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He wakes to music and warm sunbeams filtering in through the window, highlighting specks of dust and particles that float peacefully through the air in front of him.
Exhaling, he shuts his eyes again for just a moment, revelling in the tranquility. That had been such a chaotic week. The terror of nearly disappearing from existence will stick with him forever, he fears.
He grips the edges of his bedsheets a little tighter, opening his eyes and scanning the familiar scene of his room.
Marty is home.
1955 had made even the concept seem unfathomably far. Unreachable. Like gazing into an abyss and seeing a lifetime staring back at you.
The smell of pancakes reaches him, and he settles down a little. His heart does stutter ever so slightly, the question of what’s the occasion floating around unbidden in his mind, but he can’t find it in himself to worry about it right now. He is home and he exists and those are about the only two things in the entire world that matter at the moment.
All his posters are where they should be. The corner of the Star Wars one curls up the way it always has, crooked and familiar and soothing.
He takes a deep, preparatory breath, and swings his legs over the side of his bed. Sitting up now on the edge, his bare feet curl into the soft carpeting.
Padding out of his room, he stretches, yawning as he does so.
He reaches to pull his suspenders back into place and finds he is not wearing the clothes he thought he fell asleep in. He lets out a little huff of a laugh. He must’ve been more tired when he got back than he’d realised.
In the kitchen, his mother is cooking. She turns to look at him before he even fully enters the room, as though she’d somehow expected him.
“Good morning, honey! How did you sleep?” she asks, smiling.
Marty nearly falls over, taking in the sight of her. His mouth drops open.
“I- you- Mom, you look so, so,” he stutters, struggling to find the right words, “thin!”
She chuckles, though it seems almost a little sad.
“Thank you, Marty,” she says, turning away from him and flipping a pancake. “You hungry?”
“Uh, yeah,” he replies, somewhat dazedly. His stomach rumbles.
He gawks a little longer at her, and it comes to him that perhaps he did a bit more than just almost erase himself from existence.
Lorraine places a plate for him on the table, maple syrup already out. Then, she sets the pancakes down in front of him, which are piled up on a separate plate for him to take from as he pleases.
Bringing along a glass of orange juice for him and a mimosa for herself, she sits down to eat with him.
He eyes her drink. Guess that hasn’t changed, he thinks, dejectedly. Even though he’s kind of glad she isn’t that different, of all the things that he would have wished would have changed, he’d hoped her alcoholism would have been one. At least it’s a slightly more purposeful breakfast drink, instead of downing vodka at whatever time she decides she’s over dealing with the day.
She catches him staring, and her eyebrows furrow before dawning realisation appears on her face.
“Oh!” she says suddenly, looking between him and her glass, “this is also just orange juice, Marty.”
He blinks.
Oh.
Guess he’d just assumed.
How did she know he’d been thinking about-
“So,” she breaks his train of thought, “got any plans today?”
“Uh,” Jesus, did he have any plans today? It’s been a week since he’s had to think about it. And- oh yeah, that’s right, the lake and Jennifer- “uh, the boys and I were gonna go camping, but I guess with the car the way it is…”
“The car’s fine.” Lorraine says patiently. “And you won’t need it anyway, because you have your truck. Remember?”
He doesn’t remember.
Looking at his mother’s face, there is understanding there, but he knows he can’t field any of his questions to her. Because he should remember.
The changes sour his mood a little. Home is supposed to be warm, familiar. Not whatever this is.
“So, how, uh,” he licks his lips nervously, “how are you doing?”
She stops for a moment, looking up at him.
“I’m good,” she smiles, “I’m eating breakfast with my lovely son.”
He nods, though his gut twists a little. She seems so relaxed, happy. No complaint of a hangover, no passive aggressive comments about what Marty should be doing right now. Just placid conversation and a simple, easy morning.
“Where’s Dad?” Marty asks, mouth full of pancake. “And Dave and Linda?”
Lorraine wilts a little, which doesn’t make much sense and instills a great amount of unease in Marty.
