Chapter Text
May 1
Salve, terrae magicae
The rain came down.
On shaking legs Madoka ran forward. She stumbled to a halt at the edge of what was left of the roof, stared down into the darkness, and clapped her hands over her mouth to muffle a scream.
Homura's body lay splayed across the expensive carpet. The glass had embedded itself in the floor just beyond it, pointed straight up like a postmodern grave marker. Blood pooled around it, soaking into a rug already darkened with water, while something fine and sandlike had sprayed out from under her shield.
Madoka didn't stay long enough to see where her head had landed.
She threw herself backward, out of the rain and the dangerous open air, away from a world that was suddenly too huge and chaotic to deal with. Her hair, messy and wet and with its ribbons almost completely undone, hung in tangles on either side of her face and in strands plastered across her forehead. Her knees gave out as she tripped through the door, and she half-leaned, half-fell against the sturdy metal railing next to where it turned to head down the stairs.
No. No no no no no no.
Her flesh felt cold down to the bone; she was gasping for breath, quaking, afterimages of the pieces of Homura's body floating before her eyes. She wanted to scream, to sob, to dry-heave, to cry out Homura's and Sayaka's names.
She tightened her grip on the cool metal and yelled:
"INCUBATOR!"
***
In faded the body that had been waiting, just out of her sight, for weeks now.
—There's no need to shout. I'm right here.—
***
He appeared on the floor beside her, just past the edge of the light from the open door. The same fluffy body, delicate white paws, fluffy marshmallow tail. The same wide-eyed innocent face. A form that could have been calculated to enrapture the kind of girl who collected stuffed animals and rescued stray cats and had devoured every episode in the Pretty Cure franchise.
"You," said Madoka.
—Me,— said the Incubator. —Was there something you wanted to ask me, Madoka?—
"Yes!" She pushed her hair in clumps out of her face. "Homura...can she heal? She was d-dead once before, or we thought she was, and she came back! Can she come back now?"
—The current damage to Homura's body requires more magical energy to repair than she possesses. Her soul gem will exhaust itself attempting to do so. I estimate that a new witch will be born in no more than four hours.—
(He wasn't lying. Madoka had heard and read enough of his words to be sure of it. He misdirected, he left things out, he was vague to the point of obfuscation, but she couldn't point to a single line that had been an outright lie.)
"And Kyoko-san? ...Sayaka?"
—An unfortunate case. Both soul gems were destroyed before they could be corrupted.—
His voice must have been deliberate too. He sounded as cheerful as ever while expressing sincere regret, which meant he had been flat and emotionless all along: it just so happened that his natural register sounded perky to a human mind.
—However, if their loss prompts you to make a contract, it will be more than made up for.—
Lightning flashed across the clouds, followed by a roll of thunder. The ruined city was a blur now through a curtain of rain.
—You have an astonishing amount of potential,— added the Incubator. —If you had made almost any kind of wish before Walpurgis Night arrived, you would have been able to destroy it with a handful of shots.—
The last piece of a long puzzle fell into place.
Sayaka hadn't found any kind of team-up that could defeat Walpurgis Night. What she had found was Madoka. And she had fought and died to keep Madoka out of the battle, the same battle that Homura had shielded Madoka from with her life and strength and all but the last of her mind.
Madoka couldn't just throw away the gift their love had so dearly bought her.
***
But she couldn't let it end like this, either.
***
"Incubator."
(Wish them back to life, and they'll be crushed to find how all their effort was wasted.)
—Yes, Madoka?—
(Wish for something to change in the past, and she'll walk into a time loop just like Homura's. She wouldn't survive it. She isn't that strong.)
"I...."
(The only thing to do is to go forward.)
"...I have a wish."
—I thought you might,— said the Incubator.
And now that she had found her resolve, something in Madoka's chest began to glow.
"I'm using my wish for Homura," she said, pushing away from the railing to stand tall on her cold, wet feet. "I want her to be able to complete her mission — and I want her to be okay. That means making her alive again, and healthy, and sane, and not going to lose her sanity ever again. No matter how long it takes. Until the day she finds or creates a timeline where she — and Sayaka, and I — are happy with our fates!"
The pure-white glow was blazing all around her now. Sharp curved shadows reached across the wall, the silhouette of the Incubator raising his second pair of ears like braceleted hands. —Akemi Homura's wish was highly irregular to begin with. How this one will interact with it, I can't even guess.—
"Then grant my wish," ordered Madoka, "and we'll find out!"
