*001* | In Memoriam

[maverickhunterx]

"Hey." 

Nothing but a simple tombstone, engraved with nothing but a "Z", stared back at him. Not that X expected it could talk; a slab of stone under a large blossoming apple tree didn't make for good conversation, he wagered. Still, there was a comfort in small, silent things, from the simple grassy field that made up their meeting place to the hilt of the beam sabre that sat next to the bouquet of irises that lied down next to it. 

It wasn't meant to be an extravagant place full of pomp and ceremony: the clear sunny sky, endless grass (short of the single tree), and lack of any sort of building made that abundantly clear. 

"It's been a while since I've seen you...sorry about that. I've been busy and it's been hard to get away, even to sleep. You know how it is."

X chuckled, scratching his head. 

"But we're starting to home in on the last of the straggler groups still holding onto Sigma's ideals. We might even win the war soon, and then...well. Things will be peaceful again. Maybe I'll be able to go back to being a B-class, huh?"

Maybe. Maybe he'd even be able to wear his favorite human clothes, like he was wearing now: blue upon blue, with even more blue. Right now, he couldn't have even worn these around the base with as little free time as he had, but here, it was all right. In dreams, everything was safe, including prattling about at a gravestone in the middle of nowhere like he was a character in a human drama. 

Well. He was alone. 

There was no harm in creating a grave for an old friend that didn't exist in the real world, just as there was no harm in voicing his thoughts to him.

After all, it wasn't as though anyone could hear him.

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[maverickhunterx]

"All people should be remembered. Even if there's no body to bury, there should be a marker. There should still be...something, so the world will never forget."

The words came unfettered, almost as though they spilled from his mouth like a leaking faucet. Reploids were often turned to scrap metal instead of buried, except in rare cases where humans were sentimental and kind enough to give them a proper funeral and gravesite in a well-kept cemetery.

X himself tried to visit each of these graves he knew of, but then it ended in him paying his respects to everyone at the site, whether human, Reploid, or animal, that familiar saline solution bunching up and falling down his cheeks.

"...even if it's only in a dream."

[braidstobows]

If she was surprised to hear it was a dream, Homura didn't show it by so much as a flicker of her expression. Instead, there was the smallest trace of a wistful smile that crossed her face, just briefly.

"You sound very much like someone I know," she remarked, saying know and not knew because that person was everywhere - and always with her. "She worked very hard with all her strength to change that situation for the people she cared about."

[maverickhunterx]

This must have been some dream; never had X seen avatars with such color and personality that weren't directly related to his own experiences. That wasn't to say that he was immune to flights of fancy or imagination (his own bent towards poetry disproved that), but he hadn't imagined it would come about at a time like this.

Strange.

Still, X found himself smiling.

"She sounds like a great person." He even chanced to glance back at her, still smiling. "I hope she succeeded."

His eyes added something else: After all, I'm trying to do that, too.

It was funny: X normally was ridiculed for his sentimentality. He hesitated when an innocent or comrade was caught in the crossfire; he worried deeply for everyone involved in a crisis regardless of how senseless it was for someone of his position to worry; and he even was considered weak for his admittedly compassionate nature.

And yet...

Even in dreams, he must have felt, somehow, that it was justified.

[braidstobows]

"She did." Homura found herself looking up at the sky. It wasn't childish to think Heaven was there; it was natural. It was like the starry end of the universe.

Opposite of X, Homura was often misunderstood and mistrusted for her pessimistic (they said; she called it by a different name, when it came from experience) bent. But that had been part of the burden Madoka's hope to change the fate of magical girls had lightened.

"And she was."

[maverickhunterx]

"'Was'?" X turned fully around, facing her.

He didn't have a stomach, but he felt an odd psychosomatic clenching that he equated to dread, maybe guilt.

With his core growing heavier by the second, his eyes glanced away, staring down towards the grass near his feet.

"So she's...?"

[braidstobows]

"You have surmised it correctly," Homura admitted. "She is no longer in this world."

It was a loss she lived with every moment, to know that the only way for her feelings to reach her dearest friend, the person she'd do anything for, had been to never be able to see her or touch her again. In some ways, that simple fact felt lonelier than the life of a puella magi.

Still, she had Madoka's presence to comfort her, even if not in body. And she had a life lived as Madoka would wish her to. And, finally, their hearts had met on equal terms again, knowing and seeing everything, understanding each other.

It was enough. It had to be.

[maverickhunterx]

X didn't have a heart, but he certainly felt something fall like a cold stone inside him.

"I'm sorry. I...I didn't mean to bring it up."

Losing friends was one of the hardest things to do, he found.

Not that he had any real experience with it other than...well, this. One moment, he was fighting for the sake of those he cared about, and perhaps in the back of his mind, he never thought he was going to lose Zero. He was invincible, after all, his mentor who taught him so much, still had so many more things to teach him, and was the most powerful Maverick Hunter he'd ever seen.

And yet...

Zero had not only entrusted his Control Chip to him, but...he gave his arm cannon systems to him. He allowed X to absorb a part of his programming into his body, essentially replacing X's buster arm with Zero's own.

He was always with him, a mark of his own failure to protect him, and Zero's own sacrifice.

And yet...he'd inadvertently brought up the death of this girl's friend, even if she was a figment of his own imagination, conjured through a dream. He hadn't wanted to bring her unnecessary pain; she was probably getting over her death, too.

Though there was something about her words...that comforted him, somehow.

[braidstobows]

"There is no need for your apology," Homura conceded; and she didn't precisely seem angry. Unless very self-contained was covering angry like a thick coating. "You could not have known this."

No one knew this except Homura herself. Even after saying so much to X, she had not said who she meant, or precisely what happened to bring those events about. She had not told the whole tale except to Kyuubey, and Kyuubey only knew it as a story - no different from a dream, he'd said.

Homura knew it as a memory, one she held close to her always.

"In fact," she added, "Perhaps I should apologize to you. You must have come here seeking privacy."