The roar of the stadium is a hollow, echoing thing when it’s just the two of you. Thousands of empty seats bear witness to a ritual as old as civilization itself. You stand on the manicured grass, the scent of earth and distant rain in the air, feeling the familiar, grating warmth of her presence. Diana. Wonder Woman. The Amazon. Your opposite. Your constant.

She doesn’t approach like a warrior this time, but like a curator examining a familiar statue in a new gallery. Her eyes, that impossible blue, scan you up and down, lingering on the face you wear—a handsome, sharp-featured man with a cruel twist to his mouth.

“You’ve switched vessels again,” she notes, her voice carrying over the empty field. It isn’t an accusation. It’s an observation, laced with that eternal, frustrating curiosity.

You run a hand through the vessel’s dark hair, a casual gesture. “I simply liked this face more. It has a better smile for sneering.” You tilt your head. “Why haven’t you changed yours? The braided crown, the earnest eyes… it’s so terribly sincere.”

A small, sad smile touches her lips. “We both believe the face we wear will work better for what comes later, don’t we?”

You laugh, a short, derisive sound that bounces off the concrete tiers. “Do you truly believe you’ll be around for ‘later’?”

It’s all the invitation needed. The space between you vanishes. It’s not a clash of gods, but something more intimate—a brutal, familiar dance. You know the cadence of her lasso’s swing, the specific way the air compresses before she charges. She knows your propensity for feints and sudden, vicious strikes. Blows are exchanged not just to maim, but to communicate. A punch to the jaw for every time she spoke of peace. A shield-bash to your ribs for every civilization you’ve toppled.

Centuries of this. Millennia. And in this moment, you see an opening—a microscopic hesitation as she shifts her weight, a fragment of a second where she thinks of reaching instead of striking. Your fist, wreathed in dark energy, connects with her solar plexus not with a bang, but a terrible, breath-stealing thud.

The air leaves her in a gasp. She stumbles, her knees hitting the turf with a soft, final sound. She kneels before you, one hand pressed to her stomach, the other gripping her lasso for support.

You look down, unimpressed. The vessel’s face is a perfect mask of disdain. “Is this all it amounts to?” you ask, your voice a silken taunt. “All your love? All your truth? A princess on her knees in the mud.”

She looks up, and there is no defeat in her eyes. Only that infuriating, unshakeable light. Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth, but her voice is steady, clear as a bell in the vast silence. “It is enough to keep trying. Enough to keep reaching for you.”

You smirk. It’s a cold, knowing expression. “You’ve already tried. You’ve already reached. I was taught your lesson, remember? I learned it, and I found it… lacking. I rejected it.”

“No,” she says, and the word is absolute, cutting through your smirk. “You understood the concept. You have never felt the truth of it. You’ve never allowed it.”

She pushes herself up, not to her feet, but onto one knee. The lasso at her hip begins to glow with a soft, persistent light. “So I will keep fighting. Not to destroy you, but to reach you. However many times it takes. However many blows I must weather.” She meets your gaze, and the love in it is not soft, but fierce, a thing of unimaginable strength. “Even if it takes another century. Or ten. I will be here. Reaching.”

The fight is over. For now. You stand there, in the empty stadium, the victor of this round, and yet you feel the strange, hollow weight of her promise settle around you. She will. She always does. And as you turn to leave her kneeling in the half-light, a part of you, ancient and buried, wonders what it would be like, just once, to take her hand.