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This is the last time she’s going to see her.
Chloe backs away, shivering in the storm, arms wrapped around herself as she watches Max stare at her for one last time before she travels back to the end, to where it all began. For one long second she considers running back to her to kiss her again, but both of them know that if one falters, then the other would follow. So she has to stay put, accept her fate, and be happy she got to be with her one more time.
“I love you,” she calls. “I’ll always love you, Max Caulfield.”
Max sobs where she stands. She forces a smile, calling back, “I love you too, Chloe Price. I’ll love you forever.”
Chloe breaks in between a laugh and a sob and nods. Max’s stare lingers for a million more seconds before she turns away and focuses on the rain-soaked photograph in her hands. Chloe tears her gaze away from her and looks up at the lighthouse, hoping her father will come get her so that none of this would feel as scary. She closes her eyes and waits for the blackout, thinking that, at the very least, Max would finally be safe from all of this and that everybody who hurt Rachel will pay for everything they’ve done to her. She shuts her eyes tight, heart clanging within its cage; she focuses on the thunderclaps and the rain and the howling winds and the biting cold and the chattering of her teeth. Anytime now. Anytime now and she will be back in the bathroom with no memory of everything that’s happened and Nathan will end her there and then —
Max has seen her shot before. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must be like sporting a hole in her stomach, bleeding to her death. The very thought sends her chills, gives her the usual existential crisis she’s been having all week. The universe wants her to die . She’s terrified of how it’d feel to close one’s eyes forever with no undo buttons or time travel powers to make them open up again. To be lost in some unknown void. She’s never been convinced by the idea of the afterlife because what kind of god creates humans only to make them die and throw them into heaven or hell because of how they lived their lives? They didn’t choose to be born. And now they’re plucked from the world to either be punished or rewarded according to how they walked this shitty fucking earth because this so-called god is too lazy to fix things. This is all so unfair.
And dying is fucking scary.
And yet, here she is, choosing to die because hundreds of innocents are going to get killed on her behalf.
What’s taking Max so long?
Chloe opens her eyes.
Why hasn’t anything happened yet?
She turns back around to the spot where Max is — or was . Her jaw drops.
Nobody’s there anymore.
Chloe’s heart sinks. “Max?”
She stares open-mouthed at the ground where she stood a moment ago. She approaches and picks up an item on the ground and realizes that it’s the photograph of the blue butterfly from the Blackwell bathroom, stained with mud. Chloe shoots up from where she kneels and looks wildly around.
She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s fucking gone.
“Max?” Chloe shouts. “Max!”
~
She waited for the storm to subside in the lighthouse. She has lost track of time. She thinks she might’ve waited overnight, or one full day, for everything to calm. She isn’t quite sure anymore. She remained holed up in one corner of the lone building, either seated with her knees pulled up to her chest or lying flat on her back, listening to the tornado destroy everything in its path and wondering where Max had disappeared off to. If she made it back and stopped the storm from ever coming from that reality, or if time at last swallowed her whole for messing around so goddamn much. She couldn’t tell. All she could hope for is that Max succeeded. But then that would have to mean that Chloe should have died hours ago, and here she is… not so dead yet.
Why isn't she dead yet? She should be. Not them . Not the people Chloe begged Max to save.
(Oh, god.
Arcadia Bay. The people of Arcadia Bay.
Frank, Nathan, Justin, Warren, Victoria, David, Joyce —
Mom. My mom.)
Chloe never really thought about how Max’s powers actually worked. She could never tell if Max had already traveled back in time unless she said it out loud, or bent down to hide the blood dripping from her nose. Sure, she’s heard about opening up alternate timelines and causing rifts the more you go back, but it has never occurred to her what happens to the people left behind each time Max jumps back. Do they stay put? Do other copies of them pop up in other dimensions and continue where Max left off? Or do they simply rewind to square one like old video tapes? Chloe couldn’t tell. She couldn’t tell because she never truly saw Max travel through time, even though she’s proven that over and over. All she knows is that it has never affected her physically. As far as she’s aware, Max used to be just there, warning her before she does something stupid.
So what happened here? Did she jump into another dimension instead of truly going back? It happened when she tried to save Chloe’s father… right? There’s another copy of Chloe out there, also dead because she asked Max to end her suffering. But at least Mom and Dad would be together in that timeline and she will no longer be a pain in their asses moving forward.
A little price to pay so that Dad could continue living.
Chloe glances up. Soft light circles the walls and she hears the crash of ocean waves onto the shore of her wrecked town. There’s no more thunder.
If Max managed to go back, then…
I’m alone here.
