Chapter Text
Icarus
A rare free afternoon found her along the bank of the Mitakihara River with Madoka.
“I haven’t seen you around lately, Hitomi.”
Her point exactly.
From the corner of her eye, she could see that Madoka remained lounging on her back, gaze directed towards the sky rather than towards her. Madoka had spoken, but the lazy quality of her body indicated a query without any sort of weight.
Query without accusation, as Madoka always was.
As such, her gaze returned to the water.
There were no boats to catch her interest, but an uneven gleam of the sun’s reflection on the water cast a shadow that seemed to suggest something lurking beneath the surface, waiting an opportune moment to burst into the open air—ah, there went her imagination, running away in fanciful flight again.
“How are Sayaka and Miss Homura getting along?” Hitomi posed her own question, turning her body to face Madoka.
Madoka craned her head to look up at Hitomi, saying, “I think they’re a lot better now! They don’t fight as much—though I wouldn’t go so far as to call them friends, since they still like to ignore each other and stuff. Still, it makes me happy that they’ve found a good middle ground.” By the end of it, she was clasping her hands beneath her chin, grinning widely.
Hitomi mused aloud, “That must explain why Sayaka has neglected us,” with a wry smile added to her airy tone.
Because Sayaka was not the only one who had a tendency to neglect; indeed, she was the most innocent of them all.
Or should she say, the least guilty of them all?
It was all in the semantics and syntax.
“Of course Sayaka hasn’t forgotten about you and Kyousuke!” Madoka exclaimed with her expression earnest and eyes wide. “She’s just been a bit preoccupied with all the magical girl business lately, especially with Homura’s… bad health as of late.”
No change on that front, then. How unfortunate for Miss Homura.
Hitomi took a bag of cookies from her school bag. They were not too crushed, thankfully.
“Would you like a cookie?” She held the bag out towards Madoka.
Smiling again, Madoka eagerly accepted. “Thank you!”
A few cookies later, she brushed the crumbs from her uniform’s shirt and skirt as she said, “She is flying too close to the sun—and her life, it has only just begun, yet she is flying towards an early grave.”
The cadence of her words forced Madoka to a pause; mid-chew, with her cheeks puffed out, Madoka met her eyes guilelessly and without any alarm whatsoever. She looked like the very picture of innocent curiosity.
“It scares me half to death,” she appended, hunching her shoulders just so.
Sometimes it took a little more to get Madoka to reveal the cards she held close to her chest—though Hitomi’s worry was genuine.
Very genuine.
In this instance, Madoka laughed, also quite sincerely, letting the tension and wariness fade away like mist before the rays of the sun.
“I’m glad,” Madoka replied once her laughter subsided to a broad smile. “Sayaka needs people to worry about her. I mean, people who are ‘real’ in her eyes; I think she’s hyperaware of what she thinks she has become when she’s with the others, you know.”
“How typical of her,” she remarked, “though her progress is commendable. She is learning to protect her flame from the wild winds around her.”
With another wry smile, she added, “She is not the type to lie down on a bed she’s made.”
And was that not part of what attracted Hitomi? Sayaka Miki, who refused to leave anything well enough alone, and who was so indecisive—so glacial in her decisions, a stark contrast to those such as Hitomi Shizuki.
“You know how she is. She puts up her armor because that’s who she wants to be: a knight in shining armor, saving damsels in distress and championing the world’s justice…”
“Except that’s not who she should be, and her defenses are wounding her from the inside,” Madoka finished her thought for her, nodding. “That’s how it feels to take a fall, you know. It’s not on the outside that you start to crumble. It’s from the inside, with your heart plummeting down the cliff to the rocks below.”
Was that how it was?
She would not know, for nothing she faced took place on such high stakes.
For Hitomi, it was not a matter of life or death. For Hitomi, it was a matter of control and happiness, these things that were secondary to those such as Sayaka.
‘Those such as Sayaka.’ ‘Those such as Hitomi.’
And those such as Kyousuke Kamijou; yet another category that enabled doubt to creep inside, like insidious ivy crawling up the tower, confident that the stone would eventually give in to time’s inexorable power.
“It is frustrating.”
“Isn’t it?” Madoka agreed, bobbing her head in blithe acknowledgement. Then her eyebrows furrowed and her voice hardened as she continued, “But when you look towards the future, it tells you nothing. You have to take matters into your own hands; take another breath, have hope, and take action.”
