Life is Strange

Making Peace

Chapter 1

It was late morning when Max Caulfield's eyes sprang open and she sat bolt-upright. Sweat poured off her in waves, drenching the duvet and the bed sheet as her breath came in ragged, panicked gasps. Her heart rate didn't slow down any when she realised she wasn't in her room at Blackwell. It took a few seconds for the pieces to click together in her brain, as they had done every day since she'd moved in. She wasn't at Blackwell anymore. After everything that had happened, that hadn't been an option.

Sighing heavily, she swung her feet out of bed and threw the duvet back so that the air could get to it. She grabbed a can of body spray off the bedside table and sprayed the mattress and the duvet to help the process along. The damage wasn't too bad and she decided that she might be able to avoid changing them this time around. As she got up and went to throw off her pyjama top, she was interrupted by a knock at her door.

"Max, is everything okay?" She looked over at the door, hating herself as the word left her mouth.

"Chloe?" It was an automatic reaction. She and her room mate had both grown immune to it but that didn't stop the mixture of guilt and longing from stabbing at her eagerly every time she made the mistake.

"Abby." The voice was calm, but Max knew that subtle irritation was there. It was always there. She couldn't blame her. The amount of times Abby had called her by her ex girlfriend's name since they moved in together... They both accepted it, though. It was all part of the adjustment process; helping to rebuild each others' lives without the person they loved the most. "Is everything okay in there?"

"Just a nightmare!" Max called back as she threw her night shirt over her head and grabbed her can of body spray again, spraying herself quickly before grabbing a fresh bra and shirt. She'd showered the previous night, so she decided she should be fine for now. She hadn't been lying, either. It had been the same nightmare as always. The gunshot going off, Chloe's body hitting the floor heavily, David bursting in and detaining Nathan on the spot... Those Vietnam-level flashbacks were haunting her on a nightly basis now, never leaving her alone. With that, she grabbed a fresh bra and t-shirt and started looking for her jeans.

"Okay. I'm going to go do my exercise. I've left your breakfast in the oven to keep hot." Max could hear her depart, the wheels of her chair heavy on the floor. She was all too familiar with the exercise Abby was referring to: a set of fold-out bars that she would grip and then try to walk from one end of to the other. So far she'd never made it. She just didn't have the movement left in her legs to make even that distance. Most of it was her making the walk using her arms and then letting her legs catch up in their own time. But lately she'd been getting short of breath and having to stop before she'd made it even using her arms. For all the exercise she was doing, she was getting weaker instead of stronger.

Once she'd finished changing, she headed into the hallway. She and Abby had opposing bedrooms in the hallway with the front door at one end and the living room at the other. As she looked over to the living room, she could see Abby bend over in her wheelchair, her discomfort obvious from the spinal damage she'd sustained at Jefferson's hand when she herself had been a Blackwell student.

"Why do they make them like that?" Max asked as she walked in and went to bend down and help. "It's to help you walk, but it folds out so low down that you can't open it properly. Where's the sense?"

"I know." Abby nodded before flinching involuntarily. As much as she tried to hide it, Max knew she was still getting migraines from the trauma she'd suffered upon losing her eye. Every time Max saw the ruined half of her face part of her was glad that, at very least, Chloe's death was quick. After one shot, she'd been dead before she'd hit the floor. Abby, on the other hand, survived two shots from Jefferson and one of those was to the head. She'd been crippled debilitatingly for life, but she was now having to live with that and suffer the aftermath. "It's okay, don't help me. I need to get used to doing this on my own." Max nodded and stepped back. She saw the sense in what Abby was saying, but not the sense of the contraption she was trying to put together. It was so simple, yet most of the pins went into the base- the place most difficult for a paraplegic to get to- to hold it up. If she had to guess, she expected it to be because they thought the person would have a carer with them. Still, if Abby didn't want help then it wasn't Max's place to intervene unless she asked. Instead, she headed through to the kitchen and grabbed her breakfast from the oven before sitting down at the kitchen table.

