“Daaaaaddy, Daddy! Come here!” The ten-year-old brunette had an object cradled in the center of both hands. A stream of tears trickled down, wetting paths on her cheeks below each of her eyes.

Track practice ended several minutes earlier, and Pearl and her father had just arrived back home, stopping the vehicle on the driveway out front, per usual. When the girl saw the injured bird in the front grass, she immediately unbuckled, threw the car door open, and then ran over to check it out. Noticing it thrashing for its life, she scooped it up and called her father for help.

The man ran to his daughter’s side to get a glimpse of what his preteen was holding. “A bird? Pearl, it could have a disease. Put that thing down this instant.”

“It’s dying, Dad! I can’t. I can’t! Please. Do something. Anything!” At that moment, the squirming ceased and the bird’s life ended, leaving its immobile body behind. Several tiny grey feathers and other unrecognizable pieces were scattered in the little girl’s hands.

“Pearl. I-I’m sorry.” Her father clearly didn’t know what to say, it was the girl’s first encounter with death. His eyes were also welling from the empathetic feelings of what his daughter was experiencing. He hugged the girl around the shoulders from behind and reached down to gather the carcass for disposal. Pearl yanked away and put both hands around the body, cupping it out of sight.

“No! Don’t touch it.” She sniffled and leaned her head just slightly; enough to wipe her face on her shoulder.

“Pearl, sweetie. We have to get rid of it. We can bury it if you want, or I can throw it over the back fence where it can decay as nature intended. I’d like to discuss the circle of life with you afterwards. We’ve never talked about death, have we?”

“I’ll do it,” the saddened adolescent stubbornly confirmed.

“That’s my girl,” her father encouraged, a grin of pride stretching his cheek muscles. He pointed to the fence, which was about 30 meters away. “Let’s do it together.”

“NO! I can do it alone.” She was still sad but felt a sense of duty, wanting to prove to her father that she was a big, brave girl.

“Haha, fine, Pearl,” the man giggled. The girl was at an age where she thought she was ready to take on the world without any help. “I’ll be unloading the car if you need me. When you throw it over, don’t touch your face or anything. Go right to the bathroom and wash your hands, got it?”

The brunette nodded and turned towards the fence. One slow step after another, her father, the house, and the car began to shrink behind her. During the walk, she moved her thumbs enough to peek inside the temporary hand coffin she had provided. There were no movements nor signs of life, as she expected.

When Pearl finally arrived at her destination, she didn’t waste time. “Goodbye little birdy.”

Having experienced throwing the shotput during her track and field practices, Pearl knew the approximate trajectory she would need to get the carcass out of her hands and over the fence. With a balanced step forward, the girl extended her arms with a snap, opening her hands as her weight was in the proper position.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as her body recoiled from the throw and she witnessed the creature sailing over and down towards the foliage-filled ground. Just before it hit, the bird spread its wings, twisted its body, and flew away. Her breathing hitched as she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “It wasn’t dead? It wasn’t… dead.”

Ecstatic from what she’d just seen she sprinted back to the house. “DAD! DAD! DAD! The bird!”

“Whoa, calm down, sweetheart. The bird what?” He crouched down on one knee in the grass beside the driveway. He steadily placed a hand on each of his daughter’s shoulders in an attempt to focus the girl’s energy.

“DAD! The bird is alive. I watched it fly away! I-I threw it over, and… and it flew! It wasn’t dead after all!” Her chest was rising and falling with a heightened frequency, and her eyelids were flung open, wider than her father had ever seen before.

“Are you sure? It looked pretty dead to me. In fact, I know it was. Maybe you saw another bird swoop down at the same time. Ya know, sometimes our eyes play tricks on us, honey bunny.”

“No, Dad. It was the same bird. I’m telling you. It-It… it had to be the same one. It looked like the same one, I think.”

“Either way, it’s gone now. Go wash your hands and let’s have a little chat about life and death. I think that conversation is a bit overdue. Then, you can shower and we’ll get ready for your grandparents to come over for dinner. That sound good?”

