Chapter Text
Veld, 1918
The snow had stopped sometime during the night, leaving only the faint smell of frost behind, which was paired with the bleak sunlight that was currently cutting through wispy clouds and filtering through the small window.
Steve picked up his shirt and shrugged it on. He glanced up at Diana as his fingers worked on buttoning it up. She was sitting on the edge of the bed putting on her greaves, her hair falling over one shoulder and her armour and gauntlets already affixed in place.
And just like every single time he’d looked at her since they had first met, his chest constricted with a longing that he had no right to own. Not when the rest of him felt so odd and out of place, and the world outside of this small room was an uncertain thing that he didn’t trust to grant him happiness this big for too long a time.
Last night, they had been playful, laughing and trading stories, afterwards. There had been a feeling of utter exhilaration in his chest that burned warmer than the fire in the hearth and the low husk of Diana’s voice enveloping around him, and the way she traced the old scar crossing his shoulder idly as they spoke had made something tender inside of him ache.
But right now, in the sobering light of morning, Steve couldn’t help but feel the sense of doom rolling over him, gnawing on his insides like a pack of angry wolves.
He knew that one way or another, something was going to happen today from which there would be no coming back — and hadn’t he known that this moment would come when he’d chosen to go against the orders of his superiors? Wasn’t that the point? Either way, Steve didn’t harbour any illusions about the odds being in his favour. They hadn’t been for a long time now, not for any of them.
It hadn’t bothered him before. But that, apparently, was the problem with finding something that he wanted to live for. It made him scared.
“Steve.”
He blinked, zoning in on the room again—
—and found Diana standing before him, her eyes searching his.
If he had thought he was falling for her the night before, it was clear as day now (pun intended) that he was so far gone he could have laughed at himself, under different circumstances.
At present though, all he could do was register how dry his mouth had gone in just one instant. And how he could barely think straight. Or, more accurately, how the only thing he could think of was what it felt like to kiss her and have the whole length of her body pressed to the whole length of his.
“We should…” Steve started and faltered. He cleared his throat and tried to work up a smile that didn’t quite get there, not entirely. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants, shaking his head a little as the corner of Diana’s mouth lifted. “We should probably go try to find some breakfast.”
He wasn’t hungry, his stomach was in knots and the prospect of walking out of this room was downright devastating. But his boys were waiting for them and the gala was mere hours away. And that was the only thing Steve could think of to say that wasn’t a mad plea to turn around and go back to where they had come from and let someone else deal with Ludendorff because, god help him, he had never been this frightened of losing something in his life.
“We should,” Diana agreed softly, but she didn’t step away from him or reach for her cloak and weapons sitting on a chair.
She moved to him instead, after a ridiculously long moment. And there was nothing Steve could do to stop himself from reaching for her, one of his hands anchored on the small of her back, another coming up to curl around the back of her neck.
Immediately, he felt her body deflate, her shoulders rounding forward and into him. She pressed her face against his throat, and the contract between the cool metal of her tiara and the warmth of her breath falling on his neck made Steve shiver.
Outside, he could hear the voices rising, the village waking up to see another day — with certainty he knew they hadn’t felt in a very long time. There was laughter drifting all the way up to this room, the neighing of horses and the yells of good morning across the plaza. A small dot on the map coming to life.
And amidst it all, there was the sound of his heartbeat that Steve was certain everyone in a ten-mile radius could hear and a silent plea to whoever or whatever might be listening running through his head over and over again, Please don’t take this away from me.
His hand slid up Diana’s neck and into her hair. He drew back just far enough away to turn his face and find her mouth with his. This, he thought as he kissed her, was scarier than death. The enormity of the thing blossoming inside of him that felt all-consuming as her own hands came to rest on his face, her lips eager against his and just as hungry.
“We should…” Diana started when she pulled back.
He heard her swallow, her eyes fluttering closed when he bowed his head and pressed his forehead against the metal star of her tiara, his fingers moving absently through her hair near the nape of her neck.
“Yeah,” he breathed.
There were things he wanted to tell her. Things that he didn’t know how to put into words yet, the sheer magnitude of them barely comprehensible, and the thought of trying to explain them laughable, somehow. And so he just stood there, breathing her in and wondering for perhaps the millionth time how could something this right could have come out of something as ugly as the war.
She had been full of steady assuredness last night but he didn’t try looking for it today. If her resolve waved, his, he knew, would shatter.
“Yeah,” he repeated and took a breath, reminding himself that they couldn’t put off leaving forever. “Diana...”
She looked up.
(So beautiful, he thought. How could someone real be so beautiful? It was like his brain short-circuited each time he laid his eyes on her.)
