Trigger warning: themes of violence and sexual assault

* Wednesday, Five Moments From Panic, After the Storm*

No.

'Come on Max. Answer me.'

No. I'm not doing this, I'm rewinding and leaving.

'Max, I asked you a question. Why are you here?'

Fuck this, I'll just-

'Answer me, dammit!'

'no.' Max stands protectively in front of Kate, facing towards the... towards Jefferson. Mark. He's Mark now. 'I'm not telling you anything. Katie, stand up please. Let's get out of here.' Only a whimper, though the sobs were all but gone.

'Come on Max. Don't tell me you actually believe what the establishment is tell you about me. Really? You were my favorite student, my star pupil. I thought you might understand.'

'Shut up.' Now pulling on the blonde, who begins to unfurl. 'Katie? Katie, look at me. Look. How long ago did you get here Kate?'

'what? about ten minutes. maybe fifteen?'

A bit long. Gonna have to go back as far as I can. Standing to the side, out of line of sight of the doors, Max rewinds. Kate, abruptly sitting down, shakes in place. But, from Max's perspective, only for a moment. She stumbles backward into the room, disappearing. Max cannot help but peak through the gap to look for Kate. No luck. She sees him, though.

He looks... terrible. Terrible but happy? Max unconsciously slows her rewind to a crawl. Closer inspection shows a lot of wear on his closes. Dirty, greasy even at the cuffs of his shirt and pants. His glasses have a impact crack on the right eye, not large but visible. He's gaunt, maybe fifteen pounds lighter. His eyes, though. His eyes have lost that spark he had while teaching. Now they're hard. Like the dark room. Like before. The prison bars in front seem to perfectly frame him.

She doesn't realize it, not at first, but Max's power is at it's limit. No longer able to push it into the past. The scene was frozen. She strains to go further, to pull Kate out of that room before ever setting foot in it. But she can't. The sharp pain is... too much. She pinches her nose, cutting off the bleed she knows is forthcoming.

So Max stop trying to go back, takes a breath, and releases time. Just have to pull Kate out personally. And she steps right into the room.

'-a decent subject, Kate. You have a purity in your very pose but... you didn't quite lose your hope. It's-'

'Stop it.'

He looks over to the door, watching the brunette come stand in front of her friend protectively.

'Ah, Max. Welcome.'

She stares at him. Just stares. Too much! Fear, anger, hate, depression. All the negativity of the last few days, few weeks. Hell, the lifetime of all the shit of her life. Starting with William.

That was the first true tragedy Max experienced. Granted it wasn't her father. But Chloe was her sister then, so close enough. And to leave, days later. In one fell swoop she lost half her family.

And then the loneliness. Years of it. Yes, she had some... not quite friends. Acquaintances, maybe a step between the two. For the first few years she stopped herself from getting too close to anyone, protecting herself from feeling that pain again. By the time she was ready again for that sort of relationship it was too late. Max was already the quiet girl. The weird girl who took selfies all the time but never posted them online. The girl who never spoke up, kept to herself even during school trips and dances.

She built a shell for her protection and had no way to break free.

And then back home. Arcadia Bay, the place of pirates and tragedy. Painful, scary, but a chance to start fresh with a dream come true. Studying photography under one of her greatest influences. And a chance, however slim, of finding her sister again. The best friend she abandoned but hoped to possibly, maybe, find again and reconnect with.

And in a matter of two months, all gone again. Her dream squashed. Her idol fallen. Her Chloe hurt and maimed and killed dozens of times right before her eyes. And Max. Mentally tortured, emotionally played with, wrung out like a dish rag. And responsible for hundreds of deaths. All of this stemming from one person.

Mark Jefferson.

So Max takes all those negative emotions and feeds them into that one thought. Pushes them down and burns them in fires of one idea. Mark Jefferson is the one who did all this. He's why Nathan is so fucked up. He's why Rachel died. Chloe in the bathroom. My need to time travel. My choice.

If Mark Jefferson never came to the Bay, I could have had a good life.

She takes a moment for herself, breathes in, and blows on that blaze.

'Hello Mark.'

Mouth frowning. He takes a moment, angry. 'That's Mister Jeff-'

'Hang on a moment, Mark. I need to talk to Kate.' And she ignores him.

Heads close, a whisper. 'kate, you okay?'

Fear and unease sit heavily on the blonde girl. 'yeah. i was looking for you girls and wandered... i didn't know he was here.'

'i didn't think he'd still be in town. figured he'd be in county lockup or something.'

'max, we need to leave. he's so... different.' Max follows her eyes back towards their former teacher. A grin fights a grimace. He seems content to let the two girls talk before intruding. 'it's like mister hyde took over or something. was this what it was like in the room?'

The way he acted there. The cold, controlled evil he revealed when he was in control. 'yes, he was just like this.'

'he looks so... evil.'

