#lass0s

"You would say that, wouldn't you?"

Her voice is curdled with disgust. Diana is looking at her and Margarethe could grab her, shake her, pluck out those eyes, dark and sensitive and seeing her hunger. There's some well in Diana that only ever gives forth sweet water--her kindness, her generosity, her easy smile, her awful morality--and the longer Margarethe stares, the longer she holds her breath, the harder her jaw clenches and teeth grind, the more she knows she must, must drink from it. Drink from her.

She closes the distance between their bodies. Faster than human eye can perceive, in strides longer than a body should make, she is nose to nose with her; seizes her by the arms, drives her back, Diana's legs catching on the low table behind her, rattling an ashtray, a lamp, something spilling off with a thump, the table tilted back, then thunk-thunk as two of its legs regain the ground, because Margarethe is drawing Diana to her now with a crushing grip.

Margarethe could kiss her. The damp softness of Diana's pink lips is unmissable. The flare of her nostrils as she breathes. The thick dark lashes framing her agate-slab eyes.

"This is what you want," she says, "is it?" Her eyes rove, taking her in again and again, painting this sight into her mind, Diana, vulnerable. She licks her lips. "You want it. Say it, Diana. Say..." She leans in. The words that follow brush over Diana's lips in a ghost of breath: "Bite me, Margarethe. Say..." She bares her teeth. "Take me."

This was perhaps the strangest attempt at flirting he'd ever experienced. All the more thrilling it just so happened to be. Watching as a feminine form carried itself like an unstoppable force. Beat after beat, he'd kept up with her too. Maybe he should have focused more so on the enemy at hand ---- the crisis, but the man of steel was easily swayed by the sheer power she possessed.

A true warrior, unlike himself. An immortal being that could ( hopefully ) crush him, along with anything else that stood in her way. The fact that she stood for something greater than superficial and personal gain was...more than admirable.

He was awestruck.

This shouldn't have been a moment solely engineered to impress her, but more so to get the job done. She liked his stamina, his capability of not being left her dust. If he could stand toe to toe with her here and now, wouldn't that suggest potential worthiness?

@lass0s asked: it's normal not to forget your first love.

" I know, " Alex breathed out, the offering of surrender her companion invited from her a razor - thin one, a doleful one.

That Maggie had been her first love was a gross over - simplification. In every way that mattered, she'd been more than that; she'd been a revelation, a partner when she'd almost forgotten what it'd been like to be so innately in sync with someone outside the unbreakable bonds of siblinghood. Maggie had been her future, her short - lived forever — until the myriad complexities of what that future looked like had come crashing down around them in the span of what had turned out to be an agonizing last two weeks together.

Forgetting the still pale - stripe of skin banding the spot on her ring finger no longer home to her engagement ring and every inch of feeling that went with it was impossible.

" Where are you going? " He asked softly, voice slightly hoarse and still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. A small yawn and a stretch of his arms and he's quickly reaching for her wrist and her arm, trying to tug her back into bed with him.

Bruce reaches for the warmth of her beside him he fell asleep too. A spark of panic seizing the length of his spine before logic and sense joins coherency even through the haze of grogginess. Eyes peering through half open lids to trace the shape of her against the rising sun. Her silhouette forlorn even in the bright warm glow of the morning. 

He stirs slowly, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and the weariness in his bones that had dragged along with age. Arms stretching on his way up and out of the bed to reach for his robe and not much else. Barely a cover against his frame and yet somehow just enough as he walked towards her. 

Sensing the gloom with each step closer, he touched her back tentatively. Watching her shoulders stir even before his hand make contacts with the skin of her spine. The tenderness of the view seemingly shattered by what he imagined was some heart ache he couldn’t see ─ a bruising he couldn’t fix ─ pain he just couldn’t take away. 

Even if he wanted to. 

“ Diana? “ He asked softly then, circling around to her side. Trying to get a good look at her and confirm his suspicions. “ What’s wrong? “

Who else, after all, if not him?

The Caped Crusader turned Dark Knight. And from Knight to God. 

Oh, how men fall…

His gaze flickers between nothing and everything. As if the history of every bloodshed and war cry that had rung from the pores of his sword is calling out to him and he forgets and he remembers all at the same time. He looks down, feeling the trembling, the piercing, the heat of rage bleeding from the tendrils of the handle. His grip only tightening, tampening it down. 

And the world quiets once more for there is no more war. There is only him. And from now on there is only dissent. Or him. 

And there is no plan they could come up with that he couldn’t predict. No fight he couldn’t win. No battle he couldn’t end. And it's with that certainty, he strides away from the shadows and into the light, expecting nothing more than dissent, nothing more than a temporary distraction, nothing more that could catch him off guard. But he should have known, should have anticipated, should have seen what was making the cowl - no, the helmet feel heavier on his head. 

He’s no longer sure if it’s him or it that pulls the blade over his shoulder. To aim it at her. Certain even without looking that its lined with the same spot he had buried it in her chest when he had said farewell to her and his heart the first time around. 

The second time should be no different, right?