[click]

[bzzzzzz]

The butterfly! The picture I took... way back when... when everything in my life stopped making sense.

I'm here. I'm... then. It worked, I'm...

I can't hear what Nathan's saying. I can't even make out the words over the rushing noise in my ears.

The storm is suddenly five days away again but the noise its making is still so loud that it's deafening me, and then...

"You got hella cash."

Chloe.

Her voice cuts through the roaring in my ears. Like she always does. It figures I could still hear her over the end of the world.

She's right there. I could... I could do it all over again.

I could save her from Nathan.

But she sent me back to not change this. To let her go, to let her die and save the town, save Joyce and Kate and Warren and Frank and Victoria and everyone else... but if I don't save her... who will save me?

I don't think I can live with the guilt of letting my best friend die ten feet away from me and doing nothing.

There has to be another way. There has to be.

Nathan's saying something again, but it's all a blurry roaring sound, demonic and loud, and my head is pounding and there is blood pouring from my nose and I can't think straight and...

"Cmon, put that thing down."

The fear in her voice. I can feel it, it stabs like a knife straight through my heart.

I don't want her to die.

I don't want everyone else to die.

There has to be another way. I close my eyes. Think, Max! Think!

A third option.

"Get that gun away from me, psy-"

"No!" The scream leaves my mouth before I'm even aware of opening it.

Not again. She can't die again in this dirty bathroom. Not her, not Chloe. Not like this, alone and afraid!

It takes me a second to realize that the sound I've been dreading, the gunshot that will kill the girl I love, hasn't happened. The roaring in my head is louder than ever, but the gunshot never came. Eventually, I open my eyes and peek around the corner, terrified of what I'll see.

They're frozen.

Chloe is just starting to push Nathan away, and his gun is still aimed at her stomach and if time unfreezes - no, when time unfreezes - it'll fire and she'll be dead and my life will be over...

And suddenly everything falls into place, and it all makes sense.

It was never Chloe.

It was never Chloe that had to die here.

All that chaos, all the death, the birds and the whales and the storm, everything that happened this past week, these next five days, it wasn't because Chloe lived.

It was because I lived. Because I changed things.

Because I played god with the universe... and the universe played right back.

We both thought... we both somehow decided that Chloe was the butterfly that flapped her wings in Brazil, and formed a hurricane in Texas, but we were wrong. I was the butterfly, and every single flap of my wings made things worse.

Maybe... maybe I was gifted a second chance somehow, after the first time I didn't try to stop Nathan. Maybe it was a chance to do it right and save Chloe, by sacrificing myself... and instead I chickened out, I pulled the fire alarm.

Everything that followed, everything that we went through, was my fault.

She died again and again and again... because I didn't.

Oh god, it was never Chloe.

I won't waste this third chance. I won't get another, I know that.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

This is suddenly the easiest thing in the world to do, because to save Chloe, I really would do anything. I already have done everything... everything except this.

The gun isn't aimed at Chloe any more, it's aimed at me.

Goodbye Chloe, I think,

And then just like that, time restarts, like it should have all those days, all those lives, all those choices ago, the way it was supposed to.

Me saving her. The way I was supposed to.

The bang is loud, and the pain blossoms like nothing I've ever felt before, like a burning hot spike driven through my stomach. The pain from the nosebleeds, what Jefferson did... nothing I've ever felt remotely compares to the agony of being shot.

But... but...

The roaring in my ears is gone, and there is peace... until I hear her voice, hear her sob.

"Max!? MAX?!"

There's something dripping onto my face, and I know that it's Chloe and she's crying, but that's okay because if she's crying then she's alive.

"Why, Max? Why?" She asks deliriously as she pulls my head into her lap.

Because I love you, I don't tell her.

"Because... it was the... right... choice..." I whisper instead.

"No!" she cries, but she doesn't understand. I can't make her understand, but it's okay, because she's Chloe fucking Price and she's the strongest person I know.

There's a crash and the bathroom door slams open behind us, and David is there. He tackles Nathan to the ground and handcuffs him before he turns to look at me and only then recognizes his stepdaughter cradling the body one of his students.

"What the fu... Chloe?!"

"Dad!" she screams, forgetting in the moment to call him step-douche. I would have smiled, if I could. "He shot Max! Call an ambulance!"

