That night, Sean sits on the floor of his childhood bedroom, feeling like a stranger in his own life. The lights are off, but the snow outside catches the streetlight, painting everything in a dim, moon-like glow. With a finger, Sean traces the lines of the tattoo on his forearm of the boy walking on the road alone, where his wolf tattoo from Cassidy used to be. He wonders what he was thinking when he was sitting under the needle; he remembers he got it the first week he moved to Savannah and that it felt significant.

And back in Savannah, he has a life. He is about to graduate. He has some amazing job opportunities lined up. He has friends. And a cute boy who wants to have sex with him.

And he has his dad.

But the people who were there for him in the darkest time of his life . . . they couldn't be further away.

Finn and Cassidy? Jacob and Hannah? He is a literal stranger to them.

Brody is still out there blogging. Sean checks his site every few days. But there is never a mention of the two brothers on the road.

Claire and Stephen haven't seen him since he was a little kid.

Mom is just some woman named Karen who bailed on him. She's out there in the desert, living her life without him.

And then there's Lyla. And Daniel.

Daniel is just in the next room. It's the closest Sean has been to him in five years. He remembers the last thing they said to each other in the prison visitation room, that there was a wall between them. And Sean made a promise to his little brother that he would knock the wall down.

And in a way, he did.

It's just that he left a canyon in its place.

There will be a cost. It will be bigger than you can imagine. That's what Max Caulfield said.

Sean pulls his laptop from his backpack. When he searches for Max Caulfield, it comes up with links to her exhibits, some books on Amazon, and her website with her portfolios. He looks through her photography, and he wants to hate it, but it's actually pretty good. Her photos have an emo vibe to them that is sometimes a bit melodramatic, but she finds the underlying sadness in everyday things. Like, there's a photo a kid's wagon that's rusted over with tall grass grown around it. He used to pull Daniel around in a wagon just like it when they were small. Back when Daniel actually looked up to him and before this timeline's Sean let their relationship rust over.

There's a form under the contact section, and he hesitates for a long time about what to write. And if he even should. He sets the computer on the floor and grabs a beer from the kitchen. He drinks about half of it before he sits down again and types:

Hey, I know this sounds crazy. My name is Sean Diaz, and we met once but in, like, a different timeline. I have time travel powers. When we met, you told me you did too. And you told me about your friend Chloe and the storm. You told me not to use my powers, but I changed my past anyway. Everything in my life is different now. I don't really know how to handle this. And I don't know who I can talk to, so I hope you don't think I'm crazy. If this sounds nuts, just ignore this.

He leaves his phone number and his email.

Sean actually forgets he sends it as he finishes out his week in Seattle. Nothing much happens, though he tries to spend as much time with his dad as possible. He wishes he could spend more time with Daniel, but Daniel doesn't even want to play videogames together anymore.

When it's time for Dad to take Sean to catch his flight, Sean is pissing in the bathroom when he overhears:

"Why do I have to go to the airport? Sean can get on a stupid plane without me."

"Your brother doesn't come home often, my son. It is important that you say goodbye to him."

"But I don't want to go to the airport. And Sean doesn't care if I say goodbye to him."

They must move away from the kitchen because Sean can't make out their words. But Dad's voice gets louder, and it sounds like he and Daniel are about to erupt into a full-out argument when Sean pushes the bathroom door open.

"Daniel doesn't have to go to the airport if he doesn't want to," Sean says.

"See!" Daniel gestures towards him. "Sean doesn't even want me to go, so why can't I stay here?"

"I didn't say I don't want you to go," Sean says, shortly. "I said you don't have to."

"It's the same thing!" Daniel says.

"Okay!" Dad says, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I want both of my sons to say goodbye to each other at the airport. Because we are familia, and they are brothers, and deep down they love each other. That is my decision. Discussion is over."

Daniel stammers something, but Dad shoots him a glare. He's serious. The discussion is over.

The car has a weird vibe to it with Daniel sulking in the backseat. And when Sean gets dropped off, Daniel just stands across from him, arms crossed, looking away. And Sean gets it. He was fifteen. He lost arguments with Dad all the time then acted out just like this. But, also, it hurts because he isn't sure when he'll see Daniel again. So Sean figures, fuck it, and hugs his little brother for a good, long time, long enough that Daniel relents and pats him on the back.

