Author's note: Hey everyone, thanks again for your continued support, you're awesome :) Hope you'll enjoy what coming up, it's going to be a wild ride!

Paris, 2017

Nearly a century ago when Diana's mother told her that there was a lot that she didn't understand about man's world, Diana assumed – foolishly and naively – that she merely meant the ways of the people. How they spoke and dressed and carried themselves. Things that were not all that different from that of her sisters, yet somehow drastically alien in ways she had least expected. At the time, Diana thought that getting used to unfamiliar garments and strange food would be her biggest challenge. That bringing peace – what she had gone there to do – would be the easy part.

Yet, it turned out that she couldn't be more wrong.

She got used to wearing their clothes and eating their food and speaking like they did. She learned to carry herself the way it was expected. Fitting in when she knew she was different was another story, however. Somehow, looking like them and speaking like them had never felt enough.

People deemed her a hero, but she couldn't fault them for the underlying fear that walked hand in hand with their admiration. Being wary of the unknown was in their nature and there were times when Diana wondered what could tip the balance the wrong way and make them turn on her. She had not been around for the downfall of Superman, but she was there to pick up the pieces. She knew what it could be like for her. He was a saviour but also an outsider, and so was she. One wrong step, and she would become a pariah.

And she and Clark were, as far as Diana was concerned, only the tip of the iceberg. She wondered sometimes what people would think if they knew just how many things that came from places they couldn't begin to imagine lived among them. Or how many items that didn't belong in their world were scattered around. Items that carried power beyond hers or Kal-El's. A few kept in Diana's care, no less.

Until one of them was gone.

Which was her priority for the day when Pierre found her in the restoration room with a heap of papers that required her signature, messages to sort through and arrangements to discuss. By the time he paused for breath, Diana's head was swimming.

"I don't think Gerome will agree to push it back even more," Pierre was saying forcefully, as if personally offended by the fact that she kept postponing the meeting with one of their restorers, when Steve appeared in the doorway.

"Tell him I'll call him myself and explain everything," Diana responded, unfazed. Her gaze flicked briefly to the painting sitting on the easel between them, just as fascinating as the first time she saw it, what with its journey through history and the trail it had left behind. The one that had been recovered from Darrell Quinn and sent to the Louvre to finalize the formalities of its discovery. "I need you to arrange an appraiser for tomorrow, I will sign off any fees for urgency."

Pierre's eyes darted towards it as well. "Is this ours?" he asked skeptically.

"No, it's not," she shook her head. "I will be seeing to it getting returned to where it belongs myself, but I need to you call Adeline and have her come in first thing in the morning. Tell her it's my personal request."

The man pursed his lips together and nodded curtly. "The opening-" he started.

"We will talk about it later," she stopped him gently but firmly, her glance shifting for a second to Steve who was watching the exchange with great curiosity. "Please make sure you let Gerome now that I will speak with him shortly."

Pierre glanced at Steve, too, lips flattening into a thin line, which never ceased to amuse Diana. Between Steve being an American – not the most beloved nation among the French – and the guy who was hoarding a significant chunk of her attention lately, it appeared that her assistant was viewing him as a rival for her time, of sorts. And while the female population of the museum could be easily charmed into not holding either of those things against him, Pierre undoubtedly considered him a rather unsavoury choice on her part.

He opened his mouth as if to object or pour another hundred questions onto Diana, but then reconsidered and merely huffed instead as he stomped out, the air of the utmost significance trailing after him like a comet's tail.

"He really likes me," Steve observed, trying to bite back a smile as he stepped through the door.

His hair was wind-swept and his cheeks were flushed from the cold, but he was smiling at her even though there was worry lurking behind his eyes. He sounded concerned on the phone, and rightfully so, but she still yearned to wipe the touch of unease off his face, her heart clenching momentarily.

She moved toward him and pulled him fully into the restoration room that was already crammed with paintings stripped of their frames, an assortment of pots and figurines, and roughly a thousand other things sitting on workbenches along the walls as well as a statue of Aphrodite waiting to be taken care of taking up most of the space. It smelled of oil paint, dust and that distinctive scent carried by old things. And, aside from her office, it was Diana's favourite place in the museum. There was a comfort to it that she couldn't explain.

Except now it was filled with her own nervous energy, losing the layer of contentment that she had always associated with it.

She closed the door behind them, making sure that the hallway on the other side of it was empty and thinking that she would much rather be talking to her associates or discussing the upcoming exhibition with Pierre or even fending off the curious questions of her intrigued fellow curators down in the cafeteria - or maybe even locking the door and finishing what she and Steve had started this morning before she had to leave, her soft To be continued whispered against his lips – than discussing what she was about to bring up.

Anything but this.

Steve looked around. "Where's everyone?" he asked. "This place is usually teeming with old people in blazers that went out of fashion when my grandma was still alive," he observed. "Which is saying something."

She didn't so much as smile, the joke falling flat between them.

"Diana." He caught her wrists before she had a chance to move away from him and tugged her close to him, his eyes searching her face. He ran his hands up her arms, along the slick silk of her blouse. "Hey."

She felt her body relax. "Thank you for coming," she said.

Steve brushed the back of his fingers over her cheek. "What's going on? You sounded worried on the phone." His eyes shifted past her shoulder and to the painting behind her. "Is this…"

Diana followed his gaze and nodded. "Yes. The Gotham Museum finally sent it here. I will take care of the paperwork and have Pierre contact the authorities in the Netherlands to arrange the shipment."

His thumb ran soothingly over the inside of her wrist where her pulse stuttered for a moment before settling at last. "Okay, so I gather it's not what went missing," Steve noted, turning to her again.

"No, it is not," she agreed and stepped away from him, and this time he didn't stop her. "I should have known," Diana muttered, rubbing her forehead.

She walked over to the workbench, feeling Steve's gaze follow her. Feeling his curiosity and worry thrumming in his veins. But he didn't appear to be willing to push, wary, perhaps, of what he might hear. And rightfully so, she had to admit.

She looked up at him.

Caught up in the bliss of having Steve back with her, she had not yet gotten around to mentioning her carefully guarded secret to him yet: that for years she had kept things here that didn't belong to the Louvre. Things that no one at the museum knew about. That she had created a small collection of her own – artifacts that came from her people to man's world before she was even born; artifacts tracked down through private auctions and acquired in battles; objects that were safer in her possession than they were with people who didn't understand their power; things that could have been used against mankind with disastrous consequences.

Diana kept them in the glass cabinets in her office, in the reserve storage rooms, tucked safely away where no one would think to look for them – swords cast from unbreakable iron, infused with the magic of gods, statuettes made by her people before Ares came for the world of men the first time, a shield with carvings in a language so old even she had never heard of it. Things that she treasured more than some people could ever imagine.

And those that they would never know to fear.

"It is called the Claw of Horus," Diana spoke after a few moments, meeting his eyes again as she leaned against the workbench, her arms crossed over her chest. "It is a war gauntlet made from the Nth metal during the reign of Ramesses II in the 19th dynasty of ancient Egypt."

Steve blinked. "The Nth metal?" he echoed, his brows knitting together in confusion.

"It's from another planet," Diana explained and grimaced a little when she heard how it sounded. How it must have sounded to him.

Truth was, she didn't know how to cushion this for him. When she came across the gauntlet a while back, she had been just as stunned by it, by everything it was capable of. By the very nature of its existence.

That it came from elsewhere should have been the least surprising aspect of it, perhaps.

After all, Clark did, too. She was the daughter of Zeus. Barry could run back and forth in time and Arthur belonged to a race that could breathe air and water alike. How Victor operated, Diana couldn't even begin to understand, the intricacies of his nature brought to life by the power of one of the ancient Mother Boxes was beyond her wildest imagination. They should have all stopped being surprised by anything a long time ago, or at least should have stopped being so shocked every time anything of that sort came up, but they hadn't. Steve hadn't. He couldn't. Because alien meant unknown, and unknown meant dangerous. And she knew that in his world, dangerous could mean so many things.

She knew this all too well now. And she wished he didn't have to.

Still, Steve nodded for her to go on.

