Author's note 1: This "epilogue" deals with some extremely touchy subjects. It also isn't very fluffy, though, all's well that ends well. If you want their story to end with them several years later, lazing around in Blackwell's pool, don't read. If you want a glimpse of how I feel their lives would play out in the real world, after everything, read on, it's your choice, and either way, it's the right one. If you choose to leave it at 19, which is hella cool, read the note at the bottom still.

So what happened to the punk and the photographer, the pirates lost in time? A story like theirs...it goes places. It spreads. And when you are bringing the ability bend the fabric of reality into it, it really goes places. I wish I could say that it was a consistently happy story. But that isn't how life works. Which they know better than anyone else does. Happily ever afters are something that only exist in fairy tales. The thing about fairy tales, though, is that they always seem to be rooted in reality, or at least are there to teach a lesson or moral about reality. And this story is no different.

So, what happened?

Well, following the get-together in Arcadia five years after the storm, Chloe's career took off. Her voice, as Max had said, was enough to carry the fact that she was only rudimentarily skilled at the guitar. And soon after, Max's own career took off. Her work capturing live performances on polaroid, in that day and age, it gained her a reputation quickly. Soon Chloe's band was selling out ballrooms and decent sized venues across the country. Max and Chloe celebrated with an engagement party in New York, then Paris.

Life was a party, there was no weight to anything. They could forget everything horrible that had happened. There was Chloe and her band and a bus and Max and her camera. That was it. It was simple, it was clean, it was what they had always wanted. Traveling. Doing what they wanted, having nothing but each other. And Max hoped it could stay like this forever. Victoria had actually agreed to manage Chloe, and was doing a very good job with it.

Max was getting offers from every which way, but she held out, choosing to stay on tour with Chloe, making her money selling photos to magazines and promoters. Eventually, an offer from a top magazine came up, and she couldn't not take it. They did their best to stay with each other, Max would go out into the field when Chloe was not touring so they could go together, and vice versa, though they couldn't always be together anymore. This worked for a year or two, and while they missed each other horribly when apart, they were on the phone for hours every night, and when they were together, it was the same party it had been before.

These were the good years.

That couldn't be sustained forever. A year later, Max had to be away more and more often. The nightmares never really went away. The bad memories never really faded, though there were thousands of good ones on top of them now. And it hit Chloe hard, when Max wasn't there when she woke up sweating and cursing in the middle of the night. It hit Max just as hard, wherever she was in the world, neither of them slept very much, but Max didn't have the history that Chloe did.

Eventually, Chloe relapsed. It was bound to happen. It always happens. And now she was in a world surrounded by temptation, alone. The smoking started again. The drinking started again. Her aggressive stage behaviour became inseparable from her actual behaviour, as bottle after bottle would vanish from hotel bars and green rooms. Chloe actually got to the point where she stopped calling Max, instead blacking out every other night or being too messed up to dial the phone. Victoria didn't call Max right away, knowing what this would do to her, instead giving her excuse after excuse for why Chloe was so quiet, she tried to deal with it herself, she knew Max didn't buy it, but Max was stuck where she was for the moment. And it spiraled even further out of control. Chloe was impossible to reach. Max may have been able to, if they had caught this earlier. The thing was, Chloe hid it well. To start with, anyway.

She eventually had to bite the bullet and make the call, breaking Max away from a three month stay in Paris, to make sure Chloe was alright. Max had missed her, desperately. What she found when she got back, was a nightmare. Chloe's hair, which had been growing almost unbroken for years, was still blonde with it's blue streak, but it was faded, had become matted and partially dreaded. Chloe's arms had track marks and she wouldn't talk to Max, directly. Apparently, the alcohol hadn't been enough to combat the demons of the past. Max eventually stumbled upon Chloe's lyrics, that she'd been writing, and with titles like "Betraying Fate", "Joyce" and "Storm Surge", she couldn't take it anymore. Max and Victoria tried to talk Chloe into rehab, but were met with "I'm fine" and "It doesn't matter, everyone is going to leave again anyway". This went on for a month, Chloe had become even skinnier, sickly looking. She began bailing out of shows early. This couldn't go on. But it did. Eventually Max faced the ultimatum, "Come back now, or your contract is terminated". She couldn't bear to see Chloe this way anymore, this wasn't the person she loved. It wasn't Chloe Price. It couldn't be. She pleaded with Chloe to stop, but Chloe had finally broken completely. She blamed herself, more than anyone or anything else. This was a whole new load of guilt, though Kate and Victoria tried to convince her otherwise, that it wasn't her fault. Max didn't know which way was worse, that Chloe had always had this inside her, or that Chloe hadn't been able to manage at all, without her. After a fight with Chloe that almost turned violent, she left without so much as a note a few days later, returning to Europe and eventually an apartment she had bought in New York. She stayed in contact with Kate and Victoria, who were now married, but didn't talk to Chloe, or about Chloe.

