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aegiscryptTitle: The Maiden, The Witch, and The Crone
Rating: PG
Genre: General
Word Count: ~8800
Warnings: Series spoilers for all series.
Also Archived On: Archive of Our Own on June 11, 2017.
Summary: They all know something about wishes, their prices, and the way they can change a world. Some more than others.
A.N.: This thing spent 3 years marinating in a Mostly Finished state and I figured my ratio of satisfaction against vague discontent with it won’t shift much more than it has after one final polish. Please enjoy, and hopefully nobody will suffer indigestion??
The girl collapses at the gateway.
Yuuko sits at the porch and watches her sleep. The only part of her that has passed into the shop’s dimension is the shining black sweep of her hair, soaked with water and dust.
“GEH,” says Watanuki, sometime later. He windmills his arms and nearly loses his grip on his groceries. “YUUKO-SAN, WHAT ON EARTH. How can you leave her lying on your doorstep! How is this conducive to the successful operation of a respectable business! Doumeki! Come make yourself useful, hold my bags!”
She shows them to a room, and waits until Watanuki is grumbling over the stovetop to draw out a bottle of sake from the lower shelf. “I do not bring customers like her into the shop.”
Watanuki gives her a look through the steam. It is not nearly as indignant as she had expected. “Is it because of the wish shop? Even if she had a wish, and was calling for you? You didn’t have to meet her outside the shop, did you?”
He is learning. “She must enter herself, or be brought in by somebody else. I’m not involved in her balance.” She presses the sake into Watanuki’s hands. “Doumeki-kun is still waiting at the porch. Go thank him for his help. I will take that to the customer.”
Watanuki regards the bottle suspiciously. “What’s this? Does the dolt have another wish or something?”
“This is the price in exchange for his services. Of course, this is coming out of your wages! Don’t be shy! You’re paying, so make sure he at least shares—”
She maintains the toothy smile for the duration that Watanuki spends venting his outrage and fetching appropriate drinkware. While he is stomping his way out, she sends Maru and Moro to entertain Mokona. Then she picks up the tray Watanuki has prepared, and goes to attend the customer.
“I’m coming in,” she calls, sliding the door open. “My assistant has made tea to restore you.”
The girl has woken, and is sitting seiza, eyes trained on the tatami. She has made no move to dry her hair or her clothes. Wet, her dress is almost charcoal. The shield on her arm glints.
Yuuko sets the cups out, and matches her pose. “I hope you like ginger.”
“Thank you for your hospitality, but I cannot stay here.”
“It is merely due courtesy, as a guest in my shop. You may call me Ichihara Yuuko.”
“I am Akemi Homura.”
“This shop is only a way station. You will be gone soon enough.”
“Then I will go now.”
“You will, in good time. For now, please drink your tea and rest.”
“I have to go.”
Yuuko tilts her head, letting her hair slide over her shoulder. “You are most incurious about where you are.”
“It doesn’t matter where I am. This isn’t my world.”
“How will you return if you do not know where you are?”
“I know where I am heading towards.” Silence, between them. Akemi Homura’s hair curls delicately on her damp cheeks, sheened with the muted light of the jewel on the back of her hand. Her stillness reminds Yuuko of ice: ice, clinking in the summer drink; ice, cracking in the arctic heart. “You seemed very certain I would be departing.”
“And you will. But how?”
At that, the girl raises her eyes. They are slate grey, flat grey, as dimensional as her voice. Black and white in motion. “You know the answer.”
“I do.”
“Why are you baiting me when you know that I don’t?”
“What will you do, to go?”
“If you can counter my power, then you can use time magic.” A spark of silver threads through that expressionless grey. “Why am I here?”
“You have a wish,” Yuuko says.
Akemi Homura drops her stare back to the untouched cup of tea. “I am done with wishes.”
“And yet you are here, in a shop only for people with wishes.”
The girl flinches. “Is that so?” The thrumming tension in her body when she looks up is terrible to behold. “I’m not interested in trade that involves wishes. I will see it through myself. Release me, or I will fight my way out. I have to go.”
Yuuko nods, slow and thoughtful. “You are not a captive here; you are free to go. But before you do, you may want to see to your jewel.”
“It will hold.”
“It is currently not powerful enough for you to leave this shop.”
Silence, again. The look Akemi Homura levels her could grind mountains down to gravel. “You planned this.”
“No. This is hitsuzen.”
“An inevitability,” she says flatly.
“Yes.”
“But it is not an inevitability that I stay.”
“Nobody stays forever. Not even in this shop.”
“So why are you telling me all this?”
“I can help you, if you will accept it.”
“I’ve told you, I’m not interested in trade.”
Yuuko smiles at that, a humourless little curve, because the girl could not bear humour now. “Ah, but you have already paid.”
Akemi Homura stares at her, then slumps. “Then why‘d you even ask?”
“Because even now,” Yuuko says, “you have a choice.”
Akemi Homura’s fingers twitch as though they are feeling out a firing mechanism. Yuuko imagines she’d have awful trigger discipline, considering. “And I am to believe you? When the world doesn’t work this way?”
“It is only the truth.”
“Damn you.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “Damn you and damn the wishes that you sell like they mean nothing at all.”
Yuuko merely sips her tea. Watanuki really does know how to draw out the spice just right; she ought to commend him.
“Fine. If I’ve already paid for it, then help me.”
Yuuko considers her over the rim of her cup. “Would you like to know what you have paid?”
“Does it matter? I won’t get it back even if I knew, would I?” Her eyes burn with violet fire, with glacial hearts, cracking. Ah, the cracks...— Another payment, proffered guilelessly. Information, then. “Give me what I’ve paid for, Ichihara Yuuko, I’m long overdue.”
“You are not overdue. This I will tell you, Akemi Homura: you still have the power to make your greatest wish worth the price you have paid. Please drink. Not all foods will refresh the soul like this tea.”
Akemi Homura glares at her, then picks up her cup and empties it with mechanistic listlessness. At length, she closes her eyes. “I’m just so tired,” she whispers.
“Then sleep.” Yuuko catches her as she sways, feeling every second of Akemi Homura’s rewinds weigh her hands down. “Sleep, and leave behind your weariness, and all the grief that you have learned here.” She touches the jewel on the back of the girl’s hand. It glows as the sands of her spent time sink into its depths, then flares as bright as a supernova. The shield clicks, whirls, and Akemi Homura is gone.
Yuuko sighs, finishing her tea, and slides open the door. Watanuki is standing just beyond it, frozen, the tray of sake forgotten in his hands. “I thought... I thought she might have wanted some. The customer. Because I brought her in...”
Yuuko plucks the dish off his tray. It is good alcohol; she will not stand for it being dropped, not as the farewell gift that it is. “She didn’t want any. And you have already made it up to her.”
He hesitates, glancing at the empty cups. “What wish did you grant for her?”
“Enough strength to see her other wish through to the very end.”
“That’s... her other wish is important, isn’t it?”
“Her world’s hitsuzen is in her hands.” It is wound about the gears of her magic, in the facts and the fictions of her choices, in the snarls and the knots and the unescapable singularity that leads her to one moment in the future, in the past, in the present. “When the time comes, they will pay their price for it.”
But not before. Akemi Homura will make sure of it.
Watanuki stares at the space Akemi Homura had once kneeled with a troubled expression. “If I may ask, what did she pay for the wish you just granted?”
Yuuko closes her eyes. “You will know yourself, in time.”
But not before. Not if Yuuko herself can make sure of it. Not ever before she herself has paid first. It will be their end, and their beginning, and soon, it will be their present, too. But it does not have to be all in desperation, either; worn down to the truths of her thinnest selves, all she can find is hope.
Before any of that, though, he has to pay her a nominal fee first. For formality’s sake. “So! What’s for dinner?”
The girl peers around the gatepost with huge eyes, blue hair swinging beyond the reach of her barrettes into her gaze. “Wow, I didn’t know a house like this could still exist here!”
Yuuko smiles, and lounges extra sensually for her on the lawn chair, watching the girl flush. “Well, since you are a high school student, there are still many things you don’t know. Welcome! How may I address a magical girl as powerful as you?”
She jerks back, embarrassment altogether forgotten. “How’d you know?”
“Only people with power can exude this kind of aura. And you, young lady, have great power.”
The girl grins, proud and happy, and walks up the path with confident steps. “Hehe, you can tell? My name is Miki Sayaka, and I’m a friend of Justice! Are you a magical girl, too, madam Shopkeep?”
“I am not a magical girl, no. But magic is within my domain. And a friend of Justice is always welcome in this shop.”
“Oh, this is your shop? I don’t see wares. What do you sell?”
“I sell wishes, Sayaka-chan.”
“Oh...” She draws back just shy of the shade of the parasol, her smile dimming. “In that case, I don’t really have anything to buy from you. I’ve already paid for one, you see, and I’m supposed to save change for the train home when our field trip ends.”
Yuuko sips her drink, listening to the ice cubes clink. “Naturally. What is a young lady if not full of wishes?”
Miki Sayaka smiles shyly down at the ground. “Somebody told me that wishes are what makes girls like us powerful. Say, if I change my mind about buying another wish, can I still visit?”
“Of course. You are welcome to return whenever you please. You know where to find this shop; it won’t go anywhere.” She checks her watch for show. “Is it still school hours for you? Will you be missed by your classmates? It must be a far trip for you; your uniform isn’t from a local institution, is it?”
“Ah— no, I’m not local. But I’ll be fine! It’s free time right now, and my friends are just around the corner in the pottery shop. I can take care of myself! Ah—” she glances at her watch, blanching, “you have a point, though, the busses are due to leave soon; I should probably go. Until next time, then, madam Shopkeep!”
She is some time gone when Watanuki pokes his head out the kitchen. “Sorry for the delay. Doumeki has the worst timing with deliveries. There was a customer, wasn’t there? Do you still need tea or snacks? Himawari-chan brought fresh persimmons.”
“There wasn’t a customer with whom to concern yourself for now. I could certainly do with more snacks myself, though!”
When she returns, Yuuko meets her beyond the gate.
I’ve grown up, sings Oktavia von Seckendorff, I have grown up. Wheels of fate ring around them as the orchestra narrates their paths. Let me fall in love with you. Let me destroy you. Hate me for destroying you. Love me for touching you, and despair.
“I cannot grant your wish,” Yuuko says, “but I can show you the way to one whom can.”
Love me!
Three wheels of fate crash to a halt at Yuuko’s feet, four behind, melody cut short by a twist of Yuuko’s will. “There is a price.”
LoveMelOvemEloVeMelovEmElOVeme love m E
“If your wish is to be granted, then Oktavia von Seckendorff must exist in every world that Miki Sayaka does. Do you understand what that means?”
wishes are not worth any price
anY PRICE A TAL
L
“Return to your world and think on it, then,” Yuuko says, “and maybe you will find your answer there.”
Oktavia von Seckendorff sings a high note in counterpoint, soprano discordant over the tenor line, and drowns her in a great wail of water and song.
“Yuuko-san!” Over the crash of magic, Watanuki’s voice rings with indignation. “Lunch is ready! What’s with this about me needing to call for you when you only spent the last hour caterwauling for alcohol?”