Ah, a bitter truth.
Madoka never spoke so bluntly, so… sternly, especially not in regards to their little assembly of magical girls. With them, Madoka walked on egg shells. Hearing Madoka speak thusly—it was almost—almost blasphemy.
She laughed aloud.
“Eh?” Madoka glanced at her again, this time quizzically. Her eyes shone with something akin to joy, because that was who Madoka was.
Others’ happiness was her happiness.
Deception did not exist for those such as Madoka Kaname.
Gone, again, that out-of-character general. It might not have ever existed. It, too, might have been a product of Hitomi’s imagination.
“Do you think they will succeed?”
“I hope so,” Madoka said. “I really, really hope so. And if anyone tells me it’s wrong to have hope—that hope isn’t enough—then I’ll tell them they’re wrong. Every single time. I will.”
Because hope was what kept them all alive, day after day after day.
Leave it to Madoka to ignore every other factor that contributed to their chances of survival.
Perhaps it would be better to ask Miss Homura—the only one who would brusquely speak of the situation without offering even the slightest bit of comfort or glossing over the darker details.
Again, mirth tickled at her: imagine, Hitomi Shizuki asking someone like Homura Akemi for love advice!
But she sighed instead. It was not such a ludicrous thought, given that Madoka and Homura seemed to be in a very happy relationship.
Her shoulders tensed.
So many different types of people… who was wrong, and who was right?
If right and wrong even existed.
“Enough about that, though,” Madoka unashamedly dismissed their current topic. “How is cram school going for you?”
She should have expected it from the very first sentence Madoka had spoken.
It made her smile bitterly every single time; it left a painful coil in her chest and made her question her relationship to Kyousuke every single time Madoka asked, but it was such a concerned question—how could she resent it?
“Hitomi?”
Some part of her wished Sayaka had never confessed to Madoka what had happened that night.
Because now Hitomi had attachments.
She had real friends, who wanted to know. Who urged her to continue living, and would sorely miss Hitomi. Who asked questions and invited her into their homes and smudged the meticulous lines of her ideas of the way world worked—
Imagine that.
A world in which Hitomi Shizuki lived for herself.
“Do ask me that question again tomorrow, Madoka. I might have a better answer for you then.”
Even so, that sensitivity was not enough to draw out her words.
“Oh? You won’t tell me what’s on your mind, Hitomi?” Madoka insisted, pouting.
She replied, “Aside from my concern for Sayaka? No.”
There: a safer topic.
“Magical girls and witches… you and I could never possibly understand. Sayaka and the rest think they’ve lost their humanity. They don’t consider themselves human—Homura and Sayaka especially, and I think Miss Kyouko has her own doubts.”
Perhaps she had miscalculated.
She had not meant for their conversation to dwell on the age-old question.
“And with their humanity gone, what do they have left? Monstrosity, apparently, and it’s so difficult to convince them otherwise.” Madoka sat up, tugging on one of her pigtails, biting her lip in helpless frustration.
Difficult, indeed.
Frankly, it frustrated her as much as it did Madoka.
This question had no answer, yet it refused to leave. Locked in the tallest tower, it watched over them, day and night.
Could they solve the entire problem of the magical girl-witch-Incubator system? Could they face an entire alien race of vastly superior beings to defend humanity’s independence? Could they condemn the entire universe for the lives of a handful of girls?
No; though a part of her—the weak, indecisive part of her—wanted to do so, she knew better than to wish for it. Not even for Sayaka.
Then the reflection on the water winked at her.
The reflection—the reflection of a girl.
“Madoka,” she said slowly, “did you see that?”
“See what?”
They stared at the water’s surface.
She dared the apparition to respond—
And it did.
“Oh,” Madoka said, eyebrows shooting up. “Let me call Miss Kyouko. Keep an eye on it, okay? Make sure it doesn’t do anything.”
The glittering light seemed to wink at them, playful yet sinister beneath its veneer of still serenity. It spread to a greater area of the river, gradually; inch by inch it creeped in broad daylight towards the shores.
Make sure it did nothing?
Easier said than done. In fact, impossible to do if one was not a magical girl.
She doubted Miss Kyouko would arrive on time.
