Note: "Our Demons" by The Glitch Mob
Our Demons
She was beyond glad when her body finally decided to make an effort again.
It meant she could go back to classes, for one, and for another, it meant that Madoka breathed easier around her—it meant that everyone breathed easier around her.
Because everyone cared, of course; she couldn't quite make up her mind on whether she liked that or not. Because care was nice, but the worry and fear it brought were certainly not nice, and she would do anything to banish that awful, heinous feeling, even if it meant internalizing all her emotions and pains and thoughts and everything else that would so much as dare disrupt the balance she had dragged from the depths of hell.
Well. Alright. Being cooped up had definitely given her a bit of cabin fever—which was why she was doing this in the first place, actually.
She was tagging along as back-up on today's patrol (though, frankly, she wasn't going to be of much help if they really needed it), having finally convinced Madoka and Junko to let her go, and while she knew she wouldn't be at the frontlines, she felt better knowing that she was doing something.
And so she followed behind the main party. Occasionally Mami Tomoe would glance back at her, and Sayaka Miki would glower, but both left her well enough alone.
It was the youngest of their group that gave her trouble. Nagisa Momoe enjoyed spinning circles around everyone, chanting under her breath, "You took the honey from the queen bee keeper," and somehow that jarred her.
You took the honey from the queen bee keeper.
The phrase, delivered in a lilting yet monotonous voice, settled into her chest. It sought out its fellow bees.
"Oi. You coming, transfer student?" Sayaka Miki snipped at her, hackles raised and fury in her eyes; Sayaka Miki liked to act more beast than human.
She shrugged.
Nagisa Momoe piped up from somewhere in her peripheral, "Play nice, Sayaka-san!"
Glowering, but mercifully silent, Sayaka Miki turned sharply to disappear into the witch's lair. Nagisa Momoe grinned up at her before following, and she was the last to enter.
Without fail, the low buzzing in her ears grew louder, more insistent, the closer she went to the witch. By the time she was inside, it had morphed into voices clamoring for her attention, one atop another, unrelenting and unforgiving and redundant.
Up ahead, she caught a glimpse of Sayaka Miki's cape as it vanished around a corner, and Nagisa Momoe jumped impatiently at the juncture.
"C'mon!" she urged, "we're going this way."
She walked a little faster, and the walls and the floor shifted, and she just barely managed to grab onto Nagisa Momoe's hand; everything behind her disappeared into a bubbling, gurgling wall of sludge.
Disgusting.
"We don't want to get separated," Nagisa Momoe said, tugging her along, quickening their pace, as if she didn't already know. But it made sense—she was notoriously bad at team work.
No wonder she was so stubborn.
Nobody ever made her dig deeper. She simply gave up on them, and they gave up on her, and that was the end.
Around them, slugs of all sizes oozed along, and leeches hid amongst the slugs, and she took a page from Madoka's book: she summoned her bow, only her bow, and shot an arrow vertically, where it divided into countless needles to impale a greater berth of creatures.
"That's a nice trick," Nagisa Momoe praised. "C'mon," she redoubled her speed.
Breathing deeply, she managed to say, "We've lost sight of the others."
Nagisa Momoe shrugged.
They kept running through the labyrinth.
She wasn't sure where they were going, but the corridor that appeared seemed endless and Nagisa Momoe was relentless, so onwards they went into the belly of the beast.
For the most part, aside from shooting more arrows to clear their path, she was content to be led.
Everyone had a choice this time around; she would never again be the one to take them away.
Or so she liked to say, but she wasn't fooling herself.
After all, Sayaka Miki's blazing eyes told her, she wasn't a good person at all.
I suppose I can always trust Sayaka Miki to remind me of everything I've done.
"There you are!" Mami Tomoe cried, pulling her protégé into her arms, smiling in relief at both of them. Even Sayaka Miki gave her an approving nod.
Nonetheless, she cut into their reunion, "This is not the time or the place."
"Yeah, what she said," Sayaka Miki concurred, though her rigid stance might have belied her reluctance to agree with anything Homura said. Still, at least Sayaka Miki gave an attempt. Let it never be said that Sayaka Miki was a coward.
(She blamed it on the labyrinth. She had enough self-awareness to know its influence.)
Mami Tomoe wiped her eyes, and, clearing her throat, she nodded. "I apologize. I didn't mean to get carried away."
"It's okay, nee-san," Nagisa Momoe readily reassured her, even as she pulled away from the embrace. "Did you find the witch?"
