Chapter 158 - Don't Be Afraid Of Yourself
Homura was unsure of how exactly she had gotten here.
"You awake yet? If I knew this was gonna take so long, I would've waited before I started dinner."
She was lying down. She couldn't, not right now, not when Madoka was in danger. Not when she had an assignment to complete. She sat up easily, the light weight in her chest easily thrown away. Where was she? The room was small but not cramped, with plain walls and few furnishings. She was sitting in a large, excessively soft bed with thick blankets layered over her. And standing in the door…
"Ah, you're up! I'm glad you're alright. You had us all worried, Homura."
X was smiling through the doorway, hair tied back in a long trailing braid. Her usual jacket had been exchanged for a shorter coat that only partially covered the plain white shirt underneath. Compared to her usual wear, which marked her as someone supernatural even in calm moments, she looked casual. Domestic, even.
It was a nice look for her.
"Where am I? What's happened?" Homura asked. She was in the Emerald City with Mami just a moment ago.
"We're back home. The raid's over, we were just waiting for you to wake up before we celebrated. Mami said there was an ambush and you ended up cursed somehow." X recited calmly. "And before you ask-"
"Where's Madoka? Is she safe?"
"Yep, that's the question I was about to answer."
X pointed to a corner of the room, where Madoka was sleeping in an overly-plush chair. She was still wearing the same pajamas as she was last night, slumped over in her seat and snoring loudly. Completely unharmed.
"She waited here all night for you to wake up, but getting kidnapped was probably pretty exhausting. She fell asleep about an hour into it."
The mechanisms within Homura's frame grew quiet. Madoka was safe, at least for now. She could-
Wait. This was all wrong.
"This is all fake. It's a trick of some sort."
The fake X paused for a moment, then smiled calmly and nodded. "Yeah, but you're still going to be late if you don't get up. We have a hunt to get to, and Madoka's waiting for you."
That didn't make sense. "Madoka is here. You said that-"
Homura looked back to where Madoka was sitting, only to find that the scene had changed. She was standing outside on a rooftop somewhere near the border between Mitakihara and Asunaro. A faint shimmer in the air showed that a Witch's Barrier was nearby. This was the hunt the fake X had mentioned? The copy of the veteran was standing to her left, wearing her usual clothes again. To her right…
It was Madoka, again.
A jolt of panic ran through Homura as she saw she was wearing her Magical Girl uniform. Soft pink accented the white frills of her shirt dress and sleeves, exactly the way Homura remembered it. The outfit, along with the angular wooden bow in her hands, meant failure. Madoka had made a Contract and become a Magical Girl, and soon she would die. This was all fake, it had to be. But even knowing that, Homura could feel herself shaking. She could not fail again. There would never be another chance like this. It was just an illusion.
"Homura? Are you alright? You're being more quiet than usual."
Something was different, though. In every time in recent memory that Madoka had made a Contract, she had exuded a pressure that was impossible to ignore. The air would grow calm and full of gentle warmth, blazing with energy restrained enough to turn from overwhelming to comforting. Maybe Homura had been soothed by it, far back when she did not yet know to associate it with the inevitable death that followed. Sorting out her emotions was difficult even back then, to say nothing of how it was now when they were all reduced to dull echoes. Whatever her feelings, that pressure was simply not there now. And neither, Homura noticed, was Madoka's Soul Gem.
"Is something wrong? Should we stop for tonight?"
Homura snapped back to the present. Madoka was leaning towards her, worry on her face.
"I am fine. I was just thinking." Homura assured automatically. This Madoka was only an illusion. All of this was. That was the conclusion that made the most sense. There was no real meaning to easing her concern.
"Gonna share what you were thinking so deeply about that you didn't notice Madoka talking to you for about a solid minute?" X asked. Homura stalled, considering how to answer. If she should answer at all. The fake X hadn't denied that this was an illusion of some sort. Would it know anything else of use? But before Homura could decide, the fake spoke again. "Let me guess, you got distracted thinking about how pretty Madoka looked again."
"T-that-! I'm sure it wasn't- I'm not- That can't be it!" Madoka sputtered, face bright red.
