Because you have shared in their lives
by your friendship and love
you are invited to share
with our daughter, Princess Diana
and Bruce Wayne
when they exchange marriage vows
and begin their new life together
on Sunday, the Seventeenth of May
Two Thousand and Nine
at four o'clock in the afternoon.
Themyscira Council Hall

Themyscira

Clark Kent sighed as he put down the gold edged invitation card. His super-vision had already told him that the gold was genuine 24 carat gold. Only the Queen of Themsycira would use real gold on an invitation card. But why wouldn't she? It was the first royal marriage in thousands of years.

Bruce and Diana? He didn't know how he felt about that. No, that was wrong. He was delighted his two best friends were marrying.

That didn't sound quite correct. Clark forced himself to be honest.

He was very close to hating Bruce for marrying Diana. He wished that Diana had never made this decision. Never decided to get married.

Weren't Amazons never supposed to marry? Why then did Diana decide to take this step? And with Bruce?

Another part of Clark wished that things were different. But there was no way out. Clark himself was married to Lois. Had fallen in love with her and married her. For better or worse.

And there were times when he refused to admit to anyone else when worse was more often around than better. Clark had dug himself into this situation and he was going to get out of it.

But to come back to the wedding and all the events that preceded it.

The morning of the highly anticipated engagement party of Princess Diana to mortal Bruce Wayne – highly anticipated by the Amazons, not by her, not by him—Kal-El of Krypton discovered too late that escorting her from the stables had been a monumental error in judgment.

They walked back to the palace, each lost in thought. Clark had no idea how he tripped over his own feet and started to fall forward. Diana attempted to stop the fall, but was dragged down with the momentum of the movement and they both landed hard on the ground. Clark was discomfited. He was sprawled on top of Diana, with their lips just millimeters away from each other.

Rao! This was precisely the kind of temptation Clark could ill afford and had done his best to avoid as the betrothal day had closed in on him with the swiftness of Hades abducting Demeter.

For a shameful moment—or perhaps shameless—he didn't extricate himself from her embrace, as surely the friend of her to-be-husband would if he at all hoped to maintain the friendship. Instead, he savored the waft of her warm breath against his cheek and wanted to discover the softness of her eager, exploring lips. He discovered she exuded the faintest scent of roses.

Great Krypton, what was he doing? Bruce wouldn't like it one bit but if he knew the sorts of thoughts Clark currently entertained about their best friend and Bruce's wife-to-be!

Emitting a hiss, then a tortured groan, and with the sweet aroma of her body still in his nostrils, he levitated himself above her, then flew down to a standing position.

He was Superman.

But never had the ground felt so uneven beneath his feet or his stance quite so unsteady. Swiftly, he turned and offered her his back, drawing in a lungful of air.

Sounds of Diana rising to her feet finally penetrated above the blood roaring in his ears, as did the brisk brush of hands against cloth as she went about ridding herself of dewy blades of grass and the dirt clinging to the classic Greek gown that she favored while on Themyscira.

"Kal?" His name hitched in her throat, the lone syllable seeming to encapsulate all the heady emotions.

He briefly closed his eyes, suffering his remorse in silence as he could well imagine the accompanying wistfulness in her eyes and the faint tremble of her pink bottom lip.

"What is troubling you? You used to be able to talk to me so openly before." Arresting blue-gray eyes peered up at him from beneath long, sooty lashes, her expression poignant in its vulnerability.

His reaction to her was inexcusable. Reprehensible, really. She was off-limits to him.

He was married to Lois.

And Diana was going to be married to Bruce.

And he was their best friend.

"Diana," Clark began, but her name came out hoarse, forcing him to clear the alien object—which he belatedly identified as his tongue—from his throat to begin again.

"Diana, you're like a sister to me," he said with a solemnity honed to pitch-perfect sincerity.

Lying to her went beyond prudent, it was near impossible but it was now a necessity. Unfortunately, for him—for them both—any sisterly feelings he'd had toward her hadn't been able to withstand her decision to marry Bruce.

A look of hurt flitted across her face that had his heart constricting in painful response.

"I am sister to all the Amazons, not you."

As if he needed a reminder.

"What I'm saying is that I have no interest in you like that…in a romantic sense."

Friendship was an entirely different matter altogether and Clark was convinced his feelings toward Diana were friendly.

The sad fact was that truth had existed up until the prior year. What he wouldn't give that it should exist again, that he be unaware again.

His innocence was interminably lost.