Chapter Text
It shouldn’t have surprised Steve that he would find Diana at a gala. It was only fitting, he thought. A proverbial full circle of sorts, to complete the journey they had started sixty-six years ago. The only difference was that there were no angry Germans here, no lives at stake and time wasn’t running out faster than they could keep up.
(He wondered if his luck was going to hold and it would stay that way.)
Steve saw it straight away, lights and colours and music, and a red carpet running from the road to the doors that stood wide open. And beyond them—
He tried to curb his curiosity, equally drawn to and repelled by the noise that, in his time, would have been considered obscene, his senses overwhelmed. There were people everywhere, smiles and laughter. If the world as a whole was confusing, this place alone appeared alien, too bright and entirely beyond his comprehension.
Steve started towards the entrance, and then stopped, nearly tripping over himself when a black car pulled up to a stop a hundred yards ahead of him. The back door opened, and his heart stuttered in his chest.
He watched Diana emerge onto the red carpet, white dress flowing over her body and making her look every inch the goddess that she was, there to bless the world with her divinity.
He stared at her, transfixed and lost and completely enthralled. In every memory he had of her, she was breathtakingly beautiful — more than he had ever thought was possible. And yet here she was, with her hair swept over one shoulder and her lips painted bright red, and the world swayed beneath him because she was so stunning he could barely breathe.
Frozen to his spot, he watched her pause and nod a thank you to the man who had opened the door for her. And then she was moving again. Steve stared, and then stared some more, the slit on her dress running all the way up to the top of her thigh giving him a glimpse of her legs. Legs that he had a perfect memory of when they were wrapped—
He blinked, shaking off his daze, and hurried after her, desperate to catch up before she disappeared from his sight, ignoring the bewildered looks cast his way.
He jumped over the rope fencing running along the red carpet, reaching the entrance to… whatever this place was in two quick strides, Diana’s white dress never leaving his line of sight, like a beacon. Like firelight in the night—
A hand grabbed Steve by the sleeve of his jacket the second he stepped over the threshold.
“Your invitation, sir?”
Steve turned to find a man in an impeccable suit standing before him, eyeing him expectantly. Beyond him was an open room filled with light and glistening jewellery and champagne flutes. Under different circumstances, Steve would have gladly taken his time to study it some, to marvel at the effort that had gone into making this all happen.
“Sir?” the voice drew him in again. “Have you got an invitation?”
Steve blinked at him.
Of course, he didn’t have an invitation. The absurdity of the moment made him want to laugh. Some things never changed, he thought, as a sense of déjà vu swept over him, ridiculous in its clarity. He didn’t have an invitation, and neither did he have Sameer to talk them both out of this inconvenience.
“No, look, I just need to—” he started.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you in without an invitation.”
The man didn’t sound sorry at all.
“There’s someone I need to talk to,” Steve said, frustration building in his chest. How was it possible that it had been easier to sneak into the German High Command in the middle of the war than into some cocktail party in a time when the world no longer lived in a state of constant fright? “She’s right there,” he pointed behind the man’s shoulder. “If I could just…”
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
People were looking at them now, the conversations hushed as they found something more entertaining to enjoy.
How could this be happening when he was so close?
“Steve?”
He snapped his head up, his gaze zooming in on her shocked face, her eyes wide. He watched the colour drain from her features.
He blinked, and Diana was suddenly standing before him, sidestepping the man who had been so adamant to keep Steve away.
“Diana,” he breathed, nearly choking on her name.
She moved closed, her eyes frantic as she took him in, her brows knitting together when she noticed the war insignia on his German uniform. But hadn’t he—? He pushed the thought away. What did it matter?
“Steve,” she repeated, and when he looked up, there was a watery smile on her face and her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and God help him, she was so beautiful he could just stand there and look at her forever.
“Hey,” he murmured, his eyes roaming over her features while the rest of the world seemed to have fallen away.
He felt her palm slide down his arm. Her hand found his and squeezed it tight.
“Come with me,” she said, and he nodded, and then nodded again, knowing without a moment of doubt that he would be happy to follow her to the end of the world if she so pleased.
They wound their way between the other guests and patrons of the place, and Steve had to put it on good faith that she knew where they were going because his eyes never left her, his mind empty, the spacious room around them oddly quiet all of a sudden.
There was a mirror taking up half of the wall in a hallway. On instinct, Steve’s eyes went up. And he stopped in his tracks, his hand falling out of Diana’s grasp.
In the reflection, an old man with brittle skin was looking back at him. His hair was grey and almost entirely gone, his cheeks hollow and so lined with wrinkles it was hard to tell the shape of his face. Thin lips and pale blue eyes as though bleached by the sun. Steve lifted his hand to touch his cheek, and the man in the mirror did the same.
