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There were a few things in life Homura was convinced about. First, people who played the London System in chess were imbeciles. Second, that chocolate was simply the most morally superior flavor in any given scenario. Third, that her soulmate was not dead.
She didn't begrudge the people who offered her condolences, unsolicited as they were. It's not like her string was, in her own words, the usual blood-red. And, sure, nobody would be convinced to believe her string of fate was golden and not white - it was dead people who had faded, withering, decaying sour off-white tendrils connecting them to their other, living half - but that's not what that vibrant brilliance was, thank you very much.
Fuck the closet plausible explanation, she wasn't deluded in desperation. Even if she had the reputation of being stubborn to a fault and refusing to accept circumstances that did not align with her wishes, she was right about this. She knew it.
~*~
When Homura met her for the first time, her life’s suspicions were proven correct.
The second their eyes met, it was as if her flesh and bones and heart knew. It was as if their souls had spent a thousand lifetimes circling each other. It was as if their life was just an interlude dedicated to waltz in their endless, timeless dance. It was beyond a normal bond.
Homura understood, she was okay with being the only person who did.
They ended up alone in the school corridor; Homura’s heart jolted as the other girl squealed.
“You’re not a ghost,” Homura blurted out, and then imminently regretted every second of her pitiful life.
“No,” The student confirmed, skipping on her toes. “I'm Kaname Madoka. Does that disappoint you?”
She - Madoka - finished off with a tilt to her head and a wide, warm smile.
“N-no!” Homura stuttered, her hands flying to her mouth. “Of course not! I didn't mean that.”
Her gaze fell between their hands. A row of decidedly not-red glitter stuck out its tongue at her.
“Relax, Homura-chan,” she laughed, and, heaven's above, if they recorded and aired that on the radio daily, she would still listen to it a decade later. This was it. She'd found her magic - the tingling sensation in her fingertips, her sharpening breath, her bursting heart. There was something about the girl that unearthed something deeper than she could describe within her. The flying feeling in her gut had soared for the skies long ago.
“But I'm excited to have met you,” Homura admitted with flushed cheeks and lidded eyes. “Even if I don't know what this means for me and you.”
“We'll figure it out together,” Madoka's voice was confident and steady. “You and I.
“Wanna grab strawberry smoothies after school?”
~*~
But being soulmates does not fortify them from life's tragedies. It does not stop their golden strings from continuing to remain a mystery. It does not stop Sayaka from mooning over Kyosuke, who is decidedly not her soulmate. It does not stop Mami from dying - Mami, with a heart bigger than herself, as delicate as winter's first snowflake. It does not stop the Walpurgisnacht from wreaking havoc.
It does not stop Madoka from sacrificing herself.
Madoka is a river who cannot be held, she slips between the crevices of Homura’s fingers.
~*~
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
They did promise that the red strings of fate twist and turn but never break, didn't they?
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Loops come and go.
Homura can palpably feel the magic going haywire. Why is Sayaka a magical girl? Who is Kyoko? Why does Mami keep dying? Why is Sayaka a witch? Why does Kyoko keep showing up? Why is Mami still dying? Why does Sayaka always give into despair? Why are Kyoko and Sayaka’s deaths always entangled? Why is Mami dying again?
Why does Madoka always die or turn into a witch or sacrifice herself?
Why can she not save Madoka?
It's the contract. The contract is rotten.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Distantly, Homura notes that the Walpurgisnacht is getting more potent and volatile with each reset. She wonders what else is shifting in the fabric of the universe.
The magic was festering in the witch’s favor while it coincided against them. It was spreading and cracking. It became more and more abundantly clear that the universe was only worth resentment as she flipped through the pages of time.
But there's something that she loves, as well. And that something becomes the title, content, and footnote of Homura’s tale.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
“Hey, Homura-chan. Remember the first time we met? I believe in things like fate. So I think it was fate.”
Homura’s breath got caught in her chest. Madoka didn’t know the weight of the words. Of course Homura still reminiscenced the first time they met, even if it wasn't the one rendition of Madoka was referencing to - them bumping by accident when they both ordered the same strawberry cake roll. It was a carefully designed collision, but just because it was a fabricated lie, doesn't mean it wasn't real for this Madoka.
And she could live with that.
Right?
Right, Homura chided herself.
Because of course Homura remembered. Her memories of the timelines were chipped and faded and contained loopholes - edges crinkly and folded and dusted pale - but each second she had spent with Madoka was ingrained clearly in her head. Of course she remembered; it was the only thing keeping her sane.
