Who: Pyrrha, Diana and Kitty What: Diana has bad dreams and talks to Pyrrha, and then Kitty shows up in need of her own talk When: Late July Where: Diana's Rating: PG-13
Out of everything that Diana thought her dreams would throw at her, Bruce hitting the Steve Trevor had not been one of them. Of course, she well knew that she’d opened the door to it by telling Bruce that at some point even he had to move on. But that didn’t make the pain over Steve any less potent. Diana was an immortal, time moved differently for her, and death affected her differently as well. She still carried Steve with her everywhere she went, and she’d shut herself down for a century, far longer than Bruce had, so she had no place to talk. She’d shoved Bruce in response, though she’d held back, shoving him hard enough to make her point clear of telling him to back off, but not hard enough to injure him. But the damage had been done.
After waking, Diana was right back into the closed off mindset of her dream self. She didn’t even completely realize it, she’d just gone about her day. While she’d been getting ready for work, she hadn’t really acknowledged Pyrrha’s presence, instead more focused on the argument between herself and Bruce and in the dream, and trying to ignore the pain in her heart.
Diana had left early for work and stayed at work a little longer than usual. When she got back home, she had plans to change into workout clothes and exercise for a while. After changing and putting her hair into a ponytail, she came back out, she decided that she’d run to the gym instead of driving. She went into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water to take with her.
It was worrying Pyrrha. Granted, she’d been working out a lot too, but that was to get her body back into shape. She didn’t have a limp anymore, though sometimes she still felt ghost pains in her chest and something like fire running through her limbs. She kept that to herself, though.
But with Diana seeming to ignore everything around her, she decided enough was enough, and cornered her in the kitchen, “I’m really sorry but...do you want to talk about it? Whatever it is?”
It should’ve occurred to Diana that she would’ve been cornered by someone eventually. Yet she was surprised when Pyrrha cornered her. She looked at her, trying to keep her feelings at bay. Did she want to talk about it? Not really. “No, I don’t. I’m sorry if I worried you.”
“I’m here to listen,” Pyrrha insisted, eyes full of concern and voice filled with the same. For all her athleticism and ability as a warrior, she always gave her full heart to the people she cared about. Pyrrha was soft like that, in her center.
The way Pyrrha looked at her tugged at Diana’s heart. She knew she should talk about it, but what was there to say that she hadn’t already said before? Steve was dead, there was a hole in her heart and she was still in mourning. She looked at Pyrrha and pressed her lips together for a few moments.
“Have you ever lost someone, and then have someone throw that pain in your face?” Diana had tried for a more subtle way of asking, but with the subject at hand paired with her emotional state, subtle wasn’t something she could manage right then.
“No. But I can imagine how much that must have hurt. And how unfair that is!” Whoever that was, was not a kind person. She wondered if anyone would do that to Jaune, over her.
She’d come back from the dead to fight anyone who did.
“I opened the door to it. He called me on my hypocrisy of telling him that he needed to move on from something that had happened very recently.” Diana explained. She’d brought it on herself, and Bruce had taken the opportunity. Of course, he could have handled it differently, but he was purposefully trying to push her, and she was being stubborn and refusing to budge.
While there was some clear hypocrisy there, hitting someone on losing a loved one was kind of a low blow. Pyrrha frowned, disappeared for a moment then returned with a bottle of scotch. “That still doesn’t make it right.”
“Perhaps not, but he had a point. Who am I tell him to move on when I myself never moved on and let go?” Diana hated feeling what her dream self felt over Steve’s death, but she couldn’t exactly help the bleedover. That and it seemed to have become a defining trait of her dream self.
“You loved Steve. And sometimes you hold on to that.” Would she have mourned a century for Jaune? She didn’t know. But she did know she’d always love him, no matter what.
“Yes, but it is also different for me. I’m immortal, more or less. Time moves differently for me, and Steve was one of the first losses I ever experienced in my life. Antiope and some of my other sister Amazons being the other first losses.” Everything was different for Diana in the dreams. She’d outlived almost everyone she’d ever known. Aside from Chief, the only other people she hadn’t outlived were her fellow Amazons, but she couldn’t return to Themyscira. She was a lone immortal in a mortal world.
Or at least she had been until recently.
“A hundred years isn’t all that much to an immortal,” Pyrrha mused, finally offering Diana the bottle. “In human terms, that could be a few years. That’s normal and natural, you didn’t deserve to be called out on that.”