The first time Diana had faced the power of the gauntlet, it belonged to a madman who had too much money and lacked any knowledge of what he had gotten himself into or what kind of weapon he was wielding. He was beyond reason, drunk on the desire for control and the greed for bending the world to his will. Under the power of the Lasso of Hestia, he had admitted to Diana that he had found the Claw of Horus following the breadcrumb trail of legends going back to the times when the Pharaohs ruled the world. That he had paid for the truth to those who could piece them together.

At the time, she had deemed it too destructive an item to risk anyone else finding it; with the proper understanding of its nature or not.

Diana clasped the edge of the workbench of either side of her thighs. "It draws power from the magnetic core of the Earth and can negate the property of gravity," she continued, her words measured and steady. Before her, Steve rubbed his forehead as if trying to physically assemble the words in some sort of order as she spoke. "The full extent of the properties of the Nth metal is not fully understood, but it can speed up healing and protect one from physical harm. Needless to say, it can be a powerful weapon should one choose to use it for destruction." She paused, both bracing herself for what was to come next and allowing him to digest the information she'd already spat out at him before dropping the next bomb. "Whoever wields the gauntlet can, potentially, harvest enough power to defeat… well, anyone."

Steve stared at her.

"Even… you?" he asked.

"Maybe," Diana replied carefully. "Or Clark."

That was, indeed, a rather disconcerting scenario. She'd be a fool not to admit it, and the idea made her chest tighten with unease.

As far as she was aware, Clark was practically indestructible. She had seen him in battle, fought alongside him and deemed him her equal in speed and strength and endurance. Steve had yet to witness Superman in action, but he knew what she was capable of, had seen her fight against things that had no place in man's world and defeat them. And now she was telling him about a weapon that could be effectively used on someone nearly as strong as she was; one that she didn't even understand.

It was no wonder, perhaps, that he was looking at her with growing concern.

Diana's features softened, the panic that had been churning in her stomach since the moment she had walked into the locked storage that morning and found one of the crates empty seeping out of her body, replaced inexplicably by relief. She had spent decades doing this on her own, torn between two worlds while not belonging fully to either one of them. But not anymore, and the affection and gratitude toward the man standing on the other side of the room, watching her with unwavering faith in his eyes, that filled her all of a sudden was almost too much to bear.

In the years that had passed since the night when she left Themyscira for the first time, following the call she could not resist, Diana wondered if maybe it was loneliness that her mother was speaking of, when she told her that there were things about man's world that Diana didn't understand. The longing deep inside of her that nothing could fill.

If that was true, she wished she had known it sooner so she would have held on to what she and Steve had and never let go.

"Okay," Steve breathed. He pushed his hand through his hair as she struggled not to smile, if only because it hardly felt fitting. "Okay," he repeated, and looked around them. "Why isn't this a code red kind of thing? Shouldn't—shouldn't everyone be on high alert to find it?"

Diana shook her head. "The Claw of Horus doesn't belong to the museum."

Steve blinked. "It doesn't belong—Oh."

She saw the exact moment when the realization clicked, his expression going from confused to impressed to puzzled in a matter of seconds. And understandably so. She loved that about him, his ability to connect the dots in an instant without missing anything, even if the full picture didn't make complete sense to him. Even if it wasn't something he wanted to see.

"There are quite a few… items here that don't belong to the Louvre," she explained, pre-empting his questions. "Things that your people might not understand or ones they would want to use against one another, given an excuse. I understood the risks of using the museum for my personal advantage. However, it was, ultimately, the best place to store them without raising any suspicions."

"Because of the security," Steve mused.

"Yes," Diana nodded. "Because of that, and also because no one would think to connect them to me or to look for them here."

There was practicality to this decision. Steve was right, security was one of the factors. But beyond that, she knew how to mask something as an exhibit item and make it appear entirely harmless to unsuspecting eyes, tucked safely into a glass display that she knew many would pass by without sparing it a second glance. What started as a testament to her memories with Sameer's flask and Chief's old pipe and the letters that Etta had sent to her over the years – small things that she needed to keep close to her heart to remind herself where she had come from - had turned into something bigger when the fate of mankind was at stake.

Diana always knew that these things were safer with her than anyone else.

And they had been. Until now.

Steve tilted his head, studying her. "Are you sure it's not on display somewhere? I mean, if it was in storage, someone could—"

"No," Diana stopped him, shaking her head. "No one could check it out without my approval, and even if they did, officially, there would've been a record."

It was, admittedly, what she had hoped had happened. That someone mistakenly took something out of the reserve fund and replaced an existent display, mixing up the paperwork. However, she had spent a few hours combing the exhibit rooms for any misplaced and mislabeled items, hoping against all hope that when she did call Steve, it would be about getting him to have lunch with her, and not about another crisis that required her immediate attention.

He didn't take the news easily – she could see it on Steve's face, in the tight line of his lips and the stiffness of his shoulders. There was an air of a caged animal to him, amplified by the locked door and the crowded, suffocating room. Not that she could blame him. But there was an undercurrent of subtle frustration to him, too. One that Diana couldn't help but feel prickling her skin as well. She had missed him to the point of a dull ache in her bones and now they finally – finally – could do everything that they had been deprived of for so long. They finally had a chance to catch their breaths and just be, and it had lasted for all of a week.

She knew it would happen. Of course, she did. If it wasn't the gauntlet, then it would've been something else – there was always something else - and it would have still felt too soon even if they had had years to get used to finding each other again. Being forced to deal with this now was like having some cruel gods of fate laughing in her face, at her naiveté.

It was Steve who told her once, a long time ago, that it was her patience with the mistakes of mankind that was making her good at what she was doing. She kept believing in them, she kept trying where anyone else would have long given up. There had been admiration and awe in his voice when he said this that had made her breath catch in her throat. And he would know, she had thought then. What with holding on for so long during the war that had brought them together and believing in the ultimate victory when everyone else had given up. He certainly would understand that.

And maybe he was right. Maybe she didn't feel frustration with mankind often, but she was feeling it now, the desire to shut off the world until she stopped feeling like it was spinning out of control. She wanted more. She wanted lazy mornings and idle conversations about nothing and revelling in the comfort of predictability.

She was worried, too, and not without reason. Worried about the power that the Claw of Horus could unleash. But, more than anything else, she simply wanted the man standing before her to not have the expression of someone who was already pondering another end of the world, bracing himself for the battles to come.

Not yet.

"And you think it happened that night?" Steve asked, pulling her out of the deep tangle of her thoughts.

Diana pushed off the workbench and started to pace the cluttered space, feeling restless in the confines of this room.

"I think so, yes," she said after a few moments, pausing near an empty easel. "It couldn't have been gone for more than a few days, or I would have noticed. Nothing else is missing." She hesitated and then walked over to the desk in the corner where her laptop was sitting on top of a forgotten manila folder.

Steve followed her, his expression more curious than panicked now, all things considered. He trusted her, she was aware of that. She knew, if she said that something was gone, that he would know for a fact that she had checked every corner and every crevice before she even considered the possibility of it being missing, but they both also couldn't help but hope that she was wrong. Zeus knew, she did.

Diana booted the laptop and typed her password swiftly, her fingers moving fast over the keyboard. The screen went straight to a split grey image of a dozen security camera feeds.

"I checked them before I called you," she said when Steve leaned over her shoulder to have a closer look. "Three of the feeds have a five-minute delay." Her frown deepened, eyes locked on the screen like it was at fault for this mess. "Someone had to have tampered with them. It can't be a coincidence."

"It can't be," Steve agreed.

She didn't believe in coincidence. Knew better than that. Had lived long enough to learn that lesson.

"The guards?" he suggested the obvious.

She shook her head. "I don't think it's an inside job. I've known those people for years."

"I haven't," he countered.

Diana hesitated. "Perhaps it won't be a bad idea to check," she conceded. Her teeth dug into her lip, fingers tapping impatiently against the desk. "We have a good enough system in place, but it's not something that someone with a certain degree of determination wouldn't be able to work their way around," she admitted.

"I'm taking it they don't try often," Steve muttered, hand pushing through his hair.

