Author's note: You guys are so amazing! Thank you for all the love :) I do hope you're enjoying the ride so far; I have some insane stuff planned for this story, so... I'm doing my best to keep the updates frequent, I promise!

TThe fire in the sky is the brightest thing she's ever seen. It hurts to look at it but she can't turn away. She watches it grow bigger, brighter, consuming the darkness of the night. Trapped under several sheets of metal pressing her into concrete, she can't breathe, can't move, but it's her fear that truly paralyzes Diana, the terror that keeps her captive.

Her chest tightens. She wills herself to wake up. Sure this can't be real.

Above her, the air is frigid. It smells of acrid smoke. Somewhere to the right from her, she hears panicked yelling. Ares is close by – she can feel him rather that see him, and for a moment, she remembers why she is here. Yet, the thought is short-lived, fleeting. Her gaze is locked on the fire far above her, and somewhere there—

A scream pierces the night, deafening, full of pain, inhuman. Nothing like anything she's ever heard before, and the sound of it rips her soul in half, splinters her heart, tears right through her. It takes Diana a moment to realize that she's the one who is screaming, her vision blurred with tears and smoke. She can't breathe, can't think, can't be.

"Let me do it. Whatever it is, I can do it."

She closes her eyes and turns away, struggling to inhale, her chest heaving under her metal trap, her ribs protesting every move.

"There's more to the world than this, you know," Steve told her the previous night, gesturing vaguely around them, his voice soft, mellow somehow. She's never seen him like this before.

He pulled her closer, running his hand along her spine, and her whole body angled to curve around him. She smiled, leaned into him, listening to his heartbeat, her fingers tracing the lines of his body in slow, possessive touches. There were questions she wanted to ask, so many of them. And it wasn't just her curiosity that kept her awake despite the weight of the day and the warmth of Steve's body lulling her to sleep – they needed to get some rest; she didn't know what time it was, the very concept of tracking it still alien to her, but the dawn wasn't far away, and there was another battle on the other side of it. Yet, she didn't want him to stop taking, the sound of his voice washing over her in soothing waves.

She can still hear his whisper, feel the electric touch of his fingers to her skin – careful, gentle, but not at all unsure. Can feel his hands in her hair and the taste his mouth of hers. And that bright dot in the pitch-black sky can't be him, can't be, can't be…

xoox

Diana came to with a low groan, her body pressed down with something rough and heavy, a sharp edge digging into her shoulder-blade, holding her body in the kind of angle that made it hard to move. She tried to take a breath, but her ribs screamed in protest and she squeezed her eyes shut with a sharp gasp, waiting for the pounding in her skull to recede. Her ears were ringing, softening the sounds of the world like she was trapped underwater.

Someone was crying, a sorry, aching sound. A siren broke through the fog in her mind, but it was too far away, too—

Steve.

No.

Her fingers curled into fists, scraping over brick wall that was nothing but a piece of rubble now, a sob rising in her throat – pain and panic mixing together into something hot and consuming.

"Steve…"

She strained her arms, pushing herself up, brick and stone falling back, making everything around her shake, echoing somewhere beneath her as a pile of what had once been a building shifted. Diana shook her head, her vision clearing, the throbbing in her body slowly ebbing back.

The dust hadn't settled around her yet, stinging her eyes, clogging her throat.

She inhaled sharply and coughed, calling his name.

There were people gathering around, the sounds getting louder like a blurry picture zooming into focus.

She stood up and looked around, first in confusion, then more frantically, more urgently, trying to see past the destruction, shaky on unsteady feet.

A man with a crushed skull was the first one she saw, her chest caving in momentarily. But his hair was darker, and even though she couldn't see his face, it wasn't him, not Steve. Relief mixed with guilt flooded her mind. Surely it was wrong to be glad about someone else's death, but in that moment, she didn't care.

The police were already there, ordering everyone to stay back. More soldiers, too. They were calling for her, but Diana ignored them, too busy looking for—

Steve.

He was lying under a block of concrete, half-hidden, and it took her a minute too long to locate him, her mind swimming by the time she finally spotted him.

Diana fell on her knees next to him and rolled him carefully to his back, cradling his head in her lap, hands running over his arms, his chest, skimming over his bronze skin, taking in the new scrapes and bruises, as well as the old scars that she knew better than anyone else.

