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It gnaws at her, nips at her heels, tickles her peripherals with its detestable presence and taunts her when she turns away.
It laughs at her. ‘Look at you!’ it says, ‘better than nothing and worse than dirt!’.
Then it would cackle in her ear as she agreed with it and subsequently ignored it.
It’s been getting harder to ignore, nowadays.
The lights are on, and people are home, but everyone inside is nihilistic and depressed. Not a single person in that large house gives a damn about the person banging frantically on the door, trying to get their attention. They all just look, scoff, and turn away to do whatever it is they were doing. Each person in that house hears the banging again but cannot even muster the emotion to be upset about it.
The person goes from banging to shouting, and, finally, everyone in that home elects a person to go open the door and answer the person on the other side. Depression looks at Apathy, Apathy looks at Malice, Malice looks at Ignorance and Ignorance looks back at Apathy. Anger and Hatred join in and look at Apathy, and, soon, everyone in the household is staring.
There are spider lilies dotting the windowsills and painted on the walls. Blood leaks from the doorhandle. Good-For-Nothing is sleeping still, so of course it falls to her.
Apathy sighs and opens the door.
“What?”
Mami jerks in place at the sound of her sudden voice but continues anyway. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for five minutes now.” The blonde grimaces and diverts her attention. “I don’t…I think you should…have you considered decorating?”
Homura looks back into her room, notes how bland it is – like her previous home, empty and monotoned in colour – and her eyes briefly drag themselves over to her bed. She hadn’t slept in it since she got here, the slight ruffles on the side showing where she sat whenever she felt the need to. She rarely did.
The floor was carpeted, sure, but it was a dark grey that bordered black and contrasted heavily with the surgically white walls and ceiling. The bed’s sheets were light grey. The only colour to be seen was herself, with her monotone colour scheme being ousted by the slight purple glow of the ring on her finger and the soft pink table lamp at the desk beneath her window.
The walls were barren, empty, no posters, no scratch marks or shelves. Nothing decorated the floor, either, and the only other things aside form her desk and bed was a wardrobe Homura hadn’t opened since she moved in. the thin film of dust covering everything except for her bed showed that this was a place unused, even if occupied.
The lights are on, people are in, but they don’t care one bit.
“No. I see no need.” Homura leans on the doorframe and stares at Mami with dull violet eyes. Mami holds back her wince. “You wanted me for something?”
“Yes. Kyouko and I are going out for some lunch, and we wanted to invite you along.”
Homura lifted an eyebrow at that. This was outside the norm of what her life had fallen into. “You are not cooking tonight?”
Mami’s face grew darker. “No. I would be,” she leaned her head back and stared at Kyouko’s bedroom door, voice raising, “If someone hadn’t eaten everything in the fridge!”
Muffled through the door was Kyouko’s loud cackling.
“Ugh.” The blonde ran a hand down her face. “Sorry but no, Kyouko ate everything in stock with her stupid ‘no wasted food’ rule. So, we’re going out for food instead.”
Homura tilted her head. “Where would you go, then?”
Mami’s face lit up and she began an exposition on her favourite restaurant. How the waiters there were so nice and friendly, and the male servers were so cute, and the female servers all seemed to be done with something, but they did their jobs scarily well. She rambles on and on about the restaurant’s signature dishes and how they’re all desserts – this is Mami, what did she honestly expect? – and the cake they make there is to die for. Then she rambles about the foods she thinks Kyouko and her will like, all the while bemoaning that, in the end, Kyouko would eat everything on the menu just because she has so little taste in the things she eats.
Homura settles in and lets Mami rant for five minutes straight, her violet eyes dimming as she looks through the excited blonde and stares at nothing. She’ll allow Mami this moment of happiness, of peace.
Homura has no desire to tell Mami just yet that she isn’t going with them. She has things to do tonight. She isn’t missing out on much anyway; Homura doesn’t need to eat or sleep or drink or do anything normal humans may need to do. She doesn’t like restaurants anyway – they just aren’t her style, and Homura knows that Mami’s going to go to a fancy one with ties and dresses and the like.
Homura tunes back in to hear the confirmation that ‘oh, you should wear your suit! I’m getting Kyouko to wear a dress – can you believe that?’ and she had to resist the urge to roll her eyes.
Mami won’t get this happiness for long, not if Homura follows through on her self-imposed quest. Not if Homura does what she sets out to do tonight.
For now, Mami can be a normal person.
There’s a fire beneath her skin, bubbling and boiling her blood, melting her muscles and charring her bones. It sloughs the flesh from her body and leaves her a husk, burned out and rotted. Her name is Homura Akemi, after all, and her latest interpretation of just what her name means is ‘a heart on fire’.
Her heart burned, still burns, for Madoka. At this point she’s waiting for it to finally give up, fizzle out into embers and leave her as nothing but ashes to be blown away in the wind. Either that or she’ll erupt in a pyre, an inferno so great she’ll swallow the world and leave nothing but dust and bones behind. Like herself, she’ll leave nought but burned-out husks.
She stares at her Soul Gem, watches as the black creeps over the purple and the depression sets in worse than it has ever been. She ignores the pink hair, the golden eyes, the wide smile. She ignores the blood on her hands and the shield on her.
She watches as the bombs she planted outside Mitakihara Middle School are armed and primed, ready to go at the flick of a trigger.
Her Gem is halfway darkened. She taps a Grief Cube to its side and watches as the dark is chased away, if only for a moment.
Homura’s not too sure she can last a week. She’ll have to bump her plans forward to tomorrow. Mami would understand, hopefully. Kyouko would.
She flicks her phone on and types a text but doesn’t send it. not yet. She has to wait. Patience is key.
Her Soul Gem begins to darken again.
“Not long now…”