Chapter 2; All This Repetition

Now, when all the clowns that you have commissioned
Have died in battle or in vain
And you're sick of all this repetition
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

-Bob Dylan, Queen Jane

October 23rd, 2013

Max Caulfield sat amid a vast spread of photos and switched her gaze back and forth between an ID card and the older homeless woman to whom it seemingly, inexplicably, belonged:

Blackwell Academy Student ID
Issued September 1, 2012
Jane M. Caulfield
Born February 9, 1996

Even through the cracked and yellowed laminate, the photo looked eerily similar to Max, aside from an expression more confident than Max had ever felt in her life. No, not confident. Defiant! Jane, teenage Jane, in the photo, wore her hair short and shapely. It gave her a professional air that made her look older. The two girls were not identical, but if Max showed this photo to anyone and claimed it was her sister, they would have no reason to doubt it. There wasn't much left of the crisp, tidy teenager in the disheveled and bent homeless woman who sat across from her, but the resemblance was still there, anchored by those same stern, defiant, brown eyes.

"Jane?"

"Jane."

"M?"

"Maxine. Dad always loved that name. Never liked it myself."

"Dad?"

"My Dad. Your Dad."

"My Dad?"

"Our Dad. Ryan Caulfield," Jane raised a hand and pointed to the family photo on Max's desk. "Don't like the beard. He didn't have it in my reality." Max's gaze followed the gesture as a look of incredulity spread over her face. She regarded the photo; herself and her parents at Snoqualmie Falls, and tried to remember her father without a beard. She knew he didn't grow it until she was five or so, but for the life of her she couldn't quite conjure the image, and somehow, that was the sticking point for her. Half-sister doppelganger from another universe? Sure! Dad with no beard? Crazy-talk!

Max's eyes drifted to the third face in the photo; her mother, prompting her to ask, "And Mom?"

"Different Mom. See, I was like you once. Young and dumb. Full of power and looking for any excuse to use it. Yes, the exact same power as you. Well, almost. My thing was doors, not photos. I don't know how you do the photo thing."

"Well, that makes two of us," admitted Max. She knew how to perform a photo focus, but she had no understanding of the mechanics behind it. She suddenly felt very under-prepared to be talking to Jane, like she hadn't studied for an important test.

"More like one and a half of us, but yeah," said Jane with a squint, "My thing is doors. I can open a door and step through it to any time on the other side."

Max butted in eagerly, "Wait, if I go back through a photo, I just take over the body of younger me at that time. If you go back through a door... are there... two of you?"

"Then what happens when you get back? You have to jump back into your other self with no idea what she's been up to? That's weird. I wouldn't like that. Seems like a hell of a weakness. Anyway, yes. There would be two of me. I've met myself a bunch of times. It is no big deal. Back to the Future was wrong," Jane made a dismissive hand-wave and continued, "Using the same trick, I can also open any door at any time, as long as it was unlocked at some point."

"Oh! OH! So the door was unlocked!" Max exclaimed, finally feeling a little less hopelessly lost.

"There's hope for you yet, Max," Jane said, her cragged face making something between a grin and a sneer. "In my reality... the original realty... Ryan Caulfield married my mother, Katie Fisher, and had me. In yours, he marries your mom, and has you."

Max looked down at her hands and then at Jane's. So, not the same person, but apparently close enough for whatever's in charge of handing out time powers. "Okay, so, what happened? I mean, what caused the change?"

Jane adopted a pained tone and stared at the floor just in front of Max as she spoke, "I did. My mother had a twin sister, for whom I am named. Aunt Jane! God, Aunt Jane! How much did I used to hear about her?" Something approaching a smile crossed Jane's face as she reminisced, until she suddenly remembered Max was there. When she did, Max thought she saw just the faintest flicker of anger cross the older woman's face before she continued, "In the original reality, she died when they were 9 years old, running around the observation deck of the Arcadia Bay lighthouse when part of the railing gave way. My mother never really recovered from her twin's death. She refused to leave Arcadia Bay, even years later when Dad got a good job offer in Seattle, so my family never moved away like yours did. As I grew up, and started to resemble her dead sister, my mother's sanity took a turn for the worse. It was hard on us. Hard on Dad. She was in and out of institutions. We had to put her on suicide watch more than once."

Max's mind swam with questions. Were Jane and Chloe friends? What happened to Chloe in Jane's world? Had they stayed in touch since there was no move to Seattle? What else was different? What became of the alternate version of her own mother? Did she have more than one time-tossed half sibling out there? For the moment, she forced herself to stay focused on Jane's story. She gave a grim nod by way of acknowledgement.

