Slight trigger warning for casual mentions of physical abuse.

Chapter 1: A New Life

.

.

.

(3 Years Earlier)

'What... what's happening... Where am I?'

Jade lay in what seemed like an endless expanse of black. Nothing as far as she could see, she just floated there in the inky darkness. She felt that she could hear something in the background, although she couldn't quite put her finger on what the noise was or her was making it.

'Am I... am I dead?'

The last thing that she remembered was the car speeding towards her own and then nothing. Her memory was completely blank, for all she knew she could be hallucinating in the hospital. As she was looking around the abyss, she heard the mysterious sounds again, but this time they were clearer. Closer. They seemed to saying 'ry... ary…..y...Ma...'. Were they trying to say 'Mary'? Jade guessed that was a person, though she didn't know who it was. Just as she was about to deliberate further, a clear voice broke through the darkness, along with a shining light.

"Mary, that is what they're trying to say you know? You think that you'd recognise your own name huh?"

Jade opened her eyes that had been squinted shut from the appearance of the light and when she did, her jaw dropped. In front of her was a woman with short, brown, shoulder length hair and countless freckles. She wore a pink shirt with a deer on it that read 'Jane' combined with blue jeans and a grey hoodie. Jade knew who she was immediately.

"Max Caulfield?... What the fuck?"

In response to Jade's outburst, Max simply smiled slightly before responding.

"You know who I am huh? Well, that makes this easier then."

Jade was having trouble processing what was going on, first, she was seemingly in a car accident, she wakes up to floating around in a mystical fucking abyss, then, she starts hearing strange voices saying the name 'Mary', then she almost gets blinded and fucking Max Caulfield shows up. Y'know, the protagonist of an entire game!

"Y-you... what? How?"

Max's smile softened slightly and it was then that Jade's stomach dropped in realisation, one thought swimming around the forefront of her mind.

"Fuck... I'm dead, aren't I?"

She whispered lowly, so lowly in fact, that she was surprised Max even heard her. But hear her she did, proven by the way her smile became more sympathetic.

"You are... sorry, kid."

Max replied, as easily as someone giving the weather. Jade, however, was near catatonic with the revelation. She was dead. Dead. She was never going to see her family again. Her mother, her step-father, her little brother. None of them. Jade almost teared up, but managed to compose herself ever so slightly as to listen to the glowing figure of Max Caulfield before her.

"Dead?... How?... Why?"

Jade spoke softly, almost brokenly, as if the weight of the revelation was crushing her, and in a way, it was. It was at this point that Max began to reply.

"Yeah, sorry kid, but you're dead. And it sucks, believe me, I would know, but there's nothing I can do about it. You were in a car accident, if you can remember. Sped right into your mom's car. If it makes you feel any better, I can tell you safely that everyone made it out fine."

"Except for me, of course." Jade muttered darkly, causing Max to wince. An old facet of her younger self shining through that almost made Jade smile, if it weren't for the turmoil she was feeling.

"No, except for you... Like I said, sorry kid, but there was nothing I could've done. Believe me, if I could help everyone, I would."

It was then that Jade got a closer look at the person standing before her, she looked like Max, same hair, same face, same clothes, but she seemed... different. Older, wiser somehow. Like a wise old Sage hidden in the deepest reaches of cave.

"I know that you're distraught kid, but we don't have much time. Ironically."

Max's tone immediately caught Jade's attention as she snapped her still tearing eyes towards the other woman.

"Sorry, this has to be so fast, but I need to explain this, now. To make a long story short, I pulled you from a different Universe, and brought you to this one, and before you ask, no, I didn't kill you. I've been doing this for a long time, kid. Hundreds of years in fact, but I can never win against Time. Never once have I gotten a victory, until now."

Jade was enthralled, though she didn't know if this was just a random fever dream that she was having whilst in the hospital. With no better choice in mind, the still saddened girl listened to the older woman's story.

