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Time doesn’t stick for Max, not when she needs it to most. Max jumps forwards and backwards and swerves, and it is barely enough to stick the landing herself, let alone trying to tug Chloe along with her.
It’s a delicate, hard-boiled lesson; Max cannot save Chloe, no matter the time travel. Chloe cannot save Rachel, no matter the love.
It’s a delicate, hard-earned thing, that cracks open in Max’s hands again and again and again – and maybe this time; the third time, is the charm.
--------
It starts like this: a slip in time, a leakage, a half-buried body in a junkyard. Chloe’s bright hair bursting in the sunlight, a dead girl’s bracelet smothered in the dirt.
Max is crouching in the junkyard behind a rusted car door, staring at the tableau, watching another Max and another Chloe in the late afternoon sun, kneeling in the dirt, the sun setting between them on Rachel’s empty grave.
Max had been given a choice, a kiss, a hurricane – and Chloe, in a very Chloe manner, had taken one look at the storm and seen herself, blamed herself, asked Max to do the same. And maybe the Max from a week ago would’ve – but the Max a week ago didn’t have Chloe Price thundering into her life just yet, and that’s what it really all spins on.
So here Max is: one last time, one last slippage in time, rewinding not as far back as she should’ve, as she was meant to, she knows - (the moment of Chloe’s death, the reverberating BANG in high school stalls: that’s stretching Max too far, it would be the furthest tug on a rubber band before it snapped back too quick, too painful to avoid. If someone told Max that Chloe Price made the world go round – well, Max has seen what hurricanes can do and she knows how much wilder, stronger Chloe is than that),
And that, Max thinks, That is why it’s so hard to believe her death was the answer; that somehow Chloe dying without even a fight, a fire, a storm to show for it, doesn’t quite add up.
Max had taken a leaf out of Chloe’s life, said fuck that and stopped midway through, landing at their discovery of Rachel’s missing body days ago, instead.
She’s not exactly sure why she revisited this moment in particular either, that’s the thing. The time travel has never worked like this, she’s never been a bystander to her own actions, to the unfolding story, and there’s a brief flickering thought that something here has changed, some line stepped over or smudged away. It’s an unintentional gap in time Max had pulled wide the curtain on – and it hadn’t been easy.
The final leap from Chloe to here had been a struggle; there had been a fight, a bloody nose; something had been pulling Max in her entirety towards that first and final bathroom death scene, but something stronger that had been Max herself had dug her heels in, turned into the dark, had reached out grasping with both hands and flooded the stage with light, crash-landed knees first into rust and soil and a nearby open grave – had suddenly shown Max the possibility - this story started with Rachel Amber. And if she wanted to save Chloe, maybe it had to end that way too.
The light is fading as Max considers where to go from here, watches as the other Max and Chloe start to leave. Max remembers that long walk back, the silence swelling, her thoughts then and now filled with Rachel; both then and now, the stench and decay, the smallness of the grave and –
Max closes her eyes, steadies her breathing. Imagines Chloe’s hand gripping hers.
When Max opens her eyes again, the sun is lower, and a deer is standing across from her, between her and Rachel’s grave. She stands, slowly from her crouching position, but the deer doesn’t move. She takes a step towards it but it doesn’t even blink. She takes another, then another. It’s unsettling, how still it stands, how it seems to be looking right through her.
Max moves closer, gently, palms up, and only when she is almost directly in front of Rachel’s grave does it blink, just once, then turns to walk up the grassy pathway beyond the junkyard.
It’s a sign too direct to ignore, and something warm begins to trickle down Max’s lips, the tell-tale sign of the universe reshaping itself around Max; around Chloe; because of Rachel. And Max knows, instinctively, that there’s no rewinding her footsteps from here on out.
