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Diana has just finished helping Batman fight off Mr. Freeze when she falls to the ground with a sharp gasp. She’s not felt pain from fighting an opponent like this since she briefly lost her powers due to her wish in 1984. She’s immune to every human illness and hasn’t been sick a day in her life. She’s been injured on occasion, but never by an ordinary opponent like this; the only one to hurt her in battle, truly, was Ares.
And yet a simple fight with a human ice cube has just brought her to her knees.
She feels Barry’s hand on her lower back. “Batman!” she hears him call out. “Something’s wrong, she’s not okay!” His hand feels oddly pleasant against her cheek. Just warm enough, the fingers long and slender, the skin soft. “Diana,” he breathes urgently in her ear. “Diana, do you feel cold?”
She shakes her head. The pain in her chest isn’t from frostbite. She can’t breathe for a moment, her head swims…and then it clears. She sits up, feeling unsteady for the first time in decades. Barry rubs her back, slow and careful. “I’m all right,” she says, wondering if it’s really true.
She tries not to think of it. A fluke, surely. Her body cannot be breaking down. She hasn’t made any wishes lately. What on earth could be happening? She just shakes it off, as she does everything, and forgets about it.
But then there’s a mass breakout at Arkham a week later, and while fighting the Joker’s newest minions, the Valeska twins, Diana feels that same pain. She suddenly can’t breathe, her heart feels like it’s about to burst out of her chest, she can’t make her limbs work. She’s seen human men die of heart attacks, but that can’t be what this is, could it?
She tries to fight through it. She drops to her knees, hand over her heart. She hears Jerome crowing about how he’s “beaten the warrior bitch!”…only for, a moment later, Barry to whiz out of nowhere and knock the kid into a wall.
She feels someone lift her up. Arthur. “Somethin’s wrong with Princess Di,” he calls out. “We gotta retreat guys. She’s wounded.”
She can’t be…
Barry’s hand is on her forehead. “She’s hot,” he reports anxiously. “Do Amazons get sick?”
“No we don’t,” Diana protests as her breath comes back. “Put me down, Arthur. I’m all right.”
But she’s not. The pain isn’t all-consuming but it’s there, a low warning throb, refusing to completely release her. Arthur won’t put her down. He takes her out of the fight, finds an unoccupied cell and locks the door, lays her on a cot. He unstraps her armor, takes her pulse, lays his head against her chest. “I can’t find a pulse. Where the hell is your heart?” he demands.
She laughs shakily. “You’re not the first to ask.”
Arthur feels around her chest. “This isn’t funny, you could be dying, what…” He trails off as he lays a hand over her pounding heart. “It’s warm.”
“I’ve never been accused of that,” she tries to joke.
“I’m serious, it’s…” He stares at her. “Do you usually run hot?”
She could make another joke, but she doesn’t. She’s tired, she’s so tired, why is she so tired? Diana’s head hits the cot and she knows she should answer, knows Arthur must be worried, but her voice won’t come out, she just needs to sleep…
*
They get lucky, extremely lucky, with Dr. Jemma Fitz-Simmons, expert in alien biology, biochemistry, inhuman diseases, and interdimensional time-travel.
Barry is the only one of them (so far) who can cross dimensions, and he does to find Dr. Fitz-Simmons. It takes a month to find her and bring her back, by which time Diana has officially been taken off the JL roster. “It’s temporary,” Bruce insists. When Diana pushes back, he sighs, grabs her lasso, and wraps it around her wrist. “Diana. Jesus Christ. Do you really think you could fight and win right now?”
“I don’t know, but I’d try,” she snaps.
Bruce sighs and lets her go. “You’re insane,” he mutters. “No more. Not until you’re cleared.” She tries to argue, but: “Diana, it’s no less than what I’d do if Barry got a massive injury or Clark was poisoned with kryptonite. We’re a team, we take care of each other, and that means not letting someone fight when they’re down.”
He’s right and she knows it, but she fervently wishes he could be wrong this time.