One of the first things Abby had surprised Max with was her cooking skills. The landlord had been amazing, the apartment already adapted for Abby's disability and only making her pay rent every other month, but Abby had refused to let her problems hold her back. She was still able to cook just fine, although she said that using a knife was harder with only one eye due to a lack of depth perception. Usually she and Max would work together to cook, Max doing the cutting and her doing everything else. But the breakfast she'd made that day hit all the right spots. It was one half of an amazing spread and she could only imagine what it had looked like when it had first been laid out.

As she sat and ate, Max remembered when they'd first met two months ago; how Abby had talked her down from the cliff edge and provided hope for her again. She'd talked her into moving in with her, offering a roof over her head and working out a deal where Max contributed twenty dollars a week and got put in charge of cleaning all the high places Abby couldn't reach so she didn't have to pay out a hundred and twenty dollars a time for a cleaner and in return got unlimited fridge access, TV access, all her meals cooked for her, as much internet as she could use and her own room. Max had admitted that she didn't feel comfortable and that it was too soon after meeting her to trust her like that and Abby had completely understood. With that in mind, she'd written down a number and told Max to call her if she ever found herself with her back against the wall. The offer was always open.

Almost by chance, Max had showed up at her new apartment on the day to move in and discovered that it was actually the same complex Abby lived in. While Max was on the third floor, Abby was- understandably- on the ground level. Undeterred, she'd moved into her own apartment. Her life at that point basically fit into a shoebox anyway. Unfortunately, leaving behind the ghosts that haunted her hadn't been as easy as she'd hoped. By the third night, she'd staggered to Abby's door and collapsed in a shivering, sobbing heap. True to her word, Abby had taken her in. She'd offered the olive branch again and this time Max had accepted it. They were both victims of Jefferson. They both needed the common ground that they represented to each other. Since then, Abby had been true to her word. The nightmares hadn't faded, but living with someone else who also understood the pain she'd been through made it a lot more bearable.

As she finished her meal, Max became aware of the familiar rattle caused by Abby's exercise frame as she tried to walk along it. She hadn't realised when she'd finished putting it up but inwardly applauded her for managing it. Since she'd been living with her, Abby seemed to be finding it harder and harder to move. It brought with it horrible flashbacks to when she'd created an alternate reality. Chloe had been paralysed from the neck down and slowly dying of respiratory failure. Abby's pained gasps were reminiscent of that as Max tried not to look back over her shoulder and watch. That was when there was a knock at the door. From the sound of it, she could guess who it was.

"Max, can you get that?" Abby sighed as she paused, leaning against one of the rails to allow herself to catch her breath. "Kind of stuck in the middle of something here." Max nodded and got up, resolving to take her plate to the sink later as she left the kitchen and headed down the hall to the door. She opened it, only to be barged out of the way as a woman stormed in. Over the last couple of months, Max had come to know her well. Her name was Carmen Olsen. Abby just called her Karen, which never failed to annoy her. She'd been a frequent caller whenever Abby did her exercise, usually with a written noise complaint because the rattling of the frame was disturbing her in the apartment directly above. This time appeared to be no different. She stormed over to Abby, waving a piece of paper around as Max angrily pursued her. She was about to try and seriously hurt her when she saw Abby mouth the word 'Landlord' over her shoulder. Nodding, she headed to the door and picked up the phone by it. It was directly linked to the landlord's apartment. She put it on speaker as she heard it ringing and he picked up just as the argument fully erupted.

"I have told you time and time again about that stupid rattling! This is the final noise complaint!"

"Well thank fucking god!" Abby snapped. "How do you even type those things up so quick anyway, Karen? Seriously! I haven't even been on this thing five minutes!"

"My name is not Karen!" she shrieked. "Stop fucking calling me that!"

"Stop acting like one then!" Abby shot back. "You're literally filing a noise complaint over a disabled person taking care of their disability you dumb bitch!"

"Oh, you're insulting me now?" Badly manicured nails came up to rest on a set of boobs that Max highly doubted were natural.