It takes but a moment for the witch’s presence to diminish in response. “You must not have projected loud enough to be heard over the music,” Yuuko calls, but she still waits until Oktavia von Seckendorff’s last pianissimo has completely faded before she steps back into the store’s dimension. “You need vocal training.”
“As if you yourself don’t already give me enough prac— Yuuko-san!”
“Yuuko!”
“You’re soaked!” All pretense cast aside, Watanuki hurries to her side with a hastily grabbed towel and worried eyes. Mokona reaches her first, clinging frantically against her shoulder.
“Yuuko, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” It is still summer, yet it would not have mattered if she had been drenched on the coldest day of the year. She takes the proffered towel anyway, wiping her skin dry for Watanuki’s benefit, and as token nod to his foresight for doing laundry as part of his distracting list of chores earlier in the morning.
“But nobody’s ever been able to touch you like this before,” he frets, hovering with more towels, “not when you’re granting their wishes.”
If Watanuki were the sort to dare, he would be pressing the towels onto her himself. Yuuko gives Mokona a comforting pat. “Not everybody will leave you untouched.”
A tiny frown etches itself into his smooth forehead. “‘Everybody’? I was talking about wishes—”
“Wishes are only a manifestation of a person’s desires and hitsuzen. When you grant a wish, you do not interact with the wish. You interact with the source of the wish itself. No one is untouchable, Watanuki.” No matter how hard anyone can wish.
“But you’re the Witch of the Dimensions.”
“I am only human.” Close enough. “Nothing more.” Nothing less.
Mokona’s little limbs tighten against her.
“And I didn’t hear— not that I could have done anything, if Yuuko-san is— but—”
“You didn’t hear because you forgot how sensitive you are, and listened too hard. Her call was what gave you your migraine earlier this morning.”
Watanuki’s expression clears in astonishment. “Is that why you didn’t meet them in the shop itself? Because you knew I’d be overwhelmed? Yuuko-san...”
“This is the only time I’m accommodating you. You need to learn how to shield yourself against customers. There will be louder ones, too, and what good are you as an assistant if you’re laid out before my customer even comes into the shop?”
“I know I need to practice... um, I don’t hear anything at all right now.” Watanuki casts an uneasy look at the gate of the shop. “Not even an echo... I don’t think she’s going to come back?”
“Not from that instance.” Nor in any other timelines either, judging by the lack of ripples. So it seems as though she has found her answer, after all.
Watanuki sighs. “All right. I’m glad Yuuko-san is unhurt. Please come eat. The food’s still warm, and Mokona didn’t have enough time to eat everything Doumeki and Himawari-chan brought before we came to get you. Here, take this one, it’s still dry. Let me put that into the hamper.”
Yuuko has to smile. “You’ve gotten better.” At Watanuki’s flummoxed look, she adds, “at hearing what isn’t said. It’ll serve you well one day beyond hearing our orders for food!”
“I’m surrounded by comedians,” Watanuki mutters, ears a fetching shade of red as he goes to dispose of the wet towels.
“He is getting a lot better,” Mokona says, still wrapped tight against her, “and so quickly, too.”
“Yes, he is. Not long, now. And it seems as if his precious people know it, too.”
Still, it is not with grief or resignation that fuels her will to fight. It takes a moment longer for Yuuko to realize that she is still smiling in Watanuki’s direction.
“A maid café?” Watanuki says in disbelief, for the fourth time in the hour. He hasn’t broken his record yet, but if Yuuko were to truly apply herself...
“Oh? Would you have preferred a butler café instead?”
Watanuki ignores the taunt in favour of whipping an accusatory finger at the silent figure holding the door open for them. “And why did you invite him too?!”
“Maid cafés are said to be very good date spots,” Yuuko says blandly, and grins as Watanuki all but implodes.
“And we had to head out of town just for this? You couldn’t at least have waited until Himawari-chan was available?!”
“Now why would she come with us? She’s a very busy girl herself, and has better things to do.”
“And I don’t?!”
“Of course not. You’re my hired help. Do your job properly, Watanuki, or Mokona will hear that you went when it couldn’t and pout at you for all of dinner!”
Watanuki lapses into grudging acquiescence, eyes skipping and lingering over the maids bustling between the tables, but doesn’t stop sulking until their maid joins them. “Good afternoon! My name is Mami. What may I call my masters?”
Watanuki perks like a blooming flower. “Hello!” Idly, Yuuko wonders if she should tell Watanuki that he is much prettier when he smiles and means it. “I’m Watanuki Kimihiro.”
“Not many maids choose to share their real name with their customers, Mami-chan,” says Yuuko.
Mami blinks.
“I apologize in advance for my companions,” Watanuki continues through gritted teeth. “You must forgive Yuuko-san’s manners, Mami-san. She’s not nearly as socially graceful as you are. And Doumeki over here, he’s even worse.”
“Thank you,” Doumeki says as Mami hands him the menu.
“Stop playing me up like that!”
Mami laughs. “My masters have such interesting dynamics! Would my masters like to order refreshments? They are freshly made, and may delight your palate.”
“What do you recommend?”
Ten minutes later, three slices of beautifully decorated cakes and a fragrant pot of tea make their picturesque appearances on their table. Watanuki is vocally appreciative by his first bite, and Yuuko has to concur; the delicate flavours on her tongue are making a fine case for themselves.
Mami beams in reply. “I am glad to hear that my masters like my cake!”
“Mami-san, you made this?” Watanuki says, startled, midway through his second bite.
“I did! This café orders a few selections from my private kitchens.”
Yuuko cleans her fork with a relishing lick. “You must be very popular at this café, what with your expertise in food and manners. Surely this is the same with your private life, Mami-chan.”
The flinch in Mami’s smile is just barely perceptible. “Ah... I’m lucky my masters care so much for my wellbeing.”
“How much do we pay for more of your time?” Doumeki says abruptly. Watanuki winces, blinking hard, and glares at Doumeki, but shuts his mouth when he realizes that Doumeki is staring at her with his archer’s implacable focus.
Mami returns his watchful look with a weighing one of her own, then murmurs a number that makes Watanuki wince again. Doumeki is nodding before she has finished speaking. “Please add it to our bill. Here.” He nudges the remaining chair out, then pauses as she makes no motion to join their table.
“We do have treats,” Yuuko adds, placing a candy-like ball on the table. It clinks with an odd chime, its black spherical centre caged in grey, and could almost be considered innocuous if not for the spike speared through its axis. Watanuki just barely avoids breathing in his gulp of tea as he gasps.
Mami darts a quick glance at the treat, turns that evaluating look on Yuuko, then takes a seat. Even the way she scoops up the ball is doll-like in poise. Small wonder that she is this particular café’s highest earner. “Thank you for indulging me with your pleasure.”
“No, thank you for indulging us, truly. It is our pleasure to appreciate the company of such a fine cook.”
“Are you flirting with Mami-san?” Watanuki says, boggling at Doumeki.
“Stating facts.”
“Your food is made with a hand that wants for company,” Yuuko murmurs into her tea before the scene devolves any further. She smiles at the look Watanuki gives her, and at Mami’s returning smile. “You made a good decision choosing to work here, Mami-chan. Your food ought to have an enthusiastic audience, like you yourself.”
“My mistress has a sharp tongue to go with a magical touch,” Mami dimples.
“Our maid has a lonely hand.”
Mami’s eyes foil over. “People walk their true roads on their own, though, wouldn’t you agree? Companions should not be diversions.”
“There can be companions on roads that parallel yours even if you don’t change course. Even if they are at different stages in their lives. The walk needn’t be lonely, Mami-chan.”
The glinting edge of Mami’s gaze soften. “My mistress does speak true. A lonely life isn’t worth living.”
Doumeki’s teacup stills in midair. The look he directs Watanuki is perfectly unreadable.
Yuuko sighs happily over another bite of cake. “Perhaps your food and your road will soon have enthusiastic private audiences of their own. It is within your reach, you know. Like that treat.”
“Perhaps.” She smiles, more lightly than Yuuko knows she has since she walked away untouched from a near-fatal car crash, and visibly draws away with a sigh. “I regret I must attend to my other masters. Would you have any more need of my services?”
Yuuko gives Doumeki an even look. Doumeki returns it for a long moment, then stands. “No, we’ve enjoyed ourselves enough. I’ll cover. Sit down.”
“You’re not the boss of me!” Watanuki snarls even as he retakes his seat from his half-rise.
“Really,” Yuuko observes, watching Doumeki follow Mami to the counter, “even on your date, with an audience, the pair of you continue to demonstrate what a wonderfully subversive comedy combination you could be. Your boke is quite modern, yes, modern enough for his tsukkomi—”
“Yuuko-san!”
“It’s true, you know.”
“Speaking of truth,” Watanuki grumbles, “now will you tell me why you didn’t bring Himawari-chan along?”
“I did tell you the truth. She has nothing to gain from this place.”
“So she already knew what you wanted us to learn here,” Watanuki murmurs, “is that why? So Himawari-chan wouldn’t pay what she didn’t have to pay?”
“No.” She’d already paid with the name of the shop. “You responded to Mami-chan first out of all the maids in the store. How did you know she would be my customer?”
He gives her a startled look, then flicks his eyes down. “I’m... not sure...”
“She draws the gaze, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, she does.” Watanuki rubs his temple. “The way Doumeki fixated on her so quickly gave me a headache. And did you see the way that miasma from that ball-thing just... sank into her skin? Or, I don’t know, like it expanded?”
“Yes.” The extra appetizer he’ll make for her for dinner should be payment enough. “Not many people listen to that call, Watanuki. The call that drew your eyes to her.”
“Call? She didn’t call... did she?” Watanuki murmurs to himself, leaning his chin on a hand. “I only heard echoes... She wasn’t afraid of you knowing so much about her, was she?”
“No.”
“So she really was expecting you when you answered...”
“Don’t reason. Listen. Think back. What prompted you to respond? What did you hear? Only then can you ask the right question for the answer you seek.”
Watanuki’s mismatched eyes unfocus. “I heard a song...”
Such is the depth of his rumination that Watanuki doesn’t even twitch when Doumeki returns to their table with a cake box. He deposits it in front of Yuuko. “Your cover was enough,” she answers in response to his questioning look, “so what’s this?”
Doumeki shrugs. “This slice was complimentary. Mami-san said I had nice eyes.”
“You both have the same eyes,” Watanuki murmurs. Doumeki turns the thoughtful look onto him, but Watanuki is frowning down at his hands and takes no notice.
“Come,” Yuuko says as the quiet grows heavy, “let us listen to what our maid had graciously hinted to us. It’s time to go.”
“Mokona! With me! We have a guest!”
Mokona settles into her arms obligingly. “But we have no food prepared!”
“Watanuki will see to it soon. To our guest!”
“To our guest! Behind the barrier that-a-way, right?”
“Mokona is so sharp!”
“Yuuko is too good to Mokona!”
The barrier isn’t strong enough to warrant Yuuko even a raised hand to cross it; accordingly, Mokona doesn’t bother flinching. Behind it, the ruins of a church peaks against the desolate sky.
The girl in the nave whips around when they push the heavy doors open, long hair echoing her movements. Her unfriendly gaze tracks their route through the atrium. “Who goes there!”