When the doctor arrives, Diana’s pain has gone from a constant low throb to intermittent sharp jabs, and no human remedy has been able to calm it. “I just want it to go away,” she tells the girl who examines her. Dr. Fitz-Simmons can’t be a day over 30, but she is smart and kind and Diana trusts her on sight. “I’m a fighter, a warrior, I can’t be injured permanently like this.”
“If only I had a strand of DNA for every time I’ve heard that. I could make myself an army,” Dr. Fitz-Simmons sighs in reply, and Diana does not like the sound of it.
The doctor draws blood, runs scans, takes hair and tissue samples. She interviews Diana extensively about her life, her history. She gathers the JL two days later and reports, “It’s essentially death by isolation. From what she’s told me, Amazons have a communal social structure and are very, what you Americans would call socialist in their culture. Diana’s lived here for over a century now, most of that time without proper companionship. During the few times she has had romantic or deeper companions, they’ve either turned on her or she has lost them to injury or illness. It’s started to take a natural toll on her, and unfortunately that toll has turned physical.”
Bruce visibly bristles at that. “She hasn’t been isolated.”
Barry zips across the room to curl up next to Diana on her hospital cot. She immediately wraps an arm around his shoulders. He lays his head in the crook of her neck and she wants to cry. Sometimes she wishes, honestly, that she had a team full of Barry Allens. “Does this help?” he asks softly, sincerely, and the pain twinges as her heart breaks for how pure he is.
Dr. Fitz-Simmons smiles kindly. “It’s not that simple, boys.” She turns back to Diana. “Is there any way that you could return to your island and reconnect with your people? That would be best.”
Diana shakes her head sadly. “Themyscira cannot be found easily. It would take months, even years for me to find the entrance to the island.” And who knows if they would even want me back, now that I’ve lived among men for so long?
“So basically this is psychosomatic?” Bruce demands impatiently.
“Not exactly. It’s…mental and emotional, yes, but in a similar way to human mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia. The brain chemistry is altered. It’s not a question of fixing behavioral patterns.”
“Well, is there an Amazonian prozac she can take, then?” When Bruce is frightened he tends to mask it with anger. Now he’s glaring at the doctor as if this is her fault. “We can’t lose her, Dr. Fitz-Simmons. We just can’t.”
Barry is clinging to her tightly. Diana remembers with painful clarity that he’s already lost one mother. He can’t afford to lose another one. “I’m going nowhere,” she promises him softly as she strokes his unruly hair. “I’ll be fine, Barry. You’ll see.”
Bruce isn’t finished yet. “So you’re telling me that we aren’t enough, then? What the hell is the difference? She played warrior princess with all her friends on the island; she fights and then has beers with us, how is that not helping?”
“I don’t think every relationship she had on that island was platonic,” Victor observes blandly.
There’s a moment of what can only be described as stunned, horrified silence from the rest of the team, as Victor’s meaning sinks in. Internally, Diana sighs. She does wish the human world could be less hung-up on matters of the flesh after so many years. Arthur’s the first to say what they all must be thinking: “So we just gotta get her laid, then, and that’ll fix everything?”
“Oh God. We’re all screwed,” Bruce mutters, dropping his face into his hands.
The doctor raises her eyebrows. “I didn’t say…oh, never mind.” She addresses Diana again, very gently: “Take some time off from fighting others’ battles, Diana. Find some people to connect with on an emotional level. I will admit I don’t have a solid idea of how to treat you, but that seems like the best place to start.”
Diana isn’t sure how to tell her the truth.
It’s not that she doesn’t love her teammates enough; she does. The fact that Barry is still clinging to her like a kitten is evidence of how much she sees them as her family. But she does understand, sadly, what Dr. Fitz-Simmons is telling her: she hasn’t had the kind of intimacy she shared with her Amazonian tribe in far too long…
Well, put it this way. After a long day of training, it was not uncommon for her sisters-in-arms to bathe together. Physical touch was both everything and nothing; it was so common no one batted an eye at it even a little, so deeply ingrained in their culture was it. And Diana can’t pretend she doesn’t miss it. Barry is a “clingy little fucker” as Arthur affectionately puts it. But a single adult male body pressed against hers through their layers of clothing and armor is hardly a substitute for the intimacy that she once shared with her battle-mates.
