A Road Paved In Gold

by Nadin4400

Steve Trevor doesn't die in the sky in Belgium, but survival comes with the price he couldn't ever imagine. Angst. Wondertrev, Post-movie

22. Chapter 22

Author's note: Hey everyone. How are you all holding up? You know, considering *gestures at everything*

On July 15, it was 3 years since I first posted this story. It was not meant to get as long as it is, but hey, sometimes it just happens. I just wanted to thank everyone who is still around and who still supports this fic. You're the absolute best and it means so much to me :)

Won't bother you with long a preamble here, considering how the previous chapter ended. Dig in, have fun!

---

A scream pierced the night – the sound of a heart cracked open and the pain bleeding out.

It took Diana a moment to realize that it was coming from her. That the sound full of primal despair was clawing its way out of her throat.

Everything around her stopped. She could hear Bruce bark something into his earpiece, could hear the words of the others, too, crackling with static. But they were muffled and far away and entirely, completely, unimportant.

Diana tried to inhale, and then once more but her chest felt like it had caved in, her lungs crumpled, and her vision blurred. Her sword and shield fell to the ground with a loud metallic clung. She didn't even notice.

She dropped to her knees and reached for Steve, pulling him half into her lap, cradling his head to her chest and trying not to notice the unnatural angle of his neck. She couldn't breathe. Her hands were shaking when she ran them over his face, through his hair, over his chest. He was heavy and limp in her arms, his eyes staring unseeingly at the night sky above them.

"Steve." His name fell from her lips, shattering the stillness around them. "Steve," she begged, curling down over him to press her lips to his forehead. "No, please, you can't… you can't leave me, you promised me—No. Please, no."

She clung to him, her hands wet and slick with his blood, her fingers moving over his skin, his clothes. All she could smell was blood and she couldn't stand it. Couldn't stand the thought of this being her last memory of him. Not the slight curve of his lips from only two hours ago when she awoke him by accident, tangled in her dream and his first instinct was to smile at her. Not his tousled bedhead and the faint smell of her soap clinging to his skin. He refused to use anything else; she figured for the same reason that she slept in his shirts. There was a closeness in sharing those things, a comfort that went beyond anything she could imagine.

A sob shuttered out of Diana's chest, pained and broken, and she squeezed her eyes shut, rocking slowly in place, with Steve cradled close to her.

It had started to rain again, heavy droplets hitting the puddles around them left behind by the storm that had rolled over the city earlier, one concentric circle merging into another, and another,and another. But all she could see was Lex's hand squeezing the life out of Steve, her mind going back, back, back as she tried to reach the moment where she could have and should have stopped it.

He wasn't supposed to be here. He was supposed to be with Barry, but Diana should have known better. Shouldn't have trusted him to leave when she had asked him to. The man who stole Isabel Maru's book from under the crazy woman's nose when he was told to only observe and report was not going to stay on the sidelines. She had been too focused on something else to remember that. But she should have never forgotten that, and the price for doing so had been watching the life drain out of his eyes and screaming his name, knowing that she was too late.

A lie. It was all a lie. Her mother was wrong. She couldn't keep him safe, couldn't—

"Touching," a voice above her said, and Diana looked up, overcome with the sudden, sickening sense of déjà vu.

Perhaps, she hadn't woken up properly yet. Perhaps, this was still some twisted dream that she had gotten stuck in, a trick of sorts that was holding her captive in the prison of her mind.

Lex Luthor was standing ten feet away from her, watching her hold on to Steve with a curious tilt of his head. His eyes were narrowed ever so slightly like he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing, the light of the streetlamps reflecting off the gauntlet on his right hand, his fingers flexing almost imperceptibly every now and then.

Diana could tell that he was enjoying this.

"Wonder Woman and a plain, mortal man," Lex mused, his voice carrying clearly through the rustling of the rain. "There is something poetic to it, don't you think, Diana Prince ?"

She was not surprised that he knew. He had the files on her, after all, and yet her name in his mouth was like a slap to her face. Like something that he had no right to say, to use so casually. He had no right… No right to speak to her, no right to address her with such blatant familiarity. Something inside of Diana stirred, the gears in her mind shifting into a new position. The remnants of her self-control that she had displayed earlier while this man had toyed with them dissipated into nothing.

Lex paused, watching her.

"I'd think that Superman would be a better match for you. Never mind that annoying journalist that he is so fond of," he went on when she said nothing. "Alas, the matters of the heart are not meant to be understood. I don't suppose you would be so kind as to explain to me why? I mean… let's call it idle curiosity."

He was, Diana realized with horror, finding all of this entertaining.

She exhaled slowly, shakily. Her fingers unclenched and she let go of Steve.

"You will pay for this," she said quietly, the heat of fury churning beneath her skin.

Lex smiled, and for a split second, the whole world went completely still. At that moment, she felt no panic, no fear, no pain, just an empty void that opened in her chest, threatening to turn her inside out if she'd let it.

And then she lunged at him.

It took a second for Diana's feelings to come back, this time dialled up to eleven. There was a fire surging through her veins, rage burning in her chest. Like the others did before him, Lex was going to pay for hurting someone dear to her.

For a split second, Diana had a moment of startling clarity where time seemed to slow down to a crawl and as she moved towards him, she could see the lazy curve of his smile, the relaxed line of his shoulders and the emptiness in his eyes. The light was trapped in the raindrops clinging to his clothes and his skin. At a different time, it would be almost mesmerizing. She thought she could hear his heartbeat even, his thoughts, and the flow of his blood, while her own had turned into a molten lava of pain.

Diana's teeth clenched at the sight of the smugness on his face. It didn't occur to her to pause and pick her up her sword and her shield, or to reach for her lasso. None of it mattered.

Lex raised his hand, idly, slowly, and Diana ran into an invisible wall, the force of the impact tossing her back, her body hitting the cobbled ground with a hollow thud that knocked all the wind out of her lungs. She hissed through her teeth, surprised rather than hurt, and quickly kicked up into a crouch, poised for an attack.

"You thought this was going to be this easy?" Lex asked, half-disbelieving, half-mocking.

Diana rose slowly to her feet.

"You think you are above all men—"

"You know, it's ironic that you don't agree," he interjected, as he raised his hand, admiring the intricate carvings that adorned the gauntlet in a language that even Diana had never heard of. He looked at her again. "Because everything points to that, yes."

"Why?" she murmured.

Lex smiled wider. "Because I can."

Steve was dead. He was gone—And the wretched man taunting her now, like this was just a joke to him, had killed him.

Her eyes locked on the man before her, and Diana took a step forward, and then another one. Without breaking eye contact, she picked up her sword and affixed her shield behind her back. The Lasso that had remained coiled at her hip unravelled when she reached for it, unspooling onto the ground at her feet. She could feel the throb of power rising within her, growing stronger with each breath she took.

Lex Luthor's outline before her looked smudged through the rain, growing in and out of focus as the wind picked up, tossing angry fistfuls of water around.

This time, when she charged at him, he wasn't fast enough. They always made the same mistake, she thought absently as the Lasso wrapped around the Claw and her sword connected with it with a loud clang, bouncing off without leaving a mark. Her body strained against the impact she hadn't expected, forcing her hand to curl tighter around the hilt to keep it from falling out of her grip. They always underestimated her.

Lex drew his hand back, pulling at the Lasso and yanking her closer to him. Diana could feel the grip of the Lasso on his forearm grow weaker, as though the energy coursing through the gauntlet was clashing with the ancient magic of her gods. Lex felt it too, a triumphant grin appearing on his face. She let go of it, catching him by surprise when his pull met no resistance and he stumbled back on the cobbled ground beneath his feet, slippery from the rain that kept on growing stronger.

Diana's hand curled over the grip of her shield.

"It's over, Lex Luthor," she growled through her teeth.

"It won't be over until I say it's over," he snarled and lunged at her.

The next few minutes were a blur. She heard the gauntlet smack against her shield once, twice, but she couldn't remember raising it; she felt the surge of magnetic power gather around them, making her feel like gravity itself had changed, but had no time to process it. Her foot came into contact with Lex's thigh and then his chest, drawing sharp gasps out of him. Her vision tunnelled, zeroing in on the man who was looking at her with a hateful snarl, willing to stop at nothing to the world succumb to his will.

At one point, Diana found herself once again on her back with the gauntlet reaching for her throat the way it had Steve's, but then with a twist of her wrist and a jab and a grunt of exertion, it was Lex Luthor who was lying on the ground, slammed into a cold puddle by the weight of Diana's body, the tip of her sword pressed to his throat and the rain washing the blood off his face.

"I said it's over," she uttered, breathing hard, her muscles spasming from the effort.

She yanked the gauntlet off of Lex's hand and tossed it aside. It fell to the ground with a metallic clank and rolled into the shadows not touched by the pool of light. She didn't give it a second thought. Not now. Hand closed around Lex's throat, she twisted around and drove him hard into the ground. Lex's head met the stone and he cried out in surprise and pain, his fingers clawing at her wrist. Wet and slippery, they kept sliding off the metal gauntlet wrapped around her forearm.

"Let go… of…me…" His eyes narrowed, teeth gritted. "This is…not—"

"You know not what you have done," she breathed, her chest heaving, not from exertion but with anger.

He blinked at her, confused at first, and then terrified, his eyes widening when Diana raised a clenched fist above him.

It swung down fast, aiming to cause as much pain as he had caused her—

"No!"

—and then it stopped before it reached its target, hitting something soft instead.

Diana let out a ragged breath and shifted her gaze, confused for a moment to find Clark's hand wrapped around her curled fingers merely an inch from Lex's jaw. His grip was firm, his knuckles and the pads of his fingers white and it was then that she realized that she was continuing to push down and he was struggling to stop her.

Her eyes tore away from his hand and trailed up his wrist and along his arm, past his shoulder until they found his face, his eyes looking at her from beneath sopping wet hair plastered to his forehead. His jaw was set tight, his whole body poised to hold her back. He wouldn't last long if she put her full strength into pushing him away and they both knew it.

He met her gaze. "Diana, don't," he uttered between laboured gasps of breath. "He's breathing."

