White Roses
No birds sing this morning. It is raining, as it always is on this day, in whichever time-line Homura finds herself within.
The world beneath the clouds is desolate, and the sky seems to cry over the earth as raindrops soak the ground like tears. The mud crunches beneath Horuma's boots, and the soil shifts under her feet, leaving behind footsteps she had walked over a hundred times.
Today is September 21st, two days before the arrival of Valpurisnacth, in which ever time-line Horuma finds herself trapped in – today is the mourning day.
Horuma is not one to give in to grief – because she is stubborn and losing hope would mean losing Madoka, and she will never let that happen again (and again and again as it has so many times before) – but on this designated day, with not a soul in sight and no prying eyes, she lets herself grieve, if only for a little while.
She walks down rows upon rows of tombstones, all engraved with different names but all seemingly exactly the same. She passes by many of them without a second glance, for the flowers she brings are not for them.
By this day, the outcome of the final battle is almost always apparent.
By this day, someone is always dead. Statistics show that the commoners among the list are: Tomoe Mami and Miki Sayaka. Sometimes, like now, another Puella Magi joins their ranks – Sakura Kyoko or some other girl that she does not care to remember, besides bare statistics. A few times over, though not often, there are casualties among the death row – other than the victims of the witches, those nameless people everyone tries so desperately to save (though they don't really matter, like the two bozos Sayaka killed before becoming a Witch). Kyousuke, Hitomi, one of Sayaka's or Madoka's parents and even little Tetsuya. All small tragedies in the grand fiasco, Homura thinks, detached, because it hurts too much to acknowledge just how much those words really hurt. Once.
Homura is numb, she is used to people dying – both people who are important to her and those she resolutely tells herself aren't. She knows she's lying – because, statistically, she has befriended Tomoe Mami 134 times over, 78 times more than she hadn't. And, statistically, she has been in alliances with both Mami and Kyoko about two-hundred-and-something times. But Homura tells herself that they don't matter, because as easily as she befriends them, she turns them into enemies. It's not hard, her cold facade and empty words are truly all she is – or all that's left of the stuttering fool they called friend, once upon a time.
Homura she tells herself that they don't matter, and promptly ignores any aches of longing that their many selves can conjure. She is a master of deceit, and it's frighteningly easy to believe her own lies.
When she reaches the grave sight of Miki Sayaka, she finds that she is not the only one out in the rain. Subconsciously, her fingers clench around the handle of her umbrella, and she gives the young man's back a hard stare. Kamijou Kyousuke – he has not been here before, or perhaps he has, but their timing has never clashed before.
Homura contemplates leaving, but then decides against it when an image of an empty apartment and yellow daffodils, the ruins of a church and a bouquet red snapdragons paints itself in her mind's eye. She had left some flowers in Mami's apartment, next to the empty teacup on the table and never to be finished homework and a notebook she recognized as Madoka's; and there was a bouquet in the run-down church Kyoko's father used to preach in – it seems slightly disrespectful to not do the same for Sayaka. Even though they've never seen eye-to-eye, exactly – because Sayaka never really believed Homura, often proving to be hindrance in Homura's attempts to save them all(and maybe that's why she stopped trying to save her).
Coward, weak, monster, inhuman – all names she'd called her over their various meetings, and she admits to all of them, privately – and Homura has always been too put-off by the teal-haired girl's dismissals when she was still that shy, fragile girl; and she is too jealous later to try and truly reach Sayaka when she is strong enough to take the burden of change on her shoulders. Sayaka had Madoka after all, what more could she want?
Sayaka had Kyousuke too, but was too big of a fool to appreciate what she had and wanted more. Heroes and fools are two things Homura has grown to think of as synonyms.
For a fleeting moment, Homura's legs refuse to move and she suddenly feels like the shy little thing standing before her new class on her first day (the very first day), but squashes that infuriating uncertainty when it comes to things out of statistics and overused scenarios.
She takes a deep, quiet breath that is drowned out by the downpour of water, and walks the final steps to the grave.
Homura holds no particular affection for this boy, for she has never truly interacted with him in the many timelines she's jumped across. He is simply a bystander, sometimes a casualty, usually the cause of Sayaka's downfall. There was never anything between them to warren a forming of a bond, so they are strangers who go to the same school, share the same grade and classroom and nothing else – though Homura knows that isn't completely true either. They both know how it feels like to be stuck in hospital beds, surrounded on all sides by too white walls and too little things to distract them from their own despair – simmering, overwhelming and never really gone.
They had never talked about it, never shared their experiences or the demons that lurked withing the sterile wall of their prisons. Homura does not tolerate pity, and she knows that Kyousuke doesn't either. They'd both smiled politely, answer questions when asked and just wait until the stupid person sending them withering glances finally left them alone.
They both clung to a hope that one day they would be fine and free of their confides. Kyousuke never will, until that one miracle grants him back everything he's lost and takes away even more. Homura will never be free either, for she'd gone to being chained to a bed to running circles around Armageddon, always a survivor, always alone.
The violinist jumps slightly when he finally hears the mud crunching just behind him. He swirls around, and for a moment there something akin to surprise in his eyes, but soon his eyes dull again, and he is noting but another mourner in a sea of tombstones.