Madoka’s eyes did not draw away from the night sky. She was venturing into the stars. Homura rolled over and positioned her head on her arms. Now she was looking at her star, too.
“Doesn’t the whole strings aspect naturally lend itself to fate?” she teased.
Madoka shook her head. “A lot of people never find their soulmate. Some simply ignore their existence. But you and I?”
“I think in another universe without them, we still would’ve invariably met. I think there's something about us that transcends just this reality. I think I've always felt it with you,” she laughed a little, “I'm being a little silly, aren't I? Isn't that just the whole concept of soulmates?
“I guess what I mean is. You're my perfect soulmate, Homura-chan.”
Homura’s senses thrummed, as if with electricity. What she did not say was that she had comprehended fate the first time she and Madoka had met, she was going to defy it for her soulmate.
Homura would have time to tell all that to Madoka later.
~*~
“Just turn me into a magical girl, Kyubey! That's all I want! Sayaka-chan is dying, my family is in danger, and Kyoko-chan is missing! I just wish to protect everyone I love! I want them all to be okay!”
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Some days waking up at the sterile hospital bed was harder than the others. These usually include the times Homura had to personally deal with her friend’s deaths or witches. She'd seen Mami, Kyoko, Madoka, and Sayaka’s eldritch horror forms by now. She'd encountered magical girls from beyond and wondered if it was their witch form that she'd fight later.
Time or redundancy did not soothe the pain it took to bring them down. But it got easier to ignore the gut-wrenching ache she would feel each time she held one of their Grief Seeds in her hand. If she didn't let herself pause and feel it, then it was almost like it didn't exist.
(If she halted and let herself discern where her ignorance ended and agony began, then she didn't know what would become of her.)
Other times, it was harder because Homura had just left a scene of almost success. It's not hard to watch everything go astray and try again. It is hard to watch everything go right just for it to be clawed from her hand. It's hope that's contagious, it's hope that drains.
If there was a particular timeline Homura had to pin down for her immorality and apathy, it would be this one.
The variables were yet again realigning themselves in another unique proposition. Homura knew telling Mami the truth herself would just push her to commit murder and subsequent suicide. She'd tried that before herself.
So she used Kyubey this time around. She kept it simple - neither Sayaka nor Kyoko nor any other witch was in the equation so far. The fewer the enigmas, the easier the process. People were tricky.
She poked the Incubator with questions that gave away the information it withheld. He was not dishonest; his brand of manipulation included plausible but ridiculous deniability.
Homura injected horror into her voice and exclaimed, “So we'll become witches too, won't we!?” as if like she hadn't traded her godforsaken soul away knowing full well the implications and consequences.
She grabbed Madoka’s hand for some semblance of stability. Something safe, something home.
Mami’s expression gave away the debris of her confidence. Between her and Madoka, she'd be aimed at first, the only other magical girl.
So far, so good.
Except Homura didn't want to hurt Mami. So what timeline by timeline she'd stopped trying to save Mami? What if she'd accepted Mami was beyond help?
She still didn't want to hurt Mami.
They had been friends too, once.
“Yes,” the Incubator wagged its ugly little tail. “And then you'll produce even more energy for us! Another magical girl will be called to deal with your witch form, of course. But all of this only happens if you lose hope.”
That pesky little thing knew how ineluctable that was as Homura herself. As long as their souls remained intact in the Soul-Gem, their aging bodies would not kill them. Hopeless would claw its way and choke them to death, if they weren't brutally and painfully slaughtered in battle first.
Had an entire human history’s worth of observance taught him nothing at all?
Had hundreds of timelines taught her nothing at all?
Homura’s limbs worked before her commands. She took her aim at Mami’s Soul Gem before the girl could do the same to her. She didn't need time to process her shock and Homura knew it. Mami was going to act on impulse again. She'd seen it before.
Her hand felt empty as soon as it left Madoka’s to endeavor what was, essentially, preemptive murder. Justified by the proof of concept already, and yet…
“Homura-chan?” Madoka asked, taking a step back. “Homura-chan, what's wrong? Mami-chan! What are you both doing!? Stop it!”
“We have to die!” Mami gasped in pain. Her legs looked like they could barely support her standing. Kyubey was perched on the wall behind her. It was so perfectly in character for him to light the fire toss the fuel and walk away to watch hell rain that Homura was duly unsurprised. “We have to, or we'll turn into witches!”
