"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."
― Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy
In her spare moments, when the world fell silent enough to elicit contemplation, Diana would stare at Steve's watch, observing the ebb and flow of its mechanics. Time continued to push forward, pursuing the spaces between each hand, forgoing the past in favour of progress. It seeped into her waking moments far too often, falling from her fingers like sand. Although Diana lived in accordance to time, she remained detached to it, a spectator in a sport that demanded participation. Time ticked on, trapping her in a cage devoid of agency. Mankind had changed and she had been forced to change along with it.
Familiar faces had begun to decay, retreating into old age. Time had tightened its hold. Bruised under the force of forgetfulness, Diana had faded from living memory, a name spoken in moments of utter hopelessness, when faith had become nothing but a hypothesis, unproven. Steve's watch continued to tick, chasing spaces and numbers for no apparent reason other than to torment her. What had once been new soon became old, black and white photographs bleeding into textbooks like smoke, relics from a foreign age. It lingered, spilling into her memory, staining familiar scenes as though the world were nothing more than a blank canvas. Skyscrapers would grow a little smaller in size, a kaleidoscope of subdued greys, brushing against the sky like pale fingers, snatching a bit of blue. Time seemed to stop, stuck somewhere in Steve's watch.
Diana had grown fond of it. She lived for these moments, waiting in anticipation for nostalgia to take hold, defying the spaces in Steve's watch for an instant. The past had been given new life. It bled from behind her eyes as though she were seeing everything for the first time, an experience her memory had failed to completely recreate. In these moments, time no longer seemed so cruel. It became beautiful in its totality, breeching the confines of space, bringing her closer to everything she had lost. Steve didn't feel so far away and her memory of him didn't feel as far-flung, scattered across the sky like sparks, fading into nothing. She'd fold her fingers around his watch in retaliation, envisioning the weight of his hand instead, pressing reassuringly into her skin as though he hadn't left her in the first place.
Time had taken the heat of his hand away.
"Why do you let such a thing control your life?" Diana asked again, placing Steve's wrist in line with her eyes.
She felt his laughter before she could hear it, welling up from beneath her in a crescendo of soft sound. His lips parted at the base of her throat, brushing slowly against her skin, a perversion of a kiss. A smile split his lips. He looked at her as though he could see the answer resonating from somewhere deep within her, burning out of reach. The intensity of his stare left her speechless.
"I'd like to think that I control my life, not the other way around," he said, fitting his hand into the curve of her spine.
"Time is an extension of man. It doesn't exist."
"As you wish," he replied, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, "but it doesn't feel that way."
He had been right. As his fingers sunk deeper into her hair, Diana caught another glimpse of his watch. Time ticked on.