“This is no hospitable place for a guest,” Yuuko says. She places Mokona on a relatively intact pew and steps aside. “What may I call you?”
The girl frowns. “I’m Sakura Kyoko... wait a moment. You—”
“You may call me Ichihara Yuuko.”
Sakura Kyoko tenses. A whirlwind solidifies into a sectioned spear in her hands. “You’re a witch.”
“I am. But I am not the same as the witches whom you hunt.”
“Shows what you know!” She rushes, a searing line of intent. Yuuko deflects her into a wall, and watches her snarl as she fights to dislodge herself for a second run. “I truly am not one of your targets, Sakura Kyoko. But my assistant could certainly use your help.”
With a great heave, Sakura Kyoko wrenches her spear from the shattered plaster. “A witch, asking for help for her familiar from a magical girl? What kind of witch are you?”
“One who is not your target. But I daresay my assistant is a target of the witches you hunt, and of worse things besides.
“He is a very good cook,” she adds, as Sakura Kyoko coils for another spring, “and I am wroth to lose such a talented specimen to misfortunes as ordinary as a witch’s misguided vengeance and his inability to run fast. I am certain he can be persuaded to fix you something in thanks for the small favour of saving his life.”
“A familiar that can cook?! What—” The girl hesitates just long enough for Mokona to leap onto her shoulder and plead its case. “Oh, all right,” she finally grumbles, with one last suspicious look at Yuuko, and dashes out under Mokona’s directions.
Now that they have left, Yuuko is free to focus wholly on the scintillating colours of the shattered glass on the floor. “It is past time that you are gone. She doesn’t belongs here.”
The altar rumbles.
“Yes, she would have stayed, and quite willingly at that. But that doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t belong here, and never will. Would you let her linger in her grief as you wouldn’t your own?”
Another rumble, this time in protest.
“No. You had meant no harm. She knew this, when she answered your call for companionship. But you must pay her back, too, in a form beyond stagnation.”
A bone-breaking shiver from the walls, and a ribbon drops to her feet with delicate precision. Yuuko picks it up, admiring the rich red, and the blessings sunk into its weave. “A worthy price. The goodwill of your worshippers will protect her.”
The church quakes questioningly.
“She will return to bid you goodbye. You may give it to her then. One of my own will come by afterwards, and help you move on.” She kneels, draping the ribbon across the altar. “As your grace has preserved you, so will your grace let you go. Be at peace, great one.”
She does not look back when she leaves. The dregs of the barrier close behind her without a sound.
Sakura Kyoko arrives at the shop just before noon with an intact Watanuki in tow. They announce themselves by continuing to scream at each other at the top of their lungs. Mokona bounces ahead and nestles into her arms. “They were spectacular!” it cries.
Yuuko marks it down as a sign of many merry things to come from this pair, and calls for sake.
True to her expectations, lunch is served with great fanfare and greater noise. Watanuki lays out the richest feast he has ever cooked in the shop’s kitchen and howls his way through preparing the tea. Not to be outdone, Sakura Kyoko rebuts his every flare with interest.
“You have got to be the weirdest group of magical constructs I have ever had to deal with,” she declares between her fourth and fifth helping of rice. “Who doesn’t train to run faster if they’re a target for that kind of witch? Are you an idiot?”
“Magical construct! Watch your tongue, I’m not like Mokona—”
“And you!” She jabs a finger at Yuuko. “What’s with this relaxation? Just because I came into your barrier to eat doesn’t mean I’m done with hunting you!”
“Don’t bother hunting Yuuko-san,” Watanuki mutters, “she’s not worth your attention.”
Sakura Kyoko crunches on a piece of pickled daikon at him. “Really? Really? Is that your threat to counter mine against your witch? Your insults are uninspired—”
“Who’re you to call someone’s insults uninspired when yours are no better—”
Sakura Kyoko ignores his indignation with admirable practice and picks up a piece of simmered mackerel in miso. “Where’d you learn how to cook stuff this edible anyway, huh? I can’t imagine your witch going all culinary with you in the kitchen.”
“Ah...” Watanuki ducks, ire immediately set aside as he laughs sheepishly. “My mom and dad, I guess? I don’t remember my family.” He smiles wistfully down at his tea. “I just remember that they loved me, and I loved them very much too.”
Sakura Kyoko watches him with uncharacteristic wordlessness as she continues to chew. Though they continue to needle each other throughout the meal, she doesn’t ask any more questions about his family.
Sakura Kyoko negotiates her leave by bellowing that Watanuki couldn’t stop her from going if he’d tried, and Watanuki bids her farewell by verbally throwing her out. It is more entertainment than Yuuko has had the pleasure of witnessing in decades.
“Where will you go?” Yuuko asks when they both pause to draw breath.
“I’ve got some stuff to clean up around here first, that’ll take time,” the girl says dismissively, “then I’ll probably head a few cities over. There’s, ah, going to be an interesting party somewhere there, and... it’s about time, I guess. For me to go.”
“Good riddance,” Watanuki grouses.
Sakura Kyoko says a very rude word that makes him colour to the tips of his ears, then gives Yuuko another suspicious look before marching to face her squarely. “I didn’t have a horrible time today, considering that you’re a witch and your familiar’s an idiot. I guess there’s always a first.”
“Who’s a familiar!”
“Always,” Yuuko agrees, “no matter how many times.”
Sakura Kyoko doesn’t give Watanuki more than a glance for the first time in the entire day. “Here.” Yuuko extends her hand, and examines the little object the girl drops onto her open palm. A black ball of misery, caged with grey and spiked through the axis. Behind her, Watanuki flinches from the miasma, face screwed up in discomfort. “Your food was good,” Sakura Kyoko allows grudgingly, “so I suppose it’s fair that I give you something good, too.”
“A fine payment.” Yuuko declares, tucking it into her pocket.
“Of course it is. Don’t waste it.”
“I will not. Remember that I may not be the only witch who might be worthy of a second consideration.”
Sakura snorts. “Yeah, well, that still doesn’t mean I won’t deal with you the moment you start spreading death and misery.”
“Good,” Yuuko says softly, “remember that, too.”
“Huh? Of course. I only just told you this. Okay, I’m off, I gotta go hunt witches—” and she gives a now mostly-composed Watanuki a heavy look, “—that are worth more of my attention.”
“Goodbye, Kyoko-chan. If you will oblige us with an escort as a gesture of goodwill? Watanuki, please accompany our honoured guest to her destination.”
The two exchange magnificent hairy eyeballs. “Fine,” they grumble in tandem.
“Oh, Watanuki, a word of advice for you too!” Yuuko calls, as Watanuki walks out on Sakura Kyoko’s heels. “You’d better come back in one piece, because we need to prepare for a road trip in a few days. So remember to listen! Churches are built for choirs, you know. Their echoes are magnificent.”
“Listen to ask the right question!” Mokona cheers from her shoulder.
“What! What is that supposed to mean!”
“Good luck!”
She laughs at his indignation. “You’re so smart, Mokona!”
“Yuuko is too kind!” Mokona waits until Watanuki is definitively out of earshot before adding, “but Watanuki is already very good at listening. He’ll definitely ask the right question.”
“He’s good, but it won’t be enough this time. Luckily, all the church wishes for is somebody who will listen; it will teach Watanuki his first lesson on how to hear. He’ll be fine, our Watanuki.”
“Do you think she’ll be okay too? Kyoko-chan?”
Mokona is not asking about Sakura Kyoko in relation to the church. “She will make her choice and believe in it with every fibre of her being. Does that answer your question?”
“If that’s all Yuuko can say,” it replies, cuddling into her neck. “Will you be okay?”
“I will not regret, either.”
They wait, together, for Watanuki to come back.
The wards between dimensions do not ripple when it steps across their threshold. That is her first warning.
“I’ve finally found you,” it says. “What odd barriers you uphold!”
She does not turn to look, as Maru has not finished tying her hair back. “The barriers have always been the same, for you or for me.”
“Perhaps. What may I call you, Mistress of Dimensions?”
“You may call me Ichihara Yuuko. How do you style yourself?”
“Well, I usually introduce myself as Kyubey, but you already know my full title, don’t you?”
“I do,” she says, “but I will call you what you would prefer.”
“You may call me Incubator, Ichihara Yuuko.”
Moro fastens the last hairpiece in place, and steps back in tandem with Maru into the adjacent room without further dramatics. The Incubator’s magic does not mesh well with the wish shop’s, and she’d rather spare the poor dolls what she can. “What brings you here, Incubator?”
“The same reason as everybody else who comes to you, Ichihara Yuuko.”
“You have a wish, yes,” she says, “but none of your kind have sought me out in all the millennia that you have dedicated to your mission.”
“There is always a time for firsts, though, wouldn’t you say?”
There is always time, and time not enough. “You have a wish,” she says, again.
“I do, Ichihara Yuuko. And you, too, have a wish. It’s a pity I cannot grant it.”
“I’ll wager it is because you cannot make a soul gem out of me,” Yuuko opines, dry.
“Yes. My ability to grant wishes is fuelled by the energy of a soul gem’s formation.”
“Fortunately I do not have that limitation, myself.”
“Ah, yes. But that’s not very useful, isn’t it? Your exchanges are so much more vacuous in value.”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
“The weight of a wish against the weight of the destruction of the universe itself is not for you to decide?”
“No. But if you want your wish to be granted...”
“Really,” it says with a realistic simulacrum of a sigh, “I don’t understand the difference between how we grant wishes. You don’t tell your customers the true price the same way I don’t, and yet your customers certainly don’t all do what the magical girls do at the end. If anything, a magical girl’s contributions are more valuable than anything your customers can ever claim.”
“There is a difference, Incubator.” She would smirk, but she knows that it will be a wasted effort, and a lost cause besides. “Do you want to know the price of that answer?”
“No, Ichihara Yuuko. I will not ask you to grant that wish for me.”
Briefly she is glad that it is not in Watanuki’s course of lessons to meet the Incubator – now, at least – and instead is currently mired in trigonometry class. “Then what brings you here? Has the perceivable imbalance of detectable energy in the universe sped up, and you are in need of more intervention to slow it down?”
“No,” the Incubator replies so seriously that Yuuko is tempted to smash something to see if that would convince it to be less circulatory, “I did not come to ask for you to grant that wish, either.”
They regard each other for a long moment.
“I cannot stop you,” she finally says.
“And I cannot stop you,” it concurs.
Another moment.
“Then is there anything else I can do for you?” Yuuko asks, for formality’s sake. She already knows the answer.
The Incubator knows that she knows, too. “No,” it replies anyway, equally for form. If nothing else, Yuuko will give it credit for that. It is all form; but its form is very good.
“Then it is best that you go. I take my customers’ confidentiality very seriously.”
It slips out with equally little fanfare. She reweighs her decision to withhold her parting words, then decides that it was just as well that she’d done so. She cannot imagine how much longer it would linger if she were to tell it that it is not so different from her regular customers at all, even if it is not human.
After all, the approach is the same. It is so small a thing that the Incubator wishes for, and the price so insignificant. She would not presume, however, to be so arrogant as to claim that she knows just how much the price is worth to it. Sometimes, all the listening in the world will not clarify anything.
Still. Sometimes listening is all that needs to be done to discover leverage, and the Incubator does not lack for this skill. When Watanuki learns, she will make sure he does not weaponize it.
