Work Text:
Lillium had unceremoniously shoved him into the closet that was supposed to represent a bedroom. Iris had protested that there was only one bed, where would Lillium sleep? His answer was a door being audibly shut behind him.
There he was. What a day, huh? He clutched his bag close to him, acting like it could be a solace, but there was no comfort to find in it if Penny was missing. The only purpose of his bag had been to carry her. Sure, there was still some other stuff in there now, but not what he needed.
Lillium was a good guy. He’d proven that to Iris ten times over, always saying that it was because he had to repay for the rescue back in the tower. That’s what it had started out as, anyway.
Iris sat down on the bed and found it was surprisingly soft and fluffy.
Tiredness settled over him like a forbidden spell. He changed into pyjamas he’d crafted himself on a whim back in the city, switched off the light and crawled under the blanket.
Despite his exhaustion, sleep wouldn’t come, so he played with a thought. It felt too early to resurrect Penny. He’d crafted about twenty of her, the drawing was easy enough, etched into his brain. He thought so long about whether or not he could, that he barely spared a thought if he should.
Iris wanted to draw something – anything, really. His pencil lightly brushed across the paper, cautious not to put too much pressure on, scared he would pierce through with the soft surface beneath.
He ended up drawing Penny, of course. He wasn’t ready to face the world alone, he needed her support. All his life it had been just Penny and Rosalie and Madam that looked after him.
At the thought of his mom, his scars burned. It wasn’t the real, blinding sensation of the event, but the diluted memory of it.
Tears fell on the paper, and he had to wait for them to dry to draw over them. He placed his hand on it when he felt ready and softly called out her name.
Penny?
And it was her.
In her robotic flesh. He cried some more and she wiped his tears away. Iris tried to keep his voice down, afraid to wake Lillium, and Penny understood in a way only she could and softly caressed his hair until he fell asleep.
This time he could.
Iris woke up, made his bed, avoided looking in the mirror while changing clothes, riled himself up to appear cheerful when the cuff around his neck was choking him into tears and opened the bedroom closet door with a cheery “Good morning, Lillium! I’m ready to… work… Lillium?”
Lillium wasn’t there, that much was obvious in the limited space.
Iris found the letter with the training instructions and that at least gave him something to do. He did them, then paused and did another set. He cursed himself for not taking P.E. seriously.
Laurence had been so good at sports and after they had stopped talking, Iris had wanted to leave him something to do. Retrospectively, that had been a mistake. Iris should have worked on himself too, not just his inventions.
Well, too late now, he thought to himself and contemplated if he should do a third set or find some paper to sketch something or doing literally anything else than lying on the floor and trying not to dissociate too far.
That was interrupted by a noise outside.
He hoped it was Lillium, but that seemed unlikely. He opened the door and something hit his face. It was gooey and trickled down his chin.
Well, he would have to work on his reflexes some more.
The perpetrators were two little girls with a basket of eggs, calling him a murderer. They egged the house and Iris chased them a little and found that the squats he had been doing earlier, had made his legs all wobbly. There was really no point in going after them. This was a game of who the biggest loser was, and Iris was winning.
So, he trudged back to the house and got a bucket with water and Penny. Together they cleaned the mess up. He struggled through another set but had to take prolonged rests to finish it. He cleaned and cooked and ignored that the clockhands kept going and Lillium still wasn’t back.
Iris eventually ate his own portion, long cold and a little over-salted and put the other dish in the fridge.
The next day was rinse and repeat. He got up, received a sketchbook – thank you, Heather – worked out according to the instructions – just one set this time, because he could still feel the prior day in his arms – tried to talk to the girls who’d come back armed with eggs and tomatoes, cleaned the house after they were finally out of ammo, cooked for himself, ate alone, had a five minute crying session and went to bed hugging Penny, telling her that everything would be alright.
Getting up in the morning became something he tried to put off for as long as he could. He stayed in bed until he felt a black hole taking over where his stomach should be. He noticed a little nook overhead and climbed up. No sign of Lillium, but there was a mattress, obviously slept in, and some clothes lying around.
He sketched a layout for a second bedroom and taped it to the fridge. In the following days he put more of his ideas on the fridge door, but there was no reaction from Lillium.
Iris didn’t know what he expected, but it had been over a week now and he was even more lonely than he had been at the tower. He allowed himself to extend the five minute crying sessions to fifteen minutes.
The dishes in the fridge were eaten. Also, the fridge magically restocked itself over night sometimes. And the bed nook overhead changed in its messiness.
Lillium obviously came home late at night, slept for really not enough hours and disappeared before the sun was up.
Iris asked himself if Lillium was also thinking of him as a murderer like the rest of the settlement. He could have easily reacted to the drawings on the fridge or paid a visit once during the day to see if he was alright or anything, really.
He paced the top of the hill and looked down in every direction. He was either not seen or angrily glared at. The settlement was fairly big, but he was too scared to leave the hill, too scared that the bomb around his neck would start ticking. Or worse, just explode without leaving him a chance to get to a safe distance from innocent citizens.
He hated this solitary confinement fiercely. He hated this state of being more than the rules at the Tower. He had never hated anything quite like this.
He went inside, curled up in the closet bedroom, cried himself to sleep and tried to set his sleeping schedule off so he could at least see Vincent asleep at night, see that he was okay, see that all this was not just a nightmare.
Maybe he could speak to Heather or Dan to remove the collar and then just head into the woods and live there.
Maybe he could head back to his ivory tower and explain the situation to his mom. Maybe he would get more markings, but they would heal eventually, and he would be back home.
He wondered if Laurence missed picking on him. He wondered if Laurence missed him.
He wondered if his mother missed him and how Rosalie was doing.
He wondered if Lillium would miss him. Then again, how much could he miss him if he was avoiding him like the pest.
Maybe all this had been a mistake.
If he would go back now, maybe he could stop with the drawings, with his powers, with his inventions.
Then again, if he didn’t have those, if he didn’t have what gifted him someone like Penny, was life really worth it?
Would he be a murderer for killing the person that looked back at him in the mirror?
It would be durable if he would at least know there was an end to his solitary confinement. It would be durable if he could talk to Lillium.
Iris put a note over the other fridge notes with a sigh.
“Are you even reading these?”