Cultivating Love

by ead13

Summary:

Aria risked everything when she quit her corporate job and bought a one-way ticket to Stardew Valley to take up her grandfather's farm. Life had been one long series of disappointments and failures, and it looks like this will be just one more.

Harvey was always working hard to maintain the barriers necessary between doctor and patient, no small feat when working in a tiny town. Unfortunately, that leaves him with a terribly lonely existence.

As their paths cross and the seasons turn, they will find that happiness (and love) can grow in the most unlikely of places so long as one puts in the work to cultivate it.

Notes:

1. I'm not sure if this will be a proper story or just a series of related vignettes. We'll see how ambitious I get. It's been a bad year for my writing and I mostly just want to post SOMETHING of value.

2. I'm saying right off the bat, I don't think Harvey is as old as a lot of people in the fandom say he is. Not that I disrespect their opinions, I just personally don't see it. In my headcanon, he's about 32 (plenty of time to finish 8 years of med school and complete the standard 3 year residency for family medicine). He just tries to come across as older than he actually is to give himself credibility in his profession.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Summary:

A glimpse at the protagonist, one Aria Verdi, before events start.

“You’ve always been impulsive, but it’s never impeded your success until now.” Her flat tone. Her dead-eyed disappointment, blue eyes narrowed, thin lips pulled into a frown. The way she’d then turned her back on her only daughter, who knelt next to half-filled tubs that needed to fit all of her belongings by day’s end. “Call me when you’ve returned to your senses and torn up the deed to your grandfather’s dump. Until then, I have nothing more to say to you.” The click of her heels as she walked away. The slam of the door. The…

THUD!

The bus barreled over a bump in the highway, and the violent bob of her head snapped Aria Verdi back to the present. Thank Yoba! She hadn’t realized until now that she was mired in the past yet again. The ride from Zuzu City to Pelican Town was not all that long on paper, but it certainly felt that way with only that depressing memory to keep her company. Despite her best efforts to focus on her big move, to get excited for a new start far from corporate limbo, that one scene in particular kept replaying itself over and over in her mind, drowning out the happier thoughts. The wounds were too fresh to push aside, and her anticipation simply couldn’t compete with the sting of parental rejection.

In a last-ditch attempt to redirect her mind, she reached into her purse and pulled out her grandpa’s folded-up letter with practiced ease. It had found a home there since the day she’d rediscovered it in her desk drawer at work, removed, opened, and reread every time her nerves and doubts got the better of her in the days that followed until all the edges were frayed and the corners were creased. Grandpa Verdi had somehow known all those years ago that she’d come to this crossroads eventually, and he’d offered her a way out via her inheritance. Sure, her mom couldn’t be more opposed to the idea of her taking over a farm, and her father, though less blunt, voiced similar skepticism, but Grandpa Verdi believed she was meant for this. His faith was the only support she had to rely on now.

Then again, perhaps she was following the whims of a man who had gone completely senile before his passing, and this whole thing would go up in flames, leading to a smug chorus of “I told you so” as she came crawling back to Zuzu City with her head lowered in shame.

This rickety plan was chock full of unknowns, and the only thing she knew for certain was that she’d willingly endure a LOT before being forced to hear “I told you so”.