jedibuttercup (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jedibuttercup) wrote2009-08-26 10:10 pm
jedibuttercup) wrote2009-08-26 10:10 pm
Entry tags:
Fic: All Made Up (BtVS/Eureka; PG-13; 5/?)
PG-13, BtVS/Eureka; 3000 words. (For August 26; 5th of "No Place Like Eureka.")
Dawn stared at her dad for a long moment as it sank in, then drew a deep breath, and another, trying not to freak out.
Title: All Made Up
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dawn stared at her dad for a long moment as it sank in, then drew a deep breath, and another, trying not to freak out. 3000 words.
Spoilers: B:tVS 5.05 "No Place Like Home" & 5.13 "Blood Ties"; Eureka esp. 1.8 "Right as Raynes" & 3.14 "Ship Happens"
Challenge:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
twistedshorts - August, Day 26
Notes: 5th in series. As Dawn is 17 here and not 14, I elected to avoid the full-on "Get Out!" experience.
"Daaaaaawn," Zoe sighed, punching a button on her controller to pause their game. "Are you even paying attention?"
Dawn winced and jerked her eyes away from the clock, making an apologetic face at her friend. "Sorry. It's just-- I haven't seen Dad in person since I wigged out on him in the infirmary yesterday. What if he still doesn't remember me? What if he's just faking it for the phone calls? What if I embarrassed him, running out like that? What if--"
"Calm down," Zoe said, rolling her eyes dramatically. "He's your dad, Dawn. And he's alive. Trust me, been there, done that, even if my dad was never gone for as long as Dr. Stark was. It's okay to be upset and worry that he's going to leave you again. But looking at the clock isn't going to make the time go any faster."
Dawn scoffed and shifted on the bed, flopping over to her stomach for a better grip on her controller. She was not going to break into tears again, not even in front of just Zoe. "You don't have to try and sound so wise and everything, it's not like you're any older than I am," she said, scornfully.
Zoe didn't release the pause on the game, though; she sat there several seconds longer, staring at Dawn. Then she sighed, playing with the ends of her blonde hair. "Not to sound cliché or anything, but it really isn't the years, it's the mileage," she said. "You never went through the über-rebellious phase I did, except about Allison, which is totally understandable; I mean, if Dad had remarried when I was a little kid-- if we'd lost Mom for some reason-- I'd have thrown the mother of all shit fits. But I know from trying to reject a parent before they can reject you, okay? And trust me, it's never worth it."
"If you say so," Dawn said, sniffing a little-- because of allergies, totally not because she was upset.
Everything was going to be perfect. Her dad was going to show up, and everything would be okay, and he'd take her home and Momison would stop looking like she'd been stabbed in the heart all the time and Kevin would start smiling again, and then she'd have a baby sister and they'd all be one big dysfunctional family. That was the way it was going to be; it was stupid to worry about it. Just because every other person who'd randomly shown up in Eureka when they weren't supposed to be there had turned out to be a clone or a malfunctioning A.I. she hadn't even known she should be calling brother or a potentially contagious organic computer, didn't mean there was anything seriously wrong with the dad-shaped person who'd reappeared in the time maintenance lab.
It didn't, she repeated savagely to herself, jabbing at the buttons on her controller after Zoe finally unpaused the game.
It was so satisfying, the way the evil minions poofed into dust when she stabbed them with just the right pixellated weapon. She and Zoe had campaigned this new vampire-themed MRPG through all the basic zones already, and were due to gain entrance to the Delerium plane if they could just level up a couple more times before the weekend; clues dropped by Fargo (whom she suspected of being half the mind behind designing the game, since it only ran on Eureka's specialized OS) suggested that the newly released area was going to be seriously sweet, stocked with all kinds of new enemies and magic weaponry and craft items and things. So even if things weren't okay, it wasn't like she was going to just sit around all mopey Queen of Pain. She didn't care what the latest not-Beverly said; cooperative video gaming was a productive coping method, so there.
She was thoroughly absorbed in a hack-and-slash battle against a gang of uncreatively named "Chaotic Demons" with disgustingly well-rendered, drippy, slimy horns when S.A.R.A.H. spoke suddenly overhead, startling Dawn into jumping and dropping the controller again.
"Welcome home, Jack. I detect an elevated heartrate; did you have a stressful day?" the computerized voice said, carrying in from the main room of the Carters' bunker home. "Your beer is pouring now."