"No, not to my memory." She paused. "Then again, I don't think I've ever kept anything as… valuable here before."

Steve nodded, acknowledging her point. He ran his hand absently along her shoulders, feeling her relax somewhat under his touch.

Diana looked up at him, her forehead creased in concern. Her eyes flicked briefly to the screen as if it kept drawing her gaze like a magnet, before she locked them with Steve's. "We have to find it."

xoox

Over the years, Diana had met many people who were outright baffled by her career choice. Some thought that working at the museum was all about pushing papers around and blowing the dust off the old vases. In one word – boring. Others wondered why she was hiding herself from the world in the endless labyrinths with nothing but portraits of dead people for company. Both assumptions amused her greatly, although she never bothered to contradict them even though they were vastly inaccurate.

There was comfort in the history surrounding her; some predating Diana herself, some created long after she was born. Her mother had told her once, a long time ago, that art was a sort of language that everyone could understand. That everyone wanted to understand, seeking to connect with those that came before them.

Diana never truly grasped it until she found herself living in the midst of it, listening to it speak to her in words that were older than time. She found comfort in the smell of old books and faded colours of the paintings and the frozen poses of statues that seemed to be carrying a whole different world within them. What others viewed as unappealing was an entire exciting universe to her, waiting to be explored.

As for hiding herself – well, she was already doing that. Whether it was in a museum or elsewhere didn't really matter.

Her hand pushed the door open and it creaked in protest before giving in, the hinges begging to be oiled. The parlour crowded with everything from old furniture to an array of trinkets to boar heads mounted on the wall was as dark as it always appeared to be, even in the brightest of afternoons, and especially now that the night had fallen upon them. Diana stepped inside, the floor creaking beneath her feet, and looked around, searching for the things she might not have seen since the last time she had gone there.

She always wondered why the smell of the museum was so drastically different from the smell of an antique store, when both of them contained nothing but relics of the days long gone. Perhaps the difference was that people cared for the items in her charge while those that were displayed here were either no longer needed or forgotten altogether.

"Long time no see," the voice greeted her from the far end of the shop that was tucked in a narrow alley stark in the heart of old Paris. "I thought you'd forgotten me, Mademoiselle Prince."

Diana felt her lips tug ever so slightly at the corners, her shoulders relaxing when the recognition hit.

"How could I ever forget you, Gustav?" she asked, heading towards him, her footsteps dull on the hardwood floor. "You own my heart."

"You always say that, and I believe you every time," Gustav chuckled, stepping from behind the counter.

Small and wiry, in this light he could have easily passed as a 40 or 60-year-old, and Diana never saw him in proper light. She wondered a couple of times if Gustav even knew what sunlight was, or if he was forever buried in his own treasure trove. He had things here that were most likely museum rarities, destined to never be discovered.

Diana ran her fingers over a statue of some god carved from a solid block of wood, polished with hundreds of thousands of hands that had touched it as it passed from one owner to another more times than she could imagine, perhaps. Her thoughts sprung back to that morning and Steve's face when she had told him about what had happened and the cold fear that had been blossoming in her stomach since then. She hadn't mentioned to him how frighteningly powerful the Claw of Horus had felt when she tried to stop the man wielding it from destroying half the world and putting the other half on their knees, but the memory kept gnawing at her, awfully vivid even now.

In the hands of an amateur, it was dangerous. In the hands of someone who knew what they were doing it would be fatal, she knew that. And she hoped against all hope that they would never have to see it.

"What brings you here, princess?" Gustav asked, pausing in front of her.

Diana leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, and he smiled.

"Thought I'd stop by, say hello," Diana shrugged.

The man laughed. "Right. Like you'd have ever done that." He levelled her with a curious glance.

She let out a breath and felt her smile fade, harsh reality smacking her unceremoniously on the face.

He was right, she was not here to gawk at another oddity that someone chose to pawn off for some reason or other, but because she needed information. The thing about Gustav was that he was closely familiar with the underbelly of Paris – due to his line of work and, Diana suspected, a certain appetite for intrigue attributed either to those with sheltered lives, or the ones who had it in their blood.

"You know me too well," she admitted. "I was wondering if you've heard of something I'm interested in."

Gustav arched an eyebrow at her, a little amused, a little intrigued. "Anything for you, my dear."

"I'm looking for something."

"Must be something… interesting if you came to look for it here."

"A gauntlet," she responded.

"A gauntlet?" he echoed. "A metal glove?"

"You could say that, yes," Diana nodded, amused.

He shook his head. "Sorry, princess. Haven't had anything like that lately." His gaze shifted past Diana's shoulder and towards the door, and then he beckoned for her to follow him behind the counter. "There is something you might want to know, though."

xoox

Steve dragged his gaze away from the screen of Diana's laptop and rubbed his eyes that were starting to feel like someone had rubbed sand into them. He rolled his neck, stretching the kinks out of his stiff muscles. It was starting to get dark, which probably didn't count for much this late in November, but the fading light gave him a certain feeling of the passage of time and that he had nothing to show for it, and it was something that nagged him more than he was willing to admit.

He wasn't surprised when it turned out that there was no Wikipedia page on the Claw of Horus, or the Nth metal, or what exactly went down in Ancient Egypt when the gauntlet was first forged. Or anything useful prior to it, for that matter. What little useful information he had managed to find, in addition to the scraps of details that came from Diana felt like nothing at all. The rest of what he had come across were very misleading and inaccurate facts about Wonder Woman and her true persona – something that Steve couldn't help but sneak a peek at to entertain himself when he had started to feel like he was losing his mind. That, and the uncomfortable pain in his back from barely moving for close to seven hours.

He was definitely going to mention to Diana later just how far off were the speculations about her real identity and maybe coax a smile out of her. He had learned that she was quite amused by the charade that she had started unwittingly all those years ago. One that began with her crossing No Man's Land to the endless amazement of the onlookers. Something that had turned into an inside joke between her and Clark, apparently. Steve's own lips had twitched quite a few times as well while he had listened to them trade stories a few weeks back.

Alas, funny as his findings were, they still weren't exactly what he was after.

Steve leaned back in Diana's office chair and scrubbed tired hands down his face. The good news was that nothing had happened so far, and so whoever had managed to apprehend the gauntlet hadn't used it yet. Which, ultimately, felt like sitting on a proverbial time bomb that threatened to go off any second. That was, arguably, worse than having to deal with the aftermath of someone using the Claw, he mused. At least then they wouldn't be waiting for an ambush.

He had spent the morning going painstakingly through the security footage of that night, but all he had to show for it was a thorough knowledge of the guards' routines and the faces of a few people who had left after hours, neither of them carrying anything that could hide an item the size of a forearm. All there was, were the five minutes that looked like a mere system malfunction, but having happened with three cameras at once it seemed doubtful.

Steve rubbed his eyes again and reached for his phone, trying to remember just when exactly he ended up with Alfred Pennyworth on speed dial, and yet there he was.

Alfred picked up after the second ring. "Captain Trevor. What a pleasant surprise."

Steve couldn't help but smile. "Irony suits you, Alfred."

"Don't tell me you're homesick," Alfred countered.

I am home, Steve thought.

"I just… wanted to check how everything is," he said vaguely. "With S.T.A.R. Labs and all."

Alfred cleared his throat. "Agent Waller is hard at work covering it up and making a lot of noise about nothing," he said dryly. "The official statement is that there was a gas leak."

"Because a gas leak would make people do that," Steve muttered, disgusted but not surprised.

He understood why Waller was covering her ass and why the newscasters weren't exploding with the sensation of this magnitude – imagine that, someone was crafting their own superheroes in the basement, literally! – but he hated it anyway. She didn't understand the dire consequences of such actions but he had lived through them enough times to know that hiding the truth wasn't going to get her anywhere. At the very least, people would be pissed. And if they didn't figure out who was behind it, someone could, would, get hurt. Again.

"People believe what they want to believe," Alfred noted philosophically. "I'm taking it you've settled in fine."

