u/tarnishedkara

Sleep wouldn't come.

Ah just laid there, starin' at the ceiling while Remy's steady breath filled the quiet room beside me.

Once upon a time, Ah would've heard his heartbeat too.

Now... nothin'.

Mah fingers curled into the blanket, and even that felt harder than it should've. Every day the weight of the world seemed ta grow just a little heavier. The mattress held me tighter. The air itself felt thicker. Ah couldn't remember the last time movin' didn't take effort.

Slowly, Ah lifted a hand toward the ceiling.

It trembled.

Not from fear.

From weakness.

A bitter laugh caught in mah throat before dyin' there.

“Look at ya...” Ah whispered to mahself. “Can't even lift yer own arm without shakin'.”

Ah turned onto mah side, facin' Remy. Even asleep, he looked ready ta carry the weight of the whole world if it meant nobody else had to.

Once, Ah would've done the same.

Now Ah wasn't sure Ah could carry myself.

Mah eyes stung as Ah reached for his hand beneath the blankets, holdin' it gently.

“Ah'm sorry, cher...” Ah whispered into the darkness. “Ah don't feel like Rogue anymore.”

STAR Labs always had a certain charm.

Not the kind of charm people usually associate with Gotham. No gargoyles. No hidden vaults. No ancient jewels waiting behind a velvet rope while some wealthy collector pretends they deserve to own a piece of history.

No, STAR Labs was different.

It was cleaner. Brighter. Full of people who genuinely believed they were making the world better.

Which, honestly, made breaking in a little harder.

And a lot more fun.

I crouched on the edge of the ventilation shaft, looking down into the laboratory below. Scientists moved between stations, arguing over numbers on screens and scribbling notes they probably thought nobody else would ever see. Security cameras swept across the room in slow, predictable patterns.

Predictable was always the problem.

Everyone thinks better security means more locks, more cameras, more guards. Nobody ever thinks about the person who gets past all of that.

I dropped silently to the floor behind a row of equipment, adjusting my gloves as I glanced around the lab.

“Cute,” I muttered.

The place was practically a playground for anyone with a little curiosity and a questionable sense of personal boundaries.

My eyes moved over the various experiments until they landed on the containment chamber near the back. Unlike everything else in the room, that little vial had an entire section dedicated to keeping it untouched.

Which usually meant one thing.

Someone really didn’t want anyone touching it.

And that usually meant I wanted to know why.

I made my way over, fingers brushing across the glass as I studied the security system. It wasn't bad. I’d give them that. STAR Labs didn’t survive this long by being careless.

But they had built a cage.

And cages are made to be opened.

A few careful movements later, the containment unit gave a quiet click.

I smiled.

“Thank you.”

I lifted the vial carefully, turning it between my fingers. No flashy diamonds. No priceless artifacts. Just a tiny piece of glass holding something important enough that someone had gone through a lot of trouble to hide it away.

Those were always the interesting ones.

The alarms started almost immediately.

I looked up at the flashing red lights, unimpressed.

“Really? That’s what you went with?”

Footsteps echoed from the hallway.

I tucked the vial safely away and grabbed my whip, already moving before the security team reached the door.

The first guard came around the corner just in time to see me swing across the room.

I gave him a little wave.

“Sorry. I would love to stay and chat, but I’m borrowing something.”

A pause.

“Besides, you really should stop leaving the interesting things where curious people can find them.”

The skylight above shattered as I launched upward, disappearing into the night with my prize secured.

They’d call it a theft.

They’d call it a breach.

They’d probably call Batman.

But I knew the truth.

Sometimes the things people hide away aren’t the things that need protecting.

Sometimes they’re the things that need finding.

I almost laughed.

It was clever. Even now, after I had found the mechanism, she had placed another choice before me. Obey the rules or risk everything. Accept the suffering or become responsible for it.

The gods had always loved a closed circle.

I drew my sword.

“You believe wisdom is knowing which loss to accept.”

The owl’s eyes burned brighter.

“I believe wisdom begins with recognizing when the question itself is corrupt.”

I drove the blade into the center of the carving.

The island convulsed.

A crack split the training grounds from one end to the other. The sea rose in a wall around the shore, but it did not fall. The city blurred. The invaders became columns of smoke. The mortals aboard the ship dissolved into flecks of golden light.

My mother remained.