Indeed: while Madoka waited, fidgeting and anxious, for Miss Kyouko to answer, a fish burst out with a spray of oily water. It drenched them twice; once at its advent, and again when it fell into the river.
Against her will, her entire body trembled at the viscous, slippery quality of the water.
“Please, please, Kyouko….”
“We should leave. Immediately as of five minutes ago.”
They scrambled up, towards the meadow above—but did not make it far before their trembling limbs and an insistent dizzy spell got the best of them.
Driven to her knees, Hitomi fought to retain control of her mind—
Her mind—
It was hers. No witch would ever take it again!
“Hitomi, Hitomi, get up, come on!”
“G-getting there, Madoka,” she gritted out. She pulled at her sluggish, rebellious limbs, ordering them to obey her commands, not those of the witch.
At last, her body complied; she felt almost light now that she was in complete control of her own mind and body.
Standing on a cliff face, against the highest foe they would ever face—she felt it in her chest.
Her heart, beating madly, demanding she live to die another day.
This was how it felt to take a fall.
Here, with all her senses intact, in sound of mind and body.
“Um, well, I hope you’re sound of mind and body, Hitomi, because it looks like we’re inside the witch’s barrier.”
Oh dear, had she said that aloud?
No, never mind that, she scolded herself as she looked around to ascertain the veracity of Madoka’s anxious statement.
Dear-oh-dear.
Unfortunately, the hillside and the river were gone, replaced by… by an Impressionistic parody, as if someone had taken Monet and redone him in watercolors—evidence of the lair that had bloomed all around them while she had been struggling on her front.
Her hands were ill-defined blotches. There was no line for where Hitomi Shizuki ended and the world began.
“I told Homura that we’d be here by the river,” Madoka said, glancing around the labyrinth with nervous eyes that were little more than splotches of wine-red paint, “and we were supposed to meet soon at my house, so she should come here to investigate when she realizes that we’re missing and out of contact.”
“Which still means we must survive this place without a shred of magic long enough to be rescued,” Hitomi pointed out. “So far we have not been attacked, or lured further into the barrier. Perhaps it would be best to remain in place here? Wherever ‘here’ is.”
Madoka wrung her hands, whispering, “I don’t know how far in we are—I think—I think we’re still on the outskirts, but we were actually heading towards the witch instead of away from it….”
Oh.
The river—sky blue, melding into a slightly darker blue sky—seemed innocuous enough now that they were inside the barrier.
It had been a decoy. Were witches capable of being so intelligent? Were they not supposed to be mere beasts, berserk and insane in their despair?
Maybe this was hopeless—a match between an intelligent, malevolent force and two powerless school girls was clearly biased against them.
Hopeless.
They would die here before Miss Homura or any of the other magical girls could rescue them.
Stop it, Hitomi, she scolded herself. She had no need for these doubts.
Curse witches and their ability to worm past every defense. If she could, she would enter her own mind and forcefully eradicate all traces of tampering.
No one told her what and how to feel.
Not Kyousuke, not Sayaka, not Madoka, not her parents and absolutely not any witch, insecure in its place in life.
“We have two choices here,” Madoka said, straightening up as she visibly steeled herself. “We can wait here and hope for the best, or we can go up the hill and hope for the best.”
The river would not give them anything, so yes, those were their only options.
There was a tree—which had not existed before the birth of the witch—a little ways beyond their current position, at the crest of the hill.
“How about we make it to the tree, then wait for our rescue there?” she suggested. It would afford them some measure of protection, if only barely; still, being so out in the open made her back feel awfully exposed, so she welcomed any semblance of armor.
Madoka nodded, a jerky movement. “Okay,” Madoka took a deep breath, “let’s go.”
Slowly, cautiously, they continued up the slope.
Only a few minutes ago they had been caught up in their thoughts as the outsiders of the magical girl world. Now, they were in the thick of it, entirely on their own.
Alone.
Her lips twitched in a sardonic smile: she knew all about being alone—and about being lonely.
Just before they reached the hill’s peak, they reached the point of elevation required to see beyond the hill—to find the tips of stone towers jutting into the sky. When they reached the tree, the entirety of the castle sprawled out in the valley below them, for all of a sudden they knew that they were no longer on a hill.
It had become a mountain range.
“Astounding,” she breathed. The meadow had become a scene straight out of a storybook; she could not help but wonder if Sayaka’s labyrinth would one day look like this (perish the thought, of course).
