Disclaimer: I do not own Life is Strange or the song Going Home by Asgeir. Do not expect this story to be perfect. There will be inaccuracies as I am only human.

She's released on Monday morning, hesitantly, by Dr. Hawthorne. While he doesn't seem fully comfortable approving her discharge, she knows that he has no reason to keep her there longer. Max refused to give him more reasons. So with Chloe's help to keep her grounded close to reality, she made it 48 hours without slipping back into her catatonic state.

A nurse has to use a proxy card to let her out, the psychiatric ward's doors are locked to prevent runaways who aren't in their right state of mind. No wonder they didn't overly mind her wandering the other day, she wouldn't have been able to leave if she wanted to. The nurse wishes Max well, and Max returns the sentiment, but she's far too happy to leave that she doesn't want to stop and make small talk with anyone.

Being trapped in a plain, white room isn't something she wants right now. It won't help her, no matter how much effort the medical staff puts in.

Then, she's on the main floor and swinging open the doors. She takes a breath deep enough to make her lungs hurt, trying to stuff them with as much fresh air as possible. Smelling the crisp fall air with faint hints of someone burning wood in the distance heals her soul more than anything a doctor could have done. Unfortunately, her clothes still reek of the overly clean hospital scent. Chloe promised to bring her some of Rachel's clothes to wear when she was released, but forgot. So, Max is stuck wearing the same outfit she was admitted in.

Maybe some people would hold ill feelings towards the outfit that they wore during a traumatic experience, but Max doesn't care much about the superstition that it's the clothes that might be unlucky. Not with the role she played in the events leading up to her stay in The Dark Room.

The clothes are definitely not the ones responsible.

It's not like Jefferson is going to escape police custody and find me just because I happen to be wearing these jeans with this shirt.

She rolls her eyes at no one as she walks to the bus stop, reaching for her ear buds only to realize she doesn't have them with her. At least she has her bus pass.

A hint of doubt colors her mind. She knows there's no reason that her clothes would affect Jefferson's fate, but could something else intervene and save him, therefore dooming her? What if Jefferson does get released? What if there's some loophole or the Prescott's hire the best team of lawyers for him just to save their own name?

The ride back to Blackwell is unusually quiet without her music, but she looks out of the window and lets her mind become comfortably blank, forgetting the what-ifs for now. Not catatonic, just peacefully clear of thought.

Her second comfort comes in the form of anonymity. No one on the bus gives her the pitying look to which she's now accustomed. In fact, none of the other passengers spare more than a glance at her at all. She doesn't know their names, and they don't know hers.

She wonders why she ever wanted to stop being the shy, cliché geek in the first place.

I guess once you're connected with a certain event, especially one like being Jefferson's victim, being known isn't worth every look bringing back a bad memory. It's like a nightmare that just won't leave you be.

"I'm stuck in a nightmare, and I can't wake up."

She understands Kate's words on the roof now more than ever. She relates to them now. Kate doesn't even remember much of what happened, but she knows her nightmare in more detail than ever because of a binder that just happened to have her name written on it in tall, careful letters.

Max had a bond with Kate since the beginning of the school year, when they were paired up for a group assignment in Jefferson's class and learned that they got along pretty well. Since then, Max always looked forward to their tea dates. A time where they could just relax after a stressful day of classes. But she never wanted that bond to be strengthened by something like this. Just like she chose to suffer in order for Chloe and the others to live, she'd choose to be more distant from Kate if it meant sparing her from horrors she never deserved.

She considers, for a moment, trying to go back in time farther and finding a way for Jefferson to take her first. There was that group photo of their class from September that she could use. Maybe then Kate would be spared. She shakes her head and tries to squash the thought. Using her power for something like that, she can't predict what she could end up changing. Hell, remember what happened when she tried to keep William alive? Chloe asked to be euthanize. And she complied with that final request.

Never again.

Max flexes her right hand. Since her rescue from The Dark Room, she hasn't used her power. Not once. She also hasn't had a nosebleed, but she's certainly had raging headaches.

Will those effects ever fade, or is there something irreversibly wrong with me? What about all of the timelines that I changed drastically? Are there still Maxes wandering around in them without a happy ending in sight? How many Maxes have to bury a Chloe because of my selfishness?