"Uh, we go to the same class, right?" Kyousuke asks uncertainly.
Homura nods "Yeah, I believe we do."
She bends down and putts the bluebells atop the cold stone, next to the white roses. Her eyes linger on the engraved name before Homura straightens up and meets the violinist's curious gaze.
There's a pause, in which Homura takes note of his cloths, weight down by rainwater and absolutely soaking, and two almost indiscernible rivulets of salt-water still trailing down his face. "You're wet." It's a simple conclusion.
"Huh?" he asks, confused, before it dawns on him that his dripping wet. "Oh...yeah." He says, slightly sheepish and a lot more uncaring. The grief in his heart is surely grater that any otherworldly entity – the rain wouldn't have washed away any of it.
Homura wonders pensively what could have brought them together on this day, in this particular time-line. Sayaka is the linchpin of the situation, so Homura starts from there. Sometimes someone finds Sayaka's body, sometimes a drunkard, sometimes the police, sometimes it's Homura who leads them to it. Sayaka's parents don't stop searching for her more often than not, but sometimes they hold a memorial two weeks after her disappearance.
This time, there is a grave, so someone must have found the body and Homura was simply too busy to keep track of who and how she was found. She still feels obliged to put the flowers on their graves, or in Kyoko's ruined church, or Mami's empty apartment, or atop the hospital, where Sayaka sold her soul to the devil.
Homura keeps the conversation on lighter topics however. "You're going to catch a cold." They might share this grief, but their miseries are not the same.
Kyousuke mourns a dear friend, who was there every step of the way, a silent crutch, and a supportive hand to hold him, kind words to encourage him forward. Sayaka was there before the accident. Sayaka wandered into his own personal hell every day with a smile on her face and a classical CD in her hand. She was there when he pushed her away. She was there when a miracle happened not half-a-day after she said it would.
Miracles have their price.
Sayaka was there every step of the way, but she wouldn't be there for the rest of his life...
...and that was what hurt the most.
Homura receives no response from the violinist, he doesn't seem to have even heard her. She lets out a long-suffering sigh, people could be so difficult. "Sayaka wouldn't be happy with you if you caught a cold." she says, and he flinches just as she expected he would.
"I – well, I..." he stutters, shell-shocked and there's something akin to hurt, shame and guilt all mixed together in his expression.
"I just can't believe she's gone." he says finally, but it's just so easy to read between the lines: And why, why did she have to die? Why?
Homura has asked herself these things too many times.
"You just want one more miracle." Homura whispers solemnly, though no emotion coats her words, and there is nothing but perhaps the tiniest ounce of irony in her apathetic features. She knows she's struck a nerve when his head shoots up and there's a look in his eyes she's seen in her mirror to many times – raw and grieving and full of resentment.
Just one more chance to see her smiling face, gentle and kind and blue eyes shining with brilliance and excitement. To hear her voice weaved in playful teasing and sincere encouragement. To feel her next to me, her hands holding mine, her embrace when you needed it the most.
Just one more chance to say Goodbye, I love you, Don't leave, I'll protect you, Stay, Don't leave me all alone, I don't want you to go –
I miss you!
"W-what?" he stutters, voice weak, unsure.
"Miki-san often spoke about miracles." Homura covers up her slip as if it weren't completely intentional. This is the person Sayaka gave her humanity for(Does she regret it? Homura has to wonder.) and she is simply curious as to what kind of person(besides Madoka, and there really is only one Kamane Madoka) is worth all that devotion and sacrifice.
Homura has seen the deterioration of Miki Sayaka many times over, and has tried to stop it more often than not – but it is just as futile as trying to save Mami from her imminent death (which, so far, have been due to battle with Witches, other Puella Magi, Kyoko, suicide, or Madoka when she tried to kill them all on several occasion – note to self, never tell Tomoe Mami the truth about anything).
It was futile. She never succeeded. She failed time and time again. Then got up with even more scars and even fewer bits of a shattered heart. She still hears Sayaka's demented laughter, when the girl was too weak and too broken to keep fighting – before dragging herself forward and breaking herself even further so she doesn't feel anything, or rather, that there's a distraction from the aching, stabbing, burning hurt inside her that just won't go away. Homura still hears Mami's broken sobs, the not quite sane look in her eyes she tries to shoot them all – tried to shoot the monsters in her head, the monsters they'd all inevitably become.
Homura has become that monster, even if her appearance is still human enough. Homura has been tittering on the edge of Puella Magi and Witch for years now, all summed up from a single month at a time.
She doesn't think of the other Puella Magi beyond that of how to change their fates, and when a face, blank in death and empty-eyed creeps towards her conscious, she feels nothing towards the all too familiar sight besides a tightness in her chest she's forgotten to associate with human emotions.
She thinks of Kyoko then, whenever sealed emotions cross her thoughts.
If you bottle up your emotions, you'll either explode, or you'll forget you ever had them.
She doesn't remember the day that she woke up in her hospital bed to find that she simply didn't care anymore. She'd almost turned into a Grief Seed then and there and only the thought of Madoka, duped and bewitched, kept her hanging on to whatever tattered remains of her humanity she had left.