"I can tell you are trying," Dad says as he welcomes Sean into a goodbye hug. "Don't give up on your hermanito."

"I just wish I hadn't let things get so bad between us," Sean says. "I love you, by the way."

"I know. I love you too, mijo," Dad says. "And if you ever decide to tell me what has happened to you, I will still listen. Remember, you are strong enough and brave enough to face whatever it is."

"Thanks," Sean says, and even though he knows Dad isn't going to disappear, it's hard to walk into the airport. It's like he's afraid that once he leaves Seattle, he'll wake up back in the world where he doesn't have his father.

It's during a layover in Chicago that Sean's cellphone buzzes. It's a message from Max. After a bit of back and forth, and her grilling him to make sure he isn't making shit up, she says that she'll be in Georgia next month for an assignment. And they should totally meet up.

# # #

It's late in January on a Tuesday afternoon when Sean drives up to Augusta. Only a handful of people are in the coffee shop Max said she would meet him at, so Sean picks her out immediately. Even if he hadn't met her before, she'd be easy to spot. It's the blue hair and that she's the only person besides Sean who isn't bundled up like the forty-five degree weather is the Antarctic.

"Ah, a fellow Pacific Northwesterner," Max says, pointing at his thin, cotton henley. He introduces himself, says he'll be back after he orders a coffee. As he waits on it, he scratches his chest which itches from the tattoo he got a few days ago, and he tries to sort through everything he wants to say.

"So," Max says as Sean sits down with his drink, "it seems like this is both the first and second time we have met."

"Yeah, thanks for meeting with me and not just assuming I'm insane. And also, Max, I feel like I owe you an apology," Sean says. "When we met in the other timeline, I was kind of a real dick to you. I wasn't in a good place, but I was still an asshole. You were warning me not to mess with the space-time continuum, and I was not very cool about it. I may have called you a stupid white girl. So I'm sorry for that."

"My bar for 'asshole' is probably higher than you think," Max says, sipping her latte. "And, technically, the thing you're apologizing for didn't happen. Why don't you bring me up to speed?"

He takes a deep breath, and he chooses his details carefully. He's been holding back so much, but he doesn't want his dam to break and spill shit all over her. He tells her about the police shooting his dad and how he and Daniel were on the run. And how he ended up in jail and how he can travel through his sketches and that he thinks drawing a place must anchor him to it somehow.

"I was able to do that with photographs, but that came later," she says. "The easiest thing to do was to rewind time, like replaying a scene in a movie. Have you tried that yet?'

"I can't do it," Sean says. "Believe me, I have spent most of the last six years of my life wanting immediate 'do-overs.' Pretty sure if I could 'rewind' time, I would have figured it out by now."

She asks him some more questions, like how he figured out his powers. How he thinks they work. She opens up more about what happened to her. That she always thought it was weird how her ability was linked to her passion-photography. "A lot of things linked to photography ended up being more horror-show than I thought," she says.

"What does that mean?"

"So what prompted you to contact me?" Max says, ignoring the question.

"Everything is different here," he sighs. "It's not bad necessarily, but . . . I just needed someone to talk to who might understand."

"I get it," she says. "Like, obviously, you're changing time. You expect things to be different. But it's always wild how different. And being lost in your own life—it's messed up."

"And you can't just ask someone for directions," Sean says. "If you're like, 'Hey, person-who-I-have-a-life-long-relationship-with, why aren't we friends anymore?' then that person acts like you're crazy."

"I've been seeing a therapist for years. It helps. But I can't be totally honest with her. I can say I watched Chloe die, but I can't tell her that I watched Chloe die multiple times. You sound like you don't understand what reality is if you say that. But stuff like that, it is our reality."

"The fucked up thing is . . . everything was really bad in the other timeline," Sean says. "Like, I lost my dad. And got beat up a lot. A shard of glass went through my freaking eye. And I was serving a term in prison for something I didn't do. Life could not have sucked any more, and it got to the point where I was trying to end things. And so I changed the past, and everything is objectively better here. Like, I might get a job at Nickelodeon. How cool is that? But the handful of good things in that other life . . . I miss them. Like, I whole-heart miss them. And I still remember all the bad stuff. I think I have some kind of PTSD. Those things didn't happen here, yet they still happened to me. And, overall, I just have this feeling that in the other timeline, I was a better person, you know?"