For a moment, she stood across the courtyard with sunlight on her armor. She looked at me with the same quiet pride she had carried the day I first left Themyscira.

Then she vanished with the rest.

The illusion collapsed.

I found myself back in the Olympian arena, kneeling amid shattered marble. My sword was buried in the floor. The twelve statues watched from their pedestals, though Athena’s likeness now bore a crack across its face.

A figure stood before it.

Athena wore a simple white chiton beneath a bronze breastplate. An owl rested upon her shoulder, watching me with dark, unblinking eyes. There was no anger in the goddess’s expression. That would have been easier to bear.

There was disappointment.

“You refused the trial,” she said.

I pulled my sword free and rose.

“No. I completed it.”

“You were asked to choose.”

“I chose not to let you decide the limits of my compassion.”

Athena stepped down from the pedestal. Her spear touched the floor with each measured step.

“There will be moments when strength is insufficient. When speed fails you. When every path ends in grief. What will you do then?”

“Mourn,” I said. “Learn. Endure.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only honest one.”

I looked up at the statues surrounding us. Zeus with his thunder. Hera upon her throne. Ares eager for conflict. Poseidon carrying the sea in his grasp. Gods who had spent ages setting mortals against one another, then demanding that heroes clean the blood from the temple steps.

“You create a disaster in which every choice is cruel, and then call cruelty wisdom. You force a person to select who deserves salvation, and when they obey, you praise their strength.”

Athena’s gaze narrowed.

“A champion who cannot sacrifice will fail those she protects.”

“A god who demands sacrifice from others has learned nothing from it.”

Silence settled over the arena.

Even the flames in the braziers seemed to shrink.

I was tired. More tired than I wished to admit. Tired of proving that compassion did not make me weak. Tired of answering for the failures of beings who had watched civilizations rise and fall without ever asking whether immortality had made them wiser.

I placed my sword back at my side.

“I know I cannot save everyone,” I told her. “I carry every person I have failed with me. I do not need Olympus to carve their faces into another lesson.”

Athena studied me for a long time.

Then the great doors behind her opened.

Beyond them waited another passage, descending into darkness.

“The first trial is complete,” she said.

I walked past her.

As I reached the doorway, the goddess spoke once more.

“You have not proven yourself wise.”

I stopped, but did not turn around.

“No,” I said. “I have proven that I no longer need you to tell me what wisdom is.”

Then I entered the dark.

I ran toward the sea.

I heard the palace begin to collapse behind me, but I did not look back. I crossed the beach in several long strides and launched myself into the air. Wind tore at my hair as I flew over the water, reaching the ship just as another wave rolled across its deck.

I caught the broken mast before it crushed the people beneath it and hurled it aside. The ship groaned, its hull splitting wider below the waterline.

The mortals stared at me.

One man dropped to his knees. Another began thanking the gods.

“Do not thank them,” I told him.

I seized the ship by its bow and pulled.

Wood strained under my hands. The sea fought me with more strength than any natural tide possessed. This storm had a will behind it. Poseidon, perhaps, or merely Athena borrowing the shape of his anger. It did not matter.

I dragged the ship through the waves until the water grew shallow enough for the passengers to climb down. Amazons appeared on the shoreline to help them, though I knew they had not been there before.

The moment the last child reached the sand, I turned toward the city.

The palace was still standing.

It should not have been.

Smoke poured from the upper terrace, but the tower remained caught in the same instant of collapse. The falling stones hung in the air. My mother was frozen beneath them, her face tense with effort. At the lower wall, the invaders had stopped with their weapons raised.

Athena had paused the illusion.

Not out of mercy.

She was waiting to see whether I understood.

I flew toward the training grounds instead of the palace.

The owl was carved into the stone at the center of the arena.

I had passed it when I first entered the illusion. At the time, it had seemed ordinary. The symbol of Athena belonged in many places on Themyscira. My people honored wisdom, strategy, and the discipline of battle. An owl set into the floor would never have seemed strange.

That was why she had chosen it.

I landed hard enough to crack the stone beneath my feet.

The owl’s silver eyes turned toward me.

“The trial is not there.”

“It is exactly here.”

I knelt and placed one hand against the carving. Divine power moved beneath it in thin, branching lines, spreading through the island like roots beneath soil. Every scream, every flame, every doomed life was tied to this point.

Athena had not recreated Themyscira.

She had built a machine shaped like my heart.

