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graduation day.
::
shadows settle on the place that you left
our minds are troubled by the emptiness
destroy the middle, it’s a waste of time
from the perfect start to the finish line
::
The terminal is silent and gray when the boy first arrives.
Homura has lost sight of how long it’s been since something has truly surprised her, but the arrival of a new looper is enough to make her raise her brow in mild interest as she waits for something else to happen. A slow lift of her gaze from the open book in her lap and she sees him, wiry and pale, a cloud of white and a flash of red and a bewildered sort of look that reminds Homura so much of her first time here; fear, confusion, desperation, longing, all of these things intermingling in a mad rush in her head that made her feel as though she’d faint.
But the boy doesn’t faint. All he does is cry in ugly, childlike sobs, looking as though his heart has been just crushed between two massive fists.
Homura looks at him, unfazed. “It won’t do you any good,” she tells him, calm as water as she goes back to her book. “Cry all you want. It won’t change the course of events at all.”
“What ‘course’?” the boy spits out, all cowlicks and bony shoulders that poke out sharply beneath his wrinkled white shirt. “I don’t even know why I’m here!”
Homura turns the page and uncrosses her legs, recrosses them, avoids the boy’s violent gaze. “To make someone happy,” she says, cold and prim. “That’s why.”
The boy goes silent here, save for his messy sniffles and small hiccups of breath. Homura glances at him out the corner of her eye and turns another page without reading the previous one. “Of course, you can stay here as long as you like,” she says, “but if I were you, I would start planning out your next course of action. Value your time. Make it your best friend.” She closes her book and sets her hands calmly in her lap, staring straight ahead of her without truly seeing anything. “Because it’s going to be the only friend you’ll let yourself have from here on out.”
The boy breaks down again, clutching at his chest and hitting his head hard against the window. “All I wanted – all I wanted was for him to be my – ”
“It doesn’t matter what you wanted back then,” Homura tells him; the same words she’s told herself to keep the edges of misery at a safe distance, allowing nothing to touch her, not even the sharp and bloodied talons of her own pain. “What matters is what you’ll do now in order to obtain it for that person you hold dear.”
It takes the boy a while for his crying to subside, and Homura watches detachedly as he sinks down to the floor and curls into a shaking knot where he remains for the rest of the night.
If Homura is to fail again, she knows he will still be here when she returns. He’s not ready yet.
::
She fails and returns to her seat, book in hand. The boy is staring out the window, his back to her, his shoulders tense. “When I leave this place,” he says quietly, “where do I go from there?”
Homura opens up her book and looks at the pages without reading what’s printed on them. “You go to him.”
The boy takes in a breath and exhales it on a shaky sigh. “And how do I find out where he is?”
“By whatever means necessary.”
The boy doesn’t speak for a very long time, but when he does, it’s foolish. “Wish me luck.”
Homura crosses her fingers and raises them for him to see as he walks away from the window, smoothing out the creases in his shirt and looking stupid, too determined. “See you soon,” she mutters beneath her breath as he passes by. He won’t last a week out there.
She’s right.
He comes back with hollow eyes and shaking hands, and Homura feels inclined to explain why she’s only been alone for little over twenty minutes. “Time here is fluid,” she says, knowing he’s only half-listening, if even that much. “One week out in the real world is but a blink in time here. That’s why you must use your time wisely if you ever hope to succeed.”
The boy looks at her with such an empty expression that even Homura feels a little uneasy. “You act so wise,” he murmurs, “and yet you haven’t succeeded either. Why is that?”
Homura’s blood turns cold as she stares back at him, silent and still. Beyond the window, endless clouds shift and collect into a dark, pulsing mass. A storm is coming.
::
Two more trials and errors, two more times of reuniting in this ashen prison, and they finally exchange names. Homura tries out the name “Kaworu Nagisa” on her tongue twice and it’s committed to memory easily. Kaworu says her name aloud just once and it’s as if they’ve known each other forever, the common ground between them bridging the awkward silences that follow whenever they both become too tired for words.
Kaworu has softened since his first arrival, and Homura watches as all the sharp and jagged planes of him smooth out into things ethereal and feather-light. There’s something strange about this boy, and Homura is just about to compare him to something biblical and angelic before Kaworu admits that he is, in fact, something of an angel.
“Not the sort that you read about in holy texts, though,” he’s quick to add, lying on his back and staring up at the ceiling with lazy, lidded eyes. “The universe in which you come from imagines angels as beautiful beings with human forms. My universe is much different.”
