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Chapter Text

The sun over Themyscira was a benevolent god, spilling liquid gold across the white marble of the royal courtyard. It warmed the polished stone, coaxed the sweet perfume from the cerise bougainvillea clinging to the colonnades, and glinted off the bronze tips of the spears stacked neatly against the armoury wall. It was a perfect day in a perfect paradise. And in paradise, the lessons were always the hardest.

"Again, Diana."

The voice of Queen Hippolyta was not harsh, but it carried the weight of ages, the unyielding firmness of a mountain. It cut through the gentle sea breeze and the distant laughter of Amazons bathing in the cerulean bay.

A young girl scrambled to her feet, wiping a trickle of sweat from her brow with the back of a dirty hand. Her hair, a cascade of ink-black silk, was plastered to her temples. Her bright, fiercely blue eyes, so like her mother’s, were narrowed in concentration. This was Diana, Princess of Themyscira, and at present, she was more mud-spattered urchin than royalty.

Across from her, General Philippus stood impassive, her arms crossed over her formidable chest plate. Philippus was carved from the same ancient, unyielding stuff as the island’s cliffs, her face a roadmap of a thousand battles, her gaze sharp enough to chip stone. She held a blunted wooden practice sword, its tip resting lightly on the ground.

"You telegraphed your lunge." Philippus stated, her voice a low rumble. "Your opponent saw it before you even committed your weight. In a real battle, you would be disarmed. Or dead."

Diana’s jaw tightened. She hated being corrected. She was the princess, wasn't she? She was stronger and faster than any girl her age. She should be winning. "I was faster." she retorted, her voice a childish bark. "If the swords were real, mine would have found its mark!"

Hippolyta stepped forward, her white chiton rustling softly. She placed a gentle hand on Diana’s shoulder, yet her grip was like iron. "Speed is nothing without strategy, my daughter. And strength is a liability when untempered by discipline. Philippus is correct. Your pride is a blindfold. It will get you killed. The world beyond this shore is not a sparring courtyard. It is ruled by treachery. It is ruled by men."

The word ‘men’ was spoken as if it were a curse, a venomous thing that soured the air. Diana had heard it her whole life. It was the monster in every bedtime story, the villain in every historical recital.

"Men." Philippus spat, the word like a piece of grit in her mouth. "Creatures of base impulse and brutish desire. They covet what they cannot have and destroy what they do not understand. They see strength in a woman and call it a challenge. They see beauty and call it an invitation."

Diana nodded, her anger at losing the spar instantly redirecting toward the ancient, faceless enemy. She had been weaned on the tale of the Great Betrayal. How Heracles, the vaunted hero of man’s world, had come to Themyscira under a banner of peace, only to drug her mother, steal her Girdle of Power, and allow his armies to enslave and brutalize the Amazons. It was a story told with fire in the eyes of the elders, with tears in the voices of the historians, and with cold, hard hatred in the training grounds.

Her aunt, Antiope, Hippolyta’s sister and the fiercest warrior of them all, was perhaps the most vocal. "Never forget, little one." she had told Diana just last week, sharpening an arrow with a shard of obsidian, "a man’s smile is the scabbard for his lies. His hand, offered in friendship, is merely measuring your throat for his blade. They are all the same. Every last one."

This was the truth. It was as fundamental as the sky and the sea.

"They are weak." Diana said now, puffing out her chest and gripping her wooden sword tighter. "Heracles was strong only because he tricked you, Mother. If he had faced you in honest combat—"

"There is no honest combat with men." Hippolyta interrupted, her voice dropping, becoming a chilling whisper that held more threat than any shout. "That is the lesson you seem incapable of learning. They do not fight with honour. They fight with deceit. They are a pestilence. A plague upon the world that we are blessed to be shielded from. We are here because we are free of them. Free of their wars, their greed, their grubby, grasping hands."

She squeezed Diana’s shoulder. "You are the future of Themyscira, my star. You must be stronger than I was. Wiser. You must carry our history in your heart, not as a story, but as a shield. The hatred you feel for them? That is not a failing. It is your armour. It will keep you safe. It will keep us all safe."

Diana looked from her mother’s regal, sorrowful face to Philippus’s granite-hard expression. The golden sun seemed a little less warm now. The scent of the flowers felt a little less sweet. The perfect paradise had a serpent coiled at its heart, and its name was Man.

"I understand, Mother." she said, her voice filled with a conviction that was absolute. "I will not fail you. I hate them. I hate all of them."

Hippolyta’s expression softened into a sad smile. "Good. Now, again."

Diana raised her sword, her small body thrumming with renewed purpose. This time, she would not be beaten. This time, she would fight as if a treacherous, smiling man stood before her. She would fight with the righteous fury of all the wronged women in her history. She lunged, not with the clumsy pride of a child, but with the cold, focused rage of an Amazon. And this time, Philippus had to take a quick step back, a flicker of surprise in her ancient eyes.

The midday meal was a boisterous affair. Amazons of all ages gathered at long wooden tables in the open-air refectory, the air thick with the smell of roasted fish, fresh-baked bread, and crushed olives. Laughter and spirited conversation echoed under the vine-covered trellises. For Diana and the other children of the island, it was a rare moment of unstructured freedom.

She sat with her closest companions: Artemis, Io, and Nubia. They were a study in contrasts. Artemis, with her fiery red hair tied back in a practical braid, was even more militant than Diana. Her family had suffered greatly during the age of enslavement, a wound passed down through generations until it became a raw, burning part of her soul.

"Philippus said you almost had her this morning." Artemis said, tearing into a piece of bread with aggressive enthusiasm. "Good. The only way to honour our ancestors is to be strong enough to avenge them, should we ever have the misfortune of facing their enemy again."

"Facing them?" Io chimed in, delicately picking the bones from her fish. Io was slender and thoughtful, her dark eyes always seeming to see past the surface of things. "Why would we ever face them? The whole point of Themyscira is to not face them. We are separate. We are safe."

"Safety is an illusion." Artemis shot back, pointing a crust of bread at Io. "A wall can be breached. A sea can be crossed. We should be training not just to defend, but to attack. To take the fight to them, so they never think to bring it to us."

"And become just like them?" Io asked, her voice calm but firm. "Waging wars on a world that has forgotten we exist? That seems… counterproductive. It would make their history about us true."

Diana, who had been sullenly pushing a fig around her plate, looked up. "What do you mean, ‘make their history true’? Their history is lies. We are a peaceful people. They were the aggressors."

"Of course." Io said quickly, sensing she might have stepped on a sensitive topic. "But Aunt Melanippe says that in the scrolls from before the Great Betrayal, we were not always so isolated. We traded with other nations. We engaged in diplomacy. Not all of our interactions with the outside world ended in disaster."

Artemis scoffed, a sound of pure derision. "And where is Aunt Melanippe now? Dead! Killed by men. That’s what diplomacy with them gets you. A spear in the gut."

It was true. Melanippe, Antiope’s lieutenant, had been slain by Heracles’s forces. The argument was a powerful one.

"But…" Io pressed, ever the pragmatist, "that was one group of men. From one time. The world is vast. Are we to believe every single one, across all the lands and all the centuries, is a carbon copy of Heracles? It doesn’t seem logical. Nature thrives on diversity. Why would their species be any different?"

Diana frowned. She had never considered it that way. The ‘Man’ she was taught to hate was a monolith. A single entity of evil, cloned millions of times over. The idea of them being… different from one another was new. And vaguely unsettling.

"They share a fundamental flaw." Artemis insisted. "A weakness of character. A predisposition to violence and envy. It’s in their blood. My mother told me. They are born broken."

"My mother says nothing on the matter." Nubia said softly. She had been quiet until now, her gentle presence a stark contrast to Artemis’s fire and Io’s logic. Nubia was an anomaly, a child of the Bana-Mighdall tribe who had been brought to Themyscira. Her people’s history was different, more complex. She held no ingrained hatred, only a quiet curiosity. "She says to judge a person by their actions, not by the stories told about their ancestors."

Artemis rolled her eyes. "Your people chose to live in their world, Nubia. It’s made you soft on them."

"It has made us survivors." Nubia replied, her tone even. "There is a difference."

Diana felt a strange turmoil in her chest. She wanted to agree with Artemis. It was easier. It was what she had been taught. The world was simple: Amazons were good, men were bad. But Io’s words had planted a seed of doubt, a tiny crack in the marble edifice of her convictions. Are they all the same?

"Queen Hippolyta herself was tricked by Heracles." Diana said, trying to regain her footing on solid ground. "He pretended to be a friend. It proves you cannot trust any of them."

"Or it proves Heracles was a master deceiver." Io countered. "Does the existence of one brilliant liar mean that all people of his kind are incapable of telling the truth? We value logic here. That conclusion is a fallacy. A hasty generalization."

Diana hated it when Io used words she learned from the scribes. It made her feel stupid.

"It’s not a fallacy, it’s a fact!" Artemis slammed her fist on the table, rattling the plates. "They are poison. All of them. And if you don’t believe that, Io, then you’re a fool. Or a traitor."

The word ‘traitor’ hung in the air, ugly and sharp. Io flinched, her calm facade finally breaking. She looked at Diana, her eyes wide with hurt.

Diana felt a pang of protectiveness for her friend, but also a surge of confusion. She was supposed to agree with Artemis. It was the Amazon way. But watching Io, who was only asking questions, be branded a traitor felt… wrong.

"She’s not a traitor." Diana mumbled, more to her plate than to anyone else.

Artemis stared at her, aghast. "What?"

"Io is not a traitor." Diana said, louder this time, looking Artemis in the eye. "She’s just… thinking. We’re allowed to think, aren’t we?"

Artemis was speechless. For Princess Diana, the staunchest defender of the faith, to defend Io’s heresy was unthinkable. She opened her mouth, then closed it, shaking her head in disgust before storming away from the table.

Nubia gave Diana a small, encouraging smile. Io looked at her with gratitude, but also with a hint of worry.

Diana ignored them both. She stared down at her fig, the sweet fruit suddenly seeming bland and tasteless. Her world, once so clear and defined, now had a blurry edge. The lessons of the courtyard were absolute, but the questions in the refectory lingered. If not all men were the same, then the hatred she had been so carefully taught to wield as armour suddenly felt heavy, ill-fitting, and full of holes.

The seed of doubt, once planted, began to sprout in the fertile ground of Diana’s curiosity. The words of Io and Nubia echoed in her mind, challenging the monolithic truths she had held so dear. If thinking wasn’t forbidden, as she had claimed to Artemis, then she would think. And to think properly, she needed more information.

Her destination was the Great Library of Themyscira, a place she usually avoided. It was quiet, smelled of dust and dried papyrus, and the truths it held were not the kind you could wield in a fight. But today, she sought a different kind of weapon: knowledge.

The library was a breathtaking rotunda, its domed ceiling open to the sky. Sunlight streamed down, illuminating shelves that spiraled up the curved walls, packed with scrolls from across the ages. In the center of the room, at a large, ink-stained table, sat Clio, the Royal Historian.

Clio was ancient, her skin as thin and delicate as parchment, her eyes clouded with cataracts but still holding a spark of immense intelligence. She was one of the few who had been alive during the Great Betrayal, a living witness to history. Unlike Philippus or Antiope, however, Clio’s role was not to fight, but to remember.

"Princess Diana." Clio said, her voice a dry rustle of leaves. She did not look up from the scroll she was painstakingly copying. "It is rare to see you in this hall of ghosts. Have you misplaced a training manual?"

Diana approached the table, her bare feet silent on the cool mosaic floor. "I have a question, Clio."

"I should hope you have many. A mind without questions is a fallow field." the old Amazon replied, finally setting down her stylus and turning her milky gaze toward Diana. "Speak."

Diana took a breath. "The story of Heracles. The Great Betrayal. It is all we are ever taught about men."

"It is the most important lesson." Clio agreed, her expression unreadable.

"But was it the only lesson?" Diana pressed. "Io said we used to trade with the world of men. That we had… diplomacy."

A long silence stretched between them. Clio seemed to be looking not at Diana, but through her, into the vastness of the past. "Io is correct." she said at last. "Before Heracles, we were not isolationists. We were citizens of the world. Our ships sailed to Egypt, to Phoenicia, to the nascent kingdoms of the Greeks. We traded our pottery, our wine, our unique metalwork. And in return, we received spices, textiles, and knowledge."

Diana’s eyes widened. This was a revelation. "So… we were friends with them?"

"Friendship is a strong word." Clio cautioned. "Alliances is perhaps more accurate. We found them to be… a mixed lot. Capable of profound art and philosophy. The poems of Homer, the theorems of Pythagoras—these were born of the minds of men. They could be brave. They could be honorable. They could also be petty, greedy, and violent. They were, in short, complicated. Much like us."

This was heresy. Diana glanced around the empty library, as if the walls themselves might be listening. "But… Aunt Antiope says they are all poison. General Philippus says they are all brutes."

"Antiope carries the wound of her sister Melanippe’s death. Philippus carries the scars of her own enslavement. Their hatred is a shield, forged in personal fire. It is an understandable response to profound trauma." Clio explained, her voice even and academic. "But history is not about a single response. It is the sum of all responses. Their truth is not the entire truth. It is a single, searingly bright perspective in a much larger tapestry."

She gestured to the thousands of scrolls lining the walls. "In here, Diana, are stories of men who were poets, healers, farmers. Men who loved their families, who built cities, who sought wisdom. And yes, stories of men who were conquerors, tyrants, and killers. To say all men are Heracles is as foolish as to say all Amazons are as gentle as a summer breeze. Are you the same as Io? Is Artemis the same as Nubia?"

Diana shook her head.

"Of course not." Clio continued. "So why would an entire half of the world’s people be identical? Heracles and his followers were a blight. They were a particularly virulent strain of a disease—the disease of patriarchal conquest. They believed strength gave them the right to dominate. They saw our society, led by a woman, and could not comprehend it. It was alien to them. And so, they sought to destroy it, to remake it in their own ugly image. Their betrayal was catastrophic. It ended an era for us. It taught us a lesson in caution that cost us our place in the world."

She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "But the most dangerous part of their legacy, Princess, is not just what they did to us. It is what they made us become. They filled us with a hate so pure it blinded us. We traded the vast, complex world for the safety of a simple, hateful lie: that all of them are monsters. It keeps us safe, perhaps. But it also keeps us ignorant. And ignorance… ignorance is the heaviest chain of all."

Diana stood, stunned. Her entire world was tilting on its axis. The clear, bright lines of good and evil were dissolving into a murky, confusing grey. The armour of hate her mother had told her to wear now felt like a cage.

"So… if not all men are evil… then what are they?" she asked, her voice small.

Clio gave a sad, thin-lipped smile. "That, my dear princess, is the question, isn’t it? They are people. Complicated, flawed, brilliant, and terrible. And you will never find the answer to ‘what they are’ in this library, or on this island. The answer." she said, her cloudy eyes seeming to look far beyond the shores of Themyscira, "is out there."

Clio turned back to her scroll, her part in this conversation finished. She had not given Diana an answer, but a far more dangerous thing: a direction. Diana walked out of the library, blinking in the bright sun. The world suddenly seemed infinitely larger, and her perfect paradise felt, for the first time, like a beautiful, sun-drenched prison. The question was no longer if she should find the truth, but how.

Days turned into a week, and the turmoil in Diana’s soul churned like a storm-tossed sea. Every training session with Philippus felt like a lie. The general’s invectives against men, once a source of righteous fire, now sounded hollow and brittle. Every lecture from her mother about the perfidy of the male sex felt like a chain being wrapped around her mind.

She grew quiet, withdrawn. Artemis accused her of being corrupted by Io’s "traitorous thoughts." Io, sensing the change in her friend, tried to talk to her, but Diana couldn’t articulate the earthquake that had shattered her foundations. How could she explain that everything she had ever believed was now a question mark?

Her dreams were filled with strange images. Faceless men who were not warriors, but builders and poets. A vast, sprawling world of towering, angular mountains made of stone and glass, so different from the soft, green curves of her home. And always, the feeling of being watched by a million unseen eyes, none of which belonged to an Amazon.

The breaking point came during an afternoon of quiet contemplation. She had climbed to the highest cliffs on the far side of the island, a spot where the sea breeze was sharp and the only company was the gulls that wheeled and cried overhead. She watched a great albatross, a majestic creature of impossible wingspan, catch a thermal and rise into the sky. It soared effortlessly, a speck of white against the endless blue, heading out over the horizon, toward the unknown. It was free.

And in that moment, Diana knew. She was not.

Themyscira, her paradise, her sanctuary, was a cage. A beautiful, gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. Clio was right. The answer wasn’t here. The truth of what men were—if they were all Heracles or if some were poets—could not be found in stories or debates. It had to be seen. It had to be experienced.

The albatross disappeared from view, and a fierce, terrifying resolve hardened in Diana’s heart. She would do what no Amazon had done in a millennium. She would leave.