And, frankly, it’s not at all realistic to expect it now. She can only imagine the blushing, stammering, and twitching that would ensue now if she asked Barry to strip naked and shower with her. To say nothing of the reactions she’d get from Arthur, Clark, and Bruce, all of whom are in committed relationships. As for Victor, well, Diana adores him but she’s pretty sure that to attempt to cuddle him would be courting disaster.
Well. This is going to be interesting, then, isn’t it.
*
The pain is always a whisper, ready to strike. It spikes in the oddest moments. Diana can be enjoying herself, laughing at a movie with Clark and Lois or sharing a five-gallon tub of ice cream with Barry, when her chest suddenly feels as if it’s being crushed. She will suddenly feel faint when she’s doing nothing more strenuous than taking a walk in the park. And she hates it. If she could only identify a trigger for it, and somehow avoid that, it would be one thing. But it’s just. Random. Or at least, if there’s a pattern, she’s yet to see it.
She joins a gym for socialization purposes, volunteers for charity to meet “like-minded people,” even installs a dating app on her phone. All of these are kind suggestions from her desperate teammates; Barry in particular is distressed at the idea of losing her.
Diana so badly wants to tell him it’s all right, but the truth is, she doesn’t even know. She just knows she feels empty sometimes and wonders if it’s from whatever mysterious heartsickness has descended on her, or if it’s just a natural consequence of the kindly doctor drawing attention to something she’s ignored for decades.
One night, Barry cheerfully suggests she go out to a nightclub. “I can get you into the Iceberg,” he offers brightly. “You’ll love it there, Di. It’s classy as hell. Like, probably not accurate to what you’d remember but they did this awesome art-deco theme and. Y’know. Anyway. Just tell the guy at the door you know me and they’ll let you in without a problem.”
Diana has to admit this is a surprise. The Iceberg Lounge is the top club in Gotham; Bruce has been known to go there for parties he can’t get out of, and it’s run by Oswald Cobblepot, a man with mob ties who Bruce insists never quite “went straight.” It’s…not exactly the kind of place a self-professed broke college student would hang out. But Barry just innocently tells her she’d be welcome there and brightly suggests that she “check it out” sometime.
Doubtful that it’ll work, Diana puts on a cute dress and goes to the Iceberg. When she gets to the door, she introduces herself as “a friend of Barry Allen.” The bouncer immediately smiles and lets her in. Diana is, frankly, shocked that it worked, but she doesn’t look the gift horse in the mouth.
It’s a fairly nice place. The basement is the dance hall/club, the first floor is the classy lounge, and presumably upstairs there are private rooms. Diana pops down to the dance club, with its blue light-up floor and classic disco ball, and has to smile when she sees Barry on the dance floor. He’s an awkward turtle, that one, as the kids say these days. But he’s sweet, and Diana’s just considering going over and asking him for a dance, just to be polite, when the song ends and he goes over to the far end, to the bar. She follows him and is stunned when he hops up onto a stool and is immediately handed a drink…and the bartender, a chubby, scar-faced man who is dressed far too well to be a bartender at all, reaches out and gives the back of his hand a kiss.
Oh. Well then. That explains how he has an “in” to the hottest club in town.
Diana goes back upstairs, leaving the thumping bass of the music and the flashing lights behind. She doesn’t want to interrupt Barry’s date. She doesn’t think she’ll find anyone at a club like this, anyway; it’s just not her style, to hook up with someone she’s only just met at a bar.
Diana isn’t a hookup kind of woman. She knows it would appear so to anyone who knew her history on Themyscira, but those women were her friends, her longtime companions, her fellow soldiers, sisters in all but blood. They weren’t strangers. And she loved them all with her whole heart. It wasn’t like she was out in public having casual sex with people whose last name she didn’t know until the morning after.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But, still. After Steve Trevor, Diana just knows she couldn’t “bond” with just anyone.)
