In the meantime, Amelie had told Iris that she would be free for the next hour or so, if she needed help with investigation. Iris accepted, and had told Amelie she was investigating Franklin Hubert's former address; she would meet her at the entrance to the neighborhood. It was a gated community, and when Amelie arrived in her Delinquentcycle she walked up to Iris there, exchanging some words with the guard.
"Is she another student?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Alright. You're both here on investigation, so I'll let you both in. Hey, I'll warn you about somebody, though. There's an old man who lives at the end of the neighborhood. You might see him out on his porch talking to nobody, but don't pay it no mind. He ain't a host or anything."
"Who's he talking to?" said Iris.
He scratched the back of his neck. "His wife. She died a few years ago, but he just started talking to her like she's still alive. Still pretends she's sitting where she usually sat and all."
Amelie frowned. "That's horrible. Has anyone tried talking to him?"
"Yeah, we usually just ask how she's been. We don't tell him he's gotta face reality or nothing."
"Excuse me?"
"We'll just avoid him." said Iris. "Mind pointing me to-... actually, never mind. Can find it myself."
The gate opened, and in stepped Iris & Amelie. Iris checked Franklin's address again, and as they walked down the sidewalk, Amelie frowned as she saw the house at the end of the road, and its porch. He was there and talking to his wife. "Iris, we should go talk to him."
"It's not our responsibility."
"Please. It won't take more than a few minutes. I hate to see someone like that."
"Someone like what?"
"Sitting in delusion? It's cruel for this entire neighborhood to simply let him continue like that. How is he supposed to have any progression in life; to make new friends, to find another love?"
Iris said nothing.
"Iris, it isn't real. You know it isn't."
"You think it matters to him that it isn't real? He doesn't need another love; he already had one and he figured out a way to continue her. We've got better things to do than harass an old man into submitting his own reality into the greater."
"Alright, and what do you think will happen when someone else close to him dies? What, he'll have an entire house of ghosts?"
"Most likely."
Amelie frowned. "Iris, I can't believe what I'm hearing out of you. I would have thought that because of your uncle, you would- do you think it's better that he just steer himself off a cliff?"
"I suppose it depends whether you think knowledge is more important than happiness. Life focused our beliefs differently. I don't agree with him, but I understand him. You haven't had anyone close to you die. You don't know what it's like to have the pattern of somebody's presence close to you and suddenly be gone."
"Yes, I only had that happen with someone who I thought loved me."
A sense of guilt came over Iris and she did not like it. She damned her cowardice for how she had acted with Amelie, yet given another opportunity she was not sure she could have brought herself to act much differently. There still seemed an element of self-destruction that she possessed, another trait she shared with Claire; that the center of her human animal was still latched upon suffering and its sustained pull.
As they searched for the house she looked at Amelie, who seemed guilty over her own sadness. She realized that part of the way she viewed Natasha's death had only been in relation to herself; that what she did as a result of it could not be criticized, yet in seeing its outward effect she felt more of a shithead than before. She wondered if this attempted reconciliation with Claire was another expression of how Natasha's death had affected not only Iris … but perhaps she was being selfish again.
Their search found no home, and Iris looked around again.
"We could ask around." said Amelie.
"No. It was 4309, so it should be between..." She glanced between 4310 and 4308. There was an empty lot there with no markings. "…seems like it was demolished."
Amelie sighed. "God damnit. We should have expected this."
"Isn't an issue for me." Iris smirked. "Being able to see time is mighty useful."
"If you can see time, why didn't you already know the home was demolished?"
"Take that up with the spider."
"Eventually I might like to take it up with you."
"Feels like you just did."
Amelie looked to Iris, and she took her hand. "…I hope you know that it's always difficult for me to be angry at you. I can't ever hold it against you for long."
Iris nodded, and despite that she did not really want to, rubbed the small of Amelie's back. They stood there for a while, but it was uncomfortable. Outside of their vision, a small grasshopper watched them as they separated.
"Kairos: Timeline."
Iris crouched down and focused. The home rebuilt itself, and she went inside to perform a second Timeline; she exchanged not a word with Amelie, her webs half strewn within the house and half outside of it. She felt the Revenant again here and tried to make it move again, though she knew not what the risk of doing so entailed.
She felt a sense again as Kairos pulled at his Revenant and attempted to make it move again in the present, its ability a dissipated sand between its forever-working strands.
She realized that throughout her previous Timelines he had felt these attempted chronoshifts and had been seeping his Revenant throughout it. She looked to Amelie and breathed. "Amelie, can you search some through the house for me?"
Amelie nodded and went off. Iris sat there for some time, then decided to check what areas of the house she was not. She found a home-security system, a camera affixed to the top of the front-door. Franklin had mentioned these during the trial; that Leonard Hoffman had visited his home prior to the murder and framing, but she had dismissed it as part of his anti-Semitic rambling. She decided to go looking for it inside the house, and found that he had kept local backups on his computer, a constant overwrite every 24 hours and in low-resolution.
