---

“Diana,” Brion said, “this is madness.”

The reigning Monarch of Markovia stood in the doorway of his own private chambers. The luxurious nature of his dwellings from the ornate furniture, elaborate paintings and murals and beautiful hand made carpet was at odds with the still, gray figure stood in its center.

“No, Brion,” Diana said as she settled herself down comfortably in a high backed chair. “This is the most sane thing I can do.”

“I cannot...I will not allow you to do this, Diana. I cannot condone this course of action!”

Diana arched an eyebrow at him. Defiance. This was an emotion that was cropping up more often in their fledgling relationship. He would not listen to her. How could she rely on him to do the right thing if he were more concerned with doing his own thing? “Brion,” she said, her voice steady and calm. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, something he had not seen in her since their first began their intimacy. “I must take responsibility for my actions. I know that now.”

“They're not your actions, Diana!” Brion yelled. His hands were balled at his sides. “They are part of what you did, yes, I can concede that fact. Gateway City and its state of affairs...that is is not your fault. The disappearances of the Elementals that the Television is blaming you for now, that is not your fault. Even that Lava flow through the town was not your fault, Diana!”

“I know,” she said, “but that does not mean I cannot be responsible for it.”

Brion stood dumbstruck for a moment. He pursed his lips trying to form the proper words. “Diana, I am Monarch of an entire country. I cannot take personal responsibility for my people any more than you can for a rock slide in Cambodia. It is madness.”

“Yes, I can,” she said. Her stone fingers drummed against her chin. “I believe it's called ‘Martyrdom'.”

Brion scoffed and threw his hands in the air. “I was under the impression one needed to be pious and righteous to be a Martyr, Diana. To die for your people and have them rise up, you must first have people rise.”

It was Dianas turn to scoff. “I have people, Brion. They may number less than fingers on my hands, but I have people. People who could and may possibly raze the Earth for me.”

Brion locked his vision onto the former Amazon Princess. “I hope, for the knowledge of who your friends are and for your own personal state of mind, that that was a joke of poor taste.”

Diana rolled her tongue around in her mouth for a moment before she crossed her legs. “Isn't it all in poor taste, Brion?”

The King stood in silence for some minutes, staring at his lover. She looked calm, collected. Prepared, even. “Fine, Diana…fine. You have it your way. I can see that you're used to that happening, but you should know...this...malicious bitterness you have, it doesn't suit you.”

“I am...accustomed to it, Brion.”

“Then, please, be my guest, but you will have to learn to become accustomed to it on your own.”

King Markov left the room, storming down the corridor towards where his staff waited for him. Diana knew she would be alone for a minute, maybe two. She allowed the stifling choke to crack from her throat, to try and catch herself before the tears of lava rolled down her face, leaving hot red tracks in their wake.

She tried to prevent her feelings to despair overwhelm her totally. How could she be so stupid as to suggest that Kal, Orin or even J'Onn would raze the Earth on her behest? How could she be so blind to sully their friendship that way? When did compassion and humility leave her so completely that even faking such a manner came so easily to her?

It simply wasn't no the way of the warrior.

“Princess Diana?” a small, meek voice said quietly from the far end of the room.

Diana winced at the name. “Please, just call me Diana,” she said. She pushed herself to her feet, trying to maintain and air of dignity as well as calm and above all, she wanted to appear honest. “I failed to be a Princess many months ago.”

“Thanks for agreeing to do this for me. For the world,” the young woman said. She was in her early twenties, probably fresh from college. Apparently, she came highly recommended from a number of publishers and had been flown out directly to meet with Diana to discuss her role in this media storm.

“The right story for the right person,” Diana said quietly. She smiled and touched her cheek gently, remembering Superman's words.

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Just something an old friend of mine said to me once.”

“Are you okay going on record?” the young girl asked.

Diana nodded. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Saassagin Nku,” she said carefully.

Diana smiled and cocked her head to the side, almost playfully. “That's an unusual name, isn't it?”

The girl smiled and twirled a strand of blonde hair around her finger. “I'm Danish/Japanese. It's not a common name there either, but...it is what it is,” Saassagin shrugged and placed a small recorder on her lap.

“Please...” Diana said with an encouraging gesture.

“Okay. Diana, why have you agreed to see me today?” Saassagin asked.

Diana put her hands together and stared directly into the girls eyes. “I want to set the record straight on a few things. I believe that's how you start these sort of addresses?”

“It's a way to start them, sure,” the Dane said.

“I am being targeted. Maliciously.”

“Forgive me, but anyone with a brain can see that. It's sort of self evident that you're being targeted. The question is why?”

“Well, if that answer was self evident, then your question must also be,” Diana said. “Why? Because I am the former Wonder Woman who has fallen from grace; I am an easy target for all the enemies I have made over the years. I am now...vulnerable.”