“Your father’s at a meeting with his publisher this morning,” she explains, and as Marty’s eyes widen with poorly concealed shock, she dims further, “and your siblings are both at work; Dave at the office, and Linda at the boutique.”
Marty stares.
“Wow,” he says, dumbfounded, and realises how suspicious that sounds for someone who is supposed to have always inhabited this timeline. “I, uh, mean- um. Just. Always a little shocking that they have to work on a weekend, you know?”
The way he ends that question sounds less like he’s looking for conversational affirmation and more like he really doesn’t know, and he really hopes his mother doesn’t notice.
“Yes, well,” Lorraine starts responding, slowly and gently, “that’s how it is for some jobs.”
…He supposes.
“Jennifer called earlier. She said she would be around later, after sch- after three.”
Marty hums. That’ll work. His insides go all gooey as he thinks about her. God, he’s missed her so much. A week without seeing her had been far and away too long.
He chances a glance at his mother while he waits for her to criticize Jenn, but to his surprise, he finds no disapproval in her expression.
“Eat some fruit with those pancakes as well, young man.” Lorraine tacks on, and Marty sighs and does as he was told.
His mother tells him he should probably stay at the house. He wants to go skateboard around town, but she insists he doesn’t.
“Jennifer will be here soon,” she says, “she’s such a sweet girl. Why don’t you wait for her?”
Marty says it’s only noon and that she’d said Jenn wouldn’t be there until gone three.
Eventually, Lorraine relents, but only on the condition that he tells her where he’s going and doesn’t slink off anywhere else.
“Why are you being so weird?” he whines, pushing her hand away from where she’s thumbing away the last stubborn remains of breakfast from his face. “I’m seventeen. I can take care of myself.”
You never cared this much before, he doesn’t say.
“Oh, sweetheart, it’s just…” she trails off, and suddenly her expression takes on a somber quality. “I worry about you, is all.”
Marty frowns.
“I’ll be fine. I’m just going to swing ‘round Doc’s. I’ll be back by three.”
Lorraine sighs. “Okay. Please be safe. Call or come back if anything goes wrong, please.”
He scrunches up his nose. “Mom, it’s fine.”
Jeez, whatever he changed in ‘55 made her a real worry-wart.
The air outside is chillier than he expected for midday, and though the sun was shining just this morning, the sky is overcast and the ground is still slick with rain that must have fallen sometime in the last hour.
He looks down at his skateboard. Yeah, no, that’s not going to work. The roads are too wet.
Slipping back inside momentarily, he grabs the keys to his truck. The weight is unfamiliar in his hands.
In the garage, he takes a second to just admire his ride. His dream truck. He runs a hand over the sleek black frame, freshly waxed, and feels like his triumph is unearned.
The seat and mirrors are already adjusted to where he needs them to be, and there are old wrappers and an empty Pepsi can in the cup holders. It is obviously lived in by him, and though it makes sense, it still makes his chest tighten.
About halfway down the road, he slams on the brakes and pulls over to the side, heart hammering in his chest.
The trees are bare.
He knows for a fact that they were not bare yesterday.
Or, a week ago. Whenever he was here last.
He is sure.
They had been bursting with color; bright, beautiful autumnal reds and oranges and yellows that painted the world with warmth to prepare them for the coming coolness of winter.
Yet, now, the sprawling branches reach across the grey sky in a fully revealed tangle of wood.
At the base of the trees, there is none of the decaying fallen foliage that is characteristic of the season.
Marty feels his throat close up a little. Swallowing, he resolves to ask Doc about it. Turning his hazards off, he continues the short drive to the haphazard garage he considers a second home.
Truck parked and locked, he makes his way onto Doc’s property.
The door opens while he’s in the middle of lifting up the doormat to get the spare key out from under it. In the doorway is a woman he’s never seen before, dressed in slightly too formal clothing. It seems a little outdated, even.
“Uh,” he takes a step back, letting the edge of the doormat flop back down, “hi?”
