Chapter Text
A single request, and Akemi Homura spent the rest of her life trapped in a cycle named Kaname Madoka.
————
She had always known this day would come, sooner or later.
She had hoped for later.
The false sky had split open, torn clean down the middle, and through the gap the real dark pressed in, vast and indifferent. Along the torn edges something had begun to glow: a faint pink at first, soft as the light just before morning, threaded with thin lines of gold. It grew a little brighter every time Homura looked.
It wouldn't be long now. Madoka would take back the power of the Law of Cycles, and her memories with it.
Homura had stopped trying to hold the sky shut. There was no point anymore. What she had stolen was only ever a fragment, and she had spent it every single day: keeping this world standing, keeping the Law of Cycles out.
After five years, there was nothing left to spend.
So she sat at the edge of the cliff and waited. A crow perched on the backrest behind her head, shifting its weight whenever the chair rocked.
Miki Sayaka and Momoe Nagisa would have remembered by now. Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyoko wouldn't be far behind. And then all of them would know.
She looked down at her hands. Not a mark on them. They had always been clean, and that felt like its own kind of lie. She had heard her friends scream. She had seen their blood on the pavement, on the walls, on everything. On her. She had seen their bodies again and again, timeline after timeline, and every time she had simply turned the hourglass and gone back, because there was always one more chance.
Madoka. Madoka.
All of that, and she had still accomplished nothing. Not in any of those lives, and not in this one.
What a failure Akemi Homura was.
Death had always been a strange thing to her, both far away and very close. She had seen more of it than anyone: friends, strangers, girls whose names she never learned. She knew how a body went still, how a soul gem dimmed and clouded over. She had knelt beside it more times than she could count.
But she had never gone through it herself. She had only ever stood at the door, watched everyone else leave, then turned back to the beginning and started again.
What waited on the other side?
A hell, maybe, built to fit everything she had done. Or only sleep, long and dark and dreamless, with no more mornings to wake up to and no more lives to ruin.
She found she didn't mind which. Either way, she could finally close her eyes.
Whatever it was, she would meet it with open arms.
————
"Homura-chan..."
Homura jerked awake. The crow flapped off the chair with an offended croak.
She had fallen asleep? Now, of all times? This body really was at its limit.
It happened more and more lately. She would sit down on a bench, or lean against a wall waiting for a light to change, and the world would simply go out. No warning. No dreams. She hadn't dreamed at all since she became the devil.
There had been a time when the nightmares never left her. In the hospital as a child, alone and afraid of the dark. After she had to shoot Madoka with her own hands. And worst of all, after Madoka became a god, when every night she lost her again and searched and searched until there was nowhere left to look. Even so, she had taken those dreams gladly, poison and all, because every one of them had Madoka in it.
Now there was nothing. Only a hollow that started somewhere on the left side of her chest and had been growing, quietly, for a very long time.
She lifted her head, and there in front of her was Madoka. Her goddess.
Pink hair streamed out behind her with no end Homura could see, fading into the gold and pink of the broken sky. Her eyes were gold now. The last time Homura had stood against the Law of Cycles, those eyes had been as calm and distant as a machine's. They weren't calm now. They were full of sorrow, and of something else, something Homura couldn't read and was afraid to.
Madoka's hands were clasped in front of her, fingers twisting together, the way they used to before a test.
That felt like such a long time ago.
"...Madoka."
Homura's face gave nothing away. On any other day, she might have been proud of that: to stand in front of the girl she loved, feel her whole heart come apart, and let none of it show. Today it only felt like one more thing she had learned to hide too well.
She rose from the chair and called up her devil form.
The white shirt and dark trousers dissolved, and a dress the color of midnight fell into their place. Behind her, two enormous wings unfolded. Only a few feathers still clung to the bare bone, trembling in the wind that poured down through the torn sky. As she watched, one came loose and went spinning out over the city.
The goddess and the devil faced each other across the cliff, one in the sky, one on the ground.
Neither of them spoke. Neither of them moved.
