In Another's Shoes

Written by Anakin McFly

Prologue

It was amazing how Doc’s garage could look so much like an actual home, Marty McFly found himself wondering for the umpteenth time. From the outside, nothing much had changed, but the interior was now cosy and well furnished, mostly the result of Clara’s work. In late 1985, after having settled down in the nineteenth century, Emmett Brown had moved most of his belongings out of the garage and into his home a hundred years away, but now the complete possessions of the Brown family were starting to pile up in the garage, with more items coming in with each new trip in the time train.

Many things, of course, were not able to make the trip through time for the simple reason that they were just too large to fit into the train’s cabin. More than once, Emmett had remarked half-jokingly that perhaps it would be a good idea to convert a moving van into a time machine. The train was long and colourful and visually appealing to most people under the age of ten, but it lacked that one important thing: space. The vehicle itself was huge, but the cabin was another story altogether. Events of December 1985 had seen six people squeezing into the cabin, and that had started Emmett off thinking that maybe it was time for a new machine; one less inconspicuous than the train, and with more space – a caravan, perhaps?

But those ideas had to be pushed aside for the moment, what with all the many little problems and issues that needed to be settled before the Brown family could make their permanent move back to the future. For one, there were all the different personal documents that needed to be obtained; Emmett had gone into the future and had twentieth-century birth certificates and passports forged and made in a shop that provided such services for twenty-first century people who wanted these kind of things as keepsakes or just for fun. In the future, such documents had become outdated and were no longer valid… but in 1985, they were just as good as original.

Emmett meant to keep as low a profile as possible when he moved back, to avoid any unnecessary questions; but to be on the safe side, he had a rough cover story ready to explain why he had managed to get a wife and two children – the elder of whom was nine years old – when he had been single just a few months back. The fabricated story went that, seven years ago after the two boys had been born, the family had been separated in an accident out at sea and Emmett had been presumed dead. Clara and the boys had lived together until then, with her working as a schoolteacher, and only recently had they learnt of his survival.

It was a cover story that still needed quite a bit more work, but Emmett decided that it would have to do for the moment until he thought up a more plausible one. Besides, if anyone started getting too curious and poking their noses into places they shouldn’t, there was always the memory-wiping device. Emmett had got hold of it from the Hill Valley General Hospital in 2030, and it had proved a valuable asset on several occasions.

Chapter One: The Switch

April 1986
Hill Valley, California

“Found it yet?” Marty asked, turning to look at Verne, who had his head buried in a cardboard box marked ‘MOVIES’. Verne emerged from the box, looking frustrated.

“It’s not here,” he said. “I think it’s still at home.”

Marty flopped down on the sofa in front of the plasma television set. “So I guess that means no Star Wars today, huh?”

“Yeah.” Verne stuck his head back into the box and moved DVDs and the occasional VCD or videotape around. “Want to see Matrix Reloaded?”

“Is that good?”

“No,” Verne admitted. “But I thought it might be interestin’, because of what happened last year.”

”Yeah.” Marty stared wistfully at nothing in particular. “I wonder if Neo managed to get home,” he mused.

The seven-year-old shrugged and left the box, going over to sit with Marty. “If he did, he’s goin’ to die in the end, unless he changes stuff… but maybe even if he changes ‘em, he’ll still have to die in the end ‘cause it’s the only way to end the war.”

“Kind of a pathetic life,” Marty remarked.

“He kept tryin’ to take my pizza.”

“You’re obsessed with pizza.”

Silence passed between them for several moments, as they sat and remembered the events of four months ago. At least, it had been four months for Marty. For Verne, December 1985 had been barely more than a week ago.

“Want to watch Back to the Future?” Verne asked suddenly, breaking the silence.

Marty cringed. “No.”

The year before, Doc had invented a device that allowed him and Marty to communicate through e-mail across the barriers of time. There had been a computer in Emmett's home in the nineteenth century, and one in his garage in 1985 for Marty to use. Everything had gone fine... until it turned out that the device was placing too much stress on the space-time continuum. Portals to other dimensions opened, and in the end Marty found himself transported into a world where he, Doc, and their adventures were just part of a fictional movie trilogy known as Back to the Future.

It had been one of the weirdest times of Marty's life, and one of the most traumatising. He didn't want to remember any more of it than was necessary, though he sometimes missed the three friends he had made on his interdimensional trip – Neo, Frank Bannister, and Ted Logan.

