June 5, 2015
Central Business District
Seattle, Washington

Sitting in the taxi, I peer nervously through the rain-flecked window at the tastefully appointed building across the street, silently reconsidering my decision to come here. Also, very much regretting my decision not to bring an umbrella.

It's not like we're friends or anything. We never were. We've only spoken once since the storm claimed Arcadia Bay and at the time every word had felt painfully stilted. And considering it had been at Chloe's funeral, that's not exactly a good place to start from. But when all is said and done, only a handful of people made it out of Arcadia Bay. And of those, there's only one who might actually be inclined to hear me out.

And if I'm very lucky, she won't immediately assume that I've lost my marbles.

"Miss? Not that I mind running the meter, but..."

"Huh?" The cab driver's voice snaps me out of my thoughts. Rummaging through my pockets, I manage to dig up about twenty bucks in crumpled bills and hand them over, giving him an 'I'm not a crazy person' smile that I've had way too much practice with. "Keep the change."

Stepping out into the rain, I jog across the street and hurry up the short flight of steps to the large wooden door. To one side, a polished brass placard mounted right above the buzzer reminds me that the privately owned art gallery doesn't actually open for another hour. Ignoring the cowardly urge to venture back out into the rain, I silently wish myself luck and push the buzzer anyway.

For a moment, I wonder if anyone is going to answer. Then the door unlocks with an audible click, opening to reveal the familiar - if surprised - face of Victoria Chase.

"Max?"

"Hey, Victoria."

"Hey. Why are you...I mean, what can I do for you?"

"I was actually hoping to talk to you about something." I hike my jacket's collar up against the rain. "I know you're not open yet, but..."

"No, of course. It's fine." She moves back, waving me in. "Come on in."

Stepping past her to get my first look at the renowned Chase Space art gallery, I'm greeted by something that looks like it could have been pulled out of some European manor home. The walls are painted a crisp off-white, separated by polished granite columns. Both paintings and photographs – several from artists I used to idolize - hang on the walls, and in the centre of the room stands an eye-catching abstract jade sculpture. At the far end of the space is a narrow marble staircase that leads up to a second floor, which Victoria gestures me toward.

"Wow." I look around as I follow her, trying to take it all in. "This place is beautiful."

"Thank you," Victoria responds smoothly as she looks back over her shoulder, giving me a smile that isn't exactly fake. It's more like one of those slightly vacant smiles you get from your barista or the FedEx guy. I wonder if she's doing it on purpose or if it's just a reflex. "We've put a lot of work into it."

She leads me up the stairs to an unassuming wooden door, clearly marked 'employees only', and pulls a small silver keyring from her pocket. She unlocks it and for a second, I imagine it opening to reveal some picturesque fantasy world like Narnia or Rivendell. I'm only the tiniest bit disappointed when she ushers me into a less luxurious but still well-appointed office.

Following me in, she shuts the door and gestures to a red leather couch. "Have a seat."

"Thanks." Spotting a row of coat hooks beside the door, I shrug off my jacket and hang it to dry. On the far end of the room, a wide set of floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the street.

"Coffee?" Victoria asks, pointing toward a small kitchenette in the corner. I guess she's still in customer-service mode.

"Yeah. Please."

The silence that follows is broken only by the faint sound of Victoria fiddling with the coffeemaker. It's a little awkward, I guess, but I don't feel like filling the air with small talk. Victoria glances back at me every few seconds, and I'm starting to get the impression that the slightly forced politeness is just a stalling tactic while she tries to figure out what I'm here for.

It could be my imagination, but she also looks a little worried that I might suddenly break down crying. Considering the last time we saw each other I kept doing exactly that, I guess I couldn't blame her. I've gotten that look from a lot of people, like they want to say something kind and comforting, but don't want to accidentally make things worse.

Eventually, the coffeemaker lets out a soft chirp and Victoria fills two mugs, coming over to join me on the couch. "It's not exactly gourmet, but..."

"It's fine." I accept the drink with a nod. "Thanks."

