head.

“I bet you didn’t miss that,” Clark murmured, appearing by her side with a glass of wine that he offered to her.

She hummed as she took it, nodding her thank you.

She sipped the wine, watching the usual pandemonium erupt right before her eyes—loud voices growing even louder in an argument that was going to run in circles for the next few hours, she suspected. It made her heart constrict with a fierce affection, the familiarity of it leaving her with deep longing for something she had never realized she’d missed.

Diana had feared, likely not without reason, that taking a step back from the League would pull her apart from them. She would not have faulted them if they had chosen to keep her at arm’s length, as well. That her arrival felt like nothing had changed was, perhaps, the most generous, heartfelt thing she had ever experienced, or could hope for.

“Some things never change,” she noted, making Clark chuckle.

The conversation veered towards sports as Bruce’s supply of cheap beer and high-quality liquors was drained. She hoped he was prepared for that.

For a while, Diana watched the others as she finished her wine, content to stay on the sidelines and not be dragged into the madness that she knew was bound to explode before the night was through.

She spoke with Alfred, trading news and getting caught up on the latest Gotham gossip—something that amused Diana greatly, if only because she had deemed him to be above all that in the early days of their acquaintance.

She had a chat with Victor, pleased to see the gleam of contentment in his eyes—of them all, he had had the hardest time adjusting to his “nature.” It warmed her heart to see that the confusion and self-doubt that had seemed to govern his life when they had first met was now gone, replaced with newly found purpose.

Once or twice, she caught Clark’s gaze across the room. Diana knew he had questions, their phone conversation a few weeks ago must have left him perplexed, to say the least. Truth be told, she couldn’t blame him for it. But he didn’t say anything, which left Diana wondering if she wanted him to.

She was not sure who suggested the video game tournament, and she didn’t particularly care, but the idea seemed to have sparked the brightest of interests. Unsurprisingly so, if she was being honest with herself.

She declined politely, choosing to merely observe. From her experience, she knew that was going to be entertaining enough. It was sometime during the first round that her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Diana pulled it out, surprised to see a message from Steve. If she was not mistaken, it had to be around 3 in the morning in Paris. She checked to see that the men were sufficiently occupied, screaming at the TV mounted on the wall over the fireplace, and then slipped out of the room, her half-finished second glass of wine in hand.

i may or may not have put dishwashing liquid in the dishwasher, Steve’s text read.

And then another one popped up almost immediately after the first one: in my defence – how does it make sense for a dishwashing liquid to not be suitable for a dishwasher.

Diana stepped into the room across the hall, one that turned out to be a library. That’s one of the mysteries of the modern world, she typed, feeling the warmth curl in her stomach. She didn’t even wonder why on earth he was running a dishwasher at 3 in the morning. Zeus help her, she was simply grateful for an excuse to speak with him.

it is currently snowing in your kitchen, Steve added, after another moment.

And then he texted her a slightly lopsided picture capturing mounds of foam all over the counter and most of the floor. She pressed her lips together, studying it—it did, in fact, look like the result of a few hours of snowfall.

Which got her thinking of Veld. Which got her thinking of—

The grey bubble with three dots appeared again, as he typed. i swear to god i’ll clean it up, Diana read, seconds later. but the question remains…

It did, indeed, she thought.

I wish I was there to see it, she responded, before she knew to stop herself, surprised to realize that she meant it.

He had a point, though, she could admit that much. It was not unreasonable for one to get confused over two things clearly meant for washing dishes and their incompatible nature. Diana thought of her own confusions at the start of her journey in man’s world, the social norms and the life she had stepped into so alien she had wondered if she would ever learn the right way to follow them all.

She remembered it now—trying to figure out the workings of the gas stove in Etta’s apartment, the need to be careful with the faucet in the bathroom lest she screw it right off, the suffocating feeling of a corset on her body and the burning desire to rip it off. It had felt like an embodiment of all things evil, Diana mused with a slight smile. Granted, she had only worn it once and then refused to so much as touch it, much to Etta’s frustration. She had known better than to fight Diana on it, though.

It wasn’t quite the same thing for Steve, of course. If nothing else, he was a spy, someone prepared to learn quickly, to adapt.

But all the same, Diana made a mental note to tell him about her very first encounter with a washing machine that had ended up in a bit of a flood, of sorts, and some unhappy neighbours. It had not always been easy for her, either, and maybe it would alleviate his frustration over certain technological advancements.

Behind her, an argument exploded into life, Arthur’s thunderous voice carrying across the hall.

She took a sip of her wine and moved towards the bookshelves lining one of the walls. Bruce’s mother’s collection of books that he had preserved with care, she noted as her gaze scanned the spines. His own library at the lake house contained more recent works, if she recalled correctly. Mostly non-fiction.

Her eyes snagged on a few titles by Edgar Rice Burroughs, wedged between Oscar Wild and George Orwell. Diana lifted her hand to touch them, worn leather soft beneath her fingers.

Absently, she decided that she needed to remind Steve to not put anything in the washer that didn’t belong there, unless he wanted to repeat the dishwashing experience.

She glanced at her phone, the three dots indicating that he was typing a response making her lips curve upwards at the corners and her heart flutter, followed by a pang of sadness and a touch of fear.

There was something unnatural about how they seemed to have spent the past couple of weeks dancing around one another, each step calculated, each word carefully chosen. It was not how she had imagined their reunion—and she had imagined plenty of those. But even despite all that, despite the relief she had felt over making a choice to come to Gotham and give them both a chance to find their equilibrium, she missed him. She missed him desperately, her longing like a twine, winding around her heart and making her soul ache.

Diana checked her phone again, but there were no dots beneath her message anymore. Whatever Steve had been planning on saying—well, he must have changed his mind.

She sighed and slid her phone into the back pocket of her pants, trying to ignore her disappointment.

A burst of cheers and laughter erupted from the living room, followed by a defeated “No!” and a victorious “Beat that!”

Diana chuckled under her breath. Some things never changed.

It was then that she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye and looked up, expecting to find Alfred. Instead, she saw Bruce standing in the doorway, a mostly empty glass of scotch in his hand.

It gave Diana a pause, reminding her that it had been months since they had seen each other. Save for the phone call about him getting the pendant from Constantine, they hadn’t spoken much, either. And though both of them were putting quite an effort into pretending that nothing had changed, that was hardly the case. He had barely looked her way all night—if Diana didn’t know better, she would suspect he was avoiding her.

That wasn’t Bruce’s way though. Yet, she couldn’t fault him for some hurt feelings.

She wondered sometimes if they had ever stood a chance against the impulse that had pushed them towards one another and into bed that night, almost a year ago. She suspected the pent-up tension would have found another release sooner or later, the spark of attraction that was never meant to burn bright but that had existed once, nonetheless. She preferred it to happen through sex rather than in battle, if she was being honest with herself. Less risk of taking the wrong step, of making a mistake they might have paid for greatly. She had seen that backfire before, on the night Clark had lost his life. 

But she couldn’t help but wonder if things would have been less awkward now if one of them found it in them to walk away then. If sleeping with Bruce was what had given her the final push to step back from the League, even if she had spent months trying to convince herself that it was not.

“Bruce,” she said softly.

His lips curved into a smirk and he raised his glass, as if toasting her, and took a sip, his eyes never leaving hers.

“I think they’re going to—” he started.

He was almost immediately interrupted by Barry’s: “Oh, cake!”

“—cut the cake,” Bryce finished, with a chuckle.

Diana’s features softened.

She allowed herself to study him for a few moments, taking in the circles under his eyes and the tired lines near his mouth that hadn’t been there the last time she saw him. She wanted to ask when was the last time he had slept, or had a meal that didn’t consist primarily of alcohol, or why was he so adamant to race against everything he could never outrun.

But it was not her place to do it. And even if it was, she doubted he would have told her the truth.

“It was very kind of you to let Victor have this celebration,” she said instead.

Bruce looked at her in surprise, momentarily caught off guard. Whatever he had expected from her, that was not it. Diana watched a shadow of vulnerability chase behind his eyes, but it was gone almost as soon as it appeared, replaced by something pointedly disinterested and followed by a noncommittal shrug.

“It was Barry’s idea,” he noted. “I figured it was easier to go along with it than to have him pester me about it for the next ten years.”

She nodded, pretending she believed him. For a man who hadn’t particularly appreciated having strangers in his house only a year and a half ago, he had gone to quite some lengths to make sure that said strangers were comfortable—and had enough reasons and entertainment to stick around. If anything, something was telling her that he hadn’t remodelled the Wayne Manor just for the sake of using its fifteen bedrooms himself.

“Of course, it was,” she murmured, biting back a smile.

“Be careful with those matches, Master Allen,” Alfred’s voice drifted from across the hall.

“I know, I know,” Barry dismissed him impatiently. “I’m just trying—”

“Oooh, Clark should light them up with his laser eyes!” Arthur interjected with glee.

“I really don’t think…” Clark started to protest, after a moment.

“Come on, man,” Arthur insisted.

“I think we’re missing quite the party,” Diana said, shaking her head a little.

“Yeah,” Bruce breathed. “What are the chances that they’ll burn down the house?”  

Swallowing the last of her wine, she stepped to brush past him but stopped when his fingers curled over her elbow. She glanced down at his hand and then lifted her gaze to his. He pulled his hand back but didn’t move away. His gaze swept over Diana’s face. They were going to have to have that conversation one day, Diana thought. One they should have had the morning when she had chosen to disappear instead.

An uproar of excitement erupted, signifying, she suspected, Clark’s precision.

They would talk. But not tonight.

“I’m glad you came,” Bruce said quietly.

“It was Barry’s idea,” Diane repeated his own words back to him.

He didn’t smile, like she half-expected he would. Instead, he nodded, and then downed the rest of his scotch.

“Well, at least you made it all the way over here this time,” he added.

She arched a brow at him, surprised—and dismayed, if she was being honest—that he knew about her last visit.

For a long moment, he merely held her gaze, though she failed to read it, his face a blank mask, honed to perfection over the years.

“Did you find what you wanted from Constantine?” he asked, after another few seconds.

Diana tilted her head. It didn’t surprise her that he knew she had come to Gotham a few weeks ago. She hadn’t tried hiding, seeing no reason for it, and Bruce had his way of knowing things—she would not have put it past him to have witnessed her encounter with the sorcerer from one of the rooftops. But she didn’t like that he knew of her visit. It made her wonder what else he was aware of—did he know about Steve?

She held Bruce’s gaze, trying to see past the veneer of pointed boredom while he tried very hard to pretend that he didn’t care. He would have told her, wouldn’t he? Steve was not a secret, Diana reminded herself. She had never meant to make him one, yet the mere thought of sharing this part of her life with the rest of the world made fierce protectiveness flare up in her chest. The League was one thing, but then there were the likes of A.R.G.U.S. and Amanda Waller, and gods knew who else, watching them closely.

The thought didn’t bring her any comfort.

In the early days with the League, she had made it abundantly clear that she didn’t appreciate being spied on. Bruce had seemed to have respected it. Was he still keeping the word he had given her then?

She wanted to believe he was, despite the jolt of worry stirring in her belly.

She didn’t ask, however. She merely said, “Yes.”

And then she turned away from him and continued towards the lounge.


Diana awoke at dawn, jolted out of a dream that faded the second she opened her eyes.

It left her with her heart pounding and her breath caught in her throat, all the same, the sense of loss and grief pooling in her chest, pressing her into the mattress. She didn’t need to remember it to feel the weight of it in her bones.

Her heartbeat stuttered. She closed her eyes and ran her hand down her face, struggling to find her bearings. It took Diana a moment to remember where she was—the guest bedroom at the Wayne Manor. She opened her eyes and took a breath, letting it out slowly as she searched for stillness inside of herself.

The morning was early and coloured in blues and greys, and the clouds hanging low over the trees outside the window were making it darker still.

She turned towards the other side of the bed, half-expecting to find Steve there. Unsurprisingly, it was empty. Helpless against the impulse, she reached over to trail her hand over the sheets, the back of her fingers brushing over the other pillow, soft Egyptian cotton cool against her touch.

She was so used to having him there, the sound of his breathing in the night and the smell of him on the sheets that it was a miracle she had slept at all. Even with the two feet of space, they were keeping between them at all times. Even despite the confusion of what they were. Twice, he had fallen asleep on the couch, either watching something on TV or buried in his research, and both times Diana had feared he might move there permanently, the dread taking over her at the mere thought of it devastating.

But there was no Steve here now, and while the dream still lingered in the periphery of her attention, pulling at the threads of the memories in ways she found disconcerting, it was only just that—a dream.

She sighed and picked up her phone from the nightstand. There were a couple of messages from her assistant, an email that she would need to respond to soon, but nothing from Steve.

Her gaze skated over the room, taking in the new space—before, she had only slept at the lake house. Here, the silence seemed nearly absolute.

Diana’s lips twitched a little at the corners. Alright, the early hour could, perhaps, explain the silence. It was likely not going to be the case soon enough.

But, early or not, she knew that sleep was not in the cards for her anymore, even if the rest of them wouldn’t be up for hours. She sat up in bed and pushed the covers aside, thanking all gods she could think of for her immunity to the effects of excessive alcohol consumption. Not all of them, she knew, would wake up fresh, rested, and headache-free, today.

She reached for her phone, briefly considering texting Steve, but then set it down again. If he needed her, he would reach out. Diana let out a breath and rubbed the corners of her eyes. How long would she feel like this, she wondered. Waiting for him to be snatched away the moment she left him out of her sight. There was no reason for it, only her panic that she didn’t seem to be able to get under control.

Shaking her head, she slid out of the bed. There was an en-suite bathroom in her room. She took a shower and then found a change of clothes in her bag and got dressed as the light continued to brighten, ever so slightly, chasing away the fog that was hanging close to the ground. Afterwards, she followed the maze of corridors back to the main stairwell and down to the ground level.

She hadn’t had a chance to properly pay attention to what Bruce had done to the house the night before, save for the library and the lounge, but there was nothing stopping her from doing it now. The first place she came across was the study, though if she had to guess, it was not in use—Bruce, she knew, had one back at the lake house, and he preferred to spend most of his time in the Batcave anyway.

She found the kitchen empty, and too clean to be used often. When she reached the lounge, at last, she was surprised to find it tidied up. No empty bottles, no pizza boxes or dirty dishes. Not Alfred’s doing, she thought, as he had been the first to retire for the night. Bruce had left next, though Diana suspected most of his night had been spent on the streets of Gotham. He had once told her that he found patrolling therapeutic. Having to stay focused had a comforting effect on him, it seemed.

She had been the one to leave next, once the main entertainment had moved on to some form of a drinking game.

Her gaze swept over the room, but the only sign of the party that had taken place there the night before was a couch that appeared to be sitting slightly askew, and a fork, forgotten on a side table.

It was Alfred who had shown Diana to her room the previous evening. She didn’t know where the rest of them slept, and whether Clark had stayed or chosen to fly back to Metropolis, but for how quiet it was, she might as well have been the only person in the house.

The thought was strangely unnerving.

She headed back into the foyer and pulled the heavy door open, greeted by the chilly air that smelled strongly of snow even though it was only October and the cold was not likely to fully settle in for at least a month. Diana breathed it in, marvelling at the freshness of the air and the soft morning sounds that one could only find far away from the hustle and bustle of the city. And then she stepped outside and started towards the lake house in hopes of finding coffee, and maybe company.

There was a degree of comfort to discovering Bruce’s home to be exactly as it had been the last time she’d seen it. It was as still and as quiet as the Manor, albeit without the Manor’s grandeur, and the familiarity of it chased away the remnants of her unease. There had been a time when Diana had prided herself on her ability to adapt to the newness of the world around her, but lately, she found herself craving routine more than she ever had before.

She was not surprised to find Alfred awake and in the kitchen already, with a cup of tea and the morning newspaper splayed open before him on the table, his glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Unsurprised, but deeply pleased.

He looked up when Diana walked in, his expression softening in a way that made her heart squeeze with affection.

“Miss Prince,” he said as he adjusted his glasses. His gaze flickered towards the clock on the wall. “You’re up early.”

“Jetlag,” Diana said, knowing that he would never press for more than what she was willing to offer. “Must be still living on Paris time.”

The older man nodded and closed the newspaper. He cleared his throat and made a move to stand up.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked. “Or, perhaps, coffee?”

But Diana was already shaking her head, waving him off as she headed towards the kettle.

“Tea would be nice,” she admitted. “But I’ll get it. Thank you, Alfred.”

He hesitated but then nodded and lowered back down in his chair while Diana fetched a cup from a rack near the sink and a box of teabags from a cupboard. The coffeemaker was already on, she noted absently, undoubtedly waiting for Bruce to shuffle in. And maybe for Arthur, for that matter.

Unbidden, her gaze drifted towards the hallway and the staircase leading down to the Batcave at the end of it, her brows knitting together on a will of their own.

“He’s not up yet,” Alfred noted casually as he opened his newspaper again, his gaze cast down.

Diana sighed and took a seat across from him.

“I don’t suppose he’s been taking good care of himself lately,” she muttered, dunking the teabag in her mug.

Alfred glanced at her over the rims of his glasses, but while his expression remained even, almost unreadable, his eyes were kind. And more tired than Diana ever remembered seeing them.

“You know how Master Wayne is.”

“I do.”

Her palms curled around her cup. Diana didn’t feel cold the way people did, and the house was reasonably warm, but she couldn’t help but shiver a little.

“Miss Prince? Is everything alright? You seem…”

When she looked up, she found Alfred studying her, his eyes piercing behind his glasses.

“You look like you have something on your mind,” the older man added as he sipped his tea.

Where do I even start, Diana thought.

“I hope we weren’t too much trouble last night,” she said, and Alfred chuckled under his breath.

“No more than usual.”

She smiled at that, feeling herself relax, at last.

Alfred set his cup down.

“You know, Master Wayne started doing what he is doing to confront his fears,” he said, after a moment. Diana tilted her head, surprised—and maybe caught off-guard—by how wistful he sounded. She had long learned that Alfred could be very observant, but he was also quite private. It was not very often that he would let his feelings be known. “I’m glad he no longer has to face them on his own,” Alfred noted. And then added, “Even if it gets messy sometimes.”

Diana hummed, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth at that.

One would need to have an endless supply of patience to deal with the League for long stretches of time and especially when they weren’t on their best behaviour. Ironically, just the thought of it made Diana miss them all something fierce.

She wondered if Alfred thought less of her for choosing to put some distance between herself and the rest of them, for being too scared to stay, even if he was too polite to let it show.

She wondered, too—and not for the first time—if he knew about what had happened between her and Bruce that one night, a long time ago. Diana doubted Bruce would have shared it with anyone, and she had been careful to leave before anyone in the house was up. But Alfred had his way of noticing things, of seeing more than people were willing to let on.

He would never allow himself to speak of it though, she was certain of it. But Diana didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

“Though, to be fair, I think you are a good influence on them, Miss Prince,” Alfred added, after another moment. “Can’t say I’m not grateful for that.”

“Small victories,” Diana smiled.

It was a full hour before Barry shuffled into the kitchen, yawning and blinking blearily. For all intents and purposes, he looked like someone had shoved him out of the bed without bothering to actually wake him up. He scrunched his face against the daylight and yawned again.

By then, Diana had found a spot at the counter and was busy trying to make pancake batter happen, despite Alfred’s protests about having his job taken away from him. Though, he had recovered quickly and busied himself with prepping the makings of an omelette and pulling bacon and cheese out of the fridge.  

Diana’s eyes slid over Barry’s bunny slippers, an unbidden smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

“Did you sleep well, Barry?” she asked.

He groaned and draped himself dramatically over the counter. “Never again,” he muttered, and Diana bit her lip around a smile.

“What happened to your metabolism being too fast for alcohol, Master Allen?” Alfred inquired casually.

Barry popped one eye open. “Yeah, yeah. Go on, kick me when I’m already down.” And then he lifted his head when he spotted a cereal box sitting before his nose. “Oh, Cheerios!”

“So easily cured,” Alfred murmured, low enough that only Diana heard him.

“Would you like some pancakes?” she asked over her shoulder.

By then, Barry was already pulling a jug of milk from the fridge. Still, he perked up visibly at her offer as he splashed some into a bowl.

“I could eat some pancakes,” he confirmed, shoving a spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

“Evidently,” Alfred noted.

Arthur made an appearance next, just as bleary-eyed as Barry even though the time was nearing 10 in the morning—rather late, by Diana’s standards; probably, the crack of dawn for him. He grunted as a way of a greeting and shuffled over to the coffee maker.

Diana wondered with amusement if he was going to forego a cup altogether and chug coffee right out of the pot. He seemed to be considering that, if his grimace was any indication, but then he spotted her and, heaving a sigh, reached instead for Bruce’s favourite mug. Alfred opened his mouth to point that out before thinking better of it, in the end. Probably sensing the futility of it.

By the time Victor showed up, there was a pile of bacon waiting on a plate by the stove and pancakes piling up on another one. Diana put him and Barry to work setting the table. Clark walked in next, followed closely by Bruce who had his phone pressed to his ear as he spoke quietly into it. He paused in the doorway, surveying the carefully controlled chaos in his kitchen before he headed toward the coffee maker while Clark reached for the cutlery drawers, easily picking up on what still needed to be done.

Bruce’s eyes swept briefly over Diana as she carried the pancakes to the table. He peeked into the cupboard and frowned, before he looked around the kitchen. She noticed the exact moment when he spotted his mug in Arthur’s hand, his eyes narrowing a little. His jaw tightened in annoyance. She wondered if he was going to demand it back and whether she was going to have to break up a fight, but he only heaved a weary sigh and grabbed the one closest to him instead. He emptied the coffee pot into his mug and started a new one, muttering something about rebuilding the Wayne Manor, and for what? So that they could all pile into his kitchen every time they were over.

“You like it more than you want to admit,” Diana hummed quietly as she joined him at the counter.

He sipped his coffee, his gaze darting from the argument between Barry and Arthur to the skillet and butter sizzling on it to the boxes of cereal that she knew he didn’t actually eat.

He looked, to her satisfaction, surprisingly refreshed, his hair still slightly damp from the shower. She didn’t particularly like the dark circles under his eyes but knew her comment about that wouldn’t be welcome. She chose not to ask him if he went on patrol the previous night, either.

“How would I know that if they never seem to leave?” Bruce muttered into his coffee.

She turned on the burner beneath the kettle.

“One might say that keeping their favourite food around only encourages them,” she said, not bothering to hide her smile now.

“You’re right, I should starve them out,” he agreed, before he moved on to grab a plate and find a seat.

Diana glanced over her shoulder at them, milling around the table, half-started and half-finished conversations about movies and sports and the bad guys they’d dealt with recently filling the air and making her heartbeat stutter a little. She wondered if Bruce wanted to have a meeting about the League, while they were all here, and made a mental note to ask before she moved on to dealing with her job and attending to a few personal affairs. Like making contact with an auction house in Gotham that she knew would have some interesting items.  

Her phone rang just as she was about to take her seat. She plucked it from the back pocket of her pants without thinking anything of it, certain it was Celeste. Undoubtedly about that text that Diana had yet to respond to.

“Yes?” she said as she poured herself more tea.

“Hey,” a voice said on the other end, making Diana pause as her heart knocked against her chest.

Diana set the tea down and glanced at the table. No one appeared to be paying her any attention—they all seemed to be fighting over a breadbasket.

She walked over to the glass door and slid it open, stepping onto the deck overlooking the lake and into the chill morning, the sky above her overcast and the wind blowing from the water chilly. Had she been human, she knew she would be shivering without a jacket.

“Steve,” she said quietly once the door was shut once more, cutting off the noise and commotion—and the risk of being overheard. “Is everything alright?”

“No more foamy emergencies,” he reported eagerly.

“Well, that’s a good start, I suppose.”

There was a smile in her voice, she knew, that made him chuckle a little on the other end.

Steve paused then, aware that it was not her kitchen she was asking about, his flippant joke falling flat between them.

“Anything else?” Diana prompted, after a moment.

“It’s awfully quiet here, without you,” he said, softly.

A confession that had the air rushing out of her, her chest tight in an instant.

Two days ago, the plan to come here had felt like something they had both needed, but the sound of his voice left her aching for him so fiercely she could barely breathe around it. Diana closed her eyes and willed the storm of worry inside of her to settle before it had a chance to sweep over her.

The pause started to stretch between them. It stretched, and stretched, and stretched, and she still didn’t know what to say.

Perhaps, it had been a mistake to leave with everything still feeling so tentative between them.

She opened her eyes, her gaze meeting the expanse of still water before her.

In the receiver, she heard Steve clear his throat.

“You have a moment?” he asked.


Prague, 2018

If anyone asked Steve Trevor what the most remarkable thing about the twenty-first century was, he would, without a hint of doubt or hesitation say — Diana. That she had managed to create a life on the ruins he had left behind when he had, quite literally, blown up their future together, to carve out a place for herself in the world she didn’t always understand and adapt to it as time went on was something that he couldn’t stop marvelling at.

When they had first met, he had been jaded and exhausted and teetering on the brink of giving up and succumbing to the darkness that had swallowed so many around him. On the boat taking them to his world, Steve had wondered if she would fall into the same pit of despair, eventually, after she faced the horrors the likes of which she could never have imagined living on her paradise island. If the idolized image of humanity she had been walking with into the war would shatter, and break something inside of her along with it.

He remembered wanting to protect her from it, from the fate that had befallen many. Even before it had occurred to him that he was falling for her, there had been a desperate need to shield her from everything that had nearly destroyed his own soul.

Yet, here she was, her faith in mankind a little frayed at the edges and her heart no longer worn on her sleeve, but still so very Diana, he could hardly believe it.

He wondered—had been wondering for a while now—when the change in her had started to occur. Was it when the second war arrived, a mere two decades after they had stopped the first one? Or when the people closest to her had started to age and die, and she was faced with the helplessness of not being able to stop it, her divinity and immortality meaning nothing in the face of the natural progression of a human life? Or when a magic rock stolen by yet another maniac with a greed for power had turned something dear to her into a curse?

Or had it happened on the airfield, not far from destroyed Veld, when Steve had gone and broken her heart? Or even earlier still—when he had prevented her from stopping Ludendorff?

He tried very hard not to think of it being the latter, his guilt over it overwhelming.

Yet, none of it had stolen her kindness or taken away her goodness or stripped her of her faith that people deserved saving even when they couldn’t seem to stop trying to destroy themselves. And that, more than anything, was a true testament to all the love and light and compassion that she carried inside of her.

(He wondered, too, if it was what had saved her, in the end, though he was aware that grief and loss had not left her unmarked, all the same. He feared that maybe after everything he had seen and done and was complicit in, he was beyond saving.)

The second most remarkable thing in the future, in Steve’s very humble opinion, was the cars. Though, admittedly, it was only Diana’s that he was closely familiar with. But it didn’t take away from the fact that all of them, every single one he had laid his eyes on so far, had looked like something out of a sci-fi book. With all those controls and speed and how shiny they looked.

And then, a few days after Diana had left for Gotham as he was on his way to Prague, he decided that the third place on the list belonged to commercial flights.

He’d had to put quite a fair bit of effort into not staring around with his mouth agape—the way he had been staring at many things, truth be told. He wished, desperately, that Diana was there with him, though he suspected she was well aware of the comfort of air travel that he couldn’t have even begun to imagine a hundred years ago. Even if the meals they served were beyond subpar—and that was coming from someone who had been forced to live off cold beans and stale rations and coffee that wasn’t actually coffee for close to two years. Long enough to admit that even a piece of tree bark could sometimes taste better than what the commanding officers distributing their rations had been trying to label as food.

That his search would take Steve outside of France was no surprise—the story had not started out there, after all. All the data that Diana had collected and that he had spent the past few weeks poring over had come from quite a number of places, the geographical locations throwing Steve off, somewhat, but the similarities between the accounts too glaring to ignore.

That he would pursue it with the dogged determination that had defined his service as a spy had to be expected as well, he suspected. Driven by the urge to be useful, needed, helpful, he saw no other way out of it but to see it through to the end, one way or another.

That he would end up power-walking, and then running, and then sprinting from two security guards with yet another journal tucked into the inner pocket of his jacket—well, the irony of it certainly was not lost on him.

It was, perhaps, a good thing that there was no plane that he’d likely be tempted to steal close at hand.


It took Steve all of three hours to accept the fact that no one was going to break down the door to his hotel room and drag him out, handcuffed, for… well, temporarily confiscating something that no one had given much care about for the past decade, give or take—if the layer of dust was any indication. Or the lack of proper markings on the journal. Or the fact that it had been stashed in a part of the university archives that wasn’t visited very frequently, by his guess.

Steve flipped through it once, wrinkling his nose. A century later, and some things never changed.

He set it aside, then picked it up again, his eyes moving over uneven lines and words scribbled in a scrawl he doubted he would understand even if he knew the language.

His gaze darted towards his phone.

After checking into the hotel, he had texted Diana where he was staying. She had yet to respond, but he reasoned with himself that she was probably busy. Probably with something more important than his whereabouts.

Steve sighed and looked around the room. It was reasonably spacious and comfortably furnished, with a desk and a couple of chairs and a bed that took up most of it. There was a small fridge in the corner—Steve had never seen one so tiny before—and a flat TV mounted on the wall. He even had his own bathroom, right there in the room, instead of a communal one on the floor for everyone to use, like in most boarding houses he’d stayed before. The place was nice, the sheets fresh and crisp, smelling very faintly of a detergent. It was, if Steve was being honest with himself, a much nicer room than any place he had ever lived, in his time.

When he’d first decided to make this trip, like everything else he’d faced so far, he’d been overwhelmed by how much harder, and yet also easier , it was to plan travel now. It had taken him a couple of days to figure out how it all worked. The prices for both the tickets and hotels ranged so widely he had thought it was a mistake, at first. How could the same thing cost so little and yet so much on a different website? 

He had spent a full day navigating fares and checking and double-checking the dates and reading reviews from people with strange names, like KermitTheFrog59 or Thor1234 (and what was wrong with using your own name, anyway?) until he had finally given up and just called Diana again, and had her walk him through the basics. He would have felt pretty awful about it, helpless and confused about something that was likely mundane to her, had it not been for an excuse to hear her voice. 

However, when she had asked if he’d rather wait for her return, Steve had rejected it, and quite adamantly, too. He wanted to prove to her, as well as to himself, that he was not a burden, that he was capable of doing something that pretty much everyone could do without thinking twice about it. 

She would not have faulted him for waiting for her, Steve knew, but knowing that only made it worse. He already felt like an inconvenience more often than not, and he didn’t want to keep making her feel like she needed to literally lead him every step of the way whatever he was doing. 

Although he had been beyond grateful when she had simplified the entire process, telling him which fare was acceptable and which was a rip-off and what hotels to choose from for his stay. 

It had been a breeze after that.

He tried not to think too much of the smile in her voice and how he’d kept getting distracted by it, forcing her to repeat some things twice. 

Steve glanced out of the window at the old town buildings and the two church spires beyond them, shooting up into the grey sky, and tried very hard not to think of the fact that the last time he was in a hotel of any kind, it was in Veld, with Diana.

And then, of course, he started thinking about Diana and the way she had been, then. Her voice a low husk in his ear and her hand moving over his skin and way it felt when she—

Steve shook his head and picked up the journal once more, determined to keep busy and not let his mind wander in that direction. He checked his phone again—still nothing—and then, stumbling a couple of times, found a dictionary, deciding that he might as well try to make some sense of his find, so to speak. Keep himself occupied with something other than thinking of… well…

He was still on the first page, making little to no progress (much to his frustration), and his second bag of potato chips he had packed and brought with him when something caught his attention on the TV mounted on the wall that he had turned on for company, keeping the sound low. Frowning, he pushed back from the desk and looked up, catching the sight of a familiar red and blue blur, laced with shimmering gold of the Lasso of Hestia.

Diana.

Steve’s heartbeat tripped over itself as he fumbled with the remote. Admittedly, turning the sound up made little difference—the broadcast and the line running at the bottom of the screen were in Czech. He only gathered that the report was coming from Brussels. And that something bad had happened, if the crumbling building with a cloud of dust hanging around it was any indication.

Steve stared at it, transfixed, reminded of the church tower in Veld and Diana launching at it and demolishing it as though it was made of papier-mâché.

The memory of that day was so bright it startled him. With everything that had happened lately, it was strange to realize that he had watched Diana cross No Man’s Land and liberate Veld only four weeks ago. Stranger still, to know that he had known her for a little under five.

Did she still remember it all? Or had those early days gotten buried under a mountain of other experiences and memories she held close to her heart? Was there anything that she had put effort into forgetting, Steve wondered. And if yes, was he one of those things?

It was suddenly unbearable that he didn’t know any of that.

When Steve’s attention snapped back, he was startled to notice that it was not only Diana he could see behind a reporter with a pinched face and furrowed brows. There was a flickering blur of red that had to be the Flash and the polished metal of the Cyborg. The camera never stayed focused on one spot for long, but Steve could swear he’d caught a golden glimpse of a trident somewhere there as well.

Instinctively, he leaned closer to the screen, feeling more than a little foolish for it but unable not to do it, as though it could help him see something. As though it could help him step through the glass and right onto the cobbled street alight with the flashes of red and yellow light from the fire tracks.

But just as he felt like he was about to piece together exactly what he was seeing, something important maybe, the news report ended, switching to one about a football game.

Steve blinked, perplexed by the suddenness of it, his mind reeling. He grabbed the remote and flicked through the channels until he found a similar report by a different broadcaster. It felt surreal, to both watch it at the same time as it was happening—something that would be unimaginable in his time—and to feel that odd familiarity towards the people involved in the clean-up.

He wondered if everyone felt that way, with all the technology and the news readily available the second it was happening and not only learning about it the following morning. (And that was only if newspapers were quick enough.)

He suspected they didn’t. He suspected that people took it for granted, as just another part of life.

He kept the TV on after that, the volume turned up, even though he still couldn’t understand a word. When he wasn’t trying to find Diana, or spot the other members of the Justice League zooming in and out of view, Steve noticed several ambulances with stretchers being loaded into them, though he couldn’t gauge how badly people were injured.  The police had cordoned off the area, pushing the reporters further away from it. 

Eventually, the channels moved on to something else. Something more urgent and more interesting and, well, new. But even as darkness fell outside, forcing him to flip the switch and turn on the light, Steve was reluctant to let go and just turn the TV off. Not even knowing that staring at it was pointless, at best—it wasn’t like he could do anything, change anything. It wasn’t like he could help.

It was no wonder Diana hadn’t answered his text. He hadn’t tried again, knowing that she had more pressing issues at hand to deal with. Though that did little to alleviate his feeling of being useless.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, thinking of how that was her life—zooming in and out of tragedies. Not that different from what it had been like, in 1918. He sat there long enough for the stiffness to creep into his back. He straightened up and rolled his shoulders, wincing as he did so.

It occurred to him then that, save for the chips and the aircraft meal that he had barely touched, he hadn’t had much to eat all day. His stomach was still in knots and truth be told, he didn’t feel all that hungry, but maybe he could—

Steve snapped his head up when he heard a delicate tap on the door. He stared at it for a moment, listening carefully. Maybe the police had come for him, after all. Would they have tracked him down just for borrowing that journal? (Honest to god truth, he was only going to have a look.) His heart tap-tap-tapped against his ribs.

The knock came again, and it was only then that he finally realized that it was coming from the wrong direction.

He swivelled his head towards the balcony, half convinced that he was probably, maybe, very likely losing his mind. Yet, it somehow was not surprising at all to find her standing on the other side of the pane of glass.

Diana.

Waiting patiently for him to find his bearings in a space roughly the size of her living room.

Steve nearly leaped up from the chair. He crossed the room in two swift strides and slid the door open, letting in the cool air and the smell of rain, half certain that he was seeing things simply because he wanted her to be there so badly.

She was still wearing her armour, her shield and her sword affixed behind her back, her Lasso hanging at her hip, no longer glowing. Even though it was early November and the night was chilly, it didn’t appear to be bothering her in any way whatsoever.

He tried to remember the moments immediately after they had crossed No Man’s Land and whether she had looked just as composed then as she did now. If he didn’t know that she had spent the past several hours pulling people from under a collapsed building and clearing a path for the medics to get to those who couldn’t be moved, Steve would have assumed she was merely enjoying a night out.

Granted, he doubted she would have worn her armour then.

He wondered how often she made entrance through balcony doors that weren’t her own, but there was likely no proper way to ask that.

At last, he cleared his throat. “Diana,” he said, tasting her name on his tongue and feeling a little dumb for it.

“Hi,” she said and tilted her head, her eyes searching his.

Steve felt the air rush out of his body, the jolt of heat surging through his veins—a reaction that should have stopped surprising him, but likely never would.

“Is that alright if I…?” Diana started, after another moment.

His eyes widened and he stepped back hastily so she could come inside. “Yeah. Yes. Of course, I just—” he stopped there, not sure where he was going. I just can’t think straight when I’m looking at you— somewhere along those lines, perhaps. “I thought you were…” He trailed off, gesturing vaguely towards the TV where her Lasso whipped across the screen as a news program started to replay one of the earlier broadcasts.

It was surreal to see her there, lifting a piece of brick wall as though it weighed nothing, and to also have her standing right before him, fine mist clinging to her hair.

Diana’s gaze followed his, a faint frown appearing between her brows. Steve watched her press her lips into a tight line, but her attention didn’t linger. He watched her eyes move over his room, pausing on his bag he had left by the closet and the bathroom door that stood ajar and then on that half-finished bag of chips, making Steve wish he hadn’t left it on the desk, although he wasn’t sure why.

Suddenly, he found himself overcome with the sense of déjà vu—with her standing in the middle of a hotel room and him hovering at the door. Never mind that it was a balcony door this time.

Steve slid it shut all the same, goosebumps rising along his arms.

“I didn’t know you’d be coming here,” he blurted out, watching her survey her surroundings.

Prague, he knew, wasn’t on her way back to Paris. When did she even have time to read his text, he wondered, and know where to find him.

Diana turned to him. “I didn’t know I’d be coming here, either,” she admitted, quietly. “I hope that’s alright.”

Steve nodded. And then nodded once more.

He wanted to ask her what had happened, at the church, and ask how they’d gotten there so fast—Gotham was, after all, quite a bit away from Brussels. He wanted to tell her he had found something. Kind of. Maybe. He hadn’t gotten far in trying to translate the journal to know for sure. But he wanted to believe—

He did neither of those things. He just stood there and stared at her after barely allowing himself to so much as look her way for quite some time.

He wondered if she had found out, somehow, that he had stolen something—well, borrowed —and had come to save him before he had a chance to get into real trouble over it. It was hard to imagine how she would have found out, but he suspected that she had her ways, all things considered. Though that thought didn’t linger, so ridiculous it was.

She was not a mind reader… was she?

“Yeah, it’s alright,” Steve said. “Of course, it is.” More than, he wanted to add, but there was a very good chance he already looked a bit desperate. There was no need to sound it.

He raked his hand through his hair, trying to think of the last time he was at a loss for words around her.

Always, from day one, perhaps. But not to the same degree.

“Would you like to—” Steve started, his gaze moving around the room. He felt the heat creep up his neck when it occurred to him that his bed was taking up most of the space. He slid his hands into the pockets of his pants and grimaced inwardly. “Well, I’ve got water.”

At that, Diana smiled, the tense lines around her mouth finally smoothing out. She pressed her lips together, humour dancing behind her eyes and making his heart slam hard against the inside of his ribs again and again in hollow thuds.

“I think I’m fine.”

“Right. Sure.”

He nodded once more, suspecting that his neck might get unhinged any moment now.

“Would you like to stay here tonight?” he offered, softly.

Diana gazed up at him in surprise. He could see she hadn’t considered that.

“No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t want to impose,” she added, when Steve’s brows furrowed in confusion. “Bruce was going to drop my things off on the way back, but I wanted to make sure…” She trailed off, as a small frown of her own made an appearance once more.

He was not used to that, to having her choose her words carefully. To holding back. 

He wished he could see her better, but the reading lamp by the bed didn’t provide enough light, her face streaked with shadows.

“What happened?” Steve asked, jerking his chin towards the TV even though it was currently showing some commercial about mops or buckets or maybe dogs. There was a dog there. But also a mop. He didn’t get the connection.

Unable to stand it, he picked up the remote and turned it off.

Diana pressed her lips into a thin line. She wasn’t looking at him, her gaze trained unseeingly on the night outside the window and the flickering lights of the city.

“Someone wanted to hurt people, and they found a good way to hurt many at once.”

Her voice was laced with carefully contained rage, and Steve wondered if she’d gotten a chance to find that someone and make them pay for it. God help that poor son of a bitch if she had.

He was about to open his mouth and ask when something caught his attention. A streak of dark on her skin, near the curve of her shoulder.

Without thinking, he moved towards her, his hand reaching out to brush her hair aside. His stomach turned cold, twisting with a sick feeling.

“You’ve got blood here,” he murmured, his throat tight.

“Steve, it’s…”

But he was not listening. He ducked into the bathroom, grabbing a washcloth from the lip of the sink. When he returned to the room, a wet washcloth in hand, Diana had already removed her shield and sword, propping them against the desk, and was trying to crane her neck to see what he was talking about.

“Let me,” he said, brushing her hair aside once more, grateful for the better access without her shield getting in the way. He ran the washcloth carefully over her skin.

“I don’t think it’s mine,” Diana said quietly.  

He nodded, though she couldn’t see it, and tried very hard to focus on a task at hand and not the feeling of her skin beneath his fingertips and the warmth of her body and that faint scent that he was certain he would recognize even if he was dead. Ocean and sunshine and something underneath it that was making his heart beat faster.

There was nothing beneath the smudge of blood, her skin smooth. Even if she had been injured or hurt, she had long healed. Or it had indeed been someone else’s blood.

Steve lowered the washcloth but didn’t step away, his other hand resting lightly on her shoulder. He closed his eyes, breathed her in, his mouth suddenly dry and his mind swimming.

He sensed rather than saw Diana move, and when he opened his eyes, she had turned around, her gaze fasted on his and their faces mere inches apart. In her greaves, she was almost as tall as him, their eyes level.

“Why did you come here?” he asked, his voice a barely audible whisper.

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No, I… That’s not what I…” He stopped; swallowed. “Why are you here, Diana?”

“I wanted to see you.” There was no hesitation in her response. “I watched people die today, and I needed…” she faltered. She took a shaky breath, her dark eyes never leaving his.

Blood roared in his ears. Steve’s gaze dropped down, to the bow of her mouth, her lips slightly parted. The air was pulsing around them, not quite the way it had before. He thought he understood what she’d meant.

He wished he could reach for her Lasso, to have it pull the words out of him that he couldn’t quite grasp otherwise. Too many, too disjointed, every confession he had never made on the tip of his tongue.

Steve dropped the washcloth on the table, lifting his hand to trace the curve of her shoulder with his fingers. He heard her breath hitch, his pule tripping over itself at the sound of it. Felt Diana's hand on his face, fingertips skittering down her cheek. 

“Diana,” he breathed, and swallowed, his heart suddenly ten times its size behind his ribs. 

She traced her thumb along his bottom lip and lifted her gaze to his. 

He didn’t know which one of them leaned forward. He felt her breath on his lips, her eyes flicking between his, the moment hanging between them, charged with things that had no name.

Her fingers curled around a fistful of his shirt as she tugged him closer, her mouth chasing his. The shock of it felt like a spark of electricity, jolting him to awareness.

The suddenness of it had his heart stuttering, but his hesitation was brief and fleeting before he was kissing her back, cajoling her lips to part beneath his. It was slow and deep and wanting, and he could still feel the fire race through his system, scorching all reason along the way.

His body reacted immediately, tight heat curling in the pit of his stomach. He knew that Diana noticed it too when he pulled her flush against him, a soft gasp falling from her lips. He felt a shiver run down her body when his hands moved up her arms, over her back, and he wondered if this was real. He had thought of doing just this so many times, he could barely tell the difference.

He kissed her until they were both breathless, his chest heaving against hers when she drew back. One of her hands was still clasped into a tight fist around the fabric of his shirt, the other one curled around the back of his neck.

Steve closed his eyes, dropped his forehead against hers. He hadn’t noticed that he had backed her into the desk, her body pressed close against his.

“Diana—”

“I love you,” she murmured against his lips. He felt her brush a ghost of a kiss to the corner of his mouth as her hands dropped down to curl over his hips. She opened her eyes, found his gaze. “I should have told you sooner…”

He lifted his hand to her face, cutting her off with another kiss, a hungrier and more desperate one.

“Yes,” she breathed when he shifted his mouth to her throat, giving him a permission that sent fire through his blood.

Steve remembered, vividly, stumbling a little the first time he had taken her armour off of her, in 1918, his hands unsteady on the buckles keeping it in place.

There was no fumbling this time. 

Notes:

YAY!!... Right?

Gosh, I'm so happy we finally crossed that bridge :)

Okay, a few things. First, I changed the rating of this story to M. Not much has happened yet but there will be that sort of content later on, so - just to be safe.

Second, I am happy to say that I'm almost done with the first draft of this whole fic. I still have a few scenes to complete and then I'll need to edit it all (and then akajb is going to do a sweep, and then I'll edit it some more) but it's getting there. At least I can tell you that it will have 28 chapters + epilogue :) And it only took me about 14 months to spit it out. (Was almost 22 with A Road Paved in Gold, and they are essentially the same length - oops). Now let's hope I'll stick to actually posting it all?

Third, the next few chapters will be self-indulgent and shippy and I regret nothing! I hope you'll enjoy them :)) The plot will resume eventually.

As always, comments are much appreciated and I'll love you forever!

Thanks again for sticking around, I hope you'll stay to see what's coming next. After all, we're only 1/3 done :)

Chapter 11

Notes:

Hey, folks. Glad to be back with yet another update :)

Thank you so much for your amazing support! I'm glad to know that so many of you are enjoying this story. As promised, the next few chapters will be entirely shippy, I hope you are going to like them :)

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

Chapter Text

Steve would be lying if he said that he never thought about his last moments in 1918, the gun clutched too tightly in his shaking hand and the wind tearing through the cockpit of the plane, tugging at his hair and making him shiver even in his heavy wool coat.

It had been easy, to a degree, to make that decision while down on the ground. Someone needed to do it; someone needed to stop the plane from wiping half of the country off the face of the Earth. And he could do it—it had been as simple as that. Diana had come to his world, claiming that it was her mission to stop this war, but Steve was no fool. She was something he had no understanding of then, but even with her strength, she couldn’t be in two places at once.

So he had climbed into that plane to buy her a few precious moments, to give her a chance to complete her mission and save them all. She had made her sacrifices, had left her home behind, had come into a world that had known nothing but darkness and violence for so long that Steve had started to believe it was beyond redemption. 

Now it was his turn.

There, with the black sky stretching before him as though it was trying to swallow him whole, he had wondered if it was going to hurt. If dying was meant to feel like anything at all. He had seen enough death for five lifetimes, had seen the light go out in people’s eyes. But that had never given him the answer to his question. And now he was going to find it out for himself.

Steve Trevor didn’t remember dying. He didn’t remember feeling much of anything at all, just the black sky closing over him and the smell of metal and fuel around him. And then—nothing.

Which was, perhaps, the exact opposite of what he was feeling right now, his heart hammering away in earnest and his blood flowing in his veins faster than it ever had before and his breathing nowhere to be found.

“This is not why I came here tonight,” Diana said, her voice drawing him out of his thoughts.

Steve blinked, her face coming into focus as he did so.

He was sprawled on his back, one arm tucked under his head while the room continued to sway a little around him. It reminded him, in a way, of waking up on the boat in the middle of the night, under the dark canvas of sky dotted with stars, and not knowing straight away where he was. Not until he had turned and found Diana sleeping next to him.

Beside him now, Diana was stretched out on her side, propped up on her elbow, her head resting on the heel of her hand and one of her legs swung over one of his under the sheet.

“I wouldn’t have minded if you did,” he said honestly, without thinking.

She smiled that dazzling smile of hers, the one that made her eyes crinkle at the corners and his heart stutter and forget what it was supposed to do.

He watched her, studying the lines of her face, his gaze moving over the sharp angle of her jaw, taking in the soft curve of her lips, and the light dancing in her eyes, as he struggled to breathe past the longing building behind his ribs. He watched her for a long time, and she let him.

When she lifted her other hand and reached over to comb her fingers through his hair, breaking the moment, he was not disappointed though. His hand closed over the back of hers. He turned his face into her touch, kissing her palm.

“Come here,” Steve murmured.

Diana moved towards him immediately, folding herself into his side, her face tucked into the crook of his neck. He felt her sigh, melting into him. Watched her fingers move idly over the pale scar near his collarbone. She had asked about it, before. He’d told her, too. Every story he could think of, back in 1918. He wondered if she remembered them still.

He let out a long breath, turning to brush his lips to the crown of her head.

“You okay?” he asked into her hairline.

“Yes.”

“Were you hurt? Earlier, when…” He trailed off as his hand traced the curve of her shoulder, though her skin where he’d cleaned the blood off earlier was smooth and unmarked. With her, it didn't technically mean that nothing had happened.

He still remembered, vividly, how she’d told him that making her wish to get him back in 1984 had stripped her off some of her power. And he wondered…

Steve swallowed, forcing the idea aside.

Diana lifted her head. She lay her arm over his chest, placing her hand on his sternum and resting her chin on top of it. Her eyes moved over his features.

“No.”

He nodded, and then murmured, “Say it again.” 

“I love you,” she said without hesitation, as she pushed up so she could lean forward and kiss him. “I will always love you,” she murmured against his lips, her palm curling over his cheek.

She had said it earlier, over and over again, the words whispered between breathless kisses until he could feel them thrumming in his veins. He had, too, whispering every confession he could think of into her skin, desperate to make her understand everything, even the things that seemed to be too big for words.

His breath hitched in his throat all the same, as he tipped his face up, kissing her back, his mouth moving with purpose over hers. He could probably live for ten thousand years and never get tired of hearing that.

“I love you, too,” he breathed, as he opened his eyes. “You’re staying, right?” he clarified when Diana drew back, his hand moving slowly over her bare back.

She arched an eyebrow at him, curious. “Was I going somewhere?”

“If you were planning on returning to Paris tonight—don’t. Stay with me.”

He didn’t mean to sound quite so pleading, but he also didn’t really care when it came out that way as he watched her features soften.

“I’m not leaving, Steve.”

He nodded once more and he brushed his thumb along the ridge of her cheekbone, his fingers moving to tuck her hair behind her ear. He didn’t seem to be able to stop touching her, but Diana didn’t appear to mind. “You should get some rest,” he offered.

You must be tired after hauling around half-collapsed buildings. He didn’t say that.

Diana paused, teeth digging into her bottom lip.

“I’m not tired. I’m—”

Wired, Steve thought. He was, too. Like he had been that night in Veld, afterwards. His body drained, completely exhausted, but his mind on fire, and he had been desperate to hold on to every moment with her, all too aware of how, come morning, they would have to face the reality of the world where nothing was certain anymore.

He pushed the thought aside. It was no longer 1918, there was no war waiting for them on the other side of this night. Which, admittedly, didn’t diminish his need to make his every moment with her count now. The war may be over, there may no longer be any deadly gas they needed to stop or innocent people to save, but he doubted it would be so easy for him to shake off the fear of losing her. Or of her losing him too, for that matter.

That, and there was still the fact that something strange and traumatizing had happened to Diana in 1984. 

Steve was suddenly, acutely aware that she had lost him twice already. He doubted that she had forgotten about that. She was clearly still dealing with it, in her own way. He didn’t think that falling into bed together was going to be enough for them to sweep the whole thing under a rug and call it a day.

But, not tonight. Tonight, he wanted to look at her, and talk to her, and love her.

He took a deep breath and nodded in agreement, his thumb brushing over her chin.

“Did you find anything?” Diana asked, after a moment, her eyes roaming over his features.

Her question caught him by surprise. So much so that he had to pause and wrack his brain for the true reason of him even being there and not in Paris in the first place.

Barbara Ann. Right.

“Yeah, actually…” Steve’s gaze darted towards the bedside table, where he had left the journal earlier. He winced inwardly a little, and looked back to Diana. “Want me to tell you about it?”

She nodded. “Yes.” She hesitated. “Unless you’d rather do it later.”

But he was shaking his head. “Yeah, no, let’s—let’s get you something to eat, okay? And I’ll… I’ll, um, catch you up.”

She raised a curious eyebrow at him, considering his offer. He could all but heat the wheels in her head turn as she rose on her elbow once more and glanced around the room. 

“I wouldn’t mind taking a shower first,” she noted as she turned back to him.

“Okay.”

“Will you come with me?”

Steve blinked, his jaw going a little slack for a moment as an array of very appealing mental images flooded his mind. “Okay,” he repeated, making her smile.  

Diana looped her hair around her ear and leaned forward to press her mouth to his. And then she was sliding out of the bed and padding across the room towards the bathroom. After she disappeared from sight, he tipped his head back against his pillow and scrubbed his hand over his face, his mind reeling.

He could never do anything halfway, could he? He couldn’t just deliver Maru’s notebook to his superiors—he had to go and try to stop the whole war. He couldn’t just fall in love—it had to be with a goddess, no less. 

At last, he pushed the sheet aside. Through the half-open door, he could hear the water start running, the white noise filling the space around him. Steve hesitated for a moment, and then picked up the phone, dialling the room service number. He placed his order, such as it could be at that time of, well, night, and headed towards the bathroom.

The steam was already curling at the ceiling when he walked in. In the small cubicle tucked in the corner, Diana stood under the spray of hot water with her face turned up towards the showerhead, her eyes closed, the outline of her body blurred behind the wet glass.

He pulled the door open and stepped inside into a space barely big enough for two people. Steve didn’t care. He watched Diana smooth her hands over her hair, then down her face. His gaze moved over her body, the steam rising around them, suddenly remembering how he had kissed every inch of her so recently. How he couldn’t wait to do it again.

She stilled when he trailed the back of his knuckles down her arm. He moved closer to her, bowing his head to press a kiss to the back of her head.

“I missed you,” he murmured into her sopping wet hair.

A low laugh reverberated through her, a quiet sound that Steve felt rather than heard.

“You saw me only three days ago,” Diana reminded him, turning her head slightly to the side so he could hear her over the sound of the running water.

He chuckled, running his hand up and down her arm again. “Not like this.” He kissed her hair once more. “Last time I checked, it hasn’t been like this for a hundred years.”

She fully turned to him then, her eyes bright and her smile that glorious thing that made something unspool inside of him, like warm honey in the pit of his stomach. There were water drops glistening on her eyelashes and clinging to her skin making Steve think of the first time he had ever seen her, on that beach, leaning over him with open, unguarded wonder in her eyes.

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought of that image… a lot.

Diana moved closer to him until there was not a breath of space left between them, her gaze searching his face. She lifted her hand, tracing her fingers first over the scar on his shoulder, and then the one beneath his collar bone —one he had come with from Themyscira. Steve couldn’t even tell now how he had gotten it. Had it been from his fight with German soldiers, or from when he had struggled to get out of the metal hold within the bent and twisted wreckage of the plane. Or from when Diana’s people had seized him, being none too gentle about it?

Not that it mattered.

Her hand moved to his face, nimble fingers tracing the line of his jaw. When her thumb brushed over his bottom lip, Steve ducked his head closer to hers, his hands sliding around her body.

She tilted her face up, chasing his smile with her lips. He erased the rest of the distance between them, pressing his mouth to hers in a slow, lingering kiss.

“I wanted to do this that first night,” Diana said softly after she drew back. She dropped her forehead onto his shoulder and Steve’s hand moved to rest over the back of her neck beneath her hair. He turned to graze his lips to her temple.

“I’ve wanted to do it every day since then,” he confessed.

“Really?” she asked, her voice muffled.

Steve almost laughed—all those weeks of agonizing over her feelings and mixed signals and god only knew what else, and it had never once crossed his mind that the same thing had been happening to her.

His fingers danced along the base of her spine. “Really.”

Eventually, she straightened up and observed the bottles on the rack before them. Steve beat her to it when he reached for one first, and Diana didn’t stop him though he knew that if she did, he wouldn’t have argued.

The cubicle was a tight fit, but they made it work. She watched Steve pick up a washcloth and squeeze some soap onto it, lathering it into a foam. She let him do it, and he was grateful, his hands tracing the lines of her body, washing the long day off her skin with a familiarity that caught him by surprise. He had never done this before—not with Diana, nor with another woman, for that matter. Then again, he had never loved anyone the way he loved her. He suspected there would be quite a few firsts in his future, because of that, if nothing else. God help him.

He let her return the favour afterwards, her laughter echoing in the small enclosed space as they tried to navigate their way around one another, her hand shooting forward once to curl around his elbow when he slipped—it would have been awfully ridiculous if he got his skull cracked open just as things started to brighten up, wouldn’t it?  

“Sorry,” Diana said, laughing, when she almost got shampoo in his eyes, causing Steve to file away the entire experience as one of the best things to have ever happened to him.

He rinsed it off and scrubbed his hands over his face afterwards before he turned towards her once more, his arm snaking around her as he bowed his head, nuzzling into her neck. “I love you,” he whispered into the spot beneath her ear and felt her sigh in response, relaxing against him. The ease with which the words were coming now was leaving him almost dizzy with elation. 

The knock on the door came when Steve was in the process of lathering up her hair—and trying not to get anything in her eyes. By then, he had almost forgotten about his order. 

He pressed a kiss to Diana's shoulder and let her deal with the rest of the process while he stepped out of the shower, reaching for a towel to wrap around his hips so he could take care of what he assumed was their midnight dinner.

By the time Diana came out of the bathroom, a towel secured around her body and lemon-scented steam trailing after her, Steve had pulled on his pants and there was a tray with two pieces of meat pie and some fruit waiting for them on the bed. She picked up her discarded armour, setting it on one of the chairs, and then peeked into the closet. 

She paused and looked up at him.

“May I…?”

Steve nodded, and she pulled his spare shirt from a hanger, sliding her arms into the sleeves. While he fished bottles of water from the minifridge, she buttoned it up and rolled up the sleeves that hung well past her wrists.

“That’s a good look on you,” he said as he stepped closer to her, his hands absently smoothing out the collar of the shirt. He didn’t resist the urge to trace the line of her collarbone.

“Charmer,” Diana shook her head, rolling her eyes a little, but she was smiling, too, which made his heart give a wild tug.

“Hey, it’s true,” he insisted, his hands dropping to her hips. He drew her closer to him, his thumbs circling her hip bones. “You should do it more often. Wear my stuff, I mean. Or nothing. Just… wear nothing.”

Diana smirked. “Well, if those are my choices…”

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Come on, let me show you something.”

“Thought you already did that,” she murmured.

He lifted his gaze to hers, watching her eyes light up with amusement as she gazed at him from under her lashes. A strangled sound rose in the back of his throat, the colour rushing up his face. There was only so much he could do so as not to undo all those buttons all over again, the journal and Barbara Ann Minerva be damned.

“You’re mean,” he muttered accusingly.

Diana bit her lip around a smile. “Did you not?” she asked innocently.

Steve shook his head. Later, he decided, taking a breath.

“Alright, what is it?” Diana prompted, taking mercy on him.

“Well…”

Steve paused, feeling antsy and strangely wired all of a sudden. He lowered down on the edge of the mattress as he tried to collect his thoughts. The past few hours seemed to have wiped his mind clean—not that he was complaining about that, per se.

He cleared his throat and tried again. 

“I found this guy,” he started, after a moment as he watched Diana pour herself a glass of water. “Alexander Holt. He used to teach in a college here. And on the side, he had an interesting hobby.”

She picked up her glass and walked over to where he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Steve felt her hand comb through his damp hair. Without thinking, he tilted his face into her touch and kissed the heel of her hand. When he looked up at her, Diana was smiling.

“What kind of hobby?” she asked.

“For one thing, he had spent half of his life trying to prove the existence of… well, things that most people don’t believe in,” Steve explained, choosing his words carefully. “Like, the Lochness Monster. Or Atlantis. Or that tribe of skilled warrior women with a princess who was made of clay and brought to life by Zeus,” he added, earning a quiet laugh in response.

“You’re joking,” Diana said, tilting her head and narrowing her eyes skeptically.

“Honest to god truth,” Steve insisted. “Okay, maybe not the clay part,” he amended, after a moment, and she pressed her lips together. “Or Zeus. But the rest of it is true. I’m guessing he never made a visit to—uh, your island.”

Diana shook her head. “Not likely.” Steve raised a quizzical eyebrow, and she added, “It’s not likely he’d live to tell the story, if he had.” 

“I did,” he pointed out. It was her turn to arch an eyebrow at him, and he remembered it then — the swords pointed at him. He’d likely be dead if she hadn’t stepped between him and her mother’s army. “Right.” Steve cleared his throat. “Oh, just as well.”

Still, Diana pondered his words. 

“So, what else did you learn about that man?” she asked. 

Steve’s hand curled around her wrist and he tugged her to sit down next to him. He put a plate with a piece of meat pie cut in half on her lap, and she dutifully picked one up. And then he started to recount his findings to her.

Alexander Holt was a professor of anthropology at Charles University in Prague from the 1960s and until the mid-1990s. He had spent every free minute of his life searching for the proof that the tales and myths known across the globe had had a real basis for their existence, certain that none of them had come out of thin air. Some, he had discovered, had stemmed from sightings of birds and animals that had long since gone extinct but that continued to live in folklore. Others, he had been convinced, were still waiting to be uncovered and revealed to mankind.

While none of his personal research had anything to do with his official works, he had written a number of essays on the subject, bringing up rather convincing arguments to support his claims. Granted, they had never amounted to anything conclusive, even though they had seemed to be a popular discussion subject in the 80s.

However, Steve had managed to find some patterns, specifically connected to something that he had seen in Diana’s notes as well—evil spirits living not far from human dwellings and occasionally snatching unsuspecting victims only for the latter to never be seen again, their bodies often found bearing distinctive claw marks on their skin that were not consistent with any known species.

Admittedly, it didn’t feel like much of a success without any actual proof attached to it, but after weeks of banging his head against a proverbial brick wall and running into nothing but dead ends, he was not beyond grasping at straws.

That, and there was also the fact that the man had been born in 1935 and some of his exploits pre-dated what had happened to Diana in 1984. But, it had also given Steve a pause, making him wonder if Barbara Ann Minerva had not been the first victim of… well, the curse that had turned her into Cheetah. And that, Steve believed, was something worth checking out.

“There’s something about it… I don’t know, Diana, but it feels like too much of a coincidence,” he finished, raking his hand through his hair.

“You want to look into it,” she said. Not a question.

She put the empty plate aside and stood up, the same caged energy that he could feel coursing through his system was now radiating off of her. The same energy he distinctly remembered feeling when she had come to the pool caves to fetch him and leave the island.

Steve watched her pace the small space, her brows knitted together as she mulled over his words.

He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. “Yeah,” he said.

“Have you spoken with him?”

“Well, no. I mean, he died fifteen years ago during one of his… um, expeditions. But,” Steve forged on before she could so much as open her mouth, “he appeared to be documenting his finds.” He reached over across the bed and grabbed the journal from the nightstand. “In this.”

Diana stopped, pausing in the middle of the room. He saw the exact moment the realization clicked, the old memory chasing across her features.

If Steve Trevor was a betting man, he would bet every last cent he had on her thinking about Isabel Maru and her notes and everything that had followed. He could see it before him now, too, like dominos—the plane crash knocking down Diana saving him knocking down the Germans… to the boat… then No Man’s Land… Veld… the gas.

It was almost as though they were meant to walk the same path again and again.

Okay, that was not technically accurate. He hadn’t exactly planned on walking out of the university library with something that didn’t belong to him today. He just hadn’t thought it would have some chip in it that would make the strange-looking gates at the door beep in alert. Meaning, he hadn’t considered he was at risk of getting caught. Well, nearly.

Maybe it was less to do with fate and more—with bad luck, come to think of it. 

Diana lifted her gaze to his, though he failed to determine if she was mad. “You stole this?” she clarified.

“I borrowed it,” Steve said emphatically.

She pressed her lips together as she tried to fight off a smile. Alright, she was not mad then.

“Were you going to return it?” 

“Well,” he hedged, “I’m not sure I could go back there, per se. For all I know, they probably have those WANTED posters with my face all over the place by now.”

The idea actually hadn’t crossed his mind until he spoke the words, but he couldn’t stop thinking of it now. Was it possible? Could they have done it so quickly? Probably not in his time, but this was the future, they had technology. What if his face was plastered all over the—

“There are no posters,” Diana said, her voice laced with fond exasperation.

Steve snapped his head up.

“That was not the plan,” he said urgently. “I wasn’t going to…” commit felonies left and right. He waved around vaguely and huffed out a breath of frustration.

She was watching him with a small smile and shaking her head in disbelief.

“Alright then, what was the plan?”

“To read it. But it turned out it’s in Czech and I thought you could…” he trailed off with a noncommittal shrug.

Diana bit her lip.

“You could have taken a photocopy of it,” she offered.

Steve blinked at her and she laughed. She stepped towards him, pausing between his parted knees as her hands landed on his shoulders and one of his arms went immediately to curl around the back of her thighs.

“Are you angry?” Steve asked.

Her hand moved to sweep through his hair, her nails idly scratching near the nape of his neck. When he looked up, he found her smiling at him.

“I’m not angry,” she said, biting back her laugh. “I would have preferred that you could leave the house without committing minor crimes. But,” she added when Steve groaned and dropped his forehead against her sternum, “I’m not one to judge.”

He chuckled into the fabric of her shirt. Felt her curl down to press a kiss to the top of his head while her hands moved soothingly over his shoulders, his body relaxing immediately under her touch. There was a story behind her comment, and though he was having a hard time imagining Diana committing any kind of crimes, he made a mental note to ask her later.

Not tonight, though.

“You really think this man’s notes could be of help?” Diana asked, after a long moment.

Steve drew back to look up at her. “Worth the try.”

She nodded, her lip caught between her teeth and then reached for the journal that Steve handed over obediently. For a few moments, he watched her flip through it without pausing on any particular entry for long.

“Very well, I will have a look,” she conceded.

He pulled it from her hand, tossed it behind him on the bed.

“Not now,” he said, and she smiled at him.

Diana’s finger skittered along his jaw. “Not now,” she agreed.

He could have pulled her into her lap, Steve thought. He knew she would have allowed him. He could have reached up and started unbuttoning her shirt—she would not have stopped him. He couldn’t wait to kiss her again. And again, and again. Instead, he just looked at her for a long time, taking her in the way he had done before. The way he had done in Veld—with the purpose of carrying her image for the rest of forever.

Diana let him do it as she studied him back, her fingers playing with the hair at the back of his head.

“How was the party?” Steve asked, at last.

She lifted an eyebrow at him, as though it was not the question that she expected to hear.

“Loud. Rambunctious. But without casualties, which, I guess, was progress.”

Steve laughed at that. “Sounds like fun.”

Diana told him more—about the drinking games, and video games, and that race to Gotham and back that she hadn’t stayed up for but that she had heard quite a few things about the next morning. It didn’t come as a surprise that the fondness in her voice and the way her expression softened as she spoke made Steve miss his boys fiercely.

He didn’t say it though. He smoothed his hand over Diana’s hip and pressed a kiss to her stomach through the shirt.

“Did you tell them about me?” he asked, half-teasingly.

“No. But Barry asked about you.”

Perhaps, it shouldn’t have felt that shocking. But it did.

“He did?” Steve echoed, curious, as he looked up.

There was something oddly exciting about belonging to both sides of Diana’s life, even if there was only one person who was aware of his existence. After the past several weeks that he had spent wondering on occasion if all of this was actually happening, her small admittance felt… grounding, for lack of a better word.

“Is that what you want to be talking about?” Diana asked, amused.

“What do you want to be talking about?”

She slid out of his hold, taking a step back, and then another one, a slow smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Transfixed, Steve watched her hand undo the top button of the shirt, his jaw going a little slack in that undignified way that he would be embarrassed by under different circumstances. Right now, he couldn’t care less even if he tried.

“Well, I don’t think talking is the right word…” Diana said, reaching for the next button agonizingly slowly.

Steve’s throat grew dry as he followed the movement of her fingers and the skin emerging in the growing gap of her shirt, their conversation forgotten in an instant.

“I mean, I suppose we could…?”

She paused, tilting her head and arching a pointed brow at him.

Steve swallowed, blood roaring in his ears and rushing south, rendering him blind and deaf to anything and everything that wasn’t her— here, now. Hesitantly, Diana’s hands moved to the button number three, effectively catapulting him from his spot and sending him flying in her direction, his mouth muffling her laughter.


Steve awoke to a grey morning and the sound of rain pelting against the roof and window panes, the world around him painted grey. He didn’t know how long they had stayed up last night, talking and making love, or what time it was right now, but it was decidedly too early to be up, and would be for quite some time.

Though it wasn’t the rain or the faint light that had pulled him from his slumber, but the fact that Diana was not in bed with him, his arms no longer wrapped around her body. Steve scrubbed his hand down his face and lifted his head, glancing around the room. For a moment, he was overcome with panic that she had left sometime during the night even though she had promised not to. And then—that he had made up everything altogether and she had never come at all.

He blinked, craning his neck. And then, finally, he spotted her standing by the window, her palm pressed flat against the glass, the rivulets of rainwater blurring the world on the other side of it.

Steve frowned and rubbed his eyes.

“Diana?” he called in a croaky voice laced with sleep.

She turned to him, dropping her hand down, and smiled. The tension eased in his chest as he rolled onto his side. She moved towards the bed, sliding under the covers. Immediately, Steve reached for her, closing the rest of the space between them as his arm curled around her.

“What is it?” he asked quietly, nuzzling into her. His eyelids were drooping already, his mind slipping, comforted by her nearness and the familiar warmth of her body against his.

She swept her hand through his hair and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“Nothing,” she murmured into his skin. “Go back to sleep, Steve. It’s early.”

He nodded, his grip on her growing slack as he let out a long breath. And because he was too tired and not entirely awake, he said exactly what he was thinking.

“Would it have been easier for you if we—if nothing had happened between us that night, in Veld?”

He wasn’t even sure he had spoken the words out loud until he felt Diana go still in his arms, her breath hitching a little in her throat.

When Steve opened his eyes once more, he found her watching him, frozen. Even in the pale light, even as exhausted as he was, he could see stunned shock pooling in her eyes, a pang of guilt arching through his chest at voicing his question. Yet, the truth was—he had never meant to break her heart and leave her grieving for him for a century. And while he would not have changed anything about their first night together, not in a million years, it was impossible not to wonder if walking out of her room and closing the door behind him would have lessened the impact of the loss he had inadvertently shoved her into not even 24 hours later.

He wondered if she’d ever wondered about that, as well.

Steve swallowed and licked his lips, as he waited for her to say something. Suddenly awake, he felt his heart give one hollow thud after another in his chest. That should teach him to open his mouth without thinking.

Diana’s eyes moved over his face. He watched her features melt into tenderness and he felt an unsteady breath tumble out of her chest.

“No. Steve, no.” She stroked his cheek, her palm curling over his jaw, dark eyes flicking between his blue ones. “If you had walked out that door, it would only be one more thing for me to regret.”

Steve felt the air rush out of him as though someone had punched him in a stomach, the sincerity and absolute anguish in her voice making something tender inside of him ache.

“Diana…”

“I wanted to be with you then, more than anything,” she whispered, her thumb stroking over his cheekbone. “I wanted to be with you after the war was over.” She moved closer, resting her forehead to his. “And I want to be with you now.”

He closed his eyes, waiting for the raw feeling in the centre of his chest to ebb.

He should never have asked, should never have brought up something that was clearly painful for her. Yet, he was glad that he had. Hearing her say what she had hadn’t eradicated the guilt that was eating him on the inside—for leaving her, and so cruelly, too, even though it was the last thing he had wanted to do. But it had diminished it some. Enough for Steve to start figuring out how to live with it. Maybe. Hopefully.

“You’re with me now,” he said as he opened his eyes again.

Without thinking, he leaned forward and bumped his nose against hers before brushing his lips to hers. She sighed against his mouth and kissed him back, her hand curling around the back of his neck.

“I need to go back to Paris soon,” she said against his lips.

Steve looped a strand of hair around her ear and huffed in protest.

“No.” He shook his head, his hand sliding over her side. He traced his fingers along the base of her spine. “You need to stay here with me.”

A soft smile touched her lips.

“I don’t have any clothes,” Diana reminded him, her finger absently running back and forth along his collar bone.

“You’re not going to need any clothes.”

“We can’t sleep the day away.”

He grinned. “Who said anything about sleeping?”

She arched an eyebrow at him, and Steve moved towards her, without hesitation, rolling her onto her back and earning a small sound of approval when his mouth found hers. Desire curled along his spine, shocking in its intensity, the last remnants of exhaustion draining out of his body. He was never going to not want her, was never going to get enough of her.

He kissed her, deeply and slowly, drawing every breath out of her lungs. Diana wound her arms around him, kissing him back. He felt her teeth graze over his bottom lip, a low sound rising in the back of his throat in response. He felt her arch into him, her nails scratching up his back.

“Please, stay,” he murmured breathlessly, moving his mouth along her jaw and down the column of her throat.

She sighed, her hand winding in his hair.

“Steve,” she started as he kissed his way down the centre of her chest.

“You know I’ll make it worth your time,” he whispered—a cocky declaration that made her laugh, a delighted sound that morphed into something else. Something that made his blood turn into liquid fire.

“I have to…” she tried again, but without much conviction, while his mouth continued to make its way down her body.

She cursed in Greek under her breath when he reached the soft skin below her navel. Steve smiled, feeling awfully pleased to still be able to inspire that reaction in her, a hundred years later.

And do they? Love each other until death? Diana had asked him on the boat. Not very often, no, Steve remembered telling her. 

The irony of his statement was not lost on him, now that he was so far gone he would probably still love her a thousand years after there was no trace and no memory left of him, in this world or any other. 

Figures.

He pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh, and then another one, inching closer to home, and then looked up. Her lips were swollen from kissing, her eyes dark and wanting. He smiled.

“Can I at least try to change your mind?” he murmured against her skin.

She sighed and lowered her head back on the pillow, her eyes drifting shut. He smiled.


The sky had mostly cleared up by noon though the light drizzle was still falling, coating the world in a fine mist and smudging the edges of it. All these years later, and Diana still marvelled at the changes in the weather. How unpredictable it could be sometimes, so unlike the perpetual sunshine of Themyscira.

She was sure there was a metaphor there somewhere, about the weather reflecting the ever-changing world of men and the stasis of the island. 

She felt Steve’s hand slide over the small of her back before he dipped his head to press a kiss to her shoulder.

“I already miss you,” he said.

She smiled—both at the absurdity of his words, and the sincerity that made her heart clench.

She had donned her armour and greaves and was in the process of fastening her gauntlets in place, her sword and shield waiting at her feet.

“I will see you in a few hours,” she reminded him as she looked up.

Steve reached over, almost automatically, his hands moving swiftly as he affixed the buckles of her gauntlets as though he had spent a lifetime doing just that.

He had done it before, Diana remembered now. On that final morning in Veld, as they were trying to delay the inevitable and hold on to the time together that had been running out faster than they had anticipated. Twice, she had allowed him to take her armour off of her. Twice, he had been there to help her put it back on. Diana hadn’t stopped him then. She didn’t do it now, either.

There was only ever him, she thought, as she watched his hands run over the polished metal. No one else.

“At least seven hours.” He looked up at her and made a face. “And 34 minutes, give or take.”

She smirked. “But who's counting?”

“Promise you’ll come and get me if they cancel my flight.”

“They won’t cancel your flight,” Diana said, barely resisting rolling her eyes at him.

“I read about that,” he insisted. “Happens all the time, apparently. Or, you could take me with you now,” he added, making her smile.

It made her wonder what else he had read. And what he had made of it. The world had been a confusing, overwhelming place during her first few years after the war. It had been different and hard to make any sense of. Just because she knew how to navigate it now didn’t make her any less aware of her past experiences.

But Steve was a spy; he was used to adjusting quickly and taking things in stride. Still, it had to be odd, all the same. Not just the food or clothes or cars—those were just details. The whole world was different, turned upside down. It would take time to get accustomed to it. And in the meantime, there were flight cancellations all over the place, apparently.  

The idea of leaving him here and going back to Paris first was suddenly intolerable.

It would have been easy to give in to him and stay in Prague until it was time for him to go to the airport. To stay in this room and love him again and again until she could no longer remember what the century-long separation that had felt like a hole in the centre of her chest felt like.

The need she felt for him was shocking and fierce. Intense enough to knock all air out of her each time she so much as looked at him, a spark of want flaring up in her belly in an instant.

But, even though she hadn’t touched her phone since yesterday, Diana knew she had calls to return and emails to respond to, documentation to draft and a catalogue update to supervise. She needed to speak to her assistant about the calendar of events—something that she had been neglecting for a while. She had responsibilities she couldn’t ignore even if right now, she really, really wanted to.

“Yes, that would make it less conspicuous,” she teased.

Steve’s brows knitted together as though he was seriously considering that option. “Could you, though? Theoretically…”

Diana’s face softened. She found his gaze, the worry pooling in his eyes making her chest tight with affection.

“I could,” she admitted. “But I won’t.” The disappointment that chased across his features was so comical it made her laugh. “I promise to come here and fly you to Paris myself if your flight gets cancelled.”

That seemed to be enough to comfort him.

She smoothed her palms over the collar of Steve’s shirt, down his chest. He caught one of her hands, holding it against his heart. 

“You know that I have no idea how to do this, right? This… this thing with us, in this time…” he trailed off, vulnerability lurking behind his eyes and the small smile that she loved so. 

It made something warm unfold in her chest. 

She smiled back. “You are doing better than you think.” 

He drew in a breath. “Diana, are we—” he faltered and fell silent.

She watched a frown crease the skin between his brows as he tried to work something out. His gaze was cast down, trained on their hands. She could feel his heart beating beneath her palm, could feel his chest rise and fall as he breathed. But there was also a sinking feeling clawing up on her insides that made her feel cold all over.

“What?” she asked, quietly.

Steve huffed out a breath, his thumb running over her knuckles back and forth.

“Are we together?” she prompted him, smiling. She lifted her other hand and skittered her fingers along the jaw. “Steve.”

He lifted his gaze to hers. “We didn’t—I mean, we didn’t have much time together when we first met,” he explained. “And then, that—that thing happened in 1984. But you still want to…?”

She moved closer to him. His hands dropped down, brushing along the gold belt of her armour before they curled around her hips.

“I know what you said,” he added, softly. “I just—if you don’t—”

She felt her breath rush out of her, equally frustrated and disbelieving. The man had managed to figure out a major conspiracy meant to bring the whole world to its knees . He had infiltrated the German army. Had stolen Isabel Maru’s book and then made a run for it. He had disobeyed the order to stay back and had gone to the front with her against the wishes of his superiors because he had seen beyond the boundaries constructed by them.

She had never met anyone with a mind quite that remarkable.

And yet here he was, not seeing what was right before his eyes.

“I do,” Diana said decisively.

“’Cause if this is just something you need closure for,” he forged on, seemingly not hearing her. “Or if you need time, or…”

She muttered a quiet curse in Greek under her breath and shook her head as a few other choice words rolled on the tip of her tongue. He was as smart as he was stubborn, and sometimes, she was starting to learn, those things didn’t mix well.

“Whatever that was, it didn’t sound good,” Steve breathed, gazing at her sheepishly.

Diana stopped, only then realizing that she had pulled away from him and started to pace. She glowered at him. He was still looking at her, waiting, she realized, for her to—What? Get angry, perhaps. To change her mind. To tell him that he was right and she had merely been trying to get something unfinished out of her system, close that chapter of her life.

Something else occurred to her then. 

He had been waiting for it all along, she realized, mortified. Even last night, when they were making love, his voice reverent and full of devotion when he had told her that he loved her, he had been waiting—

The thought was like a bolt of lightning, leaving her stunned and frozen. What was it that he had said to her that day she had taken him to the Louvre with her for the first time? That she couldn’t stand him touching her. The memory drained all anger out of her, leaving only a small spark of frustration simmering beneath her skin.

She took a breath to steady herself against the cold panic coalescing in her chest. She moved back to stand in front of him, her hands rising to frame his face, his blue eyes wary and hopeful when they met hers. How could she have not seen this earlier?

When she kissed him, it was slow and tender, and it left them both breathless, all the same.

“You’re a ridiculous man,” Diana murmured after she pulled back.

Steve bowed his head closer to hers. “I have no idea what you said,” he admitted, his hands coming to rest on her sides.

She gazed up at him in surprise. She hadn’t even realized she was speaking Greek.

A sigh tumbled out of her chest. 

Watching him die and then getting him back and losing him again had clearly been an upsetting experience for her. But having to make a decision to sacrifice himself for the sake of millions of other people had not left Steve unmarked. They were going to have to figure out those things, talk them through and learn to navigate the trenches of their losses. Eventually, they were going to need to learn to be together without looking back at their past and expecting it to repeat itself around every bend of the road.

But it wasn’t going to happen at once.

“I will never lose you again,” she said quietly. “Never, Steve.”

He nodded and brushed her hair from her face. He looked like he was going to say something, but then he simply nodded once more. Diana leaned forward and kissed him again, her hands still on either side of his face.

“I’ll see you soon.”

“I love you,” Steve whispered against her lips.

Diana lingered near him for another moment, and then another one. And then she was stepping back and out of his arms and reaching for her sword and shield, securing them safely behind her back. She pulled the balcony door open, the cold wind rushing into the room and ruffling Steve’s hair, her skin immediately coated with a sheen of moisture from the fine mist. The last thing she saw before she leaped into the sky was his smile, brilliant against the greyness of the day.

By the time Diana reached Paris and landed outside her own balcony door, her heartbeat had settled and the fear clawing at her stomach was nowhere to be found.

Inside, she took a shower and changed before making her way downstairs to collect the bag that either Bruce or one of his people had left with the concierge. Back in her apartment, she put on a kettle and dug up her phone, not surprised to find an array of emails and missed calls. She scrolled through them as she waited for the water to boil, making a mental to-do list as she did so.

Her lips twitched, blossoming into a smile when she found a text from Steve, sent minutes after her departure from Prague.

any chance you’ve forgotten something here and need to come back? he had asked.

Earlier, she had promised herself that she would not allow her thoughts of him to distract her. That she would focus on her work until he came back. But, before she could stop herself, she was dialling his number as though her hands were working on their own volition.

Steve picked up on the first ring.

“You can’t possibly be that bored,” Diana said in lieu of a greeting, smiling so widely it hurt her cheeks.

“I wouldn’t call it that,” he responded immediately, and the implication made a jolt of desire sear its way across her body.

She chose not to take the bait. Not now, with him so far away. Her eyes drifted to the clock on the microwave. A little under six hours left.

Maybe she should have just brought him over with her…

Diana found her mug, dropped a tea bag into it and filled it with hot water, letting it steep to perfection . “You should go for a walk around. Prague is a beautiful city,” she said as she sipped her tea carefully, trying not to fantasize about what they’d be doing if he was here with her right now. 

“You’ve been here before?” Steve asked, seemingly surprised.

“I have,” she confirmed.

He groaned. “Now I feel even more cheated. You could have shown me around.”

She pressed her lips together. They would have made quite the pair—him in his trendy jacket and her in her armour. Or perhaps, his clothes, baggy on her frame. She liked the idea though, the general thought of doing something as simple and mindless as wandering the streets of a nice place, and just… being.

Diana glanced out the window at the tentative afternoon sun peeking from beneath a blanket of clouds. She could still feel the warmth of him against her body, the sensation of his hands on her skin leaving near electric sparks in their wake. She had never felt such raw, physical need for anyone before. Not since the first time she and Steve had shared a bed.

It caught her off guard, gave her a pause. But it didn’t surprise her. There had never been anyone else quite like him.

“I will meet you at the airport,” she said when the pause in their conversation started to stretch.

On the other end of the line, Steve was quiet for a long moment.

“I’ll be the first one off the plane then,” he said.

She smiled. “I’ll see you soon, Steve.”

Diana carried her tea to the study and this time tried to make an honest effort in attempting to catch up on work. She could have gone to the office for a few hours, she mused, feeling restless, the apartment too empty and too quiet when she knew someone else living in it was missing. Funny how it used to feel like a refuge before, a place where she could be her real self. But now, only one month in, Steve’s presence was suddenly such an integral part of her life she could barely stand his absence.

She called her assistant and had Celeste catch her up on everything important that had happened over the past two days. She made a list of urgent issues that needed to be dealt with immediately. In a way, it was a relief to be so swamped all of a sudden that she hardly had any time to think of him and miss him.

Still, Diana found herself checking the clock every few minutes, unable to stop herself from willing it to hurry up. She couldn’t wait to see him again, to touch him, to feel his body beneath her hands. It was strange and thrilling to have such an all-consuming need for someone. And new, too. She had never felt anything like that towards any of her other partners; such an intense physical reaction towards another person.

It was more than that with Steve, of course. More than just nostalgia and good sex. She loved him, and that amplified everything else, making her long for him more than she had ever imagined possible.

Diana rubbed her eyes, willing herself to focus.

Her phone dinged with a group chat message, her lips twitching at the corners when she found a message from Barry. A forwarded joke that sparked a conversation for the next half hour. She had one eye on it while she typed an email and then went to make herself lunch. She texted Bruce afterwards, to thank him for taking care of her luggage and to get an update on yesterday’s situation in Brussels.

Not as many casualties as there could’ve been, he responded ten minutes later. Thank you for coming.

Let me know if you need my help, Diana typed back. Whether he saw her text or not, he didn’t say anything else.

She checked the status of Steve’s flight to confirm that it was scheduled to leave on time. They had exchanged a few messages over the course of the afternoon, but once he had figured out that she was not joking about needing to catch up on work, he had given her space to do that.

At some point in the early evening, during a brief lull between tasks, Diana leaned back in her chair. Her phone dinged again but she didn’t reach for it. Instead, she stared out the window at the sun inching towards the rooftops.

It was odd and wonderful and more than a little terrifying to have her life so full. There had been good moments in her life in man’s world, despite everything. She’d had people she cared about, and had a purpose to centre her, anchor her when she was starting to feel adrift and restless.

But beyond that, there had always been a nagging feeling in the back of her mind, a reminder that in a world that was ever-changing, nothing could stay permanent for too long. Not people, not feelings. But it had never bothered her as much as it did now, when she suddenly had so much to lose.

Diana took a deep breath and willed the tightness that had closed around her chest like a vice to ease. She had meant what she had said to Steve earlier—she would never lose him again, would never let anyone take him from her. Yet, her determination felt like a weak consolation in the face of the fact that she had let people die before. Her divinity, her gifts from Zeus, she had long learned, weren’t always enough.

She made it to the airport with time to spare, finding herself watching the information displays with growing impatience.

After his last stint that had left her in grief and isolation for decades, the mere thought of Steve being anywhere near a plane—much less, getting on one—was more than a little disconcerting. (As absurd as her fear was.) 

She couldn't help counting the minutes till she saw him again and made sure that nothing had happened to him in the hours they had spent apart. 

Steve was not the first one off the plane, though he was among the first dozen, if she had to take a guess. With only her borrowed travel bag and no luggage to collect, he stepped into the arrival area, his gaze sweeping over the space before him and giving her heart a sharp twist.

Diana saw the exact moment he spotted her. It was as though everything about him had come to a standstill, the terminal, the people, the bright lights falling away until it was only the two of them and the ridiculous fifty feet between them. She hadn’t even realized how shallow her breathing had grown until an unsteady sigh stuttered out of her chest, leaving her a little lightheaded.

She smiled, his own smile springing across his face, so radiant it made her heart swell in her chest. It was hard to believe that she had seen him only that morning. That she had woken up in his arms.

He didn’t hesitate, weaving his way to her through the crowd and gathering her in his arms.

“Diana.” The bag slung over his shoulder bumped against her thigh. “God, I missed you,” he breathed, his face pressed against her hair.

It would have been easy to tease him then, to remind him that it had been barely a few hours—

Diana squeezed her eyes and inhaled deeply, holding him tightly. “I missed you, too,” she murmured into the curve of his neck.

She leaned back and found his gaze, his eyes alive and bright with affection. 

Steve glanced around, growing more aware of the cacophony of voices and music and announcements. She watched him take it in, surveying his surroundings the way he had on the streets of London, at the train station, at the ferry terminal, as though looking for the next threat.

It should have felt sad that he was still attuned, in a way, to the realities of the war when there was no longer any need for it. Instead, she found the memory of some of her first impressions of him endearing.

On impulse, Diana reached up, brushing his hair back from his face. He turned to her and she wondered what it would be like to kiss him right here. Though his hands were still on her body, he seemed to already be trying to put some respectful distance between them, which amused her greatly, given everything they had said and done not that long ago. It was so easy to forget sometimes that twenty-first century or not, he was still a man from the past.

He would probably blush, she mused. Which would likely make her want to kiss him even more.

Maybe some other time, she decided as she reached for his hand, weaving her fingers through his.

“Let’s go home, yes?” she offered.

Steve nodded. He followed her outside and into the chilly evening air to the spot where Diana had parked her car, her hand clasped in his with a firmness that spoke of never letting go.

He tossed his bag into the back seat, both of them sliding inside. She stopped fighting the urge to touch him then as she leaned across the center console, her hand curling over his jaw the moment before her mouth found his. She kissed him, and kissed, and kissed him until the jagged edges of panic that she had spent her afternoon struggling to ignore had smoothed out.

“Hi,” she said after she pulled back, pleased to find Steve more than a little dazed.

He swallowed, his breath coming out on short, ragged pants.

“Hi,” he mouthed, and leaned forward to steal another kiss.

Zeus help her, if they didn’t leave now, they were not going to make it to her apartment before clothes started coming off. Admittedly, she didn’t entirely hate the idea.

Diana slid back into her seat and reached for the seatbelt.

When she looked up, she found Steve buckled in and watching her, hunger pooling in his blue eyes.

“How fast can you drive?” he asked.

She smiled. 

Notes:

Well, as promised, a lot of self-indulgent content, and there's more to come. I swear we'll be back to having at least some plot, eventually, but in the meantime...

Please discuss, comments and feedback are always much appreciated!

Thank you for sticking around, more coming soon :)

Chapter 12

Notes:

Hey folks! Guess who is still alive? I apologize for this break, it was not planned. I had some real-life things happening, like laptop issues (did you know it's a pain in the ass to find a battery replacement for an older laptop? because it is!) and some health stuff (hello, dental surgeries) and some other stuff. Never mind that a massive chunk of this story is still not edited... Anyway, I'll do my best to stick to some semblance of a schedule. Please forgive me if I get off track again, and thank you so much for your patience and your support!

This chapter is probably my favourite. Of those that are posted, at least. I hope you will enjoy it as well :)

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

Chapter Text

Paris, 2018

“Alright, so… when did the whole thing take off?” Steve asked, his mind racing a mile a minute.

Perched on the edge of the counter, one of his loose shirts hiked up her bare thighs, Diana watched him uncork a bottle of red wine and fill their glasses. “Commercial aviation?” she echoed as she accepted a glass from him and took a sip. “Around the 1950s, if I recall correctly.”

“Huh.” Steve shook his head in bewilderment, his brows knitting together.

He had expected to be wary and apprehensive around planes, even as a passenger, considering how both of his last two flights had ended. But while he was aware that particular trauma was probably still lurking somewhere in the back of his brain—he still dreamed about it, frequently enough not to be disillusioned about breezing right through it, though he would have preferred that—the enormity of his experience seemed to have pushed it out of the way. For the time being, at least.

Back in his day, if you couldn’t save up enough money for a steamship or a train, your options had been limited, to say the least. Before enlisting, he hadn’t even left his own state. Now, you could fly anywhere, anytime, and in more comfort than he could have ever imagined. No more frigid wind tearing through a cockpit or turbulence making his stomach roll.

“It’s wild to think that you were here to see all that,” he said, after a moment, and looked up.

At that, Diana’s features softened into sympathy. She lowered her wine, her gaze moving over his face.

“It wasn’t as exciting as it may sound, if I’m being honest,” she admitted.

Steve felt his jaw drop a little. “Not exciting?” he repeated. “Maybe not to someone who can punch through a wall or lift a tank.”

Her lips twitched. She regarded him over the rim of her glass.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said, smiling. “Once something becomes commonplace, people start taking it for granted and stop paying attention.”

Steve considered her words. She had a point. He could understand it. Not in regards to technology, per se. But she did have a point.

Unbidden, his mind drifted back to the day they had left for the front—and the first time Diana had tried ice cream. It had been a treat reserved for special occasions his entire life, but nothing to lose his mind over. For her, on the other hand… Yeah, she certainly was not wrong about people taking things for granted.

“Well, at least some things never change,” he said, pulling the pint of ice cream sitting on the counter closer to him.

He grabbed a spoon and she smiled, that bright infectious smile that made the corners of her eyes crinkle and his heart do a somersault in his chest.

Getting a midnight snack had been Diana’s idea. And having already discovered her impressive stash of something called Häagen-Dazs in the back of the freezer, he should have known what she’d meant by that.

“No,” she shook her head, scooping some with her spoon. “Not all.”

He was helpless against the urge to move closer to her then, tilting his head so he could chase her lips and the faint sugary aftertaste on her tongue. She hummed in the back of her throat as her fingers threaded through his hair, and Steve’s stomach tightened with the familiar warm knot of desire at the sound of it.

There was humour dancing in her eyes when he pulled back. He had a feeling she knew exactly what he was thinking, what effect she had on him. And if he had to venture a guess, she was enjoying it immensely. And god help him, he didn’t care in the slightest. He just wanted to keep kissing her, and kissing her, and kissing her. 

“By the way, I returned the journal,” he said as an afterthought. Something he had meant to mention sooner, but then they had gotten… distracted, and it had completely slipped his mind.

Diana tilted her head. “Did you, now?”

Well, he had caught some kid outside of the university and shoved it into his hands, asking the guy to give it to the first security guard he saw. There was no need for Steve to do it personally, was there? He only hoped that the kid had done just that—but, there was no need to go into details with Diana.

Steve cleared his throat. “It’s like you said—I only needed a copy,” he said diplomatically.  

Diana nodded.

She trailed her fingertips along his jaw, and Steve watched her smile fade, a shadow passing over her face.

“What?” he asked, tapping her on the chin.

She chewed on her lip, her nails scratching absently through the hair near the nape of his neck and her eyes trained on his collar bone.

“You were wrong about something you said that day at the Louvre. About me not wanting you to even touch me. You remember that?”

Steve blinked, surprised by her words. More so—by the fact that she still remembered him saying that. That it was apparently something she had spent time contemplating. Something he had long forgotten mentioning. 

“I think we’ve established that I was wrong,” he smiled as his eyes darted towards the bedroom door and then pointedly raised an eyebrow at her. But she didn’t laugh like he thought she would, her expression pensive. He moved closer to her, until he was standing between her parted knees and then he slid his palms along her thighs, her hands curling around her hips. “What is it? Tell me.”

She remained silent as she twirled her spoon in her other hand.

“Diana.”

At last, she lifted her gaze to his. She set the spoon down on the counter and smoothed her hand over his shoulder, her thumb tracing the length of his old scar.

“I have spent years… decades, wishing for this. After what happened with the Dreamstone, I suppose I never expected another second chance. Not a real one.” She took a breath. He could see two faint lines creasing the skin between her brows as she was struggling to find the right words, his own heart a wild flutter against the inside of his ribcage. “I think I was scared to believe it was happening. Maybe I still am.”

Steve’s smile dimmed. It wasn’t like that same thought hadn’t crossed his mind. It had, multiple times. Immediately, it was followed by a flash of guilt he didn’t quite know how to navigate.

He swallowed.

Diana was watching him, her eyes flicking between his. He wondered how many conversations like this one they were going to have before they didn’t have to anymore. Before they could leave this all behind—his death, his choices that had ended up defining her life. Conversations that were bound to leave him feeling like someone had punched a hole through his chest and turned his heart to ashes.

“Losing you the first time was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,” she added quietly, making everything inside of him constrict, and it took quite a bit of an effort for Steve to not simply gather her to him and hold her and promise her over and over to never, ever leave her again. A promise he wasn’t sure he could keep. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathed, his throat tight. With a shaky hand, he looped a piece of hair around her ear. He ran his knuckles down her cheek.

But Diana was shaking her head. She leaned forward, dropping her forehead against his.

“When you came back… I wanted you to be real so badly it frightened me,” she murmured. “It still does.” 

A shuddering breath stuttered out of his chest. “Diana, I…” he started, the words failing to work around the tightness in his throat. It was sweet, what she had said. And it still made him feel raw on the inside. 

“You were wrong about something else, too,” she said, and though this time while Steve could see the making of a smile working its way towards her face, her eyes remained serious.

He chuckled, though it came out rather humourless. “I’m starting to see a bit of a pattern there.”

She let out a small laugh. “No, it’s not…” She framed his face with her hands, tilting it up until their eyes met. “I’m not trying to get over something. Over you. I loved you when I woke up in your arms in Veld. I loved you when you found me at the watchtower, after I killed Ludendorff.”

“I remember you being quite… upset then,” he couldn’t help but counter.

My mother was right. She said the world of men do not deserve you, she had said back then, betrayal and hurt pooling in her eyes.

Maybe we don't! But it's not about that, he had tried to reason with her. To make her see beyond her convictions. It's about what you believe. You don't think I get it, after what I've seen out there? You don't think I wish I could tell you that there was one bad guy to blame? It's not! We are all to blame.

She had stared at him as though she couldn’t recognize him. I am not.

He hoped that he would never see her so crushed about anything ever again.

Diana ran her thumb over his cheek.

“I loved you when that fire took you away from me, Steve.” She paused. “All these years, I never stopped loving you. How can I want to move on from it?”

His mouth went dry, his heart hammering fast in his chest. 

“Well, maybe not now,” he said after a moment, conceding her point as he offered her a small smile. “But I wouldn’t have faulted you if you’d wanted it, before. You deserved to be happy, Diana, not grieve for a ghost of someone who wasn’t coming back.”

She looked at him for a long moment, her lips parted in surprise while Steve’s heart continued to thud against his ribs. When she bowed her head, he didn’t hesitate, moving towards her, his lips skating along her jaw before he tucked his face into the curve of her neck.

He inhaled deeply, breathing her in as Diana’s arms rose to wrap around his shoulders. The memory of her pressed against every inch of him, completely boneless, only a few hours ago flashed through his mind, vividly bright. It left him suddenly very much aware of the fact that she was wearing nothing but his shirt and he hadn’t bothered putting on anything but a pair of sweatpants.

He was never going to get enough of her, was he?

“You’re here now,” Diana murmured into his hairline.

For now, Steve thought, and the realization was like a bucketful of ice water dumped onto him. He was there now, but whatever miracle or trick that had made it happen hadn’t changed the fact that Diana was still immortal and he was still just a man. One day in the future, they were going to end up right back where they had started—him dead and her heartbroken.

That train of thought and the domino effect it seemed to have set off in his mind left him feeling like someone had kicked him in the stomach.

He pushed it aside, for fear of giving in to the kind of despair from which there was no coming back. Not when he could feel the flutter of Diana’s pulse against his cheek, her chest rising and falling against his.

She pressed her lips to the top of his head once more, and Steve drew back, at last, looking up at her towering a few inches over him from her perch. There must have been something on his face, in his eyes, that gave her pause, made her study him closely for another moment. He waited for a question—a heartbeat, then another one. But it never came. Instead, he watched the line of her shoulders relax.

She picked up her wine, took a sip. He had to resist finishing his glass in one gulp, jittery and restless from both the conversation and her proximity, in equal measure.

Instead, he grabbed the ice cream again. He had completely forgotten that their midnight snack trip to the kitchen had been prompted, first and foremost, by the fact that they had skipped dinner, their journey from the airport ending directly in the bedroom, with their clothes strewn over the floor. And frankly, it was a miracle, in his opinion, that they had made it past the hallway. 

“So, you haven’t been in love again?” Steve asked as casually as he could muster. “After…”

He looked up at her, hoping he hadn’t stepped on a proverbial landmine with this one. Up until now, Diana hadn’t minded his curiosity that occasionally bordered on invasiveness—he was aware of that. He couldn’t help it sometimes. He doubted that she had no boundaries though, and he wasn’t particularly looking forward to crossing any of them.

When their eyes met, however, he saw nothing but kindness in hers.

She plucked the spoon from his hand and considered his question. “I came close, once.”

Truth be told, Steve hadn’t expected an answer, let alone a serious one. It threw him off, for a moment.

“What was he like?” he asked, unable not to, curious beyond measure. 

Diana tilted her head, her eyes alight with amusement.

“Well, for one thing, it was a she.”

Steve blinked. “Oh.” He felt the back of his neck grow hot. He cleared his throat. “What happened?”

“She deserved someone who could love her without reservation. Without looking back.”

He nodded, slowly. His brows pulled together into a small frown. He allowed his gaze to wander, moving unseeingly around the too bright kitchen.

There was a small, proud part of him that burned brightly at the thought of someone like Diana falling in love with someone like him, and loving him for as long as she had. Hell, that fact alone was enough for him to die a happy man, knowing that his life was worthwhile.

But another part of him hated it, too. Hated the thought of her having to hold back, having to choose loneliness instead of contentment, all because he’d had to go and break her heart the way he had, leaving behind something that couldn’t be mended, it seemed.

“Don't do that,” Diana said softly.

Steve snapped his head up. “Do what?”

She took his hand in hers, her thumb tracing the lines on his palm. “It's not your fault or your doing, Steve. What happened to me, the things I've done, the choices I've made. They are mine alone and I've long made my peace with the least wise of them.”

Her last statement made him smile. “I can't imagine you making unwise choices.”

She smiled, too. “You'd be surprised.”

Steve chuckled, and tried not to fixate on the suggestive implication in her words. For now.

An idea struck him, and he stepped back and out of her hold. Diana’s eyes narrowed in a silent question as he tugged her towards him and off the counter. Still, she slid down on the floor and he pulled her towards him, immediately.

“Dance with me,” he whispered, his hand sliding around her to rest on the small of her back.

Her brow quirked up. He could see her trying to bite back a smile.

“There is no music,” she pointed out.

But she let him take her hand, leaning into him, her breath warm on his cheek.

“Does it matter?” Steve murmured into her ear.

He wondered—couldn’t help but wonder—if this would have been it, their life together after the war, if he’d made it. If their life would have been full of laughter and ice cream and dancing any time they’d felt like it. Then again, if he’d made it, he would likely be already dead.

Steve tried not to think about that. 

He sighed, and held her close as they swayed in the middle of the kitchen at two in the morning, with the city’s lights flickering outside the window as far as the eye could see while he hummed a tune without a name under his breath, their wine (and ice cream) forgotten.

They lapsed into comfortable silence for a while. He tried to remember the last time he had been so content, so unafraid of the future… Perhaps, never. Which wasn’t, admittedly, the happiest of realizations, but it was like Etta used to say—once you hit rock bottom, the only way left is up. All things considered, Steve couldn’t wait to see where this up could take him, with Diana.

Her nearness was comfortable enough, but when she turned her head, sliding her lips along his cheek and breaking whatever spell had settled between them, Steve wasn’t disappointed. His hand flexed on her lower back and he drew just far enough away to find her mouth with his. She sighed against his lips and kissed him deeper, the heat behind it scorching its way through him like wildfire, his heart slamming over and over against the inside of his breast bone.

Steve backed her into the counter, earning a low groan in response.

Without thinking, he broke the kiss as his hands slid down the backs of Diana’s thighs, hosting her up until her legs were wrapped around his hips.

He transferred his attention to the column of her neck.

“What are you…” she started and trailed off when he sucked hard on the tender skin near her pulse point.

Steve smiled. “I have a few ideas about some unwise choices,” he murmured, his voice raspy and breathless, and god help him, how was he so in love with her? He looked up, pleased to find her gaze a little unfocused and wild with want. “You in?”

Diana framed his face with her hands and smiled.

“Yes.”


It was the sound of her phone buzzing that awoke Diana the following morning. She opened her eyes to the tentative grey light filtering through thin curtains, telling her that morning was not yet an entirely accurate word.

Beside her, Steve was stretched out on his back, his chest rising and falling evenly and his heartbeat a steady thump against her cheek. She lifted her head slowly, careful not to rouse him, and smiled when he scrunched his face at the loss of contact. He didn’t wake up though, as she rolled over and picked up her phone from the nightstand. A text. It was probably nothing—for all their distaste towards phone calls, even the League members knew to do just that in case of an emergency.

Yet, it was not likely she’d be able to go back to sleep knowing that there could be something important waiting for her attention.

She glanced at Steve once more, her heart constricting with overwhelming tenderness, and then, finally, unlocked her phone. She was both surprised and, well, not, to find a text from Lois.

Should I be offended that you came to Gotham and didn’t stop by?

Diana grimaced against a pang of guilt. It had been the plan, at first. After the main debauchery at the Manor, Clark and Barry had intended to take Victor and the rest of them to do something fun in the city. Diana had caught the words video games arcade and baseball tossed around after breakfast. She had hoped that she and Lois could have a girls’ day out then. She could have borrowed one of Bruce’s cars. Metropolis was only a two hours’ drive away.

But then the news had come, from Brussels, their collective attention effectively diverting towards something more urgent than pretzels and cheap beer, and possibly a nice lunch, in Diana’s case. She hadn’t planned to seek Steve out afterwards, but after the clean-up had been finished, the dead located and the injured safely carted off to the nearby hospitals, she couldn’t stand the thought of going another day without seeing him.

She couldn’t tell Lois that, though, and it made Diana pause with her fingers hovering over the screen as she tried to figure out how to respond.

Lois didn’t know everything, but she knew more than the rest of the League. Deciding to not tell anyone about Steve, in a way, was a purely selfish decision. Diana didn’t want questions; didn’t want to have her life scrutinized and analyzed and discussed and dissected. She only wanted to hold on to something that she had no hope of having back in her life only recently as close as she could and never let go.

She would tell them, eventually. Of course, she would. She just wanted to keep Steve to herself for just a while. But it still felt twice as unfair to do that to Lois.

She wavered only briefly though, her hesitation short-lived.

Later, she would tell them all, but for now—

I’m sorry, we had to leave urgently, she typed.

I know, Clark told me. Call me the next time you’re here.

Diana smiled, trying not to fixate on her guilt. She found a couple of other messages waiting for her. Work issues that were of no immediate importance. She locked the phone, leaving it on the nightstand, and turned around, sliding closer to Steve.

His lips were parted ever so slightly, his chin coated with a layer of stubble, and she was helpless against the need to reach over and touch him, her fingers moving over the planes of his face. She still couldn’t believe that he was there, that he was real. And that he was not trying to spring out of the bed at the crack of dawn the way he had done a few times over the past few weeks, she added mentally.

The memory made Diana smile a little, though there was ruefulness to it she couldn’t help.

She reached for the shock of hair hanging over his forehead, but drew her hand back, not wanting to disturb him. The first time they had woken up together, in 1918, she remembered him being more alert. A light sleeper ready to slip into battle mode at a moment’s notice, his eyes flying open the moment she stirred against him. She wanted to believe that in a world without bombs falling on them that instinct would fade, eventually.

Maybe it was already.

That, or maybe she had worn him out last night, Diana thought with a mixture of self-satisfaction and amusement.

It didn’t change the fact that it all still felt fragile, somehow. Like something that needed to be protected from the world.

“I can feel you staring,” Steve muttered, his voice low and hoarse with sleep.

She smirked, folding her arm under her cheek, tempted to slip her hand under the covers and check what else she could make him feel.

After a few moments, he cracked one eye open. And then the other. And then he smiled at her, leaving her feeling as though her chest might burst open with joy.

“You have to go to work?” he asked, his words a little slurred, making Diana wonder just how awake he actually was. Not quite, if she had to take a guess.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to?”

“Probably not,” she admitted.

He frowned. “No?” he echoed as though he was not sure he had heard her correctly. “Really?”

“Really. I think I’d like to spend my day with you,” she said, softly. “We’re long overdue for one, yes?”

Steve stayed quiet for a while, studying her, and she let him.

“I could make you breakfast,” he offered, eventually.

Funny how in almost a month of living together, they had never come around to doing that, she mused. There had always been something to do or someplace to be. Or, Diana had caught herself wondering a time or two if they deserved the normalcy she so craved, when they couldn’t even figure out how to speak to each other.

But not anymore.

Diana felt the tightness in her stomach ease, as though something had settled inside of her, at last.

“I’d like that.”

And just like that, they fell into a comfortable routine. Looking back weeks and months later, she was still amazed how easy it had been, when they had barely known each other and had no experience to fall back on, per se.

After the war, Diana had spent countless hours trying to imagine what being with him would be like. The dreams she would weave in her mind bringing her both solace and despair in equal measure.

The reality, she had quickly learned, was nothing like it. It was brighter and warmer and a thousand times more unbelievable than anything she had ever dreamed up or dared to wish for. For so long, she used to believe that she had gotten to know him well in just the handful of days that they had spent together, when they’d first met. And she had, about the important things that defined Steve Trevor as a person.

But it turned out he didn’t like the music she thought he would, and while he appeared to still enjoy novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, his tastes didn’t stay with the classics the way hers had, for the most part.

He needed her a lot of the time and was not ashamed to admit it. To help him understand this or that, or to make sense of something that hadn’t existed in his time. He needed her to centre him the same way he had centred her once, a hundred years ago. Diana was happy to be there for him.

He drank his coffee black, unless it was an ice-blended concoction that he had developed quite the fondness for and he wrinkled his nose at her collection of teas. (“Why do they call it white tea when it looks yellow? And why would you want to drink something that looks like actual grass?”) He wasn’t fussy about food, having claimed many times that one would need to be insane to be picky after all the things subpar and inedible they’d been fed in the camps, but if he could have it his way, he wasn’t adventurous either and preferred to stick to the things he was familiar with. (“Please don’t ever mention the fish eggs to me again, I’m begging you.” His words had left her laughing for days.)

She was a morning person who would often be up at dawn, wide awake and ready to face the new day. Steve loved to sleep in. Which left Diana all the more surprised to find out that she rather enjoyed the times when he would simply curl his arm around her and keep her in bed with him for an extra hour on the days when she didn’t have anywhere else to be. And sometimes on those days when she couldn’t bring herself to pull away from him. After all, there was nothing more important than him, and them, and the all-consuming joy that filled her each time she saw him smile at her; each time he said her name.

He showed up at her office at lunch once, two paper cups in his hands—coffee for him, some fancy tea for her. 

Diana had looked up from her laptop when Celeste knocked on her door to announce his arrival, her face breaking into a wide smile when she’d spotted Steve hovering behind her assistant, his cheeks flushed from the cold.

“Thought I could take you out to get something to eat,” he had said after Diana pulled him into her office and closed the door behind him.

She’d taken the drinks from him, leaving them on the file cabinet. And then she’d kissed him, her arms winding around his neck and what was meant to be an I love you and a greeting had seared a path of desire right through her.

“Or, we could do that,” he had mumbled against her lips as he’d backed her into her desk while her hands slid under his jacket to push it down his shoulders before she’d reached for the buckle of his belt...

Afterwards, Diana had buried her face in his neck, breathing him in while Steve had stroked her hair, his voice a barely audible whisper in her ear murmuring words of devotion. She had tried to remember, belatedly, if she had locked the door, mortified at the idea of someone walking in on them. 

“I wish you could stay,” she had said, pressing a kiss to his pulse point.

“Don’t you have a meeting in…?”

“A conference call,” she had corrected. She’d reached for his wrist to check the time. “In twenty minutes.”

Steve had pressed a kiss to her forehead and had pulled back with a rather dramatic sigh that had made her smile.

“Please tell me this isn’t some valuable old desk that costs a lot of money because some king used it once, or something,” he said as they’d straightened their clothes.

She had glanced up at him, a smile pulling at the corners of her mouth as she’d reached for her tea that had gone regrettably cold. She’d still appreciated the thought.

“Would it change anything?” she had asked.

Steve had cleared his throat, that traitorous grin that Diana loved making an appearance. “No, but I think I’d feel more self-conscious.”

She had smirked and sipped her tea. She’d made a mental note to ask Celeste to find her some lunch later, but she hadn’t regretted missing it in the slightest.

“I was invited to an auction next week, on behalf of the Louvre,” she had said after a long moment, and Steve had perked up, curious. “Would you like to come with me?”

“You could have just asked, you know. You didn’t have to seduce a yes out of me.”

Diana had rolled her eyes, struggling to bite back her laughter. “I’ll keep that in mind, for the next time,” she’d said dryly.

But when she’d made a move to step away from him, his hands had slid over her sides, his fingers dipping beneath the hem of her blouse. He’d bowed his head closer to her, leaving her with a dull tug of longing.

“I missed you,” he had said, his voice dropping low.

Which had been a silly thing to say, and probably an exaggeration. They had seen one another only a few hours earlier. But it had made something warm and light and tender unfurl in her chest, all the same.

“So I’ve noticed,” she’d murmured, her lips curving into a smirk.

He hadn’t smiled and taken the chance to step into the territory of some provocative banter. Instead, he had dipped his head, brushing another kiss to her mouth.

“Don’t work late,” he had asked.

She hadn’t been able to help checking the clock the rest of the day, counting the minutes till she was free to go back to him.

One day, roughly two months after Steve’s return, she had dug out a box of things she had “inherited” from Etta. A few photographs and knickknacks, a book of poetry that Diana had enjoyed at the time and a suffragette pamphlet, one of the many she had once helped spread all over London. 

There were letters, too. From Sameer and Charlie, though not as many from the latter. At some point in the years following the victory against Ludendorff and Ares and the German army, Charlie had faded away and stopped replying to their correspondence.

Diana had never pushed, though there had been times, later, when she had wished she would have pressed harder. Part of her had understood it, his need to step away from everything and everyone that reminded him of the things that had destroyed something inside of him that could never be mended. Part of her had felt ashamed, as though she had been betraying him by not fighting harder to keep their bond alive. In the end, she had never found out whether she was right or wrong to let Charlie call the shots in a relationship that required an effort on both ends to keep it going.

She had reread his letters multiple times after Etta’s passing, never quite finding anything alarming in them and yet unable to shake off the sense of desperation woven between the lines.

But there was something else in that box, too. Something that Diana had dismissed earlier, having no interest or claim on it—Steve’s financial documents, neatly organized and maintained up until the day he had fired that gun, blowing up the gas and himself. And that was something that had given him pause, that had had him poring over his old chequebook and bank statements and the pile of shares he couldn’t recall purchasing but that had his name and signature and ownership all over them.

It turned out that they had no value from the standpoint of the business they had once represented, their names long forgotten. As pieces of history, on the other hand? They sparked immense interest among collectors. And just like that, Steve didn’t need to think about money anymore. Probably for the rest of his life.

“Unless I buy my own jet,” he had mused on the night he’d received the check from the man who had made the best offer.

Diana had plopped down next to him on the couch and stretched her legs over his lap. She didn’t care about any of that. In a hundred years, she had accumulated enough wealth for both of them to live comfortably wherever they wanted—she owned a few properties in France as well as the US and South America. But having his own means was something important to Steve, and so she didn’t argue.

“You might have trouble finding a parking spot for it around here,” she’d simply noted, threading her hand through his hair.

He had turned to her and grinned.

“Now you just made it more interesting.”

He didn’t buy a jet, but he had started thinking of maybe getting his own car.

He had loved working with her again and hated when she went on missions without him, although he had never said so and she knew he never would, both of them aware that there would always be places where he wouldn’t be able to follow her, no matter how much they wanted it. But something changed now that Diana had him to come back home to, and his immense joy at greeting her and his never-ending support overshadowed all else.

They had spent their first Christmas together in Paris. After Etta, Diana had never given much mind to holidays of any sort, finding them a little baffling, a little overblown. To her, they always had been lonely, at best, and overwhelmingly sad, at worst.

With Steve, though, it felt different. Not because they meant something to him, per se, since a lot of the time he didn’t care one way or another as well. But because she now had someone to share them with, the long break between Christmas and the first week after New Year no longer looming ahead of her and filling Diana with dread. She didn’t have to be creative about finding something meaningful to occupy herself with. Instead, she had found herself counting the days till it was just them and the time stretching before them.  

It even snowed, in a rare temperamental fit of the whimsical French weather.

They went to a market, and drank hot chocolate, and held hands to keep each other warm. They spent Christmas day in bed—and she made a mental note to make that a tradition. Steve didn’t seem to be opposed to that idea.

For so long, she had held on to her memories from Veld as something akin to a beacon in the dark, a time of hope that she was desperate to hold on to. But here they were, creating new ones, warmer and brighter and filled with so much more hope than she’d ever thought possible.

It was delightful and fascinating to watch him learn to live in this world, in this time; to adjust to things that she knew were foreign and odd and baffling to him, but so exciting, too. Diana loved his curiosity, his unashamed hunger to understand the whys and the hows behind everything he came across, from electric cars (“Honestly, they just make no sense to me, Diana. You have to plug them in? Like—like a TV? Or a coffee maker?”) to the automatic doors (“Don’t even get me started.”) to the very concept of credit cards (“They buy things they know they can’t pay for? That’s irresponsible!”)

Diana couldn’t argue with the last one.

He loved 3D movies. He got into playing Candy Crush on his phone. His fondness for blended coffee drinks bordered on mild addiction, in Diana’s humble opinion. He acted endlessly indignant every time she mentioned it. She teased him about all those things, relentlessly and unabashedly—he didn’t seem to mind.

He was ridiculously competitive, particularly when it came to board games or puzzles, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, considering the man had tried to single-handedly stop a war the entire world had been sucked into. But it did, and she found it endlessly endearing. 

He didn’t like crossword puzzles because he didn’t get most of the clues—a couple of years was not enough to squeeze in a hundred years’ worth of history, mass media and pop culture, and it annoyed him that he couldn’t figure them out. (“What the hell is a twerk?” he had asked her once, perplexed, when he’d flipped to the end of the newspaper to look up the right answers. “Is that really a word? How are people supposed to know that?”)

There seemed to be no end to his wonder, making her love him even more each time she saw his eyes light up—bright and curious and inquisitive—a sense of fierce protectiveness flaring up in her chest. To feel that deeply, that passionately—she couldn’t believe that someone like Steve had been taken from this world, and was so grateful that he was getting a second chance.  

The jaded, world-weary man she had first met in 1918 was still there, though. She could see him in the furrowed brows and the flat line of his tightly pressed lips each time a news segment about one war or another popped up on TV. He didn’t like talking about those things though, if he could help it. She couldn’t blame him. She could feel it too, when Steve awoke at night after a nightmare, his heart pounding and a film of cold sweat coating his skin, and she held him while he tried to find his bearings again, stuck between here and there. Trapped in the past.  

He didn’t speak of his nightmares often, and she never pushed, knowing that he would come to her when he was ready. But those that he did mention were always about the stolen plane and the fire engulfing him, and she wondered how much of it was his mind playing tricks on him, and how much of it was memories.

She suspected he tried not to dwell any more on it than he had to. 

He wore his father’s watch that Diana had given him back in the days after they’d gotten back together. She had offered to pick up something more contemporary, if that was what he wanted, but he had only shaken his head. She didn’t argue, knowing that it was not about knowing the time as much as about memories he didn’t want to let go of. 

He didn’t like his birthday, deeming it something that he had never had a say in, and therefore, it was odd for him to celebrate it. (“Feels like a countdown, more than anything,” he’d said, speaking, she had suspected, more to himself than to her.) He had liked the cufflinks she had gifted him though, and the dinner they’d gone out for. Halfway through the meal, she had looked up and caught him watching her from across the table, with the same wonder she sometimes felt, as well. Like he couldn't quite believe that she was real. Something that had left her with a warm feeling in her chest. 

As a side effect of getting to know Steve better, Diana discovered that she was starting to learn new things about herself, as well. Like that she was not as stubborn as she used to think. Nowhere near as stubborn as he was, at least. The man could give any bull a run for its money.

Of the two of them, she was more explosive though, her temper flaring up easily, but then turning to embers just as quickly. Steve never tried to intervene, letting her frustrations run their course, his patience never-ending. But he could calm her easier than anyone ever before, a simple touch alone often enough to settle the fire raging inside of her.

It turned out that she was more patient than she had ever given herself credit for. And not as easily swayed as him once a decision was made, whatever it might be. It was thrilling to discover those contrasts, to compare them and see how they fit together.

Perfectly, as far as Diana was concerned.

“You look different,” Bruce told her the following spring when Diana ended up helping with a clean-up after a stunt pulled off by the Joker that had ended with a fire at an abandoned factory and the entire League gathered together again in Gotham afterwards.

Diana glanced down at herself.

“Must be the grime,” she noted.

It was the first time she’d gone by, since Victor’s birthday, having earlier declined Barry’s invitation for a Merry League Christmas party. She could still hear Steve laughing over those exact words on the evite, complete with a cheesy animation of a Santa Claus with Batman’s head pasted over top, his brooding expression in complete dissonance with a cheery setting and bright red clothes.

