Life is strange FF - Safe and Sound [Chapter1]

Life is Strange FF
"Safe and sound"
Also published in: archiveofourown.org/works/5620…

Chapter 1: Chloe Price is here

“Take it slow, don’t push yourself too hard” Said the women in white, looking at the young brunette girl. Her expression was a mix of compassion and worry, partially hidden by a mask of emptiness.

The young girl sighed, with her gaze fixed on her hands, oddly clean and enveloped in white bandages, stained with blood. Her blood. The blood of others. Her hands filled with blood, the blood of all the people who lived here...

“Can you repeat it?” Asked the woman, interrupting her line of thought  with a smooth tone, as if she was worried to scare the girl. “Please?”

Another sigh, empty, hollow. Then, the girl nodded, cofed a little before starting to speak.

“I’m Max Caulfield. I’m eighteen years old. I’m in Arcadia Bay… There was a storm… And I… I”

Her voice crumbled and finally broke with her last word. Her fists clenched over her lap, shaking as her nails went deeper in the skin of her palms.

“You’re safe now.” Said the woman who was with her.

She reached out and grabbed Max’s shoulder, but the girl recoiled at the contact, her eyes wide open in fear. The woman sighed and left her hand fall at her side again.

“There is nothing to be scared of, dear.”

Max didn’t respond. She just stayed there, looking into nothingness, repeating mentally her last words.

“I’m Max Caulfield. I’m eighteen years old. I’m in Arcadia Bay. Everyone is dead. Not. Not everyone, but most of them are dead. They are dead and I killed them all. I killed you. I killed you…”

Sighing in resignation, the women in white got up from her chair and stretched a little.

“I need to see others now” She said, looking at Max like she was evaluating if she could trust her enough to leave her on her own. She seemed to know it was a bad idea. “I’ll leave someone with you.”

Max just ignored her. She curled up in a ball over the hard folding bed she was sitting and just hugged her knees against her chest, her eyes fixed on the wall of the big tent she was in. The tears didn’t came as she thought they will.

She saw by the corner of her eye how the woman left the tent. A couple of seconds later, another woman working with the relief effort  entered and sat down on the same chair. She didn’t say anything.


_____________________________________________

Drenched in cold water, hugging her knees as tight as she could, as she was trying not to collapse in milion pieces. Shattered like glass, destroyed like the town not far away from the Lighthouse in where she was hiding from the storm.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t just go back and undo everything, even if she now was at the brink of collapse, even if she felt like she was about to have a mental breakdown in any second. She couldn’t sacrifice her best friend, the girl she loved with every little piece of her soul, even if it the cost to have her alive, breathing by her side, was too high.

Chloe  was there, holding the exact same position for a couple of hours now, just looking at the other side of the circular room. Breathing, safe… Chloe was an emotional wreckage, a mess, shattered, broken and full of guilt and sadness. But she was alive, and that was the only thing Max cared for. If this was the price, if this awful feeling and guilt would chase her for the rest of her life, Max was more than eager to pay it.

Even if that meant Chloe hated her for what she did. Max could live with that too. Not painless, of course, but she could.

Max could go on if she was alive, even if her best friend hated her for it. Max could. Right?

The sound of the rain started to fade after what seemed an eternity. The wind eased its whisper around them and, finally, the storm passed and a deep and heavy silence filled the air. None of them moved for a while until it seemed real. The monstrous storm has come and gone for good.

“We… we need to get to the town.” Said Chloe, getting up slowly. Max could see the dark bags under her blue eyes, puffy and bloodshot from the crying. “Maybe… maybe someone make it. We could…”

Her raspy voice faded away with a frustrated sigh. Max heard her curse in a shaky whisper.  Chloe faced her and lent a hand to help her get up from the floor, looking anywhere but her face. She didn’t say anything else, she just walked outside grabbing Max’s hand with cold fingers.

____________________________________________________________________

Max woke up suddenly a couple of hours later, with a scream stuck in her throat. The cold sweat covered her forehead and the palm of her hands, clenched in fists. She was in the same exact position she was when she lied down.

