#fth 2018

It’s been almost one hundred years and Diana still doesn’t like to work undercover, but Bruce had gotten wind of Godwatch operating in Paris and he’d asked her to look into it. She agreed because they’d been trying without success to bring the organization down for months. Anytime they’d make inroads a new branch would pop up somewhere else.

She tucks her hands deep into her jacket pockets and hunches her shoulders, trying to appear inconspicuous in the narrow alley, just another Parisian trying to get home before night falls. The warehouse she’s looking for looms up out of the darkness and Diana can hear the faint buzz of electricity as she draws closer.

Bruce had told her to hang back and observe from a distance, hadn’t wanted to scare them off too soon, but there’s nothing to see from outside. She scans the building, weighing her options. The windows are close to the roof with no ledges. She thinks she can get there, but she’ll leave behind evidence of her entry. Then she notices the door just around the corner, likely locked, but more viable than the windows.

Diana glances around and, seeing no one else in the alley, approaches the door. Picking the lock is easy, a skill taught to her long ago by a group of liars, murderers, and smugglers. She slips through the door and closes it quietly behind her. The space is dark lit only by the bright red of a flickering Sortie across the bay. Offices line the walls that surround the open floor and a flight of stairs disappears into the darkness.

She approaches a stack of boxes, looking for anything that she can tell Bruce. Of course she shouldn’t be surprised that an organization of supervillains isn’t in the habit of labeling their supplies so that anyone can read them. She’s about to open a crate when she hears a slight rustling.

The defensive stance is second nature. She scans the space, looking for the source of the noise. She’s about to continue her search when she hears it again. She curses the open floor layout and berates herself for stepping so casually into the open, her only cover the stack of crates she had been investigating. It’s faint, a boot scuffing the concrete floor and then it’s gone. Someone else who shouldn’t be there.

When Diana eases around a stack of crates, can’t quite stop the quick intake of breath, sharp and too loud in the quiet warehouse. Her eyes must have deceived her, the light too low for her to make anything out properly; her brain still wants to see blond hair above too-blue eyes wherever she looks. She hears the soft pad of feet used to sneaking around and then he’s there.

“Steve.” His name slips through her lips in her shock and he shushes her urgently.

Diana grabs his arm and drags him out of the warehouse, emerging in the same alley she had entered from. She can’t continue her search, not now when her mind is whirling with questions.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, her voice breaking the cool night air. “How? How are you here?”

Because he is. It’s really him. Her eyes don’t deceive her. Steve brushes the hair out of his face absently. “I don’t know,” he replies, scanning the street.

They can’t stay here. Her questions have to wait until they’re in a more secure location. “Come on.” She steers him down the alley holding onto him until they emerge onto a wide avenue. She pulls down her hood and takes in her surroundings.

On this street, flooded with light, she can see him. He seems almost skittish, not like the spy she had met in Themyscira. But he was there in that warehouse, apparently for the same reasons she was. So she takes his hand — this time he doesn’t object — and walks to the nearest bus stop.

She has so many questions she wants to ask, but the set of Steve’s shoulders tells her she won’t get any answers. She keeps her silence all the way to her flat in the seventh arrondissement.

Diana halts outside her apartment and turns to Steve, feeling oddly flustered, realizing now that Steve might have his own place, and yet here he is still with her. “I thought it would be easier to bring you to my flat.”

Steve gives the building an appraising look and then returns his gaze to her, nodding. “We can talk here.”

“Ok.I have an email to write and then we can talk.”

She retreats into her office, and composes a brief message to Bruce, letting him know she didn’t have any new leads on Godwatch, but there had been an unexpected development.

“Alright,” she says as she enters the room. “Let’s talk.”

Steve looks up from the photograph in his hands. She wonders if he has been looking at it this whole time. “Sure,” he replies, setting the picture back on the coffee table.

It’s the picture Bruce had sent her, along with his demand for answers. She gives it the briefest of glances before leading Steve to her kitchen. It doesn’t hold quite the same power over her as the man standing in her apartment looking so out of place.