A tearing pain in her heart made her scream and grab her chest, staggering, trying not to fall as something vital was ripped out of her.
But even before her wet clothes vanished to leave her cloaked in warmth and softness, before her hand wrapped around the rough living wood of her bow and she finally, fully, understood what she had to do, her panicked gasps were breathing in the fragrance of roses.
***
?????
Sagitta luminis
This isn't the hospital.
It's too warm. She can feel the warmth on her skin like sunlight. It's also much too comfortable, and there's none of the sterile antiseptic scent. Also, her eyes are still closed, and in the hospital it always happens the same way: she reappears with open eyes.
Homura's almost afraid to open them now.
And yet...it's a quiet, uncertain kind of fear. Not blind panic, or soul-carving terror; not the slow burn of paranoia that keeps her half on-edge even while asleep, or the cold dread that grips her in the moments when she can see everything about to go wrong. She's nervous...and that's all. How long has it been since she was just "nervous"?
How long has it been since she could think this clearly?
Homura opens her eyes and slowly turns her head, taking the measure of the room. It's a tower fit for a Western princess, the curved walls of white marble shot through with gold, broken up by half a dozen keyhole windows through which she can see trellises hung with huge pink roses. She's lying on white silk sheets in a gold-framed bed, wearing a high-waisted nightdress with lavender pinstripes that falls below her knees.
As she's sitting up, trying to make any kind of sense out of this (it was too solid to be a dream, and it didn't feel like a witch's barrier), a gentle voice says, "How are you feeling, Homura?"
Again, she should be on instant alert, should be snapping into battle-awareness and already raising a Beretta. Instead, she's...startled. Almost like a normal human being, as she gapes at the figure smiling down at her.
Madoka is leaning on her elbows over the bed's golden headboard. Her hair isn't in its usual twintails, but hanging loose over her shoulders, held back by some kind of headband adorned with white roses. She steps back and swings around the bedpost, and Homura's heart sinks, but not far: her dress both is and isn't the one Homura's grown to know and hate. The colors are the same, along with the sleeves and the neckline and the general theme of ribbons; but it's lighter, fewer layers, the skirt falling in a gentle A-line to her feet. More like a ball gown than an outfit for fighting in, even by the standards of puella magi, who have done battle in some awfully impractical outfits.
"I don't understand," says Homura faintly. (Understatement of the century. And she's lived long enough to know.) "What is this place? What happened? Am I...?"
"Not dead." Madoka sits on the edge of the bed and smiles sheepishly. "Or at least, soon you won't be dead! To be honest, I don't know exactly what we are right now."
Homura's afraid to know the answer, but she has to ask. "Where am I?"
Madoka's eyes are sad but kind. "With me. Is that okay?"
This is such a simple, monumental, impossible question that Homura can only gape for a few seconds before exclaiming, "Yes, you blockhead!"
Then she's tearing up again, and Madoka swings up on the bed beside her to gather her into an embrace. It feels like Madoka. Smells like Madoka. Even if this is a dreamworld, Homura's been so dissociated for so long that this solid, gentle warmth is the most real thing she's felt in years.
"Don't make me go back," pleads Homura. She's clinging, straddling one of Madoka's legs beneath the flowing skirt, Madoka holding her steady in part with a hand on her bare thigh. "I can't do it again. There's nothing left to try that won't be more like killing you than saving you. And I'll do it! I won't want to, I'll hate myself for it, but once all of that comes back," the force of decades that have carved her mind into a barely-human focus on the goal, the fixation that would be pathological if it weren't the least insane option she has, "I won't be able to stop!"
"Shhh," soothes Madoka, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Homura...it hasn't gone away. AIl of that is still with you. I'm holding it back, but it's right outside."
For the first time Homura looks past Madoka's shoulder, studies the wall beyond the head of the golden bed. Framed by an arch of carved blocks in the fairy-tale marble is a startlingly modern door: the steel one she last saw lying in pieces, and before that mostly from the outside, when she had Madoka safely (?) locked behind it.
"I won't open the door until you're ready, okay?" says Madoka. "And then we'll go through it. Together. Whenever something's too much, I'll be right there, and I'll take it out before it can get you."
