"Thirty dollars and fifty-two cents."

Sighing with a grimace, Emma pays the thirty in cash, scrambling to find the remaining fifty-two cents required in her wallet and pockets. Behind her, the rest of the customers wanting to pay for gas shuffle and wait, the pressure to finish her business rising by the second. Finding the change, Emma slaps it down on the counter, getting her receipt and dashing off, jostling a tall, auburn-haired man browsing the candy aisle.

"Sorry," Emma gets out, the man waving it off with an overly-happy smile that makes Emma uncomfortable. Leaving shortly – before he can start up a conversation, stars, Canadians are weird, she thinks – the blonde makes her way back to her as equally yellow Bug, the paint faded almost to the point of white. Her car is sorely in need of a paint job. Yet another thing to add to the list of things needed to be done.

Driving out of the gas station, Emma heads out of Toronto, turning up the heating as the gentle snowfall turns into a blizzard. She squints in an attempt to see better, very aware that this is why she needs glasses. Short-range, she's fine, but long distances…

Unwillingly, her thoughts turn to her old fantasy, the life she lived in a dream. Surgery had fixed her eyes in less than an hour, all lasers and paperwork. Hadn't even been that many credits, Emma remembers idly, before roughly flinching. I was in a coma. It was all a dream. I never lived in another universe and I never got my eyes fixed. She shakes her head sharply, before concentrating on the road, turning a corner only to start sliding, quickly slipping off the road sideways.

"Oh my god!" she hisses, before bracing herself as the Bug falls into a snow-drift. Unfortunately, her head still bangs against her car window and Emma feels numb, disconnected. Her body curls into the door, the blanket on the passenger seat dropping against her, along with her leather jacket – it's been too cold for her to wear it, so instead, Emma's been dressing in a thick, black winter coat, one she's got on now and is distantly thankful for. The Bug is still running, too, the heating warming her toes even as a warm trickle runs down her ear.

Not going to be cold, at least, she thinks, few thoughts coherent. Warm. Logically, she knows she's in shock, but her head hurts, throbbing in pain. This is like my car crash getting out of Phoenix. Except opposite. Snowy instead of desert. Sand. No people to help me. No-one's fault either. I'm alone.

Emma has always been alone. Even in her dreams, she- she made herself a family, made up names and- and borrowed faces and pretended she was Winona Ryder. Kirk. Fucking Winona Kirk, I was a badass in my dream and I wasn't even real.

I don't want to be alone, she thinks, closing her eyes as the throbbing in her head increases. I wish I weren't alone…and then, Emma feels a pull, right before she agrees to sleep.

Sensations. Noise. Her hands are cold…barking?

A familiar creaking sound. A voice asking her if she's okay. What's okay? More creaking and a new voice, before the floor vibrates, like someone's kicked it.

"Hey, missy, can you hear me?" they're a woman and Emma tries to open her eyes, but then a pain in her head makes itself known and she lets out a horrible whine, despairing at her own condition. "Alright, she's not good, Al. I'm going to bring her up." Limbs – hands – pad around her before digging around, lifting her up. Emma feels like a deadweight, until they actually manage to lift her, wind blowing her hair and an almighty chill creeping up on her.

"I see blood." The other voice – another woman.

"Banged her head, I think."

More barking. "Hey, shush now, we've got your lady, if she is your lady, boy. You're such a good doggo, yes you are, yes you are."

"Alison. Help me get the barely-conscious woman out of the car."

"Just a second, sorry."

Emma feels herself being lifted up into the cold, rested on a metal side before smaller hands wrap around her, lifting her into a cradle.

"Got her. I'll get her home – you get her car? It's still running."

"It's not fit for snow."

"Ray, the house is literally fifty feet down a straight road. I'll tow it up and you drive it."

"Fine. Now get the girl into our truck, before she freezes to death."

"She's a lucky one. Heater on, big jacket and hell, even a blanket-"

"Truck, now."

"Alright, alright, we're going." Emma feels them move, swaying. Her head pounds with every movement and the dog's barking echoes in her skull, kicking around and amplifying.

She comes to coherence on a floor. Or, rather, on a rug. Her head is bandaged and it hurts, still, but a little less. Heat wafts from her left and there are heavy blankets leaning on her, covering her right side. A bundle of heat is in front of her face and a second later she realises it has a heartbeat and it smells like wet dog.

Why is a dog… Emma can feel its short fur on her nose, though and it's damningly familiar. Opening her eyes, Emma sees more fur. Forcing herself to move, hissing as she sits up, head rushing with blood and pain, fuck this hurts. The dog sits up, yipping quietly.

"John."

