Octopus-Shaped Sausages and Metaphysics for Lunch

Lunchtime on Tuesday, atop Infinity Tower: the demon door that sticks, the sunny sky, the stunning vista of Tokyo from the delta, the summer breeze. Yesterday, a whole lot of awful happened. A whole lot of awful happened the day before that, too, and again, the day before that. This space up here is rather a long elevator ride or hella stairs, depending on how hardcore one is feeling, but either way it's not a popular lunch destination. What it is is a respite from bustle and noise, a tiny island of peace, a good reading spot, a good thinking spot.

Yesterday's Mamoru was being irascible in the hospital. Today's Mamoru is sitting near -- but not against -- the wall in the sunshine, where he was the first time Madoka met him. Today, like then, he's reading while absently eating whatever the cafeteria was selling fifteen minutes ago. It's warm and quiet.

It's like nothing feels real anymore.

That thought has been floating in and out of Madoka's head throughout the day. It was her first thought upon waking and realizing that last night had not been a crazy dream. It was her first thought when she had to hand-wash the blood stains out of her school uniform -- the stains that, apparently, no one else could see at all. It was her first thought when she sat down in class and watched Homura sit ahead of her, as though nothing had happened, as though her world hadn't been turned upside down and shattered a few short hours ago.

Everything's the same, but everything's different. And there's not a thing she can do to change anything.

Come lunchtime, the girl knows she won't be able to sit in the cafeteria. She could barely talk to Sayaka and Hitomi this morning under the weight of her secret, how was she supposed to make idle conversation with classmates that still hold her at a distance? No -- the roof is a much better place. She still remembers the peace that fell over her on her first day. Perhaps that peace can be found again, high above the rest of Tokyo? Above the world that kept so many secrets from her for so long?

The door opens with a shriek of metal against concrete. This time, however, there is no accompanying squeak from Madoka, nor a tossed lunchbox. Instead, there's the faint sound of panting, then an excited gasp a few seconds later.

"Chiba-senpai!"

She rushes over to where the upperclassman is sitting, a look of almost painful relief painted on her face. "You're back! I'm so glad..." And she *is* glad, but there are so many other emotions floating around her today. Sadness. Confusion. Fear.

Madoka's heart is practically embroidered on her sleeve.

Unreality is a difficult thing to get used to if you haven't been dealing with it your whole life, and secrets are a terrible burden now matter who you are or how long you've kept them.

Lunch, however, is relatively simple.

Mamoru looks up from his book at the shriek of the door, and when he sees pink hair he's already putting his book down, already putting his food down; as she runs over he's shifting to make room for her in the sunny spot where she can lean back if she wants to. "Kaname-san!" he calls back with a laugh, and he's smiling, honestly pleased to see her -- but as she gets closer, radiating the feelings behind the look on her face, his own expression changes to one of concern. "I am! I'm fine. What's the matter, what happened? Are you okay?"

Why can't she have a single conversation with Mamoru where she isn't about to freak out? First the lunch debacle, then the hospital a few days ago -- now this. He's going to think so badly of her if she can't learn to calm down.

So, with every ounce of willpower in her body, Madoka shoves away her anxiety and sadness, forcing the edges of her lips into a smile, to put his concern to rest.

Akemi-san did say how dangerous this newfound world is. She can't risk any sign that might drag him into it, no matter how much the confusion of it all weighs on her.

Unfortunately, the words don't come as easily to her as the smile does. "What? Oh, I'm fine! Really." She rocks back and forth on her feet, that suppressed anxiety working its way out through her fidgeting body. "I should be the one asking you that. Since you just got out of the hospital and everything. Sorry."

Awkward silence hangs in the air for a moment or two, then the eighth grader silently goes to sit where she did on her first day, unwrapping her bento when she does.

"M-My dad made extra sausages today when I told him how you split your lunch with me," she says, spitting out the first thing she can think of to keep the conversation Light and Happy. "Do you want them? He cut the ends so that they look like an octopus..."

The girl picks one up in her chopsticks to show him, though her hand trembles just the slightest bit.

He's not buying it in the slightest, and his face shows it. He's terrible at lying, he's terrible at faking emotions: he's only good at hiding them. He's very, very good at reading them. Mamoru's silent while Madoka flusters, and the concern doesn't leave, and it's marked by patience. He's not judging, but he's definitely absolutely not buying it.

"I really am fine, I should be all better tomorrow. I heal up pretty quickly," he says after a moment, watching Madoka's face; when she offers the octopus sausage, a corner of his mouth does finally curl up again. "Sure, thanks. How am I going to say no to cute food? It's impossible."

Expert chopstick load transfer! and then Mamoru pauses. "Wait. Are you supposed to eat the head first or the tentacles or--?"

