It's over. From the moment the pink light crests the horizon, it's over. Any chance you had to do the right thing, any hope you had of having chosen the right time, any shards of good fortune there may have been is dragged screaming into that blinding light.

I used to believe otherwise. I used to stay around when it came. But I learned my lesson, as all young girls must. I don't do that anymore.

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼

"It's starting," whispered Tomoe Mami as the earthy pink sunset was swallowed by darkness.

Sakura Kyoko pressed her torso against the pier fence and squinted into the raindrops, mercilessly pounding the water like falling bodies. "Is that really… is that really Walpurgisnacht?"

"Yes," said Akemi Homura. The raging storm before them was but a reflection of her stormy amethyst eyes. "The great Conglomeration Witch. She who will turn this planet into a grand drama, before turning her stage to dust. She is coming."

As if on cue, an unseen trumpeter heralded the witch's advent. Its whimsical music floated, like a troop of laughing spirits, over the dense fog that had smothered Mitakihara. From the fog then came the great circus procession, filled with green elephants and flying banners and distant screaming.

"Disgusting…" Kyoko murmured as a polka dot mouse was trampled underfoot by a giraffe.

"When should we go, Akemi-san?" asked Mami, turning her soft golden eyes away from the procession.

"Wait," Homura whispered. "Just wait."

Then Walpurgisnacht burst through the eye of the storm.

The witch was easily the size of the city shelter; her shadow coated all of Mitakihara in an extra layer of darkness. It was as if the night sky, dark as ink, had been wound around the groaning metal gear to form a dress of midnight. It ruffled in the wind like a second sky, perpetually in motion as if in eagerness to tear the city to shreds. Two large white cones atop her head pierced through the clouds, sending lightning crashing into the building below. The lightning lit up her face, featureless except for a mouth split open in incessant laughter.

Mami pointed to the metal gear beneath the witch's skirt. "Once that gear spins all the way around, she will flatten the city, correct?"

Homura gave a simple, curt nod.

Kyoko bit into the last of her pocky sticks. "Time limit, huh? Well, let's get started then."

Quicker than either of them could blink, Homura reached up and stabbed the point of Kyoko's spear into the cement. "No," she snapped. The young girl who had frayed timeline after timeline now seemed to find all those discarded lines plastered under her skin. She was made of them: lines creasing her forehead, lines accenting the veins in her tensed neck, lines outlining the muscles like tense coils waiting to spring. She could feel it, her entire body like a gun waiting for the trigger to be pulled. Dangling in her hand was the real thing, bullets locked and loaded in a straight line to the witch's heart. "Wait," she ordered while keeping her eyes trained on Walpurgisnacht. "Wait… this is our only chance…."

And just like with her previous forty-seven only chances, Homura felt a shudder tear through every racing nerve in her body when the Great Conglomeration Witch slowed, stopped, and turned that unseeing face on her.

Somewhere deep within her, the trigger was pulled, pitching her headfirst into a flurry of action. "Go, go, go!" she howled over the sound of the waves crashing upon the dock. "Now's the time! This is our only chance! We have to kill her, now! Oh my God, she needs to die!"

Three mahou shoujo, one Walpurgis Night. The odds had never been more in her favor. But Homura knew well by then how fate liked to play with the odds.

"Please, just let her die."

The world ceased to make sense for a time.

"...Homura-chan? Hey, Homura-chan…?"

Homura didn't believe in a heaven. She had traded away her soul to fight an unending fight against despair. Nothing but death lay behind her, as well as before her, so long as the cycle of despair continued. A mahou shoujo was not destined for heaven. But then, what was that music, and that light at the surface of the water, and that angel whispering her name?

"Homura-chan? It's… I-It's over now, Homura-chan. It's over."

With Herculean effort, Homura managed to pry open her eyes. "Madoka…"

"It's alright, Homura-chan," Madoka whispered reassuringly. Her gentle touch was like soft, downy feathers on Homura's rough and calloused hand. "You don't have to fight anymore."