Suddenly, a flash of inspiration hit Verne… and a sly grin spread across his face that went unnoticed by Marty. He glanced surreptitiously at the newly put up partition that separated his father’s makeshift laboratory from the rest of the garage-house.

“I’m bored,” Verne said, trying to sound as casual and as bored as possible.

Marty sighed. “Tell me about it,” he muttered. Right now, he could have been jamming away on his guitar with the rest of the Pinheads, but in stead he was stuck here babysitting Doc’s younger son while he and Clara went house hunting. Jules had stayed back in 1896, but as usual, Verne had not wanted to miss out on a trip to the future, even if it meant that he had to stay put in the garage because Doc dared not risk going around in the 1986 public with his son – not with a cover story as pitiful as the one he currently had. There wouldn’t be much point in denying that Verne was his offspring if someone asked, because sooner or later the family would be living relatively permanently in Hill Valley circa late-twentieth century.

“I wanna go out.”

“You know you’re not allowed to,” Marty replied.

“Are you allowed to go out?”

Marty wondered just where this was leading to. “Yeah, I guess… but I promised Doc I’d stay here with you. And they’ll prob’ly be back in an hour or so anyway.”

“So you can go out, as long as I stay here?”

Marty stared at the boy. “Is there some point to all these questions?”

“Can I go out as you?” Verne asked instead.

“I sai… What?”

Verne slid off the sofa and headed towards Emmett’s makeshift lab. “C’mon,” he said, glancing back at Marty. Uncertainly, the teen got up and followed him.

Doc’s small laboratory was undoubtedly the messiest part of the garage. He had been diligently moving his things over here from 1895, and the place was getting more and more cluttered. Furthermore, he didn’t want anyone messing around with or rearranging his things – although the boys took certain liberties with that when he was not around – and as a result, the place had had never seen a broom in quite some time.

Marty glanced briefly at several dust bunnies in a corner of the room, in the midst of doing what bunnies do best: multiplying. Then his gaze turned to Verne, who was struggling to lift up a modified version of Doc’s failed mind-reader machine. Now, instead of a suction pump at one end, there were two similar contraptions attached to each other by long wires.

“Hey, isn’t that the mind-reader thing your dad had in ‘fifty-five?” Marty asked.

“Yeah,” Verne said, face screwed up in concentration as he made adjustments to the bulky devices. “But it actually sort of works now… that day Jules was tryin’ to read my thoughts because he wanted to find out where I hid all his underwear. Dad and Mum were both out looking at houses again, and he was s‘posed to look after me, but he tied me to a chair and put one of these on my head. But he’d accidentally knocked it against somethin’, and somethin’ got changed, so when he switched it on somethin’ else happened…”

“What?” Marty asked, silently marvelling at Verne’s ability to use the word ‘something’ three times in one sentence.

“Here. I’ll show you,” Verne said. He sat down on a chair and lifted one of the mind-readers onto his head. “Put on the other one.”

Marty stared doubtfully at the strange contraption.

“It’s safe,” Verne added. “I’ve done this before, twice.”

Slowly, Marty put it on, and Verne grinned. “You should sit down,” he suggested.

Marty glanced around, but the only suitable seats he saw – apart from the chair that Verne had taken – were dubious-looking boxes filled with stuff. “Nah, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’ll stand.”

Verne hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “Okay then,” he said, and flicked a switch.

Without warning, Marty was suddenly yanked into darkness in a way that felt unnervingly similar to the time last year when he’d been grabbed into the so-called ‘real world’. But this time, the journey was much shorter.

When it ended, the impact rocked his chair onto its two back legs. It teetered dangerously there for a moment, then righted itself back on all fours.

Eyes shut, Marty suddenly wondered: Chair? What chair?

The thought wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with… and he suddenly had a very bad feeling about it.

Slowly, Marty opened his eyes to see himself staggering away from the wall the impact had thrown him into. And Marty stared as the too-familiar brown-haired teenager gave him a wounded look.

“I told ya you should have sat down,” Marty heard his own voice say.

Marty felt himself slip into a mental Twilight Zone. “Verne?” he asked in a half-whisper, but the voice that came out was not his.

“Yeah, who else?” Verne took the mind-reading device off what seconds ago had been Marty’s head and glanced around. “Things look different from up here,” he commented.

Marty looked down at his seven-year-old hands, fingers hurting from slightly from digging through stacks of movies, and a chill ran down his spine… only technically it wasn’t his spine any more. And he knew with sudden conviction that if he were to look into a mirror now, he was going to see Verne’s face.