His heart sunk at the realization that time had finally caught up with him. He looked down at his knobby hands, marked with spots. And then up again, turning to Diana who was standing beside him, watching him calmly, completely unperturbed.
“Diana,” he said weakly, but she only smiled and moved closer so he could see them in the reflection side by side. Him, an ancient creature with his skin stretched tight over his bones, and her – an ageless beauty who would keep her youth long after there was no trace of him left in this world.
“It’s good to have you back, Steve,” she said with a touch of fondness in her voice.
He opened his mouth, but try as he might, he couldn’t make a sound.
A violent shudder jolted Steve awake, tossing him against a mailbag carrying at least thirty pounds of written correspondence. He snapped his eyes open, his breath trapped somewhere in his throat and his heart pounding so hard his ribs were at risk of being bruised. Never in his life had he been this happy to have his sleep disturbed.
“Sorry about that,” Jeff Sullivan, young Etta’s husband, called from the cockpit. He had to yell over the roar of the plane engines while the entire thing shook, the metal floor where Steve sat vibrating beneath him. “We’re dealing with some turbulence here, see. Hold on there!”
Steve let out a shuddering breath and ran his hand over his face, trying to push away the remnants of the dream. And then, as if catching himself, he looked down at his hands, feeling a wave of relief wash over him when he found them unchanged. A mirror would be nice, he thought, as he slumped back against the two bags of mail and rubbed his eyes, unease curling in his stomach.
“Steve?”
“Yeah, I’m alright,” he called back and swallowed when the words came out hoarse, his voice unsteady.
“Keep it that way. I’m about to start preparing for landing.”
The massive form of the Smithsonian loomed above Steve against the steel-grey backdrop of the stormy sky.
With his head tipped back, he stared at it for a long moment. He’d made it this far, and suddenly, he was afraid. Diana was somewhere in there, in this building, and Steve was still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that she was working at the Smithsonian. Had been since Etta had told him that the night before. Which was… unimaginable, in so many ways.
It had barely been a week since Steve had seen her trying to work out the logistics of a revolving door and the meaning of the word secretary. Last night, Etta had offered to call someone who was Diana’s secretary now.
The thought still made Steve’s mind reel.
(Then again, was there anything that wasn’t making it reel?)
He had declined, choosing, in a burst of cowardice, to make it a surprise appearance instead. That way, he would be able to take his time if he needed it.
He wanted to march up those steps and demand to see Diana this very moment. He also wanted to fade into the background and curl in on himself until he could breathe again and the world stopped spinning so damn fast. He kept waiting for the illusion of this new reality to shatter before his eyes, and every moment it didn’t, it felt like he was merely biding his time, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
A gust of chilly wind snaked beneath his jacket, making him shiver.
Another moment, and the decision was made.
Steve squared his shoulders and took a breath. And then he started towards the entrance.
He had never been to Washington before and, stepping into the open concourse with its domed ceiling four floors above him, he felt his jaw go slack just a little bit more. There were marble and glass and bright lights and people milling all around him, the noise of it leaving him disoriented momentarily.
How was he supposed to find Diana?
He looked around at the displays and the people in uniforms and the information boards and signs pointing towards different galleries and parts of the building. After a moment of hesitation, Steve headed towards a directory listing departments and the people working there and the nature of their activities.
At least it was in English. Small mercies. (After nearly getting on the wrong train in Brussels, he was twitchy about getting lost.)
A couple of minutes and about half a list later, a woman in the blazer with the museum logo appeared at Steve’s side, a customary smile on her face.
“Are you doing alright, sir? Can I help you with anything?”
Steve snapped his head up.
“Yeah, actually…” he started, giving the concourse another sweep with his glance.
And froze, the rest of his sentence dying on his lips.
Diana appeared from one of the side corridors. She wasn’t wearing her armour — part of him had expected she would, maybe because that was the last memory he had of her. Which was foolish, of course. (And she wasn’t wearing the white dress from his dream, either. Much to his relief.)
Instead, she was dressed in a pair of slacks — Steve tried very hard not to gawk, but it was one thing that a lot of women he didn’t know were wearing pants, and then there was Diana — and a silk blouse and a suit vest. Her hair, curling at the ends, was pulled back and tied in a ponytail at the nape of her neck. Even across the width of the concourse, he could see the softness of her gaze, the same light that he remembered radiating off of her when she walked through the crowd of people in Veld that had gathered to thank her.
Steve felt the air rush out of him faster than he knew how to draw more in.