He's still kind of side-eyeing, and then he solves the problem by eating the entire thing at once. He figures talking with his mouth full of octopus sausage, but with his hand held in front of his face to hide it, should inject just enough absolutely ridiculous into his question to allow Madoka to hit critical mass of whatever it is that's going to give her an ulcer if she doesn't let it out.

Considering she's Homura's princess, he has a few guesses as to what it might be.

So he asks, a little distorted because food and hand, "Hey, would you believe me if I told you it wasn't a motorcycle that hit me?"

Madoka is never immune to happiness. At her lowest low, her heart craves comfort and cheer, looking for a ray of hope in even the worst of situations. And this is not the *worst* situation -- she knows this -- but it's the worst one in a while.

And Chiba-senpai's struggle with the octo-sausage makes her laugh, a dab of happiness in the tempest that has raged inside her since the Stranger approached her in that awful otherworld.

"No, see, you have to eat it all at -- that's it!" she says, coaching him through the eating process and smiling (truly genuinely) when he gets it. "You got it!"

Alright, it seems like lunch is on an okay path now. A bit looser now, able to ignore the tension that's been with her since this morning, she lightly picks at her own food, looking up when she hears Mamoru ask her a question.

Then, immediately, goes white as a sheet, smile fizzling away into nothing.

/H-He could be talking about something else. There might be some other reason he got hurt. Right?/

She pushes through the fear that hit her like an icy wave at his words, determined not to give in. "Of...of course, Chiba-senpai," she says, lowering her voice to a whisper and putting down her chopsticks so they don't betray the shaking of her hands. "But you're okay, right? You're not...in trouble or anyting, are you?"

She tries to remain calm, but the smile hasn't returned.

Aaaand that backfired a little; Mamoru definitely underestimated the depth of Madoka's distress. He almost chokes as he swallows his mouthful of food, and then his chopsticks are clattering into his lunch tray and he gives in even if she won't, and he swiftly moves to catch up her small shaking hands in his large warm ones. Instantly--

instantly

--that peace she found the first day up here, it's there. Everything is real, solid like the roof of the building they're sitting on, bright like the sky, quiet like the city muffled by distance. The Earth turns in the vastness of space, it waltzes across the cosmos in its dance with the sun and moon and planets; the stars, invisible behind the lit-up atmosphere, are warm points of life in the darkness. Every leaf on every tree is unique; each one happens only once; every daisy pushing up through concrete has a conspiratorial wink, because flowers can move mountains. Rivers course above and under the ground, the beating hearts of cities are the people.

The world is real, the world is still there.

"I'm sorry," the upperclassman says urgently, then slows down, but doesn't let go. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you further. You look like secrets are hurting you, and if you need someone to talk to, you can talk to me. If you're scared, it's all right. If you're not sure about me, you can ask Akemi-san. I don't know what happened to you, but I know what it's like to have no one to talk to."

Madoka's already frightened eyes widen a little bit more when Mamoru takes her hands in his, more out of surprise than any real fear, and then --

And then everything is okay.

The unreality, the trauma, the *secrecy* of everything from last night had tied all her emotions into a knot; a knot that sat in her chest like a stone, radiating fear and helplessness. She wanted to talk -- needed to talk -- but Homura only kept insisting that she had to stay away, that everything was suddenly dangerous for her. And who would believe her if she told them about the Stranger and Akemi-san's powers and the two brave children who fought at the risk of their lives to defend her?

So everything got sucked into foggy dissociation, a black hole of emotion that somehow made her feel even worse than before.

That knot, that black hole, is banished by the warmth of Chiba-senpai's hands and the peace that flows through her as he comforts her.

When she opens her eyes again, the desperate struggle to be okay is gone completely, replaced by a tired relief that is powerful enough to bring tears of its own. If he says that she can talk to him...

"Something really terrible happened last night," Madoka says, quiet, as though the words will harm anyone that hears them. "I -- this man. He tried to kidnap me when I was walking home. But he wasn't *normal*." She scans Mamoru's face, looking for any sign of confusion or disdain, though her heart knows she won't find any. "I...learned a few things, I guess. Things I wish I didn't know now. And I don't understand any of it."

At the mention of Homura's name, her eyebrows furrow. "Akemi-san protected me. But she won't -- she won't explain anything." She's leaving some key details out, she knows; with everything she wants to say, it seems like almost everything important gets forgotten. "I don't know what I should do."

Mamoru's focus is complete, intent without being intense, a rock instead of a storm. He keeps one of Madoka's hands held, and the other fishes a fresh handkerchief out of his pocket, pressing it into Madoka's other hand. She's right: there's no confusion or disdain, there's only understanding and patience, knowledge and empathy. Not even sympathy -- empathy. He does get it.

