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When Homura finally succeeded, she couldn’t quite process it.
Somehow, impossibly, she’d managed to get Mami Tomoe and Kyouko Sakura on her side. Even more strangely, in this timeline, the two of them had connections in other cities. Together, they gathered a powerful group of magical girls to defeat Walpurgisnacht, using Homura’s stock of grief seeds gathered from the witches she knew about ahead of time as bribes.
There had been more than a couple of casualties. Even with a group, Walpurgisnacht was no ordinary witch. But in the end, they defeated it, and Madoka was safely tucked away in the bunker with her family.
Homura hadn’t reacted at all first. She’d merely left after the battle was concluded to make sure Kyubey hadn’t managed to get Madoka to contract at the last minute.
Technically, it was still possible that Madoka could become a magical girl. It wasn’t as if Kyubey had given up, after all. But her wish had been redo the time from when she met Madoka up until that day when Walpurgisnacht descended, this time protecting Madoka. And at last, it had been granted.
She should be happy. Overjoyed. She should be rushing to embrace Madoka, to finally try to return to the life she’d been forced to put on hold for all this time.
But instead, she just felt empty.
She had succeeded. Madoka was safe. But she had given up everything for it. Her feelings, her happiness, her innocence, she’d sacrificed all of it to save Madoka. But if she had become nothing but a tool, her entire existence devoted to the mission, what was she now that it was completed? How could she just go back to being a normal magical girl again? To actually study again, now that she no longer knew what the next day’s class would bring? To look ahead, past this day, for the first time in what, for her, had been years?
Maybe, once it actually sunk in, she’d feel better. Once she’d actually lived the first new day she’d seen since she made her wish, she could finally accept that she’d won, and could celebrate it.
A month later, she was still numb.
She was a little happy, at least. When she saw Madoka chatting to Sayaka and smiling, saw the flash of a magical girl ring on only Sayaka’s finger and Madoka’s finger unadorned, she felt a real satisfaction. Even if her life was empty now, it was worth it. Madoka was safe.
But her heart refused to thaw. It was still locked in a coffin of ice that had formed around it to protect it from the constant pain of failure.To harden it against the cruelty that Homura had to perform to succeed. To stop her from revealing the dark secrets she protected from Mami Tomoe and the others, who might lose their will to fight if they knew the truth.
She couldn’t even bring herself to try to befriend Madoka. It was too much. Too intense. All the feelings that had carefully been locked away might flow out at all once, burst forth from her heart and destroy it utterly on the way out. And so she resolved herself to simply live quietly, and leave Madoka in peace. Content to watch her happiness from a distance and keep her safe from any further manipulation by Kyubey.
And then Sayaka Miki intruded into the picture.
“I don’t get you.”
Homura looked up from her textbook to see Sayaka glaring down at her, standing by Homura’s desk with her arms crossed and a frustrated frown on her face.
“...What are you talking about, Sayaka Miki?” Homura asked.
“Ever since that fight with Walpurgisnacht, you’re like a totally different person.”
Homura raised an eyebrow. That was… unexpected.
She closed her book with an audible snap. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t changed at all.”
That was the problem, wasn’t it? Things around her had changed, but she couldn’t. She was stuck in the same month that she’d been cycling through over and over again, even as the world around her moved on.
“ You totally have,” Sayaka said, pointing at her accusingly. “You used to be busy like, all the time. Suspiciously busy, in fact. Now all of a sudden you’re hanging around in the classroom after school to read a textbook ?”
Homura frowned. “...I could only study so much in the hospital,” she said coldly. “You can’t expect me to have studied enough for the entire year. It’s just a coincidence that we’ve started to come to material I haven’t covered yet.”
“Yeah right,” Sayaka said, glaring at her. “It’s not just studying after school. You’re always just… hanging around like you have nothing better to do.”
Homura’s frown deepened.
It was true, of course. Now that Madoka had survived that month, Homura had no idea of what events lay ahead. She no longer had any plans to carry out. No goals to chase after. So it was no wonder that she was less busy.
But if even Sayaka was noticing something like that…
“I simply seem less busy because I don’t have to run around working on preparations for Walpurgisnacht,” Homura said. “Isn’t it natural that things should calm down a little after all that?”
“Ugh, you’re such a pain!” Sayaka said, ruffling her hair in irritation as she growled. “I don’t just mean you have less things to do, you’re less driven than you were before! You were always so focused before, and now you’re totally aimless! Plus, you’ve started blatantly distancing yourself from Madoka, you know? Despite being a complete creep before.”
“Save your petty accusations,” Homura said, putting her textbook in her bag and standing up. “I don’t have any reason to listen to you claim I’m some kind of reformed stalker.”
“Like. I. Said!” Sayaka said, putting her hands on her hips. “That’s not the point! The point is something happened with you, and now you’re acting all weird! Madoka is gonna worry, you know. Why not just talk to her about whatever the issue is?”