(She knew she would have given a lot to see Bruce’s face when he had opened that particular message.)

Bruce gave her a long, contemplative look, reminding Diana that he was so good at not speaking the truth that he could very easily see past someone else’s lies. She just had never been that someone before.

“Definitely not the grime,” he murmured under his breath.

She wondered then, not for the first time, if he knew. About Steve. About everything. But he didn’t say anything else, and before Diana figured out how to ask without giving herself away, he was leaving and heading towards his room to change into something that didn’t smell like burned rubber.

She didn’t stick around that time, leaving for Paris the same night.

Steve was still determined to make progress in his search for Barbara Ann, but after his initial bout of enthusiasm, his research had stalled. Diana had done her best to translate the stolen/not stolen/borrowed journal that Steve had hoped would shed some light on Cheetah’s whereabouts or, at least, point them in the right direction. But while it hadn’t been entirely useless — the cases of encounters documented by Alexander Holt falling in line in what she had dug out years earlier — the thread hadn’t led anywhere in particular. There were many entries that were nothing but ramblings and speculations that provided little input and answered no questions.

She knew that it discouraged Steve. That it irked and annoyed him, even if he was trying hard not to show it.

“There is no shame in needing to take a break,” she said to him one day.

He scrubbed a frustrated hand down his face but didn’t argue, making her wonder how long he had been sitting on the exact same thought, hesitant to voice it.

“I know,” Steve sighed.

She smiled when his gaze found hers. “We are allowed to just be.”

It was not about admitting defeat, but about knowing how to not let something consume you to the point of no return. She hoped that Steve saw it that way, too.

Sometime in late April, between the exhibition that she needed to put together and an influx of summer tourists and seasonal events, Diana took two weeks off work and they went to Italy together, for some much-needed alone time that didn’t revolve around missions or business trips or poring over a mostly pointless search.

It struck her then that she had never done that. Had never felt the need to escape with any of her lovers before. Had never wished for time to come to a standstill to give her a chance to savour every moment so she could bottle them up and remember them for the rest of her life.

She was glad she got to experience it with Steve.

They took long walks along narrow winding streets, ducking into an occasional store and stopping by the markets that sprouted on every corner. They drank coffee in small cafes, with their knees pressed together because the tables were so small. Steve loved the museums, and the gondolas, and while he didn’t appreciate the art of the Italian theatres,  he stoically endured the two plays that Diana insisted they saw without complaining once. When she suggested another one, though, his face contorted into a grimace that he was too slow to hide.

“One would think I asked you to stick your hand into a tiger’s cage,” she said, amused.

He huffed out a breath. “Well, if I knew that was an option…”

She looped her arm around his and leaned into him, her lips grazing along his jaw. “Alright, no more theatre for you.”

On their last day in Rome, she got a phone call from work in the early hours of the morning. She grabbed her phone and wandered into the small sitting room, adjoined to their bedroom lest she wake Steve up. When she returned ten minutes later, he was awake and half sitting with his back leaning against the headboard, flipping lazily through one of the tourist brochures they had fetched downstairs a couple of days ago.

He looked up when Diana stepped into the room and put it down.

“Everything okay?” he asked, his eyes searching her face.

Diana watched him relax when he found no sign of distress. And then, satisfied, he did a double-take of her body, his gaze lingering on her legs. She smirked, convinced that he wouldn’t have minded in the slightest if she spent the rest of her life wearing only a tank top and a pair of underwear wherever she went. He appeared to really like her legs. 

She dropped her phone on the bed and then climbed across the mattress to cuddle close to him, resting her cheek on his sternum.

“Yes,” she said.

They stayed quiet for a while after that, his heart beating steadily beneath her cheek. She loved that they could do that, be together without feeling the need to speak just for the sake of filling the silence. She knew he liked it, too. 

“I’d do it, you know,” Steve spoke after a long moment, his fingers threading lazily through her hair.

Diana, who was running her hand back and forth along his bicep, paused and looked up.

“Do what?” she asked, a frown finding home on her face.

“The spell, or whatever.” He shrugged. She had to resist the urge to brush back the hair falling across his forehead. When he looked up, his gaze was sure and unwavering. “To make sure that whatever brought me here can’t take me back. I’d do it, if it will put your mind at ease.”

She blinked and tilted her head, surprised. “What about your mind?”

Now it was his turn to look surprised. He waved his hand vaguely around the room, and then her. “How can I ask for more than this?”

She smiled, and then she pushed up on her hand to kiss him.

It wouldn’t change much, she knew. Spell or no spell, their time was going to run out sooner or later. She was still immortal. He was not. But while the thought had found a permanent home in the back of her mind, she refused to ponder it yet. Not for a while.

And though she knew that Steve had thought of it, too, he’d never brought it up.

She tried to ignore the sound of the proverbial clock ticking.

Diana loved being in love with him. Loved the comfortable assuredness and not having to hold back and knowing that she didn’t need to second-guess his feelings. For the first time in a very long time, she was with someone who knew everything about her, every part that she had spent decades keeping hidden and every secret, and accepted them without reservation. With Steve, she could say exactly what she was thinking, what she was feeling. He respected her views and opinions but he wasn’t afraid to argue when he didn’t agree with her. In that, he made her question things that she had long learnt to simply go along with, as though she was suddenly looking at the entire world from a different angle.

She loved his openness and curiosity, and was a little envious of how easily he learned—in her day, if her memory served her right, Diana had had a much harder time with… well, most things.

In Paris, he signed up for lessons at a shooting range to get familiar with modern-day weapons. Diana had no taste for them but she understood the practicality of being able to use them if needed. Besides, Steve was a soldier—she could not begrudge him his interest in something that had been in his life when they had met.

He got a pilot’s license too, which, in his words, had been both fascinating and the biggest rip-off he could ever imagine—after all, he already knew how to fly.

She loved working with him, loved seeing him observe the situation and calculate various outcomes, thinking ten steps ahead in each of them. Loved the way his mind worked under pressure, when most people would panic—those were the things she hadn’t seen enough of in 1918, and at times, it felt like she had been robbed. Like she hadn’t learned enough about him when she’d had a chance, the unfairness of it burning in her chest.

It wasn’t always possible to bring him along with her—sometimes, the missions popped up too unexpectedly, calling for her to depart immediately. Sometimes, his involvement was too impractical or unsafe. And then there was the matter of discreteness—they were both wary of someone making a connection, unravelling the truth about Diana’s identity that she had spent decades protecting.

Yet, she cherished the times when he was there with her, fighting alongside her, the gaping void of decades spent apart falling away. She knew she could trust him, rely on him, and the familiarity of it was not something to be taken for granted.

Steve had asked to train with her as well, and what he lacked in strength, he more than compensated for in sheer determination. Most of the time.

“You can do better than that,” Diana said one day as she circled the mat where he was sprawled on his back under the glaring fluorescent lights of the gym, empty but the two of them that early in the morning.

Steve cracked one eye open, his chest heaving and his breathing coming out in ragged puffs.

“You’re trying to kill me,” he rasped, his expression accusing.

Diana paused over him and folded her arms over her chest. “If I was trying, you would be dead.”

He groaned, sounding more dramatic than the situation warranted. “I know you broke my rib.”

She rolled her eyes. “I did not. Again.”

It wasn’t until he managed to haul himself up to his feet that it occurred to her that she was sounding exactly like Antiope, back in the day. A pang of longing jolted through Diana’s chest. She remembered how much she loathed that order, the drills that would often leave her exhausted to her bones, her body begging for a reprieve. Now, she knew she would do anything to hear that familiar voice again.

She let Steve have a moment or two before she pinned him to the mat again. His eyes narrowed, and she eased back, letting him flip her. She grinned up at him and he frowned.

“You can’t do that,” he panted out, seeing right through her trick, his hands pressed into the floor on either side of her head. “It’s cheating.”

Diana grabbed him by his shirt and yanked him down. “Can I do this?” she murmured the moment before she pressed her lips to his.

He had become a permanent fixture at the museum, as well. Permanent enough that even Celeste had eased off about setting Diana up with some “nice guy”—something that she had spent a few years trying to succeed in. Which, to Diana, had come as quite a relief, at last.

Steve was courteous and charming. He spoke perfect French, melting the hearts of the snobby curators despite their reservation about the fact that he was, the horror of horrors, an American. And he had effortlessly figured out that the way towards someone’s heart was through a box of pastries from the bakery two streets over.

“Careful, or they’ll catch you and put you in a glass box as a museum rarity,” Diana teased him one day when he stopped by to take her out for lunch, for real this time, and it took him nearly twenty minutes just to make it to her office through the throng of his devout fans.

“Wouldn’t you like that,” he hummed, giving her a pointed look from across the table.

She smirked into her coffee. “Don’t give me ideas.”

And then her smile widened at the sight of crimson blush rushing up his face. Sometimes, it was just too easy.

She went to Gotham for Victor’s birthday again. And then for Barry’s as well, bracing herself for the curiosity that he had been generous enough to keep to himself the few times their paths had crossed over the past ten months.

Instead, he took one look at her face and smiled.

Bruce’s words popped up in Diana’s head then, something about her looking different. Granted, it was not the same with Barry. He was at least somewhat aware of something —and frankly, Diana was rather shocked that he had managed to keep quiet about it for so long, like she had asked. But she couldn’t help but wonder if there were indeed some subtle changes to her, all the same.

When she gave Barry his present, a video game console that he had been talking about for months, he hugged her tightly. And maybe it was the sentimentality of the moment, or the fact they hadn’t seen each other in a while, or maybe it was that she had spoken with Steve on the phone not fifteen minutes prior, her mind still attuned to the sound of his voice and the flutter of her heart in her chest, but she could swear that the embrace was more than just a thank you for her present.

It didn’t surprise her in the slightest though when no invitation came from Bruce. Or that photos and a story about him spending the week at some resort on the Argentina coast with none other than Selina Kyle ended up plastered all over the tabloids a few days later. Diana would not have been surprised if Bruce had carefully and strategically “leaked” that particular secret to them as well. After all, he knew better than anyone how to keep someone’s attention away from what was really important.

The only comment about it came from Arthur, something that went along the lines of, He was right here and he couldn’t even call. Not that Arthur was genuinely insulted.

And life went on.

There were still nights when Diana would awake with a scream lodged in her throat and fear clawing at her skin and dread churning inside of her, her mind trying to convince her that miracles didn’t exist. When the sheets felt like tanker threads and the lights of streetlamps outside reminded her of the fire in the sky that had taken Steve away from her, once.

She never told him any of that, and much to her relief, he never pressed. Though Diana suspected that there was no need for her to put into words something that he could understand better than anyone else. But not knowing never stopped him from reaching for her when she felt like she was falling apart at the seams, from comforting her and making her feel at peace.

She hated sleeping alone, for that reason.

There were still moments of panic that would sometimes overcome her when she couldn’t reach Steve on the first try because he had forgotten to charge his phone, or when she came home to an empty apartment because he had chosen that exact time to go for a run or pop out to get groceries. But, they were, mercifully, growing few and far between. As were the times when she would occasionally catch him with a look of panic in his eyes, as though part of him was still expecting to vanish into nothingness right there and then.

Maybe one day, they would look back at those moments and wonder how it was possible that they had so much power over them once. She wanted to believe.

For their second Christmas together, they went to the Maldives. Briefly, Diana had toyed with the idea of staying in Paris again, not at all opposed to repeating the last year’s experience of shutting off her phone for a solid week and spending most of it in bed, making love to him while the snow continued to fall outside. Or maybe spending it in the house she owned out in the country, a few hours drive from Paris, where they had gone for a couple of weeks the previous summer. Or maybe going somewhere like Switzerland or Austria, to one of the numerous villages tucked away in the country that looked like they had stepped right off a holiday postcard. She knew Steve would have loved that.

But it turned out that swapping snow for sunscreen and bathing suits and endless stretches of white sand had not been a bad idea. They rented a small villa, right on the water and away from the main resorts. And by miracle of all miracles, her phone only rang twice the entire time.

“Just like the first time,” Steve murmured, watching her emerge from the water one day. She was not oblivious to his less than subtle once-over of her body in the smallest bikini she could find, heated and appreciative, stirring her own desire in her blood.

“Only without the Germans,” Diana hummed, as she leaned in to kiss him, tasting the ocean on his lips.

He brandished a finger at her. “Don’t you dare jinx it.”

She laughed and filed away the idea of the snow-covered Alps for the following year and tried not to think of how much the beach and the sun reminded her of Themyscira, her longing for home more prominent than it had been in a very long time.

They went to America three months later, fifteen months after Steve’s return to the world of the living.

“Would you like me to come with you?” Diana had asked when he had first mentioned it, a few weeks after they had come back from their holiday.

The relief that had swept over his features at her words had been palpable enough to make her heart squeeze fiercely. Although it had left her perplexed, too. The entire time, she had been under the impression that he couldn’t care less about returning to a place he had once called home, now that there was nowhere to go back to, no family left to visit. 

She should have known better, she had realized with a pang of guilt. The first time she had told him she had gone to see his family, over a year ago, her confession had all but left him speechless.

They flew into Chicago and then caught a connecting flight to Louisville where a rental car was already waiting for them, to take them south, retracing the journey he had set on over a century ago when he had left for the front. Diana drove—he was too jittery and too restless to pay close attention to the road.

“I still can’t believe you went there,” he murmured without looking at her, his gaze fixed on the blur of trees framing the interstate.

“They deserved to know that you were a hero, Steve,” she said, surprised by how little she remembered of the few days that had taken her to find this place and explain who she was, to the best of her ability. “And they deserved to know it from someone who was there to see it.”

She couldn’t stand the idea of some nameless, faceless officer doing the honours. 

She didn’t say that she had needed it, too. There had been a time when she had almost convinced herself that she had made him up, certain that her grief would turn her inside out otherwise.

Steve turned to her then and reached for her hand, bringing it up to his face to press a kiss to her knuckles. Diana glanced at him and squeezed his fingers.

She parked her car near the turn that would lead them to what used to be the Trevor Ranch. There was no metal gate there, no signs to prevent them from going further but that was as far as Steve was willing to go.

They stepped out into the cool March afternoon, the sun bright in the clear blue sky but the wind blowing across the field still carrying a touch of winter that seemed to not be entirely sure if it was ready to give up for the year.

Diana walked around the hood of the car and paused next to him, following his gaze that was trained on nothing in particular ahead of him. The Trevor Ranch sign was gone. She had no idea how long it had been gone, but there was nothing else replacing it. In the distance, where a stately farmhouse used to stand, there now was a handful of low structures scattered around. Ones that looked like barns, or maybe storage facilities. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Though she hadn’t expected to find the place remaining the same as she remembered it, the change still caught Diana by surprise. How easy it was to erase something completely, she thought, surveying the space before her. How easy it was to wipe out someone’s history until there was no trace of it left.

She moved closer to Steve and slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together. He let out a long breath, and she pressed her body against his arm, resting her forehead to his temple.

“They loved you, Steve,” she whispered low in his ear. “They loved you so much.”

He squeezed her hand. She felt a faint shiver run up his body when a gust of wind blew across the valley, ruffling his hair and tugging at the folds of their clothes.

They stood there for a long time without speaking.

At last, Diana straightened up and lifted her gaze to his face. “Would you like to go closer? Have a look around?” she offered, brushing her free hand over his shoulder. “If anyone asks, we can always say that the land used to belong to your family. I’m sure they will understand.”

Steve didn’t answer at once, his eyes squinting against the wind as he studied the field and the buildings for a few more moments, his expression unreadable.

And then he turned to her, and shook his head. His face softened when his gaze found Diana’s.

“No,” he said. “Let’s go home.”


Paris, 2021 (present day)

If anyone asked Steve Trevor, back in 1918, in the middle of the war that had been ripping the world apart at the seams, what he thought the future would be like, he probably wouldn’t have known how to answer.

For one thing, when you walked the edge of the knife every damn day of your life with bullets whistling past your head and the ground shaking beneath your feet as land mines went off, thinking beyond here and now was a luxury and, perhaps, optimism that few could afford. He had learned early on not to rely on hope, for fear of disappointment that had been walking hand in hand with it, at the time. 

That, and he probably would never have guessed the extent of absolute insanity that the future had turned out to be. Not in a million years. Granted, his best assumption would probably include something like flying cars or mind-reading. In that sense, one might say that the 21 st century was actually quite a let-down.

Although now, twenty-six months into his new life, Steve seemed to have started to get the hang of it. Most of the time. At least, he had managed to figure out how to use the microwave. And fob keys. And self-check-out. Although it still baffled him that he could use a computer to buy pretty much anything he wanted, from a pair of shoes to a helicopter, or a house (if he ever had a need to buy a helicopter or a house).

He still didn’t understand people’s obsession with technology and having their phones nearly surgically attached to their hands at all times of the day and night. But he certainly appreciated the fact that he could call Diana any time he wanted to hear her voice, and she would answer (unless she was really busy), or that the phone games provided a decent enough distraction when he felt the need to engage in something mindless to pass the time.

He liked how fast the cars were and how much certain inventions simplified things. Like washing machines, for instance. The mere memory of having to wash everything by hand, and in frigid water too, was giving him the kind of whiplash that made him particularly grateful for the technological advancements. Or timers. Timers on everything that made life feel sort of programmed, but at least reduced the risk of burning food. Though it never stopped Steve—god knew he liked a good challenge. A year in, he had accepted the fact that he would never be a skilled cook. That was just something he had to learn to live with.

“You’re not that bad,” Diana had told him when he had shared that observation with her with a touch of self-deprecation in his voice, her tone encouraging. And Steve had known that she’d meant it, too. She rarely said anything she didn’t.

But he had simply looked at his burned toast and vowed to stick to something less complicated. Like maybe boiling water and eating crackers or something.

There were still moments when the sheer enormity of everything left him more than a little disconcerted. The onslaught of information available to him, often conflicting and not always factual leaving his mind reeling. In those instants, he longed for the simplicity of his own time and the pace of life that hadn’t felt like a never-ending race towards something that didn’t exist.

He missed Etta and his boys with a fierceness that would sometimes knock all breath out of him. The unfairness of not sharing this all with them still felt like a stab through his heart even though he knew they wouldn’t have begrudged him that second chance to do things right and to live his life the way they had lived theirs because of the choice Steve had made that night in Belgium.

Overall, though, he couldn’t be happier. 

He loved the comfort and the easiness of the 21st century, and the fact that there seemed to still be no shortage of wonders that never failed to surprise and delight him. And, boy oh boy, did he appreciate the marvel of food delivery. And Maltesers. And unlimited internet.  

And then, of course, there was Diana.

Being with her, being in love with her, was the easiest thing he could have ever imagined. Her kindness and compassion were as infinite as he remembered, her love for this world unparalleled. Every day, he was fascinated by her, enthralled by her. She was determined and driven, but above all that, she had the biggest heart he had ever seen, and that, he knew, was the power that went beyond her speed and strength and all else that the world deemed superhuman. 

He loved working with her when he had a chance, and hated the times when she had to leave him behind, if only because watching her in action was one of the most remarkable things Steve had ever seen. He doubted he would ever get tired of it. 

He loved the sound of her laughter and the infectious smiles that made the corners of her eyes crease and the lilt in her voice when she said his name—as though he was the only person in the world.

He loved that there seemed to be no end to things that he could still learn about her. Like the fact that she loved those god-awful daytime TV shows about home renovations that he never missed a chance to tease her about. Which she reciprocated by teasing him about an infinite number of other things. She read a lot and she loved to learn new things, even when it was something small as though she was hungry for everything that the world had to offer. 

Steve admired her work ethic, both in the Louvre and on the battlefield, but if he had to narrow down all of his experiences to one most perfect thing, he would probably pick the way her eyes lit up at the sight of him. There was nothing quite like that. Never could be. 

She loved chocolate and despised Brussel sprouts (and he couldn’t agree more on that one). She loved holding his hand and didn’t appreciate him leaving clothes in the washer for too long. She loved to drive but didn’t mind taking the subway to save time. She was kind to children and strangers, and never needed a reason for that.

There were moments when Steve thought that no time was enough to learn everything there was to learn about her, and yet, at the same time, he felt like he’d known her forever. That there hadn’t been a single day when she wasn’t in his life.

But even with all of that, there were moments when he couldn’t quite shake off the jittery restlessness coursing beneath his skin. Everything felt enough, his life was enough, Diana was enough, but he wondered what he was supposed to do with himself, on the days when he couldn’t go with her on missions. In the moments when he found himself unable to focus even on the things he was meant to like.

He was a soldier still. The army existed even to this day, but war was out of question. At least, the way he had done it before. Diana had the museum, and he was starting to wonder if there was anything that could be like that, for him. There had to be, right? Not that trying to figure out the best way to make instant noodles wasn’t thrilling enough, but…  

Diana came home early one day, and Steve was immediately suspicious because she was never early. That, and she had a department meeting scheduled for tonight and those tended to run forever, in his experience. He had been just debating stepping out to pick up their dinner and maybe that wine that she liked when he heard the key turning in the lock. It caught him with one arm down the sleeve of his jacket.

He followed the sound of her keys jingling as she dropped them in a bowl by the door. 

“Hey, what are you doing here?” he asked, staring at her dumbly for a moment or two.

She looked up, the late afternoon sun painting streaks of gold through her hair and lighting up her face.

“I live here,” she said, smiling.

Steve sputtered for a moment. “Right, I mean… you’re home early.”

Once upon a time, he used to be a pretty coherent guy, if memory served him right. One that had been good with words and maybe not sticking his foot into his mouth every time he opened it.

And then Diana came along and it all went to hell in an instant. (If that was a more frequent occurrence, there would probably be a medical name to that condition, Steve was certain.)

Not that he was complaining.

Diana pressed her lips around a smile. She set her bag down. “Well, I could leave and come back later,” she offered, raising a quizzical eyebrow at him.

It was enough to snap him out of his stupor and send him towards her. 

Her smile broke out in full force and she reached for him as soon as he was close enough, catching his face between her hands and tilting her face up to kiss him. And Steve couldn’t help but wonder for the millionth time how he got to be so lucky and have someone like her to fall in love with him. He sighed against her mouth and buried his fingers into her hair, unravelling the loose knot it was gathered into near the base of her neck.

“Hi,” he murmured, afterwards, brushing a piece of hair from her cheek.

Diana draped her arms around his shoulders. “Hi.” She smiled, somewhat breathless. Or maybe she was making him breathless. Or both. “I was going for a surprise. Thought you might like it.”

“It worked.”

Her gaze drifted past his shoulder. “Is that for me?”

He followed it towards a bouquet of wildflowers sitting in a vase on the kitchen counter. He had been planning on moving it to the dining table, but, well...

“Yeah,” he turned to Diana again. “I was getting coffee in the morning and I thought…” he trailed off on a shrug and tried to focus on thinking despite her fingers moving idly through the hair near the nape of his neck, which was awfully distracting. He took a breath and tried again. “Yes, it’s for you.”

“They are lovely,” Diana told him.

As are you, Steve thought. And how was she still making him feel like he was scrambling after her without a chance of keeping up?

“I was just going to maybe go get some food—” he started.

She smiled again and leaned forward to press her lips to his in a slow, lingering kiss.

“Or, we could do that later,” Steve muttered against her mouth.

She didn’t stop him when he backed her into the hallway table, her quiet gasp sending a spark of need through his system all the way down to the tips of his toes. She didn’t stop him when his hand slipped beneath the hem of her blouse, splaying over the small of her back and making her shiver. Steve’s pulse tripped over itself at that.

Her breath hitched in her chest when he pressed an open-mouthed kiss to her throat, her fingers gripping his hair. God, I love you so much, he thought.

If she minded that they only made it to the couch because it was closer than the bed—and significantly more comfortable than the floor—she voiced no objection to it.

Afterwards, Steve reached over to turn on the reading lamp and grabbed a blanket draped over the back of the armchair to pull it over them before their bodies started to cool off. Briefly, he considered starting a fire, but the mere thought of the effort it would take was unappealing. Not when he felt so loose and relaxed and sated, and Diana was right there, her body warm against him. Instead, he gathered her in his arms, feeling her heart pound straight into his chest as she settled into him with the ease of someone who had done just that so many times it was as natural as breathing.

The sun was nearly down by then, the last rays of it colouring the tin roofs golden while shadows started to gather in the corners of the room. Even the usual sounds of commotion from outside seemed to have died down. No cars honking. No music playing.

That, or maybe his own heartbeat hammering in his ears was dulling them down.

Lazily, Steve combed his fingers through her hair. He loved the way she fitted against him, the warmth of her skin and the weight of her body, his memory still alive with the moments right before he—before she—

He took a breath and let it out slowly.

“You’re everything to me, Diana,” he whispered, threading her fingers through her hair once more. “You know that, right?”

He didn’t expect it to come out quite so… desperate. So final. Not after feeling light as air so recently. So light he had thought he might have floated away if he hadn’t been holding onto her. But it did, and there was no way she hadn’t picked up on it. She was too perceptive and he was too frayed and too tired to lie about not being afraid anymore of… many things, really. 

She stirred against him with a soft sigh, and turned up her face. He felt her lips brush a kiss against the underside of his jaw. “Steve?”

He didn’t say anything else, though. And she didn’t ask, although he suspected it might come up sooner or later. They stayed quiet after that, for a long while, and there was something steadying in simply holding on to her, and having her hold him back.

At last, Steve felt something set into place inside of him. Something that, for lack of a better comparison, felt like those shapes you had to arrange in that phone game so they fit properly without any gaps between them.

The mental image left him mildly amused. He wondered what Diana would say if she knew he was comparing his emotional state to a game of Tetris.

He traced his hand up her bare shoulder, circling its curve, and then tucked a piece of her hair around her ear. She stilled, and then relaxed against him as he pressed a kiss to her hair.

“Don’t fall asleep,” he warned her. 

“Mm?” Diana stretched under the blanket, such as she could, given that the couch was barely wide enough to accommodate one person, let alone two. Although, truth be told, Steve didn’t mind her proximity in the slightest. Especially when she seemed to press even closer to him. “Why?”

“Because the last time we did this, I was walking with a kink in my neck for a week. Have some mercy, Diana. I’m an old man.”

Diana lifted her head and smirked at him, her fingers dancing along his ribs. “Are you, now?”

He attempted to look indignant… and failed miserably.

“Don’t start with me,” he huffed.

“Don’t remember you complaining earlier.”

He most certainly had not. Even though he was not joking about his neck.

Was that his old age catching up to him?

“Hey, not all of us are celestial beings, impervious to the suffering of mere mortals,” he pointed out.

Diana laughed, a warm sound that made his heart clench.

Without thinking, Steve slid his knuckles beneath her chin, tilting her face up and chasing her mouth with his. They kissed, lazily, for a long while, her lips soft and yielding against his. When she moved back, eventually, her cheeks were flushed and her expression dazed, and he thought that he had never seen anything more beautiful.

Had she been someone else, anyone else, Steve would probably feel smug and more than a little self-satisfied over it. With Diana, though, there was nothing but affection, and a desperate plea running through his head on an infinite loop for anyone who might be listening: Please let me have more time with her.

She hummed in the back of her throat, a low sound of appreciation. And though they were not kissing anymore, she stayed close, her face only inches away from his.

“Is this what people do when there are no wars to fight?” she murmured, her thumb running the length of his jaw, back and forth.

Her question brought on a cascade of memories, the surprise and thrill he had felt the first time she had asked it, when they had first met. The snow and her hand warm in his and wanting so desperately to find out an answer that would make sense to both of them.

“This… and other things,” Steve said, trying to keep his face straight, his voice even.

Diana lifted a pointed eyebrow at him. “Well, I suppose we covered some of the other things already.”

He groaned and she laughed.

She drew back and settled against him, with her hand on his chest and her chin resting on top of it, her eyes moving over his features. And there it was, the question that he knew she had wanted to ask earlier.

“Want to tell me what happened?” he asked, twisting a piece of her hair around his finger.

She eyed him curiously. “What makes you think that something happened?”

“Because you only leave work early when something happens.” Steve paused. “Usually something of a cataclysmic nature.”

He watched her lips stretch into a wide smile, not catching up fast enough on the kind of trap he had stepped into. “Not true,” she countered. “There was that time when we—”

“That is beyond the point,” Steve stopped her, the heat rushing up the back of his neck. “We were almost caught then. We could have been arrested.”

She quirked an eyebrow at him, and he rolled his eyes, both of them aware that he would happily get… carried away with her in a place that was not entirely private again, if an opportunity presented itself. Not that he was going to admit it aloud.

“We weren’t,” she reminded him, unmasked amusement dancing behind her eyes. She was clearly enjoying getting a rise out of him, one way or another.

Steve huffed out a breath.

“And anyway, that didn’t count,” he pressed on. “And you still didn’t answer my question.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I do have some news,” Diana said, after a moment.

“Oh.”

She smirked. “Would you like some water?” she asked suddenly, pushing off of his chest and reaching for his shirt to pull it over her head.

“Aw, come on, you can’t just…”

Steve shook his head as he watched her head towards the kitchen. He scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up, the blanket slung over his lap.

In the kitchen, he heard Diana pull a glass out of a cupboard and then turn on the water, and then again to refill it, he figured, before she returned to the living room.

“Thank you,” Steve said when she handed the water to him before she lowered down to sit next to him, one leg tucked beneath her. He drank half of the glass in one gulp and then glanced at her, finding her staring unseeingly ahead of her.

And then she turned to him, wearing one of those smiles that never failed to short-circuit his brain and derail the train of his thought until it crashed into the side of some imaginary mountain. Or veered off a cliff. Maybe thinking of his inner workings as a phone game wasn’t that inaccurate, after all.

Diana smoothed her palm over his bare shoulder and then combed her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his face. Steve took a breath and tried to stay focused. Which was… not easy.

“The museum asked me to curate a dig that we’re funding,” she said after another moment.

He loved that about her, that she knew how to get straight to the point without dancing around it.

Admittedly, this was not something he was expecting to hear. Then again, there wasn’t anything particular that he was expecting to hear, so maybe that didn’t really count, per se.

He felt his brows knit together as her words sunk in. “Curate?” he repeated.

She was curating the whole department already.

“Supervise,” Diana explained, her fingers tracing absently the curve of his shoulder. “On-site.”

It was like a bulb went on then.

“Oh.” Steve’s gaze swept over her face. He cleared his throat. “Where’s the site?”

“In Morocco. About two hours outside of Marrakesh.”

Yeah, he definitely hadn’t seen that coming.

He tilted his head, intrigued. “They asked you?” he clarified.

Diana’s smile widened, seemingly of its own volition.

“I might have volunteered,” she admitted.

“Ah.” He chuckled and glanced at the half-full glass still clasped between his hands. There had to be a metaphor there somewhere, he figured. He looked up at her once more, a flurry of anticipation and excitement fluttering in his chest. “So, we’re going to Morocco?”

Notes:

Aaaaand we're in 2021!

I hope you enjoyed it :) Let me know what you think! I have a lot of fun stuff coming up, both angsty and hot and adventurous, so stay tuned!

Once again, a huge thank you goes to akajb for betaing this monster fic and for cheering on me along the way! (If there are any typos still left, they are all mine :P)

As always, comments are always welcome. I'll love you forever!
And I'll see you all soon!

Chapter 13

Notes:

Hey guys, once again, thank you so much for your support and for sticking around :) Hey, I'm doing my best to stick to some semblance of a posting schedule. I hope you're all doing well, and I hope you'll enjoy this chapter. I'm editing chapter 25 at the moment, and wow, I so cannot wait for all of you to get there as well. A lot of fun stuff is happening there.

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

Chapter Text

Morocco, 2021 

It had all started banally enough, from longing and loss and a need to belong — in a way Diana had known from the beginning she never would — to man’s world. In part, because she was different and mankind feared different, and often despised it out of that fear. In part, because she had known it was never her place to be part of them, no matter how much she wanted it.

The idea to find others like herself had struck her like a bolt of lightning, making her wonder why she hadn’t thought of it sooner.

The simple truth was that she had not been the first one to leave and to never come back. There had been others, before Diana had been born. There had been those who had never made it to Themyscira in the first place after Zeus had cast his spell to protect the island from being found by the outside world. They were the warriors that had belonged to legends that had existed long before Diana could even remember, the tales of their bravery woven into the history of the Amazons in the way she knew her own story would become part of it one day, if it wasn’t already.

And, they were a cautionary tale too—the magic guarding the island was strong. Once you left, there was no going back. The island was to remain lost. 

But, that did not mean that the world of man had swallowed them without a trace. If they lived, they had to still be around. And if they were, Diana had figured it was worth trying to find them. To find someone who could make her feel less alone, not as adrift.

She had found comfort in helping mankind, in carrying on with the mission of the Amazons to make it a better place for all. But grief had sometimes weighed down on her like a stone, the unfairness of watching everyone around her grow old and die while she remained the same, frozen in time, stuck and unchanged, as though cast aside to watch the life pass by her, helpless to change it. Sometimes, her immortality had been the greatest gift that Diana could think of. But more than once, it had felt like a curse.

She had wondered more times than she was willing to admit if it would have been the same if Steve had lived, but the question was pointless and impractical, and it hurt her more than it soothed her. Because Steve was gone, and then Charlie was, too. And then Sami and Etta, and then it was just her in a sea of strangers that admired her for her beauty but cared nothing for the weight of every loss that Diana carried inside of her.

It hadn’t surprised her that she had found no one, no matter how hard she looked, knowing that once the word about her gifts had spread after the first war, her sisters would have sought her out themselves, if any of them were still alive.

Yet, the disappointment of it was crushing, all the same. Not only had her hope dissolved, but the purpose that had kept her busy for a while had as well. Diana had found traces of them though. A vase similar to the one that adorned her mother’s chambers on Themyscira, clearly crafted by the same hands. Bows and arrows that bore striking resemblance to those that she had used in her training, polished from the tight grip of hands wielding them. Pieces of armour that had looked much like her own, the craftsmanship unmistakable to those that knew what to look for.

That was how she had come across a sword to replace the “god-killer” destroyed at the hands of Ares. A new one, just as sharp and indestructible—a weapon not meant to be used by men.

As far as consolations went, those finds had been a weak one. But they had opened a whole new world to Diana, too. One of the mysteries hidden from people’s eyes because only someone like her could see the truth behind them. One that had ultimately guided her to where she had ended up.

But, not all of those mysteries were the safe kind. Some, she knew, could bring destruction upon the world of men if they ended up in the wrong hands. Like the Spear of Destiny that was rumoured to have played a part in Hitler’s influence on the masses during World War II. Or the Mother Boxes that had helped resurrect Victor and bring Superman back to life, their power unparalleled and unimaginably dangerous.

Diana knew better than anyone else, perhaps, that a lot of the time it was easier to prevent dangerous artifacts from falling into possession by the wrong people than to clean up the mess afterwards.

As far as the management of the Louvre was concerned, there was no particular reason for her to offer her assistance on the dig in Morocco. It was outside of the jurisdiction of her department and had nothing to do with Greek or Roman Antiquities. But, she had a reputation no one could argue with and she spoke impeccable Arabic as well as French, which carried yet another advantage. That, and her knowledge of ancient languages came in rather handy now and then. She hadn’t expected to be approved for the project, not entirely, yet it had not come as a complete surprise when they had decided to give it a go.

There was nothing particular that Diana was concerned about on that dig, per se. Not from the information she had received. But the site was new, unearthed—quite literally—recently during a particularly fierce sandstorm that had come from the Sahara Desert. And in Diana’s experience, if there was anything of a personal interest to her there, it was likely to be uncovered at the beginning of the excavation. Those things seemed to have a sort of pull to them, as though guiding the eager and curious towards themselves.

She hoped, genuinely and wholeheartedly, that the entire affair would end up being merely a break from her routine, and nothing more.

That, and she was sure Steve would enjoy the change of scenery.

He hadn’t been obvious about it, but he had been growing restless recently. She knew that it bothered him to stay idle for long, and more so—that he couldn’t always go along with her when her help as Wonder Woman was needed. That he hadn’t been able to quite figure out yet what he should do with himself. 

It didn’t matter to her. She just wanted to be with him, to have him in her life, in her bed. Wanted to hear the sound of his voice and see the blue of his eyes whenever she pleased. Wanted to tell him that she loved him. She wouldn’t have cared if he chose to stay home and do crossword puzzles all day long. 

But, that was not who Steve Trevor was, and she respected it. 

Perhaps, going away for a couple of months was not such a bad idea, Diana had figured. She was not bound to be involved as much as she was with the Louvre. Perhaps, they could spend some time together. She would not have minded that.

“They don’t actually ride camels there everywhere?” Steve had asked her as he’d flipped through some brochures he had picked up at a bookstore, his voice equally skeptical and mortified, and maybe a little thrilled at the idea.

When he had looked up at her, completely, perplexed, Diana couldn’t help but laugh.

“No, they have cars,” she had explained patiently, and decided not to tell him that she would have paid a dear price to see him ride a camel. Now that he had put that mental image in her head, it was likely there to stay.

“Do they eat scorpions?” he had inquired next, warily.

She had shaken her head. “I believe they do that in China.”

“Huh.”

“I think you should stop reading this.” She had plucked the brochure from his hands, letting it fall on the couch, and added before he had so much as opened his mouth to argue. “What you should do is kiss me. And then go pack.”

Diana had been to Africa before—to Egypt and Sudan and Nigeria, to bring relief during uprisings and military conflicts. She had seen the ugly underbelly that hatred and fights for power never failed to unearth. But she had never travelled to Morocco until now, and from their first days there, she found herself enthralled and positively smitten with the bright colours and narrow streets and noisy markets, the smells of food and spices and something perfumed mixing into a dizzying scent of change that followed her like a promise she had yet to decipher.

They moved into a charming, quaint apartment organized by the museum in a small suburb between Marrakesh and the site of the dig, in an area populated primarily by either the locals, or other researchers and archaeologists, tucked away from the main routes the numerous tourists that crowded the streets of the city used.

Diana loved Paris. She loved living in Europe and the conveniences that it offered, the food and the culture and people. But there was something about this place, a hidden gem almost, that made it feel as though it didn’t belong to the rest of the world.

Maybe it was the heat, so different from the continental climate she was more accustomed to. Even on Themyscira, with its perpetual summer, the air had never been this dry, to her memory. Maybe it was the sand that got everywhere, no matter how hard you tried to avoid it, and the coppery shade it gave to everything. She wondered how it was possible not to fall in love with this country, immediately and irrevocably.

Though that was not to say that working for hours on end in the blistering sun, with the wind throwing fistfuls of sand in her face was the epitome of joy as Diana had imagined it. And she was not even involved in the actual dig, not being a qualified archaeologist herself. For the most part, her job was to identify and label and catalogue the items that were being unearthed, a lot of it done in a stuffy tent to protect the artifacts from the elements. However, admittedly, as bad as it was she could think of far less favourable things to engage in, if she was being honest with herself. (Like baking.)

“You are an excellent cook,” Steve had pointed out the day she shared that observation with him after a week of fieldwork.

“As long as it doesn’t involve yeast,” she’d responded diplomatically, and he’d chuckled.

All in all, she was enjoying the experience far more than she expected. She knew the three months that they were supposed to stay there would fly by.

And she knew Steve was liking it, too.

He had been visibly relieved to find out that while there was, indeed, an ample number of camels in the streets, mostly for the amusement of the tourists, Marrakesh had appeared to be just like any other city he had visited so far. Enough to set his mind at ease, made better by the fact that though he had discovered some curious culinary items on the menu here and there, most of them had nothing to do with insects or crustaceans. Or avocadoes.

The traffic, on the other hand, he had called horrendous.

“And coming from someone who lived in the time where there literally were no rules, that says something,” he told Diana, his jaw a little slack as they paused at the intersection, watching cars honking and drivers yelling at one another while they tried to figure out who was going where.

“Must make you feel at home,” Diana said innocently, and he snorted.

He squinted in the bright sun, regarding the pandemonium unfolding before him with a mixture of fear and fascination.

“They are worse than Charlie,” he said after a moment, his voice laced with fond wistfulness. He turned to Diana. “Why do you think Sami was driving that day of the gala?”

She stepped closer to him and smoothed her palm over his arm. “Frankly, I never once wondered.”

“Well, your lack of interest is hurtful. Just for the record.”

Diana laughed at that, and then leaned over and brushed a kiss to his cheek.

“I’m sure I can make it up to you.”

And then she smiled wider at the crimson colour that flooded his face as something tender fluttered behind her ribs.

She awoke later that night with a start that left her disoriented for a long moment. She didn’t think she had been dreaming—at least, she couldn’t remember it, if she had. The night was quiet, strangely so. In Paris, one could not expect the silence to be quite so consuming. There was always music playing somewhere, the sound of voices drifting from the outside even in the dead of the night. Here, it felt almost absolute—the way it had been on Themyscira, in her memories.

But something was not right now. Something—

She felt Steve stir next to her, and it dawned on Diana that he had been the one who had awoken with a jolt, his breath hitched in his throat and her sleep light enough to pick up on it. She turned to him, watching him run his hand down his face as though trying to physically push away the remnants of a dream. His chest moved as he took a breath, and then another one, the air around them still and a little too warm for comfort, pressing down on them like a blanket.

She watched him toss the covers aside and climb out of the bed, his footfalls soundless as he padded towards the kitchen. Diana hesitated briefly, but then pushed the sheets off of herself as well and stepped onto the floor.

In the kitchen, she found Steve by the sink with a glass of water, his hair rumpled but his breathing steadier than it had been a few minutes ago.

She paused in the doorway, debating her options. She could go back to bed—if he wanted to speak of this, he would. She could stay and make herself known. Her gaze drifted towards the bedroom, briefly, and then she moved towards him, the tiled floor beneath her feet never cool in this place, so hot it was most of the time.

Steve didn’t turn, but he clearly knew that she was there as he didn’t tense when she touched him.

Her hand brushed over his back. “Steve?”

“Just thirsty,” he said, his voice soft in the night and his gaze trained outside the window, on the world coloured deep indigo-blue. “That heat…”

“Liar,” she murmured, moving closer to him, and he made a quiet amused sound. Not quite a laugh but close. “What did you dream?”

He merely shook his head. Diana didn’t press. That was an unspoken rule never to be broken—she knew he would talk to her if he wanted to; knew he would never ask of her more than she was willing to give, either, when her own nightmares resurfaced. 

She hated it though. She could shield him from a bullet and keep him away from danger. There were so many things that she could protect him from, but not that. Not the demons plaguing his mind, and Diana hated it so much. Hated how helpless it was making her feel. 

“You can tell me, You can tell me anything,” she said, though she knew he already knew that. 

Steve let out a long breath and nodded. “I know.” 

“Come back to bed,” she asked, after another moment, her fingers skittering along the base of his spine.

“Yeah, I just…” he trailed off and rubbed his eyes.

Diana’s arms slipped around him, and she pressed a kiss to his shoulder, and then another one. She closed her eyes, allowed herself to breathe him in. Zeus help her, how was it even possible to love someone so much, so deeply?

“Come back to bed with me,” she repeated, her voice dropping a notch.

Steve set his glass down on the counter and turned to her then. She tilted her face and kissed him softly, feeling the shift from comfort to love as though it was a physical switch inside of her; one that made her heart stutter.

He slept with her body fitted around his for the rest of the night, and neither of them dreamed.


Steve took a turn off the paved interstate and onto a dirt-packed road and slowed down as a cloud of dust enveloped their rental car, forcing him to roll up the windows. The sun was shining high up in the clear blue sky and beating down mercilessly on the endless stretch of the desert as far as the eye could see. In an odd dissonance to it, the breeze coming from the sea a couple of hundred miles to the west from them was fresh and pleasantly cool.

He squinted out the windshield and hoped he had taken the right turn—the last time, he hadn’t, and instead he had spent a good hour cursing unmarked roads and everyone who allowed them to exist to high heavens. Not that anyone was gracious enough to answer him, or sympathize with his plight.

He breathed a sigh of relief when, upon climbing a slight incline, he was greeted by a scattering of brown and green canvas tents in the valley below, small figures moving between them purposely, and quite a few clustered beyond said tents in the area they were working on. Steve rolled his neck and eased his grip on the steering wheel, having not realized how tightly he had been clutching it.

A guard positioned near the entrance to the site peeked into his vehicle and waved him in. It had taken the entire party all of two days to start recognizing him and calling him none other than Miss Prince’s boyfriend . A title that, according to Diana, had stayed vacant up until now, as far as her colleagues were concerned.

“So, you never brought anyone else to work?” he had asked Diana the day he had first accidentally overheard the term, in reference to himself.

She had smiled as she continued to dice tomatoes, not responding immediately. “I supposed I never had a reason to,” she had said, eventually.

He still had no idea why it had made him feel a little dizzy, but it had, filling him with inexplicable self-satisfaction as well. What a manly man he was, indeed.

Steve parked behind a station wagon in the hopes that its shadow could maybe, hopefully, save his car from turning into an outright oven in five minutes flat, and pushed the door open. Almost immediately, his shirt stuck to his back, the hot air rushing into his lungs. The breeze he had felt earlier did not reach the valley, apparently.

He grabbed a bottle of water and a paper bag from the passenger seat and squinted in the sun as he surveyed the site before him. Almost immediately, he noticed— heard —one of the head archaeologists, Rachid, slightly ahead, a phone pressed to his ear as he was engaged in very loud conversation in Arabic, though Steve failed to determine if he was angry or just emotional in a more positive way.

He inched past the man and then grabbed the first intern he saw to inquire about Diana. The girl gave him a mildly curious once-over and then waved her hand towards a cluster of trees where two horses were tired in the shade, rather happy about the fact that Diana was feeding them apples. 

Steve’s lips twitched and then spread into a smile, his chest growing tight with longing at the sight of serenity on her face. If the heat or the dust bothered Diana in the slightest, he could see no sign of it.

He walked over to her, the gravel crunching beneath his shoes.

One of the horses twitched its ear in alert, but otherwise, they both remained perfectly content to be occupied.

“What are you doing?” Steve asked when he was close enough to be heard.

On instinct, he reached over to pat the closest animal on the neck, earning a pleased huff in response.

Diana looked up, surprise chasing across her face before she broke into a bright smile.

“Having a break,” she said, giving the other horse a rub along its nose before she turned to Steve. “What are you doing here?”

God, that smile…

“I come bearing gifts,” he announced with a flourish that made her laugh as he handed her the water and then lifted the paper bag. “Lunch. I just thought you’d be too busy to…” he trailed off on a shrug and glanced around at the carefully controlled chaos unfolding around them. His gaze drifted once more towards the man he had passed a few minutes ago, now red in the face, his voice having risen a few notches. “I see Rachid is enjoying his day.”

Diana cracked the bottle open and took a swing before she followed his gaze. Her expression turned into one of amusement.

“We haven’t received transportation containers on time,” she explained. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they arrive within the next hour now.”

Steve hummed and looked at her again.

She tilted her head, her eyes crinkling at the corners. And then she leaned forward to kiss him.

“Hi,” she murmured. “I’m glad to see you.”

Helpless against the urge to kiss her again, Steve dipped his head to do just that. “Hi,” he echoed, running his free hand up and down her shoulder, the fabric of her loose blouse soft beneath his touch. He brushed a piece of hair from her cheek and took the water from her before handing her the paper bag. “Eat.”

“Thank you,” Diana said, sincerely.

She rubbed the back of her hand over her forehead, and then, finally, retrieved the sandwich Steve had picked up for her. He wished it wasn’t too hot to bring her ice cream, but he feared it would simply melt all over the rented upholstery. Maybe later tonight…

While she ate, he grabbed an apple from the bag sitting at Diana’s feet and offered it to one of the horses who took it gingerly, shaking its head a little in what Steve hoped was appreciation.

“So easily swayed,” he murmured, rubbing the other animal between the ears.

Camels were decidedly not his thing, but horses… He knew Diana loved horses, knew she was a good rider, too. Had to be—he had seen what her people had done on that beach, and she had trained alongside them. Maybe on her day off, they could take a ride together someplace nice.

He made a mental note to ask her later. Or maybe he could figure something out, as a surprise.

“So, have you found anything yet?” he asked after a couple of minutes.

His own pitiful knowledge in the area was limited to the things he had seen in the Indiana Jones movies. And those had made the whole process look a lot simpler than it actually was, it had turned out. The first few times Steve had come around—driven by curiosity and looking for an excuse to see Diana—they had been removing the soil by layers, which had sounded… Well, complicated and more tedious than he had expected, all things considered.

Shamefully, he had to admit that he had kind of expected them to just dig and hope for the best.

But, that had been last week and Diana had mentioned pots and cutlery already, and now the transportation containers…

It was hard not to get curious.

Diana’s features softened. She crumpled the empty paper bag in her hands and glanced towards the main site, for now—Steve knew they were going to keep moving it, until they covered the whole area of a settlement or whatever this was.

“Walk with me?” she offered.

Steve nodded. He gave one of the horses the last rub on its neck and followed Diana towards the people and tents and the cluster of cars parked haphazardly along the road. She finished the water and then tossed both the bottle and the sandwich bag into a bin before she pulled open the flap of one of the tents and ducked inside.

Steve did the same, surprised how stuffy it was. It almost made the scorching heat outside feel fresh.

Diana didn’t appear to care one way or another. She walked over to a metal table pushed against the back canvas wall, between a water cooler and a filing cabinet, and picked up a stack of paper that, upon close inspection turned out to be photographs.

“May I?” Steve asked, pausing beside her, and she handed them over.

A broken dish, something that he assumed was a toy, a hairbrush—or maybe some hair decoration, he couldn’t really tell the difference. Most of them were broken or covered with dirt, but even he, with his rudimentary knowledge of history, was not oblivious to the enormity of these finds.

“Wow, that’s…” he faltered and shook his head. When he looked up at Diana, she was smiling. “Is it always like this? With what you do?”

“I didn’t do this,” she reminded him, jerking her chin towards the photographs. “I’m here to catalogue them, describe them, see if we can date them.”

“Yeah, but still…” He shook his head again.

She folded her arms over her chest. “It feels like a nice break from meetings and paperwork,” she admitted. “Different kind of paperwork,” she amended when Steve hummed under his breath.

He glanced up at her and then flipped through the photographs once more, turning a couple this way and that to have a better look.

“Have you found anything… interesting ?” he asked, unable not to.

She raised an eyebrow at him.

“It’s all interesting.”

“No, I know. I mean, of the…” he dropped his voice and looked around for good measure, lest someone overhear him, “…strange variety. Like those—ah, pyramids.”

“Pyramids?” Diana echoed.

“I saw a documentary,” Steve hurried to explain. “About how they opened the pyramids in Egypt and then a lot of people died because they were cursed.” He paused and turned in the direction of the site. How could one even know if these things were cursed?

When he looked back at Diana, prepared to ask that exact question, she was smiling like she always did when she thought he said something old-fashioned or adorably ridiculous (and proud about it). He had seen a lot of that smile in his early days in the 21 st century, for both reasons.

She took the photos from him and slid them into an envelope.

“They didn’t die from a curse. They died because they inhaled bacteria that had mutated over the five thousand years that the pyramids had stayed sealed,” she said.

“Oh.”

He tried to remember if the documentary people had said anything about bacteria. They probably had, but he had been a bit caught up on the whole curse thing. Which was understandable, all things considered. If gods and Amazons were real, who knew what else he should be on the lookout for, really? 

Diana pressed her lips together when she noticed his expression.

“I think we’re good here,” she said, brushing her palm along Steve’s forearm.

“You sound very cavalier for someone who has gods for a father and a brother and who uses magic in battle,” he countered.

She moved to him then, her hands coming up to rest on either side of his face before she tilted her head to kiss him, once more.

“Very well,” she murmured against his lips. “I’ll keep an eye on curses, if you’d like.”

Steve huffed out a frustrated breath and leaned forward, resting their heads together, grateful for the semi-privacy of the tent as his hands curled over her hips. Even if it was stuffy and hot and smelled… He swallowed when an old memory caught up with him. It was not quite the same, but the scent of the canvas reminded him, strongly, of the war.

He pushed the thought aside, feeling himself relax when Diana’s hand stroked his cheek.

“You’re funny,” he muttered, a little accusingly, which only made Diana’s smile stretch wider.

And when his eyes widened a little, when it occurred to him that he almost forgot—

“There’s something else I wanted to…” he started, leaning away from her and reaching into the back pocket of his pants to pull out his phone. He frowned, confused, and slid it back before reaching for a different pocket, retrieving Diana’s phone this time. “You forgot it. I thought you might—” He cleared his throat. “Well, you use it a lot.”

“Oh.” She took it from him, surprised. “Thank you. I was hoping I didn’t lose it.”

“There’s… ah, Bruce called,” Steve added, a little sheepishly. “I wasn’t snooping,” he said quickly when she lifted her gaze to his. “It was ringing and I thought it was mine, and then I saw the name—” He stopped. “I figured it was probably something important,” he finished. So I came here to give it to you, was implied without him having to say it.

Diana’s features melted into tenderness.

“I know you didn’t snoop. Thank you, for bringing it over,” she repeated.

Steve watched her unlock it and scroll through her notifications—he had heard it make quite a few sounds in the past couple of hours. Leaving her to it, he wandered back to the table and peeked into the assortment of plastic containers sitting there, some labelled, most—not.

When he turned to Diana again, she was standing right where she had been a couple of minutes ago, her brows furrowed.

“Diana?” he called.

She looked up, but the frown remained in place.

“Is everything okay? Do you need to—” he cut off, and then finished uncertainly, “go save the world?”

The joke fell flat between them. Absently, she rubbed the back of her neck and let out a small sigh.

“No, but I need to…” She chewed on her lip, debating something.

Steve stepped towards her. “Can I help?”


Gotham, 2021

Bruce hadn’t heard Alfred approaching until the mug of coffee appeared, leaving Bruce both perplexed and mildly annoyed. Making him wonder if he was losing his grip, though one might argue that being on guard in the confines of their own home bordered on paranoia, at best.

“I hope it’s spiked,” he muttered as he picked up the coffee.

“I would not disrespect your father’s fine collection of liquors in such a disgraceful way,” Alfred noted dryly.

Bruce chuckled, unable to help it. Spiked or not, the coffee was more than welcome.

He glanced at the older man. “Thank you, Alfred.”

Alfred nodded, and then moved his gaze towards the screens before Bruce, his brows drawing together quizzically.

“Any luck?” he asked.

Bruce’s swivelled in his chair, his lips pressing into a thin line.

He had pilfered a bunch of files off of A.R.G.U.S.’s server earlier, more for the hell of it than for any particular reason. To see if they had changed protocols, maybe upgraded their security. (They hadn’t.) To see if they were trying to cover up something of interest to him.

These days, Amanda Waller was a little too busy running around the city with the Suicide Squad again—something that frustrated but didn’t surprise Bruce in the slightest—to pay any attention to the League. Or to cause them any trouble, which often was the same thing.

But then he’d stumbled over something marked as Classified for no reason that Bruce could see. The files contained information about a man who went on a trip to Peru, came back home with a much brighter disposition, and then, two days later, attacked his manager out of nowhere. He’d claimed that the voices in his head had told him to do that, before they had apparently convinced him to jump off a roof soon after.

The story itself was not unoriginal—pressure and stress and god knew what else pushed thousands of people all over the world to exhibit manic behaviour every day.

What intrigued Bruce was that Waller had deemed the story important enough to involve her agency. And not just that, but label it as Classified as well. 

It didn’t sit right with him. Something was wrong there, he could feel it. But the more he thought about it, the less it made sense, which was maddening in and of itself, made worse by the fact that the files weren’t providing any theories. Dry facts, while appreciated, made little difference to him.

He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his hand over his chin. On the screen before him was a video of the man rushing up the stairs, the picture grainy but his expression reminding Bruce of those he had seen on the faces of the Arkham Asylum residents.

Maybe it was that, he thought. Not everything was a deep mystery, he knew. But the nagging feeling beneath his skin wouldn’t allow him to let it go.

Hence a call to Diana, on the off chance that she had come upon anything of a similar nature recently. Something that would make a connection. But she hadn’t picked up. Bruce knew she was not presently in Paris, which explained it. Probably. He had followed the call with a text message and then forwarded the encrypted files to her email, as well.

She might not be prompt, especially when something of a non-urgent kind was concerned. The man was dead, after all. But she would get back to him, eventually. He knew he wanted to get her opinion.

“No, nothing yet,” he told Alfred, his frustration bubbling up to the surface all over again.

“Have you heard from Miss Prince?” Alfred inquired, after a moment.

Bruce’s gaze flickered towards his phone, the screen black. It had been a few hours. Only a few hours, Bruce reminded himself.

He tried to not let her silence get to him.

“No, not yet.”


Morocco, 2021

Diana came home with a thick folder one day.

Parked at the laptop in the living room with her notes from the previous week, Steve looked up.

“Hey, you home early,” he called out.

That he would end up being roped into the whole digging business before the first month was through had not surprised him.

For one thing, it was, justifiably, rather fascinating. More than anything he had ever dealt with before.

That, and after a few weeks of doing virtually nothing, he had found himself quite bored. Sure, he could lounge by the pool all day long, or wander narrow streets and crowded markets, or, well, watch TV, but there were only so many times one could do that before it lost its charm and appeal.

Hence, a stack of Diana’s handwritten notes on the uncovered artifacts and his attempt to organize them for her before she added them to the online catalogue.

All in all, it beat watching TV until he could feel his brain leaking out of his ears.

“You don’t have to be doing that,” Diana said as she walked into the living room, heading toward him, her gaze sweeping over the desk that looked like a hurricane had travelled over it, leaving nothing but chaos in its wake.

Steve looked up when she leaned down to kiss him.

“Well, you could put me on payroll,” he pointed out when she straightened up, making her chuckle. He saved the file he was working on and pushed back to stand. “Or, express your gratitude in… ah, other kinds of favours.”

Diana bit her lip around a smile. “I suppose that could be arranged,” she noted with pointed nonchalance that made a jolt of heat rush up his body. And it was only then that Steve saw the trap that he had laid out for her and walked into, himself.

He stepped towards her and wound his arms around her waist, dipping his head down to kiss her properly. She kissed him back, a low hum of approval rising in the back of her throat as her fingers moved to curl over his cheek.

“There, better,” Steve said, his voice earnest and a little hoarse after he pulled back.

Diana smiled, her nose crinkling. “I missed you, too,” she confessed. “And this,” she added, tracing her fingers over the frame of his reading glasses , head tilted as she took him in. 

“I’m never taking them off,” he promised urgently, and she laughed. 

She pressed her lips together and reached to take his glasses off and set them down on the desk. “I think they did their job,” she murmured, her voice laced with at least a thousand suggestive implications that made Steve lose the train of his thought momentarily. 

“Now you’re just making fun of my old age,” he shook his head with feigned dismay. 

“I think you look very distinguished.”    

He brushed a kiss to her brow, taking a moment to breathe her in—sunshine and sea and sunscreen, and then, finally, noticed the envelope in her hand.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“I think you’re going to like this,” she said. “We found a few bodies a couple of days ago—”

“Wait, bodies?” Steve’s eyes widened. “You mean like…?”

“Objects of historical significance,” Diana explained. He could see that she was barely biting back her laugh at the sight of his bewildered expression. “We have come upon a burial site, excellently preserved. But it is not safe to leave them there and the dig doesn’t have the proper conditions to maintain the required level of humidity, the right temperature. They will be transported to the Heritage Museum in Marrakesh and then to Paris, next week. But, they need documents to travel.”

Steve blinked. “They are dead,” he reminded her carefully.

“Well, every artifact requires paperwork for transportation,” she told him, her gaze flickering towards her laptop and the catalogue entries that he had spent the past few days updating.

He cleared his throat.

“Right.”

“So, this is the paperwork.”

She handed him the envelope, and cocked her head expectantly as he opened it and pulled out authenticity certificates, registration forms and—

Steve snapped his head up.

“Are these passports?” he asked, dumbly.

“I knew you would find it interesting,” Diana smiled.

Steve set the rest of the documents down and focused on the passports, flipping through the first of the three green books he had found in the envelope until he got to the ID page. There, from a tiny black and white photo, a mummified face with closed eyes and hollow cheeks stared at him. Well, as much as it could, closed eyes and all.

“You have got to be kidding me,” he muttered under his breath.

“They arrived from the embassy in the city today,” Diana said, moving closer to him to peek at the photograph over Steve’s shoulder.

“Well, that’s…” he faltered, shaking his head.

“They are, technically, citizens,” she said, diplomatically.

He looked up at her. “No, it’s not that. How on Earth are their photos better than mine?”

At that, Diana rolled her eyes and headed towards the kitchen.

“They are not better than yours,” she argued.

Steve trailed after her, squinting indignantly at the three documents.

“They are,” he insisted. “I don’t even look like myself on my passport photo.”

When he looked up, Diana had already pulled a bottle of wine out of the fridge and was pouring herself a glass. She lifted it up and quirked her eyebrow quizzically in a silent question, but Steve shook his head.

“Of course, you do,” she said after a moment as she sipped her wine.

“I do not. I look like a deer caught in the headlights. That they could recognize me at—ah, at the customs and all is a serious cause for concern, from where I’m standing.”

She smiled then, a brilliant thing that made his pulse stutter.

“That is not true.”

“You look good,” Steve pointed an accusing finger at her, which only made her smirk. He glanced at the mummy passports again and then set them down on the counter. “You look—Is that a rule? Do you have to be three thousand years old to get a decent ID photo?”

“I’m not three thousand years old,” she pointed out.

“Three thousand years old and dead,” he sighed, a tad dramatically, dismissing her comment.

Diana leaned against the counter. “Your photo looks fine. And you’re not dead.”

That got the corner of Steve’s lips to twitch. “One might argue.”

Diana sighed and collected the passports. “If I knew you would get so worked up over them, I would have given them to Rachid,” she said over her shoulder, heading back to the living room.

Steve stepped out of the kitchen after her.

“Cut a guy a break,” he murmured sheepishly, pausing in the doorway with his shoulder leaning against the frame and his arms crossed over his chest. “Not all of us are divine beings impervious to vanity.”

And other trivial, petty feelings, he thought. His comment was not entirely justified, Steve knew. She had always seemed to be above those things. Anger, jealousy, pride. When they’d first met, he had assumed she simply had no time to even contemplate any such thing.

He knew better now, of course. He knew that she felt deeply and passionately, never holding back. She certainly was not immune to frustration, he thought, a little amused.

Diana glanced at him and let out a small laugh, shaking her head either at his ridiculousness or his unjustified self-deprecation. Or both.

“I should maybe introduce you sometime to some notorious Greek tragedies,” she mused as she finished her wine, giving Steve a pointed look over the rim of her glass.

He chuckled. And suddenly the three feet of space between them was intolerable.

Steve pushed away from the door, crossing the room towards her. He marvelled, not for the first time, at the intricacies of fate or whatever it was that had brought them here, to this moment. Him, a man with more flaws than he could count, and her, a goddess who could have easily had anyone else in the world but who, for reasons Steve couldn’t always understand, had chosen him.

Something that he would never not be grateful for.

He watched Diana set her glass down and slip the stack of documents back into the envelope, perfectly aware that he would hear no end to her teasing him about those ID photographs in the near future.

Walked right into that, he thought, with fondness.

The thought also brought a brief stab to his ego. But then Steve remembered the feel of her in his arms, the silky skin and the husk of her voice in his ear. How she gave herself to him so gladly and without hesitation. It had never been about pride with them, and even if it was, he would gladly give it up to be with her. There was nothing he wouldn’t give up, he thought.

“Please tell me they'll be flying coach,” he said with as much seriousness as he could muster while he tried to keep his face straight.

Diana hummed, though he could see the makings of a smile working its way across her face. “Now wouldn't that be interesting.”

He reached for her then, helpless against the need to touch her, sliding his arms around her to pull her against him. He ducked his head closer to hers as his fingers slid beneath the hem of her shirt, searching for skin, pleased to hear her breath hitch a little, while her palm slid up his chest to curl around the back of his neck.

When she kissed him, it was languid and soft, but it left him with need simmering beneath his skin all the same.

“I don’t care what my photos are like, as long as you still like me,” he said, quietly, afterwards.

“I still like you,” Diana whispered, smiling. She leaned in to brush a light kiss to the corner of his mouth, murmuring something in Greek as she did so. Something that, after two years, Steve had learned to recognize as words of affection.

God help him…

“I need to take a shower,” she said, eventually, her fingers playing with the collar of his shit.

Steve bowed his head to nuzzle into her neck. “I think I have a better idea.”


“We could take that drive to Marrakesh tomorrow, if you’d like,” Diana said, and the sound of her voice pulled Steve out of the tangle of his thoughts, making him realize shamefully that she must have said something else and he had totally missed it.

They were sitting in the bathtub—which, in Steve's humble opinion, was way, way better than a shower, despite the tight fit—with his back against its frame and Diana’s body cradled between his parted knees, her back resting against his chest. The pale light of the lamp over the sink was casting a yellow halo over the space while the shadows started to gather in the corners.

He tightened his hold on her and dipped his head to press a slow kiss to the side of her neck.

“Mm?”

Diana’s fingers moved along his forearm under the water. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

He winced a little, feeling caught. Wondering how long he had been out of it. Long enough that the water had started to cool down, though with an air temperature that verged on “frying eggs on the sidewalk” even as the evening started to creep in, it would be a while before it became uncomfortable, he knew.

“That I love you,” he said, kissing her throat once more, his mouth sliding toward the tender spot behind her ear. “That I will always love you.” 

Diana made a noncommittal sound in the back of her throat and tilted her head to the side to give him better access.  

“What are you really thinking?”

“That I could have ten thousand years of this and it still wouldn’t be enough,” he murmured, as his palm slid across her abdomen, surprised by the honesty and sentimentality of his confession. And how right it felt. 

“Sitting in tepid water?” Diana clarified.

He laughed a little. “Being with you,” he said into her hair.

Her face was half-turned and he watched the corners of her lips twitch, pulling upwards.

“Charmer,” she murmured.

“You asked.”

“I did.”

Her hand curled over his wrist, her thumb stroking the skin over his pulse point. Steve wondered if she could feel the way his pulse tripped each time she touched him.

He took a breath and reached for the washcloth resting on the lip of the tub, doused with the floral-scented soap and lathered into a foam. He smoothed it over the curve of her shoulder, along the length of her arm. When Diana tipped her head back, he didn’t hesitate to lean forward and press his lips to hers, feeling relaxed and a little lightheaded, and knowing in that instant that there was something to her joke and that if she had offered to not leave the bathtub for a few millennia, he would agree, quite gladly.

“I love you, too,” she said, softly, against his lips.

The silence settled over them, the comfortable kind that wasn’t asking to be filled or interrupted without a reason. His hand continued to move, tracing the soapy patterns along her skin as he revelled in the feel of her body close to his and the simple pleasure of knowing that she loved him and that he loved her, and that, at the end of the day, not much else mattered.

Ten thousand years of this sounded rather appealing indeed.

Yet, when she said his name, he didn’t mind it, loving the sound of it coming from her.

“Steve.”

“Yeah?”

She smoothed her palm over his shin and then let it rest atop his knee.

“Did you find anything in those files that Bruce sent last week?”

Though the question didn’t catch Steve by surprise, not entirely, it made his brows knit together.

He set the washcloth back on the edge of the tub and pulled Diana closer, feeling her exhale slowly and relax into him.

“No,” he said, after a moment, his hand running absently over the length of her collarbone.

He had spent a few days poring over a few pages of… well, nothing, essentially. Bare facts that hadn’t told him anything about Batman's interest in the case. He had watched the grainy black and white security video of a middle-aged man running up the stairs until his head started to hurt from staring so hard at it. There was, mercifully, no video of him jumping off the roof, or from afterwards.

Part of Steve was grateful for that. But he was also too confused to let go. He had seen a shaky video of Diana fighting Doomsday on the day Superman had died, the scale of the battle beyond anything that he could wrap his mind around. He had seen some things she had come against in person, too. There was nothing of that sort in the video from Bruce. Which begged the question—Well, it begged quite a few of them.

And maybe because there was nothing, Steve couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was missing something important. Like the nagging sensation under his skin that he couldn’t claw out but that itched somewhat maddeningly.

He decidedly did not enjoy it.

Steve’s gaze wandered around, over the tiled floor and the curve of the sink and the half-open mosaic window behind which the sky was painted in red and orange.

The most confusing thing was, he could find no trace of that accident anywhere. When he had typed the man’s name into a browser, certain it would spit a bunch of news reports back at him, there had been nothing.

Which had made Steve wonder where on Earth had Bruce Wayne got those files. Which had left him feeling like those terriers when they could smell a fox but couldn’t track it down. Meaning, annoyingly restless.

“Did Bruce ever tell you what he has been trying to find?” he asked.

Diana had spoken with Batman the day the files had arrived. She had watched the video and read the text files, too. But this was the first time they were actually talking about it, and suddenly, Steve was curious to hear her thoughts, kicking himself for not asking sooner.

“No, he did not,” Diana said after a moment. “I think that was the point—to get an opinion unclouded by judgement or expectations.” She paused. “And, I don’t think he knew, either.”

“Hence, asking for a second opinion,” Steve mused thoughtfully.

“Yes, I suppose it was that,” she agreed.

A riddle, Steve thought. That was what it was, though where to start solving it he had no idea. Maybe that was what was making him feel so antsy. Trust him to latch onto it and not be able to let it go.

“Where did he even get that stuff? Bruce, I mean. The files… None of that made the news, or… anything.”

Diana’s fingers skittered along his arm.

“He has his ways,” she said vaguely—a non-answer that intrigued Steve even more.

The secret Justice League ways, apparently. He wondered if they were secret. Well, they were of course, but—Would she have told him if he asked, directly?

He chose not to. It didn’t matter, really.

He leaned forward and kissed her neck, moving his mouth slowly over the dip of her throat and then along the curve of her shoulder. He smiled against her skin when Diana muttered a quiet curse in Greek under her breath, her grip tightening on his wrist.

“Is that why you’re keeping me a secret? So you could say I have my ways?” he teased.

She half-turned towards him once more, smiling. “I’m not keeping you a secret. Clark knows about you. And Barry. He asks about you every time we meet. Discreetly, I must add. Which is a big deal for Barry.”

“I’m touched,” Steve said. “Truly, I am.”

She smoothed her hand over his knee that was sticking out of the water near her thigh. “Maybe I just like keeping you all to myself.”

His heart knocked hard against the inside of his chest. He felt himself curl forward, his throat suddenly tight and dry and all out of sorts. When he tried to say something, anything, he found himself unable to speak, for a second.

“I don’t mind you keeping me all to yourself,” he murmured, brushing his lips to her temple. 

“They’re not disrespectful,” she added, after a brief consideration. “But they can be…”

“Nosey?” Steve offered.

“Yes.” She smiled. “ I liked not having to deal with that. But I’m not… it’s not because I was trying to hide you .”

Steve couldn’t help but smile at that too. This was another of what he mentally called Diana mysteries. How she could be so honest and open and real, and yet so private, at the same time. An acquired skill he couldn’t remember from before.

He wondered, sometimes, what had triggered it. There were days when he couldn’t bear not having been there to witness it, to follow her every step along the way.

But, like with many things, he didn’t know how to ask, equally hungry for every morsel of information about her that she was willing to give him, and aware of the heartache that it could bring to them both. And he, of all people, understood the importance of burying one’s ghosts so they wouldn’t drive you mad.

“I know. And, you like keeping me all to yourself,” he repeated her own words. 

Diana laughed. “That, too.”

He chuckled and settled against the tub, feeling her relax in the circle of his arms. She tipped her head back and rested her forehead against his jaw, their chests rising and falling slowly until Steve couldn’t tell where she ended and he began, and the contentment of the moment was overwhelming to the point of making something fragile and tender inside of him ache.

“Have you thought of staying here?” he asked suddenly, only realizing that he had spoken aloud when Diana stirred against him. Though when she tried to turn and look at him, he wrapped his arms tightly over her chest, holding her right where she was.

“Stay here?” she echoed, clearly surprised. “In Morocco?”

Steve shrugged a little. “You love it here. You love what you do here.”

“I don’t do much of anything here,” Diana pointed out, a smile in her voice. “And, I like what I do in Paris.” She paused. “You want to stay here? What about the dust?” she asked, her tone teasing.

“I don’t mind the dust.”

She craned her neck to look at him. “What about the heat?”

“I don’t mind the heat, either,” Steve promised resolutely, which only made her smile widen.

“Yes, you do,” she laughed. “You said just that only yesterday. Cursed it rather colourfully, too, if I recall properly.”

Steve huffed, and made a face. She circled his knee with her fingers, waiting. And then asked when he stayed silent, “What brought this on?”

He didn’t respond at once.

“Steve?” 

“It doesn’t feel… real,” he admitted quietly, after some hesitation.

Which came out odd, now that he heard it outside of his head. It wasn’t like he was leading a dreadful life in Paris, or slaving away in the salt mines, or anything of that sort. Quite on contrary. Yet, it was impossible to ignore the passage of time there and the perpetual presence of never-ending fear crawling beneath his skin—the fear of never having enough time, of having his future with Diana slip right through his fingers.

Half the time, Steve could find no reason behind that feeling, but the lack of reason didn’t make it any less present, much to his frustration. 

Here, on the other hand, it was as though life had come to a standstill. It was as if he was finally allowed to take a pause and catch his breath. Which was an illusion, of course, but there was no shame in holding onto an illusion when the alternative was far less appealing.

Part of him expected Diana to dismiss it, brush his words off. But she didn’t. He watched her smile fade, such as he could.

“I know,” she murmured, and it didn’t surprise Steve that she understood. “I’m going to need to go back.”

He sighed and nuzzled into a spot behind her ear. “I know.” And then, after another moment, “What were you saying about Marrakesh, earlier?”

She relaxed at that, her fingers moving absently over his wrist. “I’m not needed at the site for a couple of days, so I thought maybe we could do something, together. What do you think?” She looked up, her smile bright enough to light up the entire world, and reached her hand to touch his chin. “Would you like to spend some time with me?”

Steve smiled back. “Yes.”

Notes:

I'll be honest, this entire little detour came to be just because I love "The Mummy" and because I wanted to give Steve and Diana a bit of time together. Yes, it will be connected to the main plot (soon, I swear) but also I wanted to shamelessly write some fluff for a chapter or two. We'll be back to all the regular drama soon enough.

About those passports, which was such a fun things to write - it was inspired by this post that turned up on my dash on tumblr at some point and akajb and I got to talking about it, and it was decided that it would be a very fun thing for Steve to deal with. Poor Steve is still dealing with a lot, so I really like rattling him whenever I can :)

Alright, I really hope that you enjoyed this chapter :) As always, comments are much appreciated, please share your thoughts!

And I'll see you soon!

Chapter 14

Notes:

Hey everyone. I hope you're all doing well, and thank you again for you amazing support! I'm so happy that you guys continue to enjoy this story :) I am only one chapter away from finishing my editing, and frankly, I cannot wait to have it all done and ready to go. The pace will be picking up a bit starting from this chapter. I know the previous one must have felt like a bit of a detour but I promise it is all connected and it will all play into the overall plot!

A bit of a warning - there will be some hot and heavy making out in this part. Nothing overly explicit (we'll get there) but I know not all of you are comfortable with that sort of stuff, so feel free to skim/skip it.

Also, I'm going to do that thing that I sometimes do that some of you don't like/consider mean 😬 You'll see.

Anyway, go ahead and have fun!

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

Chapter Text

There was nothing specific that Diana wanted to do on her days off, but maybe that was the point.

So much of her life was structured and scheduled and compartmentalized she couldn’t help but wonder sometimes if the entire thing would fall apart the second she took one step in the wrong direction. Admittedly, a lot of the time, it was the structure that brought her comfort. When your life could be upended and disturbed at the drop of a hat, it was hard to resist the temptation to cling to what was the opposite of just that.

But, there were also moments when it felt suffocating, too. As though she was stuck between rigorous control and utter chaos, unable to find a middle ground.

Even after all this time in man’s world, she still hadn’t figured that part out.

And then Steve had come back, and everything was different. For all the times she’d had to pack up her entire life and change where she lived, her age, the people surrounding her, Diana had never considered herself a drifter. She had simply done what had needed to be done, there hadn’t been anything more to it, or anything less. It still surprised her how much his presence grounded her, steadied her in a way she had never realized she’d needed.

Such a silly thing it was to think that. Yet, she knew that if she needed to move on tomorrow, to leave Paris behind for whatever reason, to sever every bond she had formed in the past decade, that this time she wouldn’t be doing it on her own. And the relief that realization had brought on was overwhelming.

So much so that when the usual dig proceedings had come to a halt, she couldn’t help but jump at the opportunity to take a step back and spent some time with Steve without feeling like she was on deadline, like she had someplace else to be.

Although, that was not entirely accurate, Diana mused as the stretch of desert between their apartment and Marrakesh morphed into a blur outside her window. Even here, away from Paris, she had obligations. There were always phone calls to make and reports to sign and exhibits to oversee, and given a chance, Celeste would happily pile more on Diana’s do-to list.

But, it could all wait for a day or two, she knew.

In truth, no one had expected to find the bodies at the site. There had always been a possibility, Diana was aware of that, but a lot of the time, the burials hadn’t survived that long without someone robbing their chambers and often destroying their occupants in the process. Yet, here they were, and dealing with them was different from dealing with the pots and hair clips and home decorations—more delicate and more urgent, if nothing else.

Rachid had been happy to take over that, and having never dealt with tombs or their mummified occupants prior to now—at least, not in a professional capacity— Diana had let him. Gladly so.

“Are you sure they’re not cur—” Steve started, for perhaps the fiftieth time, as Diana slowed down, steering their car towards the narrow labyrinth of the old city.

“They’re not cursed,” she interrupted him, trying hard to swallow her smile.

He swivelled his head towards her, and even without turning to him, she could feel his gaze travel over her body.

“How do you know?” he demanded stubbornly.

Her hands tight on the steering wheel, Diana shot him a glance out of the corner of her eye.

“Well, we’re still alive. Is that not enough proof?”

“It’s not like all the bad stuff is supposed to start happening immediately,” he argued with conviction and authority that had her biting her lip.

“Is it too late to recommend you stick to something more factual on TV?” she mused, earning a frustrated huff in response. One that had her wishing that she was not driving so she could kiss every trace of it out of him that very second.

“It’s not just the TV,” Steve said indignantly. “There were also books…”

“Books? Like Wikipedia?” she murmured.

Beside her, he heaved a dramatic sigh. “You’re the worst,” he muttered just as Diana brought their car to a stop under the shade of a tree, the street on either side of them alive with music and voices and colours.

But Steve wasn’t looking at any of that. When she turned to him, she found him watching her, and despite his comment, he was smiling fondly. Her heart twisted and unfurled in her chest, and now that they were not in danger of causing an accident, she was helpless against the urge to lean over and kiss him.

“I’ll keep that in mind when a curse comes to get you in the middle of the night,” she whispered against his lips, her fingers threading through his hair.

Steve chuckled and then kissed her once more, ignoring the honking and the general racket outside, his lips soft against hers. 

“Always the optimist, aren’t you?”

He smirked and Diana beamed at him, her palm smoothing over his cheek before she turned around to push her door open and climb into the bright, stifling afternoon.

“You sound almost as though you want there to be a curse,” she said as she circled the car to join Steve on the sidewalk.

He slipped his hand into hers. “Can’t blame a guy for being cautious.”

They spent the next two days wandering the narrow streets of the old town, the maze of red walls stretching out before them as far as the eye could see. They strolled the markets where Steve bought her a beautifully patterned scarf that smelled either of perfumed spices or spicy perfume, and ducked into small shops to escape the sun and the heat and the noise when it would all get too much, her hand clasped in his the entire time. They walked the winding paths of the gardens spilling over the tall, brick walls, dizzy from the intoxicating smell of flowers, and climbed the ruins of a palace that had long been stripped of its riches but had never lost its grandeur.

Once or twice, Diana’s mind wandered towards Bruce’s files, something about them, about his voice when she had called him later that same day, still sitting uneasily with her, made worse by how Steve had spoken of it all when they’d talked about it. She knew he had found the entire story unsettling, as well.

If it hadn’t been for the involvement of A.R.G.U.S., Diana would have gladly dismissed it, she knew. What had happened with that man was tragic, but there was hardly anything unusual about it, per se. Not at first sight, at least. But knowing that Amanda Waller had some interest in that story complicated things. That woman knew better than to waste her time on trivialities.

Then again, to get involved would be to draw the government’s attention back to the League, and they had done a lot— Bruce had done a lot—to shake Waller and her kind off of their backs. Was it worth the risk for something that didn’t seem to pose an outright threat to anyone?

Diana made a mental note to tell Bruce that it might very well be a trap, to begin with. Waller allowing him to get into the system, to push him to take the wrong step just so she could swoop in and reap the rewards.

Although, to her credit, the woman seemed to have backed off once she had faced League’s refusal to cooperate, her hands full once more with the Suicide Squad.

The thought made Diana’s mouth twist as though she had bitten into something sour. And then she decided to push the whole story aside for the time being.

The man she loved was with her, and he loved her, and that alone was enough to make her feel like her chest might crack open with joy right there and then. It made Gotham and Waller and her games feel like they belonged to a whole different world. 

She and Steve found themselves at a restaurant the following night, a small place with only a handful of tables a few blocks from where they were staying, most of them full. The night was warm, the air still and motionless, save for the occasional gusts of light breeze that made the candle sitting in a glass in the middle of the table between them sway and flicker and chase the shadows around.

Diana set aside the menu and rested her elbow on the table, lifting her gaze up to the man across from her. Steve had spent the past few minutes studying the Christmas lights strung along the wall and the other patrons, but he turned towards her immediately, as though sensing her attention.

In the semi-darkness of the street patio, under the pitch-black sky, his expression was streaked with shadows and almost unreadable. Though the way he paused didn’t escape Diana’s attention.

“What?” she asked, smiling, and picked up her glass of water.

“You’re beautiful,” Steve said without hesitation, the raw sincerity of his words sending a spark of desire up her spine.

She watched the colour rush up his face the second he remembered that they were not alone, strictly speaking. His gaze moved ever so warily around, and even though no one seemed to be paying them any attention whatsoever, he still appeared to be adorably self-conscious.

Which made her want to lean across the table and kiss him right there and then.

A waiter appeared at their table with their wine and to collect the menus, and Diana smirked a little at Steve’s apparent relief over the distraction before she had a chance to say something provocative the way he knew she would.

She made a mental note to do it later and then kiss every trace of shyness out of him afterwards.

They placed their orders and the waiter departed with a curt nod. A moment of comfortable silence settled over them, as they sipped their wine and watched the evening crowds stream down the sidewalk on the other side of the narrow street, bursting into bouts of laughter or springing into emotional arguments every now and then.

And while Steve was distracted, Diana took a moment to study him, thinking of how handsome he was in his loose cotton shirt that still hugged his shoulders so nicely and with three-day stubble coating his cheeks. Not quite a beard yet. She liked how it looked and the way it felt against the palms of her hands when she touched his face, and how both soft and prickly it was against her skin when he kissed her along—

She shook her head, pushing that thought away for now as she continued to sip her wine, feeling the familiar warmth spread from her stomach. She smiled to herself. Later…

The waiter reappeared with their order, wishing them quietly to have a good meal. When Steve’s gaze fastened on hers once more, she was surprised, not for the first time, how natural it felt. To be with him, to hear the sound of his voice any time she pleased, to never have to think beyond the here and now.

“I was thinking about what you said the other day,” Diana said halfway through their dinner. Her words made Steve pause and look up from his plate. “About staying here,” she explained when he blinked at her, clearly confused. “Not for good, but maybe a few more weeks.”

He straightened up, his head tilted slightly to his shoulder as he studied her. And then he shook it a little. “You don’t have to do that on my account,” he said.

She smiled. “I’m not.” She set her fork down and linked her hands together beneath her chin. “This new development is going to slightly complicate matters, and—”

“You mean, the dead people?” Steve clarified.

“Yes.”

“Complicate how?”

“Well, finding well-preserved bodies is a slightly more significant event than discovering the household items. They belong to Morocco, first and foremost. Like everything else, of course,” she added, “but as I said, they require specific conditions for handling so they don’t get damaged. The site is not equipped properly for that, and we’re going to request additional assistance in case we come across more burial chambers. And then, there is the paperwork, the administrative arrangements…”

“Oh. Well…” Steve twisted his fork in his fingers. He cleared his throat. “That does sound… complicated.”

Diana shook her head, her lips curving into a smile once more. “It’s not. Not really. Not when you know what you’re doing.”

“And you know what you’re doing,” he said, smiling back at her.

She picked up her wine. “Some of it. But it is time-consuming, yes. Rachid will be dealing with it all, mostly. They want to run the scans, define their age, the causes of death. Don’t—” she added quickly when Steve opened his mouth, “start about curses.”

He clamped his mouth shut. “Wasn’t gonna,” he grumbled, before pointing his fork at her. “Just keep in mind that if a mummy crawls through our window at night, I’ll be using you as a human shield—a god shied—” he huffed. “Something—something like that.”

Diana arched an eyebrow at him. “Duly noted,” she said dryly.

She watched him drop his gaze down to the tablecloth, and then lift it up and survey the space around them. The patio and the stretch of the street and another brightly lit café at the opposite corner.

“You sure you’re alright doing that?” he asked as he turned to her, a slight frown crowding his forehead. “’Cause if you’re needed in Paris—”

“I’m sure,” she stopped him gently, watching his expression smooth out.

It was not like she hadn’t understood what he had meant the other day, when he had asked her to stay back for a while longer. There was an undeniable appeal to stepping away from the familiar patterns. It was not like it hadn’t crossed her mind to put everything on hold altogether, and just hold him close and love him and never let him go.

Steve nodded. He took a sip of his wine.

“Steve,” she called, and he looked towards her. “You know that it doesn’t matter to me where we are, yes? That my feelings for you don’t change, whether we’re here or in Paris, or anywhere else.”

Surprise chased across his face “Of course.” He reached for her hand across the table, lifting it up to kiss it. “Of course, I know that.” And then, after a moment, “But I was not joking about the mummies and using you to save myself. Just so we’re clear.”

Diana couldn’t help but laugh at that.

And then she promptly banned the subject of curses or documentaries till at least the end of the night.

“I remember you being rather skeptical about the God of War,” she pointed out rather smugly, and rightfully so, as they finished their meal.

“Yeah, well, I’m learning from my mistakes,” Steve protested rather defensively. “Should I not get points for that?”

Neither of them had noticed how the wind had picked up as the night wore on, grateful instead for the breath of much-needed freshness. Hadn’t paused to consider it when the waiter brought their check and Steve asked her if she’d like to have a walk.

They were leaving the restaurant when the first raindrops fell. Within a minute, it was pouring, angry bucketfuls of water falling from the sky and having everyone run for cover, thunder rumbling above and swallowing the cries of surprise and excitement. 

Diana felt Steve slip his hand into hers and give it a tug.

“Come on, let’s go,” he urged her, and she followed him as they raced through sheets of rain, trying to avoid the puddles, though why—she wasn’t sure. His dress shoes and her sandals offered poor protection from the skies that had opened up, as though determined to drown them all.

“Here,” Steve panted as he ducked to the left, pulling her into a niche of someone’s doorway.

Diana slumped against the rough wall, a laugh bubbling up from her chest as she waited for her eyes to adjust to the deeper shadows around them. She pushed back the hair sticking to her forehead and threw her head back, her heart hammering fast and her breath coming out in short gasps. There was something inexplicably exhilarating and dizzying about the entire experience, though what was making it so, she couldn’t tell.

She felt Steve’s hand skim up her arm, his gaze trained on the downpour outside of their hiding place and the river of rainwater rushing below the one step that was keeping them dry. The niche was narrow, barely large enough to fit them, and she could feel his chest heaving, the air moving with his every exhale and raising goosebumps along her skin.

She felt him turn to her rather than saw it, his face a pale spot in the thick shadow, his gaze nearly palpable. Something that made her heart flip in her chest. She hoped that no one was going to open the door then, either to have a stroll in the storm, or to tell them to leave.

“Well, that was… unexpected,” Steve said with a short laugh.

Diana watched him run his hand over his hair before he moved closer to her, crowding her against the wall that smelled, faintly, of wet cement.

“It was,” she murmured, her breath catching in her throat again, though for an entirely different reason this time.

She could see there was fire behind his eyes and his breath falling on her skin was making Diana shiver. Slowly, his palms travelled the length of her arms. She continued to watch him, barely breathing, certain that her heart might jump right through her ribcage.

“This is not a usual thing, is it?” he asked, his voice dropping low. “The rain and all.”

It took Diana a moment to place his words, to process them.

“No, I suppose it’s not,” she replied as her gaze dropped down to his lips.

Even through two layers of wet clothes, his shirt and her dress, she could feel the heat of his body. Maybe because of them, she thought absently, the cool fabric making the contrast all the more stark. Or maybe because it was all she wanted to feel.

“One might even think…” he started before trailing off. 

She felt her lips curve upwards at the corners. “It’s not a curse,” she whispered. 

He chuckled, a soft sound that shot right through her, going deep and igniting something primal inside her, in a place she’d never known existed. “Wouldn’t hurt to be more careful,” he murmured.  

He paused there with his face an inch away from her and even less between the rest of them, which only made her want him to touch her even more. She could feel him watching her, drinking her in. Could feel the rapid beating of his heart. Or maybe her own. Or both.

“Steve,” she breathed, and his hands moved over the curve of her shoulders to cup over either side of her face, tilting her head back the moment before his mouth found hers.

The heat of it seared through her, making her breath hitch and eliciting a low, guttural sound from him that made her shudder. Diana’s fingers curled over his shirt, tugging him closer. She parted her lips beneath his, and he moaned softly against her mouth. She could taste the wine on his tongue, feel the urgency behind his touch, the need pulsing at her core making her feel like her knees might give in, and Hera help her, how was it possible that he was still doing this to her?

Steve’s hands moved over her body, his palms travelling down her shoulders, over her back. He nipped on her bottom lip, none too gently, and Diana broke the kiss with a gasp. Immediately, he dipped his head to transfer his attention to her throat, slow and deliberate, and knowing.

“Steve,” she breathed when he sucked, hard, on the gentle skin over her pulse point.

The rain continued to fall, less of a storm now and more of a steady whisper that turned into white noise that morphed into the sound of the blood rushing in her ears.

“Yes?” he said, but Diana felt it rather than heard it.

She swallowed, and took a breath, and then another one, her head still tipped back because she couldn’t think of making him stop doing all the wonderful things that he was doing, but this was—they were not—

Diana exhaled sharply and gave his chest a light push, just enough to have him straighten up. He did not move away though, his body still pressed close against hers, making her wish she could throw the caution to the wind and just—just—

“Take me home,” she murmured, breathless and dizzy, when he dropped his forehead against hers. One of his palms was still curled around the back of her neck, beneath the sopping wet ponytail, his other thumb tracing the sharp line of her jaw.

She watched a slow smile make an appearance. It started at the right corner of his mouth, tugging upwards ever so slightly and moved on to the left one until he was giving her that dazzling, brilliant thing that was making her forget herself.

“Yes, ma’am.”


She didn’t remember the walk back to their apartment, half-running and trying not to slip on the cobbled streets and ignoring the puddles because her sandals were likely a lost cause anyway. Truth be told, Steve’s shoes didn’t stand much of a chance either.

Steve paused near the entrance to their building to kiss her again, drawing out what little air was still left in her lungs and leaving her wondering how she was supposed to ever start breathing again.

And then they were inside, her back pressed against the door and he was kissing her properly, slowly and deeply, his mouth sure and purposeful. He skated his hands over her sides, up her arms, over her back when Diana arched into him. Her fingers curled over his hips. She heard him curse under his breath when he drew back for air, his mouth sliding over her jaw, and thought that she’d be damned if they still had those layers of clothes between them in two minutes.

Her pulse stuttered and her eyes drifted shut when Steve reached around her for the zipper on the back of her dress, pulling it down. His hand trailed the length of her spine from the base of her neck and down and then up again.

And then he paused and straightened up, everything suddenly coming to a halt.

Diana opened her eyes, confused and trying to hold on to whatever thread of thought there still was to hold on to.

“Steve?” she said, quietly. She reached up to trace her fingertips over his lips.

“You’re shivering,” he said, his voice low and ragged, and amidst an incoherent moment of need and want and now, Diana found herself stupidly, ridiculously pleased to still be able to inspire that reaction in him.

“You’re shivering, too,” she smiled.

He was. She brushed her hand through his hair next, pushing it back from his forehead. In the pale-yellow light of the lamp near the door that she didn’t remember turning on, his eyes were dark and hungry and wild. And she wanted to stop this moment and bottle it up so she could remember it for as long as she existed in this world.

Steve’s brows furrowed. She could practically see his struggle with trying to understand what she was saying. Which made her smile wider as the knot of desire unspooled in her stomach. Her gaze dropped to his mouth, the slight curve of it, his lips swollen—a sight that made Diana want to kiss him again.

“It’s not from the cold,” he said, as last, even though the unexpectedly cool breeze blowing in through the open window might have disagreed, on any other night.

Diana moved closer to him, one hand still clasped over his hip, until the front of her was pressed against the front of him. And even through laboured breathing and the haze clouding her mind, she found it in her to tilt her head up at him, her eyebrow quirked pointedly.

“I’m not cold either,” she said.

He drew in a shuddering breath, lowering his head as his eyes slammed shut.

“God, Diana…”

Without thinking, she reached for the buttons on his shirt, needing to touch him, to feel him. But her hands were shaking, and by the time his mouth found hers, she was simply pulling at them. If Steve registered the sound of his buttons popping off the fabric and scattering over the floor, he didn’t seem to care. She would buy him a new shirt, Diana thought absently while her mouth slanted over his. She would buy him a hundred shirts, if he wanted them.

She gave it a last tug until the thin cotton was hanging loosely over his frame. She dragged her nails over his chest, just enough to earn a strangled groan and a hard jerk of his hips against hers. Yet, when she grabbed at his belt, his hands darted down to catch her wrists.

“No,” he whispered against her mouth, lifting up her arms to press her wrists into the door above her head. “No, not yet…” 

“Steve…”

His mouth skated over her cheek. “Not yet,” he repeated low in her ear, his warm breath on her skin making her bite her lip.

Diana felt him scrape his teeth along the tender skin of her throat. She curled her hands into fists, nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms against the instinct to pull from his grasp and touch him. It was so very rare that he wanted to take control, his pleasure often found in pleasing her.

She knew why, of course. Even after the two years together, it was doubtful that he had forgotten her off-hand comment on the boat about Clio’s treatises and how unnecessary men were for anything but procreation. The small “No” he’d given when Diana had proclaimed just that was probably seared into her mind for the rest of forever. He had proved her wrong, that night in Veld, and he had continued to prove her wrong over and over again, afterwards.

She’d be a fool to complain about that. She was certainly not going to start now. No one had ever made her feel the way Steve did, and it was not about the sex or all the delightful ways in which he could make her feel good. It was about him, and them, and the way she wanted him like she never wanted anyone else. About trust, and devotion. And in part, she knew, the fragility and making each moment count.

But she was hardly going to stop him from asking for what he wanted, either. 

“Steve.”

She didn’t even realize that she was talking out loud until he pulled away, his gaze moving over her features and the burning behind it setting something inside of her ablaze.

He let go of her wrists and didn’t stop her when she slipped her hands beneath his shirt, sliding them over his shoulders to push it off. It fluttered down to the floor.

She leaned into him, brushing her nose along his cheek, nuzzling his stubble, a dull warm tug in the pit of her stomach making it hard to think. He smelled like rain and something warm and so distinctly Steve that the familiarity of it made her ache with longing. He turned his head, pressing a kiss over her brow, so gentle that Diana’s fingers twitched on his skin.

“Take me to bed,” she said, her throat tight.

That it had come out as a plea hardly mattered.

She lifted her eyes, held his gaze as his fingers hooked under the thin straps of her dress to slide them down her shoulders. He gave it a slight push at her hips and allowed gravity to take it, sheer fabric pooling at Diana’s feet. He waited a moment for her to slip her sandals off before he leaned forwards, his palms sliding down her thighs to lift her up until her legs were wrapped around his hips.

“I won’t drop you,” he said, fusing his mouth to the column of her throat as Diana’s arms came to wind around his neck.

“I know,” she murmured into his hair.

Zeus, the things he was doing to her.

In the bedroom, he lowered her down on the bed, with the care that spoke of more tenderness than she could bear. His hands skimmed over her body, his touch feather-light, leaving her desperate for more. He leaned in to kiss her, softly and slowly, until she was dizzy and dazed and breathless, her mind swimming. In the periphery of her attention, Diana heard a dull thud as one of his shoes hit the carpet. It was quickly followed by another one.

He drew back then, gazing down at her. Diana’s mind jumped to the moment on their first night together after he had come back, alive and real and hers, and how she couldn’t possibly imagine loving him more than she had back then, for fear of her heart bursting with the fullness of it.

Yet, here they were, and she loved him more still, the force of it thrumming in her veins. 

She lifted her hand to trail her fingertips along his cheek. He didn’t stop her when she reached for his belt this time, undoing it, and then the zipper. Didn’t stop her when she pushed his pants down his thighs, his boxers following suit.

He sighed against her collarbone when her hand brushed over him, a thrill racing through her system and earning him a sound of disappointment when he shifted out of her reach. Diana raked her fingers through his hair when he pressed his mouth to the dip in her throat.

“Patience,” Steve murmured into her skin, a smile in his voice. “I want to…”

She cursed quietly when his fingers traced the curve of her hip along the hem of her underwear, his touch light and teasing and almost enough, but not quite. He laughed softly, and then slid that one last item down her legs.

“God, you’re perfect,” Steve whispered as he kissed his path down her sternum, across the delicate skin beneath her navel.

“Steve,” Diana breathed when he pressed his lips to the inside of her thigh, trying to find the words—to tell him—

And then his mouth closed over her, and she stopped thinking about anything at all.


Diana was not sure at what point exactly had the rain stopped. Even the gentle patter on the rooftops that had followed them home had ebbed until there was nothing but the stillness of the night and the occasional cry of the night birds left behind.

She breathed in the sweet, perfumed air she knew she would always associate with this place, with this moment in time, and let it out slowly. She seemed to have caught her breath, but her heart was still racing a frantic gallop in her chest and the world had not yet shifted into its proper place, its axis slightly askew.

Beside her, sprawled on his stomach in a tangle of sheets and half draped over her, with his arm curled around her body, Steve was trying to get his own bearings, it seemed. His breathing was still a tad faster than normal, his shoulders moving with it beneath the thin sheen of sweat coating his skin. Although, even though his eyes were closed, he had not yet fallen asleep, she knew.

Diana’s gaze swept over his features, taking in the shock of hair falling over his forehead and the slight flutter of his lashes, even with his eyes shut. She took her time to watch him, to catalogue every detail without being caught. Without him flashing a smile at her, and saying something sweet, or something suggestive. Or both.

Her chest constricted with a fierce tenderness that unfurled behind her ribs, taking up the space around her heart and her lungs. It wove over her ribcage until she couldn’t even tell how she was breathing at all, what with so much emotion living and pulsing inside of her.

It made her feel light and heavy, all at once. It made her suddenly and acutely aware of the fact that had something tried to uproot it all, there likely wouldn’t be much of her left, in the end. How different it was from the time in 1918 when she had first lost him. And later, in 1984, when she hadn’t had enough time to get used to having him back.

Her gaze moved over the line of Steve’s nose, the curve of his mouth, the slight touch of grey in his hair near his temples, in the stubble on his cheeks. She couldn’t even tell if it had been there when they’d first met—she hadn’t known then to take her time to pay attention. She should have, Diana thought. Now she knew every freckle and every scar, and the slight wrinkles near the corners of his eyes. She could paint the map of him with her eyes closed.

It was funny and somewhat bewildering that she could speak hundreds of languages, yet if there were any words to define or name what she felt for him, she didn’t seem to be aware of them.

She wondered how long she could go without touching him. But just as the thought crossed her mind, she was reaching her hand towards him to run the knuckle of her index finger over his cheek. Steve stilled and then relaxed at her touch. She heard him take a breath before his eyes fluttered open, and then close again. His hand twitched on her ribs.

She should have been more merciful towards him, Diana thought with amusement. Not bring him to the brink of collapse, perhaps. She didn’t regret doing just that, though.

“I don’t think I remember my name,” Steve said after another long moment passed, his voice slurred and sated, bringing a smile to Diana’s face. He cracked one eye open to look at her. “Or yours, or…” he trailed off with a sigh.

She couldn’t tell if he forgot what he was going to say, or if he forgot that he was supposed to be speaking.

“I think you remembered it just fine, not long ago,” she reminded him. “All those things you said to me…”

She let the sentence hang between them until he blinked his eyes open properly, heat flashing behind his gaze. She sure remembered them, words of love and confessions and her name whispered into her skin, between breathless kisses, tattooed into every inch of her body.

“I promise to go easy on you the next time,” she said with pointed nonchalance.

And then watched Steve’s eyes widen in, very likely, genuine concern. “Don’t you dare.”

She turned her face into her pillow and laughed. Zeus help her, she could not recall the last time she felt so weightless, so full of light.

Steve moved his hand to brush a piece of hair from her cheek. She could feel him watching her, taking her in the way she had watched him only minutes ago.

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

Diana smiled, her nose crinkling. “You mentioned that already.”

“You didn’t stop being beautiful since then.”

“Flatterer,” she murmured.

“Just had to go and fall in love with a goddess,” he muttered under his breath.

“Just had to go and fall in love with a soldier,” she echoed, and his lips twitched.

“Does that fall in line with, ah—with Greek tragedies?” he wondered absently, his thumb stroking over her cheek.

The question gave Diana pause. Made her think back to every story she could remember, searching for the happy ones. There weren’t many—not as many as she’d want. Regardless, she never cared for fate, or for falling into expected patterns, if she could help it.

She rolled onto her side, moving closer to Steve. Her hand brushed through his hair, pushing it back from his face. She pressed a kiss to his temple and then his brow.

“I think we’re free to write our own, and it doesn’t have to be tragic,” she whispered into his skin.

Steve let out a breath, though she couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her, or still finding any kind of touch a little overwhelming for his system. Frankly, she could live with either.

She kissed his forehead once more, and then pulled out his grasp and out of the knot of sheets, tangled around them, and onto the floor.

“No, you can’t—” Steve started, snapping his head up at the loss of contact. “Come back,” he called after her as she headed towards the kitchen, a smile playing across her lips at the sound of his frustrated grumble drifting after her. “Diana?”

She found a glass and filled it with water, downing it in a few hungry gulps. She refilled it for Steve and moved back to the bedroom where she found him half-sitting against the headboard. He did a very pointed once-over of her body, making Diana smirk, but it was the fact that his gaze didn’t linger there, lifting almost immediately to her face that made her heart melt.

He had told her that she was beautiful—multiple times this night alone. She knew she was, too, not oblivious to the fact and the less than subtle gazes wherever she went. It had surprised her, at first, in her early days in man’s world. How much value mankind put into appearances and how little—into most of everything else. It still amused her sometimes, though she had long learned to not pay much mind to it.

But it had never felt that way with Steve, his admiration stemming from the things not seen to the eye. Her kindness—he had told her that—and her generosity and that she wanted to fight for those who couldn’t fight for themselves when no one else would.

She wondered sometimes if he knew how much it meant to her, to be seen, like that.

Diana handed the glass to him, but he put it down on the bedside table without drinking, instead curling his hand around her wrist, giving it a small tug.

“Come here,” he said, his blue eyes alert and earnest.

He scooted over to give her room when she moved to climb onto the mattress and slide under the sheet, his arms opening to her. Diana settled into his side, folding herself into his body. She pressed a kiss to his skin and then rested her cheek on his sternum.

She could do that, too, she thought, thinking back to his words from a couple of days ago. Ten thousand years of that. Was that what he had told her earlier? Oddly, it didn’t feel like that long a time. It didn’t feel anywhere near enough.

If only…

She didn’t know how long they stayed that way, enveloped in comfortable silence, her hand tracing idle patterns over his ribs and his fingers threading lazily through her hair, over her bare back. She didn’t feel the need to break it, and he didn’t seem to, either.

There had been many moments in her life that she expected to remember for as long as she lived, and many of them were faded and frayed now, nothing but a shadow of something she had once deemed important. And then there were moments like this one, nowhere near as grand, and yet Diana was certain she would carry them with her for the rest of eternity.

She didn’t even register at first that Steve’s hand stopped moving, that his hold on her had relaxed somewhat, his breathing deepening.

A smile pulled at the corners of Diana’s mouth.

“Is this why you wanted me in bed with you? So you could fall asleep on me?” she asked, with deliberate exasperation.

A laughter rumbled from the depth of his chest, reverberating into her body. “To fall asleep on you, I need to figure out how to move first,” he pointed out.

She poked him in his ribs with her finger, earning another indulgent laugh in response. Felt him shift and curl forward to kiss the crown of her head even as she muttered in Greek under her breath.

“I’m not ridiculous,” Steve said, half-indignant but his voice was laced with humour. And then added, after a brief hesitation, “Yeah, okay, maybe sometimes.” And then, “Did Sami ever figure out how much you actually curse? He always deemed you to be above that kind of thing.”

He was smirking now, and Diana rolled her eyes a little but chose not to dignify his comment with a response.

Steve didn’t push, though she suspected he wanted to. (She decided she would later tell him the story of the day when Sameer had grasped that she was very much capable of using unsavoury language, his eyes growing so wide Diana had feared, for a moment, that she had done something irreparable to him.) Instead, Steve gathered her closer once more, tracing his hand along the curve of her spine.

Diana trailed her fingers absently over the jut of his collarbone. “You should sleep,” she said quietly.

For all her teasing, it was late. And while Steve had no obligations or responsibilities, save for, perhaps, making her life an utter bliss, she was expected at the dig first thing in the morning. Maybe he would want to tag along, like he had done many times before, maybe not, but they could both use some rest.

The luxury of it, and knowing that there was a tomorrow, and a day after that, and a day after that, left Diana with a bittersweet ache somewhere behind her breastbone.

“Yeah,” Steve breathed. He picked up her hand and pressed his palm against hers, his wider than hers, Diana’s fingers leaner and more sun-kissed. “Do you ever think about—” he started and stopped.

“What?” she prompted.

He curled his hand over hers, his thumb running over the lines of her palm.

“What would have happened if you’d never destroyed the Dreamstone?”

Diana paused, surprised. They had spoken about 1984, about her wish and what had come out of it over the several months following the night she had told him the whole story. He had asked some more questions in regard to his search into Barbara Ann’s location, later on. But she had no idea that it was something still occupying his mind, at all.

She should have known better, perhaps, given all the time she had pondered that same question.

She lifted her head. “The world would descend into chaos,” she said, smiling.

It was odd to joke about it, remembering how dire the situation had been, back then. But, if she had to venture a guess, it was also a sign of finally letting go. 

Steve didn’t take the bait.

“No, I mean, what if—If it wasn’t for the world descending into chaos, would you have wanted for the illusion to stay?”

Knowing that you would likely never have the real thing —he hadn’t said that, but the meaning was left hanging between them, all the same.

Diana felt her smile fade.

In the aftermath of the Dreamstone disaster, she had asked herself the same thing, more times than she could count. Every time she found a shirt she had purchased for “Steve,” every time she smelled his aftershave on her pillow or walked into her apartment expecting to find him waiting for her there, only to be met with emptiness and silence and the ache of loss. Even when she had moved from DC, his ghost had followed.

All these years later, she didn’t know what the answer to that question was, part of her certain she wouldn’t have been able to live with the lie once she had figured out the nature of it. But another part—oh, that hungry, selfish part, would have gladly accepted the illusion, one she had wanted to be real more than anything.

She didn’t say any of that.

Her gaze lifted to Steve’s, her expression softening momentarily. “I’m glad to have the real you,” she whispered. “I don’t think anything else would ever live up to what we have now.” 

She watched him open his mouth, and then close it again without saying anything. Watched him try to work something out in his mind. (What she wouldn’t have given to get a glimpse of what was happening there!)

He tipped his head back against the pillow.

Diana pulled her hand from his hold and touched her thumb to his chin.

“Steve.” He looked down at her again. “What brought this on?”

One corner of his mouth curled into a half-smile, a little wistful, a little self-aware.

“I was just thinking about the string of things that almost didn’t happen,” he said, eventually. “If I hadn’t been at the factory that day; if Maru had been at her lab and not testing the new gas; if she had the book on her at all times.” He paused, but Diana tilted her head, encouraging him to go on. “I had almost gotten away with it, you know. Another half a minute, and they wouldn’t have known it was me. I would never have stolen that plane to escape the chase—I’d just walk away, find a less conspicuous ride back to London.”

His brows pulled together, a frown creasing his forehead. “If my plane crashed half a mile east, it wouldn’t have reached the field hiding your island. I just—” he took in a shuddering breath and exhaled, slowly. He held her gaze. “Do you ever think about all the small things that end up not being so small in the end? Would you have ever left Themyscira, if it wasn’t for me and the war?”

She noted the careful way he pronounced the name of the island, as though it tasted strange on his tongue. As though it didn’t quite belong in his mouth.

If he had crashed half a mile east, Antiope would still be alive, Diana thought. And the anger, the hatred that Ares had set off would still be ruling the world. Maybe she couldn’t eradicate it completely, but Diana wanted to believe that none of their sacrifices—her aunt’s and her sisters’ who had lost their lives on that beach and Steve’s and her own—had been for nothing.

“Who is talking about the great tragedies now?” she asked, making him smile, his frown smoothing out, somewhat.

“You’re a terrible influence,” he accused her with a fondness that didn’t match his words.

Diana chuckled, shaking her head. “Am I now?”

“I just—” He huffed out a breath, his gaze trained on a piece of her hair twisted around his finger. “At the war, I saw people die every day. There was never any reason or pattern as to why one person died and another got to live, and—I supposed it’s hard not to wonder what I could have done differently to change it all.”

She watched his jaw work for a moment or two as though it was trying to figure out what it was that he wanted to say, tasting the words on his tongue before actually speaking them. “I’m not saying I believe in fate,” Steve admitted, meeting her eyes. “It’d be all too convenient if all we had to do was fall back on the notion of just—just letting things unroll, you know?”

“I do.”

“I’m just saying that it all feels rather precarious sometimes, don’t you think? ‘Cause seeing it was one thing, all those people dying. But then, it was my time… And then it wasn’t, and…” he offered her a shrug. 

Diana took her time to consider his words, turning them in her head this way and that. She should know better than to agree, the history of her people interlaced with concepts of destiny more often than not.

But she’d lie if she said she was willing to either fully embrace them, or completely dismiss them, choosing instead to land somewhere in the middle between the two. And wasn’t Steve—living, breathing Steve—proof that even something so seemingly irreversible as death didn’t have to be permanent?

“Those sure are compelling things to think about at—” she craned her neck to check the watch on his wrist, “two in the morning,” she observed, cajoling a smile out of him.

Steve wrinkled his nose. “Well, let it be known that I’m not not swayed by the complexities of the world,” he muttered.

“I think you’re a complex man, Steve Trevor,” Diana informed him, rather formally.

Which made him roll his eyes. Which was exactly her intent.

“I think I would have left eventually, anyway,” she said, quietly. “With you or without you, Steve,” she added before he could say anything. “Eventually, I suppose someone would have to come here and restore the balance, take the power away from Ares. No reason it wouldn’t have been me. And I never regretted it happening with you.”

“Even after… everything?” he asked, softly.

Diana didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

She wondered what it would have been like, if she hadn’t met him, but she didn’t find that scenario appealing in the slightest, even in her head. And it didn’t matter anyway, really. It was like she had said—he was there, his heart beating beneath her palm, his body warm against hers and the sweet, aching heat still simmering beneath her skin, and all else was nothing but an empty speculation.

She let Steve process her words, before he nodded. And then once more. He took her hand again and brought it to his mouth, kissing her fingers. Diana smiled, leaning forward to kiss the corner of his lips.

He scrubbed his palm down his face then. “Gotta be the late hour,” he said. “Or the wine. To inspire this sort of thinking.”

“Or my terrible influence,” Diana offered, and he laughed and tugged lightly on her hair.

“That, too,” he agreed easily, a twinkle of humour in his eyes.

She shook her head, making Steve grin. Though he stilled, and his gaze softened, when she smoothed her palm over his cheek.

“I love you,” she murmured in Greek, pleased to see his eyes darken.

“I love you, too,” he said, in English, and she leaned in to kiss him. And kiss him. And kiss him.

She almost missed the moment when a switch flipped inside of her, when the mood shifted, and the warm, tugging need of it had turned all-consuming without her noticing. Steve’s hand slipped over her side and moved up her back to splay beneath her shoulder blades as he rolled her on her back beneath him.

Diana gasped softly against his mouth, moving one of her legs to wrap around one of his.

“Diana,” he whispered into her skin, his lips pressed to her neck.

“Yes.”

I will never let anything take you away from me, she thought.

Words that would come to haunt her later.


The fire is burning high up in the sky, brighter and brighter until she can’t stand to look at it anymore. Can’t stand to look, but can’t stand to look away, either. Maybe if she believes hard enough that it is not happening, it might stop.

There is a scream piercing the night. It hurts her ears, it hurts everything inside of her, and it takes Diana a long moment to recognize it as her own. It is splitting her in half beneath the tanker treads that press her into the hard concrete and the wind is tearing at her hair, and it hurts, everything hurts more than anything ever should, her heart tearing at the seams.

Diana awakes with her heart pounding and a foul taste in her mouth and a fear that she will keep losing him over and over again until she can’t take it anymore.

She sits up in bed and pushes the covers aside. She’s in Etta’s old apartment, though it makes no sense. But there is the smell of food and coffee in the air and she doesn’t want to question it. She follows it, the boards creaky beneath her feet, giving her away.

In the kitchen, Steve is standing at the stove. She can hear him whistling something under his breath though he doesn’t turn to her. Not at once. 

There is the ease to him that tells Diana that he is aware of her presence, but the only thing she can think of is that this is Etta’s apartment, one where she will continue to live until she marries, so she must be around and surely, she wouldn’t be okay with him walking around in his boxers and a plain undershirt. Not that Diana herself is complaining.

The dream still lingers in the periphery of her mind, something wrong about it, but nothing is ever right about nightmares, to begin with.

She pauses in the doorway, watching Steve for a few precious moments, his back to her and his hair mussed from sleep. But he has promised her breakfast, she remembers. She even spots a newspaper on the table, struck by how normal it all is.

“Thought I’d let you sleep in,” he tells her with a smile after a couple of minutes, half turning to still keep an eye on the sizzling bacon.

Diana folds her arms over her chest. She wouldn’t have minded if he’d still been in bed with her, but the warmth from his words spreads over her and she takes a moment to savour it.

And then he turns and the colour drains from her face at the sight of burn marks streaking down his face, running in blisters up his arms. And the fire is back, burning behind his ribcage, inside and around him, and it’s so bright all over again.

The world cracks open before her eyes because he has promised to stay, but there is nothing but ashes left.

Diana bolted up in bed, a silent scream trapped in her throat that was too tight and too raw and too narrow for her to breathe. Her hands came to press into her chest, her fingers flexing on her skin as though to claw out whatever it was that was making her heart beat so fast.

She looked around, wildly, her mind cataloguing the familiar shape of the dresser and the half-open door to the closet. No fire. There was no fire, though she could swear she could smell it still.

She bent her legs at the knees, pulling them up to her chest and leaned forward, hands pushing through her hair. She closed her eyes and took a careful breath, letting it out slowly. And then another one, and one more, trying to banish the images of her dream from her mind, twisted and bent and disturbing.

Almost the same, more or less. Always so powerless and useless against something bigger. Something that even a god couldn’t stop.

She had truly come to believe, at some point, that the dreams would stop now that she had Steve back. But they hadn’t. 

Behind her, she felt the mattress dip when Steve shifted, awoken.

“Diana?” he called quietly, his voice low and raspy, and so familiar it made her chest cave in.

Diana squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyelids. Her heart was thudding fast against the inside of her ribs. The rush of adrenaline running through her system was making her stomach feel hollow and out of sorts. She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat.

The sheets rustled as Steve moved to sit next to her, his body close enough that she could feel its warmth even without them touching. She wondered how long it would be before he actually did touch her, and then wondered if she was going to spit at the seams when it happened.

Steve sighed, a soft sound very close to her, his breath on her skin. She stilled when he brushed his palm along her back, but didn’t pull away.

“Diana,” he repeated, and she shook her head.

“A dream,” she whispered around the tightness in her chest, though she knew he had figured out as much. She didn’t offer more than that though, not knowing how to speak of it.

Another long moment, and he brushed her hair back from her face, his lips grazing the side of her head, and then the spot near the base of her neck. The tenderness of it made Diana’s eyes sting, and she didn’t mean to—

She didn’t mean to cry.

She drew in an unsteady breath. It stuttered out of her chest, past the lump in her throat. She lowered her hands, only then realizing how badly they were shaking and opened her eyes, relieved to see the familiar room of their place in Morocco and not the guest bedroom in Etta’s apartment, thankfully.

When she turned around, part of her expected Steve’s skin to be covered with burn marks and blisters and welts. But there was none of that, of course, his face smooth, if somewhat concerned, and his eyes bright and alive, and the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

She had spent years trying not to imagine what his final moments in 1918 had felt like, but it seemed like even now her mind couldn’t let go.

“Hey,” Steve started, smoothing his palm over her back once more.

Diana bit her lip. She raised her hand to trace her fingers over his cheek, along his jaw, her thumb brushing over his lips. He leaned into her touch and pressed a kiss to the centre of her palm. There was a silent question in his eyes and a shadow of defeat that she hated so; helplessness against something he couldn’t fix any more than she could fix his memories for him. It never ceased to amaze her, the lengths that mankind would go for love. But there were also so many ways to hurt someone you cared for, even when it was the last thing you wanted to do.

“It’s okay,” Steve said, dipping his head towards her to brush his lips to her temple. His voice, his touch made everything inside of Diana constrict.

They had done this before; it was always the same—old scars cut open, leaving them bleeding out on the inside.

She took another breath. He was alive. She was, too. It was not the easiest thing to remember in the dead of the night when her mind was plagued with things better off forgotten. But those thoughts couldn’t harm either of them any more than any other thoughts could.  

“Don’t leave me,” she whispered, unable to help it. 

“Diana.” His voice came out as a choked gasp.  

“Please don’t leave me.” 

He lifted his arm and she turned into him, tucking her face into the crook of his neck when he pulled her close. Diana inhaled over and over again—warmth and aftershave, her lavender soap and Steve —until she could smell nothing but him and the memory of the smoke and the smell of burning skin was gone. She felt him tighten his hold on her, his voice a barely audible whisper in her ear, murmuring words of comfort and promises that she needed so.

“You okay to sleep?” he asked, eventually, after her breathing had evened out and her heart had stopped trying to leap out of her throat.

Diana swallowed. She pinched the bridge of her nose, searching for the quiet within her and finding none.

“Hey, how about I make some tea?” he offered when she didn’t say anything.

She looked up and nodded gratefully. “That would be good,” she said.

He smiled and brushed his lips to her hair. “Alright then.”

He climbed out of the bed and located his underwear, pausing for a moment when Diana pushed the sheets aside as well. And then he moved to the dresser to pull out a fresh shirt, making her remember that she had ruined the one he had been wearing that night, and her dress was probably a wet pile left somewhere in the hallway. Which made her remember everything that had followed, the memories of being wound tightly around him earlier steadying something inside of her.

Steve crossed the room back to her, shirt in hand, and then helped her slip it on over her head. It made Diana feel like a child, making her wrinkle her nose and yet bringing a smile to her lips. One that she couldn’t help. And to his, too, when her head emerged from the collar.

Never mind that she was perfectly capable of dressing herself. She let him take care of her all the same.

Steve brushed back the hair that fell over her forehead before his hand cupped over her cheek and he tilted her face up, kissing her softly on the lips.

“All good?” he asked.

Diana found his gaze and held it. “Yes.” 

She trailed after him to the kitchen, watching him put on the kettle and find the cups and then rummage around the cupboard looking for tea, grateful that he somehow knew what to do, what to say. And most importantly, what not to say. No unnecessary platitudes, no trying to take the experience away from her with a dismissive It’s just a dream.

He understood, she knew. The only difference was that he dreamed of war, and she always dreamed of him.  It was a whole different level of helplessness, she knew. After all, he was here, alive and breathing, and yet her nightmares worked as a perpetual reminder of her biggest failure to date. 

She didn’t know how she would feel, in his place, if she told him it all.

Steve was fumbling with the tea now, trying to measure the right amount to make it the way she liked it, his expression one of utter concentration that Diana couldn’t help but find all too endearing to bear.

