Secondhand Smoke

"There is comfort in routine."

My Dearest Iris,

I'm not sure how to write a letter like this, nor do I know if you are ever going to read this, but I thought these words would be more valuable here than if they remained unspoken. To say a lot has happened in these past few years would, frankly, be an understatement. The world has changed so much, and even though I was never a part of it the way you were, even though I lack a frame of reference to compare it to, its rippling effects have surely reached me; the walls meant to keep me safe from the world, or rather the world safe from me, were not able to protect me.

I read once that nature tends towards entropy, disorder, decay. I've often taken comfort in the idea that all I did, then, was hasten a natural process. When I was first brought to Site-17, I must have destroyed dozens of devices in testing. I wonder what other damage I've unknowingly been responsible for.

I wonder if it is simply the nature of things to fall apart around me…

November 2025, The Present:

There is comfort in routine.

Iris Thompson had not thought this was something she would ever concede. For as long as she could remember, routines had been forced upon her: first by her parents, then by the Foundation.

Before, her life had been monotonous: wake up, eat, sleep. Train every day except Sunday, psych eval on Tuesday, medical on Wednesday. The odd experiment, mission with Alpha-Nine, or Adams dragging her along to some ill-fated social outing in an attempt to make her feel marginally more like a person. Now, in retrospect, it all blurred together— one long, dull, repetitive stretch of time which had not been hers to spend, in which her life had not been her own.

After the Impasse, after it had become hers, instinct propelled her as far away from the Foundation as possible. She threw herself into the deep end, and, as a result, found herself strangely adrift. Some traitorous part of her yearned for it, the way her life had been laid out for her in the past.

Lost in thought, she watches Meri — no last name as of yet — as she stands at her kitchen counter, chopping home-grown scallions.

When it came to building a life outside of the Foundation, Meri had taken the opposite approach of her: she’d not gone very far away from the Foundation at all — whether for lack of options, or because she chose to, Iris didn’t know. What she did know, or at least suspected, was that it was the same thing that brought them back together, on nights like these:

There is comfort in routine.

"When are you leaving again?" Meri asks.

Tok tok tok tok tok.

Her knife knocks rhythmically against the cutting board, the sound filling the entirety of the small apartment.

"Tomorrow," Iris mumbles from the doorway behind her. "Early, probably. I won't wake you." She pauses. "Seriously, if you need help with—"

"It's fine." Meri doesn’t turn around.

Tok tok tok.

"Where are you going this time?"

Iris sighs, burying her hands in the pockets of her jacket. She'd elected to just keep it on, rather than trying to cram it onto crowded coat rack next to the door.

"Does it matter? It's all the same."

Tok tok tok tok tok.

"It matters to me," Meri says. "I want to know what you're up to."

"They wanted me to speak at another convention. Your, ah—" Iris clears her throat. "Clef is going to be there."

Tok tok tak!

"Oh." The chopping stops.

"Are you guys still not on speaking terms?"

A pause. Iris looks past Meri, at the post cards of faraway places pinned to the kitchen wall: bustling cities and vast landscapes on glossy paper. Their backs were blank— no one had sent them. Meri had explained she simply liked to collect them, that she liked knowing just how many different kinds of places there were in the world.

Meri sets her knife down and grabs onto her cane, gripping its head tightly.

"You're right." Iris didn’t know her to sound curt often, but she did now. "I don't want to talk about that."

"Right. Right, yeah. I figured."

The ensuing silence is somewhere between awkward and familiar. Iris continues to watch as Meri maneuvers around her kitchen. There's an elegance to it, Meri's familiarity with the space readily on display. She collects twigs of herbs from the hanging pots adjacent to her stove, only ever taking as much as she needs, chops them into small pieces, and throws them into the pot, bubbling gently on the stove.

Iris couldn’t tell the herbs apart. Cooking was a skill she'd not had time to brush up on since she’d gotten out, subsisting entirely on takeout, canned meals, and the occasional fried egg. It was for the better, she supposed, that Meri didn’t let her help, even if she offered each time.

Dinner, as always, is uneventful. The two sit on wooden chairs at Meri's wooden table, eat stew from wooden bowls with wooden spoons, and outside of the occasional comment about the food or attempt at small talk, the only noises filling the apartment are the scraping and sloshing and satisfied ahhhh that marks the end of the bowl. Meri couldn't eat animal products, so she made up for the lack of available ingredients with an unwavering dedication to bring out the best in each and every one she could use— it was the best meal Iris had had since, well, the last time she’d been here.

