Tangled Regrets – Chapter 1 – Homura’s (Last) First Day [Complete] (Patreon)

Disclaimer: So that this story fits inside of Patreon’s Community Guidelines, it’s been revised so that it occurs in an AU where all the characters are legal adults. This includes the characters not involved in sexual events. Everybody is an adult, without a single exception. Sorry about the inconvenience.

I take another step toward what will be my classroom from now on. And hesitate.

I am a plain girl, the only thing that stands out about me are my long braids, but that’s only because, lying on a hospital bed, there wasn’t much to do but letting my hair grow. The nurses would sometimes try to compliment me on it, saying things like ‘Your hair is so gorgeous, Homura! You will get a boyfriend in no time at all!’

I never wanted a boyfriend; I would have been happy with just a… friend.

No! None of that, Homura; you need to be bolder! This is your chance after so long! You are finally healthy enough to leave that… that room. Yes, you are a glasses-wearing, sickly girl who has never stuck long enough to have a real friend, but…

There should be a ‘but’ in there, somewhere…

Sighing at once again having managed to bring myself down rather than up, I take another step toward my future classroom, where I will hopefully meet that friend I’ve been hoping for for so long.

Even after years apart, even after fighting and fighting so she can be not like I first remember her, I still yearn for Madoka to—

Madoka?

Who is Madoka?

My eyes get blurry, and I think I am crying before I realize that no, it isn’t that. It’s like I am wearing the wrong glasses, so I take them off and—

I see. Clearly. Like I’ve never have before.

Astonished, I look at the pair of lenses in my hands. Why didn’t I leave them behind at the hospital? It was one of the first things I fixed after Madoka’s third death—

Who is Madoka?!

My head… It doesn’t hurt, not really, but it’s like it should, like spears of molten steel should be driven straight through my skull, and I sway on my feet, barely able to put one in front of another, to take yet another step toward my classroom, toward Madoka…

I need to save Madoka.

I don’t know who she is, I don’t know why she is in danger, but I know it. I know it in a way that I can only compare to air coming into my chest, to my weak heart managing to beat once more. I know Madoka needs to be saved, Madoka Kaname needs to be saved, and I know only Homura Akemi can do it.

So I gather my strength, the strength that should allow me to jump on top of a crumbling building and ricochet off it—

So I gather my strength, the strength that should allow me to stand even after being broken again, and again and again—

So I gather my strength, the strength that has been barely enough to get myself out of a hospital room after a life of illness, and take another step.

Forward.

Forward, because I can never turn back, because I refuse to stop fighting, to let Madoka—

I fall down. The tiled floor wobbles in front of me, rippling with every labored breath as if made of a thick liquid that is just waiting for me to lie down so it can finally engulf me.

On my knees, the edges of the tiles scrapping my skin through my black nylons, I crawl forward.

I can’t stop. I can’t rest. Every second I don’t learn, I don’t train, I don’t fight, is a second of weakness dragging me down.

I am tempted to stop time and wait for my body to recover because this is abnormal, my magic should be—

What magic?

The question almost makes me stop, but I refuse. Even after my body drops down to the floor and my legs drag lifelessly, I refuse to stop, pulling myself forward with fists that pound and stick to the far too sharp tiles. I am not bleeding yet, but it’s only a matter of time till I catch a corner and it rips into my palm, so I try to send my consciousness into my Soul Gem—

My what?!

Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

Madoka.

I finally reach the door, and I could cry in relief, but the handle is too high for me to reach. I don’t even need to think about it as I punch the wood with as much strength as I can gather.

A section of the door explodes, and sharp splinters dig into my skin. I am finally bleeding, and that’s yet another thing that is suddenly so familiar, so ingrained in—

I hear rushed footsteps, and the door flies open. A woman I have never seen kneels before me, her dark purple hair framing mature lines that I would have dreamed about someday having before I found out I would never age, I would always be Homura Akemi, stuck in a body that was mine only in the loosest of terms—

“Miss Kaname?” My lips blurt the question out without permission, and her purple eyes widen, first in shock and then in something warmer.

Her hands cradle my cheeks, tender like I always want to imagine my mothers’ would have been, and she brushes back hair that is halfway undone from the braids that I shouldn’t have, because that’s not who I am, not anymore, and—

“Homura. Homura, sweetheart, how many of you are there?”

