"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?"
-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
M. C.
Max never remembers the first time she uses her powers and she forgets it twice.
She watches the world around her stomp into snow like they're making an impact-a difference-while she slouches on the side of the road, smiling and taking pictures with young blue eyes, nose so red she feels like Rudolph watching all those reindeer games (whatever those are). All the other kids on the street are laughing and dancing in the piles while she waits-and waits-and her eyes watch the snow grow heavier and heavier, streets frozen. She's waiting for her parents to finish packing all of their boxes and she thinks it sort of sucks because she never even really had a chance to meet anyone in grade school and maybe they told her to stay put but she wants to watch-wants to get closer-wants to see how cold the snow is with her own fingers and taste it on her tongue like the girl down the street who's kind of already busy making a snow angel.
And Max thinks that looks like a lot of fun.
An owlish blink when she catches something out of the corner of her eyes. A...butterfly? In the snow? She doesn't pay a lot of attention to her babysitter, but she's pretty sure it's way too cold for butterflies to be out here. It's blue-vibrant-and when she reaches her fingers out towards it, warmth glides down her skin. She's too young to understand-she'll always be too young to understand-but she follows it, anyways; watches it bounce up and down in the middle of the cool air like it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. And it is. To be so bright when everything else is so...dull.
It's-
"Woah." She slides a little on the ground, stumbling but catching herself on a nearby pole, laughing a little when she does, and the noise draws the girl down the street's attention. It must. Because what else would, with all those other kids playing over there? The butterfly floats away, but Max is suddenly distracted as she watches the girl shake her head, snapping up from the ground like her dog does, sometimes, and their eyes catch. Max doesn't know anybody here even though she's lived in Arcadia Bay her whole life, but she's seen the girl, sometimes. The girl with the bright blue eyes who makes wide arm gestures and smiles so wide that Max wishes she had her dad's digital camera to take a picture of it (is that weird? Maybe it's kinda weird) and even though she doesn't know her name, she's always wanted to. But she's older than her and probably wouldn't want to know her, anyways and...and Max forgets all about the butterfly.
"Maxine?"
Her mom calls from the house and blue eyes roll to the snowy heavens and back, breaking the girl's gaze to turn back home, too busy looking at blonde hair with a mop of white on top of it to hear a car coming. Somewhere, it's too cold, and a kid's balloon pops. Max blinks and looks back towards the older girl who's... no longer in the snow and brows knit.
"Max?" Her mom sounds a little louder. A snowball hits their garage and Max isn't really sure what's going on but the blonde girl's running towards her and she blinks, turning her head just enough to see a car coming, skidding and quaking and uncontrollable from the ice-
Towards her. Towards her because she's in the middle of the street and...
Oh, crap.
Hands wrap around her shoulders-the girl's? It barely registers in her mind-and young eyes wrench shut as a hand snaps up to shield the blow, kind of glad someone's here because she heard her mom talk about how their last dog died getting hit by a car, sometimes (when she didn't think Max was listening) and she thinks it's gotta suck to die alone. Max never wants to die alone.
But she doesn't want the girl to die because of her, either.
"MAX-"
The girl can't really do anything now. They're both sort of stuffed and Max is scared as she feels those arms wrap protectively around her shoulders and her mother's voice grow frantic-desperate-the cold air cracking with it.
Her head is pounding. It all swirls. It all tastes like...like she put too much salt on her food and couldn't shake it off and when her eyes open, everything's...messed up. Blurry.
She's dead. She's dead. Oh, man, she's dead.
"-ine?"
Her mom, confused from the door, and...and a balloon. A balloon pops.
What? No car. No totally crazy crash like she's seen on those shows her dad watches on TNT sometimes. No...nothing.