"Steve, please…" Her trembling fingers touched face, running over his dust-covered cheeks. "No, you can't-" her throat closed up. "Wake up, Steve. Please…" There was a bad-looking gush on his forehead, dark blood starting to cake over it, its metallic smell permeating her senses. "You have to."

A scream bubbled up deep inside her, the pain wanting out, but her throat constricted and it came out as a low whimper. She felt like she was about to crack and fall to pieces, and maybe this time they wouldn't fit back together. There were only so many times one could be hurt until they could no longer repair themselves, and she couldn't bear the thought of losing him, again, not after everything they'd been through to get where they were now.

"Steve… stay with me. Please, stay with me." She leaned closer to him, her tears falling on his face, leaving streaks on his skin as she felt her very soul tear to shreds. Her fingers pushed his hair back from his forehead, carefully, gently. "You can't—we made a deal, Steve Trevor…" The words tumbled out of her mouth as she brushed a kiss to his temple, her voice nothing but a hushed, broken whisper laced with tears.

How many times could she watch him die before she herself ceased to exist?

"And a deal a is promise," Steve echoed faintly, his eyes fluttering open with effort. "And a promise is unbreakable."

Diana froze, her eyes snapping open. He winced, blinking away the dust and coughing, her palm on his cheek and his chest moving, struggling to take a proper breath.

"Steve…"

"God, what happened to—" He grimaced and raised his hand only to drop it back down with a surprised hiss. "Have you noticed… that we never use the doors anymore? It's either windows or—" he coughed again. "Or this."

She laughed, a short, choked sound, disbelief mixed with relief, and pulled him closer, her heart beating somewhere in her throat.

"Ow!" Steve stiffened, his face contorted with pain.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Diana murmured, kissing his brow, her fingers stroking his face, his hair, unable to stop smiling through tears. "Don't move. It's going to be okay, you're okay. I promise you."

"You know, we need to stop meeting like this," he muttered, slipping into blackness again.

xoox

He was dreaming.

For the first time in two decades, he was dreaming not of blood and loss but of a young boy with perpetually skinned knees and a gap-toothed smile whose hair was always tousled by the wind. There was an old biplane on his grandparents' farm, broken beyond repair but too heavy for the truck for haul it off to a scrap yard. The very same one that his father flew until he could no longer kick the life into it.

The biplane was rusty, the yellow paint peeling off its cabin and wings, and by the time Steve Rockwell Trevor was old enough to climb inside, all the controls had gone missing as well, taken out to replace something or other. Steve loved it more than anything else in the world - not just the sum of its parts that formed the wings and tail and a slippery fake-leather seat but all the places inside his head where the plane could take him. All the places that weren't middle-of-nowhere rural Midwest where he was stuck every summer. The places that mattered.

Sitting inside that rusty thing that was good for nothing, not even to hide from the rain, his feet too short to reach the space where the pedals used to be, Steve would imagine soaring into the sky and circling over the barley fields and the endless expanse of flat land, peppered with farm houses and barns and herds of apathetic cows and sheep, all the way toward the cities on the horizon. He would touch the sky and let the sun decide his course. And he would be free.

There was an attic in their house – a dark, eerie place with low, sloped ceiling, stuffed with boxes and broken furniture his grandfather never got to fixing, and it was the one place where no one could find him if he wanted to escape. On the dusty floor, Steve would make paper planes, and imagine, imagine, imagine that one day…

He woke up slowly, his mind foggy, the dream clinging to his brain like a cobweb, pulling him back in and pushing him out.

"Angel," he rasped, his mouth too dry to speak, when his eyes focused enough to see a woman with black hair spilling over her shoulders sitting beside him, looking more like an apparition than anything else.

Diana.

"They told me you might be delusional," she shook her head, smiling softly.

"What…" he licked his dry lips and swallowed, trying to find his voice, his throat raw and every inch of his body aching. "Paris." His heartbeat stuttered, sprinting into a race as his memories came rushing back in. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?" He tried to sit up, but the room tilted and swayed around him, a jolt of white-hot pain shooting from his shoulder and down his arm. Steve clenched his teeth, stifling a groan.