Taking the bottle, Diana contemplated it for some moments. “No, but I cannot fault Bruce for calling me out. He is not an immortal nor does he really understand what it is to be one. I know that he is pushing me to try and be the leader of the team we are forming, but I am not willing to step into that role. That is not me. I am not a general.”
Antiope was the general, and she died to save her. The thought of Antiope sent another wave of emotion through her, and Diana took out a glass and poured herself a drink. “Would you like some?”
Pyrrha’s eyes grew sad, and her expression fell. She took a seat on one of the chairs, and rubbed her palms over her knees. “Destiny isn’t always something you expect, or want. Sometimes it just is.”
“No, that it is not. I am the Godkiller, and originally it was my destiny to stop my brother, Ares. Now that he is gone, I no longer know what my destiny is. Though perhaps I am supposed to fight to protect those who cannot protect themselves.” Even then, Diana didn’t know if that was true. Or if she’d even keep fighting after they defeated Steppenwolf.
If they defeated Steppenwolf. Diana had her doubts, and she really didn’t like Bruce’s plan of using one of the Mother Boxes to resurrect Superman. That wasn’t sitting well with her at all.
“That’s not a bad destiny to have.” It was what Pyrrha had wanted hers to be, but she’d been led in another direction. A reluctant destiny.
Maybe that was why she had died, because she’d hesitated too long, and had never really accepted it.
“Perhaps not, but sometimes my dream self wishes that she’d never left Themyscira. She is lost in the world of men, and being immortal is simply watching everyone else die. And it is what will happen to me in this life.” One day, Kitty would die, as would most everyone else here, but Diana would still exist. Her mother would die, unless she came to Orange County and started dreaming herself. Eventually, Diana would be on her own, just like in her dreams.
That thought only brought her mood down more and she took a long drink of the scotch.
Pyrrha didn’t have a response to that, not verbally. But she got up instead, and walked over to give her a hug.
Diana’s phone beeped.
Diana returned the hug. She’d needed one more than she’d realized. Though when she heard her phone beep, she pulled away to check it, half-expecting something related to work popping up on it.
Kitty >> Are you up?
Pyrrha pulled away, letting DIana have privacy with her phone. She wondered if Jaune was up, and if he’d be okay being bothered. Some of Diana’s words had affected her in that ‘I really want to reaffirm I’m okay’ sort of way.
When she first saw Kitty’s text, Diana suddenly wondered if she’d missed a date they’d arranged. But she didn’t think she had, otherwise Kitty would probably be here in person as opposed to texting her.
Yes, I am. Is everything alright?
It was a few moments before Kitty replied, Yes and no. Just bad dreams. Can I come over?
Of course you can. Diana doubted she’d be good company, but she’d do her best to be there for Kitty and stuff her own dream down. She then headed to her room to change out of her workout clothes since that wasn’t going to happen any longer. She pulled on something more casual, meant for lounging around, but it wasn’t pajamas.
“I’m going to go for a jog,” Pyrrha said, emerging from her room in workout clothing. She thought that Diana and Kitty needed a little while alone after Diana’s dreams and while she hadn’t read the message, one didn’t text someone out of the blue like that.
“Alright. Be careful, just in case Orange County decides to give us another round of weird while you’re out.” Diana said, knowing that things could turn weird or an invasion could happen at any moment. She went and poured herself another glass of scotch, which she downed before she put the glass in the dishwasher and went to put the bottle back while she waited for Kitty to arrive.
“I wish we had the rocket lockers,” Pyrrha mused. It would be a lot easier to store their weapons and call them when needed.
She was gone by the time Kitty arrived. It had been a bad series of dreams. Piotr’s sudden proposal that she’d turned down, the session before Congress, the Vanko attack on Congress and then finally the vote still going against mutants. It always went against mutants.
And past that, even, the dreams hadn’t stopped.
She really wanted the dreams to stop again.
Having weapons be instantly portable would definitely be interesting. Diana at least tried to keep her bracers with her at all times just in the event something happened while she wasn’t at home. Between the time Pyrrha left and Kitty arrived, Diana did her best to get ahold of herself.
When Kitty arrived, Diana opened the door, managing a smile even if she didn’t actually feel it. Part of her really hated Bruce for driving a spear into that sore spot of hers.
“Hello, there,” Diana greeted.