“Many could argue that you have always been vulnerable, Diana,” the journalist replied. “Why should we side with you, when you are your lowest, when you're responsible for all those things. Gateway City? The murders? All of it.”

“Murders?”

“The Elementals. I've been told they're gone and more than likely murdered.”

Diana leaned her forehead against her fingers for a moment and feigned upset. “Forgive me a moment,” she said quietly. “Those people were my friends.”

“I find it had to believe,” the journalist continued, “that anyone is your friend after what you've unleashed on us all. Have you any comment on that? Why you did it? Why it took you so long to admit to it?”

Diana lifted her head up slowly, her eyes tinged with lava.

“I admit to my mistakes, Saassagin. People have died because of my own inability to prevent the worst from happening – what's more, I appear to have failed completely in my role as Wonder Woman and as Elemental. I ask, do you hold your people responsible for what they did to the Saxons?''

“I think we can both see those are different things, Diana. I'm Danish, but I never ran around with a sword stabbing people, which interestingly, is something you did. I also didn't release the collective horrors of the Greco-Roman mythological system onto America. Which, again, interestingly, is something you did.”

The arms of the chair snapped under Diana's stone grip. She got to her feet slowly. “I made a mistake and those creatures were released, and I...”

“Made no attempt to stop them. Why is that?”

“I was taken away from my blood line, away from the authority and the ways in which I could control them, I...”

“So, removed from your safety net of your Mother and diplomatic position, instead of asking for aid, you ignored it?”

“That's not true. I wanted to help, but I was taken away from this world completely. Exiled, I was forced into working for Mother Nature.”

The Dane scoffed and slammed her notepad down on the small coffee table before them. “Come on! Mother Nature?”

“Yes! Mother Nature, Maya, Gaia. Whatever you want to call her, she was the one who gave me my new...altered appearance.”

“We're supposed to believe that?”

“Why not? You see that my appearance has changed. You made reference to the Elementals yourself. Surely you cannot believe that I am....like this, and yet not of Mother Earth?”

“Please. Your official statements about yourself have stated that you're made from Clay. What's to stop you from reverting to your 'original state' without the power of the Greek Gods behind you. Gods, which I might add, I refuse to admit are real.”

“Why wouldn't you believe this? You've been running stories about it since you outed my involvement in this. You were there!”

“Pardon? Have you lost your mind? I've just got here, how could I be from there?”

“Far from it, actually,” Diana said. She folded her hands behind her back and cracked her fingers. “You're not actually a proper journalist are you?”

“What are you talking about?” The Dane held up her journalist credentials. “I have all my details here.”

“No, you have all your forged details there. It was pretty clever, all of this,” Diana said. Saassagin made a move for her recorder but Diana's fist ways already closed over her wrist, lifting the woman from the ground. “You're playing a clever game, aren't you? You're not working on your own any more. None of you are; no…my 'rogues' are all playing together, with that...thing.”

“I don't know what you're...”

“Oh, please! I'm not enough of a warrior so I don't have the facilities to see through the little clues you've left me, is that it? You're so arrogant in your intelligence that you're willing to let me sit here and cry myself into a position of forced submission? You're not Danish and that’s not even a real name!”

“How dare you?!”

“Saassagin Nku? That's an anagram of Kung Assassain. It's not even a particularly clever one. You've been dropping these names into the water across all your interviews. Some variation on the same theme. You think I didn't notice? That I didn't connect the dots?”

Diana's fist clattered against Kung's jaw. The blow landed so hard it knocked the shape right out of her face. Her body transformed to its native form, that of an Asian woman wearing a version of her late Father's costume. Kung wiped blood from her split lip and smirked through crimson teeth. Diana let her drop. Kung landed, heavily, on the balls of her feet. “You're smarter than we thought you were,” she spat.

Diana's backhand knocked her off her feet immediately and onto her back. She coughed again and looked up at the stone woman towering above her. “It took me all of a day to get over what you did to me, Kung,” Diana said. “If it wasn't for spending so long with Batman being paranoid over everything I might have missed your clues. I might still be broken.”

Kung laughed a little. “They're not clues, Diana. You really did piss off that many people.”

“No. No, I didn't,” Diana said, putting her foot on Kung's chest to pin her. “I think that person was already upset to begin with and Maya's involvement with me was just another thing that broke her already weak back. I think that you misunderstand the basis of this relationship, Kung. I think you think that you can beat me, that you're better than me in some way.”

“I can assure you, that we are,” Kung said. She attempted to change her form, great horns curled from her head and hooves replaced her feet. Diana simply pivoted and slammed her fist down into the center of the woman's face. Her head bounced off the floor, leaving a spatter of blood and a sickly crunch of deviated cartilage.

“I am sick to death of whatever plans you people have together, just sick to death of you picking a fight with me and forcing me to lose at every opportunity. I am SICK OF IT!” Diana's fist smashed into Kung's face again. The woman screamed in pain as her malleable nose was all but mashed into her jaw. Her teeth had folded back on themselves, pointing towards the back of her throat.

