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takerfoxx · 5 years

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Coming to Terms with Homura Akemi, My (Formerly) Least Favorite PMMM Character

Or, How I Learned to Stop Whinging and Love the Emo Meguca!

I have a…complicated history with my favorite anime’s main character (and yes, Homura is the main character. Madoka might be the title character and the show’s POV protagonist, but like most things in this series, that was a clever ruse, and it’s really more about Homura’s journey than Madoka’s). The first time I watched the show, I walked away feeling kind of ambivalent toward her, even mildly hostile. And that’s weird, right? I mean, just look at her! Look how her character arc plays out! She was practically grown in a lab to be my favorite! And you know what? In pretty much any other series she would have been my favorite, no doubt. She would have been a first pick Fav of the Day, the starring character in whatever fanfic I wrote about it, etc. But since the show she premiered in is anything but traditional, the way I eventually came to love each character turned out to be a little…unorthodox.

Now, I’ve gone over most of this before, so sing along if you know the words. My first time watching Puella Magi Madoka Magica went a little something like this:

Episode 1: Blue funny, Pink cute, Yellow badass, Purple mysterious.

Episode 2: Blue favorite, Pink alright, Yellow probably evil, Purple mysterious.

Episode 3: Yellow’s not evil after all, and now is the dead. My bad.

Episode 4: Pink getting all fucked up, SOMEONE SAVE BLUE!

Episode 5: Hate Red for attacking Blue. Kick her ass, Purple!

Episode 6: Still hate Red.

Episode 7: FUCK YOU, BUNNYCAT! Red’s not so bad after all. But someone save Blue!

Episode 8: Aw, hell no, Purple! You don’t threaten Blue like that! You go, Red! You’re pretty cool after…oh shit. BLUE, NO!

Episode 9: GO RED! GO PINK! SAVE BLUE! YOU CAN DO IT, I BELIEVE IN…no.

Episode 10-12: Stuff is still happening with the plot, but I no longer care. My heart has been shattered, all light has gone from the world. My babies are gone. If only they had more time together, if only there was someplace they could reunite, really get to know one another, and go on adventures together…huh.

So yeah, that’s the story of how I fully got on board the KyoSaya train. Obviously, writing Resonance Days only solidified that, and coming across A Happy Dream by angel0wonder, AKA the potato lady AKA @smxmuffinpeddling (wazzup?!?!), pretty much cemented it as my top reigning OTP.

Now, obviously I got invested in the whole story as time went by. Subsequent rewatchings of the show, mainly through convincing people to watch it blind so I can laugh at them when they get to certain scenes (don’t hate, y’all did it too!) and taking part in online discussions really got me into the show as a whole instead of just being confined in my little KyoSaya bubble. But coming to love the other characters for their own merits took some time.

Mami was next. I’ll be honest, I just didn’t care all that much for her during my first watching, mainly due to believing that she would turn out to be evil for the first couple of episodes (I blame Disney and their recent trend of turning almost every kindly mentor/confidante figure into the bad guy lately), and me being more surprised that I was wrong when she died instead of being shocked that she was killed. Again, had nothing against her, that was just my reaction the first time around. However, she was included in Resonance Days because it felt like the logical thing to do, and she turned out to be so much fun to write for that I really came to love and care for her character in general, and her relationship with Charlotte ended up becoming one of my favorite parts of that story.

Madoka honestly took more time. I think the main reason I wasn’t all that invested in her is that she was pretty passive in the series proper while my attention was more on the more proactive side characters. And again, this wasn’t a bad thing! In fact, it was a clever bit of deliberate storytelling, as it’s revealed that she originally was a proactive main-character type, only to unintentionally get relegated to her observer role by the butterfly effect caused by Homura’s time loops. But anyway, the thing that made me turn the corner on Madoka actually also ended up being fanfiction, but not one of my own. Specifically, I came across a popular, yet also somewhat controversial, fic called Persephone’s Waltz (and wazzup, @erinptah!), in which Homura decides to just stop beating around the bush and lock Madoka up in a basement until Walpurgisnacht had passed. And as weird as it sounds, making Madoka a prisoner actually gave her more agency, as the fic really went into detail about the psychological effects of being a kidnapping victim, from the strange rituals to the escape attempts to coping strategies to Stockholm Syndrome to bouts of depression and so on and so forth, all the while never deviating from her core character. It really got me rooting for Madoka and, by extension, invested in her character in canon as well.

That just left Homura.

By then, I had gotten over being a little sore at her for trying to kill Sayaka that one time, and I was interested in where her actions would take the plot. I just wasn’t interested in her, per se, as I hadn’t had an icebreaker moment like I had with the other characters.

And then The Rebellion Story happened.

The Rebellion Story: PMMM’s End of Evangelion

Puella Magi Madoka Magica is often compared its nearly two decade-old predecessor, Neon Genesis Evangelion, and not without reason. Like Evangelion, it took a genre mainly known to be fun and kid-friendly (giant mechs for Evangelion and magical girls for PMMM) and turned it on its head, resulting in a brutal and twisted deconstruction that would end up altering the direction that genre would take for years to come. The key difference is that Evangelion’s brilliance was in many ways an accident, with the bizarre places it went being largely informed both by its troubled production and its showrunner’s personal demons staying bottled up through the early part of the show but letting them loose later on, whereas PMMM was meticulously constructed from top to bottom to become the hand-grenade to the genre that it would become. But in the end, the effects were the same. They even both had a follow-up movie that was not originally supposed to happen that ended up being highly divisive among fans due to the shots they took at the fandom that had sprung up around the original series, even if The Rebellion Story wasn’t nearly as spiteful as End of Evangelion was.

