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.
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Sometimes, walking away is the sca...
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Coraline Sinclair shouldn't be as intimidating as she was, but Iris had never felt fully at ease around the woman, even when Lyra was alive and well—even when they were on proper speaking terms with one another. Now that Lyra was no longer around to serve as a mediator, the air felt heavier, frigid in a way.
It wasn't like Lyra's parents hadn't ever liked Iris, not exactly.
Lyra had been a true social butterfly back in the day, even when they were still living on campus, and she had plenty of other friends besides Iris. However, Iris knew she'd been the only one to get close enough to deserve to meet the Sinclairs, which, in her head, had to count for something and helped her convince herself she'd mattered, even back then. With Lyra going on and on about how selective her parents were when it came to who they allowed inside their home, Iris had always worn that permission like a literal badge of honor.
They hadn't ever made her feel unwelcome in their house, either. Every time she and Lyra stopped by, there was always warm, comforting food waiting for them, along with a cup of matcha tea for Iris and a large mug of black coffee for Lyra, and Iris was routinely invited to stay over for dinner even when she couldn't, in good conscience, overstay her welcome. They'd make small talk, ask her about her family and her studies, compliment her creative writing pieces and the thought pieces she wrote for the Daily Emerald.
The issue was that their interest had never seemed to go past the surface level. Where Lyra conducted herself through life without a care in the world, a self-proclaimed flight risk and free spirit, Iris spent far too much time inside her own head and overanalyzing every interaction she had with other people.
She'd always had way too much free time on her hands, even with all the extracurricular activities she'd picked up to keep herself occupied instead of being alone with her thoughts (now she had more time than she'd ever had before, she bitterly realized), and people who truly lived in the moment probably wouldn't devote that much thought into what every person on the planet thought of them.
Still, Iris would take the distant, cautious affection over being mistrusted and passively-aggressively invited into their house when in reality they just wanted her gone and far away from their daughter any day.
At least they had trusted her to be around Lyra, even during her worst days, but those days were gone now, and Iris was certain they were well aware she and Lyra hadn't been on speaking terms for a while by the time the latter died. Whether they held a grudge against her for not having been present enough, for not trying hard enough was still to be determined, but there was a chance she could do something to change the course of history. She could make it better now, could she not?
