Chapter 3
As Max began to stir from a state of sleep, she felt an awful pinch in her neck. While in the process of adjusting her head to relieve the pain; she realized her head had been crooked awkwardly against a window. Further inspection revealed the glass to be particularly dirty, having been discolored by the presence of smoke. Looking out the window uncovered the horizon, consisting primarily of trees, passing by the window under the cover of darkness. Confused, the brunette looked around before noticing that she was careening down the highway, in a vehicle that seemed strikingly familiar.
Surveying her surroundings, a few areas of interest captured Max's attention as she discovered more items that she was familiar with. The brunette had become fixated on various pieces of graffiti and stickers plastered all across the dash before settling on a bobble head in the center of the dashboard. The sight of the bobble head, a singing Elvis dressed in all black holding a microphone, broke the last shred of denial she had been holding on to. Scared to look any further to her left, Max eventually had to force herself to confirm what she already knew, the person behind the wheel was none other than Chloe Price.
"Chloe…" the brunette said hesitantly trying to figure where or when she was. "Where are we headed?"
"Fuck if I know," the blunette said sharply, "away from the storm."
"Wha…what happened?" the brunette asked sheepishly, despite having a pretty good idea of the answer already.
"What the fuck Max?" the driver snapped before turning to face the passenger. "You tore up the photo…you let Arcadia get destroyed!"
Despite receiving the answer she expected, Chloe's words still hit Max harder than she had anticipated. The brunette found herself in a state of disbelief over the revelation of Arcadia's fate. So distraught over the shock, she felt a physical pain in her chest, as though someone was standing on it. As the brunette struggled to get a grip on her current situation, a barrage of questions began to course through her mind.
How the shit did I get here, she wondered, what the hell is this? Is this just a dream or did I somehow drift into an alternate timeline?
Having remembered a telltale sign from all of the previous times she entered an alternate timeline, Max gazed out the window looking for confirmation as to the validity of her theory. Looking to the horizon, the brunette felt panicked at what she saw, or rather what she didn't see. When she had traveled though photos, the background had always had this distorted reddish tint reminiscent of a burned Polaroid. To the girl's disappointment, that wasn't the case here as the horizon was as clear and vivid as it could be given how dark it was. The noticeable lack of what was essentially an Instagram filter on the horizon, led the brunette to suspect that she was in a particularly vivid dream. However, before she had able to convince herself of that fact, Chloe had lit another cigarette after rolling the driver side window down. The sudden influx of fresh air and smoke caused her to become acutely aware of her senses. As the smell radiated throughout the trucks cabin, Max's head recoiled back as the aroma entered her nostrils, causing the pain in her neck to reemerge. Given a second thought after noticing how heightened her senses were; the brunette reconsidered the alternate timeline option, as this experience had become more intense than any dream she'd ever witnessed.
Evidently, after the pair had left Arcadia Bay, Max had fallen asleep; exhausted after everything she had endured to that point. Having been left alone in the car with only her thoughts, Chloe had ample time to dwell on what had happened earlier on the cliff overlooking the bay, and what the ramifications would be. During this time, Chloe had begun to feel a tremendous sense of survivor's guilt. Initially after they had reached the next town, the blunette had turned on the radio with the hope that there would be some positive news reported. Unfortunately, that news never came, and she was forced to turn the radio off after experts had begun predicting an upwards of 90% mortality rate. As a result, the further they traveled down the road, the more she had convinced herself that Max made the wrong choice.
A long silence followed after Chloe had informed Max of what exactly had happened earlier. A silence that started as uncomfortable, before eventually progressing to tense the longer it went on. Equal parts unsure of what to say and why she was here in the first place, the brunette hesitated to say anything for fear that it may set the blunette off. The entire scene felt so real to Max she began to believe that she somehow had drifted into another timeline. The truck smelled of a mix of rain water, cigarettes, and two girls needing a shower. The brunette could feel the flakes of dried tears fall from her cheeks as she tried to wipe them away. Before long, Max snuck a glance to the person in the driver seat. Chloe was visibly stewing inside, as the girl had always worn her emotions on her sleeve, it wasn't particularly difficult to spot. Her grip on the steering wheel was so tight that her knuckles were white and she would occasionally mouth something incoherently to herself.
"Chloe…talk to me," Max said while bracing herself for Chloe to snap at her. "Please don't shut me out."
"Max, how are we supposed to live with this?" she replied after taking a moment to collect herself. "How many fucking people died so we could be together? How can you justify that to yourself?"
"Chloe…I…I just couldn't," the brunette began to say before arriving at a loss of words.
As the two became engaged in the conversation, they both had shifted their attention to the person sitting across from them. Max found she was unable to find the words to explain herself, given that she had chosen to honor her last wish. Through circumstances the brunette could've never foreseen, at the other end of the cabin sat Chloe Price, her dead best friend/love of her life. Together they sped down the highway in her truck towards an uncertain future at an unknown destination. The brunette decided she couldn't tell her the truth that in the event she was in an alternate timeline. Max didn't want to just drop a bomb like, "actually I did go back and let you die like you wanted," before leaving this Max to deal with aftermath. With the silence becoming noticeable, Max was unable to find the words to defend a choice that she herself hadn't made. As it appeared that she was stalling, Chloe was clearly losing her patience for the conversation.
"You know what Max? Forget it, take your time," the blunette stated with venom in her eyes. "We have plenty of…"
With her eyes locked on Max, Chloe hadn't realized that the truck had slowly started to drift into the oncoming lane. Noticing this at the same time a horn started to blare at them, the brunette desperately tried warn Chloe.
"Chloe, look out!"
Realizing what was happening in that moment, Chloe instinctively jerked the wheel to the right in an effort to evade the oncoming vehicle. While having done so successfully, the surge of adrenaline caused the blunette to use an excessive amount of force, resulting in the truck now careening toward the ditch. In an effort to steady the vehicle, she over corrected in the opposite direction, and in that instant the driver side tires began to lift off the pavement. Having lost control of the vehicle, the only thing the girls could do was brace for impact and watch helplessly as momentum took its course. After the tires left the pavement, the truck flipped over several times before eventually coming to rest upside down in the right hand ditch.
Seeing the entire event unfold seemingly in slow motion, Max had been rendered helpless, unable to do anything but watch Chloe struggle to keep the truck under control. The sudden shift from side to side left her disoriented before she eventually lost consciousness during the initial flip as her head hit the window. The last thing Max remembered was her head hitting the window followed by a white light.
Notes- this is the start of the B plot of my story. Given that I'm 100% Pricefield, I just couldn't write an LiS fanfic without Chloe.
Again feedback is always welcome, I'd be interested to hear some thoughts, particularly about this chapter
Also thanks for reading, it you enjoyed it please hit; favorite, follow, or leave a comment.
