[ he is returned to her, half-alive but whole -- but the strange, impossible thing is this: he is found ninety-nine years on (as young as she has remembered him when he told her her loved her and her ears rang from the rage of a defeated god) as precious cargo of a group of smugglers who did not know what they had excavated from the earth, and when he started to breathe again, underneath the clay, they were afraid and abandoned him.
perhaps zeus had breathed life anew into him; but even so, nothing explains just how he would have turned up here and now, on the heels of an old photo returned. thank you for returning him to me, she had told bruce wayne in an email three days ago, given him a scrap of a story for his trouble, and now she sits quietly by the bed she had laid him in. hers, a simple but elegant thing, a far cry from the hard ground they slept in during the war, and in a large, similarly elegant room in her penthouse in paris. the gods do not bestow gifts freely, and she cannot help but wonder at when the toll will come due, and if the price would be too high to pay.
it wouldn't. it wouldn't, not for steve, who gave himself up for the sake of the world. he saved that night, and as a result the next, and the next, and all the others that came after -- and she has never stopped loving him, not once. his watch is faithfully repaired, even when the watchmakers have run out of spare parts, even when two and three of them have gently told her that it would fetch a fine price at an auction house, and has she considered sothebys?
she commissions them now, the spare parts, and keeps the watch close. safe. it's the last thing he had given her, this measure of time and a softly uttered wish (more time, he wished they had more time and so did she), and here they are now, with her keeping vigil as he sleeps, a glass of water by his bed and his watch on the pillow by his side, a silent guardian to him as it had been hers for the past century.
she will pay for all that comes, as long as he is safe, and alive. ]
Steve. [ she murmurs softly, brushing his hair back from his head. she wonders if he can hear her. she swallows a lump in her throat, and contemplates the familiarity of this scene -- he didn't look too different when he'd washed up on the shore a lifetime ago. this time, however: ] It's me, Diana.
no subject
perhaps zeus had breathed life anew into him; but even so, nothing explains just how he would have turned up here and now, on the heels of an old photo returned. thank you for returning him to me, she had told bruce wayne in an email three days ago, given him a scrap of a story for his trouble, and now she sits quietly by the bed she had laid him in. hers, a simple but elegant thing, a far cry from the hard ground they slept in during the war, and in a large, similarly elegant room in her penthouse in paris. the gods do not bestow gifts freely, and she cannot help but wonder at when the toll will come due, and if the price would be too high to pay.
it wouldn't. it wouldn't, not for steve, who gave himself up for the sake of the world. he saved that night, and as a result the next, and the next, and all the others that came after -- and she has never stopped loving him, not once. his watch is faithfully repaired, even when the watchmakers have run out of spare parts, even when two and three of them have gently told her that it would fetch a fine price at an auction house, and has she considered sothebys?
she commissions them now, the spare parts, and keeps the watch close. safe. it's the last thing he had given her, this measure of time and a softly uttered wish (more time, he wished they had more time and so did she), and here they are now, with her keeping vigil as he sleeps, a glass of water by his bed and his watch on the pillow by his side, a silent guardian to him as it had been hers for the past century.
she will pay for all that comes, as long as he is safe, and alive. ]
Steve. [ she murmurs softly, brushing his hair back from his head. she wonders if he can hear her. she swallows a lump in her throat, and contemplates the familiarity of this scene -- he didn't look too different when he'd washed up on the shore a lifetime ago. this time, however: ] It's me, Diana.