Coming over, Verne lifted the device off the stunned boy, and waved a teenage hand in front of Marty in the universal gesture of checking to see if anyone’s home. “Marty? You okay?”

The now-seven-year-old was trembling. Thoughts were creeping into Marty’s mind… thoughts that were not his, but at the same time were… thoughts that told him that his name was Verne Newton Brown, and that the teenager in front of him was Marty McFly, his dad’s best friend from 1985, who could skateboard really well and play guitar and do other kinds of cool stuff…

A sudden violent mental protestation cut through the foreign thoughts.

No! I’m Marty McFly, I’m Marty McFly, I’m Marty McFly, I’m Marty…

“Are you okay?” Verne asked again. When no response came, he gently lifted the boy off the chair. Feeling strangely detached, Marty put his arms around the teenager’s shoulders and held on as Verne carried him over to the sofa and put him down.

“Marty?” Verne asked, concern in his voice. “Say something… you’re scaring me.”

“Switch us back, Verne,” came the shaky reply. “Switch us back…”

The concern vanished, and Verne gave him a creepy smile. “Nah, not so soon. Where’s the fun in that? Let me be you for a while… I was getting bored.”

Numbly, Marty got off the sofa and found himself staring at a coffee table which had suddenly become so much taller than he remembered. He ran his fingers through unfamiliar blonde hair, and watched as Verne pulled out Marty’s wallet from his jeans pocket and examined its contents.

“Whoa,” Verne began, counting the notes of money. “Where’d you get all this ca… Oh.” There was a slight pause as Verne digested the sudden extract from Marty’s memories that had come to him in answer to his question. “Yeah,” he said absent-mindedly, closing the wallet and sticking it back into the pocket from whence it came.

The phone rang.

Verne and Marty glanced at each other, then Verne dashed over and picked it up.

“Hello?” A pause. “Hey, Jen…”

Marty’s eyes widened. He rushed over to Verne and tried to yank the telephone receiver away from his ear.

“Yeah, I’m fi… OW!” Verne dropped the phone, and it lay dangling off the hook until Marty grabbed it.

“Jennifer?” he gasped into the phone.

There was a pause on the other end. Then… “Verne?”

“No! Jen, it’s me, Marty, Marty McFly…”

“Uh-huh,” came the sceptical-sounding response. Just then, Verne wrestled back control of the phone and held it to his ear, using his free hand to pin Marty down.

“Hello?” Yeah, sorry ‘bout that… Yeah, that was Verne… No, you don’t need to come over… OW!” Verne whacked Marty’s hand away, and the boy withdrew in pain. “No… that was nothing… Jen, I swear I’m fine… really… Yeah, okay. Bye.”

Verne put down the phone and turned furiously to look at Marty. “What was that for?”

“That call was for me,” Marty said softly.

“Yeah, well, I’m you now, okay?”

“No you’re not.”

“Really?” Verne thought for a moment, and suddenly he smirked. “Okay then, if that’s the case, I suppose you could tell me what your birthday is.”

“Yeah.”

“So what is it?”

Marty opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. And then he was hit with the sudden horrible realisation that he could not remember. He knew Verne’s birthday all right, although he’d never known it before… but he hadn’t the faintest idea when Marty McFly had been born.

Verne was fixing him with a knowing grin. “Well?”

Panic was slowly creeping up on Marty as he forced himself to think. It was 1986… he was seventeen in 1985, so 1985 minus 17 would give him his birth year… but what the zark was 1985 – 17? Okay, scrap the 19, Marty thought desperately. 85 minus 17… His seven-year-old brain struggled to complete the calculation and failed. Verne had never been into maths.

“I… can’t remember,” Marty said in a strangely choked voice.

“June 20, 1968,” Verne stated, staring at Marty with the blue eyes that had once been his.

The date sounded vaguely familiar to Marty, like something he should have known but didn’t. And then to his horror, he heard the garage door being unlocked from the outside.

Verne got up and tousled the seven-year-old’s hair. “Look’s like they’re back,” he said, going over to the door as it started to open.

Doc and Clara entered the garage, and Verne smiled at them in greeting. “Hey, you’re early…”

That’s Mum and Dad, Marty’s thoughts informed him, and he futilely tried to ignore them. He tried to remember George and Lorraine McFly, and Dave and Linda, but those memories seemed so distant, so far away… and getting more faded by the minute.

