And I'm completely with you on the sticky happily ever after -- which definitely makes me nervous about my own ending!! To be honest, this started out as an exercise in grief - what happens when an 'always-moving-forward' character gets struck an absolutely impossible blow? I didn't write this as a 'how-to-solve-it' story, though I feel like saying more gives the game away. (But maybe I should update that summary to say this once it's fully posted). So the ending seems impossible to me, too. But maybe nothing is impossible for two people in love? At least in this universe.
This makes me even more excited to read the rest. I definitely think this set up has the potential for a really interesting resolution. It would be a shame if it was a cookie cutter happy ending where she instantly got over her grief and it was as if it had never happened. I love happy endings, I just like them to fit the story and feel genuine.
I watched this show as it aired, and then found it streaming last year and dove into the Archive.
There are a bunch of us here who watched it when it was originally airing and then were involved in writing fanfic either at the time or shortly thereafter (there's a big contingency of us who wrote fanfic back in the early 00s when we were in college) and then drifted away for a decade or two before rediscovering the fandom during the COVID lockdown. I think so many of us were looking for familiar, comforting, nostalgic things at that time, that it brought us out of the woodwork. It's been so exciting to reconnect with old friends and meet new fandom members who are also rediscovering the show and diving into the fandom for the first time.
What a mess they got themselves into. 
