Akemi's Nutcracker

Part 4

The sound of their steps on sidewalk set pace to the gears turning inside Homura's mind and Soul Orb, hanging safely as an earring, obscured from view by her hair. She would somehow, in the five minutes it would take to walk back to her apartment complex and climb the stairs, come up with something reasonable for Madoka to do with her. She supposed she could put off her larger duties, but dragging all the work she had to do further down the line than she already did studying to convey the appearance of a middle schooler with plans for the future would be suicidal, quite literally. Much like a Soul Gem, her status as a deity depended on her maintaining this universe and cleaning the Soul Gems of too far gone magical girls as the Law of Cycles to exist, and her Soul Orb, the core of her being, required the despair of girls who would become witches one second later as fuel. She gnawed on her lip as she remembered the worrisome fact that if she ran out of fuel, she could no longer maintain the world they lived in. When it crashed down, it would take her with it, and Madoka would be left alone again to work endlessly rebuilding her own and taking the resulting magical girls. It was a fate she would not, could not allow.

So mundane schoolwork was out for sure; but which of her duties could she possibly have Madoka help her with? Not only would she reveal her true identity, but Madoka would surely ask why she bothered with such monumental tasks anyways. Madoka was nowhere near stupid, no matter how frustrating it was that she believed herself to be; she had excellent intuition for dealing with people, had made most of the battle strategy to take down Walpurgis alongside Mami in earlier timelines where she remained a magical girl, and had been able to understand the Incubator's system well enough to use their own loophole to rework it to her liking. Homura could ask her aid in helping with building-like blueprints for the universe, but no doubt a fourteen year old girl volunteering for the role of lead architect of large stretches of land would be immensely suspicious. Aside from sweeping away Incubator "litter" and suppressing her own memories, there was little plausible activities for Madoka to aid her. Homura still had a difficult time believing that Madoka was willing to help a literal stranger, despite having seen Madoka's unflinching kindness with her own dulled eyes many times before.

Maybe schoolwork wasn't such a bad idea. No matter how much Homura shoved away her needs, told herself she didn't want it, didn't deserve it, she yearned for Madoka. Her body and mind longed to do something mindless, to stop worrying for however long it could. Her Soul Orb glinted just the slightest bit brighter whenever she was around Madoka, her very best friend, and every second with her wandered into a treasure trove of memories she flashed through her mind whenever despair threatened to overwhelm her. Through all these years, all these painful timelines, Madoka was the glue that held her cracked shell and splattered insides together. For Madoka, she had always reminded herself, Madoka needs you. Don't give up, Madoka needs you. The thought of doing homework with Madoka, helping her through English and pondering over math together like simple schoolgirls bound her emotions together even now. Maybe she could show Madoka her glasses, she wondered. Maybe this time, no matter how undeserving she was, no matter how much she knew it would hurt her to have to lie through her teeth to Madoka, they could be friends again.

Excitement renewed, she ran down the street and hopped up the stairs.

Madoka struggled to keep up with the raven-haired girl, and her thoughts immediately latched on to just how much of a drag she would be to Homura's studies with new vigour, mind flashing through various scenarios of confusion for her and exasperation for Homura faster than she could run. She would bumble through English and Math, and while she was unsure what level of different her work for those classes were (after all, she was only in Madoka's class for social reasons, as she took her lectures and classwork for all her classes online given her high level...), she knew for a fact that Madoka's work was several grades behind Homura's in science. Maybe she was planning to give Madoka practice in tedious operations while giving her a crash course in more advanced concepts? Was she intending to help Madoka instead of the other way around? Was she too shocked to articulate it properly so she just agreed to what Madoka had already proposed? A new thought ate away at her once she realised what that entailed. Homura had said that she didn't have any interest in conversing with others, but when this idea coupled with the fact that Homura pursued Madoka endlessly...did the girl simply not know how to make friends with others? Homura engaged in gossip when approached, but never sought out people; was she wary of them? Anxious? Was that why she was always on edge in public? Madoka felt a pang of sympathy, knowing herself how crippling shyness could be. If Homura was too scared to make any friends and resorted to hovering over the new girl in an honestly sad attempt to form a personal connection, then she would just have to be the friend she needed. It didn't matter how uncomfortable she would be dwarfed by Homura's schoolwork; the one thing she was proud she could give without fail was good company anyway.