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Diana of Themyscira discarded her tools upon the shores of paradise: her tiara, her bracelets, her lasso.
She would not need them where she was going.
They fell upon the sand next to a black workout top and a pair of long black pants whose lower half was decorated with a series of white spots. She had carried that clothing to its current resting place because its owner had refused to do so, fearing what manner of either Amazon or divine retribution surely awaited her for setting even a single foot upon the soil of Themyscira.
Instead, the clothing's owner had settled for treading water offshore as she waited for Wonder Woman to join her.
"You don't have to do this." Diana cautioned her prospective companion while wading out into the cold lapping waters.
"Steve was my friend too… for a while." Answered Barbara Ann Minerva, who was currently trusting in her tawny golden black spotted fur alone to preserve her dignity, not that she had a lot of it left to worry about preserving in the first place.
In truth, Barbara very much did not want to be here and did not want to be doing this, but it was now or never. She'd always assumed that she'd have more time to try and make up for her past mistakes, since surely Diana would always be able to protect the lives of the people she cared about, and whatever the foe she ended up facing, ultimately, Wonder Woman always won.
It was hard to imagine anyone could be more certain of that particular fact than her nemesis Cheetah…
There was something so unfair and bordering upon unreal about all of this. If Steve Trevor was going to die, surely it should have been at Barbara's claws while she was in the grip of some blind rage, as a result of a dire hex cast by Circe, or crushed beneath the iron boots of Ares. His passing should have been the result of some grand battle with one of Diana's foremost foes.
He shouldn't have been quietly murdered by an old man with the audacity to call himself "Sovereign," who, until recently, had never even crossed paths with Diana.
But while Barbara could do many things, changing the past was completely beyond her. Which wasn't to say that either she or Diana were willing to accept the possibility that they might never see Steve Trevor again.
"The journey will be long and arduous. If you need my help, I will turn back to aid you, but if I do, we can't risk pressing on reach Steve." Diana promised and warned Barbara at the same time.
"I won't need any help, I... visited a morgue earlier today." Barbara looked away so she didn't have to see the expression of equal parts pain and condemnation that she knew those words would surely birth in the Amazon Princess' eyes.
Despite her efforts to be a better person, the curse of Urzkartaga to consume the flesh of her fellow humans still lay firmly upon Barbara Ann Minerva's head.
The plant god had crafted his magic oh so carefully because it brought him great amusement to watch what lengths Barbara would push herself to in vain attempts to outsmart or outmaneuver his divine wrath. He allowed her the possibility of being a scavenger consuming human carrion rather than demanding that she could only find sustenance if she ate while blood still pumped hot and fresh in her victim's veins; alas, such meals were always half as filling, and twice as humiliating.
So be it, after Barbara and Diana were done with Sovereign, Urzkartaga would soon enough be given his own chance to discover just how fierce a cheetah's wrath could truly be.
"Thank you for taking the necessary precautions. You were always good at that." Diana spoke with a kindness that no mortal soul could match, somehow managing to sound proud of Barbara for what she'd done.
"I was always good at it… until I wasn't." Cheetah reflected bitterly.
If Barbara Ann Minerva had truly "taken the necessary precautions," she never would have ended up falling into the clutches of an evil god who had proceeded to warp her body in such a way that the newly reshaped supervillainess' mind and soul had inevitably followed suit.
"It means a great deal to me that you decided to come along. We won't be able to talk, but sometimes a friendly presence can make all the difference in the world." The Amazon Princess' smile was pained, but she refused to abandon it.
"You say that like I'm only doing this for you and him. Like being the first archeologist to swim in the Styx while still alive wouldn't be reason enough." Barbara tried to protest.
She wished she'd been able to say those words with genuine conviction. That she was still the kind of person who cared about relaying the news of such an experience to increase humanity's understanding of the divine, rather than a mythological being without a magical realm to call her own. Neither the wild jungles of Africa nor the peaceful shores of Themyscira welcomed Cheetah's presence; she was too heavily laden with human knowledge for the former and too filled with animalistic bloodlust for the latter.
The Amazon Princess did not force Barbara to endure further discussion; she simply took a deep breath and dove beneath the waves, and a few moments later, Cheetah followed in Wonder Woman's wake.
XXX XXX XXX
Just as the two women had recently fought each other for days on end, now they swam side by side for a period of time that neither could measure. No mortal being could have achieved such a feat; no single breath could have been deep enough, and even if it were, the depths to which they ventured generated pressures strong enough to have squeezed their lungs until they practically popped.