But, at the same time, seeing her misshapen and miscolored reflection on the soup's surface, Iris searches past the minced garlic and chunks of celery for something that may or may not have been in it at all:

Love.

✽✽✽

"Listen," Iris begins after they've finished eating, "at least let me do the washing up. It's the least I can do to make up for bothering you like this."

"You're not bothering me," Meri insists, as always. "I like when you visit. No one else does, really. Let me play host.”

Iris sighs. There was comfort in routine, but it all had a way of leaving her with a guilty conscience— for not visiting more often, for visiting at all. It felt like she was taking advantage of Meri, of her loneliness and lingering affection for her. They'd both agreed to go their separate ways after all, four years ago, when it had occurred to them that they could. She could've stayed with Meri then, but she hadn't, couldn't, and Iris felt like she only ever came back when she needed something from her.

They’d had sex twice, on nights like this one. The first time had been a year and a half after the Impasse, shortly after Iris had begun visiting again. Both of them had been lonely, neither of them had been having any luck with other women. It felt like the world had left them both behind, and as Meri leaned in to kiss her, Iris had remembered what had first drawn her to the other woman: Meri, too, was something inhuman, unsure how to exist among real people.

The guilt, ever-present, had caught up with her in the morning. There had been a conversation, awkward, and not as emotional as it should have been. It had been Iris who had asked not to let it happen again. In the dull light of the morning, the enormity of what she’d felt the night prior scared her. She had meant to only visit for one night. She couldn’t stay here. She could not stay here.

Meri, of course, had nodded and smiled and understood, the way she always did.

The second time had been when Iris had let it happen again. She’d fallen asleep next to Meri afterwards, in her bed, the fur that covered most of her body soft against Iris' bare skin.

She’d woken with the first light, dressed and collected her things as quietly as she could, so as not to wake Meri. Then, out on the stairwell, she'd had what her therapist had taught her to identify as a 'panic attack'.

She stayed away for six months afterwards, terrified. When she did come back, finally (because of course she came back, she always came back) they didn’t speak of it.

They'd yet to speak of it, even now.

As Iris fills the sink with water and olive oil soap, Meri goes to collect a spare blanket from her room. The pair move around the space, around each other, with a practiced ease. They didn't need to speak; they had done this dance many, many times before: dinner, dishes, changing clothes, and retiring to their respective corners of the small apartment, careful not to get too close, not to speak too much.

Before long, Meri retires to her bedroom.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she says with a shy smile, and there is a moment where she stands in the doorway, lit from behind, that Iris feels like she should say something. She doesn't.

Meri closes the door behind her. A thin beam of light still seeps through the crack beneath it and into the room. Iris turns away from it to stare up at the ceiling. The room is silent, except for the occasional sound of a page turn from the other room, and Iris tries to let the rhythmic sound lull her to sleep.

But sleep doesn’t come to her tonight.

The couch feels softer than she's used to, like she's sinking into it, being swallowed whole by the woolen blanket. She tries to relax, tries to close her eyes and calm her breathing, but there is something threatening, suddenly, in not being able to see the space around her.

She opens her eyes back up and looks around. The apartment feels too small and too large at once. Somehow, it's as there is something ominous in dangling flowerpots, something urgent in the ticking of the grandfather clock on the wall. The air feels stale, despite Meri having left the window open while cooking.

Iris feels sweat beading down her back. She is overcome an acute sense of being trapped, that she's been deceived. Something is wrong, a part of her says, the part that expects blinking red lights and shrill alarm bells. Something is wrong.

She throws off the blanket and turns on the lampshade on the side table. Warm, yellow light floods into all corners of the room, turning dark shadows back into familiar household objects. Iris breathes in, then out. She is safe here. She is safe, and she can leave any time she likes.

After gathering her bearings, Iris shuffles to the kitchen. She drinks water straight from the tap, splashing some of it into her face.

She knows what would calm her nerves; she'd taken up smoking, shortly after she'd first struck out on her own. It had been some belated teenage rebellion, perhaps, that had induced it, despite the fact that she’d been well over thirty. Slowly, sneakily, it had turned from an indulgence to a habit to a need-– there was, after all, comfort in routine.

