Homura didn't really sleep like a normal person in the first place, to be honest. Years, or more accurately somewhere nearing a decade (she had lost track some few loops ago), of paranoia and keeping tabs on Madoka every second of every day had put quite the odd twist on her sleep instincts. Homura, on an average day, dozed, quite literally with one eye open. If she had been asked to describe it, she probably would have used fish as an example; even in sleep, she never stopped paying attention to her surroundings, and she never really closed her eyes and blocked out the world unless she was spending the time in timestop.
Which was a major problem, before this last loop. Timestop was magic intensive - it felt not unlike having a taut wire pulling on her spine in some undefined direction, slightly electrifying in a somewhat uncomfortable yet not unpleasant way. Of course, now she had a small cache of Clear Seeds stockpiled. It was still an odd experience going to sleep with the odd tingle in her back running, but in a way it was relaxing knowing that nothing was going to happen while she slept, to Madoka... Or anyone she cared about.
Madoka. Sabrina. Tomoe-san. Miki Sayaka. Sakura Kyouko. Kazusa-san. The other twenty or so people whe had gotten to know, closely. Close enough to hurt if they were taken away. Close enough to care.
And yet, here she was.
Homura stopped dozing and opened her eyes. The pale whites of the hospital ceiling greeted her with something she was completely unaccustomed to. An unfamiliar ceiling.
Homura took a moment to take a fortifying breath of air. Fresh air. She sat up, and stretched, ignoring the protests of her exhausted body like always, and the scratches, puncture wounds, and gashes still healing from the fight last night. Outside, the birds sung a triumphant song to herald the dawn of early May.
Homura didn't sleep, she dozed. But she, finally, for once, had a feeling that was going to change. The odd giddiness of the feeling ran down and around her stomach, through her muscles like a dance, and made her legs want to twitch. She didn't actually dance, of course. After what had happened to her right knee, she probably shouldn't have been walking for the next week. It was only her status as a magical girl that allowed her to heal as fast as she did. And even so, her wounds hurt. The pain let her know something far more important and poignant than the fact that she was alive though.
Wounds, like clothes, didn't persist through loops.
With a slightly pained grunt, she managed to lever her painful legs off the hospital bed. Fortunately, this wing was "generously" donated by the Shizukis, and thus the doctors here didn't ask many questions when a group of teenage girls showed up in need of healing. It also meant that Homura and her friends got very nice hospital rooms indeed, far better than the one she had after her Myxoma was removed (although she did earnestly appreciate the orphanage scraping up the funds, no matter how meager - She may have been a nerd, but the last thing she wanted was to be stuck in her bed all day lest she start slowly suffering oxygen deprivation). To whit, this one had a personal bathroom off to the side, a small counter, and even a flat-screen television hung across from her bed (Homura, it was to be noted, had developed a distinct distaste for television for a great many number of reasons) which was currently turned off. There was also a small calendar, hung across from the door of the bathroom in such a way that it wasn't quite visible from her bed.
Homura had a vested interest in the calendar. When she had been admitted into the room, it had read May 1st. And while she was of course concerned about Tomoe Mami's compound fractures, Sabrina and Kazusa-san seemed to have the worrying well in hand. Miki Sayaka would be fine once she woke up and she was able to heal herself, and if she had to hear Sakura Kyouko whine about something as minor as a concussion one more time she was going to have an aneurysm. In any case, Madoka had emerged unharmed and without contract, marking the loop as a success. Her first success.
If her legs had been whole, she would have twirled. Her love was safe.
The calendar. Homura flinched and started hobbling toward it, ignoring the pleas from her knee. She could have Miki Sayaka heal it later in any case; what mattered now was getting to that calendar!
Homura caught herself on the doorframe to the bathroom, turning to look at the calendar... Which still read May 1st.
Homura gave a sour expression. The least the nurse could do is change the calendar.
Sighing, Homura grasped the little sheet of paper, and, taking care not to rip down the whole thing, tore it off. Then the world dropped out from underneath her, and suddenly the sun didn't feel nearly as warm.
March 16th
Homura began to hyperventilate. How could this have happened? She never flipped her shield over - never initiated the loop. It was her power. Her wish! She wanted to save Madoka! That was the wish! AND IT HAPPENED! MADOKA WAS SAFE, SO WHY HAD SHE GONE BACK?! WHY WAS MADOKA IN DANGER AGAIN?!
Thick black fingers of despair clutched at her, as her resolve crumbled into dust. Fury fought a losing battle with depression for her heart, and she fell back against the bathroom door. It was impossible. Totally impossible. How could-
Ring ring!
The phone, one of the new tablet-like ones Sabrina had bought for everyone just a week or so ago, buzzed and chirped a mockingly sweet tune on her bedside table.
Ring ring!
Without quite knowing why, still in the middle of her despair spiral, Homura limped over to the table and picked up the phone. The stupid grin Sabrina always wore smiled back up at her.
An ounce of confusion flickered in the heart of despair. Homura, as if she had weights on every finger, swiped the tiny green circle to the right.
"HOMURA WHAT THE FUCK?!"