Homura's eyes flicked past Madoka to the torn sky, the edge of the cliff, the shadows under the trees. Nothing. No flash of blue, no small figure trailing after it. She had been so sure Miki Sayaka would come for her the moment her memories returned, shouting, cutlass first.
"Sayaka-chan and Nagisa-chan aren't here." Madoka's voice was soft, as if she had heard the thought. She smiled a little. "I wanted to see you. Just the two of us."
Just the two of us.
Homura's hand closed at her side, hard enough that her nails bit into her palm.
Then she laughed, low and lovely, the way she had taught herself to laugh in her own world.
"How considerate." She tilted her head, and her mouth curled at one corner. "Or did you think I'd surrender more easily without them? You underestimate me, Law of Cycles."
Hurt flashed in Madoka's eyes, there and gone, but not quite fast enough.
Good, Homura thought, and hated herself for it. She knew Madoka too well. Even now, Madoka was hoping. Hoping Homura would come back with her. Hoping she could still save her. Hoping for a happily ever after, like the last page of a fairy tale.
Homura would not let her hope.
She raised her left hand, and her bow answered, dark and familiar, settling into her grip as if it had never left. She drew the string back, and an arrow of violet light formed against it. Her arm did not shake. She had made sure of that.
And she aimed it at the one person she had sworn, across every life she had ever lived, to protect.
"You want to save them, don't you?" Her voice was steady. "Then you'll have to kill me for it. I will never surrender."
Do it, Madoka.
Strike me down. The way Michael cast Lucifer into hell. The way the knight slays the dragon at the end of the story, so everyone else can finally go home. The way morning comes, gold and pink and merciless, and puts an end to the night.
It's the only thing I have left to give you.
————
Angry didn't begin to cover it. Miki Sayaka was furious.
She had been halfway through a math worksheet when it hit her. Now her pencil lay in two pieces on the desk, and she didn't remember snapping it.
Her memories were back, all of them, and with them came the full, humiliating count. In five years, that stupid, smug, insufferable devil had reached into her head and wiped it clean more than seventy times. Sayaka had lost track somewhere past seventy, which was an insult all its own.
And it was never quick, either. Every single time, Sayaka had fought, and every single time, she had lost. She took the beating. Then Akemi Homura would heal her on the spot, dust off her hands like she'd just finished some minor chore, and walk away.
Like Sayaka was a kicked puppy. Like she should be grateful.
Sayaka's hands curled into fists until her knuckles went white.
And yet, if she was honest with herself (and she hated being honest with herself right now), those five years had been good. Really good. She had gone to school with Madoka and Hitomi. She had complained about homework and eaten lunch on the roof and laughed until her stomach hurt, like any normal girl. She hadn't had to wonder if today would be the day she died, or whether some Incubator was sitting on a rooftop somewhere, waiting to see how much her despair was worth.
A normal life. The one thing she had wanted, and the one thing that had been out of reach so long she had almost forgotten what it looked like.
And it was Homura, of all people, who had given it back to her.
Sayaka scowled at the broken pencil.
But now that she remembered, she could see the cracks. They had been there for a while. For the past year or so, the world Homura built around them had been coming apart at the seams.
Sometimes the sky would change without warning, blue one moment and bruised purple the next, then back again before anyone else seemed to notice. Sometimes, on the walk home, she would catch something at the edge of her vision: small, strange figures like broken dolls, standing too still and smiling too wide. Crows on the fence outside her house, far too many of them, all turned the same way.
All watching her.
And every time, afterward, pieces of her memory came back. A name. A feeling. The weight of a cutlass in her hand. That was why last year had been the worst. She kept going after the devil, and the devil kept burying her memories again, harder each time, as if her hold on them were slipping.
As if Homura were getting weaker.
Not that Homura was easy to find in the first place. She had vanished the moment they finished middle school. No goodbye, no explanation. One day she was just gone, and nobody but Sayaka seemed to think it was strange.
Sayaka let out a sharp breath.
