Chapter Text
You were conceived in my heart,
Came like a dream,
To save me from my mortality.
Put on your dress, white goddess,
And settle in as the weather folds.
Our lives will be entwined even when I die,
You'll see me through 'til the end of time,
No earthly bride,
The most beautiful star,
In the world,
In the air,
On my tongue.
Before my eyes,
Beyond the stars,
Beneath the sun.
Take me in your arms again,
Lead me in my dreams again,
So what is it worth? I'll sell my soul,
What is it worth? Only you know.
Ash; A Life Less Ordinary
Chapter 1: Weak
I get weak
When you're next to me,
Weak from this love
I can't speak when I look in your eyes
Belinda Carlisle; I Get Weak
There is no shaft of light to wake her this time; no flicking from sleep into full consciousness. Instead, Homura slowly surfaces, drifting languidly up through the layers of interwoven dreaming and darkness. She lies perfectly still, waiting for the universe to gradually shift into its proper shape around her, letting the images continue to spool through her brain as the dull ache in her chest sharpens into a keener, more distinct variety of pain.
Her eyelashes flutter.
Light. Suffused with light. All around her on every side, a shifting, churning cloud of celestial brilliance and colour and indescribable beauty. Pinks and yellows, primrose blooms and ripples of coral, all in motion, but all part of a larger whole, with each tiny fragment in harmony with its neighbour: a constant, eternal dance, illuminated on every side by the endless, shimmering glow of stars beyond count.
It is the most wonderful thing she has ever seen in her life – a perfection so complete Homura can hardly bear it.
So why does it feel like her heart is being wrenched out of her chest?
Homura stirs, her breath catching as she shifts her weight. She is almost sure she can feel soft cotton against her skin; the heavy, smothering warmth of something enveloping the side of her face…
And then the voice speaks to her again; that achingly beautiful voice, so soft, so warm and kind as it rips her apart with its all-encompassing, inhuman love.
“Homura-chan, thank you… you really were my very best friend…”
This cannot be. It cannot. She needs to make her understand.
“But now you can’t go back home, and you’ll be separated from everyone you’ve ever cared about! Can you really stand to be trapped out here all alone, for all eternity?”
There is a low, persistent hum from somewhere in front of her; a rhythmic patter that has no place in this strange world between worlds she has been floating in.
Homura’s eyes flicker beneath their lids.
She forces herself to look Madoka in the face. Her friend – her very best friend – is utterly serene; possessed now, in this time of crisis, with a perfect tranquillity that radiates from Madoka like the corona of a newborn star. Those rose-quartz eyes – so familiar, so alien - sparkle in the light of the constellations, the gentle smile never leaving her face as the anguish digs ever-deeper into Homura, driving inwards like nails.
“But I’m not alone, Homura-chan. Everyone… everyone will always be with me, for now and for ever. Because from now on, I’ll be everywhere, throughout all of time and space. Everywhere, I promise. Even if you can’t see me, or hear me, I will be there – right there by your side, Homura-chan, every step of the way.”
Can that possibly be true? Homura had not thought there could be a worse pain than before. Now, though, the chilled stab of hope is cutting through that stultifying, hot cloud of despair in her brain, exposing her once more, raw and stinging and wounded beyond measure. Something else.
“And you’re really alright with that, Madoka? Even though I’ll forget you and won’t even know you’re there?”
Homura can feel the rise and fall of her lungs within her ribcage now, steady and stubborn, forcing her to keep going. The soft fabric of the pillow beneath her right cheek is damp with tears. But the dream is not yet ready to let her go.
Madoka is still smiling, ever so sweetly, and gently shaking her head.
“Hold on now, Homura-chan. It’s too early for you to give up yet. After all, you followed me all the way out here, didn’t you?” Madoka’s fingers are working through her hair, unpicking those scarlet ribbons and freeing her rose-pink tresses to drift lazily out behind her, unbound at last. “So, even after you’ve gone back to your own world and your own time… I think you just might be able to remember me.”
She isn’t sure where the dream ends and the waking world begins. All Homura knows is the feeling – a golden hum of electricity, rippling through her at the faintest brush of Madoka’s fingertips across her hands before she closes her fists around the silken thread.