But he's not in control anymore.

Huh?

He's sitting behind bars. His secretes are all exposed. He's never going to see the sky without looking through chains.

Speaking up. 'He's not evil, Kate. He's just petty.'

A pairs of whats in tandem.

'Katie, I want to have a conversation with Mark here. It isn't going to be pleasant so if you want to leave I get it.'

The young woman looks at her friend with confusion and hesitation. 'Max, are you okay?'

The brunette turns back, showing a sweet smile, not the bitterness Kate expects. 'I am fine, really. I just... I need to say something to-' A thumb over the shoulder. '-that might involve some yelling a curse words. I don't want you to be here.' Dropping several octaves. 'it's going to be some nasty stuff. we haven't talked. i really don't know if you're ready to... deal with the crap yet.'

Tight-lipped, she nods. 'i'll go. but what about chlo?'

A pause in her determination. 'don't tell her. if she forces you to, tell her i'll be ten minutes and to leave me be.' Max rethinks. 'if she's going to come in here anyway, tell her she better not interrupt me.'

And alone with her demon, but armed with knowledge and armored with experience, Max turns to the man sitting patiently in his cell.

'Ah, finally. I was beginning to worry you wouldn't have the-'

'Shut it, Mark. I'm not here to hear you go on and on about-'

'Miss Caulfield.' Not loud, just insistent. 'I am your teacher and your-'

'Not anymore.' She steps up to the bars. 'Now you're just some guy that went to jail.'

A stutter. 'You're right, of course. So, since I am instead just "some guy" now, what is this intrusion all about? Why harass me?'

What? 'Harass? What am I doing that's harassing?'

A plain-old creepy smile. 'Why, you are intruding and bothering an arrested suspect in a police station, without my consent or my lawyer present. And, seeing as you seem surprised to see me, I assume without the consent of the police.'

He's just trying to rattle me. She looks at her shaking hands. And it's working. Time to take control. 'Mark, don't worry about that. You have enough on your plate as it is.'

A shrug. 'I suspect your right, Maxine. But then I think... I really should be worrying about you, shouldn't I? You are the reason I'm in here, after all.'

Huh?

A laugh. 'What, you didn't thin I didn't know you and your blue-haired sidekick broke into my studio. Twenty four hour surveillance. I knew someone was in there as soon as you walked in. Though, to be honest, I expected you to confront me as soon as you could, probably when I was announcing the Everyday Heroes winner.' He looks serious, narrowing his features to bore into Max. 'I wanted that person to be you, Max. Tell me, did you ever even do the assignment?'

'Y-yes.' Take the momentum back. 'Yes I did. It was incredibly good. An out-of-focus perspective, myself in the forefront, back turned, with a wall of Polaroids in the background. Myself as the stand it, viewing my heroes. It was really beautiful.' She deliberately puts a sad note on the last few words.

'Was?'

'Well, I destroyed it. I didn't need it anymore. It was what you wanted from me.'

'Ah. Sorry to hear that. I only ever wanted to expand your art, I guess-'

'No you didn't.' Hit him. 'You never wanted to help anyone. We're all tools and props to you, aren't we?'

'Max, I-'

'I'm curios, Mark. Why did you come here? Arcadia is a small town. Missing people get noticed. Something like what happened with Kate gets noticed. Why come here?'

He stands, starting to amble. His confines keep him from ambling more than a few steps. 'We've gone off course. We were talking about you.'

'I don't want to. And I can walk out of here any time I want. Seeing how starved you are for conversation I think we should talk about what I want to talk about.'

A moment of silence that starts to elongate. Just as Max suspects nothing more would be said, he caves.

'Fine. What do you want?'

'I asked about-'

'Arcadia Bay? Money and opportunity. My previous setup was growing a little... unusable. I needed more money and security. Sean Prescott was looking for a teacher for his son's "art". It was an easy decision.' He sighs, sitting back down. 'That's not what your really what to know, is it? I thought you had a better eye than this, Max?'

'why?'

'What? Speak up, please.'

'Why do it? Why capture and kill women?'

'Killing them wasn't the point of it.' Mark starts to grow agitated. 'If that idiot Nathan hadn't of overdosed Rachel none of this would have happened. There were mistakes in the beginning of my career, of course, but I had a system. If that boy had just followed it... but he tried too hard. It happens so often, you know. The prodigal student trying to surpass the master before his time. Or maybe the son trying to usurp his father.'

'You destroyed him. Twisted him until he was barely recognizable.'

'He was my first protégé. I may have made some... mistakes. It's just so hard to know what to do with the boy. So eager, after that first meeting with him. I saw his art and knew, just knew I found someone who could be taught my methods. But he fell too deeply for Rachel. Wanted too hard to impress me. To think, I had so much planned for that subject.'

'Rachel wasn't a subject. She was your victim.'