The lack of nicotine made her anxious, twitchy, more prone to losing her shit the way she just had, and she hadn't had any in several days. She held off on smoking before visiting Meri. The lingering smell of it on Iris made Meri's throat itch and her eyes water, like an allergic reaction, like Iris was blowing the smoke right into her face.

She deliberates, for a moment. She could take a shower, after, change her clothes. Meri didn't need to know. Or, if all else failed, Iris would simply leave before she woke up, an old reliable for when she fucked something up.

As quietly as possible, she collects her jacket and taps over to the porch, moving aside the curtains to the glass door. Taking one more glance behind her, she reaches into her pocket and pulls a cigarette from the pack.

She tucks it between her lips and raises her lighter up to her face. She can feel the dull warmth of the small flame on her skin as she waits for the smoke to fill her lungs.

I felt it was only right I remain alone in my chamber, to deprive myself of the few bits of connection I was afforded, with faith as my only comfort; I left the convent I was raised in, so how sure could I be that this new life would remain, either?

But then you came along, and for once, I began to feel like maybe, just maybe, something would last. Fate, obviously, wasn't kind to us; It never has been, to me. I'm sure you know the circumstances that led to my containment well by this point. It was… a mercy, if you can put it that way. I wish I knew my mother. Sometimes I wish I had a better relationship with my father. I wonder if I would have loved to walk the world as you once did, before you too made your way into the custody of the Foundation. I imagine you were as scared as I was, when I first arrived there, but you've never been one for fear, at least in front of me. Your bravery was something I almost envied once; you always seemed to be immovable in those difficult times.

Envy. Not quite the sin I thought I'd fall for.

And then came the Impasse, and suddenly the world was plunged into a new type of darkness. It was naive of me to think it would have passed me by. Suddenly, everything that made me special disappeared. For once, I was normal; not a half-deer, not an agent of decay, but Meri Clef, finally someone normal. Along with that normalcy, though, came something else: fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the world just outside the walls, fear that I would lose my legs. But for a moment, none of that seemed to matter. You were around, you were here, and it felt like we could weather whatever the world threw at us.

I was such a fool for believing we would have lasted forever.

March 2017:

Site-17's inner courtyard is still quite barren, despite the coming spring. Nature always seems to take a bit longer to return here; the sparse bits of greenery, meant to create at least an imitation of a recreational space for the anomalous humanoids and staff, were perhaps still too exhausted from the impossible task demanded of them— it wasn't really possible to make a place like this look nice, try as they might.

Meri might've been able to help it along, Iris thinks. If only it had been any other time, if things were the way they'd always been, if something extremely unprecedented wasn't happening to Meri, to all of them, right at this moment.

"I don't think you have to worry so much," Meri assures her as Iris pushes her wheelchair through the garden. "Consider it a vacation of sorts. We have no reason to think this isn't temporary."

Iris sighs, glancing down at her. Meri had gotten thinner, smaller. The antlers she'd shed in January, that usually made her seem so much taller than she was, never grew back in. Everything about her seemed duller, and the cheery, polite temperament she continued to maintain despite it only served to make things more unbearable.

"You're right." Iris tries her best to not sound morose. "I just don't like this inaction. I'm not used to sitting back and letting someone else do the important work. I should be out there, trying to find some sort of solution. Figuring out why this is happening at all."

Meri gives a short laugh that quickly turns into a cough.

"A task force comprised entirely of anomalies isn't really cut out to be dealing with the end of everything anomalous. I think you're allowed to sit this one out, dear."

"I know, I'm just— I worry about you, you know? What if there's no solution? What if this is just how things are now?"

Meri tilts her head upwards, giving her a look, that look, the one of endless and insufferable patience. "Then we'll just have to make do. It's what we've always done, isn't it?"

The last sentence hangs in the air for a moment. She was right. During their time on site, the pair always did what they could to maintain their bond, oftentimes skirting within the rules of their respective confinements just to catch a glance of the other. But those small waves and smiles were what provided them with hope that maybe fate would be kind to them. That maybe things would get better.

But it seemed impossible to hold on to that hope now, with how intent fate had seemed on fucking them over lately. Their luck was bound to run out eventually— Iris just hadn't expected it to happen like this. Iris can't shake a sudden wave of frustration at the other woman. She tightens her grip on the wheelchair's handles.

"God, I really wish you weren't so fucking Catholic sometimes, y'know?"

A pause. Meri adjusts herself in the chair, turning ever so slightly to lean closer to Iris in an attempt to meet her eyes.

