Disclaimer: I own the rights to more or less nothing seen here, nothing from Life is Strange or the Public Radio Alliance or Pacific Northwest Stories. This is entirely a fanbased work for personal enjoyment.
Epilogue: The Yule
Though he had not touched the stuff himself since leaving Oregon just over a week ago, Nic rose from his perch on the lid of his own cooler, once upon a time used for camping, and gestured to it as his new arrival hung a jacket up on the long, dark wooden coat rack beside the door to the Seattle Public Radio Alliance offices. More specifically, the coat rack, the cooler and the folding table around which the red cooler and four disparate chairs were arrayed had been shoved into the main office, not Nic's small recording studio turned office. He had quite enough to haul out of there any time he wanted to do an actual recording without adding the fixings for an impromptu party on Christmas Eve, something that was only happening because he had finished production on the Arcadia Bay episode early. Unlike Chloe and Max who had yet to arrive, his first guest did not have anyone to rush off to to spend his Christmas with, so as Geoff freed himself of his jacket and stretched, Nic saw his eyes shoot for the cooler.
I guess neither of us really have anyone to spend Christmas with, Nic thought, before shrugging the idea off. The desk in the corner, usually reserved for the intern assigned to Tanis, was piled high with both her files and his. He felt bad about it, but Nic had been forced to record a last minute addition to the end of this episode hours ago and that had necessitated clearing his desk. T'was the night before Christmas, he mused as Geoff called a greeting.
"Merry Christmas," the man opened with, before rubbing at his apparently still cool hands. Nic had not seen Geoff in person since their return to Seattle. Since then, he had had a lot of time to think. There was little else to do when you could not sleep and you were trying to follow 'good sleep hygiene' by not engaging with anything with a screen after a certain hour. Mostly, his thoughts were about Tanis, the wider implications of his time in Oregon and about a clearing in a woods he had most likely hallucinated. Occasionally, though, he thought about the people he had spent that weekend with. Not the least of these was the tall, average built man with a smile that Nic now saw as slightly more strained and some sort of issue with back pain. Nic had, out of curiosity, looked up the medications Geoff took. He wasn't sure how happy the man would be about that, but his journalistic impulses extended to every corner of his life, especially his Tanis life. As a result, Nic saw Geoff in a new light. It was a light that made him very, very glad to see the man walking into the Public Radio Alliance studio.
"Merry Christmas," Nic responded. "Grab a beer and I'll even have one with you."
"That's getting into the holiday spirit," Geoff told him. The man crossed the room, an act which really only took four or five good strides and lifted up the lid on Nic's cooler. "You're feeling better, then?" Nic pushed his hair back from his face. It was getting to the point where he was either going to need a cut or he needed to think about getting a hair tie for times when he needed to look half presentable. Though, there was probably going to be a good week or two more where his hair was just too long to look good and too short to put up.
"Yeah," Nic told the man. "Yeah, I just needed a lot of sleep." He only wished he had gotten a lot of sleep. Geoff came up with a couple of bottles of Guiness, pulled an amused face and settled them both onto the table. Nic took one and settled back onto the lid of the cooler. Geoff took the nearest seat to Nic's right and grabbed for the bottle opener on his keychain. Nic had one sitting around here, somewhere, but Geoff passed his keys over, waited for Nic to pop his top and then gestured for him to set them down on the table. "It got a little crazy out there."
"A little?" Geoff said. "Hallucinations, time travel, sharing dreams - "
"Yeah," Nic answered, chuckling. "I take your point." Nic wasn't sure what it was about the idea of reuniting with the women that evening that appealed to Geoff. The veteran had, certainly, developed some form of friendly bond for a while with Chloe Price and while they had not parted ways unkindly, it had hardly been under terms that suggested they would all have fun getting together for an impromptu party on Christmas Eve. Nic still remembered his confusion in the morning when he found the text telling him that the women had taken off in the middle of the night. It wasn't as if they had had any plans to go back into Arcadia Bay together: Nic had had quite enough of that for a lifetime. It was just a bit jarring to find them gone without any kind of formal or even informal goodbye. He hoped that, whatever form 'talking to Rachel Amber' took the two of them had gotten in and out of Arcadia Bay safe that last time. On the plus side, when Nic had first contacted them a couple of days prior to let them know that he was going to finish the episode of Tanis featuring their hometown before Christmas Eve, Chloe and Max had sounded, at least, somewhat excited, if not downright friendly.
"You ready?" the man beside Nic asked as Nic raised his drink to his lips and pulled at the first of the ice cold beer. Really, though, Nic wasn't sure how to answer that. He was certainly confident in his work both on the narration and the production of his episode. Despite the fact that he knew that a big part of the reason the women were cutting into their Christmas Eve time with Max's parents was the promise of previewing the episode whose working title was 'A Weekend in Arcadia Bay.' However, there was a slight problem, a surprise which he did not think the women were guaranteed to take too kindly to. He had kept that to himself thus far, but there was only so long he could continue to do that. Pairing that with Max's announcement that she and Chloe had had a question about 'something you said when we first met' and Nic had to admit he was a little nervous about the gathering. The way Max had phrased it made it seem like a minor curiosity, but when Nic pressed she had just insisted they would ask in person and something about that struck Nic as being anything but a minor curiosity.