She was tempted to tell him to go to bed, to let her deal with this and wait for her mind to settle enough to join him, when she felt safe enough to sleep. But, she also knew that if there came a day again when it was he who was jolted awake with a scream clawing its way out of his throat and his mind unable to tell a dream from reality, she would never walk away. She would be doing anything to make it better.

Steve poured the tea, and she moved towards him across the tiled floor. The night was deep and pitch-black outside. She smoothed her hand over the base of his spine and around his waist as she nuzzled the back of his neck.

“Thank you,” she whispered into his skin, her lips skating along his shoulder.

“Chamomile,” Steve said, his mouth curled into a half-smile when he glanced at her. “My mother’s remedy against poor sleep.”

Diana kissed his shoulder once more. “Well, who am I to argue with your mother?”

They ended up on the couch, with her legs stretched over his lap and something mindless playing on TV, the sound low and the plot unimportant. Steve was happy to provide commentary though, taking great pleasure in doing just that.

When she was drifting off to sleep an hour later, Diana could hardly remember what had awoken her, in the first place.


The voices were rising above the crowd, joining together in an angry choir that hung over the few hundred people gathered before the Heritage Museum in the old town of Marrakesh.

Steve surveyed the sea of motion and colour, his eyes moving over the posters some were holding, all too aware of the pieces of wood they were attached to—something that could be used as a weapon, if needed be. There was a man with a megaphone, up ahead, though between the cacophony all around, the poor quality of sound and Steve’s pitiful knowledge of Arabic, he couldn’t understand much of anything.

Except that this all didn’t look welcoming in any way, whatsoever.

He sidled up to Diana who was standing behind and slightly to the side of the main crowd, her arms folded over her chest and her lips pressed into a thin line. She was silent, hadn’t said a word to him since they had arrived half an hour prior, but her frown was speaking volumes.

He stopped at her shoulder. She turned her head slightly for a second to acknowledge his presence before her gaze swivelled back to the people before her. Steve leaned closer to her ear to avoid having to raise his voice.

“What’s going on here?”

He watched her gaze sweep over the crowd once more, focusing on the man up front.

“They don’t like the idea of the artifacts—of anything found at the dig—being sent over to France,” she said, eventually, her voice even. Had he been someone else, he would have thought she didn’t care. Steve knew better than that.

“Because…?” he prompted her to continue.

She sighed, her shoulders slumping as she rubbed her forehead.

“Because they think those things belong to the country where they were discovered,” Diana explained. “That they were made by people who had lived and died here and that France has no claim on them.”

He took a moment to process her response, his attention no longer on the protestors but on Diana and the sharp outline of her profile against the bright light of day and the tight line of her mouth. Her hair was swept back from her face, gathered in a sleek ponytail, and her gaze was piercing.

“Does it? Have any claim on them?” he wondered, trying to sort it all out in his head.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” she admitted, looking up at him. “We have an agreement that allows us to transport everything found at the dig back to Paris. I am not saying that it is morally correct,” she added, preempting his question. “This country has a long-standing history with France, I cannot begrudge them their anger.”

Steve nodded, feeling his own brows knit together.

He remembered Chief. Remembered his off-hand comments about people who had come into the country where no one invited them and took things that hadn’t belonged to them, making his people strangers in their own land. How that sort of thing seemed to just never end, it seemed.

“Is this because you guys found the bodies?” Steve asked, after a moment.

But Diana was shaking her head even before he finished speaking.

“No, it’s been going on from the start. There were requests and even threats sent to Rachid. But he was just doing his job, the formal arrangements being decided between the embassy and the local government.”

Steve glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

“You never said anything.”

She surveyed the demonstration.

“I didn’t expect it to come to this. We are not stealing anything, though I suspect it may seem that way.” She closed her eyes and bowed her head forward, and it took him a moment to read guilt in her expression. “The items will be properly cared for,” Diana went on, as she opened her eyes, though her gaze remained cast down. “And once they are catalogued and analyzed, they will be rotated between different museums all over the world, as objects of historical significance. Including this one.”

Her gaze darted towards the building before them. 

“But it doesn’t make their hurt and betrayal any less real,” she added under her breath.

“That sounds… complex,” Steve admitted, softly.

Ahead of them, at least a hundred people had started chanting something, their voices bouncing off the walls of the nearby buildings and rising above them all like a never-ending echo.

“Shouldn’t you be there?” he jerked his chin towards the guy with the megaphone. “Trying to reason with them or something?”

“I am no one to them, a stranger,” she said, and Steve could tell she didn’t like it much. Although, admittedly, the man with the megaphone didn’t look like someone who could be easily reasoned with, if first impressions were any indication. “They won’t want to listen to me. I want to stay though, in case things get bad.”

“In case they decide they want blood, you mean?” Steve clarified, feeling his gaze sharpen as it darted between different individuals and their collective fury that was nearly palpable to his skin.

Only days ago, he and Diana had walked these streets and everything had felt so blissful. It was amazing how much could change so fast, so easily, his senses suddenly sharp, every cell of his body alert, down to the familiar pin-prickling on the back of his neck, reminding him to watch out. There was a comfort to it, Steve decided absently. To having the muscle memory of a soldier and a spy, so to speak.

But part of him hated it, too. Not the skill so much as the need for it still.

Almost on instinct, he reached for his belt where his holster used to be, not to pull out the weapon so much as to reassure himself of its presence. But, of course, there was nothing there. Hadn’t been for a long time. If a fight broke out, it would be up to his fists to deal with it. And maybe Diana’s diplomacy. Mostly Diana’s diplomacy, he hoped.

His hands flexed, all the same.

“You want to stay here, or go closer?” he asked Diana as he leaned closer to her, his voice low as he scanned the gathering once more.

His gaze fastened on a police car parked to the side, but no one was making an attempt to diffuse the tension or make the crowd disperse. Then again, nothing was happening, per se. Only the loud voice disturbing the late morning, and that likely wasn’t a big crime.

“Here is good,” Diana said, like he knew she would.

Their spot provided a decent vantage point. And, with everyone’s backs to them, there was a smaller risk of anyone spotting them, which, if Steve had to venture a guess, might escalate the situation. Provided they recognized Diana or something.

He moved closer to her anyway, wishing he could take her hand. But her arms were still folded over her chest, her frame rigid, and he settled on resting his hand on her lower back instead. A small gesture of comfort.

She glanced at him, her features smoothing out momentarily, and leaned slightly into his touch.

“Look at it this way—you probably have the least boring job ever,” he murmured, and a small smile touched her lips.

“You haven’t seen the half of it,” she responded in kind, and Steve chuckled a little.

And then several things happened at once.

The man with the megaphone exclaimed something, and the crowd joined in, their hands punching the air as they repeated the same chant over and over again.

A boy on a bicycle pushing a cart filled with fruit before him tried to make his way around the crowd but got knocked off, peaches and apples scattering over the cobbled street while a man who pushed him started to yell at him. The boy snapped back, an argument ensuing, with the cart lying overturned between them.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve noticed another man walking quickly and purposely behind the gathering, his gaze darting around cautiously. It gave Steve a pause, made his attention zero in on the guy. There was something about the way he carried himself... something off. A certain stillness while everyone else seemed to be in motion, nearly vibrating with the energy thrumming all around them.

Steve’s fingers brushed against Diana’s elbow, but her gaze was fixated on the few people up front who seemed to be involved in some kind of confrontation, and he didn’t want to let the man out of his sight. His legs started to move before he even registered doing it, and by the time he had made his way through the much thinner crowd near the back, they were halfway around the museum and it was too late to go back for Diana.

Maybe it was nothing, he reasoned with himself, and he’d be back without her even noticing. He could call her, too. Though she likely wouldn’t hear it, with all the noise.

Steve’s shoulder rammed into someone else’s, the person exploding in an angry tirade, but he didn’t pause. Didn’t look back, either.

Now, the man ahead of him was walking briskly, his shoulders hunched and his head tucked low, as though he didn’t want to be recognized. Or noticed at all, for that matter.

“Hey!” Steve called out when he spotted the guy stopping at a side door, hands fumbling with the knob.

Steve swore under his breath, and picked up his speed until he was jogging and then running, blood pounding in his ears. Here, a few hundred meters away from the protestors, their voices sounded muffled, softened by the distance, his own laboured breathing the loudest thing around.

He didn’t know how angry they were, how hurt and frustrated, and how far they were willing to take it. If they would try to do something, go beyond angry demands and attempt to hurt someone or ruin something, or—

With one last tug at the knob, the stranger yanked the door open, at last. It gave with a soft creak of hinges not used very often before he slipped inside.

“Shit,” Steve muttered.

He reached for his phone, fumbling with it, but it felt like a pointless task right now, when he had a target right before him. He wished he had his gun—not to shoot, but at least to threaten, maybe.

He wished he’d said something to Diana.

Steve snapped his head up, looking around, half-expecting to see her by his side. She wasn’t.

Diana was going to… not be very happy. Dammit.

He reached the door moments before it closed shut, grabbing onto it as he skidded to a stop. The corridor on the other side was narrow and dimly lit, smelling a little of a damp basement. It was empty, too. Steve stepped inside, the door closing behind him with a soft click of a latch siding into place, the noise from the protestors immediately silenced. When he stepped forward cautiously, nothing happened. No yells about trespassing, no alarm piercing the air.

Up ahead, he could see the corridor opening up into a wide, sunlit hallway, the man’s steps echoing in the silence that was ringing in Steve’s ears, after the commotion outside.

He had barely taken two more steps when a loud pop made the entire place shudder, though he couldn’t tell whether it came from inside or outside. And then something slammed into his back, the walls tilting and the ceiling craning towards him.

Instinctively, he lifted his arm to shield his face from the dust as he flinched away from the thundering noise of it all.

And then everything went black.

Notes:

Welp... I did the thing.

I hope you liked this chapter! Also, I think we have officially hit the halfway mark with chapter 14 - only 14 more to go 😬😬 (Why am I so wordy, again?)

Feel free to share your theories about what you think is going to happen next :) Thanks for sticking around! As always, comments and feedback are much appreciated!

Stay tuned!

Chapter 15

Notes:

Hey guys, thank you - again - for your support. I'm really glad that you're still around and that you seem to be enjoying this story :) I hope the rest of it will be just as fun!

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

Chapter Text

It was the complete surrealism of the picture unfolding before her that had Diana rooted to her spot for a moment.

When the dull pop had sounded in the distance, somewhere to the side from her, she had thought, absently, of a car backfiring a couple of blocks away, or a tire running over a nail or a piece of glass. And that was why the dissonance between it, and the right half of the museum building suddenly crumbling, folding in on itself, had taken a full half a minute to register with her.

Because it was wrong, wrong, wrong. Even with the dust rising in the air and the people scrambling away and the agitated voices gaining a different cadence.

Later, she would remember it all with striking clarity—the faces contorted in fear, the clothes streaked with dirt, the blood and the way the ground trembled ever so slightly beneath their feet, making people lose their balance and trip and fall before they were scrambling up to start running again. Away, away, away from there. Away from the unknown that screamed danger.

She would remember a certain quality to the air and the panic that felt like something physical pushing at her from all sides. And the feeling like she was a fish swimming upstream, through the crowd towards the collapsing building and not away from it because Steve—

Because—

Because when Diana had turned to him, reached for him, he had no longer been standing beside her. And no matter how hard she tried to find him in the sea of faces around her, no matter how many times she called out his name, he stayed gone.

And if he was not there with her, where he was meant to be, then she knew he had to be in the middle of chaos.

She was moving swiftly, ignoring shoulders and elbows ramming into her as thick panic gripped her throat in a tight hold. Somewhere in the distance, she could hear sirens wailing, more police, maybe ambulances. She didn’t have time to pause and think of that. If the building collapsed—

She refused to think of that. Steve or no Steve, there had to be more people there, and they all needed help now. And she was going to—she needed—

Diana paused to help a woman who had fallen get up to her feet, her eyes roaming Diana’s face without seeing it before she lurched forward to continue her run away from the imminent danger. There’s nothing you can do, a voice sounded in her head, the memory so clear she could barely stand it. Who was it who had said that to her, on the day she and Steve had arrived at the front? Charlie? Or Sami? There had been that man without a leg who had been living his last moments, two horses stuck in the mud. She could have helped them, she could have tried.

The dust was thicker and heavy in the air the closer she got to what only half an hour ago was one of the most beautiful museums she had ever seen. More people were emerging from it, darting in and out of it, shapes she was having a hard time registering before they were gone again, an endless string of harried voices speaking Arabic.

“Keep going—”

“No, to the left, it’s clear.”

“Have you seen father?”

“It’s gas, a pipe. Old pipe that broke….”

Gas.

Diana lifted her arm to her face, hiding her nose in the crook of her elbow as she surged forward, looking for a door. Something. Anything. A way in.

She was suddenly overcome with a sense of déjà vu, back in a moment on the outskirts of Veld after she had brought her horse to a stop and slid onto the frozen ground, her heart splintering in devastation at the sight of absolute destruction stretching out before her, the orange gas smoothing out the sharp edges of death but not making them any less shocking to her eyes.

She had been desperate to forget it ever since.

It was worse on the inside than the outside of the museum, bright light shining through the gaping hole where the other half of the building used to be and making it all the more impossible to grasp. Diana moved forward, stepping over the rubble and bricks and pieces of plaster and concrete on the floor. She could hear broken glass crunch beneath her feet though she couldn’t see it.

Her gaze slid past someone stretched out on the crushed marble floor, beyond help now.

If this was a burst gas pipe, she feared that this was not the end of it.

There were people there still, more shocked than hurt. Confused about where they were supposed to go. She directed them carefully towards the way out, such as it was, their eyes brimming with fear but none questioned her authority or her right to be there. Likely the staff, she thought absently, glad to be thinking clearly again. For the most part. Thankfully, the place had not been open for patrons today, the protest having taken care of that.

She lifted her fingers to her lips, a touch of dread crawling along her skin. Her hands missed the weight of her sword and her shield, but there was no time—

He didn’t have to be there at all. Steve could have been outside, waiting for her, looking for her the way she was looking for him. Diana paused in the middle of what used to be the main hallway, the one that welcomed people when they entered. She pressed her hand to her forehead and looked around, searching for movement, for more people. For anything.

Please, she pleaded silently, around the ache unfurling in her chest and taking over as she teetered on the brink of panic. Please don’t take him away from me.

Steve, where are you?

But if he was not outside, then he had to be here somewhere.

She heard it then, a faint sound barely audible through the blood rush in her ears. She almost missed it. Rock grating against rock, and then a muffled grunt followed by a gasp that propelled her in the direction it was coming from.

“Steve?” she called out, the adrenaline surge coursing through her system making her vision sharpen, her senses alert, but her voice was weak and wobbly even to her own ears.

Another grunt, closer.

And then there was a broken piece of a wall, leaning over the one that was still holding on. And someone in the space left underneath it. Diana’s heart sank.

“Steve?”

She could hear the sirens wailing closer now, people with commanding voices taking over outside, telling everyone to stay clear. She tuned them out, ignored the approaching footsteps, the murmur of a hundred people speaking at once just behind the veil of dust hanging between them and her.

There might have as well been thousands of miles between them. 

Diana braced her hands on the piece of wall, torn concrete digging into the soft flesh of her palms, crumbling at the pressure. She pushed, not feeling the weight of it. Not feeling much of anything except the relief that washed over her when she saw Steve alive and breathing beneath it.

He blinked when the sunlight hit him, squinting his eyes against it. Sitting with his back against the standing wall, he was covered in a thick layer of dust, the colour of his clothes undefinable and his hair looking as though he had aged fifty years.

“Steve,” she repeated, his name falling from her lips as a sob.

“I’m okay,” he rasped, his words followed by a coughing fit that made him wince and hiss through his teeth in pain.

Diana fell on her knees before him, her shaking hands moving over him. She was scared to really touch him. Not until she knew how bad it was. There was a bleeding cut on his forehead, just below his hairline, a thin red trickle running into his left eye. A slit on his cheekbone that looked raw but not deep. There was something wrong with the way he was clutching onto his arm, in the awkward way his left leg was bent.

“Steve,” she called again, finding an odd sort of comfort in saying his name.

Her palm slipped under his chin and she tilted his head up carefully, gently, until their eyes met. And then they blurred before her, her own eyes stinging with tears.

She blinked them away, stuck in an odd limbo between fury and fear. 

“Hey,” he breathed, almost soundlessly. And even tried to smile.

His bottom lip was slit near the middle. Diana touched it with her thumb, lightly. 

Ridiculous, stubborn, reckless man.

“You’re not happy,” Steve observed in a raspy voice, and she nearly snorted.

“What hurts?” Diana asked, quietly. She pulled down the sleeve of her shirt, wiping the blood off of his face before it trickled into his eye. She couldn’t bear the sight of it.

“What doesn’t?” he grimaced, and let out a slow, measured breath. “What happened?”

“A gas pipe,” she murmured, her hand smoothing over his good shoulder. The other one, she suspected, was dislocated. Badly, by the look of it. It was painful, she knew, but not dangerous. Not deadly.

The rest—

She had never wished for more than what she had, but in that moment, she couldn’t help but yearn, desperately, for Clark’s X-ray vision, for Victor’s gifts and his ability to see through flesh. She wished she could see right through Steve, down to his every last bone and make sure that nothing was out of the order. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed.

“Did you just really pick up that wall and…?” he trailed off, but there was admiration in his voice and a slight laugh making its way out of his chest even though the mere attempt at it made him grimace once more, his breath hitching.

And yet, the corner of her mouth twitched a little.

“I figured even above average men need help, every now and then.”

At that, he groaned, like she knew he would.

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmured.

Diana looked up, her gaze fastening on his, his eyes bright and sincere. 

“Don’t,” she said, shaking her head, hating the finality of it. As though he was worried not to leave any word unsaid between them, in case— 

She reached for his hand, the good one, and squeezed his fingers. He squeezed hers back. He was alert, at least. It calmed her. 

“Ribs,” he grimaced. “A couple gotta be busted.”

“You’ll be alright,” she murmured, leaning forward on impulse to press a tender kiss to his brow, on the good side.

He went still, with her so near, inhaling deeply. Inhaling her. It made Diana’s heart constrict and she lingered close to him for another moment, thanking that damned wall for not crushing him to his death. For saving him from something worse. Thanking whatever and whoever it was that had kept him alive.

He had to have a good reason to be here, she knew. If he had seen something, anything going on—she was sure, there was a good reason why he had been inside when the building had collapsed.

She was going to give him hell for it anyway. Once her panic settled. Once she stopped imagining—

She swallowed, hard. Pushed the thought away.

Her heart was still hammering fast in her ribcage, and there was something small and fragile inside of her that died a little with every passing moment of her not knowing how badly he was injured. She didn’t like that blow he had taken to his head. Or how his ankle looked.

She bit her lip and drew back from him. 

“Diana.”

Her gaze moved to his once more.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“Shhhh.”

Her hand slipped to curl around the back of his neck and she kissed his forehead again.

It was in moments like this that the absurdity of her own gifts would catch up with her, hitting her like a punch to the stomach. She was powerful, she was so strong that no one else could measure up, and yet here she was, feeling helpless and small and useless, all too aware of how breakable the world around her was. No matter how much she wanted to protect it.

“You think we could get out of here?” Steve asked, his voice scratchy and low and strained. “Not that I don’t enjoy… some rock sticking into my back…” He inhaled shakily. “It’s just…”  

“Yes.” Diana smoothed her hand over his cheek, and he leaned a little into it. I love you. Please don’t leave me. “Yes, we can.”


When Steve woke up, the world was a hazy blur. There was a beeping sound somewhere close to him. Close enough that it made his head near-explode in white-hot pain that grew behind his eyes. He had to squeeze them shut tightly in order to block it out.

It didn’t help. It only made him dizzy; made his stomach roll; made him wonder if he was going to be sick, which would likely be a very unpleasant affair, what with him feeling like he was rocking a little from side to side, as though he was back on the boat that had taken him and Diana back to his world.

There was a voice lingering in the periphery of his awareness, and he thought that it was Diana’s. He wanted it to be Diana’s, but focusing on it felt like too much effort in the world that felt so soft and smudged around him. Morphine, or some variation of it. Had to be. He had had it exactly once, and it had left quite an impression.

He slipped away with that thought, without having a chance to figure out who the voice belonged to, and what was the deal with the beeping. And why, dear god, why everything felt so heavy—his body, the sheets, the air pressing down on him.

The next time Steve slid into wakefulness, it was dark and he welcomed the comfort of it gratefully. His mouth was dry, his lips chapped, and he hated the sensation of it. Mercifully, his brain shut off again before he could get properly annoyed over it.

For the next little while, he drifted, unable to hold on to awareness long enough. Someone was asking him questions. He was sure he was answering them, but maybe he was imagining that. He couldn’t tell.

He dreamed too, of the cold in the trenches and the mud and the ever-present scent of damp wool from everyone’s coats mixing with the campfire smoke. There was running, a lot of dream-running that was like trying to move through water. Then he was on a plane, repeating his first ever flight but his hands were frozen on the yoke, so when the plane took a dive from the sky, there was nothing that Steve could do to stop it from barreling into the frozen ground.

When he awoke again, some undetermined time later, it was daytime, the sunlight filtering in through the open blinds. Oddly enough, his mind felt almost clear even if the rest of him felt… well, like shit.

He blinked, and then blinked again, cataloguing the nuances of what was happening with his body.

The back of his head throbbed, not badly enough to make him feel nauseated but enough to make his attention scatter. So did his left shoulder, a tugging pain that grew worse when he tried to move it. Steve decided not to do it again. Maybe ever. He grimaced, and found out that something or someone must have punched him in the mouth, for good measure.

Everything hurt and nothing felt comfortable, but he was certainly grateful that the fog in his head had started to clear.

He turned his head slowly, half-fearful that it might roll right off his neck, and grimaced when an assortment of smells assaulted his senses—that sterile cocktail that could be attributed to any and all hospitals without fail. His gaze moved over the white ceiling and the window and a chair and—

“Steve?”

Diana moved over to his bed, her face swimming in and out of focus for a few moments until he managed to concentrate on her properly, and the relief that washed over him at the sight of her was all-consuming. The sheer force of it nearly sent him back into that odd half-daze of the past… little while.

“Hey.” She smiled, hovering over him. He felt her hand touch his hair, his face, very lightly. Or maybe his senses were too dull to really feel it. There was a small, uncertain smile on her lips—perhaps the most beautiful thing a man could wake up to, even if it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Steve swallowed, and tried to wet his lips. Tried to say something because damn, he just wanted—wanted—

“Water,” he mouthed almost without a sound.

“Of course.”

There was a small side table next to his bed, holding a lamp, a bottle of water and a couple of glasses.

He watched Diana unscrew the cap on the bottle and fill a glass for him, before she brought it carefully to his mouth, helping him drink. He gulped it down hungrily, nearly choking on it and thinking he was going to need five more gallons of just that to feel alive again. But, it definitely helped to swat away the cobweb that seemed to be covering his brain.

He glanced at the bottle again, but Diana was shaking her head.

“Later,” she said.

When she leaned down to kiss the side of his head, he decided that he wasn’t really feeling all that bad, all things considered. A few broken bones, so what? What more did one need when he had a woman like this by his side, anyway? 

Diana grabbed a chair sitting near the foot of the bed and moved it closer to him. Immediately, she reached for his hand, and Steve grabbed a hold of it, gratefully. Her skin was warm, her touch reassuring. It eased something inside of him instantly. 

“Hey,” he said, at last. And even mustered a smile that coaxed a watery laugh out of her.

She brushed his hair back from his forehead, and repeated: “Hi. How are you feeling?”

Like someone had dropped a tank on top of me and then ran me over with a train, he thought.

That likely wasn’t the best thing to say. Not with the worry pooling behind Diana’s eyes and a shadow of anguish chasing across her face—something that she was obviously trying, and failing, to hide. It made him wonder how bad it was, leaving him deeply ashamed of being the reason for her worry.

“How long was I out of it?” he asked, his voice scratchy.

“A couple of days.”

Days!

Steve tested his right shoulder once more, and when it protested the move, he scrubbed his left hand over his face.

“What happened?”

Diana tilted her head to her shoulder, her gaze sweeping over his features.

“You don’t remember?”

He scrunched his face and made an attempt to wrack his brain.

No memories were coming easily, feeling hazy and out of reach as though he was looking through frosted glass.

“The protest,” he said, at last, looking at Diana again, not oblivious to the relief he saw on her face.

“Yes,” she prompted.

“Did they do this?” Steve asked, though he couldn’t tell with certainty what this was.

There had been a man and a door, he remembered that. And then—nothing.

“You asked me that before,” Diana said. “Do you not remember?”

He didn’t. He remembered dreaming of her telling him that they were going to a hospital. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. But he also remembered dreaming about a bomb falling onto his shelter, in France, on his second mission and that had never happened for sure. He had only feared that it would.

He had feared a lot of things then. 

“I remember…” he started and faltered, trying to piece together the fragments of memories. “There was a man, acting strange. He looked like he was trying very hard not to be noticed. I followed him.” He paused and swallowed. “I’m sorry. I should have—I should have made sure you knew—”

“It’s alright,” Diana stopped him gently.

Her thumb was running slow circles over the back of his hand, her skin soft and smooth and warm against his, and entirely distracting for at least a thousand reasons that had nothing to do with the battering his body had taken.

He nodded. And then vowed to never nod again when it made sharp pain explode at the base of his skull.

“I followed that man,” Steve repeated. “In case he wanted to do something… I don’t know. There was a side door and maybe he had a key, or maybe he picked the lock. And I went after him.” He stopped. “And then...” he gestured around vaguely. 

At that, Diana sighed. And rubbed her forehead.

“I wish you’d told me,” she murmured.

“I was gonna,” he said honestly. 

There was a shadow of anguish chasing across her face now. Even with only half of his brain functioning, Steve hated the faint lines creasing the skin between her brows, and the way her gaze couldn’t seem to decide if it wanted to be stern or understanding or irritated, or downright frightened. He hoped it was not the latter. 

“What happened?” Steve asked again. “Was it—was it a bomb or something?”

“A gas pipe,” Diana said, after a moment. “It burst.” 

He blinked at her.

“Really?”

“Really.”

He frowned, feeling a little cheated. He’d survived a war and a dozen missions and had even somehow made it out alive from an exploding plane, and yet a burst gas pipe had nearly killed him? Well, that was… banal, really. Almost pathetic.

Almost insulting, if he was honest with himself.

Though he suspected that he was better off not saying any of that to Diana. Probably.

“Like an accident?” he couldn’t help but ask.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?” Steve clarified, just one more time.

She raised an eyebrow at him, like she couldn’t believe he was still asking.

“I mean, I know I shouldn’t be talking about it, but—”

“It’s not the curse,” Diana sighed. 

“Oh, so you admit there is a curse.”

She pressed her lips at that and shook her head. But, to his relief, there was a flicker of humour in her eyes, and tension leaving her body as they spoke. Everything still hurt like hell, but Steve chose to count this a small victory.  

“So, um…” he glanced down at himself, finally— finally —noticing that the odd pressure on his left foot that he had been trying to ignore up until now was actually a cast. Shit. “How bad is it? Like…” He gestured vaguely at his body. 

Diana’s face softened. Her fingers flexed around his. 

“Not as bad as it could have been, considering.”

Steve’s gaze fastened on hers. “That’s not really an answer,” he pointed out.

She smiled at that—a lovely one that made something shift into place inside of him. Broken ribs or not, and some were likely broken, it made it easier for him to breathe. 

“Tell me,” he asked, quietly.

She did.

He had sustained a blow to his head, though Steve could have told her that—he could very well feel every bit of that exciting occurrence. Just thinking about it was making his stomach roll queasily. His ankle was broken, and so were two of his ribs. Although, according to his doctor, they were healing nicely—Steve made a mental note to ask said doctor later what his definition of nicely was because it all hurt like a sonofabitch even with painkillers working their magic. And the more aware he became, the more acutely he could feel it all, and he didn’t like it, not even a little.

He’d had a dislocated shoulder as well, but that had been snapped back since then, of course, and was, apparently, fairly uncomplicated. Again, he wanted to know what that meant when it felt so bad.

They had debated a mild concussion, but who wouldn’t have one after having a wall collapse on them? But, in the end, that had been ruled out as he hadn’t displayed any symptoms. He wondered how he had been expected to display them while he was drugged up and blissfully unconscious, but that was neither here, nor there.

All in all, they had said he was lucky—he was expected to make a full recovery in a matter of months, provided he didn’t do anything to make it worse.

Diana gave him a pointed look when she said that last part, but Steve only nodded, more in acknowledgement of her words than anything else. Better not make any promises. After all, what had happened was entirely an accident and not his fault, and he was not liable for anything of that kind happening again.

But, with Diana and promises…

He had long made sure not to give her any he couldn’t absolutely, one-thousand percent guarantee to keep. Not after he had made one to show her the world after they ended the war and then had gone and blown himself up only hours later.

But he still hated the look on her face, the raw emotion in her eyes. That night in Prague, he had vowed silently to never hurt her again, and yet here he was. That he hadn’t meant to, that he had been trying to do the right thing didn’t make him feel any less awful.

“You’re mad,” Steve said, softly.

His words seemed to have startled her.

“I’m not—” Diana started and stopped. She let go of his hand and stood up, as if unable to keep still. “You were there, right by my side. And then you were gone, and then everyone started screaming…”

Her arms were folded across her chest, her shoulders rounded forwards. Steve watched a shuddering breath stutter out of her chest.

“Diana.”  

“You could have—” She swallowed. “I could have lost you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately and earnestly. “Diana, I’m so sorry.”

She sighed.

“I know.”

She moved back towards the bed, taking her seat again. She reached for his hand, clasping it between both of hers and leaned forward to kiss his fingers.

“What?” Steve asked when she rested her cheek against the knot of their hands.

“You look terrible.”

He offered her a cheeky smile. “You should see the other guy.”

“The collapsed building, you mean?”

“Hey, at least I’m still standing.”

“Not for the next few months,” Diana noted dryly.

But he was chuckling, and wondering how much of this light, dizzy feeling was the fact that he was, indeed, alive and she was there with him. And how much of it was, well, drugs.

He gripped her hand tighter, running his thumb over her knuckles. He could feel the fuzziness rolling in. It was chasing away his thoughts and making his search for words, any words, twice as hard.

He blinked, aware of the effort it was taking him to keep his eyes open. He didn’t want to end their conversation, not yet. It calmed him to have her there, to be aware of her presence. To listen to the sound of her voice. 

“You should rest,” Diana said quietly, ever-perceptive.

Steve let out a breath when her fingers skittered down his cheek.

“Will you stay with me?” he asked. “I hate hospitals.”

She smiled a little. “Nobody likes hospitals.”

“Well, there are plenty of really strange people in this world,” he argued.

“I’ll stay as long as they’ll let me,” she whispered, her eyes flicking between his. “Although I think I might have overstayed my welcome already.”

“Have you been here the entire time?” he couldn’t help but ask, too curious not to, though he suspected he knew the answer. Had heard it in her I could have lost you.

“Mostly,” she admitted.

“Watching me sleep?”

But she was shaking her head and rolling her eyes a little.

“I’m glad that you’re clearly feeling much better.”

“I’m sure they would be happy to make an exception for Wonder Woman,” he noted, his voice dropping conspiratorially at the last two words as his eyes darted towards the closed door. “If you wanted to stay past…” he drew in a breath. “Past the allowed time.” 

Diana’s smile stretched out wider, making something inside of him ache, but in the good way. In the way he wouldn’t have minded staying with him forever, unlike the rest of it.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to brandish that in a foreign country around civilians.”

“There’s gotta be some perks,” he muttered, his voice growing slurred. “You know, for someone who is constantly saving the world.”

She pressed her lips together. “I’ll make sure to find out what they are.”

Steve yawned, unable to help it. “You do that,” he murmured.

“Sleep,” Diana said, as she leaned in to kiss him on the forehead, her lips lingering on his skin.

“You smell good,” Steve breathed. “How do you always smell so good?”

“You’re biased.”

He tried to catch her gaze. “‘Course, I am. But you still smell good.”

“Maybe I should ask them what they are giving you,” Diana said, critically, but there was a smile in her voice, and maybe even a hint of teasing.

“Stay,” he repeated, his eyes dropping shut.

Her hand brushed over his hair.

“I will.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

And a promise is unbreakable…


The first time Steve had had to go to a hospital was when he was eight years old and had fallen off a tree growing in front of his house and broken his arm.

And even thinking back to every single thing that had happened to him since he had joined the army—the boot camp, the endless exhaustion, feeling like his ass was being kicked every step of the way—he still considered that very first experience to be the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Not even running in the rain at night, with his hands slippery on his shotgun while being shot at; not being shot in the shoulder; not even the sensation of barbed wire tearing into his skin during drills came anywhere close to it.

But it wasn’t just the pain. It was the smell of disinfectants and limited mobility and the feeling like there was so much pain and suffering and death all around him that made it worse.

Although, admittedly, Steve couldn’t help but be grateful for the future and the invention of antibiotics and, well, those wonderful, wonderful painkillers. There was something that needed to be said about that.

But… none of that was making him hate his new predicament any less.

He spent the next couple of days drifting in and out of a sleepy daze, his brain soft around the edges and his thoughts impossible to hold on to for more than a few minutes at a time. He had no idea what Diana had done to get him his own room, or maybe it was his status as a foreigner that made the hospital want to keep him away from everyone else, but he sure wasn’t complaining about that, grateful for the privacy.

Most of the time when he woke, she was there—sometimes watching the TV mounted on the wall on mute, but more often reading or doing something on her phone. Something work-related, he had figured, though each time he asked, she would give him a vague non-answer. He’d feel guilty over pulling her away from the dig and the rest of it, if he had it in him to remember how to feel anything, short of bone-deep weariness.

He knew he slept better with Diana there, though it made little sense. The drugs were doing most of the job to make it happen anyway. Still, in the moments when Steve opened his eyes to find himself alone, with the TV off, a sense of dread would roll over him, heavy and suffocating.

It was a relief to figure out that he was indeed healing nicely, as predicted. His mind cleared by day five. And by the end of the week, he was capable of having a coherent conversation, and he had even started growing restless, cooped up in the four walls with only the view of a single rooftop with an assortment of antennas on top for entertainment.

Steve Trevor had decidedly not been born for idleness, much to his own frustration and Diana’s immense amusement.

“They are not going to let you go sooner, no matter how much you squirm,” she told him nonchalantly one afternoon after lunch, an empty tray sitting before him.

He hated the food. Its lack of taste annoyed him, and there was something unfair to it, after all the culinary masterpieces he had had a chance to enjoy over the previous two months. Hated how it was never properly warmed up and hated its “hospital food” smell. 

But, Diana refused stoically to bring him anything not approved by his physician, much to Steve’s dismay, and there was only so long a man could go hungry before he stopped being picky. Especially, a recovering man with a growing appetite.

He was debating asking them to put him back on drugs and just let him sleep off the rest of his stay. Not that that was going to happen, of course.

“You’re not the one who’s been sitting on your butt for eight days,” he pointed an accusing finger at her.

Diana lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not the one who had a building collapse on them, in the first place.”

Steve huffed in indignation. But there was no point in arguing with that.

Plus, the better he was getting, the less sympathy she appeared to have towards his plight. 

Which was—

Which was quite nice, actually. It made him feel less like he was about to drop dead.

He leaned back against a pillow, his gaze moving aimlessly around. There was a football game happening on TV, but he didn’t know the teams, and the commentary was in Arabic. Every channel was in either Arabic or French, come to think of it, and at times, it was alright. He was happy to take it as a bit of a challenge to keep up with what was happening in the world. Other times, it seemed to be taking too much effort, leaving him exhausted after half an hour.

He turned to Diana who set her phone down at the foot of his bed. Steve scooted a little to the other edge of the mattress and patted a spot next to him. She arched her brow and smiled, but lowered down, gingerly, his hand immediately reaching for hers.

“It was an accident,” he said, for perhaps the umpteenth time.

But her sympathy on the matter only went so far, apparently.

Still, her eyes swept over his face, lingering on the stitches below his hairline and the bruise that Steve hadn’t seen yet but that still felt very tender to the touch. He wondered, absently, if the stitches were going to leave a scar, the idea of it not as concerning as the fact that it would be yet another reminder of how he had nearly died. Again. He wondered, too, if the bruise looked worse with his stubble shaved off—he’d had to ask Diana to do that, yesterday. This place was rather warm and his unintended beard had started to itch.

(He wondered, too—couldn’t help but wonder, really—how she could bear being with him there, seeing him so… broken. Wondered how much it hurt her, after everything, the question leaving him with a deep-seated sense of guilt building and building behind his ribs.

Steve tried not to think too much about it, and ended up thinking about it all the time.)   

She looked at him, for a long moment, and he let her, his fingers playing idly with hers.

“What’s going to happen next?” he asked, eventually, pulled back into the moment by a burst of loud conversation somewhere in the hallway.

“Next?” Diana repeated, sliding her thumb over the palm of his hand. “You mean, when they let you go home?”

“No,” Steve shook his head. “The dig, everything.”

It was only occurring to him now that he had never asked how it had all worked out, with the museum and all else. The protestors. He hadn’t even remembered to ask her if anyone else got hurt. Had to be, right? And Diana had likely had to go there and help. His brows knitted together, and he kicked himself mentally, his broken ankle be damned.

“Oh.” She seemed surprised by his words. “The museum took quite the hit. They are going to have to close it and rebuild it. At least, part of it.”

There was no way to tell yet how much damage had been caused to the items on display there, she told him. Steve could see that part of her mourned the loss of them, pieces of history that they both knew could never be restored or replaced. She was glad that by the time the gas pipe had burst, the things that had been uncovered at the dig had not been sent to the Museum yet and that the bodies—the mummies —had been making their way straight to Rabat with its better-equipped facilities.

But while what had happened was unimaginable, there was no political undertone to it. No reason to halt the dig, like they would have if an act of aggression had been at play. Diana chose not to express her personal opinion on the matter, though Steve knew she was torn, bound by her obligations towards the Louvre but not unsympathetic towards the people who found the meddling of a different country in their heritage insulting. 

Truth be told, he was not entirely sure what to make of it himself. 

He didn’t push for more, all too aware of the unfairness in which the world operated, a lot of the time. Some things, it seemed, were never going to change. 

Though he scoffed when she informed him that Rachid was already elbows-deep in trying to get another grant, increase the funding, go beyond their initial plan for the site.

Her phone dinged with a new text message just then.

“Keeps you on your toes, doesn’t he?” Steve said, his gaze darting towards it when Diana picked it up.

“It’s Barry, actually,” she said, smiling a little when she checked the message. “Asking if I’ve eaten my way through the entire country’s supply of Moroccan sweets.”

Steve gazed up at her, intrigued. “They have a supply?”

She was shaking her head, her lips pressed around a smile. “No, but I can’t tell him that. It would break his heart.”

He grimaced. “You have no problem breaking mine.”

She rubbed his arm without looking up from the screen. “Luckily, you’re already in good hands.”

Steve wanted to believe that, and truly, he had nothing to complain about.

Well, okay, he had plenty to complain about, but nothing that wouldn’t have made him sound like a spoilt brat. Granted, his main frame of reference was a war and the memory of field hospitals that couldn’t even begin to embrace the notion of sterility and plentiful medication, and where the matter of survival felt more like playing Russian Roulette than anything else.

Steve was grateful for the technological advancements of the 21sr century, without a doubt. He also was insanely curious about the beeping machines that had stayed by his bed for the first three days to monitor the beating of his heart and his blood pressure and his brain activity—the latter making Diana make a dry joke about hoping they would find some, given how he had ended up half-dead in the first place.

He had found it beyond his dignity to respond to that.

Though the food was not the best, it was hardly the worst thing he had ever eaten, and instead of the smell of rotting flesh and festering wounds for company—something he remembered, all too vividly, from field hospitals—he had a TV with a dozen channels and a stack of books and magazines that Diana had hauled over to make him a little more comfortable, a little less jittery.

Never mind that reading or watching TV was giving him a headache. 

But he didn’t have to enjoy it all, did he?

The days dragged, even though he tried his best to entertain himself, once solving half a dozen crossword puzzles in one afternoon. Well, mostly solving, if he was being honest. He had started at least three books, and even though he hadn’t gotten far with any of them, it was the intent that mattered, right? He mostly hated keeping Diana from work in the moments when she was around, her phone coming to life every fifteen minutes, yet he couldn’t stand the time when she had to leave him to his own devices even more.

His foot itched mercilessly under his cast and his broken ribs were happily preventing him from leaning forward to at least try to scratch it. Not that he was likely to get to the right spot, of course. Which was maddening in its own way, to put it mildly. That, and his bathing was limited to what they called bed bathing and involved one of the nurses doing it with soaked washcloths. Admittedly, he had an option of an assisted shower but it felt like something that Steve most certainly didn’t want to experience in this lifetime.

“You seem to be enjoying this,” he told Diana one day at the end of his second week of what he referred to as solitary confinement after the nurse had allowed her in after said procedure.

He knew that he was blushing profusely, helpless against it, and he tried very, very hard not to think of every single nurse here who he might never be able to look in the eye again.

“Enjoying your discomfort?” Diana clarified, but there was a smile tugging at the corners of her eyes as she leaned in to brush a kiss to his lips.

Steve only huffed, but it didn’t stop him from sliding his hand around the back of her neck to draw her back to him after she’d pulled away to steal another kiss. A proper one, at that. 

“Get me out of here, I’m begging you,” he said afterwards, a tad more dramatic than the situation warranted. “I’ll be on my best behaviour, I swear.”

But she was pressing her lips together and shaking her head.

“Not until they let you go.”

“You’re mean,” he accused.

She raised an eyebrow at him, but he merely glared back.

“Do you really think I’m not hatching an escape plan?”

“You better not be,” she warned him.

“Seriously, Diana. I swear I’ll make it up to you. I can—I could—Is there any chance I could bribe you?”

She tilted her head, curious. “With what?”

He sputtered for a moment, caught by surprise. “I don’t know, sexual favours?”

A smile sprung across her face—the dazzling thing that made his heart trip.

“Not until you’re cleared for those, either. Nice try, though, Captain Trevor.”

Steve sighed. “God, it’s hot when you call me that.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

She rolled her eyes and made an attempt to stand up, but Steve’s hand darted forward, curling around her wrist to keep her where she was.

“Ridiculous enough to take me home so you could have more of it?” he asked hopefully.

“Not that much.”

But she didn’t leave, and her nearness was almost enough to make up for everything else. He would probably still spend the next week fantasizing about climbing out of the window to the fire escape, though. In between fantasizing about other things, that is.

His gaze swept over her body, and then he tried to focus on the damned itching under his cast because it was somehow less tortuous than—than not even knowing when he would get to take Diana’s clothes off again.

He vowed silently to never, ever get sick again. To not so much as stub his toe. Christ.

“How about you behave and I’ll make it up to you?” Diana offered nonchalantly, her fingers running absently up and down his wrist.

Steve looked up, feeling his mouth go dry as his eyes widened a little.

“You mean…?”

She leaned forward and brushed a light kiss to the corner of his mouth, her touch making his skin tingle and his groin tighten with desire. Not even the damn cast was enough to keep his mind off of her, it seemed…

“You know what I mean,” Diana whispered.

Steve sighed and rubbed the corners of his eyes, turning away from her for good measure.

“You’re the worst,” he muttered, shifting a little.

Diana bit her lip around a smile.

“Got you distracted at least,” she pointed out.

“Tease,” he accused with a scowl, making her laugh.

God, he loved her laugh. The real one that would light up her face and make the corners of her eyes crinkle, never failing to make him feel warm all over. And her smile. And her eyes. And her—

No, better not go there.

He leaned back against the pillow.

“They’re making me learn how to use crutches,” he said, after a while. After he’d calmed down, although his blood was still running hot, and it was a damned shame the doors here didn’t have locks. What kind of doors didn’t have locks? He wondered if that was something that he could file a complaint about.

They’d probably laugh in his face, if he did.

“They are?” Diana echoed, sitting up straighter.

“Yeah.” He picked up her hand, weaving their fingers together. “Hey, maybe I could use them to fight my way out of here. Like those—those martial arts movies.”

Diana pressed her lips together and shook her head. “You seem to be rather bloodthirsty today.”

“You try doing nothing for two weeks straight,” Steve grumbled, but without any heat behind it.

In truth, he didn’t mind the crutches, not really. Not as long as it got him out of bed and hopping back and forth down the hallway a couple of times a day, even though his shoulder was still sore and was making the process less than thrilling. Such exciting life he led.

Diana’s gaze was cast down, locked on the knot of their hands.

She had probably never been sick before, Steve thought. And here he was, so vulnerable to so many things. It was hard not to wonder about the day when she would realize she’d had enough of that.

The thought made his stomach twist. Made him grimace in shame, as well. It was such a low thing to assume about someone who cared for him as much as she cared for him. About someone who put honesty above all else, too.

But he couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling entirely. Not when he knew that one way or another, she was a god and he was… not. She would still be alive even when there would be no memory and trace of him left in this world. And it made Steve hungry and desperate for more—more of her, more time with her, for every moment they could make count.

Yet, here he was, bedridden and irritable and probably less than pleasant to deal with, even for someone who had as much patience as Diana.

He lifted their hands to his mouth and pressed his lips to her fingers.

Diana looked up, lifting her gaze to his. He watched her features soften.

“I love you,” he said, quietly, honestly, revelling in every moment of being allowed and able to do just that.

She squeezed his fingers and kissed him again, slow and deep, and enough to leave him more than a little… distracted all over again.

“I love you, too,” she murmured.

“I was not joking about the crutches, by the way,” he added.

And she rolled her eyes before muttering something unsavoury under her breath in Greek. 

Notes:

Well, you're going to pry the good old "hurt/comfort" out of my cold dead hands. I love it more than I could ever tell you, though I'll be honest with you, I think I'm being very tame with it in this story. Before I forgot - I've been meaning to share the song that inspired this whole story (and its title) with you. It's one of my favourite. Give it a try :)

Also, we're getting close to the next big story arc and I think you'll like it. At least, I want to hope so. I'm very excited about the next chapter, in particular, so please stay tuned!

As always, comments, feedback, yelling, theories are very much appreciated. I'll love you forever!

Chapter 16

Notes:

Welp, here I am again, with yet another update 😬

Thanks everyone for sticking around and I hope you're still enjoying this story :) I am happy to announce that I finally finished the first draft and the first round of editing of this whole fic. Phew. It is now officially akajb's problem and not mine, at least for the time being. Gosh, this was a long journey. No idea how long this fic is, as it is spread over several documents, but it's got to be around 300k :P Anyway, you're all real troopers for following it :)

This chapter is the longest one, I think. I normally try to keep them around 10k, give or take, but something got out of control here. So... Don't worry, the rest of them are shorter than 15k lol

And a bit of a warning for those of you who don't like mature/explicit content, as I know not everyone is into that - please feel free to skim/slip the second half of the 3rd scene. But please read everything that comes next, there's a lot of cute stuff!

Okay, you're good to go :) Have fun!

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

Chapter Text

Paris, 2021

They went back to Paris a week after Steve was discharged from the hospital—he had seemed so eager and excited that day that Diana had half-expected him to jump out of the wheelchair and dash out the door, leaving his crutches behind. 

She could see the entire experience had started to wear down on him, as the days continued to go by. The bruising around the cuts on his face had faded, and that alone had been a relief. It made him look more like himself, and her own guilt no longer jumped all the way to her throat at the sight of it. She hoped she would never see or feel anything like that again—the blood trickling down his face, the certainty that it had all been worse than she imagined.

Even though he was the one who had done something thoughtless and reckless and impulsive, she couldn’t stop blaming herself for every scrape and bruise, for the broken bones and torn muscles and the misery he had been forced to endure for three endless weeks.

She had not been there when the pipe had exploded and the wall had collapsed onto him, but she had imagined it enough times to feel sick to her stomach whenever the mental image popped up. Likely not one she was going to forget or get over anytime soon, she knew.

For all his joking, for all their bantering, Diana had never been more scared than when she had searched for him in the ruins that day. And she knew that Steve knew that too, even though neither of them said anything. The weight of it all and the risks and the what-ifs were there, all the same. She hated it and she couldn’t stop thinking about what could have happened if it had taken her a few minutes longer to find him, if she had never thought to look inside, if he had made it another step forward and his head had been crushed—

It was maddening and frightening, and it had brought forward all her old memories. Everything that she could have and should have done differently, to save him before.

Regardless, it was nice to see Steve perk up once he was back in a more familiar environment. He hadn’t been tense at the hospital, per se. Not any more than anyone else would be in his place, all things considered. But he had relaxed the moment he had walked through the door of their rental apartment, refusing her help and making good use of his crutches as he did so.

“It even smells like freedom,” he had said to no one in particular.

Diana had chosen not to point out he hadn’t exactly been a prisoner of war the past few weeks. She had been all too relieved to have him around again. Though, in truth, even after all the plans he had made and all his big declarations at the hospital, he tired easily and was more sore than he wanted to let on.

She had resented her helplessness over it, over not being able to alleviate his pain, to do much of anything beyond bringing him a glass of water to wash down his painkillers.

When Diana had told him they would be going back to Paris at the end of the week, he had been surprised though.

“What happened to staying for another few weeks?” he had asked.

“Well, we did,” she had reminded him.

It had taken him a moment to catch up, and she had seen the exact instant when the realization dawned, followed closely by the disappointment that he had wasted said weeks stuck in bed.

“Oh.”

“We could come back sometime,” she had offered, smoothing her hand over his good shoulder. “Without a reason, just us. Yes?”

Though she had wondered if she would ever be able to walk the streets of Marrakech without remembering the soul-crushing feeling blossoming inside of her at the sight of the Museum building going down like a house of cards. Probably not anytime soon.

She hadn’t told him that. Hadn’t been sure if Steve had even considered it as he nodded.

“It’s not because of the…” he trailed off, gesturing vaguely at himself before he had looked up. “Is it? Going back, I mean.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I’m needed in Paris. Rachid is doing fine on his own for now, but someone else will likely be coming in, if required.”

“Just not you,” Steve had clarified.

“No, not me. Besides, it’s a little—” She had faltered. “If I’m needed elsewhere, for… ah, non-work reasons, Paris is more convenient, in that regard.”

He had blinked at her. “Right. I hadn’t… I never thought of that.”

Diana had smiled, and brushed her thumb along his jaw. “I’m just glad to have you back,” she had said, softly, as though sharing a secret as she had leaned in to kiss him on the cheek.

He had slept most of their flight back to France, and Diana had taken her sweet time to thank every single deity she could think of for the invention of business class that had allowed him more comfort. When he hadn’t been sleeping, Steve had looked out the window, at the endless stretch of clouds outside, his fingers weaved with hers.

She had loved the simplicity of it, of holding his hand just because she wanted; because she could.

She had wondered, at some point, if he had been thinking about flying, of being the one in the pilot’s seat. He missed it, she knew. More than anything, perhaps. The mere idea of him getting behind a yoke was enough to make Diana sick to her stomach—not that she had said that to him, or ever would, for that matter. But if he decided to do it again, she wouldn’t have tried to stop him.

She’d chosen not to ask though. If someone was going to bring it up, she decided to let it be him.

There was comfort to falling into their old routine, more or less. She had loved Morocco and enjoyed their time there, but there was something about Paris that made all the storms raging within her settle, chasing away the restlessness that sometimes thrummed beneath her skin.

She had planned to take a few days off work, to help Steve adjust—he’d had a doctor’s appointment coming up to remove the cast, replace it with a boot to support the healing. Something that was meant to make the experience slightly more comfortable for him, or so they had been told. But Steve wouldn’t hear of it.

“I’m not an invalid,” he had declared, rather heatedly, when she had voiced her suggestion that first night after dinner. “I don’t need you to—to babysit me.” 

Diana had given him a pointed once-over, her gaze lingering for a moment on the cut on his forehead that was turning into a pale pink scar. In a few weeks, there wouldn’t be much left of it. But it made an excellent point all the same. Her eyes moved down to his shoulder that he still carried gingerly at times, his torso and the ribs that had only just healed. And then his crutches and the cast that Steve had spent the past couple of weeks cursing to high heavens.

She smirked.

“Not that much of an invalid,” he had amended, looking flustered under her scrutiny.

She hadn’t argued, though. If he needed time to nurse his wounded ego back to health, she had no issue with that. She was only a phone call away, regardless.

That, and maybe she needed to learn to live with her own consuming fear that made it hard for her to breathe, to think each time she let him out of her sight. As though being around him was the only way for her to keep him safe, to keep him with her.

But she couldn’t do that. That was not how life worked. Tomorrow, or a week from now, or next month, Diana was going to go on a mission without him. Or maybe he would, leaving her behind and travelling on his own and she would need to know that she wouldn’t fall apart when that happened.

His death in 1918 had been traumatic, so much so that she could hardly push it aside even with a living, breathing, very much real Steve right there with her. Even after years of trying to bury that memory in the darkest corner of her memory, it continued to haunt her and maybe always would. Nearly losing him again had brought those feelings back with such clarity they would take her breath away when Diana least expected it.

It was easier, she figured, to learn how to deal with that from a few blocks away rather than with countries between them.

Although, that was not to say that it was easy.

When she was lucky, the work was enough to sweep her away for hours at a time. She had items to catalogue, articles to write, and her notes from the dig to organize and transfer to the departments they belonged to. There was another dig happening in the Middle East, its paperwork waiting for Diana on her desk the day she had returned to the office. There were collections to curate and events to arrange and a million and a half other things that kept her mind busy.

But on occasion, she would still feel Steve’s absence like a gaping hole, pulsing and aching and threatening to swallow her whole. She couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if she walked into their apartment—she hadn’t even noticed when she had stopped thinking of it as just hers —and not find him there. Or to wake up in an empty bed, his clothes gone, the last trace of him erased. To awaken to a world where he had never existed.

In those moments, she would pull out her phone and call him, just to hear his voice and the slight lilt in it when he said her name, his smile so clear in her memory she didn’t even need to conjure the image. It was right there, at all times.

He cooked for her, with limited success, to occupy his time, and probably to check if their smoke alarm was in working condition. Funnily enough, he had figured out how to use one of his crutches to shut it off. Diana knew not to tease him about that, although she was genuinely surprised and more than a little impressed when he managed to bake a loaf of bread.

“Don’t look so shocked,” Steve said when she spotted it cooling on the cutting board.

“I’m not, but I do wonder if I’m in the right apartment.” She even looked around for good measure, earning an eye roll and a muttered funny.

Every now and then, he would hobble over to the bakery at the end of their block to get some pastries for lunch, for the sake of getting outside and into the fresh air, such as it was in Paris. He never forgot to get something for her. She knew he hated the restrictions on his mobility, however temporary, and was adamant not to give in to them. Years at the front, and this was the first time he had been confined to four walls for that long.

She could see where his frustration was coming from.

It was fascinating to watch him deal with it with the same dogged stubbornness that he seemed to apply to everything else in his life. His doctor had assigned Steve some physical therapy to keep his ankle mobile and better prepared for the day he was expected to make it weight-bearing again, and he threw himself into the task with the slight obsession of a man who had been dying to not fall prisoner to his circumstances.

She would have been lying, though, if she said that she had expected anything less.

He was restless, and sometimes irritable and annoyed by the limitations of his body, and for some reason unbeknownst to her, she loved him even more for it all.

He had only been sick once, in the time since he had come back. After their Christmas in the Maldives, he had caught a nasty cold that had left him burning up and bedridden and miserable for two weeks straight, made worse by the memories from their tropical escape. As though the cold Parisian weather was mocking him over it.

That now felt like something that had happened a whole lifetime ago.

At the end of Diana’s first week back at work, she followed Steve to the bathroom and helped him strip and then get into the bathtub, his cast wrapped in a plastic bag and resting on the lip of the tub to save it from getting wet.

Kneeling next to him, she watched him tip his head back and close his eyes, his body relaxed in the hot water. She watched his chest move when he took a breath and then exhaled slowly, his face smoothing out. Her heart constricted fiercely in her chest, stuttering unevenly behind her ribs.

Two years and counting, and she would still find herself in moments like this one, when it was hard to believe he had come back to her. That she could reach out her hand and feel the warmth of his skin beneath her touch; that she could call out his name and he would look at her with those impossibly blue eyes of his, his gaze bright and brimming with affection.

Right now, he looked so much younger, innocent , making Diana wish she had met him before the war. Before it had erased that from inside of him.

She reached for the washcloth and dipped it in the water, before picking up the bottle of soap and squeezing some onto it. She worked it into a lather with her fingers and then traced it, lightly, over the jut of Steve’s collar bone, following it towards the curve of his shoulder and along the lines of his bicep, the one closest to her.

Without moving, Steve cracked one eye open, his lips twitching as though he was trying not to smile.

“I like it better when you do this,” he confessed, after a moment. “And not…”

“A stranger?” Diana supplied.

“Multiple strangers,” he muttered as he wrinkled his nose.

She pressed her lips around a smile as the colour rushed up his cheeks, debating if she should comment. Perhaps not…

“Well, you have nothing to be ashamed of,” she said, all the same, giving his body a very deliberate once over, and then biting her lip when he turned an even brighter shade of scarlet. “You’re an above average man, after all. Are you not?”

Steve closed his eyes and scrubbed a resigned hand down his face.

She wondered if he knew just how adorable he looked when he was so flustered. He was not an insecure man, Diana knew. He was aware that he was attractive. He certainly knew he had an effect on her, something that she never saw the need to hide. She was not ashamed of her feelings, or the desire she felt towards him. But it was one thing when he said that to her. When he had stood naked before her and called himself an above-average example of his sex, without thinking twice, because he had truly believed it then. But it was, apparently, something else entirely when she said it back to him, and she couldn’t help but enjoy the reaction that her words inspired in him.

That was never going to get old, Diana suspected.

Still, she combed her free hand through his hair, and Steve turned to her immediately.

“How are you, really?” she asked, softly, as her eyes searched his.

His bruises had long gone, and that was a relief, but only Steve knew what was happening to him, beyond that.

“Not bad, actually,” he said, after a moment.

Carefully, he rolled his injured shoulder—without wincing once, Diana noted. His ribs had stopped bothering him almost a week ago, and it was only the cast and everything that it entailed that he still needed to deal with.

He lifted his hand from the water and curled it around hers, lifting it to his mouth to kiss the inside of Diana’s wrist, her pulse stuttering a little against his lips.

“Really?” she asked, tilting her head.

He nodded and squeezed her fingers, smiling as he did so. “Yeah.”

She smiled, too, her hand painting a soapy trail across his chest.

He didn’t need her for this. He had mostly mastered the art of taking a shower again. But she was grateful he let her take care of him, anyway, for her sake more than his own. Even though Diana wasn’t sure she wanted him to know just how much she needed it.

Steve’s gaze darted towards his crutches leaning against the wall near the sink, his lips pressed into a displeased line.

“Those things are still a nuisance,” he added, under his breath.

Diana smirked and arched an eyebrow at him.

Steve sighed. “I know, I know, I’m also a nuisance.”

“I never said that.”

“You thought it. I could almost hear it.”

“For what it’s worth, it makes me love you even more,” she said, casually. His jaw went a little slack at that, leaving her helpless against the impulse to lean forward and kiss him. And then kiss him again when his hand curled over the back of her head.

“Would you still like me if you needed to carry me everywhere?” he asked when she pulled away.

Diana folded her arms over the lip of the tub.

“I don’t know. What did you do to make that happen?”

He groaned, throwing his head back, and she laughed.

She brushed the washcloth along his shin, from the cast up, and around his knee. Steve lifted his head and opened his eyes.

“Have you ever thought about quitting?” he asked, after a long moment.

Diana looked up, surprised.

“Quitting?” she echoed.

“The war…” he started and faltered, searching for words. “I lived it for two years and it was enough for ten lifetimes. I can’t imagine what a century had to feel like for you. And yet you’re still—” He shrugged.

He was watching her, curious and expectant, and though there was no anguish or weariness behind his question, none that she could see, she wondered what had brought it on. In the two years that he’d been back, he hadn’t once questioned what she was doing. What she was still doing.

She paused and busied herself with rinsing out the washcloth, and then tracing it along his forearm.

“I have,” she admitted, and though her gaze remained focused on his arm, she could feel his on her. Could hear his breathing growing shallow as though he was worried he’d scare her away. “Thought about quitting.”

“Yeah?” he prompted when she didn’t say anything else.

Diana sighed, biting her lip, her fingers absently fiddling with the washcloth and her brows pulling together on a will of their own.

“I was raised to believe that there was a simple solution to stopping all violence in the world. That once Ares was defeated, mankind could live in peace and nothing could disturb it ever again.”

She wondered, unable not to, if that was also one of the many things her mother had neglected to explain to her. Or if maybe her people truly never knew how the legacy of the God of War was meant to live on even with him dead, and there was nothing they could do about it, but try to put out the small fires it continued to leave in its wake.

Steve didn’t say anything, and she continued. “I was not prepared for that to not be the truth. That killing the God of War was not going to stop all wars. It was…” She smoothed her hand over his forearm. “It is exhausting to keep fighting a losing battle, watching people make the same mistakes over and over again and knowing that it will never end. To do it year after year and know that every victory is merely a pause before another fight breaks out, over money or resources or power. There is always something.”

She looked up. There was recognition chasing across his features. He might have only had two years of it, but she didn’t doubt that he understood, at least some of it.

Diana thought of the gas chambers she had seen during the Second World War and the unimaginable cruelty that had left her raw and aching for so long she had started to think at some point that she might have to learn to live with the weight of it all, all the lives lost, for as long as she breathed.

The Vietnam War and destroyed villages, people shot in the back because they had been running.

The Middle East. The uprisings in Africa—so many of those.

The smaller fights in-between that never stopped. It was as though Ares continued to live on in millions of people, coming back over and over again, undefeated.

And then there were the lives that she couldn’t save.

On the day she had crossed No Man’s Land, Steve had told her that they couldn’t save everyone. For so long, Diana had been adamant to prove him wrong, but he ended up being right, in the end. There had been times when she had been late. There had been only so much she could do, only so many places she could be at once. For every life saved, there had been many people she had failed to help, and that too was like a stone sitting in her chest. A reminder that even her divinity wasn’t always enough.

And it was never going to stop, Diana knew. There was always going to be the next Ludendorff, the next someone hungry for world dominance, above all else. They would keep on coming until the end of time, perhaps.

There was no saving this world, she had long learned that. She could try to protect it, when it allowed her, and there had been a whole different degree of devastation to that realization.

That was not to say that those thoughts hadn’t brought relief with them, as well. Yet, she wondered if anyone could truly fault her for feeling jaded now. She was immortal but she felt the passage of time, all the same. 

“Why didn’t you?” Steve asked after she had fallen silent. “Why did you choose to keep on fighting?”

Diana looked up, reaching for him before she knew to stop herself. Her hand brushed through his hair, pushing it back from his face before she had her hand come to rest on his cheek.

“Because there will always be people who deserve saving,” she said, and he lifted his hand, curling it over hers as he turned into her touch to kiss her palm. “You can either do nothing, or you can do something. Remember?”

She watched Steve swallow.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, softly, his eyes fastened on hers.

Diana ran her other hand through the water, watching as small ripples spiralled outwards. “You didn’t ask,” she said, smiling a little.

Because I can’t stand thinking about it.

Because I didn’t want you to think less of me.

Because the idea of doing this forever frightens me almost as much as the idea of walking away.

Because I didn’t know who I would be if I left.

Because she didn’t want to think of it more than she absolutely had to, and with him there with her, the thought hadn’t crossed her mind once. Not even when she had been waiting at the hospital for someone to tell her whether he was going to live or die.

Steve sighed.

“Diana, I…”

But she was shaking her head and smoothing her thumb over his cheekbone.

They were together now. They were in love and that changed everything. It changed the way she looked at the world, and the way she planned for the future. But the fight for a better world was hers.

And she knew she was not ready to leave it behind.

Steve watched her for a long moment, and she let him, certain that she could all but hear the wheels turning in his head. Once, he even opened his mouth to say something, ask something, but in the end, he exhaled and relaxed against the frame of the bathtub once more.

“Alright, so, I guess you could—” he started and stopped. “Hypothetically speaking, what would you be doing if you weren’t brushing dust off old pots during the day and keeping the world safe from bad guys at night?”

Diana smiled, equally amused and grateful for him not pushing the subject.

Maybe one day, she would tell him more. Maybe one day, he would tell her if he had ever wanted to give up. But not tonight.

She picked up the washcloth once more.

“I supposed I would live somewhere at the seaside,” she said, her tone casual. “Maybe in Greece.”

“Because you could speak Greek there?” he asked.

She bit her lip around a smile. “Because it is the closest thing to Themyscira, in this world.”

Steve blinked. “Oh.”

She watched him make the mental connection, a kaleidoscope of emotions and realizations chasing across his features.

“Do you think you would like it?” he asked, carefully.

Diana considered his question. “I don’t think it would be enough,” she admitted.

He nodded, slowly. And then once more. “I mean, as much as I appreciate the mental image of you in a bikini on a beach…” he trailed off, offering her a grin that could only be described as wicked.

She hummed. “That you do.”

“The dusty pots and pans and arrowheads would probably miss you too much,” he added, and she shook her head, with a mixture of affection and exasperation.

Steve chuckled, and reached over to stroke his cheek with her fingers again.

“We should get you out, before the water gets cold.”

“Yeah,” he echoed, absently. He grabbed her hand once again, kissed the tips of her fingers. “You’re an angel, you know that?”

“Charmer,” Diana said, smiling, and trying hard to breathe around the way her heart knocked against her ribs, her very soul unfurling in her chest at the sight of devotion in his eyes.

She was still not used to having him back, she thought with surprise. Maybe never would, for that matter. But surprise or not, it didn’t stop her from leaning forward and kissing him once more—his temple, the tip of his nose, and then finally, his lips.

He hummed low in his throat making her smile. Made the heat stir in her belly.

She helped him out of the tub, reaching for a towel on the rack while Steve muttered obscenities under his breath directed at both his cast and all broken bones in general. Something that made Diana smile despite herself.

She helped him dry off and put his clothes on, not minding in the slightest when Steve dipped his head to chase her lips.

It was only later, after he’d fallen asleep, too drowsy from his medication to even try to wait for her to finish her work emails, that it occurred to Diana that she hadn’t told him the main reason why she was still around.

That she would never be able to forgive herself for walking away.


Gotham, 2021

It was well past midnight when Bruce returned to the lake house.

He parked the Batmobile and pushed the door open, climbing out as he pulled off his cowl. 

Out there, on missions, perched somewhere high above the streets, the cowl would normally bring him comfort. So much so that he often couldn’t tell where it ended and his skin began.

But for some reason, it was feeling suffocating tonight—too tight, too hot, too much.

He inhaled deeply, finding odd comfort under the too-bright lights of the Batcave and let out a slow, measured breath. There was a strange restless energy humming beneath his skin that Bruce couldn’t place, and it left him unnerved and on edge. He was willing to write it off to exhaustion and the fact that he hadn’t had a full night of good sleep in quite some time now—something that Alfred never missed a chance to remind him about.

Maybe it was the patrol and the adrenaline rush of actually getting into a fight this time, with a couple of men who had tried to test their luck at some luxury department store. He’d had Barry with him, and between the two of them and Gordon being on call, they had wrapped it up in under ten minutes.

Maybe, just maybe, it was the fact that Amanda Waller had been suspiciously quiet lately and Bruce had long learned that that never boded well for them, though he was not particularly eager to jump to that conclusion just yet. Dealing with that woman and her games was the last thing he needed right now.

Or maybe it was something else altogether.

Bruce tossed the cowl onto a desk nearest to him. He then pulled off his gloves and dropped them on top of it before scrubbing his hand down his face. He could use a drink, he thought. He could use some sleep, the voice of reason reminded him, and for once, he was willing to agree with it.

His lips twitched when his gaze landed on a half-full bag of chips left on his workbench. Alfred was not going to be happy if he found out that Barry had been eating in here again, though Bruce was not planning on meddling with that. If they insisted on practically living on his property, they were going to have to learn to deal with Alfred and his rules.

He was tempted to call Selina, though she was not likely to appreciate it in the middle of the night. Bruce heaved a sigh, forcing himself to push the thought away. 

A shower. He was going to take a shower, have a drink and fall into bed. If he was lucky, he might even not dream, though luck was in short supply in his life these days.

He just needed to—

Bruce stopped in his tracks, his eyes narrowing when he noticed a silent alarm blinking on one of the monitors.

He walked over to it briskly, his fingers typing in the commands to see what had triggered it. He frowned when the results popped up, his jaw set tautly. And then he reached for his phone.


Paris, 2021

Diana had to leave for several days the same week that Steve’s cast was meant to come off.

After a solid week of heavy downpour, a small village in the centre of Mexico had ended up being cut off from the rest of the world by flash floods. No help, no food, no medical supplies. She didn’t hesitate, flying in there the moment the news broke out, not at all surprised when Clark showed up a few hours later, with Victor in tow.

“Bruce?” she asked during a brief lull in the million and a half things that needed to be done and taken care of.

The corner of Clark’s mouth curled a little.

“Beijing,” he said. “Business.”

Diana nodded.

“And Barry is down with a cold,” he added before she could ask. “Probably from all that ice cream that Alfred continues to stock for you. I guess he should be happy that at least one of us has taken it upon themselves to make sure it doesn’t go past the expiration date.”

She smiled, affection blossoming in her chest. And a slight pang of guilt maybe, though not as intense as it would have been if she hadn’t known that the ice cream in question was not going to waste.

“That sounds like Barry is keeping himself sufficiently occupied,” she noted, shaking her head.

Clark chuckled.

“He is missing out on all the fun,” Victor added, appearing by her side. “Don’t let him milk you for sympathy though.”

Diana laughed a little. “I’ll keep that in mind. Arthur?”

Clark shook his head. “A tsunami.”

She nodded.

There was comfort to working with them. It had been months, and even though the truth was that she’d hardly noticed, between the dig and Steve’s subsequent injury, she found herself thinking that she had missed it. The familiar steps of moving around one another, like a well-rehearsed dance that came more from muscle memory than anything else.

She still felt Steve’s absence by her side like a missing limb that had her looking around every now and then, searching for the familiar shock of blonde hair or the shape of him she could recognize in a fraction of a second. She wondered what he was doing, and hoped that he was alright. It had never crossed her mind before, but somehow, in the past twenty-six months, she had gotten so accustomed to bringing him with her, whenever the situation permitted, that it was strange to not have him there.

It hadn’t been an option right now, of course, and neither had been her staying behind. She was glad to help. Grateful for the distraction of the busy hours and the quiet satisfaction of doing the right thing afterwards, of still doing what she was meant to do, using her gifts to make the world a better place. 

But she missed him all the same.

By the time they were done, two hundred people were no longer at risk of homelessness or starvation, and contact with the outside world had been restored, with help and supplies on their way from a nearby city.

Diana surveyed the sight before her, her hands on her hips.

Maybe she hadn’t told Steve about the guilt of walking away, but she had meant what she had said, too. There were good people who deserved not being left alone with their struggles. And it always— always —made up for her uncertainty and the weight of helplessness each time she’d hit the proverbial brick wall in her attempts to change something that didn’t want to change.

Clark caught her eye and made his way over, stopping next to Diana, his gaze following hers.

“You’re alone here,” he observed, an unasked question hanging between them for a moment, then another one.

Diana’s lips twitched a little, curling upwards at the corners.

“He is otherwise occupied,” she said noncommittally.

Clark glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and shook his head. “Still going strong, huh?”

She pressed her lips together, hiding her smile.

“That is a good look on you, Di,” he added, softly.

“What look?” she asked, looking up at him.

“I don’t know. I suppose the same one I see in a mirror.” He chuckled under his breath. “I still feel hurt you insist on hiding him.”

“I’m not—” she started to protest and stopped.

She wouldn’t insult Clark by lying to him.

She hadn’t been hiding Steve, not really. But she hadn’t exactly felt like sharing him, either. Not with anyone, if she could help it. Still, Clark’s words made her wince inwardly. Lois was going to go ballistic when Diana told her the truth. But in a good way. Hera help her, she was going to have to tell Lois.

“I think you would really like him,” she told Clark, after a moment.

His brow quirked curiously. “Yeah?”

For a few moments, they merely watched Victor help an older woman who was speaking rapid Spanish with him while he shook his head to indicate he couldn’t understand her, which didn’t seem to discourage her in the slightest.

“Maybe you should bring him to a family dinner sometime,” Clark offered, after a minute or two.

Diana couldn’t help but snort. “Is that what we call them now?”

Clark chuckled. “According to Barry. But don’t tell Bruce.”

“I’m not sure I want to scare Steve away,” she murmured, but her tone was light. Teasing, more than anything else.

“I don’t think anyone dating you could be easily scared off by anything,” Clark observed, and Diana felt a sudden, fierce rush of affection towards him.

“Maybe I will,” she said, more to herself than to him.

But Clark was right, of course. Steve was many things, but timid was not one of them. Never had been. It was her who had been stalling this entire time, for reasons that she couldn’t explain even to herself.

Maybe soon.

Definitely soon.

By the time Diana made it back to Paris, it was late. A little past midnight. Her body felt heavy and loose all at once, a sign of work done well.

Even from afar, she could see that the windows of their apartment were dark. She hadn’t planned on coming back for a few more hours, and Steve wasn’t expecting her. But she couldn’t wait. Didn’t want to wait.

She landed on the balcony outside of the living room so as not to disturb him. Entering quietly, she stored away her sword and her shield, hanging the Lasso of Hestia on its hook in the hallway closet, before moving towards the bathroom.

She turned on the water and took off her armour, twisting her hair near the nape of her neck so as not to get it wet. The shower felt divine against her skin, hot spray washing away the grime of the past few days. Diana stayed under it for a long time, revelling in the fresh, clean feeling, the weight of the tragedy she had had to witness and help others move through lifting off of her, at last.

In the bedroom, she padded quietly towards the dresser to find something to sleep in. In bed, Steve was sprawled on his back, taking up a good two-thirds of the space somehow, one of his arms draped over his abdomen.

He hadn’t stirred while she had showered and changed, but it didn’t surprise Diana that he blinked his eyes open the second the mattress dipped beneath the weight of her body.

“Diana?” he asked, his voice low and laced with sleep.

“Hi,” she murmured, moving towards him, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“You’re late… early…” he faltered, making her chest grow tight with longing. “I didn’t expect you until morning,” he tried again. 

She looped her hair around her ear, hovering over him for another moment, propped up on her hand. His hair was mussed, his cheeks coated with the five o’clock shadow of stubble. She took him in, breathed him in, having not realized how much she needed it until it settled something inside of her.

“I could leave,” she offered, conversationally. “Come back later.”

Steve blinked, not yet awake enough to be teased.

“No,” he said quickly, making her smile widen.

He reached for her then, without hesitation, one of his hands sliding into her hair, unravelling the knot it was twisted into. She was going to have to look for her hairband in the sheets later. She didn’t care. He pulled her down, his mouth chasing hers while his other arm moved around her waist.

He kissed her slowly, searchingly, drawing all sense and reason out of her. His lips were soft, moving with purpose against hers, her body languid, pressed close to his.

She hadn’t meant to wake him, earlier. Had hoped that her return would make a good surprise for the morning, but now his hand was dipping beneath the hem of her tank top, and Diana was acutely aware of the fact that they hadn’t had sex since the night before he had gotten injured. He hadn’t been allowed to, for a while. She had been cautious even after the medical ban on any activities of that sort had been lifted.

She hadn’t even thought of it—

Well, she had. Quite excessively, too, for that matter. She had never had such a raw, sharp physical reaction to anyone before. Thinking back to the time since the night he had come back, she couldn’t come up with a single moment when she hadn’t wanted him. But she hadn’t wanted to hurt him, either. Hadn’t wanted to rush because she—because they—

Desire crazed through her body, filling every crack and crevice left behind by the fear of almost losing him, again. Steve’s teeth grazed over her bottom lip, making her breath hitch in her throat. His bare skin was warm beneath her hands, his heart hammering a rapid staccato right into the palm of her hand, dissolving the remnants of her resolve into nothing.

She grabbed onto the last shred of sense, breaking the kiss.

“Steve,” she murmured, breathless, her chest heaving against his.

He swallowed, his breathing short and ragged, and her eyes fluttered closed. There was a tight, hot coil of want, heavy in the pit of her belly. Diana bit her lip, feeling him slide his mouth along her jaw, not at all discouraged.

“Please,” she heard him murmur low in her ear.

“I don’t think—”

“Diana.”

She opened his eyes and pulled back, sitting up, her things bracketing his hips. Steve looked up at her, his lips swollen, his gaze a little glazed over and brimming with devotion. He looked confused, too, just a touch, by the space she had put between them. 

Her hands moved over his sides, dancing along his ribs. She pushed her hair back. For a few long moments, he didn’t move, though Diana knew that he wanted to. And then he sat up, too, slowly, with her still straddling his thighs. One of his arms moved around her immediately, so as not to dislodge her. So he could keep her close. 

“Diana,” he repeated, touching his thumb to her chin.

She lifted her hands, smoothing her palms over his face. Her thumb traced the bow of his bottom lip.

She was holding back, still.

“You were hurt,” she said, quietly, a reminder more for her than for him.

“Not anymore,” he said decisively, and even rolled his bad shoulder—what used to be his bad shoulder—as though to prove it.

Diana watched him, looking for signs of pain on his face. Of anything that spoke of discomfort, relieved to find none.

“Your ankle…” she started.

“… is not going to be used,” he stopped her, the corner of his mouth curling upwards.

Well, he did have a point there, she could admit that much.

“Diana… I’m fine, I promise,” he said, quietly, his voice unwavering.

She sighed. And then nodded, trailing her fingers down his chest, thrilled at how his body twitched a little at her touch. At the intake of his breath. She could feel him, with only the sheet and what little was left of their clothes between them. Could feel the heat simmering in her system, rushing through her veins along with her blood. Instead of it.

His hands slid beneath the hem of her tank top, moving it up her torso to slip it over her head. He paused to look at her, blue eyes flicking quizzically between her dark ones. He combed his fingers through her hair, slowly.

It made Diana think of Veld and standing before him there, the floorboards cold beneath their feet and their clothes discarded all over the floor. There had been an urgency between them then, the clock ticking and the time running out faster than either of them had wanted it to, but he had paused then too, to look at her. To take her in with the same wondrous expression going beyond desire. It had made her heart beat faster, had made her want to capture that moment forever, with his hands framing her face, his fingers buried in her hair, and the night suddenly infinite before them.

Now, she felt his hand brush her hair from her cheek, over her shoulder, his touch raising goosebumps along her skin. His other hand was still anchored on her lower back, fingers tracing the waistband of her underwear near the base of her spine and making it hard for her to concentrate on anything. To think, to—

“Yes?” Steve asked, in a whoosh of breath, searching her face.

“Yes,” she murmured, her hand sliding beneath his chin to tilt his face up.

She kissed him, with a need that had him letting out a low growl that sent her mind spiralling. His tongue slipped between her lips, his hands mapping the lines of her back, moving over her arms, her shoulders. He kissed her hungrily, with a desperation that Diana could feel thrumming in her fingertips, leaving her yearning for more.

She slowed them down, trying to tame the fire, to make the moment last. She drew back for a breath and then captured his mouth once again, her hand threading through his hair.

“I love you,” he whispered into the column of her neck, against the tender skin at her pulse point.

She moved back, pulling the sheet draped over him away. Steve let her help him out of his boxers, her own underwear gone without Diana even noticing. And then he was pulling her against him, skin to skin, his palms sliding up her thighs, over her back. Diana reached down between them, stroking her hand over him, slowly and deliberately. Steve’s breath caught in his throat, and she smiled as watched him swallow. As she watched his eyes slam shut.

 She dipped her head to capture the sigh that stuttered out of him with her lips.

“Tell me if you need to stop, yes?” she whispered into his ear, biting lightly on his earlobe.

He made a sound in the back of his throat, a guttural growl that ignited the fire within her. She heard a muttered curse fall from his lips as her hand ran over him again, her head ducking to kiss the side of his neck. She wasn’t sure he’d heard her, but it made her smile all the same.

“Diana,” he breathed, a strangled sound that had her moving her lips along his jaw, back to his mouth.

She pulled back, rising above him, hands braced on his shoulders. He pressed a hasty kiss to her sternum, the spot above her heart. She lowered down slowly, taking him in on a long slide. His hands flexed on her hips, tugged her down, closer, a ragged breath that morphed into a moan skating over her collarbone.

“Diana,” he said again, the sound of her name coming out like a prayer.

It sent a jolt of need through her. She paused to adjust, to find her bearings. 

“Aright?” she asked in a barely audible whisper.

Steve swallowed and looked up at her, his eyes dazed and unfocused.

“I need—” he started and faltered, voice hoarse. “I can’t—”

She kissed his temple, his brow, whispering to him as she started to move above him, slowly at first, desperate to savour this dizzying, blissful moment. He kissed her neck, the hollow of her throat, her name and words of love whispered into her skin.

He didn’t rush her, didn’t ask for more though she knew he wanted to. It was still too much. It had been so long, the tension building fast and glowing bright, entirely all-consuming. She didn’t fight it, didn’t try to hold off, falling apart around him, her fingers digging into his shoulders, his back, nails scraping along his skin. His name fell from her lips, a muffled half-sob she was barely aware of. 

But Steve was only just getting started, moving beneath her, inside of her, his awareness starting to slip, eclipsed by pleasure. 

This was the first time they had done it this way, without anything behind his back or hers, having only each other to hold on to. There had to be some metaphor there, she knew, but she didn’t care to look for it. Not when nothing else mattered. Only him.

“Stay with me,” Steve murmured into her ear, his hand on the small of her back and his skin slick with sweat against hers. “Stay with me, Diana.”

She floated down, slowly, breathlessly, letting him carry her through the wave of pleasure, already hanging on the brink of the next one.

“I love you,” she whispered in Greek, her hands moving over his back, his chest, through his tousled hair.

He swore under his breath and tilted his head to kiss her again, coaxing a moan out of her.

The tightness of need started to build inside of her once more, the warm ache that she wanted to hold onto, to make it last, Steve’s voice in her ear and his lips on her skin… and she didn’t know how they’d gone so long without it. I love you, she murmured over and over again, until the words were pulsing between them, seared into every inch of his body.

He quickened the pace, close now, and she let him take over, take what he needed, his touch sparking the light beneath her skin while his palms moved over her, painting the shape of her thighs, her ribs, the curve of her shoulder.

Eventually, Diana felt his body tense, his hands spasming on her flesh. He muttered her name, his voice low and barely audible through the rush of blood in her ears. So close, so very—

She shuddered against him, her chest heaving and her hand curled around a fistful of his hair near the nape of his neck.

And then everything went still.

Steve’s lips moved over her throat. A sigh. He pressed his cheek against her shoulder. She smiled when she heard a quiet, content chuckle. She felt his arms move to curl around her, hold her tight against him, and she was grateful, half certain that as loose as she felt, she would have melted if he let go, her muscles, her bones liquifying without something to hold them together.

“I will always love you,” Diana whispered in Greek, arms wrapped around him and her breathing nowhere to be found.

Steve’s hand trained the length of her spine. “I have no idea what that was,” he admitted, making her smile. 

She didn’t move, and he didn’t seem to have the need to, either. Not even to let her slip off of him. Diana stroked her hand through his hair, her voice low in his ear while the world continued to spin backwards around her.

There were tales Diana had heard as a child, about people being made of stars, parts of their souls creating constellations. Stories that had painted magic across the canvas of her life. They had been merely tales then, but she could see it now. Could feel herself splintered into millions of atoms, into particles smaller than that, all of them part of something that had no name.

She turned her face, and his lips were right there, kissing her slowly, his chest heaving against hers and her heart hammering in her throat.

“The next time I’m not touching you for five weeks will be… never,” he murmured, his lips moving along the slope of her shoulder, towards the curve of her neck. “Or maybe when I’m dead.”

“The next time you scare me as much as you did, I’d be happy to expedite that,” she countered, kissing his forehead, just beneath his hairline.

Absently, she pushed her hand through his hair, slightly damp with sweat. Steve looked up.

“Duly noted.” His gaze lingered on her lips, before he lifted it up to her eyes. “And they say romance is dead.”

She rolled her eyes a little, making him grin, and then dipped her head to kiss his hair once more.

“I’m sorry,” he said, after a moment, and it was her turn to gaze down at him in surprise. His thumb ran over her chin, along the line of her jaw. “I’m so sorry for… for all of it. You know that, right?”

She smoothed her hand over his cheek. “I do.”

“Diana.”

“I do,” she repeated, firmly and without hesitation.

He nodded, slowly, and leaned into her, nuzzling her neck.

“God, I’m glad you’re home,” she heard him say. “You feel so good.” He sighed, and she smiled, stroking her hand over his skin. “Can we do this again?”


Steve Trevor never really wondered about love.

When he was younger, he had thought that it would simply happen the way other things were supposed to happen when you grew up. Like getting a job, or moving into his own place. He had been certain about that the same way he had been certain about the heat of the summer following the freshness of spring. Or that no matter what, the sun would always come up in the morning.

And then the war had rolled around, and nothing had been certain anymore, each day somehow both flying by and yet feeling like an entire lifetime, the sun no longer a promise but more like a miracle each time he got to see another day.

He had wondered if love was in the cards for someone like him. For a spy and a liar. For a murderer with blood on his hands and more regrets than he could count. Surely, there would be many people more deserving than him.

But then Diana had come along, and everything had changed. She had been the light, the hope incarnate, and there had been so much he had wanted to give her. Still did. The whole world, if she so wished.

A hundred years later, he still didn’t know what he had done in his life to deserve her, to deserve the way she looked at him, the way she was making his heart beat differently. Still wondered if love was more of a certain thing now that he had her, though he wanted to believe so. Wanted to believe in something again.

He hadn’t let go of Diana afterwards, her body tucked closely into his side, one leg slung over one of his and her head tucked beneath his chin. Her breathing had slowed down eventually, evening out to match his. It was late, some time past three in the morning, but Steve’s mind was wide awake, wired and clear and sharp. His hands were moving over her skin, along her arms, threading through her hair unable to stop touching her.

She let out a small sigh, pressing closer to him, her fingers drawing some idle pattern beneath his collarbone.

“I’m not going to re-write Clio’s treatises,” she said softly, in response to his earlier comment that Steve only half-remembered making.

“Hey, I was not talking about rewriting,” he protested, soft laughter rumbling in the depths of his chest. “Just making a few amendments here and there. With all the new information you’ve got—It only makes sense.”

Diana hummed, though he was certain she was struggling not to smile. “For the sake of accuracy, I’m assuming,” she said, lifting her head to look at him.

“Experience-based evidence,” he deadpanned, and she dropped her forehead onto his shoulder, her body shaking with barely contained laughter.

When she looked up once more, there was a dazzling smile stretched across her face, her eyes crinkling a little at the corners. Steve’s pulse tripped a little when their eyes met and she shook her head incredulously.

He grinned back, his thumb sweeping over the ridge of her cheekbone.

He loved her smile. The real thing that lit up her whole face when she meant it, and the twinkle of humour behind her eyes. And how she looked at him—

It had been a while since he had seen it, and it was with a pang of guilt that he realized that he had been the one to blame for its absence lately. He took a breath. There was nothing he didn’t love about her, was there? God help him, he was hopeless. 

She moved to him, folding her arm across his chest and resting her chin on the back of her hand. Her eyes moved over his features, studying him, and Steve let her, twisting a piece of her hair around his finger.

“Are you alright?” Diana asked eventually, her voice soft.

She touched his hair near his temple, her fingers skittering down his cheek.

He could still hear the sound of her voice, whispering words of affection in his ear, feel the warmth of her body wound tightly around him, his mind suspended in a wonderful, barely coherent moment of pleasure that he wanted to last forever.

The memory alone was enough to make Steve feel a little heated.

“I’m not as breakable as you think,” he said.

Which was not entirely accurate, he knew.

If he could compare Diana to something indestructible, it would be a piece of marble. She was not that much unlike the statues of Greek gods that he had seen in museums. Steve’s own invincibility, by comparison, was perhaps closer to that of an eggshell, all things considered.

He had died before, and she had watched it happen, and a day would come when it was going to happen again. The shadow of that knowledge always hovered in the periphery of his attention. They had time now, but it was never going to be enough.

He didn’t say it, but he didn’t need to, his unspoken words hanging between them, pressing down on his chest and making Diana’s smile dim.

“Does it bother you?” Steve asked, after another moment had passed, and Diana still didn’t say anything.

He watched two faint, confused lines appear between her brows. “What?”

“That I’m—” he faltered, not sure how to proceed. Human? Weaker than her? Mortal?

He wasn’t trying to be coy. Or self-deprecating, for that matter. He was not an insecure man. If anything, he was bold and cocky and audacious. But he was still a man, his days numbered, one way or another. And she was still a goddess destined to live long after there would be no trace of him left, in this world or any other.

He was happy to pretend that none of that mattered, truly. But pretending didn’t really change anything. For someone who was very good at lying to others, Steve was starting to recognize that he was absurdly bad at lying to himself.

Diana rose up on her elbow, her hair falling over her shoulder, a waterfall of black silk.

“Does it bother you that I’m divine?” she asked back, and though there was a touch of a smile in her voice, her eyes were serious.

“No,” Steve said immediately. “Of course, not.”

Bother wasn’t the word he’d use. In fact, he had found quite a few words just recently to tell her how she was making him feel, and Diana probably remembered at least some of them.

She smiled, her features softening. She brushed her thumb to his chin.

“Then why should it bother me that you’re not?”

Because it was not the same.

“Diana,” he started, a lump lodged in his throat making him pause and swallow.

It didn’t seem like he needed to, though.

“I know,” she whispered, moving to him. She brushed her lips to his cheek, then his temple before she rested her forehead against his.

He wondered—couldn’t help but wonder—if this conversation was ever going to not be left unfinished, words unsaid and weighing down on them like a pile of rocks. Perhaps, one day. But not tonight.

Steve closed his eyes, breathing her in, seeping in the warmth of her, his fingers bunching the sheet wrapped around Diana’s body. He didn’t resist the impulse to turn his head, his lips finding hers with familiar ease.

The kiss was slow and tender and languid. And though Steve hadn’t meant for it to go beyond that, it ignited the spark of desire inside of him anyway. He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her until the moment was seared into his mind, and the impending despair hanging between them was scorched to ashes and gone without a trace.

Eventually, Diana pulled away with a small hum of appreciation.

He touched his thumb to her chin, smiling.

“So, about that thing that you do that I like…” he started, almost nonchalantly. “Which treatise is it from?”

She laughed, and he couldn’t resist the urge to tip his face up and kiss her again.

A moment of silence settled around them after that, dispersed by the quiet hum of the fridge in the depths of the apartment and the occasional siren of a police car or an ambulance outside. The late hour was never late for them. Steve didn’t mind. At war, he would sometimes wake in silence so complete he couldn’t help but wonder if he had died in his sleep, or maybe gone deaf.

Silence, he had very quickly found out, was scary at war. The calm before the storm, the enemy lying in wait. At least when the bullets were flying past them and the ground was shaking from exploding landmines, there had been no anxious waiting for the unknown.

Silence, he had learned, rarely meant anything good.

Now the war was over, but Steve very much preferred the sounds of life all around him. Cars honking and people talking and someone playing music in one of the apartments across the street. Signs of the fought-for peace.

He wondered sometimes how long it would be before he stopped waiting for a siren to go off, announcing an air raid. Two years and counting, and he had yet to shake off the ghost of battle that seemed to have followed him across the decades between then and now.

He wondered too if Diana ever felt that way. Maybe not after the first war, but the second? Whatever had come after that? He had never asked, however, half-unsure how to do it without accidentally cutting old scars open, and half-fearful of her answer.

She had told him that he was not responsible for her feelings, her experiences. But even though the rational part of him knew that she was right, another part—one that had watched her, confused, on the streets of London; one that had felt exasperated at her indecisiveness over the clothes at Selfridges; one that had seen her marvel over the taste of ice-cream—had never quite stopped feeling guilty over bringing her here in the first place. She deserved better than the ugliness mankind had revealed to her, his failure to shield her from it more devastating than anything he had ever known.

Steve let out a breath, pushing the grim thoughts away.

“What is the earliest memory that you have?” he asked, suddenly, surprising them both.

“The earliest…” Diana echoed, an eyebrow arched quizzically.

He looped her hair around her ear, the back of his fingers stroking her face.

“Well, I figured, for someone who’s lived for a long time—”

She laughed. “Are you calling me old, Steve?”

“For someone who’s lived for a while,” he amended, diplomatically, which only made Diana shake her head and her smile stretch out wider, so lovely he could barely stand to look at it, “it’s gotta be… Do you remember it all? ‘Cause for me, the first memory I have is… I’m around five, hanging upside down from a tree growing in front of my house, legs hooked over a branch, trying to reach the grass below me with my finger even though it was at least two feet away.”

He had pretended that he was flying, then. The rush of blood in his head, his hands splayed and grabbing onto the sweet perfumed summer air.

He had fallen from that same tree two years later, hurting his leg badly. He could still remember the way his mother had held him then, her touch full of relief and exasperation in equal measure because Thank god, nothing is broken but also I told you to be careful, Steve.

There was something strange to knowing that more than a hundred years had passed since that day, made worse somehow by the past two years that seemed to have two centuries’ worth of memories stuffed into them, for how overwhelming they felt. All the new things he had learned about the world and himself that separated him even more from his old life.

Even the war, and his memories of Charlie and Sami and Etta felt frayed sometimes.

He doubted that Diana processed hers the same way humans did, but he couldn’t quite imagine sifting through hundreds of years of experiences, of love and grief and heartache. But it also made him hungry for it all, reminding Steve that there was still so much he didn’t know about her. That it would probably take him ten lifetimes to hear every story she could possibly share with him.

Diana’s features softened, her gaze growing faraway.

“On the beach. Sitting on a horse in front of my mother as we watched Antiope lead the training,” she said after a moment, her fingers running idly over his clavicle. “It is harder to fight on the sand than the grass, when it’s so soft and moving beneath you. But they had to be prepared.” She smiled. “I’m not sure how old I was. But long before I knew how to sneak out and watch them train on my own.”

He smiled, impressed but not surprised by the audacity of her, even at such a young age, already paving her way in this world even before she knew she was doing it.  

He could just see her, keen eyes and serious face, her hands holding onto the saddle or maybe the horse’s mane, wishing it was a sword instead. And however impossible, Steve wished, fiercely, that he could have been there to see it.

“And you remember it all?” he asked. “Everything that came after?” 

She smiled. “Mostly, yes.”

He nodded and didn’t ask if she ever wished she didn’t. He already knew the answer to that—the weight of those memories was not always pleasant. He hoped that he was never going to become another thing she would want to forget, though he would never fault her for it, if she tried.

“Did you ever think of going back?” he asked, unable not to.

It was hard to imagine this world without Diana in it. Besides, she had mentioned to him before that it was likely not possible. That the magic protecting the island was strong enough to keep it hidden even from her.

She considered his question nonetheless, and he was grateful that she took it seriously.

“I don’t think it would be enough,” she said, eventually. “Knowing what the outside is like.”

It didn’t escape Steve’s attention that she hadn’t answered him. Not really. But he didn’t push. And what point was there to it, anyway.

“I want to be a good memory,” he blurted out, all the same, thinking suddenly of the haunted grief in her eyes the day he had awoken at the hospital, broken and weak and more vulnerable than he wanted to admit. The memory still made him ache on the inside. More so than any broken bones ever had. 

He didn’t want her feeling like they were walking the edge of the knife every day of their lives because she was immortal and he was not.

But he didn’t know how to make that happen. How to give her all the things that she really deserved. And that only made him want to give her everything all the more, to make her life filled with nothing but love and sunlight and ice cream. 

“Steve,” she said softly.

He moved towards her, rolling her onto her back and kissing her as his hands slipped into hers, lacing their fingers together. He stretched her arms over her head, pressing her hands into the sheets as he deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding past her lips. She hummed in the back of her throat, making his heart sprint into a race as a jolt of desire surged through his body.

She arched beneath him, kissing him back, one of her legs moving to hook over one of his.

“You’re a good memory,” Diana whispered, tilting her head to the side when he transferred his attention to her jaw, kissing his way along it, and down her neck.

“I think we could start from here and see how we go,” he murmured into her skin. “Make them better than good.”

Steve felt her laugh; felt her fingers card through his hair after she pulled from his grip. But she didn’t protest, and didn’t stop him, and the night continued to stretch before them. Into forever, for all he knew.


When Steve awoke hours later, it was late morning and the sun was beaming at him through the window.

Sprawled on his back, he scrunched his face in protest, squirming away from the brightness of it. He didn’t know what time it was, but he knew that it was later than he would normally wake up. His body felt pleasantly loose, if a little sore, but in a good way. 

The memories came rushing back then, his mind sliding fully into wakefulness.

Diana.

He blinked his eyes open, his gaze sweeping hastily over the room. For a moment, he almost wondered if he had dreamed her up and the weight of her body in his arms last night and the way it had felt when she—when they—

He let out a breath, stopping himself there.

When he turned to his left, he found Diana half-sitting against a pillow next to him, her hair down and the sheets draped over her legs. She was wearing one of his button-ups, with the collar open and loosely rolled-up sleeves. She had a book in her hands, her face relaxed, and with the way the light tangled in her hair—so luminous—he momentarily forgot his own name.

Steve felt himself relax, blinking his eyes once more for good measure. Just to make sure…

Diana looked down and smiled. “Good morning,” he heard her say as she lowered her book down.

Without thinking, Steve rolled over, wrapping his arm around her thighs as he let out a long, content breath. God help him, he missed this. He was never going to break a bone ever again, not if it meant that they wouldn’t get to do any of this. 

“Hi,” he muttered, his voice muffled as he pressed his face into her hip, nuzzling into it.

Her fingers brushed over his hair, and then, lightly, over his shoulder.

“Did you sleep well?” she asked.

“Mm-hm,” Steve hummed.

Not nearly enough, he thought, but he was not going to hold that against either of them.

He looked up and scrubbed a hand over his face, chasing the remnants of his slumber away. Diana’s smile was soft, and as majestic as only it could be. There was something in the periphery of his memory, something he had been planning on telling her, but in that moment all he could do was stare.

It was then that he realized something.

“What are you doing?”

Her eyebrow lifted. “Reading.”

“What about—Don’t they need you at the museum?” he asked, a confused frown making its way to his face. 

His gaze moved towards the alarm clock on the nightstand but the sun reflecting off of it was making it impossible to read it.

Diana’s smile deepened. “It’s Saturday,” she told him.

He blinked. “Oh.”

“Unless you’d rather have me gone.” 

She arched an eyebrow at him. 

“No,” he said immediately. 

She curled forward and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head.

“Coffee?” she asked into his hair.

“Yeah,” Steve breathed and looked up at her, propped up on his elbow.

Diana nodded and slid from under the covers and onto the floor.

“No, wait, you don’t need to—” he started after her when it occurred to him that coffee wasn’t already there somewhere, within arm’s reach. He didn’t mean to send her off to fetch it for him.

But she didn’t pause, either not hearing him, or choosing to ignore his protest.

Steve watched her leave, and then he scooted up to sit against the headboard, the cobweb of grogginess still clinging to his brain like a thin film. Coffee honestly felt like a good idea. 

He looked around, his gaze snagging eventually on his watch, sitting on the nightstand, by the reading lamp. It read 9:48. Hardly early by any standard, but not really all that late either. Although that didn’t really change the fact that he was very much not a morning person. 

He stifled a yawn and picked up the book that Diana had left lying on the bed. Something in French that, based on the title and the image on the cover, could be either a deep philosophical work, or a murder mystery type of thing. He couldn’t tell without reading the blurb on the back, and it was too early for that.

Steve set it back down.

Diana came back a couple of minutes later, two mugs in her hands, the rich, bitter smell of fresh coffee enough to lift his spirits quite a fair bit immediately. He had probably never been more grateful for the pre-programming function on her coffee maker before in his life.

“Thank you,” Steve said, earnestly, taking one of the mugs from her.

Smiling, Diana leaned forward to brush her lips to his. “You’re welcome.”

He smiled back and stole another quick kiss before she pulled away. “Now, this is a good morning,” he said, sincerely.

She hummed and settled next to him on the mattress, one leg tucked beneath her.

For a few moments, he didn’t say anything. He just sipped his coffee and watched Diana watching him back, his mind getting clearer by the second. It was Saturday. He couldn’t help but ponder the possibilities. Maybe he could convince her to spend the rest of the day in bed. Maybe she could tell him more about the treatises, even.

Steve certainly liked that idea. 

“This is nice,” he said, after a while.

Diana glanced into her mug, smirking a little. “Yes, I suppose I have finally figured out how to make it the way you like it.”

“No, not the coffee,” Steve shook his head. She quirked an eyebrow at him. “I mean, yes, of course. The coffee’s good. But what I was trying to say…” He huffed out a breath, his voice dropping a notch when he spoke. “I hate waking up without you.”

She lowered down her mug, her expression melting immediately into tenderness, making something vulnerable inside of him ache.

Who would have thought that waking up next to a goddess was something that a liar and a murderer and a smuggler would get to experience, after all?

“I don’t sleep well without you,” she admitted, softly.

“Diana,” he started, not quite sure where he was going with it.

She smiled and squeezed his knee, and he wondered for perhaps the millionth time how this all—their relationship and everything that came with it—could even feel like this. Like something that was bigger than the world itself. And yet fragile, too. Like a thing that needed to be protected. 

“There will be a fundraising event at the museum next week,” she said before the moment got too serious and grim.

Steve tilted his head slightly, curious, as he sipped his coffee. “Yeah?”

Diana smiled. “I was wondering if you’d like to come with me.”

He chuckled a little. “You just like parading me in front of your fellow curators,” he said.

Her gaze travelled very pointedly down his body, reminding Steve that he was still very much naked beneath the very thin sheet draped over the lower part of him.

“Maybe,” she said nonchalantly. “Or maybe I like how you look in a suit.”

“I knew there’d be a catch,” he mumbled into his mug.

She caught his eyes. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Well, colour me intrigued, Mademoiselle Prince.”

She smirked, her eyes lighting up momentarily. “You’re very easily swayed, Captain Trevor.”

Her comment left Steve feeling his blood roar to life all over again, the memory of her wrapped up around him the night before flashing through his mind. He wondered if she knew what it did to him when she called him that, banter or not.

He suspected she did.

“Well, you have twelve volumes of swaying… techniques,” he pointed out, very much aware of the fact that there was no way she was missing how flushed he was.

Diana laughed, the sound like sunshine, lighting him up on the inside.

“I suppose I have a date then,” she noted, evenly. Which only made the heat in his blood spike higher. “Are you hungry?” she asked, after a moment.

Yes, Steve thought, giving her body and her legs peeking from beneath the hem of his shirt an appreciative once-over.

When he looked up, she was smirking again.

He grinned back, unabashedly. “Yes,” he said.

Because he was, the hunger pangs in his stomach made worse by the coffee, somehow.

He located his shirt and boxers, and then, with an exasperated sigh, his damned brace-boot-thingy. Just a few more days, Steve reminded himself, knowing that he was going to spend them fantasizing about casting the damned thing down the garbage chute.

He hobbled into the kitchen after Diana and made an immediate beeline for the coffee pot. Well, a waddling type of beeline. A very graceless and undignified one.

“I hate this thing,” he muttered as he refilled his mug, glowering down at his foot.

Diana’s hand brushed over his back. “I know, love,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to his shoulder.

Steve looked up as she headed towards the fridge, feeling a little dazed by the small term of endearment, said so casually. Maybe it was because she rarely used anything but his name, he thought absently as she pulled eggs and butter and bacon out and placed them onto the counter. Or maybe it was because this was Diana and he would probably need to live for another thousand years before he got used to the fact that she was real, and that they were real, and—

“Steve?”

He blinked, realizing belatedly that his mind had to have drifted off. Diana was looking expectantly at him. She must have said something… asked something…

“Sorry,” he scrubbed his hand down his face. “What was it?”

“Eggs or pancakes?” she asked, eyeing him expectantly.

“Both?” he offered, hopefully.

They wake up, have breakfast, read the paper, go to work.

His own words chased each other through his head, unbidden.

They were not going to work today, with any luck. But there was a paper, waiting at the front door. And they were having breakfast, and even two years later, he was having a hard time believing that they got to do everything he had hoped to do with her, back in 1918.

Diana raised her brow, a question on her lips—he could see. But in the end, she only said, “Both it is.”

She put him on egg duty—scrambled. (One could only mess up scrambled eggs so much.) And bacon, if he was feeling particularly virtuous.

“How did it go?” Steve asked as she started to mix the batter—from scratch, not from a box.

God help him, there was nothing she couldn’t do. Which was just a little bit embarrassing, considering that the height of his culinary skills was probably heating up canned soup or pouring boiling water over instant noodles. And eggs. He knew she could trust him with eggs.

“How did what go?” Diana glanced up from the bowl.

“The… ah, saving mission,” he prompted.

He should have asked sooner. Like when she had come back. He should have asked last night. The thought left Steve feeling guilty, even though he knew that had it gone wrong, she would have told him already.

“It was good,” Diana replied, after a moment. “As good as those things can be.”

Right. People losing homes, getting injured. Dying, sometimes.

“Clark was there,” she added, a small smile making an appearance. Steve cast a glance her way. “And Victor.”

She told him about the flash flood then and a little girl stuck on the roof of one of the houses, refusing to come down even after it had gotten safe to do so until Diana had gone up there to talk to her and convince her to come with her. She told him about the houses that were destroyed and all the compassion that she had seen, in the face of the disaster. People sharing food and clothes, making room in their homes for those who had nowhere to go, and asking for nothing in return.

And that was, he knew immediately, why she hadn’t walked away from mankind even after it had broken her heart a hundred times over and the weight of the violence she had to witness had become almost too much to bear.

Because there were good people, Diana had told him, not so long ago.

Listening to her now, he knew exactly what she had meant.

Steve finished his coffee and contemplated, briefly, pouring more. And that was when he remembered—

“Hey, I’m—I found something, while you were gone doing hero things and… saving little girls,” he blurted out, breakfast forgotten in an instant.

Diana paused and looked up.

There was a white streak of flour across her cheek, and Steve reached over, without thinking, to wipe it off with his thumb.

“Well, I was…” bored, restless, missing you—take your pick. He cleared his throat. “It’s been a while since I touched the files on Barbara Ann and I—I just wanted to put them in order, check the old leads and then something…” He paused, feeling his brows knitting together. “I think I found something related to that stuff that Bruce had sent to you, a couple of months ago, remember? The man who jumped off the high-rise.”

Recognition settled in her eyes. “Yes. What about it?”

Steve glanced around, his gaze landing on the whisked eggs before him and the bowl of pancake batter. Whatever he had to say could wait another hour, surely. Although...

His hesitation was short-lived and he reached over to turn the stove off. The eggs and pancakes could wait. He couldn’t. He turned to Diana and started to explain, the words spilling forth.

He had spent the two days that she had been gone poring over the old research, hoping that something would jump out at him. It wasn’t that he had given up on trying to track down Cheetah, and he knew that the story was still eating at Diana, as well, but after one dead-end after another, there hadn’t been anywhere left for them to go. Not for a while.

Still, he liked to check in on it every once in a while, just in case something new came up. Or, at least, that was how he had reasoned it.

And that was when he had noticed something. Something strange. He was good at following patterns, at picking up on codes, or, well, similarities, for lack of a better word. At finding connections between seemingly unrelated things.

Admittedly, he could be wrong, but what he had discovered was interesting, to say the least. It turned out that there had been several more incidents similar to the one described in the files that Bruce Wayne had sent to Diana while they had been in Morocco. People who had never previously exhibited violent behaviour acting erratically, sometimes even aggressively. People claiming they could hear things that weren’t there.

Eventually, some had snapped out of their “episodes” with barely a memory of what had happened, while a few had been placed in mental health institutions where they still remained, and one had taken his own life—like the man from the video that Bruce had shared. But while a lot of that, Steve suspected, could have been attributed to stress or, perhaps, some form of a nervous breakdown, it was not what had snagged his attention. Not entirely.

“There’s no obvious connection between them,” he told Diana. “They’re all from different parts of the world. Their ages vary. So does their social background. There’s nothing tying them together, except brief bouts of… some kind of insanity.”

Diana was frowning now, listening to him. He had wondered, last night, when he had tried to put it all together in his head, if maybe he had simply had too much time on his hands lately and not enough to occupy it with. If maybe she would hear him out and brush off his concerns.

That she hadn’t was equally uplifting and, well, somewhat unnerving.

After all, part of him had wanted to be wrong.

“And then I found something,” Steve added. “At least, I think it’s something. Something strange.” He hesitated, feeling suddenly uncertain. After all, the entire story was starting to seem flimsy and ridiculous. Much more so than it had been in his head. “Maybe it’ll be better if I show you.”

“Very well,” she said, intrigued.

She wiped her hands on a towel and followed him to the living room.

Steve plopped down on the couch and picked up her laptop, rummaging for a few minutes through the files that he had tried to organize the night before to the best of his ability—a task made harder by the fact that some of them needed to be translated.

“What am I looking at?” Diana asked when he handed her the laptop and got up again, feeling too antsy to sit still even when pacing was more than a little problematic.

There it was again, the same feeling he had gotten when he had been dealing with the stuff that had come from Bruce—as though there was something obvious right before him, but try as he might, he couldn’t quite figure it out. It left him annoyed and frustrated and… annoyed some more.

“The man who killed himself,” Steve said, pausing behind the back of the armchair, his fingers drumming restlessly against the upholstery. “He was from Rome, and he was supposed to be sick. Tumour, I think. I had to use, um—an online dictionary to figure it out,” he explained sheepishly. “They found none of that stuff during the autopsy.”

Diana frowned a little. She was scrolling through the documents now, though Steve knew she was still listening to him.

“And not just that,” he went on, when she glanced up at him. “Apparently, they couldn’t find a single sign that he had ever had so much as a broken bone or a cavity in his life.” He gestured towards the laptop sitting on her knees before she could say a word. “And that woman, from Brazil. The one who’s been put in… in one of those facilities—she was supposed to be 70 years old.”

He waited for Diana to pull up the picture, her frown deepening. From the screen, he knew, the face that was staring back at her didn’t look to be older than 40—strikingly different from the earlier photographs that the press had dug out.

“What about the others?” Diana inquired, in a tight voice—Steve could all but hear the wheels in her head turning.

But he was shaking his head.

“Nothing of that kind. Nothing obvious,” he amended, pushing his hand through his hair. “No more autopsies,” he tried to joke and grimaced when it fell flat. “But you gotta admit…” he trailed off.

“And you think it’s connected to Bruce’s case?” she inquired, her gaze dropping back to the screen.

“I don’t know,” Steve hedged. “But there’s something strange happening here, Diana. People losing their minds out of nowhere. People not being sick anymore, just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis. “People not being old anymore.”

“Some sort of rejuvenation process—” she murmured under her breath.

“A fountain of youth?” he supplied. “With a catch of some sort.”

She sighed and rubbed her forehead as he hobbled back to the couch and sat down next to her, tipping his head back against the cushions.

“That would be a first,” she said.

“But where?” Steve asked, half turning his head towards her. “They live all over the place. They didn’t appear to have ever met one another, I don’t think so.”

Diana set the laptop down on the coffee table and leaned back as well, her shoulder pressed to his. Without thinking, Steve reached for her hand and laced their fingers together.

“There is something else,” he said. 

She arched an eyebrow at him, a silent encouragement. 

Steve cleared his throat. “Remember that journal I found a couple of years ago? By the guy who used to be into… into all kinds of weird things, like legends and monsters?” 

The corners of Diana’s lips twitched. “The one that you ‘borrowed’?” 

His jaw went slack as the colour rushed up his cheeks. “Must you really…” he started, accusingly, and then cut off as she pressed her lips around a smile. He huffed out a breath. 

“What about it?” she prompted, after another moment as her thumb swept over his knuckles. 

“It talked about something like that. Not in as many details, but it outlined a bunch of incidents in 1984-85 that coincided with a series of strange attacks across South America.”

He fell silent, allowing Diana to absorb the information. 

And sure enough, it clicked moments later, her brows pulling together as she pondered his words. 

“You think it has something to do with…?”

“I don’t know,” Steve admitted honestly. “It feels… I know it might seem like—like I’m grasping at straws and finding connections where there are none. But doesn’t it seem like too much of a coincidence to you?” 

Diana’s gaze dropped to the knot of their hands. “There is no such thing as a coincidence,” she said. “But why would… What happened to Barbara Ann had nothing to do…” she trailed off, as though not sure what she was trying to say. 

“You told me that people made wishes, and that some of them turned out backwards.” 

They lapsed into a long moment of silence, wrapped up in the late-morning sunshine and the muffled sounds of life wafting in from outside. But it all felt far away in a strange, disconnected way. 

“You think I’m crazy,” he said eventually, but there was no accusation or malice in his voice.

Diana lifted her gaze to his. “No,” she said, her features softening. “I think you’re onto something.”

“Where did Bruce get that file?” Steve asked, after a moment, even though he wasn’t expecting her to answer. She had made it very clear she was not going to betray Bruce’s sources.

“We’re going to look into it,” she said decisively.

Steve arched an eyebrow at her. And that was when her phone started to ring, the melodic tune drifting in from the hallway, cutting him off from… whatever.

Diana let go of his hand and stood up to get it. Stepping back into the living room, she looked down at it and then glanced up at Steve before her finger moved across the screen to unlock it.

“Bruce,” she said into the receiver, and Steve sat up straighter, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees.

Diana’s gaze flicked towards the laptop as she listened to the man on the other end of the line.

“As a matter of fact, yes. I have,” she admitted. 

There were very few things in this world that Steve had ever wanted more than to hear the other end of that conversation, but he knew that she would never put Bruce on speaker without telling him she’d done that. And she couldn’t do that because—

“So I’ve heard,” she said after another half a minute, falling silent again as she listened, her gaze locked with Steve’s. “Are you sure?” A pause. “Yes, I suppose we could use a plane, if you have one to spare.”

Steve’s eyebrow quirked.

We.

She walked over to the couch, her hand brushing absently over Steve’s shoulder, as she said, “I’ll see you soon, Bruce.”

Notes:

All right! If I could, I would give you all a cookie, or a sticker, for making it through this insanely long chapter :)

I'm very excited about everything that is going to come next! Some of you asked me about the Justice League, and while they won't be overwhelmingly present, I think you're going to like their involvement. I promise you this story will remain a mostly Steve/Diana fic though. That being said, this chapter essentially starts the main arc of the second half of this fic and the story is going to be a bit more fast-paced than the few previous chapters.

As always, comments, screaming, theories and whatever you want are highly appreciated :)

And I'll see you soon!

Chapter 17

Notes:

Oh hey, it's posting time again :) I hope you guys are excited because I sure am :) Thank you everyone for your amazing support, it means the world to me. I'm going easy on you with this chapter after the monumental chapter 16 lol

Check the end notes for something interesting ;)

And now dig in!

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

Chapter Text

If Steve Trevor had thought that commercial air travel was impressive, the private plane Bruce Wayne had sent to fly him and Diana to Gotham was completely blowing his mind. There was a comfortable couch running along one wall and two massive chairs with a folding table between them along the other. A soft carpet beneath their feet and an enormous TV screen on the wall separating the main cabin area from the small kitchen in the back.

Everything looked new and sleek and polished as though Bruce had only purchased it all a few days ago. (Maybe he had, Steve had no way of knowing one way or another.)

He had spent the first hour of their 8-hour flight poking his nose around, checking the minifridge and the screens and all the flight information they provided, down to the weather forecast at their destination.

“I can’t believe people travel like this,” he murmured at some point, incredulous, speaking more to himself than to Diana who had been sitting on the couch the entire time, her shoes kicked off and her legs folded beneath her.

She smiled at him when he looked towards her.

“Not many people,” she admitted.

Steve leaned down to look out the window, at the red and orange sunset stretching as far as the eye could see, colouring the clouds beneath them in more colours than he could name.

His brace boot had only come off a couple of days ago, and so there was still a tentative way to how he carried himself, how gingerly he stepped on his foot as though not fully trusting it to carry his weight just yet. Steve glanced down at it, and then promptly forbade himself to fixate on it.

“Can you?” he inquired as he straightened up.

He had never asked how much money she had. He suspected she would have gladly told him if he had, and he knew for a fact that she could quit her job and live rather comfortably for probably a few centuries, if she so pleased. But it had never mattered to him. Not really. And it would have probably been somewhat inappropriate to pry.

Still, he was curious.

She pressed her lips together, humour dancing behind her eyes.

“On occasion,” she admitted.

Steve wondered if it actually stood for yes, all the time.

He smoothed his hand over the leather upholstery of the chair nearest to him and shook his head, incredulous.

“How rich is Bruce, exactly?” he couldn’t help but wonder.

“He is rather wealthy.”

Steve chuckled, running his hand over his hair.

He would not have minded piloting this plane, or any other like this one. Something that could fly so smoothly and almost soundlessly.

“You probably don’t know how absolutely incredible that is, to someone like me,” he murmured. “Not that your friend is rich but…” He gestured vaguely around him.

Diana tilted her face up. “I have lived in this world for a long time, but that doesn’t mean I have forgotten what it was like before all the advancements we have right now came to be,” she noted.

Still shaking his head, Steve plopped down next to her, and then stretched out on the couch for good measure, his head in Diana’s lap. Immediately, she reached for him, running her hand through his hair — once, twice.

For a few long moments, she simply watched him, and Steve let her, happy to just watch her back. He wondered, unable not to, if there was any chance on earth for him to convince her to spend at least some part of the coming eight hours with their clothes off. Unbidden, his gaze darted towards the door leading to a cockpit. It didn’t lock, but…

He took a breath, willing himself to focus.

“What made you change your mind?” he asked.

Diana tilted her head. “About what?”

“Bringing me along.”

She smoothed her palm over his chest, and Steve caught her hand, holding it over his heart. 

“You’re the one who has worked out the pattern of what’s going on,” Diana reminded him, smiling. “Might as well explain it yourself.”

He lifted a pointed eyebrow at her, his thumb running idly over the back of her hand, between her knuckles.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

Diana let out a small sigh. She turned her hand within his hold, her fingers curling over his.

“I was never trying to hide you, Steve. I wouldn’t do that,” she said, resolutely.

“But?” he prompted when she paused.

“But there are people in this world interested in destroying the Justice League, or using our gifts to harm and threaten mankind instead of protecting it.” Steve watched a small frown appear between her brows, just barely resisting the urge to reach over and smooth it out with his hand. “I don’t want them to draw a connection between us, you and I.”

“You don’t want someone to use me to control you,” he said—a statement, not a question.

She didn’t like it, he could tell, his blunt words had done nothing to sugar-coat her fears. He didn’t like it either, truth be told. The mere idea of making her vulnerable was making him sick to his stomach.

But that was what it meant to love someone, he figured. You couldn’t have one without the other. He still hated it though.

However, it made sense for someone to try to lure them to the dark side. He already knew what Diana was capable of, and he could easily imagine the temptation to have someone like her at their disposal in their fight for power. The rest of them, he could only judge by what Diana had told him—like that the Flash was capable of running through time (Steve was still hazy on the sheer physics of that but he knew to take her word for it)— and what he’d read about them online.

They were, for all intents and purposes, weapons—plain and simple. But even weapons have a weakness.

And he was Diana’s.

“I would never let that happen,” Diana murmured, her gaze firm.

Well, he didn’t doubt that. And he knew that she meant it, too. But, he suspected, it didn’t make her fears go away. 

Steve nodded, and she carded her fingers through his hair once more. 

“Okay, well…”  He took a breath, choosing not to push the subject for the time being. “What should I expect? What are they like?”

Her features softened, as the making of a smile tugged a little at her lips.

“They are going to love you,” she said, without a hint of doubt in her voice.

Steve grinned. “Like you love me?”

She laughed. “Gods, I hope not.” She leaned against the back of the couch, propping her head on the heel of her hand, her other hand playing lazily with his hair. “Barry already likes you. I never told him about us, but I think he figured it out.”

There was humour dancing behind her eyes, her smile so lovely that Steve’s heart clenched fiercely and unfurled in his chest.

“That we’re together?” he clarified.

Her smile deepened. “Yes. Next is Clark. He is wonderful. I think you will really like him. He knows about you as well, and I think he will be the most open, after Barry, about the idea of an outsider being involved in League business.”

“You seem to really like him,” Steve observed.

Diana’s features melted. “I do. He is a good friend and he understands better than anyone else what it was like for me here, in your world.”

This world is more yours than mine, Steve thought, but he didn’t say that, instead asking, “Because he is from another planet?”

“That, too, but also because he knew all his life that he was different,” Diana explained. “Even before I came here, I was never merely a warrior. I was treated differently because of my status as the Queen’s daughter, though I knew they tried not to draw that line. But it didn’t change the fact that I was the youngest, the most sheltered, and one most believed to have been born to defeat the God of War.”