She looked different, in those weird clothes, in this weird place, but also so achingly the same it made something inside him unravel.
“Sir?” the woman at his side said, but her voice sounded muffled and barely registered in the periphery of Steve’s attention.
Steve ignored her.
He could admit it now: he hadn’t believed until this moment he’d be able to find Diana, a single person in the world that was so big. And yet, here she was, right before his eyes, a legend and a goddess. And he could hardly believe it still, scared that she was merely a dream of a lost soldier.
He started towards her, nearly tripping over himself for fear of having her vanish into thin air and about to call out her name.
And then stopped again when Diana’s face split into a warm, welcoming smile.
As if in slow motion, Steve watched her walk towards a man standing at one of the glass displays pushed against a wall. The man turned and his face brightened up at the sight of her. Diana leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. Their lips were moving, but they were too far away for Steve to hear what they were saying. Not that it mattered, he thought absently as Diana reached over to give the man’s hand a squeeze.
The pit of his stomach grew hot with jealousy, his body feeling full of empty spaces and no memory of what was meant to fill them.
After everything he had seen and heard and experienced in the past few days, he should have stopped being shocked, perhaps. And yet, this moment arrived, and once again the ground was kicked from beneath his feet.
Steve hadn’t considered this scenario. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Diana had forgotten about him — it had been sixty-six years, after all. It wouldn’t have surprised him if she’d given him a cold shoulder upon meeting him again, looking at him as merely a footnote at the end of a chapter of her life she’d long left behind. Or even if he’d failed to find her at all.
But he hadn’t entertained the idea of her having moved on.
And why wouldn’t she? It hadn’t been her fault he had chosen to blow himself up and leave her behind, breaking every promise he’d ever made. It sure as hell wasn’t her fault he had come back now. She hadn’t asked for any of that, and she deserved to be happy. To be happy and loved and...
Jesus Christ, he was such an idiot.
Steve stumbled backwards, the space around him suddenly too crowded, too suffocating. His heart was pounding so fast it was making him queasy. He needed to get out of there, out where he could breathe again.
Before she saw him.
Before he—before he saw something else that he didn’t want to see.
“Sir? Are you okay?” the woman asked, concerned.
His eyes never leaving Diana, Steve nodded numbly. He must have looked like a complete lunatic.
“Yeah, I—I have to—”
He jerked away from the woman when she touched the sleeve of his jacket, his elbow ramming into the wall. A jolt of white-hot pain shot up his shoulder, and the next moment, a loud wail pierced the air, swallowing the noise and bringing everyone to a standstill. Steve whipped around, noticing a small box on the wall he had bumped into. What the hell was it? Did it trigger that godawful sound when he touched it? He didn’t mean to—
“What are you doing?” a voice demanded. “Hey, you!”
Steve looked up and saw a guy in what looked like police uniform — some kind of guard? — rushing towards him, his eyes hard and furious.
“Don’t move!” he ordered sternly.
And behind him—
Diana.
Steve dropped his hands to hang at his sides as their eyes met, the discomfort of the pain in his elbow fading in an instant now that he was looking at her. And having her look back.
He knew exactly when something inside of her clicked, could imagine the slight intake of her breath when her eyes widened and the colour drained from her face. He watched a storm of emotion chase across her features — disbelief and sadness and hope and so much anguish he could barely stand it.
The man was telling something to him, loudly. He was practically yelling at Steve. Something about a fire — was there a fire? He probably wouldn’t notice even if there was — and false alarms and offences. None of that registered or made any sense, the man’s voice nothing but white noise.
Diana’s lips were painted red and he could see them move, forming the shape of his name.
His heart slammed against the inside of his chest once, twice, three times, and then forgot what to do next.
Someone grabbed him by the arm, yanked him to the side. Finally, the alarm got turned off, and the silence that followed was somehow louder than that awful wailing, amplifying the ringing in his ears.
Diana was moving towards them now, walking purposefully across the concourse.
Steve continued to stare, ignoring the guard and the woman who had been speaking with him earlier still lingering nearby, his eyes never leaving Diana and his heart lodged in his throat. And then she was there, reaching for him, her hands moving over his face, his hair, down the front of his chest, her eyes wide and confused and frantic.
“Steve,” she breathed, a strangled half-sob that slashed across his senses.
He was wearing the clothes that Etta’s husband had lent him, clean and less likely to attract any attention, but he saw the way Diana’s gaze lingered on his coat — her hands clutching the lapels, his hands on her elbows as the wind whipped around them, “Whatever it is, I can do it, let me do it.” The memory came crashing back as he watched Diana undoubtedly replay it in her mind as well.
