Please bear with this story past the first chapter! The second chapter onwards will really show the other characters and her interactions with them, its just an introduction chapter really.

I'll be updating this as well as Life, Love, and Marriage According to the Ministry, so if you've been reading that, don't worry, its not going on hiatus!

Chapter One

What if... What if all it took to alter the future was to stop one person from uttering a single word...? Would you stop them if you had a chance, even if it meant the stories you'd fallen in love with would cease to exist and a much darker one might take its place?

If that one action would leave you trapped in an alternate reality of which you know as little as the characters originally living it, with as much fear, horror, and death, potentially coming your way, would you manage it?

Would you have the strength of will to do it?

I would... That is... I have.

Some people say that in your last moments, your entire life flashes before your eyes. Maybe they got the gist of it right, but not which life you'd be seeing? That thought passes quickly through Elaina's mind before its dismissed in favour of asking where she is. If she tries, she finds that rather than her thought becoming clearer, she can't quite hold on to any thought long enough to question it.

Besides, why would she be wondering about another person's life at a moment like this? Her mind is too foggy to answer that question either, and this confuses her for a moment. Why is her mind foggy when it should be slightly clearer than this? Waking up normally isn't this difficult, and even when she's extremely tired and doesn't want to wake, it doesn't feel like this.

As if she's not where she's meant to be as well as... Who she's meant to be?

Elaina is never one to wake up in an unfamiliar place, or under the cover of such a mental haze. She's not a stickler for rules, but the idea of waking up in some stranger's bed isn't one she regularly entertains. Living with her mum still at the age of 22, despite working and having gone to university also isn't something she thought she'd be doing, but at least it gives her an easy out when it comes to people suggesting she goes home with them...

So... As she doesn't remember doing anything stranger than falling asleep early on the sofa at home, she finds her current state confusing. Why is everything so unfamiliar? Her eyes still haven't opened, her lids feeling too heavy to raise, but the feel of the sheets surrounding her, the pillows which manage to raise her ever so slightly higher in bed than she's used to... Even the way the light shines through her eyelids as if its summer rather than the usual winters light stealing past her curtains at home... All these things tell her she's somewhere different.

Forcing her eyes open, Elaina winces as needles seem to poke them, a sure sign of her having been unused to the sun as it now floods her senses. Now that her eyes were engaged, it seems as if her hearing and smell come back in full force. She hadn't realised she'd been drifting, numb to everything but her sense of touch before, but now that the pain in her throat and mouth registers thirst, she wonders how that could possibly have been true.

'She's awake!' The loud voice makes her wince. Who is this unfamiliar person, so intent on bursting her eardrums? As excited as he sounds, why would he be willing to break the silence of the room by such a horribly noisy announcement as to her current state of health?

Blurry images wave in and out of the stark white ceiling above her. It appears Elaina is in a hospital from the smell and sounds of things, the faint clanging and strange low voices in another part of what sounds like a large room hinting at how bad her situation must be.

A hospital would make sense, wouldn't it? Maybe she was just ill and can't remember because she was unconscious when she was admitted? But then... Why would she have been admitted to hospital without knowing about it?

Elaina tries to search through her mind in order to work out what incident could have taken place for her to be hospitalised, but none seem to spring to mind, the more she attempts to sift, the more those memories and thoughts of home and her recent life seem to evade her. Not that she forgets anything important like her name or memories of her mum, siblings, or house... Just that everything else seems to be just out of the reach of her mind.

A sudden fear grips her and she attempts to fight against the sheets trapping her body, realising that the world has never been this stark, this clean, and her mind has never been this addled. Remembering enough to be able to focus on home reminds her of the fact that this is all quite so unfamiliar. Adrenaline kicks in, and her body reengages as she starts to struggle and her body continues to break from the fog weighing her down, making her realise what that increasingly annoying feeling coursing through her body is.

Pain.

Shooting, awful pain which passes as if in waves through her body from her head to her feet, pooling in her stomach and suddenly flooding her senses as it crashes down on her. She battles even more urgently, although she remains largely silent as her throat and mouth remain too woolly and pained to create proper sounds and the sudden realisation that she might be heard and others might notice her, leaves her unwilling to attempt a scream.

Unfortunately, its too late to pretend she's not awake as the deep kindly male voice saw to that, booming as it echoed around the large room.

'Shh!' The unfamiliar voice is back just as Elaina manages to break free of the covers tucked around her as if a prison. Ignoring the shushing, she struggles anew. Wherever she is, whoever he is, and how nice his tone or intentions, something is gravely wrong.