It doesn't hurt any more. It doesn't hurt to die.

"Don't leave, Max. Please don't leave, I can't... not you too!"

It's going to be okay, I try to tell her with my eyes, as her tears continue to fall. I know you'll get through this.

I love you, Chloe Price.

"I love..."

And then everything is white...

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

"She's waking up! Max? Max?!"

"Give her some room, Chloe, for god's sake!"

My eyes open slowly, and the light streaming into them is blinding. I screw them shut again, but not before a single image is burned into my brain.

Chloe.

Outlined by the sun shining in from the window behind her, like a blue haired angel.

My blue haired, bad tempered, angel.

I'm afraid to open my eyes again, in case I'm hallucinating or delirious or something, but if I was dead, would it really hurt so much? Would heaven be so cruel? Or am I in hell, destined to relive the thing I want most, and have it hurt like nothing else... forever?

Did I really go back and save her?

Did I manage to save Arcadia Bay too?

There's a swishing sound, and the light trying to force its way past my eyelids dims, somewhat.

Joyce's voice calls out. "I've closed the blinds, Max, you can open your eyes again. I don't think it's too bright now."

I do as she says, and Chloe is still there, leaning in and staring intently at me.

My blue haired, red eyed, puffy faced angel.

"You... look like... crap," I whisper, my lungs burning and my stomach screaming in pain just from the effort of speaking.

She lets out a choked laugh, like she can't believe what I just said.

I can't believe it either.

"Am I dead?" I ask carefully.

This time she lets out a full sob and buries her head into my shoulder, bawling her eyes out.

"You... you nearly..." Joyce starts. She looks away for a second, and swallows a few times, her hand running up and down her daughter's back. "Max, you did die. Twice, actually. In the bathroom, before the ambulance arrived, and again in the ER. It was... it was a near thing. We nearly lost you."

Oh.

I think it was worth it to see Chloe alive again.

Joyce swallows again. "Your parents... they're outside, getting some sleep. They've barely left your side since you got here. Chloe and I, we offered to spell them, just for a bit. Do you want me to get them?"

I blink a few times.

A question occurs to me. "How long?" I ask in a whisper.

"Five days," Joyce says, eventually. "It's Saturday morning."

Oh. OHHHH.

"How's the... weather been?"

Joyce gives me a disbelieving look - one that very distinctly says you just died, Max, why on earth would you care about the weather? - but she answers anyway.

"Fine? Sunny? Typical Oregon, I suppose."

I breathe a sigh of relief.

The hospital is still standing. It's a bright sunny day outside. I can hear the birds singing to each other.

Everyone is alive. The storm never happened.

I did it. I saved everyone.

Max Caulfield, superhero.

I did it.

"Did what?" Chloe mumbles into my shoulder, and I realize that I said it out loud the second time.

In the background, Joyce slips out of the room to find my parents.

"I saved you," I tell her, and she pulls back just far enough to look at me and give a small smile.

"Yeah, you did," she says, and chokes back a sob. "You saved my life, Max. I owe you... forever."

I smile up at her, and shake my head. "No, you don't. You really don't."

"What?"

"It's a long story," I whisper, smiling at her confused expression.

She nods her head slowly, and I reach out and touch her cheek.

"Don't nod if you don't understand. It's okay to not understand." I smile weakly. "I don't really understand either..."

Midway between nods, she changes to a shake of her head, and my eyes can't help but watch the blue fringe as it flicks side to side. The slightly hurt look in her eyes frightens me for a second, and before I can think it through, my hand comes up and I'm clenching that something inside my head in that way I used to...

Nothing happens.

Oh.

Good.

"It's a long story," I tell her eventually. "This last week... life has been hella strange... but now I have forever to tell you..."

She smiles at my use of the word 'hella', and I pull her back down into my shoulder again, and everything feels right.

Forever and ever.

Author's Notes: So I highly suspect that I'm not the only person who was, how shall we say, somewhat unsatisfied at the options presented at the end of LiS Episode 5. I suspect I'm not even the first person to come up with this possible permutation, all I know is that this got into my head at 1am after I finished the game, and it wouldn't leave until I'd written it down on my phone. I polished it up in my lunch break at work, and here it is. (Also, wow, I guess this is what finally gives me the push to actually post my first story on FF? Go figure.)