Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Quinn awoke in the usual way: her alarm clock blared music at her in repeated 5 minute intervals, which she soundly ignored until her father knocked on the door to wake her up.

Teeth: brushed. Shower: done. Clothes: changed.

She bounded downstairs for breakfast two steps at a time. Her dad was, expectedly, manning the stove- he didn’t work on Thursdays, so he had elected to stay in the silly old dressing gown that, to Quinn, always conjured up images of smoking pipes and armchairs. Her mother was, unexpectedly, sitting at the table finishing her makeup.

“Morning, Mum. You haven’t already left for work?”

Mum dropped her lipstick back into her purse. She looked as camera-ready as ever, blue contacts in, hair bleached in a pristine blonde bun standing out starkly against soft brown skin. Quinn had always been told she looked like her mother, but she couldn’t feel more different.

“I have a little extra time today since my interviews aren’t until later. I thought I would see you off,” she said, turning towards Quinn. “Are you really going to wear that old thing to school?”

Quinn bristled slightly. “Yeah, well, it’s my favourite jacket.”

The clothing in question was a green army surplus-style jacket, plastered all over with patches, badges, and pins. It had practically become an extension of herself since Uncle gave her the jacket and first couple of patches three years ago. The old canvas rendered Quinn practically a walking billboard for a number of the latest edgy teen bands and television shows. It was, to her, art.

To her mother, on the other hand, it was a tattered old jacket that was certainly not part of Quinn’s school uniform, and would look much better in a dump.

“Quinn…”
Quinn gave an exaggerated sigh and plopped down in the chair opposite. “I always swap it for my blazer when I get to class, I’m not going to get in trouble. But I’m not leaving it here! I’m going to the arcade with my friend after school.”

Mum cocked a brow at her. “And did you think to ask before you decided this?”

“Dad already said I could!”

Dad jolted in surprise at being mentioned and awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “Er, yes, well, just remember to be back before dark. Breakfast is ready!”

He hurriedly scooped eggs and sausage onto dishes, but Mum rounded on him before he could duck out of the discussion. “Arthur, has it ever occurred to you that maybe you shouldn’t always just let teenagers do whatever the hell they want?”

Dad sat two plates on the table. “Well, I mean, I trust Quinn not to do anything stupid. Trust is important, right?”

Quinn nodded in fierce agreement before tucking into her eggs.

“So is communication,” Mum said icily.

Dad groaned and leaned on the stove, head in hand. “Tricia, do we really have to start back on this first thing in the morning?”

Their back and forth kept on for a bit longer, but Quinn tuned it out. She was getting pretty good at that. It came with 15 years of practice.

“Alright, well, I’m going to work,” Mum finally sighed. She stood and grabbed her bag in one fluid movement, pausing to give both Quinn and Dad a kiss on the cheek. “I might run late with my interviews tonight but I’ll try to be home for supper.”

“Have a good day at work, honey,” Dad said with the enthusiasm of a deflated balloon, but she had already gone out the door. He glanced over at Quinn. “It’s time for you to be off yourself, isn’t it?”

Quinn messily shovelled the last bit of eggs off her plate into her mouth, much to Dad’s consternation, and leapt up to give him a hug. “Bye, Dad. If Uncle stops by, tell him I said hello!”

“Alright, alright. Have a good day at school, darling.”

The first few minutes of the walk to school were perfectly normal. The country lane was muddy with puddles, but then, it would have been more unusual if it were dry. Quinn skipped through a couple, getting her socks damp, but she didn’t care. A bird passed overhead, then another one.

She found herself staring up at the sky after the third. She thought she had seen a huge blackbird out of the corner of her eye- but she mustn’t have, because there was no way it could’ve gone out of sight so quickly.

Quinn looked around. She hadn’t made it quite to the village yet, and home was only just out of sight behind. There weren’t even any trees blocking her sightline, only hills and fields. Nevertheless she had an uncomfortable feeling she couldn’t quite shake, and there didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

Tentatively, she took another step forward.

Something appeared to fall out of thin air directly in front of her, and she jumped back screaming.

The thing- person- shot up like a rocket, screaming in kind. “You! Who are you!”

Quinn blinked.

Standing in front of her was a girl who looked almost- but not quite- exactly like her.

The girl was a fair bit more dishevelled, for starters. Her hair looked like it had never seen a brush in its existence and her clothes were rumpled and strange looking. Quinn noticed a strange something on her arm, like someone had put a tiny television in a wristband. She had the same face Quinn saw in the mirror every day, though, the same brown hair and tan skin.

