Chapter Text
Max Caulfield looked at the half-empty whiskey bottle on the sticky roadside bar's table. Somehow, despite everything, despite loving each other so intensely, Max had still fucked up and driven Chloe away.
She could still remember the day, a year ago tonight in Sedona, Arizona, which is why she was currently seeking alcohol-induced oblivion (She'd tried hard drugs but it reminded her of too many good nights Stoning with Chloe for her to bear the feeling). Chloe had always been scary smart and, despite the thrills and distractions of their journey across the continental US together, she'd been aware of the guilt of the destruction of Arcadia Bay hanging over her girlfriend.
“Damn, Max,” Chloe remarked at her downcast girlfriend through the haze of weed smoke (and the haze in their thoughts of its neurochemical effects). “I know that time doesn’t heal all wounds but… Dog almighty Maximum Grief! Can’t you even start to let it go?”
Looking back, Max blamed the weed for her disastrous next choice and that was why she’d sworn off of the shit for life. “Time isn't enough, Chloe. It will never be enough; not when their blood is on my fucking hands!”
Chloe sat upright, sneering in a mocking manner. “Yeah, because you’re Maximum Godhood! You can predict the future and knew that the Bay was gonna be flattened!” Chloe snorted mockingly. “Gonna have to stop giving you the good stuff, babe; starting to make you have solipsistic delusions!” Chloe started laughing but it was cut off by Max’s next words.
“But I did know in advance Chloe! So did you!” You stupid, bitch! Shut up! Max screamed in her head. Just shut the fuck up! Do you want to ruin everything? It was too late though. Lubricated by the weed, all the lies she’d told Chloe, all the hiding behind their happiness together and the tidal wave of guilt she felt because of it couldn’t be held back anymore.
It all came out: Her rewind powers and pause powers; she’d cited saving Kate as proof and how the two of them had faced the Storm together. Chloe was silent, her eyes wide open in shock. “As we stood by the Lighthouse together for the first time, watching the Storm bear down on the town. I told you that I could save you or I could save the Bay; that the Storm was because of my choices! That you should be dead and you would be but for me; that I could undo it all and save the town or that I could let them all die so that you and I would have a future together!” Max made a sobbing sound. “You… you said that dying for hundreds of people made sense and….” Max trailed off
Chloe was suddenly by Max and touched her face. “And what, Max?”
Max looked up, her face shining with love and trust. “And you told me that you trusted me to make the right decision and that only I could make it.”
Chloe stood up straight and started to pace. “So, let me get this straight. You knew about the Storm and you could have prevented it. However you chose not to do so. Am I missing something?”
“You would have died,” Max protested lamely. “Chloe, the only way to stop it would have been to let Nathan shoot you dead in the restroom that day.”
Chloe frowned and nodded. “Understood. In exchange, you threw away the lives of everyone else you knew. All your school friends, even that Kate girl you liked so much, that bitch Victoria Chase and even my mom because... why?” Max was shocked. She hadn’t heard Chloe call Joyce Price ‘mom’ since before her involuntary trip to Seattle and had believed that the two women were thoroughly estranged long before the older Price’s death. She opened her mouth but Chloe overrode her. “Because you wanted me as your… blue-haired fuck toy? Does that cover it?”
“No! I loved you Chloe! I couldn’t live without you! I had gone to so much effort to keep you alive over those weeks… I can’t remember the number of times I rewound to undo you dying!”
“Okay, well thanks for that Maximum arrogance but did you really think that I’d want Mom to die for me? Did you think that I’d want my hometown levelled? If you thought that, then you never knew me at all, did you?” Chloe made a disgusted noise. “This is you though, isn’t it, Max? You ghosted me for five years because you were so damn afraid of my grief and the emotional labour that being my friend would cost you. You were so scared of dealing with my ‘untimely death’ that you ended up breaking the fucking universe so completely that only an act of mass murder could put it back together. Am I missing anything?”
Max was blinded by tears and could barely get her vocal chords to work. “I… It was all because I love you,” she protested. “I couldn’t handle seeing you hurt or deal with you being gone before… before I could apologise for all of what happened since I left for Seattle!”
