My brain's slowly turning to mush thanks to a weekend with my parents and a two hour train journey home, so:
Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change -- something tiny or big -- and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story. (stolen from
kazbaby
Inspired by Doctor Who's "Turn Left:" Pick one of my stories and tell me a point in the tale that you'd change -- something tiny or big -- and I'll tell you how that one difference would have altered the course of the entire story. (stolen from
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And then it could go two ways. Either Cam eventually manages to get through to Evan and shake him out of it a bit (possibly with help from Laura, because she'd call back to make sure Evan was okay, and he'd mention that Cam kept coming by, and she'd bully him into actually interacting with another person). Or Evan hides away and stops answering the door to him, and ends up either not going back to Atlantis or going back and getting into something destructive, depending on how far you want to go into actual depression or post traumatic streess, and how much you think John would be able to fix things without Cam to help.
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And then from that, it could go any way, really, from one or both of them being shot down and killed in Antarctica to them winding up together at the SGC/Atlantis. Obviously, I prefer to imagine something closer to the latter than the former :o)
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Absolutely! (Though I will confess to a secret love for the right kind of self-sacrificing tragic story...just as long as I can find happy!fic to read afterward.)
This is a nicer future to imagine for John than the one he got. Though I wonder what effect it would have had on his relationship with his father...earlier estrangement, maybe? Or would Cam have managed to head that off altogether? (I tend to assume that the estrangement owed more to John's decision to pursue a military career than questions about John's sexual orientation--he did marry Nancy, after all--but Cam might have changed that. Either John would have cut himself off so they didn't find out, or his father would have found out, which probably wouldn't have had good results. And now I kind of want to read the story where John and Cam get together early in their careers (very quietly, of course, pre-DADT), and John doesn't tell his father, and then one day Patrick Sheppard shows up at John's apartment--or the hospital after John's been injured--and runs into Cam....)
oh, man!
(Also known as: John isn't just rejecting everything Patrick has ever stood for, but now he knows that when John refuses to show up on holidays that he's going to some hovel with this man's enormous family!)
Although, I've always wondered if Patrick could meet Cam's family (if they were "clan mitchell"-crazy, Patriotic to the core, and ultimately accepting) if he would have reconciled (or maybe headded of the disaster that was their big fight) with John. A world where he isn't happy with John's life, but has accepted his son and let him know he loves him would be awesome. But considering how hard headded John is, I'm guessing the apple didn't fall far from the tree.
Re: oh, man!
I'm not entirely sure that patriotic to the core would really have appealed to Patrick. Maybe the ultimately accepting would have won him over, but as you say, I think John gets his stubbornness from somewhere, so maybe not. And I'm really not sure he would have given them the chance.
Re: oh, man!
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I don't know. Because, I mean, clearly his father was still around more when John was getting married, which I assume happened some time after he joined the AF, and then things went downhill more when the divorce happened. I don't think they'd ever have been close, because eventually Patrick would probably have figured out what it meant that John never brought a girl home and I can't imagine him being any good at dealing with his mostly-gay son. But maybe it would have been this thing that they just never spoke of, and the estrangement wouldn't have happened.
Plus, possibly there would have been less pressure on the relationship because John had Cam's family as well-like, eventually he would have drifted out of his father's life because he didn't need to keep pushing for a better relationship because he had others that were better.
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And I kind of think, maybe, in the end, John would have taken Alex and gone back to Atlantis, and they wouldn't have called it a break-up, would have treated it like the start of a long-distance relationship, but it would have been the end, because it would have killed Cam to not be able to see his son any more, and John wouldn't have been able to handle the guilt.