That same pressure tried its utmost to inflict suffering upon the two swimmers, but Wonder Woman and Cheetah had each done far worse to the other than any mundane physical force could manage, and so they continued their journey unhindered.
They dove, deeper and deeper, until by some unknown twist of fate, they were no longer swinging down, but up, up towards water that was dyed an improbable purple-pink color by the unnatural sky above.
It was only as the pair drew near the end of their shared odyssey that Barbara realized the water's surface was not truly uniform, but instead broken up by the presence of a small boat.
Diana completed the journey first, of course.
"Hey, pretty girl. I missed you." Spoke a familiar masculine voice.
Cheetah emerged just in time to hear the words and found some small comfort in them, even though she knew they weren't intended for her. It was hard to believe that anyone would find her current feline features 'pretty'; and harder still to imagine someone who would miss her presence.
As she blinked her orange eyes clear, she was surprised at just how "alive" a dead man could look. Steve Trevor was no spectral apparition or ethereal wraith; he seemed as solid and fleshy as he had the last time the two had laid eyes on one another. Likewise, he was only wearing a simple army uniform rather than something more befitting the nature of their surroundings.
"Barbara, I didn't expect you to come also." Steve Trevor greeted her in turn from his position, seated atop what surely must have been the mythical Ferry of Charon, though there was no sign of its owner.
"Like any stray cat, I'm always showing up unexpectedly." She replied before turning her gaze on the Amazon Princess and twitching her head towards the boat.
Sure enough, Diana got the hint and swam to the ferry, and as she boarded it, Barbara went back to treading water. If the supervillainess hadn't been so thoroughly exhausted by her travels, she would have briefly plunged back into the water to grant the two some real privacy, but Cheetah knew she needed to recover her strength for the inevitable return voyage, lest her trip to the afterlife become far more conventional in nature.
So she caught her breath, kept herself afloat, and let the Amazon Princess and her deceased lover converse, trying to remain unobtrusive as they discussed matters that were never meant for her ears.
It was only after the two had kissed and Steve Trevor had insisted that Diana not risk herself by attempting to replicate the feat of Orpheus that he was finally ready to address his unexpected guest.
"I see you've still got your hair. What happened to your clothes?" He called out to the supervillainess.
Barbara took that as an invitation to swim a little bit closer. Close enough that her eyes noticed the presence of a crumpled human skeleton in the boat, which simultaneously answered and raised a great many questions for a student of Greek mythology such as herself.
"I didn't want to get them wet. I'd already put my last outfit through enough recently..." Barbara replied as nonchalantly as she could manage.
Cheetah had never told the fallen soldier how deeply she treasured her clothing and magically regrown hair, and yet, somehow, he knew. Steve Trevor might not have been blessed with the empathy of Athena, but it didn't stop him from trying to care all the same.
"It's fitting that you showed up, since you're technically the reason I died." Steve's voice was surprisingly free of rancor as he made that particular announcement.
Barbara didn't bother to protest about how it had been Sovereign's bullet rather than her claws that had ended Steve Trevor's life; to do so now would feel unseemly.
"She told me about what you'd been through, before the island. It'd be one thing if our Angel were the only one who could defeat the Lasso of Lies, but you did it also. Knowing that was what made me so certain I could pull it off." The fallen soldier explained.
The supervillainess blushed deeply enough that it was visible beneath her fur, as now the "accusation" or at least "chain of causation" made a great deal more sense.
"Sovereign probably shot you because he realized there wasn't a chance in Tartarus he could turn you against Diana. You've always been more loyal to her than I ever was." Cheetah offered what condolences she could.
"And in her deepest, darkest moments, you've been there for her in ways that I couldn't." Steve countered, which only made Barbara's blush worse.
"I hope that someday you get a chance to understand just how happy it made me to see the look in her eyes when she first heard you talking to her. Really talking. Having a conversation! Not just parroting words back and forth like when she "talked" with me. Or remember when that Perpetua mess came to a head?" He added with a surprisingly relaxed grin, given his current deceased status.
"I f**king helped that mess turn out the way it did..." Cheetah sulked; she would have preferred to leave those particular moments from her past dead and buried, but on the other hand, she was currently floating in the Styx, so perhaps "dead" was a rather relative term at the moment.
"When that evil version of Batman unleashed his army of warped reflections on all of us, you were in the thick of it, fighting alongside Cassie and Donna, while I just hung back and unloaded every bullet I could find into anyone it looked like I might actually hurt." Steve reminded her.