The decision made, her mind, once a chaotic storm, became chillingly clear. A plan began to form, each piece clicking into place with a cold, logical precision that would have made Io proud. This was not a childish whim; it was a mission. An investigation.

First, she would need tools. The Amazons were warriors, but they were also pragmatists. There were certain artifacts, gifts from the gods, kept in the Royal Armoury for dire emergencies. Diana had always looked upon them with awe, but now she saw them as necessities.

The Lasso of Hestia. The ultimate tool for her investigation. It was said to compel any bound by it to speak only the truth. If she could find a man and bind him, she could get a straight answer. She could cut through any potential deceit and find the core of what he was.

The Royal Tiara. It was more than a symbol of her station. Forged from a unique Themysciran metal, it was nearly indestructible and could be thrown as a weapon, a razor-sharp boomerang that would always return to its master. A necessary defense.

And finally, the most daunting piece of her plan: flight. The Sandals of Hermes, which granted the power of flight, were kept under heavy guard, worn only by the Queen’s designated messenger. Diana knew she could never get to them. But the elders whispered that the potential for flight was in their bloodline, a gift from the gods that had to be unlocked. Most Amazons never bothered, content with their fleet-footedness on the ground. But Diana, descended from royalty, felt a strange thrumming in her veins when she looked at the sky. She had tried before, in secret, leaping from small hills and flapping her arms uselessly, feeling like a fool. But now, it was not a game. It was a necessity. She would have to learn, and learn quickly.

The final piece was the escape itself. The magical barrier that hid Themyscira from the world was permeable. Supply ships from the world of men, their crews magically compelled to forget the island’s location upon departure, came once a season, anchoring in a hidden cove. They brought goods that the Amazons could not produce themselves—certain spices, rare metals, bolts of silk from the far east. The next ship was due in two nights. Its crew, of course, would be men. The perfect test subjects.

She would sneak aboard that ship. She would journey to Man’s World. She would conduct her investigation, find her truth, and then she would return, her questions answered once and for all.

It was a terrifying, exhilarating, and deeply treasonous plan. If she were caught, her mother’s disappointment would be a fate worse than any punishment. But the image of the albatross was burned into her mind. The pull of the unknown world was stronger than her fear, stronger than her duty, stronger even than her love for her home.

That evening, Diana went to the sparring grounds alone. She didn’t practice with a sword. Instead, she stood at the edge of a low training wall, closed her eyes, and remembered the soaring albatross. She focused on the strange thrumming in her blood, the feeling of a power coiled deep within her. She leaped.

For a split second, she didn’t fall. She hung in the air, a foot above the ground, a sensation of weightless buoyancy holding her up. It was the most incredible feeling she had ever known. Then, her concentration broke, and she tumbled to the grass in an undignified heap.

She lay there, panting, a wide, triumphant grin spreading across her face. It was possible. She could do it. She could fly.

The cage door was unlocked. All she had to do was push it open.

Chapter Text

The night of the supply ship’s arrival was moonless, the sky a blanket of black velvet pricked with the cold, distant light of stars. A thick mist rolled in from the sea, muffling sound and cloaking the island in a shroud of secrecy. It was perfect.

Diana moved like a phantom through the silent corridors of the royal palace. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat in the stillness. Every creak of a floorboard, every rustle of a curtain in the breeze, sounded like a legion of guards about to descend upon her. She was dressed in a simple, dark-blue tunic, better for stealth than her usual white practice gear.

Her first destination was the antechamber to the throne room, where certain ceremonial items were displayed. The Royal Tiara sat on a velvet cushion inside a crystal case. It wasn't one of the great weapons of the Amazons, more a symbol, and thus lightly guarded. Diana, small and nimble, slipped past the lone, dozing guard with the ease of a cat. Using a shard of rock she’d palmed earlier, she carefully worked at the lock on the case. It was old and simple. With a soft click, it sprang open.

Her fingers trembled as she lifted the tiara. It was heavier than it looked, cool and smooth. It felt like solidified starlight in her hands. She didn't put it on her head—that was too conspicuous. Instead, she tucked it carefully into a leather pouch tied at her waist.

Next, the armory. This was the most dangerous part. The vault where the sacred artifacts were kept was deep within the mountain, protected by enchantments and the most vigilant guards. But Diana wasn’t going to the main vault. She was going to a smaller, secondary chamber where items were brought for cleaning and maintenance. She knew the rotation. Today, the Lasso of Hestia had been removed from its magically sealed display for its annual polishing by the high priestess. It would be resting on a simple altar, waiting to be returned at dawn.

She slipped into the armory complex through a ventilation shaft she had discovered as a child during a game of hide-and-seek. It was a tight squeeze, her shoulders scraping against the stone, the air thick with the smells of metal polish and old leather. She emerged into the quiet sanctum.

There it was. Coiled on a pedestal of black obsidian, the Lasso glowed with a soft, golden light of its own, pulsing gently like a sleeping heart. It was beautiful, far more so than she had ever imagined. It seemed to hum with a silent power, a song of pure truth. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she lifted it. The moment her skin touched the golden cord, a wave of warmth and clarity washed over her. It felt… right. Honest. She quickly looped it and fastened it to her belt, opposite the pouch with the tiara.

Two artifacts down. One more task to go.

She made her way out of the palace grounds and toward the cliffs overlooking the hidden cove. She could see the ship now, a dark, hulking shape in the mist, its riding lights fuzzy and indistinct. She could hear the low murmur of voices, gruff and guttural, so different from the lilting tones of the Amazons. Men. Her stomach twisted with a cocktail of fear, disgust, and a thrilling, illicit curiosity.

Now for the hard part. The cliff was a sheer drop of over a hundred feet to the water below. It was too far to jump. She had to fly.

She retreated a little, giving herself a running start. She focused, trying to replicate the feeling of buoyancy she’d achieved on the training grounds. She thought of the albatross, of the open sky. She pumped her legs, racing toward the cliff edge.

"Fly." she whispered, her voice tight with desperation.

She launched herself into the void.

For one glorious, terrifying second, it worked. She shot out over the sea, the wind whipping at her hair. She was flying! She let out a whoop of triumph.

The whoop broke her concentration.

Instantly, the feeling of weightlessness vanished. She dropped like a stone, plunging down toward the churning, black water with a shriek of panic. She hit the sea with a bone-jarring smack, the cold a shocking gasp that stole her breath. She came up sputtering, treading water frantically, her tunic weighing her down.

High above, on the ship, a lantern was raised. "What was that?" a voice called out in a language she barely understood from her history lessons.

"Probably just a seal." another voice answered gruffly. "Get back to work. We shove off in an hour."

Panic seized Diana. An hour. That was all she had. She swam to the base of the cliff, clinging to the rough, wet rock, her body shivering. She had to try again.

This time, she didn't run. She stood at the very edge of a lower ledge, just twenty feet above the water. She closed her eyes, shutting out the distractions. She didn't think about the albatross or the sky. She focused only on the feeling inside her, the coiled spring of power in her blood. She commanded it. Up.

She leaped, and this time, she didn't try to soar. She just tried to hover. She rose five feet, wobbled precariously like a drunkard, and then fell back into the water with a splash.

Failure. Again. Tears of frustration pricked her eyes. Maybe she couldn't do it. Maybe she was a fool. Maybe she should just swim back to the beach and crawl into her bed, defeated.

No. The resolve that had hardened in her heart was stronger than her failure. She would not give up.

She climbed out of the water again, her muscles aching, her body numb with cold. She found another ledge. She tried again. This time, she managed to stay airborne for ten seconds, hovering in a wobbly, unstable pocket of air before she tipped over and fell.

Progress.

She did it again. And again. And again. Each attempt was a clumsy, graceless failure, but each time she learned something. She learned that looking down was a mistake. She learned that sudden movements broke the spell. She learned that it required a calm, focused will, not a desperate wish.

Finally, drenched, exhausted, and bruised, she stood on a ledge fifty feet up the cliff face. She could hear the men on the ship beginning to make preparations for departure, the clanking of the anchor chain. It was now or never.

She took a deep breath, centered herself, and leaped. She didn't try to go fast. She just pushed up, gently, firmly. She rose. Ten feet. Twenty. She wobbled, but corrected, her jaw clenched. Thirty. Forty. She was level with the ship's deck. She pushed forward, propelling herself through the air in a lurching, awkward glide. She looked like a baby bird making its first, frantic flight from the nest.

She sailed over the ship's railing, lost her concentration at the last second, and landed not on her feet, but in a heap, crashing into a stack of wooden crates with a tremendous clatter.

Instantly, two sailors with thick beards and rough-spun clothes were on her, lanterns held high. Their eyes went wide. Before them was a small, soaking-wet girl with the wildest, angriest blue eyes they had ever seen.

Diana scrambled back, her hand flying to the hilt of the training dagger she still wore. Her heart was a trapped bird in her chest. She had done it. She had escaped paradise.

And her first act in the world of men was to be caught by them.

The two sailors stared at Diana, their mouths agape. They looked at each other, then back at the furious, drenched child who looked ready to tear them apart. One of them, a large man with a nose that had been broken more than once, took a hesitant step forward.

"Easy there, little one." he said, his voice a gravelly rumble. He spoke in the common tongue of the sea, a dialect Diana could only partially decipher from Clio’s lessons. "Where in the blazes did you come from? Fall from the sky?"

Diana didn’t answer. She pressed herself against the crates, her eyes darting between the two men, assessing them as she would any opponent. They were big. Much bigger than her. They smelled strange, a pungent mix of sweat, salt, and stale fish. Their faces were weathered and covered in coarse hair, their hands calloused and dirty. They were exactly as she had imagined: brutish, unkempt, and menacing.

The second sailor, a younger, skinnier man, chuckled nervously. "She’s a stowaway, Lars. Must’ve snuck on when we were docked."

"Docked where?" Lars grunted. "We ain’t been near a proper port in weeks. Just that misty rock… that place I can’t quite remember…" His brow furrowed in confusion, the magical compulsion of Themyscira doing its work, fogging his memory of the island into a nameless, dreamlike haze.

Diana saw her opening. While they were distracted, she lunged. Not at them, but away from them, toward the shadows at the center of the ship. She was impossibly fast. Before they could react, she had vanished into the labyrinth of ropes and cargo holds.

"Hey! Get back here!" Lars yelled, but she was already gone.

Diana found a small, dark space behind a stack of barrels that smelled pungently of tar. She squeezed herself into the gap, her body trembling, partly from cold and partly from adrenaline. She could hear the men shouting, their heavy boots thudding on the deck as they searched for her.

This was it. Her first real encounter with men. They hadn't attacked her, but their presence was an assault on her senses. The sheer size of them, the roughness of their voices, the unfamiliar, unpleasant smells. It all confirmed her lifelong lessons. They were coarse. They were foul.

The ship’s horn blew, a deep, mournful sound that vibrated through the hull. She felt a lurch as the vessel began to move, pulling away from the hidden cove, away from her home. A sudden, sharp pang of loss hit her, so intense it almost made her cry out. She was truly alone now, adrift in an alien world. She pushed the feeling down, replacing it with cold resolve. This was for the mission. For the truth.

She remained hidden for what felt like days. The ship creaked and groaned around her, a constant, rhythmic complaint. She peeked out only when she was sure no one was around, her stomach gnawing with a hunger she had never experienced before. On Themyscira, food was always plentiful and fresh. Here, she was a rat in the walls. On her third "day"—she judged time by the cycles of noise and quiet on the deck—desperate hunger drove her to steal. She crept into the ship’s galley, her senses on high alert. The air was thick with the smell of boiling cabbage and rancid fat. She snatched a loaf of hard, stale bread and a shriveled apple before scurrying back to her hiding place.

The food was awful. The bread was like chewing on wood, the apple mealy and sour. But it was sustenance. As she ate, she watched the men from the shadows. She saw them working, hauling ropes, swabbing decks. She saw them gambling, throwing dice and shouting at each other. She saw them fighting, a brief, ugly scuffle over a bottle of rum that ended with a bloody nose and sullen glares.

Everything they did seemed loud, crude, and pointless. They were a confirmation of every lesson. Brutes. Savages.

But then, she saw something else.

One evening, she watched the young, skinny sailor—the one from her first night—sitting alone at the stern, looking out at the endless water. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. On it was a crude drawing, a child’s sketch of a woman and a small stick figure. The sailor traced the drawing with a dirty finger, and his shoulders began to shake. He was crying. Not loudly, but in silent, wracking sobs.

Diana stared, utterly baffled. Crying? Men didn’t cry. Crying was a weakness. Warriors did not weep. But this man was weeping for the little figures on the paper. It wasn’t the cry of a warrior defeated in battle. It was… something else. Something soft and painful. It didn’t make any sense.

A few days later, a storm hit. The sky turned a bruised purple-grey, and the sea rose up in furious, mountainous waves. The ship was tossed about like a child’s toy. Diana, hidden below deck, was terrified. She had never known the sea to be anything but a gentle friend. This was a monster.

She could hear the men shouting on deck, fighting to keep the ship from being torn apart. Amid the chaos, she saw Lars, the big, ugly one, risk his own life to save another sailor who was nearly washed overboard, hauling him back from the railing with a roar of effort. It was an act of incredible strength and bravery. An act of… loyalty.

Diana was confused. These men were brutes, yes. They were loud and dirty. But one of them cried for a drawing, and another risked his life for a comrade. These actions didn’t fit the neat, clean narrative of pure evil she had been taught. They were… complicated. It was just as Clio had said.

Finally, after an eternity at sea, the ship’s motion changed. The constant rocking lessened, and a new smell reached her, overwhelming all the others. It was a foul, acrid stench of smoke, rot, and something metallic and sharp. She heard a cacophony of new sounds: distant sirens, the rumble of unseen machines, the shouting of a thousand voices at once.

She crept to the edge of the ship and peered over the side.

Her breath caught in her throat. Before her was a city. But it was nothing like the elegant, pristine architecture of Themyscira. This was Gotham.

It was a nightmare of iron and stone, a jagged scar on the horizon. Towers of dark brick and tarnished metal clawed at the perpetually overcast sky like skeletal fingers. Smoke billowed from a hundred chimneys, staining the air a sickly yellow-grey. The water of the harbor was a slick, oily black, choked with filth. Everything was sharp angles, oppressive shadows, and a crushing sense of decay.

This was Man’s World. And it was uglier than she could have ever possibly imagined. Her mission had brought her to a kingdom of rust and sorrow.

Chapter Text

Diana slipped off the ship amidst the chaos of docking, a small, unnoticed shadow in the throng of burly dockworkers. The moment her feet touched the grimy cobblestones of Gotham, she was assaulted. Not by a person, but by the city itself.

The noise was a physical blow—the roar of horseless metal carriages, the shriek of factory whistles, the cacophony of a thousand people shouting, haggling, and cursing. The smell was even worse; a putrid cocktail of industrial smoke, rotting garbage, and the damp, pervasive odor of urban decay. On Themyscira, the air tasted of salt and flowers. Here, it tasted of poison.

She was a creature of marble halls and sun-drenched beaches, thrust into a labyrinth of soot-stained brick and shadowy alleyways. People bustled past her, a river of pale, harried faces that never looked up. The women she saw were not the proud, strong figures of her home. They were dressed in strange, restrictive clothing, their faces often pinched with worry. The men were… everywhere. A sea of them. None of them looked like Heracles, but they all looked tired, or angry, or defeated.

Her Themysciran training kicked in. She was in hostile territory. She found the shadows, moving along the walls, her senses on high alert. She was strong, yes, but she was also small and alone in a world of giants. Her brattish ego, so prominent at home, was tempered by a primal, unfamiliar fear.

She wandered for hours, a ghost in the machine of the city. She was hungry, but the food she saw displayed in shop windows looked strange and unappetizing. She was thirsty, but the water in the fountains was brown and foul.

As dusk began to settle, painting the grimy city in shades of orange and purple, she found herself in front of a large, brightly lit window. Inside, dozens of glowing boxes flickered with moving pictures. She had never seen such a thing. It was magic, but of a kind she didn't recognize. A small crowd was gathered, staring intently at the boxes.

Diana, drawn by the light, pushed her way to the front. Most of the boxes showed people talking, laughing, or selling things. But one, larger than the rest, held the crowd’s attention. It was showing what she would later learn was a news report.

The picture showed a grand building, similar in scale to the palaces of Themyscira, but darker, more gothic. Police—men in dark blue uniforms—stood grimly. The image then cut to two coffins being carried out. A somber voice emanated from the box, the words washing over Diana.

"…a city in mourning… the tragic, senseless murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne… pillars of the community, shot down in Park Row a month ago…"

Diana didn’t understand all the words, but she understood murder. She understood death. It was a brutal, ugly part of the stories of the old world.

