In his newly constructed room, Manaka stared at the ceiling with a bored expression, despite being a literal conceptual being that devours itself.
He was still bored. Maybe it was because Sayaka and Kyoko weren't here or it was the natural inclination of a strong beings laziness. Either way he needs to find something interesting to do.
"Do i really miss Yog already, I really wondered what she is up to." He said as he began to close his eyes, maybe a little nap would clear his mind a bit.
Just as he was about to, the door to his room bursted open.
"Manaka get up, we have something to tell you." Sayaka said with her arms crossed, she was currently not in her Magical girl attire but was in a simole shirt and skirt.
Kyoko as always was wearing some shorts and a jacket. She was also eating what seemed to be an an apple.
Manaka opened his eyes and then got up to look at them. He raised his eyebrows. "How did you find this room, we literally just built it today."
Kyoko smirked as she took out another apple from god knows where and threw it at him. Manaka cought it of course. "Homura was close by so she redirected us here, anyways you seem to be out of it ever since becoming 'Salem' or something, are you suffering from some kind of mental breakdown or something."
Manaka got off the bed and made a slight thoughtful sound, he was not really suffering from anything except for the worlds supression of his powers and also the weakening of them after leaving the original universe he was born in but there was nothing wrong with his mind.
Sure he was at times distant and at the brink of a silent insanity but those things were extreme manageable.
He let out a sigh and decided to play along with whatever they have began to imagine, he was bored so he might as well. "Oh yes, i had constant episodes where I blank out and think about nothing some times and also sometimes sleep longer than usual, you two probably noticed them in our two years in the bubble world."
Sayaka and Kyoko froze, did he ever show so much signs, it was normal for someone to fall asleep for more than eight hours, they could simply just refuse to get up and sleep.
There was that time that Kyoko slept for an entire two days because she got passed off by Manaka...maybe they thought it was like that situation.
Kyoko let out a cough and walked toward Manaka, looping her arms around his and giving him a slightly toothy smile. "Well you really haven't told us that, do you not trust us Manaka or maybe you should speak with your twin sister, im sure it's been long since you two had a proper conversation."
Manaka squinted, so their entire motive was for him to speak to Madoka...and it was certainly suspicious that Kyoko would casualy tell him that he does not trust them and was keeping secrets from them, she would be very upset actually.
Sayaka came forward and looked straight at Manaka witj a serious expression. "Seriously though, you should talk to your sister and not be a passive brother, I'm sure Madoka is also feeling sad because her brother doesn't talk to her anymore."
Manaka's lips twitched, he, Homura and Madoka were quite literally beings considered Divine, the wear of time quite literally no longer affects them and they can talk to one another anytime they wanted.
They would not feel sad at the prospect of the other not paying attention to them...but looking at their expression. His shoulders dropped and her rubbed his forehead with his index finpger and his thumb...yeah maybe he should talk with Madoka and relive a few normal moments with her, it could be fun.
"Fine." He said simply.
Kyoko's smile widened and Sayaka let out a quiet breath of relief, which Manaka caught immediately. So they had actually been worried. He filed that away without comment.
"Where is she?" He asked.
"Garden." Sayaka said. "She's been there for a while."
Manaka looked at the untouched apple in his hand, then took a bite out of it mostly out of obligation, since Kyoko had gone through the effort of throwing it at him. It was good. He took another bite and walked past them both toward the door.
"You're welcome by the way." Kyoko called after him.
"I didn't thank you."
"Exactly."
He heard Sayaka suppress a laugh behind him.
The garden was one of the quieter parts of whatever this space had become. It wasn't entirely natural, nothing here was, but whoever had arranged it had clearly put thought into making it feel like something that grew rather than something that was built. Manaka walked through it with his hands in his pockets, apple core already gone somewhere, and found Madoka sitting at the edge of a stone bench near the far end where the flowers got denser and the light came through at a softer angle.
She looked up when she heard him coming.
"Oh." She said, and then smiled. Not the large radiant kind she was known for. Just the small quiet one she kept for people she didn't need to perform for. "Kyoko and Sayaka got to you."
"They staged an intervention." Manaka said. He sat down beside her without ceremony. "Kyoko implied I was having a mental breakdown. Sayaka gave me a serious face."
"The serious face is very effective."
"It really is." He admitted.
Madoka folded her hands in her lap and looked out at the garden. For a moment neither of them said anything, which was its own kind of conversation between beings that had long since stopped needing to fill silence with noise.
"You've been distant." She said eventually. Not as an accusation. Just as an observation, the way she always said difficult things.
Manaka considered denying it. Not seriously, just the reflex of it. "Time weared me down a lot, it happens."
"Yeah, especially when you're trying to erase witches from all timelines, i felt like it was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, like a large circle." She sighed.
Manaka glanced at her sideways. "That's because it was."
Madoka let out a small sound that wasn't quite a laugh but was adjacent to one. "I know. I was there."
"Right." He paused. "Sorry."
She turned to look at him properly then, with an expression that was doing several things at once. Fond and exasperated and something quieter underneath both of those.
"You don't have to apologize for that."
"I'm not apologizing for that. I'm apologizing for not talking to you after."
Madoka blinked. Then she looked back at the garden. "Oh."
The light shifted slightly. Something with wings moved between the flowers at the far end, too small to see clearly, too deliberate to be accidental. Manaka watched it without comment.
Manaka smiled. "Remember the times i was sick and you were worried about me cause I never took my pills."
Madoka snapped her head towards him. "I knew it, you never did take them huh!!!
Manaka's smile stayed exactly where it was. "I took some of them."
"That is not the same thing and you know it."
"The ones that tasted bad I didn't take."
Madoka stared at him. "They all tasted bad.
That was the point. They were medicine."
"Then I took none of them."
She made a sound that was caught somewhere between a groan and a laugh and pressed her fingers to her forehead. It was such a specific gesture, one he hadn't seen in what felt like a very long time, that something in his chest registered it before his mind did.
"Mama was so worried," Madoka said, dropping her hand. "She thought you were going to get worse and you were just. Spitting them out."
"Into my sleeve. Very discreetly."
"She found one in the laundry, Manaka."
"I thought I got them all."
Madoka covered her mouth. She was trying not to smile and losing badly. "She showed it to Papa and they had a whole conversation about it at dinner and you sat there eating like nothing was happening."
"Nothing was happening. It was dinner."
"You were the topic of the dinner."
"I was also the one eating it, so I won the situation."
She laughed then, properly, the kind that surprised her a little on the way out. It moved through the garden and scattered whatever had been moving between the flowers at the far end into brief startled flight. Manaka watched it happen and felt something loosen in him that had been drawn tight for longer than he'd consciously noticed.
He let her laugh run its course.
The two siblings sat there talking to one another with a smile on both their faces.
-----
In a Distant universe far away, Yog took away a book from someone's hands. A malformed creature without a will and then threw it towards a world that was merely a Remnant of a bigger world.
She looked at the book in her arms and then opened it.
[Day 1: The supreme Ruler of Time and Space second only to the Gate and The Key took the book of the Multiverse from the previous owner--------[YOU ARE NOT QUALIFIED, THROW AWAY AND SEND TOWARDS A NEW HOST.]
Yog's eyes narrowed, Second only to the Gate and the Key, that was an insult to her entire existence, and Supreme Ruler of time and space..what a grand title.
"For a parasite like me huh." She looked at the book and then opened a portal, throwing it into a random earth.
She looked at the void and like mist she disappeared.