Steve unbuckles his father's watch from his wrist, and glances over at Diana, the beautiful, fierce woman who has captured his heart as surely as if it were bound by her golden lasso. This is his gift to her… but he pauses, before going to her, and looks at it one last time.
He's never opened it up, never needed to, but somehow, he knows that this is the moment he's been waiting for his whole life.
There's a button on the side. He presses it, and the watch clicks open.
But it's not a watch… it's a Chameleon Arch.
Oh.
Steve breathes in his essence, feels the vitality of space and time and the very stars itself settle into his bones. Steve – the Doctor – no, Steve, for the Doctor was his father, a man who had embraced mortal life and hidden away his Time Lord DNA, breathes out, and everything is just fantastic.
"Well this is new," he says eyeing Diana with interest as his heart swells with more love than he'd thought possible, before turning his attention to the matter at hand. Steve still has the Doctor's memories, although he's more detached from them than if he'd been the Doctor's human incarnation. His disdain for guns has become academic, but Steve doesn't need them to win this battle anyway.
"I've got a plan!" he yells at Charlie. He grins, gleefully, at Charlie's bewilderment. "And there's an awful lot of running to be done."
"Right... What was that gold glow?" Sameer asks.
Steve winces and shrugs. "Oh, just a little bit of regeneration energy, nothing to be worried about. Now, what I really need is a bomb."
Charlie jabs a thumb toward the plane. "And what exactly do you think that is?"
Steve frowns. "Something incredibly dreadful." He looks at Charlie. "Ginger!" he says. "Why couldn't I be ginger? Blonde again," he huffs, running a hand through his hair.
"Right," Sameer says. "Boss has officially gone crazy."
There's two gods duking it out only a few hundred meters away from them. "That's crazy," Steve yells, pointing at them. "Now, I need a stick of dynamite, a pair of pliers and some wire."
The Chief throws him the dynamite, and Steve grabs the pliers and the wire from Sameer as he sprints past them. The plane has started trundling along the runway, and Steve's lucky he's got a lot of practise at running.
Steve's a little bit in shock when he throws the pilot off the plane. On one hand, it's definitely not something the Doctor would do… on the other, it's Steve Trevor through and through.
"You're Steve," he mutters, fiddling with his watch and the dynamite. "Steve Trevor, Time Lord and US Air Force Intelligence. Oh, I wonder if Canton's been born yet?"
He lashes the controls into a steep incline, and sets the timer on the bomb for two minutes. Ample time for the plane to make it several thousand feet above sea level, a safe height for a dangerous detonation.
Then Steve reaches into his empty pocket, eyes shut and both hearts beating a rhythm so loud it's almost deafening. His fingers close around a key, small and silver, and he grips it tight.
Over the sound of the motors Steve imagines that he can hear a faint throbbing noise, like the wheezing of gears, or the groaning of an engine or perhaps…
Steve opens his eyes. Before them is a box, the bluest blue he's ever seen, big and little at the same time, and achingly beautiful.
Steve steps into his TARDIS. He's got all of space and time at his fingertips, but the only place he wants to be is at Diana's side.