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For the first few weeks after Diana gets Steve back, they don’t really discuss plans for the future.
They don’t deliberately avoid talking about it; it simply doesn’t come up. Steve sleeps a lot in those first few days—deeply exhausted by the ceaseless daily grind of war, and recovering from the sheer physical shock of being yanked across the span of a century like a fish on a hook.
Once he’s more alert, they don’t spend a lot of time in conversation. Diana can’t be near him without touching him, to be quite certain he’s real; once she’s started touching him, it’s nearly impossible to stop.
And, as it turns out, there’s a lot of paperwork that comes with bringing someone back from the dead. So Diana has to visit some old friends, and call in a couple of favours. Fortunately, she’s owed about a century’s worth.
The morning she finally broaches the topic, they’re having breakfast on the secluded corner terrace of her Metropolis condo: coffee, bagels, fruit. It’s already a steady enough occurrence that it will soon cease to be a habit and become a tradition—a thought that fills Diana with pure, unbridled joy.
Diana insists on a terrace or a balcony for every home she owns. Aside from the luxury of being able to go outside whenever she feels like it, Wonder Woman needs a convenient takeoff and landing point.
And now, a new and unexpected advantage: the way the morning light warms Steve’s skin, and picks out the gold in his hair.
He seems thinner than she remembers him being, with inky hollows under his eyes that sleep hasn’t quite washed away. But he’s alive, and whole, and most miraculous of all, here with her.
She watches him put too much sugar in his coffee and too much cream cheese on his bagel. He still eats like a man who isn’t sure when he might get his next meal—and he applies the same philosophy to the other comforts in his life, as well. She reflects, wryly, that it’s a good thing she’s immune to beard burn.
While they break their fast, she spreads the packet out on the table and goes over everything: birth certificate, school transcripts, social security number, state ID, passport. No driver’s license—because as much as she loves Steve, she also knows him, well enough to know that he wouldn’t let a trifling thing like lack of experience keep him from making the attempt. He’s admired her sports car on several occasions, and she’s already caught him making hungry eyes at the sleek, gleaming chrome of a motorcycle.
Crucially, there's a debit card, linked to a bank account that’s been set up for him. Diana has access to the account, to add funds as needed. The PIN is his birthday—his real one.
Steve signs the back of the card in an ornate script. “Never thought I’d wind up a kept man,” he remarks, straight-faced except for the smile lines at the corners of his eyes.
“Steve?”
“Mm?”
“I’ll be going home soon. Back to Paris.”
“And I’m going with you.” He helps himself to a second bagel. “Right? Isn’t that what this autograph session is all about?”
He says it with such appealing confidence that she wants to agree—longs to put down her coffee and drag him back to bed. But this can’t only be about what she needs.
“No, my love. You’re staying here.”
He freezes, mid-bite, staring at her. He looks—not hurt, exactly, but definitely thrown.
However, he recovers almost immediately, chewing and swallowing before observing, “Fair enough.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, I shouldn’t have assumed. Just because we...” He gestures between them, vaguely. He still can’t quite say the word sex to her in full daylight, despite the fact that they’ve had copious amounts of it all over the apartment.
“You’re still assuming,” she says, with fondness. She can’t help but feel their role reversal very keenly, in this moment: he’s the one who’s new to the modern world and its strange ideas, and she is his guide, his anchoring point.
When he was in her position, he could easily have taken advantage. She can do no less now than he did then.
Steve waits, cautiously.
“I do want you to come and live with me, eventually. But first, you should have some time to explore on your own, and decide if it’s what you really want.”
“ You’re what I really want. This—this, you and me. This is what I want.” He repeats the same gesture, this time with greater emphasis. “Did I not—have I not been clear about that?”
“Of course you have.” She covers his hand with her own. “But I’m what feels most familiar to you right now. That’s going to change, in time. Regardless of our feelings for each other.”
He frowns, but doesn’t argue.
“It’s not exactly a prison sentence,” she points out. “You’ll stay here, you won’t have to worry about a job or money. Metropolis is a fantastic city. It will be like a vacation for you.”