“Hello, M-” the woman cuts herself off, “you’re Marty, right? Emmett has told me quite a bit about you.”
“Emmett?” Marty repeats. “You mean Doc?”
“Yes,” she opens the door, beckoning him in.
“Who are you?”
The woman’s face falls a little for a moment, before picking back up into that pleasant, welcoming smile again.
“My name is Clara Clayton. Emmett and I met in 1885.”
Marty freezes as the waves of information hits him. 1885. Clayton, as in Clayton Ravine, as in schoolteacher that died in the late 1800s.
Doc said he was going to 2015, not 1885. The hell was he doing in the old west?
Not sure what to do with himself, he enters.
Clara disappears off into the garage, and he’s suddenly tackled from the side.
“Marty!” shouts the small figure that is clinging to his leg, voice young and bright. “You’re here!”
“Uh,” Marty stammers, arms raised and leaning away from the strange child that somehow knows his name.
The kid removes their face from where they’d buried it into his side and looks up at him, bouncing a little. They flash a massive, gap-toothed grin, and are wearing a coonskin hat that Marty didn’t think he’d see a kid wearing these days.
“You promised you’d teach me how to skateboard!” the kid exclaims, clearly excited.
Marty lets out a startled laugh. “What? I’ve never met you before, kid.”
The kid suddenly freezes, mouth forming an ‘O’.
“I’m Verne,” Verne says, peeling himself off of Marty’s leg. He holds out a hand, and, grin returning, asks: “can you teach me how to skateboard?”
He’s endearing. Extremely unusual, but endearing.
Glancing outside, where it has begun to drizzle, he turns back to Verne and shakes his head.
“Sorry, kid. It’s too wet.”
“Awww,” Verne whines, and scampers off further into the garage. Marty follows, rounding the corner to find everything much cleaner than he remembered and Clara talking to Doc about something.
Verne is tugging on Clara’s dress, and she raises a finger as if to say ‘one moment’ before continuing to talk to Doc.
And, oh, Doc. Boy, does Marty have questions for him. He takes a purposeful step forward before stopping, because Doc, though he seems stressed about something, is staring at Clara in a way that Marty could only describe as utterly lovestruck.
Doc is absolutely not listening to a single word Clara is saying right now, Marty knows that look. Specifically because Jennifer once took a picture of him staring at her like that, because she’d gotten fed up of him zoning out during their conversations and denying it.
She still has the polaroid and brings it out every so often. He maintains that it is not his fault she’s so pretty.
Humming, Marty leaves them to it. He’s so going to tease Doc about this once they’re done. Doc. In love. That’s hilarious.
He goes back to the entranceway and fiddles about with some of the clocks there, poking a few that seem to have stopped between yesterday and now.
In the waste basket, which has been moved to be tucked beneath a table for whatever reason, a newspaper catches his eye. It’s crumpled and shoved in there, down at the bottom beneath empty cans of dog food, as though someone hadn’t liked what they’d seen or didn’t want it to be seen.
It strikes him as odd, though he realises that it probably wasn’t Doc who’d done it but rather one of the guests he’d brought back with him from whenever he went.
Curiosity getting the best of him, Marty fishes the paper out, cringing at the slimy dog food juices soaked into it.
Seems a standard issue. Nothing particularly upsetting, he finds as he flicks through the pages. Just regular news.
Then, he sees the date.
Monday, March 10, 1986
His stomach drops. He turns the paper over in his hand, over and over and over, hunting for something that would indicate a joke or a setup or something that would explain this.
And he almost slaps himself- of course. Doc had been in the future. He must have gone a few months ahead, brought this back, and discarded it because it was dangerous information to just leave around.
He thumbs over the date once more, though. The ink bleeds where the wetness from the dog food reached it.
“Marty,”
Marty startles, spinning around to look at Doc, whose expression is grim.
“I can explain. Do not worry, it is okay,” Doc holds his hands out in a placating manner, and Marty raises an eyebrow.
“I’m sure it is?” he shrugs, perplexed. “Say, what were you doing in March of next year anyway?”