~
The truck is still up and running and wasn’t thankfully squashed flat by the storm. She left it parked by the trees, away from the trail leading up to the lighthouse, enduring only a few dents that did no permanent damage (yet) to the poor old thing.
She’d passed by the Two Whales diner a half-hour ago. It’s been pulverized beyond recognition. She spent a soul-crushing hour there wailing in front of the establishment, unable to rush inside to see if Mom and the others made it. She tried to claw her way in but only got cuts and rust in return. She’d spotted Frank’s RV lying on its side, flattened, across the diner. She called out for him and Pompidou hoping they’d emerge from somewhere, safe and sound, but when nobody answered, she fell to the ground on all fours screaming until her throat hurt.
She doesn’t bother driving up to the block where her house used to be. There’s no point in checking. Mom is gone, Dad is gone, David is gone. Max is gone. She passes by buildings she doesn’t recognize anymore, avoiding broken lamp posts and cable lines and mangled bodies strewn all over the streets, trying not to look into those dead people for fear of encountering a familiar face. She wishes she had a joint with her right at this moment. Just to get rid of the trembling and the chattering of her teeth. She’s already smoked her last the day before, when she and Max waited in the Blackwell parking lot under the twin moons, and Chloe was thinking of ways on how to end Nathan Prescott’s life.
Nathan Prescott. It feels like a million years ago. Chloe wonders if he and Jefferson had been caught yet, in Max’s last travel through time. If Rachel has been found. If Kate is still alive. If Mom has discovered that her only daughter died in a fucking bathroom.
She hopes Max made it through. Because if she didn’t…
Chloe pulls over at the edge of town, some feet away from a ravaged gas station. She peers through the windshield and pauses for several seconds, or minutes, watching something move across the driveway.
Well, not something. Someone.
It’s a man. Tall, well-built, slinging a backpack over his shoulder as he starts walking away from the gas station. He turns to Chloe’s truck and both of them gape at one another in pure shock. He lets go of the pack all of a sudden and raises both hands to hold his head.
“David.” Chloe hurries out of the truck. She leaves the door open, sprinting towards her stepfather who began running in her direction as well. “David!”
“Oh my god, Chloe!” David yells back. Chloe skids to a halt in front of him as he grabs her in his arms with a sob. He almost crushes her but she doesn’t resist. She refrains herself from crying, letting the man whimper into her shoulder and causing the two of them to tremble in his relief. “Thank god. Thank god. You’re alive .”
Chloe stands stiffly there, unsure of what to do. She’s glad David is alive, she’s much happier to see him than she ever thought she would, but a David without Joyce —
Just like a Joyce without William —
She returns his embrace, sensing the awful tears rolling down her face. It’s still David. It’s still her stepfather with her and it means she’s no longer alone.
“I’d never thought I’d say this, but I’m so fucking glad to see you too, David. I’m hella fucking glad.” She shuts her eyes as she hugs him tight.
David pulls away, looking her up and down and up again. He checks on her quickly for injuries and stares at the cuts on her hands.
“Chloe, what happened to your hands?”
“I-I —” I tried to get Mom out of the diner. I tried to get them all out but I couldn’t get in. “I was — I-I was just — Where have you been? How did you get through that freak storm?”
David shakes his head bitterly. “The Dark Room.”
“The Dark Room?” She’d almost forgotten that it exists. She’d almost forgotten that it’s where Rachel died. Where Jefferson drugged and took photos of Max in an alternate timeline she’s never seen and would never want to see. “What about Jefferson? What happened to that motherfucker?”
At this, David turns away. He lets go of her hands and mumbles, “He got away.”
“What? What do you mean he got away? Didn’t you go with a couple cops to arrest him?”
He nods. “I did. But the power went out for a couple minutes and he fought his way out of the bunker. I-I think.”
“You think?”
David looks her in the eye for a second and turns away again. “I was knocked out. When everybody learned about the tornado eating up the whole town and the power went out, that punk Jefferson fought back. Next thing I knew, I awoke in that goddamned Dark Room all alone. I was stuck because of the storm.” He shudders. “I had to wait it all out. I couldn’t call you and Joyce from there, and all I could do was hope —” He stops. He stares at Chloe, glances at the truck from behind her then stares back at her again with wide eyes. “Chloe. Did you find your mom…? A-and where’s Max? Wasn’t she with you…? Where’s — where’s Joyce and Max?”
He grabs her by the shoulders and Chloe tries to step back, but his grip is too strong. She gulps, avoids his eyes, and glowers at the gas station behind him. Her lips start quivering. Biting her lower lip hard doesn’t change a thing. David doesn’t seem to notice; he shakes her a little too forcefully and she lets out a sort of yelp that is so uncharacteristic of the ever-so arrogant Chloe Price.