Now, I’ve already gone into at length about how PMMM brutally dissects and deconstructs the Magical Girl genre, and it did it so thoroughly that the genre itself was totally wrenched in a new direction, much like Evangelion did to the Giant Mecha genre. But after you’ve completely taken apart the genre in your first season, where exactly do you go? How do you continue when your work is seemingly done?

The answer: deconstruct yourself.

Much as Puella Magi Madoka Magica went after the Magical Girl genre, The Rebellion Story went after the fandom that had sprung up in the original show’s wake. The first third of the movie gives the fans what they claimed they wanted: a traditional Magical Girl reimagining of PMMM where everyone is alive and working together, everyone is mentally and emotionally healthy, the two fan-favorite ships are just a kiss away from being canon, Kyubey is now a cute and silent mascot that helps out instead constantly manipulating everyone around him, and even the most popular witch is back as a benevolent secondary mascot in a happy friendship with the character she had killed. We see Madoka and the Moemura version of Homura being adorable together, we see Kyoko and Sayaka goofing off, we see Mami cuddling with Charlotte with nary a head-chomp in sight, we see everyone being just being friends and protecting the city from weird but essentially non-threatening monsters. It is basically the summation of a hundred fanfics that had been posted between the end of the show and the release of the movie.

But this is still PMMM, and something is not quite right.

We all know what happens next. Homura starts subconsciously noticing that something is off, she gradually becomes Terminator Homura as she investigates the situation and regains her memories, and the perfect happy world is exposed for the farce that it is. Things collapse, and the truth is revealed: Homura had become a witch that had been trapped inside her own soul gem, those close to her had been lured in to complete the illusion, and of course it is all Kyubey’s fault. Because this is PMMM, and Homura doesn’t get to be happy.

But the movie doesn’t stop with that reveal. Once we learn the truth, it changes targets. It stops deconstructing the fans, and instead goes after something else.

It starts to deconstruct Homura Akemi, its own main character.

Despite her promise to continue fighting on in Madoka’s name to protect the slightly more kind world her beloved had created, Homura had found herself unable to cope without Madoka. Her mission had failed, and without that stabilizing force, despair had slowly crept in, corrupting her from within, to the point where (I believe at least) she had been fighting not to honor Madoka, but in hopes that she would fall in battle and be carried off by her goddess. She had been fighting not in hopes of building a better world, but as a way to seek release from her pain. She had been miserable in Madoka’s new world, even moreso than she had been during her time loops.

And because she had been foolish enough to tell the truth to Kyubey, the little rat had taken the opportunity to use her to set a trap. Madoka had been pulled out of Heaven right into the Incubators’ clutches, and it was all her fault.

Is it any wonder that she had been unwilling to accept Madoka’s salvation during the climatic battle? Is it any wonder that her own labyrinth had featured her own familiars dragging her away to her own execution? Homura hated herself. She hated what she had become, she hated what she had allowed to happen, she hated that she had failed so utterly and completely.

In fact, I’d say that this movie shows something about Homura that I don’t think a lot of people will appreciate me pointing out, and that is as much as Homura was single-mindedly devoted to Madoka, she never really came to know her. I mean, how could she? She only knew Madoka over the course of a few of a few infatuated weeks the first time around, which she then repeated over and over and over again, becoming increasingly traumatized over time. I don’t doubt that her devotion to Madoka is real, but The Rebellion Story does seem to suggest that after a while she was fixated on Madoka as an ideal rather than Madoka as an actual person, something to be protected and possessed rather than as a living, breathing person with her own autonomy.

Now, am I saying that Homura is a bad person and that anyone who felt inspired by her resilience and devotion is wrong? Of course not. Am I saying that anyone that ships MadoHomu is bad, promoting toxic relationships, etc.? Hell no! What I’m saying is that due to everything she’s been forced to endure and fight again, she is a very mentally unhealthy individual, one who is in desperate need of help. And if an actual relationship between her and Madoka is going to realistically work, well, first something drastic will have to happen to upset her new system and give Madoka her power back, but Homura is also going to need tons of therapy.

As I said before, Homura’s decision to rip Madoka out of the Law of Cycles and turn herself into Homucifer has been pretty controversial, with many people claiming that it betrayed her characterization. To those people, I would say that they never really knew the real Homura Akemi. The show set up an idealized version of Homura, and people had that ideal imprinted in their mind. And I can’t really blame them for that. The show ended on a big, optimistic moment with Homura making a big speech about how she was going to keep fighting in Madoka’s name. It’s all very stirring, and I can’t fault anyone who would feel betrayed by their Homura acting against that promise.

But as a sadistic bastard in another dark show that is now also very controversial once said, “If you think this story has a happy ending, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.”

Homura Akemi Did Everything Wrong, and It’s Okay to Admit That

Even though The Rebellion Story got me interested in seeing where the whole Homucifer vs. Godoka thing would go, I still wasn’t all that invested in Homura as a person. I was entrenched too deep in my KyoSaya world, and everything outside of that was just so much plot. Most of my focus was on Resonance Days, which just didn’t involve her at all.

It took years, but three things finally cracked me out of that shell. The first was writing Walpurgis Nights, of course. Granted, Homulilly was more of a Moemura than Homucifer, but that story really made me dive deep into her innate insecurities, to explore her struggles with self-loathing and her reliance on Madoka for any kind of validation.

The second was watching through a few blind reactions to the series, seeing how other people reacted to her character and the things that they picked up that I had missed. One thing in particular stood out to me: during Homura and Madoka’s first meeting in episode ten, Homura is actually shocked when Madoka casually addresses her by her first name, as no one ever called her by her first name.

