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 Thirty-Four: Aeschylus
September 17th, 2011 11:48|6:45 PM
In one second, she struggled against the sensations around her, right hand outstretched. The buzzing of halogen lights in her ears, the sound of steady beeping, of voices calling for help, the smell of antiseptic and the sweat of the cop who was grabbing her by the wrist and the shoulder, these fell away. Her body was abandoned, left to the cop's grasp on the hospital floor for the moment as what was left of her searched for just where to go and just when to take it. Hours and hours worth of sensation, sound, emotion and thought stretched out before her, pinpoints of being against a dark Khaos, a timescape both endless and limiting.
They rose one by one around her, not so much in front of or behind because those concepts did not work in the now and here. Sensing her way toward each of them, observing them in a way that was closer to sense, the essence of Max pushed onward, if such a thing can be said to exist. There was her elbow connecting with David's stomach uselessly in the emergency room and there, Max's frustration and anger and fear as Rachel passed out in the passenger seat of the Frankentruck again. None of this came in order, she found the conversation that lead to her struggle with Officer Barry not far at all from where she needed to go. The struggle with the cop tasted of weakness and sterile environments. Steph and Chloe's porch was dirt, trees and a road unfolding ahead. Its taste was surprisingly not much sweeter.
She opened her eyes. Max Caulfield gripped thin air with her left hand, trying to pull an arm that was not there away from around her throat. Her right hand was raised in front of her. She was not standing in Arcadia Bay Medical Center's emergency room. No cop was trying to pull her away from a shut door which she knew contained the bed, the bed that held her handcuffed girlfriend. There were no nurses calling for security to help the cop against her struggling, no antiseptic in her nostrils.
She heard a soft breeze through mostly leafless trees, smelled dirt and grass and decaying leaves and, unfortunately, herself. She saw Steph's front yard from where she sat on the porch, unbeknownst to those inside. Sixty-seven. Max's arms dropped to her sides. She eased back on her hands and her body hung heavy. Max didn't even try to stop the blood that flowed from her nose. She was too busy resisting the urge to grasp at her skull. Max closed her eyes against the pain in her head, gritted her teeth and tried not to scream or cry until it passed. It still felt like a hot poker in her brain-or whatever she imagined that to feel like-but in time it did pass. She was not sure if it was in more or less time than the last few. This kind of pain made time matter even less than it had for the last sixty cycles. Sixty-seven. Eight where I stop David from seeing her but she passes out anyway and I have to take her to the hospital. Three where David shoots me. Five where I sleep all day. Fifty-one failures where you don't have any excuse. You've officially reached a new record of being a fuckup, Max Caulfield.
"Ding ding ding! What do we have for her, Johnny?" Max asked the air as she opened her eyes. The pain was trying to ease out. The sun was going down but for a second it was still too bright for her to handle and she sibilated her answer as her left hand rose to block the light from her eyes. She was treated to the sight of not grass, but a dirt-and-ash-blackened hand. "We've got a brand new chance to fuck up." Not to mention to piss off Chloe. What the odds were that this was the day, this the moment when Chloe finally broke, Max wasn't sure. However, in the forty-eight attempts she had made to find some way to have the coming conversation with Chloe, they all ended with the girl enraged. Two of them had ended with, 'I love you, but I hate you sometimes,' and one had even, somehow resulted in Chloe refusing her request. Yet, none of them ended with Chloe telling you she was done with you. Max shakily reached into the pocket on the front of her favorite grey sweatshirt.
She turned the old photo over and over inside of it as her breathing calmed and the phantom grip of Officer Berry's grasping hands started to fade. Technically speaking, the photo in her pocket, the one photo of the three of them at play practice which had come out of September the year prior, should have been inside of an old, beat-up time capsule which Chloe had buried somewhere between November and December. This was Chloe's promise to her, the one she had told Max was hidden at their secret spot. The one Max had dug up after packing Chloe's room up as best she could, and then rewound, keeping her secret prize with her.
This was the object that Max had looked at after each of those forty-eight arguments with Chloe. She knew that without a doubt that forty-nine was coming. It certainly helped promote the sensation that her body felt like stone or lead. Really, the door to the house Steph and Chloe shared was only four feet away. All she had to do was stand up and take two or three steps and knock on the thick, brown wooden door. Steph would come to answer it since Chloe was engaged with the show they were watching and still wasn't comfortable answering it as if she lived there. Steph would be surprised and concerned and eventually let Max in. She's concerned because of Rachel's call, the one she isn't supposed to tell us about. Standing up and crossing those four feet might as well have been tantamount to dragging her tired ass across the finish line of a marathon in her filthy, ragged jeans and sweatshirt. The jeans in particular were tearing from the bottom up, from running through the woods time and time again. Even clean of the filth caking them they would have been termed inappropriate for wear at Blackwell Academy.
Her converse were ruined and beginning to fall apart: when she walked it was clear that the back of the right shoe was completely disconnected with the sole. Max couldn't imagine how many hours she had existed without a shower. She looked more like a swamp thing or a street urchin than a student at Blackwell Academy. Now she was going to have to trek into Chloe and Steph's place and do this all again. When she realized that she was going to neither cry nor rage at the thought of Chloe's approaching ire, Max rose to her feet. It was a pointless gesture, but she still dusted off what was left of her favorite jeans. A large, thin chunk of mud fell to the floor of Steph's porch. The door stood still and strong, almost comfortingly beneath her pounding fist. The door was an old friend, a shield against the worst part of her early routine. For a moment it obscured the form approaching and then through the frosted glass window set into it, she spotted Steph's outline. Arcadia Bae.
The girl opened the door wearing a tee shirt she had stolen from Mikey before he left. Once, in an early cycle, Max had asked her if he knew she had it and, confused about Max bringing it up when she looked like hell, Steph had told her that she took the bright orange Arcadia Bae shirt right out from under Mikey's nose while he packed. It had made Max smile. She could not remember how many cycles ago that had been. She did not smile when Steph opened the door this time. Exhausted, she met the girl's eyes. As had been the case a few times before, Steph did not recognize her for almost three seconds and then, dark eyes widening, the girl stepped back.
"Max?" Steph asked her, quietly. "What the hell happened to you?"
"So much more than I can actually keep track of." That makes no sense.
"That makes no sense," Steph insisted as she pulled the door open and reached out, taking Max's filthy right hand and pulling her into the house. Get in here. "Get in here!" Steph was bluster and confidence, care and heart and Max was not sure how much heart she could spare to give the girl, but she let a bit of out. I'm getting Chloe, go to the kitchen. "I'm getting Chloe. Go to the kitchen." Was that seventeen or eighteen times? Steph did not ask, yet, what was going on. That would come soon, in a voice that said she was not sure if she was welcome in the conversation Max was having with Chloe. Now, she ran off without Max, trusting her to do the Right Thing and do as she was told.
