Chapter 5; Like Embers

My hopes are like embers
Lying around inside a firebed
And your mind is a firewalker
It steps on them like they are dead

But, I can grow
In spite of all you know
You might not recognize me tomorrow

-Liz Phair, Firewalker

October 11, 2013. Or not.

Into Max's world of blackness and numbness there came a roaring. And then a biting cold. And then a stinging. Many little stings. All over her skin.

"You never tried, Max? Not even once?" asked the roaring.

Max forced her eyes open. It was the night of the tornado. She was standing on the Arcadia Bay lighthouse cliff... No, not standing. Floating. Above the town. Inside the funnel! She couldn't see the town through the flying water and debris, but she knew it was there, in the nebulous way one knows things in dreams. Before her floated the form of a girl, shapeless and airy, only distinguishable as a stillness among the swirling winds. On one side of its head hung a disembodied blue glow in the shape of a feather.

"Rachel!" Max gasped, "What am I doing here?"

"I just wanted some company," replied the Rachel-shaped void, matter-of-factly.

"What are you doing here?", Max tried.

"I'm not here. I mean, I am, but not the part of me that would know why. You woke me when you tried to save Chloe. That was nice. I was rooting for you! Shame you fucked it up." Max hadn't heard Rachel's voice before, but it was exactly what she expected; honeyed and imperious.

The wind tore at Max's skin. Her hair whipped her eyes. Far below she could hear the sounds of cracking lumber and rolling cars. "Rachel, why are you doing this? Why do you want to destroy Arcadia Bay?"

"I don't want anything, Max. I'm dead. I could probably come up with some good reasons, though. If I was alive. Which I'm not. And thanks for that, by the way. You never even thought about saving me, did you? Someone else had to remind you that was even an option."

The rain slashed Max across the face in sheets. She cowered behind her arms for protection, yelling desperately, "I'm sorry! I'm trying now! I will try! I promise!"

"Is that like how you promised Chloe you would call and write and visit when you went away? She showed me the texts, you know. Saddest shit I've ever seen. Chloe deserved better!"

Max staggered backwards, or felt like she did. She had only a vague awareness of her own location within the funnel cloud. She knew she was dreaming. She had to be. Rachel was dead. Chloe was dead. The storm was at rest. Even if Steph had been right about about a part of Rachel; her rage, her power, being left behind; these weren't Rachel's words. There wasn't anything left of Rachel that could form words, but that didn't make them sting any less.

"You don't get to say that to me!" Max shouted into the heart of the storm, "You cheated on her! You broke her heart! If you hadn't filled her head with all this bullshit about running away to California she'd still be alive! Chloe would be better off if she never met you!"

The ghostly apparition's eyes flared wide. Thrusting her hand at Max, fingers outstretched, her enraged scream drowned out the roar of the wind. Suddenly Max caught the full force of the tornado directly in the chest. Hurled backward, she tumbled end over end, a leaf on the breeze. Rachel's voice filled her ears from every direction, "I was murdered, Max. What's your excuse? Maybe I couldn't be exactly what she needed me to be, but at least I tried. I was around. I put in the effort."

The buffeting gale threw Max into the sky, or maybe the ground was gone now altogether. The rain lashed her face. Lightning missed her by inches. Rachel's voice continued, "You think I'm the problem? I'm the one that hurt her? What's that saying? 'Tis better to have loved and lost than to spend five years waiting for your dipshit best friend to even fucking text you once!"

Gathering her resolve, Max planted her feet. Or at least, believed she did. She wasn't even sure if she had feet in this weird, disembodied dream-state, but perhaps believing would be enough. She thrust her hand out and grasped at time, dragging the winds to slow them down.

The Rachel-shaped thing at the heart of the storm was a hundred feet away now, yet Max could still hear her voice clearly over the roaring winds, as though it was being seeped directly into her ear. "Think of the life she could have built in all the time she spent waiting for you to care again. It's you! You're the one Chloe would have been better off never meeting!"

Max clenched her fingers and forced time to its knees; dragged it to a stand-still. Holding her hand out, she advanced upward through the frozen winds. There was a strange resistance, like walking through water, but slowed to a crawl like this, the tornado had lost its teeth.

Rachel's voice broke into a harsh cry. The winds doubled in force. Max screamed right back at her and continued to climb. Cinching her grip on time ever tighter, Max held more and more of the storm in lockstep, its power reduced to a push; firm but harmless. As Max advanced, the Rachel-thing grew more and more desperate, throwing more and more of its fury against her. Blood streamed from Max's nose. She was concentrating with such force her vision was blurring, but yet she held her own. Freezing the wind in time, she took all the rage Rachel could throw at her and kept right on coming.

Through clenched teeth, her outstretched arm shaking from exertion, she shouted, "You. Don't. Get to. Say that. To Me!" and pushed her way upward through the wind until she and the Rachel-shape were almost touching fingertips.

