Segment Note: Continuation of Waiting Arms, somewhat song oriented again. Diana gets unexpected visitors and decides to face her people as well as her gods. Someone else will tag along because he won't let her face it along as he faced much of his trial alone. Allusions made to much of Greek mythology and history due to certain character references.
I can only give you everything, I've got
I can't be as sorry, as you think I should
But I still love you more than anyone else could
As she stands outside in only one of his dress shirts, she is literally glowing as the wind makes her hair flow with the breeze. She was home though of course she would still have to deal with her mother, that is if her mother would want to hear what happen exactly, so a trip to the island would obviously be in order some day soon. He sneaks up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and kisses her neck. She sighs and shifts her hips against his body so he gives her another kiss on the neck except to the other side. She turns around to kiss him full on the lips before they sit down on the balcony outside his bedroom. There is an audible sonic boom just as something flies by over head before landing on the lawn. Someone unexpected arrives, it is her mother accompanied by Alexa and Artemis, old friends would be an inadequate term to describe the two younger women accompanying her mother. Artemis had flown the Invisible Jet plane to this cove. She hurries to fully dress as does Bruce if only to look decent with not one, but four Amazons on his balcony.
"There was talk you had come back, of course we were heard Man's World news chattering about the disappearance of the Lords. We knew he went on trial for crimes against Man's World, but you were stranded in another reality with those that followed that misguided alien. You being depowered seems appropriate though something tells me you have had a lot to think on since you have been gone daughter."
"Yes mother I have much to think on, I went along with so much of that willingly thinking he was right, that we always had to stomp out things that could turn into what Luthor had almost done to the world, but somehow that was never our job, no we were suppose to help people, not dominate them with what we thought was right."
"It almost broke my heart when I saw you without the original look you had when you first came to represent us and fight for what we believed in this world."
"I am sorry mother."
"If you two have forgiven each other, then perhaps there is more to man than what I always feared was not a quality kept from long ago generations in age of heroes like Odysseus and his ever vigilant wife Penelope. There are many shining misinterpreted examples of man and woman as equals at the walls of society where their problems nearly did destroy them."
"I was planning to come home, to put myself before the Gods, to atone..."
"She will have to travel with us to the island for a time, I trust you understand?"
"Yes I understand, I will miss her, but her journey to redemption, to forgiveness, to atonement is not at an end yet."
"You remind me of a man I knew a long time ago, the man who saved Aresia."
"I remember you told me of him after what happen with her years ago."
"He risked and died to save her from drowning, somehow I think you have done something similar except for Diana."
"I love her, that's reason enough for me."
"Your compassion is your real power Bruce Wayne."
"You honor me too well majesty."
"We must be going, she'll be back soon. unless you wish to wait somewhere closer."
"You would allow a man after exiling me for bringing them to stop Faust?"
"Some traditions ought to be more flexible, how else can we forgive, besides I think Hera would understand, she was in love once too."
The five board the Invisible Jet to go to Thermyscira.
Bruce leaves a note for the others. As J'onn reads it, even he gets a little emotional for once in a long time.
The road starts somewhere, begin anew we must, love really can save you. Gone to the Island.
As the skies blur around them, day turns to night again by the time they reach the island.
Somewhere in between the invisible raindrops beneath a full moon glowing through the vapor clouds, look skyward, something connects in the moment, end of line.
The island is flourishing insofar as it could be without much contact with the outside world since Diana's disappearance. There would be some to resent her for initially betraying the Amazons beliefs, but many had come to this opinion that her mother had to contend with as she kept trying to hold the society together even as her daughter fought more for the things that were not things that Amazons believe true. As they enter the amphitheater, there is something of an uproar, some negative, many positive, and the rest are silent. Bruce already saw this kind of reaction firsthand for himself at his trial.
Your parents would be disappointed in you, the city is ashamed of you, you are a vigilante that belongs with those brain fried kooks you fought with in Arkham.
He took it all with a vaguely tranquil demeanor yet the crowd here also did not take kindly to him being there as some believe him to be part of what 'corrupted' her, maybe they were right in some small way, but they had not seen him action with the deceptively small things that never made news or media broadcast. He feels afraid for her, but knows she has to face them, face the lights, face the dark, face whatever they have to say to her.
"Sisters, I have failed you all, I went to Man's World to save it from destruction, whether it was from the outside or the inside, only to fail to realize that I too was fallible. Man has his effect on me, but we cannot blame them entirely for what happens in their world. It is easy to be a pillar of beliefs, here or there, but it is how you hold when you experience what it means to be a literal Atlas, to be a Nero when a city burns, to be an Orpheus when a loved one dies yet if you look back its over, to be Gorgo while your beloved Leonidas stands in the ranks at the pass, to be an Odysseus trying your hardest to get home... worrying you have lost your way and don't deserve to be welcomed back... to stand before what used to be your entire world and see it turn its back on you..."
