Tear Jerker / Resonance Days

As a moments subpage, ALL SPOILERS ARE OFF

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that in a story where everyone is dead, there is plenty of tragedy to be found.

Resonance Days

• In chapter 3, Mami's first reaction upon seeing Oktavia is dropping her teacup in shock and whisper Sayaka's name. It carries into the next chapter, told from Mami's perspective as she processes that the young girl she had taken under her wing and encouraged to become a magical girl did take the contract that would lead to her death. Not to mention that Oktavia being a witch means that Sayaka crossed the Despair Event Horizon and has lost all memories of who she was. Oktavia having to remind herself of Mami's name in particular hits hard, as does Mami forcing herself to not think of Oktavia as Sayaka.
• Kyoko takes longer than Oktavia to accept that they are dead and in the afterlife, despite remembering their deaths clearly. In chapter 3, she explains why; Because of her religious background, she knows where she's going when she dies, and the place she's currently in doesn't have enough fire.
• In a flashback, the first thing Mami did uppon arriving in the afterlife was gripping her neck, still feeling like it was being torn off.
  • It doesn't get much better when she processes where she woke up; The back of the car she was in when her parents died and Kyubey contracted her. And beyond that, a room full of car wrecks. With cars being a major trigger for her, it takes all she has not to scream.
• Charlotte and Mami learn the truth about Kyubey and witches, and it is not pretty. While Mami goes into My God, What Have I Done? upon realizing that she has led dozens or hundreds of kids to their deaths - or what's worse - by convincing them to contract, Charlotte insists that Mami was right in trying to kill her when they first met because of what she did as a Witch. She can't be convinced that it wasn't her fault, and Mami has to argue that they're even to calm her down.
• Annabelle sets fire to Elsa Maria's tower, leaving a crumbling husk of the first welcoming place Kyoko and Oktavia found.
• Charlotte asks why Kyoko is so determined to call Oktavia Sayaka. Kyoko goes on a Motive Rant about how, before she met Sayaka, her life was headed in a bad direction, with her losing any motivation to do good she once had and just doing whatever selfish things she felt like. Sayaka finally made it feel like she could do good and be a hero again, but just as they got to know each other, she became a witch and Kyoko could do nothing to save her. Kyoko had decided to end it all and go out with Sayaka, but now they got another chance and she refuses to accept that the Sayaka she knew is really gone.
  • Even after Charlotte explains that, since witches are "born" with their names as all the identity they have, they are extremely important to them, and calling Oktavia by her old name may drive her mad, Kyoko still resolves to find a way to get Oktavia's memories back. Charlotte has this sobering response.
    "You mean the part that has all those memories and feelings that traumatized her into turning into a witch in the first place?"
• Kyoko is initially excited over there being aliens in the hereafter, that excitement dies when Charlotte reminds her that the Incubators are also aliens. Even Mami shoots Charlotte a dirty look for ruining Kyoko's fun.
• While trying to deduce why the Void Walkers are after Kyoko, Corrie asks if maybe it has to do with her father's congregation. Upon hearing that, Kyoko gets icy cold, gripping the armlean of the sofa so hard that she tears it open, furious at Corrie for bringing it up and Mami for telling her. Kyoko's father is a very sore subject.
• While Kyoko is experimentally stabbing herself to try out her new anatomy, Charlotte casually mentions that Mami's reaction was to shoot her own head off. The next chapter confirms that this reaction was a genuine suicide attempt, and not just curiosity like Kyoko.
• In chapter 8, Mami reflects on how she failed Kyoko. Having had a major Freak Out upon arriving in the afterlife herself (to the point of the aforementioned suicide), she assumed it would be best to put everything to Kyoko gently, instead of dropping it on her all at once. Upon reflection and having Kyoko get pissed over not being told everything more than once, she admits to herself that Kyoko handles these kinds of things a lot better than herself, and she should have known that.
• When she hears that there might be dragons in the afterlife, Kyoko gets to excited she starts to tremble. When Marisa admitst that she was joking and there aren't any dragons as far as they know, she gets to disappointed that she can't even find it in her to get aggressive over it.
• Chapter 9, which is a Wham Episode:
  • Reibey tells Mami and co. about the reason why Kyoko is wanted by Void Walkers. Back then in the world of living, Kyoko was closely related to Oblivion, who could be either Momo Sakura (related to by blood) or Yuma Chitose (figurative sister). Obviously, Kyoko does not take this well, first trying to kill Reibey then and there, and later being so desperate that she's willing to let herself get captured just to see her sister again.
