Diana sat in the center of her living room, surrounded by boxes.

The apartment had been furnished when she had moved in, so there was remarkably little for her to pack. Most of her clothes would be given to the Red Cross—she had no need of them on the Island. Except her uniform, which she couldn't bear to part with. Who knew one could become sentimental over blue serge? But sentimental she was, so it would be packed carefully into tissue paper and taken back home where no doubt each and every one of her sisters would tell her how dowdy it was. She chuckled. Dowdy, perhaps, but the uniform represented something very special to her, and she had worn it with pride for years, despite the fact that it had been a costume as surely as the one her mother designed for her.

Costumes, she mused, as she opened the biscuit tin that sat on the top shelf of the closet in her bedroom, tucked away from prying eyes. Always costumes.

Inside the tin were nestled a short stack of newspaper clippings—the advertisement from her one stage appearance as Wonder Woman arranged by Ashley Norman, the article stating Steve was alive and at the Armed Services Hospital, the picture of her with Jack Wood from the Miss GI Dream Girl contest at Fort Russell, and a photo of President Roosevelt from the front page of the Washington Herald-Tribune the day after she had received a special citation. She set the clippings aside, and removed the four medals hanging from silk ribbons.

The Americans so loved medals. She remembered Steve's RAF friend James Bigglesworth once remarking that in England, they never gave out half so many. Of course, he also referred to the American pilots as "over-sexed, over-paid, and over here." Steve had laughed, and Diana had simply blushed. James had gone on to describe how British children would chase the trucks full of American soldiers through the street, and the GIs would toss them sticks of bubble gum, or chocolate bars. She couldn't help but picture J.P. Hadley's pack of war orphans—spared the rickets and boils and malnutrition of those London children of the Blitz. Such generosity for complete strangers was proof to her that for all the terrible atrocities committed in wartime, there was hope to be found in each and every person who reached out to help. She had seen both the worst this world had to offer, and its best, she decided as she reached for the next item inside the tin; a stack of letters.

They had been read and re-read so many times that the paper was dog-eared and the ink faded along the creases. The first was a letter from Charlie Bright Eagle, the belt the boy had given her tucked beneath its folds. It had been addressed to Wonder Woman care of the War Department, and the Navaho boy had written to her of simple, mundane things—lessons at school, what his adopted brothers and sister were up to, and how Maria told every guest who had slept in her bed that Wonder Woman had stayed in that very guestroom. She smiled, imaging the housekeeper charging a penny a head like a sideshow attraction. The letter had been written only a few weeks after she and Steve had visited J.P. Hadley's ranch in Texas, and it had not been followed by another. No doubt the boy had been discouraged when his hero had not written back to him—or perhaps he had simply forsaken her for a boy's next passion, as children were wont to do. She would have written back, if she could.

Etta had told her once that next to Santa Claus and the President, the Post Office received more mail for Wonder Woman than anyone else in the world. Except that the President had a staff of people to handle correspondence, and hundreds of volunteers around the country sent back letters "from the North Pole", but she was only one woman, and had long ago decided that if she answered one letter, then she would have to answer them all. And if she did that—well, there'd be no time to actually help people, she'd be at her desk every minute of every day. And as much as she hated the realities of life, she was at their mercy.

The next was a note from Steve—he'd had it delivered to her apartment by special messenger but she had not been here to accept it. It was simple, and in Etta's handwriting no less—telling her he was gone on a furlough and that she should take some leave as well and have fun. Of course, he had no way of knowing that when he had written it, she'd been in the process of being flown to Berlin, having been captured. But she had kept it, as a keepsake. He'd come after her, and risked his life to rescue her, and she would never forget that.

She re-folded the letters and replaced them in the tin. Suddenly, she wished that Dru and her mother had never come to Washington. Selfishly, she wished that she was just a normal girl, with a normal life, who had the luxury of falling in love. She closed her eyes, concentrating on the already rapidly fading memory of her first and last kiss. And inwardly, she railed at the unfairness of it. Why now? Why was everything suddenly happening so quickly? She felt as if she were drowning in a sea of uncertainty.

She ran her fingers over Minerva's profile hanging from the blue silk ribbon of the medal president Truman had pinned to her cape just days earlier, and leaned back against the sofa for a moment, sighing. For two thousand years, she had worn but one face: that of Diana of Themyscira. Heir to the throne. Loving daughter and Amazon warrior. Hundreds of years had passed in an eyeblink as she had studied the healing arts at the feet of her teachers, and for her pleasure she had hunted and run footraces, recited ancient myths and stories of great bravery and valor and even love—but she had never known the world those poems and sagas had spoken of. Her earliest memories were of the Island, and her sisters, but most of all her mother.

She had never seen a living, breathing man until Steve Trevor, and how could she not have feelings for someone who—without the strength and speed of one born of the Islands, whose own lifespan was as quick as a breath to her—still risked his life day after day to defend those who had no other champions? It was easy for her to take up the mantle—she had less to lose, and so much more to give. But to her, the real heroes were the mortals who spent their every breath in the pursuit of freedom, and sacrificed their fragile lives daily in this terrible war.

Carefully, she laid the medals back on the square of tissue paper and refolded them, closing the tin and placing it on top of her folded uniform. She reached for the next stack of items to be sorted when there was a discreet knock at the door. She picked up her glasses from the coffee table, and slipped them on in front of the mirror before crossing the room to the door.

She was shocked when, on the other side, she found Steve Trevor standing in her hallway.

"Steve!" she began, adjusting her glasses on her nose, and she stepped aside so he could come in. He seemed to be full of energy, tightly coiled, as if he was expecting some kind of fight. She'd seen him like this before, of course. When he was wrestling with a particularly thorny problem, or in more than one case, a particularly deadly foe. "I wasn't expecting—"

"Don't go," he said simply, and she froze. She just... froze. He stared at her, waiting for some kind of response, but all she could do was stare back at him, blinking behind the thick lenses of her glasses. When they had parted after the surprise party Friday evening, there had been a finality to it, despite the fact that she fully intended to come in to work on Monday. After all, her mother had given her leave to stay until the Germans surrendered, and she was determined to carry on up until the last minute.

"Steve, you'll find another secretary," she finally said with a smile, and touched his shoulder sympathetically.

"Dammit, Diana, you're not just my secretary," he said and swept her into his arms and kissed her.

It wasn't an impulsive kiss. It wasn't getting caught up in the moment. It wasn't getting carried away. It was a kiss a man gives a woman when he sees his future in her eyes. It was a kiss a man gives a woman when the thought of waking up another day without her by his side made him never want to wake again. It was a kiss a man gives a woman when he loves her.

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.