She draws a breath, closes her eyes, and is smiling again when her next customer walks in.
The first time Kaname Madoka visits, the results are so inconsequential Yuuko does not bother to remember it.
The second time Kaname Madoka visits, she is on the cusp of unbecoming. But she has not become; so Yuuko steps through the dimensions and descends into the liminality of dreams.
Kaname Madoka does not descend. Between one moment and the next she appears, with no flourish and no echo. There are not many people who can make the hairs on the back of Yuuko’s neck prickle like this, alive or dead or in between. The book tucked into the crook of her elbow vibrates with sympathetic resonance. “You called for me.”
“I did. You’re the Witch of the Dimensions, right? I’m Kaname Madoka. Well, I’m still Kaname Madoka for now...”
“You may call me Ichihara Yuuko. Why did you call for me, Kaname Madoka?”
“Please, just Madoka! I need your help, Ichihara-san.”
“Yuuko is fine, Madoka-san. You would trust a witch who deals with wishes, after all that you have gone through, and with such little time left?”
“I don’t, um... I don’t know why, but you feel safe?” Kaname Madoka tilts her head, confusion scrunching her young features together. “You feel true. Um. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I know you’re the one I should go to.”
Yuuko smiles at the gold starting to thread through her voice. No, they won’t have long together at all. “You have good instincts, Madoka-san. Tell me, what is so important and special, that you would deign to meet with someone like me?”
“Ah, no...” Kaname Madoka ducks her head. “I’m not... Homura-chan’s wish let me make mine, and I’m, um, that is, this isn’t really all that special. But she made me special, you know? Her love for me made this special. So I can’t waste this. I need to do this, for all the magical girls and all the witches. I’m just not nearly powerful enough to do it by myself.”
“What do you wish to do?”
“I want to give them hope.”
“I know of a young lady who will be able to provide you with the means to do so. She, too, is a magical girl, though not of your world. But there is a price.”
Kaname Madoka raises fiery eyes. “I will pay it. It’s worth it.”
“Very well.” Yuuko opens the book, and allows two Cards to float out. “Your main weapon is a bow, yes?”
“Oh! Um, yes.”
“Then these two will teach you how to use their powers, and incorporate them into your skillset.”
“‘The Time’,” Kaname Madoka reads, with wonder, “and ‘The Shot’?”
“Yes. In turn, you will give her the potential for hope.”
“Of course! I would do it even if you didn’t ask me to, Yuuko-san. But... she’s not here, is she? The magical girl who owns these cards? Should I go when she is?”
“No.” Yuuko lays a hand on the cover of the book. “As two Cards will give you power, two Cards will you give in return. Your power is to give hope by destroying, correct?”
“I do— ah, but I destroy the grief and sadness that consumes magical girls—!”
“The second part of your price,” Yuuko continues, unstoppable, “is to give her the potential for destruction.” It is fate itself, this love, this terrible love that is as much a force of destruction as it is a force of creation. Neither sides of it can be denied.
Kaname Madoka can clearly guess at the full details of her price, because she is recoiling. “I... but that’s a weapon of mass destruction!”
“That is why hope is so powerful, is it not?” Yuuko says, gently. “The balance with despair is what makes your wish so strong: the brightest light that shines in the darkest hour; the power to change, and the faith that the person who can use this great power will use it for good. It will be the same faith that she will have in you for the lessons that her Cards will teach you. Are you still willing to pay?”
Kaname Madoka hesitates, then sighs. “I will pay. But I don’t know how to make these kinds of cards.”
“It is good, then, that their creator is here to help.” Yuuko turns in time to watch him step into the dream. “Madoka-san, this is Clow Reed. Clow, Kaname Madoka.”
“Well met.”
“Hello.” Kaname Madoka eyes him with no little trepidation. “I thought the cards belong to a magical girl.”
“They will.”
Kaname Madoka’s eyes widen. “Are you this world’s Incubator?” she says, voice faint.
“Oh, no, I’m very human, I assure you. Although... ah.” Clow turns to Yuuko mournfully. “You have tricked me, haven’t you, Yuuko? Introducing her with her former name like that.”
“You would have known,” Yuuko tells him with some asperity, “if you’d bothered to think about why we have stepped out of time in the first place—”
“You can’t make her become a magical girl without even asking her!” Ah, how refreshing, a person with a straightforward eye on their priorities.
Clow, the blasted sinkhole of unrepentance, doesn’t even blink. “But she will be the only one strong enough to control these cards. It’s inevitable.”
Kaname Madoka stares at him. “But... even then...” She hesitates, an unearthly light flickering through her eyes, then spins back around to face Yuuko. “I understand. I know what I need to do now. Let’s start, please.”
Clow smiles behind Kaname Madoka, even as his spell-circle springs to humming life beneath their feet. Kaname Madoka takes a deep breath, and opens her glowing golden eyes. In her cupped hands, power roils in all its searing glory, all its despair and its resolution to stand up despite of everything. Yuuko could almost hold her breath taking in the sight.
Kaname Madoka breathes out, and the power splits. The great brilliance of Hope’s potential unstrings at the deepest curve of the bow and sinks into the threads of fate to wrap around the Card Captor’s soul. Its opposite twists apart at the arrow’s shaft, through the trees of consequences at the fletching, and condenses into perceptible form.
The Nothing comes to them in a terrible void of denial. It takes but a twist of Clow’s will to send it to sleep. Kaname Madoka watches it drift into Yuuko’s arms with sad eyes. “It will be very lonely.”
Yuuko lays a kiss on the sleeping Nothing’s brow before it, too, dissolves beyond their reach in search for its resting place. “Yes. But in the same way that you can give this young lady hope, so will she be able to give this little one the same.”
Behind her, Clow sighs, ever so slightly.
“A word of advice,” Yuuko says, as the scales of exchange tilt, and tilt, “choice is never so clear-cut a reason, or solution.”
“I know. I know that sometimes, you have to choose between one terrible option and another, and sometimes the choice isn’t much of a choice at all. There will always be people who will use and manipulate you. I know that.” Kaname Madoka meets her eyes with a will so fierce Yuuko can feel the heat scorch into the fine webs of hitsuzen. “But it matters. That consent. And to know that you won’t be alone no matter what impossible choice you make.”
“Yes, it matters.” On the edge of the abyss, before a jump, before a fall, that is all there is.
Kaname Madoka sighs, and clasps her hands around Yuuko’s. “Did I give you any hope yourself, Yuuko-san?”
Really, she should have known. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re not the same as the witches in my world, but you’re still a magical girl, all grown up in this barrier that circumstances had forced you to make. I can’t turn you back, any more than I can restore any of the witches in my own world.” She sounds so sad. “But it’ll be all right. You’re not alone. You’ll see.”
Scales, shifting. The golden light is almost blinding now, enveloped by pink brilliance. “I’ll take your word for it. Lovely as you are, I will not pay the price to remember you, or who you had been.”
“You don’t need to remember me. I’ll be with you, too, every step of the way to the very end. And the magical girls you meet will... they’ll know. That you can give hope, too, enough to keep going. Everything will be all right.”
With a squeeze, Kaname Madoka lets her hand go, and touches the hovering Cards before her. As they flare, Kaname Madoka doesn’t so much leave as thread into the weave of the world, as true as any warp and weft. Her warm glow envelops Yuuko in a hug, and dissipates.
Well, then.
“So?” Yuuko says peevishly. “Are you quite done?”
“Yes,” Clow Reed muses, “I am. Creation and destruction, the flux and the flow. Self-perpetuation towards the nexus, the heuristic point of no return— yes. The Cards are now balanced. They are finished. As you probably already knew, my dear.”
Yuuko exhales, harder than she’d meant. “Then, your price.”
If nothing else, Clow Reed knows how to receive his lot with grace. He dips his great echoing cavern of a head. “I would bid my Guardians farewell first, if you will.”
“Make it quick,” she snaps. He gives her an irritating smile as he slips out, but he will oblige, if only for their mutual amusement. There is nothing else left for them, anymore.
Well, perhaps a punch to his face might ease the itch in her fist. Always worth an attempt.
His return is even more subtle than his previous arrival. “I am honoured, you know,” Clow says pensively, “that you invited me to watch a transcendence. Even if I don’t quite remember it, I know it was very beautiful.”
“Yes,” she replies, absently, into the timeless dark, “because you won’t see mine.”
His smile had already flatlined when she turns, ceremonial robes flaring out around her. “For pausing my time,” she continues, slow and inexorable and unable to hate him for it, for she is the Witch of the Dimensions and she is but one instrument of hitsuzen, “you will keep going. Your duties will gain as mine might have gained, and you will become responsible for the worlds for which I would have cared. Your goodbye will be as short as mine is now long. Your home will be as mutable as mine is now static.”
He understands. But because he is an awful man, he says, “So that means...”
“I am no longer able to balance the dimensions at ground zero. So you will do so in my stead. Every single one of them. In those that do not need balancing, you will not dwell.”
This is the price, for attempting to defy hitsuzen, for attempting to change what cannot be changed. Because hitsuzen is the future made present. It is the end, and the beginning, and it is them now, separated on different sides of a timeline that cannot meet until the very end.
He has power, and she had faith in him. Has faith, still? Debatable. And so, here they are.
“I knew,” he confides, as though they had been holding a completely different conversation, with a rueful quirk of his mouth that indicates that this is not so much an admission as it is an acknowledgement that he knows that she knows. As though his spell-circle isn’t pulsing beneath their feet, primed and ready to turn their hourglass. As though he couldn’t guess at the angle and strength with which she really would like to use to deck him in that quirked mouth. “But you know me; I had to try.” And damn the apocalyptic consequences, yes, she knows. “At least you won’t be alone. I fancy our Mokona Modoka will be very good company, and will listen to your whinging with great enthusiasm.”
She has no words left for him. Her spell-circle flares in counterpart to his, as the dimensions shift, as their last great act starts to burn. “Go.”
He does not say goodbye as he leaves for the last time. She had expected nothing less, the arrogant sod, not the least for him to choose a country with the same name as his to start. They will be remembered for this anyway, and it is likely they will not be forgiven for doing what needs to be done to resolve the mess it will become.
...Come to think of it, Clow may have ensured her accompaniment solely to keep her on track instead of going insane— that giant— The nerve—!
She struggles against the swell of emotions, then lets it course through her, and lets it go. So be it, then; she will fulfill her duty to the very end, and she is not so proud as to eschew any lifeline to come her way. She shouldn’t have been surprised, in retrospect. He has never asked for permission where he could ask for forgiveness, and for this, he won’t apologize, because he will never mean it. It is a curious sort of thing to experience, to understand this about him, and still feel her heart ache for it.
“Sentimental bastard,” she mutters under her breath, and opens a portal back to the wish shop. Out of the edges of her senses she catches faint sparks of pink and gold and fainter words, but she’ll investigate later; the next customer is due, and they’re an important one. For the wheels to turn, for hitsuzen to guide and be guided into, and all that. They have started something terrible, and they will finish the cycle, and she won’t look back when they do.
But it’ll be all right. You’re not alone. You’ll see...
-fin-
Rating: PG
Genre: General
Word Count: ~8800
Warnings: Series spoilers for all series.
