Chapter Text
zero.
In Mitakihara, when Walpurgisnacht comes, all hell breaks loose.
Buildings fall, the pavement crumbles, people die...
People die — that’s the part that Homura finds hardest to come to terms with.
The world around her seems to spontaneously break to useless pieces. Mami’s cold, dead body bleeds out into a red sea, and she can only watch as overhead, one remaining magical girl soars through the air in a useless battle against the inevitable. Hope drains from her chest with every used up Grief Seed that drops from the skies and every sound of faint, choked back pain. And through all that death and destruction, all she can think is just how did things come to this? Two weeks ago, all three of them were eating cake in Mami’s house; Homura had even started thinking of becoming a magical girl herself.
A flash of pink crashes and tumbles through the sky, a tangle of limbs flimsily tumbling about before finally hitting the ground.
It splashes into a layer of water, the ocean of flooding that covers the ruins below.
Madoka Kaname’s body leaves a crater in the ground and a hole in Homura’s heart. Homura rushes over and dips her hands in the water, falls to her knees and cradles the top half of Madoka’s body. She pushes her fingers and feels around for a pulse; she desperately searches for any sign of life, frantically looks for a surge of warmth in her hands, a twinge of muscle, a heartbeat. Anything.
But instead, all she feels is the warmth of life fading away from the body, and the wide eyes of the girl whom she’d loved so much become marble— beautiful, but stone. She can still see the fear Madoka must have felt in her last moments and looking away, she brings her hand up to close the body’s eyes. And then a tremor wracks through her body. Her sobs reverberate throughout the terribly lonely space she’s in. It’s ugly and loud, but no one is left to hear it; no one’s alive to hear it.
“It should’ve been me.” She presses her head down to Madoka’s chest and her face comes off drenched in red; scarlet, crimson, cruel red . She screams, “If I could pick between saving your life versus mine… I would have chosen yours no matter what, over and over, every time .”
Somewhere in the back of her head, she knew that neither Mami or Madoka’s death had to do with her. Whether or not she died that night, Walpurgisnacht would have come to Mitakihara and whether or not she died, Mami and Madoka would have taken it upon their kind hearts to defend the city. The helplessness only serves to make her grieve more, cry more, hold on to Madoka’s shredded and blood-soaked clothes tighter. She shakes the corpse, shouts at it like her anguish will somehow spark it back to life, “did it have to be you? It couldn’t have been me?! I… I… I wanted you to live…!”
...
“Do you truly mean that? Would your cause be worth even your very life?” Homura turns around to see Kyubey standing on a destroyed column. The creature slowly advances, “if you are willing to risk it all, form a contract with me.”
“Would my wish change this fate?” She meets his gaze with wide eyes; scared eyes, desperate and— worst of all— naive .
“If that is your will.”
“Then,” Homura starts. She lets down Madoka and stands up, “I wish that I could redo my meeting with Madoka and that I’ll have the strength to protect her from this fate.”
Following her words, a flash erupts from her chest and her vision goes blinding white, searing white as a roaring pain erupts throughout her entire being.
And then it all dies into nothing.
one.
They fall beside each other, soul gems as muddled as the water they find themselves in. Mitakihara lays in ruins around them; disfigured and ugly buildings, crippled buildings, fallen buildings. Homura turns her head and takes a glance at Madoka’s gem, “No more grief seeds?”
“No more.”
“That’s fine,” Homura shuts her eyes. She finds herself feeling an ironic sense of peacefulness. Things didn’t work out the way she wanted them to, but… “I’m glad I’ll at least be with you.”
“Me, too,” a tear slides out from the corner of Madoka’s eyes. She turns away.
“Madoka?”
There’s silence. A whimper catches in her throat. “I don’t want to die, but if I have you by my side, Homura… I think I’d be okay with it.”
“I—” A rush of energy fills her chest. She looks down at her soul gem and finds Madoka’s hand holding a grief seed to it. Black wisps seep out of the gem, restoring it to its original pristine hue. The realization hits her, “you told me you didn’t have any more grief seeds.”
“Sorry, Homura,” Madoka faces her once more and rasps, “I lied. It was good enough for one more use... one of us needs to live.”
“NO—”
The soul gem beside her begins to turn into a deeper shade of pink and Madoka writhes in agony. Her expression becomes pained; deep wrinkles crease her features.
“Madoka?!”
A scream rips through the air.
five.
Again?
Again.
Homura starts feeling a sickening sense of deja vu.
Mami’s corpse tints the water red, her head smashed in with more fractures than times Homura’s lived this moment. The remaining two lie side by side on the cold, damp ground.
Only this time, their soul gems are balled up in fists. Anger.
“Kyubey tricked us… didn’t he?” Madoka’s voice shakes, “I don’t— I don’t want this. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want what happened to Sayaka to happen to me! I don’t want to become a witch.”
It hurts Homura to see her like this. “You’ll have me. We can both be witches. Get revenge on this unfair world.”
Madoka goes quiet. It’s an ominous silence.
“Shoot me,” she finally replies. For a second, Homura feels like she’s been socked in the gut.
Kill Madoka? All she can remember is how many times in how many ways she’s seen Madoka die already, and then that’s all it takes for her to vigorously shake her head.
“I can’t… I could never…”
“Please, Homura,” she pleads, “you can still use magic, right? I’m scared, please —”
“Madoka, I love you.”
Her eyes go wide, and then she smiles. There’s something reassuring about that smile; like some kind of fucked up drug, it’s the only thing Homura needs, “Homura, nothing you do could ever hurt me.”
“Is this what you really want?”
“Yes.”
