1.31.2017
Two years ago today, Deanna was laying the same bed with a bright red cast on her arm, a line of pain along her left side and drifting in and out of sleep because of the amount of Percocet she was on for the pain. She had resisted the offers for therapy for what she knew was PSTD, even then, but wouldn't take out of pride. Cricket was just a wee baby Cricket, staying at her parents' house in Lincoln so that she could rest from the beating--there was no other word for it, that's exactly what it had been--that had put her in the hospital for nearly a week, got her screws and plates in her arm and without a spleen. in the simple days, where she could delude herself into believing that it was some random mugging and potentially something worse.
Now she knew better. She had grown used to the names of 'Apocalypse' and 'Darkseid', could say them without lingering hesitation and mostly no fear. That wasn't exactly true, she still feared them but there was a sort of battle-weariness she felt as she did. She counted the number of people like her who appeared, and who she knew---and who had helped her in so many ways. She tried to help them the best she could but there was still so much of her own trauma she was trying to heal from. She didn't always do the best job. But she tried. Trying was far better than what she had been doing before. Hiding. Withdrawing.
She woke up in the morning with a new set of memories in her head, though at first she thought she was thinking about her own childhood. It wasn't difficult to think about the sunny shores she and her sisters had roamed, picking up shells and driftwood with their father, giggling and laughing at the 4th of July celebrations on the base. But she realized that she recognized the towering spires from the buildings, not just in a general sense, but a very real one. It was the place that Diana would bring her in the beginning, as they tried to find some sort of medium where they both could function those weeks when her persona was the strongest.
This is where Diana grew up. This is Themyscira.
Themyscira always was strong in the memories that Dee carried around in her head that belonged to Diana. But until this moment, it had represented a distant place, just another fantastic set on which the unbelievable action of Diana's life took place on. But this sense that she had now, this overwhelming feeling of 'home' was so strong and so powerful---and so very familiar. How Diana felt about this place, this island called 'Paradise'...it was exactly how Dee felt about the tiny island of her birth. About the sparkling blue Aegean and the cream colored sand and the rocky outcrops she and her father and her sisters climbed with her mother tended to wounded and hurt men and women.
It was the very first time in all the years this had been going on that Dee actually felt she had something in common with the warrior princess that shared her mind and body. Like her....Diana was homesick. For a place that was far away and hung with her in every motion she made. Like Dee always answered firstly that 'I was born in Crete' when someone inquired to where she was from, she now understand why Diana never introduced herself as 'Wonder Woman'. She was always and forever 'Diana of Themyscira'.
She got out of bed, giving Cricket a stritch on the head as she moved to the bathroom. After she was done relieving herself and washing her hands, after she'd taken herself and Cricket for their morning run...she was going to get to work planning a trip she 'd been putting off for the better part of three years. She was well overdue and honestly...it was time. For both of them to go home.