The back of Homura's head scraped against the jagged obsidian rocks in an attempt to see the face of her friend. "Madoka…?" she asked, her words still slurred. "Do you… Do you mean that Walpurgis… that you… you didn't…?"

Rose pink sunlight of a new day crested over the battered Mitakihara City, but brighter than that were Madoka's eyes. They smiled at Homura kindly, despite the torn and battered state of her school uniform.

For the longest time, Homura couldn't breathe. Her school uniform.

She pressed two grime-smeared fingers to her cheek and found that it was damp. She couldn't remember the last time she had cried, but it felt so good to feel pain and desperation finally flow out of her body and onto the broken rocks where they belonged.

"Oh God… Oh, God!" she cried as she collapsed into Madoka's arms. "You… I… Oh, my God, how…?"

Madoka closed her eyes and ran a hand through Homura's silky, blood-matted hair. "Thank you for protecting me, Homura-chan."

Then she gently took Homura's left hand, clinging to the back of Madoka's shirt, and placed it in her lap. "This was found in the rubble," she said. Though blinded by her tears, Homura knew well the telltale chink of a Grief Seed against her crystal Soul Gem. "Because it came from such a powerful witch, it has the power to be used dozens of times to purify Soul Gems. As long as you have it, you'll never have to fight another witch again."

"Madoka…" she breathed, whispering her name like a prayer.

The young girl simply smiled and placed a supportive arm around her friend's trembling shoulders. "Come on, Homura-chan," she said, acting as a crutch for her to stand. Behind them, the sun also rose, melting away the shadows. Homura had to shield her eyes in order to gaze into its depths, find those depths real, and summon from the depths of her heart a sound that was a marriage of crying and laughter. After the longest night in history, the dawn had come again.

"Come on, Homura-chan, together. Let's go home together."

In the following half-hour, Homura learned one very important lesson: don't look down. Down below, crushed under her heels, were things she didn't wish to see. A young woman's red kimono, most likely an heirloom, crushed under the shingles of a rooftop. The whiteness of a china tea set just barely visible beneath a field of shattered glass. A toddler's jacket left in the mud.

Though Walpurgisnacht had passed, a shadow still seemed to linger over the city. An unspoken rule, that to scream or cry louder than the wind whistling through the collapsed framework of houses would be to disrupt the isolation of others. Though almost everyone wandered through the streets in groups of two or three, each person walked alone.

"Forty-eight people have been reported dead already," Madoka said in a hushed voice. "Thirty-nine unaccounted for. And that was five hours ago; I'm sure the numbers have gone up." Her eyes looked up at the silhouettes of birds gathering on the branches of scorched trees. "But we're lucky," she said firmly. "We're lucky. You said that Walpurgisnacht could wipe out hundreds, right? Well, then we're fortunate you were able to save us before that could happen."

Homura vaulted herself over a fallen granite pillar. "You make me sound like some kind of hero."

"Aren't you?"

Drops of water fell into the cracked eyes of a china doll, mouth smeared with dirt. "I haven't felt like one in… maybe forever." If anything, you've been the hero. After all, you saved me the very first day we met.

Homura clenched a fist around the ruffled hem of her skirt. Of course, you don't remember that. How could you? All the times you learned the truth, all the times you cried…. Then, it's better this way. Those memories are only for me. In the end, none of them matter. All that matters is you, Madoka.

She glanced up only to be met with an uninterrupted red sky. Turning around, she saw that Madoka had stopped walking as she stood perfectly still, each foot firmly planted on either side of the gaping crack in the street. "I'm sorry I called you that," she said. Her bangs covered her eyes. "I know it must have brought up memories for you. It's just…." Her eyes did not reflect light as they watched black smoke curl into the sky. "Seeing everyone… all the things they've lost… I can't imagine what would happen if things were even worse than this…."

