Chapter Text
There was a sort of terrible irony to it all. When Iris had sent Alfred Hillinghead off with all the information she knew about Elias Mannix, aka Sir Julian Harker, she’d expected that time would reset and she’d… end.
Why wouldn’t she? She only existed because of Mannix. Everything that she ever was and ever would be tied in at the atomic level with Elias Mannix’ pathologically deep need for love. There was, in a very real, substantial way, no Iris Maplewood without Elias Mannix. As she’d sent Mannix’s doom off to meet him, she’d assumed that poof, the world would reset, and it would all be over.
Obviously, things had not gone to plan.
Alfred Hillinghead ‘committed suicide’. Elias Mannix did not go up in a poof of temporal illogic. And iris was still locked in the drunk tank wearing a man’s oversized shirt and nothing else.
Just before Alfred had gone off to his doom, he’d stared into Iris’ eyes and smiled so brokenly that she’d clutched his hand as if to comfort… someone. Him? Her?
Who knew?
“Find Henry Ashe,” Alfred had said as the heavy boots came down the stairs towards them. “He’ll help you.”
Six hours after Alfred left, a pair of coppers had sauntered through chatting about the most unfortunate suicide of the former DI Hillinghead. They’d been rather put out that Hillinghead hadn’t been executed as he, in their opinion, so rightly deserved.
An hour or so after that, once Iris had managed to stop shaking in the corner of her cell and had worked herself around to accepting that no, the world wasn’t going to go poof. No, she wasn’t going to magically get to walk again. No, this wasn’t a nightmare.
Yes, she had to deal with living in 1890’s.
God. The smell alone was enough to bring her to tears, not including everything else.
That was when she’d begged one of the coppers to send a message to Henry Ashe, her cousin that she’d been on her way to visit when she’d been brutally assaulted, stripped naked and left tossed like trash in Longharvest Lane. Rather disgusting to allow herself to cry at the young idiot, but he had sent a message.
The next morning, Henry Ashe arrived complete with an actual dressing gown for Iris to wear. Plus slippers that were far too large for her feet, not that she gave a damn about that.
He got her out, took her back to his flat, and then listened as Iris told him the whole miserable story.
“He was…” Henry had looked away, tears filling those bright blue eyes. “He did it for me. He confessed instead of pinning the murder on me. I don’t….”
“I know,” Iris had said. “I’m so sorry. I truly am. But Alfred failed. That means it’s up to me to try and stop Mannix, but…”
She had waved at her useless legs under their awful dressing gown. Henry had huffed a little laugh as he dashed away his tears. Then he’d gotten help from the locals for Iris.
Gertie Wright, who had been born Benjamin, found a whole wardrobe for Iris. Trousers and workmen’s shirts rather than flouncy gowns that would get caught in Iris’ wheelchair or her crutches. The crutches, along with the braces that stabilized her useless legs, came from Earnest Hughes who lived across the hall from Henry.
He’d taken one look at Iris in her oversized wheelchair and shaken his head.
“Oh, darling, you need something better if you’re going to be mobile at all,” Earnest had said, lips pursed and quite daringly painted a lovely shade of plum that didn’t go with his watery green eyes at all.
“If you’ve ideas, I’ll gladly listen to them,” Iris said with a huff and a smack of her palms against the too high / wrong angle wheels. “This is all wrong.”
Earnest had enlisted Cecil Lewis, who’d been born Lydia about sixty-eight years prior, and together the three of them had come up with a properly sized wheelchair that let Iris zip about Henry’s cluttered flat. They’d also invented some lovely leg braces that let Iris walk again.
Sort of.
More like hefting her useless lower body by brute force, but it was better than being carried up and down stairs like a baby.
Over the course of ten years, Iris had built a network of agents who helped her track Mannix’s moves. She’d not had the money or power to block the man, but oddly, Mannix did a lovely job blocking himself.
The stories of his gleeful, loving marriage to Polly Hillinghead did not come true. They were civil in public and, according to servants’ gossip, absolutely cutting in private.
When she hit forty-five, the braces became too much to handle given the progression of her Troyers Syndrome, but she had a better wheelchair and Gertie had stayed by her side all that time, so Iris still got information fed in. By the time Mannix died when both of them were ruinously old, Iris had assumed that everything was a failure.
“Ah, love,” Gertie had said as she tucked Iris into bed with a sad smile. “You did your best. We’ve built a whole organization that will keep fighting the bastard.”
“I know,” Iris had said with a sad smile of her own. “I just didn’t expect this to go on so long, you know?”