Homura is half-tempted to ask him what he means, since he appears quite human to her, but she chooses a contemplative silence instead, waiting for him to go on as she sips quietly at her tea.
“I’m a bit of a special case, you could say,” Kaworu laughs out, stretching his arms up to the ceiling and spreading his fingers. “The others of my sort look nothing like me. But despite this form of mine, I’m still not wholly human. Not like Shinji.”
It’s the first time he’s said his Precious Person’s name aloud, and Homura’s attention is caught in an instant. She looks at him from behind the rim of her teacup, studying his face closely when she asks, “What’s he like?”
Kaworu’s eyes flutter to a close as the corner of his mouth quirks up into a dreamy lilt of a smile. “He’s everything. And he deserves all the happiness in the world.”
Homura gives a quiet almost-smile and looks down into the steaming swirl of her tea; rose, lavender, soft and girlish things that remind her so much of… “No one would endure these trials for anyone less than precious,” she says. “He must be a very important person.”
Kaworu gives a light hum and rolls over onto his side, resting his cheek atop his folded arm. Seeing him like this makes it difficult for Homura to believe he isn’t human, what with how his cheeks flush and his eyes gleam with adoration at the mere thought of his Precious Person. (But he’s still so early, long before the bitterness sets in, long before the hatred and the exhaustion keeps him from smiling even if he wanted to. Homura almost loathes to see him like this, knowing what’s likely in store for him.)
“And you?” Kaworu asks, his silver hair fanning over his eyes. “What is your person like?”
Homura pauses before taking another sip of tea. “She’s everything as well,” she answers after some consideration. “And she, too, deserves all the happiness in the world.”
Kaworu lets out a laugh that reminds Homura of a bell tolling. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing we’re from different worlds then, isn’t it? That way we can keep things fair.”
And even Homura, who hasn’t laughed in only gods know how long, cracks a breath of a giggle, and the feeling of it aches deep in her chest. It’s been so, so long.
::
On his sixteenth loop, Kaworu asks, “Is it normal for your person to change in every lifetime?”
Homura can’t help but notice the bags beginning to form under the boy’s eyes, but she pretends she doesn’t and goes back to taking notes in her notebook. “Yes,” she answers curtly. “Madoka changes every time I meet her, even if the changes themselves are very subtle. Events in their lives play out differently in every universe, changing them little by little. It’s part of the cycle.” No matter how much we wish for them to stay as they were before. I want nothing to touch her, nothing to hurt her while I’m away, but how, but how…?
Kaworu is very quiet. When his silence spans a little too long, Homura looks up from her notebook and sees him staring out the window with an expression she’s never seen before. As always, she remains wordless, for he always answers her quiet questions on his own time.
But this time, he doesn’t. And Homura finds herself, for the first time in a long time, worried for someone who isn’t Madoka. “Well?” she asks, masking her concern with coldness. “What happened that time?”
Kaworu lifts a pale hand and touches his bottom lip with his fingertips. “That time,” he murmurs, “I think we might have been together.”
Homura watches him, waiting. Kaworu’s shoulders rise and fall with slightly labored breath as he stares out onto the vast expanse of gray clouds beyond the window. “I thought perhaps it would be better if I held back a little more. All the times before, I’d been forward, touching him whenever I wanted because I thought that’s what he wanted as well. He’s always needed affection and I’ve always longed to give him that, endlessly. But…”
Homura watches calmly as Kaworu’s fingers begin to shake. He covers his mouth with the back of his hand and closes his eyes, bowing his head so that the pale fall of his hair covers his face. “But he sought it out on his own this time. And he…he put his mouth to mine and it was…”
Homura isn’t used to the boy’s normally elegant speech become so unraveled and clumsy. She doesn’t know how to react to it, and so she chooses to simply sip at her tea and wait for him to leave her an opening to speak, if words will come to her at all.
“I feel as though I should be happy,” Kaworu says, moreso musing to himself than speaking to Homura. “I’d always wanted him to do that, ever since I breathed into him in the dark, far back from my first timeline. And yet there’s a horrible feeling deep in my chest that feels so much like sadness and I don’t understand why that is…”
Against her will, Homura recalls the feeling of Madoka’s lips grazing against hers, an accidental brush of a kiss from so many lifetimes ago. The memory of it is a firm pinch and Homura winces at the sting, though mindful to keep her expression outwardly calm when she says, “It makes it that much harder to leave them behind again, doesn’t it?”
