Blue [ARC 28]

[ARC 28: THE INSECT WOMAN]

Iris could not find Natasha's tablet nor the number for the infirmary, and so had stolen a car via Phantom's low-voltage current triggering the ignition. She had done this before. Natasha was not responding to Flickendecke's patches, though several were strewn across her in the passenger's seat. Iris's own wrists had begun regenerating, though she still winced whenever she needed to manually adjust the wheel.

She had stolen cars before, back home in Franklin, Tennessee. Her mind would rest there occasionally, in a time where she had been unaware to the insignificance of her ideas, feelings, things that flitted in and out through her days. She had hated teachers because of how they would hear rumors about her and talk to her, about how she was too intelligent of a student to be caught up in crimes and 'knew better'. They would tell her that they knew many of the lesbian girls liked Iris, but wouldn't if she continued to cause trouble.

To Iris's mind, such sympathy was a threat; it was artifice, for at any time they might have reported her and brought even further shit down upon her. So she grew to despise these meetings, for she knew that no matter how self-assured she entered them, she inevitably came out of them feeling more like shot than before. The bits of weakness they exposed in her stabbed at what Iris Valentine was at the time, her inopportunity to prove that she was strong and others were weak. These fights with other hosts, these crimes and theft; they were Iris's attempts at creation, to make her will an objectified thing that she could name herself, a bit like when a child has their own term for a tree or a toy.

And she did not trust entirely when others extended sympathy to her; she thought it only as further set-up to fall. With Natasha and her parents, perhaps not. But now she had given into that essence again, and she thought herself viciously stupid for having done so alongside the fear and guilt and hate that went with it.

She felt that life was unfair; innate in its design was this unfair randomness. Happiness had remained inconceivable to her in those teenage years. This, it seemed to her, was why it was necessary for humans to invent god; that the indifferent universe could become swaddling for ourselves, by imbuing our own desires into its stale machinations. Yet the image of god remains only imaginable as loving if we render it a commensurate sacrifice; we do not believe ourselves deserving of love otherwise.

She thought back to a girlfriend she had back in highschool, one whose name is of no relevance here. She was the archetypal Iris girlfriend in her attraction, for she loved that Iris dressed like a punk and worked out, hotwired cars with her Revenants and was an unregistered host. That was the coolest thing a teen host could be, besides a student. Crime, and its practitioners, lend themselves to American mythos and interest because they are secret.

The girls Iris attracted usually had their own unstable childhoods or forms of mental illness. One girl she knew once came to school with curling iron burns on her hands, though Iris had never been quite sure how to ask about it. There was another aggressive woman Iris had dated, although she hesitated to call it that, given she was in her 20s and Iris was 15.

It was not the pedophilia that primarily disturbed Iris now, but that she was even crueler than herself and in none of the amusing ways students are. She would throw rocks at passing cats and laugh at them when they limped away, and would provoke other women & girls before ducking behind Iris and taunting over the shoulder of her host.

The contradiction with these girls was that what they liked in Iris had often been lacking from their own childhoods, yet that they also perceived her of having the maturity of their adult parents: their desire to return to their homes yet reject it.

She returned to Urasaria and carried Natasha quickly into the infirmary, and set her on a bed. She shouted and Hirogane came over, and cautiously drew Pulse out, though he did not look at Iris. She wondered how much death he had seen before to treat her with such indifference, and she was angry at him. He knew what dinner would be like and Natasha may not. She envied him.

She looked down at Natasha, and she felt there were alien eyes walking upon her from some further unknown plane. There was the crumb of a glance Hirogane made to her. Had her parents been examined like this? A leftover thing from the length of her being hung over her, and it was then that she noticed that Natasha was dead.

She began to cry, and she tried to draw backwards into the all, to contain the moment in a respective time that she could not become stuck within; to avoid a drift towards the archipelagos of death that now dotted her horizons, a deep fathom of ocean she had tried to live complacently alongside, as if to notice them would again loft them above their atolls. Yet she could find no means of cleansing her grief.

She felt Emilia place their hand on her shoulder. "Please come with me, Iris." Emilia led her off to a sideroom and closed the door as Iris leaned against the wall and sobbed. But she tried to banish the thoughts that swarmed her mind using anger: that this little person meant nothing to her and she hated them.

"E-Emilia, leave me alone."

