A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I hope this clears things up a little bit.
Chapter One
At the disgruntled sound his wife issued, Bruce looked up to see a gently mocking smile on Diana's face. "If I'd known I was going to have to fight for your attention this hard I don't think we'd have children for another decade."
He smiled, but inevitably his gaze turned to the baby again. "Sorry. But she's-"
"Beautiful, I know," she smiled from the pilot's seat. "I keep looking at her to make sure she's real."
Elizabeth chose that moment to remind them she was real by gurgling in a most adorable way and then grasping her father's thumb tightly. He didn't wince. "I don't think she has your strength, though."
"Thank Hera for that," she smiled. "Having my powers would only put her in danger."
He nodded, holding his daughter's hand a little tighter. She was strapped into a custom-made safety seat that he'd designed especially to fit inside Diana's jet when it became apparent that Hippolyta wasn't coming to Man's World to see her granddaughter. It would withstand temperature extremes of two hundred degrees in either direction, and in the event of a crash would wrap the baby in a bubble of impact gel that it would take Superman to get into.
"It's not all that surprising. Your powers aren't genetic."
"True." Her smiled faded. "We'll keep her safe, won't we, Bruce?"
He nodded seriously. "From anything."
'From anything' happened far sooner than either of them had wanted.
Suddenly, the invisible jet lurched. Both heroes looked up, seeing a thunderstorm literally appear out of nowhere. There was a flash of illumination, as a lightning bolt seemed to be jumping from the sky directly at their plane. When it hit, the aircraft rocked. The restraints kept them all from being tossed about the cockpit like limp dolls, and Bruce had made sure that nothing on earth or in heaven would move Elizabeth's seat.
Despite her wrenching her neck a few seconds ago, Diana pushed the pain aside and focused on keeping the plane on course. They were heading to Metropolis - and it was so close, she could see the Metro Tower if she squinted. And with the lives of her husband and daughter in the balance, it wasn't something she was going to fail at.
Forcing panic down, she tried to address the shrilly-blaring alarms coming from the console. "We've lost main power!" she shouted. "Switching to auxiliary."
As if it could hear her, the storm above them struck again, and the auxiliary power console exploded in a fizzle of sparks.
When Elizabeth started crying, Bruce could barely hear her. He heard Diana though, with terrifying clarity, when she turned to him and said with dreadful serenity. "We're going to crash."
I woke up with a scream.
I bolted up in bed, one hand scrabbling at my chest. My heart was pounding, and so it should have been - they were gone, they were both gone-
Wait. Stop. Calm down. I was in my room, in the Watchtower. No plane crash. No dead husband. No dead daughter. No daughter or husband at all. They weren't exactly unusual things to dream about - it wasn't as though I'd never dreamt of Bruce in that capacity before. Sometimes we did have children. But those children were always symbolic of my regrets. A bittersweet shot of what I could have. They never had names. They always disappeared as soon as I try to put them in Bruce's arms.
Not this child. In the dream he'd been the one touching the child - Elizabeth? – and he'd designed the seat to protect her from danger.
And we'd crashed. Hera, I could still smell burning wires, I could still hear Elizabeth crying - was it actually possible that that had been false? My mind told me it had to be. My heart was screaming that it had happened. Suddenly I couldn't help but listen, and felt my fear grow. I needed to see them. I needed to hold my family in my arms and whisper that I loved them-
I threw back the covers, and then dressed quickly, heading out of my room and praying that Batman would be on the Watchtower somewhere.
He was - in one of the private computer rooms, with the doors locked and working on something that was closed down as soon as I opened the door with my override. Whatever admonition he was going to give me went unused; I grabbed his upper arms and literally shook him, demanding with wide eyes, "Where's Elizabeth?"
He looked at me as though I'd lost my mind, and he wasn't answering. By the gods, had I got it wrong? Was Bruce all right and it was only our little girl who wasn't-
"Diana, what? Who's Elizabeth?"
"The baby, Bruce, where is she?"
His own hands grasped my arms. "What baby? Diana, what are you talking about?"
It took a few more seconds of staring at him, but eventually I felt my mind begin to calm, my thoughts settle into some kind of recognizable order. I took a deep breath. No daughter. Never had a daughter. Never been married.
I let go of him and took a step back. I couldn't say anything else - what could I say even if my vocal chords had been working? I backed away and headed toward the door. Bruce's hand on my arm stopped me. "Diana - what's wrong?"
"I-" Hera, this was going to sound ridiculous. "I had a nightmare, and - I guess it freaked me out." This is what I got for yet again letting my emotions overrule my brain. He was going to think that I was a complete idiot and, worse, a weak female distraught over a stupid dream.
I could feel the raised eyebrow behind his cowl. "A nightmare?"
I nodded. "Yes. Bad one."
"Concerning a baby, but you don't know who's baby or-"
I interrupted; I knew exactly who's child she'd been, and I wasn't about to tell Bruce that. He already was looking at me as though I was crazy, I didn't need to give him an excuse to give me that exasperated sigh and reiterate his stupid reasons against us dating. "No. And I get it, I was being silly."
"Diana-"
I cleared my throat, realizing two things; I was still tired, and I had no idea what time it was. A quick look at the clock confirmed that going back to bed was a reasonable excuse to escape the room, so I mumbled something to that effect and almost fled the room.
"Princess-"
The doors hissed shut behind me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I went back to my room, but the bed looked cold and lonely. It was almost four am, so I decided to shower and then head to the commissary for an early breakfast.
I'd only gotten to the shampooing of my hair when a wave of dizziness crashed over me - then the darkness swarmed in from the edges of my vision. I saw the floor come rushing up to meet me. I didn't feel myself hit it.
A/N: Review please!
