Chapter Text
“I admit this is different than I expected.” Celine’s voice was analytical even while making the understatement of the year, a hand ghosting a line from Rumi’s shoulder to wrist without making contact. “How do you feel?”
“Fine,” Rumi said automatically.
Celine gave her a skeptical look.
“I’m really fine. I feel the same as always, just… lighter.”
“So something did change. And there’s no pain? Good.” Celine slumped back against the counter island at her back. “That’s good.”
The silence lingered for a moment too long. Celine could waltz through security and knock on their front door as if nothing was wrong, and not an inkling of that would show on her face. However they were both keenly aware that appearances were not the same as reality. Neither of them were the personality that felt the need to fill silence, but there was too much in this one for them to bear it.
“Would you like some tea?” Celine actually managed to make the question sound totally natural.
It still made Rumi choke out a laugh. They were standing in the middle of the kitchen in the Huntrix apartment. Celine seemed to realize in the exact same moment that she had offered Rumi tea in her own house, and she was ruffled enough by that realization to rub her temples with both hands. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long…”
Day? Week? Twenty-odd years? Celine let the sentence trail off without defining exactly what proportion of her life was the cause, because the correct answer was probably all of the above. Rumi could sympathize.
Rumi decided to accept the olive branch for what it was. “I would like that.”
Celine did in fact know where they kept everything. She visited the city often for work and on occasion simply to see the girls. Celine wasn’t checking in exactly - the girls were all too old for that now - but it was a habit carried over from when Rumi was younger. The frequency and duration of Celine’s visits reduced as Rumi grew and became more independent, but they never stopped completely.
Rumi perched on a stool on the other side of the kitchen island and watched Celine work. She had the hard-won grace of a dancer, but there was a clipped efficiency to the way she moved when her attention was fully focused on a task that was its own pleasure to watch.
There was still that nebulous tension in the silence, but it was… easier. More familiar. It was an unease that felt like home.
The water started to boil and the different flavors of tea leaves laid out in a row.
Celine set out two cups - Rumi’s favorite cup and Celine’s - then paused. “Where are the girls?”
“They ran down to a corner store. They should be back -”
In the distance an elevator let out a soft ping, immediately followed by the dull roar of “SNACKS! SNACKS! SNACKS!”
“ - soon.” Rumi sighed.
Celine went stiff, glancing at Rumi with a flash of utter horror that vanished just as quickly as Zoey and Mira burst through the front door and brandished two bags in each hand with identical feral howls.
“RUMI. WE HAVE THE SNACKS.”
“Hello, girls.” Celine said dryly, setting out two more cups. “Welcome back.”
Mira and Zoey froze in the middle of their gremlin posturing.
Rumi laughed out loud for the first time in what felt like days. “Welcome back.”
For a moment she hoped that things could go back to normal.
Mira straightened, handing her bags off to Zoey with barely a glance. Zoey stowed them away on the counter, ignoring the sound of bottles clattering together a little too loud. They slipped forward as one, every bit the synchronized deadly force that Celine trained them to be. They probably didn’t quite mean for it to look the way it did, but there was only one way to read the way they inserted themselves between Rumi and Celine.
“What are you doing here?” Mira asked, only just short of a growl.
Celine was nothing if not practiced in dealing with Mira’s bluntness. “I came to check on the three of you. None of you were answering your phones.”
“And that didn’t give you a hint?”
“Both of you stand down.” Rumi grabbed Mira’s shoulder - the other girl stiffened but then gave way to the pressure guiding her aside. Rumi was pathetically grateful for the rare concession. Zoey took even less persuasion but also looked a little like she was confronting her mortality, which was as touching as it was concerning. “I don’t need any protection, thanks.”
“Rumi let me in the front door, girls. I hardly forced my way in.”
That was not strictly a lie. Per se. Celine probably wouldn’t have left even if Rumi asked, but Rumi didn’t ask.
Celine gathered the teapot and cups onto a tray, and carried them over to the meeting area near the bay windows that overlooked the city. She glanced over her shoulder only once, but the trio were already following. Even if Mira did so with the attitude of a bodyguard, and Zoey drifted like she wasn’t entirely there.
