Author's note: Okay, so... I was playing with this idea for a while until I had no other choice but to put it into words. Not sure how long this story will be, but I have 2 chapters done and 2 more planned out, so more than 4, for now. Hopefully they'll be a fun ride!

Since this is an AU story, please excuse the DCEU canon deviations. Also my knowledge of Greek mythology may not be particularly deep. But hey, AU! I'm doing my best :)

You were my beacon of salvation,
I was your starlight

- "Cradled in Love" by Poets Of The Fall

xoox

Antiope pushed the doors to her sister's chambers open without so much a knock and strode in, printing each step on the stone floor – a privilege very few were granted.

Hippolyta didn't even turn around, only her shoulders stiffened slightly in acknowledgement on the intrusion as her eyes remained fixed on the fire in the hearth, the flames reflecting in her diadem and making it look like it was pulsing with light.

"I know what you are going to say," she said before Antiope so much as opened her mouth.

Her sister stopped in her tracks and nodded, seemingly pleased. "Good. Then I won't have to repeat myself."

Hippolyta turned around abruptly, her eyes blazing with anger and her voice strained with emotion that was normally hidden behind her careful composure, and the flicker of something as vulnerable as fear nearly stripped her of her regal veneer. "You had no right to go against my will!"

Antiope tipped her chin up. "She has the right to learn to defend herself."

"She is only a child and that is not your decision to make, Antiope! She is my daughter!"

"She is more than that," Antiope interjected, and Hippolyta flinched as if she was sapped. "You think that keeping her in the dark will stop the prophecy from happening? What if it does and she is not ready?"

Hippolyta's face hardened. "What if it doesn't?" She challenged her sister. "What if it never comes true? A vessel from the sky is supposed to take her away. What does it mean, Antiope?"

"All the more reason for her to be ready. You can't keep her sheltered from the world forever." Antiope stared at her sister, her jaw set taut and her gaze hard, uncompromising. They'd been here before, countless times. Ever since Zeus made his wishes clear, mapping out Diana's fate at his will. They could ignore it as much as they wanted – Hippolyta could keep her eyes closed and look the other way al she pleased – but doing so was not going to make it go away. "She is meant for great things, Hippolyta."

The queen pursed her lips together, regarding her sister sternly, one will against another. There was no winning here, they both knew it. One way or another, Diana would have to learn the hard ways of the world, be it through battle or through leaving this place, the only one she'd ever called home. She would lose her daughter one way or another, and there was no compromising here, only heartbreak.

"I am not going to let anyone take her away."

"This may not be your decision, sister," Antiope shook her head, her voice filled with wistfulness.

Hippolyta pursed her lips into a hard thin line, and then she nodded curtly, her voice clipped when she spoke.

"Then you should make her the best."

It wasn't until she saw a smoking plane tearing through the sky and plummeting into the ocean, not until she saw her daughter dive into the turquoise waters without so much as a second thought, not until she was awoken deep in the night by the guards claiming that Diana freed their prisoner and was leaving with him that she realized how wrong she was about the prophecy all along. Until then, Hippolyta was hoping against all hope and praying every day for Zeus's words to be a mistake. She should have known better than to believe that.

Diana didn't need to be inside the vessel for it to take her away, and there was nothing Hippolyta could do about it. Never could. There was no protecting her from her fate.

She only wished she knew it sooner.

Chapter 1

1918

It was a lie, after all. Your life didn't flash before your eyes when you died. Instead, the time stopped.

Steve heard the gas capsules explode, one after another after another, dull pops filling the cabin of the airplane as the heat started to grow, licking at his skin, the fire glowing so bright it was unbearable even with his eyes shut as his mind plunged into this nowhere place made of nothingness.

Instead of his happy moments and regrets, the memories filled with laughter and those stained with blood, all he could see was Diana's eyes locked with his, her lips curled into a soft smile, and the soft husk of her voice wrapped around him like a blanket. He could feel her hands on his cheeks, framing his face, could taste her smile, the sound of his name sending ripple after ripple of shiver through his body, and it was not enough, never enough. His chest grew tight as if his heart was about to explode, seemingly too large for his ribcage, too heavy with tenderness and fear and longing and wanting for so much more. They both deserved more.

"NOOOOOO!"

The scream broke through the explosion, registering with Steve, loud and pained, and almost as much on outside of his mind as it was inside it - her voice – as the force of decompression lurched him forward, the cool air of the night touching his clothes, his skin, before went up in flames.