“Diana!” Brion blasted into the room, his feet barely touching the ground. She turned to face him, lava trickling from the corners of her mouth. Her eyes met his and in an act of defiance, she tried to drop her heel into the neck of Kung.

Brion's glowing fist knocked her off balance, sending her shooting back into a collection of ancient chairs. Her weight and heat obliterated them almost immediately.

“Brion?!” Diana asked. She lay in the burning splinters around her.

“Diana, you cannot do this.” He raised both his hands to her and turned back to face his palace staff. “Remove her from here. Put her in the prison and get her some medical attention.”

Brion turned to face, Diana who stood in silence, touching the quickly healing crack on her chest. “You hit me,” she said quietly.

“I had no choice, Diana. Believe me, if I were to choose to do anything to you, it would not be to hit you.”

Diana smiled a little.

“That's better. Diana, please...why didn't you call for help?”

“Because I didn't need it, Brion. I didn't need your help, or anyone else's. I knew what she was doing.”

“You knew? You knew that she had been doing this to you?”

“Of course I knew, Brion. Did you think I was just that unlucky?”

“I...”

“Why did you stop me?” Diana asked. She walked the length of the room and flicked the recorder off. “They won't play this anyway.”

“Diana, I couldn't...I couldn't let you go through with killing someone, even someone who is supposedly an enemy. That is the recourse for Kings and Queens in ancient battles, not someone such as...”

“I fight my own battles, Brion. I am not a King or a Queen, or even a Princess any longer. I am simply Diana Prince and I am sick to death of people treating me as though I am a fragile flower. I am made of stone!”

“No, your body is,” Brion said.”'You heart? Your heart is made from love. Do not forget that. Do not become as we have.”

“What is that, my King? You think I don't understand how Monarchy works? The Ancient ways, as you put it so eloquently?”

“So you are Monarchy, are you?” Brion asked.

“I am a Princess, yes. Or rather, I was, but Brion, I do not consider myself someone to be served by the people. I consider myself to be someone who serves the people. Who saves them, at the cost to myself. Now, however…” Diana paused. “Now, the cost to myself is devastating. I feel as though all I know is anger, bitterness and guilt.”

“Diana, I feel your pain; I do, at least as much of it as you will share with me,” Brion said, taking her hand gently in his.

She closed her fingers around his. “Brion...these past few months have been so...”

“I know; they have been difficult. The adjustment period to even one of the things that has happened to you, Diana, it could be years. Yet you have tragedy after tragedy thrown at you. How have you survived this long on your own?”

She looked at the floor, wiping a thumb over her eye. “I have survived because I have to, Brion. Because that is what I have always done. Because that is what I do.”

“Please, let me take some of your burden. Let me take some of your pain.”

Diana shook her head gently and lifted his hand to her lips. She kissed it softly. “My burden, Brion, is for me only. I would not and will not share it with you, or anyone I truly care about,” Diana said.

Brion looked at the ground, held for a moment in rejection. “What I need from you, my King, is a new outlet. I need you not to take from me, but to give to me. I want you to leave my pain and burdens for me to deal with and instead provide me with happiness, relief and...love.”

Brion smiled brightly at her. “Love?” he said, quietly. “You want me to provide you with love?”

“It occurs to me, Brion, that we spend out entire lives fighting against evil, horrors and hatred and we very rarely afford ourselves the opportunity for love. I look at Superman, who has found love, married it and lives with it daily. I see the love in him.”

“But I rarely work with Superman, do I?” Brion added, squeezing Diana's hand. “I work with Batman, with the shadows, against the horrors.”

Diana nodded slowly. “We work more often than not with the man who would deny himself food just to make himself angry. With a man who sees nothing in his future but more broken limbs and murders to prevent. His focus his great, but his heart? I fear for it.”

Brion nodded slowly, staring wistfully at a shadow. “Diana,” Brion said, carefully choosing his words. She looked at him carefully. “These last few months with you have been emotionally fulfilling and physically crippling. I have experienced love in a way I never knew I could before, a new love that grew from seemingly nothing into a feeling that chokes me when you are not here. Before we were two, I now ask...will we, can we, be one?”

Diana narrowed an eye in confusion to his question, pulling her hand away in shock. “Brion, are you...?”

“Diana Prince, of Themyiscara, will you do me the honor of uniting my head and my heart and becoming my wife?”

---

---

Next: In Wonder Woman #17: What is the answer? Follow Diana's trip across the darkness, light and oceans of the DCA Universe, to visit those who would be most damaged by her potential nuptials to Geo-Force. Join us next for the Wonder Woman Annual #2.

Then join us for a new storyline, where Diana faces off against Doctor Poison, alongside the Terra Nova!

---

Previous Issue | Next Issue