A/N: My entry for the PMMM Ship Challenge over on tumblr. Day one's MadoMami, so here we go, folks! All abroad the magic angst bus!

A Quintessential Resolution

Kaname Madoka is weak.

It's the thought that goes through her head when Mami levels her musket at Homura — it's the thought that's always going through her head, really, but now it's practically a madness mantra driving her utterly insane as she struggles to lift a finger to stop her — her arms are shaking like a rattling tin can on top of an earthquake-shaken table, glass bones jangling feebly under the unrelenting force of her tumultuous mind.

"If Soul Gems give birth to witches, then we all have to die! Both you and I!" Mami cries out, voice quaking unsteadily through the sound of her shaking sobs as her finger descends towards the trigger — the same poised finger that had beckoned Madoka to join her for tea not several hours earlier — the same fragile finger that now bends down to kill Homura —

"Stop it!" Homura screams frantically, struggling futilely in her bindings as her desperate eyes stare Mami down, pleading for this madness to end —

Madoka could stop this. She has to stop this; what kind of friend would she be if she allowed this to happen? She's weak — she's spineless — she's cowardly — but she can't just let her friends outright murder each other, can she?

With this thought as a sword against the tidal wave of corrosive sewage eating at her heart, Madoka finally finds the strength to lift her bow in the air and level at her mentor — her friend. She feels sick — she's so sick that she can barely keep it up — but now it's almost like her glass bones are possessed with a force that both terrifies and mystifies her, compelling her to draw an arrow back and release it with an awful flex of her fingers, and the arrow goes flying just as Mami's musket fires off with deafening thunder —

— and then there's the sound of glass shattering like a vase falling off a table, before a limp body crumbles to the floor much in the same way as a puppet with its strings cut.

The shrill shriek of a pink arrow pinging off one of the train station pillars follows shortly thereafter before it fizzles out into the air.

Madoka blinks her eyes open at the sound — the wrong sound; that's not supposed to happen —!

Suddenly there's a yawning pit of darkness staring her down right before her eyes, a depthless black hole spelling out destruction and nothingness with a very much alive Mami at the head of the gun barrel. It's here that their eyes meet for the first time since this insanity had ensnared them, and Madoka can't seem to get her hands to work right anymore in the face of such human eyes — oh god, she'd just try to kill Mami, what had she been thinking?

"Why are you trying to stop me?" Mami chokes out, her voice as shrill as a broken instrument. "Can't you see I'm doing this for the good of all of us, Kaname-san? I'm trying to save you — can't you see that? Can't you see that death is our only choice?"

Madoka's no better than her — she'd been trying to kill not moments ago, and the thought sickens her so much that some crazy part of her mind almost wants Mami to end her wretched existence already.

But as Mami's ribbons sneak up from the tiled floor like slick serpents tempting her into their grasp, she finds herself springing to her feet like as if the floor is lava and narrowly dodging the musket blast fired at her chest, the bullet grazing her shoulder with a bloody spray that has her legs shaking. But she stands anyways like a quaking tower, her bow lifted up in a state of defense as she stares Mami down, breathing heavily.

"Answer me, Kaname-san," Mami demands, stepping forward just as Madoka steps back. "Why do you stand against me?"

Madoka's tongue flops uselessly in her mouth for a few moments as she tries to figure out how speaking works again, a cold sweat soaking her face and getting into her eyes — god, does she feel sick. And yet she's standing here — she's standing here with a gun to her face and legs that can barely keep her upright.

She could just let Mami shoot her dead and be done with it — after all, it's not like her life has ever amounted to anything spectacular, right?

But something drives her to step away from the ribbons still snaking forth to grab at her ankles, and even if her emotions are too shredded up to think properly she knows in her heart that no matter the reason she can't let this happen.

"You can't do this, Mami-san," Madoka wheezes out through harsh breaths as she jumps away from another ribbon lashing out at her legs like a whip. "It's not right!"

"What's not right?" Mami snarls out through chattering teeth as she marches forward with a determined stride. Madoka rears back at the sudden charge, raising her bow to retaliate but Mami lunges forward like a wolf and tears it out of her hand, throwing it down on the floor with a frightful clatter.

Before Madoka can blink, the hot steel of Mami's musket is pressed right up against her soul gem, and her face is terrifyingly close, enough for Madoka to see her glimmering irises in full detail as they bore into her own with a shaky instability that strikes a raw shot of absolute, gut-wrenching terror into her heart.

