Epilogue

[lesmodsalouette]

EPILOGUE

Your stopped time has restarted. Whether you were in the grassy field or fighting for your life on the castle grounds, you'll suddenly find yourself in an untouched area of the gardens. Ish is back, and so are the items, and the dead.

You return to Chateau Ambregris with the certain knowledge that come Monday, you will greet a new week, in a home of your own choosing. No longer will the chime of the clocks hunt you down, no longer will the oppressive scent of roses haunt your senses, no longer will you be forced to watch the death of those you've come to love and hate.

Parting is such a bittersweet sorrow, isn't it?

Make merry one last time, in this castle of illusions. Ironically, your memories of this stolen time that never existed are the one thing that will truly remain to you.

END NOTES

🔮 All dead are revived as tsukumogami! Congrats on your immortality(?)
🔮 Any other contracts made with Ish will be honored
🔮 Characters may choose to leave for any world they desire.
🔮 Time has not passed while you were stuck in this loop!
🔮 There will be no cross-dimensional world travel, except for on Samhain (Witches New Year October 31st/November 1st). On these dates, Ish will enable everyone to visit each other's world freely.
🔮 Universal Communication will be possible, courtesy of Manba and Ish. Everyone who wants one will be given a small fox that can communicate with other foxes through voice and video; the foxes can talk and are fairly simple creatures, enjoy them and give them fried tofu once in a while.
🔮 Powers are on for the finale, but Ish will step in and yeet anyone who gets too out of hand back to their homeworld, so play nice! (or relatively nice. )

[OOC: Welcome to your epilogue! The timeloop is ended, the evil has been defeated, and you have some time to catch your breath in the castle before the rest of your life begins! ]

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[antemeridian]

[ ... ]

Sometimes ... it really is just out of our hands, in the end.

[ there was nothing she could do to stop madoka from becoming the law of cycles. all those repeated timelines, leading up to this singular point. many routes, all terminating in different flavors of the same end:

madoka destroys herself. the entity known as 'kaname madoka' no longer exists. whether she finds fulfillment in it or not, and leaves a world either in ruin or better than it once was is what homura was able to change.

and after the end, you still have to continue. the world doesn't stop because you have. ]

[the_obedient_servant]

...

[There is a certain helplessness you feel after watching the people you loved and admire fall to their worst impulses - your family split apart, your own name being used to justify attrocities.

A certain despair after losing everything, watching it all rebuild itself, and promptly move on without you.

A puppet on a string. A cosmic plaything. That is all they ever were. An actor typecasted as the villain, the arbiter of power.

* SINCE WHEN WERE YOU THE ONE IN CONTROL?

It's not real control if you have one choice though, is it?]

I believe my mistake was thinking that it ever was. A mistake I've made twice.

[Their tone steadies, out of a desire for... dignity, in front of someone they can't help but admire. But the tar drips own their cheeks regardless. Proof of their weakness, their hate leaking out of their tearducts.]

I don't know what to do from here. There is nothing for me to return to.

[antemeridian]

... In truth, it was much the same for me. [ There isn't any judgment, whether of their tears or their words. How can there be, when their words are things she's thought about at times herself?

As ever, her tone is soft, steady. Factual. ] In the wake of the universe rewriting itself, that final time ... I didn't have anything left, either.

[ Her final remaining guidepost, the only thing she had left to guide her after...

'The truth is, I think I lost myself a long time ago.'

And then.

And then. ]

... Here we are still, though.

[ Persisting, persisting. Despite everything, it's still you. ]

Has anyone else offered you somewhere to go yet?

[the_obedient_servant]

[They have to wonder what will happen to Frisk. Alone in some gap between existence, waiting for something that will never come.

Why do they care? After all that they have destroyed, the idea of responsibility over a child that they overwrote, whose body they stole.

They frown. Looking at the ground.]

A few.

[They turn and look at Homura now, in all her newly rediscovered majesty as a being of immense power. It almost makes them a little jealous. They never got wings. Just a knife and a beating heart wrapped around their neck.]

Do you mean to move on? From your world that has moved on without you?

Or does your own duty - that which guides your own determination demand that you continue?

[antemeridian]

... There is someone I once wanted to protect. In turn, there is a world she wanted to protect, ugliness and all. She knew it for what it was. But even at her worst, she looked at it and saw things that she would give herself to safeguard.

[ Past tense, all of it. The implication is clear. ]

... I will too, for as long as I can continue to resolve to.

[ And after that ... after that, who knows. Not her, steadfast in her sense of duty, of obligation;

Of being the living proof of and memorial to the fact that someone else once existed. ]

[the_obedient_servant]

...I can't understand these feelings anymore.

[Their soul is empty. A cold, dark, dead thing. Their feelings are a cavernous void, but they ache all the same.

They try to remember how they felt before, the love they had for their new family, their new best friend, the glow they felt in their chest watching the barrier come clashing down and Asriel come back to himself.

