Chapter 3

Marty was glad Doc Brown's house wasn't far from the strip mall, but even so, it took him two hours to haul the unconscious man to the house. Dropping him as gently as he could on the ill-kept lawn, Marty walked to the front door and quickly felt under the welcome mat for a key.

It was always there when he came around the house a year back, but who knew what happened when a house was abandoned for so long?

"Bingo," Marty murmured, pulling out a shiny yellow key. It was cool on his fingertips. HOUSE was written in large letters across the side and Marty smiled.

Thoroughly exhausted, he entered the room, dropped his friend on the couch and breathed a sigh of relief. Marty fell backwards into an armchair and didn't move for several minutes. Dragging an unconscious Doc had to be the hardest thing he'd ever done. Marty slumped deeper into the cushions and stared at his friend. He looked old.

Granted of course, Doc always looked old. However there was a new level of exhaustion that surrounded him, lining his lips and eyes. Idly, Marty wondered how many years had passed since Doc last saw him.

During the time passed, life tore the scientist to bits and threw a broken man into Marty's lap. What was he suppose to do now?

Something terrible had happened, Marty got that much. Clara, Jules, and Verne were dead and Doc thought it was his fault.

How does a man move forward with that on his consciousness?

Marty didn't know, but he would do whatever it took to sew his friend back together.

His eyes drooped and Marty yawned. "Should get home..." He muttered, "Mom will kill m..." He trailed off, fast asleep in Doc's dusty armchair.

Jack Harkness gripped the bottle in his fist. Swinging it up, he gulped down the rancid continents and sighed. The moon made white stripes across the hotel room's carpet and Jack's body was silhouetted by the same sky.

Annoyed by the beauty of the night, he turned his back to it and rubbed his neck with his hands. "Drat it, Doctor," he muttered.

A conglomeration of photos, newspaper clippings, and messy notes were scattered on the floor. Someone spotted a disappearing blue box last year. A man appeared to a woman's grandmother and then looked the same forty years later. Apparently a teacher from 1913 wrote a book about his dreams. All the dreams were adventures of the Doctor's. Giving further proof to the story, the teacher, John Smith, mysteriously disappeared and was never seen again.

The Doctor, that idiot of a Time Lord, and Jack's only hope. He was everywhere; everywhere Jack wasn't.

"You would think," Jack drawled drunkenly, "after two thousand years, statistically I would run into you at least once…"

He stared at the beer bottle angrily. "This is crap. I need some 51st century stuff." Smiling grimly, he let the bottle slip from his fingers and stared at the ceiling. "Can you do that Doctor? Get me a bottle of daggone expensive champagne from 5034! Believe me, I have earned it several times over!"

Silence.

Jack sighed. "Who am I kidding? Look at me. I'm a wreck."

And he was. Jack didn't put up pretenses when he was alone. The mischievous smile on his lips fled the moment he closed the door, and his shoulders slumped under the weight of all the years.

Jack was at the end of his rope. This little town in the middle of nowhere was his last chance, his only lead in finding the Doctor. Years earlier, Jack set up a machine that detected temporal anomalies, the scar tissue made by time travel. And this town was crawling in it.

But why? Why was there so much evidence of time travel? Was it the Doctor or someone else? Something else?

Whatever the cause, Jack intended to unravel the secret this town was buried. He liked mysteries, they distracted him.

However, right now he was making absolutely no headway. Nil, nada, zip. In all outward appearances, Hill Valley was a perfectly normal, extremely boring town.

Jack sighed, rubbing his temples. "Come on, Doctor, haven't I waited long enough?"

Doc's eyes flew open and out of habit, he lept up. His feet hit the ground with a soft thud and he swayed. Blinking, he placed his hand on the mantlepiece to steady himself.

Quickly glancing about the room, he realized he was in his old house, the one he lived in before he met Clara.

Clara.

Doc's stomach flipped and he ground his fingers into the wood. "Can't think about it…" he muttered. "How did I get here?" He let go of the mantlepiece and paced the room. "Those creatures shot me out of the train and into the vortex… rightly so, I should have died, but possibly…" he paused, thinking furiously. "Maybe the vortex somehow tapped into my thoughts, sending me back to my original timeline. Would that work?" He huffed, throwing his hands in the air. "Apparently so."