All that work. Tearing Madoka apart, stealing her power, trapping every one of them in this pretty little cage. And after all that, she just left Madoka alone? What was the point of any of it?
Miki Sayaka was going to find out.
She was going to find that devil and get an answer out of her. Then she was going to pay her back for every one of those seventy-some beatings, with interest, and drag her to the Law of Cycles by the collar if she had to.
She knew exactly where to look: the cliff overlooking the city. Homura was probably up there right now, sulking alone like the tragic lead in some bad movie.
She shoved the window open. Light swept over her, and her school uniform gave way to her magical girl outfit, cape snapping out behind her. Her hand had barely closed around the hilt of her cutlass when a voice spoke softly inside her head.
Sayaka-chan?
Sayaka froze.
Madoka! You got your memories back? The words tumbled out of her. Where are you? Is she with you? I'm coming right now.
A pause. Then, gently: I'm sorry, Sayaka-chan. Could you go find the others? I want to talk to Homura-chan. Another pause, even softer. Alone.
But—
Please.
Sayaka opened her mouth. Closed it again. She stood there half out the window with a cutlass in her hand and all that anger with nowhere to go.
...Fine, she grumbled at last. Fine. But if she lays so much as a finger on you, I'm coming up there and cutting her down myself. Got it?
She won't. Madoka's voice was warm, and so sure it almost hurt to hear. But thank you, Sayaka-chan.
Then she was gone, and Sayaka was alone in her own head again.
She let out a long breath through her teeth. So much for revenge.
She turned to go. Then stopped.
Her eyes drifted to the distant cliff without her meaning them to. The sky above it was torn open, glowing pink and gold.
"Don't you dare die now, Akemi Homura," she muttered to no one. "Not before I get my rematch."
————
"Yo, Sayaka."
Kyoko lifted a hand as Sayaka touched down on the rooftop. She and Mami had already transformed: Kyoko slouched against her spear, Mami standing straight and composed as ever, ribbons stirring in the wind.
There was still a teacup in Mami's hand. She seemed to notice it at the same moment Sayaka did, and set it down carefully on the edge of the roof.
Above them, Nagisa sat on the water tank, swinging her legs and nibbling a wedge of cheese. She waved with it.
"You guys remember?" Sayaka asked.
"Some of it. It's still hazy." Mami's brow creased. "Fighting together inside Akemi-san's labyrinth. The Law of Cycles. And then Akemi-san did... something. After that, it all goes dark."
"So." Kyoko produced an apple from nowhere and took a loud, crunching bite. "What's the plan, Miss Archangel?"
Sayaka shot her a glare. Kyoko only blinked, as if she wasn't sure where the word had come from either. Then she shrugged and took another bite.
"Honestly? No idea. Madoka wants to see her alone." Sayaka crossed her arms and looked away, toward the cliff. "So I guess we just wait around until those two sort it out."
"Huh." Kyoko followed her gaze, chewing slowly, and snorted. "Great. Wake me up when the goddess and the devil are done with their lovers' quarrel."
"Nagisa thinks they're going to be a while," Nagisa announced from the water tank.
Sayaka started to argue. Madoka and that devil were not lovers, so it couldn't possibly be a lovers' quarrel, and—
She stopped.
Because, well. Weren't they?
She thought of all the times Madoka had said Homura's name in the middle of some completely unrelated sentence, then trailed off, confused, as if she'd forgotten why. The way Madoka went quiet whenever a girl with long black hair passed them on the street, and turned to watch until she was out of sight.
And then there was Akemi Homura herself: the devil who had torn a god in half, rewritten the universe, and cast herself as the villain of the story, all for one girl.
Sayaka groaned and rubbed her forehead.
If that wasn't love, she didn't know what was. It was just the most insane, most annoying, most ridiculous kind of love she had ever seen.
Then again, which of them could really call themselves normal at this point?
————
Kaname Madoka had been an ordinary girl, once.