"Is this about the operation?"

It was a sore subject between the two of them, and a tired one.

It had started early on into the Impasse, before Iris had noticed any substantial effects on her own anomaly. Meri had been raked with pain, muscle spasms, and a creeping atrophy of her legs, until one morning she'd found herself unable to move them at all. They'd taken it to be some sort of illness at first; maybe Meri, almost thirty, having simply gotten far older than any deer was ever meant to get. Once more humanoids contained at the site began to be affected, though, the bigger picture began revealing itself: Meri's body, in and of itself, was an anomaly. People were simply not meant to have hooves and antlers. With reality aligning itself to how things were "supposed" to work, her body, as if realizing its own wrongness, rejected a part of itself; her legs were a foreign object, some unknown creature that Meri had become conjoined with in the womb.

It had been Site-17's own medical staff that had brought up the possibility of amputation. They said it was the safe choice, with her situation being an unprecedented one. There was no way to tell how her body would continue reacting to the Impasse. It was entirely possible it would continue waging war on itself until it simply stopped functioning entirely.

Iris inhales sharply. "I mean, it's not not about the operation," she says, begrudgingly. "It's your call; I told you, I don't want to make that choice for you."

"No, I know that," Meri says, sounding tired.

Iris bites her lip.

"… Y'know what the fucked up thing is?" she asks, knowing she probably shouldn't.

Meri tilts her head.

"I used to pray for something like this, that one day I'd wake up and just be normal. My camera would take photos, and that would be it. That I'd just get to… go home."

A silence follows, one that slowly brings a smile to Meri's face. "Pray, huh?"

Iris snorts. It sounds bitter. "I know it was stupid. The vain hopes of a little kid. You don't get to home from somewhere like here. Things don't just go back to normal, but—"

"But you were homesick."

"I— " Iris hesitates, "I guess so. Either way, things are different now. I'm not— I've got—" She falters. "I've got you now. Which has to count for something."

"Thanks," Meri says, quietly. "I'm glad that I've got you too."

Iris smiles at her, tired but soft.

They find a patch of crocuses on their way back inside, white and purple against the dull spring dirt.

When the world started healing, when my body stopped the war within itself, I found that my heart could not heal. My antlers grew back, and I couldn't help but think of the person who used to be there to help me brush out the mats and knots from between them. I learned to walk again, and I imagined someone besides the site medical staff guiding me down the parallel bars. When I finally moved out of my cage and into this small halfway house I've turned into a home, I imagined there would be someone to help me decorate and make the space feel lived in. You were there, yes, but I found myself wondering if you truly were there. I know this must have been hard on you as well, and I feel so guilty for feeling like I needed more from you, but I felt so alone.

And then you left.

Though I've had time to cultivate quite an active imagination, it brings me no joy to see the ghosts of you in shadows or mirrors or in sudden movements at the edges of my vision. I wanted I needed I prayed you were there. I was so lonely. I missed you.

And out of every prayer to answer, it seemed God wanted to curse grace me with this one.

September 2024; A Little Over a Year ago:

"Iris! Over here!"

Adams had barely changed since Iris had last seen her, outside of a few gray hairs that had begun to make themselves more visible. She'd opted out of her usual pantsuit, as she tended to when the occasion was pleasure rather than business. Instead, she was wearing a short jacket and silk neckerchief over a black dress, making Iris feel under-dressed in her work pants and jeans jacket.

She makes her way over to Adams, weaving through tables before climbing onto the bar stool next to her.

"Hi," Iris says, simply.

"It's good to see you," Adams raises her hand, evidently some attempt at a greeting, but seems to think better of touching her. "Can I order you anything? My treat."

Iris scans the blackboard above the bar: Cosmopolitan, Moscow Mule, Negroni, and dozens of other fancy and utterly incomprehensible names scribbled out in colorful chalks.

"I'll, uh—" Iris squints. "Do they just have a pint of beer?"

Adams gives her a look, something insufferably amused hiding within it.

"You sure? You can order something expensive, you know. Vanguard's paying."

There it was. Vanguard. That was what they were calling themselves now, wasn't it?

"I thought you said this wasn't a business meeting."

"It's not!" Adams holds up three fingers in a mock scout's honor. "Honest! It's just that, if I, hypothetically, wasn't strictly using my company credit card for business purposes only, they wouldn't need to know."

