It's 1985 when the world falls apart; breaks; stops. It will be fixed later. Or, rather, earlier.

He's not crying, not anymore, looking at his father's grave. It's absolutely wrenching: his face feels hot and swollen, skin suddenly pulled too taut. His lungs seem to spasm as he draws breath, air rattling around inside him. But were it not for the erratic, quiet 'Oh, God, no's, it could have been said that the red-faced, shaking Marty McFly had simply been sitting in the cold for too long.

It's with some difficulty that he looks away from the grave of George McFly to take a look at the rest of the graveyard. The vandals have gotten there, too, markers tipped over and spray-painted with words illegible in the dark. With stomach turning, Marty touches his father's headstone, either to protect or be protected. The dark gets darker; the cold gets colder; shaking knees shake harder, but all at once Marty is asleep.

For once doesn't expect to be awakened by his mother. He inexplicably expects to be awakened by Biff. His eyes are open, his fist drawn back--You're supposed to be in Switzerland, you little son of a bitch-- "Doc?" he manages, voice garbled.

Marty grasps Doc in a tight hug before continuing, "Oh, shit, Doc, my father."

He can't manage beyond that, but Doc has no time for cajoling him, nor would he particularly good at it even if he had the time to spare. "Yes, Marty, I know. Let us try to rectify the situation before it becomes permanent."

"..Permanent?" Marty wheels back, stunned. "That's right, we got a time machine! So, so, let's just go back to the future and fix this!" He's already on his feet and marching out of the gravesite when Doc says, with some semblance of embarrassment:

"Yes, well…First we must get the DeLorean back into our possession."

"What? Doc, how do you lose a time machine?"

"The time machine is only a car, Marty, and if you haven't noticed, the current citizens of Hill Valley aren't exactly respectable."

It's trying work, trying to find a stolen vehicle, particularly with only the police--which, Marty learned upon entering the police station were only a glorified extension of Biff's goons-- to offer help. It was in this vein that they spoke to bikers who were either willfully or actually ignorant of the DeLorean. Beyond that they were wary of asking for assistance, because by then Hill Valley seemed so backwards that they didn't know how to continue. And so Marty and Doc were left with nothing by the end of the day.

They wait together in Doc's broken-down lab, The Doc writing on his blackboard and Marty sitting on the floor, cursing out the thief ("I hope that bastard drives into a lake."). Swears ineffective, Marty eventually looks up. "What're you doing?"

"Working."

The chalk scratches against the board rhythmically as Doc writes down the places they've already looked for the DeLorean, then the mathematical probabilities of it turning up in the locations remaining based upon the density of the population and the crime rate.

There's a beat of silence. Marty, for the first time in his life, feels absolutely awkward at sharing a room with The Doc. For that one second, it feels like they are strangers; an invisible wall built up between them. He shakes off the feeling as he stands. "Say, Doc, how come we can't just make another one?…Flux capacitor?"

Doc pauses for brief consideration before continuing to write on the board. "I think, with the lab in the state that it is," he casts a look of disdain around the room, "that that would be impossible."

"Come on, what do you need? A socket wrench? A couple of wires? You're The Doc, Doc!" With a twitch of a grin, he adds, "If we put our minds to it, we can accomplish anything!"

With suddenly renewed spirit, Doc throws down the chalk. "You're absolutely right, Marty!" After this flourish of movement, Doc stills to muse aloud, mostly for the benefit of his audience, "I wonder if the car dealership is still in existence. Perhaps, with the influx of motorcycles, there was less need for-- Well, never mind that!" He grabs a suitcase and then he's rushing out the door, Marty's words falling behind him:

"Doc, what the hell--!"

:-:-:-:

The familiar Toyota is still there, gleaming and smooth. "How 'bout this, Doc?"

"It's impractical, Marty."

"Sure," Marty concedes easily, "but look at it." His argumentative skills are depleted just by being so close to the 4x4. Marty moves his hands to touch it, recoils at the thought of smudging it, and after some deliberation lets his fingers hover above the shimmering wax coat. He glances quickly over at Doc to keep track of the scientist, but doesn't consider going with him to the 'USED CAR' section, instead opting to fawn over the Toyota some more.

