Days fade into night, which fades into day, and then so forth and so on. We live on a continuous loop of morning to night, then night to morning. We hem and haw through our lives, content to be where we are, or striving for something we can never be. We look back at decisions we've made, or paths we've chosen and either smile or regret as we wait for that next sunrise or coming sunset. We live on this loop, moment after moment after moment strung together like an intricate necklace.

But sometimes, if the clock ticks just right, if the moment pauses in one instant between the ticking of a clock, things can change. The sun will still rise and set, the day will still be long and the nights longer, but things change. That path we regret, or were content upon vanishes, leaving behind it a new path, a new set of intricate designs that we call our lives, and we're thrust into a world not exactly our own. But the sun continues to rise and continues to set, and we continue to get up in our endless loop of days upon months upon years...

"Mommy…"

Stephanie snuggled deeper into the soft covers around her. She pulled it tighter on her body, trying to draw warmth from it. Had someone turned the heater down or something because it was positively chilly in the room and she hated a chilly room. She burrowed her head further into the pillow as well, noting how comfortable it was.

In the distance, she heard a baby crying and vaguely wondered if Paul had left the television on all night on some weird station with a baby crying. Maybe it was like the Discovery Channel or a soap opera or something. She blocked it out as she went back to sleep, not even bothering to open up her eyes. The scene would change anyways and she'd be left with some other sound that would be a lot more soothing than a baby.

"Mommy," a voice whispered and Stephanie was seriously about to grab the remote and turn off the damn television with its stupid show or whatever was on. Now she was hearing a kid and she was getting pissed off that she was being interrupted. Not that she hated kids, she just didn't have the experience with them.

"Mommy, get up," a little girl said as Stephanie felt something poke her in the nose.

Stephanie thought it was Paul and swatted the hand away, but froze when the hand was much, much too tiny to be Paul's hand. Stephanie opened her eyes and found herself looking into the face of a little girl with curly, brown hair pulled back into a couple of pigtails. She was wearing a nightgown and grinning right at her. Stephanie gasped audibly and jumped back in bed as she looked down at the little girl.

"Who are you?" Stephanie asked, frightened.

"Mommy!" the little girl said, rolling her eyes. "Time to get up!"

Stephanie shook her head furiously, then took another moment to look around the room. This wasn't her room, this wasn't her room at all. This was someone else's room. Had she gotten drunk at the party last night and ended up in someone else's house? No, because she remembered going home with Paul, her husband. She remembered him laying in bed with her. Oh…a dream, this had to be a dream, this all had to be a dream. A very elaborate, very real-feeling dream, that's all it had to be. She would wake up soon and everything would be just fine and she wouldn't be the wiser about this.

So she sat there a moment, this little girl staring at her like she was crazy. She decided to pinch herself and when she did, it hurt, and that scared her. She wasn't supposed to hurt when she got pinched, and this world wasn't supposed to keep staying here once she became aware that it was a dream. She should've woken up by now, God, she should have woken up by now, but that little girl was still staring at her, her little face screwed up in concentration.

"Wake up, wake up, wake up," Stephanie whispered, willing herself to wake up from this very odd nightmare. Maybe she'd still be in that deck chair by the pool. Yes, she had fallen asleep by the pool.

"Mommy, I'm hungry," the little girl said, touching Stephanie's leg and when Stephanie felt the touch, she jumped nearly out of her skin and screamed.

"Jess, Jessica!"

Stephanie gasped and looked to her side where Chris Irvine's head was now becoming visible. Stephanie screamed a second time as she saw him, scrambling out of the bed altogether and standing there. She looked down, hoping she wasn't naked or anything, but she wasn't, thankfully. She was dressed in what she had worn to bed last night, so that was a comforting thought, maybe this really was just a dream.

"Stephanie!" Chris said, looking around in shock. "Where the hell am I?"

"Where the hell are you! Where the hell am I?" Stephanie screeched. "I don't know where I am, I was in bed last night, or by the pool, but I was with Paul! I was with Paul and we were together, and I was sleeping and I woke up and here you are, why are you here!"

"What the hell…" Chris said to himself. "I was watching a movie with Jessica, with my wife and I woke up here, what the hell are you doing here, Stephanie!"

"I don't know, I don't know," she answered, hopping from one foot to the other. "Wait, wait, wait, so you're…you're you right, this isn't our life right? I'm married to Paul Levesque and you're married to Jessica Irvine right, please tell me that's your reality. Please tell me we haven't been married for God knows how long."

"I'm married to Jessica Irvine, I've been married to Jessica for the past six years."

"Where are we!" Stephanie yelled, looking around as if this were some elaborate joke being played on them. "Were we drugged? Did someone drug us and put us into this weird…thing?"

"I don't know," Chris said. "I have no idea. Who would've drugged us? Were you somewhere where you could be drugged?"

"A cocktail party, you?"

"No, I was at home, I had nothing to do, I was just…what the hell is all of this, where the hell is this, are we in a house or something? Is this like a television set?"

Stephanie went over to the window and threw open the curtains. What she saw was not the expanse of land that she and Paul owned in Connecticut. No, what she saw was New York City. There was no way that she could've gotten to New York from Connecticut without knowing, there just wasn't any way. Chris got up from the bed and stood behind her and she could hear him gasp a little as he looked down to the busy morning streets.

"Holy shit," he whispered.

Stephanie turned to look at him, "Chris, what happened?"