That memory wasn't so bad, certainly not compared to the ones that had come before it.
"It shouldn't have taken a 'we do this together, or we all die' situation for me to start acting like a better person." Barbara sighed.
"Some people never start acting better, like that smug silver-handed asshole." Steve countered, before pausing to take a deep breath.
"After how I treated you the first time… I should have told you that I was glad to have you as part of Checkmate. You, me, Diana, and Etta, we were finally all on the same side again." The fallen soldier apologized.
"Yeah, it was nice. I should have made it happen sooner." Barbara accepted his apology in the spirit that it had been offered, while reminding him exactly whose fault the delayed nature of their reunion had truly been.
"I missed this..." Diana finally rejoined the conversation.
"The two of you, when things go right, you get along far better than most people would ever expect an archaeologist and a soldier would." The Amazon Princess practically giggled the words.
She was tactful enough not to mention exactly what sorts of things (and which feline supervillainess was typically responsible for them) had frequently gone wrong between the two in the past.
"We only do it because we both care about you..." Barbara responded instantly.
"It's not hard, given how much we both care about you..." Steve followed suit a few seconds later, the start of his answer overlapping with the end of Barbara's.
Diana's was briefly amused by how her two friends had ended up verbally stepping on one another's toes, but soon her expression became serious once more.
"Steve, I didn't come here just to say goodbye. I came, because it would give me a chance to take at a little of you, a single hair should be enough, back with me." The Amazon Princess finally revealed her true intentions.
"This moment… this moment, is all I can give you. My thread has been cut, even if you stole it from the Moirai themselves, it wouldn't make a difference, you can't graft a dead branch to a living tree." Steve sighed forlornly, forcing himself to look away so that he would not have to behold the pain that he knew his words would bring Diana.
"I suppose I should have foreseen such a possibility. Of all the gods whose blessings I carry, I've always felt the greatest kinship with Athena. I will find a way to see these events as a chance to more fully dedicate myself to her service." Wonder Woman vowed solemnly, because Diana had the strength to all but instantly recover from having her hopes crushed, a power that Barbara Ann Minerva knew she would never possess.
"Angel, if you want her kinship, Athena is right there, waiting for you." The fallen soldier insisted, before, for some absolutely absurd reason, turning his gaze squarely upon Barbara Ann Minerva.
For the first time since she had gotten the news of Steve Trevor's death, Diana laughed.
The sound was so beautiful that before she knew what she was doing, the supervillainess couldn't help but swim up alongside the boat just so that she could drink it in more fully.
"In fact, if you came here looking for a blond hair that could give you a reason to keep going without me… I know exactly how to give you one." Steve promised with a devious look in his blue eyes.
Despite how damp Cheetah's fur was, it still managed to abruptly stand on end in shock.
As for the Amazon Princess, her response to this blatant insanity was to start singing...
"Whoever can string, my husband's old bow,
And shoot through twelve axes cleanly,
Will be the new king, sit down at the throne,
And rule with me as his queen.
Let the arrow fly,
Once you know that your aim is true.
'Cause I'd rather die,
Than grow old without the best of you!
Though I never thought
That these would be the lengths we go for love,
I would not have it any other way..."
No sooner had the words "the best of you" left Diana's lips than Barbara's arm rose out of the water and pointed firmly at Steve Trevor. Steve, for his part, lacked Cheetah's superhuman speed, but that didn't stop him from soon enough raising his own arm to point at Barbara.
"If you want to make sure your prayers take hold, it can't hurt to use a hair from someone imbued with the powers of a fertility god." The fallen soldier added, his words the equivalent of cheerfully dumping gasoline on an already roaring flame.
"Oh no, there's no way we're doing that! You two do remember that I'm still f**king cursed, right? Do you know how many idiots I've had to 'politely discourage' from seeking out Urzkartaga so they didn't turn out like me? I don't want to bring any more monsters into this world!" Barbara protested.
"You won't." Diana got down on her knees in the boat so that she could rest her smooth palms atop Cheetah's fur-covered ones.
"Barbara, your love for me has always been stronger than Urzkartaga's curse." The Amazon Princess reassured her.
"I hate you." Barbara groaned, but the words had never sounded less convincing from Cheetah's lips.
"Love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury..." The supervillainess promptly rattled off the words, desperate to beat the Amazon Princess to the punch before Wonder Woman got a chance to recite them yet again.
