Fanfic / Tara Sheppard

Fanart by Marcus S Lazarus

Tara Sheppard by fmfan1980 is a crossover of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the Stargate-verse, starting just after the Atlantis expedition return to Earth for the first time. Upon returning to Earth, John Sheppard receives a note from his father’s deceased ex-secretary, Laura McClay, which reveals that her daughter Tara is John’s half-sister, asking John to visit Tara as soon as he gets the note. John’s visit occurs just in time for him to save Tara from her ‘fated’ death at Warren’s hands, setting off a chain of events that will change the lives of the Scooby Gang and the SGC forever.

This story is a Recursive Fanfiction of the author's Doorstopper fanfic An Extraordinary Journey.

The story can also be found here and here.

Tara Sheppard contains examples of:

• All Your Powers Combined: The Asgard have been experimenting with blending the Ancient gene with other DNA samples to cure their genetic degradation, with Tara’s DNA providing the final catalyst as she is revealed to possess the Furling gene.
• Ascended Extra: A minor example; although Tara is a comparatively new addition to the Sheppard family, and there are both legitimate and personal reasons why she can’t be a bridesmaid, Dave makes arrangements for her to act as joint ring-bearer with his best man so she can take part in the ceremony.
• Black Eyes of Crazy: Comes up for Willow, for obvious reasons.
• Call-Back: Buffy in particular is very hostile to John and the SGC staff early on because she thinks they’re just another branch of the Initiative, until Daniel Jackson and Elizabeth Weir convince her that they’re not trying to step on her toes regarding how she deals with things in Sunnydale.
• Canon Welding: As thanks for Tara’s help saving his people, Thor provides a full history of how demons fit into what the SGC know of Earth’s history.
• Changeling Fantasy: Tara basically gets this; after the McClays were outright abusive to her for years, Patrick Sheppard gives his daughter a warm hug on their first meeting while Dave does his best to give Tara a role in his wedding, and Tara affirms that she’d be glad to take Patrick’s last name.
• Crossover Relatives: The key premise of this storyline is that John Sheppard and Tara McClay are half-siblings, since John’s father had an affair with Tara’s mother while she was working as his secretary.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Willow mentions her past experience with magical addiction, but John assures her that he understands people make mistakes and he accepts that so long as she makes Tara happy.
• Death by Adaptation: Anya, Jonathan and Andrew are killed by Warren, while Angel, Gunn, Cordelia and Connor are all killed by the First’s forces, although Anya is confirmed to have Ascended after her death and to date no bodies have been found for Gunn, Cordelia or Connor (obviously Angel wouldn’t leave one) even if it’s unlikely they survived the explosion.
• Demoted to Extra: Kennedy would have been Willow’s next girlfriend after Tara’s loss, but now she is little more than a Potential with a high opinion of herself, trying to get into the core Scooby Gang but incapable of realizing that she can’t just force herself into the group.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Explicitly features after the SGC and Buffy save Willow and Tara from Rack, Amy and Warren, with Doctor Beckett advised to treat them as though they're coming down from a drug high.
• Evil Former Friend: Amy becomes this for Willow in particular.
• Evil Is Petty: Warren and Amy’s vendettas against the Scoobies are based on fundamentally petty motives, and Warren even destroys a small hotel and kills fifteen people just to try and kill John when John had only had one direct confrontation with Warren at that point (and the 'Warren' John fought was actually a robot that Warren had apparently set up to get destroyed as part of his plan anyway).
• Exact Words: After John learns about Tara’s ability to sense deception, when he wants to conceal the truth from her before she learns about his own secrets, he’s very careful to pick his words so that she’s given a truthful context even if she can tell he’s hiding something.
• Fate Worse than Death: Suggested for Warren; Amy is sent to a coven to get the equivalent of therapy while keeping her magic contained, but since Warren has been declared legally dead after he faked his death with one of his robots, it makes it easier for the SGC to just toss him in a dark cell due to how dangerous he is and the inability to put him on trial given the unconventional nature of his crimes.
• For Want Of A Nail: John arrives in Sunnydale just in time to draw Tara away from her and Willow’s bedroom before Warren arrived to try and shoot Buffy, saving Tara’s life and starting an entirely new chain of events.