Homura is unaware of the time that passes – which is one of the most ironic things in history, a time-traveler who lost track of time – but eventually Kyousuke's voice breaks her out of her reverie.
"Why bluebells?" he asks suddenly.
Homura is a bit thrown off by the abrupt change of topic, but doesn't outwardly show it – how long has it been since she's had a conversation in which she doesn't already know half the dialogue? "Sayaka liked bluebells." She had told Homura so herself, in some time-line long past where their relationship could have been called somewhat friendly.
Every person has their own flower, the time-traveler muses. White roses don't seem appropriate, somehow. They lack color, character. White is a sterile, unforgiving color with nothing to speak of but its' pure blandness.
Madoka is like a rose, with soft, pink petals – beautiful, but the thorns she sports hurt those who cling to her too tightly.
Daffodils remind her of Mami, because of their soft petals and sunny, warm colors.
Snapdragons, with their misshapen flower and big "mouths" are similar to Kyoko, who talks big and deceives people with her bright, passionate exterior and fiery facades.
But when Homura thinks of flowers, she always thinks of how fast they wither away.
She's always thought of herself as a weed, living off of others and oh so stubbornly clingy – and hard to kill. It's a well-known fact that if you don't rip the roots out that weeds will always grow back, stronger than before.
There's a question that's been nagging at the back of her mind for several time-lines now, though she's never been inclined to ask. She isn't snoopy, despite what some people seem to think, but knowing facts and is necessary in order to draw parallels, so Homura tries to gather every little bit of information she can. Anything can be useful, from how to use specific weapons to textbook facts and other such things (she's relived the first month of eight-grade enough times to quote the lessons word for word, and she's already worked through physics, chemistry and even math to make her bombs, to shoot her targets with various weapons on differing distances and to at least try to figure out the logic behind her power. Because if she could, maybe she'd be able to figure out what could change the inevitable outcome of Valpurgis Night).
The question she wants to ask Kyousuke is person though, and it would be like pouring salt on a bleeding wound, but Homura has long since grown jaded and numb, and her heart has bled out all its' sympathy several time-lines – lifetimes? – ago. Besides, it is doubtful that this time-line will end any differently than the others, with all other Puella Magi dead and Kuybey still whispering sweet lies to Madoka, it is just as hopeless as it had been after the first few times(when the count was still in single digits, not like now, when its' triple). So she asks without an ounce of remorse:
"If you could choose between your violin and Sayaka, what would you chose?" She feels like a hypocrite, asking that – like she's some sort of Incubator. But she is genuinely curious, and wishes to know if Kyousuke cared about the blue-haired whirlwind as much as Sayaka did for him.
Righteous indignation is written all over Kyousuke's face and Homura realizes her mistake to late. "I don't see what that has to do with anything."
Of course he doesn't, Homura thinks bitterly, and curses herself. This boy does not know the scale of tragedy that she knows, that people she usually deals with know, that Sayaka knew. Homura curses herself, but it does not make the rage on the musician's face go away. "And who do you think you are asking something like that?"
A Monster, An Irregular, Heartless, A Murderer, Abandoned, Deserter, Inhuman.
"No one." Because as far as the world knows, Akemi Homura is an eight-grader who has just gotten out of the hospital last month and has heart problems. As far as Akemi Homura knows, she is a stubborn crybaby who has forgotten how to cry.
"Don't wish for what you can't have." She contemplates saying, but those words are meaningless and will never be able to quell the impossible wishes of mankind, so Homura says nothing, and the silence is as empty as any words she might have recited.
She can't take it any longer.
"Here, take this." Homura all but shoves the handle of her umbrella in his unresponsive fingers, and he only realizes what happened when she'd already taken a step outside the little shelter over their heads. He blinks once, taking a step as if to follow her. "I'm not–!" Kyousuke tries to protest, but she would have none of it.
"Sayaka willl be mad at me if I let you get sick." she tells him firmly, because even though she tells herself that she didn't give a damn about the girl, it was Sayaka's wish for this boy to be well and healthy and Homura would never let such a wish go to waste if she could help it – besides, weren't their wishes similar in foundation?
Homura smiles slightly as she steps out from beneath the umbrella, into the unrelenting downpour of a day she's lived too many times to count. "Besides I don't mind the rain." It soaks through her uniform not a minute after she throws herself into the storm, but she doesn't mind. Her cooling skin is just as icy as the hallow within her chest – the barren home of a pinprick of hope that's slowly but surely slipping away.
Homura freezes time and walks down the slippery slope, careful not to trip and plant her face in the mud, as she has already done time and again.
Kyousuke is still by Sayaka's grave when the clock begins to tick again, and Homura can still see his blurry form in the sea of gray stone and filthy clouds that mourn over the earth bellow.
She has forgotten how to cry, but for once in her life, Homura tries to pretend that the water trailing down her cheeks is only partly due to the weather.
AN: This started out as a drabble, but then my fingers just wouldn't stop writing. I've really enjoyed the show, so I hope I've done Homura justice. Review, please?