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15:26
The refusal of the phone's clock to go any faster is slowly starting to get on Chloe's nerves. Normally, she'd try taking a nap, but ever since Max has shown the older girl her powers, she's been unable to calm her mind. In fact, she hasn't gotten more than a wink of sleep since Max revealed she can control time.
No Regrets. Who'd have those?! Seriously. Superpowers. Much as Chloe's always wanted to have them, she never believed in their existence. Only, then her childhood friend comes along with a fucking time power. It's a lot to take in. Wicked, yeah, but still- no. Fuck. World-shattering is a better expression. Thank God for caffeine. She's dead on her feet (or butt, as is the case since she's seated on Max's couch) and still the sleep won't come. Good riddance to that! One doesn't sleep when they've got time itself to play with.
Well. When one's a sidekick to somebody that does.
Details! There's so much they could do, and what is Max using it for? Classes. Yeah, she's always been a bit of a goody two shoes but Chloe'd thought her friend would go full pirate when gifted a freaking power. Nope. School. Well... maybe she's not the right person to talk about school but come on! Powers! School shouldn't even be something to consider.
At least her hipster gave her the spare key to her dorm room. Hella more comfortable than her old-ass car and its hard-ass seats.
15:27
This is fucking stupid. No, okay, sorry Max but a girl's gotta find something more interesting to do than farting around on a couch doing jack shit. She hasn't even got her music with her, so she can't pass the time that way. Max's discs aren't... bad, per say. But hell are most of them melancholic and Chloe's feeling too upbeat for that noise. For two days straight now, with some minor exceptions like when she got trapped on the rails before Max saved her. Again. It's insane. She's survived nineteen years in a more or less safe fashion, and in just the last two days she'd have died twice.
"Welp, Guardian mine, sorry not sorry," the girl says to room as she stands up and sets about exploring it in more detail. She's already conducted a sweep when she first got in but wasn't really interested enough to make a mess of the room. She's not Max. Chloe had half the mind to call the girl out when she started checking every little damn thing in her own room, but in the end, indulged her guest's curiosity. Not like she had much to hide from her anyway. Well, beside the gun. Chloe didn't feel like sharing a secret after getting slapped by her Step-Führer. Seriously, five years apart and she still hasn't grown a spine.
Alright, she's in a photographer's room. The only thing she can realistically do here is go through said photographer's pics. Uh, right after playing the guitar that is but... yeah no. Her fiddling with a guitar is not going to pass time any more chill than listening to a goat's screams. Scratch that, when she first heard a goat yell it was at least funny. Nobody would ever consider what she can pull off with a guitar funny, unless said person was drunk. It'd probably be hilarious then. Everything is.
The tall girl looks around, trying to decide behind which pile of trash should she look first. C'mon Max, the room is filthier than her own, even excluding the red painting on the wall; books everywhere, notes covering half the floor. Chloe's little friend is usually rather tidy. Seems like this power thing really has her freaking out if she let her space get this crowded. Or maybe she's changed like that over the years. That's possible too.
She checks the wardrobe first, more out of curiosity as to what Max keeps there rather than to find any pictures, and there are some nice thing in there - uh, compared to what the girl's wearing everyday. Nothing edgy, though. Not that she expected to find anything like that, Max doesn't dress to stand out. The opposite, if anything.
Nothing on the bookshelves... nothing on the desk- beside a whole lot of a mess, that is - no photos though. The drawer mayb- nah, nope, nothing in here either.
Chloe leans her elbows on the desk and looks at the sticky notes on the wall. Deranged bubbling, most of it. If somebody not in the know would look at these he would surely think poor Max has gone bonkers. But haven't they both? Time powers!
She snorts, smiling.
One note in particular craves her attention. More like four of them, actually, aligned together to make for one bigger message.
"don't mess around" "headache"
"rewind unstable" "risky"
...okay?
Actually, she sorta gets the second part. Hard not to, the whole town is living the story of how Max prevented the Marsh girl from jumping. What they don't know is that she has done so by using her powers to get to the roof. Nor do they know how said powers then decided to flip a solid ten outa ten bird and just stop working.
Chloe knows.
Man, she feels like such a total ass now, for what she did in the diner yesterday. Yeah, it was annoying how Max didn't call her for five years and then picks up a random chick's call when they're finally together again but... fuck. What ff she didn't?
She shakes her head to clear it of that line of thought.
She looks to her left, to the last place that her friend might be keeping her photos in, the cardboxes on the cupboard. One of them looks less beat up than the others, maybe that's the one?
Bingo!
