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Time is a prison--whether you can reset it or not. Emotions only seem to intensify with the birth of each new cycle.
Birth. Such a strange word for me to choose, there on my deathbed for what seems like the hundredth time. Rust-colored water swishes around me as I try to grasp something tangible, but I feel nothing but liquid cool. I can feel her close to me, though, so I search as a newborn does for its mother's teat.
I will never give birth in the natural sense. It was something I did not think of much, but when I was close to death, I did occasionally have thoughts like this--thoughts of things that could never be. I had never wanted children; it would upset my heart condition... and, besides...
I have rendered myself a shell of a human being. The rain streams down my cheeks, mimicking tears.
This is true in every sense of the word.
I turn my head, the only part of me not threatening to combust with pain. She is there beside me--Madoka Kaname. Her chest rises and falls, shallow, with effort. The tight-laced corset of her costume has come undone in some places; I can see her bloodied flesh between the hooks.
Something tickles my outstretched fingers. Her hair, loose from both of her bows, streams along with the water. I let it slide through my fingers. It is fine and textured. Its color was that soft cool-sunrise pink, beautiful and subdued, shy but passionate. With a hand that shakes, I bring the damp hair to my lips.
"Homura-chan," she whispers. She must feel my hand in her hair. She turns her face toward mine, and it is twisted, momentarily, in pain. When I glance again at her body, I see where her ribs have been smashed. "Homura, are you...?"
Her words trail into the chaotic air between us, but I know what she means. Am I dying. And, remembering the source of my agony, I remember that, yes, I am. A spear protrudes from my flank, near the hip; it is a yawning mouth of blood, endlessly rushing into our watery graves. The rain has diluted it pink where it stained my costume.
I attempt a smile, if only for her sake. "Madoka." I lower my hand and she places her own in mine. Her smooth, gloved hand. We clutch at each other as a demon laughs above us, maniacal; its laughter will chase us into hell. "I think..."
She sniffles, but she does not begin to cry in earnest. I believe she is holding back for me. I want to tell her it's okay--that I want her to feel that relief--but she says, "I don't have any grief seeds left."
"That's okay," I say. And for once, I mean it. "Maybe we're meant to die here. Together."
"But... there's no one left to stop Walpurgisnacht," she says. Her voice shakes--not with fear, but with the sorrow I know she feels, eating away at her core. "Sayaka-chan, Kyoko-chan, and Mami-san are all dead."
"I know." I close my eyes against the ceaseless battering rain. All of the battles I've endured, all of the witches who have tasted my blood--and, more importantly, her own... this comes back to me in a haunting wave. I can see a labyrinth shifting in my peripheral vision, but it is not real; it is the timeline threatening to crumble, and I know this. I can feel it.
Madoka is silent. For a moment, I fear she's fallen unconscious, and I turn as far as I can towards her limp body. Walpurgisnacht laughs above us, and it pierces the sky, the rain, the rubble--it announces to the world that she is queen, she is the ruler of this earth. Her pain--I can feel it from here. I know Madoka can, too. Her bitterness. Her disdain, for herself, for human beings. For what she has become.
"Maybe we should just... give up, like she did." I gesture upward, weakly. "Maybe it's a witch's world after all, and we're all just players in it. Or.." It's an incubator's world, I thought. I find it curious Kyubey has not sought us out--but it knows we have all but succumbed to our wounds. Kyubey has no use for two broken magical girls--not until it can harvest our souls once and for all.
"Homura-chan." Madoka's voice is tense, but soft. "Please."
I clench my fingers tighter around her own. We are both shaking, gritting our teeth. We are both cold. We are both dying.
"I mean it. What if we both just... turn into witches, like she is. What if we both just conquer this silly world? Destroy it, as it has destroyed us."
The mind is a prison. This is, as I have learned through trial and error, where the witch's egg is first conceived. The magical girl begins to doubt her purpose, doubt her peers and superiors. She begins to become corrupted. The wiring in her brain sparks and burns. She feels as though she has given her life for nothing--and she is right.
I cough, and blood erupts from my mouth and into the shallow water we lie in. It floats like red paint. "Madoka. Please. Come with me."
This is when I know, truly, that I am becoming what I was always meant to become. A witch. I can feel that shell fall away in my brain, slowly. I can feel that tainted energy snake its way down my limbs, my tendons. The soul gem embedded in my hand burns.
"Homura-chan..." She smiles at me, but it is tortured. "Please. Don't ever ask that of me."
"No. Please." My voice becomes high. "Don't leave me again. I--I don't think I can take it."
"Again?" Her eyelids flutter, concealing their pale pink irises. "Homura. I... can't..."
And that is the moment I begin to feel the earth swallow me whole, the shadows chew me into bits. That is the moment I am lost, as she is lost to me. "Madoka, say something."
Her chest falters, as though she has tried to breathe for my sake. But it stills, and I know she is dead again.
Madoka. My body clenches, curls around the stake embedded in my body. Madoka, Madoka. Why can't I save you? Why can't I make you happy? Will I... will I never be enough for you--
Madoka?
Her hand in mine is limp now. Somewhere inside of my head, I hear a guttural, animal shriek. I know. Even as I fumble with my shield, attempting to turn the time back, I know. It is too late. The black has come for me, the world has blurred around its edges.
So this was my fate all along.
The soul gem embedded in the top of my hand blackens like a violet caught aflame. The jewel shatters, and the glass splashes my face. I do not feel blood. Instead, I feel what bursts from inside me like a lion, leaping into the cosmic atmosphere with rage.
I have given birth after all, I think, lost in my delirium. Her name is destruction. Her name is grief. Her name is a timeline corrupted. Her name is Homulily.
Really--her name is Madoka.
Her body, smashed, dying like a flower under someone's foot, is the image I carry with me as I descend into a shadowy madness. My hands are shackled, now, and I lose the knowledge I have carried with me since I became a magical girl. I lose that time magic.
Love is a prison.