Her eyebrows pulled together. She glanced down at Lex squirming up at her. Of course he was breathing, that was exactly the problem—

"Steve. He killed Steve."

"No," Clark was shaking his head. He pushed her further away from Lex the second she allowed her attention to shift. She looked up at him again. "Steve's alive." His eyes darted past her shoulder. "He's got a heartbeat."

She stared at him for another moment, his words slowly making their way through the fog in her head.

"Go," Clark urged her. His eyes flicked down to Lex sprawled on the ground, no match for him without the Claw of Horus. "This one's not going anywhere."

"Steve," she breathed.

She bolted up and across the plaza, her heart pounding out of her chest and a silent prayer to her gods running on an endless loop through her mind.

He was still lying on his back, but his eyes were no longer open and trained on the black sky. They were closed, his eyelashes fluttering as the rain continued to fall on his face, washing away the blood from the gash above his brow. Diana lowered down beside him, scared to touch him. Scared to so much as exhale for fear of shattering the moment of wild, desperate hope. He was breathing, his chest rising and falling slowly.

Breathing .

She reached for his face, her other palm pressing flat to his chest where his heart was thudding away in earnest, sure and steady. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, taking short, shallow breaths, her relief too overwhelming to bear.

More footsteps sounded from behind her back, and a police siren came to life in the distance. Diana ignored them all, focused on the man sprawled on the ground before her. Alive . Her eyes swept over his body, looking for more damage. Earlier, she hadn't bothered to consider it but she had seen Lex push him, had seen Steve take that awkward fall—

"What happened?" Arthur asked, his voice booming through the cold night air.

"Get rid of this," Bruce said, although she had no idea what he was talking about and didn't care to look.

"What about—"

"The police are on the way."

Diana tuned them out as her hand reached tentatively to brush Steve's wet hair back from his forehead. He flinched a little at her touch. His eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, eyelids heavy. He blinked against the drizzle falling on them and scrunched his face in discomfort, taking a moment to find her face hovering over him.

"Angel," he breathed, his lips curving up at the corners.

A half-laugh, half-sob rose in Diana's throat. Her heart stuttered in her chest that was tight with relief and fear and utter disbelief.

Steve rarely called her anything but her name. Any term of endearing never failed to land on her like a punch to the stomach, leaving her gasping for air. She thought back to the time when he had told her that, after she had pulled him out of the water on Themyscira and how when he had opened his eyes, he had thought that he was dead and she was an angel, saving him from eternal damnation—a story whispered in the dark when he was half-asleep, his fingers tangled in her hair.

Was he thinking that now?

"I told you to stay with Barry," she said, her voice trembling. Not angry, but close.

Stubborn man. She would never have allowed this to happen in the first place if she had known that he hadn't left with the others like she had asked him to. Would never have let Lex to so much as lay his finger on him, let alone hurt him. She should have known better.

Diana was mad at his recklessness, frustration burning in her chest. She was grateful beyond words that he was alive because she wanted nothing more. She was scared, too. Scared of how fragile the world felt sometimes. And Zeus help her, she had never been more relieved in her entire life, her throat so thick with emotion that she didn't seem to be able to find her breath, and her helplessness against the things that were beyond her control was overwhelming.

She was sick of losing him.

"I don't think I did," Steve admitted. He glanced past her and tried to sit up but his whole body constricted in protest.

"Don't." Diana's palm pressed into his chest. "Don't move." She stroked his cheek as she tried and failed to find her bearings again, her heart racing so fast in her chest she feared it might leap out of her ribcage. "Where does it hurt?"

He grimaced. "It's kinda easier to say where it doesn't." He swallowed, a small frown appearing on his face. "What happened?"

She had watched a man drunk on power and his own invincibility snap Steve's neck like it was a toothpick. She had seen Steve's life seep out of his eyes before she had a chance to do anything to stop it. She had thought that her own heart would split in half when his body had hit the ground, and had almost wished that it did because the thought of staying behind again, alone, was unbearable. There was an almost animal panic still coursing through her, making it hard to think clearly, to breathe.

Diana didn't want to say any of these things. Didn't want to remember them, either.

She slid her arm carefully under his shoulders, mindful of not jostling him too much before Victor or Clark could scan him for internal bleeding and any other injuries she couldn't pick up. Something was wrong with his arm, she could see that, but her hands were shaking, and she didn't trust herself not to hurt him if she tried to have a better look.

There were very few instances in Diana's life when she wished to be more than she was, but this one was certainly one of them. If only she had the gifts the others had. If only she had the vision that could see through fabric and flesh, hear the rhythm of his heartbeat. Slowly, she moved closer, shifting until Steve's shoulder blades were resting on her knees, his head supported by the crook of her arm. Her hand slid down to rest on his chest, flat above his heart. Every second, she was afraid that the even thumping of it would disappear.

She curled over him, leaning down to press a kiss to his hairline. Felt him relax against her. Her eyes squeezed shut, the rain masking her unbidden tears.

"Nothing," she whispered. "Nothing happened."

xoox

When Steve came to, it was dark and his body ached in places he had never known existed – dull pain that blossomed in the centre of his chest and pulsed in his fingertips with every breath he took. Groggy, he blinked at the ceiling, his mouth unpleasantly dry.

The familiar and unmistakable scent of antiseptics told him that he was in a hospital, and the realization sent his senses into high alert. God, he hated hospitals.

He shifted, uncomfortable. His whole left side throbbed but he failed to determine the source of it, if there even was one. It was as if every inch of him was a bruise, tender to the touch. Steve's eyes fluttered shut once more, his mind foggy, as he willed himself to go back to the pleasant oblivion of not feeling any of this.

It didn't work.

Slowly, he turned his head, the room around him coming into focus.

Diana was standing by the window, a sharp outline of her body black against the pale-yellow light of a streetlamp filtering through the glass. It was still raining, the rivulets of water creating intricate shadows that chased one another on the wall across from him.

A wave of calm washed over him, her presence like a balm to an open wound, as his body relaxed into the sheets that smelled, not unpleasantly but still unfamiliarly, of sterility. He sighed, and at the sound of it, Diana turned around. With the light behind her, he couldn't see her face, but her shoulders slumped forward the moment she saw that he was awake. Steve could almost hear the tight stiffness of unease seep out of her body to the point where even the air started to feel light around them.

"Hey," he croaked, attempting to smile, but he wasn't sure it worked.

Nothing felt good, and it took him all of two minutes for the discomfort to grow a tad frustrating.

Maybe he was, indeed, too old for all this, Steve thought absently.

Diana moved towards him, a dark form in the dark room. For a moment, he thought that she was going to reach for the light above the bed, but instead, she lowered down into the chair next to him. He was glad when she did, preferring the comfortable semi-darkness to the sharpness of fluorescent lights that would have made his eyes hurt.

"Hey," Diana echoed, taking his hand in both of hers, her voice soft.

"What happened?" Steve asked, his eyes sweeping over the room before fixing on her face and the slight frown lodged between her brows that even the shadows couldn't conceal.

It was coming back to him, slowly. Amanda Waller. Lex Luthor. The sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw Clark being tossed aside and the fire of explosions lighting up the night sky. Steve wondered, absently, if the commotion in the hallway outside his door to his ward had anything to do with it, but the thought was fleeting, because thinking was taking too much effort and he had very little strength to spare. He might have to come back to it some other time, Steve decided the moment before he forgot about it entirely.

His heart skipped a beat, his stomach twisting uncomfortably when the familiar metallic taste of panic rose in his throat, and he forced himself to focus on Diana, on her eyes moving over his face with concern he wished he knew the cause of. It helped. Just barely, but it still helped to have her there to ground him, to be his anchor.

Except she was looking at him in that funny way he couldn't quite read, that made something unravel inside of him. It was a way she had looked at him before that felt so raw he almost couldn't bear it.

"Diana…" he started.

She shook her head and leaned forward to kiss his fingers sandwiched between her palms.

"Everything is alright," she said, and he didn't believe her for a second.

"Don't tell me I missed it," he breathed, trying to smile once more in hopes of coaxing a smile of her own out of her.

"Missed what?" Diana asked, confused.

"Did you fly me here?" His voice dropped a bit. "I would hate to have slept through that ."

She blinked, at a loss for words momentarily, and then her features started to relax again.

She shook her head. "Clark did. I needed to…" She glanced down and trailed off.

Steve noticed then that she had swapped her armour for a pair of black pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, her hair once again pulled back and twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. The armour would have probably stood out here more than she was willing to allow, he thought, watching her watch him. He was starting to suspect that there was some sort of drug in his system because everything looked softer around the edges somehow. That, or maybe he just loved staring at Diana.

His fingers twitched in her hand and she kissed them again.

"Are you okay? Lex—"

Her face hardened, her lips pressing together into a thin life as if she had bit into something sour. These days, Steve had noticed, she rarely allowed for her feelings to be this on display for everyone to see. Yet there were instances – like now – when it was beyond her capabilities to hold them back. When the force of them was beyond her control.

"Waller and her team are taking care of him," she said before he finished his question. "Everyone is alright."

It didn't feel like enough.

Steve wasn't sure what time it was, or how long he had been here, but the soldier in him wanted details, wanted a complete debrief (Bruce was probably good at those, and Steve made a mental note to ask him for more information later). But as a man whose woman had just gone up against something very bad, even more he needed to know that she was alright. Not the members of their team, not the civilians that had undoubtedly become collateral damage in the games of a maniac, or even Amanda Waller herself who, the last time Steve had seen her, had been in a rather sorry state.

It felt like an awfully self-indulgent and selfish thought, but he didn't care. Goddess or not, he needed Diana to be safe. And that was never going to go away, he was starting to realize. She could fight a million battles and win them all, and he would still be scared out of his mind to watch her swing her sword with the precision of someone who had been doing so for millennia. Even though he knew better. Even though she was the daughter of the god of all gods.

He took an unsteady breath that made his chest constrict when his ribs protested it and he gripped her fingers tighter with his own.

She did look fine, though. More than fine. She most certainly didn't look like she had just fought someone who had tossed Superman around like a ragdoll – something that Steve suspected the League wasn't going to forget any time soon. They seemed like the type to remember stuff like that.