She takes the box in her hands and sits down on Max's bed. More unoccupied space than on the coach. Damn girl, she could at least keep the couch (relatively) clean. It's like... the most important place in a room. You don't make out on your bed when you bring your date over for the first time, but a couch? Couch is around a hundred times safer than bed. You can keep pretending that you don't want to go further, kinda hard to do so on a bed.
Not that couches are a bad place to have a go, no. Just... less scary a lead-up.
She takes the first batch of photos out of the container. They all seem to be taken after Max's arrival in Arcadia Bay. A new, separate box for a new, old place. Typical of her friend to make distinctions like that.
Okay then, what do they have here... Selfie, lots of landscape pieces with selfies in between, more selfies, people from Arcadia, Blackwell students mostly, another bunch of self- Christ! She knows Max likes taking those but this borders on some sort of mania!
Wait, is that Trevor writhing on the ground? Oh man, Max, that's just evil. She nonetheless laughs at the mental image of the younger girl walking up to the poor guy and just snapping a picture as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Honestly- it would be, for her. A real photographer, Chloe has never doubted that.
Huh, a photo of herself sitting on a bench, watching the sunset. Damn she looks good, but she knows that much without a photo, she does have mirror in her house despite what some people keep telling her.
The Two Whales and... did she seriously take a photo of a scratched mirror? Or was she taking a selfie here too? Chloe can't even tell anymore. She takes another bunch of photos to look at and-
The girl's breath hitches in her throat.
There is a girl in this photo. And her eyes are haunted, oh so haunted. Chloe feels like those eyes are looking straight at her, that they are looking straight at her. With blue eyes so full of pain and betrayal that she can almost feel it herself. She's holding the right hand to her chest, stained red, so much-
She regains her bearings and throws the photo away, shooting up and stumbling away from the falling picture as if it burnt her soul. It very well might have.
Her back hits the door and her hands cover her face, slowly inching up over her wide and fearful eyes and then through the blue hair.
She grabs it with one hand and presses the second against her heart, feeling a strangely hollow sensation in it all the while it keeps hammering away as if on an anvil.
Jesus fuck! The hell was that!
She's hyperventilating, her whole body's shaking and she doesn't care because if what she's just seen wasn't some twisted trick of an eye then- then-
It takes her a full minute before she finally manages to calm her breathing and heart down a bit, just enough that she can stand without the risk of falling over on her jelly legs. It takes another before she gathers enough strength and courage to walk up to the fallen photo and reluctantly pick it up again.
So much for calming down her heartbeat.
She can't stop her hand from quivering as she looks into those hurt, blue eyes.
Her own eyes.
She runs her free, too-heavy hand through her hair again, just to do something with it.
What is this photo doing here, when did she- only now does she spot a gun in her left hand. The background is that of her sanctuary, she- she got shot yesterday with Max? But she doesn't remember being... fuck.
Fuck!
Of course she doesn't remember because it has never happened. Or it did and- whatever, point is Max must have prevented it, but why did she take a picture of her instead of just rewinding time right away? Way over the line Max! What kind of sick, sadistic asshole does that?
She lets the photo fall to the ground again, not willing- not able to watch her eyes any longer. They're going to haunt her for the rest of her life, anyway. The betrayal in them finding root in Chloe's mind.
She's been stupid. So fucking stupid.
Wasn't it her own idea to have Max play with her power? And she's never even considered that the other girl might use it on her. The joke she made in the Two Whales had been just that, or mostly, just a joke. She never would have though that Max would actually use it against her- that she would- would take her sweet fucking time so that she could take a photo to commemorate the day Chloe Price got shot again.
She looks to the box with the rest of the photos, no longer excited about what she might find in there. The girl clenches her fists a couple of times before finding the resolve to go on. She doesn't want to know. She doesn't. But she needs to know. She needs to see if this- she has to know if Max took more of these.
Numb, she sits down and takes another dozen photos out of the box.
Suddenly, Max's question if she had more bullets makes so much more sense. Damn. Would she have done it? Would she have shot Frank and left him dead, or do it, take a picture and then rewind? Fuck, she doesn't know. The Max she knew would never have even consider pulling the trigger, but the more she thinks about it, the more apparent it becomes that she just doesn't know the girl that Max has become. Because of course she's changed, Chloe has as well, but is it too much to ask for that her old friend weren't some kind of death maniac?
She looks at the pictures, a doe, some of the junkyard, herself- aiming the gun at the sky.
Herself, trapped on the rails. An enraged expression on her face this time, yelling something at Max, probably to cut her shit out and help her.
