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Mira lifts her weapon.
It’s not a cruel thing, not even a threat really. It’s just a door closing. The last crack, the last peaks of light that once leaked through sealing tight like a vault being clamped into place.
Mira will not attack her. It’s written in her posture, in her bunched shoulders lifted more like walls constructing than the squaring of preparation. The end of that starlit gok-do, even as it points in Rumi’s direction, is more of a plea than anything else.
Stay away, it says. Begs.
Rumi shifts her gaze to Zoey.
Her eyes are so watery they’re already leaking, tears spilling down rounded cheeks and lifting the makeup there so it all streaks down it in blotches. Gathering at the edges of her jaw and falling down like raindrops. Her breath shakes, even as she stares at Rumi, eyes almost sightless with fear.
“Zoey,” Rumi begs. Pleads. Whimpers like the feral, kicked thing she has always been. Will always be. “Please.”
Zoey stares, and swallows a slow, pained thing. The knives that appear in between her fingers are small. They always have been. Perfect for slipping between ribs, underneath collarbones. Weapons meant to find the smallest, softest parts of their victims and pierce. A quick death. A merciful one.
Rumi doesn’t know if she deserves Mercy. She doesn’t know if she deserves anything. But she is a desperate, wanting child. Always asking for more, always begging. Always pressing against that bathroom door in the estate, listening to Celine’s broken sobs and wishing that she could press up against her rather than the cold, unforgiving wood.
So when Zoey lifts her knives, with that same, stiff posture that Mira did. The same slight bowing of her head, the same clenching of her jaw… Rumi knows its not a threat. Not even the shadow of a promise. Zoey will not attack her. Neither will Mira. It is a defense, a desperate warning that says Go Away. Don’t make me do this.
But Rumi has never been good at listening to warnings. Not even when they were screamed in her face. Not even when they carved their way into her body, sliding down her arms and across her shoulders, reminding her and everyone that might’ve loved her that there was something rotten within her.
Mira is holding her gok-do and Zoey is clutching her knives–only two of them– and both of them are looking at her with dark, pained eyes.
And something in Rumi breaks.
Shatters like the piece of warped, bubbled glass she always was. Like a piece of pottery put in the kiln before it was ready. The steam has built and built and built and she has tried her hardest to keep it together but finally, inevitably, she cannot take it anymore, and she explodes. Regardless of what might be caught in her wake.
Her knees hit the floor and she sobs.
She doesn’t want to, but it isn’t a choice anymore, isn’t even a need. It’s a reflex, an uncontrollable flexing of her diaphragm, of her tear ducts, of her throat. She bends, keeping herself upright only with the desperate press of her hands against the concrete. One flexes, and her new pointed, stiff fingertips carve through it like its made of clay.
For some reason that just makes it all worse.
Her marks burn. They rage through her skin, carving new pathways and frying their way through the tissue to do so. Her left eye aches, the tears that spill down her cheeks doing nothing to quell it, and sizzling faintly every time they make contact with a mark.
Rumi doesn’t care. She can’t care. She can’t even see straight.
All she can do is sob.
Her teeth get tight. Tighter, then tighter still. She spits on the floor, near-gagging from the sobs, and blood and two small, white things come with it. Falling to the ground with a faint, discordant pinging. Rumi can’t think about that. Not when her lips suddenly find new, larger things poking through them, making it impossible to clamp them shut against the sobs no matter how hard she tries.
Another sob wracks her, but it comes out sounding lower than she’d thought. Deeper, more guttural. Less of a sob and more of a growl.
Somewhere in her periphery, a footstep sounds. Rumi whips her head up, half expecting to find that Mira and Zoey have magically disappeared, leaving her to give into her deepest shame in peace.
They haven’t of course, because the universe is cruel and has never, ever given Rumi anything even close to what she wanted.
Mira has retreated a step, or, no Zoey has taken one forward. The knives are still in her hands, still trembling like she’s afraid if she lets go for even a second she wont be able to summon them again.
Maybe she wont.