“How long?”
“Six months?”
“One month,” he counters.
Diana knew he was going to be difficult, but she is equally determined.
“Three months. That is my final offer. And I’ll visit you twice. For sex,” she adds, impishly, just to see him react.
He grins. “You drive a hard bargain, Miss Prince.”
She offers her hand to shake; he grabs her by the wrist, pulling her towards him for a kiss.
She lets him, tumbling into his lap, giving a pleased gasp as his free hand finds its way up under the hem of her loose shirt. She loves the conviction of his grasp, his work-rough fingertips on her skin.
“Remind me again,” he murmurs against her lips. “What exactly were you going to visit me for?”
Her smile turns devious. “Let me show you.”
*
The first text from Steve comes the morning after she arrives home.
Strange, how fast the world moves sometimes. A day ago, she was eating breakfast with Steve—a toasted cinnamon bun and burnt-tasting coffee in a bustling airport café, both of them glancing repeatedly at their watches.
Now she is half a world away, nursing a solitary cup of tea on a quiet stone terrace. The pace and the view have improved, but the company is sorely lacking.
Still, it’s good to be home. Victor Hugo once wrote that nothing was more fantastic or sublime than Paris; Diana can see the truth in that, especially in the early morning, the faint, fading mist giving every light a halo.
When her phone chimes, she ignores it. Eight a.m. in Paris is two in the morning in Metropolis, and Steve was up early to see her off for her flight. Surely he is asleep by now.
She checks it after the second chime.
DO YOU KNOW ABOUT TACOS
THEY ARE AMAZING
Apparently, Steve Trevor is a night owl.
She writes back, It’s not a telegram, Steve. You don’t have to use all capitals. Unless you’re really that passionate about tacos.
EASIER TO SEE TINY LETTERS STOP
She smiles against the rim of her cup, picturing his crooked grin.
But another picture also springs to mind: his peculiar habit of holding a book or a map at arm’s length. The way he’d squint when checking his watch. She’d found all of it charming, both at the time and after—those little idiosyncrasies that become enshrined in memory after a loved one has departed.
Now, though, it strikes her in a different light.
When was the last time you had your eyes tested?
He doesn’t reply immediately, and she wonders whether she might have bruised his ego slightly. He’s proud of his keen eyesight—has boasted of it on more than one occasion.
She actually does a search for optometrists in Metropolis before resolutely closing the browser. The entire point of this exercise was to give him time to learn how to live in the world on his own. He knows he can ask her for help if he gets stuck. He doesn’t need to be rescued.
Another few minutes pass, and then:
SO ARE WE JUST NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE TACOS
*
Three weeks later—again at two a.m. his time—Steve texts her a picture of himself in his new glasses: boxy plastic frames, matte black. Surprisingly modern, indisputably sexy.
He’s always taken a certain pride in being stylish; she knows that now, even if she didn’t entirely recognize it at the time. She recalls crisply starched collars, elegant ties, tidy cuffs, shoes polished to a mirror shine. She wonders if he feels let down by a world in which a t-shirt is acceptable everyday wear.
He’s clearly been refining his selfie-taking skills: he’s so handsome that Diana actually gets a little flushed, which is an embarrassing complication to have while in line at La Brioche Dorée.
Very becoming , she writes.
For reading only . My distance vision is still perfect.
Diana, of course, has only ever worn glasses as part of some disguise or other. She wonders what it must be like, to suddenly be given the gift of sight. She imagines it must be a bit like discovering you can fly.
How do you like them?
He responds in a flurry of texts:
Still getting used to them
Almost fell down the stairs the other day
Already had to take them back once to get them fixed
I rolled over on them in my sleep
She recalls him in Veld: sprawled across the mattress, face planted between the pillows, insensate. He sleeps more deeply than any man she’s known since, and seems to expand to fill the available space. She can easily believe he would break a pair of glasses in that state.
Why would you keep your glasses on in bed? she inquires.
