Originally written for WitchTiara as part of a challenge on AO3.
Homura opened her eyes and the familiar hospital room slowly came into focus. A soft breeze was blowing the curtains through the open window, and the first rays of the sun were beginning to pour in. She blinked and rubbed the dust from her eyes as she woke up properly. Wrapped snugly in her hand was the soul gem, a reminder that this was no normal morning.
A grim sigh escaped her lips as she propped herself up with shaking arms. Looking across the room, she could see that today's date had been circled excitedly on the calendar to mark her return to school, but the excitement she once felt had faded a long time ago.
She was beginning to lose count of the number of times she had relived this moment; the different timelines were beginning to fade and blur into one another. With each new beginning she found herself less able to differentiate between the timelines that had come before, the timelines that had each led down a different variation on the same path of misery and destruction.
Madoka...
They were growing further apart. With each new iteration of the timeline, it became harder and harder to connect with her. Gone was the sweet-if-slightly-awkward Homura of the first few timelines, and she wasn't entirely sure about the girl who had replaced her.
How could she be so cold as to forget how many times she had seen her beloved die? She wanted desperately to remember every smile, every touch, but the memories were slipping through her fingers no matter how hard she tried to grasp them and pull them back.
Finally she sat up properly, and twisted herself around ready to get up and get herself ready for school. Her limbs felt like lead as she pulled on the uniform she had neatly laid out the night before, lifetimes ago. She dragged a comb through her tousled hair and tamed it into two loose plaits in front of the mirror. She looked exactly as she did the first time, but at the same time different. There was no mistaking the weariness in her expressions; the wall she had built around her emotions left such a gaping emptiness in her eyes, she wondered if she would ever be able to let herself feel properly again.
No, it wasn't that she didn't feel; the all-consuming love for Madoka, the only girl who had been willing to connect with her, was always there to sustain her. No matter how many times it takes... But how many times would it take? Was it even possible to change the course of events, or would she be stuck living this miserable loop forever, growing further and further from her beloved until her soul gem lost its ability to shine?
It was the pain she dared not allow herself to feel, the unimaginable horror of seeing the person you love suffer and die as you watch helplessly, as you try to save her, or even worse as she tries to save you. The first time hurt the most. At first it was seared into the darkness of her eyelids, but as she saw it again and again, from different angles, in different circumstances, different lifetimes, she became increasingly numb to it. Detached. Desensitised.
Her toothbrush lay on the white, clinical sink next to a half-full tube of toothpaste. Lost in swirling thoughts, she went through the motions of brushing her teeth, as she ignored the pangs of hunger growling through her stomach. She spat her toothpaste in the sink and watched it wash away down the plughole, gone just like her dreamlike memories of the last timeline.
A spark of anger ignited in her as she looked at the indifferent girl in the mirror. Why doesn't every time hurt like the first time did? It was a question she'd asked herself many times, but she didn't really need an answer.
Survival. Half of the ever-increasing burden she carried over every time she restarted the clock would have been enough to crush most people, and yet somehow she still carried on. It was the apparent indifference, the ability to convince herself that what was happening wasn't real, wasn't meant to be, and the knowledge that she could change it all, that kept her sane in such a cruel existence...
Not that she didn't doubt her sanity at times. Everything she had endured, she had endured for Madoka. A girl she never got the chance to know for long – and yet there was something about her, the way she had so easily accepted her, the indescribable connection between them, that made an existence without her seem incomprehensible and unbearable. Even if each new timeline pushed her further away, the idea of existing in a world she didn't inhabit was not an option. Homura would save her, no matter what it took.
She gave herself one final look over in the mirror, straightening her school uniform absent-mindedly as she psyched herself up to leave.
"This time... Please let this be the last time," she said to the sad eyes reflected back at her.