Homura’s bullet was at its trajectory. If she hit anywhere that didn't kill, with Mami's mental state Homura wagered she'd turn into a witch anyway and propose a new danger to Madoka.
And then, she'd… what? Kill Mami Mami’s witch? Even if that would be easier on her, that's a risk she didn't want to take. She'd rather endure the burden of the carnage on her hands. Again? Again and again and again?
She squeezed her eyes shut. Again. Again and again and again. That was the only way for her. She had forged the path herself.
She turned her head sideways and fired the bullet and heard another one following closely. Her eyes flinched open from the ricocheting sound.
She heard Mami howl agonizingly. But it wasn't the wail of a dead woman.
Slowly, she forced herself to take in her surroundings. ‘Carnage’ was an understatement to what Homura left in her wake.
Madoka was in front of her, blood oozing out of her chest from two different spots. Her face was a little ‘o’ and her pink hair haloed her dropped jaw and widened eyes.
Homura’s heart stopped beating.
She heard the body fall before she could rewind time.
Red did not suit pink.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock ticktock ticktock ticktock tic-
As time wrinkled and unfolded to make way for her, Homura realized her face was warm with tears.
(She does not try to reveal the truth to anyone again.)
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
It took her a month to drag herself out of the hospital bed without collapsing within the first three steps.
She still couldn't bear to look at mirrors. Or strawberries.
~*~
“You!” Homura shrieked. “Don't you dare make the contract!”
She must look like a madwoman to the lot of them. They must be grief-ridden from dealing with Kyoko’s witch form. With Mami and Sayaka being the only contracted magical girls, Homura knew their dying was a matter of time and not fate so she sucked it up to focus on the only person who could still be saved.
She had staked out in her hospital and arrived a little too late. They could see she's a magical girl and they knew Kyoko came from somewhere else, so instead of questioning her identity, they questioned her intentions. Which was a problem, because her intentions spawned a multiverse of possibilities.
Madoka was confused and heartbroken. Madoka didn't even pay attention to their interconnected strings of fate. It hurt and Homura wanted so badly to tell her that they were soulmates and she was perfectly aware of what bad timing for that it was - but Madoka thought she was a random psycho who showed up out of nowhere and proceeded to instruct her on how to live her life when Madoka was Homura’s everything.
Her heart thundering too loudly to hear the light footsteps coming to rest in front of her.
And she was Madoka’s nothing in this timeline.
It hurt to be nothing.
“Do. Not. Do. It.” Homura snarked, her weapon out in Kyubey’s direction. It sensibly slithered to hide behind Madoka, a perfect mirror image of it in the last timeline - even though it couldn't even be fucking hurt - who still looked like she didn't understand what Homura was trying to say.
And then there was the little problem of her not knowing who Homura.
Two incriminating spots of red - one right over her right chest, the other centered on her abdomen.
“You!” Sakaya said - screeched, practically - heated up, a finger pressed to Homura’s chest. It wasn’t the first time Homura had been privy to Sayaka’s temperament. Sayaka was taking her hurt from Kyoko’s transformation out on her. “Who even are you?! Do you even care about what Madoka wants? You're trying to take all the agency from her decision! Why are you trying so hard to stop her from becoming a magical girl? Is it because you failed at it?”
She had killed her she had killed her she had killed she had -
“Are you done?” Homura flatly asked the seething girl. Sayaka tried to hit her where it hurt, but she didn't know Homura’s weak points. She didn't know what would truly break Homura. She was just livid and hopeless and foolish and looking for a punching bag. Sayaka would deviate to physical combat in her fragile emotional state - she drove on instinct. Homura knew them. She knew them all so well.
Homura was convinced the universe was playing a big, mean joke on her.
All she was trying to do was save Madoka.
“I don't know what I did to hurt you,” Curse that girl. Her voice always took the spotlight. Homura hadn't earned her kindness. Homura fucking killed her, and look at her go. “I… I wish to compensate for whatever I've done to hurt you. I - I don't know what that is. I don’t even know your name.
“You're hurt and alone,” Madoka whispered. She's unaware that she'd only half recognised Homura for what she truly was. Homura might be the hunted, but she was also the hunter. “I hope you find people who love you. I hope it gets better for you. I hope it stops hurting.”