His reply is quick: The better to see you with, my dear...
In retrospect, she walked into that one.
*
He calls one morning, earlier than usual, and Diana can tell he’s just a little drunk. Not quite out to sea, but not fully ashore, either. It’s delightful.
“What have you been up to?”
“Well, see, I went to this bar.” He tells it like the start of a joke. “Seemed great at first. Clean, comfortable, drinks were good. Not, uh, not a lot of women in the place.”
Diana thinks she knows where this story is going, but she will let it unfold, because listening to him is an unparalleled pleasure. She can tell he’s calling from somewhere crowded, but his voice always sounds soft, intimate, as though his words are meant for her and her alone. If she closes her eyes, she can imagine that he is lying in bed beside her, recounting the highlights of his day.
“But then, that’s not unusual for a bar, in my experience. I can hear you smiling,” he adds.
“You can’t hear a smile,” she protests, making her face very serious, just in case she is wrong.
“You already know the punchline, don’t you?”
“I think so. How long were you there before you figured it out?”
“Hours!”
She laughs.
“I thought I was finally making friends. Everyone seemed so nice. These guys even asked me to join their bowling team.”
“Oh, Steve.”
“I keep thinking about Sammy,” he muses, unexpectedly. “He would have been a big hit at this place.” A pause, and then: “Did you know? About Sammy?”
“Yes.” Diana and Sameer had kept in touch over several decades, and had guarded a few secrets for one another.
“He was a little ahead of his time.”
“Yes. In many ways.”
A heavy silence settles on the line.
“What happened at the bar?” she prompts.
“Nothing happened. I tried some new cocktails, talked to some new people. Learned all about what Grindr is. Which reminds me—is there a Grindr for taco trucks? I feel like that’s a million dollar idea.”
“You want to have anonymous sex with a taco truck?”
“You wanted me to try new things,” he points out.
She has to bite her lip to keep from telling him how much she loves him.
Oblivious, he continues, “Do you know where to get bowling shoes?”
“You can rent the shoes.”
“And embarrass my new friends? I’m not about that life.”
Diana can’t remember the last time she laughed so hard.
“You like that? I learned that one earlier. No idea if I used it right or not, but there you go.”
“I love you, Steve Trevor.” She can’t help it.
“Right back at you, angel.”
And he’s right. You can hear a smile.
*
Steve discovers FaceTime completely by accident.
Diana is in her office, replying to emails. It’s a Saturday, but one of the advantages of her position at the museum is that her hours of work are flexible enough to accommodate her extracurricular activities. There is rarely such a thing as an antiquities emergency.
Out of the blue, her phone lights up.
“Steve?”
He appears on the screen, barely visible in the dim light.
“Huh,” he remarks. “So that’s what that does.”
She laughs. “Oui, c’est le—I mean, yes, it’s for video chat.”
“No, no. Go back to French.” His voice has more gravel in it than usual.
“Did you just wake up?”
“Yeah.” He reaches over to turn on the lamp, and adjusts the phone so that she can see more of him, lying in bed. “Having a lazy morning.”
“Pushing buttons to discover what they do?”
“Well, the Netflix isn’t working.” He still insists on using definite articles—it’s always the Google , the Netflix, the Spotify . “And you’re not here for me to push your buttons.”
She smiles. “You are trouble.”
“Me?”
“You.”
He drags a hand through his unruly hair, leaving it even messier. “Say something else in French.”
“Tu m’énerves.”
“That’s sweet of you.”
“Laisse-moi travailler.”
“Wow. You want to do what to me?”
Laughter bubbles up inside her like a wellspring. “Your French will need to improve if you want to live here.”
“What are you doing working on a Saturday?”
“It’s easier to focus when the office is quiet.”
“Am I really bothering you?”
“No.” The urge to touch his cheek is so strong that she nearly caresses the screen with her thumb, before common sense intervenes. “I needed a break.”
“It’s good to see your face, angel.”
“Likewise. Though I’m not seeing as much of it as I would like.”
