Time heals all wounds. When you have the power to rewind it, you begin to wonder whether it's too much responsibility for one person to hold.
*****
Sometimes, walking away is the sca...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"I can tell there's something bothering you," Lyra told her. It was January now, colder and wetter. "You can talk to me, you know. I think we're way past the point of keeping stuff from each other, right?"
In theory, yes.
If things were real, if the two people sitting in a corner booth at one of the various local diners were the true versions of Iris Fox and Lyra Sinclair, perhaps Iris would have given it some considerate thought. Maybe she would have seriously pondered the idea of sharing what was on her mind, something she rarely did; most of the time, she just sat and listened while other people poured their heart out to her. It was easier trying to deal with other people's feelings and trying to find solutions to their problems than being faced with her own.
These two, though? These two could barely sit in the same room as each other without an argument sparking up, seemingly out of nowhere; though Lyra had always been known to start fights for the thrill of it, she'd been reeling it in ever since that night at her parents' house, the one when it became clear as day Iris could and would revert time just for her sake. It made her think she was invincible, like everything could be fixed with a simple press of a mental button, which only raised Iris' anxiety even further.
Iris pushed a now cold, soggy fry around her plate. "It's a bit more complicated than that. I might know you and be past that point, but you're not. Everything about this—being here, rewinding time, knowing you know about it"—Iris chose to omit the part about fearing she knew how it would end, in spite of her best and hardest efforts to prevent it, and knew she'd made the right call—"and being constantly concerned with the weight on my shoulders is a bit too overwhelming for me. I'm just trying to do my best, and sometimes my best is . . ." She looked around her, failing to find the energy to make a grand gesture, and shrugged. "Sometimes this is just my best. Sometimes I'm moody, sometimes I need time to process everything."
That description wasn't too far off from one she'd used for Lyra once upon a time, meaning the irony of it all hadn't been lost on her, but this Lyra had no way of knowing that. Perhaps that Lyra would pick up on it and they'd share a laugh or two over said irony, but Iris wasn't sure about anything regarding the one sitting across from her, burger barely untouched, so it was best to not assume anything.
It didn't make it any less odd for her to be close to a complete stranger to someone Iris herself knew so well. In a way, they were both strangers to each other now, with Iris barely recognizing the blonde in front of her with her defeatist attitude and pink streaks, the latter being the least of her concerns. She could do whatever she wanted with her hair—free will and all—but there was something deeply bothering Iris about how easily she had dropped the bomb about things being unsalvageable and unfixable. The Lyra she knew would have never stopped fighting like that, would have never accepted her destiny or whatever it was without putting up a fight, no matter how small it was.
