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“Ohhhh nooooo,” said the woman, a loopy smile on her face. She raised one hand vaguely — Diana had no idea what she was planning to do with it — and then let it flop down on the pavement again. “It’s PsychKnife! She’s gonna get me …”
The woman. Diana knew perfectly well that her name was Elena because when Diana had kidnapped her two months ago, Captain Crisis had called her “Elena”.
It had been random. Well, not random. Diana’d known she was a superhero’s girlfriend (there was a database; it was kind of creepy but Diana was a hypocrite and occasionally found it useful), but she just wanted a bargaining chip and hadn’t picked anyone deliberately. She hadn’t been stalking the woman or trying to get Captain Crisis specifically to pay attention. This was just something she did every so often to bolster a specific job, to obtain a desired end. There was nothing sadistic or prurient about it.
And then … the woman had been fascinating. She’d stared at Diana with dark, liquid eyes, still and in control of herself — not crying and cowering like some, but not snarling and spitting tiring defiance like others. It had been hard to do what she usually would because the whole situation was so unusual, but Diana had managed to maintain a semblance of cool for as long as it took to bring Captain Crisis in, and then it had played out more normally: threats, repartee, bargaining, ransom. When Crisis finally delivered the goods, flinging the sack to the ground with a “here’s your fucking money, bitch; now let Elena go,” Diana had let her go, but she’d lingered. She’d watched Elena’s arms curve softly around Crisis’s neck (still brave, still calm, but clearly bolstered from being rescued by the woman she loved), watched Crisis hug her in close before taking off.
Ever since, she’d kept watching. Not in a creepy way — well, not to her own conscience, but she only sometimes considered whether Elena might think it was creepy, because how was Elena ever going to know? She was never going to see Diana again, probably. But there was the chance that she’d get kidnapped again by someone else, someone less honorable, so … best to keep an eye out.
And here was the result: Elena was lying in an alley, wounded (badly, her legs were … they were bent in ways they shouldn’t be) and Diana was crashing another supervillain’s party to look after her. The first thing she’d done was to cut off her pain receptors and put her into a euphoric state to stop the shock, which was about all that she could do with her powers in this type of situation. The second thing, following right on the heels of the first, had been to send out a signal to Captain Crisis to come and save her lover before she bled out.
“This is a weird dream.” Elena’s voice was even dreamier than before. “Usually when I dream about you, it’s not like this.”
You dream about me? Diana wanted to ask, but held her tongue. It was a stupid question. She was probably the subject of a lot of people’s nightmares. “Stay quiet,” she said instead. “Conserve your strength.”
Fortunately, Elena listened. But she still managed to reach out and clasp Diana’s hand, and Diana didn’t have it in herself to shake her loose.
Crisis arrived after what felt like hours, but also far too soon. There was no plan — Diana hadn’t thought through what she was going to do — an idiot could have guessed that a superhero finding her direly hurt girlfriend being loomed over by a known villain would respond the way she did. Pressed up against the bricks, a hand closing off her windpipe, Diana still managed to feel a warm glow in her core because Captain Crisis had gotten there in time to save Elena’s life. Don’t waste your time on me, she beamed into the helmet inches from her face, visor not darkened enough to prevent her from seeing the snarling visage behind it. She needs you. She willed as much earnestness as she could into her thought patterns to prove her good intent.
It worked. Crisis dropped her with a curse, leaving her to gasp on her knees as she watched the hero tear off that helmet and her armored gloves and begin to frantically lay hands on Elena’s still body. The air around them glowed as her powers went to work; Diana could feel a sympathetic resonance in her bones as her own powers picked up on the intensity.
She should leave. She should dust off her black silk gown and high button boots and get out of there before Crisis turned back to her and pulverized her like the rubble all around them, only likely into smaller pieces. She should forget about Elena and go back to hypnotizing bank managers into opening their vaults and that kind of thing.
But she had to make sure everything was all right. Gingerly, she picked her way around to a spot just behind Crisis’s discarded gloves and bent forward a bit to watch the (unexpectedly violent) resetting of bones and closing of wounds. Color was returning to Elena’s cheeks and lips, and her limbs seemed to fall into a more relaxed pose. Diana breathed a sigh of relief, and then was slammed into the wall again.
“Fuck,” snarled Crisis. There was color in her cheeks, too — a hectic pink, probably from both the stress and having used her healing powers so extensively — and her eyes were wet and exhausted. “What did you fucking do to her? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
For some reason, Diana said nothing. Her hands went to the one holding her aloft at her throat, mostly in reflex: she didn’t try to pry the fingers away. This was what she would do to someone she thought had done this to Elena, she realized. It was fair. It was just.
“No.” Elena’s voice was soft, but Diana could hear it over the blood pumping in her ears. Crisis must have as well, because she turned and her hand loosened slightly.
“Babe —”
“She saved me, Sam.” There was still a wavery quality to her voice from the euphoria, but she was more herself even though Diana hadn’t released any of her psychic holds. She tried to bring herself to a seated position and winced; Crisis dropped Diana again and went to her girlfriend’s side.
“Hey, don’t push yourself.”
“PsychKnife wasn’t the one who did this. She just came along and … well, I don’t know what she did, but I don’t think I’d be alive without her.”
Captain Crisis planted a deliberate yet cautious kiss against Elena’s temple, and then turned to look at Diana, still kneeling on the ground. It felt — it felt like something, having both pairs of eyes on her, and she held her hands up, trying to project her lack of desire to hurt anyone mind-to-mind. That was more effective than pleading with words, she’d found.
“Let’s take her home to talk,” said Elena, more firmly.
“Take a supervill home? Are you — babe, are you fucking crazy?” But Crisis’s tone was soft, and she seemed to melt under Elena’s eyes.
“To your place, then. We’re hardly ever there.” Elena looked at Diana and smiled warmly in a way that went right to the heart. “She saved my life, after all.”