Stephanie started shaking as she stood there. She was scared, she was scared of what was going on, who she was with, this world that she was suddenly thrust into. Her lip trembled as she took in the morning sun against the buildings around her. She didn't want to turn around. New York was familiar compared to what was behind her back. If she just ignored what was behind her and continued to believe that this was a dream, then none of this would be real. This wasn't real. This was not the real world.

"Do you hear a baby crying?" Chris asked softly.

"Don't talk to me!" Stephanie screeched, turning around abruptly and wanting to rush to any place where she could be alone. She was having trouble with her thoughts right now. They were getting to her, and she was being submerged by the heaviness of her thoughts. She ran towards a door, but found it was a closet and then tried searching for the bathroom, which she found a moment later. She shut the door behind her and leaned back against the door, sobbing and sliding down the door.

Chris stood there, watching as she shut the door. He turned back to the window. He had been with Jessica not a couple hours before, right? It all seemed so hazy right now that he couldn't even remember if that had really been what he had been doing hours before this moment. He swallowed hard, and while he wasn't as demonstrative as Stephanie was, he was shaking just as much inside. This wasn't his life, but if Stephanie was here and acting like that, this couldn't be a dream, could it? No, dreams were never this vivid.

"Daddy?" a tiny voice came from behind him. Chris closed his eyes in fear. He had briefly seen the little girl when he had been rushing towards the window to see if he was in some sort of weird planet that wasn't Earth, but he hadn't really looked at her. She was calling him daddy, and he wanted to run out of this room and track down his wife and his life, and get the hell away from whatever the hell this place was. This wasn't his life and whoever that little girl was, he certainly wasn't her daddy.

"Daddy," the pitiful voice said again and this time he could hear the tears in her voice as clear as day. Chris felt bad, this little girl didn't know what was going on. He turned and looked at her and had to take a step back. This was Stephanie's daughter, there was no question about it, this little girl looked like Stephanie, except she had his nose and he could see himself in her smile.

"Oh hey…" Chris realized he didn't know her name, so he went with, "you."

"Daddy, what's wrong with Mommy?" the little girl asked.

"Mommy's having a bad morning," Chris said, kneeling to her level. He looked at her, "How are you?"

"I'm okay," she shrugged. "But baby is crying."

"Oh yeah, that's…around here, right?" he asked, trying to remain calm. He couldn't frighten this little girl. He wasn't too sure of who she was, though he could guess from the way she referred to him and Stephanie as mommy and daddy, but he didn't know how old this girl was, or where she had come from, or where anything here had come from.

"He's in his room, Daddy," she said, like it was silly of him to ask.

He wanted to go speak to Stephanie, but since she had holed herself up in the bathroom and that baby had been crying at least since he had woken up, he figured that he would have to do the right thing in this situation and actually go and see this baby. He wondered if it would be his too. Now he was just thinking crazily, this wasn't his life. He wanted nothing more than to go home. He didn't want to live this life, not with these kids he didn't know…or her…Stephanie. He couldn't live with Stephanie.

Stephanie heard Chris and that little girl walk out of the room and she slipped out of the bathroom and went into the bedroom, investigating the place. She looked at the large television hanging from the wall and the bed with the sheets she had just been burrowing herself in. On the dresser there were some pictures and she recognized her family in front of the WWE logo, and she was reassured that at least that was the same and she wasn't some poor person or something. Not that this apartment looked poor, it actually looked like a penthouse if the size of that closet was to be believed.

There were pictures of that little girl with various people and then at the end, she was staring at a picture of herself at her wedding, except it wasn't her wedding to Paul, this was a wedding picture of her smashing cake into Chris's face. She stood there, staring at for a long time. She didn't remember these events, but staring at the picture stirred a kind of anger into the pit of her stomach as she grabbed the frame and threw it against the wall, making it shatter and fall to the ground.

"Oh, that's nice Stephanie, just go around breaking all these people's things."

"They're our things," she snapped as Chris walked into the bedroom. She pointed at his arms. "What the hell is that?"

"It's a baby," Chris said, rolling his eyes. "What? Don't tell me the Ice Queen has never seen a baby before? Wow, and here I thought that you lured them to your house made of gingerbread and stuck them in the oven."

"Very funny," Stephanie seethed. "Don't tell me that one is ours too."

"Well, considering that it was in this place and he has your eyes, I'm guessing that maybe he does," Chris said. "What the hell is going on, Stephanie?"

"You expect me to know!" she screamed at him and she sat down on the bed heavily. "Yesterday everything made sense and now I don't even know where I am or who I'm with or what the hell that little girl's name is. Is she ours too? Is this our life? What the hell…"

"I don't know," he said. "I'm just…I'm trying to hold it together…for you."

She looked up at him in surprise. "For me?"

"Well…you tend to freak out about things."

"Oh, shove it up your ass, jackass," Stephanie told him. "I don't freak out."

"You just did, with the bathroom, with the picture frame. I mean, you just freak out and I'm trying to keep my cool. We'll just have to find Paul and Jessica and maybe they'll know, maybe they were…transported too."

"Oh give me a break, Chris, this is a dream! It has to be!"

"Does this feel like a dream to you!" Chris shouted at her.

"Just stop yelling at me!" she demanded, rubbing her eyes. "Just stop yelling at me, I just…I have to figure out a way out of here. I can't be here, I can't do this, I don't know what I'm doing or who I'm with…I'm lost, I'm completely lost."

"Your shirt…"

Stephanie looked down. "What about it?"

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head. "We'll figure this out, Stephanie, we will."

"That's easier said than done."

"We will…we will."

Another sunrise, another sunset.

A new timeline, a new life…