"As ready as I can be," Nic said. "How about you, how've you been? It's been a bit."
"A whole week and a half," Geoff pretended to agree, his tone a bit teasing. "I've been good. Just doing my usual: morning workout, veg out in front of the tv and put in that nine-to-five in between. You know, just a normal guy doing normal people things." Methinks he doth protest too much, Nic thought, shaking his head. He wasn't amused at the lack of acknowledgement that Geoff was carrying around some combinations of medication that suggested he might be dealing with some sort of severe anxiety issues, maybe even Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The amusement came from the idea that Geoff was 'just a normal guy'. Nic wasn't always sure of much about the brunet in front of him, but he knew better than to be that gullible. "Well, either way, you look like you're doing better."
"I've been fine ever since we left Arcadia Bay," Nic promised.
"That's not what I meant." Nic lowered his bottle to the table, left hand resting just beside it. "You looked like shit when you came to the bar to pitch Arcadia Bay to me. Maybe this Blur messed with you mid op, but everything wasn't copacetic before that." Nic sighed and leaned forward. Maybe he has a point.
"I'm not sure what's worse; remembering parts of the Calm, not remembering the Cabin or the things that I say during the hypnotherapy sessions with Dr. Bernier. Whenever she tries to pull the Cabin out of me, all she gets is – nonsense. But it's really disturbing nonsense. I guess I was focusing a lot on all of that and the whole thing with Cameron Ellis." Geoff nodded and took a long sip. "I haven't exactly slept like a stone since then, actually, but I guess it has gotten better."
"Did you figure out what to do about Ellis?" Nic smiled, a little ruefully.
"Yeah. Yeah, I have." A small silence descended on the room. This might be an amazing time for Nic to bring up his concern for Geoff's mental state but somehow it felt unkind to do. Or perhaps he felt like there was an unbalance in their friendship and speaking up challenged that unbalance, risking the friendship, or at least risking bringing it under the kind of scrutiny that might end it. Nic raised his bottle to his lips. After a few seconds, the moment passed. "I wonder how this'll go."
"Well, I like Chinese, so works for me," Geoff answered, as if unaware of the delicate topics and details at play in the coming evening. Nic did not think he was so clueless, but he wasn't sure if Geoff thought or had thought as deeply about all of this as Nic had. "When are the rest of the guests getting here?"
"Max and Chloe should be any minute now," Nic mused, looking up at the time displayed on his hi-fi across the room. "They were happy we were doing it early enough that they won't miss some family tradition of the Caulfields or something." Geoff nodded, turning his eyes on his beer as if it held his attention, and then the man smiled with a sly grin on his face. Slowly his eyes shifted toward Nic.
"And the rest?" he queried.
"Later," Nic told the man, his voice as like a brick wall as he could make it: firm, passionless and impassable. Nic did not feel like going down that road with Geoff. Who knew where that conversation led? "You can't really tie her down to a particular time and she doesn't really trust it if you try to." That was all he really wanted to say on the subject.
"That's fair," Geoff answered. "I get it. Element of surprise and all that." Nic only held back rolling his eyes with the greatest of effort. Besides, it wasn't as if Nic didn't suspect himself that that was precisely the woman's reasoning. Nic glanced about the room for a change in subject. Soon enough, the Hi-Fi on the small table in the corner would be all the distraction they needed, but for now he thought it could do them the favor of a little bit of music. Smack dab in the middle of the table, beside Geoff's keys, sat a small, square remote which only needed a moment or two of button pressing before the sound of music began to pipe from the small, if high quality speakers on the device in question. It was a simple FM alt rock station but, it would do the trick for some decent atmosphere. While Nic was perched on the lid of his cooler, there were still three empty chairs around the table, not counting the one occupied by Geoff in the moment. Certainly they would be more comfortable, but Nic was raised to put guest comfort over his own, even if that meant he had to jump up every time someone wanted a drink. And since Chloe and Geoff will be in the same room... Nic was close to voicing his sudden concern that they might want to make an emergency run to a nearby liquor store when the sound of fists against his door cut across The Revivalists coming from his stereo.
There was a chance, however small, that the insistent knocking came from someone working in one of the other spaces in the complex. Nic didn't think the music was too loud, certainly below the volume it would take to drown out comfortable conversation. More likely, though, he thought as he rose from his seat and made for the door, the guests of honor had arrived. He heard Geoff dig through the cooler he had just been sitting on. The old knob turned beneath his hand and the pale door swung inward. Sure enough, pressed to the side of a woman with bright blue hair (bluer than the last time Nic had seen her suggesting a fresh dye job) was a small brunette with a bag around her shoulders and another bag, this one plastic and disposable, hanging from her left hand. The girls were linked at the arms.
