Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2012-12-03 10:38 am
ptahrrific) wrote2012-12-03 10:38 am
Entry tags:
Madoka Magica | Homura, Madoka | PG-13 | Persephone's Waltz (5)
Title: Persephone's Waltz, Chapter 5: Can't you just tell me?
Characters/Pairings: Homura, Madoka, (skip) Kriemhild Gretchen
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer/Warnings: See table of contents.
Madoka admits to needing care for her bumps and bruises, and Homura inadvertently reveals some of her own inner wreckage.
***
April 1
(Continued)
When Madoka held out her raw hand, peppered with ripped skin and jagged scabs, Homura's visage went deathly still for as long as Madoka had yet seen. She waited until Homura was moving again before stammering, "A-and my neck."
"Your neck?" echoed Homura, eyes leaping to the collar of her V-neck shirt. Long-sleeved, in combination with a knee-length skirt and high socks, it covered everything with a visible bruise. Dressing while effectively one-handed had been a chore; she had barely done up her twintails before Homura's arrival, and they were already coming loose.
"It wasn't scraped," explained Madoka quickly. "Just sore. I think I might have p-pulled something."
"How did this happen?"
"I...fell." The excuse sounded weak even to her own ears.
To her surprise, Homura didn't press the matter. "I can check. I'll have to touch you..." She could have been thrilled as easily as disgusted for all the emotion in the phrase. "...and you let me know when it hurts."
The office chair had come through all of this and returned to its original position mostly unscathed, though one of its wheels no longer wanted to roll: any attempt to push it forward or backward sent it careening in circles, and the last one had left it facing the center of the room. At Homura's direction, Madoka sat timidly on the plush seat, anchoring the balls of her feet on the cement floor. "O-okay."
She tensed when Homura circled around behind her, long black hair sweeping inches from her face. The path to the foot of the stairs was left clear; was Homura always that dismissive of her attempts to bolt, or did it mean she had an inkling about the true extent of Madoka's soreness?
Before Madoka could work anything out, soft fingers caressed her jaw, and she nearly yelped in shock.
Homura's hands froze. "Did that hurt you, Kaname Madoka?"
"N-no. It startled me, that's all," said Madoka faintly.
School and sun and Papa's cooking and Mama's voice had all loomed so large—she hadn't had room even to think about touch, let alone crave it, until Homura's skin pressed against hers. A desperate hunger flared up somewhere inside her ribcage; her entire body seemed to have gone hypersensitive, the better to drink in every possible sensation from that light and gentle touch.
She dutifully reported the pains as Homura's questing fingers moved down the muscles of her neck. It struck her about halfway down that this was the worst possible position in which to entrust a delusional stranger, but she couldn't bring herself to pull away. If Homura wanted to strangle her, it would have happened long before now.
What was the last human contact Madoka had felt? She couldn't remember. One of Sayaka's bone-crushing hugs, no doubt. Why hadn't she paid more attention?
Homura's methodical check-up reached the sweep of her shoulders, the rim of stitches on her collar. "The search!" cried Madoka.
"What?"
"For me." There was a reason she never talked this fast; she was pulling words from the air in all the wrong order. "Out there. How is it doing?"
"It is...ongoing," said Homura. Bless all the gods, her hands were still warm at the dip of Madoka's neck. "Your friends have each been questioned...as have I. No leads have been found, including on the letter, although a handwriting expert compared it to an example of one of your in-class assignments and judged it to be yours. There has been debate over hiring a private detective. Your mother has taken a leave of absence from her career to remain closely involved with the case. Is there anything else you would like to know?"
Madoka clenched her uninjured hand in her lap. There were an endless number of things, if only she could figure out how to ask them. Of course, Homura might be lying about any part of it...but if she were going to lie, why not try to demoralize Madoka by reporting that the search had given up? "H-how do you know they have no leads? Even if you haven't heard about them...."
"I check the police file on your case every evening. As of last night, they had nothing. If they come close to discovering this place, I will move you." With that, she lifted her hands. "There are no permanent injuries here. I have no painkillers in the house, but can acquire some, if you like."
"Y-yes, please," said Madoka. Kindness, deference, and keeping up the conversation: it seemed to be the best way to encourage the Homura who gave information freely and asked before touching her neck, not the Homura who spoke about drugging her and carrying her to a new prison the way her father talked about picking up more milk. "Do you really not have...?" She could feel her face heat up just thinking it. "Even for cramps?"
