Melting Like Wax [Puella Magi Madoka Magica] [Two-Shot]

[Wolfwood]

Melting Like Wax

Homura felt like she was already dead.

She never had a good life, nothing really solid to hold on. To begin with, she had never know the warm of love, having grow in a strict, catholic orphanage. She never had friends, having been the awkward, shy, bookish kid since the beginning. Nothing made her that way. She was just like that, since the beginning.

It was a simple story. She wanted to make friends, be a normal girl. But no matter how much she thought about what to say, there was just a feeling from deep down within her that made her nervous to say anything. Like she would be shoot down, anyway. So the conversations she tried to initiate always ended up one way and one way only: with her shuttering badly, trying to bring the scattered shards of her thoughts into a coherent sentence. So eventually none of the children like her, distanced herself from her and laughed at her or some such when they actually brothered to notice her. Before she knew it, all that she left was her books.

It wasn't like she was reading solely to take refuge in it, but she had to admit that it stung.

Not having a family, she had specially be fascinated by works about orphans discovering their real family and obtaining happiness eventually, through many arguments, disagreements and all sorts of awkwardness. The struggles didn't put her off. If anything, without the struggles she wouldn't have read through it. It grounded the work in reality. Because, of course, normal happiness wouldn't be easily obtained.

No, that wasn't the whole truth. If others had obtained normal happiness so easily, then why hadn't that happened to her? She would have questioned that, and utterly refused to consider that her current live didn't have some sort of meaning, that it wouldn't get better nor get worse and it would only be a continuation of her current existence, as if she was drifting through a void. As a child, even though she couldn't put it into words, that though terrified her the most.

And all of that had changed when she meet Madoka.

She had been and still was like a shining start to her. Right when she had realized that there was nothing to her in this world, when she had be thinking of ending it all, she had come and saved her, proving her wrong. She couldn't never forget her warm smile. She couldn't never forget that she extended her hand to her, of all people. She had felt alive for the first time in her whole life. She had grabbed her hand, and Madoka clasped. Even then, she had bowed that she would grow strong. So Madoka could be proud of her. So she could protect her. So she could compensate her for what she meant to her.

Now, she was gone.

Completely gone. She knew it. It didn't have anything to do that she was told so by that very person at what felt an eternity ago. She could felt it, deep down in her very bones. Kaname Madoka didn't exist. Kaname Madoka wasn't even a concept. The kid girl that had saved her had be erased from this world, as if her existence was trash that could so easily be throw away.

Homura held her Soul Gem to her chest, eyes half closed and brimming with tears. Was that small warm an illusion, or it was it proof that even though she was gone, she was here and would watch up for her? She didn't know. She couldn't know. She couldn't even think straight now.

But she had to believe it was so. Because she didn't, she would snap.

Homura had an ordinary life to return to, even now. So she went to school as if nothing had happened, as if nothing had changed. As if there wasn't a student that shouldn't be there sitting in a chair that should have be occupied by her. She was an adept liar, and she had be faking smiles since long before any of this happened, so it wasn't hard to pretend she was the Akemi Homura she had be a day and a lifetime ago.

Madoka had given her a chance at a normal life. All she wanted was to be with her, that was her sole wish, but still it didn't change that she had sacrificed herself so that Puella Magi could live happily. She was at fault for her sacrifice, so if she didn't take this chance it would be like saying everything was a lie. She couldn't let that happen.

This new world had erased the burden of a Puella Magi, it just made it much lighter. Even though they would die once the magical energy would run out, they wouldn't transform into a Witch. These Wraiths were easier to handle that Witches, too, and, moreover, thanks to the Grief Cubes the distrust and competition between Puella Magi never happened, since there was more that enough energy for all of them, so they could all freely cooperate. It was almost what she had dreamed of, so many years ago. Yes, almost.

If only Madoka were there, it would have be perfect.



Homura meet the girl's family at the park today, in the afternoon.

Meeting with Madoka's mother and father had be nice, in a sense, but the most important meeting of that day had been her meeting with her little brother. It was the very reason she had stopped on her way, after all. In the sand, with a tree branch, he had been drawing somebody who was clearly Madoka.

He shouldn't have be able to. Madoka should have be erased, in everything but for her memories. And yet, he remembered. Maybe not clearly, but he remembered her image. She didn't know how, or why, but he did. He even remembered her name. She heard it clearly from his little lips.

She had felt so happy then. More alive that dead. She had smiled from the bottom of heart. Through that whole long, long journey, the month and half that she had tirelessly repeated, she had only really smiled when she had be with Madoka. This was the first time she hadn't because of that. She simply felt a deep sense of relief.

To be honest, she hated it. More that hating Madoka's sacrifices, she hated the mere thought that it would go forgotten. That the Puella's of this new world would take their easy, comfortable lives for grated and she would have to sit in the dark, remembering and not saying anything. To her, this was a reassurance. That at least her little brother remembered Madoka meant the world for her. She had very nearly cried, right there and there.

The impossible. Maybe that simple drawing in sand, that event, was brought by Madoka herself as a message for her. As if saying 'I'm here, I know your strength'. As if telling her to kept on going. Wishful thinking? Maybe, yes, but as things were the little things were all she could hold on to.




One day, while idly overlooking the city, she told Kyubei everything. She told it the truth about this world. How it started, about all her struggles, and about how it all came to an end with nice little bow and how things had changed.

It hadn't be for any particular reason, really. It was just how it seemed. She indulging a whim. Sure, telling Kyubei wouldn't help anybody and, in the first place, she wasn't even sure it believed her, though it had listened to her story. But it wouldn't do any harm, either. So it was just a pointless whim, nothing more. She didn't have a reason, but there was no need of a reason in the first place.

… At least, that was what she told herself.

But there was a reason, lurking deep down within her.



Months of fighting. Compared to back then, this was nothing. Because, she didn't have to try to kept herself one step ahead of Kyubei, prepare herself to take advantage of her knowledge to shift the time line into something that would benefit her more, fighting for something greater that herself and her fleeting happy moments shadowed with the knowledge of what was to come and the fear that she wouldn't manage to stop it, even this time. It was child's play.

The hard part was living on.

Without Madoka, there was no point to her life. She had tried. She had really tried. She had lived her life as normal student during those months, and tried to get allow with Sayaka, Kyoko and Mami, hoping that some sort of connection would form. Hoping that she would live on, and obtain some sort of happiness, so she wouldn't make Madoka's sacrifice be useless for her. But she couldn't.

Because Madoka wasn't there anymore. Because she always had in her mind that this was real, that this world wasn't real, that it shouldn't be real because Madoka had be here before and now she wasn't. She started to hate everything she saw, those people happily living their lives unaware of Madoka's sacrifice. And, most of all, she started to hate herself more and more.

It was all… so pointless. She didn't want this. This normal, almost perfect world. There was only one single imagine burned in her mind. Madoka smiled brightly, extending her hand towards her. She only needed her. As long as she could be by her side, as long as both of them could be happy, she didn't need anything else. But here, she had nothing. Her struggles had added up to nothing.



There was a sense of weightless. As she walked through the hallways of the school, after being discharged from the hospital, she almost felt like had be here before. Not only once or twice, but many times. It was such a fleeting feeling that she was on the verge of forgetting it, but it remained there, on a back of her mind sort of way. She didn't think about the meaning on it, if there was even any. It would only be a distraction.

After all, this was the start of her new life.