He strokes his chin in a way that makes her feel strangely piqued. She’d like him to keep going, downwards, over his throat, his clavicle, his bare chest. Such talented, beautiful hands.
“Don’t like the beard, huh?”
“It scratches. And I like to have unencumbered access to your lips.” Which is a bad road to go down, because now she’s thinking about his mouth in all the places where she’s missed it most.
Clearly she’s not the only one; she can see a faint wash of pink spread over his cheeks. “Good point,” he says gruffly.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that I should figure out how to hang up this thing before we get carried away.”
“Stay. Please.”
“If I stay I’m going to say something dirty. No one wants that.”
“ I want that.”
He grins. “And you call me trouble.”
She undoes a button on her top, then another, angling her phone to give him an advantageous view.
“You’re at work!” he protests, delighted.
“There’s no one else here. Should I speak French to inspire you? Je t’adore, Steve Trevor.”
“Tu me manques, Diana.”
It’s so unexpected and sweet that her chest clenches. She misses him too.
Aloud, she muses, “I’ve never heard you say anything dirty with the lights on. I didn’t think you knew how.”
Just as she’d hoped, he takes her comment as a challenge.
*
There’s a massive wildfire.
The Flash and Aquaman are both there, helping to quell the flames, but Wonder Woman is in high demand for the rescue effort—not only because of her powers, but because she is polyglot, and because she is kind.
She works tirelessly for days, but there are some that even she cannot save. It hits her harder than usual, for reasons she can’t explain.
All she knows is that there is only one person in the world she wants to see, and be seen by.
“Steve?”
“Hi. Diana. Hi.” His voice on the phone sounds rushed, breathless. “Are you okay?”
He must have seen something. She knows there were news cameras, and people taking video on their phones. She feels a twinge of guilt for not having called him sooner. She still isn’t used to this—having someone to whom she is accountable.
“I’m fine,” she says, unconvincingly. “Are you busy right now?”
“I've always got time for you.”
He’s waiting on the terrace when she touches down. He folds her into his arms without a word. He’s solid beneath her hands, and so warm. She tucks her face against his neck and breathes deeply. His aftershave is peppery—it’s freshly applied, his cheek smooth and soft against hers.
She hadn’t realized, until this moment, how powerfully she’s missed being close to him. He’s rubbing her back, between her shoulder blades, up and down.
“It was not enough,” she says, haltingly. I am not enough .
As is often the case, he hears the words she doesn’t say. “It was more than anyone else could’ve done.” He squeezes her tighter, and doesn’t let go until she’s ready.
Inside, he undoes the clasps of her armour carefully, reverently. She doesn’t feel as though she deserves reverence, but she’s too tired to articulate that properly. Instead, she asks him for a cup of chamomile tea. She changes her clothes, and washes the dust from her face and arms.
In the kitchen, he moves with the confidence of someone who has lived there for years. He’s rearranged the contents of the cupboards, she notes. Every time he eases past her chair, he squeezes her shoulder.
While the electric kettle boils, he lounges against the counter. He’s wearing the jeans she bought for him before she left, and a sweater she hasn’t seen before. It’s a deep forest green, just the right shade to bring out the blue in his eyes. His face is lightly tanned, as though he’s been spending his days outdoors. He looks well-fed and well-rested.
He looks beautiful.
All around her are little fragments of the life she’s only glimpsed in snippets: expired subway cards, creased museum maps, movie ticket stubs, loose change. In her absence, he’s discovered the utility of fridge magnets, and has put up the only two photos of them together in existence: the 1918 group portrait, and a selfie hastily taken on his phone the morning she left for Paris.
“I finally fixed the Netflix.” He sets the steaming mug in front of her—it’s her favourite, one of Matisse’s gouaches découpées . Did he notice, when they were here together, that she always chose it from the miscellany in the cupboard?
“What was it?”
He stoops to kiss the top of her head before sitting down. “What was what?”
“The problem. With Netflix.”
“Right. I’m not a hundred percent sure,” he confesses, rubbing the back of his head absently. “I ended up just deleting it and installing it again. Seemed to work.”
