Chapter Text
She remembers being small, too small to really reach the sink to wash her hands in a public restroom. She remembers another girl just as small not even trying to do it by herself, because her mom, what must have been that girl’s Celine, lifted her up, clearing the rim of the basin easily and helping those tiny hands get clean. The little girl beamed in arms that didn’t hesitate to wrap around, touched by hands that weren’t rushed in a haphazard way to break off contact.
When Rumi had looked away, up and into the mirror, she had seen Celine’s face staring at the back of her head with that look.
The hope she didn’t realize had blossomed caught fire and burned to ash. She didn’t ask what had wrapped her mind in a cold vice. It felt heavy. She remembers tearing her eyes away and not knowing what to call that expression, that distant, removed glimmer in Celine’s eyes. How could she?
But as she slumped down from her tippy toes, weighed by something that felt an awful lot like a hundred pounds of tears and the unrecognized ache for a hug, she could sense what it meant.
Don’t touch me.
She pretended that Celine was proud of her for being able to do it by herself. She was different. That little girl being lowered gently back to the ground had no idea the role Rumi was meant to play, so unlike her Rumi had to learn to do things by herself. She had to be strong. Celine had to step back. Had to let her be a big girl.
How else was Rumi supposed to get rid of her patterns? Love wasn’t going to stop the demons.
(That thought was just another crack, another fault line stenciled across her skin. She could claim whatever she wanted, but it didn’t change the rot in her blood spreading from the inside out.)
She sees that look now though, through the hurt and devastation on Mira and Zoey’s faces, that distant comet of revulsion catching the dim backstage lights. She feels it in her spine, the way they edge back. The threads of the Honmoon tying them together fray, quick, so quick she can’t even think to grasp them. She’s been cut off—removed like a limb they just realized was rotten.
She isn’t wanted. She isn’t one of them.
She’s a demon.
It is instinct, or maybe habit, to make herself small, so she can’t touch, even with the yawning space between them. She learned well.
But she begs, still, greedy and selfish and terrible, so maybe not well enough.
“Please, please—please,” a mantra more desperate than any Celine had pressed into her escapes from her mouth like the hopes flickering out like candles between her fingers, weak and sputtering. Her marks are burning and glowing and doing everything but what Rumi trained her whole life to ensure—staying hidden, unobtrusive, unseen. “Don’t leave. Don’t—”
She remembers being little, too small to not fall behind Celine’s brisk stride. It was hard, keeping up. She remembers the tree, the Honmoon, and its talismans, caught by the wind that seemed to usher her closer. She remembers the first time the Honmoon reached back, out, and settled in the form of her blade, too big but lighter than air. Her hands struggled to wrap around the hilt and her eyes could not contain the glow of starlight that bloomed, gentle and singing, in her tiny hands and in her heart.
Hello, it hummed. You are special. You are mine. I will keep you safe.
It had felt like a hug.
The way the starlight comes into existence now, crying, crying, crying, digs into her like a stab.
A phantom butcher’s knife not unlike the blade of Mira’s gok-do catches the breath in Rumi’s lungs and cleaves it apart; her voice can’t come out in anything but a whimper. She takes a staggering step forward. “No, please, we can still—I can still fix it. Please.”
“Rumi, just… stop,” Mira exhales, not firm, not steady, but more like she can’t bear to even waste the words on her anymore.
Zoey’s eyes flicker, distraught, between the starlight and the patterns, not to Rumi. “How can we trust you? You admitted to working with him, and your patterns—Rumi, were you ever going to tell us? That you’re—that you—this whole time, we’ve been training to—"
“The Honmoon can fix it! Me! Zoey, please!”
Zoey’s hands rise in unison with Rumi’s heart falling. The two shin-kal that shimmer quietly, with a painful finality, in betwixt the rapper’s fingers, drive it home.
She’s…
Never going to be good.
Never going to be wanted.
(You thought they could still love you?)
Rumi’s gaze flutters, going distant, lax as she tries to shield herself from the (scorndisgusthate) betrayal on their faces. Her chest aches, burns hot, deep, unyielding with the agony of her grief.
She’s lost them. She’s lost everything.
Because—
“You’re a demon,” Mira reasserts, almost as if to herself. Still, her grip is… wrong. The way the gok-do is held out, less like a swing ready to be set in motion and more like—
Don’t touch me.
(You are a stain.)
Zoey shudders with a breath and the pain on her face only makes Rumi hate herself more.
(A corruption that your precious mentor should have excised from the beginning.)
She thought they would hate her.
She was right.
But she has never once thought that she’d hurt them.
Did they love her, then? Once?
For a moment?
(You are a wretched, unlovable thing. You broke their hearts along with their trust.)
Rumi stumbles.
Their stances tighten minutely across from her.
“You’re a demon, Rumi. And…”
Zoey breaks a little saying it. “We’re hunters.”
Don’t touch me!
(You are alone.)
Rumi stands still, for just a moment. Shuts her eyes to their words. If she opens them, will she see their blades descend?
That low voice she had always loved to hear crack with sleep in the morning echoes in her ears. “And it’s our job to kill… demons.”
(Unwanted. Unloved. Do you see? Do you hear? They hate you.)
Rumi sucks in a short, aborted breath, adrift, panicking but not, her mind racing and her body struggling to catch up. Then it’s her body that’s too quick, in motion before her mind can catch the reins. She’s moving through water, through space—she’s falling into nothing. She is heavy like a stone and as weightless, inconsequential as a dead leaf plucked by the breeze. Nothing makes sense. She’s—
(But I will love you.)
