Chapter Text
The shot rings out, muffled and grey, bullet exploding from the gun with a tremendous speed before halting entirely mid air.
Homura Akemi does not look up to make sure her shot is going to hit it’s intended target, she does not pale, and her hands do not shake when she calmly reloads the gun.
The purple gem on her nail shines innocently under the hospital’s impersonal white lights- lights which she knows with absolute certainty will reflect starkly the bright red of the blood she’s about to spill.
There are other ways to do this- ones with less violence, less drama- she could poison her easily enough- make it look like it was just her own weakness finally getting to her. Push her off a nearby bridge- the police would instantly declare it a suicide, and her father would pour out his expensive bottle of scotch over her grave and imply it was her mother’s fault over the phone. In that same vein she could hang her, shove pills into her gaping mouth until she overdosed, drop her off a building or into a river.
No one would kick up a fuss over these deaths, no one would go looking for a murderer- the officer in charge of her case could hang his hat up and shake his head, disappointed but not surprised.
(What’s a girl like that got to live for anyway? He might ask, before he forgets all about her entirely.)
But those deaths take time, and patience, and careful slow caution. It’s so much easier to just do it this way. So much more convenient.
She scares some people killing her this way- the hospital shuts down for a little while when they find her body a couple of hours later, patients mutter and murmur anxiously to each other, the media is called, news vans screech their drunken way into the parking lot.
Its disruptive- but no one is hurt or killed by her actions (other than the obvious), so Homura can’t find it within herself to mind.
She’s sure some of the reporters have a moment of excitement at receiving such a juicy story- child murder is good for ratings- before they learn who exactly said child is. Homura Akemi’s death is not exciting or outraging or horrifying- it’s expected. Bland.
An unfortunate occurrence, but not something to speculate over- like a fence blowing over after a particularly windy storm or getting splashed as a car drives by. Bad luck- but it was going to happen anyways.
Homura has no tearful friends to recount her memory, no distraught mother weeping on camera about her special little girl- no father enraged and up in arms, threatening her murderer on live television. She has a father who says a few rout lines about how devastated he is before he tries to sleep with one of the camera women, and a mother who smiles passively and whispers ‘no comment’ halfway across the world.
The truth is that Homura Akemi is fourteen, and quiet, and sleeping deeply all alone in her blank hospital room- the truth is that a nurse will enter her room to check on her and scream at the bullet hole going through her shattered skull. The truth is this- that nurse will be the only person to scream her name after she’s gone.
So Homura tucks the gun evenly inside her shield, heart beat steady and calm as she kills herself.
Well. Once she’s left the room and dropped her timestop- then she’ll have killed herself. But that’s just being pedantic.
Going to school is out of the question of course. Dead girls don’t generally get shot point blank in the head and then appear magically unharmed at a local middle school only hours later.
But even without that particular obstacle it still would be a fruitless endeavor- she doesn’t exactly look like your average fourteen-year-old anymore anyway.
She’s got enough magic to patch the most egregious holes up, but making them look like skin is a trick she can’t perform for long enough to get through an entire day at Mitakihara Middle School. Too many eyes on her, too many glass walls and not nearly enough places to hide the gruesome reality of her form.
So she does what she can with what she has- which is pretty much what she always does.
She puts on baggy concealing clothes, keeps her hood up and her face hidden under it and her hair. She wears gloves when she can, pants and high socks and boots that show nothing.
She still has some of her original skin left, but not nearly enough to convincingly play as human under anything other than the dimmest light and from far away.
It’s inconvenient.
She sits on rooftops, or behind the treeline, idly twisting her hair as she watches Madoka’s class struggle through gym or laugh behind their eccentric teachers back.
Sometimes she closes her eyes and imagines herself in that classroom, listening to the quiet scratching of pencils and subtle laughter between friends.
It’s a stupid daydream- impossible and illusionary- and unrealistic besides. The last time she’d gone to public school she’d hated it so much she would have done anything to get out of it.
She follows Madoka and Sayaka as they leave the building together, watching from the shadows as Miki teases Madoka with an evil cackle, and Madoka laughs helplessly and ducks her head bashfully.
They go to the mall like that, smiling and joking and totally comfortable around each other- happy.
Homura doesn’t remember the last time she was purely happy.
Sometimes she can subtly get them to leave before the Labyrinth forms under the mall, sometimes she has to be more heavy handed.
Pulling the fire alarm works in a pinch, and if all else fails she can simply knock them out and move them somewhere else- as distasteful as she finds it.
Today is the same as the today before it, the same as the today after it no doubt will be until she rots down into nothing, dies, turns, or finally keeps her promise. Her steps are methodical- precise, almost automated in familiarity.
She’s not relaxed- not really, but she’s as close as she ever gets to it- and she lets her sight stray from the ground briefly, taking in the muddled faces of the crowd, the shops, the noise.
Gold eyes meet her own.
It’s only for a second- for less than a second- nothing, no time at all. It’s coincidence, happenstance- a moment that is so inconsequential the other girl will no doubt forget about it instantly.
Still she turns, head down, teeth clenched, and walks as quickly as she can to the bathroom.