"Weren't you listening, Max? I'm not saying anything. I'm dead," said Rachel's voice, and suddenly the tornado was gone. The dark swirls of the storm parted to reveal tile and fluorescent light. Max was standing in the Blackwell first floor girl's bathroom, looking at herself in the mirror over the sink, as if she had been yelling at her reflection the whole time. "These are your words. Not mine," said the Rachel voice, breathlessly trailing off to nothing.

Max leaned against the wall and looked into the mirror at her gaunt face, her tossed and wild hair, her sunken eyes. She missed the days when the only problem she had with her reflection was hating her freckles. Who the hell even was Max Caulfield anymore? Was there anything left but the power and a collection of traumas?

In the reflection, she saw Jane suddenly appear from the shadows behind her, syringe in hand, and she immediately woke up screaming.

October 24, 2013

"So you're awake. We just crossed into Oregon. Not far to go now before you get to save the world!"

Max's head felt like it was full of oatmeal, her body, dull and weighty. It didn't seem to want to do what she was telling it.

"Before I what?" she tried to say, but the result was a weak mumble. Her mouth felt stuffed with cotton.

"I lied before. This isn't the first loop where you developed powers. It's the second." It was Jane's voice, she was sure of that. But there was another noise. A whir, like the old VCR motor? No, louder. More growl. More rumble. The occasional dull thump.

"I'll tell you what happened the first time you found your trigger. I came to you and asked your help in restoring my timeline. The original reality! I gave you a chance to save me from this agonizing semi-existence and to save time itself from my mistake," Jane continued. Max felt there was something important she needed to remember about Jane, but for the moment it eluded her.

"Save time?" Max said and this time it came out right. As an encore, she tried moving again. Legs were obeying. Arms didn't want to move. She felt like she was hugging herself and couldn't stop.

"Why am I not surprised you haven't figured this out yet? Every time I die and reawaken in 1978, that's the end of a timeline. It becomes just another dead reality and the new reality goes forward from there, until I die in that one, and the cycle repeats. Until we fix me, the universe has no future. Time can't go any further than my death."

Death. There was something important Max needed to remember about death, too. The light was flickering. Or no, pulsing. She forced her eyes to focus and see what she could see. She seemed to be on the floor of a work van, possibly a painter's van judging by the spattered floor. The light must be coming from streetlights they were steadily passing.

"But would you help? No, you were too busy trying to save your idiot friend. I begged, Max. I begged!" Jane's voice came from in front of her. The van had two perfunctory vinyl chairs, ripped and deflated and worn. Max was directly behind the driver's seat, so she couldn't see Jane, but she must be there. Next to Max was a mattress and sleeping bag, a few loose clothes and stacks of books.

"So this time, I thought I'd try tricking you into doing the right thing. Try a little subtlety. I mean, you are an idiot. And you were eating out of my hand until your clever little friend with the bad haircut got in the way. So, now, you don't get to choose. You're helping me restore my reality, like it or not."

Steph! That was it! Suddenly Max's senses came back to her with a bitter snap. She felt the dull, cold ache of the side of her face that had been lying on the metal floor. She felt the prickle at the back of her neck where Jane had stuck her. She remembered the life draining from Steph's face. "You fucking killed Steph!", she cried.

Jane's voice sighed, "Before long, one or both of us will rewrite history and she'll be just fine. That version of that girl doesn't matter, Max."

"Fuck you! Her name was Steph and she mattered! You killed her! Why should I let a murderer tell me what to do with my power?" Max tried to move her arms again, only to find the reason she couldn't was that Jane had strapped her into a straitjacket. It stank of must and mildew.

Jane slammed on the brakes and pulled over suddenly. Max slid across the bare metal floor and collided awkwardly with the back of Jane's seat. Throwing off her seat belt, Jane surged into the back of the van and stomped on Max's chest, pinning her to the floor.

Furious, she shouted down at Max, "Your Power? You little moron, it's my power! You stole it, just like you stole my whole life! I'm the original! You're nothing but a fake, a copy, and the only thing you can ever do that will matter is help me put the universe back the way it's supposed to be!"

"I am not a copy! You don't get to control me!" yelled Max. She made a valiant effort to thrash wildly but in the straitjacket on the slippery floor, all she managed to do was wriggle.

"Are you kidding? I made you! If I hadn't gone back to save my aunt you'd never have even been conceived! Your power, your life... you owe it all to me!" Jane crooned, kneeling down next to Max and gripping her by the chin.

"I don't owe you shit!" Max spat back at her, shaking her head loose from Jane's grasp.

"Oooohh! Feisty!" mocked Jane, standing over her, "What are you going to do, Max? What's the plan? Fight back? Scream for help? Get away?"

