Chapter Two: Strange Trails

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" Chloe yells as she sprints down the beach to where Rachel dropped from the sky into the ocean.

Choppy waves lap at my feet. There's no sign of her red shirt in the dark water, but I barely look before focusing on the seawall.

"Stay here. If I go under—Listen, what happened at the lighthouse—" Chloe peels off the soaked jacket that sticks to her like a second skin and kicks off her shoes, "I—"

"It's fine," I look away, "I get it."

"Max—"

"Go get Rachel. Go."

She hesitates for a moment but turns and wades into the bay. Rachel Amber. Rachel fucking Amber. Her name is a curse on my lips. Of course it had to be her.

I kick at a clump of sand. I was stupid to think anything else, think that maybe—No. I won't think of it. I won't. I bite my tongue until my mouth fills with blood, but pain can't erase the image of Chloe in my arms, nothing but bloody soup in a shattered skull where her head used to be. Three times I drove her to the edge. I won't do it again.

And the other time, Chloe's voice is venomous in my head.

"Max," the real Chloe yells from the water, "Oh God, Max, I don't think she's breathing. I don't—Fuck!"

I spit blood onto the sand and close my eyes. My head throbs.

It was never really about me, was it? her voice spits fire It was always about you and what you wanted.

"Max!"

Time freezes. I turn to the ocean and push my way through its frozen currents until I'm at her side. With Rachel's arm in one hand and Chloe's in the other, I pull them onto the shore. Chloe remains frozen with my name on her lips, her wide eyes staring at where I was. I kiss her one last time before taking a step back.

"Goodbye, Chloe."

Rachel is limp, but her eyes move beneath her lids, and her breath is warm against my hand, even in the standstill. I laugh before a sob chokes it. Just when you think the universe is done beating the shit out of you, it comes back with a crowbar. I turn my back on them both, and time resumes. Chloe stumbles, but her shock only lasts a second before she drops to Rachel's side.

"She's going to be fine," I can't keep the bitterness from accenting every syllable.

"We need to go. She needs to go to the hospital."

"She'll be fine."

"No, she's not. She's barely breathing," Chloe's eyes burn into my back, "What's your fucking problem, Max?"

I bite my tongue again. Chloe puts a hand on my shoulder for the second time in my today, but it's not the concerned hand from this morning when I rewound my way into her bed. She spins me around to face her, lips curling in a snarl, and shakes me, "What's wrong with you?"

Someone is beating a railroad spike into the back of my head. Spots of white light blossom in front of my eyes to each beat of my heart.

"Chloe. I've spent three centuries jumping through time, so maybe, just maybe, listen to me for once in your life, ok? Rachel is going to be fine. The last thing she needs is to go to a hospital. I can explain everything when we—"

"Arguing already?" Mark Jefferson says, "That doesn't bode well."

They stand on top of the seawall, all six of Prescott's dogs. Sean calls them The Seven Aspects of Divinity, including himself. It's all bullshit, of course, like everything else in this life.

"What do you want, Mark?"

"Mark?" Chloe asks, "Since when did you start calling this asshole Mark?"

"You know what we want," he says as though Chloe didn't say anything, "Rachel Amber belongs to Sean."

"Hey!" Chloe yells, "How about you go fuck yourself!"

"I'll give you all one chance," I say, "Walk away now."

"Or what? You'll rewind us away?" Jefferson laughs, "You can't run forever."

I raise a hand, and his cocksure smile vanishes. A second later, his skin sags before sloughing off his disintegrating muscles. When I lower my arm, nothing remains where Mark Jefferson stood except his sun-bleached bones.

"I don't know the rest of you," I say, "I never knew or cared what your names were, but I've killed every one of you too many times to count. This is your chance. You won't get another one. Rachel Amber is mine, and you can tell Sean if he wants her, he can come get her himself. Or I can just kill you now if you want to get it over with."

They scatter like I'm the storm that just vanished out of existence. Chloe is magnetic behind me. All I want to do is run to her and melt into her arms, but Prescott was right. I've lived too long to be selfish again. What I want doesn't matter. I close my eyes to keep the tears behind my eyelids.

You said I was your number one priority, Chloe's voice laughs in my head, so acidic it burns my ears.

"Sorry for being a bitch," I say, "We need to get moving, but I'll try to explain in the truck. You take one of Rachel's arms, and I'll take the other."

