Fanfic musings

I was so relieved in the morning to decide that my latest YGO fic, Lead Me Through the Fire, is in a timeline all its own. XD; I'd been trying to rationalize it as being part of one of my existing timelines, but it just doesn't fit anywhere. It will not align with Dragons at Dawn, especially.

That made me realize I have five or six separate YGO timelines. LOL.

1. The mystery fics timeline (which encompasses the early oneshots, too)
2. The Life After the Tears timeline
3. The Paper Flowers timeline (I dunno, with Candy Clouds it really doesn't seem to fit the above timeline, though both were written around the same time)
4. The Seto/Téa timeline
5. The Dragons at Dawn timeline (probably replacing Life After the Tears)
6. The Fallen timeline (Lead Me Through the Fire and anything that comes after it that's connected to it)

My vision for the fic seems to change daily, but as it stands right now, I no longer am sure that there will be any kind of follow-up where David is alive but in Portman's grasp. This is what it looks like will happen:

- David stays dead
- Duke gets the smugglers caught and visits David's grave in the second-to-last chapter, then leaves to clear his mind and try to decide what to do with himself
- Téa/Serenity/whoever goes to find him in the last chapter, having realized his true identity
- There's an epilogue where he's trying to put his life back together

So the story ends more hopeful than originally planned, but only because it's being combined with the existing follow-up idea. (Originally it would have ended with his departure, with the hopeful stuff being separate.) Also, I think Duke and Serenity hook up later in that timeline, after the initial fic, having grown very close as Serenity helped Duke recover from what he went through. And though it was Serenity's choice in the end, it put a rift between Duke and Tristan that has lasted for several years, on into Duke and Serenity's marriage. I'm thinking of writing some kind of fic where he and Tristan are trying to patch things up.

I also have kind of a random blurb-like scene imagined where Duke and Serenity are visiting David's grave. ;__; And some other, more cheerful ones, like Duke at some business dinner and having brought Serenity along.

And one thing I've wanted to do since I first conceived the idea for this fic is something in the part where someone (probably Serenity now, instead of Téa) tries to get Duke to come home. Duke confesses that he killed someone, certain he's unworthy of Serenity and that she'll see that. He admits it was in self-defense, and he had to do it or die, but he knows he felt hatred for the man too. The whole reason why he stopped running and decided to wait for the assassin to catch up was because of his hatred and grief. So he tells her that his hands are filthy and stained with blood. She responds by taking his hands in hers and telling him something like, "Your hands still look clean to me," inspired by the scene in Sailor Moon where Uranus is concerned about all the blood staining her hands in their quest to save the world. Neptune then says that line to her, and even though I've come to prefer Sailor Moon in Japanese, I think that was one of the best dub lines ever. X3

I want David alive and well in the main timeline, and Duke will be so emotionally scarred by the end of Lead Me Through the Fire that I don't want that for the main timeline, either. XD; And with the possibility of Duke/Serenity thrown in, that all makes for a good case to give it its own timeline.

Meanwhile, I hope to work on Dragons at Dawn soon. X3 And I'm a good chunk done with chapter 5 of Lead Me Through the Fire. No idea how many chapters either of them will be.