Jackson and April tell their story to a teenage Harriet, How I Met Your Mother style.
"Okay...so where do you want to start?" April asked, as she and Jackson sat opposite their daughter in the living room.
"I don't know...at the beginning? I have some rules though. So, first rule, I want to keep the mentioning of sex to a minimum. I do NOT want to think about you guys doing it, eww. Second rule is for this to not cause any fights on who's right or wrong or whatever. And mom, I know you like to ramble, but I don't need to know every single detail about every little event, okay?"
Jackson couldn't help but snort at their daughter's accusation, causing his wife to swat him (something that he was certainly used to by now). They both agreed to her rules, though, and went right in to mentioning their first meeting during their intern year and the subsequent events that lead to them growing closer as friends.
"I guess the night of the boards was the start of us being more than friends...although it wasn't that simple. It took a while for us to figure things out," April explained, "We weren't the best at communicating back then."
"Yeah, so we were having sex before establishing what it meant-" Jackson went on, although he was cut off but the sound of their daughter.
"Oh my god, can we not?! I said to keep the mentioning of sex to a minimum!" Harriet explained, slinking down further into the arm chair and burying her face in her hands for a moment.
"We've only said it once!" He stated, "Alright, fine. We were...having fun- Is that any better?" Their daughter just glared at him, causing him to roll his eyes before continuing, "Then I proposed because your mom here thought she was pregnant, but it turned out she wasn't. She was really happy to not be pregnant, though, so I took that as a sign that maybe she didn't want me and called things off."
"Without even talking about it?" Harriet frowned, "Wow, mom's right. You guys used to suck at communicating."
Its April who finds herself snorting at their daughter's comment this time, remember how confusing of a time that was for her. Granted, she knew that her post-sex Jesus freak-outs hadn't exactly helped matters, but going from being sort-of engaged to sort-of dumped in the span of twenty-four hours had definitely felt like whiplash.
"You're right. Well, then we kind of...ended up with other people for a while. Your dad was dating an intern at work, Stephanie, and I dated a paramedic called Matthew-"
"Wait, is that the same guy you ended up marrying? The one who used to call me Hare-Hare and cut my sandwiches all weird?"
"Yeah...thats him, but we'll get to that later." Jackson gave April a knowing smirk, as if to say that he was right about his issues with Matthew all along - not that it mattered now, anyway. The man was long gone and was still living in Philadelphia as far as he knew, thank god.
"Then I sort of crashed your mom's wedding and stood up and told her how I felt, in front of everyone, and she agreed to be with me-"
"I can't tell if I think thats really romantic or really stupid...like I can't believe you actually did that?! It sounds like something out of a soap opera, and nobody even watches those anymore." Harriet blinked a few times in shock, looking more and more like April when she did.
"Alright, don't go calling us old now," Jackson mumbled, "Anyway, then we got eloped in Lake Tahoe. You've seen the wedding album from that, right?"
"Yeah. Grandma's told me about it before, and how angry she was that she wasn't invited."
That would be the part that Catherine would focus on, and not the post-nuptial agreement or the stresses that followed. Still, Harriet didn't need to know those things, and April had eventually ended up on good terms with her mother-in-law, so she liked to think that it didn't matter anymore. It was water under the bridge.
"Of course she did. So, we were married. We had to keep it secret for a while, due to a policy at work, but it was great. We were happy...and then your mom found out she was pregnant." Jackson paused for a moment to clear his throat, and Harriet could tell from the look on their faces what that meant. She'd heard this part of the story before.
"With Sammy," She stated, and they both nodded. The last thing she wanted to do was to upset either of them, so she didn't want them to have to spend too much time on this part. She knew that she'd had a big brother, and that he'd had osteogenesis imperfecta so hadn't lived for long after being born, and she also knew that grieving him had been difficult for both of them - even though she hadn't existed yet. Rather than dwell on the situation too much, she added, "I wish I could've known him."
"I know, bug. Us too," April replied, feeling her eyes getting teary, "So...that broke us apart. It was a rough time, and we ended up getting divorced, but in the midst of that, I found out that I was pregnant with you. Our little miracle baby, whose not so little anymore."
"I don't know about that - you definitely take after your mother in the height department," Jackson joked, trying his best to lighten the mood. It earned him a light tap on the shin with Harriet's foot, although she had to stretch quite a bit to do it, causing him to laugh, "Take after your mother in the whacking me department, too."
The exchange helped April centre herself back in reality, instead of getting upset about the past, "So...you were born at Meredith's house, in the middle of a storm. Uncle Ben had to cut you out of me, without pain relief, might I add...and then the three of us all lived together for a while."
"But you didn't get back together then?" Harriet questioned, tilting her head to the side slightly, "You know, if I'd been older, I could've schemed to get you guys back together. Like in The Parent Trap, except without the twin."
"No...it was...complicated, bug," Jackson explained, giving April an apologetic look. It wasn't worth getting into all the nitty gritty details about why things hadn't worked on then - like how they'd slept together in Montana and not talked about it at the time, or how April had decided to move out and ended up struggling with her faith, or how she'd almost died and seemingly come back to life, so instead he skipped ahead a few steps, "So, your mom moved out, and we both ended up moving on with other people. Thats how you met Matthew, remember?"
"Yeah. He had a baby then, right? I sort of remember her a little bit. I don't remember who you ended up with though, dad."
April smirked, looking at her husband, causing him to rub his face slightly in embarrassment, "Uh...yeah...let's just say your dad was pretty lost at the time. I'm kind of grateful that you don't remember any of those relationships." Looking back, he could see that he'd made a conscious effort to keep Harriet from getting too heavily involved in his dating life, which had probably been for the best - even if she would've been too young to remember much anyway.
"Then we both found ourselves single again, before your dad wanted us to move to Boston together...and eventually, we realised it was the right place and the right time to give it another go, but your dad had to do a lot of chasing."
"Okay, yeah, and I probably deserved to have to do that," Jackson admitted, "but...thats the whole story, pretty much. Any questions?"
Harriet paused for a moment, contemplating if there was anything that she wanted to ask as she tapped on her chin with her index finger softly. "Wait, yeah, I do. It's not something you mentioned, but why don't you like Uncle Tom, dad? He's-"
"He is not your uncle," Jackson grumbled, crossing his arms across his chest like a petulant child, "and it's...I just don't like him, alright? He annoys me."
"Its...complicated, sweetie. There's some...history between Tom and your dad that isn't important, but it's okay that you like Tom."
Jackson just glared at his wife, and Harriet could sense some weird tension there that she wasn't even sure that she wanted to know the answer to anymore. "Oookay. Well, I'm glad that you worked things out. No offence or anything though, but I really hope my love life is way less dramatic."
With that, Harriet dismissed herself to work on homework and her parents were able to let out a sigh of relief. April couldn't help but chuckle at Jackson, who still had his arms crossed, causing her to place a hand on his bicep and rub it gently, "You gonna stop sulking now?"
"I'm not sulking. I just can't believe she called him uncle Tom. Whose idea was that?!"
"Uh huh," April chuckled, "You wanna go get waffles to make you feel better?"
With that, Jackson suddenly found himself perking up and got up from the sofa, "Hattie, we're going out! We won't be long!"