Maybe Rumi has broken the Honmoon so terribly, so irreparably that everything that has made them what they are will shatter the moment one of them stops this charade.
She can see it in her eyes, Zoey is seconds from dropping her knives and reaching out, seconds from giving Rumi one last, undeserved chance.
Rumi can’t let her.
Because at the end of the day, when an animal is backed into a corner and you reach down a gentle shaking hand to soothe, 8 times out of 10 they bite.
And Rumi, as she is becoming infinitely aware, now has the teeth for it.
“Don’t.”
It reverberates around them. Rumi isn’t even shouting anymore, isn’t pleading, isn’t begging. Still, the demon voice comes crackling out of her. Not from her throat. It doesn’t match the vibrations in her chords, the shapes of her lips. It’s coming from somewhere else. Somewhere deeper.
Zoey freezes. Her eyes wide, breath shaking, eyes fixed on Rumi’s face like she’s looking at something she’s never seen before.
Somehow that hurts more than disgust would’ve.
Rumi opens her mouth, maybe to tell her to go. Maybe to plead once more for her to stay. Instead, something else speaks.
“End this.”
Mira stirs at that. She still hasn’t moved all this time, gok-do still extended like the last facsimile of a shield. It doesn’t tremble, it never does, no matter how turbulent the emotions underneath must be. No matter how badly her shoulders tense. She will not tremble, will not falter.
Rumi’s always loved that about her. Relied on it. Her steady presence in Rumi’s turbulent storm. The rock that both she and Zoey built themselves upon.
It won’t fail her now, she knows. Not if she asks.
“What do you mean by that?” Mira says and her voice is hoarse. A whisper, just the barest grinding of breath and the choked wetness of tears she will not let fall.
Rumi watches her, and she doesn’t know what she looks like, but whatever it is it’s enough to make Mira flinch.
“You know.” She says. The demon says. Deeper and lower and more honest than Rumi has ever been.
Mira stumbles backwards like she’d been struck. Her gok-do tumbling from her hands and clattering to the ground with a hollow, empty clang. Beside her– in front of her– Zoey jumps back like a startled cat. Her own knives falling and then evaporating midair like the moment she wasn’t concentrating on them they ceased to exist.
They both stare at her, and now Rumi knows what true horror looks like. Whatever they’d had before was only a pale imitation.
Rumi finds she doesn’t have it in her to care anymore. The demon speaks and she lets it, because she’s so very, very tired of hiding.
“I am a demon. I broke the Honmoon. Do what should’ve been done a long time ago.”
It’s a strange sensation, Rumi thinks, distantly. To move her mouth and not have her words match it. To have a voice speak and not feel the vibrations of it in her throat, the breath escape her lips.
Her eyes are dry now. Her left still burning like a hot coal was embedded in her face.
“What- What do you mean a long time ago?!” Zoey bursts, and she’s already been crying but now her face has gained that little crease beneath her left eye she gets whenever she’s so frustrated she’s about to start bawling. “What is happening?! How are you a demon? Why is it only showing now? What are you asking us to do–”
“Kill me.”
Once again they all freeze.
It’s almost funny. This strange dance of stop start. How they keep building themselves up only to falter and the slightest word from Rumi.
She could laugh.
She can’t. She doesn’t have the energy.
“Do your duty and kill me.”
Mira breathes. Her shoulders rising and falling with each gasping, panicked breath. Zoey has gone eerily and uncharacteristically still. The gok-do is still on the ground, Zoey’s knives are nowhere in sight.
Rumi closes her eyes. Slowly, almost practised, like she’d rehearsed this many, many times before, she calls her sword and lifts it. Not to wield, but to offer. Like a knight asking for a king’s blessing. Take this, bless this so that I might defeat the monster, so that I might purify this land.
“Kill me and fix what was never meant to be.”
Zoey stares. Mira breathes, and the gok-do on the floor blinks once, twice, before bursting into sparks and disappearing entirely.
“What the fUCK, Rumi?!”
