An explosion and a trail of fire broke the otherwise utter stillness of the scene: an ordinary railroad crossing on a sleepy morning. The cause of the disruption was a dirty and damaged silver vehicle, rolling from top speed to whining stop after appearing there out of thin air. The car's occupants sat there, wide-eyed and allowing themselves to breathe, after having been waiting to do so almost more than a minute before they'd appeared. They were back. It was over. Except, like all things that just seemed to keep on happening, like the past couple weeks had seemed to do, it actually wasn't. The second interruption to the silence was a moving train, churning down the track with no intention of letting up for the sake of that sad little car. Reaction times realized they were still needed, albeit begrudgingly, and the two male passengers, one old, one young, scrambled to throw open the gull-wing doors, and threw themselves out onto the ground as quickly as possible to avoid the oncoming tons of steel and heat, which in the very next moment tore through the DeLorean on the tracks as though it were little more than an empty can.

The train passed, and the two worn travelers spotted each other across the tracks. Each wore an expression that seemed a mirror to the other's emotion. Mostly shock.

Marty, the younger one, pushed himself to his feet first, stumbled, and made his way forwards.

Doc, the elder, seemed to have just remembered he had feet, and was working out how to use them by experimentation. They met at the center, at the tracks, looking at the wreckage. The car had been rendered to little more than scrap withing the span of those few seconds. A few pieces could be recognized, but not many. A wheel trying to make an escape finally fell over, at a surprisingly successful distance away. The electric time display sparked and blinked nothing but '8's in every readout, and was cracked in half and holding together by just a few wires. The Flux Capacitor lay between its inventors' feet, sparking, smoking, as a moment later, it died.

Marty took a step back, shaking his head, fingers curled up in his hair. "Jesus Christ, Doc..." He said, voice choked in how overwhelming, how very nearly and how many different ways they had both nearly been killed that morning. And it wasn't even that morning anymore! He didn't have the energy for fourth-dimensional correctness, and he knew this just as much as he knew it was getting close to the last straw of his recent stresses.

Doc, meanwhile, was beginning to look much less shaken and much more set. Well, this saved him a step later, though he hadn't expected it to have been so sudden.

"Doc..." Began Marty, as though about to apologize to, or perhaps console his friend.

"I said I wanted it destroyed when we got back." Doc said, simply. "This machine has cause more trouble than I could ever have bargained for." With his shoe, he turned over the burnt-out capacitor to face upwards. It was only a small, lifelong dream, after all...

"No kidding." Said Marty, who'd been on the brunt end of said troubles over the past few weeks. "So, ah, Doc... What... What do we do now?"

"Go home." The scientist's tension seemed to start to slip away, though he still kept himself upright in the sort of way which meant he still had work to do. "Find Einstein, and Jennifer, and make sure nothing's changed during our last trip to the past."

Marty's eyes went wide. "Jennifer!" He exclaimed. "Do you think she'll be...?"

"To the best of my understanding, Miss Parker should be just as we left her. Asleep, and unharmed. But I'd still check, if I were you."

"Thank God." Breathed Marty, then looked up at his friend.

"Go on ahead. I'll meet with you later. I'm going to stay here for a little while longer."

"Why?"

"Oh, salvage a few things before someone else finds them. Destroying a time machine only to leave the key components lying in plain sight would defeat the purpose. I'm sure I'll see you shortly, Marty."

Marty nodded his thanks, looked around for his bearings, and then set off at a quick pace after his girlfriend.

Doc, then, was left with the wreckage. He pocketed his hands, surveying out and around the scattered car parts, and sighed. It was over. After thirty years, completely, totally, and finally over. He was hit with a wash of release, and something like tiredness. Understandable, given how his morning had gone up til then. Misery, unconsciousness, sudden sobriety, duels, theft, fast-paced maneuvering and time travel. It was enough to do a number on any man. But, as always, 'over' came with clean-up. He picked up the Flux Capacitor, tucked it under one arm, and went for the time circuits. Their own weight caused the console to finally snap when he picked it up, cutting out the flickering light and causing half the readout to fall back on the ground.

Satisfied with having picked up most of the pieces, namely the circuits, and the heart of the time machine, plus the fusion generator, (he'd come back for the wheels and the rest, the former of which he'd kicked out of sight under a bush,) he made his way back home, hardly wondering himself at what would come next.

[Y]

Clara rode like her life depended on it along the train tracks. In a way, it sort of did. The night before, she'd scorned the blacksmith for toying with her, using her loves and dreams to mock her. There was no real way what he was saying could possibly be true, though, oh, how she would have loved that it was. That the man she'd fallen for was both honest, and really had come from the future, and been willing to take her there with him. The events of this morning, however, had turned her doubts around entirely. Had she judged too soon? And would she be too late to fix it now?

The diorama in Emmett's workshop had given her a map for his plan, if it was really true. She wanted it to be true, and with her concentrated on staying on her horse, she simply didn't have the mental space to share for any other option.

There was the train! She urged her horse on faster, getting to within a couple yards of the back cab. Just then, something exploded near the front, dousing her in an unnaturally colored smoke. The train pulled away from her, moving faster, louder now. Clara sped up in kind, but felt her heart sink as she continued to lose ground. No... She thought she could see someone in the conductor's cab, someone with distinctive silver hair leaning out of the window. She called after him, but it proved to be no use. There was too much noise, too much speed, and her horse, she could feel, was starting to tire under her. She yelled again as another explosion rocked the train, leaving her coughing from a new color of smoke. Clara urged her horse, but the poor beast had had enough urging for one day. It trotted, whinnying its annoyance at her as she watched the train, that ticket to wonder, slip from sight. Her mind was in a blank sort of state, berating herself for both the wild goose change, and for not beginning it sooner. It couldn't be true... It wasn't, and she'd lost it... Oh, lost it, yes, certainly she'd lost her m-...

BOOM!

Clara shot upright in her seat. The horse gave a nervous whinny, and suggested moving in the other direction. She reined it in. The whole area had gone quiet, suddenly, after that noise, and she dared not think as to what it meant. Had he really done it?

She continued down the track, now at a far less breakneck pace, keeping an eye out for any indication as to what had happened. She stopped a ways short from the end of the line, staring ahead in horror. No track, no train, just an unfinished bridge over a gaping ravine. She dismounted, preferring to be on her own two feet, so near to the edge for the second tune in nearly as many days, and went only close enough to be able to stand back with her hand over her mouth and still see the colossal locomotive wreck lying at the bottom, giving off three colors of smoke. She had to go down there! She had to see for herself, she had to-... She had to be reasonable about this. There was only one way down, from where she stood, which meant no getting back up again. Ever. Perhaps this wreck was the plan? Perhaps, but she couldn't see why... The time machine had been a unique object in the model, though, so perhaps it was? There was no way to know. Logic aside, though, she still felt sick, and restless. She had to know. Like nothing else in the world she had to know what had occurred when the train went out of sight. But there was nothing-... No. No 'nothing' to investigate. Clara went back to her horse, gave it a determined pat, and hopped back on. She'd see the Sheriff about this. He'd have a search party. Someone would have to clean it all up after all, and she'd go with them, unsure of what to look for, but just as sure she'd know if she found it. A time machine would have to look different from a train, wouldn't it?