"So, what's a gal with time powers to do? I walked through the lighthouse door and time-traveled to that very day in 1978 and then I just locked it so they couldn't get in. I watched from a window as my mother and her sister, the 9 year old versions of them, came to the door, tried to get in and eventually gave up and went away. Once they were gone, I tried to go back to my own time, and I got there and discovered my whole family was gone. With her sister alive, my mother went to school out of state. My dad married someone else. I'm never born. You take my place and all of you move to Seattle. All I found was an empty house."

Max's brows knit into a concerned expression. "I'm so sorry!" she offered, "That sounds awful!"

"I'm not telling you this for sympathy, kid!" snapped Jane, "This is for your benefit, not mine!"

Max nodded. She fished for an intelligent question she could ask to prove she was paying attention "You said this is the first time this had happened. Me developing powers. What did you mean first time?"

"Ugh. The first loop.", said Jane, wearily "Ever since I erased myself from history, time, it seems doesn't quite know what to do with me. I live in loops. I go through my life and I die and I wake right back up again in the body of my 17 year old self in 1978, just after I had set that change in stone. Right at the very second that saving my aunt's life became irrevocable. The instant I had negated my own birth."

Max just sat and listened, wide-eyed. She remembered being horrified to find how different her other self had turned out after the trip back in time to save William Price; in the reality where Chloe was paralyzed and Max herself was a Vortex Club member. She supposed it could have gone much worse.

Jane continued, "You name it, I've lived it. I've been a doctor, a soldier, a senator. I've been a gang leader and a grandmother. It turns out you can make a pretty comfortable living out of knowing everything that's going to happen."

"You really have lived in Arcadia Bay for a thousand years!"

"I told you!" nodded Jane, "I never said they were consecutive!"

Max asked, "But why be homeless? I mean, if you can make any life you want?"

"Why not? I'm basically numb to it all by now, and making a life gets old after the 20th or 30th time. Last dozen lives or so I spend most of my time vegging out in alleys depending on the kindness of people like Joyce Price. Why bother doing anything more? What's the point?"

Max stood and stared out the window as she absorbed this. Outside there blew a cold breeze, and the fall leaves were starting to come down. She could feel the chill of the air through the window. "Okay, I get it. I do. You're here to scare me. You don't want me using my powers and messing things up. Well, you didn't need to come. I'm already scared! I don't want these powers. I don't want to have to be the one who chooses! I swear to Dog, if I could just give them away I would do it, in a heartbeat! But I lost my best friend, my...my Chloe and I don't know what to do! I tried as hard as I could to help her escape her destiny..."

"Destiny?" Jane asked, her thin lips pulled into a smirk.

"Her fate! It wanted her dead, and each time I saved her I just broke things more and more!"

"That's cute, Max. You don't believe in God, but you believe in destiny? What's the difference? You're okay with the idea of an all-powerful, over-riding will controlling everything, but not if it has a beard?" Jane sneered, rising awkwardly to her feet.

Max flopped dejectedly onto her bed, unsure how to take this rebuke. Jane advanced on her, "It can feel good to shrug off our failings as the will of fate or an act of God, but that's bullshit! I had to live with this a long, long time, so let me tell you, what happened to me is 100% my own fault. I own that. There is no destiny, no fate, no hand on the wheel! Nothing is meant to happen, it can only be made to happen!"

"So it is all my fault!" Max's voice quavered as tears started running down her face, "If it's not fate then it's all on me. I was too stupid! I did it all wrong and I killed my friend! I've lost her forever and I'm to blame!"

Max broke, crying like a child; a deep, stabbing anguish belting out of her in heavy, bursting sobs. Jane sat down next to her on the bed, not looking at Max but staring darkly, straight ahead, "Hard lesson, isn't it? But at least it stops you making a worse mistake later on."

Jane stayed until Max had exhausted her tears, but she never once made contact as Max bawled. No shoulder, no comfort. "Max, look... I'll think about it, okay? I'll see if I can figure a way, a safe way, to save your friend."

Max looked up at her hopefully.

"It won't be easy," Jane cautioned, "And whatever I come up with, you'll need to do exactly as I say. Can you do that?"

Max nodded enthusiastically as Jane stood over her, chin held high, eyes angled low. Without another word, Jane turned and walked to the door, picking her way between Max's scattered photos across the floor. Max called out as Jane reached the doorway, "Wait! Did you want to see him? Dad I mean. Before you go. I could tell him you're ... a teacher! From Blackwell! A history teacher, or something, and you could..."

