That happy dream
"It's a lonely job."
A sigh. Arms cross over the guardrail. Her hair comes loose from the curls, deflated. "It is."
Kyouko looks over, a mirthless smirk playing at her lips. A ghost of her old smile lingers for a moment more. Everything is tinged with an orange-red, bleeding from skies. The sun is setting on Mitakihara.
"Will you be leaving soon?"
The wind carries what sounds like church bells over. Kyouko grimaces. "Yeah. Soon. After all this is over and done with."
Mami nudges gently, "It'll never be over and done with. Not for us puella magi."
The infuriatingly composed replies, one lacking of emotions but mechanical kindness, used to anger Kyouko. It feels like running on frictionless surface. Slipping clumsily everywhere, emotions slipping out carelessly. Those naive days spent believing that everyone was worth saving. Yellow hair merging into red, fingers locking like space doesn't exist, lips smoothing over bright red burns from loneliness and pretense; maybe that's all Kyouko liked to remember about their army of two.
"That Sayaka kid you took in..."
"What of her?"
"She's an awful lot, isn't she?"
"She has passion. She's a soldier inside."
"Not the kind that'll last," Kyouko produces a rough snort from the back of her throat. "She expects too much. She'll snap."
"What are you saying, Sakura?"
"I'll teach her how to survive. She'll be better with me."
Mami looks curiously at the horizon. Finally, she whispers: "I'm tired of you taking everything from me, Sakura."
It isn't a question, more of a demand, just doubled, tripled, in weight. Kyouko is unwavering; if it surprises her, she doesn't show it.
"You know what I'm tired of? Fighting. Everybody's dropping dead and I'm tired of it."
Mami nods. "You're right."
Kyouko finally sighs, pulling away from the guardrail and Mami observes the way her fingers twitch.
"It's just a matter of time," Kyouko says shortly, turning away.
They were combustible once, and they will continue to be combustible after.
It only takes Kyouko's observation that there is a film of dust and lint coagulating on Mami's furniture before everything bursts so sudden like wildfire.
Kyouko is a difficult one to ignite, but when a spark forks the air, she becomes highly flammable, and near impossible to subdue. A flick of ozone licks the air. Kyouko's hands are tight and yearning on Mami's shoulders, meaning to speak without words, communicate when mouths become dry and overbearingly cumbersome. Mouths are not meant for speaking, Kyouko thinks.
Mami catches the fleeting thought, wondering how it is that Kyouko's eyes darken like that.
"I've wronged you. Let me," Kyouko winces uncharacteristically, feeling miserably like she was before and absolutely detesting it, "let me atone for my sins."
Mami searches Kyouko's face for something, and whatever it is, she seems to have been contented in finding it. "Why can't you just say sorry."
And kisses her.
Mouths are made for kissing, Mami passes on the thought in between the gasps and quiet whimpers. Being alone hurts, but maybe together, it won't hurt as much.
They run, this new dimension mocking and chastising Mami of a decision made poorly. Regret kicks in, and she slows her feet.
Kyouko slaps her arm, pulling her forward, growling furiously. "What are you doin'? Move!"
"This wasn't supposed to happen," Mami raises her blanked eyes to Kyouko, and Kyouko flinches, chest heaving.
"We can't do anything now, dammit. So let's not die here," Kyouko grits, and half-drags Mami out the portal, who feels like she's being saved from drowning and now wheezing.
"Why the hell would you do something like that?" Kyouko yells, and through all the chaos and the tears, Mami can't help but think that Kyouko's temper has never changed; so easily provoked, such impulse, this is truly Kyouko. "D'you want to die?"
"You're right. You've been right all along," Mami says now, gripping onto Kyouko's forearms for support because her legs have lost the fight to stay upright, and now she pulls down because Kyouko won't look at her, and god, she feels so terrible. "I should've." She closes her eyes, gasps. "I should've listened to you."
She feels like vomiting, the bile in her throat rising up, and she flings her body to the side, retching, squeezing her eyes shut. The indentations of Kyouko's spear making a radius into the ground is the first thing she sees after she retches liquid flesh. This is the last stage of humiliation, breaking down bare and vulnerable for someone like Kyouko. Mami recognises that.
Instead of spiteful words, she feels herself being lifted, seeing flashed of red, flashes of sympathy which Mami cannot understand, and her face is pressed into the length of a collarbone.
"What-what should I do?"
Kyouko doesn't speak, offering the only consolation she can think of. Speaking messes everything up, words screw her right over, and so she offers what humans have been offering since before language.
Mami continues to choke and sputter. "I never meant for that to happen. I just wanted-just wanted-I don't want to be alone anymore. I-why? Why does that happen? Kyouko, tell me why."
Kyouko can only think of whispering awkwardly, "Let's go home, Mami."
They only have each other for tonight, both grieving. The loss digs deeply into both of them, deeper than flesh. These bone-deep wounds are soothed by kisses and caresses each of them can only think to offer and hope it's enough.
Words fail them, and they only communicate through the occasional thought, the counting of irises in eyes and sketching fingers.
I just wanted to not be alone anymore. Is that wrong?
