Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2012-12-06 10:50 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2012-12-06 10:50 pm
Entry tags:
Madoka Magica | Homura, Madoka, Sayaka | PG-13 | Persephone's Waltz (7)
Title: Persephone's Waltz, Chapter 7: You can't forget that that's wrong!
Characters/Pairings: Homura, Madoka, Sayaka
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer/Warnings: See table of contents.
Sayaka joins the party! Also, she doesn't know about Homura yet. What will Madoka do? Hijinks ensue. And by "hijinks" I mean "a whole new round of panicky escape attempts."
***
April 6
(Continued)
If Homura was glad to see Madoka moving around like a sane person again, she didn't show it. She went straight for the bed, where she laid out her unconscious blue-haired burden while Madoka ran for a damp cloth.
Sayaka was in her school uniform: mussed but intact, except for the missing shoes. Her daffodil-colored hairpins had loosened, tugging awkwardly at the shaggy locks they clung to. Madoka pushed a few stray bangs out of Sayaka's face, draped the folded cloth over her forehead, and set to easing out the pins without breaking too much hair in the process. "W-what happened, Akemi-san? Is she going to be all right?"
Homura sank into the desk chair, a tightness around her eyes the only other sign of weariness. "This is her first lesson in what it means to fight as a puella magi. There are no serious injuries. She will recover quickly."
Only a rusty sense of propriety kept Madoka from starting to check all over Sayaka's body. Nothing could stop her from looking. Sayaka. Her own Sayaka, hair blue as a summer sky. "A witch did this to her?"
"No."
"Was it...the Incubator?" Two fingers on Sayaka's neck—after some fumbling for the right spot, she found a steady heartbeat. It ought to have been criminal, how good it felt.
"No. And yes." Homura stood. "It all comes back to him eventually."
"I don't understand," said Madoka faintly.
Homura didn't seem to hear. "I'll get more things for her," she said distantly. "A toothbrush. A bedroll. You'll have to tell me what food she likes. I didn't plan on bringing Miki Sayaka here, but it's manageable. At least she won't die. You always hate to see her die."
Her slip of the tongue, as if Sayaka had already expired there on the bed, gave Madoka chills.
"Is there anything you need right now?" Homura paused. "If anything important...was destroyed...I can replace it."
Madoka flushed, painfully conscious of the paper all over the floor, the broken book and wilted head of lettuce and other victims of her pathetic attempt at a rampage. "N-no. It's fine."
"She'll want to talk to you alone," Homura went on. "If either of you needs anything during the night, write it down and leave the list on the top step. I'll check every hour, on the hour, until school begins, then visit in the afternoon as usual."
Madoka nodded, unable to drag her gaze away from Sayaka's face. Either her memory already begun to fade during her time here, or she had never before appreciated how larger-than-life her friend was, even in sleep. Speaking of which..."When will you sleep?"
Homura shrugged. "I'll manage."
***
Sayaka stirred or huffed in her sleep several times without waking. Madoka, frantically brushing her hair and splashing water on parts of herself, jumped each time. When her friend began to stretch, she bolted to the side of the bed and held her breath, waiting to see if this was another false alarm.
At last Sayaka yawned widely, rubbed her eyelids, and blinked at her surroundings. Her eyes went wide when they fell on Madoka. "Mado...ka?"
Over the lump in her throat, Madoka nodded.
"Is this another dream...?"
"Sayaka-chan..." whispered Madoka, both bandage-free hands clenched into fists at her sides. "I know it's selfish, but...I'm so glad to see you...!"
With slow, dreamlike motions Sayaka sat up. "It worked," she breathed, an awed grin spreading across her face. "It worked! Madoka, it's okay. You're saved! I've got so much to tell you, you have no idea...come here, come here!"
Madoka didn't hesitate for a second before flinging herself into Sayaka's arms.
A startled 'oof' told her she'd leaped harder than expected. But if there was any discomfort Sayaka shrugged it off, wrapping her in a real, crushing, full-body embrace.
It wasn't like the teasing, pouncing cuddles the other girl had foisted on her as recently as the day she went missing. Those were as much about the fun of freaking out Hitomi as anything else, and brash Sayaka could have done the same to anyone in reach who looked likely to put up with it. This touch wasn't for the benefit of any observer, and it wouldn't have been granted to just any passerby. Madoka heaved nearly-dry sobs against Sayaka's chest, while Sayaka held her like a mother, rubbing her back and stroking her hair and rocking the pair of them gently back and forth.
"Shh, Madoka," she murmured, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of Madoka's head. "It's going to be fine now. I've got you."