  • Kyoko becomes a blubbering mess as she begs for help to save her missing sister. Especially gut wrenching for the readers to see Kyoko being so desperate after knowing how stubborn Kyoko can be in canon storyline and in previous chapters.
    Kyoko: Guys, please! Mami, I know I haven't always done right by you. I know I've screwed up and hurt you. And Charlotte? Okay, I've been a pain in the ass since I got here. I know that. But this is my baby sister! I can't... I can't leave her there, with them. I just can't! Okay, how about this? You help me get her back, and I'll sign the Compact. Hell, I'll sign whatever you want. I'll join the neighborhood cleanup or whatever you've got, volunteer at the preschool and show the kids how to glue macaroni to paper plates or... or whatever you want.
  • Mami and Charlotte's private talk about how they are going to risk their marriage and their lives to help Kyoko rescuing her missing sister.
    Charlotte: Kyoko's going after her sister. It doesn't matter what we, or anyone else says. Try to reason with her and she'll ignore you. Get in her way, and she'll knock you out. Lock her up, and she will find a way to break out. And if we try to stop her, she'll never forgive us, never forgive you. And if you let her go out on her own, you'll never be able to forgive yourself. So you're going with her. Because you care about her. You remember what happened between you two back when you were alive, and you don't want to lose her again. And if I... And... if I try to stop you, and succeed, you'll never forgive me. And... if I let you go off, and not come along, I'll never be able to forgive myself.
• Oktavia has a fear of flying, causing Kyoko to lightheartedly (from her perspective at least) make fun of her for having acted like a knight who could take every beating Kyoko could give her and get up again in life, and now being scared of something as simple as planes. She shuts up when she notices that Oktavia and Charlotte are both glaring at her for once again forgetting that Oktavia is not Sayaka.
• Oblivion returns for the first time in a while in chapter 11, and we see the depth to which Reibey lies to her. When he lets slip that he has talked to Kyoko, he reframes the conversation to make it seem like Kyoko hates Oblivion and attacked him for no reason. The poor girl is brought close to tears at the idea that her sister hates her, only stopped by Reibey's false reassurances. In reality, of course, Kyoko loves her sister and the reason she attacked Reibey was out of fury that he was using her sister as a tool.
  Oblivion: She what? Then…she hates me?
• The Madam, aka. Oriko Mikuni, recounts how in life she was a genuinely optimistic person who wanted to make the world better and was involved in community service programs. She took Kyubey's contract hoping that she could end the competition between magical girls and convince them to work together peacefully. Then she was killed, and the area of the afterlife she woke up in was brutal enough to shape her into the callous cime lord she is today. She fully sees herself as irredeemable, and wants to help Annabelle avoid slipping down the same slope she did.
  • Annabelle refusing her offer. Wether it's because she's come too far, that she doesn't trust that the offer is genuine, or that she simply lost any hope of having a better life, she elects to continue as she is, even if that means becoming a monster.
    Madam: I see. Very well then. But when you lie broken, abandoned, and betrayed, please remember that I gave you a chance, and that you turned it down.
    Annabelle: I...
• Mami has a conversation with her old mentor Shizuku, and clearly isn't doing well. As Shizuku points out, she is essentially ruining her entire life for Kyoko's sake, and Mami desperately wishes she could just keep things as they were without changing. But her guilt complex and sense of responsibility to Kyoko would never let her do that, and she's going to suffer for it.
• By the time of the Cloudbreak arc, Charlotte has yet to demonstrate any magic powers of her own beyond joking about them being useless with Oktavia. During the fight with Arzt and Nikki, it's revealed why; Despite knowing that she wasn't herself and having long since been forgiven, Charlotte still blames herself for Mami's death, and her witch powers are strongly tied to that guilt. Even though Mami herself has suggested she test them out several times, Charlotte has completely sworn of using the powers that killed her wife. Even Mami being in mortal danger is not enough for her to overcome that guilt.
• The heroes are sepparated in the Etherdale arc as Lily persuades Kyoko and Oktavia to give themselves up to the void walkers. As far as they know, it might be the last time they see each other, and they are all sad to see each other go. Mami gives them both a heartfelt farewell, reflecting on how she feels like she has lost everything again and how Kyoko and Sayaka coming back into her life ultimately only brought her more sepparation; Charlotte pulls Oktavia into a literally bone-crushing hug, and while she still carries some resentment for Kyoko, they part on amicable terms. Kyoko tries to look at the bright side of things, but is still sad to leave Mami and even Charlotte, having grown to care about them both, as well as worried about what the future will bring. All the while a voice in her head is screaming at her that everything is wrong.
