Chapter Text
Madoka stood in the doorway to a mostly-vacant warehouse. Sayaka had called to her through telepathy, insisting Madoka meet her at the mall at a floor under maintenance — for what, and why was it so urgent? why such an odd meeting place?... — but she’d rushed over regardless.
And found Homura instead, exactly where Sayaka had asked to meet.
How strange, Madoka thought.
It was dark, and oddly foggy — weren’t they indoors? — but it was definitely Homura, clothed in her magical girl uniform, for some reason. Madoka could barely see through the fog, and didn’t want to disturb Homura, so she timidly hung back.
“Homura…chan?”
It was seemingly only at this time that Homura noticed Madoka’s presence, and turned casually towards her. The earring bearing her soul gem rustled from the soft movement.
“…oh, Madoka, there you are. I was looking for you.”
Madoka breathed a short “ehh?” of confusion. What does she mean, she was looking for me? She didn’t try to mail or contact me through telepathy… And why is Homura-chan where Sayaka-chan asked me to…
A sputtering, pained cough jolted Madoka from her confused daze.
“gh… Homura, you… damn demon…” A voice that sounded wrought with pain spoke; Madoka instantly worried for whoever it was. It sounded so familiar… Madoka jumped in surprise as she suddenly placed it.
It was Sayaka’s voice.
“Huh? Sayaka-chan?” Madoka called out, her mind spinning again with questions. Where is she? Is she okay?… She doesn’t sound like she’s alright… What did she mean by calling Homura-chan that?…
Squinting hard to see through the fog, Madoka’s gaze trailed downward. The first thing she noticed was the rather large, black pistol in Homura’s hand. Though still a bit scary to Madoka, it wasn’t necessarily out of place — guns and explosives were Homura’s weapon of choice for fighting witches, after all. (Though if she were fighting a witch by herself, Madoka would be worried sick, of course!)
The next thing Madoka noticed was Sayaka, battered and bloodied on the floor beneath Homura’s foot.
[BGM: something, everything is wrong]
“Sayaka-chan?!”
Sayaka lifted her head to regard Madoka. She struggled, attempting to move and make some kind of “yo, Madoka!” greeting; but moving her body seemed impossible. She was worlds away from her usual boundless energy. Sayaka settled instead for a weak, almost-sheepish smile.
“Haha… Sorry, Madoka. I didn’t want to have to call you over, but I ended up being in a pinch…” Sayaka forced her usual lighthearted tone.
“W-what do you mean? What’s going on?” Madoka glanced at Homura, hoping for any kind of explanation — but she didn’t say a word. She seemed to be ignoring both of them.
Taking the chance with making Homura angry with her, Madoka attempted to run to Sayaka’s side — only to run into a previously-invisible barrier. Madoka yelped in surprise at the impact, and fell backwards, onto her side. The barrier gleamed in a grid of bright purple diamonds; it looked not unlike Kyouko's barriers, Madoka may have realized. But more importantly, it blocked her completely from reaching Sayaka or Homura.
Madoka sat up with some difficulty. Overwhelmed, her eyes welled with tears. Sayaka grimaced at her friend's apparent pain.
“Madoka! Oi, Homura!” Sayaka snarled, turning her head to face Homura with some difficulty. “If you hurt Madoka, I’ll—”
“‘Hurt’ Madoka?" Homura interrupted, her tone cold and clipped. "I would never do anything to hurt her.”
She turned to look toward Madoka, Homura's suddenly-warm smile a sharp contrast to her extreme distress. “That barrier won’t harm a hair on her head. In fact—”
Homura detached her pistol’s magazine, smoothly pulling a replacement from her shield. The loud clatter of the magazine falling to the concrete floor and resounding click of another being loaded sent a chill down Madoka’s spine. Homura kept the pistol low and pointed at the ground.
“—the only thing it will do is keep her from you, Miki Sayaka.”
Sayaka blanched, feeling herself break out in a cold sweat. Her body screamed more than ever for her to run.
Homura would finish her off, and soon.
“Madoka, listen to me. This is important.” Sayaka turned to Madoka and addressed her urgently, without a hint of her previous forced cheer.
Madoka looked surprised, but wiped her tears on her sleeves and listened intently. Sayaka wanted to smile despite their situation. Poor thing. You’re a good girl, Madoka.
“Mami-san, and …Kyouko… when they died, they… weren’t killed by witches…” Sayaka grit her teeth, feeling tears prick at the corners of her eyes. Bringing up their recent deaths was bad enough, and sent a stab of pain through her to think about. But Madoka needed to know the truth.