Max begins to follow; stepping gently past Rachel’s grave (don’t look, don’t look, don’t look), past husks of cars and trucks and even a scooter, the light of the setting sun burning more red than orange against the rusting scraps of metal, up past the train tracks, and the totem pole (once imposing, now it looks just as old and forgotten as everything else in the junkyard behind her), and then it leads her up the hill, into the woods, and then, finally, through the dusk, she comes to a familiar trodden pathway and wonders if this is a dream; if the ending is the beginning; knows that every road leads here and wishing not for the first time that she understood why.
Max pauses for a moment, slightly puffing, and the doe stops when Max does, looks back at Max. Behind the doe, the lighthouse is still standing, hanging over Arcadia Bay – there is no universe Max has tread through without it, and that’s another piece, there is some way to make the pieces fit; Rachel and the lighthouse and Max.
After another moment, the doe lowers its head to sniff the grass, and then starts to chew on it.
“Really? After all that?” Max mutters out loud, but the doe continues to ignore her. That must be some hella good grass, Max thinks, then almost laughs at the face Chloe would make if she was here for Max to tell her out loud.
“Come on, Max,” she says to herself, “Come on, what now.”
Somewhere in the past Chloe Price is dying, and somewhere in the future she is too, but right now in this present, she is alive. And Rachel Amber is not. But…
Understanding floods through Max. She scrubs her eyes, wipes away another trickle of blood. Max thinks she’s starting to get it – this moment is stolen, this piece of the timeline is something she climbed into, and soon, if she does not find a way out, if she can’t fix this and soon, there will be no going back. She will be stuck; and Max can feel it now, feel the way her thoughts keep drifting, the sharpening smell of blood (her nose, again) – it was there since she first stretched herself into this moment.
The sun setting behind the lighthouse, and in the future she and Chloe were, are, will be, stuck in the same spot in a different choice – or maybe it’s only ever been the same one, this balancing act; this rewriting while retracing her own path, and Chloe’s, and Rachel’s, again again again. Max pulls out her camera as the idea hits, the doe looking up as she does, almost like it knows.
(Which, Max thinks, as the realisation hits her, is the point.)
It’s a perfect shot, a once in a lifetime opportunity, and Max is through wasting those. She lines up the view, thinks of Rachel, and brings her finger down on the shutter, and at the click there’s the sound of a gunshot, Chloe’s voice screaming Rachel’s name and the whole world dissipates into a blinding whiteness-
--
Max lands feet first in a familiar white room, the lights blinding her momentarily before she can make out shapes: sterile tables, red folders on display, a photoshoot capturing her again. The panic rises in Max briefly but she closes her eyes, counts to ten.
You’re okay, Max. You’re free, you’re alive, you’re okay.
There’s a girl slumped over on a chair, dirt streaked across her face, shirt half unbuttoned and torn, a lone hoop earring tangled in her hair. Rachel looks up at Max with a fierce expression, but it’s almost unbearable - she looks completely wild and absolutely awful.
Rachel’s eyes flash with surprise as she takes Max in, standing before her, hair still wet from a hurricane that may or may not be still happening years in the future now, waiting for the eye of the storm – for Max – to pass through.
“You’re not Chloe,” is the first thing Rachel says, voice hoarse. Rachel flinches as Max steps forward, and Max’s voice and heart both get caught in her throat, knotting together.
“No,” Max says, simply. “I’m not.”
“Who are you, then?” Rachel asks, and even like this, her glare is towering, raging.
Instead of answering, she reaches for a pair of scissors on the table next to Rachel, trying not to let her hands shake. Rachel tracks her every move and Max doesn’t know how to start a conversation that starts with You’re dead and ends with But time travel.
Max moves behind Rachel. Rachel has turned her head to watch Max and Max meets her gaze dead-on. “This okay?” Max asks gently, raising the scissors, and she can see the hesitation and mistrust flicker behind Rachel’s gaze.
Well, Max thinks, I did just materialise in front of her.
But after only a moment, Rachel nods.
“Okay,” Max says, and grabs Rachel’s wrists, gently, trying not to notice the red chafing along them. They’re bound by thick, wiry rope, different from the heavy-duty duct tape that – that had been used on Max.
