durare | let's play.

[ 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.

[He startles awake, a spy and soldier down to his very bones and he's ready for a fight that he knows nothing about but he'll fight it all the same because they won't take him, they won't crack him, he'll die first.

Which he kind of did. So there's that.

The last thing he remembers is the shaky breath in his lungs and the cold metal in his hand and the heat of the fire scorching his face. And then he's here, wherever here is and that doesn't actually matter much when he opens his eyes and his vision is filled with her.

Diana, Diana, Diana. There's no fight then. Steve relaxes in one harsh breath, his hands stop their search for a weapon, his head drops back to the pillow. It's then he realizes that everything in his body hurts and she looks different. Older, maybe. Sadder, definitely. He wonder how she saved him this time because that was a pretty tight corner he backed himself into.]

We have to stop meeting like this.

[ We have to stop meeting like this, he says, as if a hundred years has not just spanned between them, as if they had only just parted ways; but his sense of humor is not lost on her, treasured and precious and now even more so. That response gets a smile from her, dawning and hopeful, and she leans over while she reaches out, a hand resting on his forehead. ]

We really should.

[ She agrees with a soft, inexplicable huff of laughter, feeling something sting the back of her eyes, emotion flickering in her chest. It's been so long, so long, and here he is, a gift, a second chance. Dark hair tumbling over her shoulders, Diana allows herself to hope. ] Do you know where you are? What year this is?

[Well that's a weird question to ask.

Steve's forehead wrinkles in confusion, and he reaches for her without thinking much about it. Just to assure himself that this is real and not some fever dream in a hospital that's falling apart brick by brick until there isn't anything left but rubble and the cries of dying men. She feels real. This bed is definitely not a standard cot issued by the British armed forces. It's quiet here. Probably not a hospital but that's all he's got.]

I haven't the faintest idea. It was 1918 last I checked.

[ Ah, of course.

1918 -- Diana leans into his touch, pressing her cheek against his calloused palm. This is what she steals from him, just a little, before she breaks the news. His warmth, his kindness, how he looks to her, confused and lost but ultimately unhurt. Steve had been sleeping for so long, preserved in the earth, and perhaps Demeter had given him a blessing of hers, kept him safe until today.

She wouldn't know -- the gods ought to all have been dead. She opens her eyes two seconds, three later, her hand pressed against his as she thinks of just how to say it -- before she decides on pure, unfettered honesty. That's always worked relatively well with her, and Steve wouldn't appreciate being lied to. ]

We're a long way from 1918.

[No, he wouldn't appreciate being lied to. Especially not from her, even if she thought she was protecting him.

He's marveling at their hands joined together when she delivers her news. He's never really thought of himself as simple, as ordinary, as settling for the average but there's something about her and them where the little things mean everything. Holding her hand. The scent of her hair when she moves. Maybe it's because she's so extraordinary. Maybe it's because he's pretty sure he's in love with her and he's barely known her a week.]

How, uh long exactly?

let's play.

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