***
Sooner or later Madoka would have to pull herself together. Sayaka had no one else to count on, and Madoka, for all her lack of other talents, was the closest thing here to an expert in being a prisoner.
She could have clung to her friend for hours on end, but all too soon Sayaka blurted, "This isn't your room." Cautiously, as if she didn't trust the evidence of her eyes.
"That's right." Madoka sniffed, rubbing her eyes with a handful of her T-shirt. "It's where I've been this whole time. There's a staircase behind that wall. The door's at the top. L-locked."
"I knew you hadn't run off with some boy," muttered Sayaka. "Wait, how did I get here?"
"Th-the person who brought me here...." She didn't want to say Homura's name; if Sayaka didn't already know, she was afraid of the distraction, not to mention the explosion, it would cause. "They carried you down. Unconscious. M-maybe you were drugged? That's what happened to me."
Sayaka growled. Madoka could feel her shaking with fury. "That's it. You're not spending another minute in this place. Stand back. I'm busting you out of here."
The last thing Madoka wanted to do was relinquish the embrace. "You c-can't."
"Watch me."
Encouraged by a kind but firm push away, Madoka sat back awkwardly on the mattress, heart breaking for her friend's certainty. Sayaka didn't understand. Maybe couldn't understand, until she had been here long enough to learn for herself the lessons Madoka had. "I've tried. I really have. There's nothing you can —"
"Oh, there is," said Sayaka with a grim smile. "I'd explain, but you'll never believe me. So I'll just have to show you!" She flung out her hand, palm outward, fingers splayed.
Nothing happened.
Hard, cold fear twisted Sayaka's face. She schooled it quickly into determination, slapping at her pockets before scrambling out of bed. "Madoka, help me out. I had a ring. A small silver ring, with black markings on it. You check the bed, I'll check the floor."
"O-okay," said Madoka, and began feeling through the sheets. "Sayaka-chan...if you dropped it outside, it's lost. At least for now. And it's not really an important thing right now, so —"
"It is important!" shouted Sayaka. She reeled herself in when Madoka cringed. "I'm sorry. But it's the most important thing in the world. It's — you're not going to believe me, but I have these powers. Magic powers. And I can use them to get us out of here, but not without that ring!"
Madoka caught her breath. "It lets you become a puella magi?"
"Yes, I —" Sayaka froze. "How did you know?"
It was all true.
Whether or not Madoka believed them, Homura's tales were as divorced from her life as this world-in-a-bubble that boxed her in. Except for the references to a schoolmate she hadn't known anyway, there was nothing to ground them in anything familiar, no tie with the things she knew and recognized down to her bones as reality.
And now here was Sayaka—her best friend since third year in elementary school — Sayaka who always stole her extra wasabi sauce, and who could name hundreds of different kinds of fish on sight, and who insisted on watching horror movies at sleepovers but always brought a baseball bat so Madoka could fall asleep feeling protected — rewriting thousands of Madoka's memories in four words, putting them all in the context of Sayaka who grew up to kill supernatural beings in defense of humanity.
The mattress below her rocked like a boat on the waves.
In an instant, Sayaka was back at her side. "What's wrong? Are you sick?"
"Stay with me," pleaded Madoka.
Sayaka's fingers braceleted her wrists: tightly enough to hurt the tender one, but Madoka didn't flinch, and Sayaka didn't notice. "I told you, Madoka-chan, it's going to be okay. That's a promise between friends. But please, lie down if you need to. I'll find the—I've been calling it my ring, but its proper name is a Soul Gem — on my own. Because we're stuck here until I find it, you see? Don't you want to get out as soon as possible? To keep your parents and Tatsuya-kun from worrying any longer? So be strong for a little while, and after we get to safety, I'll stay with you as long as you want."
"Of course I want to see them!" cried Madoka. "But you won't find it! The person who brought us here is an expert in puella magi. If taking your ring was a way to stop you from transforming, they would never leave it with you."
The look Sayaka gave her was new and strange. From Homura she might not have thought so, but from Sayaka it was too distant, lasted too long. "Madoka? Have you become a...?"
"N-no. I'm still just me."
"Then how do you know all this?" demanded Sayaka, a thin line of anger furrowing between her brows. "Is it related to why you were kidnapped, or is it just coincidence?"
Madoka shrank with guilt. Sayaka had been so proud to be a knowing and confident hero, and here Madoka had the nerve to end up with authority in the very area where Sayaka was supposed to be an expert. "There's something dangerous happening at the end of April," she began. "I...I don't know what, exactly...."
