Hmm.
Another failure.
Homura stood among the ruins of Mitakihara. The dark figure of Madoka's witch, Kriemhild Gretchen, looms in the distance.
Usually, Homura would have already gone back to March 16 at this point, but she can't help but slump down in exhaustion onto the piece of debris that she stood over.
She needs a break.
T'was a shame too, this timeline miraculously went well. Her three magical girl 'friends': Mami Tomoe, Sayaka Miki, and Kyoko Sakura, managed to reach the day that Walpurgisnacht would arrive to lay waste upon Mitakihara. Not only that, there was also no intervention from interlopers such as Oriko Mikuni and her lapdog Kirika Kure.
And they were actually doing some damage to Walpurgisnacht too! And yet, to Madoka, they weren't fast enough. Madoka had thought that they were actually losing the battle. Sure, the favor was not in the hands of the magical girls of Mitakihara, but they still had a winning chance!
At least, that's how it seemed at first. When Mami's Tiro Finale managed to actually hurt Walpurgisnacht, the witch decided that it was the right moment to take off her proverbial glove. The following event had been a swift massacre for the three other magical girls. Homura couldn't help but hic in sadness. Even after all this time, Homura couldn't keep her cold facade up.
Madoka, after witnessing almost all her friends getting massacred by the witch…the poor girl wished for the power to defeat Walpurgisnacht, and Kyubey was all too happy to grant it.
Such an ambiguous wish…What sort of 'power' did Madoka really get to have her wish granted? What does 'defeat' mean in this context? To save? To destroy? To simply knock out Walpurgisnacht?
Questioning it is pointless now.
Maybe she should spend the entirety of the next timeline to go on a break. As much as she hate to admit it, she actually contemplated stealing a boat to relax alone on some tropical island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Maybe bring Madoka along with her while she's at it.
With a final sigh, Homura prepared to turn her shield so she could try again in the next timeline.
However, while Homura was distracted thinking about all those trivial things, she completely forgot about the fact that Kriemhild Gretchen was still there.
Homura certainly did not notice that the witch had launched a tendril at Homura, seeing as Homura is the only soul that now lives among the ruin of Mitakihara.
Just as Homura touched her shield, she was suddenly yanked up by Madoka's witch. In her panic at this unexpected turn of events, Homura's grip on her shield slipped. Her way up to Kriemhild Gretchen's face had been a long ascend, and all the while, Homura tried to get her hand on her shield, to no avail. With how fast her ascend had been, combined with how shaky Kriemhild's grip had been, trying to hold her own shield had been a challenge, to say the least.
Finally, her ascend stopped in front of the witch's face. Homura couldn't bear to look at it, even if she tried to.
"I don't have time for this!"
Right then and there, Homura spun her shield to return back in time. The witch, not exactly understanding what Homura was up to, only tightened her grip.
The pain made Homura spin her shield too roughly, and in that instant, she was sent back to a much earlier time than usual.
When Homura first woke up, she expected to wake up in the hospital as usual, not the Catholic school that she had attended back in Tokyo. She quickly adapted to her current situation. Otherwise, all these people around her would be suspicious that a meek, shy 9-year-old such as her immediately turned into someone cold and calculating.
She didn't even know that it was possible, but she was sent back 5 years earlier than usual. At some point, she looked at a calendar.
It was March 16, 2006.
Truly, there are still many things that she herself doesn't know about her own power and potential.
After Homura made her way to the relative safety of the bathroom, the cold visage that usually masked her melted into a nervous wreck…before she calmed herself down.
"It's alright Homura. You can still salvage this. All I did in the last timeline was crank my shield too hard. If I put it in the right place, it should bring me back. Even if it doesn't, then at least I'll have 5 years to prepare for Walpurgisnacht this time."
Summoning her now relatively medium-sized shield, Homura could see that her shield does indeed look off. Yanking it back to the right place had been quite a challenge for her younger body, but she eventually did it. As soon as she did, Homura was transported back to March 16, 2011.
In her perspective, she was back to the all too familiar Mitakihara hospital.
"I did it!" Homura couldn't help but feel happy at the small accomplishment.
Although, there's this nagging feeling that something was off.
It's probably just her imagination.
Little did Homura know, something else was dragged along by her botched-up time travel.
Back on March 16, 2006, within the Kaname household, a 9-year-old Madoka Kaname woke up with the strangest dream. At this point, the detail had already been quite fuzzy, but she remembered becoming a magical girl and defeating a giant monster in one shot with her magical bow!
But the second part of the dream was a bit eerie. At that part of the dream, she stood high above what she assumed to be Mitakihara, and she was holding a beautiful, raven-haired magical girl right in front of her face. All that doesn't sound too bad, but the expression on the raven-haired magical girl was that of someone in pain. And then the dream ended.
It made Madoka feel kinda bad.
Shaking her head, she headed to the family bathroom to brush her teeth. Due to some renovation at Mitakihara's elementary school that day, Madoka didn't need to rush herself to prepare. Sluggishly, she made her way in front of the bathroom mirror.
Madoka did not expect her right eye to be blue when she looked at her reflection in the mirror. It was supposed to be pink.
Madoka was slightly freaked out, to say the least.
"MAMA! ONE OF MY EYES IS BLUE!" Madoka shouted
"Keep it down! It's still early in the morning!" a voice that sounded like a slightly lower-pitched version of herself ordered. The pitch is still within the realm of possibility for her young vocal cords.
"Huh?! Who's there?" Madoka asked, now with lower volume.