The world began moving again.

The palace ceiling gave way. The ship, somehow returned to the sea, rolled beneath another wave. The Amazons at the wall cried out as the enemy charged.

Athena’s voice hardened.

“If you destroy the heart of the trial, you destroy all within it.”

The gates opened onto Themyscira.

For one foolish, hopeful moment, I forgot where I was.

I stepped through the archway and felt warm sand beneath my boots. The sea stretched out before me, bright beneath the afternoon sun, each wave folding gently against the shore. White stone climbed the cliffs in graceful terraces, threaded with gardens, fountains, and banners carrying the eagle of my people. I could smell olive trees on the breeze. Somewhere beyond the training grounds, women were laughing.

It was home.

Not an imitation assembled from scattered memories. Not the vague shape of an island created by someone who had only heard it described. Every detail was where it belonged. The crack running through the western watchtower. The faded paint on the columns near the old amphitheater. The narrow path through the cypress trees that Antiope used to take whenever she wished to avoid the palace.

Olympus knew my home well.

That realization stripped the warmth from it.

I stopped at the edge of the beach, my shield still raised from whatever beast I had expected to find beyond the gate. There was no creature waiting for me. No hydra, chimera, or champion dragged from some forgotten age. Only Themyscira, peaceful and whole, offered to me with all the care of a gift left upon an altar.

“No,” I said quietly.

The world answered with a scream.

The sound came from the city above. I turned in time to see one of the palace towers buckle, marble splitting down its center before crashing into the courtyard below. The ground shook beneath my feet. Birds scattered from the trees, and the gentle bells hanging along the terrace began to ring wildly.

Amazons poured from the training grounds with swords and bows in hand. Behind them came soldiers wearing bronze armor blackened by fire. They climbed the outer walls, appearing in numbers that should have been impossible. Some carried the insignia of Ares. Others bore no mark at all.

The sea changed behind me.

The water grew dark as storm clouds gathered over the horizon. A wooden ship appeared between the swells, listing badly to one side. It was crowded with mortals. Men, women, children. Their voices carried across the water as the mast cracked and fell into the waves.

Then I heard my mother call my name.

“Diana!”

I looked toward the palace.

Hippolyta stood beneath a collapsed archway, one arm braced against the stone as she tried to pull an injured Amazon free. Another column had fallen behind her, trapping several of my sisters in the courtyard. Fire spread through the hanging banners above them. The ceiling groaned.

My body moved before thought could catch it. I took one step toward the city.

The voice of Athena filled the island.

“Choose.”

I stopped.

There was no thunder in her voice. Zeus favored spectacle. Athena never required it. Her words entered the mind cleanly, with the calm certainty of a blade resting against the throat.

“The palace will fall. The invaders will breach the shore. The ship will sink. You may save one.”

I looked toward the city, then the training grounds, then the sea.

The attacks had been placed carefully. My mother and the women trapped with her were too far inland. The Amazons defending the lower walls were being surrounded. The ship was already being pulled toward the rocks. Even with all my strength, even with all my speed, there was no path between them that did not cost too much time.

Athena had measured it.

Of course she had.

I lowered my shield slightly and stared up at the sky.

“How many times must we do this?”

No answer came.

Around me, the island continued to burn. The cries from the palace became louder. On the ship, a mother clung to two children while the deck tilted beneath her feet. Along the lower wall, an Amazon lost her spear and drew a knife instead.

Athena spoke again.

“A leader must understand that not all may be saved.”

There it was.

The lesson Olympus returned to whenever it wished to remind mortals of their place. The old cruelty dressed in the robes of wisdom. They would create a tragedy, remove every merciful path, and then judge the person forced to choose between the ruins.

I had heard versions of it from Zeus, Hera, Athena, and even my own mother. A queen must choose her people. A warrior must choose the greater good. A champion must accept sacrifice. Each of them spoke as though grief became nobler when someone powerful decided who would suffer it.

I looked toward the palace again.

My mother met my eyes from across the impossible distance. Even within the illusion, she knew what I was being asked to do.

“Go!” she shouted. “Save them!”

She meant the Amazons at the wall. Or perhaps the mortals on the ship. That was how my mother had always been. She would offer herself before allowing the choice to rest upon me.

The gods knew that, too.

My grip tightened around the edge of my shield.

“You have given me this trial before, Athena.”

