a heavy roll of her eyes was all she could manage at first. chloe was livid, beyond words it seemed. nathan was supposed to be behind bars, rotting away in prison for the rest of his forsaken life for all she cared. it was the one thing that had kept chloe together since suddenly cropping up alive and healthy - that the people who had hurt rachel were getting what they deserved. so to see him now, a frustrating combination of smug and weak-willed, left her furious. life would never stop dealing her a shit hand. perhaps she’d stop being so utterly destroyed every time if she’d just accept that much.
“i know, i was there.” she wasn’t, really, although she doesn’t say as much. she does remember seeing the gun the first time around, but max had saved her before anything serious could have happened. and the last thing chloe now remembered was standing at the lighthouse and asking max to go back and let nathan kill her - anything to save arcadia bay. she’s prepared to just walk away, maybe spit on him for good measure, but then rachel’s name is tumbling from his mouth and any semblance of self control she might have had flies out the window. her fist flies forward, aimed right for his jaw, and it’s gratifying and painful all at once. “fuck you, nathan.” she seethes, her entire body vibrating with emotion. “you lost the right to say her name when you murdered her and stuck her in god damn trash bag.” she can still remember finding rachel’s body, buried in the old junkyard that they’d called home. now it’s just a painful reminder of how fucked up the world was to do that someone as wonderful as rachel amber.
her chest seizes up and she holds her hand to her chest in an effort to keep from hitting him again. “you don’t get to use either of us being alive as some fucked means of redemption, you asshat. for all i know i’m going to end up six feet under again the second i leave this dump, but even if by some twisted sort of miracle i’m still breathing - nothing will ever erase what you chose to do.”
Whenever a fist connected with Nathan’s face -- he stumbled back. He wasn’t going to fall over. He was just -- shocked. He thought that Chloe was a figment of his imagination. He thought that she was a hallucination brought on by how much guilt he had for ending the other’s life. After that hit -- he figured she was real. Not unless he, like, Fight Club’d himself and actually punched himself in the face and was having this whole conversation with himself but -- he wasn’t that fucked up, was he?
How did she even know this? How did she know that he killed Rachel Amber? It -- it was an accident. He didn’t mean to. Once he was impressing Jefferson -- he was going to let her go and she wasn’t supposed to remember anything but shit turned south and Nathan fucked up (like always -- as his father would say) and now she was dead. She wanted to be a model. She wanted to go to California and live her life and -- and now she couldn’t even do simple things like wake up in the morning and that was all Nathan’s fault.
Tears threatened to spill from his eyes. He sniffled and blinked them away. He had to bite down on his lower lip so it would stop trembling. He muttered something like “I’m not crying because you hit me” or something stupid like that. He shouldn’t have even opened his mouth. Whenever he sees Chloe he should just -- ignore her until she goes away but instead he showed her how weak he was and he figured she was so god damn happy for making Nathan break down like this. You’d think, with all the crying he’s done, that he wouldn’t have any tears left.
If she was real -- does that mean he could strangle her with his bare hands?
“I didn’t say I wanted redemption you -- you bitch.” The words came out like venom. “We both fuckin’ know that I don’t deserve that. I was saying it --” he paused. Why did he say it? “For you. If -- if you loved her so much, wouldn’t you be ecstatic to hear that there’s a possibility that she could be back from the dead?? Like you are.”
