stay calm. it will be okay. you have my word. Episode Six: Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy
This is episode six! To start reading from the beginning, check out Pilot : The Season Two Ending We Deserved
Story Summary
Turn off “The Reality War” at 40:15 and start here instead. This is the story of what happened after—the story where the Doctor, Bel, and their extraordinary daughter Poppy get to live the life they deserve.
It’s about finding family across time and space. It’s the Doctor and Bel co-parenting like the besties they are, Poppy growing up splitting her time between 21st-century London and the far-future of the Preservation Alliance, and a Sanctuary Moon fanclub that spans across the universe. It’s Rogue getting the ending he deserves, Jenny finding her fathers, Murderbot reluctantly acquiring more humans, and a universe where love, in all its forms, is the most powerful weapon we have.
This is a fusion-fix-it full of gratuitous wish fulfillment, because sometimes the best way to heal is to rewrite the story. 💕💕
Episode Summary:
Jenny’s acceptance to university begins to clash with Rogue’s protective instincts, only for River Song to arrive and propose they join her on a heist that will be “easy peasy lemon squeezy.” But since when has anything come easily to the friends and family of the Doctor?
Notes:
his chapter… did not go where I thought it was gonna go. But I’m not mad about it tbh. This chapter features more from the Ocean’s characters but still nothing you need to have seen the movies for. 😊
Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments and kudos, and special thanks to Fire_Phoenix2305 and tinysugacube for helping me bring this fic to life and to Marvin for his official seal of approval!
Episode Six: Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy
Danny Ocean had seen his fair share of impossible things—high tech vaults, uncrackable safes, and security systems designed by paranoid billionaires. But none of that compared to the impossibility that was Jon Smith.
Firstly, the name was definitely fake. Jon and his partner Arthur had appeared one day out of nowhere, having records that were obviously faked, and no trace of who they had been before arriving on the Las Vegas scene. He and Rusty had been putting together the Bellagio heist, thinking they had everything more than under control with just the eleven of them, and then along came Jon and Art, who had technology more advanced than any of them could dream of. The whole operation was streamlined because of them, and while Danny ended up back in prison due to his violation of his parole, when he left again it was to his best friend and wife waiting for him.
Jon and Art, meanwhile, had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. When Benedict came after them, requesting his money back—with interest—he admitted that even his extensive network couldn’t find them. For a while they wondered if they were dead. As it turns out they were half right, because when Jon came back it was with the news that Art was gone, and a teenaged daughter in tow. The girl was British, which provided a clue that Jon had been spending at least some time in the U.K. Yet there was no true trace of them either. It was almost as though the two had dropped out of the sky…
—
The phone was ringing off the hook, waking Tess and Danny at what their alarm clock informed them was five o’clock in the morning. Danny turned back over to go back to sleep, and Tess considered doing the same, but she was up anyway, and checking the caller ID showed Jenny’s contact.
“Hello?” Tess yawned.
“Tess! Tess! Guess what?” Jenny shouted over the phone. She sounded excited, not upset, and it brought a smile to Tess’s face.
“Well how would I know if you don’t tell me?” she asked bemusedly.
“I got into King’s College! We just got the letter! It’s official that they have a place for me.”
“Congrats! That’s fantastic news,” Tess smiled. “I know you’ve been working hard at school the past few years, I wouldn’t expect any less.”
Tess heard the muffled sound of Jon’s voice on the other end of the phone just before Jenny gasped. “Oh, I’m so sorry! It must be very early for you over there, isn’t it?” Jenny asked worriedly.
“It’s okay, I always like to hear from you. But I might try to get a bit more sleep, we were up late last night.”
“Okay! Call me later then, bye Tess!”
“Bye Jenny.” Tess yawned again before climbing back into bed.
“What did Jenny say?” Danny mumbled. “She got into that university she wanted over in the UK. King’s College I think it’s called,” Tess answered, pressing a kiss to Danny’s shoulder before they snuggled together in bed.
—
“Do you really think this is a good idea, Jenny?” Rogue asked worriedly. “I know this guy is a Doctor, but is he the one we are looking for?”
“I know what I’m doing, dad,” Jenny replied with a roll of her eyes. Part of Rogue softened every time she called him that, even when it was in a tone of exasperation. He never really saw himself as father material, and found the prospect of having to take care of a newborn to be anxiety provoking. As it turns out, however, when the newborn is in the shape of a teenager and fully capable of advanced thoughts, mobility, and speech, raising a kid was a lot easier, and in some ways harder than he may have expected.
“I’m just saying, the Doctor is all over the place, how do we know if this is the right one?”
“He’s not,” Rogue and Jenny did not jump in surprise, but they did turn rather quickly upon hearing the sound of River’s voice. They were at the apartment that Rogue had rented out in preparation for Jenny starting university, and had locked all the doors—but when had a locked door ever stopped River Song?
“What do you mean?” Jenny asked with crossed arms.