Pearl nodded and made her way inside the house. Her mind was slowly drifting away from what she had just experienced with the bird. Inside the bathroom, she looked at the leprechaun-themed soap dispenser and smiled. Besides Christmas and her birthday, St Patrick’s Day was her favorite holiday, and she was thankful her mother decorated for practically every occasion. Pearl loved the color green and the idea that a pot of gold could be found at the end of a rainbow.

Her sense of smell was the first to return. A coppery, iron-like scent was radiating from within her. Max’s mind felt like it was rebooting and attempting to run its startup scripts like a computer that had crashed or been abruptly turned off and on again. A reset button seemed to have been pushed, but Max was still unaware of fully conscious thought.

Next was her taste. She opened and closed her mouth several times, subtly smacking her lips as she suddenly felt a desperate need for water; a basic human necessity for life.

Before the next sense kicked in, Max felt a strange, unexpected sensation in her head and heart. A circular pattern of energy pulled at her mind with a tiny tug. The tugging slowly grew to a point where she began to feel embarrassed. She could feel her cheeks grow warm as an unexplained force was digging into the most intimate and protected crevices of her soul. Even though it felt like an intrusion of some private aspect of her heart, all she wanted to do was allow it inside to fill her up. It felt so sweet and pure that nothing else seemed to matter. She couldn’t resist it anymore, so she opened her mind, heart, and soul before being engulfed by a radiating and powerful bond. A sudden flash of orange and white erupted through her vision which quickly subsided.

“Max?”

It sounded like hearing her name from under water.

“Max!”

The second time, it was much clearer.

“We haven’t done this in a very long time, but I’m here, love.” Her voice seemed to almost echo through the dark void as clarity returned.

The brunette felt a mild dribble of pleasure, beginning behind her ears and slowly inching downward. It seemed like a trickle of stream water flowing down a rocky hill and passing over the tiny stones of love in her heart.

“Chl-Chloe?” Her words didn’t seem to come audibly out of her mouth, but she knew they were heard.

“Yes. Remember?… follow the blue.”

As her perception began to phase in, beginning with the corners and focusing through the warped blur, Max realized where Chloe was calling out to her from. Almost as if by instinct, she quickly located the sweet spot where her power resided, soaring past the vast forests of grey, carefully making sure not to press down but pull upward instead. As it raised, she could once again see the inner workings of her mind. The circuitry and swirls of energy were still so beautiful and magnificent. Wisps of colors floated by and all around the vast sea of darkness. She dove inside and began searching for blue.

Like the muscle memory of riding a bike, Max easily spotted a glow of blue incandescing on the horizon. With a swimming motion, she hurriedly made her way towards the azure area. It wasn’t that she was afraid, but the feelings of loneliness and desperation for human interaction in the mindspace felt almost overwhelming. She knew Chloe wasn’t far away, but she urgently pushed herself to her destination.

The blue object was in sight, and she approached with haste. Max reached out and, like lovingly holding hands, interwove her essence into the pulsating fabric of the coil. She was suddenly transported to the infinitely vast and dimly lit area that looked like a ballroom once again.

Standing before her was the tall, blue-haired beauty she had dedicated her life to many years before. The girls looked each other up and down and both smiled like they hadn’t seen one another in months. Max’s heart was bursting with love, she wanted to laugh out loud but restrained herself so she could speak.

“Wowser! You look like you did when we first reconnected in the Blackwell parking lot, babe. You’re nineteen again. Damn, I haven’t seen your skull tee in years. And those boots!”

“Yeah, you too, love. Grey-ass hoodie and shit.” Chloe reached across and, with her pointer and thumb, gripped the inside seam of Max’s hoodie. Starting near the collar, she ran the two fingers down its length, stopping around the naval area. “You’re so goddamn cute! I’m fucking lucky, Maximus.”

