Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The museum was quiet — the kind of hush that felt holy, as if the ancient artifacts themselves demanded reverence. Moonlight filtered through the tall windows of the Hall of Antiquity, casting silver patterns across marble floors and glass display cases. Diana Prince stood alone among them, her heels clicking softly as she made her final rounds of the evening. She had already dismissed the last curator and was personally ensuring the museum was secure before heading home.

Her tailored blazer hugged her figure, and a low golden light flickered off her glasses as she adjusted them. She paused in front of a newly cleared exhibit space, where velvet ropes had been arranged around a large glass container that had yet to be filled. She glanced down at the schedule on her clipboard.

“Meteorite from South America… expected tonight,” she murmured, brushing a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear. “Carbon-dated back millions of years. Possibly extraterrestrial… possibly not.”

She smiled faintly. A little mystery never hurt.

Just then, her phone buzzed on vibrate.

“Miss Prince?” came the voice of the museum’s lead security officer over the line. “The transport truck just arrived. You’ll want to see this thing. It’s… strange. Looks like it’s alive.”

Diana arched a brow. “Alive? I doubt that.”

“You’ll understand when you see it.” The security officer replied.

She made her way to the loading bay, where two armed guards stood beside a thick, obsidian-black rock suspended inside a reinforced steel case. The rock pulsed faintly, as though something inside was moving in time with a slow heartbeat.

She stepped closer. Her Amazon senses twitched. “There’s something… off about it. It feels like it’s watching.”

“Creepy, right?” the guard muttered. “Just need your sign-off and we’ll move it to the east wing.”

Diana signed the form with a quick flourish. “Thank you. I’ll finish locking up.”

As the guards began to move the meteorite deeper into the museum, Diana returned to her office, removed her glasses, and let out a breath. “Finally.”

She reached for her coat—Then the alarms screamed.

Red emergency lights began to strobe through the museum corridors, the calm silence now broken by klaxons and warning sirens.

“A break-in?” Diana whispered, narrowing her eyes. Then, with smooth precision, she crossed the room and pressed her hand to the hidden compartment in the wall. It slid open with a click, revealing her armor—her true self.

In moments, Diana Prince was no more.

Wonder Woman emerged into the hall, clad in her armor — red and gold bustier, dark blue shorts, silver gauntlets, and that golden tiara with a crimson star gleaming in the center. Her lasso swayed at her hip, and her eyes burned with purpose.

She moved swiftly through the corridors, past overturned display cases and shattered glass. Voices echoed from the Greek artifacts wing — mocking, nasal, and painfully familiar.

“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” the voice cackled. “A woman running a museum, guarding dead trinkets instead of swinging swords and barking orders like the old days. How very… domesticated.”

Diana stepped into the wing, her silhouette framed by the red lights behind her. “Psycho,” she said flatly. “Of all the rodents I expected to see, you were never on the guest list.”

Dr. Psycho stood atop a broken pedestal, surrounded by stolen artifacts — golden urns, spears, and one of the last surviving Athenian war masks. He wore a twisted grin beneath a bulbous psychic helmet glowing violet with humming energy.

“Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Princess. I didn’t come for you.”
He leered. “But… let’s just say I wouldn’t mind watching you crumble tonight.”

Diana’s fists clenched. “Surrender, Psycho. I’m giving you one chance before I break that toy helmet and drag you to prison.”

He laughed. “Still the same arrogant feminist icon, I see. You and your righteous indignation. That’s why I hate you.”

She stepped forward. “You hate all women, Psycho. Because you fear them. Because you’ll never measure up.”

His grin twisted. “You’re going to regret saying that.”

He thrust his hands forward, and a telekinetic wave blasted toward her like a freight train. Diana braced, raising her bracers in time to deflect it. The shockwave shattered every window in the room, and priceless pottery exploded into shards.

“This helmet,” Psycho bragged, “was modified by Gorilla Grodd himself! It enhances my mind a hundredfold. You don’t stand a chance!”