“He isn’t the Doctor that either of you are looking for,” River explained. “He’s older than the Doctor you met—” River pointed at Jenny “—but he’s younger than the Doctor you met,” she continued, pointing at Rogue. “Moreover, he’s got his situationship locked in a vault beneath the university and he’s still in mourning over my death.” River shook her head. “He’s really not in a good headspace right now.”
Rogue really wanted to know more about the situationship that the Doctor had imprisoned, but before he could ask more questions River continued speaking.
“This is all besides the point, because I need the two of you for a job.”
“No,” Rogue replied immediately.
“Oh come on dad, we don’t even know what it is!”
“Jenny, we agreed that you would be staying on Earth and going to school here for a reason, you might look like an adult, but you’re only two years old, whatever job River wants us to do is undoubtedly horrifically dangerous—”
“God, you’re such a helicopter parent, I wasn’t even two minutes old the first time I got shot at—”
“That’s not the endorsement you think it is—”
“To say nothing of the fact that I’ve literally gone on several heists with Danny and Rusty—”
“Which they never should have taken you on in the first place—”
“I’m not a child dad—”
“You are a child that is literally my exact point here—”
“OK then what is even the point of me going to university anyway it’s like you want to keep me wrapped in a bubble, did you forget how we even met—”
“Yes, you crashed into a hell dimension and then we got kidnapped by space pirates, because you have zero experience navigating interstellar travel—”
“How am I ever supposed to get experience if we never go anywhere!?”
“If I may interject,” River coughed, the two turning away from each other and towards her again. “This job is a simple in and out, easy peasy lemon squeezy. It’s perfectly safe, and I’ll need your exact skill set.”
“Oooooo I love lemons, now we have to go. Plus, it will be a good learning opportunity!” Jenny turned towards Rogue, who was torn. He understood Jenny’s point, and it would be nice to be out in open space again. The Yossarin was almost fixed anyway, and Jenny was right that she had to do things to gain experience. She had good instincts and he trusted her, even if he did not completely trust River.
“Fine,” Rogue sighed. “What’s the job?”
—
Approximately ten hours later they were sprinting through a maze-like alien fortress several light years away, blaster fire scorching the walls behind them. Rogue ducked behind a pillar, yanking Jenny down with him as River returned fire with her usual terrifying precision.
“Easy peasy, huh?” Rogue shouted over the cacophony caused by the fight. “I think that phrase doesn’t mean what you think it means!”
Jenny, breathless but grinning, wiggled out of Rogue’s hold to peek around the pillar. “Also where are the lemons? That phrase is terribly misleading, is there a glitch in our translation matrices?”
The blaster fire stopped—River was very good at hitting her targets, and she signaled for them to stay put while she disappeared around a corner. Only a few moments later she was running back, an explosion behind her. She tossed a small, glowing fruit at Jenny. “Here! Now run!”
Jenny caught it with delight as she and Rogue ran after River. “This is the worst,” Rogue muttered.
“But fun right? I love the running,” Jenny beamed, clutching her lemon like a trophy as they bolted for the exit. Rogue did not answer but for a small smile as they finally made it back to the Yossarin and were able to take off. Within minutes they were in a completely different sector of the galaxy, and River was giving Jenny a high five.
“OK, so what’s with the lemon?” Rogue asked, pointing to the fruit Jenny still held in her grasp.
“It feels more like a crystal than a lemon,” Jenny mused. “Like, it’s harder than normal fruit skin.”
“Archaeological retrieval,” River smirked as she plucked the crystalized fruit out of Jenny’s hand. “This little beauty contains the last surviving records of the Citrussian civilization—advanced beings who encoded their entire history into citrus-based bio-memory.”
Rogue pinched the bridge of his nose. “You recruited us to break into a high-security vault and blow up an entire scientific research operation just for some historical space citrus?”
“Not just space citrus. I visited the Citrussians once, with the Doctor. They hated him so much that they managed to find a way to weaponize vitamin C, and it can be deadly for time lords. They were destroyed in the time war, but people we stole this from were on the brink of decoding the bio-memory. In a few years time they would have it refined and developed enough to kill the Doctor. We just travelled back to the day that they first found the last remaining citrus, before they were able to fully start research in earnest.”
“Why did you need us?” Jenny asked, now looking at the lemon with no small amount of trepidation.
“You’re both smart, capable. And you have a ship that makes a great getaway vehicle,” River shrugged.
“Surely the TARDIS—” Rogue began.
“Even if I could involve the Doctor in this—which I can’t, seeing as how this would be doubling back on their timeline—it’s not in the cards. Me and the Doctor? It’s over. I won’t see him again until the day I die,” River shrugged sadly.
“River…” Jenny reached for her shoulder and for a moment River leaned into the touch before she brightened.
“Enough of that maudlin talk though! Rogue, where’s your kitchen? You know what they say, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade!”