And the third might get me some hate, but it was through coming across this little video:

youtube

Now, like many things I’ve discussed in this post, this video has been pretty polarizing, with some people outright hating it and labeling it as slanderous character bashing. The clickbaity title certainly doesn’t help, and I can’t say I agree with all of its points. But the video really isn’t the character-bashing piece that it might seem like. Rather, it’s as much a deconstruction of a character that has been heavily idealized by the fandom, pointing out the many mistakes and, while it certainly was not her fault, how she was driven more by a personal need for validation rather than selfless love.

That’s when it all clicked for me, all the little pieces coming together.

Despite how badass she appears to be, despite how unwavering her adoration for Madoka is, Homura Akemi is someone who was broken from the beginning, who was re-broken again and again, who never seemed to make the right choice, who was never allowed to have what she wanted, who was never allowed to win, until she finally snapped and ripped apart the carefully-laid plans and systems that seemed to be set against her.

Homura Akemi did everything wrong, and that is fascinating!

Consider: when we first meet her, she is a young girl who has known nothing but neglect, who has been shuffled around by an uncaring system her entire life, who is physically weak due to a heart condition, who is terrified by any kind of attention and is genuinely perturbed just by being called by her first name.

Of all the tragic backstories in the series, hers is easily the worst. Mami and Kyoko’s characterizations are both defined by having a single horrific event in their respective pasts that took everything away from them, events that shattered their worlds and which they blamed themselves for. But at the very least they had something before the cruel hand of fate reached into their lives. Homura never had anything! Her family is so completely out of the picture to not even warrant a mention! Her heart condition leaves her constantly balanced on the precipice of death and frequently leaves her weak and in pain. She’s never had a real friend, never had anyone close, never had anything that made her feel good about being herself. So when the Arch of Victory witch ensnares her with suicidal thoughts, it doesn’t really have to try very hard.

And then Madoka came into her life. A cheerful, outgoing girl who showed her kindness, one who called her by her name and said that it was pretty. Someone who came to her during the scariest moment in Homura’s life like a guardian angel and saved her. Someone who was everything Homura had ever wanted: kind, humble, encouraging, non-judgmental, loving, powerful, protecting, and the list goes on.

Is there any wonder that Homura became infatuated with her? Not one bit.

But then something terrible happened. Madoka and Mami were faced with the horror of Walpurgisnacht, and it killed them. Finally Homura had someone in her life that made her feel good about being herself, and that person was stolen from her. She had to watch Madoka fail. She had to watch Madoka die. And she just stood by and did nothing.

And it is then that Homura made her first mistake. Kyubey being the opportunistic manipulator that he is, he took advantage of her vulnerable state in order to add another soul to his quota. And of course Homura accepted; who could blame her?

But consider this: Homura could have wished for Madoka to be resurrected. Walpurgisnacht had been defeated; it was no longer a threat! Then the two of them (or three, had Mami been brought back as well) would have been together, fighting side-by-side! I mean, it would have eventually ended in tears anyway, but Homura had no way of knowing that. As far as she knew, she was in a traditional magical girl story that just so happened to have a bad end, one that she could have fixed.

Instead, she wished to be sent back in time to redo her first meeting with Madoka, only this time as a Puella Magi. That way, she could help Madoka and Mami prepare for Walpurgisnacht! She could protect Madoka!

It wasn’t enough just to have her dearest (and only) friend back in her life. Homura wanted to switch the roles. She wanted to protect Madoka like Madoka had protected her. She wanted a reason to keep existing, a mission, a way to prove her worthiness, because she still hated herself and needed something to validate her existence.

But it wasn’t that kind of show. She didn’t have all the information. How could she have known that Kyubey was being deceptive? How could she have known of the truth about witches? How could she have known that her time-looping would make Walpurgisnacht stronger? How could she have known that each loop would alter the timestream, entangling both Sayaka and Kyoko in its web?

Still, she kept trying. She made herself stronger and stronger in hopes that she would be able to stop Walpurgisnacht in time. She tried to warn everyone about Kyubey and the witches only to be disbelieved. She watched the others die around her again and again. She watched Madoka either die or succumb to despair and become a witch herself.

And then it happened.

That all-important timeline, where everything in her changed.

The one where she and Madoka finally successfully defeated Walpurgisnacht, but lost everything else. The one where they laid side-by-side in the ruins and the rain, as their cracked soul gems grew darker and the darker. The one where Homura resigned herself to becoming a witch.

The one where Madoka sacrificed her final grief seed, Sayaka’s grief seed, in order to save Homura. The one where she made Homura promise to go back and prevent her from making a contract in the first place. And the one where Madoka died again, not in battle against a witch, but by Homura’s own hand.

Something inside Homura broke that day, something that was never repaired and never will be. It was then that Homura shed the last remnants of the frightened, insecure girl she had been and became the Terminator-esque warrior that we were first introduced to. Her missions was clear then: stop Madoka from making a contract and defeat Walpurgisnacht by any means necessary. Nothing else mattered.

But despite all her resets, despite all her preparations, despite (supposedly) finally having all the information, Homura still kept failing! No matter what she did, Madoka always made a contract and became Kriemhild Gretchen. And Walpurgisnacht just seemed to be getting stronger.

Finally, in the timeline that encompasses the show proper, Homura learned the reason why. She was doomed from the start. Her own resetting of time was only building Madoka’s karmic destiny, increasing the power of both Walpurgisnacht and Kriemhild Gretchen. The more she went back, the more the universe itself stacked the deck against her, and now it was all but impossible. And what was worse, she had done it to herself.

Just look at her in that second to last episode, when she’s lying there bloodied and broken, when she’s about to go back yet again but stops herself. Just look at her face as her soul gem darkens as literal years of despair seep out of the defenses she had built up around herself. She knew that it was hopeless, she knew that both she and Madoka were doomed, she knew that she was seconds from finally becoming a witch after all of her efforts were for naught, and it terrified her.

