Storytime with Rachel F Hundred

Challenges are always a good way of practicing the art of writing and November’s challenge on Rough Trade intrigued me: what would happen if you took an existing canon character from one show and dropped them into a different world?  Who would they be in this new world?  What would stay the same, what would be different?

Character: John Sheppard

I selected John almost immediately.  He was so unexplored within the show’s canon with only the barest backstory for all that he was the lead character. 

I quickly decided though that I didn’t want to just replicate John’s Stargate background, I wanted to tweak it.  So I very quickly decided to keep his mother alive and to create a second sibling – a sister. 

What I didn’t want to change was John and flying; the background of his Air Force career.  But I also wanted to keep the sense of tragedy in John’s life and the episode Vegas gave me the idea – John leaves the Air Force due to being unable to save someone badly enough that it affects his love of the sky.  As I wanted to ramp up the angst and remembering the episode where he attempted to save Lyle Holland and failed, I made this the tragedy and determined that it was worse for John in this world because he and Holland were in a relationship. So, John in this story is gay.

Canon John is very awkward with women and potentially a reason for that could be that he struggles with his own sexuality.  Ultimately sexual identity is a personal thing; what we choose to present to the world may not be the way we actually identify in the privacy of own minds.  Admittedly I haven’t written a great deal of slash myself although I write gay characters in my original fiction.  Possibly a reason for this is most of my OTPs are het couples and that’s what I tend to write. 

However, I also wanted to acknowledge John’s canon relationship with Nancy.  So they do still get married and divorced but here they are also best friends.   

I definitely wanted this to be a positive story for John a redemption story, so he’s recovered from his tragedy enough to think about falling in love again, and within the plot he regains the sky – flying again.

World: NCIS

I selected NCIS primarily because as it’s one of my favourite shows I know it reasonably well and I didn’t want the challenge of starting a world completely from scratch.  I also wanted to put John somewhere where there was no supernatural, alien or fantastical elements – I wanted a normal world.  

I also wanted to explore one of the NCIS tropes: what would have happened if McGee and David had really not been listening to Tony and something happened – specifically if Tony was taken hostage?

So my jump point became Dead Air.  But the challenge was going to be writing all that fallout from John’s point of view while keeping John’s own character story progressing while he was investigating what had happened.

I also debated at this point whether John would be a NCIS agent maybe former Navy rather than Air Force and decided against it.  If I wanted John to be investigating as NCIS he’d have to be an internal investigator (which I don’t think suits his character) or in a different agency – so FBI was the best fit, even if I had to construct a reason why the FBI got called in rather than NCIS investigating themselves. 

Tony As Love Interest

Having chosen John/John’s backstory tweaks and NCIS/Dead Air, I quickly landed on Tony as the love interest especially as my take on Dead Air was going to put Tony in danger and so create another personal tension for John in the story.

I have debated writing a fic with John and Tony for a while based on the premise that John goes to Washington in the wake of Season 5 of SGA and moves into Tony’s building, establishing a friendship based on their love of football and sport.  So this quickly became the background for their relationship in this story.

I wanted to make sure though that both men were equal – so they’re both Senior Agents, both smart and intelligent, both contribute to the case and the resolutions within the story.

Having worked through these major pieces I began to plot.

The Beginning

I quickly realised that I wanted to establish John in his situation first; to introduce his revised circumstances in this new world both personal and professional, and to introduce his team. 

Personal was easy having already formed the basis of John’s family: I wanted to give him scenes with his family – a call with his Mom, breakfast with his best friend/ex-wife, dinner with Emily, golf with David.  They talk about John’s love life, they talk about his still fraught relationship with his Dad, they hint at the tragedy.

Professional was not so easy as I had to make the decision over whether I duplicated Stargate characters into the story or whether I kept this as ‘new’.  I went with an original set of characters for John’s own team primarily because I was following the logic of…this world doesn’t have a Stargate but characters would evolve on their own planets, on Earth in a very similar way to the Stargate world – they just wouldn’t end up at Cheyenne Mountain going through the gate.  So, that automatically ruled out Teyla and Ronon.  In this world, they’re still in the Pegasus galaxy and there is no knowledge of them on Earth.  I debated about Ford but ultimately continued with the logic – military people would generally go into the military; scientists into science.  I figured in that case, a whole new team would be the way to go.  Plus this would help enforce the notion that this is John outside of a Stargate story.