When Barbara went back to glowering silently at Diana, Steve reached out and helped himself to some of her fur.
"Here you go, Angel, your blond hair..." The fallen soldier offered, his shameless self-confidence somehow managing to effortlessly eclipse that of the supervillainess who was quite possibly the fastest woman on Earth.
"I'm still a bad choice for this. Any child you have deserves to be raised among the Amazons, the same way that you were, but if you do that, I can't be there to help you." Cheetah warned Diana.
"If either the Amazons of Themyscira or the gods of Olympus do not respect Barbara Ann Minerva after she has helped me defeat Sovereign, then… I will educate them on the error of their ways." It was truly impressive how Wonder Woman was able to make such seemingly mundane words sound like the kind of vow whose resolution might require spilling an entire ocean of blood.
Diana clutched the tufts of Cheetah's fur tightly for just the briefest of moments… and then let her grip relax and held out her open palm to the supervillainess.
"Still, I will not do this without your blessing. I could never allow my grief to serve as an excuse to cause yet more misery to one whose life already contains far too much. If you are not comfortable with this plan, take what is yours and cast it to the bottom of the Styx." The Amazon Princess offered.
Because of course she did, even now, even here, Wonder Woman was still, just, so, perfect.
The supervillainess took a moment to steady herself and then pushed the extended hand back towards the superheroine's chest.
"All I ask is that you let her think that Steve was her father. Let her have someone to be proud of, rather than someone like me." Barbara sighed.
"I am the Spirit of Truth, I'm not sure how I could be worthy of that title if I constantly deceived my own flesh and blood. My daughter will grow up knowing that she was born from the union of two great heroes." The Amazon Princess insisted.
A long silence hung in the air, and Barbara eventually nodded. If that was the lie that Wonder Woman could live with, well, so could Cheetah.
That weighty decision made, the supervillainess returned her attention to the dead man they'd come to visit.
"Your daughter will be waiting for you when you get out of here. It'll probably only be two or three years tops." Barbara predicted, trying to once again force a smile upon the superheroine's lips.
"I'd ask what exactly makes you an expert on the Greek afterlife, but that'd be an extremely foolish question, wouldn't it?" Steve chuckled, showing appropriate deference given their differing levels of academic knowledge on the subject.
"If you don't believe me, let's go talk to Aphrodite and Poseidon. On second thought, Diana can talk to them. I'll be keeping my distance in case they've decided to hold a grudge." Cheetah suggested turning her eyes towards the Amazon Princess.
"Poseidon, hold a grudge? I've never heard of such a thing!" Mused Diana with considerable sarcastic whimsy.
"Thank you, both of you, for coming. Angel, Athena, go kick that bald bastard's ass. The Trevor family hasn't served for generations just so a king could rule America..." The fallen soldier prepared to see them off.
"Steve, even if a dead tree cannot have its branches grafted to a live one, once it has been turned into compost, it can still help new life blossom." Diana granted her lover one final gift of wisdom, then she took a deep breath and dived out of sight.
For her part, Barbara Ann Minerva and Steve Trevor simply exchanged one last pair of shared nods, a silent promise that whatever came next, they would both sail across the Styx before Diana. Then Cheetah likewise filled her lungs with air for the daunting swim back to the world of the living.
XXX XXX XXX
On the beach of Themyscira, where the waves eternally kiss the sand, water and land flow together, blending into a new singular form; something almost like clay.
From that material, the Amazon Princess had ever so carefully sculpted a small human figure and placed upon her creation's forehead two offerings: a lock of her own black hair and a blond one from someone she loved deeply.
While Diana performed her ritual, Barbara Ann Minerva once more treaded water off the coast of Themyscira, still refusing to "further defile the island paradise with her presence".
All that was left now was for the Amazon Princess to speak a prayer of invocation to the gods, that they might grant her the same mercy they'd shown her mother Hippolyta. Well, that was nearly all she had left to do.
Wonder Woman still wished to have one final conversation with her daughter to be before her child had ears of flesh with which to hear her mother's words.
"Elizabeth, if someday when you're older, you ask me for suggestions on what to call yourself, a title that makes it clear you're more than just another 'Wonder Girl', I already know the answer… Trinity."
The End
AN: Behold, an actually good in-universe justification for Elizabeth Marston Prince's superheroine title!
Orpheus is a Greek myth about a guy who goes to the underworld in an attempt to bring the woman he loves back to the land of the living.