But then, just as all seemed lost, Madoka herself appeared to save her, but did so through the last thing Homura wanted her to do. She took all of that karmic destiny Homura had burdened her with and made a witch that shook the very foundations of reality. Witches were removed from the equation, and Puella Magi who had succumbed to despair were simply allowed to pass peacefully instead of becoming monsters. The contract system and the advancements wasn’t removed, and the girls’ wishes weren’t negated. But the cruelest aspect of it was.

And all it cost was Madoka’s existence.

Yes, Homura was saved. Yes, Madoka was spared of dying or turning into Kriemhild Gretchen. But the person that Homura had devoted her entire existence to protecting was gone, and by her own hand. Only Homura herself was left to remember her.

Can you imagine how that must have felt, to be forced to soldier on while bearing the weight of that knowledge, to know that you had ultimately failed in your mission and had to go on without the only person that had ever meant anything to you? Sure, there was that whole “always be with you in spirit” thing, but that is a poor comfort to someone like Homura. Yes, the show ends on an optimistic note, with Homura promising to fight on in Madoka’s name, but it’s often been said that the only thing that give a story a happy ending is where you end it. And while I’m sure that many fans would have loved to believe that Homura had done just that, had fought the Wraiths to the bitter end until she was welcomed into Madoka’s arms, the sad fact of the matter is that reality is rarely ever so simple.

In The Rebellion Story we learn how true that is. Without her mission, Homura was unable to keep herself together, and despair did finally overtake her. But instead of peacefully disappearing and being taken by her love, she had made the fatal mistake of confessing to Kyubey of all people the truth about the way things were.

Now, why would she do that? Why tell Kyubey about the witches and how Madoka had changed things? Did she not suspect that he might do something with that knowledge?

Personally, I think she did. Maybe not consciously, but I feel that deep down inside, she hated what the world had become, not because the Law of Cycles had removed a significant portion of the pain, but because Madoka had to erase herself in order to create it. Yes, deleting witches was a net positive, but it wasn’t the positive Homura had been fighting to achieve. Madoka had made her promise to keep her from making a wish, and Homura had to execute her right after. So I do think that she told Kyubey the truth because part of her was kind of hoping he would intervene somehow and bring Madoka back.

And he did, and he did so though screwing Homura over. Again.

Within the labyrinth contained within her own soul gem, Homura build the world she had always wanted to exist. The endless loops had been washed away, and she and Madoka were fighting together in a joyful magical girl show. She worked so hard to build a place that would make her happy, but in the end she had been unable to accept even her own gift, in part because she subconsciously knew that something was off, but also because she had conditioned to be suspicious anything that seems like it would be working in her favor.

Learning the truth broke Homura yet again. She had done this. She had been the one to admit the truth to Kyubey, and he had used that knowledge to ensnare Madoka once more. Her love was again trapped by Incubators, and it was all her fault. Is there any wonder that while everyone was fighting to rescue her from herself, she was screaming for them to stop while her own familiars executed her over and over again?

Homura’s decision to rip Madoka out of the Law of Cycles and again rewrite reality is a controversial one, and I get that. But when you put aside the cool, determined badass that she presents herself as and look at the whole of her journey then it only makes sense. She was sick of it all. Sick of being manipulated by the Incubators and their contracts, sick of having her desires denied by the Law of Cycles, sick of being held back by her own inadequacies. She was sick of losing, and that was going to end.

The movie is called The Rebellion Story, and that title couldn’t have been more accurate. Because at the end, Homura rebelled against everything: against the Incubators, against Madoka, against herself, against a world that seemed set against her from the beginning. She forcibly seized control, dominating Kyubey and his ilk, ripping Madoka from the Law of Cycles and reprogramming her to be sweet and docile, and even erasing Madoka and Sayaka’s friendship so that Sayaka wouldn’t interfere. In the end, she finally won.

And she still hated herself. Even after overcoming everything and embracing her status as the world’s new Devil, we see her own familiars throwing trash at her.

And that is the Homura I came to love. The icy, mysterious warrior that she was presented as just didn’t do anything for me. But the broken girl who seemed to have the entire world set against her, that had what little happiness she had stolen from her time and time again, that made mistake after mistake as she tried to fight against the unfairness of everything and constantly made things worse, that finally said “Fuck it” and forced the world to bend under her will but still wasn’t happy at the end it all? Well, just look at the stories I’ve written, the kinds of stories I gush about. That is a story I can sink my teeth into. That is a character worth investing in, because she is just so damned fascinating!

Now, I’m not going to say that she’s my favorite character now, but her story is the one I’m the most interested in. And when we finally get that long-awaited follow-up, I’m definitely going to be swooning over any and all KyoSaya interactions and watching what happens to Mami and Madoka with rapt attention, but the bulk of my investment will be in Homura’s story, because in a very strange way, her story feels the most human.

Now I just wonder how many people I’ve managed to piss off.

#puella magi madoka magica #pmmm #homura akemi #Madoka Kaname #sayaka miki #kyoko sakura #mami tomoe #the rebellion story #essay #character analysis #don't kill me please i really do think she's an awesome character

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parkerparts · 5 years

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Wishes from the Cursed

Demons like to take children in deals with desperate people. Sometimes, they return the children back to the world of mortals, but the Underground leaves its curse.

In a little cabin in the woods by a lake, two cursed children learn to fall in love.

Parkner Week 2019 Day Six: “Five Feet Apart ‘Cause They’re Not Gay” / Swimming / Hurt/Comfort

Read it on AO3 here.

Harley believes in the power of human touch, the worst of humanity, and demons.