"Don't move. Steve, I'm okay. Everything is fine." Her hands were on his shoulders, pushing him back into the pillows, her face hovering over his. He relaxed under her touch, soothed instantly.

She smoothed down his hair and stroked his cheek, her skin pleasantly cool against his.

"Where are we?" He asked quietly as Diana sat down on the chair next to his bed, his eyes darting from her face to the ceiling to her face again, and to the window, and back to Diana as his mind started to clear, somewhat.

He was in a hospital.

The realization was surprising, almost shocking, the pieces of a puzzle not quite fitting together. And yet, the ever-present smell of disinfectants mixed with the whiteness all around him and the rumble of voices that buzzed like a beehive on the other side of the plain door were unmistakable and impossible to ignore.

"London," she responded.

His eyebrow quirked in curiosity. "London," Steve echoed. "And… how did we get here?"

She let out a short laugh, and it was pretty damn hard not to notice that even though she was putting effort into keep the smile in place, her lips were quivering ever so slightly as worry pooled in her dark eyes that looked like she hadn't slept in a long time. Or like she cried. Neither thought sat right with him.

"You probably don't want to know," Diana said, clasping his hand between her palms and kissing his fingers. There was a tiny frown creasing her forehead, and his hands itched to smooth it away. She was so beautiful.

He missed her, too. Missed her the way he tended to even when she was right there next to him, even when he didn't know that he did. And seeing her now was the only thing that mattered, her gaze tired, but also full of start. Infinite worlds and the entirety of the universe in the eyes of the woman who saved him in more ways than one.

Steve offered her a crooked smile. "I probably don't," he breathed out. God knew he would find out eventually, but right now it felt like too much. "Are you really okay?"

She rested her cheek against the knot of their hands. "I am, I promise."

She'd swapped her armour for a much less conspicuous skirt and blouse, and the feeling inside him was trepidation mixed with panic. There was a gaping hole in Steve's mind between the morning in Paris filled with softness and the warmth of her body against his, and now, and he couldn't look away from her. Losing her became such a natural thing it started to terrify him to the core.

He wasn't joking when he admitted to not sleeping much because he feared he might wake up without her – there was an even-present undercurrent of fear coursing beneath his skin, a constant tug in the pit of his stomach that she was going to – POOF! – disappear. She'd always felt like a dream, like something entirely unattainable. A mirage that could disappear before his eyes. Even before, in the time right after the first war, he would lie awake at night as Diana slept next to him, unable to believe his luck and whatever providence made their paths cross.

His chest felt tight at the thought of not having this. Her. Them. Even now, he almost expected her to vanish like a billow of smoke.

"I love your smile," Steve murmured, his voice dropping to a whisper and his fingers running over her knuckles. "You have the most beautiful smile in the world."

"I thought I lost you." Diana's whispered. "When I couldn't find you, I thought…" She swallowed and pursed her lips together. "There was a man there. A dead man, and it thought it was you, and-"

"I'm not going anywhere." He pulled their hands to him and brushed a kiss to her fingers. "A promise, remember?" There were words, perhaps, to describe how hollow he felt for doing this to her, to making her feel this way, but he didn't know them, and all he could do was to hold on and hope that she understood. "What happened?" He asked after a few moments to break the silence that felt like it could shatter and cut them with its sharp edges if they allowed it. "It's a bit fuzzy."

She relaxed momentarily, leaning closer to him a little, propped on her elbows on his mattress, her features softening. "The bomb… You got lucky when one of the walls didn't collapse, it sheltered you."

"And, ah…" Steve's gaze shifted to the newly noticed bandage running across his chest. He looked at her quizzically, trying to grab a hold of the thread of reality that seemed to be slipping away from him.

"Your collarbone is broken," she added, which probably explained the way everything was so blurry around him and why the words that he meant to keep locked deep inside him were tumbling out of his mouth without his say in it. Morphine, he guessed. It made sense. "And you have-"

"A concussion," another voice finished for her.

Diana turned around, and Steve's gaze shifted past her shoulder.