But she looked tired, she looked angry, and she looked like she was drawing back with a sharp rock.

Quinn jumped back another foot, falling back onto her rear. “Who are you ?”

The stranger narrowed her (familiar) eyes at Quinn. “Tell me who you are and I’ll tell you who I am. Deal?”

“Er,” Quinn stuttered. She stood and brushed herself off. “My name’s Quinn. Quinn C. Dent. Are, erm, are you alright? Do you need to go to hospital or anything…?”

The girl slid the rock back into her pocket, but still had a look in her eyes like a dog sizing up a car. “No,” she barked. “Dent?”

“Dent,” Quinn nodded.

The girl seemed to think about it for a moment. “My name’s Random,” she grunted finally. “Random Frequent-Flyer Dent.”

Quinn’s mind raced with all the implications, the possibilities, and- immediately tripped over the hurdles and took itself out of the running. Something terribly strange was going on here. She hadn’t the faintest clue what it was, but it was something .

“Random? That’s a nice name,” she said.

“I know it’s weird. Long story,” Random grunted. “Is this Earth?”

Quinn looked around. “Er, yeah. Where else-?”

Random had stopped paying attention and was instead crouched down in the road, running her hands over the dirt. She had a look about her like she was experiencing some great truth and not, as she was to Quinn’s eyes, just getting her hands dirty for no reason.

“Where- where did you come from? Like, you weren’t here and then- poof!- you were.”

Random looked up at her with wide eyes. “I’ve never been on Earth before.”

“Why- I mean- how did you get here?”

Random looked around, but didn’t seem to find whatever she was looking for. “My bird brought me here. I wanted to go to Earth.”

Every answer Random gave only made Quinn more confused, and she started to feel the panic rise in her chest. “Alright, well, if you’ve never been to Earth, where did you just come from?”

“My dad’s house,” Random said simply, running her fingers through the tall grass beside the lane. “He crashed in a rocket in this little village a few years ago and stayed there I guess. It’s pretty boring. He’s kinda boring too. Before I was there I spent a lot of time on spaceships with Mum or in timezone daycare.”

Random looked back up at the sky, seeming in thought. “I wonder if either of them are looking for me? I mean, Mum probably doesn’t care, but…”

“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Quinn said, but she could hardly follow the conversation.

She saw a figure coming round the corner. Lucky break , she thought, because if anyone would be able to figure out what the hell this was it’s probably him.

“Uncle!”

Uncle startled, his satchel swinging forward like he was prepared to fight with it before realising who it was. “Quinn? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

“I’m not skipping on purpose! Only…”

She motioned down at Random, who was kneeling in the dirt again, staring at a bee on a wildflower.

Uncle looked between Random and Quinn, Quinn and Random. “Hello?” he tried.

Random looked up at him, then jumped to her feet. “If you’re after your ship I took, I don’t have it anymore!”

Uncle raised his hands peacably. “I didn’t have a ship. Why don’t you walk with Quinn and I to her house? It’s just up the road here, and you can tell me who you are on the way.”

Random glanced between him and Quinn aprehensively. “Alright,” she said.

When Quinn got in the door, Dad was asleep upright in his chair with an empty mug of tea on the table beside him.

“Dad!” she called.

He startled awake, looking as lost as an ant on the Underground. “Huh? Quinn? Good God, surely I haven’t been asleep all day…”

“No, only, something really weird is happening. Uncle’s outside.”

“Something weird is always happening wherever Ford goes,” Dad snorted. “If you’re skipping school this better be something exceptionally strange.”

Chapter Text

It was, Arthur had to admit, exceptionally strange.

Outside, arguing with Ford Prefect over something utterly incomprehensible, was most certainly his daughter. A very ragged, ill-kempt, and oddly dressed version of his daughter, but surely he would recognise his own child.

The main problem with that was his daughter was standing next to him, in the same mostly-polished state and school clothes he watched her leave home in that morning.

He looked at Quinn next to him.

He looked at Quinn? arguing with Ford.

He looked at Quinn.

He looked worriedly back at Quinn?

He finally settled on the Quinn he was reasonably sure was his.

“Quinn, lamb, what’s happening here?”

“I think she’s an alien,” Quinn-next-to-him provided.

“I’m not an alien!” Quinn-next-to-Ford snapped.

