Disclaimer: Anything familiar to you, I don't own. This is a work of fanfiction for personal amusement, fulfillment and a bit of self-therapy. I make nothing from any of it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Ecstatic Revelations
September 12th, 2011 4:30 PM
For the most part, it had been something of a calm day. Their party was at three: herself, Max and Kate. Rachel, it seemed, had a headache and was going to take a nap. Max hadn't acted particularly worried but Chloe found the sudden illness at least concerning enough to offer to bring Rachel a meal, something which was soundly rejected. That was how she found herself on the far edge of Max's bed, backed up against the wall and half-reading Slaughterhouse Five for English class in the middle of the day when she would much rather be doing anything but school work. I can't say that I've ever actually been alone with Max and Kate at the same time. Chloe's eyes trailed up over the top of her book.
They weren't reading in silence but were discussing the requirements of some assignment for the photography course they were in in quiet voices. Something about it seemed to annoy Max, judging by the way she kept frowning at the page. Whatever the annoyance was, Kate seemed entirely nonplussed. Chloe returned to her reading though she marked Max's frustration down as something to keep an eye on. Chloe was, given everything going on in her own life, trying to take a vacation from worrying too deeply about anything that wasn't homework, the immediate health of her girls or related to tabletop. Unfortunately, one of those topics was rife with all kinds of pitfalls.
"I still can't believe Mrs. Drewer's going to retire," Kate said, as the conversation died down. This drew Chloe's head up. She hadn't heard anything about that. Considering the woman was by far Max's favorite teacher, it might explain Max being in not such a great mood. Speaking of Max, the brunette suddenly fixed wide eyes on the guidelines in front of her, not quite looking up. Chloe doubted Max had any idea that she was being watched. Chloe turned the book over and rested it in her lap. Max continued to read something that Chloe was fairly certain she had already read two or three times in the last minute.
"It's really sad," Max agreed, though Chloe thought she heard a tension underlying the girl's voice. "She's probably my favorite teacher, but she's way too young to be retiring unless something else is going on." The brunette turned the paper over so quickly it made barely any sound. "Probably with the school."
"Well, I heard it was really unpopular when they decided to make it a two-year senior year program, maybe she just didn't like the idea," Kate offered. "Besides, she can probably get away with retiring with some benefits and find somewhere else to hire her. I don't know how long she's worked here but Blackwell must look good on a resume." Kate was occasionally glancing up at Max as she spoke but she seemed oblivious to the slight uptick in Max's breathing or the way the paper was starting to shake lightly in the photographer's grasp. Chloe was not. She stifled a sigh as she scooted forward on the bed until her feet were on the floor. Max didn't seem to notice the movement. Whatever music had been playing quietly from Max's computer in the background moments ago was no longer running. Chloe noticed its absence.
"It was pretty shitty," Chloe said quietly. Kate didn't seem to care much for her language (or Rachel's for that matter) but sometimes it still snuck out around the girl. For her part, Kate barely reacted to it, simply turning to look more directly at her to show she was listening. "I mean, Mikey was pretty broken up about it." Actually, not sure I can really forget his face when he first heard. "Even after he 'got used to the idea' he was pretty down. I hope he's better now."
"That's too bad," Kate replied, placing the paper in her hands down and looking wistful. "Mikey was such a good guy. We were friends in elementary. He was quiet but he and I would always read together at recess. Everyone else acted like we were weird for reading. Not Mikey."
"Did you know Steph too?" Kate shook her head.
"She was the same year as me, so I knew her but we never really talked. Always different teachers," Kate mused. "But she's turned out to be really smart and very pretty." Chloe nodded. That much was true. In a lot of ways, Steph shored up a lot of Chloe's weaknesses in science classes and she did the same for Steph. Though, they both remained less than stellar in biology. Chloe wasn't entirely able to suppress the smile. "And I saw her sketchbook the other day. It's awesome."
"It really is," Chloe chimed in. This was when she realized that Max still hadn't spoken.