Max blinks, looking around, her hand slowly dropping to see a car coming. She barely steps back when a snowball hits their garage and the blonde girl is running towards her, sort of...awesome and thoughtless and-and she's trying to save her, isn't she? That's so awesome. Before Max knows what she's doing, she grabs the girl's shoulders and tugs backwards when the blonde collides with her, knocking her out of harm's way into a large pile of snow as the car skids past them, both of their bodies creating enough momentum to slide right past it.
Max still doesn't know what it's like to make a snow angel, but she suddenly knows what it's like to be buried in it, a warm body on top of her. Eventually, they both groan and lift their heads up.
"That was so crazy!" The girl's voice booms, blonde hair sticking to her forehead as she wildly looks around, like she didn't just save her life. "Hey." She greets and Max splutters a little.
"Hey?" She shouldn't sound so confused, but she is. Maybe she hit her head. Maybe that's why she thinks everything is-
"Your nose is bleeding."
"Huh?" A young hand scrubs at a point, smearing red and brown, looking down at her hands with wide eyes. Snow and blood and...and she's alive. She's not like the road runner, smooshed on the ground. "Woah." Scuffed hands hastily tug off a fluffy jacket and suddenly the blonde girl is pressing poofy fabric up to a red nose, "Thanks." It's muffled through the fabric and the large grin she gets in response from the blonde makes Max not feel so bad about her headache. "You saved my life."
"Yeah." The girl agrees and it seems to register, "Woah, yeah, I totally did! I like...I like just saved your life and stuff." Max nods, smiling when her hero dramatically flops back onto the ground next to her, "Close, right?" The girl agrees, making a whistling noise with her hand heading towards Max like that's even close to the sound a car makes. "I'm glad it didn't hit me. My mom never would've let me out of the house again. But it was totally worth it because you were, like...you were almost roadkill."
"That'd suck." Max boldly states.
The girl looks at her like she found twenty bucks and Max's chest clenches.
"Totally!"
There's a long moment of silence, Max hunched over on the stoop with a headache, a bloody nose, and this girl's jacket pressed up against her face, forgetting all about the popping balloon and the car and the snowball and her mom, looking down at the prone, almost lazy form by her feet. A hand snaps up between them, the bare-armed girl offering a greeting.
"I'm Chloe." Her smile is soft but wide and carefree and Max immediately grabs her hand.
"I'm Max."
"Want to come over and, like, watch movies, and stuff?" It's the most casual offer she'll ever get after someone saves her life and Max nods and beams, handing the girl back her bloody jacket.
"Oh, God, Max." Both of her parents are suddenly outside, smothering her and Max swallows down the lingering fear in her chest. Her parents are so shaken up they wind up never moving-she never finds out why until she's twenty-seven with red-rimmed eyes and hollow knees-and invite Chloe in, instead, and Max learns what it's like to have a friend.
They laugh about stupid stuff and Chloe is sort of funny and when she blows a raspberry on her cheek the blonde doesn't even care that Max smacks her in the face with a pillow.
It's kind of great.
It's that night that Chloe tackles her into a fort of pillows, both of them laughing so hard that Max thinks she might cry and it isn't until Chloe falls asleep with a pillow over her head and both of their hands tangled that she realizes they never stopped holding hands. Her dad takes a picture and the young girl curls up next to her, glad for school to start, tomorrow, and falls asleep.
Max doesn't let go of the hand and Chloe never tells her to.
C.P.
The first memory Chloe Price has of meeting Maxine Caulfield is of running. She doesn't remember the day very well, all of it pieces and fragments and torn remnants of a picture she was never able to put back together. Sometimes when she thinks about it, she remembers seeing a mess of brown hair above a railing. She remembers a laugh, sometimes, warming her chest and catching her attention. Sometimes she remembers the sound of a balloon popping, because who had balloons during a snowstorm, anyways? Sometimes she remembers the screeching of tires, or the way Max's jacket compressed when she laid on top of it and made a Max-Angel in the middle of a pile of snow.
