The Professor Laytor serie is a serie of games about puzzles and uh... well, puzzles. While there is some plot going on, it's clearly not what the games prioritize, and i mean, good for them. Not ever single video game has to be a plot masterpiece- my favorite game IS Caesar III, after all.
But still, there is a story, clumsy as it is. The first game involves the titular Professor Layton meeting a girl named Flora, and being tasked by her father to take care of her now that said father is dead. Which would be very heartwarming, if the sequel games didn't make it sound like Layton fucking hated Flora; he's consistantly shown avoiding her, keeping her out of the loop, and generally making her feel alone and distrusted.
In the fandom, I often see people rewrite their relationship to be closer to found family. I can see the appeal; aside from the fact that everyone likes a found family, no one wants to think of their blorbos as an asshole, and frankly I think this situation is less "Layton as a character hates Flora" and more "the writers hate women and are playing every trick in the book to keep Flora's relevance at a minimum, which incidentally makes Layton into a huge dick."
But personally I would be very interested in seeing the situation adressed as-is. Flora was promised a family in Layton, and she is Not Getting That- how long is she going to chase this ideal? How long is she going to project her hopes on Layton before she realizes that he simply never saw her as someone close to begin with? What of Layton? He doesn't strike me as someone actively malicious about that kind of stuff- but I could perfectly see him being a bit awkward about someone latching so heavily onto him. Or maybe he just has hugely different expectations than Flora about that relationship- after all, she is probably an adult (?), I could hardly blame him for thinking "yeah she can handle herself I'm just gonna do my own thing in the corner" blissfully unaware that her mountain of trauma means she's expecting him to actually hang out with her sometimes.
It's a situation that sucks because no one is happy with the way things are, and no one is really in the wrong- but by god, can it devolve into deliciously ugly feelings. I want Flora to fucking explode at Layton and call him out for constantly abandonning her, I want Layton to reflect on everything about the two of them- not as in character bashing, but as in two people sucking real bad at communicating and experiencing the very natural friction that would come with it.
I don't think their relationship is doomed, mind you- but I do think it would require a lot of work. It would require Flora to fuck off to college/canada/idk literally anywhere else, and learn who she is outside of her father's legacy (which does include Layton). And it would require Layton, after some reflection, to do a bit more effort in involving Flora in his life. I imagine that after a lot of yelling and then three years of radio silence, they would tentatively reach out to one another and learn to be normal friends. I don't think they would actually ever reach "found family" level of closeness (that ship sailed a while ago lmao) but they text each other twice a year, and when they're in the area they visit each other.
Anyways I'm not nearly invested enough in this scenario to write a fic about it, so I wrote this post instead. You're welcome.