Strawberry cupcakes glazed in frosted sunlight. That was the best that Homura could describe the strange sensation that welled in her heart when Madoka rested her head over it. Perhaps Homura had had to choke down such a sweetness earlier; it was the only way to explain the tight constriction of her throat as Madoka trembled in her arms.

"Shh," Homura whispered, pressing Madoka closer to herself, "it's alright now. You're safe. From Walpurgisnacht, from Kyubey, from everyone else. As long as I'm around, no one will ever make you cry like this again. I'm here, Madoka. Just hold on to me. I'm here."

"I'm glad," Madoka whispered as she dragged the hem of her sleeve across her eyes, leaving them puffy and red. "It's just so hard, to think about what will happen next. Not even typhoons get this bad. So much work will have to be done for years…." She crossed her arms over her chest as the empty wind ruffled her hair. "It almost makes me want to run away. I know it sounds cowardly, but it's true. I want to go someplace where none of this sadness can follow."

A man's screaming could just barely be heard above the cawing of crows. "Madoka, you can't just run off on your own."

Standing upon the gash in the road, with the wind in her face and the ash in her eyes, Madoka didn't look real. A single touch would turn her into sand. "Then come with me," she whispered. "You don't have a family, do you, Homura-chan? Then let's run away together."

Homura's eyes widened in tandem with the rising thunder in her heart. "But what about—?"

"Yes or no. Please. Yes or no, and then I'll answer anything you want, Homura-chan."

When Homura sighed, it was the rattle of a spirit's movement. Madoka possessed a heartbreaking kind of beauty, with her head tilted towards the sky and her tears like diamonds on her lashes and her delicate lips as still as death. And people wondered why Homura would march to the end of the world for her! "Yes," she finally whispered. "Yes, Kaname Madoka, I'll run away with you."

She clapped her hands together. Homura jumped at the sound. "Thank you," Madoka whispered. "Thank you."

"But what about your home?" Homura insisted. "You can't just leave them all behind!"

"Oh, of course I'm not going to do that!" said Madoka, still smiling. "We can't run away with nothing, can we?" She giggled, and Homura felt her heart thrash inside her chest. "I'll see what I can salvage, and then we'll go, okay? Just wait here, Homura-chan!"

…Salvage?

Once the pink light blooms, it's over. A dome above their heads, it bled into the shadowy cracks of Mitakihara. When Homura's silken locks of hair flared in the wind, she could almost feel the color leaking into their tips. She ground her heel into the asphalt of the road. She could see the pink light illuminating the sea of faceless faces, and it made her sick. Imposter color. A shadow of Madoka, nothing more. No, Homura knew better. Stretching out her hand to grasp at empty air, she ran towards the truth.

How strange, the sense of vertigo that sent pinpricks across her skin. The faster she ran, the faster it felt like all the organs inside her were falling. Why… why am I running after her? We'll be running away together, right? Just as we should have the day she died.

Homura was screaming Madoka's name before she realized it. All around her, actually, was a cacophony of screaming which rose in a crescendo to the point where it was a miracle she could hear her own voice inside her head. A choking, gasping kind of screaming, as if she were trying to vomit up all the life-giving air dragged into her lungs. It was not an uncommon sound. That day in Mitakihara, there was a very simple way to tell the person trying to lift a building apart from the person crushed beneath: Listen for those who sounded like they were dying.

Heh, how funny, thought Homura, tears stinging her eyes. She was dimly aware that she was still screaming Madoka's name. All these people must be the stupidest people alive. They must think Madoka's dead.

How stupid. I've saved her. How very, very stupid.

Madoka's only died once, hasn't she? She's had a million deaths, but all pressed into the same day, the day Walpurgis killed her in a million different ways. Still the same window of time. But isn't that the same with everyone? All the different possible choices must lead to just that many possible outcomes, right? No, that's not right. Everyone has to die, right? That's the only true outcome. But she doesn't die today. Because I looked through that window a little more than most people would like to. More than anyone would consider a person like me capable of doing.

