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 Sixty-Six: Attack on Salamis
April 25th, 2012 3:17 PM
Rachel Amber was pacing the grass by their favored picnic table when Max came back to herself. She exhaled once, shook her head and raised a hand toward either eye. There were no tears in them, but some rested still on her cheeks, and though she felt ashamed as she wiped them away, Max could not stop to speak. She took one or two steps away from the picnic table, doubled over and lost what little of her lunch she had been able to eat. It took forever, it was stressful and the muscles in her neck, shoulder and chest ached when she was done, but eventually, stress had robbed her of another meal. Rachel's hands on her back, her shoulders, her neck, they attempted to soothe her, to calm her down but nothing could do that and they certainly did nothing for the pain. Gasping, she wiped at her lips and then spat to get the taste from her mouth.
"I know you're worried," Rachel told her, "but we have to keep it together until we find someone who can help us find her. We've got half of the Vortex club looking for Eliot and Nathan. Hayden will kick their doors in if he has to." Max shook her head, drawing another great lungful of air in. Unfortunately with it came the memory of Chloe, broken with her arms and shirt covered in red. With it came the memory of Chloe screeching at the top of her lungs, of Mark Jefferson gasping unnaturally for breath and of the still, prone form on the floor of the old boiler room. Max lifted her phone and looked at it. The time read 3:18 which was only about eight minutes before the gunshots sounded audibly from the boiler room. Nathan Prescott had only eight minutes to live and that meant Max had only eight to save him, or more realistically to save Chloe from having to kill him.
"Back from a few minutes into the future," Max told her in a short, stilted gasp. "We gotta go."
"What?" Rachel suddenly came to life, standing straight but not releasing Max's shoulder. "What happened?"
"If I take time explain, it happens again," Max told her, before turning toward the front doors of the school where she knew she could find Wells and David discussing installing cameras in the front hall.
"What?" Rachel repeated herself, confused.
"Tragedy," was all Max told this girl that she loved. It was all they had time for. "Chloe in trouble. WE have to get her help." She contemplated bypassing the two men entirely and bum rushing for the door to the boiler room but there were too many unknown variables. Max had not stuck around to find out the specifics of what had happened. She had not been able to sit there and ignore Chloe begging her to put an end to everything she was experiencing. Max needed to bring unknown variables of her own. She trusted inherently that Rachel was keeping pace with her but did not slow down even when her foot caught on a stair up to the front doors and she almost fell.
The cool glass door gave way under her weight, swinging open quite suddenly, quite loudly. The sound of the metal frame striking the doorway around it drew the attention of Raymond Wells and David Madsen, who were standing together as expected not far from the door to the front offices. Steph, at the end of the hall, spotted them. Max heard the girl scream to ask what was happening but she could not stop. Every single second mattered if they were going to get there in time to stop the girl from killing Nathan Prescott, to spare her whatever hell the Prescotts would bring down on her, to say nothing of her own mental health. Max was not going to lose Chloe, not for anything. Steph sprinted toward them as Max angled for Wells and David.
"David," Max yelled, despite the fact that he was staring at her as if she were up to no good, as if she were about to shit on the floor or something. "David," she pulled to a stop right in front of the two men and reached out to grab the brunet by the arm. "You have to come now. Someone's about to get shot." The man's face turned to shock quickly. Max knew the fear she was feeling, that which caused her limbs to shake and made her gag at the end each sentence, was palpable. It was enough, it seemed, to rob him of his words. "You have to come now, do you understand me?" Confusion settled in over the shock and Max didn't like that. Beside David, Wells' brows were knit together in confusion. "Nathan Prescott has a gun and he is going to shoot someone." The principal's dubious face become even more dismissive and as his low, patronizing tones began to sound, Max screamed over him at the top of her lungs.
"David, your options right now are to come save Chloe's life or I do the same thing to you and your secrets as I did to Nathan and Jefferson's. And I promise you, Wells, you're not in the fucking clear here either." Wells' eyes widened, his voice cut off with a squelching noise as Rachel and Steph both called for her to calm down. Max did not care that her every word was breathy or that she had to release and draw in more oxygen as soon as she got hold of the last batch. She did not care how much everything hurt. Rachel said her name, but Max could not turn and give in. Eight minutes had turned into six already and Max was not okay with that.
David's wide eyes and pale face made it clear that her words had finally been heard. She released the man and bolted. Several sets of footsteps sounded alongside her own but she did not turn to look back. David would either come or she would tell the world what he was, whether in this timeline or another. Rachel continued to ask for her to tell them what was happening but it was all Max could do to keep inhaling and exhaling, to keep pumping her arms and lifting her legs as she shot down the hall and hooked a left into the back hall. Dana and Victoria were present in the hall but she did not look either one in the eyes, not even when they asked if she had found Chloe. David yelled questions, Rachel and Steph yelled questions. None of them understood what was happening. None of them were thinking sanely. She pushed out of the doors and began to hook around the corner to the back of the school, as she had shortly before hearing the sound of the rounds which had taken Nathan Prescott's life.
"Jefferson and Nathan are in there and they're going to kill Chloe if we don't stop them right now." Max who had been the first of them to reach the boiler room door heaved it open without hesitation. If the others heard her well enough, then they would know what they were walking into, if not, at least she was not going down alone. Max took in the sight of Chloe, holding Nathan's gun as Jefferson reeled back from her first shot. Apparently, Max's timing had been off. Nathan's eyes turned toward the door where as of yet, she stood alone. Max pushed herself five or six steps down the stairs even as Jefferson ran toward them for dear life. While Nathan's muscles tensed, so did Max's failing ones. She threw herself off of the stairs and onto the boy. They collapsed together in a flailing mess of arms and legs but there were no more bullets. Chloe did not shoot. As far as Max could tell in that moment before leaping, Nathan was uninjured. Her timing had been off or she had been slower than expected, but it was not in vain.
