Promises

Maxine Caulfield strode through the rain until she reached an area where the quanta hadn't yet fused. She time-stepped to Blackwell and looked over her shoulder at the oncoming storm. She glanced down at her watch, did some mental math, and nodded: she knew exactly how long it would take for the storm to make its way across town and up to the school. She'd experienced most of the storm's rampage once, in a timeline where she'd been able to keep Rachel from dissipating but where the Barrier had nonetheless failed.

She had enough time for her final tasks.

At the entrance to the bunker in the woods, she found that the alarms she'd so carefully crafted had dissolved. She expected that most of her constructs had fallen apart: there were still many zones of fractured time and space that she could sense but most of the fabric of reality in Arcadia Bay had flattened and merged together; this universe, her universe, was becoming something close to normal again.

She felt a pang at that, a pang of loss and regret.

And fear.

Yes, even after all of this time, she feared death. She had some inkling, given Rachel's experience and her own views into other universes, that life after death was a reality. But to what extent life continued after death, she couldn't know. She shook her head, gritted her teeth, and stepped into the bunker.

When she turned on the lights, they flickered, died, and then came back as the bunker's generator rumbled to life.

With a sigh, she walked over to Sean Prescott and Mark Jefferson; the quanta hadn't yet fused here and the two men still hovered in the air, frozen in time. With a flick of her hand, she released them both and they crashed to the floor. Prescott screamed in agony, as usual. And Jefferson laughed, as usual.

Then they looked at each other, surprise dulling their pain. Then they looked at Maxine, taking in her rain-soaked hair and clothes.

"Something's happened," Jefferson said, a twinkle in his eyes.

"My guess is that you've fucked up," Prescott said with a painful wince.

"I did fuck up," Maxine said, "because I became like you. It's taken more than seven hundred years but they finally woke me up and forced the issue."

Prescott asked, "how long?"

"More than seven hundred years," Maxine repeated.

"No, silly girl, not for you," he said, "how long since we last spoke?"

"Only a few weeks," Maxine said.

"It was the other you, wasn't it?" Jefferson asked, "she was here, you know, the last time you woke me."

"Ah, full of surprises, that one," Maxine said, raising her hand towards Prescott.

"What are you doing?" Prescott snapped, trying to push away.

"Fulfilling a promise," Maxine said, her eyes straining with pain.

Prescott gasped and then relaxed, his head dropping to the floor.

"There," Maxine said, "fully healed. And you, Mark."

"Are you sure, Max?" he asked, "taking away my pain would end this poetic justice. Are you sure you want to end it before you can capture it?"

"I don't give a fuck about that and I never did," she said, "you can take a selfie if you really want it. And it doesn't matter anyways. This place is dying. The Barrier is down and the storm is here."

"What?!" Prescott hissed as Maxine twitched her hand in Jefferson's direction.

"Yes," Maxine said, her voice tight, "I was convinced to finally give it up. A sweet surrender, this. And it happened before I could become even more like either one of you. If you want poetic justice, Mark, this is it. For me, at least. The last people I'll ever see are the two of you as my precious world falls around us. Not what I wanted but I did make a promise."

"You call this fulfilling your promise?!" Prescott said, pushing himself up off the floor, "releasing us into a destroyed world? One that, if you haven't been lying this whole time, will simply collapse in on itself?"

"My promise was to heal you and free you," Maxine said with a shrug, "perhaps it's my last act of sadism, too."

"Fuck you, Maxine Caulfield," Prescott said, shambling over to lean on a wall.

"Fuck you, too, Sean Prescott," Maxine said.

She stopped moving her hand: Jefferson's wounds were healed and the pipe that had been shoved through his arm sat on the floor, completely clear of blood.

"And you, Mark, you…," she began.

Jefferson suddenly leapt up from the floor and slammed into Maxine, pushing her back up against the wall with his arm to her throat. She gasped briefly but then smiled.

"Oh, Mark," she said, "you can kill me if it will make you feel better. But we're all doomed anyways."

"Don't blame me if I don't take your word for it, Max," Jefferson said, his voice hard, "I'll be leaving now. Don't try to follow. You'll tell me where my car is and…"

Maxine held out a jingling set of keys and Jefferson snatched them away. He lowered his arm from Maxine's neck.