“That was a long time ago,” Diana comments, watching Steve closely.

He looks up at her and there’s that determined look in his eyes, the one she remembers like it was only yesterday. The last time she had seen it, he was running headlong to his death.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” he says and he glances back down at the photograph as if he could bring the memory to life with just his stare.

“How are you here?” Diana blurts out, repeating herself, unable to contain her curiosity anymore.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s been over one hundred years, Steve. I watched the plane explode.” She can feel the horror of that moment so clearly.

“I know,” Steve replies.

He sits down and she joins him. “What were you doing in the warehouse?”

“The same thing you were,” he says. “Spying.”

“By yourself?”

“No,” and she knows that look. It says that whatever he’s doing is classified, that he can’t tell her.

Her lasso is in the office, where she left it when she wrote to Bruce, tempting her, but she won’t use it. Not this time.

Before she can ask, Steve continues. “I remember firing the gun, and the next thing I know I’m in a lab, surrounded by scientists. The woman told me that she was the director of a group called A.R.G.U.S., and that they needed my help.”

The name sounds familiar. Diana thinks Bruce may have been contacted by them, but she doesn’t know who they are.

“You trusted them?” Diana asks.

“Not at first,” Steve tells her. “But I wanted to look into it, know what I was being recruited for, and I found you.”

And she knows what he’s telling her, that if she was there then he was on the right side.

“What about you?” Steve asks. “Are you working alone?”

“No.” She hesitates for a moment and then adds, “I’ve been working with a group of individuals,” she paused, trying to decide how to explain them.

“Like you?” Steve suggests.

“Yes,” she nods. “People with the ability and the desire to help others.”

“With superpowers?” he asks, and it doesn’t seem to surprise him.

“Mostly, yes,” Diana agrees.

She thinks back to how different he had seemed on the street, waiting for the bus, and it clicks. He has not been in this world, her century for long and everything has changed so much since she accompanied him to Man’s World. This is her world now. Not his.

Before she can say anything Steve says, “I guess I’ve been out of the world a long time.”

“I never expected to meet anyone else with abilities like my own either,” Diana assures him.  

A moment later, Diana’s phone rings, breaking the silence that has grown up between them. She looks at the caller ID and is not surprised to see Bruce’s name.

“Hello, Bruce,” she says, watching Steve. He frowns, but doesn’t say anything.

Bruce cuts directly to the chase, barely sparing a second for a greeting. “I thought you said Steve Trevor died.”

“He did,” Diana concedes, “but he’s here now.”

“How?” Diana rolls her eyes, even though Bruce can’t see her but she thinks she sees the hint of a smile from Steve.

“I asked him. He doesn’t know,” Diana replies in the voice she reserves for obstinate diplomats.

“I’ll talk to Barry, see what he knows. Do you know why he was there?”

Diana wonders why Barry would know anything about Steve’s appearance in the warehouse she had been investigating but she lets it slide, focusing on the question.

“He says he was working for an organization who wanted his help,” Diana replies, her gaze never wavering from Steve.

He hasn’t looked at her since she answered the phone, but at Diana’s vague mention of A.R.G.U.S. he looks up and there gazes lock. She’s not sure what she sees there. She refrains from telling Bruce the name of the organization and quickly ends the conversation.

“What can you tell me about A.R.G.U.S?” she asks Steve, sitting down beside him.

“I don’t know much about them,” he replies. “And of what I do know, I don’t know what’s classified. But they gave me a profile of someone, some organization they’re tracking and asked for my help.”

“Who?”

“Godwatch.” It’s the same group she’s been following with Bruce and she thinks he must know about A.R.G.U.S.

“That explains why you were in the same warehouse as me,” Diana remarks and then clarifies, “I’ve been finding out what I could ever since they came up on Bruce’s radar.”

“Who?” Steve asks.

“A friend of mine. He thinks he can save the world,” Diana explains.

“So did you,” Steve reminds her.

“I still do, but I sometimes think we have different ideas about how to do that.”

She moves closer to him almost automatically, drawn to him like a magnet.