“Your brilliant future professor said that your particles flung themselves off into the future,” Gertie said, eyebrows dancing much like they had all those years ago when she helped Iris choose trousers that weren’t too much of a bother to wear while enduring a wheelchair designed for giants. “For all you know, this will go on for several hundred years, way off into Mr. Well’s future.”
Mannix was dead. He would be reborn. The cycle would continue for ever and ever and ever.
Amen, damn it all.
Iris had shut her eyes to the sound of Gertie’s deep humming as she washed their dinner dishes. It’d been a quiet life, overall. While Iris hadn’t ever found someone to love as she’d almost loved Gabriel Defoe, watching Gertie find love, settle down, break up, and then find someone new a thousand or so times had been entertaining, at least.
Sad that no one had appreciated Gertie for who she was. If only she’d had access to hormones as a younger woman, she would’ve been happier.
Still. Iris’ heart fluttered as she dropped off to sleep in ways that promised that there would be no more mornings for her.
Finally.
She’d opened them a blink later to Longharvest Lane.
Electricity arced over Iris’ ice-cold body. Fuck, she’d forgotten how damned cold the jump through time had been. Getting torn apart into three versions of herself had been bad enough. To land here in the grime and stinking muck of Longharvest Lane as second time drove a pained whine through Iris’ clenched teeth.
Starkers, again.
She was starkers, again, with hands as young as when she’d made the leap the first time.
“Oh, bloody buggering fuck,” Iris cursed as she pushed herself up and stared around Longharvest Lane. “Not again. What the bloody hell?”
Time had clearly looped. Obviously. But why would Iris be back here? Shouldn’t she be back in her own time? Logically?
She smacked on hand against the filthy cobbles while fighting off tears that she couldn’t afford to shed.
Then she sucked in a breath and screamed bloody murder.
That might, actually, be where she’d gone wrong the first time. Hiding up in the little hollow and cowering under rags had made the incompetent fools that they hired as police, the undertrained rabble of coppers, think that she’d been up to something. Ranting on about talking to Hillinghead had only made it worse.
Not this time.
Iris screamed, screamed a bit more, then allowed herself a sob as some girls appeared at the entrance to Longharvest Lane with wide eyes and those horrible stained pinafores girls wore at this timeframe. One came to fling a pinafore over Iris. The other went running up the alley for help.
Gertie came running in, half naked with just her skirt and petticoats overtop her flat-fronted corset. She had a bit of five o’clock shadow on her chin, but she still dashed to Iris’ said with a flutter of her hands.
Such a sight for sore eyes. And body. And heart.
If there was a sort of knowing to the way she looked at Iris, well, hopefully that would ease the way a bit. Iris needed all the help she could get if she had to do this all over again.
“Oh, love, what the hell happened to you?” Gertie asked. She whirled before Iris could muster the strength to speak, waving to Earnest who was already pulling off his shirt. “Thank you, Earnest! Goodness, this is, what the bloody hell?”
“Thank you,” Iris said, clinging to Gertie in ways that were, probably, absolutely, completely scandalous currently. “Thank you so much. Oh, bloody hell. Don’t let the coppers take me, please. They’ll throw me in the drunk tank. They’ll put me in an asylum.”
“They would, at that,” Gertie said as she hefted Iris up like she weighed less than a loaf of bread. “All right, darling, where are we taking you?”
“Henry Ashe,” Iris said. “Take me to Henry Ashe.”
Gertie raised an eyebrow. “Ashe it is. You know where he lives, love?”
“He’s right outside,” Earnest said. “He was taking pictures. You know how he is.”
The street beyond Longharvest Lane was as grey and filthy as Iris remembered it being. Whitechapel had never been a clean place. Even in her far-off and long-gone future where everyone was so very loved, Whitechapel had had a bit of scum to it. Mannix had cleaned it up, scrubbed off most of the muck and misery, but it had still oozed out of the bricks.
No one had made a single attempt to improve Whitechapel in 1890. They only raided and ruined, slummed and sneered.
Off up the street, Alfred Hillinghead gestured for a mother to be allowed to take the paddy wagon with her arrested son. As Iris watched, Henry Ashe took a photo of Alfred with his latest and greatest flash.
They shared a look. They passed each other by.
Then Henry spotted Iris in Gertie’s arms.
He gasped.
“You…”
“Mugged,” Iris said, interrupting whatever questions he’d been about to ask. “I need help, cousin. Mind if I visit for a bit?”
Henry blew out a breath, right eye narrowing as he slowly tilted his head to the side in that “there’s something here that I need to puzzle out” way he had when he started investigating a story. That disappeared when Iris reached out to him.
