When We Grow Up

[A/N: “Working on long fics is too hard at the moment,” I said. “I should focus on shorter ideas until I get back into things,” I said. And then shortly after I start this thing which took me about three weeks to finish. Maybe some day I will learn to take my own advice when I know it’s what’s best for me.

I had the idea of wanting to do a modern AU fic where Byleth’s mother was still alive. Sadly the game never names her (afaik), so I had to make up my own name. I just wanted a happy family life for them. Which then expanded in scope as I wanted to add some Edeleth “fated reunion” + “childhood promise” romance to it too.

This is a bit different from my usual “modern AU” MO of just transposing as much of the setup as possible to a different setting, and not really changing much. Instead actually trying to think up new roles, statuses, and interpretations for the various characters for once. Not that I go completely off the wall with it or anything. Just tried doing something that fit the story better.

I did have to rein myself in a bit. I realised fairly early on that I couldn’t just add a bunch of the characters to this. Some are mentioned in passing, some are alluded/hinted to as being part of the wider setting, but the number of actively participating characters is kept pretty small. This is already long enough without trying to incorporate even more stuff. I do have to aim for actually completing my fics at some point. *quietly hides all my unfinished drafts in a cupboard*

My one big worry is that since it was written across such a long period of time, and some days I wasn’t able to write at all, it will not feel as coherent as it would if I had been able to write at a more steady, continual pace. Hopefully it still turned out okay. That’s probably enough of these author’s notes though, I should let you actually read the fic.]