Marty backs away from the truck guiltily as he thinks of how he got to stand beside it in the first place. He stumbles over his feet as he takes a step backward. It doesn't seem right to enjoy something the day after he learned his father died.

He hesitates.

Why shouldn't he? His father's been dead for twelve years.

No, not to him; to him, his father's been dead a day.

Marty closes his eyes tightly and thinks of his father. The memories that come to mind are before 'Father' and straight to 'Daddy'. There's a blurry shape that could be George McFly, but Marty can't see him, not with his mind's eye, and he can't hear him. And all at once it goes from 'possible George McFly' to Biff, and it's still his father. Biff is his dad as much as George McFly ever was. "Hurry the hell up and get the remote, you little shit," Biff tells him when he's seven.

"Doc," Marty croaks out helplessly, opening his eyes. He runs to the 'USED CAR' section, ricocheting awkwardly off a front bumper as he does so.

"Marty! What is it?"

Marty opens his mouth, not entirely sure what to say.

Then, all of a sudden, George McFly is once again his father for all seventeen years of his life.

"…Nothing." Marty says.

"Yes…Well, I've purchased a car that may prove suitable. Get in."

Marty climbs in. As he sits down, he realizes he's glad; his rubbery knees wouldn't have supported him much longer.

When Doc drives through the slim opening of chain link fence, Marty asks, "Was this lot always gated?"

He already knows the answer.

:-:-:-:

A capacitor, Doc explains, functions like a battery, building up a storage of energy. He gives a fairly animated definition of it, hands waving and voice thrown to fragmented exclamations. (Exactly! Yes, Marty, precisely! It truly is remarkable! Incredible, how such a simple piece of machinery could have such an astounding impact on history.) The flux capacitor is unique, he says, because…

Marty stops paying any real attention here but watches Doc fondly through the rest of the heated explanation. The excitement that Doc feels at the mere thought of science is almost enough to outweigh the contempt that Marty felt for it through years of barely passing biology in school. Although, now that he thought of it, the last school hadn't been as bad as the three prior to it; he'd even made some friends that his mother thought were good influences despite the fact that borderline-hooligan Hill Valley boys didn't mesh well with the kids who went to boarding school in Switzerland.

"I've never been to Switzerland," Marty mutters to himself.

"What?" Doc asks, distracted by taking apart the passenger side door panel.

"Nothing. Nothing, nothing. So, uh, hey, Doc, what're you doing?"

"Here is where the wiring will go."

"Oh. Cool. Hey. Doc. Do you know who, who, who…we were? Are?…here?"

"Given what we become in this alternate reality, I think we'd best focus on reversing the situation, Marty."

Marty watches Doc's face lingeringly, turning away abruptly. It's probably just as well that he doesn't know who he is, here; it'd probably break the time-space continuum or something. He climbs into the driver's seat of the car, glances again at Doc, and turns the car on. Doc, now sitting back and looking at schematics, doesn't scold him. Marty tunes the radio --static, static, static, "So, time for Billy Jay's news minute: John Harris, who was recorded on his own home security system stabbing his employer to death four months ago, was found not guilty on a technicality…"

"The damn legal system," Doc says scornfully.

"Just wait 'til they get rid of all the lawyers."

They share a grin like the future is some sort of inside joke.

"And 'Doctor' Emmet L. Brown," Billy Jay says. Marty, attention grabbed, quickly cranks up the volume. Billy Jay continues, "our local crackpot scientist, escaped from The Hill Valley Mental Institution around 9:00 last night. Lock up your houses, folks, the mad doctor is--"

Marty turns the volume back down. "Escaped? Yesterday? Nine o'clock? That's when we got here, right?"

Doc looks quickly at the watch adorning his right wrist, then his left. "Yes, Marty, that's--Great Scott!"

"What? What?!"

"Marty, have you heard anything about the whereabouts of your other self?"

"My other self? You mean the me in this 1985?"

"Precisely!"

"No," Marty says automatically. "I mean, yes! My father! Biff! Biff told me I wasn't supposed to be here! I'm supposed to be in--oh, shit, Doc. Does this mean we're--"

"Yes, Marty, I'm afraid we are."

