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She always had problems with plucking her hair.
At first, the habit had picked up because of split hairs, tangling her hair into knots and tearing painfully into her scalp. The pain that came with detangling the problematic strands became grounding in a way, the sting bringing a clarity that fought off the drugs she was constantly dosed with. Even if it was only for a short time.
So she started doing it more often.
She started idly plucking the loose hairs whenever she was doing some recreational activity like reading a book and pulled out strands of hair in boredom as she waited for the nurses to come check up on her. It also didn’t help that her hair was so long and grew so quickly. The nurses that came by often like to titter and tease that her body went through so much effort growing her hair and giving it a silky, sleek sheen that it couldn’t even develop her heart properly because of it.
Cue a round of frustrated plucking that grew into literally ripping her hair out as she got sick of it.
Sick of being stuck in a bed for the majority of her life. Sick of having bad eyesight. Sick of being an outcast. Sick of constantly needing to be checked on. Sick of being so sick all the time.
When the nurses had checked up on her ten minutes later, she hadn’t had enough time to clean up properly.
So they braided her hair instead, showed her how to twist the silken strands until the whole length of it was pulled taut from the tension, an aching, dull pain settling in as she grew accustomed to the mystifying twists and intricate knots that her hair could create. They showed her how to have it loosely styled but still firmly intact, gaudily decorated or boorishly plain.
It was a needed and fascinating distraction from the monotony of the hospital, with its blank white walls and sterling silver equipment. Some days, when the empty hallways echoed with the occasional pained groan as the terminal patients shifted uneasily on their bedding- when her own heart thudded oh so painfully in her chest and felt as if it was about to burst, the colorful ribbons and fancy clips helping to dissuade her from any further hair pulling or more...active venting of her frustrations.
The more intricate the hairstyle, the more it showed her frustration. The nurses eventually learned of that whenever they noticed the nicer hairdos on her bad days. It wasn’t much of a surprise when they also noticed that she had mastered everything that had been taught to her after that.
She eventually moved onto hairsticks and successfully mastered the use of them in various updos within days of being introduced to them. The repetitive motion of twirling her hair upupup before feeling it all tumble down blissfully occupied her mind. Moreover, it finally made her mind shut up in the ever quiet hospital when it would normallly run rampant with dizzying amounts of thoughts and observations. She no longer had to endure that as she learned how to put her hair up into a bun without ever using a hair tie, or how to make the more elaborate buns that looked like a rose or could hold ornaments up by her head.
Stylizing her hair filled up her days (and sometimes even nights) up until she transferred back into school.
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She had decided to braid her hair in simple twins of each other that day. The strands twisted together tightly enough that not a single one escaped from its confinement.
In all her naivety she had thought that maybe, just this once, she could have a friend and they could do each other’s hair, teach each other how to braid or plait or whatever mystery of human invention that one knew and could teach.
But the girls there were jealous creatures. Selfish and vapid, they teased her for her bookish appearance and tugged on her hair mercilessly throughout the day.
During lectures she would be attempting to listen and learn what was being taught, but there would then be an insistent tug on her hair from one side and to a harder pull on the other before both would be yanked back so strongly that her head knocked onto the desk behind her.
The teachers never noticed.
She didn’t use the braids again for a long time after that
In fact, she didn’t use them at all until she transferred to a new school, Mitakihara Middle, in the vain hope that maybe, just maybe, she could fit in for once.
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She didn’t. At all.
But she gained a friend from that. Four in fact. Closer to her heart than her blood family ever was. Lifting her heart and bringing her emotions upupup before it all. Fell. Down
Magic. Witches. Girls.(Liesliesliesliesanddeceit in prettypretty lights wrapped up in prettypretty ribbons soaked in blood and ignorance and obscurity )
Walpurgisnacht. Death(ohgodpleasenopleasplease please-!). Loop.
Again and again she spiraled downwards as the timelines grew.
Soul Gems. Eggs. Witches. Incubator(hateithateithateit why do you-???)
Again and again it repeated, her relationships souring into a bittersweet parody of what it once was until it ended with this.
She doesn’t exist to them. She’s a ghost, a phantom of the past with all the power to do anything. For her. For them. For their broken, broken pseudo-family of broken daughters and broken people. For all the deaths that they went through because of petty misunderstandings, bullheaded stubborn idiocy or simple ignorance.
She could fix all of it.
Knew that the other had just been waiting for her with those aggravatingly kind, open arms.
But she won’t, she doesn’t because now her troubles won’t ever touch them and she’ll forever be their watchful shield. The ever present guard to the unseen threat. (Can’t rest, never rest. Have to look, have to see-!)
Somewhere during that time she had fallen out of doing her hair, losing the fascination of pulling it up and decorating it.
Instead, she had become fascinated by her wings.
At first it had been the ones bestowed upon her by Madoka, soft and pure white, ever silken in their almost holy shine with a quiet pride to them.
But then, as the taint in her Gem grew and her mind became ever darker, she had turned to old habits and started plucking feathers off. One. By. One. Spiraling once again into madness.
At first it had started with the loose feathers that were gently tugged out, a slight pang emitting as they were evicted from the magical container that her body was before slowly dissipating and fading away in the lonely moonlight.
Then it evolved to twice a day, thrice maybe? Once she had found out that she could actually feel the pain from the magical constructs.
Magical girls couldn’t feel pain very well after all, so her hair tugging had come to a very abrupt halt once she found out that she couldn’t feel the pain from her scalp. While she didn’t mind pulling out her hair (quite literally) by the roots, the point of the habit couldn’t be fulfilled anymore.
So the feathers started falling instead.
Slowly at first, before more and more joined into the piles on the floor of her room, blanketing the Spartan design and absolutely drowning everything in it within days.
She opted to stop plucking in the house after that.
After becoming corrupted turned, she vaguely remembers a hazy memory of the fluffy wings smoothing out, becoming seamless and smooth as marble before taking on a dull psychedelic appearance that turned the stomach and eye alike in its mystifyingly grotesque and perverted existence.
There had been nothing to pluck from there for a very long time after that.
Now she has empty bones that ragged feathers hang upon, worn and fraying as she tries to curb her addiction to the pain, and instead rubs the offending appendage between her fingers before (reluctantly) leaving it be. She can’t pluck as many as she could before, the pinions and fluffy down growing back slower and slower before settling on recovering at a glacial pace.
She had heard once that birds plucked their feathers when stressed.
She can’t help but laugh at the irony once she remembers it as black feathers fall down from the sky like rain.