CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Now or Never

Saturday, October 26, 1985
1:24 AM

The DeLorean came to a halt in total darkness.

Emma bit back a curse as her seatbelt thrust her back into her seat, lighting up the pain in her shoulder. She hardly spared a hiss as Marty backed out of the building; this gunshot wound was an adorable little trifle compared to what was happening.

Emma's eyes darted between the windshield and the passenger-side window. The street was filled with modern light; the bright, plastic logos and humming neon overpowered the streetlights. She was already taking off her seatbelt and unlocking her door when Marty stopped in the middle of the vacant stretch of road. Their gull wings lifted almost simultaneously, and they stumbled into the road, soaking up their success.

While Marty took in everything there was, Emma noted what there was not. The cable fixed between the lampposts in the distance was gone, as was her dad's yellow Packard and the swells of wind that accompanied the impending storm. The air felt thinner, sootier. Silent. She looked at the body of the DeLorean, a faint smile coming to her as the sub-zero vapors rolled into her.

"It worked."

"Everything looks great," Marty chuckled in disbelief. He pointed to the Bank of America clock, and Emma immediately dropped back into the car in anticipation of their speeding to the mall.

She didn't remember him turning the DeLorean off, but he turned the key, and the engine remained dormant. Marty growled, fighting with it to do more than flicker its headlights for the second time in under five minutes when Emma suddenly shoved his forehead into the steering wheel.

"What the hell, Em?!"

"It worked the last time you did it!"

Marty shot her a look, but then he remembered that he'd sent her forehead into the dash in Peabody's barn and stayed further rebukes.

That, and her face had dramatically paled.

Afraid that she would choose this moment to pass out again, Marty was about to yell at her for standing up out of the DeLorean so quickly when he felt a vehicle breeze by. He was out in the street just as fast, horrified that he recognized it as the Libyan's Volkswagen. The week he had just lived through vanished, and he was right back in the hell they had left at the screech of their tires.

Emma already had a head start on him, somehow tearing around the corner in her low heels. Marty immediately sprang over the bench and cut across the courthouse parking lot to catch up, and at one point, he overtook her, but he didn't lose her by a long shot. Like him, an inexplicably powerful force was driving her through the pain of stitches in the side and a chest burning from lack of oxygen.

Desperation.

But when he finally made it to the Lone Pine Mall's sign, he wished he had slowed down. If he wasn't going to be able to save him – if that was a well-and-true, established fact – why couldn't the universe have spared him the agony of seeing Doc alive for a split second before he was shot? Why did he have to relive that moment? Wasn't it enough that he failed?

Emma, at least, had been spared this, barreling lifelessly into the sign beside him after Doc had fallen. Her heart felt on the verge of exploding from the run, and she collapsed against the sign as she watched Past Marty pull her past self from the front of the white step van to the DeLorean. Even at this distance, she could see the blood beginning to blossom on her back. Her stomach was starting to turn from a combination of overexertion, pain, and defeat when she saw her motionless father heaped in the middle of the wet asphalt.

Once the Past DeLorean was flying through the parking lot with the Libyans in pursuit, Emma slipped around the sign with Marty and stumbled down the embankment. Her feet got tangled in the darkness, and the lace of her dress picked up a few leaves by the time she and Marty were doubled over at the bottom, still trying to recover from their herculean sprint. They were just in time to witness themselves start The Week From Hell, and the Libyans received the Fox Photo stand as a parting gift. The Volkswagen was only just engulfed in flames when they raced toward Doc.

Emma clambered on behind Marty, catching herself on his shoulder when he dropped to the ground. As Marty pulled Doc over onto his back, Emma sank to her knees, staring at the holes on her father's chest and his unblinking eyes. Her body seized up, a crippling numbness seeping through her resolve with gradual, irreversible panic. What does she do? What does she do now?

Even as Marty had to turn away, she held vigil over her father as she tried to digest this reality.

This is real. This is your reality. It's real. He's —

Emma wouldn't think it, not until she knew. Not until she knew.

Hand trembling, she slowly reached out over the entry holes in the radiation suit for the side of his neck to feel for a pulse – definitive, tangible evidence she could tether to her hypothesis. As her hand passed over his heart, her own nearly gave out, and she froze.

He blinked.