"Merry Christmas," Chloe greeted, lifting her right hand up to show off a twelve pack hanging from her grasp. At least it didn't look like there were any trips to the liquor store in Nic's future. He stepped aside, trying his best to appear the welcoming, gracious host. The truth of the matter was that while it was not unpleasant to see the women, their appearance did heighten his anxiety a bit. Nic gestured inside as Max raised the plastic bag up in a similar gesture to Chloe's. The pair entered.
"Hey, come on in," Nic told them. "You do remember that I ordered Chinese right?" he queried Max, as he had a feeling that the bag came from some kind of takeout place and it was rather large.
"Yes," she answered, "And I fucking love it. So, here." Without explanation, the brunette shoved the bag into Nic's hands. All he could tell right off the top was that it contained a box inside of it, and whatever was inside of that was actually fairly warm. As the couple entered, Nic shook his head and brought the bag to his stretch of the table. The door shut behind Chloe who entered last and strode across the room toward Geoff.
"Hey there big guy," Chloe said in way of greeting. Nic watched her offer a fairly large smile, one in contrast to the smaller, if merrier smile her girlfriend wore.
"Cheers," Geoff answered, tilting the neck of his bottle toward her for a moment. "How are you doing?" he asked Max. While Nic opened the plastic bag to get to Max's mystery package, he saw that Geoff had retrieved drinks enough for Max and Chloe, as well as another for himself and Nic. All in all, it looked like Geoff was ready to get the party going. Nic couldn't entirely blame him, mind you, but he was going to have to take it easy on the drink until such time as they finished what they had all come here to do. Well, maybe the biggest thing emotionally we came to do? Nic did consider this a bit of a Christmas party. Perhaps some of the more important people in the long term were missing: his parents, Alex, MK, but there were still friends here, gathering about a tiny folding table in his cramped little office space as X Ambassador played in the background. About that, Nic had no doubt.
"I'm alright," Max told the man. Nic tried to listen to her voice to see if she was lying, to see how alright she truly was, but had trouble reading her. That, he thought, only made sense. "Hungry, thirsty, can't wait to hear what's going on with the episode." Nic swallowed. Oh, boy. Max did seem, for the moment, to be in a good mood. He just hoped that it held up when he gave them the news. Then again, he looked at Chloe as she reached for the bottle opener on the table and sought to begin her own drinking. Maybe Max isn't the one I should be worried about.
"You look like Christmas came early," Geoff told the shorter woman.
"Max got promoted," Chloe told them as Nic freed long, thin white box from the bag in front of him. The box was warm as hell and if Nic didn't know better, he'd say he smelled something sweet. Chloe sounded absolutely proud to fill them in, but that pride was eclipsed by the tone of near fawning in her voice when she corrected herself. "Well, it's more like she walked in and demanded a promotion from the asshole she works with and finally got it." The bluenette looked at Max with something that spoke of carnality in her eyes, so Nic decided it was best not to think too deeply on the gaze.
"If I have to work on this side of a gallery, I want to be helping people find what they're looking for," Max said, rolling her eyes at the look Chloe had shot her. "Not to mention help photographers sell their work, so this is great."
"That is awesome," Nic echoed. He reached out a hand for a shake. "Congratulations – and Merry Christmas." To his immense relief, the smaller woman seized it and gave him one firm shake before joining her partner and settling down around the flimsy table.
"So, have you been good, Geoff?" Max asked.
"No ma'am, good is boring. I like to misbehave."
"Good man," Chloe echoed. Unable to entirely resist opening the box in front of him, one which he now caught Chloe side eyeing, Nic did not join in on the banter as it unfolded to Chloe being a poor influence on Geoff. As if Geoff needed a poor influence. He reached down, found the lower edges of the side of the box and lifted the lid. Nic was hit in the face immediately with the smell of sweat, warm pastries. Dear god.
"Fresh donuts on Christmas Eve? At this hour?" Max flashed a thumbs up.
"They're sort of my go to, especially when I'm carb loading with Chinese food." Oh, right.
"I made sure to order a bit extra in the way of lo mein and pepper chicken for anyone who might be extra hungry," he told her. "They deliver to me all the time out here, so sometimes they toss in a little extra anyway. Consider this me paying them back a bit." When no one immediately spoke up in answer, Nic barely suppressed a frown. The punk sat with a beer at her lips, her hair swept back and a little out of order, torn tee entirely unbefitting for a winter's day. The photographer's hands rested on the table in front of her folded over and she had not yet removed her old, dark gray jacket, as if she were still cold. Even Geoff quietly spun his bottle between his hands as if bored. It was, he knew, his cue.
"So," Chloe started, leaning forward and rubbing her hands together. He nodded toward the twelve pack on the table in front of her and then gestured to the cooler he had been about to perch on again.
"Beer's there, toss some of yours in if you want."
"That's not what I was excited for," Chloe told him, looking a little bit dejected. Nic knew that. He wasn't sure if it was anxiety or just the urge to string everyone along a few more seconds that kept him from diving right into the feature presentation. Probably a bit of both, Nic admitted to himself. In retrospect, that felt a little bad, though, because he realized that the others were probably as anxious as he was. "But a good idea."