Too late…

There were things in his life that Steve wished he didn't do, the things he wished he'd done differently, his existence like a patch quilt of memories he wished to hold on to and those that he'd rather let go. He was more than the uniform and his skills and the bravery he couldn't always comprehend, scared of going too deep into the whys and the hows for fear of never finding his way back.

Another pop, and he was completely engulfed in fire, not feeling it so much as knowing that it was there, too bright to look at, too hot, too final. It was burning away everything that he was, everything that he wanted to be, and… please let me live, let this not be the end.

And then he was falling, so fast it was giving him vertigo. His stomach flopped down and then lodged itself in his throat, making it impossible to breathe.

In the air force, when he was only trying his hand with the planes, he and his buddies would sometimes take the training planes afterhours and soar into the sky, doing loops and eights and barrels until they could no longer tell the up and the down apart, until their hearts were hammering and their blood flowing, and the world was at their fingertips, tiny and yet so fast he couldn't breathe at the sight of endless fields and skies streaked with wispy clouds.

He was having the same sensation now, the thrill of free-falling, his mind comfortably empty. If he could flow like this for all of eternity, free from the weight of the world, he could be happy, he decided. Completely and utterly free.

And then…

…everything…

…stopped.

Steve opened his eyes and peered into the grey November sky hanging low over the trees, their branches scraping against the clouds that promised more snow later on, undoubtedly. He blinked, blinded by the brightness of the day even though the sun was nowhere to be seen, disoriented and dizzy, grateful to be feeling the carpet of dead leaves beneath his body, the world spinning backward around him.

He probably had a concussion, he figured wincing. His head throbbed and each breath resonated painfully somewhere deep inside him. Broken ribs, most likely. Cracked at the very least. He tried to move in an attempt to assess the damage. Nothing appeared to be broken, to his relief, although a concussion wasn't out of question – even thinking of getting on his feet nearly made him pass out, black dots dancing before his eyes and his brain seemingly too big for his skull.

Steve rolled onto his side, hissing when his body protested against the move, and fairly certain he was going to throw up - so nauseous it made him. He took a deep breath, and then another one, inhaling the pungent scent of cold soil and forest, until his stomach settled and his head stopped spinning. Pushed up slowly, mindful of the sickening sensation as his ribs grated against each other.

He'd had it worse before, Steve thought absently. He'd been shot, so at least he was not in any risk of bleeding out to death, but bloody hell did it hurt.

Wincing, he pushed up to sit, his heart skipping a beat or two with effort.

And with that, the memories came rushing back. The German base. Ludendorff. The gas.

Diana.

He looked wildly around, the woods creeping in on him, dark and ominous. There was no break between the trees, no indication of where he was or where he should be going to get back to… to the people, he figured. Another village. Anything. Without the sun, it was hard to tell what time it was, how many hours had passed since—

His thoughts skidded to an abrupt halt.

He remembered pulling the trigger, remembered the explosions and the fire licking at his skin-

The ground swayed beneath him when he pulled himself up, holding on to the trunk of a tree, fingers grazing against the rough bark, almost painfully raw against his skin. Legs weak and knees unsteady, threatening to give in beneath him, the weight of his body too much for them to carry, Steve leaned heavily against an old oak, bare this late in the autumn, gulping the air hungrily like he might run out of it, his chest tight as though he'd spent too much time underwater.

He needed to get out of here. It was cold, his body shaking from the chill snaking under his clothes and what Steve suspected was shock, if he had to put a label on it. His head was pounding, and when he touched his forehead, his fingers came away smeared with blood from the cut somewhere below his hairline, the metallic scent of it now permeating his senses. He needed to find out what happened.

And most importantly, he needed to make sure that everyone else was safe.

xoox

"Don't do it, Diana," Charlie's voice was soft, laced with sorrow, his accent so much more prominent in grief. "Don't go there."

She chose to pretend not to hear him, her mind blank and her body moving on autopilot.

"Let her," Chief shook his head, his eyes never leaving the back of her head – she could feel it almost like a touch, and it wasn't the first time since they met that she wondered if he could see inside her mind. "A closure goes a long way."

She didn't listen to the rest of it.

Once the smoke started to settle, once the people began to shake off the stunned stupor over what had happened, she grabbed one of the horses and headed in the direction of the bright explosion she'd seen a few hours ago, the image seared in her memory like a scar, half knowing that the others would follow her, half not caring if they did.