Don’t think about that, Max. Don’t you dare. Deep breath Max, come on.
“How long?” Max asks quietly, and she doesn’t need to elaborate for Rachel to understand, because she immediately stiffens in the chair.
“What’s it to you?” Rachel spits back.
I can see why she got along with Chloe, Max thinks dryly. House meet fire.
“Okay,” Max says again, as she begins to hack through the tightly wound ropes, and her voice seems too loud, echoes in a way that she doesn’t like. “I’m not Chloe-” Max begins,
“Clearly,” Rachel drawls, who’s still watching Max closely.
“-but,” Max continues, her tone strengthening. “I’m trying to save her. And I think the only way to do that is by saving you. And I’m pretty sure this is my last chance.” Oh god, I’m screwing this all up, get it together Max “-Look she talks about you so much, and Rachel I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s all so complicated – ”
“Why isn’t Chloe here then? What does she have to do with any of this?” Rachel cuts Max off, and Max really, really doesn’t know how to explain any of this to her.
Max opens her mouth, then closes it, buys time when the scissors snick through the last corded rope and they fall to the ground. She takes a step back from Rachel, who rubs her wrists and then frees her legs, stands up and stretches, and then looks over at Max.
“I recognise you.” Rachel’s abrupt comment startles Max, and this time it’s Rachel who takes a step closer. “You’re Max.”
It startles Max enough into replying, “You know me?”
“She talks about you. A lot.”
And just as Max starts to feel some trickle of warmth at that comment, Rachel says, “You’re the best friend, the one that left her.” The words reverberate too loudly between them, but Rachel barrels on-
“So,” she says, fierce and slightly wide-eyed, her arms pulled tight across her chest. “I’ll ask again. What does Chloe have to do with this? What the fuck is going on?”
And Max knows that tone, because Max has seen this defence a million times in a million ways from Chloe Price before. No wonder, Max thinks, No wonder this is who Chloe loved.
But that question is something that Max doesn’t even know the answer to, not really. So she shrugs, replies, “I’m trying to save you. And I’m trying to save Chloe. And,” Max adds, just as she sees Rachel open her mouth, because there is no good answer, not really. “Time travel.”
“Did you just say –”
“Time travel. Like Back to the future style. Except not nearly as cool.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t need you to believe me. I’m going to prove it anyway.”
Rachel just glares back at her, arms still crossed, staring Max down like she’s crazy. Max doesn’t care. Max isn’t rewriting another reality, she’s doing it to her own and this time, Max thinks, this time she’s going to save everyone.
Max strolls over to the red folders on the far wall, still meticulously shelved only the collection is much smaller than the last time she had been there. Her hands start to shake but she refuses to focus on that thought any longer, and grabs for the nearest one instead. She can feel Rachel over her shoulder as she begins to flick through one, then puts it next to her on the ground. Grabs another one, and does the same.
She can feel Rachel hovering behind her but Max ignores her, grabbing another folder, and another, then reaches for the one labelled Rachel-
-who reaches over from Max’s shoulder and plucks it out of her hand. “What the hell are you doing, freak?” Rachel asks.
Max turns and takes Rachel in, her defensive stance, the red mark across her chin, the dirt across her cheekbone. The urge to apologise is overwhelming, but if this girl is anything like Chloe, Max knows it would be useless.
“Evidence,” Max replies, who picks up the pile she’s made on the ground and shoves the rest of the folders towards Rachel, who takes them. “You need evidence.”
Rachel stares at her for a moment longer.
“Come on,” Max says, and because Rachel is still hesitating, looking between her and down at the folders in her arms. Max understands, she does, but now there’s a faint ringing in her head and Max understands that for the first time in a long time, she might actually be running out of time.
Some things, Max knows, are never meant to change. Some things, Max has discovered, come precariously close to being fate.
Too bad, Max thinks, that fate has nothing on Chloe Price.
