The sun rose, and she was herself again. She'd been able to feel the bits and pieces of it starting, the things that were so very her refusing to be put to the side for longer than a few hours. The worry, the anxiety. The acceptance of loneliness even with someone's supposed claim locked very firmly and very permanently around her neck. The way that being left alone felt inevitable. The sun rose as her hands rose to her neck, searching for the sign that someone wanted her enough to claim her. Trembling when she found it gone.
Her book spoke of a secret, that which she had carried and become. Was that her secret? That she belonged to someone? Perhaps only that she wanted to belong to someone. In the heat and darkness of the basement, she had been willing to be claimed again, the mark of teeth in her skin. She had needed it, had wanted nothing else in that moment. Was that her secret? Or was her secret darker? Was it the thing that had driven her into the basement in the first place, had her paying in some way for a man's company and then using him in a way that she had no right to. The hotel had returned her to her bedroom, behind a door that didn't truly belong to her, after betraying the one person that still even wanted her around. She could only imagine the look in his eyes when he (inevitably) found out. The disappointment. The anger. Maybe something darker. Her one anchor would be washed away like the rest of them, all because of her own actions.
The laughter started without her notice, without her permission. It was desperate and unstoppable, even when she clenched her eyes shut and pressed her palms over her mouth. After a moment, it was mingled with tears, wrenching sobs in between the laughter, the outpouring of emotion hysterical and overwhelming. And under that, the soreness between her legs, the ache of a bruising phantom bite to her shoulder, all of it underscoring how broken she was. That she could do such things with only a simple prompt from a building.
She'd found that she was awful enough that she couldn't blend in - not even in her own family - and the second man, the one made of living outlines, had refused to show her how. Maybe he knew what she was finally seeing of herself. That there was no way to blend in when you were so wrong. She had to go, had to hide. Monsters couldn't stay in the daylight. She would have to check on the wolf - the man who had been forced to play to her whims. The thought of it made her ill, and she prayed that he would be alright. She would check, she would (she promised herself that she would), but she needed to find someplace else to hide, first. Hiding was the most important. Iris grabbed her journal and as much money as she could find in her own things and, in flat shoes that made no noise on expensive floors, ran from Ian's house.