The beagle yips again, before pushing his head against her side, Emma staring at him in both wonder and dismay, her free hand coming to stroke his head. No, no, it was a dream.

"Is that his name?" comes a new voice. Emma looks around, finding a dark-skinned woman in a knitted jumper curled up in front of an armchair, right beside where her head had been laying. Firelight illuminates her face, the right side of her forehead immediately drawing her attention because of the large dent in it. Emma can't help but stare. "Moose antler to the face, five years ago. My wife and I rescued you from your car. You slid off the road and banged your head. If not for your dog, we- well, we probably would have seen you eventually, through our window. Your car was fine, still running. Probably kept you from freezing."

"It's a good car," Emma finally speaks. She shuffles, pushing the heavy blankets off her, pulling John the Beagle – James John Archer, John the Beagle, oh stars, oh holy fuck – into her lap, pulling him into her chest. "Who are you?"

"Rachelle. Rachelle Lemoreau. My wife is Alison." Rachelle moves, rearranging her legs. "She's a nurse. It's how we met. You have a medium concussion, or something like that. Not mild, but not severe, either. If you don't mind, we'd rather you stay here tonight, so we can keep an eye on you. If things go south, Al can help. Your car's not really suitable for the weather, either, no matter how good it is."

"Right…thank-you, I mean."

"It's no problem. Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Do you have hot chocolate?" Emma tries, getting a smile from Rachelle before she gets up.

"Sure do. Just wait right there."

It makes sense to take John the Beagle with her when she leaves Canada. Of course it does. It's not as if he's a dog from another universe, no.

"I have to get you a bed," Emma says as he curls up on her jacket. "Or like, a dog seatbelt. I know they have those. Both is good, maybe. What do you think, Johnny?"

John the Beagle yips once.

Emma nods, hands curling around the steering wheel. "Right. Both is good, definitely. Pet insurance, too and- and you'd already have a tracker, wouldn't you? All I gotta do is find it and calibrate some kind of- kind of…"

She just can't believe he's here. Her dad's dog. Fuck, it was real, it was all real. Her hands clench and she concentrates on driving down the road without losing focus. All of a sudden, her stomach aches and she smashes her hazards, pulling over abruptly, stopping on the maintenance track. Emma hunches over herself, John whining and climbing over the gearbox to sniff at her.

The pain is something she's felt before, definitely and it doesn't take her long to remember from where because she's been through it three times. Not once, just when she was eighteen but thrice – at eighteen, twenty-two and twenty-five. Ever fucking three years, just why the fuck is it always three? Emma groans, tugging her shirt up and her trousers down, watching with disbelief as a red scar traces its way over her skin. Each millimetre is a jolt of pain to her system and through it, familiar stretch marks appear, turning purple then silver, overlapping and overlaying the ones that had been there since two thousand and one.

Fucking C-section, George Samuel Kirk Junior, you were one hell of a kid. Emma forces herself to remember the day he was born. He was late, like two weeks late. She'd gone into labour but Sam was just too fucking big. Even a couple hundred years in the future, C-sections were the way to go with humans and the anaesthesia had kept her under as long as she was opened up – George asked them to wake her up so she could meet Sam as soon as he was cleaned up.

George, Emma squeezes her eyes shut, the pain in her abdomen fading as the scar finishes painting its way across her skin, turning silver. George was real. He was real in an alternate universe. He's dead in an alternate universe. Fuck you, Frank, just fuck you. He might not be alive here or even existing yet, but George was real. Sam and Jim are real. James was real, too and Amanda and Jodi. I hope Spock is doing fine. Ten years. Seven years since…since the ten years I spent in the future, in another universe.

Holding John the Beagle tightly, Emma hugs him for a few moments longer before doing up her trousers and tugging down her shirt.

"Back on the seat, boy. I know my Bug isn't as nice as a spaceship or a hovercar, so sorry, but I can't do anything about that…well, I could," Emma pauses, eyebrow rising as something occurs to her. "The Prime Directive. Technically, this planet could be classed as a pre-warp civilisation. Civilisations. I'm not really allowed to make a hovercar or use my damn engineering degrees."

Frowning deeply, Emma doesn't realise that someone's pulled up behind her until they're knocking on her window. Jerking, she rolls it down upon seeing a cop, grimacing.

"Hey."

"Hey," they glance at her dog. "You having trouble, ma'am?"

"It's nothing, I'll be off soon. I…I mean, I was having some trouble, but it's all dealt with now."

"Alright, then."

The officer leaves after asking to see her drivers license and another form of ID, Emma making sure John the Beagle is set on the passengers seat.

"Lets go."

John the Beagle yips, Starfleet insignia on his collar reflecting the light and Emma wonders just how he came to her universe.