Archive of Our Own

Madoka Kaname, by all accounts, is a very normal young girl. Exceptionally so.

Her grades are good, but not outstanding. She has a handful of good friends, she is approachable, she doesn’t have trouble getting along with people, and she is loved greatly by those who are close to her, though she is not terribly popular. She is modest and polite, her personality is likable and pleasant, it doesn’t draw her much attention among her peers. If you asked her if she had any special talents, she would laugh, a bit somberly, and tell you not at all. She can be a bit klutzy, it makes her cry, but everyone else watches her with a fond exasperation. She is a good kid. If she were ever suddenly absent from the lives of the people around her, they would all feel a terrible grief, a terrible void in their souls, an overwhelming feeling that something important was missing. This is natural, of course.

She is loved. She is sweet. 

She is normal.

There is one thing that is quite a bit unusual about her, however. 

Madoka Kaname is afraid of light.

When she is a little girl, she is plagued by a very odd phenomenon. She is in kindergarten, and as such it is not something she dwells on as the attention of children that age is fleeting and sporadic. She is able to happily go about most of her everyday life without even remembering that it is something she is afflicted with.

But when night falls. When darkness is all around her, and her mind is free of thought as she drifts close to sleep, there appears an inexplicable light behind her eyelids.

One would think it would be reassuring. Light amid the dark is usually a comforting thing. One would think it a beacon, a bright beam that cuts through the shadows of open doorways and towering bookcases that hide within them the monsters imagined by the mind of a child not yet familiar with the world and afraid of the dark.

But Madoka has never been afraid of the dark, she knows there’s nothing there. 

There is very much something there in the light. What she feels from it is real.

It hurts. It’s impossibly bright and it makes her head ache with thoughts that she doesn’t understand. The light is vast and unending and invincible, and it is very far away from her but she is scared that it might be getting closer. 

She cries and stumbles into her parents bedroom where she takes refuge under their covers in between them. With their arms snug and warm around her as they whisper reassurances with hoarse, drowsy voices familiar and calm, she forgets the light is there. And when she forgets the light is there, then the light isn’t there anymore. That is the nature of how it manifests and disappears. It only exists for as long as Madoka believes it does. So, when her mind can settle in the warm relief of her parents’ embrace, the vision dissipates entirely, like a desert illusion that was never really there in the first place.

She forgets and then she remembers, but it’s okay because she forgets again, and so on and so forth, and it’s fine. She goes on with her life.

Everything is normal.

…

A few years go by, she’s a big girl now. Big girls don’t throw fits and sleep in their parents’ beds, they’re not supposed to anyway. She knows she’s too old for this, she’s going to be in middle school in just a few years, and she knows she needs to grow out of this soon, but she can’t imagine that honestly.

This. These feelings and thoughts that seem like the weight of the entire world and then some, they’re too much to handle alone.

She waits until her tears dry this time, she wipes them away entirely as her bare feet plod along the carpeted hallway.

She sees light and hears muted noise from the living room. She follows it and finds her parents snuggling on the couch, watching some drama on the TV. She silently hovers behind them for a few moments, staring at the dark silhouettes of the backs of their heads resting against each other. She squints, it takes her eyes a moment to adjust to the stark brightness of the screen in the otherwise unlit room.

The people on the screen are crying, one of them being a child. She hears goodbyes. It seems like a pretty sad story they’re watching.

“And what do you think you’re doing up this late, young lady?” Her mother says suddenly without even turning around.

She squeaks and tenses. 

Moms really do have eyes on the backs of their heads…

Junko snickers lightly. Both her parents glance back at her with kind smiles.

“Having trouble sleeping?” Her father asks softly.

There isn’t the slightest hint of irritation in his voice or in either of their eyes, but she averts her gaze down to her feet with a crease in her brow anyway.

“Um… yeah, a little…” Her small, high voice echoes through the room with high ceilings. She sounds like a baby to her own ears.

Junko waves a beckoning hand. “Get over here.”

So, she does. She crawls over their laps and fits herself into her comforting, grounding place cozily sheltered in the space that was in the middle of them. They were softer and warmer than her most snuggly plushies and ten times comfier than her bed and pillow could ever be. It was sad to her, that growing up meant not having this anymore. 

Junko fidgets with the remote. Changing the program to something entirely different. She puts on a cheesy sitcom with canned laughter. Something much more palatable for a child than the tragedy they’d been watching before.

“Sorry…” Madoka mumbles. She feels bad for interrupting.

“Ah, don’t worry about it. That show was bumming me out anyway.” She says as she ruffles the top of Madoka’s head. “Besides, I can understand why you’re nervous. If monsters come out from under your bed, you’re on your own in there. At least, I’ve got backup in my bedroom.” She jokes.

“Hehe, mama, I told you already, I’m not afraid of monsters.”

“Really~? Even me before I’ve had my coffee in the morning? Now, that’s a real monster.”

Madoka smiles proudly. “I’ve defeated that monster everytime.”

“Thank goodness you have. You’re my hero, Madoka! You save me from myself. Ha ha ha!”

“Hehe, it’s not very hard though…” Just make sure there’s a warm espresso waiting for her after ripping the curtains open. Madoka rests her head against her father’s chest, she already forgot why she couldn’t sleep. She was safe. Always safe with them around. “Not scary at all…”

She closes her eyes, and feels her father’s fingers cart through her hair, combing her fair locks straight. “So… what is it then?”

“Hm?” She peeks open an eye and looks up at him.

“What is it that’s scary? You never really tell us.”

She frowns in shame, there’s a reason for that. It’s because what’s scary to her shouldn’t be scary at all and it would sound ridiculous. Even when she was younger and didn’t care about sounding ridiculous, she still didn’t tell them because she could never quite figure out how to put it into words. She still doesn’t know if she can, really.

“Are you afraid of the dark? Or… do you have nightmares?” He tries gently, his voice as non-judgmental as can be.

“Well… I don’t think… they’re nightmares exactly. I don’t think I’m asleep when I…”

She has both of their attentions, they watch her intently and wait patiently for her to continue. She quickly comes to the conclusion that she should shrug it off again, just shake her head and assure them it’s nothing, no, they’re right, just nightmares probably, but Tomohisa speaks first.

“You might feel better if you talk about it. Sometimes that’s all you need to do and it won’t bother you so much anymore.”

Hmm, well…

“Well,” She swallows thickly, a bit shaky at the thought of talking about it, though she’s not sure why. “When I close my eyes and I’m just about to fall asleep, I kind of see… o-or I imagine-” She corrects because she must be imagining it, she must be. “A… light. A really, really bright light.” She states.

She looks between them, they blink after they realize that that’s the end of it, that’s what it is, that’s all. 

“Oh? Oh… hm…” Junko looks to be racking her brain at that one, probably trying to figure out why that would be such a big deal.

“Okay, and… what’s scary about the light, sweetie?”

That’s the hard question. “I’m… I don’t know… it’s just… big…” 

All-consuming would probably be a better way of putting it, but she hasn’t covered that term in class yet.

“Big…”

“Uh-huh… and bright, brighter than anything. The brightest light ever, and…”

And sometimes it feels like it’s… telling her things. But it’s not trying to talk to her, she doesn’t think… it’s more like it’s thinking her thoughts for her, or thinking thoughts that aren’t hers but putting them in her head anyway, or maybe they are her thoughts… but they aren’t. Maybe they aren’t even thoughts or ideas to begin with, maybe they’re just feelings or… a concept?

It doesn’t make sense, even to her. She really can’t put it into words.

“Brighter than anything…? Oh! The sun? Is it the sun you’re imagining?” Junko asks.

“Oh! Um…”

She guesses she never tried to put a name to whatever it was. She never tried to identify it as something recognizable because it was incomprehensible to her.

But, actually that might make sense.

Because there is another fear she has that she forgets about most of the time. She hadn’t even really felt it was a fear so much as it felt like a habit, but one she fell into without any rhyme or reason.

Sometimes, when she’s walking outside, and the sun is out, and the space around her is wide open and vast, she’ll hold onto her parents hands a little tighter, or if they aren’t around, she’ll hold onto whatever’s closest.

On those perfect clear days, when the obstructions of clouds or buildings or whatever else is absent, and the sky and sun seem closer, she holds on tight. 

Because for some reason, it makes her feel… weightless. Like she’s a balloon and if she’s not tethered to the ground in some way she’ll just float up and up and up and away from earth and away from everyone. 

It wasn’t even a thought she’s dwelled on in the past, she just held on as soon as the feeling came over her and went about her way.

But now that she thinks about it, maybe it really was the sun she was imagining. Maybe she was afraid of floating up into the sun and being burned up by it.

She hugs her legs to her chest, what a scary thought. “Maybe… the sun is a little scary. It’s made of fire… it would really hurt if I got burned by it.”

“Eh? But all you have to do to stop that from happening is to wear sunscreen. You’re the one who always wants to rush into the pool without it.”

“Mmm…” 

Her mother’s playfully accusatory words don’t quite reach her. With her head tucked in her arms she doesn’t see the look her parents give each other.

She feels a warm hand on her back.