I look everywhere except Chloe as we struggle to drag Rachel to the truck. The sky is already bright blue without a cloud in sight, and people are starting to come out of wherever they bunkered down. We switch wordlessly at the steps, Chloe taking Rachel's arms while I switch to lift her feet. She keeps glancing at me as we carry her up the stairs that jut out of the seawall, but I stare at the hem of Rachel's shirt at the bottom right corner. Some threads have come loose, and I try to push everything else out of my head except for those fraying strings. The migraine helps. Pain devours everything in the end.

You're the God you keep cursing, forcing your fucking will on everyone else.

I drop Rachel's shoes as soon as we make it to the sidewalk and fall against the truck. My vision of the world comes in pictures separated by seconds of blinding light.

Fuck you, Max.

"You're going to have to drive," I say, "I think—I think I'm going to blackout. Just keep driving North. Don't stop for anything except gas."

I sneak a look at Chloe as I slide down the rusted metal. So many conflicting emotions play across her face. I've had three hundred years to watch them dance. Anger. Happiness. Confusion. Fear. And love, some of it for me even though I don't deserve it. Three hundred years, and I never get tired of watching her. But three hundred years is enough. It's time.

"I'll always love you," I echo back to her before the sound of a raging storm fills my ears and downs me.

You did this, Chloe hisses, each word a red-hot needle plunging into my skin, You did this.

Warm blood runs down my arms, curling around my fingers before it drips into the void. Chloe's blood, my sacrifice a million times over, is so dark it's almost black. The air tastes of copper and salt. Something moves in the darkness. A bird's wings flutter. Red eyes watch me.

"Well?" I yell, "What do you want?"

You did this.

A path forms in front of me. Bubbles in time flash into existence on all sides. The Blackwell bathroom, the junkyard, and our backyard. Voices play over each other, but all I hear is the blast of the shotgun and the silence, the absolute silence that follows.

When I woke up, my arms instinctively reached out for her, but the bed was empty. And I knew. I knew the second before the gunshot went off, and I rolled over to see the note on my bedside table, the same note: I love you, Max. I love you so God damn much, but I can't. I can't keep doing this. I'm sorry. Please don't blame yourself. Don't come downstairs. I don't want you to see.

I must have gotten out of the bed and walked downstairs, but I don't remember. I don't remember anything except collapsing at the sight of Chloe's body outside the kitchen's sliding door and crawling to her, cradling what was left in my arms. But I didn't cry, not that last time.

"You're alright," I said, rocking her like I did when she couldn't sleep, "I love you, Chloe. You're alright now. You're alright."

I don't know how long I held her. Night came. Her blood dried on my arms. I wished for death, but it never came, and when I stood Chloe peeled off me and fell to the ground, her headless body crumpled in a heap at my feet.

You did this.

Vibrations from the truck engine massage the cramp in my neck. My eyes flicker open, but I don't move even though I'm slumped awkwardly against the passenger door of Chloe's truck. Rachel is in the middle seat between us, her head on Chloe's shoulder and one of Chloe's hands on her leg. It's a miracle her other hand is keeping us from veering off the road and into a tree. Rachel laughs at something Chloe said—hollow and exhausted but genuine—and I close my eyes.

"How long was I out?" I ask without opening them.

"I don't know. About an hour," Chloe clears her throat, "Uh, Max, this is Rachel. Rachel, Max."

"We've met. Do you remember? The other timeline?"

"Timeline?"

I open my eyes to see if she's lying, but it doesn't do me any good, not with Rachel Amber.

"You've got the same powers as Sean Prescott, and part of his powers is that he's unaffected by my time manipulation. So, he's aware of all the other timelines I created trying to save you and Chloe, but he can't see the future. He only sees the timelines I've created that run parallel to what's happening right now. He's also had millennia to refine his powers, so I don't know which you'll get first. They get stronger with time too. Like, when I first got mine, I could barely rewind time more than a couple of minutes, but now I can hold a standstill for as long as I want or manipulate pockets of time. Prescott didn't know I could do that yet or he would have come himself instead of sending Jefferson."

"Jefferson," Rachel repeats, her eyes narrowing.