There was a sound of scuffling and Chloe began to scream, at first it was the familiar mindbroken scream but soon words came into it, words that sounded like Chloe telling Nathan to leave Max alone. A large hand settled on Max's shoulder as, beneath her, Nathan struck up and caught her in the eye with his elbow. For her part, Max shrugged off the hand and pressed into Nathan's throat with her forearm. An animal stared up at her from Nathan's body. She was just beginning to consider how long she could safely hold her arm there without seriously injuring him when the hand grabbed at her again and then the sounds of the rest of the room came into being. David's voice, mid admonishment for her to release Nathan rang in her ears and the man hauled her to her feet through brute force alone.
The fall from the stairs had not broken anything but it had not helped anything, either. Rachel had just stopped yelling, but it was almost like the boiler was on, the room was sweltering around Max. Chloe fell silent as the whiny little shit whose pathetic life Max had just saved was hauled from the ground just as Max had been a moment ago and pinned to the old stone wall. Chloe had the gun trained on Nathan and David and Max didn't blame her, she only hoped the girl was enough herself to not pull the trigger, never mind the sheer joy Max would get in that moment from doing violence to either of them, herself. Just not this kind of violence. Nathan's feet didn't touch the floor when David finished pinning him to the wall. Max looked around. Jefferson was gone, David was yelling for Nathan to stay still and Chloe to drop the gun. Neither of them were obeying him. She was not sure either of them could. She was not sure they knew what he was saying.
Rachel leapt into action from where she paused on the bottom stair but that did not stop Max from seeing that she looked like she had a horrible sunburn or seeing legitimate, very physical flames manifesting in her eyes. When Chloe spoke of this sight, it was always in metaphor. Now, Max could swear it was literal, that fire burned behind Rachel's gaze. The girl looked fiercely, proudly at Max and then spun away toward Chloe who dropped the gun to the floor with a clatter. Mercifully the weapon did not go off. On the ground Max spotted a dark case designed to hold needles. Mark Jefferson was already active and Chloe had almost become this world's Rachel Amber. Or maybe not, she thought, reminding herself of the memory of Nathan, bleeding on the floor. Max and Rachel hurried together to Chloe's side as she began to pull, to tug at the ropes around her ankles.
Max had to grab Chloe's hands, slick with blood from wounds around her wrists to stop the girl from fumbling uselessly at her bonds and making it impossible for them to remove the rope. Chloe babbled at her about 'Steph but Not Steph' about seeing Max in a grey, foggy void that sounded to Max a lot like the Timescape and any number of things Max could not understand too well. Max just held tightly to Chloe's hands and let Rachel do her work. After a time, Chloe held tightly back. When Max looked up toward the doorway it was to see Wells standing in it, still outside the room, ultimately useless as usual. The most useless piece of shit in Arcadia Bay history. Go fuck yourself with a whiskey bottle. Contempt was good, contempt was bracing, contempt chased away memories of a fate now circumvented. Chloe squeezed tighter to get her attention, so Max turned back.
"Call 9-1-1," David demanded, turning his head to yell up the stairs. Max had no clue if Jefferson listened, but as soon as Chloe's legs were free and she stood up, Rachel and Max wrapped her tight in a hug. The girl's babbling turned to sobs and then to breathing, to sniffling, to wailing. "You three, go sit down or get upstairs until the police come." Max ignored the man, who was still fighting the flailing Nathan, screeching about how his father owned this town and would destroy them all without a thought, screeching about how a storm was coming. Both of them, petty little fucks always needing to control every little thing.
"Miss Amber, Miss Caulfield, please release Miss Price and bring her upstairs." Angry, Max turned her head away from Chloe and Rachel.
"Anyone who isn't a lapdog for Sean Prescott may talk, the other two can go fuck themselves. You did this. You." Max locked eyes with David Madsen. "You did everything to make sure that the Prescotts had free reign at Blackwell Academy, that Nathan never got in trouble for anything he did, that he never had to answer for himself and so that he could never be treated. You did all of this. You put Chloe down here." Max was feeding Rachel's rage and Chloe's grief, too. The both of them shook in her arms and the heat in the room, even with the door wide open, was becoming unbearable. If Max did not stop talking, she knew the room would find out once and for all who gave David the horrible scars on his palm and who took Nathan's eye.
Rachel and Chloe's grips tightened on her. She continued to sweat as Chloe continued to sob. Her breathing had not entirely normalized but it did not come or go as quickly now. Wells at some point announced he was going to meet the police and almost a second later she felt David's free hand on her shoulder. Max lifted her head from Chloe's hair in time to feel that hand lift and David scream out in agony. Nathan collapsed to the ground as David turned his full attention on Rachel, who had taken him by the wrist of the hand he had grabbed at Max with. The blonde broke free from Chloe and Max. David was clearly angry, agonized but also shocked as Rachel seared the flesh beneath her grasp.
"I warned you," Nathan screamed, before curling up into a ball. "Freaky bitch took my eye!"
"After what you did to Max, you're lucky I had enough control to stop before I turned you to ash!" This girl did not sound in that moment, like her Rachel. She sounded like an angry mother nature. All sense of control over this situation was gone. Chloe grabbed desperately at Max's shoulders as the brunette watched David stare down Rachel, whose gaze swiveled from Nathan to the head of security. "You - you piece of shit. If you'd just listened to any of us a long time ago, none of this would have happened. People have gotten hurt, people have died, just because you couldn't do your job and keep your own house in order. You had to go off chasing your paranoid delusions." David tried to jerk his arm free but Rachel's grasp was tight, vindictive. This room could burn and take the school with it at any moment. "And now, you are not to touch another one of us, ever again. Either of you. I don't care what happens next." Max broke her right arm from Chloe's grasp as fire manifested in Rachel's left hand. This was supposed to be smooth, no problems. Why is it like this?
Nathan was a sobbing mess on the floor. Rachel didn't even notice Max's hand on her shoulder. David faltered for just a moment, head lifting, eyes widening with genuine mortal terror before Rachel gasped, closed her left hand around the flame and extinguished it and released David, pushing him at Nathan. For a moment, the room was in stasis. David managed to stay standing but he was clearly injured. Nathan no longer tried to move and Chloe's head was finally out of Max's shoulder but she did not look as if she understood what was happening to them all. Max wanted to mutter into either girl's ear, but she knew it would not work, not for both of them, so, taking a deep breath, she called out.
