Disclaimer: I don't own Life is Strange.
A/N: It's been a long, long time since I've written for this fandom. I hope you guys enjoy this, and I hope that I'll have more to contribute here soon.
It has yet to sink in, the fact that Chloe's…
Dead.
No, maybe just gone. Somewhere else. For now. Somewhere better, maybe, but it's a place Max can't reach. Convincing herself that this is reversible—that it can all be changed and go back to how it should be—makes it a little easier to get through the days. She'll have to face the truth eventually, but not yet. Not today.
Once that finally clicks, she'll have to think about the weight that comes with the fact that Chloe died believing she was abandoned by, well, everyone, and Max can't help but wonder if the Chloe who was shot by Nathan in the bathroom, before they spent a week together reconnecting and solving the tragic mystery of Rachel Amber (which, she reminds herself, never happened. Not here), would still say that it's okay to let her die. It's okay to save Arcadia Bay instead, because that was the 'right' choice. It was the 'right' thing to do.
For whom was it the right choice, though? Because Max doesn't feel any better. Arcadia Bay might as well be destroyed for how empty it feels now. Max may as well have been the one shot for how dead she feels.
But it's Chloe's casket that has been lowered. The grave has been filled in with dirt, and Max finds herself still sitting there with nowhere else to go. Taking a trip to the cemetery has become part of her daily routine. No, it's become the focal point of her days, especially the ones where she skips class and sits next to a cold gravestone for hours on end.
She takes her seat in the grass and leans against the left side of Chloe's gravestone, curling her knees up so she can hug them against her chest.
"Hey, Chloe," Max says. "Remember the other day when I told you about my powers? You believed me when I first told you. You never made me feel like a freak about it either. It was kind of the opposite, actually. You thought it was the coolest thing, like I was some sort of superhero."
The wind is the only response to her words, rustling dried leaves and gnarled tree branches that grow more bare each day. There's a chill in the wind that whispers promises of the coming winter cold, and Max pulls her legs a little closer to fight it off, wishing she'd brought a jacket, but not feeling as though she deserves the warmth when the residents of this haunting place will never know warmth again.
Although, she could… And maybe…
"I guess that day technically never happened, but I wonder if you'd still feel that way now."
Now that, no matter how many times she tried, those powers couldn't save Chloe from death in the end. Fate had marked her, and no amount of tampering from Max could erase it.
"I know I say it every day, but I'm sorry."
She's sorry that she listened to Chloe when she said she was okay with this option. She's sorry that she never kept in touch while she was in Seattle. She just… was hurting and thought (stupidly) that keeping ties with Arcadia Bay would make the move that much harder. Then, so long had passed that she no longer knew what to say. She assumed that Chloe moved on without her during those years, but now she wonders about the truth of that assumption.
Her excuse sounds about as pathetic in her head as she imagined it would.
She's sorry that she couldn't see Mr. Jefferson for the psycho he was before it was too late. She's sorry that Rachel ended up as the victim of more than a demented photography session (even if there wasn't anything she could do to help or prevent that). She's sorry that Chloe had to deal with Rachel's sudden absence on her own.
She's sorry that she's left so much unsaid between them.
"It's sounds selfish, but I'm not sure that all of this was worth it," Max says. "It's tough to get up in the morning, and I don't have anyone who would understand if I told them about the mess my life has been lately. Or if I told them about the mess of a week that never happened. I feel insane just thinking about it."
She tilts her head to the side, resting it on the cold marble slab beside her. It would be easier if insanity was the answer. If Max could snap back into a reality where she can't rewind time and Chloe is safe and Arcadia Bay was never the home to monsters.
"Maybe I am insane."
With each day that passes, it becomes more difficult to believe that the week that never happened did happen, even if she's the only one to remember it. People can't really rewind time, and superheroes don't exist. It's easier to write it off as products of her imagination. Stress, maybe.
But Jefferson was arrested and those binders filled with creepy pictures of girls he drugged and dragged to the Prescott's bunker were real.
She has a lot of words left to say, but she can't find a way to say them. Besides, she's starting to wonder what the point is in talking to someone who isn't listening. Who will never listen again. So, she sits in silence until the sun starts to set.
She pulls herself from the ground, ignoring the buzz of her phone and the slew of texts from people who can never fully understand what she's lost with Chloe. She doesn't rush down the path and back to Blackwell. There isn't any point in hurrying when tomorrow will be the same as today. Empty. Bleak. Grey.