This went on for several years. Max went to bed alone every night, and cried herself to sleep, expecting to hear that Chloe had died for good the next morning. She stumbled through her late twenties and the early part of her thirties like this. Her photography became darker, focusing on more gothic, morbid things. She was becoming known was a troubled artist, which only boosted her career trajectory. But, this was her release, like the drugs had been to Chloe. Chloe's fifteen minutes of fame were up, but she had become something of a reclusive cult hero in the music community, for her unabashed presence, brutally honest lyrics, former charity work and that voice. Chloe had quit the band a few years ago. She had enough money, with Victoria watching it and investing. She stayed in Seattle, which she had never thought would happen.

Eventually Max fell out of contact with Victoria and Kate altogether, though they kept their pact, and met up in Arcadia Bay once a year, minus Chloe. Kate once asked Max if she was ever going to talk to Chloe again, and Max just said she didn't know, and they left it at that. If the conversation ever shifted to Chloe, Max changed the subject. Victoria hadn't been in contact with Chloe either, save to manage money once or twice over the last year. The thirty something year old woman sitting across from Kate and Victoria could have easily still been eighteen, if the loneliness and insecurity hadn't aged her quicker, mostly the eyes, they were no longer the eyes of an innocent teenager, they were the eyes of a woman who had seen every facet of humanity, almost like a soldier's.

When Max was thirty four she had done her best to push the past out of her mind altogether. She was now working with film, some were saying that Max Price was going to bring analogue back for good. She kept her unofficial name, over the years. Though The Price was gone, and her and Chloe's engagement never went further.

Max eventually heard a cover of David Bowie's "Heroes" on the tentative soundtrack for a film she was doing test shots for. She instantly recognized that voice. She didn't want to listen, but she did. Chloe. It was the first time she had heard Chloe's voice in years. She'd heard the song a thousand times, but there was a new desperation and weight to the words.

"I, I will be king

And you, you will be queen

Though nothing, will drive them away

We can beat them, just for one day

We can be heroes, just for one day"

Max didn't want to listen. She didn't. The tears came again, she knew exactly why Chloe picked this song as a comeback, and she knew exactly what Chloe was talking about.

"And you, you can be mean

And I, I'll drink all the time

Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact

Yes we're lovers, and that is that

….

And we kissed, as though nothing could fall

And the shame, was on the other side

Oh, we can beat them, forever and ever

Then we could be heroes, just for one day"

Max continued work on it, on the agreement she never had to hear about the music end of it, that wasn't her job. It was agreed. Max worked so much that she never had time to stop and think. It was easier this way. Chloe did the same, now working on a solo comeback after her cover of "Heroes" had been a success. Chloe was clean now. She had been for over a year, but she didn't even know how to approach Max. She wanted to. That was why she had chose that song. She had no idea, however, that it would wind up on Max's desk, or that Max would even ever hear it. The project never really amounted to anything, Chloe had lost the drive and passion she had as a nineteen year old...and there was a...problem. She now had a timeframe. She'd known about this problem for a few months, but didn't know how she could possibly tell anyone.