“Chloe?” David calls again. “Your mom? Joyce? Where is she? Did you find her?”
“I-I —” She tucks her head in between her shoulders and shakes it slowly from left to right. “I don’t — She’s — Mom is —”
“What?” David demands. “She’s what?”
Gone. Like Dad. Like everyone. Dead. Both dead. They’re all fucking dead. “The diner. Mom was in the diner.”
“Was?”
She nods. “She was in the diner.”
David grunts. “What do you mean ‘ was’ ?”
“She was in the fucking diner!” Chloe hisses. “She was there, and now she’s… She’s…” She looks up at him and shakes her head, recalling what she’d seen earlier. Ruins. The Two Whales Diner sign taken down by the storm. Dead bodies littered the streets, their blood washed out by the merciless rain. Mom trapped inside and she couldn't see her. “I couldn’t get to her. I-I couldn’t get to her.” She lowers her head. Sniffles. Chokes back a sob and a curse. “Mom’s… gone.”
David releases her at once. He says nothing. He takes a step back and Chloe doesn’t look at him for a while, doesn’t glance up to see how the pain on his face looks. She’s seen that before. Seen that on her own mother’s face when she told her Dad was killed in a car crash. She’s seen that look on her own face on a pile of broken glass shards a half hour ago when she realized nobody was coming out of the diner. She doesn’t want to see that look on David’s face now.
She hates it too much.
David breathes out in front of her hoarsely. There is a whimper here and a whine there, and he paces back and forth then squats out in front of the gas station. Chloe can see him standing back up in the corner of her eye and hears another whimper and a string of broken words.
“My wife… dead… Joyce… oh, god… oh, god .”
Chloe finally looks up at him. His back is turned on her. One hand is on his hip and the other is spread somewhere over his face. His broad shoulders quiver and Chloe finds him smaller and weaker than she’s used to seeing. A tiny sob slips out of her lips. She slaps both hands to her mouth as her stepfather wheels back to her with red eyes. Her shoulders quake under the extreme effort of not breaking down before him.
“Chloe…,” he calls softly. “W-What about… what about Max?”
She stares at him again, hands over her mouth. She shakes her head once. Twice. Thrice. She shakes it four more times as more tears burst down her face and all she can see is David’s blurred silhouette.
I don’t know where she is. She’s supposed to go back in time to save everyone. She’s supposed to go back to let me die. “She… didn’t make it either…,” she whispers. “Nobody else made it. Nobody.”
David falls to his knees, weeping aloud. His cry cuts like a knife through the silence and Chloe hurries towards him, falling on her knees too.
They begin to cry together on the ground.
~
Both of them agreed that neither of them wanted the company of other people who didn’t know or understand what truly happened, so David drove them away for hours and completely ignored the motels they’d passed by. There was still no signal anywhere which was fine by them. There’s nothing important in the news anymore. Everyone they’ve ever known and loved is dead, and so keeping up with the news would be mere background noise that would eat them up later on.
They parked off the road and onto a hill overlooking a distant shore that strongly reminds Chloe of Arcadia Bay. She doesn’t know why David chose this particular spot but she never bothered to ask. He'd parked her truck feet away from the mouth of a dense forest, under the shade of trees, but with a good enough view of the ocean and the moon. They sat there for a long while watching the waves crash into the sands. Chloe turns away, seeing the tornado in the back of her head tearing through the Bay, and the dead whales, and right into the town —
“I’ll…” David hesitates then gulps before resuming, “I’ll go get us something to eat. I, uh, managed to grab some food from Jefferson’s stash. Anything you want?”
Chloe leans her head against the window and crosses her arms. “I’m not hungry.”
There’s silence for a few seconds.
“All right,” David says. “But I’ll get you something to drink. That cool?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
David slips out of the truck with a squeal as his weight is lifted off the seat. Chloe feels the truck bounce a little but she doesn’t move. Her gaze remains fixed on the shore.
There are soft thuds from the back of the truck. She hears the clinking of cans and a little later David reappears and retakes his seat on the driver’s side, holding a can of pears in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. He offers Chloe the bottle, sighs in his seat, and opens the can with his army knife. There is a metallic pop! and the sweet scent of fruit wafts through Chloe’s nostrils. David fishes out a spoon sticking out of his breast pocket and begins to eat. He doesn’t bother closing the door by his side.