"Oh, wow, this is heavy." Marty swallows thickly, feeling very ill suddenly. He'd taken for granted that he was just him, Marty McFly, who'd grown up in the normal Hill Valley, and that he and Doc and Jennifer were the only ones aware not that everything was wrong, but how everything was wrong. "Jennifer," he says weakly. "Shit; I'd forgotten all about Jennifer, Doc. What's gonna happen to her?"

"Presumably, she'll become whoever she is in this universe, just as we are. But never mind that, now, Marty; it just makes the completion of the new time machine all the more significant."

"I don't even know Jennifer in this universe," Marty says vaguely. He watches Doc, considers Doc, for a long while. That same unfamiliar feeling comes back to him; the intrusive feeling of coming into someone's home uninvited. How was it that they'd spent time together before all this? Had they spent time together at all? Yes, there's something there, something untouchable lurking in the back of Marty's mind just out of reach, quick flashing pictures of a lifetime of sneaking into Doc's house. But there's nothing there, nothing real…

The time machine. That's real proof of that, right ahead of him. Well, there's a partially stripped car right ahead of him, along with a blueprint of…something, the flux capacitor, lying on the ground. But Emmett Brown is crazy; he's just escaped from a mental hospital; there must be a reason why he was in the mental hospital to begin with; maybe imaginary inventions were part of his psychosis. Maybe there never was any time machine. Who believes in time machines, anyway? Who believes in alternate universes? Why the hell is he in the house of someone so disturbed?

The DeLorean. Marty shuts his eyes and calls it to mind. He mows down a tree. (You space bastard! You killed my pine!) "This is nuts," Marty concludes, opening his eyes.

'Listen. Doc? I think I gotta get home. So you just don't move…stay right there…' he thinks of saying, 'and I'll find the door by myself.'

But just a moment ago, he, too, had known of the alternate universes. He had known about the DeLorean and the flux capacitor and Doc. "I don't know you here, either, Doc," Marty says.

Doc has resumed work.

"Doc," Marty prods.

There's the smooth, clean sound of hard work, slightly grunting breath and clothes scraping across the floor.

"Doc," Marty says urgently. He lunges forward and grabs at The Doc desperately. "Doc, will you forget the goddamn flux capacitor?!"

Doc looks agitated. Is this the first time Marty's seen him this way? It's the first time in the past two days he has. But is it the first time ever? The first time in his own time? The first time in other's time?

"Doc," he pushes on, somewhat quieter, "I want to know you."

:-:-:-:

It is a decidedly strange experience, learning in hours what he'd had most a lifetime to learn the first time around, but there's a creeping familiarity settling around the edges of the conversation; a calm dawning of déjà vu that makes Marty feel he'd known all this about Doc before and simply couldn't bring it to mind. If there are any differences in the history of this world from the history of the good Hill Valley--was it all that good? Doc's accounts set it up to be amazing.--then Marty has no knowledge of it, but the history of Doc, himself, is comfortable and easy to believe.

It is through this conversation that Doc becomes the only connection Marty has to his former self. A half-connection, really, because even Doc fumbles over the friendship they had and has to admit its nonexistence for the past seventeen years. He recalls, at once, Marty appearing on November 5, 1955. It was the day he'd invented the flux capacitor, Doc informs Marty off-handedly. But functioning time machine or not, he can't think of how Marty would have gotten there. "I must've hit my head harder than I thought!" Doc concludes, holding a hand to where the bandage had been thirty years ago; Marty doesn't understand the reference but smiles bemusedly.

"I don't remember inventing any time machine," Doc says; these words, too, bring about a thirty-year-old déjà vu.

"But, Doc, the flux capacitor! That's the thing that makes time travel possible! Right?"

"No, no, no, no, Marty, that I remember. But the completion of the time machine--When was it that we got here?"

"Yesterday." Or maybe longer. All their watches seem ineffectual, time too fluid to hold onto. Marty watches Doc confusedly. "I don't get it, Doc, what's happening?"

Doc, eyes wide, runs to a nearby table and picks up a newspaper, holding it up for Marty to see.

'EMMETT BROWN COMMITTED
Crackpot Inventor Declared Legally Insane'

"We already knew that," Marty says.