The vivid colours are draining from that spectacular cosmos, stained glass leaching into subtle watercolours as the last remaining wisps of sleep begin to evaporate. Homura works her jaw, letting her dry lips peel apart, her tongue poking around the parched insides of her mouth.
She should open her eyes now. She knows it. But she can’t. Won’t.
“Everything will be alright, I just know it will. We just have to keep on believing!”
The light is starting to fade, luminous skies and seas peeling back like the petals of a flower, leaving only blackness in between…
“Madoka…!”
“After all, we are magical girls, aren’t we, you and I, Homura-chan? We make hopes and dreams come true!” Madoka is drifting away from her, still encompassed in the light of that glittering aura, but just starting to melt now into the surrounding darkness.
It’s unbearable.
“I’m sure that if it’s small enough, even now, a real miracle might just happen… don’t you think?”
“Madoka, don’t go!” Homura clutches the ribbon to her chest, stretching out with her free hand. But it’s too late now, far too late. Madoka is already dissolving away into nothingness.
“I’m sorry, Homura-chan. I have to go to guide the others home. We will meet again, you and I, one day… one day when the time is right. But until then, I’ll just say… goodbye…”
There is a last flash of light, one last glimpse of that smile, and…
“Madoka!”
Plunging backwards, downwards, tumbling through darkness.
On and on. Still backwards, still downwards, whirling in a flat spin as her screaming blends into the roar of reality shrieking past her in a broken kaleidoscope of noise and colour.
Falling, ever falling…
And resting…
And…
And…
There is a thin, watery sort of light filling the room when Homura lets her eyes creak open. She is lying on her right side, knees drawn up towards her waist and her hands resting on the pillow in front of her, palms pressed together in an attitude of prayer. A brief flurry of unpleasant memories flit through her brain, echoes of that awful time in the orphanage, at her old school, and she wonders, fitfully, what she could have been thinking to have unconsciously adopted such a gesture.
There is a pressure in her body; a tight constriction that pushes in against her ribs and stomach, so that the very act of breathing seems to require a physical and mental effort that seems wholly ridiculous.
Why should she have to fight merely to keep this desiccated husk of a body functioning? Why is that ache there, that cold, numbing ache and heaviness and…
Homura rolls her head to tilt her face upwards, blinking stupidly as her rheumy eyes slowly come into focus.
A ceiling – nothing so very remarkable in that. Rows of strip lighting set into a suspended grid of polystyrene tiles, painted in a flat, uniform white only broken up by the shadows cast by the grainy texture, and a slight yellow-brown stain of water damage over by the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the room.
She knows that ceiling intimately; has spent more of her life, and then later of her un-life, gazing blankly up at it than she can remember, or cares to contemplate.
The east-facing windows are half-hidden behind the slats of a curtain of white vertical blinds, carefully angled to allow the morning to fill the room without dazzling her as she sleeps. After all this time, the faint rustle and click of fabric and metal as the blinds ripple in the breeze is usually soothing, for all its dismal association with failure piled upon failure, and the need to pick herself up, dust herself down and try once again.
Homura’s stomach writhes queasily.
Why?
Why here, and why now?
She had thought – no, she had known, that she would never have to return to this place.
She rolls onto her back, feeling the quiver of an ugly pulse of nausea deep in her guts, threatening to overwhelm her, then winces as a hard, unyielding lump digs into her lower back. Delving down beneath the covers, her left hand clasps around it: cold and smooth, something like the size and shape of a pigeon egg, with a jagged little crown rising from one end.
She would know it anywhere.
Throat tightening, Homura raises her hand clear of the covers. She can hardly bear to look as her fingers uncurl.
There it sits. There she sits. After all this time, still the thought is nearly impossible for her to bend her thinking around. Homura’s soul gem lies in the palm of her hand, the clear amethyst of the stone catching and scattering the light in a thousand directions. She brings it closer, half-enchanted and half-repelled, delicately rotating it by its golden finial.
Strange, really, how her prison still has the power to captivate.
A wave of revulsion shivers through Homura’s body and she drops the soul gem down into the bedcovers, fighting back a rising, icy-cold tide of fear and misery as that voice in her head, the one she has spent so long trying to suppress, starts up its insistent mantra once more.
