Chapter Text
(Ba-dum)
When a person becomes a demon—because all demons are first people—they renounce their humanity, and their soul is marked as damned, as an inevitable and eternal slave to Gwi-Ma. Their patterns sear and brand across their skin, shifting and transforming, breaking and rebuilding. This painful metamorphosis, this willful surrender of someone’s soul, always begins with the same thing:
A choice.
Often, that choice is to craft a deal: a give-and-take of what never could have been for what only ever was. A lowly and poor woman becomes the most courted person within her village, only to have her back bow and break, her teeth grow and bend, sharp and gnashing; her once beautiful visage becoming that from tales told only at night. A businessman finds himself in possession of an unimaginable hoard of wealth, able to buy out his competition, to keep his luxuries well stocked and charms never far—only for his hands to gnarl and claw, his jaw unhinge and snap, eyes serpentine and cursed.
A brother, a son, becomes a demon when he abandons his family so that he may never remember the ache of hunger, that endless pit of envy.
But not always is that choice made a selfish one. At least, not immediately, not inherently. There is no desire to move ahead in the world nor is it fueled by the longing to make life easier. Sometimes the choice is to simply turn away from duty, to embrace the love from the very thing she is meant to destroy. To betray her soulmates, to bear the child of a monster.
To leave this world before a daughter could know a mother’s love.
(Ba-dum)
Rumi never has a choice. From the moment she's born she's only ever the direct consequence—the equal and horrible reaction to her mother’s rebellion against fate. The reminder is incessant and throbs within the ache of her shoulders, the gentle shake of her fingers. It drops and spills into the spaces between, shadows stretching and covering and expanding until there is an impossible wall between her and them. It burns into her flesh, so cold it stings and encompasses, drowns out anything beyond the panic, the fear.
(Ba-dum)
Day after day, choking on obligation, allowing herself to be marshaled forward on the predetermined path ahead of her, Rumi makes the choice to not choose herself. She pulls the sleeves down a little farther, the turtleneck a little higher. Cannot let them see. Cannot let them know.
(Ba-dum)
Hiding, hiding, working so hard day and night it sometimes feels as though she might turn to dust—no, not dust. That’s too light; too liable to get caught on a breeze, to drift, to float.
Stone. She will turn to stone. Her limbs heavy, unmovable, and stuck and stuck and stuck and—
(Ba-dum)
Rumi does not choose herself. She does not choose Zoey. She does not choose Mira.
(Ba-dum)
They do not choose her.
(Weapons raised, weapons pointed. At her, at her.)
(Rumi…)
(Ba-dum)
She runs. Disappears into red mist that suffocates. It drops her in the only place she could ever end up: the beginning. Or… (her eyes—one brown and fearful, one orange and feral—cut and land on an unmarked grave) perhaps this is the end?
(Ba-dum. Ba-dum.)
She finds Celine. Begs. Pleads. Sword in hand and resignation in her heart. But Celine has never once chosen Rumi, has never once given her what she wanted… so why would she now?
(Just let her die. Just let her die. Let her be rid of this curse. Let her failures burn to ash with her.)
The sword clatters, hands hover... but they do not touch.
(Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.)
(Rumi…)
A scream rips through Rumi’s throat, animalistic in its grief, and the Honmoon pulses, shudders, tears around her: the opposite and horrible reaction. There is nothing left for her. There is nowhere to go.
(Ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum. She will die here. She will die. It will all end. Let her follow her mother. This is her choice. This is hEr chOIcE)
(Rumi…)
More red mist swirls around her. For a flash of a moment, it reminds Rumi of finales and fireworks and standing on the stage facing an adoring crowd, face aching from how hard she is smiling, heart feeling full, almost as full as her hands that hold and are being held by two—
(It’s cold—it’s so cold—her fingers—CLAWS—slash out, grab at nothing, frantic in their desperation for warmth. But there is none, there is none, it’s gone, it’s gONE. Her sternum is empty. A light has vanished.)
