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Going for a walk had sounded like a much, much better idea in theory.
The weather had, somehow, returned to its usual surly state, like not even Iris' intervention could mess up things that bad (and the weather changes on the night she met the Sinclairs for the second time had been just an accident, a fluke), and walks by the shore were greatly advised against.
Though it wasn't raining by the time Iris and Lyra got out of the car, the harsh gusts of wind slamming against them nearly knocked them off balance. Lyra did a much better job at remaining upright on her feet, despite being thinner and smaller, whereas Iris wasn't nearly as graceless. While trying to fight against the strength of a natural force to close the door on the passenger's side, forever the passenger seat princess that she was, her boot landed the wrong way on a muddy puddle and she barely found the time to hold on.
Lyra would have laughed, in a different time. She would have chuckled, at the very least, but, this time, Iris got nothing of the sort in return. If anything, Lyra looked up at her over the hood of the car when her head suddenly dipped out of her sight, as Iris struggled to not look like an idiot with mud all over her jeans. Once it was settled Iris hadn't slipped, fallen, and cracked her head right open, Lyra locked the card and tucked her hands into the hands of her coat.
Then, she continued to act in unthinkable, uncharacteristic ways.
She waited.
Lyra Sinclair never waited for anyone and had never done so, in any version of reality, so the fact that she'd held back instead of sprinting down towards the sand and the wild ocean down below, miles away from the top of the cliffs, instantly made alarm bells blare in Iris' head.
Iris didn't know exactly where Lyra had fallen from—if she had fallen at all, if she might add. The information she had about the circumstances surrounding Lyra's mysterious death was limited, and she had nothing necessarily tangible to base her theories off of; she knew Lyra had drowned, but no one had told her a thing about everything else.
How had she drowned? Why had she been by the coastline under such dire weather conditions? Had she been up on the cliffs? Had she been simply walking along the shoreline and gotten swept up by an aggressive wave?
The fact that she didn't know—and would never know—the answer to any of those pressing questions was like a permanent itch underneath her skin. Her main goal was to keep Lyra alive, anyway, and none of that should matter (why would she be worrying about how Lyra had died if she succeeded in keeping her alive? Wasn't that the whole point of the ruination of humanity by the cold hand of Iris Fox?), but her undying curiosity was putting up one hell of a fight.
However, there was something undeniably eerie about the possibility of standing on the same cliffs Lyra had once looked down from, contemplating the crashing waves below. It was one of those things Iris would be grateful to be able to forget, to not ever think about, but, as she followed Lyra down the stairs leading down to the beach (and paying appropriate attention to where she placed her feet before she came tumbling down and injured them both), those thoughts resided there, rotting in the back of her head.
Whether those cliffs had any association with Lyra's death or not, they'd now forever be tainted by the possibility simply because they had dared to cross Iris' mind for a fraction of a second. It had been as simple as that, a complete rehaul of her memories, and now she couldn't get the new ones out of her head.
It was what she'd been doing in the past, anyway—wiping away memories, not even just hers, and convincing herself the rewritten and the new ones would be far better, with better consequences. She'd been convincing herself all the suffering would be worth it for the sake of a greater good, but what about all the people who weren't associated with her and/or Lyra at all? Why didn't get a say on what Iris had done to their lives just because she could, just because she'd wanted to? For the sake of something that wasn't guaranteed, for the sake of something the person directly impacted by it the most was passively fighting against?
"Be careful," Lyra warned her. They still hadn't gotten to the bottom of the stairs, but they had both stopped walking. In the distance, thunder rumbled, the skies coated in an even deeper shade of gray, and Iris was still mesmerized by how it made her eyes look even paler, almost translucent. "If you fall, it's going to be nasty."
"Have you ever fallen here?"
"Down these stairs? Oh, so much." She dramatically rolled her eyes. "They're a hazard whenever they're wet."
The question was right there, hanging on the tip of Iris' tongue like the sea foam from below, and all she needed was a little push, a little more bravery. All she'd have to do was ask, but stopped herself thanks to the nasty, stinging reminder that the Lyra standing in front of her wouldn't know the answer to any of her questions, either. The only one who did was dead and buried in a timeline Iris had wiped out of existence and, even if she hadn't resorted to her time altering powers, she would have never found the courage to reach out to the Sinclairs and ask them. She'd avoided them for months, after all, and the only reason she spoke to Coraline was because she'd cornered her in a grocery store. Had Iris had her way, she would have gone on her merry way avoiding everyone and everything that brought back reminders of Lyra (though her return to Emelle Bay was, by itself, a trigger).
This Lyra would never know whether she'd jumped off a cliff or not.
Based on the state of her body during her funeral—perfectly still, almost like she was trapped in a magical slumber, albeit with a blue tint showing through the makeup they'd caked her face with—there was a high chance she hadn't, which was why everyone had attributed the death to nothing but a freak accident. One of those things that happened to careless people, and Lyra had always been known for her recklessness, so any doubts regarding her state of mind at the time had been brushed aside by most residents.
