Iris

...was an overstatement.

I can't save anyone.

Up until now, my story has been very sparse in detail. You have learned about my living arrangements; the absence of my mother, the dedication of my father to pick up where she left off and to encourage my kindness, grow the traits that he could see would become something beautiful. My grandmother, who is losing more and more knowledge every day. Sylph and Onen, my friend and the girl she calls her servant, but that is more like a friend than anything. And you have learned about Kellin, who came into my life one day and changed it forever, even though he'd barely done anything to warrant so.

When your entire life is routine and predictable--- sheltered--- someone like Kellin can come in, whip everything up into a frenzy, and let it settle back down, but never the same way it was before he came into it.

I haven't shared details of my life, really--- not things about myself, not how I feel about things, my political stances, my hopes, dreams, and aspirations. I suppose this is because I've never really thought about them extensively. It was more or less guaranteed that I would end up inheriting my father's estate, even if it wasn't anything particularly impressive, and that I would work as a doctor making house calls or something of the sort. An apothecary, for lack of a more accurate term.

I never thought about what would happen if that wasn't the way my life was destined to go.

So--- for the better part of my life, I have been unaware of what in life makes me want to pursue it. What I have a passion for. And as I have been sitting here in the correctional facility, I have been thinking it over. I have a lot of free time to do that now.

At first, Sylph came to visit often. Not so much anymore. She would bring me small gifts--- fruit baskets, stationery. news of the outside world. Not that anything was really happening out there. The world was pretty calm; had been, generally, since the third war when the militaries of the world powers had tired themselves out killing each other until there was nearly nothing left. Nowadays, the government had reformed into something sort of resembling a parliament--- we just called it the Council, and everything was put to a final vote. Apparently a long time ago, there had been houses and senates and all sorts of things, but the people gave up their right for extended politics when they almost caused their own genocides.

So life passed uneventfully in the facility. It had taken some getting used to at first, and the people there certainly weren't people I would fraternize with on a daily basis outside of imprisonment. I was labeled as the good girl since the only thing I'd done to get in here was premeditated arson and neglect of property. I was quiet, too; from my upbringing, really, so when they had tried to get a rise out of me, it hadn't done much.

Not like I hadn't changed, though. I definitely had. Once the delicate, soft-spoken lady of the house, I had now become something of a frustrated, slightly jaded girl. My patience wasn't endless, and things had ended on such a terrible note that my worldview was exceptionally biased. While I was still well-read and well-educated, the syntax no longer spilled out of me as easily as water pouring from a kettle--- I was often snappy, colloquial, and much like I would be if I hadn't been raised in the house that I was, and instead in a sector where I would have had to attend public schooling and live in a building with other families.

And I so very often still thought of the boy who had spoken such confusing words before being taken back to Red Light.

I wondered how he was doing.

I hoped it was better than I was.

I didn't hear from him--- and didn't leave the facility--- for three years.

Spring, 2061

My name is Iris Penryn and today I was released from Everett's Correctional Facility for the Troubled.

It wasn't on any effort of mine. My sentence was longer; a year or two more, at least, five or six at most. It was supposed to be based on my behavior, and I was shooting for next year, but obviously that didn't happen. What's more, it wasn't just me that was released. It was every mid-level or up convict in the place. Someone had paid bail for every single person who wasn't on the list of life-in-prisons or death-row-sentenced. Since my charge was one of the least severe, I got off with no sort of house arrest or anything--- only a ton of paperwork, and then my father outside the front doors, looking as excited as a father can look.

He'd visited periodically, of course. The frequency of Sylph's visits had dropped over time, which I didn't really blame her for--- they were stressful as anything, and I probably would have done the same had she been in this situation--- but my father had visited once a month, which was the recommended amount. Any more and he would have risked me becoming dependent on him; any less and I might have gotten angry with him for not coming to see me as many times as he was allowed.

"I brought you clothes," he said as he ushered me towards the car, security looking on to make sure I didn't try anything, but pretty certain the girl who set fire to her house wasn't really a threat especially with the good behavior I'd shown over the years. "I didn't know if they'd fit, but I figured it can't hurt to have something on hand besides the orange stuff, right?"

"Right. Thanks, Dad. It means a lot."

The car was still the same--- he hadn't gotten a new one in the three years I'd been gone. Probably a smart move since it was one of the only things from the old house that reminded him of our old life.

"I'm sorry," I said suddenly as he helped me into the front seat. "I know I've said it before, and I know you know I'm sorry, and, like...even though I wouldn't have done anything different, probably--- I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have reacted like that. Or I should have at least said something before I did it. I don't know. I'm so sorry." My voice wavered on the last few words, and without meaning to, I burst into tears, big ones that slid down my face faster than I could count, and that I had to put my hands up to cover.

He let me cry it out. My dad might have been sort of quiet and powerful in his own way that made it seem like he didn't really understand how to interact with other people, but he could read me like a book. He waited until I was taking shaky, staggered breaths to say, "Yeah, it was a pretty shitty thing to do."