"Everyone calm down, it's over." As Nathan started to uncurl on the floor, David lifted his boot and put it down into the boy's back. Rachel and David stared at one another from feet apart, so Max repeated herself. "It's over. It's all over," this last she said as soothingly as possible as she turned her eyes on Chloe and reached up to stop her from smearing blood across her face as she tried to rub at her eyes. "It's going to be okay." Max hoped what she said was true, but felt more relief than she cared to admit when Steph descended the stairs, no longer being blocked from doing so by Wells. Sirens sounded in the distance. Whatever came next was probably on David.
Max had nothing to say to either David or Nathan. Together she, Steph, Chloe and Rachel agreed upon a story in hushed tones. David did not try to speak again until the police arrived.
The emergency room of the Arcadia Bay Medical Center was a cool, rather dark, quiet and clean room so unlike the loud, filthy hell that Max's memories kept trying to drag her into. Having long since been interviewed about what they had witnessed down in the boiler room, Max and Rachel were now among several other familiar faces waiting in the ER to hear about Chloe. Max, shameless, sat curled up in a couch leaning against Rachel as she held her from behind. The more natural body heat of the blonde she loved was soothing but not as much as the sound of her heartbeat whenever Max turned her head and pressed her ear to the girl's chest. Half heartedly they tried to speak to one another, but there was so much more to be gained by simple contact. She felt a little dead inside, honestly, but her eyes opened briefly to take in David, where he sat beside his ex-wife.
Chloe had not been allowed any visitors while the police interviewed her. Max wasn't sure about the legality of keeping people back while she was tested and scanned, but she was so tired of fighting. David, who was hiding an unwrapped wrist under the long sleeve of his coat, had just a moment or two finished recounting that Nathan had been in the middle of a psychotic episode when the incident took place, leading to him hallucinating people, creatures and even fire as Max led David and Wells to the boiler room. Jefferson, he had stressed, had disappeared without a trace. It also seemed that David had made it clear that any attempt to silence what had happened would result in him going on national radio or television 'faster than you can say corruption.' Ultimately, it was encouraging behavior from David Madsen but it was too little too late. The damage was already done and his piddly little burn was nothing compared to everything he had done to Chloe and Rachel. She felt neither pity nor approval when it came to the man. She only hoped he quit his job and fucked off somewhere.
"It's bullshit he's pretending to care about Chloe after everything he's done," Max muttered as she shut her eyes and pressed into Rachel. Rachel made a familiar 'hmm?' noise in her throat but Max did not repeat herself. Instead, she worked her left hand across herself to grasp at the back of Rachel's where it sat on Max's own knee. "Are you alright? Not cold or anything?"
"No," Rachel told her in a similarly quiet tone. "I'm really not okay. But, I'm not cold." They had gotten their stories straight. The police thought that Max had seen Nathan dragging Chloe to the room and then ran to find David but was unable to before tipping off most of her friends that something was wrong with Chloe. Their confusion about where she was, Max had insisted, was simple miscommunication in a moment of panic. Either way, she had found David and he was their big hero. The idea made her want to puke again, but she wasn't sure she had much in the way of even stomach fluids to leave on the shiny waiting room floor. "Are you okay?" When Max shook her head, Rachel grunted understanding and tightened her hold on the photographer.
Max eventually lifted her head again. The room was pretty populated by Blackwell students and staff. David, Joyce and Ms. Grant sat near to them, in a row of chairs along the back wall of the waiting room, the wall which held those doors Max was waiting to be told she and Rachel could go running through to get to their girl. Steph was in the chair just behind Rachel, her knuckles pale as she gripped her armrests. She was as worried about Chloe as any of them. There had been talk about a potential concussion and Steph seemed very concerned about that possibility. Hayden, Logan, Dana, Juliet, Kate and even Taylor and Victoria sat in clumps across the room. There had not been much talking but occasionally one of them would come over to Rachel and Max to talk, to offer a kind word. Victoria's presence had made Max realize that whether or not there was any kind of potential for a relationship or not, Victoria was trying her damndest to be Max's friend and that had put a kind of bracing warmth in Max's gut.
As far as any of them could ascertain, Nathan was being held in jail, though Max and Hayden shared the belief he would be out in no time. Joyce had not really spoken to them, but the embrace she had wrapped each of them in when she first reached the emergency room made Max wish she could look at Joyce through the eyes of a child Max. Seeing her as a warm, kind figure that she loved like another mother would have been great comfort. Instead, this image of Joyce was tainted and that struck Max as profoundly gross. If her view of Joyce was so tarnished, what must Chloe's be like? The worst thing a parent can do to their child is to hurt them, because then this whole cornerstone of their life comes unraveled. Poor Chloe.
The light pouring in from the outside was low and golden when Chloe Price emerged from the back. She was not flanked on either side by police officers. Max nudged Rachel, who had fallen asleep and the girl sat immediately up. It took Max a second to get off of her, to let Rachel rise completely as Chloe scanned the room and her eyes landed on the two of them. Rachel was barely on her feet, grunting and swearing under her breath when Chloe lifted a sheet of paper over her head like it was an olympic medal or a first place trophy.
"I am free of concussion," she declared to the room at large, though her eyes never left Max and Rachel. Her celebration was for them, not the rest of the room. Even still, Dana and the others called out a brief cheer. Max heard Hayden's voice loud among the others. The girl's wrists were freshly bandaged and Max figured that was something that would need to happen for a while but beyond a black eye which had not yet developed very well when Max last saw her and the look of exhaustion which stole over Chloe's face the moment her mother and ex-stepfather rose to their feet, it was her Chloe, whole and sane. Come to think of it, Max had a hell of a shiner of her own forming. Nathan was safe and nothing could come back on Chloe or any of them. More than that, this had been so severe that the chances that he would be allowed back in Blackwell struck her as too low to consider. In short, when Chloe healed up, there was a chance that all would be right with the world.
