Wondertrev prompt: little bit of a reverse Disney princess story, Steve didn't die but is unconscious when Diana finds him and he only wakes up when she kisses him goodbye
Day was just breaking as the battlefinished. Diana looked at the German soldiers who had begun taking off theirgas masks. —They are barely more than boys! she noted to herself,surprised. Certainly none of them are older than… She froze, unwillingto finish that thought, to think the name and feel her heart break again. Fullof restless energy, she rolled her neck from side to side and looked the otherway. There was the rest of the team: Charlie, Sameer, Chief. Refusing to saythat name to herself couldn’t keep her from seeing her own grief mirrored intheir eyes, from feeling the gaping hole his death left in the crew. A dry sobcaught in her throat, but she forced it down. She wasn’t ready to let herselfaccept the truth yet. Praying to gods that were supposed to be long dead andsomehow clinging to the smallest shred of hope, she took off at a dead run inthe direction she’d seen the plane go.
The rhythm of her stride gave hersomething to focus on besides the memories that swirled in her head. Pain, anda ringing in her ears. Strong hands under her elbow, helping her to her feet.Clear blue eyes filled with worry. Those same hands, now gentle as theycaressed her face. A watch, pressed into her own hands. Haunting last words: “Iwish we had more time. I love you.” She ran harder, trying to drown herthoughts in the sound of her feet pounding against the ground, wishing shecould have run after him and kept him from sacrificing himself. Soon, sheslowed her pace. Here was a bent metal bar, there a piece of wing torn in two.This must be the plane’s debris field.
She was entering the outskirts ofwhat must have been a forest before the artillery of both armies had ripped thelife from the earth. Scattered about were the remains of once-mighty trees. Shelooked at the trunks, blasted and twisted into grotesque shapes, and felt thatthey were a fitting memorial to this horrible war mankind had brought upon theearth. As she surveyed the trees, she saw in the distance something that madeher heart begin to race. A shredded mess of cloth and cord hung tangled in thebranches of one of the larger trees, fluttering listlessly in the early morningwind. She didn’t know what it was, but it was something. Her feet were suddenlymoving of their own accord, carrying her at a dead sprint through the eerieforest graveyard to get a better look. She was still a few yards from the treewhen she pulled up sharply, skidding to a halt. Her heart stopped. At the baseof the tree lay a figure with tousled hair, facedown in the mud.
For a few moments Diana couldn’tmove. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. This could only be one person, but itcould not be! —Did I not see the explosion with my own eyes? She thoughtwildly. —That is something no man could survive! Her train of thoughthalted abruptly. She didn’t actually know if he still was alive. In arush of motion she was at his side. His clothing was shredded, and with all ofhis cuts and burns he didn’t look much better than the rags that clung to him.He seemed to be wearing the remains of some sort of pack on his back; her brainregistered this without comprehending as she hooked both hands around one armand rolled him over. The arm flopped limply into the mud. His eyes remainedclosed. His chest did not rise or fall. Diana reached one tentative hand towardhis face, as unsure as the day she had dragged him out of the waters ofThemiscyra. This time, though, he made no movement in response to her touch,and something inside Diana shattered all over again.
The boys later told her that they’dheard her first anguished cry from the airfield, well over two miles away. Theyalso said they’d seen a solitary flash of lightning, heard a single clap ofthunder, before the world returned to quiet. She could barely remember it. Thelightning bolt had struck her directly, and it seemed to fill rather than harmher. It was as though Zeus himself reached down to be with his daughter in hertime of mourning. She had no idea how long she knelt by his side, overcome bythis fresh loss. No tears came. She was beyond tears. Instead, brimming withthe power of the gods, she shrieked her wordless pain and rage into the morningstillness. As the waves of grief slowly began to subside, she looked down atthe man she had grown to love. His face was just as burned and bloody as therest of him, but he seemed to be at peace. A smile tugged at her lips despiteher grief, and she reached out to sweep aside that one lock of hair that wasforever falling into his eyes. At least now she would get to say goodbye. Sheslipped one hand tenderly under his head, and brought her lips to his in afinal farewell.