Three months ago, Steve had never seen a computer, never mind a smart TV. Now, he seems completely at ease in this world, in a way Diana herself has never quite managed.
She sips her tea in silence. She wonders whether it was cruel of her not to take him to Paris straight away—to transplant him here in Metropolis and let him blossom, only to ask him to uproot himself again at her leisure.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I know a great place to get tacos.”
She smiles weakly.
“Or, we can go to sleep.”
“It’s still early for you.”
“Me? No. I’m an old man, I’m good for nothing after about 9.”
“You’re always texting me at two in the morning.”
His smile is sidelong, almost bashful. “I like having breakfast with you.”
His reply strips away the last of her defenses. She tries to speak, but her heart is too full.
“Okay. Come on.” He tops off her mug with hot water, then picks it up and starts walking towards the bedroom. “You’re lucky my landlady doesn’t mind if I have overnight guests,” he tells her, and turns to give her a wink.
In the bedroom, the first thing she sees are books: stacked on the nightstand, piled on the dresser, strewn across every flat surface.
It doesn’t surprise her. She remembers going with Etta to clear out his apartment, and the endless boxes of books they packed away. She recalls that she kept a few for herself; she can return to him, she thinks, when he comes home.
From the look of things, Steve has graduated from Burrows to Bradbury, Le Guin, Asimov, and beyond. A copy of The Three-Body Problem is tented on the nightstand, open to about the midway point; beside it, his reading glasses.
He sets her tea down and picks up the glasses. She watches him wipe the lenses with a little cloth, somewhat theatrically, before putting them on.
He blinks at her in feigned surprise and says, “Wow,” just as he did on the day they met.
She cracks a smile—genuine, this time. “Steve Trevor,” she says. “Come to bed.”
He puts the glasses down, peels off his sweater and jeans, and climbs in beside her.
One of the things Diana misses most about home is uncomplicated touching. She grew up with a mother, an aunt, and a legion of shield-sisters, all of whom were very at ease with physical affection. In the world of men, it’s impossible to touch, or be touched, without it being seen as an invitation to something more.
But Steve, who has every reason to assume that something more might be on offer, doesn’t escalate. He lets her take the lead, lets her curl up with her back to his chest before settling with his arm around her.
“I should bathe,” she murmurs. “I smell like smoke.”
“Mm-hm.” He presses his face against the back of her neck, breathing in. “I don’t mind if you don’t.”
Sleep takes her before she’s able to formulate a reply.
*
Diana sleeps without dreaming, and wakes to the smell of espresso. It takes her a moment to realize where she is—or, more precisely, where she is not.
Steve’s side of the bed is empty, and she bolts upright, filled with an urgent, irrational dread.
She forces herself to take slow, deep breaths, and in the interstices, she can hear the sound of dishes clinking.
As if her momentary panic has somehow summoned him, Steve peeks around the door jamb.
“Hey. I made breakfast, you hungry?”
She’s about to say no, but her stomach voices its opinion loudly before she has the chance. “Apparently,” she remarks.
He brings in a tray: coffee, bagel with cream cheese, fresh fruit, all artfully arranged.
“It's not much,” he says, even though he is plainly pleased with himself. “If you’d rather have something else, I can make pancakes. Waffles. Or, uh. French toast?” He wiggles his eyebrows mischievously.
“You don’t know how to make French toast.”
“I do. I took a cooking class through the public library. And I watched some videos online. Turns out, it’s not that hard.”
“I’m impressed.”
“As you should be.” He sets the tray down across her lap. “I’m very impressive.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I’ve been telling you that since the day we met.”
“True.”
“I’ll make you something special for dinner. If you can stay.”
“Yes.” She smiles. “I’d like that.”
“And.” He eases down next to her, careful not to jostle her tray. “Before I forget. This doesn’t count as one of my two visits.”
“I believe we agreed those visits were for a specific purpose.”