“We thought you might want to be home for dinner,” Doc replied. “It wouldn’t be a good idea to have your parents wondering where you were.”

“Yeah, I guess…”

Feeling as though he were in some sort of trance, Marty came over to join them. Doc looked at him. “And how were you?”

“We were fine,” Verne replied for him. “We played on the computer a while, then we watched a bunch of movies… I wanted to see the Star Wars prequels but apparently they haven’t been packed yet… But we still had fun. Right, Verne?”

Faking a small smile, Marty nodded. Part of him wanted to go crazy and start yelling that he was Marty McFly, not Verne… but why should anyone believe him? What proof did he have? He couldn’t even remember his own birth date… his best hope now was to play along, hoping that sooner or later Verne would tire of this game and switch them back.

If he ever did.

The other three were talking, but none of their words fully registered in Marty’s traumatised mind, until he heard his voice saying: “I’ll guess I’ll be going then. See you guys another time.”

Marty watched numbly as the teenager waved goodbye and stepped out of the garage. Then the door thudded shut, and the creeping panic suddenly escalated in him. His pulse raced as he stared at the closed door… from what seemed a far-off distance he heard Clara calling Verne’s name…

He felt dizzy, his small body shaking with each beat of his heart. He heard his panicked breathing, loud in his ears, and all around the daTHUMP daTHUMP daTHUMP of his heart…

Red began to cloud his vision. Everything started looking static-y. Distantly, Marty felt hands on his shoulders, and what may or may not have been a face looking at him.

His vision turned almost completely to static and Marty closed his eyes in agony.

daTHUMP daTHUMP daTHUMP…

Then blackness overcame him, and Marty knew no more.

Chapter Two: First Night

Verne hesitantly put his foot on Marty's skateboard and took a deep breath. He'd never ridden one before...

Cautiously, he kicked off with his other foot, and the skateboard slid out from under him, throwing him off-balance. Verne yelled in shock and hopped off just in time to prevent a painful meeting with the road. Stumbling back upright, he stared warily at the skateboard lying innocently before him and ran his fingers through his brown hair.

You're Marty McFly now, he told himself, placing his left foot firmly on the board again. You've spent half your life skateboarding. You can do this. Just follow your instinct...

Verne closed his eyes and tried to remember, tried to recall from Marty's memories what it felt like to be whizzing down the road on a skateboard and seeing the world zoom by... remembered the feel of the moving board beneath his feet...

Just do it.

"Right," Verne said softly to himself, voice shaking slightly. He took another deep breath and kicked off strongly. His right foot joined his left on the board, and suddenly, Verne knew...

Marty's skateboarding instincts and years of practice had taken over. Now, they directed Verne, subconsciously telling him how to adjust his balance, when to kick off again, how to turn, how to speed up, how to slow down...

A wave of exhilaration swept over Verne, and a grin of pure bliss spread across his face as he grabbed hold of a passing car. The way to 9303 Lyon Estates laid itself out in his mind, clear and familiar. Trained legs pushed off from the car, and Verne turned the corner into the next road, effortlessly manoeuvring the skateboard with a skill he'd never had.

The streets started looking more familiar; this was a route often traversed by Marty. Minutes later, Verne turned into Lyon Estates, cruising past the two pillars with the lion statues on top. The teenager came to a halt right outside the McFly residence, and without needing to think automatically flipped the skateboard up into his right hand. Verne dug into Marty's jeans for the keys he knew were there, and let himself into the house.

By the time the door clicked shut, he'd almost forgotten who he really was.

"Verne?"

Fuzzily, Marty opened his eyes, and Emmett's face swam gradually into focus, looking concernedly down at him.

"Dad?" he heard himself say without thinking, when a little voice somewhere in his head hesitantly tried to correct him.

No, that's Doc, that's not your father, your father's that... that other guy... whatsisname... John... Jor... George, yeah, that's it...

"W... what happened?" Marty struggled to sit up on the sofa, legs barely touching the floor. His head throbbed with a dull pain, and he grimaced.

"You fainted," Emmett informed him. "Are you feeling all right now?"

Marty's seriously messed up mind was still trying to figure out what was going on. "Yeah... I think so..."

"You must have been really tired," Clara cut in gently. "We've got dinner for you. Are you hungry?"

He was.

"Yeah..." Still feeling in a daze, Marty made his way to the table and sat down. His head still ached... Vaguely, he recalled flashes of memory about Emmett's mind-reader device... it had been altered or something... yeah, it had, he remembered Jules and him accidentally swapping minds that time, and then after they swapped back he'd wiped Jules' memory because he didn't want him remembering all that stuff about him...

