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It hadn’t occurred to Sayaka Miki until a few days ago, when she squinted to read the teacher’s handwriting on the board, how much had changed without her noticing. She couldn’t recall when she’d lost some sight in her left eye; isn’t that the type of thing that traumatizes people? And yet, it was gone, and she didn’t know why. Even now, days later, she had no answers. The familiar sight of her own bedroom was instead a faint blur of color on her left. It definitely wasn’t… no, it probably wasn’t like that her whole life. The fact that she can’t even decide that for sure causes her to cry out in frustration, but her fist pounding against her bedroom desk helps her regain her senses before she cries for real. She speaks aloud, despite nobody else being in her room to hear her.
“Well, let’s just think. What could’ve done this to me?” She puts a hand over her one functioning eye, and tries to focus on the input of the other as she thinks. The gradient of grey, the vague light contrast between the moonlit windowsill and the darkness of her room, and television static apparitions that the optic nerve feeds her as input provide a sensory white noise that helps her rack her brain. “It wasn’t something I ate, wasn’t in a car wreck or sports accident or anything, I wasn’t in the hospital except to visit Kyousuke, so what even- ugh, this sucks!” She yells again and then lowers her voice as she follows a train of thought. “Kyousuke got outta the hospital because I made my wish, did I pay the price for that?”
The thought prompts another. “Price of making wishes, huh? Wish someone would’ve told me. Wait, didn’t someone? Mmm…” she hums to herself as she squeezes her head as if it’d help her remember, but she feels like she’s reaching at a dream from many nights past. She sighs and gives up, the futility of the exercise apparent. She wonders if her memory was always this poor, or if it, too, was part of whatever was going on. A never-ending feedback loop, how wonderful.
“Back to square one, huh? No, this is like square two. I know something is going on, at least. I just gotta keep thinking, I’ll figure it out. Always do!” She punches the air as she opens her eyes again, determination brimming forth. A yawn brims forth as well, she finishes getting ready for bed, and sleep takes her not long after she lies down.
Her dreams had become vivid since she made her contract, and especially so in recent days. While she semi-regularly dreamt of battle, sometimes even reliving ones she’d fought in the waking world, lately her dreams were particularly fixated; fixated on her best friend, Madoka, and fixated on that transfer student who had worked her way into both their lives, Homura Akemi. Tonight, again, she dreamt of them. She walks between Madoka and Homura along a familiar road, all three arm in arm as if they’d been friends forever. She blinks, and suddenly finds herself ten meters behind them, and they walk forward without her. She calls out, but her voice fails her. Even her legs fail her and she remains rooted in place, merely watching them leave. Homura looks over her shoulder, and Sayaka swears she can see a small smirk on her face. Suddenly, Homura fully turns around and Madoka falls over. Sayaka manages to break free from her dreamed shackles, transforms, and charges right at Homura, her sword thrusts towards her- and her alarm frightens her awake, and she shoots upright with a start. Taking a few seconds to collect her thoughts, and allow her heart rate to recede, she sighs and slides out of bed to prepare for another schoolday.
She checks the time, and she has an ample amount before homeroom starts. Her arms behind her head, she begins a leisurely stroll towards the school, her head up in the clouds she’s staring at with her uneven sight. She has no real problems with the transfer student, she reckons; the girl is somewhat standoffish with everyone except Madoka, but ultimately, Sayaka didn’t think she meant any harm. They had fought at first, but it was mostly her own fault, a bit of jealousy about the attention she had grabbed from Madoka. By this point, it didn’t bother her any more. Madoka’s heart seems to have room for everybody in the world all the same; once Sayaka had realized that, she no longer feared that she was losing Madoka to some newer, prettier friend. Even so, she can’t shake some kind of nervous feeling around her. Besides, her thoughts are still churning from last night, both regarding her eyesight and her dream. Thinking about her eyes, it felt unsafe, somehow, walking along the road with so much of her vision cloudy. It must not have always been this way, right? Well, could she see with both eyes in her dream? Ah, she couldn’t remember… besides, it’s not like dreams are reliable information sources anyway. She could focus on that more once she was sitting in school. Her mind drifts back to Madoka now, and she is suddenly glad that the both of them had made more friends this year, and Magical Girls at that! It’d been just the two of them for as long as she can remember. At the very least, she knows Madoka was safer with more magical girls around.
Safer from what?
The thought makes her freeze in her tracks. Safer from what? They had duties, right? Magical girls must fight… what was it? Wraiths…? No, that must be an enemy in a video game she’d played, or dream or… something. Her mind seems to scream at her, and she nearly doubles over. Safer from what? Safer from what? From each other, maybe? But why would they fight? Why would she be relieved about the others if they had to fight? No, this was something else. They had to fight something, right? That’s why they made the contract, that’s why they had the weapons. Wait, what did she even mean by making a contract? She’d thought about a contract last night, too, but she didn’t realize just how strange it was that she couldn’t remember what that even meant. Contract with who? To do what? Make everyone safer from what?