For a moment Rumi was almost tricked into believing it was a normal night again. Celine set out the cups and poured the tea, all with the same careful, measured movements as always. If she was as terrified of this conversation as Rumi felt it didn’t show in her steady hands.
“You have questions.”
“Why did you make Rumi lie to us?” There was so much violence with no outlet, twisting tighter like an overwound toy. Suddenly Rumi was painfully aware of why Mira didn’t seem as angry at Rumi herself as Rumi expected. Oh. Oh Mira.
“It was safer for Rumi if no one knew. I couldn’t risk compromising your ability to perform before then.” Celine sighed. “Ideally you two would never need to know.”
Zoey straightened, suddenly clocked back into the conversation. She took one of Rumi’s hands in hers like a lifeline. “Wait. So you just… expected her to keep a secret that big from us forever?”
“If her demonic energy was erased by the Honmoon, it wouldn’t have mattered. Obviously that didn’t come to pass.”
“What the fuck, Celine?” Mira had a way of cutting to the core of things. This was less an observation than a murder threat. “She was terrified of us! We could have hurt -”
Mira started to stand - and stopped short at Rumi’s hand on her arm. Her eyes darted between Rumi’s face and the hand on her arm, and back again. “What? Am I wrong?”
On the other side of Rumi, Zoey shook her head frantically with wide eyes, gesturing with her spare hand to drive home her point. The stage whisper was entirely unnecessary when they were all so close. She did it anyway. “Sit. Sit down.”
Mira looked down at Rumi again, and whatever was on her face finally made the other woman sink back into her chair. She set her hand palm-up on the arm of Rumi’s chair, and Rumi settled her hand into the open palm.
Celine stood and paced over to the floor-length window, staring out over the sparkling streets spread out below.
“I gave Rumi’s mother a choice when I found out about her demon. She could have him or she could have us. There was no room for divided loyalties.” Perhaps this was the only way she could tell this story: to her own dark-eyed reflection in the glass. “In the end she chose us… but by then she was already…”
She was not talking to them anymore, not really. Celine held up her sword hand, watching the silver moonlight play over her spread fingers. “She asked me to help her hide the pregnancy, and I agreed. She asked me not to take her to the hospital, no matter what. I agreed to that as well.”
Celine’s voice became sterile as a scalpel, cutting away all emotion until only the bleached bones of the story remained: “She did not survive.”
Those words held weight, but Celine didn’t linger over them.
“Afterward it was all our generation of hunters could do to maintain the barrier between the demon world and ours. I was all that remained of the three huntresses, and my voice alone was not enough.” There was no possible way to blunt the truth. “Mi-yeong’s mistake set us back an entire lifetime. I couldn’t risk anything going wrong this time.”
“Why didn’t you even tell me any of this?” The Honmoon trembled at the touch of Rumi’s voice, but it didn’t darken the way it would have in her youth. Even that didn’t drag her attention away from Celine. She was too busy trying to fit this story - known in some vague sense but never laid out so clearly - into a world she could accept. She felt sick.
Rumi didn’t need Celine to spell out Mi-yeong’s mistake.
Either the question or the disturbance in the Honmoon was enough to pull Celine from wherever her mind was trying to go. She turned to face Rumi with her brows knit. “You were a child.”
This was a scene tailor-made to make Mira come unhinged. She bared her teeth, staying seated only by the grace of Rumi’s hand clamping down around her shoulder like a vice. “Yeah right. Did you ever think about how Rumi might feel being a dirty little secret?”
Rumi was too frozen by the way Celine’s expression chilled to say anything. Zoey, for her part, was making a valiant attempt to sink into her hoodie.
“Of course I did. It was secondary to the survival of the Honmoon.”
“Fuck you!”
“That can’t be the only reason.” Zoey piped up softly. “...Right?”
“There’s no other reason to keep a demon alive.” Every eye in the room turned to Rumi.
This was what finally made Celine’s face crumble.
Silence. Shame. Perhaps Celine finally broke in the moment between one breath and another. A lifetime of regret, and fear, and love finally welling to the surface. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that you thought that there was a weapon in the world I would raise against you.”
