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-Six: The Pythia Speaks
September 18th 2011, 6:14 AM
If she was honest, Max's first thought as she came to a stop outside of the old brick building was not about anything personally significant or important. Her first thought was to wonder how anyone lived in a city where it was already ticking steadily toward 80 degrees at six in the morning in early September. When the sun was high overhead, she quite hoped she was inside somewhere, preferably somewhere with an air conditioner. If it was somewhere with an air conditioner and someone who didn't look too closely at IDs she was going to leave a very, very large tip. Except that someone forgot to raid their stash before they left, genius!
Eventually she stopped complaining. Eventually she let her eyes come to rest on the brick edifice before her. Perhaps edifice was not the right word: it was not exceptionally tall, only two stories and, truth told, it was not exactly wide or bulky. It was still, if she thought about it much, a little imposing. Nothing special was contained within its walls, neither in what looked to have been an abandoned tea shop down below or the studio apartment she knew to be up above. It was the idea of the building that was imposing. The more she looked at it, the less power that idea held.
Having long since laid her chucks to rest in a trash can somewhere and picked up a new shirt, to boot Max stood in her overpriced flip flops alone on the cement sidewalk for longer than she wanted or expected to. The name of the business that had occupied the lower floor had already peeled away. Faded but still present was a depiction of a steaming cup of tea. Max almost laughed to herself. Whoever thought that opening a business which sold hot beverages in a city that sweltered like this in the fall was a good idea needed a reality check. Short of the sweet relief of caffeine flooding the system in the form of a big cup of coffee she couldn't imagine drinking anything that wasn't ice cold if she lived here. Especially if I'm going to be walking around somewhere. Caffeine didn't sound horrible.
The truth was that she was exhausted. She felt like it had been a couple of days since her last sleep cycle, something which she was relieved to recognize was over. Though she had gotten a short amount of sleep on the crowded, tiny plane between Portland and LA, what she really wanted that morning was a bed. Unfortunately, sleep weighed against the prospect of hard and fast answers left little question what her choice was going to be. Her stomach growled for the first time in a long long time. I mean, I already don't feel hungry as often as I should and I've kind of not been operating in normal time-space, so this isn't too surprising. The problem was that her limited funds on hand were running out and she wanted to save money for a cab from Portland International to the bus station so that, if she chose, she could actually go back to Arcadia Bay.
As much as Max hated to admit it, whether she returned or not might be influenced heavily by the conversation that was coming. Where the fuck is she, come to think of it? What kind of a time traveler is late to a meeting with themselves? Whether by coincidence or by design, the woman who Max had been waiting for for what was now approaching fifteen minutes finally came into view at the top of the wooden stairs leading up to the second floor. Max couldn't remember if she had heard the door open and shut. However she got there, she's here.
Max had glimpsed this woman either head on or from the corner of her eye time and time again for nearly the last year. If she paired that with her suspicion about missing time, she was beginning to think that, in front of her, was someone who had taken a very serious interest in her life. The first question that needed to be answered was why. She waited in silence as the brunette woman, the one who reminded Max almost more of her mother than herself, looked her up and down and then smiled, as if satisfied. For Max's part, she was dubious. Not about the identity of the woman descending the stairs, no, that was almost reasonable for someone who traveled in time. She was dubious about the thick leather jacket stretched across the woman's shoulders. She also wondered why and how the older Max Caulfield had it. What would have made Rachel give it up?
"I stand transfixed and transfigured by the mirror. It doesn't show me what I am but what I could have been if not for the turn of the tides in that bloodiest of wars, fate versus will." The words were pretty but they meant nothing special to Max. Still the woman looked at her as if to see if she was impressed by them or affected by them as she hit the bottom step and paused five or six feet from Max. "It's a line from a larger poem, free form. It probably won't get written in this world, but it's always been important to me. It feels pretty fucking poignant right now, though." A sort of serenity was beginning to settle into her voice, as if she was calming herself down so as not to disturb Max.
Max thought she was already pretty disturbed, all things considered.
"Hello, Max," the woman said. "I've been talking to the landlady for about half an hour. Told her I wanted to show the place to my little sister and asked her if she would be able to let us in." The elder Caulfield gestured up the stairs toward the door at the top of the stairs. "Don't you want to come up and see it?"