"Your car is parked in the Blackwell lot," Maxine said, "but I wouldn't go out there if I was you."

"You're not me, Max," he said, shaking his head, "with time and practice and more expansive vision, perhaps you could've become great. But no, you never allowed me to truly teach you. A very sad thing, Max. And I won't allow your apocalyptic fantasies to sway me. Goodbye, Max, perhaps we will meet again."

He hurried out of the room.

"No, I don't think we will," Maxine said under her breath.

"What a fucking idiot," Prescott mumbled.

"You don't want to take your chances somewhere else?" Maxine asked.

"Fuck you," he said, "I know my bunkers. I'm staying here. If it turns out that you're lying, I'll be safer here. And if you're not, this place will last far longer than anywhere else."

"Well, have fun," Maxine said, turning away.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"To my one place of peace," she said.

At a wall, Maxine pressed a hidden latch and a section of the wall pivoted away.

"What…?" Prescott began.

Maxine slipped into the passage beyond and closed the door before Prescott could reach it. She locked it behind her and moved off into the dark, humming to herself as Prescott's hammering fists and shouts faded into the distance.

. . . . .

Mark Jefferson picked his way through the bunker's outer room, clutching his car keys tight. When he reached the outer door, he peered out cautiously.

Torrents of rain crashed down through the trees above and a sheet of water flowed down the ramp outside, bubbling up towards the edge of the door.

Jefferson leaned out and looked up at the dark skies. He knew the tornado had to be approaching, that much he believed. And that meant he needed to move quickly.

He slipped the keys into his jacket pocket, pulled the jacket taut, swept a hand through his hair, and stepped outside. Thick raindrops pummeled at his head and streaked his glasses but he walked calmly up the ramp, his expensive shoes cutting through the water.

He'd never believed Maxine's tall tales about alternate universes and a supposed apocalypse. Her powers were real; that much, he'd experienced firsthand. And the storm was real; he'd found predictions about it in one of Prescott's supposedly-hidden journals and saw glimpses of it himself. But Mark Jefferson was a firmly practical man: he'd absorbed the reality of mystical powers and made them mundane in his mind. But not Max's ravings: he was certain that she was lying when she said that years had passed in some kind of pocket universe.

And now she'd released him. She'd given up on whatever revenge fantasy she'd been playing at and now he was free.

In the time it took him to ascend into the forest, he planned out his next twenty steps, from how he'd retrieve his car without drawing attention to identifying the safest route out of town to recalling the details of his safehouse in Corvallis. Once sequestered away, he would monitor every piece of news to determine what survivors and information made it out of Arcadia Bay. And his contingencies after that were numerous. No matter what, his work would resume. He'd come so close to capturing exactly what he'd been searching for; he'd been so sure that Maxine Caulfield would be the one, a crown jewel among his projects. But not anymore: she had no more innocence. He paused among the whipping branches and frowned: what had made her lose so much of it? She was right: she had become more like her captives…

He shook his head and continued through the rain: he couldn't allow any of his former student's wild claims get into his head. That would distract him. And at this moment, a moment of triumphal escape, he could afford no distractions.

The woods thinned out and Jefferson stepped out next to the Tobanga. Over the top of the Blackwell dorm building, he could see the swirling top of the tornado, lit by flashes of lightning.

He smiled.

All of the fools in this redneck town had probably locked themselves inside to ride out the storm; he'd be surprised if anyone, even Prescott in his bunker, survived it. But more important to him at the moment, that meant that no one would see him out here; no one would notice his escape. And so he moved out into the open, strolling along the path towards the Blackwell parking lot.

When he reached the lawn in front of the main building, Jefferson came to a stop and started laughing: the boards on the lawn, rocking in the wind, had been lazily papered over with new posters and art…but those had been torn away by the storm, revealing Jefferson's own photo prints beneath.

Jefferson took it as a sign, a sign that when this place was wiped off the map, he would remain.