Emilia seemed ashamed; this had always been difficult for them to do. "I must be in the room, to make sure you do not hurt yours-"

"GET OUT!"

Emilia quickly left, and Iris clutched herself onto the bed as she continued to cry. She sought to recompress pieces of herself, to recover them before this had happened to Natasha. She breathed and tried to stand outside of herself, enough to take her phone out, and call her uncle. Maybe the problem was that she had been made to have needs and urges, to feel dependent on others.

"Hey, Iris. What's going on?"

"N-Natasha d-died."

"What?" A pause, followed by a bit of yelling, and the closing of a car door. "…say that again for me, I'm sorry."

"My m-mentor died. N-Natasha. I-I-I'm in the inf-firmary now."

"…shit, Iris, I... I'm sorry to hear that. I know you mentioned to me you was gettin' close wit her, I just didn't… this just happen now?"

"Y-Yes."

"Do you got someone to talk to there?"

"I-I do, but you're the f-first one I-I called."

"I appreciate that. You know I'll talk to ya long as you need me to."

Iris closed her eyes and nodded.

"Did you get the bitch that done it?"

"Y-Yes."

"Who was it? Some random thug? Hell, if I was there, I'da…"

He spoke some more, though his attempts to divert her were not really succeeding; and whenever she thought too steeply about who it was she was talking with she felt anger again, this urge to despise him for his addiction, and the absence that he represented in her life. In several moments left unspoken here, such cliched lines as 'it'll all be alright', 'she died a hero', and 'I know you'll outlast this' were uttered by her uncle.

He could offer little more than this, but she still listened to them; she felt a myriad of glistening shards of her own personality now, ones that she wished to currently expel so that she could not feel the texture nor hue of them.

"…hell, I'm sorry, Iris. You know I am. I'd come up there to pick you up if I didn't think you wouldn't want me to. Is this giving you any pause about being a student?"

"N-No." Iris wiped her eyes. "I-I just feel I need to go about it differently than I have. I-I remember, when I-I was carrying her after she was h-hit... she was starting to b-babble. She acknowledged what I-I kept apart from myself: that s-students die. Maybe not me, b-but other students die. And I f-felt when she could feel her last intakes of air withering the world, s-she was still trying to warm again some cold dust of life in her, even a-as she..." She started crying again. "B-But that was what s-she wanted me to acknowledge. She did. T-Things aren't simply are: they happen for a reason."

"…well, Iris, I'm not -- I wasn't there. I didn't know her. But I know you, and I know part of you might be seeing something that ain't there. You know, it's normal to try to make that meaning outta something. Hell, we're our own agents of meaning into life. But wanting to think that she was teaching you to avoid people again... I know it was what I did when my brother, your father... well, I guess I'm just thinkin' back when you told me that you didn't want no belongings. You didn't want your memories; no friend or love. That they were all traps. I just don't want you to let that belief happen again."

A knock came at the door. A familiar woman's voice said: "I'd like to come in, if that's alright."

Iris wiped her eyes. "I-I'm sorry, I-I gotta answer this one."

"Alright, Iris. You call me back when you got the chance. You know I love ya. And you got Phantom with ya."

Iris hung up and answered the door. It was Kate, who quickly closed the door behind her as she stepped inside. "I'm sorry, Iris. I just got the news. Do you remember who I am?"

"P-President Kate." she mumbled and sat down.

Kate thought to hug Iris, but she saw an almost imperceptible shudder of Iris's shoulders. On the sensitive aspects of handling students, she was generally poor; it was not how she had been raised. Killing criminals was how she dealt with issues in herself, similar to how work had been for her father; that by making herself useful in some aspect, she could prevent further callusing of herself.

"I'm guessing you've been here for a bit." said Kate, pulling up a hair-chair. "I'm sorry, Iris. A mentor's death can be hard on a student. You know you've got my condolences, and you know you aren't the first student this has happened to. I'm sure that it'll… be alright, and... you're a student. You know you're strong enough to get through this."

Iris did not respond.

"…sorry, Iris. I have to admit I've done a few of these and I'm still not much good at them." Kate looked down. "This isn't how I'd comfort myself, admittedly. Tell me if you aren't feeling ready for it, but I'd like to discuss a few things in terms of what'll happen now. Something to keep your mind moving a bit. I find that helps me: maybe it'll help you."