"I knew Courtney Wagner, but she ignores me now," Kate added. "We went to church together, used to have sleepovers, the whole nine yards." Chloe's response was off the cuff and not thought out at all. Though she saw the effects of it almost immediately, it took her a few seconds to comprehend them.
"I mean it's one thing if people change and grow apart, it's another entirely to ignore someone. Shitty." Again, Chloe thought nothing of this and only looked over at Max to try to ascertain why she was so quiet. What she saw when she did, though, was that the girl's eyes had finally drifted from the paper to look at Chloe herself. They were wider than ever as if in some surprise and hurt. They certainly didn't water, but as soon as Max realized she had been caught looking, she jerked her head back to the document in her hands.
This, Kate noticed. As understanding washed over Chloe, she felt a mixture of exasperated and dumbfounded. Yes, she now understood why talking about the topic of friends ignoring one another might upset Max. The room grew uncomfortably silent and Chloe closed her book and set it aside. She did so as softly as she could but when the book closed it was still apparently loud enough to make Max jump. Okay, okay, that's enough of that. She stood up slowly and took a couple of steps toward the girls backed up against the far wall of the room.
"Can I borrow Max for a few Kate? I promise to have her home by ten." Quietly, Kate said yes and Max lifted her head to see Chloe's outstretched hand, pale blue nail polish and all. Max seemed conflicted about taking it, which Chloe was trying not to let hurt her. Once they grasped at each others' hand, Chloe pulled the girl into a standing position and then without letting go of her made for the door to the dorm. The hall was mercifully empty when Chloe poked her head out of it and then eased Max from the room. The photographer shut the door behind them and Chloe exhaled. "I think I need to know what happened in there," Chloe started. "From the beginning, the part with Drewer."
"To-to explain that, like, to explain most of it, you'd need to know things." Chloe blinked at the familiar refrain. 'I can't tell you because then I'd have to tell you everything, and we can't have you know what's going on in your girlfriend's mind, or anything. That'd be crazy!' Swallowing the metaphorical bitter pill, she tried to figure out how best to safely and effectively respond.
"This is about those things you can't tell me, right?" Max only nodded. One second, Chloe was telling herself to stay calm. The next her hands had risen into the air of her own accord, and she was either groaning or growling. The transformation on Max's face was immediate, from upset to borderline panicked. "Look, first," Chloe started, "the other part I was talking about, about people falling out of contact wasn't supposed to be a shot at you and I'm sorry if it upset you." She waited patiently, and eventually Max nodded and lifted her eyes from the floor to Chloe's face. Chloe pulled out her ace in the hole. "Second, you saved an encoded document onto the flash drive with all the Prescott shit and I sort of sent it to Mikey and we cracked it." It wasn't that Chloe didn't want to ease Max into this revelation. Damn did she ever. It just came out all at once. The reaction was severe and immediate and after all this time Chloe knew better than to consider it an overreaction.
Max's head snapped up again as if receiving sudden whiplash. Chloe instantly went for the girl's eyes, where everything else had been replaced by some sort of all encompassing terror. They almost looked darker than normal, though Chloe knew that wasn't how it actually worked, that it was just her mind playing tricks on her. Max seemed to be waiting for something from her, though her entire body was tense with the anticipation. What did she expect? Max was waiting on some sort of damning proclamation if her usual feelings on the subject were anything to go by.
"Which one?" the question was louder than a whisper, louder than normal conversation even, approaching a panicked yell, though not quite reaching it. This is all gonna break down fast if I don't do something about it right now, Chloe told herself as she reached out to take Max by the shoulder, to calm her, comfort her. Anything to make her understand I'm not running from her, here. "Which fucking one?" Max asked again, though she shot back to press right up against her own door rather than be touched. Chloe immediately brought both hands up, open palms out to show she wasn't going to try to touch her.