The woman from FEMA wasn’t there anymore, but the tent wasn’t empty. Max recognized Chloe’s silhouette at the open door of the tent, dark in contrast with the orange glow of the sunset lighting the place. She was wearing a big coat, David’s no doubt, and her beanie was missing. A lighted cigarette was hanging between two fingers.

Max got up, with her heart still racing as she tried to shake out of her head the awful nightmare. The rustle sound of the rough sheets made Chloe turn around and her eyes bump into Max’s and she looked away as fast as she could, avoiding to hold her gaze.

“How… How’s Joyce?” Max asked, her voice shaky and weak.

Chloe let her cigarette fall to the ground and crushed it with the heel of her boot. She sighed, turned around and sat next to Max on the bed, her head down as her elbows rested over her knees.

“Better now that she knows we’re alive.” She said. “Step-dou… damn. David is with her now.”

“Why you’re not?” Asked Max. She would understood Chloe wanted to be with her mother instead with the girl responsible for her injuries.

“I’m worried for you, Max.” Said Chloe, with a hint of exasperation, her eyes still fixed on the flor. ”I’m… hella worried to be honest. You are not the same after… after what happened at the cliff.”

Max shook her head. This wasn't the first time they had that conversation. And it always ended the same way.

“I did the right thing.” She said.

“I don't think so, Max. I mean, look at this shithole… mom is hurt, a lot of people are… gone. And look at you. You… You’re broken. Maybe you should have…”

“You are out of your mind if you think I’d be okay if I had let you die, Chloe.” Snapped Max.

Her fists clenched, her heart started to race again and her breath felt heavy, making her to struggle just to catch air.

A gunshot, Nathan crying as Chloe’s warm blood painted the white floor red. A blue butterfly flying away as Max regressed time. Pressure in her head, the world twisting around her, collapsing, breaking, the universe falling apart...

“Max? Max can you hear me?”

Max blinked twice and looked up, just to find Chloe’s blue eyes filled with alarm and concern. Max felt like years had passed since she could look Chloe in the eye. The brunette shook her head and hugged her knees, placing her chin over them, trying to focus. For a moment she felt she was about to lose it. Maybe she had.

“I’m Max Caulfield. I’m eighteen years old. I’m in Arcadia Bay. I’m in Arcadia Bay and Chloe Price is here. Chloe… Price… is… here…”

A warm and familiar arm wrapped her as she started to cry again.

______________________________________________________________________________

Arcadia bay had become a ghost town. There was no sign of life anywhere. No movement, no sound, not even a survivor making a way through the wreckage. It was almost nightfall when the girls reached the main street and passed The Two Whales, or what was left of the diner.

Max looked away the very moment the diner appeared in their line of sight. It seemed abandoned, like the rest of the town, and Max tried to blink and erase the image of the very same building blowing up in front of her.

The dark stains on the outside, the shattered glasses of the windows and the terrifying hole in the ceiling confirmed what Max already knew. The diner blowed up, because she wasn’t there to stop it.

Part of her was hoping that this timeline was different, but at the end, it seemed to be like being stuck in and endless nightmare.

Chloe parked the truck in front of the diner and run to it, leaving the driver’s door wide open. Max could hear her shout her mother’s name. That desperate sound ringed loudly in her ears, higher and higher. She didn’t knew when she covered them with both hands to drown it, but it was ringing in her head. Inside her, tearing her apart.

“This is your fault” A voice whispered. Her own voice. “This is all your fault and you know it. You fucked everything up for your precious punk Chloe, like I said you would. You’re a murderer.”

“Shut up.” Max growled, pressing her hands harder against her ears.

“I’ll not. Because I’m you and you want to hear what I have to say, asshole.”

“I don’t want to hear anything. I just…”

“You did what I said you’d do. I tried to warn you, I tried to tell you she’s using you, screwing with you, but you don’t want to see it.”

“Chloe’s not using me. Chloe is my best friend, she’d never do that…”

“You know she would. You know she does. But you’re too proud or too naive to finally admit it, even to yourself. You are pathetic. You risked everything for her, even the integrity of the fucking universe. And what do you receive in exchange? A fucking cold shoulder. She’s even incapable to look you in the eye, you idiot.”

