Author's Note: I've been away from fan fiction for a long time, but when the muse hits, I must write. I know I'm late to the game, but "Life is Strange" certainly inspired me to write. I'm not sure how active, if at all, the LiS fanfic fandom is at this point, but if you found this, I hope you enjoy it. It was inspired by some really great LiS stories out there, esp. the Chasefield/Maximum Victory stuff. In particular, "Sucked into the Vortex" by lydiarmarks and "It's even worse than it looks" by unknown_knowns (on Archive of our Own only I think).


Of course she would snap back right into the funeral. A now-familiar wave of nausea and vertigo swept through Max Caulfield as she felt the timelines sort themselves out. Fortunately, anyone who noticed would simply attribute her distress to the circumstances. Perhaps because she filtered so much of her life through her hobby, Max visualized this readjustment period as a series of photographs either burning away, fading, or appearing. She managed to collect herself from the transition just in time for the grief to come crashing down upon her, the sudden realization of what she had just done, the sacrifice she had made.

Chloe

Tears fell and a tortured sob escaped her as Max resisted the sudden urge to throw herself on the coffin. She deserved to be in there, not Chloe. She did this. It was all her fault. She knew she would soon forget, once the timelines settled. She didn't deserve to forget this pain, so she wallowed in it, forcing herself to feel every ounce of it. Only when Joyce's arm fell across her shoulders did Max realize how badly she'd been shaking as she broke down completely. Right now, she did not even know how long she had known this Joyce. Had she sought her out immediately after? Had she chickened out, again, and avoided her until this very day? How much did Joyce hate or resent her for ignoring Chloe for all those years, for not doing anything in the bathroom other than watch as the young girl bled out on the cold tile? For injecting morphine into an IV and ending her daughter's life? Dozens of Maxes and dozens of timelines and nothing but failure and heartbreak. Max did not deserve to forget this.

A flicker of blue in the corner of her eye snapped Max out of her daze. That same damned blue butterfly fluttered over the grave, taunting Max. It had offered her unimaginable power, only to punish her for using it. The harsh, arbitrary unfairness of it all seared into Max's soul. Why be given these powers if she wasn't supposed to use them, if trying to do good and use them responsibly only led to mass destruction? Max knew she had never, not once, used her powers for selfish reasons, no matter what the demons in her nightmares claimed. 'Wait,' she thought with a sudden revulsion, 'maybe I made the wrong choice. Maybe I was supposed to save Chloe. Everyone said the town was decaying, rotting from within. Maybe the storm was the right answer, a chance to cleanse Arcadia Bay.' She almost threw up.

When the service ended and people began drifting back towards their cars, Max excused herself and ran to a quiet part of cemetery, away from prying eyes. With a manic desperation, she pulled her journal out of her messenger bag, flipped to the end, and starting writing. She didn't have long, but damned if she'd let it all be for naught.


**BEEP BEEP BEEP**

Max reached over to her nightstand and switched off her phone's alarm. She could not remember any dreams and felt like she'd slept soundly, but still felt exhausted. 'It must be the stress of the funeral,' she thought, trying to bite back her guilt. Five years she'd failed to reach out to her former best friend. Three months she'd been back in Arcadia Bay without a phone call or a text, and now Chloe was dead, mixed up in some weird psychotic S&M photo dungeon with Nathan Prescott and Mr. Jefferson! The story was trickling out slowly, and it seemed like maybe Chloe's involvement was incidental, but still, Max couldn't reconcile the blue-haired punk girl dead at the hands of a drug dealer with her sweet Pirate Captain. 'Her father's death must have been so hard on her,' Max considered, with another swell of guilt. She hadn't exactly been there for her best friend back then and the move was a piss poor excuse.

Shaking her head to try to dislodge this cycle of recrimination, Max slipped out of bed and stretched. Going through the motions of her morning routine, she watered Lisa and picked out her clothes. On her desk, her journal lay beckoning, but Max couldn't bring herself to pick it up. Maybe in a day or two. She gathered up her bathroom stuff and headed toward the showers.

Things would eventually get back to normal, or the new normal in any case, but the residue of this horrid week still lingered at Blackwell. Max noted how few of the message boards had anything written on them. The peace sign she'd left for Kate remained and Max felt confident that she'd never again need to erase harassing graffiti. Kate had been completely vindicated when the details about Nathan's activities at Jefferson's behest had come out. That did little to comfort Kate who now had to deal with the aftermath of what that scumbag had done. At least the police were able to confirm that none of the sick images Jefferson had taken had been distributed anywhere outside his sick photo dungeon. Everyone had been assured that only those people involved in Jefferson's trial would ever see them and they would be destroyed as soon as legally possible. Principal Wells had even sprung for a counselor to be made available to students and Max hoped Kate would take advantage of that. 'Maybe I should,' she pondered.

Classes would start back up on Monday, except for photography, of course. Max had heard a rumor once that, at college, if your roommate killed themselves, you got all As for that semester. She didn't know if that was true, but everyone in Jefferson's class had been given an A and full credit for the class. Life moved on elsewhere, though, and Max did have some homework for her other classes. After her shower, she got dressed and started on her reading, not really in the mood to be with anyone else. Warren had been texting less and less since he'd hooked up with Brooke and Max suspected Kate needed some space as much as she did.