"What's not right is the fact that our fate is to become monsters, Kaname-san!" Mami explains harshly as the ribbons finally wrap tight around Madoka's legs, probably enough to cut off her blood circulation.

"But that doesn't mean you have to start a slaughter fest, Mami-san!" Madoka chokes out desperately as she feels nails pounding her coffin shut. "You can't just give up on us and everything we've worked towards!"

"What does it matter? What does any of it matter? We're just going to negate everything by destroying it in the end, so what's the point?" Mami screams right in her face, spittle flying from her lip to dripple onto Madoka's sweat-soaked cheeks. "It's obvious there's no convincing you, but trust me as your senpai that this is the only option we have. I'm sorry it had to end this way, Kaname-san."

And then Mami's ribbons snap up like cheetahs on a hunt to ensnare her arms, but Madoka yanks her arms away and roughly shoves Mami's musket out of the way of her gem right as she pulls the trigger. The gun goes off with an earsplitting bang! the musket ball crashing into her jaw and tearing though the side of her face in a shower of blood. Madoka chokes on the crimson fluid flooding her mouth and stumbles back into the glass railing as the world flashes white before her eyes, but she doesn't receive an opportunity to recuperate from the blow as her mentor is already drawing another musket to fire at her.

Ignoring the blood-soaked agony ripping across her skull, Madoka finds herself lunging forward with an almost animalistic desperation, tearing through the ribbons still clinging to her person and swinging her arm forward just as Mami fires another shot. Her fist connects with the other girl's face in a crushing blow, throwing off her aim and sending the musket ball careening into the glass railing with a resounding shatter.

Her body hits the floor like a clunk of wood, and Madoka tumbles forward from her own momentum as well, landing on her knees on top of her. Despite the dizziness threatening to overwhelm her, she takes advantage of her position to grab at Mami's wrists and yank them above her head, restraining her.

"Kaname-san…" Mami wheezes feebly, looking like she's seeing stars from the hit she'd just taken. Her nose is twisted and broken, blood slowly leaking out of her nostrils and staining her lips.

[Please stop, Mami-san,] Madoka pleads, tightening her grip on the other girl's wrists even though her arms are killing her. Her entire jaw is fucked up so bad that she doesn't want to even attempt physically speaking, but hopefully telepathy could get her message across just as effectively.

"But… Kaname-san… I—I don't want to see you become a witch," Mami rasps weakly, the fight seeming to drain from her body as her arms flop limply against the tiles. "I—I don't want to become a witch."

[I know,] Madoka chokes, her own arms shaking. [I don't either, Mami-san. But this isn't the answer.]

"Then… what is…?" Mami murmurs, her voice giving out as her eyes slide shut in exhaustion. She looks twice her age in this moment, her once-prim features haggard and broken.

[I don't know. But we'll find it together… okay?] Madoka replies, not daring to even believe her own words but it's all she has to give.

There's no response in return to her false reassurances, and after a few moments of waiting for one, Madoka cautiously deduces that Mami has passed out and releases her wrists. She doesn't rise from her sitting position on top of her, though, feeling weary right down to her bones.

Sitting back on Mami's stomach, she draws her arms in and slumps her shoulders, daring to survey her surroundings.

She immediately regrets it when she twists her head in the direction of Homura and Kyouko's corpses laying strewn across the tiled floor, feeling her gut lurch at the colorful glittering shards scattered about their bodies.

Madoka couldn't save Sayaka; Madoka couldn't save Kyouko; Madoka couldn't save Homura, and she's not even sure if she's saved Mami yet, or even herself. She's weak; she's spineless; she's cowardly; and she can never seem to get things right — she could've saved Homura at least, but she'd gone and fucked that up, hadn't she?

Suddenly a powerful wave of nausea overtakes her, and she shakily stands up and stumbles over to the glass railing right as she empties her stomach, blood mixing with god-knows-what-else to form a disgusting mixture down by the tracks that Madoka doesn't even want to look at.

It's here that her knees gives out, and she collapses back down to the floor with a heavy exhale, shaking inexorably. Hugging her knees to her chest, she curls up into a ball against the cracked glass to quell her trembling, but it only makes her shake harder. For some reason, the tears won't come.

If someone had told her that it's even possible for everything to go so horribly wrong so fast she would have never had rolled out of bed this morning, honestly.

