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Do not stand by my grave, and weep
Inhale-
Don’t look at the hands.
Whatever she does it’s a method of coping, and wherever, whenever, she finds herself it helps keep her grounded. Keeps her sane. Reminds her of how not-wretched she used to be if she just doesn’t look.
Do not look at the hands.
It’s not a mantra, per se, because that implies it keeps her focused. It does not. it keeps her grounded in reality, away from the past and moving forward like she’s supposed to. Until she doesn’t. that is when the not-mantra becomes important.
-exhale.
I am not there, I do not sleep
She can’t look at her hands. She cannot because if she does, she’ll unmake herself. She’ll become more wretched than she already is, more pathetic than she used to be. Her hands are her lowest point and they have never once brought her to any highs.
She can’t bear to look at them. They disgust her. She hates them almost as much as she hates herself as a whole, and that’s no short order.
Inhale-
She averts her amethyst eyes from the mirror in her sparse bathroom and wraps her body in a towel without looking at it.
She hates that, too. Her own body is a horrible, terrible reminder of what she is. A wretched little thing that hates itself so much it would willingly dive into hell just to try and fix one little thing. She only wants to fix one little thing.
She’s not scarred yet she knows she should be. She’s not hideous yet she feels like she is. She’s not ugly yet the Soul Gem on her hand – don’t look at the hands don’t look at the hands don’t look at the hands – attests to how ugly her soul is.
-exhale.
I am the thousand winds that blow
The only times she can bare to see herself, any part of herself, is when it’s absolutely necessary. Her hands she sees in combat because that’s all they were made for. She catches glimpses of her body – wretched, hideous, disgusting – when she’s getting dressed and can’t afford to throw up on her outfit. She sees herself in the mirror sometimes when tending to her hair, the only part of her she doesn’t downright despise.
Because she said my hair was pretty, once.
Homura loops the tie around her neck and tugs it tight enough to feel its presence but loose enough to know it won’t strangle her unless she makes such an endeavour a priority. She flattens out the dress shirt’s collar, pushing it down to hide the rest of the tie, and follows suit by ensuring a pair of white dress gloves are covering her hands – don’t look don’t look don’t look – and hidden beneath the sleeve cuffs.
She stands for a moment, taking in how she looks with black slacks and a white dress shirt in her full-body mirror – god I’m disgusting there’s so much red – and attempts a full-faced smile.
Her lips don’t move an inch.
I am the diamond glints in snow
She knows, as sure as everyone else attending this farce, that as soon as it’s all over she’s burning this outfit and skipping town. There is nothing here for her anymore, and she softly wonders if there ever was. There used to be something here for her, once, a long time ago when she was naïve with twin braids and still had the ability to smile.
Hundreds of years later and here she is, sixteen years old going on six hundred – wondering why she’s even bothering to go to this thing. Pink hair glistens just outside her peripheral vision and her mood, low and depressed as it is, sours even more.
Of course. She’s why. She’s always why.
Her amethyst eyes, once vibrant and full of wonder, are nothing more than lifeless, lightless gems to be seen and appraised. She knows she looks like a living corpse, and sometimes feels like one, too. Like a ghost playing with being human, like a shadow taking three-dimensional form. Homura knows her pale skin would practically glow if seen in the right light, and hair would do its best to swallow up any traces of sun.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
She pulls on the overcoat – a slate colour that drives itself as a reminder; Homura Akemi will never have colour. She is monotonous, wretched, monochrome in both looks and consistency. She tightens her dress gloves and ensures they won’t, by some miracle, fall off; she can’t stand to look at her own hands but a brief thought flits across her mind.
What do others see when they see her? Does she look, dare she say it, normal? Does she look alien? Does she look like a walking corpse, bereft of life and reason? Does she look calm where she is stoic? Does she look serene where she is tumultuous? Does she look still when her soul is shaking?
She’ll never know. None shall see her for more than perhaps ten minutes. Twenty at most, if someone actually finds some far-flung reason to talk to her beyond a ‘business’ standpoint. Perhaps Mami might, and Homura would entertain herself with the few minutes that conversation would bring – most likely about Wraith-Hunting, or where the next cluster might show up, or what Magical Girls are looking to try and take Mitakihara and whether it needs defending or sharing.
Those kinds of things are the norm between them, and she appreciated Mami for that.