“What are they looking for?” Steve asks.

She’s been asking herself the same thing ever since Bruce asked her to look into them. It’s only now that Steve has asked her that she looks at what she’s been avoiding for a while now.

“Me,” she replies quietly. “What?” She hears the protective tone in Steve’s voice. She had appreciated his desire to protect except when it was directed at her.

“I can take care of myself.” Diana reminds him.

“I know that,” Steve says. “But how do you know?”

“Because they want to find the Amazons,” Diana replied. “And they will need me to do that.”

“But they haven’t found you.” Steve is looking at her like he’s trying to solve a puzzle.

“I have grown more subtle in my time here. I kept the name Diana Prince and until very recently I kept a low profile. I did not engage in grand heroics.” Diana feels like she’s defending herself. The woman Steve remembers had gone rushing after Ares. She grew more discreet after grieving her losses.

“What does Diana Prince do these days?” Steve is growing more comfortable, more himself.

“I work for the Louvre, cataloguing the artifacts in their collections,” Diana replies. “I remember when some of them were made.”

And just like that, their conversation becomes easier. They move away from A.R.G.U.S and Godwatch, and Bruce Wayne. She has learned since she first asked him what people do when there is not a war. He listens and he laughs and they talk long in to the night.

In the morning she calls into work to tell them she won’t be going in. She hangs up and presses herself closer to Steve, and drifts back to sleep.

The next time Diana wakes up, Steve is gone. She straightens up her shirt and wanders out of the bedroom. Steve is still there, sitting on her sofa, staring at something on her laptop. A breath she hadn’t realize she’d been holding escapes, and she walks up behind him. It’s her notes on Godwatch. And in another window, is the morning news.

He looks up at her when lays her hand on her shoulder. Before he can say anything she asks, “How about breakfast?”

His face clears and he gives her a small smile. “I’ll help.”

Diana pulls eggs out of the refrigerator and Steve slices bread. The smell of tea fills the room, when she pours hot water into the teapot. It’s all so much more domestic than she had imagined in Veld. She’s shared breakfasts with others before, but it never felt like this. The way they move around each other, making breakfast, setting out the table.

“What did you think?” She asks Steve, watching him over the rim of her tea cup.

“How long did you know they were looking for you?” he asks, rather than answer her question.

“I told myself they were looking for anything to create a gateway to the Amazons. I told myself I was in no danger from them. Last night, when I told you they were looking for me, was when I allowed myself to believe it.”

“You didn’t want to tell Bruce,” Steve guesses.

“I didn’t want to tell Bruce,” Diana confirms.

Steve nods. He looks like he’s about to say something else when Diana’s phone rings. She walks back to the bedroom to get it.

It’s Bruce. “Hello?”

“I just touched down in Paris. When can we meet?”

Diana rolls her eyes and walks back into the kitchen. She gives him a time and a place in Steve’s hearing. When she makes eye contact with him he gives her a nod in confirmation.

Bruce agrees to the arrangement and she hangs up the phone.

“I didn’t know he was coming to Paris,” Steve remarks.

“Neither did I.”

They finish their breakfast in relative silence and Diana goes back into her room to shower and change so they can meet Bruce. When they leave, Diana reaches for her hand before drawing it back. She still doesn’t know what they are, even after falling asleep in his arms and the ease with which they had shared their morning.

They take the Métro east and get off at Saint-Sulpice. Her arm brushes his as they walk to the café where she had told Bruce to meet her. He’s standing outside, just to the right of the street seating. Even in casual clothes, Bruce stands out.

“Hello, Bruce,” Diana greets him once they’re closer.

Bruce pulls his hands from his pockets to shake Diana’s hand. “Diana.”

“This is Steve Trevor,” Diana gestures to Steve, who steps forward to shake Bruce’s hand.

“Just like the picture,” Bruce remarked. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replies honestly. “One moment everything was going up in flames and the next I was waking up in some kind of hospital room.”

“And it was owned by A.R.G.U.S?” Bruce confirms.

Diana guides them inside and asks for a table in flawless French. Steve doesn’t answer until they’re sitting.

