InsaneJournal

She’d digitized her picture, the one of Steve and the others. It had been the first thing she’d done when she’d had a moment, and today she sat in the lounge with a drink, watching the stars drift by as she traced the edge of the picture on her PADD with one finger.

Maybe it was the Captain being Steve’s spitting image. It made it impossible for her to keep down old feelings. She sighed, and knocked back her drink.

"Is that regret drinking?" A voice asked, from behind her. Tony had a drink in his own hand - his hand was rarely without one unless he was on shift, really.

His sharp eyes peered over her shoulder at the picture on the PADD, but he remained silent about its contents. The way she'd been caressing the screen, he didn't have to take wild guesses as to how personal the photo was.

“Nostalgia, maybe.” Diana glanced back over her shoulder at him, and she turned a little, gesturing with her drink for him to have a seat and waggled the PADD. “I’d not seen their faces for decades, before I saw a copy of this photograph. And then a friend found me the original.”

She smiled, a soft laugh escaping. “A funny thing, reminiscing.” She was willing to talk about them, if he asked.

"Reminiscing isn't usually one of those things I do in public," Tony replied, as he came around and took the seat she'd gestured to.

The woman, who he'd seen around the network but had forgotten the name of, was gorgeous. The kind of breathtakingly gorgeous that was downright intimidating, but that didn't stop him from giving her a bit of a cheeky smile.

"And I definitely don't laugh about it when I do it. But maybe I only have bad things to get nostalgic about. Decades? Are you one of those immortal types, then? Because obviously you haven't aged a day."

Tony was handsome, in a dashing sort of way that reminded her a lot of Bruce Wayne. It was ironically an apt comparison. “I’m immortal, yes. I am Diana of Themyscira. My mother is queen of the Amazons and I guess you could call Zeus my father.”

She turned the PADD around so he could see the picture better. “I came to Man’s world during the First World War. Steve.” She tapped her finger over him. “Died during the war, stopping a plane filled with a terrible nerve agent. Charlie, we buried in ‘27. He was was a sniper, haunted by the ghosts from the war. All he wanted to do was sing. He had such a beautiful voice. But the ghosts caught up to him.”

Finger moving from Charlie, she continued. “I laid Sameer to rest in 1938. He was a brilliant actor, who struggled to find work because he was not white. But he did find some theaters who accepted him, and his shows were lovely.”

And there was the Chief of course. A relic of the time, a derisive nickname for a beautiful man. “Napi and I, we did some things during the Second war, but after that we both gave up on humanity for awhile. He disappeared, and I struggled to find a place in a world hell-bent on destroying itself. I saw Napi again, a few years ago, when I visited Charlie and Sameer’s graves. We mostly drank, and talked of the old days. Have you heard of creatures like Coyote, Fox or Loki? Napi is cut from the same cloth, a trickster and storyteller. But I have seen him with people who have nothing, and I have seen him help them.”

Diana accepted a refill of her drink. “I’m told that people can come from different points in their lives. I’ve not yet decided what I would do or say if any of them arrived on the Enterprise. Do you have friends like that?”

"That's. Uhm." It was a lot. Tony hadn't expected that, though maybe he should have. Diana seemed like she'd been trapped in one of those memories that needed to be talked about, and he was there. And seemingly willing to listen. Well, more than just seemingly, though his mind, quick as it was, was still bouncing back and forth.

He'd winced a bit at the mention of Loki, though, and he decided that was a good jumping off point. "Loki, we have a guy like that where I'm from. He's basically an alien, but on my world we'd call him a god. The Norse did - Loki, Odin, Freya, Thor, all of those Gods. Real people, just from a place called Asgard that really does exist. Loki's no good. Maybe he was when he started, but by the time I met him? He was bent on enslaving Earth and hurting my friends. Took over my tower, summoned a portal to outer space, and almost killed me. We're not friends."

Did he have friends like hers? He shook his head, and took a long sip of his drink. "Too early to tell on the friend front. I don't play well with others. Bruce Banner would be the closest. He's aboard here, works in medical with me."

“I trust you stopped him?” Napi wasn’t the same as Loki, or that Loki anyway. Though he’d done his fair share of tricks, usually as the expense of the people who’d murdered his people. Not something Diana had been bothered by. “Gods as aliens is unsurprising. Perhaps Zeus was one, as well. But it is good you have someone.”

Not playing well with others was a cover, and Diana knew it. Definitely a lot like Wayne.

"Yeah, we stopped him. After a bunch of aliens came through it and blew up half of Manhattan, anyway. My tower was a wreck. Lots of property damage. Very annoying. No one was paying for that, either. Good thing I'm a billionaire." Tony's eye twitched just slightly, because the next part of the story was always the part where he flew a nuke through the portal and nearly asphyxiated to death.

"So... then there was a nuke, and I flew it through the portal. And then I almost died, and Loki was released back to Asgard for THOSE guys to deal with him."