Max scooted her back against the wall and glared back at the older woman looming over her as Jane continued, "You think you can do that? And what will that accomplish? I get unlimited do-overs and you don't. Even if you find some way to get away from me, I can just close that loophole next time."

Max's nostrils flared. Her breath came in angry puffs.

"Like maybe next loop instead of killing gamer girl I bring her along and hurt her until you cooperate. Is that what you want? Is that's what you're telling me I need to do?"

Max struggled in the straitjacket. It was loose; probably intended for someone bigger than her, but she couldn't get free.

Jane leaned down and grabbed both shoulders of the jacket to hold Max still. "I don't want things to go that way, but you're the boss. If that's what you want then I guess we can stop on the way and pick up your church-mouse friend."

Max's eyes went wide. Over the last week, trying to make sense of her loss, Max had often found herself thinking of all the people Chloe's sacrifice had saved. Kate Marsh had always been at the top of the list.

"Yeah," Jane crowed, "I bet she screams real good."

Max snapped. She kicked Jane in the chest for all she was worth, yelling, "YOU FUCKING MONSTER!"

Jane fell back onto the mattress, knocking over the stacks of books and scattering various belongings. "You leave Kate alone!" Max said, as sternly as her quavering voice would allow.

Jane slowly pulled herself to her feet. "Oh, I'll leave her alone. If you cooperate. It's simple cause and effect, Maxine. I know that's never been your strong suit, but it's actually quite simple. I'm going to be exactly as much of a monster as you make me be. No more, no less."

Still shaking with anger, Max looked away from Jane in an attempt to calm down. She wanted to kick and rage and scream, but she knew in her present position that would all be useless, and may just get her sedated again. If Max's kick had hurt Jane at all, she didn't show it.

"Done with our little tantrum, are we?" said Jane, standing again in the center of the van. "Good. Fucking teenagers. Now, sit still and shut up. You really, seriously do not want to make me pull this van over again."

Max lay on her back and stared at the roof of the van, trying not to panic. The van ground its way back onto the highway and soon settled into a steady rhythm of chewing up miles. Max shut her eyes, held her lips together in a tight line. She breathed curt, forceful breaths through her nose. Every bump in the road tested her ability to hold back the tears. She struggled to keep the mental image of Jane tormenting Kate out of her head.

Fear nipped at her heels. She tried to calm her mind by reminding herself she had managed to escape Jefferson (twice) when she had previously been in situations like this. But those situations weren't like this. Jefferson didn't know about Max's power. Jane knew. Jane knew more about time travel than Max did.

She suppressed a shudder and took another look at her surroundings, searching for... she didn't know. She had no idea what she was hoping to find, but anything was better than staring at the ceiling for the remaining four hours to Arcadia Bay. To her right, she noticed Jane's belongings had been scattered in the scuffle. Something had fallen loose from a stack of books. Something small and white. A note card?

Max wriggled on to her side and, when she was confident Jane wouldn't notice, reached out with her foot and kicked the thing over to her side of the van. Then she lay still, just to make sure Jane wasn't any the wiser. After a few minutes of no response, Max sat up and turned around to examine her prize.

Jane's student ID. The old one. The one she had shown Max when they first met. Issued last year, at the start of Max's junior year, yet worn and cracked as though it was much older. Max supposed young Jane must have had it with her when she went back to 1978. Unfortunately, not very useful to her current...

No!

No, it couldn't be!

Max held her breath and waited to make sure she was really feeling what she thought she felt, and not just a bump in the road or lingering effect from the sedative.

Yes! There it was again! The pull! The strange, luring sensation and burst of sounds she had felt when she first discovered her ability to time travel through photos. It was definitely the same sensation she had felt two weeks ago while holding the old picture of herself and Chloe at breakfast. The photo from the day William Price died.

Was it possible she could travel into a photo of Jane? Were they close enough to the same person that was feasible, or had their similar powers created some sort of bridge between them? Or, if Jane was to be believed, their shared power?

More importantly, where would this take Max? And when?

From her position sprawled awkwardly on the floor, she glanced up at Jane. By the older woman's feet lay a black canvas bag. Max could see the plungers of several more syringes sticking out of it. Wherever this photo would take her, it had to be better than here.

Trying to keep her breathing as quiet as possible, she concentrated on the photo. The image pulsed like a beating heart. Faint sounds went in and out of her hearing; girls talking, shoes on tile, the whir of a printer. There was a resistance she wasn't expecting, almost as if there was an opposing will trying to keep her out. She felt like there was an unseen hand pushing directly on her brain, but Max pushed back! Again and again the focus slipped away from her and again and again she started over, trying to nail it down. It took far longer than she expected, and far more effort than any other focus, but Max persevered.

She heard the telltale click of the camera, and saw the flash.

And she was somewhere else entirely.