"I was stupid . . . so stupid."

As she turned to me, I could finally see the tears pooling in her eyes. Not for a second had I doubted them from her trembling, but she had always kept them from me. They had been held inside her since we first met. But she had been so divorced from herself that it was like I was seeing her face for the first time, baptized in pain she let free.

I reached out as the tears spilled over, began running down her face. I placed my hand over hers on her lap, squeezing tight.

She jumped a little at the contact, dropping a tear from her face onto her soul gem. It was so filthy, so distorted from the shining thing Kaname had thrown from the bridge, it was nearly unrecognizable. I wondered if I was talking to a dead girl walking.

You know, more than I always had been.

My voice broke. I remember that. "You're not stupid."

Just forcing the words out forced my throat tight, like they were choking me. Shame coiled like a chain around me.

"What," she said, as if she couldn't even hear me.

This time, it was a little easier, and all the force just made it come out like a shout: "You're not stupid, stupid!"

Sayaka recoiled, but she didn't take her hand away from mine. Instead, the flinch was enough to turn her towards me, to look me in the face. I think that's when I started crying. It must have been, because she asked, "Kyouko?"

The crying opened floodgates beyond the tears, deeper into my words. I was loud, much too loud for how close she was, but as loud as I needed to be.

"Don't you get it!," I cried, "you've been right about everything! About justice, about saving people. About being a magical girl. You're willing to be brave even when you're in pain! Even now, I can see how much you hurt, trying to convince yourself you believe my bullshit!"

The tears had become too much for my eyes, and I had to raise my arm to clear it away, so I could see her clearly again. She seemed frozen, but as my fingers dug into the back of her hand, she wasn't pulling away. It had to have been hurting her. She didn't seem to notice.

Me being a mess gave her time to speak, even if I hadn't planned on giving her a break until she listened. "But this world . . . it's no good. The people in it are no good. And pretending that I could be a hero didn't make me any good."

Sayaka tightened her grip on her own legs, her muddy soul gem beneath her thumb.

"It just made me think I could decide what was good and what was bad. It made me think I could just choose good. It made me think I could be good."

And. Well. That pissed me off.

"You are good, you idiot! You're so good. When will you believe that?"

Sayaka finally looked away from me, shaking her head.

"No," she replied, looking back down at her legs, "I'm not." She stroked the gem underneath her finger.

After a few seconds of pause, she tilted her head back up, to the ceiling, to the sky, to something I couldn't see. "I betrayed humanity. I betrayed my wish. I betrayed my best friend. I betrayed Mami. I've cursed them all, when it was my fault for making them into something they're not."

God, Sayaka could not open her mouth without making me angry. Not once. Certainly not this time.

"BECAUSE YOU'RE JUST A PERSON!" I yelled as I stood, needing my full body for the yell. In the graveyard silence of the train station in the late night, I knew my voice had to carry far, but that was fine as long as it carried as far as Sayaka.

"You've carved yourself out of the equation, but you're still there! You're still - you're still right here!" And I snatched her soul gem from her lap, holding it in front of her eyes. Her face pinched, closing her eyes from the sight of it.

I reached forward, grabbing her chin and keeping her face forward. "Look! Look, Sayaka, this is your soul. Do you see that light shining through? You're still here! You're still alive."

Finally, she opened her eyes, and stared forward.
And she could yell, too.

"I KNOW!" She yelled as she stood, snatching the gem from my hands. Now she forced it in front of my eyes. "I know I'm in here, instead of in this body. I know it's me. I - know it's still me."

I was on the edge of punching her, I knew it. Punching her or hugging her or . . . something.

I settled for the middle ground of grabbing her by the collar and dragging her towards me, her hands dropping to her side. Her gem dropped to the ground, a tinkling louder than us, our unsteady breathing.

She was close enough that I could be quiet, though my voice wavered between normal and a whisper. "Then act like it. Take care of yourself. You can't just let yourself die. Not now."

