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Betraying its harmonious and tranquil namesake, Arcadia mirrored an iron cage, constricting her wings until they snapped in a burst of cobalt feathers, and Rachel Amber spent the better part of four years direly pursuing the key.
Sleep was a stranger, late nights and early mornings tended by mindlessly accessible recreations. Idleness mimicked a parasite prohibited from seizing control. Every squandered second burned her future to ash; doomed her to an eternity of cold squalls and colder opportunities. She couldn’t stay in this hapless wasteland so every action milked productivity. Her charisma, her credentials, her contacts; each cultivated a brick on her road to liberation. The road’s destination didn’t matter so long as Arcadia dwindled far behind.
This town was boring and worthless; a forgotten land of fittingly forgotten people. She couldn’t wait to leave and never look back. Undoubtedly someone desired freedom as much as her.
Someone did, and Chloe Price was the only good thing Arcadia ever spawned; the only person who brightened her life; the only kindred spirit banging fists and boots on symbolic bars. Originally Rachel believed she held the key. Or, at least, would come to. And she did, a rusty yet reliable relic twirling between blotchy blue talons. But the twirl lost its luster. Doubts piled, problems arose, and as time progressed, once ink stained their skin, escape dug further and further into Chloe’s pocket and beyond Rachel’s reach. Maybe with patience Chloe could’ve presented a refurbished key capable of taking her anywhere, but Rachel’s patience was long gone.
So she scouted alternative solutions. Faceless wanderers easily abandoned in her shadow; some promising, others not. Some offered distractions rather than keys but sometimes those were just as satisfying. When her vision blurred and her mind hazed and smoke poured from her mouth like a sighing dragon her perpetual hunt could ease for a blissful moment.
Those moments, like camera flashes, were fleeting.
She stumbled upon people with faces she’d rather forget. People who morphed her drastic search into a damned one. People who decided she didn’t need a key to leave Arcadia.
She couldn’t have known. Couldn’t have known each footstep heralded a shallow grave. Couldn’t have known which second was her last.
Then she met someone who could rewind those seconds. Who did.
She didn’t ask for it, didn’t have a choice, every choice robbed and replaced by someone strong enough to make the hardest ones of all, but the girl she’d only encountered through pictures saved her. Someone with freckles like constellations. Someone who caused tearstains in Chloe’s journal. Someone with every reason to forsake her in missing persons posters.
It was a sign, wasn’t it? It had to be. Surely her saviour was her ticket to freedom.
But Max Caulfield didn’t offer a key.
Just her hand.
A hand pulsing with cosmic power, reaching beyond the dead stars to the deepest stretches of the universe. A hand that shredded timelines to protect the one she loved, then countless more for someone who didn’t deserve her sacrifice; someone who, at the time, maybe even now, wouldn’t have done the same.
And that hand was kind and gentle despite its fearsome capabilities, unearned forgiveness entangling with the soothing yet suffocating warmth whenever Max interlocked their fingers, tethering Rachel to a discrepant reality. One that still didn’t feel real.
Because how could waking up to Max and Chloe be real? Fate deemed her equivalent of the chassis in the junkyard, deemed she and Max would never meet beyond photos, deemed Chloe would die the day she and Max reunited. So how could they exist in the same timeline? How could such serenity be real?
But, like every morning this past month, instead of deciphering this reality, utilizing it, Rachel simply dwelled beneath Chloe’s arm, numbly observing the slanting sunrise gradually illuminate the sentimentality of Chloe’s room; the place of paramount affinity for all three of them. Chloe’s soft snores fluttered her hair, Max’s hand warmed her hip, and each mellow breath caught the remains of cigarettes, weed and cheap beer. These scents, sights, sounds; sensations weaving into a weighted blanket of familiarity.
Rachel felt grounded. Not in the sense of being unable to fly, but that she didn’t need to. When everything beyond these walls played at supersonic speed, life slipping between her fingers, in this makeshift pocket dimension she could just exist like time was paused. Like there was no rush to search for the key. She could enjoy the seconds for what they were rather than worry for their purpose. The concept was so foreign it sounded like a lie and she was so sick of being lied to, so sick of lying, and this resembled some twisted mockery of lying to herself.
Except this wasn’t a lie.
A shift at her hip broke her reverie, followed by cold, and Rachel scarcely resisted tugging Max’s hand back where it belonged, an almost desperate urge she had yet to understand. Like without Max’s touch she was hollow, a frozen husk that wouldn’t—shouldn’t—feel any warmth at all.
Despite her subtlety Max noticed. Max always noticed. She’d seen too much to not see this. She saw Rachel at every low, had to learn everything about her in order to save her, never providing how many timelines it took and didn’t need to. The fact it took any was enough.
Max’s hand lifted to her cheek, thumb slowly stroking, a muted greeting to not disturb the slumbering skyscraper between them, and way more tender than Rachel deserved. She could never bring herself to initiate or return such affection. Not that Max didn’t deserve it, she absolutely did, but Rachel didn’t understand why Max would want it from her. Didn’t understand why she was receiving it in any capacity. Didn’t understand the butterflies it generated, the ease in every muscle, how each gentle swipe crept under the mask barely clinging on.