Diana surged forward, faster than his second blast, and slammed into him with her shoulder, sending him flying across the floor. “I don’t need to stand a chance,” she growled. “I make one.”

He recovered, floating into the air with psychic propulsion, face twisted with fury. “You're so tiresome. Always playing the noble warrior! Let's see how noble you are when your spine’s been crushed.”

Another wave of force crashed into her. She flipped mid-air, landing in a crouch, but not without strain. The helmet hurt — each wave felt sharper than the last. He was stronger than before, and this wasn’t just mental pressure anymore — it was augmented, weaponized thought.

Artifacts floated into the air behind him and launched toward her like missiles. Diana dodged left, weaving between them, but caught a heavy marble piece in the side. She grunted and rolled, crashing into a pedestal. Blood trickled from her lip.

Psycho cackled. “What’s the matter, Wonder Woman? Slower than usual tonight? Or just distracted by all these irreplaceable relics?” He waved a hand and another statue shattered.

Diana rose slowly, breathing heavy. “These relics carry the spirit of a civilization. But you're just a bitter little man with a grudge against women who are stronger than you.”

She hurled her tiara like a boomerang. It struck the edge of his helmet, cracking the casing and making the device spark violently.

“AHHH!” he shrieked. “You wretched harpy! That’s it!”

He focused all his power in a telekinetic grip around her throat. Diana dropped to a knee, clawing at the unseen force crushing her windpipe. Her vision blurred — the psychic pressure was immense.

“This is how it ends, Diana,” he sneered. “With the most powerful woman in the world on her knees. Exactly where you belong.”

----------

(Meanwhile...)

The air in the museum had grown still again, but not peacefully so. It was the breathless, eerie calm of a battlefield just after the clash — when the dust hadn’t yet settled and the echo of destruction hung in the air like smoke.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the floor of the east wing where the ancient meteorite had been stored, glowing faintly beneath the security lights. The rock, once sealed tight and unmoving, now groaned with unseen strain. Hairline fractures expanded inch by inch, pulsing with an internal rhythm — like a heart waking from a deep, starless sleep.

And then it broke.

A jagged crack split down its center with a soundless snap, revealing a black, wet core. Thick, oily liquid oozed from the wound, pouring down the meteorite's sides and pooling on the cold floor in thick globs.

But this wasn’t just liquid.

It moved.

It slithered like a thing with purpose, forming tendrils and tendrils within tendrils. It pulsed in confusion, a consciousness groping its way through new freedom after millennia of silence. It had no name, not anymore. Only instinct. Memories of a far-off world… a hive that no longer answered. It remembered a sky painted red with fire. A war. A fall.

Now it was here. Alone.

It shifted in the darkness, sensing vibrations in the museum. Energy. Life... And pain.

----------

From across the hall, another crash echoed. Stone shattered as Wonder Woman’s battered form was hurled across the exhibit room. She struck the marble wall with a brutal thud and crumpled to the floor, motionless, her shield skidding across the ground and spinning in place before clattering to a stop.

Dr. Psycho chuckled as he floated back down, flicking some dust from his coat with telekinetic smugness. “Pity,” he sneered, “I expected more from the queen of feminist fantasy.”

He stepped over her slowly, admiring the results of his enhanced powers. Her breathing was labored. Her head lolled. Blood trailed from a cut above her eyebrow.

“If I wanted to,” he muttered, his voice low and twitching with sadistic temptation, “I could end you right now. Crush your throat, pop your skull like a grape. But no… no. The League would descend on this place in minutes, and I still have treasure to collect.”

He turned his back on her, hands glowing as he levitated several priceless relics into the air — a set of Greco-Roman blades, the Mask of Delphi, and a preserved Spartan cloak.

“Priorities, Psycho,” he told himself smugly. “Sell now, gloat later.”

While he was distracted, the black ooze slithered through the shadows, moving toward the woman who had been defeated.

----------

It stopped inches from her hand.

It observed her.

This being… this warrior… she was not like others. There was power here. Ancient power, like its own — power forged through centuries of battle and wisdom. Even wounded, her body radiated strength. Her scent carried the wind of gods and war and truth. She was old, older than she appeared — just like it.

