Because it's twenty-three, it's always twenty-three.

Twenty-Three Percent

| caught up in a dream, in a technicolour beat |

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Her mother keeps photo albums, pictures of her and Light as babies and then older – Sayu's first day of Middle School, Light graduating, holding his diploma with their father's hand clasped on his shoulder, that one family holiday they have when she's ten and her brother in his tennis uniform.

"You were very small." Ryuk tells her, peering from behind her shoulder, eyes stopping on a picture of her in her bathing suit with fifteen other kids, all five years old and smiling brightly at the camera.

"I was a small child." She tells him, switching to another page where Light's tenth birthday party is immortalized forever, Sayu's arms wrapped around him. "Twice, maybe I'll also be one the next time."

Sayu makes it all the way to her twenty-third birthday and then something – something clicks in her mind.

(she watches as her brother yields pen and paper like an axe, brings countries to their knees until they offer him everything he's ever wanted, Kira crowned as God of the New World, a world made for the pure, a world controlled by the fear of heart attacks and distant whispers of Shinigamis)

And, on her twenty-third birthday, something just clicks, a deep seeded envy inside of her bones, an entity of its own that takes over, a need that never really left in the first, one she only buried deep within.

"Ryuk." She turns around and comes face to face with the Shinigami, his body bent oddly and inhumanly. "You'll kill my brother soon."

It's not that a question, it doesn't need to be a question. If her brother forgot the axe that hangs above his head, she hasn't. Boredom makes Death Gods restless and she knows, she can see it.

He offers her a lopsided grin, unashamed and unapologetic – not that she expected him to be either of those things.

"It's been fun, little miss." He tells her with a shrug of paper thin shoulders. "But it would always end that way, Light knew that."

"Will you kill me too?" She blinks, innocent and childlike, no lifespan and condemned to live forever in the worst of ways (maybe that's what hell is, having your sins pulled from underneath your very skin and served up to you in an endless loop of torture).

He smiles, too wide and too wicked for it to mean anything else and Sayu –

It was always supposed to end this way, wasn't it?

(and maybe that's what hell is, having your sins pulled out and served up to you in an endless loop of torture).

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Epilogue

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"I'll see you after school!" Her sister cries out, waving her hands in the air as she disappears in a crowd of elementary school children, all with bright backpacks different colours of the rainbow.

She waves back, even if her sister can't see her.

(she is many, many things after that).

Each time, it's harder to remember the first and second and third. Each time, it's easier to start over. She is many, many things – a daughter and a sister, a friend and an enemy, a schoolmate and a lover. She learns how to spin thread and how to bake, understands that mother nature is capricious and works the earth with her bare hands. She studies philosophy and psychology, life after death, mathematics and chemistry.

Her brain overloads and then releases everything it's ever known to accommodate new things, a new family, new friends, new school subjects, a new life.

Sometimes she shares her previous experiences with others, sometimes she keeps it buried in the deepest part of herself. She learns that speaking of reincarnation can make people uncomfortable and shifty, she learns that it can lend you in the hospital on heavy medications that make your heart give on soon after your twenty-third birthday.

(because it's twenty-three, it's always twenty-three, that fated number that makes the clock stop for a second and then move backwards until she is cried back into the world for all eternity).

"L!" Someone shouts, loud enough to make her blink and snap out of her thought.

There's a child not too far from her, with a backpack a sickly neon green that probably glows in the dark. He's a small boy, maybe six or seven, with pretty blonde hair that shine in the sun.

He's with someone, another boy, a teen that looks about her age. His shoulders are slouched and his shoes aren't quite attached to his feet and she has the strangest, strangest sense of déjà vu.

"Will you pick me up?" And while the question should raise a few eyebrows, the child says it with mirth, almost like he wants to laugh.

The other boy hums and thinks about it for a second before his expression becomes blank.

"There's that new dessert shop that just opened a few streets over…" He trails off and the smaller boy rolls his eyes, but there's a smile on his face.

"Pick me up. We can have cake after." And then the boy waves a hand, almost dismissively and also disappears in the sea of children behind the wide iron gate.

She must have been staring because when the teen turns around, he gives her a puzzled expression and blinks at her, still with his slouch and those shoes that don't fit.

"Do I know you?" He asks and she shakes her head, not embarrassed at all.

"Sorry." She knows she doesn't sound apologetic at all, but it's polite. "You just reminded me of someone." And she turns her back towards him, hand on her own backpack, ready to head to school.

"Have you seen him recently?" She pauses and turns, raises an eyebrow at his question.

"No, I haven't seen him in a long time." She's meant to be fifteen, she looks to be fifteen. He might not believe her, but then he levels a look at her, like he actually does believe her, like he sees something.

"Did you like him?" This is turning out to be an interrogation and she's pretty sure she'll be late for school.

"We had interesting conversations." She has distinct memories of Shinigamis with a passion for apples, a brother she was very enamored with, a detective with a slouch and who ate too much sweets.

But her memory is fuzzy, it could even be a story she read or a movie she saw, a show she watched or a cartoon.

"What did you talk about?"

"Death Gods and apples, mass murderers and death." If she doesn't leave now, she'll never make it to first period. She wants to tell him that, is about to tell him that and then –

But then he looks at her, really looks at her and her words die out before they can even make it past her lips.

She doesn't know how long they stare at each other, how long he stares at her, analyzing quietly, trying to find something, trying to remember something maybe.

"Someone once told me that death really isn't as bad as most people make it out to be." He tells her and it clicks, it just clicks in her mind. It's hazy and not so clear, but the words buzz in her ears –

Someone touching her wrist, an umbrella soaked in rain water, the distant sound of computers and then darkness.

Her eyes are dry because she can't blink.

"There's a new dessert place that opened up a few streets over."

Finally, she blinks.

"Okay." She nods her head.

a/n: can you believe this over? or that it was always going to end this way? I can't. I can't believe this story became this... I want to thank everyone who stuck by me till the end, everyone who found this story and liked it, took the time to review and like and follow. I hope you liked this ending and please let me know what you thought. Thank you and I hope you enjoyed your time here.