“My name's Akemi Homura,” she told Madoka. She needed Madoka to know her in every universe and every reality, no matter how fleeting.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
And it won't stop hurting until you do.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
Something maniac grasped her as soon as she woke up. The last encounter’s words rang loud in her head.
She jolted out of the bed and started wildly looking for something sharp. A medical equipment she did not recognize would do the job. She flipped her hair and got to work.
She was still not thinking straight.
Homura ran the blade over the string that stuck out from her finger once, twice. Vertical, horizontal. Again, again, again. She dug her nails into the string until her knuckles were white and she was panting with effort.
The red string of fate did not give away.
She started giggling. Falling back on her hospital bed, she clutched her stomach with how funny everything was.
“See,” she relished, “You're wrong, Sayaka-chan.”
Homura's not taking Madoka’s agency. She was saving Madoka from a world which is unworthy of her light. And if this love manifested in ugly ways in other people's eyes - it manifested in ugly ways inside her too. She couldn't blame them.
Homura would still save her.
And then it hit her like an avalanche.
What had she nearly done?
What if it had worked and their connection had severed? Even if the string was weaved from fate, was fate not the very thing she was going against? What if she lost the only part of Madoka that stood static no matter how much the arms of Homura’s clock spun?
It was getting hard to breathe. The room was closing in on her. The floor was shifting beneath her feet.
She was too disgusted to live in this timeline.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
“It’s you,” Homura was sobbing on Madoka’s shoulder. A bag of Madoka’s strawberries fell on the floor with a soft thud. “It's you, it's you again. It's still you.”
Their bond was still okay. Homura hadn't damaged that one thing.
“I -”
Homura raised her finger as an explanation and kept crying. Madoka must’ve determined finding your soulmate to be a valid reason for an emotional outburst over a stranger in the (thankfully empty) public because her fingers started stroking Homura’s hair, prompting her to look up.
“Is - is this okay? It's what Mama does when I’m sad.” Madoka squealed. She was nervous too, wasn't she?
Homura pulled back; she sniffed and wiped her face with her sleeve.
“I didn't think I’d ever meet you,” Homura-chan lied. Or maybe she just told something that was the truth years ago to the person she was trying very hard to cling to. “With… with our string being golden. I mean, it's not like I can just follow it, right? It doesn't work like that. It's too abstract. I…”
Madoka was comfortingly nodding along with her rambling.
Homura held her close like she hadn't cursed her hours ago.
How could she have done it? Was she losing herself? Would she forget why she started the time loop in the first place soon?
~*~
Homura was drowsy.
Her limbs were strangely liquid. She felt as if she was floating. Her eyes were heavy. She wanted to close them forever and let herself dream.
“Don't close your eyes!” someone's voice tore from their throat, strangled. “Homura-chan, stay with me!”
Homura mumbled with a slurred speech, complaining, “But it feels so good.”
From a hundred moons away, Madoka sobbed painfully. “Can you save her?”
“Save me?” Homura's question was muttered giddily,"Why are you saving me?”
Madoka suddenly hung over her.
Ash and blood and grime shouldn't be in Madoka, Homura concluded, her fingertips already on the shield. Something was wrong. She'd sleep later.
Kyubey was saying something about trading her soul and making her wish. He was as unfeeling as ever to their plight. He’d claim it was a fair trade and proceed to show up only in moments of distress. This wasn't a moment of distress though, was it? She didn't know. She couldn't focus. Couldn't Kyubey ever shut the fuck up?
“Homura-chan!” Madoka was whimpering. She hadn't made her wish yet. That made Homura’s fingers jerk back.
“It's not your blood on your face,” she stated. Even as she said it, she knew it was the truth.
Madoka sniffed, leaning down. “Homura-chan? Where does it hurt?”
Life flooded through her veins.“It's… it's everywhere.” she croaked. She didn't feel tired anymore. She couldn't pin down its source with the adrenaline gushing in her head. She felt, vaguely, like she was high, even though she'd never been high.
Madoka was weeping. Why was Madoka weeping? She wasn't supposed to be suffering anymore. That was the point of Homura's suffering.
Amidst all the numbness, she felt one hand place itself upon her shoulder, and the other on her cheek. Her thumb streaked her jawline.
Madoka’s shed tears fell upon her - it hit her. Her, it was her who was fatally wounded.
Madoka shook. “Homura-chan… You can manipulate time.”
Homura nodded weakly. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Loop three, all those years back.