That was just how she was. She never thought before acting. She was impulsive.
What a shame, what a loss, but is anyone actually shocked?
It's a miracle she lasted as long as she did without someone keeping an eye on her.
What happened to that Fox girl, anyway? Weren't they attached by the hip? How could she have let this happen? How could her parents let such a tragedy happen?
She should have known better than to go for a walk on the beach during the stormy season, but why didn't anyone pull her back? Why didn't anyone try to help? Why why why?
Then, Lyra reached out a hand towards her.
Even with the perilous weather, even when she should be using both hands to steady herself in the frail stone-made stairs and their railings so she'd be safe, she was willing to sacrifice part of her safety to help Iris. It was those little things that gave Iris hope, at least a tiny sliver of it, that they weren't doomed, that there was still something worth fighting for; even with Lyra putting herself at risk by losing her footing, the hand she reached out towards Iris still meant the world. She was wearing her signature fingerless gloves, which weren't doing much to warm her up, and Iris knew she'd be gelid to the touch, but she had touched those same hands under much lower temperatures.
And Iris took it.
And Iris didn't drop it, not even when they were both standing on the wet sand, the heavy clouds looming with the threat of a downpour. The air was thick with humidity and electricity from the distant thunderstorm, the salt from the roaring waves clinging to Iris' hair as they repeatedly pounded against the coastline.
With the wind howling as fiercely as it did, it was a miracle Iris could hear herself think, but she remained focused on the task at hand: be honest with Lyra. Assume she could handle it. Not assume she didn't have the emotional range to not dismiss everything she wanted to say. Not assume she had officially given up on herself—years before her regularly scheduled untimely death.
"Can you tell me how it happens?" Lyra quietly asked, fingers still laced with Iris. At that moment, they were a little bit more than strangers, more than friends, but not best friends. Iris had never been quite sure how to describe the nature of their relationship to other people, and that had been without the ramifications and complications of time travel and the multiverse meddling in. "Like . . . how . . ."
"How you die?" Iris' voice cracked at the end of the sentence, as expected, but she doesn't allow herself to be embarrassed by it. They stop by a large rock, mostly damp on the surface but not soaked, and share the little space, Lyra's bony hip pressing against hers. "I don't know the details, but was told you drowned. I was just thinking about it earlier, actually."
She kicked a lone piece of driftwood, seaweeds clinging to her boot in a desperate attempt to seek solace from the weather. Iris wondered if that was how pathetic she'd been this whole time—between making her desperate wish come true, all for the sake of the one person she couldn't save, the one person her heart would beat for, between everything she'd sacrificed, all she'd been was pathetic.
How could she fight to save something and someone who refused to put in some effort, too? How could she be strong enough for the both of them?
"I don't think you jumped from the cliffs, based on . . . well. Your mom insisted on it being an open casket ceremony," Iris continued, stomach churning as wildly as the ocean. Lyra wrinkled her nose. "I saw you. You looked peaceful. You didn't look . . . hurt, you know? Just blue. You would've hated it."
Lyra pulled her knees close to her chest, wrapping her arms around it. "Do you know why? Did I . . ."
"No. No one knows what happened for sure or why, but you and I . . . we weren't speaking then. We hadn't been speaking for a while when it happened."
The look in Lyra's face then perfectly matched the scenery around them—beautiful, so beautiful it hurt, but with a lingering dangerous wildness lying underneath. Iris, like the coastline, like the cliffs, had had pieces of her chipped off, but had withstood it all.
"Why not?" Lyra questioned. "Were we really that terrible to each other?"
Iris let out a small sigh, the sound fading into the hissing gusts, and tucked her chin into the collar of her knit sweater to protect herself from the chilling gales. "It's complicated."
"I don't think anything about us was ever simple, according to everything you've told me so far. I can draw my own conclusions, too." The first droplets of rain started falling then and, while Lyra pulled up the hood of her raincoat, Iris didn't. "I want to know more. I want to know what happened and how it happened so I can help you move forward with your life after . . . after the inevitable happens. I don't want you to . . . live your life looking back on all of this with regret and anger." She vaguely gestured towards the horizon, blurry with the progressively heavier rain. The longer they stayed, the harder it would be to return to the parking lot without being completely drenched, but neither of them made a move to leave. In the middle of all the chaos, there was something static, something stable. "You hated this place when you left, didn't you?"
"I hated it for stealing you away. I hated it for reminding me of you." She swallowed the lump in her throat, staring down at her knees. "I hated you for robbing me of a lifetime with you. I hate you now for giving up on yourself and not letting me do what I came here to do."
"Iris—"
"You want to help me move on, but what if I don't want to move on? What if I want to keep saving you? What if I want you alive?"
"Maybe it's not about what you want. Maybe it's about what the universe is willing to let happen." Her hand squeezed Iris' wrist. "Maybe we're not in the cards."
ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.
hey kids! heartbreak is fun!
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