Archive of Our Own

Rumi can’t help but stare. 

The backless dress that Mira steps out in is nothing short of stunning. It makes her heart hammer in her chest, and she suddenly feels ridiculously underdressed, even despite the fact that Mira came in underdressed. 

Establishing a wardrobe has been a battle all three of them have had to deal with, though Rumi’s has been meticulously picked for her since the moment her patterns started to spread. Celine has prepared years in advance, which Rumi is...appreciative of, even if it makes her sick to think of a time where wearing a t-shirt won’t be an option for her.

Zoey has resorted to desperately raiding Celine’s closet, deeply insistent on getting at least a few suits. Celine spent an hour talking about social imagery and the roles they have to fall into before Zoey—in a near-uncharacteristic act of defiance—casually shot back a date and a fansigning. Rumi had never seen Celine’s jaw shut so hard it actually clicked, and the soft huff of laughter that followed was even more surprising, but the defeated, “Okay, Zoey.” was more unbelievable.

(Zoey happily showed both Rumi and Mira what she meant, and...oh. There it was, Celine wearing a suit. Rumi could only roll her eyes and think hypocrite. But if anyone could win Celine over, it was Zoey.)

Mira has been at it for the last two hours. How she hasn’t gotten exhausted of this is beyond Rumi, who was ready to tap out after the first zipper she couldn’t get up by herself. Mira is particular, especially about fashion and clothes and what looks good and what doesn’t. Rumi has never had that sort of eye, not like Mira, but she’s beyond thrilled to watch her work.

And to watch her. Generally.

Which she shouldn’t be doing, but Mira is busy twisting her head from side to side, carefully moving her body, raising up one leg at a time, studying every angle of the dress. It’s really nothing that fancy, it’s just black with a sort of glossy red undertone, and, well, Mira’s entire back is on display. 

And so Rumi is looking. 

“I don’t like it,” Mira announces, scowling at herself in the mirror.

“What?” Rumi immediately asks, stunned as soon as she processes the words. “Why? I like it.”

“You like everything I wear,” Mira shoots back with a teasing grin, which Rumi expertly chooses to ignore. Mira has always been like this; it hardly means anything when this is just what they do, no matter the way Rumi’s heart starts to race. “It’s too...”

Mira waves a hand. Then she waves her other hand, her nose crinkling in frustration. Against all odds, Mira has somehow remained one of the most patient people that Rumi has ever met, especially toward her. It sometimes takes this form, where Mira is trying to figure out how to explain something to Rumi, knowing entirely well that it’s not going to make sense.

Mira eventually gives up and sighs. “I just don’t like it.”

Rumi rolls her eyes, moving from where she had been sitting. She casually—or, as Mira would probably say, the most casual to ever do it—strides up to her. Rumi moves to stand next to her, studying Mira in the mirror, watching the way her eyes narrow further and further, like she’s getting personally offended by the dress.

“It looks good on you,” Rumi says, simply. “Brings out your eyes. It—well, it feels like it kind of brings out your face. Does that make sense? That sounds stupid,” Rumi mutters, heaving a sigh. “It’s just...kind of soft. Velvety, and there’s the red, like, undertone, I guess. Does that make any sense at all?”

Mira laughs, the irritated look gone from her face, replaced with a wide grin. “Not at all.”

“Whatever,” Rumi grumbles, crinkling her nose. “I think you look good.”

“I always look good,” Mira easily says, tipping her chin up, but Rumi catches the way her grin slips into a much softer smile. “Whatever. I’ll tell Celine to get it.”

Rumi grins, feeling like she’s won a prize she didn’t even know she was going after. She heaves a relieved sigh, watching Mira for a few seconds too long, eventually clearing her throat and looking away when her heart starts to race. “We need to go soon, anyway. The worker who had to help with my zipper is totally going to come over here and kill me. It took a whole fifteen seconds out of her day, Mira. That’s—do you know how many drills I could run in fifteen seconds?”

Mira throws her head back, laughing wildly. It takes no time at all for her to shove Rumi back, which makes her giggle, trying to steady herself before Mira decides to actually get into a shoving-match. By the time Mira has calmed down, there’s a slight shine in her eyes, her ridiculous, wide grin plastered back on her face. 

