Chapter 1: Home at Last
The hum of the ion thrusters faded to a whisper as the invisible jet breached the mystical veil surrounding Themyscira. Diana Prince watched the familiar coastline resolve through the cockpit canopy, a sudden tightness in her chest that had nothing to do with the descent.
Home.
The word felt different now. It tasted of salt and memory and the faint, metallic echo of chains.
“Wow,” Beatriz Da Costa breathed from the co-pilot’s seat, her plasma form cooled to its human state, leaving her bare skin glowing faintly in the dim cabin light. She pressed her face to the glass. “It’s even more green than you described. Like, entire crayon box green.”
Dejah Thoris leaned between their seats, her smooth red skin a vivid contrast to the lush panorama. “The oxygen saturation is remarkable. The foliage density suggests a highly advanced, non-invasive agricultural symbiosis.” She placed a comforting hand on Diana’s shoulder. The touch was warm, steady. “It is good, Diana. To be in a place of safety.”
Safety. Diana wasn’t sure she remembered what that felt like in her bones. Her body did, though. As she guided the jet to a silent landing in a secluded meadow, the muscles across her back and shoulders began to unknot, one fiber at a time. The scent of hibiscus and ocean air filtered through the opening hatch, an olfactory balm.
Stepping onto Themyscirian soil was like stepping into a forgotten part of herself. The grass was cool and soft under her feet. The sun, diffused by a gentle mist, warmed her skin without burning. For a few heartbeats, she just stood there, eyes closed, breathing.
Then she heard the rustle of armor.
A patrol of four Amazons emerged from the treeline, spears held with disciplined ease. Their expressions were initially fierce, then shifted to confusion, then to stunned recognition.
“Princess?” The lead guard, Ephiny, lowered her spear, her eyes doing a rapid, bewildered sweep of Diana and her two companions. Her gaze wasn’t judgmental, just profoundly shocked. An Amazon was never ashamed of her body, but this was different. This was her princess, returned without word, and… unclothed. With two equally unclothed strangers.
“Ephiny,” Diana said, her voice thankfully steady. She held her head high, back straight, refusing the instinct to cover herself. That instinct, born of months in a cell where her body was not her own, was the enemy. “I have returned. These are my sisters-in-arms, Beatriz and Dejah. We seek sanctuary.”
“Of course, Princess. The Queen… she has been anxious.” Ephiny recovered her composure with soldierly speed. She snapped her fingers, and one of the younger warriors peeled off, sprinting back towards the city. The remaining three fell into a protective formation around them, though their eyes kept darting with a kind of tactical curiosity.
The walk to the city was a quiet parade of awkwardness. Amazons they passed stopped in their tracks. Some gasped. A few older warriors frowned, their hands tightening on their tools. Most just stared, their faces a canvas of concern. Diana focused on the path ahead, on the marble columns of the palace growing in the distance. Dejah walked with an alien’s disregard, observing the architecture and flora with academic interest. Beatriz, however, cranked the tension into something else entirely.
“So, the whole nudist colony thing wasn’t a metaphor,” she muttered to Diana, a smirk in her voice. “I’m feeling seriously overdressed with just my skin.”
“It is not our custom to greet guests unadorned,” Ephiny said stiffly, overhearing.
“Hey, blame the witch with a vengeance complex,” Beatriz shot back, flicking a tongue of green flame from her fingertip to make a point. “This isn’t our preferred dress code either.”
The Grand Hall smelled of beeswax and old stone. Queen Hippolyta stood from her throne, the motion so fluid it seemed to defy her ornate armor. Her regal face, a older mirror of Diana’s, fractured for a single, devastating moment. In it, Diana saw not a queen’s disapproval, but a mother’s heartbreak. It was worse than any glare.
“Diana.” The word was a breath, a prayer, an ache.
“Mother.” Diana approached, stopping at the base of the dais. The composure she’d clung to threatened to crumble. She felt acutely, painfully visible—not just her skin, but every new scar, every shadow that hadn’t been there before.
Hippolyta descended the steps. She didn’t embrace Diana immediately. Her eyes, wise and terrible, scanned her daughter, reading the story written on her flesh. She saw the faint, silvery lines left by high-tech restraints the subtle tension in Diana’s jaw, the way her hands didn’t quite hang naturally at her sides.
