The Only

The Strand

An indescribable heaviness pushed on Chloe's chest. Her lungs were tight and her insides wretchedly burned. Sixty terrifying seconds ago, she watched life's light rapidly fade from her soulmate's beautiful blue eyes, followed by a debilitating shockwave of grief passing through her.

Still held tightly in the blonde's arms, the full weight of Max's body rested in her lap on their living room floor. Tears continued to roll down Chloe's face, wetting her wife's still cheeks. The myriad of emotions warred in her mind, locking the new widow in position. Disbelief, desperation, and anger all battled for control of her motor functions, though none of them stood a chance. The feeling of absolute loss of her perfect person placed her in a state of near paralysis.

"Max... please... no... y-you can't be... dead..." Moisture continued covering Max's lifeless cheeks from above, trailing down in tiny streams to finally drip on the floor as if she, too, shared in Chloe's sorrow.

Another sixty seconds had passed since Max was murdered by Marzanna. Esther slowly walked over and placed a palm on the deceased's forehead. She slid her hand down the freckled woman's face, closing her still-opened eyes with a gentle swipe. When Chloe noticed the former zealot's hand on her wife, she shoved the girl away, causing her to stumble backwards and land on her butt with a thud.

"DO. NOT. FUCKING. TOUCH HER!!" Chloe screamed at the top of her lungs, surprising even herself with the harrowing, guttural tone in her voice, though she didn't really care. "YOU KEEP YOUR FILTHY HANDS AWAY FROM MY WIFE, BITCH!!!" Another wave of sadness pressed through from inside, spilling out of Chloe like a dam bursting wide open. She uncontrollably sobbed while rocking back and forth with Max's head and torso in her lap, running her hand over her wife's face, feeling the cooling skin beneath. Her emotions quickly swung from anger at the stranger in her house, back to an extreme and unfathomable sorrow.

"Chloe, she's gone," Esther whispered from the floor. "I'm so... so sorry."

"Fuck you..." Chloe was losing the motivation to not only respond but to exist at all. Her thoughts began wandering towards darker, more self-destructive areas she'd only considered when she was much younger. Maybe she should think about joining her soulmate and throw life away. If Max was gone from this world, Chloe didn't want to be stuck here without her.

We're always together, even when we're not.

The words, ones originally spoken long ago, quietly whispered as if on a breeze, bringing with them needed comfort. A new sense of clarity began forming inside Chloe's mind; an awareness that had always been there, just covered up and masked, hidden recently by shock and grief. She had allowed her emotions to get in the way of what she knew to always be true. It was the one constant she held in her life through everything that ever happened to her.

"No," she plainly stated, "she'll never be gone. We're Max and Chloe." She sniffed back the snot her sinuses had produced from crying, and she wiped away the stream of tears from both sides of her face. Using her sleeve, she dried her wife's cheeks as well.

Chloe pointed at the girl on the floor and motioned her over with a back-and-forth curling of her finger.

"I don't know how much time we have, but I need your help. If you really want redemption for the fucked-up shit you've done..."

"Anything," the former zealot responded, as if she were a soldier preparing for orders.

"Help me get her up then. You better be gentle or I swear to God..." Chloe shot Esther a determined, if fiercely straightforward, glance.

The girl nodded and followed Chloe's lead. Together, they tenderly moved Max's body up to the couch, setting her in a comfortable sitting position. If she didn't know any better, Chloe would have thought her partner was merely sleeping.