It was an odd feeling, Steve had to admit. He had his own hangers in Diana's closet – their closet – and a drawer in the dresser in the bedroom that was still half empty, but he was working on amending that, and a shelf in her cabinet in the bathroom even though he had told her that it wasn't necessary and his shaving cream didn't require that much space. He thought, feared, that after spending so long doing anything and everything humanly possible to avoid growing roots, it would feel strange to do this. That he would feel out of place.

In reality, it was the easiest thing ever. He loved waking up next to Diana with his face buried in her hair. He loved the faint smell of her perfume that lingered on his clothes because he kept them next to hers. Loved the easiness between them. The way he fit so seamlessly into her life, like they had been doing this forever. He revelled in this feeling and wouldn't have it any other way, not for the world.

"Yeah, it's okay," Steve responded, having to bite back a chuckle.

"And Ms. Prince?"

The sound of her name was sobering. "We're good," Steve said although not without a slight lilt in his voice now. "Hey, Alfred, you guys still have that software for restoring wiped security feeds, don't you?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Did something happen, Captain?" the older man asked.

"Not sure yet," Steve answered vaguely, which wasn't a complete lie – at this point, he honestly still had no idea what they were dealing with here, and while it was all but making him climb the walls in frustration, at least he could claim ignorance with a clear conscious.

Alfred hesitated. "Yes, we still have it," he said. "But you can't access it remotely, Master Wayne made sure of that... for security purposes." He cleared his throat. "After Ms. Prince did it without permission."

Steve swore softly under his breath.

"Captain?"

"Sorry." Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's… unfortunate."

"Is there anything I can do?" Alfred asked.

Probably, Steve thought. But when he'd asked Diana yesterday if she wanted to fill the League in on anything about what had happened at the museum, she told him that she wanted to know what and who they were dealing with first. For now, he was going to respect her decision.

"No, Alfred, thank you. I appreciate the offer."

"Well, tell Ms. Prince we miss her."

Steve nodded even though there was no one to see him. "I will. We'll see you soon."

He hung up after a quick goodbye and let out a long breath. Another option down the drain. Well, not entirely but it might as well be, and he wanted to start somewhere. Anywhere.

There were many occasions when he saw playful Diana, determined Diana, the one with the fire in her eyes that could burn him alive if she so wished. The curious one that he loved so for the hope spilling out of her. His favourite was the one that was sprawled across his body, sated and happy, all soft words and lazy smiles and so much love personified that he could feel it beating in his pulse.

The woman standing before him yesterday morning was none of those things. Her shoulders were tense, her back rigid, and Steve could practically hear the gears in her head grind as she mulled over something that was turning her into someone Steve could barely recognize. And he wanted to fix that, badly; wanted to make the frown lines smooth out on her face and her smile grow easy again.

He switched on the reading lamp and turned to the frozen frame showing the corridor leading to the storage room where one of the reserve collections was kept. It didn't matter how many times he scrolled back and forth – no one came anywhere near it between the time when the last staff member had signed off for the day and the moment when the alarm went off.

He didn't know how long he sat there staring at the screen when the front door opened with a soft click behind him, the sound of it oddly loud in the silence of the apartment. The echo of Diana's footsteps bounced across the hall.

Steve turned around when she stepped through the office door, carrying the jacket that she had shrugged off in her hand, two faint lines creasing the skin between her eyebrows. For all he knew, they were stark in the middle of some kind of apocalypse, but his first reaction was still a smile and a mental note of how bloody stunning she was, albeit slightly tired. His second reaction was the fierce sense of protectiveness that flared up in his chest. A determination to fight God himself if he had to, to chase that worry out of her eyes.

There was nervous energy radiating off of her. The restlessness that he could understand all too well. He had long abandoned the illusion of her being immune to the wide spectre of human emotions simply because she had fewer things to be afraid of than his kind.

His mind went back to the time when they first met, to the fearlessness with which she had quite literally marched into his world and demanded justice when all they were interested in was elaborate games where pawns died left and right. He remembered determination and something bordering on recklessness. She knew what she was doing, she knew what needed to be done, and she charged into battle without thinking twice.

The Diana that he knew now was still all those things, but so much more, too. Time had stripped her of her blind faith in the goodness of mankind. Her decisions were calculated now, each step thought through. He knew better than to assume that she was fearless, that she presumed she would always win, that she was invincible. A loss would do that to one, Steve thought. He knew full well that she might not be fearing the same things his people did, illness and death not quite something she contemplated much, but one could only see so many people die before they lost their faith in life itself. She feared time. And above all else, she feared losing him.

And right now, she feared something that she couldn't properly understand because she seemed to have always hoped that she might never have to.

"Hey," Steve breathed.

Diana draped her jacket over the back of another chair and stepped toward him. He never looked away from her. She slid into his lap, straddling his thighs and Steve reached for her, one hand on her hip, another splayed on the small of her back.

"Hi," she murmured, and with that sound, he could feel the tension draining out of her body. "What is this?" she asked, pulling his specs sitting on the bridge of his nose off and trying them on.

He had completely forgotten he was wearing them.

Steve chuckled, shaking his head a little. "I'm an old man," he reminded her.

"Didn't seem so old last night," she hummed, an eyebrow raised, watching the heat flare up in his eyes.

He snatched the glasses from her and put them on the desk behind them. "Go on, make fun of a senior citizen."

"I'm older than you," she pointed out.

"Yeah, well, didn't seem so old last night."

Diana smirked. She swept her hand through his hair and leaned forward to brush a kiss to his lips before tucking her face into the curve of his neck, her breath warm on his skin.

"This is good," she whispered.

He wrapped his arms around her. "What is?"

"Coming home to you."

Steve trailed his hand up and down her spine. Felt her muscles relax against his body.

"It is," he agreed. His voice was soft when he spoke again, "You're scared."

"I am," Diana admitted.

Last night, she had woken with a silent scream in her throat and a film of sweat on her skin, her heart racing frantically in her chest. For one long, blood-chilling moment, Diana was certain that they had got him – the soldiers, Ares, Waller. Anyone that could take him from her.

She had sucked in an unsteady breath and turned her head only to find Steve sleeping soundly by her side, his chest rising and falling evenly and his lips parted slightly. Alive. His eyes had fluttered open when she shifted, moving closer to him, bleary and not nearly as awake as she was. But he registered her presence, reassured by it, and reached for her, tucking her into his embrace in his sleep. She had drifted off with his chest pressed to her shoulder blades and his arm anchored safely around her, thinking that she would stop at nothing to protect this.

She expected an easy Don't worry, or a habitual, It's gonna be okay, but those were not his promises to make. Diana honoured his honesty above all else, so when he whispered, "We'll figure it out," it felt like a relief.

Steve tugged at the band holding her hair in a tight ponytail at the base of her neck. It spilled over her shoulders in heavy waves and she smiled. In Gotham, she found herself missing her job and the easy familiarity of her daily routines, but it was different when it wasn't an empty apartment waiting for her at the end of each day but a man she loved beyond comprehension.

Steve's fingers tunnelled through her hair. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

"Hey, since when did you pick up smoking?"

Diana huffed in amusement. "I didn't. I just spent a few minutes with someone who entertains the habit."

He hummed. "Want to tell me about it?"

"Later," she murmured.

"Okay," he didn't argue. A pause. "I spoke with Alfred."

That got Diana's attention. She lifted her head and looked at him, eyes roaming over his features.

"I didn't tell him anything," Steve promised quickly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "But Bruce has a program for reconstructing deleted footage. I thought you might want to give it a shot."

"I suppose it won't hurt," she said after a moment.

"It can't be used remotely," he added. A smile worked its way to his face. "Not after you used it last time without asking." She rolled her eyes the way he knew she would. "Probably not unless you want to tell them everything and just have Alfred run it for you."

Diana bit her lip and glanced away, her fingers scratching absently through the hair at the nape of his neck.

Steve ran his palm up and down her thigh. "Hey."

She turned to him again, thoughtful. "I don't want them to worry about something that they can do nothing about," she said at last.

"You think it's still here?"

Diana rubbed her forehead. "I think it's not something that you can easily get through airport security."

"Look, we were supposed to go back this coming weekend anyway," Steve said. He traced his thumb along her jaw. "I could change my ticket, go earlier and have a head start on this, and you'll fly in on Sunday as planned." His blue eyes were earnest and assured. "I could leave as soon as tonight."