She couldn't tell if Homura was offended or simply frozen again. On pink-socked toes she pulled her seat forward, letting the jammed wheel spin it to face her captor. The other girl's expression looked no less like offense than anything else.
"Oh!" exclaimed Madoka suddenly, hand flying to her mouth. "You've been so strong, I completely forgot! You were sick until recently, weren't you? So maybe you wouldn't have...but even then, wouldn't you need something after the surgery?" She winced in dismay as Homura continued not to respond. "Forgive me, Akemi-san! These are such personal questions....you don't have to answer."
"I can show you the reason, Kaname Madoka," said Homura, more slowly than usual. "But it will upset you again."
"Can't you just tell me?"
"I don't know how. And you won't believe me unless you see it."
Madoka clenched her fists in her lap, close to one of the bruises under her trousers. "Then show me, Akemi-san."
The dark-haired girl took a step back, then another. From behind her shield (how big was that trick pocket, anyway?) she produced a knife, short and crude-handled but with a more wicked blade than any Madoka had seen, even in her father's kitchen. Shifting the hilt into her shield hand, she held out her bare hand and drew the metal in a neat slash across her wrist.
It was Madoka's turn to freeze, staring as if hypnotized at the neat line of blood trickling down Homura's pale skin.
Where the knife vanished to she couldn't say, but the hand that hovered over the wound a few seconds later was empty, unless you counted the purple gem fixed to its back. A flash of light sparked deep within the jewel, and before Madoka's eyes the wound sealed up, leaving nothing but a faint red smear to show that it had been there at all.
"It's a waste to do that too much," said Homura. "And the ability to repair myself is limited. But it covers the aches and pains of the average well-off person."
Spending half a year in the hospital isn't average, Madoka thought but didn't say. "Being a puella magi doesn't seem average to me," she said instead.
"It isn't." Homura wiped the blood on the tail of her white waistcoat. "Which is why it's not something I would wish on anyone."
***
According to the clocks in the room, Homura was gone and back in less than ten minutes. Madoka was ready with a glass of water when the other girl reappeared with a bottle in hand and shook two small red capsules into her uninjured palm. Homura had also brought a broad plastic-wrapped bandage that turned out to be white and slightly moist with something antibacterial; she directed Madoka to lay this across her scraped skin, then covered it with a layer of soft cloth.
Every brush of their fingers against each other sent chills down Madoka's spine. Homura fastened the dressing in place with strips of medical tape that crisscrossed her hand, too intent on her work to notice the discomfort it was causing.
The bottle waited on the floor throughout. Its label had been scratched off, with only a few scraps of its soft underbelly remaining; Homura picked it up as soon as her ministrations were finished, and shook two more pills onto a plate that had been left on the desk, still strewn with the crumbs of Madoka's lunch.
As Madoka got to her feet, Homura capped the bottle. Madoka stared. "Don't I get to keep the rest?"
"I can't let you have too much." The remainder of the painkillers disappeared into the trick pocket on Homura's shield.
A stubborn sulkiness Madoka hadn't indulged since toddlerhood reared up in her. "I'm not a child! I can take my own medicine."
"Have you been taking your vitamins?"
"I...I've been eating well enough," said Madoka uncertainly. A week ago she might have said that being away from her family was a great excuse to eat nothing but sweets; now, especially after what she'd written in her letter, she was taking pains to keep her diet almost better than it was at home. The mini-fridge was running low on vegetables, while she'd only eaten two slices of cake. "I never needed extra vitamins before, Akemi-san. Don't you know that?"
Homura didn't respond to the jab. "You were exposed to regular sunlight then. You aren't now. Your body needs help to compensate."
Madoka was at once glad Homura had known about the problem and prepared for it, and horrified at the thought of how many other essential things she might be missing without knowing it. "I wish you'd told me," she said helplessly.
"Don't say that so casually." After the tenderness of her hands, the cold tone hit Madoka like a slap. "If you want to wish for something...." She trailed off, gazing at something beyond the jade walls. "...Amy."
"'Amy'?" repeated Madoka in disbelief. What did the stray cat have to do with anything? Maybe Homura meant some other Amy, but at this point Madoka wouldn't have put money on it. "Is she okay?"