Max did, this time. As she sat down in the kitchen, Steph stood in the living room, recounting Max's sorry state in hurried tones too quiet to be audible from the wooden table she was gathered at. 'She looks like death warmed over. I think she's hurt or something. Her eyes look wrong. I don't know why.' It took only a second or two more for Chloe to come rushing into the room, stomping as if she were in her boots instead of bare feet. Chloe hadn't run around barefoot in years but she did now. She's comfortable, Max had told herself in cycle 0. Now she only hoped that was true. What the fuck is going on?
"What the fuck is going on?" Chloe exclaimed from the doorway. Her passion was authentic, her surprise and care real. It was just like a bad dream to Max, one you woke from only to find yourself a part of again and again. She began to feel a little manic in the chair. An eager, unyielding energy built within her, demanding to be shown something it had not seen so many times before that it hurt to consider. She wanted the woods, to try again to carry Rachel to the truck before she passed out or David caught her. She wanted to try again to balance both keeping Rachel from passing out and still driving the huge truck whose handling and shifting had become rapidly familiar. She did not want to hear Chloe screaming at her. It was coming. Max, are you with me? "Max, are you with me?" Chloe knelt down just in front of her. Max was glad she did not have a mirrored surface around her.
"I'm here," Max told her, lifting her head to match Chloe's eyes. In Chloe's gaze now were worry and fear and love. While two of those emotions were clearly not very nice, they were bright and alive and at least not anger, disgust, hurt, betrayal. Give it time, Caulfield. "I need help and there's not much time." Her words were of speed, but even with the itching energy to move on, she heard them come out slowly, passionless. Need help with what? Did someone hurt you? What happened?
"Need help with what?" Chloe asked, pressing her hands into the knees of Max's filthy jeans. They had torn at her knee caps some time ago. Hah! Instead, Chloe's hands pressed down on warm, filthy skin. It had been twelve cycles since that caused any sort of feeling or emotional sensation in her. "Did someone hurt you?"
"What happened?" Steph queried, her voice soft.
"I need a favor," Max told Chloe, not wanting to ignore Steph but knowing precisely how complicated things would get if she engaged with the brunette. "And it's kind of a biggie." Of course. Within reason.
"Of course," Chloe said, rubbing at her knee. "Within reason." Max's eyes dragged between the two as she answered, watching the familiar emotions playing across their face, concern, disbelief, frustration.
"I need your truck."
"Why?" Chloe asked, having clearly not expected this request.
"It's important. It's to help someone." Max tried, she really tried to say it with as much emotion in her voice as normal. It was just that sometimes emotion was like a sponge: wring it out too much and you stopped getting anything from it. You had to let it soak for a bit. You're acting like something is really wrong, here. That's not going to be enough this time.
"You're acting like something is really wrong here," Chloe responded, light blue eyes tensing, locking, fixated on her own. And I look like I bathed in the tar pit that killed Tasha Yar. "That's not going to be enough this time, hon." Chloe was right. She was unwell. She had known that for several cycles. After her last sleeping cycle, she had not felt too well rested. She had not felt hopeful. She had barely felt anything but tired. Oh, that always changed in the heat of an argument or at the height of her attempts at rescuing Rachel, but here and now, before Chloe began to scream, it was so hard to have any sense of emotional stability. It's because I need her to yell at me, to tell me how much I've hurt her. I deserve it and she knows it and I know it and Rachel would know it too. Chloe was already reaching the edge of her own breakdown. Steph was going to become uncomfortable in the face of their coming conversation, but Max deserved it. When it was on, when she was the target of Chloe's frustrations, she thought she could function again.
"I can't tell you what's going on, but it involves Rachel and she's in trouble." Max had tried this angle four times, and two of those had involved the most spectacular argument she had ever experienced. Once, she had thought Chloe was going to spit at her. Now she stands up, gets her game face on and says she's coming. Chloe did as expected, bouncing to her feet. Almost imperceptibly, so slightly that had Max not seen it before she would not have noticed it, Chloe's face flared with some kind of pain. Max thought it was most likely emotional in nature.
"If she's involved, I'm coming with you." Until these cycles began, she had never wanted to see Chloe the kind of mad at her that she was now one or two sentences away from bringing down on her head. Now she needed the words of accusation, telling her how she was lying and hurting and didn't seem to care what happened to Chloe or Rachel as a result. They were at least half right, but Max did care what happened to them. In fact, that was the only thing she cared about right now. The next five minutes played out in her head: she would tell Chloe no, that it was too dangerous, too dangerous even to know what was happening. They would fire back and forth and then Chloe would throw her keys, they would hit Max in the chest if she was too tired to catch them because Chloe could not read her exhaustion through the girl's own anger. Chloe would tell her that she was hurt, that Max had hurt her, that the lies, the lack of care, it was all too much. Then, Max would leave the building, with or without apologizing to Steph or Chloe. She would get into the truck and drive off.
And suddenly it all felt a little too much. There was no end to what she would let happen to herself to protect Chloe and Rachel from everything she was or everything she might or might not be. That being said, and maybe it was the exhaustion speaking, she was tired of watching Chloe hurt. Two of the precepts by which she lived her life began to duke it out somewhere in her very heart and Max froze. When she could move again, a moment later, the fight was over. The loss was accepted and she knew that if this worked, she was going to lose Chloe and Rachel both in a few hours. The good outcome of this gambit was that she ended up alone, but Rachel was safe and warm in Chloe's arms. Max inhaled and for the first time in ten or eleven cycles, went entirely off script.
"If you give me your keys," she started, pleadingly, "if you just give me your keys and let me save Rachel, then the next time we talk I'll tell you everything. What's going on right now connects to everything. Everything you want to know. Everything Rachel wants to know. Fuck it, I'll even tell it all to you," she turned her head to look pleadingly at Steph. The girl took a step or two back, confused. Max did not blame her. "This is me telling you that I give up, just let me help Rachel." Emptiness and silence was pierced by a sharp blade: her eyes watered and she blinked this away. "You just have to give me the keys." Chloe Price did not reach into the pocket of her skinny jeans and fish out a set of keys, the set of keys Max knew damn well rested in the left front pocket. Instead she turned and began to walk toward the hallway.
"What are you doing?" Max called at her back in genuine surprise.
"My boots," Chloe shot back. Across the room, Steph's face was contorted with pity, concern and for the first time since Max was brought into her house as a complete stranger last year, the smallest amount of distrust. That sharp blade stung deep into the silence but Max kept her composure as she tried to think. Chloe was going for her boots. She was going to demand to go with Max. She did not understand. This would mean giving part of it away now, starting to open the door to the monster. She's gone. You're here. She was never here. The tired argument sounded weak in the back of her mind. Perhaps this was one of those days when she did not particularly believe it. This day had lasted for almost twenty-two days, as best as Max could figure.