And it’s a weird question, the sort of question that should make me distrust this stranger who isn’t and her tender touch—

“I don’t know.” But I answer it. Because it’s, I think, the right question.

And she nods, a small smile flitting through perfectly painted lips the color of her eyes before they settle into something grave and serious.

“Madoka!” she yells, and my head jerks up at the name, at the something that I know is beyond the certainty of the sun, the moon, and the stars. “Help your new classmate to the nurse’s office!”

Before I even manage to turn my head to the side from where tender hands are cradling me, there’s another face in front of mine.

Pink hair pulled in twin tails with two flashy red ribbons holding them together. Pink eyes opened in wonder, lips without gloss or unnatural color that twitch in something I have yet to recognize, but I know, know like my name before it became meaningless sound without even a kanji to—

“Of course, mom,” she says.

And four arms lift me up, the floor no longer so unstable, so fluid.

My own arm goes around slender shoulders whose shape I’ve known for years even if it’s the first time I touch them, and my body rests against one that should be so much weaker than mine.

Her scent… The hint of lavender flitting over something sun-kissed and warm… I know her scent.

And that… That seems to be enough for the rush of thoughts that don’t belong and memories that aren’t to quieten as I allow Madoka, Madoka, to take me to the nurse’s office like I’ve so often asked her to do even if I never have.

***

I am lying on a cot that manages by a narrow margin not to remind me of the hospital bed where I’ve been confined for years.

There’s a girl sitting beside me I have never seen.

And my world revolves around her.

“You just need some time,” she tells me in a soft voice that carries far too much gentleness and care for someone who should be a stranger.

“You… You remember me, don’t you, Madoka?” And her name… Finally saying it… I feel like something’s come undone inside me.

“Of course I do, Homura.” Careful fingers thread through my hair, undoing my braids completely so that black tresses will spread around my prone form like a halo of shadows.

I feel lighter. Better.

“I know you. I feel like I have, for years, yet I don’t. What is happening to me, Madoka?” And I have to add her name at the end of the sentence because I need to say it once more, to have the sound that emerges from my lips be real, to have Madoka exist and be within reach.

In my grasp.

But I can’t say all of that. Not yet, maybe not ever.

The last thing I want is to scare her. To scare Madoka.

Pink, shy, downturned eyes meet mine. They should be so much like mine. So much like the scared, eager girl I saw in the mirror this morning.

“I can’t tell you. Not yet. You need to find out for yourself.” And I would think the words cruel were it not because they come from someone I struggled to teach time and again that kindness can be a cruelty all of its own. That…

“No matter how hard you try, there is no thanks or recompense,” I blurt out without quite knowing why. And Madoka flinches at those words, but she doesn’t flinch away.

“Do you remember Sayaka, then?”

I don’t. That’s a name I haven’t heard, a name that doesn’t belong to a cheerful, overly bossy and proud girl with short, blue hair that always fought until there was nothing left to give, that always died, again and again, even as she struggled to be the best of us, as she tried to be better than she was allowed to be by a world—

“Shush. It’s all right, Homura. Sayaka is all right.”

I am crying, and Madoka is consoling me, like the first time her Soul Gem blackened and she asked me to kill—

I scream.

I thrash, my strength still lacking, my power still beyond my reach as I cry out for something that stabbed inside me, a dagger of icy crystal lodged deep in my chest since that first time these hands killed the girl I had sworn to protect, since that awful, terrible promise that didn’t let me—

Warm arms surround me, and a hint of lavender calms me down.

Madoka is hugging me, embracing me, and that means the month is almost over, that she knows, she knows and I’ve failed yet again, and—

“Kyubey. I need to kill—”

“You don’t. Not anymore. I can’t become a magical girl, Homura. Never again. It’s over.”

And I feel an overwhelming sense of relief, but I don’t know why, and, amid warm arms and soothing lavender, as my tears dry on my cheeks, I fall asleep.

***

I wake up to find a sleeping, tender, almost childish face resting next to mine.

Madoka. Madoka Kaname. A kind girl who would waste a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity just to heal an injured cat by the side of the road.

A girl so kind it drove me insane, as, no matter what I did, no matter how hard I fought for her, to spare her, she would always find a way to get involved, to wish for something noble and stupid just so she could fight monsters by my side.

A girl who, if I can believe her, if I allow myself to believe her, can no longer be a magical girl.

And she’s lying on the same cot as I am, hugging me in her sleep, clutching me with a strength that is not beyond human, that doesn’t betray a body remade by—

Kyuubey.

