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The hours stretch on, the vibrance of day bleeding away into silence as Sayaka sits at the train station, unseeing eyes trained on the horizon.
She has never felt so cold, alone watching the hands of the clock engage in their perpetual race. The sensation was not physical. Her magic would not allow her body ─ her shell, she thinks bitterly, the husk posing as Miki Sayaka, to be in anything but optimal combat condition.
The chill came from within. It is a web of misery which she simultaneously spins and is ensnared by, icy cords cutting deeper than any flesh wounds could. Your are not worthy, the voices in her head say. You are twisted, broken. How dare you dream of standing amidst the brilliance that is his sun?
Sayaka just stares wordlessly at the way the sun shies behind the silhouettes of distant mountains, her hands clasped around her blackened soul gem.
Eventually, the sound of footsteps echo across the empty space, crisp and sharp against the slow swirling mass of Sayaka's grief. She doesn't look up as the clicking noise of approaching heels slows.
A streak of red flashes in the corner of Sayaka's eyes as the other magical girl invades her space.
"Finally!" Kyouko exclaims, plopping down uninvited at the far end of the same bench Sayaka is occupying. "I found 'ya."
The blue-haired magical girl fights a wince as Kyouko pops open a metal tin of potato chips with a vicious tug.
"So how much longer are you gonna do the stubborn thing, huh?"
Sayaka cringes at the obnoxious sounds Kyouko makes as she chews on the chips, uncaring of the way she shreds apart the peace of the night. The familiar embers of irritation stirs deep within her, but she is too exhausted to bring it aflame to fuel an argument.
"I'm sorry," she grits out. "If I caused you any trouble."
"Seriously?" came the reply. "Doesn't sound like you at all."
Of course it doesn't, Sakaya thinks, staring down at her hands. This body is not her, not anymore. She is ─ an angel stripped of her feathered wings and righteous fire. A siren with its voice stolen. Whatever she had that made her human, she had long lost that quality and along with it the identity of Miki Sayaka.
"Yeah you're right," she sighs. "I guess I just... don't care anymore."
She lets her gaze resettle on the twilight sky of the Mitakihara cityscape. It is a vast expanse of starless dull greens and purples and not quite gray — if Sayaka wasn't so far removed from everything but her depression she might have been able to appreciate the sight and find it beautiful.
"I can't remember... what I thought was so important, what I thought was worth protecting, you know?"
"It's all a blank now," she says. Her soul gem pulses in her hands, and the roar of voices in her head is both deafening and chillingly silent.
" — It doesn't make sense anymore."
"Hey come on," Kyouko says, and Sayaka wants nothing more than to wipe that stupid grin off of her face. The thought is so selfishly cruel and so unlike what she once aspired to be, and yet as if watching a trainwreck in slow-motion she finds herself unable to punch the brakes and shield her friend from the pain.
Her hands unclasp to reveal her tainted soul gem, mottled and rotten with self-hatred and defeat. Next to her, Kyouko gasps, and a part of Sayaka finds twisted delight in it.
"Balance means good and bad have to zero themselves out right," she says, and she doesn't care enough to think if it is to Kyouko or herself or to the world at large.
"That's what you said," she continues. "Or something like it. I think I understand what you mean now."
"The good thing is, I did save a few people. But the bad thing is, I got angrier and my heart filled up with envy and hate."
"It got so bad I even hurt my best friend."
"Sayaka," Kyouko says, seemingly snapping out of her stupor. "Your soul gem — "
"For all the happiness you wish for someone," She carries on in a clipped monotone, ignoring Kyouko's interruption. "Someone gets cursed with equal misery. That's how it works for magical girls — and that's how it is for me."
And Kyouko had tried to warn her, hadn't she? It was the same story, the same introduction and exposition — the Little Mermaid turns to seafoam. Kyouko's father murders her family. And Sayaka... She too has to pay for Kyosuke's recovery. It's a principle that transcends time, a cycle that goes round and round like the porcelain figurines sitting on a carousel.
"I was stupid," she admits, her voice choking on a sob as tears slip free and leaves a glistening trail down her cheeks. "So stupid."
It happens like how one falls — slowly, and then all at once. It is the split second of inertia before gravity takes over, the blissful moment of unawareness as you plunge into love or sleep, before you raise your head and realise how far you have slipped from heaven and grace.
It is excruciating. It is peaceful. It is the quiet horror dawning on Kyouko's face as she drinks in the way Sayaka is splitting apart at the seams. It is the way the blue-haired girl's soul gem collapses around itself to reveal the grief seed sitting within its walls. It is the warping of space, accompanying the initial exothermic blast.
Distantly, the red-haired girl screams out a name as she is thrown back by the howling gusts, and the being previously named "Sayaka" startles. Its dull blue eyes shift to track the lifeless body sliding across the rebuilt floor, and a small part of it lights up in recognition.
Oh.
And then, darkness descends.