AN: Welcome to Life Goes On! This is a story written by Ben (beloved-monsters on tumblr) and Sid (thesilvergoddess on tumblr), a couple who like Life is Strange way too much. We've been posting chapters weekly on AO3, but from now on we're going to post it here too. After the initial few chapters are up, updates will come every Wednesday evening. If you like something, or notice anything, leave us a review! We love feedback.
Arcadia Bay was burning, and it was all Max's fault.
She'd thought she could save everyone. She'd thought that she could be a hero. All she had to do was sacrifice her best friend in the whole world to a cold and meaningless death, and the storm would vanish. Easy, right? Chloe's lips were cold against hers, their bodies shivering together in the freezing rain. She had to do - one last kiss before everything went back to the way it was meant to be. Chloe pulled back first, eyes filling with tears, turning away. Max reached for her, but it was a mercy. She couldn't look this Chloe in the eye - not knowing what she was about to do. A branch whipped by, cutting her cheek open as it passed. She didn't care.
Max stared into the photo, and a moment later she watched Chloe die. Again. She saw the light leave her eyes, and told herself that it was what had to be done, that one life, no matter how precious, couldn't balance out the lives of an entire town. She was doing the right thing. Everything blurred, the sickening whirl that accompanied a jump in time eating at her, screaming in her ears. It was if time itself were laughing at her arrogance, she barely had time to think, before she was in the present.
She fell to her knees, blood running freely from her nose. Dead. Chloe Price was dead, and God forgive her for what she'd been forced to do. The photograph left her hand. Out of sight, out of mind. Sound faded back in, and she was overwhelmed with a familiar roar. Wind blasted her face, soaking her through her jacket, cold drops of rain whipping like jackknives into her eyes. She looked up, and there it was. The tornado, raging in the bay, creeping closer and closer to the town she'd grown up in.
"I did what you wanted!" She screamed into the storm, words torn away by the cruel and uncaring wind. "I let her die! That was supposed to fix this, you son of a bitch!" Who was she screaming at? It didn't matter. None of it mattered. She'd killed Chloe on a hope, a theory, little more than a whim. Somewhere behind her, a tree crashed, torn asunder by the force of her mistake.
"Bring her back! I changed my mind! I don't want this!" She sobbed, choking on her words. She'd thought she'd felt despair under Jefferson's cold, clinical hands. Now she knew better. That had been nothing. She heaved, empty stomach clenching in horror, in disgust, in pure, agonizing pain.
The tornado made landfall. One of the beached whales, seemingly immovable in its' weight and solidity, lifted into the air as if it were nothing more than a plastic bag in the breeze. It came apart in the air, painting the tornado red as it did. It hadn't been built for the rigors of flight. Who knew that anything could have so much blood? A boat whipped past the shattered lighthouse, carried on the wings of the storm. She could see it's path. The Two Whales. She watched as if trapped in a world of slow motion as the broken ship slammed into the diner, embedding itself in the roof with a crash she thought she could hear even all these miles away. "Max?" The building exploded, shooting up jets of flame and debris that were extinguished nearly as quickly as they'd appeared. Joyce. Frank. Warren. Her scream mingled with the concussion of the blast, the wind howling around her. So much death. She really had done nothing but leave a trail of death and destruction in her wake. "Max!" She shook madly, as if a pair of hands were holding her by the shoulders and-
"Max, wake up!"
Her eyes flew open, and she pulled herself away, desperately fighting to get out of reach of away from the touch. She was back in the dark room! Jefferson was-
"Max, Max, Max, it's me…" A soft voice. Familiar. "It's me, you're safe." Chloe? But she was… "You're safe, it's okay…"
With a cry, Max flung herself into Chloe's arms, tears flowing freely down her face.
"Chloe, I thought… I dreamed…" Her fingers dug into the other girl's back. She was just lucid enough to be aware that it was probably painful, but the rest of her just didn't care. She needed to be close. She needed to feel her presence.
"Take a breath, Max." Fingers in her hair. Stroking. Gentle. Reassuring. Not like… No. "Breathe. It's okay. You're safe." Max sucked in a shaky breath and opened her mouth to speak, before dissolving into another sob. "I'm right here…" She buried her face into Chloe's chest, staining her shirt dark with tears.
It wasn't Max's safety she wanted to be reassured of. Chloe. She needed to know Chloe was okay. She remembered that night; she remembered the choice she'd made. She'd ripped that photograph in two. She'd made a stand against destiny. But God, it felt so real… The destruction of the Two Whales was burned into her mind. Every time she closed her eyes she could see Chloe's blank face on the floor of the girls' bathroom, staring at her accusingly.
"I'm sorry Chloe…" She choked out, shaking in the taller girl's arms. "I wasn't strong enough… I didn't mean it…"
Chloe spoke quietly, calmly, levelly. "You didn't do anything wrong. I'm okay. You're my best friend, you nerd." This wasn't the first time in the last two months that Max had screamed in the night, not the first time she'd woken without knowing where she was or what was real. Somewhere inside her, she knew that she was hysterical, that she had had this breakdown before, but that knowledge didn't help. She felt like a child, lost and alone and guilty.
Time passed. Max wasn't sure how long. Fifteen minutes? An hour? A lifetime? Chloe had never stopped her soothing, never ending stream of reassurances, one arm around her, the other in her hair. Her breathing was almost back to normal, but every now and then a shiver would wrack her body, a jolt of pain striking her heart and her head.