"Right," Nic said, before nodding toward the door to his own, smaller recording booth turned office. While Chloe opened the box she had brought in with her, Max and Geoff followed his gesture as Nic made for the door. He left the table, his guests and the donuts behind. Listening to the sounds of Chloe retrieving can after can and trying to fit them into the, admittedly, small cooler already fairly full of ice and drink did keep Nic from feeling any kind of separation from the 'party' as it were when he crossed into his office. The desk was mostly clear for the moment, a couple of small files and his recording equipment were the only real clutter. What Nic's eyes landed on and he snatched up from the desk was a brand new, sleek blue flash drive. Nic seized the drive and strode back out of the room, only to walk face first into a flash of white light. When Nic had had a second to blink away his surprise, he saw Max Caulfield only a step or two away from him, grinning presumably at how off guard she had managed to catch him. The camera held between her hands began to emit the polaroid and Nic shook his head at her as she reached for it.
"Sorry, saw my opportunity to get a good shot of you in action. I only really got one picture of you in Arcadia Bay and it didn't seem very fair to you." For a second, Nic thought about having a talk with her about what she might do with the photographs and then decided against it. People who valued privacy as much as Max and Chloe did were unlikely to violate his own. Nic held up the flashdrive for the room to see, though Geoff was more interested in the hot glazed donut held in his right hand. Nic chuckled.
"I wanna see it when it develops," he told Max, who shrugged as if to say it was his and then placed the photo down on the table beside the Hi-Fi. "But I guess it's time to start?"
"I'm good for that," Chloe told him. Nic found the port and slid the flash drive into place. While the three of them quipped about whether or not Max had earned a drink that day (Nic was with Chloe and Geoff on this one: a promotion, especially around the holidays, was worth celebrating) Nic did his best to access the files on the drive without too much delay. A small beep signified that the file had been loaded under Nic's expert button mashing.
"Didn't you say there'd be someone else?" Max asked him. Nic shrugged.
"Yeah, but no telling when they'll show," he told the woman, passing behind her and her lover as he returned to his perch atop the now significantly more full cooler. His left hand ran absentmindedly across the knees of his dark jeans, as if he were dusting himself off for some reason and with his right he found purchase on the remote sitting on the small card table near his beer. "Best just to get on with it," he counseled, holding the small remote aloft. While he sensed a certain shared trepidation in Max's face, Geoff and Chloe wore matching looks of poorly contained eagerness. The two really were somewhat alike in ways that an outside observer, who had never seen them interact but spotted them together out and about would never have understood.
"In that case," Chloe said, "go! We pause for Chinese and nothing less!" A bit awkward at everyone's exuberance, Nic pressed play and watched the familiar two or three seconds of silence shift forward. They're going to kill me when they find out, he told himself. Frankly, MK had already threatened to have his head checked for his decision. Someone, and Nic did not turn to look at who, popped the top of another beer. He hoped it wasn't Geoff. Nic closed his eyes and grabbed at his own drink when his voice began to sound through the speakers. Nic knew he was unlikely to ever get used to listening to his own work with others who were genuinely interested in it. That was alright though. He was among friends.
"From the Public Radio Alliance and Minnow Beats Whale, it's Tanis. I'm Nic Silver. We're telling the story of Tanis in order every two weeks, so if you're new to Tanis, you should go back and start at the beginning. We'll try not to get too far ahead. We'll be here when you get back."
Chloe figured that, judging by the look on his face, his clenched fists in his lap whenever he was not holding onto the bottle or standing up to get someone another drink, this whole thing had felt like hell for Nic. His rigid posture and the tension in his neck evidenced by his frequent attempts throughout the episode to relieve it by popping it were big indicators, but she had to be honest. The man's clenched jaw and his unwillingness to look anyone directly in the face were the biggest giveaways. Chloe kind of got it, though, she thought as she jabbed her fork into a pile of noodles in front of her. This whole experience had been terribly personal for Chloe and Max and the idea that they had put that out there for everyone to hear sometimes still made Chloe sit up in the middle of the night from a nightmare. Max had been kind enough to pretend that she had not been on the receiving end of most of them, but sometimes not even Max was that good an actress.
"So, there it was. I had spent the weekend with someone who styled themselves a mass murderer inside of the town which they claim they had killed. It took me some time to process both of the stories these women gave me. The trip back to Seattle gave me some peace and quiet and with the Blur back in the realm of bad memories, I had the focus to do just that. What I reflected on was not just the narrative that Chloe and Max had spun for me and not even the stories of people like Rachel Amber, Nathan Prescott and Mark Jefferson, who were so integral to their stories. What I thought about as I rode back to the Public Radio Alliance studios was all the strangeness in the world, all the strangeness in the universe. There is still so much which I do not understand, which I don't think we're supposed to understand. I thought about life and love and a town unusually marred and I decided that I just couldn't agree with the idea of Max as some kind of selfish, cold-blooded killer. I know I'm not the judge of good and evil, but I have come to know something else, as well.
There are dangerous things.
But I don't always think we get what we deserve.
