As they drove away from the wreckage that had been their home town, Max and Chloe were as quiet as the grave. Except for a bitter chuckle from each of them, as that phrase entered their minds.
As the drove by the sign, Max thought ‘Never again. This can never happen again.’
April, 2014
They had been staying at Max’s parents house for six months. She had been surfing the Net, and had found a fundraising campaign for the survivors of the tornado that had happened in Arcadia Bay.
“Boo-Yah!” Hands gripped her shoulders.
“FUCK!”, Max shouted, flailing.
“Sorry, Maximus, but, I had to. You were zoning out.”
“Stupid Chloe”, Max growled.
“You know you love me”
“...maybe.”
Chloe noticed the page Max was looking at.
“Why’re you looking at that?”
Max sighed. “Because I made a promise, when we left Arcadia Bay. A promise that anything like that would never happen again.”
“You can’t stop natural disasters from happening, Max.”
I know. And I would choose you over that town, any day”
As the first few months had gone by, more information had been released about the storm’s impact.
Most of the town had not survived. Some of the exceptions were Joyce, who had taken shelter in the diner’s freezer. She had managed to keep the door propped open, just slightly. Kate had been in the hospital’s basement, along with most of the patients. Victoria and David had stayed in the Dark Room.
Rebuilding had started not too long ago. It was slow going, however.
As Max moved onto another page, a article about possible candidates for the 2016 election caught Chloe’s eye.
“Max. What...what if you ran for office?”
“What.. as in for President?”, Max gaped at Chloe, as if she had lost her mind.
“Well, gotta start out at the bottom, but, yeah. We know you still have your powers.”
A few months ago, she and Chloe had been crossing a street in downtown Seattle. Chloe had tripped on a piece of broken concrete and fell in the path of a semi truck. Max had fallen with her, still holding her hand. She rewound, purely on instinct.
When they were back on the sidewalk, she stopped. Chloe had turned to her, looking like she had learned some amazing secret.
“Max….you..you just rewound! I remember falling in front of that fucking semi. Then we went back!”
Max stared at her. “It might be because I was holding your hand. That’s never happened before”
They touched each other’s face. Both women’s fingers came away stained red.
Since that day, Max had done a few experiments. They found out that she did not need to be touching Chloe, for it to work.
She had said something about fate, and destiny. Chole merely rolled her eyes, and lightly socked her in the shoulder.
“But, I’m such a damn loser, Chloe. I can’t run for office”
“Max Caulfield. You are NOT a loser. Would a loser have saved me all of those times? Saved Kate?”
“..no, but..”
“No, buts”, Chloe said, staring into Max’s eyes. “Well, except this one” She squeezed Max’s butt.
Max let out a yell, smacking Chloe on the shoulder, who wore an unrepentant grin.
March, 2022
Max sat at her desk, in the U.S House of Representatives. It had been one hell of a almost decade. She had used her rewind powers to play the stock market. For some reason, bringing Chloe back with her, on that one day long ago, had broken the limits on Max’s powers. She had had no trouble keeping an eye on the market, then going back and buying when certain stocks were very low.
Max had gotten a job at a small portrait studio. Chloe, after a bit of self training, had found a job coding software. They slowly built up their savings, before their first trade.
Max had also used her powers to gain recognition, by saving people from several disasters, like fires. She had originally balked at using that idea. It seemed wrong, to use the misfortune of others to profit. Chloe had said that since she would rewind to save the victims, it wasn’t bad.
So, a few years after becoming Seattle’s unofficial superhero, Max ran for office. She had wanted to run for the state legislature, but, Chloe said, ”Go big, or go home”
Of course, being so young, and a woman, she had been a severe underdog. It surprised everyone, Max much more than anyone, that she won.
She continued to use her powers on her fellow Representatives in D.C. When you can rewind after a conversation with a particularly stubborn person, it’s damn easy to get things to go your way. Soon, she had gained enough attention, that she was given more roles in different sub committees.
Given that Chloe now came back with her on every rewind, she became Max’s chief of staff.
After hours of dealing with other Congresspersons, Max slumped back in her office desk chair.
“I kinda knew how this would be, but, I didn’t really know.”, she sighed.
Chloe stepped through the door. As always, Max appreciated the very well cut suit the strawberry blonde wore. She missed the days when Chloe had been a bluenette, but, dyed hair wasn’t really professional. She slid behind Max, rubbing her shoulders.
“It’s a hell of a tiring life, Max Power. But, just think of all the good you’re doing.”
