Chapter 9; What Becomes of Us

Nothing natural could come between
Enamored mortals such as we
The winds may blow us far apart
But nothing will undo our hearts

Nothing natural could turn the tide
That washes over both our lives
By day we'll burn, by night we'll rust
And who knows what becomes of us?

-Jill Sobule, Nothing Natural

June 3rd, 1978

Max closed the door behind her, stepping through from another time, and the heavy sound of the mechanism echoed up and down the hollow insides of the lighthouse. She had snuck in here as a child, once or twice with Chloe when they were playing pirates, and it was striking how little the place had changed between then and now. Or, rather, now and then, Max supposed. It would be another 15 years or so before she and Chloe were even born. Max found a landing partway up the spiral stairs where a freestanding pair of metal lockers and wooden crates gave her a good hiding spot with a view of the door. And then she just had to wait.

Before leaving the night of the tornado, she had taken the time to raid Chloe's wardrobe and wash up. Nobody had been home at the Price house, but the door was unlocked. Or rather, it was unlocked. She had dearly wanted to carry Rachel's shirt with her to the end, a reminder of Rachel and Chloe and Steph and the ties that bound all four of them, but it had been ruined by her misadventures. She had selected Chloe's Firewalk shirt and the first pair of jeans she found that fit, but these had not been the only things she had taken from the Price household.

It had been the third time she had been in Chloe's room without Chloe. The first was in the alternate reality where Chloe was paralyzed. The second, after Chloe's funeral, with Joyce. And despite what she had thought so many years ago on the day she and Chloe dug up their time capsule, her most recent visit really would be the last time she would ever see that room.

Soon, Jane would arrive. Not the monster she knew, but the original. Young Jane. Monster in training. Old Jane wouldn't loop back into her younger body until a few minutes later, once the change to history had become irrevocable; once Jane's mother and aunt had given up trying to enter the lighthouse and had left the park. A few minutes to set destiny in motion. Exactly when those minutes would come, Max didn't know. Some time today, but it could be literally at any time. The cold, still air made her shiver and yawn. She hoped she wouldn't fall asleep before it happened.

As an experiment, she stretched out her left hand and flexed.

Nope. Still no fast forward.

Max wasn't sure exactly how long she'd been asleep when the loud clunk of the door roused her, but it must have been several hours given the stiffness in her back and legs from the dank concrete floor. Peeking out from her hiding spot, she saw another girl had entered the lighthouse and locked the front door behind her. She was listening intently at the door but suddenly stopped and looked behind her up the stairs. Max stifled a gasp, but it seems young Jane hadn't spotted her.

Young Jane was wearing those same stack-heel boots, stylish jeans and a black tank-top. The boots rung out a hollow clang as she walked partway up the grate metal stairs to peek out the window. She was a few steps below Max now, with her back to her.

Slowly, Max crept out from her hiding place. Holding the pistol in both hands, just like Chloe had shown her in the junkyard, she leveled it at Jane's back. She drew her lips tight and held her breath. She felt the trigger push back against her finger. Her hands shook. One little squeeze was all it would take. One little squeeze and it's over before it even began.

This is the woman who killed Steph, she forced herself to remember. Who threatened to torture Kate! Who killed William Price! Except... except she wasn't. Not yet. For the time being, this was still young Jane. A girl her own age. Her sister, almost. Staring at her from behind reminded Max of her contest entry photo; the self-portrait of the back of her own head in front of a myriad of photos.

She could imagine Steph and Alyssa and a thousand other voices screaming at her to fire, but she couldn't do it. Not like this, at least. Not in the back. Not if there was any hope of another way.

Max cleared her throat and said, "Jane? We need to talk."

"What are you doing? Don't shoot me!" cried Jane in surprise, cowering against the window.

Voice and hands shaking, Max replied, "I don't want to! I'm here to help you!"

"With a gun?"