"You burst into my home..." Abby's voice dropped dangerously low. "You keep filing noise complaints over a piece of disability equipment that I need-"

"You're not even disabled! You're standing now, aren't you?" she said, gesturing to Abby leaning heavily on the bars of her frame. At that moment, Max realised that the landlord had hung up the phone. The door to his apartment burst open and he stormed across clad in some sort of urban self defence club shirt, a pair of khaki shorts and some heavy duty work boots.

"That's enough, Carmen." She turned to face him, still brandishing her noise complaint.

"Ah, Ronnie. Glad you're here. I need her evicted. She's nothing but trouble. Have you heard the insults she's been throwing my way? And the noise from that thing she's standing in while she's faking her disability! I swear it gets worse every time!"

"I've heard what she's been saying, Karen. And it's all true. Someone's getting evicted but it's not her. Your rent's overdue, you're not a lawyer so you need to stop informing people of your rights and frankly the only reason I put up with you so long is because of all your noise complaints only one has ever been valid and the rest made good kindling last winter." As he carried on, the main phone in the living room began to ring. Knowing that Abby wouldn't be able to get out of her walking frame to get to it before it rang off, Max headed into the living room to grab it.

"Oh, look at this!" Carmen said as Max headed past. "She's really got you at her beck and call, hasn't she?" Max merely responded by flipping her off as she grabbed the phone, leaving the situation in the landlord's hands.

"Okay, that's it. You have three days to get packed, Karen. If you're not out by then, I'll have the police escort you out."

"My name is not Karen!" she screeched again. "You cannot evict me! You're breaking the law! I'm calling the cops!" As she went into a full-blown meltdown, Max clamped her hand over her ear and put the phone on speaker so as to hear what was being said.

"Hello? This is Officer Travis of the Washington Police Department. Is everything okay there? What the hell is that noise?"

"It's okay!" Max assured him. "No one's getting murdered! We've just got a Karen in here!"

"Ah, I see." Max was quite shocked by the calm response. And why was he calling from Washington of all places? Surely it should be the Arcadia Bay department ringing up. "Am I speaking to Abby Denver?"

"I'll put her on." Max said, handing the phone to Abby. "It's for you." Abby took it as Max turned to watch the carnage while only half-listening. The landlord had decided it was pointless trying to reason with Carmen and had instead decided to simply escort her outside. The whole way she was shrieking and protesting and Max felt a pleasing sense of relief when the door finally slammed shut. Peace had descended.

"What do you mean you arrested her?" That caught her interest. She turned to see Abby scowling at the phone as she listened to the response. "No, I said she could keep the bike. She didn't steal it from me. I'm a monocular paraplegic now. It's not like I can ride it... Oh, so there's some documents that need signing. And there's no way around it? ... Okay, well that's fine. How soon can you mail them to me? I want to get her out of there as soon as possible... What do you mean 'come to you'? I can't fly! I have serious damage, some of it in my brain, due to two gunshot wounds! I haven't been cleared for travel! ... Well I have no way to get there, I'm afraid. Looks like you'll have to give her the forms and send her here personally to get them signed." Max's curiosity was now impossible to hide. Fortunately, it wasn't long before Abby hung up and let out a sigh.

"Are we getting a visitor?" she asked, trying to play it casual.

"Oh god, this is awkward as fuck." Abby muttered as she handed the phone back to Max. "Okay, so do you remember when I told you about my ex?"

"You said her name was Lynn, right?" Max wasn't sure, but that name seemed to fit.

"Right." Abby nodded. "Well, she's been arrested because they thought she stole my bike. There wasn't really time for paperwork in our situation. I don't even think she knows I'm alive, actually. Anyway, she's about to find out. She's going to be paying us a visit for a few days."

Welcome to the new story! I apologise that it's taken me this long to start uploading chapters. We've had a few developments at work and I've also been a bit under the weather but still powering on through it so life has been turbulent lately to say the least. Still, here's a nice long beginning to make up for it. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy this one and the direction I'm planning to take it in. These two stories have been one of the more interesting story projects I've worked on so I'll be interested to hear what you all think to it.