"I'm just-" Max stuttered. "I'm just trying to help," she told Steph. "I'm trying to protect them both." Just once, slowly, the brunette with the killer eyes and sometimes obviously manufactured confidence nodded.
"You're always trying to protect people," Steph told her, her voice as slow as that nod. Max wondered if it was not her power acting up, slowing time. Or she's trying to talk to me like I'm a small child, trying to make me hear her. "Don't think no one notices your guardian angel routine: Kate, Stella, Chloe, Rachel, Victoria, Taylor, even me that time you thought Nathan was following us around campus? You never try to protect yourself but the way you do it... it- no one understands how and why you're doing it except that it puts you on some kind of pedestal above us. You're out of our reach." Max shook her head in denial. No, wrong. Wrong.
"Not above you," Max tried to tell her, tried to make her understand. "Never above. Just-I can't have anyone else hurt. I know I can do this without getting hurt but if I don't, then it's okay. If someone else gets hurt, well, if someone else dies, there's nothing I can do." Steph shook her head, again, slow as an encroaching glacier. Where was Chloe? What was she doing? Max needed her keys. I need to go. I need to move.
"What if you were to die?" Max's hands rose in the air, she wasn't sure what gesture she was trying to make, how she was trying to show that Steph didn't understand. She couldn't find the words to make her see that if someone else died it wasn't okay. It wasn't okay if Chloe got hurt. It wasn't okay if Rachel ended up in prison or worse. It wasn't okay if either of them died. It wasn't okay if Victoria lashed out about her self-esteem issues by causing Kate or Stella pain. It wasn't okay if Steph fell under Nathan's gaze, if Taylor cried alone in a corner of the TV lounge at three in the morning because the only person she thought still loved her was being vicious and cruel and dismissive. It's not okay how much everyone else is hurting and if I don't fix it I am that monster.
Instead Max exhaled a shaky breath and turned wordless to watch Chloe stomp into the room, booted up and ready to go. The keys, valuable as gold, hung from Chloe's left hand. She was trying to gesture at Max, encouraging her to get up, to come with her. Max opened her mouth, trying to find her words, to tell Chloe to give her the keys and go watch TV, stay here safe and sound and that Max wouldn't stop until Rachel was safely back with her. This wasn't the reaction Chloe wanted. The girl's face split into an ugly frown and, angry, Chloe spat a line whose source Max had almost forgotten, whose source was dead in less than an hour. Oh god, less than an hour, she realized.
"You don't have a damn sense of self-preservation," Chloe called at her from the doorway. Max stood, a fire lighting in her gut. It dimmed almost as soon as she thought of yelling back, of demanding the keys. This had all spiraled out of control. Maybe it was best just to rewind and find somewhere to sleep for a cycle or two. Her mind felt all kinds of twisted up and that did not bode well for saving Rachel. Sick to my stomach, Max mused at the churning feeling. She could not shake the year old argument of who she was and more, the image of Frank, brains splattered across the grass in those few moments before his body and home were consumed by unnaturally hot flames. Max thought that if she really was the woman from Los Angeles, she wished she could capture that feeling, that primal acceptance of doing what must be done for the ones you loved. If she could, this would be no problem. Rachel would be safe in Chloe's arms and Max would be halfway across the country hiding herself away from the human beings around her.
Every second I waste is another second I can't be getting ready for Rachel. Chloe wanted them to match eyes and have some moment of understanding but it was impossible. It was impossible to fathom the meeting of eyes. Max stared at the ground. People were used to that from her. People left her alone when she did that. People, people not Chloe Price. People not Rachel Amber. People not Steph Gingrich. Others. Chloe's hand cupped her chin and forcefully lifted her head. She was going to meet Chloe's eyes no matter what she wanted. Surety rose in her, the idea that she would come unraveled, be unmade if she did.
She was not. Light blue eyes swam with hurt and panic, anger and love. The love and the panic were not all for Rachel. They were for her too. The anger, the hurt, those Max held alone. I'm not a monster, she told herself, fists clenching, nails digging into her palms. I am not a monster. I am not a monster.
"This isn't about me or who or what I am," she said aloud and though she was looking at Chloe, Max was talking to herself. Or maybe she was talking to anything otherworldly that might exist to hear it. She was praying and she did not know who to. "This is about Rachel. Rachel Amber. The girl who saved me from Nathan. The girl who would burn down the world to protect Chloe. This is about her. If I am a monster, then I'll swallow that pill." Chloe's hard face did not change in response to her words. Max wasn't sure how loudly or softly she had spoken them.
"I'm coming with you," Chloe said, still angry, still hurt. In the grip of surrender, Max nodded and shot one apologetic and sheepish look toward Steph who stood with arms folded across her chest by the refrigerator. "Max Caulfield," Chloe called to her, loudly, jerking Max's head back around toward her. "Rachel is in trouble. Let's go."
Internally she was at the height of panic, shaking limbs and screaming instincts as she climbed into the passenger seat of the truck. If I think, I can find a way to stall tonight before I explain. I can choose between losing them today and losing them tomorrow. I want it to be tomorrow. One more night. All three of us. One more night. The truck was loud in her ears, louder than she remembered. It was crazy how it seemed worse in the passenger seat than in the driver's seat. She did not buckle up as Chloe backed them out of the driveway.
Rachel.
For the next few minutes Max did her best to direct Chloe and ignore the mental image of the one time she had gotten a look at Rachel in her hospital gown: pale, weak and cuffed to the railing, wearing a look of defeat so wrong as to violate a natural law of the universe.
"Where are we going?" Chloe asked for the fifth time as they began to approach the edge of city limits. Max did not have a real name for where they were going. Names beyond those of her friends and her girlfriends had been pointless to even consider for a rather long time. If anything, she was want to call it a trail and name it after herself, considering what the trail was made up of.
"We're going to park in the middle of nowhere, we're going to go into the woods and we're going to sit and wait in the dark." Chloe's head twisted around briefly. The last of the businesses lining this road of Arcadia Bay passed by them out of the window.
"How in the name of hell does that help Rachel? What's happening to her?"
"Right now Rachel is completely fine and completely safe. In about fifteen minutes she's going to be scared and angry. Five minutes after that, she's going to be not fine. Not safe."
"How do you know any of that? This isn't making sense Max," Chloe chided. "This isn't what I signed up for. I need to know shit."
"I know all of that because I've seen it, time and time again."
"What does that mean?" Max shook her head. Thoughts and figures, timing, down to the second were battling against the fear, the certainty that she was going to tomorrow night alone, whether they saved Rachel or not.
"Rachel is going to be in trouble and we're going to save her and everything else, all the answers and everything come next."
"What?" Max repeated herself.