"Walpurgisnacht."
"Wa-ru-pu-ru-gi-su no yoru," echoed Madoka, testing the name on her tongue. Gears and lace. "And what is it?"
"It's big," said Sayaka shortly. "Huge. A terrifying thing for puella magi to go through. Not to mention all the innocent people around them."
So she didn't actually know. Well, this was no time for Madoka to push it. "O-okay. So after that's over, I'm supposed to be let go. Until then, this person brought me here to keep me safe." She decided not to mention how Homura had predicted Sayaka's death. It scared her even to think about.
"Do you believe them?"
Madoka shivered.
"Madoka, listen to me." Sayaka cupped Madoka's face between sports-roughened palms. Her eyes burned a serious midday-blue. "It's called Stockholm syndrome. When someone locks you up like this, you lose all perspective and start to believe their reasons are right, no matter how crazy they are. This person drugged you, snatched you off the street, and hid you in a basement somewhere! That's wrong! You can't forget that that's wrong!"
"I know! I promise, Sayaka-chan, I know." So how much must Homura have gone through, that she's forgotten....
Sayaka didn't seem reassured. And no wonder, when Madoka was still shaking. "You're white as a sheet, did you know that? I hate to let you go, but there's no time to lose. This lunatic might show up any minute, and I have to find a way out of here first."
Though she was certain Homura wouldn't come down again until tomorrow, Madoka didn't see any chance of convincing Sayaka. And why bother? If Madoka's trust was deserved and not Stockholm syndrome, surely Homura would be able to earn it from a second person without any help. And while the frantic search for a nonexistent way out had only made Madoka anxious, she could see the idea giving Sayaka a sense of purpose. It couldn't hurt.
"You might find a weak point in the room that I didn't," admitted Madoka, slipping out of Sayaka's grip and letting herself settle onto the bed. "You're a lot more tenacious than I am."
Relieved, Sayaka pumped her fist in a triumphant gesture. "Leave it to me!"
***
While she combed the walls of the room, Sayaka kept up a constant stream of chatter. Madoka had always been the shyer of the two anyway, but in their brief time apart it seemed she had completely forgotten how to get a word in edgewise. Mercifully, she didn't have to ask. Sayaka seemed to know exactly what she wanted to hear.
"Your mom hired a fancy private detective," she explained, while pulling back the desk to poke at the wall and outlet behind it. "Badgered her company into covering most of the cost, too. Claimed it was likely you were kidnapped by business rivals, or maybe someone who's counting on her paying a huge ransom and stealing from the company to cover it. I don't know how much she bought her own story, but she was convincing enough that they swallowed every line."
She moved to the wardrobe, then on to the vent that lay low beside it.
"There's a shrine for you at school — not a memorial, since most people haven't given up hope, but a place to wish you well. One of your family's photos is in the middle of it, and a sixth grade yearbook open to the page with the choir photo, and people leave their own pictures and flowers and ofuda and things. A bunch of the boys have left chocolate. Mostly in secret, but I definitely saw Nakazawa-kun leaving candy hearts! Your secret admirers will be so glad to have you back."
One by one, she cleared out all the boxes from under the bed, shoving them across the floor to crawl in their place. Her voice drifted up from under the mattress.
"Someone else got you a whole bouquet of really fancy flowers. Professionally-cut, in a vase, the works. I looked them up, and it turns out they're dahlias — in French flower language, it means 'forever thine'. And get this: Hitomi swears she saw Akemi Homura leaving them!"
Madoka bounced in shock, the squeak of the bedsprings camouflaging the one of shock that eeped from her lungs.
"Poor girl just about had another heart failure when you disappeared right after her 'date'," continued Sayaka, knocking something against the corner of the room under Madoka's head. "I, um, didn't exactly help with that. I kind of yelled at her. Then I met this girl, her name's Tomoe Mami...you'd love her, Mado-tan. She's an elegant onee-sama type. She's also a puella magi, that's how we met, she saved me from a witch...did the lunatic tell you about witches?"
"They did," admitted Madoka.
Sayaka wriggled back out into the (relatively) open air, brushing dust bunnies from her skirt and cardigan before stripping the latter off, draping it and her ribbon over the back of the office chair.
"Mami-san's been fighting them for a year or so now," she continued, rolling up the sleeves of her collared shirt, already rumpled as if she'd spent the whole day hard at aesthetic-but-manual work. "She and Kyuubei...oh, you'd love Kyuubei even more. He's this fluffy white cat-sized thing with long ears and a big poufy tail. Like he stepped right off your shelf of stuffed animals! Anyway, he's the one you contract with —" (Madoka's heart kicked.) "— to become a puella magi. I wasn't sure I'd do it, but then Hitomi-chan was in danger and Mami-san wasn't around, so I went for it!"