Sayaka Miki jerked her thumb to their left, saying, "Last we saw, the main chamber was somewhere that way, but this one moves around a lot for something so sluggish." She sneered towards the slugs that were gradually creeping closer to their cleared position.
"Close together this time," Mami ordered. "Nagisa will clear a path, I'll follow, then Sayaka-san, and Homura-san will cover us. Got it?"
She's a true leader, isn't she?
Because she has a choice now.
All nodded, with Nagisa bouncing on the soles of her feet, no doubt itching to blast her trumpet.
When they finally, finally caught up with the body of the witch, her limbs were trembling with exhaustion, her fingers fumbling on her arrows, fumbling like Madoka's never did, her breath sharp and painful in the back of her throat, and even her magical girl uniform lent her no confidence.
Nagisa Momoe went first, trumpet blaring, nearly uprooting the leech that curled around the caricature of some faceless memory.
Mami Tomoe flung her flintlocks towards the familiars after discarding them, using the burst of vanishing magic to attack the vile creatures that oozed closer.
Sayaka Miki focused her attention on the familiars that clung stubbornly to their miserable existence—slime globs flew from severed bodies and every single one of them screeched upon meeting their death at Sayaka Miki's unforgiving blades.
Meanwhile, she lingered in the back, shooting her arrows every now and then, but mostly attempting to regain her breath and silence the incessant buzzing that waxed and waned in her ears.
Everyone's got a choice this time around.
This time around.
Around.
A leech covered her foot; she stared at it, stared at it, stared, its ring of teeth twitched—she recoiled, using an arrow as a spear to destroy it.
She breathed a little easier once it was gone, but she kept thinking about it, the voices kept nagging at her, chanting, 'This time around, this time around, around.'
Looking back up, suddenly remembering the existence of Mami Tomoe and Nagisa Momoe and Sayaka Miki, she watched them from her remote corner of this hell. She watched them battle, with their sloppy teamwork and their earnest faith.
She blinked.
They wavered, somehow. Blurred around the edges, and her hand moved up to adjust her glasses, and her fingers ended up grazing her hair instead.
Sorry, sorry.
I'm sorry, Madoka.
She was already saying sorry, and she hadn't even finished fainting.
／人◕‿‿◕人＼
"I knew we shouldn't have brought her, damn it, I knew it! Now Madoka's gonna be here any minute, and Akemi's passed out on the couch, and what am I supposed to tell her?! That I let her best friend—excuse me, her girlfriend—get overwhelmed by a second-rate witch?! Damn it!"
Evidently Sayaka Miki slammed her hands on the coffee table, for there was a slap and Mami Tomoe chided, "Sayaka-san."
"Don't—okay? Just don't."
She opened her eyes, grimacing against the sour taste she recognized coating her tongue and her mouth.
The lights were dimmed, however, so she was thankful for at least that small mercy.
But she thought of Sayaka Miki's words. Apparently she wasn't the only one living in fear of Madoka, which sounded bad, of course, but she meant it… in some obscure, oblique way. That was to say, both she and Sayaka Miki… they held Madoka Kaname so dear, so important, so vital, that they would rather kill themselves than let Madoka Kaname's soft face crumble under the reality of the world.
No wonder they had demons.
"I am fine," she said aloud, announcing her presence to whoever was with her.
Mami Tomoe soon appeared above her, worry making her forehead furrow and the skin around her eyes tight. "Homura," she murmured.
"Oh, thank god," Sayaka Miki breathed out, approaching.
"The witch…?" she asked as she sat up, rolling out a kink in her neck.
I feel much better without that witch's bees flitting around in my head. But she wasn't going to admit that to anyone whose name wasn't Madoka Kaname.
Mami Tomoe shook her head, but answered nonetheless, "It wasn't that difficult. We got a grief seed out of it." She handed her a cup of tea; her expression hesitated.
What Mami Tomoe was too polite, too respectful, to say, Sayaka Miki had no such qualms. "Do you need it?" she demanded.
"No," she said, and she told the truth.
But she had told the lie so many times that when it was true, they had difficulty believing her (not that she blamed them).
Everything she had done was coming back around.
The tea scalded her tongue. She didn't mind, for it was an almost pleasant sensation.
"I have soup and rice left over," Mami Tomoe offered. "If you want to join us for a late supper. You and Madoka-san, I mean. Sayaka-san is going home once Madoka-san gets here, and Kyouko and Yuma are asleep, so it will only be Nagisa-chan and I tonight."