“The sun won’t hurt you, Madoka. It’s too far away.”

“But…” Something is stinging behind her retinas. There’s a static dull glow that pulsates with energy and is trying to ignite to life, a devastating powerful life that would light her whole body on fire. “It feels close…” She whispers.

“It does feel close, doesn’t it? Like in the summertime, heh, it feels way too close sometimes. But really… it’s as close as it needs to be. It’s not too far away, and it’s not really too close either, it’s in juuust the right spot in the sky. You know why?”

“Why?” She asks, and she can barely hear her own voice over the noise in her head, a noise she can’t place. A voice or voices or the static of a radio station that’s too far away or the sound of every wave in the ocean or the sound of a busy highway or the sound of applause or the sound of plants growing. She doesn’t know which one of these sounds it is she’s hearing, maybe all of them at once.

“Because if Miss Sun were in any other spot in the sky none of us would be alive.”

She hears her mother’s words over the static. It stops when she looks up at her.

“Really?”

“Mhm, did you know, Madoka, if you spend too long inside and you don’t go outside and play underneath the sunshine, it can make you really sad?”  Tomohisa asks.

Madoka shakes her head.

“Sunshine has vitamin D in it, which makes us happy. Miss Sun is our friend. She gives us lots of wonderful gifts. She gives us warmth so we don’t get too cold. Miss Sun helps the plants grow too. If she wasn’t there you wouldn’t be able to eat any of the yummy tomatoes Papa grows. That would be no good, would it?” He continues.

Madoka vehemently shakes her head.

“And you know what else would happen if Miss Sun was gone?” Junko asks and the scary look in her eyes makes her nervous.

“Wh-What?”

“If she was gone then it would always be night time, and if it was always night time… it’d be your bedtime forever! Mwah ha ha ha!”

“Nooooo–!” Madoka squeals in horror, and giggles afterwards despite the horror because her mother starts tickling her while laughing maniacally. 

“Ha ha, so don’t take Miss Sun for granted, Madoka. She’s the reason we have daytime, the reason you can go to school in the morning and see your friends. She keeps us all happy and healthy, you and I, and every creature on Earth, big and small..”

Once Madoka catches her breath after her mother ceases her tickle attack, she hums in consideration. 

“And Madoka, don't worry about getting burned. She’s waaaay up there in the sky and she’s not going anywhere, and unless you’re planning on becoming an astronaut, you’re not going anywhere either. Miss Sun keeps her distance, she stays in her own space far away from touching us because she doesn’t want to hurt us.”

She… knows this. Yes, actually she already knew this. The light was never trying to hurt her, it was just there, the expanse of it overpowering to her senses. It was all the things the light was doing, comprehending them all at once was impossible and just so much it was frightening.

But all those things… they were good things.

That makes her feel better about it, she thinks.

“Hm… Miss Sun is really nice, isn’t she?” She leans back, all the tension that had stiffened her muscles uncomfortably taut starts to ease away. She closes her eyes.

“The nicest.”

Maybe the light isn’t so scary.

…

But it is still quite a lot for one small and growing mind to behold. 

A few more years pass, and she’s in middle school, finally. It’d felt like it took forever to finally get here. It’s her second year, and she’s finally back home in Japan again after stuttering her way through the last three years in an American school where she never quite felt like she assimilated properly. In truth, she likes her new uniform and thinks it looks cute on her, but she is far too modest to say that out loud. Her parents ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’ at her when she puts it on for the first time, and she fidgets and twiddles her thumbs in embarrassment under their adoring gazes. Tatsuya babbles incoherently in his father’s arms, but Tomohisa assures her that that was an affirmation that he thought she looked cute too. The blush across Madoka’s cheeks only deepens when her mother tells her that such an old fashion style reminds her of the outfits in the romance dramas she used to watch as a teenager, and that maybe this is a sign she’ll meet someone really special this year.

Madoka tells her to stop between the shields of her hands that cover her burning face. It hides her smile too, though. Despite her protests, she is actually quite excited by her mother’s words.

She hopes she’s right. She hopes something romantic and life changing like that will happen to her soon. Her soulmate… what kind of soulmate would she have, she wonders, as all girls her age wonder.

Because she’s normal.

And because she’s normal, of course, it’s probably far more likely that nothing spectacular like a thrilling romance will happen the moment she steps foot in her new school.

It’s a little disappointing, but she figures she shouldn’t get her hopes up. She’s not elegant and popular like Hitomi, she’s not cool like Sayaka. She doesn’t think she’s all that good at ‘going about as if she has secret admirers’ like her mother told her to. She doesn’t think she pulls it off very well.

She tries her best always, regardless. And though that sometimes ends up with her face planting on the ground in gym class or with passable grades in the classes she finds hardest but nowhere near the top of the board, still, she never gives up.

She has something that encourages a little more now, after all.

Though she recognizes it for the simple, friendly story that served the purpose of easing the mind of frightened child that it was, her parents' words, about the fictitiously sentient and benevolent-spirited Miss Sun, stuck with her all these years. She liked the image of the endlessly giving and merciful being that her parents had painted a picture of in her mind. 

As she grew she would think back on that story, and she would think of how she would like to grow into a person like Miss Sun.

She doesn’t know what the light is. Maybe it’s the sun, maybe it isn’t. It still gives her a headache if she settles in its presence for too long, sometimes she feels like she’s far away from her body when the afterimage of it flickers away, and lately she gets the feeling that its message or purpose is becoming a bit clearer to her, she remembers having that thought when she’s in its presence, but she can never remember for the life of her just what she’d come to understand when she returns to the reality outside of her mind. It’s a little scary still, but she knows now for sure that she’ll be okay. She doesn’t remember everything, but the echoes of the feeling it leaves behind linger, and they aren’t bad feelings at all. But sometimes her inability to grasp and comprehend those feelings can border on agonizing.

It is easier to see in the shadows of her room when her grip on consciousness slackens, in the dark scene that speeds past her when her parents drive past the city at night, sometimes all it takes is closing her eyes… or thinking about it, though she doesn’t quite remember how to think about it once it passes, it’s there. More so than it used to be, which considering how much less afraid she is of it, is surprising. 

But eventually she realizes that might be exactly why.

The latency of this existence flares up particularly when she is struggling with something, when her friends have problems that she doesn’t know how to solve, when she can’t figure out how to stop Tatsuya from crying, when she sees a student, ethereally, almost inhumanly beautiful and with a broken aura that she is utterly drawn to, so inexplicably drawn to her it makes her feel like her chest is ripping open whenever she looks at her, wearing that wide smile, the kind of smile that no one should ever wear, full of pain and nothing else, a girl with dark hair and even darker look in her eyes who acts in a way that she doesn’t understand at all.

Whenever she feels so completely helpless, when she wants to help , all she wants to do is help, she knows she needs her help, she can feel it, but she feels too powerless to move, that is when she becomes painfully aware of the light.

The light like the sun inside of her that could help if she had a grasp on it, but she knows she’s not strong enough. It’s closer, but it’s too far away still and she doesn’t have the strength to reach it-

“Help me!”

A voice she’s never heard before calls out to her.

“Help me… Madoka!”

The voice is calling out to her. But… it sounds like it’s coming from inside her head. Nothing like the mysterious and numerous noises from the light she’s heard before, no, this voice was distinct, detached, very much its own.

“Madoka, are you alright?” A muffled voice in the real world asks.

She slips off the headphones she had been using to listen to a sample of a cheery pop song at the music shop and turns to Sayaka.

“Ah… yeah… I’m fine, I just-”

“Help me!”

“I’ll be right back.” She says cryptically as she takes off without explanation.

“Hey, Madoka!”

She’ll explain to Sayaka later… if she even can. The tone of the voice convinces her that this is an urgent matter, she can’t waste any time. Someone is in trouble and she’s not sure if she’ll be able to help, but she wants to, she’ll at least try the best that she can.

…

“Madoka Kaname.”

Oh no. It’s a cat. A little cat and it looks hurt.

“It’s you.”

It shakily rises to its feet, its voice tremoring weakly with it. It has a big fluffy tail that drags on the ground behind it.

Oh, so it wasn’t a cat? A fox, perhaps.

“Finally.”

It looks up at her. 

Its eyes are round and wide and red.

So, not a fox either. 

A… white rat, then, she supposes.

“I need your help.”

Actually, it doesn’t look like any creature she’s ever seen before. She’s not sure what it is, she’s not sure what she’s looking at.

But that doesn’t matter, this little one needs help whatever it is.

“Of course!” She kneels before it and slowly extends an open non-threatening hand. Her father always told her to stop and let the animal come to you before you approach it so as to not scare it away. “What do you need?” She asks softly.

It limps its way over to her, the lacerations all along its unkempt, scraggly white fur become apparent as blood runs down its trembling limbs as it walks, staining its fur a sickly pink. Madoka’s heart aches at the sight of it, it looked like someone had lashed out at it. How could anyone hurt such a sweet and innocent creature? She can’t fathom it.

