A/N 6/13/18: I am currently rewriting this story. So I'd advise against reading this story until I've completed the rewrite. Please be sure to follow the story so you get an alert when I finally get there. I'm hoping to have this done in a few weeks. Please be patient and bear with me. Thank you in advance.


Chapter 1: Another Chance

Max Caulfield steps out of college's lecture hall in Portland where she is currently going to college to study photography, of course. It was just after a brutally long and boring lecture that left her feeling drained physically and mentally. Even at age 22, she looked a lot younger than she actually was, which has been something she had to deal with a lot after turning 21. She didn't frequent bars often, but when she did she had to go through several people thinking she had a fake ID. Her once dark brown hair was now dyed bubblegum pink underneath a dark blue beanie. She wore a black shirt with a neon blue doe design on it under a black leather jacket rolled up to her elbows. Her jeans were dirtied with paint with several tears placed there by design. She wears Chloe's necklace, the one with three bullets on a black cord, a silver nose ring through her left nostril, and has a tattoo of a blue butterfly on the back of her right hand. Her old messenger bag hung behind her from her shoulders. All of this happened fairly soon after she left Arcadia Bay for the last time, and you can probably guess what caused this change in her.

Max puts her earbuds in and plays some of her favorite music as she walks towards the bus stop. The bus was waiting and she managed to get on just before it departed, which was lucky considering most times she had missed the bus and had to wait for an hour for the next one. As soon as Max got onto the bus she could feel something was off, but after a quick look around. There was the bus driver, a heavy set man humming a tune to himself as he drove along his route, a older couple near the back talking quietly to each other as they look at something on their phone, a guy sitting behind the driver looking straight ahead out the windshield like he was in the middle of a day dream, and three girls in the middle of the bus watching videos on their phones. The feeling remained, but Max couldn't find the source of it, so she decided to ignore it and sit down a few seats in front of the girls.

Once she was seated she pulls out her phone and cringes inwardly as she sees a text from Joyce Madeson. Max blanches as she puts her phone away, trying to ignore the sudden wave of memories threatening to break her composure. It was hard for Max to think that four years have already passed since... Max shook her head to get rid of that thought and the reminder of better/worse times. Thinking of her best friend always made her sad, and thinking about her death nearly crushed Max with the weight of the pain and guilt every time it came to mind.

Since the day Max used that butterfly photo to change the fate of Arcadia Bay, the pure Max, the one that always said and did the right thing, the one who was looking out for others, was gone. She definitely didn't go out of her way to make any new friends and completely dropped most of the friends she had since then, having decided it better to go back to being the shy girl who barely talks to anyone once again to avoid her pain. The only people she stayed in contact with were Joyce, though that has been becoming less and less frequent, and her parents, and even then she wasn't very talkative towards them. As soon as Max's senior year at Blackwell was over she had to get the hell out of Arcadia Bay. She couldn't handle being there, being traumatized by the events that saved so many people at the cost of the death of her best friend. After stuffing down those depressing thoughts, Max let herself flow with the music and passing scenery, anything to keep her mind occupied so she wouldn't start crying again.

Twenty minutes later, Max stepped off the bus a couple blocks away from her apartment in one of the more shady neighborhoods in the Portland area. As she walked, Max couldn't shake the feeling like someone was watching her that started when she got onto the bus. Trying to be discreet as she could, she took a look around, playing it off as stretching her neck. She thought she saw someone in the corner of her eye in the corner of her eye, but as she looked back all she saw was a gray cat with a white spot on its chest sitting on the sidewalk looking directly at her. Shaking her head and feeling a little silly, Max enters her rickety apartment building convinced her mind was playing tricks on her.

Max takes out her earbuds and turns off the musics as she climbs the stairs to the third floor where her apartment was. Max's place was a small one bedroom apartment with a metal door badly painted to try and blend in the with walls. She noticed several chips in the paint and shakes her head dismissively at it before entering. The hardwood floors of her apartment were covered with dents, scratches, and scuff marks left by the previous tenants. The walls were off-white with some parts yellowing from cigarette smoke, again from the previous tenants since smoking is a bad habit Max thankfully never picked up. The windows in the living room were painted over, which Max didn't mind since the windows only viewed the red bricked apartment building next door, leaving only a few feet of empty air between them.