The crowd is silenced, some are on the verge of crying, others that were initially giving her a hard time just flop, and she even looks a little disheartened having said those things. She begins to walk among them, there are hugs, there are tears, and there are a scattered handful of those who can't face her either for shame or belief that she is too easily forgiven. However she has made the leap, stood before, and of course, they were not the only ones listening so as she enters the Temple of Athena, there are many goddesses that she had often prayed to waiting for her. Bruce waits by the shore line staring out into the distance though he worries what the goddesses will decide until someone comes up besides him, it is Aurora, goddess of the dawn. She caught him humming a song, a silly irony for her to be the dawn and him speaking of light.
Light up, light up
As if you have a choice
Even if you cannot hear my voice
I'll be right beside, you dear
"You need not worry brave soul. Her love for you is as bright as the dawn that comes when you want the rest of your life to flow having the most treasured element within your life forever. It is as you had once said long ago, not enough to believe, but important to have faith rewarded, besides, there are more than a few that are indebted to your service of humanity especially Themis, considering how well learned you are ... you know who I refer to."
"Yes I do, after meeting Diana, I realized that perhaps a lot of what I have read might be true somewhere, somehow, and to meet a goddess is certainly proof."
"I once had a lover, I asked for him to be immortal, I only forgot that he should never age, my silly error, but even as he grew old I love him forever."
"Mortality is its own design, I maybe mortal, but it is time for me to live the life I keep avoiding despite how much of a half life I already had without her love."
As the goddesses announce their decision, she knows the worse might still happen, but to be mere mortal does not scare her so long as she has Bruce.
"You will regain your powers, you will become impervious too most injuries, but your immortality is the price of forgiveness though we suspect you have found merit in being mortal because of that servant of Themis."
"Yes my goddesses, I accept your judgment."
"Then live well Diana, you may have strayed, you may have done many things, but there is something we of Olympus forget by denying we too have more in common with mortals except the living forever part."
They have told her some further things, which she accepts as she would done the same anyway whether she was on the island or not. She cries a little after knowing that she could stay with him, have a life as long as they were both together. As she catches up with Bruce at the beach, he is wading in the shore line, quite wet, but she does not mind as she kisses him under a light rain that puts a mist over the full moon over their heads.
"I love you Bruce."
"Love you too Princess."
She kisses him again biting his lip and he aggressively pulls her into the next wave with him. She cracks up laughing as her clothes get drenched as much as his were already getting just awhile ago. It really could be like a paradise, if only for intermittent eternies in each other's embrace. They would return to Gotham, but not tonight. Tonight she is truly on her way to being an Amazon again fully and she had the love of her life unable to let her go on the damp sands of Thermyscira's endless coast line. It did not matter to him whatever conditions she had to agree to because he had more than a few of his own to live with every day. It is enough to lie under these stars with her.
If I just lay here
Would you just lie with me
And just forget the world?
Forget what we were told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden
That's bursting with life
Stars fill the night sky as she pulls closer to him as the waves splash close to their feet.
Hippolyta is grateful for the goddesses' decision and believes both of them have more than earned this. She only worries more for them as the Fates were less than clear as of late about what is happening with the strands, but she recalls an old phrase, fortune favors the bold, perhaps it favor the brave too. There is no shortage of that in them nor is there any doubt of their love because even Aphrodite weeps tonight.
She recalls all her old friends that gave up their immortality for their men, for their hearts, she had almost done it once herself, but that was long ago when she was as young and as in love as her daughter looks and feels now. Such an energy, an essence is meant to be kept, fought for, because there is little else that is as precious or priceless. The two while from different lives, different worlds, something had gotten into the other, and they couldn't bear to let the other just walk away forever.
Happy lost in your hair
The scene drifts back to Bruce and Diana cozy on the sand such a beautiful from here, they would not let it end.
A/N 1: Thermyscira, so its back to the island, well I said she would have to face up to this too, and of course they are forgiving with something of a price. However, mortality is its own gift, renders meaning deeply into things like love, maybe I am a little sappy, romantic, and poetic, but sometimes they also say confession or testifying is a spiritual thing to be done when the need is great.
A/N 2: If you have seen Little Piggy, you'll get the Themis reference, though Aurora is a little something from the poetry of Tennyson, but she also belongs to the supernatural realm of the Greek and Roman pantheons.
A/N 3: Other fics I have read have mentioned feminine heroics of the past, I took it a little further mixing the roles up to both men and women.