Work Text:
I used to like strawberries, once upon another life.
They were not my favourite, but they were something I enjoyed. Something to look forward when it was their season, sweet strawberries with Greek yoghurt. We’d make a bowl of it and have it for dessert, a special day for all of us. Me and my siblings.
I don’t remember them anymore. The degradation of my memory began sometime after I died, I suppose. Their names, their faces, their likes and dislikes – it’s all gone now. The feeling that they’d been there is all that’s left. Sometimes not even that.
I don’t like strawberries anymore.
Sayu is a good sister. We’re not that close, but that’s more my fault than hers. I was always closed off.
Raito is…
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a boy. He found a terrible tool and killed two people with it. To cope, he decided to become god.
He would have killed millions.
Once upon a time, there was a girl. She died and came back as a baby and remembered one day what her brother would do.
She hated herself. She hated the world. She loved her brother.
Suicide never was an impossibility for her.
I don’t like strawberries anymore. They keep being fed to me.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. The doctors were surprised. ‘A miracle,’ they said. They told my parents that I should have died with burns that severe. My lungs had been severely damaged in the fire. My skin would never recover properly. One of my legs had gotten infected and had to be amputated.
The psychiatrist that worked with me said something about trauma and recovery. I knew the whole shtick already – you tend to memorise this kind of thing, and I was familiar with psychiatrists both of my lives. Nod along when they want you to, make empty promises, take your meds on time. They’ll leave you alone eventually.
My name was Agnes Millefeulle. I was twenty when I died. I was seven when the memories of my death were shoved unceremoniously into my head.
My name is Yagami Sayori. I am seven – or twenty-eight? Who even knows anymore. Who even cares.
For eight years, I lived as if this was a dream. I imagined that if I kept going, I would go back home, to being Agnes. I refused a name, I refused a life, I refused to see what was wrong.
When I liked strawberries, I read a story. Many stories, and stories about stories, and I wrote a few. They were a comfort, a way to escape. They are my worst nightmare now.
“You know.”
Raito looked at me with cold eyes from the hospital chair, legs crossed, looking every bit like Light Yagami. None of the mirth of my older brother, none of the distant pretend affection of the last months, after he found the Death Note.
Kira looked at me, evaluating my worth. Deciding if I deserve to live.
“I know everything,” I answer.
“How?”
I trail my eyes over at the shinigami next to Raito. “Why don’t you ask your friend?”
The ship of Theseus is a famous thought problem. If you have a ship and slowly replace its parts over the years, until all of the parts have been replaced, is it even the same ship anymore? Or are you in front of an entirely new ship?
I don’t like strawberries anymore. I can barely remember my past life.
If he wrote my name, what would it be? Yagami Sayori? Agnes Millefeulle? Something else, an abomination of an identity? An amalgamation of pieces that has no right to exist. That failed everything it tried to do.
Something that failed to die properly twice. I deserve no name.
“You don’t have a name.”
“I haven’t decided on one yet.”
Ryuk chuckled as Raito narrowed his eyes. “Explain,” my brother demanded.
I don’t like strawberries, but I can’t escape them anymore. I have no choice but to adapt.
“It all began when I died.”