“I…It's selfish of me to be asking you. But even if I turn into a magical girl now, even if I…”
Homura cut her off.
“I know.”
She didn't know. Madoka wasn't a magical girl, so everything was okay, wasn't it?
“Homura-chan, when you travel back in time…” Madoka said urgently, “Save yourself, too. Please. Before you try to save anyone else. You've tried to do that with me since we met.”
Homura tried to grin cheekily. It came off as defeated. Still, she promised, “I'll try, Madoka-chan.”
“No! Please don’t just go! I can help you.” Homura wanted to start screaming. Why would this woman not stop doing this to her? “Even if I can’t come with you... I wish to ease your pain, Homura-chan. I don’t know what doing this will do to you. I don’t even know if-”
Homura cut her off again. There was destruction and bloodshed around them. She had maybe three, maybe five, maybe seven places blood was oozing out of. None of that mattered. Not even the fact that she couldn't flip her hair before traversing in this position. She quite liked doing that. “Stop.”
“Madoka-chan, do you love me?”
Madoka was caught off-guard. There was no hesitation in her voice as she declared a resounding, “Of course I do! I love you, Homura-chan.”
Homura smiled sadly.
“Then you shouldn't even have to ask, Madoka-chan.”
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
It's funny how the sorrow doesn't go away. The pain doesn't dull like a knife’s edge. It wrapped around her until it became her. Made her rotten and heartless. Or maybe just stripped her down and revealed how rotten and heartless she was all along. At her core, she was selfish, and abhorrently so. Her sin was loving the wrong person too much. Her sin was the lengths she was willing to go for her. Her sin was that this person was worth the entire universe.
It was like the hypothetical of letting a train run over five people or pulling the lever to make it run over one person - except for Homura, there were the few people she'd cared for in front of the rails, and everyone else ahead of the lever; it wasn't a moral dilemma of what was right, it was a question of how hard she'd have to pull the lever to make the train’s wheels turn.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧
In the end - the thing that hurt the most was how much it made sense.
“I just wish to protect everyone I love!”
“I… I wish to compensate for whatever I've done to hurt you.”
“I wish to ease your pain, Homura-chan.”
Every wish Madoka had ever had led to this. Homura had been building up the karmic debt, but Madoka had sealed her fate. Bit by bit and piece by piece until no other conclusion was on the horizon.
It was inevitable.
It was so, so cruel.
~*~
Homura plummeted to the ground and submerged with the real world, fluid and sauve. Her consciousness plunged into a meadow of strawberries. She could smell berries and grass and twilight.
Hazily, she raised her quivering arm to shield herself from the setting sun’s light. It was too bright for someone who'd just returned from - the realm of gods? The boundaries of the existing universe? A stoppage point between the shards of realities and solid ground?
It was then, and only then, that she realized her string of fate was slipping from her finger.
“No,” tears welled her eyes. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Her hallowed bones and arid vessels had nothing else left to give.
The edges of the string begin to unspool.
“Please.”
The threads started unfurling.
“Please!”
The brilliant brightness turned blinding. That… finally explained the golden-ness, at least.
Homura was on her feet, and then her unstable legs were giving up beneath her. Her knees bruised on the hedges, blood scouring her lilac-gray skirt; fingers twisting as she tried to grip the ground, hair sheathing her crumbling face.
For the second time in her life, she begged the universe for something.
For the second time in her life, it looked her straight in the eye and gave her the middle finger.
She fell back on her folded legs and started screaming. The noises from her throat were a year, a decade, a century’s worth of despair. They carried the grief of a thousand different timelines. The sins her hands had committed would weigh on the scales of judgment and they would break because nothing could atone for the things she had done and the one thing she hadn't, the one thing she'd set out to do.
Miniature suns caught her tear-brimming eyes.
She sniffed quietly. She registered, dimly, that she was shivering even though it was warm.
Little sparkles curtailed around her fingers. They danced and twinkled mischievously. They winked an eye and grinned at her. They swam and sank but bounced back and did not drown.
They were the same golden of her string of fate. Dispersed, disintegrated.
Madoka. Of course it was Madoka’s doing. Madoka was everywhere and everything and all at once. And Homura was tied with her. Madoka - her only reparation, her only salvation, her only amenity - had given her a little trinket. Madoka was her goddess, and Homura would die worshiping on the altar of her divinity. That much was fated.
She let the scattered little stars sweep her under.
✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