"I forgot," said Homura distantly. Her eyes were wide open, the pupils pinpricks, as if her mind had gone some other place with open air and blinding light. "I was supposed to be prepared—"
Madoka found herself holding her breath. Whatever this is, it's taken her over. If I ran...now....
"She's dead," blurted Homura, stopping Madoka's train of thought in its tracks. Her icy cool was riddled with cracks; the tremulous voice of the moe Homura was seeping through. "I was supposed to fix things. She was hit by a car. I forgot. I knew it was coming and. And I didn't stop it."
"Akemi-san...."
No response. Only the spillage of words, tumbling forth in ever more scattered fragments. "I fix up everything else. The easy things I remember. Kaname Madoka loves that cat and I forget. I couldn't. How many years? Strawberry soap—and I didn't save Amy. A hundred times? This was supposed to be it. Everything prepared. And I failed." Tears pooled on her lashes. "So kind—Kaname Madoka. The cat knew it. And I—"
"Akemi-san!" cried Madoka, grabbing her by the shoulders. Her body trembled under Madoka's hands. "Homura-chan!"
A pale, broken face turned to her, unseeing. "I forgot."
"I know," said Madoka, heart racing. "It's okay."
"The car."
"It's not your fault!"
"I didn't stop it."
"It's okay," repeated Madoka. "I forgive you."
The spell broke. Homura's ragged breathing began to steady; violet eyes regained their focus. The tears didn't fall.
"Strays are always in danger," Madoka continued, aware on some level that she was soothing herself as well. "Even if you saved her from one car, she could've been hit by another the very next day. Anyone on the street could have protected her by taking her in, but we didn't. I didn't. She was happier that way, getting treats but having her freedom. She died living the way she wanted to live. You didn't fail anyone."
Homura blinked: once, twice.
Madoka swallowed over the lump in her throat.
"Please let go of me, Kaname Madoka," said Homura quietly.
Too overcome to think of anything else, Madoka obeyed. In the motion, the pain she'd ignored in her bandaged hand shot to the forefront of her awareness; she grabbed her wrist with a gasp, as if it would somehow relieve the stinging pain shooting through her entire arm.
"You need to be more careful." The cool Homura was back, almost: an echo of the stutter lingered. She pointed to the box the tape and bandage had come from. "I will leave this here. Please change the dressing once or twice a day."
"Y-yes, Akemi-san."
Homura's jaw worked. "You shouldn't hurt yourself for my sake," she hissed, and vanished.
Madoka ran to the foot of the stairs, just in case. A closed door harrumphed at her from the top.
Nerves jangling, she made for the bed, then turned on her heel and stumbled to the cupboard. The vitamin pill was bulkier than any she'd ever seen. It took half a glass of water for her choked throat to make it down. It was a testament to her disorganization that she only then noticed the wetness on her shoulder: blood, her first panicked thought ran, but no. Her shirt was damp with ordinary water, as if from a cup she hadn't spilled.
***
Her inner Sayaka-voice was throwing a fit.
Madoka tried to listen in between writing things down. She was back on the bed, the pillows and stuffed animals stacked into something she could lean against, Panda-san cuddled under her arm. The notepad lay propped against her knees; a new list labeled The Mystery of Homura Akemi ran down the page it was opened to. Using her non-dominant hand made for slow going. At least her aches and bruises had muted.
"Vanishes," said one row of skewed characters. "Keeps precise time," said another. "Heals. With jewel?" "Protecting me from Incubator (?)" "Thought she knew about Amy's death." "Psychic? Doesn't react to things I think (mostly)." "Costume repairs itself?" "Trick Magic (?) shield." "Panicked over not saving Amy."
That was your chance! wailed her inner Sayaka. Madoka could almost hear her friend hopping up and down in agitation. You could've been out the door while she was still going all blue-screen-of-death!
"I know," said Madoka out loud. "You don't have to remind me. I know."
A low-key classical tune meandered along in the background. She couldn't bear silence, but pop would have been an awful, fraying distraction.
Some realization was hovering at the edge of Madoka's awareness. Bits of the conversation recycled themselves in her head, the key moment buried in them somewhere, dancing just out of reach. She hadn't been the one to mention Amy. So what had set Homura off...?