It wasn't that much of a surprise to see Etta standing in the doorway, a busy hallway bustling with commotion behind her back, regarding him with mild exasperation. She was in her late 50's now, if Steve was not mistaken, but her eyes were the same, sizing him up in that odd way that was somewhat apprehensive but not as shocked as he expected, and Steve wondered in the back of his mind just how long she'd been around, what Diana had told her.

"I can't believe you never said anything me," Etta threw her hands up, stepping into the room, and his lips quirked a little.

She must have had to hold it back for quite a while.

Still. He gave Diana a reproachful look.

"I had to call her," Diana said, nonchalant.

"You're impossible," Etta rolled her eyes, and just for a second, Steve thought she would smack him. God knew he probably deserved it.

She didn't, though. Instead, she gave him a long, contemplative once-over, curious now more than anything else.

"I didn't think-" Steve started, still finding it pretty hard to keep his thoughts from scattering around.

"Obviously," Etta interjected with a snort. She huffed through her nose, and shook her head, making Steve feel like a naughty child who got caught stealing cookies from a jar before dinner. "Well," hands on her hips, she regarded him without much sympathy, "now that you're awake and quite clearly not dying, your girl here needs to eat something.

"Oh, no, I don't," Diana started to protest.

"No, go," Steve insisted, his eyelids already dropping and his brain feeling uncomfortably heavy in his skull.

"Poor thing was stuck here for ever," Etta added, and muttered, "God only knows what you've done to deserve such devotion." And then, as an afterthought, "Not that I want to know anything about that."

"Go," Steve repeated, his grip on Diana's hand loosening. "I'll be right here."

xoox

He was asleep when Diana returned, her heart feeling lighter by the moment when he eyes fixed on his form, his chest rising and falling slowly under the blanket, his hair ruffled and his features relaxed. The early evening light coloured the room in hues of purple, softening the edges of reality.

She lowered down on the side of the bed and reached over to brush his hair back from his forehead, careful not to wake Steve up. He didn't stir, though. Didn't so much as move aside from leaning a little into her touch, aware of her presence even in his sleep, and this smallest tilt of his head filled her with so much affection she could barely stand it.

Earlier, she didn't have it in her to tell him that when she found him, his chest was crushed, his pulse barely there, his body broken beyond repair. The wall that she claimed saved him had actually crushed him under its weight.

When she found him, he wasn't breathing.

Until he was.

Until they were here and the men in white coats who claimed being the best healers around were promising her that he wasn't in any danger. That there was nothing that they couldn't fix about him. And she didn't know what to make of it.

Until she was calling Etta, unable to find the words to explain what happened.

He didn't need to know that. Diana wished she didn't either, the image of it still raw and fresh and frighteningly vivid in her mind.

You're fearless, Steve told her once, a long time ago, and at the time, she laughed it off, insisting that everyone was scared of something. At the time, she didn't quite figure out yet that the one thing that terrified her the most was the chaos of his world. There were so very few rules – to life, to war, to anything, really. She was not used to experiencing loss. She was not used to how fragile lives were.

Not as far as he was concerned.

His eyes fluttered opened slowly; he blinked a few times, waiting for his vision to adjust. "Hey."

Diana smiled and shook her head. "Sleep."

"I'm not tired," Steve slurred, making something warm unfurl in her chest.

"Liar."

He chuckled. "Never. Not to you."

She refused to think about being one now.

"I found this." She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out his watch.

It was in the pocket of his jacket that she found in the rubble later on when she went looking for her shield and the lasso buried under a pile of brick and concrete, trying not to think of how breakable everything around her was, how there could still be bodies trapped under the collapsed building. There was nothing she could do for them now, but the pain for the loss was squeezing her chest still. Merely thinking of losing Steve was unbearable, and her heart ached for those who the deceased – killed – left behind.

Steve's good hand closed around the watch, his thumb running along the leather strap and over its white face. "Still ticking."

Diana leaned down to press a kiss just below his hairline, where the cut that had been bleeding so profusely a few days ago that she thought it would kill him was nothing but a pink line that would turn into a scar before he knew it. His cheeks were covered with 2-day stubble, and he looked tired even when he was asleep, world-weary in a way she hadn't seen him before.

But so very familiar. So very hers.