"What, are you some kind of jerk here?"

"Not exactly. Kind of? From what I can piece together, I'm not an outright asshole. People think I'm self-centered, but I think I might just be overwhelmed. I don't really give people many reasons to think I'm not a shithead, though, and I apparently don't try very hard to keep the people that matter the most in my life. I retreat if things seem like they're difficult or complicated. I get the sense I'm an aggressively C-minus person."

"Most people kind of are C-minus, though. Especially guys in their twenties, no offense."

"None taken, I guess."

"So does being a C-minus person make you wish you hadn't changed the past?"

"No. I mean, that's not even up for debate, right? Here, I'm about to graduate from art school, maybe work a cool job, and I can call my dad whenever I want. That other life, I'm in jail, missing my dad every day, suicidal, and I don't even have peripheral vision. This is, uh, kind of why I yelled at you when we met before. Because there's no real choice to make. This life is the better choice."

"I can see that. But whenever I messed with time, especially the big stuff—"

"There was a consequence. You told me," Sean sighs. "In the other timeline, a lot of the bad stuff that happened to me was . . . it was my brother's fault."

The words fall out of his mouth so easily that it catches him off guard. He has never said that, never let himself think it consciously: It was Daniel's fault. But now the words sit there on the table like a black wad of phlegm he didn't know he was choking on.

He loves Daniel. Obviously, he does. Daniel is his little brother. Enano. His hermanito.

But Daniel is also an anchor.

Even before things got fucked up with the cop, how many times did he have to tell his friends he couldn't hang out because he was on big-brother duty? When his mom left, how far down did he shove his broken heart because Big Brother Sean needed to be brave for Little Brother Daniel?

And then Dad got shot and they were on the run, and suddenly, he was all Daniel had. He had to be Dad too. Everything became about protecting Daniel and doing what was best for Daniel. Sean became a candle that was burning itself at both ends, and his little brother was the flame.

And Sean's candle burned itself out.

It feels like dragging a cheese grater across his heart to consider that loving his brother could also be a thing that was hurting him.

"Sean?" Max says. She slides a napkin over to him.

"Sorry, I got—it's nothing." He wipes at his eyes.

"It's cool. It happens."

"But, anyway, Daniel was the reason we had to run from the law. And the reason I made a lot of the worst decisions I did. But it all brought us closer, and he is literally the most important person in my life. And here, he doesn't really want anything to do with me. I don't really understand how. I don't think the person I am here would put Daniel first, ever."

"It sounds like you had to give up the person closest to you." Max sips at her latte, just a bit too long. Sean remembers the way she looked away in the visiting room of the prison, but now, he's not angry. He's not desperate. And he can hear the sadness in her voice, see that her eyes are those of someone who is much more broken than the people around her understand.

It's not an act. He gets that now.

"Are you talking about your friend Chloe?" Sean says.

Max nods. "She was more than a friend, actually."

"Girlfriend?" Sean says carefully.

Max shakes her head. Then shrugs. "I don't know. 'Soul mate' sounds too schmaltzy, but it's like that."

"I get you."

"Anyway," Max says, clearing her throat. "Your relationship with your brother—do you think that's a price you're willing to pay?"

"It is like having a piece of my heart that is straight-up missing, him not talking to me. But overall, he's okay, you know? He seems kind of sad, but it's sad in a normal fifteen-year-old way. Our dad is alive. If everyone is okay, but we're just a not very close, that seems like . . . I guess it's an okay price to pay." Sean looks away for a moment. "I, uh, I guess I'm okay with it."

"That doesn't quite sound big enough," Max says. She turns the stirrer in her latte. "When I did this, it was like the universe reacted in the biggest, most melodramatic, worst way. Did you say your brother was the reason you had to run from the cops?"

"Yeah," Sean sips his coffee. "He kind of . . . killed the cop that killed our dad."

"Wait, you said you were sixteen when that happened," Max says, counting on her fingers. "How does a nine-year-old boy kill a police officer?"