Her hand curled over a fistful of his shirt as she tugged him closer, bringing his mouth to hers and kissing him once more.
There was a promise to it — and a promise is unbreakable — but underneath it, Steve could hear the clock ticking and their time running out.
Steve woke up with a heavy sky stretched above him filled with low grey clouds and the smell of cold mud permeating his senses to the point of making him feel nauseated. That, and the fact that the whole world sort of felt like it was swaying beneath him. Like a ship in a stormy sea. It made him wish he could reach out and grab hold of something, except nothing felt steady.
It took him a few moments to gather his bearings, somewhat. And when he did, a few things registered at once.
First, he was cold. So cold that his teeth were chattering unevenly even though the touch of the air to his face didn’t feel all that frigid. It was almost as if the cold was coming from within him.
Second, there was the taste of ashes in his mouth even though the air, when he breathed it, was fresh. More fresh that Steve could remember from the past few years when everything around him smelled of blood and death and gunpowder and fuel exhaust.
Third, there was a rock or a stick poking rather uncomfortably into his left shoulder blade. Which was, perhaps, the only thing that kept his awareness focused.
And finally, it was the silence, so deafening he could hear the air coming in and out of his lungs and the steady thumping of his heart against the inside of his ribs. So deafening he could all but hear the Earth itself breathing beneath him.
It reminded him, oddly, of the first time he had ended up under artillery fire. That was when he had learned that a ‘rain of bullets’ wasn’t just a figure of speech. Not when they were coming in such quick succession like an actual, honest to god storm upon them. And then, afterwards, when it was over, there had been that eerie silence that had made him hold his breath until his lungs began to burn for fear of breaking it with a loud exhale. Lying at the bottom of a trench, breathing in heat and dust and the unmistakable whiff of blood emanating from the dead and wounded, Steve had been very aware of his heartbeats and his blood flowing in his veins and the fact that, miraculously, he was still alive.
Except now, it didn’t feel right, because he couldn’t be, he couldn’t still be alive. He had climbed into that plane, loaded with gas, and he had pulled the trigger—
The realization brought a cascade of memories.
The cold wind tugging at his clothes and whipping Diana’s hair against her bare shoulders and the words clogging in his throat because he didn’t know how to say them and his hands pressing his father’s watch into hers.
The sight of her hovering twenty feet above the tarmac minutes before that, and a voice booming across the stretch of the airfield coming from someone who had to be — who could only be — the God of War? And Steve’s mind running in circles because it was not possible, it couldn’t be.
And the dread sitting in his chest when he had realized how much of a fool he must have been to want something he knew could never be his. How the war was going to claim him, one way or another, and that the previous night with Diana might as well have been a dream. And the ache of that realization and wondering why it had to have happened like that, in such a twisted turn of fate.
Was he dead now? He sure didn’t feel very alive. But shouldn’t he feel nothing then?
They hadn’t prepared him for this, Steve thought with something akin to hysterical laughter bubbling up in the back of his throat. They had taught him how to die but not how to deal with making it through it in one piece.
He breathed in, and once more, as if unable to get enough of it. And again. And that was when the pain exploded in his chest, the familiar sensation of cracked or broken ribs reminding him to take it easy. Except now he could also feel bile rising in his throat and he needed to maybe try to at least roll over—
A face appeared above Steve, blocking a chunk of the grey sky.
A man hovering over him had a thick beard streaked with grey and a wool hat pulled all the way down to his bushy brows. He was wearing a puffy coat like nothing that Steve had ever seen before and a thick knitted sweater underneath it. Because the day was already grey and what little light was coming from behind the stranger, Steve couldn’t read his face but if he had to guess, he’d say the man was frowning.
Steve blinked.
“You drunk?” the man asked in French.
Why would he be—
Oh.
Did they end the war?
Steve’s heart tripped over itself and shifted into a whole new rhythm. Was he presumed drunk because everyone else had spent the night celebrating?
Before he could open his mouth to say anything, another face appeared over him. This time one of a scruffy dog.
The man stared. The dog stared, panting. Steve stared back. He could feel nausea rolling in his stomach. Could feel his head pounding dully — holy shit, had he fallen from the sky?
And then, it was as if someone had flipped a switch and the world turned black.
The next time Steve woke, it was from the noise and the light so bright it felt blinding even through his eyelids.
He blinked his eyes open, squinting against the glare of two overhead lamps mounted on the ceiling, their white light scorching his retinas.
The sound came rushing in, fast — voices, so many voices speaking over each other, and some odd persistent beeping in the distance. And the smell — sterility and food — that he wouldn’t have confused for anything.
A hospital.
Steve turned his head, looking around the room.