Kyuubei?
The laptop bounced unsteadily across the surface of the desk as Sayaka shoved it to one end. "It's so creepy that they would spend all this money on you," she muttered, shouldering the desk itself across the floor until it was directly under one of the lights. "I mean, you're supposed to be a prisoner!" A light hop, and her sock feet were braced on the desktop. "Do the lights work together, or separately?"
"Separately," said Madoka. About this Kyuubei....
"Great. That makes this easier." Sayaka yanked the chain and twisted off the plastic covering. "Catch."
With a yelp, Madoka flailed her arms and managed to intercept the plastic...with her elbow. It bounced to the floor with a crack.
Sayaka winced. "Maybe I'd better just hand you this," she said, unscrewing the bulb.
Madoka rose to a wobbly standing position on the mattress, so that Sayaka no longer towered over her any more than usual. Once the bulb was safely in her hands, she sat down as quickly as she could, thoughts racing in too many directions to follow just one. Those wires look unsafe. What are you planning? When you say 'contract'—
"Better get under the covers for a minute," ordered Sayaka, and Madoka obeyed. The last thing she saw before the heart-patterned sheet descended was her friend standing on tiptoe to claw at the fixture.
At last, a pause in the conversation, stretching until it was long enough for Madoka to have the nerve to jump in. "Sayaka-chan," she said, hands around the base of the light bulb, "I don't want—"
A crack; a shout; a crash and a thud. Madoka froze.
"I'm okay!" panted Sayaka a beat later, from somewhere near the floor. "You can come out now."
Lifting the edge of the blanket, Madoka found her field of vision Sayaka-free except for what she realized after a moment were two dark-socked heels. She scooted on her knees to the lip of the mattress to find that the chair had interrupted what would have been a fall onto cement. Instead Sayaka's butt was on the floor, arms and shoulders clinging lopsided to the seat cushion, ankles still up over the desk's edge, skirt flipped back to reveal — Madoka averted her eyes. "Don't move. I'll help...."
"Stay right there," Sayaka ordered. "I'll be fine in a minute. No big deal. You were saying something?"
Madoka's mouth worked. "You should have told me...." she said, staring at the blanket around her knees. "We could've put down pillows...I don't want you to hurt yourself for me!"
Piece by piece Sayaka winched herself back to equilibrium: one elbow, then the other, then leg by leg, every motion making the chair wobble as if it desperately wanted to roll away, and creak angrily as if to scold the rug for getting in its way. At last with a grunt she stood, brushed her skirt back into place, and flexed her arms. "Nothing to worry about! I'm tough, see? I can take a lot worse than this."
A sniffle escaped Madoka in spite of herself.
"Hey, hey, Mado-tan. Shh," breathed Sayaka, bending close, managing to look serious in spite of her untucked shirt, the the disheveled frizz of her hair. One hand slipped under a fold of the blanket to touch Madoka's. "Here. C'mere. Touch me. Prove to yourself that I'm...."
Fingers slid over Madoka's palm. This time the rawness didn't go unnoticed.
"Can I see?" said Sayaka weakly.
Madoka held out her hand. In the half-light her friend took her wrist and examined the marks that remained on her skin.
At last Sayaka swallowed and gathered her steel. "I don't want to upset you," she said quietly. "So you don't have to explain if it's too hard. Just answer yes or no, okay? The person keeping you here...have they hurt you?"
"No!" exclaimed Madoka. "I promise, Sayaka, they weren't even there. I tried to break out when I was alone, and I was clumsy about it. They got me bandages and things — this looked a lot worse a few days ago. They helped. Really."
A grimace crossed Sayaka's face, flashing her teeth. "How can you talk so nicely about them? You wouldn't have had to try breaking out at all if they hadn't locked you up in the first place."
Madoka's shoulders slumped. "You're right."
On the pulse point of her wrist, well past the edge of the scrapes, Sayaka's thumb began rubbing gentle circles on her skin. There was grit under her nails, and a blue symbol like an inverted tsu etched on the middle one, but Madoka was absorbed most of all by the warmth of that single point of contact.
"Sayaka-chan?" she whispered. "Is Kyuubei's name an alias? Or...a nickname for something?"
"Dunno," said Sayaka with a shrug. "I don't think so. Maybe kyuu is short for cute?"
"...Maybe."