And what's with only leaving you two pills, huh? demanded Sayaka. She talks a good game about being on your side, and then she holds out on you! Is she afraid you're going to overdose or something?
The pen scored an angry black streak across half the page.
***
̵̫͍̻̰̬̤̘͎͇̪̗̠͢ị̲͙̩͓̗̲̙͙͍́ͅx͎͇̹̤ͅx̢̛̹͙̜̮̞͓̞̹̲̙͙͍́͝ͅx͎̭̼̲̙̹ͅx̹͙̜̮̞͓̞̥́x͙̘͇̙̬̟̲͇̦̭̳̘̰̠͕̤̦
d̛̹̻̗̞͓̪̟̗͑̿̈́a̢̼̠͔̼̼y
She's watching the world from high in the air, the boroughs of Mitakihara laid out below like a playset.
The height doesn't frighten her. Neither in flight nor in freefall, she's the dark soul of a mountain, watching from above the clouds while toppled and ruined buildings lie scattered around her feet. An acrid yellow stench rises through the air.
The city is fragile. She's unshakeable.
They'll fight her, poor things. Clinging to the crumbling fragments of their homes, rising up out of the rubble, struggling, living. She has a vague memory of doing something like that, once. It was so hard. Giving up was so easy. The gnawing black vortex in the pit where her heart used to be doesn't even hurt.
It's not a hunger. That would imply desire, and it's nothing so conscious, so alive. Inside her is an emptiness so profound that everything else must try to fill it, and can never succeed, and will keep trying regardless until it's all been swallowed up. The city. The nation. The human race. The planet from whose surface she rises. As they collapse one by one, she'll take them inside her, until finally all will be at peace.
The wind howls.
Another memory: there was one person whose despair she wanted to ease above all others. If only she could remember how that soul tasted, or see anything as small as an individual human in the flooded ruins below.
Not that it matters too much. She's sure to reach them eventually.
***
April 2
Saturday
The wall clock said it was past eleven in the morning when Madoka first stirred under the blankets, shivering from a nightmare she couldn't remember. Saotome-sensei would be teaching history right now. Or, more likely, teaching how social developments in the Meiji period demonstrated that you couldn't put up with a man who criticized a perfectly nice sweater set.
Madoka crawled out of bed, pulled the chain on each ceiling light in sequence, and turned to retrieve the last of the painkillers. They awaited her between the open laptop, its screen black but its speakers still putting out gentle violin arias, and the discarded notepad, nearly all the dates on its calendar crossed out.
A vague image from the dream returned: a bleak too-big sky, mirroring a wide-open space spread out below her. It was like a bad joke: You think being buried underground is bad? Let me tell you about....
Though she'd already fallen asleep in her clothes, Madoka climbed back under the blankets without bothering to change.
***
She didn't talk to Panda-san, or hold imaginary conversations with her mother or Sayaka. Her thoughts churned alone, steady but slow.
A dull hunger eventually dragged her out of bed, but the dark stains visible under the cloth on her hand compelled her to open the first aid kit before touching any food. Picking off the tape was a rhythmic and surprisingly soothing task. She barely winced when the bandage was peeled back from the raw-but-healing skin, and applied its replacement automatically.
Nothing in the fridge or the cupboard looked appealing. She gulped down a vitamin pill with the help of a glass of fruit juice, then soldiered half-heartedly through a packet of seaweed crackers.
At half past five, she tossed her crumb-strewn clothes in the hamper, doing a double-take when she realized it was empty. Had the laundry vanished at the same time as Homura did, and been gone all day? She hadn't noticed.
What if she's not teleporting at all? What if she just moves faster than the eye can see? Or...pauses everything else, like a video, and rearranges things before she starts playing it again?
She ended up in a light red sundress, over a pale-purple shirt with puffed sleeves. The bruising on her thigh before the skirt covered it looked much less angry, while the one still bared on her knee had faded to a yellowed smudge. She settled on plain white socks that didn't rise far above her ankles. If Homura noticed what remained of the bumping and scraping, let her.
At a quarter to six, she finished brushing her hair one-handed, and, working slowly enough to accommodate her sore shoulder and bandaged hand, did up her twintails with lavender ribbons.