He started across the lawn when something caught his eye: he looked to the side and came to a stop. A statue rose up near the front of the lawn, a statue of Maxine Caulfield, her arm extended towards the approaching tornado. Jefferson then looked down at the town: he saw a huge, unfinished concrete dome off to the left and the ruins of an enormous steel lattice tower near the waterfront. And he spotted an even larger statue at the center of town, pieces of it falling off as the edge of the tornado tore at it. Even though he couldn't see the front of it, he surmised that it depicted Rachel Amber.

Doubt tickled uncomfortably at his mind: none of those things would take only a few days or weeks to build.

He shook his head: no, he wouldn't let doubt sway him. He clenched his fists and began to turn away when a flash of light glinted in the distance. He paused, watching as a piece of metal, needle-like in the distance, tore away from the statue of Rachel. It twirled up into the storm and vanished.

Something about the sight gave Jefferson a deep disquiet in his chest.

But before he could do more than acknowledge the discomfort, the sharp spike of steel came around the other side of the tornado and hurled out over the town, right at him. Jefferson shouted and spun around to run…but the spike flew right into the center of his back, piercing all the way through his body and slamming him into one of the boards, pinning him to a print of one of his own photos.

As his vision faded away, Jefferson laughed at how wrong he'd been.

. . . . .

As Mark Jefferson died out on the lawn, Sean Prescott sat on the dusty floor of the bunker, watching the lights on the ceiling flicker.

He, too, had never been fully convinced of Maxine's claims about the apocalypse of their world. But unlike that idiot Mark, he had no intention of stepping out into a lethal storm. When he began to notice water seeping into the room, he pushed himself up and, with his newly-healed ankles still raw, limped out to the front room and shut the heavy door.

He dragged an old office chair out of a pile of boxes and sat, thinking. When the storm passed, he imagined that he would emerge from the bunker as perhaps the only survivor of the disaster. And even if a few others survived, it would be his word against theirs over what happened here.

And so, like Jefferson, he began forming a plan.

But he thought slowly and didn't get very far.

The ground began to rumble, derailing Prescott's thoughts. He looked around, brow furrowed. Then cracks began to appear in the concrete walls.

Prescott leapt to his feet.

"No, what is this?" he called out to no one.

The cracks widened and spread as the ground trembled.

"What is this?" he cried out again.

A hissing sound came from the inner room and Prescott peered through the open doors: the back wall, right behind where he'd been held prisoner, began to dissolve. A hazy mass of gray and black consumed the wall and began to slowly roll through the room.

Prescott screamed, running for the door.

Before he could get there, the lights gave out. The hissing sound grew to a roar as Prescott fumbled around in the dark, his hands groping for the door. Then the edge of the universe swept over Sean Prescott, turning every particle in his body into nothing at all.

. . . . .

Maxine strode swiftly into a small room at the end of her secret tunnel. She opened a door at the far end, leading right into her photo tunnels, where the strings of warm lantern globes were still alight. Maxine smiled, even as the ground rumbled beneath her feet. She took off her shoes and her socks and then the rest of her wet clothes. She used a towel from a shelf in the room behind her to dry off before grabbing a thin robe from a hook and wrapping it around herself.

Then she began walking.

The walls and floor shook as she descended, her feet silent on the warm concrete. When she reached her destination, she sat down: the number above the photos read '4562' and most of the photos showed a version of herself with both Chloe and Rachel. It was, in many ways, a perfect universe: one where Max never left Arcadia Bay, where Mark Jefferson had been caught before he'd ever set foot in Blackwell, and where Max and Chloe had both become close friends with Rachel Amber. It seemed like an impossible universe, too, one where the three of them formed a perfectly-balanced relationship. Maxine never told anyone how many times she looked into that universe, watching the smiles of those three girls.

It made her happy, knowing that that universe existed. And it made her sad, since her connection to her own Chloe had frayed and her connection to Rachel had only ever been something supernatural. Perhaps because of that mix of feelings, she'd always known that, if given the choice, this would be where she'd meet her end, with reminders of just how many of the universes around her did have happy endings.

The floor trembled. Cracks began cutting through the walls and dust and chips of concrete fell from above. The lights flickered but didn't yet go out; the generator sat far from the edge of the now-dissolved Barrier; these tunnels wouldn't be the last thing to be destroyed but they'd be close.

