Twenty years ago, I watched the OAV of a tragic 70s yaoi manga where a pure-hearted piano player fell in love with the jaded school prostitute. In 2020, I came up with the idea of sticking Ashe/Yuri in a similar story, but nothing really came of it until Three Hopes dropped and their support chain brought me back to that line of thought. Soon I had a rough outline for an AU that took on a life of its own.
I rewatched the OAV and Gilbert really did remind me of Yuri. Serge really did remind me of Ashe. Not a one-for-one comparison, but the basic "kind and pure-hearted X aggressively tries to protect jaded and self-destructive Y from themselves and love ensues" was there for me. The scraps of info we got about Rowe's relationship with Yuri and Yuri's hatred of him made it easy to slot them into the horrific situation presented with Auguste and Gilbert. The only differences were that a) Yuri didn't love the Count and knew he was just a toy for him and b) my boys were going to earn that happy ending and Rowe would get smashed with the karma stick.
For NaNoWriMo 2023 I decided I was going to write the fic. I have a history of never finishing my solo longfics, and even more history of dropping NaNo projects after November's over and I've hit 50k words, or at least only going back to them once in a while but never actually making progress. But with SoTM, I was determined. I wrote so much I surpassed the 50k mark by 20k words by the end of the month, I took a break only to post the finished chapters to A03, and immediately got back to writing. Because I had everything all planned out it was easier than I anticipated.
March 11, 2024. I post the final chapter. I'm finished with the main story, but nowhere near finished with the 'verse. Therefore, I've made this page for not just the main story, but sidestories taking place in this AU along with various tidbits and information.
CONTENT WARNINGS: Sexual abuse, rape, prostitition, pedophilia, slutshaming, classism, violence, parental death, assassination attempts, bullying, psuedo-incest