copulation b.e imagines

ᴛɪᴍᴇ ᴀꜰᴛᴇʀ ᴛɪᴍᴇ

The Hollywood Hills twinkled with Christmas lights, but Billie Eilish couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Maybe it was the freezing LA night or the way Maggie had been acting weird all week. Either way, as she guided her Tesla down Mulholland Drive, her fingers drummed nervously against the leather steering wheel.

"You're being paranoid," she whispered to herself, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the rearview mirror. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and her blue eyes looked tired after the long studio session.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Maggie:

Hurry home. I have something important to tell you.

Billie's stomach did that familiar flip it always did when she thought about Maggie. They'd been dating for eight months now, and every day felt like falling in love all over again. Even with all the chaos of their careers - Billie's music taking off in new directions, Maggie's tattoo art becoming the talk of LA - they'd found their rhythm together.

The radio crackled to life, playing "Last Christmas" for probably the millionth time that day. Billie reached to change it but stopped when she saw something in her headlights that didn't make sense.

A figure stood in the middle of the road, wearing what looked like clothes from another century. Billie jerked the wheel hard to the right.

The last thing she remembered was the guardrail giving way, the sensation of floating, and a strange whisper in her ear: "It's time to see what matters."

Then everything went black.

"Billie? Billie, can you hear me?"

The voice sounded familiar, but wrong somehow. Younger. Billie forced her eyes open and found herself staring at... Maggie?

But not her Maggie. This Maggie had no tattoos, her black hair was shorter, and she looked about sixteen years old.

"Thank god you're awake," Young Maggie said, helping Billie sit up. "You hit your head pretty hard at practice."

Practice? Billie looked around. They were in a high school gymnasium, the kind she'd never actually attended, having been homeschooled her whole life. The walls were decorated with Christmas garland, and a banner read "Kennedy High Winter Showcase 2018."

"This isn't real," Billie said, trying to stand. But her legs wouldn't move. She couldn't feel anything below her waist. Panic rose in her throat as she realized two impossible things:

She was paralyzed.

And she had somehow traveled six years into the past.

Young Maggie touched her arm, concern written across her face. "Maybe we should get the nurse..."

But before Billie could respond, the gym started to fade away like smoke, and she felt herself being pulled through time again. The last thing she saw was Maggie's face, transforming from teenage worry to something else - something older and sadder.

In the distance, that same whispered voice: "The past is just the beginning. Are you ready to see what you've been missing?"

Everything went dark again, but this time, Billie could have sworn she saw a figure watching from the shadows - Dr. Sarah Chen, the mysterious neurologist who would become crucial to both their lives, though neither of them knew it yet.

The antiseptic smell hit Billie first. Then the beeping - steady, mechanical, like a metronome counting out her heartbeats. Cedars-Sinai Hospital materialized around her, and she was back in her own time, lying in a bed with tubes and wires creating a spider's web across her body.