"Well, no, I...", Max stammered. She glanced down at the gun for just a second and felt a strange sensation. Young Jane had taken advantage of the momentary distraction to activate her rewind. When Max looked up, she saw her counterpart extending her hand with a wicked grin on her face, and fair enough; this would have turned the tables on any other attacker. Max just adopted a wry expression and said, "You can't rewind me, Jane. We have the same power. I couldn't rewind you either."

Jane dropped her hand and stared at her, wide-eyed. Max struggled to read her expression. It didn't really seem to be fear, or even surprise!

Max explained, "I'm an alternate reality version of you. What you just did, saving your aunt? It works! She survives! Your mom has a much better life. But she and her sister go to school out of state, and she never meets your dad. My dad. Our dad. He marries a different woman and has me instead of you."

If anything, young Jane's expression became even more inscrutable. Max expected shock and alarm. All she got was glare.

Max continued, "But that's not important right now. What's important is that ever since then, you get stuck in a time loop! Every time you die, you wake up right back here in your younger body. Your body! Right now! It will happen in just a few minutes. She'll come! The old you, the one who's been through 100 lifetimes and, no offense, it made her mean and crazy. I want to save you from becoming that, if I can!"

Jane sneered, "You want to save me from becoming immortal?"

Max found herself nearly shouting, her hands were shaking, "She's awful, Jane! She's broken and miserable. Just imagine; the same 80 years or so over and over with no escape. A 'wretched semi-existence' she called it. And she'll erase you, overwrite you! She'll take over your body and you'll go away!"

"And you're proposing... what exactly? You want me to unlock that door and let my aunt die? Revert my change?"

"No! I want you to come with me! We'll escape to another time! I'm thinking maybe if you're not here, the old you won't have anywhere to jump into and she'll just go away, and then, you'll be free. We both will! There's... there's got to be a way! I don't know if we'll ever be friends, Jane, after what you did to Rachel, but we are sisters, in a way. We can go back, we can save Rachel from the blizzard. We can make a life where we're both happy. With everything we can do, I know we can find a way we can both just live in peace! We've got to!"

"What if you're wrong? What if I come with you and this supposed old me jumps into my body anyway? What if it's tied to my age or my body and not where or when I am?"

"Well... then..." Max looked down at the gun in her hand. It still felt so alien seeing it there. The heft of it, the chill of the metal, the smell of the oil. These were not things that belonged in Max Caulfield's hand. She was trying to work out in her head what it would even mean if she killed Jane just after the start of a loop. Wouldn't that theoretically doom the universe to infinite loops of just those few seconds? She suddenly realized young Jane had noticed her staring at the revolver.

"Well, this sounds like a really stupid, crappy plan. I'm not going anywhere with you, fake Jane!"

Max leveled the gun at her. She tried so hard to keep her hands and voice from shaking as she said, "It's not a request." She walked out onto the stairs, a few steps above Jane. Jane stared a hole in Max while slowly raising her hands in surrender.

Then they both jumped as there was a sudden clanging noise from down below them. Jane's mother and aunt, outside, trying the door. Jane turned back to the window and watched them. "It's them! It's my mom and her sister," she cried. It was the happiest Max had ever heard her. "I have to see this!" she said plaintively.

There came a few more clangs at the door and the faint mutter of girls' voices through concrete. "They're turning away! They're leaving!" said Jane, pointing out the window.

Max nodded, but knew this meant they only had a few minutes left before another loop would begin. "We have to go," she said, taking a step down toward Jane.

"Just a minute!" Jane replied, waving her off. "I've heard about this moment my whole life. I want to watch them go! I want to know it worked!"

"That's when it happens, Jane!" said Max, taking another step closer. "That's when the loop starts! We have to go NOW!"

"If I go with you, I'll never get to see them again! You have to give me this!" cried Jane. Max took one more step closer.

