ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

"You can rewind time."

"Something like that, yeah."

"So you're . . . what? A time traveler?"

Iris' shoulders sagged. "I suppose so."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

The conversation had had to wait a few days. Around two weeks, to be more precise, but Iris couldn't find a single flaw in that plan; after all, it really wasn't a simple explanation and, following that fateful night's events, it was no wonder Lyra had needed time and space to breathe and gather her thoughts before confronting Iris.

Perhaps confront was too strong of a word to use. It was like ghosting, in its own way, as both were entirely different in nature, intent, and purpose, but the lingering feelings were somewhat similar in Iris' head.

Confront implied an antagonistic conversation or, at the very least, negative feelings directed towards the other person.

Iris harbored no resentment towards Lyra (you know, besides the whole dying and leaving her behind to rot and deal with the aftermath of the strangest world she'd ever lived in debacle, which, in turn, had triggered her time traveling powers and got her into her current mess), though she couldn't be certain the other way around was the same. It wasn't like Lyra didn't get to be justifiably pissed off at Iris, both for going behind her back in the oddest way possible and for keeping vital information from her, and Iris wouldn't sit there and try to take it away from her.

All she could do was hope, because when wasn't she desperately hoping for something instead of doing everything she could to make it happen?

For the sake of keeping her ego unwounded, she was choosing to believe Lyra was the slightest bit grateful for having a second (technically third) chance at life, regardless of how confusing and infuriating the whole ordeal certainly was for her. Iris couldn't begin to fathom being in her shoes, being told she had already died in two versions of reality, and had been brought back by a force that shouldn't exist or be messed with.

That would be stressful enough on its own, but having to listen to those words come out of the mouth of someone who had been your best friend for years, been in love with you for years, but who was still just a college friend in your present instance of reality? Right after your second untimely death, which had been undone without your input? That was a whole new level of losing agency, regardless of Iris' intentions or the implications; she was alive, and people were supposed to be grateful for that kind of thing, but Iris also knew Lyra. She knew how her mind operated.

She didn't like to be controlled. She didn't like to have her free will be questioned or be taken away from her, and no amount of good intentions coming from Iris would ever change that. Lyra could kick and stomp her feet and argue with her all she wanted, but Iris was arrogant enough to know when she was right, and she was adamant on being the one person in the world who knew her better than she knew herself.

At least she had, up to a certain point in their lives—before it all went wrong. At least she thought she had been that person, once upon a time. She hoped so—wishful thinking, and all.

All the time Iris had spent oscillating between stages of grief somehow felt meaningless then. Even the unbearable numbness that had found its way into the cavities between her ribs hadn't amounted to anything, and all that anger and sadness and everything in-between had all been for nothing.

Trying to make sense of what had happened to Lyra was pointless because she had successfully undone it—not just once, but twice—yet the doubts and the bargaining attempts were still bubbling underneath her skin like lava. She'd cried for Lyra Sinclair, begged the skies and the sea to bring her back, broken several of her belongings, shattered her parents' hearts, and Lyra was sitting right next to her as though nothing had happened. As though Iris had gone through all that mourning over a death that hadn't ever occurred in the literal sense, at least in that version of reality; to her, however, it had.

What was she supposed to do with that?

She'd heaved and broken down in the kitchen floor for an undead girl, and, now that she'd finally gotten everything she wanted—a second, a third, a fourth chance to finally making it right—she'd been rudely reminded of how fickle life truly was. Everything could be over in a fraction of a second—a current too strong to withstand, a speeding car, anything could whisk Lyra away from her again—and she felt so goddamn ungrateful and selfish for daring to be furious about it.

She was furious over Lyra's own anger for having been saved, for being known and seen by someone after years of complaining about being the daughter of two people who found her to be invisible (which was objectively not true). Lyra had questions, but so did Iris, and only one of them got to have theirs be answered. Only one of them got to be coddled and supported and saved.

Why wasn't Iris allowed to feel her own emotions? Why was she, after all this time, still invalidating herself for the sake of protecting Lyra? Lyra Therese Sinclair, who didn't love her in this universe, who barely even knew her, whereas Iris had gotten to keep all the memories?

Why?

"Prove it, then," Lyra said, voice surprisingly steady for someone who had been hunched over, arms circling her bony knees, for so long Iris could hear her joints creak like a ghost house. Iris looked at her, but Lyra didn't return the gesture. Instead, she stared right ahead, focused on a blank spot on one of Iris' dorm room walls—one of the few devoid of any decorations. "Can you prove you can rewind time in a way that doesn't involve my death or a near-death experience involving either of us?"

Iris chewed down on her bottom lip. "I don't know. Most of the time, I don't really know how to trigger it; it just does. It's usually in response to an external event."

"The external event here is me asking you to do it. It shouldn't take an imminent tragedy for it to happen, right?"

Iris cowered with the animosity and defiance in Lyra's voice, even though she should have expected it from the start.

She'd had a hard time believing her powers herself, but had attributed most of it to her crippling self-doubt, a constant in her life that had been present for as long as she could remember being aware of it, and to the sheer ridiculousness of time traveling being real outside of the fictional worlds she didn't even review or edit for a living. Those were her personal feelings, and she knew she had a plausible explanation to feel that way, one that no one but her got to invalidate.

To have Lyra, out of all people, do that . . . well. It felt like a punch to the heart, like her insides had been set ablaze, but that was the nastiest thing about feeling betrayed—it never came from someone who didn't know you or someone you didn't care about. Even if the version of Lyra sitting next to her didn't know her that well, not nearly as deeply as the original one once had, the latter was dead and buried six feet underground. This one wasn't necessarily new or improved, but she sure as hell knew how to pack a punch.

