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Timeline 09
"Madoka?"
There was a wailing in her heart as she stared at Madoka's figure. In the blurry background, the sky was coloured ashy grey from the pluming trails of smoke and destroyed cityscape. Mitakihara was in ruins and unlikely to recover anytime soon. The death rate was surely in the hundreds from the casual destruction alone.
Despite all that, Homura could not bring herself to care. She had not become, and had never become, a magical girl for the people in this world.
She had become a magical girl for one reason and one reason alone. Her salvation. Her light. Her motivation. Her purpose.
Madoka Kaname.
In the foreground, Madoka stood, her head tipped forward and face obscured by her hanging bloodied bangs.
Homura felt her wrecked body scream in protest as she forced herself to step forward. The countless injuries that littered her skin was shoved to the back of her mind, and the pain from her fractured ribs was ignored. Despite the magical vessel that the Incubators had gifted her with, the pain that wracked through her was still no joke.
Homura Akemi stumbled closer to Madoka, eyes widening in horror.
The pink-haired girl slowly tilted her head back, revealing an uncharacteristically empty expression, as her body began to lose balance and lean back.
Leaning more... and more-
Before she could hit the ground, Homura had thrust herself forward to catch her. Her knees slammed against the destroyed cement as her arm cushioned the magical girl's fall. Homura had no care for her body as she gently set Madoka's fragile frame down, her arms trembling with exertion as she did so.
This made no sense! She had been keeping track of Madoka's soul gem. There was no way she could have been corrupted - she made sure of it! Why... why!
"MADOKA!" Homura screamed. She reached up to brush the hair out of Madoka's face, but froze at the sight of her own fingers. At some point during the battle, it appeared the witch had managed to get a prime shot - blasting her skin off. Disgusting tendrils of flesh were exposed and immediately cauterised by the blast - revealing the smooth ivory bone under. She hid her hand behind her back, not wanting Madoka to worry. "Madoka.... can you hear me?"
The silence sounded like the tolling of a bell.
Her figure crumpled over Madoka, who would stay silent forever more.
Another fail...
Hot tears, the only sensation she could feel anymore, dripped onto Madoka's closed eyes. It looked like Madoka herself was crying for Homura's failure.
One more time... one more time...
Homura squeezed her eyes shut, reached into herself for that ability and twisted.
Pain that made her physical injuries pale in comparison shot through her as her entire body began to deconstruct to go back in time... time... time....
Timeline 38
She delicately cupped Madoka's face, brushing her thumb over her dusty cheek.
The words Madoka had said, complete with her smiling and joyful expression, flashed to the forefront of her memory.
"I'll never forget your name, Homura Akemi."
Madoka would have no idea how tight Homura held those words to her chest or how it fuelled her determination to keep going. She would save Madoka no matter how many times she relived her past.
There was a sorrow in Homura at that. She was on her twentieth try and yet barely anything had changed. She had killed Mami from the start. She had kept Sayaka as far away from Madoka.
Yet somehow! Somehow!
Madoka had appeared before her as a magical girl, pink-bow in her hair, lightly touching down onto the ground and materialising out of nowhere to help fight off Walpurgisnacht. How had the Incubator found her?
She wanted to rip Kyubey apart.
Homura had screamed for Madoka to get away from the battlefield, her fingers chafed raw from constantly firing and setting up her line of weaponry against the witch.
Yet still...
Homura didn't know what to say or do for something to change.
She reached into herself and twisted.
Timeline 70
She had messed up this timeline from the start.
The door slammed closed before her, hiding Madoka's terrified face from view.
It had been Homura's fault.
She had been driven so insane by the last timeline's events that as soon as she could, she had arrived to Madoka's front door.
It had been the middle of the night, but Homura was not in her right mind to care. She had knocked on the door politely at first, but when no one had answered, she had turned to slamming an open palm on the wood - to even scratching at it.
"MADOKA!"
The girl had appeared, wide-eyed, through the smallest of cracks.
"Do... do I know you?"
Had Homura been in her right mind and capable of seeing herself, she surely would have degenerated even more.