She’s stunning. This wild, untamed sort of smile is only for Rumi and Zoey; Mira can be mysterious and illustrious out in public, flaunting herself with a kind of I’m better than you mentality that she hones perfectly. But this is for her. This is for Rumi.

“You know that’s not going to happen,” Mira tells her, rolling her eyes. “There’s also literally no drill in the world that you could do in fifteen seconds, let alone multiple. And, you know, there’s the whole thing about how we’re demon hunters and how the general populace...aren’t...demon hunters? I think she was more than fine with helping with your zipper, Rumi.”

Rumi purses her lips, clicking her tongue. “No, I don’t think that’s true.”

Mira scowls at her. “You could also just ask me for help. I would have come to your dressing room, you know. It’s not a big deal.”

“It was harrowing,” Rumi disagrees, grinning now at the way Mira scrunches up her face. “I couldn’t let a fellow hunter see me in—in such a state. Faults and fears—”

“Was the zipper a fault or a fear?” Mira asks, her eyes sparkling. “I’m banking on fear.”

“It was in fact a fault,” Rumi shoots back with another roll of her eyes. “Get changed. Like I said, she’s going to start hunting me in...probably five minutes. We gotta hurry, Mira.”

Mira laughs, waving her off as she stalks back toward her room. She pauses when she reaches the door, head twisting to the side. “You know I wouldn’t let you get hunted, right?”

It makes Rumi feel terribly warm, feeling like she’s going to burst into flames right then and there. She feels the way her heart twists in her chest, feels how her throat closes up, how her mouth goes dry, and none of it is fair. Mira has always had this ability over her, and Rumi has been desperate to try and get some sort of control over it, but she’s never managed. 

“Because we’re soulmates?” Rumi sing-songs instead, grinning as brightly as she can, because she’s very aware that Mira hates the idea of fate. 

As expected, Mira scoffs, rolling her eyes as she opens and shuts the dressing room door. It makes Rumi laugh harder than she had been before, giggling at the way she can still hear Mira’s huffy grumbles. 

Rumi has never minded Mira’s adamant hatred of the idea of soulmates. Rumi likes it, but it’s always been one of the few things that has made her feel less alone, especially from before Mira and Zoey. But she’s more than content to live with Zoey being her soulmate and Mira being her not-soulmate, so long as they’re both happy.

Rumi is happy regardless; soulmates or not, they’re still hers, and that’s enough for her.

The years pass. Her patterns spread.

Rumi wants to tell them so badly. 

She thinks they would understand. Mira is the most patient person she’s ever met, Zoey is the nicest person she’s ever met. Rumi swears that they would understand. They’ve been nothing but kind to her—and, okay, they don’t know—and maybe that would...maybe they could keep being kind to her. Maybe they’d still be nice to her. Maybe they’d still love her. Maybe they would still understand, and everything would be fine, and...

Celine would kill her if she said anything. Not—not literally, just...there would have to be an entire conversation there, Rumi knows that. And every single time she brings it up, Celine gets more frustrated than the last time, and Rumi doesn’t want to be thrown into another shouting match. She gets more frustrated every time they have this talk, too. Celine has always told her that hunters just inherently know each other, that—soulmates or not—hunters will always be able to work together and understand and defeat anything in their way, so long as they’re together.

So why wouldn’t Mira and Zoey understand this? If they’re meant to understand each other, doesn’t that mean everything about each other?

Rumi knows she’s a demon. The word burns every single time she hears it, but it’s just true. She’s a demon, she has patterns, she’s the exact thing that Mira and Zoey have been trained to hunt down and kill. Celine has told her that this has never happened before—a hunter being both a hunter and a demon. That’s what makes it different, that’s why she can’t share this part of herself, that’s why she has to keep it hidden even when she can share everything else. It’s complicated, it doesn’t work the same as everything else, this is different, you can’t risk it, what if they don’t understand? 

That’s why they’re not actually soulmates.

