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The first time it happens is the worst day of Phil’s life.
Not the day Phil’s dad walked out on them. Nor the day he completely blew it with his long-term college girlfriend.
Not even February 2nd in its most soul-crushing iterations.
On the worst day of Phil’s life, he gets a call at work. Not on his cell, which for God's sake he turns off during broadcasts. This is the kind of call that makes even your no-nonsense boss pull you out in the middle of a live feed.
The kind where you’re asked to come to the hospital to verify whether the kid on life support is yours, because it’s so bad they can’t tell.
Phil blasts through every red light on the way, blaring the horn at any asshole who dares to follow the rules of traffic right now. Doesn’t remember parking, just shouting at the nurse that he needs to see her now , God dammit.
Phil knows from the second he steps into the hospital that the nearly unrecognizable figure on the bed is his daughter. (It’s the shoes. Chrissy refuses to go anywhere without her Moana sneakers, and neither he nor Rita have the heart to say otherwise).
In the grey haze of the waiting room, someone takes Phil's phone from him and calls Rita. Phil knows he's a coward for not doing it himself but he can't let this be real yet. He can't let go of a memory from just yesterday morning, their little family arguing loudly in the car about who could kick whose butt in the DCU.
And now they’re talking about when to take Chrissy off of life support.
It takes about two hours for Rita to arrive - thankfully she hadn't left the airport when she got the call. Phil has seen his wife upset plenty of times over the years. Furious at Phil for whatever shit he just pulled. Exasperated at how idiots are trying to run the country. Upset and angry at herself when the promotion went to someone else. Drained and lost by her mother’s nursing home bedside.
He's never seen Rita look so completely and utterly devastated. Not like this. She mouths his name and no sound comes out. Phil stands up, pulls Rita to him. And then she starts to sob, an ugly thing that envelopes her entire body.
It hits Phil like a punch to the stomach, his last precious piece of denial shattered. All he can think is that this can’t be happening, how could he let this-
The world goes still. Phil is in the hospital with Rita, her arms clutching him so tightly he can barely breathe. But he’s also somewhere else, somewhere quiet and separate from this place. His thoughts drift to that ordinary moment last week debating the grocery list with Rita while Chrissy watched The Lego Movie in the living room.
Something that Phil can’t name is coming into focus. Phil reaches out with an unseen limb for something he can’t name but needs like oxygen. Finds something that’s real, if not solid.
He pulls-
“Who you gonna call? (Ghostbusters!)”
Phil blinks his eyes a few times. He’s in their bed and morning light is shining through the window. He touches the fabric covering his chest. Not the stiff weave of the sports jacket he wears during broadcasts, but the wrinkled cotton of the “I Make the Weather” t-shirt Rita got him last Christmas.
Phil’s phone alarm continues to vibrate against his stack of library books. “If there’s something weird, and it don’t look good. Who you gonna call?”
Wasn’t he just…?
Phil is clued in by the weather. It’s one of those weird spring days that’s overcast and threatening rain, with just a few rays of sun shining through that might just might hold. He had said so himself on air, right before...right before...
Phil races to Chrissy’s room, banging his knee against the door on the way and not giving a fuck. Sees his little girl asleep on her bed. He’ll apologize later for waking her up, but for now all he can do is pull her tightly to his chest and finally, finally let the sobs wrack his body.
When his 6-year old rubs her eyes open and asks him why he’s crying, all Phil can do is tell her that he had a really, really bad dream. Chrissy smushes her palm against Phil’s chest as she stretches and reminds him matter of factly that she gets nightmares too, and that even superheroes cry sometimes.
Phil swears to God he’ll beat the living tar out of that little shit with the sports car if he ever finds him.
Phil is very, very insistent that Chrissy not get on the school bus that morning. In fact, he’s considering just getting a limo or a private jet or an armored tank to take her to school from now on. For her part, Chrissy seems pleased about the impromptu stay-in Daddy-Daughter day and doesn’t ask too many questions. That's the awesome thing about 6-year olds: They're up for just about anything.
Phil orders pizza for lunch and dinner. He lets Chrissy get whatever toppings she wants. He’ll put up with olives every day for the rest of his life if it means he’ll never have to face a reality where he and Rita have decide when to take their daughter off of life support.