Emma's eyes grew, and before she could more than blink herself, her father was sitting up. In her dumbfounded silence, his chest met her paralyzed hand as he rose. A watery smile wrinkled Emma's lip when she flattened her palm and felt him breathe.

Emmett smiled.

As expected, life pieced together every question he had suppressed that week, and realizing some time after sending Emma Klein back to the future that she was indeed Emma Brown filled him with insatiable anticipation for the moment on the other end of that lightning strike. And through the continuity of time, confirmation of the success of his greatest invention finally arrived by means of Emma throwing her arms around him in a parking lot.

He could feel her holding her breath to refuse the sobs trying to surface, but when he wrapped an arm around her, she exhaled audibly and clutched the back of his neck.

"You're alive."

Emmett let his daughter fall away at Marty's voice, seeing her eye something she couldn't quite place about his torso as Marty turned around. He revealed the vest, amused at their predictable awe. He watched their eyes dance over each spent round plastered harmlessly to his person, Marty steadying himself at Emma's low back as he leaned in.

"How did you know?" he asked, a question Emma hadn't even considered until that moment. "We never got the chance to tell you."

Marty felt Emma draw a sudden, silent breath, further peering around her as Doc retrieved their preserved, yellowed letter from between the bulletproof vest and the radiation suit. They had been his first defense against this horrible fate in more ways than one, and Emmett had waited a long time to deliver this apology. Part of him was relieved to finally have the freedom to acknowledge them as he had first known them: the kid in the life preserver and the girl who spouted brainwave stuff.

As Marty folded the letter over in confusion, Emma had already beat him to the punch with a soft, wry smile, eyes locked on her father. With that look, Emmett plainly heard her berating him in his mind: you damned hypocrite, quickly followed by thank God.

"What about all that talk?" Marty asked, still trying to work the adrenaline out of his voice and gulp air at the same time. "About screwing up future events? The spacetime continuum?"

Emmett dared a smug grin.

For these two kids, he was all in.

"Well, I figured, what the hell?"

Emmett did not have the weight of seeing his loved one shot (twice, as Marty liked to remind him) hindering his clean-up efforts of their little experiment. Marty and Emma seemed placated by how able-bodied and not filled with bullets Doc was, moving from the case of plutonium to the gun he had thrown when faced with the Libyans. All of it was quickly stowed in the step van so they could get out of the area just in time to hear the incoming sirens.

When they reached the DeLorean, Doc flipped some hidden switch under the ignition that made its temperamental engine turn over without so much as a sputter. Somehow, he hadn't expected that to lead to Marty and Emma excessively sputtering their frustrations at him.

"Are they any other magic switches we should know about?" Marty demanded, ducking out of the passenger side.

"Forget those," Emma muttered, standing in solidarity with Marty as they stared Emmett down. "I want to know about the ones we shouldn't know about."

"And I want to know how we're going to explain this," – Doc gestured to the DeLorean – "if we don't get it out of sight immediately. We can argue about switches later, yes?"

Marty took the hint, but he exchanged a look with Emma before heading to the cab to lower the ramp. It whined all the way to the ground, momentarily drowned out as a helicopter made another pass of the area.

Emmett craned his neck as its searchlight receded, and he paused at the greyed glow of the courthouse's clock. How many times he had walked past it now, watching the ghost of himself hang helplessly from the face of the clock? Just as the thirty-year-old apparition regained its footing, Emma came to stand next to him. Her arms were folded tightly against her chest as if still shielding herself from those winds long ago, eyes dull as they followed his to the defunct clock.

She scraped the sidewalk with her heel, shifting her weight.

"Did you ever actually figure it out?"

"Of course. I'm here, aren't I?"

"Before the letter, Dad." She wet her lips, looking up at him wearily. "Did you know?"

He knew what she was asking. And during that week, at war with himself over simply wondering about the possibilities and likelihoods, every inch of his gut instinct had turned out to be right. He may not have recognized that he knew it then, but through the years, the realization became more evident.

Emmett gave her a wry smile, pocketing his hands.

"I had my suspicions."

Emma smirked weakly. Had Marty not returned to them a moment later, she wouldn't have been able to help herself from pressing him for more details as to how he came about these revelations. As it was, Marty had already driven the DeLorean into the step van, so there was little else to do but go home.

Though, still partially, mentally stuck in 1955, "go home" had acquired a whole different meaning. It meant returning to one's time rather than one's dwelling. And they did it. They were home in 1985.