Diana nodded. While it could be argued that Loki should be tried by those he harmed, he'd also harmed his own people, and honestly, who could control a god but more gods?

"They tried to nuke Doomsday too. Superman fought him into space, and they were both hit. It did not stop Doomsday, and it only briefly stopped Superman. Why is the government's first impulse to deploy nuclear weapons?"

"Beats me," Tony said, with a shrug. "Fury tried to stop the council, but they weren't really listening. It's like hey - they don't even read the history books. Nuclear solutions? Historically not awesome. For anyone. Honestly pretty sure it wouldn't even have penetrated the shell of the big Space Whales, either."

He took a moment to put his head back together, finishing his glass and motioning for a refill. "Your friends sound like a good bunch of heroes, though. I don't think I could have stuck around like that. To bury them all. Most of them... any of them, really. There's been a few- A few people. That you know. Died for me, or for the cause in general. Don't really handle that stuff well."

“I would like to fight one of these space whales.” Diana tilted her head to the side as she envisioned it. It was a habit of hers, when something presented a challenge to her. Her way of saying ‘challenge accepted’.

“Grief is something different for everyone, Tony. There’s no wrong way to do it. Or rather, few wrong ways to do so.” She thought about what losing Steve had almost done for her.

Tony shook his head, "OH I just don't. I don't grief. I do other stuff, instead." Coping mechanisms? What were those?

"Do you do much fighting? That's a stupid question, look at that muscle tone. And you're an Amazon, of course you do much fighting. Please don't get up and show me, my ego is fragile enough. These things have armor that most stuff can't pierce. What would you do against that?"

“Mm. Of course you don’t grieve.” Obviously, she didn’t believe him. “I’d have to see one to know for sure. Brute force is usually effective, though I prefer a little finesse. My sword can cut through many things, so that would be something to test as well. I take it you don’t want to see what I demonstrated to Lucifer before I bruised him?”

"You bruised Lucifer?" Tony's eyebrows shot up so far they nearly scraped his hairline, and then he grinned. "THE Lucifer? The guy who runs this bar and likes to pretend nothing can hurt him? That one?"

“That’s the one.” Diana grinned over her drink. “I’d like to train with him further. To have someone I don’t really have to hold back with is a luxury. I suppose you might feel the same way, with your mind.”

"With my- yeah, I guess so. It's debatable, depends on the person. Bruce challenges me, but you know, I challenge him too. It's even, so it works out. Maybe sometimes he doesn't challenge me enough, though. I think it's my face. I have those puppy eyes." Tony joked. He could see Lucifer being on equal footing with her, though. If she was graced with otherworldly power like the comics seemed to say, anyway. Probably the only person on the ship at the moment who could go toe to toe with her was Sauron.

Well, or capsicle. But he liked to pretend Steve didn't exist, and so far that was working out for them both.

"What did you do to bruise him, though?"

“They’re very puppy-like.”

Diana wouldn’t mind fighting the Big Guy sometime too. In another place and another time, it had been shown that her greatest weakness was that she wouldn’t give up. She’d keep fighting until the fight killed her.

“Just a punch to the stomach. I held back a little. I didn’t want to actually hurt him and I wanted to gauge his durability.”

"So what you're saying is you didn't even hit him at full strength and you left a mark?" Tony found that hard to believe, but this woman was maybe the most unbelievable one he'd met so far.

It was kind of attractive, but he'd learned not to just go trying to sleep with the women aboard the ship. Like Lucifer, he'd decided that the ship was just far too small for that shit. Plus, this woman deserved better than a one night stand. Unless that's what she wanted.

He wouldn't say no if she brought it up, anyway. But that was getting ahead of himself. "Right." He cleared his throat, "So. That's... actually kind of funny. How did he take that?"

As a rule, Diana tried to avoid entanglements. Steve had hit her hard, and when she’d tried to move on later she’d quickly learned that all mortals would eventually die on her. Even friendships could be tricky or tragic. But sometimes, she just really wanted to be intimate with someone.

“Decided not to try a follow-up punch. He’s a good man, I think I like him.”

"Most people do. He's easy to like. Which is, you know, the opposite of me. I can respect that." Tony said, nodding his head. "The guy's even more charming than my old man. Who's also around here. You've probably already met him. Howard."

“I haven’t had the pleasure, actually. I’m sure he’s almost as handsome as you are.” Diana winked at Tony, Complete sincerity in her tone and expression. “And as far as I am concerned, you’re easy to like, too.” She reached over and poked him in the arm.

He looked down at where he'd been poked, raising a brow. "Actually right now he's even more handsome than me. Since he's younger. You know, in his prime and all of that. I sound jealous. I kind of am - honesty, that's a thing."

Then he shook his head, and toasted her with is drink. "I don't know why, we only just met. But alright, I'm likeable. Sure. Here's to you, Xena. My brand new friend."