Teleportation is new to Rumi, but there within the bleary haze of her mind, she knows at once something is not right. She feels like ink in water, slowly drifting and losing her shape within this redpinkpurple liminal space. She is nowhere, and yet… she is everywhere.
(Ba—
RUMI)
Rumi’s pulse stutters.
She listens.
… And the Honmoon speaks.
(Rumi…)
It pleads.
It cries.
(This world… I am sorry… It has been so unfair…)
But Rumi doesn’t understand. Cannot understand. Only moments ago, she was ready to turn her back on the Honmoon; had accepted that it did not care for her, despite the years of Rumi bearing its weight. Was grateful for the chance to let it shatter at her feet. But now it speaks to her. Weeps for her.
Mourns her.
(I have been so unfair…)
The rage is quick and unforgiving. For the first time in far too long, Rumi is consumed by heat. It blisters and broils, the jagged lines on her skin flaring a deep red.
“WHY,” she screams. “WHY NOW? AFTER EVERYTHING I’VE DONE. AFTER EVERYTHING I’VE LOST. WHY NOW?”
(They had raised their weapons at her.)
(There is no return from that.)
But the Honmoon shifts and simmers, embracing the heat of Rumi’s anger. Of her heartache. Sends it back to her in endless refractions, its edges cool and curved.
(Rumi… I am sorry…)
(Hide her faults, hide her fear. They must not be seen.)
(They must not be seen.)
(We must… You may…)
(A splinter of a moment—a hug, an embrace.)
(Hands—two—in hers. Gripping, pulling.)
(Gone.)
(Choose.)
And suddenly it’s no longer her grief being refracted back, but worlds, lives, herself. What she could have been, had she not been… this. This girl who never had a say in who she was to become. Who she could be.
The nowhere around her shifts and becomes the everywhere. A fragile warmth gently caresses her skin.
Understanding is a stone in her gut; it is the palm cupping her cheek.
Rumi sees it in a fractal—there: she’s on a beach, with Mira and Zoey. They are laughing while they lie on the sand, curled around each other, glowing and warm under a summer sun. And it makes her breath stop, because Rumi is in the middle of them, unguarded and seen. Without patterns. Free.
(Ba-dum)
And then the fractal is gone, replaced just as quickly with another—her and … her mother. She’s with her mother, cooking shoulder to shoulder in a kitchen. The counter is covered with food, and the smiles on their faces are—identical. With a start, Rumi realizes she never knew how they would look together, older, grown up and around each other like two plants in a garden. How alike they would be while in motion, while warm and alive.
(Ba-dum)
But as she howls, as she instinctively reaches out, the fractal shifts. Too fast, too fast and too many of these lives, these universes spiral and spin in front of her, claws once again grabbing nothing, nothing. There are moments of yellow, of blue, of pink, of black—they swirl and blur and move and transform and it’s too much for Rumi, she can’t keep track of them all.
The only thing she sees in flashes... is herself, is possibility, of second and third and tenth chances. She witnesses what could have been, and her soul cracks.
(Rumi…)
The Honmoon begs. Begins to die.
(Choose…)
And Rumi knows… there is not much left for her in this world (this world, her world). She has lied and betrayed the only two people who truly loved her. They have raised their weapons against her. The only person—thing, monster — to have understood her pain, did the only thing a monster could ever do. And the only woman who might have shown her what it's like to be loved by a mother, has only ever tried to hide her away.
No, there is nothing left for Rumi here.
(Ba-dum…)
She cries along with the Honmoon. Reaches out, fingers (fingers... not claws...) curling. Grabs.
Falls.
Shifts.
Becomes undone and redone, a hundred times, a million times, until Rumi is no longer sure she exists at all.
(Ba… dum…)
.
It goes like this: the world never once chooses Rumi.
So, she chooses a different world.
.
Again and again and again.
.
(Ba…)
.
Her eyes open. The sky is blue. The sun is warm.
(…)
She does not know who she is.