Kaworu is motionless for a few beats before giving a small nod. He’s still touching his bottom lip with deft fingertips long after they both go silent, taking in the soft rush of wind and the sway of purple clouds beyond the window.
::
One hundred loops later – or perhaps two hundred, maybe three hundred, neither of them know anymore – Kaworu is beginning to come undone.
“It’s not healthy to do that,” Homura tells him one day when she catches him marking off another tally on the wall. “It just instills more self-hatred. You don’t have time for that.”
Kaworu lets out a laugh that should be as light as air, but cracks around the edges and makes it sound closer to a sob. “But you said it yourself,” he muses, staring at his makeshift calendar with the countless slash marks etched into the wall with chalk. “I have nothing but time, seeing how it bends at my will and is ultimately rendered meaningless…” He drops the piece of chalk onto the floor, where it skitters at his feet and rolls away. “This isn’t even the right amount of marks,” he laughs out. “I started counting far too late.”
Homura takes a long, deep breath and exhales slowly. “You have to preserve your sanity or else you’ll push him away when you do see him again. You can’t afford to dothat, do you understand?”
Kaworu doesn’t reply, his fingers twitching as his arms hang loose at his sides. In the silence, Homura can hear him humming to himself as he tilts his head back to survey the rows of tallies and slashes that dwindle in their neatness as they go down, gradually turning into scribbles and violent slashes.
She leaves him be for a while. When the sky turns black and darkness comes, she lights candles throughout the terminal in the places the two of them inhabit the most often. She finds Kaworu in the same place she left him, sitting against the wall with his head in his hands. The candlelight sets off an amber glow, and in the halo of light, she can see Kaworu’s shoulders shaking, his breath hitching in little hics. The tallies drawn on the wall behind him shine like hundreds of tiny white gravestones.
::
Kaworu is a familiarity, a presence that Homura has become so used to, that she almost doesn’t know how to respond when he hands her a can of coffee and says, “This will be the last time we see each other here.”
He looks confident today, if but a little tired. The bags under his eyes are like battle scars. (Homura has never asked about the thin white scars lining his wrists, but she doesn’t think she really needs to. They always heal before he goes back into the new world, but the memory of them remains every time.)
“I’ve decided this will be the one,” Kaworu says with a smile. His eyes glow like heated blood in the amber sunlight streaming through the window. “I have a plan this time.”
“Implying that you haven’t had a plan all those times before?” Homura accepts the can of coffee from him and primly pops off the tab. “I’ve seen your sketches and notes on the walls. You’ve had many plans.”
“You don’t sound very enthusiastic for me,” Kaworu says, but there’s a laugh in his words that makes them ring soft and pleasant. “And besides, those were faulty plans. This one isn’t.”
Homura looks at him as if seeing him for the first time as he takes a seat on the floor at her feet, legs crossed and hands folded neatly in his lap. She remembers his first arrival, the crying boy with the messy hair and wrinkled clothes, and suddenly the boy she’s looking at now scarcely seems to be the same person. All of his shattered and exhausted pieces have somehow come together and made him stronger, more present, less waiflike and otherworldly. If he were to tell Homura now that he isn’t human, she wouldn’t believe him; his heart is in his eyes, and in them is such a tender humanity that Homura finds herself warmed just by meeting his gaze.
Kyuubey is the one who isn’t human. He could never understand the human heart. But this boy is, and he does, no matter what he calls himself.
Nevertheless, Homura’s smile is a thin one as she takes a sip of coffee. “What makes this plan so different from the others? I’m curious.”
“This one will work out in the end,” Kaworu says simply, his words always cryptic like riddles. The way he smiles down at his hands makes Homura feel inexplicably sad. “That’s why this one is different. Because it will be the last one.”
Homura wipes a droplet of coffee from the corner of her mouth with one gloved fingertip. “You went from tallying off all of your lives on the walls, to this. I’m not sure which one is more unnerving.”
Kaworu closes his eyes, still smiling. “Faith is a good thing. It keeps us from destroying ourselves. And for a while, I thought it would be easier to let myself fall apart, because then the trials and errors wouldn’t hurt so much anymore, and I could just fall asleep and give up and that would be it.” Pale fingertips trace inane shapes into the tiled floor; Homura thinks the shapes might be music notes. “But I could never give up as long as Shinji is still out there. He’s what’s kept me going this whole time. He’s my purpose.”
