The doorbell rang. An unprecedented occurrence. Homura knew who was behind it.
She opened the door anyway.
“Um. I...wanted to give you your school assignments. I noticed you missed class so...I took some notes for you.”
It was a fib. A daring, determined trick. An excuse.
Madoka was not supposed to have noticed her absence.
“Th-They may not be the best notes! But...I thought they might still be helpful...”
The ever-seemingly shy Madoka. She would speak with strength one day, strength that already lay so close to her skin, it showed in the way she did not tremble whatsoever. The way she reached out and reached out.
Homura had told her hadn’t she? And in a few years, Madoka should find the steel in herself. This time it wouldn't be tempered by pain and loss.
She was making sure of it.
Madoka stepped forward as she fished the pieces of paper from her bag. Homura slowly lifted a hand to receive the small stack.
“Thank you, Madoka,” she murmured, then moved to close the door.
But instead Madoka asked: 'Could...could I come in?' and Homura stepped backwards as though she had been struck very, very softly.
This invasion was not a deliberate assault, however much it felt like it. Just a curious young doe wandering too close to an intriguing patch of darkness in the forest. Homura would make sure that no predators would harm her – but scare, it was necessary to learn of danger if one wanted to survive.
She laid back onto her bed. In her room, in her house. It had been her house for years now. Shadows skittered sniggering in the corners of her eyes. In her world. There were legacies she could not erase, she knew that she should not in any case.
It was her bed, but she was still caught on it. Again. A legacy she could not erase? She should.
Madoka did not smile this time. She had once, back before the living room held a guillotine masquerading as a pendulum.
There were no holograms now, no plans outlined on the walls, the house once again held nothing much more than a couch and a bed. Stark, modern, old, decrepit. Homura had cast no helpful glamours over it. She didn't think she would need them.
But Madoka Madoka Madoka. She always somehow managed to step into places Homura did not think she wanted her to, she always managed to knock Homura over. Hold.
She laid back onto her bed in a last bid for peace, a last show of power. But she knew. She had no choice. She curled her lips into a smirk with no effort at all.
Madoka did not smile. She did not cry like she had many times more.
Her eyes were pink and not gold and that was really all Homura cared about. Disbelieving snickering tickled her ear
can't even keep her from the heart of your storm
“Do you like what you see?” Homura asked, and her tone was deliberate. Her words were deliberate. Homura wanted to chase her from this place, this emptiness, she wanted to tell her to never come back, to banish her, to make sure that she would never turn up in front of her door again.
That she would never again be tempted to let her in.
Madoka shifted, blinked, as though broken from a spell. She looked around and back at Homura. Red crept into her cheeks.
“Your home,” (home) “looks very nice.”