Mira snatches the sword from Rumi’s hands but instead of plunging it into her chest or cleaving her head from her shoulders she tosses it away like the very sight of it hurt. Then, before she can even hear the clatter against whatever surface it landed, Mira grasps Rumi’s shoulders and shakes her like a large, oversized maraca.
“You were supposed to run , goddamn it!”
Rumi blinks, for the first time in possibly minutes.
“Wha-”
“You’re our friend! ” Mira shouts it, screams it, inches from her face and for a moment she sounds more broken and unnatural than any demon. “Our friend , why the fuck would we kill you?! Why would we- would you ask- would you even- why…” she trails off in a heaving, aching thing that it takes disturbingly long for Rumi to identify as a sob.
“Mira…” she breathes, and it surprises her when the word comes out in her own voice rather than that deep, bone-chilling thing from before. Knees hit the floor beside them, and Rumi doesn’t even get a chance to turn her head before arms are wrapping around her and pulling her close.
“I’m sorry,” Zoey whispers. Sobs and buries her face in the crown of Rumi’s head. Her hands are cold, her cheeks are wet, her fingers are edging against her patterns and for a moment all Rumi can feel are hands ripping away her jacket for the world to see— “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry, please don’t ask me to- I’m sorry.”
Rumi blinks again, a bit slower. Confused.
“But you raised your weapons-”
“So you’d run !” Mira answers the unfinished question, stares at her like she still can’t quite comprehend what she’s seeing. Still can’t fathom it. “So we wouldn’t have to face you. Not so you’d try to- to-” she breaks again. This time the sob comes with a bowing of her head and– oh, there’s the tears.
Whatever is left of Rumi’s heart shivers in a weak attempt at breaking further.
“What else was I supposed to do?” She asks instead. Tries to ignore the urge to lean into Zoey’s touch, to crumple beneath the both of them and just let this happen. They don’t understand , they don’t get it, she needs to be stopped . She needs to be fixed . She needs to- “If you couldn’t believe in me anymore what hope was there? If I’m not good enough for you then what worth do I have left?”
“So you just die?!” Mira bites back. Always, always fighting back. Always challenging her, always pushing her, just that bit further, just that note higher. Always, always wanting the best out of her and always achieving it, every single time.
Except this one.
“That’s all I’m good for! ” she shouts back and there’s the demon again. She can feel the saliva collecting on her teeth, watches how Mira visibly forces herself not to flinch when she flashes them in her face. When the world turns pink around them for the briefest of moments, her marks crackling with energy as they burn brighter. “ I’m a demon , that’s all I’ve ever been good for.”
Zoey’s arms tighten and by now the sequins of her jacket are biting into the flesh of Rumi’s neck. The buttons pressing into her temple.
“Rumi,” she sobs, whispers into her hair like a sacred, desperate prayer. It hurts. It burns. It makes the patterns ripple along her skin, the teeth in her mouth ache.
Rumi doesn’t pull away.
“How long?”
Rumi closes her eyes.
“Since I was born. I was never supposed to exist, I was a mistake . Celine said-”
“I meant ,” Zoey cuts into her tirade, but it sounds choked out, like she started the interruption and then Rumi’s words registered. She continues though, squeezing just a little bit tighter. “How long have you felt like we were all you had to live for?”
Rumi, finally, flinches.
That’s what Zoey’s good at, that’s why her weapons are so small and so precise. She cuts to the heart of a matter, pierces through it just like skin, muscle, and bone.
Rumi doesn't answer.
There is no answer. No real one. Rumi has always, always known that she lived only because she had to. Because there was a job to do and only she could do it. Sometimes she thinks that was the Honmoon's last gift to her mother. Ensuring that there was a reason her child remained alive.
After meeting Zoey and Mira, that knowledge, that life given to her, had morphed. No longer had she lived merely because she had to, but because she wanted to. She wanted to spend more time with them, no matter what it might mean if they managed to break down that final wall.
If they didn’t want her anymore? That meant she was back to square one. And if she was back to square one, well…
Rumi had failed that one too.