…all for nothing all for nothing all for nothing all…
She turns her head to the left, knowing all too well what she will see there on her bedside table. They have been faithful companions for so long, after all.
The calendar is there, as always, turned to March, each day that has passed neatly scored through with her red felt tip pen, drawing closer to her school start date just over a week away, helpfully ringed in blue and labelled with her anxious little attempts at humour from half a lifetime ago, when she was a different girl in a different universe.
That is for the future, though. For the time being, there is today to navigate first.
March 16th.
Well, she is at least tolerably familiar with everything it has to offer.
Not again. Please Gods, not again. Unless…?
And then, all at once, that ugly, unspoken fear has her caught tight in its claws. It is another enemy she has had to fight so many times now that she has lost all proper reckoning of when it first fastened itself into her skin, or of how many times she has had to push herself through the same process to shake free of its grasp.
Was it all nothing but a dream? Was any of it real, and, if so, how much? And, if it is real – if I am not just a broken, lost soul, out of her mind with grief and confusion – then how on earth can I possibly find the strength to do it all again?
Homura knows the answer, of course. She worked it out long ago, or so it seems, at least. It’s just not much fun to put herself through.
That pain, that awful, yawning chasm of loss you feel inside – surely that’s too real not to be true. Picture them. Picture her. All of your failures, Akemi-san… look on them, one after another as they flicker through your mind and your stomach ties itself in knots.
She had told Madoka, once upon a time, that she had lost count of the number of girls she had seen die. It hadn’t mattered at the time – what was one more lie, anyway, when her entire existence had become a drawn-out exercise in deception and concealment? However, the truth was that she hadn’t forgotten a single thing, no matter how hard she tried. It hurt, more than she had ever thought possible, but it kept her true inside, sure of her course, even wrapped up in so many layers of dishonesty.
She doesn’t try to block them out now; she lets the visions run free, each one a shallow, stinging little cut across her soul, but enough for her to be sure.
Not mad. Not yet. Just hurting. All true. All of it.
Fuck…
There’s a bulk in the top pocket of her lilac pyjamas that shouldn’t be there. Homura has raised her hand instinctively to investigate it before she realises, belatedly, what it could be, and her heart spasms wildly. Well, it’s too late now. She’s lived long enough to learn the hard way that pretending things aren’t there and carrying on in feigned ignorance only leads to disaster. Besides, if she’s going to wallow in self-pity, she may as well do the thing properly.
Hardly daring to breathe, Homura inches her fingers inside the pocket. She feels the soft silk against her skin, and recognises straight away that her suspicion was correct.
It only takes a single, steadying breath for her to summon up the strength to pull the strips of fabric loose, spooling out to lie in a loose coil in the hollow of her lap, shockingly bright against the plain white bedsheets.
Is it just her imagination, or do the ribbons still have that faint, ethereal glitter clinging to them? A dusting of starlight, captured forever in the silk.
Then, the feeling grabs her suddenly by the throat, hard, squeezing down mercilessly as that murmuring voice in her ear rises to a deafening roar. Homura’s lip trembles, and she hates herself for her weakness. She claps a hand tight across her mouth, her eyes welling with tears as she tries in vain to swallow that gut-wrenching loneliness and desolation back down again.
Through the blur, she sees the first hairline thread of darkness blooming in the middle of the purple crystal of her soul gem. It’s nothing: no more than a whisper, the suggestion of a flaw in the stone – but already it is growing, almost imperceptibly; gnawing its way through the pristine gem like a maggot eating through the flesh of an apple.
She could let it just keep on eating. Perhaps she should. Just give up the fight and keep on falling, allow herself to plunge completely into her despair and sink below the surface. There was no longer any reason to dread such a fate; Madoka’s choice had ended that terrible fear forever. So… just stop fighting, relax, and have the darkness finally claim you for its own. Hadn’t she earned her rest after all this time? Madoka had promised to shoulder the awful burdens of the magical girls herself – and who else could claim to have had to bear such a burden, or for so long?
It would be easy. Just close your eyes for one last time, and wait for the inevitable.
Madoka would come for her.
So easy.