Also Archived On: Archive of Our Own on June 11, 2017.
Summary: They all know something about wishes, their prices, and the way they can change a world. Some more than others.
A.N.: This thing spent 3 years marinating in a Mostly Finished state and I figured my ratio of satisfaction against vague discontent with it won’t shift much more than it has after one final polish. Please enjoy, and hopefully nobody will suffer indigestion??
a defender
The girl collapses at the gateway.
Yuuko sits at the porch and watches her sleep. The only part of her that has passed into the shop’s dimension is the shining black sweep of her hair, soaked with water and dust.
“GEH,” says Watanuki, sometime later. He windmills his arms and nearly loses his grip on his groceries. “YUUKO-SAN, WHAT ON EARTH. How can you leave her lying on your doorstep! How is this conducive to the successful operation of a respectable business! Doumeki! Come make yourself useful, hold my bags!”
She shows them to a room, and waits until Watanuki is grumbling over the stovetop to draw out a bottle of sake from the lower shelf. “I do not bring customers like her into the shop.”
Watanuki gives her a look through the steam. It is not nearly as indignant as she had expected. “Is it because of the wish shop? Even if she had a wish, and was calling for you? You didn’t have to meet her outside the shop, did you?”
He is learning. “She must enter herself, or be brought in by somebody else. I’m not involved in her balance.” She presses the sake into Watanuki’s hands. “Doumeki-kun is still waiting at the porch. Go thank him for his help. I will take that to the customer.”
Watanuki regards the bottle suspiciously. “What’s this? Does the dolt have another wish or something?”
“This is the price in exchange for his services. Of course, this is coming out of your wages! Don’t be shy! You’re paying, so make sure he at least shares—”
She maintains the toothy smile for the duration that Watanuki spends venting his outrage and fetching appropriate drinkware. While he is stomping his way out, she sends Maru and Moro to entertain Mokona. Then she picks up the tray Watanuki has prepared, and goes to attend the customer.
“I’m coming in,” she calls, sliding the door open. “My assistant has made tea to restore you.”
The girl has woken, and is sitting seiza, eyes trained on the tatami. She has made no move to dry her hair or her clothes. Wet, her dress is almost charcoal. The shield on her arm glints.
Yuuko sets the cups out, and matches her pose. “I hope you like ginger.”
“Thank you for your hospitality, but I cannot stay here.”
“It is merely due courtesy, as a guest in my shop. You may call me Ichihara Yuuko.”
“I am Akemi Homura.”
“This shop is only a way station. You will be gone soon enough.”
“Then I will go now.”
“You will, in good time. For now, please drink your tea and rest.”
“I have to go.”
Yuuko tilts her head, letting her hair slide over her shoulder. “You are most incurious about where you are.”
“It doesn’t matter where I am. This isn’t my world.”
“How will you return if you do not know where you are?”
“I know where I am heading towards.” Silence, between them. Akemi Homura’s hair curls delicately on her damp cheeks, sheened with the muted light of the jewel on the back of her hand. Her stillness reminds Yuuko of ice: ice, clinking in the summer drink; ice, cracking in the arctic heart. “You seemed very certain I would be departing.”
“And you will. But how?”
At that, the girl raises her eyes. They are slate grey, flat grey, as dimensional as her voice. Black and white in motion. “You know the answer.”
“I do.”
“Why are you baiting me when you know that I don’t?”
“What will you do, to go?”
“If you can counter my power, then you can use time magic.” A spark of silver threads through that expressionless grey. “Why am I here?”
“You have a wish,” Yuuko says.
Akemi Homura drops her stare back to the untouched cup of tea. “I am done with wishes.”
“And yet you are here, in a shop only for people with wishes.”
The girl flinches. “Is that so?” The thrumming tension in her body when she looks up is terrible to behold. “I’m not interested in trade that involves wishes. I will see it through myself. Release me, or I will fight my way out. I have to go.”
Yuuko nods, slow and thoughtful. “You are not a captive here; you are free to go. But before you do, you may want to see to your jewel.”
“It will hold.”
“It is currently not powerful enough for you to leave this shop.”
Silence, again. The look Akemi Homura levels her could grind mountains down to gravel. “You planned this.”
“No. This is hitsuzen.”
“An inevitability,” she says flatly.
“Yes.”
“But it is not an inevitability that I stay.”
“Nobody stays forever. Not even in this shop.”
“So why are you telling me all this?”
“I can help you, if you will accept it.”
“I’ve told you, I’m not interested in trade.”
Yuuko smiles at that, a humourless little curve, because the girl could not bear humour now. “Ah, but you have already paid.”
Akemi Homura stares at her, then slumps. “Then why‘d you even ask?”
“Because even now,” Yuuko says, “you have a choice.”
Akemi Homura’s fingers twitch as though they are feeling out a firing mechanism. Yuuko imagines she’d have awful trigger discipline, considering. “And I am to believe you? When the world doesn’t work this way?”
“It is only the truth.”
“Damn you.” She squeezes her eyes shut. “Damn you and damn the wishes that you sell like they mean nothing at all.”
Yuuko merely sips her tea. Watanuki really does know how to draw out the spice just right; she ought to commend him.
“Fine. If I’ve already paid for it, then help me.”
Yuuko considers her over the rim of her cup. “Would you like to know what you have paid?”
“Does it matter? I won’t get it back even if I knew, would I?” Her eyes burn with violet fire, with glacial hearts, cracking. Ah, the cracks...— Another payment, proffered guilelessly. Information, then. “Give me what I’ve paid for, Ichihara Yuuko, I’m long overdue.”
“You are not overdue. This I will tell you, Akemi Homura: you still have the power to make your greatest wish worth the price you have paid. Please drink. Not all foods will refresh the soul like this tea.”
Akemi Homura glares at her, then picks up her cup and empties it with mechanistic listlessness. At length, she closes her eyes. “I’m just so tired,” she whispers.
“Then sleep.” Yuuko catches her as she sways, feeling every second of Akemi Homura’s rewinds weigh her hands down. “Sleep, and leave behind your weariness, and all the grief that you have learned here.” She touches the jewel on the back of the girl’s hand. It glows as the sands of her spent time sink into its depths, then flares as bright as a supernova. The shield clicks, whirls, and Akemi Homura is gone.
Yuuko sighs, finishing her tea, and slides open the door. Watanuki is standing just beyond it, frozen, the tray of sake forgotten in his hands. “I thought... I thought she might have wanted some. The customer. Because I brought her in...”
Yuuko plucks the dish off his tray. It is good alcohol; she will not stand for it being dropped, not as the farewell gift that it is. “She didn’t want any. And you have already made it up to her.”
He hesitates, glancing at the empty cups. “What wish did you grant for her?”
“Enough strength to see her other wish through to the very end.”
“That’s... her other wish is important, isn’t it?”
“Her world’s hitsuzen is in her hands.” It is wound about the gears of her magic, in the facts and the fictions of her choices, in the snarls and the knots and the unescapable singularity that leads her to one moment in the future, in the past, in the present. “When the time comes, they will pay their price for it.”
But not before. Akemi Homura will make sure of it.
Watanuki stares at the space Akemi Homura had once kneeled with a troubled expression. “If I may ask, what did she pay for the wish you just granted?”
Yuuko closes her eyes. “You will know yourself, in time.”
But not before. Not if Yuuko herself can make sure of it. Not ever before she herself has paid first. It will be their end, and their beginning, and soon, it will be their present, too. But it does not have to be all in desperation, either; worn down to the truths of her thinnest selves, all she can find is hope.
Before any of that, though, he has to pay her a nominal fee first. For formality’s sake. “So! What’s for dinner?”
-----
a producer
The girl peers around the gatepost with huge eyes, blue hair swinging beyond the reach of her barrettes into her gaze. “Wow, I didn’t know a house like this could still exist here!”
Yuuko smiles, and lounges extra sensually for her on the lawn chair, watching the girl flush. “Well, since you are a high school student, there are still many things you don’t know. Welcome! How may I address a magical girl as powerful as you?”
She jerks back, embarrassment altogether forgotten. “How’d you know?”
“Only people with power can exude this kind of aura. And you, young lady, have great power.”
The girl grins, proud and happy, and walks up the path with confident steps. “Hehe, you can tell? My name is Miki Sayaka, and I’m a friend of Justice! Are you a magical girl, too, madam Shopkeep?”
“I am not a magical girl, no. But magic is within my domain. And a friend of Justice is always welcome in this shop.”
“Oh, this is your shop? I don’t see wares. What do you sell?”
“I sell wishes, Sayaka-chan.”
“Oh...” She draws back just shy of the shade of the parasol, her smile dimming. “In that case, I don’t really have anything to buy from you. I’ve already paid for one, you see, and I’m supposed to save change for the train home when our field trip ends.”
Yuuko sips her drink, listening to the ice cubes clink. “Naturally. What is a young lady if not full of wishes?”
Miki Sayaka smiles shyly down at the ground. “Somebody told me that wishes are what makes girls like us powerful. Say, if I change my mind about buying another wish, can I still visit?”
“Of course. You are welcome to return whenever you please. You know where to find this shop; it won’t go anywhere.” She checks her watch for show. “Is it still school hours for you? Will you be missed by your classmates? It must be a far trip for you; your uniform isn’t from a local institution, is it?”
“Ah— no, I’m not local. But I’ll be fine! It’s free time right now, and my friends are just around the corner in the pottery shop. I can take care of myself! Ah—” she glances at her watch, blanching, “you have a point, though, the busses are due to leave soon; I should probably go. Until next time, then, madam Shopkeep!”
She is some time gone when Watanuki pokes his head out the kitchen. “Sorry for the delay. Doumeki has the worst timing with deliveries. There was a customer, wasn’t there? Do you still need tea or snacks? Himawari-chan brought fresh persimmons.”
“There wasn’t a customer with whom to concern yourself for now. I could certainly do with more snacks myself, though!”
When she returns, Yuuko meets her beyond the gate.
I’ve grown up, sings Oktavia von Seckendorff, I have grown up. Wheels of fate ring around them as the orchestra narrates their paths. Let me fall in love with you. Let me destroy you. Hate me for destroying you. Love me for touching you, and despair.
“I cannot grant your wish,” Yuuko says, “but I can show you the way to one whom can.”
Love me!
Three wheels of fate crash to a halt at Yuuko’s feet, four behind, melody cut short by a twist of Yuuko’s will. “There is a price.”
LoveMelOvemEloVeMelovEmElOVeme love m E
“If your wish is to be granted, then Oktavia von Seckendorff must exist in every world that Miki Sayaka does. Do you understand what that means?”
wishes are not worth any price
anY PRICE A TAL
L
“Return to your world and think on it, then,” Yuuko says, “and maybe you will find your answer there.”
Oktavia von Seckendorff sings a high note in counterpoint, soprano discordant over the tenor line, and drowns her in a great wail of water and song.
“Yuuko-san!” Over the crash of magic, Watanuki’s voice rings with indignation. “Lunch is ready! What’s with this about me needing to call for you when you only spent the last hour caterwauling for alcohol?”
It takes but a moment for the witch’s presence to diminish in response. “You must not have projected loud enough to be heard over the music,” Yuuko calls, but she still waits until Oktavia von Seckendorff’s last pianissimo has completely faded before she steps back into the store’s dimension. “You need vocal training.”