Max shook her head, incapable of replying to her own cold and teasing voice. She wanted to scream, to drown it, to shut it, to hear only silence…

“¡Max, I need help! ¡Max! ¡Come here, quickly!”

She snapped her eyes open and looked at the diner. Chloe was coming back, almost running, with something in her arms. It seemed like a bloody bag of fur.

“Are you gonna help me or not!?” She demanded. Max stepped out of the truck and approached her.

Chloe had her puffy eyes red, and the mark of the tears that had been running down her cheeks recently. Max only recognized Pompidou when she was close enough to touch it. The dog was injured, it’s hair burned and a terrifying amount of blood was pouring from it’s injuries.

“Oh my god.” Whispered the brunette as she guided Chloe to the back of the truck, where she left the dog, whining and crying, trying in vain to lick his wounds.

Chloe went straight to the cab of her truck and came back quickly, with a small beaten up first aid kit. Silently, the girl opened it and started to clean the dog’s injuries with shaky hands, while Max stared at her and then at the diner, insure if she should tell Chloe about it. About how she knew the diner would blow up if she wasn’t there to stop it.

“You hurt Pompidou” Said her other self, coldly, her voice loudly enough to drown the dog's cry. “You killed Joyce, Warren, Frank and everyone at the diner. You’re a monster. You’re a selfish brat with a power you don’t understand. And you just played with it. Idiot.”

“Earth calling to Max Caulfield?”

She shook her head and came back to the present. Chloe was staring at her, alert and concern filled her blue eyes.

“Yes?” Muttered the brunette, looking away.

“Do… do you think my mom was here?” She asked, finishing with the last injury in Pompidou’s back. Her hands were shaky, but the dog seemed to be feeling better, because he stopped whining.

“I…”

“Tell her. Tell her the truth. You know how she’s gonna react. She’ll swear and get angry, because that’s all she does.” Teased her the voice in her head. “Come on, tell her Joyce is dead and you knew it will happen…”

Max swallowed audibly and the look on her face must have tipped her off, because Chloe’s expression muted from sad concern to fury in just a couple of seconds.

“Max… what do you know?”

“I…”

“You... knew!  She was here and... You fucking knew and you didn’t tell me?!”

Chloe snapped, like Max knew she would. The girl punched the back of the truck with a clenched fist, boiling in anger. Pompidou growled, scared for the outburst.

“I can’t believe it. You could… you could have told me, we could have warned her! We could have done something!”

“Chloe, it was another timeline, I wasn’t…”

“This timeline or not, it happened!” Chloe blowed up, fixing her eyes in Max’s. The tears rolling down her cheeks again in desperation. “You know what? Fuck this shit. I’m not leaving until I find her. You can do whatever the fuck you want.”

“Chloe, wait!”

The blue haired girl run to the diner again. Max ran off behind her.

The diner was empty, no bodies. Aside from Frank. Or what was left of him.

Chloe was the one who found him, and recoiled back to the street. She let herself fall to her knees and threw up in the pavement, shaking and sweating. Max let her be. She was afraid of coming closer to her, even if she wanted to. She just saw her best friend swear in the street, trying not to stain her wet clothes with vomit as she tried to avoid looking at the diner. She wanted to reach out, to touch her, to hug her, to tell her everything would be fine. But she knew it was a lie.

She could barely stand at that point, her mind overwhelmed by the guilt, by the memories and the heavy lift of her powers pushing her down in desperation.

“Well, good job. Now Frank is just a bloody mass all over the floor. Congratulations” The other Max in her mind teased her. “And of course, Chloe’s angry with you. Because it’s all your fault. Ha, I may give her the right to be pissed at you this time. You deserved it, asshole.”

“Stop it.” Whispered Max. She closed her eyes.

“You don’t want me to stop. That’s why you’re listening. You don’t get it, don’t you? I’ll never leave your head, because you regret it. You regret what you did.”

“No, I don’t!”

