Max had to strain her eyes to make anything out in the dim candlelight of the underground room. This wasn't the kind of place that had ever felt the warmth of the sun.

It would be so much easier if she could just think. But everything was so dull and foggy. Max knew she should care, should be terrified of the thin tube which had been feeding a steady stream of some liquid into her body through the IV, but she just couldn't seem to get worked up about it.

She was leaning back, half way between standing up and lying down on the sturdy metal frame to which she was securely bound. Thick metal at her wrists, ankles, knees, elbows, neck and waist left her without even enough freedom to thrash and jerk in her bonds.

She was also naked.

That should have been particularly troubling. But in the muddy fog of her weary mind, not even the thought that she should be concerned lasted long. It faded to mist and a glassy emptiness came over her eyes.

Time passed strangely as the flame of the candle wavered and sputtered. First going in a great rush, the world buzzing around her as she drifted, only for single moment no different from any other to stop and hang for what seemed like an eternity. And then drifting slowly and lazily forward.

Things happened. People came and went, poked and prodded. The IV was disconnected and sense started to return, oh so gradually. The fear finally came, then, all-consuming and almost comfortingly familiar. This wasn't the first dungeon she had been drugged and held in. Looming men with dark, shadowed faces looked down at her with cold, empty eyes. Unlike last time there was no lust or satisfaction in their gaze as they surveyed her naked, bound body. You had to see someone as human in order to enjoy degrading them. They looked at her with the calm, businesslike pragmatism of a carpenter looking at a piece of wood.

As clarity returned she struggled, fought with all of her non-existent strength. They discussed her attempted resistance calmly, unhurried. The drugs were suggested, then dismissed. Instead they simply hurt her, one man stepping forward with a long, shiny object. A spark of electricity dancing between two prongs, interrupted by flesh as the device was pressed into her arm.

There was no more room for observation. For thought, analysis or even fear. There was only pain, agony surging through her with an all-consuming immediacy which made Max miss even the dull oblivion of whatever drug they had used to keep her docile.

Once Max's voice was too ragged to keep screaming, her muscles too tormented to respond to her brains signals, they stepped back, the cruel device drawn blessedly away. Max lay, trembling, as needle after needle was inserting into her body. Warm red blood drawn away through plastic tubes, drop after drop.

So much.

Too much.

If this kept up there wouldn't be any left for her.

The men were talking among themselves, faces smiling and hands patting backs. There was the distinctive pop of a cork as celebration began and Max knew that leaving enough for her was not in any way a concern.

The draining continued and Max trembled.

Then woke, scrambling to the edge of her hospital bed to vomit out seemingly everything she had ever eaten. Chloe asked questions, muttered condolences, then simply held her for hours as she wept.

Chloe did her best to keep her voice steady and even, doing nothing to betray the tension that had been growing steadily over the last few days.

"Max, I really think you should reconsider the offer."

Her girlfriend didn't move from her place, head nestled comfortably between Chloe's breasts.

"I can't see the hospital's psychiatrist Chloe. Most of the stuff I am traumatized by technically didn't happen."

"Doesn't mean it didn't fuck you up, Max. Erased timeline or not, it happened to you."

Max sighed. "Yeah, but I can't exactly say that, can I? At least not without getting committed."

"So make shit up, lie your ass off. Find something close enough to what you suffered and that they can believe. Max, this shit is not okay. Your nightmares are getting hella scary."

Max didn't respond, staying still in Chloe's embrace while her girlfriend continued.

"You are the strongest person I know, Max, but when shit gets too hard you….you retreat. You just lock yourself down and cut yourself off. Like….when dad died and you got carted off to Seattle. You cut yourself off and neither of us dealt with things and it fucked us up for years."

Max shimmied her way up the bed until her head was on the pillow, her big blue eyes looking into Chloe's from only an inch or so away.

"I will try and think of something that could work and if I come up with something I will use it, but I have one condition."

Chloe nodded. With any luck it would be something sexual.

"Go with Joyce and David, like they asked."

Chloe groaned. Of course it was the one damn thing she least wanted to do.

"Seriously, Max? You are going to condemn me to family counselling with David?"

"Hey, if I have to deal with my issues so do you. Mental health for everyone."

Why did she have to be so fucking close? With those fucking eyes, so loving and sincere?

"Dude, going to family therapy with him means labelling him family. You do get that right?"

Max nodded, eyes unchanging.

"Just give it a try. One session. If the therapist is being an asshole or…..siding with David or if it just isn't working, you don't have to go back."

Chloe grit her teeth. As odious as the idea of pouring her heart out while David was in the same room was, if it was the price for getting Max to seek help with the nightmares that had plagued her every night for the last few days she would gladly pay it.