Tonight?

Her heart skipped a beat.

"No," Diana shook her head. "Not tonight."

He didn't argue. "Okay, not tonight."

He smiled.

She loved his smile, loved the way the corners of his eyes creased when he meant it, his whole face lighting up like sunshine and making her weak in her knees. This man had seen the world shatter before his eyes more times than anyone should have to, and yet he was still looking at her the way he did – with hope and trust and infinite affection. There were things that Diana might never forgive herself for, mistakes she wished she could avoid. But Steve would, in a heartbeat. He would see past everything that haunted her and still love her. There was no end to the marvels of the world indeed.

Gustav had told her something earlier, about someone who was asking about odd things, unusual things that no one had ever heard of before. Their community was small and rather private, made of people who knew each other's names and recognized one another's faces, and something like that would never go unnoticed. Gustav had never met that person himself, couldn't even tell Diana if it was a man or a woman, but the grapevine worked like magic, and maybe it was nothing, but she didn't believe in coincidences.

Upon Diana's request, Steve was keeping tabs on auctions and private collections on the off chance that someone would decide to sell the gauntlet - a necessary measure until they figured out their next course of action.

Yet, she had a strong feeling that they wouldn't find anything there no matter how hard and how long they looked. It was something else, someone else. Someone who didn't belong. And what bothered her most wasn't the fact that someone did it, that someone managed to bypass the museum security like it was nothing, but that she couldn't even begin to imagine who would possibly even be aware of the existence of the Claw of Horus. After all, the only person who seemed to have known more about it than she did – to her knowledge – had died the night she apprehended it, and dead men can't talk.

And she was going to say all of this to Steve shortly, but they deserved a few minutes of normalcy first – before reality kicked in again. Before she poured new information onto him and he changed his ticket to the earlier flight because he was right, and they couldn't afford to waste any time.

"Are you hungry?" Steve asked, watching her. His fingers closed around a fistful of her shirt and he tugged at it a bit to draw her attention back to him. "I ordered something. Thai." His gaze flicked past her shoulder to the clock on the wall – antique, like nearly everything that Diana owned. "It should be here any minute now."

She nodded, feeling her pulse settle into a more measured rhythm. "That would be good, yes."

I love you, she thought as she leaned forward to rest her forehead against his. I love you so much I can barely breathe.

xoox

They ate and spoke about nothing – the weather that was supposed to turn at the beginning of next week and the final touches she and Pierre had added to the exhibition that was meant to open this Friday, her assistant quite possibly sleeping in his office despite Diana's attempts to usher him home at a reasonable time every night. She never told Steve that she used to do that too, used to work into all hours of the night because there was little she had to come back to. Just empty walls and memories and ghosts she couldn't escape. She suspected that he knew it, though. He was good at reading people. At reading her - even now when Diana thought that she had mastered the art of not letting anyone in.

They ate and she told him about a play she wanted to see, and he asked her if she remembered the first time he took her to the theatre – the tickets were a gift from Etta and neither of them knew how she pulled it off. In many ways, it felt like an entirely different life, not only because of the passage of time, but because of who they were back then. She loved who they were now more, though. A little jaded and worn around the edges, but so much more appreciative of this wonderful thing that was happening between them.

Long ago, Antiope had taught Diana that the battle was meant to sharpen one's senses and harden one's skin. That each scar was like another layer of armour, making it harder to hurt them. The body's natural response to pain. Each cut a reminder to keep the distance. Diana always thought that it worked for the wounds of the heart as well, but she and Steve were the opposite of that. The opposite of a scar. There was softness between them she had never known before, something that she didn't expect to find, what with all the disillusionment and heartbreak they were both carrying inside of them, and she loved it so.

Loved the way his eyes would light up when he looked at her, how animated he sounded when he was speaking about something seemingly unimportant, all because he was speaking to her. For the first time in over half a century, Diana found herself making plans that went beyond work events and trips to Gotham. She was looking forward to Christmas and taking some time off to spend it uninterrupted with Steve. Zeus help her, she was looking forward to a trip to a department store sometime soon because they needed more hangers for the closet and maybe some new towels, too. And if someone told her a year ago that shopping for towels would be something that she would be willing to clear her schedule for, Diana would probably smile politely at them and consider this idea entirely nonsensical.

And then Steve smiled at her from across the table, a tiny smudge of sauce on his cheek, and she forgot just how hard they were working to push the serious talk to later and thought, I love you more than I ever knew I could.

Later, as he was rinsing the plates while she collected and threw out empty food containers, Diana told him about her visit with Gustav, voicing her concerns over what she had learned, all too aware of the tremor in her voice.

He listened carefully as he stacked their plates and cups on the rack and dried his hands with the dishtowel, pensive and quiet. There was a frown on his face when he turned to her, his brows knitted together, and Diana couldn't stand it. Not when she could step toward him and kiss it away, smooth his worry lines with her fingers and making him forget.

Now, she was lying draped over his body, head tucked under Steve's chin and arm slung over his abdomen. His chest was rising and falling against hers, his breathing deep and slow, and had it not been for his fingers combing idly through her hair, Diana would have thought that he had fallen asleep.

"I love the sound of your voice when you say my name," she whispered.

"Diana," Steve said dutifully, smiling.

"I love the sound of your voice no matter what you say," she added.

"I love you," he murmured, kissing the top of her head.

She rose on her elbow, reaching over to trace her thumb over his chin. "I love your smile. It makes me want you even more."

He quirked an eyebrow at her. "Still?" Which was a valid enough question after everything they'd done to occupy the past few hours.

She hummed, turning her head to press a kiss to his clavicle, her lips curved into a smile.

"Always," she murmured, her eyes searching his. Steve brushed her hair from her face, trailing his finger over her cheek, along the ridge of her cheekbone. "Promise me you'll be careful," Diana asked quietly.

"You know I will."

xoox

A muted football game that no one was watching cut to an emergency broadcast just as Steve's gate opened for boarding, a pleasant voice asking the passengers to please proceed to the waiting lounge. A man pushed past him, muttering a quick apology, but Steve ignored him, his eyes trained on the screen mounted on the wall showing yellow police tape fluttering in the wind, flashing ambulance lights and faces contorted in soundless panic. Someone was running while the police tried to cordon off the area but why, he couldn't tell.

He snatched the words subway and collapse from the crawler at the bottom of the screen, but it was moving too fast and the panic was building up in him in hot waves and making it hard to concentrate.

One of the airport staff breezed past him, heading toward the counter at the gate and Steve caught her elbow.

"Can you turn the sound on?" he asked urgently.

The woman frowned, her eyes darting between the screen and his face, pausing only briefly at the image but not nearly as affected by it as Steve was.

"Is this your fight?" she nodded toward the line of passengers, passports and boarding passes ready, trickling slowly toward the jet bridge. "You have to proceed to the gate."

Steve ignored her and reached for his phone.

He had spoken with Diana half an hour ago, after he went through security and passport control. She had asked him to call her when he landed and told him that she loved him, more than once. The glow of her words was still simmering beneath his skin, and it calmed him some. However, now his calls were going straight to voicemail. It wasn't surprising. She was either already at the site helping, or heading there – wherever there was.

He tried again.

"Hey, it's me," Steve breathed when her voicemail picked up once more. The camera snatched a bloodied face of a man who was being loaded into an ambulance, and for a moment, it filled the whole screen, his eyes panicked and shocked, his features contorted with pain. Steve doubted he would ever forget that image for as long as he lived. "You're probably busy, but please stay safe and call me when you can." His fingers flexed on the phone, gripping it tight. He closed his eyes. "I love you."

"Monsieur?"

He turned to see the same woman who he stopped earlier waving at him, beckoning him to come over. He looked around and noticed that he was the last person left in the lounge. Everyone else had to be seated already then, uninterested in the tragedy happening somewhere in the city.

The woman's expression was growing mildly frustrated over the delay he was causing.