Her friend straightened, patting back flyaway hairs. "Anyway, you'd better show me where those bandages are. Next time you get hurt, I'll be the one to take care of you."
Characters/Pairings: Homura, Madoka, Sayaka
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer/Warnings: See table of contents.
Sayaka joins the party! Also, she doesn't know about Homura yet. What will Madoka do? Hijinks ensue. And by "hijinks" I mean "a whole new round of panicky escape attempts."
***
April 6
(Continued)
If Homura was glad to see Madoka moving around like a sane person again, she didn't show it. She went straight for the bed, where she laid out her unconscious blue-haired burden while Madoka ran for a damp cloth.
Sayaka was in her school uniform: mussed but intact, except for the missing shoes. Her daffodil-colored hairpins had loosened, tugging awkwardly at the shaggy locks they clung to. Madoka pushed a few stray bangs out of Sayaka's face, draped the folded cloth over her forehead, and set to easing out the pins without breaking too much hair in the process. "W-what happened, Akemi-san? Is she going to be all right?"
Homura sank into the desk chair, a tightness around her eyes the only other sign of weariness. "This is her first lesson in what it means to fight as a puella magi. There are no serious injuries. She will recover quickly."
Only a rusty sense of propriety kept Madoka from starting to check all over Sayaka's body. Nothing could stop her from looking. Sayaka. Her own Sayaka, hair blue as a summer sky. "A witch did this to her?"
"No."
"Was it...the Incubator?" Two fingers on Sayaka's neck—after some fumbling for the right spot, she found a steady heartbeat. It ought to have been criminal, how good it felt.
"No. And yes." Homura stood. "It all comes back to him eventually."
"I don't understand," said Madoka faintly.
Homura didn't seem to hear. "I'll get more things for her," she said distantly. "A toothbrush. A bedroll. You'll have to tell me what food she likes. I didn't plan on bringing Miki Sayaka here, but it's manageable. At least she won't die. You always hate to see her die."
Her slip of the tongue, as if Sayaka had already expired there on the bed, gave Madoka chills.
"Is there anything you need right now?" Homura paused. "If anything important...was destroyed...I can replace it."
Madoka flushed, painfully conscious of the paper all over the floor, the broken book and wilted head of lettuce and other victims of her pathetic attempt at a rampage. "N-no. It's fine."
"She'll want to talk to you alone," Homura went on. "If either of you needs anything during the night, write it down and leave the list on the top step. I'll check every hour, on the hour, until school begins, then visit in the afternoon as usual."
Madoka nodded, unable to drag her gaze away from Sayaka's face. Either her memory already begun to fade during her time here, or she had never before appreciated how larger-than-life her friend was, even in sleep. Speaking of which..."When will you sleep?"
Homura shrugged. "I'll manage."
***
Sayaka stirred or huffed in her sleep several times without waking. Madoka, frantically brushing her hair and splashing water on parts of herself, jumped each time. When her friend began to stretch, she bolted to the side of the bed and held her breath, waiting to see if this was another false alarm.
At last Sayaka yawned widely, rubbed her eyelids, and blinked at her surroundings. Her eyes went wide when they fell on Madoka. "Mado...ka?"
Over the lump in her throat, Madoka nodded.
"Is this another dream...?"
"Sayaka-chan..." whispered Madoka, both bandage-free hands clenched into fists at her sides. "I know it's selfish, but...I'm so glad to see you...!"
With slow, dreamlike motions Sayaka sat up. "It worked," she breathed, an awed grin spreading across her face. "It worked! Madoka, it's okay. You're saved! I've got so much to tell you, you have no idea...come here, come here!"
Madoka didn't hesitate for a second before flinging herself into Sayaka's arms.
A startled 'oof' told her she'd leaped harder than expected. But if there was any discomfort Sayaka shrugged it off, wrapping her in a real, crushing, full-body embrace.
It wasn't like the teasing, pouncing cuddles the other girl had foisted on her as recently as the day she went missing. Those were as much about the fun of freaking out Hitomi as anything else, and brash Sayaka could have done the same to anyone in reach who looked likely to put up with it. This touch wasn't for the benefit of any observer, and it wouldn't have been granted to just any passerby. Madoka heaved nearly-dry sobs against Sayaka's chest, while Sayaka held her like a mother, rubbing her back and stroking her hair and rocking the pair of them gently back and forth.
"Shh, Madoka," she murmured, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of Madoka's head. "It's going to be fine now. I've got you."
***
Sooner or later Madoka would have to pull herself together. Sayaka had no one else to count on, and Madoka, for all her lack of other talents, was the closest thing here to an expert in being a prisoner.
