A/N: I can't tell you how happy I am to get all the love and kind words about this story. It really makes me proud to be able to provide that for all of you who are reading this. So let me just give you a huge THANK YOU!
That said, I really have no idea where this story is going which is why each chapter sorta marks it as the end. But in truth, I write when I get the next scene inspiration or if something someone comments on sparks an idea. Believe me, I am loving it as much as you. So who knows where this will go. It's a mystery. So I'll leave it marked with a question marks as unfinished until it truly is The End. :)
Enjoy!
She runs, fast and furiously across the top lateral bracing of bridge. The creature gallops fast and faster. Bruce swings the Batwing toward the other side of the traverse with the intention to shoot it down as she corners it. They close the distance. Coming faster and faster, the eyes of the creature bulge in his windshield with a menacing furor. Snarling teeth drip with venom.
Bruce fires.
The roar of his gun canon sprays fire from the expulsion of a hailstorm of bullets. The creature screams and rears back. She's there, leaping onto the creatures back. She plunges the sword into its neck as he continues to fire into the creature's chest.
Bruce's pulse races in his ears then stops dead. Time slows and he can't breathe. She's hit. One of the Batcanon's bullets hit her in the shoulder. She flies back. He hears her scream in his earpiece.
"Diana!"
His own modulated voice erupts from his throat.
She falls.
And falls.
And falls.
There's nothing he can do.
Barry's not here.
Cyborg is not here.
Arthur is in Atlantis.
Superman is needed in South America.
She plunges deep into the water below.
The creature falls landing next to her.
She's gone.
Bruce gasps and sits bolt upright. Sweat pours from his face and over his chest. He drags in lungfulls of air on rapid, ragged breaths. His fists clench the sheet over his waist. When his eyes adjust to the darkened room, he takes a relieved breath and looks over his shoulder to the curves beneath the sheet beside him.
She's alive.
She's sleeping.
He runs a hand over his eyes to wipe the dream from his vision. Only it wasn't a dream. It was real. The angry red mark marring her shoulder tells him the truth. She is healing. But she almost died. And he almost killed her.
He slips out from the sheet and pulls on a pair of pants and a t-shirt before he goes out to the kitchen for a glass of water. Greedily, he swallows to moisten his dry throat. He knows from experience there's no going to sleep after, so he goes down to the cave to do some work. And forget.
An hour passes before she makes her way down the steps. He almost smiles. If he wasn't in such a state, he'd be amused by her lack of stealth. She knows he knows she's there so she runs a hand over his shoulders as she rounds his chair. He stops typing and looks up at her. She's barefoot, dressed only in one of his white dress shirts. Sexy as hell, but her face is serious and there's a concerned tilt to her eyebrows.
"Nightmare?" she asks.
"Yeah." There's no sense in denying it. She's seen them before. The first few times she tried to talk to him about it but has since learned that its better to just roll over and go back to sleep and let him process.
She straddles his thighs and settles herself over his lap. He relishes her weight on him. Her fingers curl into the hair at the back of his head and he closes his eyes. When he opens them, her clean lips, free of lipstick and gloss, smile down at him. Her eyes regard him like a loving embrace and she says, "I'm fine."
He immediately wants to push her away, because he disagrees with everything she means behind those two simple words but she traps in him the chair with the strength of her legs. Her head tilts with a frown. She unbuttons the top of his shirt she's wearing and pulls the two pieces of fabric open to reveal the wound on her chest over her right breast. It's even less red than it was an hour ago. She takes one of his hands and places it over the welt. Her skin is hot where her body works to heal the angry tear of his bullet through her flesh.
"I'm fine."
"Diana…"
"Bruce…" she returns and it's definitely a reprimand. "I am fine."
Her lips take possession of his and there's nothing left to say because she is so very alive above him. Just as much as she was when they made love hours before, after he fished her from the bank of the river and took her home. He was desperate when he touched her then. A man obsessed. Drinking in her life force like a man dying of thirst as if to prove himself that she was still there with him, alive and whole.
Bruce runs his hands over her hips and up her back to pull her closer. She smells like his sheets and his aftershave. Dressed in his shirt, he can't deny that a primal possessiveness stirs in his gut. He knows what this feeling is, knows it's been coming for a long time, but cannot give words to it. Not yet. The vulnerability of what that means terrifies him.
He can admit that. He has. Especially after her fall last night.
If he lost her…
He would be broken beyond repair. He'd already reached the brink with Jason. On top of having his parents ripped from him at such a tender age, losing Jason nearly made him destroy himself. The death of a son was terrible enough for one lifetime, he could not survive the loss of his Princess. Not now.
Her hips shift above his and he groans with desire. His hands slide down to her backside, pulling her that much closer. She has no panties on under the tail of his shirt. He almost cries out in pleasure at the feel of her smooth skin in his hands. She is truly the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
A discreet clearing of the throat stops Bruce cold. A growl tears his lips from the magical column of her throat.
"Do pardon me, Master Bruce, Miss Diana, but breakfast is served."
Diana pulls back to grace his butler with a lovely smile. Everything about Alfred amuses her and she takes the interruption in stride. Bruce not so much. He was about to live out his fantasy of having her in his Batcave chair. And while that might be a little pervy, it would be extremely hot. His hips rise with the anticipation. On second thought, he sinks back into the cushion. Probably a good thing Alfred interrupted because Bruce would never be able to sit in that chair again and not think about how glorious her strong thighs feel over his.