Chloe frowned. “So. you missed all those times I cried myself to sleep because mom had died not knowing that I loved her and that I forgave her?” the punk asked viciously. “No, Max. It was a selfish act in a lifetime of selfish acts.” Ignoring Max’s broken sobs, Chloe stormed out of the room and into the motel room’s connected bedroom area; Max could hear drawers and the wardrobe doors slamming as Chloe grabbed her stuff.
When she came back, she was carrying her travel duffel into which she started stuffing various personal items that were on the sofa. “W… What…? Where are you going?” Max asked lamely through the tears and snot streaming down her face.
“I don’t know; out? Away; away from you, at least.”
“Chloe, don’t! I love…”
Chloe had never struck Max before, even when as high as a kite of drunk as a skunk. So the backhanded slap to the mouth she now received left the hipster’s mind and body reeling. “DON’T say that, you self-righteous bitch! I don’t know who you are and what happened to the girl who I thought was my childhood best friend but she isn't you. I don’t know you, Caulfield. I don’t think that I ever knew you! I sure as hell can’t stand the thought of even looking at you right now for fear I’ll just succumb to the urge to snap your neck like a twig!” At the hate she’d seen in Chloe’s expression, Max began to bawl loudly as Chloe finished collecting her property and stomped towards the motel room’s main door.
“Chloe! Please! Don’t go! What will I do?” Max cried out desperately.
Chloe stopped and looked towards her and Max wished with all her heart that Chloe’s face was still twisted with hate. Instead, far more damning, was the pity and sadness that she saw there. “You’ll be okay, Max,” Chloe said quietly. “You’ll look out for yourself, figure something out and be okay. That’s what you’re good at, after all, isn’t it? Being okay in the end, no matter what happens to anyone else?”
Max didn’t unfreeze until the door banged shut. Her rewind powers had stopped working after the Storm but that didn’t stop Max trying to use them for another chance with Chloe for nearly an hour. In her heart, she knew that the Universe had taken them away because she was unworthy of them.
All for nothing, was the only thing Max could think, or focus on for hours. All for nothing; all for nothing!
The motel’s owner ultimately had to break into the room and yell at the catatonic hipster, who had been sitting unmoving in a growing pool of her own filth for a day, to leave or that she’d call the cops. Too messed up to disobey, Max did so, nearly crawling out of the complex and back onto the road.
Max did try to end herself a few times after realising that Chloe had blocked her number and on social media but she couldn’t think of anything painless enough that she wouldn’t be afraid to do it. So, she drank herself into a stupor every day for weeks, hoping that her body would just give out from a lack of self-care. Then, one day on a highway in Oregon, she found herself staring at a sign soliciting donations for ‘The Children of the Storm’, a charity that cared for the survivors of Arcadia Bay, especially orphaned children. Much to Max’s surprise, she did something that she hadn’t done for over five years: She thought of Kate Marsh and her two younger sisters, Lynn and Charlotte.
The next few days were a frantic blur of borderline-demented work. Max had kept her polaroids from Blackwell, of all her friends and of the people of the town of Arcadia Bay. She scanned each one into electronic form on her laptop. She now organised them into categories and put them together with some hastily-drafted notes into an anthology she called In Memoriam. She offered it to the charity without asking for a penny in return and she was surprised and pleased to learn that the trustees had published her work and had made a tidy sum for their good cause.
Only a small thing but at least that’s some of the red ink wiped off of my ledger, Max decided.
~*~*~
“Max, there’s someone who wants to talk to you!” Kate Marsh, called out from the door of their shared studio apartment to her best friend and long-term roommate, Max Caulfield, MA (visual arts).
Max turned from her work on her birthday gift to Joyce Price, an anthology of photographs of Chloe that she was calling “Blue-Haired Free Spirit”. “I’m coming Kate!” she said. Arriving at the front door, she stepped around a peacefully-smiling Kate and confronted the smiling, middle-eastern woman standing at the door. “Ms Caulfield?” Max nodded. “The same Max Caulfield who authored Homo Urbanis and Terra Americana during her BA studies?” Max blushed slightly at the reminder of her two breakout works that turned her into a published artist. “I am Dr Yasmin Fayyad, president of Celadon University.”
Max had heard of Celadon University in Vermont; Kate had suggested the institution for their post-graduate courses but Max, still suffering intermittent bursts of depression after Chloe’s death that required medication and personal care, didn’t want to travel too far from Seattle and her parents’ support. That meant staying at the University of Washington. However, she knew that Celadon was at the top of the Ivy League’s list of Liberal Arts colleges. “Doctor Fayyad, how can I help you?”
