After :
On November 11, 1918, the armistice is properly signed and the war to end all wars finally ends.
The world goes on.
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What do people do when there isn't a war?
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The war ends, but the battles continues.
There are refugees, and rebuilding, and still so much to do, to heal the scars that all the fighting left behind.
There are soldiers, returning home, young boys with darkened eyes or missing limbs, but they are breathing and they are there, and that is enough for most, for their families, to have hope.
There are civilians, innocents caught in a battle they had no power to fight in, and they come in droves, trying to find anew all that they have lost.
There are mothers, who grip at their children with relief, who finally allow their hands to let go, so that laughter and tiny feet fill the streets once more. There is dancing and singing, bright lights that almost shine like tiny stars at night, as everyone rejoices in the newfound peace.
There are buildings, turned to rubble, priceless works of art that are unrecognizable now. But there are people who draw new plans, people with calloused hands who dig through the dirt and carry brick after brick to make new buildings
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They get a job, get married, have children.
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The world goes on.
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What is that like?
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But not for everyone.
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I... don't know.
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A few days after the celebrations in London, Etta hands her the keys to Steve's apartment and offers to go along with her. Diana accepts both, and the two of them end up at a small flat on the third floor in a slightly less travelled part of the city, overlooking the water.
The place is a bit of a mess. There's clothing strewn on the furniture, papers and books haphazardly piled and some framed photographs of people and places Diana does not know hanging on the wall.
The air inside is stale from being left untouched for so long, but that is not why Diana chokes.
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I wish we had more time.
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There is so much Diana does not know about Steve Trevor, did not get to know about him. The time they spent, the things they shared, all of it was but a drop in the ocean, a few weeks in a lifetime.
Here, in his apartment that she has never been inside, that she did not even know about, it has never been clearer.
Diana does not why he has a photograph of what appears to some sort of barn on his desk, or why he has a book titled Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea when he was a pilot.
She does not know his parents' names, where they lived or of they are even still alive. There are so many blanks, so many questions, and her mind whirls with it all. It feels like that moment right before , when everything impossibly silent, and it seemed like the whole world was trapped in a bubble. Until the bubble popped and time moved like thunder racing-
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I love you.
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The words ring in her ears, and just what- who -Diana has lost hits her all over again, a wave crashing over her until she feels as though she is drowning.
But even so, Diana does not drop to her knees, does not tremble, barely even reacts, save for a pained gasp slipping from her mouth.
Etta reacts anyway, wrapping the taller woman in a fierce hug that steals the air entirely from her lungs, demigoddess strength leaving her entirely, as she finally falls into her friend's arm, tears streaming from her eyes and a grief-stricken wail coming from her mouth.
There are many things Diana does not ever get to say or ask Steve Trevor.
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I love you.
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His absence feels like a dark stain, a black hole in her life. Some days, she still turns and feels surprised to not see him there. She remembers him, and her dear aunt, and each Amazon lost, and the village they had liberated, only to see their lifeless bodies on the ground later on-
The grief over all that she has lost, all those she has failed to save, weighs down on her like a shroud, invisible and intangible but heavy all the same.
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I wish we had more time.
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Etta helps, telling her about Steve and explaining all she knows as best as she can.
Later, when they begin the task of organizing Steve's apartment, and they look through old photographs, she talks about his origins, as a boy born in a small town in America, to schoolteacher mother and a watchmaker father. He was an only child, and his parents were good loving people. His father died was he was young, killed as a conscripted soldier in another war. Steve had admired him, and followed in his footsteps, going on to become a pilot and later, a British spy.
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My father told me once: if you see something wrong happening in the world, you can either do nothing or you can do something.
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It's only the bare bones of his life, a short summation that seems pitifully incomplete, because, Etta admits apologetically, "The man could be so secretive about his past, honestly. You had to pry everything out of him."
And Diana remembers a story about a watch, about a boy and his father.
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I guess I gotta try.
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But Etta has other stories, not about a boy, but about the man he became.
The other woman is a fantastic storyteller, and she has many stories about him, most of which she has no doubt he would not have wanted her to know, as they all seem to have a tendency to showcase him in embarrassing light. Diana laughs at it all, and all the more, as she imagines his reaction.
For a moment, in the soft glow of the afternoon light filtering through his apartment's windows, as the two of them speak of him and all his strengths and flaws, he does not seem so far away, so lost.
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Still, the world goes on.
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It's about what you believe.
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In the midst of them all, among the soldiers and mothers and children, there is Diana, standing tall, and she helps the rebuilding and the refugees, not with shield or sword, but with strength and smile.
From dusk till dawn, she wades through masses of people, directing the lost through their new homes; she drags heavy bags of sand and cement like they are nothing, and watches with excitement as they turn into something; she helps to heal the sick and carries the ones who cannot stand on their own; she works and works, until even her supernaturally strong limbs ache.
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And I believe in love.
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But at the end of the day, she is always beaming, laughter ringing out as the people around her speak and joke and spin around with the kind of relief that only comes with freedom.
And this helps too, heals the wounds that war has inflicted in all of them, bit by bit, scar by scar.
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Only love will truly save the world.
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At night, Diana falls asleep to the ticking of Steve's watch nestled close to her heart.
Steve Trevor is gone , she knows.
But she likes to think, that somehow, a little bit of him lives on, in the steady ticking that sounds so much like a heartbeat.
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I love you.