Then the hairs on the back of Maxine's neck prickled; someone was here.

She held her breath; had Jefferson found a way down here? Was he about to kill her?

Someone sat down next to her. Maxine closed her eyes and then turned to look: it was Rachel.

Maxine's eyes went wide and her mouth fell open. It wasn't Rachel as a doe or a cloud of red vapor or a translucent ghost; she looked completely solid and real.

"Hi, Maxine," Rachel said, with a smile that gave Maxine goosebumps.

"Rachel? How are you here?" Maxine asked.

"I'm not entirely sure," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear, where a blue feather earring swung, "maybe it's like you said: you and I and this place are all tied together. As it dies, perhaps this Arcadia Bay decided to let its heart live again, if only for a minute or two."

Maxine paused for a long moment, her eyes tracing over Rachel's face, before she asked, "so what happens now?"

"I'm taking you away."

"Taking me where? I'm…I don't think I deserve to go anywhere else, Rachel. I made this place, I held people here against their will, and I did terrible things," Maxine said.

"I know," Rachel said, "which is why I'm going to take you somewhere where you can heal. Where both of us can heal."

Maxine furrowed her brow and asked, "are you sure you want me with you? After I kept you locked in a statue for hundreds of years? That's…definitely one of the terrible things I've done."

"Oh, Maxine, time didn't work the same here, remember?" she said, "for me, it may have been centuries but it was also only seconds." She laughed. "But either way, I forgive you. Can you forgive me? For leading all of us down this path? I mean, this whole thing was kind of my idea."

Maxine raised her eyebrows and said, "I…I'm sorry, I guess I forgot that. And yes, Rachel, I forgive you. I suppose that you and I never realized what this place would really do when we made it."

"How could we?" she said with a shrug

They paused as another rumble shook the tunnels.

"Did you send Max?" Maxine asked.

"I did," Rachel said, "it's a bitch to try to communicate with people when you're dead, you know. It took a long time to get all of the pieces right. And I'd say that it worked spectacularly. I am sorry, though. I know that wasn't easy."

"It wasn't," Maxine said, "but it was necessary."

"It was," Rachel said, "and now that's it's over, we get to move on."

"Move on?" So we won't be alive, where we're going?"

Rachel shrugged again and said, "I don't know. Maybe we'll both dissolve into some universal consciousness. Maybe we'll become trees or some shit. No idea. But I do know that wherever we go, it will be better than staying one more moment in this fucking place."

The ground shook again and more cracks raced up the walls; photos began to fall out of their neat rows, drifting to the floor like autumn leaves.

Maxine bit her lip and then stood up.

"Okay," she said, "let's go."

Rachel stood and held out her hand.

"Good timing," she said, "the edge of the universe is only a few feet away."

Maxine took Rachel's hand and with a flash of light, they both vanished. Seconds later, the globe lights flickered and died, plunging the entire tunnel into darkness right as it collapsed and vanished into a fuzzy blackness.

. . . . . .

In the lifeless Arcadia Bay, the tornado swept up to Blackwell, the wind whipping at the buildings and tearing the bricks away. And around the town, a hazy sphere of shrank in, devouring the lumber mill, the lighthouse, the lonely barn, and Maxine's subterranean galleries. It ate away at Blackwell and closed in like a fist around the remnants of the tornado, choking it off and sapping its power away. Debris from the dying tornado crashed down and dissolved into the haze.

The sphere of the world closed in on what remained of Rachel's statue.

For an inexplicable moment that no one ever saw with mortal eyes, the statue seemed to maintain its space, holding back the end. Two warm lights, spinning close together, flickered up from the statue's feet and then disappeared through the statue's heart, leaving the world behind. Then the sphere collapsed in on itself and the universe ceased to exist.

Universe 1176

Kate Marsh sat on a park bench under the sun, sketching in her notebook. In front of her, the wooden skeletons of new houses rose up next to a freshly paved road. And behind her, at the center of the reborn Arcadia Bay, the Rachel Amber Memorial Library buzzed with activity as people scurried in and out.