She swallows heavily, staring at the picture. She does remember Max spacing out for a moment after she wrecked the station's controls. A moment before she had helped her get her leg out of the tracks. The angle of this picture... it looks taken from the place where she stood. But Max didn't take a photo. No- that's... She doesn't remember Max taking a photo. She clenches her teeth and looks at another picture.
Herself, confusion creeping its way into her features, overtaking anger.
A different angle, the train still quite far away and herself, watching the machine come out from behind the corner.
Herself, fearfully looking at the camera... at Max. Saying something, an unsure smile on her lips, as if telling her... friend... As if telling Max to stop joking around. An expression of disbelief similar to that when she hears a bad joke.
Herself, tears in eyes, with face set in such desperation and terror, and so in contrast with the perfect quality of the photo, taken by a steady and sure hand.
The next picture Chloe stares at, unblinking, unfeeling, unbelieving that Max went through with it to the very end. She puts the macabre photo away, feeling empty and cold, her insides coiling in on themselves, her fortunately empty stomach taking twists and turns in vain attempts to empty itself. Chloe can't find it in herself to look any further. She doesn't need to look any further. She can't. A scathing, bitter thought enters her mind.
She really is a photographer isn't she?
She can feel a void in the place of her heart, a gaping emptiness threatening to consume her insides. She wouldn't mind if it were to really happen. Fucking again. Everyone she cares for just shit all over her. Again. She worries her lip and blinks away the mist in her eyes, refusing to cry over this.
Because she hasn't lost anything. At all. Max had ceased being her friend when she left for Seattle. This... this monster that came back in her body is not the girl she once knew.
If she ever had.
Her beautiful smile, her kind words, her captivating eyes. All lies. All lies.
Just then, the door creeks open, and she turns to see a smiling Max entering the room. A plastic bag with an ice cream box in her hand.
"Hey Chloe. Hope you didn't have to wait too long?" She asks in a cheery tone. Happy to see her test subject again, she'll bet. And her smile is captivating as ever, as promising as ever.
All lies.
The older girl fully turns towards her friend and hops off the bed, a cold, hard expression on her face.
"Hey yourself," she responds angrily, startling the other. Yeah of course she wouldn't even know what she's done wrong. "Mind explaining this?" She gestures to the photos now laid out on the bed.
"Explain wha-" she begins after she puts the bag away, abruptly cutting off upon seeing the cardbox on her bed. She glances at the cupboard where it should stand and then back to Chloe again. "...oh."
"Oh? Oh! That's all you've got to say after pulling this shit off?!" Chloe's hard demeanor shatters as she starts yelling, stepping closer to Max and pushing her against the wall. "You fucking let me die to get a few twisted photos?! Fuck you Caulfield!"
The smaller girl draws in on herself, then narrows her eyes and looks about ready to snap back before her eyes loose focus, and just shakes her head looking away, sadness etched into her features.
"I'm sorry you've seen this Chloe, but we'll be fine, I promise. I'll make sure you didn't."
What? Wait-no!
15:27
This is fucking stupid. No, okay, sorry Max but a girl's gotta find something more interesting to do than farting around on a couch doing jack shit. She hasn't even got her music with her, so she can't pass the time that way. Max's discs aren't... bad, per say. But hell are most of them melancholic and Chloe's feeling too upbeat for that noise. For two days straight now, with some minor exceptions like when she got trapped on the rails before Max saved her. Again. It's insane. She's survived nineteen years in a more or less safe fashion, and in just the last two days she'd have died twice.
"Welp, Guardian mine, sorry not sorry," the girl says to room as she stands up, about to set off to find something interesting to do when Max enters the room, a plastic bag with an ice cream box in her hand, and a shy smile on her face.
"Hey Chloe, hope I didn't keep you waiting?" She sounds so hopeful that even if the older girl were actually mad at her, she just wouldn't be able to keep it up.
"A bit. Might need a bribe to forget about it." She flashes her friend a crooked smile, returned by one full of relief. Pft, seriously, Max can be so painfully awkward at times. She's not about to get mad for her being a bit late, and with ice cream too.
"In this case, my faithful sidekick, I bring you gifts of ice and cream," she says while taking the box out of the bag and- oh man she's even holding it out in both hands.
"Ice and- oh my... Max don't, please. My ears are bleeding," she can't hold in the laugh at how terrible what Max said is. Her friend flashes her one of those charming smiles and, for a moment, she has this far away look in her eyes she sometimes has when thinking what to say, before the smile on her lips morphs into a smirk.
"Want me to kiss them better?" Whoa, okay. So that's how it's gonna be, is it?
"You might just have to, or you'll have my hearing on your conscience for the rest of your life."
The shorter girl laughs before putting the ice cream away, flashing Chloe a smarmy smile.
"If you say so."