Addendum to "Companionship": what other characters were up to
A couple weeks ago, 
athousandsmiles read my Early Edition/Doctor Who crossover, "Companionship", and in talking with her about it, I mentioned I had built up a whole background story in my head about what happened to the EE characters during The Year That Never Was. She was kind enough to ask about it, and since I wrote it out at one point in an email to
serrico...
It's kind of too long for a comment, so here it is.
First of all, even though he's in the story, Crumb would like to point out the bitter irony that he--the character who has no established family and very few friends outside of the crew at McGinty's--had to live through a year in which everyone else was mourning their losses. He has no idea why he was spared, and he's pretty sure he wouldn't like the reason if anyone gave it to him.
(Also, I should say before I get to the fun stuff, that I had in my head all this other stuff that might have happened, specifically to Gary and Marissa, between the end of the EE's run and the year all this was supposed to happen (2007? 2008? something like that)--and in the end I just kind of compressed everything, and/or wrote around it. It would probably have added too much backstory, and added too many characters to deal with, to "Companionship," and frankly, it would have *sucked* to have to directly address, say, the fact that I figured Marissa was probably married by then with at least one kid--but what would have happened to her husband and her child (who is, to me, Ellie, always)? I did not have the heart, though I made a couple of really, really oblique references to the possibility. Also, I figure by then Gary and Brigatti were either in some kind of established, but not necessarily consistent, relationship, if that makes any sense--or they'd had the relationship and played it out and decided to move on, and damned if I can bring myself to write about Gary with anyone else.)
So there's that. The rest is more fun to think about, for certain values of "fun":
Miguel followed his brother Joey into one of the work camps, because he wasn't about to get separated from the only family he had in Chicago. They got stuck there, and Miguel ran out of film too quickly, but he spent the nights tracking down broken pencils and bits of charcoal, and reminding Joey of which details to add to his drawings of Chicago-That-Was.
Lois and Bernie probably organized some kind of neighborhood relief group in Hickory, IN with their mad gardening/carpentry/curling skills.
Patrick Quinn, I think, would try to help the kids he taught in that kindergarten in Bend, OR--maybe by being some kind of caretaker in the work camps, maybe by sneaking them out and hiding them somewhere. When he gets discouraged, he reminds himself that he has to keep going, because that's what Mr. H. would want him to do. [God, Patrick's goofy optimism vs. The Year That Never Was just breaks my heart.]
When everything went pear-shaped on the streets of Chicago, CPD put out a call for all hands on deck--but Toni Brigatti caught Paul Armstrong eyeing a picture of his wife and kid. She wasn't his superior, wasn't even his partner, but she told him to go get his family somewhere safe. That was back when she believed there were still safe places. She hasn't heard from him since, and she tells herself, when she thinks about it, which she tries not to do, that he must have escaped the worst of it, that he must be with Meredith and the kid doing his best to keep them both alive.
She tried to track down Hobson [there's a reference in the story to finding a file folder with his name on it in an office--she's the one who found it], but couldn't get to him once they shoved him in the federal prison in Wisconsin. Since she'd done undercover operations in the past, she worked her way into the leadership of the camps for the sole purpose of smuggling the most vulnerable people out. Some of them, like Whitney, she sent to Marissa; some she helped reunite with their families; some she just sent on their way, not that there was a better place that she knew of to which she could send them. Eventually she teamed up with a group of people who'd been chemists, engineers, and students at the U of Chicago; she used her position to smuggle...certain materials...into the steel mills and factories. None of the Master's minions could satisfactorily explain the series of accidents that took out machinery and transports at his outposts along Lake Michigan, but never seemed to hurt any of the workers.
And Chuck. Chuck was caught out in Hollywood. He used one of his production company's cameras and their store of film to document as much of the year as he could--the horrors, the resistance, and the small kindnesses that made him unbearably homesick when he stumbled into them. After the year rewinds, he doesn't remember a thing, but every once in a while, when he's watching daily rushes, he finds a frame or two superimposed over the day's shoot that doesn't make any sense; a face, a shadow, a blur of violence. He can't even name what he's seeing, but every time it happens, his gut clenches and he calls home to make sure everyone's okay.
All this, of course, assumes they all lived through even the first day. Who knows what really happened. Good thing time can be rewritten. Up to a point.