Doc blinks. His postures loosens, all stress leaking out of him in an instant.
Then Verne pops up next to them.
“It’s March now, silly!” he says, and Doc goes tense again.
“Verne!”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Dad. I forgot.” Verne shrinks under Doc’s glare and-
WHAT?
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Marty steps backwards pointing between them, “did he just call you ‘Dad’?”
Doc looks at Marty, and he gives a sad smile.
“I guess it’s an explanation day,” Doc says, and Marty doesn’t really know what that means until the blackboard comes out and Marty groans.
Marty sits on the rickety old couch and waits for Doc to fill the blackboard with barely comprehensible physics. Marty can sometimes keep up. But not enough to make him not dread it every time it gets dragged out.
“Marty, first things first, I need you to understand that I am not trying to scare you here.”
“That’s not at all reassuring,” Marty responds, still unsure as to where all this is going.
“I will begin by saying that Verne, as well as my eldest son, Jules, who you have not yet met as he is having a social meeting with a peer of his, are both mine biologically. Clara is my wife. We have a house on the edge of town.”
Guess he was right about Doc being in love.
“She said you guys met in 1885.”
“That we did. I stayed in the 1800s for many years before finally returning to 1985.”
“Okay. I don’t really understand why you would do that, but okay,” Marty pulls a face. Sure, weird time travel shenanigans.
Doc takes a deep breath before continuing.
“It never gets any easier explaining this to you.”
“What?”
“You are currently incapable of forming new long-term memories.”
That’s not funny.
That’s really, really not funny.
Marty stands, heart beating out of his chest.
“Doc,”
Chilly, overcast, wet weather. Trees empty and barren. The world drab and grey.
The newspaper and the boy had said it was March.
“Please do not be afraid. I am certain it is reversible,” Doc, out of nowhere, pulls him into a hug, and Marty nearly flinches at the sudden contact. “I promise you I am working on it.”
“You- you tell me I’ve got something wrong with my head and you expect me to be calm?!”
Doc draws back, placing his hands onto Marty’s arms and gripping them tightly, like Marty will slip through his fingers if he doesn’t hold on.
“I assure you that there is nothing wrong with your mind or your body, Marty. It is merely that you are stuck,” he explains, and though the situation is inherently terrifying, Marty does find the steadiness and confidence in Doc’s voice to be more comforting than he’d realised it could be.
“Stuck?” Marty repeats, small.
Doc nods once. “Yes. You caused significant changes to your own personal history, enough that upon closing the loop, the versions of you that merged were on the edge of being entirely incompatible.”
The chalk finally comes out, and Marty watches Doc begin to write. The hypnotizing rhythm of the numbers and symbols and words being written drill into his head, heavy and familiar.
“However, if I am correct, you were held together by a device within the DeLorean, which was able to keep you in a stable state for a while.”
Oh dear lord. He does not recognise most of those equations.
He most certainly does not want them, along with the words ‘merge’ and ‘incompatible’, at all associated with him.
“…If I was- stable- then how did this happen?” he asks, playing with his hands.
‘Incapable of forming new long-term memories.’
He remembers this morning clearly. His head feels fine.
“You were in 1885 with me, for a time. However, upon your return to 1985, the DeLorean was destroyed.”
His eyes go wide, and he tries to envision how that would even happen.
“I believe,” Doc says, grave, “that this broke whatever was holding you stable. I have done the calculations and have almost narrowed down the exact component that was responsible.”
Marty drops back onto the couch, and his gaze falls from the blackboard to the floor.
“What does that mean for me?”
“Functionally,” he says, drawing a few lines to emphasize his point, “every twenty-four hours, at precisely 1:35 AM, you ‘reset’, so to speak.”
Marty’s hands grip his knees, bunching up the fabric of his jeans.
“Do my parents know?”
“They do. I had to ensure they knew this was not a medical issue. Jennifer Parker is also aware. I believe your bandmates have some idea of the situation.” Doc begins to erase the board. “Your school, however, only has the information that you are currently suffering from temporary anterograde amnesia.”
