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Every second she’s here, every second she’s aware of where she is and who she is and what she is, Homura feels like the anomaly she knows she is.
Is it bad of her, though, to want to be human? Just for a day? An hour? Five minutes?
Is it bad for her to want to see herself in the reflection of a mirror without throwing up?
Is it bad for her to want to go on dates with the people she might like and touch them with her hands without feeling disgusted with herself?
Is it bad that all Homura wants to do is age and grow old and die naturally, instead of this strange half-life immortality she’s been forced into?
Everything she does, from the way she reads to the way she fights, is anomalous. Her speech patterns are not the norm – too formal, too impersonal. Her eyes track people in a way other people don’t, even if they want to – others account for clothing styles and fashion trends, she accounts for areas weapons could be hidden or glowing rings on fingers to indicate a potential enemy.
Homura knows she doesn’t belong, that she never has and never will. Homura knows she can’t, either, because this world isn’t her world. It isn’t filled with Witches but Wraiths. It isn’t filled with Despair but Hope. There is no cloying darkness but a light at the end of the tunnel – a light by the name of The Law of Cycles.
Homura hates this world, wants to be less of an anomaly and go back to her own, even if she was still anomalous there, too.
Homura knows she’s an anomaly.
She sometimes wishes she wasn’t.
Mami notices when Homura stares at her, blank and dead-eyed as she does, and her mind works back to the church and just how they last found her. How they’d had to run all the way from Kazamino to Mitakihara instead of taking the train, draining themselves of a lot of magic in the process. How they’d had practically forced the thin girl to eat food and drink water – she understands Magical Girls don’t need food, Mami does understand that…but they still need nutrients every now and again.
Something Kyubey only told her, it would seem.
She can still feel Homura’s ribs jabbing into her arm, how thin her shoulder blades felt, how gaunt her cheeks really are. She doesn’t border starvation or anything, but the lack of anything resembling fat on her is worrying. She’s all corded muscle and skin and bone, and nothing else.
Despite herself, Mami returns the gaze with an inquisitive stare.
“What’s wrong, Homura?”
The girl says nothing for almost a full minute and Mami keeps sipping her tea, trying to act like she isn’t immensely bothered by the feeling of someone staring hard enough to see right through her.
“You did not need to help me.”
“Well…yes.” Mami’s genuinely confused, and slightly worried at just how…well, just how Homura looks in general. Homura, for all her strengths, is socially inept and callous. Mami reminds herself of that and words her answer in a way that…somewhat gets across how she feels about the situation. “Well, you saved me, right? So, I saved you.”
“Acceptable.”
Kyouko waltzed into the room and plopped right next to Homura, leaning on the girl. To an outside observer, even to Mami, it seemed as though Kyouko was doing it to get a rise out of the stoic girl. Hell, she might even be doing it just because she’s lazy and needs something, or someone, to lean on. In this particular case, however, Kyouko was acting a lot softer than one would dare call her.
Where Mami saw Kyouko trying to get a reaction, Homura saw the girl for what she was doing. Providing body heat. It was as soon as Kyouko sat down next to her that Homura realised just how cold she felt. She leaned into the body next to her and continued to stare at the window just behind Mami.
She felt too…deadened to even bother shunting off sensations like touch or taste to her Soul Gem. She felt too tired with everything. For once, just this once, she would allow herself to enjoy the feeling of another person’s body heat. Even if she didn’t deserve it.
Kyouko seemed suitably pleased with herself and her ploy – even if it was seen through – and her self-assured smile grew when she spotted Mami sending her a sour look.
“Awww, what’s up, Mams?” For show Kyouko threw her arm over Homura’s shoulder – somewhat surprised but inordinately pleased with herself when Homura leaned in even more. She lifted a red eyebrow in challenge. “You jealous?”
“Firstly, never call me ‘Mams’ again if you don’t wish to wake up to a healthy breakfast of nothing but vegetables for the next two weeks.”
“What? You can’t do that! That is torture, Mami! Torture’s bad, Mami!”