She bled, but she did not yield.

The symbiote wavered, confused, uncertain. It remembered bonding… once… long ago. It had amplified others, given them strength, purpose… and they had turned on it. Betrayed it. It remembered pain. Abandonment. Loneliness.

But this one… this Diana…

Her heartbeat was slowing. She was unconscious — or very close. Her breath came shallow. Her hand twitched.

The ooze hesitated, then slid up her wrist. She didn’t stir.

It climbed higher, studying the contours of her armor. Alien senses told it she wore not just physical protection, but the blessing of gods. A divine champion.

"You are strong," the symbiote whispered — though not in words, but in thought. "Beautiful. Like our kind once were. We are alone. You are alone in your way. Let us… become more."

The tendrils reached her chest, just below her damaged breastplate. It paused, one last time...

...And then it struck.

The symbiote surged over her like a tide, slick and inky, burying the red, gold, and blue beneath darkness. Her tiara became a sharp silver streak. Her bracers turned black with gleaming silver veins. Her bustier became a textured black armor, trimmed with a faint, radiant outline of white stars and moonlike symbols etched along her sides. Her shorts were now black, dotted with glowing white stars across the fabric like a piece of night sky.

Her lasso, still looped at her hip, glowed brighter, its light flaring in defiance as the black substance touched it. The symbiote hesitated at the holy relic — the truth was something it could not smother. It recoiled from the rope, giving it space.

Chapter Text

The cold marble pressed against Diana’s back as she stirred, her fingers twitching first, then curling slowly. Her head pounded—not from any blow she could remember, but from something deeper, like her very nerves had been rewired in her sleep.

Her eyes fluttered open, greeted not by the blinding lights of the afterlife or the somber halls of Themyscira’s underworld, but by the soft flicker of damaged museum security lights and the acrid scent of burning electronics.

She sat up with a sharp gasp, before she groaned softly.

“I'm... alive?” she breathed out, her voice carrying a husky edge she didn’t recognize. She looked around. The once pristine Greek antiquity wing was a battlefield. Shattered glass and splintered columns littered the floor. The relics—many of them—were gone.
“Psycho…” she muttered, scanning the room. But he was nowhere in sight.

She pushed herself up to stand, wobbling for a moment before her balance stabilized. Her hand clutched at her head. “How long was I out?”

Then it hit her—he left her alive. Dr. Psycho of all people. She had been beaten. Nearly killed. By him.

Her pride took a deeper wound than any of his psychic blasts ever could. “I lost,” she whispered. “I lost… to that twisted, arrogant, misogynistic little…”

Her voice trailed off, the sentence unfinished as the crushing weight of her own humiliation settled like a stone in her chest.

She could already hear the scathing commentary in her mind.

"You let Psycho get away?" Flash’s sarcastic disbelief.
"Next time, don't hold back." Superman’s well-meaning, but condescending tone.
And worst of all...

That silence.
Batman’s emotionless stare. That look he gave whenever he was disappointed.

Diana winced. That one hurt the most. “Goddesses help me, I’ll never live this down…”

Her fists clenched. Her breathing slowed.

But as she calmed herself, she noticed something else. Something… wrong.

The leather and fabric of her armor felt unfamiliar — slicker, tighter, and heavier in strange places. She looked down and immediately blinked in surprise.

Her once red-and-gold bustier was now a gleaming, textured black — almost like lacquered leather, but flexible and matte. The silver eagle symbol across her chest remained… but it was stretched, distended. Her breasts were larger, pressing against the top of her outfit, and her deepened cleavage spilled past the line of her armor like it was sculpted that way.

“What in Hera’s name…?”

She turned to the cracked glass of a display case and caught her reflection.

Her black-and-silver tiara gleamed above a face that looked… the same, but not. Her eyes were sharper, more piercing. Her body had changed, subtly but unmistakably. Her arms were still toned, her thighs powerful, but her curves were more pronounced. Fuller. Her hips flared slightly more, her rear now prominent and round beneath tight black shorts patterned with scattered white stars.