Sometimes, if she thinks hard enough, she can remember the way blue eyes looked so far away across a sea of white, angels falling from the sky in a blanket of ice and new, eyes frozen shut from tears, something pressed in her palm. She remembers the way Max looked so sad, hand barely raising above the white wood of her emptying home, but it's a faint memory. A bare one.
Chloe remembers many things about the first day she met Maxing Caulfield, and she remembers none of them, but she always-always-
She always, no matter when or where, remembers running.
M. C.
"You have to let me go, Max, you have to let me-"
"I'm never letting you go. I'm never letting you-"
They say when a tornado comes it's like a train, and she reminds herself that she stopped a train from killing Chloe, too.
She has to do something. She has to do everything. There's things she hasn't tried-there's places she hasn't gone-there's places to go and people to do and one of them is Chloe, who she won't give up (she won't) and the steadying breath she tries to take isn't enough to calm her quivering hands or still the beating drum of a migraine against her ears.
She's on the floor of the bathroom, waiting-waiting-and her tears are staining her journal. The hairs on the back of her neck are still standing from the rushing wind and her mouth is still warm from Chloe's lips but her hair is no longer soaking wet when Nathan Prescott pushes open the door. Maybe she's a C student, but she knows enough about the 21st century to know that the world doesn't really need (totally not virgin) sacrifices, anymore. There has to be another way.
There is another way. She just needs time.
She just needs time.
Sorry, Chloe. No non-virgin sacrifices today.
Max pulls the fire alarm.
C. P
It's ruined. It's gone. It's gone-it's gone-it's gone-
Chloe remembers the way she burnt her fingers on the edge of searing black when she was four-remembers the way William used to tuck her knees underneath her as he lifted her up onto the counter-she remembers stealing pastries and donuts until she couldn't hide the glaze off her nose. She remembers the way Joyce would scream at her and the way she would fight and hate and there's so many years of love and loathing locked up in her chest that Chloe's knees dig into gravel and dirt and blood.
The air is still-so settled that it burns her lungs, or are those just the tears?-and all she can feel are Max's hands gently cupping her shoulders.
She can't have all of that an hour ago and then have none of it an hour later, but Chloe knows better because she had all of her Dad, once, and none of him an hour later and all of Max, once, and none of her an hour later, and all of Rachel, once, and none of her ever again.
And now she feels like she's Max, for once, stuck between time like a wrathful, vengeful God reaping what she's sown, because she had all of Joyce, once, and wished this tornado on the world, and all of her life is gone. All of her life but Max is gone, and how long will that last, too?
"Mom." She begs, hands digging into the dirt like she'll find Joyce here like she found Rachel. "Mom-" Max is behind her, holding her back from digging through the wreckage, because this isn't like Rachel. This isn't like Rachel and Max can't look at her and the sinking, horrified feeling in her gut only grows.
"How many times?" Chloe shoves away from her, stumbling back, holding up an accusing finger like it's Max's fault when they both have to know it's hers and she ignores the way Max looks so small. "How many times have you done this?" It's an accusation, "Why won't you just let me die? Why won't you just let me-"
Chloe falls back down to the ground because what kind of a world does this? Who does this?
Chloe does. Chloe does this.
She burrows into Max as she cries and tries to not look so relieved and scared and loving when Max's hand knowingly raises up, her best friend's eyes sunken and tired, and the orphan knows what's about to happen.
"I'm sorry." Chloe weakly apologizes, fingers holding onto Max like she never really wanted to let go, and she doesn't remember anything, after that.
M. C.
She's back in the bathroom and she can feel her like a phantom ghost-like a phantom limb-alive but dead weight sagging in her arms as Max saw what she'd wrought. She can't just let the tornado take Joyce. David. Warren. Brooke. Alyssa's limbs scattered like tinsel on a Christmas tree and the fisherman's eyes open so wide, leaning against a torn wall, that Max doesn't know if he ever had eyelids.
She can't.