“Hey.” Kitty wasn’t feeling her smile either, and she had the sense that something was off, just not quite what. “I hope I’m not bugging you. You were the first person I wanted to talk to.”
It might be more relevant to Rogue or Logan, but she thought Diana might still understand.
“You never bug me.” Once Kitty was inside, she closed the door. “May I get you something to eat or drink?” She offered, always more than ready to be the good hostess. “Did you want to talk about your dreams?”
“Something sweet sounds really good,” Kitty admitted. But she wasn’t that hungry, “Mostly I just want you.” She paused, “Well not like that. Okay always like that but not right now. You know what I mean.”
She was babbling, “Uh...how are you doing?”
Something sweet she could do. Diana had made some baklava the day before, so it was still pretty fresh. “I understand what you mean,” she responded with a little smile. She headed to the kitchen and got some baklava, putting it on a plate and bringing it over to Kitty. “Made fresh yesterday.”
As for Kitty’s question, it was difficult to answer it. “I’d like to say I am fine, but I would be lying.”
“Perfect.” Kitty’s smile was a little more genuine, and she took the plate from her girlfriend. “What’s wrong? Anything I can do to help?”
She’d rather focus on Diana’s problems than her own.
Diana went and sat down after giving Kitty the plate. “Another dream. Bruce was arguing for bringing Superman back to life, and I was arguing against it. It devolved into a verbal fight between the two of us in which I told him that even he had to learn to move on from things. At that point, he threw Steve Trevor and how I shut myself down for a century in my face and I shoved him.”
Of course, a shove from Diana was no small matter given her strength. “He was not wrong, I was being a hypocrite.”
Kitty put her hand over Diana’s for a moment, but she needed it to eat so it wasn’t for longer than was needed to express sympathy. “You’re right, he’s not wrong. But there were probably better ways to have pushed you on it.”
Kitty wasn’t the best person to talk about letting things go, all things considered. Though she was better at it than she used to be, and she was trying to see both sides. “Especially since he had to have known how much of a sore spot that was for you.”
“No, there weren’t. He wants me to be the leader of the team, and he’s doing everything he can to push me into being it. But I refuse to be the leader. I am not a general, and I do not like risking other people’s lives.” Diana wasn’t a general, and she didn’t really want to be one. “And I definitely believe it is a bad idea to use Steppenwolf’s Mother Box to bring Superman back to life. He could potentially be worse than Doomsday was.”
“Sometimes when the situation is desperate, you have the bad choice and the worse choice. Which do you think this is?” Kitty thought that Diana would make a good leader. While a general needed to risk lives, you also wanted a general who valued those lives enough to not take unnecessary risks.
“It is difficult to tell which one this is. I just have a very bad feeling about it. The last time the Kryptonian ship was used to resurrect something, Doomsday could’ve destroyed everything. It took Superman using a Kryptonite spear to finally take Doomsday out. We don’t have any Kryptonite any longer, so if Superman wakes up and starts attacking us, he will be unstoppable.” Diana doubted that she could take Superman being reborn from the energy of the Mother Box.
“A concerted effort could maybe take him down, but I doubt you have the time to figure out a way to counter a yellow sun,” Kitty mused. She had a few ideas but they would all require subduing him first, which would be the hard part.
“And considering we are already on a short time table to stop Steppenwolf before he turns the Earth into a hellscape, figuring out how to deal with Superman could take up all of the time we have.” Diana knew she was in the minority with her opinion, and she also knew they were up against the wall and needed all the help they could get.
This was why she hated unknowns. Superman could wake up perfectly fine. Or he could wake up a rampaging monster with the power to destroy the planet.
“It sounds like there’s no good choice here,” Kitty agreed. “God do I know that feel.”
She set her plate on the table and scooted closer to Diana, sliding her arms around her. “Because either Steppenwolf kills everyone, or Superman kills everyone. But at least with Superman there’s a chance everyone won’t die.”
“No, there isn’t.” Diana responded. She leaned into Kitty when she slid her arms around her, taking in the comfort. “Yes, there is a chance that Superman won’t kill everyone, but I am very wary of the method by which Bruce wishes to bring him back to life. Not to mention if Bruce is the first thing Superman sees upon waking, he will start attacking.”
Considering Bruce had tried to kill Superman shortly before Doomsday showed up and shifted the focus of their fight.
“Sounds like some people I know,” Kitty mused. She was familiar with people getting resurrected, and how that didn’t always go according to plan. “Do you think you’ll get him go through with it? Or is it not something you really have a choice in?”