Then, the picture changed again. It focused on a single figure standing beside a tall, thin man in a black suit. It was a boy. A boy her own age. He had hair as dark as her own, and he was dressed in a small, formal black suit. He was standing perfectly still, his face pale and impassive. But his eyes…

His eyes were a void. They were wide, dark pools of a sadness so profound, so absolute, that Diana felt it like a physical impact. She had seen Amazons grieve for fallen sisters, a noble, stoic sorrow. This was different. This was a hollowed-out emptiness, a world of light extinguished. As the camera lingered on his face, the boy’s composure finally broke. His lower lip trembled, and a single, perfect tear escaped his eye and traced a path down his pale cheek. He didn’t make a sound. He just stood there, silently shattering.

Diana stared, transfixed. This was a male. A boy. A man-in-training. According to every lesson she had ever learned, he should be vicious, or arrogant, or cruel. But he was none of those things. He was just… broken. He was the weeping sailor on the ship, but a thousand times more potent. The sadness emanating from the glass box was the most powerful thing she had felt since arriving in this monstrous city.

"Poor lad." a woman in the crowd murmured, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. "To see his parents gunned down like that. And now all alone in that big house. Just him and the butler."

"The Wayne boy." a man next to her grunted. "Richest kid in the world now. Some good that money does him."

The Wayne boy. Bruce. The news anchor had said his name. Bruce.

Diana couldn't look away from his face. She felt a strange, unprecedented emotion stirring within her. It wasn't pity. Pity was for the weak, and while this boy was sad, he didn't look weak. He looked… lost. It wasn't disgust, the feeling she had been trained to feel for all males. It was… intrigue. A deep, powerful curiosity that eclipsed even the one that had driven her from her home.

The story her mother and aunts had told her was of men as monsters, as aggressors. But this boy was a victim. A victim of the city’s ugliness. He was not Heracles. He was the opposite of Heracles. He was the one who had been wronged.

The news report ended. The image of the crying boy was replaced by a woman with bright red lipstick smiling and holding up a bottle of soap. The spell was broken. But the image of the boy—Bruce—was burned into Diana’s mind.

She had come to Man’s World to find a man and use her Lasso to extract the truth of his nature. It was a scientific, if hostile, mission.

Now, her mission had a face.

She turned away from the glowing window, her purpose singular and clear. She was no longer just a wanderer in Gotham. She was a hunter. And her prey was the sad boy prince in the lonely palace. She had to find him. She had to understand him. He was an anomaly, a contradiction to her entire worldview, and she could not rest until she had solved the puzzle of Bruce Wayne.

Finding Wayne Manor was surprisingly easy. Diana, a hunter by nature, simply had to follow the trail. She asked a street vendor, a tired-looking woman selling roasted nuts, by pointing at a discarded newspaper with the Wayne family’s picture on it and saying the one word she had latched onto: "Wayne."

The woman, seeing the determined look on the strange, fierce-looking child’s face, simply pointed. "Big fancy estate? Out past Bristol. Follow the river north. Can’t miss it. Biggest damn house in the county."

It was a long walk, taking her from the dense, oppressive heart of the city to its greener, more spacious outskirts. The air grew cleaner, the oppressive noise faded, and the houses became larger, set back from the road behind stone walls and iron gates. Finally, as twilight deepened into night, she saw it.

Perched on a hill, silhouetted against the bruised purple sky, was Wayne Manor. It was an imposing Gothic structure, all sharp peaks, dark stone, and shadowed archways. It looked less like a home and more like a fortress built to keep the world at bay. A massive iron gate, topped with stylized bat-wing motifs, blocked the main drive.

For a Themysciran princess used to scaling sheer cliffs for sport, the gate was a trivial obstacle. She waited until the road was empty, then scrambled up the cold iron bars with silent, practiced ease, dropping lightly onto the manicured lawn on the other side.

The grounds were vast and eerily quiet. Perfectly trimmed hedges formed intricate mazes, and ancient oak trees stood like silent, brooding sentinels. The place felt heavy with a silence that was not peaceful, but mournful. It was the silence of absence.

Diana circled the house, her bare feet making no sound on the damp grass. She peered into the tall, mullioned windows. Most of the rooms were dark, filled with the ghostly shapes of furniture draped in white cloths. The palace was asleep, or perhaps, dead. It was a mausoleum.

Her hunter’s instincts told her this was wrong. People lived here. The sad boy and the thin man. They had to be here somewhere. She continued her circuit until she saw it: a single light, a warm yellow square in the vast, dark facade of the second floor.

This was her entry point. She studied the wall. Ivy, thick and ancient, clung to the stone, providing a perfect ladder. With the agility of a jungle cat, she began to climb, her strong fingers and toes finding easy purchase in the foliage and stonework. She reached the window and peered inside.

It was a library. Walls lined with books from floor to ceiling, a fireplace with dying embers, and two large, wing-backed chairs. The room was empty. But a door on the far side was slightly ajar, leaking light and a faint, muffled sound.

The window was unlocked. With a soft click, she slid it open and slipped inside, landing as silently as a falling leaf on the plush oriental rug. The room smelled of old paper, leather, and woodsmoke. It was a comforting, scholarly smell, reminiscent of Clio’s library, but tinged with the same profound sadness that permeated the entire estate.

She crept across the room, her senses heightened. The muffled sound from beyond the door grew clearer as she approached. It was a sound she had heard only once before, from the skinny sailor on the ship. It was the sound of weeping.

Her heart began to beat a little faster. This was it.

She nudged the door open another inch with her toe and peered through the crack. It was a bedroom, vast and opulent. A huge, four-poster bed, big enough for ten children, dominated the space. But the room’s grandeur was lost in the gloom. And in the middle of the floor, curled up into a small ball beside the bed, was the boy from the television.

Bruce.

He was wearing silk pajamas, but they were rumpled, and his dark hair was a mess. His face was buried in his knees, and his small shoulders shook with silent, gut-wrenching sobs. He was completely alone in the enormous, dark room, drowning in his own grief.

Diana’s first instinct, honed by years of training, was aggression. This was the male she had sought. She should confront him, subdue him, use the Lasso, and demand answers. Her hand instinctively went to her belt where the golden rope was coiled.

But she paused. He was so… small. So utterly defenseless. There was no threat here. No monster. Just a child in pain. The fierce, angry part of her, the part that had been nurtured by Hippolyta and Philippus, was at war with the strange, new feeling of… empathy. It was confusing. She felt an urge to charge in and demand answers, and an equally strong urge to… what? She didn't have a name for it.

Deciding that action was better than inaction, she pushed the door open fully. It swung inward with a loud, ominous creak that echoed in the silent room.

Bruce’s head snapped up. His eyes, red-rimmed and swimming with tears, went wide with terror. He scrambled backward, crab-walking away from the doorway, pressing himself against the leg of the massive bed. He looked like a frightened animal cornered by a predator.

Before him stood a girl he had never seen before. She was barefoot, dressed in a strange dark tunic, with wild black hair and the most intensely blue, angry-looking eyes he had ever seen. She looked like a storm that had just walked into his room.

"Who… who are you?" he stammered, his voice choked with tears and fear. "How did you get in here?"

Diana stood in the doorway, her posture rigid, her chin jutted out in a display of what she hoped was intimidating bravado. She was in control here. She was the Amazon. He was the weak, crying male. But looking at his terrified face, she didn't feel powerful. She just felt… big. And clumsy. And very, very out of place. This was not going according to plan at all.

For a long moment, they just stared at each other across the cavernous bedroom. Diana, the intruder, stood ramrod straight, a pillar of misplaced aggression. Bruce, the resident, was a crumpled heap of fear and misery.

Finally, Diana broke the silence. Her voice, intended to be commanding and imperious, came out as a gruff, childish bark. "I am Diana. And I walked in."

Bruce wiped his wet cheeks with the back of his pajama sleeve, his fear mingling with confusion. "You… you can’t just walk in. The gates are locked. The doors are locked."

"Your locks are… insufficient." Diana said, puffing out her chest slightly. It was the truth, after all.

She took a step into the room. Bruce flinched and pressed himself harder against the bedpost. Seeing his fear, Diana’s programming kicked in. He was a male, and he was afraid of her. This was the proper order of things. Her confidence returned in a rush. She was the strong one. He was the weak one.

She strode toward him, her bare feet silent on the floorboards. She stopped a few feet away, looking down at him with a critical, appraising eye. "You are the boy from the glass box." she stated.

Bruce blinked. "The… the television?"

"You were crying in the box. You are crying now." Diana observed, her tone less of an accusation and more of a blunt statement of fact. "Why do you cry so much? Crying is for the weak."

The bluntness of her words, so different from the hushed, careful platitudes he’d been hearing for a month, seemed to shock him out of his terror. He looked up at her, his tear-filled eyes holding a spark of indignation. "My… my parents are dead." he whispered, as if the words themselves were a physical weight.

Diana knew this, of course, but she wanted to hear it from him. She wanted to test the information. "They were murdered." she said, repeating the word from the news report. "What is murdered?"

Bruce stared at her as if she’d grown a second head. "You don’t know what murder is?"

"Explain it." she commanded.

He swallowed hard, a fresh wave of grief washing over him. "It’s… it’s when someone kills someone else. On purpose. A man… a man with a gun… he…" Bruce’s voice broke, and he couldn’t continue. He buried his face in his hands.

Diana watched him, her brow furrowed. This was part of the test. She had to remain detached. Scientific. "Why would a man do that?" she pressed, her voice devoid of sympathy. "For what purpose?"

"For… for money." Bruce choked out from behind his hands. "For my mother’s pearls. He took her pearls."

Diana’s mind reeled. This was incomprehensible. On Themyscira, one might kill in battle, for honour, to defend one’s home. But to kill for… shiny beads? It was a level of petty avarice that defied her understanding.

"He killed your mother and father… for rocks from the sea?" she asked, unable to keep the disbelief from her voice.

"They’re not rocks." Bruce mumbled, looking up again. "They’re jewels. People… people do things for money here."

"This is a contemptible reason to take a life." Diana declared with the absolute moral certainty of her people. "The man who did this, he is a villain. A coward."

Bruce nodded, fresh tears spilling down his cheeks. "Yes."

"And you… you are his son." Diana continued, her train of thought moving in a straight, brutal line. "Men are treacherous. Your father was a man. Was he treacherous?"

This question seemed to snap Bruce’s heart in two. "No!" he cried, his voice suddenly loud and fierce. "My father was a good man! He helped people! He was a doctor! He saved lives! He was the best man in the whole world!"

The passionate defense caught Diana completely off guard. She had expected… she didn’t know what she had expected. Agreement, perhaps? Or a weak, tearful denial. Not this fiery, absolute certainty. The boy, who had seemed so fragile moments ago, was now glaring at her with a protective fury that was almost… Amazonian.

"He saved lives?" Diana repeated, the concept foreign in this context.

"He was a doctor." Bruce said again, his voice thick with pride and sorrow. "He fixed people when they were hurt or sick. He and my mother… they spent all their time trying to make this city better. And it… it killed them." The fire went out of him as quickly as it had come, and he slumped back into a posture of pure despair.

Diana was silent. Her neat, orderly investigation was in shambles. She had come here expecting to find a data point for the ‘men are evil’ column. A weak, crying boy who was the product of a treacherous father. Instead, she had found a boy grieving for a father who was apparently a healer. A good man. The contradiction was a physical dissonance in her mind.

"My mother, the Queen, says all men are like Heracles." Diana said, more to herself than to him. "That they are all liars and brutes."

Bruce looked at her, his sadness momentarily replaced by a child’s simple, honest confusion. "Who’s Heracles?"

Diana stared at him. He didn’t know Heracles? The greatest villain in history? The monster at the heart of her entire culture? The ignorance was staggering.

"You are… very uninformed." she said, her tone a mixture of disdain and bewilderment.

Bruce just shrugged, a small, helpless gesture. "I’m sorry."

He looked so lost, so small and alone in the vast, dark room. The fierce Amazon princess, the intrepid investigator, felt a strange, unwelcome softening in her chest. Her mission to interrogate a male specimen was failing. She was just… talking to a sad little boy.

"Do you have any friends?" Bruce asked suddenly, his voice barely a whisper.

The question blindsided her. "I have… companions. Artemis. Io. Nubia."

"Are they… here?" he asked, looking around the dark room as if expecting more strange girls to appear.

"No. They are on my home island." she said. "I am alone here."

Bruce was quiet for a moment. He looked at her, then at his own hands, then back at her. "I’m alone here, too." he said softly. "Except for Alfred." He paused, then looked up at her with a hesitant, hopeful expression that was utterly devastating. "Maybe… maybe we could be friends?"

Diana was floored. Friends? With him? A male? A boy? The idea was absurd. It was against everything she had ever been taught. It was a betrayal of her people, her mother, her entire history.

But he looked so lonely. And she, in this foul, alien city, was lonely too.

"I… do not make friends with males." she said, her voice stiff with ingrained prejudice.

Bruce’s hopeful face fell. "Oh." he said, looking down at the floor. "Okay."

The sight of his disappointment, so raw and genuine, was a feeling she had never known how to process. She felt… bad. It was a terrible, uncomfortable feeling.

"However." she added quickly, the word bursting out of her before she could stop it. "I am conducting an investigation. It may be… strategically beneficial… for me to observe you for a period of time. As a… test subject."

Bruce looked up, a glimmer of light returning to his dark eyes. "So… you’ll stay?"

"For my mission." Diana confirmed sternly, crossing her arms to reinforce her scientific detachment. "And only for my mission."

A small, watery smile touched Bruce’s lips for the first time. "Okay." he said. "Friends."

Diana opened her mouth to correct him again, to insist on the ‘test subject’ terminology. But she didn’t. The word ‘friends’ hung in the air, strange and alien and, in the crushing loneliness of Wayne Manor, unexpectedly welcome.

Chapter Text

An unspoken, fragile truce settled between them. Diana, the self-appointed investigator, and Bruce, the designated test subject who insisted on calling it a friendship. Her decision to stay was, by all Themysciran logic, an act of madness. But her curiosity about this baffling specimen of boyhood overrode her conditioning.

"Where will you sleep?" Bruce asked, his voice still small and raspy from crying.

Diana glanced around the opulent room. "I do not require a bed. I will rest here." she declared, pointing to the thick, plush rug in front of the fireplace. It was softer than any bedroll she had ever used. To her, it was a luxury.

Bruce looked at the floor, then at his own enormous, empty bed. "You can… you can have the bed if you want. It’s too big."

"I will not sleep in a male’s bed." Diana said instantly, the ingrained taboo flaring up. "The floor is acceptable."

Bruce didn't argue. He seemed to understand that some lines, for whatever strange reasons this girl had, could not be crossed. He crawled back into his own bed, pulling the covers up to his chin. He watched her as she settled on the rug, not lying down, but sitting in a cross-legged, meditative posture, her back perfectly straight. She looked like a small, fierce statue guarding his room.

"Goodnight, Diana." he whispered into the darkness.

Diana did not reply. She was an Amazon on a mission, not a guest at a slumber party. But she heard him.

The next morning, Bruce woke to find her gone. For a panicked moment, he thought he had dreamed her. But then he saw her, in the center of his room, going through a series of fluid, powerful katas. She moved with a grace and precision that was mesmerizing, her limbs cutting through the air in silent, deadly arcs. He had never seen anything like it.

"What are you doing?" he asked, his voice full of a child’s awe.

Diana stopped, mid-kick. "This is my morning exercise. It prepares the body and mind for combat."

"Combat? Who are you going to fight?"

"One must always be prepared." she said cryptically. Her stomach then chose that moment to let out a loud, un-Amazonian growl. She hadn’t eaten since the stale bread on the ship. She clapped a hand over her midsection, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

A small smile touched Bruce’s lips. "Are you hungry? We can ask Alfred to make breakfast."

"Who is Alfred?" Diana asked, her guard instantly up. Another male?

"He’s my butler." Bruce explained. "He takes care of me. He’s… he’s all I have left, and my best friend."

The plan, as Bruce outlined it, was simple: Diana would hide. He would go down for breakfast, procure an extra tray of food, and sneak it back up to his room. It was a plan born of a child’s logic, full of holes, but Diana, knowing nothing of butlers or household routines, agreed. She was a master of stealth. Hiding would be easy.

She concealed herself in the massive wardrobe, leaving the door cracked just enough to see. A few minutes later, she heard footsteps approaching—one set of small, familiar steps, and another, slower and more deliberate.

The door opened, and Bruce entered, followed by the tall, thin man from the television. He was older, with kind eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache, and he carried a silver tray laden with food. This must be Alfred.

"Master Bruce, why are you insisting on eating in your room this morning?" Alfred asked, his voice a gentle, calm baritone. "It’s a lovely day. Some sunshine in the breakfast nook would do you a world of good."

"I… I just want to eat up here today, Alfred." Bruce said, his voice tense. He was a terrible liar.

Alfred’s eyes, full of a quiet, knowing intelligence, swept the room. He seemed to notice everything: the slightly ajar wardrobe, the indentation on the rug where Diana had slept, the almost imperceptible shift in the room's atmosphere.