All her life, she'd known only one home – a place that held the memories dear to her heart. But no one told her before that a home didn't need to have walls. Sometimes it needed to have a crooked smile and a heartbeat and the eyes so blue she was drowning in them every time she allowed herself to forget to hold on. Sometimes, it was that simple.

Still ticking, she thought as he drifted off again.

xoox

"At least here… I'm free."

Steve's jacket held the warmth of his body and smelled faintly of male and soap and smoke, and Diana wrapped it tighter around her shoulders as she watched the Chief poke at the fire, sending handfuls of sparks into the air, his posture relaxed to a degree. As much as it could be in the middle of something that was tearing the whole world apart.

The Evening Hate was a very appropriate name for the midnight fire, she thought if a little absently, equally dumbfounded and awed by the men's ability to sleep when the ground was shaking beneath them. Charlie wandered off to cool down but Sameer was snoring quietly, and Steve's breathing was deep and even, his face relaxed in a way she didn't remember.

Diana tore her gaze away from him and studied the Chief, his face streaked with shadows.

"So you're not afraid to die for this, then?" She asked, gesturing toward the tent behind her, curious.

He looked at her, his eyes glinting with amusement. "I will not die in this war."

Diana's eyebrows arched. "How do you know that?"

"I just do," he shook his head, chuckling under his breath.

"What about them?" She nodded toward the sleeping men, her eyes narrowed ever so slightly and her head tilted to her shoulder. People, she had learned quickly, were very easy to read. Even the notorious spy let his guard down when he didn't know anyone was looking. But this particular person sitting in front of her allowed nothing to betray his thoughts, which left her intrigued and more than a little wary. Not alarmed, though – Steve clearly trusted him, and she was learning to trust him. And yet...

The Chief glanced at the swaddle of coats and blankets that moved slowly as his friends slept, his brows coming together as his eyes lingered on Steve for a brief moment longer. He looked Diana square in the face then, the gaze of his black eyes piercing her with its intensity.

"None of them will," he responded softly after a few moments, and she knew that he meant it. "I know who you are. What you are."

"What I am…?" She echoed, not quite certain how to take it.

His chin jerked toward Steve. "He does, too. He's just doesn't know it yet."

"How can he not know that he knows something?" Diana smiled, thinking that he was teasing her.

The Chief added another log to the fire. His face grew serious. "Sometimes, it takes a lot of bravery to believe something that you don't understand."

xoox

The only time Steve had ever been to a hospital was after his first tour, back in the States still, when he stupidly dislocated his shoulder and was sent to the infirmary. The one thing he remembered from back then was a heavy smell of everything that was the damned hospital that seemed to haunt him for weeks on end after he was discharged. It was like it lodged itself into his throat and seeped into his skin, and no matter how many times he bathed and washed his clothes, he couldn't help but feel like he was carrying an entire ward on him.

And it was that again, but so much worse, too. It turned out that a person could only sleep for so long, and once the medication started to wear off and the fog had lifted, he found himself bored out of his mind. Reading was giving him a headache, and the crackling radio at the end of the hallway was hard to hear, and being bedridden for most of the day was driving him insane. And worst of all, he wasn't allowed to shave. Apparently, they were not trusted with any sharp objects – the logic he didn't quite understand, but even his barely edible lunch only included a fork and a spoon.

It was ridiculous, really.

"Get me out of here," he begged Diana two days later.

"I will, as soon as you can stand without swaying," she gave him a pointed look, remaining unmoved.

He flashed a grin at her. "I thought you liked swaying."

She adjusted his pillow. "Nice try."

He hated the time when she wasn't around, when the minutes stretched endlessly and the nights were unbearably long and his thoughts were so loud he could hardly stand it. There was only so far a man could run away from himself.

Etta came over, too, although she was worse than Diana in that she didn't want to tell him anything about the outside world. He'd heard the snippets of the conversations between the nurses about the Germans leaving France for good, about the overall panic among the troops, about the shift in power, the allies gaining some leverage at last. They promptly ignored his questions though when he asked them to elaborate.

"All I can do is stare at the ceiling," he told Etta when she managed to kick Diana out 'to get some fresh air', taking her turn in babysitting him.

"Beats being dead," she pointed out without much sympathy, making him smirk. "I can't believe you never told me," she said once more, and Steve flinched a little. "You could trust me."