There was wistfulness in her tone, making something inside of Steve constrict.

It was not the same, of course, but he couldn’t help but think of himself and of trying to measure up to his own expectations. Or to his father’s expectations of what Steve might be. Granted, he had likely left more blood behind him than Diana could imagine, but a s heavy as his burden had been, he knew it was nothing compared to hers. How lonely it had to be, he thought. How isolating, to know that there was no one else like her.

He swallowed past the discomfort of it, feeling fiercely protective of her, all of a sudden.

“That sounds like a lot of weight to put on one person,” he said quietly.

Diana considered his words. “They never did, that’s the thing. But I do remember that odd feeling of waiting for something but not knowing what it was.”

He mulled over her words before reaching for her hand to bring it up to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the centre of her palm.

“What about… ah, Arthur?”

“Aquaman, yes.” She smiled again. “He can come off as gruff, but in truth, he is very kind. He will likely try to test you.”

Steve’s brow quirked. “To bully me, you mean?”

She smirked. “Yes. Don’t let him.”

“I won’t. Who’s next?”

“Victor.”

Steve nodded. “Cyborg.”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “His gift came at the highest price to him, of all of us. He is the least trusting of us all, too. And the most cautious with his heart. It was not easy for him to accept his new self, but he is smart and kind and generous, once he lets his guards down. A good friend.”

She paused, her gaze sweeping over Steve’s features with a tenderness that made his breath hitch in his throat.

“I don’t doubt for one second that they will see you for who you are, my love,” she said, quietly. “And that they will appreciate it.”

Steve cleared his throat.

On impulse, he kissed her fingers and then curled his hand around hers.

“Alright then… And Bruce?”

“He is the one who wanted to have this issue resolved,” she said, and it didn’t escape Steve’s attention that she skirted around the actual answer.

“You think he is not going to be very happy about my involvement,” he stated.

Diana sighed. “Bruce is very protective of the League. I can’t blame him for not wearing his heart on his sleeve. He has good reasons for being private and keeping League business private as well. But he was the one who asked me for help.”

Steve mulled over her answer.

“And if they don’t trust me?” he asked, after a moment.

“They don’t have to,” she said. “They will have to trust me and my judgement. We have known each other for years and I have never let them down before. I believe they will know to acknowledge that.”

“And if they don’t?” Steve pressed.

“They will,” she said decisively.

“You seem to be awfully sure of that,” he noted.

Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, in truth. He never knew her to not be awfully sure of anything. To this day, he remembered her bull-headed stubbornness about getting to the front and dealing with Ares with fond amusement. Some things, he suspected, never changed.

Diana pressed her lips together, fighting back a smile.

“Now who doesn’t trust me?” she teased. “Have some faith.”

“You know I do,” Steve said sincerely, and she smiled with such radiance it made his heart ache. “You didn’t tell them that I’d be coming with you, did you?”

Diana shook her head. “Bruce knows I won’t be coming alone,” she explained. “But nothing more than that.”

He nodded, pondering all the information while he ticked off the names in his head. 

“Anyone else?” he asked, in the end.

“Alfred,” Diana said, after a moment, and Steve quirked an eyebrow at her. He was certain he’d checked off everyone already. Had any of the articles ever mentioned an Alfred? “He works for Bruce,” she explained, noticing his confusion.

“Works as…?”

“A personal confidant, as far as the League is concerned. And a butler, in regards to Bruce’s household affairs.”

Steve felt his jaw go a little slack. “A butler,” he echoed, blinking at her. “They still have butlers in the 21 st century?”

He wasn’t sure he had even heard that word outside of a 19th-century  novel. And for a moment, he was almost convinced that Diana was messing with him. A butler…

“It’s a long story,” she said, her voice growing softer. “Alfred raised Bruce after his parents died. He’s family more than anything else. And he has been carrying Bruce’s secret longer than some members of the League have been alive.”

Steve stared at her, and then stared at her some more, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that this was her life now. People with superhuman abilities, billionaires with their own planes and butlers.  

At last, he let out a long breath.

“Anything else I should know?” he asked.

“They are…” she paused, a small, fond smile making an appearance. “They are smart. And kind. And noble. And loyal. They don’t have to do what they do, but they choose to, anyway.”

Just like you, Steve thought, studying her face. Over the past two years, he had memorized it down to every last freckle and even the smallest laugh line, yet she was still taking his breath away like she had the day he had first laid his eyes on her. God help him, he was so hopelessly in love with her.

It was no wonder that they would be drawn to her, to her will and her spirit. Or that Diana would be drawn to them, if they were even half the people she had painted them to be.

“Are you worried?” Diana asked, her voice kind.

“No,” Steve said, after a brief consideration. And he meant it, too. He wanted to help, and while he’d like for Diana’s friends to like him, he knew it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t, not really. He had her and she loved him, and he loved her, and nothing else mattered, in the grand scheme of things. “Whatever happens next, I still got to fly on a private plane.”

He grinned at her and she rolled her eyes a little, making his pulse stutter. He decidedly liked that feeling.

“Small victories, I suppose,” Diana murmured.

How bad could it be, he thought. Her mother had pointed a sword at him once. He doubted that a bunch of people—even people with superpowers—were going to be scarier to deal with.

Steve sat up, moving closer to her, his thumb sweeping over her cheek. She turned to him, and he was helpless against the urge to lean forward. He bumped his nose against her, cajoling another smile out of her, before chasing her lips with his.

She kissed him back without hesitation, her hand curling over the back of his neck and her mouth eager and yielding against his.

“I am so in love with you,” Steve whispered, after he drew back.

“So you keep saying,” Diana murmured, her smile making the corners of her eyes crinkle.

His eyes darted towards the cockpit door once more. Maybe…

He huffed out a breath as he looked back towards Diana. Better not start something they were not going to be able to finish.

To distract himself, he allowed his gaze to travel around the cabin once again. It was hard not to wonder how rich you had to be to live like this and not think twice about it. He was getting more and more curious about Bruce Wayne—a man who could lend someone his private plane at the drop of a hat.

He cast a look at Diana out of the corner of his eye, and then chuckled to himself, shaking his head a little. She certainly had some interesting people for friends.

“What is it?” she asked, smoothing her hand over his shoulder. Steve could feel her watching him.

He looked at her, feeling his smile dim as he reached for her hand, weaving their fingers together.

“What do you think is going on, with those people?” he asked.

Diana dropped her eyes to the knot of their hands, her brows pulling together pensively.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, after a moment as she chewed on her bottom lip. Her gaze drifted towards one of the windows and the setting sun beyond it before swivelling it back to Steve’s. “But I hope Bruce will have more information.”


Gotham, 2021

There was no Alfred waiting for them at the airport like Diana had half expected. Instead, the ground personnel directed them towards one of the cars belonging to Wayne Enterprises with the keys left in the glove compartment.

Steve paused a few feet away from it, his jaw dropping ever so slightly as his gaze swept over the sleek black sedan with an appreciation that she knew was reserved for vehicles alone. Diana arched an eyebrow at him, and then opened her palm, offering him the keys.

“All yours,” he said, raising his hands up and making her laugh.

She wondered how much of it was because he was worried about wrecking something this high-end, versus how much he simply wanted to fiddle with everything inside while she drove. She made a mental note to introduce him to one of Bruce’s sports cars if the opportunity presented itself.

She hadn’t even had a chance to tell him about the jets Bruce used for missions yet, she thought, her heart clenching with fierce affection in her chest. She glanced towards him, a twinge of heat at his excitement stirring in her belly. He was going to love those jets.  

They drove in silence, for the most part, Steve’s eyes drawn to the flickering lights of Gotham outside his window. Light rain was falling from the sky and pattering against the rooftop of the car, the rhythmic dance of the wipers nearly hypnotic.

Every now and then, Diana’s eyes flickered towards him. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for a chance to sneak a peek inside of his head and see what he was thinking, what he was feeling. He was not as nervous as she had expected him to be, she had to give him that. She didn’t doubt that the League would love him. That they would see his intelligence and kindness, like she had, and appreciate them for what they were.

Steve’s eyes widened when they reached the massive form of Wayne Manor, standing stark against the indigo-blue backdrop of the late evening sky.

“Is that…?” he started, straightening up in his seat.

But the place appeared to be mainly dark, save for the perimeter lights, and she passed by it without slowing down until she reached the turn leading towards the lake house, which was shining like a beacon behind the thicket of trees.

She came to a stop, the gravel crunching beneath the tires, oddly loud in the stillness of the night.

“Well, here goes nothing,” Steve muttered under his breath before he pushed the door open. He paused and turned to Diana, a shadow of hesitation chasing across his face for the first time since they had boarded the plane.

She watched him swallow and steady himself, slipping into a spy mode—a habit he couldn’t help, she knew.

Diana reached across the console and squeezed his hand.

“Let’s go.”

She rang the bell—once, twice.

When nothing happened, Diana punched in the easy-access code, sending a silent thank you to Bruce for not changing it since the last time she had used it, and then pushed the door open.

The first thing she noticed was the tell-tale booming sound of a video game or, perhaps, one of those action films that involved guns and car chases, coming from the lounge, the echo of it bouncing off the walls and filling the wide hallway.

It was no wonder no one had heard the doorbell, Diana thought, smirking.

Next, she noted the smell of something burning hanging in the air.

“Master Allen!” Alfred called out from the study, as if on cue.

A gust of wind whipped past her, and then back, the burning smell starting to dissipate almost in an instant.

“All good, Alfred!” Barry called out from the lounge moments later, the sounds of rapid fire and explosions resuming immediately.

“Wait, was that…” Steve started in a hushed voice, as his eyes darted between the kitchen and the lounge.

“Barry,” Diana nodded, biting back her laugh. She reached for Steve’s hand. “Come.”

She led him towards the lounge where Barry and Victor were sprawled on the couch with game controllers while a battle scene of epic proportions was unfolding on the screen before them. Her gaze swept over pizza boxes and snack wrappers piled high on the coffee table before them, amidst empty cans of Coke.

“Eat that!” Barry whooped savagely as the screen turned bright with an explosion, and beside him, Victor groaned.

Neither of them bothered to so much as look up when she paused in the doorway, observing the mess she knew Bruce wouldn’t approve of. His absence explained it, though. It was no wonder that Alfred had chosen to hide in the study, she thought, amused. Sometimes, it was easier to simply stay out of the way of a hurricane.

“I see you’re making great use of the house that Bruce rebuilt specifically for you,” she observed in an even voice.

Barry’s head snapped up in surprise, but his attention didn’t linger. A moment later, Victor glanced towards her as well.

“Hey, Di,” he said, smiling.

His gaze darted towards the screen once again, before he paused and turned to her once more, slowly, as Steve’s presence registered with him.

“We were out of snacks,” Barry said as he chewed. “Yo, I just killed you, man!” he added, elbowing Victor who continued to stare at her and Steve, ignoring the game entirely. “You know it’s not going to work if you… What?”

At that, the speedster looked up as well, properly this time, his jaw dropping open a little.

Diana bit her lip. Her gaze flicked towards Steve who was taking in the scene before him, as well as the glass walls of the room and the dark wall of forest on the other side of them.

She remembered her first visit to the lake house, over four years ago now, and how impressed it had left her. He would likely find it even more interesting in daylight, she thought.

“I’m assuming you are planning to clean this all up before Master Wayne’s return,” Alfred noted as he stepped into the lounge, pausing when his eyes landed on Diana. “Miss Prince,” he said, his features softening. “We didn’t expect you—” He stopped, his gaze moving to Steve, curiosity chasing across his features. “We didn’t expect you for another hour.”

“Alfred,” Diana said, her lips curving into a soft smile. “It’s good to see you. The traffic was better than expected.”

Alfred lifted his eyebrow, giving Steve another sweep with his gaze.

“Everyone, I would like you to meet Captain Steve Trevor,” she said, as she looked at Steve. “He is… We are—”

“It’s him,” Barry blurted out. He was now staring at Steve with his eyes as wide as saucers. “You’re him.”

Steve’s gaze shifted towards her as his brows knitted together slightly, a silent question in his eyes.

“Him who?” Diana asked. “Barry—”

“The guy from the old picture,” the young man whispered in awe as he stood up, hastily brushing cookie crumbs from his pants.

“What old picture?” Steve asked, speaking for the first time.

At that, a bright red blush crept up Barry’s face and he grimaced with that caught expression. From several feet away, Diana could all but hear him wish he could make a run out of there. She suspected that he would happily give it a try, had she and Alfred not been blocking the exit.

“Master Allen,” Alfred prompted, after another moment.

By then, Victor had also stood up, and to his credit, Steve managed to keep his face passably neutral. She was all too aware that the metal parts of Victor’s body were bound to leave him more than a little shocked, the first time around.

Barry heaved a dramatic sigh, looking a little like he was being admonished by a schoolteacher—something that Diana had had her fair share of experiences receiving,  recognizing his expression immediately. It made tenderness towards him blossom in her chest.

“As you probably know, Bruce has files on all of us,” he said, after a moment, glancing quickly towards Alfred. “From A.R.G.U.S., you know? I didn’t mean to snoop, not really. I just wanted to see what he’s got on me, and then… I kind of accidentally read everyone’s,” he finished sheepishly. “And there was a picture in yours, an old one, from like a gazillion years ago, with you in the middle and four guys wearing those funny old-timey clothes, and…” he trailed off with a shrug.

Diana pressed her lips together, feeling a spark of irritation flare up in her chest.

Beside her, she heard Steve mutter defensively, “Hey, my clothes were not funny,” the remark making the tension inside of her ease.

She had spoken about the files with Bruce before, having made it very clear that she was not comfortable with him keeping the intel that Waller had gathered on them in the system. She had put a lot of time and effort into erasing the traces of herself from history over the past hundred years, for privacy and safety. He had left her with the impression that he understood her concerns, and while he hadn’t outright promised her to delete those files, she had assumed that that was the understanding.

She should have asked, directly and explicitly. She was going to, as soon as an opportunity presented itself.

Diana glanced towards Steve who was watching the exchange with interest, only understanding half of it, she figured. She had never told him about A.R.G.U.S., for there had never been any need for it before. She made a mental note to do that soon.

The urge to reach for him was overwhelming. Instead, she folded her arms over her chest.

“It’s alright, Barry,” she said, offering the young man a smile.

“Is he?” Victor asked, jerking his chin towards Steve, still sizing up the latter skeptically.

“As a matter of fact…” Diana said, lifting her gaze to Steve’s. He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“I’m Steve Trevor, hi,” Steve said as he turned to Alfred, offering him his hand.

Alfred shook it. “My pleasure, sir.”

“But how…” Victor muttered.

“It’s a long story,” Diana responded noncommittally.

“Like a gazillion years old?” he pressed, making Diana smile.

“Perhaps a bit shorter than that,” she said as she looked towards Alfred. “Bruce?”

“On patrol, with Master Curry.”

“Probably fishing,” Barry muttered under his breath, as he rocked on the balls of his feet.

“Well, that would explain this,” she noted, glancing around the room again, and making the colour rush up Barry’s face once more.

She was certain that had Victor been capable of turning red, he would have, as well. He certainly had the sense to look bashful. She chose not to ask about the fishing part. Didn’t want to know, truth be told.

She turned to Alfred. “Do you think I need to—” she started but he was shaking his head before she even finished speaking.

“As you can see, the cavalry is vigilant and hard at work,” he said, glancing towards Barry and Victor over the rims of his glasses, and Diana had to press her lips together to hold back her smile. Beside her, Steve cleared his throat to mask his chuckle.

“Buzzkill,” Barry muttered under his breath.

“I heard that,” Alfred said, without looking at him. His eyes were trained on Diana instead, and his voice decisive when he spoke again: “Master Wayne has enough support, if he needs any.”

Diana nodded. “I suppose we’ll get settled then.”

Alfred pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “The room you had the previous time is ready for you, Miss Prince.” He glanced at Steve. “And, Captain Trevor.”

“Just Steve’s okay,” Steve offered.

Diana touched the older man’s arm. “Thank you, Alfred.”

When she looked up again, she found Barry glancing between her and Steve, a hand pressed to his chest and his awed expression bordering on mildly disturbing. She barely resisted the urge to roll her eyes, choosing instead to focus on how much this felt like coming home.


By the time they made it to the Manor, Steve’s head was buzzing.

He followed Diana along the labyrinth of corridors and staircases without even trying to memorize the layout of this maze of a house. She had never told him that Bruce Wayne owned a goddamned castle, and he wished she had. He liked being prepared. 

About a year ago, he had started to believe that he had seen enough of the future to stop being surprised by anything it could possibly throw at him. Yet, here he was, just off a trans-Atlantic flight on a private plane, and he was right back to his early days in the twenty-first century when he’d had the ground knocked from beneath him daily.

There was no big surprise with the Flash—Barry Allen was exactly the way Steve had pictured him, based on their one phone call. Steve hadn’t been surprised when he’d noticed that Barry looked at Diana full of endearing devotion.

Victor Stone, on the other hand, had turned out to be a lot more impressive than Steve had expected—the grainy videos filmed from far away made by curious onlookers did him little justice. He was far more reserved than Barry, too, just like she’d said. Steve was grateful that Diana had warned him not to stare, otherwise, he would have probably gaped at Cyborg’s glowing robot eye and the mechanics of his body the nature of which was so beyond his comprehension he couldn’t even begin to figure out how to grasp it, yet. How fluidly they moved, almost like a metal skin. How not at all clunky Victor had seemed when he’d stood up.

Steve had a feeling he was going to like Alfred and the older man’s dry humour. The way everything about him had softened when his gaze hand landed on Diana had certainly made Steve like him even more.

And he had questions, too. So many of them, he didn’t know where to start.

Diana paused in front of one of the doors lining a long hallway and pushed it open. Steve stepped inside after her. His gaze moved over the large room, with a bed pushed against the wall opposite from him, a desk and a chest of drawers sitting to the right and a window on the left. Like everything else he had seen so far, it looked new and polished and perfect.

“Well, you were not joking about a butler,” he said as he sat their bags down on the floor.

Diana, who had pulled her phone from the pocket of her pants and was checking her messages, looked up at him and smiled.

“I would never joke about a butler,” she said.

Chuckling, he shrugged out of his jacket, and then he flopped back on the bed, feeling suddenly drained to his bones, and perhaps, more overwhelmed than he’d felt in the two years of being a spy in the middle of a vicious war.

He scrubbed his hands down his face, trying to get his swirling thoughts to settle.

He was not going to stop thinking about the plane, was he? The furnishings, how nearly silent it had been when it flew… It had felt like magic, and with an actual goddess standing right before him, he felt like he was a good judge of that.

Steve tipped his head back, staring at the white ceiling for a long moment.

This was Diana’s world, more so than anything he had witnessed to date. A world full of people like her. It felt odd and exhilarating and slightly unnerving to step into it, if he was being honest with himself. Not quite the same as her Paradise Island but—

“That went well, didn’t it?” he asked thoughtfully, after a moment, casting his gaze towards Diana.

She set her phone down on the dresser.

“I was hoping they would all be there,” she admitted.

He had figured out that much earlier, judging by her expression.

“Do you need to go help?” he asked, gesturing vaguely in a direction that might not even indicate Gotham, for all he knew. He really needed to find his bearings here, Steve decided. 

He wasn’t sure if Barry’s words about fishing were an inside joke or an actual comment, or something else altogether, but it intrigued him greatly.

Diana shook her head.

“No, you heard what Alfred said. Besides, they know where to find me, if they need my help.”

Steve nodded. He rolled off the bed and stood up, moving to peek out the window. Yet, whatever it was out there was now completely obscured by pitch-black darkness. Trees, probably. There had been a lot of trees on their drive, if he recalled correctly.

“Diana?” he turned to her, feeling his brows knit together when a thought caught up with him. She had set her bag on the bed and was pulling out the clothes to put them in the drawers or hang in the closet. At the sound of her name, she looked up at him. “What is ‘argus’ ?”

She straightened up. Steve watched her bite her lip as she considered his question. She leaned against the dresser, arms folded over her chest.

“Advanced Research Group Uniting Super-Humans,” she said. “It’s a United States federal agency created to work closely with metahumans.”

“With people like you?” he clarified.

She nodded. “Among other things, yes. Work, arrest, cover up for, clean up after.”

Steve whistled quietly under his breath. He slid his hands into the pockets of his pants. He didn’t like her expression, and how carefully she appeared to be choosing her words.

He loved that about them—that in the time since he’d come back, he had learned every nuance of her, every smallest change of expression. But it could all be too revealing sometimes, and Steve wasn’t always sure if it was a good or a bad thing.  

“Good guys or bad guys?”

“Good idea,” Diana said diplomatically, after a brief consideration. She rubbed her forehead, a sigh escaping her chest. “There are things that can be hard to explain, to the general populace. People can find it hard to accept certain truths if they are not ready for them.”

Like the nature of Cyborg’s existence, Steve thought immediately. Barry’s speed. Diana’s strength. Alright, well, there was a lot to explain, he could admit that much.

“A.R.G.U.S. was meant to be the link between us and civilians,” she continued.

Just like the Amazons were meant to be a bridge to a greater understanding, the memory popped up in his head. He knew better than to assume that Diana hadn’t noticed the irony of that connection.  

“But?” he prompted.

There was definitely a but coming.

A slight frown appeared between Diana’s brows, and if he wasn’t so intrigued by the new information, he would immediately cross the room so he could try and figure out how to make it go away, for good.

“It’s run by a woman named Amanda Waller who believes that metahumans must be controlled by the government. That we’re time bombs waiting to go off, weapons that others can’t wait to get their hands on to use us for their benefit. That we can’t be trusted to operate on our own and be accountable for our actions.”

Steve stared at her. “Surely, she knows how much you help,” he said, dumbfounded.

Okay, there probably was a grain of truth there, he wasn’t going to argue with that. He knew what Diana was capable of. Had a fairly good idea of what the others could do, as well. But anyone who’d met Diana, who’d spoken with her, would be a lunatic to think she could or would ever cause harm on purpose.

“There is reason, and then there is desire for control, Steve,” she said softly.

And there it was again, the weariness pooling behind her eyes that she couldn’t conceal.

He wondered, not for the first time, how long that battle had been going on. He doubted that this Amanda Waller was the first one to question Diana’s motives, her… everything.

The thought left him feeling fiercely, inexplicably protective.

He remembered the feeling well—on the streets of London when men had been calling out to her; in the alley where Ludendorff’s men had cornered them; as he followed her across No Man’s Land and in the occupied Veld, even after she had proven to him that she was more than capable of taking care of herself. He had still wanted to protect her, to shield her. Her heart more than anything, he was now starting to see.

Even now, part of him desperately wanted to keep her from the ugliness of his world. Never mind that she had probably seen more of it than he could even imagine.

“But you’re not working with her, are you?” Steve asked next.

He would have noticed if she was, in the past two and a half years. But he still wanted to clarify.

Diana unfolded her arms, her fingers curling over the edge of the dresser on either side of her thighs.

“No. She has been trying to strike a deal with the League for the past few years, but so far, Bruce has managed to keep her at bay.”

Steve regarded her, perplexed. “Would it not be easier for you to have the support of the government on your side?” he asked, carefully. “I mean I know you said it’s not ideal, but wouldn’t it be…” he trailed off.

But she was shaking her head even before he finished speaking. “They want control, above all else. And Amanda Waller…” Diana paused, her lips pressed into a thin, displeased line. “She is the kind of person who often thinks that the ends justify the means, no matter how unethical the means are. Which is why, I suppose, she finds working with the Suicide Squad palatable.”

He blinked. “What on earth is a Suicide Squad?”

At that, a small smile touched Diana’s lips—brought on by his facial expression, Steve suspected, more than anything else.

It dimmed almost as quickly as it came.

“They are a group of metahumans jailed for crimes and held at Arkham Asylum as exceptionally dangerous individuals. They run missions for her in exchange for reduced prison time and various other favours.”

Steve let out a long breath. “That… does sound questionable, yeah.”

He raked his hand through his hair, and then rubbed the back of his neck. The onslaught of information was coming at him like a freight train, and if he had to venture a guess, it was only going to get worse, from now on.

He had a few questions about the picture that Barry had mentioned, one that had to be from Veld, Steve knew, and those files that Bruce Wayne had, but he chose to keep those for later.

“Do you think this A.R.G.U.S. place has something to do with why we’re here?” he asked, instead.

Diana didn’t respond at once, instead taking her time to consider the question.

“The files that Bruce had sent to me, months ago… he’d found them in the A.R.G.U.S. archives.”

Steve arched a curious eyebrow at her.

“He stole them?”

She bit her lip around a smile. “I want to believe he borrowed them.”

He laughed at that, raising his hands in surrender. “Yeah, okay. Fair enough.”

She was smiling again, the real, luminous thing that had Steve crossing the room until he was standing right before her.

Diana pushed away from the dresser, straightening up, her eyes flicking between his. He reached for her, his hands sliding around her waist. He ducked his head closer to hers. She smoothed her hands over his chest, her thumb tracing the line of his jaw.

“You are remarkable, Diana,” he whispered. “Everything that you do, everything that you are… You know that, right?”

She smiled, her fingers fiddling with the collar of his shirt. “I think you might be a little biased.”

Steve let out a small laugh. “Well, yeah. Sure. But my sentiment stands.”

He sighed and shook his head.

“I don’t know what to say to that,” she confessed, still smiling.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said, moving closer to her as his fingers dipped beneath the hem of her shirt, searching for the skin near the base of her spine. Her breath stuttered, and his pulse tripped over itself at the sound of it, the heat of desire searing its way through him. “What you should do is take my clothes off, take me to bed and have your way with me,” he murmured, a second before he pressed his mouth to hers, kissing her the way he had wanted to kiss her on the plane. The way he wanted to keep kissing for as long as he lived. “Or, you know, the other way around,” he added against her lips after he pulled back.

Diana wound her arms around his neck, her face only a breath away from his.

“Yes, I suppose we could do that.”


Steve awoke a few hours later, disoriented. The sheets felt strange. The window was on the wrong side of the room and its placement left him confused, for a moment. It took him a few long seconds to find his bearings, his mind racing from a dream he couldn’t remember but that had left a foul aftertaste in his mouth and the feeling of grime on his skin that he desperately wanted to scrub off.

There was a queasy feeling in his stomach. It made him swallow, hard. Made him take a measured breath, and then another one, and he wondered if he was going to be sick.

He blinked at the ceiling, and exhaled, slowly.

Gotham. Bruce Wayne’s labyrinth of a childhood house.

Right.

The night was dark, still hours away from dawn. But not dark enough—

Steve frowned when it occurred to him that a light was actually on, a dim reading lamp in the corner of the room, and that Diana was no longer in bed with him. He remembered the feeling of her body pressed close to him only recently, warm and heavy and his, right before his mind had drifted off. Her absence made him miss her achingly.

He turned his head to the left, pale moonlight peeking through a crack between the curtains. At least the rain must have stopped, Steve thought absently. When he looked to the right, he found Diana sitting at the desk in the corner, one leg tucked beneath her, her fingers moving over the keyboard of her laptop.

Relieved, he scrubbed his hand over his face, chasing the remnants of his dream away.

She looked up when he moved, her face lit up by the glow of the screen. She smiled. “Hey.”

Steve rubbed his eyes as he pushed to sit up. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice low and scratchy from sleep, but his pulse immediately kicking up into full gear.

The wrong room, the wrong place… He was having a hard time separating the events of the previous day from whatever he’d been dreaming.

“Nothing,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep, thought I would…” she trailed off. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

“No.” Steve cleared his throat. “No, I’m—”

He just wanted her close, not all the way across a room that suddenly felt even bigger than it actually was, with all that space between them.

Diana’s smile slipped. “Are you alright?”

She stood up and crossed the room. Steve watched her, golden skin nearly glowing in the yellow light of a reading lamp, the tightness in his chest easing. There was something, something odd, lingering in the back of his mind. But try as he might, he couldn’t seem to grab a hold of it.

He blinked, trying to clear his head. At least his stomach seemed to have settled.

“Steve?”

He looked up as she approached, her hand reaching immediately to brush through his hair. A breath stuttered out of his chest. She lowered down to sit next to him. Steve closed his eyes and leaned into her touch, his shoulders rounding forward. He hadn’t even realized how tense he was, until he allowed himself to relax.

“What is it?” she murmured, nimble fingers smoothing over his face.

“Nothing.” Steve opened his eyes. “Nothing, just…”

He glanced around the room, feeling his heartbeat start to even out, to find its pace once more.

His ankle was throbbing ever so slightly, making him grimace in frustration more than anything else. Perhaps, that was what had awoken him in the first place. A nagging, dull pain that was nowhere near as bad as it used to be, in the early days. It was unpleasant, all the same. Should have gone easy on it, he thought with a touch of irritation. He hadn’t walked as much as he had yesterday since before the accident.

He rubbed his eyes again.

It had to be that. Had to be—

“Steve,” Diana called him again, her hand sliding to rest on his cheek.

He lifted his gaze to hers. “I’m okay,” he said sincerely. “Weird dream.”

It was worse sometimes when he couldn’t remember them, as though there was something in his mind that was too far out of his control, and the mere thought of that was enough to leave him antsy and restless. He used to hate it, during the war. But even though the war was over, as Diana had reminded him— still had to remind him sometimes—there were things that he just couldn’t seem to let go.

Diana was watching him closely, her eyes moving over his face. He lifted his hand to rest it over hers and turned into her touch to press a kiss to the centre of her palm. God help him, she could fix it all just by being… just by being, period.

She leaned forward, her fingers threading through his hair once more, before she pressed a kiss to his forehead. “Alright then,” she murmured.

He rolled his shoulders, his eyes feeling full of sand but his mind wired. There was the making of a headache starting to blossom in the back of his skull. Jetlag, he knew, was going to be hell to deal with, on top of everything else. Maybe he wasn’t as well as he wanted to believe, after Morocco. 

Steve bent his leg at the knee to pull his foot closer, running his hand absently over the place of the fracture as though he wanted to scratch something out from underneath his skin. It looked fine, he could detect no swelling, thankfully, but it felt strange. Strange enough to make him feel groggy and frustrated and flushed all over.

“What is it?” Diana asked, a slight frown creasing her brows. “Does it hurt?”

Steve made a face. “A little,” he admitted. “I’ve got…” his gaze darted towards his bag where, somewhere at the bottom, was a bottle of painkillers. 

“I’ll get it,” she said and stood up, her hand brushing over his shoulder.

Steve watched her dig for the pills and then shake a couple onto the palm of her hand. She grabbed a bottle of water from the dresser before making her way back to him.

“Thank you,” he murmured, taking the pills from her. He popped them into his mouth and took a few hungry gulps to wash them down.

Diana took the bottle from him, screwing the cap back on, and set it on the nightstand.

Steve closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, searching for the quiet inside of him. He felt Diana’s palm move over his shoulder once more, her touch soothing and oh so wonderful, smoothing out the sharp edges of worry coalescing through his head.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked quietly.

His fingers curled over her wrist. “Stay with me,” he said in a whoosh of breath.

He didn’t mean for it to come out quite so… half-pleading, but he didn’t care that it had.

When he looked up at her, she was smiling. “Of course.”

She stood up, crossing the room to close her laptop and turn off the light, and the darkness felt like a balm against his wired, antsy restlessness. Steve watched her draw the curtains shut before she made her way back to the bed. He scooted out of the way and Diana slid under the sheet, moving across the mattress and closer to him.

“Okay?” she asked, as she folded herself into his side, her head tucked under his chin and a leg curled over one of his.

Steve wrapped his arm around her shoulders. His mind felt soft around the edges, his focus already getting scattered. He turned his head to press a kiss to the crown of her head, breathing her in, his fingers training absently up and down her shoulder.

“More than,” he murmured, almost inaudibly.

He felt her fingertips skitter down his cheek, heard her sigh as she relaxed into him. His ankle still had a dull ache, but it was more of an afterthought now, not something that demanded his attention for more than a few moments at a time.

Diana tipped her head up, her breath warm on his skin, as her mouth moved over the underside of his jaw, the scent and the warmth of her body enough to push everything else out of his head.

He couldn’t sleep without her, the first couple of weeks after he had left the hospital, Steve remembered now. More so than without his medication. He wondered, groggily, if this need for her qualified as an addiction of sorts, though if it did, he was fine with it. More than fine, really.

“Sleep,” she said, softly, her voice fighting through the fog in his head.

He was certain she said something else too, afterwards. But he was too tired to catch it or try to respond. And before he knew it, he was asleep.

Notes:

Alright! The Justice League! I'm quite excited for some action and for Steve's interaction with them all.

And on that note... I have some news. Or an announcement. Or something. Anyway, with this story being done and with akajb doing a spectacular job with betaing it (and me almost keeping up), I think I'm in a good place to start posting weekly again like I did in the beginning. What do you guys think? Would you be interested in weekly updates?

I hope you are all staying safe and taking care of yourselves. I'm in a lockdown again, likely for a long time, so... writing is something that's keeping me sane, hence all this increased productivity.

As always, comments are very much appreciated :) Also, have you seen The Suicide Squad? What did you think? Personally, I found it fun. Better than the first one, and it made me want to bring Harley into my WW works. And... King Shark should be protected, period. Anyway, talk to me :)

Chapter 18

Notes:

Oh hey, I actually don't suck at posting weekly, I think? At least the second week in a row 😬😬 Thanks everyone for sticking around, you are so wonderful and I'm so grateful for your support :) I'm going to stir some trouble in this chapter because... it's fun.

Enjoy ;)

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

Chapter Text

The next time Steve slid properly into wakefulness, it was morning.

He was alone in bed, again, sprawled diagonally across it on his stomach, his arms wrapped around a pillow. His head felt clearer than it had hours earlier, his ankle no longer aching, and for all intents and purposes, it was a vast improvement.

He lifted his head, his gaze swivelling around in hopes of finding Diana, but unlike last time, the chair sitting at the desk was empty, her laptop shut off. There was an ensuite bathroom, its door standing slightly ajar, but no sound was coming from within it.

He sighed and ran his hand over his face, trying to remember if she had awoken him sometime in the past couple of hours to tell him where she was going, but he came up empty. Or maybe she’d said something last night before he had fallen asleep. She might have but he couldn’t remember.

Steve rolled onto his back and reached for his phone, groping his way across the nightstand until his hand closed over it. He pressed the home button, bringing the screen to life, the clock saying that it was 9:23 AM. There were no texts from her either, and he felt his brows knit together in confusion.

They were supposed to meet with the rest of the Justice League this morning, he knew. Would she have gone without him, just so he could sleep in? Would she have thought he was too unwell to participate? Steve brushed both ideas aside, knowing she wouldn’t have made that decision on her own—that he was certain of.

He rubbed his eyes and sat up. She probably had some work issues to attend to, he reasoned with himself. She didn’t need a laptop for that, necessarily, but she surely wouldn’t have stayed in the room with him if she needed to make some phone calls. He tried to think of what time it was in Paris right now but it felt like an impossible task. Not without some coffee, at least.

Steve pushed the covers aside and climbed out of the bed, testing his foot carefully, relieved to note that all seemed well. Well enough. He still hated it though, how tentative he was about every step he took. How he didn’t trust his body completely. It was not permanent, he knew. A few more weeks, and he would likely forget about the entire experience like a bad dream—or so he hoped—but it didn’t make him any less apprehensive of it now. Or any less grumpy.

He found a set of fresh clothes and left them on the bed before he hobbled gracelessly towards the bathroom. Stepping into the shower, he decided that he certainly felt annoyed that Diana was not there for that part. He wondered what it said about him that he wasn’t even surprised to find a full-on jacuzzi bathtub, in addition to a shower cubicle in the corner. Perhaps, after meeting Victor Stone, he truly was not going to be surprised by anything ever again, Steve thought. Or maybe it was the private plane that had desensitized him to Bruce Wayne’s fortune.

He stayed in the shower for a long time, feeling significantly more awake by the time he emerged from it in a cloud of steam. Afterwards, he got dressed, deciding that he might as well just try and find Diana. And maybe coffee, if he was lucky. It certainly beat sitting in their room and doing nothing. 

Steve stepped into the hallway, turning his head this way and that and trying to remember where they had come from, the night before. There was a long corridor stretching on both sides of him. After a quick deliberation, he turned right, pleased to have managed to retrace their steps to a wide staircase. He listened carefully, but the place remained quiet, save for the very faint creaking of the floorboards beneath him and the ticking of an old antique clock on the landing.

He paused before it, giving it a long, studious look. He wondered if the clock was around when Bruce Wayne was a child—Diana had told him that this was where Batman had grown up, though the place had burned down nearly to the ground at some point and he had only rebuilt it a couple of years ago.

Steve couldn’t imagine living in this house and not getting lost a hundred times a day.

Downstairs, he turned right again until he reached the library, its walls lined with bookshelves housing thousands of volumes. A heavy desk with an antique globe sitting on top of it was placed in front of French doors framed with heavy drapes leading out into the garden.

But no Diana.

Steve headed in the opposite direction, hoping for the best.

He didn’t find Diana. Or a kitchen. But what he discovered was a lounge with leather furniture and a massive TV on the wall over the fireplace, one that was the size of something he’d only seen in a movie theatre. Steve barely resisted the urge to whistle under his breath.

And there, sprawled out on one of the couches, was Barry Allen— lounging, by the looks of it. He had a phone in one hand and some kind of cookie in another one. He appeared to be perfectly content doing whatever it was that he was doing.

Steve didn’t want to interrupt, but he feared that he was going to die of old age before he found anything in this place.

(Part of him was tempted to call Diana, but there was something odd about the idea of calling someone who was probably in the same house as he was. Even if it was a very big house.)

He stepped into the room and the young man immediately snapped his head up. A brief moment of confusion chased across Barry’s face as he continued to chew, before recognition settled in. And then he grinned and waved his cookie at Steve. Well, it was probably meant to be just a wave, the cookie just happened to be there.

“Hey,” Barry said.

“Good morning.” Steve glanced around the room, as though to make sure that Diana wasn’t hiding under a coffee table or something. “It’s Barry, right? Do you know where Diana is?”

The young man shook his head vigorously. “Probably running,” he said around a mouthful of his snack. Steve stared at him, and Barry explained, after a moment: “She likes to run around the lake when she’s here.”

Oh.

Okay, that made sense. She did that in Paris too, sometimes, except lakes were in short supply there so she had to settle for the promenade along the Seine. Steve could certainly understand the appeal here.

He nodded and cleared his throat. “Um… is there a kitchen here somewhere?”

Or did he have to go to the house on the lake with the glass doors, he wondered. Diana hadn’t said anything about that. Although, admittedly, they hadn’t exactly talked about anything like that. He wondered what the rules were about where he could go and what he could do—there had to be some, right?

Suddenly, there was a whoosh of air and a flash of electric sparks, like lightning, and then Barry was standing right before him. Steve nearly staggered back in surprise.

Superspeed. Right. There was probably a way to get used to it, wasn’t there?

Barry beamed at him with more enthusiasm than Steve had seen in… probably all of his life, come to think of it. The Flash seemed to be like Sami in that way—quick and generous with emotions. The realization left him with bittersweet wistfulness spreading through his chest. 

“I’ll take you,” Barry said.  

It didn’t feel like something worth arguing over.

Steve followed him out of the lounge and down yet another corridor, convinced that anyone who stepped foot into this place needed to be given a map. He wondered if he was going to need to use GPS to find his way back to his and Diana’s bedroom. 

But, much to his relief, there was indeed a kitchen there, right around the corner. With a coffee maker sitting on the counter, no less. One that resembled the one they had in Paris—thankfully. At least Steve knew how to make it work.

There was a box of filters and a pack of ground coffee, and the smell alone when he opened it was enough to lift his spirits substantially.

“Coffee?” he offered the younger man, as he filled the pot.

Ignoring the coffee maker, Barry beelined for a row of cupboards lining one of the walls. He chuckled a little. “Better not, I’m usually too full of energy as it is.” 

Steve’s lips twitched. He had noticed as much. 

“So, do you all live here?” he asked over his shoulder as he pressed the buttons to turn the machine on.

“Kinda?” Barry snatched a couple of boxes of something from the top shelf. “I mean, I do. My living situation wasn’t… ideal until Bruce came along.” He busied himself with opening both boxes. “Vic, too. I mean, lives here. Clark’s from Metropolis. It’s, like, an hour away from here?” He frowned pensively. “And Arthur is… at the bottom of the ocean.”

Steve blinked at him.

The Atlantian, right.

“I wonder if that’s why he never invites us over,” Barry muttered under his breath as he ripped open a silver foil packaging and pulled another cookie out of it. “Pop-tart?” he asked Steve.

The coffee maker beeped, but Steve ignored it, intrigued.

“A what?”

 Barry’s eyes widened and he gasped audibly.

“Wait, you’ve never heard of pop-tarts?” he asked, aghast.  

Based on Barry’s expression, Steve was seriously concerned for a moment that he had committed some kind of crime against humanity. Or maybe treason.

“I, um…”

“Oh, my god!” Barry breathed, looking a little like he was on the verge of a stroke. “You have to—” without finishing, he turned around and grabbed another few boxes, opening them all quickly. “We’ve got… ah, strawberry, chocolate, s’mores and cookie dough,” he announced to Steve as he put one of each into a ginormous toaster, and looked up expectantly. “I mean, really, never?”

Steve stared at the variety of boxes before him and tried to remember if that was something he had ever come across in Paris. He couldn’t tell for sure. Diana was partial to Belgian chocolate, so they usually had that in the house. And she liked macaroons. Steve preferred things that had bacon on them, generally speaking. Although he wouldn’t say no to chocolate chip cookies, and never had, but of the two of them, Diana was the one with the sweet tooth.

However, the way Barry was looking at him now, it was as though he had missed out on food of gods, no less.

He was decidedly curious.

“Chocolate?” he chose, half-uncertain.

Barry’s face lit up, and the next thing Steve knew, all four popped up and there was a pastry-cookie thing in his hand and the speedster was looking at him like he was planning to count the number of Steve’s chews. Which was a little unnerving, but Steve didn’t want to disappoint him.

“That’s…. good,” he said, after a moment, as he took a second bite.

And it was. Crumbly and chewy and warm and chocolatey.

Barry beamed at him, looking exceptionally pleased with himself.

“You have to try the s’mores one!” he declared, rifling through packages. “But don’t tell Alfred you liked them.”

Steve frowned a little, forgetting momentarily to even wonder what the hell was a s’more. “Why?”

“He doesn’t think this is real food,” Barry explained, dropping his voice for good measure and even having a look around as though Alfred could be listening in. “Too much food colouring or something. I don’t remember. But he also eats hamburgers with a fork and a knife.” He made a face. “So…”

“I think it’s real food,” Steve said, trying to sound encouraging. And diplomatic. 

And, well, compared to the stuff they had been forced to eat at the front, it was decidedly more food-like than what he’d had to eat then, all things considered.

“I know, right?” Barry heaved a dramatic sigh. “Anyway, where are you from?” 

Steve blinked, thrown by the rapid change of subject. “I, ah… Kentucky.”

“Oh, like Colonel Sanders!” 

“Who?” 

Barry waved his hand at him. “Never mind. What I was trying to ask— when are you from?”

“Oh. 1918.” 

“Wow. That’s, like, a long time ago. So… no pop-tarts?” 

Steve bit another piece of his pastry. “No cell phones, either,” he confirmed. “Or microwaves. Or—or the internet.” 

The speedster shook his head. “Dark ages.” He snatched another box from the counter, pushing more pastries into the toaster. “Anyway, try this one!”

And he shoved another pop-tart in Steve’s free hand.

It felt, a little, like trying to stop a freight train rushing towards him at full speed. It was easier to just get hit and deal with the damage later. And Steve didn’t really mind, the things really tasted good. A little too sugary but definitely palatable.

“Yeah, this is also very good,” he admitted, taking a bite.

Barry grinned, and Steve could have sworn he could see the younger man literally vibrate with enthusiasm over their shared culinary tastes.

It was oddly endearing.

“So, you and Di, huh?” the young man said after a while, his gaze cast to the side, as he rocked on the balls of his feet as though it was physically impossible for him to stand still.

If Steve wasn’t mistaken, there was some colour creeping up Barry’s face.

Steve’s gaze darted towards the hallway, the question giving him a pause. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be discussing their relationship. If Diana didn’t mind that, or if he was expected to zip his mouth shut on that one.

He wished she was there.

Well, he wished she was there, period, invasive questions notwithstanding.

But also he suspected that the League members weren’t complete idiots.

“Yeah,” he said, in the end, swallowing.

“I knew it!” Barry exclaimed, his whole face lighting up. “I mean, I didn’t know it,” he backtracked, and explained quickly: “Diana is very private, she never said anything. But she also never let anyone else answer her phone for her before.”

Steve nodded, both comforted that the details of his personal life had stayed personal, as far as the Justice League was concerned, but also feeling put on the spot. Because really…

“Yeah,” he said again. And cleared his throat.

“And she’s never brought anyone over for a visit,” Barry added, eagerly.

And Steve was suddenly thinking of the horde of gossiping girls in a schoolyard, when he was twelve, and how much he felt like one, right now.

It reminded him, again, of Sameer and how he could fish any kind of information out of anyone. Maybe the League wasn’t all that different from his friends from a hundred years ago, in the long run.

When he looked up, he found Barry staring at him with his hand pressed to his chest, looking like he might cry, his smile quivering a little.

“These are very good,” Steve repeated, waving the half of his pop-tart in front of the younger man’s face, hoping to get their conversation back on track. Or, at least, away from the track of his personal life.

“I’m just… happy for you two,” Barry said, shaking his head a little. “Diana is awesome, you know?”

Steve’s expression softened. “Yeah, she is,” he said, feeling the heat rush up the back of his neck, his mind suddenly full of memories from the night before and the feel of Diana’s body and the way it felt when—

He took a breath and pushed the mental image aside, god help him.

He wondered again where she was and if she was going to make an appearance any time soon. Or if maybe he should go and look for her. Or call her, even though the idea still felt absurd.

“And you’re okay, as well,” Barry added. “You, um…”

“Thanks, Barry,” Steve said, stopping him. He suspected that a compliment about liking certain types of sugary things was just a tad too odd, even taking into account where he was and who he was talking to. Although was there such a thing as too odd? He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

Barry nodded, seemingly satisfied.

“But don’t tell her I told you that,” he added quickly. “About boyfriends and all that. She doesn’t like gossiping.”

Steve pressed his lips together and tried not to laugh.

“Noted,” he said, sincerely, certain he wouldn’t know how to approach that conversation even if wanted to.

“What’s going on here?”

The sound of a familiar voice behind him made Steve’s heartbeat trip as he snapped his head around to find Diana standing in the doorway, an eyebrow arched curiously as her gaze moved between him and Barry. There was a smile on her face, humour dancing behind her eyes, and he wondered for the millionth time if he was ever going to be able to look at her without feeling like his heart might burst from joy.

“Nothing,” Barry said, just as Steve responded, “Pop-tarts.”

They looked at each other.

“Can you believe he never had them?” Barry asked in a dramatic voice, pointing an emphatic finger at Steve.

The corners of Steve’s mouth twitched and he cleared his throat. “Want one?” he asked as he turned to Diana.

His smile dimmed when her face froze, her expression—curious and mildly amused only moments earlier—suddenly unreadable.

He frowned as he moved towards her.

“Diana?” he said, his voice dropping a notch. “What’s wrong?”

She blinked, a shadow passing over her face, and then she was back, her gaze alive and warm, as though nothing had happened. Steve couldn’t quite shake off the feeling of wrongness all the same.

“Nothing,” she said with enough conviction for him to almost believe her. “Nothing. I was wondering where you were.”

“Diana,” he tried again, a warning in his voice.

But Barry was there, and even if it was something, whatever it was that had her looking at him like he was a ghost, however briefly, he doubted that she was going to tell him about it. Not with someone else around.

He made a mental note to ask later, feeling more than a little unhappy about the whole thing.

“Are you alright?” she asked softly, her gaze searching his face.

Her question caught Steve off guard for a moment. The previous night suddenly felt a thousand years ago.

For a long moment, he just stared at her. He could smell the soap on her. She must have taken a shower already, leaving Steve wishing he’d been there for that. Or that she’d come to find him sooner. Her hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, the strands that had escaped the hold of the hairband curling a little as they framed her face.

He wanted to kiss her almost to the point of a physical ache. It was suddenly somehow very unfair that they were not alone when the house was enormous enough to get lost in.

“Yeah,” he said, eventually, unable to stop his gaze from dropping to Diana’s lips. “Yeah, I’m… fine.”

She smiled, tilting her head a little—

“Aw, you guys,” Barry said, forcing both him and Diana to turn to him.

Once again, the young man was wearing that odd, disturbingly happy expression.

“Is he okay?” Steve asked quietly, leaning a little closer to her.

Diana bit her lip.

He felt her comb her hand absently through his hair—if there was one person on earth who didn’t care for social norms, or saving any displays of affection for when they were alone, or… anything else, really, it was her—before she stepped away from him.

Steve tried not to think of how maybe he was just a little bit disappointed that she hadn’t kissed him.

“Breakfast, then,” she said as she moved towards the fridge. “Those are not food, Barry,” she added without looking at the speedster.

“You sound like Alfred,” Barry grumbled the moment before his face lit up and he pointed a finger at Steve. “Steve liked them.”

Steve tossed the last piece of his pop-tart into his mouth. “I guess there are probably healthier options,” he noted noncommittally.

“Traitor,” Barry muttered, shaking his head, but he dutifully gathered all the wrappers and stuffed them into the garbage bin all the same.

Steve moved towards Diana who was unloading eggs and cheese and other breakfast ingredients onto the counter.

“I could help,” he offered, pausing close to her, although not close enough for Barry to melt from cuteness or whatever it was that he had been doing earlier. As touching as it was, it also looked just a little bit unsettling.

Diana looked up at him and smiled. “I suppose I could think of something for you to do.”

He finally poured himself that coffee that had led him to the kitchen in the first place then. And made a cup of tea for Diana afterwards, earning a fleeting kiss on the cheek from her—and a sigh from Barry from all the way across the kitchen. Then she put him on eggs duty and had Barry looking after the bacon.

Victor made an appearance next, yawning. His gaze fell on Steve, and he paused, briefly, as though unsure what the protocol was but, in the end, he just nodded his good morning. Steve nodded back. Without another word, Cyborg started setting the table with a familiarity of falling into a well-rehearsed routine.

Arthur Curry stumbled in half an hour later, bleary-eyed and resembling a bear who had just come out of hibernation. He headed straight to the coffee pot, and it was only after he had a cup and a half that his gaze swept over the kitchen before landing on Steve.

“Who’s the new guy?” he asked, a little curious and a little uncertain, his pale-blue eyes piercing as he gave Steve a pointed once-over.

“That’s Steve. Diana’s boyfriend,” Victor called out, with a good-natured chuckle, followed by a kissy sound made by Barry that had a flush of embarrassment rush up the back of Steve’s neck.

“Huh.” Arthur’s eyebrows lifted. “That’s a first.”

Diana gave him a look, and at least he had the sense to look abashed, put on the spot like that.

“What?” he asked defensively, before drowning the rest of his coffee in one gulp. “Never happened before.” He set the cup down and stepped towards Steve, clapping him on the shoulder with enough force to nearly send Steve stumbling forward. “You’ll do.”

“Thanks?” Steve said, uncertain, as Diana pointed Aquaman towards the cutlery. Steve leaned a little towards her. “You didn’t tell me there was a vetting process,” he said, watching her lips twitch at the corners. “What if I didn’t pass?”

She lifted her face to him. “I’d still love you,” she said quietly enough only for Steve to hear.

“Get a room,” Barry called out, and Steve straightened up immediately. “Or… don’t,” he added sheepishly when Diana glanced towards him.

“Don’t pay them any mind,” she said to Steve, but there was the fondness in her voice and a smile on her lips that made his chest tight with affection and wistfulness.

“You needn’t have done this, Miss Prince,” Alfred’s voice came from behind them as he stepped into the kitchen, followed by—if Steve was correct—Clark Kent.

It struck Steve how… normal Superman looked, without his suit and cape. How normal all of them looked, more or less. Not Cyborg, mind you. And Arthur was, well, huge, but still.

Steve had used to wonder, after he had first seen those videos of them, how it was possible that people never recognized them. How they never recognized Diana, for that matter, even though she clearly stood out wherever she went. But he understood it now. In a way, at least. 

“It is no trouble, Alfred,” Diana assured the older man.

Alfred observed the state of the kitchen and neat table arrangements, one eyebrow arched.

“You’ve trained them well,” he said quietly, a twinkle of humour dancing in his eyes.

“Heard that!” Arthur boomed, though he didn’t sound particularly offended.

Steve could see what she meant when she’d told him that they liked to tease one another relentlessly. He chuckled a little under his breath.

“Captain Trevor,” Alfred nodded at Steve.

“Hey… good morning.”

Meanwhile, Diana’s gaze had moved past Alfred, her face lighting up in a whole different way.

“Clark,” she said.

She stepped towards Superman and he enveloped her in a hearty hug.

“Hey, Di.”

She drew back. “Glad you could make it.”

He smirked. “Didn’t sound like I had a choice. It’s good to see you in our neck of the woods.”

Then his gaze moved towards Steve, his expression not altogether surprised.

He knew, Steve remembered. Diana had told him that. Barry and Clark knew… something. Which left Steve curious all the more about the relationship between them, if it allowed the kind of trust that didn’t extend to all.

Another round of introductions followed, having Steve twist around for a handshake while he also kept his eyes on the second batch of scrambled eggs. (Truth be told, they did look like a bunch that could eat an elephant, should they put their mind to it.)

“Can I help with anything?” Clark asked.

Alfred directed him towards the toaster and two bags of sliced bread.

“Is Bruce joining us?” Diana asked, turning towards the butler.

Alfred shook his head. “Master Wayne has an early board meeting, but he should be back within an hour, give or take.”

She nodded. Steve couldn’t tell from her reaction if Bruce Wayne’s absence was a good thing or not.

It was fascinating to observe them, like this. He had already seen multiple videos of them working together, courtesy of the ever-present technology and someone always willing to film something exciting. Or morbid. Or both. It was always seamless, as though they knew their roles precisely without ever having to communicate or coordinate anything, although he suspected it likely wasn’t that simple. He knew how much training and work went into being able to work seamlessly as a team.

But at the breakfast table, with plates of food being passed around and news shared, it looked like something honed to absolute perfection. The comfort of this routine palpable in the air. Even when a near fight broke out over the last few pieces of bacon.

Steve took his time to study them all, to catalogue the information new to him, taking note of the easiness between them and the comfortable familiarity of friendship. There was nothing quite like it, and he revelled in it all, grateful to be allowed to soak up some of it.

He took his time to study Diana as well, the way her features softened around them even when exasperation crept into her voice (when Arthur almost started a food fight or when Barry tried to get Clark to heat up the bacon with his laser vision—thankfully unsuccessfully). Diana always had kind words to offer, her voice gentle and laced with affection. She listened to what they had to say as though it was the most important thing in the world even when it wasn’t, and Steve’s heart swelled in his chest.

There was a whole new quality to her he hadn’t seen before. One that was different to that as his lover. One that, Steve suspected, his own friends had gotten to experience, perhaps.

At some point, she reached under the table and squeezed his knee, her smile directed at him fleetingly before her attention was diverted towards Victor, but it made Steve feel like part of it all anyway, even though he wasn’t entirely sure what it was, yet.

They talked about sports and politics and their missions. A time or two, it felt as though a fight was about to break out, and Steve couldn’t help but wonder if it had ever happened before. Arthur seemed to be the one with the most explosive temper, but Victor appeared to be opinionated and stubborn, adamant to defend his opinions. Even mild-mannered Clark looked like the type to feel passionately about things.

Steve made a mental note to ask Diana later if she’d ever had to break up a fight before—but he had a feeling he knew what her answer would be.

“So, why are we here?” Barry asked as the meal started to draw to a conclusion. His gaze swept over the table, not really pausing on anyone in particular.

“You live here,” Victor said flatly, making Arthur bark out a laugh.

“In the capacity of an occupant,” Aquaman muttered under his breath.

Barry sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know,” he said, dramatically. “And hey!” And then he brandished his fork in the direction of Steve, wiggling it between him and Diana. “What about them?”

Clark glanced between them all and shrugged, his expression expectant and curious in equal measure. “Didn’t get any memo with my invitation,” he said, pensively.

Victor didn’t comment and Arthur was too busy tucking into the last of his pancakes to even bother to look up.

Diana checked her watch, before her gaze lifted to Steve’s. He quirked an eyebrow at her but didn’t say anything. It seemed like they were the only two who knew more than nothing.

She propped her elbows on the table and linked her fingers together, resting her chin on them.

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough.”


Bruce was not unaccustomed to his days going to absolute shit more often than not. He had long learned to expect the worst first and hope for better later—that way he would be pleasantly surprised if reality surpassed his expectations.

When he had gotten summoned for an emergency Board meeting at the crack of dawn, he should have known that that was not going to happen today.

He parked his car in the spacious garage beneath the lake house and killed the engine, climbing outside as the wide door closed almost soundlessly behind him.

He was late, and he hated being late even when he knew that the matter could wait a few minutes. He had been the one who had called for the League meeting, after all. It was not like they were going to start without him. 

Bruce checked his watch once more, feeling his jaw clench tautly. Foregoing the elevator, he headed towards the stairs leading to the ground level of the house, taking them two at a time. Maybe if he ran, he could afford to spare a few seconds to pour himself a glass of something to wash away the aftertaste of the damned meeting he had just put behind him and steel himself for the one awaiting for him.

He should be so lucky, shouldn’t he?

There was also a folder of business documents he needed to go through later, to be left in the study, and he could feel the making of a headache pulsing behind his forehead.

“Alfred?” he called out, but there was only silence in response.

He was probably at the manor, with everyone else, Bruce thought as he moved towards the room at the far end of the hallway, his hand reaching up to tug at the knot of his tie. Today, it felt too much like a noose.

He dropped the folder on his desk and even stepped towards the liquor cart sitting in the corner before he noticed Diana standing in front of the glass wall overlooking the lake. It took him another moment to realize that she was not alone. 

When the man turned around, Bruce froze in his spot, the sudden rush of adrenaline making the blood pound in his ears.

Before he had even known her—all of them, actually—he had spent a fair amount of time poring over the files that he had pilfered off of Lex Luthor’s server, studying the videos and grainy photographs and reading barely distinguishable print from scanned newspaper articles to the point where he could recite every line of said files in his sleep.

He didn’t know what it said about him that he recognized Steve Trevor in an instant, be it obsession or dedication or outright lunacy, but Bruce decided that he wasn’t overly comfortable with any of the terms.

The man’s hair was a little different, shorter than in the picture that Diana had spent decades hunting down. He was not wearing his army jacket and the heavy overcoat over it, and there was no shotgun in his hand. But his posture was unmistakable, his eyes inquisitive, and his chin held high with a confidence one couldn’t fake, if Bruce’s own experience was any indication.

How was it possible?

Thousands of questions swarmed his mind.

“Bruce,” Diana said, drawing his attention to her. When their eyes met, her expression was sympathetic. He wasn’t sure he liked it, directed at him. “I was wondering if you’d have a moment.”

It didn’t feel like he had much of a choice, Bruce thought.

He cast a quick glance towards the liquor cart, debating that drink for a moment, not certain if this was the conversation he was better off sober for or not. Maybe later.

Instead, he gave Steve Trevor a measured look. The man appeared unbothered by it.

“Of course,” Bruce said.

“Bruce, this is Steve Trevor, the man who brought me to this world during what your people call the Great War. Steve, Bruce Wayne.”

There was a brief moment when Bruce expected her lost pilot to offer him his hand, and the absurdity of the situation struck him as something disturbingly hilarious. He was relieved that the other man remained where he was, only glancing towards Diana for a split second.

“How?” Bruce asked, turning to Diana.

He could have played dumb, but he wouldn’t insult her that way. She knew he was aware of who her companion was, and pretending would only leave them both frustrated with one another.

“Long story,” she said, the non-answer made Bruce bristle on the inside.

“I thought we were past those,” he noted dryly, but she was shaking her head, her eyes hardened and a warning pooling in her gaze.

He could see it now. Of course. The way they stood, seemingly facing him but also turned towards one another ever so slightly. An entire conversation seemingly passing between them each time their eyes met, however briefly.

Bruce knew she and the spy had been lovers in 1918—it wasn’t easy but he had dug up the man’s dossier, back when he had first found the picture. He doubted that Diana knew that, he had never said anything and he suspected she wouldn’t have liked it. Thanks for bringing him back to me, she had written in her message to Bruce, to thank him for locating the photograph. Him, not it. It was not just the photo she had been after, but the memories.

He couldn’t be sure then. She had never spoken of the past even when he’d tried to pry. But she didn’t have to. One would have to be blind and an idiot not to see that she and Steve Trevor clearly were close and intimate right now. Though Bruce wasn’t sure if it rubbed him the wrong way because she had kept it a secret, which she clearly had, or because there was still some deep part of him that was more than a little jealous, even now, years from the time when they had stood even the barest of chances.

That thought irritated him even more.

“It is not relevant right now, Bruce,” she said in that even tone of hers that he found so hard to argue with even when he really, really wanted to.

“Then what is?” he asked, his voice filled with a petulant challenge he hadn’t meant to slip.

He wanted to believe that they were past testing one another, too. And yet…

“I want Steve to be present at the meeting with the League,” she said, choosing not to beat around the bush.

Bruce liked that about her; her honesty and directness that showed respect more than anything else. Not wasting his time, or her own. He liked that she knew he didn’t tolerate dancing around the subject or wasting empty words.

There were many things that he liked about her.

But he didn’t like her request in the slightest.

Yet, he hesitated when the immediate No jumped to his lips.

Almost three years ago, she had made it clear that she wanted to put some distance between herself and the League, to not be tied to it in the way the others were. Bruce had respected that. He couldn’t say he didn’t understand—theirs was not an easy life, and he knew full well how much of herself she had already given to the world. He would rather have contact with her on her terms than not have it at all, but he’d wondered—couldn’t help but wonder—what was the last straw that would have her walking away from them for good. He wasn’t sure he wanted her boyfriend to be it.

The thought unsettled Bruce more than he wanted to let on.

“Those are… confidential, you know that,” he said, all the same. Not a no, but not quite a yes.

Diana folded her arms across her chest.

“Steve was the one who found the same connection that you did, between those cases,” she said without breaking eye contact with Bruce.

Meaning that she thought he deserved to get a piece of the pie, Bruce thought, feeling his nostrils flare up and his jaw clench.

He felt trapped and ambushed, and he didn’t like it. Wasn’t used to it.

If they were alone, he would likely not feel this diplomatic, if he was being honest with himself. He and Diana had gotten into half a dozen of arguments in the past, wills clashing and tempers flying high. He had never felt the need to hold back, and neither had she, to his knowledge. 

Bruce wasn’t sure he wanted to do that in front of a stranger, though. Especially one that she was—

His eyes narrowed, her request making him feel like she had tricked him into agreeing. He wanted to say no, but he wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t simply leave and never come back. He held her gaze without saying anything for a long, tense moment. She never broke eye contact either.

“If it’s something big—” Diana started, sensing his hesitation.

“It is,” Bruce interjected.

She nodded. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

Bruce wondered if all of this would still be happening if he had woken up on the right side of the bed today. God, he wanted so desperately to start over.

“Very well then.” His gaze swivelled towards Steve. “You’re in, Mr. Trevor.”

“Captain,” Steve corrected. “I mean, Steve’s okay.”

Bruce nodded as he turned on his heel, craving that drink like never before. A whole bottle, actually. He made a mental note to catch up on that later.

“What do you think it is?” Diana asked, and he was not surprised that she and her Captain were following him only half a step behind.

He could hold on to that one for a while, Bruce knew. But what was the point?

“Lazarus Pits,” he said over his shoulder.


“A what now?” Barry’s jaw dropped a little once Bruce had finished the initial briefing, outlining his finds—from a file that Steve was closely familiar with to a dozen other cases, some of them new and never heard of.

Sitting beside Diana at the oval table in what passed for a conference room at the Wayne Manor, Steve listened with rapt attention, seeping in every grain and morsel of information, surprised by how much he had missed this.

At some point during the time that it had taken them to reach the Manor, he had slipped into spy mode. And though there were no bombs falling from the sky right now and no war tearing the world apart, this room was not all that different from the War Rooms he had been in before. Where plans had been drafted and strategy discussed.

A hundred years later, it somehow still felt like stepping into a pair of well-worn shoes.

Diana had told him a while ago that for all the advancements, people hadn’t changed that much. At their core. Sometimes, Steve saw it, too. Other times, he couldn’t disagree more. But as his gaze moved from face to face at the table with him, he could see just how right she was.

Bruce paused at the head of the table, clutching the back of the chair as he leaned forward slightly, a frown creasing his forehead.

Steve wasn’t sure what to make of their introduction earlier. The man clearly hadn’t been happy to see him. Moreover, there had been a shadow of recognition that had chased across his face before his mask of polite indifference had slipped back on. He had seen the picture from Veld, Steve knew. But there had been something else there as well. Something that Steve hadn’t yet figured out. That he was allowed to join in had come as a surprise—something that he knew had to do with Diana and the silent moment that had passed between her and Bruce in the study.

Now she was listening closely, along with everyone else, her face pinched with concentration.

She had barely glanced his way in the past half an hour, leaving Steve oddly restless, initially, making him want to reach for her hand under the table, until he’d figured out that she was merely trying to treat him the way she would treat anyone else. In this room. In this situation. That this was not about him and them, but about the mission.

He had allowed his shoulders to relax then.

“Lazarus Pits are natural pools filled with a liquid of unknown chemical composition,” Bruce went on to explain as he passed around the folders that Steve knew contained his own finds printed out, to everyone, as well as whatever Bruce had discovered. “They are assumed to rise from beneath the Earth’s crust. The pools are rumoured to be able to heal the sick and rejuvenate the old. They have also killed those who have stayed in the water for too long.” He paused, as his gaze travelled around the table, lingering for a second or two on Diana. “There have been several Lazarus Pits found all over the globe throughout recorded history, though no one knows how they appear where they do and why.”

“So, you think this is what is happening with those people?” Clark asked, after they had a chance to flip through the provided information.

When Steve turned towards him, he found Superman drumming his fingers thoughtfully against the table, his brows knitted together.

“I have been trying to figure out what else it could be, but…” Bruce rubbed his hand over his chin.

“Chemical waste,” Victor offered with a shrug.

“Government experiments,” Arthur echoed.

Steve frowned a little.

“Zombies,” Barry piped up, index finger held up high.

“The Hills Have Eyes sort of thing,” Victor added, with a nod.

“You might want to broaden the scope of what you watch, Master Stone,” Alfred noted dryly.

“How’d you know it was a movie?” Victor asked, one side of his mouth curling into a smirk.

“They might not be that far off about the toxic waste scenario,” Clark noted, pensively.

Bruce pulled out his chair and lowered into it heavily.

“The symptoms are wrong,” he said, shaking his head. “Besides, the way these cases have popped up all over the world? Too much to be a coincidence.”

“I was not joking about zombies, you know,” Barry said, and shrugged when Arthur glanced his way.

“Why would Amanda Waller have interest in any of this?” Diana asked no one in particular, her voice making the murmur in the room ebb.

“Something she doesn’t want to mop up later?” Clark offered, glancing at her.

Bruce leaned back. “There are dozens of these files on the A.R.G.U.S. server,” he said, after a moment. “Far more than those that have leaked into the media. She has clearly been tracking them.”

“But why conceal it?” Victor echoed Diana’s question. “What’s her gain? It’s not like anyone expects her to do anything with what happened in Peru. Or Indonesia. Or… wherever.”

“Power,” Steve heard himself speak before he even realized he was doing it out loud. And the next moment, seven pairs of eyes swivelled towards him. He hadn’t expected to be heard, or paid attention to. The attention made him sit up straighter and clear his throat. “If those pools can heal people, rejuvenate them—that’s a hell of an incentive to keep an eye on them,” he offered.

“They can also kill or drive people to madness,” Bruce countered. “As we have seen happen.”

“There’s probably plenty of people who would be willing to take that risk,” Clark noted, leaning back in his chair. “Someone dying of a terminal disease, or of old age even.”

“Can they make you immortal?” Barry inquired, genuinely curious.

Steve’s eyes flickered towards him.

“It’s not an exact science,” Bruce said.

“But if they can, or if they can revive the dead, or something of that sort—” Victor let his words hang over the table for a few moments. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d want to keep something that big to herself.”

“Otherwise, you’d have half of the world jumping in that water,” Alfred said, his arms crossed over his chest. “Whatever the consequences.”

“But why now?” Bruce mused. He shook his head.

Steve could see his restlessness, his frustration radiating off of him. One wouldn’t stand at the head of a global international corporation if they weren’t good at being in control of it, and likely, Bruce Wayne was someone who enjoyed being in charge.

Steve wondered if that was what had made Bruce the leader of the group. Was it unanimous? Was it the only way he would have allowed the Justice League to exist? Steve knew Diana didn’t want to be sitting at the head of that table, though he also knew she would have been excellent, if she chose to do it.

He filed those observations away for later.  

“Could be anything,” Arthur offered, serious in a way that Steve found fascinating. The image clashing with the one he had observed during their shared breakfast. “You said it comes from underground,” he added when Bruce turned towards him. “An earthquake, or even an excavation or whatnot could have popped them open. People drill for oil all over the place like maniacs.” He grimaced in distaste.

“Or… Zombie apocalypse,” Barry suggested again. “Wait, were you serious about bringing people back from the dead?” He peered intensely at Bruce. 

Arthur elbowed Victor. “We already did that,” he said in a loud whisper, eyes darting towards Clark. 

“Oh, but Clark is not people,” Barry protested in a loud whisper. 

“So easily distracted,” Alfred muttered under his breath. 

Clark cleared his throat, choosing not to acknowledge them. “Are they?” he pressed, looking at Bruce. “Bringing people back from the dead?” 

Frowning, Bruce nodded. “Yeah, but the window for that is narrow. And you can never know what would come out of it.”

The speedster was shaking his head, but made no comment. Steve could only imagine what horror movie was playing in his head at the suggestion.

“So, what’s the plan?” Victor asked.

“Is there a plan?” Arthur echoed.

Bruce glanced towards Diana. “Some of those people have gone back to normal,” he said carefully.

“We can’t assume they are all dangerous,” she agreed.

“We can follow Waller’s example,” Clark suggested. “Locate those places, keep an eye on them.”

“They are everywhere,” Arthur countered. “If the bat guy is right. How do you suggest we find them?”

“Probably wouldn’t be that hard to single out the affected individuals,” Diana spoke, and though everyone looked at her, her own gaze remained on the polished tabletop, before eventually, she looked up. “Shouldn’t be hard to trace their footsteps back to where it has all started.”

“And then what? Just wait?” Arthur demanded, frowning a little.

The question made Steve’s lips twitch a little.

Hours ago, they were laughing and poking jabs at one another, but now, he could see what they were like in battle—almost. Arthur clearly liked all the action, as did Barry—both appeared to act first and think later, though Steve suspected it was not always the case, based on what he had seen. Victor, on the other hand, was more likely to think a few steps ahead, if Steve could venture a guess.

He couldn’t quite make much of Clark or Bruce yet, but both seemed like the type to hesitate only briefly, although it was hard to imagine either of them rushing into a fight without thinking. Actually, Bruce seemed like someone who really liked to strategize. Which made Steve wonder if any of his assumptions would end up being accurate, at the end of the day.

His eyes flicked briefly towards Diana, his chest swelling with tenderness. He knew what she was like—compassionate, above all else. Always trying to protect the innocent. Hot-headed too, but one could afford that when one was immortal and nearly invincible, even though it had never not frightened him, to see her put herself in danger.

As if sensing his attention, she turned to Steve, a slight smile touching her lips and making his heartbeat kick up a notch. And then the colour rushed up his cheeks when he remembered that Clark had super-hearing and could probably detect that.

Steve tore his gaze away from her, half-certain that Diana knew exactly what he was thinking, if her small smirk was any indication.

“Or, you could just, you know, destroy them?” he suggested, to direct his attention away from her, if nothing else.

“Destroy?” Clark repeated, and once more, everyone turned their eyes to Steve.

Steve wasn’t entirely sure what his role there was meant to be, but it didn’t sound like the craziest idea, all things considered.

He looked at Bruce. “You said those things were dangerous. That they could drive people insane. Why not—blow them up or something?”

“I like him,” Arthur said with a short laugh.

“That way no one would be able to use them for their own gain,” Steve forged on. “Or against someone else,” he added.

He shrugged. It was not, after all, that much different from destroying the gas to stop the war, he thought, absently. Never mind that he had been the one to pay the ultimate price for that, but sitting around and doing nothing—

Well, it didn’t seem like that idea was comfortable with most of them, either.

Barry grinned. “This is going to be so much fun.”


After the meeting was over, Diana found herself at the lake house. 

Alone. 

It had taken a while for the information to settle and the onslaught of questions to dry up. They still had no specific plans in place, but they had come up with plenty of ideas to choose from and she considered that a good start. Yet, after all the thrill and commotion of the afternoon, she welcomed the silence around her now. 

It was either Arthur, or Barry, or both of them, who had dragged Steve away at some point—to show him a pool table or the stereo system that was nearly as impressive as the one in the lake house, or maybe Bruce’s collection of cars. She wasn’t completely sure. Their eyes had met briefly, Steve’s gaze full of a silent plea for her to come and rescue him, but Diana chose to pretend not to notice. It would do him good to expand the circle of his acquaintances, she thought, amused.

It surprised her—but also not really, perhaps—how much she wanted them all to like each other. The way she had loved Steve’s friends, she thought. It mattered, even if she couldn’t quite define why, not even to herself.

The house was empty and still. Diana wandered around for a bit, hoping she would find Alfred and maybe convince him to have a cup of tea with her—he had never rejected her offer before, and she could admit that she missed his company. But he was not in the kitchen or the lounge, and the study where she and Steve had spoken with Bruce earlier was empty as well. If he had retired to his room, she didn’t want to bother him. Or maybe he was at the Manor still. It was sometimes hard to keep track of everyone’s comings and goings when they all gathered together, the level of noise and commotion suddenly rising tenfold.

In the end, she headed back to the kitchen and put the kettle on—the old-fashioned kind, not an electric one. Bruce’s butler despised those for some reason, which she found oddly endearing. While it boiled, she found a cup and dug into Alfred’s extensive collection of teas, smiling to herself as she sorted through boxes and packages.

As she waited for her tea to steep, her gaze wandered behind the glass wall and to the half-moon shape of the lakeshore, following the edge as it bent towards the deck that jutted into the water. She had always found this place to be so tranquil. So unlike Bruce… and his life. But she was happy for him, that he had made this place his home. Even when you belonged to a world, home was not a given, she knew.

She picked up her cup and took a sip.

She had yet to figure out what to make of the information unveiled by Bruce. She had heard of the Lazarus Pits before and was curious how Bruce had learned about them and their nature. She shared his concern about them, and Waller’s involvement. That woman always had an agenda. One way or another, none of this was good news.

“You couldn’t even give me a heads-up?” the voice came from behind her.

Diana turned around as Bruce entered the kitchen, heading towards the coffee pot. At least it was not alcohol, she noted, but wisely chose not to comment on it.

“It was not meant to be a trap,” she said as she sipped her tea.

He grabbed a mug from the cupboard and emptied half of the pot into it. Black, no sugar. She watched him take a generous gulp.

“Felt like it,” he said when he looked up, their eyes meeting.

He was hurt, Diana realized, the guilt of it flaring up in her chest. It also surprised her that he truly seemed to not know about Steve—part of her had been convinced for a long time that he had continued to keep an eye on her even after she had asked him to stop.

The realization made her bow her head against the shame of it.

When had she stopped thinking about the good in people first? The thought left an unpleasant aftertaste in her mouth.

“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her gaze, her voice sincere. “I didn’t mean it.”

Bruce pressed his lips together and stared into his mug.

“Is it really him?” he asked. “Your pilot from a hundred years ago?”

“Yes,” Diana said simply.

He looked up. “How do you know?”

How could she not? There was nothing about Steve she wouldn’t recognize even ten thousand years from now, her own doubts that had plagued her mind in the early days after his return now felt ludicrous, absurd.

“It’s him,” Diana repeated, firmly, her voice allowing no room for argument.

“How long?” Bruce fired back immediately, eyes narrowing.

It made her own frustration spark to life in an instant. They were teammates, partners. She wanted to believe that they were friends, too, but none of that gave him the right to make any demands or entitled him to the details of her personal life. To know anything outside of her commitment to the Justice League.

“Two years,” she said, her tone taking on an edge that, in the past, had been a clear warning to back off.

Bruce stared at her for a long moment and then ran his hand down his face, a frustrated sigh stuttering out of his chest.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t,” she said, sharply.

She couldn’t bear being hurtful, but there were lines she would never allow him to cross.

“The League—” Bruce started.

“Do you truly think so low of me that you think I would intentionally endanger the League?” Diana cut him off.

“Not intentionally,” he hedged and huffed out an annoyed breath. She watched him run his hand down his face again. “But you’re clearly—”

“Careful, Bruce,” she warned.

“Why hide him then? And for so long…”

Because Steve was hers, and hers only, Diana thought. Because she had wanted to protect what she and Steve had from just this—from having her personal life be dissected and analyzed under a microscope. Because part of her feared that someone would find out about Steve and how much she cared for him and try to use it against her, or worse yet—try to hurt him to hurt her.

Bringing him into the spotlight the way she was—it was making her heart beat faster and her mouth go dry. More than anything, she feared that she might not be able to protect him again. She would have been happy to keep him tucked away, safe and hers, forever. If she only could.

The League was not the threat, of course. But associating with them would inevitably put Steve on A.R.G.U.S. and Waller’s radar, and she could barely stand the thought of it. Not even for a good cause.

And yet…

She didn’t say anything, merely holding Bruce’s gaze.

Those were her reasons, but that they existed didn’t mean that she was obligated to bare her heart to him. That they were a team didn’t mean that she owed him anything beyond that. Certainly not the deepest things that she held closer than anything.

He pressed his lips together, a storm brewing behind his eyes.

“Why now?” he asked, quietly, his voice full of carefully controlled anger that made her bristle back.

“Steve was the one who found those cases, made the connection between them. He deserves at least to know how it all resolves.” She paused and set her cup down, folding her arms across her chest. “His dossier is impeccable, Bruce. He willingly sacrificed his own life to save the world, when we’d first met.”

“And you are sleeping with him,” Bruce sneered.

Diana gritted her teeth, her gaze heavy and full of warning, making him break eye contact as she continued to face him squarely.

“So, he’s been in on everything all this time?” Bruce pressed on. “Every mission, every—”

“No,” she stopped him. “Some things but not everything.”

“How much?”

“How much does Selina know?” Diana fired back.

Her words caught him off guard, she could see that in the shadow that chased across his features.

“It’s not the same.”

“Why?” Diana demanded.

“She was around before—”

“Steve has been around since before you were born, Bruce,” she interjected. “I’ve known him since before your parents walked the Earth, so if you are going to—”

He glowered at her. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what?” she pressed as she lifted her chin. “What are you saying?”

“If I’d brought a stranger into the team—”

“I would have given you the benefit of the doubt. You can’t even extend that courtesy to me?”

His jaw clenched. 

Diana wished she felt as vindicated as she wanted to. Instead, all there was, was disappointment. “We were all strangers once. Not that long ago, must I add.”

“And then you left—”

“I didn’t leave…”

“You needed space ,” Bruce stopped her.

“Have I not come when you’ve needed me?” Diana demanded. “Have I not been there to support you and the League?”

At least, he had the decency to look abashed. She might not have been around as much, she might not have been as present as he had imagined she would be when he had first formed the Justice League, but she had kept every promise she had ever made and stayed true to them.

“Why hide him then?” Bruce asked again, his voice softening.

She should have warned him, Diana knew. He was not entirely unreasonable with his frustration. He looked tired, too. Wrung out, even. She wanted to ask about that, and about last night when he had been out on patrol. About the dark circles under his eyes.

She knew he would not be forthcoming if she did, though. That he was expecting her to be when he would never even consider returning the favour was, she could admit, more than a little irksome.

“I wasn’t hiding him,” she said, shaking her head. “Had you not called off the PIs you’d used to find us all, you’d have found out about him in the first week of his return.” She let out a breath, her voice dropping. “I suppose I must thank you for that. For keeping your word and not invading my privacy, like I asked.”

She could see in Bruce’s face that he wished he had.

“How?” he repeated, the same question that had been the first thing to fall from his lips in his study, hours earlier.

The question felt just as exhausted as he looked, all of a sudden.

“Does it matter?”

He clenched his jaw.

She held her ground, holding his gaze, her shoulders squared against his frustration, and maybe even anger. It made her own blood boil.

“It would, if someone decided to dig into it,” he pointed out.

“I won’t let anyone touch him,” Diana countered.

“They might not ask,” Bruce said, under his breath.

She chose to ignore it, pressing her lips together for a long moment.

“He is brilliant,” she said, eventually. “If you trust me at all, trust me about this—I would not let anyone meddle with the League business if I didn’t think they would be helpful, least of all for personal reasons.”

Bruce seemed to not have heard her.

“In the dozen times that you and I have spoken in the past two years, you couldn’t have—” he started.

“Do not mistake my loyalty for complacency, Bruce,” Diana stopped him, her voice growing dangerous. “I would not let you interfere with my personal life any more than I’d let anyone else do it. Or Steve’s.”

“If anyone finds out—”

“I don’t care about anyone.”

He glared at her. “Maybe you should.”

“Is this about what happened between us?” she asked, coldly. “Because if you…”

He raised his hand, stopping her. “Don’t go there.”

“Maybe we should. Maybe we should have gone there years ago.”

He chuckled, bitterly. “When? That morning when I woke up without even a trace of you in the house, my calls going to voicemails for a solid week afterwards? Or over the year that followed when you could barely look me in the eye?”

“It should not have happened at all,” Diana said, shaking her head as she rubbed her forehead.

There was something that flashed behind his eyes that made her wince inwardly. Made her wish they had indeed had this conversation earlier. Made her wish she had leaned away from the kiss that had ended up with them in the same bed, in the first place.

“So what makes you think I’m still carrying a torch for you?” he inquired, almost snidely. “It was one night, Diana. Besides—”

He cut off suddenly, his gaze moving over her shoulder and towards the kitchen doorway, making an invisible cold hand clench around Diana’s stomach.

She turned around and felt her heart sink.

“Steve.”

Notes:

Okay, so... drama. Look, it needed to happen. Both Bruce and Diana AND Steve and Diana needed to talk about that thing. You know, so they could move on. Anyway, the next chapter is quite exciting for a lot of reasons and I think you're going to love it :))

My apologies if I'm not coherent, I'm having a cold or something. I hope it's just a cold and not the other co-thing. Please send some good vibes :) And please take care of yourselves!

See you soon!

As always, comments are much appreciated :) I will love you forever!

Chapter 19

Notes:

Hey guys, thank you so much for your well-wishes. I'm feeling better. Whatever it was, it was not fun. Please take care and stay safe!

The previous chapter had a pretty evil cliffhanger (because I'm fun like that), so this one will be dedicated to resolving that issue. Lost of emotional Steve and Diana content - I know you love that sort of thing :) This chapter is one of my favourite in the whole story and I hope you'll enjoy it as well.

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

Chapter Text

Diana closed her eyes and breathed in deeply as she searched for a quiet, peaceful place inside of her, the light breeze fresh on her face. Before her, the lake was stretching all the way to the dark wall of trees on the other side of it, its waters still.

The deck that wrapped around the lake house and jutted into the lake was quiet, the water before her still. The sight of it calmed her for reasons she couldn’t quite explain even to herself. Perhaps, there was something about knowing that the stillness was misleading. That it didn’t take away from the depth or ferocity of what lay below. 

Or maybe, just maybe, she liked it because there was nothing of interest about it for anyone else, and so it was a safe place for her to find some peace of mind, when she needed it most.

But there was no peace to be found now. Her heart was beating in stuttering lurches and her mind was in complete disarray.

Diana exhaled slowly, and opened her eyes, her gaze trained towards the pale stripe of light behind the clouds, the only sign of the setting sun, minutes before it would sink behind the trees.

Her chest constricted with the longing she couldn’t name, a shiver travelling down her body.

Unbidden, her mind circled back to what had happened earlier. To Steve’s startled face and Bruce’s hasty excuse as he brushed past the two of them. And then the heavy silence left behind, so enormous it seemed to have sucked all air out of the room.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Steve had said, quietly. “I was looking for Alfred, and…”

He hadn’t said anything else, and he hadn’t needed to. Diana had seen it all on his face—the hurt and confusion and incomprehension, resonating with a painful tug in her own gut. A wild spark of hope had turned to ashes the second their eyes met. He had heard it all. 

She had opened her mouth to explain, to answer any questions he might have had, but that was when Alfred had made an appearance, as though summoned by the sound of his name. He was a lifeline that Steve had grabbed onto, walking away with the older man and leaving Diana behind before she could have so much as said a word.

She had wondered over the course of the past two years if she should have mentioned something, about her and Bruce and the one night that they had never spoken about to Steve. But each time, there had been something holding it back. Be it the fact that she and Bruce had never talked about it and so his stance on what had happened was unclear to her, or that it had never meant to be anything but what it was—an odd bout of tension, resolved.

Diana had never thought there ever could be anything than just that between them. He lived in Gotham. She lived in Paris. He never struck her as someone interested in something that complicated. She certainly hadn’t been interested in taking their relationship anywhere else. Bruce had been right when he had said she’d been avoiding him, afterwards. At the time, Diana had been convinced she was doing them both a favour, allowing the dust to settle so they could go back to working together like before.

Maybe she had been wrong to do that.

The wind picked up, tugging a little at her hair and snaking through the thin fabric of her blouse, sending her mind veering in a different direction.

Steve had asked her about her past relationships, a few of them at least. And Diana had answered truthfully and openly, the way he deserved. She hadn’t even considered this particular incident as something worth mentioning, but looking at it now, she could see why Steve might feel hurt by her oversight. It was not about Bruce, she knew, or the fact that something had happened between the two of them long before Steve had returned, but about him walking into it blind.

She couldn’t stand the thought of having hurt him, however inadvertently. Couldn’t stand thinking of the look on his face when their eyes had met.

She needed to find him, speak with him. He had left the lake house though, she had already checked. As soon as she had been able to move, she had gone looking only to discover Alfred in the study, sorting through a pile of documents. He had nothing to offer her but a shrug and, “Perhaps, the Manor?”

Diana had never deemed herself a coward, yet here she was, stalling under the guise of giving Steve time when in reality it was she who couldn’t seem to find any solid ground beneath her.

The fear stirred in her belly, the familiar pang of concern over how precarious their life had been, all this time.

Her phone let out a chime, oddly loud in the stillness of the early evening, nearly giving Diana a start.

Her heart lurched, slamming against the inside of her ribs.

Steve, she thought immediately as she reached for her phone, pulling it out of the back pocket of her pants.

You have a BOYFRIEND???? the message read, with four exclamation marks added for good measure.

Lois.

Diana’s lips twitched at the sight of it on a will of their own, the excitement of it making something inside of her settle, somewhat.

Well, perhaps this was no surprise, she decided. Now that the cat was out of the bag. 

Been meaning to mention that, she typed, unable to help herself. She had been meaning to bring it up, after all. Her heart twisted with a stab of guilt. She had been meaning to bring it for a while.

Three dots appeared beneath Diana’s message as Lois started typing again, an array of questions, no doubt.

A door leading onto the deck behind her slid open with a quiet swoosh, making Diana turn around. She spotted Clark who paused at the threshold. Diana smiled, enough of an invitation for him to step towards her.

“What are you doing here?” she asked as he paused a couple of feet away from her and slid his hands into the pockets of his pants.

Clark’s eyes moved past her and over the lake, taking in the tranquillity of it all, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly against the breeze. After a moment, he looked at her.

“Was looking for Alfred actually,” he said. 

“You should check the Batcave,” she offered.

He tilted his head, studying her closely, his eyes bright and curious, and so very keen.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice light but his gaze serious.

The phone in Diana’s hand chimed once more, and she was helpless against a small laugh, knowing who it was before she even checked.

“Lois,” she said by way of an explanation when Clark raised an eyebrow, confused by her reaction. “She has questions.”

At that, he winced a little, the colour rising up his cheeks.

“I suppose she might,” he offered diplomatically.

Diana shook her head. “That’s alright. It was a lot to ask of you, to not say anything all this time.”

His expression softened immediately. “It was not,” he said decisively. “It’s your life, Di. Only you can decide how much of it you want to be out in the open.”

But was it fair to not let them in sooner, she wondered.

“He is interesting,” Clark went on. “Steve, he is… It takes guts to just march into a meeting with us and take it in stride. And to not waver. It’s not something a lot of people can just do.”

His words made her heart clench with tenderness.

“I guess Steve has had some experience with that, before,” she offered, smiling a little. “And, well, audacity was never something he lacked.”

Clark chuckled. “Yeah, well… How else do you get to date Wonder Woman?” he noted, and Diana laughed, against herself.

“To be fair, we’re equally matched,” she acknowledged, and Clark’s eyebrows shot up, but a question never came. “Bruce is not very happy I sprung it on him,” she admitted, her smile dimming.

For a moment, she considered telling Clark. All of it, or as much of it as they could discuss in the next few minutes. He’d never known, she was certain. And he was the one person she trusted to listen without judgement. Well, Lois too, perhaps, but Lois was not there, and this was decidedly not a phone conversation, at any rate.

And then Diana caught herself thinking that she was doing it again, trying to find a way to avoid speaking to the one person she needed to speak to, the thought making her wince inwardly in shame. Once, audacity had been something she didn’t lack, either.

“Bruce will get over it,” Clark said in the meantime, with the evenness of someone who believed his own words. “You okay?” he asked, softer. “You seem…” he trailed off with a slight shake of his head.

Lost, Diana mentally finished for him. Confused.

“Just needed a breath of fresh air,” she said, a half-truth that felt real enough for her to not feel bad about.

Clark nodded, chuckling under his breath. “It never stops being overwhelming, does it?”

A small smile touched her lips. “I don’t think it is meant to,” she admitted, and he laughed, although Diana wasn’t sure what he meant—the League, the world never running out of trouble to throw at them, or love. Or all of that, in equal measure.

“It’s a good look on you, you know?” he added, after a moment. “During the meeting, when he spoke… I have never seen you quite so—proud, I think.”

It was Diana’s turn to raise an eyebrow at him. And there she was, hoping she had breezed through it all with enough of a poker face to keep her personal feelings out of it.

She was not going to argue with him, though. Was never going to deny her feelings, or hide them. Not anymore.

“I should have brought him over sooner,” she said, though she didn’t expect Clark to comment. And he didn’t. “What did you think of it all?” she asked, sobering by the second. “The Lazarus Pits, and everything else that Bruce said.”

Clark’s expression grew serious in an instant. He rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing ever so slightly. “I think Steve is onto something with getting rid of them,” he offered. “That Waller is involved is never good news. I don’t want to think of everything she might do with something that could bring the dead back to life.”

“Potentially,” Diana murmured, repeating Bruce’s choice of word.

Clark nodded. “But do we want to take our chances?”

And that was the real question, Diana knew. She hadn’t had an opportunity to give the meeting a proper thought yet, but what little she knew about the pools screamed trouble. Amanda Waller was not someone who could be trusted even in the best of times, but with something like this, something so powerful, Diana was certain that keeping her away from it was the only way to ensure that nothing bad happened.

Well, nothing worse than what already had.

Clark was right, too. She herself was closely familiar with the lengths that people might go to when they were desperate. Bruce had told them that there was no exact science to the Pits and their nature, nothing proven beyond the few instances of what could only be called miracles. But Diana didn’t doubt for one second that there were millions of people who wouldn’t hesitate if they were given even just a spark of hope. And the consequences of that could be devastating.

She nodded, feeling slightly on the side of hypocrisy for agreeing. There had been a time when she wouldn’t have thought twice either, if only it was her choice—

She pushed the thought aside. The truth was, the pools were dangerous, not only from the standpoint of power but for everyone taking a dip in them, however unintentionally. Steve was right. They needed to be destroyed.

Her gaze met Clark’s. “I don’t see what other choice we have.”

Her phone pinged once more, and the corner of Clark’s mouth twitched.

“She’s persistent,” Diana murmured, fondly.

“To be fair, you two have a lot of ground to cover,” he said, sheepishly, his gaze darting towards her phone.

Diana pressed her lips together around a smile. She suspected that she and Steve were going to be the main gossip for the next year, at least.

Provided there still was her and Steve

The idea nearly made her keel over, the air rushing out of her as though someone had popped her lungs like a balloon.

There hadn’t been a moment in the past two years when she had questioned his feelings, his intentions. There was nothing about his love that felt like it was something that she needed to earn. He gave it willingly and fully and gladly, and even so—Diana had never taken it for granted. Even in the moments when she had feared for his life, it had never once crossed her mind to fear the change of his heart.

After a century of heartache, it felt as though she could breathe again, as though she had finally come up to the surface after being suspended underwater for too long.

She didn’t even know how much she had been bracing herself for more disappointment, day after day in the weeks following his return. And still, it hadn’t come. To this day, she could so vividly remember him standing under the massive glass pyramid, a ghost and a dream and her wildest wish come true, her every prayer answered when she least expected it. And she held on to it.

But, she was the one who had made trust the keystone of their relationship. There was nothing that he could do or say that would have ever made her love him less. There was nothing that she wouldn’t forgive, to be with him. And she knew that it worked both ways, that she could tell her every shameful secret to Steve and face no judgement. She had made sure that it worked that way, that there was always trust between them.

Yet here she was, not being entirely open about something, and suddenly, her entire life felt so precarious she could barely breathe around the fear of it tearing at the seams while she watched, helpless to stop it.

The way she had once before, trapped under the tanker treads as his plane soared into the sky.

The memory resonated painfully deep inside of her, pulling at the threads of memories she didn’t want to relive.

“Di?” Clark’s voice pulled her out of the tangle of her thoughts.

She looked up and offered him a smile that, while weary, was genuine and warm.

“You should go find Alfred,” she said.

There was a moment then when it seemed like he was going to pry for more. But in the end, he simply nodded.

“I guess I should,” he said. His gaze flickered towards her phone. “And you seem like you’ve got your hands full as it is.”

Diana chuckled at that. “You should know, I suppose.”

He let out a small laugh. “It’s good to have you back,” he said, his face softening momentarily.

“It’s good to be back.”

Diana watched Clark head back into the lake house, the door sliding closed silently after him.

She turned back towards the lake and inhaled deeply, still water and pine and wet soil, courtesy of the rain. She glanced down at the phone and then tucked it into the back pocket of her pants, without opening the new messages.

And then she headed towards the Manor.


After his hasty (and rather cowardly) escape from the lake house kitchen, and with his heart pounding somewhere in his throat, Steve had spent the afternoon at the Wayne Manor.

He remembered, vaguely, talking to Barry and running into Arthur and quite possibly exchanging a few words with Victor, but his attention had been scattered and his mind abuzz. If Diana had made an attempt to track him down, he sure as hell hadn’t made it easy for her, moving about that maze of a house as he’d tried to sort through his racing thoughts.

By the time his mind had settled, somewhat, and he had found himself in their room, it was almost dusk, made darker by the clouds that had kept the sun hidden for most of the day. Steve paused at the window, looking at the ominous mass of trees on the other side of the narrow clearing, his heart slamming hard against his ribs over and over again, as he tried to figure out what it was that had disquieted him so.

He knew that there were other people in Diana's life. People she had cared for. People she had stayed with for extended periods of time. He knew it and he was happy about it. He had never wanted loneliness and isolation for her. Had never wanted her to grieve for the rest of her life for someone who was not coming back.

It was not that, he knew.

It was the surprise that Bruce’s words had brought on and the revelation that Steve hadn’t seen coming that had left him feeling like someone had punched him in the chest.

It explained so much, too. The proprietary, almost territorial way the other man would sometimes look at Diana. The way he had visibly bristled at the sight of Steve earlier today, when he had stepped into the study.

What Steve had first mistaken as protectiveness towards the League was not that. Or not entirely, at least. It was, in all probability, something akin to jealousy.

Something that made similar jealousy flare up in the pit of Steve’s own stomach. Knowing that there had been others was one thing, but he had never expected to meet one of Diana’s past lovers. The feeling was making him antsy and restless, and like there was something that he wanted to scratch out from beneath his skin, made worse by the fact that Diana could have told him—had a million and a half chances to do so—but had chosen not to, for reasons that Steve didn’t understand.

He scrubbed a hand down his face and rubbed the corners of his eyes. The day, not even over yet, had already lasted so long he couldn’t help but wonder if time had started running backwards.

The sound of the door opening behind him had Steve dropping his hand and turning around, his heart twisting in his ribcage as he watched Diana pause for a brief moment as though she was surprised to find him there, and then step into the room. She closed the door but didn’t move any further, instead leaning against it. When she lifted her gaze to his, it brought everything inside of him to a standstill.

“You could have told me,” Steve said, quietly.

“I thought you were going to hide from me forever,” she said, a ghost of an uncertain smile touching her lips.

“Why didn’t you?” he pressed on, ignoring her attempt to lighten up the mood.

Her smile faded.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, her voice sincere.

Suddenly, the desire to cross the room and reach for her was almost unbearable.

He didn’t move, watching Diana closely instead.

“Were you together?” he asked, after another moment.

She was shaking her head before he finished. “No. It was—Bruce and I are friends, I want to believe. We are partners, when it comes to the League. I will always care about him, but that one night was… There was nothing to it.”

Only sex, Steve added in his head, wincing inwardly at the mental image that the thought conjured instantly—of Diana in Bruce Wayne’s bed, back arched beneath another man’s hands. A mental image that Steve could have happily lived without. He wondered, absently, if the future allowed scraping memories from one’s mind. He had never asked, but—

It occurred to him then that none of this was about Bruce. Or anyone, really. Not even about Diana not disclosing her complete dating history. Long ago, Steve had decided that none of it mattered. She had chosen him. And he had never once had a reason to question that. So what difference did it make that Bruce was part of her past?

No, he now recognized that it was fear. That the reason he had found himself so unsettled, so thrown by that sharp feeling that seemed to have twined around his heart, tight as a vine,  was because he didn’t want to lose her. Yet he couldn’t help but wonder if he was going to. 

It was that he had never had to measure himself against anyone else before. Steve was not an insecure man, far from it. An insecure man would not have stood naked before a woman he had only met an hour before, calling himself an above-average example of his sex. An insecure man would not have gotten it in his head to try to stop the war—even if he had to do it by himself. An insecure man would not have stolen a plane, or a second one, for that matter.

An insecure man would not have fought to be with a goddess after he had been catapulted a hundred years into the future, despite logic and reason.

But, Diana was still divine. And royalty, at that. And he was only a man. One that didn’t have private jets or giant houses or a butler. Admittedly, she had never expressed any interest in any of those things. And frankly, Steve suspected that their relationship wouldn’t be worth a dime if she was the kind of person who needed a butler.

Yet, it didn’t change the fact that he wanted to give her more. That he wanted to give her everything. And meeting someone who could have, maybe, if only…

He took a breath around the deep-seated feeling blossoming in his chest, to stop his mind from wandering even further down that path.

With the turmoil of the past couple of hours, he hadn’t had a chance to even begin to process everything he had learned at the meeting with the League. And now it was all hitting him like a freight train, leaving him feeling like someone had kicked the ground out from beneath him, suspending him in mid-air.

“He clearly still has feelings for you,” Steve said quietly, focusing on the subject at hand.

Takes one to know one, he thought but chose to keep it to himself.

Diana gazed up at him in surprise, catching him off-guard. Had she really never noticed?

“Is that why you left the League?” Steve forged on before she had a chance to object.

She shook her head. “No. It was like I told you. I felt… safer not getting too close to anyone.”

Steve chose not to point out that everything he had witnessed since last night wasn’t exactly falling under the definition of “keeping distance.” She likely knew that herself.

“Although, I suppose, what happened between me and Bruce added a layer of complexity to the situation,” she admitted after a moment, and he nodded, grateful for her honesty. “But no, it was not because of that.”

There was hesitation in her voice, as though she wasn’t done talking. And so Steve waited, watching her brows pull together slightly as she tried to figure it out for herself.

“I told you everything that mattered, Steve,” she said, her gaze open and earnest, locked with his. “About all of them. I didn’t…” she paused and sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Bruce has been with someone else for a while now. I had truly believed that he had long moved on from what happened between the two of us.”

There was nothing but sincerity in her voice, and if there was anything that Steve knew about her at all, it was that she never said what she didn’t mean. Whether or not Bruce had forgotten about their… something was a different story, but whatever the answer, it didn’t make Diana’s words any less truthful. Steve knew that much.

It was his turn to sigh.

“Well, speaking from experience, I doubt that anyone can easily move on from you,” he noted without malice or self-deprecation.

A faint smile touched Diana’s lips.

“I sense there is a compliment in there somewhere,” she murmured, biting her lip a little.

There had to be more to it, Steve suspected. If he was right about the jealousy issue then Bruce likely hadn’t moved on as far as Diana thought he had. Steve was not unfamiliar with the concept of casual sex and one-night stands, of course. But it felt like there was more to the story than that. Or had been. At least, on Bruce Wayne’s end.

He wanted to ask Diana more questions. Like, whether she had ever been attracted to Bruce, in that way, or if she ever wanted their relationship to be more than just that one night. But looking at her as she watched him from across the room, he realized that none of that mattered. She was there, after all. With him, and Steve knew that she would never have made that choice if it wasn’t what she wanted.

Which, in turn, left him more than a little ashamed of his reaction.

Steve rubbed the back of his neck, feeling his cheeks heat up a little.

“I shouldn’t have left,” he blurted out. “I wasn’t snooping,” he added quickly. “Earlier, when I heard… I really was looking for Alfred because Barry said…” He stopped, deciding that the long and winding explanation was likely irrelevant. “I should have stayed,” he finished.

Diana’s expression softened, her relief at his words nearly palpable. Slowly, she pushed away from the door and crossed the room towards him. Steve reached for her without thinking when she was close enough, his hands curling over her hips. He drew her closer until there was nothing but a breath of air between them.

His pulse stuttered and tripped over itself in his veins, the way it always did without fail when he touched her. He still wondered sometimes if there was ever going to be a time when he wouldn’t have such an acute physical reaction to her. It was not the same, not as insatiable and hungry as it had been in the first months after his return, but there seemed to be intensity of a whole different quality to it now. One that made his blood roar to life in an instant.

Diana’s hand slid up his chest. Her finger skittered over his cheek, along his jaw as her other curled over the back of his neck.

He bowed his head closer to hers. He breathed her in, the suddenness of the comfort that it brought almost too much to bear.

He thought of the doubt pooling in her eyes, only minutes ago, and of the odd, inexplicable vulnerability she had never tried to mask. One that seemed to have mirrored his own. And Steve wondered if she’d thought… if she’d assumed—

His breath hitched a little before the thought even had a chance to fully form. He swallowed, hard, his heart slamming repeatedly against the inside of his breastbone.

“It is you,” Diana murmured, her hand stroking his cheek. “It was always you, Steve. Even in death. It will always be you.”

Steve’s mouth went dry, the air rushing out of his. He lifted his gaze to hers.

“Diana.”

“You’re everything to me.”

He didn’t resist the need to lean closer to her. She smiled when he bumped his nose against hers, his lips chasing hers, making Steve’s heart swell ten times its size and settle somewhere in his stomach. He felt her sigh against his lips before she kissed him back, her mouth soft and yielding, and god, how was it possible to love someone as much as he loved her?

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he took note of the fact that her hands came up to cup over his cheeks. Heat seared through his system, white-hot and needy, so strong he thought it would leave a scorching trail in its wake, his blood ablaze. His earlier bout of mild jealousy suddenly felt like the biggest nuisance.

Diana’s lips parted beneath his, and he deepened the kiss immediately as his hands moved around her waist, roaming over her back, her shoulders. His blood was a wild roar in his ears, and if Steve had a moment to think about it, he would likely be aware of every cell of his body being attuned to her, to needing her.

His fingers dipped beneath the hem of her shirt, tracing the soft skin at the base of her spine. She made a sound in the back of her throat, her hands dropping from his face to curl around fistfuls of his shirt.

He was the one to break the kiss, pulling away to suck in a hungry gulp of air.

“Diana,” he breathed hoarsely.

“I’m yours,” she murmured.

Her eyes, when they met Steve’s, were dark with want, sending another jolt of desire down his spine.

He swallowed, hard, resting his forehead to hers. He inhaled, and then inhaled once more, trying to think of something to say. Something big and meaningful to match her words; her confession that he knew she meant with everything that she was.

I’m yours.

This was not the first time she had said those words. She had whispered them into his skin before, on their first night together in the 21 st century. Countless times afterwards, too. Not only for him to hear, but as a form of reassurance for herself, as well. A tether connecting them.

And though he had heard it before, her quiet whisper made Steve’s head reel, all the same. Something that felt larger than life, somehow.

Absently and without thinking, he lifted his hand to pull her hair band off, a waterfall of black cascading down her shoulders. Her eyes fluttered closed. He sifted his fingers through it, feeling Diana sigh, her breath warm against his collar bone. Steve leaned closer to her, lips skating over her temple as he threaded his fingers through her hair once more

He could live for thousands of years, and speak hundreds of languages, and he doubted he would ever find the words to tell her how much she meant to him. How much she would always mean to him.

She turned her head, her lips sliding along his cheek. Steve’s hand curled over her jaw, tilting her face up. He kissed her again, slowly, the aching warmth coiled in the pit of his stomach. He kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, drawing every last breath and every ounce of reason out of her, until he was dazed and drunk on her, and the world around him had a soft, unfocused quality to it.

“Be with me,” Diana whispered against his lips.

When he drew just far enough away to look at her, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glazed over.

He swallowed, hard.

“Please,” she breathed.

His fingers slid back under the hem of her shirt, sliding it up and over her head. He let go of it, letting it fall to the floor. She moved closer to him, arms winding around his neck, and he was helpless against the urge to trace the length of her spine, from her waist to her shoulder blades and up to the base of her neck, feeling her arc into him.

“Do you have to… do we need to do the—the meetings stuff again tonight?” he asked, trying to get the question out before he lost all control.

Diana smiled. “No.”

He dipped his head and pressed a hot kiss to her throat. “Good.”


Diana's first impression of Bruce was that there was little he did without the intention to impress. And years later, that sentiment still held true.

There were the state of the art cars parked in his garage. Ones that earned him envy from men and admiration from women. He drank the best scotch, ate the best food money could buy and owned what could only be described as a castle. His suits were perfectly tailored to fit him like a second skin. When the League needed upgrades to their suits, or in their tech—he spared no expense.

A lot of the time, he did those things without realizing he was doing it. For a man used to putting on the show, it had long ago become second nature.

Sometimes, Diana found it amusing. His collection of high-tech gadgets had her thinking of Bruce as a little boy who had never had a chance to grow up. Other times, it vexed her, that need to dig through all the layers of proverbial armour and that “smoke and mirrors show” to the man he actually was. Someone, she suspected, he didn’t always know how to be.

On occasion, though, she was more than a little appreciative of his extravagances and grand gestures. For instance, she couldn’t help being grateful for whatever had possessed him to put full-on jacuzzi bathtubs in every bathroom of the Wayne Manor, even though, reasonably, it was neither necessary, nor practical.

She was particularly appreciative while sitting in one now, her back against the frame of the bathtub with Steve settled comfortably between her parted knees, his back resting against her chest. Definitely appreciative.

Diana picked up the washcloth and dipped it in the water. She squeezed some soap onto it and lathered it into a foam with her fingers. She traced it over Steve’s shoulder, along his arm and back towards his shoulder blades.

Absently, she leaned forward to move her lips over his neck, smiling a little at the slight intake of his breath.

He didn’t say anything for a while, and Diana didn’t feel the need to break the silence, either, content to be close to him, feel the warmth of his skin beneath his hands. Her own body felt loose, relaxed. Alive with the memory of another kind of nearness from not long ago, when she was pressed beneath him, his lips on her neck and his voice low in her ear.

She smoothed the washcloth over Steve’s chest, leaving a trail of suds behind.

Unbidden, her mind circled back to the past several hours and the tight feeling of dread when she had stepped into their room, half expecting to find it empty. Or worse yet—to find Steve wishing to leave, unable to forgive her lie.

The thought felt almost absurd now, after everything they had done in the past couple of hours. After everything they had said to one another. But that was not to say that there hadn’t been a moment when everything between them, the last two years and all the words and memories and tenderness, hadn’t felt precarious and fragile. Something that had made Diana fiercely want to hold onto it with all her might.

She had called him a liar and a murderer once, and though she hadn’t meant to, Steve had not been wrong to attribute those words to himself. He would not have been wrong to say the same thing to her now. She had lied more times than she could count. Even when she’d had good intentions, it had still made her feel sick. And she had killed, too, though always as a last resort.

Yet, looking back at their time together, at everything they had done to make their relationship work, to let each other in despite heartache and ghosts haunting their souls, she was suddenly ashamed of her fear that he might have given up on them so easily. She had been wrong not to tell him about Bruce, but would she have walked away from him—from them —over something similar? The mere thought was ludicrous.

She should never have doubted him.

It was not about taking each other for granted, Diana knew. She would never do that. No, it was about devotion and gratitude and knowing the worth of each moment they got to have together.

Eventually, Diana set the washcloth on the lip of the bathtub. Her palms slid along Steve’s arms as she leaned closer to him and said his name.

He snapped to attention. “Hm?”

She kissed the spot beneath his ear. “Are you alright?” she asked quietly.

“Yes,” Steve said immediately. Diana felt him pause, before he twisted his neck to look at her, as best he could without pulling away from her. “Are we?”

It was her turn to pause in surprise, caught off guard by his question.

He was looking at her, eyes bright and gaze open and earnest. But there was a touch of worry, too, which left Diana at a loss. The entire time that she had been agonizing over his reaction, it had never once crossed her mind that he’d have to have his own concerns.

The thought made her heart twist.

“Yes,” she said. “Steve, yes. Of course.” She lifted her hand to thread her fingers through his hair, her chest tight with more emotion than it seemingly could contain. “Of course, we are.”

She didn’t fight the impulse to lean down and kiss him, her lips lingering on his for a long moment. It was soft and sweet, and it made her pulse trip over itself all the same.

“I love you,” she murmured against his lips. “I will always love you. Only you.”

When she drew back, his eyes were dazed. It made her smile. Made her lean forward and brush a kiss to his temple as he settled back against her.

“Today was…” he started after a moment, and faltered. “The pools stuff is insane,” he admitted, and it only occurred to Diana then that they hadn’t had an opportunity to speak of it until now. She knew he had to have questions, opinions. She wanted to hear them all.

“Hardly the craziest thing we’ve dealt with,” she noted, with amusement.

He chuckled a little under his breath.

“Not even close,” he agreed. “And then…” he gestured his hand vaguely at the two of them.

Diana slipped her arms around his torso, moving closer to him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, kissing his shoulder.

“Don’t,” Steve said. “Please don’t say that.” He smoothed his palm over her knee that was sticking out from the water. “I don’t want you to think you have to tell me anything you don’t want to speak of. And I don’t want you to be sorry for—for what happened. With anyone.”

“Steve…”

“I wanted you to be happy,” he said decisively. “You deserved to be happy, Diana. And loved. You deserved to have people in your life who cared about you. I was gone, and… I would never have wanted you to be so caught up in it that you’d forget about yourself. Life is… messy, and cruel, and it’s—it’s chaos, but it can be so wonderful, too. I would never have wanted you to give up on it because of my mistake. You deserve to live.”

She listened to him, to the conviction in his voice, feeling her throat grow thick.

“I saw it all,” she whispered, kissing his shoulder again as she tightened her hold on him.

And she had. The violence and despair, but also so much love, so much light. The lengths that people go to do the right thing, even when the odds are against them. The kindness and compassion. The things that were worth fighting for.

“But you’re back now,” she added.

She felt Steve relax at that, his thumb running in circles over her knee.

“It’s good to be back,” he said. He picked up her hand and lifted it to his mouth, kissing the inside of her wrist. “I never thought I’d have this,” he added, after a moment. Life, Diana thought. “But I’m glad I can have it with you.”

Diana smiled and craned her neck to brush her mouth to the side of his jaw, finding their position to be frustratingly limiting.

“I’m glad I can have it with you, too,” she whispered.

She reached for the washcloth again then. For a while, they lapsed into another bout of comfortable silence. Diana didn’t mind.

The lights were dimmed, only the one lamp above the sink turned on, and with how remote the Manor was, it almost felt as though they were the only two people in the world.

She would not have minded that, either.

It was getting late though. Diana wasn’t sure what time it was. Just like when they had first met, she ate when she was hungry and rested when she was tired. Her work at the Louvre demanded a certain degree of routine, of course, and that had changed her habits some. Yet, aside from that, she had never quite gotten used to caring for the notion of time.

It mattered to Steve, however. He had to be jet-lagged still, and with the previous night not being peaceful for him, he had to be tired. Zeus only knew what tomorrow held for them.

“What are you thinking?” Diana asked, after a while.

“That island we went to, for Christmas,” he responded.

She smoothed her palm over the curve of his shoulder, smiling. “Maldives?”

“Yeah. You remember?”

She did remember it, vividly. The endless stretch of white sand and the water as blue as his eyes, and the two of them making good use of… well, each other.

The memory alone was enough to make desire stir low in her belly.

Idly, her fingers ran along his bicep, tracing the contours of his muscles. “Of course, I do. What about it?”

“We should do it again, sometime,” he said, his head half-turned to her. “It suits you, when you wear one of those… small things.”

“A bikini,” she offered, smiling as she watched his neck grow a little hot.

Which, she thought, was all too endearing, all things considered. That he would still feel shy about telling her he loved her body.

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, that.”

Diana leaned closer to him. “I’d like that,” she murmured.

Steve glanced up at her. “When this is over,” he said.

“When this is over,” she echoed.

They hadn’t settled on a plan yet regarding the Lazarus Pits, but she hoped—wanted to believe—that resolving the issue wouldn’t be a particularly complicated ordeal.

What bothered Diana most was Waller’s involvement. The woman was a wild card. While she wouldn’t have been surprised if the Director of A.R.G.U.S. had kept the Lazarus Pits a secret to use them for her own benefit, what Diana feared more than that was that Waller would go beyond that. She knew that Waller still used the Arkham Asylum residents to do her dirty work for her, and if she tried to revive them so as not to waste a convenient workforce, there was no telling what would come out of that. Unhinged people turned mad by the chemicals in the pools…

Immediately, Diana’s mind jumped to Doomsday, helpfully offering her the memories of the night when Clark had died. It had nothing to do with the Lazarus Pits, but the parallel was unsettling all the same.

She pushed the thought aside.

The Pits could wait a few more hours. Tonight, she didn’t want to think about them, or Waller. She wanted tonight to be about Steve and the two of them, the rest of the world be damned.

An idea struck her then, making her lips curve upwards at the corners. They did need to get some rest, she mused, but…

She smoothed her palm over his shoulder to draw his attention.

“Come with me,” she said, leaning close to his ear. “I want to show you something.”

Steve craned his neck to look at her, one eyebrow quirked suggestively.

“Again? Already?” he inquired, trying very hard not to smile.

Diana rolled her eyes, choosing not to dignify his quip with a response. She ignored the heat that had flared up in her stomach—they would have time for that later—and stood up, stepping out of the tub to Steve’s dismayed, “No, stay.”

With a sigh that came out a tad more dramatic than the situation warranted, he stood up as well. Diana reached for a towel on the rack, and then another one, handing it to him. He dried off and wrapped his towel around his waist. When she turned to him again, she was struck by the memory from his very first night in the 21 st century when he had stood in her bathroom door, clutching the knot of the towel with his hand, and the disquiet inside of her had been so strong that she had feared she might never find a way out of it.

Yet here he was again, standing before her with the droplets of water glistening on his shoulders. And she couldn’t help but feel like an entire lifetime had passed since that moment. Several even. She could barely remember being the person she had been on that night.

She wondered if he felt the same. If the past couple of years had felt like a century to him.

And she still— still —could barely believe that he had come back to her.

“Hey,” Steve breathed, moving towards her as his arm slid around her waist to draw her near.

Diana let him, aware of the warmth of his touch even though the thick towel.

He ducked his head closer to hers and lifted his other hand to tuck a piece of hair that had escaped the loose bun at the nape of her neck behind her ear. She could feel the warmth of him, his chest rising and falling so close to hers, as his eyes moved over her face.

“I love you, too,” he said quietly but with such deep conviction that her heart stumbled, losing a beat or two.

She watched a slight frown appear between his brows, her fingers running idly back and forth along his collar bone. She wondered what he was thinking, and if he was going to share it with her.   

As if reading her mind, he sighed and rested his forehead against hers. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Diana. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to be with you. You know that, right?”

Her chest constricted, leaving her momentarily at a loss for words. “Steve.”

He took her hand, lifting it to his mouth to kiss her fingers that had been running over his skin only moments prior, his eyes never leaving hers. Diana leaned into him, her mouth sliding along his jaw. On impulse, she dipped her head, kissing the water droplets on his skin, not oblivious to the sound of his breath hitching, his hand flexing on the small of her back.

When she turned her head, his lips found hers, without even the slightest hesitation. She sighed against his mouth and kissed him back, tempted more than ever by his only half-joking suggestion only minutes ago.

Diana pulled back, breaking the kiss. She smiled against his lips when Steve huffed in disappointment.

“You sure you don’t want to stay here?” he murmured.

“I will make it worth your while, I promise,” she said, stepping out of his arms before she could change her mind.

“More than…?” he trailed off, his eyes darting pointedly towards their bedroom, one eyebrow arched.

She pressed her lips together.

“You’ll see.”

Notes:

Alrighty, this was a lot of shippy stuff. I really do love complicated relationships so please don't hold it against me. We'll be back to having a plot soon enough, but Steve and Diana deserved some quality time together (before I get mean and evil again, ahem).

It kind of blows my mind a little that this story is technically finished but I've still got something like 3 months of posting left, provided I stick to weekly updates. Surreal feeling. I hope at least my lockdown will be over by then. Please stay safe and I hope you're all doing well, wherever you are :)

As always, comments are welcome, I'd love you forever for them :) Feel free to share your speculations as well, if you have any! And I'll see you next week!

Chapter 20

Notes:

Oh wow, this weekly posting is actually more fun than I expected! Many thanks to everyone who is still following this story, you guys are the best!

I can't believe we're on chapter 20 already. Where did the time go? Also hey, I think I can tell you that there will be 30 chapters + epilogue, in case you were wondering. akajb just finished reading it all and she seemed to like it, so hopefully, you will, too! Lots of angst to come, but you all probably know me well enough to have figured that out.

This chapter is a lot of fun, please enjoy!

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

Chapter Text

After they got dressed, Steve followed Diana out of the room, down the hall and to the ground level of the Manor. He wasn’t sure what time it was—he had left both his watch and his phone back in their bedroom—but it had to be past midnight. The house was quiet, and much like this morning, it felt empty but for the two of them.

Earlier today, Barry had introduced him to a pool table with more fanfare than it probably deserved, and Steve was half-expecting Diana’s surprise to be something along those lines. Maybe a statue or a painting—he knew that she had taken a special liking to a few of those here; original items owned by the Waynes that had survived the fire. That, or maybe a midnight snack. He would not have necessarily minded that. They had, indeed, worked up quite some appetite…

Instead, she led him towards the front door, pulling it open. Steve raised an eyebrow at her, but followed her outside, into the fresh, cool night. One that was darker than anything he had seen in a while. There was an interstate road not that far from the house, an artery leading into Gotham, but the forest swallowed the noise of it, so much so that it would have been easy to believe that there was not a soul alive for miles and miles around.

Diana slipped her hand into his, weaving their fingers together as they started in the general direction of the lake house, if Steve had to venture a guess.

For a while, they walked in companionable silence. The air was fresh on his face, and his body still felt pleasantly loose and yet oddly wired, his senses prickling. But Diana was there, her hand warm in his, and there was nowhere he wouldn’t follow her, he knew.

All in all, what they were doing was not altogether unwelcome.

Eventually, though, his curiosity got the best of him.

“Alright, come on, what’s this all about?” Steve asked.

“Patience, Captain Trevor,” Diana teased, a smile in her voice.

God help him, he wished he could see her more clearly.

Steve chuckled under his breath a little. “Not my strongest suit. You should know that.”

She hummed. “That I do.”

And it probably wasn’t meant to come out like that and to sound quite so provocative. It was an innocent enough response, after all. Yet, because she was who she was, and he was hopelessly and desperately in love with her, Steve’s mind was immediately flooded with the memories of moments when he had not been patient in a not so innocent way.