Barbara fighting alongside Cassie Sandsmark and Donna Troy takes place in Dark Nights: Death Metal, The Last 52: War of the Multiverse. It is worth pointing out that when the Darkest Knight is trying to break Diana's will, the first thing he shows her that causes her to feel anything besides anger or contempt for him is the sight of Barbara getting hurt.
https://i.imgur.com/9gIbqUc.png
As is indicated by her lack of hair and clothing, this was Barbara before Wonder Woman volume 5, Issue 792, when Cheetah was still an unrepentant villainess, yet Diana still cared that much about her.
The "smug silver-handed asshole" Steve mentions is Sargent Steel. I think a little anger towards him on Steve's part is more than warranted, given how the two's last interaction went.
https://i.imgur.com/Ci75p1O.png
When Steve talks about "the first time," he's talking about the first time Barbara tried to give up being a supervillainess, and how he was less than fully won over by her efforts. To be fair to him, Diana had temporarily gone insane at the time, so Steve was probably not in the best place mentally himself either.
https://i.imgur.com/6q9XRL0.png
Barbara joining Checkmate to work alongside Diana, Steve and Etta happens in Volume 5 issue 792.
In Greek mythology, the "Moirai" are the trio of beings named Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos who are responsible for controlling fate and "cutting the thread of life" when a person dies.
Athena is famously a virgin goddess for the reason that she simply doesn't have the time/desire for sexual love and instead dedicates herself completely to the mastery of arts and warfare. Athena, like most Greek gods, has a Roman equivalent, and said Roman equivalent is named Minerva.
The song that Diana starts singing is a section of "The Challenge" from EPIC, which is a musical based on the Odyssey. This particular song is sung by Queen Penelope as she prepares for the possibility that her husband Odysseus is, after being away for twenty years, finally on the cusp of returning to her.
When Diana sings "'Cause I'd rather die, Than grow old without the best of you," she means the words in a slightly different context than Penelope. Penelope's meaning was "without the best person from among the pool of all the people who have come to seek my hand in marriage." Diana, however, means it as "without seeing that I help bring out the best qualities in the people I love." And that applies equally to all the people she loves, be it platonically or romantically. Diana knows that Barbara Ann Minerva is far from the best person on Earth, but what Diana cares about is that she can tell how spending time with her helps Barbara be the best possible version of herself.
"Love can exist with hatred, each preying on the other, and this is what gives it its greatest fury..." Is a quote from T.H. White's "The Once and Future King," but more importantly, Diana also quotes the first half of it to Barbara in Wonder Woman Volume 5 Issue 3.
https://i.imgur.com/jcC0GTJ.png
I like to imagine that it's a line that Diana has repeatedly said to Barbara over the course of her supervillainess career because they both know that deep down, Cheetah can only hate Wonder Woman as fiercely as she does, because she also loves her.
Barbara suggests getting the opinions of Aphrodite and Poseidon on how long people tend to stay dead because she killed Aphrodite with the Godkiller sword in Wonder Woman Volume 5 Issue 76, and Poseidon with the Tear of Extinction in Justice League Volume 4 (2018) Issue 8. Both of them came back to life in Wonder Woman Volume 5 Issue 775.
This fic is intentionally not part of my Elizabeth Juno series because Barbara would not go on to do the things she does in that series after defeating Sovereign (breaking ties with Diana to go and try and deal with Urzkartaga as a supervillainess) if she knew that she had a daughter/"niece" in Elizabeth/Lizzy. A lot of Barbara's childhood trauma came about as the result of her mother not being there for her, and Barbara's mother had the quite reasonable "excuse" of being dead. Barbara would never forgive herself if she ended up inflicting the same fate upon her own offspring because she was too busy seeking revenge to be present in Elizabeth/Lizzy's life.
Which isn't to say that she wouldn't still seek revenge on Urzkartaga, she'd just insist on making Diana completely aware of what she was doing, why she was doing it, and then asking for whatever help Wonder Woman could give her. This effectively transforms the "Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League" six-issue mini-series into a "Cheetah and Wonder Woman ask a Favor of the Justice League," one-shot. Half of the issue is taken up by Barbara and Diana arguing over what music will be playing from the boombox Diana is holding up while Barbara fights Urzkartaga, Barbara wants "600 Strike" https://www.allmusicals.com/lyrics/epicthemusical/600strike.htm while Diana prefers "Goodbye Earl" https://genius.com/The-chicks-goodbye-earl-lyrics. (Much like their fight on the Island in issue 10 Barbara actually wins this one but its not like Diana is especially upset at the outcome)