InsaneJournal

Who: Sam, Iris + an appearance by Chloe
What: Breaking Iris' face
Where: Aria Hallway
When: Recently, but after this
Warnings/Rating: Violence and language and references to Ian

Sam had spent the morning pacing. She hadn't slept for shit, and she'd woken up with the worst fucking jones that she knew she wasn't going to be able to do anything about. Getting drugs into Neil's place was fucking impossible, and yeah, so that was a good thing, but it meant that she was sleep-deprived and anxious, nerves crawling along her arms and legs like fucking ants or something. She'd spent the whole sleepless night going over shit that she might say to Iris in her mind. It was like practice or something, rehearsal, and she tossed and turned as she played everything over and over, trying to find just the right thing to explain how hurt and fucking pissed she was at her sister.

Unfortunately, all those mental acrobatics meant Sam was dark circles that morning and way too much fucking coffee. Neil was off at work, doing whatever the fuck it was that Neil did at work. Ash wasn't fucking anywhere, but Ash was never fucking anywhere lately. Which meant Sam was alone with the standing order not to deliver anything to the suite, and with the coffeemaker, which had just become her new best friend.

Music had blared while Sam showered, and her fingers had trouble holding onto the comb as she untangled her wet hair. That made her impatient. Because, yeah, she had transferred all that anger at Ian to her sister, and the fact that she couldn't brush her hair without losing her shit just made her remember. And remembering was bad. Remembering was really fucking bad.

By lunchtime, Sam's fingers trembled from the caffeine and the tension, and she wanted a hit so bad that she bit the inside of her cheek and drew blood. The button-down shirt she wore beneath the loose overalls was from Neil's closet, and paint stained the cuffs where they were rolled up to her elbows. She was shapeless, thick fabric that didn't touch her skin anywhere, and she'd given up on her fucking hair, which was still tangled at the ends.

The opera still blared as Sam sat on the couch and watched the door, Doc Marten'd feet going thump thump on the floor. And maybe she should have followed up with Joey and forced him to come or something, but he'd never agreed, even when she'd asked, and it was too fucking late now. Thump thump, and she pulled a cigarette from the front pocket of her overalls and lit it, the match joining a an overflowing pile of smoked-down sweet cloves on the coffeetable.

Iris had spent the previous day restless. Almost agitated, though the signs of it were much more subtle than they might have been in someone else. She had paced back and forth between her room and the common areas, trying to spend time in the small outdoor courtyard, carrying the journal with her and peering at it at regular intervals. She likely would have spent the night just as awake as Sam had (in her own room across the city), only drowsiness hit her hard after evening medication, and she realized that yes, there had been more medication in her cup than usual. Though “usual” had been shifting lately, becoming more frequent than not. She simply sighed and accepted it, an echo of someone’s voice following her down into swiftly approaching sleep. Trust the doctors, Iris. They know what they’re doing. She couldn’t place who might have told her such a thing. Maybe it was only her own mind trying to reassure her.

Sleep was complete and dreamless. It was a heavy, medicated blanket that muffled everything, from thoughts and worries to outside sounds and commotions. It took one of the nurses coming by in the morning and pulling her to a propped sitting position (like an oversized doll) before she could start fighting through the fog toward wakefulness. The familiarity of it itched at the edges of her awareness, but then she was being escorted to breakfast, and morning meds shortly after that, and while the fog began to fade, the usual chemical suppression of her worries stepped in to keep her from chasing those thoughts around and around.

When Doctor Roman arrived to be her escort and chauffeur, she followed along easily, not saying much of anything. Quiet had once again become her standard baseline, and concern over the coming meeting gave the excuse for her not speaking much on the ride to the Aria. The radio played softly in the background, and between the music and the passing scenery, there was not much that needed to be said. Maybe she could have mentioned how she’d been so worried about the meeting, how that had all been muted overnight and into the morning. But she didn’t. She simply nodded at his instructions to contact him when she was ready to leave, and headed for Neil’s suite.