For want of knowing where to start, I lift the coffee to my lips and start drinking it probably faster than I should. And that's when I know that she's prepared to wait as long as she has to for me to explain why I'm here, because otherwise she probably would have commented on me shotgunning straight black coffee like hard liquor.

"Chloe died," I eventually say, which isn't remotely close to what I'd actually intended to say. And although the instant coffee burnt my tongue a little, I don't think it's responsible for the sudden tightening in my throat.

"I know that, Max." Victoria's tone is cautious, a worried look on her face that she's trying to hide behind her mug. "We spoke at the funeral, remember?"

"That's not what I mean." This isn't off to a great start. Considering I rehearsed this conversation in my head about a hundred times on the way over, I shudder to think what would have happened if I'd just tried to wing it. "It's just...I had this vision of a future where we were old and grey and happy and together and still just us." I'm not going to cry. I refuse to cry. "And now she's gone and it's gone and I...I've got nothing else."

Shit. What do I expect her to say to that? Realizing I'm putting her on the spot, I immediately start backpedaling. "Never mind. Forget I said anything. I'm fine."

Victoria regards me skeptically as she taps a single perfectly manicured fingernail on the side of her mug. "You're fine?"

I nod. I've been here for five minutes and I already feel like an idiot. Way to go, Max.

"Do you remember what I told you at the funeral? About how it's okay to not be okay? Because however 'fine' you claim to be, I somehow doubt you came here just to ignore your problems over a cup of mediocre coffee."

She's got me there. And what's worse, I can tell she knows she does. Crossing one leg over the other, she takes another sip of coffee and looks like she's waiting for me to say something that isn't a complete waste of her time. Serves me right for wanting someone smart, stubborn, and completely intolerant to bullshit.

"I want to fix it." It's a mildly better start. It's still painfully vague, but at least it's on point. And it does seem to pique her curiosity.

"Fix what?"

"All of it. Chloe, your parents, Arcadia Bay. Everything."

"I see." She delicately raises one eyebrow. "And how would you manage that, exactly?"

This is the big moment, although it did come up a little faster than I'd have liked. Regardless, I take a deep breath and square my shoulders. "Time travel."

"Time travel," Victoria echoes slowly, probably back to thinking I'm off my rocker. She studies me for a long moment before continuing. "Look, Max, I can't imagine how hard losing Chloe has been for you. I mean, even I could tell what the two of you had was something special. But have you maybe considered talking to someone about this?"

"I'm talking to you."

"I mean someone..." She gestures slightly into the air. "Better qualified to help you."

Called it. "You think I'm crazy."

"No, I don't." Her response is surprisingly intense. "But for better or worse, I think you've been trying to deal with a lot on your own, and you don't have to. Speaking to a therapist helped me a lot when I was in the same place."

"That's not what this is." I can already feel this going in the wrong direction and I try to get us back on course. "I'm not..."

"You know about the stages of grief, right?"

I nod and add a dramatic sigh for effect. If she insists on railroading the conversation, I refuse to let her think I'm happy about it.

"Did you know they don't always happen in the same order? Or that you can go through a stage more than once?"

"What's your point?" I follow the question up with a classic annoyed eyeroll. Shockingly, it doesn't do anything.

"My point, Caulfield, is that this whole thing right here? This is bargaining." Her brow furrows slightly. "I mean, it's a really messed-up version of bargaining, but it's still bargaining."

"No, it isn't."

"Listen to yourself, Max." She looks genuinely concerned and reaches out to hold my hand. Honestly, I'm a little taken aback. "You're talking about building some kind of time machine to go back and save a town that's long gone. That isn't healthy."

Oh, man... If the idea of time travel has her worried, I can't wait to see what she does with this. "I don't need to build a time machine, Victoria. I am a time machine."

She blinks very slowly and, for a very brief moment, I'm a little worried she might've blown a fuse. "You...are...a time machine."

"That's right."

"Right. Okay. Have you - and I swear, I'm not judging here - but have you been taking anything?"

"Taking anything?" The implication hits me a second later. "I'm not high, Victoria!"