In the end her silence seemed to answer for her.
Against her, Zoe’s body shudders. A breath tugged in too hard, too fast, and her grip on Rumi turns bruising. “ Oh, Rumi… ”
Across from her, Mira looks like she’s going to be sick.
“Rumi… I…”
Rumi turns her head.
“I was never meant to exist,” she repeats softly. Petulant. “Celine should’ve killed me when I was born.”
Mira, finally, pulls her hands away from Rumi’s shoulders. Against her temple Zoey makes a distressed sound that plucks at whatever is left of Rumi’s heartstrings.
“I’m sorry,” Rumi mumbles. Whispers. She turns, as much as she can in Zoey’s near vice-like hold, and tries her hardest to find her maknae’s gaze. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have let it go this far. I should’ve said something before we got so close, before you– I shouldn’t have let you–”
“Let us what?” Mira cuts her off. Her hands, now free of Rumi’s shoulders, grasp her by the jaw, forcing her to look back at her. There’s something in her gaze now. Something dark and dangerous. Rumi swallows, but doesn’t shy away. She deserves this. She’s earned this.
“I’m sorry,” she tries again. Pleads, but Mira shakes her head.
“No, I want to hear you say it. What should you have not let us do? Huh? What goddamn sin did you let us commit that you’re so dead set on apologizing for. Because I swear to fucking god Rumi if you’re about to fucking apologize for letting us love you I’m gonna–”
“I’m sorry! ” Rumi begs. Rumi sobs, and it spills out of her in discordant, cacophonous noise that turns the entire world around them horrible, Honmoon rending pink . " I'm sorRY, I'm s o rry, I'm sorrY. I'M Sor r y, I'm SORry –"
Mira screams.
Shouts in Rumi's face an anguished, distressed, mournful noise that Rumi doesn't think she's ever heard before. Zoey isn't far behind her, sobbing incoherently into Rumi's hair and all but strangling her with how tight her arms have squeezed.
Rumi can't help but wish she would.
Mira doesn't give her time to ruminate on that for long though. Instead the hand clutching Rumi's jaw tightens into something bruising, something punishing and Rumi can't help but let her eyes flutter shut as finally, finally, Mira understands. Finally, she is going to do what no one else can.
Mira doesn't kill her.
Mira kisses her.
Hard and bruising, all teeth and desperate, wounded passion. She kisses Rumi like she's trying to press something into her with her teeth. Like she's pouring all of the grief, all of the hurt, all of the confusion of the last twenty minutes or so into her and expects her to just sit there and take it.
She will. Rumi always takes whatever is given to her, whether that be an extended hand or one coming down on the backswing.
Mira kisses her and Rumi– despite everything she has done, everything she has promised and broken, everything that is sick and terrible and wrong with her and knows, painfully, deeply, intrinsically, that she is not worthy of this– in spite of all of that. Rumi kisses back.
For a long, long moment, that seems to be all. Mira kisses her and Rumi kisses back. Their teeth clash, Rumi growls , Mira's tongue rakes across Rumi's newly lengthened incisors and adds a metallic taste to the overwhelming sensation of whatever the hell is going on in her mouth right now.
Then, slowly, almost sweetly, Mira pulls back.
Her hands remain on Rumi's jaw. Her nose sliding up the length of Rumi's as she pulls away like she's reluctant to let go of the sensation.
Rumi chases her. Just for a moment. Lips searching for their newly minted counterparts even as her skin continues to burn with the reminder of what led them here.
Mira pulls back and that dark, dangerous thing her eyes has blossomed fully into something that Rumi has seen many, many times before, but never directed so fully and so unabashedly at her.
"I don't care if you're a demon," she husks, voice low and sending goosebumps all down Rumi's spine. "I don't care if you're fucking Gwi-ma himself. You are one of the most important people in my goddamn life and you are not allowed to tell me that you're sorry for that. I love you, I have loved you for years and you do not get to tell me that was a mistake."