"Why would I?" Max asked her, feeling unimpressed, if a little uneasy. She was here for answers, not checking out shitty apartments. She remembered the place in enough detail to know it was a shitty, shitty apartment.
"Why indeed," the woman echoed, and then she smiled. What is so fucking funny? "Well, Max. I made a date for us to grab breakfast in an hour or so. Let's go for a walk."
"A walk to where?"
"The bus stop, of course. It's not like I've got a car here. Besides, no one drives in this city." Max nodded. She had heard that a time or two. When she gestured for the woman to lead the way, the elder Caulfield turned right in front of the building and held out her left hand toward Max. Max blinked once or twice at it before understanding that the woman was asking her to take her hand.
"That's not going to cause any sort of universal unraveling, right?"
"You watch too much Doctor Who," the woman told her. "Makes you feel like you're cheating on Star Trek. Don't worry, Roddenberry would've understood." Max smiled at herself despite herself. It did not completely banish the urge to scream at this woman that she had been promised answers, though. Nothing but answers is going to do that. Hesitantly, Max took the woman's hand and began to walk beside her. She felt for a moment like a small child being lead by their mother and then after a second considered whether it was not more like one sister with another. Only child, wouldn't know. "You know, Max, your girls are going to give you all kinds of shit for that shirt." Half-absent, Max looked down at the brand new tee.
"What was I supposed to do, walk around LA with a cartoon cat on my chest?" she asked the woman. The tie dye was bound to attract less attention than the shirt wrapped up in the plastic bag hanging from her left hand, right? The woman was nonetheless right. It had been almost two months since Chloe had bumped her on the shoulder and called her a filthy hippie. It was only a matter of time. I mean, if I go back.
"And what's wrong with cartoon cats?" the woman asked. It was not just hot out, it was humid. Their walk toward the end of the road and what she thought was a bus stop a block or two away was taken at a leisurely pace but it did not stop Max from quickly feeling warmer than she wanted to. Arcadia Bay was in the 60s as a high lately, which probably contributed more to her issues with the heat. As it happened, Max did not answer the woman's question. She was waiting, waiting for answers of her own. "Oh, Max," the woman sighed a few moments later.
"Yes, Max?" Max answered almost immediately. If I have to annoy her into talking, then I'll annoy her into talking.
"Don't be a brat, this is difficult."
"I know you are, but what am I?" When the woman snorted instead of growing frustrated, Max tried to relax. This did not look like it had to be adversarial. Maybe it was up to her to start.
"Do you know who I am?" Max asked her.
"You know who you are," the brunette beside her responded. "It's just about accepting it." That is maddeningly unhelpful, thank you. "Not the answer you wanted to hear?" Max rather thought she must have been scowling to draw the woman's attention, but she received a soft squeeze of the hand as they continued onward. "Why didn't you want to go into the apartment? Surely a chance to see your old home-"
"Is it my old home?" Max queried, again jumping on the opening as soon as it appeared. They were beginning to get toward a more crowded portion of the street. Five or six early birds were a few steps ahead of them, marching, no doubt, toward the bus stop.
"Is it? Does it hold meaning for you? Did you feel nostalgic when you saw it?" Max shook her head. "Curious isn't it? If it was your old home, where you lived with the woman you were going to marry and cleaned and fought and sang and danced and drank, cooked, fucked, went to sleep at night and woke up each morning, why wouldn't it matter to you?" Max fell silent. She had had this part of the conversation with herself long ago. When she first realized that she was no longer missing Blair and her extended family or that thinking about the Chloe who had lain dying on a small road slightly further on the edge of LA no longer made her sick to her stomach.
"I wonder about that, but then, it doesn't necessarily mean anything does it?" The small overhang of the bus stop came into view in the distance. It was only another five minutes or so away at the slow strolling pace the older Max seemed determined to maintain.
"Does it?" Stop answering every one of my questions with a question! Max's free hand (or at least the one that was not holding the woman's) closed tight. This was rapidly becoming infuriating. Last night she had been promised answers. All she was getting was questions and riddles. Well, she had asked all of these questions of herself before, damn it, a hundred times, a thousand times, a million.
"I was… she was, whatever it is, that person, whether she was me- ugh, that Max is fucking nuts, isn't she? Aren't I?" The woman only sighed and again squeezed her hand.