Everyone had agreed, many reluctantly, that Maxine had done an amazing job with her pick of a universe: many of those who had died in their old universe had survived in this one, most of them holed up in the wreckage of a boat near the old lumber mill. And not only did the cross-universal refugees have the resources they brought from their old world, they'd found Sean Prescott's stashes of valuables in this new universe as well, infusing the town's treasury with even greater wealth.

Within a couple of months, new construction sprung up everywhere: the businesses near the waterfront were rebuilt and now, after nearly a year, most families had traded their temporary trailers for new homes. On the hill above, the new Blackwell Academy was nearly ready to accept students and Kate would soon resume her delayed final year. And she hadn't been the only one to stick around: almost none of the Blackwell students had left, remaining in Arcadia Bay to help with reconstruction until Blackwell reopened. Victoria, though, had moved back to Seattle within days of the escape from Maxine's pocket universe. Kate kept in touch with Victoria and visited whenever she had the chance, surprised but delighted that Victoria wanted to stay in touch.

So far, the only time Victoria returned to Arcadia Bay had been for the opening of the library. That building had been one of the first things planned after the refugees started settling into the tents and trailers brought by disaster relief teams. In those early days, there had been some talk of naming the library after Maxine but before an argument could break out over what were still raw and conflicted emotions on the subject, this universe's Max pointed out how odd it would be to memorialize someone who was technically still alive and, of course, not the same person in this universe. And this universe's Chloe put it more bluntly by saying, "guys, that would just be super fuckin' weird on, just, every level." And Victoria, who hadn't left for Seattle yet, just said, "no," with a firmness that brokered no further discussion. So the town decided to name the library after Rachel Amber, still deceased in this universe and having an even greater role in the lives of the town's new population. And once built, the library quickly became one of the most unusual places in the world…

First, books donated from all over the world filled most of its shelves, multiplying the meager selection from the old (and alternate) library and making it a curiosity among the world's most dedicated bibliophiles. But what made the new library truly unique were the set of collections, held in special rooms only accessible by appointment, that came from another universe: trinkets, art pieces, artifacts, photos, and more that the townspeople had brought with them and donated. And, of course, one of those rooms contained Maxine's journals and photo albums.

Kate had spent many hours with this universe's Max and Chloe going through those books and photos. And both Max and Chloe were equal parts fascinated and disturbed by what those archives contained. The two of them had originally planned on leaving town but the journals and photos had been enough to keep both of them in Arcadia Bay. Kate found herself deeply grateful to have them around, and not just because Max's power came in handy from time to time: Max and Chloe had become her best friends, providing the anchors in this new world that Kate desperately needed.

And Kate would need them again soon.

Arcadia Bay was about to hit another tipping point in its history. That very afternoon, a small delegation of researchers, reporters, and government officials would be arriving in town. Word had started to leak about the true origins of Arcadia Bay's survivors. It wasn't surprising: no one had told anyone to keep it a secret because everyone assumed that no one would believe it. But after a year, enough little oddities had accumulated to generate conversations in serious circles. And now, the town would essentially be going public with its supernatural history.

Most people saw the change as a positive, giving residents a chance to speak about their experiences. Not only that, but the expectation was that the story would draw scholars and tourists to Arcadia Bay, enough to inject much-needed life and commerce into the town…but not enough, given Arcadia Bay's rather inconvenient location, to overwhelm it. And those that didn't like the idea of nosy tourists were building their houses out of the way.

Kate knew that the coming hours would be difficult: despite her age, Kate's role in the old world had left her as a leader in Arcadia Bay's community and so she, along with the town's other leaders, would soon be grilled with intense questions. And while she was certainly nervous about that, she was perhaps more nervous about her parents, who would be arriving for dinner and only found out about Arcadia Bay's real history yesterday.

So Kate sketched in an attempt to relax.

A shadow fell over the path; Kate looked up and shielded her eyes: Max stood in front of her with a smile. Even after all this time, Kate felt a moment of doubt over which version of Max she was seeing. But the moment passed quickly.

"Hey, Kate," Max said.

"Hi, Max, would you like to join me?" Kate asked, patting the bench next to her.

"Sure," Max said, sitting down with a sigh.

"How are you?" Kate asked.

"I'm good," she said, "I mean, I'm not the one who has to deal with the investigators today."