And he remembered something about wanting to watch Star Wars, only the DVDs weren't there yet, and Marty didn't want to watch Matrix Reloaded because he had told him it wasn't too good, then Marty had...

Wait... I thought I was Marty... am I?

Marty tried to think, but his brain felt half dead.

From the bedroom of Marty McFly that night came a hesitant version of Johnny B. Goode being plucked out on an electric guitar. Some time into the more confident second chorus, the door opened and Lorraine McFly stepped in.

"Marty, we were thi..."

Verne stopped playing with a start, noticing for the first time Lorraine's presence, as well as the queer look she was now giving him.

"That's... that's the song you played, right, in 1955?" she asked quietly.

He gave her a nervous smile. "Uh... yeah..."

Lorraine appeared to be staring off into some faraway place or time. "Yeah, I remember it now," she said distantly. "That time at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, where your father and I kissed for the first time..."

Verne was starting to feel uncomfortable. "Uh..."

Lorraine didn't really hear him. "Calvin Klein played it," she continued in the same dreamy tone. "I still can't believe he was actually you... We used to wonder what became of him... he just turned up one day, and one week later he was gone..."

"Ah... Mom?"

Marty's mother gave a slight jump, as thought realising suddenly where she really was. "Oh... sorry," she said, looking back at the teen. "Anyway, your father and I were wondering if you'd like to invite Doctor Brown and his family over to dinner at seven tomorrow night. You know, since they'll be leaving soon... It'll be a chance for the rest of the family to get to know them better. What d'you think?"

Verne hesitated. He wasn't too keen to get into a situation where he'd have to interact with his real family, just in case something slipped out... and if Marty was there too...

Then again, he couldn't deny that it would be a very interesting experience to have dinner with his family as Marty McFly, for once... and besides, what was the worst thing that could happen? If Marty decided to blurt out the truth, what were the chances that anyone would believe him? And surely Verne wasn't going to be afraid of some seven-year-old kid...

"Yeah," he decided aloud. "I... I think it'd be a great idea," he said with what he hoped was a convincing smile. "Thanks... I'll go call Doc now and tell him."

About a minute or so later, the telephone was ringing in the Brown household. Emmett answered it. "Hello?"

"Hi, Doc," Verne said, feeling a slight thrill at being able to call his father that.

"Marty? Is something wrong?"

"No, no. Everything's fine, Doc. Um, my parents were just wondering if you and Clara and, uh, Verne would like to come over for dinner tomorrow night." Verne's pulse was starting to race. He was talking to his father and his father didn't know it was him... He grinned.

"Of course we'll come," Emmett replied. "What time?"

"Seven."

"Seven... all right. We'll be there."

"See you then, Doc."

"You too, Marty."

Verne hung up with an odd mixture of emotions churning around inside him: part guilty, part apprehensive, part excited... He gave the strings on Marty's favourite guitar a strum, only half-listening as the chord resonated around the room.

The teen glanced at the clock. It was almost midnight; he should go to bed. Tomorrow awaited him: his first day in Marty's life. Placing the guitar to a side, he left for the bathroom to wash up for the night.

Another thrill ran down his spine as he looked into the mirror above the sink, Marty's reflection staring back at him. An unsuccessfully restrained grin spread across the teen's face, and it stayed there as he later stretched out comfortably on Marty's bed.

Outside, the moonlight shone through the window onto a scene it had shone down on for many years: Marty McFly, turning in for the night.

Verne gave the pillow a cheerful hug. This was his pillow now, his bed, his room, his house, his family, his life, and no one could prove otherwise. A great feeling of security came over Verne. No one would ever know... no one but him and Marty, and what could Marty do about it?

Nothing.

Verne rolled over and flicked off the light.

He was Marty McFly now.

Chapter Three: First Morning

That Sunday morning saw Verne fast asleep on Marty's bed as the early sunlight filtered through the windows. All was quiet, all was peaceful... until the silence in the room was rudely interrupted by a loud banging on the door.

"MARTY! Get up! We don't wanna be late for brunch!"

Verne bolted up in shock and fell off the bed. He lay there for a while, too tired to get onto his feet, and trying to remember where exactly he was. He stared incomprehensibly for a moment at his arm on the floor in front of him, which looked rather different from what he remembered and had Marty's watch strapped on its wrist.

Marty...