Chief was wrong. There was no closure. Could be no closure. Not when it ended so abruptly, so unjustly, so unfairly soon. She didn't even get to say goodbye, and now her chest was aching with so much grief and devastation she didn't know how it was possible for one body to contain it without exploding or folding in on itself until it ceased to exist. With every step, every move, every spoken word, Diana feared she would tear at the seams and the pain and agony simmering inside her would spill out and consume the lands around her.

It was early still, her breath puffing out in small clouds as she moved first in a trot and then in gallop once they left the base behind, speeding up along the narrow road.

It was awfully ironic, really, how there was nothing that could have prepared her for this moment. She could be lethal, she could destroy the root of all evil, but nothing in all those years of training taught her that there was no shield that could protect her heart from breaking, no sword that could deflect the blow that shattered her very soul into a million pieces. No one ever told her that the invisible wounds hurt the most, and how was supposed to go on when there was no force in this world or any other to mend what broke inside her when that plane blew up?

Diana's hands clenched on the reins, her mind spiraling into the abyss.

Who knew that regret and remorse could be so bitter and angry, bubbling up in her chest, nearly boiling over the rim?

The first piece of the aircraft that she saw was a part of a wing, charred from the fire, its torn edges sharp and jagged like a row of bared teeth. There was another shred of metal about a hundred feet from her, near the tree line, and something black scattered around. The air smelled of burned rubber and something else, something acrid that tasted foul on her tongue. And it was so quiet, so awfully quiet…

Diana pulled at the reins, and the horse turned in a semi-circle, jerking its head up and down, its breath puffing out of its flaring nostrils, confused by the abrupt stop. In her haste to get here, she didn't think of how the explosion had probably scattered whatever was left of the airplane for miles around.

Her breath hitched in her throat, her eyes prickling, and in that moment, it was so easy to write it off to the cold and fatigue and not the fact that her very essence was shattering before her eyes.

"Steve!"

His name scattered across the valley, echoing in the distant hills, slashing her eardrums – a pained, desperate sound that carried the weight of the ache burning in her chest and making it hard to breathe, and it took her a moment or two to realize that it was she who was calling for him as if it could miraculously summon him back to life.

There were lessons, Antiope told her countless times, that one couldn't learn from someone else; that she needed to learn for herself. Diana always assumed that it was about her training, finessing the fighting techniques. It made sense to her then – no one else could learn to deflect the blows and perfect her strikes for her. However, right now Antiope's words gained a whole new meaning, pressing down on her like with the full weight of loss that could so easily grind her into dust if it so pleased. How much easier it was to live in the world that was more black and white rather than tinted in shades of grey…

No one told her that losing the people she loved was not the worst thing – the worst thing was being alive when they were gone and carrying the burden of emptiness inside her, something black that threatened to turn her inside out.

She dismounted the horse, feet hitting a patch of frozen, brown grass, and turned around, eyes taking in the clearing and the hills rising behind the forest, and it occurred to her for the first time that he could have evaporated in the blast, and this realization sent a jolt of anguish so sharp through her it nearly left her keeling, hand still closed around a fistful of the reins as her horse reared back, frightened by the raw emotion radiating off of Diana.

In the folds of her cloak, she found the watch, gripping it tightly, struggling to breathe past the burning lump in her throat.

"There's more."

The voice didn't surprise her, however looking up and finding Sameer look at her with profound sadness felt almost like an intrusion, which made her look glance quickly in guilt. She was not the only one who lost Steve, her pain was not stronger just because it was hers. The only difference was that she could have saved him, if only he'd let her; if only they had more time.

She turned to Sameer again, followed his gaze with her own toward another cluster of trees that apparently held more pieces of her fractured life, and nodded numbly, uncertain as to why she was so drawn to come here at all – it wasn't like she could put them back together like nothing happened. This was the one thing, it seemed, that she was not capable of.

Charlie slid timidly to the ground, mindful of his horse's temper, his features streaked with soot and lined with bone-deep weariness.

The Germans surrendered, but the war, Diana thought, would take some time to leave them all be.

She started toward the trees that Sameer pointed to, desperate to find something, anything. A piece of fabric maybe, a button from the uniform Steve was wearing under his heavy winter coat. A proof that she didn't make him up – it was like a burning inside her, the need to close her hand around something tangible that was a part of him, even if it killed her all over again. If she stopped, she thought she might disintegrate.