It's Tanis. I'm Nic Silver. We'll be back in two weeks with the next episode. Until then, keep looking."
Chloe leaned back, feeling a little more grim and a little less merry than she had been when she first arrived. That's alright. Everything sounds about right. At least, it sounded about as right as it could with Max's moment of self-loathing and self-doubt laid out for all the world to hear. I don't know what we're doing, here. Chloe had always been dubious about the idea of putting all of this out there. Now, after listening to it, her stomach felt like it had no bottom, she was suddenly cool enough to wish she hadn't left her jacket in the car and she wasn't sure how to tell Max or Nic, after all of this, that they could not release this. A grim sort of silence settled about the table. Max's frown, which Chloe marked as being the result of Nic contradicting her with his closing remarks, made Chloe a little bit afraid. Not afraid of Max, so much as of the fight that was going to result if she spoke her mind about her doubts about releasing the episode after all of the time, effort and energy expended by everyone in the room. Chloe bit her bottom lip.
A beep shattered the silence as Nic crossed the room and turned the Hi-Fi off. She watched him retrieve the flashdrive. Max seized the drink in front of her quickly, angrily, and emptied it. Glass clinked against ice inside of the cooler as Geoff fished out another bottle. As for Chloe, she turned to her second beer, which had remained mostly untouched throughout the length of this new episode of Tanis and stared at it. The rather excessive order of Chinese takeout sat arrayed in front of them, not as well dug into as it should be. Slowly, in the ensuing awkward silence, Chloe's left hand found her shitty, plastic fork and she picked at the lo mein on the paper plate in front of her. Finally, Max exhaled and Chloe shot her a look as the woman retrieved her chopsticks and started at her own meal. Chloe turned her eyes on Nic and Geoff as she chewed. Nic sat back down on the cooler, which rocked a bit beneath him before he readjusted. The man placed the flash drive in question down on the table and shoved it toward Chloe.
"For your records," Nic told her. The man smiled as if he had just made a joke. Chloe did not see a joke. She did not find anything funny about all of this. True, Chloe had had no delusions about her life, not before or after the Storm. To lay it all out for Nic, something she had not even done for her one non-Arcadia Bay friend, had been stressful enough. To hear it as the outside world would hear it, the truth instead of obfuscation, well, that had been devastating. Chloe had felt worse: the day she lost her father, the day she lost Max, the day she lost Rachel, the day she lost her hometown, even the day when she realized Max's emotional state had gotten so bad that she was a genuine danger to herself had all been so much more painful than this moment, but it robbed her of her voice. She reached out with her right hand and, feeling unnatural, grabbed the flashdrive and drew her arm back across the table. Chloe knew she should speak, that she needed to say something, but every time she tried to think of a response, all she wanted to do was say that that episode of Nic's, the culmination of his hard work and their mutual painful weekend, could never see the light of day.
It was ultimately selfish and so Chloe was relieved when a knock on the door sounded and Nic perked up suddenly, his attention redirected. Chloe's grief and anger fell quiet under her curiosity as she watched the stress drain out of Nic's face to be replaced by a kind of excitement as he rose. She raised an eyebrow.
"What's that about?" she asked the man.
"That's our last guest," Nic told her, staying still to the spot before raising his voice. "Door's open, come on in." The door swung open rather quickly and perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary. Without hesitation, a woman stepped into the room. Chloe narrowed her eyes at this woman. Maybe Chloe's age, she was definitely Max's height with similarly colored hair, though hers reached as far as possibly her mid back. Other than a pair of really stylized sunglasses which seemed to be all sharp angles and edges, she wore plain clothing: a dark blue top and a pair of jeans that looked like they had most certainly seen better days. Adding in the pair of chucks, Chloe rather thought that this woman and Max would have gotten along fine in their taste of clothes, even if Max rated a bit more on the hippie side than the hipster. Chloe might not have known their last guest, but, the more the merrier. Chloe was grateful for the distraction. There was no way she would have been able to keep her mouth shut without it. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it. This is just cold feet.
"Merry Christmas," the newcomer greeted. "Or Happy Holidays. Take your pick." The door all but slammed as the woman reached back and kicked it shut. Chloe blinked as the woman adjusted her laptop bag. She noticed the phone hanging from the brunette's hip and the way her eyebrow arched challengingly when no one spoke at first, though Nic so obviously stared. Why is she familiar? "What's going on? Did I just walk in on the lamest Christmas party in history or did someone die? Shit, did someone die?" She supposed it was rather quiet and somber for a party. Chloe shared a confused look with Max, who also seemed to be wholly distracted by the sudden shift in atmosphere and then it clicked.
"It's good to see you," Nic told the woman. "Come sit down. We've got Chinese and entirely too much beer."
"Or too little," Geoff posited in response before leaning down to fish a drink from the cooler whose lid Nic had just vacated. He came up rather quickly with a can of what Chloe and Max had brought. Chloe's attention, though, turned to this newcomer, waiting for any confirmation of her suspicion, one which Max had just begun to share, judging by the slightly teasing look on her face as her eyes shot between Chloe and the woman. Chloe wondered how best to ascertain if her hunch was correct when the newcomer turned her eyes on her and Max.