She shakes harder at the thought.

Madoka's not exactly sure how she finds the strength to go on, but either way she somehow manages to drag herself and Mami back to the blonde's apartment in one piece. Luckily for the both of them, they still had some spare grief seeds stocked up from previous battles to use, so they aren't totally doomed. Madoka had picked up Sayaka's grief seed too, but she can't bring herself to use it — not with what it means, at least.

Mami's lying in bed, out like a log, with Madoka sitting in her desk chair, holding both of their soul gems in her palms. She sets them down gently on the table, eyeing their frighteningly dark depths with no small degree of dread — knowing the implications of that taint makes the sight of her own soul far more sickening than it ever has been to her. With a heavy sigh, she clears the corruption away like she always does, her heart sitting heavy in her chest like it's engulfed in an iron cauldron of acid. Even when her gem turns bright pink it doesn't stop the sick feeling resonating throughout her being — its deceptively shiny surface does nothing to reflect how broken she truly feels.

Her hands start shaking all over again at the thought, and she immediately decides to switch to another train of thought, pouring some of her magic into healing her smashed jaw and… well, the rest of the right side of her face, pretty much. It's nowhere near the level of Sayaka's healing powers, but it'll still speed up the process significantly. She's too exhausted to bother doing much about the dried blood caked on there, or the rest of herself, really.

Leaning her elbows onto Mami's desk and propping her chin up on her palms, she eyes Mami's sleeping figure warily even as her own eyelids start drooping. She's… honestly not sure what to make of her, or do about her. It's pretty obvious Mami's off her rocker, and that's made Madoka lose a significant portion of the trust she'd previously placed in her. When she'd stared into those shimmering broken eyes on the precipice of her own demise, she hadn't seen the senpai she'd come to know at all.

And while Madoka is a forgiving soul, Mami had outright murdered two of her friends and then proceeded to try and kill her, and she's really not sure what to make of that either. Honestly, the sensible thing to do would be to cut off all her ties to this girl and stay the hell away from her after all that instead of idling about her apartment, but she just… can't let go. Not after everything they've been through together — not when Mami's the only one of her group left beside herself — not when she can still save her, at least. Besides, she'd seemed like she'd started to come to her senses right before she'd passed out, so maybe Madoka wouldn't have to worry about being murdered in her sleep or waking up to round two.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there's much else she can do about that last thought because she's already folded her arms on top of the table and nestled her head on top of them, and she's so exhausted and dead and in pain and basically insert-any-horrible-feeling that her eyes slip shut against her will, and she finally crumbles into a deep sleep.

It's uncertain how much time passes, but either way Madoka finds herself being jolted awake to the sound of, well… hysterics.

"Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god…" is the wheezing mantra that befalls her ears, and her eyes fly open in some sort of knee-jerk survival instinct as her head snaps up at the sound — apparently her brain hasn't forgotten the danger associated with that unhinged voice.

"Mami-san?" she croaks, fearing the worst as her head snaps up almost painfully, twisting her neck to the source of the sound.

Mami's huddled into a ball on her bed, knees drawn up to her chest as she rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, hair askew and eyes hollow as she gives the opposite wall a wide-eyed staredown.

"K-Kaname-san?" Mami chokes out feebly, her eyes darting over to meet Madoka's. She's shaking harder than a leaf in the wind, and Madoka's stiff arms tense up at that broken expression.

"I'm here, Mami-san," she responds warily, hand on her gem. "Please don't do anything rash."

"I'm sorry," Mami sobs out as if apologizing would bring back the dead. "H—How could I…?"

"I don't know… you just kind of lost it," Madoka supplies unhelpfully as her mentor full-on breaks down into unintelligible sobs, curling in on herself further like a turtle blocking out the world. Her kind nature is telling her to go over and comfort the girl immediately, but something powerful ensnares her body into a state of inaction — she can't bring herself to get any closer than necessary to her after the events of last night.

After a while, Mami's sobs die down into choked sniffles while Madoka awkwardly idles about in her chair, unsure of what to do with herself. Her mentor finally raises her head then, snot drippling down her nose and mixing with the dried blood still caking her face. She levels Madoka with a deadened look that makes even her heart ache terribly at the sight.