"'Chloe goes into peoples' dreams. Rachel makes fire and wind and even rain. They would believe me if I told them about all of it.'" Answering the girl's question seemed to do the opposite of putting her at ease. In fact, Chloe was relatively certain Max's eyes had just shot at the door at the end of the hall, leading to the staircase down and out of the building. Well, shit. Max's throat worked to try to swallow at something. "Max, can you tell me who it was I was supposed to have seen?" Chloe already had a theory on that, but that theory made no sense. There had been a woman in the club, one who Chloe had briefly mistaken for Vanessa Caulfield, but in retrospect the woman's hair had been too long and she had been far too young.
Max opened her mouth and moved it silently a few times. It was reminiscent of a gasping fish, especially when paired with the eyes threatening to bug out of her skull. Floundering, the brunette again shot a look down the hall. She's gonna bolt, Chloe realized in a moment of perfect clarity. Before Max could run, Chloe turned and put her own back toward that very door, hands still raised and took a couple of steps away from Max, down the hall. Of the two of them, Chloe had somewhere to go if she left the building. Max did not.
"I was scared shitless for you. I still am. I wouldn't have done it for any other reason." The truth was that the document had sat there, taunting her for some time before she convinced herself to pursue it. When someone held as big of a secret as Max seemed to, the idea that there was information sitting there within easy reach, information important enough for Max, a high school student, to want to encode, it had been too tempting. There, in that document could have been the answer to everything. "I'll leave now if you want, I promise. I don't want you to get upset." Max tried to speak again, body slackening slightly against the wall. "I'm sorry, Max." She was. I fucked it up, I think.
A strangled sound eerily close to her name escaped Max's throat and Chloe paused, three or four steps away from the girl, hands still raised. The girl shook her head, emphatically and Chloe watched her trying to work feeling into her limbs, try to regain control after a 'deer in the headlights' moment. If she wants me to stay, I'll stay. Chloe no longer trusted that the decision to confront Max about this had been particularly smart but she was sure of one thing. She had no other ideas about helping the photographer in her rapidly deteriorating state, and communication from the Caulfield parents suggested they secretly shared her concerns. Add to the top of that her own building frustration with being kept in the dark and maybe she had simply snapped. Chloe wasn't sure, she sucked at analyzing things after the fact. All she knew was that it had backfired.
"What is it you can do that is like what Rachel and I can do?" Chloe asked, voice at a normal conversational level. Max's response was to shake her head at first and then in a wavering tone to answer with more cryptic bullshit.
"You wouldn't believe me," Max said. "Might not even if you saw proof of it. Sometimes you don't, I think."
"What does that mean?" Chloe asked. "It's not like you've ever actually told me about whatever this is." The girl shook her head again, though it was more emphatic and this time it seemed to calm her more than express her tumultuous emotional state.
"You're right, I haven't."
"Like, is it something closer to what Rachel does or to me?"
"Neither. It's like nothing you can imagine. Or maybe you can imagine it, but you can't imagine half of it." Chloe seized onto this small bit, this bit of reaction from Max, this tiny seed of half of an answer like a man dying of thirst in the desert who had been dropped unceremoniously at the edge of a beautiful, wet oasis. She wanted to drink. Fuck, do I ever. "It's like neither, but it's fuckin' scarier. It ends lives, it levels cities." The brunette's eyes never moved from hers. She stood like a different person, tall and confident in her words and hardened. She looked like the girl who Chloe had seen approaching her from the end of the street which held Max's childhood home last May. If someone had leveled a city in modern day America, I'm pretty sure no one could hide it. Besides… Max isn't a monster.
Max wasn't a monster. The realization was enough that Chloe slammed the palm of her hand firmly against her forehead. Whatever kind of ability or power Max had gained that was like and unlike those she and Rachel were sitting on, it was this that made Max afraid of herself. She's afraid she could hurt someone, no, lots of someones. Jesus this makes so much fucking sense.
"What else do you know?" Max asked her. "Anything I haven't said? "
"No, just what was in 'why'."