On the night of Max's thirty fifth birthday, Max heard a knock on her apartment door, waking her up from where she'd fallen asleep, at her desk, over folders of photos and film samples. She groggily made her way to the door, she hesitated before opening it. She still expected, somewhere in her mind, for someone to call her or show up saying Chloe had died of an overdose, and even though it had been pushing seven years since she'd seen Chloe, that part of her was still the eighteen year old girl on the cliff, faced with an impossible choice.

She opened the door, slowly, and was met with...Chloe Price. An older, more world-weary Chloe Price, but, despite that, the drugs, and the demons, Chloe still looked remarkably young. No older than twenty five, at the oldest. Her hair was still very, very long. It's natural strawberry blonde, but with a vibrant blue streak in the front, that was visible even though her hair was in a messy ponytail, some of it hung around her face, like it had so many years ago. She was still skinny, but not the sickly waifish she had become, when Max had last seen her. Her clothing had remained basically the same, but it was slightly more mature. Less torn up, anyway. She still wore Kate's cross. She still wore her engagement ring. Max wore hers too, but on a chain, under her shirt.

They stood in the doorway, looking at each other, for a few moments. Max hadn't aged much either, her hair was pretty much the same, though Chloe saw some gray strands, she was dressed more professionally, but overall, she looked like Maxine Caulfield.

"Chloe is...it really you? You, you?", Max had asked, tentatively, not sure she wasn't dreaming or hadn't finally lost it entirely.

"Yes….Max. It's me. It's really me. Clean, too. A year and a half, i'd show you my AA keychain, but I sold it for booze money", Chloe had not changed. At all. Seven years, and a joke about the thing that had driven them apart was the first thing she had to say.

Max had nothing to say. She had so much to say, that she couldn't formulate the words to say it. She embraced Chloe more tightly than she ever had before, crying into her shirt. Chloe just held her.

"I'm sorry, Max. I'm so, so sorry. I fucked up so, so bad", Chloe whispered, "This was never supposed to happen. We...were never supposed to lose each other...I lost myself...and lost you and I just...everything I did was for you and then the...old me came back out and...you weren't there...and...I-", now she was crying too.

"Shhh", was all Max could formulate. She just wanted to know that Chloe was alive. Was there.

Was back in her life.

"Max...I don't know...how to tell you this", Chloe started.

"...then don't tell me anything….just stay here, with me."

"I...that's what I always intended...but, Max...i'm...sick."

"...what? What do you mean?"

"I have…", the tears came back to Chloe's eyes, "I have...I have...fucking...HIV, Max."

"I...no...you can't...you...how…", Max cried.

"I don't know. There was never anyone else after you. Ever. They think I...used a dirty needle...once."

"Oh my fucking God…Chloe…"

"I'm alright. For now. But you needed to know. I guess...I really fucking blew it, it...really was all for nothing, because...i'm such a fucking idiot."

"Don't you say that, Chloe", Max choked out through her tears, "Don't you ever fucking say that. We...still had all of that time together...and you're here now."

"I know, and i'm not leaving...if...you still want me. But...I don't know how long I have, Max. I really...don't."

"You better never fucking leave me again, Chloe."

"Then I won't. Ever. But…eventually i'm going to...to..."

"Don't say it."

"Well...it's fucking true", Chloe choked out through a sob.

"I don't want to hear it."

"I know. Neither do I."

Max kissed her anyway, the kiss was long, a lot of lost time. It led to more, which Chloe initially protested, and then realized what Max was doing. It was Max's choice. Chloe couldn't stop her.

Chloe stayed with Max in New York for a few months. No longer half-sleeping alone, wondering if her soulmate was dead in an alley in Seattle, Max was revitalized, the film she was working on was the critic's darling, her cinematography and use of stills was lauded across the board. Chloe stayed clean. By the end of the New York years, neither of them really needed any more money. And so, Max said her farewell to the film world, having left her mark.

Chloe had arrived in New York in a beautifully pristine blue 1969 Plymouth Road Runner, and it was in this car they spent the next year. They finally got their road trip together, like they had always wanted. Just traveling across the country, back again, and again and again, staying in cheap motels under fake names. They were making up for lost time, again. Max continued taking pictures, of anything that caught her interest on the road, but she found that most of these shots ended up being of Chloe, who had really been the reason she returned to the hobby at all, in the first place. This older Chloe was just as beautiful as her younger self had been.