No one stopped her on the way in, likely due to the fact that (despite the edge of frailty that had been her companion for so long) she looked like she belonged there. The dress she wore wasn’t this year's fashion, but it was the classic sort of simple that wouldn’t truly go out of style for a long time. Though it was the sort of comfortable knit that she lately favored, it was tailored, but for someone a size or two up from where she currently was. Looking closely would reveal the extra room where there should have been a dart or a seam to take it in, and it ended up somehow both hiding and accentuating her thinness beneath. The layer of a sweater, tights, everything was for warmth and comfort while it did its best to look “nice”. But overall, it did nothing to flatter her. The cut, yes, and more importantly the color. Beige dress, off-white cardigan, off-white tights, blonde hair that was too light to be called honey or gold brushed but hanging loose and fairly limp to her shoulders, no makeup or lipstick to break the monotony of pale skin. She looked halfway to being a ghost, appearing on Neil’s doorstep to knock at the door, only half-realizing that the opera was coming from inside. She wasn’t worried, and that should have been a worry in itself.

The knock sounded like some kind of fucking gunshot, though the bad shit in Sam's life had never come in the form of bullets. Needles and knives and hands, yeah, but not fucking guns. Still, she jerked on the couch, the sound freaking her the fuck out, and she was on her feet and pacing in front of the couch almost immediately. Her heartbeat like wildness in her chest, and she wondered if it could break the fuck free or something. But that was ridiculous, and she just needed to fucking breathe, yeah? She had to remind herself that it was just Iris, that her sister couldn't drag Ian out of the fucking grave and bring him here. She didn't answer right away. Instead, she grabbed the phone that sat on the coffee table and pulled up the pictures of Ian she'd saved there. Dead, dead, dead Ian. He was dead, and he wasn't knocking at the door, and then she managed to fucking breathe again.

The Alexanders had grown up rough. Boys all, except for her and Tess, and Sam had learned to throw punches and slam boys into the ground before she started school. It was just the way shit was, and she'd never been afraid of a fight. Her husband hadn't been violent, but she and Clarissa had slammed each other into every fucking wall of their shithole apartment. Fighting was just part of what Sam was. Words? Words were shit. Fists got everything out, and then everyone just hugged after. And yeah, ok, she could do this. The fact that she was probably too fucking pissed to fight anyone safely was lost on her. Introspection wasn't her thing, and she stared at the door for a few seconds. She'd invite Iris in, yeah? She'd invite her in, and she'd tell her how fucking pissed she was, and then she'd break her nose. One punch. That's all she needed. Just one fucking punch and she'd feel better.

Determined, Sam stomped to the floor, and she yanked the door open. She stared.

Iris stood in front of the door, fingers twined tightly together, and she waited. She studied the grain of the wood in front of her, looked down to trace the pattern of the hallway carpet with her eyes. The passing minutes didn’t quite register, except in the way that she knew time had to be passing. It took several of those long moments before she began to grow confused, looking back up from the carpet at the door.

It was Saturday, she was certain of it. Doctor Roman wouldn’t have arrived otherwise, and even if she was uncertain of other things, she had faith in that. He wouldn’t have been there to pick her up from the facility, to deliver her to the suites of the hotel. And she recalled telling Sam that she would arrive in the early afternoon. It was written in the book, which meant that she had to have put it there. And hadn’t Sam agreed? Unless…

Unless Sam had never meant to be there in the first place. Unless her sister (no, it was better to not force that label upon Sam, not even in Iris’ own mind)... Unless Sam had agreed but not intended to meet her at all. Some sort of comment about not wanting to see Iris, perhaps. Iris’ fingers went even paler as they tightened around each other. She hadn’t realized until that moment (no matter what misgivings and skepticisms she’d revealed to Bruce) how much she’d wished for the meeting to be some sort of forgiveness.

But no. She should have realized. There were some things that were simply unforgivable, and she knew, deep in her heart, that there was no chance of it for her.

She drew a shaking breath, the disappointment of everything tightening her throat past the numbing of the medication in her veins. It was another moment before she could finally gather herself and take the first step to turn from the door, to carry herself back to the lobby of the hotel where she could call Doctor Roman to come get her. Or to find a taxi. Or some other way to carry herself back to the facility.

It was only half a step, but her mind was already down the hall and no longer on the door when it was wrenched open. It drew a (nearly) startled gasp from her (nothing greater than a slightly swifter inhale, all things told), and she stared at the open door with wide eyes, gone so pale as the rest of her that they were nearly grey instead of blue. She found, looking on her sister - on Sam - that she couldn’t force a single sound from her throat.