Steve’s throat constricted. He caught her gaze; held it. “Hey,” he choked hoarsely.
The guard was speaking with them both now, his voice cutting through the haze in Steve’s head. Miss Prince and responsibility and repercussions. Neither of them seemed to hear him, though.
“Steve,” Diana repeated, ignoring the man entirely. “But you’re—you were—”
“I know. I know.” He swallowed. “Diana, I—”
Her lips were quivering. He watched a slight frown appear between her brows. “But how—”
She looked up, lifted her hand to trace her fingers down his cheek. If seeing her hadn’t broken him already, this surely would have done the trick. As it was, though, he leaned towards her, leaned into her touch—
And then he remembered.
The man, from earlier.
The memory was like a bucket full of cold water being dumped over him.
Steve snapped his head up, his heart kicking wildly, sprinting against the inside of his ribs because the man… she had kissed the man, only minutes ago. Did she not?
Right now, over Diana’s shoulder, Steve watched a petite woman appear from one of the galleries. As soon as the man that had been with Diana earlier saw her, he swept her in his arms and kissed her — unlike that time in London, Steve didn’t look away — and then they started towards the exit, only glancing towards him and Diana once, with nothing more than cursory curiosity.
Steve felt his brows knit together, his mind sluggish.
“Steve?”
He felt Diana’s fingers on his jaw and dragged his eyes back to look at her, a watery, confused smile bubbling up to the surface.
“I don’t know,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “I don’t know how, but it’s me. Diana, it’s me.”
“It can’t be,” she murmured, her eyes darting over his featured. “How can it be—”
Her face started to crumple, her breath hitching with every inhale.
Steve dipped his head and pressed their foreheads together. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry—” I left you. I’m sorry it took me so long to come back.
She shook her head, her eyes bright with unshed tears and her lips trembling. And then she pulled him to her, winding her arms around his neck and holding him so tight Steve could all but feel the frantic thumping of her heart.
Relief washed over him like a tidal wave, a physical sensation that made him shudder and left him fearful that he might shatter from her touch. His arms moved to wrap around her, stiffly at first and then as tightly as he could bear, ignoring the protest of that goddamn rib that still hadn’t fully healed yet. Just so he could hold her, feel her. He pressed his face to her hair and inhaled, breathing her in, past the years and space and all the unsaid words that still existed between them.
I love you. I missed you. Please forgive me, please don’t let me lose you again.
He didn’t even realize that Diana was crying until her voice pouring in his ear came out wrong, a forced, broken sound. Until he felt her shaking ever so slightly. Steve pulled back just far enough away to look at her, his hands coming up to cup her face, thumbs brushing the wetness from her cheeks as tenderness blossomed in his chest, taking up all the space behind his ribs. He leaned forward to press light kisses to her forehead, her temple, the tip of her nose as he breathed past everything he wanted to say to her, the words stuck in his throat.
“Diana…”
There was a pointed cough at their side and a quiet Miss Prince, please.
When Steve drew back, he saw that another man in uniform had joined the first one. Both of them appeared very serious but neither was looking at him or Diana directly, discomfort evident on their faces.
“Miss Prince, he can’t just,” the first one started, his eyes darting quickly towards Steve as the tops of his cheeks reddened. “Triggering fire alarm without reason is an offence,” he added, looking uncomfortable.
“I’m sure it was a misunderstanding,” Diana said, her voice bearing only the slightest trace of the earlier turmoil.
“We have to inform the authorities,” the second man added, glancing briefly at the first one. “I’m sorry, but such are the rules. It’s protocol—”
Dazed and more than a little disoriented, Steve turned to Diana who reached for his hand, her fingers weaving through his. Her touch soothed him, smoothing out the jagged edges of his soul that had been scraping against the soft parts inside of him.
He stopped hearing the words that were exchanged after that, his focus entirely on her and the regal profile of her face and the warmth of her hand in his, her grip firm and sure. Her shoulder was still pressed against his and Steve watched her, drinking her in. Watched her mouth move while she explained something to the men, something about making mistakes that didn’t hurt anyone, the sound of her voice more important than what she was saying.
And he thought, absently and like a man afflicted, that he could spend the rest of forever just looking at her, and he would die happy.
Eventually, Steve knew, he would remember what came afterwards. That one day, he would remember the guards agreeing to let him go without a fuss, merely warning him not to do it again. And following Diana to her office to collect her purse and coat — and how empty the museum seemed to be by then, the echo of their footsteps on the marble floor bouncing off the walls and domed ceiling. He would remember the office itself and the trip to her apartment under the pale light of the streetlights and the fact that she had only let go of his hand once — to put her coat on.