A stormy scowl passed over Jane's features. "Max, I think... I think you mean that to be kind but, no. Seeing someone you love and they don't know who you are. You can't imagine how much that hurts."

October 24th, 2013

Steph Gingrich never cared much for fall, but even she had to admit that fall on the University of Washington campus was pretty spectacular. The close buildings of the central quad protected the cherry trees from the wind, so they maintained their dazzling orange foliage even as most other trees in the area were blowing bare. The ring of vivid colors pressed up against the buildings reminded her of Rachel Amber and the Arcadia Bay forest fire of 2010. Steph had come to expect that little tinge of nostalgia each time she left her Physics class.

The other thing in the quad that reminded her of Rachel Amber; the one she was not expecting; was a red flannel shirt, worn by one Max Caulfield. Max looked better than yesterday. The bags under her eyes said she hadn't slept much, but she had at least washed and brushed her hair, and her hoodie and jeans looked clean. She waved energetically to get Steph's attention, "Hi Steph!"

"Max! Good to see you out in the world! Am I going crazy or is that Rachel's shirt?"

Max nodded solemnly, "That's a long story. Steph, I'd like to tell you everything. About that week. About me and Chloe and Rachel," Max said, looking her right in the eyes, "And you're going to think I'm totally batshit insane, but I've prepared a little proof I think you'll find very compelling."

Steph began walking down the quad and gestured with her head for Max to follow. She wrapped a red and white checked scarf around her neck, obscuring a well-worn black t-shirt adorned with a pink triangle and thin white letters reading, HBH. Don't Assume! She zipped her faux leather jacket over top of it, jammed her hands in her pockets and nodded for Max to continue.

And Max did. As they walked, she told Steph about her rewind power, her trips through time, and the week that never was. Her adventures with Chloe, and how they used Max's abilities to unearth the truth about Rachel. The visions, the tornado, the snow, the twin moons and finally the ultimate cruel choice Max was forced to make on the lighthouse cliff. Steph listened throughout, but made no sound, save the steady clop of her boots on the concrete as they walked, her expression growing steadily darker with each new revelation.

Steph stopped and stood in front of Max. With a concerned expression, she told her, "Max... look, I can tell this means a lot to you, but just because I'm into fantasy doesn't mean I'm gonna swallow this sort of thing."

Steph hadn't noticed that Max had taken out her journal. With a sheepish expression, Max opened the journal and already written on the page she selected were Steph's exact words, Max... look, I can tell this means a lot to you, but just because I'm into fantasy doesn't mean I'm gonna swallow this sort of thing.

Steph paused. "Okay, that's a cute trick, but you could have just written a bunch of answers and, you know, turned to the one I said."

Max flipped the page. The next entry read, Okay, that's a cute trick, but you could have just written a bunch of answers and, you know, turned to the one I said.

Steph paused again, then defiantly crossed her arms and said the most random thing she could think of, "For thine is. Life is. For thine is the. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends..."

Max flipped the page. Not with a bang but with a whimper, read the next sheet.

Steph stared at the page for a long time, uncertainty and doubt playing over her face, fishing for another explanation. "Let me see that!" she said, taking the journal from Max and flipping through it to try and discover the method behind the trick, "So you're saying... you knew what I was going to say... because you replayed it?"

Max nodded, "This is the fourth time we've had this conversation. I wrote down what you said and rewound. I have no reason to trick you Steph, and I need someone I can talk to about this. Did you hear how the police found Rachel's body?"

"Anonymous ... tip..." said Steph, slowly piecing things together, "That was you?"

Max nodded. "How else would I know? I was here, in Seattle when ... when it happened. And Nathan would never tell me. He hates me."

Steph looked back and forth between Max and her own words in Max's journal. "Max, why do you have Rachel's shirt?"

"She left it at Chloe's. In that other timeline, Chloe gave it to me. In this one, Joyce let me take anything I wanted from Chloe's room after the funeral. I took this and a few other things."

Steph handed the journal back, a skeptical look still clouding her face, "You wore it because you knew I'd recognize it?"

Max shrugged, "I suppose I should have figured you would, but no, I wore it because it was clean and warm. I haven't been great about keeping up with laundry."

Steph laughed, "Did you know I gave it to Rachel? She told me she liked it the first time I wore it. When her birthday came up 2 weeks later, I knew it was either use that excuse to give her the shirt or I'd end up wearing it, like, every day, to try and impress her. I thought the former was marginally less pathetic."

