It did not take Mami long to notice the envelope.

Her apartment, after all, was enduringly static: everything had its place, and there was a place for everything, with only the sky visible through the windows offering any level of change. Every day she came home to the same scene and the same layout, to the point where something as simple as a thick envelope on her floor was as alien as the results of an earthquake would have been. No one even knew that she lived here: not her anonymous classmates at the University, not her professors... Kyuubey knew, of course, but even it had learned to give her a wide berth in the last year or two, and an envelope would not have been its style.

That left only...

Following her normal routine, Mami exchanged her shoes for slippers and set down her school bag. Pointedly ignoring the envelope for the moment, she continued with the practiced steps of walking into the kitchen and making tea. Only when all was prepared and the tea tray was set on the living room table did she bend to retrieve the intruding paper form the floor. Unsurprisingly, it was addressed only "To: Mami Tomoe" in the tidy penmanship of Homura Akemi.

Homura had sent her only one letter in the two years since Mami had left Mitakihara, and it had been short and to the point: "She is dead. I understand if you do not wish to return, but you would be welcome."

From the weight and thickness of the envelope, this was a longer missive than that. Mami took an ornate silver paper-knife from a nearby drawer to open it, then removed several folded sheets of stationery, along with a length of red ribbon which looked very much like the ones that Homura always wore.

Mami's brow furrowed, and she felt a brief sense of unease. Homura wore these ribbons almost obsessively: what would have prompted her to send one to Mami? Unless...

She set the ribbon on the low table, then sat down on the sofa with the pages in one hand and her tea in the other, and began to read.

Tomoe-san,

If you are reading this letter, then I have died, most likely in battle.

She stared blankly at the words for several long moments, feeling their weight. So it had finally happened. As distant as she and Homura had become, as many times as they had found themselves at odds in the past, Homura had been the only person left in the world that Mami could legitimately call friend. Now, she was gone, just like the others.

Because I know you, Tomoe-san, and I believe I know you better than you think I do, I must ask you not to grieve, or to blame yourself. No one knows better than I that death comes for us all. I have never begrudged your decision to leave Mitakihara and its painful memories. Perhaps even now you are wondering what you could have done to save me, just as you did for Miki-san and Sakura-san. I can only ask that you not add to this any additional feeling of responsibility for whatever misfortune has befallen me.

In the event of my death, I have instructed my student to deliver this letter to you, and if possible, to as well include my ribbons, for reasons which I will detail shortly. I know that you value your privacy, but I have made it very clear that she is to simply bring the envelope to your address and never return. I believe that she will comply with these wishes: the legend of Mami Tomoe is still strong in Mitakihara, and she would not dare do anything that might upset the Golden Goddess.

With me gone, you are now the last of us, Tomoe-san: the last of the four to have shared the life and companionship of the one who would transcend this world and become the redeemer of us all. Forgive me for what must sound like the ramblings of a madwoman, but the truth is that the four of us were truly blessed to have walked this world at her side, even though I am the only one to remember her. Her wish literally saved our souls, as well as the soul of every Magical Girl who came before us, and every one yet to come.

But I am getting ahead of myself. To explain all of this, I must first tell you of a girl named Madoka Kaname...

From there Homura launched into a story that made up the bulk of the remaining correspondence: the story of Sayaka's best friend Madoka, a Magical Girl who had been an inspiration and later an obsession for Homura. According to the tale, Madoka had been Mami's partner in magic, and the two of them had saved Homura from a creature called a Witch, only to die weeks later protecting the city, and Homura herself, from Walpurgisnacht, the most terrifying and powerful Witch of all. It was only then, in the grim aftermath, that Homura made her own contract with Kyuubey, in exchange for the wish to be able to protect Madoka even as Madoka had protected her.

With the awakening of her new powers to manipulate time, Homura had traveled to the past to try to undo what had been done, and to save Madoka from the fate which awaited her, only to fail time and again, beginning a cycle of countless repetitions in which she learned two horrible truths about being a Magical Girl: first, that their soul gems literally contained their souls (a detail which Mami had already learned, to her regret), and second, that upon the inevitable corruption of that soul, every Magical Girl would transform into one of the very Witches that they had been fighting. An endless cycle of death and corruption, all to serve Kyuubey and its alien race in their plans to combat universal entropy. What were the lives of a few humans, after all?

From there, the focus of Homura's repeated attempts had been not only to save Madoka from Walpurgisnacht, but from ever becoming a Magical Girl in the first place. Gradually desperation turned to obsession, and with every failure and re-attempt the Karmic scales tipped further, to the point that the entire fate of the world hinged on Madoka's contract, the fulfillment of which would make her not only the savior of the world, but also its destroyer.

In the end, Homura explained, she had failed to save Madoka, because Madoka had saved her first, by using this vast potential to forge the greatest wish of all: to change past, present and future so that the cycle of Magical Girl to Witch would be broken: Madoka herself would purge every Magical Girl of her corruption at the time of her death, so that a Witch would never be created, and the ones who had fought so hard to protect the world would know peace rather than torment.

For a moment, Mami stopped reading and gave a tiny sigh. The ramblings of a madwoman indeed. She had always known that Homura had been disguising a certain intensity beneath her taciturn nature, but this was nothing short of religious hysteria. A Christ-like figure who had ascended to wash away their sins? Had this fantasy been Homura's way of coping with the inevitability of her own death, just as religion had been doing for humans since time out of mind?

She reminded herself that Homura had been her only companion for a long time after Kyoko's death. The least she could do was finish reading, as ridiculous as it all sounded.