She orders a glass of prosecco and settles herself down in one of the lounge areas. It’s a nice place, really. The couches are velvet, the tables glass. Everything is shades of ice-blue, silver, and white. It’s a far cry from the seedy dive bar that once stood here. Ex-mobster or not, she likes what Oswald Cobblepot has done with the place.
Couples are all around her, sharing tiny bistro tables or cuddled up on velvet chaises. One father is presenting his daughter with a sweet-sixteen present. At the bar, a group of men in their late sixties are toasting their friend, a man who is apparently about to retire from work. Diana feels that empty chill inside her and wishes she could feel the warmth of those moments reflected onto her, the way she used to.
She’s tired. God, but she’s tired. And she hears cheers and clinking glasses behind her, and turns her head to see a man getting up from one knee, a woman admiring a new diamond that glints prominently on her left hand, and—
Oh. There it is. Diana cringes and claps her hand over the burn in her chest. She sucks in deep breaths, tries not to cry with the pain. She hates these attacks, hates knowing they’ll only get worse, hates that she can’t make them stop, hates the fear they instill in her teammates. Right now, though she’ll deny it to her last breath, she hates herself for being so weak.
“Oh God! You ok, hon?”
Diana realizes too late that she’s dropped her glass. She starts to apologize, but the waitress has already set down her tray and is sitting beside Diana, taking both of Diana’s shaking hands into her steady ones. “Panic attack? God, don’t I know how those feel,” the woman hums sympathetically. “Deep breaths, hon. Just like that. Nice ’n’ steady. Atta girl. Hey, ’s okay, you don’t gotta be embarrassed. I only notice this shit since I used to work in Arkham, don’t worry.” One arm goes around her, the hand lightly rubbing her back. “Take it easy, sweetie. Just breathe and try to relax. It’s fine hon. You’re fine.”
It takes a moment, but eventually her head clears and Diana is able to raise her eyes to her comforter. It’s a face she knows, a face she’s punched. Her blood would freeze in her veins, if she didn’t feel so warm. Harley Quinn’s arm is strong and yet gentle around her shoulders, and the hand holding hers doesn’t look like one that’s covered in the blood of Gotham’s police force.
Harley recognizes Diana at the same time Diana recognizes her. Diana wants to panic—she can’t fight Harley right now!—but Harley doesn’t seem inclined to fight. “What are you doing here?” Diana whispers.
“I’m a waitress,” Harley says, like it’s obvious.
“You’re a PhD!”
“Well, right now I’m not exactly able to practice, so…” Harley gives Diana a comforting squeeze. “So forget me sweetie, what’s up with you?”
Diana would say nothing’s wrong, would pretend. But she’s stuck on how…nice…it feels to have another woman touch her. How comfortable, how natural, it feels to lean her head onto her would-be enemy’s shoulder. “I’ve been struck with an…odd illness.”
“Didn’t think warrior princess babes like you got sick,” Harley comments.
Diana lets out a bitter laugh. “That makes two of us.”
There’s a long, quiet moment, Harley absently tracing patterns on the bare skin of Diana’s arm the entire time. It shouldn’t feel so good. But Diana doesn’t even think of asking her to stop. “Are you gonna be okay?” Harley asks at length.
“I don’t know,” Diana says truthfully.
Harley nods, her chin scraping against the top of Diana’s head. “Wanna get drunk?” she offers. “I heard that helps.”
“I don’t want to be alone.” Once again, the truth slips out as though Diana’s been tied with her own lasso.
Harley hums in sympathy and gives her a squeeze. “Don’t I know the feeling, babe,” she says emphatically. “Hey, listen. I gotta go work and stuff, but. If you ever wanna come here, consider this place neutral ground all right? Whatever you say in here stays here.” She stands up with one last pat to Diana’s arm. “I mean it, hon. You ever try to stop me out there I gotta fight back. But this is a safe zone, you feel me?”
Diana is too disoriented by the strangeness of this whole scenario to say much. She just nods and tries to find the words to thank Harley, and she can’t before the other woman is gone.
*
Soon, Friday nights are Diana’s nights. She goes to the Iceberg every week with a sexy dress and the intent to drink champagne until she can’t take another sip. And every night, Harley takes ten minutes to sit with her, share a drink, squeeze her hand. It feels good, to the point where Diana soon looks forward to this beyond anything else.