"Have I been wrong before?" X said smugly. Homura stared disapprovingly at the older woman. "Oh, let me have a little fun. It's a parent's responsibility to embarrass their children at least a bit, and I never fail to uphold my responsibilities."
"That was unnecessary."
Homura still didn't know why she was replying like it was really X and Madoka here with here. She needed to get back to reality so she could save the real Madoka.
"We have wasted enough time playing around."
"Yeah, fair enough. Ready?" X commented, before thrusting her arm forward and tearing open the Witch's Barrier.
Weapons appeared in Homura's hands. Illusion or not, she wouldn't take the chance that the things here could hurt her. She raised her rifle towards the torn gap in space and readied herself for whatever the Barrier held-
-but the inside of a Barrier wasn't what she found. Instead, she was facing X standing in front of a whiteboard in a small classroom. She was sitting in a desk near the front of the class. Madoka was seated to her side, her costume exchanged for her school uniform. Homura glanced around, spotting Mami, Kyoko, and Sayaka seated around the room as well.
"Yes, Homura?" X asked from the front of the classroom. Homura only blinked. "Don't be nervous, just ask your question. I'm always here to help you."
Homura considered the proposal. She did need to know more about what was going on if was going to escape this trick and save Madoka. But could she actually trust anything in here to help her? She didn't have many other options.
"This is all an illusion." Homura stated. She had heard the fake confirm it once already, but checking again was still a place to start. It would at least decide if the copy was consistent on what it was sayin.
"Not a question, but yes, it is. I confirmed that just a minute ago." The fake X said.
"How can I leave?"
The copy scratched its chin. "Well, you should probably start by retracing your steps. How'd you get in here in the first place?"
How had Homura ended up here? She hadn't had time to focus since she arrived with things switching so often. She and Mami were progressing through the Emerald City as normal, and had run into a building too large to go around and too tall to climb over. They couldn't just blast a hole through it either without the risk of collapsing the building, so the only choice was to actually walk through. The traps inside the buildings were worse than the streets, and the walls restricted Homura and Mami's range significantly. Eventually, they'd come to a certain room, where…
Both of them had noticed something was about to happen. After so long fighting as Magical Girls, knowing when danger was approaching had been burned into them. The doors slammed shut, the room flooded with vile energy, and the pair shot off a moment before the trap could spring.
But by chance, this time they were just too slow. The room flooded with not-light, and the last thing Homura remembered was tapping Mami's shoulder and shoving her back. Back to the moment before she'd entered the room. At least one of them would make it out unhurt.
"I see you've got it now." The false X chimed in before Homura could announce that she'd done as she was asked. The fake was no longer facing the classroom, instead sketching something on the chalkboard. "Why'd you save Mami? You could've done the same thing to yourself and escaped to go save Madoka without being slowed down at all."
"I was unsure of the trap's nature. Whatever it was, there was a higher chance I'd survive it than Mami." Homura answered. Wasn't that obvious?
"Hm. And why does that matter? Never mind, we're getting off-track. You wanted to know how to get out of here, yeah? You just saw it." the fake said.
Just saw it? Then, did that mean the same method that got Mami to safety could help Homura escape? But her powers didn't seem to be working here. She hadn't ended the acceleration that she'd applied to herself and Mami earlier, but it wasn't affecting her in this place. "My abilities can't help me here."
Something moved behind Homura. She spun, half-risen from her seat and ready to engage whatever it was. She still didn't know if she could be hurt here. Scanning the room, she saw only the other girls. Mami's hand was raised.
"Yes, Mami?" X called from the front of the room.
"It's because the affects of your powers speed up both a person's mind and body. This illusion is being produced from your mind, so it's moving at an accelerated rate along with you." the Magical Girl explained.
"Why's all this sh- em, stuff gotta be so complicated?" Kyoko complained from the back of the classroom. "Isn't school s'posed to teach you stuff for your future? I'm not gonna need to know this later."
"Hey! School's important! Yeah, not everything's the most useful, but-" Sayaka interrupted back. Homura tuned out the pair's oncoming argument. It wasn't important right now.