The moment she's in the bathroom she throws up and when Nathan pushes into it he smells the stench and wrinkles his nose but maybe the smell fits whatever's happening in his head and Max can barely feel the world around her. She can barely listen as Chloe barges into the room. She stumbles and catches herself on the nearby pale-shit-her head light and breath barely a puff as she rewinds. Waits.
Chloe comes in and Max throws the alarm.
C. P
"Max?" Chloe asks, moving forward to catch her best friend as she stumbles, and just like that she's back. She recognizes the way Max's lips part-the way her eyes glaze over and then focus, a hint of red staining underneath her nose-and a dirtied hand raises up to gently swipe away the red like it won't stain. "Max, you have to go back to-"
"No."
Chloe's heart is in her throat.
"Max, how many times have you-"
Max stumbles backwards, pushing her away, and without a single word, runs back towards the town.
"S-shit. Max? Max!" Chloe chases after her and neither one of them will ever remember what happens next.
But they never talk about it, either, so maybe it doesn't matter.
M. C.
She rewinds. No pictures because they're burned. Chloe is impaled by a falling sign.
She rewinds. A stack of pictures never burned and she doesn't know why. Chloe is electrocuted trying to cut through to the diner.
She rewinds. One picture of them in her pocket, a necklace hanging around her neck and she kisses Chloe so hard she can barely breathe before the diner is crushed behind them, Chloe clutching desperately to her shoulders.
She rewinds. Resets. Rewinds. Resets.
Max doesn't remember anything, anymore, but her feet have worn paths into the dirt of the world like a shovel digging a grave and eventually she knows it all without feeling it. She pulls Chloe down when a sign swoops past-guides them around the wreckage-drops a plank for Alyssa while Chloe pulls a truck off of a face neither of them can know through blood and mud. They make it to the diner and Chloe kicks over sand while Max pulls them all out.
They're alive. They're all alive and Chloe's arm wraps around her neck, pulling her down as Max feels like her head is the one ready for the Mosh Pit, Shaka fucking brah.
"Max?" Chloe asks but Max can't breathe. She looks up and sees her, but can't remember- "Max?" Chloe presses, fingers pushing through wet hair and holding her and Max loses herself in blue eyes. Endless. "Max." Louder. Softer. Colder. Warmer. Max's body pitches forward and from this moment-from this moment-Max learns about something Chloe won't explain to her for a decade.
She learns entropy is a bitch and she doesn't remember anything, after that. All she does is feel Chloe move forward without her, while part of her is stuck in the past, reliving it-reliving all of it-waiting to come back home, again.
C. P.
It's not perfect, but it's a whole lot better than Chloe would've thought would've happened, what with the whole tornado of doom out to get her thing.
Max can barely sleep and Chloe is right there with her and neither one of them knows what to do but shut up and hold each other, it seems like, so that's what Chloe does. Sometimes she hates her and she figures Max must hate her, too, but it's a lot easier to forget when Max tangles their fingers and dances breath like lullabies on the inside of her wrist. When Max leans into her and buries her nose in her neck and brushes the hair out of her eyes like she's something fucking precious-and Chloe wants to believe her-she lets her. And the more days that go by, the less Chloe hates Max and just hates herself, instead, which is what she's always hated and always will.
But the more days that pass, the less she hates that, too. Guess time travel heals all fucking wounds. Even the gaping chasm of a hometown they used to have.
They don't really know what to do after all of it, it's not like life will ever be normal, again, so they wind up living in the bed of Chloe's car for the majority because the shelter is too much and broken remnants of their childhood homes and schools and diners isn't enough. Joyce asks them to help clean up Arcadia Bay only once before seeing the look on Max's face-like she was going to turn around and hurl and scream and maybe go catatonic all at once-and immediately suggests they go spend time with her parents in Seattle, instead. They don't. Not right away, anyways.
The mornings are spent staring at wreckage that's slowly pooled to the side like the town's been disaster snow-plowed and the nights are spent huddled together under the blanket in her trunk, Max way too small underneath all that fabric, nose buried in her neck and arms tight around her. Chloe holds her back and hates that she's so glad to be alive.