As it stumbles closer, she realizes through the initial panic of seeing a hurt creature, just how unusual said creature is. Of course, aside from the obvious fact that it appears to be communicating with her telepathically, she really cannot identify what this animal is. An odd red oval pattern on its back, golden rings almost like the halos of an angel around either of its long ears. She’s never seen anything quite like it in her entire life.

So, that makes it even more odd, when something like déjà vu hits her in this moment.

“Madoka Kaname. I would like you… to make a contract with me.”

The creature looks around itself then suddenly, as if it expects something to jump out at it.

It continues hurriedly. Almost mechanically.

“I can grant you one wish. If you make a wish, your soul gem will be created and from then on you will be duty bound to fight wraiths and witches as a magical girl.”

“Wait, what, I-”

“Whatever desire you wish to be granted can come true. As a magical girl, you will become strong. You will be strong enough to protect everyone you love. You will be strong enough to save me.”

“I-”

Something is burning. 

She thinks she sees gold.

“Please, Madoka Kaname.” Somehow the voice sounds desperate and hollow at the same time. “You are my last hope. You are the hope of the entire universe. You can finally become the savior that you never thought you were strong enough to become if you say yes. You can inspire hope in everyone, you can be the salvation of every soul you touch.”

“I… I want that. More than anything… I want to… return to that…” 

Very suddenly.

Like being dropped out into open air out of nowhere.

Reality is fluid.

Nothing is solid under her feet. The light has forced itself to the forefront of her mind, she doesn’t know anything else in this moment, except for how to reach out for it.

“Then return to your true form, Madoka. Make a contract with me and I can reunite you with your power, reunite you with your wish, reunite you with the one thing you cherish the most. Become the embodiment of hope once more.”

“I will. I… will…”

She lifts her hand out, a singular conviction moving her body for her.

There is a light just ahead of her.

Finally, it is within her grasp.

The light embraces her, wraps its warm arms around her and finally she’s back.

She smiles because she kisses her forehead.

The light becomes her.

She’s happy again, truly.

~

Sayaka Miki, by most accounts, is a very normal young girl. Yes, most accounts, not all accounts. Hitomi has made a few unintentionally rude comments about how unusual of a girl she is, how oddly unladylike she can be at times. Sayaka could only sigh at those remarks, she knows it's a byproduct of the girl’s upbringing. She knows Hitomi doesn’t mean ill, not like the other people who’ve said similar things. Hitomi, in her sheltered and posh little existence, is just genuinely confused and worried for her well being when exposed to what was a groundbreaking way of life according to her worldview.

Hitomi knows that Sayaka is a good person and vice versa, they’ve been close friends all these years for a reason. They perhaps even became a little closer than they were initially while Madoka was absent for three years. The trio of childhood friends was disrupted, it was quite lonely. So, they’d spent more time together.

Sayaka loves her good friend Hitomi.

Sayaka loves her good friend Kyosuke too.

She’s glad they make each other happy.

…

Sayaka Miki is a normal girl.

But lately, something has been off.

She’s afraid of drowning.

She hasn’t gone swimming anytime recently. She’s only sat in her bathtub.

Still, she’s unnerved when she does. It still feels as if, despite how shallow the water is, that something could pull her deep, deep down, down where no light reaches. Something could submerge her entirely and if it did, she would never be able to make it back up for air.

It’s a ridiculous thought, she’s being ridiculous, she’s being stupid. She gulps in air, pinches her nose, and ducks her head beneath the suds.

The water is warm not cold, soapy not salty, clean not tainted.

She hears something anyway.

She knows what it is under the water that’s trying to steal her away.

It’s a mermaid.

But not a beautiful mermaid with long hair to comb and a tail with scales that glisten like diamonds from the fairytales.

This mermaid is ugly and selfish so she hides herself in the dark deep so she can’t be seen by others. But Sayaka can see her now, she can see the siren hiding in the muddy depths of her soul.

The siren sings to her. This is how she first becomes aware that she is with her. Its voice is high and mournful like a violin that hasn’t been tuned properly.

Kyosuke had shown her how to tune a violin once.

She doesn’t fight it at this point. The salt of her tears and the salt of the water she’s sinking in are one and the same.

The deeper she sinks, the more beautiful the voice starts to sound. The beauty of it is an illusion of malevolent magic she’s sure, but she can hardly hear her own thoughts over the powerful swells of the underwater orchestra filling her ears. 

This deceptively beautiful sound, yes, deceptive, a lie, an absolute pathetic wail of sorrow that had the nerve to call itself a symphony, it’s everything to her now.

There is no light here.

…

Until there is.

“Sayaka-chan, it’s okay. You can see now.”

And when she opens her eyes, she can see. There is light.

A very, very, bright golden light.

Ah, Madoka remembers.

And because Madoka remembers, she does too.

Sayaka looks down at herself. She’s donned in the blue armor she’s always known. She sees her reflection in the big puddle of water she’s standing in. Sayaka’s reflection is Sayaka, of course: a mermaid.

All the despair and hopelessness that had brought the witch into being feels instantly far away from her, gone almost as soon as they arrived, she's already far past and above those thoughts, as if they were someone else’s sorrows. 

Madoka steps forward, disturbing the image in the water. 

Madoka’s every footstep creates what looks like a burst of stardust under the soles of her angelic, winged white heels.

There is a little girl with equally angelically white hair giggling and splashing in the puddle, running joyful circles around them.

“We’re back.” Sayaka states. Back to business as usual then, now how is that?

She remembers a demon. That is the one thing she had never forgotten, she’d remembered shouting that promise to herself before she was thrown into the demon’s waking dream.

“For now.” Madoka says quietly. 

“Oh? Someone trying to drag us down again?” Sayaka asks with a malice that she can’t hide. Madoka looks away.

Before she had remembered, after the picture of the truth in her mind was reduced to running paint that morphed the image of reality into something impossible to make out, she’d only had that one confirmation to go off of. The demon is not to be trusted. The way she looked at Madoka, she couldn’t wrap her head around what it was, a look like she wanted to eat her alive. 

Sayaka had thought initially it was hatred. 

She had convinced herself that this glaring, smirking, chuckling demon hated innocent little Madoka simply for being just that, innocent and pure and kind in a way that she could never be, in a way the opposite of her, in a way that she must detest. Sayaka was weary of her, overprotective of Madoka whenever Homura slinked in the shadows about them, boring eyes that Sayaka thought looked dangerously predatory into Madoka’s fretting face. She could never understand how Madoka could never agree with her, never concede that she wasn’t anything other than an absolute villain. She thought the hatred in Homura’s eyes quite obvious.

She knows now that she couldn’t have been more wrong.

She doesn’t know if the truth is any worse or better though.

“Technically, you’re still down for the count.” A voice says beside her. 

Sayaka narrows her eyes when she sees who the voice belongs to. “Incubator…”

The creature casually laps at his bloody wounds as he speaks. “Though you’ve regained some of your powers from your previous incarnations, this temporary awakening will by no means last as things are. The current laws of the universe we are in now prohibit you from completely reuniting with your previous forms. The universe as it is, or by whom it is being led, is holding those forms hostage. Since the power of Madoka’s original wish was so unfathomably strong and its effects were felt across multiple timelines, the mere memory of that invincible hope pertains just enough karmic destiny in this one to allow you spotty glimpses of its power.”

He trots over, his steps steady, not looking the least bit in pain from the cuts he’s covered in. “But, of course, that power is incomplete. However, if Madoka were to make a contract with me, as she has yet to do so in this timeline, I could return her to her full power. She could return things to their former order-”

“Well, that sounds very convenient, Incubator. I’m sure you don’t have any ulterior motives for wanting such an arrangement at all.” Sayaka mutters.

“Correct, I do not.” Kyubey responds.

“Oh, please…”

“Make no mistake,” He starts, his ears twitching. “You and I are not so at odds with each other anymore. We are also unsatisfied by the current state of things. This constant and sudden flux of universal systems makes harvesting emotional energy far too unpredictable and dangerous to pursue consistently. If there is any way we can help you abolish the current system of existence, we will do our utmost. We’d really like to leave Earth as soon as possible to search for alternative energy procurement methods.”

Sayaka is utterly taken aback by his words. “What…? But… if you left, then there wouldn’t be any magical girls… and if there aren’t any magical girls protecting Earth from beings of despair then…”

Sayaka feels a hand take hers. 

“Sayaka-chan, don’t worry about the Incubator’s words right now, we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. There’s something else we need to take care of first.”

“Homura Akemi is who you’re referring to, correct?” Kyubey butts into the conversation uninvited once again. “If you need to take care of her first, then making a contract with me would be wise. I don’t know what she’s planning, but I know she has something in mind for you. She wouldn’t let me approach you before, but, one day, she suddenly let me talk to you without interfering. It doesn’t sit right with me. You might not stand a chance against her now, not if your powers were to suddenly give out on you as they very well might, but if we contract you would gain the ability to completely overpower her. Killing her and restoring proper order would be easy!” He says with the practiced, optimistic lilt to his voice, completely failing to even notice how dark his words were.

Madoka looks over at him with burning eyes, close to anger in a way that her expression nearly never is. She shuts her eyes, ignores him, and returns her firm gaze to Sayaka.

“I have a plan, Sayaka-chan, to settle this mercifully.”