“I guess this means we’re still on the periphery?” Madoka asked, dubious. “But it’s not like any other labyrinth I’ve seen before… it’s too straightforward.”
Straightforward?
Ah, she would not know. The last time she had had anything to do with a witch had been… well, that dark day that stood out in her memory as a black hole instead of a blank patch of no memory at all.
“Do you want to go further?”
Madoka sent her an alarmed look, protesting, “You know that’s not a good idea, Hitomi.”
Quite true, it was not at all a good idea, regardless of her burning curiosity.
Something flickered in the corner of her eye; she turned—“Look out!”
Madoka turned so slowly, too slowly—the hawk’s wing clipped the back of Hitomi’s head.
All breath left Hitomi’s lungs.
‘My, my, look who we have here!’
‘Our disobedient young daughter, who thinks to make her own bed!’
‘Tsk, tsk. Hitomi, will you lie down right within it? Will you forsake everything for that?’
‘You cannot lie, Hitomi. You have made your decision already.’
‘Tell us—will you tell us?’
‘Do not worry your pretty little head about it, Hitomi. Let the adults take care of it. We shall clean up your mess; we shall fix things for you.’
‘I hope you have learned your lesson, young lady!’
Please, Mother, Father—
They appeared before her: Father, with his polished glasses gleaming in the light; Mother, with her silver silk gown and shining pearl necklace; and Kyousuke, who shrugged helplessly at her from behind her parents.
Mother repeated, “I hope you have learned your lesson, young lady. A person of your standing is, without a doubt, above such things. Cease this foolishness at once.”
“Young Kamijou here is a good lad, why must you ask for more? More is not necessary, dear. Greed is unbecoming of you.”
Greed?
All of her desires, all of her wishes, all of her hopes—reduced to greed.
“That is not—” her hands clenched into fists—“that is not who I am.”
“Oh?” her father sneered.
Kyousuke made as if to move towards her, but when her father laid a firm hand on Kyousuke’s shoulder, he froze.
“Unclench your fists, dear. That is terribly uncouth of a young lady,” Mother reprimanded her, a green fan slipping from her sleeve to cover Mother’s mouth. Mother’s eyes, however, continued to judge her.
“Dearest, Hitomi,” Father coaxed, softening his voice and his expression, “come with us.”
“Please, darling,” Mother added.
A part of her yearned to join them. To be with her parents, and Kyousuke, in a perfect world where nothing else mattered.
But Kyousuke frantically shook his head at her, mobile once more.
“Run, Hitomi!” he shouted, shoving Father’s hand off his shoulder and latching onto Mother’s arm, dragging her backwards. “They’re not your parents!”
But they were.
“Nonsense, boy!” Father roared, while Mother gave an affronted gasp, struggling to escape Kyousuke’s grasp.
They were the Mother and Father who lived in her mind.
And he was the Kyousuke who lived in her mind, as well.
While they fought—
“Oh, hey,” Sayaka remarked, giving Hitomi the barest glance. In her hands, a sword stabbed into the ground, and Sayaka’s cape fluttered in a nonexistent breeze. Sayaka herself coolly gazed down at the castle in the valley below.
“Your life, Sayaka—it’s only just begun! Why must you—”
“Hitomi! Return at once!”
“Why won’t you run, Hitomi!”
“Your foolishness has gone too far!”
“I know I’m flying towards an early grave,” Sayaka shrugged. “But I’ll never stop reaching for the sun. For justice.”
She made as if to reply, but a sharp sting to her cheek jerked her—
Right back into the real world as she fell to her knees, gasping for air.
“Hitomi, oh, Hitomi—I’m so, so sorry but you just wouldn’t wake up and—how do you feel?”
Blinking sparks of pain from her eyesight, she took a moment to rasp out, “Fine. I’m fine, Madoka.”
Madoka’s trembling form did not come into focus; it took her another moment to remember that they were in a witch’s barrier, which had rendered them thus, and one more to realize that she lay on Madoka’s lap.
She endeavored to rise, only to have Madoka push her back down gently.
“Take your time, Hitomi,” Madoka insisted, and added with a touch of humor, “it’s all we can do at the moment.”
“Where are we?”
“Still at the tree. I’m not anywhere near strong enough to carry you far.”