"Why…why are you even here?" she rasps out, voice hoarse. "I've done something utterly atrocious. You should hate me…"

Madoka blinks at the question, and her eyes glance over to Mami's gem still sitting on the desk. She bites back a gasp of alarm at the darkness creeping forth from the base of its golden depths like sewage tumbling into a pristine lake. Okay, she really can't afford to be passive about this.

"I don't hate you, Mami-san," she replies with conviction, somehow finding the strength to rise to her feet in front of the girl. "I'm here because I want to be."

"What does it say about you if you can't bring yourself to hate a monster like me?" Mami laughs bitterly, the smile that stretches across her face looking more like an expanding crack crumbling her visage than anything positive.

"I don't know, that you're not a monster?" Madoka argues, summoning the bravery to take a step closer to the bedside, and then another, until she's practically standing over the crumpled form of Mami on the bed. The girl just looks up at her with those same hollow eyes, unable to comprehend her words.

"You must be fooling yourself," she hisses out, edging away from Madoka. "We're all monsters, can't you see that? There's no point to our existence — all we'll ever amount to is suffering and death to others." Mami releases a shaky exhale as the words rattle out of her throat.

Madoka takes the plunge and sits down on the bed next to Mami — she doesn't seem like she's a threat anymore when she's like this. Lifting a still-hesitant hand, she places it on Mami's shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly.

"But that's like saying there's no point in living if we're all inevitably going to die, and you know that's silly because that would mean that there should be no life to begin with," she counters, her voice gaining strength the more she speaks. "It's about the experience, not the end." Madoka tries to flash Mami a smile of her own to drive her point in, but it feels forced even on her own face.

"What experience could we possibly have that would be worth it if we're like this?" Mami sighs, weakly attempting to shrug Madoka's hand off to no avail. The other girl just holds on tighter, delicate fingers pressing firmly down on her skin in a way that brooks no argument. Her shoulders slump in defeat, allowing the hand to remain. "I just want to die already. I've done nothing but drag everyone down and hurt people — I don't deserve ant sort of experiences when I stole other's chances of having any at all."

"No, Mami-san," Madoka argues, pushing at Mami's shoulder to turn her towards her. "That's not the answer. Dying isn't going to help anyone or fix anything. You've made a terrible mistake, but dying isn't going to amend it."

"Of course not," Mami breathes, looking her straight in the eye with that same shaky gaze. "It's irredeemable. There's nothing I can do to make up for it... there's no point to my existence."

"That's not true." Madoka shakes her head at her, bringing her other hand up to grab at her other shoulder, holding the blonde firmly in place. "There's no predefined point to anybody's existence — we make one ourselves. Like, how about this: why don't you help me protect this city and defeat Walpurgisnacht like we've been saying we'd do all along? It's what we've been working towards, right? Don't let Kyouko-chan and Homura-chan's efforts go to waste. I'm sure… I'm sure that would be more than enough to make up for everything that's happened."

There's a long stretch of silence between them after the words leave her mouth, and for some reason Madoka's heart is thundering in her chest in the wake of her proposal, breathing uneven as she stares Mami down. She's probably digging her fingers into the other girl's shoulders hard enough to hurt, but she doesn't care — she needs something to anchor herself to or she'll lose it too. She doesn't dare tear her eyes away from Mami to look at her soul gem again, but she knows it's probably darker than it was before. If she can give Mami a sense of purpose again, then maybe she can still save her…!

"Okay," Mami whispers, voice weak and shaky but the decision is still there. "I'll… I'll try."

"Really?" Madoka breathes, tightening her grip even further. Mami visibly winces at that, and she quickly loosens up her hands.

"Yes," Mami affirms, and then her arms are hooking around Madoka's waist to tug her close into a tight hug, nails digging into her back as the blonde buries her face into Madoka's shoulder. A lance of fright spears through Madoka's veins for a brief moment at suddenly finding herself ensnared again — her body's reminded of the way the girl's ribbons had tightened themselves around her legs like boa constrictors last night — but the fear passes a second later when she comes to her senses and realizes it's just Mami. Sighing shakily, she returns the gesture in kind, gripping her with equal force.

"We'll do it together… right?" Mami asks, her jagged breaths stumbling over the skin of Madoka's neck. "You won't leave me, right?"

"Of course," Madoka confirms, even her own voice wobbling. "We'll figure this out together."

"That's good," the blonde exhales, her body going limp as she practically slumps against Madoka like she's a brick building to lean upon. Madoka almost falls back onto the bed at the sudden weight, but she simply digs her knees into the mattress and holds her tighter, her own breathing shaky.