A few weeks in, Harley surprises Diana by bringing along her girlfriend, Pamela Isely, a very, very pretty scientist whom Diana pretends not to know is actually Poison Ivy. She’s smart and she’s lively and tactile. Sometimes she likes to grow the vines on the plants and make them twine around Diana’s wrists or ankles. She likes to nudge her foot against Diana’s, lean her head on Diana’s shoulder, touch Diana’s hair, brush Diana’s knee with her own. It’s sweet. And most importantly, it’s enough.
There are still pains here and there but the debilitating attacks ease off and Diana thinks maybe just this…just letting someone in again…this could be the cure.
(She tries hard not to think of Barbara. She tries not to think of what will happen next time Poison Ivy tries to start a rebellion with plants from the butterfly garden, or when Harley steals something and starts a police chase that covers half of New York. She tries not to think of what Bruce would say if he knew.)
She’s able to fight again after a few months, and nothing gives her greater joy than the night Barry explodes into her bedroom shouting about how skeletons are crawling out of the sewers and telling her they need her help now. She’s out of bed and dressed in seconds, eager to get her blood pumping again.
It’s a mess, but thankfully not a mass death event. Diana quickly discovers the problem is not that there are walking skeletons, but that they can pull themselves together again after they are struck. They can’t be burned. They can’t be beaten. They have to be subdued and crushed.
Diana is fighting six of them at once when… no, no no, not now… the pain begins to squeeze her chest. No, no, she hasn’t had an attack in weeks and it has to happen now, the first proper fight she’s had in months? “No,” she gasps aloud, struggling to stay on her feet. The hand gripping her sword slickens, her palm too sweaty to hold on, and lights pop in front of her eyes. God, is this how she’s finally going to be taken out? Fighting a bunch of animated skeletons in downtown Gotham?
She drops to her knees. Raises her shield just as one of the cursed skeletons tries to strike her. She’s not going down without a fight, even if it does feel like she has the entire encyclopedia Britannica crushing her chest.
One of the skeletons rips away her shield and tosses it aside. Normally she’d turn a backwards roll. That’s not going to happen right now. Diana sucks in a breath and waits for a blow that never comes—because thick green vines wrap around all six of the skeletons and, as Diana watches in awe, squeeze until the bones are crushed to fragments.
A moment later, an arm comes out of nowhere and a hand covered in rings seizes her upper arm and lifts her to her feet. “You ok, hon?” Harley asks, her eyes wide and fearful but her voice determined. “We got your back.”
“You can’t—Batman—”
“Batsy ain’t gonna do shit while he’s fighting Jason and the damn Argonauts. C’mere babe…” Harley wipes a smudge of blood from the corner of Diana’s mouth, uses the hem of her sweatshirt to dry the sweat from Diana’s hands, hands Diana back her sword and shield. “There ya go. Good as new.”
Meanwhile Ivy has unleashed botanic hell on any skeletons within reach. “These fuckers. This has Crane written all over it,” she says scornfully. “Him and Pyg. They’re gonna end the goddam world with all these drugs they cook up. C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s get tough with ’em.”
Harley lets go of Diana and whips out a baseball bat. “My pleasure,” she grins, tapping the bat against the palm of her hand.
It’s a quick fight, once the girls join, and if Batman notices his enemies are helping him fight the skeletons, he’s smart enough to not look a gift horse in the mouth. Diana, Clark, Bruce, Arthur, and Harley herd them towards Barry, Ivy, and Victor, who use their powers to vaporize the monsters. Within half an hour, the skeletons are gone.
Diana feels shaken as the adrenaline recedes, but she’s not hurting and that’s a relief. She feels a mouth press against the side of her neck from behind, and Harley’s voice drifts to her ear: “Come to my place after you get away from these guys.”
*
Diana waits until Barry has run back to Central City and Arthur has dived back into the water and Bruce and Clark have gone to bed with their respective partners (Selina for Bruce, Lois for Clark) before she goes downtown to Harley and Ivy’s loft apartment.
