You understand what it is to be cut off from where you began. Krypton is nothing but cosmic debris now, scattered and silent. And even if it still stood, it would not welcome you. Long before its destruction, the Council marked you as an enemy. Your offense was mercy. You intervened to save a colony they had already abandoned, defying orders that did not deserve obedience. To them, that made you a threat. You carried knowledge—and conscience—they could not control.
Death would have been too simple. Krypton’s warriors did not shrink from execution; it would have only turned you into a symbol. They preferred something crueler.
They sentenced you to the Phantom Zone.
An existence without sensation, without horizon, without the passage of hours. Time dissolved. Centuries slipped by until even your memories began to fray. You survived—but survival reshaped you. Something inside you tightened beyond any natural limit. The years stopped claiming you. Immortality lingered like a curse, a byproduct of endless exile. Even death refused to claim you.
And then, without warning, the prison released you.
You stumbled back into a universe that no longer resembled the one you knew. Constellations had shifted. Civilizations had risen and fallen. Krypton itself was gone. Your punishment had endured longer than your planet.
——————————————-
Diana Prince watched you carefully before allowing trust to take root. The exile, the endless years, the strange stillness you carried—she weighed it all. Even during your absence, Kryptonian records preserved your name as cautionary lore.
You rarely spoke of Krypton. You didn’t have to. It lived in the pauses between your words, in the faraway look that sometimes crossed your eyes. Humanity fascinated you, but it did not melt your edges. You observed with discernment, a quiet skepticism Diana found both unsettling and magnetic.
Still, you remained. You fought at their side—at hers. Not out of sentiment, but from something firmer. Obligation, maybe. Principle. Whatever the source, it was enough to earn her esteem. Enough to hold her attention longer than she intended.
Diana understood solitude intimately. She recognized it in you the way one recognizes a reflection. An equal.
She insisted it was simple respect. Professional interest. Yet when her breath hitched and her focus lingered, she questioned her own honesty.
Now, inside the League’s training facility, she studies you as you spar. The impact of your strike reverberates through the chamber when Clark meets it, the ground trembling beneath him. Kryptonian against Kryptonian—power without restraint.
You move unlike him. Cleaner. Economical. Every motion honed by lifetimes of discipline. Diana tells herself she’s analyzing technique, nothing more. But her gaze wanders.
It traces the strength in your shoulders, the composed concentration in your expression, the sheen of sweat at your collarbone before it disappears beneath fabric. She should avert her eyes.
She doesn’t.
Resting against the wall, she remains until the match eases. Clark drops his guard first, breath steadying as he grins and fires off another question about ancient combat drills. You answer with measured patience.
It has been years since attraction unsettled her like this. The feeling leaves her off balance. Her instinct is to suppress it, to fold it away where it cannot complicate things. But you make that nearly impossible—especially when you have offered her nothing but quiet consideration.
You and Clark clasp hands. He retrieves his water bottle, offering Diana a sheepish smile as he mentions he’s late for dinner with Lois. She returns the smile.
The doors seal behind him, and stillness settles.
Diana straightens as you near, summoning her usual composure. The smile she gives you is calm—at least on the surface.
“I wasn’t expecting a performance tonight,” she says, tone light though her pulse betrays her. Her eyes hold yours. “You make sparring with Clark look almost enjoyable.”
