Work Text:
It wasn’t hate, not really.
Well, it wasn’t for one of them.
Sayaka loathed her with a passion the girl was known to take to anything – her passion for music, for life, for that stupid little worm Kyousuke, for her friends, for being a hero-
Sayaka desired her death. She hated her wholly, fully, convinced their rivalry and hatred was a shared thing.
How could it be? Homura was a creature of love, it’s all she’s been able to do – and she used that love to power her movements through timelines and a world in which her love was a distant memory. And then her soul was borne to those she loved most, and then she split God for love. She locked them in this gilded cage for love, because she wanted to show them that she loved them enough to suffer even more.
So she suffered. It’s what Homura does. She suffered their confusion, their amnesia, their twisted senses of self-righteousness. She suffered Madoka’s distant smiles. She suffered Kyouko’s unknowing commentary. She suffered Mami’s ignorance. She suffered her own self-doubt.
She suffered, worst of all, Sayaka’s loathing.
She called her a Devil, an evil creature that took everything and twisted it, locked them in this prison as a warden with the key thrown away. She treated Homura like she’d snapped the universe over her knee, like she’d taken everything Sayaka fought for and bent it under strain after strain. Sayaka hated her, loathed her, despised her-
And Homura loved her. So much, too much. She fell asleep to the Everdistant memory of lips pressed to hers, of a hand carding through hair, of deceptively strong arms around her middle. She woke with a half-startled “Good morn” before she remembered herself. She was in her New World. Her apartment was empty of anything warm and blue.
This repeated endlessly.
The loop she was now acquainted with went like this:
She woke up half-screaming Sayaka’s name, a memory of her previous loops in which Sayaka had despaired so crushingly she begged Homura to kill her.
She crawls out of bed like a troglodyte creature emerging from the primordial ooze, hatching from a cocoon of blankets and self-hatred. She claps once and she’s dressed, hair done, outfit ready for the day.
Which is useless, because she knows she’s never going back to that school again. Mitakihara Middle School has outgrown her, she tells herself – but the truth is Homura can’t stand to be in the same room as Sayaka Miki, because that loathing in her beautiful blue eyes twists her despair-riddled insides more than anything she had to go through for Madoka.
But she’ll go anyway, because as much as she can’t stand the hate, she can’t stay away. Sayaka has always been her deepest fascination, her greatest weakness. It’s why, later in the loops, she didn’t protest as much as she wanted to when Sayaka and Kyouko got together. She didn’t protest now, when the redhead asked the bluenette out and Sayaka Miki looked her dead in the eyes across a hall of people and clearly said “Of course”.
Another twist of the knife. How like Sayaka that is.
So she walks to school and sits in her chair and blanks out Saotome-sensei’s nonsense rambling about eggs and boyfriends and desperately stares into the Great Nothing to avoid the loathing aimed at her.
She wipes her tired eyes when the bell rings, and she shuffles like a zombie to the pre-set metal-wire chair she’d placed outside a few months ago. It’s in a location objectively pretty, a beautiful backdrop to her inevitable downfall.
She will die on this hill, like she does on every other she sets up on.
So she slumps into it, reaches to the plastic table shaded by a parasol, and grabs a steaming teacup. It takes her a sip to untense the muscles in her neck and shoulders, and she’ll relax there for an hour, sipping tea and staring into the sky – looking at the galaxy she’d overtaken, ruled with the iron fist of someone that can’t stop loving.
And then Sayaka will be there. Spitting vitriol, telling her she’d never win, calling her a Devil, a monster, an evil thing that should have been choked in her crib.
But instead, she looks Homura in the eyes – for the first time since she’d been locked here away from her grand purpose – and take sin the bags. She sees the sallowness of her skin, the barely-there gaze, the defeat in her posture.
And she doesn’t feel pity – Homura’s a Devil, Sayaka reminds her for the umpteenth time. It goes in one ear and out the other, as so many things do these days.
But she flips the script when she speaks next. Homura had believed it to be her usual acidic comments on her desire to end Homura’s wretched little life. Homura will go home and mourn the times she could hold and kiss and love her so openly, without having to be a villain for Sayaka to feel better about herself.
Instead, she says this:
“Madoka won’t love you for this,” she hisses, blue eyes dark. Taking in every micro-movement of the Devil under her gaze, hoping for a flinch or something to set her satisfaction back on track.
She gets a confused, weary frown. “Yes? I am aware, Sayaka Miki.” (Homura wants to strangle herself. Why can’t you say her name, her nickname, call her Saya-chan, anything-)
Steam removed from her sails before she could even get going, Sayaka’s very eloquent “Huh?” makes Homura stare for a moment.