She took a step back in shock, instinctively clutching her chest. “What is this?!”

Her first thought was enchantment. A trick. Had Psycho done something to her? But no… she could still feel her divine blessings. Still sensed her connection to the gods. Whatever this was, it hadn’t overtaken her.

It had… joined her.

She rushed down the hallway, boots thudding against the marble until she reached her office. The door creaked open. Inside was her private sanctuary—bookshelves, relics, scrolls, and a large mirror above her desk.

She stood in front of it, breath held.

Her new outfit gleamed like black silk wrapped in shadows. Every motion of her body made it shift subtly, like it was breathing with her. It felt… alive. Not just metaphorically, but literally.

She grabbed a piece of the top near her shoulder and pulled. It stretched like taffy before snapping back onto her body.

She pulled harder with both hands. Even with her super strength, the material refused to tear. Instead, it pulsed against her hands, resisting.

“It’s bonded to me.” She said aloud, realization dawning. “This isn’t just armor. This is something alive.”

Her fingers brushed over the black surface again. It was warm. Gooey when stretched. Yet firm as steel when still.

And even more unnerving — it responded. When she thought about shifting it, a faint pulse passed through the suit, as if awaiting her will.

“A living… symbiote?” she guessed aloud.

She sat at her desk, mind racing. She remembered the meteorite. The guards saying it "looked alive." The strange pulse.

It must have escaped during the fight, and bonded to her while she was unconscious.

She narrowed her eyes. This wasn’t random. The creature… it chose her. And she’d felt something, just briefly, when she woke — like a voice in the back of her mind. Not invasive, not like mind control — more like a… curious presence. Watchful. Waiting.

She stared at herself again in the mirror, frowning.
“You altered my body…” The black suit rippled faintly in response — as if amused.

Diana sighed and rose. “Fine. You’ve made your point. But this isn’t over.” She clenched her fists. “For now, I’ll tolerate you. But if you mean harm to me — or to anyone on this world — I will burn you from my body with the fire of Hestia herself.”

The suit pulsed once, gently — not in defiance, but in agreement.
Diana allowed herself a deep breath. Whatever this being was… it hadn’t taken control. It had joined her. And while it clearly had a mind of its own, it was letting her lead. For now.

Her eyes glanced back to the museum's damaged halls, the empty display stands, the priceless artifacts missing from their pedestals.

Her thoughts returned to Dr. Psycho. He would pay.

“I may not know what you are,” she said to the suit, “but you chose a very bad night to bond to me.”

She opened her window. The wind blew in sharply, tossing her black hair behind her. With one step, she leapt out into the night.
And the black symbiote rippled over her body like wind over water — tightening, adapting, preparing.

Whatever Dr. Psycho had started… She was going to finish it.

Chapter Text

Diana moved like a shadow braided to the night itself. The black suit clung to her like a second skin, but tonight it did more than drape — it sharpened. Every muscle hummed, each synapse firing with a clarity she hadn’t known in years. Speed that used to be the product of training and discipline had been honed by something else now, something that folded instinct into reflex and thought into silence.

The warehouse that housed Dr. Psycho’s operation crouched next to a shuttered pharmaceutical storefront, its loading docks bathed in sodium-orange streetlight. From a block away she could smell the tang of stolen metal and the stale perfume of fear. Her boots made no sound as she dropped onto the corrugated roof and slid toward the vent that gave her line-of-sight into the dim interior. Inside, men — several of Psycho’s mind-controlled goons — moved like puppets, hauling crates and cataloguing artifacts glowing softly in their crates. The psychic residue from Psycho’s helmet still hummed in the air, small notes of control that made Diana’s skin itch.

She exhaled and thought like a detective and a tactician — a little of Batman’s method she had practiced privately — cataloguing exits, noting light sources, counting the number of men. The symbiote flowed beneath her skin, a silent partner that hummed when she focused. Its voice was close in her mind, not loud, simply present like a hand resting on her shoulder.

"Careful..." it breathed. "Take them without breaking them."