She could have clung to her friend for hours on end, but all too soon Sayaka blurted, "This isn't your room." Cautiously, as if she didn't trust the evidence of her eyes.
"That's right." Madoka sniffed, rubbing her eyes with a handful of her T-shirt. "It's where I've been this whole time. There's a staircase behind that wall. The door's at the top. L-locked."
"I knew you hadn't run off with some boy," muttered Sayaka. "Wait, how did I get here?"
"Th-the person who brought me here...." She didn't want to say Homura's name; if Sayaka didn't already know, she was afraid of the distraction, not to mention the explosion, it would cause. "They carried you down. Unconscious. M-maybe you were drugged? That's what happened to me."
Sayaka growled. Madoka could feel her shaking with fury. "That's it. You're not spending another minute in this place. Stand back. I'm busting you out of here."
The last thing Madoka wanted to do was relinquish the embrace. "You c-can't."
"Watch me."
Encouraged by a kind but firm push away, Madoka sat back awkwardly on the mattress, heart breaking for her friend's certainty. Sayaka didn't understand. Maybe couldn't understand, until she had been here long enough to learn for herself the lessons Madoka had. "I've tried. I really have. There's nothing you can —"
"Oh, there is," said Sayaka with a grim smile. "I'd explain, but you'll never believe me. So I'll just have to show you!" She flung out her hand, palm outward, fingers splayed.
Nothing happened.
Hard, cold fear twisted Sayaka's face. She schooled it quickly into determination, slapping at her pockets before scrambling out of bed. "Madoka, help me out. I had a ring. A small silver ring, with black markings on it. You check the bed, I'll check the floor."
"O-okay," said Madoka, and began feeling through the sheets. "Sayaka-chan...if you dropped it outside, it's lost. At least for now. And it's not really an important thing right now, so —"
"It is important!" shouted Sayaka. She reeled herself in when Madoka cringed. "I'm sorry. But it's the most important thing in the world. It's — you're not going to believe me, but I have these powers. Magic powers. And I can use them to get us out of here, but not without that ring!"
Madoka caught her breath. "It lets you become a puella magi?"
"Yes, I —" Sayaka froze. "How did you know?"
It was all true.
Whether or not Madoka believed them, Homura's tales were as divorced from her life as this world-in-a-bubble that boxed her in. Except for the references to a schoolmate she hadn't known anyway, there was nothing to ground them in anything familiar, no tie with the things she knew and recognized down to her bones as reality.
And now here was Sayaka—her best friend since third year in elementary school — Sayaka who always stole her extra wasabi sauce, and who could name hundreds of different kinds of fish on sight, and who insisted on watching horror movies at sleepovers but always brought a baseball bat so Madoka could fall asleep feeling protected — rewriting thousands of Madoka's memories in four words, putting them all in the context of Sayaka who grew up to kill supernatural beings in defense of humanity.
The mattress below her rocked like a boat on the waves.
In an instant, Sayaka was back at her side. "What's wrong? Are you sick?"
"Stay with me," pleaded Madoka.
Sayaka's fingers braceleted her wrists: tightly enough to hurt the tender one, but Madoka didn't flinch, and Sayaka didn't notice. "I told you, Madoka-chan, it's going to be okay. That's a promise between friends. But please, lie down if you need to. I'll find the—I've been calling it my ring, but its proper name is a Soul Gem — on my own. Because we're stuck here until I find it, you see? Don't you want to get out as soon as possible? To keep your parents and Tatsuya-kun from worrying any longer? So be strong for a little while, and after we get to safety, I'll stay with you as long as you want."
"Of course I want to see them!" cried Madoka. "But you won't find it! The person who brought us here is an expert in puella magi. If taking your ring was a way to stop you from transforming, they would never leave it with you."
The look Sayaka gave her was new and strange. From Homura she might not have thought so, but from Sayaka it was too distant, lasted too long. "Madoka? Have you become a...?"
"N-no. I'm still just me."
"Then how do you know all this?" demanded Sayaka, a thin line of anger furrowing between her brows. "Is it related to why you were kidnapped, or is it just coincidence?"
Madoka shrank with guilt. Sayaka had been so proud to be a knowing and confident hero, and here Madoka had the nerve to end up with authority in the very area where Sayaka was supposed to be an expert. "There's something dangerous happening at the end of April," she began. "I...I don't know what, exactly...."
"Walpurgisnacht."
"Wa-ru-pu-ru-gi-su no yoru," echoed Madoka, testing the name on her tongue. Gears and lace. "And what is it?"
