Soli Deo gloria

DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Wonder Woman.

So I just watched Wonder Woman (2017) for the first time ever (you get some time to do some stuff when it's COVID-19 Season, y'all—
:P) and I think it's my favorite DCU Superhero movie. It was some really good story-telling.

The rattle of Etta's key in the doorknob echoed inside the narrow hallway of the British office building. Etta talked pleasantly, filling the air with nonsense as she jerked open the door and allowed them access into the dusty old office. Diana smiled; Etta couldn't remain hampered by grief for too long; it was her nature to fill the air with words. Her distracting words, wondering about the fate of Britain and America now that the War to End All Wars was over, were not unwelcome to Diana's ears. Still, her eyes strayed from Etta to latch onto the contents of this office she'd never known. Her breath released as she entered. This was Captain Steve Trevor's old office. Was.

Etta's chatter petered off as she closed the door behind them and looked from Diana's poised stance to the old familiar elements around her. All old news to her, the previous owner's secretary, but all new to this young woman. Etta had spent many a day in this place; when her boss was home from the front, he barely got anything done at his desk as his helpful secretary, all ready with all necessary documents, supplies, and correspondence, fussed over him and his hair and his plans and his health. She'd spent many an hour with Steve Trevor here, and here Diana entered only after she never could.

Etta was never one to keep down in the dumps for too long—she was British, after all. But still, she leaned her generous frame against the windowsill offering a dirty glass through which to view liberated London town and said, "You should've seen him at the desk, my dear. Focused, single-minded. I had to drag him away just to get a cuppa or a breath of fresh air, or he would never get any. Devoted, was one word to describe him."

Diana now let Etta's words flow over and around her as she walked through the little cramped space. Her calloused fingers ran across the dusty desk, the bookshelves. She sat in his hard chair and imagined him hunched over the desk as the lights waned and dark was cast long over the city. She curiously opened the filing drawers and pulled out old case files. News reports, missions—all once imperative time bombs, on-a-need-to-know-basis, will-take-a-cyanide-pill-if-captured-before-their-contents-were-revealed—now collected dust in a nondescript filing cabinet in a fifth floor office building on the business side of London.

"Is this his handwriting?" Diana wondered curiously. Her fingers traced over long pages full of dashed-off cursive short-hand. She knew hundreds of languages, but she failed to interpret the coded messages and weird acronyms he only knew.

Etta nodded. "Yep. Couldn't make him learn how to use a typewriter. He said that was my job; I typed, I didn't teach him. Stubbornness personified, bless 'im."

Diana smiled. Stubbornness personified, indeed. She recognized that persistence she herself possessed in him and respected him and loved him for it. She opened another drawer; the pile of papers, unreadable as they were, weren't forgotten. She'd analyze them until she had them memorized later; her curiosity must be satiated in the present, though. She longed for any part of Steve she could hold onto, and here she was at an epicenter of his files of communication. She dug around and pulled out several yellow envelopes. Her smile broadened. Here was correspondence over the course of the war with their partners in the fight. "Sammy." She gazed over each one before filing it behind the next. "Chief Napi. Charlie." Her eyes were filled with tears of fondness and sadness for what could be no more as she looked at Etta. "I will return these to them. They will need them."

Etta smiled; despite brimming over with optimism and cheer, she couldn't help her own tears. "Those boys will love having them back, I'm sure. More prized, perhaps, though, are the letters they are sure to have in their current possession: his responses." Etta sighed and heaved off the windowsill. She grabbed up one of the wooden crates she and Diana had toted up into the office building to start up the laborious process they'd come up into this labyrinth of completely known and completely unknown memories to do—pack up Captain Steve Trevor the best they could. Well, to pack up all the material possessions he left behind so the landlord could rent out the place he once spent days of his life to some ignorant tenant. Neither Diana of Themyscira or Etta Candy of London could get 'packed up' all that they had left of Steve Trevor.

Etta set about doing it, chatting up a storm as her busy hands made light work of it. Diana listened the best she could, but her mind wasn't there. It was off in battlefields in Belgium, in hidden moments on the island she loved, on moments of stolen time she didn't know she should treasure forever. Her mind lived in his final moments, in the sincerity and beauty of his eyes, of his belief and her realization that while men were corrupt, all could have goodness in them. Steve Trevor had the most of all.

The afternoon idled away. Etta couldn't get much traction on conversation with Diana, but she didn't push it. This young woman was different—
her nonconformity to the fashions or positions of any other woman in London taught her that—but Etta didn't push it. She didn't need to understand her, the same way she never fully understood Steve Trevor—why he went to war even when he wished there were other options; why he pushed to complete the mission set before him, to protect those innocents who were left after so much death and destruction. Etta Candy didn't need to have ever fully understood Steve Trevor, nor did she need to understand Diana Prince. They understood each other, and that was enough.