It’s cozy inside, and messy. A mesh of green and red and blue and pink, stuffed animals and pillows everywhere, a hyena napping in the corner, stacks of DVDs surrounding the TV. And the minute she’s inside, Diana finds herself wrapped around the waist with vines and pulled down the hall like a fish on a hook.
She lands in the bathroom and starts a little to see Harley in the bathtub, naked. “What—”
“If you don’t like us,” Harley cuts her off, “say ‘no’ and we let you go. Just say it, babe. We ain’t kidnappin’ you here.”
“But we do like you,” Ivy confirms as she unbuckles Diana’s armor. “And we’d very much like it if you’d join us.”
Diana’s half naked before she comes to her senses. “I shouldn’t…”
“But you can,” Harley points out, licking her lips as Diana’s skirt falls to the floor. “The choice is yours, hon.”
It would be more ethical to say no, she knows. But the bathtub is definitely big enough for three and it’s full of sparkling bubbles and Harley looks so unfairly good wet. And Ivy’s kissing her hair, and stroking every bit of skin she uncovers, and she’s nuzzling her neck. And Diana doesn’t want to be strong. Not right now.
Instead she lets Ivy use those strong vines to lower her into the tub, a deep sigh escaping her lips as the hot water soothes her battle-induced aches. A moan slips out a moment later when a cup of hot water trickles through her hair, and then again when someone begins to massage cool shampoo into her scalp. “That’s nice,” she murmurs.
“Told you she’d like it,” she hears Harley say triumphantly. A moment later she feels handfuls of cool, slick body wash against her skin, and she can’t help but sigh deeply and melt into the touch. Ivy and Harley are so tender, so much more than any supervillains have a right to be. It’s easy, she finds, to slip into the familiar dynamic even if they aren’t her amazonian sisters. When Harley’s done, Diana washes her hair in turn. She massages body wash into Ivy’s smooth, pale skin and marvels at how soft it feels under her hands.
It’s safe. It’s familiar. The act of cleaning up her sister-soldiers after a fight is so comforting, and it absolutely doesn’t hurt that everything in the bathroom smells fresh and clean and feminine. The lavender bubble bath, the champagne-scented soap, the rose-petal sugar scrub, the rosemary-and-mint shampoo. It’s a feast for the senses, and that’s even before Harley begins to kiss her neck, her breasts, her shoulders.
“Do we have to—do you want—” she begins, but Ivy quickly breaks in.
“This is just a warm-up, sweetheart. No one’s going to force you here.”
“I could fight you off if you tried anything,” Diana insists bravely.
“You could but you won’t.” Ivy kisses the top of her head. “We won’t hurt you, all right? We just…”
“We like you,” Harley finishes simply. She nuzzles Diana’s breast with a wet cheek. “And we wanna finish the bath and do cuddles. Cuddles are the best part.”
As though she’s a baby, Diana is lifted from the tub and dried off in turns by Harley and Ivy. They rub her hair dry with near-ceremonial care, and then wrap her in one of Ivy’s plush robes. A few minutes later, as Harley requests, they’re in a pile on the couch, swathed in blankets, cuddled up together like puppies.
“How did you know?” Diana whispers as Ivy strokes her hair.
“We do this every time we have a fight,” Ivy replies, and Diana feels such intense warmth well up inside her she thinks she might cry out of joy. “I thought you might like to join us.”
“It’s Amazonian tradition…”
“Well, it’s ours too.” Harley kisses Diana’s ribs, the only part of her she can reach. “And now you’re one of us, honey.”
Diana knows damn well this arrangement can’t last. Because these are villains, she mustn’t forget that; Ivy is an eco-terrorist and Harley is crazy, they can’t be trusted…
…but she does trust them, and she can’t feel anything but love right now. Love, and comfort. She feels happy and relaxed here, in this warm cocoon of blankets, her skin clean and rubbed dry, surrounded by tangled limbs and hot breaths and slow, steady heartbeats.
For the first time since her attacks started, there is no pain, not even a whisper of it. Diana closes her eyes and lets herself feel safe.