She looked beautiful. Even after a fight, even in a goddamned hospital room in the middle of the night, she looked so beautiful it almost hurt.

He looked at her some more, searching for signs of… something, distress maybe, anything she wouldn't want to put into words, until the tightness in his chest started to ease. If something was wrong, Diana would have told him. The rest could wait, he decided.

Steve squeezed her hand once more, his eyes moving over her face.

"Are you okay?"

Her phone chimed in her pocket, but Diana ignored it. "I am now," she said.

He cleared his throat. "Wanna catch me up on… everything?" he asked, carefully lifting his left arm for emphasis.

Diana swept her fingers through his hair, brushing it back from his forehead, and even a touch that small felt like heaven.

"Your wrist is sprained," she said after a moment. Yeah, that would explain the brace, he thought, his eyes darting toward it for a second but his attention didn't linger. The last time he had a fractured bone or a dislocated joint, it hurt like hell. He didn't feel much of anything now, which reinforced his assumption about some drugs being involved. Not that he minded, all things considered. "You have two broken ribs," Diana continued. "And this…" She touched her fingers very gently to his left cheekbone that Steve, mercifully, couldn't see, "might not feel good for a while."

"It doesn't feel very good now," he admitted with a small grimace.

"You needed stitches, too," she noted.

He vaguely recalled meeting a brick wall with his forehead, and the memory alone all but made the stars explode behind his eyes. From an impact like that, he was lucky to need stitched and not a lobotomy. Pettily, he hoped that he had at least left a dent in the bloody wall. It deserved it.

He grinned a little, not able to help it. "Hey, you're the one who said that scars make a man look dignified. A life well-lived, remember?"

"Are you saying that you were merely trying to play into my ideas of attractive masculinity?"

He closed his eyes and then winced when it made the throbbing in the back of his skull grow worse, adding a queasy feeling in his stomach to the fun list of everything that he wished he didn't have to deal with.

"Can't blame me for trying to impress a pretty girl," he breathed, opening his eyes slowly again.

The wave of nausea receded.

"You might have a concussion, too," Diana added, not falling for his light tone and reminding Steve that she was not that easy to fool.

"I've had it worse," he tried to brush her words off nonetheless.

Because he really and truly had. And once he could string his thoughts together, he would happily tell her some horror stories about field hospitals where the chances of survival and losing limbs to blood infection had been about the same.

Maybe he could even save that for some romantic night, to make his reminiscences more special.

His humorous mood evaporated when a shadow of anguish chased across Diana's face, and he kicked himself mentally for being such an idiot. Of course, he had it worse. She had been there when he had it worse. She had seen it all. He, of all people, should know better than to be so callous about the memories of something clearly very painful to her.

"Diana…" he started but she was already standing up and moving away from his bed, looking like a caged animal in a room that was too small and too dark and too crowded with ghosts.

Suddenly, Steve wished that she had turned on the lights, after all. Wished he could see past the shadows hiding her face.

He didn't ask for it though, resigning to simply watch her as she walked over to the second bed, empty at the moment. Watched her rub her forehead, her chest rising and falling with each measured breath as she tried to regain her composure. Which, if he looked closely, he could almost see tearing at the seams.

"Diana," he tried again.

She squeezed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "I can't believe that you did it when I specifically asked you to go with Barry."

"You can't have the rest of the team babysit me all the time," Steve said quietly, not liking the way her words stung.

However, when she raised her gaze, she looked so stricken he wished he had said nothing at all. He winced, and for once it had little to do with the dull ache in places he never knew existed.

"I'm not trying to—"

"You don't trust me," he stopped her.

"I don't want to lose you!" she snapped.

An eerie kind of silence fell between them, still ringing with the edge in her voice even after she had stopped speaking. For the first time, Steve wondered if there was a resolution to this situation, or if they were going to keep on running in circles until they had tired themselves out.

"What do you want me to say?" Steve asked softly. "Did you really expect me to walk away?"

"Yes." She rubbed her eyes and turned away. "You're a soldier. You, of all people, should know the importance of following orders."

His lips twitched humourlessly. "And you, of all people, should know that I don't have a good track record there. If all I did was follow orders, you and I would never have met."

He hated the distance between them. All four feet of it. It felt almost unbearable to not touch her.

She didn't say anything, and he shook his head. "Lex would've killed her, Diana. He would have killed Amanda Waller, or he would have used her to stop you from stopping him." He swallowed. "As long as he had her, he had leverage over you. Over this whole… mess. Get her out of the way, and all bets were off. He was yours to deal with, without any more casualties." He waited for her to look at him. "I saw my chance and I took it."

Diana pressed her lips together. He could practically hear her swallow the curse word or two threatening to slip from her tongue.

"It is not the point," she said sternly.

"Did it work?" Steve asked. "Did you get Lex?"

"Yes."

"Then it was worth it—"

"Your heart stopped beating, Steve," she interjected angrily. "It was not worth it."

He stared at her, her words ringing in his ears like an echo bouncing off the inside of his skull. He didn't remember that. He didn't remember… much of anything. It was cold, so cold that he would have felt it in his bones if it wasn't for the adrenaline rush that made him feel like he could jump over buildings and punch his way through concrete. He didn't remember making the decision to pull Amanda Waller out from the proverbial crossfire before it turned her into a cannon fodder, but he remembered the moment when he knew that it needed to be done.

The rest of it felt soft to the touch and blurred around the edges.

She bit her lip and stared at the cheap linoleum at her feet, her face so pained he could barely stand looking at her.

"Diana…"

"You don't know what it is like," she breathed out softly.

He didn't, Steve knew that much. He didn't, and he knew that it was not likely that he ever would. She had been injured before, he had seen blood and bruises on her skin. There was a pale, barely visibly scar on her shoulder from when she was hurt so badly that even her divinity and the blood infused with magic were not enough to make it go away. So badly that anyone else would never have stood a chance. But she was right. He didn't know what it was like to watch the life drain out of her. He didn't know what it felt like to feel helpless in the face of not knowing how to stop death itself.

And he was tempted – his bloody nobility be damned, he was so tempted - to tell her to walk away now before it was too late, to ask her to leave before he broke her heart beyond repair. God knew he had outdone himself there already. And the absolute worst thing, that made him sick to his stomach, was that he could promise her to love her for as long as she lived, and to do anything and everything humanly possible to make her happy, but he couldn't promise that he wouldn't break her heart again.

They both knew that.

"I'm sorry," Steve said instead because he was a selfish asshole. Because he wanted her so much that the idea of spending a minute of his life without her was akin to ripping his heart out of his chest with his bare hands.

She was shaking her head now, her arms folded over her chest.

"Diana."

She looked up.

Guilt washed over him. She didn't deserve this. Didn't deserve to go through a century of watching everyone she cared about die only to wind up with someone who was just as fragile, albeit in a somewhat different way. Regardless, she couldn't possibly not consider it. Couldn't possibly not understand what she was getting herself into. Steve knew her better than that.

Yet, he also knew that he could never have stayed back, not when someone needed help. Not even the woman who was the embodiment of every annoyance and frustration and trouble in his life lately. A life was a life, and it was not for Steve to decide who deserved to see the light of a new day. And he'd be damned if he ever wound up being the reason that someone didn't get that chance. Not ever again.

He might not be strong or fast or bullet-proof, but he had taken enough lives that he could no longer stand to watch others die from the sidelines. He knew it, and he knew that Diana understood it, too, even if she hated it. It was what bound them together in the first place, it was what she loved about him – she had told him that; had told him that in the moments when his self-loathing was too much for him to keep moving forward. The goodness in him that he didn't always see past his sins. His desire to amend his mistakes.

They were too far gone to walk away from this.

She cursed in Greek under her breath, her frustration nearly palpable in the air between them.

Steve let out a small laugh. "I'm not a stubborn mule," he protested.

" That you understand," she muttered.

"I knew that having you teach me insults in Greek would come in handy one day," he noted.

Diana glowered at him.

"C'mere," he said quietly.

She did, crossing the room and lowering down onto the edge of the bed next to him.

He took her hand, tugging her towards him until her face was so close to his that her eyes were all he could see.

"I wasn't trying to…" he started and stopped, swallowing, not sure that he wanted to say those words out loud. He let go over her hand and reached for her face, his fingertips trailing down her cheek as his eyes searched hers. "I want you. This. A thousand lifetimes of this," Steve whispered, his thumb running back and forth along her jaw. "I need you to know that I would do anything to be with you, Diana."

An unsteady sigh stuttered out of her chest, her hand twitching on the sheets near his shoulder.

"But I had to help," he continued, helpless against the fog in his head that made the words scatter whenever he reached for them. He swallowed. "I couldn't stay back when something bad was about to happen. I had to do it."

He had never felt so exposed, so desperate to get her to understand, see the things the way he was seeing them. It wasn't about Amanda Waller and Lex Luthor. He would have run across that plaza for anyone, a friend and a stranger alike. There was a time in his life when following orders was all he did, when he looked the other way because he was told to, when he let people die because he didn't know any better. He couldn't bear the thought of doing that again.

Not even at the risk of losing his own life.

This thing that had happened to him - whatever it was that kept his heart beating and his blood flowing, be it Diana's love literally running in his veins or a glitch of nature or a divine intervention beyond anything he could even begin to comprehend - was his chance at redemption. Maybe the only one he would ever get. He needed it, one way or another. He needed to know that what had happened to him wasn't for nothing.

Diana's hand curled over his good cheek as she leaned closer still until her forehead was pressed to his and Steve no longer knew where her breath ended and his began.

"I know," she murmured.

"You're angry," he said, his thumb still drawing patterns over her cheek.

"I am," she admitted. Steve's chest constricted, his body stiffening, and Diana added, "Not at you. At—" She bit her lip, shaking her head again.

"I love you," he said, his words as sincere as they could ever be. "I have never loved anyone the way I love you, and I would never, ever do anything to hurt you."

She drew back and sighed. "And now you're the one who is hurt," she said.