Then the memory avalanche hit him, and a weird thrill burst through his mind. It hadn't been a dream, after all... Slowly, Verne stood up, grasping onto the bedstand for support. He was actually here, in the McFly's house, in Marty's bedroom... he could look through all of Marty's private things and he'd never kn...

They're my private things too, a small hurt voice sounded in his head, and suddenly Verne had a remarkable mental flash by of the private things in question – love letters to and from Jennifer, diary entries in a long-untouched diary, stuff Marty had snicked from Dave and Linda, the photo of him and Doc in 1885, prized items from various places – and all these along with the steel-strong indignance that he didn't want anyone touching them, especially not some little kid like Verne.

Verne was filled with the uncomfortable feeling of being two people who didn't particularly like each other. He stood there awkwardly for a moment, and then with a slight twinge of guilt, pushed aside the remaining thoughts of his own and tried to fully immerse himself in Marty's mind, filling his head with the teen's memories and sense of self and forcefully ignoring his own. He was Marty McFly now, after all.

It sent a strange chill down his spine.

The now-seventeen-year-old left the bedroom and went to join the rest of the family. Linda passed him on his way down the hallway and gave him a cursory glance.

"Do you always have to sleep in your clothes?" she asked.

Verne silently marvelled at how much shorter Linda seemed now. When he'd first met her, she'd seemed so tall...

"Marty?" she asked cautiously. "What're you looking at?"

Verne blinked. "Huh? Oh, uh... nothing... yeah... Ah... yeah." Forcing a smile, he walked off, mentally whacking himself on the head.

Emmett Brown felt a little worried about his youngest son. Verne hadn't been himself the night before; he'd been too quiet, too prone to staring blankly at nothing... and then there had been that whole fainting spell to add to it. And now, Emmett saw that same look on the boy's face again as he sat on the bed. That distant, puzzled, not-quite-there look.

"Verne?" he asked softly.

Slowly, Marty looked up and stared at him

"Are you sure you're feeling all right?"

Marty stared, then blinked, and something seemed to clear briefly. "Huh?"

"Do you think you need to see a doctor?"

"Huh?" Marty asked again. "Oh... No, I... I'm fine..."

Clara came over and sat down next to him. Moments later, Marty dimly felt her cool hand against his forehead. His mind was a mess of thoughts; he wasn't sure which were his and which were not, and he was tired from trying to sort them out. He didn't know who he was, and the jumbled memories weren't helping. All he really knew for sure was that he could trust the two adults – his parents? His friends? – who were currently with him.

A seventeen-year-old mind was never meant to be forced into a seven-year-old brain.

"I think you've got a fever," Clara informed him, removing her hand and putting an arm around his small body.

Fever... the words floated painfully around Marty's mind. Come to think of it, he did feel rather sick... maybe that was why he felt so weird...

Emmett looked at him with concern. "I suppose I'll have to call up the McFlys, then, and tell them we might not be able to go for..."

"NO!" Marty yelled suddenly, and the effort made his head start throbbing. "No... I... I'll be fine, we can still go..." He wasn't too sure why, but something told him that he had to go for that dinner... there would be answers there, he had to go...

"Are you sure?" Clara asked.

Marty nodded. "Yeah... Yeah, I'll be fine... I promise..."

Clara gave a resigned sigh. "Well then, in tha tcase you should at least have a good rest, and we'll see how you are this evening."

He had technically just woken up, but rest still sounded good. Closing his eyes, Marty lay back down on the cool pillow and grabbed hold of the blanket for comfort, feeling its softness between his fingers.

His head hurt too much... he had to think less... Marty tried to consciously shut down parts of his mind, leaving nothing but what he absolutely needed to function. The pain subsided a little. He concentrated on his breathing, closing off the rest of his thoughts and filling himself with the rhythm of his breaths: in... out... in... out...

Eventually he slipped back into a thankfully dreamless sleep.

Verne was having a pretty good time. Everything seemed different now: things looked smaller, the world less scary, children who would have been his elders were now mere kids... And, best of all, he was now truly a part of the future world which he had for so long dreamed about. He was now a member of the world of 1985, no longer just a visitor who would never be able to fully be a part of it. He was no longer the offspring of the unconventional marriage of two people separated by a hundred yeras; now, the McFlys saw him as one of their own and had no reason to doubt otherwise.

He was in an act where the script was figuratively in his hand atnd his character's entire background literally in his mind.

And it was fun.

He looked forward to dinner that evening.