Only Max fucking Caulfield could talk her into this.

"Alright, fine, guess I can use it as a chance to mock David in front of an audience. Could be fun."

Her girlfriends face lit up and once more Chloe couldn't believe how lucky she was. Every damn day Max just got cuter.

"To getting better together," Max said and leaned forward.

The kiss was slow, gentle and long.

The sun was bright, warm and strong. Birds happily tweeted out whatever inane bullshit birds considered worth communicating (probably boasts about how good they were at bird sex, if Chloe's understanding of nature wasn't too far off the mark). Insects lazily drifted here and there. The grass was green, the trees were leafy and above all else the street outside the family therapists office was not a fucking hospital.

Chloe breathed in deep, delighting in her first whiff of free air in what felt like an eternity. This was probably going to go shit, but it might be worth it just to get out of the hospital for a bit. She was pretty much recovered, now, and getting dangerously close to the point where the Doctors would have her literally thrown out. She really should have left the hospital a week ago, but sharing a room with Max was simply too great an opportunity to pass up.

Not to mention the way letting Max out of her sight left her with a tense, queasy, uncomfortable twisting in her stomach. As if this bright, beautiful future they had stumbled into was some sort of dream that could vanish in an instant. Max had turned almost everything in her shit life to gold, and was now diligently working on that last little bit by forcing her to deal with her family problems. Being away from her was fucking terrifying, as if all the changes she had wrought were a house of cards she had been holding together, doomed to fall apart in her absence.

Chloe snorted and rolled her eyes, forcing away her paranoid melodrama. She was getting dangerously close to being the clingiest bitch in the universe. Striding forward confidently, Chloe found her mother and the step-soldier waiting by the door to the office.

Guilt stabbed at her as soon as she saw the pathetic relief on her mother's tired face.

Fuck, I really should have texted once Max talked me into this.

"What up, party people?" Chloe greeted, causing her mother's eyes to twinkle in amusement and David's perpetual frown to deepen.

"Chloe, thank you so much for coming." Joyce said.

"Y'know me," Chloe replied. "Anything to keep the peace. 'Cause I am all about that fam."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP you goddamned DICKTATOR!" Chloe roared at David, hands clenching painfully around the chair she had picked up to throw.

"Go on you ungrateful little shit, throw it. You will just fuck it up the way you do everything in your goddamn life. Escalate things to violence and just see how that ends for you." David snarled, standing on the other side of the room.

In the chair between them, Joyce wept.

The self-proclaimed therapist, who had explained that his main purpose in early sessions was to observe, sat behind a desk taking notes.

Chloe slammed the chair back to the floor. "Yeah, you would fucking love that wouldn't you. An excuse to give me another black eye. That's all you have, isn't it? Fucking violence. Don't know how to parent, don't know how to cook your own fucking food, don't know how to do your goddamn job and keep Rachel safe."

At this point David was trembling with rage, hands clenched into fists with the effort of not striking out physically.

"Better to fail at doing the right thing then succeed at doing the right thing YOU FUCKING PUNK! Drugs, graffiti, stealing, you oughta take a good hard look at yourself before you think you are fit to judge anyone else. I might not be perfect but I served my country! Combat changes -"

"Oh holy hella fucking shit we get it! You served in the waaaaaaaaar! Congratulations, you shot at brown people for oil! Guess that totally makes it okay to stomp your army boots into my life and start swinging your dick around like anyone is fucking impressed! All I fucking had in the world was my mother and my home and you just had to fucking take them for yourself! And then you fucking judge me for taking the only fucking option to deal with it? I might be a punk fuck up but at least I am still young enough that it is endearing instead of revolting, and young enough to bounce back! You? You are fucking done. A bitter old asshole who uses military training and a position of authority to take your war rage out on teenage girls. It's literally your job to make people feel safe yet all you do is terrorize and intimidate! Congratulations, dozens of teenagers live in fear of you! I had to steal a goddamn gun just to feel safe in my own home."

David's rage seemed to leave him all at once and he fell heavily into his chair.

"I…..I never meant for any of that, Chloe. It….No one ever…..explained how to be a father. Emotional stuff doesn't come easy to me and…I fell back on what I know. How I was raised."

Chloe leaned heavily on her chair.

"I didn't want a father. I already fucking had one, the best one, and I am not accepting replacements. All I ever wanted from you was respect and distance. I never got it. You even set up secret cameras throughout the house!"

David looked down, expression more morose then angry now. "Never showed it either. If you want respect you should…..you should show it."