The laugh was like a hiccup, something startled out of her mouth, but a laugh nevertheless. How does it feel now, Incubator? How does it feel to know I've won?

Homura felt her heel stab into the cracked head of a china doll. Honestly, there must have come a point where I never thought I'd win. My God, it feels like a dream.

A scowl caressed her pale face. Dreams. Reality. As if there's any difference. The dreams I chose, they weren't worthy enough to be real, until now. Yet the nightmares, somehow they were all too real. What sense does that make? What nonsense. What insufferable garbage. It makes me sick.

There were dreams, reality, and Homura running the line between. On the threshold of a world between worlds, she didn't feel real. She was falling up the road winding up the hill, while the sick pink sunlight passed through her chest. In the corner of her eye, she could see the millions of shadowy faces wearing the pink bloated skin of newborn babies. They didn't notice her run. She was the wind in your face and whisper in your mind and the emptiness in your heart. Her skin was lovely white, the color of puffy clouds and bones bleached dry. Obsidian hair unfurled like a banner behind her as she ran in circles up the hill. How many times had she run around this spiral before? Too many times to matter.

A gasp escaped her lips when the earth beneath her shifted from asphalt to cobblestone to dirt to glass to sand. She felt the grains run through her hair like water. Her eyes rolled back in her head, drunk on the air of dreams and powdered sugar.

Up ahead, Madoka's pace hadn't slowed. Homura's eyes could only catch a glimpse of her pink hair curling in the wind. A blink, and the mirage collapsed into the silhouettes of buildings and faceless strangers.

Ghosts chasing ghosts.

A teacup shattered, a red kimono crumpled at the seams, and a toddler's jacket flew away in the wind. Not long now, Madoka, thought Homura as she reached out her hand, edges fuzzy in the pink sunlight. Not long now. Ah yes, finally…

Kaname Madoka, I've caught you.

Then Homura turned the corner and reached the house at the top of the hill.

The only way she could call the smoldering wreckage a house was because she knew what it was like before. The pristine white walls were gone, and any of the remaining interior structure was reduced to shriveled black twigs. Some of the roof could be found atop a pile of ashes. The ashes brushed over everything with a soft grey, yet if Homura squinted, she could see a few items peeking out of the rubble: A crushed tomato plant, a makeup kit with its contents scattered, an overturned bottle of wine. Another gust of wind, and these things were buried under another layer of ashes.

All the inexplicable weightlessness of her run now came back with a vengeance. She was suddenly all too aware of the intensity of the sunlight raining down on her like a spotlight. The air itself was heavy; it made her fall to her knees in the sand. It had mingled with the ashes to form the color of clouds. She scooped up a handful and watched with unseeing eyes as it ran through her fingers. Only a tiny bit remained, stuck to her hand by tears.

Gasping for breath, Homura lifted her eyes. Amidst the smoldering ashes stood Madoka, eyes closed and lips graced with a peaceful smile. Behind her, another beam collapsed with a resounding crack.

"Okaeri, Homura-chan," she whispered. "Welcome home."

Every organ in her body felt like it had been tossed around at some point; it was no wonder that it took Homura ages to find her voice. "Wh-What happened to your family?!"

Madoka did a pirouette on the remains of her front stairs. "Silly Homura! They're dead! Mamma's dead, Papa's dead, even little Tatsuya's dead! And Mami-san and Kyoko-chan, too! All of them are dead! No one's left, except for you!" She did a little clap each time she said a name. They rippled through Homura like thunder.

"No… Impossible…" Homura managed to choke out. "You can't possibly be… Oh God, why…?"

Madoka giggled. "Silly Homura-chan! Because I've taken you to heaven! And this is how you wanted it to be."

In that frozen moment of time in the desert of sand, Homura remembered something very, very important:

Mitakihara City wasn't built on a hill.