Eventually, she hates that less, too.
It's been a week and Max still hasn't called her parents-hasn't talked to anyone but Chloe, even the friends who did survive only getting nods and slim smiles and occasional hugs until Max gives them a look and Chloe shoves them all away like the loyal guard dog she maybe is-and it's a day before the official list is posted that it happens.
People come forth and Chloe eventually realizes that Max is waiting for someone in particular-someone that isn't her-but she must be too scared to go into the wreckage and too scared to leave it. For once, Chloe doesn't push her. It's not that Warren kid, stumbling with a bleeding fellow-nerd girl, or that Alyssa girl who hugged Max so tight she was kind of surprised that she didn't break her back. It's not the creepy kid drawing up some (okay, pretty awesome) pictures of everyone missing or the teacher. Not the janitor or the principal or even David who was stuck in a bomb shelter across town-
And maybe Chloe hugs step-douche, too, so hard she might break his back, which is alright, because he kind of fucking deserves it, the miserable fucking super-soldier-
-and it's not even Victoria, who Max actually hugs first like it's some kind of bizarro world.
It's some blonde chick and this old lady, stumbling, that finally causes Max to stumble off of the truck and catch herself around the older woman. Chloe hops off of her old baby, the shocks absorbing a little less than they used to, moving forward and stopping, hand reaching out across the distance because it feels so messed up and cold in this town full of wreckage without Max right by her.
"Taylor!" Max's hand shoots up to the girl's shoulder, fingers curling in the fabric, leaning the older woman against the nearby over-turned car.
"Max?" The woman asks, "Max, I've heard so much about you."
"I'm so glad you're both alright." Taylor, this blonde chick, is hardly the first person to tug Max into a hug-apparently super Max made as many friends as she used to when they were kids-and it's not the first person where Max looks over her shoulder. "Is Kate-"
And then Chloe gets it. And immediately moves behind her.
Taylor looks stunned, brows knitting painfully underneath her bangs, and for once Chloe isn't angry at someone she doesn't know-doesn't judge them-because they've all been through enough to understand that kind of devastated look.
"Kate?" Taylor's voice hitches and Chloe wants to punch the wall.
"Max," Surprisingly enough, the woman leaning up against the car's voice is the one to respond, hand gently reaching out to cup both of the girl's shoulders, obviously recognizing the tone of voice cracking her kid's throat in two. "She tried to get everyone out of the hospital. She went back upstairs to help evacuate the top floor and-"
"Max." Taylor's eyes are so full of tears that the only thing Chloe knows how to do is gently take her best friend's shoulders, swallowing down the lump in her own throat. "I'm so sorry, she-"
"She went back." Max breathes it and Chloe knows her. She knows every hitch of her voice and every dip of her breath and every clench of her fingers, even with a week together and five years gone. She knows Max Caulfield like the back of her hand, bloody and bruised and broken, and she doesn't cry, then, but that night in the truck when it hits her like a load of bricks, Chloe feels the air stiffen, tugs the brunette into her arms, and lets her best friend sob into her shoulder for the first time all week.
The next morning the list of official casualties is posted-not as many as Chloe thought there'd be, and what fucked up kind of gratitude is that?-and she watches from what feels like miles away as Max traces Kate Marsh on a piece of torn paper like a prayer.
"Chloe," Max rasps an hour later, voice rough from disuse, turning to look at her like she'd looked on that cliff before she tore that photo. She looks determined and sad and angry and so old it scares her. "Let's get the hell out of here."
Without a word, Chloe kisses her temple and opens the door and they drive through the wreckage and still-uncleared bodies of their home town, reaching out to gently tangle their fingers. She finds it odd that as much as she wanted to skip out of here for so much of her life, leaving it is the second-hardest thing she's ever had to do.
Chloe never lets go of Max's hand, and Max never asks her to.
M...