Zoey's arms, still wrapped around Rumi's shoulders, finally loosen. Mira's eyes dart in her direction and she releases Rumi's jaw only so that Zoey can claim it.
Her grip isn't as tight as Mira's, it doesn't sink into the soft flesh of her underjaw. Instead it skates along the line of it, settles gently, oh so softly, against the curve of her ear as she too brings her in and presses her lips to Rumi's.
Kissing Zoey is a completely different sensation than kissing Mira. Mira kissed like she was putting an end to something. Snuffing out a flame, tearing a page out of a book, ending a life.
Zoey kisses like she's trying to coax a new one out of her. Gentle and warm, like sunlight peeking through the cracks of dawn. Like a gentle breeze brushing against a flower to release its pollen. Zoey kisses not like she's forcing Rumi to stay, but instead asking her to come along.
Where Mira was teeth Zoey is soft, wet lips and pressure. Warm and safe, breaking the kiss on Rumi's mouth so she can plant more against her cheeks, her brow, under her still burning left eye.
Finally, when Rumi thinks she's going to combust, fall apart beneath all that is Zoey, she pulls back.
Rumi doesn't chase her, not like with Mira, because part of her is afraid that if she does she won't be able to handle it.
Even now, meeting Zoey's gaze, Rumi feels like she could drown in all the warmth in her eyes. Fall into those twin black holes and let herself be consumed. It'd be a gentle death, she thinks, far more gentle than she deserves.
"I don't know what's going on," Zoey whispers, voice little more than a breath. Yet, Rumi feels it like it's humming through the floor, through her bones. "and I'm still not sure what exactly is the truth and what isn't, but I know that only two people have ever been there for me when I needed them. Only one has ever held my hair back while I vomited myself stupid because I was so nervous for our debut concert I couldn't walk straight. You are a lot of things, Rumi. Stubborn, a workaholic, so self-reliant its down right frustrating, but you're not a mistake. Even if you are…” Zoey darts forwards, pressing a final, intense kiss to Rumi's lips. Its deep, passionate, but still so different from Mira's by the simple, inarguable fact that it's Zoey, “I’m glad someone made it.”
Rumi whimpers. Still a desperate, kicked thing, but softer somehow. It reverberates around them like a guitar being plucked. The Honmoon trembles, but for once it isn't pink that pulls at it.
Its gold.
For a long moment none if them speak. Simply sit there, unable to move for fear of breaking whatever fragile peace has found them for the moment.
Then, Rumi breathes.
"I wanted to tell you," she's not sure where she gets the energy. All she knows is that something in her chest, perhaps whatever remains of her half-begotten soul, is pressing hot against her ribcage, begging to come out.
Mira looks down at her for a long moment. Then, with visible effort, straightens.
"You said something about Jinu?"
Rumi flinches.
Zoey's arms are still around her shoulders, not quite tight enough to hold her in place anymore so she ends up almost elbowing her in the nose. She doesn't, but only because Zoey pulls back before she can.
Its cold.
Rumi shivers.
"We made a deal," she whispers. There's no fight left in her, no energy left to lie. To hide. Mira's eyes narrow in something like disapproval and Rumi doesn't let herself shrink under it, she doesn't deserve that luxury. "He'd deliberately lose the idol awards and in return I told him he could be on this side when we sealed the Honmoon, I…"
She trails off, wincing. "Im not actually sure if thats something I could've done. I want to believe we could've but…"
Zoey makes a noise. Rumi cant decipher it.
"When did you even have a chance to make that deal? Before the fan sign?"
Rumi winces again.
"No, we, uh… we'd been… meeting up… at night. Just to… talk…"
Mira's gaze sharpened back into something dangerous, though for a different reason this time.
"You'd been meeting. With a demon. At night, without telling us?"
Rumi doesn't have it in her to look guilty. She already looks guilty, if she somehow managed to get more guilty she thinks she'd actually find a way to implode and turn into a black hole.
