The apartment is silent except for the soft ticking of the kitchen clock. Streetlights spill through the blinds, casting pale lines across the worn-out couch where Fionna lays curled up beneath a thin blanket. Her eyes are open, staring at nothing.

1:47 AM.

He's not home yet.

She shifts slightly, pulling the blanket tighter around her body. The weight of the silence isn't comforting—it's waiting. It's holding its breath, just like she is.

"He's late again," she murmurs, voice barely above a whisper. "That's never good."

Her fingers tighten around the edge of the blanket, knuckles pale. Her phone rests on the floor beside her, facedown, as if turning it away will keep it from ringing—or from lighting up with a name she doesn't want to see.

"Please be drunk somewhere else," she says to the dark, almost like a prayer, hollow and mechanical.

She closes her eyes, but sleep won't come. Not while that door is still unopened. Not while her mind is playing out what he might do if the wrong song was playing in the car or if he read a text that wasn't meant for him.

"I hate this." The words come out flat, but real.

Her throat tightens. She swallows it down like always.

"I hate you," she says to the quiet room. Then, softer, "And I hate that I still flinch when I hear your keys."

She presses her face into the pillow, her voice muffled now. "I just want to disappear."

The ticking clock keeps counting. And so does she.