Steve's hand slid down to rest on the back of her neck. "Had it worse," he repeated, and this time, she smiled. It was small and not very convincing, but it made his heart sing nonetheless. "Don't go," he asked, his eyes flicking between hers.

She nodded. And then once more, as though she needed the reassurance as much as he did.

The hospital bed was too narrow and entirely too uncomfortable for the two of them when Diana kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the mattress. It was just barely wide enough to fit them both without one of them toppling down to the floor. Steve didn't care. His injured wrist resting across his sternum, he lifted his good arm and she ducked underneath it, settling habitually into his side. He was grateful for the proximity even when the jolt of pain shot across his ribcage.

"Sorry," Diana murmured, shifting her weight off his ribs.

"S'okay," he said, tightening his hold on her. "I'm okay. Stay."

She tucked her head under his chin, her cheek pressed to his collarbone through the fabric of his shirt. He was still wearing his own clothes, Steve had noticed. They must really be busy if they didn't bother with his attire and getting him into one of those ugly hospital gowns.

He felt his eyes flutter shut, his fingers running idly up and down Diana's shoulder. At some point, he reached for the elastic band holding her hair in place and pulled it off, dropping it on his pillow, his hand combing through the thick mass of her curls that were still slightly damp from the rain. There was no one else here, no one to see her the way very few were allowed to, and he revelled in the sensation of her nearness, and the peace that it brought.

They stayed quiet for a while, lulled into comfortable silence by the buzz of voices in the hallway that felt both very close and infinitely far away. Until her chest started to rise and fall in sync with his and her tight grip on him had relaxed.

"Did you do it?" Steve asked after a long moment. "When I… did you…?"

"I don't know," she said into his chest, her breath warm on his skin even through the fabric of his shirt.

He opened his eyes slowly and let out a long breath. "Thank you."

And then he told her how she kept him alive, how she kept him going even when he wasn't in imminent danger. How there were so many ways for him to die and she had saved him from each and every single one of them, again and again and again. Had been saving him from the day they had met.

He had already told her the worst of the things that he had done, things that he knew would keep haunting him whether he lived for a decade or a thousand years. Things that made his heart feel so heavy he could barely stand straight sometime. But it was not the same as explaining his yearning for absolution.

When he fell silent, Diana lifted her head, her eyes roaming over his face in the semi-darkness, and he was so tired that he could barely focus on her features.

"I love you," she murmured, her face so close to his that Steve felt her words before he heard them, the reverence in her voice making his breath catch.

He swallowed, hard, almost dizzy from how fast his heart was thumping against his already assaulted ribs, as if they hadn't had enough as it was. He wanted to thank her – for listening, and for doing everything she had done for him, and for loving him despite all the things that he hated himself for, but no words felt big enough for that.

"Diana…"

"I will always love you," she said.

"Will you stay?" he asked quietly when he found his voice again. "Hospitals… I'm not very good…"

Diana touched his cheek, her fingers stroking his stubble. "Of course." Her hand swept through his hair and he found himself leaning into her touch, his eyes drifting shut again, a sigh rising in his chest. "Sleep," she whispered. "I'm not going anywhere, Steve."

If either of them noticed that her hands were shaking, they chose not to mention it.

xoox

Steve awoke a while later, disoriented and confused. His body ached. It felt like every inch of it throbbed, reverberating into his skull which pounded dully with every beat of his heart. He breathed out slowly, feeling somewhat sick. Concussion. That would explain it, he thought absently and without much conviction.

He felt like shit.

He had been dreaming too, but he could no longer remember what of, the memory of it nothing but a dark cobweb clinging to his brain. There had been a hand squeezing the breath out of him. Someone who wasn't Lex Luthor, Steve knew, but he had woken up before he saw the face of the person that it belonged to.

Outside the door, he could still hear voices and the very unmistakable sound of stretcher wheels on polished linoleum. He couldn't have been out for more than an hour, then. Maybe less than that.

"Steve?" Diana lifted her head off his shoulder. Her hair was still down, framing her face.

He blinked sleepily up at her.

"Angel," he breathed, wondering if he was still dreaming. Not impossible.

Everything felt wrong, somehow, out of place. His ribs protested every move he made, his wrist started to ache under the brace, making Steve want to claw the discomfort from under his skin. The back of his head was pulsating unpleasantly, his skull feeling twice the size it should be. He hated feeling like this, so broken. There was no glory to battle wounds, no pride. There was only exhaustion and the desire to make it all go away.

Diana pressed her palm to his forehead, then his cheek, checking him for signs of fever. Steve felt her relax against him when she found none, even though a slightly concerned frown seemed to have made a permanent home between her eyebrows. He hated being the reason for it, but she looked so lovely that all he could do was stare.

She made a damn good distraction, he could admit that much.

"Do you need anything?" she asked quietly. "Should I get someone?"

Steve licked his chapped lips. "No."

He could probably use a painkiller—or a whole bottle, for that matter—but the thought of her leaving even for a few minutes was unbearable. He hated the idea of staying alone in the bleak room that smelled of everything that was making his stomach turn.

"No," he repeated, shaking his head a little when she made an attempt to draw back. "Don't go."

She looked conflicted, debating her options. For a brief moment, he was certain that she was going to ignore his protest, see past the veneer of his deliberately nonchalant voice – not that he was even trying to sound convincing – but there must have been something in his eyes. The same haunted panic, Steve figured, that he could see reflecting in her own.

She hated the idea of leaving him as much as he despised the thought of it.

Diana nodded slowly and swept her hand through his hair, pushing it back from his forehead. Steve felt his eyelids grow heavy, almost unbearably so, her touch so much easier to focus on than the discomfort in his body. He was too tired, too groggy, and barely awake to say anything when she nestled back into his side, very careful not to put excessive pressure where it could hurt.

"Sleep," Diana murmured; but he could hear the smile in her voice.

He dozed off, lulled back into drowsiness by the warmth of her body, with her fingertips still stroking his cheek.

xoox

Steve awoke once more hours later, when the grey dawn started to creep into the room through the cracks between the blinds that someone – Diana? – had closed sometime during the night. He didn't remember it happening, and was certain that he would have woken up, but it didn't seem like something worth mulling over.

Diana was asleep, as was his arm that was trapped beneath her, the tips of his fingers tingling slightly. Steve didn't care, too relieved to have her with him still. He felt… well, not better, exactly, but most certainly not worse, and that was comforting in its own way. The ache in his wrist had ebbed, diminished to a dull throb that he could almost ignore if he put his mind off of it. The discomfort in his cheekbone had receded as well, and if he didn't know any better, he would have assumed that he was dealing with a bad hangover rather than yet another one "crossing the line and coming back" experience.

He made a mental note to never word it that way in front of Diana, certain that she was not likely to appreciate his flippant attitude.

Sameer would have loved that. He always called Steve a lucky bastard, even despite a nick here and there. And Charlie would have grimaced and muttered something unsavoury under his breath that Steve would adamantly, and despite reason, take as a compliment.

Sometimes, in the moments when he least expected it, he missed them something fierce.

Diana stirred in her sleep, tightening her hold on him, but didn't wake up when Steve turned and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head.

"I love you," he murmured into her hair.

She still smelled of ashes and hot metal and dust, and it made his stomach turn and his heart clench uncomfortably, his mind suddenly flooded with the memories of things he didn't want to remember. Not now. Not when he had almost moved past the feeling like someone had tossed him into a food processor and turned it on at the highest setting. And Diana was there, warm and real, folded into his side, her breathing deep and measured, calming him in more ways than he could name.

Steve's mind started to cloud.

He was going to regret not changing his position, he thought absently. His arm was going to feel like it had fallen off altogether in a few hours.

Diana sighed in her sleep, wonderfully real.

He honestly didn't care about much else.

xoox

It wasn't the late hour or the sunlight flooding the room that awoke Steve again hours later, but a persistent whooshing sound and a pressure on his upper arm that pulled him out of his slumber. Groggy, he blinked and groaned in protest, willing the blinds to fall shut, or the sun to go away, whichever happened first. He tried to roll onto his side and away from the blinding glare that was falling on his face, threatening to burn right through his retinas.

"Don't move," a voice ordered rather impassively.

Steve turned to the right, his eyes landing on the curtain between the two beds occupying the room that, to his memory, had been pushed aside last night. Right now, he could see an outline of another person behind it.

He turned to the left and found a stocky woman in pale blue scrubs standing by his bed as she tried to check his blood pressure, a tight inflated cuff wrapped around his bicep. Hence the whooshing sound that awoke him, Steve thought, trying to gather his thoughts into something more or less coherent. With little success, as it turned out.

His eyes landed on the badge on the nurse's shirt that read Liz. She appeared to be in her late 40's, her hair pulled into a tight bun on the back of her head and her brows knitted together, although not unkindly. She was watching the number on the meter without any particular concern.

It was then that Steve realized that Diana wasn't in the room.

"Where's—" he started, his voice scratchy from sleep and his eyes moving around the small space even though there was hardly anywhere to hide. Unless she chose to fold herself into a small nightstand.

"Your girl?" Liz finished, checking his vitals and was scribing something in his chart. "The… leggy one?"

That was one way to put it, Steve thought. Now he wouldn't be able to think of anything but Diana's legs.

(Not that it was a bad thing to think about, but he would have preferred her to be around.)

"Had to send her away," Liz continued, not missing one beat. "No overnight stays unless you're terminal," she added without looking up.

Well, at least he wasn't dying. That was good news, all things considered.

He wondered, if a little absently, if the hospital knew what had happened to him. Could they? Was there any trace left inside of him, pointing at him actually crossing to the other side, however briefly? He had read once that the people who got struck by lightning and survived would often have intricate scars following the pattern of their veins. Did he have a mark left on his body somewhere to account for the moments that his heart had stopped beating? Was there anything in his blood? On the tissue of his organs? And if there was, would anyone understand it?

Liz put his chart into a slot at the foot of his bed and moved behind the curtain to tend to whoever his new neighbour was, Steve's attempts charm her into letting him go bouncing right off a proverbial brick wall.

When Liz yanked the curtain shut after her, Steve huffed out a breath and allowed himself to relax into the pillows.