There appeared to be four beds sitting with their headboards against one wall with small white nightstands between them. Four chairs against the opposite wall (one of them currently holding what looked like Steve’s overcoat) and a chest of drawers in the centre, with some sort of box on top of it. Steve’s bed was the closest one to the window, and in the one next to him, a man with a cast on his leg was half sitting with his back leaning against his pillow, eating crackers from a crinkly bag. The other two beds were vacant, just bare striped mattresses waiting for new occupants.
There were voices coming from the hallway, although Steve couldn’t make out the words through the buzzing in his ears.
The pounding in his head from earlier had receded to a more tolerable although not any less irritable throb in the back of his skull. But even so, his thoughts had started to clear.
How the hell did he get here? And where was here?
And why was it—Well, he didn’t think that the hospital not being full was a bad thing, strictly speaking. But they tended to be, these days, what with the war and all that.
He filed his surprise away to deal with later.
Steve was about to introduce himself to his neighbour and maybe ask a question or two when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. And the next moment, his jaw dropped and his eyes grew wide when it registered with him that the box sitting on top of the dresser wasn’t just a box. There was a moving picture inside of it, behind the curved glass screen. Like in movie theatres but small and coloured, and coming seemingly from the inside instead of—
Rising on his elbow, he looked up, wondering if he’d find a projector mounted on a wall somewhere or any other source — anything! — feeling something inside of him twist when he saw nothing but just the expanse of white paint.
Much like in that field, his windpipe constricted, the confusion of the moment making his head spin.
His gaze drifted to the box again, his eyes narrowing as he tried to figure out what he was seeing.
It looked like a soccer game.
“What the hell—” he muttered.
“Ah, you’re awake!”
Steve snapped his head up to see a nurse in a pale-blue uniform making her way towards him. She was young and smiling, her hair gathered under a cap the same colour as her dress.
“Mathias, you shouldn’t eat that before dinner,” she chastised the man with a cast.
“When did I refuse dinner, Annette?” the man chuckled good-naturedly and fished another cracker out of his tiny bag.
For a moment, his eyes flickered curiously towards Steve, and then returned to the game unfolding in—whatever that thing was.
Steve felt like he was losing his mind.
The nurse stopped before him, and like each time Steve had ever been to a hospital before, he had to resist the temptation to pull the sheet up to his chin, like a shield.
“How are you feeling?” she asked as her hand moved to rest briefly on Steve’s forehead before she leaned in to check his eyes and then reached for his wrist, pressing her fingers to his pulse point. “The man who brought you in said you were disoriented.”
“I—” Steve started and swallowed, his mouth dry. It took him a second to realize that she was speaking French. And another one, to scramble for his less than stellar vocabulary. “Where am I?”
“The Central Hospital,” Annette said. “What is your name, Monsieur? Do you remember your name? You didn’t have any documents with you.”
“Steve. Steve Trevor.” His eyes darted around the room. “The Central Hospital where?”
He wanted to protest about the documents — because of course, he had documents! — and then it hit him that he had given them to Sameer to hold on to right before they’d driven into the German High Command, on the off chance he got seized during the mission. His documents. His money.
The thought made Steve grimace.
“Liege?” the man — Mathias — said although it came out more as a question.
Liege? Steve felt his brows knit together. It was a few hours’ drive from Veld but why didn’t they take him to a field hospital in the area?
“What day is it?” he asked.
“November 12th,” Annette responded.
Two days. It had been two days. Okay, that wasn’t so bad.
He needed—
Steve ran a hand down his face. He needed to get out of here and find a way to get a hold of his guys. He needed to find Diana.
Diana.
His heart gave a dull tug.
Were they looking for him? Or did they think he was dead?
The thought sent a trickle of cold dread down his spine. No, they wouldn’t—He thought of Diana’s hands and her whisper in the near-dark and the way his chest had felt too full with things he hadn’t felt in so long and how they made him ache in places he never knew existed.
He hoped they were alright. Sammy and Charlie and Chief. He hoped they’d survived that battle. God only knew what had gone down there after he had—
Another thought struck, pushing all the air out of his lungs once more.
“The armistice,” he said, his voice urgent and panicky even to his own ears. He made a grab for Annette’s wrist. “Did they sign the armistice?”
His eyes were darting between the nurse and man now, both of whom were looking at him with growing concern.
“Monsieur Trevor, is there someone you would like me to call for you?” Annette asked in a careful, placating, voice that only left Steve more agitated.
Who did she think she could call?
He just needed to know if the war—
“The war,” he repeated, frustrated, but let go of her. “Did the war end?”
“I think I should call the doctor,” Annette muttered.
