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Diana Prince watches Lian Harper more closely these days.
It's the only logical thing to do.
Diana was the Officer of the Watch the day that Justice League's orbital headquarters was robbed, and they almost lost the impossibly valuable Power Battery (which stored backups of every League member's powers), along with genuinely losing some incredibly valuable objects from their trophy room. Since Diana had been in charge of the Watchtower's security that day, there is no one (well, save the perpetrators, obviously) who is more to blame for that outcome than her.
As the day's unusual events had begun with Lian Harper arriving with the security system detecting her as the hero Sideways instead of her actual identity of Cheshire Cat, Lian somehow being involved was a possibility that needs to be investigated, especially given that her mother is the supervillainess Cheshire.
It did Lian's no favors that Cheshire had been among the criminals involved in the robbery. It wasn't exactly proof, but it was the kind of circumstantial evidence that made it almost too easy to connect the dots, which, granted, could just mean that someone was trying to frame Lian.
The Amazon Princess had been sorely tempted to ask Lian's father, Roy Harper, if he'd mind Diana using the Lasso of Truth to settle the matter conclusively… but before she could figure out how to tactfully raise the question, she'd been visited by a blue owl, the Goddess Athena bearing news of a divine nature.
Urzkartaga was dead.
The African god of plants and fertility was well known and well hated by Diana. Not even Ares, whom she had clashed with many times, could arouse such a fierce hatred in Diana's heart, because though they had been few, there were times when she and the Greek god of War had been civil with one another.
Diana had no desire to be civil with a monster.
Urzkartaga had changed Diana's friend Barbara Minerva into the snarling supervillainess Cheetah, and cursed her with an appetite for human flesh that could never be truly satisfied. Transformed someone who had always been so intelligent (even if sometimes too much so for her own good) into a being who had to struggle against her tormenting hunger for every coherent word she managed to speak aloud.
Athena had also explained that the nature of Urzkartaga's demise had led to his power not simply dissipating into the ether, but instead being siphoned up, though she could not say by whom or what.
Diana did not need the goddess of wisdom's guidance to solve that mystery, at least not once she'd done a thorough review of exactly what had been stolen from the Justice League's trophy room.
Because one of the objects taken had been a seemingly inconsequential plant that bore a single purple bulb… and held a deep mystical connection to Urzkartaga.
Someone intelligent (most likely too intelligent for their own good, given all the ways such an attempt might go awry) could have used it to summon Urzkartaga, and bind him in a mortal form. Through such a ritual, even a deity could be slain. Diana, of course, had known about the plant, known what it could do, and by all the Greek gods she had been tempted.
There had been nights when she hadn't been able to sleep, and simply gone to the trophy room to stare at that plant for hours on end. Yet, she knew in her heart of hearts that if left unprompted, she never would have been able to bring herself to act on those desires. Such binding spells that might be used against Urzkartaga were by no means certain to succeed. If she had tried and failed… well, it would not be upon Diana's head that the divine punishment landed, but Barbara's.
Diana would never risk giving the plant god an excuse to further punish someone she cared about so deeply. So instead she would simply sit, look at the plant and wish that Barbara might one day prove capable of swallowing her pride. Because if she had just asked Diana for help, of course, she would have granted it eagerly, she just refused to play games with Barbara's fate without the other woman's consent.
But, even haunted by hunger and up against the might of a god, Barbara Ann Minerva had still been Barbara Ann Minerva.
"I have set my life upon a cast, and will stand the hazard of the die." The line was from a famous writer in the World of Men, Shakespeare, but Diana had heard it first from Barbara.
It was one of the last things that Barbara had told her before they parted ways, and the archeologist had discovered just how dangerous it could be for mortals to draw a god's attention.