"Rachel is going to be in trouble and we're going to save her and e-"
"God damn it, Max. This would be so much easier if you just dropped this mysterious fucking act." Chloe's foot pressed down harder on the gas. They were blowing past the speed limit now, and Chloe was doing her best to stay focused but terror and frustration were making her look shaky. Max did not worry about it. If a crash began to happen she would just rewind and damn the pain in her head. This got so far out of control.
"It wouldn't help," Max promised her. "This moment right here might make sense, but the minute I explain everything ends and I'm not risking fucking up rescuing Rachel again." Chloe started to speak but Max struck out, taking her frustration out on the truck's dash for the first time in her life. She regretted it instantly. This was a trusty vehicle, she loved it, she owed it. It did not deserve her anger any more than Chloe deserved to be hurt by her. "No," Max yelled, turning to make sure she was heard clearly. "No! I will not fuck up saving Rachel. Not again. Jefferson doesn't get to take her from us." Max's eyes slammed shut. FUCK! "And neither does anyone else. Not the police. Not David. Not Frank. Not the fire. Not anyone. If she dies, if she goes to prison, if she gets grabbed up by some fucking alphabet soup agency for study, everything is pointless."
Max turned back toward the windshield and resisted the urge to childishly scoot toward the far door, as far away from Chloe as she could She wasn't mad at the girl, she just felt vulnerable. She wanted the space between them because Chloe could very easily make her change her mind. Max knew it. That mind was fragile at the moment and if her will broke she wasn't sure Rachel was ever getting out of this situation.
"Who is Jefferson?" Chloe asked her, trying a sudden change of subject that almost worked to throw Max off her game. "You were saying that name last year, while trying to fight the drugs off. You said it in your dreams at least twice that night. I just thought you were out of your head because of the meds. Who is he, Max?" Outside the world was going dark. Max tried desperately to look into that dark, away from the headlights until Chloe got to the turn they needed. She felt the now familiar sensation of them passing to gravel from asphalt. Chloe was going too fast. An odd wind that Max thought was related to Rachel's first growing bout of nerves was starting. It's not long now. We need to get into place. Twenty minutes until she gets there, if that.
"He's not important right now," Max told her. "Speed up and keep your eye out for the next left. Dirt road. Turn down it." Chloe nodded and Max continued as the determination pushed devastation from her heart. "You'll find out who he is too soon. Way too soon. Drewer set her retirement for the end of the year, but she's only gonna make it until Christmas Break. She'll die on New Years Eve, three minutes before the ball drops and her replacement will be around to start his career here in a couple of weeks." Chloe stared at her for almost a full second, eyes off the road, before Max realized she had continued talking. In for a life alone, in for a pound, she told herself.
"What in the name of fuck are you on?" Chloe asked her, no longer mad or scared but purely accusatory.
"Mrs. Drewer has cancer that has metastasized. She hasn't told the school yet. It's getting bad. In a week or two she'll let on how bad it is." An idea began to grow in Max and she seized it, tightly. When Chloe saw that she was cognizant and watching her, the girl turned back to the road but Max continued yet again. "Chloe, her replacement is a monster. Famous but falling out of vogue. He walks like a gentleman, looks like a playboy and he is a way more intelligent, more dangerous Nathan Prescott. No matter what happens tomorrow, never ever let him near you or Rachel. Do whatever it takes." Chloe shook her head hard, beginning to panic again. Max knew she was getting to the girl but the cat was out of the bag, the storm was loose. "Promise me, Chloe."
"What, where do you think you're going tomorrow?" Chloe pressed.
"I don't have plans to leave you. But you might both leave me after you hear everything and I will not stay here after that." Chloe shook her head again, this time so hard that the wheel shook beneath her hands. "Calm down," Max told her.
"I'm not leaving you," Chloe insisted.
"Listen, just do whatever it takes to keep Drewer's replacement away from you. Do not trust him."
"Whatever it takes? Does that involve a baseball bat and Frank?" Max clenched her eyes shut. Chloe had some kind of soft spot for the man. She had no idea. Chloe, damn it. "What?' Chloe asked her, clearly engulfed in some fresh wave of panic.
"That's not an option anymore." Max leaned down and pulled the thick and dirty brown blanket Chloe kept on the passenger floorboard up and into her lap. Chloe did not ask about the blanket. This should be big enough for all three of us. I just have to keep Rachel from moving around too much.
They spilled out of the cab less than two minutes later. Max told her to keep the truck running and the heat on high but had not answered or given Chloe anymore ominous predictions of the future. Max wasn't sure if Chloe hesitated or not before following her, but it didn't matter. The soft glow of her flashlight lit up the ground in front of Max. She found a path, a path she had made by trudging through the dirt and mud forty-three times before. Her footprints, footprints of timelines past, remained etched into the dirt. That was the downside of breaking the laws of time and space simultaneously: while she kept things she needed like Frank Bower's flashlight or the photograph in her sweatshirt, she also kept all of the mud, ash and gore attached to her. There was a reason her sweatshirt had a blood-stained hole in the back of it.
"What is this?" Chloe asked. Max made a 'quiet down' gesture.
"They're all my footprints. I've been making them for... almost fifteen days now."
"That makes no sense."
"It will," Max said, gesturing into the dark woods. "Now keep your voice down, I need to hear shit." A gust of wind caught Max unaware and she stumbled backward even as she attempted to do the opposite. "Stay close to me, follow me as close as you can and you shouldn't trip over anything." With that, she pushed into the woods. The minute they crossed the line into the forest their only light was Frank's dying flashlight. The stars were gone, the moon low and equally muted by the dying canopy overhead and their eyes had not yet adapted to the darkness enough to make use of the low ambient light. Chloe was mercifully quiet, save for her footfalls only a few inches behind Max's. It gave her time to think.
"You need to know how amazing the last few months have been," Max told the girl. "Like, I've been down and sad and sometimes I'll hide but the last year has been amazing, even setting aside Nathan Prescott." Still no tears, though there was the occasional watering of her eyes. She did not want to think about Nathan. Saying his name made her shiver, made her wonder about time which she could not remember, and was not sure she wanted to. God, she was too tired to be rendered useless by the feelings beating around inside her. Keep it together. She was nonetheless, glad to have those feelings back. "The time with you was the greatest I think I could have ever imagined. I don't think it was or would have been any better the other way. Probably couldn't have been." Oh sure, there would have been more photos, but less worth photographing. Less worth living. No tabletop, no relationship, no tromping through the woods or singing Christmas carols until Chloe's eyes roll so hard they hurt. No warm quiet nights beside Rachel, no none of it. If this is how it all goes down the toilet, then 'fucking worth!'
"Stop talking like you're saying goodbye," Chloe hissed. "I refuse to accept that." That will change, Max understood. A few hours at the least, a day at the most, either way, she'll wonder why I really came back. After a moment Max realized that the bends of some of the trees in front of her were beginning to get extra familiar. The familiar outlines of footsteps were beginning to not exactly thin out but become more and more focused, showing how, over time she got better and better at finding the tree in question without having to backtrack.
