Hit Rewind

THIRTEEN: COLD BLOODED

Naturally, Mama Fox had taken this as a personal attack; with both her parents having passed away years prior and her siblings having their own families to tend to, it was hard for her to not see the sudden decision as an inherently, consciously evil choice. To her, he would simply drop off the face of the planet during a holiday people would usually spend with their families, small personal conflicts brewing or not, and yet he was choosing to rub it in her face she'd be all alone. Iris had been promised the illusion of a choice, the illusion of free will, as Lyra would put it—spend Thanksgiving by herself on campus, sad and lonely, be miserable with her mom while devouring cold takeout in front of the plasma screen, or be surrounded by a large dining table, complete with homemade meals.

There would also be the option to try and convince Lyra to invite her, but she'd completely blown that, so she was ignoring everything related to that hypothesis for the sake of her mental well-being.

It still didn't turn her into the most pleasant to be around, no.

One would expect Iris to be the perfect guest in her mother's house after how much time she'd been devoting to miss her—and how things between them used to be before Iris' great plan of rewinding time to save Lyra and doom everyone else's lives in the process, that is—but, instead, she'd found herself strangely drawn to her bedroom.

It wasn't where she'd spent most of her childhood, with the constant moving around Oregon they'd do back when she was younger and had a happy family that was much, much better at keeping up appearances than they currently were, but it wasn't in Providence, either. In case there was an emergency, she'd still be relatively close to Emelle Bay, albeit not in the immediate vicinity as she always was, which brought her an odd sense of relief.

Still, even after spending so long wanting to grow closer to her mom like she knew the two of them really were, she'd gone for the safest option—self-isolation. The very moment the negative thoughts hit her square in the chest, bringing along an overwhelming tidal wave of guilt and shame for finding some truth in her dad's accusations and mean-spirited comments, she'd retreated into the one place in the house where she was bound to not be bothered and to let those same thoughts consume her. It was a never ending cycle of self-sabotage, the one thing she knew how to do better than anyone else—besides prioritizing Lyra, of course.

Of course.

Maybe her dad had a point when he told her mom she had driven everyone away by forcing them to choose sides. Maybe he had a point when he told her she'd be miserable during the holidays because of that—no friends, no family, no grand meal. She'd dismissed the staff so they could go home to spend time with their own families and, whether she wanted to admit it or not, Iris was all she had left. Iris herself could very well have taken the path of self-preservation by doing something entirely different during her Thanksgiving break, the pile of untouched coursework growing exponentially with every minute she spent neglecting its existence, yet she was there.

She wasn't there in spirit, of course, and it felt like she was the one pacing around the house like a ghost. All her life, she'd never been invisible to her own parents; to everyone else, perhaps, except when they needed a favor or needed her, and she'd always been more than prepared to do what was expected from her.

She didn't want her mom to grow comfortable with this dynamic, one where Iris would drop everything in the blink of an eye to run back to her simply because she had no one else, be it because of the separation or because of her own personality traits, but she also couldn't leave her own mom alone at a time like this. She would never outwardly verbalize it, no, as it would mean admitting defeat to Iris' dad and she vehemently refused to show a single sign of vulnerability (something that had greatly contributed to all the bumps in their marriage, no doubt), but her silent pleas to have some company had wrecked whatever was left of Iris' heart, torn apart by Lyra Sinclair's two deaths and returns to live.