A/N: This is it. My fiftieth fic. In two-and-a-half years I have thrown 334.532 words on the page (plus deleted a fair few more) and received numerous reviews, PMs, likes and reblogs. I have become part of an ever-changing, welcoming community and have made amazing friends I could not imagine being without.

My first fic was a train wreck; I didn't even capitalize the first person singulars and it received six reviews. I was pretty much astounded - the fandom had not embraced the potential romance between a nippy sweetie Housekeeper and a stern, inflexible Butler yet - and it spurred me on to write more.

And more.

And more. From prompts to PWPs, from romance to AUs and angst. It's been glorious. There has been such encouragement and such a steep learning curve, especially for a non-native speaker.

Ficcing has been my outlet for a very long time and I hope it will continue to be. To celebrate fifty fics I am attempting something new:

A modern AU.

To be honest: I had been working on this for over a month and had plotted and planned and researched for weeks; when I finally got to writing, I had beaten the idea to death. Nothing I wrote was remotely good enough to put out there and I got in touch with two of my friends in the community with texts about NEVER WRITING EVER AGAIN and WHY DO I EVEN BOTHER (and worse…). But they are Le Awesome and told me not to be such a drama queen and fed my narcissistic needs - oh, how frail the artist's ego is.

And all was well. Or at least readable.

So here it is:

The first chapter of my Modern AU.

Enjoy!

On the other side of the glass is Mr Charles Carson, the star of his own show: a mid-morning staple for the Yorkshire forty-five to seventy demographic - the age group with the most expendable income and it shows in their ratings and the ad breaks for luxury cruises, life insurance policies and the RAC.

He sits at an old-fashioned wooden desk, facing her, but he is always fiddling with his record player, laptop and mic and she knows he has a thick block note filled with hundreds of little facts he collects and shares with his listeners. Sometimes he reuses his factoids, knowing there are few people who have the memory of an elephant (like Elsie has) and she always smiles when he gets enthusiastic about a personal favourite.

They have worked together for twenty years and she knows exactly how he takes his tea, how he sneaks a sandwich in during the news. She knows his love for progressive and symphonic rock and he indulges her every Friday when he calls her on the air for ten minutes. She knows he doesn't much like to play the big selling hits he has to play - but he understands that Robert Crawley has a business to run and that to receive a salary, money must be coming in.

Today he has played Adele - who he doesn't mind too much - and Maroon 5 - who he can't abide. Two new songs an hour: it's really not that bad. Elsie makes sure he gets a jingle after a track he hates, so he can compose himself a bit. The new music comes from the computer on Elsie's dash, as well as the jingles. Whilst Charles Carson puts the needle on a record, she checks the news online (and throws sneaky peeks at Twitter to see if their hashtag is being used that day).

Charles' voice fills the air again after the jingle - she had to threaten to turn off his mic when he started complaining about the state of modern music during the news - and she cannot help but smile. His extensive knowledge of music history is one of the things she loves about him. That, combined with his smooth, rumbling voice make him a real presence on the air.

"Alan Parsons was a gifted engineer who was getting fed up with having to listen to the demands of artists he worked with and together with songwriter Woolfson started his own band - The Alan Parsons Project. Today we'll be hearing a song about friends lost and about the passing of time. Ladies and gentlemen: Old and Wise, by The Alan Parsons Project."

The song always makes him melancholy and she doesn't know why he is playing it today. It's a sunny out; the dog days of summer are upon them. She watches him from her booth, sees him hunched over his smartphone, his brows knitted. Elsie thinks she knows almost everything about him, but there is a chapter in his life that he will never share with her and she never knows when this thoughtful, nostalgic, maudlin mood will hit him.

Instead of trying to figure out why Charles Carson tears up when Colin Blunstone sings, she makes him another cup of tea and silently sets it down on his desk. He looks up, smiles at her and her heart skips a beat. As she walks back to her booth, she berates herself: there is to be nothing between them. They are colleagues, friends even. But that is it. Mr Carson is a solitary man.

She doesn't admit to herself that because of him, she is a single woman.

Oh, she doesn't like the notion much; Mr Carson can be condescending and conservative, he can be downright rude at times, but she does love him. For she knows his heart is kind and because he is extraordinary at what he does - the combination of experience, expertise and talent is simply very appealing to her. And of course he is very tall and his chest is very broad and he has this rogue curl falling over his forehead that almost does her in if she doesn't keep a tight reign on herself.

It's ridiculous. She is a middle-aged woman of ample capability. She hit puberty during the Summer of Love. She has ridden the second and third feminist waves - has made herself heard and seen. She's been on 'pirate radio boats' and worked on news programs and is well-known throughout the country for training other young producers, technicians, engineers and indeed deejays. Her clipped Scottish lilt fills the air ten minutes a week, always at the same time. There are people tuning in to hear her specifically.

One of her protegees is tapping against the window from the corridor and holds up two paper cups from the coffee shop across the street.

She opens the door and she hugs Anna clumsily, not wanting the girl to drop the cups. The smell of vanilla is a little overpowering, but the smile on Anna's face is contagious.

"So, what are you dealing with today?" Anna whispers.

"Melancholy and nostalgia…" Elsie replies in the same muted tones and they both giggle a bit.

"I can stay at the dash for you while you do your bit," Anna offers - like she does every week and like every week, Elsie declines. There is nothing that needs adjusting and even if there were, Anna is needed in another studio. They keep an eye on the clock and sip their coffee, chatting softly.