Homura splays her fingers across Madoka's hip and curls them into the fabric. In the sorriest excuse for a "cool" voice ever, she says, "I was supposed to be the one protecting you."
Madoka strokes her hair, caresses the length of her spine. "You have. And you will again. It's fine if we take turns, right?"
"Right," breathes Homura, pulling back to gaze into her eyes, and then, "Okay —"
The way she smiles, it's magic, it's heaven all by itself, there's nothing for Homura to do but cup Madoka's face in her hands and tip her head forward.
(She's been kissed by Madoka in other timelines. She never starts wanting it less.)
***
They stand in front of the doorway, side by side. Madoka has an arm around Homura's waist, while Homura holds on to her shoulders. When Madoka flings out her free hand, a dozen live wooden bows spring up from the stone, each nocked with an iridescent pink arrow. A grasping gesture, and each string is drawn back.
The door falls open.
With a blast of air the darkness rushes in — the unleashed memories of pain and trauma and guilt and despair — everything she'll have to pull back in without, somehow, this time, losing her perspective or her sanity. There's anger threaded through it too, a hundred repetitions' worth of fury at a time — Homura's mostly turned it on the Incubators, but there's only so much tension she can burn through when there are no targets other than a sequence of tiny white squirrel-cats that go down in one shot. By turns she's hated everyone she knows, convinced that she could win this thing if not for them — she's even let it fall on Madoka, if only for a second —
(I forgive you, murmurs Madoka against her ear, as bright pink light tears through it.)
There are timelines when she isn't angry, but pretends to be. The time when Madoka comes to her house, scared but ready to face it down, saying she's thinking of making a contract because she doesn't want Homura to have to face Walpurgis Night all alone — how dare you, snarls Homura, you planned this all along, didn't you — probably let them die on purpose, so you could have Walpurgis Night's grief seed all to yourself — get out of here, I don't want to see you again, if you show up at that battle I'll kill you with my own hands —
— of course Madoka didn't believe her, or did believe in her, and was on the scene that night to wish her safe —
(These too dissolve in swirls of brilliant pink, the next wave of shadows already bursting through.)
She's grabbed Madoka and run from so many battles, at so many costs. Picked her up and carried her out of Oktavia's barrier, knowing they were leaving Kyoko behind to die. Dragged her bodily away from Charlotte's frozen teeth, though after they closed on empty air the very hungry witch would turn on Mami. Held her back from a burning warehouse, not listening as she kicked and cried and called out Sayaka's name — or Hitomi's — in two horrible irregular timelines, her mother's —
(Madoka doesn't even flinch, just hugs Homura tighter and pulls her forward. They make it a step.)
It's cruel, the way she's hardened her heart against letting Madoka's pain move her, but without it she'd have lost the ability to get out of bed in the mornings after she's knelt over Madoka's writhing body and drawn her Beretta or her Desert Eagle. One go-around they're out of grief seeds and Madoka doesn't know, can't realize what she's feeling as despair floods her soul gem, doesn't understand why the last thing she sees is Homura raising her Remington — you would have asked, Homura thinks later, then forces herself to stop thinking about it at all. It takes years more before she can stop being afraid that she was somehow broken from the start, remembering that first time, her glasses blurred with raindrops, when she hadn't had a chance to steel herself and was crying almost too hard to see but that didn't mean she couldn't do it —
(You weren't, whispers Madoka, you weren't, you weren't, you weren't.)
There's a timeline where she spends a good half hour standing over Sayaka's bed, handgun raised, thinking if it hadn't been for you last time she would have lived — she leaves without firing while Sayaka dreams on, and a week later Sayaka contracts just in time to save Madoka from Gisela, leaving Homura to hate herself for almost making that impossible —
After the irregular timeline when Oriko first appears, a puella magi with foresight hell-bent on killing the girl whose witch form she knows will destroy even more than Walpurgis (Homura doesn't know when Madoka got that powerful, and frankly doesn't care), there's no such hesitation. She's only contracted once in all these cycles, there's no way of telling what small factor made the difference or whether it would be easy to prevent, but Homura doesn't care — it's part of her routine now, wake up, fix her eyes, distract Kyuubei, shoot Oriko, shoot Kirika so she won't contract to save Oriko, sign the papers that finalize her transfer to school —
(Another step. Madoka's bows keep firing.)
