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she’ll be a goddess, one day, but right now she’s a little girl – pigtails, pink dress and hair and a gap in her front teeth when she smiles. she laughs, and homura smiles right along with her – genuinely, for the first time in who knows how many of the same month – again and again, that deplorable pattern stitched in every color of misery and then a slip-up born of near-total despair.
a slip-up, and now she’s here, not a witch, not dead yet, years and years back and she’s smiling – they’re both smiling.
there’s a gentle scent riding the breeze – spring coming, no rain, no blood – and they’re in the same city but kyubey is in another one and there is no walpurgisnacht yet looming.
‘you haven’t changed at all,’ she murmurs to no one – no one present here, anyway, just the ghosts of repeating futures – and madoka responds – standing right in front of her, now, arm raised high to grab at the tips of the older girl’s slender fingers – still cold, still the illusion of wetness.
‘come play,’ she giggles, and her mother apologizes, but – no, she really doesn’t mind at all, it’s no trouble, she was just –
– just a little startled, is all.
they play tag, pretend and become friends all over again. it may be a small detail – another of many happen-stance acquaintanceships, and one of the two is bound to forget it before long – but homura will soak up all the goodness she can for as long or as short as it lasts.
and madoka is fast, really – she loves to run, loves the wind tugging at her clothes, loves the smell of just-cut grass and has no qualms about leaving green smudges on the soft pink of her new outfit. homura can see in every shift of the girl’s weight another fighting stance, another losing battle, but she smiles and chases without haste anyway – has to remind herself again and again that it’s not true, that this is not all done in preparation for an early death – that fate is not playing with them even now.
that the birds chirping are not mimicking the laughter of a witch, the sick notes streaming forth from some dark corner of a labyrinth. that the butterflies don’t resemble embers, that fire and falling will not destroy this park someday.
homura doesn’t even know, either, of the final sacrifice that this sun-lit, dimpled child will one day make, but she does know of the suffering that will repeat itself before then. it’s a lump in her own throat, a sword upon which she will run very soon, and she knows maybe even better than madoka how much it all hurts.
it may not be enough that this girl’s life was once dyed in peace and flecked with real moments of beauty – not enough the pink of cherry blossom petals, not enough the laughter or her parents’ strong arms carrying her home – but homura will remember this, too.
‘let’s play again next time,’ she offers, and madoka smiles right back at her.