They stay that way for a long while until Mami passes out from exhaustion again, and Madoka feels like following suit with the way her own heavy eyelids keep wilting under the weight of gravity, but there's something she absolutely must do first. With that thought in mind, she gently untangles herself from Mami and rests her back down on the bed before sliding off the mattress and heading back over to the desk.

Mami's soul gem has darkened considerably all over again, the pools of black corrupting her amber soul into a muddy brown. Madoka picks up the gem with gentle fingers, cradling the glass case in her hands like it's a sacred treasure. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, releasing it slowly in an attempt to calm herself down. The sick feeling hasn't left her stomach at all, and she's not sure if it ever will, really, but at least her head's a little clearer than it had been before.

Walking with purposed steps, she yanks open one of Mami's desk drawers and digs around in it before procuring another grief seed — it's the last one in Mami's stock. Gulping nervously at the implications of running out, Madoka presses the seed to the girl's gem and drains the sewage away from her soul, trying not to put too much thought into the grief seed gripped between her fingers.

With that task done, Madoka makes a mental note to hunt down some witches tomorrow — with their current emotional states, they can't afford to not stock up on grief seeds — and heads back to Mami's bed. Slipping them both under the covers, she notices Mami quivering in her sleep like a petrified rabbit in front of a predator, and she automatically wraps her arms around her waist, tugging her close. Mami reciprocates the gesture in kind, practically holding Madoka in a vice grip. But Madoka doesn't mind… because she's doing the same thing.

The once-magnificent Mitakihara lays in ruins.

There's shattered skyscrapers floating haphazardly in the air like testaments to the chaos swirling tumultuously around the flooded bay, glass falling from the sky like vicious rain.

Everything's gone wrong, and nothing is right.

Madoka and Mami find themselves huddled underneath a twisted metal fixture — maybe it had once been part of a metal warehouse from the industrial district, but now it's just a twisted sheet of metal buried into the flooded asphalt. Either way, it creates a convenient overhang for them to take shelter in, and Walpurgisnacht seems to have shifted its attention to continuing its wreckage of their hometown.

But all of this is the least of Madoka's concerns in this moment.

Mami lays limp on the ground underneath their pseudo-shelter, her body mangled and her blood staining the water around them a sickening red, crimson oozing forth to pool around Madoka's ankles as she kneels besides her mentor.

Her soul gem is almost pitch black.

"Mami-san," Madoka chokes out through gritted teeth, gripping her senpai's battered hand with trembling fingers as she leans over her body. "Hey, don't quit on me, yet. The fight's not over. Please, Mami-san…"

Mami's eyes are barely staying open, shattered amber staring dizzyingly up at her own with an unprecedented level of exhaustion.

"Kaname-san…" she croaks hoarsely, the shredded muscles of her throat jumping viscerally at the attempt to speak.

"You're going to be okay," Madoka promises fervently, using her free hand to dig around in the pocket of her magical garb and procure a grief seed — Sayaka's grief seed. She had never wanted to have to use this, but it looks like she'll have to call upon her old best friend for one last favor.

But Mami raises a hand and pushes the grief seed away when Madoka tries to press it to her gem.

"Don't…" she wheezes weakly.

"H—Huh?" Madoka chokes out, her entire body quivering as she tries again, but Mami pushes it away a second time. "What are you doing? If you don't use a grief seed soon, you'll become a witch!"

"Look at yourself, Kaname-san," Mami grunts, shakily pushing herself up into a sitting position. She shakes off Madoka's hand still holding her own to reach out towards her neck, cradling her teardrop-shaped gem in her blood-soaked fingers. Madoka's gem is similarly pitch black. "You'll become a witch too, you know."

"I don't care," Madoka sobs out, tears threating to overwhelm her vision. "I don't care about myself. I have to — I have to save you, Mami-san!" She pushes the grief seed towards Mami again, but the blonde simply plucks Sayaka's seed out of her hand, holding it away from her.

"You're the one who has to defeat Walpurgisnacht," Mami argues, putting a hand to Madoka's shoulder — whether to reassure her or to keep herself steady Madoka doesn't know. "I couldn't do it myself — you know I'm weaker than the thinnest glass. But you can do it. You're so much stronger than you give yourself credit for. I know you'll have the endurance to push through all of this."

