Celery.
Carrots, onions, milk.
Beef cubes, curry spice.
Peppers.
Corner stores are small, crowded. The light is a sort of dim yellow, slight flicker, unnerving on the eyes. She'd dropped out of school so long ago, and now, the appearance of fluorescent lights agitating in a new, unfamiliar way. The list is short, small, folded three times and bent at the corners. She rubbed her finger and thumb against the material when she inevitably passed an exhausted customer. Somewhere down the isles, an almost newborn cries shrilly as her mother unfortunate mother racks the isle for formula, her own breasts too dry and unproductive for the late hours.
(Tatsuya used to cry like this. Do you remember, Madoka? When I'd stare into your window? You would get up every so often to comfort him; a stand in, for your own mother. Do you remember?)
The store had ran out of milk. She bit her tongue and stared in malice at the overnight shift, but they hardly noticed; the management would change in two hours, the sections would be restocked, and anyone up at a reasonable hour wouldn't have a need to complain. Who comes to buy milk at 4 am, anyway?
Homura tears the paper in two when she digs her fingers into it, but, nonetheless, she's all pleasantries when she pays.
She should've stolen it. She could've. No one would've even been upset, no would've noticed; either ten dollars would've been deducted from a paycheck, or it would've fallen into 'expected losses', and it's not as if a camera would catch her in the act. But Madoka...never would've stolen it, and that's the issue; Madoka was such a sweet person, always worried someone would get in trouble, the thought of theft never coming up as a valid option.
Homura isn't so sweet. She's afraid Madoka was damn her for it.
The night air is crisp cold, and it stings. She hasn't worn a coat in years, and she isn't about to start; the crystals that build in her never harden, and the frostbite never sets in, and for one second, just one, it feels like she's alive; it feels like she's alive, and she's cold, and she's...worried, about her heart condition, about what her mother would say, about how father just died, about how she was going to a new school next semester, about the new hospital-
Sometimes, in the very back of her mind, she wishes she never met Madoka.
And the pain of frostbitten blisters reheating in lukewarm water isn't anything compared to the self inflicted punishment she digs into her skin and her gem, and the hollow ache of guilt she feels for a month after-
-Tatsuya is crying again.
It's faint, just a few houses down, but so familiar. He's a big boy now; almost ten years old and he's taken so much after his mother, the fearless nature leaving him almost impenetrable.
Yet there's blood on the pavement in front of the house, and he won't stop crying.
Homura is just out of view now, and she watches Mrs. Kaname bend over a small animal. A cat, perhaps. "Oh, Tatsuya, why aren't you in bed?" She whispers, and her voices is almost mute. Mr. Kaname kills the engine to the car, stepping outside and looking away.
"S-she...needed to go out..."
"Oh, honey. I'm sorry."
Bittersweet. The animal was already dead, but he has parental comfort, and the beginnings of a long lesson on mortality.
...at this rate, Mami and Kyouko will start without Homura. Maybe she didn't mind so much, if not for the chance to wear her soul gem further.
Mortality, life and death, these were concepts that Homura knew had become warped and beaten by her mind. Madoka was life, and she was death, and she was almost certainly a make believe friend Homura constructed, years ago; perhaps that had been her wish, the wish nobody can remember-to have someone to love.
As with all wishes, it must have backfired. The only thing she really had now were despairing memories and a sense of displacement.
Her gem ached harshly, as it had been doing that so often lately. She placed the food neatly on their back porch, and headed straight for the city.
Mami and Kyouko hardly ever communicated with her outside of coordination and night patrol. There was simply no need anymore, and really, they'd wiped out their threats.
As expected. he battle was short and uneventful. Kyouko had nickered herself, and Mami seemed to react almost too strongly. Once the witch was gone and over, they shuffled their feet, glancing at each other when they thought no one noticed, before finally parting ways.
It seemed so trite, an endless cycle they'd been trapped in ever since Sayaka had died-
(Sayaka had almost been the real thing. Had almost tamed any reason to remember, or fantasize, Madoka. And then fate came, beckoning.)
-but then, perhaps the same could be said about herself.
When she was finally alone, she inspected her gem once again. The color was getting increasingly dark, dull. It shouldn't have pleased her as much as it did, but there was just no room for suicide or accidental deaths. On the off chance; the very, very unlike possibility Madoka truly lived and she had truly left, she couldn't ruin her one shot at the only potential heaven she could imagine.
"Oh, Madoka. Please." Her voice was so quiet, foreign. How long had it been since she'd said a word? "I'm so tired, Madoka. Please. I'm so tired."