Chapter Text
Chapter 1. Back to life... again
Diana took a sudden breath, and she choked on... Soil? She couldn't breathe. She had been buried underground. She died, then came back to life again. She tried to remove the earth that was on top of her. She died again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And she kept dying, coming back to life, fighting to reach the surface and then dying again.
It took her a while to finally manage to unbury herself, but she did it. Once she was out she began inspecting her surroundings. She was in a forest but she didn't recognize where she was exactly. Then she looked at her clothes, or at least what was left of them. What the hell had happened? She tried to remember the last things that she did. She remembered a battle. She had been fighting. She looked around her again.
"Andromache?" She half-yelled. Maybe she and Quynh were still near there, but she didn't hear any battle noises, nor did she hear an answer. Then it hit her.
The battle of Sagrajas
Yes, that's the battle she fought. Her, Andy, and Quynh had decided to join the army of Alfonso VI of Castile to help with the so-called "reconquest". She remembered that they were winning when suddenly she was shot with an arrow. Her hand traveled to her stomach, where she had been injured; there was no mark, no sign that she had... lost her immortality.
The memories suddenly came back to her and she began to remember what had truly happened. She had died. Andromache was there with her, holding her in her arms as she took her last breath. Quynh was there too.
Shit.
How long had she been dead? Days? Weeks? Years?
She began walking, trying to find a way out of the forest. She walked for days, with no food or water. She should stop and rest a bit, but she couldn't; she had to find Andromache. She needed to.
After a whole week wandering in the forest, she finally made it out. After that, she just continued walking. She died a couple of times from dehydration and starvation, but she kept going. Finally, after a few days of the same routine, she encountered some kind of carriage being pulled by two horses. The men on the horses spoke Spanish, so she tried asking them to help her, but her Spanish was, apparently, too old and they didn't understand what she was saying. Still, they decided to take her to the nearest town since they saw the conditions she was in.
The ride was silent, they were carrying all kinds of stuff, from fabrics to utensils. Until she decided to ask the question that had been giving her a headache since she had woken up.
"Excuse me, what year are we in?" She asked in Spanish, praying that they would understand her.
The men looked at each other with confused expressions, but still the older one decided to answer her.
"1589, why?"
Diana froze completely. She had been dead for over 500 years.
No, that couldn't be possible. No, no, no. Just no. There had to be a mistake. The man was probably messing with her. He had to be.
The man, seeing her reaction, looked at her suspiciously. "Is there a problem?"
She took a deep breath and just shook her head, a smile plastered on her face.
The man eyed her from head to toe but just nodded. On the other hand, the other boy, whom Diana assumed was the older one's son, looked even more confused with each passing second. She decided right there and then that she needed a story to tell people for if they asked what had happened to her.
Then she began planning what she could do to win some money to try and look for Andromache. The first problem was that she doubted they would let her join the Spanish army. Five hundred years ago, it was already difficult for Andromache, Quynh, and her to be accepted as warriors, and things really did not look very good for the future. Maybe she'll pass herself off as a boy. All she needed to do was cut her hair short, put on some clothes that did not make her body stand out, and show her skills in the battlefield. It would not be the fist time she made herself pass as a man. She was tall, very tall, and had a lot of muscles, so it had never been a problem for her.
The second problem that she had, and the most important one, was that she had absolutely no idea where Andromache could be. She knew she would be fighting some war, but which one? And how was she going to find her? Yes, she could dream with other immortals, but the dreams stopped once they met, so that wasn't an option. Still, it was worth trying.
Once they arrived at the town, she got off the carriage and thanked the two men for helping her. The father just gave her a nod and walked away, starting to prepare everything they were going to sell, but the boy stayed behind.
"Look, I don't know what happened to you, but if you need help, my mother and sister live over there. My father and I travel all the time, so we are barely at home" He said with a small smile while handing her a dress so she could change her clothes.
"Thank you, kid" Diana said, walking away from him. She still had a lot of things to think about, and even if the proposal from the kid was very tempting, she didn't want to get too involved until she had a background story and perfected her spanish. Then she would start her plan to look for Andromache. She would find her; she always did.
°°°°
Paris (France)... Present day.
Diana walked through the streets of Paris. She had just bought some groceries and was returning to her apartment. Just as she had turned a corner, she saw a drunk man trying to open the door to his apartment block. She could smell the stench of cheap alcohol from where she was. Still, she did not think much about it and just waited for the traffic lights to allow her to cross the road.
The bottle of alcohol suddenly fell from the man's hand and he groaned, frustrated that what was left just went to waste.
Diana turned around slightly to give him a look, but then stopped dead in her tracks. She recognized the men.
On the other hand, the man didn't realise she was staring at him until he looked up from the broken bottle. Just like Diana, he also froze, and for a moment he thought he had seen a ghost.
"Booker?"