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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It was her. It was her. It was her.
Lyra Sinclair. In the flesh and blood and, most importantly, alive and well.
Years younger than she'd been when she died, sporting a short and messy golden bob instead of the curtain of pale blond hair she'd been known for after graduation (Iris remembered when she first started bleaching it and how she'd wince at the burning feeling on her scalp), she was there, all right.
Iris could never forget the first moment she'd ever laid eyes on her, standing on the dust-filled hallway of their dorm floor, discovering their rooms were right next to each other. Lyra was wearing her septum piercing, which she'd abandoned at some point during junior year, sniffling thanks to her crippling allergies, yet she still looked far more composed than Iris could ever aspire to be.
Allergy-free, Iris had still walked face first into her closed dorm room door. That explained her disorientation—the original one, at least. This new version of her, influenced by all the years she'd rewound and lost to the void, had other thoughts swarming her brain. Maybe her true past self had been too flabbergasted by being the target of the attention of someone like Lyra Sinclair, but you couldn't rewind time and expect to come out unscathed, especially when faced with the girl you'd been killing yourself to try and save.
Lyra was standing right there, close enough to be touched, and Iris' first instinct was to launch herself into her arms and hold her tight enough to break her bones. However sentimental she was feeling, though, she had to reel those feelings back in, as Lyra didn't know her yet in this timeline. In this timeline, Iris could even convince herself they still had time for such developments.
"Your forehead is all red," Lyra commented, still oblivious to the inner turmoils of Iris' mind. "Do you need ice?"
"Oh," Iris muttered, instinctively brushing her knuckles against her forehead, right where she'd bumped it against the door. "I think I'm okay. Thanks."
Lyra frowned and her nose wrinkled, as it always had—though she didn't know how familiar the expression would feel like to Iris. It hit Iris square in the face, even harder than the door or even a brick wall. "Well, at least it's your own door, right? You're not walking around, knocking on random people's doors with your face, or anything. You could've knocked on my door."
Iris wiped her clammy palms on her jean-clad thighs. She'd almost forgotten how painfully awkward their first conversation had been and reliving it, knowing what had happened next and how everything had ended, felt even more like a punch to the gut the second time around.
To get everything Iris wanted, all she had to do was keep Lyra alive. That sounded easy enough in theory, but she had never been able to keep a plant alive for long, and clearly she'd failed at ensuring Lyra's survival in their original timeline. There was no way of knowing the full consequences of rewinding time more than once, messing up the universe beyond repair, and Iris didn't want to stand there and think about everything she had already screwed up thanks to a selfish whim.