“Come on,” Max says, once more, and grabs Rachel’s free hand and pulls, and that’s all it takes to get her moving. And suddenly she’s tugging Rachel out the door, and then they’re both tumbling through and Rachel is panting behind her “Holy shit, holy shit,” and then they’re both sprinting up the stairs, out the barn, it’s night and the air is cool and clear, and Rachel is gripping her hand tightly the entire way. They run until they can’t, past houses and through the woods until they reach the edge of an old junkyard and Rachel lets go of Max’s hands, lets the folders collapse into the grass and then wraps her arms around her middle, tilts her head back to the sky and breathes.
(Max doesn’t think Rachel is aware of how hard she’s trembling.)
Max sits down, hard in the cool grass, slightly out of breath, tucking her head against her knees and leaning her forehead against them briefly. Holy shit you did it Max, she thinks, even though she really has no idea what it means to save Rachel Amber. You did it, you did it, you’re both safe, and so is Chloe.
Max only raises her head when she feels the blood dripping down her nose, becomes suddenly aware of time passing too quickly, slipping away minute by minute.
Rachel is still standing up next to her, blinking hard up at the night, the spread of constellations thick in the sky.
“Thank you,” Rachel breathes out in a whisper. “Thank you,” she repeats, and Max doesn’t know who she’s thanking. Max doesn’t think it matters. Max lets her have a moment, lets have her two, trying to ignore the tightness in her chest. Finally, when they’ve both stopped shaking so hard, she breaks the silence.
“You went to Blackwell, didn’t you?” Max asks, watching Rachel’s body tense momentarily.
“Once.” Rachel says, glancing down at Max. Her expression goes tight at the question, eyes alight like she could burn the whole world down if she wanted it badly enough.
“Yeah,” Max says, glancing away. “Me too.”
“Two weeks,” Rachel says.
“What?”
“You asked me before how long I was there. It was two weeks. The sick fuck just took tied me up, took some photos of me, kept me drugged. I don’t know what he was planning, and I don’t remember all of it, but if you had arrived any later…”
Rachel trails off, and Max doesn’t need her to finish that sentence. She lived through that as well, they all did.
Although now, Max supposes, I probably never will.
(Her head hurts slightly, trying to keep up with all of this.)
Rachel finally sits down next to her, her knees knocking against Max’s. Max’s vision blurs for a moment, then settles, but she can no longer make out the woods, the lighthouse, in the distance. It almost feels unfair, Max thinks. There’s only ever been a handful of moments when Max has been short of time, and it’s always been the times when she’s desperately wanted to stay the most.
She looks down at Rachel’s hand, flattened into a shadow in the damp grass. There’s an impulse to take it and squeeze it tight, to hold on to Rachel, now and forever, no matter what.
“I have to go soon,” Max tells her instead, with a thick voice.
“I know.” Rachel says, and Max doesn’t ask her how. “You didn’t really save me because of Chloe, did you?”
“Kind of. It’s…complicated.”
“Time travel, right?” And Max looks at Rachel in the dark, her mouth firm and eyes serious but still on fire, still dancing in a way that makes Max understand exactly what Chloe found so compelling about Rachel Amber.
Rachel meet Chloe. Max thinks. Hurricane meet Inferno.
“You’ll see,” Max says, and she desperately hopes that she’s right. Max doesn’t know if Rachel will remember any of this. Max doesn’t know if she will, if the consequences are going to be what she thinks they are.
But, Max thinks, it was worth it. It always will be.
With that, Max pulls out the crumpled photo from her jeans, a blue butterfly perched in a high school bathroom. The last piece of the puzzle. And the first.
She lingers for a moment more, in the winter night with Rachel still trembling beside her, both of them breathing and alive, and then she stands up, and Rachel follows, and together they pick up the discarded folders strewn around them.
She turns to Rachel, who’s silhouetted against the dark by the flashing of the lighthouse beacon, and she knows she hasn’t given Rachel nearly enough time or explanations, but maybe now, if she’s lucky, one day in the future she’ll get to.