"My, my, so you've finally figured it out!" cried Madoka giddily as she spun faster and faster upon her family's grave. Homura watched in horror as all the roads rose up in time with her spinning until they formed a vast done with the pink sun at its peak. Still Madoka continued to spin until she herself was little more than a tiny pink whirlwind. The roads arched downward and converged on her, wrapping her in darkness. Then the sun disappeared behind the amethyst clouds, and the orb of darkness cracked like an egg. And there was Madoka, wearing an ashen grey dress of ribbons that extended down to the base of the ersatz mountain. Around her waist, keeping the ribbons together, was a simple red bow.

Homura's hands curled into fists. The destroyer of Walpurgisnacht. She who would destroy Earth within ten days. The witch who upheld the nature of mercy.

Homura said it softly, though the name was a poison in her throat. "Kreimhild Gretchen."

"I'm sorry you had to find out like this, Homura-chan," said Gretchen as she walked towards the motionless body in the sand, "but in my defense, you've always been too curious for your own good. But since you like to know the truth so badly, would you like to know how they died?"

Gretchen sat on the sidewalk curb, rested her chin in her hands, and watched Homura with lidded eyes. "I snuck out of the shelter to find you, to help you fight Walpurgis. A little while later, my family found out I was missing. It was Mom who ran outside first, then Dad behind her, shouting for her to come back inside. Even Tatsuya found his way outside. How funny they must have looked, running after each other. Running, so eager to die and come to heaven."

"They may be here," continued Gretchen, tracing a finger through the ashes. Homura felt like throwing up. "I don't know; I didn't find out until much later. As they died, I was trying to find you."

The witch lifted her eyes to the lazily drifting clouds of white. "The sky was a ring of fire around you. The bombs, the rockets, they lit up your face. For a second, you looked beautiful. But pretty dolls are just better familiars for Walpurgisnacht. You were losing, I knew, and you knew it too."

People said that the eyes of the newly dead still retained imprints of the last thing they ever saw. When Gretchen looked back down at Homura, all that Homura could see was her own face framed in fire.

"Which is why Mami and Kyoko had to die."

Gretchen let her words echo across the labyrinth before continuing right where she left off. "Beserker, right? That's what it's called? Yeah, I think that's it. You started blowing up buildings, shooting at bridges, hurling buses filled with evacuating people. I saw it for myself. It was Mami-san who tried to reign you in, but then you shot her in the head. Same thing with Kyoko-chan. It wasn't Walpurgisnacht who killed forty-eight civilians, Homura-chan. It was you."

"So you made a contract," said Homura, hollow and empty as she lay in the sand.

"That's right, Homura-chan!" she said. It was sugary, too sugary, and it hurt Homura to hear. After all, a sweet tooth still knows how to bite. "Funny how I spent so much time worrying about a wish, when really I had the answer all along. I told Kyubey my wish, to have Mami and Kyoko live. Which Kyubey did, Homura-chan. After Walpurgisnacht was gone, I went to go to you and… there you were, shooting bullets into Kyoko and Mami's skulls. They'd keep standing up, and you'd keep shooting them down. You couldn't even recognize their faces with all the bullet holes. I remember sound of the gunshots… Bang, bang, bang," she whispered, and watched Homura shudder and bury her face. "One after the other, like you were keeping time. I ran up to you, Homura-chan, and I tried to take the gun from you. But then, when I grabbed your shoulders, I looked into my eyes, and I think I saw the real you for the first time. Eyes like glass dusted with ashes. And then I realized that you're damned, Homura-chan. I despaired right after that."

Homura just curled into a tighter ball when Gretchen walked towards her, gliding like an angel under that pink sky. Ah, that sky, that awful sky. She pressed a finger to her cheek and found that it was dry. Perhaps the sand had adsorbed her tears like they were nothing. Perhaps she hadn't cried at all. She didn't know which one was more terrifying.

Gretchen knelt down so that their faces were separated by mere inches. It was the manner in which one would kneel at the foot of the dead. "They're here, you know?" she breathed. Up close, Homura could see stars in her eyes. She closed her own eyes as her chest heaved with a dry sob. "Kyoko and Mami are here. I ground them into sand with my own two hands, just for you. You're sleeping on their bodies."