Before she met Homura-chan. Before she learned that magical girls were real. Before she watched her senpai die in front of her. Before she learned that witches had once been magical girls. Before she became the Law of Cycles.
Could a god be selfish?
She didn't know. She had never met another god to ask. No one had told her what she was allowed to want, or what she was supposed to give up. There had only been her, and the whole of time, and every magical girl who had ever lived or ever would.
But she knew one thing.
When she rewrote the world, everyone forgot her. Her family. Her friends. Everyone except one person.
She had left Homura's memories untouched. She had let her be the only one in the whole universe who still remembered Kaname Madoka.
Because she had been so scared.
Scared that the name Kaname Madoka would simply fade away, until nothing was left of her but a title: the Law of Cycles, something vast and faceless that came for magical girls at the end, instead of a girl who had once laughed and cried and hidden under the covers during thunderstorms.
There were still so many things she had wanted to do. Have a drink with Mama on her twentieth birthday, the way they had always joked about. Watch Tatsuya grow up, see what kind of boy he became, and then what kind of man. Walk to school with Sayaka-chan and Hitomi-chan on some ordinary morning, complaining about tests.
And more than anything, she wanted to see Homura smile.
Not the thin, tired curve of her lips when she was being polite. Not the cold, sharp smile she wore for everyone else. A real one, the kind that reached all the way to her eyes. Madoka had never once seen it, not in any lifetime since Homura let down her braids.
Just once.
————
"Sometimes that name feels so familiar. Madoka." Her mother's voice drifted up, soft and puzzled. "Like I knew a girl called Madoka once."
It was an afternoon by the river, long before any of this. The light was low and golden, and the grass along the bank moved in the wind. Junko and Homura sat side by side, a little apart, watching the water. Junko had kicked off her work shoes and was digging her toes into the grass.
Madoka floated above them, unseen. That was simply how things were now.
Then, by some small miracle, her mother tipped her head back and looked up, straight at the place where Madoka was, though of course she could see nothing there but sky.
"If I ever had a daughter," she said, "I think I'd name her Madoka."
Madoka's breath caught. She pressed both hands to her chest, as if she could hold the feeling in.
Then she looked down at Homura.
Homura seemed very far away. There was a small smile on her lips, and it didn't fade. The sun was sinking behind her, and somewhere down the bank Tatsuya was laughing, but the sound seemed to come from another world.
"It's a good name," Homura said quietly. "I have a best friend named Madoka."
Have. Not had.
Something leapt in Madoka's chest, a heart she no longer had, beating all the same.
So she watched.
Whenever she could (and for Homura, she always could), she floated beside her, close enough to touch if touching were still something she could do, as if simply being there might make Homura a little less lonely.
It was a foolish thought.
Homura wasn't completely alone, of course. She had Kyoko and Mami now. They fought together, walked home together, sometimes even laughed together.
But she was still alone.
Alone with memories that never faded, with a name no one else in the world understood. She carried it everywhere, and every time she said it, it meant something only she could hear.
Sometimes Madoka wondered if she really was cruel. To take everyone's memories but one. To leave one person holding all of it by herself.
The years went by, and she watched Homura grow up, a little taller every year, a little older around the eyes. A little paler, too. A little thinner. Every day, a little less of her.
Some nights, dinner was a cup of instant noodles eaten standing at the counter. Some nights, it was nothing at all. Kyoko and Mami noticed. They brought leftovers and dragged her out to eat, and Homura brushed them off every time. Once Kyoko left a bag of taiyaki on her doorstep with a note that just said EAT. Homura ate one, put the rest in the freezer, and never mentioned it.
She had always been too stubborn for her own good.
And Madoka could only watch.
She didn't regret her wish. She never had. She had wanted to free Homura from that endless, circling trap of time. She had wanted every magical girl, past and future, out of the Incubators' hands, no longer pieces on their board.
But what did Homura want?
Madoka thought back. Homura's very first wish had been to meet her again, to start over from the day they met, and this time be the one doing the protecting instead of the one who needed it. After that, it had only ever been one thing, over and over, through every loop and every death.