With an intense strength, Max wrapped her arms around the girl and squeezed tightly. She felt her young wife bury her face in her hair and take a deep sniff like she used to do all the time. The sensation sent a shiver through her body, goosebumps popping up all over. The lovers held each other, enjoying the pure sensations of simply existing together.

Max pushed back and took a step away. “Chloe. Wait a minute. Why are we here? The last thing I remember is being tied up and… fuck. She dragged you away and started hitting me.”

“I’m so sorry, Max. She had some sort of… device. You tried to rewind but couldn’t. I swear to fucking god, I’ll kill that bitch!”

“Shit. I spoke to Des on the phone at one point. She told me to remember something. Then… Chloe… Damn! She-She hit me with her gun, I think.”

“I could feel you being knocked unconscious, Max. FUUUUCK!” The girl balled her fists and strained the muscles in her face, stomping an enraged foot down. The ballroom-like space they were standing in momentarily shivered. “I didn’t want you to have to experience that shit. Being goddamn pistol-whipped hurts like a bitch. I mean, you’ll have to deal with it when we leave this place, but I knew we needed to connect here again; regroup and shit. I needed to feel you.”

“God, I can’t remember what Des told me, but it seemed like the most important thing ever. She made a specific point to tell me… something.”

Chloe pulled Max back in by her arm and squeezed her smaller body against her taller frame, pressing their curves into one another. The girls embraced the other as Max racked her brain trying to recall what her daughter told her.

“You really do look super cute, Super Max. I forgot how damn adorable you were when we were teens.”

“Are you saying I’m not cute and adorable normally?” The grey-hooded brunette stepped back, frowning and crossing her arms at her chest. Despite the situation, Max had no trouble teasing her wife.

“Well, no… wait… yes. No. I don’t know! Oh, don’t give me those puppy dog eyes and that Max Caulfield sad face. It’s like, my only weakness.” The older of the pair stepped forward for a hug but the girl in front of her stepped backwards. “Okay, look. You were always the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. That was true when we were kids, it’s true here in this place, and it’s true everywhere we are. There, are you happy? You just wanted to make me goopy, didn’t you?”

Max uncrossed her arms as a slight grin was beginning to curl the corners of her lips. “Well, sorta.” She broke her stance of feigned anger. “Do you remember what we did the last time we were in this place?”

“Hmm, let’s see.” Chloe tilted her head upward and ran her fingers through a fake beard on her face as if in deep thought. “Well, you couldn’t keep your hands off me. I remember that pretty clearly.”

Max took a step towards her best friend, closing the distance between them. She felt her heart flutter like the first time her punk joined her in the shower. She found herself alternating glances between Chloe’s eyes and her lips, not sure which she’d rather be lost in. Like a moth to a flame, she was being uncontrollably pulled closer to her soulmate. Just as their lips tenderly grazed the other’s, a memory darted across Max’s mind. She flinched with a small hop, and Chloe huffed as if the denied kiss was physically painful.

“Max, are you okay?”

The hipster took a small step backwards and placed both palms on either side of her head, trying to contain the painful memories that were beginning to flood back in. Then she heard Des’s voice hollowly tunneling through her mind like a tape player being turned on.

Anyway, Mom had gone through some shit and was in the slam on death row, scheduled to be executed pretty quickly… I was going to save you like normal, but I remembered already seeing this version of you at the merger gathering point. Since I knew you would be fine, I realized all you needed were some words of motivation. I briefly spoke to you then left. It was weird as fuck because it was the only instance where your power had morphed into less of a rewind and more of a wormhole thingy. You saved Mom then saved yourself… it seemed pretty bad, but you overcame that shit like you always do. Point is, you need to remember. Somewhere inside of you, you can create wormholes. Now that I think about it, her fucking device might not detect your power that way. You gotta remember!”

“Shit, my head.” Max felt woozy and reached out for something to prop herself on. She would settle for anything she could grasp. The mindspace reality they were currently residing in bowed outward then stretched like an elongated and disproportionate rhombus.

