a/n: hey welcome to the rewrite, my old version was awful and im glad im rewriting and continuing this

anyways. thanks for even bothering to click on this, i dont think i need to say this more than once but i dont own either franchise.

go on then

The cold floor seeps into her conscious, it's slowly waking her up. The floor feels like anger coiling in your gut and the glint of a knife, something that Homura felt distinctly uneasy by.

Wait.

Her eyes snap open and her chapped and broken lips part as she sits up, her wide eyes scanning the room she's in.

Madoka is sprawled on the floor beside her. Her hair fans out around her, ribbon lying on the ground like a tarnished treasure.

Homura immediately looks at all the other items in the room around her. It's got cabinets and some carpets and it's oh so very dark and musty. Oil lamps flicker terribly on the walls, their sickly dim light being the only source of illumination. The room is grey and with peeling walls and it's terrible. It feels like a very, very diluted labyrinth.

Her hands grasp onto the reason she still lives today. Madoka groans in her sleepy state, her eyes groggily opening and trying to take in the sight of Homura.

"Nnhhnn... Homura? Ghh.." Even in Homura's panicked and frazzled state she cannot help but quirk her lips at the sight of her beautiful and amazing Madoka.

"Yes, it's me." She says calmly, her eyes shimmering with tears. "We're alive, we're out, none of us are dead."

Madoka smiles through her haze, her hair falling into her face like ripples of summertime sunset. Her eyes shimmer too, with tears brimming.

Madoka sits up, her hair falling into her face and brushing the shoulders of her school uniform. "We aren't in a labyrinth?" She murmurs, her eyes flicking around the terrible room. Her eyes land on the ribbon, lying on the floor, and she quickly ties it into her hair again.

Chapped lips quirk. "No. I don't think we are." Madoka nods at this, her eyes going unfocused.

"Where are we?" Her voice suddenly cracks and she sounds afraid. Homura's heart aches for her. Her gentle, loving smile turns into a grimace.

"I don't... wait. Why do I feel like I'm missing something?" Homura looks on her person, intent on looking for something.

Her soul gem is still on her. It looks like it's only at half capacity, but it is not corrupted.

She cannot understand.

Madoka stands up and brushes herself off with trembling hands. Her hands grip her skirt.

"We need to find out where we are." Madoka's voice, usually light and airy and pure, so so pure, is now cold with fear.

Homura can only helplessly obey as Madoka takes her hand with still trembling fingers.

She's been pulled up. The miasma of evil that wells in the floors and halls is nothing compared to her once corrupted soul, but it still makes her uneasy and sick. She cannot, will not return to that hell she resigned herself to. She came out of that and went right into another hell that she made for her lover. For her friends. It makes her inner well of self-hatred burn. She cannot.

Madoka tentatively opens the door to the room their in. It opens up onto another grim, grey backdrop.

Oil lamps still flicker on the walls. There is a staircase nearby, and the two of them quickly and quietly make their way to it.

The stairs creak terribly as they walk down, hand in hand, and they get down with nothing significant happening.

A curtain covering a painting flies open, and a horrifying woman looks down on them. Her painted face moves to scream but Homura slams a hand over the painting's mouth.

The woman's eyes flutter as waves of magic flood from Homura's hand. Then they widen in shock and absolute, soul felt terror as she realizes who the pulses of magic are coming from.

A demon is here.

The painting flies shut again as the woman in the frame whimpers, and Homura takes her hand off, looking at her hand in surprise. It glitters a faint pale purple before fading.

Madoka raises an eyebrow. She then hands an umbrella she had grabbed out of fear.

"We don't know who we're dealing with," She says, her frame still stiff with fear yet somehow relaxed enough to smile. "And I didn't know paintings could move unless we were in labyrinths. And I absolutely didn't know that you could shut them up that easy."

Homura sighs in exasperation, a fond grin working it's way onto her lips.

She hears, all at once, the chatter that is happening behind the door at the end of the hall.

Madoka suddenly reverts to a timid and afraid girl, instead of the confident Goddess she should have been (but yet, shes always been one).

Homura grips the umbrella handle. There are ridges and bumps in the handle and they cut into her hand. Pain brings clarity here, unlike the hell she was trapped in. It only brought despair.

Both of them traipse towards the door.

Madoka swings it open and it creaks wildly and loudly and any chatter that may have been happening ceases instantly.

There is a room full of people.

They all stand as one.

Madoka shrieks in terror. Homura raises the umbrella.

She closes her eyes.