Patchwork Memory
Summary: I am you, but you are not me.
Fandom: Arcaea Characters: Vita Rating: G Word Count: 1254 Mirror Link: AO3 Original Post Date: 16/02/2026
Notes+Warnings: First fic of the year! 1.2k words about memory. Spoilers for the entirety of Liminal Eclipse.
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It was common nowadays for Vita to awaken from nightmares of tortured screams intertwining with the ferocious hissing of ever-burning flames. Dozens of images flitting through her mind of uncountable warships with plasma cannons readied to lay waste to the surface of a planet she had called home in another life. Geometric buildings vaporised in a second, dissipating into a ruined atmosphere clogged with debris. Children, who hours earlier had nothing more innocuous than the next episode of a TV show on their minds, were not spared from the carnage; their lives ended indiscriminately.
Before Vita had cracked the boundaries between worlds… Before she had been entrusted with Maya's very essence… Before her very understanding of her own self had irrevocably been altered… Her nightmares had never been this vivid. The cruel hands of her subconscious simply hadn't possessed the raw material to shape into vivid sensations to torture her in her slumber.
Before everything, her most common nightmare captured the moment in time when she had witnessed her first dawn break in the skies of Arcaea. Standing atop a cliff and gazing out across an endless desert of sand, broken only by random pillars that rose from the ground like outstretched fingers, attempting to bridge an infinite distance. A beautiful sight that flooded her chest with cold loneliness. It was then that the dream would tangle the threads of memory, warping the true events of that day. No one would arrive to pull her out of the dark depths of despair, leaving her huddled on the ground, drowning in lonely desperation.
It was a nightmare that left her with a crawling sense of dread, but one that was easily assuaged. Saya made efficient use of her space, and she often left Vita behind in the cave, leaving little to no trace of herself behind. One would be forgiven for looking around and thinking that Vita was the only occupant. But when Saya left, she would always, without fail, leave her cloak wrapped around Vita's shoulder. All she had to do, upon gasping awake, was clutch the familiar cloth close, and the claws of irrational fear would retract, unable to do battle against reality.
Now, however… The guilt pressed on her chest as she opened her eyes, an unbearable weight forever chained to her. One hand brushed against fresh wetness on her cheeks, the other tightening on the journal she never let out of her sight. It was tucked close to her side, kept safe in the confines of Saya's cloak. The cloak she instinctively buried her face in, the scenes from her grisly nightmare refusing to fade from behind her eyelids.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, holding back heaving sobs as she had for so many nights in a row. Apologising for a single fatal decision she could never take back, regardless of the second life she had been given in this strange world.
"I'm sorry." A tired echo of Maya reverberated in the depths of her mind. It wasn't really her - she was, after all, now nothing more than a memory contained within Vita. It was what she would have said as she carried the burden of the past, ruminating on it as she haunted the corridors of a lonely manor without its matron. Or was it what Vita thought she would have said, with Maya's memories flowing within her?
Vita and Maya. Maya and Vita. They were two halves of a whole - but they were not mirror images. Their paths had diverged too much for the shards of glass that formed them to fit neatly together anymore. The memories had gained a life of their own, even as the body continued to stumble through its first steps in this world.
Sometimes it felt like the two sets of memories formed after arriving in Arcaea were actively fighting with each other. The steadfast footfalls of Saya on desert sand contrasted with the loud echoes of Maya's footsteps in empty hallways when Vita tried to think about the events of the past few months. Even her perceptions of current events warped and shifted from moment to moment. The trust Vita had cultivated with Saya over their time together warred with Maya's reluctance to reach out, no matter how much she wanted to. Indecision left her frozen in place sometimes, anxiety she had never felt before lashing its tail around her legs. Confusion bubbled in every word, every action, every moment.
Even the memories of their shared past no longer slotted easily into the space it had been ripped from. Maya had shouldered that weight all along - it had shaped her perception of everything that came after, and always would. It was a memory shard with jagged edges that could easily stab through the heart, but one that she had refused to let go of, even as blood seeped endlessly from her fingers. But to Vita, whose hands were unscarred, the piercing pain crashed into her all at once, fresh and ferocious, eager to devour her whole.
Vita was glad to know the reason why waves of sadness would sometimes wash over her, why she clung to Saya so strongly no matter what the other woman did. But in the dead of night, having been jolted awake by another nightmare, a tiny voice in her head whispered that it would have been better to remain ignorant. What use was it to fixate on a mistake she could no longer correct? That was when the shame would find her, knowing that to forget would be to disrespect the promise she had made. All she could do during those moments was press the journal close to her chest and apologise to the raw feelings contained within its pages, penned in a shaky and uncertain hand.
Who was she now? Vita, Maya, both, neither? She wasn't merely the girl who had doomed their entire planet to a fiery death - she couldn't be, not with these new experiences. Not with the loneliness she had experienced, both in the vast plains of Arcaea and in halls filled with ghosts.
"Vita." Saya's sharp voice cut through her spiralling thoughts, slamming her back into the present. Vita uncurled from the ball she had become, finding the other woman leaning against the rough rock wall. She didn't comment on Vita using her cloak as a glorified tissue, despite the meticulous care she usually applied to everything, only calmly stared at her, arms crossed over her chest. She didn't pry any further; she never did, for she wasn't one to guide.
Rays of light filtered through the cave entrance, marking the end of a long night. The few shards of glass that were always floating around caught the light, illuminating the memories that were contained within. Memories that made up this world - memories that people had cherished, which had formed part of the story of their lives. A story of where they came from, and who they could become in the future. Right now, Vita's memories were a patchwork of mismatching fabric, put together with clumsy stitches. She didn't know who she was anymore - but the only one who could find that out was herself, no matter how difficult the path forward was. Only she could trace the threads and find a place for both sets of memories to settle.
Pulling herself to her feet, Vita faced the entrance, journal held securely in her grasp. Today was a new day - just another step on her journey to writing a new story with her memories.