"Oh, Chloe," Joyce sighed, breathing relief. "Come on, we'll get you home, I'll run to pick up the prescription the doctor handed me, and everything will be alright." Max shot a sideways glance at Rachel to see her face harden. Of course, Joyce was going to use this as a chance to get control over Chloe yet again. The bluenette lowered the paper in her hand, looked at the ones Joyce was clutching as she approached and laughed in her face. The room went quiet. Even the few Vortex Club members who had cheered at Chloe's proclamation that she was well fell silent. Max did not look at Ms. Grant, at Steph or at anyone else. Chloe held her hand out for the papers.
"I'll take care of those before I get to my home," Chloe told the woman, lifting her chin which still bore the remains of some scrape from a fall Chloe must have taken off of her board a day or two ago. Max held her breath but grabbed at one of Rachel's hands with one of her own. Joyce frowned but lifted her hand and placed the prescriptions written for Chloe and whatever other papers she had gotten her hands on into Chloe's grasp. "Thank you very much." With that, Chloe turned and pointed toward Max, Rachel and Steph. "Hey guys? I love you all for coming, and I really appreciate it, but I need to go somewhere very quiet, lock all the doors and be super alone with these three for, like, forty hours or something." Max did not look at anyone else, though she heard Dana chuckle. When Chloe pointed, Max came to her side. It did not take Rachel or Steph any longer.
"You need to be with your family right now," Joyce all but simpered.
"Oh I intend to be," Chloe promised. Max understood precisely what the girl was saying. Mom and Dad aren't here and they'll probably be texting me for the next five years to make up for it, but god it's good to be with family. Max turned her head to follow Chloe's glare as David started to open his mouth to scold her. The man remained silent, which quite frankly was something he could do with learning to pull off now and again. Chloe did not seem to give a shit about crumpling up the papers in her hands but she still moved very gingerly as she hugged first Max, then Rachel and finally Steph, who, sighing exaggeratedly, told Chloe that she was a real pain in the ass, worrying them like that. "Yeah I am," Chloe agreed. When they broke apart, Max had to tell herself that she was imagining that Chloe's smile looked broken. The crowd at large seemed to be gathering itself, preparing to leave considering that most of them were there for Chloe.
"Nathan's been suspended pending investigation," David announced to the room, gruffly, before turning away from them. Max did not try to stifle her snort. No one answered the man as he shifted his shoulders beneath his coat and made for the doors. Joyce looked between Chloe and David and then, heartbreakingly, followed the man out. There might be hope for Joyce but it thinned every time Max saw her.
"With that, I'm going home to watch TV, eat a pint of ice cream, play with my dog, hang out with my family and cry for about a year while Blackwell investigates whether they should expel a sex offender or hire him like they did the other one." Max could not help it. She looked first at David's retreating form and then at Ms. Grant, who looked incredibly upset as she and Chloe matched gazes. "Oh and David, tell Wells that Max and Rachel will be missing curfew tonight, 'kay big guy?" Max, who realized she had been nearly as silent as Rachel since Chloe emerged from the back, looked up at Chloe. She was not imagining it, the girl's boisterous front was, indeed, a front.
"It's gonna be okay, you know?" Rachel tried to reassure Chloe as the room began to empty around them. The blonde reached up to knock Chloe's bangs away from her forehead and Chloe did not even jokingly try to stop her. Max saw the concern this caused in Rachel's eyes. The Madsens were the first to go and Ms. Grant retreated afterward, apparently deciding nothing more than a goodbye was appropriate. The Blackwell students came next. Most of them stopped to make a goodbye of their own and for most people Chloe actually had something specific to say, some form of thanks. When it came to Taylor and Victoria at the tail end, the blunette and the blondes exchanged a smile that Max could not really translate and then as they walked away, Chloe called out at Victoria's retreating form.
"And I expect you to have Max home by 10:30 on Saturday, young lady! I'm not afraid to go back to jail." Victoria froze, turning back to look over her shoulder. Clearly a bit uncomfortable at Chloe hinting so loudly about their date, she gave a nervous chuckle, nodded and pushed out into the parking lot. Max felt bad but could not bring herself to scold Chloe, even if Rachel, too, visibly looked put off by the comment. It was possible Chloe was just trying to play up how okay she was a little too much. Still, Max kept her mouth shut and waited until Chloe was ready to go. "Let's blow this popsicle stand." Over Chloe's shoulder, Steph had fixed a smile on her face, but her eyes were uneasy. Clearly, Max, Steph and Rachel were all having the same thought.
Chloe was a little too cheery. When Max attempted to hold her papers for her, Chloe jerked them back and, tauntingly, shook a finger at her. Max tried to smile like she thought it was pure play, but she knew she had been caught. What Max wanted more than anything was to know exactly what prescriptions the doctor had written. If there were something there that suggested the doc had seen signs of PTSD or similar behavior, she, Rachel and Steph needed to know. Unfortunately, this line of thought became a very minor fear when the four of them stepped out into the parking lot.
Temperature-wise, it was still somewhere in the mid sixties. The low sunlight gave off the impression of a cooling day, though. It was not alone in that effort. To the several people stopping at or sitting in their cars in the small medical center's parking lot, perhaps the strangest thing about that early evening was not the level of the sunlight but the thick, large snowflakes falling from the sky in defiance of the temperature, of the season or of the weather. Ahead of her, Chloe and Rachel stared, marvelling at the snow around them. Max did not. Max slowed. Max stopped. The panic attack was immediate. She had not felt a genuine panic attack in over a year.
The dizziness came on quickly. In fact, the world might have been spinning even as one of those snowflakes spun down through the air to land on her nose. Her arms tingled even as they shook. Ahead of her Steph, Rachel and Chloe seemed to realize that Max was unable to move. What they might not have known was that she felt as if she was choking, as if she could not breathe, either. The absurd thought came that something invisible was holding that throat closed. Absolutely none of it compared to the understanding, the realization that Chloe had not been exaggerating when she told Max that she had killed Nathan. The snow was only the first sign. Oh, god, it was only the start.