This was going to be interesting.

The small TV mounted on the wall under the ceiling was on, albeit muted. It was showing a report on protests in the Middle East but the crawler at the bottom of the screen mentioned Lex Luthor's escape several days ago and his subsequent return to the Arkham Asylum a few hours back. Barely a footnote to the events of the night. There was something unnatural about that.

Steve felt his eyebrows pull together as he watched another story unfold before him, the world already moving on from something that had nearly wiped this city off the face of the Earth. Amanda Waller must have been working hard hiding the magnitude of what had happened several hours ago and covering up the League's involvement. None of the explosions that Lex had used as a diversion appeared to be linked to him, at least publicly, although the newscaster present at one of the scenes had mentioned that the situation was under control and the police would release the official statement soon.

When the camera swept over the rubble, teeming with firefighters in bright yellow gear, he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of red and blue in the back, but the image changed before he was sure he had seen anything at all.

Whatever Waller's angle was in this story, Steve wasn't sure he liked it, but he chose to think about it later. Like maybe once his brain had found itself again. It was not a priority right now, and quite frankly, he was sick of worrying about Amanda Waller.

Around lunchtime, he called Diana, but her phone went straight to voicemail. He called again without leaving a message just to hear the recording of her voice asking him to speak after the beep, the familiar husk of it making him feel warm on the inside; making him wish she was there with him.

He suspected that she was helping with whatever went down in the city last night, helping whoever needed help. There were no casualties, he knew that much, but the police and the fire department might still need assistance dealing with the aftermath of the attacks, and one thing Steve knew about her, was that Diana wasn't going to stay on the sidelines. None of them would.

I hate not having you here , he texted her after a little while.

I hate not having you here, too , she responded half an hour later.

Where's your 'here'? he asked.

Bruce's .

His fingers hovered over the screen. He wanted to ask what they were up to and if everything was alright, his mind way too awake and entirely too wired even with the trace of a headache pulsing behind his eyes.

I miss you , he typed instead.

Honest and simple.

I love you , she sent back.

He stared at the screen, grinning like an idiot. He didn't even notice when his roommate woke up and changed the news channel to some finishing show.

Maybe this wasn't so bad, he thought in the end. Sure, his wrist ached uncomfortably and his ribs protested every move he made that wasn't thoroughly thought-through and his head didn't feel quite right, but he was alive. He was alive, and he had the most beautiful woman in the world telling him that she loved him. There were plenty of people in this world who definitely had it worse.

xoox

By late afternoon, Steve had sworn to himself that he would never, ever get sick again. Not even with a common cold. He was determined to never sneeze for as long as he lived. Nothing that could put him in close proximity to any hospital, ever. Doing nothing, as it turned out, was the most mind-numbingly boring thing in the world and his entertainment was limited to counting the ceiling tiles and looking out the window at the piece of grey sky he could see.

That, and the bloody fishing show where nothing ever happened. Carl, his neighbour who was recovering from appendicitis surgery, wasn't much of a talker, either. He had fallen asleep after lunch, thus providing pretty poor company.

Steve had spoken with Barry, who had passed on to him a handful of get-well wishes from the other members of the League. He had also spoken some more with Diana, too, but by the time she actually walked through the door early in the evening, just as the light had started to fade, Steve was already plotting his escape – probably via the back stairs during the dinner rush.

He was half-sitting in bed when she stepped through the door and his heart did a somersault in his chest when he saw her.

"You look better," she said softly, crossing the room.

"Please get me out of here," Steve asked in a dramatic whisper, mindful of waking up his new not-quite friend.

Diana lowered down on the edge of his bed and leaned forward to kiss him, her hand brushing through his hair until it cupped over his jaw. He didn't miss the undercurrent of urgency in her touch, in the way she tilted his face up to her, that seemed to have ebbed when his good hand curled around the back of her neck. If she was going to leave him here again, he was going to lose his mind.

"I missed you," Steve said against her lips, relieved but not surprised to feel the tightness in his chest start to lift.

She drew back, her fingers touching gingerly the left side of his face that he knew didn't look pretty – the bathroom mirror was as honest as it was brutal. They needed to do something about those fluorescent lights that made everything look so much worse than it was – if his reflection didn't lie, he looked like he had been run over by a train, and the faint frown that appeared between Diana's brows as her gaze swept over his features told him that it probably wasn't that far off.

"It looks worse than it feels," he said honestly.

She knew what the war was, but she hadn't been with him in the field hospital, hadn't seen what it could be like, and quite frankly, the past sixteen or so hours of his life felt more like a luxurious resort than a hospital stay. A sprained wrist and a few bruises here and there were nothing. Aside from being bored out of his mind.

Steve only hoped that she had it in her to believe him.

"It doesn't look very good," she noted, and he wished he had the cover of night to hide the things he didn't want her to see. Everything seemed to be so much sharper in daylight.

Her fingers were still lingering on his face, and he turned into her touch, kissing the palm of her hand, his eyes locked with hers.

"I'm fine, I swear," Steve promised, and added quietly but firmly, "I'm not staying here."

"You are not," Diana agreed, and he blinked, surprised to not have to put up more of a fight on this. "I have already asked them to prepare your discharge papers."

"Oh."

He stared at her, and she smiled, her features softening. She leaned closer to him again and bumped her nose against his, her fingers playing idly with his hair near the nape of his neck. He wanted to kiss her again. Wanted to never stop kissing her, but on the second bed, Carl had started to snore, and Diana drew back with a small laugh.

Steve shook his head. "Déjà vu."

She glanced at him, confused.

"Remember that hospital in London?" he asked.

The time after the bomb fell on their hotel in Paris. He didn't need to say that.

"I'd rather not," Diana muttered.

Steve sighed. "Let's just get out of here."

xoox

Her hands were shaking.

Diana couldn't remember the last time her hands were shaking, and it unnerved her in ways that frightened her beyond comprehension. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly as she navigated the busy streets of Gotham. Sitting beside her, Steve was looking out the window. Swimming in and out of headlights, streaked with shadows, his face looked more battered than it was, and her chest caved in, a hollow pit opening in the center of it.

She felt her jaw tighten, the muscles of her face working without her saying a word.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve turn to her, even though her own gaze remained glued to the black asphalt stretching before them. She reached for the gear stick, her hands and feet working on autopilot as she changed speeds. His hand closed briefly around hers, squeezing her fingers for only a moment. Enough to reassure her, but not enough to be a distraction. She wished she could reach for his hand and grab hold of it and never let go.

It was dark when she pulled the car over outside the lake house, relieved not to have to think anymore about veering off the road, what with the rain and her mind so crowded he could barely stand it.

The place was half-dark, with only the front windows alight.

Perhaps, it was not a good idea to come here, Diana thought belatedly. Perhaps, after Steve's confrontation with Bruce, they should have stayed at a hotel instead. It was hard to believe that it had only happened yesterday. Deep down, she couldn't help but feel like they had all aged a hundred years since then.

She was about to suggest going back to Gotham, but Steve was already pushing the door open and climbing out into the chilly November evening, his hair ruffled by the wind blowing from the lake.

There were things she wanted to say to him, words rolling on the tip of her tongue that were getting harder to swallow with each passing moment. Words of love, and confessions and promises to never let him go, to keep him safe for as long as she breathed. Everything that she feared she would never get to say to him when she was clutching his body in her arms last night and couldn't find his heartbeat.

She had never felt so exposed and her heart ached from it.

Steve turned to her, a tiny frown creasing his forehead when he saw her still standing by the car.

"Diana?"

She let out an unsteady breath that seemed to have caught in her throat mid-exhale.

Earlier today, when she was helping with the aftermath of the explosions with Clark and Barry, it was easy to concentrate on the tasks at hand. On making sure that no one was still trapped under the collapsed buildings, that there were no remnants of explosives left lying around and that there weren't any more bombs that didn't go off but still could. It kept her senses sharp, her mind focused. It gave her a sense of purpose that she had held on to in a desperate need to find her footing again.

There was satisfaction in helping, in getting the job done and knowing that they had made a difference. There was comfort in knowing that everyone was safe, at least for the time being.

The damage, however unpleasant, wasn't fatal to anyone. There were a couple dozen people in the city hospitals with minor injuries or in shock, all of them expected to make a full recovery. She had made sure to check on that. The three of them had worked in a companionable rhythm while Bruce spoke with Commander Gordon, mindful of being exposed to the public in broad daylight. And all the while, she had felt Steve's absence like a gaping hole in the middle of her chest that made her long for him like never before, panic that he may no longer be where she had left him that morning almost too much to bear.

Yet, it was easier, somehow, to have something else to think of.

Now that it was just the two of them and she had finally allowed her mind to wander, it was like a tight vice had closed around her chest making it impossible for her to breathe. Now that there was nothing else to be worried about, his body on the ground glistening in the rain was the only thing she could think of, her mind flooded with an all-consuming grief and never-ending what-ifs. Diana was not used to feeling powerless, but her fear for him was rendering her frightened and helpless and she didn't know how to deal with it.

None of the teachings she had been put through had taught her that, and it made everything inside of her constrict with panic.

Now that there was no imminent threat to focus on, the reality of her life was suddenly almost too much to stand.

Had it been someone else, anyone else, she would have walked away. Would have been tempted to put some space between them to figure this all out and find her balance again, find a way to keep her heart intact. She had done it before, without hesitation, in the moments when she started to realize that she was getting too attached, her soul too bare for her comfort. But she couldn't do that, not to Steve. Not after they had both fought so hard for what they had now, with him looking at her the way he did and her heart finding a whole new rhythm when she was with him. And knowing that , knowing that she was helpless against her desire to be with him, brought its own kind of fear.

Steve was watching her, waiting, his brow furrowed in confusion, and she wondered what he was thinking. What words he was imagining in place of those that she wasn't saying. Diana felt something snap loose inside of her at the sight of his expression. She reached for his hand, her palm warm against his, and smoothed down his hair with her fingers.

"Come," she tugged him towards the house. "You shouldn't be in the cold."

Alfred opened the door when she rang the bell.