She always does. Sayaka smiles at her with a furrowed brow.

“I don’t understand at all.” Kyubey says as he scratches his ear with his hind leg, his tail swishes quite hurriedly. “You and Homura Akemi are enemies, are you not? You are completely ideologically opposed. In all of human history, such circumstances have always produced a conflict where either side was determined to eliminate each other. Yet another illogical anomaly born of emotion…”

Both girls are tuning him out at this point.

“And, I know what you're thinking, I can tell by the look on your face.” Madoka continues. She takes Sayaka’s hand, looks at her pleadingly. “But I want you to trust me. I know that I can still reach her. I-”

“Okay.”

“Ah-”

“What? You’re the boss lady, what you say goes. I’m not gonna try to be a hero, I know better by now, obviously.” She says with a laugh at Madoka’s surprise. Her eyes soften then. “Honestly, you think I’d doubt you? I’m aware you know what you’re doing at this point, I’d be a big idiot if I didn’t, hehe!” She says with a wink.

“Sayaka-chan…” Madoka’s golden eyes, with a thousand stars and universes and lives behind them glisten with a bright gratitude.

Amazing to Sayaka, how she’s stayed the same in the little ways even after eternity.

“Go get her then!”

“Ah-!”

Sayaka grips her shoulder and turns her around, pushing her forward gently in an encouraging gesture. She chuckles, geez, what a pain being god’s assistant is, especially this god, making everything harder than it needs to be. This one once sent her strongest soldiers to earth so a cat didn’t get run over, it’s no surprise to her that she-

Sayaka’s thoughts screech to a halt when she looks up in the sky at what’s waiting for Madoka. Seeing that smile is all it takes to overwhelm her positive thoughts with a horribly bad feeling about this. 

“Thank you, Sayaka-chan.” Madoka says soberly. “I will.”

She glances back at her.

“I want you to find Kyoko-chan. I want you two to protect the city, shield it.”

“From… from what?”

Mercifully, she said.

Madoka’s pained look is all the answer she needs. She should have figured, Madoka isn’t naive. There’s no other option. The demon is on the other side of the war, peace talks are useless to hold with someone who isn’t listening.

What an awful situation.

“Oof-!”

The thick tension dissolves in the air when little Nagisa runs face first into Madoka. 

“Oh, I’m soo sorry! Excuse me, excuse me,” Nagisa says as she straightens the disturbed lacey frills of Madoka’s white dress, completely unaware of what’s going on around her. She wraps her arms around Madoka with a polite smile. “Um, Miss Madoka, may I ask that we have our snacktime now, please?”

“Al-most!” Madoka says cheerily as she taps the tip of Nagisa’s nose. She kneels down in front of Nagisa and puts a hand on her shoulder. “But first you need to do one little job for me.”

“Ah… but I’m not sure I can do my very best on an empty stomach…”

“Oh, but there will be an even greater reward if you tough it out!”

“Eh? What, what?” She asks, bouncing on her heels excitedly.

“Listen, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to find Mami-san, and help her protect everyone. But then afterwards, if you do a really, really good job, and If you ask really, really nicely, she might make your snack, and she makes the best snacks in the world, you know, even better than mine! She might even make you a cheesecake if you’re lucky!”

Nagisa gasps in wonderment, her face distorting with a crazed witchly delight.

“Cheesecaaaaaaaaake!” And she’s gone.

Charlotte bursting from her mouth and flying down the street, looping through the air gleefully.

Madoka laughs lightly as she rises to her feet, her smile falls when she’s up.

She looks away.

“I’ll be off now. Take care.”

Sayaka watches as transparent chiffon-like wings ascend before her. She looks fragile, like nothing sturdier than an intricate doily that could be crushed in someone’s palm. 

She shuts her eyes tight and shakes her head. That’s not who Madoka is. She’s strong, in will more than anything. She’s not at all innocent, she’s seen the worst of this world and countless others, she’s wise to it all. She’s going to be okay.

She’s going to be okay.

Sayaka turns and runs the opposite direction, knowing there’s no time to waste here.

She knows Madoka will be fine, because, despite everything, she knows those two love each other. The very demon’s motivations were out of loving Madoka… so she knows she would never hurt her.

She trusts Madoka… 

Homura… she…

She watches Oktavia twist in the water beneath her.

They won’t hurt each other, they can’t really. They have the best intentions for each other. They want to help each other more than anything. She knows Madoka will hold onto that feeling… if she just holds onto that feeling then she can’t… she can't possibly…

Okatavia von Seckendorff is looking up at her now. Her still image a phantom following Sayaka atop the surface of the water.

Her footsteps splash though the water. 

For a moment, she feels as if her footsteps are starting to sink into the depths that aren't really there. She runs, breathlessly fast, outrunning the sinking feeling that is getting more severe with every step.

“Augh-!” She stumbles but doesn’t fall when her feet hit solid ground, beyond the expanse of the puddle now, Okatavia’s reflection beneath her has vanished completely, all that looks up at her now is the solid concrete of the road she continues to hurry down.

~

Kyoko Sakura is a very normal young girl. Sure, she’s normal. What, you don’t think she’s normal? You wanna make something of it, huh, you wanna say that to her face? She’ll blast you away if you look at her funny, she doesn’t have time to listen to your nonsense.

No time at all for nonsense, she’s got better things to do. 

So, what is this? Is this really happening? Why did it have to happen while she was here of all times? She thought Mitakihara would be child’s play while Mami was playing… mommy, and there was all this fresh meat. It was bound to be witch city, with all these losers focusing their efforts on familiars still, it was a perfect time for her to swoop in and swipe the good shit while the rest of the girls in the city were playing house. A coupla newbie magical girls that were way in over their heads, maybe another if Mami got her way after pestering the timid little mouse of a girl that was Madoka Kaname. 

Just a timid, unassuming little girl. 

Sayaka had been the one who had stolen her attention for the most part, egging her on was Kyoko’s concern. She honestly hadn’t thought much of Madoka, despite Kyubey’s assertions of her potential, she had barely even heard those little comments, barely paid them any mind. She hardly knew her, she was just that weird kid who tagged along and wanted everyone to make friendship bracelets with each other and frolic in flower fields holding hands or whatever. At a glance, she didn’t think she had it in her.

So, she really can’t believe what she’s seeing in front of her right now.

…

Kyoko Sakura was a normal child of faith.

She was afraid of God.

Her father had put that fear in her from the very beginning. God is watching you. God knows your heart better than you do. God sees all that you do. God is judging your every move.

In the Sakura household, fear and love were taught to be inseparable things. 

Kyoko had a hunch from the beginning. She had an idea that she was beyond being saved when she was fairly young. She liked the idea that one day she would do something wonderful that would make up for what an awful child she was.

The only thing she ended up confirming in the end was that she really was beyond help, from a higher power or otherwise. Too far gone to deserve a happy dream. She was a wretched soul from the start, she thinks. 

That’s fine. Being an unabashedly wretched soul is actually pretty fun once you commit to the bit. 

She figured out that God isn’t real, anyway. Just someone her father invented to tell him that he was always right.

So, it takes her quite a bit by surprise when she sees God before her very eyes, and that God herself is none other than Madoka Kaname, the kid a couple desks down who fell on her face in P.E. on the first day of school. 

Yeah, her dad was a bit off on his interpretation. She guesses none of the holy texts really mentioned pink hair though.

Yeah, no, this is stupid. This is stupider than she could’ve ever imagined. 

Whatever, this city is probably doomed. Satan and God are having a fight right in the middle of it. 

All of this.

Not her problem.

Nope, she’s going back to Kazamino, where things are boring and quiet, but at least Armageddon isn’t happening there. 

“Kyoko!”

Sayaka Miki calls out to her. 

She looks up, sees her running toward her. She doesn’t stop walking.

“Yo, pretty crazy night, huh? With the rapture upon us and all that-?”

“Kyoko! I need your help!” She says breathlessly as she comes to a stop in front of her. “You can use magic that makes latticework into a sort of barrier, right?”

“Yeah.” She walks past her. Sayaka trails her.

“I need you to set that up all around the city.”

“Hah!” Oh, she can’t believe her eyes tonight and she can’t believe her ears either. “Are you out of your mind?” She turns on her heel to give her a cruel grin. “Why the hell would I expend that much magic, for what exactly?”

“To protect everyone from the debris of the fight that’s going on. You see, there’s this fight between-”

“Yeah, I know about the fight going on, Sayaka! I didn’t miss it! I see fucking swan lake going on in the sky, God and the devil in tutus is pretty hard to miss-!”

Sayaka grips the front of her shirt. “Fuck you, Kyoko! Can you try to listen to someone else for once?!”

Kyoko yanks herself out of her grip. “No! I’m not wasting MY magic on useless civilians, I’m not wasting MY magic on anyone other than myself! This is your city, not mine! This has nothing to do with me!” She stomps ahead, the puddle of freshly fallen rain beneath her feet splashing her boots. 

Sayaka is silent as she stomps away. Thank god, has she finally given up-?