Homura watches him carefully, taking in the strange details of his face - the long, straight nose, the lidded eyes, the white, wispy eyelashes. There’s an air of graceful melancholy about him that’s unlike Homura’s own, but she can’t place what’s different about it. She ruminates on this quietly and sips at her coffee and hopes the boy won’t do anything stupid once he leaves this place.
“I’ll miss you,” Kaworu murmurs, reaching for her hand and holding it softly between his own. His skin is strange, too cool and too smooth. Too comfortable. It’s the first time they’ve ever made physical contact, and Homura’s eyes widen at the touch, looking down at his hand as if not knowing what it is. Kaworu smiles back at her, at peace with himself, with the world, with everything in existence. Homura’s chest tightens.
“You should make this one your last as well,” Kaworu says gently. “You’re very tired too, aren’t you?”
Homura scoffs and turns her face away from him, her eyes burning. How foolish, she’s worked so hard to never cry again and yet here’s this boy pulling the tears out of her without even trying. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. The words don’t come out as sharply as she’d wished. Where has her edge gone? “Of course I’m tired. I would have made it my last one ages ago if it were that easy.”
Kaworu breathes out a whisper of a laugh, nodding like he understands. And he does understand, Homura knows. They’ve both been here for so long, how couldn’t they understand each other?
“I have faith that you will succeed,” Kaworu says, squeezing her hand with such a gentle certainty that Homura has to scoff again to hide the fact that she’s dangerously close to tears. “And who knows, perhaps our universes will align and we’ll see each other again. We’ll get coffee and avoid airplane terminals. It’ll be fun.”
Homura shakes her head and sneakily wipes under her eyes with the back of her free hand, passing it off as a casual scratch of an imaginary itch. “You really are a fool, talking to me as if I’m your friend.”
“Do you believe me?”
Homura doesn’t look at him. After a long pause, she answers him with a light, awkward pat on his rumpled head, and Kaworu laughs like a child, the sound of it warm and honest as it rings out through the empty terminal. It’s the happiest she’s seen him this whole time, and something about that hurts a little. “You’re a moron,” she says for no reason.
Kaworu laughs again and rises to his feet. He stretches his arms up to the ceiling, sighing with relief when his spine pops and his joints crack. It’s an oddly graceless sound to be coming from him, but it’s human, and it’s real, and Homura appreciates it.
“Before you go,” Homura says on a whim, “change your shirt.”
Kaworu glances at her over his shoulder, his brow raised in mild concern as he looks down at the flash of pink beneath his button-down shirt. “Hm? What’s wrong with this one? I was tired of the orange so I thought a change would be good…”
“You look stupid in pink,” Homura says simply. “The only person who looks good in it is Madoka.”
Kaworu’s smile returns, soft and knowing. “Good point. So what color would you suggest?”
Homura ruminates for a few moments, looking down at her own clothing. Then, without realizing, she smiles back at him, her eyes wet. “Purple.”
::
Kaworu waves her off with a smile on his face, and in a flash of warm light, he is gone.
Homura stares at the space he once occupied before bowing her head in a scoff, flicking her hair over her shoulder as she approaches the treshold leading into her universe.
She casts one last glance at the terminal before departing. It’s too gray without him. He wouldn’t have wanted her to stick around in silence for too long. What a snob, she thinks with a smile as time bends around her, guiding her back to the world. I was the one who gave him that advice from the start.
::
Homura doesn’t even realize she’s failed again until she feels the cold tile floor on her face as she drifts back into consciousness. The sharp, metallic smell of the terminal invades her senses and makes her stomach turn, and the sight of a heavy gray sky beyond the window fills her with such dread that she immediately closes her eyes again to drown it out.
She doesn’t want to remember. She doesn’t want to feel anything. She just wants everything to stop.
It takes her a long time to move from the floor. Her legs are heavy and weak and don’t feel like her own. Her clothing is dirty and ripped and she doesn’t want to recall the cause behind it. It hurts too much to even consider, and winding up in this place again is already enough of an insult to the injury.
She finds her paperback book still sitting on her seat. She’s read it so many times before that she has every line memorized. She picks it up and slowly begins pulling out the pages one by one, letting them flutter to the ground like dying paper butterflies. Each page is a tally mark. This isn’t even the right amount of marks. I started counting far too late.