Kate laughed and said, "it'll be fine. We'll all just tell the truth as we know it, give them access to the archives, and answer the questions as best we can. Maybe they'll believe us, maybe they won't. Maybe something in the archives will be convincing." She shrugged.

"And if something goes sideways, you'll have me in the background to rewind," Max said.

"Exactly," Kate said with a smile.

Max shuffled in her seat.

"Are you okay?" Kate asked.

"I'm just…nervous that they'll find out about me," Max said, "or about you or Warren or Victoria."

"They won't," Kate said, "that's one thing we've all agreed on. We'll tell them about our universe's Max…um, Maxine, that is, but we're all perfectly comfortable with little white lies when it comes to the powers."

"And, I know I've asked this before but there's nothing anyone could get ahold of that could cause something like what happened in your universe?" Max asked.

Kate shook her head.

"We got it all," she said.

Max nodded.

A few days after the refugees had arrived, Kate, Victoria, and Warren had led Max and Chloe to a hidden cave filled with tablets and arcane symbols. The decision they made had been difficult, given the age and significance of those artifacts. But in the end, there had been no other course of action: they'd smashed and destroyed every single object in that place, with Chloe and Victoria both quite gleeful over the wanton destruction (just for different reasons). And they'd all gone back again and again until everything was ground to dust. They'd also combed through Maxine's journals, tore out any page with symbols copied from the tablets, and burned them. It had been destruction of the kind that historians, archaeologists, and researchers of all kinds would've found unforgivable. But having experienced the terrible, apocalyptic power of those artifacts, the group had no arguments about it.

"And do you want help tonight, with your parents?" Max asked, "I can come along."

Kate shook her head and said, "no, I'll be fine. I handled living in close quarters with Victoria for what seemed like a small eternity so I think I can handle anything."

Max snorted and then sighed.

"You know," she said, "I still have trouble believing it sometimes…any of it, even the stuff I see in front of my eyes every day."

"Me too," Kate said, "it challenges so many beliefs and expectations. All of them, maybe."

Max nodded.

Kate glanced around and asked, "where's Chloe?"

Max grinned and said, "working on her Back to Blackwell Bash over at the lumber mill. I had my doubts but I think it's going to be, to use her word, epic."

"I'm sure it will be," Kate said. She closed her notebook and slid it into her bag before continuing, "I could use some company; sketching right now is relaxing but it's letting my mind linger on things I'd rather not linger on. Would you like to get some tea?"

"I'd love to," Max said, "and you can tell me more stories about Victoria. I heard she might be visiting soon and I want to be able to hand out more smirks than I get."

"That, I can do," Kate said.

They left the bench behind, not noticing a pair of does standing right behind them. The does watched as Kate and Max walked off towards the waterfront before trotting away and vanishing.

Home

When Chloe and I returned to my universe, I didn't realize at first just how little we'd thought about our next steps.

After laughing our asses off by the tree with the swing, we pushed our wheelbarrows into a dense clump of bushes that hadn't been disturbed by human hands in decades. I then found and picked up the pieces of my broken camera as Chloe basked in the sunlight filtering through the leaves.

My brain was, of course, convinced that months had passed since I'd been pulled into that rip in the air. But as far as my home universe was concerned, I'd only been gone for a few minutes. So when I led Chloe back over the train tracks and to the spot where the photography class had arrived, we found Stella and Ms. Potts loitering near the little bus; no one else had come back yet from their photographic nature journeys.

We approached the bus and as soon as Stella laid eyes on Chloe, the peace and quiet of our slow stroll through the sunlit forest came to an end: Stella shrieked and fainted. Ms. Potts, being new to Arcadia Bay and having never met Chloe, had no idea why Stella reacted the way she did and began to bounce from foot to foot while pawing at her bag. Other students, those within earshot, came running back. And when they saw Chloe, they shouted, dropped things, and generally went about being shocked.

It was at that point that I realized just how poorly Chloe and I had prepared for this. We'd talked about how her coming to my universe would look like her coming back from the dead. We'd tossed some ideas around but most of them had been jokes, like: Chloe was an undercover CIA agent that faked her death or Chloe's evil twin sister had died or Chloe made a lifelike doll to swap out at the scene of the shootout. We'd never settled on a real plan since we'd been so focused on the urgent problems of escaping Maxine's purgatory. And now that those problems were gone, we were left hanging.