Mami ignored the mostly-fake-panicking Kyouko and sipped from her tea. “I cook the food around here, so of course I can. Secondly,” she put down her cup for emphasis, “I honestly don’t understand why I’d be jealous. I’m happy for you and Homura, but please keep the PDA to a minimum.”
“Gah!” Kyouko clutched at her chest with one hand while her other remained rooted around Homura’s shoulder. To sell the act she threw her head back and sighed dramatically. “Oh, woe is me! To be bullied in such a way is cruel!” Kyouko lifted her hand from her chest and shot Mami a middle finger, groans and moans along the lines of ‘my life is over, woe is me!’ making Mami roll her eyes in amusement.
Homura didn’t say a word, too caught up in the foreign feeling of another human being’s touch. It’s been thousands of timelines since Madoka last hugged her, since Kyouko last ribbed her, since Mami last patted her shoulder, since Sayaka did that strange ‘glomping’ thing she does when she’s over-excited. It’s been thousands of timelines. Hundreds of years’ worth of lifetimes.
Homura…misses human contact, if slightly.
Mami lifted an eyebrow. “Not going to defend yourself, Homura?”
Homura stared right at her for another ten seconds – ignore the pink, she’s not there, she’s never there – and lifted her eyebrow back. “Your tea is getting cold,” was her reply.
It’s completely out of the blue, four days later, when Homura approaches Mami and stares straight into here golden eyes.
“I am going to continue training you starting tomorrow.”
Before Mami can raise objections – you look like a stiff breeze could knock you down, Homura, you need to rest – Homura’s already crossed the room and told Kyouko the same thing. She never trained the redhead, but a sparring partner couldn’t hurt for those days where Wraiths just weren’t enough.
Of course, the redhead agreed wholeheartedly. Mami thinks there were words like ‘fuck yeah!’ and ‘about time!’ being thrown about, along with gratuitous mention of raiding Mami’s fridge as celebration. Her head was too filled with fluff to care.
Mami eyed Homura, the black-haired girl standing tall and proud despite her breakdown not four days ago. Her purple eyes were looking out the window of her living room, face a pasty white that glowed in the sunlight peeking through the glass. When her black hair caught the light, it looked like it was swallowing any that dared touch it. A scowl came to Homura’s face that was gone just as quickly as it appeared, and Mami had to wonder what Homura saw in her own reflection in the window that unsettled her.
She remembers the episode four days ago when Homura put her fist clean through said window, and how annoying it was to fix up with magic when she’d never had to do anything like that before.
Mami, in a rare case of foot-in-mouth, blurted the first thing that came to mind.
“You’ve mentioned her before…but who was Madoka?”
Kyouko long since left the room to hunt for food, so only Mami saw the flash of pain on her stoic teacher’s face before it smoothed out. Purple eyes locked with her own gold ones after Homura tilted her head and shot her a stare.
“…Madoka is the reason I am the way I am.”
“Do…do you wish you could see her again?”
Homura turned back to the window and stared out at the sight of Mitakihara sprawled before her. She traced the figure of pink hair, golden eyes, a wide smile. She placed her hand against the window and resisted the urge to punch the reflection.
I hate you, Madoka. And I hate that I love you.
The longer she stares the more she hears Walpurgisnacht’s laughter, mocking and deep as it tore everything apart with gleeful abandon. The more her eyes take in the reflection, Homura sees rubble and blood, and can see pink eyes squinted in pain and pink hair matted with blood. The longer she stares at the reflection she can taste blood and smell smoke, hear her gun firing, feel the recoil. Something shatters and then she curls up into a ball what did I do whywhywhy and then she breaks time across her knee – take me back – and she’ll find herself reliving it again and again and again. No rest.
“H-Homura-chan…pl-please…”
“I do not know.” She breathed out and ignored the reflection, eyeing up a small building just opposite Mami’s apartment. “I do not want to know.”
No more words were spoken, and Mami hated her momentary lapse in control of her own faculties.