A/N: I just discovered this while cleaning my hard drive. I don't remember how how it's been there (my Madoka Magica phase was brief). The fact that I never posted it is a sign I wasn't happy with it at the time, but I honestly can't see what's so wrong with it now, so enjoy!
It's times like these, with her head pillowed on a soft chest and arms holding her close, that Homura's cool, untouchable demeanor falls away. The earnest, impressionable girl she was when they first met is still there, always, but these days she exists behind a thick protective shell. The latter's creation had been necessity. No one ever believed her if she told the truth outright the first time around, and that impressionable girl can only take so much disbelief and mistrust before she breaks beyond repair.
Besides, if she lets one thing slip in front of Kaname Madoka before the time is right, then it will turn into a self-destructive landslide that not even Madoka's kindness can absorb. Homura refuses to do that, if she can help it.
Of course, the demeanor is not exactly necessity now. A part of her dislikes how she can't seem to be her real self anymore, but the rest simply relishes that she can finally live up to her own name.
She wonders if it's really right to be here, when the Madoka she sold her soul for is dead and gone. The connection between them is different in every timeline, which gives her the impression that she's not meeting the same Madoka every time. Is it right to think this way, to feel this way, when the real inspiration to these thoughts and emotions couldn't be saved?
Has this relationship been with one girl this entire time, or as many girls as there are timelines? Homura can't say. She wonders if that just proves she shouldn't be here.
Warm, kind fingers stroke her hair back from her forehead. Homura's eyes fall shut as she goes boneless, utterly helpless against how nice that feels.
"Homura, what are you thinking?" whispers Madoka.
Homura can't hide. She's naked, vulnerable, her shell broken wide open—she's far too safe here, in the arms of hope itself, to feel any fear.
There are a myriad of things that she can say, but what sums it all up is, "Just how happy I am to be here."
Madoka gives her a smile that sends a pleasant bubbly sensation all the way to the tips of her toes. "Me too."
It's too easy. Smiling back so freely would have felt unnatural if she were doing it in front of anyone else, but as things are it's almost downright cathartic. Homura stretches her neck, and is met halfways with the sweetest kiss she's ever known.
That's when the rapid-fire bleeping of the alarm wakes her up. Homura feels her face slide into its usual expression of indifference while the shell seals itself back up around her as if it had never broken to begin with. She is herself, and yet she is not. This is a façade, and yet her confidence and skill are far from faked. It's a troubling sensation.
Her lips are tingling. She doesn't touch them for fear of erasing the memory of that kiss entirely.
Madoka may not have corporeal form anymore, but she is not gone. It's times like these that Homura digs in her heels and fights the wraiths with renewed vigor, because Madoka did not give up more than her share so this world could fail. It's times like these that Homura believes so much harder that all of this will really be worth it in the end. It's times like these that Homura remembers she is loved, and that a connection is a connection, no matter how it feels. It's sensations like these, of a kiss she'll never know if she actually had, that remind her she has a right to her feelings and her love, just as she has a right to be here.
Yeah, times like these.