"It's big," said Sayaka shortly. "Huge. A terrifying thing for puella magi to go through. Not to mention all the innocent people around them."
So she didn't actually know. Well, this was no time for Madoka to push it. "O-okay. So after that's over, I'm supposed to be let go. Until then, this person brought me here to keep me safe." She decided not to mention how Homura had predicted Sayaka's death. It scared her even to think about.
"Do you believe them?"
Madoka shivered.
"Madoka, listen to me." Sayaka cupped Madoka's face between sports-roughened palms. Her eyes burned a serious midday-blue. "It's called Stockholm syndrome. When someone locks you up like this, you lose all perspective and start to believe their reasons are right, no matter how crazy they are. This person drugged you, snatched you off the street, and hid you in a basement somewhere! That's wrong! You can't forget that that's wrong!"
"I know! I promise, Sayaka-chan, I know." So how much must Homura have gone through, that she's forgotten....
Sayaka didn't seem reassured. And no wonder, when Madoka was still shaking. "You're white as a sheet, did you know that? I hate to let you go, but there's no time to lose. This lunatic might show up any minute, and I have to find a way out of here first."
Though she was certain Homura wouldn't come down again until tomorrow, Madoka didn't see any chance of convincing Sayaka. And why bother? If Madoka's trust was deserved and not Stockholm syndrome, surely Homura would be able to earn it from a second person without any help. And while the frantic search for a nonexistent way out had only made Madoka anxious, she could see the idea giving Sayaka a sense of purpose. It couldn't hurt.
"You might find a weak point in the room that I didn't," admitted Madoka, slipping out of Sayaka's grip and letting herself settle onto the bed. "You're a lot more tenacious than I am."
Relieved, Sayaka pumped her fist in a triumphant gesture. "Leave it to me!"
***
While she combed the walls of the room, Sayaka kept up a constant stream of chatter. Madoka had always been the shyer of the two anyway, but in their brief time apart it seemed she had completely forgotten how to get a word in edgewise. Mercifully, she didn't have to ask. Sayaka seemed to know exactly what she wanted to hear.
"Your mom hired a fancy private detective," she explained, while pulling back the desk to poke at the wall and outlet behind it. "Badgered her company into covering most of the cost, too. Claimed it was likely you were kidnapped by business rivals, or maybe someone who's counting on her paying a huge ransom and stealing from the company to cover it. I don't know how much she bought her own story, but she was convincing enough that they swallowed every line."
She moved to the wardrobe, then on to the vent that lay low beside it.
"There's a shrine for you at school — not a memorial, since most people haven't given up hope, but a place to wish you well. One of your family's photos is in the middle of it, and a sixth grade yearbook open to the page with the choir photo, and people leave their own pictures and flowers and ofuda and things. A bunch of the boys have left chocolate. Mostly in secret, but I definitely saw Nakazawa-kun leaving candy hearts! Your secret admirers will be so glad to have you back."
One by one, she cleared out all the boxes from under the bed, shoving them across the floor to crawl in their place. Her voice drifted up from under the mattress.
"Someone else got you a whole bouquet of really fancy flowers. Professionally-cut, in a vase, the works. I looked them up, and it turns out they're dahlias — in French flower language, it means 'forever thine'. And get this: Hitomi swears she saw Akemi Homura leaving them!"
Madoka bounced in shock, the squeak of the bedsprings camouflaging the one of shock that eeped from her lungs.
"Poor girl just about had another heart failure when you disappeared right after her 'date'," continued Sayaka, knocking something against the corner of the room under Madoka's head. "I, um, didn't exactly help with that. I kind of yelled at her. Then I met this girl, her name's Tomoe Mami...you'd love her, Mado-tan. She's an elegant onee-sama type. She's also a puella magi, that's how we met, she saved me from a witch...did the lunatic tell you about witches?"
"They did," admitted Madoka.
Sayaka wriggled back out into the (relatively) open air, brushing dust bunnies from her skirt and cardigan before stripping the latter off, draping it and her ribbon over the back of the office chair.
"Mami-san's been fighting them for a year or so now," she continued, rolling up the sleeves of her collared shirt, already rumpled as if she'd spent the whole day hard at aesthetic-but-manual work. "She and Kyuubei...oh, you'd love Kyuubei even more. He's this fluffy white cat-sized thing with long ears and a big poufy tail. Like he stepped right off your shelf of stuffed animals! Anyway, he's the one you contract with —" (Madoka's heart kicked.) "— to become a puella magi. I wasn't sure I'd do it, but then Hitomi-chan was in danger and Mami-san wasn't around, so I went for it!"