So, Emma revised, there is little else to do but…

Not "go home".

…continue.

Doc watched her climb into the cab of the van as he and Marty secured the rear doors.

"Alright," Marty said, giving them a quick tap, "let's get the hell out of here."

"Wait."

Doc grabbed Marty's vest, pulling him back around the corner of the van. Marty shrugged out of his grasp, raising an eyebrow at the effort Doc was making to stand taller after taking a deep breath.

"I'm only going to say this once," he announced sternly, fixing his unyielding eyes on his young assistant. "That is my onlydaughter."

Marty blinked.

"Are we seriously having this conversation?"

"It doesn't have to be a conversation – just an understanding."

Marty slowly nodded. Doc pointed at him.

"My only —"

"Doc, come on. This isn't a conversation, remember?"

At this, Emmett backed off. A gruff smile edged onto his face in the wake of this new territory, and his shoulders collapsed with a sigh. Emmett supposed he had prepped himself enough for this role over the years, but to trust Emma to him? Well, it was almost second nature after he quelled his paternal protectiveness.

Marty's stance relaxed a bit as Emmett shook his hand. They were unsure of how else to voice all they had to say, but it was all said the moment their hands clasped.

Marty wouldn't exist. Wouldn't be standing there in 1985.

And Emmett would be dead without this kid. More than that, even.

Uninspired. Cranky. Lost.

There was nothing to say to someone who believed your absence from their life too unfathomable to allow. Nothing would ever be enough.

So, Emmett decided to be the one to initiate the unending out-thanking of one another by squeezing Marty's hand just a bit tighter.

"Let's get you home."

Emma pushed the front door to the garage open with her finger.

She searched the darkness for a silhouette by which to root herself, but even the moonlight regarded her differently upon her return and was hesitant to reveal anything to her. It was as if the dark, cavernous space that lay beyond the scraping hinges was a dangerous and strange territory ready to swallow her whole. Even with her father behind her and Einstein happily trotting into the opaque void, her hand reached slowly, blindly for the light switch. She was waiting for the sickening chill of her palm flattening on the cement wall, but her hand found the square nub where it had always been, just as it had every time before.

The switch was flipped with a low, quiet click. Emma stepped inside, blinking without expression.

The amplifier was blown apart. The workbench and bookcase in front of it were tidied, just as she and Marty had left it hours before the DeLorean came into their lives. The wall of clocks that had made them late for school ticked on without qualm. The green canoe was in the rafters, a full case of peanut butter was on the floor next to the fridge, and there wasn't a wrinkle out of place on her father's sheets from when she last saw them.

The lab was exactly how she'd left it.

Coming to her side, Emmett narrowed his eyes into the distance. How he didn't see it when he came home before the experiment was no surprise; when you've just unlocked the power to time travel, big, out-of-place things would be overlooked with all that adrenaline.

Still, how had he missed that?

"What happened to the amplifier?"

A laugh straggled out of Emma's tight airway.

She wandered further into the lab as her father shut the front door. He followed her towards the living room with silent, patient steps, but not without craning his neck back at the amplifier with a bewildered frown.

Through the living room and past the empty peanut butter jar lying in the middle of the nearest couch cushion, Emma cautiously entered her bedroom. By the light of the floor lamp to her right, her room materialized – book bag slung against the Tibetan screen, sheet music for her Music History essay spread out on the sea green chaise, the corner of a sundress caught in the doors of her wardrobe. Somehow, it only seemed like an echo through an alternate dimension before her; a room she used to know, hollow in the mix of artificial light and grey late night outside her windows.

Emmett took her place in the doorway, watching her approach her desk. She touched a photo in the corner of her bulletin board of the two of them together at Disneyland a lifetime ago. Her eyes moved around her desk, reacquainting her with 1985 piece by piece. Guilt crept over him. He grew sullen, and a tremor quaked from deep within when she wrapped her hands around the top rung of her desk chair. He hung his head.

"Emma, I'm going to the future."

She wheeled around, eyebrows fiercely bent. "Wh-? Now?"

"Would you like to come?" he asked quietly, smile small. "I'll let you drive."

Emma shut her eyes and laughed, reliving that moment a week ago when she had begged him to let her go with him in the DeLorean. Now, that naivete was replaced with the wisdom of experience and a shake of her head.