"Then I can leave right now." Homura said as the machinery inside her whirred to life. A couple minutes into the past would be good enough. Forcing a person to take on a previous position was about as expensive as forcing them to take on a previous state. That is to say, very expensive. Between this and Mami, she would be down another hour in her reserves.
"Wait." X said, calmly and softly but still with a confidence and authority that Homura couldn't deny. She paused her exit. "Are you sure you don't want to stay here a little longer? Between the acceleration you're using and the usual time difference, you could spend a few hours in here are only lose a few seconds outside. Are you sure you don't want to take a short break?"
"No. I have to leave. Madoka needs my help."
"But Homura," the fake Madoka pleaded. Homura looked away. She didn't want to see the look on her face. "If you leave now, you'll miss dinner! Please, stay a little longer."
A scraping noise filled the air, and the scene changed again. Homura was seated next to Madoka around a triangular glass table. Sayaka and Kyoko were arguing about something unimportant with barely-concealed smiles on their faces. Yuma was nestled in Mami's lap while the older girl read to her from a book. At the head of it all, X sat and smiled at the lively scene.
Madoka took her fork and lifted a slice of cake up off Homura's cake towards her mouth. Without even thinking about it, Homura leaned forward and swallowed the forkful. This cake… it was the same thing Mami had served Homura. In the earlier timelines, when Homura first became a Magical Girl. She said she saved it for special occasions with friends.
Beside her, Madoka squeaked before taking a bite of cake for herself. "Sorry, it's just… you looked really cute, Homura."
Homura…
Homura felt…
"What do you gain by showing me this? You will not convince me to stay." Homura said, her voice flat and robotic. Like it always was. "I must save Madoka. That is the only thing that matters. You can't distract me."
"I'm not trying to distract you, Homura. Everything in this place came from you. All I am is the person you think X is. And all this place is supposed to do is show you what you want most." the fake X said. She was oddly quiet, lacking the commanding force she nearly always spoke with. "For anyone else, it would've been much more stable. It's very lucky that you managed to get Mami out of the way in time."
"Mami wouldn't be tricked by something like this. She's stronger than that." Homura stated. It felt contradictory. She had seen Mami break a thousand times. The idea that she would be able to endure rejecting her greatest desires as suggested should have been unthinkable. And yet, her statement held. It was true.
"She is." X agreed. Homura was right. "But it would still hurt her. You've got the opposite problem, really. What is it that you want?"
"I want Madoka to be safe. I want her to be happy." Homura answered.
"But what about you? Where are you in all this? What do you want for yourself?" X said, leaning forward. The conversation around them seemed muffled and distant.
"I will be wherever I need to in order to best protect Madoka. Nothing else matters." Homura said.
"You say that, but what about all this?" X gestured to the scene around them. "What about earlier? You enjoyed hunting Witches with her."
"It's too dangerous. I can't allow Madoka to put herself in danger like that just because it would make me happy." Homura said. The gears within her ground against each other, adding a metallic growl to her words.
"But would it make you happy?" X said, undeterred. When Homura said nothing, she continued. "You can't keep Madoka out of all danger. If she sees something she can do to help someone, she'll jump at it. That's just the sort of person she is."
"I can still protect her."
"And I'm not going to stop you. I just-" X's voice faltered. "I'm not gonna convince you of anything right now, am I?"
"Not while Madoka is still in danger."
"Fair enough. Better get going then. I'm certainly not gonna stop you." X said before leaning back and taking another forkful of her cake. But Homura didn't leave immediately. Not while there was still one more question she needed to ask.
"This is all the result of one of the Adult Who Tells Lies' spells. But you have been helping me leave since I was trapped. Why?" Homura said.
"Oh, that's simple." X said as she swallowed another bite of cake. "This stuff is all pulled from your brain. Can't make us do anything you think is out of character. And I did promise I'd help you." Suddenly, X's easy smile turned sharp and smug. "Oh, and there might've been a few extenuating circumstances while you were making your way through here. And we're definitely talking about this when everything's over and Madoka's safe and sound."
"What is there to talk about?" Homura asked. Her voice was the only sound left in the false room.
"I want you to be happy, Homura. If you just ask me… I won't reject you. Just don't forget that."
And before anything else could be said, Homura dragged herself back to before and out of the fake world.