"Diana." Chief's voice stopped her in her tracks, not so much her name as the chocked tone of his voice. Like something punched him in the chest. "Look."

She glanced up, at him still in the saddle, his profile sharp against the grey sky, and then toward the trees lining the far end of the clearing, half-swallowed in the fog.

And there—

The ground shifted beneath her, her breath wheezing out of her body.

She blinked and staggered forward, straining her eyes. Because it couldn't be. It couldn't be—

"Is that…" Charlie left the end of the sentence hanging.

Or maybe he didn't. Maybe he never stopped speaking, but she didn't hear the rest. Diana took another step forward. And then another one. And then she was running across the field before he disappeared, the nippy air biting at her cheeks and her lungs burning. Her cloak fell from her shoulders to the frozen ground in a shapeless heap, black on grey, without her noticing. And it still was not fast enough. So not enough.

xoox

It was a little known fact, and the biggest misfortune, that it was next to impossible to move in a straight line without a landmark or a compass, and Steve's pockets were empty. His gun must have fallen out of his hand when he pulled the trigger, his compass most likely lost in a battle earlier in the day. He didn't know how long he was walking, cold and dizzy and completely disoriented, the time blurring at the edges. Probably not more than half an hour, his exhaustion starting to settle in like a heavy stone pressing on his chest.

And so when the trees finally gave way and spat him out onto the field where even the air felt different somehow, lighter in the way he couldn't explain, he was tempted to believe that it was a trick of his imagination.

He blinked, and there was a black horse on the other end of the valley. Blinked again, and three more joined it. Steve leaned heavily against the tree, his chest heaving and his laboured breathing and blood rush in his ears muting the forest around him.

So tired.

If only he could just—

And then someone rammed into him at full force, making him stagger and nearly fall backwards.

"Ow," he stiffened momentarily, his battered body protesting the unexpected assault and his bones screaming in agony, and his arms were suddenly full of Amazon goddess, his name whispered over and over again in his ear.

"I'm sorry," Diana muttered, but when she started to pull away, Steve tightened his hold of her, half in relief, half needing to do so lest he collapse.

"No," he muttered and buried his face in her hair that smelled of smoke and earth and the salty air of Themyscira, and in that moment, he feared that if he let go of her for a split second, he'd fall apart. Like she was the only force keeping him in one piece.

"Steve…" She whispered again, pulling away just far enough to look in his face, her fingers touching his cheek, his brow ever so gently, pushing his hair back from his forehead, her eyes gleaming and her lips quivering like she didn't know whether to smile or cry. Steve certainly could relate to that. "But how…"

"I don't know," he rasped, their eyes meeting and his gaze holding hers. An anchor and the only thing he wanted to see. "I really don't know, I-"

"You're here," she breathed out, disbelieving.

He dropped his forehead against hers, his heart beating somewhere in his throat.

"And you found me again." He brushed her hair from her cheek, and she laughed through tears – a short, surprised sound, happiness mixing with fear. Something he was way too familiar with, half certain that she was going to evaporate like a billow of smoke. "Look at that…"

She clutched the lapel of his jacket and dropped her forehead on the slope of his shoulder, her body shaking ever so slightly, and it would be easy to write it off to the late autumnal chill, but something told him that it wasn't the case. He kissed her hair, and the ground swayed beneath him, tiling sideways.

"Oh…"

Diana's arm slipped around his waist for support. "Lean on me," she looked up, her eyebrows creased with concern, but all he could see was the impossible beauty that made his heart stutter for all the right reasons, concussion and whatever the hell was broken inside him be damned. To see that face again, he'd fall from the sky a thousand times over if her had to. He'd keep falling for as long as he lived, if she so wished.

Still, the haze in his mind was troubling, and Steve's fingers flexed on the soft leather of her armour as he held on, hugging her tight against him and hoping against all hope that he wouldn't plant his face in the ground in front of the girl he liked (woman he loved, but that was beyond the point). There was only so much embarrassment a guy could handle in a short span of time. God knew, they'd have another chance for that. Certainly a better setting than the freezing woods in the middle of nowhere in Belgium. He could do better than that.