She mulled that over.
Having a meal before she returned to the Kaname home would bring color back into her cheeks, and the sooner she ate, the better.
On the other hand, it would mean—it would mean digging deeper, because Mami Tomoe was still the girl whose loneliness had blinded her to the truth, because Mami Tomoe was not the girl whose madness had driven her to end lives, because—because.
It meant facing everything she didn't want to face. It was just a supper shared between friends, but it was so much more than that in her mind. Her mind, which would never let her rest.
"As long as Madoka agrees," she said, setting the cup down with a soft clink.
Mami Tomoe smiled, taking the cup and its saucer. "Excellent. I'll set the table, then, while we wait for Madoka-san." She left.
Returning to the foreground, Sayaka Miki waited until Mami Tomoe was fully occupied before grumbling, "What were you thinking?"
"I am not sure I understand, Sayaka Miki."
That did not, of course, deter Sayaka Miki.
"You should've said something before we left—or, better yet, you shouldn't have come with us in the first place," she growled, though she was careful this time to keep her volume controlled. It was all in the tone, after all.
"Is that care I detect in your words, Miki-san?" Meant as a tease, it came out rather flat, perhaps even accusatory. Well. She wasn't very good at interacting with people; she wished Madoka would arrive already so she wouldn't have to try her hand at de-escalation.
Sayaka Miki didn't remain confounded by Homura's lackluster humor for long, unfortunately. "Are you—are you serious?" Her face reddened, and she looked a moment away from giving into her anger.
Frankly, it irked her, Sayaka Miki's righteous anger.
That was why she dug in her heels, made herself purposefully difficult and contrary around Madoka's other best friend.
And, alright, there were other reasons, as well.
Like: everything you ever did is coming back around.
She wondered if it was the same for Sayaka. If she had somehow known, from the very beginning, that Homura Akemi was the harbinger of tragedy. Sayaka Miki, in every timeline, had clung to that one belief (and even that hadn't saved her).
"God," Sayaka Miki muttered, turning away. "You're so gloomy and sick. It makes me feel guilty. Why couldn't you have… I don't know... Never mind."
Now is not the time to have a crisis, Sayaka Miki. Madoka's not even here yet. Why would you subject me to this torture?
"You know what I don't know?" Nagisa Momoe interjected, making both her and Sayaka Miki jerk violently.
"Geez, don't do that, Nagisa," Sayaka Miki gasped, her hand clutching her chest.
Giggling, Nagisa pressed a finger to her lips. "Let's not disturb Mami-nee-san, okay?" Her teeth flashed—for a moment, they looked inhuman, crowding out of her mouth and more than ready to devour.
It is peculiar, how often I forget that this child has inexplicably retained aspects of her witch form. Of course, far be it for me to tell her. The less Nagisa Momoe knows the better.
Unless she knows already. I would not put it past her.
"I thought," Nagisa Momoe began in her typical sing-song cadence, "that you'd learned something from your trip to the church, Sayaka-san."
Sayaka stared at her. "How do you know about that?"
Nagisa Momoe clasped her hands together, beaming up at Sayaka.
Indeed.
"Well… yeah, I did." Sayaka Miki crossed her arms, looking, dare she say it, petulant.
Better Sayaka Miki than herself.
"Mhm, and?"
Definitely her better than me.
Sayaka Miki glowered at the floor; she tilted her head towards the couch, admitting, "Something about Akemi always manages to piss me off. I can't help it. Maybe I can, I guess, but I don't. It's just easier to—why am I explaining myself to you?" She made as if to leave.
Sayaka Miki's words took her by surprise. Of course, it was foolish to think that the people she had struggled to bring through the war were the same people who lived now, but somehow she had written Sayaka Miki off as someone immutable.
Someone set in stone.
That thought had been a type of comfort, taken for granted until it vanished in the face of the truth.
Nagisa Momoe latched onto Sayaka's arm, dragging her to join Homura on the couch.
Madoka, where on Earth are you? Save me!
She shifted closer to the opposite edge, folding her arms into her lap to make herself as slim as possible.
This was not at all how she had expected the night to progress.
Nagisa Momoe's dichromatic eyes gazed into her own. She wondered how Mami Tomoe had felt, captured in a similar gaze, moments before her death (her deaths).
"Homura-san," Nagisa Momoe said. "You've been a great tutor, y'know? But you're so blind sometimes." She plopped down on the carpet, forced to look up at them, yet utterly in control. "I thought it was… amusing, at first. But now it's pretty pointless; it's bringing you down, making you lose what little progress you've managed to make."