Sam stared. She stared, and the opera poured out into the hallway like a fucking score to some onscreen fight, and she could barely hear it above the blood pounding in her ears. She was so wound up in her own hurt, that she didn't even notice that Iris was a pale fucking version of what she'd been. Fuck it- she probably wouldn't have cared, even if she had known. Hurt had turned the loving feelings she'd had for her found sister into something angry, something dark. She didn't think Iris was crazy, and she still thought all this was some bullshit pity party, and remembering that just made the anger crescendo and crash like some orchestra that forgot pianissimo.

Hands fisted at her sides and arms trembling with emotion, Sam stared.

And then, just like that, Sam lunged forward and slammed Iris into the opposing hallway wall. She didn't think it through. She didn't think at all. Her calloused fingers wound themselves up in the front of Iris' dress, and she held her older sister there, pinned against the expensive Aria hallway wallpaper. Her breath was races, and her eyes were unfocused anger, hurt and a maelstrom of not fucking thinking. "Do you have any fucking idea what you did to me?!" she screamed, and fuck whoever could hear. Fuck everything. She was a horse with blinders, and the only thing in the fucking world was the woman in front of her, and the shit that had become of her life since Iris insisted on hooking up with a motherfucker that she knew was a motherfucker. "Do you know WHAT HE DID TO ME?!"

The opera was overwhelming, nearly enough to drown out any words, had Iris been able to find them. Sam looked… not well. Oh, certainly in one piece and up and around, but her clothes hung huge on her body, her hair wasn’t even brushed through, and the sweet incense of clove smoke hung around her. Iris had to admit that she had been hoping for the best, for her time away from Sam to have been healing from whatever had happened to her. Even though she knew, in a very quiet and hurt-hidden part of herself, the sorts of things that Ian could do - the way he could latch onto a person and get under their skin and stay there. Hadn’t she seen it with herself? With Cerise? With the Wallace brothers, who couldn’t even keep themselves alive after Ian was gone, because he was so much a part of what they’d both become? She had her memories of what Sam had been like before, and this wasn’t anywhere near it. The healing she’d been hoping for in her absence hadn’t come.

It was all of that going through her mind, sharply cutting through any medication haze that still clung to her, that kept her from noticing the important things. The self-preservation things that would have alerted her to the expression on Sam’s face and the tension that came to a body only before movement and action. She wasn’t expecting it when Sam barrelled into her, suddenly moving her across the hallway. Even with the way she looked sick around the eyes, there was still more to Sam than there was to Iris. Energy and solidity, and when she hit, Iris stumbled, her feet skidding across the hotel carpet in her flat, smooth-bottomed shoes, hands unclenching and reaching out for something to steady herself, keep herself from falling, but nothing was there until the wall connecting bruise-hard with her back.

“No,” she managed to whisper out once she was able to catch her breath. Oh, she had thoughts, memories of things she’d heard once upon a time, things people had said about Ian. She had the memories of what the two of them used to do - things that would maybe tear a person apart if they were done to someone unwilling. She didn’t know what had been done to Sam. No, she’d refused to see the pictures when Ian offered the threat of showing her. The same way she hadn’t looked at the pictures of him dead once Sid had put them out for all to see. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and there was a hot pressure behind her eyes, tears that wouldn’t fall, pushed back by the numbing blanket that somehow still let every crumpled pebble of Sam’s expression through to rain on her heart. It let things in, able to send the sharp little knives of guilt and pain into her without letting the expression of it back out again.

He’d stopped wanting her around. (And wasn’t that her fault too? Pushing him away though she had never intended it to be like that.) He’d stopped wanting her, and he’d chosen her sister instead - even though she had said from the beginning that he had to stay away from her family. But wasn’t it a two-way street? He only stayed away from them because she stayed with him? Her hands were bloody with the guilt of every last thing he’d done to Sam, to the pain he caused anyone else in her family and anyone that knew what Sam had been through. She had broken the deal first, so certain that he wanted her gone, and it had turned around to avalanche on all the wrong people. And that was her own crime - anything that had happened to Sam should have been Iris’ own to bear, but it made it all the more painful that it had fallen instead to her sister. No, to Sam. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, though she knew the words were meaningless, would never ever be enough. She tumbled steps back in her mind, months’ worth of any progress slipping swiftly and easily back to the thought of taking herself from the world. Removing the nucleus of hurting that affected all of those around her. Ian had died for his own crimes, and she had been the one to push him to those that involved Sam. Shouldn’t she have to pay an equal toll of guilt?