An image flickers across her mind once more. That angelic smile, the rueful shake of the head.
It’s too early for you to give up yet.
Madoka believed in her. Madoka trusted her. Madoka had told her she was her very best friend.
Was.
The sob comes as a spasm, painful in the tight muscles of her throat and chest, as the enormity of her loss, and the impossibility of her surrender, finally sinks home.
Homura crumples into a ball and lets the weeping overwhelm her.
* * *
Time passes.
It doesn’t matter; the focus of her life is gone, her mission is ended, and all that stretches before her is an endless, empty grey plain, with no path to guide her way.
What can she possibly do now?
Eventually, simple physical exhaustion achieves what thinking alone cannot do. After some uncertain period of time, marked only by the gradual creep of light and shadow across the ceiling and the faint sounds drifting in through the open window, Homura finds she is all cried out, her sobbing replaced with a strange, listless sort of calm. The universe may have changed, but she is still a part of it, however much she might wish she was not. And she had promised to keep going, hadn’t she? No matter how many times, no matter how hopeless things might seem. Promised – to her.
Time to get up.
Homura uncurls from her foetal ball and creakingly levers herself half-upright in the bed, resting on her elbows. She draws in a deep breath, and then gasps as the world seems to tilt and spin before her eyes. Light-headed, she grabs out blindly for the glass of water sitting on the bedside cabinet. Her fingers trace over piled shapes as the spinning increases in speed, before bumping clumsily into the cup and knocking it to the floor.
It’s only a short fall, but quite far enough. The sound of the glass shattering is startlingly loud in the empty stillness of the hospital.
Stifling a curse, Homura lurches upright, her pulse racing with the effort and the shock. She wipes at her face with her sleeve, blinking away the last remnants of her tears and trying to get her breathing back under control.
Her soul gem is lying on its side on the tangled white sheet, a sullen bruise against the snow. As her eyes focus, Homura can plainly see the thin, thread-like wisps of darkness spreading like ice crystals through freezing water. Even in her weary liminal state, the sudden, instinctive pulse of panic that surges through her cannot be denied.
Her very life is draining away before her eyes. She needs…
What does she need now?
Again, the impulse to lie back and give herself up to the darkness comes upon her, stronger now than ever. Who could blame her? Who would even know, alone in the world as she is now?
The answer is already on her lips. She would know. She would know, and even if Madoka would never judge her for that, Homura would judge herself. She could never bear to look Madoka in the eye knowing that, for all eternity, she had failed.
Fuck it all. She has a problem to resolve. So be it. She has been resolving problems her entire life. Keep moving forward, Akemi-san.
Homura swallows painfully, working her parched lips and tongue as her brain starts to work once more, slowly shaking off the paralysis that had gripped her.
Think. Plan. Act. We can do this. Deal with the issue at hand, then think about what comes next.
As she grows calmer and she begins to recover her cold pragmatism, Homura becomes dimly aware that something has changed, unnoticed until this moment. The room is… different. All the trappings are the same – the contents, the slightly shabby decoration, the smell – but after so many repeats, she knows not just this room, but also this day. It is all as familiar to her as the back of her hand: the way the shadows fall across the far wall, the way the glass in the cabinet catches the light just so, the high-pitched chattering of the morning chorus of starlings nesting in the trees lining the car park, wafting in through the slight gap in the windows with the warm spring breeze.
But not now. The room seems drained of vitality, somehow – faded greys in place of the harsh whites and blues of her memory. The birds are silent, and the faint draft of air from the open window is heavy and sullen, a mildewed damp laced with a mingled scent of industrial grime and earthy decay.
What has happened?
Filled with a strange sense of foreboding, Homura pulls back the sheets and swings her legs over the right-hand side of her bed. She bites her bottom lip, thinking hard, and then trails a fingertip softly across the top of her soul gem, letting it transform back into its ring form before sliding it onto her finger. Something is wrong, and whilst she cannot sense any imminent danger, it is sensible to take precautions.
She blows out her cheeks, gives herself a silent little nod of encouragement, and then slides forwards, dropping down noiselessly to the floor with the practiced grace of a cat. She pauses for a moment, listening intently for any reaction, and then softly pads across the faded linoleum to the windows before cautiously teasing back the blind with her fingers.