"Yeah. There was some kind of prophecy or some shit that someone with the same powers as Prescott would come to Arcadia Bay. That's why he teamed up with Jefferson. He needed to track you down and—well I don't really know how it all works, to be honest, but apparently, there has to be some sort of triggering event for someone to manifest their powers, usually some kind of extreme stress."

Rachel looks down, her chest heaving. Chloe's hand tightens on her leg, and my throat constricts until I can't breathe.

"It's ok. You're ok now. Max killed him, right Max?"

"I don't expect it'll last long. Like Rachel proved, it's really fucking hard to kill people like us. Jefferson is one of the easiest, but Prescott won't let him stay dead for long."

"What do you mean, 'won't let him?'"

"Like I said, Rachel and Prescott have the same powers, which as best as I can tell is some kind of control over matter. Like I can bend time, you two are able to bend matter to your will. It's not all bad though. Killing Jefferson resets his powers, so he'll only be able to catch glimpses of the future now, which will make us harder to track."

"It's not all bad," Chloe says, letting each word roll off her tongue, "Sounds pretty fucking bad. How are we supposed to outrun someone who's omnipresent? You couldn't even outrun him jumping through time."

"He's not omnipresent. He doesn't see everything, just one moment in time like normal but expanded to every timeline in existence. Plus, his—and Rachel's—powers take a lot longer to channel than mine. It's why it took you so long to come back."

"So, our plan is what?" Chloe asks, "Just run?"

"For now," I pause but force myself to continue, "But this is just your prologue. After this, you two can fly away to whatever corner of the world you want. I promise."

Chloe blushes, "You saw that?"

"I wasn't a shitty friend in every timeline, Chloe Price," I lie.

I lay awake in the back of Chloe's truck, wrapped in the sleeping bag Chloe gave me in exchange for insisting her and Rachel share the cabin seats without me. They'll be plenty warm from sharing body heat. Chloe's not-quite-snores—the ones I used to tease her about—vibrate through the metal. Just to be safe, I wait until the moon is halfway across the sky before freezing time. It's weird how I need to be careful now that Rachel is around.

I slip out of my sleeping bag as quietly as I can and jump off the back of the truck. We pulled over on a side road about an hour away from Seattle and parked behind a massive pile of asphalt. Stars shine through a thin layer of clouds. A breeze from the north rustles my hair as I walk to the edge of the little offshoot. The rings around my neck are heavier, trying to remind me of their weight before they disappear forever.

No matter where I went in time, I always kept these rings around my neck. Whether I was jumping through century-old photos or hopping into a younger Max, they were always there, the only things I was able to carry with me through time. Even Chloe couldn't come with me, but these small reminders of our love, of our commitment, they stuck. Because I made a promise.

Yes. I made a promise. A promise I will keep this time. I undo the chain and hold our wedding rings in my hand. Chloe was the only one I've ever loved. It's not dramatic to say after three hundred years; it's just a fact. But maybe that was the problem. Maybe I was never exciting enough for Chloe, whatever she said up on that stage.

"Excitement is a mere counterfeit of bliss," I say, weighing the rings in my palm.

"These storms and these adventures," Rachel's voice reverberates through the standstill, "I prefer to know that thou still cared for my plainest self."

Her smile is perfect, her face unreadable.

"Sorry," I say, "Couldn't sleep."

"Neither could I."

The silence stretches, but unlike me, Rachel seems completely at ease. Cool emanates from her effortlessly. Even after being dead and buried for weeks, she's completely radiant. But there's something different in her eyes, the hollowness that binds the two of us together. Few people have felt death and seen the void waiting on the other side. In some ways, the experience that binds Rachel and me together is stronger even than the love between Chloe and me together. After all, even love can't stand against death.

Finally, she says, "It feels weird finally talking to you. I feel like I already know you. Chloe never stopped talking about you. Kind of annoying really."

"What do you want?"

"You know she's happy you're here."

I snort, "The only thing I know is that you're full of shit."

"They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. You deflect just like she does. But it isn't real, is it? The Max Chloe told me about was never this grouchy."

"Yeah, well, I'm not the Max she told you about. She always thought I was the better one."

"Same," Rachel exhales through gritted teeth, "She doesn't know, does she? But you do."

"About what?"

"Frank. Mark."

"No. I—I didn't have the heart to tell her."

"Thank you."

"I didn't do it for you."