I am the gentle, Autumn rain
She also knows Mami well enough that the blonde will do anything to keep her here; Sayaka is gone and Kyouko still remains, sure, but Homura was the most experienced and it shows in the way she fights, in the way she commands, in the way she picks apart weaknesses and exploits little chinks in strength. Mami might be older by two years, approaching adulthood – a rarity for Magical Girls – but she’s never had the coolest head even if she tries.
Mami, in her own little way, looks up to Homura.
She doesn’t need me. She has Kyouko.
She sees glints of white in the window and sighs, standing firm in her beliefs. She will not stay here, there’s nothing else for her. She has existed in a half-state for longer than she’d like to admit existing, even without her time loops. With them she feels immortal.
They don’t happen anymore, and she hates that, because even if she can admit the time-travelling was nothing but an abstract form of torture Homura knows it’s all she had going for her. Without it she has no purpose, and even with them she felt alone and anomalous.
A stranger.
That’s all she’s ever been, in the end.
As you awake with morning’s hush
She musters up the courage – how odd, I’m usually a coward, a useless coward – to slip her sleek, black shoes on and walk to the door of her home. She looks back at it, purple taking in the black and white surroundings with a hint of grey from her pull-out sofa.
Everything worth taking is stored in her shield.
In honesty, when she leaves, this is all that she will miss. This little building, she could call hers; two stories of ‘bigger on the inside’ that she barely used for anything other than planning and strategic meetings. She used her magic to shunt away her need for sleep, keeping her refreshed and safe from the ill effects of deprivation. She uses her magic to sustain her, knowing that when she ever actually felt the need to eat it would just be MREs she stole a good thousand or so timelines ago.
The pendulum on the ceiling will be missed, if slightly; a constant reminder of what she has control over. Even if she can’t go back anymore, she can still stop time, and that would imply mastery.
Master of time she may be, she still finds herself with never enough of it. but that’s fine, because where time has failed her Homura’s patience, wit, cunning and wings have not.
They used to be white, once. Pure as snow. Corruption changes a lot of things.
I am the swift, up-flinging rush
She leaves with the keys still in the door, knowing she’ll never see it again and feeling nothing for it. She lived there, once, perhaps even ate and slept there during her younger timelines.
She walks through the streets of Mitakihara towards her destination and must remind herself to breathe every once in a while. Blink every couple of seconds.
Sayaka, all those timelines ago, was not too far off when she compared Puella Magi to zombies; they don’t technically need to breathe, or eat, or sleep, or blink. Magic was a cure-all solution to anything that ailed the Puella Magi, and as long as they had even a smidge of it left, as long as corruption hadn’t taken over, they would be fine. She’s been using her magic like this since her…four-hundredth timeline, she thinks. That was so long ago.
Of quiet birds in circling flight
Homura doesn’t pay attention to her surroundings except for her destination but she does know it’s nice and sunny outside; bright, like the sun itself is focusing onto a single point.
Knowing her it probably is.
That would be just like her though, wouldn’t it? to celebrate such an auspicious day with the full force of a raging star? To focus on the people she loves most dearly, while Homura slinks about in the shadows to keep that sun burning? That would be just like her, and Homura knows she would not have it any other way. That’s just how wretched she is.
She turns a corner and continues walking. Her violet eyes catch sight of tall spires in the short distance, and she knows she’s headed to the correct location. A young man to her left is gawking at her, a young woman to his left slapping him around the head – she would feel amused if she didn’t feel so empty. So sullen. Today is a bright day, a day of celebration!
I am the day transcending night
So why does it not feel like one?
Homura knows the answer and she hates herself even more than usual. It’s because of her. It always is. Good-For-Nothing and nothing she’s good for, that’s her. She fucks up everything she touches and leaves it heaving and a mess, panting on the ground, bleeding the colour of red and crying in despair as they twitch and spasm. And then they’re Witches.
And then she’s holding a gun. She doesn’t recall what make it is or where it is from, but she does know it’s a tool for murder; but it was always mercy, wasn’t it? Always, always mercy. Nothing else. Nothing else it could have been.
Then she points it at a Soul Gem while gold and white flutter in the distance, watching her, seeing her go about her ‘business as usual’ as she tortures herself.
Then she shoots.
She shakes such morbid thoughts from her head and finally arrives at her destination, eyeing the tall, oaken doors with trepidation and longing.
Do not stand by my grave and cry
This is a day, a cause, for happiness. Not her. Why did they invite her again?
She sighs and pushes open the doors.
She’s going to a wedding--
I am not there, Homura, I did not die
--so why does Homura feel as though she’s going to her own funeral?