The world is slowly fading to white around them. As Max meets Rachel’s eyes for the last time, and because of that, because it’s never been more important, with a burst of emotion, she blurts out-
“Make sure he pays for it.” Max says, with every bit of anger and grief that she’s held back – for Kate, for Rachel, for Nathan, for Chloe, for every death taken and not, all these ruined lives because of him – “Make sure he pays for everything.”
Max clutches the photograph tight in her hand, and her last view is of Rachel, alive, her answering anger of “You can fucking bet on it,” before the world dissolves around Max, for the last time, for the first time.
--
Max, stepping through and stepping back at the same time thinking, What good is time travel if I can’t save anyone, making a choice, the same one over and over, to love Chloe Price, to save her. A blue butterfly hovering over her shoulder, flapping its wings, a storm following Max into town on the day she arrives, two moons converging into the same choice, over and over, a lighthouse and Chloe Price lit up in front of it, Max pulled towards her over and over again, and a butterfly hovering, a deer dissolving into light --
--
The story starts and ends the same. It just unravels a little differently this time around.
--
It starts like this; a slip in time, a leakage, a half-buried body in a junkyard, only it’s Rachel’s old Labrador they’re putting to rest. Chloe’s bright hair bursting in the sunlight, a living, breathing girl’s bracelet smothered in the dirt, dropped momentarily while kissing the life out of – no, into Chloe Price.
--
It’s Chloe driving with Rachel in the passenger seat when they skid to a halt in front of Max in the school carpark on that autumn afternoon, metal music blaring through the rolled down windows.
Max hops in the back and as they speed away she takes in her former best friend, the blue hair, the troublemaker smile, her eyes flickering between Max’s in the rear view window and the way Rachel takes Chloe’s hand in her own.
“So,” Rachel says, turning round from the passenger seat to grin at her, “you must be Max.”
--
Chloe still dares Max to kiss her, and Max still does, always will do.
Rachel walks in a moment after, but she just laughs at the way Chloe blushes, throws a wink over to Max.
--
Warren asks her to the movies and Max forgets about it somewhere between breaking into the school swimming pool and being pulled towards an old junkyard and a secret hiding place with the initials C + R carved into it, three sets of footprint left worn along the abandoned train tracks.
--
Max asks for Rachel’s advice when helping Dana, tells Victoria to stay away from Nathan, takes all of Kate’s calls and then tells Kate to make some of her own, goes to every one of Rachel’s plays, helps Chloe re-dye her hair.
--
Jefferson has been locked up since Rachel broke free all those months ago, when an older girl in a mud-splattered t-shirt took her hand and pulled all of time apart around her.
(There is still a hurricane but Max tells Chloe and Rachel, Rachel tells her parents and Chloe her step-douche, and between the three of them they convince everyone to evacuate. Everyone lives. Everyone.)
--
Rachel flicks notes at Max during class, Max gets designated driver on the nights Chloe and Rachel get high at the junkyard or drunk at the latest band gig that arrives in town, and so they unfold together, into each other. Chloe mentions a road trip (“I need to fucking get out of this town for a while.”) Rachel beams, Max says she’ll look up hostels online, and Chloe laughs and kisses both of them on the cheek.
Chloe spends the rest of the year trying to convince Max to get a matching tattoo. Max pretends to be shocked like she hasn’t been considering it already, Rachel meets her eyes over Chloe’s shoulder, sees the answer there and grins.
-
It’s over a fresh plate of waffles, warm and sugary in Joyce’s diner, Chloe’s head on her shoulder and Rachel’s legs sprawled across Chloe’s, the three of them squished into one, that Max looks out the window, sees a butterfly flapping away into the distance and lets go of a memory of a half-life, lets it drift away on the back of a summer wind.
--
It ends like this; a sunset, or maybe a sunrise. One hand over another over another; a flickering radio station, laughter ringing clear from a rescued junkyard pick-up truck, speeding down an endless stretch of highway.