All across the apartment's walls were framed photographs, some from Max's exploits after Arcadia Bay, others from her past. Some of Max's photos had won some awards and were featured in several art magazines. Though one wall didn't have any photographs hanging from them, instead there were six easels with painted canvases lined that wall. Painting was never one of Max's strong suits, and she didn't get much better with practice as the years went on, but these paintings were very special to her, for they captured moments from her life that no camera could take.

Starting from left to right, there was one of her and Chloe riding along in her truck, the day they were reunited after five years apart heading back to Chloe's house to fix Max's camera. The one after that was of Chloe dancing on her bed while she was smoking a joint. The next one, Chloe sitting on a bench at the lighthouse watching the setting sun directly in front of her before Max told her about her powers. The one after that, Chloe and Max holding hands while balancing on the train tracks after their encounter with Frank Bowers at the junkyard. The next, Max and Chloe laying in bed the morning after they broke into Blackwell Academy's pool. The final one though couldn't be seen, it was turned away, facing the wall but, to Max, it held the greatest significance to her. All of these moments couldn't be captured in photographs since these memories were from a timeline that no longer existed.

As soon as Max stepped into her apartment, she was greeted by a white cat that rushed at her to rub against her shins in greeting before looking up to her expectantly, letting out a meow. "Hey Bongo, give me a minute and I'll get you some treats."

Bongo gives Max a few purrs and shin rubs before she saunters off to the window, jumping onto the sill that looks right into the neighboring building as Max puts her bag down by her second hand couch, and picks up her instant camera. The same camera that Joyce gave to her, the same camera that was a belated birthday gift from...Max forced that thought from coming up as she looks on the wall to see several famed photographs of her and her best friend when they were kids. "I miss you Chloe." Max says quietly to herself before walking over to a full sized mirror and taking that day's selfie. Max then takes the photo and puts it into a small shoe box on the end table that was filled with her other discarded selfies. Max didn't like to admit it, but she hated every one of those pictures of herself. It wasn't the fault of the pictures per se, but the subject they held that she hated.

Max put the lid on the shoe box and got Bongo her nightly meal before cooking something simple for herself. Max and Bongo ate their meal silently together and then adjourned to the couch where Max pulls out her notes and books from her college classes, turns on some music to listen to, and gets started with her homework.

She kept her nose in the books for a few hours, but Max puts everything aside and stretches, needing a break after working so hard. She grabs an empty water bottle and goes to the kitchen to fill it with water before walking over to her plant, Lisa the third, and pouring the water into the plant's soil. Max got the the feeling that she wasn't alone again and turns to look over her shoulder. Sitting on her floor was that gray cat that was sitting on the sidewalk earlier. Max turned to it, pondering how it got in when she noticed something off about the creature, it was transparent. "What the?" Max ask in awe and starts walking towards the cat to inspect it.

As soon as Max moved toward it, the cat dashed off into Max's room disappearing from sight, but as Max entered the room and searched for the cat, she couldn't find it. "Maybe, I'm finally losing my mind?" Max asks herself as she scratches her head. She looks back to Bongo with a raised eyebrow. "What do you think?" Her white cat only blinked at her for a moment before finding grooming herself to be a more suitable use of her time. "Yeah, I think so, too. That's why I'm talking to you." Deciding that if she was going crazy she'd rather have some good grades to show for it, she went back to her schoolwork.


Max had fallen asleep while she was doing her homework and now her subconscious decided to play one of the greatest hits of her nightmares. She was back in Arcadia Bay during the storm that would destroy the fishing town. To this day the choice she made here haunted her and when she dreamed it would be of this moment, either this or the Dark Room incident, which she never fully recovered from. The massive tornado heading towards the town where everyone would die.

The scene was frozen in time, nothing moved like it was a 4D picture taken by one of the eeriest photographers in history, and yet the sounds continued as if the scene was playing normally. The powerful gusting wind, the raw crackling of electricity in the air, the overwhelming roars of thunder, and the crashing of debris as it slammed into anything in its path. Max turned around and standing exactly where she remembered was Chloe and herself, frozen at the moment Max made that terrible choice. There was no good option, not for Max at least.

This recurring nightmare always brought on the cold sweats and night terrors despite the lack of activity. Nothing ever moved or changed, all she could do was listen to the last conversation they had together over and over again.