After a murmured reply from Zoe's dad, it continued, announcing the name Dawn had been waiting to hear-- plus a couple of others she hadn't been expecting. "Dr. Stark, it's good to see you again. Dr. Blake, Dr. Fontana; greetings. Would you like refreshments as well?"
"See? Told you the time would go faster this way," Zoe said, nudging Dawn's arm as she paused the game again and shut it down, saving their progress to continue later.
Dawn swallowed; her mouth was starting to go dry with nerves again, but focusing on the mystery of why her stepmom and stepmom's college roommate had tagged along was successfully distracting her from a full-on panic. Momison-- okay, if she had someone else staying with Kevin and wanted to talk about this as a family, she could see her tagging along with Dad; though doing it at the Sheriff's instead of waiting 'til the Starks went home seemed a little strange. Tess, though?
"What is she doing here?" she muttered under her breath.
"Who, Dr. Fontana?" Zoe shrugged. "I don't know, maybe she's here for me. I mean, I am planning your stepmom's baby shower with her, and I've kind of let that slack the last couple of days. Which-- oh God." Her face went suddenly blank with comprehension, and she sat up straight on the bed, controller dropping from her hands. "Dad's going to be so disappointed; Dr. Blake's not going to need him to be her birth coach anymore, is he? He was really looking forward to that."
Dawn wrinkled up her nose. She and Zoe usually just agreed to disagree on the issue of parental romance, but she'd seriously thought this particular topic was behind them. "I thought he was over her," she said, frowning as she tucked a strand of loose hair out of her face. "No offense, you wouldn't make a bad step-step-sister, but she's still totally stuck on Dad. I mean, I haven't talked to her much in the last couple days, but..."
"Oh, I know, I know, I'm not saying he still wants to date her," Zoe waved a hand between them as if erasing words from a whiteboard. "It's just, he didn't exactly get to do a lot of that dad-type stuff when Mom was pregnant with me, so...." She trailed off with a sigh, turning to stare at the darkened TV panel. "He just... missed out on a lot of things when I was little because of his job, and he was thinking of this as a second chance at being a good role model. Especially since Aunt Lexi left; don't tell him I told you, but he was kinda looking forward to having a couple of little boys underfoot. Besides, I'm pretty sure he's crushing on Dr. Fontana now, anyway."
"Seriously?" Dawn asked, surprised. The few times she'd crossed paths with Tess while the scientist had been in the sheriff's proximity, they'd been totally snarking at each other, like he'd used to do with Dad. "When did that happen?"
Zoe smirked. "Get this," she said, leaning forward and speaking in a low whisper. "She showed up at his car while he was watching for-- well, us-- with a tofu pizza the other night. And he ate it. And then when she said she was all sad about maybe missing out on that meteor shower? He totally volunteered to go with her. Why did you think he was out late last night?"
"No way," Dawn breathed back. Zoe was right; that was total crush behavior-- on both their parts. She'd heard enough about Tess, and endured her visits often enough over the years since Momison had married Dad, to know that the scientist had been terminally awkward around guys in college and hadn't improved much since. If she was snarking and offering food and watching stars with him, she was totally weak in the knees over him.
"Way," Zoe nodded, authoritatively. "I wasn't so sure about her at first, but she makes him smile, so I'm letting her have a probationary period before I go evil potential stepdaughter on her ass."
"Really," an interested voice spoke up from the open doorway of Zoe's bedroom. "Now that's an intriguing development."
Dawn gulped as she looked up to see her dad's face; she couldn't help but remember the blank incomprehension looking back at her when she'd run into the infirmary to see him-- but he was smiling at her now, that gentle, warm smile that his employees almost never got to see. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs in relief; and then she was bolting up off the bed, tripping over the disordered blankets in an effort to fling herself into his arms. "Dad," she gasped, blinking back tears again.
"Dr. Stark!" she heard Zoe exclaim behind her, as he wrapped Dawn up in a hug.
"Hello, Zoe," her dad replied, voice rumbling tangibly in his chest where Dawn was pressed against him. "Keeping my daughter out of trouble while I've been gone?"
"Oh, I've been trying to," Zoe replied, wryly. "But you know Dawn."
"I do indeed," Dad chuckled. "Though I suspect the good Sheriff would say the same thing about you."
"Hey," Dawn objected half-heartedly into his shirt on both their behalves. "Right here, you know."
