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DBD Idea. Disclaimer: I haven't read the comics, sorry.
But! After a glance through some webpages, some thinking of a fun ghost idea (that's gonna become its own fic eventually), and the few fics I've read that have had Edwin have siblings, I've had an idea for a potential fic of my own.
IIRC Edwin and Charles died at 16, right? (I could be mixing up ages with Lockwood & Co but anyway-) So, let's say Edwin had a younger sibling. I always put myself in a character's shoes/mindset (as best I can do) whenever I'm writing to try and emulate the emotions of the scene as much as possible, so most original characters I imagine are female.
Sidenote: I do have male characters I imagine, but they're usually harder for me, sorry!
If Edwin had a younger sister, I'll put her at 9 when Edwin died, imagine if one day she shows up at the agency and while she recognises him immediately, he doesn't recognise her. Because of course he wouldn't, she was 9 the last time he saw her, and that was over 100 years ago. He's not-slept since then. After a little bit of Googling (in which Wikipedia told me that the Edwardian era was actually 1901-1910, sometimes extended to 1914 when George V was king, meaning that Edwin is sort of in the middle of being Edwardian and Georgian >.>), I found that in 1929 minimum age for marriage (I'm assuming with parental consent) was raised to 16 and has near enough stayed there [link]. If this sister was 9 in 1916, then she'd be 22 in 1929, but I'm not doing that bc ✨reasons✨ and I want angst.
I always want angst, you should see what I did to Paul Matthews :)
Anyway, the age she would be in 1925 is 18, and I want to put her here bc that's two years older than Edwin ever got to be. Let's say her parents married her off to someone when she was 16 bc why not, the internet is hard to search through so if I'm not historically accurate then someone can correct me. This is fanfiction anyway, I'm not gonna be too precious on the details but I do want enough accuracy that it'll pass. I've got a dissertation to write, I'll let my brain breathe for a bit :)
So, this girl married off at 16, died at 18, eventually winds up at the DBDA with a case to help find....something, I haven't decided what yet. Anyhoo, in the office when they first meet her, she's gonna be focusing more on Charles than on Edwin because it hurts to see him. He looks alive (as alive as a ghost can look) and doesn't even recognise her because she's changed so much and she missed him. So it's too heartbreaking to see him when he doesn't see her. And obviously everyone notices how she averts her gaze away from Edwin as much as possible so they all start theorizing and Edwin's kinda upset about it but also not because maybe she's just not good with people either, he understands that, but Charles and Crystal think it's something else that they can't quite see yet.
And yeah, I've got other ideas for the little tells before it's actually revealed but wouldn't it also be fun if the Payne's initials were also acronyms? Like EMP and ESP? That'd be cool, I think. I'm doing that, that's gonna play into something later.
I swear to everything, if this ends up becoming a multi-chap idea instead of a oneshot idea I'm gonna lose it bc I don't write multi-chap for a reason. I CANNOT follow through.
Unless this idea gets traction within the fandom but I doubt it.