“You are hurt,” Hippolyta stated, not a question.
“I am healed,” Diana replied. It was mostly true.
The Queen’s gaze then turned to Beatriz and Dejah. “And you have brought others cursed by Circe’s pettiness.”
Dejah stepped forward, her bearing every bit as regal as Hippolyta’s. “The curse is an inconvenience, Queen Hippolyta. The captivity that preceded it was the crime. Your daughter freed us. We stand with her.”
Hippolyta assessed the Martian princess, then gave a slow, respectful nod. She finally closed the distance, her hands coming up to cradle Diana’s face. The armor on her forearms was cool against Diana’s cheeks. “My child. Welcome home.” She pulled Diana into an embrace, tight and fierce. In the shield of her mother’s arms, Diana finally let her eyes shut.
Later, in Diana’s private chambers, the reality of the curse met the reality of Themysciran life. Servants had brought silken robes, but they hung unused on a hook. Wearing anything felt… wrong. Like a betrayal of the truth of their condition. Like hiding a wound that needed air.
Beatriz stretched out on a divan by the open balcony, fire dancing idly along her legs. “Okay, the awkward staring I could do without, but the room service? The view? A-plus.” She sighed. “How long do you think before we figure out how to break this little spell?”
“Circe’s magic is complex,” Diana said, staring at her own hands. They were strong, capable hands. They had shattered chains. Why did they feel so alien? “It may take time.”
“Time we have,” Dejah said, sitting with perfect posture on a stone bench. She was examining a holographic star chart on her wrist device. “The psychological adjustment is more pressing. Your people see your nudity as a violation. On Barsoom, it is simply… practical.”
“It’s not the nudity,” Diana said quietly. Both women looked at her. She struggled to find the words. “It is the… silence. In the cell, for months, the only things that touched me were the chains and the cold. Now, the air touches me. The sun. The silk of that robe there.” She nodded toward it. “And I feel it all too much. It is a bombardment. And sometimes…” She trailed off, shame heating her skin.
“Sometimes you miss the simplicity of the chains,” Dejah finished, her voice devoid of judgment.
Diana looked away, out to the sapphire sea. “Yes.”
Beatriz sat up, the playfulness gone from her eyes. “Whoa. That’s heavy, Di.”
“It is a known trauma response,” Dejah said clinically, though her eyes were soft. “The mind, in prolonged captivity, can warp dependence into a perverse form of security. To redefine it is your next battle.”
The door opened, and two young Amazon attendants entered with trays of fruit and wine. Their eyes were carefully averted, fixed on the floor. They placed the trays down and scurried out.
Beatriz watched them go. “We’re making everyone super uncomfortable.”
“They will adapt,” Diana said, but the statement felt hollow.
The feast that evening was a subdued affair. Hippolyta had commanded the hall to be attended only by her most trusted council, but word had spread. The Amazons present ate and spoke in hushed tones, their eyes constantly pulled as if by gravity to the three nude women at the high table. Diana picked at her food, the flavors dull on her tongue. A councilor named Melosa was speaking about boundary patrols.
“—and the eastern reef shows signs of man’s vessels drifting closer. We may need to reinforce the mist.”
Diana wasn’t listening. She was watching the flicker of torchlight on a goblet. The way the fire captured and held it reminded her of the play of light on Aresia’s restraints. Her fingers tightened on her own cup. A sudden, vivid memory surged—not of pain, but of the terrible, quiet stillness after a punishment, when her bonds were the only things holding her trembling body together. A shocking, unwelcome pulse of heat flared low in her abdomen. She shifted on the marble seat, her face flushing.
Dejah, beside her, noticed the minute movement. She leaned in, her voice a bare whisper only for Diana. “The memory triggered a somatic response. Breathe. You are here. You are free.”
But was she? The chains were gone, but something else had taken root. Something that frightened her more than any enemy.
Later, under a blanket of stars so thick it seemed you could swim through them, Diana walked the cliff paths alone. The sea crashed below, a rhythmic roar that finally drowned out the noise in her head. She came to a secluded hot spring, steam curling off its surface into the cool night air.
She slid into the water, the heat a profound relief. It was the first thing that had felt truly good, truly enveloping, since her return. She sank up to her chin, letting the minerals sting her hidden scars.