Map could feel himself slipping.
He'd known it was a danger when he started down this road. The kind of urban magic he practised took a toll. There was a woman in Paris who had physically felt the terror attacks and collapsed into convulsions, waking up to only mute horror and silence in the aftermath. She never spoke again, she was one with the city and she felt its pain as hers. And a man in Tokyo who twinned himself with a specific district until it sapped away at his life and he was left an electrical husk, drained into a digital personality living online, who otherwise carried on his life as normal, continuing to publish his rather successful guidebooks. If Map had been the type, he could have made a fortune writing guidebooks.
He wasn't the type.
For years he had been powerful enough to be near enough untouchable in London at least, with occasional anomalies but they could be rectified. Not that he ever left London. As the years went by, leaving became harder and harder. The line between his self and London's pulsating consciousness thinned, blurring. And he could feel what was left slipping away.
It was like those people who smoked for years on end then acted surprised when they woke up with lung cancer. Always dancing on the edges of risks, always playing with a godawful deck but playing anyway in some hope they could bluff inevitability.
...funny, 'cos Map knew he knew someone like that. A face floated in his mind, details of a person he knew but couldn't name among the thousands of others that occupied every waking moment nowadays.
'The man you must never trust', he thought to himself, knowing deep down this was an unacceptable lapse for him, Ken Ondaate, Map. He had to remember this man, he knew him as well as he knew anyone. A trickster, the Laughing Magician, Billy-no-mates because all his friends died one by one, two by two...the animals went in two by two hoorah, hoorah-
He hit the side of his head and cursed. Nothing magical, just your run-of-the-mill profanity. He wasn't a particularly foul-mouthed man (unlike some people) but if any situation called for it, this was one.
There was no denying it. He was losing his mind. It boiled down to a choice, as always. Magic was made of choices in the end. His mental well-being or the city. He thought of the man in Tokyo. He thought of the woman in Paris. He thought of countless others he might never know, reeling from terror attacks or natural disasters the Western Media would never report. He thought of a Venetian Gondolier who coughed up brackish water every night but could never give up the waterways, never disconnect from the city itself.
He thought, when he could.
And he kept on going as usual, making some adjustments where needed. All the food in his fridge was labelled, so he would know what it was. All the items in his house; 'oven', 'microwave', 'toaster', 'front door'. He kept a board of noteworthy people, names he had to remember, put to faces he cut out from photographs. Clarice Sackville. Albert. The man you could never trust - Constantine, how could he forget?
(...but he forgot everything these days, the city chewed up his mind, relentless, giving him moments of lucidity in amongst the storms that were to come)
At the end of the day, he was still a bloody good magician. Still linked up to the city, still more powerful than most people would dream. It could have been worse. He saw homeless people in the stations, those who didn't have magic to fall back on and those who did and knew he'd done alright for himself, becoming one with the city, choosing the path he had chosen.
He also knew the profession he'd chosen for himself as sweeper was likely the only job he would be capable of soon. So he'd set himself up nicely for these years to come too. He'd done alright.
He'd aged. His body knew it, aching more, gaining weight from he meals he grabbed from takeouts around the city (his city), sometimes forgetting he'd already eaten and eating again. He looked in the mirror and smiled ruefully at his face.
Still recognised it. Right now at least. When the next wave of psychic torment his the city, who knew what dark places his mind would travel to?
Map was holding on. He fed off his city and the city fed off him. An Ouroboros, ever-turning, self-perpetuating in a vicious cycle.
One day he would die and maybe live on in the streets and the rails of his home. Or maybe he wouldn't die and he'd just continue living, an exception like Hob Gadling or Mad Hetty or Clarice.
There were exceptions. They proved the rule.
...i before e except after c when the sound is ee
Talking of exceptions, John Constantine. Though what rule he existed to prove eluded Map. Possibly something about respecting magic, treating these ancient, arcane forces with honour and decency. Or no, wasn't he the break in the cycle of Laughing Magicians? The twin that was never meant to live? Details were foggy.
Another storm was coming. Map readied himself and felt his city overwhelm every sense, everything, overcoming him and dulling him, externally at least. Internally he was a whir of activity, everyone working overtime, chaos abounding. He didn't fight this. He could function better if he left all output processes on minimal and focussed instead on the input.
Prioritising.
Dimly he wondered how Constantine was involved (because of course he was, he'd got off a plane he was back, this whole thing carried his taint).
Then he drifted back to work.
"May had a little lamb," he hummed to himself. "Whose fleece was white was snow…"
Lamb to the slaughter. Blood would be shed.
The question was whose?
He'd have to wait and see. Until then he opened himself to the city and anything else could wait until he got back. Until Map reentered the building.
One day he might not, might dissolve into the night and live on in the thundering of the underground and the cautioning 'mind the gap'. Oddly enough, he was okay with that. It was his magic, his city, his fate. If it was to be, it would be.
...whatever will be will be, the future's not ours to see…
Map smiled absently and finished the tune, "Que será, será."