"This is about you coming to terms with the answers you already have, Max. That's why I'm here."
"Why are you here?" The woman did not answer immediately and Max did not push. She allowed her eyes to travel across buildings in various states of disrepair. The businesses around here made do with what they had, when it came to aesthetics. It was not the brightest part of Los Angeles County. Every once in awhile someone would come ambling down the steps of a small apartment building and step in line with the small group that had formed in front of Max and- and herself. They reached the stop before either a response or a bus showed itself.
"I am here because, in part, you're my fault. It's a small part, but I still played a role." Max gestured for the woman to continue as they stood just to the side of the stop. No one was listening in. No one here cared. Six men and eight women gathered by the stop, just waiting for their long days to begin. A couple looked as tired as Max felt and stood hunched forward, bone-weary. "The biggest difference between you and me, is me."
"I'm gonna need more to go on," Max told her. She hated the biting tone in her voice but she felt like she was starting to reach the edge of some great precipice and falling was starting to sound good.
"I knew how you were going to be affected by all of this and I just wanted to make things better. I couldn't, of course, because that's not how time works. All I could do was make another timeline, and it wasn't necessarily better. Though, in some ways, it has its benefits." Max shook her head. The woman was not, apparently, in the mood to speak plainly. "All of that and more when we get settled in for breakfast, alright? I've got a habit. If I don't have breakfast in front of me before eight in the morning, it's going to be a shitty day." Exasperated, Max thought about asking her what in the hell eight in the morning really meant to people like the two of them. She also thought about freeing her hand from the woman's and crossing her arms across her chest.
She resisted both.
The bus was crowded and unpleasant to be on, if Max was honest. No one seemed to give a damn about personal space and everyone was all elbows and knees. A man twice her size fell into her at one point, and it was only her older counterpart's steady arms that spared her a trip to the floor of the bus. Max would remember later the sneer a lady sitting a step or two away from them had given her when she straightened herself back up, as if some stranger losing his balance was her fault or any of the old lady's business. It took Max several minutes to realize where the bus was talking them. None of the buildings stood out as familiar to her as they passed, but the farther and farther they went from the center of the city, the less likely there was any other destination.
By the time they stopped, Max was fairly sure she could guess where breakfast was going to be had. The time displayed on the bus's ticker declared that it was past seven in the morning already. They were only about three blocks from the hotel. On the way, Max slowed as she passed an alley with old, peeling white paint on the outside of one of the buildings lining it and her companion slowed down, too, to accommodate her. The wall was clear of graffiti, but Max had flashes of it as it had been in another world, covered in Chloe's handiwork.
As for the Hotel Du Sommeil, weakly named as it was, the building was smaller than it usually seemed in her nightmares, on those off times she saw it at all. For reasons that Max didn't quite understand, she was led farther down the street until they stood aligned with the far end of the lot, separated only by one road which had been unexpectedly free of traffic for the most part. They did not cross immediately when they got there. She glanced over to the woman to find out what was happening and saw that her dark blue eyes were fixed on Max. What is she waiting for?
They were halfway across the street with Max leading her elder counterpart when she realized their feet had just stepped across the very spot where, in another world's June of 2014, a Chloe Price had been left to expire in the street after being the victim of a hit and run. Max shivered and, despite feeling no special angst, did feel as if her stomach had twisted slightly. She focused on the cracks in the pavement of the parking lot when they crossed to it. Somewhere about twenty feet ahead of them, the man who had chased that Chloe into the road, in that other world, in the future, had met or would have met an unfortunate fate at the hands of a woman half his size.
Max did not want to consider the images of plunging knives and flailing limbs or any version of Chloe Price crumpled dead on the pavement, so she did not. She was not devastated as they entered the restaurant attached to the hotel, but to say that her mood had improved any would have been a lie. Max wanted the woman beside her to talk. She wanted answers, she wanted to know who she was and she wanted to sleep. Her eyes hurt each time she blinked her heavy eyelids. The world could be poised to end and she would still want to sleep. Doesn't she understand how tired I am?