“I’ve told Diana everything I know,” Steve remarks. “A.R.G.U.S doesn’t seem to be in the business of broadcasting its operations, and they won’t tell me more until they’ve decided they can trust me. Right now I’m an asset. Nothing more.”

“And they’re looking for Godwatch?” Bruce asks.

Diana lets the conversation go on without her. She knows all this. They spoke at length the night before about the organization using Steve to find Godwatch. Bruce wants answers. It’s up to Steve to decide what he’s willing to share.

“Argus was a watcher wasn’t he?” Bruce asks, and Diana takes a moment to realize the question is directed at her.

“Yes,” Diana confirms. “Eyes covered his body so he could see everything. I assume this organization models itself after Argus. Going after Godwatch would seem to put them on the same side as us.”

Bruce nods. “How do you feel about working with them?”

“I will work with Steve,” Diana answers. “I have no desire to work with some shadowy spy group. If he divulges to them what we find that is up to him.”

Bruce nods. “I still want to know how you’re here in the twenty-first century.”

“Me, too,” Steve remarks, finishing his coffee.

“Maybe A.R.G.U.S. will decide to share that piece of information with you,” Diana remarks drily. The idea that an organization would keep relevant personal information out of the hands of one of their agents  makes her bristle. Then again she’s never been good with secrets.

A few days later Bruce is back in Gotham and Steve and Diana are back at the warehouse. It doesn’t appear to hold any more secrets than it had the night Diana found Steve. It looks like an empty building with a few abandoned crates. She opens one and finds office supplies.

“If there ever was anything here, it’s long gone,” Steve remarks, shining a flashlight into one of the other crates.

He’s holding a piece of paper and Diana walks over to look at it. It’s just a receipt from someone’s breakfast run.

“At least we know someone used to work here,” she remarks, restoring the space between them.

“Let’s check out the offices upstairs. There might be something useful.”

Diana nods and follows Steve up the stairs. There’s a desk in the first office, but it’s been completely emptied. It’s the same in each subsequent room, sometimes a filing cabinet instead of a desk. In the last office they get lucky.

The former occupant had apparently left in a hurry and Steve and Diana have clues to what had happened in this warehouse. Diana is looking at plans to something. She isn’t sure what yet, but she can feel a sense of unease.

“They must have left in a hurry,” Steve remarks. He’s looking at a sheaf of papers from the desk. “This isn’t the kind of thing you want to leave behind.”

Diana flips the plans so he can see. “Careless to leave behind something like this.”

“Yes,” a woman’s voice says from behind them. Diana whips around, sword in hand. “You can rest assured he won’t be so careless again.”

“Who are you?” Diana asks.

“Oh you can be sure I won’t be so careless, Princess,” the woman laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound. “We didn’t follow you here to introduce ourselves. We came to make sure our secrets don’t get out too soon.”

Diana can hear footsteps down below, and she knows the woman has come with backup. Steve makes a move to the door again but the woman laughs that humorless laugh again. It sends chills up Diana’s spine.

“You won’t find escape that way, Mr. Trevor. My people are more than equipped to take care of the two of you.”

For the first time Diana wishes she had taken up Bruce’s offer to provide her with tech. She could use some back up right about now. They’re cornered with a room with no windows and the only exits are behind enemies. But they’re on the top floor and Diana thinks she can work with that. They can’t get anything more from this warehouse, but she can get them out of there.

She glances upward and then back at the woman. “As pleasant as this has been, I’m afraid it’s time for us to leave.”

Before the woman can protest that there’s no escape, as Diana is sure she’s about to do, she lowers herself into a squat and then launches herself up at the ceiling and through the roof, plaster and wood spraying away from her.

She goes back for Steve, who is covered in plaster dust, and quickly evaluates her options. She doesn’t want to be seen flying over the Paris rooftops, but they need to make a quick getaway. Godwatch followed them to the warehouse. She can’t have them know where she lives either.

“Diana,” Steve starts, but before he can say anything else she’s leaping to the neighboring rooftop, a firm grip on Steve.