"I didn't expect this from the witch of mercy," Homura said in a quiet monotone.

"No, you're right, Homura-chan. But I wanted you to remember, so that I could ask you one question: Will you run away from me?

Homura stared up into the eyes of her best friend and knew only one answer. "Yes. Forever."

"Then run," said Gretchen. "There's my mercy."

"I know why you killed them," she said, standing up and walking in spirals through the circle of sand. "It's because you've had to let it happen so many times before. They're nothing to you, are they, Homura-chan? Because there's a new timeline, a new chance, every time. They're like sand you sift through in order to find the only two that will save me."

The sun was too close from Homura's vantage on the top of the mountain. She felt like its rays would bore tiny holes in her skin, and her blood would look pink as it spilled down Gretchen's dress. "It's my sin," she whispered. "I've learned to carry it."

"Yes, you have," Gretchen said softly. "Just like all witches must do. It feels good, doesn't it? You're loathe to admit it, but wallowing in despair does have its loveliness. It's what mahou shoujo are created for, after all. Paradise doesn't suit us, only the desperation from which we were born. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, sand through your fingers. Isn't that what we are?"

"Why do you ask me these things?"

"Because one day, you'll remember this," Gretchen replied. "We're like an hourglass, Walpurgis and I. No matter how many times you think you can shatter Walpurgisnacht, eventually you'll settle, along with everything else, into me."

Leaning in close, Gretchen placed her hand on the rim of Homura's shield. Homura could smell strawberries and icing on her skin, and it made her nerves crawl. "It's not every day that a witch lets someone out of her labyrinth," she breathed, "but then again, I'm not your everyday witch, am I, Homura-chan?"

"But why let me go?" asked Homura.

"Make no mistake, Homura-chan," said Gretchen, draping her arms lovingly around Homura's tender neck, "I'm not letting you go. I don't need to, you see. No matter where you go, I've already caught you."

"Don't play games; this doesn't make sense," Homura insisted. "I know you. You want every single person to be locked inside your paradise. You're a witch; you don't just let people leave the labyrinth."

The destroyer of Earth glanced up at Homura through her eyelashes. "Think, Homura-chan. Why would I want that? Yes, I'm a witch, aren't I? Seems a bit too nice of me, wanting everyone to be happy. But you know why I want this. The worst kind of torment," she said, placing her hands over Homura's fast-beating heart, "is to have everyone happy except for you. To be hugged so tightly yet be so submerged in your own skin. To be so terribly, undeniably, wholly alone. Ah, what a lovely kind of despair loneliness is. I wouldn't take that from you for all the world."

Homura let her eyes slide close. "Then it seems you are a devil after all."

Gretchen smiled and cradled an unresisting Homura in her arms. "That remains to be seen," she whispered. Her voice was like lemonade with two spoons of sugar instead of one. Taunting her. Mocking her. A monster speaking with Madoka's voice. Or at least, that was what Homura chose to believe. "But let me say this: I gave you nearly one hundred hallucinations about Kaname Madoka being saved, and you found a way to see through each and every one of them. Instead of giving into them, you rejected them. The only scenario you accepted, Homura-chan, was when I promised to run away with you, and then I finally understood: only the damned choose to run from paradise."

"I won't accept lies as paradise." Her breath was short and ragged as she trembled in Gretchen's embrace. "That was not the happiness I wished for."

When Kriemhild Gretchen smiled, it reminded Homura of a gaping chasm yawning open. "Ah," she breathed, a lock of long black hair twirled around her ring finger, "and now we arrive at the heart of the matter. Run, Homura-chan, and find your true happiness. Then come back, and tell me if it was everything you dreamed."