• Chapter 20 opens by recounting the life of Caroline Berenson, one of the wild witches in Etherdale. She lived on a farm, had parents who loved her and friends she cared about. She had a pet piglet named Sam I Am who died and she sold her soul to the Incubators to bring back. And then she died. Her parents lost everything trying to find her and fell into a deep depression that led to their eventual divorce. And in the afterlife, Caroline was reduced to an unrecognizeable, feral animal with a small part of her still screaming because she knows what she has become. And as the narration puts it, none of that matters because Caroline is one of millions and her story, tragic as it is, means nothing.
• During the battle of the Wayhouse, it's revealed that Janelle, Lily's Number Two, was Demmi's girlfriend before Lily brainwashed her. In the midst of the battle, after Janelle kills Mundy, Demmi confronts her and asks how she could do this, that Lily can't possibly have that much control over her and she knows what she's doing is wrong. Janelle shoots her before she can continue.
  • Chapter 21 reveals that Janelle was brainwashed by Lily before she started her operation in Etherdale, and it was in fact Janelle who told her about the place. That was six months ago, and she has been under Lily's control for two years. She admits this after Charlotte yells at her, and is understandably rather furious that she blames her for having inducted them into the persephone protectorate.
• When Lily is killed, everyone who were under her thrall start screaming in pain, horror, rage, and confusion as years of brainwashing is ripped out of their head. Mami and Charlotte are both horrified and in tears as they realize what they have done, one soldier starts laughing in delight before her laughter turns into sobbing, and Janelle can do nothing but choke out that Lily is finally gone. The next chapter mentions that some of the girls who had been brainwashed for too long went as insane as the wild witches they used to hunt.
  Janelle: She's…she's gone. I can't feel…she's not in my head anymore.
  • Janelle and three other former Protectorate soldiers go into the old Protectorate base to free the wild witches still trapped in there. Not only are they faced with the guilt of what they did, but one of them, Beth, recognizes one of the wild girls as a girl she used to go to school with and help with math when they were alive.
  • In the ruins of the Wayhouse, Mami finds a notebook from one of the psychiatrists working there who's optimistic about the recovery of her patient. The guilt over having helped destroy all the work that was being done her causes her to collapse in tears, and she's not especially up for hearing Charlotte's reassurance that it wasn't her fault. Later, Charlotte spirals, and the narration informs us that the two of them have gone on and off panicking throughout the day.
    Charlotte: And… hell, maybe then we can go home and just, I don't know, get lots and lots of therapy and pray to God that no one finds out what we did and deal with the fact that oh God we just handed Oktavia and Kyoko over to the Void Walkers…
• Kyoko slips up and calls Oktavia Sayaka one too many times while they're being kept by Brooklyn. Having noticed how Kyoko only ever refers to her by pronouns or nicknames, Oktavia finally explodes and screams at Kyoko to just for once use her actual name, crying while accusing her of never actually seeing her as her own person and instead just Sayaka Miki, someone she's not. She even goes so far as to call herself the person Kyoko has to kill to get Sayaka back. And when Kyoko still can't find it in her to respect her identity, Oktavia coldly tells her to go to hell and ignores her for hours afterward.
• Knowing that the void walkers are going to betray her, Mami decides to pull the trigger first. This being Mami, however, the decision utterly breaks her and she's begging for forgiveness on the verge of tears even as she's pointing a gun at Annabelle Lee's head.
• The narration in chapter 27 notes that dying was the best thing that ever happened to Mami. Despite her smile, Mami was not happy as a magical girl. It also comes across as melancholic given the Foregone Conclusion that any happiness she found in the afterlife will be undone by Homura's reset or Madoka's wish.
• Kyoko sends a prayer to her mother in heaven, saying that she had always hoped her and Momo were happy and together but now that she knows Momo is in the afterlife it means her mother is all alone. She tears up halfway through.
  • At the end of the prayer she tells her mom to not blame her father for what he did. Kyoko may act all devil may care most of the time, but she bears the guilt for her family's death and won't even share the blame with the man who killed them. In her next prayer directed at her father, she apologizes, both for contracting with Kyubey and for not being with him in Hell.
• Being thrown off a bottomless cliff and left to fall leaves the already acrophobic Oktavia so broken and terrified that even after Charlotte saves her, she can barely choke out that she wants it all to be over and go home, before collapsing into tears in Charlotte's arms.
  "It's me," Charlotte assured her. "Don't worry. You're not falling anymore. It's over."
  
