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When that truck squealed to a stop in front of the old Abraxas house, Max wasn’t sure if she was about to get into deep shit or if she was being rescued. What she certainly never expected was the person that walked confidently out into the bright lights, silhouetted like an ethereal being brought back from the dead.
Because that was exactly what Chloe was—dead. Supposed to be, at least.
Max’s heart felt like it came to a complete standstill when Chloe stepped into the light, a familiar smirk on her face, her hair dyed green. She was tall and beautiful and not real. She couldn’t be real.
“Chloe?” she’d managed to gasp out, her entire focus settled only on the woman in front of her.
Chloe didn’t seem to notice the edge of devastation in her voice, or the trembling way Max stumbled forward and reached for her, fingers clasping around her forearms.
“We should go,” Chloe said, and her voice was exactly as Max remembered it but—matured, different. The same but different.
“How are you here?”
“Lots to talk about.” She’d gone over to her truck, turned to find Max still rooted to the spot. “Let’s go, Max!”
Sirens approached angrily and she had to force herself to snap back to reality, because Chloe was right, they needed to flee. She was not allowed to be there. There was no real time for Max to have an internal crisis.
The drive was silent and agonizing, and once they got to Hellerton house, Max was struggling to keep herself together. Chloe was alive and breathing, right there in front of her, but she was struggling to believe it.
Max kept hearing that gunshot in her head. Kept flashing back to Blackwell, to that bathroom and those bleak tile walls. Kept hearing Chloe’s cry, Nathan’s fleeing footsteps. She remembered every second that ticked by as Chloe bled to death, and Max just sat there and let it happen.
Even so many years later, Max still found herself shooting up in bed, soaked through with sweat and tears pouring down her face. She relived that day over and over, and she never forgave herself for it.
Chloe died never knowing how much Max loved her, how much she was loved in general. She died thinking everyone she cared about had abandoned her. That was something that Max could never forgive herself for, even if she knew she’d made the right decision, the one Chloe wanted her to make.
But if Max could bring herself to redo it, to go back one last time, she would choose Chloe. Over and over again, she would choose Chloe.
Now, after all those years of heartache, grief and pain, Chloe was here?
Max barely spoke. She was in shock—one second away from total annihilation. Chloe seemed so at ease, so calm despite it all, but when she asked if she could grab a few hours of sleep before they talked about everything, she finally seemed to clock that something was severely wrong. But she didn’t ask, not yet. Thank god.
Chloe borrowed a set of Max’s pajamas and slipped into her bed, and Max sat there on the stairs and watched her. It was perhaps weird and creepy, but it was… unbelievable. Max was terrified that if she turned away, if she dared to blink, Chloe would disappear.
That gave her a lot of time to think about things and she came to one conclusion. When she merged the two timelines, she must have brought Chloe back. Living Safi timeline must have also had living Chloe, and merging them both meant that Chloe… in this new timeline, Chloe was never sacrificed. That meant that in the alternative timeline, Max had chosen her.
The grief and sadness was overwhelming. Max didn’t want to wake her, so she stood and rushed down the stairs, a hand pressed to her mouth to keep those damn sobs inside. She collapsed on her couch and squeezed her eyes tightly.
She did her breathing exercises and gaslit herself that everything was fine, that she would recover from this and move on, that this hadn’t just ripped open a decade old wound that had never closed right—that always seemed to ooze whenever she thought too much about it.
How would she even talk to Chloe? What did this Chloe know about her? She laid there on the couch, eyes closed so tightly that she ended up falling sleep—or perhaps blacking out from the way her heart was fucking pounding.
Max was woken by the clinking of glasses. She woke, confused, and thought for a moment that Safi was bustling about in her kitchen. Her memories took a while to come back to her, so she was completely unaware as she stood and stumbled over to the kitchen.
And there, still in Max’s clothes, was Chloe. Her hair was a little messy, like she’d used her fingers to comb it back after she slept, and she looked so soft and… and alive.
She spotted Max standing there and she hesitated, reaching for the kettle. Her eyes darted from Max to the two mugs and she smiled slightly.
“Hey Max, sorry if I woke you.” She straightened and rubbed the back of her neck. “Figured I’d make us some coffee. I’m still wiped out from that long drive.”
Max opened her mouth to say no, it’s fine you can wake me whenever, but the words got stuck in her throat. Her fucking breath got stuck in her throat, because she was hit with emotion again.
Chloe Price was alive, in her kitchen, making coffee like it was the most normal thing in the world.
Pain swept through her like a wave, cresting higher and higher, gathering all that agony for one final flood. Max thought she was keeping it together, but she wasn’t. This was what years and years of suppression, of pain and anguish did to a person.
It simply shattered them.
Max’s vision wavered and nearly went black, and her ears kept ringing with that fucking gunshot over and over and over and over—
“Max? Max! Fuck, what’s wrong?”
Who was screaming and crying like that? It wasn’t Chloe—oh, it was Max.
She’d collapsed on the ground, folded into herself and the floodgates opened. That last week with Chloe, a week that technically never happened, that existed solely in Max’s heart—that replayed in her mind on a loop.
