I don't intend to take up too much of your time. Let's say... four chapters.
How was your shower?
Refreshing?
Well, you have come a long way.
And the dolls didn't give you too much trouble, did they?
Do the clothes fit you well? I haven't worn them since I stopped being a magical girl... about a year ago now.
Oh no, I'm not intending to mock you. But you do look adorable.
I'm laying sideways on one couch. My cheek is resting on my raised palm. You, meanwhile, are seated on the opposite side of the circle of couches. You seem tense. You're not saying anything.
Is it perverse for me to say that I always felt some kind of connection to you? It sounds ridiculous now that I say it aloud. I don't know anything about you. How can I? You're the native of a less abstract reality than mine. To you, I'm only made out of text and images and sounds. Out of ideas. The only thing I ever could have known about you is that you were a helpless observer.
But having that in common feels reassuring, in a gallows-humor kind of way.
Come to think of it, you've only heard me speak, yes? I hope you understand the dissonance between my blunt quietude in person and my verbose, dramatic flair in writing. Deep down, I can't help but be an old romantic.
Nothing? You are allowed to laugh, you know.
My intentions?
Not something I've ever had to explain to anyone before. Bear with me.
I don't know if you could understand what goes on inside my head. Not that I doubt your intelligence, it's just that I don't either. It's as if my mind is... the same mind as a billion other minds, all inside this same skull, all living this life, but at different points of time, and in other continuities. Every possible thing I could be doing right now, and in every second before, and in every second to come, I can see and hear and feel them as easily as I can see and hear and feel this room. This conversation. And I can think the thoughts of every other instance, every other Homura, like they were my own.
They are my own.
And in those futures, I see that the stage is set and the curtains are drawn for the fourth time. The first two nearly ruined me, and the third succeeded. I only survived by becoming a demon, and even then, it feels like a sick joke to call my current state "survival". So, I'm running away.
Isn't that so quaint? I'm a story that doesn't want to be written.
Still, there's no such thing as inevitability. Timelines aren't set in stone. They can be created at will, provided you're clever enough to see a new possibility. She taught me that. My leg caught under rubble, my strength gone, my will to continue crushed, she taught me how to shape the future.
I wonder if she would regret that, if she knew what I was doing with it? Because the portion of me before you is going to dig out a new timeline, and hide it in a place nobody would think to look: twenty-one chapters deep into the most turgid, asinine, pretentious universe possible.
Whenever it becomes relevant, of course, or when I feel their patience wearing thin, I'll humor the maniacs who have made it this far by choice with an analysis of whatever abstruse ramblings their Narrator dreams up. For that crowd, this will be like a book club. But for the rest of the time, I have free reign to do as I will.
That would make this my self-indulgent Everyone Lives AU, yes? Well then, let's begin.
Cut.
Our tale begins upon a visitation to the Miki household, conducted over cups of tea. It's not like I'm trying to present a ladylike facade all of a sudden - I have reconciled with my own nature, and it remains inclined toward ungovernable pride even in times of peace - this simply happens to be the point I've chosen to begin.
It's an entirely unremarkable day. The four of us (with the notable absence of Tomoe, who has fallen out of touch as of her attending high school) gather like so with decent regularity. The sun is low in the sky, and the cloud coverage is slight. It's humid, but not too humid. The train here was six point one four seconds late. Nothing is remotely askew, or out of order. And having fought lifetimes for entirely unremarkable days, it's moments like these that fill my heart with a private little euphoria.
My heart?
Oh, no. When they say you don't have to feel pain anymore, it's completely true. Coupled with the, ahem, logical immortality, I dare say that I will never need another operation for as long as I live.
Thank you for asking, regardless. I do appreciate the concern.
There's an exam approaching, and we have gathered to prepare. I couldn't tell you which exam: that much isn't important.
Then again, what is important anymore? It's history. Or, rather, it was supposed to be history, but I've alluded already to Kyoko's presence. The quality of studying is left as an exercise for the imagination.
"Whatever!" says she, with melodramatic gesticulation, "but don't blame me when we get back into it next week, and suddenly we can't understand what's going on!"
Miki (and I do feel that the absence of first-name terms is appropriately disdainful for the tension I'm sure must run betwixt us) huffs, and throws a pencil at her. "The whole idea of the show is that you can miss an episode or two and still follow along! Believe it or not, not everything is designed to cater towards hyperactive recluses with too much time on their hands, like you."
Madoka whines. "Guys... can you please focus? I found the page we were looking at in class, and-"
She points at her laptop screen. Kyoko leans over her shoulder. She smirks.
"Wow, you have NND bookmarked? Jeez, I would have hoped someone'd tell ya the 2000's were over by now."
"What's wrong with...?"