She was not sure when she collapsed, but the cement felt unpleasant to strike against.
Blackwell Academy's parking lot did not look pleasant in the near dusk light of the gathering storm. Max blinked and gasped, looking down to find that her arms were wrapped firmly around Rachel's shoulders. She dug the tips of her fingers into Rachel's shoulders as she held tight to the girl. Rachel's hug was bracing, supportive but it was still tight enough to cause her to need to force breath into her lungs. Beside her, a devastated looking Chloe mused that she had been told by the cops not to leave town. Max did not think it was a joke. She swiveled her head around. Many of, no, most of the students from the dormitory were standing with or around them. Victoria, dressed in plain clothes that looked suspiciously like Kate's was among them. The blonde stepped toward Max, one hand outstretched as if to grab on to her.
"It was a lie right? Please, tell me it was a lie. Tell me you were wrong." Max shook her head over Rachel's shoulder. No amount of pleading on Victoria's part was going to make what Max told the boys and girls assembled around them or the thick cloud cover forming over the far edge of the city a lie. Max could feel the storm forming, could feel it in the air. Not so much as a single funnel had been spotted but it was coming and at the rate the sky was darkening she was sure it would be there soon.
"It was true," Max said and then she turned. Courtney and Taylor stood side by side with Brooke and Kate, staring at her as if she had the answers. Hayden and Zachary were watching the sky together, along with a roughed up Warren Graham and a stupefied looking Justin. "Get into your cars and run now. Fuck the speed limit. Run for Edgeton and do not look back. You can still make it, we can still make it if we run now." As if the words were a starting gun, Chloe bolted from her side toward the truck.
"If you don't have a ride, get into the bed of my truck right now." Max released Rachel and began to lead her toward Rachel's car. "I'm going to go with you or with Steph. I don't care which, I just wish I didn't have to leave you both alone." Steph, it seemed, had joined Chloe and others in making a mad dash for their rides. The artist turned her green eyes on Max and Rachel as they approached and threw open her door to climb into her own ride. If they made for Edgeton, they would be able to escape the storm. Max was certain. No one else would, though. Arcadia Bay would die in this timeline and as in the other it would be her fault. Max wasn't sure she could live with that.
Pompidou barked excitedly from the back seat as they passed Steph's vehicle.
Blackwell will be destroyed. The town will be destroyed. Anyone still here will be destroyed.
"You did everything you could," shouted Victoria over a sudden gust of wind. She watched Victoria settle into a car with Kate, Taylor and Hayden. Courtney was one of the students Max watched climb into the back of Chloe's truck. It broke Max's heart to think that Courtney and Chloe had not made up enough yet to escape together. They had to make it out, all of them. Max pushed Rachel toward her car. As soon as Rachel had her hands on the door two conflicting impulses struck. One was to run to the other side of Rachel's car and jump in. The other? To turn her back on Rachel and bolt for Blackwell Academy, to die with it.
She did what Max always did when the Storm came to Blackwell. She chose to live.
Max inhaled, deep and felt the throbbing pain in her head. The pre-apocalyptic vision assaulted her in quick, merciless flashes like thrusts of a knife into a chest, into her chest. Then she opened her eyes. Settled in the back seat of Steph's old red sedan, Max was instantly the target of all eyes but Steph's since hers were on the road. Beside her, Rachel began to call for her softly, to draw her eyes to Rachel, to make Max talk to her, explain what was going on, tell her if she was okay. It didn't work. Max stared straight out the windshield as the wipers knocked small snowflakes out of the way of Steph's vision. Her hands rose to stifle the cry in her throat, but they did a pisspoor job. Max leaned forward, straining against her seatbelt as the cry drew her every bit of breath. They were almost at Steph and Chloe's house.
"Max," Chloe started, softly from the front seat. "Max what's going on? I'm getting scared for you." This is so much bullshit, Max told herself as she looked up at Chloe. This is so fucked up! Why? Why do I have to make this decision? Why do I have to ask Chloe to make this decision. I can't do this. It's not fair. It's not right. Max realized that she was close to a panic attack all over again, and she turned to her left, looking away from Chloe's loving, concerned face to Rachel's. It didn't do much good, but at least Rachel was not someone she was about to force a world of hurt upon. She successfully stopped that same fucking wail from escaping her throat by clamping her mouth shut and heard Rachel's seat belt unbuckle. The blonde scooted close to her and grabbed at her shoulders.
"Not fair," Max hissed, finally. "Not fair, not fair!" She wanted to hit something, but there was nothing around her that deserved it and when Rachel completely blocked her vision and restricted the motion of her clenched fists with a hug, she began to feel a little stupid about that passing impulse. No, no, no! Fuck! Max drew a breath in and confessed the truth in as close to a normal voice as she could. "We're fucked! The Storm is coming." She did not see Steph look at her in the rear view mirror but could imagine it when the girl spoke. Max saw nothing but Rachel's shirt and the nape of her neck.
"Storm?"
"Max," Chloe asked her, voice low and unsteady. "The Storm?"
"The Storm," Max spat, more loudly than she intended. "The town is fucked. Completely fucked." Max did not get another word out for the duration of their trip. She did not even try, despite questions being asked of her in increasingly panicked voices, until such time as they were at a stop in Steph and Chloe's driveway. Max pushed herself free of Rachel, fumbled stupidly, uncoordinatedly at her own belt and then finally unlatched and spilled out of the car onto the driveway where she landed on her knees. That, for the moment, was where she stayed. Max tried to tell herself to calm down in the quiet warmth of the early evening, that panicking and freaking out was not going to do any good, but the refrain of 'not fair' was the only answer her brain had to the order to just behave itself. The snow had stopped, but that meant very little. The darkening evening was going to give way to another day one with even with more weirdness and after a couple more there would be no more weirdness for this town. No more anything. Max looked up at Steph's house. It, too, would be gone with everything inside.