She was standing at the top of the stairs when Homura's voice came through the door: "Please wait for me downstairs, Kaname Madoka."
Madoka took a deep breath. "Why do you get upset about wishes?"
Silence.
"Go down the stairs," said Homura at last. "and I'll tell you. I promise."
Characters/Pairings: Homura, Madoka, (skip) Kriemhild Gretchen
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer/Warnings: See table of contents.
Madoka admits to needing care for her bumps and bruises, and Homura inadvertently reveals some of her own inner wreckage.
***
April 1
(Continued)
When Madoka held out her raw hand, peppered with ripped skin and jagged scabs, Homura's visage went deathly still for as long as Madoka had yet seen. She waited until Homura was moving again before stammering, "A-and my neck."
"Your neck?" echoed Homura, eyes leaping to the collar of her V-neck shirt. Long-sleeved, in combination with a knee-length skirt and high socks, it covered everything with a visible bruise. Dressing while effectively one-handed had been a chore; she had barely done up her twintails before Homura's arrival, and they were already coming loose.
"It wasn't scraped," explained Madoka quickly. "Just sore. I think I might have p-pulled something."
"How did this happen?"
"I...fell." The excuse sounded weak even to her own ears.
To her surprise, Homura didn't press the matter. "I can check. I'll have to touch you..." She could have been thrilled as easily as disgusted for all the emotion in the phrase. "...and you let me know when it hurts."
The office chair had come through all of this and returned to its original position mostly unscathed, though one of its wheels no longer wanted to roll: any attempt to push it forward or backward sent it careening in circles, and the last one had left it facing the center of the room. At Homura's direction, Madoka sat timidly on the plush seat, anchoring the balls of her feet on the cement floor. "O-okay."
She tensed when Homura circled around behind her, long black hair sweeping inches from her face. The path to the foot of the stairs was left clear; was Homura always that dismissive of her attempts to bolt, or did it mean she had an inkling about the true extent of Madoka's soreness?
Before Madoka could work anything out, soft fingers caressed her jaw, and she nearly yelped in shock.
Homura's hands froze. "Did that hurt you, Kaname Madoka?"
"N-no. It startled me, that's all," said Madoka faintly.
School and sun and Papa's cooking and Mama's voice had all loomed so large—she hadn't had room even to think about touch, let alone crave it, until Homura's skin pressed against hers. A desperate hunger flared up somewhere inside her ribcage; her entire body seemed to have gone hypersensitive, the better to drink in every possible sensation from that light and gentle touch.
She dutifully reported the pains as Homura's questing fingers moved down the muscles of her neck. It struck her about halfway down that this was the worst possible position in which to entrust a delusional stranger, but she couldn't bring herself to pull away. If Homura wanted to strangle her, it would have happened long before now.
What was the last human contact Madoka had felt? She couldn't remember. One of Sayaka's bone-crushing hugs, no doubt. Why hadn't she paid more attention?
Homura's methodical check-up reached the sweep of her shoulders, the rim of stitches on her collar. "The search!" cried Madoka.
"What?"
"For me." There was a reason she never talked this fast; she was pulling words from the air in all the wrong order. "Out there. How is it doing?"
"It is...ongoing," said Homura. Bless all the gods, her hands were still warm at the dip of Madoka's neck. "Your friends have each been questioned...as have I. No leads have been found, including on the letter, although a handwriting expert compared it to an example of one of your in-class assignments and judged it to be yours. There has been debate over hiring a private detective. Your mother has taken a leave of absence from her career to remain closely involved with the case. Is there anything else you would like to know?"
Madoka clenched her uninjured hand in her lap. There were an endless number of things, if only she could figure out how to ask them. Of course, Homura might be lying about any part of it...but if she were going to lie, why not try to demoralize Madoka by reporting that the search had given up? "H-how do you know they have no leads? Even if you haven't heard about them...."
"I check the police file on your case every evening. As of last night, they had nothing. If they come close to discovering this place, I will move you." With that, she lifted her hands. "There are no permanent injuries here. I have no painkillers in the house, but can acquire some, if you like."
"Y-yes, please," said Madoka. Kindness, deference, and keeping up the conversation: it seemed to be the best way to encourage the Homura who gave information freely and asked before touching her neck, not the Homura who spoke about drugging her and carrying her to a new prison the way her father talked about picking up more milk. "Do you really not have...?" She could feel her face heat up just thinking it. "Even for cramps?"
