Work Text:
It always began the same.
She was walking up a hill. The sunshine was beating down on her back and she could see the bright ocean of Themyscira to her side. She got to the top and...
Steve was there, whole and well. He turned to her and smiled.
It was the same. Always, every night, the same.
--
Diana did not sleep for three nights after Steve...died.
The world tasted like ashes in her mouth as much as it tasted like hope, renewal, Spring. They searched for a body but there was nothing left of him to find. Not even ashes.
They went back to England. Diana told Etta.
Finally, she slept.
She was walking up a hill. The sunshine was beating down on her back and she could see the bright ocean of Themyscira to her side. She got to the top and...Steve was there. He turned to her – whole, well – and smiled.
She ran and threw herself into his arms, weeping.
Steve caught her and held her so tightly it almost felt like everything would be all right. He spoke to her but she could not hear him over her own sobs. She clutched at him and clutched at him until she was sure their bodies would merge, that he would never be able to leave her again.
Diana woke up alone. The city streets rumbled loudly below the window of his – her – apartment. His pillow was wet with her tears.
--
It was the same the next night, and the next, and the next.
Months of it.
Diana did not know if she craved sleep or dreaded it. She tried not to let it show and thought she succeeded. Only Napi looked at her oddly and he left, back to North America, before she could find it in herself to ask.
She was walking up a hill. The sunshine was beating down on her back and she could see the bright ocean of Themyscira to her side. She got to the top and...Steve was there. He turned to her and smiled and...
...and...
Diana was an Amazon. Diana was a demi-god. She wanted to run to him and fling herself into his arms as she had every night since he had died. She did not.
She crossed the distance between them. Steve watched her, carefully, though she could tell all his muscles were tensed, ready to jump to his feet and catch her up in his arms again.
She sat beside him wordlessly. She studied his face, that beloved face. It was the same, exactly the same, perfect, as if this were some kind of cruel trick.
His smile only grew wider, until it felt like the sunshine itself. He took her hand in his and leaned over to kiss her cheek.
His hand was warm and she could feel his breath gust against her cheek. Diana’ shoulders shook and she sobbed.
He felt alive.
Steve reached over and wiped her tears away. His fingers were calloused, there was a scar on his palm. He was exactly as Diana remembered.
His smile was soft and his eyes were kind as he looked at her.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
--
Steve insisted he was real.
Diana walked up the hill, the sunshine on her back. Steve was at the top. He turned to her and smiled and they argued until she woke up in sheets that had long since stopped smelling of him.
Diana wanted him to be real.
But she did not trust it.
She also could not stop touching him.
Steve insisted he was real. He whispered secrets in her ear.
“My sister’s name was Nellie,” he told her, kissing a spot next to the joint of her jaw that made her shiver and burn when he paid too close attention to it.
Etta could have mentioned that in passing and Diana said so.
“She died of consumption when she was twenty-two,” Steve said and there was something sad and embarrassed in his eyes. “Her husband remarried and moved away. I don’t know what happened to my nephews.”
Diana kissed him because they had enough sorrows themselves and she wanted his mouth to taste of sweeter things. He obliged – he obliged enthusiastically, first with his fingers and then with his mouth, on his knees, under her skirt. She grabbed on to his shoulder with one hand to steady herself and tangled the other in his hair. He moaned when she tugged it, as he had in the room in Veld, with the snow falling outside, and worshipped her.
Diana woke up and used her fingers to ease the ache he had left behind.
--
Diana asked Etta about Steve’s sister, what her name was, when she died.
“Nellie,” Etta said, only looking at her a little oddly. “And when she was young, I think. Poor lad didn’t like to talk about it. Didn’t have any family left, I don’t think.”
“No?” Diana asked, trying to be less blunt, less obvious. “I wondered if there was...if there was anyone I could...”
Etta was looking at her like she pitied her now. Diana did not find that any better.
“He mentioned having nephews once,” Diana said. It was not a lie. “William and George.”
Etta blinked. “That’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Etta looked sad and confused and Diana felt embarrassed and ashamed. Surely, Etta would have known, if her dreams were true.
When she fell asleep that night, Diana walked up the hill, the sunshine on her back. Steve was at the top. He turned to her and smiled.
She turned and walked away. She heard Steve calling to her but she did not stop and he did not follow her. She was not sure he could.
Two weeks later, Etta came to her with a stack of carbon copy records, looking flushed and embarrassed.
“He tried to send money to his nephews,” Etta explained, showing Diana the old pay slips filled out in Steve’s neat hand. “But he didn’t have their proper address so, well, it just piled up. It...It all went to you, when he died. He changed his will before he left.”