"Very well, sir." he said, setting the tray down on a small table. "I’ve brought your usual. Scrambled eggs, toast, and a glass of milk. And… some fruit. In case you have… a guest."

Bruce froze. Diana held her breath in the wardrobe.

Alfred’s gaze lingered on the wardrobe for a fraction of a second, a tiny, almost imperceptible smile touching the corner of his mouth. "I shall be downstairs if you require anything, Master Bruce. Anything at all." He turned and walked out, closing the door softly behind him.

The moment he was gone, Diana burst out of the wardrobe. "He knows! The thin man, he knows I am here!"

"I… I think so." Bruce admitted, his face pale.

"Is he going to raise an alarm? Fetch the guards?" Diana demanded, her hand on her dagger.

"I don't think Alfred has ever raised an alarm in his life." Bruce said. "He’s… nice."

"Nice?" Diana scoffed at the word. It was a meaningless descriptor. But her stomach growled again, louder this time. Her eyes fell on the tray. It was laden with fluffy yellow eggs, perfectly toasted bread, and a bowl of bright red strawberries. The smell was heavenly.

Bruce pushed the tray towards her. "Here. You should eat."

Suspiciously, Diana picked up a strawberry. It was the color of a Themysciran sunset, plump and perfect. She took a bite. A burst of incredible sweetness filled her mouth, a taste so pure and delightful it made her eyes go wide. She had never tasted anything so good. She devoured the rest of the bowl in seconds. Then she attacked the eggs and toast with a ferocity that startled Bruce.

She ate like a starving wolf, without manners or decorum. When she was finished, she looked up, a smear of jam on her cheek.

"The food is… acceptable." she declared, trying to maintain her regal composure.

Bruce just smiled. "I’m glad you like it."

That afternoon, he tried to teach her how to "play." It was a disaster. He brought out a set of intricate toy soldiers, setting them up for a mock battle. Diana, taking him literally, saw them as a tactical problem. She dismissed his G.I. Joes as "undisciplined rabble" and, with a single flick of her finger, sent the enemy general flying across the room, where he knocked over a priceless porcelain vase. The crash echoed through the silent house.

They froze, waiting for the inevitable shout of anger. Instead, a few moments later, Alfred appeared at the door with a dustpan and brush.

He didn't look at the shattered vase. He looked at Diana, who was trying to look innocent, and then at Bruce, who looked terrified.

"It appears the visiting general’s campaign has met an unfortunate end." Alfred said, his voice perfectly placid. He knelt and began sweeping up the porcelain shards. "Perhaps a pursuit with less… collateral damage would be in order for the afternoon? The gardens are quite lovely this time of year."

He then looked directly at Diana, his kind eyes meeting her fierce blue ones. "And for you, miss… I believe we may have some of Master Bruce’s old clothes that might be a touch more comfortable than your current… traveling attire."

Diana was speechless. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t calling the guards. He was offering her clothes and suggesting they play outside. And he was being… nice. It was the second time that word had been used to describe him, and Diana was beginning to understand it. It meant… not a threat. It meant calm. It meant… safe.

This Alfred was a puzzle even more confounding than Bruce. He was a man, an adult man, yet he showed no aggression, no anger, no brutishness. Only a quiet, unwavering kindness. It was like watching a predator behave like a gentle herbivore. It broke her brain. It violated every law of nature as she understood it.

She was still rude to him, of course. When he offered her a glass of juice, she snatched it without a word of thanks. When he spoke to her, her replies were clipped and suspicious. But inside, her mind was a whirlwind. Her investigation was supposed to be about confirming a single, simple truth. Instead, every moment she spent in this house of sorrow, with the sad boy and his inexplicably kind servant, she only found more and more questions.

Alfred Pennyworth had seen a great deal in his life. He had been a field medic in the war, an actor on the London stage, and for the last decade, the loyal steward of the Wayne family. He had seen tragedy and triumph, nobility and baseness. He was, by any measure, a man who was not easily surprised.

The small, feral girl who had taken up residence in his grieving charge’s bedroom, however, came very close.

He had known she was there from the moment he’d entered the room that first morning. It wasn’t just the ajar wardrobe; it was the air itself. The profound, suffocating grief that had blanketed the manor for a month had… shifted. There was a new energy in the room—a prickly, volatile, but undeniably vibrant current. And for the first time in weeks, Master Bruce had not looked entirely like a ghost.

Alfred’s first priority, always, was Bruce. And if a strange, aggressive little girl who looked like she could wrestle a bear was what it took to bring a spark of life back to the boy’s eyes, then Alfred would personally see to it that she was well-fed and comfortable.

His approach was one of strategic kindness. He did not confront her. He did not question her. He simply… accommodated her. He acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a princess from a lost island of warrior women to be camping on his employer’s bedroom floor.

The next day, he left a stack of clothes outside the bedroom door. They were Bruce’s from a year or two prior—soft trousers, cotton shirts, a warm wool sweater. They were boys' clothes, but they were clean and comfortable. After a few hours, Diana emerged, looking deeply uncomfortable but undeniably cleaner, dressed in a grey sweater and trousers that were slightly too long. She had rolled up the cuffs.

"These… fabrics are soft." she grumbled to Bruce, as if it were an accusation. "They offer no protection."

"They’re comfortable." Bruce replied simply.

Later that day, Alfred found them in the kitchen. Diana was staring, utterly mystified, at the refrigerator, which Bruce had just opened. A cold, magical mist had rolled out, revealing shelves laden with food.

"It is a box of endless winter." Diana whispered in awe, reaching out a hesitant hand to feel the cold air.

"It keeps the food from spoiling." Bruce explained.

Alfred cleared his throat from the doorway. "Indeed. And it is currently well-stocked. Is there something I can get for you, Miss Diana?"

Diana whirled around, startled. She hadn’t heard him approach. His quietness was unnerving. She eyed him with suspicion. "I require no assistance from you, man."

The use of the word "man" as if it were a formal, and slightly insulting, title was not lost on Alfred. "As you wish." he said smoothly. "However, should you develop a need, I am quite adept at the preparation of grilled cheese sandwiches. They are a particular favorite of Master Bruce’s."

He held her gaze, his expression one of polite neutrality. But his eyes were kind. Diana had never been looked at by an adult male with such open, uncomplicated gentleness. Her mother’s gaze held love, but also the weight of expectation. Philippus’s held respect, but it was a hard-earned, warrior’s respect. The men on the ship had looked at her with confusion or annoyance.

Alfred’s gaze held… acceptance.

It was this, more than anything, that began to erode the foundations of her hatred. Her entire life, she had been taught that men were a threat. You fought them, you fled from them, or you tricked them. But Alfred presented none of those options. He wasn’t fighting. He wasn’t a threat to flee from. And he was so transparently honest that trickery seemed not only unnecessary but also cruel.

Her mind, trained for combat, had no strategy for dealing with unconditional kindness. It was a weapon she had never encountered, and it disarmed her completely.

Her rudeness toward him became a defense mechanism, a way to maintain the worldview that was so rapidly crumbling. When he brought them hot chocolate that evening, she snatched her mug from the tray without a word.

"A ‘thank you’ is customary, Miss." Alfred said gently, not as a reprimand, but as a simple statement of fact, as if teaching her a local custom.

Diana glared at him over the rim of her mug. The hot chocolate was rich and sweet, warming her from the inside out. "Why should I thank you? It is your function to serve."

Bruce looked horrified. "Diana! That’s rude!"

"On the contrary, Master Bruce." Alfred said, his calm unruffled. "Miss Diana is technically correct. It is my function. However, we have found that simple courtesies tend to make the functioning more… pleasant for all parties involved." He gave Diana a small, almost imperceptible wink. "Just a thought."

He then retreated, leaving Diana to grapple with this new concept. Pleasantness. Courtesy. These were not warrior virtues. They were… something else. Something soft. And yet, in Alfred’s hands, they felt incredibly powerful.

Later that night, as Bruce slept, Diana found Alfred in the library, polishing a silver candelabra. She stood in the doorway, silent, for a full minute before he spoke, without turning around.

"Is there something you need, Miss Diana?"

"You are not like the men in the stories." she said, the words bursting out of her. It was an accusation.

Alfred finally turned, setting down his polishing cloth. He looked at her, his expression serious. "And what are the men in your stories like?"

"They are treacherous. They are greedy. They are violent. They smile while hiding a knife." she recited, the words a catechism she had known her whole life.

Alfred considered this for a moment. "I see." he said slowly. "Well, I’m sorry to say, some of the men in our world are very much like that. But not all of them. Just as I suspect not all the women in your stories are perfect saints."

Diana had no answer for that.

"You know." Alfred continued, leaning against the desk. "I believe a person is not defined by their gender, or their station, or the stories told about them. I believe they are defined by their choices. The choice to be kind over cruel. The choice to build rather than break. The choice to help someone who is hurting." His eyes flicked upward, in the direction of Bruce’s room.

Diana stood frozen. Every conversation with this man felt like a philosophy lesson she was failing. He was systematically dismantling her entire belief system, not with arguments or force, but with quiet logic and irrefutable decency. It was infuriating. And it was starting to work.

Her mind was, as she had feared, breaking. But it wasn’t shattering into pieces. It felt more like a dam breaking, letting a flood of new, confusing, and not entirely unpleasant ideas rush in. The armor of hatred was rusting away, and she didn’t know what, if anything, would be left underneath.

With Alfred’s tacit approval, Diana’s status shifted from hidden fugitive to… resident curiosity. Bruce, no longer needing to hide her, took it upon himself to be her guide to the strange world of Wayne Manor. It became his mission to educate her, to fill in the bizarre, cavernous gaps in her knowledge.

Their classroom was the entire house. The globe in the study became a lesson in geography. Diana, who had only ever known the singular landmass of Themyscira, was astounded by the sheer size and diversity of the world. She would spin the globe and place her finger on a random spot.

"What is this place?" she would demand, pointing to a smear of green labeled ‘Brazil’.

"That’s a country in South America." Bruce would explain, pulling a heavy encyclopedia from the shelf. "They have a huge rainforest there. The Amazon."

"The Amazon?" Diana’s eyes lit up. "There are other Amazons there?"

"No, it’s just… it’s just the name of the river." Bruce said, confused.

Diana’s disappointment was palpable. For a fleeting moment, she had imagined a sister tribe, hidden in the jungles of this strange new world.

Bruce taught her to read the language of his land. She was a quick study, her mind sharp and accustomed to memorizing ancient texts and battle strategies. But she read with a literalness that was often comical. Nursery rhymes baffled her.

"‘Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,’" she read aloud one afternoon, her brow furrowed. "‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.’ This is a cautionary tale about the importance of structural integrity. The wall was clearly flawed. And why would they send horses and men to fix an egg? It is an inefficient use of resources. A poultice of herbs and clay would not have saved him, but it would have been a more logical attempt."

Bruce would just stare at her, then dissolve into a fit of giggles, a sound Alfred hadn't heard in what felt like a lifetime.

The most powerful educational tool, however, was the television. It was the glass box that had first led her to Bruce, and now it became her window into the soul of his world. Bruce showed her cartoons, which she dismissed as "childish and without tactical merit." though she was secretly mesmerized by the vibrant colors and impossible physics. He showed her nature documentaries, which she adored. She watched, wide-eyed, as lions hunted on the savanna and whales breached in the deep ocean.

"This world has great warriors." she said with grudging respect, watching a grizzly bear catch a salmon.

But her greatest fascination was with the most mundane of programming: a daytime soap opera called As the Heart Burns.

It was a world of heightened, exaggerated emotion. People fell in love at first sight. They betrayed each other for flimsy reasons. They delivered passionate monologues in dimly lit rooms. They were constantly sick with mysterious ailments or suffering from amnesia.

To Bruce, it was silly and boring. To Diana, it was an ethnographic study of unparalleled importance.

"This woman." Diana said, pointing a finger at the screen where a blonde heiress was weeping over a man who had just revealed he was her long-lost brother, "she is experiencing profound emotional distress. But it is not the grief of battle or the loss of a parent. It is… convoluted. Why does she weep?"

"Because she’s in love with him, but he’s her sister's husband, so now she can’t be." Bruce explained, sighing as if this were obvious.

"What is… ‘in love’?" Diana asked, the phrase as alien to her as ‘stock market’ or ‘telephone’.

Bruce turned red. "It’s… it’s when you like someone. A lot. More than anyone else. And you want to be with them all the time. And when they’re sad, you feel sad. And when they’re happy, you feel happy. And your stomach feels… funny when you look at them."

Diana stared at the screen, then looked at Bruce. She thought about how she had felt when she first saw him, sad and alone in his room. She thought about how his small smiles made her feel a strange warmth in her chest. She thought about how, when he had his nightmares about the alley, she felt a fierce, protective anger that made her want to hunt down the man who had hurt him. She thought about the strange, fluttering sensation in her stomach whenever he looked at her with his sad, dark eyes.

Her own eyes widened in horrified realization.

The symptoms. They matched.

She was afflicted with this ‘in love’ condition. With Bruce.

The revelation was a thunderclap. It was a biological response she couldn't control, a side effect of her investigation she had never anticipated. Love, in the stories of Themyscira, was a weakness. It was the thing that had made her mother, Hippolyta, trust Heracles. It was a poison.

And now it was in her veins.

She stood up abruptly, her face a mask of panic. "This educational session is concluded." she announced, and marched out of the room, leaving Bruce staring after her in confusion.

She had to analyze this. She had to understand the nature of this affliction. And there was only one person in this house who seemed to have answers to the illogical, emotional chaos of this world.

She had to talk to Alfred.

Chapter Text

Diana found Alfred in the greenhouse, a glass palace filled with the earthy scent of damp soil and blooming orchids. He was meticulously pruning a rose bush, his movements precise and gentle. For a man she had once considered a potential brute, he had remarkably delicate hands.

She did not announce herself. She simply appeared at his side, her presence as sudden and disconcerting as a change in the weather. Alfred, long accustomed to her startling entrances, did not even flinch. He merely snipped off a withered leaf before turning to face her.

"Miss Diana." he said, his tone mild. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I require a consultation." Diana said, her voice stiff and formal, as if she were a general reporting to her superior officer.

Alfred raised an eyebrow. "A consultation? I’m afraid my medical expertise is a bit rusty, and largely confined to battlefield triage. If you’re feeling unwell, perhaps a proper doctor—"

"My affliction is not of the body." Diana interrupted, crossing her arms. "It is… of the condition Bruce described. The ‘in love’ condition."

Alfred froze, his pruning shears held mid-air. A slow, bemused smile spread across his face. He quickly tried to suppress it, turning it into a cough. "I… I see. And you believe you have… contracted this condition?"

"The symptoms are a match." Diana stated grimly. "Proximity is desired. His emotional state influences my own. There is a… peculiar sensation in my stomach region when I engage in visual contact." She delivered the lines as if reading from a grim diagnostic chart.

Alfred finally gave up trying to hide his smile. It was a warm, genuine thing that made the crow’s feet around his eyes crinkle. "Ah. A classic presentation of the ailment. And the… object of this affliction is, I presume, Master Bruce?"

Diana nodded curtly, a blush creeping up her neck. She hated this. It was a weakness, an embarrassing, illogical vulnerability. "On Themyscira, this… this is a dangerous vulnerability. It led to the Great Betrayal. It is a poison."

"Ah, yes." Alfred said, setting his shears down and giving her his full attention. "The Trojan War was started over much the same complaint. It does have a history of causing… complications. But a poison? I would disagree. A poison, by definition, harms the body. Love, Miss Diana, in its truest form, does quite the opposite. It strengthens the spirit."

Diana looked skeptical. "It makes one foolish. My mother trusted Heracles because she felt this for him. He betrayed her."

"Then it was not love he felt for her, was it?" Alfred countered gently. "It was greed. He merely exploited her love. The love itself was not the flaw. The flaw was in him. You cannot blame the flower for the boot that crushes it."

He leaned against his workbench, looking at her with that same unnerving, paternal kindness. "Tell me, this feeling you have for Master Bruce… does it make you want to harm him? To betray him?"

"No!" Diana said, horrified at the suggestion. "It makes me want to… protect him. It makes me want to punch anyone who makes him sad."

"Does it make you weaker, or stronger?"

Diana thought for a moment. She thought of how she had been ready to fight the sailors on the ship, and how she had been ready to fight Bruce himself. But the thought of anyone hurting him now filled her with a strength that was ferocious, a white-hot protective instinct that burned even hotter than her warrior’s pride. "It… makes me stronger." she admitted, the words tasting strange in her mouth.

"Then it is not a poison, is it?" Alfred concluded, his logic inescapable. "It is a source of power. A different kind of power than the one you are used to. It is not the power to conquer. It is the power to defend. To cherish. To build."

He picked up a perfect, crimson rose he had just snipped. "On its own, this is just a flower. But in the right context, given to the right person… it can be a declaration, a promise, a comfort. The thing itself is simple. Its power comes from the intent behind it." He offered the rose to her.