"If this plays out like the other timeline," Max finally told them when the car died and the sounds of three doors opening and closing had been counted, "we have four days counting today. Then the Storm will turn day into night and then it will kill everything in Arcadia Bay." Over the next couple of minutes, Max was led into the house and into the kitchen where a beer was set on the table in front of her and probably everyone else, but at first she saw and heard very little of that. She was not even aware of Pompidou's head her lap except as more than a cursory burst of sensory information. Max's mind was somewhere else entirely. Somewhen else. What Max experienced was someone else's life in shattered, broken reflection.
Go fuck yourseflie. The Daguerrian Process. Stuck in Retrozone. Throwing Pompidou a bone. Warren, drunken and upset that another Max was not affectionate with him, not staying at the party. A photograph to another world. Another Nathan's screamed threats as he scurried away from a beating. Alyssa killed, Evan killed, Chloe killed again and again. The dumpsite of Rachel's body... all, over and over again. There, at the tail end of it all, the image of a doe poised at the edge of American Rust Junkyard.
It was that image which Max could not shake until Rachel's voice slowly brought her back to her senses. Rachel and the others were not talking at her or even two her, they were simply talking to one another, passing back and forth the limited knowledge that each had managed to scrape together about the day's events. Max tuned in to find her right hand wrapped around an untouched beer as Rachel told Chloe that rumor had it Nathan was still in jail at least as of when Hayden arrived at the hospital around 4:30. For a moment, Max froze on the spot when she realized that each of the girls' eyes had trailed over to her, asking questions she did not want to give answers to and then, slowly, Max exhaled and felt like, however regretfully, she was back together, in mostly one piece.
"Before I rewound," Max started as she lifted the bottle and paused with it just short of her mouth. "You begged me to put an end to this but you also said that you killed him." Max's eyes slid toward Chloe. "You got Nathan's gun from him and you had to shoot him. He died. I didn't think. I didn't think at all. I just rewound because why the fuck should you have to deal with killing someone, with the Prescotts breathing down your neck plotting vengeance or whatever else might be coming?" She lifted the bottle to her lips and took in the wide range of emotions, many of them some form of grief, that played across Chloe's defeated face. Max tipped the bottle back and took one long draw of the shitty, domestic brew.
"It's just like the other timeline, then?" Chloe asked her.
"What do you guys mean?" Steph queried, not giving Max a chance to answer Chloe. Instead of speaking, Max took another draw and then rolled her eyes around to look at Rachel. She wanted to share the memory of that doe with her for some reason, but by the time she had once more lowered the bottle from her lips it seemed unreasonable to not answer one of the other two girls. Rachel reached out, squeezed Max's left hand encouragingly and gestured for her to speak. That was all they had ever asked of her: honesty. It had taken her so long to reach this point where she felt she could give it. Going back now, of all times, was not an option.
"In the other timeline, Nathan shot and killed the other Chloe. That timeline's Max rewound and everything was set in motion. The Storm took the town. If it's happening here and now again, which that snow sure looked and felt the same, then that means it was because I saved Nathan."
"Meaning what?" Chloe asked, only the question felt half hearted, like when one asked, 'who's there?' in response to a shitty knock knock joke. Only, in this case, instead of an orange which you were so glad wasn't a banana, it was apocalyptic prediction that everyone you knew and loved would be killed by a fucking tornado.
"Meaning Nathan dies or the town does." Max exhaled. "In the back seat, I had a vision, just like that other Max did. Hers was of standing out at the lighthouse watching the town fall to shit. Mine was us running from the school with most of the students. Victoria said I tried to warn everyone but most didn't listen." Max laughed. "Why would they? Mad little girl runs around screaming about the sky falling. They'll write fairy tales about that shit." Max reached back out for the beer but Chloe's hand caught hers. The bluenette tried to squeeze comfortingly as Rachel had but both of them just felt like grief, lamentation. "Nathan dies or the town does," Max finally repeated.
Every bit of devastation on Chloe's face made sense except that it seemed awfully light. She didn't know whether to be proud or concerned about Chloe, about the fact that she was not reduced to a state much like Max's own but decided that Chloe had been all emotioned out for the day, considering she had spent several minutes in a boiler room kidnapped by a psychopath. Max leaned across the table and threw one arm around Chloe's shoulders, hugging her tightly once. She chose to be fiercely proud of the girl instead of concerned. There was plenty to be concerned about: a strong will was not one of those things.
"The choice is yours," Rachel told Chloe. Max wasn't sure what to make of what was going through either of their heads, exactly, so she looked past them to Steph. This girl looked lost, and she gestured to show as much when Max looked to her for answers. To Steph, Max realized, she had just told the girl that this house, her home, was going to be wiped away. In fact, everyone here had people in Arcadia Bay outside of Blackwell who were in danger. Max only had Blackwell, though she wouldn't want to see Joyce hurt or killed no matter how broken her childhood perceptions of the woman had become. God, damn it, Chloe. Chloe's eyes blinked away tears as Max released her and then quickly downed the majority of the beer in front of her. As Max waited, she considered the idea that she had never really gotten close to Alyssa, Warren or Evan and yet in that other timeline, their deaths had meant something strong to that Max. Hell, she honestly barely knew any of them beyond the images they put up of themselves. For instance, was Warren really so shady? Was Evan really such a douchebag?
"The choice," Chloe said, looking from Rachel to Steph desperately, "is that either Nathan does, or the entire town dies. Nathan, who attacked me, dies at my hands and maybe I go to jail for the rest of my life or whatever the Prescotts can pull off or everyone in Arcadia Bay dies. How is that even a choice? How is it hard to make?" Chloe looked down and Max released the bottle in her right hand, setting it back down hard.
"It's hard because it's asking you to maybe sacrifice yourself or definitely sacrifice everyone you know." Then, Max swallowed because an idea had begun to form. "It doesn't – it doesn't have to be all doom, though." Fighting to pull herself together, Max breathed out. "This time I barely got to you in time but I know what to do to get David going when I want him to, now. I know what it would take to get to you right at the right moment. I could go back. I could make sure that witnesses, multiple witnesses, see Jefferson with his needles out and you tied to that chair when you pull the trigger. Nathan will get shot. He'll die."
