((A/N: I don't usually make author's notes, but some people were confused by the last chapter, so I thought I'd clarify: this is meant to go along with canon as much as possible, it's not an AU or anything. By "the end" in the description, I'm referring to the end of the show, not the mushroom war. This story is also on AO3, and there'll be more notes there, so check that out if you're ever confused by anything (/works/16409579/chapters/38414732). Otherwise, feel free to send me a message and I'll answer any questions as best I can!))
They started by making flyers: A crude drawing of Finn with his unique little hat, and text reading
FOUND: WEIRD BABY
IS THIS YOUR BABY? DO YOU KNOW THIS BABY? DO YOU HAVE A DISTINCT FEELING THAT YOU MAY KNOW THIS BABY, BUT CANNOT BE CERTAIN AS YOU HAVE RECENTLY BONKED YOUR HEAD AND ARE SUFFERING FROM TEMPORARY AMNESIA?
PLEASE CALL JOSHUA AND MARGARET OF JOSHUA AND MARGARET INVESTIGATIONS
P.S. HIS NAME IS FINN WE FORGOT TO WRITE THAT EARLIER
They hung the flyers in town, in the woods where they'd found him, in their office window, and wherever else they could think of. When they got nothing except a few prank calls, the dogs tried a more direct approach, contacting police stations and private investigators in pretty much every town and kingdom in the grasslands to see if anyone had reported a missing baby matching Finn's description. Once again, no dice.
In the meantime, they visited several different doctors in hopes of figuring out just what Finn was. All gave similar results: Finn was a perfectly healthy baby, but they had absolutely no idea what species he was or where he came from. One doctor posited that he could've had a mixed lineage, but they put forth no theories for what his parents could've been, either.
All in all, a month went by without a single lead. It was as if Finn had simply appeared in the forest out of thin air. Neither Joshua nor Margaret dared believe it, but it was looking more and more like Finn had nobody but them.
After about two months, when yet another doctor gave yet another inconclusive test result, Joshua slammed a fist on the desk in frustration. "Come on, man! Isn't there somebody out there who can tell us more than a thing or two about this dang baby?"
The doctor, to her credit, barely flinched. "Sir, I'm going to need you to calm the bunk down, or you can leave my office. I'm doing the best I can here."
Joshua looked ashamed, and Margaret put a paw on his shoulder. "I'm sorry about him, we're both just a bit frustrated. Even if we can't find Finn's exact parents, we're desperate to at least find out something, so we can be sure we're taking care of him properly," The doctor nodded in understanding, and Margaret continued, "Don't you know anyone who can tell us more? Someone who knows a lot about biology, or different species, or something?"
The doctor chewed on her pen cap as she thought for a moment. "Well, there is someone… I suppose she's more of a biochemist, but she's dabbled in all branches of science, and she's got that tricked-out lab of hers…" She trailed off, mumbling to herself, until Joshua cleared his throat. "Oh! I'm sorry, yes. Her name is Princess Bubblegum - the ruler and founder of the Candy Kingdom. I'm sure you've heard of her." They had, of course. The Candy Kingdom was one of the biggest and most important in Ooo, with territory spanning much of the Grasslands. The dogs had visited a few times, of course, and caught glimpses of the princess going about her princessly duties, but the idea of going to such an important person for help with childcare was mind-boggling.
"Anyway," the doctor continued, oblivious to her visitors' shock, "I'm not sure she'll help right away - it depends how busy she is - but it's worth a shot. She's certainly one of the best scientist in Ooo, and I've heard she loves a challenge. I'm sorry I can't help more."
"You've helped plenty, Doc," Joshua said, standing up and shaking her hand. On the drive home, they discussed her suggestion - calling up a princess for a favor was daunting, but they ultimately agreed it was worth a try.
"Hello, you've reached the Candy Kingdom castle. Please state your business."
"Oh, hi, um. My name is Joshua, and I'd like to make an appointment to speak with Princess Bubblegum." Joshua glanced, nervously, at his wife, who gave him an encouraging thumbs-up.
"Hm… and what about, exactly? The princess is a very busy woman, as I'm sure you're aware."
"Right, well, you see, we were wondering if -"
He was interrupted by a woman's voice in the background of the call. "Peps, give me the phone."
"But my lady, it's not proper for the princess to answer business calls."
"Is it proper for a butler to leave his princess waiting when she asked him to make her tea nearly 30 minutes ago?"
"Oh, shoot!" The first voice exclaimed, followed by a shuffling sound as the receiver was, presumably, passed into the princess's hand.
"You've reached Princess Bubblegum, what can I help you with?"
Joshua took a moment to steel himself, then briefly explained their predicament to the princess. When he finished, she spoke again.