Diana stared at the flower. It was beautiful, its petals a rich, deep red. She tentatively took it from him. Its thorns had been carefully removed.

"What… what do I do about it?" she asked, her voice losing its gruffness, becoming small and uncertain. She was no longer a warrior princess seeking a diagnosis. She was just a girl, holding a flower, completely lost.

She looked so young, so utterly out of her depth, that Alfred’s heart went out to her. This fierce little creature, raised on hate and war, was now grappling with the most tender and terrifying of human emotions. She was like a puppy that had just discovered its own reflection, growling at the stranger in the glass who was, in fact, itself.

"There is nothing to ‘do’." Alfred said softly. "You simply… feel it. You are loyal by nature, Miss Diana. You are fiercely protective. This ‘love’ you’ve discovered is not a foreign invader. It’s just… your own heart, speaking a language you were never taught. All you have to do is learn to listen to it."

He gestured with his head back toward the house. "Master Bruce… he has been so lost in the dark. I believe you came here for your own reasons, for your ‘investigation’. But perhaps… perhaps you are also the answer to a prayer I didn't even know I had made. You have brought a light back into his life."

Diana looked down at the rose in her hand, then back at Alfred. The blush on her cheeks was no longer from embarrassment, but from something else, something warm. For the first time, she didn't feel the need to be rude or defensive with him.

"Thank you… Alfred." she said, the name feeling natural on her tongue for the first time.

Alfred simply smiled. "You are most welcome, my dear."

Diana walked away from the greenhouse, clutching the rose as if it were a sacred artifact. She felt… different. The turmoil in her soul hadn't vanished, but it had changed its character. It was no longer a war. It was a conversation. And for the first time, she was beginning to understand both sides. She was still a warrior. She was still an Amazon. But she was also, apparently, a girl in love. And maybe, just maybe, that wasn’t a weakness after all.

Armed with Alfred's startlingly simple wisdom, Diana's entire demeanor shifted. The 'in love' condition, once a terrifying ailment, was now re-contextualized. It wasn't a poison; it was a power source. It wasn't a weakness; it was a type of strength she was unfamiliar with. This new understanding filled her with a sense of purpose that was almost as exhilarating as mastering a new combat maneuver.

She was now fiercely, unapologetically loyal to Bruce. She became his shadow, his tiny, hyper-competent bodyguard. If he stumbled while walking, her arm was there to steady him before he could fall. If a book on a high shelf was out of his reach, she would simply leap up, pluck it from its place, and hand it to him. She saw his well-being as her new, primary mission.

Bruce, for his part, was both baffled and touched by this new intensity. Diana had always been… a lot. But now her brusque, demanding energy was focused entirely on him, like a magnifying glass focusing the sun's rays. It was overwhelming, but it was also warm. The crushing loneliness that had been his constant companion for a month began to recede, pushed back by her sheer, forceful presence.

Her fish-out-of-water nature, however, remained firmly intact, leading to a series of bizarrely sweet interactions. She took the concept of being "in love" with the same literal-minded seriousness she applied to everything else.

One afternoon, she watched Bruce meticulously building a complex model of a Spitfire airplane. He was frowning in concentration, trying to attach a tiny, delicate piece of the landing gear.

Diana, observing him from her post on the floor, felt that strange, warm feeling in her chest. She remembered Alfred’s lesson. It’s the power to build. She remembered the soap opera. People in love do things for each other.

She stood up, marched over to the workbench, and took the half-built model from him. "Your construction is inefficient." she announced.

Before Bruce could protest, she examined the tiny piece and the corresponding slot, her eyes narrowed in tactical assessment. She then applied a precise, controlled amount of pressure with her thumb. There was a soft click. The piece slid perfectly into place. She handed the model back to him.

"It is done." she said, a proud, satisfied look on her face. She had contributed to his mission. She had demonstrated her affection through superior engineering.

Bruce just stared at the perfectly fitted piece, then up at her. "Uh… thanks, Diana."

She simply nodded, as if to say, You are welcome for my invaluable assistance, and returned to her spot, feeling deeply content. She was, in her own strange way, courting him.

She began bringing him "offerings." These were not the flowers or chocolates of his world. One day, she presented him with a perfectly smooth, flat stone she had found in the garden, announcing, "This would make an excellent skipping stone. Its aerodynamics are superior." Another time, she captured a large, iridescent beetle and presented it to him in her cupped hands. "This creature is a worthy warrior. Observe its carapace. It is a model of natural armor."

Bruce, a boy who was used to being given ponies and stocks for his birthday, found himself the owner of a small, carefully curated collection of rocks, insects, and unusually sturdy twigs. He kept them all in a shoebox under his bed, treasures from a world he didn't understand but was beginning to love.

Bruce, in turn found himself in a similar, if quieter, orbit. He was a gentle, wounded soul, and Diana’s fierce, protective energy was a shield he hadn't known he needed. He began to defer to her in small ways, not out of fear, but out of a kind of loving exasperation.

"Should we read a book or go outside?" he might ask.

"The sun is strong. Vitamin D is essential for bone density. We will go outside." she would declare.

And Bruce would just smile and say, "Okay."

This strange, symbiotic relationship—the loyal, puppy-like warrior princess and the quiet, boy-prince—reached a new level of awkward, adorable intensity one evening. They were sitting in the library, a comfortable silence between them. Bruce was reading a comic book, and Diana was… watching him read.

She was studying his face, the way his dark hair fell over his forehead, the way his brow furrowed when the hero was in peril. She felt that ‘funny’ feeling in her stomach again, a pleasant, bubbling warmth. She remembered the soap opera, As the Heart Burns. There was an action she had seen performed many times, a gesture of ultimate affection. A ‘kiss’.

It was, according to her observations, a pressing of the lips against another person. It seemed simple enough. A logical next step in her demonstration of the ‘in love’ condition.

Without any warning, she leaned over. Bruce, absorbed in his comic, didn’t notice until her face was inches from his. He looked up, his eyes wide with surprise.

Before he could speak, she leaned in the rest of the way and pressed her lips against his cheek.

It was not a soft, gentle peck. It was a firm, deliberate, and slightly clumsy placement of her mouth on his skin. It lasted for a single, chaste second. Then she leaned back, her expression serious, as if she had just completed a complex and important experiment.

The effect was electric.

Bruce’s entire face erupted in a furious blush. He touched his cheek where her lips had been, his mouth opening and closing silently. He looked like a fish that had just been told a shocking secret.

Diana, for her part, felt a jolt of something hot and startling rush through her. Her own cheeks, to her immense frustration, turned a bright, betraying pink. She had not anticipated this physiological side effect.

They stared at each other for a beat, both bright red, both utterly flustered.

Then, in a mutual, unspoken agreement to pretend it hadn't just happened, they both tried to play it cool.

Bruce immediately ducked his head and became intensely interested in his comic book, holding it up so it hid his burning face.

Diana, equally flustered, stood up abruptly. "I will now perform my evening patrol of the perimeter." she announced to the room at large, and marched stiffly out of the library, her back ramrod straight.

Alfred, who had been silently refilling a decanter in the corner of the room, watched her go, a broad, fond smile on his face. The kids were, as they say, alright.

Chapter Text

The peace of Wayne Manor, a fragile bubble of healing and awkward affection, was destined to burst. On Themyscira, Princess Diana’s absence had not gone unnoticed for long. What began as a mild concern had escalated into a full-blown crisis. Her bed had not been slept in. Her place at the training grounds was empty. And a frantic check of the Royal Armoury had revealed the unthinkable: the Lasso of Hestia and the Royal Tiara were gone.

Queen Hippolyta was beside herself with fear and fury. That Diana would defy her was a painful blow. That she would steal sacred artifacts and flee to the hated world of men was a betrayal of the highest order. It was her own history, her own failure with Heracles, repeating itself in the form of her daughter.

"She is curious and headstrong, my Queen." Io had said, trying to defend her friend during the Queen’s inquest. "She meant no treason. She only had… questions."

"And you, Artemis?" Hippolyta had demanded, turning her wrathful gaze on Diana’s other companion.

"She has been corrupted by soft ideas." Artemis declared, her voice ringing with conviction. "This is Io’s fault, with her talk of ‘not all men are equal’. Diana has gone to their world seeking proof of this foolishness. She will find only treachery and death."

Hippolyta made her decision. A full-scale invasion of Man’s World was out of the question; it would expose them, break their most sacred law. But she could not leave her daughter to the wolves. She needed a small, fast retrieval team. One that could move unseen and bring the princess home before she could be irrevocably corrupted.

She looked at the two girls before her. Artemis, the fiery zealot, whose loyalty was unquestionable and whose fighting skills were second only to Diana’s. And Io, the pragmatist, whose sharp mind and level head could temper Artemis’s hot-blooded nature. They were Diana’s friends. They would be the most motivated to find her.

"You two will go." Hippolyta commanded. "You will find your princess. You will use any means necessary to retrieve her and the sacred artifacts. Find her scent, track her, and bring my daughter home."

Artemis’s eyes lit up with a fierce, joyful light. A mission into enemy territory. It was the moment she had been training for her entire life. Io looked far more apprehensive, the weight of the responsibility heavy on her shoulders.

They were given passage on the next magically-veiled transport ship, following the same route Diana had taken. They were hunters, and Diana, for all her skill, was an amateur at evasion. She had left a trail a blind Amazon could follow. The sailors on the ship remembered a strange, fierce girl. The dockworkers in Gotham remembered her, too. And asking after a small girl with wild black hair and piercing blue eyes, dressed in strange clothes, eventually led them to the whispered rumors of the reclusive Wayne boy having a new, mysterious ‘friend’.

And so it was that on a quiet, overcast afternoon, two more strange girls appeared at the gates of Wayne Manor.

Artemis, ever impatient, did not bother with subtlety. She rattled the massive iron gates, her voice a sharp, commanding cry that echoed across the manicured lawns. "DIANA! PRINCESS OF THEMYSCIRA! SHOW YOURSELF!"

Inside the house, Diana and Bruce were in the middle of a heated game of chess. Or rather, Bruce was trying to teach her chess, and Diana was complaining that the Queen was the most powerful piece but the King was the objective of the game, a "clear flaw in patriarchal game design."

When Artemis’s voice cut through the air, Diana froze. Her blood ran cold. She knew that voice. It was the sound of home. And the sound of trouble.

"Who is that?" Bruce asked, looking toward the window.

"It is… my companions." Diana said, her face pale. "Artemis. And likely Io."

Before Bruce could ask more, Diana was already moving. She ran to the window, her heart pounding. She saw them. Two figures at the gate. One with fiery red hair, shaking the bars with fury. The other, dark-haired and slender, standing back, looking up at the house with a worried expression.

"They have found me." Diana whispered. Her mission was over. They would drag her back to Themyscira, back to the beautiful cage. And she would never see Bruce again.

A wave of panic, followed by a surge of defiance, washed over her. She would not go.

She turned to Bruce, her eyes blazing with a desperate fire. "Hide." she said.

"What? Diana, what’s going on?"

"They will not understand." she said, her voice urgent. "Artemis… she believes all males are monsters. She will see you as a corruptor. She will try to harm you. You must hide. Now!"

The raw fear and protective fury in her voice was enough. Bruce didn't argue. He scrambled out of his chair and hid behind a large, velvet curtain, his heart thumping in his chest.

Diana took a deep breath, schooling her features into a mask of regal indifference. She walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped out onto the porch, closing the door firmly behind her. She would face them here. She would keep them away from Bruce.

She walked calmly down the long, sweeping driveway. As she approached, Artemis stopped shaking the gate, her hands balling into fists. Io looked relieved and anxious at the same time.

"You have been found, Princess." Artemis called out, her voice dripping with scorn. "Your little holiday in this filthy world is over. The Queen demands your return."

"I am not ready to return." Diana said, her voice cold and steady. She stopped ten feet from the gate.

"It is not a request." Artemis snarled. She looked past Diana, at the dark, imposing manor. "So this is the den you have chosen to hide in. This opulent cage. And what of the creature that lives here? This ‘Wayne’ boy? Have you been consorting with a male?" The word was an accusation of the highest crime.

"What I have been doing is my own affair." Diana retorted, her chin held high.

"It is the affair of all Amazons when you steal our sacred relics and abandon your people for the company of our sworn enemy!" Artemis shouted. With a grunt of effort, she ripped the iron lock off the gate with her bare hands and swung it open.

The hunters had breached the perimeter. And they were coming for her. But Diana knew, with a certainty that settled deep in her bones, they were really coming for Bruce.

Artemis strode through the gate like a conquering general, her eyes sweeping the grounds with contempt. "This place reeks of them." she spat. "Of weakness and decay."

Io followed more hesitantly, her gaze fixed on Diana. "Diana, please." she said, her voice pleading. "Just come home. The Queen is worried sick. We can explain everything."

"There is nothing to explain to those who will not listen." Diana said, her eyes locked on Artemis. She knew Io was a potential ally, but Artemis was the immediate threat.

"So, it’s true." Artemis said, a cruel smile twisting her lips. "You’ve been corrupted. Look at you." Her eyes raked over Diana’s clothes—the soft grey sweater, the comfortable trousers. "You dress in their pathetic fabrics. You live in their gaudy house. Have you forgotten who you are? You are a warrior! A princess of the Amazons!"

"I have forgotten nothing." Diana said, her voice dangerously quiet. "I have learned."

"Learned what? Their weakness? Their deceit?" Artemis took another step closer, her posture aggressive. "Where is he? Where is the male you have been hiding with? I would see this monster for myself."

"He is not a monster." Diana said, planting her feet firmly. "And you will not see him."

"Oh, I think I will." Artemis said. With a burst of speed that would have astonished any normal human, she tried to shove past Diana, heading for the front door of the manor.

It was a test. A challenge. And Diana met it without hesitation.

She moved in a blur, intercepting Artemis’s path. She didn't strike her. She simply blocked her, her body an immovable wall. "I said no."

Artemis, surprised by Diana’s speed and strength, stumbled back. Her eyes narrowed into slits of pure fury. "You would defend him? You would defend a male against your sister?"

"He is my friend." Diana said, the word solid and true. "And I will not let you harm him."

From behind the curtain in the library, Bruce watched, his heart in his throat. He saw the red-haired girl’s fury, the raw aggression in her stance. And he saw Diana, standing like a statue of living marble between him and the danger. She wasn’t just a strange, bossy girl anymore. She was a guardian. She was his shield.

"‘Friend’?" Artemis laughed, a harsh, ugly sound. "They are incapable of friendship! They know only dominance and desire! He has enchanted you, poisoned your mind with his male trickery!"

"The only poison here is the hatred you refuse to let go of." Diana shot back.

The insult was too much for Artemis. With a roar of rage, she lunged. This time, it wasn't a test. It was an attack. She threw a powerful right cross aimed at Diana’s head.

Diana deflected it easily, her forearm meeting Artemis’s with a loud smack. The force of the blow would have broken a normal person’s arm. The two girls, products of the same warrior culture, were perfectly matched.

"Stop it, both of you!" Io cried, her voice filled with panic.

They ignored her. Artemis pressed her attack, a flurry of kicks and punches. Diana met every blow, blocking and parrying, her movements economical and precise. It was a dance of violence she knew intimately, but this time, it felt different. She wasn't sparring. She was defending her home. This strange, sad house had become her territory, and Bruce was her charge.

"You have grown soft!" Artemis snarled, breaking through Diana’s guard and landing a glancing blow on her shoulder.

"And you have grown blind!" Diana retorted, using Artemis’s momentum to throw her off balance. Artemis stumbled, catching herself before she fell.

For a moment, they stood panting, glaring at each other. The raw, unrestrained violence of the confrontation had shocked even them.

"I will not fight you, Artemis." Diana said, her voice strained. "But I will not let you pass."

"Then you are a traitor." Artemis whispered, her voice filled with a venomous certainty. She turned to Io. "She is lost. The male has turned her against us. Our mission is clear. We must subdue her and purge this house of his influence."

Io looked from Artemis’s fanatical face to Diana’s determined one, and then her eyes flickered toward the house, toward the window where she could just make out a small, frightened shadow. She was caught between her duty to her Queen and her loyalty to her friend, who was clearly not the corrupted traitor Artemis described. Diana was… in love. Io had read the ancient poets. She recognized the symptoms.

"Perhaps… perhaps we should talk first." Io suggested weakly.

"Talk is over." Artemis declared. She looked at Diana, a new, cunning light in her eyes. "You are strong, Princess. But you cannot be in all places at once."

Before Diana could react, Artemis feinted toward her, then darted to the side, making a mad dash for the back of the house. She was going to circle around, find another way in.

Diana cursed under her breath. She couldn't leave the front door unguarded. She was rooted to the spot, forced to watch as her oldest rival disappeared around the corner of the manor, intent on finding and harming the boy she had sworn to protect.

