Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel or DC or anything else. Also this fic is primarily a Wonder Woman one, but Cap is listed first because of alphabetical reasons, so there's that.
A/N: For my real HalcyonSeasons stans (jk), this fanfic is a pretty new concept for me. It's my first crossover and years as well as my first ever superhero fic. After I saw Wonder Woman and Captain America: The First Avenger, I was shook, to say the least. I found these two movies incredibly similar and couldn't get the idea off my mind. So here's to my babies Diana and Steve. (This one-shot is more centered on Diana, though, and her coping with the loss of Steve Trevor). I'd also like to thank my homegirls SeDona and Tina for motivating me to actually get this one-shot done. So here is New Love, in which the title and lyrics both come from "New Love" by Dua Lipa. Thanks for reading.
Summary: Near the end of World War II, Diana Prince finds herself attempting to reconnect to her long-gone, beloved Steve Trevor. However, she comes across Steve Rogers instead. Semi-angsty one-shot.
Rating: K+
New Love
Wonder Woman x Captain America
and I've been through mountains and seas
tryna get you to come back to me
and I've been far, and I've been so deep
now I find it harder and harder to breathe
i.
The attempted mugger ran down the dark alley to the best of his ability with a limp, holding his sprained wrist in his good hand. He muttered expletives under his breath. Diana Prince turned to the elderly Parisian woman, handing her the leather purse back.
"Merci beaucoup," the woman told Diana. "Merci."
"Vous êtes les bienvenus," Diana replied, a genuine smile upon her face, disappearing into the shadows.
It was a peculiarly warm evening in August 1945 as Diana sat down at a bar on the outskirts of Paris. The bar was quiet and unknown. She had been to a lot of different bars in recent years—and in a multitude of different cities—but this was the place she often returned to when she wanted to wallow in her thoughts. She spent her days as a curator at the Louvre, as long as civilians weren't endangered, yet somehow, bars were even more peaceful.
The Second World War was certainly more detrimental than the first one. While France had celebrated the end of the war back in May, it still wasn't officially over. But to France, there was no more war. It reminded Diana of her conversation with Steve Trevor, twenty-seven years ago.
What do people do when there isn't a war? she had asked him.
Get a job, get married, have children, he had told her.
What is that like?
I… don't know.
He would never know.
Since Steve's death in 1918, Diana had become somehow fonder of spending her time within her own thoughts. His death was no longer fresh, especially since it had occurred twenty-seven years ago, but part of her still ached to have him back. In between protecting and defending the world one case at a time, she found herself thinking of Steve. Her one and only Steve.
Diana retrieved Steve's wrist watch from her coat pocket and slid it onto her wrist. The watch no longer worked and had seen better days, but she couldn't bear to let it wither away.
I wish we had more time, had been his last words to her. I love you.
She gently ran her thumb over the smooth surface of the watch. I wish we had more time, too, she thought.
Steve must have been on somebody else's mind in that bar, since a stranger suddenly uttered his name. However, it was followed with the surname Rogers instead of Trevor.
Diana turned her attention to the stranger, who sat at a nearby table. It was a younger woman. She explained to a man that somebody named Steve Rogers had crashed his airplane into the Arctic. The woman then referred to Steve Rogers as Captain America.
Diana had heard of Captain America in passing. It was tragic (not to mention terribly ironic) that he had died in a plane crash. Diana then overheard the woman saying how his plane had been full of explosives—Steve hadn't been given a choice but to crash the airplane.
Diana's jaw dropped as she gasped sharply. The woman suddenly stopped talking as she noticed Diana had been staring at her.
"Pardon," Diana told her, getting up. She paid the bartender and left the bar with both Steve Trevor and Steve Rogers on her mind.
Unbelievable.
ii.
Five months later, Diana moved to Brooklyn, New York for a change of scenery from Paris. The war had officially ended, and now people were living. They were working, getting married, and having children, as Diana's Steve would put it. January 1946, generally, was peaceful so far.
Brooklyn, however, still mourned its Captain.