"You could use that photo to change everything right back to when you took that picture...All that would take is for me to...to..."

"Fuck that! No...No way! You are my number one priority now. You are all that matters to me."

"I know. You proved that over and over again...even though I don't deserve it. I'm so selfish...not like my mom...look what she had to give up and live through...and she did. She deserves so much more than to be killed by a storm in a fucking diner. Even my step...father deserves her alive. There's so many more people in Arcadia Bay who should live...way more than me..."

"Don't say that...I won't trade you."

"You're not trading me. Maybe you've just been delaying my real destiny...Look how many times I've almost died or actually died around you. Look at what's happened in Arcadia Bay ever since you first saved me. I know I've been selfish, but for once I think I should accept my fate...our fate..."

"Chloe..."

"Max, you finally came back to me this week, and...you did nothing but show me your love and friendship. You made me smile and laugh, like I haven't done in years. Wherever I end up after this...in whatever reality...all those moments between us were real, and they'll always be ours. No matter what you choose, I know you'll make the right decision."

"Chloe...I can't make this choice..."

"No Max...You're the only one who can."

Max could feel the moment coming and wanted to scream at herself, do anything to make her stop, to look for a third option, anything that could save everyone and stop this overwhelming horror of what was coming next. The nightmare, of course, wouldn't let her try any of that. No matter how hard she tried to speak up, to think of any other way, she couldn't, and it broke her heart all over again.

"Max...it's time..."

"Chloe...I'm so, so sorry...I...I don't want to do this."

"I know, Max. But we have to. We have to save everybody, okay? And you'll make those fuckers pay for what they did to Rachel. Being together this week...it was the best farewell gift I could have hoped for. You're my hero, Max."

Max could still feel that hopelessness as she kissed her best friend, not sure how things would have turned out if Chloe had stayed alive. She needed something to show how much Chloe meant to her, some kind of closure, one last goodbye. She wished more than anything to be able to stay, but she couldn't, not with everyone else's lives at stake.

"I'll always love you...Now get out of here, please! Do it before I freak. And Max Caulfield? Don't you forget about me..."

"Never."

"Incredible." A male voice said to Max's right.

Max turns and sees a guy standing beside her. He was almost a foot taller than her wearing a gray hoodie, a white t-shirt, brown khaki pants, and black shoes. He had short brown hair and brown eyes and was looking at the frozen Max and Chloe. He turns his head to look at the dreaming Max before raising his arm and snapping his fingers loudly. The tornado starts moving again, kicking the wind up all over, the sounds of the storm intensify. The scene unraveled itself into a fury of howling wind and flashes of events before darkness crept in.


Max awoke and quickly sat up, she was covered in a cold sweat and confused about what she saw. It took her a moment to realize she was back in her apartment breathing heavily on her couch. She looked at her phone and saw it just turned 5:28 am. Max turned and set her feet on the floor and put her head in her hands as she trembled. That dream ended so differently from the other times she's had it. It usually ended with Max going back in time and allowing Nathan Prescott to shoot Chloe. But this time... "Who was that guy?" She had seen that guy before, but for the life of her she couldn't place where.

"You could always ask me, you know." The male voice from her dream says from the direction of Max's recliner. Max shoots to her feet and looks towards the guy from her dream sitting in her chair with that gray, transparent cat laying on his lap taking a little cat nap. Something the guy saw in Max's face made him slightly flustered as he watched her. "Or...not...I think I may have over stepped my -"

"Who the fuck are you?!" Max shrieks, interrupting him while she was freaking out and grabbed one of her school books, readying it to throw at the intruder.

The man puts his hands up, trying to placate Max before she did something violent. "Relax, please, I'm only here to talk, I swear." The man says trying to show Max no hostility. The cat on his lap didn't even raise its head as Max started her little meltdown. Bongo however was on the back of the couch, her hair standing on end and she was growling at Max.

"Get the hell out of my apartment!" Max yells in fright before there was the sound of someone pounding on Max's door interrupting her.

"Is everything alright in there!" The voice of Max's landlord shouts through the door, he sounded tired and cranky. Max walks over to the door and opens it without taking her eyes off of the guy sitting in her chair. Despite everything, the guy didn't look bothered in the least now, in fact as Max got closer to the door, the guy's smile only got bigger and bigger. An older man walks in with a baseball bat, his hair disheveled, and wearing a closed robe. Bongo took this chance to scurry out the front door, clearly frightened by what was going on inside the apartment. "What's going on?" The landlord asks gruffly, looking around her living room for any sign of a threat.