"Monsieur…" she glanced down at the sheet listing the passenger names, "Trevor? You have to-"

But Steve was no longer paying attention to her. He was already walking briskly back where he had come from, ignoring her persistent voice calling after him.

xoox

It took him several hours to get back to Diana's apartment, what with having to wrestle his bag from the air company that didn't seem to care that he was having a 'family' emergency, combined with half of the city having been cordoned off by the police, traffic frozen on narrow streets.

In that time, Steve had learned that a water supply pipe had burst in one of the north-east suburbs of the city and part of a metro tunnel had collapsed under the increased pressure, trapping several train cars and at least a hundred people under tons of metal and concrete and water.

He knew there were casualties, knew that a lot of people had gotten hurt. Knew that the hospitals that took them in were overcrowded and that quite a few people were still missing, the flooding preventing the rescue team from being able to reach the most damaged area. Every news and radio station was covering the incident, but the stream of information never seemed to be enough, dry facts that barely registered with him. He knew that Diana was somewhere there, and he wanted to go and help, do something instead of sitting in the back of a cab stuck in traffic that had to be redirected around the zone of the accident.

He wondered if it would have been faster to walk.

They wouldn't let him anywhere near the train, Steve was aware of that. He wanted to go there, but the logic of it didn't hold. He was neither a cop, nor a paramedic, nor anything else other than Wonder Woman's boyfriend – something that filled him with a ridiculous sort of pride, but that he probably wasn't meant to flaunt no matter how much he wanted to.

When he finally walked through the door, her place was quiet, drowning in the shadows of early dusk. For a second, Steve thought that Diana was still out there, helping, but the smell of acrid smoke and blood and hot metal was hanging in the air, brought in on her sword and armour, no doubt. It had to have been over then, he thought absently.

She would never have left if they still needed her.

Steve's chest tightened.

"Diana?" he called out from the darkened hallway.

The living room was empty, and so was the bedroom, he noted. He set his bag down on the floor by the door and walked past the kitchen without looking – it was dark and so still no living being could be there.

He found her in the bathroom, sitting in the bathtub with her arms wrapped around her knees and her hair falling down her back, its ends soaking in the water. He tried not to think of endless despair that seemed to have planted itself on her face. Not now.

"Diana," he breathed a sigh of relief, moving towards her. He had to step over her boots and around her armour and gauntlets spread across the floor.

She looked up, confused momentarily, as if not certain that she was truly seeing him in the dim light streaming through the frosted window above the tub.

Steve sank down on his knees near the bathtub, trying to chase the hot tightness out of his chest. There were a million questions swarming in his mind like a beehive that he couldn't get to settle down, a million things he wanted to know about what had gone down in that tunnel, the lives she had saved and those she hadn't.

He pushed them aside for the time being.

"Hey," he murmured, a slight tremor in his voice. He gave her a quick scan for any injuries, however temporary. And was relieved to find none.

"You didn't leave," she whispered.

"I saw the news," he explained, his hand reaching to tuck a piece of her hair behind her ear. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

Diana shook her head. "There were children, Steve."

Her voice broke, splintering his heart, and he swallowed.

He had heard it before, that note of utter anguish that he couldn't bear for all the pain that it carried. Remorse and regret and guilt over being too late and not fast enough. Steve could feel them pulse through her, radiating off of her in waves. There were no dramatics to it, only raw emotion aching like an open wound.

Steve thought for a second of being on board the plane heading back to Gotham and her alone in the dark apartment, tearing at the seams from another tragedy that she couldn't prevent, and it all but made something inside of him snap in half.

"I'm sorry," he said, his fingertips still lingering on her face.

He didn't want to think of that just yet, of the lost lives and the irreversible damage and a million things he couldn't even begin to imagine because he hadn't been there, hadn't seen it with his own eyes. He wanted to make sure that she was alright first.

"Do you know what day it is?" Diana asked quietly, pulling him out of his thoughts.

"Wednesday?" Steve replied, puzzled, racking his memory for—

He froze, his mind darting back to the date on the ticket, on the screens all over the airport. He was so preoccupied with his concerns over the Claw of Horus and then later over Diana and what had happened when the metro tunnel had collapsed that he'd completely forgotten that it was ninety-nine years ago today that he climbed into that plane and blew himself up in the sky above Belgium.

The cold of the night washed over him, terrifying in how vivid the memory was.

"Diana…"

Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, and he swore quietly under his breath, caught off guard by his own stupidity. The one thing that defined his life as Steve knew it now, the one thing that was a near-constant presence in the back of his mind, and he chose today, of all days, to forget about it.

He pulled away from her and stood up, reaching for the switch to turn on the light over the mirror. And then he shrugged out of his jacket and took off his watch, placing it on the lip of the sink before shedding the rest of the clothes, letting them fall on top of hers. The water was tepid when he stepped into the tub. He lowered down behind Diana and reached for her, palms moving gently over her skin.

She turned her head slightly to the side, and he paused, waiting for her to stop him if the company wasn't what she wanted.

She didn't.

Steve leaned forward and brushed her hair to the side, pressing his lips lightly to the base of her neck, then her shoulder. "I'm sorry," he repeated softly, not sure if he was talking about not being there with her when she was helping the trapped and the injured, or for forgetting. Both, perhaps.

There was a tang of blood and dust clinging to her hair, and her skin smelled of something that he could only describe as desperation. His jaw clenched involuntarily in helpless anger over not being able to fix this for her.

A moment had passed, and then another one, and then her tight grip on her knees loosened and she relaxed into him, coaxed into the comfort of his embrace. The tub was barely big enough to fit them comfortably, but Steve didn't mind it. Didn't care much, either. He leaned back, taking her with him, sweet weight and warmth cradled against his chest, nestled between his parted knees, her temple pressed to his cheek.

"I was worried," he said softly. "I know I needn't be, but I can't—You can be bulletproof and the most indestructible person in the whole of creation, and I would still never not worry about you."

"You missed your flight," Diana murmured.

Steve trailed his fingertips up and down her arm. "There'll be another one." He felt a smile creep into his voice, for a moment. "I didn't want to go without you anyway."

"I almost forgot," she whispered. "These past few weeks with you were so good that it slipped my mind. It never did before."

He sighed. "It did mine."

"I wish I could forget it, that wretched day," she admitted. "I don't want to remember it."

"Can't say I do, either," Steve echoed.

Not that there was much to forget. The one thing that Steve remembered was running after the plane and then his finger on the trigger of the gun. If it hurt, if it felt like anything at all, the memories of it were buried so deep inside of him that he could no longer reach them. He wasn't sure if it was a blessing or a curse, but it never sat right with him that Diana had a much clearer recollection of that night, of the instant when his plane went up in flames.

Of the two of them, she was the one who least deserved to carry the weight of that moment.

He wanted – childishly – to take it back from her, somehow. Claim the memory as his own.

Diana ran her hand over his wrist, stirring the water around them. He could feel the tension seeping out of her body, slowly. They stayed quiet for a while, listening to nothing but faint voices and the sounds of life coming from the street below - people talking, cars honking, a police siren wailing in the distance. Each one with a story to tell.

"Steve?"

He snapped to attention at the sound of Diana's voice, his arms tightening around her.

"Mm?"

She half-turned her face up to his. "I want you to promise me something."

He hummed and pressed a kiss to her temple. "Anything," he whispered into her skin.

"Promise me that you will never ask me to stand back and do nothing if something happens to you."

The air wheezed out of Steve's lungs and his hands that were moving idly over her skin froze mid-touch. He inhaled unsteadily and looked down, wishing that he could see more of her face than a sliver of her profile. Wishing he could look into her eyes and try to find the fear he could hear in her voice.

"I can't lose you," Diana whispered.

The thought struck him them, stupefying in its simplicity, and just as frightening.

Steve knew that keeping him alive was costing her, but he had to admit that he had never thought of what it would be like to her if he died – truly and completely and irreversibly. If he had truly died in 1918.

He had never thought of that – because he really and sincerely didn't want to, and thankfully, didn't need to, but he was thinking of it now. Was thinking of the people who would never come home to their loved ones today. Of all the death that he had seen in his life and how none of it was beautiful or poetic. It was ugly and awful, and it left nothing but torn-apart lives behind.