He listens with his full attention, and when she finishes with that sentence, his blue eyes close briefly behind his glasses. He opens them again, and they're still warm, but they're old. They're older than the sixteen or seventeen he is, they're dark and they're sad. "I can tell you about the world as I know it, but I don't know very much, and I'm not sure if any of it would help you. I can tell you that Akemi-san will protect you with everything she has, but I don't know her background; she can't tell me that. I can tell you about some people with more knowledge than me that you might be able to ask, but I don't know if they have what you want or need."

Then he takes a deep breath and says, grimacing, "I can try to talk to Akemi-san for you, but she's already mad at me about something else, and I doubt she'll listen to me right now. I have a few ideas of things you might be able to do, but I'll have to look into them first, see if they're even remotely viable." Now he lets a breath out through his teeth, brow furrowing, already shifting into problem-solving mode.

"I think the most important thing is that you talk about the things that worry you, and for now, if something incomprehensible or frightening happens, call Akemi-san or call me. You can call me Mamoru, all right?

"You can text me any time. If it's an emergency call her first and me second. I'm not strong like she is, but I'll do in a pinch. And in the meantime, I'll be working on tracking down some people I know, finding out what kind of options you've got available. A lot of people are very secretive. They don't want people who don't know to wander around terrified all the time-- but I don't want you to have to be terrified all the time, either."

So this is something he's had personal experience with. She hates the sadness she sees in his eyes; even though it means he understands, Madoka can't help but wonder how many other lives this awful conflict has touched. This secret world of magic that is apparently full of danger and violence -- how deeply does it run? Who else in Infinity would look at her with sympathetic sadness? In Tokyo?

The thought is deeply unsettling, so she takes the handkerchief with a grateful nod, dabbing at her eyes gently.

"Please," she says after he says he can explain some things, "it doesn't need to be perfect. I just want to know what's happening. Right now I don't know anything. It scares me." She looks away, eyes locked pensively on the city's skyline, though she's content to let one hand rest in Mamoru's. (A creature of physical comfort, Madoka certainly is.)

"Why does magic even exist if people only use it to fight?" she wonders aloud, recalling Homura's words from last night. Of the neverending life of battle magical girls must face. "Akemi-san...killed something last night. Something that would have granted a wish for me." The hand resting in his tenses as she recalls what happened. "She shot it right in front of me. It stained -- it got all over my --"

She swallows, unable to finish the sentence, setting aside her bento box.

"But she is a good person, right?"

Mamoru's invitation to call her by his first name is a welcome distraction, one that she returns with a shaky smile. "Oh! Alright then, Mamoru...kun." She lets the new honorific get settled in her mind, again watching his face for any sign of displeasure at the chosen honorific. "You can call me Madoka, if you'd like." It's really only fair that a first name be returned with a first name, after all.

The eleventh-grader's eyes crinkle at the corners at the honorific -- the slightest smile, most of his smiles are in his eyes. And he still doesn't let go, maintaining that grounding for the both of them-- but he turns back around from where he was twisted to face her, and sits companionably beside her instead. "Madoka-chan," he tries out, lifting an eyebrow and glancing at her sidelong, like he's teasing or challenging, testing the waters. But then his expression goes softer again, away from the too-clever and back to the calm; the small smile's back, too.

"Akemi-san is a good person. I trust her. She has to deal with a lot, and she's worried a lot of the time. Every decision I've seen her make is an attempt to stop bad things while keeping people alive." He's quiet for a moment, then pulls his own lunch back over with his free hand and puts the lid on it, and the book on top of the lid.

"There are a lot of monsters. If something was offering you a wish, it's like... it's like fairy stories, right? Fairies will give you amazing things, but there's always a price, and you don't always know what it is. Every kind of magic I know of costs something-- the most common cost is energy, it makes you tired, it could kill you if you use it all before you can rest. The bad guys-- they take energy from other people so they don't have to use up their own. If a stranger offers you a wish, find out where the energy is coming from to grant it. Find out who's paying for it and what the price is."

He's got a bit of a senpai lecture voice going on, here, and he pushes his glasses up on his nose without realizing it, heightening the impression. "If someone gives you a miracle, that's different. That's a gift. If it costs them, well-- all gifts cost something, don't they? The time to make them, the money to buy them -- which comes from time spent working to get it. If you want to pay them back, you do something nice for someone they love, right? If the gift ends up costing you, though, it's not a gift anymore. This isn't just magic. This is everything. Magic is just life at a thousand percent. That means that, yes, the bad things are a thousand percent worse, but the good things are a thousand percent better..."

Here's that sidelong look again, and a grin twitching at the corner of his mouth. "...and the ridiculous things are...?"

