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In 1993, Diana decided that she wanted to try college for the second time.
She had the funds, and the time, and the contacts who could mock up a set of transcripts for one Diana E. Themyscira, international student from Greece. Gaining admission to Columbia was almost too easy. Passing herself off as an undergraduate student was not. She looked like one; she hadn't aged a day since she'd set foot in Man's World. But Diana had been the lone child on an island of grown women, and here she was expected to live in dorms among children whose parents had not yet been born when Diana first set eyes on Steve Trevor. And Diana was not accustomed to roommates.
"Ugh," Melissa mumbled into her pillow when Diana let herself back into their room after her customary 5am run. Her roommate, Diana had swiftly learned, didn't approve of early mornings, or speaking languages other than English. "Freak of nature."
Most American teenagers, it seemed, needed more than five to six hours sleep a night, and didn't think of the dawn as the nicest time of day. Most of them knew nothing of warfare, or all the etiquette that Etta had once insisted was so essential to seeming normal, and they were baffled by the fact that Diana had never made a mixtape or hung out at a mall food court.
"I've never seen a mall in Greece," Diana said, which was at least not a falsehood. There may have been something like these great emporia in Greece, but Diana hadn't been there since 1965 when she was chasing down a turncoat KGB agent who'd decided to smuggle people as well as weapons. She hadn't really been focused on shopping at the time.
"Oh god," said Jenny, who always had ink-stained fingers and tended to chew gum with ferocious concentration during their American History lectures. "Well no wonder you dress like you've never even heard of Contempo Casuals. You were a deprived child."
Diana didn't particularly care about whether or not she dressed like the others, and she could never understand the appeal of grunge music. But part of why she'd decided to attend college was to better learn how to make friends, how to look at this World of Men more clearly—both things which she'd found ever more difficult to do since those bright, brutal days of the Great War.
"Maybe you need to join a student organisation? Some kind of club," suggested Mike, the teaching assistant for the course Diana was taking on the Classical Age. The class was almost entirely nonsense, and Diana had already had several heated arguments with the professor during the lectures, but she enjoyed going to Mike's office hours to talk with him. He was quiet, and prematurely balding, and had blushed quite furiously when Diana had caught some problems with the Aramaic transcription in a draft of his dissertation, but had accepted her corrections with wide-eyed thanks once he'd realised they were accurate. "You know, get to know people through shared interests instead of happenstance?"
Heading back to her dorm room that evening, Diana spotted a bright yellow flyer on a noticeboard. It was for the Film Society, which met every Thursday at 7pm. This week, come Back to the Future with us! Diana wasn't entirely sure what that meant, which was how she found herself sitting entranced in a dark room watching two men using an odd-looking automobile in order to time travel. The following week was a collection of Charlie Chaplin shorts, then Jaws, then The Breakfast Club, then The Sound of Music. Diana made a few friends among the society's other members, but truth to tell she returned week after week less for their company, or for their bland, chewy popcorn, than for the time to sit and soak up the kinds of worlds that people could conjure up for themselves.
It wasn't that Diana had never seen a movie before coming to New York, but she had rarely seen one the whole way through. There was always some new crisis that needed her attention, something else to demand she take up the sword and shield, and she had never really seen the appeal of a facsimile of reality when there was a whole fascinating world outside to explore. But having this time once a week when she sat in the dark, and was still, and watched this little window of colour and light and sound—well, Diana didn't think she would have been any better at the meditation exercises that Melanippe had once tried to teach her, but she thought now she could better understand their purpose.
"This is the good stuff, though," Avi said, waving a VHS tape over his head one Thursday night. "Forget those chick flicks. Who didn't want to be Han Solo growing up, or pretend to have a lightsaber?"
"I didn't," Diana said, matter-of-fact. "And my childhood sabres were made of steel."
"Uh huh," said Avi. He was a gangling Mathematics major who now rarely did anything more than blink at Diana when she mentioned anything about her past. "Well, time to head for a galaxy far, far away."
Diana had heard of Star Wars, but she had been in Siberia in the late 1970s, very far from any movie theatre that might have shown it. Now, almost twenty years later, she sat on a scuffed-up beanbag in a student lounge and wondered how she could have lived so long unaware of Princess Leia of Alderaan: her deeds, her loss, her defiance. Diana felt her eyes sting with tears when she realised the enormity of Alderaan's destruction, applauded when the Death Star was righteously destroyed, and nodded her approval when Leia honoured her warriors' achievements with public acclamation, as every good leader should.
Here was a princess whom Diana could understand.
When the credits rolled and Priyanka turned the lights back on, Avi turned to Diana and asked, "So, what did you think?"
"Princess Leia is a worthy equal to any hero from the great epic poems!" Diana said. "My mother would like her a great deal."
Avi made a face at her. "You get that Luke and Han were the heroes, right? Leia's just the love interest."
Diana sighed and said, "I will never understand your people."
Maybe she truly never would, but she kept trying regardless. She joined a study group, and took the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty, and found a favourite bagel place, and that year she celebrated the American holiday of Halloween for the first time. Diana braided up her hair, and wore white, and when small children in the street grinned in delight to see her, she smiled back at them and told them she was proud to meet another member of the Rebel Alliance. The World of Men still baffled her in so many ways—but its heroines, and the loyalty they inspired, these Diana could understand.