Not that Diana would ever not have a choice in something, but with the end of the world coming you ran out of options.
“I made my opinion known, but I seem to be the only one against the idea. So Bruce is going to get his way.” Diana didn’t blame the others for going along with the idea. Hell, she could get behind the idea if anything other than using the combination of the Kryptonian ship and the Mother Box to revive Superman. But that combination really worried her.
“See, if you were the leader, it wouldn’t be a democracy,” Kitty said, keeping her tone light. She reached over and patted Diana’s hand. “But I hope he knows what he’s doing. If I was going to be honest with you… I’d probably push the idea myself.”
“None of us know what we’re doing. If we were Kryptonian, we might understand better. But this is a shot in the dark.” As much as Diana was apprehensive at best about bringing Clark back to life, that’s not what she was truly upset about. She was upset about it, but she knew they needed to take risks if they had any hope of defeating Steppenwolf and saving the world.
No, she was upset with Bruce for pushing the Steve Trevor button. And she was even more upset that he’d called her out on her hypocrisy.
Kitty raised her eyebrows, as if sensing there was more to it than that and waiting for Diana to admit it and say it out loud. Rather than say anything, she took her hand and squeezed it.
She squeezed Kitty’s hand in response, giving her a little smile. She didn’t quite want to say what was bothering her yet. If she did, she felt like she’d start crying, and she really didn’t want to cry right then. So she was going to change the subject.
“You said you had bad dreams as well?”
Kitty opened her mouth and then closed it, having forgotten her own reason for coming, “...yeah, kind of. I’m not sure what’s worse, my ex living in my old room and then deciding he wants to marry me, or the House voting to deport mutants.”
Obviously, the latter, but she dealt with such things with dark humor.
Diana frowned a bit. That was a bit disturbing on both fronts there. “I’m sorry about that. Both things, though the latter is infinitely worse.” She squeezed Kitty’s hand. “Is there any way to try and have the vote get reversed? Surely not everyone in the government is against mutants.”
“I don’t think it’ll pass the senate, though I’m unsure if there’ll be a veto. There’s a lot going on too, and.. Fuck. We saved congress from an attack by a supervillain and that’s the thanks we get?” Kitty had an expression of ‘I don’t know what I expected’ because of course that was the thanks they got. Mutant genocide tended to be high on the agenda.
“You deserve better than that. It is no excuse, but people fear what they do not understand. There is a long history of people acting this way towards those who are different from them.” Diana didn’t like that, but it was human nature. “Even so, saving Congress should be worth something better than that.”
“Sometimes I wish it were easier, sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it for people to have families, bring kids into a world like that.” And yet she persisted, she taught and she raised the kids brought to her like they were her own.
“You never know, the next generation could be the one to help change things. After all, change is not something that happens instantaneously. Sometimes it takes a couple generations, or longer, to accept the change.” That went for pretty much everything in the world, not just normal humans accepting mutants in Kitty’s dreams.
Not to mention that it had already started happening on a smaller scale in Diana’s dreams. Superman had been called into question, people being afraid of what he could do if he turned against Earth. What would the world think if they learned of the Amazons, Atlanteans, and other metahumans? Diana shuddered to think.
“That depends on if that generation survives to adulthood,” Kitty replied bitterly. She sighed, closing her eyes and trying to center herself. “Sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just so exhausting, and with the way the world is while awake, it’s way too close to home.”
“It certainly does not make it any easier, I agree.” Diana said, sliding an arm around Kitty’s shoulders. “Life is not easy no matter what life we are in. But if we give up and give in, then they win.”
“You’re right. Just remember to take your own advice when it’s dark for you too,” Kitty pointed out, leaning against Diana and letting herself feel contented.
Diana had to smile softly at that. “I know, but I am stubborn.” She almost said stubborn old woman given she was a few thousand years old. But when compared to the other Amazons, she was still young, still very much a child.
“You’re lucky I find that sexy,” Kitty joked. She reached up, touching DIana’s cheek and turning her face towards her. “And thank you. For being you.”
Looking at Kitty, she smiled more genuinely at her. “You are welcome,” she said and leaned into Kitty’s touch. It was good to have her here. Sometimes her dream self bled over too much for Diana’s liking.
“I love you,” Kitty said, and then decided that there were much better ways to cheer up than talking.