"Right," Iris says. She can't help but smile slightly. "Y'know what, why not. Harming their finances does seem tempting."

She shoots a skeptical look at the cocktail glass in front of Adams. An orange peel floats lazily atop a sugary-looking amber liquid.

"What's the, ah— least girly thing they have?"

"Oh, so it is about that, huh?" Adams says, slyly. "My girly drink has about twice the alcohol of the pint I would've ordered you, and then some. You're worse about this sort of thing than Clef sometimes, you know?"

"Fuck off. We both know how elaborate Clef gets with his drink orders."

Adams laughs and places a hand on Iris' shoulder, amicably. Iris finds herself surprisingly alright with it.

"I'll surprise you. You wouldn't know what to get anyways."

"Sure." Iris loathes to admit that she's right. "Just don't get me too drunk. I've got work in the morning."

"No worries." Adams swirls the remaining liquid in her glass around before downing it, undoubtedly to get herself another drink, too. "This won’t be a repeat of last time. No undercover GOC agents either— I checked."

"Isn’t the point of being undercover supposed to be that you can’t tell?" Iris asks, flatly.

"I can." Adams puffs out her chest, jabbing it with her thumb. "I’m a professional."

Iris snorts, scanning the room while Adams orders, just to make sure. It seems Adams was right, though. The other patrons appear wrapped up in their own conversations, not giving them a second look.

"Sooooo…" Adams puts on a sing-song voice, "What have you been up to? God knows it’s been a while. You look different."

"Yeah?" Iris asks, somewhat surprised.

"Good-different," Adams assures her. "More like an adult. Little shabby, though, not going to lie."

"Figures." Iris rubs at her eyes. "I’ve been sleeping on a lot of couches."

Adams smiles sympathetically. "I know it may not be my place to offer, but if you're ever in the area and miss having a place of your own—"

"No," Iris says, quickly. "No, I know what you're going to say. I'm not going to indebt myself to the Foun— to Vanguard, I guess, further. I'm not giving them anything else to hold over my head."

Adams opens her mouth, but stops when the bartender returns with their drinks. Iris mumbles a thanks. Adams idly swirls her drink for a moment.

"You’re entitled to their help, you know," Adams says, finally. "You’re entitled to more than that. You have every right to bleed them dry if you ask me. Just, y'know, until you find something else."

Iris hesitates. She thinks of Meri’s arm, warm and fuzzy, draped over her under the covers that morning. Prying herself out, dressing, leaving at the crack of dawn, the morning air cold on her face as she dialed a taxi with shaking fingers, desperate to go anywhere else.

Meri, who’d moved from one form of confinement to another. Meri, who was still stuck so firmly underneath the Foundation’s thumb.

"What if I don’t find anything else? What if I don’t make it out of there, and then nothing will have changed? I’ll still be in containment, but it’ll be my own fault this time."

"I don’t think any of this is something you should blame yourself for," Adams says, quietly.

There’s a pause. Iris takes a sip of her drink. It is, in fact, sweeter than what she’s used to, but there’s a tangy aftertaste to it that she finds she likes quite a bit. Damn you, Andrea.

"Listen, I just- I need to have something outside of the Foundation, before I’m comfortable going back to them. Something of my own."

Iris glances back at Adams to find her looking into her glass, contemplative. The warm lights above the bar paint kaleidoscopic patterns onto the liquid’s surface.

"I can't tell you what to do," Adams says, carefully. "Just make sure you don't forget about yourself in the midst of everything, yeah?"

I never expected you to return to me. Truthfully, after we parted ways, I just assumed that you would have forgotten about me, left me as a memory of the world you suffered in for so long, the one you wanted to escape. I think a small part of me wanted you to remember, though. Did you think of me when you saw deer in the forest? Did you think of me when you stumbled upon crocuses or lilies or any of the other myriad of flowers or plants we used to surround ourselves with in the garden at Site-17? Why did you come back to me? It matters not; you returned, after all, and although my initial reaction may have seemed tame, when I opened the door, it felt like I fell in love all over again.

But part of me knew I could not keep you forever, and just as quickly as you came back, you were gone again. And you did it again. And again. And again. And again. This torment torture routine of you coming and going has become incredibly difficult. Some days I wish we could go back to the way things were between you and me. Some days I wish that, when you return to my apartment, you'll stay, and I can learn more about your world together. I would be lying, though, if I didn't say this whole matter was unbearable. So while some days I wait and clean and keep track of your belongings for if you'll be returning, some days I find myself wishing you simply wouldn't return at all.