"I was a teenager and you were the dude banging my mum. Of course I had a problem with you. You didn't have to try and fucking…take over my life. You couldn't have just…put up with it and let me get it out of my system? I was sixteen. I wasn't supposed to be the mature one."

"I thought I could give you a firm hand. To get back on track." David mumbled.

"Well all you ever gave me was something to rebel against."

David sighed, rubbing red eyes. "I know I have made mistakes, Chloe but I do love you, even if –"

"No."

Everyone in the room looked at her in confusion, her interruption of David's confession clearly an even bigger offense then trying to throw furniture. She had no choice but to continue.

"You don't love me. That isn't some sort of…..fucking failing. You would have to be some sort of fucking masochist to, with the way we act to each other. It's okay to have a problem with me…..hell I don't even love me. Fuck even my own mother barely manages to."

Joyce looked up, horrified surprise on her face and a denial on her lips but now that Chloe had started she couldn't stop.

"But even you have enough of a heart to know how fucked up it is to hate your girlfriend's daughter, so you invent this idea. A fake me, a Chloe you can love. One who isn't such a "fucking punk". Then you expect me to be her, treat me as if I am, and get pissed off when I don't follow the fucking script. Well, too fucking bad. This is the Chloe you get. Leave it or leave it."

Once Chloe was done, no one was wiling to fill the silence that remained. It stretched on, scars torn open and three people's hearts breaking. Until finally the therapist looked up, smiled, and said.

"I am afraid that that is all we have time for."

For the first time the whole session, Chloe and David agreed on something. Both of them wanted to punch the man in the face.

Chloe fell back onto her bed, too keyed up and raw to go to Max's as she had so many times lately. Tonight was gonna be a solo night.

"It really went that bad?" Max asked quietly.

"Full Springer in less than 20."

"I'm sorry, Chlo."

The photographer was safely swaddled, blankets up to her chin and her head sinking deep into her pillow. Chloe smiled over at her adorable girlfriend, grateful for the image after her shitty day.

"It's okay, Max. It was worth a shot, and I needed the push. Maybe…maybe I also needed to get some of that out." Years of pent up emotions that had been boiling under the surface spilling out. Like lancing a boil. Or taking an epic megashit after way the fuck too much Taco Bell.

She hadn't let everything out, of course. Some pains were too precious to be let go of. So big a part of who she was now that releasing them would be to tear a down a foundation she had already built upon, for good or ill.

Like the gnawing emptiness she had felt after sneaking back into a home she had run away from only to find that, in her absence, her mother was happy for the first time in years. The realization that she was the thing standing between her mother and happiness stealing the fire from her eyes and the strength from her limbs as she sat on the stairs and listened.

Or the first time David hit her, a year later. This was it. The line that could not be crossed. This would be enough. This would be the end of the hostile takeover of her home. She had been right, in a way. It had been the end, just not how she had expected. She had looked to her mother, blood on her lip and triumph in her eyes. Only for Mrs. Madsen to avert her eyes. The annexation of the Price household had finally come to an end, in decisive victory for the invading forces.

Max smiled at her, warm and gentle. And it wasn't as if all that ceased to matter, it had left it's mark on her, shaped her for the rest of her life. But in the curve of those lips she loved so very much, there was a peace to finally be found. The pains of her past weren't so heavy a burden to bear, now that she had a future.

Chloe slipped into sleep, thinking of the girl whose return had given her a reason to get up in the morning. She dreamed strange dreams, of red wine spilled onto a white carpet slowly forming into the shape of a heart. People tried to scrub it out, one after another, but the stain stubbornly remained.

She dreamed of storms, of a light too bright to be snuffed out no matter how dark the room, of shapeless shifting male figures each more menacing then the last. She dreamed of the Lighthouse, beautiful and strong, weathering whatever came.

Finally, she dreamed of Rachel. Her angel, garbed in denim and plaid, golden mane the only halo she needed. Rachel held her, as gently and insistently as the fog of sleep. Chloe snuggled deep into her arms and delighted in her warmth. Rachel was saying something, but somehow it wasn't as important as the feel of her body.

The model stroked her hair and leaned down, bringing her lips right to Chloe's ear in an attempt to be heard. Chloe smiled, curling her body around the other girl happily and moving her head closer to feel the press of those lips one more time.

"Wow," Rachel hummed. "A girl who loves you more then anything and you are still desperate to snuggle up to someone else. Guess we have more in common than I thought!"

Chloe lashed out, rage and shame mingling in a burst of motion, and the gentle dream of Rachel disappeared like morning fog chased away by the sun.

The first thing she saw as she bolted up in bed was the thin man in tattered clothes standing over Max's bed, the gun in his hand pointed down at the sleeping time traveler.