"No no no, don't tell me. You still listen to nightcore too, don'tcha?"
She looks aside. "Well, I mean..."
This, I believe, is as much my cue to speak up as anything.
"Could you stop bothering her and just focus?"
"Ha! Yeah, of course you'd say something now of all times. Why don't the two of you hurry up and smooch already?"
Miki drags her housemate back by the collar. "What she means to say is, of course! That's a wonderful idea!"
I should admit, naturlich, that I find myself something flustered by Kyoko's remarks. By the looks of things, I'm not alone in that.
Not to suggest, of course, that I haven't considered the possibility before, and am not considering it even now. Universe-eating time deity though I may be, the potency of my affections is nonetheless hard to place. What is it I see in Madoka? A close friend? A lover? Both feel equally desirable and equally distant to me, and I've no past experience to check either possibility against. I do wonder sometimes if I could have one without sacrificing the other, and I have contemplated trying both in parallel timelines, but what kind of friend or lover would I be if I lauded such power over her?
You're taking the revelation that I am gay far better than I did, by the way. Thank you dearly for that.
Madoka continues. "Actually, now that we're sitting down and reading through it again, It's not really very... what's the word?"
I hear something rattling very faintly.
"What word?" Miki offers.
"It's like... when it's put together in a straightforward way."
I look down to discover it coming from my teacup, still about three quarters full.
"Do you mean as in well-constructed?"
"Not exactly, it's like..."
Something is rising out of the tea.
"Direct?" Kyoko interjects with vague disinterest.
"No, it's like when the writer makes it clear-"
About a teaspoon's full hovers above the surface of the liquid and assumes the shape of a ballerina frozen mid-pose. It rotates gently in place, as if suspended by invisible thread.
"-that they know how to teach the subject."
Miki gasps. "Oh! Do you mean concise, then?"
I look amongst the three of them. It's as if none have noticed the dancer.
"That's close! But it's not necessarily the opposite of verbose, its just the, uhm, the kind of... implication of skillfulness that-"
"Eloquent?" Kyoko grins.
"Yes! That's the word. I'm saying this isn't written very... Homura, why are you looking at me like that? Is everything okay?"
I look at my cup. The figure is gone, as if it hadn't ever been.
"I'm fine. It's nothing important."
"Oho! Someone's got a cruuush~!" teases Kyoko, before Miki's elbow into her midsection elicits a pained gargle.
"You're unbelievable. To think that when you're around, I'm the sensible one by comparison."
She brushes her aside with a wave of the hand, at which point I notice the silver ring on her finger. It prompts the memory of something I've been meditating upon:
Though I am loathe to admit it, I confess I am perturbed to no end by the notion of a "puella furia", for two reasons: one, a deceptively complex problem with a straightforward explanation, and the other, a deceptively simple matter for which I have no explanation.
The former is that with all my power now, I can not only journey into the past, the future, that which is, and that which did not come to be, but to every corner of the Law of Cycles' domain. That is to say, every world in every universe in the whole of Creation. And nowhere in that endless domain do the puella furia roam, nor are they so much as mentioned, let alone written about. They, and their storyteller, do not exist.
Logically, the explanation is clear. She had offhandedly mentioned "demonic intelligence," and the existence of that much I can attest to. It is the skill of the mind that, in my current state, allows me to intuit your presence even though I cannot see and hear you. It's why I understand that you must know my world as an abstraction or simplification of your own - which is why you can perceive me, but not the other way around. I believe it may also be why I can dismiss any solipsistic or existential ramifications of this that would trouble me otherwise as the product of a simpler mind that misunderstands the gravitas of reality.
Nobody in existence has ever mentioned puella furia, therefore, whoever mentions them does not exist. Therefore, I am reading not the fruits of my own Eden, but of yours.
The latter is the problem of evolution. Evolution occurs when parent offspring capable of surviving within their environment pass on their genes to their successors, yes? Then the trouble is that magical girls do no such thing. Our genes are not passed on because we do not reproduce. Either, then:
1. There is a missing piece of information which could explain away this conundrum
or
2. The writer has overlooked this.
I have yet to think of a satisfying resolution to the former, but at the same time I'm uncertain that they might have forgotten something so elementary.
But I do think it bears noting the fifteen lineages of the species's names: Tenacity. Cruelty. Narcissism. Pride. Pessimism. Et cetera. The same fifteen, in fact.
It seems I'm not the only demon still playing with dolls.
Cut.
Traced further along the timeline is the future I hereby adopt as my present. I consider myself satisfied with my studying. The use of history note-taking proves only so useful when I can see the totality of all the time in the world, with crystal clarity.
Did I say I can? Slip of the tongue. I mean to say I have to. Forever. For the entirety of my endless life. I just thought you might like to know that.
