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Sayaka unravelled. Was unravelling. Would be unraveling, if not for Homura putting her back together with such pity in her eyes.
“Why.” Sayaka spat as her mouth reassembled from Oktavia’s bevor into mandible and teeth. Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy – unnatural. “Why are you doing this?”
Homura wouldn’t quite meet Sayaka’s eyes. Eye. It was a long moment before she replied, “Why are you doing this?”
This: pronoun, determiner. In Sayaka’s case: struggling so hard against the Devil’s barrier that her muscles frayed and her skin calcified into amour and scales, Oktavia's form spilling from Miki's shell of blood and flesh.
In Homura’s case: patching Sayaka back into her schoolgirl façade, despite the fact it was Homura’s fault she ended up like this in the first place.
“This is all your fault.” Sayaka seethed.
“…it is,” Homura agreed. But her hand remained a gentle touch on Sayaka’s face.
Cells grew and multiplied, Sayaka’s epidermis stretching over her dermis. Homura still wouldn’t meet her eyes.
Sayaka gritted her teeth. “Is my witch form truly so terrible that you wouldn’t look upon me?”
Homura’s gaze remained upon Sayaka’s breastbone – the blood-red bow of her Mitakihara uniform. But her face tightened…and, oh, that emotion in her eyes isn’t pity.
It’s something much worse.
“I never wanted to hurt you.” Homura murmured, so soft neither would hear if they were still human. “I never wanted to see you hurt.”
Sayaka’s chest burnt – it was so much easier to believe the pain was fuelled solely by rage. She wrestled herself out of Homura’s hold, and the fire in her chest grew at how easily Homura let her.
She still couldn’t see out of her left eye. Oktavia’s eye.
Sayaka spun around, blind in one eye. She didn’t linger to see if Homura’s expression changed – if she has finally lifted her gaze.
Instead, Sayaka stomped away. Away from the barrier – from the bars of this gilded cage and its captor who would not look at her with not-pity in her eyes.
She did not stop until the glint of a display window caught her eye. A pharmacy, Sayaka realised. Displayed prominently in the store window were ribbons of white bandages.
The cashier did not look at Oktavia’s eye when Sayaka entered to buy the bandages. Nobody tried to stop her as she stood in front of the store’s conveniently-placed mirror, wrapping Oktavia’s eye out of view.
Of course not. This was Homura’s world, and if she would not meet Sayaka’s gaze, why would the dolls in her world do so?
Sayaka stood in front of the mirror, hating herself for giving into the urge to wrap this aspect of herself away. Hating Homura for putting her in this circumstance – for building this cage nominally for Madoka but trapping Sayaka here all the same. Hating, as well, that Homura did not hate her back.
Sayaka just wanted her best friend back. When Homura first ripped Madoka from the Law of Cycles, Sayaka had sworn that she would stop at nothing to free Madoka. She had truly believed Homura would not get away with this.
But that was many years ago. Now, Madoka was just a middle school girl, Kyouko was just a transfer student from Kazamino, and Mami was just their senior. Time folded back on itself like an ouroboros – every time they came close to discovering the truth, Homura would reset the time loop, and it would be like that first day all over again.
Sayaka alone bore the burden of their past. Her, and Homura – this girl who could never be her friend.
She wished, at the very least, that Homura would meet her eyes. And if Homura ever found the courage to do so, Sayaka wished she would find the courage not to run as she just did.