"That shouldn't have been there. It wasn't supposed to go on the flash drive." Max let out a bitter laugh that actually comforted Chloe a bit. She finally dropped her own arms to her sides. "I was giving David all that shit the other day and I can't even save a fucking Word doc to the right place." Maybe, or maybe part of you wanted to be found out.
"I mean, I figured that but you have to understand. We're getting desperate here," Chloe said. "You're not okay and we don't know why or- hey, fuck why but what about how to help?" For some reason, this Max seemed to be capable of handling Chloe pushing like this, a complete change from merely a few minutes ago.
"You should have asked me."
"Fuck, okay, look," Chloe barely bit down on her anger, sensing some sneaking into Max's voice. "No, that's not okay to say. We both know you would have lied to me about it or just said, 'I can't tell you.' And maybe you think that's the right thing to do for whatever reasons of your own but don't pretend like it was as simple as just coming to you and telling you we're upset." Max's arms crossed her chest and as much as Chloe hated to approach an argument with the girl it was infinitely better than seeing her devastated and scared. "Look at you, Max, you're lighter than anyone on this floor. Kate and Victoria both probably have 20 pounds on you. That's not okay at your size. You're not eating. You've been in Arcadia Bay two weeks and I've seen you eat like five times with my own eyes."
"And since you haven't seen it, it hasn't been happening?" Max replied, haughtily. Is it insane that her being so pissy makes me kind of happy?
"And let's not talk about the part where you sometimes fall asleep mid-convo," Chloe talked over her.
"No danger of that with this one, is there?" Max shot back, louder still. "No one on this floor's sleeping tonight if we don't figure this shit out." The smirk rose to Chloe's face first and when its twin managed to sneak past Max's affronted glare, she snorted despite herself and found that it was difficult, for the moment, to stay mad at the girl. Max's anger broke, too, judging by the loud, long-suffering sigh that emitted from her lips or the way she uncrossed her arms. "Mikey saw it too?" she finally asked, voice lowering. Chloe nodded. "Rachel?"
"Not yet," Chloe said. "I wanted to talk to you about it first. I wanted you to tell me everything." Max shook her head. "You know the day's coming, like, very fast. I'm talking more days than weeks."
"What day is that?"
"The one where you tell us everything or else."
"Or else what?" This was not a challenge, it was fear. Not fear of Chloe, precisely, but she recognized the fear of losing the relationship. Hell, she'd been feeling it very briefly, herself, a moment or two ago as their conversation crossed the line into argument.
"Or else Rachel and I are gonna get hurt, more than we already are and, frankly, it's going to be on you." Chloe raised her hands in surrender and then turned away from Max. "I think I'm gonna head over to Steph's and see about plotting a bit more for Friday."
"You know I love you, right?" Chloe paused, only a step or two further down the hall. She couldn't recall Max actually saying those words to her, or for that matter to Rachel either. She expected a great flood of warmth at the thought and maybe it was nice to hear but it did not fight off the realization that she was probably going to have to push Max past either of their points of comfort to get the truth and, at this point, it was inevitable. Max didn't intend to hurt herself, Chloe or Rachel but it was happening. Chloe was reaching the end of her willingness to put up with the girls she loved getting hurt, even if it was by one of their own.
"I love you too, Max. I just think I've gone as far as I can without getting answers. Think about it, for both of our sakes."
Chloe was already out of the Prescott Dormitories when she realized that Max's original and obvious discomfort had all begun when they started to talk about her departing photography teacher. Somehow, that little detail had gotten lost against all of Chloe's frustrations about Max dodging her questions. What was it, she wondered as she made for the parking lot, that had Max so upset? Sure, it was sad to see a favorite teacher go, but this was the kind of upset one experienced when something particularly bad was happening. A retirement was more bitter sweet than anything, as far as Chloe was concerned.
Fuck it, she thought. Max will tell me that and more soon enough. Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, but I'm done with waiting.