“No, I need to—”
Steve made a move to sit up fully and a rib that he suspected was probably broken screamed in protest, leaving him hissing with pain.
“Monsieur, you need to lie down. You have a concussion. A cracked rib—”
“No, you don’t understand. I have to find …” Carefully now, Steve rolled onto his side and pushed himself up, eyes roaming wildly around the room once, twice. Until they landed on a newspaper lying on the nightstand between his bed and Mathias’s, and he finished under his breath, “…find someone.”
A newspaper.
Surely, there would be something about the end of the war in a newspaper.
Steve snatched it, his eyes running over the headlines as he tried to decipher the French, his mind too scattered to make sense of what he was reading. There was an article about some summit in Paris, taking up most of the front page with two men shaking their hands. There was something off about it. Something about the way they looked—
In colour. The photograph, like the moving images in the weird box-thing, was in colour.
But it was not that fact that landed on him like a sucker punch, followed by another one, and then another one until there was no air left inside of him and no way of inhaling any.
It was the date right beneath the newspaper name, Le Soir written in bold letters.
November 12, 1984.
Steve stared at it. And stared at it some more, waiting for something to click in his mind, for all of this to make sense. And then it began to blur before his eyes from looking at it for too long without blinking.
1984.
What the hell was going on?
“You okay, pal?” Steve heard Mathias ask although his voice came low and dull, like from far away.
1984.
“Monsieur Trevor?” Annette touched Steve’s arm and then straightened up, looking wary when he flinched away from her. “I’ll go get the doctor.”
“No,” Steve breathed. He let go of the paper and let it fall in his lap. “No, I’m fine. I’m sorry, I—”
What exactly was the doctor going to do? Hurl him back in time? Come in here and say that this was all an elaborate prank?
The thought nearly made him laugh. He would have laughed, if only all of this wasn’t so damn terrifying. If only he could breathe. Goddammit, he needed to breathe, but everything inside him seemed to have shrunk. Shrivelled when he wasn’t paying attention, and now he had lungs the size of raisins and a deflated balloon for a stomach.
He felt another wave of panic roll over him, threatening to sweep him under and drown him. Diana. It couldn’t be. How was it—he had to be dreaming. He had to be insane. Or dead. Could he be dead? Could it explain this?
“Perhaps, you would like something to eat?” Annette asked, her features softening with sympathy.
She must have thought he was delusional, not in his right mind.
Steve nodded, numbly. The thought of food felt nauseating, but he didn’t want to give them any more reason to think that he was losing his sanity — even if it was, in fact, what was happening. He knew all too well what they did with soldiers who couldn’t cope and keep it together. He couldn’t afford for that to happen.
Where the hell had he been for sixty-six years?
On instinct, his hand flew up to his face, a surge of panic kicking his heartbeat into a gallop. Had he—But no, his cheeks seemed smooth, if a little scruffy.
“Is this new?” Steve asked Mathias, jerking his chin towards the paper.
The man nodded. “My wife brought it this morning,” he said and held out his bag of crackers. “You want some?”
Steve shook his head, his windpipe closing down again frighteningly fast, the room tilting a little around him and his breaths coming out short and shallow. He bunched his fist around the sheets covering his lap for something to hold on to before he slid off the face of the Earth altogether. Someone had changed him into hospital garb — a pair of cotton pants and a white shirt, and it was suddenly too much. All of this — the medicinal smell, the noise, the bright lights, the coarseness of the starched fabric against his skin.
He was dead.
He had to be dead, there was no other explanation and no coming back from it.
Steve thought again that he was going to be sick, and he probably would be if he’d eaten anything in the past twelve hours. As it was, there was a foul taste sitting in the back of his throat and his stomach continued to roll, as though angry at Steve for not giving it a chance to empty.
He closed his eyes, but it only made it worse, the room tipping even more. Concussion, the nurse had said. That would explain it. It wouldn’t explain anything else but it would sure as hell explain—
Steve snapped his eyes open.
Maybe he was insane.
His gaze affixed on the goddamned box with the moving pictures again, and then the world upended once more, in a different direction. There on the screen, he could see a grainy image of someone—someone—
He squinted, trying to focus. Trying to see past the black dots dancing before his eyes. There on the screen, mid-flight with her lasso slithering through the air, was Diana.
His mouth fell open once more.
It couldn’t be.
“Yeah, I know,” Mathias whistled from his bed.
Out of the corner of his eye, Steve could see Mathias was also watching the box, somewhat in awe.
Diana.
His Diana.
The image wasn’t very clear, shown from far away, but he knew—he knew because—he would always know her.
Steve’s mouth went dry.
But how…?