“It’s been five months.” Marty says, barely listening to Doc’s response despite having asked the question in the first place. “What, have I just been doing the same thing every day? Relearning that I’m all messed up over and over?”
Doc wheels the blackboard off to the side, and moves to come join Marty on the couch. Marty doesn’t look at him, despondent.
His memory gets wiped every morning.
How is he supposed to live with that?
Well, he supposes, you’ll just forget tomorrow.
Then what is the point of today?
“We don’t always tell you,” Doc says outright. “In fact, we avoid it, because there is no sense in scaring you repeatedly.”
That makes a red hot feeling akin to rage crawl up his throat for a second. It bubbles until he sees the logic in what Doc is saying and the feeling falls away, burning residually but not lingering.
“I can assure you that you do not live the same day twice, for the circumstances around you are not static. Though your mornings are often similar, they change depending on who of your family is around and what you do when you do wake up.”
“I ate pancakes with my mom this morning.”
Doc smiles. “And how was that?”
Marty pauses for a second. And then another. He looks up to meet Doc’s eyes.
“It was nice,” he replies, and then his face turns sour, “but I’ll forget it tomorrow.”
“But you’ll remember it today. And it happened, and you enjoyed it, whether you remember it or not.”
“What’s the point of that?”
“In the timeline you came from, do you recall how your mother used to be? Does the fact that she does not remember, or that it technically did not happen at all, matter when you still loved her?”
He opens his mouth to retort something snarky and sarcastic and rude, because he’s scared and doesn’t want to accept this, but stops.
His mom. Not the thin, happy, healthy version he’d seen this morning. Drinking orange juice and cooking pancakes in a well kept kitchen and a house furnished by money they did not used to have.
The version that didn’t trust Jennifer and chided him for his relationship with her. The one that loved George but only on a surface level because his dad never let anyone see beyond that. The one that Marty had found passed out on the couch throughout his childhood more times than he could count.
The version that still, despite being haggard and sullen, loved him with all her heart and tried to do her best by him.
His mom, that he’ll never see again.
She does matter. She doesn’t exist, never did, but she matters so much.
“Doc…”
“I know.”
And he probably does. Doc has probably had this exact conversation with him multiple times before.
“I’m working on stabilizing you. And I believe I am nearly there. It should not take more than another month.” Doc reassures, but Marty sighs anyway. Doc gives him an understanding look.
A month from now, to him, may as well be never; what awaits him at the end of today is a void to swallow his memories whole and spit him out a blank slate.
Placing a hand on Marty’s shoulder, Doc uses his other hand to gesture vaguely at their surroundings.
“The most important question here, for you, is not ‘how do you fix this’,” Doc says, “it is ‘what are you going to do today?’”
Marty likes Verne. Rambunctious and passionate and reckless, but still obviously inherited Doc’s and Clara’s intelligence if you look closely enough.
He is showing him an… interesting game from the 1800s.
“So! You throw the knife, like this,” he demonstrates, the pocketknife flipping out of his hand and burying into the dirt, “and then the other person takes it out of the ground with their teeth!”
“You what?”
Verne rolls his eyes, and all but throws himself onto the ground, gripping the handle of the knife in between his teeth and wrestling it out of the soil. He keeps trying to speak while he does it, but Marty cannot make out a single word on account of Verne’s mouth being full of handle.
“Mmmthen,” Verne says, taking the knife out of his mouth and holding it out to him, “the other person does it! And you see how far you can get it in the ground. ‘Cause it’s harder to pull out if you stick it further in!”
Marty squints. “And what did you say this is called, again?”
“Mumblety-peg!”
“Right.”
Marty takes the knife into his hand and turns it over. It is slick with saliva and the blade is kind of sharp, Marty finds, pricking himself ever so slightly on the point.
He throws it. It doesn’t stick into the ground at all, thumping and bouncing a little ways away from him. Verne bursts out laughing.
“That was awful!” he hollers, holding an arm around his middle. Marty finds himself laughing, too. “You’re even worse at this than Jules!”