  Oktavia swallowed noisily. Her trembling grew worse. "No," she said. "No, it's not. I don't wanna do this anymore. I wanna go home."
• Throughout Monsterland, Charlotte becomes more and more convinced that she will be made a meat slave and neer see her wife again. When she's eventually rescued by the Border Guard, she thinks it's a hallucination because she's given up all hope.
• By the Monsterland epilogue, Mami, Charlotte, Oktavi, and even Kyoko are just tired of everything. Since Cloudbreak they've been thrown from traumatic situation to traumatic situation, never a chance to rest and never getting closer to the goal. They all just want to go home, but Mami and Charlotte gave up the only home they had to go on this quest that has brought them all nothing but misery.
  • Kyoko overhears Charlotte and Mami talk about how emotionally and psychologically broken they've all become, particularily her. Stubborn as ever, she refuses to admit that she has any kind of trauma because she doesn't want to be crazy. Despite her insistence, when she goes to bed, she can't sleep due to constant auditory and visual hallucinations relating to her trauma. She gets up and stops trying after suffering one of Sayaka seconds before she became a witch.
• Kyoko muses that she wanted to become a dancer as a kid, and wonders if she would have pursued that career if she became a witch instead.
• In Kyoko's dream sequence in Restless, she sees her father and tries to chase after him, but finds the water steadily rising around her so she can't reach him. All the while her little sister is crying in the background.
• In Oktavia's dream, she sees Kyoko being made the subject of a dunk-tank carnival game, thrown into the water by Annabelle Lee and the Twins again and again until she's crying and too exhausted to climb up. And when Sayaka tries to help her;
  "No," she sniffed as she held onto the platform with one hand. "This is my... this is my..." [is knocked into the water again]
  • The final time she's knocked into the water, she disappears, and Sayaka can't save her, begging Annabelle Lee to "give me back my friend!"
• Mami's dream is one long barrage of all her guilt coming back to haunt her, starting with a scenario where Kyubey tricks her into luring girls to their deaths, then Elsa Maria and her family asking her to stay with them but she insists on going on because it's her job, and her being put in situations where she has to kill Madoka and Sayaka.
• In Charlotte's dream, she tries to rescue Mami from being eaten by The Worm, only to find that her head has been bitten off and it was all for nothing, Mami being long dead. She breaks down crying, cradling her body as she begs her not to leave her alone.
  • At the end of the dream, she confronts the person who has been making her and everyone she loves experience Hell; Homura Akemi.
    “How many times?” Charlotte demanded. “How many times? How many times did you take our lives away? How many times did you rip us from paradise, separate us and make us relive our deaths, force us to go through the same Hell again and again, force us to fight for our Heaven, only to snatch it away and all over again? How many times did you take away our happily ever after? How many times?”
• Sayaka spends most of the time in chapter 43 (42 in the original) being confused, lost, and surrounded by people who claim that they know her and that they're her friends, but are clearly hiding something from her. She does eventually get some explanation, but only that the magical girl system was a scam, and just that causes her to curl up and turn hostile when Ophelia tries to comfort her. Eventually she gets so sick of being lied to that she pulls a sword on Ophelia and demands that they tell her what's going on. She sits quietly through the entire conversation, and once she's gotten everything, tries to stab herself to death.
  Sayaka: I am just a stupid, worthless girl! I wanted so badly to be a hero, to mean something, to be someone worth loving! But I couldn’t save Mami, and when I tried to take her place, what good did it do? I cured Kyousuke, but he didn’t even think of me after! I saved Hitomi, but she used the opportunity to take him away! Madoka tried to be there for me, and all I did was call her names and make her cry! And yes, I saved people, but they wouldn’t even be in danger if it weren’t for Kyubey, and I was helping him! And now you’re telling me that all those monsters I killed were just other girls? And in the end, I just became a monster myself, spreading even more misery and pain! And now I’m just a ghost that everyone forgot about!I should’ve just let Charlotte kill me, just kill me before I hurt anyone else!
• To avoid telling her anything at first, Ophelia makes up a white lie that they've been working together for a while and Sayaka just lost her memory. A hopeful Sayaka, unknowing that she is dead and will most likely never see her friends again, asks if Madoka is still mad at her, and is beyond relieved when Ophelia claims that they made up.
• After hearing some vague references to her and Ophelia's relationship, Sayaka asks if they're dating. Ophelia would usually poke fun at her for the assumption, but the sheer disgust and horror in Sayaka's voice makes her shut up, and she's clearly hurt by it.
• When they find Mami (or rather Candeloro) again, Sayaka just lets all of her internalized self-doubt flow;
  Sayaka: I tried to be you, but I couldn't! I was too weak, too wrothless! I tried, I swear I tried, I tried so hard, but I just couldn't do it! [openly sobbing] No matter how hard I fought, things just got worse and worse and I felt like I was sinking into dark water, that my heart was made of lead and it was getting heavier and heavier..."