After all this time—
The world around him came to a standstill, the sounds fading as if someone pulled a bag over his head. Slowly, as if worried about passing out, or maybe making everything around him shatter, Steve pushed the sheet aside and stepped onto the cool linoleum floor, walking slowly to the box thing.
It was her.
His heart ached. Everything inside of him ached.
I love you. I wish we had more time.
“They call her Wonder Woman,” Mathias called after him.
Steve glanced at him. “What?”
Mathias waved his hand in the general direction of the box.
“They call her Wonder Woman,” he repeated.
When Steve turned towards the moving pictures, they were showing something else and Diana was gone.
“Who is she?”
Mathias shrugged. “Nobody knows. But she helps when people need help.”
I will fight for those who cannot fight for themselves.
“Where?” Steve asked.
“Everywhere.” Mathias tossed another cracker into his mouth and shrugged. “But that just now,” he pointed at the screen, “that happened in London. Didn’t you see? It said so.”
The museum was dark and quiet when Diana stepped out of her office, the echo of her footsteps the only sound breaking the near-complete silence that had long settled over the empty hallways and spacious galleries. Her work was a carefully constructed world that knew little about her but that Diana cherished all the same.
She had come to America decades ago, following a conversation the details of which had started to blur in her mind no matter how hard she wanted to hold on to them. One about an endless blue sky on summer days and mountains as far as the eye could see and more ice-cream that you can ever imagine, I swear, Diana that had been held as they lay tangled in sheets in a small room that felt larger than the world itself that night while Steve’s fingers threaded idly through her hair. The land of the free was what he had called it.
She had found the sky that reminded her of home, and the mountains he had been so fond of. And yes, the ice-cream. What she hadn’t found was peace, or the connection that she’d been yearning for. That, Diana suspected, would be yet another ghost for her to chase for as long as she walked the Earth. She had learned that freedom was all but an illusion, but then again, she had long known that many things were, by then.
Diana paused in front of one of the displays, the safety lights left for the night illuminating one of the hundreds of thousands of exhibits, a fragment of history that would have otherwise been forgotten.
Her fingers grazed along the smooth glass.
People always said that all one had to do was want something hard enough, and it would be right there, theirs for the taking. After all, America was the land of opportunities, of new beginnings. Diana had always found that sentiment flawed to the core. No matter how much she wished for the one thing she wanted more than anything else in the world, no matter how much she wanted it and how much she begged for it, her sheets remained cold, her house empty and the hole in her heart that Steve had left behind continued to grow bigger with each breath she took. He had never come back to her.
She stepped away from the display and headed towards the exit, allowing the deeper shadows to swallow her and muffle the sound of her footfalls.
Just wanting something, no matter how fiercely, was never going to be enough.
London.
He needed to get to London.
Crazy as it was, having a plan calmed him some. Helped him stay focused. Grounded him the way only a purpose could even though London seemed awfully far away, once he’d given it some proper thinking.
But when did something like that ever stop him before?
Shockingly enough, sneaking out of the hospital turned out to be a much less arduous affair than Steve had expected.
In his time with the British Intelligence, he had to weasel his way in and out of situations that, if they’d gone wrong, could have cost him his life. And more. They could have had dire consequences for thousands of people.
Now it most certainly was not the case.
Steve waited until the lights went out for the night and his ward-mate fell asleep. The door to their room stood slightly ajar, and through the crack, he could hear the voices of night doctors and nurses. Quiet, unobtrusive sounds.
He slipped out of the bed and padded to the chair where his own clothes lay folded. The German uniform. The realization gave him a pause, brought a moment of revulsion and the cold shock of memories he didn’t want to relive. (These were the clothes he had worn to the gala; these were the clothes he had died in.) Still, he stripped down to his underwear. The pants would have to do, he decided. And so would the shirt. He would have to leave the jacket with the German war insignia behind but his overcoat was inconspicuous enough. And warm, too.
He dressed quickly and pulled on his boots to the sound of Mathias soft snoring.
Earlier, he had washed as best he could in the communal bathroom down the hall and even shaved, having borrowed a razor from Mathias. But even then, feeling more like himself and looking more familiar to his own eyes, Steve had still found it hard to reconcile with the situation that made less sense to him the more he thought about it. The moment of wild panic he’d had earlier, about having aged in addition to having lost all those years had ended up being disproved, but deep down, he wasn’t sure if it had made everything better or worse.
Glancing at Mathias, Steve pulled on his overcoat that still bore a faint scent of campfire and crossed the room, the linoleum squeaking softly under the soles of his boots.
Outside, the hallway was empty and dimly lit by night lights.
There were two nurses talking at the registration counter to his right. His pockets laden with the few bags of crackers and the couple of apples he had pilfered from the personnel kitchen earlier, Steve turned in the opposite direction.