“Is me turning into a witch or dying the only way I can ever get through to you…?” She mutters almost too quietly for her to hear. “Is that the only time you ever want us to be anything? Only by the time it’s too late?”

Kyoko halts completely. “Sayaka… what the hell is wrong with you tonight?” She starts to turn toward her. “You’re not making any sens-”

The tip of Sayaka’s sword is at Kyoko’s throat in an instant.

“Because if that’s the case, then fine. I’ll convince you by becoming a witch.”

“Ah-what-?!” She has to tilt her head back so that Sayaka’s sword doesn’t slice right into her jugular, but out of the corner of her eye she saw it. In the reflection of the puddle beneath her feet, she saw a mermaid…

Then, in the next second, she’s being drenched by an absolute tidal wave, because something ginormous bursts out of the water. Utterly disoriented by the impossible wake that crashes against her, she falls on her backside. She transforms the next second, sputtering on water as she does. 

What is happening?! There was nothing but a shallow puddle of rain, where was all this water coming from and… as she spits it out… why does it taste like saltwater?

She jumps to her feet and takes a fighting stance. A mermaid witch towers before her. How? Her soul gem hadn’t detected that she was anywhere near close to a ward, how could a witch appear this suddenly. And Sayaka-

“Sayaka?! Where are you?! Saya-”

She looks up. 

Sayaka is in the witch’s hand. But she isn’t in her grasp, she’s standing atop it. Sayaka swipes her sword forward, the witch mimics the motion with hers.

Kyoko backs away with wide eyes. “No way… you’re controlling it…?”

“No, we are one and the same.”

“H-?!”

A crack erupts across the sky, interrupting her question. Stray arrows come right at them. Sayaka turns with her witch and swipes them away before she’s hit as best she can, she gets nicked a few times, unable to parry the sheer number of them. All Kyoko can do is stand in disbelief under the witch’s colossal shadow as it shields her from the onslaught.

When the attack ceases, Sayaka takes a knee.

“This is a matter of life and death for many people, including you, Kyoko. This is bigger than you, just like Walpurgisnacht, and if you came here to defeat her with Mami-san-”

“How did you-?!”

“Then this is just as much of your concern. You wanna make up with her, you wanna stop me from ending up making the mistakes you did, I know that’s the real reason you’re here, no matter what your stubborn pride makes you say to us.”

The witch lowers her hand, lets Sayaka and Kyoko stand eye to eye.

“So don’t beat around the bush before it's too late this time, you hardass. Let’s cut to the chase.”

Sayaka holds out a hand.

Kyoko is angry beyond words. Who does she think she is? Reading her like a book out loud like that. She has half a mind to slap her in the face and march away.

But…

This is serious, isn’t it? She’s right. This girl who is controlling, or according to her, is a witch and knows things about her that she would never be caught dead admitting to anyone, not Mami in the past, hardly even herself, this girl who she’s known for months but feels like she’s known for years, this really is bigger than her. 

God is real and right in front of her. She’d nearly forgotten her faith.

Sayaka continues to hold out her hand, her gaze unwavering.

In response, Kyoko holds out her spear. She slams the base of it against the ground and black and red latticework paint every inch of the skies above their heads.

…

Kyoko ravenously stuffs her face with candy bars, and mini packaged cakes, and cookies. Each bite more frantic than the last.

“Slow down, you’re gonna choke.”

“I can’t help it, man. I’m a stress eater, and I’m not exactly feelin’ all that relaxed right now!”

Sayaka shrugs as if she hadn’t just explained the complicated and horrific fate of magical girls' existences of the past, past timelines, and the present. They were complacently sitting in the palm of a witch, which, as she has just been informed, is the ultimate fate of all magical girls, because the devil pulled God down from heaven, and said God is fighting for her world back right in front of her, but at like half power or less.

“It’s the truth. I just thought you had a right to know.”

Kyoko eyes her, her somber downcast expression, she’s not even watching the lightshow. Kyoko can’t blame her. With her legs crossed and her hands behind her head, she leans back and looks up at the witch. She’s stone still, but she can still hear the creak of old armor as she minutely sways, her mask looks impenetrable. 

She slips a pack of Pocky out of her pocket, places one in her mouth, and offers the open box to Sayaka

“Want one?”

For some reason, Sayaka’s face sours at that comment. She takes one anyway.

A beat of silence. Kyoko tries to figure out what it means.

“You’ve said that to me before you know?”

“Hm?” Kyoko has nearly already forgotten what it was she even said.

Sayaka smirks, but there’s too much wistfulness in her expression for Kyoko’s liking. “On the rare occasion that you’re nice, you always offered me one… when we stop butting heads, and start realizing we’re not all that different. But… you don’t remember all those other times, do you? You don’t remember any of it… You never got to the point of being taken by The Law of the Cycle anytime in the past, so it makes sense your memories of that timeline wouldn’t come back, right? ”

She doesn’t seem to actually be asking, just stating what she already knows, so Kyoko doesn’t answer.

Sayaka turns on her side toward her. “Maybe soon… if Madoka wins-I mean, if she works things out with Homura, maybe then you’ll remember. Yeah… the world will go back to how it was.”

Sayaka takes her hand. 

“M-Maybe-”

“But even then,” Sayaka’s head hangs low, her hair hides her face. “If The Law of the Cycles is restored, I’ll just have to leave you behind again.”

“...” Kyoko squeezes her hand. “But not for good, right?”

She looks up at her. “...Right…”

They both sit up. There are beady eyes of doll children glaring down at them past the lattice, giggling and clawing at it. They mockingly drop tomatoes through the spaces in between and shriek with laughter when they splatter into mush against the ground, watching it makes Kyoko grind her teeth, but she knows better than to fall for it.

Energy like hot black tar, streaks across the sky, whining like a jet when it does.

Another clash. Another tremor.

“That’s not going to happen either though, is it?” Sayaka says darkly. 

The witch’s armor starts to creak a bit louder.

“...”

Kyoko slaps Sayaka hard on the back.

“Ow! What was that for?! You beating me while I’m down?”

“Come on, Sayaka, what kind of angel are you?”

“Pfft, angel, I’m not-”

“God’s assistant, angel, whatever you wanna call it don’t matter. As an angel, you’re supposed to have more faith in God than anyone. What are ya gonna do when you get back up there in Heaven after you doubted her so much?”

“I-I’m not doubting her! I just… I don’t see how they could possibly…”

Kyoko sighs through her nose. “Well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. When I get up there in Heaven, I’m totally gonna kick your ass at the angel thing. I’ll be a way better angel than you!”

She smiles up at the pink flames that color the sky.

“Because I’m gonna have faith in God till the very end!”

She used to be scared of God. That thought makes her want to laugh now, now that she knows that scrawny little dork was God all along. It’s reassuring, in a way that she won’t say out loud. But knowing the real God was just a girl who struggled, who was unsure of what the right thing to do with herself was, a girl who wants to save those she loves, a girl who was a little bit like her all along, it makes her feel better about all this.

“Hmph!” Sayaka smiles, genuinely, thank goodness. “As if I’m gonna let you beat me there! I’ve been Madoka’s number one supporter from the beginning, so bring it on!”

She punches her arm, and Sayaka bumps her shoulder against hers and Kyoko laughs with her.

She feels like she’s regained a bit of purpose, her faith in God is stronger than ever.

~ 

Mami Tomoe is a very normal young girl. Though some may argue that her impressive diligence, her attentive strategies and research into battles, and her unwavering sense of responsibility to be the best caretaker to her underclassmen that she can possibly be even under her trying circumstances makes her special. Yes, those qualities that everyone looks up to, she takes great pride in them. She feels insurmountably fulfilled and reassured by her role as a leader. She wants nothing more than to be a rock, a pillar of reliability and comfort to her precious friends. That conviction is absolutely everything to her.

Happy and proud and calm she is… always…

Mami Tomoe has a fear of choking.

While she is elegantly drinking her warm, aromatic tea, when she lifts a piece of fluffy and creamy cake to her lips and takes a bite, she worries in these moments, these moments which aren’t the least bit significant, but are absurdly critical to her.

It is essential that it all goes down easily, all goes down the right way, and she remains a perfect picture of calm contentment.

If she choked, that image would shatter.

She would gasp for air.

Tears would collect in her eyes.

Everyone would look to her, perhaps rush to pat her on the back. Worry in their eyes. 

She wouldn’t be able to save face and reassure them with a smile. 

She can’t do that. She can’t falter in front of them, not the slightest bit. 

She can’t choke.

…

Right now, it feels like she’s suffocating.

She had woven bright gold ribbons around the tops of buildings, a protective knitting to prevent anything currently whipping through the sky from hurtling earthbound and destroying anything. She had done so even before Nagisa had arrived to tell her she should. She looks up at the solid yellow lines she’d taken the time to layer over themselves, making the bindings tight and sturdy. Hopefully sturdy enough to keep anything up there from getting down here.

Nagisa assures her with cute, modest confidence that it will be before she starts to water at the mouth and coo about how it all looked like yummy, giant string cheese dangling over them.

Nagisa had told her everything then.