Despite how poorly it had turned out for her the first time, even though she doubtlessly must have known that Diana would grant any request for aid… Barbara had once again decided to stand the hazard of the die by robbing the Watchtower so that she could get her hands on that plant. Because the beautiful, intelligent, infuriating Barbara Ann Minerva refused to allow Diana to help Barbara dig herself out of the hole she'd wound up in, even if it was deep enough that by all rights it should have reached the Earth's core by this point.
Then, either by simple good fortune or because her previous failure had in some infinitesimally small way humbled her, Barbara had won. She had managed to steal the treasure she desired from the Watchtower while using the threat of absconding with the Power Battery to distract from her true goal, lured the Justice League to the site of her initial arrival on Earth, embroiling them in a battle against another team of supervillains who had tried to ambush Barbara's small group, and in the ensuing chaos magically escaped beyond the Justice League's ability to track.
As a superheroine, Diana was furious at Barbara's ego, at her callousness to all those she put in danger with her antics, simply for the sake of crafting a tale where she could be the author of her own salvation, rather than one of the surely thousands by this point who Diana Prince had helped rescue.
Because of course she had.
Given the task of Sisyphus, Barbara would have day by day stomped her feet with even increasing force upon the hill she endlessly trod, until eventually it was worn down to a smooth and level path, across which it would be no challenge at all to roll her boulder.
As Barbara Minerva's friend (something Diana had never stopped being), it was hard not to feel at least a small swell of pride in Barbara's accomplishment; not since Arachne had a mortal so thoroughly bested a god... which of course raised the question, what sort of change now awaited Barbara as a 'reward' for her actions?
Because Arachne's transformation had not been an act of divine wrath, but of divine mercy; Athena realizing she had ill-treated one of great skill, even if the mortal in question had lacked the wisdom or humility to match her talent.
Which was how Diana had reached her current state of mind, knowing exactly why Lian might have helped those supervillains… the Amazon Princess did not have the heart to resort to her Lasso of Truth. So instead, she simply watched Lian to make sure that the young girl did not allow herself to be brought into any more overly ambitious schemes.
It was because she was observing Lian out of the corner of her eye that she noticed when the teenager slipped a physical letter into Diana's "in tray" on board the Watchtower before sauntering off as if she hadn't a care in the world. Diana, for her part, had waited until enough time had passed that there would be nothing unusual at all about her opening the letter.
Its contents were no different from messages she’d she'd received at least a hundred times before over the course of her superheroine career, a request for a personal meeting from an expert in Greek Mythology. The only thing that stood out was the sender's name...
Dr. Elizabeth Juno.
Granted, it might just be a coincidence, so Diana did a little more research.
What she found online about Dr. Juno's biography clarified the matter immensely.
Lian's father would be upset with her for lying. Her mother would be upset with her for not lying better.
Roman goddess for a last name, two PhDs, one in Greek Mythology, the other in Archeology, achieved at the remarkable age of only 26. Spoke eight languages fluently with a strong grasp of another seven. It was absolutely adorable, really. Why not include a few paragraphs about how her mother died early in Elizabeth's life, preceding her developing a contentious relationship with her father due to his disapproving of her interest in mythology? The entire thing might as well have been drawn in crayon.
Then another thought struck Diana. Was the sheer threadbare nature of the deception perhaps not a message in and of itself? That sort of 'pattern within a pattern' would have appealed to Barbara Ann Minerva back before her thoughts were constrained by Urzkartaga.
It was, in its way, a peace offering. Not exactly an open hand of friendship, but a lie too gauzy to hide a weapon behind.
Diana went back to her bedroom in the Watchtower and shook her head forlornly at what she found waiting there.
It's her Aletheia board, a holdover from her time on Themyscira, as the board game was all but unknown in the World of Men. The same one that she and Barbara had played so many games on before Urzkartaga had sundered their friendship.
The pieces are still set up for that game.
It was not the last one the two of them had ever played, and yet it was the one whose outcome weighed most heavily upon Diana's mind, to the point that she would recreate its final board state every so often out of pure habit, as if doing so might somehow mystically summon Barbara to sit across the table from her once more.
