Saturday, April 6th, 2030
8:14 AM
Redondo Beach, California
The paths that had converged to bring Chuck Bartowski and Kaylee Frye together really never should have met.
In 2007, Chuck had been a Stanford dropout, the unwilling downloader of an entire database of government secrets, and a prized government asset. Kaylee, on the other hand, had been happily living her life in the year 2518, the engineer on board Serenity.
However, the agents of Fulcrum had decided to pull a sneaky trick on Chuck and drop him into the 26th century. He had ended up on board Serenity, and while there, managed to fall in love with Kaylee, and – unbeknownst to him at the time – get her pregnant. He had then reluctantly had to return to the 21st century.
He had discovered that he was a father eleven years later, when a Fulcrum agent who had been abandoned in the 26th century managed to knock Serenity into the sky over Los Angeles. The ship crashed, and the first person Chuck encountered from the crash was his son – Charles Irving Frye, or Little Chuck (though he preferred to go by C.I. these days).
Chuck and Kaylee (who, through the vagaries of time travel, was only seven years older than she had been) had rekindled their romance, and eventually got married. They had had two more children since then – Timothy Devin Bartowski and Anna Jane Bartowski. Kaylee had almost thrown a tantrum at the idea of giving their daughter the middle name Jane, but had finally agreed to it when Chuck convinced her that it was a perfectly normal girl’s name in the 21st century, and that under no circumstances would there be a “y” in the name.
Chuck had aged grumpily, his high blood pressure removing many of his favorite foods from his diet. Kaylee, on the other hand, had aged very gracefully. Her build was just as slender as it had been when Chuck first met her, and despite a few gray hairs and a couple of laugh lines on her face, Chuck found that looking at her still got him going just as much as it had twenty-three years before.
And it was as a result of that still undeniable attraction that Kaylee had come home from her morning run, sweaty and out of breath, and moments later, found herself still sweaty and out of breath, but with considerably less clothing, perched on the edge of the kitchen sink. Chuck stood in front of her, and… well, it was a scene more suited to certain movie studios in a different part of Los Angeles.
Needless to say, this sort of recreation is often not recommended when a couple has an eighteen year old son, a ten year old son, and an eight year old daughter. The Bartowskis were about to discover this the hard way.
“Mom! Dad!” C.I.’s voice came soaring through the closed kitchen door, changing the looks on Chuck and Kaylee’s faces from those of ecstasy to those of utter panic. There was no place to run, no place to hide, and it was only going to get worse.
“Hey, Sarah and Mal are – OH MY GOD!”
The crashing sound of breaking ceramic announced the fact that C.I. had dropped his coffee mug in horror. The sight of his parents doing the horizontal hokey-pokey at a ninety degree angle had elicited a look of pure horror on his face. But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was the fact that directly behind C.I. were Malcolm and Sarah Reynolds, along with two men that Chuck had not seen before. However, the sight of one of the men caused something to occur that happened with increasing rarity these days.
As Chuck experienced an Intersect flash for the first time in quite some time, he saw images of aliens, a black Range Rover, a blue police call box, and a dead man walking swim through his mind. His flash was interrupted, though, by Kaylee scrambling off the kitchen sink and encouraging Chuck to pull his pants up.
C.I. had fled the kitchen. Mal Reynolds had an amused expression on his face. Sarah had turned bright red, and of the two men standing with them, the one in the Armani suit had a look of exasperation on his face, while the one in the pseudo-military outfit had a huge grin on his face.
While Chuck situated himself, the man in the military apparel stepped forward, hand extended. “Captain Jack Harkness,” he introduced himself. “And I gotta say, that was some nice work right there.”
Chuck had no idea how to respond to that, so he simply shook Captain Harkness’ hand and said, “Chuck Bartowski.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Chuck Bartowski,” was the reply he got. “And I must say, I’m feeling a bit jealous of your… girlfriend? Wife?”
Chuck really didn’t have the first clue how to reply to that one. However, he was saved from any further thought by Kaylee stepping forward. “I’m his wife,” she answered. “Kaylee Bartowski.”
“Very nice to meet you, Kaylee,” Jack Harkness said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. Kaylee giggled – she actually GIGGLED!, Chuck thought with annoyance – and turned red a little bit.
“Oh, would you stop it,” the man in the Armani suit said in what sounded like a distinctly Welsh accent.
“Jealous much, Ianto?” Jack snarked, turning around. “I’m just saying ‘hello’.”
“Jack, the way you say hello would get you arrested in most countries,” Ianto Jones replied. Shaking his head, he stepped forward and extended his hand. “Dr. Ianto Jones,” he said, taking Chuck’s hand in his own. “I’m director of the Torchwood Institute.”
“I know,” Chuck replied. “And Captain Harkness there –“
“Please, call me Jack.”
“- is the section commander for Torchwood Three, based in Cardiff, Wales.”
Ianto’s brow furrowed, as he gave Chuck a look of confusion. “How did you know that?”
“There’s a lot of things I know,” Chuck answered simply.
Ianto looked at him expectantly, thinking Chuck was going to say something more. When Chuck said nothing, Mal Reynolds laughed quietly. “Hoist on his own petard,” he muttered.
“Why are you all here, anyway?” Chuck asked. “I mean, Sarah, I’m sure you and Mal didn’t fly out here from D.C. just to interrupt our morning noo-“
“Chuck means we’re VERY HAPPY TO SEE YOU,” Kaylee interrupted, clapping a hand over Chuck’s mouth and giving him a filthy look.