He doesn’t even give Chrissy shit when she insists on watching Frozen for the hundredth time. Sometime around the dancing snowman’s entrance, Chrissy dozes off on the couch and Phil regains enough brain space to process what just happened.
When you’ve experienced something like that one Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, you reach a point where for better or worse you just have to trust your own brain. You have to assume that you’re not crazy, because otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your days trying to figure out whether you were really stuck in a time loop, or if you just spontaneously developed the ability to play the piano and speak French.
Life was just so much easier when you picked a set of assumptions about reality and stuck to them.
He considers the first fact: On March 22nd, his six year-old daughter was plowed over by some asshole who couldn’t bother to go less than 70 in a god damn school zone. Second fact: On the very same March 22nd, he and Chrissy played hookie from work and school respectively and ate their body weight in junk food.
Phil knows this feeling of deja vu all too well. Feared it for years, if he’s honest with himself. He quickly decides he’ll relive this day forever if that’s what’s required. It wouldn’t be so bad. Okay, so Rita has been out of town on assignment since yesterday and that’s a less than ideal way to start a never-ending day, but he knows given a few years he could perfect a routine where he steals a plane and flies to Columbus or something.
The thing is, he’s got a pretty good life these days. Not perfect, sure. It’s not like they haven’t had their bumps along the way or that he and Rita did this whole marriage and kids thing in order. But Phil has to say, he really would do it all the same. Even when looking at his life from the most curmudgeonly vantage point, Phil knows this is a pretty good place to spend eternity if he had to.
Phil decides to stay up until 6 AM. It’s a mostly-broken habit from the first days after February 2nd, when sometimes he’d lie awake at night terrified that his time would reset if he didn’t watch closely enough.
But he’s pushing fifty these days so of course Phil falls asleep on the couch right around the time Channel Five switches over to infomercials.
He wakes up to Rita’s hand on his shoulder and morning sunlight filtering into the living room. Rita smiles wryly. “I see you two had a wild night.”
Phil stands and takes in the sight of his wife and all of the casual moments which are so stupidly easy to take for granted. He holds her closely, breathes in the scent of her. “We have to talk.”
“Jesus,” Rita exhales, putting down her coffee cup. Phil feels it’s more an occasion for alcohol than caffeine, but he’ll take what he can get. “You okay?”
Rita’s attitude towards Phil’s confession about his change of heart post-February 2nd was built on a similar foundation to Phil’s sanity: You had to just accept certain truths or it wasn’t going to work. And that was saying a lot, given Rita hardly believed his story when he could mime in real time every word spoken in the Punxsutawney Diner. But there’s only so long you can be in a serious relationship and not talk about the long dark teatime of the soul that spit you out thousands of years older and possessing the capacity be a better human.
Phil figures either Rita is more into the things you can’t explain than you’d think, or she actually likes him. Hopefully both. So it’s not like Phil spends every morning talking about the time he hijacked the Punxsutawney hot dog cart, but having your partner know the truth of your post-Groundhog Day personality transplant proved really helpful in setting an honest foundation for a long-term relationship.
He considers Rita’s words. Is he okay? “No, I’m not,” Phil admits. He squeezes her hand, taking in the fact that she’s real and that their daughter is playing with plastic dinosaurs in the next room over. “I mean, I will be. Eventually. It’s just...I just saw my worst nightmare come to life.” He laughs, but can’t mask the bitterness.
Thank God Rita knows him well enough to squeeze his hand back. Phil has never been able to pull one over his wife when he’s trying to mask terror with sarcasm or anything else from his cocktail of well-honed defense mechanisms. “I figured the whole deja vu part of my life was over, you know? Don’t get me wrong - I would relive whatever I need to if it... . ”
Rita cups his face and trails her fingers over his cheekbones. Years of marriage and a micro-human later and she can still make his heartbeat quicken. “I know.”
They take an impromptu family vacation to Disney World the next week.
Slowly, life returns to the status quo. School lunches are packed, bills are paid, and Phil once again has to remind himself not to get too pissed at the universe whenever someone cuts him off in traffic. (It’s okay - he’s long ago accepted that this rise and fall is just a part of living).
It’s a few months later. Ned and the kids have just departed for the night and Phil is debating the best way to clean out the barbeque. He’ll say this for the so-called horrors of getting tied down to family life: You get really awesome burgers.