She’d forgotten that she was stillfilled with the power of Zeus’s thunderbolt. She felt the energy course intohis body and dissipate into the ground. Steve gave one violent twitch, and thenwas still. Diana recoiled sharply, dropping his head back into the muck. Shewas quite certain that mortal bodies were not designed to house the powerwielded by the king of the gods. Then, she saw something that made her heartjump into her throat: a flicker of movement under his eyelids. She reachedtoward him a third time, trembling, and pressed her hand to the skin just underhis jaw. Beneath her fingers she felt a pulse, strong and steady. His chest wasnow rising and falling rhythmically. He was alive! And Diana wept.
The first thing that registered forSteve was pain. He hurt everywhere. —I suppose that’s to be expectedwhen you blow up a whole goddamn bomber, he thought, chuckling darkly tohimself. As he processed his own thought, the next thing to hit him wasconfusion. He blew up a plane packed with explosives. With himself init! He definitely should not be alive. He remembered making his peace with hisdemons as the plane climbed into the sky. He also remembered seeing a largepack hanging on the cockpit wall, and guessing it was a parachute. The Alliesdidn’t believe they were effective but the Germans had started equipping theirown planes with the things. He didn’t know what had made him slip it onto hisback before he pulled the trigger—he knew he was going to die in the blast—buthe did anyway. Lucky for him. He couldn’t remember anything after theexplosion. He supposed he must have been thrown straight out of the windshieldby the blast of air that would have preceded the fireball in such a confinedspace. He must have stayed conscious or come to consciousness long enough topull the chute’s rip cord, and now here he was.
In the seconds it took for all ofthis to flash through his brain, he became aware of a third sensation: weight,pressing on his chest. And…crying? He struggled to open his eyes—one seemed tobe swollen shut—and there she was. Diana, daughter of Hippolyta, princess ofThemiscyra, defender of the helpless, was curled up on his chest, sobbing.
“Hey, hey…” he murmured. Every inchof him hurt—he felt like he’d been run over by a freight train and could onlyimagine how bad his wounds were—but he still gingerly lifted one hand to sweepher hair behind her ear and press tenderly into her cheek.
“You’re alive,” she crooned betweensobs. “You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive.”
“I’m alive,” he agreed, and he heldher.
Eventually Diana’s tears slowed andSteve recovered enough strength to sit up, laboriously and with much help, andlean against the tree. Diana kept reaching out to touch him with gentlefingers—his face, his shoulder, his hand—as if she was afraid that he mightdisappear if she couldn’t feel him. She avoided the worst of his injuries, andhe reveled in the sensation of her cool fingers against his skin.
“That’s the second time you’vesaved my life,” he murmured. He was sure she had played some role in his miraculoussurvival. “Thank you.”
“I thought you were dead,” shereplied. “I found you here. You were not moving, not breathing.”
His brow furrowed sharply. “Thenhow…?” She told him how she had been filled with lightning as she’d kissed him,and how it had traveled through his body and somehow revived him. His chuckleas she finished trailed off into a wheeze of pain, but his good eye was stilldancing.
“What? I do not understand what isso funny!”
He smiled. “We have a fairy tale,in this world, of a princess who falls asleep in an enchanted castle and canonly be woken by true love’s kiss from her prince.”
“Does that make me your prince?”Her eyes sparkled wickedly. Diana had seen enough of the world of men tounderstand the humor in the gender reversal.
“It does. And I believe—” his goodeye, impossibly blue, was suddenly scorching as he continued very deliberately.“I believe that also makes you my true love.”
Her breath caught in her chest.There was one thing she hadn’t gotten the chance to say to him before he’d runoff towards that plane. “I love you, Steve Trevor.” And for the second timethat day, impossibly, she was cupping the back of his head, drawing his facetoward hers. She brushed his lips with the lightest of kisses, cautious ofhis many injuries. When she opened her eyes she found him surveying her fromclose range with an intensity that sent delicious shivers up her spine.
“What is it?” she murmured.
He smiled. “How would you like toget breakfast?”
And she knew exactly what he meant.
