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...
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Iris' entire world froze right then and there.
After having been so careful—or so she thought—to be perfect, to not say the wrong thing, she'd made an amateur mistake.
Looking back on every conversation she'd had with Lyra during the present timeline, she couldn't remember hearing her mention her parents' names, and Coraline was a unique enough name to stand out as vital information. A Susan or a Mary would likely go by unnoticed, even when you were plagued with the curse of remembering so much, even the things you wished you were able to forget, but a name like Coraline and a person like Coraline Sinclair weren't things you glossed over.
Iris knew this and, much to her dismay, so did Lyra.
Even though all of the current mess was her own fault—her fault for not paying enough attention and still patting herself on the back for being so goddamn delusional, her fault for not bothering to secretly list what she should and shouldn't know, her fault for not being good enough to keep Lyra alive—part of her still mentally cursed Coraline. Why in the world couldn't she have a more common name? Why would someone named Coraline marry someone named Mike, a perfectly ordinary name?
Then again, their own daughter was anything but.
Ordinary, that is.
Even in her fury, even while standing in front of Iris like a blaze, ready to scorch everything in the vicinity, she was still the most incredible person Iris had ever met. She was wonderful and phenomenal, even with all her flaws, and Iris didn't know how to live in a world without her in it or in a world when she didn't know what it felt like to not be in love with her, but she was also so painfully average next to her.
Maybe that was why it hadn't worked out between them the first time around. Or the second. Or all the other times Iris had allowed herself to be brave enough to shoot her shot, to believe someone as mediocre as her would ever be deserving of someone like Lyra.
They were too different, both in personality and in worth, and now . . . now she had just blown it up. She'd wrecked the whole thing simply because she'd tried to overcompensate.
Even when the glint in Lyra's eyes had faded, even when she settled for a boring job she hated and muted colors that didn't suit her, Iris knew there was still some of that same old soul buried deep inside her. It was what kept her coming back to Lyra, never fully free from her magnetism, and it was when she understood what poets had said all along about souls connecting at a level far beyond human comprehension.
"I'm fairly certain I've never mentioned it to you and, trust me, I'd remember being mortified over admitting my mom's name is fucking Coraline," Lyra continued, hands balled into fists. The wind hissed like a blaring whistle around them, the distant sounds of the cars fading into the background. "Not even Caroline, no, because my grandparents had to be quirky like that. So, what's up with that, huh? How did you know her name when no one said it the whole evening? My dad has been head over heels for her since high school, obviously, so it's always honey and dear and sweetheart, but never her actual name. Go on. I want to hear what kind of bullshit excuse is going to come out of your mouth."