Max smiled and hugged her arms, "It's like we're the sisterhood of the traveling shirt!" That the red flannel had passed through all four of their hands certainly seemed to suggest that telling Steph the truth was the right thing to do. From Steph to Rachel to Chloe to Max and now back to Steph again. It seemed like... well, yesterday she'd have used the word destiny. Kismet, maybe?

"Max, why tell me of all this?"

"I let Chloe go. I let her sacrifice herself so the town would be spared from the tornado. I thought that was her destiny. But now I can't stop wondering, what if I'm wrong? What if there IS no destiny? But I don't have any confidence I can figure it out alone. I need someone who's smart. A planner. Someone who can think of all the angles."

"And you think I can... what? Save Chloe?"

"Save Chloe. Save Rachel."

"Save the world?"

"Yes! Well, maybe not the world. Maybe just the town. Are you in?"

"Max..." Steph pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. For a minute she weighed Max and her story. It certainly sounded crazy, but how else could Max have done the trick with the journal? And if she did have that kind of power what in the world did Max need her for? "I have another class. Look, if you want, you can hang in the library and after class I can drive you home, okay?"

Max nodded resignedly. "You don't believe me. Okay.", she sighed, and turned to go. After two steps, she called back, "Yo, Stephers, you got, like, any more copies of Bladerunner?"

Steph blinked at the non-sequitur and the strange nickname, "What? No, I don't do that any more. All my Dad's equipment is back in Arcadia Bay. I had some leftovers, but I sold my last one two weeks ago. What, did Chloe tell you about that?"

Max just smiled knowingly and walked away. Steph shook her head and turned and walked into the Padelford building. Truth be told her next class wasn't even here. She had just ducked into the nearest available random building since she couldn't think of a better excuse to separate from Max. Even a two-time veteran of the Fortress of Insanity campaign could only take so much crazy at once! She was wondering if she should text Juliet and Dana about Max's mental state when she was approached by a classmate from her Shakespearean Studies class. She didn't know his name off the top of her head, but he apparently knew her by reputation and asked, "Yo, Stephers, you got, like, any more copies of Bladerunner?"

At a sprint, Steph turned and ran out of the building to catch up with Max, who was walking slowly in the direction of the student parking lot. When she reached Max, Steph huffed between breaths, "Okay, so I'll play along for now, but I reserve the right to claim I never believed you if this all turns out to be bullshit!"

"I thought you had a class," said Max, coyly.

"If this is going where I think it's going, then somehow I feel like me cutting class today isn't going to matter all that much."

Fifty-seven minutes later, over four slices of pizza in the most private booth they could find, Max retold her entire story and this time, Steph took detailed notes. "Damn, Max. Okay, so you want me to try and figure out what you do to fix this? Save Chloe and Rachel, avoid the tornado. Right? Am I following?"

"Yes. At the time, I thought the tornado was because I defied fate by saving Chloe. Now I'm not so sure."

"Did you think about just, like, warning people? I mean, if people took shelter, you know? The school has all those sturdy, old, brick buildings that... certainly... you're shaking your head at me."

"That was my immediate regret; not warning people. But this storm," Max shuddered, recalling the horror of it; from the first time she glimpsed it in her premonitions to the final moment on the cliffs, she had this awful sense the damn thing was out to get her. "It was biblical, Steph! Beyond reason. Even if I could find a way to warn everyone and they believed me there's no way that storm doesn't kill people and destroy the town anyway."

"That bad?" Steph raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"It was the size of a mountain. There was a ... malice to it. Chloe called it Rachel's Revenge."

Steph sat bolt upright, "Max, what if it was? Okay, I know I'm playing catch-up here, but hear me out. We used to joke that Rachel was a force of nature. Not long after she moved to town, she didn't get the part she wanted in our production of A Doll's House and we had just awful weather for weeks afterward. It was an outdoor show and we had to cancel every single performance due to rain. Once, after a fight with Chloe, I saw her scream in anger and the wind kicked up and blew all the leaves off the trees! And there was this insane forest fire and nobody could figure out what started it, but that whole week she was having this massive fight with her dad. You're telling me about snow and tornadoes, but we had fucked up weather in Arcadia Bay before you came back. At the time, I didn't really think about it, but now you're sitting here telling me superpowers are real, so, what the fuck, right? In for a penny and all that."

"You're saying Rachel wanted to destroy the town?" Max had difficulty picturing that. Rachel had been so perfect and popular. Max couldn't quite wrap her brain around the idea that someone would have all that and want to throw it all away.