They eventually reconnected with Kate and Victoria, after David passed away from a heart attack. Several months before, Vanessa Caulfield had gone from cancer, in something out of Walk the Line, Ryan had gone a month later. None of them ever knew Chloe was sick. Or that Max had intentionally contracted it from Chloe.

And this was how Max and Chloe wound up back in Arcadia Bay, a rebuilt Arcadia Bay, possibly more beautiful than it had been when they were kids, the Prescotts' hold over the town long, long gone. Chloe ended up buying her childhood home, and here they lived in between trips all over the world. No matter where they were, the old pact was back though, and the four women met up once or twice a year, not always in Arcadia, sometimes it was. And sometimes it was New York, sometimes it was Portland, sometimes it was Madrid, Paris, Prague, wherever Chloe and Max were, which became a joke between them.

"Where are Chloe and Max this week?"

Chloe and Max were pirates again. They didn't have anything to tie them to one specific place, and this gave them the freedom to live as they saw fit. Chloe's inner teenage punk was at the forefront again, and Max had never been more in love with her.

And despite the losses, even the recent ones, and the fact that the nightmares still plagued them, at times, life was good. It was really, truly good. And this was the time when Max and Chloe were at their happiest. The horrors of their teenage years, and of Chloe's fall and return, which Victoria referred to as "The Rise and Fall of Chloe Stardust", years and years behind them as well. Chloe and Max did what they never thought would be possible, and lived happily in their hometown. Kate and Victoria had moved back long ago. And the four of them were once again the teenagers sneaking into the courtyard of the hospital to talk about their futures, though none of them could have imagined what those futures actually brought. Life carried on this way for a few years.

Then...Chloe's health started to decline rapidly. Years of abusing her body and her illness were catching up with her, and the trips got shorter. More time was spent walking the trails in Arcadia Bay, usually ending at the lighthouse. This part was fine with Max. She worried about Chloe, who had developed a bad cough and moved slower than she had in the sunshine of their youth, daily, but they'd seen the world. From Tokyo, to Amsterdam, to Cape Town, they'd seen it all. And Max had seen everything good and bad humanity had to offer, over her career and these trips. Max and Chloe remained in Arcadia.

And eventually, it happened. Chloe passed in her sleep, one night. Max knew this had been coming. But Max, Max never attended the funeral. She was sick too. She knew she couldn't live without Chloe. Never again. Max, under Chloe's direction, though it had been Max's idea, had made a brompton cocktail, the only drugs either of them had ever bought again. And Max went peacefully, next to Chloe, into whatever awaited them on the other side.

When they got here, I was so happy to see them. I hadn't seen them since I was there in the back, the night of Chloe's first concert.

Chloe and Max are still the teenagers they were in 2013, Chloe's hair is short and blue, and she'll crack a joke about anything. Max is still the awkward teenager Chloe described her as. Beautiful in her own way. Meeting her for real, I now understand Chloe's obsession. They still go on adventures. Chloe still strums her guitar, and sings. Max is still a photographer, and the scenery here is beautiful. They talk about building another pirate fort, and I think they actually might, now that they have the time. Dorks. Joyce and William are here too, and they couldn't be prouder of Chloe. Chloe finally had the chance to say everything to both of them that she never got the chance to. Chloe cooks with Joyce every morning.

So, what did we all learn from Max's choice? It's like Chloe said all those years ago, superpowers don't last forever. Superheroes aren't real. But some things, even against the universe itself, things like the two pirates, those things can be real forever.

And forever is a long, long time.

Author's Note 2: It's been a hell of a ride, guys. This story started as a one shot, and grew into so much more. In a lot of ways, it was written backwards. I always had the vision of Chloe winding up a musician, and Max a professional photographer. And it ended up being ten chapters longer than I ever thought it would be. Thank everyone who followed, favorited, reviewed and made this story possible. This portion of the story is over. However, there is something else coming in the future, and this epilogue will be important for story development, so if it makes you sad, don't fret. I couldn't really leave this so bleak, now, could I? ;)