"We're almost there," Max declared beneath her breath. The quiet night was pierced by a sudden explosion. Hurry! She picked up the pace. "Come on, come on."
"What the hell?" Chloe asked as Max rushed toward the tree, the tree with fifty-two branches that Max could make out, the tree with moss around base and three mushrooms growing on its south side. Honey, I'm home.
"Put yourself on this side of this tree and do not step away from it until I say. We stay here now." Max watched Chloe, barely visible under the flashlight's pale, ghostly glow, approach the tree. Her pale, lanky body stretched a hand toward the tree and pressed against it. Chloe looked at her, demanding an explanation for the explosion, the woods around them, the unusual things that Max had been saying. Max wished her eyes were truly cameras so that she could save this moment for eternity: not Chloe's panic, but her beauty out here, her beauty in passion. It was always Chloe's heart that was the most attractive feature about her, though there were certainly plenty of things Max could mark down as coming in at a close second.
"I want answers," Chloe hissed. This sounded like pleading. Yes, you want answers. You always want answers. You're about to get them and they'll change everything, don't you fucking get it?
"If you wait eight, maybe nine minutes, we'll have Rachel in our arms and everything will be okay." That was the important answer and if Chloe couldn't see it, that was alright. Her nerves were clouding her judgment. Max's nerves had lost the ability to cloud this scene a long time ago.
"That's not good enough," Chloe demanded as Max crouched behind a tree just a few feet from her, and again gestured for Chloe to go quiet. Maybe this is for the best, Max thought. Rachel's car was always going to be left at the site and get caught in the fire if I came alone. This way, it survives. I just convince Chloe to take us to it and then I get in it and drive it back to Steph's house behind them... I mean, if I can fix Rachel in time. This is my best chance. This is the new 'save point,' Max borrowed the term from Mikey's descriptions of his favorite video game. "Just tell me what's happening," Chloe pleaded, at something barely above a whisper. "I'm so scared for you and Rachel and me. I just want to know what's happening." Max knew Chloe was too busy talking to hear the gunshot which took Frank's life, but, focusing, she could hear it on the edge of her comprehension. Frank Bowers was dead, again.
"I promise you'll know everything after today. The truth is going to have to come out." Max exhaled as a second explosion, louder and more insistent went off. Chloe's voice fell silent as for half a second the woods was lit with a bright and almost indescribable blue light. The azure flame of Arcadia Bay, Max thought to herself. Beautiful and terrible as the dawn. Rachel was their Galadriel and this was the moment she failed the test, unlike the woman of the fiction. The blue faded from the trees, the leaves, the undergrowth and the dirt. It returned to where it consumed what Max could only assume was Damon Merrick's corpse. When people like us fail our tests, there is a price to pay.
"That's Rachel who did that," Max promised as the light faded away, lingering unnaturally until it died as Frank had mere moments before. "She is not dead, here. Frank is. He killed himself and I think he did it so that he did not have to shoot David. That's all I can say right now. Stay quiet, stay low." The finer details of Chloe's confusion passed from the reach of Max's senses at the light of the flashlight died in her hand. This time, Max dropped it to the earth. She would not need it again. David's voice slowly reached her ears. He screamed for Chloe. Max was still unsure why.
"What?" Chloe hissed. In the distance, Max saw small flares of fire, flashes of orange as tree and leaf and even earth burned. She knew she could trace them back to Rachel, barreling half blind through the woods, mind fading away. When she reached them, Rachel would be losing consciousness at such a pace that they might have one, two, at the most three minutes to get her to the truck and get her warmed up, woken up. Everything had to be perfect and Max had let things get so out of hand she had very little control over the conditions.
"He doesn't actually know you're here. He does this every time. I don't know what it's about but it's not important right now. Stay low, stay quiet. Someone is coming. When they get here, help me bring them down, get on the ground beside me and stay fucking still." Max readied the blanket retrieved from Chloe's truck, the one Chloe kept in there on the off chance that she had to sleep in it, as she had needed many times before last summer. Chloe deserves so much better than sleeping in a truck. The sound of at least one set of footsteps became audible over David's hysterical screaming of the wrong name. Why? Why does he think it's Chloe? Is he just so fixated on her? Max reached across the gap between them, the one Rachel was about to run through, and tapped Chloe on the shoulder. When she was sure that the girl was looking, she pointed. By the dim light still filtering through the canopy, Max made out the blur of the first form moving toward them. David sounded to be twenty or thirty feet behind it.
"I don-" Max shushed her. It was hard to make Rachel out in her all-black outfit, smoke rising from her body, trees and branches helping to make her erratic, weaving path hard to follow. She did not walk in a way that made sense, stumbling, falling and rising again. Max began to unfold the blanket in her hands, letting it drag the ground. Rachel became clearer still, enough that Chloe's breath hitched beside Max. As before, Rachel was coming right toward them.
"Now," Max hissed, pressing tight against the tree in front of her. Three. Two. One. The outline of Rachel's obscured face came into immediate view and, clueless, Rachel Amber walked right by her girlfriends. Max leapt, her left hand slamming tight around Rachel's mouth, her right hand spreading the blanket up and out around them. She threw her weight against Rachel, pushing her into Chloe, who reached out instinctively. Together, they collapsed one atop the other to the ground and Max hastily used her free hand to arrange the blanket overtop their bodies. Rachel was babbling something about the stars, again, as she had been the last time.
"It's okay," Max whispered in Rachel's ear. "It's okay. We're here. Chloe and I are here." She did not move her hand from the girl's mouth, though she felt something warm on it that she knew to be dried and burnt vomit. The air under the blanket was smokey, mostly because parts of Rachel's clothing had burned. Chloe must have had the air knocked out of her because she was silent. David's calling grew louder still and she counted. Ten-Nine-Eight...
Outside David was getting confused, convincing himself he had not seen her come this way, that she had gone east. Seven-Six-Five.
David was turning, taking one last look in the darkness, swinging his flashlight around. It lit the blanket but his panicked mind must have been searching for a standing form, not an odd bit of filth and dirty that seemed lumpy and might have moved. Four-Three-Two.
Chloe's stepfather turned east and hurried away. The light faded from Max and Chloe's view. One.
Max leaped to her feet, discarding the blanket and pulling Rachel up. The obscured girl's feet found purchase beneath her legs. Chloe rose with them, confused, gasping. Rachel's left arm went over Max's shoulder and after a moment Chloe pushed herself under her right. How many minutes? Two? Three? I have to move fast. Rachel followed where Max led, over familiar ground damaged, dented with footprints of versions of Max which never were, many of which should have been lined by footprints belonging to Rachel herself. They were not.
