When their paths crossed - Commentary

TLoP:

Just like we did for the first story we wrote together, What have we become? (from now on referred to as 'WHWB'), Jlocked and I would like to give you a look 'behind the scenes' of When their paths crossed.

Jlocked:
I don't know if any of you readers will get anything out of this, but writing it is just so much fun, so please indulge us.
I suppose a good start would be to talk about how we got the idea for this story. When we decided we would write a second story together, the first issue was which fandom to write for. We were hesitant to do another Sherlock-thing because we did not want to 're-invent' John and Sherlock after having just gotten to know the WHWB versions so well. Harry Potter, Avengers and Doctor Who were discussed I believe.

TLoP:

That's right. I think that the original plan was that this would become a Torchwood/Doctor Who fic, but soon we decided to bring in the Baker Street Boys as well. We just couldn't leave them behind after having had so much fun with them. That meant that we needed a case for them that would be right up Torchwood's alley.

For some reason I was very eager to make it a decapitation case. But then the question was why the victim was beheaded, and by what sort of alien?

Jlocked:
I think the decapitation thing actually started with WHWB. We considered it as the case that brought John and Sherlock back together (oh, by the way, if you haven't read WHWB: SPOILERS!), but then decided on Harris instead, because we wanted to wrap that case up. So, it seemed logical to use the idea for the start of the new story. I let TLoP do the most of the thinking there. She really is good with the gory stuff.

TLoP:

Oh, you're right, I had forgotten my decapitation dreams already started in WHWB :P

Anyway, trying to explain the decapitation case was more or less what created Eliza's species. The first we knew about them was that they were humanoid, had purple eyes and that they were all true Ravenclaws.

Jlocked:
Yes, the purple eyes were very important. And of course the search for knowledge. And that scientistish disregard for their subjects. Eliza wasn't 'murdering' her fellow student. She was just experimenting on her.
Another thing that had to be settled quite early was the nature of John and Sherlock's relationship. In WHWB there was quite a lot of focus on whether or not loving John was distracting Sherlock from his work. We figured that when they had been together for some time, they would work out how to use this distraction in a beneficial way to divert Sherlock when he was becoming frustrated or bored.
I don't see this as him 'using' John, more as John helping him. And it's not as if John wasn't getting anything out of it. And then there was also that other aspect to their relationship which became more obvious once Jack was thrown into the mix.

TLoP:

Oh, believe me, John didn't complain as he was 'helping' Sherlock there...

But of course he is a tiny bit possessive. And it's obvious enough that Sherlock loves that as well.

Jlocked:
'A tiny bit'? Is that what we're calling it?
But yes, Sherlock was quite fond of John wanting to reclaim him every once in a while, and it was not beneath him to try and encourage this mood in John. He really is a bad boy, that Sherlock. Having Jack around would of course be an almost endless source of such opportunities. And Sherlock and Jack were just having too much fun to realise that not everyone was benefiting from their little games.

TLoP:

What else would we expect of Sherlock than being a bad boy - we all know who is writing him :P

Poor little Ianto. He's such a great source of angst, which is very important to some people.

Jlocked:
I am choosing not to comment on that remark...
But yes, Ianto was a gift for an angst-addict like me. He was actually, I think, the main reason we settled on doing a Torchlock fic. As you may know if you've read WHWB, I based the character 'Ian' on Ianto. His unrequited crush on Sherlock had been so much fun to write and I really liked the character, so I thought it would be interesting to give 'the real thing' a try. So I asked TLoP if she thought she could write Jack and it all sort of built from there.
Now one would think that handling two main characters each would leave us with our hands full, but no... We just had to add 'the girls' to the mix.

TLoP:

Or rather, the girls worked themselves into our story and all we could do was watch them and let it happen. After all, Eliza couldn't just disappear after being caught. There wasn't much choice but to keep her in the story. And then she needed something to do, so there were the eyeless bodies. Eyeless bodies meant tentacles... And, slowly, Cy was created, and I have to admit that I almost immediately shipped her with Eliza, even if Cy hadn't got a name yet and it wasn't certain we would really 'use' her character in our story. In the end, she was so strong that the story became almost completely about Elicy. We never meant that to happen, since we had actually wanted to bring in the Doctor and River Song.