"Captain Trevor," he said, giving Steve a measured once-over, his eyes pausing ever so briefly on the bruises on Steve's face before they dropped down to take in the brace peeking out of the sleeve of Steve's jacket. After a moment, the tight lines around his eyes smoothed out and he nodded, stepping aside to let them in. "It's good to have you back."

Steve let go of Diana's hand and smiled at the older man. "Thank you, Alfred. Can't be happier about it myself."

Alfred's eyes flicked between the two of them. "Would you like to have something to eat? There was no dinner, per se…"

Steve stopped him with a shake of his head. "Thank you, but I think the green Jell-O has killed my taste buds."

Alfred turned to Diana, one eyebrow raised. "Ms. Prince?"

"We're good. Thank you, Alfred. I appreciate the offer." Her eyes darted down the hall. "Bruce…?"

"I believe Master Wayne is down in his… shop," Alfred responded. She had to press her lips together so as not to let her smile show. Unlike just about everyone else, Alfred never referred to the lower level of the house as the Batcave , apparently thinking that it was below any Wayne to be so attached to a place with such a name. "Master Allen is in the lounge, enjoying something he called Resident Evil . If one can enjoy something like that, that is." He adjusted his glasses. "Master Curry has retired early to his room. Jet lag."

He looked like he was going to add something else, his ever-present façade slipping for a moment, and beneath it, Diana glimpsed something akin to vulnerability. Something that Alfred had never allowed to show. She wondered, then, what kind of toll all of this was taking on him.

It was different with Bruce. Diana knew that helping him was Alfred's choice, not an obligation put on him, or something that he was tricked into. Something that, she suspected, he would be doing even if Bruce expertly told him not to. But this was different. The League was different. Suddenly, he had a house full of people she knew he cared about, and although she saw that he appreciated the fact that Bruce didn't have to face the hardships of his secret life on his own any more, it must have felt overwhelming to him, nonetheless.

And for the first time, Diana was not sure if they had the right to ask that of him.

"Let me know if you need anything," Alfred said after a moment.

Diana knew it wasn't what he wanted to say, not what was bothering him so, but she chose not to push, equally disappointed and relieved, and a little guilty about both.

"Thank you, Alfred," she said again and squeezed his arm, watching the older man's eyes soften.

He gave them another small nod, pretending not to look too closely at the stitches on Steve's face. She offered him a kind smile, pretending that she didn't notice him watching them as they walked away.

She had long learned that there were many things that she could protect people from, but heartache was not one of them. And right now, she didn't even know where to start.

xoox

Steve followed Diana to her room.

It was an odd feeling, to be relieved to be here. He knew from Alfred, that the lake house was Thomas Wayne's present to his wife and that Thomas and Martha had used it as a summer house a long time ago. And while Steve could understand Bruce's attachment to it, he couldn't grasp how someone like Bruce Wayne, a man obsessed with privacy and the need for solitude, could stand all the glass and exposure, no matter how remote. No matter the sentimentality attached to this place. Couldn't imagine Bruce's inner alarms not going off at the sight of the forest surrounding the property or the silence that would settle over them at night.

No wonder the place had a state-of-the-art security system, although even that didn't always feel like enough. Whenever they had the curtains open at night, Steve couldn't help but feel like they were being watched from the dark.

Apparently, paranoia had been one of the fun mementos that he had brought home from the front with him.

However, tonight, after spending a night in a place drenched in pain, anguish, and despair, there was comfort even to the glass walls and the eerie darkness outside them.

Diana closed the door behind the two of them. He turned to her, taking note of the nervous energy radiating off of her, nearly palpable to the touch. He was used to that with Barry who seemed to be almost vibrating more often than not, but with Diana—

She let go of his hand and stepped away to set her phone down on the dresser. It didn't escape Steve's attention that she seemed to have trouble looking at him, and his heart twisted achingly behind his ribs. She was harder to read now, unlike those early days together when she was like an open book, but in this moment, her face was betraying so much that he was scared to even guess what was going on in her head. It was like her feelings were spilling over the brim against her will, and the magnitude of it was frightening.

"Diana…" he started.

She looked up and offered him a watery smile that didn't quite reach her eyes.

Here, they couldn't hear Alfred rummaging in the kitchen or the blasts and gunfire of Barry's video game (why on Earth anyone would be so fascinated with made-up wars was beyond Steve, but he had long stopped trying to grasp it). Here, it was just the two of them, cut off from the rest of the world.

And all of a sudden, he was at a loss for words.

"Are you sure you're not hungry?" Diana asked.

He shook his head. "I was not joking about the green Jell-O," he said, his own smile only a degree more real than hers. "Wouldn't be surprised if one day we start using it as a weapon of mass destruction. I swear, half the people who end up in a hospital bed get well twice as fast just so they can get away from the stuff."

The joke fell flat between them, and he grimaced. He didn't mean to be dismissive and brush off what had happened the night before, but he didn't necessarily want to stew it in, either. She had told him that her bringing him back didn't have a lasting effect, but he still hated the idea, hated knowing that she was losing a part of herself because of him, however temporary. If they started down that path, there was no coming back, and Steve didn't think that he wanted to know what kind of people they would be at the end of that journey.

If nothing else, he knew himself well enough to understand that he would start losing his mind if he allowed himself to venture there and stick around for a while.

He sighed and stepped towards her, half-expecting Diana to try to put the distance between them again.

She didn't.

"I could get you some tea," she offered, reaching for him now that he was close enough to touch. She smoothed her palms over his chest, her brows pulling together ever so slightly when they brushed over his brace.

He watched her lips press together.

"I'm fine," Steve promised. Quite frankly, the painkillers, while doing a spectacular job, were making him somewhat queasy and the idea of food did not sound particularly appealing. However, he chose to keep that small fact to himself, not wanting to give her another reason to worry. "A shower would be nice, though," he added.

Diana's fingers trailed along his brace.

"Alright," she nodded.

She started to move away from him, but Steve reached for her, winding his good arm around her waist and drawing her close again until she was so close that they were breathing the same air; that he could feel her heartbeat. He needed to touch her. Wanted to reassure himself that they had made it through this nightmare in one piece, a little battered but otherwise unharmed, and still moving forward.

Encouraged by her lack of resistance, he allowed his hand to slip beneath her jacket and under the hem of her shirt, running his fingertips back and forth along the base of her spine.

Her breath hitched as she arched a little, her hands flexing on his hips.

"Come with me," Steve asked quietly.

Diana looked up, her eyes finding his, and this time, there was an amused glint in her gaze. One eyebrow arched, she clarified: "To the shower?"

He bowed his head closer to her, until their foreheads were almost touching and her breath was falling on his chin. It wasn't about sex or physical intimacy, although, god help him, there was barely a moment in the past few weeks when he didn't want her with a painful intensity. At times, it had still seemed to him that she was going to slip right between his fingers, that he was going to wake up in an empty bed and realize that it had all been a dream, and the only time when the fear of losing her wasn't eating up at him was when she was wrapped in his arms and he had other things to focus on.

Things that made the years they had spent apart fall away.

Right now, though, it wasn't about that. It was about closeness and comfort and learning that there was no longer anything that they had to deal with on their own. About showing her that he was scared too, not knowing how to even put it into words.

"I just don't want to be alone," he murmured.

After a moment, Diana nodded and repeated, "Alright."

She stepped back from him and shrugged out of her jacket, dropping it on the bed. She moved back to him, her hands sliding underneath his jacket and over his shoulders, where it slid easily down his arms when she pushed at it, catching it before it fell to the floor and placing it on top of hers. She reached her hand out to take Steve's, twining their fingers together.

He was too tired to be surprised. Or, perhaps, he shouldn't have been. Perhaps she needed this as much as he did.

In the bathroom, Diana paused before him, her hand hovering over his chest for a moment before she allowed her fingertips to skitter over the fabric of his shirt – over his chest and down his shoulder and along his forearm. Two faint lines appeared between her eyebrows, and Steve barely resisted the urge to smooth them out with her thumb, the way he did sometimes when she looked so serious it was almost comical.

"Does it hurt?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head. "No. Not really." They had given him a painkiller before he left the hospital, and provided a prescription that Diana had picked up at the pharmacy on the ground floor in case his discomfort got bad. "It might," he added, watching her. "It probably will, later. But it's okay now."

The one thing that Steve most certainly was grateful for in this day and age was the medical care that he couldn't have even imagined the day when he had fallen from his bicycle, aged 8, and ended up with a broken clavicle. He remembered the shock of the initial pain and was aware of a barely noticeable bump he only knew was there because he knew where to look, but the rest of it was soft around the edges, a memory too old to still hold on to, and not pleasant enough to bother.

Diana nodded absently, seemingly unconvinced, but didn't push for more.

She stepped closer to him, and he had to remind himself to breathe, the lovesick fool that he was. Her fingers danced over the shell of the brace but didn't linger, moving down his abdomen and sliding beneath the hem of his shirt. She hiked it up, and Steve dutifully lifted his arms to allow her to slide it over his head, careful so as not to hurt him.

"Sorry," she murmured when his chin got caught on the collar.

"S'okay," Steve muttered, his voice muffled.

Diana let out a small laugh and smoothed her hands over his rumpled hair that was sticking out in every which way when his head finally emerged.

And then he heard her inhale sharply in abject horror when her gaze fixed on the bruises splotched over his skin, purple and blue and raw-looking. He hadn't made anything of it when he had first seen them spreading over his ribs in all their unpleasant glory. His heart was beating, after all, and to Steve, it was the one thing that had mattered. He should have known she would see it differently.

"Diana…"

She was shaking his head, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. Her hands moved very gentle over his skin, tracing along the old scars and over new markings, so delicate that in that moment Steve could hardly believe that those were the hands that could crumble concrete like it was soft clay.

He would bet his very last cent that the world couldn't even begin to imagine how gentle she could be.

"I should have stopped this," Diana breathed, the remorse in her voice slicing through the air between them.

"My choice, remember?" he said, watching her eyes move over his left shoulder, then his ribs. He wished he could make it better for her, but knew it was hardly possible. If she was hurt, he'd hate it too. He'd hate it more than anything. "It was my choice."

