Disclaimer: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica / Puella Magi Madoka Magica is property of SHAFT and Aniplex, and was written, directed and designed by Magica Quartet. This is a piece of fanfiction, produced with no intention to profit.
Homura was tired.
No... to say that would be to say that the sun is hot. She felt the weariness in her marrow, in her lungs, in her self.
She formed the iron egg of her Soul Gem in her hand, gazing down at it. The lilac crystal within rippled softly like liquid, almost completely overtaken by a dark, haunted miasma. Homura knew that it was the miasma that sapped her strength, drained her will...
The tiredness was a physical thing – a stain upon her soul.
Perhaps a Grief Seed would have saved her... but in this world, Grief Seeds were a theory of a memory. The demon stuff had a similar effect, though it was so much weaker... many remnants were needed to restore even a fraction of what a single Grief Seed could provide, and for Homura even they had lost effectiveness as she used them.
Remnants... demon stuff... provided diminishing returns.
The others hadn't known. The loss of efficiency was so slight that it was almost imperceptible. They had died before they could reach this point.
Everyone had, killed by the demons... or sheer bad luck.
Sayaka... sacrificing herself with Final Strike because of a half-memory and a delusion of heroism.
Kyouko, who wore herself out for revenge of the girl she hadn't realised she loved until it was too late.
Charlotte, hit by a car as she was crossing the road.
Mami... who had vanished, even Homura incapable of discovering her fate.
That had been years ago. Before the war that had spread misery at a rate that even the Puella Magi and Kyubey's people had been unable to fight. Even Madoka couldn't have protected them from it.
What was once Mitakihara was now the demon waste, devastated by the nuclear strike that had ended the war. The works of man, brought low by the works of man. Demons flocked there, for mutual protection against the Magi, until they could gather enough misery to fight. A thick miasma choked Madoka's eternal presence around the city until nothing was left.
Homura's wings had been white, once, she remembered. When she fought with Kyouko and Mami they had been as pure as Madoka's wish. As the miasma set in, they began to corrupt, blackness, haunted by flowers and flywheels. Kyubey had been forced to set down a new law for Puella Magi: No girl may serve in the demon waste for more than a month. Homura had ignored him. She had continued to serve here, hunting demons in their richest breeding ground.
A doctor would have called it self-destructive. A gamer would have called it spawn camping.
Homura called it penance. She had killed demons in the waste for three years running, and she knew her time was almost up.
One could be forgiven for thinking that this was the end of the world. Twisted ruins around were turned into strange trees by the ever-present brown dust, blown by a hot wind. Homura walked across it, a lone sentinel. A lone girl, fourteen going on four hundred.
They appeared before her – thirteen demons, towering over the surroundings, swollen with the misery they had absorbed. They were the largest she had ever seen, towering over her like the buildings that had once stood there. Her expression tightened, and she called her wings, dark power exploding either side of her.
'Just a little more.' She heard, Madoka's voice, and she smiled. So... this was it.
The demons struck at her with whiplike cords of power, seeking to bind and impale her before she could act. She cast aside their assault with a thought, catching the threads on the cusp of her aura, before crouching, then leaping into the air. The darkness about her crowded in, and the weak light of her soul gem flickered.
'I'll be there... Madoka.' She whispered, and opened her soul to the darkness. Her wings flared, but it was from the outside that their dark brilliance spread, until it covered the whole of Mitakihara waste.
Akemi Homura's soul was overtaken as it bonded with the evil miasma of despair and misery that fuelled the demon waste... and then vanished, taking that cruel, vile darkness with it. The demons crumbled, and the wind stopped.
The demon wastes were no more.
And Homura?
Homura sank into the warm arms of the one who had waited for her for so long.
'Welcome home... Homura-chan!'