"Hey, I'd totally understand if you were," she says, adding, "I mean, I wouldn't support it, but I'd understand. Shit, the month after Arcadia Bay I probably went through more weed than a Phish concert."

"I'm not high!" I pull my hand out of hers, crossing my arms like a petulant teenager and glaring at her. Unfortunately, even I know that my best glare falls somewhere around housecat on the intimidation scale.

"Alright, alright. Settle down." Leaning back, she goes back to tapping her finger thoughtfully on her coffee mug. "Prove it, then."

"What?"

"If you're some kind of human time machine, you shouldn't have any trouble proving it," she points out. "So, prove it."

"I... I don't..." I look down, picking at a loose thread on the hem of my shirt. This part was always inevitable, because there was no way in hell I'd ever be able to get Victoria on board without providing solid proof. I'm glad I took a little time to practice first. I'd just hoped to provide a lot more context before, as Chloe once put it, whipping out my time dick.

What does it say about me that remembering that makes my heart ache a little?

"Unless you can't do it on command. Or when someone is watching," Victoria adds, eyeing me dubiously. "Either of which would be awfully convenient."

"No, I can. It's just I don't want to...y'know...freak you out."

"Don't think very much of me, do you?"

"That's not what I meant."

"Then...?"

Okay. Guess it's time for me to put up or shut up. Worst case scenario, she flips out and I have to rewind this conversation away to try again...and again...and again. Ah, the life of a time traveler. "Alright, fine. You ready?"

"By all means, wow me."

Standing up, I take several big steps away from the couch and draw in a nervous breath. Victoria watches, a little impatiently, as I raise my arm. Ignoring her, I focus on the sensation that always precedes a rewind. It's like dipping my hand in a rushing stream and feeling the almost chaotic flow of water rushing between my fingers. I reach deeper, past the tumbling currents, until I feel my fingers brush the bottom. I count off about thirty seconds in my head, then I grab hold.

That's the trick to it, you see. In the early days, I'd looked at rewinding like I was playing tug-of-war with the universe. I'd grab hold and immediately pull with as much strength as I had, which was a pretty dumb strategy considering how incredibly bad I am at playing tug-of-war.

It took me a while before I started thinking less in terms of forcing and more in terms of enduring. I imagined time as a river that I was standing in. Instead of trying to swim against the current, I'd just dig my heels in, grab the nearest rock then hold tight and let the past catch up to me. The longer I held on, the further back I could go.

Once I figured that out, all it took was practice (and a little trial and error) before I could rewind (though not really, but I still like the word) as much as an hour without breaking a sweat. Time Travel for Dummies by Professor Max Caulfield. No more headaches, no more nosebleeds, no more feeling like I was taking a power sander to my own brain just to buy back a few minutes.

I mean, except for those times I let go too quickly, or without knowing exactly where I was landing. Those would be the 'error' part of all that trial-and-error stuff.

I learned the hard way that the longer I held on, the more careful I had to be about letting go. Doing it right meant I'd get gently pulled back into the current alongside everyone else. Doing it wrong felt like having my arm ripped out of its socket before getting thrown from a moving vehicle into a brick wall. There were other fun bonuses, too. Like crippling vertigo that had me puking until I couldn't even sit up, vicious migraines that would sometimes last for days, and several frighteningly bad nosebleeds.

Y'know in the movie Fight Club, when he says you can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick? I don't know if that's actually true, but I wouldn't be surprised. And as a side note, blood tastes gross. Like, really gross. Seriously, I'd make such a terrible vampire.

As for my little demonstration rewind, it's so brief that there's almost no effort involved. From my perspective the room just goes the tiniest bit hazy for a second, like a really quick focus adjustment on a high-end camera, and the last half-minute blinks away.

I barely feel a thing, but to Victoria it would have looked as though I just vanished from the couch and instantly reappeared on the other side of the room.

She stares at me, her coffee mug hovering just shy of her lips, for what feels like a really long time. Then she very slowly lowers it back to the table, takes a deep breath, and simply asks, "What...the fuck...was that?"