Diana felt no better holding the slips of paper.
Steve’s smile was sad that night, when she sat down beside him. He sighed, when she wrapped her arms around him, his shoulders slumping. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and tangled his fingers in her hair as if he were the one trying to meld them together this time.
He felt so solid in her arms. Real. It felt painfully, terrible, wonderful to hold him there.
“I missed you,” Steve said.
Diana realized for the first time that she had as much power to hurt him here – if he were real – as he did her.
--
Diana wanted to believe but even his nephews – Etta dealt with his pay stubs. She could have mentioned something, Diana could have seen it, Charlie or Sameer could have said – although they looked at her blankly when she mentioned it.
She needed proof to believe, this time. She could not rejoice in Steve’s return, however limited it was, if it was not real. She would not.
She could not bear to have him back and then have him taken away again. To have him prove a figment of her grief.
Steve sighed when she said as much.
“I understand,” he said but he looked so sad.
“Tell me something Etta would not know,” Diana said. “Something Sameer or Charlie could not tell me when they have had too much to drink.”
“And it has to be something you can check,” Steve said, trying to smile even as his eyes went calculating. “Telling you my sister named our dog Butter when we were kids doesn’t do us any good.”
Diana smiled at that. She could tell he wanted her to, that he had only said it to make her happy for a moment, and she loved him for it.
Steve thought and held her hand and finally looked at her, fierce and melancholy and determined and so very much in love with her she could almost feel it wrapping around her like a cloak.
“My grandfather was Jewish,” Steve said. There was a flush on his cheeks and it looked like every word cost him. “I have never told anyone that – it was a secret. My mother...”
He faltered but here, it was like Hestia’s Lasso was branded into their skins at all times. Lying was so impossible it was not even a consideration. “My mother was scared of it and ashamed of being scared. I am...I was too. We hide it. We never told anyone. Even my father didn’t know.”
Steve looked at Diana, his eyes were bright and blue and laid so completely bare she could not help but take his face in her hands to see them soften with the love he had for her.
He looked at her with love, but the fierceness was still there. His hands slide up her arms, closed gently around her wrists. They stared at each other, so close Diana felt she only had to take another step before they would meld into the same person.
“We never told anyone,” Steve repeated. “But it would be on his immigration record at Ellis Island.”
--
Diana went to America. She had not wanted to leave Etta and Sameer and Charlie but it was she had to know. She had to know whether he was real or if it was only the measure of her grief, that she imagined him so.
It was not easy, to find the records bearing Steve’s grandfather’s name. It took weeks. But Diana was determined. It would be there – Steve would be real – or it would not be and he would be a dream.
Then the record book was in her hand and it was...it was just as Steve had said it would be. Not just his grandfather’s religion but his profession and his port of disembarkation and the name of the ship he had sailed on.
Steve had gotten the spelling of the ship wrong. It was a child’s mistake – hearing one word instead of two and smushing it together. Steve had said his grandfather told him stories about the journey to America when Steve was a child.
Somehow, it was that more than anything – that it was wrong and at the same time right – that convinced her.
Diana sat and stared at it. She did not know whether to laugh or cry.
She wished, not for the first time, that Steve was there beside her, solid and warm and alive with her in the waking world.
When she stepped out the doors of the archive, Napi was waiting for her, standing on the steps of the building.
--
“A ghost walks with you,” Napi told her.
He looked uncomfortable with the idea.
“It’s Steve,” Diana said. “Every night, I dream I am in Themyscira walking up a hill. When I get to the top, Steve is there.”
Napi did not look any more reassured at this news.
“I will arrange a dreamcatcher for you, if you wish,” he told her. He sighed. “Such things are not within my grasp. It may take several weeks. I do not know how much Asibikaashi may disapprove. But I will do this for you, if you wish.”
Diana had known what Napi was upon their first meeting. He had not tried to hide it from her, as Ares had. It was only later that she understood it completely.
Dream weavers were not part of his arts or his culture. He was offering to ask a boon from another god on her behalf.
Words could not express the depth of her appreciation for his friendship.
“Thank you. Truly,” Diana said, pressing his hand. “But he is not malicious. I do not think it would work and I...”
She swallowed but she was truthful. “I would not want it to.”
“You believe it to be truly him, then?” Napi said. “And you are sure he wishes you no harm?”
“Yes,” Diana said. She had never thought Steve wished her harm. If anything, she believed him to be a desperate wish of her own mind. “You believe otherwise?”