Diana hadn't done her research on Steve Rogers until she moved to Brooklyn. He had been from Brooklyn, and his impact continued to reign. In the streets, in the shops, everywhere, Diana saw Steve Rogers' logo. His shield—in the forms of t-shirts, flags, miniature replicas, anything—followed Diana everywhere she went. It was as if her Steve had left her to be forcefully replaced by another one.
Diana sat in a bar in Brooklyn one freezing night in late January. This bar wasn't like the one in Paris she always returned to, not at all. It was louder. More vibrant yet somehow more jaded. But she didn't feel any strain of culture shock. The only sense of familiarity this bar held to the one in Paris, however, was the topic of Steve Rogers.
Diana listened in on the quiet words of a younger man from across the bar. "I just can't believe he's gone," he said to another man. "Crashed his plane right into the Arctic. After everything that he's done, I just… I didn't think he would leave so soon."
"Have they recovered the body yet?" the other man asked.
"No. They can't even find the plane."
"Damn."
Diana had been resisting the urge to save the world ever since she had lost her Steve. And while possibly returning Steve Rogers to his people would bring about full closure, she still had a duty to serve. It was what she believed in, after all.
Within days, and through connections with various allies she had made just after World War I, Diana had made it to the Arctic Circle, where it was predicted that Steve had crashed. The air was freezing, naturally, but she didn't mind. She had a duty. Diana's helicopter pilot who had brought her to this location, Ron Jones, was on standby.
As she searched far and wide for Steve, Diana tried not to think of the snow. She used to have fond memories of snow, but the magic was gone. As of now, it was just there.
Diana had been searching the general area for hours when she saw a metal figure sticking out from the snow. She rushed towards it. Once she approached it, she ran her hand along the icy edge.
Steve, she thought. It must be Steve.
She tugged hard on the edge, and it turned out to be a severed wing of the airplane. She dove into the ice and the snow with little regards for her heavy coat, finding more hunks of metal. Diana was becoming frustrated with all the pieces of metal she found that she managed to rip more pieces apart, making her job harder for himself.
Then she finally found the cockpit and the body, pulling both out of the ground. A disk-shaped vibranium shield fell out of the cockpit as Diana lifted him. Steve Rogers' body was freezing cold. She briefly placed her palm against his right cheek. There was no difference in temperature. Everything from his pale skin to his dark uniform to his blond hair was iced over.
This was him. This was Captain America.
Diana knew how much he meant to Brooklyn, to America, and to essentially the Western world. It was a good thing that he was found, but nevertheless, he was still gone. Then again, Diana had never meant to revive him. She had only meant to find him. And she did.
She held his cold body in her arms, with one hand placed over his heart. She became still and reflective on a person she had never personally known.
And suddenly, there was a slow, deep heartbeat. Diana held her breath and didn't move him. After another sixty seconds, his heart beat again. She waited another sixty seconds, and another sixty seconds, and his pulse kept returning.
She looked down at him with wide, shocked eyes and a dropped jaw.
He was found, and he most certainly was not gone for good.
iii.
Steve had been resuscitated in a laboratory in Manhattan. It had taken days, but when Steve's eyes finally fluttered open on a bright morning that January, Diana was certain the process was worth it.
Steve had full lashes and blue eyes—the kind of ocean blue eyes that had songs written about them. They weren't the exact shade of blue that Diana's Steve had had, but they were close.
Diana stared down at this Steve, Steve Rogers, with a look of wonder upon her face. She had so much to ask him, she hardly knew where to start.
"He's awake," a voice murmured from behind Diana.
"Yes, he is," Diana confirmed, still focused on him.
Steve blinked again, trying the process the fact that he was alive. "Who are you?"
"Diana," she told him, "Princess of Themyscira, Daughter of Hippolyta."
"What?" he asked. It was a response she was used to, and the way he put it reminded her so much of her own Steve.
She gently brought her palm up to his right cheek. This time, he was warm—he felt more human than ever. Peering his blue eyes—a good blue, but not the right blue—she felt herself diving into reality again.
"Almost," she whispered.
