#6 Hours

[crazy_magpie]

Disclaimer: I own neither Without A Trace, nor the characters involved. They belong to Warner Brothers Television. I make no money from these works, they are for entertainment purposes only.
Title: "3 a.m."
Fandom: Without A Trace
Character: Martin Fitzgerald
Prompt: #6 Hours
Word Count: 8,150 (approx)
Rating: R (language)
Spoilers: Up to

Comments

[huntersglenn]

Reply, Part II

I'm a big John Carter fan, as you can probably tell from the icon, and there are a lot of similarities between Carter and Martin, although Carter's parents had a much better reason for abandoning their children than Martin's parents seemed to have had. I do know that there are differences between what was conceived by the show's creators for Martin and what ended up being written. I've seen an interview with Eric Close where he mentions Martin coming from a well off background, and his father being a politician and an appointee, and as of yet, I haven't seen that in the show, but I've only seen Season 1, season 2 up to Trip Box, none of season 3, some of season 4, but not all of it, almost all of season 5 and none of the most recent season. But my own research into the FBI indicates that the only appointed position is that of Director - the Assistant Director is always an FBI agent, even though he is appointed by the Director. I've also seen excerpts of Shadows and saw no evidence of great wealth at Bonnie's house - but I don't know if the episode states if she's Victor's sister or related to Martin through his mother. I can see Martin having some things in common with Jack with the moving around aspect - Jack as an Army brat and Martin with Victor being assigned to various parts of the country. I see Martin as being born in New York, and that being the home base, since Bonnie's right there. I can see them moving around as Victor moved up through the ranks, but always considering New York as home. As for the wealth, while Victor would have a nice salary now, he wouldn't have started out with a high salary. So, if there's wealth, it's coming from Martin's mother, not from Victor's job. There must be money somewhere, since by season 4, Martin has a maid - but we don't know if she was there before he was shot, or if she's someone his parents hired for him post-shooting. All we get is the mention that she quit to go back home.

I do think that he's not as conservative as he seems to be - and that his mismatching of suit, shirt and ties is just one way that he shows that, only nobody seems to catch on.

And yes, I am anal enough where real life and TV not meshing bothers me .

Did any of that make sense? I wish I could point to a piece of my own fanfic and say, there he is, but I can't do that. My first story has ended up being Danny's POV all the way, so it's Martin as Danny is seeing him, and it's also pre-slash, so if you're not into that, then it wouldn't matter anyway .

[crazy_magpie]

I think there are similarities to how we see them, though. :) I, too, see the sports angle, but a lot of the clues in the series seem to point towards basketball (the game he wants to go to with Sam is basketball, he criticises Danny's basketball game) and given that he's not overly tall (whereas Victor is), I see it as being a family sport that he played because he was expected to. It's also pretty canon that he's a runner... I think that's on his own.

In The Bus we get an idea that he ran away from home at least once, when he talks about hitchhiking in a container truck. I get the idea he wanted parents, perhaps, but not the ones he had.

I picked up on the same 'mother' thing you did, and when Martin was shot, Victor said his mother was at the hospital 'making arrangements'. The fact that she was doing so rather than the man with the political clout seems to indicate she's rather controlling, probably even more so than Victor is. The only other thing we know about the family is that he has at least one sibling, which is where he got the 'couple of nieces' mentioned in Season 2.

I've always gone on the theory that Victor worked his way up the ladder, but rather quickly, and that the wealth was in the family before he joined the FBI... perhaps not 'rich' but definitely uppper-middle class.

I think one of the big differences, when you mentioned the 'calculating' is that I tend to narrate from Martin's POV, and I think he thinks he's more calculating than he is.

Season 3 and Season 5 give us the best glimpses of the 'geek'. He knows everything about alien conspiracies and model trains.

I think I personally see him as an overgrown seven-year-old. He thinks he's smarter than he is, throws temper-tantrums, sulks, or lies when he can't have his way and definitely wants to please authority figures and show off, but with a rebel streak (in season 1 he helps Jack piss off Victor... and you get the idea he does it less to please his supervisor and more to piss off his father), and more than a little bit of being scared.

I'm not sure if the shirts and ties are less 'lack of conservative' and more 'see how far I can push the rules before someone stops me'. There was a lot of the pushing of the rules in the start of Season 3. Since the FBI has a pretty strict dress code, the mismatched/bright colours might have a lot more to do with petty rebellion than anything else.

But that's just my 2 cents.

[huntersglenn]

I think that with the sports thing, that perhaps basketball was Victor's sport of choice, while football was Martin's. Of course, this is based mainly on Martin's comments in one episode about how when he was a certain age, he was busy tossing a football around with his friends. They throw out tidbits, but nothing concrete.

I can easily picture Martin running, but not away, but rather to - say his father's been transferred across the country and he's determined to get to his aunt Bonnie.

The thing that got me about Martin's mother making arrangements at the hospital is just how much of an unmotherly thing it was to do. Martin wasn't out of the woods yet at that time, and in my experience, a mother would have been there purely to be at her child's bedside, holding his hand, and not making arrangements for whatever. I've read a few fanfics where the mother is not Martin's biological mother, but a step-mother, and they use that to explain the distance between the two of them. That could make sense, especially with the way Victor words things, and that we never see or hear of Martin talking to his mother. We know that he talks with his father - in Season 3, when Viv was facing the surgery, Martin talked to Victor about it and got the name and number of a doctor from him for her to consult. It seems to me, based solely on my relationship with my sons (one is 17, the other 21), that Martin would have shared his worries about Viv to his mother, and not to his father. This isn't based on any father-son conflicts having to do with work, but just based on the things my sons come to me for versus what they go to their father to talk about.

One of your stories that I really like, although I can't remember it's name, is the one where Danny is picking on Martin to the point where when he starts to mess up the edges of Martin's eraser, Martin loses it and then passes out from hyperventilating in Jack's office. I think that that story definitely shows your view that Martin thinks he's more calculating than he really is because it's so obvious that Jack and Danny can see right through him and know just the right and wrong buttons to push .

I don't know if you read any of the Magnificent Seven ATF AU stories, but I'd love to see you tackle the whole twins-separated-at-birth thing for Vin and Martin. Superficially, the two men would seem to be opposites, but deep down, I think they'd be very similar - both runaways, both with a tough-guy persona, both driven to help kids, both rebellious whenever and however they can be. And it'd be a hoot to see just how much ATF stuff Martin could fit in his pockets if he visited their office - maybe he'd like a nice, shiny ATF badge to go with the one he stole from his father way back when .

And thank you for asking me how I view Martin. Having to think about it to the point of writing it out has definitely helped me firm up some of how I see him, and question some other aspects.