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Diana knew this day would come someday. A blade or a bullet can kill swiftly and surely, but so can time. Growing up on the island paradise of Themyscira, time wasn’t something that was on the minds of many. She was the only child on the island. As she grew into a woman, no one else aged. Sure, everyone was aware of time. There was the harvest and the time it took for livestock to grow up which provided their dairy and meat.
It wasn’t until she was introduced to the outside world that she really saw how time affected everything and everyone around her. She didn’t change at all. Well that’s not entirely true. She did change quite a bit. She was less naive and more understanding of the world. All due respect to her mother and all of the Amazons, there were things about man’s world that they could never know without having experienced it first.
None of them would ever see how the world had evolved since before Themyscira was hidden from the world.
Diana probably would never have left her home if it wasn’t for him.
The day she met Steve Trevor was the strangest day of her life. All in a few minutes, she had met a man (and a very handsome one, too) and was introduced to a global war that she never would have known was happening. She correctly assumed that Ares had a hand in it and she went on a quest.
It was the strangest day of her life, but it would become the happiest day of her life. Was it a happy twist of fate that she would fall in love with the first man she met? Did the Fates themselves have a hand in her meeting her Steve?
Her Steve. She fell in love with him so fast and her love for him grew with every passing day. When he fell out of that plane as it blew up, she had never been so scared for anyone. She was so happy she caught him when she did. He still had a broken leg and it was several minutes before he regained consciousness, but he lived.
After the war, she happily accepted when he offered to show her the world. He took her to the United States and showed her the Land of Opportunity. She was horrified to see how broken the country was with its segregation and even its lack of women’s rights. It was a young country with a very turbulent history, but Steve showed her the beauty of it as well.
Steve had such a positive, though educated, outlook on life and it rubbed off on Diana. He showed her many places from the loud splendor of New York City to the magnificence of Niagara Falls to hills of Appalachia, all while working their way west. But Diana’s favorite place was not a landmark, city, or place of interest. It was Steve’s home.
The Trevor Ranch. Steve was nervous about showing her his ancestral home, but she loved it. She was happy to see his home. The airplane had quickly evolved into not only as a weapon of war, but also as a farming tool and he had gotten into crop dusting. She even let him teach her how to fly. In more ways than one actually. He taught her not just to fly an airplane, but he helped her figure out how to literally fly.
Some customs were still quite foreign to her, but she understood the thrill women must feel when it comes to marriage. Six months to the day that they met, Steve got down on one knee during a sunset and asked her to marry him.
She remembered teasing him about marriage the first night they slept next to each other. The next night they spent together was amazing. Despite all that she had ever read, there were just some things that reading material can never teach.
She never knew just how naive she was about the world until she left her home and experienced it for herself. She was more than willing to experience more of it as long as Steve was with her through it all.
What other answer could she have had for him than “yes”? She was thrilled to accept his proposal. At the time, she thought that there was nothing that could have made her happier than to share a life with him.
To this very day, nothing has happened to make her think otherwise. For sixty-two long years, she has shared her life with Steve. She had a few heroic outings where she donned her tiara and armor. Over the years rumors and whisperings gave birth to the so-called Wonder Woman. Diana thought it sounded like a silly name, but Steve thought it suited her perfectly.
One of the things that she would call “wondrous” are her three children. She was raised believing her mother sculpted her from clay and that Zeus gave her life. Well Zeus certainly was involved in bringing her to life but her mother lied to her. For a long time Diana resented her for that, but over time she learned to forgive her.
She might have learned about babies and children on Themyscira, but it still left her completely unprepared for the first time she got pregnant. Everything she now knows about pregnancy and even caring for a baby she had learned in man’s world. The first time she was pregnant, she did not enjoy it. She might have even punched a few holes in Steve’s ranch house, but he was always so patient with her.
Any dislike she might have felt during the increasingly boring nine months she spent carrying her first child were forgotten the day he was born. She knew from Steve of the fairy tales told by man, so she was aware of that concept known as “love at first sight.”
It sounded like nonsense to her ears, but the day she laid eyes on her son, she fell in love immediately. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for her son. Being a mother had quickly become her favorite thing in the world. It was exhausting at times, but also very rewarding.
Two more times she gave birth. Her lovely daughters who were both blonde versions of her, although little Lyta had fairer skin compared to her older sister, Stephanie. Their eldest, Hunter looked much like his father with her black hair.
Together, with Steve, they raised their three beautiful children. Seemingly, their children stopped aging as they reached their mid-twenties or early thirties. Steve was not so lucky. Before her very eyes, Diana watched her husband age.
She loved him dearly. He made her and their children promise not to seek a way to prolong his life, or retain his youth. Secretly, she caught her children trying to find a way to save him from aging, but she reluctantly forced them to stop. Although she also sought to save her husband.
She thought she found a way or two, but when she had her chance to try and save her husband, she stopped herself. At the time she gazed at her seventy-year-old husband in his sleeping form. He needed a cane in his old age, but she couldn’t help staring at him. When she looked at him, she didn’t see the wrinkles and white hair. She saw the man who she fell in love with. She saw the years she shared with him, the memories she made with him, and the children they raised together.
She couldn’t bring herself to do it.
He would live another twenty-nine years from that day, long enough to welcome 1980. He died peacefully Christmas morning. Diana did not cry. She did not scream. All she could do was smile and silently give thanks for the man she loved.
Her children did not take the news of their father's death as well. Hunter all but threw a tantrum about how they should have done something to prolong his life and that it wasn't fair that they were immortal when their father wasn't. Stephanie and Lyta only wept, but Diana could feel their similar resentment. Even so, it wasn't long before Hunter was crying into his mother's shoulder.
On this wintery day by a large oak tree, a small funeral was held for Steve. Steve was more than eligible to be interred at a place like Arlington National Cemetery, but Diana wanted him to be buried near his home. A color guard led the carriage that carried Steve’s casket from the local church. As they reached the plot, a bagpiper played Amazing Grace.
The sound was so beautiful to Diana’s ears as she stared at the star-spangled flag draped over the box that contained what was left of her husband. She stood by her three children who all held hands. Each of them had families of their own with them who stood in attendance in honor of their family patriarch.
Finally, the gun salute sounded and Diana flinched at each round. She watched as the flag was removed from the casket and neatly folded in its customary fashion. With gloved hands, Diana took the flag and rubbed her fingers over it. For a second she thought she felt Steve’s smile.
Tears welled up in her eyes and she allowed herself to cry. She cried for her Steve, for her husband, for the father of her children, and for her soulmate.
She screamed.