Iris Morgenstern (unsteady) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-07-20 19:58:00 |
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Entry tags: | !hotel, *log, iris morgenstern, mad hatter |
Who: Iris and Hatter
What: Hide and Seek (but not the game)
Where: Renaissance Italy -> Passages Hotel
When: After this and this.
Warnings/Rating: Angst likely, weirdness also likely, will update if needed
Bruce had been gone for a long time. Days before she'd spoken with him and days since. She'd done her best to reassure Lucia that everything was fine, and that Bruce would be returning as soon as he could, but it remined a challenge to make herself understood past the language barrier. The other woman still spilled words quickly and angrily, but at first Iris simply did her best to keep the both of them as calm as possible.
But then she'd seen the entry from Sam, seen that so much of her family was going to be without a place to go, and even though she was a world and centuries apart, she felt like she needed to do something. Anything. And so she'd told them to go to the penthouse. The penthouse that she still felt wasn't hers, but she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't leave them without a place to go. She knew how frightening that could be. So she'd offered the one place she knew of.
But it hadn't taken her long to regret it. It wasn't her place to give. It gave everyone the wrong idea about her and Bruce, and hadn't it been so recently that she'd been worried about that? The time in Italy had given her distance to forget that there was a world past this one where Bruce's name shouldn't be linked to her own. She began to worry again, old anxieties slipping back in where they'd been so quiet and absent under the Italian sun. How could she have forgotten? Something like that should never have been forgotten.
She started to grow more anxious again, her walks with Lucia growing more infrequent, mealtimes once again a struggle (though the other woman never let her get away without eating something), nights sleepless and filled with worries. The flush of health that she'd started to gain faded again, bit by bit, even though it was only a few days. She found herself wandering the villa at night, when the full moon shone in through the windows and helped to guide her path. And it was then that she (finally) found the door back to the hotel.
She stood there in front of it, open for long passing minutes, wondering what she should do. Night passed until the sky outside began to lighten again, until certain members of the house began to stir with the first hints of sunrise. Door still open just a crack (she didn't want to run the risk of it disappearing if she closed it), she rushed out for the first member of the house that she could find. It took a long time for her to tell him that Bruce had sent for her, that she was leaving, that he should tell Lucia. He was patient through her words, eyes wide that she was speaking to him, but he nodded quickly, repeatedly, so she hoped that her message had gotten across. She offered him one last smile before hurrying as much as she could back to the door.
She was running. Maybe not physically, not in the heavy skirts of the dress she still wore, but she was running nonetheless. From this place that wasn't hers, from the annoyance and anger she expected would come once it came to light that she'd told her family to go to the penthouse. She couldn't go back to Gotham (even if Bruce hadn't told her not to, she no longer had a place to go, now that the penthouse was filled with those that she couldn't be around - that she'd promised not to be around). She couldn't stay in Italy. She didn't know where else to go, but it didn't stop her from stepping through into the hotel and closing the door behind her.