“Homura… she was the one who killed them!” The words started spilling out in a frantic, angry rush. “Madoka, she’s… she isn’t who she says she is. She’s a demon! She forced you to be here, in this world…”
Sayaka dropped her head as she struggled to continue. On top of how upset talking about Kyouko and Mami made her, her head started to inexplicably throb. “I can’t… remember what, but you had a power, Madoka… to help magical girls, all of them. But Homura took it, she broke it!—“
The furious, fevered pitch of Sayaka’s voice was interrupted by a gunshot — mercifully, perhaps, only shot into the ceiling. The shot reverberated within the building, with only the sound of the crumbling ceiling between the three girls.
Sayaka breathed shakily, terrified. She didn’t want the scare tactics to work, but damned if she wasn’t already scared for her life before Homura pulled that garbage. Madoka wasn’t faring much better — she looked scared out of her wits, tears streaking down her face and hand clasped over her mouth; most likely to stifle her own crying. Sayaka felt a prickle of rage for the state of her best friend.
“Telling Madoka about all that nonsense… Really, you were always such a bother,” Homura adjusted the sleeve of her magical girl uniform cooly. “Teaming up with Tomoe Mami, trying to get Madoka to contract with you, running around spouting lines about justice without having a clue…”
The three-eyed mask of the mermaid witch sat just behind them, shattered almost beyond recognition. Homura smiled, somewhere between triumph and ridicule. “You were less annoying as a Witch, when you couldn’t speak, weren’t you?"
“H…hah… You’re one to talk, transfer student.” Sayaka managed to grin through the fear and the pain. Blood streaked down from her skull, matting her hair. “You did anything for Madoka… Over and over, no matter who you hurt, as long as it was for her — but you really messed up this time, didn’t you?”
“You’re not making any sense, Miki-san.” Homura said, smiling still, as though she were speaking to a small, clueless child. The honorific was as mocking as the polite speech could be.
Sayaka laughed outright and took in a raspy breath.
“She’s seen this. She’s going to remember everything; soon, if she hasn’t already… And then, transfer student,” Sayaka spared a small laugh as her voice shook with anger and triumph. “Madoka’s going to hate you—“
Sayaka was cut short by Homura’s heeled foot slamming into her back — hard. Madoka’s ears rang with the sickening crack of Sayaka’s ribs breaking, and Sayaka muffling her own screams and gasps of pain.
Homura sighed as though slightly bothered, and flicked her hair. Her smile was gone.
“You talk too much, Miki Sayaka.”
Madoka was stunned beyond words and beyond comprehension. Every fiber of her wanted this to be an awful dream, because this couldn’t — shouldn’t — be happening… Madoka wanted to pass out, (or wake up); whatever it took to thrust the awful scene from her vision. And she’d hug Sayaka tight and not let go for a long time, and Sayaka would tease her for being such a crybaby, and Homura would comfort her and tell her it was all just a nightmare…
But somehow, in the back of her mind… seeing Homura standing over Sayaka like that cemented it as reality. Madoka snapped out of her daze and leapt to her feet, yelling in a sudden panic.
“Sayaka-chan?! Sayaka-chan, are you okay?!” Sayaka’s head was pressed to the ground, though her body bobbed softly with stilted, broken breaths. She was alive, but far from ‘okay’. The image of Sayaka like that made Madoka’s vision swim and blur hot with tears. She thought she heard Sayaka trying to call her name—
Madoka braced herself and grabbed the bars of the gridded barrier. It gleamed with intense magical power and attempted to repel her — it didn’t hurt exactly, as Homura had promised, but it pressed with intense force in an attempt to push Madoka away. And though she was a frail (useless, worthless! her mind yelled at her) schoolgirl — Madoka hung on and did not let go. She turned to Homura, voice cracking as she yelled, panicked and desperate, through the barrier.
“H-Homura-chan! Homura-chan, please stop this!… Whatever’s going on between you two, we can work it out! I won’t h…hate you, so please… don’t hurt Sayaka-chan anymore…”
Madoka nearly crumbled into tears, her soft, hiccuping sobs echoing in the warehouse. Sayaka had all but stopped moving. Homura didn’t spare a glance in her direction or a response to her pleas.
Instead, she leveled her pistol at Sayaka, and before Madoka was able to say another word—
She fired.
Beneath the deafening gunshot, there was the quiet tinkle of breaking glass that wasn't glass, at all. A precious soul's carrier being ripped and broken into pieces.
And then it was quiet.