“Yeah, yeah, keep laughing,” Marty shakes his head in faux disapproval, “who is Jules anyway? Doc mentioned him.”
Verne tilts his head, and then smacks himself.
“I keep forgetting you don’t remember!” he exclaims. “Jules is my brother. He’s really really smart, way smarter than me, but he’s also kind of dumb and stupid.”
“Yeah?” Marty snorts. Oh, how reminiscent of how he used to describe Dave.
“Yuh-huh. He always loses. And he says it’s a boring game, and a dangerous game, and it ain’t neither of those, so, he can’t be that smart.” Verne picks up the pocketknife- again, with his mouth- and throws it into the ground. It sticks out, blade buried deep. “Your turn!”
Taking a second to stare at the knife with poorly hidden disdain, Marty gives in and lowers himself onto the ground. The still-wet grass soaks his knees and coats his palms, and as he positions his head to grip the knife with just his teeth and nothing else, the strands of grass brush against his cheek.
He pulls up, trying his hardest not to touch the handle with his tongue or lips because this is gross.
“…Eugh,” he grunts, dropping the knife into his hands while he stands back up. “I may have to agree with your brother on this one.”
Verne laughs again. “I know! You always say that!”
Marty shoots him a half-hearted glare. “Have you been taking advantage of the fact I don’t remember?”
“Yep!”
“Cruel.”
It is then that Clara emerges from the garage, and sees what they are doing.
“Verne!” she scolds, “I have told you not to play that game!”
She strides over, and moves to take the pocketknife from Marty. Marty folds the knife back in on itself and hands it to her without question, and Verne watches with minor betrayal.
“You are not to play with knives!”
“But Mom, it’s just mumblety-peg!”
Clara turns to Marty. “I am sorry he roped you into this.”
“Naw, it’s okay,” he says, “I don’t mind. It was educational.”
“Come in for some tea?” Clara sees him falter for a second, and elaborates further, “We have found one that you actually like.”
“Oh,” Marty says, a little stupefied, “okay, then.”
She’s right. The tea is nice.
She knows a whole lot about astronomy. While Doc pores over blueprints and scattered loose leaf covered in physics, and Verne plays with some device that looks a little too futuristic to be of this time period, Clara tells him about all the times they, together, have seen the stars through her telescope.
“We can’t tonight, unfortunately, because of the clouds,” she says, and it is still disappointing though Marty knew that would be the case.
She does not promise they will do it another day, though it feels implied, because what difference does it make to him? Marty appreciates that she doesn’t.
Near three, he starts leaving to return home, and on his way out he sees Clara pull Doc in for a kiss.
“Go get ‘em, tiger.” Marty says under his breath, chuckling to himself.
At home now, his mother fusses over him, no longer held back by the need to keep him out of the loop.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” she fixes his hair, trying to pat down that stubborn tuft that she’s never been able to tame, even when he was a child.
It has started chucking it down outside, rain falling so fast and so hard that the visibility has been muddled into a blurry grey mess. The pitter-patter of raindrops against the gutters and windows is relentless, and brings with it a sense of indoor calm. He’s glad he didn’t get caught out in that.
“Mom, I’m okay,” he bats her hand away, gently, “really. I trust Doc. He said he’s got this handled. But it won’t be fixed today, so, what’s the point in worrying about it?”
“One time,” Lorraine takes a deep breath, “you got panicked and ran off. We only found you after you’d forgotten why you had run off in the first place.”
He winces. “I could see that happening. I definitely felt like that for a moment, earlier.”
When Jennifer comes, it is like the eye of a storm. The battering rain does not stop, but as she crosses the threshold into his home, dripping onto the welcome mat, the sounds outside seem to cease. Everything other than her falls away.
He crosses the space between them and throws himself into her arms, uncaring for the rainwater that begins to soak into his clothes from hers.
That afternoon does not stay long. She chats, giving him all the school gossip he’s missed and joining in with his raucous laughter at Tiff and Needles hounding her for where he’s been, apparently worried about him. Of course they are. Who else do they have to bug if he’s not there?
