#when i think of a title ill crosspost this to ao3. rn im lazy. but anyway.

[dentarthurdent]

Here's my piece for the 2022 @h2g2-gift-exchange! @internet-league-blaseball requested something with Random or Ford and ships Forthur, so I wrote a fic that's some Random and Ford parental-esque bonding with some Forthur seasoning :)

Random centric, 1.3k words, story under the cut!

It had been a terribly eventful day, and Random Dent was uncharacteristically unhappy about that. After the past few months living with her father on boring old Lamuella, she thought she would have welcomed the change- yet she didn't.

Her mother had scolded her for putting everyone in danger, of course. Random didn't want to hear it from her. She never took an interest in what Random did except to tell her off, or at least that's how it seemed to Random.

Her dad, on the other hand- he didn't scold her. He gave her a stern look and said, "I'm very disappointed in you."

And that was that 

She wasn't sure why that stung worse than Mother's anger. It seemed all backwards.

Nevertheless, here she was hours later, still quite in her feelings about it all. Trillian and Trillian's doppelganger - Tricia? - had left, off to cover some grand future event or another, Random didn't really care. She was left at Milliway's, left with Arthur again, as well as Arthur's strange friend Ford.

Random wasn't sure what to make of Ford quite yet. She had heard of him from her father, of course - though to hear him tell it, she half thought he was some made-up bogeyman, or a cartoon character. He seemed larger than life, completely alien, somehow both a hero and a villain.

Definitely not the short ginger guy Arthur turned up on Earth with.

The real Ford that she had gotten to know over the past few hours- he was certainly strange, but… really, the oddest thing about him was how he and Arthur acted around each other. Were they friends? Enemies? Why did they act uncomfortable around each other but everyone's still here?

Adults, bah. They're all so dumb and confusing.

Random was still lost in thought about- well, everything, really, even later. She thought about family and thought about birds and thought about Earth.

She was 600 lightyears and a whole lifetime away from it, now.

She and her father were well and truly homeless now, it seemed. No Earth. No going back to Lamuella. No real direction in space. Ford had managed to get ahold of Zaphod Beeblebrox - his semicousin was Mum's ex, who knew? - and get the keys to a vacation home of his back on Betelgeuse V for a week. They could rest and recoup and figure out what to do with themselves later. Almost the moment they got in the door, both Ford and Arthur were ambushed around the corner by exhaustion and carried the fight only as far as the sofa before passing out side by side.

Random explored the round, tiered mushroom-shaped house, which was an interesting enough activity for about an hour until she found a window that opened up onto a roof, at which point sitting on the roof took precedence.

The night sky above Betelgeuse V looked about the same as any other night sky, save for a big moon, a smaller one, and a thin green streak of light across the whole sky. It looked as though some giant painter used the stars as a canvas.

Maybe an unimaginative one. Or maybe it was the first stroke of an unfinished masterpiece. Who can tell, really?

She wondered how many things would never be finished on Earth, and what the stars had looked like there.

"Hey, kiddo. Alright?"

Ford's voice chirping at her from the window startled her to the point of nearly jumping.

"What do you want?"

Random winced at how she sounded, but couldn't muster any better of a mood.

"It's a bit cold out to be sitting on the roof, isn't it?"

"I'm fine," Random snapped, before moodily going back to staring at the sky. "Sorry."

"I get it," Ford said. "It's been a long day."

"You don't get it! No one gets it!" Random let loose with a frustrated growl and sat up, curling her arms around her legs, looking back at Ford but not quite meeting his eyes. "I finally got to see Earth just once, and now what? It's gone? Permanently?"

Ford blinked, which was something Random had not yet seen him do. That she went quiet after her outburst was partly from surprise.

With a sigh, and some odd flash of comprehension, Ford leaned on his elbows on the windowsill. "Do you know what that is, in the sky?"

"What, the green thing?"

"Yes, that."

Random squinted up at it again. "It isn't a planetary ring 'cause it's not horizon to horizon. Is it some kind of space dust?"

"Sharp girl. Do you like astronomy, then?"

"I guess," Random grunted.

"Anyway, there used to be another planet near here," Ford said. "Well, two, really. We're on Betelgeuse V now. That big moon up there was Betelgeuse VI, until a few drunken astroneers made a bet. Really changed the state of competitive surfing here. Ah- but the green thing, that's Betelgeuse VII."

"Why's it a line?"

"It was destroyed a long time ago."

"Ah. Vogons again?"

"No, not Vogons. A Hrung collapsed on it. Killed nearly everyone on the planet."

Random looked back up at the line with a frown. Is that what Earth is now, too? A line of space debris? She shuddered.

"What's a hrung?"

The question hung for a moment in dead air.

"I don't know," Ford said finally.

"Hold on- you said it killed nearly everyone. Did anyone survive?"

"One person did, yeah. He isn't around anymore."

Random looked back at Ford. He had a strange sort of expression on his face, looking up at nowhere in particular. It reminded her sharply of Arthur's when he thought about home.

"You knew him, then?"

"Yeah. That was my dad," nodded Ford. He suddenly looked back at her with a somewhat forced-looking smile. "You know, kiddo, the thing about feeling like you don't have anywhere to fit into- all it means is you aren't tied to any one place. The galaxy is where you fit in. It's freeing, really, I promise."

"Try telling that to Dad," Random half laughed. "He makes Earth sound great. Was it?"

"Zarquon, no. Earth was as boring as he is."

"Yet you picked him to rescue?"

There was that awkward grin again. "Well, he may be a boring stick in the mud, but I'm rather attached to him."

"You don't, I don't know, regret getting stuck there?"

Ford shook his head. "Hey, everything that happened, happened. You should be grateful, because otherwise you wouldn't exist."

Random rolled her eyes  "Gee, thanks for that."

Ford laughed and stepped back from the window. "Now, you really ought to be getting inside. It wouldn't do for you to survive all that mess today then die of pneumonia."

"Zarking fardwarks, now you even sound like Dad," Random griped, but nevertheless returned inside.

Arthur's head popped around the corner at the end of the hall. "I thought I heard voices. What are you two doing?"

"Ford wouldn't let me stay on the roof."

Arthur's eyes widened. "Why were you on the roof? It's freezing out!"

"You know how kids are," Ford laughed again. "Oh, speaking of the cold- I got something from room service earlier that might help that."

Arthur perked up almost instantly. "On Earth? What was it?"

Ford pulled a tin out of his satchel and tossed it to Arthur. It didn't look all that special to Random, but Arthur looked like he might start crying.

"English Breakfast? Really?"

"You wouldn't stop complaining about it for years. If I didn't grab tea while we were there you would keep complaining about it until you died."

Random rolled her eyes and went ahead downstairs while the grownups had their moment.

Only 'attached to him' my left foot, thought Random. Adults, bah. They're all so dumb and confusing. Maybe now they wouldn't be miserable on top of it.