Maybe it's because of all the times she rewound time, but it feels like she's just living the same day over and over.
The emotion stirring within her chest, crawling right beneath her skin, doesn't fully hit until she closes the door to her dorm room behind her.
She feels trapped. She feels caged in a life that she can't escape. In the past, she's heard people say that no one realizes how important something (or someone) is until it's gone. The hardest part is that this was her choice. Chloe may have insisted that she save Arcadia Bay, but that didn't mean Max had to follow her wishes.
She leans against the door and slides down until she's sitting on the floor. She should've saved Chloe. There would've been a lot of destruction, but tornadoes hit towns all the time. People would've survived and rebuilt.
Instead, Max is trapped falling apart and unable to rebuild the life she knew, but never truly experienced in this timeline. There's no cure for her suffering to be found here. Every day is filled with the weight of little thoughts of things that should be different that add up to an unbearable pressure on the shell of numbness that keeps her functioning.
She feels the moment her shell breaks from the weight of the passing thought that Chloe should be lounging on her futon and asking her questions, like what took her so long and why the hell does she still bother with Blackwell? The pieces of numbness she hid behind fall apart and send an electric current through every nerve in her body, pulling her to her feet and to the photos she strung up on her dorm room wall and called a memorial.
She touches each photo with her fingertips, seeing the people featured in the image, then moving on to the next one. There are some of her parents. Some of herself. Some of her old friends from Seattle and the sights that took her breath away in the city she believed she was meant to be in.
Then, she starts pulling photos from her wall and letting them fall to the ground with the burning tears that fall down her face. Why doesn't she have any pictures of Chloe on this wall? She should have at least one, shouldn't she?
She moves through her room, upturning and tearing apart the place she thought would be her new home in Arcadia Bay. The room she so carefully decorated until it was just right.
It doesn't matter anymore. What good is a perfect room or the perfect little life she imagined for herself when she first arrived when Chloe isn't a part of either?
She falls to her knees in the middle of her ransacked room and a wretched sound escapes her throat. It's a sob. A yell. A plea. A prayer. It's guttural and primal and leaves her uncertain whether it came from her or someone else.
There are a few knocks at her door, and she hears Kate's soft voice on the other side asking if she's okay.
She's not okay. She's not at all okay, and she doesn't think she ever can be again. Kate keeps talking to her from the hall, but Max doesn't answer. She can't answer, and Kate's words fade into the background until they're nothing more than the monotonous hum of white noise in the distance.
She flops onto her side, lying on the floor and not seeing any point in moving. Not seeing any point in doing anything at all, really.
How did she get here? Where did everything start falling apart, and where does it end?
She's not looking for it—she's not looking for anything—but she spots it under her bed, next to her journal that's been opened, dropped, and haphazardly kicked away. A single photograph. She remembers taking it, but not why she kept it.
She moves just enough to reach out and grab it, looking into an expression on her face that's as lost and confused as her present expression must be. She took the photo right after she had that vivid vision about the storm to make sure that she was still there. That she hadn't lost her mind.
It could work, she realizes. She sits up and looks at the picture closer, trying to focus. It could work, but she has to do it perfectly. This picture is taken before everything happened, and if she goes back…
If she goes back, she can give herself another chance. If she does it all just right, she can free herself from the personal hell she accidentally created.
She concentrates, even past the point where her head starts feeling like it's about to cave in on itself. She forces herself to work through the pain, because any amount of physical pain is better to endure than this emotional and mental turmoil she feels trapped in.
This has to work. It has to.
Max blinks, like she's woken up from a long, intense dream. Everything around her comes into focus slowly. The lights of the classroom. The whispers of her classmates.
Mr. Jefferson staring at her with a disapproving look.
"Yes, photography and selfies are fun," he says, "but there's a time and a place for both, and class is not the time and place."
Max nods, still trying to blink away the film from over her eyes. She's glad when Mr. Jefferson turns his attention and questions to Victoria, even if it feeds into her already over-sized ego.
She looks down at her open notebook. She remembers doodling in it, but not writing any meaningful information down. Yet there, in her handwriting, is a single sentence that she's certain wasn't there a second ago. She's certain that she didn't write it, but no one else could have written it. Not when she sits at a table alone.
She doesn't understand what it means, but it's enough to send shivers down her spine.
Save her every time.
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