The fire escape door at the end of the corridor wasn’t locked and the hinges gave no sound when Steve pushed it open. There were no footsteps behind him and no yells ordering him to stop and come back, and no one seemed to notice he was gone, or care. The first-floor hallway was just as deserted. (He wondered briefly if that was another sign of a world without war. Before, he couldn’t recall going anywhere without running into soldiers or someone else asking questions. But the thought didn’t linger.) Another nurse was positioned at the desk near the door, but when Steve walked past her and out the door, she didn’t even look up.
The night was cold, with a bit of a chill to it that nipped at his cheeks and snaked into his sleeves, making him miss the jacket he’d had no choice but to leave behind. His mind still reeling, he turned and started to walk, in part desperate to put the hospital with its scents that made him think of death behind, and in part because it felt like doing something even though he wasn’t sure where he was supposed to go, yet. Because if he didn’t have a purpose, he would start feeling like he was drowning again, and he wasn’t sure if he’d know how to pull himself up if that happened.
It took him the better half of the night — and a few vague directions given by sparse passers-by — to find the train station. And another day to make it to London — hiding in luggage cars and compartments on the trains — via Brussels and then Paris and then Calais, before boarding the ferry that took him across the Channel.
He tried not to gawk, not to look too out of place, but it was hard. He couldn’t help staring at the clothes — so bright, as if daring. And at women wearing pants — the first time he saw one, not long after he’d left the hospital, Steve had paused in his tracks, slack-jawed. And at the hair curled up on top of people’s heads. And at small portable music-playing devices with wires running to compact earphones that muffled it for everyone else but the person who was listening to it.
And the cars!
The cars were nothing like how he remembered them. They were slick and shiny and they didn’t smell as bad, and most of them had windows that rolled up and down, depending on how much fresh air people wanted inside. Admittedly, it seemed like a smart invention.
At least the trains didn’t change that much. They were newer, and more comfortable — he assumed from the confines of luggage cars — but they still were, well, trains. He hadn’t seen much of the Channel from the ferry, holed away among people’s travel bags and a cage or two carrying dogs. The dogs hadn’t given Steve a minute of their attention, as if they knew he was worse off than they were.
Steve had never been to Liege before, and thus he hadn’t had anything to compare it to.
London, on the other hand, was a different story altogether.
London was… overwhelming.
The coach driver who took pity on him when Steve told him he’d lost all his money — which wasn’t even a lie, in the general sense — dropped him and a handful of other passengers off at one of the stations near Hyde Park, spitting them out into the late afternoon.
Even rationing his scant supplies — and kicking himself for not taking more — Steve was down to only one apple and his stomach was growling from the smells of food wafting from the cafes and flats around him. People moved past him without care, the cars honked, the music played — and the dissonance between his memories and the reality before him was mind-blowing.
He felt lost and disoriented, and more bewildered than when an army of armed to the teeth Amazons had been staring down at him, hungry for revenge for their dead.
A shoulder rammed into his, sending Steve staggering a couple of steps.
“Watch it,” the voice came, but its owner disappeared in the crowd before Steve even registered it.
In all honesty, it wasn’t all that different from the London he knew, Steve thought as he watched the coaches and pedestrians and street vendors crowding narrow streets. But it also, well, was. In just about every sense that Steve could think of. The buildings were taller. And shinier. And the air felt cleaner even with car exhaust puffing out of vehicles that seemed to crowd every inch of narrow roads. He tried to imagine Diana in this world that looked so much flashier and just… couldn’t.
And it occurred to him then — for the first time in nearly twenty hours — that he had no idea what to do now. Too focused on getting here and not getting caught riding without a ticket, he hadn’t quite taken the time to consider his next steps.
Maybe he should have. Maybe that was where he should have started.
The memory of the footage on that screen came into focus in his head, but all he had seen was a piece of a building that could have been any building, and Diana — a bright flash against the grey sky. She wasn’t hovering above the city now — Steve ever looked up, because why wouldn’t he? As if that was any crazier than everything else that had happened to him recently. But the sky remained blissfully blue with scattered clouds.
Wonder Woman, that was what Mathias called Diana. Steve turned those words in his head this way and that, deciding in the end that they fit more than anything else he could think of.
What were the chances of him running into her? Of turning around the corner and seeing her walking towards him? In a city of several million, no less.
Probably low, if he continued to stand on the sidewalk while people pushed past him, Steve reasoned pragmatically with himself.
He began to walk.
