𝕻𝖚𝖑𝖔 𝖉𝖆 𝕲𝖆𝖙𝖆

“You got a better plan?” Mason mumbled into his sheets. A moment later, his eyes snapped open. The room looks the same it did when he crashed out, except the street light filtering in had the frayed edges of many hours predawn. He sat up, his eyes tracking through the space until they landed on the figure sitting shadowed in the corner on a chair that generally saw more action holding laundry that any people.

“You’re getting slow, Tin Man.”

Mason groaned at the old nickname, even as he hungrily drank in the sight of Magda sitting there, brash as ever. With her scuffed up boots and beaten to shit bomber jacker, she looked like she’d just walked off a crime scene. He didn’t know what to say.

“Are you just going to sit there staring?”

“Magda.”

The smile that cracked her face was alien to him — he’d never known her to be cold, even in her indifference.

“Don’t think what you’ve been doing is working out so well for you.”

“You have any suggestions for me, then?” A curl of frustrated resentment coiled in his gut. “Who am I talking to? Of course, you do.”

Magda let out a peal of dry laughter that rasped against his skin the way faded cellulose flyers drifted through gutters on the streets below.

“I might, yeah.” She leaned forward on her knees to peer at him, her grey eyes clinical. The moment stretched on forever. Mason found his head void of thoughts as his whole being narrowed down to focus on Magda, like he could somehow etch the entirety of her into his soul.

“It’s time to move on.”

“What?”

“Let me go.” If he thought her smile was cold, this was so much worse.

“I can’t,” he husked through a constricted throat clogged with near panic.

“Why? You’re hurting yourself.”

“What else do I have?” For the first time, Mason looked away, staring unseeingly at the sheets bunched in his fists so tight he’d probably tear holes.

“This is all a distraction. You’re not seeing the big picture.”

“I don’t care.”

“You should because I’m really not the one who matters in all this.”

“You do to me.”