Chapter Text
Glittering, gossamer threads stretch out before her, spiraling off in a dizzying number of different directions. Each a possibility yet to be, stretching out from the loom that is the now. Each thread a life, each strand a what if, sheared off as the loom weaves ever onwards.
This is probably supposed to drive anyone mad. Max supposes she probably already is, and has been for some time. How broken must she be to have smashed her way into this impossible space out of sheer desperation?
Her sanity should be obliterated by the near infinite possibilities of billions of lives being weaved relentlessly together.
But she isn’t here for the billions.
She’s here for one of them.
It doesn’t take long to find, her own thread calls to her, and weaved so tightly with it is Chloe’s.
She follows their weave until they separate, and then she follows Chloe’s, wincing as her finger brushes the strand and a surge of sensations and memories that aren’t hers flood her mind. Loss. Grief. Depression. David’s words, then his hand. Joyce’s absence and disbelief. The pawing hands of boys using her pain for their benefit. So many of the things Chloe never told her about in their brief time together. All the times she hurt herself, all the attempts to stop the pain through the most final method possible.
She wants to rip the tapestry apart right there, reweave their lives together and spare her all of it.
But she knows better than that. The weave is tighter and stronger the further back she goes, changing things would be a huge, unpredictable mess. And that’s if she even has the strength for it.
She follows the strand further, the blossoming of young love finally reciprocated floods her chest as Rachel’s thread wraps tight against Chloe’s. But it’s not like Max’s, where their threads were always wrapped so tightly around only each other. Rachel’s zigs and zags, looping in, then cutting out other people. Frank, Nathan, Jefferson, Victoria. The Vortex Club and the nerds, the adults and her peers.
Then her thread stops abruptly and tragically short. A life of hopes and promises fueled by desperate energy, snuffed out before it could really begin.
Max looks ahead on Chloe’s thread, and she can see so, so many places it stops out in the strands waiting to be woven together. So many of them stop just before the loom, each one she can imagine is that same, stupid bathroom. Then there are the other deaths. She can’t help herself; she drifts forwards and follows them, despite how her mind screams at her not to.
Chloe not able to take it and swallowing too many pills. Getting hooked on harder stuff than she’s used to and going too deep too fast. Just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
So many of them stop so short.
She knows they all end anyway. There is no forever, not really. Chloe always ends. Usually way, way before Max’s thread ends. If it ends. It stretches so far forward that she can’t even see. She doesn’t want to know where it goes, and that’s not her problem right now.
She goes back to the moment, just before the weaving is. Three threads coming together.
Max.
Chloe.
Nathan.
In that fucking bathroom.
She can see a thread, a big fat one. Less a thread and more the absence of so, so many shorn short in its wake, stemming from that stupid bathroom. That’s why she’s here, staring time in the face and trying to find an answer. She isn’t sure how she can perceive all the possibilities stemming from it, and blood trickles down her nose the moment she really tries to comprehend it.
All she can do is work with what she has.
She starts plucking at strings, looking for ways it can go that don’t get Chloe and the Bay killed.
She can take the bullet instead. So many possibilities spiral out from it. Chloe ending up with Victoria, Chloe ending up with Kate. Both. Neither. Chloe ending herself shortly after Max is buried. Chloe drifting around until her end finds her. Chloe finding someone worth sticking around for in another high school friend Max never met.
If she goes back a little bit into the tapestry, she can tamper with Nathan’s gun, make it too light or too heavy so the bullet doesn’t hit her where it kills her outright. She follows those strands. Crushing medical debt, potentially offset by lawsuits and local charity, but not always. The bullet hitting her spine and paralyzing her, the bullet causing permanent, debilitating tissue damage. Chronic pain, opioids, addiction, overdose.
If she turns the safety on?
Storm.
Is it really worth it? Is her tiny sliver of time she’ll ever get with Chloe really worth this? No matter what she does, Chloe will always die. Someday, somehow, Max won’t be able to save her.
Yes. Yes, she will.
Max might not be able to do it alone, but what if she wasn’t alone?
Max grabs the strands she wants and pulls with all her waning might.
Something tears.