“My people’s ghosts are different than your people’s ghosts,” Napi told her. “And I have not had the time with him that you have.”
Napi closed his eyes and inhaled. He kept them closed for a long time. Diana waited.
Finally, he opened his eyes, looked at her and shrugged. “I do not sense any ill will from him but as I said, I have not had as long as you to judge this spirit.”
Diana was shocked. “You can sense him here?”
Napi blinked. “You cannot?”
“No,” Diana said. “He is only there when I am sleeping.”
“You walk with his ghost,” Napi repeated. “He’s beside you.”
Diana closed her eyes and she wanted. Napi inhaled sharply but...she felt nothing out of the ordinary.
She opened her eyes, blinking back tears. She shook her head. “Why can’t I...?”
“Well,” Napi said, shrugging one shoulder. “He does not visit me in dreams.”
--
“I could march into the Underworld,” Diana threatened, that night.
Steve raised an eyebrow at her. “This is all that’s left of me. You know that. The fire took everything else. The sky took the ashes.”
“I could demand an audience with Hades,” Diana said.
Steve only smiled at her. “He is already granting us all he can.”
--
It took years.
Diana did not mind. It was not an obsession. She had learned early on not to let her dreams consume her waking life. Steve would not have it. When she tried, Steve argued with her and then he refused to speak to her or touch her and then he wept and begged her not to waste her life for him.
The one thing he never did was disappear. He did not even threaten it. He was there, every night, in the sunshine when she walked up the hill.
She could not refuse him.
So, she lived and when she could spare a moment or two, she searched for her uncle, whom Steve seemed sure still existed.
“You can’t kill the god of the dead,” he told her, sighing and helping her plan when he could not distract her with...other things.
Diana only allowed him to sometimes. She was intent. Sooner or later, she would find her way to the Underworld and speak to her uncle.
Sooner or later she did.
--
“He is not here,” Hades told her, something like sympathy in his eyes.
Steve had told her as much, again and again. It still a sharp pain to have it confirmed.
“He was not mine to claim,” Hades told her. “He does not belong in my river. But there was no other god he believed in so much as he believed in you.”
The words were said kindly enough for the King of the Underworld. They still felt like barbs and thorns.
“He said you helped him as much as you could,” Diana said.
Hades inclined his head. “He prayed to anyone who would listen for more time with you, even just a moment. It was...a powerful prayer. A devotion that strong is rare. I granted him what I could. His body is gone. His soul was already yours. All I gave him was direction.”
Diana nodded, the magnitude of Steve’s love, what he had done, settling on her skin like a fine cloak. She bowed her head. “I honour you.”
Hades looked at her impassively. Finally, he said. “Does it not bore you to return to your hilltop every night?”
Diana bristled but swallowed it down. “I am thankful for what we have been given.”
The god of the Underworld rolled his eyes at her.
“Diana,” Hades said. “God killer. Niece. Vanquisher of my upstart nephew. You have asked no boon from me and I have granted none. I tell you this freely: you need not end in the morning where you begin each night.”
Diana stared at him. Whatever expression was on her face made Hades lean back in his thrown and laugh.
--
Diana walked up the hill, feeling lighter than she had in years. The sunshine beat down on her back and she could see the bright ocean of Themyscira to her side. When she got to the top, Steve turned and smiled at her.
She stood and stared at him.
“If I can’t be with you,” Steve said, his smile lopsided and melancholy but somehow, strangely, pleased. “I kind of like the idea of what was left of my body going to the sky, you know? I always loved flying.”
Diana went to him. She traced the line of his cheek with her fingers. He looked her in the eyes.
“I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t know anyone was listening,” Steve said. “I just wanted...”
He looked at her and swallowed. Time, he had prayed for more time at her side.
“If you want me to go,” Steve began. “If it’s better for you...”
Diana kissed him to quiet him. He sighed into her mouth, melted into her touch.
“Steve,” she said when they had parted and he was looking at her like she was the only thing in the world.
She had been for him for years, she realized. He had been so scared of her forsaking the waking world for the dreams where she could have him. He had guarded so fiercely against it.
Diana wondered at herself that she had never realized Steve could only walk at her side through the waking world, unseen and unheard. She had asked him about it, once, after Napi told her. He did not recall it clearly, it all seemed garbled and muffled and distant for him; the waking world itself turned into a dream.
And in her dreams, all that was left for him, he had been restricted to a hilltop in a land where he had only spent days.
Steve had wished for more time so fiercely a god not even his own had heard him and granted it.
She could give him so much more than that. They were her dreams, after all, where all that was left of him still lived.
