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“Chloe, you can’t stay in the car forever.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You can’t sulk forever. And I’ve heard your stomach complain, even if you haven’t.”
“Leave me alone, Max.”
Max climbed up into the car. Chloe scrambled to flee at her approach, but there wasn’t much room left. Soon she was huddled against the wall, shaking as Max came closer. Poor Chloe. The world had been so cruel to her, was being so cruel. She couldn’t shake off the memories of Arcadia Bay.
“What’s wrong?”
Chloe couldn’t speak. She looked everywhere but at Max. Her chest rose and fell far too fast, her breath came out uneven. She couldn’t help but flinch when Max traced her jawline adoringly.
“It’s okay, Chloe. You’re safe here. The storm is far behind.”
She struggled with something in her throat for a moment, like she was choking on a sob.
“Do you understand?” asked Max, “as long as we’re together, it can’t hurt you. I won’t let it.”
“You don’t— It’s not— It’s not—”
“Oh, Chloe, shh, shh, you’re alright,” Max wrapped her arms around her, holding her like fine crystal, like all the precious things Chloe pretended she was not. “I’m sad too. I still have nightmares. But if we’re together, we’ll be okay. We’ll pull through.”
Then Chloe spit something that sounded like a landslide, a block of cement coming off her chest all at once.
“It’s not the storm I’m afraid of.”
* rewind *
“Leave me alone, Max.”
Chloe just needed her space. She had died, after all. She had died so many times Max couldn’t fathom it, could only hope that no memories lingered. She had died, and she deserved space if she wanted it. Max would give her whatever she wanted.
“Okay. I’ll bring you breakfast.”
They were on the freeway and Chloe’s part was cold by the time she ate it, but at least she’d eaten.
“Don’t you feel better now?” asked Max.
Chloe didn’t reply.
Max had made the right choice. As long as Chloe was alive, it was the right choice. She’d had to make it over and over, even now she renewed it constantly, but she didn’t regret a thing. She saw Kate’s face in her dreams often. Joyce’s, Victoria’s, Warren’s, many others. But Kate’s most of all. Max heard her say “You saved me Max. Why did you save me, only to forsake me now?” She had no answer.
“How much money have we got left?”
“I tore the bills to shreds.”
“What?”
Chloe said it again, flat.
“I tore the bills to shreds.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Whatever. You can just rewind, can’t you?”
Chloe had been doing this recently. Just when Max thought she was getting better, she’d begun to test her powers, to sabotage her in petty ways like this that endangered everybody.
“I— my power’s not a toy, Chloe, we’ve been over this!”
“So you can’t put the bills back together?”
Max could. Of course she could. But how many times would she have to do it? How many times would Chloe make her suffer like this? Couldn’t she tell how much it hurt? The nosebleeds, the headaches, the searing, whited out vision and burning limbs as her mind felt like it was wrung through a cosmic drier?
“You can’t?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then do it.”
Max stepped on the brakes. Hard. Her insides lurched as the car screeched to a halt. Chloe nearly got thrown off the backseat.
“What the hell?!”
She looked angry, finally. You want to be angry? thought Max, then be angry, let it out, let’s get this over with.
But then Chloe looked back at the car desperately braking behind them. No way was it coming to a stop before hitting them. She looked back at Max, and the anger was already replaced by fear.
Her eyes were pleading again.
Save me, Max.
Save me.
* rewind *
“Chloe.”
“Yeah?”
“Do something crazy again.”
“Mad Max is getting a taste for hardcore, huh?”
“Maybe she is. Maybe she just misses our pirate days.”
Chloe turned to look at her, but Max kept her gaze trained on the stars. She’d daydreamed about a stargazing date before. Logically, she’d always figured it would be with Warren. That he’d be more interested, eager to teach her about constellations and astrophysics. But really he would have just looked at her instead if he’d had the opportunity. Like Chloe was doing now. No one would teach Max about the stars.
“I never wanted that kind of hardcore, Max.”
Max looked at Chloe too, then. It killed her a bit each time, to see the spark going from her eyes, her voice, her gait. To see her fire fading even as she struggled against literal cosmic odds to keep it going. She looked into her eyes and she didn’t feel that connection between them, that chemistry that had brought them back together after all this time.
“Do you think I wanted it?”
Max looked at Chloe’s lips and didn’t feel like kissing her. She felt like crying.
But she didn’t cry, and she kissed Chloe.