"M-Maybe."

"First thing is you won't have to worry about anything for the next few months. Meals, laundry, any menial tasks around the house. I've got Serena to handle all that for you. You won't have to call her: she'll be there every Monday. I can't offer much in the way of counseling, but I know there's a therapist who works with students near here. I can book you with her, if you'd like. I figure with students that if I can help you along with what I can, that'll facilitate things and make them a bit easier on you."

Iris nodded.

"And I'd like you to take time off. Christmas is coming up. Your rank will be frozen, so you won't lose salary or housing. After... some time, there's a second-year who wasn't ever assigned a protege. I think it'd be good to assign you under her for a week or two and see if you can work out something with her. Her name's Olivia."

"I h-had her for swap week."

"Did you do well with her?"

"I s-suppose." She looked away. "I-I'd like to have M-Meteorology, i-if I can."

Kate nodded. "Was just about to ask. Usually, what's done when someone ... we ask someone close to them if they have any preference for who the next host is. You can name yourself. Have you had your own Revenant since birth?"

Iris wiped her eyes. "Y-Yes, but I-I'm not t-that attached t-to it, a-and..." She started sobbing again. She imagined Natasha's body the same as her parents: that centuries from now a bulldozer would lift up all the rocks and dirt that still contained her dusty fragments, loved by someone long gone from this place, to be hauled away for construction of a building no one cared for. But, if she hosted Meteorology…

"I'll make sure they hold it for you." said Kate. "Can claim it any time in the next thirty days. But I'm guessing you want it as soon as possible."

"Y-Yes, p-please."

"Alright. I'm sorry, Iris: comforting grief hasn't ever been my strong suit. I know I could sit here and tell you a whole bunch of cliches, but I figured that would annoy the hell out of you and it wouldn't help you process anything."

"It's a-alright." she muttered. "I-I got people on my side f-for that. N-Not the first death in my life, e-either. I-I have a Revenant for this o-one, at least. And t-there's someone I-I need to call back."

"Alright. You want me to leave you here?"

"Y-Yes."

Kate nodded and stood up. "Alright, Iris. I'll come talk to you again after. You're a good first-year: I'd just like to make sure I'm doing what I can to put you back in commission when you feel ready."

She left and Iris called back her uncle, though not for long before she called Kate back; she did not really want to be questioned right now.

Kate went over Urasaria Academy's plan for when students have a close friend die, and relayed all of this to Iris. For the rest of the month & January, she would have delivered to her a week of Blackburn-created meals to her every Monday, along with her cleaned laundry for the previous week. Her rank would be temporarily frozen until next she killed, and all relevant paperwork regarding her upcoming surgery to host Meteorology (re-registering her Revenant) would be mostly filled out for her: she need only sign it.

Any other time Iris would have felt too coddled, yet she mostly accepted it here. She still had trouble believing Natasha was dead. Criminals and insects and humans died: not students. She tried to remember the small investigations they had gone on throughout the months, though she worried that these old memories might eventually become irrecoverable; that more of what she had shared with Natasha would be crushed below what ephemeral terrain went irretrievable memory, outside the edge of human notice.

And below her notice, she realized later that she had developed a permanent, black scorch mark on her right hand, yet it did not reply with pain when pressed. Hirogane could not heal it, and she thought that she must have acquired it when the blue hand had grabbed her in the last fight.

Then she thought of her dead parents. They had been out of the house when they died, and it was never quite ascertained the cause of their head trauma. She had imbued into their deaths the possibility of a murderous Revenant, and would bullshit to herself that it was the reason she joined, an attempt to make nobler the fact that she just enjoyed violence. There was a sense of dominance to killing that she knew Urasaria could provide.

What she missed was not this or that activity her parents had done with her. It was that whenever she had returned from school, there had almost always been someone there at home. She viewed her home as this sort of fixed entity outside and without time, that if it were ever to be demolished a part of herself would shudder off its existence.

There were books and other possessions they had of her, but she had never really been interested in it. At a young age, she had thought that her straight parents could not really understand her; there was still the defensiveness of a nascent sexuality, the belief that lesbianism conferred morality. And their death had not given her a new set of circumstances under which to tune her decisions; only an evolution of the past.