Of course.
Focusing on her shallow breathing, she waited until the after-images of Sayaka turning away from her faded away.
Then, she asked, “How long do you think we’ve been here?”
Madoka shrugged, gazing at something beyond Hitomi’s range of sight.
“It feels like a long time—but, you know, time isn’t exactly a constant thing inside labyrinths. A few minutes might have passed outside, or a few hours.” Madoka sighed. “I wish I knew.
“On the bright side! The witch hasn’t bothered us, nor has the familiar—the hawk that attacked you, I mean. It looked surprisingly realistic, with much more detail than we’re done in; I think the artist used a finer brush and spent more time on it.”
The artist?
“You mean the witch?”
Lips pursuing, Madoka nodded. “The witch… before she was a witch, she must’ve been a painter,” she explained, a trace of defensiveness in her voice.
A painter, like Madoka was.
“I meant no disrespect….”
“Oh,” Madoka’s frown became an embarrassed smile. “Sorry, it’s just… it’s a sore subject for the others. They don’t like thinking about it—which I’m sure is perfectly understandable from their point of view, even if it isn’t from mine.”
Because they were outsiders, kept at arm’s length from whatever it was that went on in the world of magic, wishes, and curses.
Kept even farther away by a single-minded Sayaka.
Except… that was partially Hitomi’s fault, as well. Normally, she would not be one to shirk away from responsibility, or even from pain if she thought it necessary to endure, but Sayaka managed to bring out the indecisive in Hitomi.
“I used to be so sure of myself.”
“H-Hitomi?”
Until lately, she had known exactly what she wanted out of life and exactly how she would obtain it.
Nothing had changed.
Nothing—except her resolve to bury her darkest desires. That resolve had crumbled, little by little, because she had friends who cared and would not let her isolate herself, who would not let her keep the world at an arm’s distance from herself.
“I am not so certain anymore.”
She sighed, moving away from Madoka to sit on her own. Now she had a clear view of the castle in the distance—so far away, it might as well not have existed for them, who remained unmolested in their little sanctuary.
Why not?
Here, in this witch’s labyrinth, she could be honest: an honesty unforced from the witch’s machinations.
After all, she was Hitomi Shizuki.
She was better than this.
“I will end my relationship with Kyousuke,” she declared, meeting Madoka’s concerned gaze.
Madoka’s eyebrows nearly met her hairline; it was a comical sight, but unfortunately this was a serious conversation.
Everything would be serious until she had her life back in order. Only then would she allow herself to relax.
“He doesn’t make you happy, does he?” Madoka nodded knowingly.
Trust Madoka to know.
She inclined her head, “Right. He does not, because he is not who I want.”
Madoka’s eyes lit up, and she even went so far as to clap her hands as she asked, “Have you—it doesn’t bother you, anymore?”
Girls can’t love girls.
A familiar refrain that she had been forced to swallow when Madoka and Sayaka had expanded their circle of friends. A familiar refrain that had steadily become more false the longer she observed Madoka and Homura, whose relationship seemed so pure and loving, it almost made her jealous.
Besides, who was she to take pride in herself if there was even a single part of herself that brought her shame?
“It still does,” she admitted, shrugging a bit, “and ultimately it does not matter. I believe that both she and I are ready.”
Madoka snorted, “I don’t think Sayaka’s ready at all, Hitomi. She’s not going to see this coming, even though everyone else definitely did.”
Her answer was interrupted by a great shout of, “Madoka!”
Lo and behold, their saviors came charging in: Homura, made reckless by worry, and Sayaka, blue eyes blazing with an energy that she had been lacking for such a long time.
“Stay here with them,” Sayaka ordered, launching past them—though she met Hitomi’s gaze squarely when she passed.
Wrapped up in Homura’s tight embrace, Madoka called out, “Be careful! Good luck!”
Sayaka’s delighted laughter echoed through the witch’s world, breaking the dead silence and heralding the onset of a new era—
Ah, there went Hitomi’s imagination again, running away from her.
“Good luck to Hitomi, too,” Madoka added, beaming at her. “I’m afraid Sayaka’s a little dense, and you’re going to need it.”
Peering at her, Homura murmured, “Congratulations?”
“Not quite yet,” Hitomi laughed.
But soon, for Hitomi Shizuki had regained her sense of self.
She would take on the world.
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