She can hear the shouts from next door as they recoup from the shock of Steve and Diana’s escape and above it all, the woman’s orders to go after them. She keeps her grip on Steve and leaps to the next rooftop.

They’re several blocks away before Diana decides it’s safe to descend to the streets. Steve looks shaken.

“That was,” he pauses searching for the right word.

“I’m sorry,” Diana apologizes. She knows it can be unsettling way to get around. “We needed to get out fast.”

He nods. “I wouldn’t want to be in an impossible situation with anyone else,” he says finally.

They start walking and Diana says, “I’m glad you’re coming around,” a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Steve replies, tucking the files he had managed to grab from the warehouse into his jacket.

“‘It’s not safe, Diana. I should do it myself, Diana,’” she quips, remembering the frustration she had felt when Steve still didn’t comprehend the extent of her abilities.

He stops and pulls her close and she still isn’t over the feel of him warm and alive and right here. He wraps his arm around her and murmurs, “I eventually figured it out.”

Diana nods, remembering those last words before getting on that plane.

“I can save today. You can save the world.” Before she can stop him, before she can say anything at all, he’s gone, getting on a plane. The plane explodes and she feels like her whole world shatters.

She wants to kiss him, he’s so close to her, but they haven’t gotten far enough away from the warehouse, so she settles for squeezing his hand and pulling him along, away from Montmartre.

Back in her apartment, she drops the files they had gotten out of the warehouse on her desk and then turns to Steve, kissing him they way she had wanted to earlier. He kisses her back fiercely, gripping her jacket at the hem and holding her close. She backs up until she’s half sitting on her desk and tangles her fingers in his hair.

Her knees tremble as Steve presses burning kisses to her throat. HIs hand slides down her hip, past her thigh, and hooks her knee and he pushes her back so that she’s seated more fully on the desk.

“Not,” she gasps as Steve nips at her collarbone, newly revealed as her jacket slides off her shoulders. “Not here,” she tries again, and he looks up at her and she feels herself getting lost in those too-blue eyes.

Before she can elaborate further, Steve takes her meaning and backs up. She immediately misses the heat of him, but he takes her hand, and together they walk to the bedroom.

The next morning, Diana stretches luxuriously, feeling the deep ache from the night before. Steve shifts besides her and she turns her head to look at him, a warm smile spreading over her face. His eyes blink open and he meets her gaze steadily.

She props her head up in her hand and begins tracing patterns on his bare chest idly. “I want to find out what they were designing in that warehouse,” Diana says.

“So do I.”

She looks at him searchingly. “You’ll have to report it to A.R.G.U.S.,” she finally comments.

“Is that a bad thing?” Steve asks. She remembers arguing with him about Ares and stopping the war. This doesn’t feel like that. It feels more like compromise.

“I don’t know,” she answers slowly. “I would like to come with you, meet them for myself.”

“What if they’ve been looking for you like Godwatch has?” Steve asks.

“Then I want to know. Besides,” she adds, “I can always make a bold escape like I did yesterday."

Her smile grows more playful and Steve almost smiles in response. Diana remembers again that, for Steve, the war is not so far away. “I believe you could. But from what I’ve seen of A.R.G.U.S. headquarters, the walls are a little sturdier than an abandoned warehouse.”

“I’d figure out a way.”

He captures her hand and pulls her to him, kissing her with a bright, intense heat that speaks to everything that has gone unsaid between them. When he lets her go she’s breathless and it takes her a moment to get up and begin dressing.

He follows suit and while she goes back to her office to collect the papers they had left scattered on her desk, Steve starts breakfast.

Diana lays out what they found in the warehouse on the kitchen table and goes to Steve. She wraps her arms around him from behind and presses her face into his shoulder.

“It smells delicious,” she says into the crease of his neck.  

It turns out she’s missed this. No one has quite fit into her life over the past hundred years the way Steve does now.

“Thanks,” he replies and she feels him shift as he pushes the eggs around in the pan to keep them from burning.