"Mhmm. So how about you move 'right here' downstairs for a little while, Zoe?" he replied, pulling back a little to set Dawn at arm's length from him. "I've got a few things to talk to my daughter about." He had that worried little thinky wrinkle between his brows, and Dawn's stomach sank again.
"Uh, sure. I'll just...." Zoe quickly finished stowing the controllers for the game, then ducked sideways out of the bedroom door, giving Dawn a thumbs up and an encouraging expression where her dad couldn't see it.
Dawn gulped as he turned and shut the door behind her friend. "Just so we're clear," she blurted, after he finished ordering S.A.R.A.H. to activate the noise-canceling system to isolate the room from the rest of the bunker. "You really do remember who I am, right? And you're not dying, or from an alternate universe, or secretly an organic computer, or anything else like that, are you?"
He chuckled, then sat down on the bed and patted a space next to him. "Take a deep breath, sweetheart. No, I'm not any of those things, and yes, I remember. Except for a specifically delimited span of time, which we've come up with some theories about. That's why I brought the others here; we have some things to discuss as a group. But I thought you deserved to hear it from me alone, first."
She swallowed, still nervous. "So you think you've figured out why you forgot me at all in the first place?" she asked. "Which, uh, which memories are still gone?"
He studied her a moment, then touched her cheek, brushing that stubborn heavy lock of hair back behind her ear again. "The ones before you turned eight years old. And-- we think it's more that they were never really there to begin with," he said, seriously.
Dawn stared at him for a long moment as that sank in, then drew a deep breath, and another, trying not to freak out.
"Are you saying I'm not-- real?" she managed to ask after a moment, the specter of Callister in her mind's eye again. He'd always said Callister was the only one of his artificial intelligence experiments to succeed, but what if he'd been wrong? What if he'd got it right earlier than that? They'd had organic computers in Eureka twenty years ago, after all; just look at the A.I. following Henry around up at Global Dynamics. What if Dad had made himself forget that he'd succeeded, like it was part of the experiment, and now it was all falling apart?
"Of course you're real," her dad objected instantly, pulling her into another firm hug.
"But if I wasn't here..." she objected, faintly. "How? I remember being here. I don't remember being anywhere else. If that's all made up, what else is?"
"Shh, shhhh," he soothed, rubbing wide circles on her back. "Nothing, I promise. I had Henry do a DNA test just to be sure, and you're really my daughter. I'd have kept you regardless, believe me, but you really are my daughter, one hundred percent, and nothing's ever going to take you away from me."
Dawn gulped, sniffing back incipient tears again. That he'd been worried enough to have the test done-- not good; but that it had turned out the way it had-- "You mean that?" she asked, plaintively.
"I mean it," he replied, firmly.
"Then-- what's the what?" she asked, thinking things through a little more thoroughly now that the first blinding moment of WTF-ery was fading. "You have to have some idea what happened. And it has to be weird, or you wouldn't have wanted to break it to me alone."
"You sure you want to hear it?" he said, pulling back again to look her in the eye. Stupid truth-assessing habit; she had the hardest time lying to him like that, and he knew it.
"I-- I think so," she said, biting her lip. "I mean, better to rip the Bandaid off all at once, right?"
"Good girl," he said, smiling encouragingly before putting on his Serious Scientist face again. "The short version is, we believe you're our daughter from a future alternate timeline, sent back to nine years ago because of some crisis we couldn't avert. We don't have any idea why we'd have brainwashed everyone instead of leaving ourselves some kind of note or warning, other than wanting you to be as happy as possible, but it's the only explanation we can come up with that fits all the available evidence."
Dawn blinked at him, digesting that for a moment. From the future? She'd never heard of a case of time travel that hadn't gone wrong. But if it finally had-- if she had--
"Wait," she said, frowning at him. "We?" Did that mean her other parent-- "Is, is Allison..." she asked, suddenly breathless, forgoing her usual nickname for her stepmom.
"No," he said gently, shaking his head. "It would be a lot easier if it were; Ally would be thrilled. I don't pretend to understand it, but..."
"Does that mean it's Tess?" Dawn blurted, knowing it had to be one of the other people downstairs. "Or, oh God. Zoe?"
Her dad's face twisted up at the first name in a similar degree of antipathy; but he snorted in amusement at the second, and she blew out a breath, relieved. That would have been seriously freakish.
"Close, but not quite," he said. "It's-- and I know this will sound strange, but it's part of why we think you were sent from the future-- your other parent is Jack." He paused, making a face, then clarified, "Sheriff Carter."
