It's that fragmented stretch of moments, that one horrible day, when Kyoko comes across her entire family dead.
After that, everything breaks.
She gives up on so much—illusions, fairy tales, happiness. Mami. Having a home. She lets it all drift away out of a need to make her mind empty.
She lets herself choke down tears the first night, and then she gives up crying.
She stops hunting familiars and only hunts witches. She knows that the few Magical Girls she consents to interact with look down on her for it, and she refuses to care.
She forces the past to be the past. She doesn't dwell on it. And when she does dwell on, it's really only when forced—when she hears through the grapevine that Mami is dead, and comes back to town. When she has to reveal her wish to make Sayaka wake up and realize that life isn't perfect.
She goes to all this effort to be someone else entirely, someone that no one would recognize. And then in her final battle she destroys it all again.
Her last minutes of life are blurred with tears and a bitter smile, resigning herself to Sayaka's impending demise—no, not impending, not really. She was dead long before her Soul Gem broke.
It's nothing new to her, this resignation, but what is new is how hard she's fought. All the blood on her. Her reluctance to accept it, even now—even as she forces Homura to leave. Even as she takes out her hairpin, knowing full well what she's about to do.
She's never been this determined before.
She's never had this much hope before.
Her Soul Gem overloads in a flare of red light, and in her last few moments, she sees her family and Mami and Madoka and Sayaka, all swirling around in the air in front of her, and she wishes she'd thought to have hope before.
i'm depressed and felt like writing me some fanfic for the first time in months. gah why does this suck so much.