“As if you yourself don’t already give me enough prac— Yuuko-san!”
“Yuuko!”
“You’re soaked!” All pretense cast aside, Watanuki hurries to her side with a hastily grabbed towel and worried eyes. Mokona reaches her first, clinging frantically against her shoulder.
“Yuuko, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” It is still summer, yet it would not have mattered if she had been drenched on the coldest day of the year. She takes the proffered towel anyway, wiping her skin dry for Watanuki’s benefit, and as token nod to his foresight for doing laundry as part of his distracting list of chores earlier in the morning.
“But nobody’s ever been able to touch you like this before,” he frets, hovering with more towels, “not when you’re granting their wishes.”
If Watanuki were the sort to dare, he would be pressing the towels onto her himself. Yuuko gives Mokona a comforting pat. “Not everybody will leave you untouched.”
A tiny frown etches itself into his smooth forehead. “‘Everybody’? I was talking about wishes—”
“Wishes are only a manifestation of a person’s desires and hitsuzen. When you grant a wish, you do not interact with the wish. You interact with the source of the wish itself. No one is untouchable, Watanuki.” No matter how hard anyone can wish.
“But you’re the Witch of the Dimensions.”
“I am only human.” Close enough. “Nothing more.” Nothing less.
Mokona’s little limbs tighten against her.
“And I didn’t hear— not that I could have done anything, if Yuuko-san is— but—”
“You didn’t hear because you forgot how sensitive you are, and listened too hard. Her call was what gave you your migraine earlier this morning.”
Watanuki’s expression clears in astonishment. “Is that why you didn’t meet them in the shop itself? Because you knew I’d be overwhelmed? Yuuko-san...”
“This is the only time I’m accommodating you. You need to learn how to shield yourself against customers. There will be louder ones, too, and what good are you as an assistant if you’re laid out before my customer even comes into the shop?”
“I know I need to practice... um, I don’t hear anything at all right now.” Watanuki casts an uneasy look at the gate of the shop. “Not even an echo... I don’t think she’s going to come back?”
“Not from that instance.” Nor in any other timelines either, judging by the lack of ripples. So it seems as though she has found her answer, after all.
Watanuki sighs. “All right. I’m glad Yuuko-san is unhurt. Please come eat. The food’s still warm, and Mokona didn’t have enough time to eat everything Doumeki and Himawari-chan brought before we came to get you. Here, take this one, it’s still dry. Let me put that into the hamper.”
Yuuko has to smile. “You’ve gotten better.” At Watanuki’s flummoxed look, she adds, “at hearing what isn’t said. It’ll serve you well one day beyond hearing our orders for food!”
“I’m surrounded by comedians,” Watanuki mutters, ears a fetching shade of red as he goes to dispose of the wet towels.
“He is getting a lot better,” Mokona says, still wrapped tight against her, “and so quickly, too.”
“Yes, he is. Not long, now. And it seems as if his precious people know it, too.”
Still, it is not with grief or resignation that fuels her will to fight. It takes a moment longer for Yuuko to realize that she is still smiling in Watanuki’s direction.
-----
a survivor
“A maid café?” Watanuki says in disbelief, for the fourth time in the hour. He hasn’t broken his record yet, but if Yuuko were to truly apply herself...
“Oh? Would you have preferred a butler café instead?”
Watanuki ignores the taunt in favour of whipping an accusatory finger at the silent figure holding the door open for them. “And why did you invite him too?!”
“Maid cafés are said to be very good date spots,” Yuuko says blandly, and grins as Watanuki all but implodes.
“And we had to head out of town just for this? You couldn’t at least have waited until Himawari-chan was available?!”
“Now why would she come with us? She’s a very busy girl herself, and has better things to do.”
“And I don’t?!”
“Of course not. You’re my hired help. Do your job properly, Watanuki, or Mokona will hear that you went when it couldn’t and pout at you for all of dinner!”
Watanuki lapses into grudging acquiescence, eyes skipping and lingering over the maids bustling between the tables, but doesn’t stop sulking until their maid joins them. “Good afternoon! My name is Mami. What may I call my masters?”
Watanuki perks like a blooming flower. “Hello!” Idly, Yuuko wonders if she should tell Watanuki that he is much prettier when he smiles and means it. “I’m Watanuki Kimihiro.”
“Not many maids choose to share their real name with their customers, Mami-chan,” says Yuuko.
Mami blinks.
“I apologize in advance for my companions,” Watanuki continues through gritted teeth. “You must forgive Yuuko-san’s manners, Mami-san. She’s not nearly as socially graceful as you are. And Doumeki over here, he’s even worse.”
“Thank you,” Doumeki says as Mami hands him the menu.
“Stop playing me up like that!”
Mami laughs. “My masters have such interesting dynamics! Would my masters like to order refreshments? They are freshly made, and may delight your palate.”
“What do you recommend?”
Ten minutes later, three slices of beautifully decorated cakes and a fragrant pot of tea make their picturesque appearances on their table. Watanuki is vocally appreciative by his first bite, and Yuuko has to concur; the delicate flavours on her tongue are making a fine case for themselves.
Mami beams in reply. “I am glad to hear that my masters like my cake!”
“Mami-san, you made this?” Watanuki says, startled, midway through his second bite.
“I did! This café orders a few selections from my private kitchens.”
Yuuko cleans her fork with a relishing lick. “You must be very popular at this café, what with your expertise in food and manners. Surely this is the same with your private life, Mami-chan.”
The flinch in Mami’s smile is just barely perceptible. “Ah... I’m lucky my masters care so much for my wellbeing.”
“How much do we pay for more of your time?” Doumeki says abruptly. Watanuki winces, blinking hard, and glares at Doumeki, but shuts his mouth when he realizes that Doumeki is staring at her with his archer’s implacable focus.
Mami returns his watchful look with a weighing one of her own, then murmurs a number that makes Watanuki wince again. Doumeki is nodding before she has finished speaking. “Please add it to our bill. Here.” He nudges the remaining chair out, then pauses as she makes no motion to join their table.
“We do have treats,” Yuuko adds, placing a candy-like ball on the table. It clinks with an odd chime, its black spherical centre caged in grey, and could almost be considered innocuous if not for the spike speared through its axis. Watanuki just barely avoids breathing in his gulp of tea as he gasps.
Mami darts a quick glance at the treat, turns that evaluating look on Yuuko, then takes a seat. Even the way she scoops up the ball is doll-like in poise. Small wonder that she is this particular café’s highest earner. “Thank you for indulging me with your pleasure.”
“No, thank you for indulging us, truly. It is our pleasure to appreciate the company of such a fine cook.”
“Are you flirting with Mami-san?” Watanuki says, boggling at Doumeki.
“Stating facts.”
“Your food is made with a hand that wants for company,” Yuuko murmurs into her tea before the scene devolves any further. She smiles at the look Watanuki gives her, and at Mami’s returning smile. “You made a good decision choosing to work here, Mami-chan. Your food ought to have an enthusiastic audience, like you yourself.”
“My mistress has a sharp tongue to go with a magical touch,” Mami dimples.
“Our maid has a lonely hand.”
Mami’s eyes foil over. “People walk their true roads on their own, though, wouldn’t you agree? Companions should not be diversions.”
“There can be companions on roads that parallel yours even if you don’t change course. Even if they are at different stages in their lives. The walk needn’t be lonely, Mami-chan.”
The glinting edge of Mami’s gaze soften. “My mistress does speak true. A lonely life isn’t worth living.”
Doumeki’s teacup stills in midair. The look he directs Watanuki is perfectly unreadable.
Yuuko sighs happily over another bite of cake. “Perhaps your food and your road will soon have enthusiastic private audiences of their own. It is within your reach, you know. Like that treat.”
“Perhaps.” She smiles, more lightly than Yuuko knows she has since she walked away untouched from a near-fatal car crash, and visibly draws away with a sigh. “I regret I must attend to my other masters. Would you have any more need of my services?”
Yuuko gives Doumeki an even look. Doumeki returns it for a long moment, then stands. “No, we’ve enjoyed ourselves enough. I’ll cover. Sit down.”
“You’re not the boss of me!” Watanuki snarls even as he retakes his seat from his half-rise.
“Really,” Yuuko observes, watching Doumeki follow Mami to the counter, “even on your date, with an audience, the pair of you continue to demonstrate what a wonderfully subversive comedy combination you could be. Your boke is quite modern, yes, modern enough for his tsukkomi—”
“Yuuko-san!”
“It’s true, you know.”
“Speaking of truth,” Watanuki grumbles, “now will you tell me why you didn’t bring Himawari-chan along?”
“I did tell you the truth. She has nothing to gain from this place.”
“So she already knew what you wanted us to learn here,” Watanuki murmurs, “is that why? So Himawari-chan wouldn’t pay what she didn’t have to pay?”
“No.” She’d already paid with the name of the shop. “You responded to Mami-chan first out of all the maids in the store. How did you know she would be my customer?”
He gives her a startled look, then flicks his eyes down. “I’m... not sure...”
“She draws the gaze, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah, she does.” Watanuki rubs his temple. “The way Doumeki fixated on her so quickly gave me a headache. And did you see the way that miasma from that ball-thing just... sank into her skin? Or, I don’t know, like it expanded?”
“Yes.” The extra appetizer he’ll make for her for dinner should be payment enough. “Not many people listen to that call, Watanuki. The call that drew your eyes to her.”
“Call? She didn’t call... did she?” Watanuki murmurs to himself, leaning his chin on a hand. “I only heard echoes... She wasn’t afraid of you knowing so much about her, was she?”
“No.”
“So she really was expecting you when you answered...”
“Don’t reason. Listen. Think back. What prompted you to respond? What did you hear? Only then can you ask the right question for the answer you seek.”
Watanuki’s mismatched eyes unfocus. “I heard a song...”
Such is the depth of his rumination that Watanuki doesn’t even twitch when Doumeki returns to their table with a cake box. He deposits it in front of Yuuko. “Your cover was enough,” she answers in response to his questioning look, “so what’s this?”
Doumeki shrugs. “This slice was complimentary. Mami-san said I had nice eyes.”
“You both have the same eyes,” Watanuki murmurs. Doumeki turns the thoughtful look onto him, but Watanuki is frowning down at his hands and takes no notice.
“Come,” Yuuko says as the quiet grows heavy, “let us listen to what our maid had graciously hinted to us. It’s time to go.”
-----
a paladin
“Mokona! With me! We have a guest!”
Mokona settles into her arms obligingly. “But we have no food prepared!”
“Watanuki will see to it soon. To our guest!”
“To our guest! Behind the barrier that-a-way, right?”
“Mokona is so sharp!”
“Yuuko is too good to Mokona!”
The barrier isn’t strong enough to warrant Yuuko even a raised hand to cross it; accordingly, Mokona doesn’t bother flinching. Behind it, the ruins of a church peaks against the desolate sky.
The girl in the nave whips around when they push the heavy doors open, long hair echoing her movements. Her unfriendly gaze tracks their route through the atrium. “Who goes there!”
“This is no hospitable place for a guest,” Yuuko says. She places Mokona on a relatively intact pew and steps aside. “What may I call you?”