She knew Lyra would be harboring resentment for a while, being one of the best people at holding a grudge she knew, and she worked with writers (not anymore, anyway), who could be some of the pettiest, most spiteful creatures on the planet.

"I guess not," Iris whispered. "I don't like overusing it, though. Messing with time is dangerous enough when you do it once and, ever since I've been able to do it, I've done it far more times than anyone should. You can't mess with the natural laws of the universe and the flow of time on repeat and expect zero consequences to come out of it."

Lyra's scoff tipped Iris over the edge. She rushed to wipe a stubborn tear from her cheek with the heel of her hand when Lyra wasn't looking—not that she'd ever been, which was ironic considering how badly she hated to be ignored and misinterpreted by the people closest to her—and loathed herself for stooping that low. It was the kind of pain that leaned more towards self-pity, the kind of pain that felt manipulative.

Iris had grieved this girl, gotten somewhat used to her perpetual absence from her life and from the world—clearly not as adequately as she could have, considering her mere memory had dragged her back kicking and screaming to Emelle Bay, and it had done the same to Coraline and Mike Sinclair. They'd been wanting to leave Oregon ever since their little girl had been ripped away from them, but couldn't escape the bay and the ghosts hanging around each corner they turned.

Had it always been like that between the two of them, or did she have new insights, a new perspective when it came to facing their relationship now that she knew how it had panned out? Were they destined to always end up fighting with each other, antagonizing each other over the smallest things? Was it a matter of individual issues clashing or was the relationship itself that wouldn't work?

Iris' stomach coiled around itself. When she'd rewound time, it was supposed to be a miraculous solution, but it had proved to be somewhat more complicated than the alternative.

She supposed that was the thing about ghosts—they were meant to haunt you.

"You've done it countless times, altered the course of reality every time," Lyra pointed out. "The damage is already done."

"Lyra—"

Lyra clenched her jaw. "This is my life. You've been messing with my life, Iris, and it's not fair that I don't even get to have a proper explanation as to why or how you do it."

Wounded silence hung in the air between them. It was hard to tell which of them was the most affected by the current circumstances, but Iris allowed herself enough grace and consideration to believe she deserved to acknowledge her own injuries instead of brushing them off for once.

She hoped she would eventually learn to extend that to other areas of her life, not just those that were Lyra-centric, but everything about her existence during the past few months had orbited around her. Her fears, her desperate wishes, her regrets, her decisions (that impacted not only her life, but those of so, so many people, including both their families and coworkers, for one, and everyone else on Earth) and indecisions, her feelings—they were all about Lyra and what she'd think or feel.

She could have rewound time to a moment when she hadn't told Lyra the truth about her time travel "skills", if one could call them that. She could have rewound time to a moment when she hadn't ruined everything by uttering Coraline's name during dinner. She could have rewound time over and over until she found the perfect version of reality, the one where everything would work out and Lyra would never be in mortal danger or their relationship wouldn't start cracking.

She could have done all that. She could do it then and there. She didn't, though, and wasn't sure how to feel about that. Whether it was because she was afraid to screw up the universe any further, whether it was because her gut knew it was a fruitless effort to keep chasing after something that would always evade her at the last moment, whether it was a combination of factors, it didn't matter.

Her hesitation and ambivalence did.

"You don't get to make me feel bad about this," she muttered. "I don't regret saving your life."

"I didn't ask you to," Lyra argued. "You didn't let me choose."

"You didn't have to ask me. It's what friends do. Friends love each other."

"Friends. Right."

That would have to be yet another comment Iris would obsess over later, something she could have easily erased from existence, but she wouldn't do it. Giving in to the urge to rewind time just because it was convenient or because she didn't want to feel as terrible as she did would mean stepping towards her own vortex of self-destruction.

Maybe the Lyra sitting in her dorm room with her right now wasn't the one she'd grown to know and fall in love with, but it didn't mean it wasn't the real her. It was a different side of her, more bitter, more jaded, meaner in general, and maybe their friendship would never be healthy, let alone a relationship more serious than that, but if that's what it took to keep Lyra alive . . .

Iris exhaled through her mouth, wishing she were able to stop giving for once. She wanted Lyra to understand everything in the world had limits, including her powers and herself, but she would never. With Lyra, it was all or nothing, and she would push everyone as far as she possibly could, stopping at nothing to get what she wanted.

She was ambitious. Sure. However, even Iris wasn't blind enough to not be able to tell the difference between ambition and inability to let things go. She wasn't the only obsessive person in the room, but she feared she was the only one who could see things clearly. Lyra would only ever admit it to herself if there was something in it for her, she feared.

"Empty your pockets," Iris said. "Everything that you keep in your pockets, set it on the table. I'll rewind once, then tell you what it is. You won't be in any danger then, right? I'm letting you decide."

Lyra's face could have brightened up even the darkest of days. "Okay. Let's see what you've got."

ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

your honor the girls are arguing and there's no plot in this novella at all. also, i'm aware lyra is coming off as very hard to like/root for, and their relationship isn't the healthiest. this wasn't necessarily the original plan; though it was never my goal to make the relationship this toxic and co-dependent, there was always the intent to show off SOME degree of it. 

the fact that it got to how it is right now kind of happened (the first time i've ever let my characters change the course of my book for me...... this is why i have a love-hate relationship with being a pantser lmao) and now you'll just have to deal with it. sowwy

wc: 2366 (docs) // 2336 (wattpad)

total wc: 21663 (docs) // 21399 (wattpad)