Homura stares out in wonder at a changed world. The sun-kissed spring morning of the March 16th she has seen so many times before is gone. And in its place…
A silver curtain of drizzly rain is falling from dove-grey skies, a blanket of cloud stretching from horizon to horizon. There is a distant rumble of traffic in the air, wafting across from the expressway she knows lies beyond the line of trees that marks the boundary of the hospital car park. The air is cool and clammy; winter still hanging on grimly and refusing yet to release its grip. In place of the sea breeze there is a heavy, faintly acrid fug of exhaust fumes and…
And something else. A bitter, alien tang of something unidentifiable that makes the skin on the back of her neck crawl in a way she can’t rationally explain.
This… this isn’t what she had expected to find. Something has changed fundamentally, but it has taken a form of its own choosing, and there is some vague, nameless threat lurking within it, veiled in shadow. Aside from the change in the weather, there is nothing obviously wrong with what she can see from the window – and yet Homura knows, deep in her bones, that she is being watched.
Unbidden, and unwelcome, a faint shiver of fear ripples across her skin.
No. No, she will not be afraid. She has seen the worst that this world has to offer, more times than she cares to remember, and she isn’t going to let herself be spooked just because the day is a bit cloudier than she expected. Whatever it might be that is hiding itself away out there, it is right to do so – because it should be scared of her, not the other way round.
Homura lifts her chin, gritting her teeth tight. She reaches up with her right hand, running her fingers through the long, loose tresses of her hair, and flicks it back with an imperious gesture. Something has obviously gone wrong. This… this cannot be the world that Madoka has created. It looks wrong, it tastes wrong, and it feels wrong - wrong on every level, wrong in a way that Homura can sense with every fibre of her being.
At last, her path is clear to her. She has to put things right.
But, just at this moment, she can barely stand.
Shit!
The weakness hits her without warning, her frame slumping and legs suddenly turned to jelly beneath her. Homura clutches wildly at the window frame as her knees tremble alarmingly. Her brain is reeling, the room spinning again, faster than ever. What…?
She needs to be horizontal, and quickly. Homura twists, letting her weight fall back against the wall before sliding slowly down to the floor in a tangle of blinds, coming to rest with her head between her knees and both hands resting against the top of her skull. Her lungs work like bellows as an uncontrollable shudder resonates through her frame. Homura gulps down air in shallow little breaths through her mouth: in and out, in and out, fighting to regain control of her body, and then, as the shivering slowly begins to ebb away, she unfurls her body enough to gaze down at the soul gem where it rests in the palm of her left hand.
Those fine filigree lines of darkness now fill every corner of the stone, twisting and thickening with every passing second. Already, time is starting to run out.
She needs to move. Now.
Think, Akemi-san. Your heart lies shattered in a thousand pieces, but you still have a brain, and the strength of will to do what needs to be done, however awful that path might be. Take those emotions, and shove them back down. You are cold. You are calculating. You do not give into despair – not now, not ever.
You must go on.
Homura transforms her soul gem back into its ring form with an unspoken command, then braces her arms and pushes down against the floor, forcing her unwilling limbs into motion. She stumbles unsteadily back up onto her feet, wobbling briefly before she stabilises herself against the wall.
Deep breath.
Okay.
Think. Think, think, think…
It is imperative that she purifies her soul gem, and soon, or else all her grim determination to push on will be for nothing. But she has no grief seeds, and where now, in this alien universe, would it even be possible to obtain one? The witches are gone, and with them her only source of salvation.
Well, there is one other place she could try, of course. One possible solution.
Homura raises her face and pushes back her shoulders. Her eyes narrow as they turn to the door.
* * *
If the nightmarish journey through town has already nearly finished her off, the climb up the exterior staircase to the second floor just about completes the process. By the time Homura has navigated the mezzanine half-landing and is on the second flight of steps, she has been reduced to crawling, palms and knees grazed and bloodied by the rough concrete.
Three more steps. She can do this.
She doesn’t need to see the crystal to know that her soul gem is right at its limit. She can feel the dreadful weight pulling her backwards with every step, but she isn’t going to stop now, not when she’s so close.