"Look here." Doc taps the headline beneath it,

'Nixon to Seek Fifth Term
Vows to End Vietnam War by 1985'

"Yeah, so? What about it?"

"Perhaps, in this universe, during the completion of the time machine I was institutionalized! If this is indeed the case, Marty, the success to our mission has been put in serious jeopardy."

"You mean, you don't know how the time machine works?"

"Precisely."

"Perfect." Marty makes a few empty gestures with his hands. "But you've got the flux capacitor, right? So what's the problem? That's all we need, isn't it? Let's just juice this baby up and stop this from happening."

"It doubtlessly requires more energy than regular gasoline allows. Here!" Doc bustles about the lab for a moment, grabbing some papers from the floor. He flips through them, dust spilling into the air. He rejoins Marty and points at some handwritten equations, "The flux capacitor has an unfortunately inefficient input/output ratio. It seemed reasonable at the time, but perhaps I was mistaken. Well, never mind, it's all in the past now. We need more than a gigawatt to be able to reach our destination! In fact, Marty, I'm afraid these calculations are now inaccurate; unlike the DeLorean, the construction isn't stainless steel; the flux dispersal will be--!"

Stunned at this revelation, Doc drops the papers and rushes to the blackboard, wiping it off with his coat sleeve before writing anew. Marty doesn't ask what the flux dispersal will be, because it doesn't much matter. He rubs his arms frantically to ward off the cold, watching as Doc's handwriting scrawls across the board.

Marty thinks.

He thinks of George McFly, of Dave, of Linda, of Jennifer, and of Hill Valley.

George--he can gather a picture of him, almost. He can bring to mind his father reading to him, and there's a warm feeling that comes with it. Funnily, he couldn't picture his father before, sitting by the grave, but now he can; the images are settled in his brain. George McFly is the same hero now that Marty's seventeen as he was when he'd died, when Marty was five.

Marty breathes slowly. He and Dave haven't talked in years, between his bouncing around schools and Dave's following in Uncle Joey's footsteps. The separation isn't anything to think about, he hasn't since he was thirteen, but he now promises to reconnect with his brother. He's not entirely sure why; he doesn't miss Dave that much.

But it's with some relief that he reminds himself he still talks with his sister, even if she does try to bum money off him regularly. She's there, and so is mom. So is his father. His father. ("Sweetie, Biff would like for you to call him 'Dad'," his mother said when he was six.
"I don't give a shit what the little butthead calls me," Biff countered as he popped open a beer.) He was too young to feel real betrayal to his actual father, and somehow with that being all his mother addressed Biff by, your father, your father, your father, it had become that Biff really was his father.

Hill Valley--is it worse than before? There's no promise of something better. He hates his father's guts, more or less hates all of Hill Valley, but it's his home for Christ sakes, and Doc's love for the old Hill Valley might just be because the grass is always greener on the other side. There's an ache for something he's never had, but it's an ache of something already gone.

"Yo, Doc. Forget it," Marty interrupts as Doc reaches the home stretch of the equation. Or maybe he'd started another one; Marty hadn't excelled in math, and the entire thing is baffling.

It's the nature of scientists to strive for improvement, so numbers and possibilities are still going through Doc's head when he sets down the chalk.

Marty continues strangely, "My father'll kill me if I go home. Can I just kinda hang out here tonight? I'll be out of your hair in the morning."

'If', not when, but 'if I go home.'

Doc wonders if that was a slip of the tongue. Then he wonders if it's hyperbole or factuality. "Yes, of course, Marty."

"Thanks, Doc."

Doc continues belatedly, "You're welcome to stay as long as you'd like."

He doesn't say that, hell, he'd like to stay forever if that's the case. That even though he's only known Doc two days, he belongs more in the broken down lab than he does in his own home. But, still, Doc understands; accepts. Marty moves again to The Doc slowly. "Thanks," Marty repeats.

Desperation has turned to apathy, fight to resignation.

His mother told him when he was thirteen that she first 'hooked up' with Biff at his father's funeral. She cried and drank and he sat there in awkward silence, feeling sorry for her and ashamed of her for doing such a thing.

And now he understands.

In the wake of Hill Valley's death, he kisses Doc as wholly and as lovingly as he's never kissed Jennifer.