Hello. Ghost Artist here. I usually do Danny Phantom fics, but I was watching this show alot recently and got into theorizing mode. And y'all may not know what comes out of it when that happens. Congrats, you're about to find out! Enjoy! This will be my first BFW fic so its a bit of a test run for me.
I don't own Best Friends Whenever, if I did there would be more seasons!
Cyd and Shelby were in fifth grade on a trip to Disneyland. Their families came together to make it a perfect vacation for Cyd's birthday. They had just gotten into the park, and...
They were leaving. It was night. They had just gotten to the exit. The whole day was a blur of vague memories. They knew they rode a bunch of rides and had some amazing food, gotten a bunch of prizes at the gift shop and taken pictures with their favorite characters. But they only knew. They didn't remember. They still felt like it all happened, too. But even with the emotions of having an awesome day at Disneyland, it only took a couple minutes for the confusion to set in.
"Did you have it too?" Cyd whispered in Shelby's ear.
"Another fuzzy moment?" Shelby whispered back.
"Yeah. Do you remember what happened?"
"I know what we did, but... kinda fuzzy."
It happened to them every once in a while. They would both have strange moments where their memories would kind of fade out and become just things they knew like they read it out of a book, especially during fun memorable moments.
They still couldn't be bummed about it. They still felt like they actually did have a fun day at Disneyland, even though they couldn't quite remember it. That's how it always went.
It was happening since Kindergarten. Since the day they met, they had the memory fuzzies, as they called it. They would know what happened, and have the emotions to go with the event.
Little did they know, they were doing it to themselves.
It was sixth grade. Shelby was on a trip to the Grand Canyon. She couldn't remember much.
Meanwhile, Cyd was at home having an average time. She also couldn't remember much during those few days.
Cyd and Shelby from the future were from a timeline where their childhood was left alone from the time travel. Every time they went back in time in their own bodies, they were unknowingly making an alternate timeline. Their present minds, unaffected by the change in timelines, never knew this happened to their past selves.
Those lives and memories were the ones left behind in the past. The ones left behind in the unknowing mists of time.
They jumped thirty minutes into the future. All to beat the boring lecture. Barry, sitting next to them, sighed once he saw them sneaking a hand-hold for just a second. The girls may have time-jumped, but their bodies and a form of their minds remained. It was the secret he always kept from them, the secret they never even thought about.
"Did you just..." Barry whispered.
"They did," Cyd replied.
"Better start writing notes, I guess," Shelby said.
Cyd sighed, but with a bit less spirit than usual.
That's how it was. They jump into the future, leaving themselves behind, although with a bit less personality. They cared for their "real" selves, doing what their "real" selves would've wanted. They kept the memories of both their "real" selves and the times they were left to take care of things. They were Cyd and Shelby, the same minds and thoughts and memories. But they just didn't have that personality, and once the "real" them returned, all of the memories from the minds that remained were gone. Cyd and Shelby never knew about it.
Barry wanted to experiment on them, of course. They didn't like the idea, of course. And he didn't want to let the real them know about their other selves just in case.
Thirty minutes later, they both twitched slightly. They were back. Their other selves were gone, and so were the memories. They had their notes now, not even worrying about how they got there. They never thought about it.
Until the next time they jumped forward without coming back to live the time themselves, of course. The time in between was for the minds left behind...
Not long later, there was a boring family dinner with Shelby's weird cousins. The girls skipped past it as to not have to deal with it. Everyone else had to, though.
The girls left behind came out to play. They answered any questions on their own, in a way that wouldn't lead to follow-up questions. They didn't even speak unless spoken to. They were the perfect crowd.
Then, once the dinner was over, the real girls returned. Shelby's aunt, uncle, and cousins were at the door getting ready to leave. They were just telling the end of a story.
"...AND THEN, you won't even believe this, the kangaroo kicks the football, right? The football goes FLYING, right into the face of the giraffe the chimp was riding! The giraffe goes crazy and runs into the ball pit and FREAKS! Then..."
Shelby looked over to Cyd. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked.
"I'm thinking we need to hear that story!" Cyd said.
They jumped back, about to the middle of dinner. The girls left behind disappeared. One of Shelby's cousins was talking about his favorite animals.
And so the timeline changed. The girls left behind returned to the timestream.
Cyd didn't like the chain of events starting from joining the middle school wrestling team years ago. She was only in there a few days, but it lead to her getting permanently banned from school sports over a wrestling incident.
Of course, they introduced a new boxing team and Cyd just had to join. Of course, she was still banned from school sports. Of course, they went back to fix that.
They came back to find Cyd had been expelled from school and permanently homeschooled because of a worse wrestling incident.
The them that lived in that timeline was used to it. The Cyd in that timeline didn't know any different life. She didn't know what the memory fuzzy during her first practice match was her future self stopping her from breaking that kid's arm and preventing her from getting banned from sports.
She also didn't expect that the memory fuzzy was also the timeline being undone. She broke the kid's arm after all.
And what happened to that timeline? Well, it existed... but it separated from the current timeline and existed on its own. A timeline left behind in the strange world of time travel.
There we go. A little experiment. I might continue on with another chapter if i feel like it idk :/