But let's have a word on Eliza first. We had an alien and her species, but no names. I decided that the aliens listened to musicals to get their first impression of "intelligent" life on earth, because that gives them their language, music and stories all in one. So her name would be Eliza Valjean, because they liked My fair lady and Les misérables, and every time someone asked Eliza whether she had French ancestors, she was all confused where that impression could come from.

The name of the species... Wait, let me have some fun first. Jlocked, what's the name of her species again?

Jlocked:
That is so not fair... But I actually think I finally remember. Dadheenku, right? Or something like that. I do realise I could just open one of the documents and check, but that would feel like cheating. I don't know how many times I just wrote something like "[the whatevers]" or "[insert name here later]" while writing the story. I hope we caught them all in editing.

TLoP:

*giggles* Dadhennku!

But I'm proud that you didn't cheat.

Jlocked:
That was damn close. Better than 'the Da... Duh... Whatevers...'
Why don't we just move on to you explaining how you came up with it?

TLoP:

Oh, right. Since neither of us really had an idea for a name, I had started doing keyboard smashes, to see if I came up with anything that sounded like an alien name. Unfortunately it didn't really work to get anything that was possible to pronounce :P So they would be the aliens that couldn't pronounce their own name. Or in Dutch: "De Aliens Die Hun Eigen Naam Niet Kunnen Uitspreken". And suddenly there was a name, putting the first letters together: Dadhennku.

Jlocked:
A name that was absolutely impossible to remember. Unless of course you worked from the original sentence. Then it was very easy to recreate, as TLoP so often reminded me. Only one minor flaw in that brilliant suggestion: I don't speak Dutch!

TLoP:

*giggles* Poor thing.

Anyway, Eliza always reminded me a little of Luna Lovegood. I also had some fun with a friend, imagining what a house had to look like according to the aliens. A little spaceship-cosiness combined with what makes a house human and very normal: a tower.

Jlocked:
Eliza was a genuinely interesting character and we grew very fond of her almost from her first word. I think initially we didn't intent for her to be part of the story after Jack and Ianto picked her up, but very soon we knew that we would want more interaction between her and the boys. And then of course there was that thing with Sherlock's brain.

TLoP:

It's prettyyyy.

Still a shame we didn't have her literally dancing around Sherlock with her hands waving above his head.

Jlocked:
It would have been hard for her to get away with. And I really liked the focus of her fascination. The true reason for her really really really wanting to get her hands on his brain was, of course, only defined at the very end, but let's save that for later.

TLoP:

Good idea.

The actual problem was that Gwen would be abducted. As long as they had no clue where she was - and that was important, because we wanted to bring Sherlock in - Eliza could stay at the Hub. But we needed some things to happen in between, to keep it interesting.

Jlocked:
Torchwood is never just working at one thing at the time. So apart from travelling across the country to pick up decapitating, alien med-students and losing their staff, Torchwood also had another murderous alien to deal with. The mysterious eye-stealing tentacle-monster.
And having recently lost their doctor, they got the idea to enlist Eliza for the job.

TLoP:

Time to tell more about "tentacle thingie"?

Jlocked:
Yes, the 'we're not making this one cute and fluffy'-alien. Cy.
Looking back, my idea for her was probably influenced by the 'squid-baby' in Men in Black, but I didn't think about it at the time.
All I had to work with were 'tentacles' and 'purple'. I wanted to make it small, because I thought it would be more interesting to have something roughly hobbit-sized running around killing people, than some giant mauling monster. And we had agreed that it had to be female. But I only had a sketchy image in my mind when it suddenly became time to describe the thing Jack was carrying into the Hub. So Cy was more or less 'born' as I wrote the description of her. And she very quickly evolved into my favourite character ever. I mean, how can you not love her?

TLoP:

She is perfect. Soon we were both saying that we wanted a Cy of our own - before we realised that that was a bad idea, as our eyes weren't purple and probably very daeezdii. And she's incredibly interesting, thanks to all the brilliant ideas Jlocked had about her species.

Jlocked:
Brilliant ideas? I was literally making it up as I wrote it. Wait a minute... Is this one of the things I shouldn't be telling the readers?
Anyway: there were a lot of gifs, pics and comments around at the time about Benedict being very tactile (then again, when are there not a lot of those around?). I've studied the different forms of intelligence/cognisance (audio, visual, tactile and kinetic) and I thought it would be interesting to have someone who learned almost solely through touching. Then of course I got to the notion that Cy's species cared very little for things they could not touch. And then it followed that if they became emotionally attached to someone, they would need to stay physically attached to them as well. So, Cy latched on to Eliza and that was it.