*
At first, Max’s nose just kept bleeding. Chloe wondered how she could lose that much blood and not look much worse for wear. But it didn’t last long. Max got frailer and frailer. She lost weight and color, her hair lost its luster. She began to tremble a lot, complaining of cold and pain. Chloe asked what kind of pain, but Max never specified.
Chloe was still there for her then, offering soothing words, a warm embrace and empty promises. That was before she realized the universe itself seemed to want her dead, and Max was destroying everything to keep it from happening.
It took all she had to let it out, randomly as Max was driving on Interstate 90.
“Why don’t you just let me die?”
Max simply looked at her. She was usually easy to read, but at that moment her face was a total blank. It was almost like she was sleepwalking, functioning but not really there.
She said nothing and trained her eyes back on the road.
Chloe’s chest was still tight with anticipation, her heart was beating like a jackhammer, skipping beats left and right.
Was Max really not going to address this?
“Max.”
“Max, I’m being serious here.”
She wasn’t even looking at her. Chloe wasn’t sure what the tears welling up in her eyes were for, if all that aggro was supposed to go outward or inward.
“Max, what the hell?!”
“You’re just not gonna answer? Gonna run away on me again? I’m right here!”
Chloe was about to get physical. Grab Max and force her to look her way, safety be damned, what was a car crash to them anyway?
But she raised her arm, and Max did look her way. Just a side glance and Chloe knew. She had grabbed her. She had crashed them. But it didn’t make a difference. They had rewound already.
Max’s eyes were colder than she’d ever seen them. “What are you going to do?” they seemed to say. Nothing. Chloe could do nothing.
So she stopped herself, and shut the hell up. It felt like the nerves would make her puke for a while, but they didn’t.
Max was back to her normal self by the time they pulled over for dinner, but Chloe had understood that she wasn’t being rescued here, she was being held hostage.
Of course. The one thing she’d wanted, all those years Max had gone AWOL on her little Seattle adventures, was to be with her. She would have given so much just for a call, hell, just for a text, and she’d got fuck all. Now Max was back, she wanted Max to let her go, and she’d get fuck all as well. She’d known for a while: the world just isn’t in Chloe Price’s corner.
And of course, Max still picked up on the running away bit, and she just had to bring it up again when they turned in for the night. Chloe was refusing her embrace, but it didn’t keep Max from talking. It seemed like she interpreted the rejection as insecurity somehow, like the problem was that she’d bailed all those years ago, and not that she wasn’t bailing now. So Chloe had to lay in the dark knowing Max was watching her, whispering variations of “I’ll never let you go.”
They didn’t talk much, beyond that point.
Every time Chloe tried to approach Max, she got that sinking feeling of deja vu again and knew they had rewound. Max wasn’t letting her interact. But Chloe was damned if she was gonna let her sweep it all under the rug. So she sulked. No kisses anymore, no hugs, no kind words, no arm rubs, not even a good morning. Max freaking Caulfield sure as shit was not about to outbitch Chloe Price.
Max bought a lot more smokes and booze than normal on their next restock, and she took to chain-smoking and keeping a buzz going. Chloe figured she probably just rewound whenever a cop saw her driving with a tallboy in hand.
“PSA, Max: that self-medication shit isn’t gonna work. Trust me, I’d know.”
Max stopped the car on the freeway shoulder. She let out something halfway between a sigh and a groan, protracted and tortured. She turned to look straight at Chloe, unflinching, unblinking in a way that had her on edge.
“Then drive.”
Chloe had talked shit in the face of skeevy bastards, bossed the heck out of sleazy creeps, faced knives, guns, and she’d never been speechless. Afraid, sure, but never so that she couldn’t speak. Yet she didn’t have a word to say. Couldn’t even think of one.
“Just drive,” Max repeated, and she got out of the car to switch places. Chloe crossed the cabin over to the driver seat.
For hours after, Max slept. She slept so much it was worrying. You could barely tell she was breathing. Chloe might have thought she’d stopped, if it weren’t for the moans and mutterings she let out while dreaming. She said Chloe’s name more than once, but when Chloe turned she was never awake. Seeing Max like this, Chloe wasn’t sure if she loved or hated her.
“I’m fucking cursed,” she swore, reaching for a smoke in her jacket pocket.
“Fucking cursed.”