Kyouko's answer is a kiss to the temple. Today, Kyouko is a mellow fire, a flaking glint in her eyes and her jaw set tight.
Why must we live this way?
To take their minds off the despair for a while, before it consumes their soul gems completely and themselves with it, Kyouko presses kisses all over, hands sliding up stomachs.
What did we do to deserve such a fate? What will we be left with in the end? Just pain? Loneliness? Despair?
"Don't abandon me again."
Somewhere else, its ears perk and Homura considers the creature briefly.
"I see Sakura Kyouko and Tomoe Mami are aware of Miki Sayaka's consequences," it says, leaping onto the couch.
Homura calculates everything in her mind, brushing off the remark with an elegant swivel of her heels. A crack resonates somewhere. The many deaths of Miki Sayaka have begun to cease its effects on her. "They should have known. It was only a matter of time."
"You're not supposed to die here. Not today," Kyouko says darkly, getting to her knees, an arm pressed onto her knee.
Blood rushes like sweet and divine wine. A deep bruising on the stark floor.
"Why are you so goddamned stubborn?! Damn it!" Kyouko snaps, glaring away. "Why can't you just live? Why-?"
All she got in reply is a small, sad smile. "I don't want to become a witch, Kyouko..."
The world flickers and wavers once, but it goes on, with or without Tomoe Mami. It wouldn't matter anyway. Puella magi are only tools, weapons of mass destruction to 'purify' this world. And all that pisses Kyouko the hell off. The thought that no one would know, no one would care. She swings her spear wildly, violently to the side, snarling.
"You're a fucking idiot," Kyouko manages to verbalise through snapping canines. "You've gotta show this world that we're not just 'things'! Prove this goddamn place wrong! Spit in its face! Not die here like some pathetic excuse!"
Mami only breathes, inhaling shallowly, dispelling a little bit of hopelessness in her with every breathe. "Death is so pretty."
"Don't talk nonsense, Mami! Don't you dare die on me!" Kyouko picks Mami up, roughly grabbing her hand and bringing it to her mouth. "Get up! Get the fuck up!"
Kyouko pauses, falters, and bites Mami's hand, hard enough to break skin and draw blood. Mami doesn't even flinch.
Finally, the colour drains from Kyouko's face, her body feeling limp, like she's lost her footing. She sets Mami down, gently, more careful than before. Wordlessly, without even a single telepathic thought in between them. It feels as if that thread holding them together has snapped. Mami's hand drops from Kyouko's grip.
She stands, edging away from Mami's steely eyes.
"What did you think you were doing? Trying to comfort me, say stupid things, have me thinking that-" Kyouko wields her spear, standing upright, something in her eyes having hardened. It seems that she has made a decision. And something has ended, something Kyouko will probably never get back. Kyouko shakes her head and sputters a disbelieving laugh. "But no, I was wrong. You...you're a bitch."
But she towers over Mami with a fond smile. "But I guess I deserved it. I mean, I betrayed you first. This is your revenge, huh? To go first. Without me. To abandon me."
Mami gasps to speak, but the windpipe doesn't seem to be able to take in anymore air, and she only sounds like a dying fish.
Then comes the final question, the tie-breaker, what will decide the fate of the both of them. Kyouko tries softly, quietly, "Do you-do you want me to-?"
Mami eases out a smile, feeling her life ebbing away already. This is it then. Kyouko will not turn from her word.
She says, lastly, "You selfish little girl."
"You too," Mami smiles, hoarsely mouthing.
Kyouko takes this as a farewell, and does her bidding. With one slash of her spear, a yellowish topaz, almost full with black, cracks and scatters away.
Then she turns away, and maybe she'll leave a flower, a memorial somewhere for her; in remembrance for that stupidly foolish puella magi who thought she could save everyone.
Kyouko looks back only once from the exit, the edges of this witch's world now fraying, the putrid breeze of the other world that awaits her now touching her tresses lightly.
"You bitch."
"She didn't expect to make it."
"It appears that way."
Kyubey's tail twitches, avoiding Homura's legs as she walks, her stance measured, like a soldier's. She's not one who cares much for him, and that seems to be a mutual understanding, a 'fine by me' thing. Destruction wrecks half their worlds now, past and present. Who would have ever expected Sakura Kyouko to accept a quiet, evanescent end. That flare of hers had already diminished into a feeble wisp of smoke.
"I sense the faintest hint of interest in you. Are you upset?"
"Upset?" Homura looks away, "I simply understand how loosing someone dear feels like."
"I wouldn't know," Kyubey inputs, and Homura glances at him in the shortest of seconds, just from the corner of her eye, a dangerous twinkle daring to be messed with.
"No," she says. "No, you wouldn't."
"Anyway," the creature actually sounds like its sighing. Maybe it has came to understand weariness. Weariness of this world, and all that comes with it. "Let's go clean up the mess Sakura Kyouko made."
Death lingers. But feelings remain too.
Maybe this the happy ending for the both of them, that happy dream. An ending where love and courage win. It's a little less lonely together, after all.
A/N: Inspired by Face Down by The 1975 (watch?v=f7JE5LsDcCY)