She loses track of time, panting and sweating and cursing with every rip and tear. Once her hysteria passes, she sees the litter of pages all around her and the empty book spine tossed away, and all she can do is curl up amidst a nest of printed words and paper scraps and close her eyes, praying for sleep.
Some faraway part of her is waiting for Kaworu to come back and fill the silence. But the only way to come back is to fail. Don’t call me your friend, she thinks, clenching her hands into fists atop the chilly tile floor. I’m horrible.
She drifts off into a fitful sleep and dreams of tumbling through an endless black abyss.
::
Kaworu doesn’t return the next day. Or the next. Or the next.
Homura finds his spare chalk on the floor and begins drawing maps, blueprints, graphs. She makes lists upon lists upon lists, crosses things out, replaces them, crosses them out again. She writes Madoka’s name in seven different languages when she starts losing focus, whispers it seven times beneath her breath for good luck.
And when she steps back to survey her work, she sees precisely where she’s been going wrong this whole time.
“It’s too much,” she whispers, her eyes wide. “Too many details. No. Too many complications…”
What if I kept it simple? comes a wisp of a thought. What if I stopped making things so difficult? What if I was completely and honestly myself?
Kaworu’s serene smile flashes through her memory. Had it truly been serene at all? She recalls the exhaustion in his eyes, the dark rings beneath them, the way his fingers would twitch and his shoulders would slump when he didn’t think she was looking. Faith is a good thing, he’d said. It keeps us from destroying ourselves. But how long have they been breaking themselves down with details? How many of their finely-tuned plans have been all for nothing? How long has the answer been so simple, waiting right in front of them, just out of reach?
Homura hears the telltale zip of the automatic door opening behind her. She already knows who it is before she even turns to look.
For a long time, the two of them just stare at each other, soundless and still. Homura can see Kaworu’s shoulders rising and falling with quick, uneven breaths, and fine tremors wrack his entire body as he stares through her with hollow eyes. The clouds out the window behind him are dark and threaten an approaching storm.
Kaworu gives a horrible smile as his shoulders bob in a shrug. “I fucked up,” he says, and in his voice is the weight and horror of one thousand deaths.
The sky breaks in a downpour of rain, and Kaworu breaks with it. He staggers and falls to his knees, and Homura’s arms are around him without her even realizing she’d risen to her feet and approached him in the first place. The rain pounds against the glass of the window and the roof overhead as Kaworu sobs into his hands, horrific scream-sobs that tear at his throat and hurt Homura’s ears.
Homura offers no words of comfort. She knows there aren’t any, not when the boy is this broken. But as she stares out the window beyond Kaworu’s shoulder, she sees the storm clouds dispersing into a few rays of hopeful sunlight, and she knows this time will be the last.
When Kaworu’s sobs die down into hiccups and a runny nose, Homura makes tea for the both of them and sits him down by the window. Kaworu doesn’t touch his tea, staring off dismally into space and picking at his bottom lip with trembling fingertips. His hair clings to his cheeks, held in place by the slow-drying tracks of tears. Every now and then, he’ll mumble something to himself, scraps of splintered thoughts that don’t quite make it into proper words.
Homura pushes his teacup closer to him with her fingertip, giving him the barest hint of a smile. “I’ve figured out where we’ve been going wrong,” she says softly. “Will you hear me out?”
After a long and motionless silence, Kaworu slowly tilts his dreary, red-rimmed gaze up to meet hers, his hand dropping away from his mouth. He’s listening. He still has hope after all.
::
“Have you ever thought of trying a color other than purple?”
Homura looks at the pale orange dress that Madoka is holding up for her, and her smile is a small and secretive thing when a thought comes to her. “I don’t think orange is really my color.”
Madoka’s sheepish determination comes out at full force, brightening her eyes and making them shine. “That’s not true at all! I think you’d look, um! Really pretty…!”
Homura blushes softly as she bows her head and tugs at the hem of her shirt, suddenly feeling exposed, shy. Just as she’s about to speak, Madoka turns her head with the suddenness of someone seeing something very intriguing and strange, her eyes wide and her lips parted in wonder. Her voice is a breathless whisper when she says, “Oh, wow…”
Homura tilts her head in mild interest, her gaze following Madoka’s as she looks out the glass shop window. “Hm? What is it?”