Diana took his hand and smiled.
“Come with me,” she said.
--
It always began the same.
Diana was walking up a hill. The sunshine was beating down on her back and she could see the bright ocean of Themyscira to her side. She got to the top and Steve was there. He turned to her and smiled.
Diana took his hand.
Dreams are malleable, reflections of desires at their best but often just the rehashing of mundane events of the past day.
Diana dragged Steve with her, through hers.
It was not perfect. She could not give him Sameer’s kiss on the cheek at the opening night of his first starring role on the West End but she could give Steve a dream of dancing with her at the after party, their faces close. She could walk with him hand in hand along the banks of the Seine, though the faces of the booksellers were blurred, their voices garbled.
She could bring him with her, all the places she went, even if she had to whisper in his ear to fill in the details – the friends she made, the food she tasted, which he would never know again.
His face glowed with happiness, with peace.
She had not thought he could love her more.
She was wrong.
--
Diana never meant to return to Themyscira.
But then, Charlie died.
There was another war.
Sameer died.
Etta.
Diana was tired. The world was as terrible a place as it was wonderful.
She stayed up two days after Etta died. She did not want to tell Steve, for all that they had been lost to each other for decades and Steve, of all people, had no reason to fear death.
Still, it was bittersweet to find herself walking up the hill with sunshine beating down on her back. The ocean glinted to her side and Diana felt sharply and suddenly homesick in a way she had not in years.
She hurried to the top. Steve was there. He turned to her and smiled.
She rushed to take his hand and pull him away.
He took a step back.
“Diana,” he said because there was no one in the world who would ever know her like he did now.
Diana looked at him. She could feel her chin tremble.
He wrapped his arms around her. She clutched at him.
She missed her mother. She had seen so much death.
“It’s okay,” Steve said. “It’s okay. We’ll find a way to get you back.”
--
It took time, longer, perhaps, than if Steve had still been alive, but he was good at picking apart the information she brought to him in her dreams. He saw it with a pilot’s eye, a navigator’s eye.
They found a route that took Diane home as she had longed for.
It was not the same.
--
Hippolyta took Diana’s face in her hands, her eyes filled with tears. She did not speak, only hugged her daughter so tightly, Diana thought that it would be all right, that she would never let go.
There was something different about being held by her mother. Diana had walked on after a hundred griefs, a thousand. She woke every morning and left behind her lover’s arms. She thought she had made peace with that.
But then her mother held her as if she were a little girl again and Diana wept anew. She felt as if she were truly grieving for the first time.
--
Themyscira felt so strange.
Her mother was the same and happy beyond words to see Diana home. It felt good to be among the women who had seen her grow from a child to a woman. It was good to be among her people again.
But...there were faces missing and Diana ached for them.
Especially Antiope. More than anyone, Diana found herself turning and looking for her and the grief when she was not there was still sharp because Diana had managed to avoid it for so long.
Hippolyta noticed, Diana was sure, but said nothing.
Menalippe avoided her. That stung, as well.
And Diana avoided any cliffs with a good view of their ocean.
She would find nothing there. She knew it. She told herself again and again.
It did her no good.
--
It happened after training one day. An artisan had recently decided to join the ranks of their warriors and her abilities were still being honed. To say her arrows had gone astray was to state it kindly. Diana and a few of the others were seeing what they could collect to be reused.
Diana followed the path she thought one of the arrows had flown out of the training grounds. She found it more easily than she had expected. She picked it up and smiled, glancing around.
Her heart plummeted.
Diana knew this hill.
Her heart soared. It felt like it was lodged in her throat and beating widely. She felt dizzy at the change.
She knew this cliff. She had been here every night for years. She had returned to it again and again.
What if it had been for a reason?
Diana broke into a run. At the top of it, every night, Steve was whole and well. Every night, he turned and smiled. Every night, he was waiting for her. He turned and smiled, whole and well, every night...
Diana reached the top. The sun was shining. The ocean sparkled below her.
Steve was not there.
Just the wind. Just the sun. Just the ocean below.
Diana had known that, Steve had told her as much. He had shown her all that was left of him, given it all to her.
And yet...and yet...
Diana sat down at the ledge and looked out at the sea. Her heart broken all over again.
--
Menalippe, of all people, was the one to find her.
Menalippe had never forgiven Steve for bringing war to their shores. She had never forgiven him for Antiope’s death.
Never forgiven Diana for loving him.
She still sat down beside her and waited for Diana to speak.