I think I saw her face twitch, saw it squirm for a second, but then it relaxed back into emptiness, looking through me instead of at me. "Why does it matter if I die? I save some people, I kill some people. I bring hope and I bring despair. It all adds back to zero."

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Why did you listen to me? Why did you listen to me without hearing me, the me screaming and clawing to be free somewhere inside this zombie's flesh?

See me.

See me, please.

"You're wrong," I said.

I dropped my grip, at first letting my arms go limp like hers, so we stood next to each other like dolls with no real limbs. Then, I raised my hand to my heart, barely holding back tears again (she was seeing me be a crybaby, but maybe that would be enough to convince her I'm real).

"You saved me, Sayaki Miki. You made me remember why I wanted to be a magical girl. You've made me have faith again."

As Sayaka looked into my eyes, I knew she still couldn't see me, but she was trying. She was looking. She was searching.

"You will never bring about enough despair to cancel out my hope again."

Sayaka was still frozen where she stood, but she was thawing. Her joints seemed stiff and heavy, lifting her arm slowly and jerkily up to my face. I didn't move as her hand reached my face, her thumb wiping away at the tears as they started flowing again.

"You're crying," she said. "Why do you care?"

I pulled away from her touch, just enough to move, but slowly enough that she wouldn't think I was recoiling from her. Breathing was hard, like there was a straw inside of my throat and that was the only way I could breathe. I wasn't sure if I even needed to, but I was fighting to.

"Because I can still save you."

I crouched down between us, plucking her soul gem from the ground and raising it chest-height between us.

"Because as long as there's still light in here, there is still something in this world worth protecting." I swallowed hard, knowing I was asking too much even as I asked: "Please let me save you."

"Kyouko . . ." she said, her hand falling over mine, fingers over the gem without pulling it from my grasp.

She looked me in the eye. "I want to die," she said.

I nodded, though my mouth filled with the taste of copper. "I know."

There was a long pause where neither of us said anything, and there was only the sound of our breathing in the quiet of the night. A train must be coming soon. It felt like we'd been here alone for too long.

Slowly, I turned her palm over, placing her soul gem in her palm while I talked.

"When I found my dad hanging in our house, and I found my mom and my sister, and I realized he'd shot them, I wanted to die too. I thought the fire would be enough to kill me, but after a little while it didn't even hurt, and a grief seed undid all the damage. There was barely anything left of them but I was just too hard to kill. I held my soul gem in my hand the whole time, and I thought I might crush it. I knew I was strong enough."

I wrapped Sayaka's fingers over her gem, giving it a small squeeze before letting my hands drop from hers.

"But you know what, Sayaka? I made a mistake. I paid the price. And I'm still here. I'm still alive. You've paid your price."

Sayaka's gaze remained fixed on the swirling darkness within her gem, the flecks of blue so ephemeral and short-lived when they appeared it was impossible to know if you'd seen them at all. Her mouth betrayed nothing, but her eyes seemed to be taking shape, focusing, like she were trying to solve a puzzle hidden within the gem.

She asked, "Do you think Mami will ever forgive me for what I've become?" There was so much hurt and fear within that question that I knew the answer could break her. I so badly wanted to give her the answer she wanted to hear.

I shook my head. "I don't know."

Sayaka looked up at me as I tugged my pin free from my hair, rolling it for a second between my fingers so that the cross's gold flickered in the light.

"But I think we both need to ask someone's forgiveness. Why don't we ask them together?"

Sayaka's head tilted to the side, taking a few seconds to recognize what I was asking.

"I'm not a Christian," she said, visibly uncomfortable.

And I think, I think I must have smiled. "Hey, well. I'm not either, anymore. But it turns out I have a soul, so maybe someone will be listening, at least."

She bit her upper lip. She thought it over. The wait was unbearable.

But finally, she nodded. "Okay."

And as I knelt on the pavement, she knelt in front of me. As I clutched my pin, she held her soul in her hands. I think we both did, to be honest.
And together, we begged for forgiveness that we did not deserve, from gods that could not hear us.

But that did not matter, because Sayaka Miki lived to see another dawn.