He could ask around but Mathias said that no one knew who Wonder Woman was. Still, Steve wondered if it was worth the shot. Or if he was going to be sent to another hospital for—for breaking some social protocol? Like the couple that was kissing right on the street. Steve turned his eyes away, feeling the flush creep up his neck. It wasn’t unheard of to hold hands in his time, but he didn’t think he had ever seen anyone express their affection so openly — well, maybe the wives of the soldiers going off to war, but that felt different somehow. It hadn’t been just because, in the middle of a street.
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and turned to cross the road, not wishing to walk past the couple, embarrassed to have witnessed something that was clearly immensely personal.
Steve wasn’t sure where he was going. Or what he was going to do. Or where he was going to sleep tonight, for that matter. He’d gotten a few bits of shut-eye here and there as he travelled, but the shock of the past couple of days was starting to catch up with him, weighing on him like a pile of rocks.
He didn’t even realize where he was until, suddenly, London no longer looked alien.
He stopped and looked around.
The world might have changed in the past decades, but not all of it. With a jolt of surprise, Steve saw that, unbeknownst to him, his legs had brought him to the area where Etta used to live. Sixty-six years ago.
Steve tipped his head back and looked up at the old building across the road.
His heart gave a few dull thuds against the inside of his chest.
It had been so long…
He squared his shoulders and started towards the door painted bright blue. Maybe whoever lived in Etta’s flat now would know something about her, or her family. He wasn’t sure what it mattered, or what he was going to do with that information, but it was something, he figured.
Steve took the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the freshly painted door before he had a chance to change his mind. Or come to his senses. Whichever.
It swung open before he was ready for it, and for the second time in as many days, it was like someone had punched him in the solar plexus, leaving him disoriented and out of breath. And convinced that the whole thing with 1984 was nothing but some fevered dream.
“Etta?” he asked barely audibly.
“Yes?” the woman frowned slightly like anyone would when they couldn’t place someone who seemed to know them in their mind. “Do I know you?”
Steve blinked.
The woman before him was dressed in the same manner everyone seemed to be dressed, her hair a pile of tight curls on her head and her blue eyes studying him without comprehension.
She most certainly didn’t look to be over a hundred years old.
Maybe he was dreaming.
(Maybe he had lost his mind.)
“Etta Candy?” Steve clarified, dumbly.
The woman’s frown deepened, her expression growing more suspicious.
“Etta Sullivan,” she said after a moment. In his Etta’s voice, goddammit. “Etta Candy was my grandmother’s maiden name. Who are you?”
Steve gaped at her, the air wheezing out of his lungs.
The foyer wasn’t well-lit, and now that she had said that, and now that a moment of pure mortification had passed, he could see it. The woman’s face was a little narrower, her lips slightly fuller and she was younger than his Etta had been the last time he had seen her. But even so, the resemblance was uncanny. It was no wonder it landed on him like a blow.
“I’m looking for Diana,” he said before he knew to stop himself.
Because she wasn’t his Etta but she looked so much like her that the small moment of connection felt like too much to bear. And because he had no idea what else to say.
Another moment, and the woman’s eyes widened. Her hand flew to press to her mouth as she stared at him the way Steve suspected he had looked at her a minute ago.
Like she was seeing a ghost.
“You’re him,” she breathed. “You’re that man from grandma’s old photographs.”
It was Steve’s turn to frown, but before he had a chance to catch up with what she was talking about, Etta — a different Etta, but Etta nonetheless — was pulling him into the familiar hallway.
It wasn’t quite the same. Of course, not. Not after all that time, but Steve was suddenly awash with recognition. The furniture was different and so were the curtains and the million knick-knacks sitting around. But he knew where the kitchen was, and which room was the master bedroom and which floorboard in the living room would creak when you stepped on it.
Suddenly, Steve felt just a tiny bit less lost.
---
Etta dragged him, half-dazed, into the kitchen. She pulled his overcoat off and hung it on the peg in the hallway and then she pushed Steve into a chair at the table (that might or might not have been the one he had sat at before). She made him tea and a sandwich — Steve couldn’t help gawking at the packages she had pulled out of the refrigerator. He had never seen anything like it before, even though in the end, it was a ham and cheese sandwich he had received, with some pickles and what appeared to be mustard.
He wolfed it down in two bites, barely remembering when was the last time he had been so ravenous. After rations and beans cooked over the fire — his usual menu for the past year or so — the sandwich had tasted like a meal fit for the gods, no less.
And then, with the mug clasped between his palms — for comfort and warmth — Steve told her everything. About waking up in the field and the weird man and thinking that the air didn’t smell quite right. About the hospital and the weird box with images — Etta told him they called it television — and seeing Diana. About his escape — not that it could be counted as such, Steve mused, when no one seemed to care he’d done it. About making it to London and then, somehow, finding this place.