A pause.

"Diana, look at me," he asked quietly.

She did, the anguish pooling in her gaze almost unbearable.

His good hand slid around her to rest on the small of her back as he shifted closer to her, blue eyes locked on her black ones.

"I'm okay," Steve promised, his face open, his voice earnest. "This is nothing, I can't even feel it. Most of it," he amended when she arched an eyebrow slightly. "It will heal."

She wanted to argue, he could see that much. Could almost hear what she was thinking – that it was not the point, and that healing didn't diminish the impact of her having to watch him die. And she'd maybe even call him something unflattering again. Steve wouldn't have blamed her for the latter. Instead, she smoothed her palms over his chest, her hands brushing very carefully over his ribs. She sighed, and Steve felt the tightness in the pit of his stomach ease at last. A wordless compromise that they would both have to live with one way or another.

He didn't resist the urge to lean forward and kiss her then, fingers flexing on the fabric of her shirt.

Diana kissed him back, the need simmering just beneath the surface making Steve dizzy. Making it very easy for him to ignore a sting in his split lip that did not appreciate this idea. For Diana, he suspected, he'd ignore more than that.

Her mouth moved down towards his chin, along his jaw. "You really do need that shower," she murmured into the curve of his neck, and when she leaned back to look at him, her face was solemn but her eyes alight.

He chuckled, and then laughed, pushing his hand into his hair. "Yeah, well, not all of us can smell like a summer meadow even after a fight."

She grinned and brushed her thumb over his cheek, "And a shave."

Steve turned his head into her touch, kissing the heel of her palm. "One wish at a time, Princess," he murmured.

Diana rolled her eyes a little, her fingers moving absently over his clavicle. "Charmer."

He smiled. "You're a goddess," he pointed out. "I gotta have something working for me." He cleared his throat then. "And um, speaking of which…"

His eyes darted to the shower cubicle in the corner and then down to his injured arm, his brows pulling together.

Diana followed his gaze.

"I'm not quite sure—" Steve started. "I'm not supposed to take it off."

"Don't go anywhere," she squeezed his arm briefly before disappearing behind the door.

"Couldn't even if I wanted to," he muttered under his breath.

When the bedroom door opened and then closed behind Diana, Steve stepped out of his shoes and pulled off his socks before padding barefoot towards the sink and the massive mirror hanging over it, his toes curling on the cool tiled floor, the touch of it pleasantly soothing. The view in the mirror on the other hand? Not so much.

In the hospital bathroom earlier that day, he'd had the pleasure of discovering a massive bruise taking up most of his left cheekbone and his lower lip slightly swollen but his eye surprisingly not as bad as Steve imagined it would be. He had already made his peace with that. But the hospital mirror was a small thing that, he thought, was probably meant to hide the worst of what people might not want to see. Bruce Wayne had spared no expense when it came to outfitting his house, and the man staring back at Steve right now in the reflection grimaced when he took in the damage that Diana had ended up being exposed to a few minutes ago.

Gingerly, Steve touched his good hand to the tender spot under his left eye that was slightly puffy still and would remain that way, he knew, for at least a couple more days. A pang of pain shot through his ribs when he leaned forward and closer to the mirror to have a better look, and Steve straightened up with a wince, his teeth gritted against it. Somehow, a sprained wrist appeared to be the least alarming of all his sustained injuries, it seemed.

He turned when the bathroom door opened again, and Diana reappeared with a roll of cling wrap in her hand—a roll that Alfred would normally use to cover leftovers. He raised an eyebrow, curious and skeptical in equal measure.

"Should I be worried?" Steve asked but she only hummed noncommittally.

He allowed her to wrap that thing around his brace and secure it with strips of duct tape, her hands working expertly as though it was something that Diana did every day, her brows furrowed in concentration. Steve watched her work with careful precision, his lips pressed around a smile. It wasn't often that he got to just look at her, taking her in as he pleased. More often than not, Diana would look back at him and smile, and effectively render him speechless, his mind suddenly blank.

Now, though, she was too preoccupied to notice him staring. And so he did it because he loved looking at her. He still couldn't believe that she was real, and here, and his .

His fingers itched to reach and tuck a piece of hair that had escaped her ponytail around her ear. Or better yet – to pull the band off and let her hair spill in luxurious waves over her shoulders like he had last night at the hospital. To do something that would chase away the worry lurking in the bottom of her eyes, that she didn't know how to hide.

Diana nodded a little to herself when the wrap was secure and sealed around his brace to her satisfaction and straightened up, leaning back from him. Steve observed the results of her work.

"I feel like a piece of leftover turkey," he noted.

She huffed. "Well, maybe you'll think twice before doing something reckless next time."

"When did that ever stop me?"

Her lips twitched, the corners tugging upwards despite her trying to look displeased with his attitude.

Steve lifted his hand to trace his thumb over her bottom lip. "There she is," he murmured, his voice low like he was worried to scare the moment away.

Without another word, Diana stepped back from him. Her fingers curled over the hem of her shirt and she lifted it up, pulling it over her head. She draped it over the lip of the bathtub and kicked her boots off next before she stepped toward the shower cubicle to turn on the water, the sound of it filling the space around them. She walked back to Steve then, her hand hesitating for a moment on the buckle of his belt as she looked up at him, an eyebrow raised expectantly.

"I can do that," Steve said.

She shook her head. "No, let me."

He could do it. Even with one hand, he was more than capable of undressing himself if he needed to. But he also knew that it wasn't about his capabilities or limitations. Last night, Diana had lost control over everything in a way she wasn't used to. He meant what he had said earlier – it was his choice to do what he did. None of what had happened was her fault.

Yet, knowing it and accepting it were two entirely different things, and they both understood that. They could not go back in time now and take different steps and make different choices and win back the second or two that could have changed everything.

But he could give her this. She needed to take care of him, needed it on a visceral level, and he chose to let her.

He nodded, and she unzipped his jeans, pushing them down his legs. His boxers followed suit, and Steve stepped out of them, leaving them on the tiled floor.

There was a crude patchwork of bruises trickling from his hip and down his left thigh from when he had tried to break his fall after Lex Luthor first hit him, sending him flying across half of the plaza. The memory flared up in his mind, too bright for comfort. Steve took a slow breath and pushed it away, for the time being, choosing to focus on the woman before him who stood up once more.

"Always at a disadvantage," Steve muttered, glancing between his naked self and Diana's still half-clothed body.

She smirked, tilting her head slightly. "Are you, now?"

His finger hooked through the belt loop of her pants and he tugged her closer, his thumb running along the waistband, just barely touching her skin. He tried not to think of how her breath audibly caught in her throat, but couldn't stop his gaze from dropping down to her mouth.

"No, I'm really not," he murmured, dragging his eyes back up. He tugged at the belt loop once more. "Take this off."

She did.

He followed her into the cubicle, wisps of steam curling between and around their bodies. Diana stepped under the spray, turning her face up to it, eyes closed. For a long moment, Steve merely watched her, his eyes moving over the line of her shoulders, the curve of her spine, her bronze skin, following the movement of her hands as she smoothed her wet hair back from her face. Eventually, he moved to her, his good arm slipping around her waist from behind, his chest pressed to her back, his bad arm hanging at his side.

"How long will it be till you're sick of me being so damn breakable," he muttered, words he wasn't sure he meant to speak out loud.

Her fingers skittered back and forth along his forearm. "You really have no idea how much I love you, do you?" she breathed.

Steve felt his lips twitch, curving into a small smile. "It's only been a hundred years, I'm still getting used to the idea," he noted.

There was something about her at that moment that reminded him of a tightly wound coil. Steve had seen it in the tense lines around her eyes several minutes ago, even when she smiled. He could feel it in every muscle of her body now, so rigid that it felt like she was cut from a piece of granite, so different from the soft curves that he was used to.

He dipped his head and pressed a kiss to Diana's shoulder, marvelling in her closeness and the feel of the hot water against his sore body. His eyes dropped closed.

"I love you, too," he murmured, his mouth lingering on her skin.

A sigh stuttered out of her chest, reverberating into him. "You frightened me," she spoke, her voice so soft it nearly drowned in the sound of the running water.

His arm flexed around her, tightening his hold. Steve pressed his lips to the back of her head. "I know, I'm sorry," he said.

For a long while, they merely stood there, his heart beating against her shoulder blades and his fingers running idly over her ribs that moved slightly as she breathed. There was no need for words.

At last, her muscles began to relax, tension seeping out of her with every measured exhale. She shifted, putting some space between them, and turned around to face him, drops of water glistening on her skin and clinging to her eyelashes. And once again, his mind went back to the moment when she had pulled him out the sea, ever a saviour.

There was still unease to her gaze, albeit a lot less pronounced than before, and he chose to take it as a good sign.

This was when he could ask about the demons haunting her. He could wait, too, giving her a chance to open up on her own terms. He weighed his options and went for the third one. Reaching around Diana, he picked up a washcloth from the rack that housed an assortment of bottles. The logistics of having to deal with soap as well, while having only one functioning hand eluded him for a second, his brows pulling together when the issue dawned on him.

Smiling, Diana took the washcloth from him.

"Let me," she said, reaching for one of the bottles.

She squeezed some pleasantly-smelling substance on the washcloth and moved closer to him. Her fingers skimming over his skin, tracing his scars and the lines of his muscles. She lifted her other hand and smoothed the washcloth over his clavicle, leaving a foamy trail behind, her touch so gentle that it made his own breath hitch.

She was as thorough with this process as she had been careful with undressing him earlier. Steve watched her with quiet affection, feeling his body relax under the slow movement of her hands, soothed by the comfortable intimacy of the moment and hoping that the lake house had ample supply of hot water.

He wanted this shower to never end.

Diana's hand pressed lightly into his good shoulder, and he turned around dutifully, allowing her to continue on with her task as she pleased. Being bathed by a goddess – now that was something beyond his wildest dreams and imagination. Who was he, a mere mortal, to protest?

He felt the washcloth paint its way over his shoulder blades, down his spine. Diana rested her other palm on his side, and he covered it with his hand, running his thumb slowly over her knuckles.