That’s why they can’t be soulmates. That’s why Mira is so insistent on it not being true. If hunters inherently know each other, then Mira must inherently know that there’s something wrong with Rumi, and that’s why she’s so distant from the idea of them actually having each other’s souls and being connected, which isn’t fair to Zoey, who did nothing wrong. It’s always been Rumi’s fault. Her being a demon has gotten in the way of everything, and it terrifies her, because what if her being a demon means she can’t turn the honmoon gold? 

Celine insists that that’s not how it works, but how would she know? Rumi already doesn’t get to have soulmates like every other hunter, she doesn’t get to be inherently known like every other hunter, she doesn’t get to have that sort of connection like each and every hunter before her. 

What makes it possible for her to be left in the dark while still being able to repair the honmoon?

Rumi feels a surge of anger and bitterness, and she chokes it back down as soon as she realises what’s happening. She forces the emotions away from her, to the very back of her mind, and keeps them away from the rest of her. If they’re allowed to fester, if she lets herself feel them at all, her patterns will spread. Faults and fears must never be seen, and that goes for the whirlwind of emotions inside of her own chest. She got to find that out the hard way, sometime after her tenth birthday.

It gets harder each time to choke it back. Rumi finds herself getting angrier and angrier with each passing day, feeling more ashamed of herself, of who she is, of what she is. Every single day, she gets to be reminded of the fact that her patterns are a brand on her skin that have effectively marked her for either a life of loneliness, or for death, and that there is nothing she can do about it. 

She wants to believe Celine when she says that turning the honmoon golden will remove her patterns. Rumi wants to believe her more than she’s wanted anything in her entire life.

It’s just...difficult.

Rumi buries her face into her hands, rounding her shoulders. She just has to turn the honmoon gold. She just has to seal it, to achieve the dream she’s been chasing for her entire life, and then everything will be better. She’ll be better.

Maybe then she’ll be good enough for Mira and Zoey. Maybe that’ll get Mira to change her mind about soulmates.

Quietly, Rumi starts to pull away.

Every single comment about demons makes her skin burn. 

Mira and Zoey playfully bring up killing demons all the time. They talk about how ugly they are. The patterns. The tell-tale signs. How they can’t wait to send them all to eternally suffer with Gwi-ma. 

Rumi agrees every single time, and she means it every single time, but she can feel the way the words worm their way under her skin, settling there. She can tell herself that she’s not technically a demon as long as she would like, but isn’t she? Celine won’t call her one, either, she’s never been able to do that, but it’s been implied throughout her whole life. Rumi has patterns. That makes her a demon. Plain and simple.

And demons have to die. 

It isn’t that Rumi wants to die, because she doesn’t, it’s just that...maybe that’s what has to happen. It’s just that she can’t stop thinking if Mira and Zoey would agree with that if they knew about her. Would they kill her themselves? They should, really, it’s what they’ve been trained for, and demons can take on human faces, they can impersonate the people you love. 

Demons have to die. Rumi can’t stop thinking about Mira and Zoey, how there probably isn’t an exception for her on that list. 

Is that why they’re not soulmates? To make it easier? Rumi doesn’t know what it would be like to have to kill your soulmate—it would have to be like killing a part of yourself, right?—so that must be why they’re not. That must be why Mira refuses to call her that. Mira doesn’t know, but there has to be a part of her that inherently knows, because they’re still hunters. 

So they’re not soulmates. They can’t be. The honmoon has prepared for failure. It's made that much clear, and Rumi can hardly even blame it, because why wouldn't it? 

Rumi keeps thinking about the way Mira looks at her, soft, gentle. Mira helps her up with every single fall. Rumi won’t let anyone else patch her up after sparring or an actual hunt, but Mira has always tried regardless. Mira loves her, but she doesn’t actually know about her patterns, so Mira doesn’t fully love her. Just the parts of her that Rumi lets her see, just like the way she handles their fans and the world outside of them.

Maybe that’ll make it easier for Mira to love her, to stomach her. If Rumi is just a little more...perfect, a little more of what she offers to their fans, maybe Mira will keep loving her. So long as she doesn’t know about Rumi’s patterns, she still has to love her, right? She has to be able to still look at her, right? To be able to still touch her? 

Nothing has to change. Rumi won’t let anything change. She’ll dig her teeth into this and keep herself perfect, and they won’t be soulmates, but maybe she won’t have to die at the end of it, and even if she does, maybe she’ll die still being loved.