"Hm… that does sound intriguing. And I don't think my schedule is super full at the moment…"
"So you'll help?"
"Sure, why not? Does Saturday work for you?"
Bonnibel waited to greet her guests in the castle foyer. They were a few minutes late, but she didn't mind - it gave her time to make sure she looked presentable, and to think.
She had her theories, of course, about what the deal was with this baby. The description Joshua gave on the phone could've applied to any number of humanoid species living in Ooo, but the fact that five doctors had tried and failed to identify him suggested something was up. She wondered if the baby was some sort of new mutation, or an experiment by some other mad scientist… or perhaps all the doctors they went to were just dumb. She always had to account for that possibility.
She was pulled out of her thoughts when she heard voices from outside the door. Pulling up the security camera footage on the holo-gem hanging from her neck, she watched the scene outside.
Four dogs, what appeared to be parents and their children, were standing outside - the mother was holding onto the two children's hands, lecturing them about being on their best behavior, while the father looked nervously at the door, holding the handle of a stroller. She turned off the footage, put her necklace back under her shirt, and went to invite them in.
The dogs stopped talking as soon as the door opened. "Good afternoon, I'm Princess Bubblegum," she greeted the family, then turned to the father. "You must be Joshua. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"You as well, your highness," the dog responded, offering a quick bow. "This is my lovely wife, Margaret, and my sons, Jake and Jermaine. And this," he pushed back the hood of the stroller to reveal a sleeping child, "is Finn."
Finn looked as he'd described, and yet… just from a quick glance, PB could tell something was off about him. There was something, in the back of her mind, an idea forming, but she couldn't quite place it yet.
"Well, come inside. I've had my butler prepare some tea in the parlor, and then we can get started on some tests."
"Can we have candy?" one of the puppies asked as they made their way into the castle.
"Jake!" his mother, Margaret, scolded, but PB only giggled.
"Aw, of course you can have some candy," she said, giving him a pat on the head. She'd always had a soft spot for puppies. As she tried to pull her hand away, Jake's head stretched out to meet it, looking for more attention. "Oh, whoa!"
"Oh, right, Jake's… a bit magical," Joshua quickly said, "We've got no idea how it happened. Just one a' those crazy things, y'know?"
He was clearly lying. "If you want, I can run some tests on him, too," the princess offered.
"Oh, no no no, that's quite alright!" That was about what she expected. Oh, well. If these dogs wanted to hide something, she had no business prying.
(She fully intended on prying, of course. But that could come later.)
In the parlor, she listened intently as Joshua explained the situation in more detail, while Margaret tried in vain to keep Jake from shoving handfuls of candy into his, apparently fully malleable, body. The other puppy, Jermaine, quietly sucked on a lollipop. He seemed shy.
"So, if you don't mind me asking," Margaret piped up, finally giving up on wrangling Jake, "What sort of tests will you be doing? Nothing dangerous, right?"
"Oh, no, not at all!" PB responded. "Let's see… I'll start with some basic DNA tests, aura analyzation, x-rays, maybe an MRI - probably the same stuff other doctors have done. But my tech is mad advanced, and, not to brag, but I probably know a lot more than most doctors. I can probably figure out everything I need to from that, but if not, there's further testing we can do."
"Would it be possible for us to watch? Not that I don't trust you, of course, your highness, but a mother worries, and I'd like to be there to make sure everything's safe."
"I completely understand," PB said, nodding. "After all, I'm a mother to everyone here in the Candy Kingdom." she then glanced at the puppies, now chasing each other in circles, and added "But… I'd rather not have them around my lab equipment."
"Oh, of course!" Margaret turned to her husband. "Joshua, why don't I stay here with Finn, and you can take the boys somewhere to play."
"There's plenty of parks in and around the kingdom," the princess added. "This shouldn't take more than an hour, two tops."
"Sounds good to me, darling." Joshua stood up, and called to his pups. "C'mon, boys, let's go play outside."
"YEAH!" Jake bounded out the door on all fours, leaving a trail of pilfered candies behind him. Jermaine bowed to the princess, said "Thank you for the candy, miss." and followed his brother.
"All right," Bonnie gently picked up Finn from the stroller, and turned to Margaret. "Let's get started!"
Finn woke up almost as soon as they entered the lab. He stared at the strange new person carrying him, seemingly unsure what to do. Please don't start crying, PB prayed, setting him down on an examination table.
Thankfully, he noticed Margaret behind her. "Mamama" he said, reaching his hands towards her.
"I'm right here, little one," she let Finn wrap a hand around her finger while the princess put on her lab coat. "We're seeing Princess Bubblegum, remember? It's just like a doctor's visit." Finn looked at PB again. She made a funny face. This seemed to satisfy him, and he giggled.
