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Diana doesn’t understand why humans care about time so much. She thinks it’s ridiculous, until Steve cradles her face in his hands, telling her that he’s going to fly that plane. She begs him, pleads with him to let her do it, but he insists that it has to be him. Before Diana can stop him, he presses his watch into her hands and says, “I wish we had more time. I love you.”
She shouts Steve’s name, and when he hesitates for half a second, she hopes he’ll turn around, but he doesn’t.
Watching the plane turn into a bright ball of flame, Diana thinks, I love you, knowing he cannot hear her.
After the battle, when everything is quiet, Diana takes Steve’s watch out and puts it on her left wrist. She makes a promise to keep it safe, not removing it except to bathe. Its weight becomes a comfort, like a gentle touch from Steve himself.
In the following days, Diana is congratulated, shakes hands with many important people, but she doesn’t care about any of it. She makes sure the men in charge know Steve’s sacrifice is equally important to what she did. Over and over, she tells about Captain Steve Trevor, how he sacrificed himself to save millions of lives.
Diana wishes Steve were there with her. She wants nothing more than to wake up next to him every morning, to eat breakfast and read the paper with him before work. There isn’t a war anymore.
Etta helps Diana arrange Steve’s funeral. The casket is empty, but putting it in the ground gives Diana a sense of peace.
Her job at the Louvre is a comfort. Working with ancient Greek artifacts reminds her of home, and she falls into a rhythm of daily life. “I wish you could be with me,” Diana sometimes whispers when she’s alone.
When Diana sleeps, at least, she still has Steve. Sometimes, she dreams of him, beside her in bed. Waking up and realizing the other side of the bed is empty causes an ache that becomes all too familiar.
present day -
Diana still keeps the watch safe and close. She wears a functional one, too, but Steve’s is a reminder of the first time she met him in that cave, when he first explained what it was. The memory makes her smile fondly. She thought it was so silly then. The timepiece hasn’t ticked in nearly a century - it died the same night its owner did. If Diana couldn’t protect Steve, it’s the least she can do for this little piece of him she has left. She has the photo now, too; a black-and-white snapshot frozen in time.
Those few days’ worth of memories with Steve are the most valuable thing in the world to Diana. Sometimes, the memories make her smile - walking in on Steve getting out of the pools, the conversation about pleasure, his flustered reaction to her human clothes.
Some are bittersweet, like dancing in the snow. “It’s magical,” he told her, and she knows now that he was talking about her, not the snow. Steve talking about a future he thought he could have with her is another one that makes her smile as tears well in her eyes.
Other memories are more like knives - pushing Steve away after seeing the gassed village, again, pushing him away when she didn’t believe Ares wasn’t responsible, of yelling at him. Time is precious, something she realized too late.
Diana’s favorite memory of Steve, though, is from the warmly lit inn room. She’s laying on top of him, listening to his heart beat, and he holds her gently, gazing at her with such reverence that it makes her want to cry.
On the anniversary of Steve’s death, Diana returns to Veld. It’s abandoned, empty since the gas attack nearly a hundred years earlier, but the stone fountain still stands. She sits on the edge, Steve’s watch pressed to her cheek. She refuses to have it repaired. Diana knows she cannot freeze the passage of time, but when she looks at the still watch hands, she can pretend that Steve still gently cradles her face, asking if she’s okay.
She often thinks about what Steve would do if he had more time, and that explanation of what people do when there are no wars, of what they could have had together, becomes less painful with the passage of time.
”Wake up, eat breakfast, read the paper. Get married, make some babies, grow old together.”
Even after so many years, Steve reminds Diana why the world is worth saving.