She gets better at it. 

Mira corners her one day during a run, and Rumi spends the rest of the night pacing, desperately trying to figure out what slipped. She stays up for hours, nearly breaking down when she realises that the worry has forced her patterns to spread even further.

They reach her throat. Rumi felt them burning the entire run, scalding hot, searing through her, ripping apart her skin and breaking her into pieces. It took everything inside of her to keep running, to not let Mira see more than she had already accidentally allowed to slip. 

Rumi very quickly learns that night that she can no longer fuck up. She has to be perfect. They’re so close to gold, it’s just going to be another month at most, and everything will be better, and she won’t have to do this anymore. But until then, Rumi has to be perfect. She can’t let her patterns spread further. She can’t.

She had been too reckless when she was younger and more willing to start fights with Celine. If she had just listened in the first place, if she hadn’t been so insistent on trying to make them work as soulmates, this would have never have happened. 

Rumi should have realised she didn’t have a soul the day Mira completely rejected the idea of soulmates. That should have been a sign. They’ve been inherently knowing each other all of their lives, and Mira making such a bold-faced claim should have been enough to get Rumi to back off, to not get so close, to not ever begin to look at her like that, like...

Rumi swallows back those feelings, too. Love and affection and adoration don’t make her patterns spread, but when she thinks about them too hard, when she realises that they’re emotions she can never act on, it brings up jealousy and shame and anger, and those make her patterns spread. They’ve been spreading a lot more the past few weeks, and Rumi hates it, and she hates herself for letting it happen.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair of the universe to give her someone like Mira, to make Rumi love her, and then force her to choke that love back. It’s not fair to Mira, either; it isn’t as if Mira loves her like that, but it’s still not fair that it’s Rumi who loves her. Anyone would be better than a demon. Anyone would be better than her. 

Rumi forces herself to be more careful after the run. Mira is good at noticing things, she’s perceptive and quick to pick up on everything around her, and all Rumi has to do is assuage her worries for another month, maybe two. All she has to do is be perfect, to keep Mira’s eyes off of her, just for another month.

She just has to be perfect for a little longer, and then things will be better. They have to be. Rumi will make sure of it, she will, she has to. Everything will be better, she’ll be better, and things will be different. They will be.

Rumi is going to kill him.

That’s what she keeps telling herself, and yet, somehow, Jinu leaves each one of their meetings no less alive than he was.

(Is he alive? He died four hundred years ago, didn’t he? So no less...sort-of-alive. Maybe.)

Rumi is going to kill him. She is. She’s just waiting for the opportunity, for the perfect chance to strike. All she has to do is wait a little longer, wait until he’s more comfortable with her, and then she’ll kill him. Rumi has time, she knows that she does. Even if she doesn’t kill him now, she’s going to send him back down to the depths where he belongs after she turns the honmoon gold. 

Obviously. She’s just playing the long game, getting in his head, waiting for him to lower his guard. That’s all.

“Do you wear anything else?” Jinu suddenly asks, pointing at the white turtleneck, squinting at her. “I’ve only seen you in this. Outside of performances, obviously. Then you get to wear blue!”

Rumi is going to kill him.

“It’s—for my patterns,” she snaps, narrowing her eyes at him. “You’re not stupid, Jinu. You could have figured that out.”

Jinu holds up his hands in mock defeat, and Rumi considers that maybe he is stupid enough to have to be told that. He’s the one who keeps requesting to meet her, a hunter, knowing full well that he’s a demon. 

(She’s the one who keeps coming. She’s the one who keeps letting him walk free.)

“So they really don’t know, huh?” Jinu murmurs, tilting his head to the side. He gives her a look that says more than it should, almost looking sympathetic. He studies her for another few seconds, and Rumi lets him do it, and she doesn’t know why she lets him do it, but she does. “You were born with them, weren’t you? Or else you’d be down there,” he says, pointing to the ground, “With me. Not up here.”

Rumi squeezes her eyes shut (and she shouldn’t because he’s a demon and demons are opportunistic creatures and they will strike and attack at any given chance and this is giving him a chance and maybe she’s doing it on purpose). 

“My dad was a demon.”