Chloe was asking questions in a half helpless tone as Max hurried them back toward the truck. In seven minutes, she knew, David would return to his car and drive it, busted tire and all, away from the fire, until the rim was bent and he saw no reason to go further. After that, Max's understanding of what he was going to do in this situation was spotty, closer to nonexistent. Even as she tried to walk, Rachel shivered, her body jerked in their arms. Cursing, Max picked up the pace, which was risky in the near-total darkness they found themselves in. A bit more light began to flood in. Feeling returned to her body, detail and emotion to her mind. She was no longer the mechanics of her situation, she was Max again.
The headlights, the fucking headlights! If Max had been thinking clearly when she and Chloe stumbled into the woods, she would have told the girl to turn the headlights off. Now the faint golden glow was beautiful and promising, it was warmer than any sunrise had ever been, more beautiful than the Golden Hour that she and Rachel appreciated for vastly different reasons, both aesthetic in nature. It was amazing. Between them Rachel gathered up most of the remaining strength she must have had and sleepily spoke.
"I'm tryna' sleep, you two. Go to Max's room." Chloe's look of relief was almost comical. It inspired the same feeling, however mutedly, in Max. If I can just warm her up in time, we're home free. Chloe ran ahead of them to the driver's side of the truck and hurried in. Max had some difficulty getting Rachel's weakly, meekly protesting form inside, she kept trying to stop Max from pushing her in and asking where they were going. At least her eyes are opening, Max thought, smiling despite one of Rachel's nails cutting a gash in her filthy, dirt encrusted cheek. Whatever it takes, Max told herself. With one last, heaving shove, Max overpowered Rachel. The girl fell unceremoniously onto the seat and Max had to shove her again, complaining about being 'manhandled' so that Max could get in.
"Turn this truck around, hit the main road and turn left," Max told Chloe as the door slammed shut behind her.
"Left?" she asked, confused but sounding a little more at ease, a little pleased. Who could blame her? Max was pleased herself, but it was artificial and temporary, more adrenaline than reason. She needed Rachel to wake up, she needed to get Rachel's vehicle clear of this and then she was going to have to face the music. She was going to have to- Oh shut the fuck up, she told herself. Feel sorry for your dumb ass later.
"Just fucking do it," Max answered turning Rachel around. Rachel tried to push her away and struggled with some panic as Max pulled the mask away. Rachel continued to breathe slowly, but raggedly. Max pulled the puke-caked bandana away and discarded it. She used the top of the filthy ski mask cleaned Rachel's face as best as she could with the girl's hands rising to make the process harder, flailing at Max's arm. "Rachel's car is ahead on the right. Keep an eye out and gun it. We need to get to it before David gets back to his car."
"Fine, let's do this shit," Chloe called, sounding more eager than ever before. Max nodded and turned toward Rachel. They were running out of time. The truck began to move as Chloe tried to get back onto the road and turned around. Max was, in the meantime, trying to pull Rachel's attention. The girl was staring at her now, confused, lost. She did not know where she was and Max understood that. She just hoped the girl could hear her.
"Rachel, Rachel sweetie, I need you to tell me how to warm you up, fast. I don't know how," Max was lying slightly. She had ideas but they were all problematic for one reason or another. The cab of the truck was actually sweltering but she had tried this before and it was not going to be enough. The rise in body temperature needed to keep Rachel from flat out passing out was significant. Too sharp and sudden for anything natural to do it in time. They would have to take her to the hospital if they weren't fast and if they did that they wouldn't be able to stop David from seeing her car when he, in his frenzied state, drove the wrong direction.
"What?" Rachel asked her, voice barely audible as she looked once or twice around the cab. "Where we goin'?"
"Rachel," Max insisted. "I need to warm you up. A lot. All at once. How do I do that?"
"I've got a few ideas," Rachel mumbled before, giggling softly. She's in fucking lala land. "More than a few." The girl's head began to dip. No, not yet. Max squeezed her eyes shut, reached back with her right hand and whispered an apology. The sound of the resulting slap across Rachel's cheek rang out like nothing Max had ever heard before. She opened her eyes in time to see a heartbreaking look of hurt in Rachel's eyes, to hear Chloe scream to ask what in the hell she was doing before the girl fell limp. God damn it!
Max held her right hand out, toward the windshield and closed her eyes. It took a surprising amount of willpower to block out Chloe's screaming but she momentarily felt her way back through time. It was a type of movement like any other, it just did not require her to move her body. It was more like her mind going on a little walk about. She sensed thoughts and feelings of her own, felt words spoken and when things tasted right, she stopped moving.
"Fine, let's do this shit," Chloe declared with some bombast as the truck lurched forward. Max kept her eyes open through the agonizing pain in her skull. She felt the wet of blood oozing down her lips and chin. With her head still feeling ready to split open, she left Chloe to handle the driving and shook Rachel twice, hard. Rachel was already watching her, but she began to protest in a half-hearted whisper.
"Rachel, I have to warm you up all at once, super fast." It was not the ideal situation for this, not hygienically, aesthetically or even ethically, but Max leaned forward all at once and pressed her lip against the shivering girl's. She was hoping for some reaction, something that would start the fire she knew could be inside. Rachel did try, to be fair, her left hand rising and even pressing briefly against Max's neck. It still didn't work. Kissing her felt like what she feared kissing a corpse would be like. She was cold, her lips blue in the pale light of Chloe's cab.
"The fuck?" Chloe queried, the question succinct enough.
"It was a gamble," Max hissed at her. In front of Max, Rachel was trying to speak. Her voice was nothing under the roar of the engine, though and as Chloe pulled toward the turnoff onto the gravel road, the girl slumped forward, her weight all coming to rest on Max's shoulder. "God damn it." Max eased the girl back against her seat, spat on the floorboard once and gave an apologetic shrug to Chloe, who was watching her, helplessly. "Sorry, love. Be right back." Max raised a filthy, bloody right hand and extended it forward again, feeling a little like a marionette being made to dance a dance for an audience of nothing and no one.
The act of pushing herself back to the past, only a few seconds prior, was slower than the time before. She was sure that each marker in the timescape was faded, hazy. Their kiss, the sensation of Rachel's cold lips passed her by, barely clear enough to feel. In the distance of the ethereal timescape, there was Max speaking to Rachel and there if she focused, must have been the jolt her body felt as the truck began to move. Max gasped, readied herself to hurt and, as if her mind was as heavy here as her body was in the physical world, tripped forward back into time.
"Fine, let's do this shit," Chloe called, again for the first time. The truck jumped forward and Max turned her head to match eyes with Rachel. She had no choice. The only thing I can think to do is piss her off. Fast. Max was going to tell herself that it was okay, that Rachel would understand and forgive her, but she realized that in a few hours it wouldn't matter if she did or not. There were only two options left that she could think of to bring that fire out and this was bound to be the most immediate. The other was rather unthinkable.