“Coffee?” she asks, moving away from him and opening up a cabinet.

He nods and she gets out the French press and the coffee grinds. When she’s done, she pours them each a cup and sits down in front of the plate he’s just laid on the table.

“So what do we have?” Steve asks, nodding at the files.

Diana is flipping through the plans she grabbed the night before and she doesn’t answer Steve right away. She’s starting to realize what she’s looking at and it can’t be good. If she sent a copy to Bruce, she’s certain he’d confirm her suspicions.

“It looks like a doorway.” She shows him one page. “They’re dealing with interdimensional theory.”

She watches him carefully, gauging how he’s processing this before she continues on. “I thought they were searching for me, but it could be more than that.”

“They want to access other worlds?” Steve clarifies. He looks up at her and she can see him putting together all the pieces, just as he had when he stumbled on Themyscira all those years ago.

“It’s not just my world they could invade. There are others as well,” Diana presses on.

“A.R.G.U.S. may have the resources to stop them,” Steve suggests. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“How?” Diana asks, thinking through the possibilities. “Destroying a machine they have not yet built? Stealing plans that could be replicated?”

“By putting Godwatch out of business completely. A.R.G.U.S. may have the authority to put a stop this,” Steve says.

“They don’t have any evidence. This looks like scientific research, the pursuit of knowledge,” Diana says pushing more of the files towards him.

“I still have to take this to A.R.G.U.S.,” Steve reminds her.

“I know. And I will go with you. I want to meet the people at this A.R.G.U.S.”

Once they’ve finished breakfast, they gather up everything they have on Godwatch and prepare to make their report. Diana lets Steve take the lead and he brings her to an office building close to Saint-Sulpice.

“Mr. Trevor,” the receptionist in the bright lobby exclaims cheerily, “And Ms. Prince,” she adds with surprise. “Just a moment. Ms. Waller will be right with you.”

“Thank you,” Steve says.

Diana hides her surprise at the receptionist’s recognition and waits with Steve. They don’t have to wait long. The elevator doors open and a woman steps out in a perfectly tailored suit and low heels, Diana notices with appreciation. She strides purposefully towards them.

“Mr. Trevor. Ms. Prince.” The woman shakes both their hands. “Please, come with me.”

They file into the elevator and Ms. Waller scans her an ID card before selecting a floor. With a lurch, the elevator descends into the lower levels. Diana hides a small smile as she contemplates the tendency agencies such as A.R.G.U.S. and Wayne Enterprises like to keep their activities underground.

“It’s so much easier to secure our operation when it’s below ground,” Ms. Waller says, noticing Diana’s smile and surmising its source.

“And I imagine the walls are heavily armored to protect against more explosive affronts,” Diana guessed.

“Of course. Something tells me your familiar with these kinds of strategies,” Ms. Waller remarks.

“Yes,” Diana answers without elaborating. She will not be giving away Bruce’s secret.

The elevator dings and the doors open onto a very modern looking hallway. Gleaming steel and glass indicate office spaces. They follow Ms. Waller as she strides towards the end of the hall and lets them into her office.

“What did you find?” she asks, barely suppressing her excitement, as if she’s been working towards a breakthrough for longer than she cares to think about.

Steve lays out the files and explains how they had gotten them, detailing their near capture at the hands of Godwatch. Diana watches as Ms. Waller’s attention zeroes in on the plans for interdimensional travel.

“What is this?” she asks.

“Look here,” Diana interjects, pointing to the page that had set her mind in motion. “This multidimensional theory. And this here is essentially a door.”

“No,” she murmurs.

“They’ve been searching for me and people like me for at least a year now,” Diana confirms. “This will help them.”

“They can’t finish this project,” Ms. Waller mutters examining the plans.

“They may already have,” Steve says, voicing what Diana has been suspecting.

“You remember Lex Luthor, Ms. Prince,” Ms. Waller is looking at her. “In the hands of someone like him this could do unspeakable damage. There are monsters out there that would leap at the chance to wreak havoc in our world.”

