She woke with his name on her lips.
Or—no. Not a name. Just the shape of one. A syllable unformed, like a breath caught in the space between sleep and waking. The moment she opened her eyes, it slipped away, just like it always did.
The ceiling stared back, pale and unfamiliar in the pre-dawn gloom. Her heart thudded as if she'd run a great distance, though her body hadn't moved. The sheets were tangled around her legs. Her throat was dry. But more than anything, there was that ache again,the unbearable kind of missing something you never really had.
Ariadne sat up slowly, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. Her dreams never gave her peace. They didn't flutter gently at the edges of sleep like most dreams did. They came like storms,loud and certain. And he was always at the center of it.
He never spoke. Never reached for her. But his eyes,a pair of mismatched eyes-one icy blue,one deep black always found hers. Every time. As if he knew her, as if he remembered. And that gaze,it held something she couldn't name. Something that dared her to find him.
She swung her legs over the side of the tiny bed, her bare feet brushing the old wooden floor. She didn't need a clock to tell her it was early. The city was still asleep. Outside, the sky was the dull blue of coming dawn.
Another dream. Another night stolen by him.
She pressed her palms against her eyes and whispered to herself, "Get a grip." But the words didn't land. Not anymore. She'd said them too many times.
Some part of her still clung to the idea that he wasn't just a figment of her imagination. That he was real. That fate was pointing her somewhere.
And if it was… she wasn't going to ignore it.
Ariadne didn't bother with coffee. The jar was empty, and she wasn't in the mood to pretend warm water and powdered creamer tasted like anything but regret.
She threw on a hoodie with a faded band logo and tied her curls into a loose knot. Her sneakers,fraying at the soles—waited by the door like tired companions. She slipped them on and grabbed her bag, one strap hanging by threads she hadn't had time to sew back in place.
Outside, the city breathed smoke and damp concrete. The kind of morning that clung to your skin and whispered that nothing would change.
She took the long route to the diner. The walk was familiar—same cracked sidewalks, same flickering neon sign at the pawn shop window, same alley cat perched like a gargoyle on a dumpster. The kind of neighborhood that forgot your name the second you turned the corner.
She arrived two minutes late. No one noticed. Or if they did, they didn't care. It was that kind of place.
She tied her apron in the back, forced a smile onto her face, and started pouring burnt coffee into chipped mugs. The usual crowd: silent old men nursing toast, students too broke for anything but refills, and couples who didn't speak between bites.
"Hey," her coworker Mina called softly, nodding toward table six. "The guy from last week's fight is back."
Ariadne followed her gaze. Just a teenager this time, scowling at a menu like it personally offended him.
Not him.
Never him.
Her heart sank in that way it always did. Like falling into the space between hope and disappointment. She nodded, grabbed a pen, and moved to take his order.
The day passed in a haze of clinking cutlery and the hum of bad music. When her shift ended, she had Eighteen dollars in tips. Not bad. Not good. Just enough to not starve.
And still, as the sky darkened and the streets grew colder, there was only one place she wanted to be.
She looked at her reflection in the diner's greasy window and told herself she wasn't going back to the bar tonight. She needed rest. Sanity. A break.
But the dream still echoed in her chest like a pulse. And her feet—they always seemed to know the way.