Sam didn't know about Iris' turmoil. It would never occur to her to think that Iris leaving had anything to do with Ian's fucking obsession, because Ian's obsession had begun while Iris was still there, her ass sitting beside Sam's bed after Iris handed her the fuck over. She didn't even hear Iris' whispers, her apologies, those feeble quiet words that couldn't do shit to make anything better. She shook her sister, fingers wound tight in the fabric of Iris' dress. Sam shook her against the wall, and she refused to fucking cry, she refused. She'd cried enough, hadn't she? She'd cried, and she'd screamed, and she'd made so much fucking noise in the hopes that some kind of fucking powerful deity would hear. But no one heard, and there wasn't any fucking God, and she was crying. Damp cheeks and red eyes, ugly sobs as she shook her sister like a ragdoll.

"Why the fuck did you do this to me?" Sam demanded. "WHY?" The words were drowned, ugly things, snot and despair and that horrible thing in Sam's gut that just wouldn't go away. "Everyone TOLD YOU what he was! Everyone TOLD YOU to stay the fuck away!! We even tried to get YOU OUT. Why the FUCK DID YOU DO IT?" Her intake of breath was sharp, a knife against her lungs and, yeah, so maybe she should just bleed and get it the fuck over with. "Why were you so fucking selfish?"

But Sam didn't want an answer. She really didn't want an answer, because there was no answer. There was nothing that could take back the fact that Iris brought that asshole into everyone's life. That Iris had LOVED that fucker, knowing, knowing, knowing every last fucking thing. There was no changing what had happened, what he had done. "You didn't even look. While I was at that fucking house with you and him, you didn't even look."

For a second, Sam said nothing, but she wasn't fucking listening. She wasn't even there. No, she was in a locked room that looked like an asylum, with a man who said he was a doctor. That's where she was, and when her fist came out and connected with Iris' face it wasn't even Iris she hit, not at first, not really.

Iris wanted to cry, wanted that pressure that was being held back behind her eyes to break free and to let the wound that festered there be lanced so that the healing could begin. For Sam, if not for her. But the tears wouldn’t come, not until her shoulders and head snapped back against the wall as Sam shook her. Those tears were a physical reaction, however, not an emotional pressure valve release. She didn’t raise her own hands, didn’t fight Sam off or push her away.

“It wasn’t supposed to be you. Never you.” The confession was ripped out from a tight painful throat, words still soft, and Iris had no inkling whether Sam was even hearing her. “I thought it was… help…” Her thoughts jumbled as she continued to be shoved against the wall. “My place, not yours.” She didn’t even know if she was making sense any longer, and the accusation of being selfish caused her to drop her eyes and shake her head. She couldn’t explain it, not in any way that would be acceptable. She couldn’t find the words to describe how the first night when Sam had messaged her, she’d been so worried and so scared, and grasped onto the first help that was offered. Un-asked-for, but offered. She’d only wanted him to sit with her, tell her that her sister would be alright, but the help was offered instead. From the man who had reappeared from the dead and who had stepped back into his role of caring for her. She had trusted too much, had thought that he would step back into the promise as well, to never harm her family. To not hurt others at all while she was there. She had been so certain that his one-time promise had held any weight at all. She had been so wrong.

Then the words stopped, the spill from Sam silencing and Iris thought maybe they were done. There was no way to explain, no words of her own that would ever set things right. And so there was no need for Sam to spend any more time on her. Even after being shaken against the wall, she wasn’t expecting anything physical, her eyes still downturned away from having to look at the anguish twisting Sam’s face, and so she could not and did not see the fist aimed at her face, couldn’t brace herself for the pain that suddenly bloomed there, disorienting her as she tried to move back, away, tried to flail up an arm for protection as her eyes watered and teared and a sound escaped her throat. She could protect from nothing, though, her flail little more than a loose-stringed puppet’s movement. Her breath came fast and choked as she blinked and tried to understand what was happening.