Kyoko doesn't rescue Yuma in the timelines after that. The witch she was tracking goes back to its normal pattern, the one where it doesn't go after this girl's family, where her parents are still alive — still calling their child useless, still leaving her with burns she keeps her hair and sleeves long to hide. For a while, calling child services goes in Homura's routine. Then she forgets — she's just rewound a timeline where Elsa Maria left Madoka in bloody pieces, she spends the whole next month in a daze — and forgets again the next time, and eventually remembers but decides she can't afford to waste the time —
The texture of the regular timelines never changes, not really, not for long. There's the one where Hitomi contracts, where Homura doesn't think anything of it until she rewinds and finds Kamijou Kyousuke never played classical guitar. But he's still despondent, still depressed, and when he says if only I'd learned an instrument when I had the chance Sayaka the music-lover latches onto it as the heart of his problems and wishes him into a virtuoso at her favorite. From then on every cycle finds Sayaka thinking of the same wish as ever, only swap guitar for violin —
And still sometimes the steps Homura takes are wrong, in catastrophic ways and small ones. The rewind after the first time Madoka kisses her, she isn't thinking straight — she corners Madoka on the school roof and pins her against the fence, kissing, touching, ignoring the way she squirms (shhh, you'll like it, and if you knew you'd be demanding that I not waste any time). It stops when Sayaka clocks her over the head with a bento box and calls Mami, who lands a minute later in full uniform to order Homura off. She doesn't know if that Madoka would have forgiven her; Sayaka swears to wish for her death if she gets near Madoka again, and she can't take that risk —
(This Madoka presses a kiss to her temple, and Homura buries her face in Madoka's neck. It doesn't do much good; she can still feel the onrushing darkness, even with the afterimages of pink arrows dancing behind her eyelids.)
A hundred failures, two hundred, three, four, five —
Madoka gathers a wounded, bleeding Kyuubei into her arms and looks up in hurt and horror as Homura steps out of the shadows, gun still at the ready —
Homura guns down an about-to-go-witch Kyoko in front of an innocent Mami, a despairing Mami in front of a clueless Sayaka, a seconds-from-corrupt Sayaka in front of a sobbing Madoka —
(She can't look, can barely stand this, even with all Madoka's power wiping out each wave before it hits.)
And over and over she sees Madoka starting down the same path, steeling herself to do what's necessary no matter how it changes her. Transformed, Madoka shatters a despairing Mami's soul gem before she can finish gunning down her teammates. Uncontracted, Madoka smashes a bucket across the face of a witch-kissed man trying to hold her back in the warehouse they're about to fill with deadly fumes, and runs alone for the door. Madoka contracts to restore Sayaka from despair, and a week later strings her bow and tells Homura it's all right, the second appearance of Oktavia was her fault, so she'll take responsibility.
Every time Homura swears she won't let it happen again, and maybe the next time she doesn't, or the time after that, but sooner or later Madoka takes another fall because Homura isn't good enough —
(It's okay. You're okay. You've been so good. I love you. I forgive you.)
For a long time she won't let herself touch Madoka in any way during non-emergency pauses, afraid it'll make it too easy for her to cross a line she can't take back, at least in her own mind. Eventually she has to change the rule or snap, and gives herself an exception for stopping the world to cry on Madoka's shoulder until she feels able to go on.
And if she's started idolizing Madoka, streamlining her into an archetype of her finest traits, well, how can she not? It's one thing to fight and risk death herself for the sake of the girl she loves, but the easier it gets for her to throw away the lives of strangers, then of former friends, the more she has to make herself believe that Madoka is objectively worth more —
(She takes the next step blind, leaning on Madoka to guide her forward.)
The last thing to hit is deceptively sweet: the sound of bells and flowing sand, the scent of lilies. The temptation. Becoming a witch isn't a straight calculation of magic levels; it can be held off longer if you focus, swallow you faster if you give up. Homura's mania has saved her in more than one dire situation, her goal an iron nail pinning her to reality — this last time around it let Madoka pull her back from closer to the edge than she's ever been, closer than she's seen any puella magi get and still return. How can she survive without it, carry on without falling into one living death or [back into] the other?
(You will! says Madoka, as surely as the Madoka who believed in Homura when she was just a fragile normal girl with bad eyesight and worse coordination. That's why I gave you my wish. Because I'm sure that you can do it.)