Merciful air conditioning struck them both in the face the moment they stepped over the threshold. The door shut behind Max as her elder counterpart released her hand and approached a pale-haired woman behind a podium. The woman looked tired, herself, though perhaps only as if her feet were sore. Max did not bother to pay attention to the brief discussion the two had, she only waited until she was told to move and did as told. They passed tables and booths with fine white table cloths and two or three other parties dining, over a hardwood floor that might have been actual wood, if Max thought about it. As if by special request, the woman who was waiting to seat them did so in the booth farthest from the door. It was not too terribly far off from pale metal double doors leading to the kitchen.
Max slid into the seat that her companion was not occupying and ordered a water without really meeting the waitress' eyes. Her companion ordered a coke. As soon as they were alone, it was apparently time to talk. That being said, if she had any delusions that air conditioning and imminent cold drinks were going to pry the older Max Caulfield's lips open and bring her secrets all spilling out at once, they faded when she was given a food recommendation. Max's toes curled and uncurled and frustration kept fists clenched where they sat on the table.
"I'm given to understand they do pretty good eggs here," the woman informed. "I'd order that when the waiter comes." Max nodded but she was not really agreeing to the suggestion. It was more like she wanted the conversation to progress to the meat and potatoes portion of the meal. The restaurant around them was rather nice, all told. Its walls were lined by paintings that were clearly reprints and photos of famous people who had eaten there. In many cases, the people were still eating when the photo was taken. Max thought that that was rather uncouth of the photographer. "I guess we'll start with the difference between you and me."
"You said the difference was you," Max told her. "What does that mean?"
"It means," the woman started, leaning back, "that for the most part, I have lived a life a lot like yours. Except that I interfered in yours. I mean, I interfered in hers too."
"Her who?" Behind Max, the waitress was seating someone else at the table. After a few seconds of receiving only a confused grunt when asked what they wanted to drink, the woman suggested she bring out some water and give them some time to think. The people at the table must have not been morning people because they said nothing in response. Max was going to shoot a curious glance over her shoulder when quite suddenly her older self reached across the table and placed her right hand over Max's left.
"You know who," she insisted, squeezing it briefly. Max forgot about the random strangers behind her. She felt the warmth of hope begin to kindle in her stomach. Max shook her head. She thought she knew who, certainly, but she was never particularly sure. "All her blackouts? All the times she lost her mind? The time she found her studio messed up? A photo missing? A knife missing? That was me, trying to protect her from herself. Don't understand? Then, fine," the woman told her. "Let's get our orders taken and then I'll tell you a story. If you think you've heard this one before, you'll have to bear with me." More stalling, more waiting.
"The blackouts, all the blackouts she had to deal with, that was you wasn't it?"
"It was."
Eventually a young man in his mid twenties walked up to them. There was something familiar in his dark eyes and chestnut brown hair but Max was now so far from caring about anything that did not get the fucking questions and self-doubt to quiet down that she did not look at him for long as she ordered eggs over easy and enough bacon to sink a ship. He laughed and told her that was his breakfast of choice, too, in a thick english accent. To Max's credit, she managed to smile up at the man, politely, as he took their untouched menus and left. What the older Max ordered, she didn't even know. Max didn't care.
"Right," the woman told her. "The story. I was fourteen years old, living in an apartment in east Seattle. I did little things like go around town taking photos on my spare time, hanging out with the couple of people who showed any interest in hanging out with the 'geek girl' who had moved up a couple grades. I really really loved to go to the Chase Space on the weekends and dream about having my photos there. My father and I would go to hockey games in the area and I always usually enjoyed myself." Max swallowed. She could definitely guess where this was going. "Mom and I were closer than we'd ever been. Life was quiet, but it was okay. I had my regrets, like anyone else. I didn't know how to reach out to my best friend. I felt guilty for not talking to her in so long and every time I picked up the phone to fix it, I thought, 'damn, why would she even want to hear from you after you ditched her?'"
"Please get on with it," Max finally said, voicing both her impatience and her discomfort with the line the discussion was taking.
"I'm getting there," the woman promised her. "Anyway, one day, I was sitting in my bedroom." Okay, here it goes. "I was watching a movie on my laptop when I noticed a gorgeous bird on the windowsill." Then I, you, she decided I wanted a photo of it. "Really, it was just a pigeon with pretty coloring but I figured I'd take a picture. I hadn't snapped anything in about a week. I was feeling pretty down. So I lined up the shot, snapped a picture and bam, the world changed forever." Max closed her eyes. She felt as if perhaps she was breathing a little too heavily.
