song selection: landslide by fleetwood mac

The nicotine still played on Jude's lips as her and Harper sat together by the bar. The rest of her bandmates found it hard to focus on much of anything with them having Jude alone besides the events that had played out last night. "So you gonna tell any of us why a Fox came to pick you up or?" Harper was the only one brave enough to ask.

Tiffany and Denise looked up from the burgers they were still eating to her surprised. Jude paid no mind to their interest over this and continued to still casually smoke in the booth. "No, actually. We're just good friends," She lied to them easily.

Knowing the young girl longer than any of them, Tiffany focused her attention over her casual response to this. "He's engaged to someone right?"

The others quickly hid themselves as she said this and Jude looked over to her offended over the quick assumption. However, she had no right to be angry with her friend over this considering she was absolutely right. "I'm not kind of girl and I didn't think you thought I was."

Exchanging small glances with one another, Jude continued to look away from them in the deep thought she found herself again in with the very mention of Michael. Denise, in an attempt to lighten up the situation, smiled to herself over her relationship. "So was it the blue eyes that got you? They did look pretty dreamy."

Thinking that her being with them out would distract her enough, then continuing this conversation only annoyed her. She grabbed her jacket off from behind her to head outside now in an attempt to leave them behind. The girls called after her in an attempt to slow her down with Denise regretting the ill-timing of her joke.

She stopped herself in the middle of the small temper tantrum she was throwing and realized how childish she was acting over this. None of them really knew what was going on, and Jude sure as hell didn't want them to know about it either. Them asking her this was only out of concern for her behavior, which she admired about all of them. The four of them were a small family in themselves, they always were. "Sorry, Denny— I'm acting like a jerk."She shoved her hands into her pockets to smile up to them. "But if it's alright, I'm gonna head home. It's been a long week."

The girls nodded understandingly for Harper to take out the keys to the van. "Everyone hope in." Arriving back home to her empty apartment, Jude tossed her keys aside to lie down onto the floor to attempt to gain some piece of mind. The chipped painting of the ceiling looked back to her with the sounds of cursing drivers outside from the busy traffic audible from even where she was on the 4th floor.

Her phone had been buzzing incessantly since she left to hang out her friends, not paying mind to it the entire time she was gone. The cell went off again in her pocket to have her groan in disapproval and cringe over the small, bright screen. Several messages from Michael appeared waiting for her as she read through them to herself:

Jude, message me. You can't just avoid me again, I won't let you. Call me.

It's getting late and I really want to see you, Jujube.

Or you can ignore everything I'm sending you, that's fine to. I still love you though, you can't stop that. I can't even stop that. Not like I want to though. Just, tell me if you're alright?

She set her phone aside on the bed stand as another message was sent and Jude continued to avoid having to send out a reply. Plopping herself onto the mattress in an attempt to try and get some sleep, the thought seemed to be in vain as she simply continued to lay wide-awake. Instead she rolled back off the bed to grab her jacket and keys to head out into the city. There were answers she needed in order to put her mind at ease. Whether they were good or bad, she needed to know.

***

Her hands traced along the door of the familiar chrome machine that hadn't been touched in some time. Continuing to look around her old storage unit out of nostalgia, Jude smiled to herself for a moment at the small things still here from her attempts at fixing up her father's time machine. She took a seat inside to familiarize herself with the control briefly before setting in a date for the near future.

"Whatever Mike and I are, whatever happens, I can just see for myself what fate has in store. Easier that way too—"

The jolt from the travel set her back into her seat and Jude gripped onto the sides of the chair to maintain her balance. As soon as she felt a short stop and her body shift forward, she unstrapped herself and pushed the capsule door out. Jude briefly looked both ways before stepping out completely to see where she had exactly landed herself in.

The plains of the countryside played past her jeans as she looked down for a moment at the small earth below her boots. The faint sound of children's laughing could be heard from the distance from her stance in a hill of sorts. Walking towards the sound, Jude looked ahead to see, in fact, there were children here. Two kids were playing in a small playground on the other side, their long hair waving past them as they continued to play.

"Been waiting for you to show up." Jude turned back to see the matured woman before her wide-eyed. The older woman smiled to her softly over her expression. "Hey Jude."

The older woman came beside her to look out past the hillside down to the small farm cottage Jude had found herself in. She continued to stare at the woman in surprise and awe, not knowing exactly the effects of this right away. "Always liked the view from here," The woman told her, audibly content by the tone in her voice as she looked away from her. The two met their gazes again as Jude continued to rationalize various scenarios in her head over this encounter. "The pleasure of being a time traveler is you'll know exactly when something is going to happen."

Jude looked down to the farm below them then back towards the older woman. "So all of this-" She trailed off, still surprised.

"We're actually on vacation. Michael wanted to visit Venice again and the girls love it here so, we came," The woman explained and smiled over to Jude, eyeing her appearance closely, "I always liked that haircut honestly. Picturing Dad's expression if he were to see it now always puts a smile on my face."

Jude laughed along with her before sighing sadly over the mention of her father. "Thinking about Dad in general can put a smile on my face too sometimes."

"You know-" The woman put down the basket in her hands to place both her hands on Jude's shoulders. "You deserve that Fox. You didn't catch him, he just came to you. Yes, you left. Yes, you don't think you should ever have fallen in love. But you know what Jude, you did. And trust me-" She cut herself off to laugh. "It's the best mistake you'll ever make. In all of time."

This made absolutely no sense to her. The very fabric of his future was now ruined over her recklessness. Things had to have been ruined because of this, there wasn't supposed to be some happy ending. There couldn't be a happy ending, Jude knew it wasn't that simplex. She shook her head to the woman's optimist comments reluctantly. "Time-"

"This is your timeline. Trust me, I've done my research. In another timeline, Michael is still with Tracy and you never went to 1985. But this timeline Jude, you created on your own," The woman reassured her. "The event of you going back to 1985 was always going to inevitably cause some sort of change to occur from it. All the events then after are then due to your time travel and separate from the timeline you already knew. You were always living your timeline since you came back from the trip, it was always going to happen."

"So like an alternate 1985A- Like Back to the Future Part 2?" She asked, still trying to understand the situation.

The woman let out a small chuckle over the comparison and nodded in agreement. "Exactly like that."

"Jude!" Both their heads turned to down the hill to see a Fox in a comfy plaid shirt walking out of the house, looking around.

It was her Fox. Older now, but still just as pretty. This really was her future? Jude continued to find this hard to believe.

Jude simply smiled over the sight of seeing a future version of Michael and turned over to the woman. "Looks like you've got plans."

She shrugged with a wide-grin, looking over to Michael as well. "Guess I do don't I?" The woman started to make her way down the hill to the house and farm with her back to the time machine while Jude watched her drift away. The back of her dress was flowing past her dreamily, making this future seem even more like some sort of fantasy as opposed to reality. "Hey Jude!"

"Yes Jude!" Jude responded back.

Her future self nodded to her intently. "You know what you have to do right?" Jude's eyes sprung out in surprise, but she nodded without hesitation. "Good! Now go! Don't want Foxy to freak out. Or the kids for that matter." She rolled her eyes with a small smirk over the statement, turning away from the future that was now possibly waiting for her and back towards the time machine.