Hello, all! Sorry for the delay! Week 2 of summer camp started today, and now that I've got one week's worth of registraring under my belt, I think I've got a better feel for it and less nerves. I

've also got a beta! The delightful patheticpisces has agreed to be on board for this series, and it makes me all the more motivated to write! I'm excited that she's excited, so I'm hoping for a snowball effect!

What we have below is the first chapter I finished for this story and another of my favorites. I hope you enjoy it as well and leave me a line or two! Enjoy! :)

CHAPTER TWELVE
Freeze Frame

Thursday, November 10, 1955
7:10 AM

The bell above the door tinkled. George didn't look up, far too interested in finishing his Corn Flakes before he had to get to school. Moments later, the stool right next to him was occupied. His stomach churned unfavorably at the thought of seeing Biff before third block, but his disposition brightened instantly upon seeing soft blond tresses out of the corner of his eye.

"E-Emma!"

"Hi, George."

He paused and shrunk back over his bowl of cereal, sullen. "Your brother doesn't like me talking to you. He said he doesn't want me to take you to the dance."

"Well, that's not his decision to make. It's mine," Emma said readily, tugging the sleeves of her yellow sweater over her wrists. George looked back over at her immediately, but her smile thinned. "But he is right," she said gently. "We can't be…together. I'm happy to go to the dance with you, but he and I are moving at the end of the week."

George swallowed a bite, narrowing his eyes in confusion. "Moving?"

"Yeah. We've been staying with our uncle, but now it's time for us to go back to where we came from," she explained as evenly as possible. "He just doesn't want you to get attached before we leave."

"Is that why he wants to fix me up with Lorraine?"

"That's part of the reason," she said, glancing at the counter. "And she's so nice, George. And pretty. I just know you two will hit it off." She touched his arm. "Just listen to my brother. He knows what he's doing. He's looking out for you, you know."

George still looked put out, sheepishly letting his eyes wander back over to her. "Can we still go to the dance together? You know, just for a dance or two?"

Emma smiled sweetly. She owed the kid at least one goodbye dance for all they had put him through. She pushed away from the counter, her hand slipping from his arm as she stood.

"Sure thing."

"Wait!" The spoon clattered in the bowl, George hastily wiping his mouth with a napkin. "I'll walk you to school."

"Oh, I'm not going to school today," Emma said from the door, bathed in the warm morning sunlight. "But thank you."

George nodded. "You know," – she turned in the doorway again – "maybe when you move, we could be pen pals?"

"I'd like that. But my brother wouldn't."

"Oh. Right."

The bell above the door tinkled.

"See you tomorrow, George."

He blinked, watching her go breathlessly.

"Bye."

Marty caught up to George at his locker, tearing the KICK ME sign from the back of his shirt.

"George! How are you, buddy?"

George smiled, shutting his locker. "Pretty good."

Marty's eyebrows shot up, thrown off at his dad's uncharacteristic cheerfulness. Was it too much to hope that things were finally being remedied on their own?

"Yeah? Did you decide to talk to Lorraine this morning?"

"…No," George said, falling back into himself again as they headed down the hall.

Of course it was too much to ask.

Marty tried to keep his voice upbeat. "Then what's got you so chipper this morning?"

George looked ill. He put his eyes to the floor and kept them there. Marty chuckled.

"Come on, George! We're pals, right?"

"I guess."

"So tell me."

"I don't want to. You'll probably hit me."

"What? What are you talking about, George? Do I look like Biff?"

"Well…"

"Out with it, George!"

His father led him into his Trigonometry classroom. "Emma came and talked to me while I was at Lou's this morning," he said, not daring to look over at Marty. "She said you didn't want me talking to her because you guys are moving this weekend."

Marty made a face at his desk. "Emma? Where is she?"

"She said she wasn't coming to school and that you were just looking out for me. But she still promised me a dance on Saturday night."

The deep lines of confusion on Marty's face dissipated.

"She said that?" he asked quietly.

George still looked to be anticipating a black eye. "Yes?"

Marty turned toward George's desk, his conversation with Doc the night before nagging at him. "George, what exactly happened in the café on Tuesday? Do you really like Emma so much better than Lorraine that you asked her out?"

"Well, no," George admitted. "I mean, not 'no, I don't like Emma,' but 'no-'"

"Cut to the chase, George."

"When I went inside, Lorraine said Emma kept talking about me and asked me if I'd like to take her to the dance. And…I said yes…"

Marty couldn't help but to smile inwardly. He should have known Lorraine would be the instigator. Especially after that tawdry display in the lab Tuesday afternoon. A wave of relief washed over him, followed by a flood of guilt.