"I know," he admitted. "It wasn't about that. I didn't want—" he cleared his throat. "It didn't seem fair to put something like this…"

"You really are a moron," she interjected, shaking her head. Then glanced toward the door to make sure that no one was there, and dropped her voice. "Just so you know, the British Intelligence appreciates your invaluable input."

Steve's eyes widened. "The letters… Did you…?" The ones that Diana must have salvaged, he figured.

"Delivered where they belong," she promised. "Just keep it between us. You're not supposed to be thinking about any of this."

His smile softened. "Thank you, Etta."

"You always have to do it the hard way, don't you?" She muttered with a hint of exasperation.

Man, he missed her, Steve thought.

He got a ward-mate, too. A 60-something Irish colonel called Hector who spoke excessively in monosyllabic words or grunts and who slept most of the time – so much so that Steve didn't even know what was wrong with him that he needed to be here at all. He tried to entertain himself by playing the guessing game but it grew old pretty fast.

Suffice it to say, he hated this place.

"Stay," he asked Diana on a Friday night, feeling like a few more hours in this room, and he wold start climbing walls.

Leaning against a couple of lumpy pillows, he was half-sitting in bed, his fingers playing lazily with hers as he cradled his left arm to his chest in a sling.

"I think it's against the rules," she pointed out.

Steve caught her gaze and held it. "We can make our own rules," he suggested quietly, letting go of her hand and wrapping his arm around her shoulders, pulling her to him until their noses were almost touching and her eyes were the only thing he could see. Her breath was falling on his cheek, and Steve grinned when she failed to bite back a smile.

"You have an awful lot of those, don't you?" Diana murmured, and his mouth went dry.

"You can't blame me."

Someone cleared their throat loudly behind them, and Diana pulled away just as Steve's roommate shuffled into the ward, walking toward his bed and deliberately not looking in their direction. He continued to ignore Diana entirely all through the past two days, much to her general confusion and Etta's outrage. Not that either of those things made much difference.

Diana bit her lip, and Steve tried to hide his chuckle behind a cough.

"And now Hector here is scandalized," he muttered, his hand finding hers again and his thumb running discreetly over the inside of her wrist where Diana's pulse stuttered a little under his touch.

Her brows pulled together. "Why? We're not doing anything."

And what a shame it is, Steve thought – couldn't help it, really.

"Because there's a beautiful woman visiting me and not him," he replied loud enough for Hector to hear, but the other man only snorted in response. "And maybe it's making him a little uncomfortable," Steve added softly, only for Diana.

"Am I making you uncomfortable?" She inquired, clearly entertained.

"Well, um…" Steve shifted under the thin blanket and glanced away, the tips of his ears turning red. "I wouldn't call it that," he responded vaguely, finding it hard to keep a straight face.

She laced their fingers together. "I'll be back in the morning."

"And bring back my shaving cream," he grimaced, scratching his scruff.

Diana smiled, her voice dropping when she spoke like she was telling him a secret, "I like it."

"I wish you didn't have to leave. I already miss you," he rubbed her knuckles with his thumb and kissed them.

She ran her hand through his hair and leaned it to brush a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Tomorrow."

xoox

She did not come back in the morning.

Or in the afternoon.

And by the time Etta showed up in the evening – and after Steve had already learned just how dedicated the hospital was when it came to keeping the people from getting out – he started to feel like he was losing his mind, his stomach clenched into a tight knot and his heart about to shatter his ribcage. There was something disturbing about thinking that the worse case scenario was her leaving, but he couldn't shake that idea, his mind stuck, running through their conversation from the previous night, dissecting it piece by piece, turning the words inside out to see if he'd missed anything.

She wouldn't, he thought. She wouldn't just leave because—

Because what? Because he wanted to believe that she wouldn't?

The thought made him feel sick, made the walls spin around him for the reasons that had nothing to do with his damned concussion.

She promised, he thought desperately. She promised…

And so when Etta stepped into the room, he was on the verge of jumping out of his skin.

"Steve-"

"Where is she?" He demanded, all too aware of the edge in his voice and not giving a shit about it.

"Look, if you would just-" she started, "—calm down, first of all."