It'd been one of Barbara's most impressive showings when she had first started learning the game, a masterful gambit that Diana had only managed to fight her way free from by the slimmest of margins. The result had left both of them with broken armies locked in what risked becoming a perpetual stalemate.
They'd decided that it would be more fun to start a new game entirely rather than simply continue what was no longer a test of skill or wits, but only of endurance, whose victor would inevitably be whichever of them managed to avoid being lulled into a mistake by mind-numbing monotony first.
Diana had been so proud of Barbara for achieving that outcome at the time and, for a while, felt delight at the archaeologist's accomplishment whenever she beheld that particular configuration of pieces.
That was not how she felt about it anymore.
Now, whenever she looked at it, all she saw was two sides trapped in a conflict that had continued past the point of any reason or meaning. There was nothing to fight for anymore, save the act of fighting itself. Exactly the sort of pointless warfare Ares cherished, and Diana detested.
Yet even though she loathed the arrangement, she still recreated it from time to time because it was one of the few things she had left that felt like it belonged wholly and completely to Barbara Ann Minerva, untainted by Cheetah's curse.
So, in the grand scheme of things, what was this letter from "Dr. Elizabeth Juno" but an invitation announcing that the time had come for the two of them to play a different game?
XXX XXX XXX
If Diana had needed any further proof, it was waiting for her the moment she arrived at the coffee shop where she'd agreed to meet her "new acquaintance".
Blond hair, blue eyes, glasses. A salmon jacket over a greyish-white shirt, with pants that were a slightly darker shade of grey and black boots.
Only a cane was missing to complete the image of how Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva had looked upon her and Diana's initial meeting, when Barbara had proven herself to be the first resident of the World of Men who had actually been able to understand Diana.
If Barbara hadn't been there to translate for her, would Diana have ever been able to become a proper superheroine? Would she have ever been able to get to know and love so many people? How much of whatever joy she felt in her life as Wonder Woman did Diana owe to one mythology-obsessed archeologist who was surely seated across the table from her?
Then Diana looks a little closer at Barbara's eyes, and she is as powerless to hold back a smile as Prometheus was to fight off his avian tormentors.
They don't look like they used to, so much of the happiness (but not quite all of it) that once dwelt there had vanished, replaced by cautious cunning. Where once Barbara had looked upon Diana with awe and reverence, today her eyes saw the Amazon Princess as an equal, and thus inevitably, a possible threat that needed to be evaluated and analyzed.
Diana didn't care; all that mattered to her at the moment was that the eyes remained still, steady, methodical, there were no spasmodic jerks brought about by pangs of hunger. They might no longer be the eyes of a scholar, but at least they are the eyes of a wise warrior rather than a predator beholden to its baser instincts.
"Dr. Elizabeth Juno?" Diana Prince is supposed to be the Spirit of Truth; yet somehow it feels as if even asking that question is most assuredly uttering a form of falsehood.
So be it… Diana would have been willing to do things so much worse than lie to have a reunion like this.
"Oh, sorry if I'm a little slow on the uptake. Guess I'm still shaken that you actually agreed to meet with me." Barbara answers, not trying to hide her accent, finally freed from the previously omnipresent undertone of a feline growl that had accompanied it since she became Cheetah.
"I'm always happy to meet with another scholar of ancient Greek Mythology. Though I'll admit I am a little surprised that this is our first encounter, I thought I knew pretty much everyone in the field, especially someone who held two PhDs by the time they turned 26." Diana responds, hoping to show that she understands what game the two of them are playing.
Barbara doesn't like it.
The movements are subtle; it's hard to imagine that anyone other than Diana Prince would notice them. It's not as if Barbara turns her head to risk a glance at some previously prepared escape route. Granted, Barbara Ann Minerva would surely have never felt the need.
