Wow, have you ever started writing a fic and figured maybe two or three chapters and then it really started flowing and you’re now working on Chapter 9? :)
I got a darkfic plot bunny for a couple I usually write upbeat romance for: Diana and Steve. I have written darker fic for them in the past, such as
Stars’ Dust, which was rather sad for most of it, and the dark undertones of 1968 Vietnam in
They Killed Another Kennedy!.
This current fic is even darker, but it has a lot of hope in it, too, mainly through the love and caring the characters show. They’ve always made a good team, and now they have to keep that teamwork going more than ever as they end up prisoners-of-war on a war-torn planet.
Diana is in full Warrior Amazon mode, and Steve has U.S. Air Force training behind him, which they pretty much need as the story unfolds.
Of course as I was writing this the last few days I realized that probably only six people were going to read it, LOL, but I’m fairly satisfied that it has some of my best work. I’m trying to balance the violence and personal traumas so that it doesn’t end up overwhelming. It’s a classic hurt/comfort fic with oodles of hurt and acres of comfort! :)
I’ve always seen the pair as, while well-connected with others (Diana’s mother and sisters, the JLA, Steve’s military colleagues), having an ‘the-two-of-us-against-the-world’ type of scenario at times. Needless to say, Diana’s mother doesn’t exactly approve of her choice of love interest (canon in pre-COIE days) and after the first flush of excitement of Steve dating such a beautiful woman, a lot of men would be uncomfortable involved with a woman of such far superior strength and would wonder how Steve could be comfortable with that and her rescuing him instead of the other way around. Which he does, too, but people see what they want to see.
It's always cool, too, when a character that starts out on the Dark Side all the way through becomes nuanced. The leader of the invading troops is still no Boy Scout but he's not a cardboard cut-out, either.
So this plot bunny has taken over right now and I’m going to ride with it.
I do enjoy a good hurt/comfort fic, don’t you? :)