Vigbean nation!
Have you thought about the Road and Snowpiercer crossover?
Pairing: Joseph Wilford x Father (the character played by Viggo was nameless in both the original book and the film)
Both films are post-apocalyptic and I even have a vague idea of how to logically connect them with each other.
In The Road, some catastrophe has shrouded the sky in clouds, blocking out the sun entirely. And what happens when there’s no sun? It gets bloody cold. Now, what went down in Snowpiercer?
Exactly, a global deep freeze. This AU, however, assumes that despite the cold, life outside the train is somewhat possible, though miserably uncomfortable (and logically even worse than the conditions in the train’s tail-end cars). But just before the events of this AU kick off, things start getting even grimmer.
(And here’s where I deeply regret not rewatching the film or the series before writing this post, as my memory of both is rather hazy.)
In The Road, Father and Son were trekking toward the coast (probably the western one, but in this AU, let’s say they’re heading east). Their journey could very well take them through the ruins of Chicago. In the original The Road, they’d likely have skirted around the city, but in this AU, the world outside the train is less populated, and there’s little need to hide from bands of cannibal raiders. As we recall, at the end of Snowpiercer’s first season, Wilford’s train linked up with the Good Guys’ (aka the Main Characters’) train in the ruins of Chicago. Now, we’d need to bend the canon a bit and have the train stop, allowing for some chaos that makes it possible for outsiders to sneak aboard.
If we completely throw canon out the window, we could tweak the premise even further to justify how they get on the train, but then it’s less an AU and more… who knows what. I’ve got an idea about this, but I’ll flesh it out in a comment to this post someday.
The Father, as we know, was clearly a doctor before the apocalypse—likely a highly skilled one, perhaps even with a narrow specialisation. Doctors in post-apocalyptic stories are always in demand because, well, people drop like flies to ensure the protagonists’ lives aren’t too rosy.
Here’s where we hit with the main question of this AU: how does Wilford cross paths with Father, and how does Father impress him enough to be welcomed into his inner circle?
Let’s just say it happens somehow. Father becomes Wilford’s doctor, and Wilford uses Son as leverage—after all, the Son’s health has greatly improved thanks to the train’s relative comfort, so it’s in the Father’s best interest to keep his head down and do his job diligently. Amidst all this, a slow-burn connection develops between Father and Wilford, laced with a hefty dose of power imbalance and UST, which eventually evolves into RST.
And yes, if I ever write this, I’ll absolutely fill in all the gaps in this fic’s concept and ensure a guaranteed happy ending. Because we’ve got enough tragic endings in real life as it is.
Thanks for sticking with this wordy post!
PS: I'd be thrilled if my post inspired you to some creative fanworks. And I will be glad to help you, if you need ^-^