Sam should have realized that Iris wasn't fighting back, but she was way too far fucking gone for that. Even Iris' claims that it wasn't supposed to be her fell on deaf fucking ears, because she couldn't make sense of it. "Bullfuckingshit! You went to him without anyone being threatened! You went to him because you fucking WANTED TO!" she screamed, anger and hurt and disgust spiking in her young voice and yeah, fuck this. "I wish I'd never fucking met you! I wish Lou had never introduced you to me! I wish I'd never learned you were family, because then I wouldn't be like this, would I?" she insisted, motioning at herself. "We tried to fucking HELP YOU." And that's what it came down to, in the end. They'd all tried so fucking hard to get Iris away from Ian, and it had only made him look at them more carefully than he might have otherwise. Family fucking meant something where Sam came from. It meant more than dick or pussy or anything else, but it hadn't for Iris.

Sam tried to shove her sister away after that punch connected, but there was only wall, and there wasn't anywhere to go. She looked down at her fist, her entire body fucking trembling. "FUCK YOU!" she yelled, tears streaming fountains down her cheeks. She paused for just a second, and then her fist fell again, and now she knew it was Iris. She knew, and she just didn't fucking care. "I loved you! I trusted you!" And she sounded like little more than a hurt girl with a heavy hand, and her fist came down again, again, again, again, again, again.

The words hit as hard as Sam’s fist had, and while she wanted to argue against some of them, but the rest were true enough that they made her breath, already gone quick from the spike of pain, catch in her throat like a knife. She’d wished all those things, from her own point of view, wishing that none of the harm had ever come to any of them, most especially Sam. She’d been so wrong about some things, and it had ruined everything.

The shove against the wall was sharp, and the back of her head connected hard again with a soft crack. She tried to blink away the stars that formed behind her eyelids, but they flared hard and blinded her to the next shot of violence. Half the blows glanced off - shoulder, chest, the side of her neck close enough to her throat that it stole her breath again - but the other half hit hard and true, cracking against bone and making the world grey and spark. And she let them. She wouldn’t have known how to hit back or defend herself even if she had intended to, and all she could do was pull her arms in tight to her chest and attempt to turn her face away.

But that only shifted the angle enough that the next blow that hit, hit hard, and everything greyed out for long seconds, weakening her knees and sending her sliding against the wall down toward the ground. Then, her body did what her brain could not, curling up against the wall as her arms lifted enough (finally) to cover her head. She coughed and choked, not realizing why breathing was hard, not realizing that it was the metallic slip of blood through her mouth and down her throat. It was warm and she was cold, and she just kept her eyes shut, not saying anything, trying to simply breathe and keep the grey from closing in more.

Commotions at the Aria were normally limited to the lower floors, where the rooms were rented by the hour and a few too many drinks fueled a lovers quarrel, but up here, things were normally quiet. So when the commotion in the hallway not so far from her door started up, Chloe simply stared at the door for a long while, wondering if it would be wise to stick her head out to see what was going on. Lately, she was operating on a policy of keeping her head down and her mouth shut, but the screaming and the thumping that was coming from the hallway sounded, in a way, serious, and given the ownership her parents had over the building, it was her duty as the loving daughter to at least do her share of assistance when it was called for.

Still fuzzy from painkillers and muscle relaxants, Chloe wound her robe about her slim figure and took up her phone from the kitchen counter. 911 was already entered, ready to dial at a press of her thumb, and only then did she release the chain on the door to pull it open. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight that greeted her there in the hallway. A slight thing crumpled against the wall and another hovering nearby, tight fists and tear-stained cheeks. It was easy enough to put two and two together and fit each woman into their role in what she had heard.

Maybe she might have told the pair to simply take it elsewhere, but recognition flared at the one who still stood, knotted hair and reddened cheeks from crying. Chloe had seen that face entirely too much on the television in the weeks past, the hapless victim who had been kidnapped and god knows what else. Samantha Alexander. Seeing her now, in person, made Chloe wonder what Neil possibly saw in her. She might have been cute, in the way that stray animals were cute, but there was nothing physically appealing about her, particularly now. And maybe that spoke volumes about Neil as well, that he would associate with someone like this.

Her lips pursed together as she weighed her decisions, and finally, Chloe pressed the dial button and held the phone to her ear. The canned greeting came moments later, and with her gaze on the two women, Chloe spoke sharply, the English accent clear though muddled from years state-side. "I'd like to report an assault at the Aria," she said easily. "You may want to get police down here soon. She's beaten this poor girl and I'm afraid of what else she might be capable of." Chloe lingered in her doorway, hand on the door frame, and for once, she couldn't be blamed for what was going on. Sam had dug her own grave with fists and tears, and Chloe was going to simply help her into it.