“This is where I find him in my dreams,” Diana said. “He is always here in my dreams. He is dead. His body was turned to ash and even that was taken by the sky. I knew he would not be here but my heart wanted it so much I thought perhaps...”
Her mother had wanted her so much she had sculpted clay and wished life into it. Steve had wanted more time with her so much a god who had no claim to him was able to answer his prayers.
It was not so strange that she thought if she just wanted enough she could wish Steve back to life.
Menalippe sighed. “They are just dreams, Diana.”
“They are not,” Diana said. “I asked Hades.”
Menalippe looked at her sharply.
“I went to the Underworld to petition for him,” Diana said. She shook her head. “But Steve was not Hades’ soul to claim. He had already intervened as much as he could. And so, Steve is with me every night, his soul is mine, but there was nothing more Hades could return to me.”
Menalippe was silent. Diana plucked a stalk of grass from beside her and let the wind take it away.
She had wanted, wished, hoped so much...
“What about Antiope?” Menalippe asked. She was white lipped and white knuckled.
Diana looked at her. The Underworld was hard to find, the path to Hades’ throne room treacherous and though Hades was a just god, he was not an overly kind one.
“She was not mine to claim,” Diana said.
Menalippe only looked thoughtful at that.
--
Diana walked the same hill in her dreams that night, a bubble of fear in his throat. But Steve was there, and he turned and smiled at her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stroking her hair, his eyes soft.
Diana shook her head. “You have told me enough times.”
Steve winced. “I know, but I don’t blame you for wanting more.”
“Do you?” she asked.
“Diana,” he said and there was such desire in his voice, such wanting, that she shuddered to hear it.
There was only one way to answer that. She blinked and they were in her rooms. Steve looked around and shook his head.
“No,” he said flatly. “This is practically your childhood bedroom. It’s strange.”
Diana laughed at him, ignoring the tears that slipped from her eyes at the sheer relief of it. “I have had lovers here before.”
“Exactly how close are we to your mother’s rooms?” Steve countered, eyebrows raised.
Diana wrinkled her nose even as he kissed her and when they fell back against the bed sheets they were in her apartment in Paris. Steve grinned.
“Better,” he said before sliding down her body to pay her tribute, first with his mouth, then with his cock hard inside her, her fingers leaving red streaks against his back.
She woke with the feeling of something unfinished, something forever unborn, and damp thighs.
--
Diana went back to man’s world. Time marched on.
She made friends. She enjoyed her work. She woke each morning in Paris and pulled her curtains wide open to see the sun shining in through the window.
She climbed the hill every night. The sun shone. Steve turned to her and smiled.
Diana shared as much of her life with him as she could.
Most nights.
There were nights spent on...other things, with him, when she only climbed the hill to pull him back into the dream of them sharing her bed.
It left an ache behind when she woke that she tended to with her fingers or, later, toys, or, very occasionally, other lovers.
Steve smiled at that when she told him, grin wicked between her thighs, determined to see how wet he could make her before she woke.
Diana always missed his touch when she woke without him in bed.
It was sharper, when she had spent the night loving him. He was forever teasing, forever pleasing – he had spent a thousand nights now devoted to the worship of her body.
Diana would not have traded it for a thousand other lovers, a million other loves. She would have traded it for nothing except to have woken up beside him once more.
--
Superman died.
War was coming.
Invasion was coming.
The only way they would survive was together and Diana was not sure that could be, no matter how the idea of the Justice League glowed like an ember in Bruce Wayne’s eye.
Diana went to Père Lachaise. It was not the right faith but she knew her uncle would still hear her there, walking among the dead.
She pounded on the ground so hard the gravestones shook, just be sure.
If the worst comes, if the world ends, she prayed, please keep him safe, grant him rest with me. You say his soul is mine and I claim it. I claim what is freely given.
When she returned to her apartment to gather her things and get on a plane for Gotham, there was a single scrap of parchment sitting neatly folded on her kitchen table.
It contained only one word, written in an elegant hand.
Yes.
--
The world did not end.
Superman rose from the dead.
Steve did not.
Diana walked up a hill every night. Steve turned and smiled.
There were...hopes. Chances, perhaps.
Barry thought he might be fast enough to undo the past. Bruce knew a sorcerer. There were gods other than Hades who sought to raise the dead.
They never came to anything.
Steve walked with her, Napi said, but only ever as a ghost.
He never returned to the waking world.
--
It was the same. Always, every night, the same.
She was walking up a hill. The sunshine was beating down on her back and she could see the bright ocean of Themyscira to her side. She got to the top and...
Steve was there. He turned to her and smiled.
Diana smiled back.