"I don't have to do it, you know," Steve spoke after a while. She paused briefly, just enough for him to know that she had heard him. "You do, but I don't," he added when she didn't say anything. "The… saving the world stuff. If you'd rather I stopped—"

"I can't ask that of you," Diana interjected softly.

He turned his head slightly to the side. She was standing very close to him now, so much so that he could feel the warmth of her skin with the whole length of his body.

"You're not asking," he said. "I'm offering."

Diana's arm slipped around him, palm splayed flat over his abdomen. Steve felt her lips glide over his shoulder where the spray of water had washed off the suds, her other hand that was still holding the washcloth frozen just below his ribs.

"Whether or not I'm involved with the League, it has nothing to do with us," he added when she remained silent, his fingers running idly along her forearm. "We will be together regardless. It has never been a matter of choice between any of this and being with you. And if it was, I'd choose you."

"You're a soldier, Steve," she murmured into his skin. "I would never take that away from you. I would never have the right to do it."

"There's nothing to take. The world needs you. It doesn't need me." He paused. "Not in the same way, at least."

"I need you," she said.

His heart stuttered, tripping over itself behind his ribs.

For a moment, Steve allowed himself to imagine what it could be like to walk away from all of this. To tell Amanda Waller to go to hell and just follow Diana to Paris. To sleep as much as he wanted, to cook her dinners and have the kind of life that he had thought he would eventually have before the war, when there was still room for dreams in his life.

It was a nice image. They could make it work, Steve thought. They hadn't always been about fighting for what was right. He remembered those other times well.

And then he imagined sitting in her kitchen and twiddling his fingers impatiently, waiting for Diana to come home. Imagined watching the news and wondering if she was in the centre of one battle or another, Wondering if she was hurt. Imagined having to put away her dinner because she never made it home in time, and not even be within his right to be upset about it because even his damned selfishness didn't go that far.

The peaceful life was a good thing to dream of, but in reality, he knew that it would take him all of two weeks to start feeling like he was losing his mind.

Steve swallowed, biting back the swear rising in his throat. He opened his mouth to argue, but nothing came out. He couldn't lie to her. She was right. When wasn't she? This life was all he'd known for so long that it was running in his veins, thick as blood.

"There's nothing I wouldn't do to be with you," he said softly after a moment. "I just—I need you to know that."

"I do."

He turned around and Diana moved to him, arms snaking around his waist. She nuzzled into him, her mouth moving from his shoulder to his neck, seeking comfort more than anything – and always so very careful with his battered body. He wrapped his good arm around her, holding her tightly, her breath hot on his skin.

Mellow against him, her body no longer felt charged with tension.

Diana pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw and murmured something against his skin, the words rolling easily and effortlessly from her tongue. Steve felt the heat rise inside of him.

"English, please," he whispered into her ear, smiling, his hand moving lazily over her back, thinking that he ought to pick up on more Greek.

"I have lost fights before. I have lost lives before," Diana muttered into his neck. "But I can't stand the thought of losing you."

Steve felt his throat close up, thick with emotion.

He drew back just enough to be able to see her and bowed his head until his forehead was pressed to hers. "I'm not going anywhere, Diana. I swear to god I'm not going anywhere."

It was a weak promise, one that he had no right to give, and they both knew it. He thought that she was going to argue, but after a moment or two, Diana just nodded, although if it was in agreement with him or merely to acknowledge his words, he wasn't sure. She lifted her hands to his face, smoothing her thumbs over his stubble, lean fingers moving slowly over his skin.

"We made a deal," she said, her lips curving into a small smile.

"We did," he agreed.

And a deal is a promise, and a promise is unbreakable , he thought.

At least some of them were.

She moved away then, and Steve let her, watching her set the washcloth back on the rack and pick up a bottle of shampoo instead. He obliged without a word when she squeezed some onto her palm and turned to him, one eyebrow arched, and despite himself, he laughed.

His own attempt to be of any assistance to Diana with only one functional hand had failed terribly, his frustration earning him a giggle from her that caused his pulse to stutter and then a smile so brilliant that he all but forgot how to breathe.

There was nothing that Steve enjoyed about being tossed around by some megalomaniac with a God complex like he was nothing but a toy, but he liked the aftermath, he could admit that much. He most certainly did like this.

Once she'd washed her hair as well, Diana reached over and turned the shower off, the sudden silence around them odd to Steve's ears. She pushed the glass door open and stepped out onto the bath mat. He followed her, wisps of steam still clinging to their bodies. She reached for one of the towels hanging on a rack and wrapped it around herself. Picked up another one and turned to Steve to brush it over his body, the movement of her hands careful and measured.

Again, he couldn't help but think of the contrast between Diana the warrior and Diana the lover, and it couldn't be more striking.

"Thank you," he murmured, looping a piece of damp hair around her ear as he watched her unwrap the film from around his brace.

Diana glanced up at him. "You're welcome."

He wondered if she knew that he wasn't talking about her help right now. Not really.

Soft towel wrapped around his body, he followed Diana back to the bedroom. If he felt tired before, he was feeling completely drained now, relaxed from the hot water and the comfort of her presence, some sort of numbness taking over his mind. If she wanted to take charge, he was more than willing to let her.

She dove into the closet and emerged from it with a pair of his boxers. Steve bit his lip, swallowing a comment that was more suited for a situation when no clothes were needed at all. Maybe tomorrow, after he'd had a good night's sleep and no longer left more dead than alive, and the thought was oddly uplifting.

He allowed her to help him put his underwear on.

"A shirt?" Diana asked, straightening up.

Steve shook his head. "No, this is good."

She nodded. Her fingers skimming lightly over the bruising on his ribs, a slight frown appearing briefly between her brows as if she was trying to find her own X-ray vision to see how bad it all was, but she didn't say anything and Steve chose not to ask.

He watched her peek into the closet again, pulling one of his button-ups from the hanger. She pulled it on, rolling up the sleeves a few times so the cuffs wouldn't hang low over her hands, and picked up her towel once more to wring her hair out properly.

"Diana," he called, his mouth suddenly dry.

She looked up.

He swallowed. "Are we good?"

A shadow of confusion passed over her features, brows pulling together when she failed to grasp the thread of the conversation at once. Then recognition dawned.

She let the towel fall on the bed and stepped towards him. Her hands reached for him, framing his face between her palms.

"Of course," she murmured, her thumbs running over his cheeks. "Of course we are."

She leaned forward, finding his lips, the kiss soft and languid as her hands moved into his damp hair and down over his shoulder. His hand slid to rest on the small of her back, pulling her closer, allowing himself to get lost in the moment because he missed her, and didn't even know until this moment how much. His chest was heaving when she drew back – too soon, for Steve's liking.

"I almost lost you," Diana whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth, her breath hot on his skin. "It scares me to think of that. I only just got you back."

He ducked his head close to hers, their faces almost touching.

"So much of my life was spent losing you," she said, leaning back just far enough for their eyes to meet. Her hand smoothed over his hair. Steve watched her take an unsteady breath. "I need—" she faltered, a sigh rising in her chest. "I need to stop being afraid," she finished, her voice dropping to a whisper.

Steve nodded reluctantly. The feeling was all too familiar – he had spent enough of his life being scared of losing people he cared about, that he forgot what not feeling it felt like, the heaviness of it pressing down on him making it hard to breathe. Yet, her words still stung.

He hated it. Hated knowing that he couldn't fix this for her, and hated being the cause of it even more.

Yet another thing they needed to learn to deal with, one way or another.

Diana's nails scratched through the hair on the nape of his neck, her eyes searching his face. "You need to get some rest, yes?"

Steve was not going to argue with that. There was no point in trying to tackle everything that had happened over the past 24 hours right now. Now when it still felt so raw and new and almost incomprehensible.

He climbed under the covers, stretching out on his back, expensive sheets pleasantly cool against his skin. He let out a long breath, feeling his eyelids grow heavier with each passing moment, the pleasure of relative comfort almost too much to bear.

He blinked sleepily, stifling a yawn. It wasn't even that late, Steve thought absently. Somewhere in the house, Barry was still wide awake, fighting monsters in the safety of knowing that none of them were real, while Bruce was probably stuck under his jet or poking at the insides of the Batmobile, the normalcy of it staggering.

Through the half-open door, he watched Diana brush her hair in front of the bathroom mirror, his gaze moving over her shirt-clad body, with her long legs stretching from under the hem. When she looked up, catching him staring at her, he patted the spot next to him with his good hand and whispered, "Come here."

She turned off the lights and padded across the dark room, a glost in his pale shirt. The mattress dipped under the weight of her body when she slipped under the sheets and crawled closer to him. There was a rustling of fabric as she settled and a soft sigh when her head touched the pillow. Steve turned his head and found her studying him in the dark, her arm tucked under her cheek.

Because it was so dark, and he was too tired and too groggy from whatever they had given him earlier at the hospital to help with the pain, he said exactly what he was thinking.

"I don't want you to be afraid."

Diana lifted her hand, reaching for him. She stroked his cheek, her eyes searching his even though Steve could barely see her properly.

"You make me very happy, Steve Trevor," she said after a moment, her voice dropping like she was sharing a secret. A confession that, despite everything, made him feel light as air.

"Even when I look like someone has used me as a punching bag?" Steve clarified.

It hurt to smile, his swollen lips protesting the twitch of his muscles, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

She traced her fingers along his jaw. "I like taking care of you."

"I like having you take care of me."

"Although, I do not like seeing you hurt," she admitted.

That was a sentiment he shared wholeheartedly.

"Not much fun on my end, either," Steve muttered, his words slurred and unfocused.

Diana shifted closer to him, settling into his side like she had done the previous night, his good arm coming to wrap around her. Her leg slung over one of his under the covers and her arm draped over his abdomen, she exhaled slowly,

"You make me happy, too," he breathed. Or thought that he did.

She hummed noncommittally, relaxing into him, soft and warm against his body.

He must have said something, after all.

He fell asleep before he had a chance to make sure.

---

A/N: Welp, only a few more chapters left. I'm not sure I'm ready.

As always, feedback and general yelling and key-smash are much appreciated.