"Time travel," I answer shortly. Although the way it makes her eye twitch is kind of funny, I feel like laughing might not be a great idea at the moment.

"You just..." Victoria gestures between the spot where I'm standing and the seat I'd previously been occupying. "Weren't you...?"

"I didn't teleport, if that's what you're thinking."

"God fucking help me, that actually is what I was thinking," Victoria murmurs, looking like she's just admitted to still believing in the Easter Bunny.

"I was sitting next to you. I stood up and walked over here." I point to my feet. "And then I waited about thirty seconds before going back in time to the point I was still sitting down. So it's the same as if I'd stood up and walked over, but without the middle part."

The explanation is 100% true, but it doesn't quite seem to have landed.

"You just have to think fourth dimensionally," I add, and that really doesn't help. She's actually looking a little green.

"Oh. Yeah, okay. That...yeah." Victoria rises from her seat, a little unsteadily. "W-would you excuse me? I just need to go..."

"Throw up?"

She blinks at me. "Did you just..."

"No," I pick up a small waste bin near the door and handing it to her. "You just look like you might throw up."

"Oh." Dropping back onto the couch, Victoria hugs the waste bin to her chest and spends several minutes breathing deeply. Eventually the color returns to her face and she looks me in the eye. "You can travel back in time."

"Yes, I can."

"Holy shit. Have you, like, always been able to?"

"No. Not until that last week in Arcadia Bay."

"The last week?" Victoria pauses, her expression shifting into something I'm not totally comfortable with. "Before or after the storm?"

"Before the storm. About four days." I thought the right thing to do would be to answer honestly and hope for the best, but the moment the words are out I can see I was wrong.

"Four days."

"Victoria, I..."

"So, when Jefferson dragged me down into that bunker, you could've travelled back in time?" The question silences me so effectively, she might as well have hit my mute button. "And during all those funerals and memorials, you could've travelled back in time?"

"No, I could only go back a few..."

"When Arcadia Bay was being ripped to shreds and my parents were dying," She cuts me off again, her voice taking on a disturbingly vicious edge. "You could've travelled back in fucking time?!"

"It's not that simple." I can still salvage this. I'm sure of it. "After the storm I wasn't even sure if I could still do it! For a long time, I was too scared to even try!"

"Why?"

"Because...well...it's just that using my power can have consequences. Bad ones." I want to glace away, not sure I can deal with the accusation in her eyes when I say this part, but force myself to hold her gaze. "At the time I thought that using them might've been what caused the storm."

Her eyes flash angrily. I'm pretty sure I just screwed up again.

"What?!" Victoria explodes to her feet, the waste bin in her lap clattering loudly onto the floor. "Then why the fuck would you do it here?!"

"I said that's what I thought at the t..." I try to explain, but she's not listening.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Caulfield!" Victoria puts a hand to her brow, shaking her head in stunned disbelief. "What if you'd caused another storm? What if you already have? Did you even consider that?"

"It doesn't work like that." I take a breath and try to find my balance. "It only causes a storm if I specifically use it to save someone's life."

Victoria narrows her eyes, like she can see right through me. "You're not sure about that, are you?"

How the fuck does she do that?

"Of course I'm sure," I insist, then reluctantly admit, "Like, ninety-five percent sure."

"But you're ready to take that risk to save Chloe? Just because you can't stand the idea of being alone?"

"That's not all this is!" Except that pretty much is all this is, but I sure as hell can't say that now. "I..."

"No. Stop." She holds up a hand and glares at me for a long, silent, and profoundly uncomfortable moment. I feel like I'm being visually dissected and it's hard not to squirm. I don't know if this is some kind of Victoria Chase battle-of-the-wills power move, but if surrendering is what it'll take to move on, I'm happy to throw in the towel.

"Vict-"

"I seriously thought about killing myself after Arcadia Bay."

I feel my stomach clench, lurch to one side, then drop out of existence altogether. Whatever I'd been about to say instantly becomes stupid and selfish, so for once I decide to keep my mouth shut.