Madoka-chan is one hundred percent okay with her. One thing she actually came to like about America was the default of addressing peers by their first names. It probably didn't mean as much to American children, as that was all they'd ever known, and they probably thought the idea of last names and honorifics strange. But, to her, the immediate use of first names made her feel closer to those around her -- like she was already their friend.

Does that mean Mamoru is her friend now too?

The idea makes her smile, some of that transfered warmth reflected on her face. She really is lucky to have found someone so understanding, even if he is several years her senior.

The girl listens attentively as he explains, relieved that Mamoru also seems to think that Homura's a good person. Really, she wants to think that of everybody, and *will* think it until conclusively proven otherwise. So, if she shot that Kyubey creature, there must have been a good reason...right?

Still, she wishes she knew what happened to those girls who fought the Stranger on her behalf.

"A thousand percent more ridiculous," Madoka finishes obligingly, then giggles. "I've already seen a few ridiculous things. One of the girls last night conjured fish out of thin air. She helped me escape." Her voice trails off. "I really hope she's alright."

There's a few moments of silence, and then, "I don't think that would be too bad," the pink-haired girl muses, thinking back on Mamoru's earlier words. "Paying for a wish, I mean." Thinking that's still too vague, she continues, "It's not so bad if I'm the one paying for it. That means other people don't have to -- and then those are miracles, right? Wishes without a price?"

This was perhaps not the point Mamoru intended to drive home, but she doesn't realize it.

Mamoru doesn't know why Madoka's smiling, precisely, except that she's probably smiling back at him, and she seems to really-- be starting to be a little okay, maybe. He carefully shifts the way he's sitting so he can lean back a little, his stiff back gingerly making contact with the wall slowly, and he listens, expression thoughtful and mild.

When Madoka humors him, he gives her a quick, crooked grin, but lets it go like the wind takes it away, breezing past them and ruffling hair and clothes. He's serious again. "She's probably okay. I'll ask around for you and find out."

Finally, at Madoka's last words, her ventured hypothesis, he frowns a little and looks even more thoughtful; his free hand comes up and rubs at his chin a little, brows furrowed. "Not quite," he finally says. "I think I misworded something. If someone gives you a miracle instead of a wish, it's something impossible that you don't have to pay for, being given to you. A gift is something given to you that someone else paid a price for, instead of you buying, you paying. A miracle-- that's something granted. An impossible thing granted with no strings attached, unexpected and delightful. There are a lot of sub-definitions and divisions, and there's a lot of metaphysics, involved in something I was trying to use as shorthand."

"So," the upperclassman says, face smoothing out, "we'll go back to just using wishes and gifts. The thing you have to keep in mind about giving someone a gift that you pay for is that you really do have to consider the cost. Sometimes a cost to yourself is too dear for the person receiving the gift, and they can't enjoy it, because the cost to you also cost them. Say-- say you're a brilliant musician, and a friend of yours is in a terrible accident and loses an arm. You want them to be happy, so you give them your arm. But the loss of your arm makes you unable to perform the music that gives you life and pleasure. That costs your friend a number of things: your own happiness and ability, the joy of listening to your music, the joy in you being able to create and share the thing you love. Your friend would say it wasn't worth it."

He really thinks that this analogy somehow will help and not be upsetting in any way.

Madoka is very still as she listens to Mamoru speak, eyes trained to his face, the steadily grinding of gears in her head all but transparent in their pink depths. She...hadn't really thought about it like that before. True, Homura's words about her family struck her on a deep level last night, but even so, she hadn't considered that a sacrifice she makes might affect -- or even *hurt* -- those closest to her. The girl bites her bottom lip when he finishes, now turning her gaze to the skyline beyond the fence.

There's still something that's bugging her.

"...I'm not, though," she finally says, not quite a whisper, but low and soft all the same. "A brilliant musician, that is. Or an artist, or an athlete. I don't have any talents like that. I can barely keep up in class." Madoka turns and flashes a melancholy smile towards the upperclassman. It's clear that she's not too broken up about this admission, despite the hint of sadness. He hasn't upset her; she's just speaking what she thinks is the truth. "If helping people is the only thing I'm good at, then that's what I should try to do, right?"

"You know-- when it comes down to it," says Mamoru with a half-laugh, looking down at Madoka again, a reflection of her own expression at the back of his eyes, "neither am I. I might be an athlete and get good grades, but-- all I'm really good at, really good at, is also helping. Everyone who's important to me is so much better, so much more, that I feel like helping them is all I can do. But it's okay, because it's all I really want to do. You, though--"

Here, there's affection again, amusement, something like admiration. "You remind me very much of someone as dear to me as you are to Akemi-san. Don't sell yourself short. The power to put a smile on someone's face is real, especially to people who don't usually smile."