The conversation stays light for hours.
Outside, as more of the storm seems to roll in, it gets darker, dim daylight barely able to penetrate the thick clouds.
“How many times have we had this conversation?” he finally asks, the question having burned at the back of his mind since she first started talking.
“Dozens,” she breathes, “and I’ll have it dozens more.”
He wants to question, how? How can you do it over and over, ad infinitum?
But then he thinks what he’d do, if their situations were reversed, and wholly understands.
“You deserve a life, Jenn,” he murmurs, and her eyes soften, edges of her lips falling.
“I know,” she responds quietly, “but I know Doctor Brown will fix this soon.”
“What if he can’t? You can’t just watch me relive the same day over and over again forever. You’ll be miserable.”
“Can’t I?” she asks, and Marty doesn’t understand the weight of it until she stares him directly in the eyes, face suddenly hard. “You wake up, every day, exactly the same. You think everything is how you left it. But time keeps moving.”
Marty’s shoulders sag a little. “Where are you going with this?”
“You love me.”
He blinks. “Of course I do.”
“And so you’ll love me every time you wake up. For twenty-four hours, you will love me, and you’ll do it again and again forever.” Jennifer takes both his hands in hers. “It’s only fair I get to love you forever, too.”
She leans in, and presses their foreheads together. He breathes out, shaky, and fights the sudden wetness in his eyes.
“You love your family. And you love Doc. And you’ll never stop loving them.”
“Nobody should have to give up their futures for me.” Marty insists.
Jennifer’s eyes flutter closed. “Don’t you get it?”
He does.
“Nobody’s giving anything up. We’re choosing to stay with you through this.”
She opens her eyes again and squeezes his hands, firm.
“We will fix this,” she states with such ferocity that Marty finds himself believing it, “and until then, we’ll take it twenty-four hours at a time.”
Linda and Dave treat him the same.
In a world full of changes and people tiptoeing around him like he’s breakable, it makes all the difference.
Dave hits him when he gets home from work, a light-ish slap to the back of his head, and says “your brain still working?”. Marty crosses his eyes, makes a brief zombie noise, and hits him back.
At dinner, Linda asks him to pass the salt, and because his dad is too busy telling him about his new book and Marty is too preoccupied listening, he raises a finger to tell her to wait, and completely forgets to do it.
She nudges him again, and he raises a sheepish hand to the back of his neck. “Whoops, sorry. Forgot.”
“Marty,” Linda groans, still waiting, “you cannot be serious. I thought your stupid memory thing only happened at night.”
He gasps, putting an overdramatic hand to his chest. Linda makes a frustrated noise.
“The salt, Marty!”
He relents, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt.
He lies awake in the dead hours of the night, staring at the moonbeams striking lines of light into the otherwise dark room. Looking at his watch, he can just about make out the time:
1:19 AM
Just another quarter of an hour, and his day will be stolen from him. Not forgotten, no. Erased. Reset. All that will remain of his actions will be other people’s memories of the day.
To Marty, it will cease to be.
He finds it is less disquieting than it should be.
He’d watched earlier as the color of the day had bled into the faded blues and then greys of dusk and night and thought, briefly, I kind of feel like that.
Stripped away. Bare, like the trees outside.
But does it really matter that he won’t remember?
He’d been there today.
He had felt uneasy about the changes to his life, and had been comforted by the time spent with his mother. He’d been terrified by his predicament while Doc explained to him, and he’d played a ridiculous game with Doc’s kid. He’d had a nice afternoon with Jennifer, and a quiet evening with his family.
It had all happened, remembered or not.
Perhaps he’s a little disappointed that he didn’t get to practice with the Pinheads or see the stars with Clara or meet Jules today, but, well. Can’t do everything.
A glance at the clock again reveals he has maybe three minutes left.
He had loved, today. He had been loved today.
Tomorrow, he will do more, and he will love more, for precisely twenty-four hours.