"A few times, actually," she continues, her tone disturbingly casual. "I even came pretty close once. Sitting in the bathtub with the razor in my hand. And sometimes I can't actually remember why I didn't follow through."

I open my mouth to say something, but no sound comes out. It's only the memory of our shared times in the Dark Room, long-since overwritten, that allows me to picture her as anything less than unbreakable.

"See, you and Chloe had each other after the storm. And you both had your parents." Her voice cracks a little and she swipes angrily at a tear that threatens to form in her eyes. "I didn't have anybody, Max. All my friends died in the storm. My parents were only children and my grandparents passed away when I was little. You think you know what being alone is? I was alone. I've been alone ever since."

"I...I'm so sorry. I didn't know that."

If she'd been teetering somewhere between anger and despair, my words seem to be the tiebreaker. "Of course you fucking didn't! You never even called to see how I was doing!"

"I..." Several painfully weak excuses come to mind, and I go with the one that does the least to make me sound like a self-absorbed asshole. "We never really got along."

"That didn't stop you from showing up here as soon as you wanted something from me, did it?" She snaps. "What do you want from me, anyway?"

"I'm..."

"Actually, you know what? Fuck you. Whatever it is, you're not gonna get it. I want you out of here."

"Victoria..."

"I'm serious." She points to the door. "Leave. Now."

I try to come up with an argument, but all I can think of is the anger and pain in Victoria's eyes. I even think about rewinding, but if the mere existence of my powers set her off this badly, I don't know what trying again could possibly accomplish.

Finally, I just nod and lift my jacket off its hook. "Yeah. Okay."

She apparently has nothing more to say. She follows me down the stairs and through the gallery's lobby without a word, opens the front door, then slams it the instant I've crossed the threshold. The sound of the lock sliding into place feels especially final.

Flipping my jacket's collar up again, I walk down to the sidewalk. Looking back, I think I see Victoria's face in the window. Then I blink and it's gone. Raising a hand to hail a cab, I resign myself to the fact that some bridges can't be mended and try to think of anyone else I can possibly go to.

Unfortunately, the list of potential candidates still only has one name, and that name just got a great big red X drawn over it.

It's late enough to be called early when my phone goes off, waking me from a restless sleep. Groping blindly at my bedside table, it takes me a few clumsy tries before I manage to find it, press it to my ear, and mutter a sleepy, "Hello?"

I immediately regret not looking at the caller ID first.

"Did I wake you?"

"Victoria?" Sitting up, I glance at the clock on the table. "It's three AM."

"Congratulations, you can tell time. What I asked was, did I wake you?"

"Yeah, actually, you did."

"Good." There's a distinct hint of malicious satisfaction in the way she says it, but I'm too tired to care right now and silently resolve to be very annoyed about it in the morning. I'm considering hanging up on her when she asks, point blank, "Can you actually save Arcadia Bay?"

That wakes me up in a hurry. "What?"

"It's a simple question."

Like hell it is. "I don't know."

"Are you fuc-"

I cut her off. If she's going to call me up at three in the goddamn morning, she's going to listen to what I have to say. "I don't know, Victoria. Even trying would be a thousand times bigger and more dangerous than anything I've ever done before. That doesn't mean I don't want to try."

The line goes quiet for nearly a minute; only the faint sound of breathing confirms that she's still there. "Do you still want my help?"

I don't even have to think about that one. "Of course I do."

"Fine. I'll text you my home address. Be there Monday. Nine AM, sharp."

"Got it. I'll be there," I agree. "And I'm glad you changed your mind."

"Oh, I haven't changed my mind. Not yet."

"Then why are y-?"

"Because we're both alone now. And if there's even the slightest chance you can change that, I figure it's worth giving you a chance to try and sell me on how."

"Thank y-"

"Nine AM on Monday, Caulfield," Victoria interrupts again, adding, "Bring pastries."

She hangs up without another word, but I'm just too relieved to care. She might think we're both alone, and maybe she's right. But for better or worse, at least now we're alone together.