She's glad when the bus pulls up to Blackwell. Focusing on walking sounds a lot better to her than thinking of the consequences to all of her actions. One of her Maxes killed Chloe with morphine. That one had to be in jail by now, Chloe's parents knew that no one else was in the house at that time. There wasn't even any proof that Chloe wanted to die. She had no will saved. Not even a voice recording affirming that her final wish was for Max to end it all for her.

Max walks straight to the dorms, ignoring the curious and questioning stares of students who don't have a class right now. They give her plenty of space as she walks by and don't say anything to her—whether it's due to shock or courtesy, she doesn't know. But she doesn't care either. She's grateful for it because she's not sure she can handle dealing with other students yet. They're going to have too many questions that she can't answer. Besides, what if their questions set her into another catatonic state? Would she have to go back to the hospital? Would she ever be released from that vicious loop set in motion by a man she used to admire?

The series of questions running through her mind makes her pick up her pace, anxious to avoid everyone else just in case they say the wrong thing and get her sent back to the psychiatric ward.

She passes by Tobanga on her way, feeling its stare upon her. A glance is all she gives it in return, but she sees Rachel's blue feather earring hanging from it near the top. When she blinks, it's gone again.

The floor with her dorm is quiet, most of the girls are in class now. She does, however, hear Kate playing her violin as the sweet notes fill the hall. Guess she's giving herself a little break. She deserves one.

Max stops in front of her door and digs out her keys from her satchel, but she freezes after she puts the key in her lock. Her autopilot memories of being captured flood her mind. Waking up to a prick in her neck and seeing a blurry image of Jefferson standing over her with a smirk of victory.

A chill runs up her spine and she opens the door only to quickly shut and lock it behind her. I can't be afraid of my own room. But he did get passed its lock once before… Maybe David could replace the lock?

She goes to change, but grabs a set of clothes as a little bundle along with her shower supplies. A nice, hot shower is exactly what she needs right now. And with everyone in class—excluding Kate with her violin—she'll have the shower room to herself.

Tuesday comes too quickly and she's not ready to face the world yet. So she hides away in her room, strumming her guitar because it lets her stop thinking. Kate's across the hall with her violin again, seemingly lacking the courage alongside Max to rejoin the routine of school. Max knows she can't hide forever, and suspects Kate knows that as well, but she can still hide for today.

Chloe texts her to ask if she wants company once she realizes Max isn't in her classes, but Max turns her down by reminding her she's lucky to have been given a second chance and can't afford to waste it. Max promises that she's all right, she just needs a little time to herself.

Maybe if she says it enough times, she'll believe it herself.

Time heals all wounds.

Just need a little time.

More time will allow her to process things.

The time will come when she has to face her demons, but for now it's much easier to just roll over on her bed, pull the blankets above her head, and close her eyes hoping for a sleep without nightmares.

Warren texts her asking if she wants to borrow his flash drive of movies again as a pick-me-up. She starts typing out a refusal, but stops and reconsiders his offer. Movies can be distracting and are also great when you want to pass a few hours, but make it feel like less than a single hour. A way to escape reality for a little bit.

So she rewrites her response saying she'll be glad to have his movie flash drive for a while again. He tells her Chloe offered to take it since she plans on visiting after class anyway.

Max: Thanks, Warren. I really appreciate this

Warren: Yeah, no worries Maximus. Just let me know if there's anything else I can do to help you.

It's not that she doesn't want Warren to drop off the flash drive himself and visit—his single visit is one that she doesn't even remember—but she looks forward to seeing Chloe again. The world always feels a little more normal, a little more right, when Chloe is next to her.

She was napping when Warren's text caused her phone's screen to flash and wake her. She panicked for only a second until the familiar scenery of her room came into view. Now, she's no longer tired and her heart is still calming from it's sudden racing in fear.

She doesn't want to play more guitar, she's played it enough these past two days. She stretches and pulls herself out of bed. Since she hasn't written in her journal for awhile, that's she decides on doing. If only to document a correction of her views of Jefferson. She remembers writing only praise for him. How much she looks up to him. How much she respects him.

But those sentiments no longer have a place in her heart or mind, so she'll write out a new passage about the true Jefferson. Maybe not what he did exactly, not yet. Just enough to ease the feeling of desperation pushing this thought to the forefront of her mind. The urgency yelling at her that this task is important.

She left it in her satchel. But when she goes to grab it, she can't find it. It's not a small journal—fairly average in size, in fact—so it shouldn't be difficult to spot at all. Which causes her to ask aloud, "What the fuck?"