The first chapters allowed me to introduce his team and to lay down some of the dynamics and characteristics before the main plot of the story kicks in.  But I did want to seed the Dead Air plot and so there are various TV reports through these first chapters where John gets to know about the situation which is the beginning of Dead Air without being directly involved.

The Investigation Begins

So why does the FBI get called in?  I constructed a scenario which I thought was somewhat plausible if unlikely in reality – a whistleblower in NCIS goes outside the chain of command in the agency and gets the Secretary of Defence involved.  The Secretary of Defence decides on the FBI to run the investigation to get an outside view of what has happened and to recover Tony. 

I had to cast the Secretary of Defence and decided I’d put Jack O’Neill in the role.  After all, Jack ended up leading Homeworld Security in the Stargate verse so a segue from his military career into such a position wasn’t unlikely.  I also liked using a Stargate character but one who wasn’t a regular within Atlantis.  Once I’d opened the gate so to speak, it was then easy to sprinkle in a few other Stargate characters – Paul Davis, Aidan Ford and Laura Cadman.  Not enough to take over the story – they all have cameo roles at best – but enough to suggest how I was handling the rest of the Stargate characters.

When I thought about who the whistleblower would be I landed on Kavanagh – he’s not a sympathetic character in Atlantis but he has an arrogance and a self-righteousness, a trait of escalating above his immediate superiors which fits with what I needed.  Here he’s not bought into the cult of Gibbs and doesn’t like Team Gibbs but he acts out of a sense of disgruntlement that they get away with everything and here’s his chance to stop that.

I also started to seed in the usual NCIS characters so Fornell makes an appearance to give his view of the situation and to follow through the show’s usage of Fornell as the usual liaison between NCIS and the FBI.

John and Team Gibbs

It was actually really fascinating for me to write NCIS characters as seen by John.  Gibbs is adversarial and defensive; Abby prickly and upset but wanting to do the right thing;  Ducky sensible and steady; Jimmy nervous but also honest; Vance a politician who is protecting his turf but playing nice.

I also liked the idea that as the investigation progresses, as the story progresses, John gets to see Gibbs’ determination to save Tony and get to the truth; his care for his Senior Field Agent and the rest of his team. 

I loved John’s scene with Ducky in particular exploring the psychology of Team Gibbs and Tony.  It helps define the team to John beyond the professional view Fornell offered and the immediate impressions from the initial confrontations.

I also like how in the story Abby shifts from wary to accepting, especially in the wake of Tony’s rescue even though she doesn’t want to believe the others and specifically Ziva put Tony at risk.

Ziva, McGee and What Happened

I chose to hint and tease at what actually happened all the way through the story to the end.  So the truth unravels bit by bit – from learning they had delayed investigating Tony’s abduction, to Gibbs getting Ziva to admit they had left the scene and she’d managed to knock over the audio device, to Abby admitting Ziva should have known about the playback option, to Tony working out exactly what had happened and facing Ziva with the truth. 

Because I wanted the tease of what was the truth I wanted McGee completely out of the picture so his getting injured was a good plot device to do that.

I actually really like Ziva as a character but the show sometimes wrote her in a very unsympathetic way and those flaws give fanfic writers a great deal to play with.  But in my head I couldn’t see Ziva and McGee just switching the radio off bored with listening to Tony (as much as I love some of the fics which go in that direction).  So what happens starts out as just an unfortunate consequence of a couple of bad decisions; it’s been a couple of hours nothing has happened, they need a bathroom break, they’re still listening…they just don’t take the threat seriously…and get caught out.