"You see, because you're not from the same Universe, Time can't govern you as it does the rest of us. Even me, the time traveller. I brought you here so that I-we even, can finally have a victory. I'm going to give you a choice. You can either choose to ignore me, and die peacefully, with no pain whatsoever, or, you can choose to take my offer, and help everyone here that would be badly affected by the tornado. Victoria, Kate, David, Joyce, Warren, Rachel, Chloe... Me."

Jade was stunned, she was actually being given a choice in the matter of her situation. She could either die peacefully, or live a new life, in a new world that wasn't her own, and help people from a mystical Time Tornado that would hit a coastal village. Before she could think further, Max spoke again.

"I know that a choice like this is difficult, believe me, I do. But we don't have much time, as ironic as that might sound. Bringing you here used up the last of my power. And I can't hold back the tornado much longer."

It was then that Jade noticed her surroundings changed. The once inky darkness became a storm of wind and hail, of a magnitude that she had never seen before in her life. Thunder roared above her head as lightning crashed all around her. It was apocalyptic.

"Please Jade, you need to choose. Please!"

With one look to her surroundings and the thought of her family in her mind, Jade turned to Max once more and answered the woman with a heavy heart.

"I pick option two."

Max seemed to sag with relief as she smiled the full, yet shy smile her younger self was known for.

"Thank you! Thank you so much... It's finally over, finally."

Max raised her hand at the end of her speech and pointed it at Jade, who looked on in thoughtful, sad resignation.

"What do I have to do...?"

Jade asked softly.

"What do I have to do to stop this?"

Max simply smiled in response before a swell of power burst from her hand and enveloped Jade. As the time travel power ran it's course over her, she heard Max say a phrase, in a small voice.

"All you have to do, is stop Chloe from entering that bathroom. Just wait three years, and you'll see."

Before she too faded out.

Jade woke up in a hospital bed with a body that felt wholly unfamiliar to her senses. As she opened her eyes, she shut them again just as fast, avoiding the light seemingly blaring in her eyes. When she managed to inch them open slowly, she noticed two people standing above her bed. A man wearing a doctor's traditional white coat and an overweight older lady, with short blonde hair and a round face. She wore a beige cashmere sweater along with a skirt that looked for too small for her body. Just as soon as she woke up, the man in the lab coat began to speak.

"A good, Ms Walters, it appears you've woken up."

'Ms Walters?' Jade thought. That wasn't her name.

"Who..." Jade coughed lightly with a sore throat.

"Who are you?... W-why am I here?"

At her questions, the woman seemed to break down in tears, though, with Jade's experiences in her previous life, she could tell that they were fake. Simply crocodile tears used to gain sympathy from others. The doctor gave the older woman a pained, yet understanding look before speaking again.

"Well, Ms Walters, you were in a car accident. You're in hospital due to your injuries and, as it seems, you have some form of amnesia as well, though to what extent, I am uncertain."

Jade grimaced in her mind, memories of the real car crash that she had been in with her family. Well, at least some things were consistent between Universes. After that, Jade went through standard procedure after waking up, all the while the woman's crocodile tears seemed to ramp up, bordering on hysteria. After a while, the doctor, who'd revealed himself to be named Doctor Smith, went to leave.

"Well, Ms Walters, it appears that your amnesia is quite severe, but your memories may come back at any time, I'm certain."

With that, he was off to check her 'brain scans' or something, Jade wasn't really paying any attention, too wrapped up in the thoughts of her family that were an entire Universe away. She was pulled from her thoughts from a sharp stinging pain on her cheek. She'd been slapped by the overweight woman, who was revealed to be her mother, Madeline, who wore an expression of sheer rage on her face.

"Listen here you little bitch! How dare you make me pay for your hospital bills you ungrateful whore, you made me miss your sister's piano lesson!" The woman, Madeline thundered in rage.