Homura snorted. “Ha,” she said scornfully, turning and walking away. “You truly have no idea what you’re talking about, Sayaka Miki.”
As if she could bring herself to tell any of this Madoka. As if she could endure Madoka fussing over her.
“Then why don’t you talk to me?”
Homura paused, halfway to the door.
It was… something she’d never considered.
She and Sayaka Miki had never gotten along. Even from the very first timeline where she was a magical girl, they’d gotten along poorly. And this timeline had been no exception- even with Mami Tomoe and Kyouko Sakura on her side, Sayaka had been suspicious of her, and openly unfriendly. But now, after Walpurgisnacht was defeated and Homura’s behaviour had changed, Sayaka seemed to be extending something of an olive branch.
A smirk slipped onto Homura’s face. Well, why not?
“Alright then,” Homura said, turning back to Sayaka, curling her lip up in amusement. “Sayaka Miki… let’s be friends, shall we?”
Homura, in all honesty, had expected the entire thing to go nowhere. Sayaka had no reason to trust her any more than she had previously. Surely, any attempt to be “friends” with Homura would be laughable at best, and would fall apart within a day. And once it did, she’d go back to just giving Homura suspicious looks from across the classroom, and Homura could go back to ignoring her.
However, she hadn’t accounted for one factor: Sayaka Miki, always, without fail, did something irritating to disrupt Homura’s plans.
So rather than back off, Sayaka jumped into this “friendship” with both feet, calling out to Homura when she saw her walking to school, throwing an arm around her, laughing and joking and dragging Homura around, chatting with her at lunch break, walking back part of the way with her after school, and generally being loud, omnipresent, and as boisterous as she ever was with Madoka and Hitomi.
Perhaps Sayaka had taken Homura’s standoffishness as a challenge, or perhaps she thought that if she forced the friendship hard enough, eventually Homura would crack. Either way, though, Homura… didn’t chase her off, either.
And as days turned into weeks and she got used to this new reality, little by little she found herself changing. She began to expect Sayaka’s arrival. Began to wait for her after class, instead of marching out and letting Sayaka catch up to her if she could. While their conversations were still quite barbed sometimes, there was a friendliness to their banter that hadn’t been there before.
It was… comfortable. And Homura found herself slowly warming to it, a little more emotion trickling back into her daily life as she started to smile more. Even to laugh from time to time.
At last, she was beginning to change.
Sayaka blurted out her offer on a whim. She wasn’t sure what had possessed her, but when she saw Homura scoff at the notion of talking to Madoka, she’d seen a certain defeated slump to her shoulders that had surprised her. That moment of weakness, that Homura hadn’t even seemed to have noticed, intrigued her. Made her curious about what had happened that left such a powerful magical girl and a determined leader suddenly deflate like a pierced balloon.
When Homura had replied to her offer with a smirk, she was sure the whole thing would go nowhere, but even though her voice had been mocking, she had agreed to be “friends”.
And, despite what Sayaka expected, Homura really had gone along with it. Sure, she was still as frosty as ever, and complained a little about Sayaka “clinging to her”, but she didn’t chase her off or avoid her or anything. As long Sayaka started conversations, Homura would carry them on. As long as Sayaka approached her, she’d walk with her.
And truth be told, she was actually kind of fun to hang out with. She might be an ice queen, but she could be pretty funny when she wanted to, and didn’t object to helping Sayaka with homework -which she always finished ridiculously quickly, unlike Sayaka. But honestly, who did homework on the day it was assigned? What a nerd.
She also started to join Sayaka on witch hunts- which turned out to be pretty necessary, as she revealed to Sayaka that she’d lost her time stop ability.
“What do you mean, “lost it”?” Sayaka asked, disbelieving.
“...It was always limited,” Homura said flatly. “It’s run out. Eventually, I’ll be out of weapons, too.”
“Where do you even get all that stuff?”
“I steal them, obviously,” Homura said, ignoring the disbelieving stare that Sayaka was giving her. “From criminals, mostly. Some from the JDSF. But I can’t do that without stopping time, so once I run out of what I have now, I’ll have to resort to what little offensive magic I have.”
To demonstrate, Homura fired off a magical bolt. It… wasn’t impressive.
“Uh,” Sayaka said. “Isn’t that kind of a big problem?”
Homura just shrugged. “It lasted long enough for me to do what I needed to,” she said simply.
“Nono, this is definitely a big deal!” Sayaka insisted. “Look, let me give you some of my swords, alright? They’re magic, so you can use them to fight witches, right?”
It took some convincing, but eventually, Homura agreed to put some of Sayaka’s swords into her shield for emergencies. For some reason, it made Sayaka a little happy to think of Homura defending herself with them.