Madoka glances back at Homura with an embarrassed little smile. “Sorry, I just…thought I saw someone with hair that looked silver.”
For a split second, Homura feels her heartbeat skip over on itself as the gravity of Madoka’s words stirs within her a sense of such familiarity that she can’t help but jump to her own private conclusion. “Silver…?”
“Mhm. There were two boys walking by, and the one with the silver hair caught my eye…and his eyes looked red, just like Kyoko’s, but maybe a little brighter?” Madoka laughs and goes about setting the orange dress back on the clothing rack. “Silver hair and red eyes, though. That’s certainly a strange combination, don’t you think?”
The clenching in Homura’s chest becomes unbearable as she lets out a shudder of an exhale, her mind racing with anticipatory questions. Did he make it out of the loop? Did he get what he was looking for? Did we really wind up in the same universe? No, no, it’s impossible…but maybe…
“Homura?” Madoka asks, leaning in close to Homura’s face to survey her with wide, concerned eyes. “Are you okay? You looked flushed.”
“Show him to me?” Homura asks suddenly, unable to contain her curiosity any longer. “The boy with the silver hair. I want to see what he looked like.”
Madoka blinks at her in surprise for a moment but gives a small nod and takes Homura by the hand, leading her out of the shop and out into the street. The balmy autumn air is a shock to Homura’s nerves and keeps her grounded enough to remain focused on the present moment, though she catches her mind wandering to memories of times before; the gray terminal, her paperback book on the hard plastic seat, Kaworu’s tallies on the wall, his screams of despair -
“Oh, I see him now!” Madoka says, hopping on her tiptoes to see over the sea of the crowd.
Homura immediately stands at attention as her eyes scan every head before her, but she doesn’t see a sight of silver anywhere. “Where?” she asks, careful to keep the edge of panic out of her voice. “I don’t see him.”
“Over there by the crosswalk, next to the dark-haired boy with the puppy eyes!” Madoka hops on her toes again and points enthusiastically, looking from the crosswalk to Homura and back again. “Do you see him?”
“I can’t find him - ”
But the crowd suddenly disperses just enough for Homura to be able to see a clear path down the sidewalk, and there he is.
Were it not for the characteristic strangeness of his features that couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, Homura almost wouldn’t be able to recognize him. The way he looks at the dark-haired boy clinging to his arm makes Homura feel as though she’s intruding on something very personal despite Kaworu merely listening to the boy speak; his eyes are gleaming and lidded, bright with adoration, his cheeks flushed a soft pink and his lips slung in a dreamy smile. His black coat makes him appear waiflike and elegant, a brother to a shadow. A purple scarf is wrapped loosely around his neck, the same purple that Homura has worn upon herself for ages.
Something overwhelming rises up within her, and her breath jumps in her chest as she whispers, “We did it.”
Madoka gives her a light nudge to her shoulder. “Hm? What was that?”
Homura raises a gloved hand to cover her mouth, a sudden sweep of an unrecognizable sentiment making it hard to keep herself together despite her most valiant of efforts. She gives a quick shake of her head and closes her eyes, laughing breathlessly. “It’s…it’s nothing. I just…thought I recognized him, that’s all.”
Madoka laughs with her, all things innocent and pure. “He definitely seems like the kind of person that would be fun to know, doesn’t he? I kind of wish I knew him myself.”
They walk on, approaching the crosswalk. The light switches over and signals the pedestrians to cross the road, and Kaworu wraps his arm around the slender shoulders of the boy next to him (Shinji, Homura remembers) and leads the both of them across. Homura finds herself walking faster to get to the crosswalk in time, but the light counts down to zero just before she makes it. Kaworu and Shinji are halfway across the road, walking close enough to each other that not a fraction of space seperates them. Their happiness is such a radiant thing that it seems to soften the world around them, blurring it so that the two of them are the only beings left in perfect focus.
Kaworu’s name is on the tip of Homura’s tongue when a brisk wind blows, ruffling her hair and sighing through the trees lining the streets. Kaworu’s scarf flutters over his face, making him turn his head in an effort to shake it off.
The look is accidental, but when Kaworu half-turns and meets Homura’s expectant gaze, the world around them slows down to a stand-still until they’re the only two moving beings left. The city is put on pause, conversations halted and steps frozen in mid-stride as time comes to a quiet stop. A clear path stretches between them, from where Homura stands at the crosswalk to where Kaworu lingers in the middle of the road.