"This asshole broke into my apartment!" Max explains, while pointing at the intruder. The intruder just kept on that friendly smile, looking like he was getting more and more amused.

The landlord's eyes skim over the apartment, completely passing over the guy before he starts walking through the rest of the apartment. Max was confused why he would leave her alone with the intruder until he came back into the living room looking mad as hell. "There's no one here, explain yourself, young lady."

Max looks at him in confusion before pointing at the guy again. "How do you not see him? He's sitting right there!" The guy give the landlord a small wave, looking like he was trying not to laugh.

The landlord looks at the chair then back at Max like she was crazy. "It's after 5 in the morning, Miss Caulfield, I have to be up for work at 8. I don't care what kind of drugs you take, but if you disturb me one more time with this, then I'll have no choice but to call the police and have you evicted."

Max was completely baffled by this and kept looking between the landlord and the guy sitting in her recliner. "But...how..." She sputters, completely lost about what's going on.

"Okay..." The guy says with a half-sigh, half-laugh. "As amusing as this is, I've had my fill of entertainment for now, this is just getting sadder by the minute." He raises his hand and snaps his fingers again and suddenly Max opened her eyes with confusion, she was laying on her couch once again, covered in cold sweat and breathing heavily.

"Now, can we possibly do this civilly or do you want your landlord thinking you're a crazy person again?" The guy says, still seated in the recliner. He was watching Max, looking completely at ease and unphased by the sudden time reversal. "I mean we could, repetition is essential for comedy, but when only I can enjoy it, it loses it's appeal."

Max slowly sits up and feels Bongo rubbing against the back of her head from the back of the couch. Max looks at her and remembers that she ran out when she opened the door for the landlord before. She scratches the cat's ears and stares dumbfounded at the guy. "What the...Did you...just..."

"Go back in time and redo that entire thing? Yeah." The guy says with a bright smile before continuing. "I've gotta admit, kinda glad this conversation is going better than the last one, hoo boy. That crazy look in your eye, it was funny as hell. Not to you obviously, but you have no idea how long its been since I've actually talked to someone other than this furball." The guy says absentmindedly petting the cat sitting in his lap. "Oh man, I've missed it. And I never thought I'd ever say that." The man looked absolutely thrilled as he kept talking, which only confused Max more.

Max's mind felt like wool, so she gets up, goes into her bathroom, and splashes water on her face before coming out to face the guy again. This whole thing brought up so many questions. Max decides to start at the beginning. "Who are you?"

"My names Steve, nice to meet you...your name is?" The guys says leaning forward slightly, smiling like a big idiot.

"Uh...Max...you can call me Max. I'm sorry, but what the hell are you doing here?" Max asks before she sits back down on the couch.

"Besides scaring the shit out of you?" Steve says with a small laugh. "Yeah, I haven't talked to anyone in such a long while and after so long of people not seeing you, you just get used to moving freely without any kind of manners. I mean seriously, the things people do when they think no one can see you is incredible. One time I was just chilling at this place watching a football game and this dude just come in and whips out his-"

"Stop!" Max says, holding up her hand to stop him from talking. "Stop, please. What the fuck are you talking about?"

Yeah, I may need to explain...without going on another babblethon." Steve says scratching his chin thoughtfully. "I'm a time traveler, like you. But I did something no time traveler should ever, ever do, so now I don't exist anymore."

"You...don't exist? Then how are we having this conversation?" Max asks in disbelief, her head spinning from that little bombshell.

"It's...complicated. It might be better to show you than to explain. So..." Steve nudges the cat on his lap, which makes the cat look up at him in annoyance before jumping off his lap and onto the couch to sit next to Bongo who start sniffing each other in greeting. Steve stands up and walks into the next room before going behind the wall dividing this room from the other. Without any warning Steve's head comes through the wall with his hands on his head making antlers. "Boo!"

Max had to cover her mouth to muffle the shriek at what she just witnessed. Steve comes back in the conventional way and sits back down in the chair like what he did was natural. Max could only stare at Steve in awe. "How did this happen to you?"

