A world without Chloe? No thanks.
"So, say you had…one week left to live. What would you do with it?" Max questioned Chloe out-of-the-blue one day as she reclined in Chloe's desk chair while the other girl lay on her stomach across the bed, propped up on her elbows, flipping through a magazine. Chloe only gave her a skeptical look.
"What kind of profound hipster shit question is that Max?" she said, returning to her magazine. Max rolled her eyes and hopped off the chair, making her way to the bed, and plopped herself beside Chloe. She snatched the magazine away from her and held it just out of arm's reach. "Hey!" Chloe protested, making a noncommittal grab toward the captive mag, but Max brushed her hand away.
"Just answer the question," Max insisted, wagging the magazine teasingly. Chloe huffed, and folded her arms underneath her.
"I don't know? I mean, there's nothing I really regret not doing I guess. Maybe spend time with you and mom, even the step-dick, if I'm feeling sentimental. I'm really not sure, what's my budget?"
Max shrugged.
"Whatever you have now, but you could always borrow money, and it wouldn't matter, you'd be dead before you had to pay it back."
Chloe contemplated the new information, pursing her lips.
"I'd take out a loan, and get life assurance, and then I'd probably bring my mom on a vacation somewhere. We haven't even left the state since before dad…I'd bring you too, if you wanted to come. I might go see my uncle too. I haven't seen him in years but…apart from that? Not much…" she trailed off, allowing a silence to fall between them. Max wordlessly relinquished possession of the magazine, but Chloe only let it rest in the space in front of her.
"Okay, your turn," she piped up after a few minutes, breaking the quiet suddenly and startling Max, "if you could live forever, what would you do with it?"
"Like, 'Forever' forever?"
"Well, maybe until the world becomes uninhabitable, or something. Or gets over taken by flesh-eating zombies."
"Well…" Max mused leaning back, propping herself on her arms, "I'd learn a whole bunch of things, languages, or how to do all kinds of weird stuff. I'd probably try learn how to do a Rubik's cube. Seems like that might take a few centuries. And-oh but wait…" she stopped suddenly, realizing something, "what about you?"
"Me?"
"I'd…outlive you. You're not immortal, can I make you immortal too?"
Chloe smiled warmly, "nope," she said, popping the 'p' and Max frowned.
"Then I don't want to be immortal. Like, my parents are probably going to die before me, so even in this life I'm outliving them, but you? Those five years in Seattle were kind of awful. I don't think I could handle you dead."
Chloe looked at her, unable to speak. It was a weird look, fleeting, but it was gone before Max could place it.
"You'd give up immortality for me?"
"A world without Chloe Price is not a world I want to live in," she said, resulting in being tackle-hugged by the blue-haired girl in question.
A world without Chloe Price is hardly worth living in.
Sneaky dealing with canon themes is sneaky.
Chloe lived for a week longer than she was meant to
Max has all the time in the world at her fingertips.
In response to a few people requesting it, I'm in the process of uploading this to ff.n, my ff.n username being manicmethod. Due to me, myself, royally fucking up, it's a slower process than it should be as a result of corrupt source files, and so it'll take another day or two for me to actually get it all up. Thank you for your feedback and your patience.