There’s a shift in the water when the dark-haired girl stands up and for a second, that’s who she really is— some little girl forced in an endless, violent uphill battle. A little girl who’s shaking, crying, and scared for her life. A little girl, a child , who’s seen so much violence and death that the only thing keeping her going is a futile ember of hope flickering weakly against the winds of violent, cruel fate. She reaches into the device attached at her forearm and draws out a gun. Click ; cocks the gun. Her forefinger pulls the slack on the trigger, then fires, hand blown back by the recoil.
The bullet hits Madoka’s arm instead of the soul gem. It takes a second to process; one excruciating second. She can see her biting back the scream.
“I… I missed?” A tear slides down Homura’s cheek, “I’m so sorry, so, so sorry… I can’t do anything right. ”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. It doesn’t hurt. Just try again,” Despite being quick to reassure her, nothing could erase the pain on Madoka’s face. She groans a little as she props herself up, and holds her tainted soul gem up to the gun’s barrel to ensure that the next shot wouldn’t miss it’s mark. She presses their foreheads together and places her hands on Homura’s shoulders as if to steady them. She repeats, softer and more hesitant this time, “try again.”
“I’m… I’m scared.”
“Please, Homura,” Madoka winces and her next words come out strained, “I don’t have much time.”
Homura cocks the gun again, fast and desperate. Her finger moves on its own.
Bang .
The life in Madoka’s eyes die out in the blink of an eye. Blank, hollow eyes; stomped out embers. The husk slumps onto Homura’s knelt figure as she sobs, “forgive me.”
ninety-seven.
Homura has done this month over almost a hundred times. She’s seen the love of her life die in her face almost a hundred times. At this point, she can only tell herself, there’s still a chance .
Everyone’s dead. She fights Walpurgisnacht alone.
There’s still a chance .
She’s gone through these motions too many times, starts to predict what the witch is going to do and where, and she’s got a goddamn arsenal in her little pocket dimension. She’s the army; one-man army, and this isn’t a fight she’s going to lose. It doesn’t matter how many missile launchers she has to pull out, how many times she gets straight up pelted by a building, or crushed into the ground.
One grief seed, three grief seeds, twenty grief seeds.
They litter the ground in intervals of about one every five minutes and she continues her fights. Countless missile launches, explosives— they all make their mark.
Every moment starts to blend into the next one and she’s not sure how long she has to fight, but she’s determined that this will be the last timeline. It has to be, because she doesn’t know what to do if it isn’t; it’s better to not think of such a possibility at all. She’s going to go crazy if she has to do everything over, because with every timeline, she’s not sure if the endings she rewrites are getting better or worse.
In the midst of her thoughts, a building smacks into her and sends her flying into a pile of debris. She winces— shake it off, shake it off — and pushes herself up.
But she can’t.
A piece of debris pins her leg down. Out of all things, a piece of concrete is what stops her from saving Madoka. She tries to slide her leg out, tries to lift it up, but to no avail. She falls back and stops struggling. Her eyes roll up to the murky sky; begs a god that doesn’t exist because somewhere out there, there has to be a timeline where she and happiness can coexist.
It’s just not here.
Is it anywhere?
If such a world is impossible, then what’s the point?
What is she even fighting for?
Despair— ninety-seven months worth of anguish— festers in her chest. Her face scrunches up in frustration, she clenches her soul gem in her fist as if she intends to break it to pieces. She slams her fist into the pile of crushed steel behind her; she curses her fate. The earth rotates, the sun sets, and Homura Akemi is still trapped in Mitakihara, in the exact same month, in the exact same year, and nothing will ever change .
Her soul gem darkens into a muted, dark mauve. She doesn’t care. Let it break. She’ll become a witch that will curse humanity because there was only one thing in the world she ever wanted and even Kyubey couldn’t grant it. Despair creeps over her soul, taints and dyes it black. It moves its way up, filling her with to the brim with sorrow. Its ascent stops abruptly to the sound of footsteps echoing through the emptiness Mitakihara had become. A hand grasps at her, pulling her out of the darkness and back into reality.
Homura opens her eyes to see the pair of kind doe eyes that she loves so much.
The darkness recedes.
“Madoka…?”
“Homura,” she responds softly, like Homura is something fragile, something precious, “thank you. Thank you for everything you’ve done up until now.”
She stands up and turns her back to the magical girl. Kyubey saunters up to the pair and then stops before turning his head towards Homura in silent acknowledgment. Nothing about his face changes, but there’s something condescending and smug about it.
“Don’t tell me…”
“I’m sorry, Homura. I’m going to become a magical girl.”
She can almost pinpoint the exact moment her heart tears into two, “but…”
“I know,” Madoka clasps her hands over her chest, “it’s just that I’ve found something worth wishing for.”
“No—” Homura props herself up on her arms and starts shouting, her tone gets desperate and anxious just like the squeamish little girl she was over ninety months ago, “don’t you remember everything I’ve told you?! Nothing is worth the cost of a contract with Kyubey! Please, please, please , Madoka…”
“I’m tired of everyone around me dying. I don’t want to see this pain and suffering anymore, Homura, please forgive me,” she turns around and gives that apologetic smile that Homura has seen ninety-seven too many times. Kyubey springs up to her and she bends down to his level, “Kyubey, can I truly wish for anything?”
The response is automatic. “With all that potential you have, anything is possible.”
“Then, I wish…”
No, no, no. Homura searches for an answer. She points her gun at Kyubey, and then lowers it. What’s the point of murdering him if there’s spares? There’s nothing she can do to change Madoka’s mind.
There’s no other choice.
“I’m sorry, Madoka. I can’t let this happen to you.”
The cogs of time turn once more.
ninety-eight.