But she thought to read through Natasha's old lifting books, as if to place herself in Natasha's mindset. What had she felt at her time of death? There was hope for Iris that she might have known she killed Salvatore, although why she hoped, she did not know; she knew that dead was dead. But in the contours of Natasha's emotional landscape, she felt there could be an artifact that could cleanse her unease; that could she search strenuously enough then there could be a completion.

Then there was Natasha's father. Iris would not meet him, though she knew he would be notified of her death. Sans Revenant, he would receive the corpse that belonged to Natasha. But those remains were *not* Natasha. A notion of Natasha had invaded her mind, and a memory was left. Through obsession she could clutch it and prevent time's slow abjuration.

So life for this week was one for observation, not action. She would cry again over Natasha, though not constantly; she would avoid it for sometime and then feel it again. And throughout it she did not keep much company, for Amelie was the only woman at Urasaria she trusted enough to make exposed this shriveled piece of her existence; yet Amelie was out on a contract and Iris could not summon the nerve to message her.

Everyone in her class knew, eventually. Isabelle Sandoval would visit her. Their conversations usually devolved, at first, into cliches: she was sorry for Iris's loss, and if she needed anything, to just... But Iris found she could not relate much at all to this. At her parents' and at Natasha's funeral, there had been many sorts of people who said the same to Iris. Having always been a direct woman, Iris could not understand this seemingly fraudulent sympathy.

So, when Isabelle would come back almost daily and talk to her, she was surprised. Isabelle said that when she was younger, she had seen how the world doled out virtue to the dead, especially to those who did not deserve it; uncles she knew to have creeped on little girls, or women who had been bullies in highschool. She did not pretend to have known Natasha, but she had tried to counter this trend in students, who she believed tended to be more ethical than civilians.

So, while professional, the talk was good for Iris.

Soon there was surgery to transfer Phantom from her and Meteorology to her. A few nights after, she heard a loud shout of 'KAIROS!' in her bedroom, yet when she awoke from troubled dreams she saw no one. It had been a while since Phantom activated, so she could not exactly remember how Revenants were supposed to activate; and Meteorology's abilities & green lightning were there.

It was a little over a week later when Kate knocked at her door, and she answered it.

"How are you feeling?"

"Not well."

"Has Meteorology activated?"

"It has."

"Good. I'd like for you to meet Olivia before you go home for Christmas next week."

"I-I don't. Not yet."

Kate looked at her with that sort of cryptic austerity she usually projected. "Iris, I understand you're grieving. But I'm not letting you sit in your house until Christmas."

"It won't be until Christmas. I-"

"Come out or Split's pulling you out."

With some hesitation, Iris left her home and allowed Kate to lead her up to the floor her office was on. Silence dominated.

"Here." Kate stopped at the entrance to her office. "She's waiting for you. Just the two of you. I'll even be out of earshot."

She led Iris inside to where Olivia was sitting and left them alone.

"Hi, Iris." said Olivia. "Do you remember who I am? We were together for swap week."

"I-I do." mumbled Iris and sat down. "I'm s-sorry, I-I just got pulled out of my goddamn house for this."

"That's fucked up." Olivia frowned. "Told you she's a bitch. … I'm sorry, Iris. I knew Natasha, too, as you may remember. We used to be friends. I think maybe we might have still been friends if not for what happened. But what's important is that I'm willing to be your mentor and help you, if you want to accept me. I want to support you."

"I'm not m-much for hunting right now."

"That's okay. I think... we can still train, right? Before Christmas?"

"Y-Yes."

"Okay. And I won't ask you to move in with me unless you feel comfortable."

"I don't want to move out."

"Do you want to live separate?"

"Yes."

Olivia nodded. "Okay. Let me give you my number, and call me up if you need someone to talk to over the winter break, okay? I'll check up on you, too."

For Christmas, she went home to her uncle. There was a timeshare he had in Florida that she usually made it out to every year, though not this one. She noted that he had not stopped drinking, though he trimmed it for the time she was there. Olivia, as she promised, called her up occasionally and checked on her mood, with the hope they could train again once she was back on campus.

She parked her truck in Urasaria's lot again, in January 2023. She stepped outside and was making her way back to the gates with the other winter-break students when someone tapped her on the shoulder: it was Viktoria. "Iris. Where is Natasha?"

Iris looked away.

"She hasn't responded to my messages. I tried to find you two on campus, but I thought that..." said Viktoria, and a glint of recognition saddened her brow. "…I suspected this."