"Steven," Chief's voice was relieved and breaking a little with something that could be so easily mistaken for affection when the rest of the group caught up with them, Diana's horse tied to his saddle, and while Sameer was grinning for all he was worth, Charlie politely looked away as if he walked in on something private, a wistful smile on his lips. Breathing hurt, thinking hurt even more, and moving was agonizing, but he'd never felt more alive, and somehow, it was the only thing that mattered.

xoox

Another nameless village, another cramped inn, a smudge in his memory between being practically hoisted up on a horse behind Diana (and her soft, Hold onto me) and walking through this door.

Stripped down to his pants, he was sitting on the edge of the bed while Diana prodded and poked at him, armed with a bag of something she'd gotten from Chief, the one with herbs and balms and whatever passed for medical care when there wasn't a single field hospital for miles around them, his I'm fine protests promptly ignored. And really, who would go against a princess of Amazons? He figured it was akin trying to stop an oncoming train with just his bare hands.

In addition to cracked ribs – cracked, not broke, although for Steve, it didn't make that much of a difference, seeing as how the discomfort was the same – he ended up with a messed up shoulder that apparently got this close to being dislocated. Diana pressed a cloth soaked in cold water to an impressive-looking bruise that started to spread over the injured joint to stop the swelling; told him to hold it there as she pushed his hair back from the cut on his forehead, frowning slightly as she reached into the bag of Chief's magical tricks.

His mind had cleared a bit, his focus sharper than a few hours before, as sharp as it could be in a dark room on a gloomy afternoon – surprisingly the only place he wanted to be. The voices were drifting in from the dining room downstairs, the people celebrating the end of the nightmare their lives had turned into years ago. For real now, not a small thing they praised in Veld the other night – oh god, was it yesterday? No, two days ago. It was hard to keep track of time.

He could hear the singing, and the laughter, and the weight he had been carrying inside him started to lift off his shoulders.

Steve cursed under his breath when she touched a strong-smelling slave to his cut, pulling away instinctively.

"I'm sorry." Diana's palm curled over his cheek and she blew on the cut before her gaze dropped and locked with his. "I don't think any stitches are required."

Her shield was propped against the wall, black cloak draped over the back of the armchair in the corner. She'd told him what happened to the sword, how in the end, it was nothing, meant nothing, and her voice broke ever so slightly with the enormity of this revelation.

"You really did it, Diana," Steve said, his voice nothing but a whoosh of breath. "You saved the world."

Her hand dropped from his face and curled around his hand, a soothing thumb running over his scabbed and bruised knuckles. Head tilted slightly to her shoulder, she studied him for a long moment as though she'd never seen him before, a wondrous expression Steve Trevor had never been on the receiving end of, which left him with a tingling sensation in his chest.

"You did, Steve. The gas…" She trailed off, shook her head, and maybe he was the one with a head trauma, but Diana was obviously having as easy a time figuring out how they ended up here as he.

Steve opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out. Not that a suicide mission could be compared to her killing an actual celestial being – the fact that everything she was telling him from the start was real still not quite registering fully – but it felt small and silly to keep the conversation going.

If there was one thing that the war had taught him, it was that no victory was a small victory, and what she did had by far dimmed the rest of their efforts. However, what made him bite his tongue in the end was knowing that she didn't do it for praise and honours and pretty words that didn't mean nearly as much as the tears of joy on the people's faces, the kind of gratitude that couldn't ever be expressed in words because such words simply didn't exist.

"Wait, I think there is something for this," Diana reached for Chief's supplies again, but he pulled his hand away from her and rose on his feet, reaching for his shirt that he couldn't remember taking off lying on the other side of the bed.

"It's just a scratch," he muttered, wincing his way into the sleeves. "Maybe, I should just…"

"Steve, what are you doing?" She followed him with her gaze, puzzled.

He ran his hand through his hair.

Bad idea.

His shoulder screamed in pain, and Steve hissed through his teeth, very aware of Diana's scrutiny, the confines of the room suddenly suffocating as the heaviness of unsaid words pressed down on them, squeezing the remnants of life out of him.

It was truly terrifying how loud the silence could be sometimes. In all his years as a pilot, Steve preferred the angry raging of gunfire to the stillness of the proverbial brewing storm. Silence, on the other hand, always left him unsettled, antsy, the need to fill the moments with the sounds of life so overwhelming it hurt. Right now, there were words tumbling in his head, rolling on the tip of his tongue – words he didn't know how to say because they made little sense even in his mind, the blurred memories that could be nothing but a figment of his imagination in the end.