Homura's despair flinched back a little.
It wasn't really hope, to be quite honest. Hope was a happy emotion, even in Homura's experience. Hope could and would hold back despair if even the smallest ounce of it remained, if even a tiny fragment of it was nurtured by it's owner. But this wasn't hope. It was abject confusion, laced through with a tiny tinge of irritation.
Some distant part of Homura, apparently with a black sense of humor, supplied that if Hope was the feeling a mother hand when seeing her newborn baby, then this emotion must be the emotion a soldier, in the midst of a firefight, was approached by the creepy individual in a mask from the Burger King commercials, and offered a meal.
"Homura?!" Came Sabrina's voice again.
"I-" Homura twitched, before gathering the willpower necessary to lift the phone to her ear. "I'm here."
"Homura, what the hell's going on?" Sabrina asked, a note of panic in her voice.
Homura was silent, not at all wanting to say her deepest fear.
And yet. "...I think... I looped."
That got a pause. "...what?!"
"I... I didn't do it on purpose, I swear-"
"Shush." Sabrina said, stopping Homura in her tracks yet again with a tinge of irritation. "I know. You didn't do it on purpose, because you didn't loop."
"Impossible." Homura said, shaking her head. Her hurt knee was starting to shake, but she ignored it.
"Homura, my soul gem is right here. In the room across from you - if you had looped, it would have had to be in your shield for me to be here, right?"
Homura bit her lip, trying to think of a way around the logic. "You've always been unusual."
"I know, but that was because of- Well, you know what that was all about."
Homura sighed, admitting defeat. "If that's not it, Vee Sabrina," she said formally, "then why are you here?"
"I dunno? Erm... Just to make sure, Homura, but does the date on your phone say March 16th too?"
A quick check confirmed it. "Yes." Homura breathed, her blood at this point replaced entirely by adrenaline. It was not a good feeling.
"That's super weird." Sabrina said.
"Unhelpful."
"Sorry. But point is, that we both have phones that say March 16 on them, despite the fact that we bought them before that date and you didn't loop." Homura nodded along as Sabrina listed what they knew, trying to piece things together.
"The calendar..."
"What about it?"
"It says March as well."
"That's... extremely creepy. None of our friends are cruel enough to play this sort of prank..." Sabrina said. Homura shook her head in denial, even though she knew Sabrina couldn't see.
"No... Mikuni?"
"No way. Last I checked Oriko still didn't have her foresight."
"You're certain you can tell?"
"It's an Incubator design. If there's one thing from the rats you can trust, it's their engineering."
"If it's not Mikuni Oriko... then who?"
"I don't know. It's pretty elaborate for a prank."
Elaborate, Homura thought, the fight-or-flight response starting to drain out of her, was going a bit too far. Changing one piece of furniture and two computer displays wasn't Homura's idea of elaborate. "Is that so?"
"Yeah." Sabrina said, sounding dead serious. "I don't know how, but they managed to get all the nurses in this wing to just up and leave. And Mami's still knocked out - I don't want to pull the plug on her morphine, but..."
Homura felt another chill run down her spine. "All the nurses are gone?"
"Yeah." Sabrina said, and Homura could hear the creaking of a door from her phone, and just slightly from outside the door to her room. "It... looks like it's just you, me, Mami... Maybe Sayaka. I hope Sayaka's here."
Homura hung up the phone and opened the door, accidentallly bashing Sabrina when it flew outwards. "Ow!" complained the foreigner.
Homura didn't care. She didn't even look at Sabrina, instead bringing up her phones contact list and paging down towards Madoka's number. Bringing it up she- twisted violently away from the peering eyes of a certain stupidly tall girl. "No looking!" She hissed, trying not to blush.
"She is kinda cute when she's sleeping, isn't she?" Sabrina said anyway, trying to put on a nonchalant grin. Somehow it fell flat though, and the silence deepened as the phone rang... And rang again... and rang again... And rang again...
"I'm sorry." a voice suddenly issued from the phone. "But the number you have dialed doesn't seem to be present on our network! Please hang up and try-" Homura slashed her finger violently across the screen to hang up, immediately twitching into her magical girl costume. Sabrina managed to get a hand on her shoulder, which was fine by Homura - the faster she got to the Kaname residence the better.
Whatever took Madoka from her, took May 2nd from her... She was going to make it pay in a way she hadn't ever even contemplated before... Once she found it, she was going to make sure it suffered an eternity for every goddamn second Madoka was out of reach.
It was almost calming when that live wire ran down her back. She was afraid, she realized now, about what might have happened. To her timestop, a bit, but mostly to her purpose.
She had purpose now.
End March 16th (Encore)
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This was originally going to be feels, but then I had a sick idea about how things might go wrong.
Next time, Homura goes full murderface... but on who? Sabrina tries to mitigate the property damage. Is Sayaka even there, or is she wherever the missing nurses went? Speaking of, where did they go?
Progress is always slow, sometimes painful. But inevitably, time marches on. Even the willpower which stood a decade against that march must inevitably crumble... taking everything to an end, and a grand finale.