Which, of course, was exactly what she Jane wanted. She turned and suddenly had a knife in her hand. She must have dug it from her pocket with the hand Max couldn't see while she was facing the window. Max had the briefest second to react, and she knew in vague terms she should do something with the gun, but her body couldn't make it happen before there was a sudden burst of blinding pain as the knife plunged through her right forearm. David's revolver flew from her fingers as she jerked back violently from the attack, stumbling on the steps. It flung over the side of the stairwell and landed with a noisy clatter down below.

"Okay, fake Jane, my turn to make some non-requests," crowed Jane, looming over Max.

Max turned and fled up the stairs in a panic, holding her wounded forearm to her chest. Jane followed her, stomping her boots loudly on each rung. "'Live in peace.' Ha! The universe didn't give me these powers so I could live in peace. I'm in control now! I can change anything I want!" she shouted.

"It doesn't have to be like this!" whimpered Max as she stumbled up the stairs, going slightly dizzy from blood loss and the circular motion.

"Oh yes it does, fake Jane! You want me to save Rachel fucking Amber? You think I killed her by accident? You think I regret it?"

Max reached the top of the stairs, at the door to the widow's walk. In a panic she fumbled with the heavy latch just as Jane caught up with her. She hip-checked Max against the door and held her there, pinning Max's bleeding arm painfully between her chest and the metal door. With one hand, she grabbed a handful of Max's hair, and with the other she held the knife against her neck.

"I want to know what your deal is and why you're so hell-bent on stopping me! See, I thought someone might be waiting for me here. That's why I brought the knife," Jane said, then leaned close and whispered right into Max's ear, "I found your note!"

"You found my warning and you came anyway?" gasped Max.

Jane laughed, "That's right! Did you think I would just wake up in the middle of the hall and not wonder how I got there when you hijacked my body? Did you think I'd just black-out for an hour and not notice everybody telling me how weird I was acting? You're warning me about some old Jane that's going to take my place, but you're the one who already tried that, aren't you? Feeding me this bullshit about erasing myself from existence. I don't know what you are or where you really come from, but nobody controls me, fake Jane, especially not some half-baked copy! So you're going to start telling me the truth or ... wait... what are you doing? I can feel it! You're doing something! You're using my power! You're doing something with the door!"

"Just... looking... for... something... familiar," managed Max through gritted teeth, as a yellow glow suffused the edges of the frame.

The door opened, and they both tumbled out through time.

October 11, 2013

The tornado greeted Max with its usual roar and a lash of cold rain. It was almost comforting to see it moving again after the temporal violence she'd had to visit upon it in the other dead reality. This reality was similar, and just as dead as the first, but it had rather a different ending.

As they spilled out onto the widow's walk, Max darted to the side of the door, but Jane stumbled in surprise. In her rage, she lashed out at Max with her knife, grazing her across the thigh and eliciting a high-pitched yelp. The winds caught the door as it swung open, tore it from its hinges and sent it spiraling away, smashing through the railing, behind Jane, opposite Max.

Searing pain shot through Max's leg, but worse still was the wrongness of it. She could feel the tear. Feel the space where her skin and muscles were no longer connected. Blood stained her jeans. Trying to keep her weight off it, she leaned against the railing for support as Jane taunted her, "Nice weather we're having! Is this supposed to intimidate me?"

Grimacing in pain and wide-eyed in fear, Max backed away from Jane around the circular walk.

Jane pursued at a deliberate pace, laughing, "Seriously? Where do you think you're going? It's a circle! A loop! You can't escape!"

Max kept backing away around, hobbling on one good leg and cradling her bleeding arm against her chest. Jane followed, not really making a serious effort to close the distance between them, shaking her head at Max's effort.

Max held up her hand as she retreated around the backside of the lighthouse top, engaging her rewind. "Stay back!" she said, trying to sound stern, but her voice betrayed her.

"Oh this is just sad!" mocked Jane, watching the raindrops fall upwards, "We literally just established we can't rewind each other, like 30 seconds ago. You were there! How do you not remember?"

"I don't want to hurt you," replied Max, still backing away.

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't worry about that. I'm the one with the knife, or did you forget that too?" grinned Jane, miming a stabbing motion at Max, who flinched and continued her circular retreat.

