Tangled Regrets – Chapter 8 – A Fated Night (Patreon)

The four of us are in one of the rooms reserved for our student trip at the local inn. At any other point, I would’ve questioned the expense of having only four students per room, but…

Junko.

I won’t ever question anything that can simply be explained away just by saying that name.

So, we are sitting on the tatami mats of the traditional room, writing our impressions about the vision we got through the black mirror around a square table, and we only lack Mami serving tea for this to be the kind of scene a younger, far less experienced me would’ve dreamed about.

Except I’ve met the current Mami. She’s far better than the one who went insane and tried to murder every single one of us, but… She’s still a far cry from the composed, graceful young woman I once looked up to.

“All right, I can’t be the only one who’s sick of doing homework after literal decades of it,” Sayaka says.

Kyouko scoffs, Madoka giggles, and I…

“You… remember the whole thing?”

The bluette looks at me in confusion.

“What do you mean?” she finally asks.

“I… The entire life? Not just the repeating month?”

And now Kyouko’s also looking, while Madoka makes the kind of face she makes when asked if she knows what happened to the last cupcake on the table.

“Explain, hitgirl,” Kyouko says.

“Explain what?”

“For starters… what do you mean by the ‘repeating month?’”

I look at Madoka, because surely she would’ve had a reason not to explain to her friends what actually happened across all timelines, the point of… divergence…

She’s shrugging.

… Damn it.

“I… don’t you remember? Me explaining it to you?” I try to evade answering—

Sayaka’s eyebrows scrunch before her face pales, and she almost falls down, only for Kyouko to catch her.

“Great, now you’ve broken her,” she mutters, right before her orange eyes widen, and she clings to Sayaka right as the taller girl turns to her and their hug becomes something…

Something that I look away from, because it feels indecent to intrude upon them.

Madoka is looking at me apologetically through the whole thing and not giving any hint that she finds the whole scene unusual.

“I never explained things they didn’t already remember. I didn’t want to interfere on… well, my plan,” she explains.

And I swallow once again at the sheer magnitude of it.

At the plan that spawned a whole world with an entirely different history that still resulted in us being born, meeting each other.

Junko said my magic could be the strongest temporal one ever registered, but… she knows. She knows how utterly ridiculous the claim is.

Although… maybe there’s a difference between time and fate—

Ouch.

I turn toward the embarrassingly close couple while rubbing the back of my head after getting hit by a pillow.

Madoka giggling may be the only reason I’m so calm about the whole thing.

“Sorry, just had to check whether you still had the whole born-for-combat thing still going,” Sayaka says in a voice that’s far from apologetic.

I glare at her. Kyouko giggles.

It’s far less welcome than Madoka doing the same.

“That’s rich coming from the girl who decided having the power to heal slightly faster than other magical girls was a great basis for a combat style,” I finally tell her.

“Hey, if it’s stupid but it works—”

“It’s still fucking stupid. Seriously, you don’t realize how disturbing it was to see,” Kyouko interrupts her, shooting me a glance that manages to convey both gratitude at my disapproval of what amounted to slow suicide and annoyance that I’m usurping her own role in poking at the short-haired girl.

“And you don’t realize how disturbing it was to fight you each and every time—”

“’Course I do. I’m awesome like that.”

Sayaka grumbles. Kyouko smirks.

And they’re both still clinging to one another, so, obviously, they end up in an antagonistic kiss.

Repressing a sigh, I stand up and look at Madoka before heading for the door.

She follows me in giving the two out-of-control lovers some privacy, and I fight to keep a silly grin off my face when she does so.

***

One of the verandas of the enormous inn (a traditional, wooden building that’s obviously grown with the influx of students over the years) looks over the small forest that separates the town we’re visiting from the cursed site we’re studying.

I’m currently resting my arms on the railing, my chin on them, trying to discern anything with the faint light of the crescent moon and stars, so much more abundant and brighter in this remote corner of the world.

Madoka is silently looking out at my side, and I keep stealing glances at her from the corner of my eye.

Because… I never saw her in the moonlight. Not like this. Not without light pollution overcoming the silver falling down from a sky that’s real enough to remind me of the one she showed me last week.

The one under which a goddess finally became complete.

And fate ended.

And isn’t that a terrifying thought? Because all of my life, I was guided by a gentle, barely noticeable hand. Guided to meet Madoka, my Madoka, one last time. To fulfill the wish she made as the world ended and this one was conceived.

And now…

There’s no fate anymore, and the hand has gone beyond what I’ll ever reach.

So anything that happens from now on, every glimpse into warm, pink eyes, every flash of hair blowing in the wind, and red ribbons trailing after a slender body, is…

Something that isn’t fated. Something that could be, or could not.

Something that… depends on me. That I can spoil. Mess up.

Ruin.

A delicate hand lays upon the one protectively cupping my left elbow, and I look up to find a gentle smile directed at me.

And something in my chest clenches.