"What you said in that village, after Ludendorff set off the demonstration…" He took in a sharp, shaky breath and finally met her eyes, a furrow of misunderstanding creasing her brows. "You were right. We were all the problem. I—I don't know if you'd have been able to stop it, to save those people but it was not my call to—to get in your way. They deserved that chance. And… after everything that happened, I wouldn't assume you'd want me to-"

"Stay." Lithe form and majestic grace, Diana uncurled from her sitting position, her expression confused and more than a little scared. One step toward him, and her hands winded into his hair, feather-light on his cheeks, so close and so real and everything he ever needed. "I thought you were gone," he whispered, tracing the line of his jaw, her voice breaking. "I thought I would never see you again. Thought I'd lost you."

"I'm sorry," he murmured, uncertain what he was apologizing for, exactly – getting into that plane, the borrowed time he took from them by making this decision, or for bringing her into his world at all. Knew she didn't know, either, and this thing between them felt wonderful and fragile, and he wanted nothing else but to freeze this moment in time and just be. "I'm so sorry, Diana. I…" he faltered, swallowed hard, his mouth dry all of a sudden.

She looked up, their eyes meeting again, and the sheer force of something behind her gaze all but knocked him off his feet. She wiped a tear from her cheek with her palm, her lips curved into a small relieved smile. "Stay."

xoox

It was the glare of the sun that awoke him the next morning, beaming on his face through thin curtains, a faint murmur of voices outside, and a nearly palpable gaze roaming over his features.

"You're staring," he murmured, his voice hoarse and thick with sleep.

"And you were snoring," Diana responded.

He cracked one eye open with as much indignation as the situation allowed to find her watching him with an amused glint in her eyes, her head propped on her hand. And in the morning light that tangled in her hair, painting it gold, she looked very much like an angel that pulled him out of the water… god, was it only a week ago? It felt like another lifetime.

"I was not," he protested nonetheless.

"Yes, you were," she shook her head, trying and failing not to grin. And added, "I noticed on the boat. And… that other night." Her eyebrow arched pointedly.

He stared at the ceiling for a long moment before noting philosophically, "No one is perfect."

Diana laughed – the sound like sunshine that made his heart trip over itself and soar into the sky, and maybe this was death after all, because how else could he explain this moment, and her, and being so blissfully content it felt unfathomable? Like a dream he had a time or two since he met her, the one that he couldn't quite remember but that was still lingering in the back of his mind. Quite frankly, had it not been for the slight throb in the back of his head and an uncomfortable protest of his ribcage every time he inhaled, he'd be tempted to write this off to a delusion of some sort, too good to be real.

"You'll heal," she said – an observation, not an assumption – as her fingers left a ghost of a trail along his skin, touching softly the bruise on his shoulder and a crisscross pattern of scars on his chest, her eyes brimming with questions Steve knew they would come back eventually. Although not now, perhaps.

"That's the plan," he agreed, unable to suppress a shiver than ran through him.

"You're cold. Let me start a—" Diana began, completely misreading the situation and pulling away from him, but Steve caught her hand, kissed the back of her fingers, marveling in the feel of her smooth skin against his calloused palm, lean and delicate and deadly in so many ways. Certainly, unsafe for his heart.

"No, stay." He murmured, and then his eyebrows pulled together as he gave her a curious once-over. "What are you wearing?"

Diana glanced down at a wispy cotton nighty, wrapped around her frame, so thin it was negating the point of having anything on at all. Long sleeves that were a tad too short for her and strings at the collar that she left untied, revealing a glimpse of tanned flesh that completely derailed the train off his thought until it reached the end of the tracks and dove right off the cliff.

Her expression was puzzled for a flicker of a moment, hands reaching instinctively for the strings. "The innkeeper gave it to me," she said, looking up at him again. "Is this not what women wear to bed?"

Steve swallowed and cleared his throat. "No, it is. It really is."

"What?" She demanded, watching him struggle.

He chuckled and pulled her down to him, his fingers threading through her hair. "It looks good on you," he whispered as her lips brushed against his, allowing him to feel her smile. It was funny in that odd and surprising way that she'd never looked less like a lethal goddess than now, and if it was up to him, he'd have her wear nothing but this nighty – that Steve was fairly certain was in high fashion in his grandmother's times – for as long as they both lived.

"How hard did you hit your head?" She murmured, kissing the corner of his mouth.

"Tease." He turned his head, capturing her mouth, his pulse stuttering for a moment and then sprinting into a race as her fingers thrummed along his neck.