“Yes, you do. You regret saving your precious punk Chloe, and now, you can’t fucking undo it!”

“I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it. I don’t regret it…”

“Max?! Max, what the fuck?!”

She opened her eyes. She was on her knees, in the middle of the street, grabbing her head with both hands, whispering loudly. Tears were rolling down her cheeks and her teeths were clenched tight.

She saw how Chloe knelt before her and took her arms, trying to undo her tense posture. Max’s body refused, while she kept whispering.

“Just look at me. Look at me, okay?” Said Chloe, trying to stop the girl from shaking. She was pale as death. “You can’t collapse now, Max. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry! Please, talk to me. Say something.”

“I’m… I’m okay…”

“Yeah, sure. Totally fine.” Snapped Chloe. Then hugged her, tight. It didn’t matter if they were uncomfortable, kneeling on the ground, the smell of pooke and a disaster around them, their clothes still wet. Max could feel like all her shattered pieces glued together. For a brief second, she felt good.

“I don’t regret it.” She thought, hoping her words reached out her other self inside her mind. “I don’t regret it.”

They spent a couple of minutes like that, their bodies pressed together as it was the only way to have a hold to reality. To this reality. To this awful and painful reality…

“Chloe?! Chloe, is that you?”

Both girls pulled away and looked street down, looking for the owner of that familiar voice.

David Madsen, along with a couple of officers and members of the national guard appeared all of the sudden, lightning the now darker environment with flashlights.

“Holy shit…” Muttered Chloe, as she stand up and helped the shaky and weak Max to do the same.

______________________________________________________________________________

Max’s head was resting in Chloe’s lap while the blue haired girl caressed her hair with shaky fingers. Outside, it was night. The tent was lighted by a small lamp that a guy from the national guard lend Chloe a while ago.

The camp was silent. Chloe told Max that she wandered around for a while. She tried to figure out how bad it was, even if she didn’t wanted to know, really. She felt responsible for what happened and seeing all those people hurt and the long list of casualties and missing people was just a punch to the gut after another.

Joyce was alive at least, and David too. She was injured in the explosion that took place at the Two Whales. And David… David was at the dark room at the time.

Warren made it too, he was the one who helped Joyce to get out of there when things got ugly. Frank saved them all. He noticed that something was off and was him the one who shout “get down!”, preventing the rest of the refugees to be reached by the explosion.

Max would never be able to erase the mental image of Frank blowing up in pieces.

As far as she knew, Frank was only one in the long list of casualties FEMA and the national guard put up. He, along with Alyssa, Evan, Luke, Justin, officer Berry and many others, now just names written down in a casualties report.

The missing person list was more scary, if possible. Almost three hundreds of people whose location and status were unknown. A chill went down Max’s spine when Chloe told her Nathan was one of them. Max already knew he was dead, buried in god knows where. They probably’d never found his body, as Jefferson planned.

Max shivered at the memory of the man. She never was captured in this reality. She never was in the Dark Room. But the memories of the other timelines she experienced didn’t fade away as she expected. Even if she was right there, curled in a bed in a stinky tent with Chloe, her mind was still there, in the dark, praying to not feel the sharp sting of the needle in her neck, praying not to hear that soft voice in her ears, telling her she was perfect, that she was the chosen one. Telling her she was going to die that night.

“I knew you were special the moment I saw your first… selfie…”

Chloe felt Max’ body tense as she curled up again into a ball and hugged her knees tight, breathing erratically as another panic attack hit her. Not even Chloe’s presence could scare them away. She learned that the hard way. Chloe just could stay there with Max, trying to snap her out of the trap of her own mind, often in vain.

“I’m… Maxine Caulfield… I’m in Arcadia Bay… Chloe…”

The taller girl caressed her friend’s tense shoulders gently as she repeated the only words she could.

“I’m here, Max. I’ll always be here. No matter what.”

Max forced herself to continue, because those words were her only anchor to reality.

“... Price… Chloe Price is… here. Chloe Price is… here.”

__________________________________________________________________________

NEXT ---> fav.me/d9nmydk