This entry was originally posted at http://akamarykate.dreamwidth.org/359797.html. You may comment either here or there.
athousandsmiles read my Early Edition/Doctor Who crossover, "Companionship", and in talking with her about it, I mentioned I had built up a whole background story in my head about what happened to the EE characters during The Year That Never Was. She was kind enough to ask about it, and since I wrote it out at one point in an email to
serrico...
It's kind of too long for a comment, so here it is.
First of all, even though he's in the story, Crumb would like to point out the bitter irony that he--the character who has no established family and very few friends outside of the crew at McGinty's--had to live through a year in which everyone else was mourning their losses. He has no idea why he was spared, and he's pretty sure he wouldn't like the reason if anyone gave it to him.
(Also, I should say before I get to the fun stuff, that I had in my head all this other stuff that might have happened, specifically to Gary and Marissa, between the end of the EE's run and the year all this was supposed to happen (2007? 2008? something like that)--and in the end I just kind of compressed everything, and/or wrote around it. It would probably have added too much backstory, and added too many characters to deal with, to "Companionship," and frankly, it would have *sucked* to have to directly address, say, the fact that I figured Marissa was probably married by then with at least one kid--but what would have happened to her husband and her child (who is, to me, Ellie, always)? I did not have the heart, though I made a couple of really, really oblique references to the possibility. Also, I figure by then Gary and Brigatti were either in some kind of established, but not necessarily consistent, relationship, if that makes any sense--or they'd had the relationship and played it out and decided to move on, and damned if I can bring myself to write about Gary with anyone else.)
So there's that. The rest is more fun to think about, for certain values of "fun":
Miguel followed his brother Joey into one of the work camps, because he wasn't about to get separated from the only family he had in Chicago. They got stuck there, and Miguel ran out of film too quickly, but he spent the nights tracking down broken pencils and bits of charcoal, and reminding Joey of which details to add to his drawings of Chicago-That-Was.
Lois and Bernie probably organized some kind of neighborhood relief group in Hickory, IN with their mad gardening/carpentry/curling skills.
Patrick Quinn, I think, would try to help the kids he taught in that kindergarten in Bend, OR--maybe by being some kind of caretaker in the work camps, maybe by sneaking them out and hiding them somewhere. When he gets discouraged, he reminds himself that he has to keep going, because that's what Mr. H. would want him to do. [God, Patrick's goofy optimism vs. The Year That Never Was just breaks my heart.]
When everything went pear-shaped on the streets of Chicago, CPD put out a call for all hands on deck--but Toni Brigatti caught Paul Armstrong eyeing a picture of his wife and kid. She wasn't his superior, wasn't even his partner, but she told him to go get his family somewhere safe. That was back when she believed there were still safe places. She hasn't heard from him since, and she tells herself, when she thinks about it, which she tries not to do, that he must have escaped the worst of it, that he must be with Meredith and the kid doing his best to keep them both alive.
She tried to track down Hobson [there's a reference in the story to finding a file folder with his name on it in an office--she's the one who found it], but couldn't get to him once they shoved him in the federal prison in Wisconsin. Since she'd done undercover operations in the past, she worked her way into the leadership of the camps for the sole purpose of smuggling the most vulnerable people out. Some of them, like Whitney, she sent to Marissa; some she helped reunite with their families; some she just sent on their way, not that there was a better place that she knew of to which she could send them. Eventually she teamed up with a group of people who'd been chemists, engineers, and students at the U of Chicago; she used her position to smuggle...certain materials...into the steel mills and factories. None of the Master's minions could satisfactorily explain the series of accidents that took out machinery and transports at his outposts along Lake Michigan, but never seemed to hurt any of the workers.
And Chuck. Chuck was caught out in Hollywood. He used one of his production company's cameras and their store of film to document as much of the year as he could--the horrors, the resistance, and the small kindnesses that made him unbearably homesick when he stumbled into them. After the year rewinds, he doesn't remember a thing, but every once in a while, when he's watching daily rushes, he finds a frame or two superimposed over the day's shoot that doesn't make any sense; a face, a shadow, a blur of violence. He can't even name what he's seeing, but every time it happens, his gut clenches and he calls home to make sure everyone's okay.
All this, of course, assumes they all lived through even the first day. Who knows what really happened. Good thing time can be rewritten. Up to a point.
This entry was originally posted at http://akamarykate.dreamwidth.org/359797.html. You may comment either here or there.