Everyone hurries to leave the eerie empty castle, but Cheren lingers and lags behind. After all, if he had no problem accepting failure, giving up and moving on, he wouldn't be here (he wouldn't even be a he in the first place).
"Wait," a voice calls after him; a deep, adult, male voice, all the same a voice he'll recognize across time and worlds.
Cheren is still in the process of turning around as N tumbles down the last golden step and stops behind him, and Cheren sees the movement of his hand to grab his sleeve. A grown-man's hand reaching for a boy's jacket sleeve down the stairs of a gigantic castle, not a little girl's hand reaching for a magical girl's uniform sleeve in a school hallway, but it's not off by far.
"— Akemi-san?" N whispers, green eyes wide and bewildered, and maybe it's only because Cheren has never seen them from this close before but he thinks they look just a little less dead and empty than before.
"... Homura is fine," Cheren mutters, throat dry because (it's no use, it's over, it's too late.)
"It is you! I knew it! Homura-chan, it's me —"
"I know."
And finally, Madoka smiles at her; and countless time loops, a world-skip and a sex change can't change the fact that Homura always had a weak heart prone to weeping like a child.