The invaders advanced. Steel struck steel along the walls.

“You gave it to Perseus when you placed a kingdom behind him and a monster before him. You gave it to Heracles each time the suffering of others was used to measure his strength. You gave it to Odysseus when you praised his reason while men around him paid for the pride of kings.”

The clouds above the island darkened.

“And now you give it to me again.”

“Choose, Diana.”

Cold marble pressed against my back when I woke.

For a moment, I did not move. I stared up at a sky painted in the impossible blue of Olympus, where the clouds curled around distant golden peaks and never seemed to drift. Twelve statues surrounded the arena, each carved larger than any mortal monument. Athena watched with her spear lowered in judgment. Ares grinned behind his war helm. Hera sat rigid upon her throne, while Zeus stood above them all with thunder gathered in one stone hand.

I had seen places like this before. The gods changed the shape of the arena, but never the purpose.

My sword and shield had been left beside me. The lasso was still at my hip, glowing faintly beneath the gaze of Hestia’s sacred flame. Somewhere near the sealed gates, Hermes’ winged emblem had been carved into the floor, and beneath it were the words every champion of Olympus eventually learned to resent.

Through wisdom, courage, strength, and sacrifice shall worth be proven.

“Again,” I muttered.

Thunder rolled across the mountains, and the braziers around the arena caught fire one by one. A voice spoke from everywhere at once, deep enough to shake dust from the pillars.

“Diana of Themyscira. Daughter of Hippolyta. Champion of Olympus. You have been called to undertake the trials of the gods.”

I sat up and rubbed the ache from the back of my neck. “Athena has tested my wisdom. Ares has tested my courage. Hera has tested my loyalty, and Zeus has tested nearly everything else.” I looked up toward the empty thrones above the arena. “How many times must I prove that I am the woman you asked me to become?”

No god answered.

The gates began to open, revealing a path descending into darkness. From somewhere below came the distant roar of a beast I had hoped never to hear again.

I stood and lifted my shield.

“Very well,” I said, more tired than afraid. “Let us see what lesson Olympus has forgotten this time.”

There are plenty of reasons to steal a diamond.

Money is the obvious one. Revenge is usually more satisfying. Sometimes it is simply the principle of the thing, especially when someone has spent millions constructing a glass shrine to an object they stole first.

Tonight, though? I just wanted it.

The Star of Qurac sat beneath a spotlight in the center of the Gotham Museum of Antiquities, glowing violet against black velvet. The plaque beside it used polite words like acquired and donated. It did not mention the deposed royal family, the private military contractors, or the three collectors who had mysteriously died while trying to own it. Funny how museums can fit centuries of bloodshed into two neat paragraphs and a donor’s name.

I watched the guards complete their rounds from the ceiling rafters, balanced comfortably above a room full of people who had never thought to look up. One of them stopped beneath me to complain about his knees. Another checked his phone when he was supposed to be watching the eastern corridor. Gotham’s finest private security, ladies and gentlemen.

“You’re making this far too easy,” I whispered.

The security system was better than the guards, at least. Pressure sensors beneath the floor, motion detectors inside the display, lasers invisible to the naked eye. Someone had even added a heat-sensitive lock after my last visit. I almost felt flattered.

Almost.

I lowered myself from the rafters, hanging upside down above the case as the lasers swept beneath me. My claws slid into the panel at its base, and the alarm system opened itself after a little persuasion. Thirty seconds later, the glass lifted without so much as a sigh.

The diamond was colder than I expected. Heavy, too. I rolled it between my fingers and watched the violet light crawl across my glove.

“All this trouble over you,” I murmured. “You must be exhausted.”

The alarm began the moment I replaced the diamond’s weight with a small velvet pouch filled with ball bearings. Not because I had made a mistake. I simply thought the evening needed music.

Red lights flashed across the gallery. Steel shutters began dropping over the exits, and somewhere below, the guards finally remembered what they were being paid for. I heard shouting, boots, and the familiar click of safeties coming off.

I tucked the Star of Qurac into my belt and fired my line toward the skylight.

By the time the first guard burst into the room, I was already halfway to the roof. I paused just long enough to look down at him, one hand curled around the cable and the other raised in a little farewell.

“Tell your donor I’ll send a thank-you card.”

Then I disappeared into the Gotham night with a priceless diamond against my hip and every siren in the city singing my name.