"Y-You'd be correct."

Viktoria teared up. "T-Then at least tell me how she died. I a-assume you were there for it."

Iris looked away, and thought she might cry again. "…I-I'd rather not recall that."

"Tell me. Now."

Iris shifted with discomfort as Viktoria continued to pester her, then was shouting at her; the crowd was beginning to slow and watch them as Iris shrank and teared up. Over again and again she had tried to create a world for herself. Now she worried that it was too strong, and that she was too weak. She felt that even the trauma suppression a Revenant provided would not prevent this stiflation; that her core consciousness would start to rot.

But she knew she must try to blink free the matter from her mind, to crush her emotions smaller than her recall of them.

Viktoria grabbed her. "IRIS! How did she-"

Iris shoved her off. "Get y-your fucking hands off of me."

She saw Olivia pushing through the crowd, then sidle up beside her.

"Iris, what's going on?" said Olivia.

Viktoria grimaced as she looked between Iris and Olivia. If there was hope for Iris to turn out differently, she thought perhaps it could be done via separation from this similarly corrupting influence on Natasha. "I see you two are already acquainted. I h-hope you are not thinking of choosing her as your mentor." She wiped her eyes. "It would be best if we could go on a contract together."

"Yeah, no. Iris, is she bothering you?" said Olivia. "Because I'm more than happy to make her go away."

Viktoria was growing angrier, yet seemed to be trying to control herself. "Precisely what I meant. Look at how this bitter woman treats a mentor's grief like a fucking game, to score points by-"

"You're the one harassing my proteg-"

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT NOT EVERYTHING MUST INVOLVE *YOU*?" Viktoria stood over Olivia. "I despise you, you sick fucking whore. If it were my decision, I would have never allowed Natasha to approach you: it would have prevented the anguish you enjoyed putting her through. You are a vulgar, despicable woman who prostitutes herself out to any woman who asks: of course a narcissist like you is incapable of understanding love outside of your own numerous and transactional relationships."

Olivia opened her mouth, but was interrupted by Kate walking over to them. "Viktoria." Kate nodded to her, then with some disdain to Olivia. "What happened?"

Olivia looked to Iris, who was starting to cry, and felt sad for her. "Can you just clear out the crowd?"

Kate glared over at the dozen or so students gathered, and in the next instant, a sharp gasp of pain went through the crowd as they clutched their hair. "Go on and get out of my sight." They did so, and she turned to the three. "All of you, separate. Olivia, come over here and talk to me."

Olivia went over with her, mostly out of earshot. She explained what she had seen with Viktoria and Iris. "She's harassing Iris to try to get her to go on a contract with her. I'm not allowed to defend my protege?"

"I don't see the issue with Viktoria asking her for a contract together, even if she might speak coarsely." said Kate. "She's Natasha's mentor and she'd like time with Natasha's protege. It was already a bit selfish of Iris not to let her know."

"Notifying students of death isn't Iris's job -- it's your's. You didn't think to notify her fucking mentor?"

Kate's mouth stiffened, and she placed her hand on Olivia's shoulder. "Let me make this clear to you: I don't give a shit that you're Naomi's protege. I'll still drop your ass if you ever put disrespect like that in your voice to me again."

Olivia's hair went taut and she grumbled. She was frustrated, but she was not so stupid as to go against Kate.

"Clearly, you and Viktoria have issues that I don't care if they're fully resolved. Stifle yourself for Iris's sake. But I'll ask Naomi if she minds coming along: she's professional and can keep both of you from your worst tendencies. I'll find a delivery for you four and give it to you within a few days. Iris'll need to be back to hunting by then."

Olivia looked over at Iris and wished she could prevent this somehow; she felt responsible for Iris's well-being, both as another lesbian and as her mentor. "Fine. But I'm not interacting with Viktoria unless I have to."

Kate went off and told this to Viktoria, as Olivia went off with Iris and told her. She apologized to Iris for not interfering sooner, and worried that she was already insufficiently defending her protege, that this would withdraw Iris further from life. But Iris did not believe so, even as she did not see Viktoria's anger necessarily as a rude outburst: she saw it as something akin to how she had screamed at Emilia. She could not blame her for being angry over Natasha's death; it was more than she had seen Olivia perform.