Damn. What an asshole he was.

"Where are you moving to? I wanted to be pen pals with you guys. If that's okay."

"Um, I'll get back to you on that," Marty said distantly. "I'll, uh, try to find out our new address before we go and give it to you."

The bell rang. While George turned his attention to the front of the class with a sigh of relief that Emma's brother hadn't knocked him silly, Marty simply fell back into his chair, dumbfounded.

Yesterday did little to release the painful tension in Emma's chest since her shouting match with Marty, but walking down the fresh, sunny sidewalks of a utopian Hill Valley put a bit of spring back in her step. With crisp air in her lungs and a whole new perspective on her world to take in, her sunken spirits gradually rose through the morning.

Emma would be the first to admit that she wasn't your standard teenage girl when it came to the stereotypical correlation of how much happiness one incurred by spending hours laden with bags from clothes shopping. Yet, it was strangely therapeutic, having a morning to focus on indulging herself in such a way. Not that she could carry much with a bum arm, but all she really needed was dress for the dance.

A woman waiting for the bus kindly pointed her in the direction of some gorgeous window shops and quaint boutiques where, at the encouragement of the effervescent clerk, she tried on more dresses and accessories in two hours than she had ever worn in her life. None of them held any appeal to the eccentric tastes of 1985, but when she put on the glasses of a 17-year-old girl in 1955, possibilities popped out all over the place.

It was a pale, mint green dress that won out in the end. It had tiny cap sleeves, its neckline hinting at a gentle dip from one end of her collarbone to the other. A thin layer of white, flowery lace draped over the solid color of the dress where it cascaded to her knees with a feminine flare, a band of its lovely mint silk flat around her waist. In 1985, she would be laughed out of the dance with how modest it was, but the bullet hole in her shoulder needed to be safely hidden from sight.

The clerk fitted her with a pair of pearly pumps, suggesting light make-up and an up-do to "bring out the young woman" in her. Emma smiled politely at the woman's referral to the nearby jewelry store.

"Thank you, but I already I have a necklace that will go perfectly with this."

She somehow managed to get back home without toppling over. On her way up the brick walk, she crossed paths with her father, relieved to have him help her carry her packages up to her room.

"I see you bought out Sears and Roebuck."

"Well, a little," she admitted, twisting her pinky. "But I didn't go to the jeweler. I was wondering if you might have anything around here I could use?"

Emmett narrowed his eyes a moment before giving a sharp nod and darting from the room. Biting her lip, she followed him into a large study he used for storage. She mimicked his maneuvers through the room to an upright jewelry armoire next to the window. He told her what she already knew: it belonged to his mother and contained trinkets that pre-dated the Civil War. A few years before Emma would be born, the mansion would burn down, and he would salvage only three pieces from its charred remains, one day giving them to her on her fourteenth birthday – a silver brooch with a tiny emerald, a thick golden bracelet, and a beautiful pearl necklace.

When she found it in the armoire, the look on her face struck him oddly.

"It's perfect," she said, running her fingers over its smooth, cool pearls. "May I?"

"By all means," he urged gently.

He smiled as she picked it up, carefully coiling the loop of pearls in her palm. In that moment, the oddest sense of rightness settled on him. It was as if a perfect thing had just transpired, and he found no other thing in the world quite so worth his while.

"Would you like to join me in the lab?" he asked quietly. She looked up. "I could use the help."

It wasn't fair. This 1955 version of her dad was still able to read her like he'd known her forever. Maybe he wasn't as tuned-in to the world as he would be in thirty years, but she could tell how intrigued he had become over the week that their wavelengths were incredibly synced.

Despite his innate fear of knowledge of the future, Emma could sense his curiosity getting the better of him with this invitation. The short time they had spent together yesterday was just the kind of thing she was trying to avoid, let alone how dangerously enjoyable it had been. She eyed him a moment for a tell that he suspected her as something other than a future lab assistant, but his lopsided grin maintained enough innocence that she accepted.

"What do you need help with?"

"Doc? Is Emma with you?"

No reply.

"Hey, Doc!"

For a fleeting moment, Marty was afraid he would find him passed out spread-eagle on the other side of the DeLorean.

In a white radiation suit riddled with bullets…

Knowing that was completely irrational but hurrying all the same, Marty grabbed the wooden post next to the DeLorean and swung to a stop, relieved to see Doc bustling about, isolated in one of is perpetual oblivions. The scientist knelt at the head of the long pole and hook with a length of cable, working to secure it.

"Doc?"

The deep humming broke. "Yes?"

Marty took a step forward. "How are things going?"