He thought of what if would've been like the other way around, if he ever had to watch her die. If she'd asked of him what he was asking of her.

Steve wondered who else she had lost. There was Etta and Sameer and Charlie, but he knew that there were other people, too. People she cared about. People she had let into her life knowing that they wouldn't stay as long as she'd want them to. She had told him that he was the only man she'd ever loved, and Steve believed her – damn, it was one hell of an ego boost to hear her say that, and who wouldn't feel that way? He was only a man, after all. But he was wondering now, if maybe she had never allowed herself to love because a loss was a loss, each of them leaving invisible wounds on her where they couldn't heal, and there was only so much a person could take. Even a daughter of a god.

What right did he have to ask Diana to put herself through it again? What right did he have to take that away from her?

Diana loved him. He was, without a doubt, the luckiest man to ever walk the Earth. He also knew that said world seemed to be hell-bent on shattering her faith in all things good with enviable determination. The least Steve could do was not let it succeed.

Back in the days when he had first faced the horrors of the war, he had known a fair share of people who feared death above everything else. The fear of never seeing the light of a new day was the force that pushed them forward, kept them fighting. And while the concept was indeed terrifying to him as well, in and of itself death was easy. It took all but a moment and no effort to die. Living, on the other hand, was a whole different story. Living was hard, but it was worth it. Oh, it was so worth it.

"I promise," he said. "I swear."

Diana picked his hand up and ran her thumb over his knuckles before pressing her mouth to his skin.

She weaved her fingers through his and turned to look at him. "I love you."

Steve felt his lips tug upwards at the corners, eyes roaming over her features. He could live a million years and never tire of hearing her say that, a slight lilt of emotion in her voice each time she spoke those words. Of that note of wonder laced through each sound, her face open, her gaze earnest.

He had seen her with the members of the League, with her colleagues at the Louvre, and had seen the way she carried herself around them – somewhat affectionate with the former, always nice and perfectly polite with the latter. Steve couldn't blame them all for having a bit of a crush on her. She cared deeply about people and it showed in the smallest ways that they couldn't miss. Yet, she always made a point to maintain the distance between herself and the rest of the world, to keep it at arm's length, protecting everyone she knew as well as herself.

Steve couldn't blame her for it. He had spent years doing just that – first out of necessity, then out of habit, and lately – out of fear. Whether it was why he had made a good spy, or a sad side effect of it, he would probably never know. He hated seeing those things in Diana, despised his kind for stripping her of her hope and turning it into cynicism instead. Didn't like the guarded apprehension in her eyes that she couldn't help.

But not with him, never with him.

Steve half-expected her remarkable self-control to extend to their relationship as well, certain that after everything that had happened between them, after he had broken her heart despite promising to himself that he never would, she'd find it hard to let him back in, and god help him, he wouldn't have blamed her. Yet, there was no hint of self-consciousness in her when they were alone, her soul open and his for the taking.

He wasn't blind, he knew it took effort, and he loved her all the more for trying. He never expected them to simply pick up where they'd left off, but this was the closest thing to it he could think of, and his gratitude for it was never-ending.

Now, unable to resist the temptation, he dipped his head to find her mouth with his, his heartbeat stuttering for a second when he realized that once again, he was the one who needed to keep up.

"Are you okay?" he asked quietly when Diana drew back and rested her forehead against his cheek, her fingers trailing absently along his forearm.

"I'm glad you stayed," she confessed.

"I couldn't go," Steve said honestly.

"I know." She glanced up at him, her voice gentle. "I'll talk to Alfred tomorrow. If you're staying here, we might as well have a head start with the footage. I trust his discretion."

"I can take care of it," Steve offered.

Diana paused, and he thought that she was going to protest. If they were going to find a balance to their dynamic, she was going to have to trust him to take the lead every now and then, but Steve was more than willing to let her do it on her terms. He was in no rush.

He braced himself for a polite no – she had always liked being in control, but even more so now, after spending quite a bit of time having to rely only on herself.

But instead, she simply said, "Thank you."

The water was starting to cool down.

Steve picked up a washcloth from the ledge over the bathtub and reached for the bottle of body wash, the one she liked best. It smelled of something floral and, faintly, of the ocean. He loved the way it clung to her skin and quite often to his own clothes. He grew to recognize her perfume, but it was this scent that he associated with Diana the most. The one that spoke of comfort.

He squeezed a bit of liquid onto the washcloth and worked it into a lather before touching it to her shoulder. He traced the length of her arm, leaving a trail of suds behind. She smiled and he dipped his head to kiss the side of her neck, the hand moving slowly over her skin as he revelled in the comfortable intimacy of being with her, close to her, right where she needed him.

"You know, it is technically my birthday," he noted casually. "My second birthday, that is. Then there's a third one…"

She ran her hand up and down his calf. "That is quite an above-average number of birthdays, Captain Trevor."

A strangled groan formed in the back of Steve's throat. "God… Never mind. Why did I even—"

She half-turned to him, "I never said it was a bad thing."

"You are making fun of me," he accused.

"On the contrary," she objected. "I was merely agreeing with you."

Steve huffed and chose not to dignify that with an answer.

"So, what happened today, was it—" he started a few minutes later, a question that had been rolling on the tip of his tongue since the moment he walked through the door.

"No," Diana responded, shaking her head before he could finish. "It was a… human error."

"Yeah, we're good at those," Steve muttered.

He didn't ask if she was sure about the gauntlet not being at fault. She would have said so otherwise.

"You're good at other things too," she said, squeezing his knee.

He took notice of how the edge was gone from her voice.

"Thank god for that," he said solemnly, and she hummed with amusement.

He found every spot where the grime of the day had touched her body and where her armour had left faint marks on her skin, those that on anyone else might have turned to blisters. He had never had anyone let him take care of them before, not like that. Not even when he and Diana were together before. Steve found it soothing beyond measure, the way it spoke of her trust more than any words ever could.

They didn't say much to one another as he washed her hair, massaging the shampoo into her scalp and then rinsing it out, his fingers moving more expertly than he gave himself credit for. Silently, he vowed to make this a regular occurrence from now on, loving the easy comfort of something this simple.

When that was done, when there was no physical trace of the day left on her, Steve moved her hair aside and pressed his mouth to the curve between her neck and her shoulder.

"I love you," he whispered into Diana's skin and wrapped his arms around her once more. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to hold her. And, much to his relief, she let him.

They stayed in the bathtub until there was no tension left in her body and her hands stopped shaking, and his started instead when even the warmth of her skin wasn't enough to keep him comfortable.

Reluctant to break the moment, Steve ran his hands up and down her shoulders.

"Your teeth are chattering," Diana pointed out, smiling.

"They're not," he protested, indignant, when she slipped quite effortlessly out of his grasp, earning a disappointed grunt in response. "No, don't—"

She glanced at him over her shoulder, "Quite loudly, too."

He raised his hands, conceding her point, disgruntled, but not arguing. And then he pulled himself up and climbed out of the tub, stepping onto the mat, careful not to drip the water on her armour. He reached for one of the towels on the rack and turned around to wrap it around Diana who followed him, before grabbing another one for himself.

He dried himself off and wrapped the towel around his waist before turning back to her. Diana was still standing before him, hands holding hers in place, watching him. When their eyes met, she smiled, making his heart slam hard against his ribcage.

Steve moved toward her. "Let me…" he started.

"Oh, you don't..."

He reached for her towel, hands moving gently over her body to dry her off as well. "I know, I know, you don't need me—I just—"

"Steve," she stopped him.

He paused and looked up to find her looking at him. She reached for his face, palm cupping over his cheek, her thumb running over the prickly stubble coating his skin.

"I don't need you to wield my sword for me, or fight my wars," she corrected, shaking her head a little. "Or dry my hair," she added with the tiniest hint of a smile. "But that doesn't mean that I don't need you."

He smiled and tugged at her towel to pull her closer. "I like taking care of you," he said as he looped a piece of her hair around her ear.

"I like that, too," she confessed.

He had a distinct suspicion that it wasn't a common occurrence. The woman he had always known tended to put the needs of others before her own. Steve doubted that it had changed in the past several decades.

