Re: Home: Iris and Manning
She did always worry - they both knew it. Most people that knew her at all knew it. It wasn't even anything that needed a reply to acknowledge it, but she did give a little hum of agreement. She wondered sometimes if she'd always worry, and often figured that it was simply part of who she was. She'd been doing better in tempering it, especially with the anti-anxiety meds once she'd gotten them to a steady dosage, but the thoughts still snuck through.
Would she like it better in the city? Maybe. There was an anonymity there that was absent in a smaller town (especially a smaller town that held family and other people that had known you for years), and there were many days that she craved that. But the city also came with an increased pace, with overwhelming lights and noise of the type that she just wanted to shut down on the times she'd been in a busier place. The people in smaller towns were nosier, but they were also quieter, and she felt like it was easier to breathe outside of metropolitan borders. Beyond that, she couldn't honestly see Manning living within city limits and being happy. So much of who he was (to her) was wrapped up in the open air and closeness to nature and more rural spaces. And she'd grown to admit that where he was, was where she wanted to be. The country may not have been what she'd pictured for herself (though she'd rarely dared to picture anything at all since she was very young), but there was no denying that she was the happiest here that she could ever recall being. It made it easy to shake her head.
Questions about location were serious enough to answer, but slipping into the past was even worse. There were so many moments where she tried to put aside the past, and sometimes she was even somewhat successful. But the spectre of what had been was never gone from her mind. She felt like her entire life revolved around it some days. Her discomfort was obvious in the way her body tensed up on itself, the way she wanted to curl away and make herself a smaller target for the thoughts. The way that thinking too deeply on that led to a tumbling avalanche of thoughts that would inevitably end with her pulling away from him because there was no way that something like her could ever fit into his beautiful life. She tried to keep her thoughts reined in from that particular path, but it lurked at the edges of her mind.
Manning still stayed near, though, and she clung to that even as the self-disgust crept up on her. "Because of that," she whispered, her voice choked off painfully. Eyes squeezed shut, she did her best to listen to him and believe what he was saying. But that was a hard battle even when she was steady and stable and not dealing with an onslaught of shifting hormones. In the moment, it was a losing battle, and she shuddered in his arms. "I have no right." The next thought spilled out without her even pausing to think about it. "She could destroy my life and it would be justified. This is nothing..."