The girl frowns. “I’m Sakura Kyoko... wait a moment. You—”
“You may call me Ichihara Yuuko.”
Sakura Kyoko tenses. A whirlwind solidifies into a sectioned spear in her hands. “You’re a witch.”
“I am. But I am not the same as the witches whom you hunt.”
“Shows what you know!” She rushes, a searing line of intent. Yuuko deflects her into a wall, and watches her snarl as she fights to dislodge herself for a second run. “I truly am not one of your targets, Sakura Kyoko. But my assistant could certainly use your help.”
With a great heave, Sakura Kyoko wrenches her spear from the shattered plaster. “A witch, asking for help for her familiar from a magical girl? What kind of witch are you?”
“One who is not your target. But I daresay my assistant is a target of the witches you hunt, and of worse things besides.
“He is a very good cook,” she adds, as Sakura Kyoko coils for another spring, “and I am wroth to lose such a talented specimen to misfortunes as ordinary as a witch’s misguided vengeance and his inability to run fast. I am certain he can be persuaded to fix you something in thanks for the small favour of saving his life.”
“A familiar that can cook?! What—” The girl hesitates just long enough for Mokona to leap onto her shoulder and plead its case. “Oh, all right,” she finally grumbles, with one last suspicious look at Yuuko, and dashes out under Mokona’s directions.
Now that they have left, Yuuko is free to focus wholly on the scintillating colours of the shattered glass on the floor. “It is past time that you are gone. She doesn’t belongs here.”
The altar rumbles.
“Yes, she would have stayed, and quite willingly at that. But that doesn’t change the fact that she doesn’t belong here, and never will. Would you let her linger in her grief as you wouldn’t your own?”
Another rumble, this time in protest.
“No. You had meant no harm. She knew this, when she answered your call for companionship. But you must pay her back, too, in a form beyond stagnation.”
A bone-breaking shiver from the walls, and a ribbon drops to her feet with delicate precision. Yuuko picks it up, admiring the rich red, and the blessings sunk into its weave. “A worthy price. The goodwill of your worshippers will protect her.”
The church quakes questioningly.
“She will return to bid you goodbye. You may give it to her then. One of my own will come by afterwards, and help you move on.” She kneels, draping the ribbon across the altar. “As your grace has preserved you, so will your grace let you go. Be at peace, great one.”
She does not look back when she leaves. The dregs of the barrier close behind her without a sound.
Sakura Kyoko arrives at the shop just before noon with an intact Watanuki in tow. They announce themselves by continuing to scream at each other at the top of their lungs. Mokona bounces ahead and nestles into her arms. “They were spectacular!” it cries.
Yuuko marks it down as a sign of many merry things to come from this pair, and calls for sake.
True to her expectations, lunch is served with great fanfare and greater noise. Watanuki lays out the richest feast he has ever cooked in the shop’s kitchen and howls his way through preparing the tea. Not to be outdone, Sakura Kyoko rebuts his every flare with interest.
“You have got to be the weirdest group of magical constructs I have ever had to deal with,” she declares between her fourth and fifth helping of rice. “Who doesn’t train to run faster if they’re a target for that kind of witch? Are you an idiot?”
“Magical construct! Watch your tongue, I’m not like Mokona—”
“And you!” She jabs a finger at Yuuko. “What’s with this relaxation? Just because I came into your barrier to eat doesn’t mean I’m done with hunting you!”
“Don’t bother hunting Yuuko-san,” Watanuki mutters, “she’s not worth your attention.”
Sakura Kyoko crunches on a piece of pickled daikon at him. “Really? Really? Is that your threat to counter mine against your witch? Your insults are uninspired—”
“Who’re you to call someone’s insults uninspired when yours are no better—”
Sakura Kyoko ignores his indignation with admirable practice and picks up a piece of simmered mackerel in miso. “Where’d you learn how to cook stuff this edible anyway, huh? I can’t imagine your witch going all culinary with you in the kitchen.”
“Ah...” Watanuki ducks, ire immediately set aside as he laughs sheepishly. “My mom and dad, I guess? I don’t remember my family.” He smiles wistfully down at his tea. “I just remember that they loved me, and I loved them very much too.”
Sakura Kyoko watches him with uncharacteristic wordlessness as she continues to chew. Though they continue to needle each other throughout the meal, she doesn’t ask any more questions about his family.
Sakura Kyoko negotiates her leave by bellowing that Watanuki couldn’t stop her from going if he’d tried, and Watanuki bids her farewell by verbally throwing her out. It is more entertainment than Yuuko has had the pleasure of witnessing in decades.
“Where will you go?” Yuuko asks when they both pause to draw breath.
“I’ve got some stuff to clean up around here first, that’ll take time,” the girl says dismissively, “then I’ll probably head a few cities over. There’s, ah, going to be an interesting party somewhere there, and... it’s about time, I guess. For me to go.”
“Good riddance,” Watanuki grouses.
Sakura Kyoko says a very rude word that makes him colour to the tips of his ears, then gives Yuuko another suspicious look before marching to face her squarely. “I didn’t have a horrible time today, considering that you’re a witch and your familiar’s an idiot. I guess there’s always a first.”
“Who’s a familiar!”
“Always,” Yuuko agrees, “no matter how many times.”
Sakura Kyoko doesn’t give Watanuki more than a glance for the first time in the entire day. “Here.” Yuuko extends her hand, and examines the little object the girl drops onto her open palm. A black ball of misery, caged with grey and spiked through the axis. Behind her, Watanuki flinches from the miasma, face screwed up in discomfort. “Your food was good,” Sakura Kyoko allows grudgingly, “so I suppose it’s fair that I give you something good, too.”
“A fine payment.” Yuuko declares, tucking it into her pocket.
“Of course it is. Don’t waste it.”
“I will not. Remember that I may not be the only witch who might be worthy of a second consideration.”
Sakura snorts. “Yeah, well, that still doesn’t mean I won’t deal with you the moment you start spreading death and misery.”
“Good,” Yuuko says softly, “remember that, too.”
“Huh? Of course. I only just told you this. Okay, I’m off, I gotta go hunt witches—” and she gives a now mostly-composed Watanuki a heavy look, “—that are worth more of my attention.”
“Goodbye, Kyoko-chan. If you will oblige us with an escort as a gesture of goodwill? Watanuki, please accompany our honoured guest to her destination.”
The two exchange magnificent hairy eyeballs. “Fine,” they grumble in tandem.
“Oh, Watanuki, a word of advice for you too!” Yuuko calls, as Watanuki walks out on Sakura Kyoko’s heels. “You’d better come back in one piece, because we need to prepare for a road trip in a few days. So remember to listen! Churches are built for choirs, you know. Their echoes are magnificent.”
“Listen to ask the right question!” Mokona cheers from her shoulder.
“What! What is that supposed to mean!”
“Good luck!”
She laughs at his indignation. “You’re so smart, Mokona!”
“Yuuko is too kind!” Mokona waits until Watanuki is definitively out of earshot before adding, “but Watanuki is already very good at listening. He’ll definitely ask the right question.”
“He’s good, but it won’t be enough this time. Luckily, all the church wishes for is somebody who will listen; it will teach Watanuki his first lesson on how to hear. He’ll be fine, our Watanuki.”
“Do you think she’ll be okay too? Kyoko-chan?”
Mokona is not asking about Sakura Kyoko in relation to the church. “She will make her choice and believe in it with every fibre of her being. Does that answer your question?”
“If that’s all Yuuko can say,” it replies, cuddling into her neck. “Will you be okay?”
“I will not regret, either.”
They wait, together, for Watanuki to come back.
-----
a visionary
The wards between dimensions do not ripple when it steps across their threshold. That is her first warning.
“I’ve finally found you,” it says. “What odd barriers you uphold!”
She does not turn to look, as Maru has not finished tying her hair back. “The barriers have always been the same, for you or for me.”
“Perhaps. What may I call you, Mistress of Dimensions?”
“You may call me Ichihara Yuuko. How do you style yourself?”
“Well, I usually introduce myself as Kyubey, but you already know my full title, don’t you?”
“I do,” she says, “but I will call you what you would prefer.”
“You may call me Incubator, Ichihara Yuuko.”
Moro fastens the last hairpiece in place, and steps back in tandem with Maru into the adjacent room without further dramatics. The Incubator’s magic does not mesh well with the wish shop’s, and she’d rather spare the poor dolls what she can. “What brings you here, Incubator?”
“The same reason as everybody else who comes to you, Ichihara Yuuko.”
“You have a wish, yes,” she says, “but none of your kind have sought me out in all the millennia that you have dedicated to your mission.”
“There is always a time for firsts, though, wouldn’t you say?”
There is always time, and time not enough. “You have a wish,” she says, again.
“I do, Ichihara Yuuko. And you, too, have a wish. It’s a pity I cannot grant it.”
“I’ll wager it is because you cannot make a soul gem out of me,” Yuuko opines, dry.
“Yes. My ability to grant wishes is fuelled by the energy of a soul gem’s formation.”
“Fortunately I do not have that limitation, myself.”
“Ah, yes. But that’s not very useful, isn’t it? Your exchanges are so much more vacuous in value.”
“That’s not for me to decide.”
“The weight of a wish against the weight of the destruction of the universe itself is not for you to decide?”
“No. But if you want your wish to be granted...”
“Really,” it says with a realistic simulacrum of a sigh, “I don’t understand the difference between how we grant wishes. You don’t tell your customers the true price the same way I don’t, and yet your customers certainly don’t all do what the magical girls do at the end. If anything, a magical girl’s contributions are more valuable than anything your customers can ever claim.”
“There is a difference, Incubator.” She would smirk, but she knows that it will be a wasted effort, and a lost cause besides. “Do you want to know the price of that answer?”
“No, Ichihara Yuuko. I will not ask you to grant that wish for me.”
Briefly she is glad that it is not in Watanuki’s course of lessons to meet the Incubator – now, at least – and instead is currently mired in trigonometry class. “Then what brings you here? Has the perceivable imbalance of detectable energy in the universe sped up, and you are in need of more intervention to slow it down?”
“No,” the Incubator replies so seriously that Yuuko is tempted to smash something to see if that would convince it to be less circulatory, “I did not come to ask for you to grant that wish, either.”
They regard each other for a long moment.
“I cannot stop you,” she finally says.
“And I cannot stop you,” it concurs.
Another moment.
“Then is there anything else I can do for you?” Yuuko asks, for formality’s sake. She already knows the answer.
The Incubator knows that she knows, too. “No,” it replies anyway, equally for form. If nothing else, Yuuko will give it credit for that. It is all form; but its form is very good.
“Then it is best that you go. I take my customers’ confidentiality very seriously.”
It slips out with equally little fanfare. She reweighs her decision to withhold her parting words, then decides that it was just as well that she’d done so. She cannot imagine how much longer it would linger if she were to tell it that it is not so different from her regular customers at all, even if it is not human.
After all, the approach is the same. It is so small a thing that the Incubator wishes for, and the price so insignificant. She would not presume, however, to be so arrogant as to claim that she knows just how much the price is worth to it. Sometimes, all the listening in the world will not clarify anything.
