Chapter One

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Fire.

A burst of searing heat and noise and pain wrapped around him, blooming bright against the blackness of the sky. For one endless heartstopping instant, the light spread - and then it was gone, flames curling quietly and anticlimactically out of existence.

There was nothing, then.

He was falling, blinded by the light, deafened by the blast. He would have cried out in terror, but there was no air in his lungs, no way to draw breath.

Mercifully, Steve Trevor was unconscious before he hit the ground.

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It seemed an age before she could get away after the battle.

Of course she went after him, running, leaping as far as she could in the direction she'd seen the explosion. Her whole body hurt, quivering with exhaustion after the grueling fight with Ares, but she staunchly ignored it.

An Amazon could have perhaps survived such an explosion - but a mere human?

The sun was well above the horizon by the time she started finding pieces of the wreckage - a wing here, a shattered propellor blade there. Burned cloth, scorched metal, the stench of fire and ozone and burned meat…

Eventually, she found his body.

He had landed in a tree, tangled in the branches. It took her precious minutes to get to him, moving carefully, terrified that an incautious shift would dislodge him and send him plummeting to the ground.

She got him down at last, cradling his broken body tenderly against the metal of her breastplate, lowering him to the leaf-littered forest floor. A bitter sob caught in her throat as she knelt over him, fierce anger and loss aching through her bones.

If she hadn't known it was him, she would never have guessed his identity. He didn't even look like a man anymore - bones broken, body burned black. His hair was gone, right arm blown away below the elbow, flesh seared by the heat of the explosion. Raw burns covered his body, vivid scarlet deepening to black wherever the scorched woolen uniform had given way, and when she reached out a hand to lightly touch the line of his jaw, his blackened skin tore and slid and came off beneath her fingers.

With a sharp intake of breath, she snatched her hand away as if she had somehow hurt him. A dead man was beyond pain, she knew - but she couldn't bear to damage him any further. Instead, shuddering, she settled her palm carefully against the burned fabric covering his chest and bowed her head.

He had been a good man. Confusing certainly, and headstrong and set in his ways, with peculiar ideas about weapons and outfits and truth - but a very, very good man after all. He had loved her, and she...

Well.

Diana wasn't sure if she even knew what it was to love a man, but if it was this peculiar sensation in her heart that radiated all the way out to her fingertips, then yes. Yes, she loved him too.

Mother, her heart cried, writhing in agony. Oh, Mother - I understand so much, now.

At length, she collected herself, tipping up her head to look at the pale sky between the leaves overhead. Her hands were still shaking, so she closed her eyes and took a long breath, willing her body to calm, trying to find it in herself to let him go.

Her left hand eventually grew steadier, but her right hand, still laid against the dead man's chest, kept vibrating - and then Diana's eyes flew open wide as she finally noticed.

She wasn't shaking anymore.

But he was.

"Steve?" she begged, leaning over him until the ends of her dark hair brushed the ground on each side of his face. "Captain. Steve, can you hear me?"

The ticking of his watch, strapped to her arm above her gauntlet, provided a steady counterpoint to the faint, uneven heartbeat and the halting, ragged rise and fall of his chest beneath her palm.

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It took forever to get him back to the army base.

She didn't dare move him much, didn't dare lift him in her arms now that she knew there was still a breath of life left in him. He was shivering, cold to the touch, deeply in shock.

Her training had not only been in the art of battle. Antiope had trained her with weapons, but Epione had taught her a little healing - and it was her voice that now echoed in Diana's mind, reminding her of a long-ago day spent tending an Amazon who had fallen awkwardly from the cliffs.

If her neck is hurt, if her back is hurt, then do not move her. Wait for us.

This time, though, there would be no phalanx of Amazons coming to Diana's aid, no hope of outside assistance. She was on her own, with a gravely wounded man dying on her hands.

Shucking off the long coat she wore over her armor, she laid it gently over Steve Trevor's ruined, unresponsive body before vaulting lightly to her feet and looking around with renewed determination.

Sticks. She would need long, straight sticks and something to tie them with.

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They got a ride back to the medical camp in an army truck that had driven out to find the pieces of the airplane. The two young soldiers driving it had stared in undisguised surprise at her unfamiliar armor and bare legs as Diana stalked out of the treeline toward them.

"I need something flat," she'd ordered. "A board, if you have it. And a ride to your nearest healer. I have a survivor."

They did have a board - a broad, flat one to prop under the tires in case the truck got stuck in the mud. The taller of the two soldiers carried one end of the plank while she carried the other end, and the second man walked alongside, making sure Captain Trevor didn't fall off.

It really was a miracle they had come when they did.

She had splinted Steve's broken bones as well as she could, pulling his crooked limbs carefully straight and binding them to her collection of straight sticks with her lasso. Steve had always complained about that lasso, disliked the heat of it, but now she found herself hoping that it would warm his cold body at least a little.

Then she had faced the problem of transportation.

The splints would do for a while, but she couldn't carry him on her own. It wasn't an issue of weight - she simply couldn't carry him and keep him as flat and straight as he needed to be. Just as she'd been considering her options, the roar of the army truck's engines had alerted her, and she had gone to meet them.

It was fortunate for them that they were British soldiers instead of German - because she would have taken the truck either way.

