A/N: This is what happens when you watch Brittany Snow-centric horror movies and can't deal with the feelings. I got a little obsessed, and this is what happened. This is chapter one. If any of you are wondering, yes, Blind Faith will be updated extremely soon.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

She can't believe she thought this was a good idea.

There's no question that it's the stupidest, most reckless thing she's ever done; her mother told her, time and time again, from the time she was old enough to understand the words, that she should never, ever, under any circumstances, accept invitations from strangers. Especially not strange men, and especially not strange men in influential-looking suits with odd nervous tics and quick tongues. She's mature, she's conscientious, and she's no fool, so she doesn't have a reasonable explanation for why she's here except for that she's desperate, which the Iris she was before the accident would have thought was a terrible excuse.

Something about being responsible for her own life, about being expected to provide for herself and take control of situations, had deluded her into believing that she was on an even footing with all other adults who, in all honesty, were just like she was – delusional, volatile humans who just happened to have reached an age that declared them responsible and, somehow, trustworthy. She'd thought that since she was expected to take charge of things at home, to assume the responsibility of her brother's wellbeing as well as her own, she could at least handle every situation with maturity, no matter how challenging.

It's a delusion that has landed her in a locked room, pinned at gunpoint to a chair with a stab wound in her ribcage and seven other adults, all of whom are dead, dying, or about to be either. The situation is gory and terrifying and horrific, but they all seem to slowly be coming to terms with the fact that there is no escaping it. That recognition has at least half of them cowering where they sit, but Iris, despite her overwhelming fear and the pain from her stab wound, is sitting up as straight as she can manage. She determined after the first round of shocks that if she's going to die in this room, she is going to do it with dignity, not reduced to the most pitiful, barest wreck of a human being that most of them are dwindling into.

Then again, she recently struck three deep, bloody gashes into another person's back, so her integrity is already out on a limb. The person she was when she stepped into this room is gone; she won't even experience life from that viewpoint again. This situation has forced upon her a perspective that she wasn't even aware existed within her – she's Iris, for God's sakes, or she was an hour and a half ago, and that Iris would have never dreamed of hurting another human being, or allowing another human being to be hurt in front of her. She had thought that she had been desperate, engulfed in suffering, to accept the invitation to this dinner, but looking back, she knows now that she hadn't known anything of desperation then.

This is desperation; this is suffering. She's trapped in a room like an animal in a cage; she's watched an old woman bleed out after begging for her life, and a dignified war veteran crumple to the floor and die of shock and agony. She's electrocuted herself, and watched several other people do the same, and she knows now that all but one of them are going to end up dead or injured to a point that will prevent them from continuing. Just hours ago, her reality was that her brother was sick and that she, a responsible, loving, adult older sister, was going to do everything in her power to save him.

Now the tables have been turned, and she's fighting tooth and nail for her own life while simultaneously trying to avoid causing others pain. Her new reality, the one that she has no choice but to accept, is that she is going to watch some of the people in front of her die. She is going to watch them suffer. She is going to suffer; she is going to be brutally injured and humiliated, and forced to go against every empathetic instinct that she has in order to save her own life. Being coerced into eating steak for money seems ludicrous now; what she wouldn't give for things to be that simple again. She is no longer fighting against personal beliefs; she is grappling with her every animal instinct. Her morality is telling her to sacrifice herself to suffer on the behalf of others, but her rising primal urges tell her that it's no good; they will be hurt, and they will die, and she might be an instrument that furthers their agony, but they will suffer regardless of her involvement.

And no matter how desperately she wants to be good, to be a sort of martyr that would rather die than hurt another person, her reflexes won't let her. Deep down, she wants to live, and despite how proud she once was of her self-control, it is slowly dawning on her that even the most remarkable restrain is nothing in the face of primitive impulses. If her inner animal wants to survive, it's going to do everything it can, and nothing that she can do will stop that. It's an odd feeling, being completely unable to control herself; it's like she's outside of her body, and there's something else attached to her that she didn't give permission to exist.

Looking around at the varying degrees of agony and stoniness displayed on the faces around the table, she knows that she has a choice, even though it isn't really up to her; there are five of them left, and she is either going to watch four other people die, or she is going to go.

She doesn't want to lose her dignity; she will not let them humiliate her, but her grasp is slipping. She had been a college student, for Christ's sake – she thought she knew all of the dirty little secrets of the world; that she was experienced and aware and even a little adept at all things taboo, but sitting here, she wants her innocence back, because that's what she had been; she had been an innocent, naïve little girl who knew nothing of horror. She thinks of Travis, who had seen war, and yet still hadn't experienced cruelty on this level, and she wants to cry with shame for ever thinking that she understood pain. She wants to curl up in a ball and scream and cry and press her hands over her ears until everything goes away and her brain melts out the realization of what has happened, but it won't do her any good. If anything, it will just get her shot or stabbed or whipped or worse, and if she's going to put any energy into sticking this out, she doesn't want to endure any more pain than she's already been forced to.