"Huh, just like the pictures. Fair enough," sounding mildly bored with her own words, the woman crossed to the table and lowered herself into a seat on Max's left. "You know, if you you guys are wanting to go a little more off the grid as far as social media, you'll want to start by getting rid of Facebook." The attitude was quick, blunt and to the point. It was almost respectable in a way. There was very little doubt left in Chloe's mind as to who they were being treated to an appearance by. I thought she was super paranoid and didn't go anywhere near people who knew who she was?
"Beerkatnip?" Geoff asked, offering a drink to the woman as she plopped down into her seat.
"Cute," she shot back, sounding unimpressed. The woman pushed her sunglasses up onto her head so that they helped hold back her hair and after staring at Geoff for a few seconds with appraising dark eyes, reached across the table and took the offered drink anyway. "But don't." Nic shrugged. "Thanks, Geoff."
"It's good to finally meet the elusive MK." Chloe did herself a favor and held her breath for a second. She did not mind looking openly at the woman, did not mind if anyone else saw. Yeah, she thought as MK made a half-assed gesture mimicking a toast, you know, under different circumstances, I could crush on this girl like mad. But I have everything I could ever want or need right here. Chloe turned away from Max, who had pulled a face at her. I just have to not piss her off until the new episode is released. After that there's nothing I can do to stop it.
"Hey, stop staring or I'm going to get the wrong idea," Max chided her.
"Same," MK announced, turning her attention back on the women. Max held out a hand to shake and Chloe followed suit. The hacker shrugged, reached out to give both women a quick handshake and then paused to lower her bag to the ground beside her with surprising care and tenderness. Chloe guessed that technology was important to her. Makes sense. "Right, so, I was promised drinks, dinner and a show."
"Already played the episode," Nic informed her. "I told you we'd be starting as soon as everyone got here."
"Eh, price you pay for free time, I guess," the woman responded.
"On the other hand," Nic told her, sounding more himself than he had since Chloe and Max had first arrived, "Max brought donuts. Fresh donuts."
"I can get behind that," MK told him, swiveling her head around toward the box in the center of the table, surrounded on all sides by takeout containers at least half-full of various dishes. Frankly, with her mind not as occupied by the potential repercussions of the episode being released, the smell of the food in front of her actually brought Chloe's appetite back. She returned to eating. "I'm a bit bummed out I won't get to hear the episode though. Only got to hear a couple of pieces and I know you worked your ass off on it."
"I'll tell you about it some time," Nic promised her, before returning to his beer-holding throne.
"What do you mean you won't get to hear it?" Chloe asked, offput. Surely Nic would give it to MK before being released, but even if not, well, "don't you listen to the show to make sure Nic here stays on the straight and narrow, unbiased and all that shit?" Actually, Chloe rather thought MK had revealed she listened to the podcast to make sure that Nic didn't 'make her look like an asshole', a feat which Chloe knew from experience was easy to do if you weren't someone who fucked around as often with too much small talk or who sugarcoated their every feeling. She was rather impressed to think that the only time he had made MK sound like an ass, the woman had been being one.
"Well, yeah, but - "
"But I won't be airing this episode." Max's fists closed so tightly that the can in her left hand dented slightly. Chloe watched her grow rigid, and her face pale. Even though warning sirens were going off in Chloe's head, she couldn't deny feeling very relieved at this revelation. Holy fuck, thank you, Nic Silver.
"Why?" Max asked suddenly. She did not sound angry, which surprised and relieved Chloe, but she sounded winded. She sounded like someone had kicked her in the gut. "After everything we went through, why?" Chloe understood. They had all kind of bled for this episode, metaphorically speaking.
"I could lie to you and tell you it's because I don't think the world's ready for time travel or dream walking or living elementals. I could tell you it's because it wasn't about Tanis. They're both true but that's not why."
"Then why?" Max asked, pained. Chloe was a little curious, too. She couldn't entirely understand why Nic would do this, no matter how happy she was that he had. Max, on the other hand, looked stressed out. She feels like we went through hell for nothing.
"Because in the end, it would mislead the listener." Max paused, as if she had not thought of this. Chloe shot her eyes past Max to MK, who shrugged very slightly and then Geoff who only stared directly at Max, his jaw set as if waiting on marching orders.
"W-why?" Quieter now than before, rather more like herself when talking about delicate subjects, Max looked at Nic with the eyes of someone who was truly listening to what they were hearing. She genuinely wanted to understand him now, instead of just vent her anger. Nic stared past Chloe at Max, rather like Geoff had been a moment ago and Chloe saw the two catch eyes, something which she knew Max had serious difficulty with, unless the other eyes were Chloe's.
"The story was told by people who are hurting too much. It was told in a way that paints good people like bad people."
"Isn't your journalistic duty to the truth?" Max challenged him.