Eventually, Homura started to warm to her. Only in little ways, but it made a big difference. Sayaka wasn’t always the one starting conversations any more. Homura didn’t make her chase after her anymore to walk home with her. Homura would call out to her if she saw her, instead of it always being the other way around. It started to feel more like they were friends, rather than Homura just tolerating her.
Sayaka was more happy about it than she’d expected. When had she started to care so much about Homura, of all people? She’d always thought she was just a suspicious creep, potentially someone dangerous, but once she got to know her, she realized that she was just terrible at interacting with people, which itself was a little cute.
At some point, she caught herself thinking that she might like Homura as… well, she wasn’t exactly sure. But even though Madoka had always been her best friend, she was starting to like Homura more. And what did that mean?
And then everything changed.
“Sayaaaka,” Madoka said, pouting at her. “We never see you anymore!”
“Ahaha,” Sayaka said, rubbing the back of her head. “Sorry, Madoka… it’s not like I’m trying to ditch you, you know?”
“You’re always hanging out with Homura now,” Madoka said.
“It’s rather like she’s stolen you away, isn’t it?” Hitomi said, sighing.
“I assure you, I had no such intention.”
Sayaka froze.
Homura never came over when she was talking to Madoka and Hitomi. She’d always find some reason to be elsewhere, although she was surprisingly good at making it seem as if she wasn’t directly avoiding Madoka, so much as just keeping her distance from people in general, and she never openly ran away from Madoka or anything, giving her the same cold politeness she extended to the rest of the class.
But now she was willingly joining in a conversation with them?
“I promise to return her, so long as I’m allowed to visit,” Homura said, smiling faintly.
“Goodness, I’m sorry, Sayaka, we’re making you sound like a lost dog,” Hitomi said, giggling.
Madoka joined in, and Sayaka laughed awkwardly as well. What the hell? Since when did Homura joke with other people? What was going on?
“Let’s all meet up to walk to school together, Sayaka!” Madoka said. “If… if that’s okay with you, Homura?”
“Of course,” Homura said. “Tomorrow, then.”
Sayaka’s stomach dropped at the softness of her tone.
It didn’t take long for things to shift. Once the four of them starting being friends, the distance between Homura and Madoka shrunk rapidly. Soon, it was obvious that the two of them were closer to each other than they were to anyone else in the group. In less than a month, they were meeting up with just the two of them. Less than a month after that, they’d started dating.
And throughout it, Sayaka felt worse and worse. She felt sick to her stomach, irrationally jealous and angry and betrayed. But what reason did she have for being upset? Homura hadn’t stopped being her friend. If anything, she was more friendly than she’d ever been, and she smiled more and more by the day. When Madoka announced the two of them were going out, it was the happiest Sayaka had ever seen her.
She’d had to excuse herself to run to the bathroom, feeling like she might throw up.
As she stared at herself in the mirror, the ugly truth emerged from where she’d unconsciously buried it, deep in her heart.
She’d wanted Homura for herself.
She’d wanted all of the nice parts to Homura to be hers alone. She’d loved being the only one that Homura smiled for, the only one who got along with the infamously stony transfer student. She wasn’t sure if she was really in love with her or not, but the jealousy burned just as much as any crush she’d ever had, and losing her to someone else hurt like a knife in the gut.
But she’d lost her chance. And so she washed her face, and went back to pretend nothing was wrong, putting on a face smile as they flirted, teasing Madoka like normal. But her heart wasn’t in it.
A few days later, Homura approached her alone.
“Sayaka,” she said. She’d started calling her by just her first name, now. Even that upset her, somehow. As impersonal as calling her “Sayaka Miki” every time had been, the fact that she was only this warm now clawed at her. “Thank you.”
“Huh?” Sayaka said. “For what?”
Homura smiled. “For being my friend,” she said. “For helping me… go back to normal. I’ve never been happier than I am now, and it’s all thanks to you.”
Sayaka laughed and rubbed the back of her. “Whatever. Don’t get all sappy on me just cause Madoka’s sweet on you now. I won’t forgive you for stealing my wife if you go and make her unhappy, you know!”
Homura chuckled. “Ah, the infamous “don’t hurt her”, speech,” she said wryly. “A classic. I’d expect no less from her noble childhood friend.”
“Hey, just cause it’s a cliche doesn’t mean it’s true!”
“Of course,” Homura said.
“Homura!” Madoka’s voice came from the other room. “C’mon, let’s go!”
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Sayaka,” Homura said, turning away.
“Alright, see you then!” Sayaka said, raising a hand.
...That had been natural, right?
She was sure she’d made it convincing. As Homura left, she let her hand fall, and her shoulders sag, as tears sprung to her eyes.
It’s all thanks to you.
Sayaka was sure Homura had meant nothing by it except genuine gratitude. But as she slid to the ground and buried her head on her knees, tears sliding down her face, she was sure that there was nothing she could have said that would have hurt her more.