"Because there's so many other Jacks we know," Dawn said dryly, as she processed the notion. "You mean to say I have two dads? Like, literally two dads?" she had to clarify.
"Genetically, anyway," he said, nodding in confirmation.
"Does he know?" she asked, hesitantly.
Her dad nodded again. "Henry told us together," he said, cautiously. "Are you okay with that?"
Like she had a choice; but-- she supposed it wouldn't be so terrible. She was at his house several days a week anyway, and he tended to treat her in a kind of distantly affectionate way, like he did most of Zoe's friends, except a little more intently with her because of her dad.
"Is he okay with it?" she asked. What Zoe'd said earlier about him wanting more kids around soothed her nerves a little; but she did kind of come full grown, and all.
"A little nervous about how you'll take it, but pleased too, I think," her dad assured her.
Good. Good. And-- "This means Zoe's my sister now, right?" she said, perking up as that sank in. The past couple years, Zoe had been a better friend to Dawn than anyone except Kevin, who'd for some reason always been able to connect better to her than to anyone else in their age bracket; as a linguistics-and-humanities type geek rather than the typical hard-science nerd, Dawn hadn't fit in particularly well at Tesla High. Zoe was refreshingly normal, but still smart enough to keep up with her; no, she wouldn't mind calling her sister at all.
He quirked a smile. "Poor compensation, I know; but yes. Technically, she's your half-sister."
Dawn took a deep breath, then let it out, feeling exhausted and overloaded and a little weirded out and relieved and cautiously happy all at once. "Yeah," she said, tossing her head a little as she pulled her 'tude back together, "I think I'm good with it. It could have been a lot worse, anyway."
"That's my girl," he said, smile widening. "Ready to go downstairs, then? We're not going to share it with the world yet-- it would be just a tad difficult to explain-- but there were a few people we thought should know right away, and Carter's got copies of all the paperwork for you to tuck away in those diaries of yours."
"One last question?" Dawn said, as she stood up to follow him out.
"Anything, sweetheart," he replied.
"Does this mean I get to call him Mom?" she asked, impishly.
The long-missed sound of her dad's laughter filled the room, warming her heart-- and finally convincing her, down deep where it counted, that everything was going to be okay.
She took a deep breath, then followed him down the stairs with a smile.
-~-
(x-posted totwistedshorts)
Dawn stared at her dad for a long moment as it sank in, then drew a deep breath, and another, trying not to freak out.
Title: All Made Up
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds are not.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dawn stared at her dad for a long moment as it sank in, then drew a deep breath, and another, trying not to freak out. 3000 words.
Spoilers: B:tVS 5.05 "No Place Like Home" & 5.13 "Blood Ties"; Eureka esp. 1.8 "Right as Raynes" & 3.14 "Ship Happens"
Challenge:
twistedshorts - August, Day 26Notes: 5th in series. As Dawn is 17 here and not 14, I elected to avoid the full-on "Get Out!" experience.
"Daaaaaawn," Zoe sighed, punching a button on her controller to pause their game. "Are you even paying attention?"
Dawn winced and jerked her eyes away from the clock, making an apologetic face at her friend. "Sorry. It's just-- I haven't seen Dad in person since I wigged out on him in the infirmary yesterday. What if he still doesn't remember me? What if he's just faking it for the phone calls? What if I embarrassed him, running out like that? What if--"
"Calm down," Zoe said, rolling her eyes dramatically. "He's your dad, Dawn. And he's alive. Trust me, been there, done that, even if my dad was never gone for as long as Dr. Stark was. It's okay to be upset and worry that he's going to leave you again. But looking at the clock isn't going to make the time go any faster."
Dawn scoffed and shifted on the bed, flopping over to her stomach for a better grip on her controller. She was not going to break into tears again, not even in front of just Zoe. "You don't have to try and sound so wise and everything, it's not like you're any older than I am," she said, scornfully.
Zoe didn't release the pause on the game, though; she sat there several seconds longer, staring at Dawn. Then she sighed, playing with the ends of her blonde hair. "Not to sound cliché or anything, but it really isn't the years, it's the mileage," she said. "You never went through the über-rebellious phase I did, except about Allison, which is totally understandable; I mean, if Dad had remarried when I was a little kid-- if we'd lost Mom for some reason-- I'd have thrown the mother of all shit fits. But I know from trying to reject a parent before they can reject you, okay? And trust me, it's never worth it."
