Life is Strange: Behind the Scenes

They surrounded Max like the toys of a frantic child. The photographs, all blue and yellow, were laid out as carefully as she could manage, but still her rug was covered of them. Five years. She’d missed five years. It was a good thing that Rachel had been a photographer, too.

Max opened up the second box of photos, and quickly recognized the one on top. Her breath caught as she remembered the day - Chloe with her arm around Max, on the day that William died. It must have been the last of the polaroids - those were always William’s thing, and it looked like Rachel had been digital.
As she lifted the photo to inspect it more closely, she traced a finger down along the side of it, as if tempting a paper cut. But no pain, no pain from the paper at least. God, Joyce. She’d had her whole family torn away, except for Chloe’s step-dad. This wasn’t fair to her. Her husband, her daughter.

It finally felt like she might cry. But there was a knock on the door.

At first, Max was quiet, not sure how to respond. Nobody had wanted to disturb her, probably because they had no clue what to say, if they even knew that Max had been involved.

“Max? . . . Max, can I come in?”
Shit, Victoria. She’d never knocked before. And Max couldn’t exactly deal with her right now. But at the same time, she didn’t sound hostile.

“Yeah.” Max was surprised to find her throat a lot more fucked up than her eyes - but Victoria seemed to hear her nonetheless, because the door opened.
“Oh,” the blonde gasped almost immediately, seeing the dozens of photographs scattered in a huge arc around Max, leaving her with only a few feet of space in the entrance. She looked hardly any different - she was just as made up and dressed up as usual, but Max could see the redness of her eyes, and remembered why she was sitting here in the first place. “Is this her?” Victoria asked, gingerly stepping inside Max’s unfamiliar room.

Max just gave a nod, and looked back at the photograph in her hand briefly before setting it aside like the others, not wanting to prompt Victoria to ask about it in particular.
“I heard you two were friends. Like, best friends.”

Max nodded again, and her eyes back down towards the pool of photos, more to avoid looking at Victoria than to see them. Victoria closed the door behind her and sat down on her knees, laying her hands in her lap and looking around Max’s room a little - at the photo wall in particular, but just trying to get her bearings, and avoid looking at the photos of the girl that Nathan had killed.
“What was her name?”

“Chloe. Chloe Elizabeth Price.” The brunette swallowed, biting back the fresh feelings, and tried to focus on the person here. People keep you out of your feelings. “What do you want, Victoria?”

That seemed to almost puzzle her, even though she knew her exact answer. She’d rehearsed it. She’d never have come without a reason. It was just hard to say. Saying it, talking about it, made it all more true. “I’m like . . . the closest thing Nathan had to family, a real family, ever since his sister left. I feel responsible for him, and of course for the way I’ve treated you. I wanted to be able to say I was sorry - sorry for what he did, and that I didn’t stop him. I should have known something was up with him a long time ago, but I was so busy protecting him that I-”

“Victoria.”

“Uh, yeah Max?”

Max’s eyes were still trained on all the photos that she’d missed. “I don’t blame you. You didn’t know he had a gun. You didn’t know that he’d kidnapped Chloe, or Kate, or anyone. And you weren’t there. You couldn’t have stopped him. But I was there, and I heard that he had a gun, but I just hid. I mean, I just sat there because I was scared - I didn’t even realize it was Chloe and I was scared and I didn’t do anything. Even when he shot her I just hid while she died and I let her die-” somewhere in there, Max and Victoria couldn’t keep avoiding each other’s eyes, and as Max’s finally cracked in pain and she finally, finally began to cry, the change felt like a stab in Victoria’s gut, or her heart.
She stood and tiptoed as carefully as she could to avoid the photos until she crouched by Max’s side.

“Max, Max, you could have been killed. I know what he’s like at his worst . . . or when he’s on something, at least. You didn’t know he’d use it. I don’t think he knew he’d use it. It’s not your fault. None of this is your fault.” Those words were so familiar to her, and it felt both familiar and horribly wrong as her arms wrapped around Max’s shoulders, but, surprisingly, Max did not pull away.
“But - she didn’t even know I was there! I hadn’t seen her in five years and I only saw her die. I never got to explain anything. And Nathan, they think he killed her girlfriend, too, Rachel. She was so alone.” Max’s hand clung to the back of Victoria’s arm like she’d grip her bag.

