A/N: This is my version of the Ford/Jess baby. How AU this chapter is depends on how the paternity and gender of Jess' baby plays out. I tried to keep it vague to focus on the character (Ford genes in the Buchanan family) than on ever shifting storylines and custody arrangements.
I woke up at 4 a.m., typed this up in 20 minutes and then went back to bed. My mind works in mysterious ways.
She's not like them.
The rest of the family are all morning birds, alert and chirping over breakfast, while she can't fathom the point of getting up before noon on a Saturday. They like fishing trips, hikes and the cabin in the woods. She dreams of lazy, sunny California. As Grandpa Clint shows Bree how to load a shotgun she sits on a rock nearby, completely engrossed in the latest issue of Crimson. On Mother's Day Grandma, Mom and Bree all vote to see the latest romantic comedy where the girl goes to Rome, or wherever, to "find herself" she whines a little bit (okay, a lot) about how she's missing "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" at the rialto in the name of family.
"Why would I want to be a journalist?" she asks Grandma Vicki who has just seen her A + in AP English "sticking to the facts is boring." Jessica will never admit it but it scares her how good a liar her youngest daughter is on the fly, without even blinking. Matthew thinks she has the "killer instinct" for business until he finds out how terrible she is at math (and how she spends most of her work hours flirting with the intern who delivers his coffee.) No loss. That job and her AP classes left no time to sneak into movies with her friends.
All her friends will swear she's the most self-absorbed person they've ever met until a week later she mentions something that proves she had, in fact, been listening the whole time.
Bree nicknames her "P-p-p-p-oker face," because no one can guess what she's feeling unless she wants to show it. In 9th grade the boys at camp will nickname her poker face too, but for different reasons - all of which she will spend the rest of high school trying to live down. In kindergarten her Mother gets called down to talk to her teachers about her playing "doctor" a bit too eagerly and often.
"This never happened with your sister," Mom will say when in the 2nd grade she put glue in Sierra Fish's hair. It was because Sierra said Bree acted like a snob in ballet class. Another thing that never happened with Bree is listening carefully when her Mom spells words out and then yells – loudly, and in public- what she has deciphered: "you spelled Mitch again! Why won't you tell me who that is!"
In their childhood she and Bree fight more than any other Buchanan siblings in family history: gulf clubs are flung, Barbie dolls are dismembered and expensive laptops are crashed (both physically and technologically.) But they share an unspoken understanding if anyone else treats their sister the same way that person will feel their combined wrath.
When they get into that car crash with a drunk Jamie Vega they're all equally banged up, but she recovers the fastest. "I always knew you had a hard head," Hope jokes during one of her visits. She'll never have to rent a room at Shady Brook (and deep down she knows they're all jealous of her for that. Good. For once she has something to hang over their perfect, blonde heads besides her grades.)
Her eyes are brown.
Somehow, that's the most baffling dissimilarity of all. And it's the one she can't ever do anything about.