No, since she had arrived at this location before Diana, Barbara probably would have already planned out at least half a dozen different possible ways to escape should the need arise, possibly including ordering her coffee extra hot so that she can toss it in Diana's face for a temporary distraction.
The Amazon Princess might not fully know the rules of the new game that the two of them are playing yet… but hopes desperately that it will drag on long enough for her to decipher them.
"You remind me of someone." Diana offers, testing exactly how thin the ice is between the two of them.
For reasons she can't articulate, the comment actually seems to relax Barbara slightly, when by all rights it should have only put her more on edge; but then, regardless of how much Diana loves Barbara, she knows that she has never truly understood her. If she had, if she'd known just how driven she was to contact the divine and how likely she was to succeed, then Diana would have refused to leave her side in Bwunda.
Had that been Diana's own hubris in action? A belief that this one mortal woman could never genuinely draw the attention of the gods, and so could be left to her own devices with only a high-tech wrist communicator (that to Diana might as well have just been another form of magic for how well she understood it) to keep her safe?
"Who?" Barbara's voice is more clipped than it used to be.
Not that it's an especially surprising change, words are a precious currency when grappling with endless hunger.
Despite her well-known enmity with the god of war, Diana is not completely averse to employing Ares' methods at times; some situations can only be resolved by fierce, sure strikes that a warrior dedicates their very soul to. This is one such occasion on which Diana refuses to dance around the issue.
"A former very dear and very close friend, one I probably never quite did enough to let know how much she meant to me. Dr. Barbara Ann Minerva. Since you're in the same field, you've probably heard of her, but if you haven't, she was brilliant and loved mythology more deeply than anyone else I've ever met. Except, she loved it so deeply that she ended up becoming mythology; she was cursed by an evil god named Urzkartaga and transformed into the supervillainess Cheetah." She lays the past between them out clearly, her tone utterly devoid of rancor.
"You don't sound especially heartbroken over it." The same cannot be said of Barbara's reply.
Which, Diana realizes, is probably her own fault. Her talents of deception have always been woefully lacking, so what chance did she have to sound as if she was convincingly delivering a mournful eulogy to the memory of a woman who was seated across the table from her? Once again, best to resolve the matter through the truth… or at least a portion of the truth.
"I'm sorry, I suppose I didn't quite finish filling you in. Due to my associations with the Greek Pantheon, I have knowledge of the lives, and in a few rare occasions, deaths, of gods that no mortal has access to. Urzkartaga died quite recently, and that is why these days I can speak of Barbara Minerva with a far lighter heart than I once used to. I think now that she's finally out from under his curse, Barbara might finally have a real chance…." Diana clarifies the reason for the lack of somberness, hoping that it will soothe Barbara's (currently metaphorical) ruffled fur.
"A chance to do what exactly? Go back to who she used to be?" Based on Barbara's voice, Diana had at least some success with her efforts.
On top of which, the longer this conversation goes on, the better; every exchange of words that does not yield an accompanying one of blows feels like a tiny victory unto itself.
"No. I don't expect Barbara to go back to being who she used to be; that'd be unreasonable, bordering on outright silly. All I want from her is the same thing that I want from everyone else, for tomorrow to find them a better version of whoever they are today." Diana knows that the two of them will never again have what they once had.
The days when Diana Prince was a being of mythology and power the likes of which Barbara can only imagine are forever dead and buried. Even if she hides her fur beneath human skin, Barbara is still Cheetah; she is magic, and myth made flesh, and Diana has made her peace with that.
It is not such a terrible thing to accept. Divorced from the hunger that has driven Barbara to horrendous actions numerous times in the past, Diana dares to dream that someday, Barbara can use her powers for good and, in doing so, make 'Cheetah' a name spoken with pride instead of fear.
Because it is not just the desire for human flesh that is gone from Barbara's eyes, the other hunger has also departed them, the one that had been there from the day the two had first met.
