"Tell me what it's like?" he whispered into her hair as they lay curled around one another beneath her chenille bedspread and wool blanket. Outside her bedroom window, the late afternoon sunlight painted the world with a warm glow as if it had been gilded by a craftsman's brush. A single square of golden light had moved halfway across the wall in the hours they had been there, trying to hold the world and time at bay through sheer force of will. "Your home."

"It's always summer," she said, her cheek resting against his chest. "The palace is on the North side of the island, on the rise closest to the quarry. Each stone was cut and laid by one of my sisters. I remember watching the walls rise around us when I was a child, stone by stone. Sister by sister. Do you know how long it takes for barely a thousand women to build a palace stone by stone?"

He shook his head, and she rolled onto her stomach so that she could look up into his face. "Neither do I. Sometimes, I wonder if time runs differently there—like in a song or a story. If one day there spans a hundred years. On the day my sister Drusilla was born, my mother planted an apple tree. That single tree became an orchard that stretches from the palace wall to the cliffs above the sea. In my memory, home always smells of apples. I remember I was so terribly homesick my first spring in Washington, when the cherry blossoms began to fall. Dru and I used to play in the orchards, pretending the apple blossom petals were snow falling. I'd never seen snow until I came here."

She wrapped her arms around him, and he rested his chin on the top of her head. She could feel his heart beat beneath her cheek. "There are statues everywhere—in the gardens, in the marble halls. My sister Andromache is a sculptor. She was blinded by the one of the generals of the Greek army, but her memory lives in her hands. She can fashion a likeness so uncanny that my mother's bust has given me quite a start when I wandered the halls late at night. She tried to teach me, but I never had the talent for it. She'd be quick to tell you I lacked the patience, as well."

"I think that you can do anything you set your mind to," he said, kissing the top of her head. He had been so quiet—as if anything he might say would shatter the peaceful stillness that engulfed them. But apparently curiosity won out at last, as he asked "What happened, with this Greek army? Is that how you ended up on your island?"

She nodded. "I was so small, when it happened. Three, perhaps four years old. I can't remember. There was a battle, and my mother bested their champion. There was feasting afterwards, but the Greeks drugged the wine. My mother's sister Antiope hid me in an olive jar before she was captured and taken away to marry one of their princes. My other aunt, Melanippe, escaped but was captured and slain before my mother's eyes. My sisters were beaten, chained and... horribly and terribly used by the soldiers." His arms tightened around her, and his jaw tightened and the lines of his face grew hard. She ran the fingers of one hand lightly over his cheek, trying to smooth away the worry over a wrong done by strangers so long ago, but touched by it nonetheless. "They escaped, and fled to Paradise Island. For over two millennia, we have lived in perfect peace on the island. No Amazon has ever raised her hand to another."

"And there are no men on the Island?"

"Only one in over a thousand years," she said, tracing the shape of the pale and puckered scar on his left shoulder. "This was where Phillipa cauterized your wound after we removed the bullet. I'm sorry it left a scar."

"I'm not—now I'll always have something to remember you by," she could hear the smile in his voice as he took her hand and pressed a kiss into the palm before continuing. "If it hadn't have been for that Nazi's bullet, I never would have met you."

"I never thought we'd ever thank the Nazis for anything," she said dryly, and he laughed.

She awoke alone, to the steady sound of rain outside her window. Pulling on her robe, she padded silently out into the darkened living room. Steve was standing in front of the window, watching the rain. He had pulled on his tan uniform pants, but the shirt was still unbuttoned, and he seemed mesmerized by the pattern of the raindrops on the glass. She came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist, resting her chin on his shoulder so she could watch the rain.

"I remember the first time I watched you sleep," he said as the silhouettes of the monuments in the distance were illuminated by brief, soundless flashes of lightning along the horizon. "It was in Argentina. Do you remember? We were locked in a wine cellar, trussed up like Christmas turkeys, and I stopped and just watched you sleep. I couldn't help it. You were so beautiful it broke my heart. And then you woke up, and smiled at me, and I felt like I was ten feet tall. And not even that moment can compare to what it was like to wake up with you in my arms. Nothing comes close."

"The first time I saw you, my sister Rina and I were walking along the beach by a cave where I would sleep in hottest part of summer when the breeze from the ocean would be the only thing cooling the air enough to make it bearable. There was a cloud of white parachute silk covering you, and I remember how frightened I was when I saw you were bleeding. But I didn't fall in love with you then—my mother always told me that a sleeping man can be an angel or a demon hidden from the truth by Morpheus' embrace, which paints us all as gentle spirits. I fell in love with the man who, lying bleeding in his sickbed, struggled blindly to get back to the battle he had left behind. I fell in love with the man I would find asleep in his chair, having worked all night at least once a week for the last three years." She smiled at the memory, resting her cheek against his shoulder. "I fell in love with the man who not three hours ago, told me he loved me for who I was. And not who he thought I could be, or should be."

"I can't let you go," he said quietly. "I don't know how I'm going to get up tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day and pretend that it's not killing me."

"But you have to," she whispered. "Just like I have to let you go."

"I don't know how." He turned around to face her, brushing her dark hair back with his hands, and she saw that his eyes were bright with unshed tears.

She took his face in her hands. "You have to promise me, Steve," she said, her throat suddenly raw. "Promise me that you'll fall in love, and marry, and have children, and have grandchildren, and you have to promise me you'll be happy. Because I can't..." her voice broke, and she blinked back sudden tears. "I can't do this unless I know that you'll be happy."

He kissed her, and there was an undercurrent of desperation in that caress that took her breath away. The world's clock had started again, and every second that passed was counting down to her leaving him. Knowledge of that compelled them both to try and hold on to one another so tightly that nothing—not family, not obligations, not a gulf between them of two millennia and thousands of miles—could tear them apart. But the knowledge that they would surely fail only spurred them on. Diana gasped as Steve lifted her into his arms, and carried her back to the bedroom.

"You're the only woman I'll ever love," he said as he laid her on the bed and gazed down at her adoringly. "I will never love anyone the way that I love you."

When Diana woke again, the sky outside her bedroom window was the color of mother of pearl, and the birds were just starting to sing outside her window. Steve was asleep, and she reached out to stroke his cheek. Slipping out of the circle of his arms, she stood in the center of her room and taking a deep breath, lifted her arms and spun clockwise until she was engulfed in a brilliant flash of light. Steve stirred, and she knelt next to him, reaching out to smooth his dark hair back from his face.

Leaning down, she kissed him softly, and when she pulled back his eyes were open a crack and he was smiling sleepily.

"Shhhh," she laid a finger against his lips. "You're dreaming," she said, remembering the first time she had said those words to him. It felt like a lifetime ago.

But she had lived a thousand lifetimes. Nonetheless, her blue eyes filled with tears as she uncoiled her golden lasso and wound it loosely around his shoulders.

Author's Note: Please, if there's anything that doesn't work for you, or is factually or grammatically incorrect, don't hesitate to tell me! Constructive criticism is the greatest gift you can give an author. I'm not a delicate flower who will curl up and die at the first sign of criticism. I want to make this story the very best I can, so please let me know what works for you, and more importantly, what doesn't.