Steve looks away, looking reluctant to talk. "I went back in time and killed my father before I was born. So now I don't exist...which fucking sucks if you want my honest opinion. You'd think being erased from existence would, you know, erase me from existence. But apparently I'm not that lucky."

Now Max was getting a little scared, she was sitting in a room with a murderer. "You...killed your own father?"

Steve rolls his eyes like that was a stupid question. "He was a serial rapist, among other things, and one of the biggest pieces of shit you would have ever meet. And trust me when I say I don't lose much sleep about it...or ever. Nobody should either."

Max leans back into the couch to digest that piece of information before shaking her head to clear it. "Okay, letting that one slide for now...wait! Now I know where I've seen you before, you were on the bus." Max says remembering. "You were the only one who wasn't dicking around on their phone."

"Ding ding ding! Tell her what she's won, Johnny!" Steve says like a game show host, gesturing to some invisible scoreboard next to him before he started talking like a normal person again. "I'm impressed that you remember me and noticed what was off. That means you're observant. That is a very good thing, Max." Steve says with a wolfish grin.

"Why are you here?"

Steve sits back down in the chair and leans forward looking very serious. "I'm here to make you an offer."

"What offer?" Max asks leaning forward as well, intrigued.

"You've seen me turn back time just like you and you've seen me use a power you're unaware of when I entered your dream. You're observant, but you need some time to fit the puzzle pieces together." Steve gives Max an impish grin like what he was offering was obvious. "You know what I'm offering, Max."

Max's heart skipped a beat, wanting to believe this was true more than anything, but couldn't bring herself to say it aloud. "I'm...I'm gonna need you to say it." Max says, suddenly shaking in nervousness.

"You might not like this, hell, most people don't, but it'll make things a bit simpler for you to understand. So please pay attention, cuz I hate to repeat myself." Steve says seriously before taking a glancing look all around the apartment before locking his eyes on Max's once more. "Your apartment is small and filled with only the bare essentials of accommodation, including a bunch of second hand furniture. But you go to college at an art school and you don't have a job, judging by the lack of any uniform. So you're either well off or your parents are and they are very supportive of your career choice. You live in this armpit of an apartment in the ass end of Portland by choice. You've won some awards for your photography, but instead of having them hanging in some gallery somewhere you have them here. So, you like to be acknowledged for your work, but you don't really want to be remembered for it."

Steve gestures around the entire apartment. "There's dust everywhere, except for three key areas. The vicinity of your couch, the paintings along the wall, and the picture frames right by the door. You don't care much for cleaning, but these areas are special to you so you keep them immaculately tidy." Steve continues as if he's running through a mental list. "The pictures of yourself that are handing on the wall are from only a few years ago, since then you've changed your looks considerably, which isn't too unexpected considering the era we live in, but changing so much so quickly means that you couldn't handle being the person you were, so you had to change who you are, in your eyes at least. The box of discarded photos of yourself by the door, along with all this tells me you've had a traumatic experience, one that you feel you feel responsible for and cannot cope with."

"The pictures in the frame right next to the door are of a girl, judging from the various other ones of her across the walls, she was a close friend to you, but you're absent from the pictures near the door, so they either you took those pictures or you weren't there for them, given the style of the pictures taken it's safe to assume you didn't take them, so she's a friend you haven't seen in a long time. A friend that is no longer with us." Steve says sadly before looking over at the easels. "But here, these aren't just some random paintings. These are your pain given substance in this reality." Steve sighs before looking back to Max. "These are moments that happened to you, but you couldn't take pictures of them since those moments no longer exist. This...is your story, Max. The story of how you had one last time with a childhood friend before you had to make a terrible choice. One life for the lives of many others." Steve points to the last painting that was turned away. "And from that day on, when you looked into a mirror, you hated what looked back at you."

Max was completely flabbergasted at that. This guy took one look around her apartment and somehow came up with her entire story as if it was plain as day. "How..." Max shakes her head, trying to clear it, but her every nerve was fried. She couldn't handle how he had gathered all of this information and decided to stick with the matter he didn't bring up yet. "What is your offer?"

"I can help you, Max." Steve says, speaking slowly for Max so she heard every word. "I can give you one last chance to save your friend and all of those people you had saved before." Steve leans forward again, keeping his eyes locked on Max's eyes as he said these next words with great care. "We can bring your friend back and save your town."