“She’s not an alien,” Ford said. “She’s from another universe.”

“He’s an alien,” other-Quinn said, pointing at Ford.

“Uncle’s not an alien,” first-Quinn said. “He isn’t an alien, is he, Dad?”

“I wonder sometimes,” Arthur said.

“Anyway,” said Ford, “we’ve got problems. There’s an extra kid in this universe that isn’t supposed to be here, and that sort of thing usually means it’s gone all dodgy.”

Ford’s been watching too much Doctor Who again, Arthur thought.

What he instead said was, “Where are your parents, dear?”

Other-Quinn looked at him like she was only just realising he was there. “You look like my dad, but you can’t be him, you haven’t got a beard.”

Arthur blinked. “And who is your dad?”

“Arthur Dent,” she said matter of factly. Quickly, she pulled something out of her pocket. “You’re an Earth person. Can you fix his watch for me?”

Arthur gaped at the little pile of things the girl handed him. Sure enough, it was the very same watch he currently wore. In pieces, and those pieces seemed like they had seen better days a decade ago, but it had the wrong name and everything on the back.

“My God, you really are from another universe,” he croaked.

“Well?” she demanded.

Dizilly, he handed the watch bits back to her. “I’m going to make a pot of tea, you’re all welcome to come in.”

Arthur willed his hands to stop jostling his tea around in its cup. They weren’t listening very well. He had hoped after the stressful start to the morning that he would have a chance to wind down, nap for a bit, catch up on some reading, the sort of activities that didn’t make his nervous disposition become centre stage. His whole person would be quivering like a startled chihuahua if the anxiety didn’t have more surface area in which to dissipate, so it focused on his hands.

The other little girl had informed him her name was Random Frequent-Flyer Dent. It struck him that her parents were rather cruel, before striking him again that he and Tricia were her parents. At least, some versions of themselves were.

A migraine was starting to creep up behind his eyes.

Ford paced across the room and back again, deep in thought.

Quinn was deeply engrossed in whatever Random was showing her on that little screen she had. Arthur thought it was a watch or something, a wristband at first, but to his horror the thing actually appeared to have been surgically implanted into her wrist.

A sudden ringing interrupted the near silence.

Random looked up, startled. "What's that awful noise?"

"The phone," Quinn said.

"A phone? That box on the wall? Where's the screen, does it pop out of that handle?"

Quinn blinked. "Screen? What are you talking about?"

"You should probably answer that, Arthur," Ford said.

Arthur broke out of whatever trance he was in and shakily stood to answer the phone. The moment the receiver hit his ear he could hear Tricia talking at him with rapid speed.

"Tricia- slow down, dear- what are you talking about?"

"I'm coming home early, I've gotten a very big opportunity we need to talk about."

Arthur looked around. "Well, we could use your help here. There's, er, a situation."

"How much of a situation could there possibly be in Cottington of all places?"

"A big one. A very… very bizarre situation."

Tricia sighed over the phone. "I'll be there soon."

"Love you, dear," Arthur said meekly.

He kept the phone to his ear until he heard the dial tone.

Quinn looked up as Arthur replaced the receiver. "What's up?"

"Your mother's coming home."

"This early?"

"Good thing too," Ford said. "We need to put as many heads together as we can get."

Meanwhile, three spacefaring adults arrived in London.

One, an interstellar reporter by the name of Trillian Astra, landed her little starcruiser safely and privately in a rooftop carpark. With its inbuilt SEP field, she hardly worried about being seen.

The other two materialised together about ten feet off the ground in a cow field. For the second time in 24 hours, Ford Prefect found himself accidentally being crushed into the mud underneath Arthur Dent.

"Get off," he grunted.

"Sorry," Arthur said. He stood and helped Ford do the same. "What happened?"

Ford brushed himself off and looked around. "Looks like we got shucked somewhere through probability when we fell off the Perfectly Normal Beast."

"We didn't die, did we?"

"If we were dead, I would hope I wouldn't still have a headache."

Arthur looked around now. The recognition hit him with a ton of bricks. "This is Cottington," he yelped. "We're on Earth! But…how?"

"Great, stuck here again," Ford groaned.

"It is great," Arthur said. "Random was going here!"

Ford shook his head. "We could be anywhere in probability."

"There's still a chance!"

A shadow passed overhead. By the time Ford looked up, whatever cast it had gone.

"Well, if we're searching, we better get started fast. I have a feeling we don't have much time."