"If you say so," Dawn said, sniffing a little-- because of allergies, totally not because she was upset.
Everything was going to be perfect. Her dad was going to show up, and everything would be okay, and he'd take her home and Momison would stop looking like she'd been stabbed in the heart all the time and Kevin would start smiling again, and then she'd have a baby sister and they'd all be one big dysfunctional family. That was the way it was going to be; it was stupid to worry about it. Just because every other person who'd randomly shown up in Eureka when they weren't supposed to be there had turned out to be a clone or a malfunctioning A.I. she hadn't even known she should be calling brother or a potentially contagious organic computer, didn't mean there was anything seriously wrong with the dad-shaped person who'd reappeared in the time maintenance lab.
It didn't, she repeated savagely to herself, jabbing at the buttons on her controller after Zoe finally unpaused the game.
It was so satisfying, the way the evil minions poofed into dust when she stabbed them with just the right pixellated weapon. She and Zoe had campaigned this new vampire-themed MRPG through all the basic zones already, and were due to gain entrance to the Delerium plane if they could just level up a couple more times before the weekend; clues dropped by Fargo (whom she suspected of being half the mind behind designing the game, since it only ran on Eureka's specialized OS) suggested that the newly released area was going to be seriously sweet, stocked with all kinds of new enemies and magic weaponry and craft items and things. So even if things weren't okay, it wasn't like she was going to just sit around all mopey Queen of Pain. She didn't care what the latest not-Beverly said; cooperative video gaming was a productive coping method, so there.
She was thoroughly absorbed in a hack-and-slash battle against a gang of uncreatively named "Chaotic Demons" with disgustingly well-rendered, drippy, slimy horns when S.A.R.A.H. spoke suddenly overhead, startling Dawn into jumping and dropping the controller again.
"Welcome home, Jack. I detect an elevated heartrate; did you have a stressful day?" the computerized voice said, carrying in from the main room of the Carters' bunker home. "Your beer is pouring now."
After a murmured reply from Zoe's dad, it continued, announcing the name Dawn had been waiting to hear-- plus a couple of others she hadn't been expecting. "Dr. Stark, it's good to see you again. Dr. Blake, Dr. Fontana; greetings. Would you like refreshments as well?"
"See? Told you the time would go faster this way," Zoe said, nudging Dawn's arm as she paused the game again and shut it down, saving their progress to continue later.
Dawn swallowed; her mouth was starting to go dry with nerves again, but focusing on the mystery of why her stepmom and stepmom's college roommate had tagged along was successfully distracting her from a full-on panic. Momison-- okay, if she had someone else staying with Kevin and wanted to talk about this as a family, she could see her tagging along with Dad; though doing it at the Sheriff's instead of waiting 'til the Starks went home seemed a little strange. Tess, though?
"What is she doing here?" she muttered under her breath.
"Who, Dr. Fontana?" Zoe shrugged. "I don't know, maybe she's here for me. I mean, I am planning your stepmom's baby shower with her, and I've kind of let that slack the last couple of days. Which-- oh God." Her face went suddenly blank with comprehension, and she sat up straight on the bed, controller dropping from her hands. "Dad's going to be so disappointed; Dr. Blake's not going to need him to be her birth coach anymore, is he? He was really looking forward to that."
Dawn wrinkled up her nose. She and Zoe usually just agreed to disagree on the issue of parental romance, but she'd seriously thought this particular topic was behind them. "I thought he was over her," she said, frowning as she tucked a strand of loose hair out of her face. "No offense, you wouldn't make a bad step-step-sister, but she's still totally stuck on Dad. I mean, I haven't talked to her much in the last couple days, but..."
"Oh, I know, I know, I'm not saying he still wants to date her," Zoe waved a hand between them as if erasing words from a whiteboard. "It's just, he didn't exactly get to do a lot of that dad-type stuff when Mom was pregnant with me, so...." She trailed off with a sigh, turning to stare at the darkened TV panel. "He just... missed out on a lot of things when I was little because of his job, and he was thinking of this as a second chance at being a good role model. Especially since Aunt Lexi left; don't tell him I told you, but he was kinda looking forward to having a couple of little boys underfoot. Besides, I'm pretty sure he's crushing on Dr. Fontana now, anyway."
"Seriously?" Dawn asked, surprised. The few times she'd crossed paths with Tess while the scientist had been in the sheriff's proximity, they'd been totally snarking at each other, like he'd used to do with Dad. "When did that happen?"
