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Every time she looked at Barbara Ann Minerva, she looked at her with a sort of sadness. It didn’t matter the situation they were in, there was always a pervasive layer of it that coated her every glance. They could’ve been so much more. They could’ve been anything . Now, they were nothing. Nothing she could name, at least. Were they enemies? Were they allies? It was never quite clear. It was muddled. And it hurt.
When she’d first met Barbara Ann, she was the first in Patriarch’s world to understand her. To speak in her tongue and take her words and share them to those who didn’t understand. Now, she didn’t need a translator. That didn’t stop her message from feeling just as muddled just as much of the time.
But Barbara had always understood. She knew what Wonder Woman stood for. She understood what the Amazons stood for. The only one in the world she thought would, for so long. Every time she spoke of her home, Barbara listened and took note voraciously like there was nothing in the world she would rather be doing. And for so long she believed it so.
While Steve may have been the first from Man’s World she met, it was Barbara that made her love it. To see people who could see the mission of her people and hold it dear.
But now it was different. Barbara said she’d done what she did, made the decisions she made, because she wanted to be like her. Wanted to be a champion of the gods among men. An icon. She believed that Barbara wasn’t lying to her. She didn’t believe that Barbrara wasn’t lying to herself.
Women were often just as easily corrupted as men, she found. She despised that she had to find that through Barbara. Maybe Barbara wanted to be like her. But maybe, Barbara saw that the power she held was possible and wanted a sliver of it for herself. She wanted to make herself feel bigger and more powerful. Was willing to sell her soul for a piece of power. All the while not caring for the cost. The cost to her sanity, the cost to other’s lives. The price was paid in blood.
She’d so long seen Barbara as a scholar, it was hard to imagine her as a killer. Until she abandoned her lectures and journals and dig sites for an ever continuing chase of blood.
The Cheetah was someone she forced herself to see as a foe. A threat. A danger. Because she was, she was. She was a monster. This was not the same woman she had once thought of a story with. Anything they could have been was gone the second she took Urzkartaga’s hand instead of hers. It didn’t matter how much she would still plead to Aphrodite to be able to hold that hand. Athena’s wisdom wouldn’t allow it.
Relationships in man’s world were different than those on the island where she’d been raised. She had often seen her mother’s hand clasped with Phillipus’. All around her, her sisters accompanied themselves with each other. Being the only daughter of all the Amazons around her, she’d never really thought of anything of the sort. But here, the world was open. All around her there were people. People who thought her beautiful, people who thought her charming. It was an experience she was unused to. Even less so upon seeing the ways men had structured relationships. One man and one woman. The idea wasn’t necessarily new to her, but it being the only way was startling. The only world she’d experienced for so long granted Aprhodite and Hera’s blessings to two women easily. This world was different.
That hadn’t seemed to stop Barbara. Hadn’t stopped her from reciting the poetry of Sappho while teaching her English. Hadn’t stopped her hand from once settling on top of her own. It was once a wonderful thing, Barbara’s presence.
No matter how much she prayed for Aphrodite to watch over their meetings, it was always Athena she felt at the forefront of her mind. She must be wise. She must fight with honor. She must have strategy. She could not give way to her heart. Her patron would never allow such a thing.
Rarely, she would be allowed to see Barbara as an ally again. She would be allowed to try to help . And she would try. She would give all she had to be able to help this woman. It always failed to have any meaning.
It would always return to the same. The Cheetah would re-emerge. Barbara’s taste for flesh would not be sated. Her love would not return to her.
She did not believe Barbara was a bad person. She could not force herself to believe Barbara was an honest one. She despised how, for a woman who valued honesty so, she was still so desperate for her connection with someone she knew as a liar. She was the goddess of truth. This didn’t change that she’d always felt more motivated by love. And this was love.
Barbara knew who she was. She knew the truth of who she was. She knew the most raw and honest and vulnerable version of Diana of Themyscira. She knew secrets she’d never indulged to anyone else simply because she thought she’d be the only one to be able to hear them. She knew her. More than anyone else.
So she tried. She tried, every time she could. To get back the Barbara Ann she had once known. Even if she could return her body to her, through magic or divorce, she could not return the mind and heart of the woman she had once held so dear to her heart. Barbara Ann had been changed irrevocably by the Cheetah. Or had this always been who she was destined to become?
She didn’t know. And she knew that she would never know. Because there was no going back. There was no chance to return to what they could have been. Now, there was nothing they could be but this.
They were nothing. And all the same, they could be anything.