"So I take this picture of this bird and when I open my eyes my head is aching and I'm lying on my floor, holding it. Nothing makes much sense, because I wasn't supposed to be in Seattle, I was supposed to be here, in LA, right? Then shit started to come back. Dead Chloe. Calvin choking on his own blood. Three hard months of practicing with my powers, running back to Chloe's funeral over and over again. Burying her a hundred times. At least now I knew why I couldn't remember her funeral the first time, right?" The woman laughed and Max's stomach sank. So I am her? "But I had a plan, a plan Blair and I had worked on tirelessly for a full month and I kicked it into action within seconds. Once my headache stopped me from seeing straight I grabbed my English notebook and started to write what I would later call the Master List." Max reached down and pulled her Master List from her pocket. It went with her wherever she went, no matter that she had not looked at it in a year.
"When I thought I'd gotten it all down in that weird, looping shorthand, when everything made sense, I set my plan into motion. Two days later I was in Arcadia Bay. I watched Chloe and Rachel on stage. They were cute with each other. I'd forgotten how vulnerable Chloe could be and Rachel Amber? Jesus, she was like nothing I'd ever seen." True, all true. "She moved from one side to another of that stage and read her lines as if she were casually hanging out in her bedroom, didn't give a shit about the crowd watching. But see, by that point, things had started to go wrong already. I tried to hold a conversation with the Ambers in the crowd, but I was stumbling all over my words. I felt like a stupid child being judged by my elders. It only got worse when Chloe saw me at the end of the play. Oh, man," the woman began to laugh. "Honestly thought I was going to shit myself running away. Didn't even know Joyce saw me, even though I was the one who made sure she came to the play to begin with. That was my first step, to push Chloe back toward her mother. I mean, shit, it was Joyce, right?"
"I didn't know," Max told her. "I didn't know how bad Joyce could be about David." The woman shook her head and squeezed Max's hand again, though this time she let it go. "I remember how scared I was to get away though. I fucking ran. That night was the first time I started to lose my shit around cars, too. I was an absolute wreck by the time I texted Chloe." This time the older Max nodded.
"I'm glad that the issue about being around the road, being around cars faded. But you know what's really weird about it?" the woman asked. Max shook her head. "I, that is to say the person who I thought I was at the time? She had never blamed the car that took Chloe's life. It wasn't the driver she chased down. It wasn't the driver's hands she shattered. It wasn't the driver she stabbed with a kitchen knife. It wasn't the driver whose hospital room she visited. It wasn't the driver she threatened to come back for if he ever spoke about what she'd done." That's right. I never blamed the driver. I blamed him. Why would I be afraid of cars? "Quite weird that here I was in Arcadia Bay, freaking out about being around cars, squealing brakes and honking horns. If I needed an absurd fear, why not get scared of waiters?"
"That's stupid," Max challenged her. "And you're deflecting."
"Or you're the one deflecting. Or fuck it, maybe we both are, but the point is that that's the majority of what you and I share in common. The thing is, it took me a long time, a lot longer than I want it to take for you, to realize that you and the woman who committed those crimes may talk the same, look the same, sound the same, but are not the same person." Max's breath caught in her chest. A lump began to form. She shook her head.
"How do I know?" she wheezed. "Why do I still have bits and pieces of her memories? Why do I have dreams about the night I realized that I either had to let Nathan shoot Chloe or I had to kill everyone in Arcadia Bay. Why do I remember the day I chose to kill an entire town?"
"Think of it like this," the older Max told her, not reaching out to comfort her, staying calm, hard-faced. "When we first developed our powers, we transferred our consciousnesses from our current bodies to our past ones. That's the majority of what you still know how to do. It's like sticking a hard drive from one computer into another that is otherwise identical to it. There is functionally no difference when the procedure is done." Max nodded. The metaphor worked well enough, but it supported her fears, not what the woman was saying. "What the other Max did, what she discovered accidentally while playing with her photo-time travel- yes, that's what I call it don't look at me like that- wasn't a hard drive being swapped out." I wasn't looking at her like anything, Max thought, her hands coming to rest on the edge of the table, squeezing at the wood. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears: it was beginning to beat unnaturally quickly. "It was more like a data transfer. She sent you files, Max. That's all. Will and Ways, Memories and Emotions but they weren't yours and outside of their host they deteriorated pretty fast."