"We're right on track," Doc said, tightening the bracket head. "Emma gave me a hand this afternoon, and we made excellent headway in preparing the DeLorean for Saturday night."

"Do you know where she is now?"

"In her room. Her shoulder was bothering her." He looked up after feeding the cable through the bracket. "If you two are speaking again, tell her I'll be up around ten to give her an injection."

Marty nodded, casting Doc a wary eye before heading up to the house.

After a short detour through the kitchen, Marty silently climbed the stairs two at a time and came to stand in front of Emma's bedroom door. He could feel the residual anger from two nights prior still radiating from its tightly sealed doorjambs, and though he knew otherwise, he felt like she had been imprisoned at his doing ever since. They had both said some pretty awful stuff in the heat of the moment, but it didn't help that he'd gone in without a hold on his temper.

He looked down at the glass jar of peanut butter, rolling it between his hands as he tried to figure out what to say. When nothing poetic or profound came to him after half a minute, he hesitantly raised his knuckle to the door, knocked, and leaned towards it.

"Em? It's me."

As expected, the door did not open. He bit the inside of his cheek, speaking carefully.

"Em, I'm sorry I yelled at you. I'm just scared, you know? All of this 'not existing' business... But that's not your fault. Or Doc's. This isn't anyone's fault," he said to the carpet. "It just…happened. And that doesn't make it okay to take it out on you."

The doorjambs continued to glow dangerously.

"Please, Em. You're all I got here."

A fiery, stubborn smolder.

"Please open the door."

Silence. Marty hung his head in wait.

He sighed.

Giving the peanut butter jar a squeeze, he resigned to leaving it on the floor, but the knob turned before he could bend over. Lock softly clicking out of place, Marty straightened as her reproachful face appeared. He met her eyes, astounded with how much his guilt had humbled him in that moment. He swallowed all of the bitter regret, barely able to speak.

"I don't want to fight anymore."

Emma glanced at the floor. "And I don't want you to not exist."

"I know. My dad told me what happened at the café on Tuesday." The mere mention darkened her eyes, but he tread carefully. "I'm sorry I got mad without hearing it from you first. I should have. And… thanks for talking to him this morning. It may have finally put him in his place."

She nodded.

"But now we need to help your dad," Marty said. He held up the jar of peanut butter. "Truce?"

She took a deep breath, studying the disarming sincerity in his eyes. Blinking, she unfolded her arms, opened the door fully, and reached for the jar in his hand with a small, forgiving smile. She joined him in the hallway.

"Come on," he said. "Let's walk Copernicus."

Emmett was in a coma. He had to be. He had hit his head rather hard on Saturday, and there were some fantastic theories about where the mind went when one was in a coma. Perhaps that's what was happening: he was lying on his bathroom floor, his deepest desire of making a history-altering contribution to science lucidly manifesting in the recesses of his unconscious. He didn't anticipate on creating something that was literally "history-altering," but the two teenage apparitions testified heartily to the fact that it was - and that he had indeed invented it.

He stood at his bedroom window in a stupor, watching Marty and Emma out on his lawn. They'd set out a blanket, a lantern, and a Scrabble board, Copernicus's head resting in Emma's lap as they dipped crackers in a jar of peanut butter between turns. It was so ordinary.

He'd never really taken the time to ponder what youth would do recreationally thirty years into the future, but playing Scrabble was not admittedly the first thing to pop into his head. Perhaps mankind hadn't made any significant leaps and bounds by 1985. Their clothes were a little different, and maybe he didn't understand some of the expressions they used, but they were still very much human, especially where he was concerned.

It didn't take Einstein and Edison to tell him that he wasn't going to have much in the way of companionship in the future. Serious scientists were loners; they didn't get married or have families or friends. They were dedicated to and persecuted for their work. There wasn't time or room for people like that between the sleepless nights and lines of equations on the chalkboard.

So, having Marty and Emma show up at his front door with whom he'd apparently established amiable relationships was a real conundrum. Never mind that they had done so as a result of one of his lifelong works succeeding. Even though sending them back in time had clearly been an accident, they had been there with him, willingly working on a trial experiment with as much excitement as him; otherwise, Emmett did not see himself having them involved in something so important. Scientists had their apprentices, but something about them seemed to suggest that an association greater than that had evolved between the three of them. A bond, even.

Something familial crept into his chest.

He chuckled; how different they were from him!

…but how keen and inquisitive they were about him. About what he did. What his opinions were. The way they challenged and taught him in return for his guidance and approval. How much he trusted and believed them. He had never imagined himself entwined in such complex relationships with mere kids, but were they really just that to him anymore? He wasn't sure he could feel such disappointment in himself for endangering their lives if they were "mere kids."