Io ran to Diana’s side. "Diana, I’m so sorry." she whispered, her face pale. "I didn’t know she would… I will try to reason with her."

"Reason is a language Artemis no longer speaks." Diana said grimly, her eyes scanning every window, every door. "Go. Try to slow her down. I must protect Bruce."

Io nodded and ran after Artemis, her heart filled with a terrible dread.

Diana turned back to the house. The battle was no longer a simple confrontation on the lawn. It was now a siege. And she was the only thing standing between the hunters and their prey.

Artemis was a hunter, but she was not a fool. A direct confrontation with a protective Diana was a stalemate. She needed a new strategy. If she couldn’t defeat Diana with force, she would defeat her with proof. She would prove to Diana—and to the soft-hearted Io—that the male creature inside was exactly the monster their history foretold.

Her campaign of sabotage began that very evening.

Alfred, ever the consummate host even to uninvited, hostile warrior children, had prepared a dinner. A tense, silent meal was served in the grand dining room. Bruce sat at one end of the table, looking small and scared. Diana sat next to him, a vigilant sentinel. Artemis and Io sat opposite, radiating hostility and anxiety, respectively.

Artemis’s first test was one of gluttony and greed. While Bruce was looking away, she used her lightning-fast reflexes to snatch the last bread roll from the basket and place it on her own plate, watching Bruce out of the corner of her eye, expecting him to protest, to show his selfish nature.

Bruce didn’t even notice. When he reached for the basket and found it empty, he just gave a small, quiet shrug and went back to pushing his peas around his plate.

Artemis scowled. Failure number one.

Her next attempt was aimed at his pride. The following day, she "accidentally" tripped while Bruce was walking past, sending a glass of water splashing all over the front of his shirt. She braced for an outburst of anger, a display of male rage at the indignity.

Bruce just looked down at his soaked shirt with a sigh. "It’s okay." he said quietly. "It was an accident." He went upstairs to change without another word, his shoulders slumped not in anger, but in his usual, weary sadness.

Artemis stared after him, baffled. His lack of reaction was more infuriating than any tantrum.

Io, who had been watching the whole exchange, approached Artemis when they were alone. "What are you doing?"

"I am proving what he is." Artemis insisted, her voice a low hiss. "All males are ruled by their base instincts: greed, anger, pride. I am simply providing the opportunity for him to show his true colors."

"And what if his true colors are… not what you expect?" Io asked softly.

"That’s impossible." Artemis snapped, though a flicker of doubt crossed her face.

Her attempts grew more desperate and more creative. She found Bruce’s treasured collection of toy soldiers and rearranged them in a humiliatingly chaotic formation, the general facing the wrong way, the cavalry charging a wall. She expected him to be furious at the disrespect to his property.

Bruce found them and just quietly, meticulously put them all back in their proper order, a sad little smile on his face. "Diana must have been playing with them again." he murmured to himself.

Artemis, hiding behind a doorway, felt a pang of something she couldn't identify.

Her pièce de résistance was a direct challenge to his courage. She cornered him in the garden, a large, menacing garden snake (which she had caught earlier) held in her hands. "In my land, we test a boy’s mettle by his reaction to a serpent." she said, her voice a low challenge. "What will you do, little prince?" She thrust the snake toward him.

Bruce, who had a budding interest in biology and had read all about local reptiles, did not scream. He did not run. He looked at the snake with genuine interest.

"Oh, neat." he said, his voice full of a boy’s scientific curiosity. "It’s just a common garter snake. Thamnophis sirtalis. They’re harmless." He reached out a gentle hand and let the snake slither onto his arm, watching it with fascination. "Its scales are beautiful."

Artemis stared, her mouth slightly agape. Her ultimate test of fear had been met with… scientific classification. The snake, sensing Bruce’s calm, flicked its tongue at his nose. Bruce giggled.

It was the final, irrefutable failure. This boy was not greedy. He was not angry. He was not proud. He was not cowardly. He was just… quiet, and sad, and surprisingly knowledgeable about snakes. He was breaking all the rules.

Later that evening, Io found Artemis sitting alone on a stone bench in the darkening garden, staring at the imposing silhouette of Wayne Manor.

"He is an anomaly." Artemis said, her voice stripped of its usual fire. It was a quiet, confused whisper. "He does not behave as a male should."

"Or." Io said, sitting beside her, "perhaps he is behaving exactly as he should. And our definition of what a male ‘should’ be is… incomplete."

Artemis looked at her friend. For the first time, she didn't have a sharp, angry retort. She had come to Man’s World expecting to find a monster and confirm her hatred. Instead, she had found a sad little boy who was friends with snakes, and it had thrown her entire universe into disarray.

Inside, Diana was teaching Bruce a Themysciran string game. Their hands brushed, and they both blushed and quickly looked away. The simple, innocent affection between them was a more powerful argument than any of Io’s logic.

Artemis watched them through the window. She saw Diana laugh, a real, genuine laugh. She saw Bruce smile, a real, genuine smile. And she felt the cold, hard certainty of her hatred begin to crack.

But her failure was not without consequence. Their mission was to retrieve the princess. They had failed to do it quickly and quietly. And on Themyscira, Queen Hippolyta’s patience was wearing thin. The reports she was receiving from Io—via a magically linked seashell—were not of a successful extraction, but of a stalemate, of a princess defending a male, of a mission gone sideways.

The Queen’s fear for her daughter was now eclipsed by her fury at her disobedience. The time for a subtle retrieval was over. It was time for a show of force.

Chapter Text

The standoff at Wayne Manor’s gates did not resolve with Artemis’s retreat into the gardens; rather, it evolved into a peculiar occupation. Queen Hippolyta’s orders had been explicit—retrieve the princess and the sacred artifacts—but they had not accounted for the logistical reality of Diana’s stubbornness. She would not be dragged, kicking and screaming, back to Themyscira, and she certainly would not leave without ensuring Bruce’s safety. Io, ever the pragmatist, recognized the stalemate immediately.

"We cannot force her." Io had whispered to Artemis as they huddled in the gazebo that first night, the Gotham fog rolling in thick and damp. "She is stronger than both of us combined when she is… motivated."

"Then we outlast her." Artemis had growled, her red hair darkened by the moisture in the air. "We wait until the male shows his true colors. We gather evidence of his corruption. And when Diana sees reason, we take her home."

And so, the Amazons stayed.

Alfred Pennyworth, upon discovering two additional warrior children camping in his employer’s gazebo, did what any sensible British gentleman would do: he invited them in for tea. Or rather, he informed them that if they were going to conduct surveillance on the grounds, they would do so with proper hydration and perhaps a biscuit, as the damp Gotham air was terrible for the joints.

Io accepted immediately, recognizing the strategic advantage of being inside the house. Artemis refused for three hours, standing rigid in the rain, until her stomach betrayed her with a loud, embarrassing growl that echoed across the lawn. Diana, watching from the library window with Bruce, smirked. "She will crack by nightfall."

"She’s scary." Bruce said, though he didn’t sound as frightened as he had initially. There was something almost comical about the red-haired girl’s rigid defiance in the face of Alfred’s polite persistence.

"She is stubborn." Diana corrected. "There is a difference. Scary implies capability. Stubborn implies merely a refusal to admit error."

By dinner, Artemis was seated at the far end of the dining table, wrapped in a borrowed blanket, devouring a bowl of beef stew with the single-minded intensity of a starving wolf. She refused to make eye contact with Bruce, whom she had mentally categorized as "the specimen." but she did not flinch when Alfred refilled her glass of water.

Io, conversely, was fascinated by the manor’s infrastructure. While Artemis brooded, Io followed Alfred around the house, asking questions with the intensity of a scholar cataloging a newly discovered civilization.

"This mechanism." Io said, pointing to the vacuum cleaner Alfred was wheeling out of the closet, "it creates suction through rotational force? Like a cyclone contained in a canister?"

"Precisely, Miss Io." Alfred replied, demonstrating the on switch. The machine roared to life, and Io’s eyes widened with delight.

"It is ingenious! On Themyscira, we use straw brooms and compressed air techniques. This is… efficient. Though I suspect the noise would alert enemies to your position."

"Fortunately, the only enemies we typically face in the east wing are dust bunnies." Alfred said dryly.

Io spent the next three days assisting Alfred with household chores, not out of obligation, but out of genuine academic curiosity. She learned to polish silver until it mirrored the sky, declaring the activity "meditative and tactically useful for sharpening observational skills." She helped prepare meals, noting that the chemistry of baking—precise measurements, reactions between acids and bases—was not unlike potion-making. She even mended a torn curtain using a needle and thread, her stitches so small and perfect they were nearly invisible.

"Your hands are steadier than a surgeon’s." Alfred observed one afternoon as Io reattached a button to Bruce’s coat.

"I was trained to thread arrows while riding at full gallop." Io explained. "This is… similar. Though the thread is more cooperative than sinew."

Artemis watched this domestication of her comrade with growing horror. "You are becoming a servant." she accused Io one evening, cornering her in the pantry.

"I am learning." Io corrected calmly. "Knowledge is not servitude, Artemis. This man—Alfred—he manages this entire estate alone. He cooks, cleans, repairs, heals, and maintains security. He is a general of domestic warfare. It would be foolish not to study his methods."

"He is a male." Artemis hissed.

"He is a person." Io countered. "And if you bothered to look past your prejudice, you would see he is also a warrior of kindness. There is strength in that. The kind of strength our history books never taught us because they were written by the wounded."

Artemis had no response to that. Instead, she began following Alfred around as well, though she maintained a surly silence, arms crossed, watching him chop vegetables with a knife that she noted was not held in a combat grip, but a utilitarian one.

One morning, Alfred was attempting to change a lightbulb in the grand chandelier. The ladder was precarious, and he was balancing on the top rung, reaching dangerously.

"Your stance is unstable." Artemis barked from the doorway. "You will fall and break your brittle old bones."

"I assure you, Miss Artemis, I have been changing bulbs since before your grandmother was a glimmer in Ares’s eye." Alfred replied, though his voice was strained.

Artemis huffed, stomped over, and steadied the ladder with her considerable strength. "There. Now you may proceed without dying and forcing me to explain to the Queen why I allowed the butler to become a casualty."

"Your concern is touching." Alfred said, though he smiled.

"I am not concerned. I am merely preventing a mess."

But the next day, when Alfred was struggling to move a heavy armoire to clean behind it, Artemis was there, lifting the furniture with one hand while he swept with the other. She did not speak, but her assistance was undeniable. By the end of the week, she was helping him carry firewood, her muscles making light work of the heavy logs, while he taught her the proper way to stack them for optimal airflow.

"You are strong, Miss Artemis." Alfred said as they worked. "But strength without purpose is just force. Have you considered what you wish to do with yours?"

"I wish to protect my people." she said automatically.

"And yet, here you are, protecting my back from strain while I dust. Perhaps protection takes many forms."

Artemis scowled, but she did not stop helping.

Meanwhile, Diana and Bruce’s relationship was entering a new phase—one of deliberate, if awkward, courtship. Diana had taken Alfred’s words about "building" to heart. She began constructing things for Bruce. Not weapons, but gifts. She wove him a bracelet from the tough fibers of the manor’s climbing ivy, treating it with a Themysciran waterproofing technique so it would never rot. She carved him a small wooden bird from a fallen oak branch, its wings spread in flight.

"It is an albatross." she explained, pressing it into his hands. "They fly for years without touching land. They are free. You should keep it to remember that you will be free too, one day."

Bruce turned the carving over in his fingers, his eyes shining. "It’s beautiful, Diana. Thank you."

He, in turn, began teaching her the customs of his world with the patience of a young professor. They would sit in the library for hours, Bruce explaining the concept of money "It is trust, crystallized into metal and paper." Diana mused, "but also the reason your parents died. It is a complicated invention.", the history of Gotham "It was built on the bones of a failed utopia." Bruce said solemnly, "which is why it feels so sad.", and the rules of various games.

Diana’s education in the ways of Man’s World was a source of endless amusement and occasional frustration for Bruce. She approached every new fact with the absolute certainty of a general briefing her troops, even when she was wildly incorrect.

"Telephones." Diana announced one morning at breakfast, holding the receiver of the rotary phone with grave suspicion, "work by trapping the voices of the deceased in copper wires. When you speak into it, you are actually addressing the ghosts of past operators."

Bruce, who had been spreading jam on his toast, paused. "Actually, Diana, that’s not quite right. It’s electrical signals converting sound waves into pulses that travel through the wire to another receiver."

Diana frowned, her pride wounded. "Are you certain? The ghost theory explains the static."

"It’s electricity." Bruce said gently, taking the phone from her. "Here, I’ll show you. We can call the operator—who is a living person, not a ghost—and ask for the time."

After the demonstration, Diana sat back, arms crossed. "Very well. It is not ghosts. It is… lightning captured in a cage. That is almost as impressive."

"It’s science." Bruce said, smiling.

"Science is just magic that has been explained." Diana retorted, though she accepted the correction with surprising grace.

Io and Artemis were undergoing similar culture shocks, though Io approached it with scientific rigor while Artemis resisted every new concept as a potential trap.

"The automobile." Io observed, watching Alfred drive the Rolls-Royce around the circular drive, "is a metal horse that consumes refined ancient plant matter instead of hay. It is efficient, but it lacks the loyalty of a living beast."

"Also, it produces toxic fumes that are poisoning the atmosphere." Artemis added grumpily, though she had been secretly impressed by the vehicle’s speed when Alfred had taken them for a drive to the market. "It is a weapon of mass destruction against the air itself."

"That is why we are researching electric alternatives." Bruce piped up from the back seat, where he sat between Diana and Io. "My father was investing in cleaner energy. He said Gotham could be a city of the future, not just the past."

"Your father sounds like he was a visionary." Io said.

"He was." Bruce said quietly.

Diana took his hand, squeezing it. She had become physically affectionate in small, fierce ways—holding his hand when he spoke of his parents, standing close enough that their shoulders touched when they read together. It was a claiming, a declaration that he was under her protection, but it was also tender.

Artemis watched these interactions with the confusion of a mathematician trying to solve an equation where half the numbers were emotions. "Why does she touch him so often?" she asked Io one night as they prepared for bed in the guest rooms Alfred had prepared. "On Themyscira, such contact is reserved for combat or ceremony."

"I believe." Io said slowly, choosing her words with care, "that she is expressing the 'in love' condition through physical proximity. It is a bonding mechanism. Like how we touch the shoulders of our sisters before battle to share strength, but… softer."

"It is a vulnerability." Artemis insisted, though her voice lacked conviction.

"Or it is a different kind of armor." Io suggested.

The girls were also learning about the peculiarities of Gotham’s social structures. Diana, in particular, struggled with the concept of "school."

"So, you are forced to sit in a room with thirty other children, all the same age, and listen to one adult recite facts for six hours?" Diana asked, horrified, as Bruce explained his upcoming return to classes. "That is not education. That is indoctrination. And inefficient! On Themyscira, we learn by doing. A child who wishes to know botany walks with the gardeners. A child who wishes to know war trains with the generals."

"It’s not that bad." Bruce said, though he looked unenthusiastic. "Though I do miss learning at my own pace. Father taught me so much at home. Now it will be… different."

"You will be bored." Diana predicted. "And surrounded by potential threats. I must accompany you."

"You can’t." Bruce said. "It’s a boys’ school. St. Ignatius. No girls allowed."

Diana’s eyes flashed. "That is a barbaric custom. Segregation by gender implies that learning is somehow contaminated by presence of the opposite sex. It is illogical."

"It’s just the rules." Bruce shrugged.

"Rules are for breaking." Artemis called out from the hallway, where she was practicing throwing knives at a dartboard Alfred had installed (much to his chagrin). "If you wish to attend this school, Diana, simply disguise yourself as a boy. Cut your hair, bind your chest—"

"I will not cut my hair!" Diana gasped, clutching her black locks. "And I will not bind my… my…" She looked down at her chest, then blushed furiously. "That is not the point! The point is that Bruce should not be separated from his guard."

"I’ll be fine." Bruce said, though he looked pleased by her concern. "Alfred will drive me. And it’s only during the day. We can still have our afternoons."

Diana huffed, but accepted the compromise. "Very well. But I will be waiting at the gates every day when you emerge. And if any boy tries to harm you, I will… have words with him."

"Words." Io noted from her reading corner, "that will likely be delivered at high velocity and accompanied by a broken limb."

"Precisely." Diana said, satisfied.

Chapter Text

The deepening of autumn brought a change to the manor’s atmosphere. The days grew shorter, the nights longer, and the shadows in the vast house seemed to stretch and yawn with the season. It was during one of these lengthened evenings, as a storm rattled the windows and the power flickered, that Bruce made a confession.

They were in the cave beneath the manor—though it was not yet the Batcave, merely a natural limestone cavern that Bruce had discovered while exploring. Diana had followed him down, impressed by the geological formations, while Artemis and Io remained above, arguing over the proper way to roast a chicken (Artemis favored an open spit; Io insisted on the efficiency of the oven).