She hadn’t thought about changing before she set off, simply chucking her coat and shoes on over her pyjamas and heading out into the grey drizzle of downtown Mitakihara. Doubtless that would have drawn a fair few curious glances, but Homura hadn’t given the matter a second thought. She didn’t have enough power left to transform safely, and there wasn’t time to start messing around with changes of clothes. Let people stare – if she couldn’t find a way to purify her gem in the very near future she wouldn’t be around to feel any lingering embarrassment in any event.
Two more steps.
The day seems to be getting gloomier by the minute, shadows drawing in around her as her vision fogs and her muscles scream with the effort of moving.
What sort of world is this? It should be spring by the calendar, even discounting the fact that this is a day that she has seen so many times before. But now…
In place of that sense of the world waking up after the long winter slumber, Mitakihara huddles beneath leaden, heavy skies, the misty rain that is falling a promise of worse to come.
One more step.
Homura’s empty stomach has had enough. Her head drops, sagging between her shoulders as she retches uselessly, biceps trembling as she tries to stop herself collapsing completely. Another uncoordinated lunge forwards and upwards, forcing those unwilling knees into action once again, and she’s there on the balcony walkway, one hand pressed against the topmost step and the other reaching out to wrap itself around the metal of the balustrade and laboriously haul herself upright.
Another spasm wracks her body, and she bends nearly double, coughing and heaving uncontrollably before straightening up once more, wiping away the drool on her lips with the back of her hand and trying to muster the energy for a last flick of her hair.
First impressions count, after all, and she knows from experience that this is a first impression it is important to get right.
Homura takes a tentative step forward, her left hand sliding along the cool metal of the balcony handrail. Her destination is two doors’ away along the balcony walkway; a solid door of dark varnished wood with a neatly-inscribed metal name plate screwed into its surface.
The dizziness is unbearable. Homura closes her eyes, feeling the way with her hand and concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other without falling in a heap.
She’s walked this way enough times to be pretty safe, after all – even with her eyes closed. She can picture the scene in front of her with perfect clarity…
Bare concrete above and tiles below, balcony floor and balcony ceiling, the west-facing walkway bathed in shadow at this time, even on sunny days. To her left, an uninspiring view out across the street to the taller apartment blocks on the other side, light traffic on the roads and the few pedestrians out at this hour bent over and huddling in their raincoats. Directly in front, a wall of translucent glass blocks stretching from floor to ceiling, too thick and clouded to see through properly but casting a golden pool of light onto the floor, stretching out to the threshold of the last door on the right.
Left foot forward. Breathe. Right foot forward…
She’s going to make it.
Homura cautiously opens her eyelids. She’s nearly there, standing opposite the door, almost within touching distance. One more effort is all it will take.
She draws in a deep breath, steadying herself, then pushes off from the handrail and stumbles across to press herself up to the smooth wood. There’s nothing else to prop herself against.
She stretches out with her right hand, feeling for the doorbell. Presses it. Presses it again, and again.
Homura can feel the last feeble dregs of energy guttering and dying.
She raises her hand, banging against the bare panel of the door, as her knees start to bend and her fingernails dig into the wooden frame.
Slowly… slowly sliding down, onto her knees.
She opens her mouth to call for help, but no words come.
Is that footsteps she can hear? They seem so far away.
Sinking into darkness.
Homura’s chin drops as her leaden eyelids start to descend once more.
There’s a squeak of oiled hinges, and the next instant she’s falling over onto her back as the door swings open, knocking her clean off her feet.
The world is black. Only a single light glows feebly somewhere above her, a soft smudge of pale yellow in the deeper gloom.
Is that singing in her ears?
There is a muffled gasp, and then a face appears out of the gloom above her. A face she knows well. High cheeks, pointed chin, and two bright, honey-gold eyes framed by tumbling blonde drill curls. The familiar features are pinched with worry as they hover over Homura.
“Oh my goodness! Are you okay? Are you hurt? Tell me, please - what on earth has happened to you?”
She doesn’t have time for explanations. Instead, Homura raises her left hand to her chest. She sees the flash of recognition in the other girl’s eyes as they alight upon the soul gem.
“P- please… help me… Tomoe-san…”
All is black.