Zoe smirked. "Get this," she said, leaning forward and speaking in a low whisper. "She showed up at his car while he was watching for-- well, us-- with a tofu pizza the other night. And he ate it. And then when she said she was all sad about maybe missing out on that meteor shower? He totally volunteered to go with her. Why did you think he was out late last night?"
"No way," Dawn breathed back. Zoe was right; that was total crush behavior-- on both their parts. She'd heard enough about Tess, and endured her visits often enough over the years since Momison had married Dad, to know that the scientist had been terminally awkward around guys in college and hadn't improved much since. If she was snarking and offering food and watching stars with him, she was totally weak in the knees over him.
"Way," Zoe nodded, authoritatively. "I wasn't so sure about her at first, but she makes him smile, so I'm letting her have a probationary period before I go evil potential stepdaughter on her ass."
"Really," an interested voice spoke up from the open doorway of Zoe's bedroom. "Now that's an intriguing development."
Dawn gulped as she looked up to see her dad's face; she couldn't help but remember the blank incomprehension looking back at her when she'd run into the infirmary to see him-- but he was smiling at her now, that gentle, warm smile that his employees almost never got to see. Her breath whooshed out of her lungs in relief; and then she was bolting up off the bed, tripping over the disordered blankets in an effort to fling herself into his arms. "Dad," she gasped, blinking back tears again.
"Dr. Stark!" she heard Zoe exclaim behind her, as he wrapped Dawn up in a hug.
"Hello, Zoe," her dad replied, voice rumbling tangibly in his chest where Dawn was pressed against him. "Keeping my daughter out of trouble while I've been gone?"
"Oh, I've been trying to," Zoe replied, wryly. "But you know Dawn."
"I do indeed," Dad chuckled. "Though I suspect the good Sheriff would say the same thing about you."
"Hey," Dawn objected half-heartedly into his shirt on both their behalves. "Right here, you know."
"Mhmm. So how about you move 'right here' downstairs for a little while, Zoe?" he replied, pulling back a little to set Dawn at arm's length from him. "I've got a few things to talk to my daughter about." He had that worried little thinky wrinkle between his brows, and Dawn's stomach sank again.
"Uh, sure. I'll just...." Zoe quickly finished stowing the controllers for the game, then ducked sideways out of the bedroom door, giving Dawn a thumbs up and an encouraging expression where her dad couldn't see it.
Dawn gulped as he turned and shut the door behind her friend. "Just so we're clear," she blurted, after he finished ordering S.A.R.A.H. to activate the noise-canceling system to isolate the room from the rest of the bunker. "You really do remember who I am, right? And you're not dying, or from an alternate universe, or secretly an organic computer, or anything else like that, are you?"
He chuckled, then sat down on the bed and patted a space next to him. "Take a deep breath, sweetheart. No, I'm not any of those things, and yes, I remember. Except for a specifically delimited span of time, which we've come up with some theories about. That's why I brought the others here; we have some things to discuss as a group. But I thought you deserved to hear it from me alone, first."
She swallowed, still nervous. "So you think you've figured out why you forgot me at all in the first place?" she asked. "Which, uh, which memories are still gone?"
He studied her a moment, then touched her cheek, brushing that stubborn heavy lock of hair back behind her ear again. "The ones before you turned eight years old. And-- we think it's more that they were never really there to begin with," he said, seriously.
Dawn stared at him for a long moment as that sank in, then drew a deep breath, and another, trying not to freak out.
"Are you saying I'm not-- real?" she managed to ask after a moment, the specter of Callister in her mind's eye again. He'd always said Callister was the only one of his artificial intelligence experiments to succeed, but what if he'd been wrong? What if he'd got it right earlier than that? They'd had organic computers in Eureka twenty years ago, after all; just look at the A.I. following Henry around up at Global Dynamics. What if Dad had made himself forget that he'd succeeded, like it was part of the experiment, and now it was all falling apart?
"Of course you're real," her dad objected instantly, pulling her into another firm hug.
"But if I wasn't here..." she objected, faintly. "How? I remember being here. I don't remember being anywhere else. If that's all made up, what else is?"
"Shh, shhhh," he soothed, rubbing wide circles on her back. "Nothing, I promise. I had Henry do a DNA test just to be sure, and you're really my daughter. I'd have kept you regardless, believe me, but you really are my daughter, one hundred percent, and nothing's ever going to take you away from me."