'Do I really only have two friends, after three months?' She had never really worried about it before. Even in Seattle, she'd relied on a couple close friends rather than fitting into a huge social circle like Victoria's Vortex Club. Max smiled wistfully. Victoria Chase could only be considered Max's exact opposite. Blonde to Max's brunette, dressed in the latest fashions as opposed to Max's 'hipster dork chic,' popular and outgoing unlike Max's shy and solitary life. Beautiful and glamorous to Max's plain and drab. 'Maybe if I was gorgeous and perfect like her, I'd be popular like that,' Max considered. For a startlingly long moment, Max let herself drift into a fantasy world where she was popular and beautiful, with a circle of friends like Taylor, Courtney, and Dana. She saw herself sitting on the quad with Victoria at her side, looking up at her with adoration, and maybe something a little more. It felt so very real...

A couple hours later, her homework complete, Max leaned back in her desk chair and yawned. She'd need to go get something to eat soon, but her room was so warm and cozy and safe. She should check on Kate. Maybe Brooke had chilled enough now that she'd finally "won" Warren that Max could hang out with them. She looked forward to hanging with Warren without the guilt of his unrequited crush hanging over them. Maybe she should try to become better friends with Dana or Alyssa. They'd both been very nice to Max, willing to overlook her shyness, or at least not openly mocking her like Victoria. The thought of Victoria brought a frown to Max's face and an unwelcome quiver to her heart. Why did Victoria waste her precious time making fun of Max? Why did Max let herself wander into Victoria's path so often? Max rubbed her hands over her face to wipe that chain of thought away and noticed her journal, forlorn on the edge of the desk.

With a sigh, Max reached out and flipped through the pages. Her last entry had been from photography class, the day that Nathan shot Chloe. It felt so inane now, skimming her entries from her arrival at Blackwell, her notes on her classmates and teachers, the little photos she'd snuck of them. As she set the book down, she noted something odd. It looked like some pages had been torn out of the back. Flipping quickly through, she saw that indeed at least four or five pages close to the end had been ripped out of the book! She certainly hadn't done that and for a moment, she worried that someone had gotten hold of her diary. A quick review of her week reassured her that she'd never left her journal unattended in that time, Even as she examined this mystery, she noted some writing on the very last page, which somehow had not been torn out along with the other pages nearby. She saw writing there in what was unmistakably her own handwriting, but which she knew she had never written.

Brooke and Warren

Well, duh. Why had she written that? Max knew she didn't have any feelings for Warren. She was happy for them both. When and why had she jotted that down?

Taylor's Mom – sick or injured. T is really worried about her.

Courtney is really sweet underneath it all. Let her help you with your fashion

What? Max had never spoken more than two words with either Taylor or Courtney. They only echoed the barbs that Victoria tossed her way. They were practically Victoria's slaves. Minions at best. Max laughed imagining Taylor and Courtney as yellow, one-eyed Minions craving bananas.

Dana's been through some shit with Logan (pregnancy) – she should be with Trevor

Dana had seemed very out of sorts recently. Max knew that she'd had some sort of fight with Juliet, her best friend, but didn't know what it was about. She lived well outside the gossip circles of Blackwell. Max hadn't known that Dana had been dating Logan. And Trevor? The skater guy? This entire thing was completely crazy.

Let Daniel draw you. He's really nice and could use the boost. Don't let them bully him.

Max flushed, recalling yet another of her not-so-brilliant moments recently, when she'd seen some of the other boys hassling Daniel by his locker. She hadn't intervened, of course, because she was Max Caulfield, not some brave heroine in a YA book who stood up for the little guy and stopped bullies. Now that she thought of it, though, hadn't Daniel said he wanted to ask her something the other day? She'd blown past him, too wrapped up in her guilt over how she'd ignored Chloe all those years. Did he want to draw her? That felt weird and a little creepy, but also a little flattering.

David is good for Joyce and vice versa. He's a little messed up (PTSD) but his heart is in the right place.

Who is David? Max only knew one Joyce. She'd been at the funeral with Mr. Madsen, the security guard. Was he David? Reading this made her happy for Joyce, she guessed, but it felt really tangential to her life right now.

Check on Kate and keep her safe.

Duh she'd keep an eye on Kate. The poor girl had been through a lot. Max missed hearing her play the violin in the mornings and made a vow to take her guitar over there to play with her soon.

What was up with these things? Some were obvious, like this. Others were completely random like that stuff about Daniel, Courtney, and Taylor. When could she have written these things? Had she gotten drunk or high and forgotten about it? Had someone drugged her? Max felt her heart rate rise with a panic, but she talked herself back down. Walking through her week since her last journal entry, she remembered everything clearly except for parts of the funeral, and it made sense that that horrible day would be a bit fuzzy. In any case, she doubted she'd been drugged and forced to write weird things in her journal at a funeral in front of half the school.

She looked back to the journal to read the last entry. Her jaw dropped, she slammed the book shut and thrust it into a drawer, a cold sweat breaking out on her forehead. Max stood and rubbed her arms, willing the goosebumps there to fade, struggling to get her breathing under control. She couldn't understand or deal with this right now. Clearly, she needed food. This whole experience must be a delusion brought on by low blood sugar. She strode deliberately to her door, determined to put all this aside and focus on simple, manageable tasks, like getting lunch.

-xxx-

Max set the pen back in her messenger bag. As the last rays of sunlight peeked between the gravestones, she saw that damned butterfly floating off into the sunset. She knew it was taking her unwanted, unhelpful powers with it and she thanked it for that one small mercy even as she cursed its very existence. She'd forget soon. Writing it all out had helped and Max understood now that she could not condemn her future self to the hell she'd lived through. She glanced down at the last bit she'd written and smiled sadly. She'd spent five years in that timeline, far longer than any other, but she only recalled those couple days she'd "woken" there. Still, what she'd seen in that brief time lingered and felt worthy of capturing, if only for this one last instant.

In another world, you were popular, like Vortex Club popular. You were confident and strong and everyone liked you. And Victoria Chase had a huge crush on you.

As bad as the one you have on her...