My heart aches, Iris, and as much as I want to rid myself of this cycle, I know, ultimately, that means ridding myself of you.

So I will play whatever part you need me to. I will greet you at the door and cook you dinner because I am a gracious host, I will keep you company and ask you about your travels because I care about you, and, in those truly lonely times, when I have not felt a friendly or loving touch in months, I will invite you into my bed because because

But even then you'll leave, as you have before.

January 2022:

The apartment is on the ground floor of a building block that had been raised out of what used to be one of Site-17’s military training grounds. It still smells like fresh paint when Iris helps Meri move in. It makes Meri’s eyes water, gives her rashes on her skin, so Iris helps her strip the walls down to the brick, watches it grow back over with vines and flowers over the next few days.

She watches Meri recover, switching from a wheelchair to crutches to a cane. They walk to the freshly-opened grocery store, exchange food stamps for vegetables; Iris assembles furniture from inscrutable instructions and Meri knits a blanket for the couch. It’s new to them both, getting to choose what food to prepare, what clothes to put on, which matter of everyday objects to clutter their space with, but it's altogether manageable, quaint even. Like playing house.

It lasts all of five weeks before Iris leaves. It’s for purely pragmatic reasons: she’s needed elsewhere. With the Impasse reversing and various nexuses recovering, thousands of displaced anomalies were beginning to make their ways back home. The world seemed awash with people searching for fragments of lives shattered by what seemed like it would be the end of the world.

Iris spends two months in Three Portlands, being shown pictures of lost loved ones, relaying their locations, writing notes to them through photographs to establish contact. She watches people reunite, closing their arms around each other with a kind of hunger Iris isn’t sure she’s ever felt.

A woman named Marcia, who told her to call her 'Marcy', offers Iris her son's old room to stay in, after finding out she'd been sleeping in the emergency shelter they'd set up. She says it’s the least she can do for her, with Iris having helped find her wife and all.

Iris isn’t sure if she can tell. She must, with the way Iris’ hair is cropped short, the way she'd stolen one of her son's old varsity jackets to wear to work once it had started getting colder, instead of taking the women's coat Marcia offered her. Either way, she doesn’t comment. Iris appreciates it.

She goes to a gay bar one night, sitting in the corner like a frightened animal. She leaves as soon as she finishes her drink.

Meri doesn’t call. She can’t. She doesn’t have a phone, and Iris hasn’t given her an address to send letters to. Iris won’t have an address for her to send letters to for the next four years.

Iris doesn’t write to Meri in turn.

She goes to work one day to find them breaking camp. It’s over, they say. Things are back to normal, more or less. They can all go home. Iris tries not to feel envious of them for having a baseline for what "normal" means.

Marcia offers her couch for if Iris is ever in town again.

"Sure", Iris says, and "Thank you."

So Iris returns to Meri, because where else would she go? She takes the Greyhound, falling asleep with her forehead on the cold glass, vague shapes rushing past in the darkness outside. She wakes in the early morning hours, watching lights turn on in windows carved into silhouettes by the side of the road. The world had seemed so small to her until just a while ago - it was humbling, the way people seemed to be able to make their home almost anywhere.

With each stop she wonders: what would it be like to get off here? What would it be like to have someone waiting for her, on what used to be the outside?

Meri, of course, welcomes her with open arms. She isn’t cross with her for being gone for so long. She's never cross with her for anything, even when Iris can tell she’s hurt. She asks what she’s missed, and Meri shrugs. It isn’t until later that she finds out Meri had found out about Clef in her absence. It isn’t until later that she finds out how poor of a job Clef had done at living up to the idea of a father Meri had envisioned for herself all these years. It isn’t until later that she finds out Meri had put together that Iris had known this whole time and not said a word.

She lasts another week in Meri’s little apartment — their apartment, back then, together — before it all becomes too much. She wishes Meri would get mad at her, allow for some sort of release for the guilt that’s been building up inside of her since she'd gotten back, maybe even since she left.

Instead, she gets mad at Meri. Meri apologizes, frightened tears in her eyes that she tries to wipe away before Iris can see them, and Iris wishes she'd never come back at all. Even still, she comforts Meri, the way she’s always done, when it wasn’t her who had hurt her, when it was still them against the world. They talk about it in the morning. It’s excruciating, how matter-of-fact it is, both of them too used to adapting to crises, to being the ones making sacrifices for the greater good.