For now, what he did remember was stumbling into her flat and having his back pressed against the door as Diana surged forward to kiss him. His jacket falling to the floor. Her fingers carding through his hair, drawing him closer. And later, his hands moving along her skin and Diana’s voice whispering I love you over and over again until Steve could hear the words coursing in his veins, his heart pumping them through his system. Until he could barely remember the time before she said them the first time. And his own desperate promises to never, ever leave her again.
Now, Diana was curled into him and his hand was moving idly over the expanse of her back while he was telling her everything — from the grey sky above the field in Belgium and the man with a dog, to staring at her like a moron across the thirty feet of marble floor at the Smithsonian several hours ago.
The night had fallen in earnest by then, the darkness outside the glass balcony door in Diana’s bedroom dispersed only by the scattered lights of the city glistening below.
Eventually, Diana pulled back with a laugh. Propped up on her elbows, she settled on her stomach next to Steve.
“You did not,” she said, shaking her head incredulously, the smile dancing across her lips so majestic it was making something warm unspool in his chest. God help him, he loved her smile.
“Did, too!” he insisted, biting back his own laughter.
“You did not fly here in a cargo container.”
Steve shrugged and grinned at her. His cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling so much — he decidedly liked the feeling.
“Ask Etta. Ask her husband! He’ll probably tell that story for years. Although hopefully, without naming names.”
He tried not to think of how much his boys would have loved it. Sameer especially would have found it thrilling. And Charlie would have undoubtedly called them both reckless bastards.
Diana hummed. “I’m sure he will.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Steve said after a moment, chuckling.
He hadn’t had to stay inside it the whole time, just to get in and out of Jeff’s plane without anyone noticing him and starting to ask questions.
(Steve debated briefly whether or not he should tell Diana he would probably agree to get in that cargo container again just so he could fly in that plane that was nothing like anything he had ever seen. But decided against it, certain that it would lead to incessant teasing — and he had already given her plenty of reasons for that.)
He’d spent most of the flight exploring the small cabin and the cockpit, enthralled by how smooth and not at all bumpy it had felt. And trying not to think of the massive passenger liners he had seen as they drove past the airfields. Even with his knowledge of aerodynamics, Steve had found it had to understand how they took off and what it was like to share that experience with at least 200 other people.
“There was no other way. Dead men can't go on ships and planes,” he added ruefully as an afterthought.
And then regretted his words immediately when Diana's smile dimmed at his flippant attitude towards something that he knew had caused her a lot of pain. Watching her close off momentarily, he was uncertain if he should apologize and draw even more attention to it, or let it go.
One day it would become one of those stories that sounded far more exciting than it really was, he thought. Like that story about crashing on Paradise Island that would probably live longer than Steve. One day, they would look back at the day when he’d pulled the trigger and blew up that gas and himself with it, and it would be just another moment in the long chain of events that had brought them together.
Steve rolled onto his side, resting on his elbow, and reached over to sift his fingers through her hair, tuck it around her ear. He couldn't seem to stop touching her, but Diana didn't appear to mind.
“I still don’t know what happened, you know,” he said quietly, twisting a black strand around his fingers. “How I got to—” he cut off, struggling to find the right words.
Come back to life? It sounded ludicrous even in his head.
“Come back to me,” Diana finished for him, her phrasing, admittedly, making a whole lot of difference.
She dropped her gaze. For a few moments, Steve watched her fiddle with the sheet as she tried to work something out, her brows knitted together.
“I wished for it,” she said quietly, at last. “I’ve been wishing for it every day you were not with me. For a second chance to do everything we got robbed off too soon. For a chance to say everything I never got to say to you.”
Steve’s mouth curled up at the corner. He traced the curve of her shoulder with his hand.
“I suppose someone heard you,” he offered.
Diana looked up.
There was a small smile on her lips and so much anguish in her eyes that it felt almost like a force field around her. Steve had only ever seen it once — on the outskirts of Veld after Ludendorff destroyed the village. The only difference was that then, she ached for the lives of other people but right now, her pain was turned inwards, towards her own losses that had left scars on her soul.
One day, Steve would ask her about it. About the things that had happened to her that had left her with pain planted all over her very being. Maybe, she would tell him, maybe she wouldn't. Maybe it would only matter that he had noticed, but he knew he would ask all the same. But not tonight.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said after another moment. “Not as much as I thought it would. When I woke up in that field, there were two things I wanted — to know what happened to me, and to find you again.” Diana watched him, her eyes flickering between his as he spoke. “But now I’m here. I’m with you, and… truth be told, I don’t care what kind of trick it was. I just want that time with you, Diana. Time that we never had, the first time around.”