Nagisa… her sweet little Nagisa whom she loves like family in a way that mended her grieving heart more than she ever thought possible. Nagisa who was terribly reserved for her age but still charmingly childish in the way that she should be. Never selfish, never asking for very much at all, but always eager for the gift of sweets that Mami was always ready and willing to provide. Mami loved to spoil her. She could never be spoiled rotten. She was too sweet for that.

This sweetness could never turn sour, so she doesn’t understand.

She doesn’t understand what’s happening at all.

Or maybe the real problem is that she understands it all too well.

All she’s been doing this whole time is leading another precious student down the path of destruction, hasn’t she? 

This happens every time, doesn’t it? And if what Nagisa said was true, then it was inevitable all along. 

She’s not capable of saving anyone. Not even herself anymore, her wish was doomed to perish from the start.

This was the truth from the beginning. Everything she’s fought for was a lie.

Witches.

They won’t exist anymore, as soon as “Madoka makes friends with the scary girl again” Nagisa had told her.

But through the yellow bindings overhead that start to droop under the weight of the truth, she can see what’s really going to happen.

She sees light and dark, unwavering, unchangeable. Neither of them are going to give up, they are going to cling to their beliefs till their dying breaths, those convictions, those wishes are everything to them. The love they have for each other is everything to them, so of course neither of them are going to give up on those feelings. 

They love each other, and they are never going to stop fighting for each other. They are determined to save each other. Madoka’s wish is to save Homura, and Homura’s wish is to save Madoka. 

These wishes are contradictions. They are going to cancel each other out.

So, because of that unyielding love, they are going to destroy each other, and perhaps the whole world along with them.

“Wah! Mami, there’s a whole horde of wraiths coming toward us! I’ve never seen this many at once!”

Mami hears Nagisa’s voice. 

She doesn’t look at the wraiths closing in on her, the wraiths that were drawn to the condition of her heart like moths to the brightest possible flame. She doesn't look at them, she doesn’t even notice them.

She looks at Nagisa.

Her hand tightens around her musket. Her finger trembles against the trigger.

“Ma…. Mami…?”

Something in Mami breaks.

Her worst fear comes true.

She chokes.

~

Homura Akemi, a name of which is hardly attached to a person anymore, has never been and never will be a normal young girl.

She knew from the beginning that there was something terribly wrong with her. Her body for one, it’d seemed to have been failing her from the start. Her heart seemed in constant protest of beating as it should, leaving her pale as porcelain, and shaky enough that falling and shattering into a thousand shards of fragile glass felt entirely within a realm of possibility.

Her sick, sick heart made her slow to catch up, behind everyone else. It made her cold, the warm blood that circulated steadily through everyone else’s veins, Homura herself could hardly believe she had any. Shivering like a little kitten left out in the cold rain even under the impossibly warm and kind sun, she truly felt that if even that couldn’t warm her, she must be cold blooded.

It was as if her very heart knew, was trying to stop her. Stop her from existing before becoming something even more wretched. It didn’t stop her soon enough.

Her mind for two. Her sick, sick mind has always been as sick as her heart. And unlike the condition of her heart that was wished away by a magic determined to keep her going, the sickness of her mind never went away, and it only worsened.

She hadn’t even been aware of it at first, couldn’t understand it at all. But she could see it in the way her classmates, perfect pictures of normalness and correctness, looked at her. In the way her teachers, perfect pictures of purity and rightness in their long black robes with the golden crosses hanging from their necks, could not hide the disappointment in their voices. In the way they all talked and made it so very clear that there was something different about her.

Different, but not just different. Off. Unsavory. Vile. Immoral. Wrong.

She felt guilty because she knew they were right. 

But then someone came along one day, a bright light brighter than the sun had cut through the darkness she lived her whole life in, and told her that she wasn’t wrong. She could live up to her name one day, she could be passionate, strong. Righteous.

She let herself be convinced for a moment that she had been the victim before. It felt vindicating to believe that all her peers' cruel words were just horrible, horrible lies, and that the real her was a kind and good person. 

The light was wrong, of course.

The light could not do away with the dark, for the dark is more than what surrounds her, it is within her, the most defining part of her. She is the dark.

Whenever Homura looked at Madoka she could feel it. She had heard a term that she’d thought described what she was feeling well: butterflies in her stomach.

Whenever Madoka smiled at her, but not just when she smiled at her, when she pouted at the grade of her math test, when she stared down a powerful witch with conviction and strength that was admirable beyond words, whenever she looked shocked with delight at how yummy Mami’s sweets were, when she was laughing so hard there were tears in her eyes because of Sayaka’s joke, whenever she looked at Hitomi and it was evident on her face that she was daydreaming about being as elegant as her, whenever she talked to Kyoko with a nervous but adorably charming determination to become her friend, whenever she spoke of her family with nothing but love and pride in her eyes. 

Whenever Madoka is simply… Madoka in her presence. The butterflies that flit to life and tickle her insides felt close to overwhelming her in their number and intensity. 

When Madoka praised her with ecstatic glee at her improvement, or when she braided her hair for her and spoke to her with a voice as soft as silk and as reassuring as a rainbow after a hurricane, when Madoka cried on her shoulder or when Homura cried on hers, when they held each others hands and thumbed at the rings that represented their shared wishes, when they looked at each other and from that alone they understood. Especially in the moments when they confided in each other, yes, they were afraid sometimes, but they felt the same, they wouldn’t give up. 

They were the same.

Homura feels like laughing bitterly at the thought that she had truly believed that once. 

All it took was taking off her glasses, and somehow that was the moment when she could truly see clearer than ever.

The truth is clouded even less now that she is looking through a pane of glass that is fractured a thousand times over. Cracks spindly and intertwining like a spool of pink thread, a reflection of every truth in every splintered segment.

That feeling. It was never butterflies. It was never sweet, or good, or beautiful like Madoka tried to convince her it was.

No, that upending, all consuming, sinful feeling that wriggled to life in her intestines, and crawled its way up into her ribcage and sunk its teeth into her weak heart, she knows exactly what it is now.

It had stared her in the face one day. She had vomited it out of her along with a bouquet of red spider lillies. Covered in her spittle and vibrant red petals, squirming on the ground before her was a plump, well-fed, grotesque lizard. It had looked up at her with her own eyes.

Eternities later, she realizes she had been right all along. Her blood really has always been cold. She was never a kitten in the rain who had any right to feel sorry for herself or deserved to be saved by the sun cutting through the clouds. No, she was no kitten, she’s always been a cold-blooded lizard. She was never innocent. 

Homura supposes that once, long ago, she used to be afraid of the dark. 

But not afraid that the dark would hurt her. The dark was always hurting her, she was born in it, dwelled in it, consumed in it, she knew there was no saving her. What she was afraid of was spreading that darkness unto others. She was afraid of tainting the light with her dark, pulling the light down into the muddy depths of her blackened soul. Staining lacey white with hideous boiling tar. 

But now this is no longer the case.

She’s not afraid of the dark.

She’s not afraid of anything now. 

The lizard girl is free and she is happy again, truly.

…

“I am a being who disrupts providence and acts as an agitator for this world.

A being that which exists to overcome the authority of even a God.

Using the pinnacle of human emotion, more passionate than hope, far deeper than despair.

Love.

I am now a being known as Evil.”

A white dress, almost like a wedding dress, not accompanied by a single church bell, she wears no veil. Her hair is loose and spiraling around her like a loose pink thread. Raveling it back up neatly around the spool it belongs with should be no trouble, she’s already done it once before. 

Madoka’s smile is far kinder than it should be.

Homura-chan…” Her voice is soft, forgiving, always forgiving and understanding even when she can’t possibly understand. “If you give yourself dark wings, and smile even when you’re crying, and call yourself horrible things, if you keep calling yourself evil, do you think that I’ll start to believe that you really are?”

The lizard writhing and thrashing in her stomach is excited by her words. “Ah, Madoka~” She moans as she looks at her through the purple crown of her soul gem that she delicately balances in her fingers. “So merciful even to a vile demon who is beneath you and wretched in every way. You truly are virtuous beyond reason, just another thing I love about you, hehe~”

“Homura-chan…” Her voice is less soft, more pained. Homura tries not to cackle. “Why do you say it like that? You tell me you love like you expect me to be disgusted. Or as if… you expect me to hate you for it. Homura-chan… do you… want me to hate you?” She asks with a trembling realization. 

Homura scowls then and lowers her crown. She sees Madoka. Madoka with nebulae and stars in her skirt instead of countable layers of pure white ruffles. Madoka with hair that extends on into infinity instead of cute and simple short twintails. This isn’t really even Madoka anymore. This is something that stands in between Madoka and her happiness.

“I ca-”

“You, Law of the Cycles, are an unnecessary existence in the world I’ve created for Madoka Kaname.” She recites in a cold tone that is easy to return to. A smile quickly twists itself back up to her lips. “You’re probably wondering why you’re here, why I allowed you to return to precious Madoka after holding you at bay for so long. Well, recently I had an epiphany you see. Why merely separate you from Madoka? You are intrinsically bound to her so long as you exist, therefore it is reasonable to assume that what little vestiges of autonomy you still possess you will use solely to reach out to her in the hopes of being a part of her again.”