Homura felt the gears in her shield spin into motion, and the world started to pool into a swirl of colors. Sandy ground the color of sunshine and screaming, inky black shadows, ashen gray hands, vomit-pink sky, and magenta eyes like springtime sickness.

"Run, run, run, until you return to me."

／人◕ ‿‿ ◕人＼

It was over.

The scarred mouth that had forgotten how to smile curled upwards as her eyes landed on that same familiar pink horizon from a million years before. I remembered, Homura told herself. I tried so hard to forget, but I remembered. But that's hardly surprising. It's my duty to remember. All the tears you never cried, all the vomit-pink horizons that meant another end, all the grains of sand crushed in my fingers. My duty, my sin to carry.

"Madoka…"

Homura's eyes were filled with swirling darkness as if to counteract the radiance of the goddess descending to the earth with her arms open wide. This was never your destiny, Homura lamented as Madokami drew nearer. Oh forgive me, forgive me, forgive me for being so unforgivably stupid.

Perhaps the all-loving goddess would have noticed the shadows dancing in her eyes, Homura wondered bitterly, had her own golden eyes not been so solely focused on the corrupted Soul Gem in Homura's hands. This is all my fault, but I can fix it now. Because now I know, Madoka. I know how horrible it is to be so, so alone. Law of Cycles, Queen of Paradise… you must be the loneliest one of all.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Kyoko and Mami, standing together and smiling at Homura. They too must have known that her suffering would be over once the goddess came to take her away. But with the goddess so close to sweeping the ground, Homura could see a full, uneaten moon hanging in the sky. Not yet, a voice within her hissed, giddy in anticipation. Not yet….

"Now, let's go," Madokami said. "From now on, we'll always be together." Those words were like ice in Homura's veins. Even she, who had danced on an edge between the end of a universe and the birth of another, could not fathom how many times those words had been said. She could hear the whisper chanting bang, bang, bang, and she felt her heart shatter. Time turned even the most precious things to sand.

I never kept my promise. That day, I promised to run from the whole world with you holding my hand. But oh, you know how I am with promises.

"Yes, you're right," Homura drawled. "After all, I've been waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Waiting so, very, long for this moment."

From that single burning moment in time, reality changed. Stars were undone and stitched together, galaxies spun into filaments rewoven, and planets were cracked and kissed by the same loving hands. An entire universe being reborn out of her greatest and most precious sin. Some would say that such a paramount event was extraordinary to say the least, but Homura knew better. This was something that was always meant to be.

She could feel her emotions churning in her heart, a wildfire that drove her to the edge of pain and passion as she struggled to keep it all in. She wanted to cling to it until the very last second, the second that the world would see little Akemi Homura from hospital ward 2-B explode into stars. I'm not going to slip, Homura screamed with the force of a tiny drop of water rippling through a barren desert. I'm not going to slip through your fingers...

Somewhere deep within, in a tiny little place where the screams of the universe fell like springtime rain, a bare lightbulb flickered in an empty room. A pink door closed with a slam so forceful that fell off its hinges and melted into ribbons, tying shut the window in the corner. A cracked porcelain doll waltzed forward, letting brandy slosh out of her teacup as she danced. She tried to make a beeline for the center of the room, but jerky were her movements as the ribbons from her wrists dragged her round in circles. Suddenly, she stopped. And the world stopped with her. Silence, so unlike the circus parade beyond the door. She clattered to the ground, snapping the ribbons under her snapped wooden legs, just to scoop into her teacup a spoonful of sugar from a reality that didn't exist.

A fist banged three times on the door, but she refused to answer. The window was her sole concern. The lightbulb flickered off a split second before her glass eyes rolled out of their sockets and into a mouse hole. They refused to see what lay beyond the window. But the doll disagreed. Raising her head to face the window, she let her mouth split open, unhinging its entire jaw, and said very plainly, "You're not going to leave me again."

Then, the tiny little doll did something very simple: Reaching into the heart of an empty reality, she turned a tiny little hourglass onto its head.

"Kaname Madoka, I've caught you."