She can still feel the water staining her hair like she's dumped Kate's watercolors over a stack of polaroids as she stumbles forward, fingers clutching at wood and-not an endtable, this time. Not the hospital. Not the school. No desk or end-table or the dirty, rusting edge of metal on Chloe's truck. A dresser. A wardrobe. She tries to focus, head searing and finally recognizes the off-brand mahogany hue of her...old bedroom dresser. Above it, precariously perching, almost knocked over from Max tumbling into it to catch herself, is an unassuming, smiling picture of Chloe and Max, young and carefree. Happy. Best friends. Max's hands shakily raise to cup it, to run fingers along the edges of Chloe's smile, because if she's...if she's here then-
"Seattle." Max drops the picture because no matter how much she time travels, she never loses that sense of urgency-that ironic, never-failing notion that she's nearly out of time-as she stumbles towards her bedroom door. "Mom?" She calls into their apartment. Nothing. "Dad?" Nothing. They probably aren't expecting their daughter to lose her shit on the middle of a boring, regular day, and Max ignores the throbbing of her head-the stinging of her nose-because she'll forget, soon. She'll forget all of it, soon. She'll forget the tornado and the way Chloe's knees dug into the ground. She feels like she fixed it-she feels like she fixed it-but she doesn't remember when she came back from or where she's going when she'll forget and-
God this is all so messed up. Her life is becoming a Troma film.
Her dresser's knocked over just enough from her stumbling into it to showcase a crumpled, torn piece of paper behind it that Max doesn't remember, but she doesn't see it, all she sees is spots and rain and Chloe bleeding out in a bathroom, alone and dying, as she grabs the nearest piece of paper.
Chloe. Maybe she came from the tornado. Maybe she came from the bathroom when Chloe asked her to give her up. Maybe this is the only way she can save her-by saving her. By fixing it. She didn't talk to Chloe for so many years, but maybe-
"Don't be too late. I can't be too late. I can't be-fuck!" She's probably too young to be swearing so boldly and her dog trots up to her, giving her the most curious, almost knowing look.
Max wonders if, in any of these timelines, she managed to kill him, too.
"It's okay, Sparky." She consoles, anyways, and the dog nuzzles into her thigh like he knows she's upset, Max trying to focus down on the paper as she writes. She just focuses on writing. "It'll all be okay."
Her head is practically split open as she licks the letter and seals it, shakily signing the name and address she knows by heart on the front of it.
Chloe Price.
"It'll all be o-" Max doesn't remember anything after that, just her knees hitting the floor and when she opens her eyes, blinking and bleary, she's sitting on campus.
C. P.
The trip up to Seattle is a lot like their time in Arcadia Bay, it turns out. Neither one of them's really ready to talk, yet, and Chloe's glad because the last thing she wants to do is talk. They don't have much money, just what Max's mother guiltily routes them, but since Max, for some weird reason, refuses to use it, they wind up in the truck most nights. It's become more of a home than Arcadia Bay felt like when they left it and the more cool air that dusts their cheeks and the heavier Max's body sags against hers, the more reality sinks in.
She's alive. Kate's dead. A lot of people died because she's right here, laying here, holding Max, and it scares her, sometimes, because one night Max leans up on the crook of her elbows and traces Chloe's jaw like she's a fucking rembrandt, shivering and quaking in response to the gentle touch, and even after all of this-all of this-shouldn't all of the universe want her dead? Max included?
But Max looks at her like she's glad she's alive, and as messed up as it is, Chloe is glad, too.
"It's all so fucked up." Max murmurs above her, one night, hair hanging in front of star-lit eyes and freckles Chloe can't see.
"You want to add mind-reader onto that super-power list of yours, eh, Max?" Is the quiet retort and there isn't a breath of a movement that follows, maybe scared that if she moves too much, Max will revert back into that silent, pensive, broken thing.
"But I wouldn't change a thing. Not this time." Max finishes and Chloe can't help how startled she looks.
