Wonder Woman and her little hero!

The Watchtower always smelled faintly of ozone and recycled air, and Constantine hated it, made no secret of hating it, muttering the whole way up about capes and their glorified tin can in the sky. He'd dragged you along anyway, coat swishing around his ankles, cigarette already half gone before the teleporter beam had even finished fading around you both.

"Wait here and don't touch anything," he said, not even looking back to see if you'd listen. "This lot's got more security than the Vatican and twice the ego."

You trailed after him anyway, because that's what you did, because three steps behind John Constantine was usually the safest place to be even when he complained about you being there.

The command deck was mostly empty, just a couple of Leaguers going over monitors, low conversation drifting between them. Diana was near the observation window, arms crossed, looking out at the curve of the Earth like she did it every day, which she probably did.

She turned the second she heard footsteps, and her whole face changed.

"John Constantine," she said, dry as anything, "gracing us with his presence. Should I alert the others, or will the shock kill them?"

"Diana," Constantine said, already reaching for another cigarette. "Lovely as always. Try not to smite me."

She was already moving past him though, barely sparing him a glance, because she'd spotted you hovering behind his shoulder, and that was that as far as she was concerned.

"And who is this, cutie!" she said, delighted, crossing the last few feet in two long strides.

"Don't," Constantine started.

Too late. Her hand was already on your cheek, pinching it with the kind of fond, unbothered affection that made you want to duck out of reach and lean in at the same time.

"By Hera, Barda would love to be here right now," she said, still talking to Constantine but eyes on you the whole time, warm in a way that didn't match anything you'd heard about the great Wonder Woman. "John Constantine, mentoring someone. I never thought I'd live to see it."

"Someone's got to keep the kid from getting eaten by something with too many teeth, plus the young blood got potential." Constantine muttered, lighting his cigarette like this whole exchange was beneath him, though he didn't move to stop her.

"You're doing a fine job so far," Diana said, still smiling, hand finally leaving your cheek to rest warm and brief on your shoulder instead. "Come find me if he ever forgets to feed you or teach you anything useful. I mean it."

"She means it," Constantine said, sounding almost proud despite himself. "Terrifying woman. Don't get attached to ‘Mummy’ over here."

Diana just laughed at that, bright and easy, the kind of laugh that made the whole command deck feel a little warmer, she hugged you tightly, head on her chest as she dragged you somewhere, then she spoke like a doting mother or auntie. She couldn’t help her heart.

“I know Constantine is a butt of a man, you must be starving, your skinnier than a warrior trainee in Themyscira, I’ll tell you all about it when we reach the mess hall sweetie...”

Diana had a thing for sidekicks. She'd never admit it was a thing, not out loud, but everyone who knew her well enough could see it plain as day. Something about the young ones, the ones still growing into their powers and their names, turned her into someone softer than the Wonder Woman the world got to see.

She blamed it on being an Amazon sometimes, joked that Themyscira had never prepared her for how much she'd love a bunch of loud, reckless kids in capes. Robin drove her up the wall with his mouth running faster than his fists and quips, and she still couldn't stop herself from messing up his hair every time he rolled his eyes at her. Superboy acted like a puppy, he was so sweet and honestly Clark felt pressured to bring him to the watchtower cause of her. Donna she loved like a sister, easy and uncomplicated, the two of them training together until the sun went down more times than either could count.

But you were different. You were hers in a way she never quite explained to anyone, not even herself.

Maybe it was because you'd been so small when you started, still growing into your own name, still looking over your shoulder for approval before you threw a punch. She used to pinch your cheeks until you groaned and pulled away, used to scoop you up in hugs that knocked the air out of you, used to sit with you after hard nights and tell you stories about the island, about her sisters, about what it meant to be strong and kind at the same time. She was proud of you in a way that felt bottomless. She told you so, often, because she never wanted you to wonder.

And then you died.

It happened fast, the way it usually does. A villain who'd been watching, waiting, patient in a way none of you saw coming. The details blurred together afterward, the way violence does when the person you love is on the other side of it. What stayed clear, what never stopped being clear, was the after. The funeral. Diana standing at the front of it like family, because she was, because she had been since the day she met you.

Your mentor grieved hard too, the kind of grief that hollows a person out and leaves them walking around like a shell for a while. But Diana's grief had its own shape. She'd buried people before, plenty of them, and every single time she swore to herself she'd love fewer, love smaller, keep some part of her heart out of reach so it wouldn't shatter again. She never managed it. Not once. And after you, she stopped even pretending she would try.

Years went by. The ache dulled the way aches do, folding itself into the ordinary weight she carried, a permanent smaller heaviness she got used to without ever forgetting where it came from.

Then the sky over the city split open.

Nobody understood the device at first, only that some third rate villain with delusions of grandeur had gotten his hands on something that shouldn't have existed, something that tore at the seams of time itself. Buildings flickered between what they were now and what they used to be. Cars from decades past sat parked next to cars that hadn't been built yet. People wandered the streets disoriented, caught in moments that didn't belong to them.

And somewhere past Fifth and Main, a Tyrannosaurus the size of a building came roaring out of a fracture in the air like it had never left the Cretaceous at all.

Diana didn't have time to marvel at it. She just moved, throwing herself into the chaos the way she always did, all muscle and instinct and the particular calm she got when the stakes were highest. The thing was fast for its size, faster than anything that big had a right to be, and it swung its tail through a parking structure like the concrete was paper.

She got in close, dodged a jaw big enough to swallow her whole, drove her fist into its snout hard enough to stagger it. It roared, the sound shaking windows for blocks, and she planted her feet and got ready to do it again.

The fracture behind her widened without warning, light spilling out of it in a way that had nothing to do with the sun.

She didn't see what came through at first. She was too busy hauling herself out of the path of a tail strike, rolling across broken asphalt, back on her feet before the dust settled. But she felt it, the air changing, something familiar cutting through all that unfamiliar noise.

Then a blast of [something] tore past her shoulder and caught the dinosaur square in the side, staggering it sideways with enough force that it stumbled into the wreckage of a bus stop.

She turned toward where the shot had come from, and everything in her chest went still. Because you were standing there. Older. Taller... just how she imagined you could have been before your death.

You didn't look like you belonged to the past anymore. You looked like a whole future she'd never gotten to see. Diana's mouth opened and nothing came out for a second, which never happened, not to her.

The dinosaur roared again behind her, dragging itself back up, but for one long moment she couldn't make herself care about that at all.

"{{user}}," she started, and stopped, and just stared, like if she looked away you might vanish back through whatever crack in time had spat you out here.