They offered her a seat in the cab, but Diana refused, crouching in the back next to her spy. He was still shaking, fine tremors racking his body from head to toe. Whether it was the movement of the truck or the warmth of the lasso, Diana wasn't sure - but his eyes shifted behind closed eyelids occasionally, and he groaned faintly in mute agony whenever they went over rough ground.

"You're going to be all right," she promised quietly. She didn't want to touch him for fear of tearing his burned, fragile skin again, so she laid a careful hand on the toe of his hobnailed shoe - the place least likely to hurt him that she could think of. "I am right here, and I will take you to your healers. They can save you."

She didn't wait for the truck to stop completely when they reached the compound, instead lifting the board with Steve's body and balancing it carefully before slipping out the back and sprinting smoothly toward the cluster of tents.

Men stared or turned aside, gagging at the sight of the captain's terrible injuries, but Diana ignored them completely, scanning the tents desperately. Where was it, the red symbol he had told her stood for healing in this world? It had to be - ah, there it was.

She burst into the medical tent, holding Steve's body out in front of her. "Heal him," she ordered simply, and watched as pandemonium erupted.

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They said he wouldn't live to see another day.

"His injuries are simply too grave," Dr. Goss tried to explain. "Quite frankly, it's astonishing that he's still alive."

Diana looked down at the man in the bed, swathed in layers and layers of white gauze. The stump of his right arm was carefully wrapped, and his limbs and back were braced. Only the faint rasp of his constant struggle for air gave away the fact that he was alive. If possible, it was even more uneven than it had been when she had found him.

He was fading.

"Steve Trevor is a man with infinite strength of will," she argued passionately. "You are a healer, and yet you say you cannot heal him?"

The little doctor took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, and shook his head. His hair was prematurely gray, but the war was rapidly turning it white.

"Ma'am," he told her. "This boy's got one collapsed lung, more broken ribs than I can count, and a back that's broken in at least two places. Both legs are broken, he's lost part of his arm, and he has third degree burns over seventy percent of his body - and he inhaled gas shortly before taking off, so his only good lung is blistering from the inside. It doesn't matter how much strength of will he has - his body is dying."

Confused, Diana shook her head. "But what will you do?" she asked again, not entirely understanding. She had assumed if she could get him to a healer, they could save him. "What will you do to help him?"

Dr. Goss patted her arm kindly, and tried to smile. "We have him on morphine," he explained. "Painkillers. We can keep him comfortable until he dies."

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She stayed with him, sitting beside his bed and watching his faint breathing grow progressively shallower and more labored as the day wore slowly on. A few of Captain Trevor's teammates came by, but they were called away, and now she sat alone. A well-meaning nurse had brought her a long coat, and Diana tugged it tightly around her shoulders, trying to think.

If only they were on Themiskyra; if only she could figure out how to take him there. The healers there would perhaps know what to do, how to help. She felt incredibly useless, just sitting here and watching her companion die. They'd given her a solution to wash his eyes with, irritated from the mustard gas - but she knew it was more to make her feel useful than anything else.

It was breaking her heart.

A nurse came through, lighting the lamps. At some point, dusk had fallen again, and the light she carried sent her shadow flickering across the walls of the tent. "You doin' all right, sweetie?" she asked. Diana hesitated and then slowly shook her head.

"No," she answered. "No, I do not think so."

The nurse looked at Steve's bandaged body, and then back at Diana with deep sympathy. "I don't think any of us are, come to think of it," she agreed quietly. Her once-pristine white apron was stained, and there was blood on the hem of her dress. "But he saved a whole lot of lives out there. A bunch of people will have a future now, thanks to him, and that's got to count for something."

She moved on, leaving Diana alone with her thoughts and her dying friend. Mechanically, the warrior dipped the corner of the soft cloth in her bowl, dabbing it tenderly against the burned, swollen skin of his eyelids. Steve choked, coughed, a fine fresh spray of blood coating what was left of his blistered, blueish lips. His only lung was failing, airways slowly closing from the gas he had inhaled.

He was dying. The doctor had quietly told her that Steve would not live out the night.

It was true; he had saved a lot of lives with the willing sacrifice of his own. Many soldiers would get to go home. They would find people special to them - fall in love - get married - eat breakfast together in the mornings - have children and watch them grow.

But Steve Trevor would never get to have that. Not now.

The lamp was too bright. Diana closed her eyes against it, heart twisting in pain, and a tear dropped from her eye and splashed against her knee.

Then a shadow moved in front of the light, and she knew she was no longer alone.

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So yes. Hi. No, I have not stopped writing my other stories. But this is a special request from my sister. A couple days ago I came home late to find her waiting up for me with the biggest Bambi eyes you ever saw. Disney's got nothing on her, I swear. "I have another movie you need to write an ending for," she announced immediately. Turns out she'd just seen Wonder Woman, and was heartbroken.

So, because I love my sister, and because I apparently have a weakness for doomed couples involving soldiers named Steve, I did some quick research and hammered this out. It will be three chapters long. Hope you enjoy! :)

Textile Nerd Note: The reason Steve's clothing didn't entirely burn up is because WWI soldiers' uniforms were made of wool, which has a very high burning point, although still significantly lower than the temperature of burning hydrogen/oxygen. Yes, his clothes would be scorched. No, they wouldn't be burned all the way up, because burning hydrogen travels upward, gravity pulled Steve downward, and wool stops burning as soon as the heat source is removed.