Chapter Text
Diana, princess of Themyscira, did not have the most well-developed sense of irony. She, and most of the island’s other inhabitants, preferred to speak plainly or else not speak at all, and that often left little room for humor in incongruity.
But she could appreciate the irony of Themycira’s (re)introduction to Man’s World. Her mother - Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons - had weaned her on tales of Man’s feeble nature, the darkness of Man’s hearts, their rampant corruption that would rip the world asunder. And even though all of this wickedness was born of Ares’, the god of war’s, influence, Diana knew her mother believed that this evil had seeped deep into Man’s very bones. Unshakeable, the very thing that held them aloft even as they tore each other down.
Man was horrible and weak, as opposed to the Amazons, the stalwart (women) guardians of the world. War - that monstrous beast - was Man’s domain, whereas peace was theirs.
So in the end it was fitting, really, that the first of Mankind to walk the shores of Themyscira was not a man at all, but a woman.
It happened early one morning, as the flames of dawn were just licking at the horizon. Diana was running along the island’s cliff edge, warming her body up for Amazonian training. Her aunt, General Antiope, didn’t start the army’s training until later in the morning, but Diana took her dedication to getting stronger seriously, having been forbidden from training for so long.
Diana knew the island’s perimeter like she knew her own heart. Her feet naturally found their way around rocks and over holes and guided her up and down the gentle slopes. It freed her mind to focus on other things, which as of lately was something Diana was beginning to rue.
When Diana had first begun training as a child, so many years ago, she had done so in secret. Her aunt had met her at night, or in whatever stolen moments they could find, and put Diana through the paces. Stances, falls, defense, offense… Diana had eagerly copied it all, clumsily at first, and, under Antiope’s hawk-like eyes, sometimes clumsily even still. When her mother had found out, angry at their disregard for her order but ultimately relenting to their persistence of its necessity, that was when Diana had truly started her training. Antiope had put her through drills that were far more arduous than those she put the other Amazons through. It had left Diana battered, bruised, frequently gripping her last thread of resolve. For a time.
Now Diana was strong. Fast. Unwavering, though her mother called her ‘bullish,’ with love.
And yet.
Diana sighed raggedly, picking up her speed until her lungs burned, sweat started pricking on her brow. She turned her dark gaze to the ocean, but like the waves, her thoughts kept churning.
Diana was among the strongest on the island, and yet the General insisted that she was holding back, that she was stronger but for a lack of faith in herself and her abilities. It was starting to wear on her, but… There was something else, too. Something she couldn’t name. It felt like a wind inside her chest, faint but growing, that was tugging at her heart. It made her restless, try as she might to anchor herself.
Diana shook her head, forcing away these thoughts to the back of her mind, where they had seemed to take up a permanent residence.
And that was when she saw it. In the distance, bobbing in the waters just inside Themyscira’s protective border, a shape, and another and another. Squinting, her racing heart skipping a beat, Diana pushed herself to run faster still.
It was wreckage, pieces of...what was probably part of a large ship, when it was whole. Nothing stirred against the ocean’s current, and Diana had a foreboding feeling that she was looking at a desiccated example of Man’s greatest past-time, destruction.
Curious even so, Diana kept running, making a straight line for the closest path down the cliffside.
By the time Diana made her way down, the boat had drifted within an arrow’s flight from the shore. The rocky barrier outcroppings encircling Themyscira had pummeled the hull, its gleaming green and white paint marred by vicious scrapes. The water inside was ankle deep at least.
Most of it was just splinters, painted white and gleaming in the sun. There were a few larger pieces, warped, though whether it was from the blow that destroyed the ship or from the journey that brought its ruins here, Diana did not know.
A chill coursed down Diana’s back. She couldn’t be sure that the ship hadn’t merely fallen victim to troubled waters or whatever else. It was probably a product of her mother’s tales, that she so readily jumped to the conclusion of violence. That didn’t change, however, that whatever the ship had met had reduced it to shreds.
And the worst of all were the carcasses of everyday items, echoes of the lives that must’ve been aboard. A crate, stamped with some insignia that Diana did not recognize. A green-tinted glass bottle, its own contents long since gone. A bundle of clothes atop the largest fragment of ship, that almost resembled…
Diana’s breath hitched. Was that - Could it be - ?
She was moving before her thoughts could catch up with her, diving into the water and swimming with a might the General would be proud of. The waves pushed back against her, the salt stinging her eyes, but she cut through it like a knife, iron-willed.
(Diana had always been grateful for her training, for the strength it had forged in her, but now, when it counted for something more than competition or the thrill of winning a match or completing a drill, she was thankful .)
Reaching the wreckage, Diana braced her elbows at its edge, gasping for breath. Wiping her brow, she glanced over and her racing heart nearly stopped. It was a person, someone from Man’s World! Diana, testingly, pulled herself halfway up, but the ship’s fragment tilted alarmingly. Settling back down in the water, she scrambled nearer. Hesitating, Diana stared, wide-eyed, the waves pounding against her back.
It was a woman, not a man. Diana knew Man’s World had women, of course, but it was strange to see an outsider who was at once familiar and yet so strange.
The woman had sandy blonde, shoulder-length hair, splayed out limply behind her. Her skin was pale, freckled, tinged pink with exposure to the sun. There was nothing about her that seemed so inherently different from an Amazon, aside from her relative lack of muscle tone and her clothes. And her clothes were odd - like the leather skirts they wore, but made of a lighter (less protective, Diana thought) navy-hued fabric and longer, reaching midway down her calves. She was half shrugged out of a matching jacket, revealing a white undershirt beneath, nearly thin enough to be see-through.
Diana, snapping herself out of her observation, put a hand up to hover close to the woman’s face, checking for any stirrings of breath. The woman’s eyelids didn’t flutter, she didn’t move or react at all. Diana bit her lip, and her eyes traced the outsider’s scattered freckles, her strong jaw, waiting, waiting, and - yes, faint but even, it was there . This woman was alive.
Diana grabbed onto the wreckage with one hand and began to swim back to shore. She scanned the top of the cliffs for other Amazons. None. It didn’t surprise Diana. It was still early, and the others usually gave her privacy on her morning runs, knowing that of late she enjoyed the solitude while she readied herself for the day.
Diana’s feet hit sand, and she stood, dragging the wreckage through the water and then onto the beach. She took a few shaky-legged steps and then sat down on the sand, leaning forward and wringing the seawater out of her hair as she regained her breath.
Diana’s eyes found the outsider again. She checked the rise and fall of her chest, and then her eyes drifted over the other woman’s features. Diana frowned.
“Water,” she murmured to herself, reaching for the leather canteen she kept strapped to her shoulder as she trained. The Amazon army had seen its fair share of over exertion and sun sickness; the canteens were standard issue. She’s probably dehydrated.
Diana kneeled over the outsider, putting a hand behind the woman’s neck and tilting her head up, bringing the canteen to her chapped lips. She hesitated, then poured the water into the woman’s mouth.
Nothing. Diana waited. She watched the outsider’s face for any sign of reaction. Nothing. Heart beating faster, Diana moved her arm so it was behind the woman’s back, propping her into a sitting position. Here was a living, breathing person from Man’s World, washed ashore Themyscira - she’d be damned if this person would die now, in her arms.
Fight, Diana thought, her eyes searching. Hades doesn’t have you yet.
After an excruciatingly long moment, the hope in Diana’s chest a nearly crushing weight, Diana heard a soft groan.
And…
The woman’s eyes blinked open.