Kaworu’s face lights up, and the smile that graces his lips is the happiest that Homura has ever seen. He glances to Homura’s left where Madoka remains suspended in time like a pretty statue. “So that’s her, huh?” he asks, his soft voice ringing out like a bell amidst the silent city.
Homura bows her head with a smile, pride welling up in her chest and shortening her breath from the excitement. “Yes,” she says, turning her attention to the motionless boy at Kaworu’s side. His blue eyes are shining and fixed on the sky as he holds onto Kaworu’s arm with mittened hands, smiling in the middle of his suspended sentence. “And that’s him?”
Kaworu takes in a breath that looks as though it flutters right through him, what with his visible giddiness. “Mhm,” he hums happily. “Today is his fifteenth birthday.”
“Is this the first birthday he’s had with you?”
Kaworu closes his eyes for a moment, his smile soft and graceful, almost melancholic. “Yes. Which is why I want to make it perfect.”
“Remember what I told you,” Homura says. “Keep it simple.”
“The same applies to you,” Kaworu says with a small, grateful bow. His eyes are sparkling when he looks back up. “Although you seem to be getting along wonderfully. She looks very happy with you.”
Homura returns his little bow, her face warming. When she straightens, Kaworu’s gaze is faraway and thoughtful, aimed up at the sky as he muses something to himself. Homura waits patiently for him to speak.
“I feel as though this is something only you would understand,” Kaworu says slowly, measuring his words with great care. “It’s this…lingering sense of anxiety deep within me, this fear of everything coming undone just like all the times before. It’s almost as if everything is just…”
“Too good to be true?” Homura finishes for him, and judging by the relieved sigh that Kaworu gives, she knows she’s right.
“I love him,” Kaworu says, looking at Shinji frozen in time by his side. “I love him more than I can even explain. And I’ve worked so hard to get to where I am now that to lose it all would be…unbearable.”
Homura listens to his words as if she’s listening to her own thoughts, all of them familiar, things she’s felt so many times before in this almost-too-perfect world. But a sweet calm rolls over her as she looks at Kaworu and gives a light smile, and it’s the most certain thing she’s ever felt when she says, “It’s going to be alright this time. I can feel it.”
Kaworu swallows hard, his apprenhension apparent in the tremulous lines of his willow-like body. “What makes you say that?”
“Because this is the only universe we’ve ever shared,” Homura says simply. “That has to mean something. Something good.”
Kaworu watches her closely for a few silent moments before his expression softens back into the tranquil easiness that Homura knows so well. “I’ll trust you on that.”
The two look at each other in peaceful silence for a few more beats before the faintest feel of a faraway wind blowing brings them back to the moment. “We’re trying to find a cafe,” Kaworu says quickly, “but I’m not sure where one is. All these times looping and I still don’t know my way around this city…”
Homura breaks in a laugh, the boy’s awkwardness pulling it out of her without warning. “Madoka and I are on our way to a cafe just two blocks from here. You can follow us if you’d like.”
Kaworu’s warm smile touches the brisk autumn air with heat. He serves a quick glance at the other end of the crosswalk, where lone walkers and flocks of teenagers are fixed to the spot, unaware of the universe bending around them. “We’ll wait for you,” Kaworu says with an earnest nod, looking like an excited child what with the way his face flushes and his eyes glow.
The wind picks up; the world is on the precipice of moving again. Homura feels the energy shift around her as sounds begin rushing back into the city - muffled conversations, the buzz of traffic, the low hum of life and the dull roar of all living things. She feels Madoka’s hair blow softly against her shoulder, can hear the faint thrum of her heartbeat next to her.
Just before the city presses play on itself once more, Homura takes in one deep breath, looks at Kaworu, and says, “Thank you.”
Kaworu’s eyes widen with delighted surprise just in time for their surroundings to burst back into life. He stumbles a little when the crowd around him pushes him along the crosswalk, but Shinji guides him with a gentle tug of his arm, laughing and beaming as he dives right back into the moment, unaware that it had even stopped at all.
Beside her, Homura hears Madoka saying her name, just as unfazed as Shinji. “So did you still want to go to that cafe?” she’s asking.
Homura lets out the breath that she’d been holding, and with it is an outpour of any of the last remnants of tension that had been weighing her down for ages. She takes hold of Madoka’s hand and laces their fingers together. “Of course,” she says. “And if it’s okay…there’s someone I want you to meet.”