Chloe finally woke Max up to take her to a diner for lunch. It was a beautiful day in North Dakota, white and clear. They were bundled up in the heavy coats Max had gotten for them, and for what little distance they walked Chloe found she could almost pretend this was a normal road trip between friends, a good time. Even after all the sleep she’d gotten, Max still looked rough, and she was nursing a cigarette already, but she didn’t look like death anymore. That was something.
“How long’s it been since you last took a picture, hippie?”
That seemed to get some light back in her eyes.
“Oh wow. I don’t even know.”
“Get me in the snow!”
A reluctant smile.
“What?”
“C’mon, aren’t you supposed to be a movie nerd? Capture that Fargo experience or whatever!”
Chloe plopped to the side of the road and started moving her arms with all the grace of a beat-up windshield wiper.
“There are no snow angels in Fargo!”
“Who cares?” asked Chloe, because Max’s voice had almost trailed into laughter right there and she was looking through her camera lens, searching for the best angle, so classic movies could suck it. “Just get me!”
Max finally took a picture and extended a hand for Chloe to take. Chloe grabbed it and pulled Max to the ground with her. She yelled and laughed as she fell. They found each other and wrestled around in the snow like they were kids again, until they were winded and content to just lay there, snuggled into each other.
“Hey Max.”
“Hmm?”
“This is actually hella cold.”
“Yeah.”
Their eyes met. Chloe could swear the softness was back. She found herself trailing her hand over Max’s cheek.
“Your fingers are cold!”
“So warm them, Super Max.”
Max put her hand over Chloe’s. Chloe could feel the dopey smile that took over her face.
“Kiss me?” Max asked.
“Don’t have to ask me again.”
They eventually made it into the diner. Things were suddenly good. It was crazy. It was like the sun coming out after a stor--
A storm.
A storm was on the news in the diner. Freak weather events. Disasters. Scientists baffled. Towns blown clear off the map, and the pattern was that of their trip.
“Max!”
Max was seeing it, of course she was. She must have known all along. It was her decision, after all.
“Fuck, I’m such an asshole, I almost forgot for a-- This can’t go on!”
Max wrinkled her nose at the sudden reality check.
“Why not?”
“Because the fucking world wants me dead, Max!”
“You want to do this here?”
They were getting a few glances, but there weren’t that many people around. Chloe couldn’t bring herself to care anyway.
“Sure, might as well. If you’re not going to shut me up, anyway. Or maybe you already have.”
“The world wants nothing. If it wanted you dead, why did I get the power to bring you back?
“Because—”
“Do you know how many times I lost you?! Do you know the things I went through to save you?!”
“I can’t know that, I’m not the time traveler here, it’s not fair of you to ask me to—”
“Why can’t you just be happy?! Aren’t you glad you’re not dead?”
The words hit like a sucker punch. Even Max deflated.
“Heh. You know that’s not exactly my forte.”
“Chloe. I chose this. You’ve seen the consequences. It’s all my fault. And you’re telling me that it was all for nothing?”
They weren’t avoiding each other. It was now or never. Chloe rested her hand over Max’s on the table.
“I’m sorry, Max. I know it sucks, I know I can’t even begin to understand the shit you went through, and you don’t want me telling you this, but I have to. I’ve outstayed my welcome here. This hell isn’t gonna stop unless I’m gone. You need to let me go.”
Max looked down at their hands, then at her coffee.
“Please, Max! Please.”
When she looked back up, her eyes were dead again.
“No way.”
Chloe put both hands on her face and cried while Max drank.
If anyone got too suspicious, Max could just rewind.
They were driving again. No snow anymore, that’s about all Chloe knew. She followed Max’s directions without question or interest. Her mind was trying to come up with an argument for her case.
“How long are you gonna be able to keep using that power anyway?”
Max took a drag off her cigarette. Chloe cracked open the window, because even she was getting tired of the fucking smoke in the cab. Max closed it.
“Look, you can look at pictures and go back in time, right? Why not look at one right now?”
Max was looking straight ahead, mouth slightly open. She didn’t blink much anymore. Her eyes were red.
“It’d be better than running, right? If you’re gonna abuse your power anyway? We can be detective prodigies of Arcadia Bay, put Jefferson in jail right from the day you show up at Blackwell. I mean we know where all the evidence is, it would be hard to explain, but it’s not like we don’t have eternity to come up with excuses. Why can’t we just… rewind the good times over and over, huh? How about that snow back in Dakota? You took a picture, we could just… go and be snow angels forever.”