Warm arms encircled her and that just made Max cry even harder, because Chloe smelled so good, just like how Max remembered, even though she shouldn’t. She physically never had Chloe for that week. Never actually got to laugh with her, touch her… fall in love with her.
They were shadows and echoes that Max had longed to forget, just to spare herself the pain they caused. But she was the last piece honouring Chloe, and she could never bring herself to forget it. Any of it. The sacrifice Chloe had made? That had been big, and no one even fucking knew about it.
“How are you here?” Max sobbed, her voice terribly broken and swallowed by tears.
Somehow, she’d ended up cradled on Chloe’s lap. Wherever their skin touched, Max felt like she was burning. She felt as though she was being cremated by the grief in her chest.
“I drove here?” Chloe answered, clearly confused.
Somehow that pulled a broken laugh from Max in between all the sobs.
“You drove here,” she repeated, laughing again.
Chloe’s hold on her tightened. “Max, you’re really freaking me out here. I thought you’d take our break-up hard, but not like this—”
Max laughed again, interrupting Chloe’s words, but then she just started crying again.
They’d broken up? Alternative Max had fucking dated Chloe, and they broke up? Max felt furious, then a crushing, terrible sadness. This was what she’d missed out on, wasn’t it? She never chose Chloe, chose to save Arcadia Bay instead, and left herself alone.
Because as much as she tried, there was no moving on from that. The trauma, the memories, they were too much. Max fled Arcadia Bay right after the funeral, taking part time jobs wherever she ended up so that she could afford food. She did photography on the side, until that became something more substantial.
The pain was captured in every one of her photos. Abandoned, desolate spaces. Places with lost potential—it was an echo of what Max felt each and every day.
Now, to find out that there was a different version of herself who got to have Chloe, that was painful. This version of Max didn’t remember that. Never experienced that. Whatever she did with the merging, she hadn’t merged with her alternative Max.
What the fuck did that even mean?
“Dude, I’m really freaked the fuck out here,” Chloe said.
Max needed to get her shit together. She’d done her screaming and crying, and as much as she was struggling to believe it, Chloe was actually fucking alive and she was sitting there in her arms. She could pick at her old wounds later, now she needed to let Chloe know she hadn’t lost her damn mind.
“Sorry,” she said, pulling away slightly and wiping at her wet face. Her heart skipped when Chloe pulled her right back in and didn’t let her go.
“No, you’re staying right the fuck here until you stop looking like that.”
Max let out a soft, tired sigh. “Like what?”
Chloe went silent, went still, then she settled her chin on top of Max’s head. “Like… like I died, or something.”
Max didn’t know how to respond to that. How would Chloe take the news, that Max wasn’t her Max? That those memories she had were hers alone? Would this Chloe still love this version of Max?
Was there ever a timeline, a reality, where things ever just worked out for them? Was this their chance to finally have some happiness, or was this just another cruel trick of fate?
“I don’t know if you’ll even believe me,” Max admitted quietly, fingers curling tight against the shirt Chloe wore. It was warm from her body heat.
Chloe snorted. “You can rewind time, Max. I don’t think anything can surprise me at this point.”
Okay, so Chloe knowing about her powers was still a thing. But she clearly didn’t know about the timeline hopping.
“Before… Before I tell you anything, I just need you to know, Chloe that I… I love you.”
Chloe took in a short, sharp breath. “I love you too, Max. I never stopped loving you. I… fuck, I know I ended things when it all got too much but I never, ever stopped loving you.”
Max sniffled. “Chloe, I’m not your Max.”
“What… what do you mean by that?”
She started to pull away and Max let her, the pain almost caving her chest in with the way Chloe was looking at her, all wounded and surprised.
“I mean it literally,” Max clarified. “I merged two different timelines. I am not the Max from yours, and you aren’t the Chloe from mine.”
Chloe’s brows connected. “This is a cruel prank, you know.”
“It’s not a prank.” She rubbed her hands over her face, still wet with tears. “Fuck, I wish it were. But… but you’re here.” She uncovered her face, felt fresh tears well and spill. She studied Chloe’s face and felt pulled apart by her—being here, being grown and beautiful, being alive.
Chloe’s furrow deepened as she watched Max, then her eyes slightly widened and she must have put the pieces together. “I’m dead in your timeline, aren’t I?”
Max bit down on her lip. Surely she’d cried enough.
Chloe stood suddenly, leaving Max there on the floor. That was fine, she didn’t have the energy to get up. To stand by herself, support her own weight. She’d been held down by too much for too long.
“That explains it,” Chloe said to herself, pacing. “I’ve been having these fucked up dreams. I see this woman in my dreams, and she keeps getting killed. Then it’s me and I’m dying on the floor at fucking Blackwell.”
That finally gave Max the strength to get up. She went over to Chloe and gently took her hand, her own fingers trembling.
“You remember it?” she asked, voice soft. “Blackwell… Nathan… Dying?”
