Remember, Remember, the Twelfth of November

A/N: Sorry for the massive delay, but I'd had a MAJOR writer's block with this fic and for a while actually contemplated abandoning it!

This chapter is actually the only one which revisits an actual scene from the trilogy. No guesses needed as to which year its set in...

Saturday, November 12th, 1955

10:04 PM

Doctor Emmett Brown was not having a normal day. Not even by his standards.

Somewhere at the back of his mind, he was conscious of the fact that in another reality, in another life, he wouldn't even have been here! He would likely have been sitting home quietly, pondering the strange vision that had entered his mind over a week ago, making notes and perhaps taking the first tentative steps towards what would undoubtedly be...the greatest experiment of all time...

But Marty had changed all that. Marty McFly, the teenager from the future, who had come to the door a week ago with a bizarre story, and even more astounding proof. Proof that, in the year 1985, he, Emmett Brown would actually succeed in inventing a time machine! His 'flux capacitor' would enable a futuristic sports car, known as the 'Delorean', to actually travel through time when accelerated to 88 miles per hour! But only with 1.21 gigawatts of electricity...

Which was precisely why he was standing here, on Hill Valley's near-legendary Clock Tower, waiting for a lightining bolt to irrevocably end its seven decades of service to the citizens of Hill Valley...and hoping against hope that the electricity from the lightning bolt would be directly channelled into the flux capacitor, sending Marty back to the future...

But there was a hitch in the plan. The industrial strength cable that was lying spread-eagled over the street had been disconnected from its ground-level terminal. And he had literally seconds before the lightning struck!

And as he saw the time vehicle in the distance...it headlights approaching like the eyes of a demon...a strange technological monstrosity...he made up his mind...

Taking a deep breath, he gathered up all his courage, and clutched the cable with hands. In one instant, he slid down the cable to the street. Collapsing onto the ground, and ignoring the shock of the impact, he rushed to his feet, untangled the cable from a fallen tree, and connected the cable to the terminal just as the clock struck 10:04 PM.

It was a sight that had never been seen in Hill Valley's entire hundred year history! A lightning bolt struck the Clock Tower, and the current surged through the cable at the precise instant the hook at the top of the time vehicle connected with it. In an almost imperceptible flash of light, the time machine simply vanished, leaving behind a pair of flare trails leading up to the theatre at the other end of the street...almost as though the car had become a phantom and left them behind.

For a few moments, Emmett stood on the streets, stunned, almost as he had been struck by the lightning bolt himself rather than just receiving a minor shock from the cables.

The time vehicle was gone...and Marty in it. Vanished. Disappeared...into the future.

The future.

And when the realisation of what had happened, of what he had made happen, fully dawned upon him...he felt literally insane with euphoria...

He danced around the streets, chanting incomprehensible sounds, his scientific mind unable to make sense of where he was and the miracle that had just happen. And when reason returned to him, when he regained his sense of perspective, when he came to terms with the fact that thirty years from now, he would indeed invent a time machine, which he had now sent back to the future...he felt the emotions surge through his mind with renewed vigour. He felt awe and pride and sheer unadulterated excitement...the kind he had never ever known in all his life!

I did this, he said to himself. I will do this.

And he swore to himself that no matter what trials and tribulations lay before him in the next thirty years...he would not be frustrated by them. He would instead be grateful...grateful because he knew it would all be worth it in the end! Any price would be worth paying to be the proud inventor of this marvellous machine!

So engrossed was he in his thoughts, that he was literally deaf and blind to the world around him. But the feeling of someone pulling him from behind...yanked him back to reality.

"Doc...doc...DOC", came a voice from what, to Emmett, appeared to be a great distance. It was a curiously familiar voice...and one he couldn't quiet place...

He turned around, almost irritated by the voice having interrupted his wallowing in euphoria, and caught a glimpse of the one who had intruded on his impromptu 'celebrations'...

Emmett felt he was going to sick.

"Ahhhhhhh", he yelled, when confronted by the familiar sight of none other than...Marty McFly.

Marty McFly! The kid whom he had just seen disappearing into the future!

Marty McFly...who had no business being in 1955...who simply didn't belong to this moment, this scene...

Had it all been a dream! The time vehicle, the lightning bolt, the flare trails...had he been day dreaming on the streets! Or was he asleep at his lab...was it the night before November 12th...

Dream or no dream, Emmett was determined to get to the bottom of this...

"NO...it can't be you", he shouted, in what he imagined as a feeble tone but which actually sounded loud and agitated to him. It didn't matter...he felt he was having an out-of-body experience...as though time itself had conquered his body, his life... "I just sent you back to the future!"

"I know you did send me back to the future", said Marty. "But I'm back...I'm back from the future!"

The statement sounded so absurd to Emmett's scientific mind that he decided at that moment that it was all a dream. And perhaps he needed to sleep again in order to wake up...

Leaving one confused and temporally displaced teenager on the street, surrounded by flare trails, at the end of a long day he had experienced twice, to wonder how much worse could things possibly get!

Looking up helplessly at the Clock Tower, as though for guidance, all Marty could do was wish, stupidly, foolishly, that this was November 12th 1985...

A/N: The year of Hill Valley's founding, 1855, was taken from one of the earlier scripts for BTTF2.