"At first I figured I'd just kill him when he had his guard down then he… he figured it out. What I… I am. He understood, at least I thought he did, now I… I'm not so sure…"
They let that breathe for a moment. Mira looks like she'd just swallowed a particularly spicy mouthful of ramyeon and was trying not to let it show. Zoey…
Zoey's face is like nothing Rumi has ever seen from her before. Impassive almost.
It reminds her of Celine. The face she'd make whenever Rumi came crying to her as a kid about how the patterns had spread further. Not disappointment, not even anger or worry, just a deep-seated storm of emotions that Rumi never knew how to read. Eventually, she stopped coming to her.
"When did the marks appear, Rumi?"
She says it like she fears the answer. Like she expects Rumi to tell her that there was an event she missed, a turning point when this could've been avoided.
Rumi almost laughs. A bitter, mournful chuckle. It comes out in a low, rumbling sound that makes the Honmoon sway around them like a spider's web in the wind.
"I've always had them. Since I was born. My father was a demon. I don't know the full story, Celine never told me."
Mira huffs a breath that sounds suspiciously like "fucking Celine." Before she can comment on it Zoey continues.
"So you've always been like this. Since we met?"
There's a tone in her voice that Rumi can't read. Or maybe, she's just too scared to. Still, Rumi's had enough of lying, so she just nods.
Zoey absorbs that. Then, with a slow, determined nod, presses forwards.
Her arms are still warm when they surround Rumi. Warm and soft and kinder than anything Rumi has ever experienced.
"Then this changes nothing. You're still Rumi."
Rumi's vision whites out for a second, and it takes her a long moment to realize it's because her patterns flashed an iridescent glow so bright for a moment she became a living flashbang. Mira is blinking like a startled cat that had the lights turned on unexpectedly in the middle of the night and Zoey buries her face in Rumi's hair again in na attempt to shield herself.
Runi doesn't even realize she's crying again until one of her tears finds a mark and sizzles out of existence.
"I- Zoey I-"
"Nope." Zoey cuts her off. Squeezing Rumi suddenly and intensely so that all the air is forced out of her lungs. Maybe strangulation isn't the way she wants to go. "No more apologies. No more moping."
She releases Rumi only so she can clap her hands on either side of her face and press her cheeks together, clonking her forehead against Rumi's with enough force to nearly give her a concussion.
"You're a demon. You've been a demon this whole time. Am I upset that you didn't mention this earlier? Yes. Am I gonna hold it over your head to win arguments for the next several months? You betcha! Does this change the fact that you're one of my best friends and have been fighting by my side, saving my cute little ass for the past 4 years? No! the! fuck! it! does! not!"
She punctuates each word with a kiss. On her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her chin and, finally, her lips once more.
By the end of it Rumi feels dizzy and a bit overwhelmed.
"But I-"
"Lied?" Mira finishes for her, arresting both of their attention. Zoey releases her face and Mira takes her place, though her touch is much gentler this time as she claims the edge of her chin. "Went behind our backs? Nearly got yourself and, by extension, all of us killed? Yeah, and it fucking sucks." Mira seals it with a final, hungry kiss and Rumi melts beneath her. Hands trace down the curve of her neck, her shoulder, down her arm. Zoey's, if she had to guess, Mira's are still gripping her chin. "But we are a team. We've always been, this doesn't change that. Nothing will ever change that. If one of us stumbles, we pick them up. That includes you, leader."
Finally, Mira releases her, settling back on her haunches. Zoey too, settles, though her hands remain wrapped around Rumi's wrists like she's afraid if she lets go that Rumi's gonna make a break for it.
She might've, a few minutes earlier.
Now, though, Rumi just sits there, catching her breath, tasting the remnants of her teammates, her girls, her hunters , lipstick on her lips.
Her body aches. Patterns still burning within her, still humming in her skin with shame and guilt and fear. Still, there's another emotion there now, glittering in soft, iridescent white in between each deep, bruised purple and burning orange.
Hope.
It's not over, they'll need to discuss this more later, when the world isn't quite literally hanging on the precipice of the end, but for a moment, for a fleeting, desperate, painful moment, it's enough.
"Okay."