Chloe swallowed thickly and glanced away, a storm of emotions filling her eyes. “I remember a storm tearing Arcadia Bay apart. I remember my mother dying. But she’s alive, you know? She’s posting and everything. Arcadia Bay is still standing, like it was never destroyed. Like we—” her sentence cut off as she inhaled shakily.
Max’s own chest felt tight, hearing this from Chloe. Hearing what the alternative choice meant.
“I remember us running away together to escape the horror of it all. I remember nights with you, Max. That storm, your powers, me dying before you saved me… all of that fucked you so resolutely. It was the guilt that tore us apart, the trauma. I couldn’t handle seeing you suffer, and I thought… I thought if I left you, you’d be able to forget it and move on. I hoped that you would forget me and be able to live again.”
Max choked on a sob. “Chloe, no matter what fucked up timeline or what reality, I will never, ever forget you. In my timeline, I chose to save Arcadia Bay.” Chloe looked at her when she said that, not shocked or upset, but sad, and Max flinched. “I went back and I let Nathan shoot you. I… I sat in that bathroom and I listened to your last breaths, and I just—I—I can’t—”
Chloe was in front of her again, arms wrapped around her. Max felt lips press to her temple and she trembled and shook. She tried to hold her tears in, but talking about it was so painful she could barely contain it.
“I’m so sorry,” Chloe said softly, pressing kisses against her hair. “I’m so sorry you ever had to make that choice, Max. Fuck, I wish I could have taken that from you.”
Max shook her head. “I’d do it all over again for you. I just… I wish I’d chosen you.”
“You did, Supermax.” Chloe pulled her in tighter. “You listened to me and you saved the town over one insignificant life.”
“Fuck that,” Max argued, “your life has never been insignificant. I love you with every fibre of my being, Chloe Price. I always have and I always will. Through time and death and horror. And it kills me to know that I could have had time with you if I’d just chosen you.”
Chloe gently guided them over to the couch and Max let her. Let Chloe pull her down onto her lap again, comfort and hold her. She smelled so good, she was so soft and warm. Max wanted to just melt into her. She wanted to become just a part of Chloe, no longer conscious of herself or her needs.
“I’m not your Max,” she repeated, voice broken, bleeding. She felt so cut open.
Chloe made a soft, annoyed noise in her chest. “Well, who the fuck cares?”
“You should.”
“I don’t. You’re still Max.”
“I’m not yours, though. I’ve never been. I’ve only ever kissed you once and that was the day I chose to sacrifice you. And even then, I rewound it. It never even happened.”
Chloe sighed. “Well, Max, something is clearly happening here at Caledon. That’s why I came here, because I’m getting these weird dreams and visions, and memories that aren’t mine. Whatever happens now, I’m here. I’m alive. If you want, you can have the chance to be with me.”
Max just burrowed her face deeper against Chloe’s chest. “You don’t know the ways grieving you has changed me.”
“Maybe I want to.”
Laughing brokenly, Max pulled away just so she could see if Chloe was actually serious about this. She was—her eyes were firm, mouth pressed into a line. Max could see it then, all the stress and worry she had been carrying. The exhaustion from her long drive still showed in her expression, in the shadows beneath her eyes.
She couldn’t help it, though, her eyes dipped down to Chloe’s lips. Chloe noticed, of course, and she lifted a single brow.
Despite the anguish still present and the pain that was almost so tangible Max could taste its bitterness, Chloe brought lightness back to her.
“What, you want to see what you’ve been missing?” Chloe asked her, pointing at her lips.
Max flushed. “You’re still a jerk, I see.”
“Hey, I didn’t change that much with age.”
Max snorted, then grew still. It was like every single time she just took Chloe in, she was fucking gut punched. But this was better than the emptiness that’d been there before in Chloe’s absence. Max would take this any day.
“Can I?” she asked softly, afraid.
Chloe’s expression grew soft and affectionate. “I told you. You’re still Max. So yeah, kiss me.”
Max did, and the touch of their lips was everything. It was not like that kiss they’d shared at the end of everything. This one was warm and tender, filled with eagerness and promise. It was the sort of kiss that made Max want to sob all over again, but also helped to soothe the jagged edges of her broken heart.
Chloe was right—whatever she’d done to merge the timelines, whatever was going on at Caledon, they were together at last.
When they broke away, they were both flushed and breathing hard. Chloe’s eyes were glossy, filled with emotion.
“God, can’t believe I ever chose to leave this.”
Max let her fingertips trail along Chloe’s jawline, admiring the softness and realness of her skin. That sentiment really hit home, but definitely harder for her.
“Yeah,” she agreed, smiling sadly, “me too.”
Chloe leaned into her touch, eyes fluttering closed. “Whatever happens, we’re partners. Got it? Like always.”
Max swallowed. “Partners in time.”
Chloe gave her a familiar mischievous smirk. “And partners in crime.”
She was about to argue that one, Chloe’s favourite addition to that phrase, but then she remembered she had been trespassing not too long ago, and she shut her mouth. Instead, she kissed Chloe again, and she didn’t think she would ever be able to stop.
After this, Max would never make the wrong decision again. She would choose Chloe.
Over and over again, no matter what else she had to sacrifice to do it.