Diana nods. Lex Luthor had used the remains of the battle brought to earth by Krypton in pursuit of his ambition. With something like this he could call forth someone like Ares. In the hands of Godwatch, clearly a large organization, they could open multiple doors.

“How do we stop them?”

“I’m in charge of Task Force X. They’re something of a strike team. They could infiltrate Godwatch, find and stop any progress that’s been made on this front,” Ms. Waller replies. “I just need to know where to find them. The location you found had been abandoned, you said?”

“Yes,” Steve cuts in. “In our effort to escape we weren’t able to track them back to their base of operations.”

“I can put scanners on it. Something like this has to be using up enough power to pop up on our radar,” Ms. Waller muses.

She picks up her office phone and relays her orders to someone somewhere else in the building.

“Now,” she looks back at Steve and Diana, “What about the two of you?"

Diana frowns. However much this meeting has alleviated her doubts, she has no desire to work for a shadowy entity. “I’ll help you with this, Ms. Waller, but I have my own work to do.”

Ms. Waller nods as if she had expected Diana’s response and Diana thinks maybe she hadn’t given the other woman enough credit. She turns to Steve, “And you?”

Diana has a good idea what Steve’s answer will be before he says it, so when he agrees to work further with A.R.G.U.S. she’s not surprised. He wants answers, she knows, but he also wants something to work for. He’s much more a spy than she ever was.

After a few more minutes where they discuss the terms of Steve’s employment with A.R.G.U.S., Ms. Waller brings them back to the matter at hand. “Let’s see what my team has turned up, shall we?”

“Ms. Waller,” Diana starts as they leave her office.

“Please, call me Amanda.”

“Amanda, how long have you been doing this?”

“Long enough to know that some days it feels like we’ll never stop fighting the bad guys.” Amanda gives her a penetrating look as they wait for another elevator. “Not as long as you I think.”

“You’re wrong,” Diana corrects her. “I took a long break while I decided what to do after the war.”

She’s not surprised that Amanda recognizes her. She knows rumors have floated around about her role in the Great War. An organization like A.R.G.U.S. would have looked into those rumors, particularly if they had gone to such efforts to bring Steve into the modern world.

“You’ve still seen enough of what our world is like to be familiar with the feeling,” Amanda insists.

“Yes,” Diana concedes.

They enter another room, this one with a multiple tables, each with a computer, and a small group of men and women waiting for Amanda to address them.

“Well, what did you find out?” Amanda asks.

A North African looking woman answers in a slight French accent, “We think we found a power signature large enough to be Godwatch north of Paris. Near Saint-Denis,” she clarifies.

“Show me,” Amanda prompts and the woman turns to her computer and pulls up a screen. They gather around to look.

She points out the bright spot and then says, “If I pull up the analysis, you can see the radiation spectrum.” She clicks on an icon and another window pops up, this one an analysis of the energy signature.

“That’s it,” Diana remarks, looking closely at the information before her.

“How do you know?” the woman asks.

“I’ve studied the plans their working on,” Diana answers absently. “This reflects what they called for.”

“Agent Bisset,” Amanda interrupts. “Your team will work with Ms. Prince and Mr. Trevor to neutralize this site.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the woman answers automatically, appraising Steve and Diana with heightened interest.

Amanda leaves them with the team, who quickly introduce themselves. They  move quickly into planning, which takes the rest of the afternoon. It’s dark out when Steve and Diana leave, but she’s confident they can put an end to this particular activity.

She calls Bruce back at her flat. After all, she was helping him when she got embroiled in this affair.

“We should have the matter wrapped up in a few days,” Diana tells him after she’s briefed him on what she’s learned.

“And Steve?” Bruce asks.

“He’ll continue to work for A.R.G.U.S.,” Diana replies evenly.

Bruce makes a noncommittal noise on the other end of the line but he doesn’t argue. They both know that being aligned with an agent for an organization like A.R.G.U.S. will help them. She hangs up so she can go over the plan with Steve before their team infiltrates Godwatch’s facility.