But…

Collectors.

They have helped us. For centuries, if the history books are to be believed.

Because…

How many of me are there?

Two.

There’s only two, but one is so much more than the other, so much older, experienced, broken.

Because this Homura hasn’t had to watch her best friend die, become a monster, sacrifice herself, or drift away in a sea of time that she could not navigate by my side.

This Homura is tender, weak, like the one who first walked into Mitakihara Middle School without knowing what pink twin tails would mean for her future.

This Homura also lost her mother during childbirth, also had an absent father that became ever more absent as she remained stuck in a hospital room. This Homura was also lonely, clumsy, bad at everything because she never had a chance to even try to apply herself.

It’s the Homura I despise, the one who first fell for the alien’s lying truths. The one I left behind along with those ridiculously unwieldy braids that only got in the way when I—

I don’t have my weapons.

I almost panic when I realize it. My shield doesn’t appear when I call for it, and I can only feel an echo of it, but even so I know that echo is empty.

It’s the first time in years I don’t have a gun at the twitch of my fingers, and I never realized how important that safety was until now that it’s gone.

I… may have to delve into homemade explosives. Again.

A downgrade from recoilless rifles, that’s for certain.

Mami had it so easy…

…

Is Mami alive? Sayaka is, and Madoka knows I know her, and it is the beginning of the month, so maybe…

I shouldn’t hope. I know how that ends.

Feather-soft fingertips trail down my cheek in a caress that doesn’t make me twitch in readiness and instincts honed to a brittle razor’s edge. Tender pink, far too open, far too trusting, meets my dark violet.

“You already are here, aren’t you?” She asks, and there’s something of hope in that question, and it shouldn’t be there, because she knows how that ends—

Those very same fingers touch my lips, and I feel my words stuck as a knowing gaze holds me still.

“If anyone tells me it’s a mistake to have hope, I’ll just tell them they’re wrong. And I’ll keep telling them until they believe. No matter how many times it takes. Even if it’s you, Homura. Even if it takes as many times as you came back for me.” And she smiles.

And she knows me.

The me that struggled. The me that grew strong, stronger than I ever hoped, even if it was never enough.

The me that broke.

My arms surround her once again, a flash of white on my hand letting me know Madoka has bandaged my wounds while I slept. That she has tried to heal me.

“I am sorry. I am sorry. You will think I am gross, that you don’t—”

She kisses my cheek, tender lips brushing against my peach fuzz sending a thrill of something that is forbidden, something that I can’t allow—

“I never thought that.”

Her hands turn my head. We are both lying on our sides, and only now do I realize her thigh is resting on top of mine, her warmth seeping through my nylons and the runs the tiled floor tore in them. Madoka’s body warms mine, and a heart that is no longer so weak quickens.

“Never, Homura. That last month… I never told you, but I dreamed about you. I saw you battling Walpurgisnacht, and I stood on a ruined building, watching you fight, refusing to surrender, to back down, standing up again and again… I thought you looked beautiful. I am sorry.”

“Why?” My voice cracks, even as part of me refused to ask the question. To know why Madoka would be sorry for thinking me beautiful.

“Because I didn’t recognize your pain. Because I didn’t act sooner. Because…” And she tightens her arms around me, her face buried on my chest as I look down at pink hair that has never been so close after… “Because I didn’t understand you were hurting worse than any of us, even as you stood and fought again and again.”

“I… I couldn’t stop, not after—”

“No. You didn’t stop. You choose to move forward, and I won’t allow anyone to belittle what it took to do that. Not even you, Homura.”

And she lifts her head from my blouse, warm pink with too much sparkling wetness meeting my dark violet once again.

“You are my hero, Homura. You always were, and will always be. But now you can rest.”

And I shouldn’t hope, shouldn’t be so ready to trust words I have longed to hear for years, shouldn’t let myself—

I hug Madoka to me with as much strength as this meager conduit allows my magic to manifest, and she gasps in something that is not pain, so I clench a bit tighter, as much as I can without fear of hurting her, of letting her get hurt ever again.

And the tears fall.

And she… Madoka…

She cries with me. For me.

***

I wake up once again to find pink hair tickling my nose in a way that should annoy me, but Madoka is clinging to me, to gross, incompetent, weak, naïve Homura Akemi.

Both of them.

