#sayaka.

"Was it...no, that was her. Oh, maybe--n...no, that was..." She is still trying to pick her own memories of living apart from the other Sayakas. She is going to give herself a migraine somehow.

Painted eyes manifest upon a surface, focusing on the seraph.

"HOW STRANGE. YOU ARE NOT THAT ONE. THE ONE WHO EFFECTIVELY DISSOLVED. YOU PLAY ANOTHER ROLE, ONE OF BIBLICAL SCALE. TO WHAT END DO YOU SERVE YOUR GOD?"

"Have you ever considered nice and polite introduction and conversation before jumping right to the intrusive questioning?" Sayaka raised an eyebrow, staring back at the weird....eyes. This is a new one, not just to her but to all of the memories in her head.

It's the same routine, almost every other day. It isn't like she needs to sleep. But sometimes she does it anyway. Through no fault of her own, something makes her drift off. It makes her visit the memories of the many she took upon herself.

They ranged from surprisingly pleasant to abruptly horrific. Sometimes she felt their pain. She felt their joy and love. She felt their anguish and their wounds as if they were branded on her own body. Glimpses of different versions of the same faces she knew and loved herself. Sometimes she watched them die. Sometimes she watched them scorn her and sometimes they laughed.

Even when she woke, those memories still played. It was like a curse she had agreed to without realizing the extent. But would she take it back? No...she wouldn't. They didn't deserve that. They deserved so much better than all the ways each of them perished. It wasn't fair. It took so long for her to accept her own death, and she couldn't imagine how cheated they felt.

She didn't have to. She felt it, whenever she had to feel the phantom sensations of their last moments. Feel the emotions that wracked their heads in their last breaths, and the pain of whatever their body had to go through.

She didn't let the sentient witch companion she'd come to be so familiar with be burdened with these unusual problems. She didn't like the idea of allowing her temporary host, the strange and quiet shinigami that had watched over her since her re-awakening after what she had done, to deal with her weight. Maybe she never learned. Or maybe her ways mingled with the mindsets of so many other Sayaka Mikis in a way that made her make those same foolhardy decisions she would make before when she was still among the living. But regardless of the reason, she was always trying to trudge through it alone. Grit her teeth. Tremble through it. Steel herself. She could remember who she was. Among the sea of memories and emotions that weren't her own, she could still pick herself out.

Right?

She could, couldn't she?

No, no that's not really right. That's hard to do. Sometimes, she looked at herself and doubted what she saw. She looked at her hands and wondered why they looked like that. She could see her face in a mirror and in the instant she felt unfamiliar with the tired eyes staring back, feel a horror that she wasn't meant to feel.

She wouldn't wish this on anyone. She wasn't sure what the goddesses had to put themselves through, but this? She wasn't meant to do this. Her feeble mind and her body wasn't supposed to wade through the souls of so many others. They were not supposed to be here. But where else would they go? They didn't want to move on. They would be stuck in place otherwise. Damned in a purgatory of their own making because they didn't know what to do. They were never granted the freedom to figure that out. The right.

It's not fair.

Hands rise to her head, fingers slipping through blue hair as she squeezed her eyes shut, breathing out a soft but forced breath. Her name is Sayaka Miki.

Which one is she?

She needed to be able to do this.

She doesn't know how to do this.

She isn't sure she can.

Her head hurts so much.

The presence remains quiet, yet it lingers ; contemplating the troubles of this lost angel, drowning in her loneliness and forgetting important pieces of who she was meant to be. The salt water permeates, indicating no intention of leaving. With the sound of waves crashing against the rocks, a voice rings out within Sayaka's head. Her own. “It doesn't have to always be like this. Unless you wish for it to be, but I know that is not what you want.” The low keys of a piano accompany an orchestra composing a melody to soothe a lost soul. A white thread is tied around Sayaka's finger, glowing beyond the scopes of reality ; a trace of the Law of Cycles that she belonged to, signaling its presence—or something close enough to it, to the home she longed for. “I am everywhere,” Multiple voices echo, entangled within the sound of the music. “and nowhere at all. I do not need to go where I am needed, for I am already here.”

​Sliding her arms back onto the desk, Sayaka picks her head up a little bit, regarding the white thread quietly before looking at the journal, then up towards the ceiling with a sigh.

"...you're different. I don't know how though. It's like if I think too hard about why Kanade doesn't feel quite like a god, despite being like one," She quietly muses about it, feeling a little strange, talking to the air. Talking to...a voice in her head. It makes her feel a little...well, she's definitely not well. She already knew that. But she supposed she could take a little comfort in this voice not exactly coming from herself.

Still...maybe it's sad of her to admit, but hearing a voice that wasn't her own voice was a welcome change, even if it was strange. Even if it was unusually layered and unusual.

A Sayaka, maybe? Or maybe an Oktavia. She was too exhausted to tell. Or to linger on why it sounded like that.

"It's still pretty selfish of me to go pulling someone's attention like that, I'm sure. These feelings will go away. They always do, for a while. It's just...a lot. But I guess that's on me for trying to give a damn about those specific versions of me. I...asked for this. I probably should have thought it through more, but...that's never been a very me way of handling things, has it?"

[In reference to @viitiosus]

A small sigh was the only sound in the room before a journal was gently placed back on the desk, and the chair pulled out to sit in. It was a simple little book. The first half had already been heavily used with various inconsistently timed entries. It was a clean white color with gold trim and decorations.

Gently, fingers pull the journal open to the page marked by one of the attached silk ribbons, opening to a page that had been carefully doodled and decorated on. In the center of the paper was carefully drawn lettering, words crafted into a time-consuming but surprisingly artistic title.

"In Memoriam"

"Good job, Sayaka. You've made the atmosphere of this little pet project completely impossible to work out." She frowned, but moved past it already. She had done it while she was bored anyway, still deliberating if she wanted to do this or not.

the cosmic chewtoy of mitakihara at times