Author's Note: I watched Madoka and cried. You should also watch it and cry. Each prompt for this is a single word taken out of the episode titles, and there are twelve of them.

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in another life

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001. dream

The first time we met, you had feet made of silk that I worshipped, following your every step as if the displaced air in your wake was manna from heaven and your scuffed shoes would lead me on a trail to eternity. With you as my guardian angel, I could have lived forever in a dream. But you were lighter than I expected when it turned to nightmare and I turned into ash to save your soul.

002. wonderful

You were wonderful, beautiful when you fought alongside me. The three of us, you, me, Mami - we could survive anything. That is, until we didn't, and you became smoke and I grasped onto nothingness again.

003. afraid

I was so scared, so scared when you crossed arms with Mami to save me - that you would sacrifice your dearest friend to protect me. We would fight together until the end, into hell, when our arms fell across each other in exhaustion and we nearly died in each other's arms. And when you asked the unthinkable twice over of me, I didn't hesitate.

004. miracles

Kyubey said it was a miracle when you became a witch, that you'd sacrificed yourself for the sake of the universe, and that no one ever needed to worry again. It's hard to worry when you're dead; but I didn't care about the rest of the world, because so long as I stood by, you would not suffer in your own despair. The true miracle here was learning how to tame you, how to defeat you, while knowing full well that I couldn't.

005. regret

I grew stronger, passing across time and space again and again and again, with my lungs and my legs healing from sickness. I made no friends; I trusted no one, because no one seemed to trust me. As long as there was a chance that you could be saved, I would not regret, not for a single moment.

006. right

I was right about Sayaka, you know, whether you'll admit it or not, about her heart that was too strong and too wide for a magical girl. None of them lasted, never could they last as long as me. Because I alone understood that the path I walked was not one in which I could afford to be sentimental; there was one reason I was alive, so I could abandon all others, all others except for you.

007. feelings

A shattered pair of reading glasses in the train tracks - that is all that is left of me in this life. I wasn't the one to be remembered; if you were sunlight, I was the shadow; that is to say, I only existed where you did. No longer human, I couldn't feel the pain of reliving your death over and over; it was much simpler to become a machine, a timepiece in your never-ending life, a life that I could only hope to leave behind.

008. stupid

There were the times I made unforgivable mistakes - times when I somehow managed to worsen your fate. Those lives were the most painful of all for me, and they were the ones I remembered most vividly - the lives in which I learned that your lips taste of the sweetest plum blossoms in May, the lives in which I learned that you are both resilient as water and as fragile as ice. You taught me to be frigid, because the lives in which you suffered the most were the lives in which we melted together.

009. never

They say that if you know someone so terribly well that you know every weakness, every flaw - and yet you still love them, then that is true love. I never doubted that you were beautiful, but your clumsy mistakes and habit of failing over and over - it got tiresome at times, I won't pretend that it didn't. But never would I have given up on you, just as I could never tell you why I cared so much.

010. rely

Considering that I was faithful enough to chase you across a thousand lifetimes, I had such little faith in your choices. How ugly I must have seemed to you, how selfish! That I couldn't bring myself to rely on my best friend, the one who held my life and my soul in her hands, the one who saved me before she ever became the universe.

011. left

Being wrapped in light and left behind is not what I wanted, not what I expected. I don't know what I expected, to be honest, because that had always seemed like such a distant wasn't your transcendence, and it most certainly wasn't your hands upon my stomach like a blessing… which made being left behind all the more painful.

012. friend

You were the best part of me, undeniably, irrevocably, as bright as the ribbon with which I tie back my hair. What was left for me, what was left with you gone, with a hole in my life as large as the universe? But there are still enemies to kill, still magical girls to protect; and as long as I remain here, I will do what it takes to keep you alive, if only through the words on my lips and the flick of my wrist.

Because magical girls live no other lives, and so I do what I can with this one that I have.