For once Celine didn’t hide the raw devastation in her eyes, tempered with the gentleness that Celine had always spared for Rumi alone. They both knew what she was talking about: that day that the night sky was dyed red like all of Rumi’s childhood nightmares.
Rumi barely remembered some parts of that night. Least of all what she had said and done when she was talking to Celine. It came in flashes: The voice of all her pain and shame in her ear. Rumi’s familiar sword, the sword of a hunter, resting in the flat of her palms like an offering.
Celine’s eyes were dry. Not because she didn’t want to cry but because she couldn’t.
“I have made… so many mistakes with you. I won’t ask for anything else, not even forgiveness.” Not one of them could look away from her now, this woman with nothing left to lose. She was as magnetic as she was in her youth, when she held entire stadiums in her thrall. “Just promise me: live, Rumi. Run far away from me if you must. Hate me if it will give you some reason to keep going. Live. Please.”
Rumi wasn’t like Celine. She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her arm, and let out a single, soggy, “Okay.”
It was Zoey who understood first. Her other hand came up to hook around Rumi’s arm to pull it close. As though she could hold Rumi there with her bare hands.
Mira took a moment longer. Life had always burned so fiercely in her that Rumi doubted she ever had the same thoughts. Mira reclaimed Rumi’s hand in both of her palms with the careful tenderness that so often lay just below her surface.
Rumi came so close to losing them forever. The thought still made her heart beg to stop beating.
She could imagine herself in Celine’s place with sudden, terrible clarity: Mira and Zoey and their harmony silenced forever. All the years of Rumi’s life stretching out before her without their voices ringing in her every song. Rumi didn’t know if she could forgive Celine… but she could understand more than she wanted to.
The momentum of their argument came to a slow, grinding halt. Rumi was wet-eyed, Zoey was getting her shirt sleeves soaked with tears, and Mira was somewhere between angry crying and crying-crying.
“I think that this is enough truth for today.” Celine said softly.
“What now?” All three of them turned to look at Zoey, who abruptly looked like she would love to be anywhere but here. She had a spine of steel under all that softness, but this entire conversation would test anyone’s mettle. She faltered but… didn’t buckle.
Zoey tried again, gesturing at Celine as well as the trio of hunters. “What does all of this mean for all of us?”
“I don’t know. From here the path you take is up to you girls.” Celine said, calmly tucking her emotions away as though they had never been. “Please take some time off. Several weeks at least. In the meantime if there is anything I can do for any of you, don’t hesitate to reach out to me. You have my number and so does Bobby.”
All the fire of mere minutes before burned down to cold ash. Perhaps that was all Celine could offer them: a few minutes of honesty, a glimpse behind the mask.
Rumi gently pulled away from Mira and Zoey, and drew herself up straight. “Let me walk you to the door.”
She was raised by Celine. This was the language they spoke like breathing. They walked to the door together, as though it were an ordinary day. Celine turned at the door to face Rumi and they never looked more like mother and daughter in that moment, standing tall under the weight of the world. Until Celine ducked in and hugged Rumi tightly enough to audibly knock the breath from her body. This was not part of their old pattern.
“I never had the right to call you my daughter.” Celine stepped back. There was not a hint of the vulnerability of moments before on her face, only a careful, measured control. “But remember that you have always been my greatest joy.”
Rumi felt a sudden, ugly foreboding. Her hand shot out before she could consider otherwise, catching around Celine’s wrist before she could disappear. She searched Celine’s eyes. “Stay.”
“Do you really want that?” Celine’s expression couldn’t seem to settle on any one emotion.
“I want things to change. I don’t want to keep going in circles like this forever. Stay here tonight and we’ll talk more tomorrow. All of us.”
“...Did you know you’re your mother’s daughter?” Celine laughed, her other hand going up to cover her eyes. That last ditch effort wasn’t enough to hide the tears welling from beneath her palm. “Of course, I’ll stay.”
Rumi flung herself into Celine’s arms, and before she knew it two more sets of arms wrapped around them both. There the four of them were, sobbing in the open door of their own apartment. It was a good thing they owned the building.
This was what each of them wanted all along: to fling open every door and window, and finally let in the light.