She turns around and stumbles back towards her home, to safety, before her mind even catches up to her body’s actions. It’s as though somebody had cleft her mind in two and dragged half of it thousands of meters deep into the ocean, the pressure crushing all she is, her very soul. She’s never experienced pain like this before… no, she has. She knows she has. She can’t remember when, where, why, or how, but she knows in her bones that she has. It’s somehow familiar, it’s agonizingly familiar. She makes it only a few meters back when she falls over onto her hands and knees on the side of the road. Panicking, she begins breathing deeply through her mouth as she notices that the blurred vision of her left eye isn’t so much a blurred version of reality as something entirely detached from it. She feels compelled to stare into that abyss. She focuses on the dancing colors and shapes over her heaving breaths, and finds them first to be water bubbles, or a musical score going by, then finally a theater of some kind? She slumps over from all fours onto her rear end, sitting against the guard rail at the edge of the road. As she takes her seat, her vision is completely overwhelmed by what is clearly now an orchestra awaiting cue from the maestro. Her other senses follow sight; she’s no longer sitting on asphalt, instead a plush velvet seat in a decorated symphony hall. The conductor raises the baton, and the strings start to play. At first, it feels faraway still, but slowly the volume builds and she can feel even the timbre in the air. Something stirs inside of her, she wants to cry, she wants to run, but she can't move a muscle. A crescendo means she can now hear the orchestra clearly, clear as her own voice. Then, suddenly, a realization - this is her voice, in a way. It all makes sense now, she has seen this before, she has done this before… this is the end. She slumps in her chair, failing to hold back tears. She can’t believe she had forgotten, but she is back here again. The gaps in her memory, had she been hurting people? And her eyesight, maybe her body was simply deteriorating. If this was reality, was all the world outside just a cruel joke? Perhaps she was in hell, being permanently punished for her failure. The tears stream from her eyes, her sleeves starting to soak through as she wipes them away.
But as suddenly as it appeared, the vision is gone. With the blink of an eye, the music hall is changed back into a quiet suburban roadway, and the symphony subsides to ringing in her ears. She stares at the pavement, aghast for a moment, before wiping her eyes to finally dry them. She notices then a feeling in her chest which had been there since her return, pleasant like the presence of… a friend? A mother? A sister? God? She can’t tell, but it feels like the warm embrace of a person most dear.
Her mind begins to clear in the warm embrace, and she remembers everything.
Madoka had surrendered her body, become as god, and made it so no-one had to become a Witch anymore. She saved all Magical Girls from their fate. She probably just had again for her, but it wasn’t the same way; her soul gem, she notices, is still intact, when she knew that the Law of Cycles meant it should have exploded. This almost certainly had to do with what she did. That witch, that demon… Homura had split Madoka’s very being into two aspects, the divine and the physical, and done who knows what else to her. The Law must clearly exist, she thinks, having saved her just now, but yet Madoka walks the Earth in her old body. Both her and Homura weren’t human, at least not fully, anymore; neither is she, she thinks. She’d already lost her humanity some time ago, become a Witch, and was now back in this body. All of them, human-shaped vessels for inhuman beings… this really was some kind of hell. But, she remembered that now. That was all she needed.
“Maybe that’s why… it’s gotta be me that does it,” she thinks to herself, as she gets to her feet again. “I’m already dead, so, nothin’ to lose, you know?” She chuckles despite herself. Someone had to set things right, someone had to restore Madoka’s wish to her. Madoka sacrificed everything to save everyone, and nobody was going to deny her the fruit of her wish. Not even the Devil. Her hands clench into fists as she continues the walk to school, her thoughts racing as she attempts to formulate a plan.
She spies Madoka and Homura standing at the gate, waiting, presumably for her. Madoka’s smile becomes even wider as she sees Sayaka approach, and she waves and calls out to her. “Sayaka-chan!” Sayaka, even enraged though she is, can’t help but return a smile as Madoka approaches her. The light embrace she finds herself in confirms it; Madoka had saved her before, that feeling must have been her. It builds her resolve. She squeezes Madoka back briefly, and then lets go, her focus returning to her mission as Madoka steps back. “Sayaka-chan, you’re late! Are you okay? Homura-chan said that-”
“Madoka, actually, I was thinking, could me and the transfer student have a minute?” Her blue eyes narrow on Homura as she finishes her request. The black-haired beauty retains her neutral expression, as always disinterested as in all matters not named Madoka Kaname.