His mother was young once. Young, desperate, and pregnant at sixteen. She was hopelessly in love with the senior boy who tutored her in physics, but he saw the baby growing in her stomach, and he ran away. Leah Keener was young, desperate, pregnant at sixteen, and alone, There’s no worse fate than that.

Sometimes, people get so desperate that they stop praying to the Lord and start praying to the demons. The demons come from the Underground to bargain, and barter, and cheat desperate people. Most people who make a deal with a demon end up worse off than they began. It’s only if you’ve got nothing to lose that you end up better off.

Leah Keener hit rock bottom, and she began praying to demons, cradling her swollen belly and begging for salvation.

The demon named Brannimus appeared to her on the night of the new moon. “You been asking for a demon, little lady?” he hissed, slithering closer to where Leah lay crying in the dirt of the hare’s meadow. “You got yourself a good demon, here. Brannimus is the best demon of all, miss, yes he is. He’ll strike you a good deal.”

“I’m alone,” Leah told Brannimus, sitting up and wiping the tears away the best she could. “My lover, he left me, and I’ve got this baby on the way, and I don’t got a place to stay, or a bite to eat, or a dollar to my name. I need that boy of mine, Brannimus. I need him to kiss me right like he used to, and we’re gonna raise our baby together.”

“Ahh, so you’re in love. Them lover fools, they’re the most desperate of them all.”

“Yes, I’m desperate. I’m the most desperate of them all, and I’m begging you for that boy of mine back.”

“And you’ll have him, this I promise, but you must promise me something in return.”

“Anything, Brannimus. Anything, and it will be yours.”

“Them lover fools are the most desperate of ‘em all,” Brannimus repeated. His long tail flicked Leah’s stomach. “If you’re desperate enough, you’ll promise me your firstborn child.”

And that’s how deals with a demon are made.

As soon as the baby was out of the womb, Brannimus the demon appeared to Leah and whisked her child away, leaving behind a screaming, bleeding mother and the pitying midwife. The baby disappeared, but it was still in the world, so they christened him Harley after the hare’s meadow where Leah made that demon’s deal.

Five years passed until the baby was seen again. In that time, Leah’s lover wandered his way back to the demon’s ditch called Rose Hill. They had another baby, a baby girl, who was an angel untouched by any demon’s hand. At the sight of her, Leah’s lover cried tears of joy, and they named her Abigail, which means father’s joy.

The name Harley took on another meaning: father’s sorrow.

When baby Abbie turned two, and the missing baby Harley turned five, Leah heard a knock on the door. The hand knocked five heavy times, and she feared the Brannimus had appeared to her again to take her angel child away. What she found at the door was much, much worse.

Demons like to take children in their deals. Usually, the children disappear forever in the demon’s den. Sometimes, they return. However, demons leave their mark, and the children they send back to the world of mortals are cursed.

Harley is a cursed child.

They call it Brannimus’ Barrier. No human can get within five feet of him, for he’ll start screaming like he’s being burned from the inside out.

“Damn that demon,” Leah would say at night as she tapped Harley’s forehead with a five-foot-long pole in an imitation of a goodnight kiss. “That bastard Brannimus, dooming my child to a cursed life.”

Leah’s lover would come up behind her and gently take the pole from her. He would guide her from the basement they kept Harley in and take her upstairs to the bed they shared and their normal, angel daughter. Harley would lie on a flea-ridden mattress in the basement, and the sound of the rats would put him to sleep. He’d wake the next morning when the basement door opened, and Leah pushed in a plate of breakfast with her five-foot pole.

Harley spent five years in the demons’ den Underground. He spends ten more in the basement underground. He vows to spend twenty more years above the ground, and then he’d spend the rest of forever in Heaven, where dead children go to play.

When Harley is fifteen, he sneaks out of the basement in Rose Hill and walks north for two weeks until he finds a clearing in the woods by a lake that’s clear enough to see his reflection in it.

He’s never seen what he looked like. He never wants to again.

Harley spends a month chopping wood and a month building his little log cabin in the woods by a lake. On the first night he spends inside of it, snow falls over the North. He’s never seen snow before. He wishes it would always snow.

Harley spends a year in his little log cabin in the woods by a lake. With the fish in the lake and the berries in the woods, he wants for nothing. He has an alpaca named Gerald to keep him company on lonely nights, and it’s peaceful. It’s all Harley ever wanted. He turns sixteen on a full moon in the middle of winter.

The snow melts, and summer comes again. With it, comes five heavy knocks on his door. Harley warily pushes it open with his five-foot-long pole.

On Harley’s doorstep stands a boy. He’s ethereal, and Harley knows he’s no mere mortal. He’s just not sure whether the boy is an angel or a demon. “Don’t come closer to me than the end of this pole,” Harley warns, taking several steps back so that the boy can enter and close the door behind himself.

“My name is Peter.”

“What are you, Peter?”

“I am a cursed child running from a demon’s ditch.”

Harley drops the pole to the floor. An act of acceptance, but not yet a gesture of trust. “My name is Harley, and I am a cursed child running from the demon’s ditch.”

Peter hails from a place called Queens, which makes Harley laugh. “With a royal name like that, I’m surprised it’s not an angel’s palace.”

“I’ve never seen an angel’s palace, and I don’t think they’re real,” Peter says with an angry fire in his eyes.

“There’s got to be an angel’s palace, right? For every demon, there’s an angel.”

“I’ve never seen an angel either. All I ever see are demons.”

“What are you saying?” Harley asks, standing up. “That we live in a world with no angels, just demons?”

When Peter smiles, he shows all his teeth. The expression he wears is feral. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

Peter moves into Harley’s little log cabin in the woods by a lake. They section it off so they each have a side to themselves on opposite ends of the one-room house, and they share a common area in the center. If they’re careful, they manage to coexist around the five-foot pole Harley still carries with him as he walks around the house.