Diana slid down the vent and slipped into the shadows between crates. She moved with precision, closing on a two-man pair bent over a wooden crate. Without alerting the others she struck: a careful snap to a carotid, a directing push under a jaw to roll and render unconscious, a sweep that left them slumped but intact. She worked from shadow to shadow, a careful, surgical force — gauntlets that could crush bone withheld, pressure points used, ligature that meant imprisonment and not death.

By the time she stepped from the stacks into the central aisle, Psycho was at the far end of the room, his helmet aglow as he studied a catalog of buyers on a tablet. He looked up at the sound of a footfall and, for once, the grin that bloomed felt raw.

“Ah,” he said, clapping slowly. “The museum’s favorite Amazon steps out of the closet. You’re persistent. I’ll give you that.”

“You let your greed and your contempt for women lead you here, Percy,” Diana said. Her voice was calm, even amused until she noticed him craning his head to drink in the sight of her new outfit. The helmet picked up even the subtlest shifts in Doppler, and Psycho’s eyes widened in calculated appreciation.

“What’s this? New threads? Very… slimming.” He flared his hand toward her chest with a leering gesture. “Looks like the meteorite left you with improvements. Lucky you. Maybe I should sell you to a private collector.”

Diana’s face cooled. “You will not demean me, or any woman, ever again.”

He laughed, a brittle sound. “Oh, I like that righteous heat. Makes this worth the trouble.” He snapped his fingers and the lights dimmed as the helmet spiked the minds of his goons — not to kill, but to put them on edge. “And now the fun begins.”

The first wave of psychic energy cracked like a thrown plate. Crates rattled; a low groan moved through the stacked relics. Diana pivoted, using the wall as a brace to keep the artifacts from toppling. Her training screamed at her to protect the fragile objects — each was a life and a story — and she shielded their worth with the same ferocity she’d defend any life.

She moved again, but Psycho’s advantage was in the helmet; his power swelled with every taunt. He launched thought like arrows: small, sharp darts of agony that would have unseated a lesser mind. The symbiote tightened inside her, urging a countermove without words.

"Focus. Breathe. We are with you." it hummed, intimate and small.

Diana let the symbiote steady her like a hand at the back of her head and melted into shadow the way a practiced hunter does. Psycho’s smirk broadened. “She hides,” he announced loudly. “Hiding like a mouse. You should be ashamed.”

Diana’s voice then came from every dark corner of the warehouse, rolling like a tide. She had practiced the performance — made it a tactic. “You’re not a hunter, Percy,” she said, her tone theatrical and wide. “You are pathetic. You borrow power. You wear toys from brutes like Grodd because you lack the courage to stand naked and be yourself.”

He shouted in fury and lashed out — psychic shards jagged into the air, striking walls and throwing up clouds of dust. The artifacts trembled; a crate teetered. In that instant Diana stepped from the edges of shadows behind him, appearing like a storm at his back. Her black suit caught the dim light; her silhouette was the shape of a promise.

Psycho spun, panic cracking the veneer of his arrogance. He fired a mental bolt with a scream; it swept across the warehouse from left to right. For a breath both Diana and the symbiote quivered — the bolt grazed them both and the impact was dizzying, like underwater pressure. Psycho threw back his head and laughed — triumphant, because he believed he had unbalanced her.

The dizziness passed. Fury flared in Diana’s chest like a struck bell. She moved — a furious, focused storm of elbows, knees, and braced strikes that blurred. The symbiote was precise, not wanton; it lent momentum where needed, wrapped around muscle like a conductor guiding an orchestra. Diana’s gauntleted fists found his helmet, slammed, and he raised a psychic shield that rippled like trapped smoke. She hit it with everything she had — the force of years, of purpose, of righteous anger. The shield shuddered, then cracked. The helmet split with a shower of sparks.

Psycho hit the floor, stunned and bleeding from his nose. He blinked up at her, still foolishly smug enough to think wounds meant mercy. “You... you won’t ruin me,” he croaked. “You’ll kill me and become what you truly are: a tyrant!”