"Well, my dear, that's the last of it in this office. What say we call it a night and meet tomorrow at this address?" Etta handed Diana a scrap of stationary inked with another London address.

Diana's eyes flickered from the paper to Etta. "What is this place?"

"Captain Trevor had three leases in his name. This place, his home in Oklahoma, and his London residence. He was hardly there the least. Still, the last place here."

Diana's eyes burned with curiosity. "Where is Oklahoma?"

"Oh, it's in the States, luv. He was born and raised in the middle of it, in the middle of them. I couldn't point it out to you on a map if you held a gun to my head, unfortunately. I will have to fly over there, though, to settle his estate—if an apartment he hadn't been in in four years counts as an estate, anyway."

Diana looked wistfully, sorrowfully across the now barren walls and empty furniture. "Where I am from, whenever a sister dies, the entire island mourns for her. Buries her well. A whole month is spent going through her personal items by those who loved her most. The pieces she chose to keep in her possession are gifted to her loved ones, so each has a piece of her, so her memory is commemorated daily." She looked at Etta and said, "Is there no family to mourn him? No one to look after that he left behind besides us?"

Etta put her chin up as she sidled a crate onto her hip. "He's got no more family that I know of, my dear. But aren't we enough, poppet? We loved him and he loved us. We're occupying those roles just fine. We're doing the duty you described just now; and we Brits—well, we do our duty."

Etta's smile was bracing and heartening as Diana picked up and carried out behind her several cases of his personal effects. Her heart flooded her ears as they paused in the hallway to allow Etta to lock up the office behind her. That was the first and the last time Diana would ever enter that office.

Diana didn't follow Etta to the States to clean out his Yankee apartment, but she was there for their British invasion. She loved the slight attempt at domesticity Steve had ventured for—she knew all about domesticity as much as she knew nothing about marriage. The blankets across the sofa, the tea mugs, the hung picture, the dead flowers still sitting in a vase on his little kitchen table. Seeing where he lived without him hurt her more than she could almost bear. Diana saw where she might have been, had he lived. Would the flowers in the vase be a bouquet he picked just for her? Would the picture, a small house in the countryside, might be where they ended up? Would they have taken up with the idea of marriage and decided that together, they could pursue this strange idea that neither ever experienced but longed to try, as long as they did it together? She would've, with him. And she knew he would've, with her.

"Look at this, luv," Etta said, handing her a small book. "That's all he's got left of his childhood, I believe."

Diana was enchanted as she sat cross-legged on his squashed couch and flipped through this book. It was a magical book, like the storybooks of old. It sported pictures depicting a life altogether different from what she knew. She recognized the titular character as a young Steve. Her fingertip played along his grainy jaw. The first man she'd ever seen, and now, after seeing her fair amount, the only one. On another picture, she recognized the watch he left her—
it was strung on a chain held by a man who resembled him greatly. "Oh, that would probably be the Captain's father, then," Etta said. "His genes carried on right through, didn't they?"

Diana, still vague on the details of fathers, said, "They look greatly alike."

Etta cocked her head. "That's what I said, wasn't it?"

"Can I keep this?" Diana asked, holding up the album with both hands gripping its folds, like it was the greatest treasure in the world.

"Sure." Etta looked soberly at it. "Everyone in that album is dead. You're the only who could want it now, dearie."

Diana clasped it close. Growing up around immortals, she saw many of their memories first happen right in front of her. With Steve, she barely had enough time for him to tell her all about him at all. Here was a gift, a book full of times and memories of who he was and how he came to be before he came to her.

Etta looked at Diana with a strange look on her face. She still didn't know how exactly she and Steve met or how they left things, but she had a woman's intuition and enough social insight to be able to put two and two together. "I know of another thing for you, Diana. If you care that much about an old photograph album, this should be a treat for ya."

Diana followed Etta into what could only be Steve's bedchambers. Her eyes ate up the books on the end table, the tray of toiletry items still set out for the master of the house, the neatly pulled bedspread over the innocent looking bed. Etta paid no mind to how Diana imagined Steve existing in here as she rummaged through a few drawers until she pulled out what she sought. "Oh, I found it! Here it is." She presented a rugged looking journal, its pages crinkled from dry ink and being handled. "He wouldn't take it to war with him—he had other papers on him for that—but he kept it here at home, and wrote it in when he had the chance. He'd come apologizing when he was late to the office, and after teasing him about being at the pub until the wee hours of the morn, he shut me up by saying he wrote in his journal. A penny for a dead man's thoughts." Etta dug into her coat sleeve and pulled out a few papers. She offered them, her voice sober as she said, "These were in his personal effects that he left at your camp, with the boys. They gave them to me, but they looked like they wanted to give them to someone else. I believe they're right; they're yours, dear." Etta gulped. "All of Captain Trevor's last notes." She smacked on a tidbit of a smile because she must and patted Diana's hand as she pressed them all in there. "We're all certain he would've wanted you to have them."