"All right, now keep him distracted," PB instructed Margaret as she brandished a syringe. "This should only hurt a bit."
Finn was, to Bonnibel's surprise, a remarkably good patient. He sat still and calmly as she drew a blood sample, seeming to react to the pain with only mild annoyance. He was equally calm as she checked his heartbeat, temperature, reflexes, aura color, and blood pressure, only beginning to get fidgety when she laid him down for an x-ray - and even then, it only took a bit of coaxing to get him to still again.
The more tests she ran, the more results she compared, the more that tiny, niggling idea in the back of her mind grew into a full-blown hypothesis. She was hesitant to believe it; After all, it seemed so impossible, and confirmation bias could easily be in effect. But as she sat beside Margaret, making funny faces at Finn while they awaited the DNA test results, the princess couldn't help but wonder: what if?
She didn't have long to ponder the question, as the bleep-bloop of the scanner alerted them that the last and most conclusive test was completed. Holding her breath, she waited for the pages to print, and then
no way.
"...Princess? Is everything alright?" Margaret asked, after PB had gone several minutes silently staring at the papers in her hand.
No way.
"I have to get some books, one second." Bubblegum ducked into another room, then returned a minute later with a stack of biology texts that looked centuries old. She opened one, compared the data on the page with Finn's, and then started laughing under her breath.
No flippin way.
"Princess?" Margaret sounded scared. PB caught herself, and turned around, clearing her throat.
"Sorry, Margaret," she said, "everything's fine. Would you mind calling your husband? I want everyone together when I tell them."
"Of course. I'll meet you upstairs." Bonnie almost wanted to laugh again as she watched Margaret leave, having no idea that she was cradling what very well may be the last of a species thought long extinct.
The princess was taking forever, and Jake was bored. He had morphed himself into a cushion for Finn to sit on while his parents talked about complicated stuff he didn't understand, and was attempting to entertain himself by teaching Finn his name.
"Okay, let's try one more time. Say Jake. JJJAAAAKE."
"Dake!" Finn squeaked, and laughed when Jake groaned in frustration.
"Stop it, Jake," Jermaine chimed in, without looking up from his notebook. He appeared to be drawing the talking pinata hanging from the ceiling. "He's not gonna get it."
"Fine. How 'bout this, Finn: say Jermaine. JJJEERRRMAAINE."
"Der… der may."
"Heehee. Dermay."
Jermaine threw a crayon at him.
"Ow! Whassa matter, DERMAY?"
"He can't say 'J' yet, dummy!"
"You're a dummy!"
"Boys!" their dad interrupted the argument, gesturing at the doorway where Princess Bubblegum had just emerged, wearing a labcoat and carrying a stack of books and papers.
"Sorry! Sorry!" The princess gasped. She handed the books to her butler, a little peppermint candy man, who grunted under the weight. "I'm so sorry! I got caught up reading the results and lost track of time."
"So there are results, then?" Joshua asked, sounding excited at the prospect.
"Yup," the princess said, smiling, "Although some of them may be a bit hard to believe, so I'll start with the basics."
Jake listened - or tried to, anyway - to the Princess's findings. A lot of it was big sciencey words Jake didn't understand, but he caught parts of it: Finn was almost exactly a year old (Jake and Jermaine were almost two), he was likely colorblind (Joshua chuckled and said something about irony. Jake didn't get it), his DNA showed no signs of having gone through a jump in time or between dimensions (why would you even test for that? This lady was weird), and several other random facts about the baby currently using him as a chair. Jake felt like he was about to fall asleep when the princess finally started getting to the point.
"Alright," she began, "now that that's out of the way, time for the crazy part. I compared Finn's DNA to data from nearly a millennium ago, and it's as close to a 100% match as you can expect something to be after that long a time. Everything other test came up with similar results. The reason no other doctor could figure him out is because Finn is a perfect match to a species long thought extinct."
"Now, in science, it's impossible to be completely certain of anything. There are always variables, and there's always margin for error. But," she paused, seemingly for dramatic effect, "with the data I've gathered, I feel confident in concluding that Finn is a member, perhaps one of the last living members, of the species Homo sapiens."
Home of what? Jake wondered, and his family seemed to be similarly confused. Seeing this, Princess Bubblegum smiled, clapped her hands together, and clarified: "Joshua, Margaret, congratulations. Your new son's a human."
Stunned silence followed her declaration, as everyone turned to look at Finn, who giggled at the attention. Jake had heard plenty of bedtime stories about humans, but he'd always thought they were just… stories. On the same level as a man living on the moon, or baby-eating foxes. And now he had one sitting atop him, cutely giggling. He had a human for a little brother.
It was Jake who finally broke the silence, expressing what everyone was thinking the only way he could:
"Oh my glob."