She couldn't tell if Homura was offended or simply frozen again. On pink-socked toes she pulled her seat forward, letting the jammed wheel spin it to face her captor. The other girl's expression looked no less like offense than anything else.
"Oh!" exclaimed Madoka suddenly, hand flying to her mouth. "You've been so strong, I completely forgot! You were sick until recently, weren't you? So maybe you wouldn't have...but even then, wouldn't you need something after the surgery?" She winced in dismay as Homura continued not to respond. "Forgive me, Akemi-san! These are such personal questions....you don't have to answer."
"I can show you the reason, Kaname Madoka," said Homura, more slowly than usual. "But it will upset you again."
"Can't you just tell me?"
"I don't know how. And you won't believe me unless you see it."
Madoka clenched her fists in her lap, close to one of the bruises under her trousers. "Then show me, Akemi-san."
The dark-haired girl took a step back, then another. From behind her shield (how big was that trick pocket, anyway?) she produced a knife, short and crude-handled but with a more wicked blade than any Madoka had seen, even in her father's kitchen. Shifting the hilt into her shield hand, she held out her bare hand and drew the metal in a neat slash across her wrist.
It was Madoka's turn to freeze, staring as if hypnotized at the neat line of blood trickling down Homura's pale skin.
Where the knife vanished to she couldn't say, but the hand that hovered over the wound a few seconds later was empty, unless you counted the purple gem fixed to its back. A flash of light sparked deep within the jewel, and before Madoka's eyes the wound sealed up, leaving nothing but a faint red smear to show that it had been there at all.
"It's a waste to do that too much," said Homura. "And the ability to repair myself is limited. But it covers the aches and pains of the average well-off person."
Spending half a year in the hospital isn't average, Madoka thought but didn't say. "Being a puella magi doesn't seem average to me," she said instead.
"It isn't." Homura wiped the blood on the tail of her white waistcoat. "Which is why it's not something I would wish on anyone."
***
According to the clocks in the room, Homura was gone and back in less than ten minutes. Madoka was ready with a glass of water when the other girl reappeared with a bottle in hand and shook two small red capsules into her uninjured palm. Homura had also brought a broad plastic-wrapped bandage that turned out to be white and slightly moist with something antibacterial; she directed Madoka to lay this across her scraped skin, then covered it with a layer of soft cloth.
Every brush of their fingers against each other sent chills down Madoka's spine. Homura fastened the dressing in place with strips of medical tape that crisscrossed her hand, too intent on her work to notice the discomfort it was causing.
The bottle waited on the floor throughout. Its label had been scratched off, with only a few scraps of its soft underbelly remaining; Homura picked it up as soon as her ministrations were finished, and shook two more pills onto a plate that had been left on the desk, still strewn with the crumbs of Madoka's lunch.
As Madoka got to her feet, Homura capped the bottle. Madoka stared. "Don't I get to keep the rest?"
"I can't let you have too much." The remainder of the painkillers disappeared into the trick pocket on Homura's shield.
A stubborn sulkiness Madoka hadn't indulged since toddlerhood reared up in her. "I'm not a child! I can take my own medicine."
"Have you been taking your vitamins?"
"I...I've been eating well enough," said Madoka uncertainly. A week ago she might have said that being away from her family was a great excuse to eat nothing but sweets; now, especially after what she'd written in her letter, she was taking pains to keep her diet almost better than it was at home. The mini-fridge was running low on vegetables, while she'd only eaten two slices of cake. "I never needed extra vitamins before, Akemi-san. Don't you know that?"
Homura didn't respond to the jab. "You were exposed to regular sunlight then. You aren't now. Your body needs help to compensate."
Madoka was at once glad Homura had known about the problem and prepared for it, and horrified at the thought of how many other essential things she might be missing without knowing it. "I wish you'd told me," she said helplessly.
"Don't say that so casually." After the tenderness of her hands, the cold tone hit Madoka like a slap. "If you want to wish for something...." She trailed off, gazing at something beyond the jade walls. "...Amy."
"'Amy'?" repeated Madoka in disbelief. What did the stray cat have to do with anything? Maybe Homura meant some other Amy, but at this point Madoka wouldn't have put money on it. "Is she okay?"