She thought she was tired before this; she thought that she was familiar with exhaustion brought on by caring for an ailing brother and feeling the loss of her parents and the weight of responsibility and grief. She didn't. That was mere weariness.

Iris is drained; exhausted by the effort of staying alive, of holding herself together and not going berserk; of not curling up in a rocking, screaming ball in the corner. Of not begging for death.

It might not matter; she might be dying very, very soon, but if she is, she isn't going to lose her humanity. She hopes. God, she hopes for it, she prays for it, because she hadn't been the biggest believer before tonight, but after seeing what she's seen, it's all she can do to hope that Linda has found peace and that these sick bastards, whenever they die, will burn in the deepest, most unreachable depths of hell.

She disagrees with herself a little, because how can she wish hell upon someone when hell is what she's experiencing at this very moment? How can she wish that upon someone when she knows what it is to experience agony? Yet, how can she wish anything else for someone who has brought them all such pain?

She can't think about it; she can't, not if she wants to live through the night (she wants to, but she doesn't, because how can she go on knowing what she now knows?) She can't think; she can only do. She discreetly slips her shoes off beneath the table, and when the signal is given, she moves on pure adrenaline and desperation. She has no idea what she'll do if she gets out, but she can't stay here. She can't withstand it. So she battles her way blindly to the door, and she runs faster than she ever could without this kind of terror driving her; she darts and skids and hides, moving with pure fear, not knowing anything other than that she has to get away. There isn't another option. And then Doctor Barden is there, and she's almost safe, but then suddenly there's a gunshot and he's dead and Julian is pinning her to the floor, biting and pinching and ripping at her flesh, and his hands are travelling somewhere they definitely shouldn't be, and she doesn't have the energy for this to happen, too; not on top of everything else. This is too much and simultaneously almost nothing, but she's kicking and screaming and screaming and screaming, not knowing if there's anybody to hear and save her, just screaming because he's heavier than she is, and he's hurting her, and she's probably stronger but she's exhausted, and what else can she do but fall back on an instinctive reaction that she can't control?

Eventually, it's over; someone else – an enemy – is down there with them, and Julian is no longer on top of her, and it's all she can do to stand and follow Bevens back into the dining room to the dark wolf she knows, where Cal is lying dead and everybody else is sitting in various states of shock, and even Amy looks like she's about to vomit. Shepard makes some ridiculously humiliating comment followed by an apology and a hand on her skin that she definitely doesn't want. She doesn't want him to touch her, because even though he's caused all of this misery, he hasn't laid a hand on them himself, and she doesn't want him to touch her, but she doesn't move, because she knows that to react will mean further pain, and she's hurting enough as it is.

She watches a man's hand get blown off, sees him go into cardiac arrest and his eyes go blank right there on the bloodstained tarp in front of her. She holds her breath until it's her turn again, and after seeing the flesh get torn from someone so brutally that it makes his heart fail, she doesn't need to consider her options any further. She's always been one to play it safe, and although it could be wiser to take a chance here when there are so few to take, the universe is brutal enough. She's not going to mess with fate; not now. Not ever again, if she makes it out of this alive.

She will never be able to describe the level of desperation that comes with losing her most basic faculty and not being able to save herself. She can only grip at the sides of the barrel in something that desperation is too weak a word to describe, feeling her mind go fuzzy and her lungs nearly collapse; feeling the tingle of her blood as it grows frantic, knowing that it's been a long time, too long, and feeling vaguely that she'll probably sustain some brain damage from this, and then there's air, and it's miraculous. She never knew how lucky she was to be able to take it in and have control of her own survival in the most basic of ways, and she vows that no matter whether she lives through the night or only for another thirty seconds, she will never take that ability for granted again. It's a gift like she's never known.

She gets to watch that gift be stolen from Amy, who despite her bravado and psychopathic front looks like she might actually be about to shed a tear; she sees just how cruel Shepard is to bring all of their weaknesses into this. She watches as Amy struggles, almost immediately in the stage that she was in right before she got pulled out, and she feels the rage rise up in her at the unfairness of it all, because yes, they're probably all going to die, but the least he can do is offer them a decent chance at trying to survive.

She watches as Amy's body goes limp and is laid on the floor, and she's startled but doesn't let it on when she notices that Bevens isn't taking her pulse correctly; that a faint flutter is visible in Amy's left wrist, hidden from Bevens' view but perfectly visible from where she's sitting. Amy's not dead, only unconscious, and she prays that she will remain so until she has been left wherever it is they've been taking them. Maybe she'll live; she won't be able to escape in her weakened state, but she might live just a few minutes longer, and at this rate, that's all that any of them can hope for.

She watches Lucas slit his eye open, and then she's hearing that they're free to walk away, with no prize, but alive, but suddenly a gun is being placed in her hands, and she's horrified with herself, but she knows what she's going to do before Lucas even begins to speak. It registers with her when her fingers curl around the trigger that even though she's technically about to win, she's just lost, because the last ounce of her humanity has been destroyed. She tries to console herself with the knowledge that she is doing this for Raleigh, but she's about to kill someone, someone who has a chance at survival, when she's spent the entire night being horrified as she watches people be stripped of their lives, and she knows the moment she pulls the trigger that she will never be able to reconcile herself with that.