"I know you can hear me, Rachel, so it's time you listen. There's some shit you've needed to hear for a while." I don't wanna do this, Max screamed inside. Chloe turned her head around to stare at her, at the tone of her voice. Rachel locked eyes with her. Somewhere, somewhere deep in those eyes was a degree of awareness. She had to speak to that buried awareness in simple, hurtful words. "Your dad did nothing wrong. Sera was in the wrong. Sera should have stayed away from you. She would have gotten what she deserved after what she did to you." Confusion split across Rachel's face. Chloe called her name in anger. "You fucked up today and Frank died. There's probably going to be another forest fire. That's on you, Rachel. Rachel Amber did that. Rachel Amber killed Frank Bowers tonight." The sound emitting from Rachel's mouth was a wail, and it began almost as quietly as anything else to come from it. After a moment, as Max tried to find something else, any other lie to tell to enrage her, the wail became louder. Rachel's upper lip curled. Max grabbed at either side of her head as she tried to turn away.
"You took Nathan's fucking eye. Do you have any idea what you've done to him? All of the pain you caused him? All of the hurt?"
"What in the fuck are you doing?" Chloe screamed at her as she pulled up to the turn off. It's working. She's still conscious. Oh god, it's finally gonna happen.
"Saving her," Max shot at Chloe. "Saving her the only way I know how, by showing her she has the power to save herself." Her eyes locked with Rachel's. She could swear she felt more strength in the girl's neck as Rachel tried to jerk away from her. The thespian's face began to blur and Max knew the fault there was in her watering eyes. "Oh don't think you're done yet, Rachel fucking Amber. Miss fucking perfect. So better, so holier than thou. This isn't the first forest you've set on fire, is it? Can you imagine how many people lost their homes, their livelihoods, everything they owned and loved and even the beds they slept in?" She could not make out the fine details but it looked like Rachel's face was turning red. Color, color in her cheeks again.
Max had not been entirely sure she would ever see that again.
"Who else has to get hurt? Frank is dead because you fucked up, just like Damon's dead because I fucked up." Max's hands were thrown wide as Rachel, reached up with both of her own and pushed Max off of her. When the girl could move her head she swung it around harshly once or twice to take in where she was and then turned back to Max, who had had time to blink the wetness from her eyes. In Rachel's eyes was hurt like Max could have seen in Chloe's even a few minutes ago, but also rage, fire. Her cheeks were rosy, in fact she was red from the nose down. Yes! Yes!
"No!" Tears came in earnest and a sob choked Max's throat as Rachel yelled back at her, fist curling in her lap, head shaking harshly side to side. Chloe gasped and swerved the truck as Rachel bumped into her by accident, clearly trying to get space between herself and Max. The gravel road was beneath their feet. In seconds, Rachel's car was going to show up. It's working. It's fucking working. "No that's bullshit! That's all bullshit," Rachel told her, insistent, indignant, angry, hurt. Alive and awake and warm, so fucking warm. Sitting this close to Rachel, Max felt like her very skin could burn and crisp. She pushed closer. "Frank shot himself, James is where he needs to be and Nathan is a sack of shit who deserved more than I gave him. I did the right thing! I did the right... thing." Rachel's voice was trailing, she was calming, realization was literally dawning, rising across her face like the morning sun. If Max hadn't jerked around to stare out of the windshield looking for her car, she could have fucking sung. "You know this. You know it. Why did you say it?"
"Because you needed to know it," Max told her. "You needed to know that not everything is your fault and it's not up to you to fix it." Raging hypocrite! "And it pissed you off and now look at you, you're breathing heavy, you're warm, so fucking warm. You know why I said that shit."
"To make me warm," Rachel asked her, both demanding and pleading that she answer. Something up ahead on the right side of the road drew Max's attention. It was the gleam of, she was sure, Rachel's car.
"To make you warm," Max promised her. "Your keys are in the back of the driver's seat?" Rachel nodded, dumbfounded and sat up. Despite her confusion, her obvious discomfort and the slight shaking that Max thought had to be from adrenaline, she looked at her not like the half-conscious unaware being she had been moments ago, but as Rachel Amber: fierce, proud. A lioness. My lioness.
Chloe pulled to a sudden stop and as Max moved to throw the door open, fingers curled tightly into her hair, causing her to turn around suddenly. She was an inch from Rachel's face and though a kiss was going to be less than pleasant for a few reasons, the girl leaned in. Rachel's forehead pressing against hers burned as if she had a horrible fever. Her eyes were hotter, alive with the power inside her. They glowed very literally, a pale golden shine. Rachel's look did not say all was well, it said that the world was ending and they should steal pleasure and passion like thieves in the night. That, more than anything, sealed the deal. I'm going to have them for one more night. Max broke free of her and rolled out of the truck onto the pavement.
"I'll meet you at Steph's," she lied. "Go!" For the first time, lying to them felt good on her lips. It felt like heaven for the devil. Max pulled open the door to Rachel's car, reached behind the front seat and freed the keys from the pouch at the back. One of several times she had carried Rachel from the woods, Rachel had mentioned the detail about her keys. She was glad that was not nonsense pulled from an addled mind. Glancing back she saw Rachel and Chloe together, safely, outlined by the edge of the windshield. They shared one concerned look no doubt at Max's expensive and then the truck began to turn around.
Rachel's car started under Max's hand and she found as she turned that vehicle around that driving it was nothing compared to the literal crash course she had taken to learning how to drive stick with the Frankentruck. Normal girls learn to drive in their parents' car. You practiced in your girlfriend's truck in a fucking time loop. Laughing bitterly to herself, Max eased the car back into drive and pulled away before David could return to his car and pop out. Him getting turned around and trying to drive the wrong way at first would be such a relief.
Max pulled her phone from her pocket as she made toward Arcadia Bay. She had to be careful about this, she was not particularly comfortable with texting while driving. The phone flared to life with a 48% charge and she pulled up a message screen.
Me
Joyce I thought about what you said and I wanted to tell you, again, that Chloe is safe. I just left the place she's staying and she's sitting there drinking hot chocolate and watching TV. No matter what, it's better that you know she's safe.
Max did not go to Steph's house. Maybe at one point she would have. This was not that one point. After a trip of watching building after building, business after business go by with a wonder she could not have imagined feeling for Arcadia Bay ever again, Rachel Amber's car came to a stop in its usual place in the Blackwell Academy parking lot, thirty minutes before curfew. I couldn't have planned it better if I tried, Max thought, shutting the car off and climbing from it. There was no one around as far as the eye could see.