“They are a bit much, aren’t they?” she says, with that gentle tone that broke me apart so many times, that kindness that made me come back again and again…

“They always were. Honestly, Kyouko is quite an improvement this time around.”

She giggles, and my heart breaks.

“She is! She used to be so scary, but she always ended up being this big softie…”

Her face turns melancholy. Because she also remembers everything.

Like me.

Yet she still is Madoka. Still innocent, kind, warm.

I don’t know how she does it. Never did.

“I tried to hook them up once, you know?” I manage to say without the words getting stuck in my throat.

Madoka looks scandalized for a moment and then bursts into laughter.

“No! And I missed it?”

“Yeah, I was trying to distract them from what was going on, and they always had this… well, this thing, so I figured I may as well see if I could… push them a little bit.”

Her shoulders shake, and her hand tightens around mine.

“It ended in violence, didn’t it?”

“I couldn’t flee fast enough.”

The flustered Sayaka, the outraged Kyouko, and the veryconfused waiting staff at the café I had brought them to…

At the time, it was just another failure, another angle that didn’t work. But…

Now, with hindsight, with time and distance…

Oh, I am going to tease them so much.

My eyes go from the silver-lined forest to Madoka’ face once more, and she looks at me in a way I have never seen her do, and—

She leans down, her eyes right in front of mine, the warm air from her nose gently tickling my lips and chin.

“I’ve waited so long to see you smile like this…” she whispers as her fingers slide between mine.

“Madoka?”

“I was afraid, you know? Afraid I wouldn’t manage, that even with my wish, there would be something wrong, something that would make it so I never saw this side of you. I stayed up at night, thinking about meeting you again, only for you to still be stuck in there, still having that disgusted face that kept trying to hide what went on inside…”

Her fingers tighten, and I can tell she’s holding back. That she would do it far more strongly. Desperately.

Like I clutched her that last time, when she came to see me, to plead with me, and I ended up breaking down and telling her how disgusting I truly was, how much I’d given up just to… just to…

I raise from the veranda’s railing, and I pull her to me, our hands held between our chests as my free arm clutches her desperately to me, as I smell her hair while her head is tucked beneath my face, as I can feel that something uniquely hers, that moonlight bouncing off dewdrops, that fragrance of a forest at night that is not really a forest, because plants hadn’t yet been born, and it’s not really a night, because the first dawn had yet to come.

It’s the scent… not of magic, because each magic smells different. Because Junko’s is ozone after a lightning strike, and Sayaka’s is violets blooming at midnight, and Kyouko’s is a spice that’s barely there until you notice it, and then overpowers all other scents like burning cinnamon…

Not, this is Madoka’s magic.

The magic at the birth of the world.

And she only carries an echo. She’ll never be half as powerful as the weakest in our class, because she gave it up. She gave it all up.

She promised me she’d never be a magical girl.

Her head leans back, her eyes meet mine.

I look at the girl who could’ve been a goddess yet chose to remain.

The girl I crossed time for, again and again.

The girl I bled for. Survived for. Clung to life for.

Tears brim in the corner of her eyes as a soft hand comes up to brush my cheek, a hand I can’t help but nuzzle against as my eyes involuntarily close at her gentle touch, her intoxicating warmth, her smell wafting toward me…

Then I feel her chest raising, and my eyes open in shock just in time to see her close her own, her lips barely open…

And she kisses me.

The arm surrounding her tightens, our bodies mashing together, and moonlight falls all around me like it did while I fought the curse.

Though it’s a moonlight I can only see with my magic eyes, and the silver rain spirals around us like falling blossoms in an unfelt wind.

It is a gorgeous sight. One of the most beautiful I’ve seen in any of my lives.

I close my eyes and feel Madoka against me, her lips barely touching mine, her warmth a suggestion, a promise of a deeper touch.

I lean down, the breeze coming from the forest tracing my profile like a hand delicately caressing me, memorizing my shape, but the intimate presence of the wind fades away as my whole world becomes the point where Madoka’s lips touch my own.

And I…

I don’t dare press further. I don’t dare try to affect how this sacred, perfect moment will play out, because I know there’s nothing I can do to make it better and a thousand things to ruin it. Because I’m still that gross girl who kept coming back to a girl who didn’t remember me, who forgot after each month, who would have been so happy if only—

Her hand goes from my cheek to my hair, and she grabs my nape before pulling down, to her, as she raises on her tiptoes, and our lips merge fully before she opens them, before sinuous, wet fire traces my own, and I allow her tongue to enter me, because how could I ever deny her anything she wished to take—

Madoka lets out a sweet moan when her tongue touches mine for the first time.

Her fingers tighten once more against mine.

And, when the moment ends, when she pulls back and looks at me, wonder in her eyes that she should be far too old to so easily express, let alone feel…

The motes of moonlight frame her face in a single, frozen, perfect moment.

And, for the first time since I learned to wield it, I wish my magic could keep her like this forever.