meet me in the afterglow

Afterword

Well, if you've made it this far, I applaud you for having the patience to sit through all that. Fair warning, this note will be pretty ramble-y so I hope you're prepared.

First of all, thank you so much for reading this very self - indulgent AU. When I started writing this, I literally had no other idea in my head apart from omg married armaan riddhima! But, obviously, as I wrote, the story developed. In the interest of being honest, let me tell you the various directions this story took before it reached what you've read today. 

Initially, I had planned to write a whole long fanfic on this idea, but then a lot of the things would overlap with both ILYLTF and TDBU, so I dropped that idea. Plus, you know... I've been writing both of those for years and they're still incomplete, so if I started another fanfic, who knows when it would have gotten over. But, at one point, I was planning on showing Riddhima extremely aloof from Armaan to the point where she didn't talk to him and then we'd have a whole dramatic climax in the same corridor where the shootout happened. I actually have that climax written somewhere in the drafts LOL.

I also had major plans of showing Riddhima very against therapy but decided that it would send a very wrong message given that she's a doctor herself. I do think that while mental illness is considered taboo in our community, it is especially so in the medical field because people think that a doctor who is going through this would not be fit to treat them. I do hope that translated well in this story, but if it did not, I'm sorry. 

Another direction this story was going to take was showing that Riddhima's mental health was so bad that the doctor said it could lead to a heart attack. I actually did write that before going, nahhhh to freaking dramatic, and so ended up scraping that. At some point, I also had plans to show more of the gang (this is when this was planned as a long fic) and have them have issues too. Rahul and Muskaan's break up and Abhi's revelation of being married and the consequences of all these things would have taken up some chunk of the story, but I scraped that because I wanted to concentrate only on AR in this one.

The decision to leave it so open ended you could say, was a very conscious decision. Armaan and Riddhima are together at the end of it, but they have a lot to process and talk out before they can be truly move on from everything. I like to believe that it was a long and difficult journey for them to get there, but they figured it out and are extremely happy somewhere in the world right now.

Anyway, once again, thank you so much for reading this story. This story is my way of thanking all my readers who have stuck by me for so long despite my very sporadic update schedule. You've all been very patient with me, waiting for weeks for an update, still here despite me not finishing stories for legit years. So, I thought I'd thank you for all the support by finishing at least one story. I hope that I was able to make you smile with this. 

It was a very self indulgent 26k word ramble from me, and maybe some of you might not like how I've glossed over so many things to reach the ending so quickly, and that's okay... but, I just really wanted to write this and share it with all of you. So, I hope you guys appreciate it.

Thank you for all the love. I am so, so, so grateful to each one of you. But also, especially to my girl, Sanju (YES YOU!) for being my biggest cheerleader in all these years. You have no idea how much you've motivated me. Thank you. I love you.

That's a wrap on this one. Thank you for reading the story and a bigger thank you for reading this note. Y'all are the best. See you on the other side.

Love, Prags <3