It was scary finding someone who turned her masks obsolete, and no matter how many she crafted, no matter how durable, Max saw right through. With nowhere to hide she could only await the inevitability of her fears proving true; that the real her wasn’t likeable, wasn’t good enough, wasn’t destined beyond this cage, wasn’t worth liberating from the infamous posters.
But with each mask removed Max’s hand was warmer.
Cold revisited when Max leaned over the bed to grab her Polaroid, performing her daily selfie ritual, a precaution Rachel initially thought was ridiculous and unnecessary. Nothing substantial occurred since Max saved her alongside the rest of this ungrateful town but Max took the pictures anyway, and soon enough watching became Rachel’s daily ritual as well. And she liked watching. Liked watching Max’s distant look transform more into a smile each day. Liked how it was especially soft today.
Liked it too much.
The flash roused Chloe who mumbled expletives, making Max giggle and kiss her cheek, and even in her daze Chloe smiled. That was something that surprised Rachel, too; the lack of jealousy. How the cozy intimacy between Max and Chloe didn’t bother her at all. In fact, she encouraged it so they’d spend less time doting on her—even if her egotistical selfishness soaked up unadulterated attention like a scrounging sponge—because they deserved each other’s attention, each other’s love, and she didn’t.
But it’d never been about what she deserved, had it? She believed she deserved to escape Arcadia, succeed in her field, relish the adventure life was supposed to be. She believed she didn’t deserve to get drugged, murdered, buried in the worst possible place, spirit mutated into an enraged, vengeful storm.
She also believed she didn’t deserve all the things trying to keep her here. She didn’t deserve Chloe’s fingertips tenderly caressing her side. She didn’t deserve Max’s shirt clinging to her back. She didn’t deserve this warmth, this domesticity, the memories she’d be making with them. Memories she shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want, shouldn’t desire further.
She didn’t deserve to start falling in love.
Chloe’s arms tightened around them, a content sigh spilling past her lips, and that sigh could’ve been a gale with how it emptied Rachel’s lungs of air. Chloe looked so happy, a level of happiness Rachel never garnered on her own. From what Max admitted she couldn’t garner it on her own, either, Chloe’s eyes clouded with longing for whichever best friend hadn’t been present.
The blue of her eyes were cloudless skies now, crystal clear beauty stemming from each of them curled into her sides; from all three of them together. And Rachel’s heart slammed against her ribs, chest aching, because just like Max’s smile she liked that look in Chloe’s eyes too much. Chloe’s happiness meant everything, even back when she ruined it. She never wanted to ruin it. Never again. Mornings wouldn’t feel right without seeing Chloe happy.
If she left she wouldn’t wake to that smile or those eyes again.
“Anything on the agenda today, Rachel?”
Max’s tone was light and fond, like she knew everything, relived this moment a thousand times. And it was a fair question; Rachel was busiest by choice and responsibility. There was always someone to talk to, deals to make, resources to gather, masks to model. But this wasn’t just Max asking.
This was Rachel’s excuse for doing. To be productive. To resume her search for the key. With her kidnappers in jail, tornado threat thwarted, and a time traveller personally watching over her, there was no need to be wary. She could dive headfirst into her California dreams once again. Warm sun, warm beaches, warm press of whoever entertained her the most that night.
She was warm here, too.
“There’s always something,” Rachel murmured, flimsy and uninspired, unsteady in aiming towards her desired future. Hard to aim when losing sight of her target.
Chloe’s breath washed by her ear, “Can this something—” briefly receding thanks to an irrepressible yawn. Chloe clumsily pulled Rachel closer, resting her chin at the crown of her head. “Can it wait five minutes?”
It was never just five minutes, a blur of stagnation, but the groggy request caused a flicker in Rachel’s belly, a candle burning brighter and brighter. The swaying flame prompted strange sensations, ones she didn’t feel, didn’t let herself feel, because that would mean being regulated, influenced, trapped in a harsher prison, and she couldn’t surrender such control.
But Max and Chloe never demanded control. They just wanted to wake up next to her. Were willing to relinquish everything to wake up next to her. And she wasn’t worth the effort, not when she kept searching for excuses to leave.
But their voices, their presence, dulled the excuses and the search.
Arcadia was still a cage, always would be, but didn’t feel as small when she was with them. They were so much stronger than her. Their strength prevented iron bars from crushing her, prevented her from plummeting, prevented all concepts of loneliness. Their strength offered a sense of freedom maybe even restored wings couldn’t grant.
Perhaps she couldn’t find a key because it didn’t exist yet. It had to be forged, nurtured, impossible on her own, and observing Max and Chloe she realized maybe the key didn’t look like a key at all. It wasn’t something tangible to fit a lock, open a door, attach to a chain. It was the warmth of this bed. It was the comfort of this room. It was the mantra in her mind booming louder every fresh morning she saw the ocean in Chloe’s eyes and the stars on Max’s face. It was the two people in this forgotten land she’d never forget, that she wouldn’t let be forgotten, as they didn’t let Arcadia forget about her.
“Yeah.” Rachel savoured Chloe’s heartbeat and grasped Max’s hand for the first time. “It can wait.”