— and then at last the gale dies down, and all the demons are quiet.
***
Homura's still wrapped around Madoka, face buried in the shoulder of her dress. "I have to go back."
"That's right," says Madoka softly. "Soon."
"...How soon?"
Madoka strokes Homura's silky hair and sends a wave of power down her back, transfiguring her nightgown into something long and flowing and satin. "I think we have time for one dance."
At last Homura raises her head.
They've come out onto the top of the grand staircase in a massive ballroom. White marble pillars and diamond-paned lancet windows stretch more than twelve meters between the floor and the ceiling; the room is lit not by its golden chandeliers but by the brilliant daylight that pours in equally on all sides. It's only from this height that the pattern on the floor can be properly seen: massive diamonds framing bed-sized roses in full bloom. The dancers (you can't have a serious ball without dancers) are still transparent shadows, so they don't block any of it out.
"It's beautiful," says Homura, turning to take it all in. The now floor-length gown swirls around her knees, and she looks down in surprise, a flush rising on her pale face.
(Admittedly, even if she was sure Homura could use a break from high collars, Madoka could have made that neckline plunge a little less.)
"S-so," stammers Homura. "A dance?"
Madoka nods, and offers her arm. "Do you know how to waltz?"
***
As they glide across the floor, the other shadows begin to gather substance.
These are all in couples too, and it's in pairs that their lines sharpen, their details fill in, until some of them are silhouettes Homura knows — and, for once, doesn't have to rush to kill. They never fully lose their translucense, and they're still all dark as a starry night, until a flash of color catches her eye: a golden ball gown and rust-red coattails. It's the ghosts of Mami and Kyoko, twirling in perfect time.
She looks at Madoka in wonder. Madoka smiles, and nods to the left (Homura nearly trips over her feet trying to look and keep up at the same time).
In this direction she spots a navy tunic over trousers, and, visible as the wearer swings around, a sky-blue heraldic mermaid embroidered on the front. Sayaka, in the phantom garb of a casual knight. Her partner is more than a head shorter than her, one of the faceless shadows, but with edges sharp enough for Homura to recognize the Walpurgis-familiar she'd connected with 80% certainty to Albertine...the Scribbling Witch.
Step-slide-step. Step-slide-step. Homura's the one with a leading hand on Madoka's waist, but it's Madoka who directs their steps, until the closing notes of The Blue Danube for strings.
The shadows begin a slow file toward the stairs, and Homura clasps Madoka's hands. "How much of this will I remember?"
"I...don't exactly know," admits Madoka, with an awkward giggle that breaks the poise of serenity she's held for quite a while now. "But it'll be enough!"
She's starting to lose opacity herself. Homura can look through Madoka's fingers and just see her own.
"Remember that you can do this." She steps back, falling once more out of Homura's grasp. "Remember that I believe in you."
Mami, Kyoko, and Sayaka are waiting at the base of the steps. Albertine holds Sayaka's hand and bounces impatiently in place until Sayaka lets her go and gives her a friendly nudge. She waves before joining in with the flow.
"Hey, Akemi!" It's a shock; it's been months since she last heard Kyoko's voice. "Sorry about giving these two such a hard time!" This Kyoko elbows both Mami and Sayaka, with affection. "Don't let me throw you off too bad, okay?"
The ghostly Mami shrugs Kyoko off with an indulgent smile. "I'm sure you'll make it, Akemi-san," she adds. "Even if we can't be much help."
Madoka reaches Sayaka's side, and Sayaka slings a protective arm over her shoulders, pulling her close. "Listen, transfer student..." she begins, sober and serious, none of her usual bluster getting in the way. "You keep her safe. Whatever it takes. And any time I'm the one who's putting her in danger...consider this a free pass, okay? You'll have my permission, so don't beat yourself up over it. Just do what you have to do."
There's a pure-white light growing at the top of the staircase, its rays shining right through the four girls as it brightens. Most of the other dancers have already walked into it. (Kind of a cliché visual, some small part of Homura thinks...except for the part where it leaves her friends with colorful shadows, vivid as stained glass.)
"I will!" cries Homura. "I'll figure it out. Somehow. And Madoka, I...!"
The last thing she sees before the light whites everything out is Madoka blowing her a kiss.
***
***
March 16, 2011
Wednesday
In her post-surgery bed in the hospital, Homura opens her eyes.