“What’s your curse?” Harley asks one night. “Who cursed you?”

Peter’s story is similar to Harley’s. When he was three-years-old, his parents died, and he was given to an Uncle Ben and an Aunt May to be raised. They raised him right until he was ten, when Uncle Ben was shot in the head. Aunt May was poor, and she had to feed a boy that wasn’t even her own, so when the demon named Segroth appeared to her, she exchanged the boy to bring Uncle Ben back to life. Segroth took Peter away for five years, and when he was fifteen, he returned to Queens with a curse called Segroth’s Spider Bite. His senses were dialed to eleven. Everything was too loud, too bright, too much. For a year, he lived as a cursed child in a demon’s ditch, but Aunt May and Uncle Ben kicked him out, so he ran away to the woods “To find you, Harley. I think we were destined to find each other.”

Harley believes in the power of human touch, the worst of humanity, and demons. He doesn’t believe in destiny.

“There’s no such thing as destiny, just desperation and the choices we make when we’re desperate.”

Weeks past, and summer’s almost over. When Peter turns seventeen, on a half moon in August, Harley makes a wild berry tart. They don’t have wax, so they stick a twig of wet, green wood in the center and light it on fire. It smokes too much to be a good candle, and it’s hard to blow out, but Peter manages anyway.

“What did you wish for?” Harley asks.

“To go swimming with you. Tonight.”

They strip to their shorts and go swimming by the light of the moon. It’s bright enough to see but dark enough to hide secrets, just how Harley likes it.

Peter runs and jumps into the lake, sending up a wave of water that splashes squawking birds away. He comes up laughing. It’s bright enough for Harley to see the dark curls plastered to Peter’s glowing face and the way the light reflects off his wet, slim body, but it’s dark enough that Harley can’t read the expression in Peter’s shining eyes. He looks like an angel, Harley realizes, and he thinks that it’s a shame Peter had to be a cursed child because everything else about him reeks of angel grace.

Harley looks like a demon. He wades into the water and stares at his reflection in the calm water, and all he sees are the features of a demon.

For every demon, there is an angel, and Harley found his in a little log cabin in the woods by a lake.

Peter creeps closer, and Harley realizes that he doesn’t have his pole. “Stay back. Five feet.” Peter is much farther away than five feet, but Harley is scared that if Peter comes any closer, he’ll do something reckless.

“What, are you scared I’m going to seduce you or something?”

“I’m not gay,” Harley shoots back. “Gay is another demon’s curse, and if a child was cursed twice, than surely he’d be dead right now. I already have one curse, so I can’t be gay.” That’s what they told him, growing up in a basement in Rose Hill. That’s what they say down South.

“Gay isn’t a demon curse. It’s a human curse. A love curse.”

“Do you have it, this love curse?” Harley asks, backing slowly away.

Peter steps forward boldly in response. “Yes.”

“Well, I don’t,” Harley demands, and he hates the way the panic creeps into his voice. Peter is twice-cursed, and surely no child can survive that, but here is one living and breathing and far too close for Harley’s taste.

“How would you know? You’ve never loved a soul in your life.”

“I love you.” The words leave Harley’s mouth before he realizes what he’s saying. He chokes on shame on retches into the clear, calm lake. The wild berry tart tasted sweet going down. It tastes sour on the way back up.

At least the vomit makes Peter back away. “That’s gay,” he says softly. “That’s love.”

Harley clambers out of the lake and runs inside the cabin. Peter doesn’t follow.

There are two long months of miserable chill before the first snowfall. Harley keeps the fire lit and stomps up and down his cabin, kicking Peter’s things around and snapping all his five-foot poles in half. He spends cold nights wrapped in Peter’s blankets because Queens is colder than Rose Hill, and Peter had brought warmer blankets than Harley. The smell of the other boy, the scent of wild berries, birch wood, and summer sun, makes Harley nauseous, but he suffers through it all just to be a little bit warmer.

Gerald disappears some time during the first month. Harley spends that day in Peter’s bed crying.

There are five heavy knocks on his door at sunrise on the day of the first snowfall. Harley pushes the door open with a broken, two-and-a-half-foot pole, but Peter is standing five feet away from the door, so Harley is safe. They don’t say any words. Peter just steps inside the cabin like he’s coming home after a long journey. He surveys the damage done, the way his things are scattered across the floor and how his blankets are all on Harley’s bed. He still says nothing, just cleans it all up and steals back his blankets, being mindful to keep five feet away from Harley, even without the full-length poles. They go back to living together like it’s summer instead of winter, and Harley can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

“What does it feel like?” Harley asks one night. They’re curled up in chairs five feet apart in front of the fireplace. At Peter’s questioning look, he clarifies, “Touch. Human touch.”

Peter is quiet for a moment before answering. “Before I was cursed, before Uncle Ben and Uncle May took me in, I lived with my parents. Human touch. It’s the first form of communication. When you’re born, you don’t understand anything about the world, but you understand that your mother’s embrace is the safest place in this big, big world. Touch connects us, literally and figuratively. It comforts us, consoles us, excites us, makes us feel loved. We need touch like we need air to breathe.”

“I’ve lived this long without human touch. If I needed it like I need air to breathe, I’d have been dead three minutes after I was cursed.”

“I don’t know how you’ve lived this long without human touch. You’re the bravest, strongest person I know, Harley.”

The words make Harley’s chest ache in a warm way he doesn’t quite understand. “Thanks,” he mutters under his breath, and he hopes he looks sincere. He means it, he does, but he’s lost, and hurt, and confused..