"You scared me," she murmured, a frantic edge in her voice.

"I'm sorry."

He shifted, drawing her closer, warm and real and—

Wrong move. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

With a groan, he gripped a handful of Diana's nightie and pressed his face into her neck when his body resisted the idea, cursing it mentally, although not that surprised – he tumbled from the sky not a day ago. It was a miracle he wasn't paralyzed. (It was a miracle he wasn't dead, for that matter.) Not being ready to move on to the best parts yet was probably the least of his issues.

"I'm probably going to be out of commission for a while," he muttered, kissing along her jaw.

Diana's palm found his cheek, a thumb running over his prickly stubble, her face so close he could feel the flutter of her eyelashes on his skin. He could probably spend the rest of his life in this moment and nothing would be better. "You're here." And somehow, in the madness he found himself in, this was the only thing that made sense. "I have something that's yours."

The static in his mind cleared a bit when she reached for the nightstand and picked up something that, upon closer inspection, turned out being his watch. The very same one that he pressed into her hands before all hell broke loose.

His dad gave it to him when Steve was 12, saying that the time was the most precious gift, and that it was Steve's duty to make sure to find some for the things that really mattered, no matter what. For years, he didn't think much of those words, treasuring the watch as a precious gift he knew meant a lot to his old man. A gift for his service – no wonder Steve followed in his footsteps. It was funny how some things took a while to truly gain their full meaning, and the importance of time was no exception from the rule. Ironically, he hadn't realized it until he had none left, and the memory of the night that he believed would be his last one left him with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

And a twinge of guilt, too. This watch has been his most prized possession for as long as Steve remembered himself, the one that he kept intact and running all through his training and his missions and that one time he nearly lost his very soul at poker, and he probably wouldn't have even thought about it if Diana wasn't holding it in front of his face. Speak of priorities….

He started at it for a long moment, the hands frozen, the gears silent. He'd never not heard it before.

"Would you hold on to it for me?" He asked her, even though his eyes hadn't moved from the object in her hand.

"But it's your father's," Diana protested.

"Not for good, just for a while." He reached over to tuck a strand of tousled hair behind her ear, having a very distinctive feeling that they were no longer talking about the watch. "I think you'd take good care of it."

"You are a very stranger man, Steve Trevor."

She scooted closer to him, lowered her head down on his pillow, their temples touching, her eyes studying the pale face, the thin hands, the leather of the strap so worn out it was as soft as a piece of fabric, albeit strong and resilient as ever.

He chucked, his own gaze never leaving her regal profile – the line of her nose that seemingly came straight from some ancient Greek painting, a tinge of colour on her high cheekbones, a delicate curve of her lips moving soundlessly as she read the engraving on the back.

"Tell me something I don't know," he breathed out, more to himself than to her. "Here, let me…"

Steve took the watch from her and fastened it on Diana's wrist. It was too bulky for her, too big and slightly loose, and undoubtedly inconvenient with her wrist guards that were currently tossed on the table in the corner. He didn't expect her to wear it, but there was something impossibly mesmerizing about seeing these two different worlds collide in a way.

She turned her wrist this way and that, testing the weight and the feel of the watch.

"It stopped."

"I can fix that." In Steve's memory, the seconds, and minutes, and the hours of that day blurred into one endless moment of aching uncertainty and bone-chilling fear, but if his calculations were correct, his watch stopped ticking at the exact moment when his plane had gone up in flames. A constant reminder that he was equally tempted to keep and to erase it for fear of being held back by it for the rest of his life. "I think I can."

Diana looked up at him. "It's really over," she said, pensive. "No more wars left to fight."

And what a weird concept it was, Steve thought. Through all the fighting and trying and the sacrifices, deep down he was starting to lose hope. He could hardly remember the world before the war, the fragments of his life feeble and faded, somewhat out of his reach.

"From where I'm standing, it's a good thing," he noted.

"It is." A pause. "So what do we do now?"

The question almost caught him off-guard. No longer used to seeing past one day at a time, when tomorrow was hidden in the fog and the future was obscured and uncertain, he'd long forgotten how to dream of more.

Steve ran the back of his fingers over her cheek, his mind instantly flooded with a thousand things he didn't dare think of for so long. "Anything. Anything we want."

To be continued...

A/N: I was meaning to make it angsty straight away, but all deserve some fluff before everything goes south.

Feedback is always much appreciated! :))