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If anyone were to ask Sayaka to describe Akemi Homura, she’d call her a stone-cold bitch. A strong, stone-cold bitch. She’d also call her a fighter, a badass, and someone who can't be fazed by anything. Sayaka admires her stoic strength—even if it it means a lot of frustrating emotional conversations, because emotional conversations with Homura are like talking to a brick wall. Homura just—can’t empathize. Can’t feel sympathy. Sayaka doesn’t think she can even cry.
And yet, halfway through their walk home, that’s exactly what Homura does. Without any explanation or visible cause, she goes from blank-faced to sobbing her heart out. And then it gets worse, because Homura then switches from crying to laughing hysterically—except no, she’s still crying, just laughing at the same time, which produces this terrible wheezing noise that has every part of Sayaka cringing in sympathetic pain.
“Homura-chan?” Madoka asks, all frantic and caring and kind in the way only Madoka can be. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Sohohaharry—” Homura chokes out, grabbing fistfuls of her hair and yanking. Madoka makes distressed noises. Sayaka also makes distressed noises and grabs her wrists to try and stop her from hurting herself, but Homura shakes her off with surprising strength and staggers back. “Hahaha—it all just—ahahahAHA—”
Her laughter grows increasingly crazed. People on the other side of the street send glances their way.
“Homura,” Sayaka starts, only to flinch back when Homura lurches forward and grasps her by the shoulders. The other girl’s hair spills down like ink, obscuring her face.
“It’s hi-hi-hilarious,” she giggles. “I've tried—tried so hard, hahaha!”
“Homura, you’re not making sense—”
“You know how—ha —how many times I’ve done this? You’re both going to die again and again and again and so is Mami and Kyoko but I still kept try-hy-hying!” Homura lightly beats one fist against Sayaka’s shoulder, her own shoulders shaking with suppressed mirth. “It’s so funny!”
“Um—” Sayaka looks to Madoka for help, but her friend looks just as lost as Sayaka feels. Nothing happened to trigger this. Sure, Homura’s been a bit quieter the past few days, but it’s not like she’s that talkative in the first place. For all intents and purposes, Homura’s mental break came out of nowhere.
“Homura-chan?” Madoka reaches out for Homura, then hesitates before touching her. Probably a smart decision. Sayaka doesn’t think Homura will hurt them, but—this is uncharted territory. “Homura-chan, what…what happened?”
“What happened?” Homura echoes. Her head is still bowed forward, but she’s not laughing anymore. Somehow, her stillness is even scarier. “What…happened. What happened. What happened—happened—again and again and again—and it’s all USELESS! ALL OF IT! EVERYTHING! FOR NOTHING! NOTHING MATTERS!” Homura throws her arms up into the air, staggering away from Sayaka in the process. “NO! THING!”
Purple light flashes around her. Sayaka stumbles back in shock, grabbing Madoka by the arm and pulling her away like she can somehow protect her from whatever the hell is happening now. When the light clears, the only thing that's changed is Homura’s outfit. She’s gone from her school uniform to a weird dress-like thing. It’s—cutesy, almost, with purple bows and a gray skirt.
“Wha—” Sayaka starts, but Homura isn’t even looking at them. She’s clawing at the dark purple—nearly black—decal on the back of her hand. With a noise of rage, she tears it off and hurls it into the street.
“H-Homura-chan?” Madoka asks, her voice fragile. “Wh-what’s happening?”
Homura turns to them. The expression on her face is—Sayaka doesn’t even know how to describe it. “I’m a magical girl,” she says, “it’s a curse. I made a wish to save all of you. I always fail and you won’t stop dying.”
Right. Okay. Magical girl. Them dying. Sayaka puts aside her momentary conflict between Homura’s gone crazy and she just changed outfits with purple light in favor of trying to calm Homura down. “That’s—uh, that’s—really rough.”
Homura stares at her. Sayaka mentally kicks herself.
“I mean—” she starts, then looks at Madoka in a silent plea for help. Her pink-haired friend steps forward, her hands spread in supplication.
“Homura-chan, I don’t—I don’t really know what’s going on, but, um, I know you’re really upset. L-let’s go home together, okay? We can have a sleepover and you can tell us what happened and we’ll—we’ll help.” Madoka takes a deep breath. “Let us help,” she pleads.
And Homura—
Homura looks up at them with eyes full of agony so incomprehensibly terrible that Sayaka doesn’t know how she’s still standing. “You can’t,” she says.
A car roars by on the road beside them. The gem Homura had torn off her hand disappears beneath its wheels, shattering moments before it can transform into a Grief Seed. Homura lurches— then collapses like a puppet with its strings cut.
Madoka screams Homura’s name and surges past Sayaka. Sayaka just gapes numbly at the body, unable to comprehend what just happened. She can’t hear the voices of various concerned passerby through the blood roaring in her ears, can’t hear her own breaths becoming increasingly panicked. Madoka turns to look at her. Her eyes are wide and terrified. Sayaka sees her lips move, sees them form the shape of “She’s not breathing, Sayaka!”
Homura dies on a day like any other, crushed between monotony and guilt and the unending, unforgiving wheels of time.
A week later, a different magical girl dressed in yellow approaches Madoka and Sayaka. No matter what she says, they refuse to contract. They tell Mami, and later Kyoko, about the first magical girl they encounter. Kyoko suggests they look through Homura’s belongings for clues.
They do. They find her accounts of the many, many timelines she’s lived.
Against the wishes of her friends, Madoka contracts and turns herself into the Law of Cycle. Walpurgisnacht never comes to be. Witches are erased from the fabric of the universe. Homura's shattered soul is gathered and put back together, piece by piece.
Homura lives on as part of the Law of Cycle, watching over her friends alongside Madoka. It is not a perfect ending, but it’s kinder than the one she gave herself. She is happy. She is whole. She will heal.
The world spins on, now just a little bit brighter.