It had been a little over a year since the disappearance of Devi Gellner and the creation of the identity Tova Katz. And Tova Katz…was a loser. Hell, Devi Gellner may have been a loser, but even she would look down upon a girl like Tova. And she was.

She didn’t really have friends.

She didn’t really have any hobbies.

She didn’t really have a life.

The only time she ever enjoyed was her time as Sailor Requiem, which isn’t something she was so sure she should enjoy. Sure, it was the only thing in her life with any kind of meaning or purpose, but her pleasure came from causing displeasure of those who crossed her – she became a type of person that had tormented her former identity.

The types like Becky McZlutt, who had tormented both Devi and Tova until Requiem’s torture became an accidental murder. She felt some guilt about that. Or the types like Tanzanite who had tortured Devi’s parents. No matter how closely the Dark Mirror Senshi would work with the Negaverse, she’d never be able to forgive some of them for the pain they caused her and her family…

Her family is perhaps what Tova missed most. As Devi, even when she didn’t have very many friends, she was always able to rely on her family for support. Her family and their funeral home was her security blanket, and she left both of them behind. Both parties were left with a void. Tova felt as empty as the now-abandoned funeral home, and longing for her mother and father just as much as they longed for her.

She had seen the flyers posted looking for Devi since her disappearance. There were a few nights where she’d want to go visit them, just crawl through mirrorspace to their new home in Florida and watch them laugh at dinner or sleep happily in bed. But she couldn’t – she was too afraid of the pain that it’d cause her to see them happy, or realistically, see them sad. There weren’t any happy dinners or good night sleeps. There would only be mournful quiet dinners and sleepless nights.

She wasn’t prepared to see her family either way.

Tova approached the empty funeral home she once called her second home with a bagged dinner and half-drunken bottle of wine. It was Rosh Hashana, an important Jewish holiday celebrating the new year – a holiday she hadn’t celebrated since simpler times.

She wandered around inside – the room was lifeless and stiff, quiet and dark. Aside from the cobwebs and dust, it hadn’t changed a bit, which brought some comfort to her already. She sat on the floor and unpacked her small dinner and drank the wine straight from the bottle.

She would make this year a better year, she thought to herself. …Or Jewish year, that is. This year she will turn her life around, make her identity as Tova Katz an actual identity, not just an alias for Sailor Requiem.

She was going to be a new Tova, a better Tova. And maybe what was left of Devi Gellner would be able to be happy with what she had become.