Love Beyond Time, The Rewrite {PriceField Fanfiction}

《BONUS CHAPTER》The Night We Fled

10 pm, some motel room a few miles from the hurricane refugee camp, Max Caulfield's POV

"Chloe we have to get some rest, knowing your mom she is probably helping to feed the survivors at the camp." Chloe smiles faintly but dials the number again. I don't even know if Joyce is alive, but I have to hope. The Two Whales looked indistinct after the storm, however, Joyce is a force to be reckoned with on her own. "It's been a week and we have a long drive tomorrow, please get some rest." I intertwine my fingers with Chloe's while she dials the number yet again. Like before, she gets a long high pitched note, and a message that the number has been disconnected. Every night Chloe and I try to remember exactly how much damage there actually was. We keep trying to calculate how many people would've made it out. We punish ourselves for driving out of town so fast. We should've stayed or at least searched, but shock took us hostage and we drove as far away as possible from the remains of Arcadia Bay.
"You don't get it Max. The first thing my mom would do is call me as soon as she would be safe. That's how she is, she always checks on me. It used to piss me off so much but now... I just really miss hearing her voice." Chloe gives up on her phone and slides it underneath her pillow. She draws closer to me and gently asks for a hug with her glassy blue eyes. Without saying anything, I take her into my arms and we both fall back onto the cushions of our bed in this cheap, decaying and moldy motel room. This is how we've been the last few days, finding comfort in eachothers arms and wondering if we should actually be here in this place, at this time, or even this timeline. "Why me, Max? My ungrateful ass over all those people. I can't imagine how you could choose." She shakes her head in disbelief. I can almost hear the gears grinding in her brain. After a few silent minutes, she removes herself from my embrace and sits across from me. "How did you choose?" Chloe asks with an anxious stare. I avoid her eyes. I always do when she asks questions like this and sometimes I can't answer them, although I can answer this one and I know she will hate the truth. Chloe has every reason to be mad at me. In the end, I was the one who tore that picture in half, closing the only door that could have saved everyone. It was my, and only my, decision to make. Chloe doesn't have to share this burden. She deserves to know why I sacrificed an entire town for her life. "Chloe, I need you to listen very carefully now. You need to understand that I have tried dozens of timelines, and in every single one I lost you in some horrible way. I feel like I have lived a thousand lives, in a thousand different realities, but even in all those alternate versions I was always drawn back to you. While everyone else just thought it was a weird week, I was messing around with time. I honestly don't think my powers were some kind of cosmic screw up, the universe gave me a choice and I chose you. I have seen you suffer over and over again, I have suffered over and over again to be able to fix time, only to realize time can't be controlled without a sacrifice.
I wanted to take your pain away, whatever the cost, and even when I learned the price that I had to pay to keep you, I didn't think twice. There was no right or wrong answer between the two, the universe wanted me to choose and I chose for me by choosing you." Chloe's eyes shoot up, a fire raging deep in them, "What do you mean you chose for yourself? Are you saying that letting me live was a selfish choice?" She knows exactly what I mean, she just wants to hear me say it. "I felt guilty, okay. I left and didn't talk to, or text you for years. The moment Nathan pulled that trigger for the first time, I didn't even recognize you. If it had to be that way, if you actually should be dead I wouldn't have gotten those powers right? It was a second chance for the both of us." Chloe angrily jumps out of bed and puts on her jacket, while shakily taking out a pack of cigarettes from her right pocket. "No, it was a second chance for you." She declares while lighting up a cig. She inhales and exhales a thick cloud of smoke as she talks; "So you wouldn't have to feel bad about abandoning me for all those fucking years. I would have rather died not knowing that the girl I loved got drugged and killed by some psychopath punk, and buried at a junkyard. I would have happily died with the thought that Rachel was living happily in another state."
Chloe's eyes tear up and I can feel myself doing the same. This is good I think, this is processing. When I try to take a step towards her she takes one back.
"Chloe, I hear you. Rachel didn't deserve that, neither did Kate. None of those girls deserved to be used like that. I felt what they felt, I felt their fear, their numbness. If I could have saved Rachel with my powers I would have, but it started with you and I wasn't going to end it without you." I reach out my hand, and as she takes it I sigh in relief. "I know this isn't easy, but we can't keep questioning why, or how I got those powers. The fact that they have disappeared is enough for me to believe you were the reason I got them in the first place. Everything was connected from the moment I stepped into that bathroom. Please, I have literally bend space and time to be here with you. Let's stop asking questions we are never going to be able to answer." Chloe's expression softens up as she pushes out the remains of her cigarette. She takes me into her arms. "Ever since I lost my dad I was angry at the world. I didn't want to cooperate with a system that could break a person like this. I wanted to exchange my life for my dad's, he was so much better than me. For years I questioned why I was still breathing and now I finally know." She takes me by my shoulders and sinks a little through her knees to be on the same eye level as me, like a parent giving their child an important life lesson speech. "We belong together somehow. The universe brought us back together after 5 years and we may have destroyed that town, but Jefferson went down too, which means it wasn't all for nothing." She lets go of my shoulders and hangs back onto the desk while lighting another cigarette. When Chloe gets overwhelmed she chainsmokes, normally I don't approve but I don't want to start a new fight. "Max," she gazes out of the window into the dark, as if she's trying to find the words in the dim forest, "You told me that your powers might not last. Do you remember what I said to you?"
"We will... forever."

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Greetings from the author. This was a short story I wrote for a fanfiction contest. Sadly I didn't win, but the good news is that I finally get to publish it. I hope you enjoyed. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Yours truly,
The BluePunkRockRebel