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Homura wakes up with a foot stuck between her ribs, red hair picking her nose and firmly holding a hand, like the storm could take her.
The storm! There's not time to lose, just the blinding lights of the hospital and-
There were no lights in the room, curtains tightly closed, only a tiny gap of sunshine coming through them. Homura looked at her sheets, not the rough plastic of every start in the hospital, but a comfort she knew too well just from the smell, Mami loved to spray perfume on the sheets right before bedtime. Even with her eyes still adjusting at the dark, the floral patterns were hard to miss, and so it was the pink hair tucked under it.
As if a nail hit Homura's head, an unbearable headache kicked her. Flashes of bright colors burning her eyes even if she closed them, a blue melancholy, a red ire, a yellow bond, even tones she couldn't exactly pinpoint down. Surrounding all of them, the pink woven with gold. The one resting there, at her side. Up and down her breath goes, covered by the dark. Up and down, almost in tempo with her own.
She stands up in bed, hand so rigid just to not awake her. Do not disturb her, Homura, if you dare to even wake her… and the headaches come again. Not now, her breathing descending and rising, it’s not the moment to check it, to see that's more than just smoke and mirrors, it’s just not the time. In the case this was an illusion, and she accounted it as a possibility in her paths, the pain of a choice she wasn't ready to take loomed over her head. A bow already strung, set to shoot. But now wasn't the time, or the universe, for that.
The nail in the back of her eyes hit her like it wanted to burst them. Wait, what day is it?
Reaching for the phone felt like swimming in honey, and even with the fear in the tip of her tongue, it tasted as sweet. Looking around not even Mami was awake, everyone sleeping like a truck had run them over. Although, on a second thought, that would have been lighter than fighting the-
Nail incrusted further in her skull, stopping her breath for a second.
She swallowed hard. Free hand shaking toward her phone. The last proof of the truth. Only a way to find out, the last brick to remove to see if the Jenga falls. Her breath was cut in half by the sheer force of tension ejected towards her chest with every hand movement. Like a building falling on top of her, she lost all her air. Fingers picking her objective. Just a touch and it would light up. Only a soft one. The temptation of not knowing grows slowly inside her, since when knowing something turns things better? But she has to fight the instincts, at least one last time. The lights blind her for an instant that felt longer than all those years.
"6:36 am - MAY 1"
Then, the nail breaks the dam, and she bursts down in tears.
It starts soft, under her breath, barely moving anything more than her eyelids. A false yawn shows to awkwardly try and fail in stopping her tears. A hand up to the mouth seeks to quiet down her whiny weeping. The fingers gripping her to reality were slowly moving, and her bearer grumbled in the dark. Homura's head shaking was a futile endeavor in the act of keeping her cry quiet, dropping teardrops everywhere. Madoka turns just a bit, eyes slightly open, and Homura wishes she wouldn't speak, her heart couldn't take it, not that soft voice, not her name in those lips.
"Ho...Homura?” Madoka's eyes blinked in the dark, and she was searching for her with her free hand. “Is something wro-"
She pulled Madoka to her. Head against an aching chest, exactly where her heart scar was, and just a breath away from the emotional one. The crying didn't stop, how could it? The dam bursted under its own weight the moment she saw the date. A tricky sunshine ray of May slipped through the curtains, roosting on Madoka's hair and, for only a second, the whole room lit up with the spark in her eyes.
The girl crushed against her thorax, moving her head, seeking with the gaze the other girl’s faces, but Homura only hugs her tighter. Roughed hands scorching in lead and blood were never meant to hold the pale pink of her skin, and yet here she was. The impossible wish rises from the imposing storm.
Madoka hands draw messy circles in Homura’s back, an exasperated attempt to calm her. Homura cries echo across the room, and the subtlety of it was gone long ago. Madoka gasped at her twitching with each touch in her back, and a mumbling voice in the distance caught her attention.
A pillow flies through the air and hits Madoka's hands. Sayaka tells them something in a sleepy murmur and throws a second one at Homura's head that she barely notices, even more tears running down her cheeks.