“And if I’m not the person I once was?” she asked.
Steve’s heart gave an uneven thump, and he wondered for the millionth time how exactly could someone be exactly the same and yet so very different from who they were before.
He opened his mouth to protest but her words gave him pause. He thought back to the time when they’d first met and the hope shining in her eyes and the steady certainty that she could save mankind from the worst it could become. He thought of the moment at the top of the watchtower when he watched her faith in everything she had ever known shatter because it had never been that simple, and the blame could never be assigned as easily as Diana wanted it to be.
And he wondered how many of those moments she had gone through over the years, and how many scars they had left her with. Many, he suspected. He might not know much about the world in 1984 but he knew enough to understand that beneath the veneer of novelties, it probably hadn’t changed all that much, at its essence.
There was a right answer there somewhere, swirling in his head, but each time he tried it on his tongue, it felt all wrong and awkward. More patronizing than Diana deserved. Besides, he could admit now that she probably knew his world better than he ever would, all things considered.
“One might say that after falling from the sky, I’m not exactly who I used to be either,” he said in the end and offered her a disarming smile. “Does it matter to you?”
Diana turned her face towards his, her eyes roaming over his features.
He watched her face smooth out as something inside of her settled. And then she leaned forward and brushed her lips to his. “No, it doesn’t.”
Steve kissed her again; and again, for perhaps the thousandth time in the past few hours, he thought, I am so in love with this woman.
“So, what do you want to do?” he asked when she drew back.
“We never got a chance to—” she paused, and Steve watched another memory pull to the surface. Her hand slipped into his, fingers twining together. “To do what people do when there are no wars to fight. I suppose we could try that and see where it takes us. If that is what you want, too.”
Steve arched an eyebrow at her.
“If?”
He trailed a pointed gaze along her body beneath the sheet, the memory of everything they had done in the past couple of hours making the heat rise up the back of his neck and his belly grow warm with desire.
Diana rolled her eyes, shaking her head a little — amused and exasperated in equal measure.
“I didn’t want to presume.”
“I did not find you at all presumptuous, earlier,” Steve promised quickly, watching her eyes light up. He lifted the knot of their hands to his mouth and kissed her fingers. “In fact, you can go ahead and be as presumptuous as you want to be.”
A smile broke across her face, so radiant and bright it could chase away the night.
“I can work on that.”
They fell into a pattern that was as easy as breathing. Almost as if their lives were two pieces of a puzzle meant to fit together, and once that happened, nothing else mattered.
There were moments when Steve couldn't help but feel the stretch of time between them acutely and achingly. Moments that left him with the sensation of standing on the edge of a void that he could see neither the bottom, nor the other side of. Like when Diana spoke of something that had happened to her or his friends sometime in the past six decades. Or when some aspect of the new world around Steve would puzzle him into a stupor and leave his mind swimming. Each time, it would leave him feeling a little hollow, the sorrow for everything he had missed filling him to the brim.
And then there were instances when it would be like they had merely picked up where they'd left off, having spent only a few days apart. Like there was nothing left unsaid between them and everything made perfect sense.
And the contrast between the two would leave Steve disoriented and scrambling to keep up.
It surprised him how much he had managed to pick up about Diana in the brief time they'd spent together in 1918, and how much of it still rang true all these years later. Small things that, in retrospect, didn't feel small at all. The observation made his heart swell with affection in his chest and he revelled in that feeling immensely for reasons he couldn't explain even to himself.
He wondered if it would still be the case a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand years from now. If Diana was going to stay, well, Diana for the rest of eternity, her essence unchanged even though the world continued to spin faster and faster. And he hoped, oh how he hoped that he would be around to see it for himself.
One morning a month later, Steve’s mind snapped into wakefulness minutes after dawn, when the day outside was still grey and soft around the edges.
It had started to snow three days ago and had barely stopped since then. Big, dime-sized flakes falling from the sky and forming snowdrifts on the sidewalks and windowsills until the world seemed to be half-buried beneath a blanket of white.
Beside him, Diana was still asleep, curled in on herself, her hand tucked under the pillow and her breathing deep and even. For a moment, Steve contemplated abandoning his plan and simply sliding his arm around her and falling back asleep for a few more hours — the weather sure was right for that. Or better yet, tracing his hand along the length of her spine to wake her and—
He pushed the thought away and slid from under the covers while his resolve still held. Away from the warmth of her, he missed it instantly, but today, he was a man on a mission. And like any man on a mission, he needed to stay focused, even if it meant leaving an actual goddess behind for a little while.