"Me!" Madoka's mouth spoke on its own.
At first glance, it would seem like Madoka was talking to herself.
"H...Hueh? Are you a ghost?" asked a frightened Madoka.
"I'm not a ghost. I'm a witch!" her own mouth retorted.
"Then why are you possessing my body?"
"I don't know! I was already here when we woke up this morning!"
"We?"
It was then that Madoka's mother, Junko Kaname, burst into the room with a broom that she held as a makeshift weapon.
"Madoka! What's wrong?!" Junko asked with a composed but alert expression.
"Mama?!" Madoka asked in surprise.
"Mama!" the ghost that was possessing Madoka exclaimed.
"THERE'S A GHOST POSSESSING ME AND ONE OF MY EYE IS BLUE!" the scared young Madoka bawled and cried.
Gently putting her makeshift weapon down, Junko wordlessly took a closer look at Madoka, and one of her tearful eyes is indeed blue now, but…
"What do you mean there's a ghost possessing you?" Junko asked, with obvious disbelief in her tone.
"I meant what I said!" Madoka said, still with that tearful expression.
"I am not a ghost! I am a witch!" the ghost, with an equally tearful expression mixed with a frown, tried to correct Madoka.
Yeah, something is definitely not right. Junko had seen something like this before in her career, or at least heard of it, and she knows exactly how to confirm it or not.
"What's your name?" Junko asked her daughter.
"Wha-?" Madoka was confused.
"Huh?" the ghost was equally confused.
"Let me rephrase, tell me your full name." Junko now asked more urgently.
What kind of question is that, of course it was-
"Madoka Kaname."
"Kriemhild Gretchen."
Silence permeated the Kaname bathroom when that last name was uttered. Even the 'ghost' herself was confused.
"I knew it." Junko muttered under her breath. She then looked up at Madoka, "Go take a shower for now. We'll visit a psychiatrist after breakfast."
"W-what for?" Madoka asked.
That day, Madoka Kaname was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Officially, at least.
The psychiatrist explained in a way that her 9-year-old brain could understand: there is another girl living in her body. When her mother asked what can be done about it, the psychiatrist explained that the condition is incurable, and that the Kaname would have to deal with it.
The Kaname took the news quite well. To Junko (and later that day, Madoka's father, Tomohisa Kaname), it only means they just got another child to care for. To Madoka, at least after she was told that she wasn't possessed by a ghost, started to treat Kriemhild Gretchen as a friend (and later, as a sister) that lives in her body.
As for her eye condition, nobody was sure what the cause of that was. But no complication was found alongside it, and thus it was written off as a coincidence that Madoka's eye condition happened at the same time as when her Dissociative Identity Disorder manifested.
T'was the night of March 16. Madoka lay on her bed, intent on asking Kriemhild about herself.
"So, Kriem-chan. Can I call you that?" Madoka asked, still a little nervous about the whole thing.
"Of course!" Kriemhild exclaimed, finding the nickname cute.
"Um, let's see…do you know where you came from?" Madoka asked.
"Uhh…Mitakihara?" Kriemhild answered, not exactly sure what the question meant.
"But you weren't in my body yesterday! Where did you come from exactly?" Madoka asked a bit too eagerly.
"I dunno. Your brain?" Kriemhild answered nonchalantly.
Sensing that this particular line of questions was going nowhere, Madoka decided to move on, "Next question: what's a witch?"
"I dunno." Kriemhild answered nonchalantly, again.
"But you keep calling yourself a witch." Madoka exclaimed with pure curiosity.
"It's…an instinct, you know?" Kriemhild tried to answer, a bit uncertain with herself if what she was saying is correct or not, "Like how I know that my name is Kriemhild Gretchen. I mean, what does that name even mean? I just know that it feels right, just like how I feel about me being a witch."
Madoka innocently sighed, "Oh well, I guess we'll find out sooner or later."
"I guess we will." Kriemhild agreed.
A comfortable silence filled Madoka's (and now Kriemhild's) room for a little while, until the silence was broken by Madoka.
"Hey, Kriem-chan?"
"Hm?"
"What was the first thing that you remembered when you first appeared?" Madoka asked.
Kriemhild hummed before answering, "Well…there's this dream that I had this morning. I was wearing this cute pink outfit while holding a bow…"
Madoka perked up, "Wait, is it the one where we beat a giant monster?"
"Yeah!"
Madoka was happy that their interaction is going somewhere, "Did you see another girl in your dream?"
"The one with black hair?" Kriemhild said with a hint of fondness. Something which Kriemhild herself doesn't know where that came from.
Madoka beamed up, "Yeah! I think we just had the same dream this morning!"
Kriemhild crossed their hands under their head, "Wow…I wonder what it means."
Madoka was inclined to agree, "Yeah…"
…
Kriemhild then remembered something else, "…oh, and then, after we woke up, I think the both of us now share all your past experiences and memories. Remember how I also called out for Mama this morning?"
"Oh yeah, you did…Wait, does that mean you also know all my embarrassing moments?!" asked Madoka, who was aghast at the concept.
"Hey! Those are my embarrassing moments too!" Kriemhild retorted.
What followed was a tense silence, and then they both laughed.
"Wehihihi, I was just joking Kriem-chan!"
"Wehihihihihi, I know Madoka-chan."
The rest of the night was filled with more chatter and bonding between Madoka and her newfound roommate/friend/sister/witch until the both of them exhaust themselves and fell asleep.
The both of them dreamt of separate and trivial things that night.
This idea had been living rent free in my head, I had to get it out somehow.