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If there was one thing that she hated almost as much as the Incubator, it would be the smell of smoke. Not the smoke of a bonfire or camp, but rather the smoke that came out of the death sticks that people indulged in to feel better about themselves. If she had to put further thought into it, she would say how she hates how cloying it is. How it clings to everything and drags behind a person like a trail of ill omen.
(It was nothing like the comforting blaze that Kyoko emitted, blanketing the air in her scent with the homeliness of a campfire, banked by the tragedy of her family or the calm lantern-like glow that Mami gave out, gently suffusing the air with flowery infusions and gentle wisps of smoke that reminded her of the old gas stoves and ovens used at home)
She didn’t have much of a problem with it at first. Her mother would come in smelling like smoke and booze every so often, stumbling about and yelling for her to shut up and turn off the lights. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, rather easy in fact. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut, flick the appropriate little switches and endure her mother’s....less than optimal state of mind. What was hard about the simple command was staying quiet and not making too much noise or movement while her mother went through her phase, especially since her level of 'quiet' was reliant on her mother's state of mind. Sometimes the creaking of a floorboard would be too loud in her mother's presence, while at other times she could almost travel around the house like normal barring any accidental collisions with furniture or dropping anything. (On some rare occasions it even seemed like her breathing was too loud)
She had long grown used to traveling in the dark, leaving the lights off for the most part save for when she wanted to read something. Whenever her eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden, abrupt entrance of her mother, her memory came as a sufficient substitute, the arrangement of the furniture and the layout of the room having been memorized for as long as she could remember. Though her memory couldn't help her with the creaking floorboards of the house. (She quickly learned how to step lightly after the first time she was yelled at for being too loud, and even then she opted to be as quick as possible to lessen the chances of the ornery floor giving her presence away when she wanted to avoid her mother)
After yelling, sometimes for the better part of the hour, her mother would always find her and apologize.(She always found her) Whenever she opened her mouth during her apology, her nose was flooded with the overpowering sense of smoke, mixing with the booze on her mother’s breath whenever she breathed, creating a nauseating mishmash of scents that clawed their way down her throat that made it hard not to turn her head. (Nothing like the gentle scent that Madoka gave off, soft, roses that would easily be covered by other scents but still somehow present and nothing like the energetic, oceanic scents that Sayaka gave, like a summer day by the beach that reminded her of foamy waves and hot sand)
She would always start with her face whenever she approached in one of her moods, stroking her cheek and cooing at how cute she looked. Like a little trembling bunny (Like a pet) Then her hands would travel down her shoulders and stroke ever so lovingly down her arms (”My sweet, sweet little doll”)
And it would continue on like that. Nothing wrong ever happened per se. She was never hit or unclothed or humiliated or anything like that.
(Nothing except for a vice grip that prevented her escape)
She was just...just uncomfortable. A slow caress down her back sent shivers of foreboding down her spine. An affectionate ruffle of her hair made her flinch and turn away (She got out of that habit soon enough) The only time that she had broken that one unspoken rule, was when her mother had gone out on a drunken shopping spree and decided that she would look just. Lovely in them. Which would have been fine. It was nothing that was all that new after all. Her mother bought her clothes all the time, stating that it made her happy to see her beloved daughter wearing the clothes that she had bought (and spent on her ungrateful, stupid little girl) It should have been fine except... The clothes were odd, frilly and lacy on some while others were garishly colored. It had been night and her mother had wanted her to change into these? Frilly shirts and short skirts? Low tank tops and shorts that would’ve been better as underwear? None of the other kids wore stuff like this.
She didn’t want to wear this sort of thing (too cold, too exposed) And her mother... Her mother had only smiled (fake, as fake as the sturdiness of the porcelain laying on their table) and sent her up to her room. Eventually she had fallen into a fitful, uneasy rest, unable to shake the foreboding eeriness that emanated from her mother’s smile. She awoke the next day well into the afternoon, dizzy and nauseous, but thought nothing about it at first. Too young to think too deeply into how she was feeling and assuming that she had just overslept.