"Yes, yes it is," Nic told her. The man leaned back in his seat, fixed a confident and comfortable look on his face and tried to reason with Max. He looked as if he believed in what he was doing and saying. "And theoretically, this is the story of a lifetime. Theoretically. I don't have the truth here. I have people in pain. I have peoples' memories. I have a scary story told in a graveyard and, to top it all off, I realized that it's not my story to tell." Shakily, the photographer exhaled and put her hands comfortably, carefully back down on the table. She did, however, look away from Nic and away from everyone else, to boot. This story would bring trouble down on me and Max. Best case scenario, it could put Max back in the hospital. This had been a risk Max had been all too eager to accept to begin with, but Chloe had tried her best to honor it as Max's choice. What Chloe had not known going in was that Max had been building up to a big reveal, one which painted her as a monster who killed everyone in her hometown town for purely selfish reasons. Maybe that had not been Max's intent originally: Chloe had noticed a marked change in the woman's behavior after standing in the remains of the Prescott Dormitories. Chloe exhaled, too, unaware she had been holding her breath.
"I understand," Max whispered. Chloe slid the flash drive into her pocket and patted it.
"That is the only copy of the episode that exists," Nic told her, his eyes slowly shifting from Max to her. Chloe rather liked this confident, self-assured Nic Silver. She knew that, to a degree, it was a face, a face she knew him well enough in their two days of close association to know was not entirely accurate. Then again, everyone wore faces sometimes. Max had plenty and some days Chloe wasn't sure she could recognize and see through them all. Chloe wore her own when it was necessary. She could not judge him. What she did know was that, under all of Nic's own trauma, under the secrets he was trying to get at lodged inside of his own brain, the confident, self-assured journalist was there, doing his job in the face of stressful situations. Throughout this entire conversation, MK continued to eat, as if interested but relatively unmoved by the scene in front of her. That was alright. She was, in a way, an outsider.
"Chloe, If you come to me within the next year and say you want me to have that, to publish that, I won't do it. If you come to me after that, the choice is yours. But I will have to add a note on, to say that I believe that much of the story they were about to hear is painted by the grief of being the only confirmed survivors of Arcadia Bay and not because either of you are bad people." Max's head lifted a bit, frown evident. "It might sound like I'm trying to call you both mentally unstable - but I'm not, and I don't want to have to do that. So think about it before you come back to me saying you want me to put this up." Nic looked away from Chloe, away from Max and nodded at MK who responded by waving a forkful of pepper chicken in the air. "In the meantime, my friend here will see to it that no one makes a bad choice and tries to upload it themselves." Chloe nodded. She did not think she could go head to head with Meerkatnip in a battle of technology, even if she wanted to see this episode released and their still new lives most likely ruined. MK plopped the bite into her mouth, raising an eyebrow tauntingly. Chloe had to admit she liked the woman challenging her from across the table, even if the challenge was entirely unnecessary.
"Well, now that we've got all that out of the way," MK started. Her next words were cut off entirely.
"Why do you keep saying that," Max hissed, somewhat angrily. MK froze and on the other side of the table, Geoff sat his drink down and folded his hands in front of him, looking patiently over at Max. Chloe turned toward Max, watching the frustration form on her face. Maybe Max was not as okay with this as she had let on. Maybe she did not yet understand what Nic was doing or why he was doing it. Or maybe, Chloe thought, all of this means that Max is still kind of a danger to herself. That thought alone was chilling enough to rob Chloe of what little appetite she had managed to scrounge up. Nic paused halfway to sitting back down.
"What?"
"Why do you keep saying 'only confirmed survivors' like that?" Chloe turned her attention back to the man. This was what she and Max had wanted to ask him, but Chloe had envisioned it happening over a beer while jamming to music that she would normally have found too light and Max probably too heavy. She had not imagined this. "Every time you talk about Arcadia Bay, you say that. What does that even mean?" A brand new uncomfortable silence spread throughout the room. It traveled alongside a look which passed from MK to Nic. MK, who was still frozen with a fresh bite of chicken on her fork, made a face that seemed to be encouragement, as if she were trying to get Nic to speak. Nic looked doubtful. Max had taken to looking between the two expectantly when MK finally rolled her eyes and sighed exaggeratedly.
"Look," the other woman said, "I can't pretend to understand what you guys have gone through, but I don't have patience with dancing around shit or sugar coating it, so if this is insensitive, well then that just sucks. Do you guys realize the number of conspiracy theories that have surfaced over you two and Arcadia Bay?" The question was asked with such bluntness that Chloe felt suddenly stupid for her answer. While the hacker mimicked Geoff's folding of his hands and his observant attitude, Chloe shook her head, no.
"No," Max answered. "I know there's some but – I try not to look at anything about it." Chloe nodded her own agreement as MK grimaced.
"So you don't know anything about the Portland incident?" Max shook her head this time, but Chloe saw the way her hand rose to toy with the strap of her camera bag. Max had gone from being on the offensive to being on her back foot. "Look," the woman started, "there have been loads of conspiracy theories, from the whole town being made up of crisis actors to false flag attacks, to alien invasions, all kinds of crazy shit all over the regular internet and the deep web. Most of it is bullshit. Every once in a while someone claims to have found another survivor. Again, most of it's nonsense. Then there's the Bay Seven."