Just as they completed a full circuit around the walk, Max stopped retreating and said with quavering voice, "Last warning!"

"Duly noted!" laughed Jane, advancing with her knife raised and then, just a split second too late, she noticed it. The door was back! Max disengaged her rewind and it flew open. The winds caught it, tore it from its hinges just as before and sent it spiraling away, smashing through the railing. Except this time, Jane was standing right in its path.

The door struck Jane, trampling her down onto the railing, which snapped and sheared under the assault. When the door was gone, in its wake it left Jane hanging halfway off the ledge, impaled through the midsection on a foot-long vertical spike of rusted metal. The knife clattered off the brim and fell away into the sea. Jane wailed like a trapped animal, sounding to Max more enraged than pained.

Max couldn't help herself, gasping in shock and horror. She instinctively reached out her hand to rewind; after all, she had only intended to stun Jane with the door and disarm her. But then, she paused, closed her fingers and slowly lowered her hand. The rewind couldn't save Jane. All it could do is repair the railing around her. Even if it could save her, Max didn't think she wanted to.

Leaning against the lighthouse wall and cradling her bleeding arm, Max stood over Jane. Rain and windswept hair stung her eyes as she took in the sight of her fallen doppelganger against the background of the giant funnel cloud. Only a moment later, young Jane's countenance of shock and pain twisted into a knot of rage and frustration. Old Jane had arrived. The start of another loop.

"YOU!" she growled at Max. Looking at her own trembling hands covered in blood, she hissed bitterly, "Vicious, Max! I like it! What happened to the girl who didn't want to hurt anybody?"

"I don't know, Jane. Maybe you killed her. Over and over and over again," spat Max, bitterly.

Jane scrambled to try and get up, but she was in such an awkward position she had no good way to push off anything. The rough metal of the broken railing support held fast to the flesh of her torso. In desperation she tried pushing off the ledge and just falling, but the spike was bolted down to the floor on one end and bent at the other. She was going nowhere without aid. "How'd you do it? How am I here?" she demanded.

"Younger you followed me here. I tried to help her. Tried to save her from becoming you, but she kept trying to stab me and got herself impaled. And hey, you were right," Max said as Jane scowled at her, "Having to jump into your other self and you don't know what she's been doing? Hell of a weakness."

"You think you've won?", bellowed Jane over the roar of the wind, spitting up flecks of blood in her fury, "I will END you, Maxine Caulfield! Next loop I'm going to devote every minute to making you suffer!"

Max shook her head, "No, you won't. There's no you in 1978 any more. This is where your loop starts now. Right here. Like this. With a foot-long spike through your gut," Max replied plainly. Despite the winds and the rain pelting them both, her heart was settling into a profound calm. The monster couldn't hurt anybody any more. Max realized Jane must have felt the time jump as they spilled out the door, but she hadn't yet seemed to figure out, "This is a dead reality."

"This timeline only lasts for another minute and I know you can't leave without me." Max gestured around her at the skies, at the massive black mountain of a funnel advancing on Arcadia Bay. Not all realities end in a cataclysm, but this one seemed determined to go out in style. "When this timeline goes it's taking you and all this time travel bullshit with it. You end here, Jane. It all ends here!" The tornado obliged her with a well-timed burst of lightning.

Jane seethed, "You mincing little hypocrite! I saw you! I may have been the first to kill William Price but you were more than willing to kill him again when you thought it would help your idiot friend! How long before you become just like me? How long before you break something you're willing to kill to fix?"

"Never. I'm letting go, Jane," Max sighed and looked out at the storm. Hi, Rachel. I'll be seeing you soon. Real soon. Hopefully. And hopefully when we next meet we won't be screaming at each other. "When this reality ends I'm going to go with it! And then it will all be over forever! The new timeline will start from a 1978 where your aunt lives. Our dad marries my mom but you're not around to fuck with everything this time! Mark Jefferson and Damon Merrick stay in jail. William Price and Rachel Amber live. New Max gets a fresh start without all the horrible shit you did to find my trigger. No powers. No memory of any of this, or of you! I think she'll be a lot happier."