Madoka. Madoka. Madoka. Save Kaname Madoka.
Madoka searched all of it, every timeline, every life, every moment she could see, and could not find a single wish Homura had ever made for herself.
Every one of them had her name in it.
Was that her fault?
If she had never smiled and pleaded for Homura to go back, all those lifetimes ago, would any of this have happened? A dying girl's request, whispered at the end of their world, and Homura had carried it through every timeline after, like a promise she could never set down.
But all she had wanted, back then, was for Homura to live.
Somehow, Homura had only ever heard save me.
Madoka could see every corner of time, past, present, and future, but not the paths that had never been taken. Not even a goddess could see those. The words had been said, and they could not be unsaid.
So she kept watching.
She watched Homura throw herself at the wraiths night after night, as if her body were something she could spend and replace. She watched her come home bruised and bleeding and too tired to care.
And she watched her in the quiet afterward, when the city was asleep and the room was dark. Homura would sit by the window with Madoka's ribbons wound around her fingers, holding them the way someone holds a hand. Madoka sat on the sill beside her, knees pulled up, the way she used to sit on her own bed at home. And sometimes, so softly it was barely a breath, Homura would whisper her name.
It hurt to see. But in a strange way, it held Madoka together, too.
Because to Homura, she had never become the Law of Cycles, or the salvation of every magical girl who ever lived. She was still just a girl with pink hair, her best friend.
Somewhere in the whole wide universe, one person still remembered her that way. And as long as Homura remembered, Madoka could remember too.
So when she learned what the Incubators had done to Homura, something in her gave way.
They had taken her. Sealed her soul gem inside a barrier, cut her off from everything, and left her there to sink slowly into despair, all so they could watch. So they could study the moment the Law of Cycles came for her, and learn how to catch it.
They had used the person most precious to her as bait.
And every magical girl ever gathered into the Law of Cycles saw something they had never seen before. Their goddess, who had welcomed each of them home with open arms and never shown them anything but kindness, was angry.
The soft light that always surrounded her had gone white-hot at the edges. All across the Law of Cycles, not one of them dared to speak.
"Are you sure about this, Madoka?"
Sayaka stood beside her, her oldest friend and now her archangel, chewing on her lip.
"This is exactly what the Incubators want," Sayaka said. "They're waiting for you to come rescue the transfer student. That's the whole point of the trap. Wouldn't it be better if Nagisa and I went in instead?"
"I know you're worried, Sayaka-chan." Madoka's voice was as gentle as ever, but it didn't bend. "I have to go. And if we do it the way we planned, the Incubators will never see me coming."
Sayaka studied her face. Madoka knew that look. It was the same one Sayaka used to give her back in middle school, whenever Madoka had quietly made up her mind and everyone else was only just catching up.
Sayaka let out a long breath, and then she smiled, a little resigned.
"All right," she said. "Then let's go get her back."
————
How did it come to this?
Madoka looked at the violet arrow drawn back on the string, its point aimed at her heart. She could see every corner of time, and she had never once seen this coming. Not when she reached into that barrier to bring Homura home. Not even when Homura's hand closed around hers.
What a cruel joke.
"I don't want to fight you, Homura."
Just Homura. No -chan. The shy girl with braids and glasses was gone, and so was the girl who had believed the world was only kind. They had both grown up somewhere in all those lifetimes, and neither of them had been there to see it happen.
Homura didn't waver. But something in her eyes flickered, like a candle when a door opens somewhere else in the house.
"What a shame." Her lip curled. "When has anything ever turned out the way we wished, Madoka?" Her fingers tightened on the string. "Let's put an end to this little play, once and for all."
Madoka closed her eyes.
Her Homura had never once listened when it came to herself. If words couldn't reach her, then actions would have to.
When Madoka opened her eyes again, the gold in them burned with nothing but resolve.
Her bow answered her call, bright as the dawn tearing through the sky behind her.