  • Later, after learning about Oktavia from the others, Sayaka's self-doubt makes her feel like her other self is better than her in every capacity; Oktavia is well liked and gets along with everyone, Oktavia has apparently saved her friends' lives multiple times, Oktavia managed to befriend and possibly date Kyoko of all people. Everything she hears makes Sayaka feel like everyone would much rather have Oktavia there.
• When Candeloro realizes that she's forgotten her human life, she's overjoyed at finally being free from all the memories that has caused her nothing but suffering. Mami's life was so agonizing that not remembering it is a blessing.
  • Ophelia for her part knows that this is most likely temporary, that they are in a dream being tormented by some unknown force and that they have to break out of it. Which means forcing Candeloro to get back all the memories that made her life hell
  • Sayaka is also present and is devastated when the girl she looks up to and admires and has missed so much is apparently happy that she can't remember neither her nor Madoka.
• Kyoko's horse is lost in Charlotte's dream. While she knows it was just a dream construct (and literally made from paper), she still mourns it. It was her horse, and had served her faithfully, and she had to watch it fall off a skyscraper.
• Sayaka realizes that she will probably cease to exist when they get out of the dream, and though she's not fine with it on any level, she wants to at least apologize to Mami/Candeloro for having failed to live up to her legacy.
• After the big fight against Mephisto's witch form, she decides to again torment them personally in dreamscapes, and it's not any better this time around.
  • In Kyoko's dream she has to sit on a sermon in her father's church, where a dead and crucified version of said father is berating and accusing her of everything she feels guilty for, amplifying the mountains of guilt she's already dealing with a thousand times.
  • In Sayaka's dream, she sees all of her friends and classmates move on after her death as if she never existed, Hitomi and Kyosuke happy to have her out of their way, and Homura seamlessly slipping into her place in Madoka's life. And to rub it in further, Mephisto also shows her afterlife friends having fun and enjoying the company of Oktavia, convincing her even further that no one actually wants her around or would miss her.
  • In Mami's dream, she's in a courtroom with all the people she fels she has let down or caused the deaths of accusing her. Madoka and Sayaka accuse her of ruining their lives by teaching them about magical girls, Kyoko of having abandoned her when she needed her most after her family's deaths, a girl named Janice Goldberg who was killed as a warning to her sister by other magical girls because Mami didn't warn said sister about the dangers of hunting on rivals' territories (and then ignored her calls because she didn't know how to help her), a girl who became a witch after contracting on Mami's suggestion, and another girl who contracted on Mami's suggestion, died, and is currently being painfully consumed by Mephisto.
    • Mephisto offhandedly mentions that the last girl was offered the chance to be put in a Lotus-Eater Machine. She refused, and now she spends all her time screaming and begging to get a second chance.
      ''"Please stop, I'm sorry! I take it back!"
  • In Charlotte's dream, she's in a claw machine with plushies and toys representing everything she loves and cares about, with Annabelle Lee and Kyoko playing. The plushies Charlotte loves are all taken away one by one, while she begs them not to take her home and loved ones, to no avail. And when there's just the Mami doll left, its head is ripped off when Charlotte tries to hold onto it. And when all is said and done and she's lost everything, Homura appears to repeat the cycle and her suffering again.
    Charlotte: Please don't take my home away from me.
• When Mephisto's dream collapses, Sayaka is taken away along with it. Kyoko tries to hold onto her but it's to no avail as Sayaka is ripped away while crying that she doesn't want to go. When they all wake up, Kyoko just silently walks over to Oktavia and hugs her while holding back tears.
  "Kyoko, please! It's taking me! I don't want to go! Please don't let me go!"
• In the epilogue of Restless, Kyoko and Charlotte are both at the end of their ropes. Kyoko tells Jerky that she can't take it anymore, and she thought it was supposed to stop hurting when she killed herself. Charlotte collapses into Mami's shoulder and cries about how it never stops, that they always face something new that wants to make them suffer and no matter what they do they can't get away from it. She even calls the afterlife Hell, and laments that they left behind the one good part of Hell they had and now can't go back.
  Charlotte: I can't do this anymore, Mami!
• Oktavia, having been told that Sayaka came back during the dream sequence, has a bad identity crisis. Initially she had assumed that she was just Sayaka sans memories, but now she feels like a monster who killed Sayaka Miki and took over her body, and that Sayaka and Kyoko must both hate her for that.
• Chapter 47 finally reveals who Oblivion is. Yuma Chitose, not Momo Sakura. Somehow, she is an anomaly who can remember one previous timeloop where Kyoko was her big sister, and wants to be reunited with the only person who was ever kind to her... except Kyoko doesn't know who she is, and is expecting someone else.
  • Yuma has been Oblivion for so long that she doesn't remember her old name anymore.
• Last time we saw Elsa Maria, she was standing up to Reibey and refusing to give in, even when threatened with eternity of solitude. Now, she's so broken by being alone in the dark of Palace Omega's dungeon that she isn't even sure if Elsa Maria is her name.
• The whole purpose of working as a Void Walker? To die permanently.

