I Miss You - McLennon AU

25.

"I... Do you have any questions?" Paul asked, his tone shy and nervous.

"Yeah." Mike responded with a chuckle, as if he was taking a deep breath after holding it in for so long. Paul laughed along too, glad his brother wasn't being distant with him. "You don't have to answer these if you don't want."

"I know, thank you." The older smiled.

"I... How did you know it wasn't a dream?" Mike asked, clearly genuinely curious. "Not like, now, but I mean when you... Well when you got there, I suppose."

Mike was careful with what he was saying, still getting used to the news. Paul understood, he would need time to adjust too.

"It's like... Well, to me, dreams always have this sort of haze over them. You jump back and forward from bit to bit. It's like you're watching everything happen in third person, I guess." Paul explained, truly trying to give a proper explanation whilst also making sense of it himself. "This felt nothing like that. As soon as I woke up... There, in that hospital bed, I felt like I had adjusted already. I felt truly 'with it' with in a couple of minutes, and I just... I just knew it was real. I mean, I had my doubts sometimes, but everything dragged on, time and that. The conversations with people were real, and by like day three... I knew for sure that I was not dreaming."

"I see." Mike nodded, looking down to ask another question. "I just... If you don't want to answer, like I said, then that's fine, please don't. But I am actually interested... How did you know that it was real when you woke up here again?"

"At first..." Paul sighed, looking to the roof as if to make sense to it and remember it. The time was a painful time, his mind had tried to blank the majority of it out it seemed as he couldn't instantly recall like he could when he woke up in 1955. "Y'know at first I had my doubts if it was real or not. When I first woke up, like in the first few minutes, I honestly thought I had just been... I don't know, in Liverpool hospital in modern day for two weeks in a coma. But then Da' told me I had been missing for the exact time I was away, and my doubts started to fade. But it was confusing..."

"Why?" Mike asked, interested.

"I didn't know what was real or what wasn't. Obviously the actual time line, I suppose, was different, but when I woke up in 2019 again, I woke up under that tree in strawberry fields. There were people singing songs that John and I had wrote in 1955, and it's like we were famous... I remember running infront of the car, but what I remember was not waking up here... Old John was the man who ran me over... E-Except he didn't, he stopped just in front of me and saved me."

Mike looked stunned, and Paul felt it too. He genuinely was so confused.

"I'm my memories I went with old John, then I saw how he had become famous without me, how he hadn't needed me or whatnot though his life, and I fell depressed. I remember leaving old John's apartment, in this expensive place in Liverpool City, and then waking up in hospital."

"Christ, Paul..." Mike spoke. "You were definitely hit. I remember- remember seeing you." He winced as he spoke. "You must have been imagining when you woke up, maybe for some... I don't know, some idea as to how it all happened."

"Yeah. I won't lie, the only part of this entire thing that I can feel was not real was when I woke up here again." Paul spoke. "My memory of that was so hazy, Mike."

"Maybe you're mind was giving you closure, or something." Mike suggested, and Paul thought about it for a second.

For whatever reason, this world had decided that after a tragic loss that left a hole in his life, to throw him all the way back to 1955 to make that hole filled. That was the idea Paul had come up with over the last couple of years. He had no idea why he came back, why he didn't just stay in 1955, and he doubted that he ever would know. But by giving him that... Dream as he woke up, it was like the worlds attempt at giving him, as Mike said, closure.