Anger gave way to fear on Jane's face as she confronted the specter of actual death for the first time in a hundred lifetimes, "And what will become of me?" she said quietly. Max could barely hear her over the din of the storm.

"I don't know," answered Max. "Maybe vanishing with a dead reality breaks your loop and you just go away. Maybe you get stuck repeating these last few seconds for eternity. I don't really care. But you won't hurt anybody any more."

"We'll see. You don't even know everything I've done. I haven't survived a hundred deaths to be beaten now! Don't you walk away from me, you FAKE! You THIEF! I'm the original! You're nothing compared to me! I'll find a way! I'll get out of here and I'll make you KNEEL!"

Max ignored her and turned back through the open doorway to the steps down. "Well, whatever you're going to do, do it quickly. The world ends in a minute," she called over her shoulder as she went down the stairs.

"Now get out of here! Do it before I freak! And Max Caulfield... don't you forget about me!"

"Never!"

From the lighthouse door, an older, wiser and much wearier Max Caulfield watched the final exchange between herself and Chloe Price. Her younger self turned her back and gazed into the blue butterfly photo. Chloe buried her face in her hands. Now or never. Or maybe a little of both.

Max reached out and felt the flow of time like wind out the window of a moving car. She weaved her fingers through it and squeezed. The rain slowed to a crawl and then stopped in midair, frozen in place like stars. A dozen feet away stood Chloe Price. Her Chloe. This one would know who she was. Max turned her hand over and beckoned Chloe toward her, unfreezing her friend in time while holding everything else still.

Chloe looked up, "Max? What... I don't understand.", Chloe turned back and forth looking between the two Maxes, one frozen, gazing intently at the photo, the other standing in the doorway of the lighthouse. "I ... yeah I don't understand. Wasn't that door locked?"

"It was unlocked," offered Max, limping forward, one hand raised, fingers outstretched.

Chloe checked behind her. Other Max was still there, focusing on the photo. All around her the raindrops were hovering in midair. The din of the wind had stopped. The tornado was unmoving. Chloe felt a tinge of panic creeping up her spine. Only seconds earlier she had been ready to die for the sake of Arcadia Bay and now she was stuck waiting. The universe, it seemed, was not done toying with her.

Max pressed forward. Looking at her own outstretched hand she suddenly realized she wasn't actually exerting any effort. When she had first held time prisoner, to save Kate, what seems like months ago now, she had to grasp it, crush it, wrestle it to the ground. It was like flexing every muscle in her body at once. Now, it was almost scary how little effort it required; merely a fraction of her attention. The gesture itself was irrelevant. Stopping time was as easy as flicking a light switch. What was she becoming?

Chloe asked desperately, "Why are you here? Didn't it work? Didn't we save everybody?"

Max smiled, "You did. In the end, you were the hero, not me. You saved everybody, Chloe Price. It was your idea, and it worked. Not for the reasons we thought, but it worked."

Chloe just shook her head, struggling to comprehend. As Max drew closer Chloe could see her friend was wounded, bleeding badly from one arm and leg, covered in scratches and bruises. She rushed forward through the still raindrops and caught Max in her arms.

Max pulled the blue butterfly photo from her pocket as she leaned into the taller girl's embrace. "I kept it, you know? I couldn't get rid of it. I felt like the only way I could accept losing you was knowing I could always go back and save you."

The Polaroid was badly battered; creased and waterlogged, but unmistakable. It was the last possession Max had. In some ways, the last remnant of a very different Max Caulfield. Her bag and camera had been abandoned by Jane in the research facility. Her phone, ruined by the plunge into the Bay. She wasn't even wearing her own clothes. This was the last physical thing left to her. The last piece of herself.