"Kate-" And maybe it's kind of messed up to ask-to protest-to put the blame on Max's shoulders when it's clearly on her own. Max flinches a little and Chloe's arms wrap tighter around her.
"I'm tired of thinking that the whole universe was out to get us." She eventually responds, forehead falling to rest on Chloe's collarbone, fingers curling so tightly in the fabric of her shirt that she's pretty sure it'll never press out. Not that she presses out her shirts. Ever. "I'm tired of thinking that it's my fault. Maybe I could save Kate on the roof but that...that wasn't my powers. That was me. And maybe I couldn't have done anything. Not this time."
Chloe tucks up Max's chin and Max looks so desperate that she doesn't know what to do-doesn't know what to say-because the saying the right thing deal has always been more in Max's department than hers.
"I need to believe I couldn't have done anything." Max repeats-maybe admits-and Chloe tucks her nose back against her neck.
"Fuck everything else." Chloe immediately responds and Max curls into her. "You couldn't have done anything. You did everything you could've except off me and...who knows if that would've changed anything, right?"
"I did everything I could." Max agrees and for her sake, Chloe ignores the freezing tears against her neck, fingers smoothing underneath the fabric of a ratty jacket that the brunette's been wearing for way too long, now. They both probably smell to hell and back.
Not that that's really on her list of priorities, right now.
"Hell yeah, you did." Chloe kisses her forehead. "I bet, somewhere, with that big man up there of Kate's…" She swallows, because she hated when people said this to her about her Dad, but for some reason it feels different with Kate. "She's proud of you."
Max stills.
"Come to me, all who are weary and burdened," A small body barely sags. "And I will give you rest."
Chloe wants to ask if Max just quoted the fucking bible but doesn't really think it's the time because that's the most peaceful she's sounded in weeks-like maybe she let a piece of something go-and neither of them sleep, that night, but she spends all night searching the skies, holding Max and twirling two rings in her palm like a thoughtless habit, wondering if Kate was willing to rest so that both of them could stay awake.
M. C.
Campus. Campus.
A hand raises up to her temple, the headache slowly fading into...whatever this feeling is everytime it happens. Campus. Blackwell. "Chloe?" She murmurs, shaking her head, looking down to see...oh, thank god, pants. Not khakis. No Vortex club or...anything. She's sitting underneath a tree, head whipping around to see...no one. Weird.
Max stumbles to stand, hand steadying herself against a billboard, fingers crumpling against some notice, or another. Her head lolls to the side, band posters and something about narwhals crumpling underneath her fingers-
They're real, Max. They're real! She remembers Warren exclaiming, eyes full of fire, Brooke nodding far too seriously for it to be at all ironic next to him. Did he ever say that, here? Did he ever even talk to her? Did that happen in any universe? Her head tips back, fully ready to see the bulletins she's read a thousand times stare her back.
"Well, Rachel, it's time to see whether you made it in this timeline, to-"
Max's blood freezes.
"No." Both of her hands raise up to the billboard and she can't hear anything, anymore. Her ears ring and her heart stops and Max thinks the tornado must have finally gotten to her. It must've sucked up all of the air and her thoughts and all of Arcadia Bay because this is wrong. "No." She tears down all of the missing persons posters. "No, no, no, no, n-" It's a reprise, but she can't hear it. Over and over and over again.
Because there it is, clear as day:
Chloe Price Missing.
Blonde and beautiful and smiling, chin ducked, someone cut out of the corner of the picture. It looks like a selfie taken by someone else where Chloe was meant to be the subject and Max realizes with sinking-sinking fucking-horror, that it's a picture she took that she doesn't even remember. Five years she doesn't even remember.
Before Max can throw up, she's running off of the courtyard to a few stares and knowing, sad looks, heading towards the one place she's always prayed she'd never find her.
Rachel Amber is one of the onlookers, checkered shirt worn like a suit of armor, watching Max curiously from the front door of a school Max never knew they shared.