He told her what had happened before that, too. Some of it. Enough to see her face change when he mentioned Etta — his Etta. And maybe the things that his Etta had told to her granddaughter.
She took it in stride, too. Better than Steve had, at least. Be it for whose descendant she was, or maybe it was the whole Diana deal — and one couldn’t meet Diana and still not believe in the impossible — but Etta only raised her eyebrows once as he spoke. It happened when Steve told her about taking the food from the hospital kitchen.
“They had to have better stuff there than crackers,” she said, and there was only so much Steve could do to not burst out laughing.
Using his momentary distraction, she stood up and disappeared into the living room only to come back a mere half a minute later carrying two leather-bound books. Ones that, upon closer inspection when she dropping them on the table before him, turned out to be photo albums.
They spent the next hour going through photographs. There was one from his Etta’s wedding, of her and her husband, both of them looking so serious that Steve couldn’t help but smile. He had no doubt she had rolled her eyes when she’d first seen it. Then there were a few images of a toddler with a cheeky smile — Etta’s son, young Etta’s father.
“Dad used to call grandma Etta Senior, and me Etta Junior,” she told Steve, smiling fondly. “Used to drive grandma crazy but he never even considered another name for his daughter.”
She paused, and then turned to Steve.
“She was very fond of you, Steve. Used to call you the bravest man she’d ever met.”
“Used to call me different words,” Steve muttered with a chuckle.
Etta hummed. “No doubt about that.”
There were photos of the others, in those albums, too. From after. All of them, although not as detailed and not as numerous as the family ones.
Steve’s heart tripped and sprung into a gallop when he saw one of Diana, her hair gathered near the nape of her neck and her hands tucked into the pockets of her long coat, similar to the one they’d gotten for her at Selfridge’s. She was looking at the camera, dare and mischief in her eyes, but there was something underneath that, too. Something that nearly splintered him in half right there and then, that had him transfixed.
Steve studied it for a long time, taking in the small details — the curve of her smile and the strand of hair falling across her cheek and the slight tilt of her head. He had only seen her a few days ago — well, a few days for him. But she seemed so far away and so out of reach, it might have as well been centuries, and his longing for her grew beyond unbearable.
If the picture of Diana threw him off, it was the photo of Sameer and Charlie, arms slung over each other’s shoulders and smiles stretched ear to ear, that drove the truth home.
They were dead, had been for a very long time. Caught up in the craziness of his situation, Steve hadn’t taken the time to consider it before. Not really.
He could feel it now, the weight of the loss of something that he couldn’t put into words that sat heavy on his chest, an invisible hand grounding his insides into dust. Somehow, it had never crossed his mind that he would be the one to outlive them.
And for the first time since he’d woken up in that field three days ago, he wept.
With his hand pressed to his mouth and his eyes squeezed shut, barely making a sound, he wept from loss and fear and confusion and the years they had all lost to war. And the realization that none of this was going to go back to the way it had been before that night when Steve had gone and blown himself up. He could find Diana, and he could find answers, and it still would never be the same.
He felt Etta’s hand squeezing his shoulder briefly before she stood up to give him some space and to put the kettle on again.
It was only after the storm had passed, after another cup of tea was placed before him, that Steve finally asked the question that had brought him there in the first place.
“Is she here?” He looked up at Etta who met his eyes with a puzzled expression. “Diana. Is she here, in London?”
“No,” Etta shook her head. “She lives in America, in Washington.”
Steve blinked, so thrown by her words it rendered him speechless. He had spent hours today, trying to figure out how to find Diana in a city this huge where he was all but a grain of sand. He hadn’t thought he would have to look even farther.
And then his heart sank.
America was far away. He wondered if they had ships going there still — had to, probably. Or planes, maybe. If they had those tiny television boxes, surely there had to be planes flying across the ocean. But even so — he didn’t have any money and no documents, and the thought of spending weeks in some boiler room, hiding, made his stomach turn.
He’d do it. For Diana, he’d do it, without hesitation. He’d do anything. But even so, the enormity of that plan was overwhelming.
“What?” Steve asked, watching Etta’s expression turn into something that he found both familiar and slightly disconcerting.
That was the face of his Etta who had once pointed a sword at one of Dr. Maru’s men. And the one who had brought Sir Patrick Morgan to a secret meeting because she knew he meant business while his generals continued to look the other way as their men died in droves. And the one who had broken hundreds of rules when Steve asked her to without batting an eye.
That look he was seeing right now? It meant trouble.
“My husband, Jeff, is a pilot employed by the British Postal Services,” she said pensively after a long moment, eyeing Steve with a speculative tilt of her head that made him shift nervously in his seat. “He will take you.”