Max smiled. Once, using her powers, and their combined nosiness, they had managed to get evidence of other Representatives, one that had had an affair with his male chief of staff. His wife had been very shocked. Max agreed to keep it to herself, if he voted a certain way on a bill for education funding she had created. Another had earmarked a portion of infrastructure spending bill to a energy company in his state. The thing was that his wife, through several shell companies, owned said company. Again, secrets were kept, at a price.
January 20, 2035
The political world was stunned, to say the least. Against the might of the Washington political scene, Max Caulfield was being sworn in as President.
She had been cast as an outsider, with no chance of winning. A idealistic small town Oregon girl, running for President? Most thought the campaign was doomed. But, as the year had went on, she had had more support. Support from both the public, and, as the primaries went on, from those who had dropped out.
A little over a month prior, her Chief of Staff had resigned. They had gotten married on Christmas Day. And today made Chloe Caulfield-Price, the country's first First Partner. Some people had railed against the seeming destruction of “traditional values”, but, neither woman paid any mind.
That night, Max looked out the window of the President’s Bedroom. She still had trouble believing it was hers.
As she stared out into the darkness, memories of what she had done to get there filtered in.
There had been the Senator from the Midwest, who had killed that young couple in a car accident. Max and Chloe had been there, cleaning up the scene. “What are you going to do with...them?”, the man with salt and pepper hair had said. “…..do you want to know?”, Chloe had said, her face neutral. The man shook his head, his face bathed in sweat. He agreed to drop out of the race.
Another candidate had hired, through a good 20 or 30 shell corporations, a ‘security’ team. Most had been former Special Forces personnel.
The two women had been dancing at a well known D.C. watering hole. “We can’t live our lives as if we were in a bunker, Max”, Chloe had argued.
As Chloe dipped Max down, during a slow number, Max suddenly hit the floor. A small hole had appeared in Chloe’s forehead. Max let out a horrified scream, as her wife dropped to the floor, like a puppet that had had its strings cut.
After rewinding back, Max froze time. It was much easier than it had been with Kate, on the dorm roof. As the two searched the area, they found a sniper situated on a nearby roof. He had, somehow, managed to get by the security detail.
Max glared at the man, frozen in place. She had never known this level of anger, even with Jefferson. This human fucking garbage had dared to kill her other half, her heart, her soulmate!
She resumed time, and the man pulled the trigger. Seconds later, she encased him in a time bubble. She slowly aged him. She could see his face and body grow older, terror etched on his face as he felt the years creep up.
She released the bubble, returning him to his normal age, but leaving the memories.
“Who? Where?”, Max said, her face in stone.
The man gibbered out a name, barely coherent.
“Okay.”, Max said. She encased him in the time bubble, again slowly aging him, until there was nothing but dust left.
Chloe drew Max into a hug. “I know that..that was awful, baby. But, it had to be done”
Max cried in Chloe’s arms for a few minutes, then straightened up. Freezing time again, the two walked to the man’s apartment.
They walked right by the security detail, to his bedroom. Chloe leaned over the sleeping man, and slapped him in the face.
He awoke with a startled gasp. “Wha..?”
Chloe gripped his head. “We do the talking, you sack of shit. You hired someone to kill us.”
“You bitches should be dead!”, he yelled, fear crossing his face.
“We obviously fucking are not.” Max snarled. “Why?”
Max formed another bubble around his hand, and slowly aged it. The man screamed in horror and pain, as his skin wrinkled and the nails grew longer.
Finally, the man whimpered the name of a local shipping company, saying “They’re owned by the Russian mob. They said they would kill me if I didn’t hire someone.”
“It sounds like they wanted to get their hands on a potential President.”, Chloe remarked.
As the man whimpered, Max put a few pillows over his head. Chloe took out a .45 with a silencer, stuck it under the pillow, and fired. After checking the surroundings with several rewinds, they knew that no one else had heard the shot. After stripping the bed of it’s sheets, Max decayed them, the pillow, the gun, and the body to nothing. Freezing time again, they walked out of the building. Max restarted time when they were about 30 blocks away.
“That was a kick ass gun, Max.” “There’ll always be another one, Captain.”
The next morning, the news was ablaze about a fire at a local shipping company near the docks. It had been a total loss.
As the memory cleared from Max’s mind, she thought about how she’d repay the Russians for their attempted murder of her wife.
As she looked at her reflection in the window. She saw a faced twisted in rage, with eyes harder than diamond. She felt a brief twinge of sadness for the girl she had been, during that Arcadia Bay fall, long ago.
But, it soon faded. She knew she was meant to be here. She was meant to make America the absolute best.
No matter how much blood was on her hands.