Kyuubei?
The laptop bounced unsteadily across the surface of the desk as Sayaka shoved it to one end. "It's so creepy that they would spend all this money on you," she muttered, shouldering the desk itself across the floor until it was directly under one of the lights. "I mean, you're supposed to be a prisoner!" A light hop, and her sock feet were braced on the desktop. "Do the lights work together, or separately?"
"Separately," said Madoka. About this Kyuubei....
"Great. That makes this easier." Sayaka yanked the chain and twisted off the plastic covering. "Catch."
With a yelp, Madoka flailed her arms and managed to intercept the plastic...with her elbow. It bounced to the floor with a crack.
Sayaka winced. "Maybe I'd better just hand you this," she said, unscrewing the bulb.
Madoka rose to a wobbly standing position on the mattress, so that Sayaka no longer towered over her any more than usual. Once the bulb was safely in her hands, she sat down as quickly as she could, thoughts racing in too many directions to follow just one. Those wires look unsafe. What are you planning? When you say 'contract'—
"Better get under the covers for a minute," ordered Sayaka, and Madoka obeyed. The last thing she saw before the heart-patterned sheet descended was her friend standing on tiptoe to claw at the fixture.
At last, a pause in the conversation, stretching until it was long enough for Madoka to have the nerve to jump in. "Sayaka-chan," she said, hands around the base of the light bulb, "I don't want—"
A crack; a shout; a crash and a thud. Madoka froze.
"I'm okay!" panted Sayaka a beat later, from somewhere near the floor. "You can come out now."
Lifting the edge of the blanket, Madoka found her field of vision Sayaka-free except for what she realized after a moment were two dark-socked heels. She scooted on her knees to the lip of the mattress to find that the chair had interrupted what would have been a fall onto cement. Instead Sayaka's butt was on the floor, arms and shoulders clinging lopsided to the seat cushion, ankles still up over the desk's edge, skirt flipped back to reveal — Madoka averted her eyes. "Don't move. I'll help...."
"Stay right there," Sayaka ordered. "I'll be fine in a minute. No big deal. You were saying something?"
Madoka's mouth worked. "You should have told me...." she said, staring at the blanket around her knees. "We could've put down pillows...I don't want you to hurt yourself for me!"
Piece by piece Sayaka winched herself back to equilibrium: one elbow, then the other, then leg by leg, every motion making the chair wobble as if it desperately wanted to roll away, and creak angrily as if to scold the rug for getting in its way. At last with a grunt she stood, brushed her skirt back into place, and flexed her arms. "Nothing to worry about! I'm tough, see? I can take a lot worse than this."
A sniffle escaped Madoka in spite of herself.
"Hey, hey, Mado-tan. Shh," breathed Sayaka, bending close, managing to look serious in spite of her untucked shirt, the the disheveled frizz of her hair. One hand slipped under a fold of the blanket to touch Madoka's. "Here. C'mere. Touch me. Prove to yourself that I'm...."
Fingers slid over Madoka's palm. This time the rawness didn't go unnoticed.
"Can I see?" said Sayaka weakly.
Madoka held out her hand. In the half-light her friend took her wrist and examined the marks that remained on her skin.
At last Sayaka swallowed and gathered her steel. "I don't want to upset you," she said quietly. "So you don't have to explain if it's too hard. Just answer yes or no, okay? The person keeping you here...have they hurt you?"
"No!" exclaimed Madoka. "I promise, Sayaka, they weren't even there. I tried to break out when I was alone, and I was clumsy about it. They got me bandages and things — this looked a lot worse a few days ago. They helped. Really."
A grimace crossed Sayaka's face, flashing her teeth. "How can you talk so nicely about them? You wouldn't have had to try breaking out at all if they hadn't locked you up in the first place."
Madoka's shoulders slumped. "You're right."
On the pulse point of her wrist, well past the edge of the scrapes, Sayaka's thumb began rubbing gentle circles on her skin. There was grit under her nails, and a blue symbol like an inverted tsu etched on the middle one, but Madoka was absorbed most of all by the warmth of that single point of contact.
"Sayaka-chan?" she whispered. "Is Kyuubei's name an alias? Or...a nickname for something?"
"Dunno," said Sayaka with a shrug. "I don't think so. Maybe kyuu is short for cute?"
"...Maybe."
Her friend straightened, patting back flyaway hairs. "Anyway, you'd better show me where those bandages are. Next time you get hurt, I'll be the one to take care of you."