Still dressed in a white hospital gown and trussed in bandages, Homura looked every bit like a patient who had just escaped a mental asylum. A crazed look in her eyes... an aura of despair and desperation clouding her frame.... Under the limited light of the moon, Homura's staggered frame looked every bit like the monster she was inside. After going through so many timelines, looping so many times, consumed by her obsession, could Homura even be said to be human anymore?
"Do you... remember me?" A crazed smile split her face as Homura looked up at the girl, tears beginning to bead at the edges of her eyes. "Madoka?"
The girl screamed, slamming the door shut.
"Madoka?" The sight of the girl vanishing behind the wood set a feeling of anxiety off within Homura, her pupils dilating. Like a baby, in her unstable emotional state, Homura had little concept of object permanence. "Can you open the door, Madoka? Madoka? Madoka, open the door! OPEN THE DOOR, MADOKA!"
OPEN THE DOOR!
MADOKA!
The name eddied in her head, drilling into the sulcus of her brain, until it was all she could see and think.
"I'm not sure who you are! Please leave!"
Homura's forehead knocked against the door, causing Madoka to flinch on the other side, as Homura slowly slid onto the ground. She didn't know how much more she could cope.
She reached into herself and twisted again. Again. Again.
Timeline 88
"You know, you're going to burn yourself out," Kyubey mused, its lithe figure twisting around the underground pillars as it approached Homura. This incubator had already realised Homura's existence. "It's a trap. You can't change anything."
Homura didn't even look up, raising a hand and firing a series of rounds at Kyubey's direction.
The incubator went silent, before speaking again.
Mottled with holes, the carmine-eyes stared incessantly at Homura.
"You won't make it back. You won't get back what you've lost."
Homura snapped at that, "I will! I will save her!"
Kyubey sounded like it was in her head. How did it know? How had it known Homura's doubts- had pinpointed them so eerily?
Of course, it was because Homura... in the end, was just a girl. A magical one who had lived countless lives, but in the end she was a girl. And Kyubey, as a vessel with higher consciousness imbued in it, knew how one's existence would eventually despair after so many failures. Only, Kyubey hadn't expected Homura to last so long.
Even if itself had been forced to do the same activities as Homura, living the same two weeks over and over again with no change in the outcome, it would go crazy.
If Kyubey thought even itself couldn't withstand it, a higher being, how could a magical girl like Homura stand it?
The alien's child-like laugh sounded eerie.
"You will not make back your humanity. Even when you die, your soul will never be buried in the garden of death. It will disappear into a thousand fragments for this transgression."
Another gunshot and the Incubator evaporated.
Homura drew a shuddering breath.
Madoka... tell me you will recognise me when I die. Tell me you will feel it.
Timeline 94
She was beginning to think blasphemous thoughts.
What was it about Madoka that had captured her love so deeply? From the first timeline and onwards, there was something that had just... clicked inside of Homura at the sight of the girl. And when that girl had died, died, died, died, died, died- that something had emptied out inside of Homura so monstrously.
A gaping chasm yawned open in front of her, churning inside of her as if constantly reminding Homura of her failure and inadequacy.
A thousand guns and their bullets lit up the ruined sky simultaneously, firing asynchronously and unceasingly at the wailing witch in the centre. It was a spectacle, causing Mami's mouth to drop open.
Homura was the most powerful magical girl she had ever seen.
Homura knew as well that there were few magical girls as powerful as her, perhaps, and still, she failed to save Madoka. But why? Why was she still doing this?
What was it about Madoka that forced her to keep going?
Homura wanted to hate her even, for causing that something (love) to disappear from inside of her, but she couldn't. She struck down the blasphemous thought immediately, shook that she had even considered that possibility.
Every time. Every time line. Every reversal where Madoka met Homura, smiled, and called out Homura's name.... she fell deeper and deeper.
The witch wailed, falling to the ground and dissipating finally. The success felt numb.
Mami appeared by Homura's side, slack-jawed. "Homura, that was amazing!"
She didn't even look at Mami, gaze trained still on the fallen figure of pink on the ground.
What was so amazing?
In the end, it was another failure.
Homura blankly reached inside her and twisted slowly.