We are back in my apartment. Now secure in the confidence of your company, I release the illusion I'd harbored since our reunion, as if to release a breath held unconsciously. I show my real face only to the dolls, and now, to you.
The casual jacket and jeans are no longer, now replaced with a crenulate black cocktail dress and bicep-length silken gloves. My soul gem, rather than the illusory imitation that adorns my hand, hangs light from my ear. Immense raven wings emerge from my shoulders. I conjure a new screen to act as a mirror and observe further.
My limbs are more pallid and frail than as in the image I maintain. Some of my hair has grayed and dulled with stress, much as my eyes have with undeath. My features are sunken, the edges of my mouth pulled tight to reveal hints of rows of needlelike fangs (helpless to crack nuts as once they were made to do), and thick, pronounced, pink, running vertically through what the dress reveals of my chest, the scars of heart surgery, a lifetime ago.
If I might reminisce on timelines long since extinguished...?
Thank you.
I still remember my first few days in Mitakihara as if they were yesterday. Given the number of times I'd repeated them, they may as well have been. Regardless, until I'd managed my, ahem... rebellion, I think it goes without saying that that first timeline - that is to say, my genuine first few days - were the most enjoyable.
I'd spent much of my childhood traveling from city to city, and on rare occasions even out of the country, due to the nature of my heart condition. My parents, of course, were as patient as they needed to be, since the alternative would have been the loss of their only daughter. For them, no surgeon or specialist was too expensive or too distant.
It almost doesn't need to be said that because of this I never had any friends growing up. To the students at every school I attended, my presence was a formality at best and a temporary inconvenience at worst. I expected much the same here.
And then I met Madoka.
What am I to say about her that you don't already know? She was kind to me in a way nobody ever had been before, but I feel that to even say as much is to undersell the fact of the matter: she was kind to me in EVERY way nobody ever had been before. She, myself, and Tomoe spent most of that month in one another's company, living out the generic fantasy of magical girls. Every day, another hyper-saccharine adventure resplendent with excitement, jokes, romance, and drama that always worked itself out by the end of the day.
It goes without saying that I became infatuated almost instantly.
I wept to myself that night, cliché though it was. Devoutly Catholic as I was at the time, self-flagellation for my feelings being out of line was second nature, regardless of whether or not I ever considered exploring those feelings (and as you yet know, the decision remains unsolved) - I had become convinced that I was some kind of failure in the eyes of God for being being this way, that I was damned to Hell for thinking the way I did.
I suppose I was right, in a sense. I'd just never expected I would be sitting upon its throne.
Hm.
Am I boring you? I'm sure you know all of this already. I can think of little else to talk on, though. I don't know the interests of higher beings, and you're not exactly the talkative type.
I should ask, at least. Can you explain my hideous appearance? Nothing seems to alleviate it. I've tried rejuvenation and healing magic, both in quantities that could restore a dying man to his prime, and nothing has come of it. Hence the illusion instead, you see. As unpleasant as it is to-
Hold that thought. Someone's knocking at the door.
I make haste down a corridor, branched by fifteen bedrooms and each marked with the name of another of my grim progeny. Pride, Jealousy, Stubbornness, and then, at the very end... Love.
I've never seen the other side of this door. At night, there are times when I hear furious knocking from behind it, and mornings where I come upon it to discover pieces of the lock taken apart and fed through the keyhole, which I am forced time and again to return to its past, intact state. Whatever lives in there, I have no idea, but I can feel there is solace to be taken in the fact that it doesn't ever manage to open it.
But the knocking stems not from this door. Then...?
Oh, excuse me. That comes from the front door. I've said what I've said about your company, but you'll understand I have to recreate my visage of health for now.
I urge in my most trusted confidant (present company excluded, of course) and, if you'd like, the third member of this book club, even though she doesn't know it yet.
Kyoko removes and folds away her sunglasses. She had taken to wearing them soon after beginning her indefinite residence in the city. After all, the Sakura family massacre was only two years ago and still fresh in the minds of some - although I do not know if the sunglasses conceal her identity, or if they make her appear intimidating enough to deter people from asking too many difficult questions, or both.
"Make yourself comfortable. Don't mind the screens, those are just notes I was taking."
"Notes on what?" she asks, and assumes a position on one of the couches.
"Nothing interesting. Something I caught an old friend reading recently. It's needlessly complicated and dense. I can't figure out what it's trying to achieve, but if you want to try for yourself, be my guest."
I depart for the kitchen (dread not the cooling of our freshly cooked dinner, for time is but falsehood, its passage doubly so). Kyoko scans my notes before calling to me,
"Hey, so what do you think a 'witch' is?"
...
Ah.