“I am aware Madoka will never love me,” she starts slowly, as though speaking to a child. “I have always known she would never love me, even during my time travel.”
“What? That’s – no, you’re trying to trick me!” Sayaka jabs a finger in Homura’s direction. “You did all this for Madoka! I know that much. This is all so you could – could take her power and leave her a mortal little girl for you to-to twist or – or something!”
-but Homura doesn’t even pay her attention anymore, a bland “Is that so?” drifting through Sayaka’s ears like air. And like air, they go mostly ignored.
“Yes! This is all some twisted game to you!”
“Really?” Comes a disinterested hum.
Sayaka’s hands clench. “Take this seriously, damn Devil! We’re just your fucking amusement, aren’t we!?”
Homura’s eyes snap to hers with a sudden, quiet, startlingly lucid intensity. “Ah, and I suppose you want me to agree. Of course, Sayaka, this is all a trap for me to mess around with Madoka to my heart’s content. Why, just the other day I…did nothing with her. And of course, you can’t forget that memorable time I also did nothing.” Homura’s creepy smile is painted on, placid and empty of anything that could make it a smile. “Haven’t you noticed? It’s been months in this world of mine. Beyond greeting the transfer student at school, I have stayed well away.”
Sayaka’s disbelief is etched into her face, her mouth opening and closing as though to find something, anything, to argue with.
It breaks Homura’s heart again. Sayaka hates her this much she’s will to find anything to levy against her just to hate her even more.
Homura sighs, allowing the full weight of her emotional exhaustion to come crashing down on her shoulders. Her chin dips and she stirs her tea with a spoon, eyes half-lidded. “Of course, that’s not what you want to hear. You want to hear that I have designs on Madoka, that I want to ravish her every day or some such nonsense,” she says all this with a deadpan tiredness that Sayaka hasn’t heard before. “That I have plans to grow closer and form a relationship or something to that affect, yes? Twist her away from her purpose as the Law of Cycles just to torture her, or something.”
Homura shakes her head when Sayaka nods mutely.
“No. I have never wanted that. Not with Madoka.” She hides the want in her eyes when she stares a little longer than necessary at Sayaka. “But you don’t care about the reasons, do you?”
That snaps Sayaka from her daze, eyes hardening into beautiful chips of ice. “Of course I do!”
Homura shakes her head. “No, you don’t.” It’s said with such certainty that even Sayaka, hothead extraordinaire, stops to listen. “You want to hear that I am a truly evil person, that I have predatory designs on my ex-best friend. You want me to tell you my evil master plan of subverting the Law of Cycles forever, gaining untold power and playing god to suit my sick fantasies. You want me to tell you that you are but a toy to me, that I enjoy watching you struggle and suffer.”
Sayaka’s hands clench tightly and her knuckles turns white. If she clenches any harder her nails might cut into her skin – but Sayaka’s always been good at taking an injury.
Paradoxically, her white-hot rage has simmered down, and her eyes find themselves following Homura’s movements; how lackadaisical they seem, how slow, how lethargic almost. She takes in the ever-so-slight shaking in her hands, the distant gaze to her eyes, the way she doesn’t even bother trying to pretend at hostility anymore.
Something sick wriggles in Sayaka’s stomach, but before she can confront it, the Devil speaks.
Just her voice is enough to blind her with rage again (to chase off the doubt, because if she’s wrong-)
A crow caws loudly, shocking Sayaka from her thoughts.
“You’d best get going. Madoka’s looking for you.”
Sayaka snarls at the empty way Madoka’s name crosses those lips – like she truly doesn’t mean anything. She’s too angry to pay it any mind.
Instead, she shakes with impotent rage and spits at the Devil’s feet. “I’ll bring an end to this, just you wait. This isn’t over, Devil.”
As Sayaka marches off, Homura slumps in her chair, staring at the sky while a tear traces its way down her cheek. Her smile is hurt, and empty, and at this point she’s waiting for Sayaka to succeed. To gather up their so-called Holy Quintet and steal Madoka’s power back.
For Sayaka to finally put down the Devil like she’s been wanting to. Jam her sword through Homura’s chest and pull out her heart, only to see that it only ever beat for Sayaka – Madoka was just the catalyst, not the result.
That’s always been Sayaka. And one day Sayaka will kill her, because she hates her for reasons even she doesn’t understand.
This isn’t over, she’d said.
“It never is with you, Saya-chan,” she sighs fondly, and sips her tea, and knows this will repeat tomorrow.
After all, this isn’t the first time they’ve had this conversation.