“We certainly didn’t mean to interrupt,” Jack Harkness apologized. “Please, if you want to, continue. Don’t let us stop you.”
“JACK!” Ianto snapped. “Can I speak to you, please?”
“Absolutely,” Jack replied, his smile growing ever larger. He practically bounced through the kitchen door. Ianto rolled his eyes, blew out a frustrated sigh, and followed him.
After a moment of muffled arguing filtering through the kitchen door, Ianto came back into the kitchen alone. He stood for a moment, a bemused look on his face. Then, “How much coffee did he have on the flight over?”
“Uh, probably six or seven cups,” Sarah replied.
“Plus that big iced frapawhatever at the airport,” Mal said.
Ianto closed his eyes, visibly struggling for control. “Okay, you’ve got to understand, Jack has the adult equivalent of ADHD. Now, for most people with that, caffeine will counteract it a little, but not for him. It just makes him worse. That, and caffeine is somewhat of an aphrodisiac for him. Well, I’m convinced everything’s an aphrodisiac for him, but caffeine especially.”
Chuck looked around at the people in his kitchen. “Wait a second,” he protested. “Are you telling me that this guy is in charge of a regional section of a top secret government organization, and he’s hyper, high, and horny right now?”
Looking as though it almost pained him, Ianto slowly nodded. “He’s waiting in the car right now.”
“Yeah, that’ll work out well,” Sarah cracked.
“Was that aimed at me?” Chuck asked. “Because, you know, it’s been a few years since I was asked to wait in the car.”
“Not that it ever made a difference if you were asked to wait in the car!”
“It was boring in the car! And besides which, it seems like I was needed every time I got out of the car anyway!”
“You were being disobedient, irresponsible, and stupid!’
“It was TWENTY YEARS AGO!”
“That doesn’t change the fact that you were an idiot!”
“Hey, watch how you’re talking about my husband!” Kaylee objected.
“This isn’t your fight, stay out of it!” Sarah snapped back.
“This is my house, not yours! Don’t you dare tell me to stay out of an argument involving my husband in my kitchen!”
“WOULD YOU ALL JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Ianto roared. Mal clapped a hand over his mouth so he didn’t burst out laughing. Chuck gave Ianto an astonished look, while Sarah and Kaylee fixed each other with withering looks of death. Then Chuck had a thought.
“Sarah, where’s Lisa?”
“What?!” Sarah snapped, not breaking her gaze.
“Your daugh-ter,” Chuck said, carefully enunciating each syllable.
Sarah broke off the staring match and seemed to snap back to reality. “Uh, she’s with the family of a friend from school.”
Sensing an opening, Ianto spoke again. “Are we all done acting like kids on the playground now? Because I left my whistle back in London. Can’t really referee if you’re going to be acting like children.”
Mal spoke for the first time in a while. “This is pretty important, guys,” he said. “There seems to be a Reaver loose in Wales.”
Chuck grew immediately concerned, based on his knowledge of Reavers, but Kaylee’s reaction was even worse, as she let loose a cry of fear and collapsed to the floor.
Dropping to her side, Chuck wrapped his arms around her. “Don’t worry, babe,” he said soothingly. “Wales is several thousand miles away.”
“But if one got here, more can get here!” she practically wailed. “I thought I was safe from those things forever!”
“It’s very unlikely that more will find their way here,” Ianto reassured her. “That one happened to fall through a rift in space and time in an abandoned Firefly.”
That last word caused Kaylee to look up, her eyes widening and the expression on her face going immediately from fear to excitement. “Firefly?”
Mal couldn’t help but smile. “Oh yeah,” he said, the grin threatening to crack his face in two. “And Torchwood has requested that you and I take a look at it. They’re going to be consulting with us on the Reaver, too, but they’re going to try to track that down themselves.”
“And is Chuck coming, too?” Kaylee asked, looking hopefully at her husband. His involvement with the Omaha Project had kept them to all of two real vacations in the eleven and a half years that they had been married.
“Yes he is,” Sarah replied, a touch of annoyance still present in her voice. “By order of the DCI, he is temporarily released from the Omaha Project for secondment to Torchwood.”
“But who’s going to oversee Omaha while I’m gone?” Chuck protested. “This is a very sensitive project! I can’t just leave it alone –“
“Which is why Bryce Larkin has agreed to come out of retirement on a temporary basis,” Sarah finished.
Chuck threw his hands up in the air. “No!” he almost yelled. “There is no way I’m turning my program over to a former DCI with a touch of megalomania!”
“Chuck, he’s one of your best friends!” Sarah replied.
“And that means I can’t think he’ll run Omaha into the ground?” Chuck shot back. “This is a bad idea.”
“Well, it’s not your call, it’s mine,” was the answer. “I’m the DCI, you’re a program director. Please, just do this and don’t make me pull rank.”
“Come on, Chuck,” Kaylee pleaded. “And I bet we can get a hotel room with a deadbolt that they won’t be able to get through.”
“Well, when you put it THAT way…” Chuck deadpanned.
He looked around the kitchen, at the hopeful look on Kaylee’s face, the excited look on Mal’s, and the somewhat demanding looks on Sarah and Ianto’s. “Alright,” he finally said with a shrug. “Let’s go to Wales.”
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