First Time

• In general, the whole fic has a sense of melancholy in seeing the happy life that Charlotte and Mami had before the events of the fic happens, and the life that Kyoko and Oktavia could have had with them if it wasn't for Reibey.
• Before her first sleep at the Nautilus Platform, Mami is reflecting on the life that Charlotte must have had before Kyubey contracted her, when she realizes that the witch is crying. She considers going over to comfort her (and get comforted herself in turn), but finds that she can't bring herself to do it, still traumatized by her death at the teeth of the Sweets Witch.
  • Before drifting off to sleep, Mami prays that Sayaka, Madoka, Homura, and Kyoko will be safe. As the reader knows, that hope is in vain.
• In the second flashback, three weeks after Mami and Charlotte died, Mami is suffering a nightmare about being a with and being hunted by her old friends, causing her to wake up crying and screaming. This is a regular occurence, but she refuses to talk about her nightmares with Charlotte or their hosts, thinking it her burden to bear. Not to mention that she's not particularily keen on telling Charlotte about her nightmares involving witch hunts.
  • Charlotte tries to comfort her, and though Mami is unreseptive, she does let Charlotte sleep with her, scared of being alone. It makes the panic attack slightly better... right up until Charlotte's tail wraps around Mami's legs, triggering her trauma from being killed.
• While alone, Mami and Charlotte are called to help the evacuation of a local research station where a young witch, Jezebel, succumbed to despair and became a full witch. Her friends and coworkers remark that they knew Jezebel was dealing with some stuff and was fairly quiet, but none of them had any idea it was this bad and her partner Nina blames herself for not having noticed how much she was struggling.
  • Nina and every witch at the station, including Charlotte, insist on going back into Jezebel's labyrinth to save her. The Puella Magi are a lot more hesitant, as they still remember the trauma of fighting witches when they were alive and many are triggered by the thought of doing it again, especially with the knowledge that Witches are as much victims as them.
• The next flashback opens on Mami waking up after having shot her own head off following her realization about the true nature of her body. When Charlotte asks why she did that, Mami says it doesn't matter since she's just a ghost.
• While exploring Jezebel's labyrinth, Charlotte asks if her labyrinth was similar. Mami can only nod, and Charlotte clearly feels bad for bringing it up.
• While at dr. Young's clinic after everything, Mami talks to Jezebel about why she witched out. Jezebel never felt like she belonged in the afterlife, despite having a good life. She eventually realized why; Because of what she did as a Witch in life, she sees herself as a monster who deserves Hell, and couldn't accept being given a chance to live a happy life. Mami confides in her that she can relate, still guilty over having recruited so many girls into Kyubey's schemes.
  • Recall that Kyoko had similar feelings upon arriving in the afterlife, certain that she was destined for Hell. How many girls feel the same, one has to wonder.