The facility north of Saint-Denis is just  as rundown as the one near Montmartre, but it has a more closed-up appearance. It doesn’t appear abandoned like the other warehouse. Instead it looks as if its occupants are doing everything they can to make it look that way.

She and Steve are arranged around a table in nearby cafe with the rest of the team as they regard the building before them. It’s not exactly a fortress. She remembers the energy signatures they had looked at at headquarters. The project will be underground.

Agent Bisset —“ call me Nadine” — was a stealth operative. She should be able to get in and out of the building undetected. Grant, an Irish operative, had developed the devices that would short out the entire system. One for the power source and another for the computer networks. Steve, Diana and the other two agents were the extraction team. If anything happened to compromise Nadine, they would go in and get her out, and the destruction of the facility would be a lot less subtle.

Diana looks to Nadine at her left. “Ready?”

The other woman give a curt nod. She’s dressed in unassuming clothing, the kind of thing that nobody would like twice at. She would walk right in the front door and right back out again in plain sight. It was a bold plan but the entire team had assured Diana she could do it.

Nadine stands up and steps out onto the sidewalk, no longer hiding, but she’s immediately forgettable. She blends in the few passersby, no more than a local resident going about her daily business. Diana’s sharp gaze follows Nadine’s progress to the warehouse, but no one else pays her any attention.

Behind her, Grant is speaking quietly into his comms device. She knows he’s following Nadine’s progress on his scanner. He begins giving her instructions as the scanner’s picture gets clearer with Nadine’s proximity.

“Remember,” he says, “any computer will do. They’re all networked.”

Diana watches him frown and she can almost hear Nadine’s sharp response. They went over the plan so many times that Nadine doesn’t need any reminders but still Grant worries.

They need to disable the computers first. The program Grant wrote will work slowly, giving Nadine time to find a power source. Everything should go out at the same time, giving Nadine the cover she’ll need to leave unnoticed.

“Perfect. Now there should be a box nearby. Follow the hall to the end then turn right.” Grant focuses intently on the screen in his hands, while the rest of the team watch for any sign that Nadine has been caught.

Diana can feel tension radiating from Steve as he watches the building before them. Then she hears, “Nadine?” from Grant and her gaze is on him an instant. His face is lined with worry and she wonders what he could possibly have heard on the other end.

“Grant,” Steve prompts, but the other man doesn’t answer. Around them the team subtly begin changing positions, preparing to charge across the street after Nadine.

Then Grant lets out a breath and as quickly as the team had sprang to attention, they settle back into deceptively easy postures. “Ok, get out of there.”

Suddenly the building doesn’t look closed up anymore. She watches a people exit in groups of twos and threes, and there’s even more movement around the edges of the blacked out windows.

“There she is”, the woman next to her, Flores, says.  Diana would have almost missed Nadine’s exit if she hadn’t been looking for her.

“Let her go,” Young reminds them. “We don’t want to be the reason she gets caught.

The operatives around her relax slightly as they mark Nadine’s progress down the street.

Grant looks up from his screen. “She’s done it. The networks are completely wrecked. When they bring the power back up, everything will be gone.”

“What about any hard copies?” Steve asks.

“Did you see the briefcase she came out with?” Flores replies. “That’s what you were worried about wasn’t it, Grant?”

He nods absently. “I thought it was an unnecessary risk.”

“It was a good idea,” Diana remarks, standing up. “Let’s go.”

Grant slips his tablet into his shoulder bag and the group gets up to go. Steve pays and they exit the bar, each going in separate directions. They’ll meet back up at the building near Saint-Sulpice later.

“It’s done,” she says that night on the phone with Bruce. “A.R.G.U.S. is monitoring Godwatch. I still haven’t been discovered, and the plans for a multidimensional portal are gone.”

“Destroyed?” Bruce asks.

She nods even though he can’t see her. “The network is completely corrupted and the team got the hard copies and destroyed them.”

“Good.” She can hear the satisfaction in Bruce’s voice.

“I think they’re an ally, Bruce,” Diana adds after a moment of silence.

“Are you going to continue to work with them?”

“I’m going to continue to work with Steve.”