The cavern was vast, damp, and filled with the sound of dripping water. As their flashlights swept across the ceiling, thousands of tiny eyes reflected back at them.

Bruce froze. His breath hitched. "B-bats." he whispered.

Diana looked up. The ceiling was a living carpet of leathery wings and small, furry bodies. They were hanging in clusters, sleeping, but the disturbance of the light caused a few to stir, their wings unfurling with soft, leathery crinkles.

"They are harmless." Diana said, though she kept her voice low to avoid startling them. "They are mammals that fly. They eat insects. They are beneficial to the ecosystem."

"They’re… they’re scary." Bruce admitted, his voice small and ashamed. "I know it’s stupid. They’re small. But ever since… since that night in the alley… I’m scared of the dark. And they live in the dark. They’re like… flying mice. With teeth."

Diana looked at him. She remembered the weeping sailor, the crying boy in the glass box. Bruce was so brave in so many ways—facing his grief, facing Artemis’s hostility, facing the future—but everyone had their fear. Even Amazons feared the loss of honor, the betrayal of sisters.

"Fear is not your enemy, Bruce." she said, stepping closer to him in the dim light. The beam of his flashlight trembled. "Fear is a signal. It tells you where the danger is. But you are the son of a doctor and a philanthropist. You are not prey. You are a hunter."

"I don’t feel like a hunter." Bruce said, his eyes wide and fixed on the bats above. "I feel like a little boy who’s scared of the dark."

"Then be a hunter who is scared of the dark." Diana said firmly. She took his hand, steadying the flashlight. "Use the fear. Let it sharpen your senses. My aunt Antiope taught me that the warrior who feels no fear is a fool, but the warrior who masters fear is invincible. If you are scared of bats, learn everything about them. Know their habits, their strengths, their weaknesses. Then they are not monsters in the dark. They are… tools. Allies. Weapons."

Bruce looked at her, the fear in his eyes slowly being replaced by contemplation. "Use the fear." he repeated.

"Yes. And…" Diana paused, a mischievous smile touching her lips. "If you master the bat, if you make it your symbol, then the criminals of this city—who are truly monsters—will fear you. You will become the thing that haunts the darkness. The Bat… Boy."

Bruce’s eyes widened. "The Batboy?"

"It is a formidable title." Diana said proudly. "Better than 'Wayne Heir.' It implies mystery. Danger. Wings."

Bruce laughed, a real laugh that echoed through the cavern, causing the bats to rustle but not flee. "Batboy." he tested the name. "And what about you? If I’m Batboy, what are you? You’re not just Diana. You’re… you’re like an Amazon warrior, but also a princess. Also my… my best friend."

Diana considered. "You may call me Di." she said, a concession she had never offered to anyone. "Or… Wonder. For I am full of wonders that your world has yet to see."

"Wonder." Bruce said, trying it out. "And I’m Batboy."

"Yes." Diana said, squeezing his hand. "Batboy and Wonder. We shall be the terror of the playground and the guardians of the night."

From that day on, the nicknames stuck. Bruce began signing his drawings—elaborate sketches of vigilantes and detectives—as "Batboy." Diana would respond to "Wonder" with a bright smile, correcting Artemis when she used her full name. "It is Wonder, now. It is my battle name."

They established rituals. Playdates that were half combat training, half childish games. They would spar in the garden, Diana teaching Bruce the Themysciran forms of unarmed combat, while Bruce taught Diana chess and strategy. She was terrible at chess, always sacrificing her queen too early because she valued the piece’s power over its survival, but she was a natural at tactics.

"You cannot just charge the enemy." Bruce explained one afternoon, resetting the board for the fifth time. "You have to think three moves ahead."

"I prefer to think three enemies behind." Diana said, knocking over his knight with her bishop. "If I remove the threats, the future is safe."

"But you lose pieces that way." Bruce said gently. "And you need all your pieces to win. Even the small ones. Especially the small ones."

Diana looked at the pawns. "They are… expendable."

"No." Bruce said, his voice serious. "No one is expendable. That’s what my father believed. That’s what I believe. Every piece matters. Every person matters."

Diana put down the chess piece. "Then I shall learn to protect the pawns." she said softly. "For your sake."

Their afternoons became sacred. They would explore the grounds, Diana climbing trees with preternatural agility while Bruce read beneath them. They would have tea parties that were actually strategic war councils, using cookies as territory markers. They would talk about their parents—Bruce sharing memories of Thomas’s medical bag and Martha’s garden, Diana explaining the weight of Hippolyta’s crown and the burden of expectation.

"Your parents would be proud of you." Diana told him one evening as they watched the sunset from the manor’s highest balcony. The Gotham skyline was a jagged silhouette against the purple sky. "You are kind when you could be cruel. You are brave when you could be safe. You are building yourself into a fortress, but one with open gates for those in need."

"I hope so." Bruce said, leaning his head against her shoulder. "I think they would have liked you. Mom would have liked your spirit. Dad would have liked your logic."

"And I believe." Diana said, her voice dropping to a whisper, "that I shall marry you one day."

Bruce sat up straight, his face flushing red. "M-marry?"

"When I am grown." Diana said, as if discussing a military campaign. "And you are grown. It is logical. We are compatible. I am strong where you are clever. You are gentle where I am fierce. And… I love you. Not as a friend. As a… partner. A consort. My chosen."

Bruce’s mouth opened and closed. "But… but you have to go back. To Themyscira. And I have to stay here."

"Then I will come back." Diana said fiercely. "When I am queen, I will change the laws. Or I will sneak away again. But I will find you, Bruce Wayne. And I will marry you. This is my promise, sworn on my tiara and my lasso."

She took out the golden Lasso of Hestia, which she had kept hidden in her room, and wrapped a loop of it around both their wrists. The rope glowed softly, warm and true.

"Do you swear?" she asked, her eyes blazing.

Bruce looked at the glowing rope, feeling its truth humming against his skin. He felt no fear, only a profound, warming certainty. "I swear." he whispered. "When we’re grown up… I’ll marry you, Di."

"Good." Diana said, and kissed his cheek again, longer this time, her lips soft against his skin. "Then it is settled. Batboy and Wonder. Forever."

The integration of the Amazons into Bruce’s life reached a new level of complexity when Bruce decided to introduce them to Dr. Leslie Thompkins. Leslie was a close friend of the Wayne family, a physician who had worked with Thomas at the free clinics in Park Row. She had been a fixture in Bruce’s life since the tragedy, checking on him not just as a doctor, but as a concerned family friend.

"She is a healer?" Io asked, intrigued, as they walked through the park toward the community center where Leslie volunteered. "A true physician? Not a witch or a charlatan?"

"She’s the best doctor in Gotham." Bruce said, holding Diana’s hand. "She knew my dad. She helps people who can’t pay. She’s… she’s good."

Diana was wary. She had learned to trust Alfred, but her default setting regarding adults in this world was suspicion. However, if Bruce vouched for her, she would grant the woman a chance.

They found Leslie in a small, clean clinic attached to a church. She was a tall, stately woman with kind eyes and hands that moved with the same precision as Io’s. She was bandaging a child’s scraped knee when they entered.

"Bruce!" she called out, her face lighting up. "And who are these friends Alfred told me about?"

"This is Diana, Io, and Artemis." Bruce introduced them. "They’re… they’re staying with me for a while. They’re from… overseas."

Leslie’s eyes swept over the girls, taking in their unusual posture, their muscular builds, their wary eyes. She saw the way Diana positioned herself slightly in front of Bruce, protective and possessive. She saw the way Artemis scanned the room for exits and threats. She saw Io studying the medical supplies with intense interest.

"Well, welcome to Gotham." Leslie said warmly. "I’m Dr. Thompkins, but you can call me Leslie."

"You practice medicine without magic?" Diana asked bluntly. "Using only tools and herbs?"

"I use science." Leslie said, not offended by the question. "Though sometimes, I think a little magic wouldn’t hurt. You’re interested in healing, Diana?"

"I know battlefield triage." Diana said. "Binding wounds, setting bones, treating shock. But I do not know…" she pointed at a stethoscope, "…the listening tube."

"Stethoscope." Io corrected quietly.

Leslie smiled. "Would you like to learn? All of you? I could use some helpers today. We have a lot of patients, and I’m short-staffed."

Artemis bristled. "I am a warrior, not a nurse."

"Warriors often become the best nurses." Leslie countered gently. "They know what pain looks like. They know how to be gentle when strength is required."

To everyone’s surprise, Artemis agreed. The afternoon was spent in a blur of activity. Io assisted Leslie with a minor surgery—removing a splinter from a construction worker’s hand—her steady hands and calm demeanor impressing the doctor. Artemis helped organize supplies and carried elderly patients from the waiting room to the examination area, her strength making light work of moving those who struggled to walk. Diana watched Bruce interact with the patients—bringing them water, holding their hands, offering comfort with a maturity beyond his years.

"He has the gift." Leslie said to Diana as they watched Bruce talk to a frightened child about to get a shot. "His father’s compassion. It’s rare in a boy so young, especially after what he’s been through."

"He is not rare." Diana said fiercely. "He is exceptional. And I will not let this world destroy him."

Leslie looked at her, really looked at her. "You love him." she observed. "Not as a child loves a friend. Deeper."

"I do." Diana admitted, lifting her chin. "And I will protect him. From everything."

"I believe you." Leslie said. "But remember, Diana—protection isn’t just about fighting off monsters. Sometimes it’s about holding a hand in the dark. Like you’re doing now."

The day ended with Leslie packing them a basket of sandwiches for their walk home. "Come back anytime." she told them. "You’re all welcome here."

It was the first time Artemis had been welcomed anywhere in Man’s World without suspicion or hostility. She walked home in silence, but her expression was less severe than usual.

The following Saturday, Alfred organized a picnic in the gardens of Wayne Manor. It was a perfect autumn day, crisp and golden, the leaves falling like confetti. He laid out a blanket and a feast—sandwiches, fruit, lemonade, and pickles.

Diana, who had been inside retrieving her wooden albatross carving to show Io, returned to find Bruce staring at his plate with a look of resignation. On it, Alfred had placed a pickle spear.

"Everything alright, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked, adjusting the umbrella.

"I don’t like pickles." Bruce said quietly. "They’re too sour. They make my tongue feel weird."

"Oh, I apologize, sir. I forgot—"

But before Alfred could remove the offending vegetable, Io, who had been reaching for the pickle jar, popped one into her mouth. "They are quite tangy." she said. "A preservation method using brine and fermentation. Clever. Efficient."

Diana froze. She stared at Io. She stared at the pickle. Then she stared at Bruce’s plate.

"You." Diana said, her voice rising, "gave him a pickle?"

Io blinked. "I did not give it to him. Alfred did. I merely commented—"

"But you ate one! In front of him!" Diana was suddenly furious, her face flushing. "Bruce does not like pickles! I told you this! I told you both! He finds them repulsive! And yet, you would consume them in his presence, making him feel that his preferences are invalid, or worse, forcing him to endure the smell of brine when he is already distressed!"

The outburst was disproportionate to the crime, but Diana’s love had taken on a ferocious, maternal edge. She remembered every detail about Bruce—his fear of the dark, his love of strawberries, his preference for blue over green, and yes, his hatred of pickles. To her, this was a violation of sacred knowledge.

"Io knew." Diana said, turning to Artemis as if seeking an ally. "She knew he dislikes the vinegar-cucumbers, and she flaunted her enjoyment of them! It is cruelty! It is… it is pickle-treason!"

Artemis, who had been about to bite into a sandwich, slowly set it down. "I… did not know about the pickle aversion."

"Well, now you do!" Diana huffed. She snatched the pickle from Bruce’s plate and threw it with unerring accuracy into a nearby bush. "There. Gone. You are safe, Batboy."

Bruce, who had been watching this display with wide eyes, suddenly giggled. "Diana, it’s okay. I just wouldn’t have eaten it. You didn’t have to declare war on the pickles."

"They are your enemies." Diana said solemnly, sitting beside him. "Therefore, they are my enemies. I will permit no pickles in your presence. This is law."

Io, looking between Diana’s fierce expression and Bruce’s amused one, suddenly understood. This was not about pickles. This was about Diana’s absolute, unwavering devotion to Bruce’s comfort and happiness. It was the "in love" condition manifesting as dietary protectionism.

"I apologize, Wonder." Io said, using Diana’s chosen nickname with a small smile. "I shall never eat a pickle in your joint presence again. I swear it on my honor."

"See that you don’t." Diana grumbled, though she accepted the apology. She then turned to Bruce and carefully assembled a sandwich exactly to his specifications—no crusts, extra cheese, no green things. "Here. This is safe."

"Thank you, Diana." Bruce said, taking the sandwich. Their eyes met, and they both blushed, remembering their promise on the balcony.

Artemis rolled her eyes, but there was a smile tugging at her lips. "This world." she muttered, "is very strange."

"But not entirely terrible." Io added, looking at the sunny garden, the good food, and the children’s blushing faces. "Not entirely terrible."

Chapter Text

The equilibrium of the manor was disrupted by the arrival of Zatanna Zatara. She was not a frequent visitor—her father, Giovanni Zatara, was a famous stage magician and an acquaintance of Thomas Wayne—but she had heard of the tragedy and had begged her father to let her visit Bruce to "cheer him up with magic."

She arrived on a Tuesday afternoon in a puff of purple smoke and a shower of sparkles, stepping out of a taxi with a top hat in one hand and a rabbit in the other.

"Bruce Wayne!" she announced, striking a pose in the foyer. "I am Zatanna, the Mistress of Magic! I have come to banish your blues with wonder and awe!"

Bruce, who had been reading with Diana in the library, came out to investigate. Diana followed, her hand instinctively going to her hip where her dagger usually rested.

Zatanna was a vision in a small tuxedo and a cape, her hair curled and her eyes bright with mischief. She was perhaps a year older than Bruce, but she carried herself with the confidence of a seasoned performer.

"Zatanna?" Bruce asked, surprised. "I haven’t seen you since… since the Christmas party."

"I know! It’s been forever!" Zatanna bounded forward, dropping her rabbit, and threw her arms around Bruce. "I’m so sorry about your parents. I brought you a magic kit. And I can show you how to pull cards from behind your ear. It’s great for distracting people when you’re sad."

Diana watched this interaction with a growing, unfamiliar heat in her chest. It was jealousy, pure and simple. This girl—this Zatanna—was touching Bruce. Hugging him. Claiming familiarity. Offering him gifts. She was pretty, confident, and she knew magic, which was a skill Diana did not possess.

"Who is this person?" Diana asked, her voice cold and imperial.

Zatanna pulled back from Bruce and looked at Diana. Her eyes widened. "Whoa. Who are you? You look like a princess from a movie."

"I am Diana." she said, stepping forward and inserting herself between Bruce and Zatanna. "I am Bruce’s… beloved guardian. And his promised."

"Promised?" Zatanna looked confused, then delighted. "Like, you’re getting married? That’s so romantic! Can I be the flower girl? I can make real flowers appear out of nowhere. Watch! Abracadabra!"

She waved her wand, and a bouquet of roses materialized in her hand, presenting them to Diana with a flourish.

Diana did not take them. "Your magic is… sleight of hand." she said suspiciously. "Illusion. Deception."

"Nope! It’s real magic." Zatanna insisted. "Well, mostly. Some of it is sleight of hand. But I come from a long line of magicians. We have the power. I can prove it. Pick a card."

"I do not play games of chance." Diana said stiffly.

"Bruce, pick a card." Zatanna urged, shuffling a deck with expert hands.

Bruce, sensing the tension, picked a card. The two of hearts.

"Put it back in the deck." Zatanna instructed. Bruce did. She shuffled again, then pointed her wand at Diana. "Your Highness, would you please reach behind your ear?"

Diana, against her better judgment, reached up—and found a card tucked there. She pulled it out. The two of hearts.

"How…" Diana checked her ear, finding no device. "How did you do that?"

"Magic." Zatanna grinned. "See? I’m not a threat. I’m just here to be friends. Bruce needs all the friends he can get, right?"

Diana looked at the card, then at Zatanna’s open, friendly face. Her jealousy wavered. This girl was not trying to steal Bruce away. She was trying to heal him, in her own way, just as Diana was.

"Very well." Diana said, handing back the card. "You may be… an ally. But I am his primary ally. And his future wife. That is established."

Zatanna’s eyes sparkled. "Future wife? Oh, this is better than magic! This is a romance! Come on, let’s all go to the garden. I’ll show you how to make doves appear. Diana, you can be my assistant. You look like you’d be good at catching things."

"I am excellent at catching things." Diana admitted.

The afternoon became a lesson in stage magic. Zatanna taught them how to palm coins, how to use misdirection ("Look at the pretty wand while I steal the cookie." she explained), and how to perform the classic cups and balls routine. Diana found that her warrior’s dexterity made her a natural at sleight of hand, though she disapproved of the "deception" aspect.