"You're up!" Anna says and Elsie quickly grabs her record and opens the door to the inner sanctum. She makes herself comfortable on the armrest of Mr Carson's leather desk chair and slides the record from its sleeve and lays it on the player, checking which track she'll be needing.

"It's time for our own Mrs Hughes to share her chosen song for this week! Mrs Hughes, will you join me?"

"I think I will, Mr Carson." She is much too close to him… she can feel his warmth, hear his soft breath.

"Dear listeners, what you must know about Mrs Hughes is that she has an extensive record collection and that she carries her chosen album with her on the Tube to allow you and me to feast our ears on it." They smile at each other. They both have large record collections and they often spend afternoons and evenings together talking about music, about the station, enjoying dinner together - sometimes at his flat, sometimes at hers. As friends. Obviously.

"I have brought one of my favourite albums, 'Diamonds and Rust' - it's sold to hundreds and thousands of music lovers all over the world. Now Joan Baez is known for her political activism and I think most of us have seen or at least heard her performance at the original Woodstock festival where she played 'Sweet Sir Galahad and Joe Hill." Charles smiles at her again and she recalls playing the whole Woodstock album whilst drinking one of his very good wines and discussing wether they should not have indulged in something of a more herbal variety.

"Her life-long love of folk music was fueled when she was taken to a Pete Seeger concert as a teenager and she bought her first guitar when she was seventeen. She played the Newport Festival and became well-known in the mid-Sixties. She was the one who really showcased Bob Dylan. But none of that - or little anyway - matters because I am not going to make you listen to her early work." He looks at her thankfully. He likes folk - of course he does - but he prefers it when he can listen to it on his own. Or with her.

"And which song will you share with us?"

"Diamonds and Rust's title track - written about an unexpected phone call from a former lover that makes her reminisce about days gone by - a rather melancholy song." She cannot help but give him a bit of a side eye. He must know that she had noticed that he was being rather blue himself. And she is about to make it worse, because she may love him, but there is nothing that will make the blood course through her veins in excitement than to push this gentle giant to his limits occasionally.

"Now, if people are interested, there are other very different versions of the song available online - from Judas Priest to Blackmore's Night, and I truly recommend doing a bit of a video search until you find Joan Baez and Judy Collins collaborating on this song for the Newport festival 2009 on YouTube."

"Oh Mrs Hughes, after all this time, you could not have spared me this talk of YouTube and internet?"

"Mr Carson, I'm afraid you'll have to join me in the twenty-first century soon. If only to see viral videos and cat memes."

"I'm not a cat-person, as you well know. But I am waiting to hear Joan Baez."

"I'll put the needle down now."

Mary Crawley is doing what she does best: she introduces the songs from the tracklist Anna's made, sips her sage and rose petal tea and laments the lack of chia seed pudding in the hotel bar she visited during the weekend. She discusses festival wear, men's facial hair, and flower crowns. She praises the kale crisps she has found at Whole Foods and discusses her Pinterest. There's name dropping and instagram mentioning and she talks about mindfulness and the merits of being a green alkaline gluten-free vegan.

There is not a shred of hipster to be found in the actual Mary, but on the air she plays it well.

Mary Crawley lives with her fiancé: a steady, kind, cheerful country solicitor. Anna has great respect for the way Mary navigates the difficulties of being the boss's daughter and carving out a career of her own, instead of finding someone with a great fortune to marry her and pump his money into the station as was expected.

And of course Mary has been a tremendously good friend during the time Mr Bates was incarcerated, and when Anna was attacked not long ago. Anna bites down on her thumbnail. The past couple of years have been so hard. If it weren't for Mary and Elsie, she doubts she'd be sitting here at all.

She starts the jingle for the station, then one for the show and focuses on getting her breathing under control. The next song has been programmed in; there's no need for her to pay attention, but the words of the song make it through the fog and chase away the fear, anger and hopelessness.

After all, things aren't hopeless at all. She's steadily getting stronger, her nightmares are lessening and she's been seeing a therapist. And because of all of this, there is something she can look forward to. A soft smile relaxes the tense muscles of her cheeks and mouth.

Beth Ditto commands the air now, a song Anna has chosen to support Elsie. Elsie who is so confident and who is such a legend, but who is also lonely and pining for a man who doesn't see her.

Well… that's not entirely true. For one 'pining' is far too strong a word and secondly: Mr Carson may look like he isn't at all interested, but there is nobody he is as close to as he is to Mrs Hughes. At any dinner he sits next to her and with every Christmas party he buys Mrs Hughes something very thoughtful or clever.

He guides her across the street and he remembers her birthday and the day Elsie's mother passed away.

Mr Carson may perhaps not know it himself, but he does love Elsie very deeply.

"Whatever you want, the choice is yours / So choose" Beth sings and Anna makes up her mind. All Charles Carson and Elsie Hughes need to do, is make the choice: take that step, or wait forever.

And there is nothing wrong with her nudging them in the right direction.

notes:

* Charles played: Old and Wise, by The Alan Parsons Project

* Elsie played: Diamonds and Rust, by Joan Baez

* Anna played: Heavy Cross, by The Gossip

All songs can be found on YouTube or Spotify

(for my Germany-based readers: if the songs fall under your harsh copyright laws and don't know them, but would like to hear the fabulousness, send me a PM and I'll try to hit you up)

Some of the trivia come from memory, some from Wikipedia.

A/N2: Thank you, Dee for your always inspiring, encouraging and educational beta - and for those texts I spoke of in the other note… Between "trigger warning: Sting" and unconventional debuts - it's a miracle we manage to publish anything at all.