And Sean winces. It's the real elephant in the room, that sat there all of Christmas just sucking up all the space and oxygen. The thing he most does not want to think about, so much so, that saying it out loud feels like it will make it real. "Daniel kind of, sort of had telekinesis which activated when he saw our dad get shot," he says quietly.

"Your brother had powers too?" Max says. "Dude, you think maybe you should have led with that? What happened the first time he used them?"

"He, uh. . ." Sean rubs the back of his head. "He kind of blew up most of our front yard. The first time he used them was when he killed the cop on the day our dad died."

"And does he have his powers in this timeline?"

"I don't think so," Sean says. "Or maybe they haven't developed yet because nothing traumatic has happened to him. Or maybe he can use them, and he just doesn't tell me about it. He's clearly hiding something, but I have no idea what."

"Okay, okay," Max says. Then she says okay, like, ten more times. She squeezes the bridge of her nose, and strands of blue hair fall in her face. "Let me just get this straight. Your brother had psychokinetic powers, which were a big part of the reason that your life got dramatically messed up. And he doesn't seem to have them in this timeline because the first time he used them is the exact moment that you went back in time to change?"

Sean chews on his lip. "I mean, you're leaving out a lot of nuance. . . "

"How actually fucking stupid are you?" She cuts him off as he tries to interject. "No, dude, it is 100-percent obvious that you have not paid shit yet. Are you sure you actually got that eye back? Because you must have a huge blindspot to not see this sitting right in front of you."

"I'm not fucking stupid, Max!" A woman with two kids at a nearby table glares at him like he's a shitty, abusive boyfriend starting a fight in the coffee shop. He takes a breath. "I'm not stupid," he says quietly. "I've had, like, three nightmares this past week just about Daniel's powers. The first time they went off, it was like a bomb, and I keep imagining them building up like pressure inside his head so that if something finally triggers them, it'll be like an atomic blast. You told me about the storm, Max. That it was going to destroy your whole town. And I am both very aware and very terrified that my storm could be inside my kid brother's brain." Sean lays his head on the table. It's cool and slick against his forehead.

Sean wonders if the woman with the kids is still glaring at him. He probably looks like a manipulative, shitty boyfriend with his head down. But all of this has been sifting in the back of his mind since Christmas. And if something does happen, it's all on him.

He feels Max's hand on top of his. It's warm and surprisingly rough. "Look, dude," she says as he raises his head. "I shouldn't have said that. It's not cool for me to make you feel like a dumbass. I just have to be honest with you, and I have to impress upon you how serious this is. What I went through was—it was the worst thing that is ever going to happen to me, and I don't want this for someone else. I get this sense that there is a storm coming your way. It's only a matter of time until it catches you. And it will be bad."

"I know," Sean sighs. "I don't know how I know, but I do. Do you—do you think I should change things back? Because, Max, I don't think I can. I don't think I'm strong enough. I can't give up my dad. I can't go back to a life where my life is over. Maybe that's selfish. Maybe I am a self-centered, shitty person." He lays his head down again. "Maybe I'm just not the person I need to be. I'm not the person Daniel needs me to be."

"I don't think you're a shitty person," Max says. "Look, I don't think you should have ever changed the past because, well, bad shit happens when you do. But since you have already done it . . . " She drums her fingers on the table. "I told you about Chloe and the storm, right?"

Sean sets his chin on his arms so he can look at her. "Yeah. You had to choose between saving everyone in your town or Chloe. It sounded like a real shitty choice."

"'Shitty choice' is an understatement. But there isn't a day that goes by that I don't question the choice I made. And if I had it to do all over again, I don't know. I think I might choose Chloe and let the storm just wipe everything else away." She sighs again, sort of bounces her fist anxiously on the table. "I guess what I'm getting at is, there isn't really a thing you should do. There's just . . . what consequences are you prepared to live with?"

"I just wish I knew what those consequences were going to be," Sean says. "And I can feel it, that I'm going to find out soon. And it sucks because whatever happens . . . from here on out, it's all my fault"

# # #

Sean walks out with Max, and they stand outside the coffee shop waiting for her Lyft. Sean offers to give her a ride to her hotel, but she jokes that she doesn't get into cars with boys she's only met once in this timeline. "Actually, though, I kind of have one more piece of advice for you."