The words felt heavy in her mouth. She was condemning a boy to death who she had spent so much time trying to convince to go get immediate mental health treatment. Reasonably, she knew that he did not deserve death. His life had value. The question was whether it held more value than the entirety of Arcadia Bay to Chloe. How did the other Max make that kind of choice? Max could not say. She did not remember. She also could not recall seeing Nathan in her vision at the school. There was no guarantee that he was going to live through the storm, himself. Max did not tell Chloe that. Somehow, that felt like breaking this choice down to numbers. Shouldn't it be broken down to numbers? Who are you to keep this from her? This is her choice. It's not right, but it's happening.
"Nathan wasn't in my vision," Max told them all as Chloe looked contemplatively over each of her bandaged wrists. They had to hurt. "He might have been in jail or at home. If it's either of those... I don't think he would have survived the storm." Chloe sighed with frustration. Now she was glaring at her wrists. It's because it offers her incentive to pick what she's making sound selfish. I don't think there's an unselfish choice here. "I don't think there's actually a Lawful Good option here, Chloe. Or even a Neutral Good one."
As if putting it in these simple terms had gotten through to her, Chloe dropped her right wrist into her lap and with her left hand grabbed at her own beer. Max sat looking into Rachel's eyes, looking at the exhaustion, the humanity, the care in them as Chloe turned the bottle upside down and it went from F to E. Rachel mouthed something to her, and Max was confused to interpret it as thank you. Max tried to ask her what for, but Rachel waved it off and only replied with a silent, warm smile. She didn't know what to make of that or Steph beaming at her from across the table.
"Then my options are to look at it like a True Neutral or a Chaotic Good. The way I reason it, the Chaotic Good sends you back and tells you to let her kill Nathan, not because she wants him dead, because chances are he will die anyway. True Neutral, to me, says fuck morality and go utilitarian. Either way it's the same choice but -" Chloe exhaled shakily, the ghost of a sob in her voice. She seemed to banish that ghost away. "I don't want to kill anyone. Not even Nathan. He needs to be allowed to get help."
"You wouldn't be the kind of person we all care about if you did," Steph told Chloe. "You wouldn't be Chloe." For several seconds the two artists shared a look. It spoke of admiration, of a different kind of love. It spoke of family. Then Steph, sighing, folded her arms up and got to her feet. "You guys do what you have to do. I'm packing a back for us both, in case." Max nodded and watched Chloe's face as Steph disengaged from the table. Chloe sighed, herself.
"Do it," Chloe said. "Rewind. Find me in time. Make sure I don't fry for this."
"Okay," Max said, but there came no immediate attempt to lift her hand and do was she was told. For the next minute or so, Max went over the plan with the other two in as much detail as a minute could provide them but when they had both echoed it back to her and it sounded technically fine, if unpleasant, Max still did not lift her hands. She stared down at the dog on the floor between her and Chloe. Pompidou, you don't know how hot you've got it, buddy. She felt first Rachel take her left hand and then Chloe take her right. The action was warm, it was warmth. Max smiled for the first time since they left the hospital.
"Will you guys keep hold for me? Until I'm gone?" Max didn't particularly wait for either girl to answer. She closed her eyes, lowered her head and rose to a standing position. She could feel the other two doing the same, by virtue of the level of their arms. "I love you, you know? You're both fucking amazing. I'm going to do everything I can to be worth you for the rest of my life." No one spoke. That was good. Max reached out, not so much with her hand this time as with something invisible, something hard to name. That something, like a third hand, seized onto nothing and pulled her forward, forward into a dull, grey fog. Amazingly, she still felt her girls' hands on some level as Max opened her eyes to the void. Strange, afterimages of them, real but frozen in place, awaited her. Max felt a smile at those images and then she moved.
She pulled resolutely along a long string of emotions, grief, rage, terror, wonder, relief, anger, so much anger and finally, concern and confusion dancing entwined in the form of a jagged gash in the fabric of reality.
Max pushed through that one particular tear and emerged on the Blackwell Academy grounds at roughly 3:17 PM. The feeling of being loved whole and completely, stuck with her no matter how hard it had to fight with apprehension and regret about what she was about to have to do. She only hoped Chloe could forgive her once she told the whole story. The smell of dirt and grass met her nostrils and Max opened her eyes. Warm sun, untainted by unnatural snow, warmed her skin and Max turned to Rachel. Max remembered the girl standing nervously a step or two away from her, but this was not the Rachel Amber she saw when she looked. Rachel was dressed as she should be and looked as she should, but the girl standing a few feet from her was looking about in wide-eyed panic, mouth gaping. Max would go far as to say she was freaking out. She did not remember Rachel being this distressed. Okay, I think I have a minute before I have to run for David.
"Max? Max- Max!" She lifted her head, frustrated to Rachel. The girl's wide eyes spoke of panic, but Max didn't have time. She had to count, she had to focus, for Chloe's sake. "Fuck's sake Max," Rachel called when she turned away again toward the school and began to count. Rachel's nails almost dug into the skin around her chin and cheeks as the blonde grabbed her chin and turned her head back around, a tiny bit harshly. "Did I just fucking time travel?" For several seconds Max blinked at Rachel, frustrated and then her words and the change in her demeanor from Max's memories struck Max like a train.
"Oh," Max started, "Oh- OH." Oh shit. If this happened to Rachel, what happened to Chloe? Max nodded that she sure as fuck thought Rachel had. The memory of seeing the two girls, holding onto her hands inside of the timescape stuck out.
"The Storm is coming if we stop Chloe from shooting him," Rachel said. "I'm not losing my mind?"
"You're not," Max said. "Now, run." Even after saying this, in her mind she ticked down what she thought was another thirty seconds and then without warning, bolted for the doors. "Breathe," she instructed either herself or Rachel. Possibly even both. This time, Rachel did not scream for information, because she knew it all already. She had already lived through these moments. I pulled someone back in time with me. Maybe two someones. Max had to hope that if Chloe had traveled back, she stuck to the plan, because Max intended to do so. She hoped the girl could pull it together enough to get Nathan's gun again. It doesn't take Max as long this time to reach David and Wells. Steph still yelled at her from the end of the hall and Max called for her to come with her.