She flips her satchel upside down and lets its contents fall to the ground. When ashes sprinkle out in globs, then in a flood, she understands.

At the same time, she doesn't understand.

In one timeline, Jefferson burnt her journal because she ruined his photos by kicking his rolling tray. However, in this timeline, she left The Dark Room with her journal completely intact. She never had the opportunity to so much as move while captive this time around, so there was no way for her to ruin his photos and lead him to destroying her journal in anger.

Then why is she staring at a pile of ashes on her floor with no journal to be found?

She can't come up with an answer, because she doesn't know where to begin figuring out the problem. Math and science were never her subjects anyway. Words problems, ugh.

Chloe, on the other hand, loves science. She stopped trying somewhere along the way after Max left, but that didn't mean she no longer likes her old favorite subject. It was likely just part of her rebellion against the structure of her life. Chloe will also be visiting her later, so Max hopes she'll be able to get some answers.

Even a theory. A hypothesis. She'll take anything she can get right now that will help her sort this out.

Chloe can't arrive soon enough. Something about the pile of ashes keeps drawing Max's attention and leaves her feeling uneasy, almost lightheaded.

There's nothing more innocent than a teenage girl's journal.

Flash.

Crash. You bitch!

Flash.

Maybe another dose will calm you down.

Flash.

She's tied to a chair, but manages to detach her foot. Victoria is asleep beside her, peacefully unaware of her surroundings. Panic quickens Max's breathing as she pulls a nearby cart closer. It has a pack of syringes and a vial or two. A few of the syringes are missing from the pack, and she can guess what they were used for.

Photos are scattered on the top tray. Photos of her that she doesn't remember being taken, all surrounding a red binder with her name written on its side. She glances at each one to find something she can focus on and travel back to, but the only one she has a clear view of is the picture of Rachel laying in the junkyard, already dead. Max knows this picture doesn't belong, but can't figure out why until she notices the person in the picture with Rachel.

She's posed with Rachel in the picture, her head resting on Rachel's stomach. They're exceptionally pale, even for a black and white photo, and limp. Already dead.

"Max?" Chloe asks. She's knocking at the door. "You in there?"

Max rubs her eyes, safe in her room on the edge of her bed. She gets up and opens the door as Chloe is in the middle of knocking.

"Thanks for making me stand out here like an idiot," she says.

"Sorry, I guess I fell asleep," Max says, despite that experience feeling closer to reality than a nightmare.

Chloe shrugs and holds out Warren's flash drive with a triumphant grin. "Whatevs. How about a movie?"

Max rolls her eyes and grabs the flash drive. "Thanks, Chloe. And yeah, we'll watch a movie in a second. Just look at this first."

She points to the ashes and Chloe squats to look at them. "So...there are some ashes here," Chloe says. "What? Did you take up smoking without telling me?"

"This was my journal, Chloe. I left The Dark Room with everything in that satchel intact and the only things I've removed are my phone and bus pass. So, why is my journal suddenly a pile of ashes?" she asks.

Chloe sits on the ground and crosses her legs, taking renewed interest in the situation. "That's a good question, Max. But that's still not very much to go off of."

"Here's the other thing," Max says. "In one of the timelines that I changed, Jefferson did burn my journal and it looked exactly like this. I kicked a cart and ruined the pictures on it because something spilled—a vial of the GHB, I think. It made him so angry that he dosed me again. Then, he must have burned it while I was unconscious because it was ashes on the cart the next time I woke up. But in this timeline, none of that happened."

Chloe looks at the ashes in silence for a few minutes, pushing them around with the tips of her fingers like the answers she wants are hidden within the pile. "Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect, Max?" she finally asks.

Max shakes her head. "No. Care to explain it, Einstein?"

Chloe chuckles. "It's basically the idea that people can collectively have memories from another timeline running parallel to our own and the timelines are so similar, that they slip across into a new timeline where their memories don't line up with the events of reality. Just small differences that no one notices until it comes up in conversation. Things like people swearing they watched the funeral of someone famous on TV, but then they find out that famous person is still alive. The weirdest part is that a lot of times, more than one person will swear that the same piece of false information is true and they remember it so well."

"So you think this is like the Mandela Effect?" Max asks.

"I don't know. Maybe." Chloe shrugs. "It's just the closest thing that I've heard of to this. Except, instead of memories, your belongings are swapping with the identical version of themselves in other, parallel timelines. Or something like that."