Her hands slip once, twice, on the metal of the handle as she opens it, and the voices and music and squeaking of shoes wash over her like screaming static, and maybe she hears someone call out after her, but probably she’s just imagining things, probably she’s just paranoid just like she always is.
The washroom is thankfully empty, and it was nothing, it was nothing- just because she recognized her didn’t mean anything- Mami didn’t even know her this timeline, hadn’t even butted heads with her over territory or grief seeds or two naïve potential contract-ees.
She was being silly, and stupid, and what was she doing panicking in here when she was supposed to be helping Madoka? What was she doing in here wasting time and ruining this timeline and fucking everything up like she always did-
The door opens behind her- and Homura realizes that she hadn’t even thought to hide in a stall like she used to from the other girls at school- that she’s done nothing but stare at the scuffed linoleum flooring with silently freaking out like an idiot.
Her skin crawls and she freezes and she needs to transform right now- she needs to transform right now and stop time and then run, everything will be fine if she does it right now- right now-
“Wait! I didn’t mean to- are you still- I-“ A hand lands on Homura’s shoulder, and she spins around without meaning to, her boots murdering the flooring with the sharpness of her movement.
Mami stares at her. She stares at Mami.
The other girl goes red, and immediately pulls her hand away from Homura’s shoulder- the spot tingles ever after her fingers are gone, despite the layers.
“Oh! Oh. I- I’m so sorry! I thought you were s-someone else- I- her- your hoodie just looks a lot like-“
Homura abruptly realizes her mistake. She’s wearing Kyouko’s hoodie. She’d given it to her in an early timeline for some innocuous reason or another, and Homura had dutifully stored it in her shield-space after that version of Kyoko had gotten smeared across the pavement in bloody chunks. Homura never really threw anything away that she stored in there- not when she usually found some use for everything, no matter how inconsequential.
As it was, it was easier to slip on barrowed clothing to hide her body than go out and steal some- she’d never even thought twice about it.
But the hoodie she’d chosen was dubiously one of a kind- a bland ruby red color, with the elbows patched mismatching hues and bright pink paint splotched hopelessly on the back. The front had a panda designed on it, but the eyes were blacked out creepily in a manner she was sure Kyouko had found amusing.
It wasn’t exactly sold like this.
And with her hood up, and all her skin and hair covered- and then she’d ran away- which must have made Mami go from hopeful to convinced- she’d dug her own grave by panicking.
Mami had stopped talking, and was now just staring at her with her mouth slightly open and eyes wide.
Oh.
Homura frantically patted her right cheek with her hand and was met with a wet warmth. Her glove came back covered in blood.
Her magic. She’d completely forgotten to keep her illusion up!
Fuck.
“-You- oh my god.” Mami was pale, skin almost sickly- and her hands covered her mouth with enough force that it had to be physically painful.
Homura flinched, despite herself, the movement sending her hood flying off her head- and Homura froze.
Mami stumbled backwards with a pained noise, barely keeping herself up with her hand against a wall, eyes wide and horrified.
Homura found herself taking her own shaky steps backward in automatic response, trying fruitlessly to cover the right side of her face with her remaining hair, irrational tears gathering in her good eye- despite the fact that she didn’t care how ugly she looked anymore, or how inhuman, or what Mami thought of her, or anyone else or about the way that her teeth and tongue were visible on that side or how her skull probably shone underneath the artificial light or how her muscle probably bulged and twitched grotesquely with no flesh to cover it or-
“Y-you’re a magical girl- right? You have to be- you- how- how are you still alive?” Mami stuttered, voice unsarcastically shaken and childish.
(-voice fluttering like a bird’s spastic wings- “where did my legs go Homura- why can’t I- Homura why can’t I-)
This wasn’t supposed to happen! Mami was supposed to hate her and fear her because Homura didn’t know how not to make her do otherwise anymore- she wasn’t supposed to see- wasn’t supposed to know- how had she messed everything up so horribly already?
“Y-your head- w-what did- how are you- magic can’t heal that!” Mami cried, and then inexplicably started to come towards her for some reason, tears dripping from her eyes.
Homura stuttered like she hadn’t in forever, pressing herself backwards until she was flush against the bathroom wall.
What was she supposed to say?! She couldn’t tell her the truth- that her body was a vessel that she merely puppets, that her real soul had been pried from her like a blackened tooth from a bloody mouth, that she was a shambling testament to every close call and moment of personal agony she’d ever suffered?
That magic couldn’t heal that- not without running her dry- so she just…didn’t.
“I-I’m fine.” Was what she managed to mumble out, to an incredibly disbelieving audience.
“Your face is gone! I can see y-your skull! You-you’re missing a-an ear!” Mami somehow managed to sound aggressively disbelieving while also crying.
This wasn’t going anywhere that Homura could possibly save. She had to get out of here now.
Homura transformed with a violet flash, bringing her shield to bare in an instant and with a click-
Her shield shifted just in time for Mami to clamp a hand ironclad over her left arm.
Whereupon she screamed bloody murder when it was made apparent to her that Homura’s arm was less arm and more skeleton.
Time froze.