“Well, dinner’s a long way off.” His voice is low, his eyes half-lidded. “I want to be a good host. I’ll have to find a way to entertain you.” He leans over and presses a kiss to her bare shoulder.
Diana hums appreciatively, her eyes closing. “Good thing you fixed the Netflix.”
“I’m serious about this, you know.”
“About entertaining me? I hope so.”
“About proving to you that I’m ready to be together for the right reasons.”
“Oh,” she says, suddenly sad.
“What’d I say?”
“It wasn’t meant to be a test, Steve. I wanted you here to be sure you’d be safe.”
“Safer than when I’m with you? Not possible.”
His earnestness is heartbreaking because she knows how rare it is. Steve is, above all, a realist. Pragmatic to the last. But he has faith in Diana, in her ability to shield him from harm.
His faith is a beautiful gift, but it is misplaced.
She pushes the words out. “To be sure you would be safe if… if something ever happened to me.”
His lips part soundlessly.
“I’m strong, but I am not invincible. I didn’t want to leave you alone in a strange place with nowhere to live, no way to take care of yourself.”
He looks hard at the breakfast tray for a long moment. “Like I did to you, you mean,” he says quietly, not meeting her eyes.
“Steve...”
He gets up and walks out without a word.
*
Diana gives him time to calm down before finding him in the kitchen. He is unloading the dishwasher (an appliance Diana has never used, because she does not cook) with the ease of long familiarity.
“Steve.”
He looks up.
“It wasn’t like that.”
He shakes his head emphatically. “Don’t.”
She sees that she has badly misread the situation: she can tell by his tone, by his movements, that he is not angry. Rather, he is resigned. He believes that she has every right to feel that he abandoned her a century ago. He does not believe that he deserves her forgiveness.
She takes the clean coffee cup from his hand, and moves to put it in the cupboard over the sink—only to find it fully stocked with cocktail glasses.
He doesn’t comment, but his lips have a wry curve to them.
Undaunted, she sets the cup on the counter and drifts closer, into his orbit. When he doesn’t shy away, she lifts a hand to cradle his cheek.
“I’m okay,” he tells her, automatically. “You don’t have to…”
“Steve. Listen to me. It was not like that,” she repeats.
“You never talk about what it was like.”
And he’s right. It’s a topic she has avoided, for exactly this reason: she wanted to spare him this pain, this guilt.
But it was a choice that was not hers to make. She is not the curator of his feelings.
“It was… there were times when it was painful. But I did have friends. I lived with Etta until I was ready to try it on my own. I visited Charlie and his wife in Scotland, and Sameer visited me in London. We caused quite an uproar when my landlady caught him coming out of my room. I was nearly evicted. Sameer managed to convince her that we were cousins. She even agreed that we looked alike.”
Steve snorts.
“And Napi—Chief—took me to see the place where you were born.”
“I never told him where I was born.”
“He knew. He loved you, Steve. We all did. And that bound us together. So you did take care of me. I never thought that you’d left me... only that I’d lost you.”
He nods slowly. His mouth is tightly drawn and his eyes are bright, crystalline.
“But not forever. And I am grateful for that.”
“Me too.”
“My love,” she says softly. “Come home with me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I want to taste your cooking. I’ll let you organize my kitchen to your liking.”
He smiles faintly. “You’re too damn tall, is what it is. All these high shelves. Not all of us can fly, you know.”
“I have thousands of books for you to read.”
“Admit it. You just like the glasses.”
“Oh, yes,” she says, with a sultry look.
“Okay,” he says.
“Okay?”
“Okay. Paris. Let’s do it.” He turns his head to kiss the palm of her hand.
Diana can tell she’s beaming. “Okay.”
*
Steve falls in head-over-heels in love with Paris—and the feeling is mutual.
He takes to exploring alone during the day when Diana is at work. He still doesn’t have a driving permit, but he buys a fixie from someone on Le Bon Coin, and goes off on all sorts of adventures, a battered leather messenger bag strapped to his back. He will ride for miles, if there’s a well-stocked bookstore at the end of it.