"That's not true," Madoka cries, unable to prevent the sobs that start to shake her shoulders uncontrollably. "I'm the weakest out of all of us, what are you talking about? All I do is screw everything up... and you're trusting me to kill Walpurgisnacht myself?"

She tries to snatch the grief seed out of Mami's hand, but the blonde twists her arm out of the way and lunges forward, pinning Madoka to the ground and completely soaking the back of her uniform in the water. She presses the grief seed to Madoka's gem while her other hand holds Madoka down.

"Hey!" Madoka protests, squirming underneath her. She tries to bat Mami's hand away, but the other girl grabs her wrist and yanks it above her head. "No, please… Mami-san, you can't do this…!"

She's practically thrashing wildly by this point, but her movements are weakening — she's absolutely exhausted and most of her energy has been completely drained. But apparently Mami has more fight in her than she does because she holds her down fast, practically straddling her waist at this point.

It's over a few seconds later, Sayaka's grief seed teeming with corruption while Madoka's gem is a pure pink once again.

"Why…?" Madoka sobs, beating her fist against Mami's chest. "Why would you…?"

"I'm sorry it has to end this way, Kaname-san," Mami chokes out, even her own voice starting to waver. "I'm the one who screwed everything up — I'm sorry I killed Akemi-san and Sakura-san. I'm sorry I tried to kill you —I'm sorry I couldn't have done more for you. But I'm grateful, too, because you helped me go on living when all I wanted to do was disappear. Even though I've done great wrong to you, you still stuck by my side. So thank you."

"Don't talk like that," Madoka whispers hoarsely, reaching up to grab the sides of Mami's face with an almost desperate intensity. "It can't end this way… Please, don't leave me all alone…"

"I know you can endure it, Kaname-san," Mami wheezes out encouragingly, reaching up to grasp at the hands cupping her cheeks. "I know you can win this."

With that said, she uses the last bits of her magic to conjure up a makeshift pistol, its steel figure poorly molded and warped, but it'll get the job done. Mami hisses in pain as her soul gem flashes menacingly, her entire body spasming horribly.

With quivering fingers, she puts the gun to her gem, and her eyes meet Madoka's — two lost souls searching for something in each other's gaze.

Madoka feels sick — god, does she feel sick as she stares at the barrel of the gun kissing Mami's corrupted gem. She wants to scream; she wants to cry; she wants to curse whatever awful force had told the wheel of time to turn this way — but she knows none of this will help anything.

"I believe in you, okay?" Mami whispers. "Consider this your last duty as my kouhai. Don't let me down."

"I won't," Madoka breathes shakily, clutching at Mami's free hand. It's too late for Mami by this point, even she can admit that much. There's no use in pretending this situation could be reversed, even though Madoka's still desperately wishing it had been her instead. "I'll kill Walpurgisnacht! Just watch me!"

"I leave this city in good hands, then," Mami chuckles weakly, squeezing Madoka's hand. The world around then starts warping and flickering hauntingly, flashes of visceral creatures fizzling at the edges of their vision. They're running out of time.

"Goodbye, Mami-san," Madoka chokes, feeling her throat start to close up.

"I'll see you later… Madoka," Mami returns, and then she pulls the trigger.

Deafening thunder roars in Madoka's ears, along with the shriek of shattering glass before Mami's body slides off of her, flopping lifelessly on the ground next to her.

Madoka makes the mistake of turning her head to look at her, and feels her heart stop at the sight of those empty amber eyes staring blankly ahead.

Reaching forward with shaking fingers, she closes her eyelids gently, feeling another wave of nausea overtake her, just like that night.

Somehow, she manages to rise to her feet on wobbling knees, stumbling into a twisted metal pole before she starts retching awfully, body spasming violently against her will before she collapses on her knees after a wave of dizziness. Nothing comes up though — her stomach must not have anything left to give.

Eventually the spasming stops, but her shaking doesn't — she sits there, hunched over and quivering uselessly as the horrifying shriek of Walpurgisnacht's insane laughter echoes about the city — as the screech of buildings being tossed into each other and the roar of entire skyscrapers crumbling under its relentless might rings in her ears.

But she'd promised she'd end this, hadn't she?

With that thought as her beacon, Madoka stands to her feet once more, stepping out from underneath the shade of the metal construct, shielding her eyes against the sickly light of the sun as she stares up at the towering silhouette of Walpurgisnacht in the sky. She can clearly see the way the witch's shoulders shake with laughter as she breathes gusts of hellfire onto the ruined buildings, and when that twisted grin turns toward her she feels her blood run cold. She's been spotted.