"I've had enough time travel escapades for one night," she said. As for her father, she realized that, while he knew what his own invention was fully capable of, he hadn't yet tested it himself. And there was no stopping him, no stopping any scientist with this kind of breakthrough.

So, she swallowed hard, accepting the inevitable.

"Just… come home."

The lamplight shined in his daughter's eyes. Despite his lifelong dream having become her living nightmare, she was still going to hand him the keys to the DeLorean. He knew he had always had a smart and mischievous young woman on his hands, but not until that moment did he realize how courageous.

With a smile, he walked up and enveloped her.

"Come here."

She clung to him, allowing a sniffle to be buried in his chest as she made fists of the back of his shirt. This was the most real thing she had experienced in the last week – him, here, holding her. She heard his heart beating, the air filling his lungs. Felt his head lowering onto hers, the weight of their feet on the ground, the rush of his exhale through the roots of her hair, and the chill that surged to the surface of her skin in its wake.

"I love you, Dad."

Emmett shut his eyes as her voice resonated through him. He held her tighter.

"And I love you, dear."

One last sniff tucked discreetly into the folds of his shirt, Emma stood straighter. Emmett hooked his arm around her neck, kissing the top of her head.

"I'll be back by morning. Peanut butter-stuffed French toast waiting on the work bench for you when you wake up."

"Deal."

"Oh, before I go…"

He reached into the bathroom across the way, immediately retrieving a small glass vial and syringe. Emma narrowed her eyes, a smirk trying to work its way onto her lips.

That wasn't there before they left for the mall last w—

…several hours ago.

"Just to hold you over until morning," Emmett said, readying the syringe. "You left your hydrocodone on the dresser."

Emma smiled and turned out her elbow, imagining her not-yet father returning to their guest rooms after they had left him. It occurred to her as the cool delivery of morphine eased into her veins how strange it must have been to strip the sheets and clear away the little things of a life lived over the course of a week.

What had he done with all of their clothes? Marty's hair gel and her tube of lipstick? Did he examine the fifteen sheets of crumpled paper in her wastebasket from her failed attempts to write him a letter? Did he find the rubber band on the stairs or their Scrabble score sheet? How long did it take for the scent of her shampoo on the collar of his silver snakeskin robe to dissipate?

She swallowed and took the cotton ball from him after he removed the needle.

Emmett lowered her arm and stretched back into the bathroom, laying the syringe on the edge of the sink.

"Get some rest. I'll be home soon."

Emma climbed into bed, content to sleep in her dress – dirty mint silk, snagged lace, and all. She kicked off her scuffed, pitted pumps, and they clacked together across the carpet and into the wall. Bent, windswept tresses framed the same face Emmett remembered first seeing thirty long years ago. Her anxious, averted eyes of that week had been drained empty now, a deep yawn scrunching them shut. She balled into her blankets, minding her sore shoulder.

He turned and switched off her light, but she quickly sat up.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Watch out for those Morlocks. I hear they have a taste for time travelers."

He smiled to the floor and back up at her. "I'll keep that in mind."

Emma fell back on her right side, sinking deeper into her bed.

"Night, Dad. Be careful."

"I will. Goodnight, dear."

The door was pulled shut but not closed. Emma stared at the side of her wardrobe in the darkness, listening to the hushed footsteps on the thin sitting room carpet acquire a resonant tap out in the main lab. His boots shuffled around on the cement here and there before he left. Outside, the DeLorean begrudgingly turned over, and the headlights pulled across her wall. Then, after they had died away, the sonic boom came from up the street, and for a few seconds' time, that rush of white light was all there was.

Emma didn't even blink.

He was coming back. He was.

She sat up again, turning on the lamp on her nightstand. Emma threw the covers aside and let her bare feet push into the thick, daffodil yellow carpet, curling her toes as she stood. She took tentative steps out into the living room and felt more surefooted by the time she got to the wooden shelf. Reaching for the uppermost shelf, her calves and arms tightened uncomfortably, and she sighed when her heels touched the ground again, book in hand.

Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics

John von Neumann

She opened it, greeted by the Hilbert Space chapter and its subsection on closed linear manifolds. The creases in the binding, the crisp crinkle of the water-damaged pages, his notes in red, black, blue, and green ink – it was all there. All of it, right down to the very last period.

It was nice to know that some things never changed.