Still. Sometimes listening is all that needs to be done to discover leverage, and the Incubator does not lack for this skill. When Watanuki learns, she will make sure he does not weaponize it.
She draws a breath, closes her eyes, and is smiling again when her next customer walks in.
-----
an interceder
The first time Kaname Madoka visits, the results are so inconsequential Yuuko does not bother to remember it.
The second time Kaname Madoka visits, she is on the cusp of unbecoming. But she has not become; so Yuuko steps through the dimensions and descends into the liminality of dreams.
Kaname Madoka does not descend. Between one moment and the next she appears, with no flourish and no echo. There are not many people who can make the hairs on the back of Yuuko’s neck prickle like this, alive or dead or in between. The book tucked into the crook of her elbow vibrates with sympathetic resonance. “You called for me.”
“I did. You’re the Witch of the Dimensions, right? I’m Kaname Madoka. Well, I’m still Kaname Madoka for now...”
“You may call me Ichihara Yuuko. Why did you call for me, Kaname Madoka?”
“Please, just Madoka! I need your help, Ichihara-san.”
“Yuuko is fine, Madoka-san. You would trust a witch who deals with wishes, after all that you have gone through, and with such little time left?”
“I don’t, um... I don’t know why, but you feel safe?” Kaname Madoka tilts her head, confusion scrunching her young features together. “You feel true. Um. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I know you’re the one I should go to.”
Yuuko smiles at the gold starting to thread through her voice. No, they won’t have long together at all. “You have good instincts, Madoka-san. Tell me, what is so important and special, that you would deign to meet with someone like me?”
“Ah, no...” Kaname Madoka ducks her head. “I’m not... Homura-chan’s wish let me make mine, and I’m, um, that is, this isn’t really all that special. But she made me special, you know? Her love for me made this special. So I can’t waste this. I need to do this, for all the magical girls and all the witches. I’m just not nearly powerful enough to do it by myself.”
“What do you wish to do?”
“I want to give them hope.”
“I know of a young lady who will be able to provide you with the means to do so. She, too, is a magical girl, though not of your world. But there is a price.”
Kaname Madoka raises fiery eyes. “I will pay it. It’s worth it.”
“Very well.” Yuuko opens the book, and allows two Cards to float out. “Your main weapon is a bow, yes?”
“Oh! Um, yes.”
“Then these two will teach you how to use their powers, and incorporate them into your skillset.”
“‘The Time’,” Kaname Madoka reads, with wonder, “and ‘The Shot’?”
“Yes. In turn, you will give her the potential for hope.”
“Of course! I would do it even if you didn’t ask me to, Yuuko-san. But... she’s not here, is she? The magical girl who owns these cards? Should I go when she is?”
“No.” Yuuko lays a hand on the cover of the book. “As two Cards will give you power, two Cards will you give in return. Your power is to give hope by destroying, correct?”
“I do— ah, but I destroy the grief and sadness that consumes magical girls—!”
“The second part of your price,” Yuuko continues, unstoppable, “is to give her the potential for destruction.” It is fate itself, this love, this terrible love that is as much a force of destruction as it is a force of creation. Neither sides of it can be denied.
Kaname Madoka can clearly guess at the full details of her price, because she is recoiling. “I... but that’s a weapon of mass destruction!”
“That is why hope is so powerful, is it not?” Yuuko says, gently. “The balance with despair is what makes your wish so strong: the brightest light that shines in the darkest hour; the power to change, and the faith that the person who can use this great power will use it for good. It will be the same faith that she will have in you for the lessons that her Cards will teach you. Are you still willing to pay?”
Kaname Madoka hesitates, then sighs. “I will pay. But I don’t know how to make these kinds of cards.”
“It is good, then, that their creator is here to help.” Yuuko turns in time to watch him step into the dream. “Madoka-san, this is Clow Reed. Clow, Kaname Madoka.”
“Well met.”
“Hello.” Kaname Madoka eyes him with no little trepidation. “I thought the cards belong to a magical girl.”
“They will.”
Kaname Madoka’s eyes widen. “Are you this world’s Incubator?” she says, voice faint.
“Oh, no, I’m very human, I assure you. Although... ah.” Clow turns to Yuuko mournfully. “You have tricked me, haven’t you, Yuuko? Introducing her with her former name like that.”
“You would have known,” Yuuko tells him with some asperity, “if you’d bothered to think about why we have stepped out of time in the first place—”
“You can’t make her become a magical girl without even asking her!” Ah, how refreshing, a person with a straightforward eye on their priorities.
Clow, the blasted sinkhole of unrepentance, doesn’t even blink. “But she will be the only one strong enough to control these cards. It’s inevitable.”
Kaname Madoka stares at him. “But... even then...” She hesitates, an unearthly light flickering through her eyes, then spins back around to face Yuuko. “I understand. I know what I need to do now. Let’s start, please.”
Clow smiles behind Kaname Madoka, even as his spell-circle springs to humming life beneath their feet. Kaname Madoka takes a deep breath, and opens her glowing golden eyes. In her cupped hands, power roils in all its searing glory, all its despair and its resolution to stand up despite of everything. Yuuko could almost hold her breath taking in the sight.
Kaname Madoka breathes out, and the power splits. The great brilliance of Hope’s potential unstrings at the deepest curve of the bow and sinks into the threads of fate to wrap around the Card Captor’s soul. Its opposite twists apart at the arrow’s shaft, through the trees of consequences at the fletching, and condenses into perceptible form.
The Nothing comes to them in a terrible void of denial. It takes but a twist of Clow’s will to send it to sleep. Kaname Madoka watches it drift into Yuuko’s arms with sad eyes. “It will be very lonely.”
Yuuko lays a kiss on the sleeping Nothing’s brow before it, too, dissolves beyond their reach in search for its resting place. “Yes. But in the same way that you can give this young lady hope, so will she be able to give this little one the same.”
Behind her, Clow sighs, ever so slightly.
“A word of advice,” Yuuko says, as the scales of exchange tilt, and tilt, “choice is never so clear-cut a reason, or solution.”
“I know. I know that sometimes, you have to choose between one terrible option and another, and sometimes the choice isn’t much of a choice at all. There will always be people who will use and manipulate you. I know that.” Kaname Madoka meets her eyes with a will so fierce Yuuko can feel the heat scorch into the fine webs of hitsuzen. “But it matters. That consent. And to know that you won’t be alone no matter what impossible choice you make.”
“Yes, it matters.” On the edge of the abyss, before a jump, before a fall, that is all there is.
Kaname Madoka sighs, and clasps her hands around Yuuko’s. “Did I give you any hope yourself, Yuuko-san?”
Really, she should have known. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re not the same as the witches in my world, but you’re still a magical girl, all grown up in this barrier that circumstances had forced you to make. I can’t turn you back, any more than I can restore any of the witches in my own world.” She sounds so sad. “But it’ll be all right. You’re not alone. You’ll see.”
Scales, shifting. The golden light is almost blinding now, enveloped by pink brilliance. “I’ll take your word for it. Lovely as you are, I will not pay the price to remember you, or who you had been.”
“You don’t need to remember me. I’ll be with you, too, every step of the way to the very end. And the magical girls you meet will... they’ll know. That you can give hope, too, enough to keep going. Everything will be all right.”
With a squeeze, Kaname Madoka lets her hand go, and touches the hovering Cards before her. As they flare, Kaname Madoka doesn’t so much leave as thread into the weave of the world, as true as any warp and weft. Her warm glow envelops Yuuko in a hug, and dissipates.
Well, then.
“So?” Yuuko says peevishly. “Are you quite done?”
“Yes,” Clow Reed muses, “I am. Creation and destruction, the flux and the flow. Self-perpetuation towards the nexus, the heuristic point of no return— yes. The Cards are now balanced. They are finished. As you probably already knew, my dear.”
Yuuko exhales, harder than she’d meant. “Then, your price.”
If nothing else, Clow Reed knows how to receive his lot with grace. He dips his great echoing cavern of a head. “I would bid my Guardians farewell first, if you will.”
“Make it quick,” she snaps. He gives her an irritating smile as he slips out, but he will oblige, if only for their mutual amusement. There is nothing else left for them, anymore.
Well, perhaps a punch to his face might ease the itch in her fist. Always worth an attempt.
His return is even more subtle than his previous arrival. “I am honoured, you know,” Clow says pensively, “that you invited me to watch a transcendence. Even if I don’t quite remember it, I know it was very beautiful.”
“Yes,” she replies, absently, into the timeless dark, “because you won’t see mine.”
His smile had already flatlined when she turns, ceremonial robes flaring out around her. “For pausing my time,” she continues, slow and inexorable and unable to hate him for it, for she is the Witch of the Dimensions and she is but one instrument of hitsuzen, “you will keep going. Your duties will gain as mine might have gained, and you will become responsible for the worlds for which I would have cared. Your goodbye will be as short as mine is now long. Your home will be as mutable as mine is now static.”
He understands. But because he is an awful man, he says, “So that means...”
“I am no longer able to balance the dimensions at ground zero. So you will do so in my stead. Every single one of them. In those that do not need balancing, you will not dwell.”
This is the price, for attempting to defy hitsuzen, for attempting to change what cannot be changed. Because hitsuzen is the future made present. It is the end, and the beginning, and it is them now, separated on different sides of a timeline that cannot meet until the very end.
He has power, and she had faith in him. Has faith, still? Debatable. And so, here they are.
“I knew,” he confides, as though they had been holding a completely different conversation, with a rueful quirk of his mouth that indicates that this is not so much an admission as it is an acknowledgement that he knows that she knows. As though his spell-circle isn’t pulsing beneath their feet, primed and ready to turn their hourglass. As though he couldn’t guess at the angle and strength with which she really would like to use to deck him in that quirked mouth. “But you know me; I had to try.” And damn the apocalyptic consequences, yes, she knows. “At least you won’t be alone. I fancy our Mokona Modoka will be very good company, and will listen to your whinging with great enthusiasm.”
She has no words left for him. Her spell-circle flares in counterpart to his, as the dimensions shift, as their last great act starts to burn. “Go.”
He does not say goodbye as he leaves for the last time. She had expected nothing less, the arrogant sod, not the least for him to choose a country with the same name as his to start. They will be remembered for this anyway, and it is likely they will not be forgiven for doing what needs to be done to resolve the mess it will become.
...Come to think of it, Clow may have ensured her accompaniment solely to keep her on track instead of going insane— that giant— The nerve—!
She struggles against the swell of emotions, then lets it course through her, and lets it go. So be it, then; she will fulfill her duty to the very end, and she is not so proud as to eschew any lifeline to come her way. She shouldn’t have been surprised, in retrospect. He has never asked for permission where he could ask for forgiveness, and for this, he won’t apologize, because he will never mean it. It is a curious sort of thing to experience, to understand this about him, and still feel her heart ache for it.
“Sentimental bastard,” she mutters under her breath, and opens a portal back to the wish shop. Out of the edges of her senses she catches faint sparks of pink and gold and fainter words, but she’ll investigate later; the next customer is due, and they’re an important one. For the wheels to turn, for hitsuzen to guide and be guided into, and all that. They have started something terrible, and they will finish the cycle, and she won’t look back when they do.
But it’ll be all right. You’re not alone. You’ll see...
-fin-