“Ehh? But Sayaka-chan, class is-”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
Madoka follows her gaze onto Homura, who then sighs and tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Fine, Sayaka Miki. But let’s make it quick, so we don’t miss class.” She looks at Madoka, and her expression softens a little. “Why don’t you run ahead, Madoka? I promise, we’ll both meet you in class soon.”
“Well… alright, but you’d both better make it on time!”
“We will,” say both girls in unison.
They both watch as Madoka leaves, and then Homura is the first to turn, looking Sayaka up and down. “Your knees are all dirty. And it looks like your hands are, too. Being rather careless, did you trip, perhaps, Sayaka Miki?”
Sayaka’s eyes narrow as she locks eyes with Homura. “Don’t you think your acting could use some work, transfer student? Or is your title ‘demon’ these days?”
"Oh? What is it you are accusing me of, exactly?" Homura's lips curl into the smallest smile, betraying what Sayaka had already known. It was also just like she’d seen in her dream, which only infuriates Sayaka more.
"Something tells me you already know that. But first, I’d like you to follow me over here, behind the building-”
“There’s no need for that. They won’t be able to see us.” Homura makes no attempt to hide her knowing smirk. The people around them keep walking, oblivious or perhaps incapable of noticing their conflict.
Sayaka sighs. “So they won’t, I guess. But I take it you know what I’m going to do then? Why don’t we just drop the pretenses and get-” she interrupts herself, transforms, and lunges at Homura, both swords aimed at her chest. Or rather, aimed at where her chest was moments prior, but she is there no longer. How had she missed? With her one eye out of commission - had her Magical Girl form always had a bandage over its eye like this? No, surely, this can’t have always been like this. But even that accounted for, no, she must have had time to react.
“Oh, poor Sayaka. You had the intellect to guess that I knew, but not enough to figure out why I knew or how much.” Homura’s voice mocks her from right behind her. Sayaka swings one sword as she spins her entire body, lightning fast yet not fast enough. The voice appears directly to her left side this time, “Don’t you get it yet?” She swings at the voice, but it disappears before her sword reaches it and arrives in a blind spot, again and again.
"You - always - do - the - same - thing.”
Sayaka swings fruitlessly at the source, and then stops, breathing heavily. Then, the girl appears directly before her, a sight simultaneously familiar and not. It wasn’t Homura’s typical Magical Girl outfit, but instead an unusual, scant garment in the darkest black. Wings had sprouted from her back, feathers dark as coal. Sayaka can’t help but chuckle at the sight of it. “You’re not even trying to hide the fact that you’re just totally evil, are you?”
Homura giggles back to her. “No, I suppose not, Sayaka Miki. Does that upset you? Would you prefer I conceal my intentions?”
“I’m just trying to figure it out, how you justify doing this, if you hate her or something. Or maybe you just hate me.” She glares and her grip tightens on her sword.
Homura frowns, as if disappointed. “Oh, you wound me, Sayaka. Obviously neither of those is true.” Homura tilts her head, as if in thought. “If there is a source of limitless good, then there must be a limitless evil in the world, right?”
“What kind of nonsense is that? More good is good, and those who are evil should be punished.” Sayaka shrugs sarcastically. “I mean, everything seemed to be getting on just fine before you decided to ruin everything.”
“Getting on fine?”Homura glares at her. “This world is much the same as the other, but Madoka is here, in it, safe and happy. Isn’t that a better world to you?” She scoffs. “Do you honestly think that a world without Madoka is okay?”
This pulls on a heartstring, and somehow Sayaka fails to disagree. “You’ve… got a point on that one.”
Homura smiles with intrigue. “Well now, that’s new.” A few things click within Sayaka’s mind all at once, but Homura continues while she processes them. “Look, Sayaka Miki. I have no particular desire to fight with you. You subject yourself to this, on some crusade against the windmills. Both of us, you and I, we both want the same thing, correct?”
Homura takes a staggered breath, clearly emotional about her precious Madoka. “I want to protect Madoka, as do you. Therefore, if you can keep your mouth shut, we-”
Homura is interrupted by a sword thrown directly at her. Mid-sentence, she is caught off guard, and it grazes her torso. The second sword, still in the hand of its wielder, also approaches rapidly, and with it a war cry.
“HOMURAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Her voice breaks, Sayaka swings, but the Devil catches the second sword in the palm of her hand, and wrenches it with a force even a Magical Girl couldn’t match. Sayaka tips over, and finds herself sliding across the ground as a kick lands. As she skids to a stop and rights herself, she swings a fist at the winged beast flying toward her. With only one eye exposed, the lack of depth perception finally catches up to Sayaka; the swing is too early. The Devil's charge lands, and Sayaka is tackled by her shoulders to the floor, her arms pinned by an impossibly powerful grip.
