Re: Log: Iris/Hatter
The compliments were still hard to take. She'd never really learned how to accept them, so the comment on her smile immediately made it fade for a moment, her eyes wide at first and then looking back down to the ground as she shook her head. The blush was still there, pink dark on her cheeks. She started off trying to find words to disagree, but all she could get out was a soft 'no, it's...' before he was moving on, topics slipping away like water.
She glanced up and then watched as he tapped at his forehead, and she nodded. Just a bit. She knew the need to have weight there too, but she hadn't felt it there quite as much lately. Not since the days where she'd been taking too much medication, enough to make the world around her dull and her own mind flat. "The dress doesn't always work, either." Her voice had slipped softer, back to the point where the smile had faded away again. "Everything comes back in, all the worry and..." She wasn't quite certain how to explain it. She'd never been able to make the doctors understand when she tried. "It all feels shaky."
She went quiet as she thought about it - being shaky. Being uncertain and feeling like any sort of push could knock her over into something awful. Something that would touch all of those around here. It was a fear that seeped out from her bones, it seemed. The thought of separating herself from it, from becoming a different person, was tempting. Dangerous to think about, and so very tempting. "I think... I might like to be Wonderland Iris. For a while." She looked back up at him and her eyebrows quirked as her mouth twisted into something sad and self-deprecating. "I think she might be better than Everywhere Else Iris." Better for who, she couldn't quite say. Maybe better for everyone.
The color through the door once it was opened was familiar. She'd been there before, only pulled away the last time because the hotel had seen fit to toss them all into each other's bodies. She watched as Hatter stepped through, leaving her on the dull hotel carpet, but she knew he wasn't leaving her behind. Not really. Not when he stopped and reached back for her. And maybe she needed the reassurance of safety, but maybe she didn't, because she was already reaching her hand forward to take his and step across the threshold toward him. The sun nearly tingled on her skin once she was through, but her smile was still small and uncertain when she looked up at him. And then she whispered. "Wonderland Iris...?"