She kept thinking that even as she started missing school, or had days of blank memory lost to the nebulous grasp of sleep. It wasn’t until she had collapsed from dizziness that she had even thought of her oversleeping being anything other than that. Normally she would be a little nauseous in the morning, not enough to impede on her overall day, but leaving any sort of heavy breakfast out of the question. Nothing like this, with bile consisting of nothing but stomach acid and water threatening to come up. Nothing like this shaky, unsteady feeling in her legs that made her unbalanced and wobbly, mimicking the jelly in the fridge that she had made earlier that week. Her morning sickness was becoming something more and her body was somehow permanently becoming less in some way that she intimately knew of its loss (but what happened? What did she do?)
She had tried to power through it at first, but after collapsing and experiencing a fit that left her unable to breathe at one of the rare times she awoke early enough to attend school on time, she couldn't hide it anymore. The hospital had admitted her readily enough, stating that she would need to stay for a while before she would be ready to do anything normally again. It was then that she heard her mother, just outside the door (cracked barely open. Just enough so that she could hear the light conversation that petered in)
“Oh, no it’s nothing. My daughter just had a fit you see. Threw the loudest tantrum that she could and made a big enough fuss to worry the staff at the school, probably just faked it and seeking attention” A fit to seek attention? She didn’t remember throwing a temper tantrum, she couldn't feel anything other than panic once she realized that she couldn't breathe... “Yeah. She’s just so needy y’know? She always does her own thing and she never listens to what I want her to do” What? But she...she made sure that she was out of the way. She tried to be quiet. Was she a bad girl? “No no she isn’t bad. Just a little headstrong so I had to...convince her to see things my way. She was a bit of an annoyance but I managed to think of something.” She was a troublemaker? A bad kid? An annoyance? She heard about kids like that, in abandoned hallways and echoing, nearly empty rooms. Bad kids who nobody wanted, who meant trouble, and who were always alone.
She was one of them?
B-but she always listened to what her mother wanted! She made sure to not make too much noise, even when she felt like she wanted to cry and she did her dishes so that her mom didn’t need to. (so that she wouldn’t notice her presence) She always wore the clothes that she bought to show that she appreciated them even if she didn't want to or she didn't really like them. ”My precious doll” The only thing she didn’t do was wear the clothes her mom bought whenever she was drunk, but that shouldn’t make her a bad child right? She was good and sweet and followed all the rules ... Right?
Right?
It had taken her a while to overcome that revelation while also adjusting to live in a hospital for...a long time (it felt like eternity. Madness with nothing but blank white walls to stare at or the same games played over and over again as she was stuck in bed, unable to stand, unable to even walk on her own)
But somewhere down the line, when she had briefly glanced at a mirror from behind, she saw tiny little dots. They weren’t like the freckles that the boy from the room across hers in the hallway had, smothering his face and shoulders in smatterings of color and uneven circles that traveled from his shoulders and danced across his back. This was nothing like his. This was hundreds of tiny little dots, uniform in size but not in placement, some clustered unevenly around her shoulder blades and peppered down her spine. “Well. She just would never shut up you know? She’s such a chatterbox that sometimes I can’t even understand what she’s saying! She’s a bit of a noisemaker too so I just send her to sleep sometimes when she goes too overboard.”
Ah. So this was what her mother had done (robbed her of her future. Her body so that she would remain her little doll forever and ever and ever)
It was with this revelation in mind that she was so uncertain of the offers the white rat made, promises with seemingly no consequence. (just like her mother) Giving praise and compliments to ply them to give it what it wanted (”Come on Homu-chan, you look so nice in these”) It was why she had almost been too late to make her wish for Madoka. It was why she had contemplated, during her Fall, if she should have added horns to her transformation and keep it permanent but well...
The worst monsters were the ones that appeared normal.