She rolls her lips between her teeth to keep from laughing, but her eyes dance with delight, unashamed at their intimate position. Instead, she drops a lingering kiss on his lips before sliding off of his lap. Bruce closes his eyes to take a personal moment and slow his breathing before he confronts his well-meaning butler.
He rises from the chair and lets the blood flow return to the other more appropriate parts of his body. Rounding the chairback, he sees Diana in all her glory standing like a beacon of light in the center of his dark cave. Her skin glows with a radiance that is truly her own, enhanced by the crisp white of his dress shirt she unceremoniously made claim to from his closet. Her hair falls in undulating waves around her shoulders, loose and bed tousled. And her eyes. They glow like the sun. He used to think Shakespeare was a besotted fool, full of flowery adulations but if the dark lady of his sonnets was anything like the Amazonian princess before him, then it was Bruce who was the fool.
"Thank you for this delicious breakfast, Alfred." She plucks a fresh baked scone from the tray. Bruce can smell the cinnamon and glaze as she takes a generous bite. Much like Barry, she eats heartily when she's healing. A sumptuous moan emits from her throat as she tastes the confection. "Truly amazing, as always."
Damned if Alfred didn't blush at her accolades. Bruce smirks to himself because he can't let the old man know how much it tickles him that Diana loves his pseudo father too. "Can I interest you in some coffee, Miss Diana?"
"No thank you, Alfred," she declines. "I'll just take another scone. I really must get ready. I have a few things to take care of in town this morning."
"Very well." He places one on a plate and hands it to her. All the while Bruce watches the exchange. She kisses the old man on the cheek before she pads up the steps in her bare feet to the elevator. She tosses wink over her should at Bruce before she disappears with a silent promise to resume their activities later. Bruce heart actually flutters in his chest and he shakes his head before turning to nail Alfred with a glare.
The old man shrugs with a decidedly non-apologetic smirk.
"You couldn't have checked the panel feed before you came down here?"
Alfred hands him a full cup of coffee as was their ritual. "And bear witness to things I should not be privy to?"
Bruce huffs at his sarcasm. "You rather see it live and in person?"
"Certainly not." Aflred scoffs and places the tray to the side. "I rather thought you'd hear me before I made it down the steps. Like the hundreds of other times I've entered while you are down here…working."
"I was busy."
"So I gathered."
Irritation ticked at Bruce's jaw. "Can we not?" He gestures with his hand to move them past this uncomfortable conversation.
"Of course, Master Bruce." Alfred ambles over to the workbench. "It appears Miss Diana has recovered from her plunge yesterday."
Bruce runs a hand over his face. Plunge was a mild description of it. Alfred heard then entire battle over the comms, and was equally as rattled when Bruce landed the Batwing on the lift. "She heals fast. Though if anything, the impact only knocked the wind out of her."
"Fortunate."
He rolls his neck recalling images from his dream. "She says that only weapons that can puncture can harm her."
"Swords, arrows." He pauses. "Bullets." It's not an accusation, rather a pointed observation. One that all three of them took for granted.
"I've seen her deflect a rain of machine gun fire, so I'm not sure it's actually a weakness."
"There will always be the one you don't see coming."
"Yes, that's what I'm afraid of." Bruce sits in his chair and swivels to face his butler. "I'd like to develop an armor for her."
Alfred lifts an eyebrow. "A Bat Armor?"
"It doesn't have to be…" Bruce shakes his head, taking note of the tone in Alfred's voice. He's not trying to take ownership of her. "Something like her own armor but that will cover her entire body and be puncture proof."
"Ah, a Kevlar body suit." Alfred sets his wrench down on the table. "Have you discussed this with her?"
"No."
"I see." He wipes his hands and comes to stand before him. "Buying her diner, jewelry and trips to the South of France are romantic gestures. Changing the way that she does battle smacks of possessive control."
"That's not…I don't want to control her." He stands on a sigh, by his inability to express what concerns him coupled with the fact that Alfred is closer to the truth than Bruce realizes. It's more his desire to control what happens to her. To protect her.
His pacing inadvertently takes him near the glass case of another suit and he crosses his arms, closing his eyes.
"You…care for her…most ardently." Alfred's voice is low, full of understanding. He lost a grandson, so he feels the cut just as deep. "It is understandable to be worried."
He turns to look at Alfred. "I can't lose her, Alfred."
"Master Bruce, she is a 5000 years old demi-goddess. She will outlive all of us."
"She and evidently Clark." He's not really sure where that came from. But he'd be lying if the thought hadn't crossed his mind.
"Don't go there. What they do after you and Lois are long gone is none of your concern. Jealousy is an unattractive emotion."
Bruce tosses him a snide look. "Can you at least draw up plans that I can show her, when I discuss it with her?"
"That I can do." He nods and then pauses for a beat. Bruce feels his eyes on him. Knows there's more he's not speaking.
"Say it."
"You should tell her. How you feel."
"I have…somewhat."
"All of it, Bruce. The words, the reservations, the desires. She loves you. Do not push her away because of a misplaced fear."
He looks back to the case. The last time he allowed himself to be vulnerable, to open himself up to love, he was burned badly. This is nowhere near the same circumstance, if anything it was far deeper than that, with so much more to lose.
He turns back to Alfred. "Make sure there's a belt for her lasso and a harness for her shield and sword. And thin enough to accommodate her bracelets."
"Of course, Master Wayne."