There is one thing, however, that I have neglected to mention thus far, and I apologize for waiting this long to say it. The truth is that Madoka Kaname loved you, Tomoe-san.

Mami arched one eyebrow a fraction of a centimeter. Loved?

Every cycle I lived through had subtle differences from the others, but there were constants as well. Sayaka Miki would always fall into despair and become a Witch in the instances in which she contracted. Kyoko Sakura would always return to Mitakihara, though her reasons varied. You would almost invariably die, whether to a Witch or in the final battle with Walpurgisnacht. As for Madoka Kaname, I was never able to stop her from making a contract and sealing her own fate.

There was one other constant, however, that pained me more than I realized at the time, and only in the years since have I come to realize was the true driving force behind my endless repetition of that month of history. You see, in every iteration in which Madoka was allowed to meet you, you simply became the sun in her skies. You were her revered senpai, you were her lonely mentor who needed only a friend, and you were her inspiration not only as a Magical Girl but as a woman. There are times when I believe the two of you might even have taken the first tentative steps toward being lovers, though I dared not try to find that out for myself.

The simple, shameful truth is that Madoka loved you the way I wished she would love me, and in the cold light of retrospect I can see that I came to resent you more and more with each passing loop of the journey. I would even venture to say that there were times when I sunk so far as to passively allow your death, or to not act in a way that might have saved you. As I descended further into obsessive madness, I thought of you already as a lost soul, and the Mami Tomoe who had been my patient, caring teacher in my earliest incarnations became dead to me.

It has only been in the five years since Madoka's sacrifice that I have come to know you again, and to truly recognize the light that drew Madoka to you. I hope that in death you can forgive me, Tomoe-san: not only for my past actions, but for never telling you these shameful secrets while I still lived.

In the end, I suppose, whether I deserve it or not, I have been the fortunate one, as I am the only one to remember Madoka. I meet her frequently in my dreams, and I have always known that she is with me and walks beside me in my waking hours, even as I have always worn her ribbons as a remembrance. Yes, they were hers: the only physical trace of the young woman who became our salvation. She gave them to me before disappearing from this world, and they have been my talisman ever since. I hope only that they do not disappear with me upon my own death, and that my student may retrieve them and deliver them to you, as I have asked her. Perhaps I shall leave one with the letter and wear only its partner, so that something of Madoka will remain in this world even as I pass.

Should my hopes come to fruit, I want you to keep these ribbons always. She would have wanted that, I believe.

Yours has been a life defined by isolation, Tomoe-san. I am sorry that I could not be a better friend to you, and to my dying day I will regret the circumstances which led to your departure from Mitakihara. Had I been the friend you deserved, perhaps I would have noticed sooner, and intervened. I pray that one day you can forgive me for that as well, but more than that I pray that you will realize that you have never truly been alone. I know that what I am asking may sound like madness, but try to realize that there is someone watching over you: someone who has loved you and admired you and wished only happiness for you.

I will be with her soon, I feel, along with Miki-san, Sakura-san and all the others, and as you shall be as well one day.

Until that time comes, I beg you to let her into your heart, Mami. Let her love you again.

Ever yours,

Homura Akemi

Mami stared at the signature for a good five minutes before setting the letter down on the table and taking a sip of her tea, which by then had gone cold. She finished it nonetheless, then poured herself a second cup, which she drank in thoughtful silence as she absently twined the red ribbon around her fingers.

From there she set the ribbon with the letter, then took the tea tray back to the kitchen, where she set the dishes in the sink and began preparing dinner. She went through the motions with practiced ease, ate mechanically, then washed up and put everything into its place on the drying rack.

Next was to start the bath running, and to put her clothes in the laundry basket- three-fifths full, so laundry in two more days- before washing herself. A long soak, then she dried herself off with a towel that eventually found its way into a second basket- five-ninths full, so it would be a while before the two laundry days overlapped again. She then walked naked into her living room- being on the thirtieth floor had its advantages- and picked up her bookbag to take into her bedroom.

It was then that her eyes fell once more on the letter, and its accompanying ribbon, and for a moment she froze, wondering what to do with them. These were not part of her day.

She elected to leave the letter where it was, and took the ribbon with her into the bedroom. She removed today's schoolbooks from her bag and set them neatly in place on the second shelf of her bookcase, then removed tomorrow's books and placed them in the bag for morning before hanging the bag on its hook beside the door.

She then paused to stare once more at the ribbon in her hand, once again unsure of what to do with it. Eventually she elected to set it on her nightstand and get back to her normal evening activities. Into the attached bathroom, toilet, wash hands, brush teeth, pull hair back into a ponytail for sleeping, done.

She then conjured her soul gem, transforming it from the ring on her finger into its true shape. She gazed studiously into its depths, noting no trace of darkness: the same bright, untarnished sun it was every night.

While holding the gem in her left hand, she conjured a musket in her right, then leaned over the bed and placed the gilded jewel on her headboard. She then made her away around to the foot of the bed, stood, and brought the stock of the musket to her shoulder, staring down the long barrel at the shining gold.

"Madoka Kaname sacrificed herself to save us from torment, eh?" she heard herself say. "I'm sorry to tell you this, Akemi-san, but she died in vain."

She pulled the trigger.

When the smoke cleared, her gem was still there on the headboard, with shards of the musket-ball embedded in the headboard all around it, joining countless other fragments. Mami dismissed the gun, then picked up the still-warm jewel and returned it to its ring-state.

News or no news, in the end it was a night like any other night. Mami lay down in the bed, turned off her bedside lamp, fumbled under the covers sufficiently to bring herself to an indifferent climax, then slept, awaiting the nightmares.

(To be continued...)