disclaimer: pmmm © gen urobuchi

41.

you held my heart in your hands

built with a heart, broken from the start

;

It takes Homura three reversed timelines, three rewinded deaths, three failures to save her, for her to realize she loved — she loves — Madoka.

Not the simple type of love spelled out between friends, or the uncomplicated sort of love shared between the saved and their savior — it was a love that when Homura closed her eyes long and hard enough she could almost imagine a happy ending for her, for Madoka, for them.

It takes her another strangled cry, another deadly wish, and another unspoken promise that she'll save her this time, dammit, for Homura to realize her love for Madoka can never be reciprocated.

Her throat chokes up at the thought, the sudden realization that if she were to ever truly save Madoka, being close to her, would be impossible. She would touch Madoka as one touches their dreams through glass—wanting, waiting, and dryly smiling at hopes that wouldn't come true.

So instead, Homura keeps an eye on Madoka.

(It is all she can do, with Madoka being the center of her existence.)

Homura notes the little thing about Madoka, the specifics, eagerly garnering all she can about the girl with the cherry blossom hair tied into pig-tails, and the sunshine smile stretched across her face. She collects and gathers and notes and remembers, swearing she'll never forget, because Madoka was the only one — the only one — to remember Homura in her time of need. For that, Madoka died and Homura would be damned if that death or the life behind it was forgotten.

And all the while she notices how Madoka ties her right pigtail before her left or how she has an embarrassing habit of tapping her feet during lectures, Homura is fighting. She is defeating witches and releasing souls and chasing Kyuubee all for the sake of a girl who smiles shyly as she approaches her friends and meows back at stray cats.

She fights with hardening eyes and a heart that was slowly, slowly, withering away.

It is timelines later, when Homura senses Madoka's end, when her eyes are getting heavy with tears that will never come (she'll reverse time before they fall), when she strikes on auto-pilot, unseeing and unhearing ( just doing and doing and doing ), when she damns red ruby eyes and enticing lies and her very pitiful self — it is that time when she realizes, that she really, really, does love Madoka, and in the same way Madoka died in her foolish love for her, Homura would waste away like-wise.

Such a truth was scary and heart-breaking and maddening to her, yet, in the same way it, was strikingly beautiful.

She dare say, even a bit romantic.

;

_an: idk what is write but ok (( btw this is set in the timeline before madoka sacrificed herself ))