His shoulders slumped and he stopped his frantic pacing, freezing in the middle of the room as the world fell back somewhat, like someone pulled a bag over his head, making it hard to breathe and impossible to hear anything outside of his own mind.

"What happened?" He asked, so very close to actually screaming.

Etta's eyes flickered toward the other man in the room before she grabbed Steve by the elbow and dragged him unceremoniously into the hallway and toward the fire escape staircase that seemed to be the only relatively secluded place in the entire building.

She pushed him through the door and shut it behind them, cutting off the voices of the doctors and other patients, and thank god the god-awful medical smell that was the real nightmare of this place.

"It's the Germans," Etta hissed as if someone could still overhear them. "Something's—something's up, they're panicking." She swallowed uneasily. "They're burning down the camps."

"Oh god." His insides dropped, air wheezing out of him. "Did she go there?"

"Steve…"

"How did she even know-" he started but cut off abruptly when the realization dawn on him, nudged by Etta's suddenly evasive gaze.

"Well…" She drawled. "How was I supposed to know that she would—Okay, I probably should have." She admitted. "There was a letter… the British intercepted a letter, and I—I'm sorry."

"I've gotta get out of here," he muttered, and ruffled his hair, running his hand over the 3-day stubble on his chin. Then leaned closed to Etta and whispered urgently, "Please. I can't stay here. Not when Diana is—out there, somewhere. I can't."

Etta shook her head vigorously and even took a step away form him for good measure. "She will kill me. Really kill me. With a sword."

"I can't stay here," he repeated, half frustrated, half pleading.

"You have a head trauma, Steve," she reminded him. "What are you planning to do, exactly? Swim across the Channel? Do something smart that would get you killed?"

"I mean, I don't know-"

"Well, maybe you should start with that." Her voice wasn't harsh but it wasn't particularly kind either, and her gaze was daring him to protest.

She had a point, Steve had to admit that. He hated it when she had a point.

Etta's expression softened and she let out a slow, steadying breath when he wisely remained silent. "You trust her, right?"

xoox

He did. He trusted Diana more than he'd ever trusted anyone. It was himself that he didn't know what to do with.

For the sake of well-being of the patients, the hospital limited the war news for their charges to a minimum, and the old radio was often tuned to one of the music stations that were of no help to him. He could feel the shift in the air, something was stirring, but Steve couldn't put a finger on what it was, and the time stretched painfully, one agonizingly long minute after another.

Even Hector who had no idea what got Steve looking like a caged animal seemed to have tuned down his displeasure over the unwanted company – anyone's company, for that matter. Granted, it would feel like a victory only if he bloody cared.

As it was, however, he chose not to.

His broken bones ached dully, making him aware of every move he made, every breath he took, distracting in the way that he didn't find welcoming. Pacing the room left him dizzy, sitting on his bad was akin trying to rest on a bed of sharp nails. Nothing was right, nothing felt comfortable, and he regretted more than anything not convincing Etta to help him leave. Maybe he wouldn't be able to help – hell, he had no idea where she was, but at least he wouldn't feel so helpless and useless, and everything about him itched to go back home where even the walls offered comfort.

He was stretched on top on his blankets sometime after midnight the following night, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, his mind on fire, while his neighbour snored peacefully ten feet away from him when the door opened, revealing a familiar silhouette that made Steve's heart trip over itself standing in a rectangle of light.

For a moment, he thought he was dreaming. It was late, the lights long out on the entire floor, and he had worn himself thin with worry.

But then Diana crossed the room in two swift strides, graceful and soundless as ever, and was lowering down next to him. Steve met her halfway, pushing up to sit and reaching for her, wrapping his arms around her, feeling so light with relief that he thought he would float away if he let go of her.

"Thank god," he breathed out.

She was shaking ever so slightly, small tremors that reverberated into him, and she smelled of smoke and blood and all the things Steve didn't want to think of. Yet, she was here, warm and real, and he couldn't catch his breath because until this very moment, he was thinking he would never see her again.

Steve kissed her temple and buried his face in her hair, breathing her in. The cold of the early winter was clinging to her skin, her armour, her lips, and he seemed to not be able to hold her close enough.

"Are you okay?" He asked softly once his heart was no longer lodged in his throat, nearly choking him.

