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Chantal, the folklore witch, is an outlier, a renegade witch that has only shown up in two of the forty-three timelines Homura has repeated so far. She hasn't had enough encounters with it to memorize its rapid, seemingly-random attack patterns, and she still feels a sheen of fear when facing it rather than her normal cautious confidence. Chantal's a brutal fighter, its familiars pinging in and out of existence at a moment’s notice - which means when Homura notices Kyouko on the far side of the witch's barrier, too caught up in skewering a candy-pink fairy on the end of her spear to notice the blur of movement behind her, Homura only has a second to intervene.
When she’d followed the witch’s trail down this alleyway, Homura hadn’t expected to run into Kyouko at all. Despite their tentative partnership, the two of them don't hunt together most of the time. Still, their truce is working out unusually well this timeline, and Homura doesn't want to lose it. Walpurgisnacht is still a fortnight away, but there's no time to waste - and with Mami dead and Sayaka infuriatingly uncooperative as usual, Kyouko falling to this witch would be a big setback.
Homura freezes time and, without breaking stride, empties half a clip into the familiar that's poised to stab Kyouko in the back. In another life its dew-eyed appearance might have seemed cute, if not for the ruby poison dripping off its antlers. She keeps going, running fast enough that the stale not-wind of frozen time makes her eyes water, until she reaches the teetering stack of dishware and tree branches that ascends impossibly upward until it disappears into a papery-looking cloud that forms Chantal's main body. Three grenades will be enough to destroy it, she remembers.
Her trap laid, Homura makes her way back to Kyouko. She double-checks that the familiar's antlers haven't made contact with Kyouko's skin, then allows herself a moment of raw relief before restarting time. The familiar explodes in a fountain of sequins and stinking ichor. Kyouko squawks in outrage, clutching at her ear, and Homura can tell she's cursing even though her voice is drowned out by Homura's grenades going off, obliterating the witch in seconds.
The barrier fades, doll-like lambs and crayon-sketch wolves dissolving back into the shadowy alleyways of Mitakihara. Kyouko is still complaining, though less aggressively now. "Crap! Did you really have to do that right next to my head?"
"It wasn't intentional," Homura says as the last of the barrier's surreal terrain morphs back into regular pavement beneath their feet. Her heart rate is returning to normal, but she still feels out of sorts, unsettled. Chantal's grief seed descends from somewhere up above and Kyouko snatches it, staring at Homura with the same calculating expression she gives the vending machines Homura's watched her break into half a dozen times.
"This is mine.” Kyouko gestures idly with the hand holding the grief seed. Her eyes glint. "Since I was the one who did most of the work."
Homura thinks for a moment about whether it would be too suspicious not to put up a fight, but in the end she really couldn't care less about the seed. She shrugs and Kyouko turns, already stalking off without so much as a thank you. After a few steps she stops and looks over her shoulder.
"You want ramen?"
Homura stares. Kyouko stares back, her expression mostly hidden in the shade of the alleyway. She still has a bit of the familiar's slime in her hair, but she doesn’t seem too worried about it. Homura remembers how she'd stared at Kyouko's long red hair when they'd first met. She'd been impressed by how carefree Kyouko was with it, whereas Homura felt she had to keep hers tidy and out of the way, so it couldn't be a bother. That meek Homura seems so distant now she might as well have lived on another planet.
"I do."
Kyouko's magical girl outfit dissolves, leaving her in her street clothes. "Come on then. I know a place nearby."
She's dined-and-dashed at a place nearby, she means. Homura follows her anyway, and neither of them push the barrier between them, even more invisible than a witch's barrier would be to normal human eyes.
The ramen shop is crowded for this time of night, but the chatter doesn't bother Homura. By now she's used to tuning out unimportant things. Kyouko doesn't seem to mind the volume - or Homura's silence - either. They eat together and Homura watches Kyouko inhale her food like she's trying to break records. It's fascinatingly rude, in a way that would have made her laugh in appalled amusement another lifetime ago. Even though that emotion is long dead, the memory of feeling it is still enough to startle her.
Kyouko notices her sudden change in demeanor. "What's wrong? Don't like the food?" She is silent for three seconds before continuing, "I'll take yours if you don't want it."
Homura pushes her bowl toward Kyouko and watches her red eyes glitter. She feels...she doesn't know what she feels. She has no time to worry about anything other than Walpurgisnacht, no time to care about saving anyone but Madoka. Forty-three timelines now and she needs this one to be the last.
She and Kyouko are not friends, she tells herself harshly. And she isn’t really breaking her resolve not to rely on anyone other than herself. Kyouko is a useful tool, and Homura needs her to beat Walpurgisnacht, the same way she needs C4 and ammunition. That’s it.
But...she had liked Kyouko, once. She could have been her friend, once. Sitting in silent, uneasy companionship with her now, Homura supposes that both of those things are true. It's just that the affection feels very distant, like looking through the ice at something on the bottom of a frozen lake.
The two of them sit together, side by side, both of them keeping their inner thoughts carefully hidden away. Kyouko slurps and swallows and occasionally makes an inane comment about passersby, and sometimes Homura replies. Time passes, and for once Homura is happy enough to let it.
If she needs someone by her side in this upcoming fight, she's more than content for it to be Kyouko.