He’s resigned himself to getting charcoal all over his hands when Phil becomes aware for the second time of something in the back of his mind’s eye. Like...an invisible string dangling just in front of him. Examining that niggling feeling in the back of his brain feels like stretching out a muscle he never knew was a part of his body. Maybe it’s the wine and the comfortable feeling that comes from spending time with old friends, but he’s not scared this time. Phil reaches out his hand, even as he knows this isn’t something he can physically touch and-
Ned takes the last of the chocolate chip cookies. “-did I ever tell you about the time Phil got drunk in the school mascot costume?”
The adults are at the kitchen table. Chrissy and Jasper are negotiating United Nations-esque peace terms over who gets to play Super Smash Brothers next. Outside, the last of the barbeque charcoal is giving off smoke.
Well, this is interesting. (Somewhere near him, the invisible string is still vibrating, slowly coming to a stop).
Phil takes a longer than necessary swig of his beer, and gets up to join Rita when she starts wrapping up the leftovers in tin foil. “Tell me something I don’t know.” The words come out in a jumbled rush.
“Come again?”
Phil touches a hand to her side. “Rita,” he breathes. “Just...tell me something I don’t already know.”
Rita lets out a snort. “Okay, where do you want me to start?” Even Phil knows he walked right into that one.
“I’m serious. Uh...what did you have for lunch today?”
She’s looking at him with suspicion now, because he’s never been able to pull one over on her. “What’s this about?”
“I think I may be onto something, but I need to test it. Just...tell me something I wouldn’t have known on my own, and I promise I’ll fill you in later. “ His mouth quirks upwards. “I’ll buy you lunch tomorrow.”
“That’s incredibly sweet, given we share a bank account.”
“I’ll get you Tacosaurus Rex.” Phil goes for the kill. “And I’ll help you get out of the staff review meeting.”
Rita considers the bait and deems it acceptable. “Okay. I had about 30 seconds last week when I thought about becoming a vegan.”
“Seriously?” He glances at her cleared plate.
“PETA was offering ‘Hail Seitan’ t-shirts if I signed up.”
He kisses her quickly on the lips. “Be right back.”
“What do you mea-”
Phil reaches out again. The thread is easier to find this time, like it never went anywhere and has been here this whole-
“-got drunk in the school mascot costume?”
Phil slams his hand down on the last cookie, shaking the table. The conversation goes quiet. Ned’s expression is frozen on his face.
Phil removes his hand and gingerly offers Ned the half-smashed cookie. “Er...sorry. Did you want that one?”
Yup. So this a thing.
Phil makes good on his promise and comes up with a very convincing excuse as to why Rita has to ditch her meeting for eating lunch with her husband in the park. As promised, he gets them both the best Mexican food this side of the border.
“So...I think it wasn’t a fluke.”
“Care to elaborate?” Phil knows Rita loves him by her offer of half a churro.
“Um…” Phil scratches the back of his head nervously. “I did that thing again. The one where, uh, I go back in time.”
Rita stares him down without blinking from the other end of the park bench. “Phil, I love you, but you did not go back in time. I know because Larry would have kicked your ass if you were anywhere except on site this morning.” (Phil has to give her that one. It was a special broadcast and Larry was stressed ).
“Not like that. It’s like my brain did. Kind of like...you know...” Rita nods in silent understanding. “But this time I did it on purpose. Last night when Ned was over.”
They had both seen the newspaper story the day after Chrissy’s near brush with fate, the one on Page 3 about the out of town financial mogul who plowed his sports car into a stop sign less than fifty feet away from the elementary school. But Phil knows he’s pushing it when he talks too literally about his encounters with the unexplained, and Rita deals with these deviations from reality best when they are in the abstract rather than the concrete. Maybe she’s swayed by the haunted look in his eyes when he talks about Groundhog Day. Or maybe love and partnership allow her to grant him this one insanity. Phil is never quite sure.
“Okay. How?” Leave it to Rita to be to the point.
“I don’t know. I just...did.”
Rita licks the last of the sugar from her lips. “Okay, you wanna take us both back to before lunch started, then? Because I could definitely go for another taco and I could probably get through the DMV faster than that line.”
Phil smiles smugly. “Got one on you.” He gestures emphatically with his hands. “You told me you had a moment last week where you seriously thought about veganism - something about a Hail Satan t-shirt. And I know you can be -”
“How did you know that?” Rita has put her fork down.
