The light changed—generously flashing the color of safety to its people below. The people obeyed their kind automated shepherd with chins tucked into jacket collars and arms pinned close for warmth.
Cars honked in a tired chorus while tires squealed in practiced complaint slipping and sliding over shiny black streets. The winter sun bore down disinterestedly upon the icy world. Homura passed through the streets like a ghost.
For the first time in a long time she felt aimless. Maybe restless was the right word-not that it mattered. She just couldn't stop moving for some reason. Like a water snake she soundlessly navigated the condensed stream of human traffic flowing sluggishly along the corporate district streets. Why people felt the inexplicable urge to come out in droves to waste their lunch breaks sure beat her. Though the day was nowhere even near over she had absolutely no intention of heading back to the droll little campus in which she spent the majority of her time off as a magical vigilante. Fluid mechanics at 2 p.m. was just not going to happen today. Her brain felt like it was on fire, anyway. Was this what they called insanity? The answer was not so clear at the moment.
Anything would be better than sitting in front of a screen all afternoon. A split second decision was made to head in the general direction of the dockyards. She let her thoughts begin migrating toward the back of her mind as she slinked through the crowd.
Kyoko had been absolutely baffled by the news. Homura hadn't gone to her expecting any sort of explanation but she had been anticipating something along the lines of comfort if not just for old times' sake. Kyoko had to be somewhat forcefully reminded of that intention. Afterwards, however, she had sat wordlessly upright against the headboard for an entire hour still dumbstruck by what she had just been told. If Homura's heart hadn't already been at the bottom of the ocean she may have found the other's awe endearing.
Nine years ago was when her heart had taken the plunge. She couldn't help but feel as if all her efforts, painful forays into the depths of time, and love had gone to waste. Of course she had been told otherwise after the fact, but people tend to say anything for another privileged flash of thigh.
Never in her darkest dreams could she have anticipated that her last run of the same nightmarish month would culminate in such a fundamentally irreparable loss. And for Madoka's own mother to not even…it was just too much. Tragedy, apparently, knew no bounds.
She hadn't been completely alone in mourning Madoka but it had been pretty damn close. It had required a borderline brutal beating in a wraith-infested warehouse to shock Kyoko's memories back to life. Mami's two cents on the matter, at least as told by Kyoko, was more or less in alignment with theirs.
Homura hadn't bothered to search for the strength to approach Sayaka about it. In all honesty the two had never gotten along in any of the times and spaces that they had been acquainted. Sayaka never seemed to put her faith in any place or person for which/whom it was deserved. There were times though, in passing of course, when Homura glimpsed what could have been the dull subdued glint of profound loss in Sayaka's eyes. She was probably wrong, though, and these moments would pass in the blink of an eye-washed away like writing in the sand.
A decade had rushed to fill the void in her heart. Homura's own sense of loss had become heavy, smooth, and achingly familiar like a stone in one's pocket. But something was happening. And now that it was Homura didn't know what to do.
She, of course, had dreamed continuously of just this. Her dreams of reunification ranged from the deeply horrific to the astoundingly lovely. Despite having had Madoka die in her arms over and over again in real time her dreams never ceased to amaze her. As distressful as the dreams could be the worst would unfailingly be the moment she woke up. Reality would crush her under its timeless weight-collapsing her lungs in the fading darkness of pre-dawn. A familiar sorrow would bloom viciously in her heart-exquisite yet excruciating in its heartrending sadness.
And now her dreams were threatening maddeningly to cross over into whatever world this was. Is that what all of this meant? Or was the universe again simply jerking at Akemi Homura's heartstrings like it had so often in the past? She couldn't for the life of her deny that she hadn't been dying every minute of every day for something like this to happen. She had, after all, always been waiting.
A child shrilly whined to his mother by Homura's left. She jerked her head ever so slightly to the right in mild irritation. The glass pane she perpetually lived behind when around others was on occasion woefully not as soundproof as she would have liked.
The boy had dropped one of his mittens on the busy sidewalk and his mother wheeled around in unmasked annoyance to scan the ground for it. The mother and child were beginning to obstruct the mindless pace of traffic and a few unsympathetic individuals grumbled as they passed.
The mother bit her lip anxiously as she fruitlessly searched for the little mitten amidst the unrelenting onslaught of boots and dark dress shoes.
"I'm sorry Yuichi we'll get you another pair but we're going to be late-"
As if out of thin air Homura appeared calmly before her with the trampled mitten in one hand.
"Oh! Well… thank you very much, miss. I couldn't see it at all the street is so busy… how lucky…"
Homura dipped her head ever so slightly and watched as the mother and child turned to continue on to wherever in the world they were going that afternoon. She couldn't help but notice the woman cast a final look of unease and no small degree of intrigue over her shoulder.
"Still as sweet as ever, eh, Homura-chan?" A voice asked quietly behind her.
Suddenly the world was still. Noise from the street seemed to have retreated into a vacuum. Her heart thumped torturously as the impossible sweetness of that voice wafted out towards her through the cracks between dimensions.
She swallowed and closed her eyes. A second as fleeting as an eternity passed as she bravely opened them again. She shook slightly as she slowly turned toward the source of her unsteady trepidation and wild anticipation.
Somewhere, leagues upon leagues deep beneath the ocean, a chest of ice cracked just a sliver leaking the ruby glimmer of what may once have been Homura's heart. A celestial wind she had once felt long ago pried tenderly at her usually unmoving leather jacket collar.
Homura stood in the empty street, with unfocused eyes wide open, transfixed by the pearly pink ends of long hair lifted up languorously by the unearthly breeze.