"Akemi-san, I've seen how you eat, and it isn't acceptable for a girl your age."
"I still don't see why this is necessary."
Mami's counter was currently covered in... well, a little bit of everything. Mushrooms, leeks, bok choy, tofu, beef, eggs, several types of sauce, noodles. At the moment, Mami was chopping up scallions. Unlike most things in her house, her cutting board looked well-worn. "It's necessary because a diet of cup noodles won't last you forever." Mami lifted the cutting board and scraped the green stalks into a bowl, then grabbed another handful. "Do you think you're going to beat Walpurgisnacht if you get scurvy?"
Homura frowned. "I've been eating like that for..." Six years, two months, and fourteen days, subjectively. But she wasn't about to say that. "... a very long time."
"Then it's even more of a problem."
"We should be using this time to prepare for Walpurgisnacht."
Mami looked up with a smile. "This is my way of doing that. You'll fight better tomorrow if you have a good meal tonight."
"I..." Homura trailed off as she fished for a defense. This was infuriating. She knew she'd had almost this exact conversation with Mami before, but that was about twenty loops ago. "... I do take a multivitamin. Every day."
"Ahh, they said on the news that those don't really help." Mami smirked. It was obvious that she felt like she had won this argument. "So, Akemi-san, that's why you and I are going to sit down and eat an actual meal, with actual food that doesn't involve the phrase 'stir in the seasoning packet' in its recipe."
Homura glanced over all those veggies that Mami was prepared to chop. "Then let me help prepare it."
"Well, I only have one cutting board." Mami momentarily stopped chopping up onions and looked over the assortment of ingredients that she had laying out. "If you'd like, you could wash the mushrooms and start trimming them. That's not too hard to do without a cutting board, if you're careful."
Soon enough, Homura was standing over the sink, pulling shiitake mushrooms out, chopping off their stems, and rinsing them. She glanced over at Mami as the other girl worked, cutting the onion stalks into regular lengths by rote experience, rather than needing to focus on it. It reminded her of herself, assembling bombs: When she first tried it, it was a harrowing, anxious experience, but now she found it almost calming.
"How do you find time to eat like this, and still do your magical girl duties?"
Mami shook her head and laughed softly as she continued chopping up veggies. "It probably doesn't fit the way you think of me," she said, while still focusing on her work, "But I eat a lot of leftovers."
Homura paused and looked up, with a mushroom head still held under the water. "Then why sukiyaki?"
Mami finally did look away from her work for a moment, and absently brushed her hair back with one hand. "It's a meal made to be eaten with others. I can make something to eat for leftovers another time."
Mami was a veggie-chopping machine, and with a little help from Homura, it was barely fifteen minutes before the two were sitting on opposite sides of the table in the living room, with a simmering pot between them. Mami prodded at it with her chopsticks occasionally, while Homura sat patiently, waiting for the meat to brown.
"I know it's not really the kind of food I usually feed guests, but..." Mami shook a chopstick to get a little sauce to drip off of it and back into the pot, then settled back down on her cushion. "When I was young, my parents would make it as a special treat on nights that they were both home." She looked down at the chopsticks in her hands, and fiddled with them absently. "I'm sorry, I probably sound incredibly uncool right now, don't I?" she said with a smirk.
No answer. "... is that why you asked me to come here, Mami Tomoe?"
Mami was caught off-guard by this question for a moment, then smiled wryly. "Maybe it is. I haven't had somebody to share food like this with since... well, a long time."
"Your parents are dead. You no longer get along with Sakura Kyoko... you're lonely."
It was delivered in the same stable, calm tone Homura used for everything else, but Mami recoiled in surprise. "How did you...?" That, she already knew, was a futile question. Homura had always refused to divulge that information before, and Mami doubted she was going to start tonight. After she got over the initial shock, she laughed and shook her head. "You're probably right." Her eyes were now fixated on her lap, and while she tried passing it off as a self-depreciating joke, her voice grew increasingly bitter. "I asked you here because everybody I know is dead or hates me, and for one night, before we possibly die tomorrow, I wanted it to feel like I had a friend."
Awkward silence, with nothing but the occasional soft bubbling of the pot, until Homura poked at its contents. "The beef looks done. Let's eat."
The two did eat, in total silence, for quite a bit. In polite deference to each other, they both avoided the choicer bits of beef and tofu at first, until eventually somebody had to take them, and through an unspoken agreement, they took turns grabbing them.
Only when the pot was mostly empty, and Homura had eaten more than she'd had in a single sitting in subjective months—and the last time was at Mami's hands, too—did she speak up. "I can't tell you about why I'm here, or where I come from. I'm sorry. But...I've watched countless magical girls die. Most of them were my friends."
Homura glanced up from her plate, and rested her chopsticks politely across it. "Everybody I have known is dead or... gone. I'm lonely too. Sometimes, I'm so lonely that—..." Homura's voice cracked, and she stopped herself. These things were not for Mami to hear. These things were only for Madoka. "... but I can't be your friend, Tomoe Mami. I already told you that I'll be gone after Walpurgisnacht, whether or not we win."
Mami was sort of overwhelmed for a moment—it was more than Homura had said to her, well, ever. When she did manage to respond, it was only haltingly. "W-well. I... yes. You're right, Akemi-san. You told me you'd... be going away. I should have realized that we were comrades in arms and nothing m—..."
"But," Homura said, and while it was quiet, Mami trailed to an abrupt end. "You were a very good friend to me once. Almost my best friend. It would be foolish for us to get too close now, but... I wish that we could." She leaned forward and kissed Mami on the cheek. Even though the blonde was half-stunned, she could already feel her skin warming up from a deep flush.
Mami looked up at Homura, with a storm of conflicting emotions in her eyes, but there was no way she could even start to find words for what she was feeling. Homura rose to standing and turned away, partly so Mami couldn't see the tears in her eyes. "... I'm sorry."
That, she'd only had to do a few times, in all of her iterations. But it was always to Mami. Homura had long ago learned that it was a bad idea to get close to anybody, even Madoka if she stand not to (rarely)... and Mami, she knew from long experience, was lonely enough that this almost always happened if she let it.
Better to make Mami sad now than make herself even more upset if Mami died tomorrow. Better not to leave yet another ruined life behind her. Better to be just comrades in arms, really. That thought strengthened Homura's resolve, and she was back to her practiced neutral tone when she spoke again. "Walpurgisnacht arrives in Mitakihara just after 8 AM tomorrow. … I'll see you at 7:30."
"R-right." Mami had calmed back down a little. "I'll see you then."
"Good. And... thank you for the meal."