Barbara Ann Minerva has buried her muzzle deep in Urzkartaga's chest, feasted upon his heart, and in doing so has been able to gorge herself until her craving for the divine has been forever sated.
Those are not the eyes of a woman who is planning to expand her act of deicide into a divine rampage the likes of which would do the Norse tales of Ragnarok proud.
Much as it pains Diana to admit it, much as she might wish it were not so… in some way, this is the happiest she has ever seen Barbara Ann Minerva look. No longer is she confounded by questions about her place in the world, nor is she bedeviled by a divine being seeking to punish her for his own amusement. She is finally free to be herself, perverse as that statement might sound, given that she is currently operating under an alias.
"It's a noble wish." Barbara agrees with her.
Diana wonders if she's gotten wiser in the years that have passed, if Barbara has, or if, even more obviously, they both have.
She's tried to reach out to Barbara so many times before, and always her words were slapped away with hisses, growls, and condescension. Even before Barbara became Cheetah, when Diana had tried to warn her of the danger she was invoking upon herself by seeking out a god, Barbara had refused to listen.
This time, it feels like Barbara is finally taking Diana's words to heart.
"It sounds so simple, and yet so many people fail to live up to it, not just supervillains, either. Still, every day offers new possibilities, new chances." Diana reassures her conversation partner that she's willing to accept what sits before her, even if this was not the way that Diana would have wanted Barbara's story to go.
Diana had always imagined that the only way for Barbara to be free of Urzkartaga's control was for her to grow and change as a person, to overcome the hubris that brought about her transformation in the first place.
That is evidently not the case.
It is hard to imagine that Barbara has learned some grand moral lesson as a result of her pilfering relics from the Justice League before personally slaying the god who cursed her and absorbing his power into herself.
Once again, so be it.
If life were all simple stories where doing the right thing inevitably yielded the right result, then Barbara would not have spent years trapped as an unwilling bride of Urzkartaga. Diana cannot bring herself to care more about the twisted path Barbara took to reach this particular destination than the fact that she has finally reclaimed the chunk of her soul that was so cruelly torn from her.
Not when now they finally have a chance to once again be more than just enemies…
"Tell me, Dr., are you familiar with Aletheia?" She dangles the offer slowly, carefully.
"The Greek goddess of truth?" Barbara gives the correct answer for someone who has studied Greek Mythology but never become intimately familiar with the culture of Themyscira.
Over the years that have passed since the two were last able to have a proper conversation, Diana has learned more about cheetahs than anyone who isn't a zoologist or veterinarian should really need to. She had sought to understand the animal that Urzkartaga had warped Barbara into the shape of, as if knowledge of a mortal beast might somehow reveal an otherwise obscured path to freeing Barbara Ann Minerva from the plant god's grip.
It had, unsurprisingly, yielded nothing useful… until today.
Sitting here, Diana feels strangely soothed by the knowledge that the only thing that matches a cheetah's speed is how skittish they are. If this deception is what Barbara requires to feel safe in Diana's presence, then she grants it gladly.
"Well, yes, but that's not the exact meaning I had in mind. Aletheia is also the name of a board game played on Paradise Island, like chess, but more complex. If your current academic workload isn't too back-breaking… I'd love a chance to play a game with you. I think a woman of your intelligence would be able to pick up the rules fairly quickly." Diana struggles to give each word the correct pronunciation and intonation, and not simply stumble her way through phrases that shouldn't need to be said, because she is only reiterating something they both know by heart.
"Do you play it with all your fans?" Barbara refuses to abandon the lie that is both impossibly scanty and yet wrapped impossibly tightly about herself.
Diana cannot help herself; she throws her head back and laughs.
Do you still remember how much you used to love my laugh, Barbara, or has Urzkartaga taken that from you, whatever else you've managed to claw back?