"Do y'all have a problem with a Magical girl sleeping or what?" with eyes still closed Kyoko brushes her hair off her face, "Not even saving the world can give me some good rest, shit sucks man."
"Isn't it polite” Mami grumbles half asleep “, to interrupt a girl's beauty dream indeed".
While Madoka's brain was fuming like crazy searching for something to soothe the poor girl, the three just enjoyed the silence in the room with Homura slowing down her cry. Until the three of them caught on in what was happening.
"Oi, who's the bastard that's bothering you?!" screamed Kyoko, unaware it was already defeated
"Do you got gunpowder in your eyes again?" asked Mami, bolting out of her floor mattress.
"Isn't it a bit early in the morning for that?" Sayaka hugged a rabbit pillow with one eye half-open.
The voices just blend and mix in Homura's head, coming together in a cacophony that she thought was from heaven. Tears fall now faster than ever and her wimps go full on screams that startle everyone in the room. The agony in each cry is as sharp as the clock hands. The future wasn't certain anymore, and she held the present so dear between her hands and close to her chest.
"Homura, I'm here..." Madoka's embrace was soothing, the gleam of her voice shining through the dark room, her hair sparkling wet with tears, "for you, I will be here, I won't go anywhere."
She was indeed there, with her, touching her, breathing the same air. The pillows weren't as soft as her gaze and the early birds' chirps weren't a worthy opponent to her voice. Not even Mami's sweets could compete with this nectar.
Homura cried as much tears as blood was spilled in her indomitable web of futures and pasts that was now untangled, and she's here in the center of all the strings. Not an illusion, not a mirage from the desert of her emotions, sanded down from the eternal loop. Was as real as the universe, and it gave its arms back again to her. The whole wide world, just cooped between her bruised arms, and smiling to her, like nothing ever happened. Like she hasn't cried like this in front of her ever.
"Please," Homura cried, as she did so long back ago, and so many times. "please, please...", grasping Madoka back, her voice breaking.
The pink covering Homura’s face slowly turned to the pink of her eyes. They were crystallized, like frozen in this exact second, not a tick more or one less. Those eyes smiled at her, even the darkness in her soul was touched by their gleam. That look disarmed her in just a twist of the clock-hands.
"The first time I cried in front of you like this... " she tried to say, ugly slurping her tears in the most modest way she could, "you were cold, so cold. Not even the water was moving."
Everyone stopped her heartbeats in sync, only Homura's words linger in the air. She couldn't stop looking at those pink eyes.
"And now..." she tilts her head just a bit, "the sunshine of May is blessed by your existence, Madoka."
All hearts back again with the one, two, three. The rhythm of their breaths made her smile for the first time, a soft confirmation of their existence beyond any dream she could have. Madoka's eyes were filled with tears, and so were her cheeks, now tinted with a reddish tone. Homura slid her hand, full of callous from her firearms, through those tears falling, catching them, even if her touch was a bit harsh, but it awoke Madoka from her dreams, and brought her back to earth, with her, not a mind revolving round and round, just here. Eyes to eyes, and gosh what a view.
"We-e should talk this through breakfast," The calm of Homura not crying let Madoka ignore the sudden rise of temperature in the room "If you want, of course..."
No more secrets, no more tricks, she's gonna tell them all. Her soul needs it.
"I would love to."
Everyone started leaving the bed, the sun was high up in the sky, Mami taking the lead in the kitchen, Kyoko and Sayaka bickering with each other for not taking care of her words in the morning. Madoka was firmly held to Homura, not letting her go, at least for today.
The first day of the rest of her life. A white feather falling through the window and between the curtains, landing on top of Madoka's pillow.
"Good luck, lonely girl. For now, you can stop this endless circuit. The clock that spins alone gave her the last tick, and now she can move on."
The feather burned in an instant with a fire that didn't hurt.
"Wake up and prepare for peace, Homura."