He felt the blood rush up his face, and Christ, was he ever going to not think about the sex each time he was around her?

He huffed out a breath, willing his mind to focus on something else. Anything else, really. Polar bears, maybe. Or that unfinished game of Candy Crush on his phone. It was not helping that walking beside him, Diana was smirking. And though he couldn’t see much of anything, her face nothing but a pale spot next to him, he was certain she knew exactly what he was thinking.

And, she still hadn’t answered his question.

“You did well today,” Diana said quietly after another moment.

When Steve glanced towards her, she lifted her free hand to smooth her palm over his cheek. Even in the dark, he could feel her eyes on him.

“You mean, hanging out with your super friends?” he clarified.

He could have sworn that her smile brightened at that.

“They can be—” she started.

“A lot?”

“Intense,” she amended. “You handled it well. Not everyone would.”

Steve nodded, more to himself than to her.

She was right, perhaps. These were people who had kept the world from imminent collapse more times than he knew. He hadn’t been nervous, per se, not after seeing them be so human at breakfast today. But there had been a different kind of energy in that room during their meeting, something he couldn’t quite pinpoint. It had left him alert, his senses sharp. Like he had been a part of something big.

And he had been, all things considered.

He was glad that he hadn’t had the time to overthink it while it was happening, too interested and curious about the information being shared.

“They didn’t point any weapons at me. That’s a start. And besides, you know what they say—if you’re nervous about anything, just imagine everyone around you in their underwear,” he noted philosophically.

Beside him, Diana burst out laughing. “Were you imagining everyone in their underwear?” she asked.

He cleared his throat. “Only you,” he admitted, grateful for the cover of darkness. “But… I’m doing that often, anyway.”

Which was true, although again, he suspected that she knew that.

Her hand brushed over his arm before she leaned into him, without breaking her stride, to kiss his shoulder briefly.

“Tell me about that later,” she murmured.

Her words left Steve more than a little heated. He wanted to clarify which part she wanted to know more about—he was pretty sure he had said some things to her earlier that he would likely not say outside of the bedroom. She seemed to have liked it, too.

But before his train of thought got derailed completely, something occurred to him. Something that she had said that had lodged in his brain like a bullet. An observation she was not entirely accurate about.

“I didn’t do anything, though,” he told her. “It was all you, Diana. They are all so drawn to you. You could have brought anyone, and they wouldn’t have hesitated to accept them.”

Which was not merely a platitude, as far as Steve was concerned. The way Victor looked at her or the way Barry listened to her, they were all but hanging on to her every word. In the morning, Steve had caught her having a brief conversation with Clark while they ate and her earlier words about Superman being a dear friend had resonated in the way they carried themselves around one another.

Even the gruff Arthur would go softer around her, his voice quieter and less demanding.

Alfred was a lost cause, no matter how much he tried to keep it to himself. Steve suspected that the older man’s loyalty would always lie with Bruce and the Wayne family but it was also likely that there was little he wouldn’t do for her. All Diana had to do was ask.

Bruce… Well, Bruce’s situation was kind of self-explanatory, after the revelation that afternoon. Steve tried hard not to think about it, or the spark of white-hot jealousy shooting through him each time that particular memory popped up in his head.

Diana had told him that the Justice League was Bruce’s idea. That Bruce had been the one to make the effort to bring them all together. Yet, after everything Steve had seen over the course of the past 24 hours, he was left certain that she was the one keeping them as a team. Even now. Even after she had decided to distance herself from them.

He felt Diana squeeze his fingers.

“Somehow, I doubt that,” she said quietly but with so much certainty that Steve almost believed her.

Almost. He was sure that he was right. Could she really not see it? Was only an observer able to notice Barry’s utter adoration and Clark’s admiration and Victor’s undeniable loyalty? Maybe Bruce had been the mastermind behind it all, but it was her heart and her light and her kindness that had kept them in.

But, before Steve could so much as open his mouth to say just that, the perimeter lights activated by the motion sensor came on, flooding the lawn in front of the lake house with bright light.

Diana headed towards the front door without breaking her stride.

She punched in the access code, and the lock clicked open obediently.

“Should we be here?” Steve asked, his voice dropping to a whisper as she pushed the door open. Part of him expected some booby trap to activate instantly. 

She smiled at him. “Come,” she said, giving his hand a tug, and he followed her inside.

The light was on in the hallway but dimmed for the night. Much like the Manor, the lake house was quiet, save for the soft hum of the fridge coming from the kitchen. Alfred, Steve suspected, was likely asleep. Whether Bruce was also in bed or patrolling the streets of Gotham like he had done the night before, or out on a date, Steve couldn’t tell, but no alarm rang as Diana closed the door behind them and no one appeared to greet or admonish them for their intrusion.

If he was being honest, his curiosity was going through the roof at this point.

When he glanced at Diana, he saw that she was trying very hard not to smile. He swallowed his comment, certain that she was not going to disclose her plan regardless.

She led him down the hallway, past the kitchen and the lounge, both dark and empty, until she stopped before an… elevator, cleverly designed to look like part of the wall.

Steve stopped, his jaw going a little slack at the sight of it as two things occurred to him at once. First – how had he not noticed it before in the three times that he had visited this house? And second – why would a one-storey house need an elevator? Where could it possibly go? Unless…

He frowned.

Meanwhile, Diana pressed a button on the wall. It lit up as wheels and cables came to life inside the shaft. A shaft?

He turned to her, sputtering as he tried to ask about it.

The doors slid open before them, and she stepped into the car, her hand still clasped around his and Steve had no choice but to follow. She pressed another button.

“You are kinda scaring me right now, you know,” Steve muttered under his breath when he felt the elevator start to move downwards.

Diana pressed her lips together, the corners of her eyes crinkling from the smile she was trying to hold back.

“No, I’m not,” she murmured.

His own lips twitched a little and he shook his head.

“No, you’re not.”

The door slid open once more. This time, Steve moved forward without being prompted. They were standing on a grated catwalk-like balcony overlooking a massive, wide room below. He felt his mouth drop open once more as he took in the cavernous space and the staircase leading down, and below them—

His gaze moved over the desktop monitors sitting on several desks pushed against cement walls, glass displays with something he couldn’t quite make out from their current angle, and behind them, a dark, sleek car parked on the lower level, and further ahead…

Steve leaned forward, his hands curling around the metal railing. Was that a plane? Was there an actual plane there?

“What is this place?” he asked, barely audibly, as if scared that the whole thing would go poof before his eyes.

Diana moved to stand beside him. “Bruce’s workshop,” she said.

Steve turned slowly to her. “The Batcave.”

She arched an eyebrow at him, surprised.

“Victor mentioned it,” he explained. “Earlier, when we talked… I thought it was a code for—for something. I don’t know. Some Bat… stuff. Like his bedroom or something. I didn’t think it would be…” he trailed off, gesturing vaguely around.

She smiled, that soft thing that he loved so.

“Bruce doesn’t like when they call it that,” she confessed.

Steve nodded, dumbly, not sure how to even begin to process it all. The whole place had to be at least three storeys deep underground and as large as two airport hangars. How did someone even manage to build it? And the lake…

He looked up, trying to remember the logistics of their movement. They had to be right beneath the lake. Steve did not for the life of him understood the physicality of it all, but—

He looked at Diana.

“Can I, um…?” he started.

She folded her arms across her chest, humour dancing behind her eyes, and jerked her chin towards the staircase.

“Go ahead.”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

On the lower level, Steve allowed his gaze to sweep over the room once more, feeling a spike of adrenaline jolt through his veins at the sheer volume of everything in there. Behind him, he heard Diana’s footsteps on the grated stairs as she followed him down, but he was already moving towards the car—one of those low, sports vehicles that he had seen in races on TV.

It appeared to be painted with some sort of odd black paint, as though it was meant to absorb the light and stay near invisible. Mesmerized, he ran his hand over its roof, and then, following an impulse, he ducked inside, eyes moving over the dashboard and all the controls and buttons and God knew what else. It looked more like what he imagined a spaceship would look like than a car. If he had to guess, it was one of those self-drive types, too.

It smelled of leather and a little of gas, the way cars tended to, but it made him feel, again, like a man out of time, struggling to keep up and yet always somehow a few steps behind.

Steve whistled softly under his breath as he straightened up.

When he turned towards Diana, he found her standing halfway between him and the staircase as she watched him with unmasked amusement, as though she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Which likely wasn’t all that difficult—he probably looked like a kid in a candy store, all excitement and anticipation and that weird energy buzzing right under his skin. Kind of like Barry, Steve thought, right before the speedster would do his super-speed thing and zoom out of sight.

Except he wasn’t Barry. He was just someone who had grown up on a farm and who once couldn’t even begin to dream of life beyond it.

That memory felt like something out of someone else’s life altogether.  

He pushed it aside, not willing to dwell on something that never failed to leave him feeling out of sorts. Instead, he headed towards the jet, his footsteps echoing loudly under the tall, cavernous ceiling.

It was no wonder the League dubbed this place a Batcave, he thought, absently.

The plane was sitting on some kind of elevated platform, secured with metal frames hanging from the ceiling. There was a metal ladder leading up to it. Steve paused beneath it, taking in its heavy, massive form and the gaping hole in its belly—a trapdoor leading inside.

It was nothing like anything he had ever seen, oddly shaped, with huge engines and strange, short wings. He could hardly imagine something like that taking off, let alone flying, but he didn’t doubt that it did. That it was able to defy all logic and reason, just like the people using it did.

Steve took a breath, and then reached for the rungs of the ladder, climbing up to have a closer look.

Mesmerized, he lifted his hand to brush his palm along the cool metal fuselage when he was close enough. The plane hung over him, huge and dark, undoubtedly designed to stay hidden in the night sky.

The first plane he had ever flown was an old, rickety thing that shuddered and jangled beneath him, tipping this way and that with every gust of wind and making Steve wonder if his first flight was also going to be his last. (Though he had been too busy losing his mind over the fact that he was flying to actually care about the prospect of imminent death.)

During the war, the planes he had flown were newer, more solid, more reliable, and still—thinking back, they seemed like toys to him now, something held together by a few wires and a lot of hope and not much else.

This thing right here—

It took Steve’s breath away. He tried to imagine what it could be like to fly inside that plane. And not just to fly in it, but to fly it. To pilot something so monumental.

Slowly, he climbed back down the ladder.

His mind was reeling, thoughts scattered. He stepped back to take the whole jet in once more, wondering for the first time how it got inside this place, or how you got it out. There were no obvious doors that he could see, though after the cleverly disguised elevator, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn about some other concealed passageways.

He spent the next hour poking his nose around, too eager to even care about the passage of time. Every now and then, he exchanged some comments with Diana but for the most part, she left him to his own devices.

There were two motorcycles parked near one of the walls. Custom-made, if Steve had to take a guess. Like everything else, he suspected. There were all sorts of gadgets lying around, and prototypes that Steve wasn’t sure what to make of. A taken apart engine on a workbench—either being fixed or put together. Weapons, too, locked in glass cabinets with magnetic locks and wired with alarms to high heavens.

Steve even spotted some blueprints for something that looked like a military type of jet—a sleek two-seater that made his fingers twitch a little from the sheer hunger of actually seeing it, one day. He wasn’t sure if Bruce was planning on buying it, or building it himself, but whichever it was, the enormity of it was nearly incomprehensible.

The whole place might as well have been a theme park, for someone like him.

It was almost—almost—enough to distract him from something that Barry had mentioned during the meeting earlier today (Steve could hardly believe that meeting had only happened today, it felt like years had passed).  Something about the pools possibly, maybe making people immortal.

Steve had been trying to push the thought aside as best he could for the duration of the afternoon. It was not a sure thing, he knew. And it likely came with a side helping of crazy. But what if—

His gaze darted towards Diana who was studying something on one of the monitors mounted on a wall. Forever with her. Forever loving her and living together and never, ever feeling the dread of looming separation again. Was it worth the risk? What would become of him, of them, if Steve took it?

A dull tug of longing made his stomach twist.

There is nothing I wouldn’t do to be with you, he had said to her not two hours ago. And he had meant it with everything that he was.

Was he insane thinking of it at all? Pools, for god’s sake…

He forced the idea away, and focused for the next few minutes on some high-tech night goggles that were likely more technically advanced than all the technology that had existed in his time, combined.

When he finally made it back to Diana, he found her standing in front of one of the glass cases that Steve could now see contained a suit of some sorts, adorned with words written in yellow paint. Was it Bruce’s old suit, Steve wondered. The sight before him gave him a twinge of inexplicable unease.

“What is this?” he asked Diana who was studying it with a slight frown lodged between her brows.

She glanced at him, her face smoothing out minutely.

“Bruce’s ghosts,” she said quietly.

Her answer caught Steve off-guard. Although why would it? Everyone had something haunting them, even the man who seemingly had everything a person could wish for. The only people at peace with themselves were likely those who were already dead.

He felt Diana thread her fingers through his hair once, twice. When he turned to her, her gaze was searching his face.

“What is it, love?” she asked.

Steve’s pulse stuttered. God help him, he loved when she called him that.

He took a breath and glanced behind them, towards the wide belly of the Batcave.

“They would have loved this, you know,” he said softly. “Charlie, the guys. Sami would get a real kick out of all that stuff.”

She smiled, her fingers scratching absently through the hair near the nape of his neck as her gaze followed his.

“They would have,” she agreed.

Steve chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief.

“There’s a plane here,” he said, incredulously, as though she could have missed that.

Diana’s smile widened. “I’m aware,” she murmured. “I flew in it, too.”

He turned to her slowly, his eyes growing wide.

“Really?”

She nodded. “Really. A few times.”

Steve scrubbed his hand down his face, still trying to wrap his mind around this all. The League—all of them. Wayne Manor rising from the ashes like a Phoenix bird from old legends. The lake house with this massive bunker hidden beneath the water. How deep were they, even?

All this time in the future… He was starting to think he’d gotten used to it already.

And because he had nothing else to say, he said just that.

“I thought I’d stop getting surprised by things by now, you know,” he confessed quietly. “And last night, after meeting Cyborg, I thought I would never see anything more impressive. And then this…” he gestured vaguely in the general direction of the plane and the car and… everything else. He huffed out a breath. “Every time I think I’ve seen it all, something—something entirely insane happens.”

She trailed her fingertips along his jaw. Like in Veld, Steve thought absently. Without thinking, he leaned into her touch, pressing a kiss to the centre of her palm.

“Happens to me, too, you know,” she said, after a moment.

“Yeah?” he echoed, looking up at her. “I mean… you’ve—you’ve lived a little longer than me.”

She laughed at that, a joyous sound that echoed under the high ceiling.

“Are you calling me old?” she asked, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

“No,” Steve said quickly, feeling his face heat up. “No, I mean you’ve had more…”

Experience, he wanted to say, but they had already had that conversation. One that had descended into a rather provocative innuendo, at the time. And more. He trailed off before he had a chance to stick his foot into his mouth, and from the look in Diana’s eyes, he figured she was reliving the exact same memory.

He cleared his throat.

She chose to take pity on him and not take that conversation where she wanted it to go. He could still see though that she was trying hard not to smirk.

“I think that life would be awfully boring if we stopped being surprised by the world,” she said after a moment, her expression turning wistful.

Steve lifted his hand, brushing away a piece of hair that fell across her forehead. His hand lingered near her face as he swept his thumb over her cheek, his eyes roaming over her features.

He had stopped, once. During the war, he had stopped being surprised. He had stopped seeing the world, period. For different reasons, mind you. There was only so much a person could take when they saw all that death, all that despair, All you could do to save yourself from having your humanity torn to shreds was to stop looking.

He knew she had had quite a few moments like that, as well. Had witnessed her first crisis of faith, even. On top of that watchtower when the world had crumbled before her eyes.

They rarely spoke of his war, or of all those that she’d been through. It was easier that way, for the most part. Sometimes late at night, he would share something, or she would. Things that were easier swallowed without the sunlight painting them in all their despicable glory.

But she had never stopped seeing the beauty of the world, not even after witnessing every ugly thing it had to offer. Had never turned her back on it. Not so much because of what she was, Steve knew, but despite everything that life had tossed at her, too. It was what he admired most about her. That she had forged on when others would have long given up.

And because he was suddenly feeling raw on the inside for no reason he could define, he said exactly what he was thinking.

“You’re the best thing that happened to me.”

There was something about his voice, or maybe his eyes, or both, that gave her pause. That made her smile dim a little even though she was trying to hold onto it.

Steve moved closer to her, dropping his gaze until he was focused on her collarbone and the small freckle just beneath it, his heart pounding dully in his chest. His fingers curled over her hips, his thumb running over the jut of her hip bone.

“Steve,” she whispered.

“I mean it, you know,” he said, the words coming out in a whoosh of breath.

He felt her hand curl over the back of his neck. He leaned a little closer to her and inhaled, breathing her in. That lavender soap that she loved so and warmth and something that was just Diana.

“Better than iced coffee?” she murmured, and his gaze snapped up to hers to find a spark of laugh dancing in her eyes.

Steve sputtered for a moment, so visibly thrown, it seemed, that she couldn’t help but laugh.

He groaned. “Dear God…”

“Better than Pop-Tarts?” she pressed on.

He made a move to step away from her. “You’re the worst,” he accused.

Laughing, Diana caught his hand, pulling him closer to her, her hands coming up to rest on either side of her face as her eyes flicked between his.

For a moment, they simply stood there and she watched him, her thumb idly stroking his cheek.

“You’re the best thing that happened to me, too,” she whispered, at last, making everything inside of him melt.

He quirked an eyebrow and opened his mouth.

“Yes, saying it from the height of my old age,” she beat him to it, biting her lip.

It was his turn to laugh.

“Just making sure,” he said.

She tilted her head, brushing her lips to his. It was soft and brief, and like everything that had anything to do with her, it made Steve crave for more.

She drew back and smoothed her palm down his chest, her gaze moving past him and around the Batcave.

“So, was it worth your time?” she asked.

Steve followed her gaze.

“Well, it’s not better than…” his voice dropped a little, “naked you in bed with me. But... it’s a tough call, it really is. And an unfair question, you know.”

Diana rolled her eyes, like he knew she would, and he grinned indulgently, his very soul unfurling in his chest. Heaven help him, he would never figure out what it was that he had done to deserve someone like her.  

“You asked,” he reminded her.

Diana hummed. “Should have known better.”

And then her smile faded.

She stepped away from him and headed towards the work station in the corner and the row of monitors on the wall. Steve followed her. It took him a second to figure out that she was looking at the screen displaying a map of sorts, a dozen red dots blinking there, marking places all over the world. China and South Africa and maybe Germany, if he was not mistaken.

He paused next to Diana.

“Are those…?” he started.

Her arms were folded over her chest, her brows pulled together in a frown.

“Yes,” she said. “Lazarus Pits. Those that have been already located.”

Not all that exist, Steve noted in his mind.

“That… looks like a lot of work,” he said.

It would take quite a bit of time, and quite a bit of effort to find them all and make sure they could never cause harm again.

“Yes, it is,” Diana agreed.

He turned to her, their eyes meeting.

“Well, I guess we better get started.”


As it turned out, getting started wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

Diana awoke to grey light streaming through the window and the patter of rain against the roof. She couldn’t tell what time it was—with the sky so low and so dark, it could have been the middle of the day or dusk even, and no one would be able to tell the difference.

All these years later, and she still took the time to marvel at the intricacies of weather. The first snow was her favourite, but the rain never failed to bring a certain degree of serenity to her as well. In the early days in man’s world, Diana used to wonder if her sisters missed it. The change. The seasons. Those of them that had gotten to see enough of man’s world before their exile from it to know the difference, that is.

She would likely never know.

Steve was fast asleep still, wrapped closely around her body, his chest rising and falling slowly against her shoulder blades and his arm curled around her waist.

For a while, Diana simply lay there, taking note of the warmth of him and the feeling of his breath on the base of her neck. She could feel his heart beating, could hear the soft sound of him breathing—something that she had gotten used to taking comfort in. They hadn’t gone to sleep till almost four in the morning, despite her best intentions to let him rest. A smile crept to her face. It was no wonder that he was out cold, she mused. 

Diana’s fingers moved idly over his forearm, her touch light so as not to disturb him. The contentment that his closeness was bringing was almost overwhelming.  

He responded almost immediately, all the same, tightening his hold on her.

“S’too early,” he mumbled sleepily against her shoulder.

Diana’s smile softened, warmth blooming in her chest.

He had told her before that there was something deeply unfair about how she could simply snap into wakefulness, as though someone flipped a switch. In the past, she had merely laughed when he had made that observation, but there likely was something to that unfairness on a day as gloomy as today, she thought with amusement.

She trailed her fingers along his skin once more as she pondered the possibilities. If they were in Paris, she would gladly throw caution to the wind and simply turn in the circle of his arms, kiss him and see where that could take them. He would not be opposed to that, she was well aware. 

But, this was not Paris and they had work to do. Today, the League was going to meet again so they could discuss everything that had been overlooked yesterday so they could figure out what to do with the Pits. And with Waller. There were missions lying ahead of them, she knew. And more work than she could imagine.

The thought cemented Diana’s resolve.

There was a nagging feeling of concern in the pit of her stomach that she couldn’t quite put her finger on. As though there was something that she wasn’t seeing clearly yet. She couldn’t wait to find out what was causing it.

Behind her, Steve seemed to have drifted off once more, his breathing slow and even. Diana lingered in his embrace for another moment, and then one more, and then, with a sigh, she pulled away from him, sliding out of his grip and onto the floor.

She paused next to the bed, watching him make a sound of protest and roll onto his stomach, pulling her pillow over his head for good measure. A low, indistinguishable grumble came from underneath it. Diana bit her lip, her fingers curling into a fist against the urge to touch him. Zeus help her, they were not going to get anything done if she did.

Her gaze moved over to the bedside table and her phone, a few messages undoubtedly waiting for her attention. With a pang of guilt, she remembered that she had never responded to Lois yesterday. She made a mental note to take care of that as soon as possible. But first, she reached over to pick up Steve’s watch, her fingers stroking the familiar worn leather. There was something entirely endearing about him being so set on wearing it again, instead of any of the modern models he could have chosen from.

Just a little past 9 o’clock, she noted as her thumb swept over the glass face. Hardly the crack of dawn, all things considered. She really needed to get ready.

Diana set the watch back down and turned around, heading towards the bathroom. She turned on the shower and stepped under the sprays of water, wondering as she plucked a bottle of shampoo from the shelf if Steve was going to wake up enough to make an appearance.

Sure enough, the cubicle door opened as she was rinsing her hair, a touch of cool air skating over her back. She stood with her face turned up to the water for another moment, allowing her hands to smooth down her hair.

And then she turned around.

Steve blinked at her blearily, his hair mussed and his features soft with sleep. He stifled a yawn as Diana’s eyes moved over the rivulets of water running down his body and the constellation of freckles on his shoulder, lingering on the old scar beneath his collar bone. For the first time it occurred to her that she probably knew his body better than she knew her own. For reasons she couldn’t explain to herself, she liked that idea.

“Good morning,” she murmured, smiling.

“Morning,” Steve mumbled as he scrunched his nose.

And then he moved towards her, his arms sliding around her as he dropped his forehead on her shoulder. He let out a sigh.

“You’re mean,” he muttered into her skin.

Diana’s arms moved to wrap around her shoulders. She lifted her hand to stroke his hair.

“Go back to bed,” she whispered into his ear.

He shook his head, nuzzling into her neck. For a long moment, he just stood there, holding her as the water ran down their bodies. His hands were moving slowly over her back, and Diana didn’t fight the urge to brush a kiss to his temple.

Eventually, he straightened up and rubbed his eyes, huffing out a breath as he did so.

“No,” he shook his head. “No, you’re awake, and we’re—we’re a team… right?”

Diana smiled, her hand lingering on the curve of his neck.

Things felt different somehow, after yesterday. After Steve had found out the truth about her and Bruce. After those fractured moments when she had feared that they would never be able to mend. It was about more than just the truth, she could see it now. It was about trust and tearing down every last wall still standing between them.

Antiope had told her once that bodies were stronger in places where scars were, where the skin felt thicker than before, after it had healed.

Diana was wondering now if that was how it was with love, too. With relationships between people. You either bled out to death or came out stronger on the other side. She wanted to believe that she and Steve still stood a chance, as long as they kept choosing each other.

Last night, she had lain with her head over his heart and prayed to every god she could think of to never let them make the mistake of making the wrong choice.

“Yes,” she said, trailing her fingers idly over his throat.

“Right, well. You’re awake, and I’m… something.”

Yeah, she could see that.

She pressed her lips together.

“And now you’re laughing at me,” Steve accused her, puckering his face.

A smile sprung across hers, entirely on a will of its own.

She didn’t argue, though. Instead, she leaned towards him and brushed a kiss to his cheek.

“I’m done here, it’s all yours,” she said softly, letting her hand trail along his chest as she stepped around him.

And then she was gone, stepping out of the shower and reaching for a towel to wrap around herself.

Back in the bedroom, she dried off and towelled off her hair. The rain was still falling steadily outside, making the world look out of focus and blurry around the edges. By the time Steve emerged from the shower, looking slightly more aware of the world around him, Diana had already gotten dressed, having pulled on a pair of black pants and a white loose-fitting shirt. Her hair, still slightly damp, was gathered at the base of her neck.

She made a mental note to stop by the kitchen to find some coffee, for his sake, if nothing else, before they went to find everyone else.

Her phone chimed on the nightstand. Without thinking, Diana reached for it, finding a new message from Lois. You can’t ignore me forever, you know.

There was no malice behind it, though. Only curiosity.

Diana scrolled up to read the half a dozen that had arrived since the previous afternoon.

IS IT REALLY HIM?

Oh, Di.

Call me!

Come on, this is just cruel.

I’m going to have Clark tell me EVERYTHING! 

I bet someone there has his picture. 

Diana smiled to herself.

I’m not ignoring you. Busy night, she typed and left it at that.

When she looked up, she found Steve already dressed and eyeing her, intrigued.

“What is it?” he asked, seemingly unable to help it.

She bit her lip around a smile and shook her head, sliding her phone into the back pocket of her pants. That was something they were going to have to deal with later. He was already subject to more scrutiny than he’d ever been under in his life.

Almost immediately, there was another melodic chime, but Diana chose to ignore it for the time being.

“Ready?” she asked as she walked over to him, reaching habitually to straighten the collar of his shirt. She lifted her gaze to his, her head tilted quizzically to the side as she brushed his hair from his forehead. “You could stay, Steve. Have some sleep. I could come get you later, if you’d prefer.”

His lips quirked at the corner. “And have them all think that I get special treatment because Wonder Woman is in love with me?” he countered, chuckling a little.

“You are getting special treatment because Wonder Woman is in love with you,” Diana noted.

She didn’t mean it like that, but his face flushed crimson-red immediately and the way his breath seemed to have rushed out of him at the implication gave her a jolt of thrill, a spark of heat flaring up in her belly.

That was the special treatment that she would rather keep between the two of them.

Years later, and she still had such an acute physical reaction to him. She had assumed it would lessen with time, stop being as intense as it had been in the early days. It never quite ceased to amaze Diana that it never had. Instead, they seemed to have found their rhythm and held on to it. Although she couldn’t help but wonder, at times, if it was all about her attraction towards him and feelings the likes of which she had never had towards anyone else, or if at least some part of it was brought on by the notion that she could never know what moment might be their last one.

She took a breath and pushed that idea aside, not liking it in the slightest. She didn’t want to live in fear, waiting with her every breath for the other shoe to drop.

Instead, she watched a flush blossom Steve’s face, wondering if he knew just how adorable it was. And feeling more than a little pleased that his desire appeared to be just as insatiable as hers, in many ways.

He didn’t say anything at once, and she didn’t either, waiting to see what he was going to do.

After a moment, his features softened. Moving closer to her, he raised his hand to brush away a strand of hair that had fallen across her cheek and tuck it around her ear.

“I’m good to go,” he said. “Unless you’d rather I stayed out of it all.”

The last part came out more as a question, his eyebrow lifting.

It caught Diana by surprise. Her hands slid down to rest on his chest, and Steve covered one of them with his, holding her palm against his heart.

“Steve,” she started.

“This is your world,” he said decisively. “All of this, and I wouldn’t want to…”

She brushed her fingers through his hair, her hand sliding to rest on the back of his neck. He bowed his head closer to her, their foreheads almost touching.

“You’re my world,” she whispered, tilting her head ever so slightly to kiss him softly.

She lingered close to him for a long moment. And then she stepped back and reached for his hand.

Her phone announced the arrival of yet another text just as Diana was pulling the door open.  

“You should probably get that,” Steve said as he followed her into the hallway.

She smirked to herself. “I probably should not.”


It didn’t surprise her in the slightest that coming to an agreement about the Lazarus Pits was not going to happen easily.

Down in the Batcave, plans were offered and rejected, as strategies and ideas were tossed around. Once or twice, Diana had even expected a fight to break out, but somehow, it never had—something that always amazed her. That they could be nearly at each other’s throats one moment and then working peacefully together and even joking around the next.

She held back, for the most part.

The truth was, she agreed with Steve. Not because she was in love with him and was, thus, biased, she wanted to believe. She truly did think that the pools needed to be destroyed, lest anyone else fall prey to their magic, whether by accident or on purpose. Not to mention the drastic consequences of Amanda Waller possibly, maybe, using them for something that Diana didn’t even want to imagine.

Bruce wanted to figure out if there was a pattern to their appearance. Victor was torn. Clark thought that time was critical, and whatever decision they made, they needed to act quickly. Arthur and Barry… Well, Arthur and Barry just wanted to blow something up. No surprise there.

Alfred wisely refrained from weighing in, except to mention that some of the Pits were located within no-extradition zones so maybe they needed to apply at least some caution there.

It was hard to argue with that.

She allowed their voices to fade into the background, a low drone that was nothing more than white noise.

They would settle on a plan, she knew that. They always did, eventually. It was what she loved about them so. For all their differences, for all their occasional disagreements, they always found a way to make it work, in the end.

It was also what had scared her, once. The spirit, the loss of which she knew she would never be able to bear.

Her gaze shifted to Steve. The contrast between him several hours ago and the man standing across the room from her now couldn’t be more striking. Last night, he had been wide-eyed and, perhaps, more fascinated than she had ever seen him. Not even in his early days in the 21 st century. His eyes had been so alive, so alight with unadulterated wonder and curiosity she could barely stand to look at him, for fear of having her heart burst in her chest with joy.

Now, it was as though all the wonders he had discovered in the Batcave earlier had faded into nothing. He was logical and practical, offering strategies and arguing gently when he disagreed with something. He reminded her, in a way, of the Steve she had seen in the war room, standing before his commanding officers and trying to win his case.

He was in a spy mode, and she wondered if he even realized how easily he slipped into it. She had seen it the previous afternoon, too, though not quite to this degree. There was something about his composed voice, the way he never raised it, unlike Arthur, or Barry, that had the rest of them listening to him without even realizing they were doing it. Even Bruce.

It made Diana fiercely, unapologetically proud to the point of a dull ache behind her breast bone. Which made little sense, really. None of this was her doing in any way whatsoever. And yet…

As if sensing her gaze on him, Steve looked up, his gaze sweeping over the Batcave until it landed on her. A corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile, making the tightness in Diana’s chest that she had spent the past hour breathing around ease.

She took a breath, feeling the world zero in on the two of them, the rest of the League falling away. In that instant, her heart found its rhythm again. She could have asked him to stay away from this all, from the Lazarus Pits and Waller and the madness, proverbial and literal, that seemed to be lingering on the outskirts of this situation. She had debated doing that just this morning, while he was in the shower. She knew he would not have argued.

But watching him now, she was glad that she hadn’t, even if the mere idea of putting him in danger, however distant, still made her sick to her stomach.

Diana took a breath and reached for her phone, intending to call her assistant and have Celeste catch her up on the work affairs. There were two new messages from Lois waiting for her.

I’m THIS close to just driving there to meet him.

And then, a couple of minutes later, Damn Perry.

Diana’s lips twitched. It would not have surprised her if Lois had indeed done just that. She really did need to check in with Celeste, but instead, she found Lois’s number and pressed dial.

“I was not ignoring you,” Diana said as soon as Lois picked up. There was a commotion of voices and ringing phones, a persistent background buzz that Diana recognized from previous calls.

“I suppose I can’t blame you, even if you were,” Lois said, a smile and an unmasked implication in her voice. The noise cut off then. She must have found an empty room to escape to, Diana thought. “Is it really him?” Lois asked, after another moment.

“Yes,” Diana said softly.

Two years was supposed to be a long enough time to get accustomed to that idea. Yet, each time Diana thought of it, it still felt like a miracle. Like something that needed to be protected from the world.

“Oh, Diana.” A long pause followed. “What’s he like?”

Bruce had been annoyed by her secrecy, and while part of Diana found it frustrating, she could not blame him. Not entirely, though she preferred not to go into reasons behind it.

And she had feared, perhaps not without reason, that Lois might feel the same. Instead, Lois seemed to be endlessly fascinated.

Diana glanced towards Steve once more. “Kind,” she said without hesitation. She watched Victor chuckle at something Steve said. “Funny. He is loyal. And very driven.”

He was many things, some that she knew she would never be able to put into words no matter how many languages she used. He made her feel alive the way no one else ever had. He made her feel at peace with herself. She loved nothing more than those moments in the early morning, with her mind teetering on the brink between sleep and wakefulness, when he slept by her side. Diana was the one who could flip tanks and crumble concrete to dust with her bare hands, but it was Steve who made her feel safe. Who made her soul feel safe.

She didn’t say any of that, deeming those confessions too personal to share even with a friend.

“He is clever, too,” she said instead. “I showed him Bruce’s toys last night. He seemed quite impressed.”

On the other end of the line, Lois let out a small laugh. “So, he is a guy.”

Diana pressed her lips together.

“Clark liked him,” Lois added, quietly. “I spoke with him last night, and…” A pause. “I would like to meet him.”

“I think you’d like him, too,” Diana said, meaning it.

It felt odd and unfair suddenly that she had spent two years keeping Steve to herself, and while she didn’t regret it in the slightest—there was nothing more she wanted than a thousand years with just him—part of her wished she had told Lois the truth sooner.

“How bad is it?” Lois asked, her voice suddenly serious. “Clark mentioned something about some chemical water. I don’t know if I understood it all.”

Diana’s smile slipped.

“We’ll figure it out,” she responded without saying much of anything.

“Keep me in the loop, okay? I’d like to help if I can.”

“Thank you…”

Behind her, Bruce swore under his breath, making Diana turn around.

He was standing at one of the workstations, his lips pressed into a thin line and his face grim.

Diana’s fingers flexed on her phone.

“I have to go.”


Barry Allen was the fastest man alive. And even though in some instances Clark was faster, Barry didn’t think it really counted because Clark was not really human. Regardless, it was Barry who knew how to run through time. To his knowledge, Clark hadn’t even tried that, so alien or human, there was no competition there, not really.

Barry wished, at least sometimes, that he was the kind of fast who thought fast and acted faster, but the truth was that acting was his thing and thinking often came later (if at all). And that had resulted in quite a few unpleasant ordeals for him in the past. Like that time when he had stopped a “robbery” that was actually not a robbery at all but a guy getting some cash from his girlfriend to buy them snacks.

Barry appreciated the idea of snacks, more than anything, really. But he had not appreciated being yelled at by a very confused woman. And that was just one of those confusing instances.

But all of that had happened before Bruce had come along. Before the Justice League had come to be. And that was the thing about the League — they were all different, and sure they fought sometimes and didn’t always agree on everything, but they somehow managed to balance each other out. Each working like a different part of an organism that did a fine job functioning on its own but that did an absolute stellar job when they worked together to keep the whole body alive.

He had never shared that observation with anyone, and he wasn’t sure if they’d agree with him or laugh at the absurdity of it if he had, but maybe it was better that way. Barry found comfort in that notion, and maybe keeping it to himself was the whole point.

The way he saw it, they had Bruce to do most of the thinking. Bruce and Victor—it was insane how smart Victor was. Something that made Barry so very inexplicably proud—be it the fact that they were the same age, give or take, or that they were both accidents, their gifts unasked for and not entirely wanted.

Diana was the heart of them, that went without question, even though she wasn’t coming over as often as she had in the beginning. There had been a time when Barry was worried that she would leave the League for good to do her own thing, but a few years later, he was glad she was still there. Not as much as before, but Barry wanted to believe that she liked them enough not to walk away. 

Then there was Clark who knew how to keep Bruce’s impulsivity in check and Arthur who was freakishly strong even in the company of an actual alien and a demi-goddess. And holy smokes, he could breathe underwater. Admittedly, there wasn’t much to do underwater, as far as Barry was concerned, but it was still pretty cool.

He wasn’t entirely sure where he fit in the whole equation, but he was good at teamwork. And he loved being accepted for what he was, quirks and all. That he could be himself around them without the fear of being sent to some lab for tests or ostracized for his oddities. 

He didn’t know yet what to make of Steve, in the long run, but the way the guy was looking at Diana was making Barry’s face flush all the way to the tips of his ears. The way he made her smile, too. And Barry loved the way Diana was around Steve, softer around the edges, her voice quieter somehow. It was as though when Steve Trevor was around, she couldn’t see anyone but him.

In all the time that Barry had known her, and granted, a few years wasn’t that all that much for someone who had been living for as long as she had—not that Barry would ever say that to her face—he had never seen her like that. And that definitely wasn’t nothing. He hadn’t quite understood yet how someone who was supposed to be dead for a hundred years was suddenly alive, but Barry’s existence wasn’t exactly natural, either. Or Victor’s, for that matter. So who cared?

And Steve was smart, too. Wickedly smart even. That he had managed to put together something at the same time as Bruce had certainly earned him some cool points. And funny. Yesterday, he was a lot of fun to hang out with even though he had spent half of the time watching the door, probably waiting for Diana to show up.

Now they were talking about getting rid of some natural pools filled with stuff that made people mad, which sounded a little far-fetched, truth be told. But frankly, it was hardly the most unbelievable thing Barry had ever heard or dealt with. Not in the past few years, at least.

Besides, it was hard not to get excited about the prospect of probably, maybe, setting something on fire. Hopefully, they were going to do that from afar, but still.

“We can’t just destroy them,” Bruce said just as Barry zoomed in on the conversation again.

“Why not?” Victor asked, his voice genuinely curious.

Bruce was shaking his head. “These things stayed dormant for 20 years, give or take. And even then, there used to be what, three of them? Four? Now they’re popping up all over the place. There has to be a reason.”

“You think that destroying them won’t solve the problem?” Clark asked.

Bruce hedged. “That’s not what I said.”

“Then let’s just do it,” Arthur shrugged, and Barry scoffed a little under his breath, shoving a handful of chips in his mouth to mask it.

Bruce looked up and gave Aquaman a measured look. One that would have likely made someone else cower down. Arthur only raised his eyebrow.

“We still won’t know why,” Bruce explained patiently.

“Does it matter?” Arthur pressed.

“It will, if it happens again sometime down the road,” Steve noted, speaking for the first time.

Barry watched him cast a look towards Diana where she was standing near the Batmobile, holding her phone at her ear. Probably for work, Barry thought. That was something he had long noticed about her—she really worked a lot, even though he suspected she didn’t really need to. Not from the standpoint of providing for herself. She just seemed to really, really like it.

“But if we wait, more people might die,” Victor reasoned. “Or go on killing sprees.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Barry muttered with a shudder.

He was still not convinced about the whole zombie thing and whether or not it was happening. It would have been an easy idea to dismiss, had he not witnessed some weird stuff over the past few years of his life.

And the thing was, he knew that they had all considered it, too, even if they weren’t saying it out loud.

“So what’s the plan then?” Clark asked, sliding his hands into his pockets.

“I vote for blowing them up,” Arthur was the first to speak. He even raised his arm for emphasis.

“No surprise there,” Bruce commented. 

“How long can we wait?” Victor asked, his gaze sweeping over everyone’s faces.

“Not as long as we think, most likely,” Alfred offered. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “These things tend to escalate fast.”

If Bruce noticed the pointed look his butler gave him, he chose not to acknowledge it.

“Why not do both?” Steve said, after another moment, his face pensive.

Everyone turned to him, and for a second he seemed surprised. Barry smirked a little to himself. He was remembering now that Steve used to be a spy during the war, probably someone used to staying on the down-low rather than being noticed.

Steve cleared his throat.

“We know the location of some of the Pits,” he explained. “But not all of them, right? So why not take care of those and try to figure out what else is going on here while we’re looking for the rest of them. It’s gotta take us some time to—well, eliminate those that we know about anyway.”

There was a long moment of silence (save for the crunching of Barry’s chips as he ate them but there was no helping that, was there?)

In the end, Bruce nodded ever so imperceptibly. It was only then that Barry noticed that he and Steve were trying very hard not to look at one another any more than they absolutely had to. Even now, Bruce was mostly staring past Steve, and it intrigued Barry greatly. Had something happened since the previous afternoon?

Then again, Bruce was not the most communicative person in the world. Even on his best days, he could come off as stand-offish and kind of defensive. Maybe Steve was not a fan of that. That, and Bruce liked being in control—even Barry had long noticed that.

This whole situation had to be driving him nuts, even without Diana’s new beau upending their group balance.

Still, Barry frowned a little, feeling a slight unease coil in his stomach. He was about to open his mouth and just ask, because why not, when Clark spoke.

“That could work actually,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “We’d have to split up anyway, to cover more ground, but it would still take time.”

“And you can’t just go and blow things up in foreign nations,” Steve added, diplomatically, though as a soldier, Barry suspected, he had probably done just that during the war. Then again, maybe he was speaking from experience.  

Arthur guffawed. “Never stopped us before.”

Even Victor smirked at that. “Likely never will.”

The two of them bumped fists as Alfred arched his brows, and looked towards Diana for support.

“I mean, why can’t we, really?” Barry piped up. He balled the empty bag of chips and tossed it into a trash can. “It’s not like they can stop us.”

“And it’s not like those things are located in the middle of Times Square or something,” Victor added.

“’Cause you’d probably want to stay on the down-low if you want to cross multiple borders without being caught,” Steve offered, looking kind of like he was trying not to smile.

It made Barry wonder what exactly it was that spies did, during the war or not. Probably a lot of illegal stuff, he figured. That was why they were supposed to stay quiet about who they were and all that.

He gave Steve a measured look, deciding that he actually liked Diana’s boyfriend a lot, even outside of that whole googly eyes with Diana thing going on.

“Who cares though?” Arthur countered. “We’re not being a secret or anything, you know?”

“Yeah, but you probably wouldn’t want to alert anyone of what’s happening,” Steve explained, his voice light but the grave seriousness behind it evident. “Or make people start asking questions.”

“He’s got a point,” Victor agreed, after a moment, as he rubbed the human side of his face with his hand.

Another thing that Barry decidedly liked about Steve was that he didn’t stare. People often did, when they went on missions, and though Victor often tried to pretend that he didn’t care, that it had stopped bothering him a long time ago, Barry suspected that it wasn’t entirely true. And here was a guy who had been born, like, a gazillion years ago, taking this whole thing in stride like it was no big deal.

Granted, his girlfriend was a demi-goddess but Barry had yet to figure out if Steve was immune to this whole superhero thing because he was with Diana or if Diana had chosen him because he could see past the superhero thing, without fixating on it.

Though before he could decide one way or another, Bruce glanced towards the screens and then muttered an emphatic “Shit” as he moved towards the workstation.

“What is it?” Clark asked, following after him.

Barry glanced toward Victor but Cyborg only shrugged his shoulders.

“The feed is gone,” Bruce said as his fingers moved over the keyboard. However, the map showing the identified pools appeared to be inactive.

“What’s going on?” Diana’s voice made them all turn towards her as she made her way to them across the Batcave.

She paused next to Steve, her hand going briefly to touch the small of his back—something small and innocent that still made Barry want to look away.

He loved Diana more than anything, really. She was pretty and kind and she never made fun of him even when the rest of the League had no qualms with it (even though he didn’t really mind, because he knew they never meant to be actually mean). But seeing her be all touchy-feely with Steve, no matter how awesome he was, made Barry feel like he was watching his parents kiss. Which was to say that it was weird, and a little embarrassing.

Also, it was making him acutely aware of the fact that while he had made some serious progress in that “talking to Iris” thing, they were still light years away from an actual date. Frankly, he was having trouble reading her signals, so really, he didn’t even know if she was interested in the idea of a date, in the first place.

So he turned away and chose to stare at Bruce instead.

At least his girlfriend had little interest in hanging around the Manor, for the most part. She scared Barry a little, if he was being honest with himself. Had to be the whole claws and whip thing.

Bruce clenched his jaw, his brows furrowed in apparent displeasure.

“I was hooked to the A.R.G.U.S.’s feed,” he explained. “And now they cut it off.”

“Did they find out that you were reading it?” Diana inquired.

“I don’t know,” Bruce said without turning to her. “Could be. Or could be that they just scrapped it, deleted the files.”

“How likely is that, though?” Clark asked.

Bruce shook his head. “Not very. They could have moved it elsewhere to keep it more secure, that’s possible. Or,” he glanced towards Diana, “they could have spotted me, yeah. And cut me off.”

“I’m on it,” Victor muttered, half a dozen holograms shooting out of his fingers as he tried to navigate the intranet of A.R.G.U.S. or whatever. Barry liked to think he knew how it worked, but he wasn’t sure he really knew how it worked.

“Would Waller just cut you off?” Diana murmured. “Wouldn’t she want to feed you false information instead? She’s done that before.”

“With an open investigation?” Bruce countered. He gestured towards the screen and the frozen map on it. “I’m not sure even her superiors know about this. There are no active files. If she is keeping secrets, she might not want to draw any attention to it, and herself. Not that I could do anything about that. Or, she might just not be in a mood to play games.”

“Why are we putting up with her interference, again?” Arthur asked, gruffly.

Clark smiled a little. “Because you can’t just threaten the US government and not have them threaten you back.”

Aquaman shrugged. “Worth the try, no?”

“What’s the plan, then?” Diana asked, cutting off their banter.

She looked towards Bruce, who looked towards Clark, who looked towards Steve, who looked towards Diana. And then everyone was staring at Steve.

“What he said,” Barry pointed his finger at the spy.

“Meaning, Captain Trevor suggested running two parallel missions,” Alfred translated to Diana.

Barry grinned.

“And, if we are going to destroy the pools, we might need to do so without leaving any traces behind,” Victor added. “Anyone knows any recipes for biodegradable bombs?”

After a moment, Steve took a breath. He cast a quick look at Diana and winced a little when she raised an eyebrow at him.

Barry watched them in mild fascination. It was as though the two of them were having a conversation without saying a single word.

He shook his head, dismayed. That was some next-level relationship stuff.

And then Steve said, “I might have an idea.” 

Notes:

Alright so... I love this Steve. I love the way he interacts with the League and I love the idea of him putting his skills to use and actually doing stuff. I guess it's one of the reasons why I like the upcoming storyline so much.

I hope you're all staying healthy and safe and taking good care of yourself. I suspect I'll be in a lockdown until the pandemic is over. Fun times.

As always, comments, opinions, speculations are very much appreciated :)

See you next week!

Chapter 21

Notes:

Hey everyone, I hope you're doing well! Thank you for your support and for being so awesome :) I said that before but... I still can't believe we're closer to the end of this story than its beginning. And while there is still quite a bit that I need to share, it is starting to feel a little sad. I do hope you'll have a great time with it though!

Okay, dig in, have fun, I think you'll like this one :)

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

Chapter Text

It took them almost five weeks to bring Steve’s plan to full fruition, namely—to locate every last one of the Lazarus Pits and then make sure that there was no trace left of them.

Five weeks that felt simultaneously like the slowest months of Steve’s life but that had somehow flown by in a heartbeat.

It had reminded him of the war in an odd but not altogether unpleasant way, as weird as it was to admit that. Of all the things that had pushed him to be a spy in the first place. There had been the greater good, of course, looming far ahead of him, but in the more immediate moments—the moments that had stitched his life together, at the time—it had been about the thrill of learning something new and using it to his advantage. Something that had been so different from blindly following orders without having the right to so much as open his mouth no matter how much he disagreed with them.

And while the work was gruelling and not particularly exciting at times, as far as finding and destroying the Lazarus Pits was concerned, Steve didn’t mind.

It wasn’t that he’d done nothing over the past couple of years. He’d gone on missions with Diana, and he had loved every moment of it. There was nothing quite like working with her; both the purpose that it gave him and the jolt of adrenaline that fighting alongside her brought on without fail.

But this was different. Working with the Justice League had triggered a cascade of memories about Chief and Charlie and Sami, about cold nights in the trenches when they couldn’t light a fire for fear of being spotted and sharing stories in a quiet whisper to keep each other from sinking further into despair and of bottles of beer passed around by the campfire when the war felt less like war and more like an adventure. The way Steve had expected it to be when he had first enlisted.

There were no cold nights in muddy trenches here and no campfire—though admittedly snacks and energy drinks were aplenty everywhere on the Wayne property, apparently—but for all intents and purposes, it was not all that different. While Bruce was sort of in charge, he didn’t make final decisions and he didn’t give orders—when he tried to, half the time no one listened so Steve decided that it didn’t really count.

At the end of the day, it was about teamwork and trust and having each other’s backs no matter what. There was something about that that made Steve miss his friends fiercely. But there was gratitude, too—for the experiences that had made him the man he was.

Even though part of him still longed for that campfire and the voices he knew he was never going to hear again.

He stayed behind on the first mission. His shoulder was not in the best shape yet, and every now and then, his ankle would ache dully when the weather changed.

It frustrated Steve to no end. Not his own physical limitations, per se, so much as watching everyone else suit up and get ready to leave, making him feel sulky and irritable. Which seemed to amuse Diana greatly. She didn’t even try to conceal it. And that made Steve feel like a petulant child, which irritated him even more.

“These are long-range comms,” she said to him as she handed him some earbud-type devices. “We’ll be able to stay in touch wherever I am.”

Dressed in her armour, her sword and shield affixed behind her back, she glanced towards where everyone else was ready to pile into the Fox—that was what the plane was called, Steve had learned a few days ago. (He tried very hard not to be entirely consumed with envy over them getting to fly in it while he was supposed to stay back with Alfred and guide them through their missions.)

He studied the small pieces of technology sitting on his palms and shook his head in mild bewilderment. Something designed by Bruce himself or by someone who he had paid some serious money, if Steve had to venture a guess.

“That’s… neat,” he said, at least.

He liked the idea of staying in contact with Diana at all times, that was for sure.

When he lifted his gaze to hers, she was smiling.

“The channel will be open to everyone,” she added quietly.

He quirked an eyebrow at her.

“Nothing personal or provocative then. Got it.”

She cupped her hand over his cheek and leaned forward to brush a soft kiss to his lips.

“Save it for when I’m back,” she whispered.

And then she stepped away from him, heading towards the Fox. She was the last one to climb aboard.

And then Steve had the pleasure of feeling his jaw drop all the way down to the concrete floor as the roof above the Fox opened up, draining the lake water around the concealed door in the ceiling before the massive plane lifted into the air as though it weighed nothing at all.

“Looks impressive the first time, doesn't it?” Alfred commented as he paused next to Steve, sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants.

Steve stared at the wide gaping hole in the ceiling, the water cascading into a draining system so as not to flood the Batcave each time the Fox arrived or departed.

“The first time?” he echoed, dumbly.

Frankly, he could not imagine ever taking that view for granted, no matter how many times he saw it.

“You get used to it,” Alfred noted as if reading his thoughts. And then, “Could I interest you in some tea, Captain Trevor?”

The plan was simple enough—find the Pits they knew about, take water samples to try and figure out what it was about them that had that odd effect on people, and then use carefully crafted explosives to fill them in and make sure no one would come in contact with them again.

There were seven known locations to cover, and the team divided up. Bruce headed off to China and took Barry with him. Arthur and Victor went to Peru. And Diana and Clark left on their own, each going to the Austrian Alps and Namibia, respectively, with additional missions to Norway, Argentina and Pakistan to be taken by those who finished first.

Bruce had been right about A.R.G.U.S., too—the files had been moved to a different server, though when Victor gained access to it, having again worked around their firewall, he couldn’t tell who Waller was trying to hide it from—them, or her own people.

Not that it mattered.

With direct access to the files, it was now up to Steve to track down any other locations by trying to make connections between the new pools and those that had existed in the past.

It was boring, scrupulous work. But, perhaps, it was the tediousness of it that kept him focused over the following days. Even though, in truth, the only thing he wanted was to be out there, by Diana’s side. Or anyone’s, really. To be doing something that didn’t feel quite so… passive.

Which was, oddly enough, not that different from being a spy, too. Which annoyed him even more, if he was being honest with himself. Back in the day, he had spent many a night hanging out at the back of a dingy bar or occasionally even gentlemen’s restrooms, trying to catch snippets of conversations and praying they would be useful and he was not wasting his time in vain.

A cup of coffee appeared by his elbow the afternoon after the League had left. When Steve looked up, he found Alfred standing by his side, his eyes trained on the screen.

“Thought you could use an energy boost, Captain,” the older man said. They had established the day before that, unlike Diana, Steve was not a tea-drinker.

Steve had been trying to get Alfred to start calling him by his first name, but so far he was failing miserably.

On instinct, he opened his mouth to correct the other man once more, but then closed it when he realized the apparent futility of his attempts.

“Thank you,” he said instead, picking up the cup.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

“How do you do it, Alfred?” Steve asked, after a while.

“Coffee?” Alfred quirked an amused brow at him. “Well, you take a pod and feed it into the machine…”

Steve chuckled a little as he sipped his drink.

“No, sitting back and just… waiting,” he said.

Alfred lowered down into a chair in front of another screen and laced his fingers together before him. He studied Steve for a long moment, leaving Steve feeling strangely exposed. It made him wonder how much Alfred actually knew, about everything. About everyone. Did he know about Bruce and Diana? What did he think of it, if he did?

Steve had kind of gathered that no one else suspected anything, but Alfred… Well, the man was nearly impossible to read. And Steve had a feeling that, being someone's confidante, he knew how to keep secrets.

But, there was nothing about him betraying his knowledge, or lack thereof.

“This doesn’t look like nothing to me,” Alfred noted as he picked up his own tea.

He nodded towards a printed-out map with markings that Steve had spent the past several hours adding so he could double-check the information before updating the digital one that was transmitted directly to the Fox and from there, to everyone else.

“Besides, I suppose that when you get to be my age, you start looking for more, ah… energy-efficient ways to change the world.”

Steve smiled at that. “I am older than you are, Alfred.”

“Now you are just boasting about your good looks, Captain Trevor.”

At that, Steve laughed.

“I’m sure Miss Prince would rather have you right there with her, you know,” the older man added thoughtfully.

When Steve turned to him again, he found Alfred looking back towards the screens.

It was an oddly personal observation. One of those that Bruce’s butler didn’t allow himself often. Which made Steve wonder if it had anything to do with Alfred’s apparent affection towards Diana, or the fact that he was not the only one left behind, for once.

Steve couldn’t tell for sure, and for some reason, it felt invasive to ask. So he just nodded.

“Yeah, I’d rather be there with her, too,” he breathed out.

“I believe you have another one,” Alfred said, pointing at the screen where a new alert had come to life—a blinking red dot broadcasting its coordinates to whoever was watching.

Steve turned towards it.

“What do you know about Amanda Waller?” he asked Alfred after he logged in the coordinates and sent them off.

The older man sipped his tea. “That she’s not one to cross paths with, if you can avoid it.”

Beyond that, he didn’t elaborate.

Later that night, Steve dreamed of the day his plane had crashed on Themyscira. Often, when that happened, the only thing he would dream of was opening his eyes on the beach and seeing Diana bent over him, her eyes wide and surprised and her smile the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

But this time, he dreamed about being trapped in his damaged plane, his lungs burning and his heart beating so fast in panic that he feared it might burst in his chest. When he looked up, towards the surface, towards the sun, he saw a figure standing on the broken wing that was floating above him. Someone who could have been Diana, but he couldn’t tell. But this time, instead of diving in and pulling him out of the wreck, the person continued to watch him sink into the turquoise depth until his lungs constricted, desperate for air, and Steve inhaled reflexively—

It was disconcerting to wake up alone in a room in Wayne Manor, the other side of the bed empty, as panic coursed through his bloodstream.

He still dreamed about the war, various parts of it, different experiences. But rarely those dreams felt as vivid as this one had, leaving him with a film of unease coating his skin that he knew he wouldn’t be able to scrub off no matter how hard he tried.

He wished he could speak to Diana at least, and not on the open channel where everyone could hear them. But, Diana was not due to return for at least five more days. And that was if all went well.

In the end, Steve spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, unable to convince himself to close his eyes. 


Steve flew back to Paris without her. She had decided to go directly there, after a pit stop in Vietnam to leave some explosives behind. She was needed at the museum; there were responsibilities that she could only neglect for so long. It was easier for him to travel on his own, but it felt strange anyway. Like something was missing—he had her luggage with him but the person it belonged to was thousands of miles away. It felt unnatural, in a way.

He had spent most of the flight thinking about the pools, and the things that they were about to learn. All of them were supposed to have got water samples from each of the places they visited, and Bruce was going to run diagnostics on them all.

There was something about the whole thing that was bugging Steve. Something was off but, try as he might, he couldn’t figure out what it was that wasn’t adding up. Or was it merely a deep-seated paranoia, a left-over side-effect of the war, that had resurfaced when he had least expected. He had been taught to question every fact and every truth, after all, and he had spent a long time doing just that.

Time and time again, his mind circled back to the conversation that he had had with Diana about the connection between the pools and Cheetah. Unfortunately, Diana had failed to find any connection so far, which left Steve wondering, was he wrong in his assumption? He’d been sure he was right, at the time, but he wasn’t so sure anymore. And the more he thought about it, the less he felt he understood.  

Steve tried very hard not to fixate on Barry’s words and speculations about immortality. The possibility felt so real, so palpable, and he was trying so hard to not get his hopes up before they knew anything for sure.

He didn’t know, after all, if the water analysis would turn out to be useful.

He also didn’t know if, for that matter, that was something that Diana even cared for. Having him forever.

As soon as the thought popped up in his head, he felt ashamed. She had done nothing but show him time and time again how much she cared for him, how much she loved him. Steve knew that all he wanted was to be with her, for centuries to come if that was in the cards for him. So why would he assume she wouldn’t want the same thing? After everything they had been through together, after everything they had experienced.

Yet, that was only half of his concern. He still didn’t know if the pools would work. If they were at fault in everything that was happening with those people, or if they were all merely grasping at straws and looking for a convenient explanation.

Not that it was overly convenient, at that, but that was neither here nor there, really. Steve wanted answers, and he hoped they were going to get them.

When he made it to their apartment, worn out after a long flight and the few tedious days leading up to it, Diana was already there, having beaten him to it, somehow.

As he closed and locked the door behind him, she stepped out of the study, already changed out of her armour, a cup of tea in her hands.

She put it down on the table in the hallway as she moved towards Steve, and he reached for her immediately, gathering her to him. Her hair was still slightly damp from the shower, he noted as he pressed his face to it and inhaled.

“Hi,” he murmured, still holding her close. “How did you get here first?”

She let out a small laugh, something that he felt rather than heard.

“You’re late,” Diana said, her face buried against his throat.

“My flight was delayed by an hour,” he said with a sigh.

She pulled just far enough away to look at him. “Well, there you go,” she said, her fingers skittering down his cheek. When Steve raised an eyebrow, she added, “I was hoping to go get you, but I wouldn’t have made it to the airport on time.”

He swept his thumb along the line of her jaw. “Doesn’t matter. I’m glad you’re here. I brought your stuff,” he pointed towards their bags.

Diana smiled. “Thank you.”

Steve turned to her again. “So, how did it go? Tell me.” He paused, scrunching his nose. “But first, food.” And then, after another moment of consideration, “No, shower.”

She leaned forward, brushing a kiss to the corner of his mouth before she wrapped her arms around him once more.

“I missed you,” she whispered in his ear.

Steve squeezed her tight. “I missed you, too.”

Diana ordered food while he cleaned up and they ate in the living room, sitting on the couch with an array of take-out boxes spread before them on the coffee table.

She caught him up on everything he didn’t already know from their status reports, which wasn’t much, come to think of it. She had met up with Clark before making it back to Paris to give him the two water samples for Bruce and Barry to analyze, but aside from that, it had been just her and all had gone off without a hitch.

Steve leaned back against the cushions as she spoke. Next to him, Diana was sitting with one leg tucked beneath her and the other one stretched over his lap as he ran his hand absently over her calf. The same odd feeling of missing something in this whole story was once again lurking in the back of his mind, more frustrating than ever. Like a splinter he couldn’t get out from under his skin.

“There are no obvious commonalities behind the Pits appearance in all those places,” he said once Diana fell silent.

Admittedly, he only had seven data origins to work with, which wasn’t much. Which was really nothing, truth be told. Steve had been hoping that the geography would help. Say, if the pools only popped up in seismically active areas—that would have explained a lot, and part of him had hoped that the answer would be as easy as that. Or maybe topography. But while three of the Pits were indeed located in the mountains, the rest didn’t fit into any particular patterns.

Which meant that there was something else that they weren’t seeing.

Which meant that they were back to square one and walking around blind.

Granted, there was always a possibility that there was no connection. That it was all some weird coincidence and in their attempt to find any links between the separate incidents, they would just waste their time.

But, Steve didn’t believe in coincidences. And he wasn’t going to start, at least for the time being.

He scrubbed his hand down his face, feeling useless and restless and on edge.

“Have you located any new ones?” Diana asked, as she reached over to run her fingers through his hair, her touch soothing, smoothing out the ragged edges of his uncertainty.

He caught her hand, turning his face into her touch to kiss the inside of her wrist where her pulse was beating in earnest.

“Two more,” he said. “I left the data with Alfred. They’re close enough to one another to need only one team… or person, to take care of them. But that’s the thing—the only way to find them is to follow the media coverage of something odd happening in the area. It’s… bullshit, to be honest.”

She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the corners. God, he missed her.

“Sounds like it,” Diana conceded with a sigh.

She rubbed her eyes, and Steve squeezed her calf.

“Did, ah… everything work?” he asked, matter-of-factly, trying very hard to downplay the fact that he’d had to miss out on blowing something up and that it was still bothering him at least a little bit.

She smirked, not oblivious to it.

“You sound just like Barry,” she said after a moment, and Steve failed to figure out if that was meant to be fond or teasing. Or both. “And yes, it did. Everything worked.”

Steve had spent a riveting afternoon yesterday speculating with Alfred on what Amanda Waller was going to do once she got wind of the League running their own operation right under her nose. But while they hadn’t exactly settled on a what, they both agreed on the when, which was likely soon.

Helpless against it, Steve lifted his hand to brush away a strand of hair that had fallen across Diana’s cheek. 

“I’m coming with you next time,” he said.

Diana watched him for a few moments, her eyes moving over his features and her face unreadable in that strange way that never failed to throw him a little. Not when he was so used to being closely familiar with even the slightest changes in her expressions.

“Yes, you will,” she agreed, surprising him. Part of him expected her to protest, to bring up the accident in Morocco and his injuries—her trump card that Steve was finding hard to argue against.

It was one of the frustrating things that he had learned about her over the past couple of years—she was almost impossible to argue with. She was always so damn logical, so prepared for just about anything that his objections could do nothing but bounce against the wall of her resolve.

That was not to say that she didn’t want to hear his reasoning, but once she made her decision, she was not easy to sway. Which made Steve admire her all the more, but which also made him want to pull at his hair. To think that she had once called him stubborn… It was like she’d never met herself or something.

Steve leaned forward and kissed her.

And that night, he slept well at last, for the first time in eight days.

Diana left for work early the next day while he was still fast asleep in a tangle of sheets to take care of something or other. The collection from Morocco had arrived the week before, and while her department was more than capable of taking care of the basics, it was still her job to oversee the shipment before transferring it to the department where it rightfully belonged, not being part of the Greek, Etruscan or Roman culture that her department specialized in and all.

There were a great number of other things that she needed to take care of, too. Ones that had accumulated over the past couple of weeks of her being away, Steve knew. And while he still hated to wake up alone in the apartment, at least they were on the same continent now. The same city even—he was going to take comfort in that.  

An email from Alfred arrived later that same morning, while Steve was nursing his third cup of coffee and trying to chase away the damned jetlag.

While further analysis had yet to be completed, the preliminary testing of the samples of water hadn’t revealed anything out of the ordinary. Some higher than normal levels of a few minerals but that was not unexpected. But so far there was nothing to explain the temporary… psychosis, for lack of a better word.

There were a few possible explanations included in the email. Something about the effects not being tied to the water but to something else in the area. Which, while not impossible, was at least somewhat questionable. Then there was, of course, the possibility of the chemicals needing a permanent underground source to stay active. Once removed from the pool, it might have simply ceased to exist or its concentration was not enough to show up on a test. There was also the possibility that they didn’t have a test capable of detecting whatever was in the water and causing the problems, but Steve didn’t like to dwell on that.

As he read the attached report, stumbling a little over the unfamiliar terms that it was liberally peppered with, it occurred to him, at least for a wild moment, that they were all wasting their time. That there were no pools with magical water, no mystery, and people were merely affected by something else entirely. Could they all be so easily fooled by a few coincidences?

He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand down his face.

He wondered if any of them felt the same thing—like they were running in circles.

Except he couldn’t argue that something weird was going on.

And he tried—he tried so very hard—to not feel a sharp pang of disappointment at the idea of potentially losing the flimsy connection to something that might make it possible for him to be with Diana for longer than his mortal life would allow.

Not that Steve had ever said that to her, even though he probably should have.

Not that he ever allowed himself to think too much about it, either.

He joined Diana on her next mission. For the several days that it took them to locate the Lazarus Pit, then wait till the area was cleared and finally make sure that no one could ever take a dip in it again, the work was all that he thought it. It was easy and familiar and comforting to focus on the task at hand. On the goal ahead and the clear plan on how to accomplish it.

Working with Diana in the future was not that different from their first experience in 1918. On the brisk September days somewhere in the fields of Mongolia, she was as driven and focused, and if Steve hadn’t been busy making sure he didn’t accidentally blow something up ahead of time, he would likely have spent the entire time admiring her.

He loved working with her and the quiet calm that seemed to settle over them in those moments, the steady assuredness that he could trust her with his life and that she could trust him to have her back, even with the whole League listening to every word they exchanged—for safety more than anything. Though Steve suspected that they didn’t necessarily oppose the concept of gossip. He loved having a sense of purpose again that went beyond anything he had experienced on their missions together in the 21 st century to date.

The pool they had come to take care of was nothing but a sinkhole filled with water that had a strange greenish tint to it. Steve paused at the edge of it and studied it for a long time, surprised by how entirely mundane it looked. Granted, he hadn’t been expecting to find anything like what he had seen in the films. No hellhole with some putrid-smelling liquid bubbling to the surface, no barren land around it signalling the death of everything that water might have touched. Or, on the other side, a magical oasis, with plants growing more thickly at the pool edges than anywhere else.

He crouched down, looking at it closely.

Would something happen to him immediately the second he dipped so much as a finger in it? Or would he need to be submerged in it for it to have any sort of effect on him? Would he need to go all the way under, head and everything?

“Careful,” Diana said from the other side of it, her gaze scanning the area around them before it fixed on Steve. “That bank doesn’t look very stable.”

He flashed a cheeky grin at her, squinting a little in the bright sun.

“Care to take a swim?”

She shook her head, rolling her eyes a little but not before Steve caught a glimpse of a traitorous smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“You’re not as funny as you think you are,” she noted as she walked around the Pit to him.

Steve scooped some water into a vial, careful not to touch it and sealed it. He stood up, holding it at his eye level. It looked like… well, water.

“Think they’ll find anything interesting this time?” he asked when Diana paused next to him.

Habitually, she smoothed her hand over his shoulder, two faint lines appearing between her brows. Steve knew that the lack of progress was annoying her to no end. Patience, he had long learned, was not Diana’s strongest suit.

She pressed her lips together in apparent displeasure as she studied the vial in his hand. Steve watched her, waiting. 

Eventually, she sighed. “Tenth time’s the charm,” she murmured.

His lips twitched a little.

“Hey, maybe it will be,” he said, feeling strangely jovial about being out and about and no longer having to think twice every time he put his full weight on his left foot. He was decidedly not having a bad time, all things considered. “This is fun, isn’t it?” His gaze darted towards the explosives they were about to light up.

“A hundred years in your world, and I’ve yet to understand what it is that makes men so thrilled to destroy things,” Diana muttered under her breath.

“Well, in our defence…” Steve started and faltered, chuckling. “Nope, I’ve got nothing.”

She smiled, a dazzling thing that made his heart twist in his chest.

He noted their coordinates to pass them over to Victor later to run cross-analysis against the existing parameters. The good thing about Vic’s talents was that they could get nearly instantaneous results on most of their research. The bad, well, was that the disappointment was rather instantaneous as well. Ten missions later, and they still had no patterns, and no clear idea on what A.R.G.U.S.’s agenda might be.

That, and what it was about the Pits that was making people lose their minds.

Bruce had said that it was some chemical composition that affected the neurological system of a person, but since they were continuously failing to define said composition, that was of little help to them. And of course, filling the Pits and making sure that they could no longer accidentally harm anyone was helpful, but Steve wondered—as did the rest of them, he knew—how long they could keep doing it, and if there was a more permanent solution.

“You know it’s not your fault, right?” Diana asked on the night they came back to Paris.

Stretched out on her side under a sheet, her head propped against the heel of her hand, she was tracing idle patterns with her fingers on his chest. Arm tucked under his head, Steve turned towards her. He reached for her hand and lifted it to his mouth, kissing her fingers.

“Don’t tell me it doesn’t bother you,” he said, watching her in the dark, barely dispersed by the street lights filtering through the sheer curtains on the windows.

“You know it does,” she agreed. “You know what else bothers me? That we talk about work when we’re in bed.”

She raised a pointed eyebrow at him, but Steve refused to take the bait. Besides, it wasn’t like it was all they had done in bed—his still-rapid heartbeat being a direct proof of that.

“There has to be something, Diana,” he mused as he looked at her. “Something is causing them to open up, all those pools. Something…” he shook his head. 

“Then we’ll find it out,” she said decisively. Steve failed to understand if she truly thought so or if she was merely saying it for his benefit, though at that moment he wasn’t sure he cared. There was something about her believing in him, in them all, that he found deeply reassuring.

He nodded.

She moved closer to him until her body was pressed closely against his side and her face was tucked in the crook of his neck.

“Do you have to go tomorrow?” he asked, his hand running absently up and down her arm as he tucked her closer still.

“It’s only for a few days,” she whispered.

He was going to miss her even if she was gone for only just one.

Diana left for a meeting in Milan the next morning, a trip that Steve had been briefly tempted to accompany her to. He knew she wouldn’t have minded. She seemed to like when he travelled with her and the time they got to spend together between her business affairs.

Instead, Steve packed up and went on a mission with Barry in the wilderness of South Africa. Which was quite an experience, truly. Working with Diana was one thing, but someone else from the League… Steve was not used to that; he’d had no idea what to expect of it. And Barry was not someone he’d call predictable, to begin with.  

Afterwards, Steve vowed to never think that keeping up with Diana could be challenging. Ever.

“Tired you out, did he?” Diana laughed when he relayed their trip to her on a phone from within a cheap hotel room while Barry snored away on the other side of the wall in his own room.

Steve flopped back on the bed that creaked beneath the weight of his body. He let out a long sigh and rubbed his eyes.

“Where do you think he gets all that energy?” Steve muttered.

On the other end of the line, Diana snorted. “Sugar.”

After he had witnessed Barry inhale half of the contents of some vending machine, Steve couldn’t argue with that.

Still, it was fun, in a way. Maybe Diana was not that far off with her assessment that men, at their core, liked to destroy things. Steve chose not to dwell on it. And hey, he got to cause an explosion. His inner 7-year-old was more than satisfied.

Victor’s call came early on Saturday morning, a few days after Steve had arrived back in Paris. For a moment, the name on the screen didn’t register with him. Steve tried to recall if he had given his number to anyone in the League, but remembering how easily Cyborg had hacked into A.R.G.U.S. just by thinking about it, he chose not to overthink it. There was no point to it, anyway.

“Hey, I might have something,” Victor said as soon as Steve picked up, foregoing a greeting.

“Okay,” Steve said, a little confused.

“So, I was checking all the data you’ve sent lately, and it appears that literally all of the pools had appeared at the junction of various ley lines. You know what those are?”

Steve paused for a moment, wracking his brain. The term sounded vaguely familiar, though it wasn’t something he had heard recently.

“The lines that were supposed to connect various historical landmarks?” he offered, somewhat uncertainly.

“Yeah, those,” Victor confirmed. “It still doesn’t explain why, or what causes them…” He trailed off with a huff, and Steve could all but feel the young man’s annoyance. “But that’s something, right? It’s gotta mean something?”

It’s gotta, Steve agreed, rubbing his forehead.

He stood up from where he was sitting at the desk in the study and walked over to the window. Outside, the day was grey and overcast. What felt like summer only recently was now moving towards full-on autumn.

Gingerly, Steve rolled his neck, stretching the kinks out of it, jet lag still clouding his mind, making it hard to focus.

“All of them?” he clarified. “Are you sure?”

Victor was right, it didn’t explain why but it was perhaps the first connection they had managed to find between all of the occurrences. And if Victor was correct, they no longer had to wait for something to happen—they could just calculate every single possible location and… well, do something before anyone else got hurt. Admittedly, the mysticism of that theory and the belief that ley lines were harnessing some sort of energy was a little too far-fetched for his liking. Then again, so was working with a group of superheroes.  

For the first time in the three months that they’d been working on destroying Lazarus Pits, Steve felt the tightness ease in his chest. Like there was hope for a proper, reasonable conclusion to the whole story. While they hadn’t learned anything specific, it was finally starting to feel like they were going to be able to stop walking around blindly and hoping for good luck.

“Yeah,” Victor said . “I ran the analysis twice on all the locations that we’ve been to, so far.”

“Any reason it didn’t come up sooner?”

“’Cause it’s not an actual science, man,” Victor chuckled. “Someone took that theory that ancient societies deliberately built their temples and stuff along some mystical routes and ran with it. It’s all there is to it, though. A theory.”

“But it checks out now?” Steve pressed.

There was a pause on the line before Victor spoke. “Yeah, it does.”

Steve stared out the window. “Huh.”

“What?”

“You think you could track down where else we should look?”

“Sure. It’s actually pretty straightforward, now that I know what to look for.” There was a slight metallic sound that Steve recognized immediately as Victor shrugging. “Bruce is gonna want to have a meeting, or a call, or whatever about all this, but…”

Steve glanced over his shoulder. Somewhere in the depths of the apartment, Diana was speaking on the phone. In English, which likely meant—

“Hey, can I call you back?” he asked, and then hung up before Cyborg could say another word.

He followed the sound of Diana’s voice, finding her in the kitchen standing at the counter as she waited for her tea to steep, her phone pressed between her ear and her shoulder.

She looked up when he approached her, surprise chasing behind her eyes.

“Lois?” Steve mouthed as he pointed at her phone, and then wiggled his fingers when she nodded.

“My phone?” Diana clarified, a little intrigued and seemingly amused.

Steve reached for it, and she let go of it without protest.

“Hey, do you guys have newspaper archives… at your newspaper?” he asked without any further preamble.

There was a long pause on the line, followed by a tentative, “Hello.”

Steve cleared his throat and glanced towards Diana who was watching him, her lips pressed together around a smile and her arms folded over her chest.

“Yeah, hi. Sorry, I’m Steve. Steve Trevor, I’m—”

“I know who you are,” Lois interjected softly, a smile in her voice. For some reason, it made the back of Steve’s neck grow hot. His mother would have scolded him for his apparent lack of manners. “It’s nice to… ah, meet you, Steve Trevor.”

“Likewise,” Steve muttered and cleared his throat once more.

“So, how can I help you, Steve?”

He glanced towards Diana once more. She was not even trying to conceal her interest as she watched him, her eyes alight with humour.

“Say, if you need to find old newspaper issues. From maybe the 70s and the 80s, that kind of stuff, how would you go about it?” he asked, watching Diana raise an eyebrow at him.

There was a moment of hesitation on the other end of the line, before Lois spoke again. “We might have quite a few of them in archives here, on microfiche.”

Steve blinked. “You still use microfiche?” he asked, dumbly.

Lois laughed. “You’d be surprised how anachronistic newspapers can be. What do you need?”

He told her, listing the dates and locations, and she promised to have a look and forward everything she deemed relevant over to Diana’s email. Steve thanked her profusely and after that, he handed the phone back to Diana.

He was about to retreat back to the study when her hand darted out, her fingers curling around his wrist. Steve stared at it for a second, before lifting his gaze up.

“I’ll call you back, alright?” Diana said into the phone. “Thanks.”

She set it down on the kitchen counter, her tea long done and probably getting cold but she didn’t seem to care much for it. Instead, she gave Steve’s hand a slight tug and he stepped towards her obediently.

“What was that about?” she asked when he was close enough for her to drape her arms around his neck.

She brushed his hair back from his forehead, her eyes searching his face.

Immediately, Steve’s eyes dropped to the bow of her mouth, effectively derailing his train of thought and making every word he had been planning on using evaporate from his head. With effort, he dragged his gaze back up and tried to focus as his hands came to rest on her sides.

“Victor found something interesting,” he said honestly. “I’m just trying to—to check if he’s right. And, um… something else.”

She smiled. “Want to tell me?”

Steve dipped his head, nuzzling into the side of her neck. “Yeah,” he murmured, his lips trailing along the column of her throat. “But not right now.”

He let his teeth graze lightly against her skin, and smiled when Diana’s breath hitched.

Pools or no pools, this was the first time they were going to spend the weekend at home, and have all the time to themselves, in weeks. He didn’t want to waste a second of it.


Gotham, 2021

It was Alfred who had asked Bruce first, a long time ago, what it was that was keeping him in Gotham. 

Many had done it later on. Including Selina, though she herself had never revealed her own reasons for staying there, either. There was nothing that had any hold on her there, Bruce knew, and the idea that, perhaps, it was him she was still around for unnerved him to no end. He was not used to being someone’s priority.

As for himself… well, there was no answer, not really.

Bruce Wayne was many things but sentimental was not one of them. He knew that he could have moved Wayne Enterprises anywhere, if he so wished. He could have left, moved to New York, or California, or the Bahamas even, and run it from there, and it would still work. He knew it would—he had long made sure of that.

His parents had died in Gotham, and this alone should have long propelled him away from this city. He knew that holding on to the memory of that night, for whatever reason, was not doing him any favours.

And not just them—Bruce had lost other people to the violence of the city, too.

Truth was, Gotham had brought him more pain and suffering than anything else. And yet here he was, living in the house that his father had built for his mother, only half a mile away from his childhood home that he had once considered lost for good.

Maybe it was laziness. Or maybe it was habit, not unlike those that pushed addicts to surrender to their vices.

How else could he explain the sense of profound relief he felt from being back on the dark streets of the hostile city for the first time in weeks? Feeling like he had returned home.

Admittedly, it hardly diminished the restless itchiness clawing on the inside of his skin. Something that was making Bruce feel like he was being watched, though each time he turned around, there was nothing but darkness and emptiness surrounding him.

He had even thought, for a split moment, that it was Selina playing her games, but he had dismissed that idea, wanting to believe that they were past those things by now. He was far more likely to find her in his bed when he returned to the lake house later that night than have her stalk him from the shadows.

Still, the unease remained.

Which, inevitably, got him thinking…

The first time he had heard about Lazarus Pits was at least a decade ago, and at the time, it was nothing more than an urban legend. Magical pools that could bring people back to life, cure the ill and restore youth. Granted, after the Joker had taken a bath in one, they had stopped being a legend and turned into a pain in the ass instead.

Thankfully, the Joker was still safely locked up in Arkham after his latest stint that had left nearly half of Gotham burned to the ground and was not a likely candidate for a dip in one of the pools, supposing he had somehow got wind of their return, thus eliminating that particular risk.

Regardless, Bruce had never seen one before, and while taking care of them had turned out to be a rather anticlimactic ordeal, all things considered, he had managed to at least satisfy his curiosity, to a degree.

There was a message from Victor waiting for him on his phone, but it was not marked as urgent and Bruce had decided that it could wait till he was back home to deal with it.

He only hoped that it was something useful this time.

He sensed the movement behind him even before it actually registered with him, the very hair on the back of his neck standing on end in alert. When he turned around, he saw Constantine step out of the shadows, the ever-present beige trench coat fluttering around his legs and the red tip of his lit cigarette the brightest thing in a five-block radius.

Bruce’s jaw clenched. The sorcerer was a human version of a headache, and tonight, Bruce was decidedly not in a mood to deal with him.

“What do you want?” he asked flatly.

Constantine grinned around his cigarette. He puffed a cloud of smoke out of the corner of his mouth.

“Could ask you the same thing, Batty,” he quipped. “Been a while since you came to meddle with us mere mortals. New friends keeping you busy?”

Bruce snorted. “Since when are you a mere mortal, John?”

Constantine smoothed his hand down the front of his shirt, straightening his tie. “Can a bloke be modest for a change?”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Stay out of my way.”

He turned around to leave.

“Just wanted to pass on some news, but if you’re not in the mood…” Constantine spoke behind him, his words accompanied by a heavy disappointed sigh.

Bruce stopped in his tracks and turned back to him.

“What news?” he asked.

Bruce watched as Constantine flicked his cigarette into a puddle by his feet, the red glow of it going out with a hiss, before reaching into a pocket of his trench coat and pulling out a cigarette pack. He shook out a new cigarette with the casualness of someone who had all the time in the world. A silver lighter appeared in his hands and he clicked it once, twice before the flame shot out of it.

Bruce stared as Constantine inhaled and then let out a long puff of smoke hanging like a veil between them.

“What news?” Bruce repeated impatiently, his voice coming out almost as a growl. Something he couldn’t help even though he knew Constantine well enough to understand that the more annoyed he got, the more he’d have to wait for an answer.

The best way to play the sorcerer was to feign complete disinterest, but as someone running on caffeine and not enough sleep, Bruce didn’t have it in him to be bothered with their usual games.

And he was too damn curious, if he was being honest. It had been a while since Constantine had anything interesting to share.

Meanwhile, Constantine’s lips curled into a grin. He chuckled a little under his breath.

“I had a chat with a mutual friend of ours recently,” he said, his cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, moving with every word he spoke. “The one that likes bossing criminals around.”

Bruce frowned. “Waller? Since when do you work with Amanda Waller?”

Constantine snorted. “I’m not working with her. Give me some credit, Batty.” He sighed dramatically. “But I do occasionally invite myself over for tea, to catch up, share the news. You know the drill.”

“I don’t,” Bruce said. “Your point being?” he prompted when they lapsed into another pause.

Constantine plucked his cigarette from between his lips and tapped on it, to shake off the ashes. “She seemed to be very curious about what you and your sidekicks were doing running around behind her back and, allow me a direct quote here, blowing things up. No idea what she was talking about, but… just so you know, she’s onto you folks.”

Bruce huffed through his nose. “What did you say to her?”

Constantine shrugged. “Nothing. Mind you, I know nothing, but…” He pressed a hand to his chest. “Just doing you a favour here, sharing some interesting gossip. Friend to friend and all that.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Same old. I scratch your back, you scratch mine… when the time comes.”

“So you’re saying that I’ll owe you… for nothing?”

Which was not accurate, and they both knew it. Being a step ahead of Waller was never nothing.

“Your friend with pointy ears might know more,” Constantine offered.

Selina.

“Leave her out of this,” Bruce said.

Constantine’s brow arched. “It’s like that, huh? And here I was thinking…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“What?”

The sorcerer grinned again. How he was doing it with the damn cigarette right there, Bruce had no idea.

“Nothing. Never mind. Give my best to Her Majesty.”

And with that, he was gone, leaving Bruce alone in the alley, feeling more weary and cold than he had in a long time.

For a long moment, he merely stood there, peering into the shadows, certain that Constantine was still lingering nearby, just for the sake of irritating Bruce, which he knew how to do exceptionally well. Bruce had to give him that.

But the alley remained quiet and empty. A gust of wind skated along the pavement, fluttering the fabric of Bruce’s cape. The air smelled of trash that had been waiting too long to be picked up and the river. There was some mist hanging around him, not quite rain but not quite not-rain either.

Eventually, the wheels in his head started to turn.

He had zero reasons to trust Constantine, per se. But one thing the sorcerer was right about—it was all about give and take between them, mutual favours here and there. Whatever Constantine’s deal with Waller was, Bruce was certain that the sorcerer needed him and their flimsy partnership more than he needed Waller. For one thing, Bruce had nearly unlimited resources while Waller did not. And also, he was at least slightly more likely to break the law, if needed be, to accommodate Constantine’s requests.

Still, it didn’t sit right with him that Constantine would visit A.R.G.U.S. at all. But, the important thing was—Bruce now knew that Waller was onto them. Maybe he could ask Victor to plant something on their intranet, send her on a wild goose chase for a while and give the League some precious freedom of movement without being constantly scrutinized and overanalyzed by a bunch of bored bureaucrats.

That could work.

With that in mind, Bruce pulled out his phone.

Victor’s message was the first one that came up on the screen when he unlocked it and Bruce ran his gaze over it. And then a couple more times.

Well, that was definitely the progress they had all been waiting for for some time.

He glanced around, listening closely for any sign of movement, but everything remained quiet. A slow night, which was a blessing and a curse, rolled into one.

Then he looked down at his phone once more, thinking.

Ley lines.

Huh.


It should not have surprised Diana that Steve was exceptionally good in a crisis. And it didn’t, not really. But watching him deal with any task thrown at him for months, with the same dogged determination that she remembered vividly from their early days together, back in 1918, had brought forward a cascade of memories that she hadn’t anticipated to still exist.

About him trying to figure out how to make a compass work, down in the caves beneath her mother’s palace, though she knew that the field surrounding Themyscira would never allow for it to happen.

About deciding to still go to the front against the orders of his superiors, or stepping into No Man’s Land after her even though he had thought back then that it would be the death for him. (It hadn’t occurred to her until he was gone, not even ashes left, that he had done it because he trusted her like he hadn’t trusted anyone else.)

About going to the gala at the German High Command and following her back to Veld and then deciding to stop Ludendorff even after Diana had refused to come with him, crushed by her disillusionment.

Memories that made her chest ache and her head swim, her entire being overcome with such immense pride that she couldn’t put it into words. Not even if she tried.

Granted, there were no Germans threatening to wipe out half of the population of the world now, but at the end of the day, it didn’t change her feelings. Or the fact that even after his death and resurrection, he was still the same man she had met all those years ago. That he could live for thousands more years, and still be the same Steve Trevor who had stolen the plane to run away with Maru’s book and who had slept by her side on that boat and who hadn’t hesitated to sacrifice himself to save the lives of innocent people.

Diana took a breath, the air fresh and chilly on her face as she turned onto one of the many bridges crossing the Seine—ones that always made her think of stitches holding the two banks from drifting away from one another—to circle back to where she had come from, on the other side of the river.

This was no Themyscira with its lush hills and white cliffs overlooking the sea, where the air always carried the smell of forest and ocean. It wasn’t even the path around the lake in Gotham that she favoured so much when she went there on League business, the earth packed beneath her feet and the smell of pines so rich she could nearly touch it.

But in the absence of all else, Paris, with its busy streets even in the early morning and honking cars moving far too slowly past her in its perpetual traffic, had to do.

She had awoken early, as usual, wired in a way she couldn’t define. Beside her, Steve had been fast asleep with his face pressed into his pillow and his shoulders rising and falling evenly. He hadn’t stirred when Diana had slipped from under the covers, or when she had bent over to press a kiss to the crown on his head.

Briefly, Diana had contemplated going to the gym to blow off some steam to find her balance once more, but the idea of the four walls and pale lights above her head had left her feeling caged in and claustrophobic.

She needed air. She craved space, even if it was just a circle around her block and down along the river bank, with the smell of exhaust and stagnant water hanging around her.

There was a comfort to moving, to feeling her muscles strain and her heart beating fast and her lungs drawing in and expelling air as she ran past the early commuters. The signs of being alive. On instinct, she balled her fists, missing the feel of her sword in them. For all her complaining about rousing at dawn once, there was nothing she wouldn’t do to hear the clank of metal on the beach before the sun even inched up over the horizon and Antiope’s commanding voice floating above it all.

Diana drew in more air, feeling the cold coat the inside of her.

Sometime in the past two years, she had finally accepted the fact that Steve was back. That she was not going to wake up one morning with nothing but memories left of him and a hole in her heart bigger than anything that could possibly ever fill it. She couldn’t remember when it happened. Just that one day she realized she was no longer carrying around that dread, unsure when it had finally fallen away. Some days, she wished that it hadn’t slipped by, that she could point to a specific moment, so she could savour it.

They rarely spoke of it, of her fears or his, though Diana was sure that he had them, too. Or used to, at least. But she wondered sometimes, in the late hours of the night when the world was so quiet that she could nearly feel the Earth breath and pulse beneath them all, if Steve felt the same. If he had stopped being surprised by the miracle of his revival.

What she knew was that in half an hour, she would walk into their apartment and he would likely be up already. She would kiss him, for no reason. Just because she could. And he would smile that soft smile of his that made everything inside of her melt, every time without fail.

There was another mission waiting for them at the end of the week, if all checked out. But before then, there were three days during which she had to deal with a stack of paperwork almost as high as the Eiffel Tower, a few boxes of artifacts that she needed to label and likely a million other things that she wasn’t even aware of yet, and wouldn’t be until she walked in her office in an hour and a half.

Diana couldn’t wait to do it all.

By the time she made it back to the apartment, her mind had cleared, the restlessness inside of her settled.

Steve was still asleep when she peeked into the bedroom on her way to the bathroom, sprawled on his stomach with his arm wrapped around her pillow. Diana’s lips curled into a smile, her chest tight with so, so many things.

Unable to help herself, she stepped out of her running shoes and padded soundlessly around the room until she was standing bent over him. She allowed her hand to run over his hair once, twice, biting her lip when he made a sound of protest and pressed his face into her pillow.

Never a morning person, she thought. Some things never changed.

In the bathroom, she got undressed and stepped under the spray of water.

She had already checked her phone and seen a message from Bruce with the new coordinates for them to check. All those months, and they had yet to figure out what it was that had brought the Pits back to life after years and years of hibernation. It bothered her more than she was willing to let on. Something this dangerous existing seemingly without logic or reason behind it.

Given time, she suspected, they would be able to find an answer to that question. Problem was, they didn’t have time. If Bruce was right, if Waller were to use the water—another mystery that made so little sense—on the array of criminals that she favoured so, a few strangers taking a swim in them would be the least of their problems.

And that was something that was lodged beneath Diana’s skin like a splinter.

She made a mental note to speak with Victor the first chance she had.

By the time she stepped out of the bathroom, the bed was empty and the apartment was filled with the smell of fresh coffee and the unmistakable combination of eggs and toast that she recognized immediately.

She followed said smell to the sun-drenched kitchen where Steve stood barefoot before the stove, his hair still mussed from sleep and sticking out in every direction.

Diana paused in the doorway for a moment, taking him in. They have breakfast, read a paper, go to work. They had no paper today—she had forgotten to pick it up at the concierge desk, her routine entirely thrown off lately. Well, that left them with two out of three.

She moved towards him, sliding her arms around him from behind and pressing closely against his back. He went still for a moment, and then relaxed. Diana pressed her face into the back of his neck.

“Good morning,” she murmured.

“Morning,” he said, his voice still hoarse from sleep. He cleared his throat. “Good morning.”

“You needn’t have done this,” she said. She could have picked something up on the way to work.   

She felt him chuckle as his free hand closed around her forearm while he continued to stir scrambled eggs in the skillet.

“My grandma used to say that breakfast was the most important meal of the day,” Steve said, half-turning to flash a smile at her. “Can’t skip it.”

Diana smiled. “Well, if your grandmother said so…”

She pressed a kiss to his shoulder and loosened her arms, stepping away from him.

“Eggs?” he asked, and she nodded. “There’s coffee,” he added, jerking his chin towards the coffee maker.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely.

There was a plate of cut fruit already sitting on the table. Diana pulled two plates from the cupboard and handed them to him, before pouring coffee for both of them. The toaster shot up two pieces of bread, and Steve plucked them before he carried everything to the table.

He set the plates down before stepping towards Diana and sliding his arm around her, his palm resting on the small of her back as he drew her closer.

“Hi,” he said quietly, dipping his head to give her a quick kiss.

She smiled against his lips. “Hi.”

She lingered near him for another moment, helpless against the urge to run her fingers through his hair and smooth it down. It didn’t work, which only made her smile wider.

“You’re making fun of me again,” he sighed dramatically.

She leaned in once more, her mouth moving along his jaw.

“I am not,” she whispered, still smiling.

He didn’t look like he believed her.

“What’s on your docket for today?” Steve asked as they sat down to eat.

She told him, filling him in on her projects and deadlines and all the million small things that would fill her day. He listened intently, and asked all the right questions as Diana savoured the moment—the sunlight and the food and bout of normalcy, which was something she had once thought she would never get to experience with him.

Eventually, Steve set his fork down and picked up his coffee, eyeing her for a while over the rim.

“What?” she asked, tilting her head.

“The coordinates that Victor sent over checked out,” Steve said, after a pause. “We can leave as early as Friday.”

She mentally went through her schedule, checking off the things that she would need to complete in order to be able to extend her weekend by a couple of days, if needed be. It was a tight fit, what with a few events coming up at the end of the month, but she knew she could make it work.

Diana picked up her own cup, and nodded. “Friday it is.”

He took her out for dinner that night, to an Italian place a few blocks over that she loved so. One that had checkered tablecloths and candles on each table and wine that tasted just right. One that had his favourite lasagna and her favourite dessert.

It was a rare luxury for Diana to not have to think about the future, not even as far as tomorrow, and just be. To simply revel in here and now. She knew Steve felt the same.

They left on Friday, as planned, taking a trip to China, with the possibility of making a stop somewhere in Siberia afterwards.

On the plane, Diana watched Steve watch the wispy clouds rush beneath them for a long time.

She had never doubted that he could be a worthy and capable addition to their team. He was smart and resourceful and he never lost his cool, even when Arthur did his utmost best to push his buttons. He knew how to draw their attention and hold it, and though he never insisted on anything or pushed for his ideas, he somehow still managed to sway them to his side more often than not.

There had been a time, she knew, when Steve had had to work with less than nothing and still managed to get things done. It was no wonder he ended up being as valuable to them as he was. And more so, he seemed to enjoy it, too.

Diana loved working with him again, and though they had done quite a few missions together since his return, there was a different quality to it all when the rest of the League was involved. He was funny and clever, and though those were the things that she already knew about him, it was heart-warming to see the other people who were dear to her recognize them as well.

“Waller tried to put a detail on us,” Bruce told her when she called him two days later, from a small hotel in Hong Kong where they had to stay overnight to catch some sleep after the mission was complete.

“Did she actually do it?” Diana asked as she surveyed the city stretching below her all the way out to the hazy horizon. The world had an interesting quality to it when you looked at it from the 30 th floor.

Behind her, the water was running in the bathroom as Steve had his turn in the minuscule shower cubicle to wash off the grime of their venture into “the wild” as he’d called it.

Diana hoped their room service would arrive by the time he was done. She was starving and knew he was as well.

On the other end of the line, Bruce chuckled. “Victor corrected her memo, a little.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for it, just the same,” she said. “Thank you, Bruce.”

She flew back to Paris afterwards, needed for a project that required her immediate attention while Steve went on to Puerto Rico to meet up with Victor. He called her every night at 9 in the evening, on the dot, his voice wistful and yet excited, and Diana tried to breathe around tenderness that twined around her heart, squeezing it tighter and tighter until she could barely stand it.

“I miss you,” he said the second time they spoke.

“I’ll be there within hours if you need me,” she promised, her eyes trained on the glistening lights of Paris before her.

It was raining, hard, and a harsh wind was tossing fistfuls of water against the glass panes and making the sea of light on the other side look like it was pulsing and moving with it. Like it was somehow alive.

Diana lifted her hand and pressed her palm flat against the cool glass.

Steve chuckled a little. “Sadly, all is good here,” he said. And then, “God, I wish I could just lie and tell you to come. I used to be good at lying. What happened to me?”

It was her turn to laugh. “I could think of a few things,” she murmured, smiling.

“You’re a terrible influence.”

“I taught you to cook without setting off the smoke alarm,” Diana reminded him.

He chuckled again. “Like I said, terrible.”

They spent the next six weeks in and out of Paris. At times, she couldn’t help but feel immense gratification from a job well done. Other times, it felt gruelling and daunting, leaving Diana worn out and frustrated.

They spent a week in Gotham; her—negotiating a contract with a museum, and Steve—working with Bruce and Victor on a prototype of something or other. Usually, Steve would tell her all about it in the evening, going deep into the specs that, half the time, sounded like complete gibberish to Diana. Those details were not the point, she knew. It was the spark in his eyes and the excitement in his voice and the words pouring out of his mouth fast, as though he couldn’t wait to tell her all about it.

As it turned out, having a pilot that had once brought a supposedly damaged beyond repair plane back to life on the team had an inarguable benefit for something like that.

He had even tested a modified and upgraded motorcycle, one of the few that Bruce always had on hand—something that Diana preferred not to think too much about. All in all, she was certain that Steve treated the entire experience like a trip to a theme park. One where he got to also mess with the mechanics of the attractions.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you looking quite so…” Lois started during their rare shared lunch, one that Diana drove all the way to Metropolis for.

“Like what?” Diana asked, chasing a cherry tomato with her fork.

Lois studied her for a long moment, and then shook her head. “Radiant,” she said, at last.

“You should hear what Barry calls it,” Diana noted, trying hard to bite back a smile.

“A heart-eye emoji face,” Lois said immediately. “Clark tells me everything,” she explained when Diana raised an eyebrow at her. She grinned. “Barry is not wrong, you know?”

It was in the beginning of November that their final mission rolled around.

Steve went with Barry and Clark while Diana stayed behind to deal with some commitments at the Louvre that she couldn’t walk away from. Bruce was in Seoul on a business trip, annoyed about the fact that he wouldn’t get the chance to go. 

It took two days before Alfred deliberately stopped picking up his calls to stop the persistent micromanagement.

Diana knew that from Victor who ended up being caught amidst it all, amused and irritated about his role of a messenger in equal measure.

Steve came back home three days later. She was reading in bed when the key turned in the lock in the hallway, the door opening. He shuffled straight into the bedroom where he fell face-first onto his pillow and let out a long sigh.

“I think I could sleep for ten years,” he mumbled.

“I missed you, too,” Diana said, amused.

He shifted and rolled onto his back, resting his head on her stomach. And then he smiled at her, blue eyes bright and alive and earnest. His gaze swept over her face. Without thinking, Diana reached over to card her fingers through his hair.

She took him in, taking note of the stubble coating his cheeks and the tired lines at the corners of his eyes. His clothes smelled of cold, that distinctive scent that the world carried only in winter.

“Hey,” he breathed, his smile softening.

“You’re home early,” she said, running her hand through his hair once more.

“Caught a quick ride,” he said cryptically before he reached for her hand to bring it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles.

Diana arched an eyebrow at him.

“One of those private jets, courtesy of Alfred,” he added, shaking his head in slight bewilderment.

She hummed. “I see.”

Her thumb moved along his jaw.

“Is it over?” she asked.

Bruce had been keeping an eye on every set of coordinates that they had managed to locate for the past two weeks. There had been no unusual activity anywhere though. Just as suddenly as the issue appeared, it seemed to have vanished.

Waller was not happy—they knew that from the few pieces of encrypted correspondence they had managed to intercept. But, as expected, she couldn’t make her involvement known and by confronting them, she would have incriminated herself.

It was going to backfire, Diana suspected. The woman was more vindictive than anyone she had ever known, save for a few deities she was related to, but that was not entirely relevant in the present situation, all things considered. Still, the fact that they had managed to gain the upper hand in the situation without outright conflict was a cause for celebration, as far as Diana was concerned.

Steve nodded.

“It is.”

Notes:

Or... is it? Still 9 more chapters to go...

It is fun to have Steve more involved with the League. Our boy deserved some fun and some... blowing things up. I'm here for all kinds of team work tbh. I also have to admit that I love having Constantine around. There should be more of him in JL related content.

Let me know what you think :) Comments, opinions, screaming are always much appreciated!

See you soon!

Chapter 22

Notes:

Hey everyone, how are you all holding up? My last few days consisted of Neo-Nazi assholes running rampant all over my city and an earthquake that was... well, unexpected. Australia is far too flat and seismically stable for that. Like, the last big earthquake happened here something like 25 years ago. But go figure. I'm starting to feel like the Earth is getting really sick of all of us :P

I hope you are all doing well and staying safe and taking good care of yourselves. I'm just happy that I'm still alive to post this update :P And I hope you will like this chapter :)

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

Chapter Text

“I look ridiculous,” Steve muttered as he stared at himself in a mirror.

A man in a perfectly tailored black suit stared back at him. Steve rolled his shoulders a little, and the man in the reflection did the same. Even though the jacket was a perfect fit, Steve couldn’t help but feel its stiffness, desperate to yank it off.

“You look handsome,” Diana said as she sidled up to him, meeting his eyes in the reflection.

He glanced at her, skeptically.

“I look like a penguin,” he countered.

She bit her lip, her eyes crinkling at the corners. He could nearly feel the quip rolling on the tip of her tongue.

However, she held back, simply repeating, “You look very handsome.”

Steve eyed his reflection in distrust for another moment and then sighed.

He remembered the evening when Diana had mentioned an auction that the Louvre was to host, a selection of items to be sold and the million and a half things that needed to be done in preparation for it.

He had a vague memory of her saying a few days later that she would like to bring him along as a date.

He could still somewhat recall being dragged into one store after another, being sent into countless changing rooms with heaps of clothing and squeezed into at least a dozen various suits. Steve genuinely, from the bottom of his heart hoped that one day—hopefully, one day soon—he would simply blank out the entire experience from his mind.

“You make it sound like I’m making you walk on burning coals barefoot,” Diana had noted when he had nearly made a cowardly run for the nearest exit, rules of civility be damned. There had to be a back door there somewhere.

Steve had perked up at her words then. “Is that an option? Can I do the coals thing instead?”

She had only rolled her eyes at him, and he had obediently shuffled into yet another changing room.

Admittedly, he had been acting a tad dramatic then. The event was important to Diana, and he was undeniably curious. He had never gone to an auction before, let alone one organized by a museum. From where he stood, it was going to be one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that was not to be missed.

It was not that, not really.

It was…

He took himself in, his crisp white shirt and black vest, pressed pants and jacket, his tie still hanging loosely around his neck.

He wondered if it was too late to change his mind.

He was a spy. He was used to wearing a suit to pretend to be someone else, and had done that countless times—to such a degree that it had started to frighten him, how easily he could do it. If there was anything of the real him left underneath all those people that he had once been.

That, and…

His gaze trailed towards Diana who stood tall and sure next to him in front of the vanity mirror, not a trace of hesitation or uncertainty about her.

She had been born in a palace.

He had been born on a farm.

It didn’t matter of course. It never had, as far as Steve was concerned. If it did, he suspected they wouldn’t have lasted as long as they had. Diana was many things but obtuse wasn’t one of them. She would not have stayed with him if it wasn’t what she wanted, Steve didn’t doubt that. He never had.

But there were still moments sometimes, like the one right now, when he couldn’t shake off the feeling like he was wearing someone else’s skin. When he was acutely aware, to his bones, of the fact that she was a princess of her people and he was a farm boy who had only gotten away from that life by chance and a shit ton of good luck.

The fact that he’d ended up where he was, having met Diana at all, was not something to be taken for granted, he knew.

“Steve?”

The sound of Diana’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts. He felt her hand smooth over his shoulder as she moved closer to him.

Steve took a breath and turned to her, realizing then that she must have said something that he’d missed.

“Sorry, I’m just…” he started and faltered.

She smiled, her eyes kind.

“Let me do this, yes?” she asked, turning him towards her by the shoulders before she reached for his tie.

He watched her loop the ends of the tie expertly around one another. She adjusted the knot and smoothed her hands down his chest.

“You should wear a suit more often,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.

“Sounds like a threat,” Steve muttered under his breath, making her laugh.

“I like when you wear a suit,” she said, arching her brow pointedly at him.

His throat went dry momentarily at the implication and the spark of heat in her eyes. He swallowed and cleared his throat.

“Well, I mean, in that case…”

Diana pressed her lips together.

She turned around.

“Could you…?” she started.

A zipper.

Right.

Steve stepped closer to her, sliding it up, his hands lingering for a moment on the delicate red fabric of her dress.

“Up or down?” he couldn’t help but ask, leaning a little closer to her. 

Steve couldn’t see her face but he was certain that she smiled when she said, “Up.” 

Her brief hesitation was not lost on him. 

“Later then,” he murmured. 

“Thank you,” Diana said, brushing her hand against his.

She turned towards the vanity mirror.

For a while, Steve merely watched her put on her earrings and fix her hair that was gathered in an artful loose bun near the nape of her neck. And just like every other time it happened since the moment he had met her, it had a sledgehammer effect on him. That she was breathtakingly beautiful was part of it, sure, but it was not all.

His gaze moved over the sharp line of her jaw, her high cheekbones and the delicate curve of her mouth that was painted bright red, to match her dress. With her chin held high and the steady, assured calm that found its home on her face, she could not have looked more like the goddess that she was. In his mind, he had compared her before to the statues of Greek gods that she worked amongst, but it had never felt truer than it did in that moment.  

Unable to hold back, Steve took a step towards her, sliding his arms around her from behind and resting his cheek against her temple.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, without thinking. Because she was and he would never get tired of telling her that.

Diana’s eyes when they met his were alive and smiling.

Her fingers drifted along her forearm.

“Charmer,” she murmured.

Steve dipped his head to plant a kiss on her shoulder, and then a longer one—on the side of her throat, pleased to hear her breath hitch a little. Her fingers curled around the sleeve of his jacket, and he smiled.

“We could always stay home,” he whispered against her skin. “I could make it worth your while.”

She was not going to agree, he knew. Wasn’t sure he wanted her to—she had worked hard to make the auction happen. They all had, and truth be told, Steve wanted to see it. But he liked that there was at least a split moment of consideration hanging between them, a slight wavering when her body responded to his touch so easily.

He pushed away the few tendrils of hair to kiss the spot where her neck sloped into her shoulder and then, with regret, he straightened up, putting a bit of distance between them, his gaze still locked with hers in the mirror.

“I think you are going to enjoy it,” Diana noted.

Steve nodded absently.

He stepped around her and picked up the box with the cufflinks. Something made from white gold that Diana had gifted him for his first birthday in the twenty-first century. He had never had a chance to wear them, yet.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” he asked, after a moment.

“Of course. Anything.”

He felt his brows pull together as his fingers fumbled a little with a cufflink. It had, after all, been a century since he’d last worn them. The thought made his lips twitch a little bit without much humour. 

“Did you ever wish that it worked out between you and Bruce?” he asked without looking at Diana.

Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw her pause. Could feel her gaze on him while he continued to pretend to care about the damned cufflinks, his heart hammering out of his chest as he waited for her to say something. Anything. He damn near stopped breathing even.

“Where did that come from?” Diana asked softly after a moment.

But he was only shaking his head, feeling ridiculous all of a sudden, the back of his neck growing hot. He had regretted the words the second they came out of his mouth. He wished he could take them back. Why did he have to be such an idiot?

He grimaced inwardly. She had done nothing but show him time and time again that it was him that she wanted, and here he was, with his petty jealousy. Like some schoolboy.

“Steve.”

She moved closer to him, lifting her hands to take the cufflink from him and affix it properly on his sleeve.

“Look at me,” she said quietly.

He did.

She was watching him, her eyes searching his features.

“I don’t understand…” Diana started.

He made a face and ran his hand through his hair, probably messing up whatever it was that she had done with it earlier to make it look all nice and smooth, but what did it matter?

“You could have it all, you know?” Steve said, a note of self-deprecation in his voice that made him wince. “A Manor for a home and private planes and a… and Alfred.”

God, it sounded even more asinine outside of his head. But that was the thing—she deserved everything, and there was only so much he could give her, even when he gave all of himself. She didn’t want more than that, Steve was certain. But it didn’t change the fact that he’d wondered, that he couldn’t help but wonder…

They hadn’t talked about her and Bruce since the night he had found out the truth about them. He had thought about it alright, but they hadn’t… Well, it was no wonder she looked so surprised. 

Maybe, just maybe, he needed to learn to keep his mouth shut and stop giving her ideas.

He took a breath.

“I don’t want it all,” Diana said quietly, her hands coming to rest on either side of his face. Her thumb smoothed over his cheek. “I only ever wanted you.”

Steve closed her eyes, dipping his head closer to hers. He inhaled, breathing her in. It was such an absurd thing to bring up, really. And tonight, no less. She already had so much on her mind.

He cupped one of her hands with his own and turned into her touch, kissing the heel of her hand. When he opened his eyes again, he found Diana smiling at him. A sight that made something tender inside of him unravel.

“What brought this on? Are you…?” she started.

He huffed out a breath.

“I’m not…” jealous, he wanted to say. He didn’t because he suspected she would know instantly it wasn’t true, and he was not going to disrespect her by lying to her face. But that didn’t make trying to explain it to her any easier. “…very good at being jealous, I guess,” Steve said, in the end.

Which was kind of self-explanatory, he figured.

“Steve.”

He met her eyes, her expression surprised.

Well, apparently, he was good at hiding it, at least. Small mercies.

“I know, I know,” he sighed. “You must be so above all that, being—” he took a breath. “Being you and—and everything.”

But Diana was shaking her head.

“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked, softly. “The two of you worked together, I thought…” she trailed off.

“Didn’t stop me from being petty on the inside,” Steve muttered.

“You are such a man,” she murmured, though her voice remained fond.

“And a ridiculous one, at that,” he offered. “I know, I know, you mentioned that before.”

Diana pressed her lips together, trying to swallow her smile.  

“I never thought of it, in that way. About me and Bruce. I never even considered…We live such different lives.” She paused, her features softening. “And I’m not immune to feeling jealous.”

Her words caught Steve off-guard momentarily.

“Yeah?”

She tilted her head, eyeing him with a touch of disbelief.

He should have asked sooner, he was realizing, instead of stewing in his assumptions for months now. Every time he and Bruce had ended up in the same room, it had been impossible not to imagine Diana in his bed, with another man’s name on her lips. Each time, it had hurt like a sucker punch to his gut.

Steve pushed the mental image away.

Diana’s fingers skittered along his jaw before she dropped her hands to his chest.

“I almost didn’t go to Sameer’s wedding,” she said, her voice low as though she was sharing a secret. “I couldn’t stand the thought of watching the happy couple knowing that you got taken away from me too soon.”

Steve blinked, feeling his jaw go a little slack at the news. They had spoken about Sameer’s wedding before. About many things from her life following the war and his untimely demise. But never of that.

“Really?”

“Really. Them, and everyone else in attendance,” Diana added. “I used to hate seeing people holding hands on the streets of London. That was not jealousy, I suppose. Envy, more like it. But the burning desire to have what they had was the same.”

Steve considered her words, his thumbs trailing absently over the fabric of her dress.

“Sami would have understood, if you didn’t go,” he said decisively.

“I know.” She was toying with the lapel of his jacket, her eyes trained on the knot of his tie. “But I would never have forgiven myself if I missed it. They did so much for me, they were such good friends. I would never have hurt them by thinking only of myself at a time that had nothing to do with me at all.”

He still couldn’t bear the thought of it, the weight of despair she’d had to be feeling then.

His own turmoil suddenly felt so trite by comparison. It was not very likely that he could ever lose Diana the way she had lost him, but trying to imagine it was bad enough. If their places were reversed, he would not have likely taken it quite as graciously as she had.

She never deserved to deal with a heartache so grand, to live with a loss so unfair.

“Diana,” he started, his voice tight.

“I just wanted to do it all with you,” she said wistfully, her palm smoothing down the lapel of his jacket. Her gaze moved over his features. “And now I can.”

Steve caught her hand, lifting it up to kiss her fingers. A watery laugh bubbled out of his chest.

“Well, I suppose it makes me feel better to know that you’re also prone to those… less than noble human feelings,” he admitted. But then his smile slipped. “I’m sorry you had to live through that, Diana.”

She shook her head, and then tilted it to brush a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I have never wanted anyone but you.”

Steve nodded, though without much conviction. It did matter because it was something he had caused, however inadvertently. And hurting her was the one thing in this world that he had never wanted to do. Not even when he was dead and unable to stop it. That, and they both knew that it had done something to her, had played its role in making her the person standing before him right now.

There was no point in kicking himself for something that he couldn’t have stopped then, and couldn’t change now. But the guilt of it was still there, all the same. He doubted that anything she could have possibly said was going to make it go away.

However, now was not the time to ponder the complexities of his self-contempt. He was certain he’d find a spare moment or two to do so later. It was hard to tell if Diana’s confession made him feel better about what he could only now call childish pettiness, but he appreciated her honestly, for what it was worth.

Steve let out a breath and kissed her fingers again.

“You ready to go?” Diana asked, smoothing down his hair to make it look more presentable and more in line with his suit, he suspected.

He gazed hopefully at her.

“There will be snacks, right?”


The first time Steve visited a museum in Europe, it had been a grim affair. At the time, the place had been stripped of its valuables in order to store them securely out of reach of the enemy, had the German army ever gotten that far, and it had been converted into a hospital for injured soldiers.

The place had been dark, the electricity cut off and candles and oil lanterns used to illuminate it, and grey in that unwelcoming way that had made Steve want to turn on his heel and walk out and never go back. It had smelled of antiseptic and blood and too many bodies crammed in a place that was never meant to hold them, the sound of voices chasing down long hallways. He remembered trying to imagine what it had been like before the war had come as his eyes had moved over the walls dotted with spots where art used to hang.

He and a few men from his troops had been given a back room to hide away from the cold and rain lashing outside, all the assigned accommodation full for the night.

He had lain on a thin mattress on the floor, unable to fall asleep as the other soldiers snored beside him and the rain pelted against the roof. He had thought of how humans were not the only ones witnessing the horrors of the war. That there was not a single thing left anymore unaffected by it.

The Louvre was nothing like that, of course. Not even at night, seemingly transformed into something entirely different for the occasion.

Steve had been there after closure, of course. To pick up Diana, for one thing. At least a few dozen times. Not to mention that his very introduction to the future had started right here, under the glass pyramid, even though that night was starting to feel like ancient history now. Interesting how much life one could pack in only a few years if they lived it to the fullest.

Tonight, however, everything felt different.

He had never seen the place open to visitors after hours before. Had never seen so many people wandering the galleries where the lights were dimmed, the works of art accentuated with newly installed spotlights.

Diana had disappeared to the staff area almost as soon as they arrived. There had been a moment when Steve debated going with her, but she had things to do and people to speak to and he didn’t want to get in the way.

He didn’t know how long the auction was going to go—there was no set schedule for it, per se. And he figured it was likely impossible to accurately predict the timeline for something that required direct human participation.

He found a collection he didn’t recognize and stayed there for a while, moving from exhibit to exhibit as he read the description cards. At some point, he came across a set-up area where two young men were serving champagne and canapés to anyone who wanted to sample those, his spirits lifting at the sight of food. More so than art, at any rate. He spoke with a few of the curators he knew and had a chat with the security guards on duty. By then,  his suit had stopped feeling like a straight jacket, much to his relief.

Every now and then, he would catch a glimpse of Diana across the room, the fabric of her dress shimmering under the halogen lights, making her look even more ethereal than she usually did.

Steve didn’t stick around for the auction itself, having no interest in familiarizing himself with the bidding process or finding out how much people were willing to pay for the various pieces.

Instead, once everyone had settled in for the main event of the night, he followed a path outlined by the digital displays until the sounds of the gavel in the main concourse faded in the distance and it was just him and the echo of his footsteps and the deep shadows that made everything look different somehow. He couldn’t hear the hustle and bustle of the city, the walls too thick to let it in. Steve found himself half-convinced that he was indeed the only person for miles and miles around him. 

Eventually, he made his way to the roof, open to guests for once but mercifully deserted at the moment. The wind was stronger there, coming from the Seine and the Channel with nothing to shield him from it. It was no wonder, perhaps, that no one else had chosen to indulge in the rare opportunity to enjoy the view.

Steve moved towards the railing, doing his best to ignore the chill snaking beneath his expensive suit and raising goosebumps along his skin.

In the time since he had learned about the Justice League and their gifts, he had allowed himself to wonder which one he would like to have if the opportunity presented itself. And while flying and shooting lasers out of his eyes remained the top contenders—despite the fact that Barry continued to argue that there was nothing better than running very fast—right now Steve wouldn’t have minded possessing Diana’s ability to not be affected by the cold.

He shivered when another gust of wind skated over him. And then he forgot about it all when the view opened up before him in all its glory—the two pyramids below him, glimmering with thousands of lights and casting patterned shadows on the plaza around them. And beyond the walls of the museum—a sea of light that was the night Paris, stretching as far as the eye could see.

Steve breathed in the cold night air and the smell of the approaching winter, mesmerized.

It felt suddenly unfair that Sami and the rest of them were not there to see this. They’d had good lives, Steve knew. Not perfect, but happy. It was him who had missed out on things—weddings and births and deaths and milestones—and not the other way around. And yet…

These thoughts didn’t come as often these days, not as they had in the beginning. But when they did, they inevitably left him yearning for something that he never knew how to put into words.

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, looking at the city sprawled out before him in all its glory, never noticing that the night chill was making him shiver.

At some point, Steve’s phone buzzed in his pocket.

Thinking that it was probably Diana, he pulled it out only to find a message from Barry. Steve’s lips twitched at the corners.

Sometime in the past few months, he had gotten added to the Justice League group chat that, to his knowledge, was meant to keep all members updated on missions and to share important information and alerts. In reality, it was a mess of memes and occasional squabbles that fascinated and slightly terrified Steve, in equal measure.

Once a man from the past—always a man from the past, he had joked to Diana at some point.

His eyes moved over the few lines of conversation without really taking it in. The usual quips and jabs with an occasional gif image peppered in here and there.

It was the date at the top of the screen that gave Steve pause, that had his heart knocking against the inside of his ribs, his stomach growing cold. He stared at it for a long time, not quite able to comprehend it for a dreadfully long moment.

Could it be…?

A sharp breath tumbled out of him, puffing into a cold night.

Steve’s fingers flexed on his phone.

It was today that he had guided a German plane laden with gas into the night sky in Belgium in 1918, a supernova of an explosion taking his life. It was today that he had died 103 years ago.

There was an odd quality to that realization. One that made a cold pit open in his stomach. Steve swallowed. It was just a day, he knew. One that didn’t matter anymore, not for a long time. He was alive, after all. It was not like a hole was going to open up in the sky and suck him back, all the way into the inferno that had killed him. So why did he feel so unnerved by it?

Steve’s hands gripped the railing before him, his heart knocking against his chest in slow, hollow thuds. He could smell it again, the jet fuel and worn metal and exhaust, the black sky rushing towards him faster than he knew how to process it—

He blinked, the picture fading. He was still standing on the roof of the Louvre, the lights glimmering on the surface of the pools between the pyramids below him. Somewhere in the distance, a car honked and another one honked back, the cacophony of the city rushing back.

Steve scrubbed a shaky hand down his face. He wished he hadn’t remembered. He hoped as hell Diana hadn’t.

He rubbed his eyes.

He needed to go back inside, he knew. Where it was warmer, at least.

Instead, he stayed right where he was, frozen to the spot, for a long time, unable to think or feel anything, but the cold void inside of him.

It was a hand brushing along his lower back that yanked him back to the present. A moment later, a pair of arms slid around him, the familiar scent of Diana’s perfume wrapping around him like a cloud.

“There you are,” she murmured, her voice quiet.

“Hey,” Steve breathed as he looked over at her.

She smiled at him, making his heart stutter again in his chest, but this time, for all the right reasons. Just looking at her eased the tightness he’d been feeling, making something inside of him settle. Somewhat, at least.

“I knew you’d be bored,” she said apologetically, resting her chin on his shoulder.

“I’m not,” he said immediately. “I swear I’m not. I was just…” he trailed off.

Diana’s gaze swept over the plaza below and the lights of the city ahead. To the right of them, the Eiffel Tower was shooting into the black sky, like a beacon. She drew in a breath, her expression softening.

“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is,” Steve murmured, his eyes never deviating from her. Diana raised an eyebrow at him when their eyes met, and he knew that he was caught. He grinned back, until something occurred to him. He glanced past her and then at Diana once more. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be… ah, doing some other stuff?”

She hummed, moving to stand next to him, amusement dancing in her eyes.

“How long have you been here, Steve?”