"Nagisa…," Sayaka let her confusion hang in the air.
You are unusually blunt and cutting.
For once, Nagisa Momoe's expression was not one of gleeful oblivion. Her mouth settled into a grim line—annoyed, as if Homura and Sayaka were misbehaving school children, as if she were more capable of than they.
Which, to be fair, she probably was.
Everything you ever did is coming back around.
Such as underestimating those around her.
"I can't help you if I'm weaker."
Those words hadn't come out of her mouth.
They were—"Sayaka Miki?"
Sayaka Miki shrugged, turning her head to the side.
On the other hand, Nagisa Momoe appeared to regain much of her carefree demeanor, for she said, "Great! I'll leave you two to sort out your problems. I'm pretty hungry, though, so don't take long about it." With that, she clambered to her feet and skipped to the kitchen, where Mami Tomoe was undoubtedly busying herself so as to give them privacy.
Well.
The world liked to conspire against her.
"Um," she began, oh-so eloquently, and it sounded so absurd that she simply stopped.
Sayaka Miki sighed, sagging against the cushions. "Yeah, this is going to be on me, isn't it? No offence, I mean." She sunk further down.
"…None taken."
"Hitomi and Kyousuke had this long talk with me—well, it wasn't that long, and I guess it wasn't much of a revelation for someone like you, but it was, and I'm trying to do better. It's high time I stopped fucking up, right?"
She was not sure she wanted to hear this.
Not from Sayaka Miki of all people.
Laughing weakly, Sayaka waved her hand half-heartedly. "Anyway, I'm sure you're not interested in that, but my point is… my point is, we both suck at letting go of things. I don't know why my first instinct is to be suspicious of you, but I've known you for years now; after what we went through, all of us, shouldn't I let go of it?
"And Hitomi said something, that I've been stuck on for a while now, that I think might sort of explain—or at least partly explain why we're so easily caught in these ruts."
Blue eyes, which had so often reviled her, now looked earnest in a way she had only ever seen directed towards Madoka (and perhaps Hitomi Shizuki, but the other lived on the outskirts of her awareness).
"I know I've been the weak link since the beginning. It rubs me in all the wrong directions. How much do you know of my personality? A lot, I bet, but some things are sunk in too deep to see.
"My point is. I'm sorry. I want us to stop fighting. I want you to know that most of the time, I hate you only because you are the 'knight,' and I am the 'court jester' instead of the hero I dreamed about as a kid.
"Sure, some parts of you, the Machiavellian ones, definitely bother me. I'll never let you get away with that the whole 'the end justifies the means.' But you've been—you've been a good person lately. So. So I'm going to seriously work to fix our relationship."
What am I supposed to say?
Glancing down at her ring, she mumbled, "Okay."
Sayaka Miki scoffed, though it was more exasperated than anything else.
"I will not explain myself to you," she snapped, only to append, "Not today. Perhaps at a later date, if… when we are on better terms." It was the biggest concession she was willing to make.
"Good enough," Sayaka Miki agreed.
Before she could start dreading an awkward silence, Mami Tomoe stepped out of the kitchen. "If you are amendable, Sayaka-san, perhaps you would join us"
"Sure."
"Then," Mami Tomoe's eyes twinkled suspiciously, "there's someone waiting for you both."
She exchanged a wary look with Sayaka Miki, who said, "This was totally set up, wasn't it?"
Madoka, from her seat at the table, waved and replied, "Yep! Surprise!" Next to her, Nagisa Momoe hummed cheerfully to herself, apparently not so preoccupied with the book in her hands.
"What a nice way of showing you care," she muttered to Madoka, taking the seat beside her. Madoka nuzzled her, making her blush and drop her complaints. It wasn't like it truly bothered her.
"When—how did you get in here!" Sayaka demanded.
Madoka smiled sheepishly. "We snuck in through the window," she explained, gesturing to Mami Tomoe.
"Of course you did," Sayaka Miki rolled her eyes.
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A/N: I love running away from my responsibilities.
Somehow I can't make up my mind whether this is plot-driven or not. I mean, it mostly isn't, since whatever plot that does show up is more often than not a means to continue in my character exploration; however, there are times when I'm thinking about this story that I feel as if it should be some grand project, more than just a place to hold my Madoka Magica same-AU vignette-drabbles.
Ehm. Anyway.
Comments, reviews, please! :)