A stream of blood poured out of Max’s nostrils. She didn’t even try to stop it or wipe it off. It was slowly seeping into the fabric of her sweater. It was like she didn’t notice. But she kept smoking.
“Max! Hey, Max! Do something! Holy shit, you’re creeping me out here! Hey!”
Chloe reached out, but Max immediately put her hand up, and Chloe knew what was coming.
Deja vu again. Chloe was at the wheel, she wanted to talk. But Max wouldn’t let her.
She turned on the radio.
Max turned it off.
They drove in silence, fleeing an inevitability. Days and nights blurred into each other. There was no joy or wonder to be found in the landscape, no glance or thought spared for the trees, the skies, the people. Just the asphalt, the wheel, the pedals, the mirrors. Just beer and coffee and tobacco; drive-by takeout, barely any nights in bed anymore, barely any showers, just the car, the car was the only place to be.
Just a mirror in a truck stop bathroom. Because they still washed up sometimes. Chloe looked at the zombie in that mirror. Sunken red eyes, dry lips, faded hair dye, dark roots, split ends. Her skull was staring at her and that bastard wasn’t even grinning.
She had scissors. She had a razor.
She had Max’s hand on her shoulder. She had no power. Chloe turned to look at her.
Before she could, Max was bent over the sink in a coughing fit.
Chloe reached out as though to hold her back, force of habit, and her fingers rested on Max’s neck, toying at the hair there. Max coughed and coughed. The scissors were still within reach. There was a wet sound. Max was wheezing. Chloe stood looking at her neck.
Max’s hand found hers while she caught her breath. There was nothing to say, nothing to do.
Neither of them mentioned the blood in the ceramic bowl when Max came up.
She was unsteady on her feet, heaving, eyes unfocused. With reddened knuckles, she tucked a lock of Chloe’s hair behind her ear.
“Chloe…”
Her body shook, but her voice was firm. And thin. A whisper of adoration.
Max would never let her go.
They got back to the car and both slept like the dead. Only rumbling thunder woke them up.
It felt like there was no sleep after that, but it didn’t feel like waking either.
A trance, a fever dream. A fevered nightmare. A show of sensations, utterly devoid of deliberate action. No words anymore, not even to clerks and waitresses. Just sights, smells, sounds, numbness and tingles, cold sweat and burning up. Chloe’s vision tunneled on any sharp object, any drop, any car on the opposite lane, any bottle of pills. It got so bad any damn wall made her want to smash her head to pieces.
She could never do it. So it shifted.
She had visions of pushing her fingers into Max’s eyes, crushing her windpipe, ripping her face to shreds with a broken bottle, stabbing her with a screwdriver, bashing her head in with a wrench, stomping her to a pulp.
Max looked at her like she knew, and for the first time in forever she smiled. A sallow twisted thing, but a smile still.
When the car was parked, they fucked. Frantically and frenziedly, drawing blood, picking at the wounds to prevent them healing. Afterward they crushed their bodies together and made broken sounds like laughing and sobbing.
Chloe must have tried to murder her. But she didn’t get the deja vu.
She saw the stripes on Max’s skin, deepening and multiplying. She couldn’t even remember when it started. Before Chloe knew it it was just a fact of life that Max scored them whenever she felt like it, even in the damn passenger seat right next to her.
Chloe looked at the blood welling from the fresh cuts and wanted to pry them open and lick it all up.
“Do you know how to tell when you love someone?”
Max’s voice was thick and raspy from disuse. It had been so long. The memories were faded and cracked like peeling paint and Chloe had almost forgotten what it sounded like.
“Loving someone,” Max turned to Chloe and intertwined their fingers, “is being okay with them destroying you.”
Chloe looked, and she understood. She stopped the car. They looked at each other. The smoke had cleared and they wondered where they had gone all this time.
They made love, as slow as they could, exploring their scarred bodies in the dimness. It was quiet and languid, they cast themselves into each other over and over until the first rumbles were heard in the distance.
“Chloe. I could never live without you,” Max said. She guided Chloe’s hands to her throat, “I’m sorry. I love you.”
Chloe squeezed. Max’s body tightened in response, but she caressed Chloe’s fingers. Soft. Gentle. She smiled. Chloe tried to smile, too.
They looked at each other through a haze of tears.
Until Max let go.
Chloe buried her face in Max’s chest.
“I love you,” she cried, “I love you.”
The storm was coming.