"You back in the world of the living, Max?" Chloe tried very hard to act like these episodes didn't frighten her, but underneath the calm and concern, Max could hear a vein of genuine worry in her voice that ran deep. Max pretended she couldn't hear it, for the other girl's pride if nothing else.
She took a shaky breath before speaking in a quiet whisper. "I'm… Yeah. I'm okay. I dreamed…" She pulled her face back, wiping her tears from her cheeks with the back of one hand. She looked up at Chloe with red-rimmed eyes, and her lip trembled. "I dreamed I let you… d-die. I went back and w-watched it happen but it didn't change a th-thing."
"It was just a bad dream, dude. I'm right here. See?" Chloe leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss on Max's lips. She pulled back and smiled down at her, brushing a strand of her wild bed head from her face. Max could see her trying to hide how troubled she really was. "If I was dead, would I be able do that? Or… This?" She tweaked Max's nose.
Max laughed, despite herself, and scooted until she was sitting up, facing Chloe. "No. You couldn't. But if anyone could find a way to be annoying from beyond the grave, it would be you." She tried to joke about it because it hurt. She had actually watched Chloe die too many times for it to be funny anymore.
Her reaction seemed to satisfy Chloe, though, and she pressed her forehead against Max's, closing her eyes. "Boo, motherfucker."
Max closed her eyes as well, just enjoying the feel of her girlfriend's cool skin against hers, the simple reality of her presence. "I love you, Chloe."
"I love you, Max," she replied quietly. It was still something of a novelty to both of them, those declarations of love. They still felt so surreal, that someone as perfect as her Chloe could think the world of her. Surreal, and yet, somehow natural as well. Like a pleasant inevitability.
She'd fought so hard for this. She'd fought harder than she'd ever imagined that she could fight for something. She'd been through Hell and back, forged like iron through the fires tribulation to become something... else. Chloe said she was steel. Max wasn't so sure. She felt so fractured and broken, unable to stop reliving the past. Nightmares she wouldn't have wished on her worst enemy. Flashbacks and panic attacks and dissociation. And yet...
Chloe's cool forehead pressed against hers, her shaking fingers intertwined with Chloe's more steady grasp between their chests. And yet. She was still here. That was something she needed to remember. She was still here, and she had found the love of her life where she'd least expected it. That was worth it. Sometimes she wasn't sure that she, Max Caulfield, was worth it. Surely someone was more deserving than her. But whenever she started down that particular rabbit hole, Chloe would... be there. She'd lean over and crack a joke, say something dumb they used to when they were kids, e. Even do something as simple as a smile. And Max would see the world reflected in her eyes, something bright and beautiful and... hopeful. If she could ever capture a photograph with that intensity of emotion and surety, that pure humanity, she would be the greatest photographer anyone had ever known.
Her thoughts were rambling, and she knew it. She let them go, though. They were helping to ground her, to draw her consciousness back fully to reality. She was Max Caulfield, she was whole and unbroken, and Chloe's beautiful eyes were centimeters from hers, and all was right with the world.
Chloe stayed silent. This wasn't the first time Max had done something like this, and it would likely be far from the last, and she'd quickly learned that sometimes the best way to help her suffering lover was to simply provide something solid to hold onto, while she battled her inner demons herself.
Finally, Max drew one more shaky breath and pulled her face away, glancing aside at the old digital clock by the bed. One of the lights in the the third digit was dead, but the time was easy enough to read. 4:27. How long had they been sitting like this? She rubbed at her face, wiping the last of the tears from her puffy red eyes.
"Sorry, I kinda... lost it for a minute there." She smiled feebly, feeling a pang at the obvious concern in Chloe's eyes. "It's okay if you want to slap me or something. Get some payback for waking you up and slobbering all over you."
Instead of responding to the halfhearted joke with humor, the way she'd expected, Chloe furrowed her brow and released Max's hands, just to put her own firmly on Max's shoulders.
"Hey," she said, her tone serious. "Don't give me that. You're fucking Super-Max, and I'm not gonna forget that just because you have a bad dream now and then."
The words weren't always the same but it was a conversation they'd probably had half a dozen times by now. Chloe was probably fed up with her self-pitying bullshit. Right. Super-Max. "It's not just bad dreams, Chloe, it's-"
She found herself cut off again by a rough kiss, just Chloe's lips pressed against hers to shut her up. It was nice, even if it did make it a little harder to think about arguing. Chloe caressed Max's cheek, then pulled back. "No."
"But-"
"No, Max." Chloe shook her head. "I'm right here for you. You deserve that much. No matter what. You protected me, right? Now I get to return the favor, man. That's all."
Max didn't know what to say. Instead, she just crushed the other girl to her in a tight hug, letting the feel of Chloe, the scent of her, overwhelm her.
She wasn't going to start crying again. She wasn't.
Chloe seemed startled by the sudden affection, but returned the embrace with the hint of a sad smile on her face. "I'll beat up the sads, Max. Just point the way."
Max sniffled, and it almost sounded like a laugh. "You can't beat up an emotion, tough guy." Though she would like to see Chloe physically wrestle the physical manifestation of depression into submission.
Chloe laughed, and Max found herself laughing too.
The night was dark and scary and full of reminders of the bloody past, but Chloe was here with her. Chloe was alive and vibrant and... Chloe. That was enough.
That was enough.