Perfectly Safe (7/?)
Title: Perfectly Safe
Fandom: H2G2
Character/s: The whole sort of general mishmash.
Arthur/Fenchurch later on, and eventually
Random/Mown for the crack pairing lulz.
Word Count: 1200 / (projected) 50,000
Rating: Whatever the film was rated. PG, was it? Something like that.
Summary: Earth has been demolished, but there are still a few kinks to be worked out.
Notes: Follows all continuities, and none of them at the same time (much like the series itself). On the whole, it ignores And Another Thing..., though that did provide a few good gags that I’ve thrown into a combine harvester and recycled into sort of flat-pack bits and pieces. Directly follows the events of Mostly Harmless.
Chapter 7
Trillian left the Heart of Gold and walked straight to the ticket queue. She didn’t know where she’d go, but leaving the galaxy all together was starting to sound like a good idea. Maybe she’d go to Larithnal in the Sagittarius Galaxy, where the water quite literally flowed like wine, or relax under the triple suns of Trisol in the Canis Major Galaxy.
She was greeted at the ticket counter by a small green man with impossibly orange hair, who didn’t seem to care one way or another that Trillian was standing there.
“Yes,” Trillian said. “What’s the farthest ticket available?”
The green ticket clerk shook his head slightly. “Well, that all depends on how much you can afford.”
“I can afford it,” Trillian assured.
This was not a lie. Between all her hazardous duty pay from the network, and the interest in her account that had built up while she was whisking through time, she knew she had enough money to buy the ticket and relocate comfortably once she got to where ever she wound up getting to.
The ticket clerk looked at his info screen, pressed a few buttons, and made an odd sort of clicking sound.
“You can get as far as Frass,” he said. “It’s on the Outer Eastern Rim.”
Trillian sighed. “That’ll do,” she said.
It would have to.
She paid the clerk and took her ticket, checking the time on it against the giant clock that watched over the queue, and sighed again. At least Barnard’s Star had the foresight to expect 26-hour waits between flights, so there was plenty for Trillian to do while she waited for hers to start boarding.
Ford had found himself a small, but very loud pub run by a man from Betelgeuse IV. As Ford never did have the chance to sober up from his six Jinnin Tonnixes he’d shared with Zaphod, he was still fairly drunk before he sat down to enjoy the more familiar drinks from closer to home while he rambled at the very bored barman.
“So he said,” Ford said. “So, he said,” Ford continued. “He said to me, ‘Ix, listen’-”
“Ix?” the barman asked, looking sharply at Ford. “That’s your name, is it?”
“Well, no.” Ford swallowed his drink and tried to finish his story, but the barman cut him off again.
“What is a Hrung, anyway?”
Ford sneered at him. “Zark off,” he muttered, turning away from the barman. There was something sort of green and shabby standing behind him, so Ford decided to tell his story to that, instead.
“So, anyway,” Ford said to the green thing. “He said to me, ‘Ford, listen’-”
“Ford,” said Arthur, cutting him off.
“Yes. Ford. That is my name.”
“I know it’s your name. That’s why I said it,” Arthur said. He pushed Ford back into his seat, since he was starting to fall out of it. “Listen, about what I said earlier.”
Ford looked up at Arthur and blinked several times. It wasn’t a particularly natural thing for him to do, so he had to force the motion, causing a rather comical effect. “Arthur?” he asked as the shabby green thing came into focus.
“Yes. Arthur.” He pushed Ford back into his seat again. “About what I said earlier, when I asked you not to leave us behind.”
Ford looked round. “Did we leave already?”
“No,” said Arthur. “Forget it.”
“No, no. Tell me,” Ford insisted. “I’m listening. Really, I am.”
“I mean, forget it,” Arthur said. “Forget what I said. We’re gonna make our own way for a while.”
Ford looked him over once more. “You?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Really?” Ford seemed dubious. “It’s just that every time you decide to make your own way, I have to come rescue you again.”
“No you don’t,” Arthur insisted. “I’ve always been perfectly fine on my own. It’s when you come along that I always have to be rescued.”
“Yeah, but we always have a laugh, right?” Ford asked, grinning widely.
“Hmm.” Again, Arthur could argue this point, but he chose not to.
“Well, here. Take this, then. You’ll need it.” Ford took off his electronic thumb and tried to give it to Arthur.
“Thank you, but I don’t need it,” Arthur said.
“You’re not going to start selling sperm again, are you?”
“No, I mean, I don’t need it because I’ve already got one.” Arthur showed Ford the one he had just purchased. “See?”
“Oh, that’s the new model,” Ford marvelled. He reached out for it, and was slightly surprised when Arthur pulled it away.
“Yes. And it’s mine.”
“Got your towel?”
“Yep. And my Guide.”
Ford stood up and pulled Arthur into an awkward hug. “Arthur,” he said. “It’s about zarking time. Where are you going?”
Arthur shrugged. “Not sure yet. Figure we’ll probably just play it by ear for a little bit.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said. “Okay, then. Here.”
Ford took off his satchel and upended it over the bar, spilling its far-too-many contents all over the place.
“Take this,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Arthur took the satchel cautiously, as though he was worried that it might bite him.
“Yeah. It’s yours,” Ford said simply, using his towel as a make-shift bag to hold all of his assorted items and trinkets, some of which Arthur was quite sure had no place in polite company. “It was given to me when I first started hitchhiking.”
Arthur looked at the bag, and something struck him suddenly, the way a rogue football has a habit of striking an unsuspecting person in the back of the head.
“Ford,” he said slowly. “I don’t mean to sound ridiculous but it’s-”
“Gallifreyan,” Ford finished. It wasn’t what Arthur was going to say, but it was still technically correct. “I’ve seen them cram entire sky scrapers into little blue boxes, and don’t even ask me how they do it.”
“Okay,” Arthur said slowly. “I won’t.”
It was impossible to tell how large it actually was on the inside, but Arthur was willing to bet that if he was feeling especially silly, he might just be able to climb inside it and kip up for the night. He wasn’t feeling especially silly, so he didn’t, instead putting his copy of the Guide, his Sub-Etha Sens-o-Matic, and his towel inside. At first, he thought he might be in danger of losing everything forever, but the inside did conform to whatever forces the outside was experiencing, so all it took to fetch anything back up again was just some creative manipulating of the bag’s bottom and sides.
“Well, thank you, Ford,” Arthur said, waiting for the catch.
Because there was always a catch, wasn’t there?
“Now go,” Ford said, apparently determined to avoid any catches. “And don’t expect me to come rescue you at the first sign of danger.”
Another smile and another hug from Ford.
“If it’s all the same, I’d rather that you didn’t,” Arthur said. He pulled away from Ford and rejoined with Fenchurch, who was being chatted up by something large, red, and with twelve tentacles.