"That's crazy, Chloe," Max says. "But so is everything else that's happened this month."

"Is it really that crazy, Max?" Chloe asks. "I mean you've traveled through timelines that are different to this one, where things that have happened here haven't happened here. You're like a walking Mandela Effect. You've physically slipped through alternate timelines, but on purpose instead of accidentally. You knew when you slipped between them, because it would happen after you changed something. I guess something else has happened somewhere along the way, and now your belongings are swapping through timelines. You get ashes. Another you gets an intact journal with your writing."

Max sits on her bed. Chloe's words make sense, but she still has trouble wrapping her head around the concept. Chaos Theory. The Butterfly Effect. Now, the Mandela Effect. What other time-related effects am I unaware of? I thought I did my research thoroughly, but I guess I focused on the wrong aspects: how someone can time travel. Not what happens when they do.

"How do you know about these effects and theories?" she asks.

Chloe shrugs. "Hey, once I learned you could control time, I did my research, too. It's not like I was going to school or had a job, so I had plenty of time to kill while you were at school and having your Blackwell adventures."

Chloe stands and stretches. "So, movie?" she asks with a grin.

During the second or third movie—Max wasn't paying enough attention to keep count with the amount of information she needed to sort through in her mind—Chloe falls asleep on the futon. Max gets up and throws a blanket over her. Her left leg sticks out, but Max leaves it like that. Chloe was never known to be a peaceful sleeper anyway. More like a sleep thrasher, and Max had been the victim of her dream fights more than enough times to attest to it.

It's dark out and her clock tells her how it's the middle of the night, but she has a feeling that she needs to go across the hall to Kate's room. Not out of urgency, she doesn't feel that anything's happened to Kate, but out of a weighing solemnity on her heart. A certain hollowness she can't explain.

She knocks three times, lightly, on Kate's door, and isn't surprised when it opens.

"Max?" Kate asks. "Are you alright?"

"Did I wake you?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, I was awake anyway. I slept during the day and, well, I guess I slept a little too long during the day. Now, I'm wide awake in the middle of the night." She steps aside. "Would you like to come in?"

Max accepts and enters Kate's dorm. She glad that, when she looks to her left, Kate's mirror is no longer covered by cloth. While she might not be making much progress in her own recovery, Kate's little progressions are enough to keep her content for now.

Someone's healing… It doesn't have to be me, and Kate deserves it more anyway.

"I heard you playing the violin earlier today," Max says. "It was really nice. Calming, you know?"

Kate smiles. "Thank you. It was really nice to play again. Calming, just as you said."

Kate sits at her desk and gestures for Max to take a seat on her bed. "So, any reason you're up this late?"

Max shrugs. "Same as you, I guess. I suppose I'll go to classes again tomorrow. You?"

"I should as well," she says. "I don't want to get too far behind. Even though I think Principal Wells would let us, I don't want to struggle in college because I hid away in my room."

"Did they find a new teacher to replace…?"

Kate shakes her head. "No, not that I've heard of. Stella said they've just been watching art documentaries in the mean time."

"That doesn't sound so bad."

Kate smiles and wrinkles her nose a bit, just like her bunny. "Maybe we'll get to learn a bit about drawing as well, not just photography. No offense, Max."

"None taken. I get that not everyone in that class wants to be a photographer. It just happened that the teacher they found used to be a famous photographer."

Kate stands and shuffles through her room. "How about a midnight tea date?" she asks. "I know I still have the stuff around here somewhere."

"You know, that sounds amazing. A cup of tea is exactly what I need right now," Max says.

She wants to savor this peaceful moment with Kate before she gets thrown back into a reality that she's not ready for, but can't hide from forever. She can't avoid the questions her classmates will ask, or the pitying, sad looks they'll give her, but she'll always have this night of movies with Chloe and tea with Kate. Her first happy memory since her release from The Dark Room.

A/N: I'm really late in updating, and I'm sorry for that. I just need to get through finals, so my updates will be a little irregular throughout May. Though rest assured that I will do my best to update as frequently and quickly as possible. Good luck to all of the others who are facing finals as well. Do your best!

Thank you to everyone who reviews, follows, favorites, and reads. We broke the pattern of reviews equaling the chapter number, but that's okay because it means I get more feedback to read! I hope that this story will continue to satisfy you as we progress. I know there's not much Pricefield so far, but I'm going for the slow path.