“Your idea. I asked for something I wouldn’t have known otherwise.”
Rita considers this. “Fair. And it’s Hail Seitan.”
Suddenly the whole thing makes a lot more sense. “Oh.” The summer breeze picks up. Phil can’t quite meet Rita’s eyes. “You have to be anywhere soon, or can we abuse the fact that we’re salaried and go for a walk?”
Rita takes his hand, rubbing a thumb over the back of his palm. “You know I’m always up for playing hookie with you, Connors.”
It’s a nice day outside. Phil’s always liked how it can go quiet with Rita without feeling uncomfortable. That they both can have their space without feeling like they’re alone. Rita waits until they’ve reached the place where the Three Rivers Heritage Trail intersects with the business district to address the elephant in the room. “So let’s keep with the assumption that neither of us have completely lost it. If what you’re saying is real, what exactly does this make you?”
Phil considers. “I guess...I’m a god?” Rita slaps him playfully on the arm. “Or an alien. With superpowers. That’s uh...what I told you. That one time in Punxsutawney when I told you everything.“
“I believe you said I thought you were full of shit,” Rita reminds him.
“At least the part about being a god,” Phil counters.
Rita gives him one of those looks. “You’re not a god.”
“I know,” he concedes. Sometimes he thinks back to that day and is terrified of what could have happened had Rita not been there to knock him down a peg.
Rita takes a breath. “I mean, really Phil - what are you then?”
And there’s the rub, God dammit. It doesn’t feel fair that he’s always been the one who has to make meaning out of any of this. The universe certainly isn’t providing. “I don’t know.”
It’s pretty, the way the light reflects off the water at this time of day. Without saying anything they’ve come to a stop to watch. “You scared?” She asks.
“A little.”
Rita folds her hand around his, fingers intertwining. They stay like that for a while.
That evening is one of those perfect summer nights, when the air has finally cooled after a long, hot day and you’re all the more grateful for the difference. Phil and Rita and Chrissy decide to walk instead of drive to the ice cream place. Chrissy straddles herself between Phil and Rita, stubbornly insisting on putting a foot on each of their shoes as she walks. They end up half carrying her home, Chrissy shrieking with giggles when Rita scoops her up. She falls asleep halfway through the Incredibles and Phil ends up carrying her to bed.
Rita is waiting for him in the hallway as Phil silently pulls shut the door to Chrissy’s room. “You tired?” she asks, playing with the fabric of his t-shirt. Her bare thumb brushes against his collarbone.
Phil grins wickedly as his right hand twirls few strands of Rita’s hair. His left hand finds the smooth skin between her t-shirt and jeans. “Not that tired.”
Some time later in their bedroom, Phil is deep in that pleasantly sated post-coital feeling when Rita breaks the silence. “I have one condition.”
Phil’s attention turns away from the patterns in the ceiling. “Okay.”
She rolls over to face him, curls her fingers around his wrist. “You don’t get to do any of this without me.”
“I always figured that’s what marriage and a shared mortgage meant.”
But Rita goes on. “You don’t get to do our important stuff over and over while I get it once.” She bites her lower lip. “You don’t get to replay our fights just so you can finish with the ultimate comeback. Or to get things perfect when I only get one shot.” Rita is on her side, staring intently at their bedroom carpet. “We’re not getting any younger, Phil, we’re not going to have this time with Chrissy forever. I’m trying so hard to make the most of it, but…”
“Me too,” he whispers quietly. Brings her gently to face him.
Rita brushes his cheek. “I know.” And in the end, isn’t that the core of what keeps them together? Each of them desperately trying to chase the bright spark of the universe, and finding it reflected within each other’s eyes.
Rita scooches so that her head lies against the crook of his neck. Time removed from Groundhog Day has never changed the fact that Rita is always the star by which Phil charts his course. Phil nods and kisses his wife. It’s a long moment before they come up for breath. “Okay.”
Even outside of Rita’s parameters, Phil figures the next logical step would be go mad with power. The thing is he’s already had his chances to run down Punxsutawney streets naked and smack little old lady’s asses. It just doesn’t hold the same appeal as it might have before Groundhog Day.