“A bit?” It came out as a question. He had no idea. Long enough to nearly turn into a popsicle. What he had mistaken for unease, at first, was likely his body simply trying to conserve the heat. He frowned, confused. “What? Is it over?”

She lifted her hand to smooth it down his cheek. “Has been for half an hour. That’s why I came looking for you.”

He blinked. “Oh.”

Diana laughed.

“You missed everything,” she noted.

“No, I didn’t,” he countered. “I did the… the champagne, and those things with calamari. And I saw—I saw the lights.”

He gestured vaguely towards the door leading inside.

She pressed her lips together. “The lights,” she echoed.

And it was then that he noticed, at last, that she was not wearing her coat. She must have left it in her office or… somewhere else.

Kicking himself for not registering it sooner, Steve shrugged off his jacket. She might be more impervious to the elements than he was, and he likely needed that jacket more than she did, but he was not taking chances. His mother would have scolded him into next week if Steve had done nothing.

“Take this,” he said, draping his jacket over Diana’s shoulders. “It’s freezing out here.”

“I don’t think... I can’t really—” she started to protest but cut off, merely tugging it closer around her when he just shook his head, resolutely. “Thank you.”

Steve nodded. He moved closer to her, allowing himself to study her for a long moment. A gust of wind tossed a piece of her hair across her cheek and he tucked it gently around her ear.

“Your hands are cold,” she whispered.

He chuckled a little. “Yeah, well, not all of us are celestial beings here. Let’s do this again in summer and then we can talk.”

She rolled her eyes, but a traitorous smile pulled at her lips.

“How did it go?” he asked, changing the subject as he fussed with the collar of the jacket to straighten it as the wind cut straight through the cotton of his shirt. Steve tried to ignore it.  

“Good,” Diana said. “It went well.”

“That’s good.”

Her eyes swept over his features as she studied him, her head tilted slightly to her shoulder. Whatever it was that she saw there made her smile dim a bit.

“Are you alright?” she asked quietly, reaching to brush his hair back from his forehead.

He could have told her, Steve knew. He should have told her. That night was as much a part of her life, her story, as it was of his. But the mere thought of uttering so much as a word about it when she looked so relaxed, so at peace with herself, made him feel sick to his stomach.

And what did it matter now, anyway?

“Yeah, I just…” Steve paused. His thumb swept over her cheek. “Yeah, I am.”

Which he was, all things considered. God, he was alive. What more could he possibly ask for?

For a moment, it looked like Diana was going to press for more. He wondered if she didn’t believe him. She was good at reading him, at knowing when he was not being completely honest with her. But in the end, she simply nodded as she traced her thumb over his chin.

Taking advantage of her momentary distraction, Steve let his hands slip under his jacket and around her waist, drawing her close against him. He bowed his head down, pausing an inch away from her lips. It was Diana who bridged the remaining distance, tilting her head until her lips were pressed against his, warm and eager.

He kissed her for a long time, one of her hands tangled in his hair.

By the time Steve drew back, the night didn’t feel quite as frigid. He stayed close to her, his chest heaving against hers.

“Can I take you home yet?” he asked, his voice a little hoarse.

“I thought we were enjoying the view,” she teased.

God help him, it made his blood turn to fire right there and then. She was gazing at him from under her lashes, a coy smile playing on her lips. He loved her smile. And how clever she was. And that twinkle of humour in her eyes that never failed to make him feel like he was always a step behind her, just barely keeping up.

And he definitely— definitely —liked the way she looked in red.

“Yeah, we were—are,” he cleared his throat before resting his forehead against hers. “But I kind of just spent a few hours thinking of about a hundred different ways I could take that dress off of you, so…”

A spark of heat flared up in her eyes. Steve felt her nails scratch through his hair near his nape.

“A hundred? Really?”

“Hey, you have your twelve volumes of Clio’s treatises on bodily pleasure, and I have—I have my imagination.”

 “That you do,” she hummed.

A low sound rose in the back of his throat. “God, Diana.”

She laughed and stepped out of his arms, reaching her hand out to his.

“Take me home, Steve.”


Gotham, 2021

Bruce felt him before he saw him, the fine hair on the back of his neck standing on end. He scowled at the screen before him, his brows knitting together.

Some ten feet away from him, Barry was sitting with his legs propped on the desk. He was tossing M&M’s in the air and trying to catch them with his mouth. Bruce had stopped paying attention a while ago, but if he had to take a guess, they would all be stepping on candy for the next week or two. Fast or not, Barry’s aim was, well…

“Hey, did you know that M&Ms are the most commonly eaten chocolate in the NASA space program?” Barry asked, tossing yet another piece of candy into the air and groaning when it missed his mouth, once again.

“Making you feel like you're in a space shuttle, innit?” a voice asked behind them.

Barry yelped, nearly toppling to the floor. He dropped his snack, sending whatever was left inside of the bag scattering about.

Bruce heaved a sigh and rubbed his eyes, feeling wearier from what that particular voice entailed than from the past two hours of his patrol.

That security system had cost him a few million, but what did it matter if some people could just pop up out of nowhere? He really needed to look into some… unconventional measures.

He turned around and glowered at Constantine who was standing in the middle of the Batcave, gawking around with glee. He turned to Bruce and grinned.

“Nice lair you got here, pal,” he said.

“What do you want?” Bruce growled.

Barry’s eyes were wide as saucers as he stared at the sorcerer. He looked towards the stairs and then at Constantine again.

“But where… how…” he pointed towards the elevator. “Where…?” he started again.

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Constantine waved him off. “I get that reaction all the time. Hey, I think you dropped something.” He pointed to the candy on the floor.

Barry’s jaw went slack.

Meanwhile, Constantine reached into the pocket of his trench coat and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Unhurriedly, he pulled one out and stuck it between his lips.

“What the hell,” Barry muttered.

“Don’t smoke in here,” Bruce said flatly. “The sprinklers will turn on.”

Constantine, who already had the lighter cupped with his hand, lowered it down. He gave Bruce an accusatory look.

“You’re not fun, Batty.” He let out a dramatic sigh and then glanced curiously towards Barry. “Using child labour now, are we?”

“Hey! I’m 28!” Barry protested.

Constantine gave the young man a measured once-over. His eyebrow cocked in surprise.

“Whatever you say, mate,” he said amiably.

“What do you want?” Bruce repeated, wondering if maybe he should have let the sorcerer set off the fire system. Maybe it would have gotten him to leave sooner.

Constantine stuffed his hands into the pockets of his beige trench coat and looked around once more. Bruce’s frown deepened. The last thing he needed was for someone to see something they were not meant to see.

“What? Can’t a pal visit another pal to catch up? Been a while since we done that.”

“Literally never happened,” Bruce countered.

Constantine shrugged, not at all offended.

“Can he just…” Barry turned to Bruce. “Like, can he teleport or something?”

Bruce ignored him.

“Say what you want to say and get out,” he told Constantine, whose expression turned mock-hurt.

“That’s rude. Truly.”

Bruce sighed.

“Hey, I come bearing gifts,” Constantine said, his disappointment short-lived.

“What?” Bruce snapped.

“Well, you know how it works,” Constantine explained. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine, you know.”

Bruce rubbed the corners of his eyes. “What do you want?” he asked for the third time, wondering in the back of his mind if there was something he could do to prevent these kinds of visits in the future. Didn’t people burn sage for things like this? Maybe he should leave some crystals lying around.

“See, I’ve been looking for something,” Constantine started. He glanced towards Barry as though debating how much he wanted to reveal in front of someone he had never met before. Bruce waited, curious, mostly wondering if Barry’s company would be enough to get the sorcerer to leave. But, in the end, Constantine seemed to decide that he didn’t care. “A book, with all kinds of important information.”

“You should check the library,” Barry offered eagerly.

Constantine tilted his head to his shoulder. Looking at Bruce, he pointed at the young speedster.

“This one is going places,” he said. “Anyway, I was wondering if your lady friend would be interested in a side gig.” He paused, his eyes widening as some sort of epiphany dawned on him. “Hey, see what I did there with that scratching metaphor? And a cat-loving woman? Huh.”

Bruce snorted. “Can’t do your own stealing anymore?”

Constantine drew his hands apart. “There’s only so much a bloke can do, and my girl is morally opposed to these things, see?”

“Who’s that?” Barry piped up.

Bruce shook his head. “Leave Selina out of this.”

Constantine gave him a look. “Do you want information or not?”

By habit, he pulled out the cigarette pack again, before he sighed and stuffed it back into his pocket.

“This is so exciting, you guys,” Barry breathed.

Bruce glared at him, and Barry pointedly mimed zipping his lips shut.

Next, Bruce sized Constantine up, his annoyance growing by the moment. It could be nothing. It was likely nothing. Nine times out of ten, Constantine’s intel was a pile of garbage. Granted, Bruce had never been particularly forthcoming either so that was fair.

But, knowing about the man’s connection to Amanda Waller gave Bruce pause, made him reluctant to dismiss Constantine’s words. If he did know something useful, something that could give them more leverage against that woman… or anyone…

“Tell me what you want, I’ll deal with it,” Bruce said, in the end, glowering at the sorcerer.

Constantine let out a small laugh. “Always a gentleman, Batty.” He grinned for good measure. “I’ll have my assistant give you a call,” he said formally. “I mean, I don’t have one but that’s what they say, right?”

“For God’s sake,” Bruce muttered.

“Anyway, you’re a delight to do business with!”

“What do you know?”

Constantine shrugged. “There’s a disturbance in the force.”

And then he was gone, as though he had never been there at all.

This time, Barry did fall out of his chair, landing on the concrete floor with a thud. He shot up in a blink, looking wildly around.

“Where did he…?” he turned to Bruce who continued to stare at the spot where Constantine had stood only seconds ago. “What did he mean?”

Bruce huffed in annoyance, and then swore under his breath when he spotted an alert blinking on one of the screens.


Paris, 2021

Steve Trevor was dead.

Had to be dead. There was fire all around him, licking at his skin, running in his veins. He was breathing flames. It hurt him to look at it, dancing all around him, but even with his eyes closed, it was all he could see, its brightness blinding.

He was wrapped in the smell of hot metal, the blackness of the night wide and vast around him. He had never been so frightened in his life. He thought he was going to die a hero, but what he was was a terrified man who would have stopped at nothing to take it all back. If only he could turn back time, if only he could—

Steve awoke with a gasp, his heart pounding and a sick, queasy feeling churning in his stomach. He swallowed. And then swallowed again, convinced for a panicked moment that he was going to throw up.

He could still smell the smoke and what he knew was the scent of the plane burning up, metal and leather melting in the fire, his skin clammy and his throat so tight it made him frightened that he might run out of air.

He exhaled slowly and ran his hand down his face, only then noticing how badly he was shaking. How his hands were shaking.

Beside him, Diana stirred, immediately awake.

“Steve?”

He blinked into the dark, a metal taste sitting on his tongue and filling his stomach. Lifting his hand up, he stared at it for a long moment, taking in the unmarked skin. He flexed his fingers, to make sure he was in control of them.

He sat up then, waiting for the queasiness to ebb, his eyes moving about the room. Their clothes were strewn over the floor, his jacket draped over the back of the chair—not intentionally, if Steve recalled correctly. When Diana’s hands had slipped beneath it, sliding it down his arms several hours ago, the only thing he’d thought to do was to just toss it aside.

“Steve?” she spoke again, her voice soft in the dark.

Steve felt the mattress dip when she moved closer to him. Her hand skated along his back, making him go still under her touch. She paused too, and he wondered if she was going to pull away, but her hand stayed where it was until he relaxed, letting out a slow, measured breath.

A nightmare.

Figures.

Diana’s hand moved up his back, across his shoulders—a slow, soothing touch that felt like a balm on an open wound. Steve closed his eyes, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. He could no longer see the fire but it was easy enough to imagine.

He wondered, not for the first time, if that was a dream or a memory lurking in the back of his mind, but he didn’t want to know. Not really.

For a while, he just sat there, focusing on breathing in and out until the heavy, sticky feeling in his stomach was gone and he was certain that he was not going to be sick.

So much for a romantic night with her, Steve thought sourly.

Diana’s fingers carded through his hair, before her hand dropped to rest on the small of his back. He felt her move closer still, felt her lips press to his shoulder, a touch so gentle it almost made him ache.

“Are you alright?” she murmured into his skin.

Steve huffed out a breath and rubbed the corners of his eyes. And then, finally, he turned to her.

She was watching him closely, eyes awake and worried, leaving him with a stab of guilt.

“Yeah, I’m…” he tried, but his mouth was too dry and barely any sound came out.

He swallowed. She lifted her hand to thread it through his hair once more, her gaze searching his.

“Just one of those…” he trailed off once more on a shuddered inhale.

He could have told her. He knew he could. There was nothing he couldn’t tell Diana, really. But what good would it do? To make her relive one of the most traumatic moments in her life, and for what? It was not going to make him feel better, and it was not going to make him dread the next time it would happen any less.

She waited, but he only shook his head, knowing she wouldn’t pry if he refused to speak of it.

She didn’t, instead leaning forward to kiss him on the shoulder once again. Steve felt her hand roam over his back, something that had a nearly lulling effect on him.

He looked down at his hands, still surprised to find them not covered with blisters and peeling skin, the bones peeking out from beneath burning flesh.

He pushed the mental image aside.  

“You know what today is—” he started and cut off.

Diana went still beside him.

When Steve looked up, her eyes were full of sympathy.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember,” she admitted.

“You did?” he asked, feeling stupid.

Of course, she did. He couldn’t imagine Diana forgetting a single thing in her life, for starters. That, and she had lived through more than a hundred anniversaries of his death. No one would forget that, if he had to take a guess.

He opened his mouth to say something, to apologize maybe, but no words came out.

Her expression softened, melting into tenderness.

“Oh, Steve,” she breathed, tilting her head to brush a kiss to his cheek, his temple, the tip of his nose until eventually, he turned his head, resting his forehead to hers. “What did you dream?” she asked as her fingers skittered down his cheek.

He caught her hand, his fingers curling around hers, and held them both against his chest.

“Dying,” he said, his stomach tightening with the weight of that confession immediately.

Diana drew in a breath.

He expected a reassurance to come next, something that she felt compelled to say because it was what people did.

“There is no shame in fearing death, love,” she said instead, surprising Steve. “Even the bravest warriors live with an awareness of it. And you not only faced it. You came back to me.” He felt her brush a kiss to his skin, the touch feather-light. “I’m glad you came back.”

A hundred years ago, he had watched her step onto No Man’s Land, convinced that he would never witness anything more brave (or potentially stupid). But if he’d had any remaining doubts about her abilities, that moment had erased them all. Only to be later topped when he’d seen her deflect bullets and flip tanks and punch through concrete as though it was a piece of cardboard. He had seen her grieve losses and had felt her fall apart beneath his touch. Hell, he had seen her fly.

And yet, she had never, ever stopped taking his breath away. Never stopped showing the sides of her that Steve didn’t know existed.

He figured that he could live forever, and she would still never cease to amaze him.

“Barely,” he reminded her with the making of a weak smile working its way to his face.

Her lips curved up at the corners.

“Takes an above-average man,” she noted.

Steve blinked, nearly choking on his breath. He let go of her hand and fell back on his pillow with a groan, palms cupped over his face.

“I will never live that down, will I?” he muttered.

When he lowered his hands, he found Diana smiling down at him, her hair spilling in dark curls over her bare shoulders.

“I thought we were having a moment,” he pointed out, half-accusatory.

Diana pressed her lips together.

“I think we’ve had quite a few of them,” she said as she struggled to contain her smile, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

Unbidden, his gaze swept once again over their discarded clothes, and then—over her body, a low sound rising in the back of his throat.

They had, indeed. There was no point in arguing with that.

Steve found her gaze, held it.

“C’mere,” he murmured, reaching for her.

Diana moved towards him immediately, folding herself into his side, one of her legs slung over one of his and her head tucked under his chin.

Steve turned to press a kiss to the crown of her head. “Thank you,” he murmured into her hair.

“What for?”

“I know what you did there. Trying to distract me…”

Admittedly, he could no longer smell the smoke and feel the burning in his lungs, and his stomach wasn’t churning with fear anymore. The dream suddenly felt like a ghost of a memory, nothing else.

Her fingers trailed down his chest.

“Doesn’t take much trying,” Diana whispered evenly, her words laced with a suggestive implication.

“See? That—that right there.”

She chuckled.

He let out a long breath, closing his eyes as he tried to memorize this moment—the warmth of her skin and the scent of her hair and the comfort of their chests rising and falling in unison, and the sound of her voice bringing him peace.

For a while, neither of them spoke. Steve didn’t mind, his head growing heavier, his eyes having a hard time staying open.

“Steve.”

“I’m fine,” he said, honestly, his hand running absently up and down her shoulder. “I swear, I’m just—it caught me by surprise, you know.” He swallowed. “Do you ever wish you could forget it all? All the bad stuff?”

Diana didn’t answer at once. “Sometimes,” she said eventually.

He wondered if she was going to add something about the past making them who they were now, but she didn’t.

The Diana he had met in 1918 likely would have, Steve thought. The woman lying in his arms now knew better than to mention something as needlessly pointless. Not all hurt was good for the soul—she had learned that the hard way, he knew. Sometimes it was just hurt that you wanted to go away.

“I was thinking…” she started after another moment.

She lifted her head. Steve raised an eyebrow, curious. She set her hand on his sternum and rested her chin on top of it.

“What?” he prompted.

She smiled. “We were talking about going away for a bit, just us. After we were done with the Lazarus Pits, remember?”

He nodded as he reached to brush her hair from her face.

“Yeah.”

“You still want to do it?”

Steve felt his lips curve in a smile. “Like—someplace with a beach and tiny bikinis?”

She laughed, making something unspool inside of him all over again.

“If that’s what you want,” she said. “Anywhere.”

Steve thought of their missions over the past few months, long days and restless nights when he could barely feel like he had slept at all, afterwards. The flights back and forth around the globe and the frustration of it, and the tedious research that went into it all. He loved working with Diana, more than anything. Loved watching her survey something with that critical gaze of hers as she considered their next steps and he loved watching her in a fight, precise and on target, never wasting a moment.

And then he thought of white sand and the curve of the turquoise sea hugging it closely, droplets of water glistening on her skin and her smile as radiant as the sun.

His gaze moved over her face. The remnants of his dream were still lingering in the back of his mind, but it no longer had any hold on him, the memory of it fading more and more with each passing moment.

He trailed his thumb along the ridge of her cheekbone.

They hadn’t heard anything from Bruce or Victor for a couple of weeks now. Maybe Steve was grasping at straws there, but it felt like a good sign to him.

“Yeah, we could do that,” he agreed. “Just us.”

Diana’s smile widened. She rose up on her elbow, leaning forward to kiss him.

“Deal,” she whispered against his lips.

Notes:

Welp, I'm not going to pretend that this wasn't mostly a filler chapter. I just wanted to give Steve and Diana some cute moments together and let them enjoy some peace and quiet for a bit. Angsty peace and quiet, but still!

Proper plot will be back full-force in the next chapter!

As always, comments are very much appreciated :) Thank you for sticking around long enough to make it all the way to chapter 22!

Also, I'm starting a new job on Monday and I'm really freaking out. Wish me luck! And I'll see you soon :)

Chapter 23

Notes:

Hey everyone, thank you for your patience and for your overwhelming support, it means so much to me :) You've bee so wonderful this entire time and I really appreciate it! I think this chapter is one of my favourite, and I'm very excited to share it.
I'm also very excited to have made it to the end of my first week at a new job alive :P Yay?

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

Chapter Text

They didn’t go to the Maldives, like Steve had thought they would. He had loved it the first time around. He hadn’t thought anything quite like that even existed. Outside of Diana’s Paradise Island, that is. At the time, he had thought that it was why Diana had picked it in the first place—because it reminded her so much of Themyscira. Part of him still believed that.

This time, though, she had chosen a small remote island in French Polynesia. So remote it took them nearly two days just to get there.

“Would’ve been faster if you flew us here,” Steve noted, at some point, after he had lost track of time and the miles left behind.

She bit her lip around a smile. “What about our luggage?”

“Meh. How much do we need, really?”

He chose to not point out that he was good at not needing much, and that as far as tropical islands were concerned, most clothes were vastly overrated. He knew that Diana knew all that. 

The place was stunning, and even though Steve had known it would be, it still left him at a loss for words. There was a bungalow sitting on the beach, close to the water, and tall palms casting long shadows across the white sand and hanging over the sea. The air was so rich with the scent of flowers that Steve was certain he could taste them on his tongue, the whole experience made better by the memory of the grey and rainy Paris they had left behind.

They spent the next ten days exploring the island and swimming in a bay that belonged just to them and lounging on the soft sand, so pristine it was as though they were the first people to ever walk on it. Mercifully, her phone only rang twice the entire time. 

They hired a boat and went swimming among fish of every colour of the rainbow in water so clear they could see all the way to the bottom even though they were a mile away from the shore. Diana had worn colourful swimsuits and floating sundresses and a wide-brimmed hat that would have looked ludicrous on someone else but that only made her look even more stunning, somehow. Steve had no idea how she did it, but he decidedly did not mind. Not in the slightest.

She plopped down on the towel next to him one afternoon, her hair wet and slicked back and her smile so radiant it hurt to look at it. When she leaned forward to kiss him, Steve could taste the ocean on her lips.

He allowed himself to wonder what it could be like to live in a place like this. To wake up to the cries of seagulls in the morning. To stroll along the beach whenever he pleased. To make love to her with their windows open as the ocean whispered to them, Diana’s skin luminous in the pale moonlight. He wanted, desperately, to bottle up every memory of this place and hold onto them for as long as he breathed.

“Have you ever thought of looking for—for your home?” he asked her on their last night on the island. The looming trip back home was both thrilling and bittersweet in equal measure—he missed Paris even though he hadn’t expected to, but he was also reluctant to go back.

He was sprawled across their bed on his back, arm tucked beneath his head. The night was quiet around them, the sky outside the large window a black canvas dotted with stars.

Beside him, Diana shifted and rolled onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows.  

She didn’t answer at once, and he didn’t rush her. It was a big question to consider, he knew. 

The endless stretch of stars outside reminded Steve of the night on the boat when they had left Themyscira. With the blanket of darkness around them and the smell of the sea so close, he could almost feel the sway of the boat beneath them, his thoughts in complete disarray for reasons he couldn’t explain.

He had stayed awake for a long time that night, long after Diana had fallen asleep next to him, feeling so wired he had been certain that he wouldn’t be able to catch a moment of shut-eye. But, even then, it had calmed him to have her there. To hear the sound of her breathing as she slept. That was the first night he hadn’t dreamed of war since he’d landed in London some 18 months earlier.

Diana didn’t look at him, her gaze trained instead on her hands for a long moment. Long enough that Steve started to wonder if he had spoken aloud or merely thought those words.

“It wouldn’t be that well-hidden if it was easy to find,” she said, at last.

Steve turned properly to her, studying the outline of his profile, barely visible in the dark. Not for the first time he wondered if she would have gone back, if she could. Away from the fighting and violence and history repeating itself over and over again while she was forced to watch it happen.

He had never asked, not sure if he wanted to hear her answer. He would not have been alive if she had, and that thought was more unnerving than he was willing to admit even to himself.

Helpless against the urge to touch her, Steve reached over to sweep his thumb over her cheek.

When Diana looked at him finally, he saw that she was smiling.

“I’m where I want to be,” she said with such conviction that it made his heartbeat settle instantly. 

When they arrived back in Paris, it was snowing—one of those rare storms that would roll in every few years, paralyzing the traffic and bringing the life of the entire city to a halt. They closed down schools, of course, no way to avoid that. They even closed down the Louvre, which almost never happened, but the weather—something that felt mild, at best, to Steve who had grown up in a place that would routinely get thirty inches of snow multiple times during each winter—was declared too extreme to keep anything nonessential operating.

As far as Steve was concerned, the entire ordeal felt like a continuation of their vacation. He decidedly would not complain about that.

And Diana loved the first snow of the season, he knew that. Thinking back to Veld, he was certain he knew why. The look on her face when she had seen it was one of pure joy. Not even the power going out on the second day after their return to Paris dampened her enthusiasm.

Steve woke up that morning in a noticeably colder room to find her standing by the balcony doors, looking at the white flakes falling outside, her palm pressed to the cool glass. Her hair was spilling over her shoulders, and though he couldn’t see her face, he knew that her expression was one of pure wonder.  

She had to go help in areas where the pipes had burst and the power lines snapped under the weight of the snow that they had not been designed to endure. She couldn’t stay back, Steve knew, and he never expected her to.

The rest of the time, though? They lit the fire in the hearth in the living room and the array of candles lined up on the mantle. She wore his sweater with the sleeves rolled up at the cuffs—not because she was cold, Diana told him, but because she loved the way it felt. She had said it in an off-hand, casual way but it made something inside of him stir, all the same.

He decidedly loved the way it looked on her, that was for sure.

The outage could last a couple of days, she told him. Weather that bad was so infrequent that the city wasn’t ready for it—Steve had found that argument ridiculous, but there was no point in arguing, really. 

They made hot chocolate and played board games and argued about the films they would be watching, if they could. 

He had Diana read to him something in Greek that he didn’t understand but that he liked the sound of, regardless. 

They walked through the quiet, empty city as the snow continued to fall and climbed up to the top of the Montmartre hill, their boots soaking and their noses red from the cold. There was no one up there, for the first time in Steve’s memory. The weather must have kept everyone away, he thought as he leaned in to kiss Diana as they looked at the city that stretched all the way to the horizon as their feet.

Her breath puffed out in a white cloud when she pulled back, just far enough to look at him.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” she told him, smiling, as her hand stroked his cheek.

Steve chuckled and then kissed her again.

“Then so be it.”

Back at the apartment, the lights were still out—just as she had predicted. He started the fire again, poking at the logs until it caught on properly.

It reminded him of Veld. The slight chill in the air and the dim light coupled with the smell of woodsmoke, and the thrill of feeling like they were the only two people left in the world.

He tried to hold on to the good memories, the laughter that they had shared afterwards and the warmth spreading in his chest the likes of which he had never known existed. But somewhere underneath it all was an odd, dark sense of foreboding that Steve couldn’t place and didn’t seem able to shake off. Like they were waiting for something, only he had no idea what it could possibly be.

He remembered it then, too. The feeling he’d had that night in 1918—like time was running out, and that no matter how hard they pretended that it was going to be okay, deep down Steve had always known what the outcome was going to be for him.

With all the good memories that still shone brightly in his mind, it was sometimes easy to forget that he had died the very next day. He remembered it now, suddenly wishing they’d stayed on that island for another week, even though he knew that Diana had needed to come back. It still surprised him that even with all the technological advancements of the past century, humans were still terrible at accurately predicting the weather. Perhaps if they had known just how bad the weather would be, he’d have been able to convince Diana to stay longer.

He gazed towards the window and the snow that seemed to be falling even harder now. In the fading light, he could barely see the building across the street. He could see lights in the distance—not everyone had ended up without electricity, it seemed—but their street was dark and getting darker with each passing moment. It looked odd with the street lights out, Steve thought. Nothing but the headlights of a rare car chasing away the gathering shadows. Like a whole different place that felt unfamiliar in a way he wasn’t sure he liked.

Diana’s arms slid around him from behind as she pressed close to him.

Steve let out a breath, relaxing against her touch. He was not a fool, he knew she had noticed something. He wondered if she was going to ask him what it was that was bothering him—the only problem there being that Steve had no idea. Save for some premonition, at that. Or if she was going to let him decide if he wanted to speak of it at all.

Truth be told, he didn’t know which path he wanted her to take.

They stood like that for a while, watching the snow until it was almost impossible to see anything at all, even the lights in the distance now hidden behind the thick curtain of snow.

He wondered if the Louvre was just as dark. If its massive grey form was slowly being consumed by the snowbanks growing around it.

“We could make a fort,” Diana suggested after a while, her breath warm on his skin.

It was her words that had Steve nearly choking on his breath in surprise.

“A fort?” he echoed.

“You know, pillows, blankets.”

He could hear it now—that barely contained laughter in her voice. It made him chuckle. And then full-on laugh. He rubbed his eyes and then turned to her, incredulous. In the dim light from the fire burning in the hearth, her smile was luminous.

God help him, she was so beautiful it made something tender inside of him unspool, filling him with warmth.

“And you’re calling me ridiculous,” he pointed out, with feigned dismay.

They made dinner instead, in an attempt to save the most perishable products in their fridge, even though simply putting everything that could go bad on the balcony was going to solve the problem just fine. Steve didn’t object, either way. He didn’t enjoy cooking, per se, but he liked cooking with Diana. Liked doing something together that didn’t require any physical exertion, and that didn’t draw blood.

It made him think of his parents and their small kitchen, when he was a little boy. Steve suspected that it was the darkness and candles that were doing that, pulling up memories tinted with the same shadows from the back of his mind.

His parents had only gotten reliable electricity after he had left for the front, he was remembering now. It was wild to think of all the lives he never got to live because of what had happened in 1918.

He considered the idea of that fort, which could be a fun type of entertainment if they were still snowed-in and without power tomorrow. Or even if they weren’t.

“Here, try this,” Diana said, drawing him out of his thoughts.

When Steve turned to her, he found her offering him the sauce she had spent the past half hour working on. It smelled divine. He leaned forward to sample it from the spoon she was holding. One of these days he was probably going to stop being impressed by the fact that she was excellent at just about everything she put her mind to, he thought. But today was not that day.

It tasted even better than it smelled.

“Good,” he nodded, and then leaned forward to kiss her quickly on the lips. “Even better.”

Diana smiled, and rolled her eyes like he had expected she would.

“Charmer,” she murmured under her breath, but there was enough fondness in her voice to melt all the snow in Paris in an instant.

There was still fear clawing at the back of his mind and leaving Steve somewhat restless, but it had ebbed somewhat. Almost enough to make him forget about it altogether.

Almost.

He flopped down onto a chair while Diana slid the roast into the oven. When she straightened up, he reached for her, drawing her towards him until she was standing between his parted knees, her hands on his shoulders.

Steve leaned forward, nuzzling into her sternum. He closed his eyes and breathed her in, exhaling slowly. He felt Diana’s hand thread idly through his hair, down his neck, along his shoulders, the tension that had been sitting in his stomach like a ball of lead all day evaporating, at last.

His arms came to wrap around her thighs. She ran her fingers through his hair once more.

“I could get used to this,” he said into her thick sweater, his voice muffled, although whether he meant cooking together and being stuck in a powered-down apartment with her or holding her, or maybe something else entirely, he wasn’t sure. All of it, perhaps?

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” Diana said, a smile in her voice.

Steve looked up at her, and sure enough there it was, that dazzling, heart-stopping smile of hers that made his stomach flop wildly every time without fail.

He drew back and gave her hand a tug. Diana tilted her head, her eyebrow arched, but she allowed him to shift back in his chair and then pull her down until she was straddling his lap. Steve’s palms smoothed up her thighs as he slid his arms around her, holding her close.

She was pressing her lips together, her eyes alight with amusement.

“Maybe I should teach you how to knit next,” she mused, her arms draped around his shoulders.

Steve felt his eyes widen a little, her words effectively distracting him from the fact that a gorgeous woman was literally sitting in his lap. For a split second, at least.

“You know how to knit,” he said, dumbly.

“Etta taught me.”

He shook his head in bewilderment.

“On a cold and gloomy night like this one, I’m sure.”

Diana laughed. “Something like that, yes.”

He huffed out a breath, his thumbs stroking the small of her back absently.

“Is there anything you can’t do?” he asked.

“I’m not particularly good at parallel parking,” she admitted.

Steve didn’t argue, specifically because he didn’t think it was possible to be good at parallel parking. There were many good things about the future, but the way they had organized their traffic rules was insane. Back when he had first learned how to drive a car, the main rule was to not hit anyone.

“I’m not particularly good at it, either,” he said, and she smiled wider.

“You’re very good at other things.”

Her voice was even when she said it, and for a second Steve wasn’t sure if she’d meant for it to sound quite so suggestive. His gaze dropped to the bow of her mouth, all the same, his thought process wiped clean in an instant. He inhaled shakily, his hands flexing on her hips and drawing her closer.

“What?” Diana asked when he lifted his eyes to hers.

Steve reached his hand to pull off the hairband holding her hair in a loose ponytail. It cascaded down her shoulders in black waves. He sifted his fingers through it, the way he had done on their first night together, so long ago. The way he had done so many times since then, too. He looped a strand around her ear, his thumb tracing the line of her jaw afterwards.

“Nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing, just, um… thinking about all the things that I am apparently good at.”

She bit her lip. The way her breath seemed to have caught in her throat gave Steve a jolt of thrill. He swallowed, his gaze searching her features.

“Yes?” Diana whispered as her fingers trailed down his cheek.

“Yeah,” he breathed.

She was the one who bridged the space between them, her lips brushing lightly along his as her palms rose to cup his cheeks. Steve kissed her back, hungrily. She didn’t stop him when his hands slipped beneath the hem of her sweater, allowing him to pull it off over her head. She allowed him to take the rest of her clothes off, too.

By the time the timer for their roast beeped, they had long forgotten about their dinner.


It was still snowing the next morning and the power was still out.

They slept in. Well, Steve slept in while Diana spent the morning reading in bed, her hand reaching occasionally, and without thinking, to thread through his hair, her touch light enough so as not to disturb him.

She could get used to this, too, she thought, thinking back to Steve’s words the previous night as she looked down at him. Lying on his side close to her, he had his arms tucked under his pillow, his shoulders rising and falling slowly as he breathed. She certainly would not mind getting used to idle days and slow mornings and the time spent together.

It was not going to last, she knew. The snow would stop, and then it would melt. The duty would call again, be it her job or her missions. There was going to be danger in their lives and she was going to have to learn to let her worry go, lest she drive herself mad with it.

But it was good to have this moment of reprieve now. She knew to cherish them when they came, even at the cost of some comfort. The house was certainly getting cold, even for her comfort.

She ran her fingers through Steve’s hair once more before setting her book down on the nightstand. She pushed the covers aside and padded to the fireplace that she seldom used, having had no need for it in the bedroom. Until now, apparently.

Her lips twitched a little at the thought.

Yes, she could definitely get used to this.

With the fire crackling, Diana returned to bed. She read for another hour before she noticed that Steve was actually awake. Sleepy and bleary-eyed, he was watching her quietly, his eyes bright and blue and affectionate, making Diana’s chest clench fiercely.

She smiled at him. “Hi.”

“Morning,” he mumbled and stifled a yawn. His gaze drifted to the window behind which the snow was still falling. He scrubbed his hand down his face and wrinkled his nose.

Which made Diana feel ridiculously, and foolishly pleased with herself. Their night had been… good. Better than good. She certainly could not complain about having some uninterrupted together time, even if it was only going to last a few days.

Steve’s eyes moved over the cover of her book before he looked up at her once more.

“What’s for breakfast?” he asked.

Diana couldn’t help laughing at that.

They made eggs and finished the puzzle they had started the previous afternoon. She checked in with work, grateful for having decided to keep the landline in the apartment even though at the time, she hadn’t thought she’d need it. Her cell phone would remain useless until the electricity came back. She knew she would likely need to go on patrol later, check in to see if anyone needed help.

That aside, there was something addictive about knowing that she had nowhere to go, nothing to do. That it was up to her and Steve to decide what they wanted to occupy themselves with, for a while.

He taught her how to play chess that afternoon. It surprised Diana that after a hundred years in this world, she had never picked it up. She didn’t like it much, didn’t have the patience for it. Steve, on the other hand? She could see that it suited him, that he liked planning out various strategies, thinking four steps ahead.

She enjoyed watching him playing chess more than she enjoyed playing chess, truth be told.

“Where do you think you would be now, if you hadn’t ended up in Paris?” Steve asked later that evening as Diana was cleaning her armour that was spread before her on the dining table.

He was sitting nearby, straddling a chair, while he tended to one of her gauntlets, his face scrunched in an adorable kind of concentration as he rubbed it with a soft cloth. The kind that was making Diana want to reach over and smooth out the crease between his brows with her thumb.

Her gaze lingered on him, taking him in, that shock of his hair that had fallen across his forehead and the three days’ worth of stubble on his cheeks, his eyes narrowed in focus. The sleeves of his long-sleeved t-shirt were pushed up to his elbows and the fine hairs on his forearms were catching the lights of the candles they had lit to chase away the encroaching shadows of the evening.

He was very handsome, Diana thought, her heart swelling behind her ribs. She shook her head a little to herself. Looking the way he did, and he had the audacity to call her a tease?

She studied him for another moment, taken by the care with which he handled her gauntlets. Steve was the only one she had ever allowed to touch her armour, outside of her immediate family, Diana realized. Not even Etta had had that privilege, in her time.

His question gave her pause. It made her realize she had never thought of it before. Never had to. When the chance to come to Paris had fallen into her lap, she had simply taken it, without even considering the alternatives. She knew it couldn’t last. Another five years, at most, and she would need to move on elsewhere. The risk of someone noticing anything odd about her was too great to take, even for a place that felt more like home than anywhere else in man’s world.

But she was content here now. And knowing that she was not going to have to make that decision on her own again, that Steve was going to be with her—she hoped-believed-prayed —gave her a kind of comfort she had never known she was looking for.

Yet, it was interesting to speculate.

“Milan, maybe,” Diana offered, after a moment. “Or someplace else in Italy.”

Steve looked up from her gauntlet. “Why?” he asked, his eyes alight with genuine curiosity.

“It’s elegant. And the weather there is not as foul as it often is in London.”

She knew she hadn’t wanted to stay in America, after her first stint. The events of 1984 had been the deciding factor, at the time. She wasn’t sure she would like to move there now, or anytime soon, for that matter. Not unless Steve brought it up, but he hadn’t yet. He had barely spoken of it after their visit to where Trevor Ranch had once stood. 

Steve chuckled at her comment. “Never quite developed the taste for it, did you?”

Diana smiled. “Only for tea, I’m afraid.”

He nodded and set down her gauntlet before folding his arms across the back of the chair.

“So, Milan. Think you want it to be your next destination?”

She looked up at him, not surprised that he caught up on the train of her thought.

“Our next destination,” she corrected. “And no, not likely. Not this soon, if I want to keep doing what I’m doing now. They know me well enough in the art circles to make it impossible to become someone else.”

He nodded, not saying anything for a while.

Diana picked up one of her greaves, checking the straps and bucks for signs of wear. It still astonished her beyond anything that this armour was older than her, and that even after a hundred years of heavy wear, it had persevered remarkably well.

“Does it ever bother you?” Steve’s voice made her turn to him, to find him fiddling with the cleaning cloth. “That you’re…”

“Immortal?” Diana offered.

He looked up. “Yeah.”

She hesitated. “Not bother, not really.”

“Do you ever wish you were mortal?”

“No one is really immortal, Steve. Not even me.”

He shook his head, his gaze locked with hers. “You know what I mean.”

Diana bit her lip, her eyes dropping to the armour before her. She had dreams sometimes. Dark dreams in which her lasso snapped and a sharp weapon pierced right through her when she least expected it. She was not invincible in them. 

But then again, they were only dreams.

She wondered for, perhaps, the first time in her life if her armour was going to outlive her. It was not impossible, she knew that.

“It’s lonely,” Diana said, her fingers tracing the golden trim on the bodice of her armour, her gaze cast downwards and her brows drawn together. “It’s lonely to know that nothing can last, and there is nothing I can do to stop people from ageing and passing on, while I remain unchanged. It makes me feel like I’m always waiting for that to happen. As if it’s all there is to my life.”

There was a sharp intake of breath that had her look up. She found Steve watching her closely.

She could hear her words the way he must have heard them, all of a sudden. It made her heart twist in her chest.

“Diana,” he started but she was shaking her head.

“Don’t,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean it like…”

Like I’m waiting for you to die. She didn’t say that. Couldn’t. Even though there were moments sometimes, in the deep of the night, when she would lie in the dark simply listening to him breathe to reassure herself that he was there and safe and hers.

She rubbed her forehead to chase the mental image away. Beside her, she heard the chair legs scrape against the floor as he stood up.

“Hey, c’mere,” he murmured, tugging at her arm.

Diana stepped into his embrace without hesitation, burying her face against the curve of his throat as his arms closed around her, his body warm and solid and reassuringly real. She felt him run his hand down her back as he pressed a gentle kiss to her hair.

“But think of all the cool stuff that you’ve got to see,” he said quietly, and his words made her smile. That was not what he was really thinking about, she knew. Not the trivialities of the world advancements but of the inevitable separation looming before them. Not now, not for a while, but there, all the same. They had time, and that was all she had ever wanted, but it was never going to be enough.

She was grateful that he tried to take her mind off of it, even if it made her feel slightly guilty, too. 

She snorted a little and pressed close to him, breathing him in.

“I suppose it was not that bad,” she whispered into his neck.

Steve chuckled, the sound of it reverberating into her. And though it felt forced and unnatural to joke about her losing him one day, they both pretended that it was fine.

“Hey, how about some hot chocolate, hm?” he said, eventually, running his hand up and down her back once more.

Diana drew back to look at him.

“To make up for the heavy burden of my divine gifts?” she deadpanned.

He smiled that lovely smile that stretched straight to his eyes. The one that she loved so.

“Feels like a fair trade, no?”

He stepped away from her, his eyes already roaming the kitchen. Diana didn’t move, her hand sliding down his arm, along his wrist until she wove her fingers through his, tugging him back towards her. Steve turned to her, looking confused, but didn’t resist her pulling him closer.

“I love you,” she said quietly, her eyes searching his. She lifted her free hand to run it through his hair.

He reached for it immediately, closing his own palm over it as he turned into her touch.

“I love you, too,” he whispered, dipping his head to rest his forehead against hers. “You have no idea how much I love you, Diana.”

I will never let anyone take you from me, she thought with the assuredness of someone who had defeated the unthinkable before. She chose to ignore the cold feeling in the pit of her stomach that reminded her that there were things that even she couldn’t beat.


They stayed in bed until early afternoon the next day, despite the power having come back sometime during the night, the familiar purr of the fridge that Diana had long learned not to hear at all coming back to life and breaking the silence she had already gotten accustomed to.

She didn’t seem to have it in her to let go of him. It was so easy to forget about the world when she could feel Steve’s skin under her hands, beneath her lips. When his heart was beating straight into her.

They made plans, too. Diana loved that. Loved knowing that she could look forward to something beyond tomorrow, or next week. Or next month, even. She wanted to go to Greece sometime next summer. Over the past hundred years, she had visited nearly every country in the world (including some that no longer existed), but she had never made it to Greece, somehow. Steve wanted to go to an aviation show in Germany, and she loved the way his eyes lit up as he talked about it, his fingers playing idly with her hair but his mind miles away.

She had never allowed herself to make plans, not until he had come back. Not even during the periods in her life that had felt peaceful and stable, and happy even, in their own way. O nce upon a time, she had expected to get used to it, yet, years later, she felt almost drunk and dizzy with it now, with all the possibilities stretching before them.

There was a nagging feeling of desperation underneath it all, their conversation from the previous evening sitting in her chest like a stone, but she did her best to ignore it. It didn’t matter now. It was not going to matter for a long time.

“We should just stay here forever,” Steve said at some point, brushing Diana’s hair from her face.

She was stretched out on her side, propped up on her elbow as she watched him, her hand tracing idle patterns on his chest because she couldn’t stop touching him. Didn’t want to.

His comment made her laugh.

“We can’t stay in bed forever,” she pointed out, amused.

Steve shrugged. “My father used to say that there’s nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it.” His gaze trailed over the outline of her body under a sheet. “I could put my mind to this, easily.”

“I don’t think that was what he was talking about…” she trailed off and arched her eyebrow meaningfully.

He rolled onto his back and tucked his arm under his head. There was so much devotion in his gaze when their eyes met it made everything inside of her ache with longing.

“Don’t you wish we could, though?” he asked.

Her features softened. She was helpless against the urge to reach over and touch his face. “I do.”

When Bruce called later that afternoon, as Steve was in the shower taking advantage of being able to bathe with hot water and the lights on and she was debating whether to order takeaway for dinner, Diana knew instantly what it was going to be about. She knew it the moment she saw his name on the screen.

“Another one?” she asked in lieu of greeting as she picked up.

“Three, at least,” Bruce said, his voice grim.

Diana let out a breath and rubbed her eyes, biting back a few choice words. When she looked up, Steve was standing in the doorway, a towel slung around his neck and his hair wet. He cocked an eyebrow at her, and whatever it was that he saw on her face made him frown a little.

Bruce rattled out some details, dry facts that she barely registered—they were going to go through them again later anyway.

“We’ll be there,” Diana said before hanging up.


She knew he was going to bring it up eventually. In fact, she was surprised it took him six whole months to do so. The entire time Diana had been both anticipating it and dreading it in equal measure.

Yet, when Steve finally said that he wanted to take a dip in one of the Lazarus Pits in hopes of gaining immortality, it still landed on her like a blow, the world tilting around her.

“No.”

“Diana…”

“No,” she repeated more forcefully, cold panic snaking up her spine.

“It could work,” he insisted.

“You don’t know that.”

“You don’t know that it won’t.”

“We ran the tests, dozens of them, and there is nothing to explain how that water works. Or why. Or why it affects people differently.”

“Obviously it’s got something to do with where the pools open up. It’s about the location—”

“There’s nothing obvious about any of that, Steve,” she interjected firmly, feeling sick to her stomach.

He stared at her, for a long moment, before saying, “I’m willing to take the risk.”

Of course, he was, she thought bitterly, pressing her fingers to her temples, her heart racing wildly in her chest.

He had taken the risk of stealing the German plane right from under Ludendorff’s nose to escape with Maru’s book. Had taken the risk to go to the gala at the German High Command. Had taken the risk of flying a plane stuffed with deadly gas. And he hadn’t stopped taking risks when he’d come back. She was remembering more recent events now. He had stolen— borrowed —that journal a couple of years ago to help Diana look for Barbara Ann and he had followed a stranger into a museum that had collapsed the next moment. And had taken the risk of helping the League, even though he didn’t have to.  

Just thinking about all that was making bile rise up Diana’s throat.

“I’m not,” she said quietly but firmly.

“It’s not your life, Diana.”

She felt all air rush out of her body, her blood suddenly hot with anger. The kind of anger that nearly made her see red. Was he truly willing to throw away their life together for a maybe?

He had the sense to look abashed, at least, when their eyes met.

“Haven’t you thought about it?” he asked, quietly.

She had. Ever since Barry had casually and thoughtlessly thrown that possibility at them, it was nearly all she had been able to think about. Having forever with Steve. Never looking over her shoulder, never feeling like they needed to make every minute, every second count because they were running out of them faster than she ever imagined.

Everything she had ever wanted.

Diana drew in a breath. Even if it worked, it wouldn’t have made him invincible. He would merely stop growing old, though as far as she was concerned, that was enough. She could keep him safe and alive and with her.

The mere idea made her wild with hope.

But what if he lost himself in the process? What if it changed him into someone— something —unrecognizable? What if he lost his life? Or went insane as so many others appeared to have gone? 

She had lost him before. She knew she would survive if it happened again, if she had to. But she couldn’t stand the thought of his soul being taken away from him. And for her, no less. And it infuriated her beyond anything that he didn’t seem to understand that. That he didn’t want to understand that. 

“You could die.” Her voice was steely and cold.

“I am going to die,” he responded in kind, his gaze uncompromising. “Maybe not tomorrow, but how much time do I have, objectively? Another thirty years? Maybe forty, if I’m lucky?”

He might have as well slapped her.

“Don’t you think it’s worth—”

“I’d rather have a few decades with you than lose you in three days,” Diana stopped him.

She turned away from him and rubbed her eyes, feeling helpless and frustrated by his bull-headedness. She should have known he would come at this with the dogged stubbornness she had witnessed so many times before. Normally, she admired it. She loved his determination and his resolve to never give up. But she couldn’t stand it now, didn’t want to hear his reasoning.

Diana had never felt more terrified in her life.

It all felt wrong and vile somehow, the words ready to fall from her lips tasting foul on her tongue.

“And then what?” Steve demanded, a challenge in his voice. “You think I don’t wish there was another way?”

Diana looked up. “Constantine…”

“…could maybe do something to try and stop some vague talismans that may not even exist from jinxing me out of existence,” Steve finished for her, shaking his head. “What does that change?”

She pressed her lips together into a tight, furious line.

He didn’t flinch away, holding her gaze squarely, just as uncompromising.

“Then what are we doing here, Steve? Living together, working together, being together. What is the point of all this if you are just waiting to die?” He flinched at her words, but Diana didn’t have it in her to stop now. “You knew all that from the start, did you not?” Her voice caught. She paused to take an unsteady breath. “You told me you loved me,” she continued, her throat tight. “You told me you wanted to be with me. Why do it? Why stay together? You knew I would have helped you when you came back, even without us getting intimate, if that was all you wanted it to be.”

It was hurtful and unfair, she knew, but she was so angry and feeling so raw she didn’t know how to stop herself.

Steve stared at her, looking stricken.

“That’s not—that wasn’t what I was trying—”

“Then what? What are you saying?”

He took a breath. “You deserve better, Diana. You deserve more.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

Again she pressed her lips together, this time trying to stop more words from spilling out, sharp as daggers. She huffed out a breath of frustration and annoyance as fear simmered beneath her skin, coursing through her system. It felt like poison.

She wished they could go back in time, to an hour ago. Or yesterday, those blissful hours they had spent in bed, making love and talking and making plans for the future. The world suddenly felt like a precarious place, with Steve on the other side of the room that felt miles away. It made her feel like the whole universe might tilt beneath her at any moment and she would fall off its edge.

Diana turned away from him and ran her hands down her face, the rapid pounding of her heart making her dizzy.

She had known this moment was coming but she still wasn’t prepared for it, never had been.

He was right about one thing though—it was his decision, his life, his choice. He could do whatever he wanted, no matter how she felt about it. And it was that that scared her the most. She couldn’t do anything about it if he chose to go through with his idea , much like she couldn’t save the world the way she had always thought she was meant to. She could only protect it when it allowed her to and watch it fall to pieces when it didn’t.

They were due to leave for Gotham in the morning. She didn’t want to go now; could barely stand the thought of it. She didn’t want to go anywhere or hear anything about the Lazarus Pits again. Let Waller do whatever she wanted to do. It didn’t concern them, didn’t concern her or Steve.

And then another thought struck, making Diana feel sick to her stomach. Did Steve really think so little of her feelings for him?

She didn’t know how to ask. Wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his answer, either. But it hurt. It hurt in ways that she didn’t even know how to comprehend. Was that the message she had been sending all along? The years of having to keep distance lest she get hurt, the years of heartache and learning to live with her losses. Was that all she was capable of doing now? Expecting more than he could give her?

But no. No, it couldn’t be.

Could it?

Diana turned around.

He was still standing where he had been minutes ago, his gaze cast down and focused on the rug at his feet, his face weary and drawn.

“Steve.”

He looked up.

I’m sorry.

She wondered if he felt as defeated as she did. 

There were so many things that she wanted to say to him, but no words to say them. She spoke a hundred languages, but it seemed to mean nothing when there was a gaping hole in the centre of her chest, threatening to consume her whole.

The pause stretched between them, heavy and deafening.

Diana bit her lip, scared of saying something else that she was going to regret later.

Eventually, Steve slid his hands into the pockets of his pants and looked away, breaking eye contact.

She felt her shoulders slump, her heart slamming one hollow thud after another against the inside of her ribs, her life unravelling at the seams. This was not the first fight they’d had but the weight of it was crushing.

“I need to go on patrol,” she said quietly, breaking the silence.

Without looking at her, Steve nodded.

He didn’t try to stop her when she turned to leave. Didn’t offer to go with her, like he often did, either.

It was only after Diana had landed on the rooftop of the Pantheon, quiet and dark in the evening, that she allowed herself to burst into tears.


He was reading in the study when she got out of the shower later that night, ready to go to bed. Or he was pretending to be reading, the book open in his hands but his gaze was unmoving and he appeared to be staring straight through it.

Diana paused in the doorway, her hand on the frame. He knew she was there. She could see in the way his shoulders tensed even though he never looked up or said anything. She wasn’t sure if they were fighting anymore or if it was something else.

Maybe they had just needed space, she thought.

She hated the idea of it, all the same.

Diana lingered there for another moment, struggling to find something to say. Each time she opened her mouth, no words came out, her throat tight. Until, eventually, she stepped back into the hallway and padded quietly to the bedroom.

She didn’t think she would be able to sleep—the bed felt too big and too empty with just her in it, and the sheets too rough against her skin even though they were the finest Egyptian cotton, soft and smooth. She rolled onto her side and ran her hand over Steve’s pillow, his absence feeling unnatural.

The rift between them suddenly felt absurd. All those years of loving him and missing him and longing for him, and she had him right there, the two of them driven apart by a conflict that felt so nonsensical, in the grand scheme of things.

She drifted off before she could convince herself to go get him.

When Diana awoke a few hours later, she was still alone in bed and the night outside the window was dark and deep. She pushed the covers aside and slid out of the bed, the floor cool beneath her bare feet.

The light was still on in the study, the book that Steve had been reading when she had last seen him sitting on the desk, but the room was empty.

A jolt of panic surged through her, clawing at her throat and feeling like ice in her veins. In the first few months after Steve’s return, she used to dream about waking in the morning and finding him gone. Finding out he had never come back to her at all.

Standing in the empty, quiet room, she was suddenly frightened that it had come true.

“Steve,” she called out as she moved with urgency down the hallway, dread pulsing behind her ribcage.

She found him in the living room.Standing in front of the patio door, he was looking out into the night. Even with the five feet between them, Diana could see the stiffness of his back, his hair ruffled as though he had run his hand through it time and time again.

She didn’t lose him. He wasn’t gone, he was only—

The relief that washed over her at the sight of him was almost unbearable, making her weak in the knees.

He must have heard her, or maybe sensed her, because after another moment, he turned around, his expression ragged and wary and more exhausted than she had ever seen. As though he didn’t know what to expect from her and had resigned himself to whatever was about to come.

Diana’s breath caught in her throat.

“Come to bed,” she said, her voice small.

“Diana,” he breathed, his shoulders rounding forward.

She moved towards him across the room. He watched her until she was standing right before him. She wondered if he was going to touch her, but it wasn’t until she lifted her hand to stroke his cheek that his hands curled over her hips, pulling her closer.

He ducked his head closer to hers. Diana leaned towards him, draping her arms around his shoulders. She closed her eyes, feeling his chest rise and fall against hers.

“Are we still arguing?” he asked, after a long while. Long enough that she had managed to forget about everything but him. 

Her heart twisted in her chest.

“You could die,” she whispered. “If you did it, if you took a swim in one of the Pits.”

She heard him suck in a breath, his fingers flexing on the small of her back.

“I could die tomorrow,” Steve said. “I could get hit by a bus. Or have a brick fall on my head. Or—or a piano.”

She snorted, unable to contain it, and nearly rolled her eyes, both bristled by his dismissiveness of such a grave issue and yet grateful for his attempt to lighten it up. There was no happy middle there, was there?

“It doesn’t happen as often as the films may have led you to believe.”

“You don’t know that,” Steve argued. “They don’t just pull those things out of thin air, do they?”

He drew back to look at her, his gaze moving over her face. He brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, looping it around her ear. The skin where he touched her was tingling.

“Come to bed,” Diana repeated quietly. 

He ran his thumb along her cheekbone, and then he nodded.

In the bedroom, he stripped down to his boxers. Diana watched him drape his clothes over the back of the chair before he climbed under the covers.

She turned off the light and slid across the mattress closer to him, folding herself into his body. Her head was tucked under his chin, her arm draped across his abdomen. She felt him take a breath and then exhale slowly, the air of it tickling the top of her head.

“You should get some sleep,” she said, her voice barely audible.

The alarm clock on the nightstand read 3:27 AM. They were supposed to be at the airport in a little over five hours. She had almost forgotten about that, in the light of their fight. It came back with a pang of guilt. She had meant to call Bruce tonight, but it had slipped her mind completely.

She felt Steve nod. His fingers were threading slowly through her hair.

“I’m not gonna do it,” he said just as she started to think he had drifted off.

His words made Diana grow tense, her hand that had been tracing back and forth along the jut of his collar bone pausing. She could feel his heart beating, his chest rising and falling as he breathed. His body felt warm against her, and yet she suddenly felt cold all over.

She was hoping they would never speak of it again, even if that felt more like sticking her head in the sand.

“You don’t have to ask for my permission,” Diana responded, eventually, her throat tight.

The air felt charged with tension around them now, as though sparks were about to start flying.

“I would never—” Steve paused and swallowed. “Not if you’re upset. I’m not—I would never want to hurt you, Diana. Not ever. And I know I have before, though I never meant to do it.”

There was no winning, was there? One way or another, she was going to lose him again. She refused to think of what it had felt like the first time—like a hot knife twisting in her heart, cutting her soul open. Yet, she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help but feel trapped in the devastation of it.

“I’m not upset, I’m scared,” she said, pressing closer to him.

She expected him to argue, to try to convince her again. But he stayed quiet for a long time, and she knew that he was thinking about the same thing she did—that no time was ever going to feel like long enough. Not twenty years, not fifty.

A long time ago, she would have given up anything to have another week with him. Another day even. But now she was hungry for more, feeling greedy and selfish for it, but unable to help it.

Yet the risk was too great. He could die, and then there wouldn’t be those twenty years, either. Just her and her loneliness again, and the emptiness that felt like it could swallow her whole.

“I mean, you don’t know, they could invent something,” Steve said, eventually, as though reading her mind. “Like a—like a youth pill or something. Or some machine that keeps you alive forever. Hey, they invented cell phones and automatic doors and… and oat milk.”

The last one made Diana laugh. She smoothed her hand over his jaw. It was late, they needed to be up in only a few hours…

She pushed away from Steve and sat up. His eyes when he gazed up at her were bright and somewhat perplexed, a shock of hair hanging over his forehead. Her chest grew tight with tenderness—over the trust and devotion in his eyes, over the familiarity of his presence.

Diana had wondered earlier, briefly, what she was going to do if he had left because of their fight. She was ashamed of it now, of thinking that he would simply walk out without a word. How could she expect him to give up on the chance of immortality because of her fears and yet think so little of him, all at the same time? She wanted to tell him that she understood. That if she was him, she would not have hesitated to do anything to be with him forever, whatever the cost.

“Diana?” he murmured.

She watched a slight frown appear between his brows. It made her smile.

She pulled her tank top off and tossed it aside. And then leaned down and kissed him.


South America, 2021

Diana should have known it was going to end this way.

Perhaps, she had.

Perhaps, she had known it all along.

Later, once she had time, she would remember odd, unexpected details about that moment. Like the scent of wet soil after the rain that had fallen the night before and the sweet, perfumed air rich with the smell of flowers. She would remember the heavy, hard pounding of her heart in her chest and the way everything seemed to be zeroed in on her and the creature standing before her.

She would remember how time seemed to have slowed down to a crawl, each second an hour long, and the weight of her sword in her hand, unnaturally heavy for no reason that she could understand, and the tight, nearly painful tension in her muscles as though her whole body had turned to stone.

Those memories would come weeks later, at odd times and often unexpectedly, catching Diana off-guard. They would make her wonder how it was possible for her to have experienced it all, to have lived through it, and to not have noticed any of those things at the time.

But the only thing she was focused on right now was the figure half crouched some twenty feet away from her, across the clearing, the face nearly unrecognizable even though she had dreamed many times of the thing—the creature—that Barbara Ann Minerva had turned into. Teeth bared and eyes narrowed, her tail twitching behind her back. It was impossible to see where human ended and animal began, but try as she might, Diana wouldn’t have been able to attribute either of those words to what Barbara Ann had become — Cheetah.

“Princesssss,” the creature hissed, her paw poised for an attack, white claws smeared with blood.

Diana’s hand flexed on the hilt of her sword, her senses sharp and her heart splitting at the seams.

To the right of her, Chief was standing still as a statue, unmoving as though he was indeed made of rock and not of flesh and blood.

Diana didn’t care about him, not at the moment. It would register with her later that she hadn’t been surprised by his appearance though it had been years, decades, since they had last spoken.

There was only one thing she cared about right now—the body lying in front of Barbara Ann, face down, unmoving, the grass around it sprayed with blood. More blood than a person could afford to lose without losing their life along with it.

Steve.

Her own blood was hammering in her ears, so loud Diana was desperate for it to stop, to give her a moment to think. To focus, goddammit.

He was not breathing. Steve was not breathing, she could see that from across the clearing, his body looking more like a ragdoll than a person. All that blood…

Diana felt her throat close up, the despair building in her chest and making her feel like she was breathing through a straw.

“You’re back,” Barbara Ann spoke again , in a low, throaty voice that didn’t sound at all human, her claws still aimed at Steve.

She tilted her head and smiled, matted fur standing up on her hackles.

And then she lunged at Diana.

Notes:

Well, I did the thing again 😬 Most of you people know me well enough to know it was coming.

I'll fix it, eventually. But I also have to say that the next few chapters are some of my favourite in terms of emotional impact on everyone involved that we're going to see.

Please take very good care of yourselves and stay safe!

Comments and thoughts are always much appreciated :) More coming soon!

Chapter 24

Notes:

HEY GUYS! Guess who is still alive!

I apologize for dropping off the face of the earth for a bit. And leaving you with that massive cliffhanger, too. Ah! My new job has been kicking my ass. I don't believe I mentioned it before but I'm working with a Covid research project and it's intense, as you can probably imagine. (And I was also offered a promotion today?? So things might get busier??? Yikes.)

A huge thank you to those of you who checked in on me :) And thank you for your patience. I hope you are still interested in seeing this story through. I'll do my best to post regularly, and hopefully it will work better this time.

This chapter and the one after are quite special to me, and I hope you will like them as well :)

Have fun!

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

Chapter Text

Veld, 1918

Steve awoke to the first rays of grey light of the early morning filtering through the curtains.

The room was cold, the fire long gone out in the grate, and the air had that palpable quality to it that only chilly mornings could give it.

It was early. Way too early. Although what surprised Steve was not the hour or that he had awoken on his own, but the fact that he realized almost immediately that he hadn’t dreamed.

The dreams had started at the end of his first week at the front, wretched memories plaguing his mind the moment he closed his eyes and often leaving him more exhausted when he woke up than he had been upon falling asleep.

The first time in two years he didn’t dream of death and blood and violence was on the boat, with Diana asleep by his side and only a few inches of space between them. The second time was last night.

Steve let out a slow breath and blinked at the ceiling, trying to get his mind to clear.

Beside him, Diana was fast asleep, fitted closely against the curve of his body, his arm wrapped around her shoulders (and mostly numb by that point, though Steve didn’t mind) and her head tucked under his chin. He could feel her hand resting over his heart, rising and falling slowly as he breathed, the comfort of her nearness almost too much to bear.

He turned slowly, lest he disturb her, half convinced that he had dreamed everything that had happened between them. That he was still dreaming, his chest tight with too many things that he couldn’t put into words. Things that, perhaps, couldn’t be defined with words, to begin with.

He had gone into the war knowing that there likely was no way out of it for him. Not alive, anyway. And he had been fine with it the entire time, certain that doing the right thing was worth it. That the peace was worth dying for.

For so long, that was what he had believed, wholeheartedly and completely.

Yet, here he was, not so sure anymore.

Ahead of him was a mission the outcome of which he could neither predict nor envision. And for the first time since he had enlisted, he could feel himself holding back. Death, as it turned out, was a whole different beast when you had so much to lose. And god help him, he wanted to lose none of it.

He was not a fool; he knew exactly why this was happening. He was falling for Diana, hard and fast. Had been falling for her from the moment he had laid his eyes on her. In retrospect, looking back at everything that they had been through together in the short time since they met (that felt like an entire lifetime, at that), Steve knew now that he had never stood a chance against her kindness and compassion and the promise of life so rich he couldn’t wrap his head around it.

But, it was making things hard. It was making him afraid because part of him still felt his clock was ticking and his time was running out no matter how much he wanted it to come to a standstill so he could catch his breath. So he could seep in this new and wondrous feeling blossoming inside of him and revel in it until he no longer remembered what loss and cold and isolation felt like. Until he was filled with the same light that he saw in Diana’s eyes each time he looked at her.

He wanted it all, he wanted it so badly it was making something tender inside of him ache with longing.

Please give me more time, he silently begged anyone or anything that might be listening, desperate to do something even though he knew that there wasn’t much left that could be done.

Slowly, he combed his hand through Diana’s hair, allowing his fingers to trail down the curve of her spine, and then up again. She stirred against him, the pattern of her breathing changing as she woke up—and wasn’t it insane that it had taken him all of a few hours to learn to recognize something like that?

Absently, he wondered what other small details he had picked up about her without ever realizing it. And what she had picked up about him.

She drew in a breath and lifted her head, looking around the room before her gaze found his.

“Is it time?” she asked, her voice low.

“No.” Steve picked up her hand still resting on his chest and lifted it up, kissing her fingers. “Not yet.”

He watched Diana’s features smooth out. Watched her gaze drop down to his lips, which made him look at her lips, in turn, his heartbeat shifting into a different gear and his blood coming alive in his veins.

She shifted against him, pressing closer to his body. She turned her hand in his hold, pressing her palm flat to his as she weaved their fingers together.

Together, in that way.

Still together.

“You must be cold,” Steve murmured, only realizing that he had said it out loud when she smiled, and how dumb it sounded.

“I’m not.”

He loved her smile, he thought absently. Loved how it brought something different in her eyes, the sharp edges of that uncompromising drive inside of her—the one that had pushed her to follow him all the way to the front—smoothing out, turning into something different. Something that he couldn’t seem to get enough of.

And she deserved that. She deserved a world which she could look at with wonder and not devastation.

She deserved the kind of life that was filled with laughter and joy and… and ice cream, god help him.

And maybe, just maybe if he managed to live long enough… if he could… maybe they would…

Steve dipped his head, craning his neck. She met him halfway, her lips warm when they brushed against his, the touch so familiar he could have sworn he’d known her for as long as he lived.

He drew back, and bumped his nose against Diana’s, cajoling a smile out of her. And then kissed her again, slower, deeper, a jolt of thrill surging through him when her hand moved along his skin, over his ribs.

“We’ve got time,” Steve said against her mouth, suddenly both frightened and desperate and so many other things.

Diana nodded, her hand trailing over his cheek, along his jaw.

Without thinking, he moved towards her, rolling her on her back beneath him as his mouth found hers once more. He kissed her, feeling her arc into him. She sighed softly, her hands sliding over his back, along his arms, through his hair as her lips pressed against his.

He heard her make a sound in the back of her throat, one that made his breath hitch and something akin to fire sear its way through his system, every cell of his body alight.

If Steve could wish for something, just one thing, he would have wished for that moment to never end.

They stayed tangled for a long time afterwards, quiet words whispered between slow kisses and hands mapping each other’s skin.

(He would remember it all later, in the cockpit of the stolen German plane laden with deadly gas, the gun trembling in his hand. Every last word and every last promise and the way his skin felt in places where it had been pressed close against Diana’s.)

She had told him things the night before, not only about Ares but about other things too, and Steve wondered if maybe one of her many gifts was to change the course of time. He wondered if it was selfish to ask for something like that when the rest of the world was waiting for a different kind of miracle.

He watched her watching him, their faces only inches apart. Diana’s lips were bright pink and swollen with kisses. He could still feel the taste of her skin.

And he wanted to tell her—

He wanted to tell her because he could barely stand to hold on to that feeling pulsing behind his ribs—

“We need to…” she started, her hand sliding over his face.

The light was brighter now, pale autumnal sun painting streaks of light across the bed, over the hardwood floor. It was not long now. They would have to leave soon. Steve was certain that he could hear Sameer’s voice coming from somewhere downstairs, but he tuned it out, refusing to acknowledge the world that existed outside of this room, not yet.

“But don’t you wish…?” he started and faltered as he brushed a piece of her hair from her face.

Diana moved closer and kissed him, her hand on his cheek.

“I do.”   

They dressed in companionable silence as the sleepy village started to come to life outside, voices drifting up to their small room right under the roof and the smell of coffee wafting in from the kitchen downstairs.

Steve had found a few more logs and started the fire once again, though the warmth of it was nowhere near what he and Diana had shared only recently.

Putting on the stolen German uniform, he went through a mental list of everything that they needed to do today, the next few hours feeling too enormous and stretching endlessly before them.

Getting into the German High Command would be no easy feat, he was aware. And God only knew what was waiting for them there. The plan that had felt so brilliant only yesterday suddenly felt foolish, impossible even. But it was too late to do anything about it now. They were running out of time, and if Ludendorff attacked before they stopped him—

Steve pushed the thought aside and looked up.

Diana was standing by the window, peering at the plaza below.

She had donned her armour already and was putting on her gauntlets, her hands now working on wrapping the leather straps around them. She didn’t even need to look, her eyes trained on the people and life outside, the muscle memory enough for her to not need to pay attention to what she was doing.

He wondered then how many times she had had to do just that—wrap those straps around her hands. Put on that armour, or any armour—unbidden, his mind swivelled back to the golden one she had been wearing when they had first met.

Steve didn’t need her to tell him that she had worn both with pride.

He dropped the German uniform jacket he was holding and moved towards her, his palm sliding habitually along the small of Diana’s back. He bent down and pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder, helpless against the urge to do it.

Diana looked up at him and smiled that lovely smile that went all the way straight into his heart.

She turned around and, wordlessly, Steve reached for the gauntlet still sitting on the windowsill, waiting for her to put it on. She could probably do it faster, but even though there was a flicker of surprise in Diana’s eyes, she allowed him to affix it to her forearm, his fingers moving with more certainty than they had the night before when he’d taken them off.

His heart stuttered at the memory and Steve pushed it back, taking a breath as he tried to stay focused on the task at hand. Still, a spark of heat came to life in his blood, making him feel a little heated. A little restless.

When he looked up, their eyes meeting, he was certain that she knew exactly what he was thinking about. And maybe she was thinking about it, too.

“Thank you,” Diana said quietly when he was finished.

Steve nodded.

She lifted her hand, trailing her fingers down his cheek the way she had done last night, right before he had kissed her for the first time. Her eyes flicked between his.

He needed to shave, he thought absently. There was a bathroom down the hall, and he needed to shave and make himself look more like a German officer would look at an official function. But he didn’t move, lingering close to Diana for another moment. And another one. And then one more, unable to bear the thought of opening that door just yet.

Instead, he closed his own hand over hers, holding her palm against his cheek. Their eyes locked together, he turned into her touch, kissing the heel of her palm.

“I meant it, you know?” he said as his other hand found its place on her side, above her hip. He traced his thumb along one of the grooves etched into the bodice of her armour. “When I asked you to come with me, to America. After this is all over.”

Diana’s features softened, melting into the kind of tenderness that he only now was learning to recognize.

He had meant all the other things, too. Like when he had said that she was beautiful, more than once. That she felt like a dream—the words whispered into the soft skin of her throat, into the valley of her chest. That he wanted that night to never end.

He couldn’t bring himself to repeat them all now, feeling strangely exposed in the bright light of the day, with their clothes on and her body not pressed close against his. He hoped that she knew it, anyway.

“I know,” Diana said.

Steve nodded again and moved closer to her, dropping his forehead to rest against hers.

“Do you want to?” he asked.

Someone yelled something outside, and a burst of laughter followed, carrying across the plaza. But it felt like it was miles away. A place that they didn’t belong to.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes crinkling at the corners when she smiled.

“I could make you breakfast,” he added, feeling ridiculous the moment the words fell from his mouth.

Who cared about breakfast when the fate of the world was balancing on the edge of the knife?

But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help thinking about that now, everything that he hadn’t dared to wish for even months ago was suddenly playing out in vivid colours before his mind’s eye.

He wanted more. He wanted more so badly that he could hardly think of anything else.

Diana bit her lip, her other hand smoothing over his hair and down the back of his neck until she rested it against his chest.

“I’d like that,” she said, her voice dropping as though they were sharing secrets.

Steve would remember this all those hours later, with the wind whipping his hair and the smell of fuel and such a profound sense of regret that it would fill his entire rib cage until he couldn’t stand to take another breath.

And then the fire would engulf him, and he wouldn’t need to breathe at all.


South America, 2021

She hadn’t believed him at first. Not entirely. It had felt like too much of a coincidence. Something too convenient to be true.

When Steve had first told her that Cheetah and the Lazarus Pits could be connected, there had been a moment when Diana’s instinct was to dismiss the theory. After all, he had been trying to track Cheetah down for a couple of years by then, and while he had done his best not to show it, Diana knew that the futility of his search was weighing down on him, leaving him antsy and restless and desperate for a new lead.

She understood his desire to grasp at straws and hold on to every morsel of information that fell into his lap. The two of them, they were not that different when it came to such things, in the end.

She had let him have it, that new speculation. Had let him go along with it, play with the variables and draw theories, not quite buying at first into something that felt like a coincidence more than not.

For a long time, Diana had ignored the small voice in the back of her mind telling her that something had to be wrong with those occurrences —magical water, people going mad, and the mention of Barbara Ann amidst it all. That there was no such thing as a coincidence. That somehow, despite her skepticism and, perhaps, her unwillingness to see the truth, Steve had to be right.

It was why she had rejected Bruce’s offer to come along with them here—she had wanted to try and find evidence of Steve’s claims without involving anyone else. She had never mentioned Cheetah to the League, though try as she might, she was not sure why not. But that was why she had brought Steve with her instead of sending him off on a mission with Victor like they had planned initially, even though it would have been safer. Steve was the only one who knew the truth, after all.  

They had found the spot easily enough, following the provided coordinates. Stark in the middle of a tropical forest, no less.

“It’s a travesty we only get to see such places when we are working,” Steve had muttered, dismayed, as he looked around them, at the lush greenery and flowers the size of his head.

Diana had glanced at him over her shoulder, trying to bite back her grin.

“Such hard lives we lead,” she had mused, and he had chuckled behind her back, making the familiar warmth blossom in her stomach. The comfort of it was enough to settle her, to push aside the nagging feeling of wrongness that had been following her for hours now.  

In the two days that it had taken them to get there, they hadn’t spoken of their fight again. Of his plans and her fears and the million things hanging between them, silent reminders that she didn’t want to think of. Things that had no right to exist when she loved him so and he loved her back.

Last night, there had been a touch of fragility to everything between them, both of them skirting around one another as though trying not to take the wrong step by accident. But today, everything seemed to have settled, their smiles easy, their words no longer forced. Earlier, when Steve had leaned in to kiss her before they’d set off on the trail, it had felt as natural as breathing.

It had been easy enough to locate the pool—a crack in an outcropping of rocks filled with water. The pools were something that they had both gotten used to recognizing by then, the water having an odd quality to it that Diana couldn’t put into words. As though it was alive somehow.

She tried not to think too much about that.

Steve had set to dealing with the explosives they had brought with them without another word. The entire time, Diana had been expecting him to bring up getting into the water, but he never had, although, in the end, she had not been sure whether it pleased her or disquieted her even more. It had reminded her that their argument from a few nights ago hadn’t been resolved, not really. If anything, it had felt like putting a band-aid on a wound that needed stitches.

She hadn’t said anything though. Instead, she had pressed her lips together and looked away. Part of her had feared that he would pick up on it without her saying a word. 

But it was not that that had been holding her attention. It was the forest and the strange feeling she’d had about it. She had taken a step forward, and then another one, looking into the lush foliage around them as she listened closely. It had been then that it had occurred to her that the place had been quiet, unnaturally so. As though everything around her had been holding its breath.

It had made Diana frown. Had made her reach for her sword, pulling it out of its sheath, the feel of its hilt comforting in her hand and the weight of it in her hold steadying her heartbeat.

She had glanced at Steve, crouched between the rocks.

And then she had stepped under the canopy of trees, certain that there was something out there watching her, waiting for her, the fine hairs on her arms standing on end in alarm and a cold trickle of uncertainty curling around her spine.

The sounds had dimmed even more in an instant, even the whisper of the wind dying down. No animals, no birds. She had wondered how it was possible for the forest to be so completely still.

When a gunshot had rung out through the air, minutes later, her blood had turned to ice.

She had turned on her heel and run, sprinting back to where she had come from. But, the clearing where she had left Steve behind had been empty, his footprints ending where Diana had last seen him.

“Steve,” she had said, her voice low and barely audible, a jolt of panic surging through her and leaving her weak in the knees.

Absently, she had caught sight of a red blinking dot—the timer that was going to activate the bomb—as she had rushed past it and down the path towards where the echo of the gunshot was still ringing in the trees. When she had reached an opening in the forest, a pair of eyes and a paw with blood dripping from its claws had brought her to a halt.

She should have known, shouldn’t she?

She should have believed him sooner. And now she was going to pay the heaviest price for her doubts.

“You’re back,” Barbara Ann—something that used to be Barbara Ann—had hissed, the words sounding like a crunch of gravel in her mouth. “Princesssss.”

Diana had watched the creature bare her teeth and leap into the air, high above the ground, as she had braced herself for impact—

Another gunshot rang in the air, followed by a high-pitched wail, and then a bundle of pale fur with a streak of red across her side had come tumbling to the ground. And then the next moment, she had disappeared into the forest as though she had never been there at all.

Diana swivelled her head around just in time to see Chief lower his hunting rifle, its barrel smoking and the faint smell of gunpowder hanging over the clearing, the sound of the shot still ringing in her ears.

She was at Steve’s side in an instant, dropping down on her knees and turning him carefully, slowly, her hands coming off smeared with warm, sticky blood. A low, pained sound rose in the back of her throat, clawing its way up her windpipe. His throat was slashed, dark blood caked around the wound. Four parallel claw marks ran across his chest, his shirt in tatters and red with blood.

“Steve?” she whispered, her lips quivering.

No. No, no, it couldn’t be. It couldn’t be happening, it couldn’t be…

Diana lifted her hand, smoothing it through his hair by habit, and jerked it away when she realized that her fingers were covered with blood. And now so was his hair.

She bit her lip against the anguish that had her throat in a tight grip, a cry of loss seeking its way out, until she could feel her own blood on her tongue.

She wished, desperately, that she could step through time and go back to a few days ago. To the morning when she had awoken next to him, his hand sliding with habitual comfort around her, a spark of heat searing its way through her in an instant. To the moment when he had smiled at her, his eyes bright and alive and alight with a familiar glint of mischief.

Everything had felt so simple then.

“Steve,” she called him again, quietly. It had only been a few minutes. She had only left him for a few minutes. How was it possible…? How could he…?

Her throat constricted, growing hot as her vision blurred.

Her fingers shaking, she pressed them to the pulse point on his neck.

Nothing.

No. She had to be wrong. He couldn’t—

“Diana.”

She turned, almost surprised to find Napi right there by her side. His face was grim, his lips pressed together.

“No,” she murmured, staring at him for a moment as though waiting for reassurance. She looked down at Steve, his head cradled in her lap now. “No, Steve, please.”

“Diana, he is—”

“No!” she interjected forcefully.

No, he was not.

How could she have lost him? He had made her a promise. They were supposed to have more time, a lot more time. But she was a fool to think that the gods would grant her that. That they cared for promises of mortals. She should never have let him do this, risk his life. She should have left him behind and taken care of her unpaid debts on her own.

Diana felt all air rush out of her.

The pool. One of the Lazarus Pits that they had come here to destroy. They were supposed to heal the ailing, were they not?

Diana’s fingers flexed, grazing over his shirt.

And then everything inside of her turned to ice.

The explosives.

She was breathing hard, her heart pounding so fast it was making her dizzy. Was making it hard to think.

She sucked in a breath, willing herself to concentrate, to push aside the panic churning in the centre of her chest.

Earlier, she hadn’t looked at the timer; didn’t know how much they had left before it was supposed to go off.

Her throat closed. They didn’t have the time to take him elsewhere, they were too far away from anyone, the nearest hospital miles away. She feared it was too late for that, regardless.

They didn’t have the time, period, a small voice reminded her. He was not breathing, his blood no longer pumping out of his body because his heart had stopped—

She was running out of time.

“Diana.”

She turned to Chief, panic rising inside of her in hot, suffocating waves.

“He is not breathing.”

“You have to—” he started.

“I have to save him.”

What a fool she was to think that she could keep him safe, that she could protect him. A selfish, naïve fool. Again, she had allowed him to be taken from her. How was it possible? Why, gods why, had she left him behind?

“Diana, listen to me,” Chief said, his voice firm and urgent. “You have to get her. You need—”

She shifted, her eyes roaming wildly around. Where had she come from? She couldn’t remember. She needed to focus, she needed to…

Diana swallowed, bile rising in her throat. Steve’s body was limp in her arms, and there was nothing else she could think of.

A hand curled over her wrist.

“I’ll take him,” Napi said.

“There are explosives,” she murmured. “Steve… He left—”

“I know. You have to go,” Chief pressed. “She needs to be stopped, you know that as well as I do. There is no one else to do it but you.”

Diana glanced down, the back of her throat tight and hot, threatening to suffocate her.

“I’ll take him,” Chief repeated, his voice low but his tone urgent.

She lifted her gaze to his. “There is no pulse.”

“You have to go now.”

She knew he was right. She knew what the right thing to do was—go after Barbara Ann, the way she should have all those years ago before Cheetah had known to hide herself so well that no one could find her.

But Diana couldn’t do that and also take Steve to the Lazarus Pit. For the second time in her life, she couldn’t be in two places at once when she desperately needed to. There had to be irony to it, perhaps, but the only thing she felt was utter, consuming devastation.

“If the bomb goes off…” she trailed off.

Chief nodded. “I know. Go.”

She curled forward, smoothing her clean hand over Steve’s face, careful not to get any more blood on him, sick at the sight of it as it was. His skin was warm still, the familiar feeling of it under her touch making everything inside of her ache. She pressed a kiss to his temple, and then his forehead.

“I love you,” she murmured into his skin, past the burning lump in her throat. “I will be back before you know it. Come back to me, Steve, please come back to me. I love you.”

There was no response, though she hadn’t expected any.

Chief was looking anxiously at her, and Diana was suddenly very aware of the moments ticking away, faster than they could allow. She moved away from Steve and stood up, picking up her sword from where she had dropped it.

She had Steve’s blood on her armour, on her skin, but she couldn’t pause to think of it now. There was something cruel about constantly ending up with his blood on her hands.

When she glanced down, Chief had already moved closer to Steve, taking her spot. As if sensing her attention, he looked up at her and nodded.

That was when Diana turned and started to run.

She was merely two minutes away from where she had left them when the ground beneath her shook, the boom of an explosion rising above the trees.


1917

There was a lot they hadn’t told him about the war.

Steve remembered playing “war,” as a boy with perpetually skinned knees and a gap-toothed smile. They had used sticks for rifles, “firing” them from behind bales of hay and lazy sheep and overturned wheelbarrows, back when the world had felt like an adventure waiting to happen.

Back then, “war” had smelled like summer and freshly cut grass and lemonade left by his mother on the back porch when she got tired of calling for him to come home. It had felt like the rush of thrill and the anticipation of dinner and the desire to have time slow down so they could soak up every bit of the game that had made them feel victorious.

The real war was nothing like that.

It smelled like mud and blood and the wet wool of the officers’ coats that never got completely dry, not with the film of mist that seemed to be hanging in the air at all times, the chilly wind blowing in off the water making it feel ten times colder than it actually was. It smelled like sweat, and too many bodies crammed into spaces not meant for them, and fear.

Up until Steve Trevor had gotten to the front, he’d had no idea that fear had a distinctive smell to it, something indescribable but present all the same.

He had wondered, more than once, if the enemy could simply follow it and find them all, their camps tucked in the woods, the fire out and voices lowered. If hiding was pointless, when their fear was like a beacon in the sea of darkness.

The real war was sludge beneath his boots, seeping inside and making his toes feel like cold little stones. It was hunger like nothing he had ever experienced, his stomach eating itself. It was hearing artillery fire in the distance and wondering if this was about to be his end.

They were passing through a small village in the south of France in late November, struggling to move with their feet getting stuck in the river of mud that the road had turned into after the rain. Their packs and their weapons were so heavy that all Steve wanted to do was drop them, to keep pushing forward without the weight slowing him down.

The village was empty, the smoke of gunpowder and something that he had long ago learned to recognize as “missile residue” hanging around them in the air that was so still he was finding it hard to breathe for fear of disturbing it. One of the houses—a low structure with small windows and a lopsided roof—had its door open. And it swayed slightly, disturbed by nothing they could see.

An officer walking ahead of Steve moved in that direction, poking the door with the muzzle of his shotgun until it opened wider.

There on the floor was a boy, small and skinny, no more than seven years old, lying in the pool of his own blood, his chest a mess of gore.

Steve turned away, his insides rolling until he was sick, his stomach empty but the bile burning his throat and his eyes watering as he heaved over and over again, ignoring the murmur and snorts behind his back. As though that was something that a person was ever meant to get used to. Or ever could get used to. As though it was not a life being taken but a game that they were playing and the boy was about to get up and run away, amused by the absurdity of grown men believing in his death.

That was the first time he had seen an innocent person slaughtered in the name of something they didn’t understand. There would be more, in the months to come. Children and women and old people, killed or having taken their own lives because they saw no other way out.

To each life that he helped save there were dozens that he was too late to do anything for, accusation in their unseeing eyes and surprise forever frozen on their faces. As though they couldn’t believe what had happened to them.

Steve couldn’t blame them—he couldn’t believe it either.

He got lost the following April on his way back to his base—an encampment of a dozen tents, a kitchen and what they were optimistically calling a field hospital, in the woods surrounded by the Germans. He was supposed to be transferring to a different battalion in the morning. He was supposed to be flying again.

Following an injury sustained three months earlier, he had remained grounded, but he couldn’t stand it anymore. He couldn’t stand looking at the faces of people he was supposed to shoot on sight. At least, from up in the sky, he could pretend that those were not real human beings he was slaughtering. It didn’t make it better but at least he didn’t dream of them—well, not in as many details. 

(A year later, when Diana got appalled by the idea of killing people a soldier couldn’t see, all Steve could think about was that there was a mercy to it, for there was nothing more haunting than watching life drain out of a person's eyes. There was nothing noble about that, just a part of you dying with them.)

He was on the trail he knew was meant to take him back to his people, but something was wrong. He was supposed to be there already, he was supposed to have arrived an hour ago. Except the forest continued to grow thick around him, the bare trees swaying in the breeze, their gnarly branches rubbing together and filling the air with the kind of whisper that made Steve feel like there were people all around him.

It was not until he spotted the tents ahead of him—the wrong tents—and fire shooting sparks into the late afternoon sky as people milled around it, that it occurred to him that he had trespassed, venturing into the enemy territory.

It was not until one of the German officers looked up and spotted him lingering near the trees at the edge of the clearing that he realized that he was going to die.

They followed him, through the forest and across the river, ice-cold water sloshing in his boots as his lungs burned from not enough oxygen, his head swimming and the world swaying wildly around him. He had jumped over a fallen tree and crouched behind it, waiting for the German soldiers to pass. Instead, they fired, hitting the tree that he was hiding behind over and over again. The heat of their bullets made it smell like a campfire, only in a twisted, terrifying way.

There were at least seven of them, and only one of him, with no one to cover him.

His heart was pounding out of his chest.

He didn’t want to die.

A week before, he had seen the light go out of someone else’s eyes and now he saw that face every time he closed his eyes. An officer he didn’t even know, whose name he would never learn, now haunting him like a ghost because Steve had lived while that man had not. That was the burden of the living.

Steve closed his eyes and took a shaky breath, and then another one.

He didn’t want to die, but he wouldn’t be caught alive either. He knew what the Germans did with prisoners of war. Knew what they put them through, the never-ending cycle of torture and beatings and things that no human should be able to even imagine. He had seen it—broken fingers and pulled out teeth and cuts meant to make the person bleed out slowly and painfully as their heart struggled to keep up.

It was how they had learned about the gas too—that the Germans had been working on a secret weapon to defeat the allies. They had found bodies that resembled pieces of meat and not people, with their skin peeling and their innards melted, their lungs burned to a crisp from the inside.

If the German soldiers got him, that was going to be him. He would be a cautionary tale and a footnote in the book of history where his name wouldn’t belong otherwise.

He didn’t have enough rounds to take them all out. He didn’t know where they were, except that they were behind him and advancing fast. There was mud seeping into his boots because he couldn’t allow himself to move, for fear of making a sound, his fingers frozen but his palms slippery with sweat. With each breath he took, he feared that he was going to drop his shotgun.

A crack of a twig somewhere to his right had Steve snapping to attention, a surge of adrenaline shooting through his veins, white-hot and dizzying.

And then he was running, tripping and slipping, his legs ready to give way any moment, but moving forward faster than he had ever run before in his life.

There were yells behind him, a staccato of gunfire—they were not trying to conceal themselves because they knew he had nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The woods were theirs and he was all but a sitting duck, an easy target that they pursued lazily, knowing that they were going to win, in the end.

There was another abandoned village ahead of him, just a handful of dilapidated houses, unaffected by the war because it had been abandoned years before the war had even started.

Steve sprinted towards it, a blister on the heel of his foot making him feel like he was stepping on a blade each time his sole hit the ground. He gritted his teeth, and then paused and turned around, firing once, twice, reload, again. Three soldiers down. More fire his way.

The world felt like a maze; or like one of those dreams where you couldn’t move even though you knew that you needed to. The closer he got to the village, the farther away it felt.

Another shot rang through the air, his shoulder suddenly ablaze.

Steve glanced down, teeth gritted against the pain.

Just a graze, but it made his heartbeat spike, his body going into overdrive.

They were going to find him. They were going to capture him.

He wondered, not for the first time, what was the point of this all, and whether there were going to be any winners in the end, or just a torn-apart world, barren land stretching for miles and miles, and the fear living inside every one of them every day of their lives.

Steve sucked in the air, the smoke from the gunpowder tickling his nose and trickling into his lungs. In the back of his mind, he could still remember the smell of the freshly-cut grass and hay and that particular scent of his father’s barn—manure and barrels of grain and the dry, sun-baked wood it was built of. He remembered the smell of his mother’s peach cobbler and the ink of the new books he had received every year before school started—until he had stopped noticing such things.

But those memories felt barely real now.

He wondered if the world would ever smell that way again, or if they would have to breathe in death and fire and dirt until the end of time now.

The forest opened up before him, spitting him out onto a field, a lopsided row of houses ahead of him, less a beacon of hope and more a statue of dread.

His heart leaped in his chest, relief and anticipation and a prayer to something he didn’t even believe in running on an endless loop through his mind, over and over and over again.

He didn’t hesitate, rushing towards the house, the ground uneven beneath him and his muscles burning with exertion, his legs ready to give up.

A hundred feet.

Fifty.

The blow to his shoulder sent him reeling forward, nearly flying from the force of the bullet piercing his flesh.


South America, 2021

“Your… fault!”

“Barbara Ann—”

Cheetah bared her teeth. “Don’t call me that.”

“I didn’t come to fight you.”

“I don’t want to fight you. I want to make you pay, Princessss.”

“Let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help!”

“Diana, status!” a voice demanded in Diana’s ear. Had been demanding for the past hour, but she had tuned it out, wishing she had thought to throw the comm piece away.

Victor.

Diana took a breath, oddly centred by the sound of his voice, no matter how terse, suddenly grateful to still have that tether between herself and the rest of the world.

She exhaled slowly.

The four parallel slash wounds on her arm where Cheetah had gotten her throbbed; the claws had been as sharp as daggers. They were going to close and heal soon enough, Diana knew, but the discomfort of it was distracting nonetheless.

Something was wrong with her shoulder—a sharp jolt of pain shot down her arm each time she moved it, however unintentionally. A dislocation, perhaps. That, too, would mend itself before she knew it.

Her chest was still heaving, her breathing laboured, as the adrenaline started to drain out of her system.

On the ground before her, Cheetah lay bound with her Lasso, unconscious and subdued for the time being. Diana didn’t know how long that was going to last. She suspected that it wouldn’t be long.

She couldn’t think of that now, she needed to get back to Steve. She needed—

Her gaze moved towards the path leading back to the pool. The explosion… Had Chief been too late…?

She forbade herself to think of that.

“I need help,” she said, loudly enough for Victor, and everyone else who was tuned in, to hear.

“Where are you?”

Bruce.

Diana’s fingers flexed on the hilt of her sword, her gaze dropping down once more. There was blood on Cheetah’s fur. Diana didn’t know how badly Barbara Ann was injured, or how easily she was going to heal, but she didn’t want to stay there and wait. Yet, she also couldn’t leave Cheetah alone for long.

She owed them an explanation, she knew. They were not going to be pleased with her secrecy, however well-intentioned. It was something that had put them all in danger, one way or another. One of them could have been hurt. Or worse.

Diana’s chest constricted with a pang of guilt. They deserved better than that.

She pushed the thought aside, for now. That was something she was going to deal with later.

“Track my comm,” she said. “There is someone here. I need you to take her with you, and keep her sedated.”

“Someone… Who?” Victor asked immediately.

“I’ll explain later,” Diana promised. “Please.”

After that, before more questions came, she pulled the comm out of her ear and dropped it on the ground, right in front of the creature that had once been her friend. She knew Victor would be able to determine its exact location and hoped that her promise to give them answers later would also be enough.

And then, she turned on her heel and headed back where she had come from, begging all gods she could think of to look favourably upon her, just this once, and let Steve live.

When she reached the clearing, framed by the outcropping of rocks, it was empty.

Her heart leaped into her throat, leaving her momentarily dizzy with panic.

“Steve,” she breathed, her gaze sweeping the area wildly, blood pounding in her ears.

It was on her second sweep that she noticed them, half-hidden behind the boulders.

At the sound of her footsteps, Chief’s head snapped up, his hand reaching for his shotgun lying on the ground. He paused when their eyes met, his shoulders relaxing and his features softening.

Lying before him on the ground was Steve, eyes closed and one arm draped over his abdomen.

Diana crossed over to them, lowering down to her knees in front of him.

“Steve,” she murmured as she reached for him, noting absently that his hair was no longer caked with blood where she had touched it earlier. “The explosion…” she started, casting a glance towards Chief.

“I couldn’t disarm it,” he said. “Had to—” he jerked his chin towards the forest to the west of them.

Diana nodded, losing her interest in the subject immediately. It was of no concern to her.

Her hands moved slowly over Steve as she took him in, the turmoil churning inside of her receding some. His throat was whole, the gaping wound that had been spilling blood only minutes earlier was gone. His shirt was soaked through, in tatters and red with blood, but his skin beneath it was smooth and unmarked.

She pressed her palm flat to his chest, feeling his heart beating evenly into her hand.

Diana’s throat grew tight once more, the relief of it almost too much to bear. She waited, counting to ten, and then to ten again, before her hand moved to his neck, pressing to the pulse point beneath his jaw. She couldn’t help it, desperate for reassurance.

“Steve,” she whispered, feeling weak in the knees from relief, even though she was already sitting. 

On impulse, Diana combed her hand through his hair. However, his eyes remained shut. He didn’t seem to care for her voice, or her touch.

She looked up at Chief.

“Is he…?”

“Alive,” Chief nodded. It was only then that Diana noticed that the sleeves of his coat were wet as well, as was the front of his shirt from when he had pulled Steve out.

Her gaze darted towards the water of the pool, seemingly undisturbed. She half expected it to appear to be tinted with Steve’s blood but there was no trace of that, it remained the same greenish hue she had noticed before.

“But why then…” she trailed off, her hand smoothing over Steve’s chest, carefully, as though she was scared to hurt him.

“Give him time, Diana,” Chief said quietly.

She didn’t feel convinced, the initial relief turning into concern now that a few minutes had passed. Grateful as she was, she couldn’t exactly ignore how unnatural their predicament was. After all, his body had been nearly shredded to pieces less than an hour ago.

She shifted, moving closer to him. She lifted Steve’s head carefully to place it in her lap, running her hand over his damp hair once more. His skin was warm, his chest rising and falling evenly. But the image of those gaping wounds and all the blood was vivid before her eyes, the paralyzing fear still holding Diana in its tight grip. She curled her hand around his and squeezed his fingers.

Death had never become routine to her, something to brush off like it was nothing. It was something that no one could ever get used to, she was convinced. From that day she had seen her sisters die on the beach on Themyscira—the day that Antiope had died in her arms—it felt like a punch to her gut every time.

For a while, Chief stayed quiet, giving her that moment to collect herself. Diana could feel his eyes on her, sweeping over the blood on her arm beneath which the gashes left by Cheetah healing already. Mercifully, it never took long. She could all but hear him thinking, itching to pepper her with questions. She was grateful that he didn’t.

It settled Diana, somewhat, that Chief didn’t seem to be as concerned as she was. Enough for her breathing to even out and for her frantic heartbeat to settle.

“What happened?” Chief asked, after a long moment, his eyes darting to the forest where Diana had come from.

“She poses no danger anymore,” Diana said, lifting her gaze to Chief’s, her thumb running absently over Steve’s knuckles. Chief arched a curious eyebrow at her, and she explained, “For now. Someone is coming to help.”

His lips curved ever so slightly. “Friends of yours?” he inquired.

“She won’t stay subdued for long,” Diane said quietly.

“You could have killed her,” he offered, in an almost off-handed manner. If she didn’t know him better, she would have believed that he meant it.

“It’s not her fault. What had happened… She never chose it, Napi. She never knew where her wish would take her when she made it, but she didn’t choose to be—”

“A flesh-eater?” Chief offered when Diana faltered.

She drew in a breath. He certainly didn’t dance around the truth.

There were moments when she appreciated it, but she was not sure now was one of them.

She held his gaze, her resolve unwavering. If Diana had been certain that there was no salvation for Barbara Ann, she would have done what needed to be done. Even her sentimentality didn’t go that far. But, there was still hope. 

“It was a curse, Napi.”

“She has killed people,” he reminded her, though there was no malice or accusation in his voice. He didn’t judge her choice.

“And it will always be on me, for not stopping her sooner,” Diana murmured.

Chief eyed her curiously. “You blame yourself but not her?”

“An animal can’t be at fault for following its instinct,” she said. “The person who allowed it to run wild is.”

He chuckled a little and shook his head.

“You truly believe that there is still redemption for her?”

Diana glanced down at Steve, allowing her hand to smooth over his jaw before she looked towards Chief once more. “I believe that Barbara Ann Minerva is still there somewhere, desperate to shake off the prison she has been living in for nearly forty years.”

He nodded. Diana expected him to argue but he didn’t. Instead, he looked around the thick greenery, not oblivious to the approaching sound of the jet—Bruce, probably with Victor, too. And then he nodded once more, with a finality she had long grown to recognize.

“Let’s hope that you are right,” he said.

“Thank you,” Diana said, holding his gaze. “For…” her eyes dropped down to Steve.

“He would have done the same for me.”

“He thinks you are dead.”

Chief nodded again, but whether in agreement with the situation or merely to acknowledge her words Diana didn’t know.

She smoothed her hand over Steve’s face once more, seemingly unable to stop touching him.

“It is going to disturb the natural order of things,” Chief mused. “Her return, it is going to change the balance.”

Diana peered at him. “Does it matter?”

He shrugged. “Time will tell.” He glanced down. “You should be leaving, too. And I should…” He trailed off, an unfinished sentence hanging between them.

He would be leaving once more, and there was no telling if they would see each other again soon. Or ever, for that matter. The thought brought on a deep-seated feeling of loneliness that she had long forgotten. Like Steve, Chief was a tie to the part of her life that no one else remembered or was aware of.  Something that she knew she should have tried harder to hold on to, if only she knew how.

He had a life of his own though; he followed rules she didn’t understand. The rules of his people that had been governing his existence for a long time.

It was not Diana’s right to ask him to change that.

She nodded, slowly.

“He misses you,” she said, all the same.

For a moment, there was a flicker of wistfulness in Chief’s eyes, and she wondered—

Steve’s eyes snapped open, his body going rigid all of a sudden in her hold, wide awake and alert in an instant. He sucked in a hungry breath. And then another one, as though remembering somehow that time when he hadn’t been breathing at all.

Diana felt the line of her shoulders round forward in relief.

“Steve,” she murmured, a water smile touching her lips. Her palm smoothed over his cheek once more with a familiarity that nearly made her ache.

“They’re coming,” he breathed, barely audible.

Diana frowned when he clasped his hand over his own shoulder as though holding onto a bleeding wound, before his eyes swept around widely, not pausing on anything.

Something was wrong.

“The bullet,” he whispered urgently, struggling to sit up.

“Steve, what are you—”

“The Germans,” he hissed. “You have to keep your voice down. They are close, they are going to find us. I need to find a tourniquet.”

Diana’s heart sank, a cold pit opening in her stomach.

“Steve...”

He didn’t seem to hear her. Or even be aware of her.

Pushing away from her, he scrambled closer to the boulders, grabbing Chief’s shotgun as he did so. Immediately, Chief moved back, raising his hands in surrender to show that he meant no harm to anyone. On instinct, Diana reached for her sword. And then lowered her hand, catching herself.

Steve didn’t appear to even know that they were there, though she suspected it was the rumble of the jet’s engine that had him so disquieted.

Back pressed against the boulder, he peeked carefully over it, and then reloaded the gun with the ease of someone who had done just that hundreds of times, checking the bullets in the chamber and then sliding the safety off, getting ready to fire.

“Steve,” Diana started again, as she moved closer to him.

He didn’t turn to her. Didn’t so much as glance up to acknowledge her presence. He didn’t lower the shotgun either. From only a few feet away, she could hear his ragged breathing, a thin sheen of sweat coating his forehead. He looked like a coiled spring ready to snap, the muscles of his arms flexing beneath his skin as he gripped the gun, his knuckles white with tension.

“He is not here,” Chief whispered after a moment. “He can’t hear you, Diana.”

Slowly, Chief uncurled from his crouch and stood up, his palms still turned up to show that he was unarmed, lest Steve take it as a threat. And then he took a step towards Steve, and then another one, the foliage rustling beneath his feet.

Steve didn’t react to the sound of it, didn’t spare Chief so much as a glance, his gaze remaining focused on the wall of trees surrounding the clearing.

“What…” Diana started and faltered.

The water.

Of course.

Her heart sank, dropping like a ball of lead into her stomach. In her glee over Steve’s miraculous healing, she had almost forgotten about the mind-altering qualities of the water in the Lazarus Pits. There was a price for coming back from the world of the dead. Insanity was what Bruce had called it. At the time, Diana hadn’t paid much attention to it, merely filing it away along with the rest of the provided information.

She had given it a bit more thought later on when the idea of Steve’s possible immortality had wedged itself in her mind. It was the aftereffects of the water that Diana had been adamant to protect him from, even at the cost of having him forever, fearful of Steve losing a part of himself that could never be restored.

Yet, there they were, him stuck where Diana could not follow and her feeling helpless against the power of something that she could not defeat.

She could all but hear the gods of fate laughing in her face as something small and fragile died inside of her, bit by bit. It was almost as though the harder she tried to protect Steve, to keep him safe, the more vulnerable he became.

The thought was entirely unbearable.

What was the point of her gifts if she could not use them to keep the one person she loved most out of harm’s way?

She felt her fists tighten, involuntarily, anger rising inside of her in waves, each more powerful than the one before it. Rage simmered in her veins, white-hot.

Diana remembered the feeling well—Zeus’s blood calling for the kind of wrath that was meant to overturn empires.

Except there was no one to turn it on, save for the hole in the ground, that had both brought Steve back and harmed him, all at once.

“Is he going to be alright?” she asked, speaking more to herself than to Chief.

He responded, all the same: “With time.”

“We have to hide before they see us,” Steve muttered under his breath, his eyes glazed over and unseeing.

However, he didn’t move. Didn’t do much of anything, save for taking one shallow breath after another, as though he was trying very hard not to be heard.

Slowly, Chief lowered down on his knees before Steve. He reached for the shotgun, gently prying it from Steve’s grip. Surprisingly, Steve let go of it without protest, and Chief put it behind him, out of Steve’s reach. He leaned closer to his friend, peering into his eyes, as Diana watched, a mix of dread and hope coalescing in her chest.

“He is back where he had started,” Chief said, after a moment, as he pulled back, straightening up.

“Back… where?” Diana’s eyes shifted between the men.

She reached for Steve, her hand shaking when she smoothed down his hair. He didn’t seem to notice her touch as though she was not there at all.

Chief looked her square in the eye.

“With his demons.”

The three of them looked up to the sky when the rumble of a plane filled the air, growing louder and seemingly taking up all the space around them. The Fox. They had to be close.

The thought was simultaneously comforting and unnerving.

Steve murmured something, but the noise swallowed his words, drowning out everything until only the hum of the powerful engines was left.

“What if he…?” Diana started.

Yet, when she turned around, Chief was gone. It was only her and Steve. 

And the ghosts haunting him.

Notes:

Welp, I think I promised you more ansgt 😬😬😬

I live for angst so I regret nothing, but happier times are coming as well. I think there is enough of everything for everyone in this story :) I already forgot most of it lol It's quite fun to reread those unpublished chapters again.

Comments, thoughts and opinions are much appreciated, as always :) I would love you forever :)

Also, have you seen "Red Notice"? Let me know what you think! Personally, I quite enjoyed it and I think Gal Gadot needs to do more comedic roles where she can be a bit unhinged.

I will hopefully see you next week! Please take good care of yourselves.

Chapter 25

Notes:

Hey everyone, I can't believe it's been a week already! Thank you so much for your amazing support, I'm happy that you continue to enjoy my story :) I know the previous chapter has been quite the roller coaster. I want to believe you will enjoy the way it all works out.

Won't be bothering you with my ramblings any longer. Enjoy!

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

Chapter Text

In a way, it was a relief to be back on the Fox. And yet, it was not, too.

The familiarity of it centred Diana, but the close confines of it left her feeling restless and on edge, part of her wishing she could rip a hole in the hull. Maybe then she would stop feeling so claustrophobic. No matter how fast they moved, it didn’t feel fast enough, the energy thrumming beneath her skin was making her want to scratch it out, if only for the sake of catching her breath, at last.

Steve had needed to be sedated for the trip. While barely responsive in the clearing near the last existing Lazarus Pit, he had grown agitated when Diana had tried to get him to come with her, once Bruce had confirmed that they were waiting for them at the landing site, half a mile away. It had splintered her heart to do it, but she had feared that he might hurt himself in his attempts to fight her if she hadn’t.

Now he was sleeping in one of the fold-out cots. Gods only knew why the Fox had them, but at the moment, Diana was grateful. She hoped against all hope that maybe he would sleep off his odd state of mind. (Part of her hoped that what was actually going to happen was that she was going to wake up and find out that the past few hours had never happened at all.)

At the other end of the Fox, the prone form of Cheetah—Barbara Ann Minerva—lay on the metal floor, still bound by Diana’s Lasso. She had stirred once or twice but hadn’t come to, for which Diana was grateful. She didn’t want any more blood to be spilled today, which would be inevitable if Cheetah decided to fight for her freedom.

Diana hadn’t spoken with Bruce yet, his attention focused on flying the Fox at the moment. Barry and Victor both seemed to be at a loss for words, and that came as a relief for the time being. She knew they had questions, but with her mind in complete disarray and the worry churning in her stomach, she couldn’t think of how to explain everything that had happened to them.

She lingered near Steve, for the most part, his sleep restless, his lips moving soundlessly as he spoke with someone in his dream.

At some point, a couple of hours into their journey, Barry materialized by her side. His gaze swept over Steve, lingering for a moment or two on his torn and blood-stained clothes. And maybe it was the light inside the Fox, but Diana could have sworn that the younger man’s face turned somewhat greenish at the sight. She didn’t blame him.

“Is he going to be okay?” another voice asked, and when Diana looked up, there was Victor, standing a bit to the side.

She had already had him scan Steve for any internal injuries, taking advantage of Cyborg’s gift of X-ray vision. There appeared to be none, much to her relief, although it hadn’t alleviated her worries as much as she had hoped.

What she wanted was for Victor to be able to tell her something about Steve’s mind, but that, he had told her, was beyond anyone’s capabilities.

“Yes,” Diana responded decisively, sounding more certain than she felt.

“Is he…?” Barry started and trailed off as he lifted his hand, wiggling his index finger near his temple.

Moving forward, Victor smacked him on the arm.

“Real sensitive,” Victor muttered with accusation.

Immediately, Barry’s face turned scarlet red.

Diana knew they felt guilty over what had happened, over not being there to stop it, but even though it was not their fault and they would likely not have been able to change the outcome of that day, she didn’t have it in her to reassure them. Not when she felt so out of sorts and helpless herself.

Still, she reached over to place her hand on Barry’s arm, squeezing it a little.

“He will be alright,” she said softly as her gaze flickered towards Steve once again.

“And…” Victor jerked his metallic thumb to the back of the Fox.

Diana’s lips pressed into a flat line.

The truth was, she hadn’t thought that far. When she had asked them for help, the only thing she had been certain of was that the Cheetah couldn’t be left behind.

The sound of footsteps, oddly loud on the metal floor in a space where even the smallest of noises echoed, had her looking up. She watched Bruce step into the belly of the Fox, the plane on autopilot for the time being.

“Arkham?” he offered, clearly having caught the tail of the conversation.

Diana shook her head. “No.”

Bruce frowned, and so did Victor. Barry merely looked nervous.

“Why?” Bruce asked.

“This is not her. She is much the victim here as—”

“The people she mauled?” Barry offered, glancing skeptically towards Cheetah.

“There has to be a way to bring her back, out of this form,” Diana mused, her hand running absently over the back of Steve’s hand. He twitched in his sleep, and she pulled away.

“Let’s just hand her over to authorities, let them handle it,” Victor offered, evidently not open to any other course of action.

“So they could do what? Let Waller have her?” Diana asked.

Was there a way to save Barbara Ann though—that she didn’t know. The stone that had cast the spell was long gone. Even if the Cheetah was lucid enough to take back her wish now, it likely wouldn’t change much of anything.

But Bruce nodded.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“We could keep her as a pet if we don’t,” Barry shrugged.

Victor rolled his eyes. “She’d kill you in your sleep.”

An unbidden smile tugged at the corners of Diana’s lips. She pressed them together to conceal it.

“They wouldn’t want to help her at Arkham,” she said, eventually, though no one had asked for an explanation. “They would want to dissect her, understand her nature, in this form. But they wouldn’t care for anything else.”

“But you do,” Bruce murmured, an eyebrow raised.

“As I said, it was not her choice.”

He nodded curtly.

Victor’s frown deepened, and Barry didn’t appear convinced in the slightest but neither said anything, and Diana was grateful. Flimsy as that idea was, it made something inside of her shift into place all the same.

One step at a time, she told herself.

Eventually, Barry wandered off to the lower deck where the Batmobile sat, along with one of the motorcycles, waiting for their turn to be used. Victor left with him.

Diana moved closer to Steve once more, unable to resist the urge to touch his face, her fingers stroking his cheek. It was only then that she noticed that her armour was still covered with his blood. Smears of red on the gold trim around her waist. The realization made her stomach turn.

“What about you?” Bruce asked.

She turned to him. She had nearly forgotten that he was still there.

“What about me?” Diana echoed.

“Are you coming to Gotham, too?” He paused, considering something. “I suppose the Manor—”

“No,” she stopped him.

She couldn’t bear the thought of it, truth be told. She knew they all meant well and truly cared, but the idea of constant scrutiny, no matter how well-meaning, was intolerable. Grateful as she was for Bruce’s generous offer, she wanted to be alone with Steve.

He watched her, waiting.

“Take us to Paris,” Diana asked quietly.

Bruce shook his head. “Not the best idea.”

“He will be safe with me,” she said, shaking her head.

“Too many curious eyes around,” Bruce pointed out.

Diana bit her lip.

Scrutiny of a different kind.

She rubbed her forehead, feeling the making of a headache start to pulse in the back of her skull, too many thoughts and not enough space for them making her feel like her head might explode.

She closed her eyes and inhaled, trying to find an anchor within herself to hold on to.

When she opened them once more, Bruce's gaze had moved towards Steve, for the first time since he had stepped into the area.

“It will be better for him to be somewhere familiar,” she said, eventually.

Bruce didn’t appear persuaded, and for a moment Diana expected him to protest once more. To get her to change her mind. But he didn’t.


France, 2021

Diana had bought a house on a whim. She had done it a full five years before she had even considered moving to France, working at the Louvre hadn’t even crossed her mind, at the time. She had done it simply because she had fallen in love with the property, the rolling hills and the forest around it. And the lake that she could see from the porch.

It was the water that had really sold the place to her, Diana knew. She had been drawn to water her entire life, seeking comfort in the familiar.

Located a short drive from Paris, the house was an old one-storey stone structure, built over a hundred years ago, and Diana loved it dearly. Loved the large windows she had installed when she renovated the place and the fireplaces in every room. Loved the tranquillity that it offered.  

She would go there often in her first few years upon moving to Paris, looking for a reprieve from the bustle of city life. It had never quite ceased to astonish her what a difference some eighty kilometres could make. She had gone there with Steve as well for a couple of weeks during the first summer after his return, and for another week the following one, among many other occasional weekend visits.

Diana knew that once the time came for her to move on and start anew, she would have to sell her apartment in order to sever that connection, careful not to leave anything behind that could be traced easily to her. There was no room for sentimentality in her life, not when it came to safety. The house, on the other hand, was something that she planned to keep. Few people knew about it, and there was something about it that she was reluctant to let go of.

It was also the first place that had come to her mind when it had become apparent that taking Steve back to Paris was not an option. Not in the state he was in. Bruce had not been wrong about potentially attracting attention that she wouldn’t want.

“Would never have thought that country was your style,” Bruce had commented offhandedly when he had dropped them off half a mile away from it—the only spot where he could land the Fox safely close enough to it.

Diana had paid no mind to him.  

Even without being affected by the cold to a significant degree, the chill of the air had shocked her when she had climbed out of the Fox and into the ice-cold rain, only a degree or two away from becoming snow, her arm wrapped around Steve’s waist. He had been awake but drowsy, having trouble moving his feet. After the stifling heat and humidity of South America, the contrast was stark, each raindrop slashing against her skin like tiny daggers.

“Call if you need anything,” Bruce had said before they had parted ways.

Diana had given him a distracted nod, her mind already miles away from the Fox.

There was a relief to being someplace familiar, and it centred her despite the cold and the rain and the uncertainty of Steve’s affliction. The house was not home in the same sense their apartment in Paris was, but it was full of memories that anchored her, helped her to not give in to the despair and anguish of the past 24 hours. Memories about lazy mornings and slow kisses and tousled hair, about lounging in the sunlight and words of love whispered without thought.

That, and there was food and firewood and electricity, even if she wasn’t sure she could trust it in the storm. The place was frigid, barely a few degrees warmer than the outside. But, for all intents and purposes, it was more than enough.

Diana couldn’t recall the last time they had been there. It had been a few months, at least.

Getting them settled gave her something to do, something to busy herself with for the time being, as she wiped the dust from the surfaces and started the fire.

There was no peace to being there—not after everything that had happened; not with how Steve was—and it saddened her immensely, but she refused to let her mind linger on that thought.

Once Steve seemed to have shaken off his slumber, he crushed Diana’s hopes for his “recovery” when his eyes had skated around the room without recognition, moving past her as though she was nothing but part of the interior, his lips moving ever so slightly.

She knew what it was, of course. To some degree, at least. She had seen men just like him after that first war that had brought her to man’s world. Volunteering at hospitals and help centres alongside Etta, Diana had seen those vacant eyes—home of grief like nothing she had witnessed before. Trapped forever in memories they could not escape. Those men would wake up screaming at night, they would try to run away from an enemy that had long been defeated, unable to tell their imaginings from reality.

Haunted, that was what Chief had called it.

She couldn’t agree more.

At the time, after the war, she had tried to remember if that was something that had befallen her people as well. Many of them had been warriors, before they had been banished to an island they could never leave. Many had to have seen things better left forgotten. But she had kept coming up blank, confused for reasons she couldn’t explain.

Diana locked the door, fearful that Steve might want to get out of the house, chased by the ghosts he couldn’t seem to shake off.

In the master bedroom—one that they had shared before—she stowed Steve’s travel bag away. He was not going to need it anytime soon, she suspected. She hadn’t left many clothes behind, but she managed to find a pair of pants and a shirt in the closet, and Steve’s old sweater that still smelled faintly of him, relieved that she would not be forced to wear her armour for days to come.

She cleaned up, relieved to be able to do that, and then she pulled the spare clothes on, having to roll up the too-long sleeves of the sweater. She stored away her armour and her sword and shield—she’d had to leave the Lasso behind, still wrapped around Cheetah to keep her subdued. Now part of her wished she hadn’t—she felt its absence acutely in a way she never knew she might, longing for its familiar presence at her hip.

For a moment, she allowed herself to wonder how they were going to handle Cheetah, but that was out of her control now. 

In the living room, she found Steve cowered in a corner, wedged between the armrest of a couch and a window, his lips trembling and his gaze filled with such terror Diana could almost feel it with her skin. Could feel it in the air, like electric static after a thunderstorm.

She crouched down in front of him, reaching for him instinctively to smooth her palms over his face, through his hair.

“Can you hear me, love?” she murmured, her eyes searching his, her heart bleeding out behind her ribs at the sheer enormity of what he was living through. The depths of grief that he had been plunged into.

Knowing that there was nothing that she could do to help him was devastating. Her throat constricted, hot tears welling, unbidden, behind her eyes. Now that it was only them, there was nothing but despair that she felt. Despair and deep, consuming fear that she had lost him forever.

“Steve, please…”

Suddenly, he pushed past her, moving closer to the window and peering cautiously over the windowsill, into the darkening afternoon beyond it, made worse by the grey clouds and the steady patter of rain.

“You have to be quiet,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. Even though Diana knew it was not her he was speaking to, she couldn’t help but follow his gaze. “They are coming. We need to be ready. How much ammunition do we have?”

She remembered losing him, the memory of her very soul ripping at the seams still as fresh in Diana’s mind as though it had only happened yesterday. Remembered the fire burning high up in the black sky so clearly she still saw it sometimes when she closed her eyes.

She didn’t think she would ever feel anything quite as heart-breaking in this lifetime again, convinced that there was only so much hurt a person could bear before they simply ceased to exist.

But this was worse, somehow. Watching Steve suffer and not being able to do anything about it had brought on a whole different kind of heartache.


There was no known timeline for what was happening to Steve and it was driving Diana mad with uncertainty. It’s not an exact science, Bruce had said, and though she was aware that he probably didn’t know any more than the rest of them did, she wished she had pushed him to elaborate.

Over the next few days, she found herself wondering if time had lost its meaning somehow, the hours blending together until she could no longer tell them apart.

She tried to get Steve to eat something but he didn’t appear to ever remember that he needed sustenance.

She tried to get him to take off his bloodied shirt and put on a fresh one but he was uncooperative there, too. Diana let him be, fearful of hurting him by accident if she tried to force it.

Clark called, and then Bruce. She ignored them, allowing the calls to go to voicemail. Barry and Victor messaged, too. She didn’t bother opening their texts, finding herself to be too single-minded to care, for the time being.

There were moments, rare moments, when Steve seemed to be almost lucid, his gaze focused enough to make Diana believe for a second that he had shaken off his wretched affliction. It was when he talked to her, even though she knew that he was not talking to her, not really. Often, it was Sameer and Charlie, she had figured out. Sometimes other people she had never known existed. Dead people, she had gathered.

Sometimes, he was reliving the occupation of a small village, his troops outnumbered and surrounded by the enemy. Other times, he seemed to not know where he was, even in his mind, his recounts confusing and inconsistent. She could feel his fear then, could see the panic in his eyes and hear it in his voice, and her inability to help him was utterly devastating.

“You know what they’ll do with you if they catch you,” he said one afternoon, the house growing gloomy as another storm started to gather outside, low clouds hanging over the roof and the fire the only source of light, dispersing the shadows around them.

Huddled against the wall, his voice lowered to a hushed whisper, he glanced around as though expecting them—the Germans, Diana assumed—to spring at them from behind the dresser.

It wasn’t a question, what he had said, and she wondered who he was speaking with. Wondered what else they all knew in those moments of despair.

It was intolerable beyond anything to see him like this, hurting in ways she couldn’t even begin to imagine. Slowly, she lowered down to sit next to him, still wary of startling him, though not once in the past thirty hours had he acknowledged her presence one way or another.

She reached over to touch his face, noting the fevered glint in his eyes. Her hand moved to press to his forehead, and then his cheek, relieved that his skin was warm but not alarmingly so. He was agitated but not sick, to her relief.

“That guy, that had come back. Well, he didn’t… they had to drag him out of that house… Remember, Sami? The way he screamed—”

He cut off and sucked in a breath as Diana pressed her hand to her mouth.

She had seen it all, not during the first war but during the second one. The gas chambers and experiment labs that, to her knowledge, had gone beyond anything that Isabel Maru could ever dream of. Unimaginable cruelty and things that no one should have had to go through.