• Ignorant of Their Own Ignorance: While the SGC are quick to adapt to accept the supernatural into their worldview, Warren gets outmaneuvered, captured, and sent off to a very dark prison because he has no idea what John and his allies are capable of.
• In Spite of a Nail: The First attacks and the Ori come to the Milky Way galaxy regardless of the other changes in Buffy’s life or the SGC’s new discoveries.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Tara serves as this for Willow, as shown by what happened to Willow after her death in canon and expressed by Willow’s fears of what she could become if she had lost Tara if John hadn't shown up.
• Loophole Abuse: After the SGC learn that they can’t recruit Buffy due to an old deal with the Watchers’ Council, they find a way around this by officially offering support to Tara; as a result, they can give Buffy support if she needs it, as technically such aid is being provided because she lives with Tara, who is a close relative of a high-ranking member of a top-secret government program, rather than because Buffy is the Slayer.
• Place of Power: In a sense, the Hellmouth serves as this for John; while in proximity to the energies of the Hellmouth his Ancient gene is boosted to the point that he can heal injuries and use telekinesis, allowing him to heal Buffy after she’s shot by Warren, although this boost quickly fades once he leaves Sunnydale.
• Put on a Bus:
  • After their attacks on Tara and Willow, Warren and Amy are each put in prisons specifically intended to hold them, Warren put in a very dark prison by the SGC while Amy is stripped of her magic and confined by a coven in Devon.
  • Tara thwarts the Trust’s attempt to infiltrate the SGC by spotting something wrong with Caldwell the first time she visits the Daedalus, allowing Caldwell to be freed before the Goa’uld within him can do anything significant.
  • Jasmine’s plans are put on hold after the First’s attack apparently takes Cordelia out of the picture and kills Connor.
  • John, Buffy, Willow and Tara are all reduced to observers when the Prior plague strikes Earth while they’re attending the wedding of John and Tara’s brother Dave, leaving them isolated from their allies due to the country-wide quarantine until the SGC find a vaccine.
• Relative Error: When Dave initially meets Tara, he wonders if John’s come home to get help after getting Tara pregnant, but is quick to apologize once John confirms that’s not the case and is later embarrassed when he learns who Tara actually is.
• Spanner in the Works: The moment Tara is beamed aboard the Daedalus, she identifies the Goa'uld in Colonel Caldwell, and is able to help the team knock him out so that the Goa'uld can be interrogated and extracted, cutting off most of the Trust's plans in regard to Atlantis.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Aside from the obvious detail of Tara’s survival, Tara’s aura-reading abilities help her spot heart damage that would have likely led to Patrick Sheppard’s fatal heart attack a couple of years later in canon, giving him the chance to get it treated before said heart attack. Less directly, Anya ‘escapes’ her death by Ascending (even if she 'dies' a year before she would have in canon), and the Furling gene in Tara’s DNA provides the Asgard with the vital breakthrough needed to save them from the genetic degradation that would have driven them to mass suicide.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Warren blows up the Sunnydale police station and part of a hotel, killing over twenty innocent people just to kill Jonathan, Andrew and John while faking his own death (although John escapes before the blast goes off).
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Despite everything they've done to the Scoobies, Warren and Amy are arrested rather than killed as they're only human.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • Subtly done, but Tara gains greater confidence in herself as she learns more about her new family.
  • Technically for Anya, considering that she becomes one of the Ascended; she’s now bound by the rules of non-interference, but she has already bent the rules to comfort Xander and give Giles a crucial warning.
• What Could Have Been: An in-universe example of this; while Patrick is having an operation, he is visited by Laura in the guise of a coma fantasy, who gives him a brief glimpse of the best possible outcome if she had told him about Tara in the past, as he witnesses himself and Laura watching John, Dave and Tara playing together at the beach as children.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Willow nearly succumbs to this when Rack and Amy give her a dose of dark magic, but she fights it off out of love for Tara long enough for Buffy and the SGC to save them.

---