The rest of the day was lost. Diana first dove into the journal; she wanted to know him for longer. She wanted to know all his thoughts; she was delighted to find that she read all his writing in his voice. It was like hearing him just speaking out loud. She would never hear that voice again, yet she heard it now.

Etta packed up the kitchen and living room, stopping every now and then to sit down and sob for a moment as she was overwhelmed by memories. It was nice to not have to talk to Diana. While they both loved him, they each had a different relationship with him. There was a different suffering in their grief.

As the evening grew and the electric light bulbs waned, Diana laid against Steve's goose down pillow and reveled in his latest words, even as her heart ached the closer they got to the end. The last note, the night before the gala, he had written while they camped out in Belgium. Charlie would wake up from a terrible nightmare later; they'd just met up with Chief Napi; she must've been asleep while Steve wrote this. She could picture him in her mind's eye: crouched on a log, clinging to the fire for warmth against the elements and light against the blanket of night, writing fiercely and determinedly away. Despite the big war and all of the importance of his mission and how important it was that he was a good soldier and warrior and carried out his duty for his brothers, he still stole a moment to express his own personal thoughts. They were not big, important things in the grand scheme of mankind, but they were big, important things in the life of this man.

Her vision blurred when she caught her name again. He'd mentioned it once before, on an entry before they left London. He was confused then. Now he wasn't. "If we do this, we could end the war. We could stop fighting. We could go home in peace and we could live. I barely remember who I was before the war; what I did, what I filled my time with. Before now, I didn't know what I would do when the war ended. All I wanted to do was get through it. I didn't think far ahead. Now I want to. Now I know what I want to do, what I want, who I want.

"Diana is the most amazing person I've ever met. She's kind, intelligent, and beautiful. She doesn't accept things she doesn't agree with and she isn't afraid of saying what she means. She's resourceful; her depths of compassion surpass what I've seen in anyone in many years. She's the bravest of us all. I don't know what she thinks of me, but I know what I think of her. I think she makes me want to be better. I think she makes me think of life after the war with hope, with more longing than ever before. I think she makes me believe marriage isn't something everyone else does except for me. I think I don't ever want to leave her; I don't ever want to spend another day of my life without her ever again. I think I found her. I'm in love with her and I only hope that the war has taught me to summon up my courage and tell her before time runs out. I don't know how much time we have left together; I don't know if we only have a moment or if we have forever. I just hope I can tell her before it's too late."

Diana felt the press of his hand as he made sure she had his father's watch. She heard his last words to her as he ran into his certain death: "I love you. . ." She felt the sob roll up in her chest and pressed her eyes tight as she hugged the notes to her chest.

The Amazons were wise to stay away from men. Mankind was one thing, but men were another. Diana was warned of their evil, witnessed their goodness, and felt firsthand the new sensation of a broken heart. None of the other Amazons could ever have felt this heartbreak as Diana did now. They were wise to stay away from men.

When Etta asked Diana if she wanted to come to Oklahoma with her, Diana thanked her but declined. Etta was still surprised when Diana expressed a wish to live someplace other than London. This current apartment needed a tenant, but Diana knew every moment spent here with all of his things, with everything but him, was too much for her. "I like Europe, what I've seen. Besides the war, there are beautiful places here. London," Diana sighed. How could she say that this place would tear her up with indescribable pain she alone must feel? "London is ugly," was what she settled on.

"Well, where do you want to go then, poppet? You could go anywhere you wanted; hello, do you want to go home?" Etta wondered. "War's over. You could go back."

Diana shook her head. "No," she said soberly, "I cannot go back." Etta cocked her head and Diana asked, "Where would you wish to go, Etta?"

"Well, I've always wanted to go to Paris," Etta said. She looked up at Diana. "How about there, luv?"

"Paris." Diana loved its feel on her tongue. It sounded far away, and elegant, and sophisticated, and yet soft at the same time. "Is Paris beautiful?"

"One of the prettiest places on Earth, or so I've heard."

Diana wanted to see beauty again. Beauty could not totally eradicate the pain, but it could relieve some of the grief she felt living in her. So she smiled again. It wasn't a forced smile, like Etta wore during the war. It wasn't a naive smile, but a smile she wore despite her grief. It was an earned smile. Clutching Steve's last words to herself, she said, "Then I want to go to Paris."

Dang, now I'm really looking forward to Wonder Woman 1984. Diana/Steve are JUST SO CUTE.

Thanks for reading! Review?