"Yes," Max admitted. "By September I could only really see most of those memories in my nightmares. But doesn't that mean they're buried in my subconscious somewhere?" At this the woman fell silent. The waiter from before, with the familiar face and eyes returned with their drinks. Max hadn't even thought about them since ordering them, but she quickly grabbed her water and took a long drink. If she's saying that that woman isn't me, I need proof. I need to be sure. "I mean, if they're in there doesn't that mean I'm at least partially her? Doesn't it mean I'm the one who chose Chloe over Arcadia Bay? Doesn't it mean that I brought that storm on them? Doesn't it mean they're all on me?"
If Max was going to have to live with a piece of that woman inside of her for the rest of her life, she thought she could deal with it. She thought she could deal with it as long as the woman in front of her answered this question, as long as she found some way to be sure that she was not a twenty-something year old woman taking advantage of Rachel and Chloe, as long as she was sure she was not the person who nearly killed a man by the name of Calvin, as long as she was sure she was not the girl who had chosen someone she loved to live, while an entire town was left to die. Am I always going to carry around the psycho who killed Arcadia Bay?
"You're not her, Max. She's not in there. Not at all." The woman's voice rose, both in volume and frequency. She was trying desperately to make Max believe her but not giving her any reason.
"Damn it, how are you so sure? That's all I need," Max told her, speaking up herself. The glass of water slammed against the table so hard that even in its half-empty state, some splashed up and over the side of the glass and down her hand. "No more games, no more riddles, no following me around and watching me, no stories. Just fucking tell me how you're so sure because sometimes I still remember the knife in my hand." Max knew she was speaking too loudly. She felt someone in the seat behind hers bump into the back of theirs, as if turning to look at her. The quiet people at the other table must have overheard this last bit. Probably think I'm nuts.
"Because that woman, that Max would never have given her order to or taken a drink from a glass of water given to her by Calvin Matthews. She never would have looked him in the face and not recognized him, certainly not with only a couple of years between the man he is now and the man he was then." Max's head swung around hard, looking, searching for the man who had just handed her the drink. He was passing through the kitchen doors, into the back. Nothing registered when she looked at him. That same sense of vague recognition was there but nothing more. No rage, no hatred, no fear, no agonizing defeat, no urge to kill, to beat, to maim. She wanted to hurt Nathan Prescott and David Madsen more than this man before her and as far as she was concerned they had gotten their just deserts already. Max leaned forward, forearms sliding against the table and, when she felt her vision begin to blur and eyes start to burn, she crossed her arms and laid her head atop them, eyes closing. She drew as slow and deep of a breath as she could.
"I think it's all up to you two now, girls." Though she could not seem to clear the moisture from her eyes, Max looked up at her counterpart, to find the woman staring over her shoulder. She didn't need to turn around to understand what was happening. The realization hit her well before she saw, through watering eyes, the bright blue of Chloe Price's hair or the long, thick mass that was Rachel Amber's. No other defining characteristics stood out to her in her current state but the realization, the idea that they had been there the whole time, that they knew it, all of it, drew out every feeling Max had been swallowing since well before she and the woman from another future began to talk.
She did not feel too kindly toward herself as those emotions came on all at once, but she could not bury her head again. Max blinked, trying to clear her vision as she felt the bench shift against her back and Rachel rose from her seat. Across their table, Chloe did the same. What was supposed to be an exhale turned into a strangled sob. The minute that Rachel settled onto the edge of Max's booth seat and pushed against Max's shoulder for her to scoot over and let Rachel in, the floodgates opened. They're not running. They're not running. They don't know it all but they know enough to run and they're not running. Max felt helpless as she watched Chloe approach her older counterpart and demand the woman scoot over to let her in. Instead the older Max rose to her feet.
"I don't have anymore parts in this play," the woman said. "Besides, you three are better actresses than I'll ever be." Chloe paused, not sitting down as the woman took a step or two forward. "Oh and Max?" she turned her burning eyes on the other Max Caulfield, helpless and pathetic against grief and relief, against the shackles cut away from her arms and legs. "Always take the shot, kid. Always take the shot." With that, the elder Max walked away. "Take care of her for me."
