Wonder and Legacy - Wonder Woman

The Work of the Gods

Barbara was wearing an oversized sweater - which seemed to be the fashion these days, oversized clothing, not form-fitting armour like Aikaterine was used to. On the topic of armour, part of her wondered what type of suit of armour would suit Barbara...

A mortal wearing a suit of armour? Ugh, what was going on with her all of the sudden?  

Still, she was trying not to look at how the sleeve of Barbara's oversized sweater had slipped off her shoulder, revealing her bare shoulder.

She suddenly became aware that Barbara was talking to her. She had been daydreaming. 

"So yeah, I've been wearing glasses for most of my life and now suddenly I don't need them. It's so weird - but I'll take it!" Barbara chuckled.  "Plus, I'll take not having to wear those silly things."

"I like your glasses. I think they're cute." 

"Thanks, but they were really more troublesome than anything." 

The phone in Barbara's office starting ringing then, startling the two women who had been smiling at each other. 

"Hello, Dr. Minerva, the Smithsonian. Oh, hi Diana."

"Barbara.  Is Aikaterine there? Could you put her on the phone for a moment?" Diana requested.

"Yeah, sure." Barbara passed the phone to the redhead.

"Diana?"

"Aikaterine, what we're dealing with is bigger than we originally thought - we found the inside of the stone's bottom ring in Max Lord's office.  It has writing in it that I couldn't see before - the Language of the Gods."

"Oh... Lord Maxwell must have known."

"Yes, he must have. But that means it's much too powerful for him."

"Which God?"

"I don't know yet, that's why we need to find out where the stone came from."

"Very well. Good to know."

"May I speak with Barbara again please?"

Aikaterne handed the phone back to Barb, who spoke with Diana for a moment, and then hung up. 

"Diana says she needs to know where the stone is from," Barbara explained. "Want to help me look?"

"Yes, I will help." She would have helped the other woman anyways, but especially now that she knew there were Gods involved. But which God was the question.  And if a mortal like Lord Maxwell didn't fully understand what he was dealing with, well... The consequences could be grave.   "Where do we start?"

"Good question - that can be the hardest part with these things, knowing where to start."

That could be said for many things, Aikat realized.

The two women sat across from each other on either side of the desk and got right down to work on their research, Barbara bustling around the office retrieving various books, files, and papers which might prove helpful. 

"Whew, I need a break," Barbara announced, rubbing her eyes after pouring over countless books and pages for hours. She looked up at the clock on the office wall - nope, it didn't just feel like it had been  hours, it literally had been hours. Hours of searching with little success. 

"Good idea," Aikaterine agreed, blinking her own eyes a few times.  

The two women sat across from each other on either side of the desk, just smiling at each other silently for a moment.       

"I like your outfit," Aikaterine said, breaking the comfortable silence between them. 

Barbara chuckled.  "You told me that already this morning."

"I did? Oh I-" She was really losing it.

"It's fine. Thank you, I'm glad you like it." 

Aikaterine smiled back.  Her fellow Amazonian warriors would be very unimpressed by her lack of focus.

 "Barbara!" she suddenly cried.  "Look!" An imagine in one book laying open on the desk caught her eye.  "In this figure's hand - doesn't that look a lot like-"

"The stone!" Barbara cried, also leaning in to get a better look at the image.  "You're right! Oh, just when I thought we were at a dead end-"

Bonk!

"Oh!"

Both pouring over the image, they both leaned in too far, ending up bonking heads slightly. They looked up and drew back, apologizing to each other which quickly faded into giggling.  

The image led them down a path of discovery, and so when Diana called them again to check in, they were glad to say they had made some progress. 

"Hello, Dr. Minerva, the Smithsonian. Oh, hi-" Barbara held the phone away for a moment to speak to Aikaterine. "It's Diana calling from Cairo."

"Cairo?" What was she doing all the way in Egypt? 

"We haven't figured out exactly what the stone is but we've found historical images of it."

"From where?"

"That's the weird thing - from everywhere. It first appeared in the Indus Valley almost four-thousand years ago. It popped up again in Carthage in 146 BC. Kush, 4 AD. Romulus, the last Emperor of Rome, he had it on him when he was assassinated in 476. The last record is in some previously unknown dead city near Dzibilchaltun."

"The Mayans?"

"Yeah. Anyway, it just led us to a bunch of dead ends, and our last lead is not that promising."

"What's that?"

 "A flier I found, grabbed it at the embassy.  Some guy advertising to be a Mayan shaman. But he literally teaches a course in a squat next to Galaxy Records."

"And he knows about the stone?"

"So he says. We're going to go over there in the morning."

"Okay, we'll meet you there. And thank you."

"No problem.  See you then." Barbara hung up.  "Diana says she'll meet us there tomorrow." 

"Good.  So all of these civilizations collapsed - when they had the stone in their possession," Aikaterine mused.

"Can't be a coincidence," agreed Barbara. Then she pushed herself to her feet.  "Well, I think that's enough work for one day and I think we deserve a reward for our hard work - want to go somewhere for dinner? That pizza was to die for!" 

Aikaterine found herself focused on Barbara again, smiling.  Barbara had such a bubbly personality, the likes of which Aikaterine had only ever seen in one other person she realized: Diana. The Diana she had known back home in Themyscira, the Diana before the war and the heartbreak of losing Steve Trevor.  The Diana she had long been in love with.  Perhaps that's why she liked Barbara so much...

This thought struck her like an arrow or a bolt of lightning, snapping her back to reality. 

Oh no... What was she thinking? What was she doing? No, she could not go down that path. Not again. And certainly not when she knew, deep down, that she was not fully moved on from Diana's unrequited love, no matter what she told herself. 

 Not when she knew heartbreak would be right around the corner once again.  

(Thank you so much for the reviews! :) Got a bit of a twist coming in the next chapter! 

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed as always! :)