“I . . . I’m so sorry, Max. I’m so sorry.”
So, it had been Nathan, not Jefferson. Victoria hadn’t known that. Her friend hadn’t been all right for a long time. She just hadn’t realized to what degree. But with Max falling apart into her shoulder, one thing, at least, felt normal. Victoria felt like she had someone to take care of.
“They’re going to put him away, Max. Both of them, Jefferson and Nathan. There’s no way they’re walking away after what happened. Nathan’s . . . gone.”

Max knew she was trying to be comforting, by adding some degree of justice to the situation. But Max was not a foolish girl, even when she was scared and in pain. She could hear what ‘gone’ meant to Victoria. And for some reason, it was that that was comforting, or that at least helped her calm her breathing.
“He was like . . . your family,” Max uttered.

Victoria’s voice trembled a little on the simple note, “Yeah.”

Max let her grip on Victoria’s arm abate, and peeled it slowly away from her body until Victoria dropped her arms. Max turned and scooted away from Victoria, leaning her back against the frame of her bed. Victoria turned and sat against Max’s couch - Max with her legs out in front of her, Victoria still on her knees, proper beyond the last straw.
“I’m sorry, Victoria. I’m sorry for you. You don’t deserve to lose your best friend, either. But I . . . I want those fuckers to pay for what they did. Not just to Chloe, but to Kate, and to Rachel, and everyone else they hurt. Nathan, or Jefferson - they might get out one day, but Chloe’s never getting out once we put her in the ground.”

Max had never looked Victoria in the eye like this, but it was almost exactly what Victoria had come looking for - the anger and indignation that she knew they deserved, that she wanted to eat up for her guilt. “I know,” Victoria replied. “But they won’t ever hurt someone again. Not even the Prescotts have that much money.”

Max just nodded again, looking at her feet. “Good.” And the word hung there, still.

Victoria took to looking at the pictures, trying to let the tension abate without just leaving; she leaned over them from her seat without touching any, not wanting to disturb them, recognizing when a space was sacred. “She was . . . beautiful,” Victoria said, not knowing what else she could deduce respectively from any of the recent photos.

Max nodded again, reaching up to swipe some of the hair away from her forehead. She pulled her knees a bit closer to her chest, looking over the photos again without really seeing any. “Yeah, she was. She was . . . my first crush. She got so punk while I was away - but, I mean, she always loved sci-fi, so it was only a matter of time.”
Victoria gave a bit of an appreciative huff, but just kept looking.

Max had been having so many thoughts, looking through the photos; “She and Rachel . . . they must have been something. Chloe loved . . . science - I mean, like. all of it, but engineering and astronomy. And I heard that Rachel was a model, and she was studying for a legal degree at the community college her senior year. They must have been an amazing couple.”

That prompted a long sigh from Victoria, as she noticed a few of the two together - frequently, frequently together, but never quite couple-y. “I never met Chloe, I don’t think. But Rachel, she partied with the Vortex Club - and it looks like they both hung with the skaters, but I don’t think I ever saw them together.”

“Huh . . . the way her mom talked, it sounded like they were inseparable. Chloe - she really took a hit when Rachel disappeared.” Max pulled another photo from the photo box - one of Chloe performing an ollie while her hair was still long and blonde, probably when she was just picking up skating.

“I . . . her funeral - it’s Friday, right? Rachel’s family, they haven’t put out an obituary yet. I guess, even with how long she was gone, they didn’t believe she could be dead.”

Another nod from Max. If only she knew how to communicate more nonverbally. “Yeah, Friday at five, at the cemetery close to the light house. She and I used to have a, a ‘pirate fort’ near there, and her mom thought she might. Like it.”

Victoria watched the tension in her neck change as the mixture of nostalgia and grief struck Max, but she welled up the resolve to finish her question: “Can I come with you? To pay my respects to her family. I don’t need to tell them about me and Nathan but I just want to . . . see.”

That made only the vaguest, strangest sense to Max. But she didn’t want to feel any more alone than she already did. “Okay, Victoria.”

“Okay, Max.”

The blonde leaned forward on her knees and dragged herself a bit forward, and pulled Max into another hug, but this time Max was capable of reciprocating it, holding her much more tightly than she thought any hug with Victoria would ever be.