"David," Max told the man lacing her voice with urgency as his mustache twitched with irritation. The man had been mid sentence to Principal Wells when Max burst in a little more calmly before. "Chloe's in trouble, Nathan took her down to the boiler room and he has a gun. It's time to move." She could see the irritation fade to confusion and distrust immediately. Max did not look at Wells this time. He was a non-actor. He was a pair of eyes to see the results of this botched kidnapping. He had no more value to her or the school than that. At least David, Prescott puppet he was, might have enough human left in him to commit one act of decency as he had the last time. Maybe this time, that would be to stop Jefferson's escape. Max approached David, drew very, very, uncomfortably close to the man and then leaned forward as if to hug him. Instead, she whispered in his ear.
"David, if you don't move, I will do the same thing to all of your secrets that I did to Nathan and Jefferson's. Do you want that?" Her combination threat and confession jarred the security head from his complacency. "I promise everyone will know everything I know about you if Chloe is hurt." She felt preternaturally calm as she turned away from him, brought her voice back up to full volume and again, running as fast as she thought she could, blew by Steph first and then Victoria and Dana. She did not speak to them except to yell to follow her. She yelled that as loudly as she could. "Follow me!"
The hallway was almost a blur, Max had kept count the entire time in her head but still felt like she had only just entered the school building when she pushed out of it. Her inner clock suggested Chloe was going to shoot the first shot in less than forty seconds, so Max only paused a second to turn and see who was following her. David and Rachel were at the forefront, side by side. She caught a flash of bright blonde hair, bright enough to be Victoria's and then she saw Dana and Wells at the back. Strangely enough, his face still somewhat a mess, Warren Graham seemed to have heard her from, what she suspected had been the doorway of the science lab because he and Brooke Scott had brought up the rear. Witnesses.
Max continued her race for the door at the back of the school which led in turn the door to a long abandoned boiler room. Only she slowed slightly along the path, listening to her inner clock continue its inevitable countdown. By the time she placed her hand on the door and turned to make sure that she was still being followed, the first pop of a gunshot rang out from behind the door. That, more than the run, finally got her adrenaline pumping. David's eyes bulged from their sockets in surprise but not even he could pick up the pace as much as Rachel did in that second. At the end of the pack, Brooke was pulling Warren along behind her as they rounded the corner. Max threw the door open just in time to expose the scene below to David and Rachel.
In the room, Jefferson had paused only a step or two away from Chloe in front of a dropped hypodermic needle case, clutching at his lower chest. He hesitated as he looked at the doorway and then made to run up the stairs toward the three of them. Nathan did not hesitate as he lunged forward for the gun in Chloe's hand. Chloe, who was screaming like a bat out of hell, only this time in a sort of rage and not the broken terror Max had heard during her first cycle, pulled the trigger. Two rounds pierced Nathan's chest this time and the boy dropped mid lunge at Chloe's feet. Max thought she had readied herself for the sight, not to mention the coming impact with Jefferson, hell she had even convinced herself a moment or two prior that it was going to be okay to push him down those stairs.
She still landed on her ass when Mark Jefferson lowered his shoulder and plowed into her, using her body to push David and Rachel aside. Max spun around and tried to grab at his foot but it was out of range before she came to her senses. Beside herself with the force of his assault, she watched Jefferson disappear toward the edge of campus. David paused, bug-eyed for a moment and then hurled himself down the stairs. It took Max a second to get to her feet even with Rachel, Steph and Victoria all three pulling her up. She never intended to stand in the way of a charging fully grown man again. Paranoid, she ran her hand over her chest to see if it hurt more intensely, if something had been broken or caved in. She felt nothing like that and followed David down without answering any of the girls behind her. She heard each of them as they descended the stairs, clear and loud over Wells' impotent whining.
David tried to apply pressure to Nathan's wound over the next couple of minutes. He tried CPR. He tried everything he must've known to do, but nothing came from it. Max and Rachel took the ropes off of the wide-eyed Chloe Price's ankles, taking turns shushing any questions it seemed as if she was trying to form from behind her pale, confused, nay, dumbfounded face. Slowly but surely, Max's higher order thoughts came back, even as Chloe's did. Disoriented, the girl clutched at either of them with bloodsoaked hands and whispered the question she had been trying to get out into Max's ear.
"Did I just go back in time?" Chloe's hands pressed into the old flannel overshirt Max had come to love so much. She knew it was probably time to retire that, too. Her favorite clothes seemed to keep dying in horrific events. Then again, it's always to save Rachel or Chloe. I'd burn my entire wardrobe and the clothes on my back to do that, time and time again. The worry was so silly and childish that Max couldn't help it, she laughed.
"Yeah," Max told the girl as Rachel wrapped her arms around both of them, tightly. "Yeah you did."
"It's really not all it's cracked up to be," Chloe told her, before going quiet again. Quiet and numb, if the way she held her arms at her side and did not continue to hold tight to Max or Rachel was any indication.
Max and Rachel were treated to another round of being interviewed by the police, another round of sitting in the ER unable to see Chloe while Joyce tried her tricks. Outside of the windows of the waiting room, she watched the light darken and go golden again. They were the least surprised and, this time, the loudest when Chloe emerged from the back with her papers in her hand, declaring that she was free of signs of concussion but had been diagnosed as showing warning signs of PTSD. They did not cheer, precisely, but they rose with Steph and called Chloe over to them. Chloe did come, but only after stopping by where her mother sat with her prescriptions in hand and retrieving them without a word. Max told the crowd arranged before them that she would be sending texts out as soon as Chloe was safe and sound and led her girlfriends and Steph from the room without answering any questions or letting them do the same.
All three of them had been through this drama before and Max rather thought as they emerged into a warm spring evening free, completely devoid of unseasonal snow, that they deserved something new. Something absolutely horrible had happened that day and something else horrible had been forestalled. That was worth celebration as far as Max was concerned. They all, each one of them, deserved to come down from the mountain.
End Part Four
Spanish Sahara