I am at the age where schools start teaching magic, because it’s dangerous to know too much before then, but it’s more dangerous to know too little afterward.

Which means I am years ahead of any of our classmates. Unless Sayaka…

This has a name. I know it has.

But the Homura that belongs here either doesn’t know it or refuses to tell me.

Throughout history, there’s been talk of magic users far more powerful than they should be. All of them were young girls. And I know, the older Homura knows, that all of them met a horrible end in a time that no longer is, that never was.

Because Madoka cannot become a magical girl in here… Because magical girls don’t exist. And so neither do witches.

Pink hair shifts, and Madoka smiles up at me, still dizzy with fading sleep.

And the fact that she feels safe enough in my arms to fall asleep between them… I could cry.

Again.

But that is the weak Homura coming through, not the—

“Boop,” Madoka says as she pokes my nose, and I feel my face scrunch up before she starts laughing.

I… Don’t know…

“Don’t worry, Homura; we will teach you to laugh again.”

And the line is weird enough, but something sticks out to me.

“We?”

“Sayaka, and Kyouko, and Mami. And mom, because, uh…” she fidgets, her body shifting atop mine as she pokes her fingers before looking at me with a hint of shyness. “Well, it’s the law, you know?”

“I… Don’t think I do.” And I am confused. Which is novel enough, after years and years where each revelation and mystery brought horrible clarity rather than anything close to befuddlement.

“You are moving into my house.” The words are a rush so fast it takes me a moment to properly separate the syllables into something meaningful.

“Wha—what? Why?”

“It’s the law, I told you. Those with parallel lives need to live together with people significant in their other time until the shift settles. Sayaka is still miffed at Kyouko living in her room. Or, well, she says she is…”

And only now do I process that all of them… They are alive. After so much time, so many tries, fighting so hard only to end up discarding them as impossible, lost causes that only got in the way of saving Madoka…

“Shush.” I only realize my shoulders are trembling when Madoka once more holds me. “It’s all right. Sayaka remembers enough to know Kyouko is important to her. Even if they fought so much, even if they almost managed to kill each other more than once, they… They are tied. And she knows.”

“How… how do you remember all of that? How do you know so much?” Because that’s not what happens with people with parallel lives. They remember bits and pieces, some details sticking out more than others, and I remember the Homura from this world wishing she would remember, that she would meet some fated person that was by her side on another life that never actually happened.

It seems, even in this life, I should be careful with my wishes.

And Madoka flushes in something that has a bit too much guilt as she, once again, fidgets over my body and I, once again, with far too much practice, restrain the urge to cling to her.

“… Promise you won’t get mad?” Wide eyes look at me in a way they never have before, not in a hundred lifetimes, and it takes me a moment to process the childish insecurity as belonging to the same Madoka that would rain down arrows of burning magic on cataclysmic foes.

My lips twitch into something that, just a few hours ago, would have been a regular smile.

“I promise,” I whisper. To her. For the first time since I clung to a shocked Madoka that couldn’t process the girl coming undone in front of her.

“It was my wish,” she says with a thread of voice that still manages to stab me through the heart, right where I thought the icy dagger from when I first took her life could have started to melt.

“You… You said you… You told me you couldn’t become a magical girl. Not anymore.” Please. Please, Madoka, please. Not again. Not another month, I can’t, can’t—

“Homura!” Lavender. Sun-kissed warmth. Soft arms. “Homura, no! It’s over; it really is!”

And I try to ask, to question, to wonder, but only something ugly and staggered makes its way past my clenching throat.

And Madoka pushes herself up so her eyes can meet mine yet again, so she can hold me down with soft pink that so many times held hope, and despair, and death, and determination, and—

“It’s over. You are here, with me. And I am never letting you go back again.” Steely determination seals her promise, every bit as harsh as the one she asked of me that time she tricked me into living while she died. And then steel melts into something that trembles. “You were my best friend all along, Homura. Even if I never knew it. But now I know, and you won’t ever be alone again.” The steel partly comes back, but its determination doesn’t take away from the tenderness, a sword held over a lake by a graceful hand. “I promise.”

And I…

Can I… believe you, Madoka?

Can both Homuras believe they’ve finally found their friend?

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This story has been funded by QQ’s Varosch on my Patreon, who came up with the original premise of having Homura finally have some goddamn happiness with Madoka without the very fabric of the cosmos tearing their psyches apart. It’s… been a bit of a challenge.