In the dim light of the morning that had yet to fully arrive, he put on his clothes. Clothes that he still found odd and out of place in, like something that wasn’t entirely his even though they were comfortable and fit well. He tried not to think about it any more than he absolutely needed to. Surely, it wasn’t any worse for him than it had been for Diana when he had first brought her to his world.
And weren’t spies supposed to be perfectly adaptable?
In the living room, standing near the bureau where Diana kept all sorts of documents and money, Steve counted out a few bills, making sure to note how much he took to repay her later… when he got a job. (He was working on that.) And then, with one last glance through the bedroom door at the still sleeping Diana, he slipped out of her apartment, heading to the market two blocks away.
He had a mission to accomplish, alright.
An hour later, he was setting up the table for breakfast. The coffee was brewing in the coffee machine — if there was one thing that Steve was eternally amazed by and grateful for, aside from the woman he was living and sharing a bed with, it was the coffee machine — and the eggs were whisked and ready to go on the skillet. He was just pulling the plates from the cupboard when Diana stepped into the kitchen.
“What is this all about?” she asked.
Steve jerked around, startled, and like every time he had looked at her before, his jaw went a little slack.
She was wearing a robe, and if his past experience was any indication, there was probably nothing underneath it. He was tempted, oh so tempted to tug at the belt and let it shimmy down her shoulders and start the day the way they’d started most of them over the past month.
He forced himself to drag his gaze up to her face (not that that made it easier). In this light, relaxed and with the remnants of sleep still lurking behind her eyes, she looked painfully young despite being older than the world as Steve knew it. And like each time that thought had crossed his mind, his chest constricted with fierce tenderness.
“This is… ah, breakfast,” he said, setting the plates down.
Diana pressed her lips together around a smile, one eyebrow arched quizzically. “I can see that. And this?” she asked, pointing towards the living room and the Christmas tree tucked in the corner between the couch and the balcony.
Steve’s lips twitched, her question kicking him into action.
“Well, this...” he started and trailed off.
He moved around the table and towards her. With his hands curled over her sides, he dipped his head and kissed her, lingering for a long moment when her palms came to rest on his face.
“Morning,” he murmured after he pulled back.
Diana smiled, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “Good morning.”
He glanced at the table. “I was hoping to get this ready before you were up,” he admitted.
She was watching him, waiting.
Steve squinted at the tree. “See, I’ve been thinking…”
“Yes, you seem to do that a lot,” Diana agreed nonchalantly, following his gaze. And it took him a great deal of effort to ignore the suggestive undertone in her voice and the less than subtle innuendo.
The idea had struck him a couple of days ago when, after haven’t even thought about Christmas or what this time of year entailed (because he was too damn caught up in being alive and in love to care), Steve had spotted a brightly decorated tree at the department store, all tinsel and colours and twinkling lights.
It brought an avalanche of memories — the scraggy tree they would have in the family room when he was a child, decorated with ribbons and hand-made ornaments, frosted-over windows and his mother’s bright smile. The way that time of year had always felt special even though they hadn’t had much. He hadn’t thought of that in a very long time, and he wished he had now. Wished he’d taken a moment to remember.
And he had thought then—
Diana had told him on their first night together in 1984 that'd she'd wished for him and for everything they had missed. But the truth was that Steve had wished for things, too. On that night in Veld when they'd danced in the snow and loved each other for the first time, he had wished for something real with her, something normal. Something that wasn't bloodbath and carnage. The world that Steve could only barely remember by then.
But they had it now, didn't they? Life the way it was meant to be. And what could be more normal and real than this? Than a tree and bright lights, and maybe he could even try to replicate his mother's pie. (No promises on the outcome, though.)
“I haven’t even thought of a Christmas tree since 1916,” he said, tracing his fingers idly along Diana’s collar bone and ignoring the heat creeping up his neck from just this small contact. “And I don’t know what your protocol about these things is, but I just thought—I thought that maybe we could…”
It had all sounded so much better in his head, earlier. He took a breath and looked up. Some smooth composed spy he was.
“I haven’t done anything, since Etta,” Diana said softly, her voice wistful but her smile fond. “She used to love it. Charlie, too. He would send me a card every year, until…” She shook her head and then looked up at him, her gaze finding Steve’s. “I still have them, cards and letters. If you want to see.”
He nodded as warmth sparked somewhere under his ribs and unfurled in his chest. “I’d like that.”