Her smile is too wide to be human.

“So then, I thought, why should you still exist?” She continues with a quiet, stomach-turning gentleness. “What purpose does your existence serve in a universe that exists for Madoka Kaname’s happiness when all you do is disturb it by your very presence?”

“That’s not-!”

“Destroying you is the only option, hehe~”

Madoka gasps with a quiet horror. No, this is a misunderstanding. This is all a huge misunderstanding. 

“Ha ha ha~! Once I kill you, all will be well again. Madoka will never remember her past lives ever again. All the pain she went through, all the despair she absorbed, all those millennia spent alone, she’ll finally be free! Free of you! You, the horrible fate that I damned her too out of ignorance.”

No, she’s wrong.

“You who exists because of my selfish desire to be together with her. My selfish wish to be her friend even after what I did to her. I’ll destory that wish once and for all!” She screams with a smile even though she’s sobbing at the same time.

“And I’ll finally save you Madoka!”

An army of children that aren’t really children dressed in funeral garb, march around her in giddy circles. 

“Fort da! Fort da! Fort da!” The children proclaim proudly, as if their words were putting her in her place.

Madoka clenches her bow, clenches her teeth and tries not to let the tears fall. 

“I won’t allow it, Homura-chan!” She shrieks and Homura looks overjoyed that she’s upset with her. Madoka shakes her head vehemently with a quivering lip as she pulls back the string of her ignited bow and aims it at the sky. “I won’t allow this world to exist any longer! I’ll fight with every ounce of power I have left to destroy this cruel world where love is condemned as something evil!”

~

They clash.

And Homura rips out the arrow that had impaled her eye, and she cackles as she clenches it in her fist and rushes forward with it.

They clash again.

And the paper dolls impale Homura with countless needles, spinning around her and propelling her forward with a violent and bloody force. 

They clash.

Madoka is fighting back, but she isn’t. She can’t kill her. It doesn’t matter whether Madoka is fighting back, though. Homura is taking a lot of damage, regardless. 

She’s killing the both of them.

Madoka has to stop her, trap her, force her to hold still and listen. She needs to talk to her, but her words go unheard under the laughter that might be sobbing or sobbing that might be laughter. The doll children watch them with glee disguised as grief, their howling feverishly excited.

They clash.

Madoka’s power gives out on her and she plummets to the ground.

Stars are flickering weakly, white lace is so fragile it threatens to dissipate into thin air, the ribbons of fate wound around her are threatening to slip away. She sees her reflection in the water beneath her, the light is starting to sink away from her.

A demon looms above her, aimed and at the ready to deal the final blow that will kill God, and do away with every hope of salvation left in the world.

Madoka presses her palm firmly against the water, she holds on as best as she can. She looks up and sees crows circling around her, red eyes in the middle of the swirling black storm overhead.

It’s not over.

She believes in the light.

“Homura-chan…” She starts weakly. “You’re too kind.”

Red eyes widen, a slit of black thins. Anger beyond words.

“You do so much for me, and I haven’t ever been able to return the favor.” She pushes herself up on her hands, something sharp pricks her neck, but she doesn’t back down.

“You did all this because of what I said, didn’t you?”

“What I said when I couldn’t remember everything. Homura-chan, the Madoka who said those things was a Madoka who was uncertain of herself, unaware of her strength. Unhappy.”

The demon flinches, but doesn’t back away. Her eyes wide and bloody still.

“When we were in the garden and I told you that if I was forced to leave everyone I would regret it, I would be horribly sad no matter what. I only said that because I couldn’t remember how happy it made me to watch over and protect everyone. I was never alone, I never regretted my decision, I was always surrounded by hope and love and everyone who I’ve ever cared for at all times.”

The demon’s hand twitches so minutely its nearly imperceptible. Crows are dropping from the sky, splashing into the water and disappearing without a trace one after another. 

“And when I told you I thought it was bad to break rules just because you feel like it. Hehe, well, if you’ll remember I once broke and rewrote the rules of an entire universe too. So, we’re not enemies-”

“Yes we are! I am in opposition of everything The Law of the Cycles represents, I am your antithesis incarnate! What we want are opposite things-”

“Are they?” She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.” 

She stands up, and she isn’t being impaled through the heart yet so she hopes that means she’s getting through to her. 

“Homura-chan, listen to me. Listen to the real me, the me that is all here and remembers everything and every part of myself. You want me to live in the world that makes me happiest? I’ll tell you what world that is. It’s the world where I can be The Law of the Cycles and save everyone.”

“No, no, no, no, you’re-” Homura speaks as if she doesn't think her voice is trembling, she stands as if she doesn't realize she's falling, she looks down at Madoka as if she isn't a thousand times smaller than her. She holds onto her control, she had control, she has it. She still has it. “You’re lying.” She gasps. “You’re just saying this because you think you have to. You think you have to take on that responsibility, but it’s not really what you want!”

Madoka gently takes Homura’s face in her hands before she can crumble.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I was terribly lonely sometimes, maybe I really couldn’t always be strong even though I tried.”

Homura gasps. “Wh-?”

“So, let me tell you the truth. The selfish thought that made me happier than anything else. Being The Law of the Cycles made me happier than anything because I knew that one day I’d be able to save my best friend too. Knowing that one day you would return to my side, and we could finally be together, without having to fight anymore, just being able to protect everyone together, just like we wanted from the beginning.”

“So, don’t you see, Homura-chan?” She murmurs with a sad smile as she strokes the tears along Homura’s face. “You can’t continue to fight for my happiness if you’ve already forgotten the most important part. It’s you, Homura-chan!” She exclaims with a crack of fondness in her voice as she cups Homura’s cheeks reverently. “To me the happiest possible world I could ever live in is a world where I can be with you!”

“Ma… Madoka…” Her voice is hardly a whisper but it’s louder than anything in the silence around them.

“So don’t destroy The Law of the Cycles, don’t take back the precious gift you gave me in the first place, don’t destroy my greatest happiness. If you do, I won’t be able to remember all the reasons why I love you so much. Every part of you, every version of you that fought over and over for me, each one as important to me as the other, each one who went through hell and back to give me the strength I needed to be the person I am today. Don’t destroy the person I love the most, please.”

“I’ve forgotten you so many times. I never want to forget how much you mean to me ever again. Let me be happy, Homura-chan. Let me love you.”

~

…

…

…

Madoka looks around at the place she’d suddenly found herself in.

Homura had slipped out of her hands and fallen down. She’d sunk into a deep darkness, but Madoka followed her here.

There are white wilted flowers all around her, but her footsteps make the ones around her stand tall and pure white and healthy again.

She follows the sound of laughing children.

There are rotten pumpkins along the path, festering with flies around them like jack-o-lanterns that had been left on the porch far too long after Halloween.

There are nutcrackers not only with missing teeth, but with missing heads. They slump in heaps on the ground, purposeless. 

There are cages overflowing with white rats. The cages aren’t big enough with so many stuffed in at once, so they squirm and slip through the bars and escape one by one. Little soldiers in glasses chase after them, but the rats have them outnumbered.

There is a phonograph, it is playing a record. But the record keeps skipping, starting over from the beginning over and over again, before it can get past the intro of the song it so desperately tries to play.

Madoka finds the children the voices belong to. They stand in a circle huddled around something, pointing at it, laughing at it, mocking it.

The one in the middle of the circle who they torment is a girl. A girl with braids and red glasses, crying on her knees. Her white dress is stained with black tar, her hands are covered in sticky red up to her elbows.

There is a lizard in her lap, its belly is cut open and Homura, with a bloody needle in one hand that she’d used to cut it open, is tearfully pulling the red spider lilies out of it.

The children look up at Madoka as she approaches.

“F-Fort da!” They shout as if trying to deter her from getting any closer. “Fort da! Fort… da?”

When she continues to approach they eye her nervously, they look at each other, before they all run away with tears and crying that is genuine for once.

Homura sniffles and gasps as she works with trembling fingers, the lens of her glasses so spotty with teardrops she can hardly see through them.

There are two white chairs next to her, one upright, and one knocked over. Madoka picks it up and gently places it before Homura where she takes a seat, so that she can take Homura’s head and rest it in her lap.

Homura immediately tenses and shakes her head but she doesn’t pull away.

“No, nonono… I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you. All I do-” She whines breathlessly. “All I’ve ever done is ruin everything for you. Every time I try to help, every time I try to make things better I just make it worse for you. I’m cursed. It’s what I do. And I did it again.”

“That’s okay.”

“No!”

Madoka plucks the lizard out of her lap, takes her needle and threads it with pink fiber. She starts to sew the lizard's belly closed with it.

Madoka shakes her head. “No, it really is okay. It can’t be helped. Everyone hurts the people they love sometimes, and there’s no avoiding it. The only thing you can do is keep trying, and that in itself will make up for it.” She smiles at the neat stitch that fixes the lizard and she affectionately scratches it under its chin. “It’s proof that you care.”

“That’s not enough. I was about to… I almost… ” Homura breathes unevenly as the thought makes her feel close to suffocating and Madoka wipes her tears with her dress. Homura wants to rip the needle out of Madoka’s hand and stab herself with it for dirtying Madoka’s perfect dress, but Madoka presses her face against the fabric. 