Diana Prince has thousands of fans, she has dozens of close friends, but even some she cherishes most dearly, like Steve, Etta, or Clark, do not enjoy the prospect of playing Aletheia with her. Bruce is intelligent enough to give her a good game, but is too serious and dour to ever allow himself to dedicate the sheer amount of time required to playing.
"I'm sorry, that was probably in poor taste. No, it's actually been a while since I've played. As I said before, it's a very complex game, and one that I grew up with. Those two facts combined tend to give me an all but insurmountable advantage against most people whom I can convince to give it a try. It's why I haven't had a steady partner to play against in a very long time." That's another lesson that Diana has learned twice over about the woman seated across from her over the years.
Barbara Ann Minerva is not afraid to lose.
Diana had tried to take it easy on Barbara while teaching her Aletheia, but the moment that the archeologist had gained a firm enough grasp of its tactics to realize what was happening, she'd insisted Diana needed to stop. That she'd never be able to learn properly if her tutor coddled her rather than trying to best her with every ounce of skill she possessed.
How many times had Diana managed to bind Cheetah hand and foot with the Lasso of Truth or otherwise secure a victory against her, and yet Barbara had refused to contemplate the possibility that she might never defeat the Amazon Princess.
Urzkartaga, too, had surely realized in his final moments that Barbara Ann Minerva only accepted temporary defeats and no number of them would ever bring forth her ultimate submission.
It made her soul burn with a brightness that was, for good or ill, better matched by her new divine flesh.
"Who was your last?" The question surprises Diana slightly.
Not because of its content, but because of its tone. She would have expected it to be more envious or bitter, but Barbara manages to keep her feelings in check and does a decent job of sounding like she is not emotionally invested in the answer.
"Barbara Ann Minerva. Honestly, I think the only reason I was able to achieve such an impressive number of victories against her as Cheetah was her being cursed with a boundless hunger for human flesh. It made her more savage… but savage is not the same thing as cunning. When Barbara and I matched wits over an Aletheia board, once she had become properly familiar with the game, I soon found myself gaining victories and defeats in equal number; Cheetah never managed to offer me such an intricate mental challenge by comparison. I probably should say that I'm thankful that I never had to face a version of Cheetah with Barbara's full brilliance, but I'd be lying. The pain I feel from missing that mind far outweighs any agony Cheetah ever inflicted upon me with her claws.
"I believe that nearly all of my foes can be redeemed… but for Urzkartaga, I think I'd already made an exception even before his demise. Whenever I think about him, there's no sorrow at how he might have been a better version of himself, only satisfaction that he'll never harm anyone else. That probably doesn't say very nice things about me, that I'd still try to redeem people who have killed so many residents of Gateway City, yet I find Urzkartaga, whose actions only ever directly affected one single person, utterly unforgivable simply because they struck so close to my heart." Diana lays out the facts of the matter as dispassionately as she can.
Because of how many battles and confrontations the two have had since Barbara's transformation, Diana's heart cannot help but prepare for this one to end roughly the same way, even if it is unlikely to erupt into explicit violence.
Barbara will surely come up with some excuse that will allow her to keep her distance from Diana, remain a wary figure forever stalking on the periphery of the superheroine's life, never again a close friend or confidante. Never give Diana the chance to make up for failing to notice how much Barbara had truly mattered to her until Urzkartaga had ripped her from the Amazon Princess's side.
"I think I might have a gap in my schedule sometime next week. How long would you want me to set aside?" That is how their lives have been for far too long… but perhaps, just as Persephone inevitably returns to her husband's side each fall (though hopefully in this case without the inevitable departure six months later), Barbara is finally ready to allow herself to be eased back into Diana's life.
Wonder Woman offers a silent prayer of thanks to the entire Greek Pantheon, not wanting to waste time figuring out exactly which deity would be most appropriate for this particular situation.
"The more time you can, the better, Dr. Juno. I've been due for taking a break from my superhero work, and I've missed having a friend to play against." And that, was one of the truest statements that Diana had ever spoken.
The End