"I forgot," said Homura distantly. Her eyes were wide open, the pupils pinpricks, as if her mind had gone some other place with open air and blinding light. "I was supposed to be prepared—"
Madoka found herself holding her breath. Whatever this is, it's taken her over. If I ran...now....
"She's dead," blurted Homura, stopping Madoka's train of thought in its tracks. Her icy cool was riddled with cracks; the tremulous voice of the moe Homura was seeping through. "I was supposed to fix things. She was hit by a car. I forgot. I knew it was coming and. And I didn't stop it."
"Akemi-san...."
No response. Only the spillage of words, tumbling forth in ever more scattered fragments. "I fix up everything else. The easy things I remember. Kaname Madoka loves that cat and I forget. I couldn't. How many years? Strawberry soap—and I didn't save Amy. A hundred times? This was supposed to be it. Everything prepared. And I failed." Tears pooled on her lashes. "So kind—Kaname Madoka. The cat knew it. And I—"
"Akemi-san!" cried Madoka, grabbing her by the shoulders. Her body trembled under Madoka's hands. "Homura-chan!"
A pale, broken face turned to her, unseeing. "I forgot."
"I know," said Madoka, heart racing. "It's okay."
"The car."
"It's not your fault!"
"I didn't stop it."
"It's okay," repeated Madoka. "I forgive you."
The spell broke. Homura's ragged breathing began to steady; violet eyes regained their focus. The tears didn't fall.
"Strays are always in danger," Madoka continued, aware on some level that she was soothing herself as well. "Even if you saved her from one car, she could've been hit by another the very next day. Anyone on the street could have protected her by taking her in, but we didn't. I didn't. She was happier that way, getting treats but having her freedom. She died living the way she wanted to live. You didn't fail anyone."
Homura blinked: once, twice.
Madoka swallowed over the lump in her throat.
"Please let go of me, Kaname Madoka," said Homura quietly.
Too overcome to think of anything else, Madoka obeyed. In the motion, the pain she'd ignored in her bandaged hand shot to the forefront of her awareness; she grabbed her wrist with a gasp, as if it would somehow relieve the stinging pain shooting through her entire arm.
"You need to be more careful." The cool Homura was back, almost: an echo of the stutter lingered. She pointed to the box the tape and bandage had come from. "I will leave this here. Please change the dressing once or twice a day."
"Y-yes, Akemi-san."
Homura's jaw worked. "You shouldn't hurt yourself for my sake," she hissed, and vanished.
Madoka ran to the foot of the stairs, just in case. A closed door harrumphed at her from the top.
Nerves jangling, she made for the bed, then turned on her heel and stumbled to the cupboard. The vitamin pill was bulkier than any she'd ever seen. It took half a glass of water for her choked throat to make it down. It was a testament to her disorganization that she only then noticed the wetness on her shoulder: blood, her first panicked thought ran, but no. Her shirt was damp with ordinary water, as if from a cup she hadn't spilled.
***
Her inner Sayaka-voice was throwing a fit.
Madoka tried to listen in between writing things down. She was back on the bed, the pillows and stuffed animals stacked into something she could lean against, Panda-san cuddled under her arm. The notepad lay propped against her knees; a new list labeled The Mystery of Homura Akemi ran down the page it was opened to. Using her non-dominant hand made for slow going. At least her aches and bruises had muted.
"Vanishes," said one row of skewed characters. "Keeps precise time," said another. "Heals. With jewel?" "Protecting me from Incubator (?)" "Thought she knew about Amy's death." "
That was your chance! wailed her inner Sayaka. Madoka could almost hear her friend hopping up and down in agitation. You could've been out the door while she was still going all blue-screen-of-death!
"I know," said Madoka out loud. "You don't have to remind me. I know."
A low-key classical tune meandered along in the background. She couldn't bear silence, but pop would have been an awful, fraying distraction.
Some realization was hovering at the edge of Madoka's awareness. Bits of the conversation recycled themselves in her head, the key moment buried in them somewhere, dancing just out of reach. She hadn't been the one to mention Amy. So what had set Homura off...?
And what's with only leaving you two pills, huh? demanded Sayaka. She talks a good game about being on your side, and then she holds out on you! Is she afraid you're going to overdose or something?
The pen scored an angry black streak across half the page.