Diana’s jaw clenched. The symbiote pressed its presence against her like a hand wanting to push her further, darker. For one scalding heartbeat she felt its hunger — a flash of a feral solution that would make the room go quiet forever.

Then a voice — sharp as flint, practiced and cold — slid through the edges of her mind, as if delivered by memory itself.

"Control yourself, Diana!" it said. "You are better than that."

It wasn’t the symbiote. It was the echo of discipline she’d learned from friends and mentors, a memory of Batman’s iron restraint and the code that held heroes to a higher standard. She recognized it like an old scar — not because it sounded exactly like him, but because it carried the same weight and the same unflinching criterion.

Diana inhaled, let the anger fall into its proper place, and stepped back. Her voice was low but resolute. “I will not become what you are, Percy. I will not be you.”

The symbiote’s presence contracted, then sighed — a tiny current brushing her thoughts. "Hmph, fine. We'll be merciful... for now." it sent, softer than the wind through a corridor.

Diana moved to Psycho, drew the Lasso of Truth, and looped it around his chest. The rope glowed a soft, demanding light and did not bite. It bound without crushing, compelled without destroying. She tightened until he was immobilized and the fit of it seemed to calm the psychic flare that had been his lifeline.

“You will answer for what you did,” she told him. “But I will not murder you.”

Psycho’s protests were sputters. The symbiote pressed against her sternum like a pet seeking assurance; she felt its reluctance, its animal lament at the denial of finality. Diana stroked the sensation like a child calming a startled creature.

“Mercy,” she whispered, and the symbiote folded into a patient quiet.

She called the Watchtower and the Justice League with the procedures she’d always used: calm, precise, professional. “This is Diana. Psycho is contained. I have the artifacts’ location and his manifest. I request a retrieval crew and medical assistance for the suspect.”

Superman’s voice came first over the secure line, warm and immediate. “What happened, Diana?”

“I had an encounter,” she replied, eyes still on the figure on the floor. “Meteorite breach. A symbiote bonded to me. Psycho has been stopped. I’ll brief you on arrival.”

A pause. Then Batman cut in, voice low and clipped. “We’re on our way.” Then, softer, only for her to hear as if across a distance, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

The words landed in her like a single warm stone. Her face flushed in spite of the night, a sudden ember of want that was equal parts foolish hope and centuries-old longing. The symbiote — subtle, curious — felt the shift as clearly as she did. It tightened a fraction, an instinctive, almost tangled response that made her bust press forward into an exaggerated cleavage.

Diana startled, then scolded it in a whipping whisper that was more amused than angry. “Hey! Control yourself.”

The symbiote cooled under the rebuke, its presence curling like smoke gone calm. "We are learning", it sent, patient and almost apologetic. "Although we can't help it." it added in a smug, devious tone.

She let herself smile, a small, private thing. There would be questions, explanations, and awkwardness in the weeks to come — and yes, the attention that would accompany this new black armor would be unavoidable. The world would stare and whisper and speculate. But in the quiet between heartbeats she allowed herself another small imagining: a coffee, somewhere safe, with a man who moved in shadow as she did in light, where she could ask questions and maybe — if fate had a sense of humor — get a real answer.

Sirens cut through the night as League assets appeared on the perimeter and a retrieval team moved in for the artifacts. Diana tightened the lasso one last time around Psycho and allowed herself to be practical and gentle. The symbiote’s curiosity lingered like a question mark above a new horizon.

“You did well,” she told it softly as the Watchtower beam blinked in the sky. “You helped me protect what matters.”

"And you helped us too, Diana." it replied in the softest current of thought, a feeling almost like gratitude.

Diana suppressed a grin and, for the first time since the meteorite had cracked, felt the future open like a road under her boots. There would be difficult conversations and scrutiny, and her silhouette — changed and dark and now impossible to ignore — would draw eyes not all of them kind. But she had kept her code. She had kept her mercy.

And somewhere in the back of her mind, true and persistent, was that little ember of hope — not for accolades or attention, but for one normal, human thing: a date... with a certain caped crusader.