"Aw, jeeze, this isn't just another opportunity for you to call me stupid, is it?" he says, flashing a smile so she knows it's a joke.

"No, and I don't even know if this is good advice, but—maybe you should just accept things the way they are. A mistake I made, I think, is that I kept messing with things. I tried to control everything, make it all exactly right. You say you are a C-minus person, but, dude, that's still a passing grade. Your life is better here. Your brother is growing up with a normal life. Maybe you should just make peace with the fact that all of this is good enough, and if you don't rock the boat, maybe the universe will let you get away with this."

"So you're saying I should just live with my little brother kind of hating my guts? Max, I don't know if you get how much it hurts, the way he looks at me with such disappointment."

"I kind of get it. I know how much it hurts when I remember the way Chloe looked at me and then I remember she'll never look at me like that again," Max says as her Lyft pulls up to the sidewalk. "It's just a thought. I don't know if the universe will really forgive you, but it might be worth a shot. Ultimately, it's your choice. What are you willing to live with? What is too much?"

"Isn't that, like, every choice in life, though?"

She smiles. "I'm glad I met you again, Sean Diaz. I'm sorry I called you stupid."

He chuckles. "Thanks for taking time to meet up with me, Max Caulfield. I'm sorry I turn into an emotional rage-baby every time we do this."

He waits until Max's car is down the street before he shoves his hands into his pockets and shuffles back to his. He sits down in the driver's seat, pulls out his phone to find some music for the drive back to Savannah, but then he just stops and rests his head on the steering wheel.

What is he going to do?

A part of him thinks he should change everything back, but the rest of him screams that he can't. It would be like trying to throw yourself into a fire.

So does he just wait around for Daniel's powers to come out? Probably at the worst time?

Or . . . does he test out Max's hypothesis. That if he accepts the consequences of this timeline's Sean's choices, if he gives up the few good things from his old life, maybe he'll get away with this. He glances at his cell phone. He could text Daniel right now, tell the kid to fuck off or something and probably seal the deal.

But, really, Sean has no idea what he is going to do. He just knows that whatever choice he makes, he is responsible for everything that happens next.

# # #

While Sean is meeting with Max, Daniel is on the opposite side of the country, sitting on a school bus with his forehead resting on the window. Beside him is some annoying seventh-grader who keeps quoting some obnoxious movie. Daniel used to always sit with Noah, but, well, not anymore.

It has snowed. Not enough to cancel school, but enough that it covers the sidewalk, and he leaves a trail of footprints from the bus stop to his house. When he gets home, he texts his dad like he always does to let him know he's okay.

Dad texts back, Since you are home could you shovel the driveway for your papa? Por favor? You are one of my two favorite Diaz bros!

So Daniel sighs and gets the shovel from the garage, and he starts scooping. It was a really bad day at school today, even worse than usual. Some asshole spilled Gatorade on his shoes in the hallway. He sat all alone at lunch. And he got a bad grade on his math test because he had a headache through the whole thing. He's halfway through shoveling the driveway when he feels his phone vibrate. He takes a break and leans on the side of the garage, and he checks the message.

It's from Sean.

I was just thinking about you bro. Hope you're okay text me whenever you want okay?

And . . . Daniel just does not understand his brother. As a kid, he never understood why Sean didn't want to hang out with him. And now, he doesn't understand why Sean keeps pretending like he does. And then there was that whole nightmare over Christmas and the stuff in Sean's sketchbook about Daniel having powers.

There's rock sitting in the snow near the end of the driveway. It would be cool if Daniel did have powers, right? He could be some kind of superhero. Maybe he could make all the bullshit going on in his life go away.

He concentrates on the rock. Imagines how much it weighs.

And he tries to lift it with his mind.

Soundtrack – Outro: "Hazy Shade of Winter"

cover by The Bangles

This has been "The Bravest Wolf in the World"

A Life is Strange 2 Fan Fiction

Episode Two: The Unknown

look around

leaves are brown

and the sky

is a hazy shade of winter

hang on to your hopes, my friend

that's an easy thing to say

but if your hopes should pass away

simply pretend

that you can build them again