She called Amelie in to sit beside her, then reverted his hard drive to the day Franklin had mentioned, slightly more than a year ago. "Think he mentioned that Leonard visited him that day."
"You don't think it's Leonard, do you?"
"No. Far as I can tell, Franklin's just a delusional bigot." But then she recalled Olivia's research of him; not once had he seemed a bigoted man, yet she supposed many men concealed such until they were imprisoned. "…still. I have the feeling the murderer did visit Franklin. Maybe not the day Franklin mentioned, but it's the only lead we have. I don't believe it's a police coverup at this point."
"Alright."
They viewed the security camera footage, and something odd occured as they watched a man pull into the driveway. As he stepped out, his hair and height constantly shifted; even his posture and gait was in flux, even when Iris paused the video and stopped it entirely with Kairos. She looked to Amelie, who realized now that same beast she had rather early in this investigation, but told to no others out of fear it may tint them as well.
"His Revenant manipulates perception." said Amelie.
"…far as I can tell." muttered Iris. "Leonard Hoffman seems to be an image into which blame against the actual host is poured."
"Can you revert any earlier than this? The tapes?"
"No, these... these were the moment they were written." She stared at them for some time. "…by the time they were recorded, he already had his Revenant. He visited Franklin after murdering the woman. He had an intent to kill or falsely imprison Franklin, and so it had preemptively begun to protect his image from any evidence that might later be used."
"That can't be possible."
"That I wouldn't like it to be possible doesn't mean it isn't."
Still they sat in silence and were unsure how to proceed. She had found his image, yet it meant not as much as it should have.
"…Iris. Do you still have the blackmail?"
"I do."
"Revert them to the moment they were written. I- the woman wrote them before his Revenant activated, yes? You didn't feel it once during that Timeline?"
Iris took the papers out of her pocket, unfolded them, and reverted them back to the state they had been upon birth.
Upon them was the name: Harman Horstmann.
Slowly, Iris advanced it forward in time, and it became Franklin Hubert once more. She looked over to Amelie, who seemed to realize what she had now. "It's protecting him."
Amelie's phone vibrated and she took it quick. "Yes? Are you alright?" She seemed perplexed. "…I was with Iris, we were… oh. Alright, but I- alright." She seemed frustrated. "Why? What did she say to you? Well, god damnit, Claire, you can't respond like... no, I'm not saying -- stop it. You know that's not what I'm saying. Why do you just insist on misinterpreting me? … Yes. Yes, fine. I will." She hung up and sighed, but did not speak for a few moments. "…it's Claire, I-..."
"You said she went off with a woman?"
"Yes, and apparently she tried to get Claire to drink."
"She's lying."
"Well, of course she is, Iris. She lies enough to me that if she started telling the truth I wouldn't know where Claire ended and the truth began, but she's my mentor, and…and I don't know beyond that, exactly, b-but…"
Amelie teared up, and soon she began to cry.
Iris held her as she mumbled about how she would need to leave and help her mentor Claire yet again so that she would not get caught in any worse trouble, and Amelie spoke of a time, early on, where she had tried to help Claire at a bar, and Claire had yelled at her with all the ferocity and menace of a stranger; she could find no reason for this but the nothing that inhabited Claire and that blur of reality & fantasy.
She had never received resolution for this, for simply weeks later it had dripped from Claire's recall: if she had been asked about the incident she would have no clue what Amelie was talking about. And it reminded Amelie of her childhood, in that these little nicks had bruised at her despite her attempts to be inured; that she believed her mother despised her and loved her younger rogue host sister, who she had not told anyone of but Iris, out of worry for her safety.
"…I-Iris." mumbled Amelie. "I u-understand we're in the middle of investigation, I-I... Will you be alright if I l-leave?"
Iris nodded, and helped Amelie out. She thought to view her growing smaller into the pavement, but she still had Kairos' cloud cover over Timeline. She realized that they had been separate for long enough now that there was a sort of a fixed Iris and a fixed Amelie that anchored their own visions into the past, and as she had left, Amelie understood this as well as Iris. There could be no return to these visions, however.
Claire had not caused this, however much Iris occasionally blamed her.
In truth Iris thought that initially she might have been able to carve out of empty space the requisite condition Claire would have to be, to deserve her empathy and her understanding. But however Amelie had spoken about her, she could not really do so; whenever she attempted to see Claire it was only her uncle again. She was a drunken fuck-up and a loser, as much to blame for her own condition as her uncle was his.
There was a supreme wish Iris wished to conjure and bring an end to her by a metaphysical instrument; not violence but banishment of this obscene joke from Amelie's life. Amelie was a sweet woman, and Iris felt protective of her, yet even her urges, formerly selfish and internal, had begun to turn outward. She had no right to control Amelie and she understood that, even as they tested each other as they had. She thought that perhaps every couple had these attempts to reconstruct the ruins of what they had once shared, yet neither now wished to accept its splendid risk, lost in that fog of all actions suckled under the appellation of love.