He caught her hand. “Oh, goodness, you’re frozen.”
“Like ice,” Gertie agreed. “They took everything, Ashe. Not a stitch on her. What do we call you, dear?”
“Iris,” Iris replied, clinging to Henry’s hand. “Or Issac. Either works. Honestly, most of the time I prefer trousers. So much better than bloody skirts with my wheelchair or braces. Both of which are long gone now.”
Gertie’s delighted smile at someone else who wasn’t wedded to the gender they’d been assigned as a baby was a joy to see. It wasn’t as deep a thing for Iris. More practicality than anything else. The way women, especially crippled women, were treated in 1890 was so bad that being a man just made more sense.
Iris had made a point in her last life of not considering that she really wasn’t invested in gender at all. Possibly something to think about, once she had a wheelchair that fit, clothes that didn’t hamper her movement, and braces to keep her legs from being utterly fucking worthless.
The “long gone” comment made Earnest gasp and press his fingers to his mouth while Henry glowered as if he wanted to go punch someone in the nose. It was a bit of a lie, except not really.
Her wheelchair and braces literally were long gone, just in time, not in space. Either way, it was highly effective for getting Iris off the street and into Henry’s flat a block and a half away. As Gertie carried Iris there, she skimmed the notices tacked to the walls around them.
No mention of seances at Harker Manor. No KYAL anywhere. Just wooden barrels and carriages with horse shite in the streets. Along with human shite because of course London didn’t have proper sewage treatment yet. This time around. This time around Iris was doing something about the hygiene issue, no matter how much work it took.
“Men’s clothes?” Earnest asked once Gertie set Iris down on Henry’s battered old Chesterfield sofa.
“Preferably,” Iris agreed. “Though you’ll be looking for boy’s clothes, not men’s.”
Earnest grinned, bright and delighted, before he hurried off to see who could spare what.
“I’ll see if anyone has some food to spare, darling,” Gertie said with a pat to Iris’ shoulder and a nod to Henry. “Back quick, I promise.”
She bustled off, hopefully to put on a bodice of some sort if she was going shopping. Either way, that left Iris alone with Henry who had his puzzle things out frown on again. New photos hung from strings all across the flat. His pot-bellied stove stood silent and cold, appropriate given that the day wasn’t that cold for anyone who had actual clothing.
“Yes, you know me,” Iris said into the looming silence. “And yet you don’t. It’s a long story. I’d prefer to tell it once, if possible, though I know that’s unreasonable. Can I use a blanket to wrap up in, by any chance? I’m chilled through.”
Henry sighed and shook his head in dismay. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. I just. It’s deja vu. I could swear that I’ve met you before. Just not quite this way.”
“You did,” Iris said.
Her smile came out crooked enough that any discussion waited until after Iris had clothes, some old, holey shoes, and lovely thick socks brought back by Gertie along with slop pretending to be food.
Iris ate it, of course. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Now, tell me why you feel like my very best friend, darling,” Gertie said. She lounged on the Chesterfield next to Iris with studied grace and a bodice front stuffed with enough wadding to impress an opera singer’s costume maker.
Padded out that way, chin properly shaved and a good wig on, Gertie looked like the woman she really was. Iris couldn’t help but smile fondly at her.
“It’s a long story,” Iris said. “And a weird one. You’ll likely not believe a bit of it.”
“I love wild stories,” Gertie declared while Henry laughed as he brewed them all some tea.
“Agreed,” Henry said. “Let us be the judge of whether or not it’s unbelievable.”
“On your own heads be it,” Iris said.
Telling the whole thing took them through two full pots of tea, a fifth of awful rotgut whiskey, and into the small hours of the morning. Iris ended up curled next to Gertie, held almost in her lap, while Henry paced the far side of the room, making his pictures ruffle with the breeze of his passing.
“I don’t know what to say,” Henry said. He stopped and stared at Iris with a troubled expression. “Sir Julian Harker is dead. No one’s come forward pretending to be him. If there was someone, he’s gone.”
“The loop’s broken,” Iris breathed as she curled into Gertie’s embrace. “But if the loop’s broken, why am I here? It makes no sense!”
Unless Iris, in this timeline, went back in time for completely different reasons and she simply didn’t remember them. That future.
Her future, the future of Elias Mannix and KYAL, was gone. Iris remembered it, still. What if her being here was what made that horrible, perfect, broken dystopia of a future happen?
What if Elias Mannix wasn’t the problem?
What if it was her?