So we played it by ear.

Once everyone had calmed down enough to listen (although plenty of them, like Victoria, had been silent the whole time, staring at Chloe with wide eyes), I stuttered my way through a few different explanations, rewinding each one before finding a narrative that I could put forward with enough confidence to stick: I'd discovered Chloe while I was out wandering and she was alive for reasons that she (conveniently) couldn't explain at that moment. Chloe nodded along with me.

It was good enough for the moment: we all loaded onto the bus and drove in utter silence towards Blackwell, with most eyes locked on Chloe.

Finally, Chloe chuckled a little and said, "so, um, crazy fuckin' day, huh?"

"How did you survive?" Daniel blurted out, leaning close.

"Oh, well, you know…the bullets…they don't always, you know, kill you and stuff," Chloe said, her eyes darting to me while everyone stared at her.

I nudged her and I could practically see the gears spinning in her head.

"Sorry," she finally said, rubbing the back of her neck, "I, um, haven't really talked to anyone in a while. Kinda, um, out of practice."

There were no more questions and when the bus stopped, I spoke briefly to Ms. Potts and got her permission to skip class as she eyed Chloe with awe.

I knew that news of Chloe's survival would spread like wildfire, which meant we had to get somewhere fast…

. . . . .

Joyce answered the door shortly after I rang the bell.

Her sunken eyes lit up just a little when she saw me and I smiled before wincing.

"Hi Joyce, I, um, found someone," I said.

Chloe stepped out.

"Hey, Mom," she said, giving a little wave.

Joyce gasped, slapped her hand to her mouth, and began crying. She reached out, grasping for Chloe with her free hand.

What followed was about half an hour where barely any words could be uttered over the sobbing and hugs. And Chloe was completely taken aback when David appeared, choked out a cry, and hugged her tightly before stepping back and apologizing. David's reaction surprised her so much that she couldn't get out any of the choice terms she'd been mulling over for days with regards to her stepfather.

When we were finally able to talk, we told Joyce and David the truth.

They didn't believe us.

So we demonstrated.

Chloe demonstrated her power first, moving a toaster up and down and around the room. And I demonstrated mine, predicting things that would happen in view of the back yard. In the end, both Joyce and David sat staring at us with wide eyes and I couldn't think of what to say next. Then Chloe cleared her throat.

"So, I know I'm not the real Chloe," she said, "you know, the one who lived and, um, died here. But my home is gone and…I know I can never replace your Chloe but I'm hoping you'll be okay with me, um, being here, I guess. And I can go and stay somewhere else if it's too weird and stuff and…"

Before she could finish, Joyce wrapped her in a hug.

"Chloe, I don't care where you're from," she said, "you're still someone's Chloe and I'll do my best to be your mom here, just like I'd want for my Chloe if she went somewhere else."

"Really?" Chloe asked, tears in her eyes.

"You're damn right," Joyce said, her eyes fierce, "this is your home and your family as long as you want it." She paused, chewing her lip. "And, well, you don't have to answer but now I'm thinking about it: where's your original mom? The…other me?"

"She…she went to a place where another version of you didn't make it. Most of the town there didn't; just the Chloe and Max there and a few others," she said.

"Then it seems like everything balanced out," Joyce said with a nod.

We all turned to David.

He frowned and furrowed his brow.

"David," Joyce said, her voice low.

"I'll need to make some calls," he said, "but first, we'll need to get our story straight. It's probably not a good idea to go around telling a bunch of people about your…special stuff. You're here, Chloe, and we're going to make sure everything's all official. We'll make it happen." He nodded to himself.

"Th…thanks, David," Chloe said.

"You're welcome," he said, "just…don't get shot again, alright?"

Chloe smiled and said, "I won't."

. . . . .

It wasn't easy, making someone come back from the dead. But being in a small town had its advantages: David was able to talk his way through a handful of officials to set our story in stone.

And that story?

Chloe had been in serious condition but survived; she'd then stayed hidden for several weeks, out in a shack in the woods, in case there were others besides Prescott and Jefferson that might seek her out.