"Wait," Chloe called as Rachel's arms connected, her hands meeting on the other side of Max's shoulders as Max fought hard not to sob again, not to cry anymore. Not for this. Not for this thing she'd wasted a year and change fearing that she was. Max only knew that the woman paused in her quick exit because Chloe spoke. "I want to talk to you." The tall, thin girl stopped, reached past Rachel and pressed a hand into Max's cheek. "I'm coming back in just a second, do you understand that, Max?"
"Yes," Max confessed, feeling awe and embarrassment. "You're not leaving."
"No," Chloe told her. "And I told you that yesterday."
"Yesterday was so long, and it was so long ago." Max shifted in her seat as Chloe pulled her hand back and, without shame, buried her face against Rachel's jacket. How the hell is she wearing that in this fucking heat? As Max tried to regain control, she breathed in the scent of her girlfriend and did not complain at the arms tightening around her. In fact she soaked up that pain and listened when Rachel spoke.
"Max, you're no Prometheus, but you've put yourself up on the mountainside. There's no one here to punish you but yourself. It's time to break the chains and come down here. Live with us mortals who are allowed to fuck up, okay?" Max nodded and with a great effort she shifted her hands enough that they could grab into Rachel's shirt, gathered together just above her stomach. Just more connection was all she wanted. More. "Come down off the mountain."
Chloe returned after about two or three minutes to tell Max that her older self was gone, vanished into thin air in broad daylight. Max laughed once, remembering a dozen potential confrontations that had been cut off by that very thing happening.
"Yeah," she said, sniffling. "She does that."
"Now what in the name of fuck are you wearing, you dirty god damned hippie?" This time, Max laughed and did not try to stop it. Rachel, who had yet to move her arms from Max's shoulders, finally did so, but she seemed to do so only to reach into her right pocket. Max watched the girl deposit twenty bucks on the table. I guess she was right about the shirt, Max told herself, glancing down once. The sandals don't help, either. If she was right about that, maybe she's right about the rest of it too. Rachel did not hurry them to leave and after a moment of running her hand through Max's hair, Chloe sat down opposite of them.
They were on the plane from Los Angeles to Portland when one of them finally began to broach the whole subject of what they had heard. Max was, as her ticket dictated, planted firmly in between Chloe and Rachel both. This was just one of the cheeky minor miracles her counterpart had worked, but then, when you had all the time in the world to do it, Max rather thought it looked less impressive. Rachel started the conversation out by going right to one of the most painful subjects, which Max considered akin to ripping off a bandaid. Half exhausted herself, Chloe's eyes only half-opened when the discussion began.
"I understand now, why sometimes Blackwell fucks you up," Rachel told her. "If you just kept thinking the whole time about being responsible for some sort of disaster in Arcadia Bay, it would get to you fast."
"It's going to take me time to stop thinking like that," Max told her honestly, then shifted her glance to Chloe, who watched with narrowing, curious eyes. "But I need to know how angry you guys are at me for keeping all of this from you. I need to know what to be ready for."
"I'm fucking pissed," Chloe told her, voice low and even. The girl looked uncomfortable in her seat. It probably had to do with how low the ceiling was right beside the window and Chloe's stubborn insistence to deal with it. As far as the bluenette was concerned, it was a general affront to peoples' health and safety that they didn't make the ceilings higher, a matter of principal. If that's the hill she wants to die on, Max thought, smiling ruefully despite Chloe's admission. "But I'll get over it, as long as we don't go back to pretending nothing ever happened. I won't. I can't do it anymore." Max nodded.
"Ditto," Rachel told her. Despite the admission of anger, the girl reached across their shared arm rest and took Max's hand. She was comforted when Chloe did the same. "I want to understand what's been happening since I met you. I think so much of this has to do with the two of us, too, that it's only fair." Max nodded again and then, with a slowness that came from a place of being unsure what words to use to convey an idea, she spoke.
"It's going to take me a little bit of time to find the words to tell the story, but I'll do my best when we get back home. There's someone else I want to include in all of that."
"Steph, still?" Chloe asked. Max nodded. "That would involve her knowing about the two of us and what we can do, too."
"I know, which is why it's your guys' decision. I've made too many decisions for you both already. Especially when I first came to town."
"Like what?" Rachel queried.
