There is something infinitely frightening about the moment when she crosses the boundary between sleep and wakefulness. That single gasping moment when her mind is simultaneously lunging towards wakefulness and desperately grasping at the last remaining strands of cobwebbed dreams. It's almost like dying, every time she wakes, because she knows that she feels like someone else in her dream. She can almost feel the sun of her dreams on her skin, she knows she went places inside them, talked to people who were but only figments of her own mind. There is something inside her dreams that calls to her, and while she dreams she feels complete, but when she wakes all she has is that terrible mocking memory of completeness.
It's jarring, this sense of loss she feels when she wakes up each morning with forgotten dreams. It is an effect without a cause. It's terribly frustrating, just like having a word on the tip of her tongue but never quite being able to remember it. She tries not to let it bother her, she really does, but she can't quite forget that terrible emptiness like an open gaping wound inside her mind. It's a desperate clawing longing made so many times worse by the fact that she doesn't know what she so longs for. Sometimes she wakes up crying and she doesn't really know why, and all she can do is let the warm tears drip down her face as she stares into the darkness of her room, and hope that the inexplicable sadness will pass before she has to pretend to wake up to get ready for school.
She is very good at pretending. She has to be. She tried to talk to her mother about the dreams once. Her mother had the strangest look in her eyes, she thinks it was worry, then. She didn't like that look, not at all. So she told her mother that the dreams and the horrible emptiness had gone away. So she pretends, pretends that she isn't afraid of going to sleep at night. Pretends that the she's the normal, cute, oblivious little girl that her mother expects her to be.
She doesn't even consider telling her father. He's a busy man, a policeman, and he's rarely home anyway. When he is home, she only ever receives the barest acknowledgement from her father. You're so cute, Sayu. He always says with a vague smile, as his eyes are thinking of something else. He never really sees her, doesn't see the need to take a moment and really look. But that's okay. She knows she's not really special, not compared to her older brother.
Her perfect brother, always neatly groomed and intelligent and whose room was always as obsessively organized as his own brilliant mind. He's their father's pride and joy, and their father always tries to spend time with him, whenever he's home. She used to be jealous when she was much, much younger and still wanted her father's regard, but she sees now that it was foolish of her. Her brother doesn't really want or need their father's approval, or his warm pride, even with how freely given it is. She sees how fake the smile that he gives their father is, each time he comes home. How carefully manufactured each of his conversations with him are. She doesn't know if he's aware of just how deeply ingrained this mask of his is, or if he realises it's even there. She admires his skill, unknowing or not.
She's never been truly close with her brother, despite appearances. He's always acted as the perfect older brother, but it's just that; an act. But she watches him; catalogues his every movement, every habit and nervous tic. She thinks that if Light were another person, she would know him better than himself. But he isn't another person, he's Light, and his mind will always be beyond her own meagre comprehension. She can read him, to an extent, but she doesn't think that she'll ever truly know him. Part of her doesn't really want to, because she knows that even beginning to think that she knows him would be the greatest folly of thinks it's only fair really, because he will never really know her either.
She doesn't think anyone will. The only difference is that everyone else will make the mistake she's avoided-they'll all think that they know her.
A/N: More little drabbley bits. I just love exploring a different Sayu.