Instead, Phil cautions Rita against taking the interstate. He suggests Ned try taking the cute waitress out for coffee. When he sees Missing Pet posters, he rewinds back to a time when he can make sure Fido never got out in the first place. And when Phil (seemingly by magic) pulls an old man out of the crosswalk just in time to avoid being hit by a motorcycle, Rita kisses Phil fiercely and reminds him that she loves him.
The more he does it, the more Phil realizes this has always been a part of him. He’s always been aware and been part of this fourth dimension, he just never knew how to name it before. Life slowly shifts into a new normal.
Phil keeps waiting for some old blind man to show up. For a secret government agency to appear at their door and tell him he’s been recruited for God knows what. Hell, he’d even settle for being grabbed by some men in black in an unmarked car.
But one thing hasn’t changed since February 2nd: There are no answers. Sometimes it feels like that truth is going to drive him mad. It’s either been eight years or eight centuries since his confession to Rita on the bench in front of Gobbler's Knob, and he still doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. Phil’s just left with trying to be a good husband and dad and a decent human being.
If he has to live with that...well, he could do a lot worse than having a badass wife and a kid who sometimes gets sent to detention for refusing to stand down about whether Han shot first.
Phil can see time’s tapestry clearly now. See isn’t the right word - it’s more like he notices time flowing the way he sees people cross the street. And just like he can move in the physical world, he can shift his weight the temporal sense too. It feels natural, really.
That’s how one day he’s walking the length of hallway from his office to the break room and notices he’s gone backwards 20 feet. He shakes his head and dismisses the whole thing - he’s been distracted today, after all.
It’s not until he’s sitting in a meeting and strumming his metaphorical fingers through the strands of time that Phil notices something new. There’s a layer underneath this one. Phil turns his attention to this morning, to the hall just outside of this office, takes a string and snaps it back like a rubber band. He can feel the vibration from 10:43, can feel himself here but also several hours ago, shaking his head in confusion and choosing to ignore it.
Okay, so he can do this to himself without knowing it, which means...
The realization guts him like a knife to the stomach. Phil stands, quietly excuses himself from the room. Splashes water on his face in the men’s washroom and lets his forehead rest against the mirror.
“ Fuck .”
He waits until after Chrissy has gone to bed that night and Rita has joined him on the couch. Phil pulls her to him tightly.
“Okay, so something more is going on than just the Steelers-”
Phil cuts her off with his mouth. Rita brings a hand to his back, matching his intensity until they both have to break apart for air. “What was that for?”
Phil’s hand is trembling and he can’t stop it. “I think I know why Groundhog Day happened.”
Rita waits for him to continue. “This morning...I was able to throw myself back in time. Just a little.” Like whether “a little” or a lot makes a difference in this case.
“Okay, but that’s nothing new.”
“No, that’s the thing. Like...I did it to myself, but in the past. It wasn’t past me that was in control of it, it was current me. I looped, and I didn’t even know why until later.”
Rita nods. “So one more point to add to your list of superpowers.”
Phil presses his forehead against Rita’s. Takes in her smell, savors the fact that she’s real and with him and he’s able to move through time in tandem with her. “I think I’m supposed to trap myself in Groundhog Day.”
“Phil, that’s ridiculous. You don’t have to do anyth-”
The next words come out half choked. “That’s the thing. I think I already have.”
Phil can almost see the connections making their way through her brain, making brief stops regarding issues with the the space time continuum before reaching their inevitable conclusion. Her mouth forms a silent “Oh.” And since there are no words, Rita simply holds him closer. There’s so much Phil loves about his wife, but right now what stands out is the way she sees him raw and vulnerable and makes him feel unjudged and safe.
“You know whatever happens, I’ll always be waiting for you at the end, right?”
Phil rests his head on Rita’s shoulder, grateful that somewhere along the way he grew brave enough to be with her. “I do.”
Phil didn’t sleep well last night. The tacky decor of this bed and breakfast is not helping his mood. It’s depressing to think that some laborer in China’s entire life purpose is based on crocheting these pillows. But hey, it’s the last day he’ll ever have to spend in Punxsutawney, right? Fuck, if he’s lucky it’ll be the last day he’ll have to spend with that camera man or whatever moron they sent to produce this god forsaken segment.
He stretches and buttons the last snap of his jacket. Phil reaches for his scarf and for just a second, it feels there’s something off, something Phil can’t quite name. It feels almost like...eh, forget it.
Phil heads out the door to face the day.