“It’s better out here than in the demon’s ditch. In Queens, it’s noisy and bright and dirty, and it made everything hurt too much. After I was cursed, I couldn’t stand to be touched. No one really wanted to touch me anyway, but even touching the fabric of my clothes hurt too badly. Touch used to bring comfort to me, and now it only brings pain.”

“You’ll learn to live as long as I have without it. You’ll learn to live every longer. You’ll figure it out. I know you will. You’re the smartest person I know, Peter.”

Harley turns seventeen on a new moon in January. There are no berries to make a tart with and no green wood to make a candle out of, so they make do with maple syrup brittle and a dry stick that Harley has to blow out quickly before it burns the house down.

“What did you wish for?”

“To be able to feel human touch.”

Peter shakes his head. “You shouldn’t waste your wishes on undoing a demon’s curse. That’s a fool’s dream.”

The snow melts early that year, and Harley fears that Peter is going to leave again, leave Harley to face the miserably cold spring rains alone. Peter doesn’t leave though. He stays in the cabin and nurses Harley to health when he catches a nasty cold. His care consists of pushing cold rags and warm tea to Harley’s bedside with a new five-foot pole, but the gesture makes Harley smile.

“Don’t leave me again,” Harley begs when his fever is at its highest.

“Never.” Peter promises. “I will never leave you.”

Harley’s health returns with the summer sun. Peter leaves his worry behind in the mud of the spring rains, and they spend another summer as carefree boys who have a whole world to themselves in their cabin and their woods and their lake.

Peter’s turns eighteen on a rainy day, and they can’t see the moon. They have their wild berry tart, but it’s storming too hard to go swimming. Instead, they dance in the rain, barefoot in the mud. Harley thinks it’s the most he’s ever heard Peter laugh.

“What did you wish for?” Harley remembers to ask, once they’re dry and warming themselves by the fire.

Peter turns to face him, and Harley’s heart stops a beat at Peter’s tear-stained face. “To dance in the rain with you forever.”

“That’s a fool’s wish,” Harley whispers back. “A foolish lover’s wish.”

It doesn’t matter. He’s just as much of a foolish lover as Peter.

When the autumn chill comes and chases them back into the cabin, they feel pent up and reckless. “Do you think curses fade over time?” Peter asks as he paces up and down his side of the cabin.

Harley finishes slicing the potatoes for dinner before replying. “No, but it would be nice if they did.”

He’s about to take the pot of roasted vegetables out of the fire when the pain hits him. It’s sudden, like a balloon of acid in his stomach had popped open, and its contents were corroding holes through his guts. The pain is over as soon as it begins, but Harley’s throat is sore from screaming, and he’s panting from where he lays on the ground, head dangerously close to the fire.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says, and Harley has to close his eyes and swallow his rage down.

“You should be,” he grits out. “What the hell were you thinking? You know the rules.”

“Harley,” Peter says softly. “Look at me.”

Harley looks at him, and Peter’s still standing far too close. There’s a broken five-foot pole in between Peter’s feet and Harley’s curled up body, which means there’s roughly two and a half feet in between them. Yet, Harley can’t feel the pain that’s supposed to come when Peter stands this close, the pain that hit him moments earlier.

“How close were you standing when I, um, fell?”

“Less than two feet. This pole is one of shorter pieces.”

Harley takes a shuddering breath. Tears are pressing at his eyes, and he’s not exactly sure why. Pain, maybe, mixed in with hope and terrified confusion. “New rules. Two feet apart at all times.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” Peter says with a ridiculous salute, and it’s enough to make Harley laugh.

Their dinner is burnt, but neither of them really care. They’re eating dinner close enough to see the emotions in the other’s eyes, and it’s exhilarating.

“I think I love you,” Peter says as they watch the first snowfall from in front of the fire. Harley chokes on his tea.

“You think or you know?”

Peter considers it for a moment. “I think. I’m not really sure what love is, but I think it’s what I feel for you.”

“That’s fair enough,” Harley says, willing his heartbeat to resume a relaxed pace.

“What about you? Do you love me?”

Harley sighs. “Yes. I told you that already, don’t you remember?”

“It’s nice to be reminded of it.”

They do their best to remind each other. Harley greets Peter every morning with a simple “I love you,” and wishes him goodnight with the same phrase every evening. Like clockwork.

Peter, on the other hand, reminds Harley at random. “I think I love you,” he’ll say as Harley makes tea for the both of them in the morning, or as they curl up by the fire reading, or as they fish in the ice. It catches Harley slightly off-guard each time it’s said, but it never fails to bring a smile to his face.

He wishes that Peter would drop the “I think,” but he’s a patient man, and he’d wait until they were both dead and well into the afterlife if that’s what it took.

Harley turns eighteen on a half moon in January. “What did you wish for?” Peter asks, as soon as Harley hurriedly blows out the fire on a dry twig.

“To love you forever,” he says, like the confession of a secret.

“That’s a lover’s wish,” Peter chides him.

Harley smiles. “Well, I have the lover’s curse.”

The spring rains wash away the winter snowfall, and the summer sun dries the spring rains. Through it all, two boys in a cabin in the woods by a lake grow closer, literally and figuratively. With every reminder and secret smile shared, they are able to close the gap between them slowly but surely. By the time the rains are dried, Harley and Peter can stand half a foot apart. It’s close enough to breathe in each other’s air and pick out every detail of the other’s face, but it’s still not close enough, not close enough to touch.

Peter’s nineteenth birthday creeps up to them, and before they know it, the summer is nearly over, and Peter’s blowing out a wet green stick in a wild berry tart again.

“What did you wish for?” Harley asks as they sit half a foot apart on the bank of the lake.

“To touch you.” Harley closes his eyes and shakes his head with a fond smile. “No, listen to me. I just wished to touch you. You and only you. I will deal with the pain of touch from the rest of the world if it means I get to touch you and hold you in my arms. I want to show you what human touch is, Harley. Is that too big of a wish?”