“May I come in, Ms Caulfield?”
~*~*~
Max looked at the elegant Syrian-looking woman sitting on the other side of the bar table, seemingly not in any way disturbed by Max’s ragged appearance or the sticky state of the furniture. The phone call from Max's parents had been unexpected but she had been fascinated enough to arrange a rendezvous with this enquirer. “I am a great personal fan of In Memoriam, Ms Caulfield; you have an eye for portraiture and biographical art. I am also very impressed by the quality of the landscape art that you have been publishing in various photography magazines of late as well as your older works from across the country since the destruction of Arcadia Bay.”
Max shook her head. “Thank you, Doctor Fayyad,” she said, glad that she hadn’t drank for a few days so that the slur of alcohol was not audible in her voice. “If you’re interested in a commission…”
“Not that, Ms Caulfield… At least not just that. The Board of Trustees at Celadon University is interested in having its own artist in residence to record the day-to-day events and the stories of our faculty and students. Our Professor of Creative Non-Fiction recommended you based on your work done immediately after the Arcadia Bay tragedy and I have been reviewing your portfolio since then.”
Max shook her head. “I’m sorry… what?” Feyyed laughed at the brunette hipster’s reaction. “Dr Feyyed, this is very flattering if I’m understanding you correctly but you understand that I’m a high-scool dropout? That I've never even taken an undergraduate course?”
“Paper qualifications are not of great importance to become part of Celadon’s faculty, Ms Caulfied. What matters is the skill and dedication that you can bring to your art.” Max opened and closed her mouth a little whilst trying to find some kind of reply. “We’ll enrol you in BA visual arts if it’s that important to you and will support you up to graduating with a Master’s Degree.”
“Wait… A full ride up to Master’s level?” Max’s head felt like it was spinning. “In exchange for a few photographs?”
“Oh, not just a few, Ms Caulfield. We’d be commissioning full photographic almanacks of each academic year and its notable personalities as well as illustration for our staff profiles.” Dr Fayyad sat back. “I’ve been doing my research with Professor Hunter’s help, Maxine. I know that you went through a horrible breakup with your fellow survivor or Blackwall Academy. I know that you have been drifting around the West Coast states for a year, trying to find some way to find meaning to your life… or maybe a way to end it. However, the fact is such that a wander’s life is a waste for someone of your talent. I am sure that we can find a way to make those talents into a tool to help people.”
Max chuckled brokenly. “If you knew just why I had my ‘bad breakup’, Doctor…”
“I'm willing to take a risk on this, Max… That is the mode of address you prefer, is it not? I pride myself on being a judge of character and that tells me that you are worth taking that risk.”
Max’s mind raced as hse considered the woman’s words. Help others; she thought. Not just ‘look out for myself but help others through my art. That’s the best way to prove to Chloe that I’ve learned my lesson. She nodded firmly, her mind switching smoothly over to ‘barter’ mode.
~*~*~
“That is very generous, Doctor,” Kate said, her gentle, sweet voice from behind her shoulder shocking Max out of her spiralling thoughts. “I think that Max may be interested in this, aren’t you?”
Max scowled at her best friend and occasional lover for her presumption. Yes, this was Kate: Not letting Max hide behind her mental illness and self-worth issues. “Ma’am…” she began lamely.
Surprisingly, Fayyad reached out and touched Max’s hand. “I am aware of your past, Ms Caulfield. To lose a dear friend in a moment of drug-fuelled violence is one of the curses of our times and I can understand the scars it has left. However, what your work has proven is that you can be more than a survivor of such a trauma. I believe that you can make not just your art but your future career as a lecturer at Celadon the greatest tribute to your dead friend that could be.”
Max blinked furiously to clear the tears from her eyes. To make a body of work that served as a tribute to Chloe? Max could not have higher aspiration and, at that moment, she knew that this was something that she could do and would do. “I can promise nothing, Ma’am, but I would be glad to visit your institution and learn more about the program you’re offering and how I could help.”
~*~*~
On both sides of the Veil Between Worlds, a Max Caulfield thought, in a tone of defiance: This one's for you, Chloe!