Steve didn’t like speaking of the war. Whenever the topic came up, it was as though shutters would close in his eyes. Diana knew that each time she had asked him something about it, he had been truthful about his experiences. He had never lied to her, she believed that much, and she took immense comfort in it. In knowing that she could trust him wholly and completely.

But that was not to say that she knew everything there was to know about him. And although she would never have expected more from him than he was willing to give, it was one thing to suspect that he had witnessed more than he wanted to share, and another to know beyond doubt that the scars the war had left on him ran way deeper than she would likely ever know.

“I’m not Sami, love,” Diana murmured, running her hand over his cheek once more, the two days’ worth of stubble rough against her skin.

“I’m not going there, you know that, right?” Steve swallowed. Then, suddenly, he lifted a finger to his lips. “Shhh, keep quiet. They’ll hear us. And put the fire out so they can’t see us.”

Her shoulders slumped, desperation washing over her like a wave. She leaned her head against the wall, feeling the world close in on the two of them, until there was nothing but the suffocating circle of light created by the fire burning in the fireplace, a place from which there was no escape.

There was nothing she wouldn’t have given to have a glimpse into his mind to see what he was seeing, to feel what he was feeling.

It frightened her more than anything that she didn’t know what she was going to do if he didn’t come back to her. If he remained lost to himself and to the world for good.

He didn’t really sleep, dozing off occasionally and then snapping awake ten minutes later, disquieted and in panic, his eyes bloodshot. Diana debated sedating him again. She had the mediation, having brought it from the Fox. But she didn’t know if it was going to do him any good, in the long run. And it felt wrong. She couldn’t stand the thought of taking that choice away from him.

“There was that girl, in France,” Steve told her the following afternoon. “They shot her on sight. I still don’t know what she was doing in that place, it was supposed to be evacuated. Do you think her family ever found out?”

He told her more, about that day and a hundred others. Burned down villages and hunger and thinking that he was never going to stop seeing the eyes of those dead people, half surprised and half accusing, because those who were meant to save them had come too late.

Diana preferred his ramblings to the times when he was convinced that his troops were surrounded and needed to deflect an attack. In those moments, he barely resembled himself, a panicked, frantic man overcome with such animal fear it nearly killed her to watch him try to hide, huddling in the corners, and not be able to stop it.

It was in those moments that Diana asked herself if getting his life back was worth it, if the cost was so high.

And then she would get disgusted with herself for thinking that, even for a moment. She would remember the years of desperation and longing for him and the immense gratitude for the second chance they got when she had least expected it. How could she ever not want that?

But, it did little to alleviate her guilt. All those gifts she possessed, her divinity, and the only thing she could do was wait. And wait. And wait some more. The cruel irony of it was not lost on her.

You need to let us know that you’re okay, Victor messaged her on the fourth day.

We’re alright, Diana texted back, certain that if she didn’t, they would show up there to check on her and Steve, and that was the last thing she wanted or needed. Their concern touched her, but there were still things that she couldn’t stand letting anyone in on. This was not their battle.

The text seemed to have done the job, and she was grateful. As grateful as she could feel, given the circumstances.

She was desperate to talk to  Bruce and ask him to pull out statistics on the other cases of people affected by the Lazarus Pits—how long the water’s effects were meant to last and how severe they had been for most. But, she also knew that it was likely not going to make much difference. Whatever he told her, she would either feel frustrated that it wasn’t happening faster, or she would feel dismayed that they still had quite some way to go.

Besides, this was Steve. He was not numbers on a piece of paper or a graph of data. He was smiles and crinkling eyes and a boisterous belly laugh that she loved beyond anything. He was tousled hair and heart beating into the palm of her hand when she held it pressed against his chest and the quiet whisper murmuring words of love in her ear. She wanted it all back, and not knowing how to make it happen frightened Diana beyond comprehension.

“They’re coming! They’re coming, just stay down. Stay quiet…” Steve muttered, rocking a little, his eyes unfocused and his words barely audible. He was cowered down in the bedroom, behind the dresser, his fingers flexing as though holding an invisible weapon. Diana was sure he thought he was back in the trenches.

It came as a relief to her that he at least wasn’t trying to harm himself, the case that had started this chain of events, bringing them where they were right now sitting like a splinter in her brain. Yet, it seemed that while Steve’s mind was taking centre stage, he appeared to not care for much else.

Small mercies.

She remembered being trapped under the tanker threads on the night Steve died, feeling paralyzed and helpless and unable to escape her captivity. She wondered if that was how he felt now, unable to escape the confines of his memories. Did he know what was happening to him? Was he trying to fight it?

Sometimes, Diana spoke to him, too, in the moments when he went silent for extended periods of time, hoping that he would use the sound of her voice like a beacon that he could follow. She would tell him about Etta and his boys, recounting the things she likely had already mentioned before, but still comforted by those memories above all else. She told him about the League, as well, in a desperate hope to inspire some reaction in him.

She told him that she loved him, that she would always love him, her voice raw and thick with emotion. She told him how much he meant to her, promising him time and time again to never let him get hurt again, if only he found his way back to her.

They were sitting on the kitchen floor one night, nearly a week after the incident. Steve seemed to have quieted, withdrawing into himself, gone where she could not follow him.

Diana scooted over, watching for his reaction. Her heart sank when she detected none. Still, she trailed her fingers along his forearm, before sitting down next to him, leaning against the wall, the tiled floor cool beneath her.

“Go to bed, please let me put you to bed,” she murmured, watching him closely. Her gaze moved over his sunken cheeks covered with a few days’ worth of stubble, his eyes bloodshot from lack of rest. “You have to sleep, Steve. You need to…” She drew in a breath, her throat tight and her worry feeling like a bird fluttering against her ribs. “Please, let me help you.”

“Do you think they can hear us?” he muttered as he tensed, as though indeed hearing something, although there was nothing but the wind outside and the quiet whir of the small fridge before them. “That gas, they gotta have the gas but we have more ammunition, we outnumber them by… by… what did you say, Chief?”

With that, Steve pulled away from her, bolting towards the opposite end of the kitchen where he pressed his back against the wall next to the door leading to a sparse pantry.

Diana watched him for another moment, his chest heaving as she bit her lip against the sound of despair clawing its way out of her throat. She was not unaccustomed to fear, having long learned to be humble in the face of something that she could not control. But, this was not a fight. There were no winners or losers now, she suspected. And it was because of that, that facing the uncertainty of Steve’s fate terrified her beyond anything.

She watched Steve sink down to the floor and press the heels of his hands into his eyes, as if in an almost child-like attempt to ignore something by blocking his vision.

“Go away,” he mumbled, barely audibly. “Make it go away.”

At that, Diana dropped her face into her hands and burst into tears, trapped in her desperation from which she saw no way out.


1917

No one spoke of it, but the war carried the kind of darkness one could not imagine without stepping into it, and by the time that happened, it was too late to go back. It was defined by violence and punctuated by death, morals blurred and then tossed aside. People were at their rawest when they needed to survive, and often it was not a pretty picture.

Steve had seen people lose themselves completely, succumbing to things many would think unimaginable without a barrel of a gun pressed to their heads, figuratively or literally. It didn’t matter, not really. You were expected to follow orders and do so immediately and without questioning them.

Before he’d got to fly, before he had become a spy, he had been a pawn in a game he didn’t understand. One that changed with every step he took, feeling unable to keep up. But if you didn’t, you were nothing but cannon fodder, a piece of meat no one would think of twice about before pulling the trigger.

It was who Steve Trevor was, who he had become. There was no way out of war, he had very quickly learned, except through the violence that ruled it. It changed you, Steve was aware, in many ways that could never be mended.

Every lie you told, every life you took, every atrocity you closed your eyes to was something that would stay with you, covering your skin like a film that was impossible to scrub off. It made him sick to his stomach, it filled him with such unbearable self-loathing he could barely stand it.

(A year later, when Diana called him a liar and a murderer and a smuggler, it didn’t give Steve pause, not even for one second. He had long attributed those words to himself, and more. It didn’t surprise him that she found him despicable.)  

It happened that first winter, one that Steve was going to forever remember as the coldest he had ever experienced, when the chill was getting all the way to his bones no matter how hard he tried to keep warm.

His battalion had been advancing steadily for weeks, each inch of gained ground feeling like a victory. So much so that they had allowed themselves to hope and dream of seeing a light at the end of this endless tunnel of dread and devastation. No one had told him but hope came at a high price in a war, as though every morsel of it was meant to keep them humble—one step forward, ten steps back.

But they were making progress, at last, and it felt glorious for the first time in a long time. Hunger and exhaustion and cold seemed to be forgotten, for the time being. His fellow officers were trudging forward with a renewed and reinvigorated sense of purpose. Gone was the despair they had all shared the night before, huddled in the trenches and speaking in hushed voices, convinced that death was coming, to take them out one by one any moment now.

They were advancing fast, cold slush made of mud and snow making slurping noises beneath their heavy boots as they moved across a narrow strip of forest and towards the field on the other side of it, beyond which lay the enemy line.

There was a man running next to him. Steve couldn’t remember his name, but his face had grown familiar enough over the past few days.

He would remember in the years to come the sudden red spot on the man’s chest, bright and out of place among the greys and browns of their clothes and the dreary landscape around them—blood spreading fast. Another second passed before the man’s body was tossed back by the impact of the bullet. And then another one, before Steve even registered the gunfire and the yells for everyone to get down.

Steve slipped, landing hard on his hip, a jolt of pain followed by a surge of panic shooting through him, both lightning-fast and hot and disorienting.

He looked around, realizing suddenly the horror of their situation—what they had mistaken for advancement towards enemy territory was merely a ruse. A trap to lure them in, and now they were boxed in and surrounded.

He waited for his own bullet to find him, certain that these were about to be the last moments of his life. Beside him, another man collapsed in a heavy heap. Steve knew instantly the man was never going to rouse again.

But then the rest of them started to move once more, the carnage and massacre taking over, the world coloured red around him and filled with sounds that no human should be able to make. That no one should be forced to hear.

Steve fought his way forward, loading and reloading his gun with numb, slippery fingers, still half-convinced that these were the last of his moments on Earth and half-desperate to do whatever it took to make it through this nightmare, one way or another.

His troops reached a church, half demolished and long abandoned, but sturdy—whatever was left of it, anyway—and solid enough to make a good cover. Their numbers were dwindling but so were the Germans’, and while Steve knew better than to keep his hopes up, he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help seeing the other side of this day, one not tinted with blood.

They filed into the church, spreading over the space and moving between the few pews left behind. Made of stone, it felt so cold. Colder than it was outside, it seemed. Like a grave, Steve thought, and shivered, disconcerted by that realization.

He paused to catch his breath, his gaze lifting up to the ceiling, once painted with holy imagery. Now, half of the roof was missing, destroyed in the last aerial attack, most likely. There were pieces of support beams scattered over the floor, beneath the layer of dust. If it was raining, the place would have offered little protection. While he knew the Germans would not be held off for much longer, it felt like a much-needed reprieve.

And then Steve found him—a young German officer. A boy, really, barely out of his teen years, if even that. Skinny and small, he seemed to be barely old enough and barely strong enough to hold his weapon.

Huddled beyond the altar, he jerked his gun up when he spotted Steve, his hands shaking and beads of perspiration coating his face, despite the cold.

His eyes were wide and blue and frightened, but there was determination in them, too. It was easy to forget sometimes that the other side believes in their cause wholeheartedly, as well.

It would have to be one of them, Steve knew. Only one of them got to live and walk out of this ruin alive.

Steve raised his shotgun, the commotion around him falling away as though someone dunked his head underwater.

He met the boy’s eyes, piercing and intense. A child who had to grow up faster than he should have.

The boy’s finger was trembling on the trigger.

By contrast, Steve’s wasn’t.


Gotham, 2021

If Bruce Wayne had a dime for every time he had brought a dangerous beast into his home… he would have a dime. Which, in his book, was likely a good thing, considering his line of work and the clientele he often associated with. If anything, he quite prided himself on turning his place into a fortress, the multi-million dollar security system a testament to the safety that he valued above so many things. The safety that the streets of Gotham had never given him and likely never would.

It was about the contrast; he had figured it out a long time ago.

He didn’t mind it, taking it as a given.

And yet here he was, with a creature that could shred them all to confetti locked in his basement and mild frustration running through his system. Part of it, he knew, had something to do with the fact that he felt awfully unprepared for the entire ordeal. He had never before needed to make arrangements for containing something that was not entirely human, and though one could not be prepared for everything, it still left him with a restless feeling that he couldn’t seem to shake off.

Another part, he knew, was about the fact that Diana had clearly known more about the—the panther-woman than the rest of them, and yet she had never bothered to bring her up before.

A feeling that bordered on betrayal stirred inside of him. He didn’t trust many, but he trusted Diana the most. Or, he used to. He was not sure he could anymore. 

Standing in front of the glass wall in his study, Bruce peered into the deepening darkness outside. Only mid-afternoon, but the gathering clouds that promised more rain, or maybe even snow, were making it feel like nightfall already.

The weather was leaving him even more on edge. Patrolling would be hell later on, with the rainwater or sleet, or both. Frigid and uncomfortable, at any rate.

Or maybe he shouldn’t go, Bruce reasoned. Not when there was something deadly in the house. Something that he couldn’t even understand.

The irritation at Diana had come back at full force.

She had a right to her secrets, and Bruce was the last person to fault her for that, what with his own secrets and no desire to share them if he could help it.

But it was different when it was done to him, wasn’t it?

His lips twitched into a humourless smile. Karma—he would probably think if he believed in any such thing.

As it was, Bruce mostly believed in balance.

But, Diana had been so distraught on the Fox he hadn’t had the heart to bring it up with her. So shattered over her pilot that Bruce could still feel the residue of her anguish clinging to his skin three days later. Admittedly, the memory made his frustration ebb, giving way to sympathy.

She had been a closed book for as long as he had known her, keeping them all at arm’s length even at the height of their partnership when the League had first come to be. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t feel deeply. If anything, Bruce was certain it was the opposite. Which, he suspected, made her heartache all the more profound. He had never seen her quite as lost and frightened as she had looked with her hand clasped over Steve Trevor’s limp one while he slept.

The familiar pang of jealousy arced through his chest, though the burn of it was no longer there.

Bruce wondered when he had accepted the fact that she would never be his, not the way he had once wanted to. Had it happened the morning when he had awoken alone in his bed, the house empty and not even a perfunctory note left behind? Or when Diana had gone on ignoring his texts for months afterwards? Or, perhaps, when they had met again, on a mission, no less, and the casual way she had spoken to him that had made him ask himself if that night had happened at all or he had only dreamed it?

Or had it been the day Bruce had met Steve Trevor in the flesh and seen the way she looked at him? Part of him was still envious over the fact that no one had ever looked like that at him, and probably never would, if he had to venture a guess.

Not that it mattered now, really.

He suspected it had stopped mattering a long time ago. Maybe it never had.

Still, he had promised to help her, and he was going to keep his word regardless of how he felt about her secrecy. It was their problem now, not just hers.

“It can’t be that serious,” a voice spoke up from behind him.

When he turned around, he saw Alfred setting a mug of coffee onto Bruce’s desk. Bruce hoped he had thought to add some fine liquor to it, and be generous about it.

“What can’t?” Bruce asked, reaching for the mug.

He nodded his thank you as Alfred adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose before folding his hands behind his back.

“Whatever problem you are trying to solve. I was worried there for a moment that the glass would crack from the tension of it, the way you were staring at it. And I don’t need to remind you, Master Wayne, what a terrible occurrence that would be.”

Bruce’s lips twitched. He took a sip of his drink, dismayed but not surprised not to detect any alcohol in it. To this day, Alfred deemed it to be in bad taste to drink before 6 PM, and it was barely 5 yet. Bruce wondered if there was any statistical probability of that approach to prevent one from becoming an alcoholic. He knew better than to voice that theory, though.

“If she breaks free, she is going to tear down more than a few walls,” Bruce murmured into his cup.

Alfred’s eyebrow arched meaningfully.

“Ah, our new guest,” he said diplomatically.

Bruce hummed. “That’s one way to put it.”

“Master Allen seems to be quite apprehensive about her.”

“Last time I checked, he was apprehensive of linguine.”

Alfred pressed his lips together. “Too worm-like,” he said dryly, repeating Barry’s words.

“He’s got a point,” Bruce shrugged.

“Don’t enable him, Master Wayne. We are already running out of options for pasta night.”

Bruce smirked.

“And why do we have a pasta night?”

Alfred cleared his throat. “Because Master Allen insisted that we need one.”

“And I am being an enabler?”

Alfred chose not to dignify his quip with a response.

“Do you know what you are planning to do with our new… ah, visitor?” he inquired instead, watching Bruce closely.

The question made Bruce’s smile dim and his light mood evaporate in an instant.

They had had to sedate Cheetah before they had been able to retrieve Diana’s Lasso, but that couldn’t be a permanent solution, of course. Whatever she was and whatever had made her that way—and Bruce was halfway through catching up on that fascinating story, featuring some businessman and apparently a magical rock, if the story he had dug up was correct—had left her stronger than nearly anything and anyone known to mankind.

He didn’t like the idea, but he liked thinking of what kind of chaos she could bring on Gotham if she got loose even less.

The truth was, there was only one solution he could see, short of simply putting a bullet in Cheetah’s head—and he suspected that Diana wouldn’t be overly pleased if he did that, though Bruce knew he wouldn’t hesitate if he had no other choice left.

(Which reminded him that she hadn’t picked up any of his calls or responded to any of his texts since they had parted ways—a realization that brought on an unpleasant sense of déjà vu, his understanding of her situation being tramped by the familiar frustration he couldn’t help.)

Which, sadly, left him with only one other option.

One that was giving him a toothache and making his face twist on a will of its own.

Constantine.

Bruce grimaced. Just thinking about that name made his jaw clench.

God only knew what the sorcerer was going to ask for in return. And it was seldom money—Bruce wouldn’t have minded that. But deals with Constantine often entailed favours—it was as though the other man enjoyed pulling the strings.

Which he probably did, now that Bruce was thinking about it.

A lot of the time he liked what they did, as a team. He took pride in bringing change where others only thought to bring destruction.

But then there were moments like now when he wished he’d stayed in corporate business and picked up golf as a hobby.

He looked at Alfred who was waiting patiently, his gaze serious.

“Yes, I…” Bruce glanced into his cup. “I’ve got it sorted out.”

“Well, if you mean it,” his butler noted noncommittally.

“When haven’t I?”

Alfred pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “Well, I suppose that time—”

“Rhetorical question, Alfred.”

“Aren’t they all?”

The corner of Bruce’s lips quirked.

“Stay away from there, if you can,” he said as the older man turned to leave.

“It’s not me you should be worried about.”

Bruce smirked. Although, while Alfred was likely right, he couldn’t imagine anyone venturing to the part of the house where Cheetah was being kept. Not after everything they had seen on the Fox and afterwards, her struggling against the hold of the Lasso more animal than human.

Which reminded him that he really needed to deal with the situation sooner rather than later, regardless of whether or not he spoke with Diana.

For a moment, Bruce couldn’t help but wonder what Waller would make of that creature, though he didn’t allow his mind to venture far in that direction. Not too far, anyway. As much as he might have liked handing Diana’s friend over to the authorities, he knew they could never allow someone like Waller to get her hands on someone so strong and vicious, no matter what. Something that he knew with certainty was that Waller would try to use Cheetah as a weapon.

Besides, he suspected that Waller’s main concern in the near future would be dealing with the fact that they had destroyed all the pools that she seemed to be so interested in. No doubt for her own selfish reasons.

The thought gave Bruce pause. He had never asked Diana if the last one of the pools had in fact been taken care of. It hadn’t even crossed his mind until now to consider it.

He made a mental note to clarify that later.

His cup still half-full, he stepped toward the liquor cart he kept in his study and picked up a bottle of scotch, topping off his coffee with it. He took a sip and nodded to himself, and then he reached for his phone.

The sooner he dealt with Constantine, the better. Pain in the ass as he was, Bruce knew he would likely be much too intrigued to refuse Bruce’s request.

There was nothing from Diana still, though in truth he hadn’t expected to hear from her anytime soon. She was probably all too busy dealing with her Captain and whatever was going on with him.

Sipping his drink, Bruce scrolled through his contacts, his thumb pausing over Constantine’s number.

And that was when a text arrived, popping up at the top of the screen and pulling his attention away from Cheetah and the sorcerer.

You around tonight?

Selina.

Bruce took another gulp of his spiked coffee.

No patrol, he typed. He would be useless out there, too distracted by the idea of a giant beast trapped in his basement. Besides, only a madman would venture out to commit crimes in the weather so foul, he reasoned. Or so he wanted to believe.

The three dots indicating that Selina was typing came on.

Bruce waited, finding the slight thrill of anticipation not entirely unpleasant. Quite the contrary. But, after a few moments, the dots were gone.

Quelling his disappointment, he glanced outside. The first plump drops of rain had just hit the roof and glass panes, sliding over the smooth wall as they chased one another.

His phone chimed once more, nearly giving him a start.

I could come over, another text from Selina said.

It wasn’t until he saw it that Bruce realized how badly he had wanted her to say just that. His own response was immediate.

Yes.


France, 2021

Steve finally fell asleep on their fifth day at the cabin. Not by choice, if Diana had to take a guess. At some point, she suspected, his body simply refused to continue carrying on with the torment he kept putting himself through and shut off, desperate for rest.

Carefully, she helped him into the bed, finally taking advantage of the lack of his resistance to pull off his shirt that had started to resemble rags, tearing it at the seams so as not to jostle him. She took off his shoes and pants next, and then pulled blankets over his body, helpless against the impulse to run her fingers through his hair.

To her relief, he slept deeply, his chest rising and falling evenly, her touch not enough to disturb him.

She hoped that he found peace, at last. Hera knew he deserved it, his exhaustion nearly palpable in the air, like a field around him.

She lingered near him for a moment, and then another one, merely watching him, the familiar lines of his face in the grey afternoon light, his cheeks coated with stubble and sunken from barely eating for almost a week. She took note of the dark circles under his eyes and the deep, tired lines mapping his features, her heart squeezing achingly from things that she didn’t know how to define. Sympathy, longing, affection, relief.

Maybe they should have gone to Gotham, she thought, not for the first time in the past five days. It had felt like the right thing to do to bring him somewhere where they could be alone while he rode out the effects of the water, without scrutiny and prying eyes. That, and part of Diana had hoped that being someplace familiar, in a space that carried a lot of happy memories for them both would help.

But, five days was enough time for her to give it some more thought, and make her doubt her decision.

Maybe she should have taken him to a hospital.

Diana brushed the thought aside, shamefully.

What would she say at a hospital? How would she explain his state? She couldn’t stand the thought of Steve being treated like the people in Arkham were. Like something dangerous and uncontrolled when he was anything but. When he was merely trapped and lost and confused.

Her heart gave a dull tug once more, tenderness blossoming behind her ribs, sprouting out to vine around her lungs and up her spine. On impulse, she leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead, her lips lingering on his skin for a long moment.

“You will be alright,” she promised, stroking her fingers through his hair once more. “I promise you will be alright.”

She straightened up and rose from the mattress. On her way out of the room, she picked up the remnants of Steve’s shirt and his pants, also torn in many places. They were ruined, and Diana carried them to the kitchen to throw them out. Over the past few days, she had grown to despise the view of them.

She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, trying to chase the tension aside. Her eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand into them, her mind in complete disarray, thoughts chasing one another without order or purpose.

Steve was exhausted, but so was she. She needed to get some rest, she knew. Yet, despite being worn out, she felt restless and wired, too, underneath it all. She didn’t think she’d be able to lay still for more than five minutes, much less sleep.

She needed to eat as well, having barely eaten as well over the past several days, her stomach in knots and queasy from worry more often than not. But even the idea of food didn’t seem appealing.

With a sigh, Diana stepped towards the stove—an old-fashioned kind that fit the original design that she had kept, wishing to preserve the feel of the place the way it had been a hundred years ago—and flicked the burner on under the kettle. Maybe a cup of tea could help her soothe her nerves, or, at least, take the edge off.

Her gaze drifted towards her phone.

Steve’s, she had found out, was ruined—Chief had not thought to check his pockets for it before lowering him in the healing pool, rendering the device useless afterwards. Yet another thing that had befallen the fate of collateral damage in this entire ordeal, Diana thought with a touch of dark humour.

She needed to call Bruce, she knew. Inquire about Barbara Ann. Asking him—all of them, for that matter—to deal with someone that was Diana’s problem had been unfair. She hadn’t given it much thought on the Fox, her mind preoccupied with Steve, and Steve alone. But she was starting to see it now, the realization resonating with a pang of guilt in the centre of her chest.

There were no messages from Bruce when she checked her phone though. No new ones, at least. He would have called or texted in case of an emergency, wouldn’t he?

There was a half-hearted joke from Barry in their group chat about their tendency to keep picking up stray cats, referring, undoubtedly, to Selina Kyle. Unexpectedly, Diana felt her lips twitch in amusement. Bruce either hadn’t seen it or, likely, had wisely chosen to ignore it, though Diana knew it wouldn’t have pleased him. Arthur, on the other hand, seemed to have found it rather entertaining.

It warmed her heart to see them being so… themselves, the familiarity of it more reassuring than any words of comfort ever could.  

There was a message from Lois. Several, actually, asking Diana how she was and if Steve was doing better. Diana looked at them for the longest time, her finger hovering over the keys. But in the end, she closed it without responding, not sure what there was to say, yet.

She needed to check in with work. Another “family emergency” in a long line of other emergencies was her weak excuse, and part of her wondered how long those were going to hold, her guilt over the neglect she had allowed to happen, a nagging feeling she couldn’t quite seem to push aside. But, focus felt like something unattainable at the moment. She couldn’t think about it, about the museum and the things that, while important, felt far too trivial to her.

Leaving her phone on the kitchen counter, Diana wandered into the living room.

It was only mid-afternoon, but the gloom of the evening had already started creeping in, barely chased away by the flickering of the fire in the fireplace.

She padded towards the window, her eyes trained on the slight slope leading to the lake, invisible behind a curtain of rain that had barely stopped since they’d arrived. It was not as vicious as it had been on the first day, but the clouds were hanging low and heavy still, as if uncertain if they wanted to leave for good or drop another storm onto the world.

There was a small town a few miles away, small and quaint, and so quintessentially French it was hard to believe it was not used to define the country. Normally, its proximity gave Diana a sense of comfort. But now, with all the rain and her feelings in such a complete tangle of confusion, it felt like it was hundreds of miles away. It felt as though she and Steve were the only two people in the whole world.

Unbidden, her mind swivelled back to Steve, and then, inevitably—to the Lazarus Pits.

Their mystery and ambiguity bothered Diana for reasons she couldn’t quite put her finger on just yet. Their nature confused her, true, but it was their purpose that she couldn’t grasp, leaving her on edge. Clearly, there was a lot of ambiguity to them, but it was the conflict between their healing powers and the damage they caused at the same time that left Diana at a loss.

She knew better than anyone, perhaps, that it was not about the weapon but about its wielder. The same one could be used to destroy and to protect, often doing both at the same time. Perhaps, the pools were not all that different from that notion. But, like many things without a clearly defined purpose, they made her uneasy.

In the future, Diana hoped that they would find their answers, and that her mind would settle. Right now, though, all she could do was hope that it had not been a fatal mistake to allow Steve to be grasped by the Pits’ magic.

Steve…

She took a breath and let it out slowly, searching for a quiet place inside of herself.

He had always been reluctant to speak of his experiences at war. Never dismissive but elusive about it in a way that had told Diana to let the subject rest.

But with everything she had learned over the past few days… She wondered how much of it was true and how much—his mind playing tricks on him, luring him into the depths of his fears. She wondered if she’d ever know for sure. Yet, there were recollections he had spoken of that she knew to be factually correct, things she had heard from other people, afterwards. 

Her heart ached for him and all the unspeakable cruelty and violence he had had to witness or live through. Things that he was carrying inside of him, still, unable to let go even now, after all the time had passed.

He didn’t deserve it. He was a good man forced to do bad things, but that hadn’t changed the goodness of him. It hadn’t taken away from his kindness and his heart, from his compassion and the sense of purpose that had drawn Diana to him before she had glimpsed all those other things. It had changed nothing. No one deserved it, but most certainly not someone like Steve.

On Themyscira, she had been raised to believe that the world was a good place populated by good people, fair and just, as her mother had told her. That when bad things happened to it, it was because someone like Ares brought them on.

In her hundred years in man’s world, she had long learned that that was not entirely true. That even without Ares, people continued to make harmful choices, and there was nothing that she could do that would stop them. A lot of the time, at least.

But, knowing that and fully accepting it were not the same thing. Diana wondered if she would ever be able to accept it, if that would ever happen.  

It shocked her, too, how much she had been unaware of. How much of Steve’s history had remained a mystery to her, the guilt of it like a stab to her gut, slicing through her like a hot knife. It was not about mistrust, Diana knew that. He could tell her anything without being rejected or judged—she had made sure that Steve was aware of that. But that didn’t change the fact that he had been the one carrying the weight of his past on his own, this entire time. She wasn’t sure she liked that idea and the unpleasant aftertaste it brought on.

She let out a slow breath, her eyes still trained on the dull scenery outside. Even without touching it, she could feel the cold emanating from the glass pane before her. There was a certain beauty to it, if a wild, fierce one.

She knew she would appreciate it under different circumstances.

It was, however, a welcome distraction—she hadn’t thought she would ever stop seeing all the red—Steve’s blood on his clothes and the grass, and later, smeared over the stretcher on the Fox. It had taken her almost two days to scrub it off her armour and gauntlets. While it hadn’t felt like a task of the utmost priority, the sight of it had been making her sick, the idea of putting her armour on nauseating.

Diana had done it in the quiet times when Steve had been too withdrawn, staring at something inside of himself for long stretches of time. Times when she had wondered if that was all that he was ever going to be.

Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about that blood, those slash marks and his throat being cut open. Once she had time to remember things, all she wanted was to erase those memories from her mind.

He was alive though. Was it not the only thing that mattered? She was going to bring him back somehow, whatever it took. How could she give up now?

But, the fear was still churning in her stomach, like a ball of barbed wire.

She knew she was not going to forget about what had happened to him any time soon.

Diana’s chest constricted.

She stepped away from the window, her gaze moving over the room without quite registering much of anything. The comfort that this place used to bring was nowhere to be found. Somewhere in the kitchen, her phone chimed quietly, but the sound of it was almost like an afterthought that didn’t linger in her mind for long.

Without thinking, she wandered back to the bedroom, both comforted and somewhat disconcerted by how quiet the house was. Paris was nothing like that, and the contrast was throwing her off.

Steve was still asleep, much to her relief. Peacefully too, it seemed, his breathing even and deep and slow. He had rolled onto his side, arms tucked under his pillow. A pang of affection arced through Diana’s chest at the sight of him, the familiarity of it making something tender inside of her ache, familiar warmth unspooling behind her ribs.

She walked around the bed, climbing onto the mattress carefully as she tried not to disturb it too much. She lowered down, resting her head on the pillow, not even bothering to pull the covers over her. Tucking her arm beneath her cheek, she allowed herself to watch him for a long time, comforted by his nearness.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep, but the past three days must have caught up with her because one moment, Diana was wondering how long he would sleep for, and the next thing it was morning, the tentative sun peeking through a crack in the clouds and flooding the room with its bright light.

Diana blinked her eyes open, disoriented momentarily. She must have rolled over in her sleep, as she was now lying on her side with Steve’s body pressed against her back, his arm curled habitually around her waist, holding her close.

Carefully, she turned, mindful of not pulling away from him. And when she did so, she was surprised to realize that Steve was awake, as well. Lying on his side, his pose mirroring her, he was watching her, his gaze soft with sleep, but clear and alert with recognition for the first time in a while.

“Hey,” Diana breathed, her voice croaky and low.

He smiled at her, that lovely smile of his that went all the way to his eyes.

“G’morning.” 

Notes:

I won't lie to you guys, this chapter feels rather special to me. I'm a huge fan of Steve's past and the impact that the war had had on him. It is understandable that it doesn't always have a particular significance in fic, however I love diving into it for character study. Surely, he wouldn't be able to just sweep his experiences under a rug and just pretend it never happened. It was so much fun to write this part and bring up his traumas to the surface. That, and showing the impact of his past on Diana.

I hope you enjoyed reading it :)

As always, comments are much appreciated! You guys are the best!

See you next week!

Chapter 26

Notes:

Hey everyone, thank you again for your incredible support! I know the last 2 chapters were rather mean and angsty, but I hope that the upcoming ones will make up for it :) You have all been so supportive I can't thank you enough! I hope you are doing well and that you're taking good care of yourselves, and as for this story, I want to believe you will enjoy the remaining chapters :)

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

Chapter Text

Diana looked at him, and then looked at him some more, as her heart shifted into a different gear, fluttering wildly against the inside of her ribs.

“Steve,” she whispered, helpless against the urge to reach for him, trailing her fingers down his cheek, his stubble coarse to the touch.

His eyes moved over her features, and she watched a faint frown appear between his brows. She wondered what it was that he saw in her eyes that made it happen.

For a moment, Diana thought that he was going to ask, but he didn’t. In the end, he merely continued to study her, and she let him, taking him in as well, as she pushed back the flicker of panic that was telling her that she was imagining this. Countless hours of waiting for his awareness to return had robbed her of all hope that it ever would.

It struck her then that she had truly come to believe that he was lost to her for good.

“You’re back,” she said before she could stop herself.

Steve blinked at her. “Was I gone?”

Diana merely shook her head, her throat thick with emotion all of a sudden, not unlike the relief she had felt at the clearing when she had made it back to Napi and had found Steve breathing again.  

She felt the tightness ease inside of her, her chest growing warm with longing.

“I had a dream,” he said, after a long moment, his words slow and careful.

Diana moved a little closer to him, her thumb running absently back and forth along his stubbled jaw. “Yes?”

“Chief was there,” Steve said, sounding a little bewildered at the idea. His voice was soft, still laced with sleep as he drew her closer still. His hand slid up her back, over her side. He touched her face, brushing her hair from her cheek.  

Her heartbeat stuttered once more. She drew in a breath.

“What else?” she asked in a whisper.

Was he remembering something? He couldn’t have seen Napi. She didn’t think he had. But they both had spoken to Steve, so maybe…

But he was only shaking his head now.

“That’s all.” His lips tugged upwards at the corners, his smile soft.

A dream. He thought it was a dream.

Diana was searching his face, his eyes blue and bright and a little confused, but brimming with affection all the same. She searched for traces of the man he had been only yesterday, the haunted shell of someone that she had barely been able to recognize, but there was none of that left. Only her Steve. The one who she knew so well, and who she loved so.

She moved to him, without thinking, tucking her face into the crook of his neck, feeling so light with relief she feared she might soar away if she wasn’t holding on to him. Steve’s arms closed around her immediately, the ease of it after days and days of confusion and rejection almost too much to bear.

She was still lying on top of the bedspread that was caught between them now, still wearing her clothes from the day before, but she didn’t care.

Steve didn’t seem to, either.

His heart was beating steadily into the palm of her hand, his skin warm to the touch. She felt him stroke her back, felt his lips brushing to her temple, a feather-light touch that made her eyes sting a little. She squeezed them and inhaled deeply, breathing him in over and over again until the cold panic of the past several days finally started to ebb.

They stayed like that for a long time. Long enough that she almost managed to convince herself that it all—Cheetah, the attack, Steve’s past rising up from the depths of his mind to haunt him—had been a dream.

“Diana,” he said eventually.

She was tracing her fingers along the line of his collar bone, nearly lulled back into sleep by the warmth of him and the comfort of his closeness. She paused when he said her name. Drawing back, she looked up at him.

“Hm?”

Steve cleared his throat.

“What are we doing here?”


While Steve showered, Diana made some food and started a pot of coffee. She made tea too, finding comfort in the routine of it all, something to help her get her equilibrium back while he wasn’t looking.

Whatever she had expected from his, well, return, she had never thought that he was going to simply snap into his old self as though nothing had happened.

That Steve didn’t remember anything, or much of anything—they were yet to have a proper conversation about that—surprised her. And though she was not entirely sure yet if it was a good or a bad thing, in the long run, part of her was grateful. What he had been through at war was more than enough as a one-time experience. Being forced to relieve it equated to unspeakable cruelty.

What mattered now to her was that he was back. They would deal with the rest of it together.

Diana paused, her gaze drifting towards the tentative late-morning sun outside and the patchy clouds in the pale-blue sky.

It bothered her more than a little that there was no way of knowing if it was truly over, or if it was merely a reprieve, the thought leaving Diana on more on edge than she was willing to admit. But, there was nothing that she could do about that. Only wait.

Yesterday, while Steve slept, she had found the files that Bruce had shared with them all, a digital version of the handouts he had distributed during their meeting. She had skimmed over them. But like with almost everything that had to do with the Pits, none of the information was definitive or conclusive in ways that Diana wanted it to be.

It was, perhaps, a true testament to her unease that she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.

Diana took a breath, her gaze darting towards the bathroom door down the hallway behind which the water continued to run.

For a brief moment, she couldn’t help but consider going in there, taking her clothes off and joining Steve under the spray of hot water, a jolt of longing careening through her, surprising in its intensity.

She remembered the feeling well, from his early days in the 21 st century when her desire to see him and touch him and reassure herself again and again that he was not a figment of her imagination had been almost unbearable. When her desire for him had been insatiable.

It still was, a lot of the time.

She bit her lip, pondering that idea for another second.

Steve would not mind, she knew. He never did.

She sighed and turned away, shaking her head a little. Perhaps, another time.

Setting the plates down on the table, she picked up her phone, realizing with a pang of guilt that it was almost noon and it hadn’t even crossed her mind to check it, until now. Something that she normally wouldn’t allow.

Diana skimmed through the work messages, marking those that required her attention and sent a brief text to Celeste. There were more messages in the Justice League group chat, but nothing of substance. Apparently, Selina Kyle hadn’t taken the ‘stray cat’ joke well—to no one’s surprise. Diana pressed her lips around a smile. Frankly, with that comparison, Barry should have seen the consequences coming.

At last, she pulled up the text messages, sending one off to Lois immediately to reassure her that both she and Steve were doing well. She thanked Clark for his good wishes, and made a mental note to respond to the remaining ones at the first opportunity. Hopefully, sometime today.

Then, eventually, she found Bruce’s number and pressed dial.

He picked up on the second ring.

“You okay?” he asked without preamble.

“Yes,” Diana said.

“And, ah…”

Her gaze drifted towards the bathroom door once more.

“Steve is well.” She paused, her eyes moving towards the counter as the coffee maker beeped, signalling it was finished. If they didn’t have other pressing matters to discuss, she wouldn’t have resisted the impulse to ask if Bruce had nothing else to do but wait for her call, for how quickly he had picked up. “I owe you,” she said instead.

“Don’t,” he said immediately. “We don’t keep score and we’re not going to start doing it now, Diana.”

“What you’ve done for me—”

“—is what you’d do for me, if our situations were reversed,” he stopped her.

She took a breath. She knew that he was right, and it was one of the reasons why the League worked, and worked well. And she was grateful for it.

“Thank you,” she said all the same.

Is it over? ” he inquired.

Diana considered the question. She wanted to believe so, the mere idea of going through another minute of what both she and Steve had been dealing with for the better part of the week was intolerable. She did not and would not imagine the sort of torment that he would have to face if it came back.

But, she couldn’t help but feel hopeful, not quite surprised that it reflected on everything around her. Everything inside of her. Even the place that had started to feel like prison was suddenly home again.

She let out a slow, measured breath.

She should have joined Steve in the shower, she thought.

“Yes. Yes, I believe it is.”

There was a pause on the line, neither of them seemingly knowing what to say. She could very clearly picture Bruce nodding to himself, even if she was not there to see it.

They were going to have to talk eventually, Diana knew. She didn’t think they’d get far as teammates if they didn’t. She could feel the weight of those unsaid words hanging between them now, and she didn’t want their friendship to get crushed under it. This was territory she was not familiar with. One that she didn’t quite know how to navigate.

But, not right now. Now was not the time.

“How is she doing?” Diana asked, not needing to specify who she was talking about.  

On the other end of the line, Bruce made a sound—something between a chuckle and a groan. It made her smile a little.

“She is strong,” he said, his voice surprisingly serious.

Diana couldn’t help but tense, her smile dimming.

“Is everyone alright?”

“Yeah. It would be nice if Barry stopped trying to come up with ideas on how to keep her as a pet.”

His words gave Diana pause. “You’re joking,” she said as she leaned against the counter.

On the other end of the line, Bruce heaved a sigh. “Barry Allen is a very smart young man,” he said.

“That he is,” Diana confirmed.

“But he can be a little short-sighted, in certain situations.”

She didn’t argue. To be fair, she hadn’t spent much time thinking about Cheetah living there, and now her mind was caught on the idea of someone extremely dangerous living in close proximity to someone (or multiple people) who didn’t mind poking a proverbial hornet’s nest with a stick. The thought was more than a little concerning.

Which made Diana’s sense of guilt deepen. She’d had no right to spring it on them like that. It was a lot to ask for, as close as they were.  

“Just try to make sure he keeps his fingers intact,” she said softly, hoping to keep her mood light.

“Are you sure Arkham is not the way to go?” Bruce asked, after a brief pause.

“Is she still…?”

“Biologically impossible? Yes.” Another pause. “What exactly happened there?”

Diana chose to ignore that question. It had been six days now. She was certain that Bruce had done his homework by then, learning all there was to learn about Barbara Ann Minerva and her alter-ego. Maybe even more than Diana herself was aware of. His question, she suspected, was merely a formality. It was not likely that she could tell him anything he hadn’t already dug up.

“It appears that she had been sustaining her, well, health through the Lazarus Pits,” Diana said instead. “I was hoping that having no access to one would… would reverse the process.”

“It hasn’t been long enough, perhaps,” Bruce offered.

“She is not a criminal, Bruce. She is merely following instincts she can’t fight.”

“Like a cheetah.”

Diana rubbed her eyes, choosing to ignore his attempt at a joke. “No doubt that if she lands in Arkham, Waller would be notified. And Waller would do nothing to actually help.”

“And do you know how to help her?” Bruce inquired.

“Aside from waiting it out?” It was not enough, Diana knew. Bruce made a non-committal noise. “Do you?”

She was suddenly curious, certain he had considered a few options while Diana’s mind had been otherwise occupied.

Before Bruce could say a word, there was a loud pop that sounded from somewhere on his end, followed by his grunt of frustration.

“I do, actually,” he said, his voice inexplicably laced with annoyance, which made Diana’s curiosity pique. “I have to go, but I’ll tell you all about it—”

“Batty!” Constantine's familiar voice drawled, loud enough to reach Diana’s ears.

Diana’s eyebrow arched, despite there being no one there to see it.

Yet, before she could so much as open her mouth, the line went dead.


Gotham, 2021

“Batty!”

Bruce stuffed his phone into the pocket of his pants and turned around, stifling a groan of annoyance when his gaze landed on the familiar beige coat and the cigarette hanging from Constantine’s lips. An unlit one, mercifully. 

At the sight of him, the sorcerer grinned.

He really needed to have some kind of security system against this sort of thing, Bruce thought. Maybe he should consult Constantine’s girlfriend, he mused. She was into magic as well, if Bruce recalled correctly. And likely an expert at keeping John Constantine at bay.

Except, this particular visit was Bruce’s idea. Which, frankly, was only making him even more frustrated by the sight of the familiar smirk on Constantine’s face.

“You’re here,” Bruce said impassively.

He gave the other man a closer look, taking note of his rumpled hair and the dark circles under his eyes. Admittedly, the harsh overhead lights could be easily blamed for that, but if not—Bruce couldn’t help but wonder what Constantine had been up to lately. Keeping out of his way, thankfully. But still.

Not that he wanted to know, if he was being honest with himself.

Still, the sorcerer’s presence was not exactly a welcome affair.

“You called,” Constantine reminded him, almost gleefully, clearly taking great pleasure in the fact.

He cast his eyes up to the sprinklers on the ceiling and then heaved a dramatic sigh. Bruce couldn’t help but roll his eyes a little. It was as though by not allowing Constantine to smoke he was putting him through some unimaginable torment.

“I did,” Bruce acknowledged.

Constantine arched a pointed eyebrow at him. “And? Time’s money, and you have wasted…” he pulled up his sleeve and peered at the wristwatch strapped to his arm, “five minutes of mine. A travesty, if you ask me.”  

Bruce clenched his jaw, refusing to take the bait.

Constantine’s grin widened, turning almost ghastly. “Well?” he prompted again.

Bruce sighed. “I need your help.”

Constantine stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trench coat and tilted his head.

“Just give me a sec, Batty. Trying to savour this moment.”

Bruce rolled his eyes and turned away, heading into the depths of the Batcave.

“Aw, come on, don’t begrudge me this indulgence,” Constantine called from behind him but he followed Bruce, all the same, the echo of his footfalls bouncing off the concrete walls.

“Are you going to help or not?”

“You haven’t told me with what, yet,” Constantine pointed out. “I mean, there are financial aspects to it, of course. I’m not cheap. And I have a moral code, you know.”

Bruce snorted at the last remark.

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be right up your alley.”

“Well, you should know. You and I, we go way back, don’t we?”

“Don’t start,” Bruce muttered.

On the lower level of the Batcave, he turned towards the passage running between the lake house and Wayne Manor. He didn’t pause to check if Constantine was still following, knowing that at that point, the other man was too curious to just leave.

God help him, he really wished there was someone else he could ask. Anyone, really. Before calling Constantine, Bruce had even briefly contemplated engaging one of Waller’s… proteges for the job, but had to toss that idea aside. Whatever Constantine was going to ask in return for his invaluable services, Waller would, undoubtedly, collect tenfold that.

The lesser of two evils and all that…

It still felt like too much evil, in Bruce’s opinion.

“That’s a nice dungeon you have here, pal,” Constantine noted as they reached the area below the Manor split between his father’s wine cellars that had survived the fire and a number of utility rooms that Bruce had repurposed at some point. He whistled under his breath for good measure.

Bruce clenched his jaw and huffed out a breath.

“It’s not a dungeon.”

Constantine raised his hands. “Whatever you say. I’m not here to judge. We all have our… ah, interests.”

“Oh, for god’s sake…”

“Hey, we all have our needs, I’m not saying—”

Bruce made a strangled noise in the back of his throat, half wishing he was not the only one around. Not that it would make Constantine any less… Constantine but it would have at least diverted the sorcerer’s attention. Maybe.

“What was it that you wanted from me, again?” Constantine asked, after a beat.

“Are you never not intolerable?” Bruce inquired.

The other man beamed at him for all he was worth. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Bruce sighed.

More fun was all they needed, indeed.

He stopped in front of one of the doors. The room behind it was meant to be outfitted as a bunker of sorts. Or, at least, that was the idea for when he had time to deal with it. At the moment, it was only half complete and, according to Alfred, even that “half” was enough to make Bruce the definition of paranoid. Bruce preferred to believe that it merely made him prepared.

As it turned out, it had paid off, albeit not in the way that Bruce had expected.

He paused, listening carefully.

They had to keep Cheetah at least somewhat sedated at all times, for their safety as well as her own, Bruce suspected. She was strong, incredibly so. Strong enough to give both Arthur and Clark a run for their money.

Bruce wasn’t sure how Diana would have fared against her, but he wasn’t overly optimistic. If nothing else, Diana was likely to hold back with her old friend, or whatever she was. And Bruce knew better than to trust emotions when they got involved.

He wasn’t sure he even liked their collective odds, at that. And frankly, had it been up to him, he wouldn’t have hesitated about sending Cheetah on to where he thought she belonged. But… had it been someone Bruce knew closely and cared for, even in the past, he knew he would have wanted to help them, too.

He didn’t appreciate Diana’s decision but he understood it well, and he was in no position to judge.

“You’re making me nervous, Batty,” Constantine muttered, his eyes also trained on the metal door.

Bruce glanced at him, surprised that despite his light and almost dismissive tone, his gaze was sharp and focused. Inquisitive in a way that Bruce had grown to appreciate in the past. It was easy to forget sometimes that alongside being the biggest pain in the ass, John Constantine was also pretty good at what he did. Bruce had certain misgivings about his personality, but he was surprised to realize that he had never doubted Constantine’s… well, professional qualities.

There weren’t that many people in this world whom he could say the same thing about.

At last, Bruce took a breath. He unlocked the door and pushed it open slowly, fully aware that while Cheetah would be slightly incapacitated by the drugs administered to her, she was far from being harmless.

The lights were dimmed in the room, just bright enough to know where the creature was but not overly so, so as to not agitate her—something they had learned the hard way.

She was crouched in the far corner. When she spotted Bruce, her eyes narrowed as she bared her teeth at him, letting out a low growl that morphed into a hiss. He watched her paws flex on the concrete floor, certain that if she had it in her to charge him, she would be happy to rip out his jugular.

“Well, blimey,” Constantine breathed, his façade slipping, for once. “Who’s your new friend?”

“You know what she is?” Bruce asked, watching Cheetah closely, ready to shut the door if she so much as moved.

“She has magic in her, a lot of it,” Constantine observed, sounding more impressed than Bruce had ever heard him. “Old kind. Something you don’t see much of these days. So again — who’s your new friend?”

Bruce sighed.

A friend was a stretch. A big one.

“Can you fix her?” he asked.

Just then, without so much as a warning, Cheetah rushed forward, frighteningly fast.

Bruce slammed the door, and the next second there was the sound of a massive body colliding with it on the other side, followed by a loud scratch of claws against metal and a growl of disappointment.  

Another sign that Barry’s idea to placate her and keep her as a pet of sorts was probably a lost cause.

Constantine stared at the closed door for a long moment, his head tilted and his brows furrowed. Which, to Bruce, felt slightly more disconcerting than his constant quips. It was so out of character that Bruce couldn’t really place it.

“That will cost you,” Constantine said at last, and just like that, the familiar, easy grin was back, somehow more infuriating than before.

“Shocker,” Bruce said flatly. “Can you?” he pressed impatiently.

Constantine’s smile widened. Theatrically, he pushed the sleeves of his trench coat and the plain white shirt that he wore underneath it up his arms. He moved his unlit cigarette to the other corner of his mouth.  

“Do you want me to do it now, or…?”


France, 2021

There had been quite a few times in Steve Trevor’s life when something inexplicable happened, leaving him at a loss for words or, well, thoughts for that matter.

Meeting Diana had been one of those things, of course, if he had to name a few. Finding out that her people had been direct descendants from gods was certainly high up on that list as well. Then there was learning that her half-brother was the God of War who had somehow pushed the cogs of war into motion, determined to keep people fighting one another until the world of men was destroyed.

After all that, Steve being catapulted into the future with the help of some magical artifact had felt almost like a minor afterthought, if he took into account some of the bigger instances. Though it was certainly on the list, somewhere.

Point was, he should have probably stopped being surprised by anything, he reckoned. Maybe he would one day, if he lived long enough to see it. But, going on a mission and then waking up in what he considered their vacation home almost a week later, with a black hole in his head and no recollection of how he had gotten there and why still threw him off, just a bit.

Steve wasn’t sure how long he stood under the spray of the blistering-hot water, scrubbing himself over and over again as the small room filled with the scent of Diana’s floral-scented soap. His mind was in a disarray.

The last thing that he remembered, prior to this morning when he had awoken with Diana soundly asleep by his side, was reaching an outcropping of rocks housing a pool of greenish water and pulling a make-shift bomb out of his pack. He remembered how hot it had been, the air thick and humid, all but clinging to his skin like a film. And then—nothing but fragments of dreams that disquieted him for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

Steve plucked a bottle of soap from the holder and squeezed some more onto the washcloth, seemingly unable to scrub off everything that he wanted to wash off of himself, finding odd comfort in the simplicity of taking a shower.

He hoped that Diana had all the answers.

When he had asked her earlier, a shadow of confusion had passed across her features, followed by a flicker of haunted grief in her eyes that had given Steve pause. He hadn’t pressed then, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it now.

That, and the irony of it—something had happened to him, he was sure of it. And once again, like in 1918, it was Diana who had been the most affected by it.

Eventually, Steve turned the water off, reaching for a towel. He stepped out onto the mat outside the old, heavy bathtub that had likely come with the place and turned to the sink, sweeping his palm over the fogged-up mirror. A bearded man stared back at him. It was, perhaps, more disconcerting than realizing that apparently he had missed a few days of his life. The last time Steve had seen himself in a mirror, his face had been clean-shaven. Now, it was as though someone had pressed a fast-forward button on his life. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

He felt strange, too. Wired in an odd way, and yet worn out underneath it all despite having slept in almost until noon. He felt almost as if he was coming off a bad hangover though he knew that was not the case.

There was a bathroom cabinet over the sink and Steve pulled its door open on impulse, wondering if there was a razor there somewhere. As he did so, he was overcome with a sudden sense of déjà vu and standing in Diana’s bathroom on the night he had come back to life.

No razor. He couldn’t remember if he packed one, either. And he didn’t even know if his bag was there somewhere—he hadn’t thought to check earlier.

Shaking his head, Steve tied his towel around his hips and pulled the bathroom door open. He shivered a little in the cooler air that greeted him. He paused on the threshold. Somewhere in the kitchen down the hall, he could hear Diana moving around. She was on the phone, if her quiet voice drifting over to him was any indication. Too quiet to make out any words—not that Steve wanted to eavesdrop.

His nose twitched a little as he detected the smell of coffee—something that left him more than a little relieved, lifting his spirits momentarily.

He stepped into the bedroom, overcome suddenly with the memories of the previous times they had come to that place. Memories about late-morning sunlight tangled in Diana’s hair, of the thick, humid summer air and of making love to her unhurriedly, as though they’d had all the time in the world. The good kind of memories.

The back of his neck grew hot immediately at the mental image they conjured, his confusion be damned. Steve pushed it aside, for the time being. There was no summer outside the window now, and the place was chilly.

Entering the bedroom, he found that the bed, flanked by two nightstands, had been made. His duffel bag was sitting at the foot of it, making him smile. For a moment there, he had wondered if his wardrobe choices were going to be limited to the white towel or… another white towel. Although, he probably had some stuff left behind, he thought. Maybe a pair of shorts or something.

Maybe they could make a trip to that nearby town and get him a damned razor later.

He towelled off quickly and then dug out fresh underwear and a clean set of clothes. He got dressed, feeling suddenly reinvigorated. Not even the slight chill bothered him—although it was making him wonder what had happened to South America. They hadn’t just gotten teleported here, had they?

He had a lot of questions, if he was being honest.

Barefoot, Steve stepped out of the bedroom and moved towards the kitchen, pausing only briefly to peek into the living room that looked the same as it had the last time he had seen it a few months ago, when he and Diana had come out for a week to escape the stifling heat of the Parisian summer. Her work kept her too busy to allow a proper break somewhere cooler—like the North Pole, maybe—at the time.

Now, the fire was lit in the fireplace, its glow warm and inviting. Steve tried to remember if there was any other kind of heating in the house but he couldn’t recall any such thing. Though Diana had mentioned wanting to come over for Christmas before, they hadn’t done that yet.

Shaking his head, he stepped into the kitchen just as she finished her call. Steve watched her stare at her phone for a long moment, a slight frown on her face, before she set it down on the heavy wooden counter.

He paused in the doorway, taking her in. Taking in the kitchen, too. He liked this house. It reminded him, oddly, of the one where he had grown up, even though they were nothing alike, objectively. Had to be the rustic feel, he decided absently.

It suited her, the quiet sort of life a place like this would invite.

Then again, their apartment suited her as well. 

Maybe that was the thing about her. She could make any place feel like home. 

It was only then that Diana looked up, at last, noticing him.

The change was subtle but immediate. Her features softened, melting away the concern he had spotted moments earlier, slight surprise chased by relief as a small smile made an appearance. A lovely thing that had Steve moving towards her before he even knew that he was doing it.

Diana reached for him once he was near, arms winding around his neck as she pressed close to him, while his hands moved over her back and around her, as well. He buried his face in her hair and inhaled, holding her against him until he felt her relax, melting into his body.

Her fingers combed through his hair. Steve heard her sigh a little, his thoughts about coffee and all else forgotten in an instant, the relief of being near her taking over.

“Are you wearing my clothes?” he asked, eventually, taking note of her sweater that he recognized belatedly as his own.

Diana made an amused sound and, at last, drew back—just far enough away to look at him. Her eyes moved over his face as she took him in, and Steve let her, feeling the shift in her as though something was settling.

“It smelled like you,” she explained after a moment.

He felt the corner of his mouth lift as he lifted his hand to brush his thumb along her cheek. “Hey, I’m not complaining.”

There it was again, a shadow in her eyes that he couldn’t quite make sense of but that stirred unease in his chest. It was gone almost as soon as it appeared, leaving him even more perplexed, somehow.

Meanwhile, Diana’s fingers trailed down his face, her thumb brushing over his stubble.

“I have no razor,” Steve said, almost apologetically.

Their mission was supposed to have lasted only two days. It was a miracle that he had even brought a change of clothes.

“It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, shaking her head, her smile making something warm unspool inside of him. “I missed you.”

Her words gave Steve pause, making him inhale unsteadily. He didn’t like the unsaid implication behind them or the swarm of questions they raised.

“Where was I?” he asked, somewhat warily.

But she was shaking her head again, without answering. And then she leaned forward to brush a kiss to the corner of his mouth before her arms wrapped around him once more.

They stayed like that for a while—Steve decidedly did not mind that in the slightest, her familiar scent and her heart beating close to his, her face pressed to the side of his throat and the warmth of her breath on his skin.

It gave him comfort. And enough courage to face whatever had happened.  

He took his chance to survey the kitchen over Diana’s shoulder—the coffee maker and a packet of crackers on the counter. He was ravenous suddenly, with no recollection of the last time he ate.

Behind the window, the day was getting grey. The sun that had greeted them earlier had sunk behind heavy clouds once more. There was a stretch of the forest ahead, gloomy in the dead of the winter.

It made Steve’s stomach grow cold. He had all too many associations with forests, few of them of the pleasant kind, made worse by the dreary weather.

“Diana,” he said after a few minutes, hands moving idly over her back.

“Yes?” she murmured into his neck.

“What are we doing here?”


She told him everything—or almost everything, at that.

With the food spread across the coffee table in the living room, and Steve’s coffee cup refilled at least three times over the course of the conversation, he asked question after question and Diana shared follow-up details.

She kept the Napi part to herself, though it had taken her quite some deliberation to do so. She and Chief had never spoken of it, but to Diana, it felt like an unsaid agreement between them—if he had wanted Steve to know about him and the nature of his existence, he would have revealed it himself. He knew where to find them both, Diana was certain of that. And deep down, it felt to her like mentioning his involvement to Steve would be akin to betrayal of Chief’s trust, even if he had never explicitly asked her to keep it secret.

Though that was not to say that Diana liked it—she hated keeping things from Steve. But it was not her place and not her right to share.

She also kept the severity of his wounds to herself—the fact that his heart had stopped beating, at some point. The way his blood had soaked his clothes. Perhaps there was some selfishness to that, but she couldn’t imagine Steve benefitting from knowing all that. From knowing what she must have felt when she had seen it.

He had died once before, in the inferno high up in the sky, and it was haunting him still, making him jolt awake in the dead of the night. She didn’t want to give him more grief to dream of, not when it was within her power to keep it from happening. She had failed to prevent Cheetah from attacking him but she could do this. Did he not deserve a reprieve? Did he not deserve the peace of mind?

If Steve had noticed anything, or if he had so much as suspected that she hadn’t told him all there was, Diana was not sure, for he had not shown it. For some reason, it made her feel even more guilty over that deception, however well-intended.

Later, she had promised to herself. She would tell him later, after he had recovered properly. He would never forgive her for keeping it all from him. She knew she would never forgive herself, either. But not right now. Not tonight.

Eventually, they fell silent, the only sounds permeating the room being the hum of the fridge in the kitchen, and the fire crackling in the hearth in front of them.

Diana watched Steve tip his head back against the back of the couch as he stared at the ceiling. He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing in his throat beneath the coat of his stubble trickling from his cheeks, down his neck. His hair was a little tousled. She was not quite used to seeing him with the makings of a beard—he normally preferred to keep it shaven off or trimmed—but she didn’t mind it. He always looked handsome to her.

A sense of fierce, inexplicable tenderness filled her entire being all of a sudden—it spread from her chest into her limbs and all the way to the tips of her fingers and her toes. She was reminded how fragile life could be—something that was easy to forget sometimes when she had so much of it, stretching before her all the way into forever.

She was sitting next to him, with her legs tucked beneath her. Unable to help it, Diana reached for him, carding her fingers through his hair.

“Do you feel alright?” she asked softly.

She had spent the entire afternoon waiting for something inside of him to snap once more, sending him spiralling back into whatever dark place he had managed to pull himself out of. It was only now that she was starting to accept the fact that that outcome was not likely. And the consolation that thought brought her was almost too much to bear.

Steve let out a long breath. “Yeah, it’s just… a lot,” he said as he ran his hand across his chest, almost as an afterthought.

Diana wondered if he sensed that that was where Cheetah had slashed him.

The mental image made her mouth go dry.

“I’m sorry,” she said, without thinking.

Steve turned to her. His gaze when their eyes met was clear and earnest.

“Don’t. Diana, don’t…You can’t—you can’t blame herself for every trouble and every pitfall in the world.”

“We’re not talking about the world, Steve. It’s you, and—”

But he was shaking his head, and she knew that there were no words that either of them could say that would make the other one see the situation the way they were each seeing it.

“I’m here, am I not?” he shrugged.

Ironic, was it not?

Twice, she had failed to protect him, the reminder of it suffocating and making it hard for her to breathe. Twice, Steve had come back to her, amazed by the miraculous forces that had made that happen.

Two sides of the same coin, so to speak.

Diana sighed but didn’t say anything, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.

“Was it at least, you know… fun?” Steve inquired.

She gazed up at him, surprised. “What was?”

“I mean, did I learn a new language or something?” he pressed on. “After… you know. Or maybe I know how to tap dance, all of sudden? I’ve always wanted to learn how to tap dance.”

She stared at him, feeling her mouth drop open.

“See, I read a story once about a woman who was in a coma for a year and then she woke up and she would speak Portuguese even though she never knew a word of Portuguese before,” Steve forged on. “Handy, don’t you think?”

Diana smiled, helpless against it, and rolled her eyes because even in the direst situation, Steve Trevor knew how to put an interesting spin on it. Affection blossomed in her chest. Even despite the fact that he sounded downright ridiculous.

“No, no tap dancing,” she murmured, pressing her lips around a smile, her fingers scratching idly through the hair at his nape, the warmth blossoming in the centre of her chest making her fears drain away.

He made a face. “Tell me I didn’t do anything awfully embarrassing.”

“Define ‘ awfully embarrassing’.”

Steve blinked and then shook his head when Diana’s lips stretched out wider.

“You’re the worst,” he said, pointing an accusatory finger at her.

She shifted closer to him, her hand moving to his face, her thumb brushing over his cheek as her gaze searched his. The drastic circumstances that had brought them there aside, Diana had to admit that it was a nice moment—with the firelight colouring the room in the hues of gold and the warmth of his smile and knowing that they had gotten past the worst of it all, she wanted to believe.

“Are you well, really?” she couldn’t help but ask, all the same.

“I am, really,” Steve said sincerely as he reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together, his touch warm and reassuring.

She swept her gaze over his face once more and then nodded. There was no point pondering the matter, and though her concerns were hard to brush aside, she decided to try and focus on this moment right now.

Her thumb swept over his cheek once more. One day, they would have to talk about it all, the things that he had gone through and the things that he had shared with her, however inadvertently—for Steve’s sake, if nothing else. She couldn’t stand the weight of it, pressing down on him. The burden that he had felt the need to carry on his own.

But there was no need to do it now. Not for a while.

“I’m glad,” she said, leaning forward to brush a kiss to his cheek.

When she drew back, Steve turned his face, chasing her lips, the kiss soft and sweet and languid.

He made a sound in the back of his throat when Diana pulled away, his eyes a little dazed when they met hers. It made her smile.

“And um, what about…” He cleared his throat. “What about…?”

“Barbara Ann?” Diana supplied.

He nodded. “Is she okay?”

Unbidden, her eyes darted towards the kitchen where she had left her phone that had stayed uncharacteristically quiet for the past few hours. Had Bruce really decided to seek Constantine’s advice on the matter? She had managed to put the thought aside for the afternoon, but that last bit of their call intrigued her greatly.

It should never have become Bruce’s concern—the situation with Barbara Ann being Diana’s issue, not the League. The thought made her frown a little.

She needed to call him and find it out. She needed to be there, period.

She took a breath.  

“Diana?”

She turned to find Steve watching her, an eyebrow quirked quizzically.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, she is going to be alright.”

Which, admittedly, she didn’t know for a fact. But having captured Cheetah after several decades of failing to do so felt like a leap, not a step, forward. One way or another, it changed everything.

Steve nodded. There was a question behind his eyes, and Diana was certain that he was still desperate to fill in the blanks but they had time for that.

It was rather incredible to know that they had time, Diana thought. What a gift that was. She knew not to take it for granted.

Meanwhile, Steve allowed his gaze to sweep over the room, not pausing on anything in particular.

Watching him brought on a set of different memories. Memories from a time that was not tainted by fear and desperation. Diana wanted to believe they would make more of them, eventually.

She watched him for a long while, wondering what he was thinking, as the silence stretched between them. He would have told her if she asked, Diana knew. But, part of her still suspected that he was aware she had not told him everything. And she would never be able to lie to him if he asked her, directly. So she didn’t speak, in the end, feeling both cowardly and relieved as the minutes continued to tick by, a storm of things that she didn’t know how to define brewing in the pit of her stomach.

Eventually, Steve turned back to her and found her gaze once more. Diana didn’t think she had ever seen him look so worn out, tired lines gathering in the corners of his eyes.

“Can we go home?” he asked.

Notes:

As promised, this chapter is less mean :) I feel like Steve and Diana need a break and just go on a vacation for maybe 2 years after all they have been through.

I can't believe how close this story is getting to an end. I am going to miss it, though don't worry, we still have 4 chapters and an epilogue to go, if I'm not mistaken.

As always, thoughts, comments, opinions are much appreciated!

And I'll see you next week!

Chapter 27

Notes:

"What a crazy week" I say at the end of every week as if they are ever going to not be crazy :P

I hope you guys are doing well and taking good care of yourselves :) And here I am, bringing you yet another emotional chapter with (I hope) a lot of cool stuff. Please be aware that there is some explicit content in this chapter so those of you who are not into it - please skip/skim the second half of the second scene. Basically, when they start making out - jump to the end of it. But make sure to read the end of the chapter! There's some important information there!

Those of you who like adult content - ENJOY! (I had to send them off with a bang, pun intended ;)) I am a bit nervous about that part because it's a little bit more than what I usually do. Please be kind :)

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

Chapter Text

They went back to Paris the next morning, the French countryside a soothing blur outside the train windows.

On the trip, Diana watched Steve poke around the train car for a while, deeply fascinated still. Even trains, she had to remind herself, had changed drastically since his time. He had long grown used to the conveniences of the future, she knew, no longer freezing to a spot each time he saw something unfamiliar and intriguing, but there were still moments like this one when he couldn’t seem to help it.

Now she studied him as he studied one of the touch screens mounted on the back of the seat in front of him for entertainment—not as impressed by the content it offered so much as by its mere existence—as tenderness unfurled in her chest, entirely all-consuming.

Absently, she thought back to his fascination with Bruce’s toys and the Fox, recalling his half-hearted joke about buying his own jet. Something he had told her a long time ago. For the first time since then, Diana considered the possibility.

The idea of him flying again was something that she found disconcerting still. But it was not about her. He loved flying. And she loved him, beyond anything. It might not necessarily be something doable, she was aware of that. A plane was not a car, they required more work and more attention and, most importantly, a place to store it.

But, as the thought took root in her mind, she wondered if it was not as impossible as she might have assumed, at first.

Maybe that was something they could discuss later.

Her eyes drifted towards the window and the blur of browns and grey, only barely dotted with green here and there at this time of year. It was not a long trip, a little over an hour total. But it stretched in an odd way, all the same. Having lived most of her life on a tiny dot-on-the-map island, the vastness of the world still felt rather unfathomable to her sometimes.

When they arrived in Paris, it was late afternoon and rain, only a degree away from turning into snow, was falling in sheets from the sky and blurring the edges of the world. But, as dark and dreary as it felt, Diana could not remember the last time she had been so relieved to be back home.

It had something to do with putting the experience of the past week behind them, she suspected.

Steve fell into bed, barely bothering to take his clothes off and seemingly falling asleep the second his head touched the pillow. Diana changed into her sleepwear and crawled under the covers next to him, helpless against the impulse to touch him, to stay close to him. Even though it was barely past dinnertime, it was dark outside and she felt exhausted. Tomorrow, she was going to regret not unpacking immediately, but she couldn’t bring herself to bother.

She trailed her fingers down his cheek, mapping the lines of his face with her fingertips. He hadn’t shaven yet, the making of a beard somehow both soft and scratchy to the touch. Again and again, she kept finding herself marvelling at the miracle of his presence right there with her.

As if on cue, Steve blinked his eyes open, his gaze unfocused. He took in a breath and then reached for her, tucking Diana close against the curve of his body.

That he did it without even being fully awake made Diana’s heart constrict with tenderness.  

“Sleep,” she murmured, smoothing her hand over his hair.

His eyes dropped shut. She was not sure he had heard her, or that he had been listening at all. Diana smiled to herself.

She drifted off shortly afterwards, fitted closely against him.


“She’s confused,” Bruce told her when Diana called him the next day. “Doesn’t remember much of anything past the day she turned into… well…”

Diana didn’t know how to respond to that, torn between satisfaction over Constantine’s help, sympathy towards Barbara Ann’s plight, and utter confusion over the rest of it. In all the time she had tried to catch up with her former friend, Diana had never once paused to consider what she was supposed to do should it finally happen.

Then there was, of course, the matter of adaptation. It was likely going to be easier for Barbara Ann than it had been for Steve—thirty-odd years of changes and progress could not compare to an entire century—but Diana was certain that it was not going to be simple.

She wanted to believe that Barbara Ann was not going to waste her second chance.

“You know that the pools worked, right?” Bruce asked her, after another moment.

“They did?” Diana echoed, her heartbeat escalating momentarily. It took her a moment to realize that he was not talking about Steve.

“Yeah. I mean, I pulled up the old photos from the Smithsonian archive,” he explained. “There were also a few missing person reports and newspaper articles…” he trailed off and cleared his throat. “She looks the same as she did in 1984. More or less. Thought it was something that you’d want to know.”

“Thank you,” Diana said, sincerely. “For everything, truly.”

“It’s what we do,” Bruce brushed her off.

Never one comfortable with gratitude and sentimentality, she thought.

And then the meaning of Bruce’s words caught up with her. The pools had managed to keep Barbara Ann from ageing. Or slow it down significantly, at least

Diana’s heart stuttered in her chest.

Steve.

She had stopped thinking about it, for the most part. There was no definitive way of saying what the Lazarus Pit had done to Steve, and so she had chosen to let it go, for the time being. But Bruce’s confession made her breath catch and her pulse trip in her veins, the possibility of forever with him so real all of a sudden, she could barely breathe.

“Do you think it’s real?” Steve asked her when Diana relayed the entire conversation to him later the same day, his voice wary.

She understood the feeling well. It was better, she figured, to keep her hopes low so as not to be crushed by disappointment if they were wrong.

“I don’t know,” Diana admitted as her eyes searched his, taking in the tired lines around his eyes, all the more prominent now that he had gotten rid of his beard. If the aftereffects of the Lazarus Pits were meant to be in any way physical, she could see no trace of them, though. And for that, she was grateful. “How do you feel?”

“Depends. What does being ageless feel like?” Steve inquired, offering her a small smile.

He looked tired, she could see that. But beyond that, he was Steve, the same man she had woken up next to nearly every morning for the past three years.

Again, Diana reminded herself that greed was not a vice to indulge in. He was alive. It should be enough. 

It was enough.

She couldn’t help but smile back.

“I wouldn’t know the difference,” she admitted, rolling her eyes a little.

He gave her body a less than subtle once-over. “I guess I’ll be waiting for a moment when I look drop-dead gorgeous and radiant then.”

She shook her head, biting back her laugh. It was, admittedly, easier to laugh and joke about it than to obsess over the possibilities neither of them knew how to put into words.

The next few days passed uneventfully. Steve slept a lot of the time. Once the initial shock of her confessions regarding what had happened to him had started to wear off, the toll of the days when he had been battling the aftereffects of the pool seemed to have caught up with him, leaving him worn out and desperate for a reset. He didn’t dream of anything, he told her. She believed him.  

Diana worked, catching up on the tasks that had accumulated over the past couple of weeks, nearly drowning in mounds of paperwork but grateful for the distraction of it. Sometimes, she stayed home, typing away at grant proposals and updating their website and exchanging brief emails with Celeste as she sat on the bed with her laptop perched on her lap while Steve slept peacefully by her side. Other times, she was grateful for a chance to spend a few hours in the artifact storage areas beneath the Louvre, cataloguing the items, thousands of years of history at her fingertips and her mind thousands of miles away from France.

There was a comfort to it that she realized she had missed beyond comprehension. The simplicity of the familiar tasks beaconing her, her soul searching for a reprieve.

She was going to need to go to Gotham. To speak with Barbara Ann in person. Bruce had told her he was going to take care of her documents and everything needed for her to start her life over, but it was Diana’s past, not his. Bringing Barbara Ann back made Diana feel responsible, at least in some way, for whatever was going to happen to her next. After all, Barbara Ann had never asked Diana to save her.

But Diana stalled, uncertain as to why.

It was such an odd, disconcerting feeling. In part, because she seemed to have put the story with Barbara Ann to rest a long time ago. She had tried to close that chapter of the book of her life and moved on, distancing herself as far as she possibly could from everything that had happened in 1984. From the Dreamstone and Maxwell Lord and the consequences of everything that had happened then. Yes, finding Cheetah had been something that Diana had been focused on for a while, but she had carried on with it with a sort of disconnect that made her view the entire story as something that had nothing to do with her, personally. Another task. Another mission.

But now it was back, and part of Diana didn’t know how to react to it, how to feel about it.

Then again, maybe it was her chance to get real closure. Cheetah had remained the last thread still tethering Diana to that time of her life. With it finally being severed, maybe she could put it to rest for good.

So what was it that was holding her back then?

“Do you blame her for the deaths she caused?” Steve asked her one night.

They were in the living room, with the fire burning and something mindless playing on the TV above the mantle. Something that Diana hadn’t even tried paying attention to. She had a glass of wine in her hand—Steve had declined her offer to have one, or maybe a beer—and Diana took a sip of it as she considered his question.

Sitting half-turned to her on the couch, with one of his legs tucked beneath him, Steve reached over to twist a piece of her hair around his finger, before tucking it around her ear. A mindless gesture born out of comfort and habit and familiarity.

Diana could feel him watching her while she stared sightlessly straight ahead. He didn’t repeat his question even after she hadn’t answered for a few long moments, and she appreciated that—the time that he always gave her to consider her answers. Or to choose not to speak them.

Did she? Did she blame Barbara Ann?

It made no sense to blame a lion for attacking a gazelle—it was something sewn into the lion’s DNA. One could not fault an animal for following its instincts to survive.

But Cheetah was more than that. Yes, Chief had told Diana that Barbara Ann had been merely following the call of magic under the spell of which she had lived. Yet, Diana could not dismiss completely that making that wish had been Barbara Ann’s doing, a decision she had made, rather than something done to her, against her will and desire. Barbara Ann was intelligent, too. She had recognized Diana, recognized her for who she was.

Then again, Barbara Anna had hardly known how far her wish was going to take her. Would she still have made it if she had known that? That was a different question. Alas, it was one that they would never get an answer to, perhaps.

In the end, Diana let out a breath and looked at Steve, soothed by the comfort of his nearness. His eyes were clear and bright, watching her with rapt attention.

She sighed once more, her fingers playing with the stem of her glass.

“No, I don’t. Not any more than I blame myself for my wish not coming true exactly as I expected.”

But maybe she blamed herself, a little.

For opening that door a crack and allowing Barbara Ann to see what “more” could be like.

For holding back instead of stopping Cheetah sooner.

But then she remembered Steve saying to her, a long time ago, that she couldn’t take blame for the mistakes other people made. That it was not right and no one should be carrying the burden of saving mankind from themselves every step of the way.

There was going to be some kind of resolution to it all, perhaps. Eventually. Once Diana allowed enough time to pass and the turmoil of her inner conflict to settle.

And there was still relief in knowing that Cheetah would never be able to hurt someone ever again.

And for the time being, that was enough.


She found Steve lingering on the concourse in the Louvre one night, just as she was leaving to head home.

The museum had been long closed for the night, but a new shipment of artifacts from the Middle East had kept Diana busy, having her go through the entire collection, matching each item with the paperwork they had received in case anything was missing or if something had gotten damaged during transportation.

The task was both fascinating and yet gruelling in how painstaking it had to be, how much care it required. It was not surprising that she had gotten carried away way past her work hours, though Diana felt no guilt over it, revelling in the satisfaction of work done well.

By the time she had finished her paperwork and left it on Celeste’s desk, it was nearly 9 in the evening, the city outside teetering on the brink between the sleepless night that lay ahead, and the mystery of a new day waiting on the other side.

Still, the sight of Steve chatting with the night guard as she stepped from the side corridor and onto the main concourse was welcome. It made the weight of the day lift off of Diana in an instant, making her lips curl upwards at the corners when she spotted the shock of his tousled hair and the sound of his voice reached her ears, the warmth unravelling in her chest.

He glanced up then, their eyes meeting across the width of the concourse. Her heart knocked hard against her ribs. Each time they found themselves under the pyramid, she was immediately taken back to the night he had returned to her, making the world tilt a little around them. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked, smiling, when she reached him, leaning forward without thinking to kiss him on the cheek.

She would have gladly done more than that, the longing flaring up in the pit of her stomach, had it not been for the guard who was trying hard to pretend he was not even there.

Amused, she watched Steve cast a quick glance towards the other man. It had to be cold outside, February vicious this year, but if Diana had to venture a guess, the flush on Steve’s cheeks had nothing to do with the weather.

Once a man from the past, always a man from the past, she mused.

“Thought I’d interest you with dinner,” he said. “But apparently someone made a clay pot three thousand years ago and now we have to put that on hold.”

Diana smirked. “Two thousand years ago,” she corrected him, and Steve chuckled.

“Tell me about it?”

She did. She caught him up on the past couple of days of her work as they walked towards home, choosing to forgo a cab even though the wind coming from the Seine was chilly, snaking beneath their clothes. Diana didn’t care and Steve didn’t seem to mind, his hand warm in hers even if his cheeks were flushed.

Her schedule was packed again, meetings and conference calls and grant proposals, new collections waiting to arrive, and a couple of interns who needed help getting used to the ways of the Louvre. The familiarity of it felt like an anchor, and after months of chasing after the Lazarus Pits, it was exactly what she needed.

Some room to breathe—which was ironic, in a way, considering that she’d barely had time to have lunch lately.

“You should come by when we move it to a gallery,” Diana said as she turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, stepping into their apartment.

“A personal tour, huh?” Steve grinned at her as he shrugged off his jacket. “I still remember those museums in Italy, you know,” he added, referring to their first trip abroad together.

“I remember your mortification,” Diana echoed.

She padded into the kitchen, not quite sure if she was hungry and too wired to eat.

“No, that was opera,” he countered, trailing after her.

She laughed. She had never asked him to accompany her to an opera again, taking mercy on him as best she could. Steve Trevor was many things—many great, extraordinary things—but patience for classical singing was something that he decidedly did not possess.

Diana didn’t mind. She had long learned that it was the contrast between them that somehow worked in their favour, bringing them closer where it might have driven other people apart.

“That was also the curator who took a liking to you,” she pointed out evenly, recalling an elderly woman who was so charmed by Steve’s attempts at Italian, coupled with his dashing looks, no doubt, that she had proceeded to practically follow them around a museum in Rome. Which, in turn, had left Steve more than a little flustered. 

Steve’s jaw went slack a little, crimson red flooding his cheeks. “She did not,” he declared.

“I would have protected you,” Diana promised, as she watched him turn an even deeper shade of scarlet.

It was no wonder, perhaps, that he seemed to be cautious around the staff at the Louvre, she thought, amused. She was not going to deny that there was something about Steve and elderly ladies being dazzled by him that Diana found entirely endearing. Not even when his cheeks were the shade of ripe beets.

Still, she knew better than to say it to his face.

Diana pulled the fridge door open and peeked inside, surveying its contents. They could cook, but she didn’t feel like it, her day already long enough and would be made longer still if she set her mind on cooking something from scratch.

“I’m sorry about dinner,” she said, making a mental note to make sure they had a proper date night sometime soon. “We could order something,” she offered as she straightened up, glancing over her shoulder at him.

“Or,” Steve reached for a box of Pop-Tarts sitting on the microwave. He smoked cheekily at her as he waved it in Diana’s direction. “We have these.”

She bit her lip around a smile and wrinkled her nose.

“That is not food.”

“You sound like Alfred.”

Diana laughed. “You sound like Barry.”

Chuckling, Steve set the box of Pop-Tarts down and reached for his phone.

“Charlie would have loved this,” he murmured after he placed an order, his voice laced with wistful fondness. “Any food you could wish for only a phone call away.”

Diana felt her heart squeeze behind her ribs as she watched him set his phone down on the table and step towards her. His hands moved over her shoulders and down her arms, trailing along her wrists. Diana lifted her gaze to his, smiling when he closed what little space was still left between them. His thumb swept over her chin as he tilted her face up an inch.

“Hi,” he murmured.

“Hi,” she breathed back as his lips brushed against her, leaving her near-breathless in an instant. This, Diana thought, was exactly what she wanted every day of her life to be like. Even if they ended up eating sugary pastries for dinner.

She tilted her head, her hand sliding up his chest and around his neck as she kissed him back, smiling against his lips. She felt his hand close over her cheek, his touch warm, making something just as warm blossom in her belly—

She broke the kiss, feeling his heartbeat spiking beneath her palm that was pressed to his chest.

Steve made a sound in the back of his throat when she drew back, disappointed. He didn’t move away though, and neither did she, yet Diana could all but feel a wall go up between them.

“Don’t,” he rasped, his voice low and going straight through her, like a shock travelling from the top of her head to the tips on her toes.

“Steve…”

“You think I don’t see it?” he whispered. “The way you—the way you walk on eggshells around me? The way you look at me? Like I’m—” A shuddering breath stuttered from his chest. He swallowed, the raw vulnerability in his voice making her heart splinter. “I’m not broken.”

She bit her lip, her gaze cast down, trained on the open collar of his shirt, her heart giving loud, hollow thuds against her ribs. She could feel it all now—her fears coalescing in her chest mixed with the thrill of his touch. So many things that had remained unsaid between them and still no words to say them.

Steve was watching her; she could feel his gaze on her, as palpable as a touch. Could feel his thumb running idly over her cheek, reminding her that they had barely touched one another lately. She could feel his hunger for her. Something untethered and wild.

“You could have died,” she breathed, unable to bear another moment of silence hanging between them. “You did die. I saw you die. I felt you die.”

He drew in a sharp breath, his body stiffening against hers. His hand fell from her face, leaving Diana missing the warmth of it instantly.

She looked up, watching a kaleidoscope of emotion rush behind his eyes.  

His grip on her loosened as he took a step back, as though to collect himself.

“But I’m here. I’m right here, Diana. Is it not enough?”

There was the kind of dejection in his gaze that felt like a slap. One that pushed all air out of her until her lungs ached and her throat felt like a straw, so narrow she could hardly take a breath.

She felt her shoulders slump forward, and she was reminded suddenly of the memories following the war when she would spot a man who looked like him on the streets of London—there had been many men back then dressed in bomber jackets and thick coats just like those that Steve had worn when they had first met. She remembered well the flicker of hope that would flare up bright in her chest, only to burn to ashes of bitter disappointment moments later when she realized it was never him. Couldn’t be him.

“Of course,” she whispered. “Of course, you are.”

He didn’t look convinced. Diana realized with a horrified jolt that she couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t remember the days following his revival. Days filled with anguish and worry, her heart bleeding in her chest at the sight of him being tormented by something she couldn’t stop. What he remembered was what had come next—her trying to find her footing again, to reconcile with the fact that she had almost lost him. Her looking at him like he might slip right through her fingers. 

But he had awfully misunderstood it all, too.

She had never thought him broken. It was herself that she didn’t know how to find peace with, the despair like poison in her blood. The fear of having her heart shattered to pieces once more. 

To him, it must have looked like walls were going up around her. 

“Steve,” she repeated, softer.

He nodded, more to himself than anything, and then moved towards her. In the too-harsh overhead light, Diana watched him take her in, his eyes roaming over her features before they dropped to her lips. Her heart gave a wild tug, knocking hard against her breastbone.

She knew that he was going to touch her then, before he so much as moved. Could feel it in the near-electric charge in the air between them. And sure enough, he lifted his hand to brush his knuckles down her cheek, his thumb tracing the line of his jaw.

Their earlier kiss had been soft and playful, without much promise behind it. One that was meant to leave her with a flutter in her belly but not much else.

But there was fire and want in his eyes now, leaving Diana suddenly aware of the fact that they hadn’t been together since before the incident with Cheetah and the Lazarus Pit. The aftereffects of the water and Steve dealing with them after their return to France… it had never felt like the right time. But they’d been back in Paris for a little over a week now. And all of a sudden, it felt like an eternity.

And maybe he was not wrong about something else, too. Maybe she had been holding back.

She certainly didn’t want to do so anymore.

Desire shot through her, a jolt of want searing through her system at the mere thought of it, of his hands on her body and his lips on her skin and the burning need simmering in her every cell.

“Steve,” she murmured.

He dipped his head, kissing her slowly, and then urgently, with a purpose that she recognized so easily. He kissed her for a long time, searching and purposeful, intent to leave her dazed and wanting. Until neither of them could take it anymore.

They were moving, though Diana didn’t realize it until he’d backed her into the counter. It didn’t stop him as he pressed even closer against her, breaking the kiss to trail his lips along the column of her throat. His mouth was hot on her skin, his hands moving expertly over her body with a hunger that mirrored her own, his touch scalding even through her clothes. Her breath hitched when he sucked hard on the tender spot over her pulse point and she tilted her head, her eyes drifting shut as sensation took over.

She bunched her fingers around fistfuls of his shirt when his palms slid down the backs of her thighs to hoist her up onto the counter. He drew back to look up at her, his eyes clouded over and dazed, sending another spark of thrill through her. Knowing that she could evoke that kind of reaction in him was something that she would never get tired of, she knew.

Diana smiled at him.

She lifted her hand to trace her thumb along his bottom lip, watching Steve swallow hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. Watching his gaze drop to her mouth.

Zeus help her, the things he was making her feel...

“Bedroom?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, still tasting him on her lips.

Steve dragged his gaze up, slowly. He considered her words for another moment and then leaned in, kissing her for a long, long time as a way of response. The kiss lingered, languid and slow, drawing all sense and reason out of her. So much so that she only noticed his fingers working on the buttons of her blouse when he reached her sternum, the brush of his hand to her skin sending another surge of heat right through her.

“We’ll make this work,” he whispered low in her ear when Diana pulled back with a gasp, breathless and dizzy.

He opened her shirt, sliding it down her shoulders. The contrast between the cool air and the heat of her skin made her shiver. Made her wish for more. She bit her lip when Steve ran his palms up her shoulders, goosebumps rising in their wake, bringing a raw kind of desperation to life inside of her.

She drew him closer, erasing the space between them, her hands sliding over his arms, down his chest. His heart was beating fast against her, and her blood was pulsing with the thrill of knowing that she was invoking that reaction in him. And that he could invoke the same in her. 

His hands moved over her skin, along her ribs, mapping the lines of her body. He dipped his head and trailed the path along her collarbone with his lips, tasting her skin, the touch of his stubble sending a hard shudder of need down her spine.

Diana drew in a breath, her fingers tangled in his hair.

She had fallen asleep next to him every night since their return to Paris. She had woken up with him still sleeping by her side every morning. Now she could barely understand how she had managed not to reach for him sooner, how they’d kept the burning they had for one another at bay for so long.

It felt like an impossibility now. Something so absurd she couldn’t comprehend it, her fears foolish.

“If you say so,” she murmured, sliding her mouth along his jaw.  

Steve’s hand reached for her hairband. It slid off easily, her hair cascading in dark waves over her shoulders. He paused to look at her, his eyes moving over her features with a hunger that made something unspool in Diana’s chest, the warmth of it heavy in her belly.

He combed his fingers through her hair, twisting a strand around his finger. She sensed a switch inside of him, a sudden hesitation that somehow only made her want him more. His eyes search hers, looking for something—approval, permission.

I’m not broken, his words resonated in her head, the urgency of his voice making something inside of her ache.

Diana felt his other thumb brush along the underside of her breast, her breath catching in her throat. Her palms cupped over either side of his face and she tilted his head, kissing him hard, the needs throbbing in her veins like a second pulse.

He made a low sound against her mouth. His teeth caught her bottom lip, biting lightly. It was suddenly very unfair that he was still wearing so many clothes. 

She tugged impatiently on his shirt, and Steve allowed her to slide it over his head, her hands reaching back for him immediately, tracing the familiar lines of his chest, his abdomen, his shoulders. She tried—very, very hard—not to picture the slash marks left by Cheetah, the memory of them overshadowing all else for one bright, unwelcome moment.

Diana pushed it aside, hoping against hope that a day would come it would fade entirely, crumbling to dust in the back of her mind.

He took the rest of her clothes off expertly, sliding her pants and her underwear down her legs and tossing them to the floor. Diana responded in kind, fumbling a little with the buckle of his jeans in impatience, tempted to snap it in half. Steve chuckled a little against her cheek, his lips brushing her temple, her jaw. His fingers slid over the base of her neck, under her hair, making her lose the train of her thought momentarily.

She pushed his pants down his thighs, his boxes going with them. Steve stepped out of them and moved closer to her, the heat of his skin beneath her palms nearly scorching. He kissed her once more, his tongue sliding between her lips, his mouth urgent and hungry, sending another shock of thrill through her.

She loved the way he tasted, Diana thought absently, tugging him closer still. His hand slid up the curve of her spine, and she arched into him, needing to feel him and earning a low sound rising in the back of his throat in response.

Smiling against his mouth, she reached between them, stroking her hand over him. And then once again, with more purpose. Steve broke the kiss. He clenched his jaw with a hiss through his teeth, his hips jerking against her touch. She felt his fingers flex desperately on her flesh.   

“God, Diana…”  

“The bed would be more comfortable,” she whispered, smiling, as she trailed her fingers down his cheek. She could feel tenderness blooming behind her ribs, almost too much to bear.  

“It’s too far away,” Steve breathed, as though the twenty feet were a thousand miles.

His words went deep, igniting something entirely wild.

Her smile widened, elated, heat churning inside of her, building with every breath she took. This was easy. Sex with Steve was always easy. She couldn’t remember the hurt of loss when he was this close, when his hands were on her skin, when her lips were on his, as the world felt soft and shimmering around the edges. It couldn’t mend them and make the past fall away, but in the moment, it was enough.

He caught her hand, pulled it away. She slid her mouth along his jaw, feeling impatient suddenly. He had been the one who started this, but it was her who didn’t want to wait anymore.

“Steve…”

Her hands tugged at him with urgency.

He obliged without protest, angling her hips just right. Her breath hitched when he filled her with a long, hot slide, catching her gasp that morphed into a moan with his mouth.

“God, you’re perfect,” he rasped against the hollow of her throat, words that were nearly drowned out by the sound of blood rush in her ears.

His skin was slick with sweat beneath her palms, his breath hot where it fell on her shoulder. Diana’s eyes drifted shut as he started to move, slowly at first, maddeningly so, his hands firm on her hips. He held her close, his lips on her skin, pressed to the tender spot behind her ear.

Somewhere in the kitchen, his phone buzzed, the sound of it barely breaking through the incoherent haze of pleasure clouding Diana’s mind. Seconds later, their intercom rang.

Her fingers dug deeper into the flesh of his shoulders when Steve paused, for barely a moment.

“Our dinner,” she whispered into his ear. Zeus only knew how she even remembered.

“You can’t possibly be thinking...” he breathed and trailed off, his tongue leaving a hot trail along her clavicle and making her lose the train of her thought for a long, long moment.

Still, she smiled.

“We are in the kitchen,” she murmured, amused, as he nipped the tender skin near the slope of her neck.

He made a noncommittal sound that sounded to her like a chuckle that morphed in a groan when she scratched her nails deliberately along his back.

She tightened her grip on him lest he get any ideas, her fingers gripping his hair at the back of his head. The intercom rang again, or so Diana thought. But by then, her mind was miles away, where the sound of it couldn’t reach.

He took his time, made it last, his voice low in her ear as he whispered the words of love and promises that she needed to hear. Diana kissed him, holding on to the moment, the tidal waves of pleasure and longing building inside of her. It was magnificent and astonishing, the fire that they ignited in one another. One that she never wanted to go out.

She held onto it for a long time, her nails digging into his skin and his face buried in her neck until, eventually, it got too much. The feel of him, the steady rock of his hips against hers and the tightness unravelling in her belly. Her breath hitched and she arched into him, a quiet sound falling from her lips as release swept over her, entirely all-consuming.  

In the periphery of her attention, she felt Steve tighten his grip on her, his breathing ragged and hoarse, his control slipping. She loved that, loved making him feel untethered. And, gods, how good it felt as he fell right after her when he finally let go.

He held her for a long, long moment, his chest heaving against hers and his heart hammering right into her own.

“I love you,” he whispered, barely audibly, sliding his mouth along her neck. Words that she felt rather than heard, waking another spark of heat within her.

When he started to draw back, Diana slipped her arms around his torso, keeping him right where he was. She pressed a slow kiss to his shoulder, and then another one—to the spot where it sloped into his throat. Eyes closed, she took her time to catalogue every nuance of the moment—the scent of him, the warmth of his body, the movement of his muscles beneath her hands. The desperation that had brought them to the moment abating, slowly, and the way it felt when he stroked her hair, lazily and unhurriedly now that the fire had passed, the tension between them dissipating.

“I wish I could take it away,” she heard Steve say, and it was the surprise the words brought that had her pulling back to look at him.

He looked up at her, before reaching out to brush her hair from her face, his blue eyes bright and so alive. 

Helpless against the impulse, Diana smoothed her hand over his face, and he leaned immediately into her touch. He kissed the heel of her palm, their gazes still locked.

“Take what away?” she asked quietly.

“I hate the idea of you hurting,” he said, a slight frown lodged between his brows.

“Steve…”

“I don’t want you to think that you have to keep it from me. That you have to—have to save me or something.”

He tucked a piece of her hair around her ear. It didn’t escape her that his hand was trembling ever so slightly.

“I know,” she breathed as she leaned to rest her forehead against his, the aftershocks of bliss still dulling her awareness, her perception of everything outside of that moment hazy and unfocused, as though she was looking at it through frosted glass. She could have said anything to him then, promised him anything.

Diana let out a breath and turned her head, and his mouth was right there, kissing her slowly and with more tenderness than she could stand.

“I don’t suppose we could make this a… ah, a dinner tradition?” Steve murmured afterwards, and she couldn’t help but laugh even as his palms slid beneath her thighs as he lifted her off the counter and turned towards the bedroom.

He was lucky that her legs were still wrapped around him, Diana thought with a hint of amusement, both entertained and impressed by the fact that he was still standing, let alone capable of carrying her.

She didn’t say that. What she said instead, as she wrapped her arms around his neck, was, “I suppose we could negotiate something.”

He sucked in an unsteady breath at that, and her smile widened.

In the bedroom, Steve lowered her down gently, the bedspread pleasantly cool against her heated skin. In the darkness, away from the overhead lights, she could just barely make out his features as he paused, leaning over her. Diana lifted her hand, tracing her fingers along the lines of his face. She would have recognized him anywhere, she thought. Just by touch, by the shape of his jaw and the texture of his stubble and the faint laugh-lines near the corners of his eyes.

The thought gave her comfort, made something settle inside of her.

She traced her thumb over his bottom lip, watching her eyes grow dark and hungry all over again.

“Was that… did I hear the door earlier?” he asked. “I wasn’t sure…”

Diana couldn’t help it—she laughed. “Yes.”

A corner of his mouth quirked. “Oh, well.”

His breathing still hadn’t evened out. Diana traced her hand along his clavicle before her palm slid lower, resting over the rapid beating of his heart. She didn’t stop him when he leaned down and pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the side of her neck, sucking hard.

Her pulse stuttered, a surge of need shooting through her veins immediately.

He moved his mouth lower, trailing a slow path across her chest.

“Steve,” she started when his palm smoothed over her ribs, sliding down until his fingers curled over her hips. She trailed off, as sensation took over.  

“Hm?” He kissed her sternum, his breath on her skin making her shiver. “I just thought…”

She sighed and threw her head back, her eyes drifting shut. If he finished his thought, she didn’t catch it.

I love you, was the last thing she thought before the world fell away. I will always love you.


Afterwards, Diana gathered him to her, his body half-draped over hers and his cheek resting over her collarbone.

Content and sated, she felt boneless, spent, her muscles pleasantly heavy and languid. Earlier, when Steve had tried to shift off of her, she hadn’t let him. She liked the weight of him pressed close to her, the warmth of his body, and his heartbeat that she could feel as clearly as her own.

Now, he had his arms curled around her, his breathing deep and even. Had it not been for his hand tracing slow, idle patterns over her shoulder she would have assumed he had fallen asleep.

It had started to rain, rainwater pelting softly against the roof and windows, as the night wrapped like a blanket around them.

As Diana ran her fingers slowly through his slightly damp hair, Steve stilled under her touch, before relaxing into her, exhaling slowly, his breath tickling her skin.

She brushed her hand through his hair once more and then smoothed her palm over his cheek.

Inexplicably, she was thinking about the night sky over Themyscira even though there was nothing about the moment to remind her of it. Their bedroom was nothing like her quarters in her mother’s palace. The air, if she opened the window, would be chilly instead of the gentle breeze that followed her wherever she used to go. It would smell like rain, not the sea.

But even so, Diana couldn’t help but think back to nights when sleep evaded her and she would climb to the top of the highest tower on the island. How endless the sky and the stretch of stars had felt then. How vast it felt compared to her, as she gazed up at it in wonder. The world had seemed so infinite then, when she had known so little of it.

A hundred years later, having travelled to most countries, she sometimes felt like she knew even less.

She ran her palm over Steve’s shoulder, his skin smooth and warm. Her fingers traced the lines of his muscles. The familiarity of it, of every touch they had shared over the years made her heart constrict achingly, filling Diana with longing. Filling her with an endless hunger for more.

“Someone needs to go get our dinner from Leon,” Steve spoke, his voice low and almost slurred, breaking the silence for the first time in a long while.

She smiled, unable not to.

“Someone does,” she agreed.

“Not gonna be me,” he breathed. Diana felt his arms flex around her before he turned his face to nuzzle her clavicle. “Not you, either.”

She laughed.

“Who else is left?”

Her question gave him pause. He hummed noncommittally.

“Maybe he ate it,” Steve noted thoughtfully after a moment.

Diana snorted. “Leon won’t have eaten our dinner.”

“You don’t know. It’s been a while.”

It had been, admittedly, and her body was very much aware— wonderfully aware—of every moment of that time. Diana’s heart squeezed fiercely. She allowed her fingers to dance over the expanse of his back.

“This was not the plan, you know?” he said softly, after a long moment.

She combed her fingers idly through his hair. “It wasn’t?”

Steve stirred and lifted his head, blinking in the dark. He looked a little dazed, his hair dishevelled and his lips swollen from kissing. The sight of it made a familiar warmth unfurl behind her ribs. He propped up on his elbow, his gaze sweeping over her face.

“Well, there was a plan to get your clothes off,” he clarified. “That’s always the plan.” He waved his hand at her when she laughed. “But I was going to do it with more finesse.”

He brushed his thumb to her chin, and even despite the light tone and the humour in his voice, there was a wild longing lurking behind his eyes. Something she couldn’t miss even though she felt light as air.

“More finesse,” Diana repeated, charmed and amused in equal measure.

The man whose idea of “fancy” was serving soup from a can in an expensive china bowl was talking about finesse. The idea was both endearing and absurd.

She was instantly and immensely curious.

“Yeah, well…” Steve tucked a piece of her hair around her ear. “I was going to take you to a nice place, and then… maybe light candles. Do something wildly romantic.”

Diana felt her lips stretch out wider. Any more, and her head might crack.

She trailed her finger down his chest, finding the idea of him planning to light candles entirely too much to bear.

Oh, Steve Trevor was very much capable of grand gestures, she was very aware of that. In fact, he was exceptional at grand gestures. They just seldom included candles.

“Were you, now?” she murmured.

“You’re laughing,” he shook his head accusingly.

She pressed her lips together, barely able to contain her smile. “I’m not. Tell me more.”

He dipped his head to kiss her, his lips lingering on hers for a long, sweet moment.  

“You deserve to be romanced, Diana. I don’t think we ever got to that, did we?”

They had, she wanted to argue. They’d had all she had ever wished for, and more. But it had often felt like they had spent more time in battle than sampling exquisite cuisine, she would admit. Yet, given a chance for a do-over, she wouldn’t have changed a single thing.

She brushed his hair back from his forehead. “I think we did well. I don’t need to be wildly romanced.”

“You deserve… everything.”

His words, and the reverence in his voice, made her chest tighten. “I have everything.” She paused. “Steve.”

His gaze found hers.

“I do,” she pressed, trailing her fingers over his cheek.

She thought he was going to argue. But, in the end, he merely nodded—though she couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with her or simply acknowledging her words. He kissed her once more and then lowered his head down onto her chest again.

“I wanted to impress you,” he said, after a moment.

It made her smile, how both absurd and sweet his statement was.

“You don’t need to impress me.”

“I know I didn’t need to,” he pressed. “I wanted to.”

“You already impress me.”

She didn’t mean it to come out as an innuendo, or something provocative. Her comment was entirely innocent and sincere. Still, she smiled when Steve made a choked sound, reading between the lines.

She didn’t mind. She liked that they could easily turn any conversation into something suggestive, even without meaning to. She loved knowing that he wanted her as badly as she wanted him, that his desire for her mirrored the intensity of Diana’s need for him. Loved knowing that it went beyond sex and physicality—it was that connection that made her feel safe. That made her feel loved. She liked knowing that he felt the same way.

The rain outside had reduced to a whisper. In the darkness and silence of the night, she could hear the old clock ticking in the living room. It reminded her, strangely, of living with Etta after the war and the massive clock she’d had sitting in the hallway.

That felt like a different lifetime, now.

Steve took a breath and let it out slowly. Diana could feel his fingers running absently against her bare shoulder. She turned her head and pressed a kiss to the crown of his head, her hand smoothing absently over his hair.

“How were you planning to impress me?” she asked.

“Well, I—” he started and paused to clear his throat. “I had a list.”

“A list,” Diana echoed, intrigued.

“Yeah.”

“What was on it? Aside from candles and…?”

“Getting you naked?” Steve supplied helpfully.

She pressed her lips around a smile and hummed, her heart thumping in her chest. She would have allowed that even without a list, she suspected. But, she was curious and amused by the idea of Steve trying to seduce her, for lack of a better word. He was many things. He was brave and honourable and selfless in more ways than she could count. He would sacrifice himself for others without thinking twice, and Diana loved him for it beyond anything. She knew that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, nothing he wouldn’t do to make her happy.

But, if she was being honest with herself, romantic he was not. Oh, he was very much capable of going big. Like whisking her away for a weekend so they could spend some time together. Or booking a table at her favourite restaurant to surprise her. He bought her flowers and he remembered what kind of chocolate she liked. Or all the other things that she liked, really. But, with all that, he was not a man of flourish. And though he told her that he loved her, frequently and earnestly, Diana could hardly imagine him sprinkling rose petals over their bed, just to impress her. She saw his devotion in small things, every day. Things that would always overshadow big proclamations or expensive gifts.

Yet, she would be lying to herself if she said that his plan—however unfulfilled, all things considered—didn’t intrigue her greatly. The mere idea of it was filling her with more affection than she could bear.

She circled her hand over his shoulder blade and, encouraged, Steve continued.

“There was supposed to be wine,” he said. “That stuff that you like.”

Diana smiled. “What else?”

“Music. So we could… sway.”

Her heart clenched fiercely and unfurled in her chest, so much so that she could hardly breathe for a moment, overcome with emotion.

“Consider me impressed, Captain Trevor,” she murmured.

“You’re making fun of me.”

Diana bit her lip. “I’m not,” she promised. “Honestly, I’m not.”

“I can be romantic,” he insisted.

“I never said otherwise.”

“Now I know you’re making fun of me.”

She did, in fact, laugh, feeling weightless and elated by the ridiculousness of their conversation and of the contentment of being with him. It was as though in that moment their past fell away. That he had never been blown up by the gas. That she hadn’t spent a century alone, grieving for him and wishing for his return. That she hadn’t watched him die two weeks ago, either. It was as though they had been together since the dawn of time, and had as much, if not more, time stretching ahead of them, suspending them in the blissful moment.

Tomorrow, or a day, or a week from now, there would come a time when she would have to put on her armour and go fight for a world where happiness was possible. She would see blood and despair and death. But until then, she was happy to hold on to the feeling that was blooming behind her ribs now, something warm and aching and larger than life. Hold on to the world where Steve Trevor was making plans about dancing with her.

Diana exhaled slowly, aware despite herself of a shadow hovering just outside that moment where nothing existed but the two of them.

It made her smile fade. Made her chest tighten momentarily.

“It was not you,” she found herself saying before she even knew she was speaking.

“Hm? Not me what?”

“I never thought—I was not trying to push you away,” she said softly, the night suddenly quieter than it had been moments ago.

Steve went still, his hand pausing on her skin, waiting.

“I know,” he said, carefully, after a moment.

But he didn’t, she realized. Not really.

He had not been there the first time when she’d had to cope with losing him. When the whole world had been celebrating the end of the war, and Diana couldn’t help but see it as a bleak, hopeless place, devoid of light.

He had not been there in 1984 to watch her pick up the pieces of herself, certain that her heart would never mend.

It was, perhaps, not surprising that she was so careful with it, so adamant to protect it. But it was also not fair to hurt Steve back, simply because she was fearful of having her heart broken. The only way to protect it, Diana suspected, would be to walk away. To shield herself completely. But as soon as the thought crossed her mind, she forbade herself to venture in that direction. She would never be able to walk away from him, from them. Not even if she tried. All she could do was try to find a way to live with that fear without allowing it to consume her.

And the good way to start, she knew, was to tell him everything, the way she should have done earlier.

It may not have been her plan, but it was the right thing to do.

So she told him everything that had happened over the days following his magical resurrection in the Lazarus Pit. The things that he had said, the things that he had done. The truths that she had learned about the war that he had never spoken of before. Not him during, and not Sami or Charlie, afterwards.

Thinking back to those years now, Diana could see how many of their tales had been tinted with optimism and jolliness, as though, at the end of the war, the only way to look back at it was through a lens of adventure and not the madness and slaughter that it had been. It was their way of coping, perhaps. Or maybe they had done it for her benefit, to spare her the burden of knowing something that she couldn’t change.

She wondered how much she didn’t know. She knew that even though she had spent the past hundred years learning all there ever was to learn about that wretched time, there would be many secrets that men had taken to their graves. Secrets that would never be discovered.

She spoke at length, trying to keep her voice under control but certain that it betrayed her all the same, the raw emotion lurking behind every word impossible to hide.

Steve listened in silence. The onslaught of questions Diana had half expected never came. Had it not been for the stiffening of his body against her, the proverbial shutter falling down, she would have wondered if had fallen asleep.

It hurt him, she knew. And she hated it more than she ever hated anything. But, these were his memories and she had no right to hold on to them. If she didn’t tear down that last wall between them, she wasn’t sure they would be able to move on.

She told him of things he had spent the past few years carrying locked far away, cutting the scars open as her own heart bled. Things that she had learned about him against his will. Of the missions that had once filled him with more fear than a human should ever endure and of the things that he had done to make it out alive. Things that she knew he loathed himself for, though she wished that he wouldn’t. The war had never been about the choice that he made. He was as much a victim of it as the people whose lives he had taken.

When she fell silent at last, Steve didn’t say anything for a long moment. Diana could feel him thinking, could all but hear his mind working.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, at last, after a long while.

Diana drew in an unsteady breath.

“You have lived through it once,” she whispered. “It was cruel enough. That you were forced to experience it again and I couldn’t stop it—” She bit her lip, noting how his breathing changed, growing shallow. “I didn’t want you to think of those things again.” After a moment, she added, “I was going to tell you, but I wanted you to heal first. I was afraid that you would go back—back to that place, inside your head. That you would go back and never return.”

Steve didn’t respond immediately and his silence made her wonder, for an agonizing moment, if he was mad at her for keeping it from him. If maybe she should have said something sooner.

He stirred against her and sat up, turning away. He scrubbed his hand over his face, his back to her. Diana watched his shoulders slump as he let out a shuddering breath, rounding forward.

“I wish you never heard any of that.”

“Steve…”

“I wish you didn’t…” He inhaled shakily, his voice low and hoarse. “I’m sorry.”

He was sorry? After everything he had gone through, the horrors he had experienced, he was apologizing to her?

Incredulous, Diana pushed up to sit. The sheets rustled as she moved closer to Steve. Her palm brushed along the small of his back. He didn’t flinch away from her touch like she half-feared, and she was grateful.

“That first year,” he started, his voice hollow. “I had never imagined the world to be so vile. It was—it didn’t seem like a place worth saving. All that darkness, cruelty… I’m sorry you had to…” he trailed off.

Diana dipped her head, pressing a kiss to his bare shoulder. Her lips lingered on his skin for a long moment as she tried to find words of consolation, anything that could be said to take away the despair he had spent years living with.

“Tell me,” she asked softly.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Don’t ask for that.”

His profile was a sharp outline against the grey backdrop of the window, his jaw set tautly. Diana leaned forward and rested her cheek against his shoulder, her eyes dropping shut.

“Tell me,” she repeated. “No one should carry a burden that great on their own.”

She felt Steve inhale unsteadily. And then he started to speak, filling the gaps, making the story complete. He spoke of days that she knew would be seared into his memory for as long as he breathed. About helping a young mother—a German woman—hide in a cellar before the troops reached her village, for he knew she would be killed on sight, as she clutched her child to her. 

He spoke of getting drunk until he could no longer feel the weight of his guilt, the haze in his mind the only reprieve. Of sitting with other officers and listening to them gloat about taking lives, about the savagery that occurred on both sides, and feeling sick to his stomach, rage simmering beneath his skin. Of finding men that had gone through Maru’s experiments and his blood turning to lava in his veins with barely controlled fury.

He told her of the night before he had gotten reassigned, at last, to RAF and how he had stood in the shower of his apartment in London, scrubbing himself raw as though he could wash the previous few months off his skin. He had wanted to believe then that this new assignment was going to make a difference, but it had frightened him to imagine that it might be a lost cause. That they had lost before the war had even started.

His body was rigid, stiff against hers, his voice low and hollow, filling the dark room. This was not how the night was supposed to end, Diana thought as he fell silent after a long, long time.

But there was something cleansing about laying their cards on the table. She wanted to believe that.

She kissed his shoulder once more and then smoothed her palm along his arm, her fingers curling over his.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

She felt his knotted muscles start to relax slowly. He let out a long breath and dragged his hand over his face.

“I should have told you sooner,” Diana added, quietly.

“I still wish you hadn’t heard it. Any of it.”

“I’m not. I’m glad I know.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yes, I am, Steve.”

There was such conviction in her voice that it had him turning to her, his eyes brimming with weary hope.

She reached for him, framing his face with her hands. She held his gaze for a long time before she leaned forward to press a kiss to his brow. Steve lifted his hand, his fingers curling over one of her wrists. His eyes drifted shut, his breathing short. Diana rested her forehead against his.

“I love you,” she breathed. She stroked his cheek with her hand, and his shoulders rounded forward. In relief, she suspected. In absolution that she had no right to give but that she knew he was seeking.

“I think I’m terrible at romance, if this is how it’s going to end every time,” Steve murmured, and she let out a small laugh, unable not to.

“You’re better than you think,” she said, shaking her head before she pressed a kiss to his hairline.

Steve chuckled, the sound of it easing the tightness in her chest.

Her fingers trailed along his jaw. “There is nothing in this world or any other that could make me love you less, Steve,” she whispered.

He looked up, his eyes searching his.

“I don’t think I deserve it,” he said. His hand was still closed over her wrist, his thumb running over the spot where her pulse was fluttering rapidly.

Diana’s smile softened. “It’s not about what you deserve, remember? It’s about what you believe.”

Still holding onto her hand, Steve turned his face into her touch and pressed his lips to the heel of her palm.

“We really do need to get our dinner,” he murmured, as an afterthought.

She smoothed her hand over his hair. He was right, but it was late, and even though the night concierge was probably awake—he had to be, as Diana was aware—the thought of leaving the bed even for the short trip to the lobby was unfathomable.

“I think it can wait till morning,” she said.

Steve’s gaze found hers. For a moment, he simply watched her, taking her in, and Diana let him, grateful for the vulnerability that he had allowed her to see. More grateful than she knew how to express.

Her hand moved down his neck, threading idly through his hair, and then along the line of his shoulders as she contemplated all the ways they could end this night on a higher note.

And then she paused, a frown furrowing her brows.

Something was off. Something—

“The scar,” she breathed, her hand giving Steve’s shoulder a slight push to get him to turn around.

He blinked at her, perplexed. “What? What scar—Diana?”

But she wasn’t listening. She was staring at a spot just beneath the nape of his neck, disbelieving.

That night in Veld, in 1918, she had discovered a scar there. A thin, pale line running from the base of his neck and towards his shoulder. A remnant of boot camp, Steve had explained to her when she had asked, curious and desperate to learn all there was to learn about him. His skin had snagged on a sharp thorn of barbed wire during a drill, leaving him with a perpetual reminder of that dark and rainy day for the rest of his life.

Diana still remembered trailing the length of it with her fingers. Remembered pressing a kiss to it as though she could take away the pain of that experience though it had long healed.

The memories of that night flashed through her mind, a kaleidoscope of emotions chasing one another, so bright and vivid as though no time had passed at all.

She knew Steve’s body so well now. Better than she had on that night over a century ago. She remembered tracing the line of that scar a few weeks back when they had found themselves in a shower together, the warm water cascading down their bodies.

But his skin appeared to be unmarked and smooth now, save for a freckle just above his shoulder blade.

“Diana?” Steve called, his voice sounding as if it was coming from far away; muffled, as though she was listening to him from underwater.

She didn’t respond as she continued to stare—his scar was gone.

Notes:

Welp... As I told you earlier, I'm going through the aftereffects of the Lazarus Pits. Steve is certainly not going to simply be able to ignore everything that had happened to him.

Upcoming: A trip to Gotham! I hope you'll be here for that :)

Please take care of yourselves everyone and stay safe!

Comments are always much appreciated, I'll love you forever <3

My next week is going to be... yeah, insane. Wish me luck, and I'll see you soon!

Chapter 28

Notes:

Hey guys, my apologies for posting a day later than normal. I was not feeling well yesterday. Anyway! Thank you for your support, as always :) And as always, I hope that you will like the ending of this story. Can't believe we've got only 2 chapters and an epilogue left. Feels like I only started posting it yesterday, no?

With that - have fun!

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

Chapter Text

 

Paris, 2022

Steve Trevor loved weekends. Not because he got to sleep in and the brunch places were open all day. And not even because there was something nice about days running at a different pace where it felt like the entire world seemed to slow down and relax—something he had once forgotten the feeling of, for a very long time.

Steve loved weekends because it was when Diana, ever the morning person and an early riser and some other things that he found entirely incomprehensible more often than not, did not mind lingering in bed since there was no day to seize and no calls to make and nothing propelling her into a flurry of activity. (Mostly.)

He awoke to the tentative February sun peeking uncertainly over the roofs stretching outside of their bedroom window and colouring them gold.

His arm was curled around Diana’s body, his face pressed to the silky mass of her hair and his mind a little fuzzy around the edges, still lingering in the world of neither here, nor there. Steve let out a breath and flexed his arm, pulling her closer against him. His body felt a little sore, but his muscles were loose in that pleasant, familiar way that made a spark of heat flare up.

Maybe, just maybe, he could convince her to stay in bed with him for the rest of the day, everything else be damned, to make up for the past week. He decidedly liked that plan. A day in bed, with, perhaps, a break to make pancakes.

Diana loved breakfast food. He was not entirely sure if it was about the food itself or about the promise of life without war that had embedded itself in her mind and had never let go, but Steve found it completely and utterly endearing regardless.  

That, and maybe because breakfast food was something that he could make without setting anything on fire.

Diana was awake, he knew that. Heard it in the pattern of her breathing, her body not as relaxed the way it would have been if she was asleep. And the second the thought entered his mind, he felt it too—her fingers running absently back and forth along his forearm.

Steve smiled to himself, nuzzling into her hair before he turned his head to kiss the curve of her neck and then her shoulder. 

“Morning,” he breathed, barely audibly, his voice scratchy and low.

She let out a slow breath and relaxed against him, melting into the curve of his body.

“Morning,” she echoed, a smile in her voice.

God help him, he had missed her. Like this. Without the veil of fatigue clouding his mind, a side-effect of coming back from beyond the grave. Without her work or the shadow of worry in her eyes that he’d catch when she didn’t know he was watching.

Just this. Just them. No interruptions.

Well, alright, there were interruptions sometimes, but Diana didn’t mind ignoring them now and then. Steve had never insisted on being at the front and centre of her life. He would never have wanted it, truly, her purpose in this world bigger than nearly anything conceivable. But he knew that their relationship was important to her, that there were moments when she wanted to put it above all else, and he was grateful for that.

He was grateful for many things, really. A long list, at the top of which was her love that he had never once doubted, and that was the only thing that mattered.

What else could he possibly ask for?

Steve pressed another kiss to her bare shoulder, tasting her skin, a simmer of heat curling in his belly. It never quite ceased to amaze him how hungry he was for her; the effect that she had on him nearly short-circuiting his brain every time without fail. 

He didn’t mind, and he knew that Diana didn’t, either.

He smiled a little against her skin when her breath hitched a little, feeling pleased and a little self-indulgent about inspiring such a reaction in her with just the barest of touches. He pulled his hand from beneath hers and covered her fingers with his, lacing them together.

“Let’s stay here today,” he murmured into her ear.

“In bed?” Diana asked, softly.

Steve dipped his head and pressed a slow kiss to her neck, smiling when she went still against him, her fingers curling tight around his.

“Yes,” he breathed, kissing along the column of her neck. “I’ll make it worth your while. We could get some breakfast later, maybe…”

To hell with wasting time on pancakes. 

Maybe tomorrow. He could make her pancakes tomorrow.

She sighed, and, encouraged, he drew his hand away from hers and smoothed his palm over the curve of her hip. He was going to make it worth her while alright. Maybe they could just stay here until Monday, and who knew? With some right persuasion, there was a chance she’d stay home from work even then.

“Steve,” she called, the sound of his own name barely registering with him with the haze of want churning in his bloodstream.

“Hm?”

He brushed his lips against that sensitive spot beneath her ear that worked like magic and smiled when she swore under her breath. His palm skated along her ribs—

Diana shifted against him and rolled onto her back. Puzzled, he drew back and propped up on his elbow, watching her watch him in the pale, soft morning light. Her eyes moved over his face the way they had the night before, after he had confessed his sins. He wondered what it was that she was seeing, what it was that she was looking for.

He was certain she still hadn’t told him everything about what had happened to him when Cheetah attacked him, or what had happened to him afterwards. Especially about how deeply he had sunk into himself. She had told him that the pools had healed him. She had said that she had stopped Cheetah, but she hadn’t explained how both of those things had happened at the same time. It made no sense but Steve didn’t know how to ask and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear her answer.

But he knew that the grief behind her eyes—grief that he was certain she was not even aware of— had something to do with it all. It made him ache in places that he couldn’t quite name.

And he was desperate to rectify it, to give her the light and laughter and happiness and chase that wretched despair away. It frightened him that he wasn’t sure that he knew how.

“I need to go to Gotham,” Diana said, eventually, her eyes flicking between his.

Steve blinked, caught off guard. “Now?” he asked, dumbly.

She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Not now.”

He felt the tops of his cheeks flush. So much for being able to keep up with her.

He cleared his throat. “Right.”

She rolled onto her side and tucked her arm beneath her cheek. Steve’s hand was still resting on her side and he wondered if she was going to touch him. Sure enough, she reached her hand over seconds later to trace the jut of his collar bone.

“I should have been there,” she said, after another moment. “Cheetah—Barbara Ann is my concern and not Bruce’s, or anyone else’s in the League. She was my friend and a person that I should have protected.”