There's no turning back.

Raising her bow and angling it at the horrific abomination polluting the sky, Madoka charges forward from her cover, shoes splashing against the blood-soaked water.

It's over.

It's over — her final strike had been the final nail in the witch's coffin.

Now Madoka can only watch with ragged eyes as Walpurgisnacht slowly crumbles away into nothing, its torso spasming violently as its last bout of insane laughter racks its system.

Eventually the laughter cuts off abruptly, and Walpurgisnacht is no more.

Madoka collapses onto her knees against the asphalt with a splash, every bone in her body as heavy as lead as she stares blankly at the cloudy sky where the witch had once been.

Its twisted grin and soulless face are still bright and clear in her mind's eye though, and she starts convulsing uncontrollably under the weight of that terrifying visage, eyes disbelieving as she stares down at arms slick with her own blood.

She lifts her head a moment later, sitting back on her legs as she takes in the sight of the ruined city around her — it looks like the apocalypse.

She had won.

But what had it cost?

Craning her neck down, Madoka casts her gaze to the soul gem seated at the base of her throat.

It's pitch black — again.

It could end here. She could just break it and be done with this — be done with everything. She'd fulfilled her promise to Mami; she'd fulfilled the mission the five of them had originally set out to accomplish. It's only her now — couldn't she quit now?

But even as Madoka summons an electric pink arrow in her hand to do just that, the energy crackling with lethal intent around the tattered skin of her hand, she knows in her heart… that this isn't the answer.

It can't be — not after everything that's happened.

With that thought in mind, she somehow finds the strength to dispel the arrow wrapped tight in her fist and pick herself back up, rising to stand on two wobbly legs that can barely hold her weight anymore.

Madoka trudges through the ruins of her once-magnificent hometown, blood-soaked water sloshing at her heels as she limps toward the grief seed perched atop another twisted metal construct.

As she walks, flashes of hanging corpses begin to flicker at the edges of her vision like phantoms latching onto the frayed ends of her mind. Ghostly, wavering images of dark train stations follow shortly thereafter, and the entire flooded region of Mitakihara she's standing in seems to suddenly take on a menacing crimson tone like that of blood. Everything's warping and wavering around her like as if she's walking out of reality, and the shriek of glass shattering and musket fires rings in her ears even though she knows it's not real.

Quickening her pace, she breaks out into a jog towards the lone grief seed seated atop the twisted rubble even as terrifyingly real and familiar voices plead for her not to at the edges of her ears, sending a lance of raw horror into her deadened heart.

Madoka doesn't want to become witch.

Finally, she reaches the rubble where Walpurgisnacht's grief seed lies, breathing shakily as she feels ghostly hands groping at her body, trying to drag her back — it's not real, it's not real, it's not real, it's not real—!

She bends down to snatch the seed up from the place it had fallen, almost toppling over onto her face in her haste. Her soul gem flashes wildly as she feels searing agony rip through her body right from her chest then — it's almost like some sort of invisible force tearing at the very fabric of her soul. Gasping, she presses the seed into her soul gem even as she crumbles against the remains of a twisted metal wall, body convulsing.

Thankfully, she'd made it on time — the grief seed sucks the corruption from her soul like it always does, and soon enough she's left standing there breathing heavily with a clear pink gem once more. The visions have disappeared, taking with them the voices that had been slowly driving Madoka insane.

Now, it's deafening silent, the only sound being Madoka's own labored breaths.

Sliding down the wall, she sits on the pile of rubble heavily, staring down at the grief seed gripped in her palm.

Maybe… this isn't the answer, either.

But she knows it's a step in the right direction to finding one.

After all, there's still plenty of things in this world Madoka still wants to protect.

A/N: Because being meguca is suffering. I think Madoka's actually one of the strongest endurance-wise; you never see her break and give up completely, after all (hence why Mami was like 'no you go fight Walmart Night meduka!') And in case the whole 'the answer' thing wasn't clear, the question they're trying to answer is how to move on from/come to terms with the events of Timeline 3. I originally wanted to include some transitional scenes between their conversation and fighting Brazilian Night but… [slides down wall from writing so much so fast] it's fine like this. Maybe I'll add 'em in later, maybe not haha.