That story satisfied almost everyone.

Those who had seen Chloe die took a little more convincing and my rewind came in handy for that. All in all, we only ended up having to tell a couple of people the full truth, after which we were free and clear.

Throughout that time, I continued my studies at Blackwell and visited Chloe every day and every night. We didn't have the freedom or space of Chloe's old pirate castle…not yet, at least. But we made the best of Chloe's old room and my cramped dorm room, which meant that it didn't take long for people to figure out that we'd become more than just friends. Victoria was the first to figure it out and she held back no snark when telling us exactly what she'd heard from my room when walking down the hall.

And my time with Chloe wasn't just sex, films, and games: we began planning for our future. And the future held a lot for us.

We both had our powers, which gave us a secret leg-up. I had months of extra education in the arts, along with tips and tricks from Maxine's centuries of photographic experience. And Chloe had years of study into subjects that could land her a job as a car mechanic, a plumber, or even a sculptor, all while mulling the idea of going into physics. We also had some material advantages, as well. Those wheelbarrows we'd taken with us from Purgatory Bay? We'd packed them with more than just booze and belongings: Kate and Victoria had given us a portion of the gold that they'd retrieved to bring to their new world. And, from some spying I'd done on my own universe back in Maxine's photo tunnels, we knew the locations of Sean Prescott's secret stashes of valuables, stashes that his own family didn't know about. We raided every stash, taking some for ourselves, donating more of it, and anonymously informing Prescott's family about the rest. In the end, we had more than enough to provide ourselves with a solid foundation, one from which we could build our lives with confidence. Chloe used a portion of it to buy the old lumber mill and started to transform it into something like her old pirate castle, this time with big windows. We wouldn't be staying in Arcadia Bay forever but the pirate castle would give us a place of our own for a little while.

And so, as we leisurely prepared for life after Blackwell and Arcadia Bay over the span of weeks and months, Chloe got a job at the local mechanic's place and searched for physics and engineering programs while I searched for photography ones in the same places.

. . . . .

From time to time, I'd go out into one of the abandoned areas of the lumber mill and set up the paper tablet that allowed us to see into other universes. Chloe and I had looked for the cave of tablets my universe but it appeared that the tablets never existed here or that the cave that contained them collapsed long ago. We both considered that to be a good thing.

I checked in on the universe that the residents of Purgatory Bay had evacuated to, watching as they rebuilt Arcadia Bay and settled into renewed and recharged lives.

At one point, I used a photo from Purgatory Bay to try to see into the old pocket universe. As I expected and hoped, I could make no connection.

Then I'd roll the paper up, pop whatever photo I'd used back into my album of interdimensional photos, and carry them back inside, storing them in the very back of a closet.

One night, I felt an odd sort of restlessness and slipped out of bed. Chloe, snoring quietly next to me, mumbled in her sleep and tossed her covers away. The stairs creaked and groaned beneath my feet and I strolled past the still under construction kitchen and out into the night, where a full moon bathed the forest in white light and crickets chirped all around me.

I found them almost immediately: a pair of does, standing still and watching me from the trees.

I approached them and they didn't turn away or flee.

A few paces in front of them, I stopped and squinted.

"Maxine? Rachel?" I asked.

The two does blinked slowly and I felt, somewhere inside of me, that they'd said yes; I smiled.

"You both doing okay?" I asked.

Both does tilted their heads and blinked again. It felt like they were both saying something like, "yes, we think so."

"We're doing okay, too," I said with a grin, gesturing behind me to the lumber mill, "well, better than okay; way better. And the others are, too. Although I guess you've probably been there, too."

The does blinked again.

I stood there in front of the two does for several minutes; the silence wasn't uncomfortable. Instead, it felt like we were all soaking up warm feelings in the space between us.

Then, just as I began to feel awkward, the does blinked again, twitched their ears, and turned away.

"Bye," I said, giving a little wave, "and…thank you."

They looked back at me for a moment, blinked again, and then vanished into the forest. I went back inside, climbed up to the bedroom, and slid back into bed next to Chloe. I smiled, closed my eyes, and fell asleep.