Multiple tests were run on Steve over the next three days, but eventually, he and Diana returned home to Brooklyn, where Captain America's return was especially celebrated. Diana revealed herself to Steve to be Wonder Woman. She wasn't as well known in the Americas as she was in Europe, especially in England. Steve had claimed to have heard of her before in passing and in history chronicling World War I.
The sky was a grayish purple as Diana and Steve approached a snow-covered grassy area near the Brooklyn Bridge. They wandered without a plan or any sense of time. Steve Trevor's watch, which sat on Diana's wrist, had no sense of control in this moment even though it was long broken. Diana had become more sensitive and conscious towards time since she had lost her Steve, but right now, it didn't bother her as much.
And with Steve Rogers, walking through the snow filled her up with joy. Here in Brooklyn, the snow was magical. Steve was a perfect stranger, but for a moment, she felt like she was back with her own Steve.
"So I was asleep for five months?" Steve asked for clarification.
Diana nodded, the light snowflakes falling onto the tip of her nose and her thick eyelashes. "Correct."
Steve somehow didn't feel like himself anymore. He felt like he was in limbo, stuck in a dream where he had to follow this unexpected, gorgeous woman in order to finally get to heaven. He wasn't meant to be here. He just wasn't.
"How did you find me?" he asked her.
"I heard you crashed in the Arctic," she replied easily, "so I went to find you."
"You searched the Arctic for me?" he asked her incredulously.
"Why is that so hard to believe?" she wondered.
"When I was just about to crash," he explained, "I… I thought I was a goner. I thought it was over. Not like I would've minded."
"People were mourning your loss, Steve Rogers," she said. "And not just Americans, either. I first heard about your disappearance when I was in Paris."
"That doesn't mean anything," he said, shaking his head.
"How?" she demanded. "How does that not mean anything? Steve Rogers, your presence is so massive that—"
"I'm just saying you didn't have to save me," he said curtly.
"Well, I didn't save you," she murmured. "You were already alive. I just brought you back home."
"You didn't have to do that, either," he replied.
"Steve Rogers, I cannot believe you."
"Why are you doing that?" he asked as they continued to wander aimlessly towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Their shoeprints made prints in the fresh snow.
"Doing what?"
"Why do you keep calling me Steve Rogers? I'm the only Steve here right now."
"I…" She faltered, realizing that reality was knocking right on her door. Maybe she was selfish for bringing Steve Rogers back. After all, he hadn't wanted to come back. "I, um… I used to know a Steve. Steve Trevor."
"Oh. Is he back in Paris?"
"No," she said. "He passed away back in 1918."
"I was born that year," he commented. "That's ironic."
"Very," she agreed.
They walked in silence for a moment, creating new prints.
"Do you miss him?" he asked her.
"Every single day," Diana replied. "Is there somebody you miss? Or somebody you can't wait to get back to now that you're back?"
"Bucky," Steve said. He had a look in his eyes that was reminiscent and far away. "I won't go into it, but… But I lost him and it was all my fault."
"I'm sure it wasn't your fault," Diana said reassuringly.
"It was," he countered. "I'm never going to get him back, and I'll have to live with that. I do have Peggy, though. In fact, I have a dance with her to get to at some point."
"Agent Peggy Carter? I spoke with her in the laboratory when you were asleep."
He quickly looked to her. "You did?" he asked, his eyes bright and hopeful.
She nodded. "She had to leave, but she'll be seeing you tomorrow."
"Alright," he said.
"Do you love her?"
"Yes."
And it was left at that.
At once, Diana could finally see Steve Rogers as a person. As a living, breathing person. This was evident as they walked aimlessly through the snow, their hot breath hitting the frozen air.
She hadn't replaced Steve Trevor, her Steve, but she had found somebody new entirely. She had found Steve Rogers, who had hopes and love and a life of his own, even if he didn't necessarily want it. He had his own duties. He had his demons surrounding Bucky to deal with. And of course, he had his dance with Peggy.
Wandering through the snow—the magical, pure snow—with Steve Rogers was enough for Diana in this moment. She had been looking for a way to get back to her Steve, and while she was closer, she still wasn't there. She would never be quite caught up with him.
I wish we had more time, had been his last words to her.
It's okay, she thought.
And it was.
fin.