When Iris leaves for the second time, she takes her belongings. She buys a travel backpack to carry them. It doesn’t fill up all the way to the top.

She's only gone for ten days when Marcia opens her door to find Iris before it, again. She doesn't seem surprised to see her.

Five months pass before Iris sees Meri again. It’s Light who asks for her at Site-17, to help locate a person of interest. She doesn’t have to come, doesn’t have to help Vanguard, but old habits die hard. She’s offered a bed at the Site, but refuses, staunchly, despite not really having a backup plan, despite it being February, and cold out at night.

She sits in a little kebab shop, four street corners from where Meri lived alone now, until closing time, before resigning herself to her fate. On her way over, a part of her hopes that the apartment might be empty, that Meri might not be in, but really, where else would she be?

Meri welcomes her gently, warmly. She makes her a bed on her couch.

"Be here earlier, next time," she says, "and let me know in advance. We can have dinner."

When next time comes, Iris finds her way to the little apartment of her own accord. The third time, she leaves some clothes and a toothbrush.

Two years later, she wakes up in Meri’s arms, leaving without waking her, feeling like the biggest piece of shit on earth.

It must be easy for you to leave. It must be so easy for you to move from place to place while I'm rooted here. I think sometimes that if only I too had been a field agent, that I could have accustomed myself to it, and then now I could come with you. But, really, I know that's not true. Because what is out there for me? You are all I've ever had.

How am I supposed to feel, watching you leave after those nights, Iris? How am I meant to feel when your warmth leaves me in the night without a word? How am I supposed to feel, opening my eyes and not seeing that slight smile you used to give me, or even just the comforting reassurance that someone sleeps softly besides me?

I felt a million things when you left me that night, and even now you do not know how deep that blade has been plunged into my heart. I prayed that day, not even knowing for what, gripping my rosary so tightly I thought the pearls would crack and shatter in my shaking hands. And the only thing I could think was why? Why did you leave me? Why? Why? Why?

Even now, you haven't told me. Does it bring you shame, are you ashamed of me? Do you even want to apologize, but cannot find your words? Or, I find myself thinking sometimes, cynically, are you waiting for the day I fall for you again, turning our entanglement into a routine where the only constants are me and an empty bed? I know that if you'd let me, I would fall for you again and again and again and again and again because you are the only thing I know for certain…

I'm sorry, Iris, but I am so tired. I feel… wrong. Even as I write this, my hand shakes and teardrops stain the page and muddle the ink. And even still, in all this pain and frustration, excruciating frustration, I can't seem to let you go. Even this letter has lost its purpose, even words fail. But I would rather lay my sins bare, just for once. I hope you can forgive me.

Love, Yours,
~Meri

The Present:

The cold night's air does little to provide Iris relief, and her cigarette, still a good thumb's length from her knuckles, only seems to stain her and her surroundings with the smell of smoke. That would fade in time, much like Iris' imprint on the couch cushions, or the smoothed wood on the coat rack from where her jacket, now long discarded, once hung. It was the nature of things to slowly fade away, but Iris was unsure she ever would.

How many times had she been here before? How many times did she dine with Meri? How many times did her ex-lover's smile greet her at the door? And still, Iris returned. Maybe Meri would have forgotten me by now, she thinks, if only I stayed away. But Iris knew that wasn't true.

Even now, leaning against the railing of Meri's porch, still minding the many plants that sat neat and manicured in their planters, Iris knew she would have another night just like this one. For, below all of Iris' frustration, all of her regret, all of her guilt, were the embers of comfort, stoked only by Meri and this routine.

Tap tap, thud.

Behind her, she hears the quiet, steady rhythm of footsteps, and the hollow reverberation of a cane along the floor.

Tap tap, thud. Tap tap, thud.

Meri slides open the curtain, one hand gripping the wall, and the other, the decorated sheet separating her domain and the outside world. They lock eyes; Meri's are red. Tears stream down her face, but Iris can't tell if it's because of the smoke or something else entirely. Her expression is painfully neutral, bereft of her usual soft smile. It's strange, almost uncanny. Iris hadn't thought her able to make any other face, even if she wanted to.

And in the starry night, on the porch of the halfway house outside of Site-17, Iris and Meri stand in silence; there is simply nothing to be said at all.