“Homura-chan, needless suffering is just that. It’s not repentance, it doesn’t do any good. You don’t have to suffer, you just have to keep going. And I will too. I know I’ve hurt you more times than you can count over the course of this.”

“But you didn’t mean to!” Homura shouts defensively, looking up at her with watery but firm eyes. It wasn’t her fault that she forgot.

“Neither did you, right?” Madoka replies as she catches Homura’s chin in her hand, so that she’ll see her smile. “Placing the blame isn’t important. Moving forward is. Nothing will make me feel better than moving forward with you.”

"With me...? Look at me! Look at what I am!" Her hand curls around the lizard and her trembling hold threatens to crush it in her palm, Madoka puts a gentle hand over hers so her stitches aren't disturbed. "Look at this hideous, disgusting thing I've become! Putrid and vile and unfit to be a part of your beautiful world! I am undeserving! The devil is unworthy of the love of a god! I threw my worthiness away when I chose to become this, a being who's appearance spits in the face of all that you value most! I-"

"Shhh, shh, shh, oh Homura-chan, that's not true at all." She hushedly murmurs as she places a fingertip to Homura's mouth, her touch quieting Homura's words and her very soul along with them. She lifts the lizard as if she were holding something invaluable, something more precious than gold. She gently kisses the top of its head. Homura shudders under her lips. She puts the beast in her lap and smiles when it curls up, the beast would smile too if it could, for the first time depite its cold blood, it feels warm.

Madoka then looks up to Homura and takes off her glasses. Her face warms when Homura's eyes dye the same color as the deep red plastic frames in her hands.

"No matter what form you take, Homura-chan is Homura-chan. Falling in love with someone is wonderful, so don't call yourself the devil."

Madoka's looks into her eyes, and she sees every part of her, not a single facet of Homura makes her want to turn away. She's in loving awe of it all.

“I love you.” 

She leans down and Homura just barely squeezes her eyes shut before Madoka’s lips meet hers in a chaste kiss. Homura’s whole body tremors violently, she gasps against her mouth, unable to do anything but feel like falling apart completely under the softness she’d only had futile glimpses of in dreams she felt guilty about having afterwards. 

But it’s not a dream this time, she realizes.

Because when she opens her eyes, she’s in the real world again. She whimpers when Madoka pulls away and slowly opens her golden eyes, giggling when she does. She’s holding her arms around her tight, they’re chest to chest, white lace gently brushes against feathery black. Madoka’s hands resting on her hips feel grounding, they keep her in the present. 

Homura's whole world shifts in this moment. Everything she'd been obsessively dwelling and planning and mourning and fighting and killing herself over being turned on its head. In truth, she'd thought she'd be used to these upending truths revealing themselves at the crux of her devotion to the opposite by now. This is far, far, far, from the first time something came along that shattered her worldview and forced her to pick herself up and start over from the beginning heading in the opposite direction. After everything, she thought she'd mentally fortified herself so that no surprise would take her off guard, nothing would be able to compromise her hardened defenses, she couldn't be shocked anymore lest she falter and lose everything.

But she doesn't know what's happening. Is she losing everything or...?

Homura’s fingers tighten around the lace. “Do I really deserve this?” She whispers in disbelief.

“Hm, I don’t know if I can answer that. I don’t know if I deserve this either.”

Homura opens her mouth to say something predictable, but-

“But! I do know that this makes me happy.” She gives Homura a knowing look.

The mission that Homura had dedicated herself to from the very start hasn't changed. Homura is only aware now of how to realize it.

Her answer.

“Ah… well… in that case, I suppose that it’s imperative that I do everything in my power to perpetuate this arrangement since… that’s my… what?”

“Heheh~ oh, nothing.” Madoka chuckles. “You’re just cute.”

Homura blinks at her as if she’d just said something to her in a foreign language. Homura, as far as she knows, still has eyes the color of blood and circles underneath them as dark as her dress, so “cute” seems like an incorrect conjecture to describe her. 

It takes her a moment to realize that she should be flattered by this statement.

“O-Oh, ah… thank you, Madoka.” She blushes and looks away.

Madoka’s heart warms at her expression, she can almost see the braids and glasses still, despite everything she was still there, if only a little bit.

A serious expression flashes across Homura’s face, she straightens and regards her with firm eyes.

Despite her own feelings, she cannot afford to slip up in this moment.

She is still on a mission after all.

“Of course, you are far cuter.” She states as if she were stating an irrefutable fact from a textbook.

Yes, this is the proper response, she believes. Alright, now that her objective is apparent, it is important that she choose the proper actions going forward. Proper courtship involves reciprocal flirting in reasonable intervals, dates, and… kissing… and… hm, she’s not terribly acquainted with what exactly a successful romance entails. Her previous missions required her to do research into things like how to make bombs and how to handle heavy artillery, which she doubts will be of use in this mission. This mission is of the most dire importance yet, and she no longer possesses the time powers that allow her to trial and error her way through this, she should educate herself on such matters as soon as possible. 

“Eh, I don’t know about that.” Madoka says sweetly, unaware of the excessive gears that had started turning in Homura’s head. “Maybe we can agree to disagree on some things, hm? Hehe…” She rests her head against Homura’s shoulder. 

And Homura has a thought then. 

Maybe she’s overthinking things, is what she thinks.

This is the first time she’s ever experienced that thought.

But the feeling of utter warmth and calm and joy that envelops her entire being at such little contact, reassures her that maybe she won’t have to try so hard. She lets herself rest a hand on top of Madoka’s head, lets herself cart her fingers through her hair, lets her lips kiss her forehead. 

She just lets herself.

Maybe that’s all there is to it.

Tentatively, hesitantly as if she were about to turn to sand in her arms any moment now, Homura eventually settles into the fact that this is real, and when she does, thought becomes a distant thing as she melts into her embrace and loses herself entirely. Every touch from Madoka for as long as she could remember has made her feel like sobbing openly, whenever Madoka’s gentleness was directed at her her chest felt close to bursting. Madoka’s soft palm drags up and down her back methodically, and Homura has to swallow down a shuddered sob with every stroke. Her knees feel close to giving out on her.

There’s a part of her that she can’t shake that’s telling her that she shouldn’t be allowing herself this, that indulging in this will cost Madoka somehow, that she needs to be doing something more important, she should be trying harder to protect her, that she should be suffering right now. She doesn’t know why, there is no logical reasoning to this thought, it is just the line of thinking she has grown the most accustomed to. 

And sure enough… 

Her sinking feeling alerts her to what is happening around her, it instantly pulls her out of her distracted bliss and makes her realize.

The weather. There is a vicious storm whipping about them very suddenly, a storm far too brutal for this area, this time of year. She’s seen it a hundred times here anyway. She knows exactly what this storm means.

“Madoka… this weather, it means…”

Madoka looks up at her and the look in her face tells her that she already knows. “Walpurgisnacht is coming.”

Homura’s heart sinks. 

There it is. The usual turn of events coming to crush down any hope that had naively started to bloom within her foolish heart that never seems to learn its lesson. 

She can hear it. The distant echo of a distorted laugh, almost mistakable for the whistle of a gale. 

“Homura-chan, it’s going to be okay.” Madoka says taking her hand. Her voice is strong and easily overcomes the howl of winds and the march of rain and thunder. 

“But Madoka, you’re not at full power, and I don’t know if I’m-”

“Still.” Madoka persists. “It’s going to be okay.”

Her smile is bright in the dark. 

“You said it yourself, Homura-chan. You’re fighting with the pinnacle of human emotion, more passionate than hope, far deeper than despair: Love, ehehe! Ah… it sounded cooler when you said it, though.”

“Madoka…” Her chest swells with affection and an utterly overwhelming fear at the same time, she’s scared of losing her again. This fear always comes back to encase her heart in an icy terrifying vice, to block out any hope. 

“If we both fight with love there’s nothing we can’t do! We can make a miracle, Homura-chan! We already did once before, right?”

At this she takes out the red ribbons that Homura had tied in her hair on the first day of school. She delicately lifts Homura’s dark locks and gingerly ties a bow in her hair once more.

She clasps her hands together and smiles brightly at her work. “You know, I think we’ll have to agree to disagree again. I think they look better on you, after all.”

Homura holds onto the ribbon like a lifeline. She wants to believe her, she really does. 

Madoka kisses her.

“It’s too soon to give up yet. We’ve managed to make it this far, haven’t we?” She holds the hand that is holding their bow. “It’ll be alright. I know it’ll be alright. Let’s believe. After all, magical girls make hopes and dreams come true.”

Homura isn’t sure. Are they really even magical girls anymore? Either of them?

"That's exactly what you said last time."

"And it's still true. So, let's see it through together this time, alright?"

Madoka faces the storm, her expression determined. The sky is a block of concrete gray, the plain curtains yet to rise on the bright, theatrical show. 

“Are you not afraid?” She asks Madoka with a quiet acceptance.

“Not at all.” Madoka takes her hand. “Thanks to you, I have nothing to be afraid of anymore.”