"The Bay Seven?" Chloe asked.
"Yeah, Nic, if you could stop people from doing your 'repeating shit at you' thing, that'd be great," MK told the man, before turning back to Chloe. Chloe shrugged.
"My bad. It does rub off."
"Do yourself a favor and break the habit. I mean, you can get away with it better than Nic can, but it'll still piss people off," Chloe turned and stuck her tongue out at Nic who only shook his head at her in disbelief. She probably did seem strange to Nic, Geoff and in that moment even Max. This was, after all, no laughing matter. That being said, it was great to hear someone else as annoyed by Nic's verbal tic as she was.
"The Bay Seven are the seven people who were confirmed to be alive before the storm hit whose bodies were never found. Not counting the dead gir- not counting Rachel Amber." Chloe felt a muscle in her face twitch in response to the offhand comment. Calm down, she wasn't trying to be an ass. MK continued, almost as if unaware of, or unphased by Chloe's flare of irritation. "There are all kinds of conspiracy theories especially about the Bay Seven. People claiming to be one of them, claiming to have seen one of them. If there's any evidence attached to the claim it tends to backfire. Especially if you have a modicum of common sense. The story with the largest amount of traction is the Portland Incident."
"What happened?" Max asked, her anger forgotten and replaced with a severe discomfort that did not do anything to rob Chloe of her curiosity. Chloe leaned forward, hands on the table, suddenly not hungry or thirsty.
"The long and short of it is that someone posted on Reddit about seeing one of the Bay Seven outside of a nightclub in downtown Portland, when he showed up to pick up a young blonde girl about our age after she was thrown out of it." MK tilted her head as she reached down for her phone and sat it down on the table in front of her. "I think it was called the Platinum Globe or something like that. She was, it seems, making a scene so people started paying attention. The man who posted this has since retracted his story and claimed to have made it all up. Other people on the scene corroborated his story, though and they did not retract. One of the missing Arcadia Bay residents was identified as the man who picked this mystery girl up out front."
"Who was it?" Max asked. She did not sound entirely as if she wanted to know. Chloe didn't think she could blame her. MK leaned back in her chair. Who? Max repeated, insistently.
"A man called Samuel Taylor. An employee at Blackwell Academy."
"Samuel," Max said, sitting up straight as she turned to at Chloe. "'You and Blackwell are connected by Time and Tide' he said. Samuel knew something."
"Is there any evidence?" Chloe asked, excitedly. MK looked moderately confused by this last exchange, but she sadly shook her head.
"There was. The original post claimed to have a photo but it never got uploaded and hasn't been seen since." Chloe could feel her heart bashing aggressively against her ribcage. She also felt a little lightheaded. Her long fingers flexed open and closed ahead of her. She was not sure what she had expected when she and Max had decided to ask this question to begin with, but it wasn't anything like this. "There's one other thing, one thing that supports the guy's story. The girl was said to have left behind a copy of a very short story, a piece of flash fiction entitled 'The Problem With the Storm.'"
"And?" Chloe asked.
"Well, anything after this and I'll have to ask you if you know how to pay in coin, but this one's on the house. The story is real and I will send you a copy of it in just a moment." At this, MK unfolded her hands and took hold of the phone she had just freed from the holder on her hip. Chloe was about to speak, but she felt Max's left hand close around her right forearm and turned toward her girlfriend instead of anyone else in the room.
"If Samuel's alive – if Samuel's alive I need to find him," Max told her. She looked around at Nic and Geoff. They both looked unsteady, concerned. Chloe understood. Max's transformation was sudden and brutal, from angry and dejected to consumed and obsessed. Chloe's phone vibrated in her pocket.
"There," MK announced, setting her phone down and immediately retrieving her fork to continue her Christmas Eve dinner. "It's in your email."
"How in the hell do you have my email?" Chloe asked before turning to Nic. "Come to think of it, how did you even get ahold of us?" MK laughed, loudly as if the question was funny, was stupid or obvious.
"Do you really wanna know?"
"Hell yeah," Chloe shot back. "We've been covering our asses as good as we could since coming back to Seattle."
"Yeah, maybe," MK told her, not quite committing to telling them whether or not they had done a good enough job. Chloe rather thought the fact that everyone was sitting at that table together in that exact moment was answer enough to that question. "But your university's servers are not as secure as they really should be."
"You broke into my school records?"
"Guilty," MK admitted to her, before stuffing her mouth full of chicken. Chloe couldn't help but laugh. Of all the fucking ways for her to blow it, to fail to keep their return to Seattle a secret, it had actually come down to trying to go to college. This is what I get for trying to 'better' myself.
"Alright," Max muttered to herself, "alright."
"Max," Chloe counseled, leaning to the side so as to bring herself in close to Max, to draw her focus, "calm down."
"Yeah," she agreed. "I'll calm down. We can figure this out tomorrow. If Samuel's out there. I have to find him." Chloe sighed and tried to figure out the best way to distract Max. Instead, Max looked past her to Nic. "Pass me a cold one. Or two."