“For what it's worth,” Homura begins, “you haven’t done that before.”
Sayaka laughs defiantly. “I realized you must've fought me before, and that's how you knew what I was gonna do. So I did the dumbest thing I can think of, something I’d never do!” She smiles, spiting her captor. Homura just sighs in response as Sayaka continues, “But if we’ve done this before, that means you’re the one who’s been messing with my memory, aren’t you?”
“More than once, and it will happen again soon.” Her face falls back to expressionlessness, which Sayaka can't decide to be more or less angry about. “This brings me no pleasure, Sayaka Miki.”
Sayaka looks off to the side, eager to break eye contact. “Not like this is fun for me either,” she says through gritted teeth, “but I owe it to her. She saved me, I don’t know how many times. Today, even. I almost…” she trails off, unwilling to deliberate on her fate further.
Homura cackles at this, which elicits a glare from Sayaka. “Oh, I’m sorry. No, that was not what you think it was, I’m afraid.”
“What? What are you saying?”
“Were that the Law of Cycles, the thing you think you remember, you simply would have died before your total transformation into a Witch. No, what saved you was my intervention, to deplete your curse buildup.”
“What? No, that can’t-” Sayaka’s pupils narrow and she tries in vain to shake free from the hold, but fails.
Homura chides, “Oh, don’t be so dramatic! Does it really matter?” Sayaka only flails more in response. “It’s always been me looking out for you, you know. Over and over again, countless times… I gave up on trying to save you once, but now I’ve decided you might just be worth it.” She smirks. “At first because it mattered to Madoka, but now, it just pains me to watch you fail over and over again! And all because of your own deluded sense of justice-”
“Deluded?! Ha! Hahaha! Deluded!” Sayaka suddenly boils over with rage under the demon holding her down, and manages to slip an arm free from her hold, nearly shattering her own bones in the process. “Me? Deluded? What a sick joke!” Her fists pound on her captor, who hardly flinches. “You've deluded yourself into thinking any of this is okay!” With her free arm, she shoves the girl off of her, summoning a sword into her now-free hand. “Why?! How could you do all of this, put us in this fantasy land - steal Madoka’s wish from her? Of course I want her back, but she sacrificed everything to make a world safe for us! To deny her that, what’s wrong with you?!”
This seems to upset Homura.
Sayaka sucks in a breath. “And I’m going to tell her what you did.” The words are forced out behind Sayaka’s gritted teeth. Homura does not respond, standing in place with eyes downcast.
“Nothing to say about that, huh? Well then-” Sayaka moves to lunge for an attack, but finds that her body no longer responds to her commands. She falls over in the same position, as if frozen stiff, and Homura gets to her feet and slowly walks back over to her. Sayaka wishes she would just kill her rather than gloat. Homura does neither.
“My hope is that eventually, or maybe with enough of a penalty, you'll realize the futility of your little outbursts, and assist me in maintaining this slice of paradise, Sayaka Miki.” She begins to circle the frozen girl. “I can’t just remove you from the picture, for Madoka's sake and for your own. You can think I’m evil for now, if you’d like. You aren’t totally wrong. Besides, I need you in fighting shape, just in case. But… well, I suppose I can’t have you doing anything stupid.”
Bandages appear over Sayaka's mouth a moment later, soft linen wrapped around her lower face, another layer atop that covering her eye. “That’ll make sure you don’t mess this all up. And next time, you won’t say all those hurtful things you did. Maybe it will help you not think them, either.” Homura stops circling right in front of her face, scanning it with downcast eyes, just out of Sayaka’s field of view. “But only time will tell if you actually learn your lesson. Oh, and you may find that you're less talkative out there, in your normal life. Not fully mute, I’m not heartless.” She crouches, and her face comes back into Sayaka’s view, which makes her heart rate elevate for a number of reasons, not least among them rage. “I do care about you, Sayaka Miki. This is for your good, and Madoka’s, and mine. This is the best thing for everyone. Maybe next time, you’ll see it.” She stands again as she continues, “but oh, I’m mostly just talking to myself at this point. I'd ask you to think about all I do for you, but you won't.” She snaps her fingers.
Homura extends a hand to Sayaka Miki, who is currently on the ground in the school courtyard. “Sayaka Miki, are you okay? We are going to be late to class.”
“Ah…” Sayaka opens her mouth in surprise, but can't think of words to say. She nods her head. There's a bit of dirt on her school uniform, but it's not worth complaining over.
“Well, let's go, then. Madoka is waiting for us in homeroom.” Sayaka Miki nods again and takes her hand, and they walk to the school building together.