Work Text:
They meet at sixteen. By seventeen, they’ve already emerged and they’re going steady. Then he gets his papers, and she gets a ring. It’s a small, quick ceremony, so she can have something to hold on to while he’s overseas.
Her mother tells her she should be proud, and she knows he has millennia of fighting experience, but this war is something else, and she doesn’t like being away from him.
When he comes down in his uniform, with his bag, she can’t deny that he looks handsome. She’ll be working as a ship-welder while he’s gone, building their nest egg the best she can, and that’s exciting, but her heart still aches when she sees him ready to go.
“I’ll be home before you know it,” he says, leaning down to kiss her.
She leans into him, her hands tracing the area on his back where his wings would sprout. “As if you haven’t been taken away from me enough over the years,” she says mournfully.
He catches her chin, lifting her face so he can look into her eyes, warm, familiar and unchanging after all this time. “People are dying. The world is in distress. I have to help, I only wish you could be by my side. Instead, I will do what I can, and then come home to you.”
She nods, and leans up to kiss him deeply. If only in this crazy time, people didn’t fight with guns instead of maces. Bullets are too unpredictable. Cannon shells and rockets fall like the meteors from her first life. She remembers the days of the Great War. They said it was the war to end all wars, she watched as the earth was torn apart by trenches, warfare grew more grisly. And now, what do they have? Another war.
Each day she wakes up alone, and has to get used to cooking for one. She writes to him, when he’s gone. Always finishes off every letter with a line of Ancient Greek, or hieroglyphics. Something just for him.
She also wakes up very, very early, and heads to the shipyard. She likes welding. She likes learning new skills. She likes that she picks it up quickly, and everyone seems more impressed than they’d like to admit.
She goes to the cinema alone. Not much is playing. Walt Disney Company can’t afford to make full length features, so he makes package films. Films she wishes she didn’t have to see alone. Sometimes, she’ll reach next to her for his hand, only to be met with an empty seat.
She starts to decorate their home. Pick out drapes. Paint the living room. She leaves most of it the same, though. She doesn’t want to jar him when he gets back.
The Normandy Landings make her so relieved she feels like she could burst. It’s not too much longer until he sends a letter saying his troop is being demobilized.
He’s coming home.
When his ship comes in, she’s waiting for him. She calls his name as he walks off of the gangplank. When they meet, there is no hesitation, he wraps his arms around her, pulls her close, spins her around.
“My love,” he sighs happily.
“You came back to me.”
He looks down at her, brushing a lock of her hair out of her face with his thumb and smiles. “Always.”
His fingers find her wedding ring, playing with it as they meet for their first kiss in what feels like forever.
“Let’s go home.”
They finally, finally start their lives. He looks for work, fully supports her when she says she wants to continue in the shipyard. He helps her finish decorating the house, which she appreciates. Her mother starts nagging them for children.
And, when they can do it without giving themselves away, they go for nighttime flights together.
She misses a menstruation cycle. And starts throwing up a lot. But she doesn’t tell him. She wants to know for sure. A month later, another missed cycle, and she feels like she did in other lives.
She tells her boss first, who makes her resign. She swallows her pride – there are other shipyards – and rushes home to tell him, beaming.
She throws open the doors. “Are you home?” she asks, stripping off her coat. “I have wonderful news! I can’t wait to-”
“Chay-Ara”.
Vandal Savage is sitting in her living room. In her husband’s favorite chair. Playing with a knife that has blood all over it.
“No, no, no,” she runs into the kitchen, sees his body on the floor. He has roses in his hands. For her. She squeezes her eyes shut, feels Savage behind her. She steps away, turning to face him. “You were in Germany!”
“Ah, yes. But the war is over now.”
She’s unarmed. She has nothing to protect her, except her wings.
Her hands are covering her stomach. She didn’t even realize. Savage steps forward, into her space. She can taste the vomit in the back of her throat.
“Do not tell me you are expecting?” he asks. His hand finds her stomach, which has just the barest of bumps, and rests there, thumb rubbing back and forth against her. “I can tell it is a healthy baby, how lovely.” She recoils from his touch.
She grabs the nearest knife and stabs him. He stops her before she can dig it deep enough to faze him at all.
“You never learn. You always put up a fight.”
She looks at him, murderous and desperate. “I will always fight you.”
“Such beautiful determination,” he says, stroking her face…and then stabbing her in the same breath.
She gasps, and her vision blurs with tears. More for her child than anything else.
They had a life this time. They had time. Or so they had thought. Maybe they had been stupid to hope. She fell next to her husband's body, and wrapped her hand in his, though he was already cold.
“Come back to me.”