“He can hear me. That’s why I can never be free. His voice can reach me, even here, through your precious Honmoon.”
She knows the story. Knows the appeal of having what you so desperately want crooned in your ears alongside all your insecurities…
Hasn’t Jinu been doing that all along?
She’s not in control.
Not completely.
But she can stall. She can stop it.
She can fix it, the one thing.
She can fix the mistake Celine made.
She won’t—she won’t be what he wants her to be. Even if she is what they know her to be, now. She is weak, but she can be strong, just this once.
Just this one, last time.
Celine will be proud, Rumi thinks, distant, hopeful. Please let her be proud.
“Rumi, take a step back. Now.”
Mira.
She said such awful things to Mira. Rumi truly is the worst of the worst; does she have any right to plead with her, to tell Mira she never meant it? That she hopes Mira will still dance in the morning like they did together, turning in spirals in the living room, twirling whoever is lucky to be caught in her orbit into dizzying spins, laughing when it’s one spin too many and inevitably they stumble? That the only thing that matches the way she smiles unrestrained and confident is the way Zoey laughs freely, loud and with her whole body? The way Zoey curls her fingers into theirs and hooks them along to whatever fascinating or mundane thing that steals her eye? The way she rambles and how—how happy she is, just to exist at the same time as them.
How many times did she crowd close to them on the couch, stealing their warmth as her patterns burned beneath layers that were never thick enough to warm her without their touch? How many times did she linger in doorways to listen to their voices? How many times did she sit at the same table as them, pretending nothing was wrong, that she deserved the same simple pleasures they did, and gorge herself on their presence?
All these beautiful moments Rumi had thieved right from under their noses, and she can’t bring herself to apologize for doing it, only to be sorry that she ever had the chance.
She deserves to be alone.
(But you don’t have to be.)
Rumi shakes her head, of the memories, of a voice she never wanted to hear. Pushes against the marks trying to shackle her in place, hot chains of harsh violet that sear in their effort to dissuade her forward march.
“I know we’re hunters, but I don’t—I don’t think I can—god, Rumi—don’t—don’t make us do this.”
“We can’t ever go back to the way we were.”
“I know that, Mira! But this is Rumi! You feel it too, don’t you? Look at you, you’re not even holding your gok-do right!”
Rumi can’t speak. She looks through them. The starlight is so bright.
(Why race to the end? Why flee the arms that would embrace you?)
And the darkness so close.
Why?
Because this is how it was always going to play out. She was silly to think otherwise.
(Come to me. Come. To. Me.)
Rumi shuts her eyes. Thinks, No, and inches forward.
Even if she is rotten at her core, she won't turn to him. She won't turn her back on them.
Not like that.
Mira moves, edging away, tilting her head the barest bit, her eyes leaving Rumi to meet Zoey’s. “Fuck, Zoey, I know, I—"
Rumi is there, then, in front of her.
It's so bright.
Rumi chooses to burn in the starlight.
The screams tear through the veil that falls over her, but they are just a breeze that barely stirs her consciousness, her chest speared on the end of Mira’s gok-do. She is the choking flame at the end of a burnt-out candle wick. She is a natural disaster finally coming to a close, and in her absence everything she touched can finally heal.
Yes, this is it.
This is how she fixes it.
She burns it out of her.
“What the fuck, what the fuck, what—no, nonono, you weren’t supposed to—"
“RUMI!”
And she did it so they didn’t have to. Used all her force. It’s straight through. Through the chest. She’s choking around it, lungs struggling.
She’s standing, then she’s sitting, then she’s laying. The world is full of color, bright but blurred, watercolor shapes surrounding her.
This warm feeling around her… is it the Honmoon?
Is it crying?
Is it—they’re holding her.
“Please, no, Rumi,” hands brush her face, stroke the untidy mess of her hair that strays from her braid, sweep across her jaw. “Don’t, don’t,” the words splinter, cracked and fragile and desperate.
Their arms are around her. The gok-do is gone. It had burned and now it does not. She’s floating with it, this sensation.
Surely, she cannot burden them when she is no longer heavy.
“This is insane, it’s not real,” something pushes against the emptiness of her chest. It doesn’t hurt. It only feels like pressure, like an anchor. “You’re crazy, you’re so—why would you do this? Why did—I wouldn’t have, I couldn’t, never, never—if you had just—”
They are touching her. They aren’t flinching. They aren’t letting go or shoving her away.
Are the marks gone?
“Rumi, I don’t give a shit about your patterns,” Zoey barks, wetly. “I just want you to stay! Can you stay? Please, just stay. We can fix this, we can do better, all of us. Just give us the chance!”
Why?
A sob.
A choked gasp.
Neither of them hers.
“Rumi—"
Did I… do it wrong?
I tried, I really did, I promise.
Why aren’t you happy?
I fixed it.
I fixed me.
A shuddered breath. This one is hers. She doesn’t feel it, only knows in the way someone looks out the window and sees the trees blow that it is there.
The next gets stuck.
“Mira, she’s not—"
“No, no—please, move—!”
Another one doesn’t come.
Everything is still.
Everything is quiet.
(Oh. Child. Did you think this would save you?)
(You bear my mark.)
She opens her eyes, and she is standing, and the flames are hot and violet, and—
She screams.