"I know. It's fucking funny, honestly. Everyone always thought I had everyone wrapped around my finger. Bet you did too, didn't you? But nothing that anyone did was ever for me. No one cared about me. 'I prefer to know that thou still cared for my plainest self,'" she laughs, high and cold and bitter, "I've lied so much, I don't even believe myself anymore."

"I did try to save you. Twice."

"But not for me, right? It was always for Chloe."

"No. Not for Chloe. I don't think I did any of it for Chloe really. I did it because I loved her, but what did that mean? Just that I was unwilling to give her up. I put her through hell just to try and keep her with me. I stole," my voice breaks, but the words tumble out anyways, "I stole the only timeline where she was happy because I couldn't live without her. Because I don't really love her. I never wanted her happiness if it wasn't shared with me.

"Twice. Twice I went back in time and managed to skip a grade to get into Blackwell a year faster. Twice I seduced Mark Jefferson before you did and got him caught in the act, so Prescott's empire crumbled and neither you or Chloe or anyone else ever had to be touched by all that shit ever again. Twice Chloe chose you over me. After all, I could never compete with Rachel fucking Amber. And twice I destroyed the timeline. It was never about trying to do what was right. It was about trying to twist time and fate into something it wasn't so that I could end up with Chloe because I'm a selfish bitch. But, I'm changing that this time. I won't get between Chloe and happiness again. I meant what I said in the truck."

Rachel is silent for a long time, looking out into the darkness between the trees. The wedding bands in my fist are warm for the first time in decades. All the aches and pains of three centuries cramp my muscles and pull on my shoulders, pulling me down into the earth until it swallows me in a shallow grave. Chloe should be the one with the powers, not me.

"What I want," Rachel says, "I want to kill Mark and Mr. Prescott and the rest of their cult. I want to kill them in every single timeline there is until none of them can ever come back, and then I want to go someplace no one knows my name, someplace I can be whoever I want."

I meet her eyes, and for the first time, I can see what's behind them. The same inferno that eats me alive is starting in her.

"No. You don't. You can't."

"What?"

"You don't want to kill them. And you can't have a fresh start. Believe me. For twenty years, I hunted them down in every timeline I could. For three years, I killed Sean Prescott, he resurrected, and I killed him again, and for every time I killed him, I killed Jefferson a hundred more. I've tortured him to death in every way you could imagine. But it's done nothing but make me hate myself.

"You can't have a fresh start because no matter where you go, you'll always know yourself. You'll always have to face who you are and what you've done every time you look in the mirror. There is no escape from who you are or what you've done.

"The only thing you can do is kill yourself and try to be better. Each day, kill who you used to be, and become someone better. Do that at the start, and maybe you'll find the peace I will never know."

"They killed me, Max."

"Have you ever heard 'Lady Lazarus?'"

"The Sylvia Plath poem?"

"Yeah. She never finds peace either, you know. 'Herr God. Herr Lucifer. Beware. Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair, and I eat men like air.' The fire that she stokes, the desperate desire for vengeance, they are what keeps her from ever finding peace. She's never able to let go, so she's bound in a cycle of death that she will never be able to break free of."

Rachel watches me with those eyes that miss nothing and her head cocked to one side.

"Believe me," I say, "You don't want to be caught in that cycle."

"Don't throw it away," she says.

"What?"

"Whatever you've got in your hand. Don't throw it away just yet," she smiles slightly, "Goodnight, Max."

"Goodnight."

She walks back to the truck, gravel crunching under her feet. I wait a few minutes after the truck door slams to make sure she won't wake up Chloe before I release time. Somewhere out in the darkness, an owl hoots. The air is sweet with the sticky smell of pine sap and cedar berries in the air. This isn't so bad, being here with Chloe and Rachel. So what if she chooses Rachel in the end, at least she's alive. At least she's happy. I fasten the chain around my neck and slip the rings under my clothes.

The car door clicks open and shut as quietly as a rusty old truck can, which is to say scatters every bird in a ten-mile radius. Chloe's boots scruff against the gravel, and the smell of her perfume nearly washed away by perfume and sweat fills the air. She stops beside me, and without thinking, my hand reaches around her waist, and she drapes her over my shoulders on instinct, pulling me close, just like that day on the train tracks.

We don't say anything, and we don't have to. I lean into her and let myself believe that we really will last forever. I allow myself feel the peace I can never have again.