"Goddamn, Max, you're really bleeding here!" Chloe's shirt was staining red as Max leaned her weight against her, cradling her wounded arm between them both. Feeling Max shaking on her cut leg, Chloe reached down and scooped her up in her arms and carried her to the park bench overlooking the sea.

"I wanted to save you. To use this photo and go back and make the other choice. I almost did. So many times. But I couldn't, because it was your idea. You were willing to die to save everybody else, and I couldn't tell you no. I couldn't force you to live in a world where I had taken that decision away from you."

"Max, please just shut up and let me wrap that arm!", Chloe took off her jacket and was trying to tie the sleeve to crudely tourniquet Max's wound.

"So I hope you don't mind, but I made us a new reality," Max let the butterfly photo fall from her hand as she held it up so Chloe could bandage her wound. "A whole new world, from all the way back in 1978, and there, you don't have to die, and neither does Rachel or William or Steph. And there is no tornado and no paralyzing car crash. But... THIS Max... and THIS Chloe... and that magical week we spent together; all the wonderful and awful things we did. It's gone forever. As soon as I let go, that other me will travel into that photo. When she does, this reality ends and the new one takes hold. We end here."

"No Max!" Chloe grasped her by the shoulder, "You don't have to end! You always come through these crazy reality changes! You can get out, right? I... I don't want you to end!"

"No, don't you see? That's what I did wrong. It's not about me! It's about you and your Dad and Rachel and Steph and Kate and everybody else. If I really care about helping people, what does it matter if I remember doing it? If I keep holding onto this power so I can make every little change I want then I'm going to turn into some sick wannabe overlord, some puppet-master. I've seen where that path leads, Chloe! It's better this way! There'll be a new Max, and she won't know any of this! With luck, she won't ever discover her power. She won't need it! But... things will be so different. New Max and New Chloe may never reconnect like we have. Without Jefferson teaching at Blackwell, I probably won't come back to Arcadia Bay, and even if I do, you might be away at college, or with Rachel. The new us may never discover what we have. I don't know what's going to happen. But we'll be alive. And we'll be free."

"And Rachel? How do you know she'll be okay?"

"Jefferson won't be a part of her life, or Nathan's life. Nathan won't have any reason or any way to drug Rachel. Or Kate. Or you! And do you know someone named Damon Merrick?" Chloe's face knit into a furious scowl. Max took that as a yes. "He won't be around either. Whatever he does to Rachel's mom won't happen. She'll have a fair chance."

As Chloe processed everything Max was saying, she broke into a huge smile. Tears slid down her cheeks, "My Dad's going to be okay? And Rachel? Max, I'm so happy! It's a real second chance. For all of us, even Sera! You're a miracle worker! Who could ask for anything more?"

"But we go away."

"Max, if you think about it, that's already happened to me like, what, 10 times this week? It's not dying. It's just forgetting!" Chloe caressed the scrape on Max's forehead gently with the backs of her fingers. "It looks like you've got a lot you could stand to forget."

"But we have to ... give up... you know... we have to give up...", Max said, gesturing meekly back and forth between Chloe's heart and her own, looking at the ground.

"Look!" Chloe gripped Max by the shoulders. She bent her neck down the shorter girl's level and tilted her head to the side, "I am in actual-factual romantic love with you, Maxine Caulfield, and I kind of always have been! And it's not because of your power or that night we broke into the pool or solving mysteries together. Those are all just symptoms of you being the awesome you that you are. That's the part I love. This! The core of you!" She thumped Max hard in the sternum for effect. "I mean, fuck, here you are bleeding all over the place and all you can do is apologize to me because you think your perfect new reality might not be perfect enough! That's not going to change just because we had different experiences along the way. So I don't want to hear any more about how we won't know each other or we won't see each other. How many realities have you been through? And in how many of them did Chloe love Max? Was it all of them? Because I think it was!"

"It was ... most of them. There was one where you didn't like me... but then, I guess that reality didn't really have a Max."