TLoP:

Cuddles! Fluff! How happy I was.

Before the Queen of Angst came up with the idea of killing Cy of course.

But before that, they could have some fun together. Jlocked wanted to make a Galaxy Quest reference as the boys were watching them ("That's just not right"). I didn't even know yet that it was a reference at that time :P

It was also nice that Cy would have her own reasons to be almost as interested in Sherlock's brain as Eliza was. They made a great team.

Jlocked:
They did indeed. And writing the physical aspect of it was so much fun. I got too use all kinds of verbs like rippling and snaking that I rarely find use for when writing about boring humans. And of course having Cy's tentacles go exploring was totally irresistible.
But my very favourite part, I think, was writing Sherlock's explanation about 'sensing love'.

TLoP:

I'm still waiting for you to publish your treatise on sensing love :P

But I really like that bit too. Even if it makes Sherlock a bit of a silly romantic :P

I also liked putting in Eliza's view on love and 'friends'.

Jlocked:
Sherlock was allowed to be a silly romantic at the time. John had been hurt and he'd been afraid of losing him. That kind of shock is not so easily shaken off.
Eliza's views were interesting too, though they seemed to cause Ianto some distress.

TLoP:

Which gave us the chance to focus more on Jack and Ianto's relationship, which actually is quite interesting. It wasn't easy to get a good view on how Jack would react to Ianto's feelings here.

Jlocked:
I think it worked pretty well. We were juggling three very different relationships that contrasted and affected each other. It was the real driving force behind the story. Gwen being kidnapped wasn't even secondary. It was pretty far down the list.

TLoP:

Ah well. She wasn't really in danger anyway. Unless the Dadhennku would have started to experiment on her :P

Jlocked:
They almost should have. Her abduction was so textbook as the last thing she remembered was being in her car and her having no memory of the time that had passed.

TLoP:

Ssh. That was just convenient. We had more interesting things to focus on.

Jlocked:
Like killing Cy. And making everyone feel miserable. Yay.

TLoP:

*huffs*

Eliza's parents were lightly based on Corpse Bride parents. They seemed to fit the situation. But there was no way they would let Eliza take her 'pet'...

And that was why Eliza needed to become an adult very quickly. A clever human brain would make quite the discovery. But there simply wasn't enough time and she'll never forgive herself for being too slow.

Jlocked:
Let's hope she never finds out that Cy is not waiting patiently for her in Cardiff.
We had agreed that they should be separated and I was thinking on how Cy would react, and then I just had this mental image of a crying Ianto begging Jack to help her and Jack's solution being to shoot her to put her out of her misery. The image was very strong and I managed to 'sell' it to TLoP. Especially the detail about Jack hugging Ianto with one arm and keeping his head down so he won't see it coming was good I think.

TLoP:

Yes, that made the mental image so much stronger, and like we kept telling ourselves, it was all for the story.

Even if it felt as if our heart was being ripped out and shredded. Poor Eliza. I still believe that one day she will come back for Cy and who knows what happens then.

Jlocked:
I loved and hated writing that part. Both the separation of the girls, Cy's death and Ianto's breakdown as he cradles Cy's body.
But it made for a great story. I hope.

TLoP:

So do I.

Is there anything else we want to clear up?

Jlocked:
Can't think of anything at the moment. Except of course, that we could not resist bringing the boys back together again. So there is a sequel called When their paths crossed again. This time the Torchwood boys come to London, but I don't think we should tell any more about it.

TLoP:

Just go read it, and don't forget to review ;)

Then there's only the alternative ending Jlocked wrote for chapter 24...

Eliza had just put the scalpel down on Sherlock's skin, ready to push it in, when the noise disturbed her and she looked up. "Oh, really. Do you always have to spoil the fun?" she pouted at Ianto. "And you were so nice at the start."

Ianto aimed his gun at Eliza's head. "Put the knife down and step away from him." He said. Then a tentacle lashed out of nowhere and hit his wrist. The shot hit the wall and the gun flew out of his hand.

"Thank you, Cy. It can get dangerous to let boys play with their toys." Eliza gave Ianto a stern look. "I'd really expected better of you. Sherlock promised me I could do this."

Ianto shrugged. "She's right Sherlock. You did promise." He turned around and went up to make a cup of tea. John was going to need it.