It mattered then. Nothing matters now.]

Do you see anything in that world worthy of protection beyond her love for it?

[antemeridian]

No. I think, inherently, it is neither worthy nor deserving of anything like that. In fact ... I did wonder to her, once.

"Hey."

[ her tone gentles itself, takes on a kinder sound. so incredibly soft, and kind, and gentle, in a way that's long been lost from the Homura who exists here in the castle now. lost, but not forgotten, as she recalls it now and juxtaposes it with the bleak and hopeless words she speaks to the empty air, addressing someone who no longer is, and hadn't been for a long time now. ]

"How about we both become monsters together... and lay waste to this awful world? ... We'll wipe out everything, all traces of evil or sadness, and just destroy, destroy, and destroy. Until there's nothing left but dust.

"Don't you think that sounds nice?"

[ you didn't think it would be so bad, dying together. maybe ... as witches they could have brought down the whole, sad system where a girl who makes a wish born of hope is inevitably doomed to become a monster who spreads nothing but their despair.

maybe they could have destroyed all the sad things like that together.

... well. in the end, it took neither a witch, nor the both of them. so maybe that's why the answer Madoka found was worth more than Homura's, back then. ]

I imagine you might be able to guess what the shape of her answer was.

Her love doesn't make it any more worthy of anything. [ Madoka once considered Homura dear, too, and Homura isn't anything more than the ghost of a time that never was. what could she possibly be worthy of? ] And ... that isn't what matters. It is a choice. I will protect it, yes, because that's what she wanted, but that doesn't mean it deserves it. To try to think of the world as something deserving protection ... would be a mistake, for once it fails to live up to whatever idealized pedestal it is that you set it on, there is nowhere for you to go but crashing, spiraling down.

[ her answer to Norna's question stems from this. it is not a matter of whether people deserve it or not. goodness is not being kind to those who deserve it. it is that rare quality that exists in the world in spite of itself. ]

[the_obedient_servant]

[There is a bitter irony in it.

They see Homura in a new light, not necessarily as a reflection of themselves, but as a reflection of their counterpart. They have a lot of experience being more of an idea than a person - an ideal to be reached, a past to yearn for, something to strive to uphold... something worth killing over.

* Someone still needs to tend to these flowers.

Something stirs in the void inside their chest. Guilt? Hate? Envy? They look at the ground.]

I used to care deeply about saving the world in some sense, or maybe I just wanted to destroy the present state of things, or... maybe I just wanted revenge against everyone who had ever hurt me, and all the rest were excuses. [That's certainly what Asriel felt, when he took a glimpse at the hatred that had rested inside them since they were too young to understand why they were being punished.]

It doesn't matter. What I want, what I feel, what I think never matters. Only that I remain a faithful servant.

You remain to protect your world. I remain, committed to waiting eternally after having destroyed mine, following up on your initial suggestion and becoming the demon that I was always designed to be.

I wonder if we might have swapped places if things had turned out differently. [A useless hypothetical. This could only have ended one way.]

[antemeridian]

'If' is a matter beyond even either of us, despite everything. There isn't much point in attempting to dwell.

[ said the time looper to the other time looper. for all their ability to keep traveling through different 'ifs' ... they more than anyone know the limits of it, don't they? but then again, if pointlessness ever stopped anyone from doing anything then a significant part of either of them would not be who or what they are.

what they say, about committing themselves to waiting, waiting, and waiting. is that penance? is that duty?

both. neither. Homura can't say. ]

... when I was younger I used to believe in the stories. The ones where, despite everything, hope was something attainable. That what they wanted, and what they were trying to reach ... was in fact something that could be grasped.

[ past tense, once again. still, to bring it up if it isn't at least somewhat relevant would be foolish, and they know it as well as her. ]

Will you return yourself to whatever cycle you were caught in once more, then?

[ in a place where who or what they are and think doesn't matter, and are jerked around at the whim of something that wants them to struggle as much as it is endeared to them?

it's not accusing, or anything other than neutral, if questioning. Homura understands the weight of things owed, too, what is and isn't meant to be. ]

[the_obedient_servant]

[Despite everything.

* Despite everything, it's still you.

There is nothing left for them - not in their own world. Their only option is to return to oblivion and await a more satisfying escape, or to move on, declare all that they sacrificed meaningless, and accept a happy ending they never earned or asked for.]

I died a long time ago, driven to a purpose that I believed in.

I never asked to return. Now I stand here with a stolen body, a stolen soul - and a second chance that I alone got.

What would you do? If you were in my shoes? If there was nothing left of the world you once fought for, not even the memory of it or a legacy to protect? Do you think you could move on?

[They look up at her, and there is a look of genuine vulnerability in their eyes.

There is a profound despair in the hollow violence of their soul, but more than that there is a feeling they didn't know they knew anymore.

Fear.]