Madoka’s stomach had long since dropped to her feet. She couldn’t feel. She couldn’t breathe. Sayaka couldn’t be, she couldn’t—
Homura tossed her pistol, as though she were disposing of trash. She pushed her hair off her back and regarded the body beneath her feet.
“Goodbye, Miki Sayaka. No matter how many times I repeated or what world we were in,” Homura smiled, laughing to herself.
“You were truly a fool.”
[BGM: dream world]
Homura stepped off the corpse of Miki Sayaka, dispelling her uniform and returning to her school uniform as she walked towards Madoka.
Homura’s shoes made an echoing ‘clack’ on the concrete as she approached, but Madoka couldn’t move.
Homura’s soul gem had returned from her hand to the earring, which gleamed a brilliant, beautiful violet — but she couldn’t say a word.
Sayaka had been killed right before her eyes, but she couldn’t do anything.
Madoka could not remember a moment of feeling more worthless, more crushing despair, in her entire life.
Homura spoke suddenly, in a light and casual tone.
“Well, Madoka. You’re probably hungry, aren’t you… Shall we go somewhere? The restaurant you like is here, yes? We can go anywhere you want. I’ll treat you, Madoka.”
Madoka hung her head, saying nothing. Homura stopped just a foot or two before her. It was odd for Madoka to not reply to her, wasn’t it? She reached forward and boldly grabbed Madoka’s hand. (A boldness she'd only gained through having no one to challenge her.)
“Madoka—”
In the next moment, Homura was shoved hard in the shoulders, hard enough to throw her backwards. She caught herself and kept from falling over, but was still surprised — not a single thing in this world had managed that, so far. Blinking, Homura looked up and leveled her vision at the source.
It was Madoka — breathing hard, her arms outstretched and body braced. She was tense, Homura noticed faintly. Her bangs hung over her eyes, obscuring them completely. Homura was baffled. Had Madoka pushed her?… Despite herself, she felt a scrap of that timid, bespectacled weakling of a girl leak into her speech.
“M...Madoka?” Homura stepped closer — not within the clear space that Madoka had claimed, but just outside of it — and balked, hanging back. Madoka dropped her arms slowly, but still said nothing in response.
Homura shifted her gaze around the room, feeling herself getting concerned, nervous. Is Madoka alright?… Homura had put the business with Miki Sayaka behind her, but that inkling of insecurity followed her everywhere. From the very beginning.
Homura’s relations with people had never been good, and her self-esteem suffered terribly… there was no shaking the feeling in the back of her mind that she was a nuisance to others, that she was unwanted and hated. She learned to not care about most everyone — with Mami and Sayaka (and in some timelines, Kyouko), their relations were repeatedly built on mutual dislike at the bare minimum, and outright hostility and hatred at their best. Being 'friends' with them... was an unfortunate waste of time and energy. But the one person who Homura couldn’t stand that from—
If Madoka were to hate me, I…
Feeling her stomach sink, and a needling anguish that would have previously turned her soul gem black — she reached out toward Madoka a second time. She had to, had to make sure everything was alright.
If it meant using her control of the world to push Madoka’s memories of Sayaka away… that was fine. Maybe it was better to make it as though Sayaka, or the others had never existed at all… Madoka didn’t need those useless, painful memories anymore. Homura hadn’t a single reservation about removing their existence.
They were only in the way.
Just touching her should be enough. She’ll forget, everything…
“Madoka…” Homura forced steel into her voice, but heard it waver, tremble, all the same. Feeling the power to warp time and space and memories well within her; feeling the embodiment of her soul glow a burning-hot, blinding purple as it surged with energy… Homura reached out and gently but firmly held Madoka’s shoulder.
“Let go of me.” Madoka spoke sharply, barely a second after Homura had touched her.
Homura stopped short. Madoka sounded cold, angry. I’ve never heard her speak like that… A part of her wished to heed Madoka’s wishes; but a larger, more dominant part challenged them. Homura held on to Madoka, still.
“Madoka.” Homura spoke in a firm command. “Forget about Miki Sayaka. Forget about the others. You don’t need those memories any longer.”
That… should be enough. She shouldn’t remember them anymore… The menacing tone was a front; inside, Homura was a bundle of nerves. Her expression softened after a moment, nervous as she was. The dead silence from Madoka was killing her.
“Madoka?…”
Madoka lifted her head. Her eyes were a golden, pupil-less sheen. And tear-stained though they were, she looked truly and fully angry.
“I said to let go of me, Homura-chan.”
The room was suddenly stifled with an overwhelming pressure — worse than a hurricane, volcano or the depths of the ocean — the power of a god. Homura jolted back as though she had been burned, her face growing pale.
Madoka's transformation had already started.