Admittedly, he didn't know much about her dating history, just that there were people in her life that she was intimate with in ways he didn't necessarily want to imagine. Didn't know how to ask and whether he had the right to do it, or even if he wanted to know, for that matter. But it didn't seem to him that she had let them close enough to show a vulnerable side of herself.

Steve dumped his discarded clothes into a hamper and followed Diana to the bedroom where he watched her reach past a stack of her own garments and straight for one of his shirts, pulling it on over her head. He smiled, not even bothering to hide it, and wondered if this was the right time, all things considered, to tell her that he had never seen anything sexier. She'd probably laugh at him, and the comment would sound quite ridiculous indeed, he thought, turning it this way and that in his head.

"What is it?" Diana asked when she saw him watching her as she gathered her hair into a loose knot at the base of her neck.

God, I'm so crazy about you, Steve thought.

His lips twitched but he swallowed the sentiment and asked, "You hungry?"

She wasn't enthused by the idea of eating so, while she put her armour away, he made tea, which still went untouched, growing cold on the coffee table.

Somehow, they ended up stretched out on the couch in the living room, Diana's body wedged between him and the cushions, curled into his side, their legs tangled and Steve hand running absently over her damp hair as the intricacies of Casablanca unfolded on the TV screen. It was too quiet to follow the plot properly, but neither one of them bothered to turn the sound up, or turn it off altogether, for that matter, swallowed by the sweet nostalgia.

Steve remembered seeing this film when it first came out, back when movie tickets cost about 30 cents and the seats in the theatre were hard and stiff, leaving patrons with an inevitable backache. However, having grown up with far less than that, he could never bring himself to complain.

"I forgive you," Diana murmured after a little while, pulling him out of his thoughts.

Steve's brows knitted together. "Hm?"

He glanced down and stared at the crown of her head, wishing she'd look up at him, wanting to see her face.

"That night in Clark's apartment in Gotham, you asked me if I could ever forgive you for leaving," she said. "I can. I have." She paused. "There is nothing I won't forgive you. To be with you, I would do anything."

His throat went dry.

"Diana…"

"I thought about those things that you had said to me when you left," she continued as if not hearing him, "about not being able to live like this. I did."

Steve swallowed. "I didn't mean them. I told you—"

"It doesn't make them any less true," she interjected softly. "And I want you to know that I understand. I watched you die, Steve. Don't think I don't know what it feels like for you every time I go where you can't follow me."

He scratched his fingers lightly through her hair. "I don't think it ever stopped me from trying before."

"I don't think it did," she agreed, and then sighed. "You know what I'm saying."

"I do." He swallowed. "Diana, I would never—I will never ask you to walk away from what you do. From who you are. I need you—I need you to know that." He took in a shuddered inhale. "Before… I merely didn't want to be a burden."

The words left a foul aftertaste on his tongue.

He'd thought that before, but speaking his thoughts out loud gave a kind of finality to them that he didn't like.

He didn't doubt that Diana wanted to be with him. She had told him so and he believed her. She was not a liar. But there was still an inadvertent panic jolting through him now and then. Maybe one day, he wouldn't feel it so sharply. Maybe one day, he would stop being scared.

"You were never a burden, my love," Diana whispered, her palm pressed to his chest, warm even through the fabric of his shirt.

Steve stayed quiet for a few moments. "I like it when you call me that," he confessed.

"Because it's what you are." She lifted her head to look at him, her palm closing over his cheek. She smiled at him, a little tired, endlessly tender. "My love."

"Really?" His brows pulled together in comical confusion. "I always thought you meant it in a more… metaphorical sense. You know, like how when I call you honey. I don't mean it in, ah—a sticky way."

Diana snorted, amused, and nuzzled into him, "Such a charmer."

Steve chuckled.

She fell asleep before the credits started to roll. Steve smiled when he noticed it, watching her shoulders rise and fall steadily, his hand running absently up and down her arm. Tomorrow, she would have to go back to where people lost their lives today and do more, help more, give more and ask for nothing in return. He knew that, even though she had told him nothing. He'd seen it before. Was aware of her patterns.

Now, though, she deserved her rest.

Steve turned the TV off and considered his options. He could wake her up and usher her to the bedroom. He could wiggle from beneath her and carry her to the bed, although that would probably rouse her as well. For a moment, he debated the merits of the couch over the comfort of the bed, but in the end, he merely reached for a quilt draped over the armrest and tossed it over them, his own eyelids drooping by now, his body relaxed against the warmth of hers.

Diana stirred but didn't wake up.

He drifted off shortly afterwards thinking of how a century ago she saved his life, and how she hadn't stopped saving it since.

xoox

If someone had asked Steve what his takeaway from his time as a soldier was, he wouldn't think about his experience with firearms or being able to pilot just about anything that could fly, or his days as a spy and the moments spent as someone that he was not.

Oddly, but not quite surprisingly, his mind would surely jump to his ability to fall asleep whenever, wherever, in a matter of minutes. Be it a narrow cot in the barracks or the freezing ground in the trenches, slouched in the seat of an airplane or, well, on a couch that was a great couch overall, but that wasn't exactly meant for overnight stays. One of the perks of civilian life was, he wanted to believe, that he normally didn't have to do that.

He awoke shortly after dawn, just as the sun peeked above the horizon, flooding the living room with soft light.

He roused to awareness slowly, noticing a few things as he did. Firstly, Diana's bed didn't have cushions that tended to slip from underneath his body. Secondly, there was a kink in his neck that was going to get very painful very soon. Thirdly, Diana wasn't with him. And lastly, it wasn't her absence but her voice that awoke him. Coming from the kitchen, it was loud enough to be heard, but not enough for Steve to make out what she was saying.

He tossed the quilt aside and stood up, wincing at the soreness in his muscles, and padded barefoot across the room. He ran his hand through his hair and over his face, chasing the remnants of his sleep away. A cup of coffee would be nice now. Or two. And then he might try to coax Diana into bed, maybe. A proper bed, that is. She had to work today, but perhaps she wouldn't mind being late, just this once.

The memory of the previous day was still painfully raw in his mind, the desire to replace it with something better running strong in his blood. The need to make her forget.

He peered into the kitchen where Diana paced between the stove and the window. She was still wearing his shirt, her hair down and curling at the ends, a slight frown lodged between her brows. It was probably work, he figured. They'd been calling her at all times of night and day lately, something about agreements and catering and the sponsors.

To Steve's knowledge, it was seldom a reason to be concerned, and he was about to step back and give her some privacy to resolve whatever matter came up this time, and maybe take a shower while she finished the conversation. But that was when Diana hung up. She raised her eyes and noticed him standing in the doorway, and Steve couldn't help it. He smiled because, god help him, was this not everything he had ever wanted?

"Hey, remind me to never do that again," he said, gesturing vaguely in the general direction of the living room. He rubbed the back of his neck. "The couch, that is," he added and grimaced a little, trying to cajole a smile out of her. "I'm too old for it, and you were right, your bed is perfectly comfortable—"

Diana didn't smile back and he trailed off. His smile fading, his brows pulling together as he took in her expression.

She pushed her hand through her hair, teeth digging into her lip.

"Diana, what's wrong?"

She glanced at the phone still clutched in her hand. "It was Bruce."

"Oh. Okay." He paused, waiting. It shouldn't have been that unexpected – after all, he'd only spoken with Alfred the other day - but it was. And he didn't like it. "Was it about the S.T.A.R. Labs? Did they… find whoever did it?"

"No, it wasn't about that," she shook her head, and Steve found himself wanting to go back to a few hours ago, when he was still asleep on the couch that was not quite meant for it, and Diana was still pressed to him curve for curve, and the worst thing that he had ahead of him was a slight discomfort in his tight muscles in the morning.

"What is it?" he asked.

She took a breath.

"Lex Luthor. He escaped from Arkham Asylum."

A/N: I told you we'll be having more plot, and I'm quite stoked for it :) And, of course, I couldn't help adding some angst into the mix. Sorry, not sorry.

Comments and thoughts are always highly appreciated :)

Also feel free to yell about the WW84 trailer that just came out. I know we're all excited :)