He refuses to wear a helmet, until he has an extremely close encounter with a bus, and Diana has to pick him and his mangled bicycle up from the hospital.
She’s angry with him for days.
But he follows the doctor’s orders to the letter; his cuts heal, and his bruises fade, and he isn’t too much the worse for wear. He comes home from the repair shop with the helmet, and some proper lights for night riding, and Diana has to concede that she can’t expect him to stay in the house forever.
His French quickly improves, and he adopts a clean, streamlined way of dressing, everything slim-fitted and casually refined. His half of the walk-in closet quickly grows to rival hers. After a month, it’s impossible to tell he hasn’t lived there for years.
Diana’s colleagues at the museum adore him, and never tire of letting him practice his French on them. At first, it’s helpful, because many of the phrases he learns from Diana are not suitable for polite conversation. However, once they learn what an incorrigible flirt he is, they mostly teach him terrible pick-up lines, which is less helpful.
The ladies in their condo complex are also quite taken with Steve. After he moves in, there’s a sudden epidemic of leaking faucets and sticky kitchen drawers. Eventually, word gets around that he is not as handy as he looks, and doesn’t even own a toolbox, though he is a dab hand at wireless routers.
Their downstairs neighbour, Madame Bineau, refers to Steve as “typical of his generation,” citing his haircut, and his bicycle, and the fact that he came over to set up her new satellite receiver wearing shoes, but no socks.
Alone on the elevator, Diana laughs until there are tears in her eyes.
His third week in the city, Steve is offered a part-time job at a small used bookstore. Diana is never entirely sure why or how this happens. Steve has no retail experience; in fact, he has no work history whatsoever, at least in this century. But the store owner asks him if he wants the job, and he accepts—provided they pay him in cash, because he doesn’t have anything remotely resembling a work permit.
He tells her this, quite cheerfully, over dinner that evening. The next day, Diana makes a call and gets him properly documented.
His duties at the bookstore include wearing his glasses, being well-read and impossibly charming, and occasionally organizing shelves and ringing up sales.
Diana wonders, at first, whether it will be enough of a challenge for Steve, physical or mental. But he loves every minute of it—though she questions how much of his pay goes straight back into the till, because he brings home an outrageous number of books. What was once the guest room becomes, out of necessity, the library.
They go out often: dinner and dancing, cafés and patios, indoors and out. She shows him Paris as it was, as it is, as it aspires to be. They take in art and architecture, theatre and film, playing tourist in their own city. They talk, endlessly: about history, about politics, about their lives before the war and since. She’s kept and treasured the particulars of Steve’s biography for a very long time, but she comes to realize that it’s a bit like owning a suit of clothes that once belonged to someone you loved: clothes are not a person, and a list of dates and places and surviving relatives are not a life.
Diana loves their nights out, but there are also times when she prefers to stay in, tirelessly exploring the wonders of nature’s architecture. Though fewer words are said, they still enjoy each other’s company just as much.
Steve eventually does get a driver’s license, and a pilot’s license—and, as Diana predicted, trades his bicycle for a motorcycle. His is still a wandering spirit, never quite happy to be at rest. Diana knows this about him, because she knows it about herself.
Together, they travel to their hearts’ content. Steve has never seen Europe at peace, and Diana has never shared her favourite places with someone she loves. So it’s a first for both of them.
Their life is not quite what she’d imagined, that first night, when Steve had spoken so wistfully about what people did when there were no wars to fight. She had believed, then, that a lasting peace was still possible; now, after many mortal lifetimes of experience, she knows better. There will always be another battleground, another distress call, another disaster, another time and place that Wonder Woman is urgently needed.
But when there is a break in the fighting, Diana now has a refuge to return to.
She knows that, even if Steve isn’t there to greet her, she will be able to look around the home they share, and see evidence of his recent occupation: leftover dinners and books and reading glasses and shoes without socks.
She knows that there will be soft, sun-dappled mornings, and beard burn, and breakfast in bed, and above all, love.
And Diana still believes in that.