Beyond the Roundels

As I mentioned about a month or so ago, I did some AU_gust prompts, starting with flash fic for the prompt Romance, using the UC generator to get a summary for The Winslow Boy. It was a bit of a complicated summary for flash fic, and it's just taken me about, um, seven weeks to straighten this out into being a reasonably more comprehensible bit of AU nonsense than it was at the start. idk why. Anyway, also for genprompt_bingo & two allbingo squares (for two different bingo fests of theirs, that is, I'm not cheating).

A Family Affair (1472 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Morton/Catherine Winslow
Characters: Catherine Winslow, Robert Morton (Winslow Boy)
Additional Tags: AU-gust | August Writing Challenge 2025, Alternate Universe - Regency, Regency, Unconventional Courtship Generator, Accidental Baby Acquisition, Stranded
Summary: Catherine Winslow's day is getting worse by the minute.

As I said, I tried to write a second treat for yuletide, and didn't quite make it. But I got it ready to post today when the New Year's Resolution collection went live.

With many thanks to persiflage_1 who not only agreed to beta in like 0 minutes available on Christmas Eve, but put up with 3 emails of "Here's the fic to beta; No wait, not that version, HERE'S the fic to beta" and then finally, "No, don't beta the damn thing, it's a mess, sorry, i'm going to bed," and then finally beta-ed it today, by which time it had grown 1.5k words over what I told them it would be. (♥ Pers, you're a star!)

I had fun writing it, I should say! I just swithered over what I was doing with it, and then it turned into one of those silly situations where every change begs more change. I'd have sorted it sooner if I hadn't exhausted myself with the zombies already, because what it really needed was just have the time to sit down and rewrite of the first half properly. And then fix everything I'd messed up by rewriting the first half, lol.

ANYWAY, edwardianspinsteraunt had prompted about getting a reversal where Sir Robert was involved in a scandal this time, and also forced proximity tropes and for some reason I got absolutely fixated on combining the two, which was why the original idea of being stuck on a train in the snow got shelved because there had to be the scandal bit (my brain, idk) and that necessitated it being late July 1914, when, cool as the weather was, it would have been unlikely to snow in the south east of England. (Even granted that even as little as one flake might cause a British train to halt, if it were the wrong kind.)

What I'm blathering about and towards is, the whole thing about simultaneously thinking about how hard they were to apply tropes and I couldn't do a daft AU for them + "stuck on a train in the snow" led me to the distracting idea (NOT ever for the gift, do not worry, edwardianspinsteraunt) that OMG what about MURDER? They would have exactly the right skill set between them and Sir Robert would absolutely hate it, it would be amazing.

Me: Someone should write a series of 1920s cosy crime novels where the protagonists are a former suffragette and a posh lawyer.
Me: (reflecting on how many cosies there are) ... one almost certainly already exists, doesn't it?

Anyway, I couldn't put them in a fake relationship, I couldn't strand them on a train in the snow, but I listened to the commentary (which I was taking notes from for sovay, if they still want them) and that got me to an actual fic, rather than a slight ficlet, and here it is.

(I watched TWB too many times again, I'm sorry. I apologise for the wittering. I've just had this fic nearly done stuck in my head and having to rewatch the film extra to keep it there for a week and a half and now I can talk again.)


the furthest stars came thundering at the door (4455 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Robert Morton/Catherine Winslow
Characters: Robert Morton (Winslow Boy), Catherine Winslow
Additional Tags: Yuletide Treat, Edwardian Period, with World War I approaching like the down express, Trains, Smoking, Post-Canon, Scandal
Summary: Catherine and Sir Robert find themselves on the same train, but travelling in quite different directions.

(The title is from a poem about London Bridge Station, written in 1909.)