She walked casually, intent on shutting herself into her room, answering texts only with, 'I am at school, I will talk to you tomorrow.' With that kind of weight off of her mind, she enjoyed the sight of Blackwell Academy. It was actually a fairly attractive looking place when not seen through eyes of guilt and regret. Max knew that by this time tomorrow, she would have spilled everything to Chloe and Rachel and, for good measure, Steph. If they were thinking clearly at all, they would send her packing within a few hours. She wasn't sure how many more chances she was going to have to look at Blackwell. It was okay to enjoy it.
Her phone vibrated in her pocket. As Max approached the dormitory building, caked in mud and blood and ash, she saw Samuel in the distance. Distracted by his work, he did not see her. She would not have cared if he had. Inside the building she climbed to the second floor, her sore limbs lighter than they should have been, her lips curled up in a small smile. The door to the showers opened beneath her key and Max piled her clothes to the side of one of the stalls.
Chloe
We're safe. Are you almost here?
Reasonably they had to allow her a little time to catch up, so Max thought she had a few to respond. Obscuring her phone in the middle of her filthy clothes, Max stepped under a stream of hot water and drew a pale curtain across the entrance to her shower stall. It was excellent, she had to admit, amazing to feel the warmth of a shower trace down her body. By her guess it might have been ten days for her, even though here in this timeline it was more a matter of a handful of hours.
"They're both safe and I'm alive," Max told herself as she scrubbed at the filth on her skin with her hands. It took her a little longer than she wanted to look more like a human than some kind of uruk-hai, but when she shut the water off and stepped out to admire herself in the mirror, there was, at least, no trace of blood and she looked less like she had gone swimming in Arcadia Bay's biggest mud puddle and more as if she might have been doing yard work. Max pulled her ruined shirt and the scraps of denim that were once pants back on temporarily, grabbed the rest of it and strolled at a casual pace to her bedroom.
The door was shut behind her before she freed her phone and sat it on the edge of the bed where it would lay forgotten. Max stripped away the filthy clothes, found underwear, a pair of pants and a tee and revelled in her momentary victory as clean, untorn cloth settled warmly on her frame, despite sticking a bit to the water on her skin. It's over and Rachel's okay. It's over and Chloe's okay. It's over and I'll be okay. This last bit sounded like a lie even to herself, but Max repeated the mantra a time or two as she kicked her ruined converse against one wall of the dorm room.
Turning, Max was starting to wonder how to celebrate. Vodka sounds like a lovely option, vodka and Deep Space Nine… what's the appropriate Sisko toast here then? Is it 'So I will learn to live with it, because I can live with it' or is it 'To Manufactured Triumph!'? Personally I think both work, but I'm in the mood for Pale Moonlight. Max's tired eyes landed on her laptop and all joviality faded, she stopped dead in her tracks. Her stomach dropped. Even her enjoyment of her manufactured triumph seemed to slip away at the face staring back at her from her laptop.
On the screen was a woman, a woman who Max had been seeing hanging around her since at least January, never approaching and never talking to her. It was a woman she had seen bump into Chloe in the nightclub in Portland. It was, she was given to imagine, though a few years older, very clearly Max Caulfield. It was some version of herself and it seemed she had left her younger counterpart a video. Oh this day just never fucking ends, does it? Fuck you very much, Future (question mark?) Max.
Max took two long strides across the room and pressed the spacebar on her laptop. She tried ot absentmindedly rearrange her hair, to get that wind-swept look she loved, but clearly a shower without shampoo or soap had been less than successful in cleaning everything from her hair: it did not want to untangle, and she thought she felt a bit of mud in it. The screen brightened. The video had been recorded in that very room, from the laptop's webcam and judging by the lighting of the room it had not been very long ago. Asshole probably left while I was in the shower. I really have to work on my social niceties before I'm her. If I'm her. On the screen an older version of herself with long braided hair settled into the computer chair. Two stripes of color ran down the unbraided portion of hair. One was a familiar blue, the other a bright orange. I'd have to be fucking stupid to miss the implication. Max didn't think she was stupid. On the screen the woman began to speak. The video's timer read as two minutes long.
"Hello, Max."
"Hello, person trying to be ironic and funny," she shot back, unwilling to let go of the small smile on her lips. She wanted her manufactured triumph back, damn it. This was not the future Max who had stabbed a man in a parking lot, who had broken every bone in his hands, she saw. Max was mildly confused that this did not crush her. If the woman on the screen had been that Max, wouldn't that answer the big questions?
"It's been a long road for you and I don't think it's over yet, but I know you're exhausted. I'd give you time to rest if I could."
"Oh I just fucking bet," Max told the woman on the screen, turning toward her fridge and reaching down to dig the grey-green bottle within out. Almost as soon as the familiar steel touched her hand she knew it was empty. Max pushed it back and shut the door. No toasts tonight, unless I want the warm shit.
"Under your laptop is about two hundred dollars, a bus ticket and a plane ticket. The bus ticket will get you to Portland. From there, you'll be getting on a plane at Portland International to Los Angeles."
"Are you sure about that?" she queried someone she knew couldn't hear her. She still dug the tickets and money from beneath the laptop. According to the top ticket, the bus was leaving in forty-five minutes. "What, no 'Sorry for your time, Max?' We both know you could come see me if you wanted to." Then again, a voice in the back of her head said. It would mean answers and it would mean holding off on telling Chloe and Rachel. A reprieve was not precisely fair to them, but it was appealing to her. Also, answers. The woman on the screen finally spoke again. Max was glad she hadn't watched the woman's silence.
"So, here's what's going to happen. It's going to be rough for you, but you're going to go to the building that one time might have been called Arcadia Studio." The name set off a signal in the back of her head, a memory of a memory, the echo of an alarm someone else had pulled. "Six in the morning," the woman instructed, making a movement with her arms that Max thought looked familiar: Chloe's knuckle cracking. "It shouldn't be hard for you to make it in time. I know you don't think you want this, but it's going to be worth it." For some reason this woman wanted to bring her to this site, the site of value to another Max entirely.
Or is it actually another Max?
"You're starting to realize this is it, this is your chance for an answer, aren't you? This is your chance to find out if you can accept who you really are." For reasons Max would never be able to explain to anyone else who asked, she nodded at the video as if it was interactive or a live feed. "Then come. Leave the laptop, leave everything. Bring your money, bring your ID, your real one and bring the tickets, just come. I will be waiting on you." The room around her was not quite as near and dear to her the one last year had been. Still, as she heard the suggestion to abandon it, to leave Max couldn't help but wonder if that was what she really wanted. I mean, you were going to have to leave anyway, weren't you? In a couple of days?
I could do it, Max thought, watching the screen freeze, watching the video end. I could totally make it to the bus station in time. This is what I want, right? Max blinked at the screen, looking hazily, exhaustedly about her room one last time. This is what I want. Right?
"Come find out who you are."
Her ragged, sole-weary sneakers, still covered in mud and ash, beckoned to her.