He eats fast, chewing aloud. Chloe figures he hadn’t eaten the night before, too worried and too terrified for his family to even think about his appetite. She hears her stomach grumble a little and she fidgets, but thankfully David notices and hears nothing. She removes the cap from the water bottle, downs it in three big gulps then sighs, chucking the bottle out the window and crossing her arms again to watch the faraway shore. Her eyes feel heavy. She hadn’t slept yet. She doesn’t want to. She’s terrified of the dreams, terrified of seeing more people other than her father.
And if she sees Max, then what would that mean…?
David sighs again and sets his now-empty can onto the dashboard, slipping the spoon inside. He leans back and stares ahead at the dark waters with a blank look on his face.
“What’re we doing here?” Chloe begins quietly.
He shrugs.
“What’re we going to do now?”
David shrugs again. Chloe turns to look at him. She tries to think of something else to say, but her mind feels as foggy as her stomach right now. She can always step out of the truck and fumble through David’s pack, but she’s too exhausted to do so. She stays in her seat and shudders. The air is neither warm nor cold, but the chills persist anyway and leaves her shivering where she sits.
There’s nowhere to go. No home to return to. No Joyce to cook her dinner, no Rachel to mess shit up with, and no Max to have fun with. There’s nothing left for her.
When she said she wanted to leave Arcadia Bay, she meant that. But she never said she wanted to leave it in pieces.
“I still can’t believe it’s all gone,” she says. “That we can’t go back.”
David says nothing.
“I wanted to leave the town with Rachel and be her manager or her personal assistant or walk the runway with her or some shit. I wanted to send you guys postcards and laugh at you because we’re living the life and you guys are still stuck in lil’ shitty Arcadia Bay. I wanted to leave the town and come back one day when I’m filthy rich, make Mom proud, and maybe even you. But… not like this.”
David glances her way at last.
“I just wanted to live a normal life for once,” Chloe chokes. “I can’t believe all of this happened. I can’t believe all of this happened just because —” She stops.
Because what? Because Max had powers and the heavens itself wanted her to die but both of them had been so selfish to let destiny take its course? And now she doesn’t even know where Max is, or what has happened to her. She begins to think that maybe her best friend did die, not because of the storm, but because of her powers, and she wonders if it killed her because Chloe had been alive for way longer than necessary. She tries to banish the thought and hopes Max at least made it to another timeline where she accomplished her mission and everyone is safe. Chloe wouldn’t want her to die like Rachel, to die lost and forgotten, to die trapped in the middle of endless timelines and with her body and soul trapped in a space no man has ever stepped foot in before.
Chloe could feel her heart shatter a million times over, again. Why does everyone she’s ever loved die such horrible deaths?
You don’t even know for sure that Max is dead, dumbass.
She doesn’t continue her sentence. If David could read minds, would he blame her for everything? Would he blame her for the storm? Would he have wanted her to die?
“You don’t have to be stuck with me, y’know,” Chloe says all of a sudden. “I gave you shit. Treated you like shit. And now you’re stuck with me and I’m stuck with you.”
David chuckles, causing her to stare. There’s hardly any humor on his face.
“I’m the one who gave you a hard time, Chloe. I treated you like shit. I hit you. Said mean things to you in front of your mom. I can always say that I did all of those things to discipline you and to turn you into a better person, but that doesn’t justify all the awful things I’ve done. You needed love and understanding and nurturing, but instead, I treated you like a soldier. And I treated all those kids like soldiers. I ran with my… my fucking paranoia and led Kate Marsh to her doom. Led you farther away from her — from Joyce . And now that it’s all gone, I… I should’ve been better. I should have .” He sniffles, wiping an arm over his face. “Now I can’t be better. I can’t prove myself. I lost my home — our home. And we have to live with… with whatever this is we’re facing. And you’re stuck with me. Your sorry excuse of a stepfather.”
Chloe wipes both her bandaged hands over her eyes, a hollow laugh escaping her lips which turns into a choked sob. She clamps her mouth shut and reaches out to pat David on the shoulder. He squeezes her hand and for once, she does not recoil.
“What the hell,” she mutters. “We’re both shitty people, huh?”
David snorts weakly. “I guess we are.”
“And we’re… stuck with each other.”
“We are.”
“I wish Mom were with us.”
Tears fall down David’s face. “Me too, Chloe. Me too.”
Chloe lets go of his shoulder and fingers all the bracelets wrapped around her right wrist, tracing the tattooed flowers over the length of her forearm. Chirps from the trees and the distant crashing of waves fill the silence. She thinks she heard a low rumble of thunder among them but decides it’s just one of the new things she would hear every day from now on, apart from the other voices already keeping her company whenever she’s alone.
Neither of them talk for the remainder of the night.