And God damn it, Emma's father. There was no explanation for why he had become so fixated with it, and that alone infuriated him with how distracting it had become. But the absence of evidence was not evidence of absence; just because there were no mentions of it in the tape didn't—

Emmett scolded himself. He was breaking his own rules, risking the very space-time continuum, and at this point, his mind was only going to make connections because he was looking for them. For once, the scientist was discouraging his sense of curiosity. He felt on the brink the night before by simply asking Marty her last name, and the power behind it all was enormous to him.

Further exploration in the matter could only be devastating. He would not bear what responsibility came with such selfish undertaking.

Whoever Emma's father was – a future colleague, a passing face, or he himself – Emmett would find out in due time.

Just like whatever happened after that tape cut off.

Run for it.

He blinked once.

Coma, he thought, abruptly skulking away from the window. Coma, coma, coma.

Emma bit half of a saltine cracker slathered thick with peanut butter, raising her eyebrows at Marty as he laid some tiles on the game board.

"Are you serious?"

Marty wrote down his score as she fed the other half of her cracker to Copernicus. "Why not?"

"Marty, I think this requires a little more tact than walking into the room and announcing without warning that he's going to get shot. You saw first-hand how well that worked Tuesday."

"I had a preamble then; this time we'd lose that. Do you think he'd listen if we told him you were his daughter first?"

Emma shook her head, studying the letters in her line-up and on the board. "Probably as much as your parents would if you told them you were their son." Her letters clattered as they joined those in play, and she straightened them. "FLOCKING. Triple Word on the F and the G."

Marty leaned over the board, his mouth open. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Eighteen times six… a hundred and eight points? Really?"

Emma smiled triumphantly, swiping a healthy hunk of peanut butter out of the jar. "Just write it down, you big sissy. You still have a Z, anyways."

After Emma took a moment to replenish her tiles and feed Copernicus another cracker, she realized how quiet Marty had become, likely sulking. She was about to chide him again when she looked up. The pen hovered over the pad, and above them, Marty's eyes doubled as he slowly met her gaze.

"That's it."

"Yeah," Emma said, slightly thrown off by how excited he was at her mild observation. "Z is worth ten points, and you could play it several plac–"

"Not that," he said, urgently waving his hands to clear away the misunderstanding. He gestured to her, then the notepad. "What you said before: we'll just write it down."

Emma soon mirrored his expression, and Marty smiled, a small huff of laughter escaping him.

"But it still won't work," she said. "He either won't believe you or avoid you like the plague once he reads it. He may even try to erase his mind."

"But—wait, he can do that?"

"Marty, at this point in time, he's not as receptive as we know him to be."

He clapped his hands, the pad of paper scattering their game tiles as he rose to his knees. "Then we put it in an envelope and date it! Like a time capsule! That way when he is in the right mindset, he will listen. We can date it for the day we go back, if anything."

Emma's shoulders fell. "What makes you think that he's going to hold onto that envelope for that long just because we tell him to?"

Marty's light bulb was flickering. He tried to say several things at once, but they kept slamming head-on into the question she had posed, trying to scramble over the need for a logical reason that Doc would do as instructed after they had gone back to the future. But nothing immaculate came to him. Eventually he just shrugged, falling back on his heels.

"I don't know. It's just…It's all I've got right now. We can only do so much, Em."

Copernicus wriggled his head across Emma's lap towards the peanut butter jar. She sat it in front of him, letting him sniff at it before licking it clean. The tight anxiety familiar to her chest and bullet wound seared, crying out for relief in a way that she could only hope to have in this mess. Marty was right; it was their responsibility to tell him, but after that, it was out of their hands. While her future father would likely disregard it adamantly when he discovered it, they had to at least try. What kind of daughter would she be if she didn't do that much?

At length, she nodded. "Okay."

"Do you want to write it? I mean, it might be a little more effective coming from you."

An unpleasant, sour taste fizzled in her stomach. "Sure. I'll do it tomorrow night. It's been a long day, and I'd like to think about it first."

Marty stood, extending his hand to her. With a grateful smile, she eased Copernicus from her legs and accepted his hand. He steadied her at the elbow, preventing her from overexerting her aching shoulder. Despite his assistance, she was panting by the time she was upright.

"I'm going to get this damn thing amputated."

Marty passed her the lantern before collecting the corners of their blanket and throwing it over his shoulder. "No, you're not," he said, patting his leg for Copernicus to follow. "Because then I'd have to listen to you whine about being one-armed for the rest of your life."

Emma smiled. "Is it sad how much I hated not talking to you yesterday?"

"Pathetic."

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