Dawn gulped, sniffing back incipient tears again. That he'd been worried enough to have the test done-- not good; but that it had turned out the way it had-- "You mean that?" she asked, plaintively.
"I mean it," he replied, firmly.
"Then-- what's the what?" she asked, thinking things through a little more thoroughly now that the first blinding moment of WTF-ery was fading. "You have to have some idea what happened. And it has to be weird, or you wouldn't have wanted to break it to me alone."
"You sure you want to hear it?" he said, pulling back again to look her in the eye. Stupid truth-assessing habit; she had the hardest time lying to him like that, and he knew it.
"I-- I think so," she said, biting her lip. "I mean, better to rip the Bandaid off all at once, right?"
"Good girl," he said, smiling encouragingly before putting on his Serious Scientist face again. "The short version is, we believe you're our daughter from a future alternate timeline, sent back to nine years ago because of some crisis we couldn't avert. We don't have any idea why we'd have brainwashed everyone instead of leaving ourselves some kind of note or warning, other than wanting you to be as happy as possible, but it's the only explanation we can come up with that fits all the available evidence."
Dawn blinked at him, digesting that for a moment. From the future? She'd never heard of a case of time travel that hadn't gone wrong. But if it finally had-- if she had--
"Wait," she said, frowning at him. "We?" Did that mean her other parent-- "Is, is Allison..." she asked, suddenly breathless, forgoing her usual nickname for her stepmom.
"No," he said gently, shaking his head. "It would be a lot easier if it were; Ally would be thrilled. I don't pretend to understand it, but..."
"Does that mean it's Tess?" Dawn blurted, knowing it had to be one of the other people downstairs. "Or, oh God. Zoe?"
Her dad's face twisted up at the first name in a similar degree of antipathy; but he snorted in amusement at the second, and she blew out a breath, relieved. That would have been seriously freakish.
"Close, but not quite," he said. "It's-- and I know this will sound strange, but it's part of why we think you were sent from the future-- your other parent is Jack." He paused, making a face, then clarified, "Sheriff Carter."
"Because there's so many other Jacks we know," Dawn said dryly, as she processed the notion. "You mean to say I have two dads? Like, literally two dads?" she had to clarify.
"Genetically, anyway," he said, nodding in confirmation.
"Does he know?" she asked, hesitantly.
Her dad nodded again. "Henry told us together," he said, cautiously. "Are you okay with that?"
Like she had a choice; but-- she supposed it wouldn't be so terrible. She was at his house several days a week anyway, and he tended to treat her in a kind of distantly affectionate way, like he did most of Zoe's friends, except a little more intently with her because of her dad.
"Is he okay with it?" she asked. What Zoe'd said earlier about him wanting more kids around soothed her nerves a little; but she did kind of come full grown, and all.
"A little nervous about how you'll take it, but pleased too, I think," her dad assured her.
Good. Good. And-- "This means Zoe's my sister now, right?" she said, perking up as that sank in. The past couple years, Zoe had been a better friend to Dawn than anyone except Kevin, who'd for some reason always been able to connect better to her than to anyone else in their age bracket; as a linguistics-and-humanities type geek rather than the typical hard-science nerd, Dawn hadn't fit in particularly well at Tesla High. Zoe was refreshingly normal, but still smart enough to keep up with her; no, she wouldn't mind calling her sister at all.
He quirked a smile. "Poor compensation, I know; but yes. Technically, she's your half-sister."
Dawn took a deep breath, then let it out, feeling exhausted and overloaded and a little weirded out and relieved and cautiously happy all at once. "Yeah," she said, tossing her head a little as she pulled her 'tude back together, "I think I'm good with it. It could have been a lot worse, anyway."
"That's my girl," he said, smile widening. "Ready to go downstairs, then? We're not going to share it with the world yet-- it would be just a tad difficult to explain-- but there were a few people we thought should know right away, and Carter's got copies of all the paperwork for you to tuck away in those diaries of yours."
"One last question?" Dawn said, as she stood up to follow him out.
"Anything, sweetheart," he replied.
"Does this mean I get to call him Mom?" she asked, impishly.
The long-missed sound of her dad's laughter filled the room, warming her heart-- and finally convincing her, down deep where it counted, that everything was going to be okay.
She took a deep breath, then followed him down the stairs with a smile.
-~-
(x-posted to
twistedshorts)
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