Steve felt his brows knit together, his lips flattening into a thin line.

But, there was no sense in trying to tell her that there was no such thing as protecting everyone from their mistakes. God knew he had learned that the hard way. He only hoped that Diana would see it for herself, when the time came. Besides, he would have felt the same if someone close to him was concerned, he suspected. He certainly couldn’t begrudge her that guilt.

He let out a breath and then lifted his hand to brush a piece of hair that fell across her forehead.

“Okay.” His thumb swept across her cheek, and, helpless against the urge to kiss her, he leaned forward to brush his lips to hers. And then once more. “When?” he asked after he drew back.

“Next week,” she said in the voice that told him that she had made that decision already.

He nodded again, dropping his hand on the sheets between them. Immediately, Diana reached for it, her fingers tracing the length of his, circling absently over his knuckles as she considered something. He turned his hand palm up and she slid her hand into his, twining their fingers together.

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked, quietly.

Diana lifted her gaze to his. “Yes,” she said.

Just like that. Yes.

He loved that about her. Her directness and knowing what she wanted and never being afraid to say just that.

“We could talk to your friend, too,” he mused, thoughtfully. “The one who’s a magician,” he clarified when he caught the surprise in Diana’s eyes. 

“Sorcerer,” she corrected, her lips curving up at the corners.

“Would he turn me into a frog if I used the wrong word?”

Diana smiled. “I wouldn’t risk it.”

He chuckled, shaking his head. “Noted.”

They hadn’t spoken of that—the spell or whatever—in quite some time since the issue of Cheetah hadn’t been resolved until only now. And frankly, after everything he had been through and after all this time in the future, Steve found the idea of simply disappearing more than a little ludicrous at this point. His fears from his early days were long gone. If it could happen, wouldn’t it have already happened?

But, he was also aware that there were things beyond his comprehension in this world. The fact that he was in love with an actual goddess was, perhaps, the biggest proof of that. Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to ask, right?

There was a flurry of nervous anticipation in his stomach all of a sudden.

They still didn’t know what the pools had done to him. Save for the disappearance of that scar, he could feel nothing different about himself. Should he? For all his wordless acceptance of certain things that Diana had to deal with on a daily basis, he certainly sometimes wished there was some sort of manual. If only for situations like this one.

“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” Diana murmured, touching her thumb to his chin.

Steve met her gaze. “No, it’s not—” he cut off and shook his head again. “I’m already mortal. What could he say to make that worse?”

She bit her lip, considering something as her fingers traced idle patterns on his skin.

“She looks the same,” she said, after another moment. “Bruce said that Barbara Ann looks the same way she did in 1984. It has been over thirty years, Steve.”

It took him a second to process her words.

“She was using the pools’ magic,” he caught on, a flutter of hope coming to life behind his ribs.

“We don’t know what it cost her,” Diana warned him.

He rubbed his eyes. They did not, indeed.

But the pools had worked. Barbara Ann Minerva was a living, breathing proof that they had worked, one way or another. And that gave Steve hope, in a way, even though part of him tried to rein it in. For now, at least.

Barbara Ann had been using the Pits for years. Decades, even. She was likely the only one that they knew of who had done that and had lived to tell the story. But, frankly, that left them with more questions than answers. That, and… had they not destroyed the very last one of the Lazarus Pits?

He pushed the thought aside. There was no point pondering any of that until they knew more about what they were dealing with.

He looked at Diana who was watching him closely. Her expression softened when their eyes met.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked, quietly.

Steve reached for her, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb. “That whatever happens, we’ve had this. It’s already more than I had ever hoped for.”

There was a shadow of something that he failed to read chasing across her features, and then it was gone like it had never been there.

“If only I knew you’d be such a sentimental romantic when I first met you,” she murmured, a twinkle of humour in her eyes.

Steve grinned at her and let out a small laugh. “You know us, spies. The dashing sort.”

She hummed, “That I do.”

He tried not to get distracted by the implication and the heavy innuendo that her words were laced with. He was already feeling more than a little heated by her presence, as it was, his mind painting vivid pictures of everything that he wanted to do with her. Everything they would get to do soon, he hoped.

“When do you plan to go?” he asked.

“Soon.”

“But not today?” he clarified.

Maybe there was a way to salvage his weekend plans, after all.

Diana laughed. “No, not today.”

He moved to her immediately, rolling her onto her back beneath him as his mouth found hers, earning a sound of appreciation that rose from the back of her throat as her hands slid over his back, pulling him closer still.

“Good,” he murmured against her lips before his mouth moved to slide along her jaw.

Diana sighed, her fingers threading through his hair. She tipped her head back, giving him better access to her throat. He transferred his attention there gladly, slowly and painstaking making his way down.

“We’re in no rush then,” he whispered into the valley of her chest, not oblivious to her rapid heartbeat and the hitch in her breathing. The heat that had been simmering in his system since he had awoken now flared into a full-on blaze.

Diana’s palm smoothed down the back of his neck and over his shoulder.

“What do you have in mind?”

Steve pressed a kiss to her sternum and smiled into her skin. “Lemme show you.”


Gotham, 2022

The very first thing that Diana had thought upon meeting Barbara Ann Minerva all those years ago was that she had kind eyes. She had seen loneliness in them that she had recognized, and the kind of yearning that was hard to put into words.

In the aftermath of what had happened with Maxwell Lord and the Dreamstone and the fallout that had followed, Diana had often wondered what would have happened with Barbara Ann if her story had played out differently.

She had been a brilliant scientist with a bright future ahead of her and, perhaps, accomplishments beyond Diana’s wildest imagination.

The woman standing before her on the deck running around the perimeter of the lake house was wary, but her eyes were just as kind and just as bright and inquisitive as Diana remembered. Something that had come as a surprise. Part of Diana had expected to find the same viciousness she had seen in Cheetah’s face, teeth bared, eyes gleaming. Instead, there was something startling about seeing Barbara Ann the way she had looked the last time they had spoken to one another, barely changed. A little more worn out, perhaps, though it was hard to tell whether it was because of the spell that Constantine had performed on her or the onslaught of new information.

Diana wondered who had picked up the glasses that Barbara Ann was wearing—the frames were nice and suited her well—since, according to Bruce, she had yet to leave the premises of the Wayne property.

Now she was holding her coat wrapped tightly around herself and she squinted against the harsh gusts of wind that tugged at her clothes and her hair. 

A few hours ago, when their plane had landed in Gotham, it was rain that had greeted Diana and Steve, the frigid kind that bordered on snow. But the sky had cleared up since then, and it was surprisingly nice to be outside in the late afternoon sun, albeit a little chilly.

“Diana,” Barbara Ann said, a little hesitantly, making Diana realize that perhaps, they were both equally uncertain about this moment.

“How are you feeling?” Diana asked.

When she and Steve had arrived at the lake house, it was Alfred who had met them at the door and informed them that Bruce was stuck in some meeting but was expected to arrive shortly. Barry was supposed to be around, and maybe Victor, though Alfred hadn’t been too sure about the latter.

But, tempted as Diana had been to prolong dealing with the reason for her visit, she had asked Alfred immediately where she could find their most recent guest. Without hesitation, he had pointed her in the direction of the deck.

The last thing she remembered before she had stepped out of the house was the small smile on Steve’s face and the nod of encouragement he had given her.

It had felt like enough, at the time. Now, she was still holding onto them as a storm of emotions rolled through her, each one of them hard to put into words.

“Confused,” Barbara Ann answered in the meantime. She rubbed her forehead, and then offered Diana an uncertain shrug. “It comes in bits and pieces, but never anything to hold on to.”

“What is the last thing you remember?”

“You and your friend…” Barbara Ann’s voice trailed off. Diana had to resist the impulse to glance towards the lake house, where Steve was likely still speaking with Alfred. Unless he had gone over to the Manor. “You said the stone needed to be destroyed. I left because I didn’t want to do it.” She winced. “Everything is a bit hazy after that. And then I woke up in some basement with a weird man standing over me and speaking Latin. I think it was Latin.”

Constantine.

Diana nodded.

“I never meant to do it, you know,” Barbara Ann continued, her smile slipping, her expression earnest. “The things that they told me I did—I never asked for that. I never wanted to—to hurt people.”

Diana’s face softened, sympathy blossoming in her chest. “I know.”

“They said it’s been 37 years,” the other woman added, and this time it was her turn to give Diana a curious once-over, taking in her jacket and tight black jeans, her hair smoothed back and gathered in a sleek ponytail.

“That is true,” Diana confirmed.

“Well, you look good for a 70-something.”

Diana couldn’t help but smile at that, if a little wistfully. “It’s a long story,” she murmured.

Barbara Ann nodded. “I gathered as much. There is a guy living here who is… a robot, I think?” She glanced uncertainly towards the lake house, a slight frown creasing her brows as she huddled deeper into her coat.

“A cyborg,” Diana corrected. “His name is Victor.”

“Let me guess. Another long story?”

“Might be the longest one of them all,” Diana said.  

They lapsed into a long moment of silence, neither of them knowing what to say. 

“What’s going to happen to me?” Barbara Ann asked, eventually. She sounded small and confused, and it was so very easy to forget for a moment the bright blood on Steve’s chest and Cheetah’s paw raised, poised to strike again. 

Diana turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“I—what do I do, Diana? It’s been a long time.” Her gaze moved again towards the lake house, her expression suddenly utterly lost. “There is a refrigerator in that kitchen that talks to you. Everyone has those—those small phone thingies. I’m not sure how…” she trailed off.

“You could start over,” Diana offered, her voice soft. “Whenever you are ready.”

She already knew from Bruce that he was going to help with some documents for Barbara Ann, with whatever was necessary. Diana could maybe even put in a word with some museum, if that was what she wanted to consider for a career. She had been brilliant once. Beyond brilliant. There was no shortage of research facilities that would be happy to have her on their staff.

But it was not going to be easy. It was going to be way, way harder, she suspected, than living a life in the wild and letting nothing but your instincts guide you. But it was probably worth the try, in the end. Diana wanted to believe as much.

“It felt like a trap,” Barbara Ann said, her voice quiet and far-away, as though she was talking to herself more than Diana. Maybe she was. “I don’t remember it, but I remember wanting to get out and it wouldn’t let me. And I was hungry all the time, no matter how much I—” She cut off and pressed her lips together, taking in a breath.  

“It was always meant to be a curse,” Diana told her, her eyes trained on the ripples on the water, remembering the sense of betrayal that she had felt when she realized that “Steve” was not who she had asked for, the unfairness of it unbearable.

A rueful, humourless chuckle fell from Barbara Ann’s lips. “So much for making your greatest wish come true, huh?”

“I don’t think that was ever the plan.”

They stood there in silence for a while as the sun continued to inch towards the line of the forest, guilt and compassion coalescing in Diana’s chest. She should have stopped Cheetah sooner. She was glad it had happened, at last.

She was going to have to learn to live with the fact that it had taken them over three decades to get where they were now and to move on with her life without regrets holding her back.

She wondered if she was in a position to admit that her wish had come true, eventually. It had taken some time, but it had, in its own way. She had Steve now, like she had always wanted. He loved her and she loved him, and maybe the world felt like a wild, uncertain thing to Barbara Ann now, but Diana’s life was an example that there was hope in it still, as long as you didn’t give up.

“Do you want to go inside?” Diana asked, after a while. “I think Alfred will be serving tea just about now.”

Barbara Ann shook her head. “A few more minutes,” she said. She exhaled slowly. “It’s… quiet here.”

Diana’s lips twitched a little. “They can be rowdy,” she admitted, meaning the League and the clamour that they always brought with them wherever they went. “You get used to it.”

“No,” Barbara Ann smiled. “Not them. I think…” An unsteady breath stuttered from her chest. “Being here makes me feel quiet, on the inside. I haven’t felt that way in a long time.”

Diana nodded. “Very well.”

“Diana,” Barbara Ann called just as Diana stepped towards the door leading inside.

She paused and turned around.

“Thank you,” Barbara Ann said. She adjusted her glasses, pushing them a little further up the bridge of her nose. “For coming over here, I mean. And for everything else, I guess. I know I wasn’t very nice to—ah, your friend. The pilot. The chatty guy, Barry, told me some things—I’m sorry about that.”

The memory came back in an instant—blood and gore, Steve’s throat ripped out, his shirt shredded to pieces. She still remembered the way his gaze had been trained unseeingly at the clear blue sky.

Diana’s throat tightened and she pushed the mental image away.

“He’s alright,” she said.

And what else could she say? Knowing what she had done to Steve would not have helped Barbara Ann. It would have only driven her guilt even deeper, and there was no point to it. No reason. Only senseless cruelty, from where Diana was standing.

Steve was alive. He was alright, she was telling the truth.

For a moment, a shadow of doubt passed across Barbara Ann’s face. It didn’t seem like she believed Diana, not entirely. But she didn’t argue or ask anything else. She merely nodded.

“I’ll see you inside.”


Diana pulled the door open and stepped into the lake house, enveloped immediately in the warmth of it and the smell of coffee coming from the kitchen. Coffee and something like homemade cookies. She wouldn’t have put it past Alfred to make them, she thought, smiling to herself.

She wondered if Steve was around, suddenly desperate to see him.

There was the sound of the TV playing in the living room but when Diana peeked in, there was no one there, the movie unfolding on the screen for no one to see. She checked the kitchen next, but it too was empty, the coffee pot half full and—her eyebrows arched when she spotted the cookies cooling on the counter.

She wondered what Barry had done to bribe Alfred into that kind of effort.

Diana was about to simply pull out her phone and dial Steve’s number when she heard footsteps in the depth of the house.

She followed the sound that led her to the study where she found Bruce standing at the liquor cart. He was wearing a dress shirt—a rare enough sight to give her pause. His jacket was draped over the back of a massive leather chair sitting at his desk.

He looked up when he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, seemingly just as surprised to see her in his house as she was perplexed by the view of him in his business suit.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Diana said diplomatically.

“You aren’t.”

Bruce glanced towards the liquor cart and then back at her and raised an eyebrow in a silent question. She shook her head and he shrugged before taking a sip of his drink.

Save for the offer of the drink, he didn’t acknowledge her much, but Diana wasn’t fooled. She wondered if there was something about her presence that had unsettled him. Or if it was something else and she was merely projecting.

“I spoke with Barbara Ann,” she said after a moment, breaking the silence.

Bruce nodded. “Alfred said as much.”

Surprised, she glanced around. “I was wondering where everyone was,” she mused.

“The Manor. I think Barry was rallying them up to have a darts tournament or something.”

Unbidden, Diana’s lips curved into a smile. “Sounds like fun.”

Bruce smirked and took another sip of his drink. “Sounds like Barry.”

Still smiling, she moved into the study, once again taking note of the contrast between here and the place he had at the Manor, which was more classy but far less personal. Here, he had papers strewn over the desk and a few morning papers. There were some awards and various knick-knacks sitting on the shelves. The books, though far less entertaining than those that used to belong to his mother, were ones that Bruce had actually read and needed for business.

This place, she realized, was as much a step towards the future as the Manor was a monument to his past. That it had never occurred to her before caught Diana off-guard.

When she looked up, she found Bruce watching her. It was the first time that she noticed that he had loosened his tie and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He’d had a meeting, that was what Alfred had told her. She never thought much about it, about his life outside of the League, but she was more used to seeing him in his Batman suit and cowl than any of the businessman attire that he probably had to wear a lot when she was not around.

Diana turned fully to him.

“I wanted to thank you, for your help with Barbara Ann,” she said, sincerely. “For everything.”

He was shaking his head, even before she had stopped talking. “You don’t have to thank me for anything, Diana.”

“But I do,” she insisted. “I could never have dealt with her and—” help Steve. She couldn’t bring to mention his… episode, or the kind of despair that had taken over her the moment she had realized his heart had stopped beating. “It means a lot to me that you did it. All of you. It was a lot to ask.”

“It was not,” Bruce said, firmly. He set his half-full glass down and rolled his shoulders in a half-shrug. “You may have known her first but what she had become—it’s what we do, isn’t it? Protecting the world from things like that.”

Diana considered his words as she took her chance to study him, looking for a sign that he was merely placating her in his eyes. She found none.

“She doesn’t know what to do next,” Diana added.

“She’ll figure it out,” Bruce said. “You did, when you came to this world. Your Captain has, too.”

“I know she will,” Diana murmured.

She didn’t tell him that it didn’t diminish the sense of fear and loss that Barbara Ann had to be feeling now.  

Bruce nodded once more. “She can stay here for as long as she needs. Alfred has taken a liking to her. Apparently, your friend can hold a much more intellectual conversation than the rest of us,” he explained, unmasked amusement in her eyes.

“She used to be a scientist,” Diana offered, her chest tight with unexpected fondness.

“I’ll try not to hold it against her.”

“I hope Barry stopped with the cat jokes, at least,” Diana murmured.

Bruce made a sound in the back of his throat, something between a chuckle and a grunt. “I think he went back to making those about Selina.”

She arched an eyebrow at him but he didn’t elaborate, merely sliding his hands into the pockets of his pants instead and looking towards the glass wall and the lake outside, the darkness gathering over it.

Diana followed his gaze. From this room, she couldn’t see the spot where she had left Barbara Ann behind, but she wondered absently if the other woman was still there.

Bruce didn’t speak. The moment stretched between them, interrupted by nothing but the heating system pumping the warm air through the vents. For the second time that day, Diana found herself hesitating and holding back when she knew exactly what needed to be said and done.

But, she had come this far and they had avoided that conversation long enough.

Diana drew in a breath. In a house less than a mile from the spot where she was standing, Steve was waiting for her. Soon, she would see him again and he would smile that dazzling smile of his the second their eyes met. She didn’t know what the future held for them, but she was certain that they would make the best of it, whatever it was. And she would do so gratefully.

But until then, there was a piece of unfinished business that she feared was going to keep holding her back until she dealt with it, the way she should have years ago.

“I think we need to talk,” she said.

“About what?” Bruce asked as he looked at her, his voice even and casual.

But even so, the recognition settled immediately in his eyes.

“You know about what,” Diana said quietly.

“There is no need for it.”

“I think there is.”

He looked her square in the eye. “Why? It happened four years ago, and you have been with someone else for three of them.”

“So have you,” she reminded him.

“So have I,” he agreed. He shrugged, though Diana was not oblivious to what she thought was hurt behind his flat tone. Old hurt, but hurt, all the same.

“All the more reason to clear the air, to put it behind us.”

Bruce held her gaze. “I think you’ve done that for both of us.”

He winced, as if kicking himself for saying exactly what he was thinking.

Diana pressed her lips together.

“I shouldn’t have—It felt like the right thing at the time. ”

“Yeah, I figured as much.”

“But it’s not an excuse. I should never have ignored your calls. I should never have treated you the way I did then.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Diana.”

“I think I do.”

He shook his head.

“There was an attraction between us…”

“I know,” she said gently.

“But it doesn’t mean we should have acted on it.”

She tilted her head. He was hard to read, and though she had learned to do it, over time, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out if he meant that. “Do you really think so?”

“Don’t you?” he shot back. 

“I don’t regret what happened,” she said simply. The surprise on his face was so evident it was like a punch to her gut. “I don’t think we would have ever worked out,” she added, her voice apologetic. “For many reasons. But I don’t regret that one night. I should have made myself clear on that.”

Bruce nodded. For a long moment, he simply stared into his glass and what little was left of his drink. “You really think that?” he asked, eventually.  

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t. I care about you, even if it didn’t mean—”

“No,” Bruce stopped her, lifting his gaze. “Do you really think it could have never worked out?”

Diana gazed at him in surprise, caught off guard by his question.

She knew he had found her attractive. That he had wanted to sleep with her, at one point. But while all that was true, Diana had never assumed that having sex with her was anything but a footnote in his life. Yet here he was, genuine hurt lurking behind his eyes once he realized that that was all it had ever been to her, in the long run.

This entire time, Diana had thought that having that night hanging between them was merely an inconvenience, and even Bruce Wayne was not entirely immune to that notion. She had never expected, well, more.

“Did you?” she asked, before she knew to stop herself.

He grimaced and ran his hand over his hair. “Well, when we kissed and you didn’t slap me senseless afterwards, I may have entertained the idea for a moment or two.”

His admission shocked Diana. Not because he felt that way but because he actually put it into words. Something that Bruce wasn’t particularly fond of, as far as she was aware. It gave her pause, making her realize that in thinking that, perhaps, she was not entirely correct in her assumption that she’d had him all worked out.

Which also made her ignore and avoid him until they had somehow reached the middle ground of simply not talking about sleeping together all the more unkind.

“I’m sorry, Bruce,” she said, sincerely.

She had never wanted to be with him, like that. But she had never wanted to hurt him, either. 

“Don’t be,” he said, shaking his head. “You don’t owe me anything. You never did.”

“I did,” Diana murmured. “You deserved an explanation, at least.”

His lips twitched humorously. “I’m a big boy, I got it.”

But shame was still burning in her chest, sitting like a lump of hot coal behind her ribs.

There was no way out of it, was it? One way or another, she was always going to break his heart. They should never have allowed that night to happen without both of them knowing what they were signing up for.

But, she had never once thought there would be more to it for him than it ever had been for her. She would have made sure to clear the air sooner if she’d known.

Diana took a breath. “I never meant to hurt you.”

Bruce grimaced, never the one for sentimentalities.

“I’m fine. And it doesn’t matter now, does it?”

“Of course, it does,” she said gently. “You and I… we are more than what happened between us that night. I would like us to still be all those things, don’t you?”

He looked at her, his expression more vulnerable than Diana had ever seen. More vulnerable than she had ever been allowed to see, she corrected herself.

“I do,” he said, after a moment. “We make a good team.”

“We do,” she agreed, offering him a small smile.

“Is that why you left the League?” he asked, and though she had seen the question coming—had seen it from the start—it still landed on her like a blow.

“I didn’t leave…” she began.

“You needed more space,” he interjected with a wave of his hand. “I know. Was that the reason, though? That you and I…?” He trailed off.

“No.” She hesitated. “Maybe in part… a small part, but no. There were other things I needed to figure out for myself.”

He quirked a curious eyebrow at her. “And have you?”

Diana tilted her head. Her mind circled back to her conversation with Steve, him telling her that the League adored her—direct quote, no less—and the wistfulness in his words that spoke of him missing his own friends. She thought of Barry’s unmasked excitement and Victor’s kindness and the softness that Arthur liked to hide beneath the veneer of a tough guy. There was Clark’s encouragement and Alfred’s compassion. Looking at Bruce now, she also knew that he would always have her back, no matter how differently they viewed the world. There was trust, and she would be a fool to walk away from it.

She had not been ready to open up to it all when they’d first started out as a team.

But maybe she was now. Maybe she was more ready than she ever would be.

“Yes. I think I have,” she said.

The corner of Bruce’s mouth pulled upwards. “I’ll have Alfred send you the schedule of our meetings,” he said with feigned formality. “And there’s also a membership fee now, but I’m sure you’ll be able to scrape by.”

Diana rolled her eyes, unable to help herself. “Barry is rubbing off on you, isn’t he?”

Bruce slid his hands into the pockets of his pants. “I do wonder if they are ever going to move out, or if I’m expected to fund their gluttony and entertainment for the rest of my life.”

She folded her arms across her chest, her mind painting a not altogether unattractive picture. “Probably the latter.”

They fell silent, though the air didn’t feel as charged now as it had been an hour ago.

For the first time in quite some time, Diana felt like she could breathe freely, without an invisible vice squeezing the life out of her lungs. They should have done this sooner, but there was no point dwelling on it now.

“Are we alright?” she asked, eventually.

Bruce nodded. “We always have been.” And then, “Is he good to you?”

Her heart knocked against her chest at the thought of Steve.

There had never been anyone else but him, not really. There couldn’t be.

“Yes. The best.”

Bruce nodded once more.

She wondered if it was idle curiosity that he couldn’t help, or if there was still some trace of feelings living beneath everything that they had tried to ignore for so long. But she pushed the idea aside. He had been with Selina Kyle for a long time now—and not for the first time, if Alfred was to be trusted.

Diana had never known Bruce to date someone for an extended period of time before, and to think that he was only doing it while he was biding his time waiting for Diana to change her mind was a disservice to both Bruce and the woman currently present in his life. He was many things, but he was not cruel, and his girlfriend didn’t seem like someone easily fooled.

“Good,” he said, absently. “That’s good. I’m glad you are happy.” He paused. “Are you happy?”

“I am.”

“That’s good,” he repeated.

“And, what about…?” Diana started.

He pressed her lips together, and maybe it was just the light or the half a glass of alcohol, but she was almost sure that he blushed.

“She practically lives here, half the time,” he said with a noncommittal shrug that didn’t quite match the unbidden affection in his voice or the flush on his face that didn’t feel quite so imaginable anymore.

“So, I suppose Barry better find a way to get along with her then,” Diana observed.

Bruce chuckled. “He better cut down on the cat jokes, but I’m not getting dragged into that. They can figure it out between themselves.”

“Probably a wise choice,” she agreed diplomatically.

He looked up at her and then picked up his glass once more. The ice in it was almost completely melted but Bruce didn’t seem to care as he took a sip.

“I was not joking about meetings and agendas,” he noted. “If you are in, you’re all in.”

Diana pressed her lips around a smile. “I figured as much.”

“But don’t bring it up with anyone,” he added. “I’ve had Barry asking me for matching hats for months now, and I swear to God—”

She burst out laughing, unable to help it, the sheer absurdity that the mental image brought bubbling up to the surface.

“Noted.” She glanced around one more time, feeling herself relax, at last. It was not until now that she realized that the entire time, she had felt like they were sitting on a ticking time bomb, with all those unsaid words and pent-up feelings brewing into a poisonous concoction.

There was something freeing about not having to think of it anymore.

“I need to…” she started, and Bruce nodded.

“Yeah. Dinner’s soon. You’re staying, right?”

“We are,” Diana confirmed. She moved towards the door but then paused and turned around. “Do you know how to find Constantine?” she asked.

Sure, she could go and prowl the dark streets of Gotham, but if Bruce knew a better way to do it—why not ask?

Bruce, who had already pulled his phone from the pocket of his pants and unlocked it, looked up at her.

“Why?”

She hesitated, suddenly uncertain. It was one thing to talk about those things with Steve when she was wrapped in his arms and convinced that no one and nothing existed in the world but the two of them. It was something else to spill their private plans and hopes to someone not directly involved.

Then again, Bruce had been there. There was no point dancing around the subject when he had seen the effects of the Lazarus Pit on Steve first-hand.

“Whatever happened in South America—” she faltered and sighed as she tried to choose her words carefully, the memories of the days following Steve’s resurrection flooding her mind. “I was wondering if he would know more about the water. He treated Barbara Ann, after all.”

Bruce’s brows pulled together, and for a moment, he looked like he was going to ask her something. But, in the end, he didn’t.

“I wouldn’t call it treated, exactly,” he murmured. “But I’ll make the call.”

Diana nodded. “Thank you.”

She stepped into the hallway, peering towards the door leading onto the deck down the corridor. The darkness had gathered outside, the trees swaying in the wind but Barbara Ann was no longer there.

Diana paused in her tracks, listening closely, but the entire house remained quiet and still, save for the sound of Bruce’s quiet voice coming from the study as he spoke on the phone. She wondered, briefly, if it was Selina Kyle that he was talking to.

But the thought didn’t linger, unimportant as it was. And then Diana headed for the door, intending to make her way to the Manor to find Steve.

Notes:

Trying to tie all the loose ends is... tricky. But I hope it makes sense and that you're still enjoying this story. I have to admit that I really love the character of Cheetah/Berbara Ann Minerva and I'm glad that I got to play with her in this fic. While WW84 had some obvious flaws, it offered us, writers, quite a few interesting ideas, and for that I'm truly grateful.

This is the last chapter that I'll be posting in 2021. I'll be taking a break for a few weeks to deal with some hectic stuff in my neck of the woods and I'll be back with the ending of this story sometime in January 2022. This is my last story so I don't want to rush finishing it. Please bear with me.

Whether or not you guys celebrate anything specific at this time of year, I hope that you'll get to have a break from school/work and that you'll treat yourself to something nice. Please take care of yourselves and I'll see you in 2022!

As always, comments are the best thing ever, and I'll love you forever for them :)

Chapter 29

Notes:

Hello everyone :) I'm back on my bullshit with a new update, at last! I hope you all had a nice holiday season and enjoyed some time off. Mine was... let's just say, eventful. Two weeks into 2022 and I'm ready for an 8-month vacation.

But, enough about that! We have only 2 chapters and em epilogue left and I hope that you are all going to enjoy them.

Have fun!

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

Chapter Text

Once Diana disappeared to deal with her personal affairs, Steve spent most of the afternoon talking to Alfred at the lake house. He liked Alfred and how smart the man was, and how he knew the most eloquent way to share gossip without making it sound like gossip and without making it feel like he was being nosey.

But even more than that, Steve loved that Alfred could be counted on to make sure that the coffee pot was always full. Be it just his habit or the fact that Bruce drank a lot of it at all hours, Steve wasn’t sure, but after an early morning, a long flight, and the change of time zones, he didn’t care.

So while Steve gulped two cups, he learned a thing or two about Barbara Ann Minerva, which was rather enlightening, seeing as how his own experience with her had been limited to her slashing his chest open. As far as first impressions went, it hadn’t been the best one, though Steve was willing to give her another chance.

Afterwards, Alfred excused himself, needing to do something for Bruce.

Steve lingered in the kitchen for a little while, not quite sure what to do with himself. Briefly, he considered looking for Diana, but she had things to do. That was the whole point of them being in Gotham, was it not? He didn’t want to get in her way.

Maybe he could take their luggage that was currently sitting by the front door to the Manor, he mused. Alfred had said that their old room was ready for them to use for as long as they were planning to stay. That would give him something to do, Steve decided, as he tried to ignore the nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that the prospect of speaking with John Constantine had left him with.

Steve both anticipated and dreaded it in equal measure, not quite sure what to brace himself for. When he was a kid, a sorcerer had been someone who wore a pointy hat and performed at travelling circus shows, not someone who you were supposed to be taking seriously. The idea, even in the light of knowing what everyone in the League was capable of, was more than mildly disconcerting.

Although, admittedly, it was not only that but mostly the answers that Steve was expecting to get from Constantine—or rather, the fact that he had no idea what those answers were going to be—that had left him restless in a way he didn’t particularly like.

He poured himself another cup of coffee as he considered his options. Diana was busy, and so was Alfred apparently. Though he and Bruce had gotten along just fine while they were working on some prototypes a while back, Steve wasn’t sure that Batman was someone whose company he necessarily wanted to seek out, all things considered.  

He wondered if anyone else was around. Barry and Victor both lived here at least half of the time, but they both also had jobs.

He was pondering the idea of just going to the Batcave and poking around, ever fascinated by the array of Bruce’s gadgets and vehicles, when Barry made an appearance.

Whistling under his breath, he rounded the corner and stepped into the kitchen, freezing in his tracks when he noticed Steve with his cup half-lifted to his mouth. For a moment, the young man looked almost stricken with panic, before recognition settled in and he relaxed visibly.

“Thank god,” he murmured. “I thought you were Alfred.”

Steve sipped his coffee. “Which would be a problem why?” he inquired, having a hard time imagining why anyone would have a problem running into Alfred, of all people.

Barry looked around conspiratorially and then moved towards a row of cupboards lining one of the walls. He glanced over his shoulder once again and then opened one of the doors and reached inside, pulling out a packet of chocolate shortbread fingers.

“Because I’m not supposed to touch these,” he explained to Steve, his voice dropping. He grimaced a little. “I’m going to replace them, I swear!” he added quickly as Steve raised an eyebrow at him. “We’ve just got no snacks left at the Manor and I know that Alfred always keeps a bag of these babies—”

Expertly, he opened the packet—making Steve suspect this was not the first time it had happened—and tossed one shortbread finger into his mouth. Knowing Alfred, Steve also thought that the older man would probably know to hide his stash better than, well, in plain sight. Which likely meant that those were the cookies meant to keep Barry from finding the ones that Alfred actually wanted to keep for himself.

Steve smiled behind his coffee cup and chose not to share that particular observation with the speedster.

“My lips are sealed,” he promised.

Barry grinned back at him. He tossed another cookie into his mouth and then gave Steve a curious once-over.

“You look better,” he said after a moment. “Less… um, dead?”

Steve frowned a little. “Thanks?” he echoed, the world coming out more as a question.

He remembered now that Barry had been there. And Victor. And Bruce, who had piloted the Fox. In the aftermath of it, at least. Steve still didn’t know what it was that they had all seen—he had never asked, but he suddenly wanted to. There was something unnerving about other people knowing more about his experience than he did. About being incapacitated enough not to remember.

Steve wasn’t sure he liked it, but he pushed the thought aside. There was nothing that could be done about it now, but part of him wondered if it was something worth asking Diana about.

“Have you met the cat lady yet?” Barry inquired meanwhile. “She’s nice.”

The cat lady?

“You mean Barbara?” Steve clarified, remembering that that was also the term that Arthur once used on Bruce’s girlfriend, courtesy of her Catwoman disguise. He couldn’t help but wonder how they were not getting all mixed up here.

“Yeah,” Barry mumbled around a mouthful of his cookie. “She’s, like, wicked smart, too.”

“Um, no.” Steve’s eyes darted around and he wondered if that was where Diana was now, talking to the old friend of hers. “I haven’t seen her.”

He finished his coffee and considered another cup before deciding that four would probably be pushing it, jetlag or no jetlag.

“You’re gonna like her,” Barry announced with a certainty that made Steve’s lips twitch at the corners. And then the younger man’s eyes widened a little when something occurred to him. “I mean, I know she—” he made a slashing motion with his hand, his face growing deep red. “Never mind, maybe you won’t…”

“It’s okay, Barry,” Steve interjected gently.

“—‘cause it’s okay to hold a grudge, you know?” Barry pressed on.

“I’m not…”

“And I wouldn’t have blamed you in the slightest because if she did that—” another slashing motion, “—to me, I’m sure I’d be—”

“It’s okay,” Steve stopped him, and finally, the speedster clamped his mouth shut. “I’m fine.”

Barry flinched a little and then smiled somewhat sheepishly at him. “Okay.” And then his face brightened, a proverbial light bulb turning on above his head. “Hey, do you like darts?”

Steve paused. “Um…”

He liked Barry, truly, but there were moments when it seemed like it was not just his body that could move at superspeed but that his mind often did as well, working in patterns that no one but Barry could understand. He sure knew how to change the subject unexpectedly.

Oh, what the hell! What else was he going to do? Just stand there in the kitchen and count the tiles on the wall? He didn’t know where Diana was or how long she’d be busy, and Alfred might not even make an appearance again, for all he knew.  

Steve set his mug down and shrugged.

“Sure.”

That was how he found himself in the Wayne Manor lounge where a darts board was affixed on a wall. Steve tried to remember if it had been there the last time they visited, but for the life of him, he could not recall.

He wasn’t entirely sure when Victor showed up, or Clark, for that matter, just that suddenly, there were the four of them, the room suddenly full of voices and calls for food (Barry) and for something less boring than darts (Victor). Much to Steve’s surprise, the entire affair ended up being a lot more fun than he had anticipated. So much so that he only looked towards the door, wondering if Diana was going to make an appearance, every ten minutes or so.

He hoped that she was alright. That she was going to find peace and put the past behind her, or start moving in that direction, at least. He wanted to let her know that he was there for her, no matter what, and was thinking that maybe he should have told her just that before they had parted their ways a few hours ago.

The thought made him miss her terribly and he was decidedly grateful for the distraction, he could admit that much. Even if between super-vision, super-aim and super-speed, he didn’t stand much of a chance at winning.

Arthur wasn’t around—back with his wife at the bottom of the ocean, perhaps. Steve was not entirely sure how it even worked but the entire concept fascinated him deeply. He wondered where Bruce was. There was something odd about hanging out in his house without him, but no one else seemed to care about that.

It was sometime during a lull in the game and conversation that Clark sidled up to him with two bottles of ice-cold beer.

“Thanks,” Steve said, accepting one gratefully.

“Thought you might use a breather.” His eyes darted towards Barry and Victor arguing about something animatedly.

Steve chuckled and took a swig of his drink. “They’re not that bad,” he said, diplomatically.

It was only then that it occurred to him that even though Clark had been working with them for a while, he was also someone who once had to get used to them, what with the League forming when he was technically dead. (Diana had explained to him that it was more stasis than death, but Steve suspected that that hadn’t really mattered to the people who cared about Clark—to them, he was gone, the details of it less important than the feeling of loss.)

“It’s way louder when everyone is here,” Clark agreed as he sipped his own beer, his eyes twinkling with unmasked amusement.

Steve could see why Diana was so fond of him.

“I thought that was the point,” he mused and the other man laughed.

“Touché.”

It was the good kind of noise, overwhelming as it was, Steve thought. Boisterous and happy. They were different on missions, quiet and serious and solemn, so much unlike the people standing before him now with smiles plastered on their faces.

It was good to have this to balance out that other life, he thought. It was important to have something joyous to look forward to, even if it was only a game of darts.

“Have you thought of what you are going to do next?” Clark asked, his voice casual and lazy but his eyes sharp and keen and interested.

His question gave Steve pause, throwing him off a little.

“Next?” he echoed.

Clark shrugged. “The team could use a certified spy.”

There was nonchalance to his tone, but Steve wasn’t fooled. Clark was being serious and he was offering Steve a job, or a version of it, with the League.

Steve would have lied if he said he had never considered it. Knowing that they were part of Diana’s life had left him longing for that connection even before he’d gotten to meet them. That, and the obvious fascination that he couldn’t help. Of course, he had entertained the idea of joining them before. Who wouldn’t want to be part of a group dubbed superheroes?

That conviction had been cemented after he’d got to work with them, to see them in action and appreciate what they were, as a team.

But he had never taken the time to actually consider it before, part of him too busy digging through the mysteries of the Lazarus Pits, and part of him certain that he was not something they’d need, in the long run. After all, he couldn’t fly on his own or punch through brick walls or shoot lasers out of his eyes—the things that made them what they were.

Of course, Bruce wasn’t a metahuman either. And neither was Alfred, for that matter. And they still made it work one way or another.

So, while he hadn’t thought of it seriously before, he was thinking of it now, his heartbeat stuttering a little at all the possibilities that Clark’s words were offering. He didn’t even pause to consider the fact that it wasn’t up to just Clark. That they would all need to agree to it. While Diana had the museum and the League, Steve, up until now, had mostly just had Diana. But being part of something bigger, something important—

He decidedly wanted that for himself, for his life. Ultimately, he wanted to be more than what he was and what he had right now.

It was not that simple, of course. Clark was kind and generous, but there was no guarantee that the rest of them would want to vote Steve in… would they?

He took a sip of his beer and tried not to get consumed by the disappointment that thought brought on.

But… if they did, if they accepted him as part of them full time—

He could work with Diana more, he knew that. And he loved that idea, a lot. He loved working with her more than anything. Well, not anything anything but more than not working with her, at that. He certainly loved some of the other things they did together better, but he would have loved being more involved in this part of her life. 

There was a purpose to it—not that his life didn’t already have purpose, of course. But the fact of the matter was that Steve Trevor was an ambitious man. He most certainly wouldn’t have minded being part of something bigger.

“Our eyes in Europe and all that,” Clark added, evenly, as if he knew exactly what Steve was thinking about. “You know, we can’t be everywhere at once.”

“You have those smart satellites for that,” Steve murmured, laughing a little.

That Bruce Wayne owned actual honest to god satellites would never, ever, not boggle his mind.

Clark laughed at that. “They’re not that smart.”

“And you’ve got Diana.”

Clark tipped up his bottle, taking a swig. “She can’t be everywhere at once, either.”

Steve chuckled. “You know how to sell it, huh?”

“Who’s selling what?” Barry called out as he zipped towards them from across the room, the air around him smelling immediately a little like ozone.

Clark arched his eyebrow and Steve busied himself with his drink.

“He’s right, you know?” Victor said as he joined them, pausing next to Barry. He jerked his chin towards Clark.

It was only then that Steve realized that the Cyborg had been listening carefully the entire time. He had yet to get used to the full array of Victor’s gifts, and super-hearing was apparently one of them. His eyes were on Steve now—one human and one glowing robotic one, curious and expectant.

“We could use more eyes on the ground,” Victor added with a shrug.

Amused, Steve noted that both he and Clark knew how to play the whole noncommittal card well.

“Oh, you mean—” Barry’s eyes went wide and then a smile split his face ear to ear as he caught up. “Oh my god!”

Steve felt the back of his neck grow hot, all of a sudden. Smiling, he shook his head.

“Let me see if I can pencil you guys into my already busy schedule,” he muttered.

There was more to it than that. Bruce Wayne could very easily veto the idea. More importantly, Diana might not want it. He wouldn’t have faulted her if she didn’t—she had the right to keep some parts of her life separate from them, if she so wished. It wouldn't matter if she made that choice. Whatever happened, he was going to have Diana, and loving her and being with her was the only thing that he deemed important. He would still have missions with her, and there were other things he could do, he was certain of it.

The world, confusing and chaotic and messy as it was, was full of possibilities, and that was the one thing that gave him hope for whatever was coming next.

But, he allowed himself to imagine being part of that team nonetheless, if only for a few moments.

He couldn’t say he hated the idea. He most certainly did not.

Eventually, Clark had to leave. Between a deadline at the paper and some quality time with Lois, his evening appeared to be pretty packed. Barry had settled in front of the TV with two boxes of pizza, the game of darts completely forgotten by then. Steve wasn’t sure where Victor had gone off to. 

He made his way towards the kitchen, not hungry but restless in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. Be it Clark’s offer or the prospect of speaking with John Constantine or something else entirely, he didn’t seem to be able to shake off the feeling of an itch that he couldn’t quite scratch. He tossed his empty beer bottle in the trash.

He could easily join Barry who was yelling at the TV and figure out what it was that had gotten him so agitated, but Steve didn’t feel like immersing himself into some fictional story when his life felt wilder than that, at times. Instead, he wandered around the first floor, poking his nose into the conference room with its massive table sitting in the middle of it and then the study, not quite sure what he was doing or what he was looking for.

There was an odd feeling to the huge house that felt both comfortable and imposing. As though the entire point of its existence was to make someone feel small and inferior.  

Again, Steve tried to imagine growing up in a place like this one but his mind kept coming up blank every time. If he hadn’t seen a picture of Bruce Wayne as a young boy—a photograph of him and his parents sitting on the desk in the study—he would have been convinced that that man had been brought into the world at 45 years of age. He was certainly someone who Etta would have called an “old soul.”

Eventually, Steve made his way to the library. There was a comfort to knowing that there was something about the world that hadn’t changed and that people still valued books the way they had in his time.

There were tall shelves lining three of the four walls and Steve moved along them slowly and purposely, reading the names and titles on the spines. A lot of them had been published after his death in 1918, but he spotted a few books that he recognized. Books that were deemed to be classic literature now—in his time, many had been considered monumental, the ideas shared within them ground-breaking. Others had been called inappropriate and scandalous.

Not for the first time, Steve wondered what it was like for Diana. She had lived for so long and had seen so much. What was it like to look at something created a hundred, two hundred years ago and have been there when it was considered new, now to see its value barely consequential?

“He has the full collection of Edgar Allan Burroughs,” a voice said behind him, and Steve snapped his head up, sliding the book he was holding back into its spot on the shelf.

She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her arms folded across her chest. Her lips were curved into a soft smile that gave Steve’s heart a kick, making it slam against the inside of his ribcage.

God help him, he was never, ever not going to be in love with her.

“Yeah, I know,” he said, glancing towards Diana. His gaze swept over the bookshelves before it fastened once more on hers. “Alfred already offered to let me borrow anything I want.”

An eyebrow arched, she stepped into the room, moving towards him. Seconds later, her arms slipped around Steve from behind, her body pressing closer to his. He felt her brush a kiss to his shoulder before she rested her chin on it. He was suddenly grateful that everyone else had disappeared to do whatever it was that they were doing.

His hand curled over one of her forearms habitually. They stood like that for another minute, eyes moving over the book spines.

“It was kind of him, to offer you that,” Diana said quietly, meaning Alfred, undoubtedly.

“Yeah. Yeah, it was,” Steve agreed.

That was, perhaps, the one thing that had never ceased to amaze Steve—how easily they had all accepted him. He knew that at least part of it was due to Diana and their trust in her and the choices she made, but another part, he was aware, was about them and their own kindness that he wanted so much to be worthy of.

Steve let out a breath and then turned around in the circle of Diana’s arms. He reached for her, hands curling over her hips pulling her the remaining inches until there was no space left between them. He could smell the cold on her, that unmistakable smell of winter mixed with the delicate scent of her perfume. There was something about it that made his head swim.

Or maybe it was just her.

“Are you done?” Steve asked, forcing himself to stay focused.

She lifted her gaze to his, tilting her head quizzically. “With what?”

He shrugged. “Your unfinished business.”

She fussed with the collar of his shirt before smoothing her palms down his chest. “I think so,” she said after a moment.

She didn’t add anything else and Steve didn’t pry. He was curious beyond anything, about Barbara Ann and everything that had gone down between them, but he swallowed his questions, for the time being. She would share anything she wanted him to know without him having to ask. The rest, he knew, was not really any of his business.

Still, he watched her. Watched her brows pull together as a slight frown lodged between her brows while she figured something out for herself. He loved that about her, that she never felt the need to rush with her words just for the sake of hearing herself speak. That she saw no shame in taking her time to think things over.

“It’s a lot,” she said eventually, her fingers fiddling with a button on his shirt. “For Barbara Ann. What happened to her—it’s a lot to come to terms with.”

Steve nodded. “I can imagine,” he murmured.

Diana glanced up at him. “Yes, I suppose you could,” she breathed. “There is a lot of guilt she will have to learn to live with. But she is a good person. And a strong one, too. She will find a way.”

His thumb circled over the jut of Diana’s hipbone as he pondered her words, struck, for the first time, by the similarities between himself and Barbara Ann Minerva, crazy as it sounded.

He had never been caught up in a curse and she had never been at war, but they had both been shoved into a world so very different from the one they had been used to and Steve knew so very well how monumental and overwhelming it could feel.

And he knew, perhaps better than anyone, what guilt was. Guilt that was eating him up on the inside to this day. He’d done unspeakable things, thinking, at the time, that he’d had no other choice, and that was something that he would have to live with. But he was getting there. In part, because he didn’t want to be weighed down by his past for the rest of his life. And in part, because he had Diana and she had forgiven every one of his sins even before she knew what they were. And that, to Steve, was like a beacon of hope calling him home.

He wanted to believe that Diana’s friend stood a chance, as well. Second chances, he knew, did not come around all that often.

“Yeah,” he echoed, taking a breath. “She will.” He paused as he searched her face. “You okay? It’s got to be a lot for you, too.”

Diana smiled, but it felt wistful around the edges. Without thinking, Steve brushed his thumb over her cheek, the tenderness toward her unbearable in his chest.

“This entire time, I wanted to find her and put an end to that story,” Diana said quietly. “I don’t think I ever once considered that it was not going to be the end but rather the beginning of something else. Something entirely outside of my control.”

Steve’s lips twitched at the corners. “I believe what you just described is called life.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes like he knew she would, the tight knot of concern easing in his chest.

“I spoke with Bruce, too,” she added, after another moment.

“Yeah?”

“What happened between the two of us…” she hesitated. “I thought it was about time we put that to rest, as well. It was my fault that it got ignored for as long as it has. It wasn’t fair to either of us to keep it that way.”

She lifted her eyes to Steve’s but he didn’t say anything, waiting for her to continue.

And there it was again, that familiar twinge of jealousy flaring up in his stomach. A knee-jerk reflex that he couldn’t help. He pushed it aside and tried to quell it. He suspected it was going to take some time for him to learn to deal with it without seeing Diana in Bruce’s arms in his head each time the two of them were in the same room.

But, Steve also knew that it was him she had chosen, it was him she wanted, and at the end of the day, that was enough.

Even if he still felt stupidly and unreasonably jealous every now and then. 

“I think we both deserved to clear the air once and for all.” She traced her fingers absently along the collar of Steve’s shirt. “I also told him I want to be more involved with the League again.”

“You did?” Steve echoed, surprised.

“Yes,” she nodded.

He studied her closely. “Is that what you want?”

“Yes, I think it is.”

Steve nodded once more. “Good. I’m glad,” he said as he tucked a piece of hair around her ear.

Diana tilted her head. “You are?”

He sighed. “Yeah. They’ll be happy, you know.”

“Because they adore me,” she teased.

He chuckled. “Because you’re a badass warrior who can flip tanks with your bare hands. But yeah, that, too.”

She pressed her lips together, her expression full of fond exasperation—something that Steve had gotten quite used to seeing, and one that he loved so.

“You wouldn’t mind?” she murmured, tracing her fingers idly around the button on his shirt. “I’d probably have to come here more often.”

“Um, about that—” Steve started and cut off.

He was going to tell her about Clark’s offer and everything that he had spent the past few hours thinking about. Granted, he was likely getting ahead of himself, considering that it was not an offer, per se. Just an idea.

But, that was not a conversation for right now. She’d had a long day and he wasn’t sure it was the right time to dump anything else on her plate. Especially something so big and possibly life-changing. Between speaking with Barbara Ann for the first time in nearly forty years and sorting out her situation with Bruce, she had enough to think about for the time being, Steve reasoned. Anything else could wait till tomorrow. Or… whenever, really. 

He tried to pretend that it wasn’t nervousness that was holding him back. 

“What?” Diana prompted when he didn’t add anything else.

Steve shook his head.

“Nothing. Never mind, I just…”

His knuckle slid beneath her chin, tilting her face up. He dipped his head, kissing her—softly at first, and then with a little more purpose as heat seared through him, the familiar intensity of it making his head swim. Diana kissed him back, her mouth hot and eager against his as her fingers moved to comb through his hair.

“Been thinking about that all afternoon,” he whispered after she drew back.

She bit her lip around a smile, and he was helpless against the instinct to lean forward and bite it a little as well, kissing her once more until they both were out of breath.

“So I see,” she murmured, her fingers toying idly with hair near the nape of his neck.

But there was something else, too. Steve felt his brows pull together as he watched an odd expression chase across her face. One of the drawbacks of being able to read her so easily was… well, that.

“Bruce will find Constantine,” she said eventually. “He’ll try, at least.”

Steve gazed up at her in surprise, having almost forgotten about that.

He nodded, after a moment. “Okay.”

Her gaze swept over his features. “Are you nervous?” she asked softly.

He couldn’t help chuckling at that. “Nah. I mean, what could he possibly say that would trump dying and coming back to life—again—like, two weeks ago.”

She didn’t like his cavalier attitude towards it, Steve could see that, and he wished he hadn’t mentioned something that was clearly painful to her quite so casually. He grimaced, wishing he’d thought before speaking. His hands smoothed over her hips once more.

“What I was trying to say is… whatever he could tell me, we still have this, right? I’m here and you are…” he trailed off with a shrug.

“And I’m in love with you,” she said, smiling, her eyes alight with affection.

“Yeah, that,” he breathed.

Three years together, and he still felt his heart twist in his chest each time Diana said those words. He was hopeless, wasn’t he?

“And what have you been up to today?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Playing darts,” Steve said, with more formality than the notion of darts warranted.

She couldn’t help laughing at that—either at this tone, or the fact that a bunch of men spent an afternoon throwing pointy things at a wall. Maybe both. He would not have faulted her if it was both.

“Who won?” she asked, her fingers moving over Steve’s skin making it hard for him to focus.

He grinned.

“Friendship.”


Paris, 2021

As it turned out, tracking down John Constantine was harder than they’d expected. Apparently, the man was far more popular and his services far more required than anyone in the League could imagine. He had not been in Gotham when Bruce had made an inquiry through his channels—Steve wasn’t entirely sure what those were yet, but the idea of them intrigued him greatly.

He and Diana had stayed around for a few days, but there was only so much time off she could take under the guise of “family issues” before she needed to head back to Paris and to her work. 

Briefly, Steve contemplated staying back for another couple of days in hopes that Constantine might make an appearance, but there was not much point to it. Bruce was meant to go to Hong Kong on business and take Alfred with him. If there was any work that could be done with his weapons or prototypes or whatnot, Steve couldn’t do it without him. And the idea of sitting on his own in that large house and watching TV and consuming Barry’s stash of snacks was not particularly appealing. Just the thought made him feel all too useless for his comfort.

Constantine, Bruce had explained, could occasionally disappear for weeks or even months at a time. There was no saying when he might make a reappearance.

So Steve went back to Paris with Diana.

He tried to quell his disappointment—after all, he had meant what he’d said. Being alive and being with her was all that mattered to him.

They fell into a comfortable pattern over the next couple of weeks. Her schedule was packed with grant proposals and catalogue updates and fundraising meetings. Steve finessed the prototype blueprints that he had promised to look at and sent them over to Bruce the day the Batman arrived back in Gotham. He also tracked down a few things for the team, working with Lois, and then planned out the next couple of missions with Alfred, grateful to be keeping busy through it all.

There was still no word from Constantine but by the end of that first week, Steve had almost forgotten about it and everything that had anything to do with the sorcerer. It was easier to push it back, bury it in the depths of his mind for the time being. Save for the two scars that had never made a reappearance—like he had half-expected—and the light streak of grey disappearing from his hair, he felt surprisingly the same.

“At least I haven’t grown a tail,” he said to Diana one evening as he was changing into his sleepwear before bed.

“Would be handy though, wouldn’t it?” Diana called back from the bathroom. She peeked into the bedroom, a toothbrush in her hand.

Steve straightened up. “You… like men with extra limbs?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows at her for good measure.

She rolled her eyes and disappeared across the hallway.

Steve was not fooled, though. He knew that the aftereffects of the Lazarus Pits frightened her far more than they did him. He would catch her looking at him sometimes when she thought he wouldn’t notice, her eyes pools of such deep-seated fear it would all but knock all air out of him every time.

He wished there was something he could do to make it go away. Wished he could give her a life filled with nothing but laughter and happiness the way he had wanted when they had first met. He hated that it was not possible. Life didn’t work that way, not even when you were a god, apparently.

Still, Steve dropped the shirt that he was holding on the bed and stepped towards the vanity mirror. In the bathroom behind his back, the water was still running.

He stared at the man staring back at him, not sure what it was that he was looking for.

He could use a haircut, he noted absently. His five o’clock stubble was trickling down his cheeks and onto his neck. He ran his hand over it. Diana didn’t like the beard much, deeming it unkempt, but she liked the stubble. The grey was still there, just a touch on his chin, though he knew that his hair bore none of it anymore. The scar beneath his collarbone was barely visible, a pale thin line. But the one on his bicep was gone, the skin smooth. As was the one at the base of his neck.

For a few days after Diana had noticed them missing, he’d kept expecting them to pop up again, certain it had to be some kind of mistake, but they never had. Which made Steve wonder what else about him had changed that he couldn’t see.

He didn’t know how long he had stayed in the pool, after the Cheetah's attack. When he had asked Diana, she had merely shaken his head—as far as Steve was concerned, it remained one of those mysteries he didn’t know how to figure out. One of those details that didn’t quite fit.

But he had never pressed. The entire experience had been traumatic enough for her, more so than it had been for him, he knew. He might as well just let it go, for Diana’s sake if nothing else.

Still, he wondered what would have happened if he’d stayed in that water longer. Would he have woken up with the body of his 20-year-old self? Or younger still? Although, knowing what he knew from those files that Bruce had gathered, he suspected that he would likely simply die.

What he knew for a fact was that he hadn’t developed any superpowers, which was a shame, truly. He wasn’t super strong or super fast, and much to his disappointment, he couldn’t shoot lasers out of his eyes though he suspected it would have been a neat trick. He usually found it quite impressive when Clark did it.

Whatever it was that was different about him now, it had to be inconsequential enough, Steve figured. He couldn’t imagine it being anything of real importance.

He tried not to overthink it, certain that that was the kind of black hole that could swallow him whole if he let it.

Diana stepped into the room, flicking the overhead light off until it was only the light of their reading lamps dispersing the dark.

“Say, what else do you like in guys?” Steve asked, turning to her. “Since the tail is out of the question, it seems. Pointy ears, maybe?”

She bit her lip and shook her head.

“You’re ridiculous,” she murmured.

Steve’s arm darted out, curling around her waist as he drew her near. She let him, her hands smoothing over his bare skin with the familiar purpose that made a jolt of heat surge through his blood like fire.

“Horns?” he offered.

She muttered something in Greek. Something that likely wasn’t a compliment.

But she didn’t resist when he tugged her closer still and didn’t stop him when he reached for the belt of her robe, like Steve knew she wouldn’t. When she tilted her head to kiss him, he forgot about the Lazarus Pits and all else, for that matter.

Diana went on a mission at the end of that week, and Steve went with her. When they came back to Paris a few days later, it was pouring and Diana had a new excavation to unpack waiting for her at the Louvre. She spent the next two days cooped up in the sublevels of the museum, which, Steve knew, was her equivalent of being a child in a candy shop. Something that he found entirely too endearing, her eyes glinting with excitement each time she spoke of it.

There was still no word from Constantine, but by then, Steve barely thought about it at all. The entire incident with Cheetah had started to feel like something that had happened to someone else entirely. Like it was nothing more than a dream, now frayed at the edges.

In the middle of the following week, Alfred sent him some documents to analyze, needing a pair of fresh eyes, as he had put it in his email. There had been some sightings of a creature in Romania that may or may not be something straight out of a myth. Or maybe, out of a curse. (Steve had had to push aside speculation about Dracula.)

Still, he dove into it with abandon, grateful for the distraction, and more so—for the sense of purpose. A task. A goal to accomplish. Funny how after dreaming of doing absolutely nothing after the war, while he had been sitting in the cold trenches, drenched in frigid rain, he could now barely stand the idea of idleness.

He was making Diana breakfast the following Sunday, standing barefoot at the stove as the sunlight streamed through the window when it struck him that this was exactly what he had been fighting for, at that same war that had brought them together. Breakfast and work and—

His gaze darted towards the table, already set for two.

There was even a morning paper waiting for them. Try as he might, he had no idea why she kept the subscription when she could easily get all the news she needed on her phone.

A sense of habit, perhaps.

Or maybe, like him, she had been searching for just that idea of peace all along.

Diana walked into the kitchen then, her hair, slightly damp from the shower, twisted into a loose knot near the nape of her neck. She surveyed the view before her, and Steve saw the exact moment it all clicked for her as well.

They had had breakfasts together before, of course. They had read newspapers and solved the crossword puzzle at the end. But, he figured, it had never quite clicked.

She lifted her eyes to his, and Steve saw recognition that resonated deep inside his own chest, probably in the very place where his soul lived.

“Took us a while to get here, didn’t it?” he asked quietly, although whether he meant the century of separation or the few years that it had taken them to appreciate these small moments, he wasn’t sure. Maybe both.

“It was worth the wait,” Diana said.

“Yeah. It was.”

She stepped towards him, her hand sliding over the small of Steve’s back as he turned off the stove before dipping his head closer to hers.

“Morning,” he murmured.

She smiled. “Good morning.”

Her lips brushed against his, a habitual touch that spoke of familiarity.

Yeah, Steve thought. It was definitely worth the wait.  

It was when they were mostly done with their breakfast that Diana’s cell phone rang. She was finishing her tea and Steve was paging through that newspaper—hey, they hadn’t fought hard for that staple scene of normalcy to simply let it go to waste, had they? and come on, he was getting better at those goddamned crossword puzzles—but the sound gave them both pause.

A phone call on the weekend was not in and of itself unusual. After all, the museum was open on weekends. In addition to that, there were digs and other projects that could require urgent assistance. And, of course, there was the League and their business. But, a call at 10 AM on a Sunday was not something that happened often.

Steve glanced towards Diana across the table, an eyebrow arched.

She shrugged and stood up, heading into the bedroom where she had left her phone. He heard her voice as she answered, intrigued enough to forget about the paper and the last piece of bacon on his plate.

When Diana stepped into the kitchen minutes later, there was a frown on her face, her phone still clutched in her hand.

“What?” Steve prompted, standing up as his heart kicked against his breastbone, his mind helpfully painting half a million worst-case scenarios.

“It was Bruce,” she said, looking up at him. She pressed her lips into a tight line as she set her phone down on the table.

“What happened?”

“Barbara Ann.” Diana rubbed her forehead and then ran her hand down her face. Steve waited. “She left. She went on a walk around the property, and then she never came back. Bruce said she took the ID papers he got made for her and some clothes, but left the bank cards. And now she’s…gone.”

Notes:

Thank you for making it this far :)

I cannot believe that this story is almost over. Also, I can't believe it's taking place in the past already. How is it 2022??? Where did 2021 go? (Also, it was very long and slow, don't ask me how exactly, I don't know :P)

You guys have been so wonderful and so supportive this entire time, and I can't thank you enough for that. What a wonderful bunch you are! 🥰🥰🥰

As always, comments are highly appreciated! Please stay safe and take good care of yourselves, and I'll see you next week!

Chapter 30

Notes:

Hello everyone, I hope you guys are doing well :) Welcome to the last chapter of this story, technically. There will be an epilogue but, strictly speaking, this is it, mostly. I'm sad. And I'm very grateful for all of you and your support! I hope you'll enjoy these last bits.

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

Chapter Text

They didn’t look for Barbara Ann. Not really, at least.

Part of Diana wondered if they should have, considering everything Barbara Ann had done over the past four decades. But then she’d remind herself that it was not Barbara Ann at all, but something that had taken over her. A curse that she was free from now.

In the days following her departure, Bruce had been tempted to engage his channels and resources, but Diana didn’t allow it. Whatever her reasoning was, Barbara Ann was not a criminal. She had not been a prisoner at the Manor, either—they had made that clear. She had been free to come and go as she pleased, and if she had chosen to leave, abruptly as it was, it was not within their right to try and keep her there.

“She could still be dangerous,” Bruce had told her, his voice reasonable and pragmatic, and maybe a tad annoyed.

“She is not,” Diana had countered. “Keep an eye on any incidents that could have her old MO, however.”

“Like people being torn to pieces?” he had clarified flatly.

Diana hadn’t responded, refusing to take the bait.

She understood the guilt and the need to start anew all too well to hold it against Barbara Ann. After all, she had packed up her old life and started afresh more times than she could count, never looking back for fear of regret consuming her entire being. She had left people behind and places that had meant a lot to her for the sake of peace and safety, even at the cost of heartache that sometimes haunted her still.

Still, it didn’t surprise her that Bruce’s surveillance had revealed nothing.

It was not them that Barbara Ann was running away from but herself, and Diana was willing to give her that space. She was certain that her old friend would resurface eventually, maybe years later. Or maybe not. Maybe she would carve out a life for herself that would be running parallel to Diana’s, their paths never crossing again.

One way or another, it was not Diana’s choice to make.

She tried not to let the sense of responsibility get to her. She was no more in charge of the situation now than she had been when Barbara Ann had picked up the Dreamstone and made her wish to be something more than she was meant to be.

And then, with that thought, Diana simply let the situation go.

There was a new exhibit coming up at the Louvre and her department was working round the clock to make it happen on time, polishing it to perfection. There was a marketing campaign to prepare and press releases to compile and distribute. Diana had checked and rechecked all exhibits and installations countless times over the weeks leading up to it, grateful for the busyness and the familiarity of it, her mind running a mile per second as she ticked off the tasks in her head.

There was a comfort to it and to knowing that she had something to fall back on to find her equilibrium in the moments when the rest of the world worked hard to knock the ground from beneath her feet.

And then, of course, there was Steve.

Looking back at her own wish, all those years ago, Diana could never have imagined that it was possible to get what they had right now. Her amorphous desire to have him back had turned into something beyond anything she could have possibly asked for.  

She was working at home one day, a stack of papers spread out on the dining table as she tried to put an exhibition together, playing with the printout descriptions of the items the way she would have if they were a diorama and trying to arrange them to her liking before she sent the entire setup to Celeste to pass it on to the other curators.

Absorbed in her task, Diana didn’t hear him approach. Didn’t know he was even at home until his arms slid around her from behind and he dipped his head to press a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the side of her neck.

It made her breath catch and her heart jump, knocking frantically against her ribs.

“You work too much,” he whispered as his mouth moved towards the slope where her neck curved into her shoulder.

Diana smiled, tilting her head a little to the side to give him better access as she leaned back into him, her body melting into his touch.

“With all the time off I had to take lately, I barely work at all,” she pointed out, biting her lip when he sucked hard on her skin, lest whatever sound she made escaped her throat, her hand curling reflexively over his forearm.

Steve hummed, and even though she could not see his face, she was certain that he was smiling.

“Still too much,” he murmured, his fingers sliding beneath the hem of her blouse and skittering along the skin of her abdomen, raising goosebumps in their wake.

Diana swore under her breath and turned around in the circle of his embrace, winding her arms around his neck as she chased his mouth with her. There was no way she was getting any work done now, she knew. Not for a while.

Things between them were good; better than good. She loved waking up next to him every morning and falling asleep in the circle of his arms every night. She loved the sound of his voice and his laughter and the smell of him on the sheets. She loved his rumpled hair when he shuffled into the kitchen in the morning and the way he scrunched his nose when she teased him. She loved that they could talk about anything and nothing, and that there was nothing that she couldn’t tell him. She loved that he was smart and clever and that he was amazing to work with, but that he could make her laugh like no one else and that he understood her without words.

She loved being in love with him and knowing that he loved her back unashamedly and unapologetically and without reservation. That he still had parts of him that he wasn’t proud of but that he was not trying to hide them from her, trusting Diana to love all of him the way she knew he loved her.

They didn’t argue often, but they had learned to walk out of their disagreements without leaving scars on one another. She loved that he never tried to placate her, that he was not afraid to speak his opinion even when he knew she would disapprove. It was not perfect, by all means. No relationship ever was, Diana was starting to learn. Not even when you loved something with everything that you were. But it was worth working on and fighting for, and that, to her, was the only thing that mattered.

Part of her wondered— feared —if the same apprehension that had made her keep the League at arm’s length was going to push Steve away. That she wouldn’t be able to help and that the walls that she was so good at building would destroy them. Yet, the truth was that, while it had taken some work, at the end of the day, opening up to him was easier than she had expected. It was not about being strong or proving anything to herself. It was about trust and devotion, and as far as Steve was concerned, there was no shortage of either between them.

Zeus help her, the way he looked at her sometimes…

She wondered, at times, what her life would be like if she hadn’t picked up that stone from its crate in 1984 and hadn’t made her wish. All these years later, and it still hadn’t quite ceased to amaze her how something twisted and wrong had, in the end, led to the best thing that had ever happened to her.

A long time ago, she used to wonder how something as ugly and violent and wretched as the war could have given her something as marvellous as meeting Steve Trevor. One would think that nothing good could ever be born out of something that awful.

Decades later, she used to wish that the Dreamstone had never been unearthed, but she was not so sure anymore. Not with how it had all worked out eventually. It made her wonder if there were other people in the world who also hadn’t gotten exactly what they had asked for when they’d made their wishes, but in the end, had gained much more than they had ever expected.

---

When Amanda Waller resurfaced with the new Suicide Squad team a few months later, Diana was not surprised.

The woman sure had a knack for not knowing when to quit.

Bruce didn’t seem to care.

“As long as she stays away from us,” he pointed out.

The rest of the League seemed to be in agreement with that, though Victor appeared to be a bit more wary than most, all too aware that it was him that A.R.G.U.S. was most interested in getting their hands on.  

Steve was mostly intrigued, particularly by the whole new team of metahumans that Waller had unearthed.  

“How many of you guys are out there?” he asked her one evening while he loaded the dishwasher.

Standing at the counter with a glass of wine, Diana smiled as she sipped it. “Probably more than we’ll ever know,” she responded.

That was, indeed, the question of the century, wasn’t it? Some were people born with abilities, like her and Arthur, but many others were people who had gained them during the course of their lives, like Victor and Barry. They would likely never find them all, Diana mused.

She suspected that the bout of Waller’s activity was tied to the disappearance of the Lazarus Pits. That Waller hadn’t tried to stop the Justice League from destroying them was something that still puzzled Diana, but her best guess was the Director of A.R.G.U.S. had her hands tied. If she had interfered, she would have had to answer to her superiors, and that was probably something that she found even less thrilling than dealing with the League.

She was pissed, Diana didn’t doubt that, but that was a silent war that the League had won. This time around, at least.

Hence, Waller got herself a new hobby and a new team of supervillains that she wanted to use as pawns to do her dirty work for her. Diana suspected that the League would be called in to clean up the mess eventually, when things went south, but she chose not to think of it just yet.

“They have a talking shark,” Steve pointed out in that tone of awe that he normally reserved for things that bewildered him beyond measure.

Diana merely shook her head, endeared by his expression more than the cause of it. (She chose not to point out that in their line of work, the talking mutant shark was not even the most bizarre thing they’d had to deal with.) 

As for the Lazarus Pits, there was only one of them remaining, to their knowledge. The one that had brought Steve back to life and that they hadn’t yet gone back to deal with, too swept up in the aftermath of Cheetah’s capture to think about it.

The theory, albeit the one that they had no proof to support, was that the magic that had kept Cheetah trapped in her curse had also kept the pools alive, their connection something that they could neither deny, nor prove with absolute certainty. In the months after Barbara Ann’s return to the world of humans, there had been no more reports about the Lazarus Pits opening up again. Nor had there been any more people falling victims to the mysterious chemicals in that water.

Diana wondered if they would ever know the whole truth.

But, she was not the one to push for the elimination of the very last one of them. Selfishly, she wanted to know that if all else failed, they still had something, anything, to fall back on if anything ever happened to Steve again.

The thought of putting him through that experience once more was intolerable, but the idea of losing him was something that she could not stand either.

At the end of the day, she knew that should they need it, it would need to be Steve’s decision and that she would have to accept whatever he chose. But, she hoped, that was not going to happen anytime soon, if ever.

Waller and the pools aside, life had gone back to normal, more or less. Diana had long stopped trying to define normal, but she was willing to take the moments of reprieve as they came.

It was not going to be an easy road for both of them, she knew. Losing Steve had been traumatic for her, and the deep-seated fear for his well-being was something that she could not simply brush off as a mere inconvenience. Steve’s own past was something that he was still working through, his mind wandering off where she could not follow him in those moments. It would take time, she was aware, but they were in no rush.

She still dreamed of the fire that had taken his life sometimes, of her powers leaving her and her sword breaking and her gods abandoning her for the last time. It was in Steve’s arms that she found comfort in those moments, a silent reassurance and the beating of his heart beneath her palm enough to smooth out the ragged edges of her panic and his quiet voice in her ear chasing her demons away.

He still awoke with his breath caught in his throat from his own nightmares about the horrors of war, his skin coated with a thin film of cold sweat. He never spoke of them, and Diana often wondered if he dreamed of things that she had inadvertently glimpsed into all those months ago.

But, those nights were growing few and far between. She wondered if they would ever come to a day when their fears would let them be.

They had the future together, and that was the only thing that mattered. The future that had once felt like an unattainable illusion, and Diana knew better than to take it for granted. She understood the importance of the small moments, like coffee in bed or leisurely walks along the Seine on the weekends or the comfortable way his hand felt in hers.

She was determined to make them count.

---

Gotham, 2022

When John Constantine finally made an appearance, he was nothing like what Steve had ever imagined a sorcerer would look like. He looked rumpled and tired, his beige trench coat wrinkled as though he slept in it every night and his blond hair mussed and unkempt. If Steve Trevor was a betting man, he would have bet that it had been weeks since the last time Constantine had properly rested.

It had taken Bruce all of two months to track him down, and another three weeks for Constantine to finally squeeze a pit stop in Gotham into his otherwise undoubtedly busy schedule. Steve wondered what that schedule looked like, his curiosity piqued.

He and Diana had had to fly in on short notice, though Steve had offered to go on his own, feeling a little ashamed to pull her away from work that was probably more important than a meeting in a back alley with someone who would likely deliver bad news. Still, the truth was, he was deeply grateful that she had insisted she would come with, saying something vague about a business meeting she could squeeze in and maybe catching up with the League—all of which, he suspected, had been an attempt to make him feel better about dragging her halfway around the globe for a ten-minute tête-à-tête.

Now, standing in some grimy alley in Gotham city, Steve was not convinced the entire trip had been worth their trouble, made worse by the late-April drizzle that hung in the air rather than falling from the sky, a perpetual wetness coating everything around them.

The man before them took a drag on his cigarette, its tip burning bright red in the encroaching darkness. He puffed out a cloud of smoke and grinned, the cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“Why, Princess, if I knew that you were the one looking, I wouldn’t have turned off my phone,” he drawled in a thick British accent that Steve failed to place.

Meanwhile, Constantine gave Diana a pointed once-over for good measure, but there was humour behind his piercing blue eyes that looked, to Steve, endlessly tired. He wondered what the man’s story was and how he had ended up in that line of business—was being a sorcerer even a business? Or was that something you were born with? Steve had even asked Bruce once, but had only gotten a vague non-answer. He suspected he’d get even less out of Constantine himself.

Standing beside Steve with her arms folded across her chest, Diana only rolled her eyes, neither insulted, nor particularly bothered by the other man’s comment. Which intrigued Steve quite a fair bit.

Smoothing his hand down the front of his shirt, Constantine straightened his crooked tie and then flicked his cigarette into a puddle on the ground before immediately reaching into the pocket of his trench coat for a cigarette pack. He shook out another one and stuck it between his lips, but didn’t light it up straight away. Instead, he cocked her head and peered at Diana.

There was something about the deliberate casualness of his actions that made Steve wonder if he knew exactly why they were there and what they had sought him out for. But John Constantine was entirely impossible to read.

“Good to see you, John,” Diana said.

“Always the kind soul, Your Highness. I knew you liked me.” He wiggled his eyebrows at her as he rocked on the balls of his feet.

Steve was starting to see why Bruce’s jaw would twitch every time someone so much as mentioned Constantine. It was hard to imagine the two of them getting along, which only left Steve more curious. So much so that for a moment, he had almost forgotten what the entire meeting was about, and when Constantine asked, “So, how can I be of service?” Steve’s mind went completely blank.

He felt, for all intents and purposes, entirely out of place in that conversation even if it had everything to do with him.

A peculiar feeling.

“Do you remember that charm that you tracked down for Bruce a few years ago?” Diana inquired, her voice even and casual.

Steve cast a curious look towards her. If he didn’t know any better, he would have easily believed that she was entirely disinterested in what was happening there.

Constantine wasn’t fooled.

“The Soul Amulet?” he echoed and puckered his lips together as he considered his answer. “What of it? As I said, there is only one of them, and if you lost it—”

“I didn’t lose it,” Diana interjected.

Constantine’s eyes flashed with unmasked curiosity. Another moment, and something clicked in his mind. His eyes darted towards Steve for the first time since he had popped up out of nowhere—literally—right before them some five minutes ago, looking both like he had just rolled out of bed and walked out of a battle.

“Ah, I remember it now. You told me you tried to find someone but—” He gave Diana another studious look before his gaze swung back to Steve. “You must be that accident that she mentioned.”

“I’m not—” Steve started but cut off when Constantine stepped towards him and peered at him as though he was trying to see right into Steve’s soul, their faces only inches apart. “Um…”

“Interesting,” the sorcerer muttered as he moved away.

Steve looked towards Diana, puzzled, but she was watching Constantine.

“You told me the amulet finished the spell,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, I did,” Constantine echoed absently. And then he grinned. “Say, what is Batty up to these days? He doing well with that cat friend of his?”

Which one, Steve wondered. He was starting to see why the League members were finding the entire situation with Catwoman and Cheetah confusing.

Seemingly not interested in a response, Constantine fished a lighter out of the pocket of his pants and flicked it once, twice. The flame finally caught on the third try, shooting into the damp air as Constantine lifted it to the tip of his cigarette, cupping his hand over it as he inhaled.

He flicked the lighter shut and let out a long billow of smoke.

“You said you could make the spell irreversible,” Diana reminded him, and it was the first time that Steve caught a trace of emotion in her voice.

He wished he could reach for her hand, almost achingly so. Wished he could reassure her and promise her a thousand times that he was not going anywhere even if he had to sell his soul to the Devil himself. He wanted—

He took a breath and forced himself to focus.

They had barely spoken of any of this in the past week. She had hardly acknowledged Bruce’s call two days ago as though it was merely a footnote in her schedule and nothing more. Moron, Steve thought. He should have known better. He should have known that she was anxious about any information Constantine could have given them. More so than Steve, probably.

He kicked himself mentally for not thinking of that sooner. For being so sucked into his own restlessness that he had never considered hers.

But, he couldn’t do anything, or say anything. Not in front of Constantine. Which only made Steve’s shame deepen. What was he thinking, truly?

A kaleidoscope of emotions chased across his features—it must have, at least, for when their eyes met, Diana’s expression softened momentarily as though she knew exactly what he was thinking. A moment passed, her gaze holding his.

“Ah, this is how it is with you two,” Constantine said, his gaze flicking between the two of him. “Isn’t it grand?”

The way he was looking at them reminded Steve somewhat of Barry, in the early days of learning about his relationship with Diana. Although the mock-awe looked slightly more disturbing on John Constantine.

Steve pushed the thought aside, determined to banish it from his mind forever.

“I believe we had a deal,” Constantine said, casually, as he slid his hands into the pockets of his coat.

“We had,” Diana acknowledged.

Steve’s head swivelled towards her. That was the first time he was hearing about some deal. She had never mentioned any deal when she had told him about possibly asking Constantine to work his magic.

He wasn’t sure he liked it.

Constantine nodded, all business-like.

“Now, I think you still have that Incan warrior mask in that fancy museum of—”

“Now, wait a second,” Steve started, when he caught up on where it was all going.

Both Constantine and Diana seemingly didn’t hear him.

“No,” she said calmly, shaking her head.

Constantine grimaced. “Aw, come on…”

Steve looked at her. “Diana,” he started with a warning.

“You’re twisting my arm, love,” the sorcerer sighed.

“Not that kind of deal, John.”

They stared at each other, unmoving and not speaking for a long moment. Steve glanced between them, completely mesmerized. Where Constantine was cocky and gambling, Diana remained sure and unwavering.

Steve made a mental note to ask her later how she got to know that man and what their story was.

She arched an elegant brow at Constantine and he heaved a dramatic sigh, accompanied by an eye-roll.

“You are going to owe me,” he muttered with dismay.

And maybe it was the poor light or the play of shadows but Steve was certain that he saw Diana smirk.

“Very well,” she said.

After another moment, Constantine huffed out a breath. “You have it?” he inquired.

A brief moment of hesitation, and then Diana was reaching into the pocket of her jacket and pulling the box that Steve hadn’t seen since the night she had told him everything about the Dreamstone and what had happened in 1984.

Intrigued, Steve watched her pop it open and hand it over to Constantine.

The other man ignored the box but plucked the amulet that winked at them in the yellow light of the few street lamps.

Steve stared at it. Again, he had a distinct feeling like he could see something moving inside of it as though the stone was alive somehow. As though it was hollow and filled with smoke.

If it bothered Constantine, or if he even gave it a thought, Steve couldn’t tell. The sorcerer’s fist curled over the pendant, the silver chair hanging between his fingers. His lips moved as though he was saying something soundlessly. Or maybe he just needed to push his cigarette to the other corner of his mouth—Steve couldn’t tell for sure.

He felt his brows knit together, the cold of the night and the darkness falling away, his focus centred entirely on Constantine’s fist. So much so that he was barely breathing.

Beside him, he felt Diana stand just as rigidly, her posture stiff.

After a minute, Constantine squeezed his fingers tighter until his knuckles turned white.

When he opened his palm, the stone was gone, only a bit of dust remaining in its place. Constantine caught the chain before it fell to the ground and then smoothly dropped it into the box that Diana was still holding, shaking the dust off his hands afterwards, his face a picture of deep self-satisfaction.

“All done,” he announced, indulgently. “Everyone happy?”

Diana lifted her gaze to his, her brows furrowed.

“That’s it?”

Constantine smirked. “What did you expect, Princess? Fireworks? Zee likes those tricks but they’re not quite my style, and you should—”  

“Can you make him immortal?” Diana cut him off.

Her question made Steve freeze, all air rushing out of him as his heart started to pound in earnest.

Constantine frowned. “Even more immortal?”

Steve blinked. “What do you mean more?”

The sorcerer sighed and turned to Steve, his face a mask of dismay over the bluntness of humankind, it seemed. “See, pal,” he started patiently, “the way this thing worked—you came back the way you were when you went poof, however that happened. Not sure I wanna know. And you’re here to stay that exact way. Erm, preserved, so to speak .”

Steve stared at him. “Am I not going to get old?”

“Would you want to?” Constantine wrinkled his nose.

Steve glanced towards Diana but she was watching the other man, her expression a mix of hope and disbelief and a million things in-between that he couldn’t read when his own mind was in such complete disarray.

“No, I mean… I just…”

Constantine turned to Diana. “Is he always this slow?” he sighed dramatically before looking at Steve. “You’re going to just be…” he motioned vaguely, “like this for as long as she’s alive, since she kicked the whole thing in motion. It’s the old magic, see, and old magic is no joke. You don’t mess with it unless you’re not ready for happily ever after, and I do mean ever after.”

“I can’t die?” Steve echoed dumbly, his mind reeling.

This time, Constantine flicked the lighter on and lit up his cigarette. “Of course, you can die. You think anyone can survive a decapitation? Not even she is immune to that.” He pointed at Diana, between puffs of smoke. “It’s why they were so popular in France for a while. You know, in the Middle Ages. That aside—you’re grand.”

“Why haven’t you told me before?” Diana asked, quietly.

“You never asked,” Constantine shot back, though there was no malice or irritation in his voice. If anything, Steve glimpsed a flicker of sympathy. He glanced between them. “We good here? I’ve got business to do, with paying clients. Unless you’ve changed your mind about that Incan mask.”

When no one said anything, he heaved another sigh and then turned on his heel to leave.

“John,” Diana called after him.

Constantine stopped in his tracks and turned around, offering her a toothy smile while he simultaneously puffed some smoke out of the corner of his mouth.

“I wouldn’t lie about something like that,” he said jovially, his tone at an odd dissonance with his rumpled look and his tired eyes. “Not to you, Princess. Have some faith.”

Diana took a breath. “Thank you.”

Constantine saluted her. “Give my best to Batty, I’ll be over to collect.”

He blew out more smoke, and when it settled the alley was empty as though he had never been there.

Steve stared at the spot where the other man had stood only moments ago, feeling his jaw go slack.

“Did he just…?” He turned to Diana but trailed off when their eyes met, nearly knocked back by the storm of emotion chasing across her face.

She glanced down at the jewellery box still sitting on the palm of her hand, a silver chain gleaming against the velvet padding. She snapped it shut and slid it into the pocket of her jacket. Her eyes moved up to survey the alley as though she half-expected John Constantine to pop out of thin air once more, but it remained empty and quiet.

In the end, she reached for Steve’s hand.

“Let’s go.”

---

A few hours later, Diana allowed herself to replay the conversation with Constantine in her mind.

She and Steve hadn’t spoken much of what he had said on their way to Wayne Manor, taking Bruce up on his offer to stay there for the night instead of booking a hotel room. They hadn’t spoken about much of anything upon arrival either, distracted by something else entirely—there had been a kind of desperation pulsing through her the second Steve’s hands skated across her skin. The need to reassure herself that he was there, that he was real.

Now, draped over his chest, her breathing evening out slowly, she allowed herself to truly absorb the weight of Constantine’s revelations, the enormity of everything that she didn’t know how to accept and understand just yet.

The room was dark and quiet, the patter of rain outside plunging the world into the sea of white noise. The sheets were soft against her skin and the air smelled faintly of wood polish and linen detergent, but she couldn’t stop feeling the warmth of the fire from the hearth in that small room above the inn all those decades ago and the slight smell of dust and every single wish she had made that night, begging her gods for things that she hadn’t been able to even put into words.

Immortal.

Preserved.

It was a strange word to use in regards to human life. He was not a jar of pickles, after all. But it fit, Diana had to admit that much.

Forever with Steve.

Her mind was swimming from the mere idea of it, so monumental and surreal, and yet—

Had it not been all she had ever wished for?

“Did you know?” Steve asked softly, his voice oddly loud in the dark, as though sensing what she was thinking about.

Or maybe, Diana thought, it was because it was exactly what he was thinking about, too.

Sprawled out on the sheets, he was tracing idle patterns over the expanse of her back, his heart still beating rapidly beneath Diana’s cheek but he was clearly coming to his senses, she couldn’t help but think with a smile.

She allowed her fingers to trace the jut of his collarbone, painting a trail up the column of his throat and then back down, her thoughts swirling.

“No,” she murmured.

And she hadn’t. The truth was that Constantine’s revelation was something that she couldn’t have imagined. Even Diana’s wildest dreams had never painted a picture quite like that, the answer never being as simple as it had turned out to be.

Diana turned her face and pressed a kiss to an old scar on his chest, one of a few that had remained on his body after his dip in the Lazarus Pit. She smiled when Steve sucked in a shaky breath, stilling beneath her touch and then relaxing slowly, his heart picking up its pace beneath her palm. She kissed his skin again and then, finally, lifted her head to look at him, his face a pale spot in front of her as her vision adjusted just enough to make out his features.

“Forever is a long time,” Steve said, carefully, his fingers threading slowly through her hair.

And there it was again, that feeling that kept blossoming behind her ribs, growing bigger and brighter until Diana could barely stand it, fearing that her chest might burst from the pure joy of it.

She rolled over, stretching over him, her face mere inches away from his.

“Not long enough,” she whispered as her eyes flicked between his.

One corner of his mouth twitched, and then the other one, until he was smiling that dazzling smile of his at her. The one that always felt like a punch to her very soul.

She felt his hands slide along her sides and up her back, holding her right where she was.

“What if you get tired of me?” he inquired, with a formality that made her own smile stretch all the way across her face.

Diana pushed her fingers through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead, allowing her fingertips to trail down his cheek. Her skin was tingling where it was in contact with his.

“What if you get tired of me?” she teased back.

He chuckled. “There’s always a guillotine, yeah?”

She rolled her eyes at his absurdity, muttering something in Greek about men and their ridiculousness under her breath. But when she tried to move away, Steve locked his arms behind her back, tightening his hold on her.

She watched his smile fade, a flicker of concern flashing behind his eyes. Pressed close to him, Diana could feel his heart beating as though it was her own. Could almost hear the wheels in his head turning too, for that matter.

“You know that you don’t have to—” he started and faltered. “That I don’t expect—” He took a breath. “That if this is not what you want…”

Diana lifted her hand. She traced her thumb along his bottom lip.

He fell silent, watching her in the near-complete darkness.

He was not the most easily swayed man, she knew. With everything that he knew about her, after meeting the people she worked with, there was not much that could throw him off anymore. But he was also practical and pragmatic. It would have been hard for him to take Constantine’s words in stride, even if a long life was what he wanted. And now that he had time to consider the ramifications of his situation, he was starting to think beyond here and now.

Diana should have seen it coming, perhaps.

Romantic as the idea of their life together, without deadlines and limitations was, it was still huge. Bigger than anything that either one of them had ever considered before. She knew where he was coming from, too. It was not about doubting her feelings towards him, she was aware. But he felt responsible, in a way, for making sure that she still had the freedom of choice.

Still, her heart clenched fiercely and then unfurled in her chest.

She traced her thumb along his bottom lip once more and then, helpless against the urge to kiss him, she leaned forward and brushed her mouth to his. Lightly at first, and then deeper when Steve tilted his head, his lips parting beneath hers.

“It is you, Steve,” she whispered after she drew back. “It will never be anyone but you.”

When she looked at him, he appeared to be a little dazed.

Diana smiled.

“But only if you want it, too,” she added.

“I do,” he said quickly, and she laughed. “I do,” he insisted, holding her closer still. “You think I ever stood a chance?”

“Charmer,” she murmured, fondly, relaxing against him now that it felt like the matter was finally settled for good. At least, for the time being.

He chuckled and twisted a piece of her hair around his finger before tucking it behind her ear. Diana watched his gaze sweep over her face, taking her in with a new consideration. As though this was the first time he ever laid his eyes on her and he was trying to memorize her. Which made her think of the very first time she saw him, his clothes sopping wet and his hair plastered to his head, and his eyes so, so blue.

His features softened, and she wondered if he, too, was thinking of that day on the beach. She wondered if he remembered it as clearly as she did.

“There goes my pipe dream of ageing with dignity,” Steve noted with mock dismay, his thumb running absently over her cheekbone.

Diana grinned. “Such a hard life you live.”

“Hey, I think some grey would look good on me,” he protested. “It looked good on my father.”

“It would,” she agreed, touching his hair near his temple.

“And a few wrinkles,” he added, thoughtfully.

“A few more missions with Barry and you’ll have that grey. And maybe those wrinkles, too.”

Steve laughed. “Duly noted, Miss Prince.”

Smirking, Diana craned her neck to kiss him once more. Her mouth slid along his jaw then, revelling in the sound of his breath catching. Her lips lingered on his skin as she held onto that moment, desperate to bottle it up and hold it in her heart for the rest of eternity.

When she lifted her head again to look at him, his eyes were dark and hungry, making something warm and needy unspool in the centre of her chest. Hera help her, no one had ever looked at her the way he did.

“I love you,” she breathed, feeling her heart knock against her chest. She was certain that she would never get tired of saying those words. Not even after ten thousand years.

Steve trailed his fingers down her cheek. “I love you, too,” he echoed.

Diana kissed him once more, softly, and then she shifted against him and settled into the comfort of his body, her head tucked beneath his chin. She felt his hand stroke her hair and then run over her back, the touch comfortable and familiar in a way that she couldn’t put into words but that made her crave more of it, greedily and unashamedly.

Somewhere in this house, the members of the Justice League were peacefully asleep. A mile away at the lake house, Alfred was probably reading late into the night, cozied up with one of the novels that he seemed to favour. Bruce was somewhere on the streets of Gotham, if she had to take a guess. Diana hoped that he would find peace one day, if he hadn’t already.

She and Steve had decided they weren’t going to tell them what they had learned from Constantine tonight. One day, they would. But not right now. Not so soon—she needed, desperately, to simply revel in that feeling of Constantine’s revelation for a while, not shared with anyone except the man holding her in his arms. She needed to seep it in and feel drunk on it and feel it thrum in her veins until she could no longer remember what the fear of losing him had been like, all that time.

“He was joking about the guillotine, wasn’t he?” Steve asked after a long moment of silence, his voice a quiet husk in the night.

The question made her smile.

“Not very likely.”

“You have weird friends. You know that, right?”

Diana smoothed her palm down his chest. “Sleep,” she whispered, and he chuckled, a low sound reverberating straight into her core.

Tomorrow, they would go back to Paris where her work awaited. But in a few months, during a lull in her packed schedule, they would take a few weeks off and go away together and take their time to celebrate the news, she mused. Without crises or interruptions, just them and the rest of their lives unfolding in front of them like a canvas waiting to be filled.

She used to miss him and long for him and dream of his return, her mind weaving a story about the impossible. But now, all these years later, the reality was nothing like what she had imagined. Not even close. And it was nothing like what she had asked for when she had made that wish, completely on a whim.

Instead, it was infinitely better.

---

Paris, 2022

A message from Barry arrived a couple of weeks later and was as vague as they came. There was some obscure case that Bruce was looking into and that Victor was supposed to be part of but he was involved with something else, and could Steve maybe offer his expert opinion if he had a chance?

The long, and only mildly coherent, text had lacked punctuation but had included a wide array of emojis peppered within it. Emojis that had done nothing to make it any more coherent.

Needless to say, Steve was intrigued.

He phoned Alfred, gathered more intel and set to work. It seemed that there was a contraband ring operating internationally and likely involved with selling samples of metahuman DNA and other biological material to anyone who would pay a high enough price.

The case, in and of itself, was a no-brainer. But Steve didn’t mind—he liked feeling useful, having never found the idea of idleness particularly appealing.

Over the next few days, he exchanged a few more messages with Barry and received more detailed information from Alfred, who had even managed to draw Arthur into their happy circle of investigators so he could keep an eye on anything suspicious in Aquaman's neck of the woods while A.R.G.U.S. was none the wiser. Bruce, as it turned out, had someone tracking the suspects somewhere in central Africa while Clark appeared to be using some more legal channels to follow the development of the situation—none of them wanted the criminals to notice anything and lay low.

In Paris, Steve had managed to narrow down the list of suspects, so to speak, and the search area for them to use. He didn’t have all the fancy toys and gadgets and systems that the Batcave was stuffed with, but over the past few years of doing this for Diana, he certainly knew his way around the places that regular people rarely had access to.

On the afternoon of the fourth day after Barry’s original message, Steve printed out the maps and the graphs and locations, spreading them out over the coffee table in the living room—

And that was when Diana walked in, home from work earlier than he had expected.

“What is all this?” she asked, intrigued, as her gaze swept over the papers, keen and inquisitive.

Steve paused, feeling caught doing something wrong, though not sure why, exactly. 

“Um…” He ran his hand over his hair. “You’re home early,” he said dumbly.

She smiled and arched an elegant eyebrow at him.

“And it seems like I’ve been missing out on something interesting. Have I not?”

Steve grimaced.

“It’s… ah, Barry asked for my opinion on something,” he said smoothly.

Her eyebrow climbed up higher.

“Barry?” she echoed, even more curious. “Is there a new mission?”

“Well, no,” Steve hedged. “Not exactly. I mean, not yet. They are trying to figure something out and Alfred thought—”

“Alfred,” Diana repeated.

Steve sighed and flinched inwardly, feeling the back of his neck grow hot a little. He had never been good at keeping things from her, however inadvertently.

He had meant to speak to her about that conversation he’d had with Clark, that time when they’d gone to Gotham before Barbara Ann ran away. About working with the League more, and more officially. He honest to god had. But, stuck between ‘not the right time’ and still trying to figure out if that was something he was ready to commit to, he never had.

And then Barry’s message had arrived.

Under her scrutiny right now, he was starting to realize that he maybe should have brought it up the same night. Just to save them both from this exact moment.

Caught red-handed, he was sort of starting to see how it looked to her. How it must look to her—like he had been lying to her.

He hated the idea.

Diana watched him without saying anything else, her eyes both quizzical and somewhat amused.

Now was probably a good time to come clean, he figured.

“Why are you home early?” he blurted out instead.

She pressed her lips around a smile.

“Didn’t want to miss that dinner reservation of yours,” she reminded him.

Steve blinked.

Dinner. Right. His gaze darted towards the clock on the mantel as he realized shamefully that their date night that he had planned the week before had completely escaped his mind.

He sighed and turned to Diana.

“There is no mission,” he started. “Yet.”

And then he told her about the conversation he’d had with Clark when Diana had been speaking with Barbara Ann. And then about the request that Barry had sent, outlining his finds and what the rest of them had discovered, asking for Steve’s advice.

Steve helping still wasn’t a formal commitment, at any rate. But the idea still had him intrigued and excited, and he knew that she could hear it in his voice.

Diana listened without interrupting, her eyes moving over the printouts with a new degree of interest, although outside of that, Steve couldn’t tell what she was thinking or how she was feeling about his clumsy and belated confession. Just then, he wished that she was easier to read.

He wondered if she was going to be angry or offended that he hadn’t said anything sooner, but when she finally looked at him, all Steve saw was kindness.

“Do you want to do it?” she asked softly.

He looked down at the papers strewn all over the coffee table.

“I think they have pretty much got it under control,” he said. “These are just a few details—”

“No,” Diana shook her head. “Do you want to be more involved with the League?”

“I want to work with you,” Steve said immediately, watching her features melt into tenderness. “I wasn’t trying—” He huffed out a breath. “I was still thinking. I wasn’t trying to go behind your back or anything, and I just thought—”

“I know,” she stopped him, her hand coming to touch his arm. “I know, love.”

Steve scrubbed a hand down his face, his heart kicking up its pace a notch.

This was not how the conversation was meant to go. It was not meant to be so… messy and unprepared and barely coherent. Yet here they were, and he was oddly at a loss, struck suddenly by the realization that very few things in life could be planned. Much less monumental ones.  

“Would it be alright with you? ‘Cause I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes, and you don’t have to say yes because I—because we—” he faltered and drew in a breath.

She was biting her lip again, her eyes crinkling at the corners.

Steve clamped his mouth shut, realizing that he was babbling again, and now was not the time for babbling. To think that he used to be quite smooth and coherent before he’d met her…

He shook his head.

“I would love that,” Diana said simply.

He lifted his gaze to hers. “Really?”

Her smile stretched out wider. “Yes.”

Steve cleared his throat, feeling a little flustered. God help him, the effect she had on him. “Good. That’s… good.” He frowned a little. “I don’t think it’s a done deal or anything,” he added quickly. “Is there like a contract or something? Or an initiation process?”

He hadn’t even thought of that before, but once the idea had planted itself in his mind, there was no way back, his mind painting everything from a secret handshake to some kind of blood oath or whatever it could possibly be to make their commitment, well, solid.

Then again, Alfred stocking up the Manor with Barry’s favourite snacks seemed to be working well enough for Barry. Steve wondered what the lure for the rest of them was, if any, aside from their desire to make the world a better place.

And also, did he have to be… like them? And where did his, well, nature put him on that scale? He was not entirely sure if coming back to life, twice, or being ageless, made him a metahuman or just… not entirely a regular human, considering that he was still very much the same he had always been, otherwise. He’d gotten a paper cut the other day, and boy oh boy, did he wish he had the gift of super-healing.

He didn’t think there was a manual to explain all of that, and the enormity of all the things that he couldn’t entirely wrap his mind around just yet was making his head spin.

Diana pressed her lips together and moved closer to him. Close enough that he could smell her perfume, which quite successfully stopped him from thinking about the League altogether, heaven help him.

“Pretty sure you’re doing it already,” she murmured.

“Huh?” Steve frowned. “Oh. Oh. You mean…”

He looked down at the printouts, only then realizing that at least some of them had to be classified, so the fact that they’d sent him all of that—

Was it really all there had to be? He hadn’t even said yes, or no, per se.

“Well, there was that thing that Clark called me about last week, too,” Steve started and trailed off.

Huh.

They had simply assumed…

Then again, there wasn’t much to assume, was there? As if he would have ever walked away from all these exciting things and the shiny cars and all the gadgets and the whole different world that very few knew anything about.

Diana stepped to him, her features softening as her eyes searched his.

He reached for her, sliding his arm around her waist as he leaned forward to press a kiss to her temple.

“You sure it’s okay?” he asked, all the same.

She smoothed a hand over his shoulder, and then allowed her fingers to trail down his cheek.

“You’re a soldier, Steve,” she said, her voice quiet but serious. “You’re a spy. I would never have expected you to stay here and… bake.”

Steve felt his jaw go slack as he sputtered for a moment or two.

“That was one time!” he insisted, feeling indignant.

But she was shaking her head and trying to bite back her laugh.

“You made bread.”

“It was a good loaf,” he said defensively.

She bit her lip. “It was,” she admitted. “But I’d rather have you on missions with me. Unless you’d rather deal with yeast.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, and he shook his head vigorously.

Diana moved to stand in front of him, hands sliding up his shoulders until she had her arms draped around his neck. She tilted her face towards him, and Steve wondered—couldn’t help but wonder—how much it took her to say all that when he knew for a fact that she would in fact be happier if he stayed behind, where nothing could happen to him. Where he couldn’t die and take a piece of her heart with him, the way he had done before.

He swallowed, watching her for another moment, her eyes clear and certain. Steve wasn’t sure he believed it, not entirely. But he believed that she was trying.

A shuddering breath stuttered out of his chest. He drew her closer. Diana was doing that for him, he realized. Because she knew what he wanted to be and what he wanted to do, and she was not going to ask him to go against himself even at the cost of her peace of mind.

He couldn’t promise her that nothing bad was ever going to happen to him. That he was not going to get hurt or worse still—go up in flames and break her heart all over again. But he knew that they were going to figure it all out, together.

In that moment, he didn’t think he had ever loved her more.

“Diana,” he started.

“I would like to work more with you, too,” she said decisively, as though knowing exactly what he was thinking about.

Steve nodded. Then he leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers, relieved and entirely too distracted by her hand playing lazily with the hair near his nape.

“It’s not a done deal or anything,” he warned. “They’ll probably have to—to vote me in or something. Right?”

He wondered what that could possibly be like. Again, something along the lines of a sacred ritual popped up in his head but he pushed the thought aside, embarrassed by the ridiculousness of it.

Diana smiled, a lovely smile that made his heartbeat stutter all over again.

“Perhaps,” she acknowledged.

Steve nodded again.

“Well, I mean, how bad can it be?” he muttered.

He dipped his head and bumped his nose against Diana. She giggled and lifted her face to his—

And that was when his phone started to ring.

Startled, Steve jerked away from her, a sound of protest rising in the back of his throat as his heart gave a wild, panicked tug.

Dismayed, he reached into the pocket of his pants, pulling out his phone. From the screen, the grinning face of Barry Allen stared at him from the caller ID, seemingly mocking him as the damned phone continued to make melodic shrills.

“Aren’t you going to get that?” Diana asked, watching him with a mix of curiosity and amusement.

Steve silenced his phone, dropping it on the table and the stacks of paper still waiting for his attention.

He turned to her and smiled. “Not on date night.”

Notes:

Congratulations to everyone who has made it this far! You're real troopers! As always, this story was never meant to be as long as it got, but well, what can you do, eh?

Please share your thoughts, opinions, or just some random wild rage over injustices in this world :)

Take care guys and I'll see you soon :)

Chapter 31

Notes:

Alright, here comes the very last bit :)

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

Chapter Text

Epilogue

 

Gotham, 2022

When Steve met Amanda Waller for the first time, he was not sure if he was more surprised or impressed.

Sitting across a massive conference desk from him, the imposing woman in a no-nonsense perfectly tailored suit was trying very hard to be intimidating. And mostly succeeding, Steve had to admit. She didn’t scare him or bother him in any particular way, but he was convinced he wouldn’t want to end up on her bad side if he could help it.

He had met people like her before. People who had known how to cause trouble simply for the hell of it and how to be a nuisance of monumental proportions, and he had honestly had enough of that.

But, when Waller’s second stint with the Suicide Squad had ended up in a massive disaster, once again putting the lives of innocent people at risk, it was the League who had had to sweep in and clean up the mess (which had coincidentally ended up being Steve first official mission with them, no less.) Again, Bruce had grumbled when the news had first come in.

Their past history considered, Steve could certainly see the cause of Batman’s discontent.

Hence, the meeting at the A.R.G.U.S. headquarters and the debrief with Director Waller who appeared to be no less pleased with her present company than they were. Which only made Steve’s curiosity pique.

To the left of him, Diana didn’t seem pleased, nor particularly interested in being there, her lips pressed into a thin line, albeit one that bore no animosity. Yet. On Steve’s right, Victor was trying to stare Amanda Waller down, though admittedly, Waller was his worthy opponent there. Sitting next to Victor, Bruce looked pointedly bored.

Barry, to no one’s surprise, had found someplace else to be, seeing as how Waller gave him the creeps, as he had told Steve before he had zoomed away from the rest of the group faster than Steve could so much as blink.

Steve was decidedly starting to understand that.

“You understand, Mr. Wayne, that you have no official jurisdiction to simply do whatever you want?” Waller inquired, her voice cool, composed and formal.

Steve wondered if anyone else aside from him heard the carefully controlled rage underneath it.

Interesting.

He stole a quick glance towards Diana, whose eyes were narrowed and boring into Waller now. Alright, she certainly had heard that. He felt his lips twitch a little and he had to clear his throat to cover his amusement.

Immediately, Waller’s gaze swivelled to him. Steve held it squarely, certain that she didn’t like it. It looked, to him, like Amanda Waller was the kind of person who expected people to shrink and cower down in her presence.

It was, perhaps, no wonder she was practically seething in their present company, he thought, finding his observation amusing.

“Anything you want to share with the class, Captain Trevor?”

Beside Steve, Diana tensed up.

Waller’s gaze moved to her next. She had done her homework then—and if she was even half as good as the rumour was, she’d have done it meticulously. Meaning that his relationship with Diana was no secret to her. Steve could tell that she liked that even less than his bashful attitude and his refusal to be intimidated.

It was not his habit to brandish their romance in anyone’s face, a spark of fierce protectiveness flaring up in his chest. He quelled it, choosing to focus on the fact that, at least, watching Waller process it was entertaining.

He could all but hear the wheels in her head turn as she tried to calculate, perhaps, how it could be used against the League. Against Diana. That was likely what he would be thinking if he was her. It bothered her that Steve was a wild card. Someone new that she knew little about—he was aware that Diana had done her best to ensure there was not much information left about him where the likes of Amanda Waller could find it. No wonder she looked so annoyed.

All things considered, this new chapter of his life was full of interesting discoveries.

Meanwhile, Waller pursed her lips together, but looked away first. Diana, Steve was all too aware, was not someone who could be stared down easily.

“And by jurisdiction you mean…?” Bruce spoke, drawing Waller’s attention to himself.

“You people can’t be simply running around—”

“Excuse me, but the last time we were running around after your stunt with the Arkham Asylum residents, you were the one who asked for our help,” Bruce interjected firmly, his voice icy and dripping with unmasked contempt. “You seem to be forgetting, Director, that your jurisdiction can be severely compromised if—”

“Are you threatening me, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce’s jaw clenched. “I thought we were here for a debrief,” he told her coolly. “By our own accord, at that.”

“It wouldn’t have taken me much effort to summon you with a warrant,” Waller deflected.

At that, Victor scoffed, the sound of it strange and grating in the still air of the windowless conference room with its bright lights glaring above them.

“You’ve got some nerve, lady,” he said, shaking his head, but there was no humour in his voice.

The two security guards at the door tensed, though no one made a move. Steve took note of it, cataloguing their positions and the weapons they carried, but something told him that armed as they were, even they knew not to do anything rash in the presence of Wonder Woman and Cyborg. Common sense and all. If they knew anything about her at all, they certainly knew that she could incapacitate them in a matter of seconds, even without Victor’s help.

Waller levelled him with a steely gaze, her face pinching in displeasure. They had crossed paths before and they would do it again, and she was entirely and completely unhappy about the prospect.

“You have something to say, Mr. Stone?” she inquired.

Victor leaned back in his chair. He glanced towards the guards and nodded at them. They merely stared back, uncertain.  

“Nah, I think you know it all without me having to say it,” he said as he looked at Waller once more.

She glared at him for another moment and then focused on Bruce.

“As I was saying—”

“You’re welcome,” Bruce interrupted.

She gritted her teeth. “I need a written report from all of you,” she said as Bruce stood up.

As expected, the guards didn’t move. Not even when Diana rose next, and then Victor, and then, at last, Steve. Waller remained seated, and though part of Steve wondered if she would try to stop them somehow, she said nothing as they headed for the door.

“I’m sure we’ll come up with something,” Bruce said over his shoulder.

“You seem to be forgetting, Mr. Wayne, that it’s an official federal investigation we’re talking about here,” Waller called after him.

Bruce stopped and turned to her.

“Official federal cover-up, you mean?”

Waller didn’t respond.

“And you seem to be forgetting something, as well, Director,” Diana said, speaking for the first time since their arrival there almost an hour ago, surprising Waller enough that it took her a moment to compose herself as her gaze fixed on Diana.

“And what would that be, Miss Prince?” she inquired, tilting her head, her tone nearly mocking.

A smile so slight that Steve was certain only he noticed it, and only because he had spent years cataloguing and memorizing every single one of Diana’s expressions, touched Diana’s lips. She reached for the door, and the guards obediently stepped aside, allowing her to pull it open.

Steve almost felt for them, and their uneasy predicament. There clearly was no protocol for dealing with the League, and the men were not taking it well.

Diana glanced at Waller fleetingly. “That you need us more than we need you.”


Paris, 2022

There had been no blood oath. Or an initiation, much to Steve’s dismay—he wouldn’t have minded that, all too curious about what something like that could even entail. There hadn’t even been any sort of official contract or anything else of that kind.

“They don’t cover dental, either,” Barry had whispered to him dramatically on that day in Gotham when Steve Trevor had officially joined the Justice League.

“Don’t forget to mention that we’re not unionized as well,” Alfred had noted dryly.

Barry’s eyes had lit up and he had swivelled to Steve.

“Yeah, and they’re not—”

“That was sarcasm, Master Allen,” Alfred had stopped him, giving Barry a look over the rims of his glasses.

It had been all Steve could do so as not to burst out laughing. He had settled on covering it with a cough instead.

What there had been was a rather unofficial-feeling vote (a unanimous yes), a process cut short by Arthur’s question if they were going to get any food afterwards and if afterwards could hurry up and happen sooner. There had been an evening of pizza and beer, followed by a tasting of Bruce’s impressive collection of expensive liquors and, eventually, of Steve following Diana to their room while the party had still been at large, neither of them particularly interested in hanging out with the others after a while.

All in all, it had felt to Steve entirely too informal for a moment as monumental as he had expected it to be. (Aside from that last part, alone with Diana, that had indeed felt very nice.)

Whatever he had expected the work with the League to be, the reality turned out to be nothing like that. It was different and it was more; chaotic and unpredictable and messy at times. The League argued and didn’t always feel collaborative and they definitely didn’t always see eye to eye. But, Steve had learned a long time ago that making the world a better place tended to be messy so he didn’t mind. Not even when plans didn’t work out the way they were meant to and they all had to improvise, or risk losing the battle they were fighting.

In the months following his joining the team, Steve had to take a crash course on how to work with them, for real. Those missions they had done together hunting down the Lazarus Pits, he soon realized, were nothing like most of the stuff they normally dealt with.

He had to learn a lot, and he had to take it all in stride, often feeling like it was making his mind reel.

He knew how to ride a horse and how to be a decent driver behind the wheel of Diana’s Volvo and he knew how to use most of the modern-day weapons that he’d had tested at the shooting range. But, none of that had prepared him for driving Bruce’s sports cars or piloting the Knightcrawler or using many of the advanced weapons stashed in those glass cases that he had seen in the Batcave. None of his previous experiences had prepared him for dealing with the likes of the Joker and the Penguin, which had felt like a free-fall, unsettling and exhilarating all at the same time.

He felt, for all intents and purposes, almost the same as he had during his early days in the 21st century when everything had seemed so new and confusing, as though he had been sent even further into the future, his knowledge about modern-day life suddenly feeling almost archaic, in the face of everything that he was discovering that he still he didn’t know.

He learned to operate the spy software that Victor and Bruce had designed over the past few years and to hack into places that he had never thought were possible to hack into and to do so artfully and without leaving a trace of his presence.

He learned to work with all of them, too, and he’d had to do that all over again as a member of the Justice League and not merely Diana’s boyfriend, just along for the ride. He wouldn’t have lasted long if that was all he was. He had had to prove himself on his own merit and that, Steve had to admit, had made him endlessly and shamelessly proud.

By the time the meeting with Amanda Waller had rolled around, life had almost started to settle into a sort of a routine, split almost equally between Paris and Gotham. At least for the time being. Steve knew that he was meant to be their operative in Europe alongside Diana, but that was going to take time. He needed to get up to speed first, but he was in no rush. Though they hadn’t yet told the League the whole truth about his… situation, Steve liked being in on the small joke about having all the time in the world.

He loved working with them. He loved their passion and their loyalty, and he loved knowing that they could all rely on each other and trust one another with their lives.

They were not Charlie and Chief and Sami but Steve hadn’t been looking for replacements. Instead, this group was wholly different, in the best way, and he was grateful that he was no longer facing the world on his own. That he still had a purpose and people to fight alongside for what he thought was right.

He loved, more than anything, that there still were people in the world willing to do anything to make it a better place for those who couldn’t fight for themselves.

A few years ago, Diana had told him that it was impossible to remove every last trace of Ares’s impact on the world and from man’s hearts; that there would always be wars and people fighting with one another. Steve didn’t know if she was right, if there ever was a chance for the world to rid itself of darkness and violence. But there was something about knowing that there were always people willing to do the right thing that gave him hope.

He was sitting in the kitchen the night they had come back from Gotham, after the meeting with Waller. Perched up shirtless on the stool near the counter, with a bag of frozen peas in his hand, he winced his way through Diana’s examination of his banged-up shoulder—something he hadn’t even noticed had happened until the adrenaline rush of the fight and the meeting with the Director of A.R.G.U.S. had left his system.

The irony of ending up right where he had started on the night of his return to the world of the living was certainly not lost on him.

“It’s just a bump,” he insisted as Diana’s fingers prodded carefully over his flesh, her brows knitted together.

She hated having missed the chance to have Clark check it with his X-ray vision, Steve knew, and he also knew better than to bring that up. Or to argue too much, for that matter. Even if it was nothing, he knew she would feel better making sure of it for herself.

Diana glanced towards him, an ocean of worry pooling behind her eyes. That was exactly what she feared the most—him getting hurt, or worse. Steve grimaced inwardly at the realization that she had to be feeling that pretty much all the time. First official mission together, and he had just had to take that unfortunate fall.

He offered her a disarming smile, all the same, watching her features smooth out.

“It’s never just a bump,” she murmured under her breath, but when he reached for her hand and gave it a tug, she allowed him to pull her closer.

“Yet another fun story to tell when I’m old and grey—Oh, wait a second.”

He flashed a grin at her. He watched her fight her own smile as she muttered something in Greek under her breath.

“Hey.” He touched her chin, blue eyes flicking between black ones. “There she is,” he murmured, tracing her thumb along her bottom lip when she smiled. “That was one hell of an initiation,” he confessed, dropping his voice, the awe he simply couldn’t contain any longer coming through.

This time, Diana rolled her eyes. “There is no such thing as initiation.”

“Hey, the first mission—”

“You’re ridiculous.”

She made a move to step away from him, but his hand darted out to curl around her wrist. He pulled her back, his free hand sliding into her hair and tilting her face up, his mouth finding hers before she could say anything.

He kissed her for a long time, languid and slow, pouring every promise he could think of into it, all the things that couldn’t be defined with words. He kissed her until she relaxed, leaning into him, her lips hot and hungry and yearning against his, her hand pressed to her pounding heart.

When he drew back, he felt dizzy and dazed, the faint throbbing in his injured shoulder nothing but an afterthought now. He dipped his head, resting his forehead against Diana’s, his chest heaving under her touch.

“I still liked it,” he murmured.

She hummed noncommittally, and though he suspected she was not overly impressed with his comment, watching her gaze get clouded over with need, her lips parted and swollen from kissing, left him more than a little pleased. Of course, her next words were like being hit by a bucket of ice water.

“Please ice your shoulder, Steve.”

The League wasn’t enough for him. It took a few months before Steve started to get it.  To understand that working with the League—while great and something he loved to do—was just part of what gave his life purpose. 

He wasn’t alone in that. There was more to life for all of them. Diana had the Louvre and Barry worked at the crime lab, and while Victor was having a harder time blending in and carrying on as before, he has his own things, as well, helping out at the S.T.A.R. Labs, though Steve had only a vague idea to what end. There was Clark with his job at the Daily Planet and Bruce and his mega-corporation that was slowly but surely taking over the international market of… something. And Arthur had an entire kingdom to run.

Which left Steve yearning for more. Which, in turn, left him a little restless and uncertain, and he wasn’t sure he liked that feeling.

“Well, you could always—” Diana started when he shared that with her.

Steve raised his hand up. “Don’t… start with… I’m not going to be an exhibit at your museum.”

She pressed her lips around a smile. “I never suggested that,” she argued. “Agnes did, because your eyes are just so blue.”

Agnes was a 60-something curator, kind and motherly, and entirely enthralled by him for reasons Steve couldn’t quite comprehend. She never missed a chance to pinch him on his cheeks, of all things, while firing something at him in rapid French that he always had a hard time keeping up with. She was also the only person in the world who made him look over his shoulder each time he set his foot in the Louvre. He was not going to lie—the woman terrified him a little bit. He feared that she secretly harboured the desire to whisk him away and stuff him with her pies and pastries until he burst at the seams.

She had been the one who had proclaimed once that he belonged at the Louvre as a work of art, though by what logic Steve still wasn’t sure. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

He winced, feeling his face flush crimson red and pointed an accusatory finger at Diana who seemed to be enjoying the moment entirely too much.

“You…” he started and sighed, making Diana laugh.

Still, the thought of having something of his own wouldn’t let go.

There had to be something, he knew. There couldn’t not be. With the world being so vast, the possibilities so endless, he refused to believe that his destiny was to simply be set adrift.

It was in the weeks of this uncertainty and soul-searching that Steve uncovered something, completely by chance.

He was doing research on an upcoming mission with the League when he accidentally tracked down Barbara Ann Minerva. Living in a small community in South America under an assumed name, she was teaching in a local school and helping people. 

The discovery gave Steve pause. Made him take a closer look.

She didn’t appear to be hiding, and if she was, she was doing a pretty bad job of it. If Steve had to take a guess, it was not that at all. It was—

“Redemption,” Diana said when he told her. “She is trying to make up for her mistakes.”

And in a place where she had caused the most damage, too. 

Steve didn’t argue. Perhaps, she was right. Or perhaps, she was not. They were not very likely to find out unless they asked Barbara Ann herself, though when he suggested approaching her, making contact, Diana merely shook her head. He didn’t press, not surprised.

After all, he understood better than anyone—or, at least, better than many—how guilt could weigh down on a person, how heavy the burden of one’s past could feel. There had been a time when he could barely stand tall under it. He couldn’t know if that was what Barbara Ann Minerva was dealing with, but he wanted to hope that she would find peace one day.

Two weeks later, he was working on something for the Justice League, trying to track down a missing artifact that they desperately wanted to intercept before it got in the hands of the wrong people. There was a stack of maps and blueprints and approximate coordinates spread before him, grainy pictures that he was trying to make sense of, his phone dinging with incoming texts every now and then.  

It reminded Steve, in a way, of those weeks when he had spent doing pretty much the same as they had chased the Lazarus Pits. The thrill and exhilaration of the chase. 

He loved a good puzzle, a challenge to tackle and solve, and he threw himself into the new task gladly. So much so that even Diana didn’t have the heart to tease him about it even though Steve knew that she wanted to. He could see it in the smile that she tried very hard to hide. 

And it was a few days later that an idea struck him. An idea that had him pulling out different maps, from a different time. He was good at this, he realized with a jolt. He was good at taking something obscure and analyzing it and turning it into exact coordinates, something useful and meaningful. Like he had done with the Lazarus Pits. Like he had done for other missions. It hadn’t occurred to him earlier because he had been too caught up in getting to the end result to appreciate the process.

It was not easy to find all the pieces. For all the convenience of the Internet, it could only help him so much when looking for something not needed for over a hundred years. He started his search by focusing on the boat that had towed them to London in 1918. He had found the ship logs, though it had been hard, having to track them down in an ancient archive. It was a miracle they still existed, the precious documents feeling fragile in his hands. 

From the logs, he looked for weather reports, and to the history books that outlined the things that Steve had been part of but could no longer recall precisely. He gathered everything he could get his hands on. 

As the pile before him grew, Steve felt the rush of adrenaline in his veins, the excitement of a new mission buzzing beneath his skin. 

He had done this before, and he was going to do it again, no matter how long it took him. 

He glanced towards the hallway, half-expecting to hear Diana’s key turn in the lock. But, to his relief, the apartment remained silent. 

He was going to tell her, Steve thought. He was going to tell her everything. 

But first, he was going to find Themyscira. 

The end 

Notes:

A huge thank you (and congratulations) to everyone who has made it this far! You guys are real troopers and I am so grateful for your cheering and support and for all the awesomeness :)

I was debating the ending of this story for a very long time. As a rule, I'm not a fan of "And then they lived happily ever after" sort of stuff, even though sometimes it's the most logical way to end a story. So for this one, I chose something more along the lines of "And then they lived happily ever after and had a ton of awesome adventures." I wanted an open ending, something that would give a hint at what would be happening next, or maybe not? Either way, we'll never find out, very likely.

I was also, at some point, open to the idea of continuing with this universe and maybe writing a one shot or two, related to this story. I don't know if I'm actually going to do that. But if that day ever comes, there is an opening or two that I can use.

A huge thank you goes to akajb who tirelessly beta-ed this whole monster of a story and who's been cheering on me along the way. This fic would never be what it is, and it likely would never get posted without her support!

A shoutout to booksthief for being a fantastic friend who always knew what to say to make me even more excited about this story :)

And a special thank you to each and every one of you who has ever found a few minutes to drop a comment or a few kind words here. You guys have been so wonderful this entire time and I'm so grateful!

As I mentioned a few chapters prior, this is my last story. At least, for the time being. If I ever decide to share any of my works again, I know what to do :) In the meantime, please keep on supporting fic writers. It means the absolute world to us!

Comments, thoughts, ideas and general screaming are always welcome :) I do hope that you enjoyed this very last bit.

Take care everyone and stay awesome!
Cheers xo