"Magic is about wonder." Zatanna explained, sitting cross-legged on the grass with Bruce, Diana, and eventually Io and Artemis, who had been drawn out by the commotion. "It’s about making people believe in the impossible, just for a second. When everything is terrible, and you’re sad, sometimes believing in the impossible is the only thing that keeps you going."

Bruce looked at her, understanding. "Like believing that good can win?"

"Exactly." Zatanna said, softening. "Like believing that the dark can’t last forever."

Diana, watching Bruce smile at Zatanna’s tricks, felt the jealousy drain away completely. This girl was not an enemy. She was a sister-in-arms, fighting the same battle against Bruce’s grief.

"Zatanna." Diana said, offering her hand. "I apologize for my earlier hostility. You are welcome here. And your magic… it is acceptable."

"Thanks, Di." Zatanna said, shaking her hand.

"I am not just Di." Diana corrected. "I am Wonder."

Chapter Text

Zatanna Zatara did not merely visit Wayne Manor; she invaded it with the subtlety of a supernova and the organizational prowess of a stage manager. Within twenty-four hours of her arrival, she had established a base of operations in the sunroom, converted a card table into a "Mystic's Workshop" covered in purple velvet and glitter, and somehow convinced Alfred to serve her hot chocolate with marshmallows in a goblet she had produced from her sleeve.

"I require a top hat." she announced at breakfast, her feet swinging from the dining room chair because her legs were too short to reach the floor. "A proper one. Not one of those bowler things. A tall, black, silk top hat. For the rabbits."

Alfred, who had already spent the morning retrieving three doves from the library fireplace and untangling a deck of cards from the chandelier fan, merely raised an eyebrow. "I shall consult the costume archives, Miss Zatanna. Though I must inquire: are the rabbits strictly necessary?"

"Absolutely." Zatanna said, her eyes wide and earnest. "Rabbits are the classic symbol of hope emerging from darkness. Also, they're fluffy. Bruce needs fluffy things right now. Scientifically."

Diana, who was meticulously peeling an orange for Bruce—removing every trace of pith because she had noticed he disliked the bitter white strings—looked up with a skeptical frown. "Your magic is effective." she admitted grudgingly, "but I do not trust things that appear from nowhere. In Themyscira, matter does not spontaneously generate. It must be forged, grown, or captured."

"That's because Themyscira doesn't have access to the Fifth Dimension." Zatanna said airily, waving her wand (which was actually just a painted stick, though Diana suspected it held real power). "Everything there is very... linear. Third-dimensional. Very sword-and-sandstone. Here, we have wiggle room."

Io, who had been quietly reading a book on physics she had found in Thomas Wayne's study, perked up. "The Fifth Dimension? As in, a spatial dimension beyond the four we perceive? Or are you referring to the Kaluza-Klein theory regarding compactified dimensions in relation to electromagnetism?"

Zatanna blinked. "I... uh... I say words backwards and things happen?"

"Fascinating." Io breathed, sliding into the seat next to Zatanna. "Can you demonstrate the thermodynamic principles? When you pull a rabbit from a hat, is it a transmutation of energy, or a spatial translocation via wormhole? Does the rabbit experience time dilation during the transit?"

"I think the rabbit just hops in from backstage." Zatanna said, suddenly looking less certain of her mystic arts when confronted with Io's scientific interrogation. "But... maybe? I could check next time?"

"Please do." Io said, pulling out a notebook. "I would like to measure the air displacement and temperature fluctuation."

Artemis, who was eating her porridge with the enthusiasm of someone chewing gravel, slammed her spoon down. "This is absurd. Magic is just trickery. Deception. Sleight of hand. I watched you last night, Zatanna. You 'healed' that bruise on Bruce's knee by covering it with your hand and humming. When you removed your hand, the bruise was faded but not gone. You merely accelerated the natural healing process through... what? Heat? Massage? It was not magic."

Zatanna turned to face Artemis, her expression shifting from bubbly showmanship to something sharper, more focused. "You don't believe in magic, Artemis?"

"I believe in what I can kill." Artemis said flatly. "Can I kill magic?"

"Not with an arrow." Zatanna said, and suddenly her voice had an echo to it, a resonance that made the silverware rattle. "But you can kill a magician. The question is: would you?"

The air in the dining room grew heavy. Diana tensed, ready to intervene.

Artemis stared at Zatanna for a long moment, then slowly picked up her spoon again. "You are brave." she said, not looking away. "For a non-Amazon. For a... civilian. You meet my eyes. You do not flinch."

"I've been booed by tougher crowds than you." Zatanna said, the echo fading, her smile returning. "But I like you. You're like the tough critic in the front row. If I can impress you, I know I'm good."

"You cannot impress me." Artemis said, but there was no heat in it anymore. "But you may try."

And so began the unlikely apprenticeship of Artemis the Amazon to Zatanna the Magician. It started with card tricks—Artemis insisted on learning the "warrior's way" of card throwing, which Zatanna demonstrated by flicking a playing card with such precision that it embedded itself in an apple across the room. Artemis spent three hours practicing until she could split the stem of a flower from twenty paces.

"See?" Zatanna said, as Artemis proudly displayed a deck of cards that looked like they had been through a war. "Magic is just physics with better lighting."

"It is acceptable." Artemis admitted, which from her was high praise.

Io, meanwhile, became Zatanna's lab assistant. They conducted experiments in the greenhouse, attempting to measure the "magical field" Zatanna generated when she cast spells. Io rigged up a series of copper wires and galvanometers, while Zatanna attempted to levitate a potted fern.

"The readings are... unusual." Io muttered, adjusting her glasses (which she had constructed from wire and crystal lenses found in the manor). "There's a definite electromagnetic spike, but also something else. A quantum signature I can't identify."

"That's the magic." Zatanna said, sweat beading on her forehead as the fern wobbled in the air. "It's like... singing to the universe. You have to hit the right note."

"Sing to the universe." Io repeated, writing it down. "A harmonic resonance with the fundamental strings of reality?"

"Sure." Zatanna gasped, and the fern suddenly shot upward, hitting the glass ceiling. "Whoops!"

Diana watched these developments with mixed feelings. She was glad Zatanna had integrated into their group—she recognized the value of having another ally, especially one who could produce doves on command—but she remained possessive of Bruce's attention. When Zatanna taught Bruce how to make a coin disappear, and Bruce laughed with delight, Diana felt that familiar, uncomfortable twist in her stomach.

"You are jealous." Io observed one afternoon, finding Diana practicing sword forms in the garden while the others were inside learning a new card shuffle.

"I am not jealous." Diana said, slicing through a rosebush with unnecessary force. "I am... vigilant. Zatanna is unpredictable. Her magic could be dangerous."

"She is kind." Io said. "And she makes him laugh. You make him laugh too, Diana. But you also make him work hard. She makes him play. Both are necessary."

Diana lowered her wooden practice sword. "Do you think I am... too serious?"

"I think you are a princess who is also a kid." Io said gently. "And now you are trying to be both: a warrior and a girl. It is complicated."

Diana thought about this. "When I am with Bruce." she said slowly, "I do not feel like a princess. I feel like... Diana. Just Diana."

"Then perhaps." Io suggested, "you should let Zatanna be Zatanna, and you be Diana, and both of you can be Bruce's friends. There is room in his heart for more than one wonder."

Diana sighed, recognizing the wisdom. "You are annoyingly logical, Io."

"Thank you."

That evening, Zatanna approached Diana with an offer. "I want to show you something." she said. "A real spell. Not stage magic. Something... from my family's book. I think you're the only one here strong enough to handle it."

Diana's interest was piqued. "What kind of spell?"

"A truth spell." Zatanna said, her eyes serious. "But not like your lasso. This one shows you the truth of yourself. It's scary. Most people can't handle seeing their own heart laid bare. But I think... I think you need to see yours. To understand why you're so afraid of sharing Bruce's attention."

Diana stiffened. "I am not afraid."

"Then prove it." Zatanna challenged. "Meet me in the cave at midnight. The one with the bats. Bring your courage."

Diana did. At midnight, the manor was silent, the bats were stirring, and Zatanna stood in the center of the cavern, holding a candle that burned with a blue flame.

"Stand there." Zatanna instructed, pointing to a circle she had drawn in the dirt with chalk. "Don't move. Don't speak. Just... look."

She began to chant, words that sounded like they were being sung backwards, or inside-out, or through water. The air grew cold. The blue flame flared.

And Diana saw.

She saw herself reflected in the flame, but not as she was. She saw herself as a child, alone on a cliff, watching ships sail away. She saw herself training until her hands bled, not for glory, but for approval. She saw her mother's face, not smiling, but worried, always worried. And she saw Bruce—not as a project, not as a mission, but as a bright, warm light in a cold world. She saw that her love for him wasn't a weakness or a spell, but a choice. A brave choice.

The flame died. Diana stood trembling, tears on her cheeks.

"See?" Zatanna said softly. "You're not jealous because you don't trust me. You're jealous because you're terrified that you're not enough. That you're too much warrior and not enough... for Bruce."

Diana wiped her face. "How did you...?"

"I'm a magician." Zatanna said, stepping out of the circle. "I know all about wearing masks. You're wearing the mask of the perfect Amazon princess. But underneath, you're just a kid who wants to be loved. Like all of us."

Diana looked at the small magician, this girl who wielded wisdom as powerfully as she wielded wand tricks. "Thank you." she whispered.

"Now." Zatanna said, grinning, "can we please be friends? Because Artemis is teaching me how to throw knives, and I'm teaching her how to juggle, and Io is trying to calculate the mass of my rabbits, and Bruce... Bruce needs all of us. But he needs you most. He talks about you even when you're not there. 'Diana says this,' 'Diana thinks that.' You're his compass, Wonder."

Diana smiled, the first real, unguarded smile she had given Zatanna. "I would like to be friends, Zatanna. And... you may call me Di. If you wish."

"Di." Zatanna tested. "I like it. Now come on, let's go raid the kitchen. I know where Alfred hides the good cookies. Levitation spell."

They levitated the cookie jar out of the kitchen window, caught it, and ate cookies in the garden until dawn, talking about magic, mothers, and the terrifying, wonderful burden of being special.

The attic of Wayne Manor was a cathedral of dust and memory. Sunlight filtered through a round window, illuminating motes that danced like golden constellations in the stale air. Trunks were stacked like ancient monoliths, draped in white sheets that turned them into ghostly sculptures. It smelled of cedar, old paper, and time itself.

Bruce led the expedition, climbing the creaking ladder with Diana close behind him, followed by Io, Artemis, and Zatanna. They were on a mission, Bruce had explained, to find his mother's wedding dress for a "historical fashion analysis" Io wanted to conduct, but they all knew the real goal was exploration.

"My father kept everything." Bruce said, his voice hushed in the sacred space. "He said memories were the only things we truly own. Everything else can be stolen."

He pulled the sheet off a large leather trunk. The brass clasps were tarnished but opened easily. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, were clothes—elegant dresses, tailored suits, the fabric of a life lived in public.

Diana reached in, her fingers brushing against silk. "These were your mother's?"

"Some of them." Bruce said. He pulled out a small, leather-bound book. "And this... this is the photo album. I haven't looked at it since... since before."

He hesitated, his thumb tracing the embossed cover. Diana placed her hand over his.

"We do not have to open it." she said softly. "If it causes you pain."

"No." Bruce said, taking a breath. "I want to. I want to remember them with you. All of you."

He opened the album.

The first page showed a young Thomas Wayne, not yet burdened by the weight of his fortune, smiling broadly as he held up a fish he had caught. He looked strong, kind, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"He was a doctor." Bruce explained, his voice steady but soft. "But he loved the outdoors. He said healing people was like fishing—you had to be patient, and you had to care more about the catch than the trophy."

"Wise." Artemis grunted from over his shoulder, looking at the image with an assessing eye. "He has the hands of a warrior. See the calluses? He worked with his hands, not just his mind."

The next page was Martha. She was breathtaking—a smile that seemed to light up the photograph itself. In one picture, she was in a garden, dirt under her fingernails, laughing at the camera.

"She loved flowers." Bruce said. "She said Gotham was ugly, so she had to make her own beauty. She ran the free clinics with my father. She was... she was the one who made everyone feel welcome. Even the people my father couldn't save, she would sit with them. She said no one should die alone."

Diana felt her heart ache. "She was a queen." she said. "A queen of kindness."

"Yeah." Bruce sniffed, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "She was."

They turned the pages. There was Thomas at a medical conference, looking serious in a suit. There was Martha at a charity ball, radiant in blue. And then—there they were together. A candid shot, stolen by a friend, showing them in the kitchen, flour on their faces, apparently having lost a battle with a bread machine. They were laughing, leaning against each other, so obviously in love that it hurt to look at.

"They were happy." Zatanna whispered. "Really happy."

"They were." Bruce said. "They used to dance in the kitchen. To no music. Just because. My mom would hum, and my dad would spin her around, and they'd knock things over, and Alfred would come in and pretend to be scandalized, but he'd really just make sure they didn't break the good china."

Diana stared at the image of Thomas and Martha Wayne. This was what love looked like in the world of men. Not treachery. Not Heracles's betrayal. But partnership. Laughter. Flour on faces.

"My mother." Diana said suddenly, "is Hippolyta. Queen of the Amazons. She is... formidable. Beautiful. Stern. She loves me, but it is a heavy love. It is the love of a queen for a princess, a general for a soldier. She has never danced in a kitchen."

"Does she... do you have a father?" Bruce asked, looking up from the album.

The question hung in the dusty air.

Diana sat back on her heels, her expression troubled. "It is... complicated. On Themyscira, there are no men. We are... we were created by the gods. Or so the stories say. My mother tells me she sculpted me from clay, and the gods breathed life into me. I am clay given soul."

"That's beautiful." Io said. "A creation myth of pure maternal love."

"But there are other stories." Diana continued, her voice dropping. "Stories spread by Circe. She is... she is my age, but she is already a sorceress. A troublemaker. She says that my mother lies. That I was not born of clay, but of... of a man. That my mother went to the world of men and lay with a god. Hades. Or some other immortal brute."

She spat the names with disgust. "Circe says I am cursed, and that my 'father' is some death-lord. She says this makes me impure. That I am not truly Amazonian because I carry the taint of male blood."

"That's horrible." Bruce said, his eyes wide. "Why would she say that?"

"To hurt me." Diana said. "To hurt my mother. To sow discord. Circe is... she is like a dark mirror. Where we are warriors, she is a trickster. Where we value truth, she values chaos. She is around our age—eleven—but she has the malice of someone much older. She claims to be the protegeé of Hecate, goddess of witchcraft. And she hates me, because I am the princess, and she is merely... tolerated."

Zatanna frowned. "Circe... I've heard that name. My father mentioned her. He said the Zataras and the... well, the other magic families, we don't get along with her line. They're into the dark stuff. Transformation magic. Turning people into pigs, that kind of thing."

"She cannot transform me." Diana said fiercely. "I am too strong. But she can transform how others see me. If the Amazons believe I am the daughter of Hades, they will treat me differently. Some will worship me. Some will despise me. All will see me as... other. Not truly one of them."

She looked at Bruce, her eyes desperate. "I do not want to be the daughter of Hades. I want to be the daughter of Hippolyta, born of clay and love. Is that... is that wrong?"

"No." Bruce said immediately. He took her hand. "You get to decide who you are. Not Circe. Not stories. You. If you say you're clay and love, then that's what you are. Just like... just like I'm not just the boy whose parents died. I'm Bruce. I'm Batboy. I'm me."

"And you are my promised." Diana added, squeezing his hand. "Regardless of whose blood runs in my veins. I choose you. I choose this."

Io, who had been quietly examining a photograph of Thomas Wayne in military uniform from his time as a field medic, spoke up. "From a biological standpoint, Diana, it doesn't matter. Blood is merely a transport system for oxygen and nutrients. Your actions define you. Your choices. And you have chosen to be kind, to be brave, to be... here."

"Besides." Artemis said, crossing her arms, "if you were the daughter of Zeus, you'd be able to throw lightning. Can you throw lightning?"

"No." Diana admitted.

"Then you're probably not his daughter." Artemis concluded with practical finality. "Circe is a liar. All sorcerers are liars. It's their nature."

"Hey!" Zatanna protested.

"Present company excluded." Artemis amended grudgingly. "Probably."

They spent the rest of the afternoon in the attic, building a fort out of old trunks and dressmaker's dummies, surrounding themselves with the memories of the Waynes. Bruce told stories—about his father's medical bag, about his mother's terrible cooking ("She could burn water, Alfred says"), about the time they had all gone to the circus and he had wanted to run away with the acrobats.

Diana listened, filing every detail away, building a mental shrine to the parents she would never meet but was coming to love through Bruce's words. She understood now, more than ever, what Bruce had lost. And she understood what she was fighting for—not just a boy, but the last light of a family that had been good and kind in a city that was neither.