"Well, then that's a stupid reality! Let's not go there! My point is, we're not giving up a goddamn thing! And this...", she mimicked Max's gesture between their two hearts, ending with her hand on Max's chest. "Don't you worry about this! This will be just fine!"

Max beamed at her, "You know, I told myself to tell you I love you. I should have known you'd beat me to it."

"You could say it anyway. I don't mind."

"I love you, Chloe Price!"

Chloe smiled and blushed. She tried but failed to adopt a serious expression as she said, "I knew you were going to say that. Do you think I have time powers too?"

"Chloe, how are you so okay with this? I'm scared shitless! I'll never know how you found the courage to face... "

"There's going to be a Rachel who gets to live? And a Max who doesn't have to be responsible for the whole world? And a Sera who gets to keep her daughter? And a Chloe who gets to keep her dad? Fuck yeah, I'm okay with that! Even if that Chloe isn't me."

"There's going to be a Max who didn't have to bury you!"

Chloe nodded vigorously with a sympathetic look and clutched Max's head to her chest, "I can't imagine what that was like for you, Max! See what I mean about forgetting? I only wish I could tell Rachel somehow. I wish she could know what you did for her."

"I didn't do much, really. I'm just cleaning up someone else's mess. Not all of her mess, but, well, that's on her," said Max cryptically, stealing a furtive glance at the top of the lighthouse.

"How long can you hold this?" Chloe asked, looking around at the still raindrops hanging in the air.

"I don't know. It's... it's actually kind of scary easy now. I don't want to have this any more. Nobody should have this!"

"So this is it, huh? This is the way the world ends?"

"Not with a bang...", mused Max.

"Okay, one last thing, and then you can let go."

Max didn't even get the chance to ask what it was before Chloe's lips were on hers. After everything she had felt in the last few hours; the musty straitjacket, the chill waters of the Bay, the point of Jane's knife; asphalt, stone and steel; sorrow, rage and despair; kissing Chloe Price again seemed to her the softest, warmest, sweetest sensation she could imagine. She felt like her nervous system was no longer equipped to process this kind of joy. She felt like her body would evaporate into a cloud of tingling lights.

When they broke apart, Chloe's hands cupped Max's face. She wanted to melt into a puddle. "Okay, when you put it like that, maybe I'm not so worried about what the new reality holds for us."

"Told ya!"

Chloe held her close, placing Max's wounded arm up on her own shoulder to keep it elevated. Using the other sleeve of her jacket, she kept steady pressure on the cut on Max's leg. Max found neither wound really hurt much any more. Or maybe she just didn't care. All the pain would be over soon.

Chloe asked, "You don't think destiny will find some way to fuck this up again, do you?"

Max shook her head, "Not any more! Someone once told me there is no destiny. Everything we thought was destiny had a cause. Everything we thought was set in stone was set there by someone else. Things are made to be, not meant to be."

"Some things are meant to be," said Chloe, leaning her forehead against Max's.

"I'm glad you're with me, Chloe Price, here at the end of all..."

"Really, Max? Tolkien?" interrupted Chloe with a grin. "You are such a nerd, it's adorable! See? This is why I'm not worried! Sooner or later, new Max will be adorable in new Chloe's presence. She won't even be able to help it! And then new Chloe will fall for her. It's just the way of things!"

Max smiled and tilted her head, "You really think so?"

"Head over heels, Caulfield!" replied Chloe, spinning her hands in the air to illustrate, "Head over fucking heels!"

Max traced Chloe's cheek with her hand. She wished they had more time. Then again, they had all the time in the world. It just hadn't happened yet.

"Good bye, Chloe!"

"See you real soon, Max!"

And Max let go.

Max let go and for a split second, the rain fell, the tornado howled, the wind raged, but Max and Chloe didn't care, lost in each other. Max let go and her younger self completed her focus, ending that reality just as before, but Max and Chloe didn't care, confident they were making way for something better. Max let go and all was swept away into silence and void, but Max and Chloe didn't care. There was nothing left of them that could.

Max let go and it was the end of everything.

And also.

The beginning.