She nodded and took in a shaky breath. "I'm sorry."

"Are you hurt?" Steve pulled back just enough to see her face, make sure she was real. He smoothed down her hair, ran his thumb over her cheekbone.

"No," Diana whispered, touching her fingertips to her cheek. "I shouldn't have left… like this."

"It's okay," he shook his head, smiling faintly before he pulled her to him again. "I thought you…" He swallowed, unable to utter the words that were coursing through his system like some vile disease. Now that she was back, the idea seemed ludicrous, impossible, and he was suddenly overcome with guilt over doubting her. Steve exhaled slowly. "I'm glad that you're back."

"They really wanted to do it, to burn everything to the ground," she muttered into his shoulder, her voice breaking.

"Shhh." He kissed her hair, his hand running soothing over her back.

"The way they were talking about those people… They called them 'meat', 'disposable'. They said-"

"Diana…"

"I don't understand how..." Her words were barely audible, soft in the night, and he could feel her heart bleed like it was his own. Steve's eyes dropped shut as he willed her pain away. "They were saying those awful things about real people, and they talked about them—How could they be so cruel? How could they… how could you be like this to one another?"

Steve let out a long breath and leaned back against the pillows, taking her with him, cradling her to him like a child who was lost and sacred, careful to be quiet, less concerned about the comfort of his neighbour and more about losing this moment if the other man woke up.

He wanted to ask her questions about where she went and what happened and whether she really wasn't hurt because it scared him to see her life this. It scared him to know that he couldn't make it go away for her, make it better somehow. But there were answers that no one wanted to hear, and moments no one wanted to relive, and maybe in another lifetime they would be luckier not to have to go through either.

"Because it's not Ares. It's not gods that make us this way. Sometimes, it's what we are." Steve said softly, not sure if she was listening or not, the words finding it hard to claw their way out of his throat. "But there are good people, too. So many more of them, and they're worth fighting for, you know?" She was crying now, soundlessly, his shirt damp with her tears, and all he wanted to do was keep apologizing over and over again, I'm sorry you only get to see us at our worst. I'm sorry we're not as good as you thought we were. I'm sorry the world can be ugly sometimes, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry… "It's over now. I promise you it's over." His bad shoulder screamed in protest, but he couldn't bear the idea of letting go. "I can't fix it all. I don't think anyone can. But we're doing what we can, and… you saved them all, you saved so many people."

"I don't understand… I don't understand why there must be so much pain, why you would choose to cause it to one another," her voice was soft, and muffled by her uneven breathing.

In the darkness of the room dispersed only by the strip of light under the closed door, everything looked smudged somehow, the sounds swallowed by the shadows, and yet at the same time, everything about his moment felt impossibly clear. He could smell his soap and the sun of Themyscira on her skin, his thumbs running over her back, their faces almost touching. Steve swallowed hard when she took in a shuddered breath, acutely aware of every point where her body was pressed to his.

"We're not perfect, but we're not that bad," he continued, more out of need to fill the silence than anything else. It was hard to think when she was this close, so close he could no longer feel the numbing bone-chill settled deep inside him. "So long as we don't give up on each other."

For all he knew, they were not talking about the war anymore.

Her breathing evened out eventually, falling in sync with his.

"Don't go," he muttered when she stirred.

"I should let you rest," Diana responded softly.

He chuckled under his breath. "I've been stuck here for five days. I think I'm done with resting."

She stayed quiet for a while, her fingers closed in a fist around his bunched shirt, flexing with every inhale and exhale.

"I was thinking… Will you come with me?"

He pecked the top of her head. "Anywhere."

"To Themyscira."

He went still when her response landed on him like a punch, knocking him off-balance, the unexpectedness of her words leaving his mind reeling momentarily.

"Are you going back?" He asked in a strained voice, wondering what the right answer was. Was she planning on leaving regardless of his decision?

She lifted her head to look at him and then shook her head after a short pause, her words nothing like what he thought they might be, "I don't have the answers you're looking for. But they might."

To be continued...

A/N: You guys are so amazing! Thank you for all the love :) I do hope you're enjoying the ride so far; I have some insane stuff planned for this story, so... I'm doing my best to keep the updates frequent!