I did choose to have Ziva herself make the decision not to tell McGee immediately – to panic and try to cover that something had happened because she didn’t want to get into trouble only for that to compound her initial error because she delays help getting to Tony; enables the Military At Home group to blow up a house and injure and kill.  And once discovered, to try and again pretend it was all an accident.  She places her hope on Tony forgiving her as usual and moving on.

I definitely wanted that final scene of truth to be between Tony and Ziva – mostly because this is Tony’s moment within the story.  And it’s a moment of epiphany – Tony knows she left him deliberately, that her actions contributed to others getting hurt, and there is no forgiveness for that.  It’s a final straw. 

I also wanted to allude to the fact that Ziva’s actions also come out of a place of jealousy and fear because Gibbs was likely to chose Tony’s side as he did in Israel (than for different reasons to the ones they each believe perhaps) and when she fails to convince Tony she chooses to fight – but as he realises she’s trying to provoke him into killing her the way he killed Rivkin.  It’s not a particularly happy ending for Ziva but I like to think Tony’s words in the epilogue – his decision to remember the best of her rather than the worst helps to give some balance to making Ziva the bad guy.

Military At Home

Of course the other bad guys are drawn from the Dead Air episode itself.  I realised I was going to need to extrapolate from the bare details in the episode.  I liked the idea of taking the Haskells out of the equation because they were a large part of the original episode and focus instead on the two villains: Matt Lane and Zach Nelson. 

If we use the main change being Tony’s abduction – what then happens to make that a reality?  Matt Lane the postman was the most obvious choice – he recognises Tony leading to his abduction.  And this gave me the excuse for the Haskells’ exit – they blow up the house to cover their tracks.

I liked building a wider political conspiracy around the Nelsons – especially given everything that was happening in America at the time I was writing with the US Election and the surprising win of Donald Trump. 

Gloria Bridges really came into being because in the episode she is talking with the Nelsons at the barbeque.  Hence her affair with Zach and becoming a key witness to events.

I liked how John and his team followed the same crumbs as the original episode so Deeter Johanson, etc. to get to the truth.  Firstly with where Tony was being held and later with what the target was going to be for the missing bomb.  Bethesda just fell into place once I had Tony in hospital. 

John Regains the Sky

I always had the ending of John rescuing Tony in a helicopter flight in mind from the outset.  I still feel the scene is a little clumsy but I like that John is forced into flying and the symmetry of his losing the sky in the past because of his love for Lyle and his inability to save him, and regaining the sky for the future because of his love for Tony and success in saving him.

John and Tony

This is a getting-together fic.  I liked the idea of the story peeling back John’s feelings – from attraction to his family/loved ones knowing he was interested in someone, to the realisation as the story progressed his feelings were deeper than simple attraction and affection.

I really liked the idea of John realising Tony’s feelings via the live wire – because there is no other point of view in the story apart from John’s it was a good device to reveal Tony’s inner thinking – that they’ve been dating but haven’t yet admitted it.  And I like how John lets Tony know and reassures him when he’s rescued.

The kiss in the apartment was a way of actually finally getting them together but keeping them constrained – John is meant to be protecting Tony but it is a signal they’re going to be together and are on the same page.  

Epilogue

Originally, I hadn’t plotted the epilogue but as I’d finished writing with time left over for the challenge (primarily thanks to being off sick for most of the challenge), I decided to add an epilogue as the end with Ziva was a very angsty place to leave it.

I liked the idea of book-ending the story – so following some of what had happened at the beginning and focusing on John and his relationships only with Tony in the mix; breakfast with Nancy, call with his Mom, party with the rest of the family.

I also wanted a scene with John and his team; to show things have moved on and John is promoted, just as similarly things have changed for Tony professionally.

For Tony as well I wanted to show him as being happy with John and accepted by John’s family; to give a glimpse into his friendship with McGee in the wake of what happened and for him to determine his future.

Admittedly I love the party scene at the end from the banter with the Sheppard family, Jack meeting Sam, and the final scene with John and Tony together – looking forward to the future.

It felt like a really positive and hopeful place to end it.

Sequel

Yes, I have an idea.  No, I’m not committing to write it but I may very well return to this ‘verse in the future.

fin.