"Like when I stopped you from getting stabbed in the junkyard by Damon Merrick," Max admitted. "And I know that sounds like a good thing to stop, especially because you almost died, but I didn't know you then and that action had consequences." Please don't ask me what they were. It's going to hurt us both if you do.
"Like what?" Rachel was turning more toward her, more awake than before. The plane jostled slightly at a bit of turbulence, enough to make Max's breath catch in her chest. If this fucker starts going down, I'm rewinding so hard my head spins and we're missing our flight. "Max, if it involves me, like what?"
"Who cares," Chloe asked suddenly. "What happened to other people isn't what happened to us. They're not us." Max listened in silence as the two debated across her for a moment, her cheeks heating, her stomach dropping out. Then, quietly, Rachel seemed to come around to Chloe's side. "Besides, we're gonna talk about plenty tomorrow, when we sit down with Steph." Max nodded, slowly. She had missed when the other two agreed to include Steph in their airing out. "I want to know what was on the piece of paper you left on the table at the restaurant."
"It's the Master List. I wrote it all out just after I got all of that lady's memories and feelings. It was a kind of a cheat sheet to the people in Arcadia Bay and most of it is bullshit," Max released their hands and, much as the other two, shifted to try to be comfortable in the tiny, cramped seat. "Because that woman was fucking crazy. I got rid of it, but I don't know if I can ever get rid what I still know."
"We'll have to deal with that as it comes," Rachel assured her.
"Do you think that you can accept that you're, you know, you and not this other Max?"
"I think so. I'm going to try. I'll need your help for that." Chloe only gave her a nod and then smiled briefly for the first time in several minutes, leaning back in her chair as best she could. There really was no getting comfortable on the plane. At least it's only a two and a half hour flight, Max thought with false enthusiasm.
"On second thought, maybe I don't want to know everything about the other timeline," Rachel muttered. Max wondered if Rachel was remembering the moment of desperation last year, the one that had caused Max, in an altered state, to beg Rachel to stop Jefferson, to take the weight off of her shoulders, to help her feel like a normal girl again if just for a few minutes. In retrospect, with the idea that she truly wasn't the woman she feared she was, Max no longer felt as embarrassed by this sign of weakness. It wasn't even a sign of weakness, she told herself. It was a normal human response to being stressed to the edge and then drugged on top of it.
"There are things I never want to think about again," Max told her. Chloe did not open her eyes, but she was not done with her part in the conversation.
"How much is going to be relevant, the stuff that was on that sheet?"
"A lot of it was useful information but the conclusions about people that I wrote down… they were nonsense. Also…"
"Also?" Chloe asked, opening one eye.
"The results of almost every major sporting event between 2010 and mid 2013? It was all in that shorthand Blair taught her, but it's there and I know it's worked out."
"Ever use any of it?" Now Chloe was asking with some cheeky eagerness in her voice. It was enough to give Max some serious pause. That being said, she had just made a commitment to honesty, to telling them everything that concerned them and maybe even the useful bits that didn't. Technically, technically this concerned them.
"I sort of made a chunk of cash off of the Superbowl last year. Frank hooked me up with a bookie." When the mere mention of the man's name did not send Rachel into an obvious tailspin, Max glanced at Chloe who was watching her in some awe. "I had some saved up from- oh never mind."
"You've got to tell me who wins the next one," Chloe suddenly called, sitting straight up quickly enough that she banged her head. Score one for karma. "Whatever," Chloe said when Rachel began to cackle quietly in her seat. "Whatever. That's the way to use time travel," Chloe insisted.
While the two of them joked about what they might do with the ability to travel through time, not understanding all of the things that Max understood (at least, not yet), Max rested her eyes. Los Angeles had always danced around the back of her mind as a sort of goal to aim toward. Now she rather thought she was done with LA for a while. Leaving it behind was relieving. It meant very little to her but what little it meant was unpleasant. If I come back, I want it to be with Chloe and Rachel and on my own terms. Our terms.
It was easy, with the voices of her loved ones, to drift off into sleep. She was not going to wake up magically cured, but Max thought as she felt herself beginning to fade, at least she was not going to wake up to Rachel in trouble and Chloe enraged. If there was ever a version of Max Caulfield she was happy to be, it was this one. She had hours ahead of her traveling with Chloe and Rachel by her side. They came all the way to LA for me. And whatever happens tonight, that's not nothing.