Jade grit her teeth in anger and pain, it seems this 'Mary' was from an abusive household. She wanted to retaliate, but the pain from her ribs flared up and caused her to sit down.

"When you get out of here, I'm going to make you wish you were never born, you bitch!" Madeline screamed at her.

And make her wish she was never born she did, or at least, she tried to. When she got 'home' she almost laughed when she realised that she was in a Harry Potter like scenario. Her sister, Emily, was given anything she wanted and acted like the spoiled brat she was made into, whereas Jade was forced to live in the attic, cold and dusty as it was. Her 'father' Michael, barely even looked at her and when he did, he treated her like she was trash on the sidewalk. Her 'mother' was by far the worst however. Whereas Emily was only spoiled and bitchy and Michael treated her with cold indifference most of the time, Madeline actively abused her. It was worst when she was recovering from her injuries, the physical abuse creating multiple scars across her back and stomach. Though she tried to act unbothered by it, it brought up memories of her biological father, ones that she didn't want to remember.

Eventually, when her injuries healed, she began to fight back, both literally and figurately. She actively rebelled against them, completely juxtaposing to Emily, who was the goody two shoes of the family. She cut and dyed her hair, which in the end had gotten her slap from Madeline, but at that point she didn't care, she felt like her old self, fresh and free from burden. Then came the piercings. She got one in her left eyebrow and a stud on the left side of her nose. That had gotten her a beating so bad she couldn't walk right for a weak, but in her mind was worth it. Next, was the snake bite and the belly button piercing, which had gotten the same response as the last one. Tattoos, drinking, drugs, she did all she could to feel like her own person, like her old self again and in some aspects, it worked.

For her self proclaimed 'family', the final straw was when she 'accidently' came out to her parents, who saw her making out with her girlfriend on the sofa. It was the most scared Jade had ever been, after they finished they told her that they couldn't live with her disgusting lifestyle and were getting rid of her. She thought that she was going to die, but at the same time, their words caused her to fell only relief. She was finally getting out. But that hope was short lived.

After she was put into the system, she was bounced around from house to house, some abusive, though none as bad as the Walters, though some were kind and only got rid of her when they had a real kid on the way, their own flesh and blood. It was only the words of Max and the thoughts of her family that helped her through the 3 years she was supposed to wait. After she reached 18, she was removed from the system and lived to a boarding house in Seattle. It was their that all of her problems caught up with her. She felt the weight of her reality pressing down on her and couldn't bare it and had a mental breakdown in the bathroom of the boarding house, the years of abuse and neglect weighing down on her mind until it snapped. She was taken to a psychiatrist afterwards who helped her work on her problems. It was there that she was diagnosed with depression and mild PTSD, due to her traumatic past, but she was helped along and given antidepressants to take by her psychiatrist, a kind older woman by the name of Sarah.

After a month or so, she realised that the 3 years that Max had spoken to her about had passed and she was nearing 19, the same age that she died at in her previous life. She laughed so hard that she almost cried, it was a hysterical laughter, one that would typically be heard from a person in an insane asylum. 3 years of abuse and neglect that left her with scars, both mental and physical and for what? Nothing!

Her laughter tapered off as she decided to go drink her sorrows away, something that she did very infrequently after Sarah cracked down on it when she mentioned that she used it as a coping mechanism in one of their sessions. The older woman had been angry with her, but it was the anger that one would associate with an angry mother, something that the younger girl was eerily unfamiliar with, as the memories of her real family, of 3 years ago began to fade.

As she entered the bar, she looked for the nearest seat open and spotted her, sitting there at the bar. A girl with short brown hair with a single blue streak in it. Chloe Price.

Max hadn't been lying after all.

AN: Sup, ASR here. Sorry if this chapter might seem a little bit rushed, but I wanted to set up a backstory for the protagonist and the things she dealt with during the 3 years, which will be explored more throughout the fic. That being said, this is a romance fic with a primary focus on fluff, not angst, so look forward to that in the future. ASR out!