“I gotcha, love,” Chloe comforted, as she pivoted around her partner, gently catching the girl and lowering her to a seated position.

Max felt her wife’s warmth behind her, and it brought a moment of solace. The pain was gone but something wasn’t quite right. It was like someone was breaking into the vault of her mind and trying to access her memories. Suddenly, the dizziness returned and a crash of recollections dove into her.

A woman from another timeline she somehow recognized named Maria began speaking:

…“Giiiirl, I’m working on a story about a woman who suffered from amnesia for fifteen years. One day, she just snapped out of it and realized she had an entire family living in another state. It’s the damndest thing. Gonna interview her tomorrow. Maybe you can join us with those camera skills I’ve heard so much about. Show off a little.”…

“Maria?” Max spoke to herself, but the memory had faded.

She then heard her own voice:

…“Yeah, it’s nice to feel like I’m diving into my career and all. Plus, the assignment revolves around a murder that happened in Arcadia Bay of all places. Crazy, right?”…

Then she heard Chloe’s:

…“Holy shit, Max… Of course you’d clumsily scrape the chair on the floor. You’re still a dork.”…

…“Stop taking those stupid pills immediately. Fuck ‘em. I know it sounds batshit crazy, but that garbage is doing more harm than good for you.”…

… “I do, dork. It’s fucking hilarious. Your memories of us couldn’t be contained forever; no damn way. They’re coming out and I’m excited as shit.”…

…“Shit, Max, I could sit here forever with you… if only I wasn’t facing my execution in two damn days.”…

…“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just remembering my first few weeks in this hell pit. Not to go too much into my own shit right now, but a lot of fucked up things happen here. Being a prison exclusively for women, you can imagine how a mostly male staff would treat prisoners.”…

…“Max, we have one more day together. You have to remember everything. Demand answers from your parents; do some research…anything. Just remember us. I know you’ll find a way.”…

“Max, who’s Maria?” Chloe asked from the mindspace, pulling the smaller girl from her daze. Max could still feel her perfect person behind her and was calmed again.

“I-I… Chloe. She was… I worked with her at the Fresno Herald, in a universe before Des put it all back together. It’s kinda fuzzy, but I remember.” A swirling pillar of black smoke seemed to fill the room. Max had enough sense to recognize the scene was only happening in her head, but it frightened her none the less. It reminded her of the trance the original Watcher put her in many years prior.

Looking around, she noticed she was lying on the floor in a room filled with people she didn’t know. Chloe was on the other side of a glass partition merely seconds away from receiving a lethal injection. Max’s energy was depleted, as she had rewound a dozen times trying to figure out how to save the prisoner.

Just as she felt she couldn’t push herself any harder, she noticed someone crouching over her weakened body.

“Believe in yourself, Max. You still have the power to save her. Don’t give up, you got this. It’s all that matters.” A teenage girl’s voice called out from the distance, filling the brunette’s heart with vigor.

With a newfound strength to move forward, Max felt a seed of confidence shoot up through the soil of her self-doubt and begin to bloom. She pivoted her body just in time to see the teen run her hand through short-cropped, blonde hair, turn to look back once again, then push the door open and disappear outside.

The scene burned away and Max turned to look back at Chloe, who was still cradling her in the mindspace. “It was Destiny! Chloe, it was her! I know what she was saying now!”

“Love, explain everything to me. You’re freaking me out a little bit, not gonna lie.”

“In another reality, you were on death row. I had to sorta level-up my power, and I created a wormhole to save you. That was what Des was telling me on the phone before that zealot girl knocked me out.”

“Whoa, Max. So, I was on… death row? That’s a mind fuck right there.”

“I love you so much, babe.” Max craned upward and grabbed her wife by the neck, pulling her face down and pecking her quickly on the lips. She let go and pushed herself up to a stand. Playfully twisting her body around to face the love of her life, she excitedly clutched both of the girl’s hands in her own. “I know what we have to do now.”