"I don't know. Maybe. Or maybe somehow after she died, all that power had to go somewhere. Maybe it got stirred up by your investigation, or what was happening with your own power. I don't know. But honestly, the idea of super-powered Rachel... it kinda clicks. And I think I know what it is about you that reminds people of Rachel," Steph leaned low across the table in a conspiratorial way, "With both of you, there's this feeling, like you know something the rest of us don't."

"Okay, so if the storm is Rachel... or like, what's left of her, why would it go away when Chloe died and why only specifically when she died in the bathroom on Monday, but not when Jefferson shot her Thursday night?"

Steph smiled and tilted her head sideways, "Aww Max, I thought you were a romantic! Maybe Chloe is like, the anchor. Maybe she was the last person in Arcadia Bay that Rachel really cared about, and without that anchor...", Steph wiggled her fingers and moved her hand through the air, miming evaporation. "But come Thursday night, things were already too far along to stop."

Max reached across the table and grasped Steph's hands, "Holy shit, Steph, you're good at this!"

"Gamemasters. We can make a story out of anything!"

Max dropped Steph's hands and her shoulders slumped in disappointment, "So you don't believe any of what you just said?"

"I told you, Max, I'm playing along. Your proof of your own ... power... thing... whatever, that was very convincing, but I'm taking your word that there even was a tornado, or any of this other stuff! I've got no way of knowing if I'm right about Rachel or your storm. What happened when you tried to save Rachel? Did the storm still come?"

Max really didn't want to have to answer that question out loud. It wasn't even Steph's reaction she was afraid of. She was ashamed. "I don't know", she said quietly to the table. "I never tried."

Steph leapt to her feet and batted their drinks off the table. "YOU NEVER TRIED?" she cried, "You never tried to save Rachel? What the fuck, Max?" The crashing plastic tumblers and scattered ice drew the attention of the whole restaurant. Max closed her eyes, reached out her hand and hit rewind.

"What happened when you tried to save Rachel? Did the storm still come?"

Max raised her eyes to meet Steph's, "How, Steph? You tell me how and I'll do it. I'm not smart. I'm a coward. I don't know what I'm doing. Rachel wasn't my friend. I don't know her. I don't have photos of her. If I went back and like, warned her, would she listen?"

"No. Rachel wasn't one for warnings," Steph stewed, "Okay, let me try and understand how this photo thing works. Are there any limitations?"

Max shook her head, "I don't think it works with screens. It has to be a physical image," and she patted the lump of her camera in her satchel. Feeling its weight in her hands again, it occurred to Max she hadn't taken a single photo since Chloe's death. Not so much as a selfie. She opened the bag to look at it and was struck how strange it was to have her old camera back. Since the events of that week were aborted, her camera was never smashed, and Chloe never gave her William's camera to replace it. She smirked at the clunky, old thing. At least one thing had benefited from all this time travel bullshit.

"Okay," Steph pondered, "Does it have to be a photo of you? I was around the night of that party. Maybe I could find an excuse to pull her aside."

"I think it has to be me. If I stare at a photo of me I can feel a sort of... pull. I don't get that with photos of other people."

Steph nodded, "Makes sense. Or I guess as much sense as any of this makes. Okay, so Rachel won't listen to you, and even if she would listen to me, we can't send me back. I'm trying to remember what else was going on in town that night. Maybe we could buy her and Chloe tickets to a show or something?"

Max suddenly slapped the table with both hands, "Three thousand dollars!"

"Oh I see," smirked Steph, "Here we go. Sorry, Max! The Nigerian prince was way more convincing..."

"No, I mean Chloe and Rachel needed money to leave town. If we can get that money to them at the right time, they'll both be out of harm's way! And I think I know where I can get some, but it's on campus and I'm in Seattle all that time."

"I'm on campus at that time."

"Do you think you could write me something to say that would convince your younger self to break into the principal's office, steal the handicapped fund and give it away to Rachel Amber?"

"Max, do I seem like the kind of girl who does her own dirty work?" Steph grinned, "Why would I, when I have a certain blue-haired punk to do it for me?"

Max laughed, "Yes! Yes! Chloe would jump at the chance to steal that money! All we have to do is figure out how to get her that information, and when to go back to. It would have to be a time when they were both still serious about leaving. Come to my house and help me find a photo?"

"Max, I still haven't decided if you're crazy, but if you are, it's the best kind of crazy! Let's go!"