Tears burn in Harley’s eyes, but he blinks them away. “Yes, but I hope it comes true anyway.”

Subconsciously, their hands inch closer together, and as the sun sets on their cabin in the woods by the lake, Harley feels a warm, electric touch on his finger.

He looks down. They’re hands are touching, fingertip-to-fingertip, and the realization knocks the breath out of Harley’s lungs. “I can touch you,” he breaths, letting his fingers dance over Peter’s palm. “I can touch you.”

“And I can touch you.” Peter sounds like he’s crying, and Harley looks up in alarm. He wants to touch Peter, but he won’t if the other boy will feel any pain. However, Peter doesn’t look like he’s in pain. Instead, he’s letting salty tears drip into his grinning mouth. “Harley, I can touch you, and it doesn’t even hurt.”

Human touch, Harley thinks, is incredible. He takes Peter’s hand in his own and relishes in its warm, comforting weight. Human touch is undeniable, he thinks as Peter’s lips press against his forehead. Human touch is maddening, he thinks. The two boys lay out by the lake in the fading light, pressed against each other in an impossible embrace. Human touch is everything.

Harley believes in the power of human touch, the worst of humanity, and demons. But most of all, he believes in wishes.

They wake up by the lake to the wrath of the last summer storm and run shrieking into the cabin. Harley’s out of breath and laughing, and when Peter pulls him close, he feels like he’s on fire.

“I think this is an angel’s palace,” Harley says. “This cabin and these woods and that lake are an angel’s palace, and we are its angels.”

“We can’t be angels,” Peter whispers. “We’re touched with a demon’s curse.”

Harley stares at their intertwined bodies and snorts. “Are you sure about that?”

Peter doesn’t say anything. Harley thinks he’s never seen the boy look so confused.

In the cold months before the snowfall, the two boys touch each other as much as they can. It’s been years since Peter had been able to touch another person, and for Harley, it’s been a lifetime. One time, Peter touches Harley’s lips with his.

“That’s a kiss,” Peter tells him. “A true love’s kiss.”

It makes Harley cry, for some unfathomable reason. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

After that, Peter stops saying “I think I love you” and starts saying “I love you.” He says it more often too, but it still makes Harley smile every time.

“We have the love curse,” he jokes, as they curl up together on Peter’s bed. Harley’s bed is cold, and it hasn’t been used in weeks.

Peter kisses him. “That’s the best kind of curse there is.”

Snow blankets the ground when they wake up. Harley drags Peter outside with him, and they spend the morning throwing snowballs at each other. When it stops snowing, and the world is too still, Peter runs after Harley and catches him in his arms.

“Got you,” he cries triumphantly, pressing kisses all over Harley’s face.

Harley swats at Peter with a laugh. “Never let me go.”

Peter promises, “Never,” and Harley believes him.

When Harley turns nineteen, the moon is black, and the world is dark. They feed each other maple brittle and cuddle in the bed they dragged to be close to the fireplace. “What did you wish for?” Peter asks.

“To live and die by your side, forever in this angel’s palace.”

Peter’s face is unreadable.

The spring rains come to wash the snow away, but it brings a plague with it. Harley catches it first, his body having never really recovered from the first time he caught the spring sickness. He sleeps all day in the bed by the fire and only wakes to vomit in the pot by his bed. Peter sleeps in Harley’s old bed, and Harley swears he hears Peter praying some nights.

“Cursed children can’t speak to the Lord,” Harley croaks out when he catches Peter praying.

A fire burns in Peter’s eyes. “You said we weren’t cursed anymore. The least I can do is try.”

Harley stops vomiting, but the fever still burns. Fire spreads, and Peter’s catches a fever too. He lies in bed by Harley because there’s no use being apart if they both have the plague anyway. They sleep most days away, sometimes trying to eat when they’re awake, but mostly they just clutch each other tightly and hope they never have to let go.

“Do you still think this is an angel’s palace?” Peter asks.

Harley smiles bittersweetly. “Yes, and I think we are dying angels.”

When the summer sun chases the spring rains away, it shines on two boys in a cabin in the woods by a lake. These boys are supernatural. They are mortal children with demons’ curses who live in an angel’s palace. They are also dying, but at least they are together. It is all they have ever wanted.

Death comes for Harley and Peter slowly. They don’t know how long it will take. Harley says they will be dead by summer’s end, but Peter says it will take another year. It doesn’t matter, they agree in the end. As long as they die together.

“Do you promise to love me, Peter? Right now in life and forever in death?”

Peter kisses every inch of fever-warmed skin on Harley’s body. “Yes,” he whispers as Harley cries out. “I will love you always.”

“Good.” Harley trembles when Peter pulls away. “Because I too will love you always.”

Harley believes in the power of human touch, the worst of humanity, and demons. He also believes in love because he is so in love with Peter Parker.

“You’re an angel,” he says, reaching out to cup Peter’s face.

“We are both angels,” Peter corrects. “Dying angels, but does it really matter?”

It doesn’t goes unsaid by both of them, and Harley believes. He believes in Peter, and somehow, along the way, he learned to believe in himself.

“We’re both angels,” he agrees. He can see himself reflected in the light of Peter’s eyes, and he looks like an angel. “Dying angels, but we long as we’re together, it doesn’t have to matter.”

Peter pulls him close with a smile that borders on a laugh, and Harley’s too close to crying. They’re dying, but it doesn’t feel like dying. It feels like living.

Harley falls into Peter, and he lives and loves forever in death.

#parkner week 2019 #parkner week #harley keener #peter parker #harleypeter #parkner #parley #my day six fic #it's live!#bella writes

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