Then a small memory trickled into the back of his mind. "Marty…" Doc whispered. Hadn't Marty been with him in the vortex? He frowned. "No, no he came after…" he sighed, " then again, exposure to the raw time winds of the vortex could easily cause me to hallucinate... Yes, that must have been it."

Marty, meanwhile, was heavily asleep in the armchair; however, the Doctor's ranting drug him into half consciousness. Stretching, he yawned and stood up. He gave Doc a bored glance and wandered into the kitchen. Coffee. Right now all he wanted was a cup of coffee.

He yawned again, the back of his hand pressed against his mouth. Sliding open a cupboard, he stared dumbly into the empty space. Of course there wasn't food. Marty cleared most of it out himself when he realized that it would rot with Doc gone.

"On the other hand, it might have rotted anyway," he said to no one in particular. "Given his habits…"

Meanwhile, Doc Brown was ranting in the other room, throwing his arms in the air and stomping about. Then the sound stopped and Marty frowned.

Was something wrong?

Slowly, Marty crept behind the kitchen door and prepared to peek out into the living room. However, at the same time Doc burst through the door, waving a fire extinguisher.

"By the power of the Shadow Proclamation I demand that you surrender alien fe-!" Doc stopped suddenly, realizing who stood in his kitchen. He huffed, dropping the extinguisher."Marty, for stars sake, don't do that. I thought you were an alien!"

Then Doc Brown's eyes suddenly widened, really realizing who stood in his kitchen. "MARTY?!" he cried, rushing forward. "Is it really you?"

Marty blinked. "What?"

"I thought I was hallucinating!"

"I really think you might be. Did you just say alien?"

"Oh yes." Doc waved Marty's shock away. "Turns out there's billions of them, out in the stars. We found them forever ago, been traveling for ages. But that's beside the point. How are you here?"

Marty gaped. "Aliens. Like little green men with the funny-"

"Oh don't be ridiculous!" Doc Brown interrupted. "Of course not. Except, well. We did run into these- stop distracting me, Marty! It's hard enough to concentrate with you speaking a million miles a minute."

"Me." Marty's eyebrows rose incredulously. "I'm speaking a million miles a minute."

"Yes you. It hardly would be me!"

Marty just shook his head. "Whatever, Doc." He yawned, pushing past the scientist and entering the living room. Light filtered through dusty windows and gave the room an abandoned feel. Marty didn't take the time to fully look at it. He glanced backwards at his old friend and gave him a small smile. "Are you… okay?" he asked cautiously, snatching up his coat, which he'd discarded some time in the night.

Doc frowned at him, "Of course I'm okay! I am the king of okay!"

"Uh huh," Marty said with a slow nod. He didn't believe him for a minute. Looked the scientist up and down, Marty searched for a sign of his true emotions, but he had them quietly tucked away. "What you said about… about you family. It's not true, right? They're not really-?"

"-Dead?" Doc finished, his voice suddenly low. His face had gone slack, like someone was sucking the color out of his body. His eyes dimmed and his mouth hardened. "Yes. It's true."

Watching the miraculous change in his friends demeanor, Marty gulped. He most definitely was not the king of okay. For a moment Marty debated whether he should leave him or not. Then he shook his head mentally. It was still early morning. He needed to get home before his mother woke up and realized he had been gone all night. Marty headed for the door but glanced back at the last second. He felt horribly guilty for leaving him here alone, especially when he looked so lifeless. "Do you want me to stay, Doc? I can if you want."

Doc shook his head, turned away and began fiddling with a contraption on the mantelpiece. "No, no, Marty. Of course not. You've got school and your mother will be furious if she realizes you've been gone all night."

Marty blinked. "Maybe she knows I'm here," he argued.

"When have you ever told your mother where you go?" the scientist sighed, glancing at him.

"Touche."

"Really." Doc insisted, giving him a small smile. "Go home Marty. I'll keep myself busy somehow."

Sighing, Marty conceded and opened up the door. "Alright." A blast of warm air wrapped around him like a sweaty blanket and he paused to look back one last time. "I know it doesn't mean anything, Doc," he said softly, "But I'm sorry."

Doc Brown's gaze had settled on the floor, but now it jumped up. He nodded and seemed to physically push away his dire mood. "Me too, Marty. Me too."

AN: Sorry about the delay. I've got half a million other stories I'm trying to write at the same time as this one. Ugh... Anywho, please REVIEW! I love to hear your feedback!