Gift of the Puella Magi

• Charlotte does not take losing the ring she was going to propose to Mami with during a snowball fight well. It doesn't take long into a struggling search for a voice telling her how this was a sign she didn't deserve to make Mami happy after murdering her starts taunting her.
  "I'm so sorry, I know keeping it in my pocket was stupid, but I didn't know the fight would be that crazy! And everything's been such a mess, and I've been horrible to everyone, even you, and you've been nothing but wonderful to me, just like you always are, but I just keep screwing up like I always do, and I had this whole thing planned out where I'd take you outside during the party tomorrow and it was going to be all romantic and stuff, but now that's ruined and I don't even know what I was thinking, that someone like me deserved to be married to someone like you, because I'm such a stupid, selfish person, and it's my fault you're even here in the first place, and…"

Ghosts of Christmas Past

• Despite being happy with her (after)life and overjoyed at being reunited with Yuma, Momo, and Mami, and generally much more well-adjusted than in the main fic, Kyoko still has a hard time dealing with everything, as she confesses to Mami at a Christmas dinner.
  • First of all, despite there having only been a year since she died from Kyoko's perspective, Momo has spent over fourty years in the afterlife, and is closer to 60, and Kyoko has a hard time adjusting to her little sister being that much more mature, not to mention the grief over having missed out on so many years of her life. Same with Mami, who's now 22 and married. She even admits that at times she thinks it would have been better if she wasn't out the day her family died, and that she should have died with them so at least she would have arrived in the afterlife along with Momo.
  • While she has an easier time adjusting to Oktavia's name in this timeline, Kyoko still grieves over Sayaka being dead and can't help but wonder if there's a chance she'll come back.
  • Eventually, Mami takes Kyoko outside where she just cries into Mami's embrace.
• Kyoko and Yuma's first days in the afterlife were just as bad as in the original fic, if not worse. Kyoko assumed it was all an incubator scam, while Yuma thought she was in Hell and was scared that her abusive parents would come for her.
• This timeline's version of Annabelle Lee hasn't joined the void walkers? She and Nikki were sepparated early on in their stay in the afterlife, having run afoul of some unspecified bad guys, and only Annabelle Lee was rescued, with Nikki nowhere to be found. She's spent the last 39 years looking for her, and has had no luck, but still carries around a picture of her. What's worse, the picture shows Nikki before whatever happened to make her the Creepy Child she is in the main timeline, making it a bitter insight into a happier past. Kyoko, who herself knows what it's like to spiral into misanthropy after losing her family, can hardly blame Annabelle Lee for her attitude after hearing that.
  • It seems briefly like Kyoko and Oktavia has made some progress in befriending Annabelle Lee, especially since Kyoko can relate a lot to her experience. Then, for reasons even she doesn't really know, Kyoko blows up and accuses Annabelle for having given up looking after her sister too soon. Annabelle Lee storms off, and Kyoko is left to realize that she really screwed that one up.
• Kyoko mentions that she suffers nightmares of her father coming to drag her to Hell.
• Of course, since this is a previous timeloop, the Foregone Conclusion eventually catches up with everyone. As Oktavia and Kyoko are enjoying the fireworks and looking towards a bright future together, the world suddenly starts cracking apart. They try to escape through the water, but realize that it's futile as the world is consumed by nothingness, and they spend their last moments holding each others hands as oblivion consumes them.
  • When Kyoko wakes up in her hotelroom back in the living world, the month having reset and everything that happened rendered to nothing, she can barely remember something about a mermaid, christmas, and someone that was important to her, though it disappears before she can remember more than a hint of blue. And she realizes that she's crying, for the first time in months.
• Yuma Chitose is dead before this timeloop even started. Kyoko sees a news heading about her death from heart failure caused by parental abuse. She doesn't know why she almost breaks into tears, but brushes it off, since she never knew the girl.

Walpurgis Nights

• When she first wakes up, Gretchen cries out to Homura to help her, but as she does so, her last memories of being alive slips away, and she forgets the name, leaving her to just cry out for anyone to help her. For all intents and purposes, Madoka Kaname is dead.

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