It's when the deed has been done that she finally breaks. She shatters, and she can almost feel every fraction of each atom that makes up her being scatter to the far corners of the universe. She lays down the gun and that is when she begins to sob; she curls up and covers her ears and screams and grips and pulls her hair so hard that it nearly comes out in massive hunks in her fists. Shepard lets her sit there and break, and it's finally the recognition that he's amusing himself by entertaining her needs that snaps her back into a shell of herself. She won't let him sit and watch her break down into the destruction that he's caused, and so she sits back up and asks to leave. He starts to call for the driver, but she says no, that she'd prefer it if the man went to get her car from her house and brought it to the door. She will not accept anything more from him.

He permits it, and the driver goes, and she is given the suitcase full of cash in amounts that she's sure even ATMs don't contain. He then leaves her alone, thank God, because she forces out a meek thank you to restrain herself from ripping out his throat, and it's when she's standing alone in the hallway waiting for the driver to return with her car that she remembers Amy.

Remembering passing a halfway-open door on her way down the hall, she sets the suitcase down and retreats back down the corridor a little ways, fighting down the urge to run screaming out the door rather than return into the depths of the house. She finds the room easily enough, and when she pushes the door open, she feels the bile rise in the back of her throat at the sight of her companions laid out across the floor of the living room like dolls, the bowl with their keys and phones in it on the table, as though mocking them.

It takes her a minute to stumble over the bodies and locate Amy, who has been stuffed unceremoniously in the corner. The brunette is splayed out on her back with her neck bent out at an awkward angle, but a quick press of her fingers to the soaking wet skin of her neck is enough to tell Iris that she's still alive. For one weak moment, she sits back on her heels among the bodies and the blood and allows the torment in her mind to take over – Amy stabbed her, after all, and if she takes her, there's sure to be retribution, and if she leaves right now, she can clear out with her money and save Raleigh and try desperately to live the rest of her life without reminder of this night (though it's an impossible feat), but then the tip of one of Amy's pinkies twitches, and Iris is awash with shame. She just spent all night fighting for her life while all the others around her did the same; she grappled with her humanity and the urge to not be the survivor at the expense of others' lives, and here she is with the opportunity to save someone, and she's consider not taking it?

It's all she needs to gather the unconscious young woman in her arms and struggle to her feet. She has no idea how she does it, but she manages to stagger over the freshly laid-out corpses and down the hall without detection, and out the door into the night. Seeing that her car has been brought out front, she doesn't spare a glance behind her before taking off down the walk. She shovels Amy into the backseat and trips around to the driver's side, and doesn't bother buckling in before speeding off. She's just experienced something more horrific than she could ever previously conceive of; if she's going to die not wearing a seatbelt, so be it. It would be ironic and ridiculous, and honestly, she might even appreciate it if she did.

She doesn't bring Amy in right away when they arrive back at the house; she needs to take a moment to recuperate – not long enough to allow herself to think, but long enough to get some energy back for the task ahead.

When she finds Raleigh after her shower, it's almost the thing that breaks her – she just endured this entire night for his sake – but something about the mindset she's been forced into keeps her from entirely shattering again. Raleigh's dead. Many other people are dead. She almost was. If there's anything she knows, it's that she can't bring them back, and she's also beginning to understand that whether other people choose to live or die is out of her hands, no matter how horrible it is. She could have chosen either way, and she knows that nothing could have stopped her from dying tonight if she'd wanted it badly enough.

At least she didn't have to watch him die.

The sight of his black, cold, still face is all she needs to make her decision. She trips through the house in a daze, tossing random objects into a suitcase – spatulas, tee shirts, a camera; a stray sock and a book she's never read. Enough clothes make it in for her to wear, but honestly, she couldn't care less if she went naked. Clothes are the least of her concerns.

It ends up being that she packs several outfits, a random assortment of objects, and the old picture of her with her mother and father. She bring one of Raleigh, but vaguely promises to herself that she will never look at it. She disconnects the phone wires, yanks the TV cable out, unplugs the stove and refrigerator, and stumbles back to Raleigh's room. She presses a clumsy kiss to his clammy forehead, pauses to rip a CD from the collection above his bed, and totters with her suitcase back out the front door. She leaves the house unlocked so that the cops will be able to get in in a few days when the hospital hasn't heard from them.

She piles everything back into the car and takes off, and doesn't stop driving until they've reached the nearest city of any remarkable size. There, she stops at a Seven Eleven to change Amy out of her bloody clothes in case they get pulled over, almost crawls next door to a Hilton, and books a room, slamming down at least eight thousand in cash that will hold them for a couple weeks and that makes the receptionist gasp. She seizes the key without paying any attention to the woman's shocked expression and drives around back to the utility entrance. Somehow, she manages to drag the suitcase of money, her duffel, and Amy all the way up to the seventh floor, where she throws everything down on the floor of the room and gets Amy settled on top of one of the double beds.

Then she goes into the large, luxurious, pristinely clean bathroom and vomits for hours on end.