I laughed in spite of myself, and then he was laughing, and then we were both laughing. We had to pull into a credit bank parking lot to calm ourselves down.

And I did feel shitty about it. If I could have gone back, nothing would have changed, that much was true. It was a decision made on impulse and I wouldn't have been able to think of an alternate outlet for my grief and despair even if I had time-traveled back to that point. But at the same time, I did sort of want to go back anyway and punch myself in the face. At least give myself some punishment before the court system got me.

I used the neckline of the shirt I'd changed into on the way over to wipe my face dry from the tears, both from my sadness and my laughter. The sun was shining, fluffy clouds were gathered in the sky, and things seemed to finally be looking up. I'd go to our new home, reform the relationship with my father, take care of my grandmother, and spend some time trying to figure out what my purpose in this life was, and what I wanted to do. I wouldn't let life carry on without me trying my best to find whatever it was that would make my heart happy.

Or that was the plan, anyway.

The plan was very abruptly cut short with the sound of helicopter blades from only a short distance away. Helipads weren't uncommon throughout cities and their suburbs, but I was usually at the house, where there weren't any for a good ten miles, God forbid they destroy the fields or something like that. It startled me at first, but my father and I looked at each other and grinned simultaneously. He didn't get to see them very often either, and we were alike enough in thought to have the same idea. He started the car up again and wound through the maze of buildings and a side street until the helicopter came into view--- a enormous red one, with black blades beginning to spin so fast I was losing track of them.

"I want one," I said immediately.

My father laughed. "Marry rich. They don't come cheap, even to people who work for 'em."

I was engrossed in the image--- a few men and women in blazers and trousers were milling around, most with clipboards or suitcases or other business-type things. It was obvious the helicopter belonged to someone who was very high up in some sort of company, or someone who had inherited wealth from a family built on generations of success. I leaned my head against my hand and watched with a trance-like expression on my face until one of the people with a considerably-nicer looking blazer walked around from the other side of the helicopter into view.

Kellin.

Kellin!

It took me two or three seconds to process what was in front of my eyes. No. No, that wasn't possible. Kellin was a Red Light slave, unfairly thrown back into the system three years ago. He was blind. He was broken. He'd been branded. Most likely used for the sex trade. I'd found him in a fucking pile of garbage.

How...was he here...getting into the...helicopter?!

My body acted on its own. My father realized who it was about two seconds after I did, and I didn't hear another car door slam behind me, so I could only assume he was sitting there in shock. Meanwhile, my legs were carrying me across the cement sidewalk, every footstep pounding like blood in my ears. No. He was getting in. No! I was going to lose him!

Three years, and I was going to lose him again.

I ran across the street as he was getting in. A car swerved to avoid me; I heard the screech of tires and a horn honking like crazy, which was understandable, and also worked to my advantage. The horn could just barely be heard over the blades of the helicopter, and it must have stalled liftoff by just a few seconds, enough for me to nearly throw myself in front of the side door--- I had to hold my left arm out to regain my balance.

The other people in the blazers were already filing into the helicopter. It was going to leave any second now.

"Miss, you need to move out of the way," I heard one of the ground staff call, but I ignored him, even as he came jogging over to me to, presumably, force me away from the helipad. But I couldn't. I couldn't leave, not when I was so close. Not when he was right there--- in the helicopter, seated right in front of me, designer sunglasses parked over his eyes. His head was tilted just enough that he wasn't looking straight ahead, and that I was fairly positive he'd react if I called his name.

So I did.

I called it as loud as I possibly could. Screamed it with every bit of desperation that had been inside me starting the day I burned my fucking house down.

"KELLIN!!"

He reacted.

He turned towards me, slid the designer sunglasses down. His eyes--- the sun was making it hard to see, but I'd known what his eyes had looked like while blind. Milky white, and useless except for the faint smears of colors he could see.

This Kellin's eyes were a seagreen color, somewhere between blue and green, ambiguous enough to remind me of the waves of the far-off oceans I had seen in documentaries and photographs.

This Kellin could see.

I waited for any chance of recognition. I didn't look much different. My hair that had been so carefully styled when I was still living with my father now hung loose around my face, cut so that it only reached just below my shoulder blades, but it wasn't dyed or anything of the sort. The clothes my father had brought were more casual than I was used to wearing, but nothing so out-of-place that I'd look like a completely different person.

"Sorry, ma'am," Kellin shouted over the roar of the blades, in the same voice I had been so desperate to hear when he was living with us, every word he had spoken kept safe in my heart, where I could replay them during those days of silence where he was nothing more than a shell of a person, where he could sit and stare out the window for hours and never notice the time passing. "You must have the wrong person."

The ground crew reached me then and guided me away. It was easy for him; I didn't put up much of a fight. I was staring, speechless, after the helicopter as it lifted into the air and shot through the sky, taking Kellin away from me for the second time in three years.