They did that, going through the box of old letters and photographs, all faded but scrupulously preserved. History encapsulated. Diana added more stories, some sad but most happy, filling in the blanks in Steve’s mind. About a burned dinner that left everyone scrambling to pull together a meal basically from scraps and Sameer’s passionate rendition of a song that got one of the neighbours calling the police. About the protest march that had nearly got Etta arrested and that time when Charlie, true to himself, punched a man who had made a crude comment about Diana on the street and broke one of his fingers. And how Sameer had taught Diana to play cards and she cleaned him of his cash that first time. He had never played with her again, and she suspected he’d held a grudge, too.
Steve laughed until his face hurt, marvelling in having once known people so remarkable and falling in love with all of them all over again in a way he never knew was possible, his heart aching from being so full.
They picked up two boxes of ornaments from the store — angels and bows and balls in every colour — and he watched Diana arrange them on the tree however she pleased, content in merely being there, in the presence of her glorious smile.
It was later that night, a little over a month after Steve’s miraculous return that it finally sunk that he was not imagining any of this. That it wasn’t an illusion which could burst like a bubble before his eyes. That he was truly back and this was his life now, and the future that was stretching before him and Diana was infinite in its possibilities.
And maybe he was a man out of time.
Maybe he always would be.
But here he was, finally home.
There were moments in Diana's life that she knew she was going to remember for the rest of forever.
Like the first time she had hefted a sword, nearly yanking her shoulder out of its socket when she’d taken a swing.
Or when she had watched the light go out of Antiope's eyes on that beach, her blood on Diana's hands and the grief of it slashing something inside of her in half.
Or when the night sky had lit up with the brightest fire she had ever seen, and she had screamed and screamed because it hurt to feel so much of everything but the one she had been calling for was no longer there to hear her.
Or when Diana had gone to say hello to an old friend only to come face to face with a ghost she had spent the past half a century running away from, after he had left her with a pain so deep that even all these years later, her soul was still bleeding.
One would think that being a demigod, she would know not to be surprised by anything. (Had she not seen everything there was to see, after all?)
One would be wrong about that.
There had to be an answer to it all, an explanation that would make sense to her even if it wouldn't to anyone else.
Five weeks later, and she was no closer to finding it than she had been that day when they stood on the concourse and Steve had looked at her with those blue eyes, bright with reverence and affection, and her heart beat so fast she thought it might burst right out of her ribcage.
Five weeks of not having to remember the colour of his eyes or the cadence of his voice or the touch of his hands, or what it was like to wake up in the night to the sound of Steve’s breathing. She didn’t need to remember because he was there, alive and safe and hers.
Five weeks was what it took her to decide that she didn’t care for an answer. Be it a trick of magic or a fluke or her not-so-dead relatives choosing to grant her a gift — if her mother was around, Diana was certain she would have found the latter amusing — it was hard to keep this matter close to the top of her ever-growing list of priorities. In the end, she simply decided that having him back was enough. And was one really meant to have all the answers, anyway?
(If one day Steve chose to seek the explanation of his miraculous return then so be it. Until then, Diana was content to have him back, details be damned.)
She still had nightmares, although not as often as Steve, and not as intense anymore.
“I've had a long time to deal with them,” Diana told him when he'd awoken from one for the third night in a row, his body covered with a sheen of cold sweat and his breath trapped in his throat. Although, admittedly, it sounded like a weak consolation, even to her ears. She wished she could shield him from them, protect him from the memories stained with blood.
Hers were always about an ink-black sky and a bright fire and being stripped of her strength and the sense of loss so consuming she was frightened every time she would never find her way back, stuck for eternity in that world of endless hopelessness.
But they didn't scare Diana as much as they used to because all she had to do now was roll over and reach for him. And Steve would be right there, gathering her in his arms and holding her against him until the sharpness of her dreams ebbed and the frantic gallop of her heartbeat steadied.
“I love you,” she whispered each time, revelling even months later in the freedom of being able to say it to a living, breathing person and not a memory.
“I love you, too.”
After the war — the first one; the one that had started it all — Diana used to think that she would have done anything to have Steve back. To undo those fifteen minutes that had changed everything and have the life they could have had if only the stars were aligned differently.
But looking at him now — with a book on her couch, or shuffling into the kitchen in the morning, just barely awake, or sitting across from her at the table in a restaurant, or even when she’d catch a fleeting smile from him from across the room — Diana knew she wouldn’t have given this up for anything in the world. That, ultimately, every moment spent apart was worth it in the end, a million times over.
“He is quite… something,” Barbara Ann said to Diana once after Steve dropped by her office, stunning a handful of her colleagues into silence with his charm and dashing looks.
Pressing her lips around a smile, Diana had glanced at the photo of the two of them sitting on her desk now. “That he is,” she agreed.
Maybe one day they would find every answer the universe had to offer, or maybe they would stop asking questions.
What mattered in this instant was that they had time.