'She was my muse! We would have done such work...' He gets a lost, even longing look in his eyes. Leaning back, his hands make absent motions, evoking human forms. 'She was such a perfect model. A chameleon, she flitted in and out of any situation. It was so beautiful to watch. She had so much potential. So useful.'

Stop it! 'You aren't talking about a person. You're talking about an object. You're a sociopath.'

Standing, very much grounded in the here and now. 'What the hell-'

'A fucking sociopath.' Max pushes him. 'You're crazy. Like, really.'

'I am not, I'm-'

'An artist? Are you for fucking real? You kidnap, assault, and kill people! You're fucking scum.' I'm done listening. 'You aren't even worth this conversation so I'm done letting you talk. Mark, you are nothing. Nothing more than a byline on the news, someone that'll be forgotten in a month except by a few people who will lament at the loss of the actual art you could have produced.'

'How dare-'

'NO! How dare you!' Fuck this asshole. 'You think you get to be offended? After you killed Ch- after what you did? You're a Goddamn rapist with delusions of sophistication.'

'I never laid an inappropriate finger on them!'

'Everything you did was inappropriate!' A chance to keep her voice down. 'No, not just inappropriate. Tasteless. Unprofessional. Wrong. Everything you did down in that dungeon was just wrong.'

And he doesn't understand...

'And you can't understand that. What you did to those women, what you wanted- it's evil. Purely evil.'

He approaches quickly, causing Max a half-step back. Gripping the bars, spittle flying as he screams. 'I was making art! It's about pushing boundaries! Challenging the status quo!'

'It was for your own lustful needs, you sick son of a bitch. And you're going to rot for it!'

And he laughs. A deep, belly-laugh. 'Max, thank you! Thank you so much!'

What?!

'You get it! It's all I want from my art. Challenge! Argument!'

'Shut the fuck up.'

'There it is again. This is the core of art. Disagreement and discourse. Art isn't art if everyone loves it. Art is when people argue over merit and meaning.'

'I'm not arguing over that. We're talking about the the fact you're insane.'

'No artist is sane. Not in his own time. They are always viewed with a hint of trepidation at their next piece. Always persecuted.' He poses, theatrically, to stare out his foot by foot window towards the darkening sky.

What the hell? 'Mark? Who are you playing for?'

'What do you mean?'

Shit, he's serious? He really doesn't realize... 'Mark, I'm the only person around. And, like you know, I've been in your little dungeon. I've see the real you.'

'And?'

'Why the hell are you hamming it up so hard?' Max almost laughs. 'Do you really think it's going to work on me? Thant's... fucking hysterical.' She does laugh now, a stiff giggle. She throws on a faux hipster pose and pitches her voice to something more like Victoria in prissy mode. '"Art is challenge and argument. I'm persecuted." Really? I'm surprised you can sit on the high horse with that stick sticking out of your ass.'

Damn, this is actually feeling good.

'That is really uncalled for. We were having a pleasant discussion-'

Another laugh, more belly this time. 'Pleasant? No no no. You were enjoying yourself and I was horrified. But I get it. I finally realize it, now.' She steps forward, causing Mark to step back.

'You are completely.'

Step.

'Utterly.'

Step.

'Full of.'

Step.

'Shit.'

He plops down hard on his bench. 'That is frankly rude.'

'Well I'm tired of sparing people's feelings. Mark, I feel sorry for you.' For once, her standing and him sitting, Max towers over her former teacher. 'You're nothing, you'll be nothing, and your "art" will be nothing. You don't realize it yet, do you? Your art is lost.'

A bit of fear stammers his voice. 'What d-do you mean?'

'Mark, it's evidence.' A smile creeps over her lips. Not humorless but certainly not wholesome either. 'It's going to be seen only by prosecutors and judges and jurors. The only people. And their job is to figure out how sick you are. How long to lock you up. After that, all those pictures you took?' This, I think, will actually hurt him. 'They get taped up in little cardboard boxes for the next forever after. Maybe, maybe, a few decades from now they'll refer to your case when building of another serial killer's profile. Maybe some day, when your hands start to shake and your eyes can't focus, you'll be let out. You need to realize this very important fact.'

Max delivers the coup-de-grâce.

'Your art will never matter. All that you've done will be lost. You will never be allowed to produce more. Nothing will come of your "life's work". You no longer matter at all to anyone, and you won't ever again.'

Mark Jefferson, former teacher, former renown photographer, just sits there. Several times he tries to start but, a bit perplexed, he stops. And keeps growing more desperate.

He's speechless. 'You know what, Mark? I won't leave you with nothing.' She pulls out her camera, turns around a takes a picture of the pair of them. Max enjoys how her obnoxiously perky attitude contrasts with Jefferson's depressive malaise. 'Here, a memento. Now go fuck yourselfie.'

Before she could ruin a line like that, Max walks out, a spring in her step.

And walks right into Chloe.