***
̵̫͍̻̰̬̤̘͎͇̪̗̠͢ị̲͙̩͓̗̲̙͙͍́ͅx͎͇̹̤ͅx̢̛̹͙̜̮̞͓̞̹̲̙͙͍́͝ͅx͎̭̼̲̙̹ͅx̹͙̜̮̞͓̞̥́x͙̘͇̙̬̟̲͇̦̭̳̘̰̠͕̤̦
d̛̹̻̗̞͓̪̟̗͑̿̈́a̢̼̠͔̼̼y
She's watching the world from high in the air, the boroughs of Mitakihara laid out below like a playset.
The height doesn't frighten her. Neither in flight nor in freefall, she's the dark soul of a mountain, watching from above the clouds while toppled and ruined buildings lie scattered around her feet. An acrid yellow stench rises through the air.
The city is fragile. She's unshakeable.
They'll fight her, poor things. Clinging to the crumbling fragments of their homes, rising up out of the rubble, struggling, living. She has a vague memory of doing something like that, once. It was so hard. Giving up was so easy. The gnawing black vortex in the pit where her heart used to be doesn't even hurt.
It's not a hunger. That would imply desire, and it's nothing so conscious, so alive. Inside her is an emptiness so profound that everything else must try to fill it, and can never succeed, and will keep trying regardless until it's all been swallowed up. The city. The nation. The human race. The planet from whose surface she rises. As they collapse one by one, she'll take them inside her, until finally all will be at peace.
The wind howls.
Another memory: there was one person whose despair she wanted to ease above all others. If only she could remember how that soul tasted, or see anything as small as an individual human in the flooded ruins below.
Not that it matters too much. She's sure to reach them eventually.
***
April 2
Saturday
The wall clock said it was past eleven in the morning when Madoka first stirred under the blankets, shivering from a nightmare she couldn't remember. Saotome-sensei would be teaching history right now. Or, more likely, teaching how social developments in the Meiji period demonstrated that you couldn't put up with a man who criticized a perfectly nice sweater set.
Madoka crawled out of bed, pulled the chain on each ceiling light in sequence, and turned to retrieve the last of the painkillers. They awaited her between the open laptop, its screen black but its speakers still putting out gentle violin arias, and the discarded notepad, nearly all the dates on its calendar crossed out.
A vague image from the dream returned: a bleak too-big sky, mirroring a wide-open space spread out below her. It was like a bad joke: You think being buried underground is bad? Let me tell you about....
Though she'd already fallen asleep in her clothes, Madoka climbed back under the blankets without bothering to change.
***
She didn't talk to Panda-san, or hold imaginary conversations with her mother or Sayaka. Her thoughts churned alone, steady but slow.
A dull hunger eventually dragged her out of bed, but the dark stains visible under the cloth on her hand compelled her to open the first aid kit before touching any food. Picking off the tape was a rhythmic and surprisingly soothing task. She barely winced when the bandage was peeled back from the raw-but-healing skin, and applied its replacement automatically.
Nothing in the fridge or the cupboard looked appealing. She gulped down a vitamin pill with the help of a glass of fruit juice, then soldiered half-heartedly through a packet of seaweed crackers.
At half past five, she tossed her crumb-strewn clothes in the hamper, doing a double-take when she realized it was empty. Had the laundry vanished at the same time as Homura did, and been gone all day? She hadn't noticed.
What if she's not teleporting at all? What if she just moves faster than the eye can see? Or...pauses everything else, like a video, and rearranges things before she starts playing it again?
She ended up in a light red sundress, over a pale-purple shirt with puffed sleeves. The bruising on her thigh before the skirt covered it looked much less angry, while the one still bared on her knee had faded to a yellowed smudge. She settled on plain white socks that didn't rise far above her ankles. If Homura noticed what remained of the bumping and scraping, let her.
At a quarter to six, she finished brushing her hair one-handed, and, working slowly enough to accommodate her sore shoulder and bandaged hand, did up her twintails with lavender ribbons.
She was standing at the top of the stairs when Homura's voice came through the door: "Please wait for me downstairs, Kaname Madoka."
Madoka took a deep breath. "Why do you get upset about wishes?"
Silence.
"Go down the stairs," said Homura at last. "and I'll tell you. I promise."
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