Amatara

Hmm, if we're also counting stories that include characters dealing with onscreen deaths, my list suddenly gets a lot longer. Loss and coping with loss are themes I use very often in fics, now I think about it. But yes, the philosophy behind the Doctor Who story you describe is one that I very much understand. For me to get something out of writing or reading about a character's death, the story has to be either therapeutic in some way, or fit a certain pattern in canon that makes the death a likely conclusion. Preferably both. (That one other time where I actually killed a character in a fic was for Babylon 5, in which there's a race of people who have prophetic dreams about their own death. My 'happy ending' for that fic was letting the character dream his own death, decades later, as a happily married man after a long and full life. So not quite as sad as what I did here.)

This story didn't start out as "The One Where I'm Going To Kill Off Cooper". It only became that when, in listing the situations I wanted to use for the vignettes, I got stuck on the ending. It had to have a punch, and it had to fit into the larger pattern, and resolving Cooper's possession seemed like the only way to do that that made sense. Then I thought about the only two 'resolution' fics that I know of besides my own, which are Once and Future King (http://www.yuletidetreasure.org/archive/2/onceand.html) and Victory (http://archiveofourown.org/works/6100). Have you read these? (Well, I'm sure you have. :) ) The former has a happy ending, the latter doesn't. While I love both fics, in my personal opinion 'Victory' has just about the most painful resolution to Cooper's story I could imagine - despite the fact it doesn't involve anyone dying. That, I think, is when I decided I was going to write Cooper's death. Not sure if it makes sense, but I felt I owed it to Dale to write him a less-than-perfect ending that still isn't as unbearable than a lifetime of wasting away in the Black Lodge while BOB is committing atrocities to the people he loves. And from a storytelling perspective it echoed not only Leland's death, but Caroline dying in Cooper's arms, which brings the whole thing full circle. So - yeah. Strangely, writing the death itself wasn't all that hard. It was only after I'd written that scene, and had to re-read it so I could finish up on some of the other scenes, that all of it hit me. Then I spent an entire evening wandering around in a half-daze going "Oh, God, what did I do? I killed Coop!" And then I wrote the final part. As therapy. :)

Thank you so much for coming back with a more detailed review! I really appreciate it. (How is Original Project of Doom, by the way?)

Re: the fluffy smut, do you have anything specific in mind? :) It's always easier for me to start from a prompt or more detailed request than from a white page, especially when it comes to fluff (which, if I write it purely for myself, always feels gratuitous to me).