“Rough,” Jinu offers with a wince. “How does that work? Do hunters...?”

“You don’t need to know that,” Rumi snaps again, narrowing her eyes further. “They don’t know. Is that what you wanted to hear, Jinu? No, Mira and Zoey don’t know. They don’t need to know. They can’t know. If they knew—”

They’d kill her. They’d hate her. One of those is worse than the other, and Rumi can’t even pretend that she doesn’t know which she’s more terrified of.

Jinu stares at her, the look in his eyes still bordering on sympathetic. He can’t be sympathetic, because demons don’t know how to feel anything other than shame and hate, and that’s it. Jinu can lie to her all that he’d like, he can talk about how ‘all demons do is feel’, but that’s not true, and Rumi knows it. And even if they did only feel, then they certainly wouldn’t be able to feel sympathy. 

“What would they do?” Jinu asks, almost softly. 

Rumi sets her jaw, furiously glaring at the sky. “They’re hunters. They’d do what they’d have to.”

“So they’d kill you,” Jinu says, easily. “And you’d, what, you’d let them?”

“I wouldn’t have a choice,” Rumi snarls, snapping her head to stare at him. “And it wouldn’t matter. It’s not going to happen. They’re not going to find out.”

Jinu hums, raising his hands up again, as if that means anything at all. “Sure. Sorry for bringing it up.”

Rumi stares at him a little harder. She feels her chest ache, feels tears stinging at her eyes. “No, you’re not.”

It’s ridiculous to say, and it makes her feel like she’s a child again, but Rumi says it anyway. It’s almost worth it when she sees Jinu’s faux-sympathetic look shift into something like bewilderment.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Jinu presses, raising an eyebrow. “It’s clearly a touchy topic.”

“You’re a demon,” Rumi mutters, with hardly any bite in her voice. She has to kill him. She has to kill him, and she has to do it soon.

Jinu rolls his eyes. “Uh-huh. Did you just figure that out?”

“Shut up, Jinu,” Rumi scoffs. “Why—why would you care? It makes things easier for you, doesn’t it? You’re literally poisoning the world just by being here. Don’t you get a kick out of it?”

“I’m only doing this so I forget,” Jinu says, his voice low, far more harsh than it had been just a second ago. “That’s it, Rumi. All demons do is feel, and demons are selfish. There are your lessons on what makes us up. I hate having to remember,” he continues, a little softer. “I want to forget. That doesn’t mean I want you to die.”

Rumi feels like she’s been slapped. 

When was the last time someone said that to her? Never, she thinks, because why would anyone ever say that to her? She doesn’t think she’s ever heard those words out loud, not in reference to her. No one has ever...

Rumi stares down at the ground, feeling her throat start to close up. “Shut up. You’re lying.”

Jinu hums. “I could be. I guess you’ll just have to choose to believe me or not.”

Rumi hates him.

Somehow, Jinu walks free again that night. 

(Next time, Rumi promises herself. Next time she’ll kill him.)

Next time, he makes her laugh.

Mira barges into her room on the night that Rumi realises she doesn’t want Jinu to die. Mira followed her. Mira saw her with him. Rumi can’t do anything but snarl back at her and return every single scathing look until Mira calls him a demon with a disgusted curl of her lips and then begs Rumi to tell her what’s going on, promising that she’ll understand.

Rumi tells her to leave.

She realises that she doesn’t want Jinu to die. She realises that all of this can only end with one of them dead, and it can either be her, or it can be him.

Rumi thinks that she wants to die.

(It’s him in the end. He gives her his soul. Rumi hates him for it.)

Mira won’t look at her.

The only time they talk is when Mira comes into her room and tells Rumi to summon her saingeom. She does.

“Is he in here?” Mira asks, fingers dragging along the blade.

“He’s dead,” Rumi snarls back. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Mira still doesn’t look at her when she says, “No.”

The honmoon reclaims her saingeom. Mira leaves. 

Rumi wants to die. She understands now what it means to be alive and to be hated, and she wishes Celine had killed her. She wishes Celine had just done what she should have done years ago. Rumi wishes she wasn’t such a coward and could do it herself. 

Rumi wishes Mira loved her. She wishes it wasn’t her fault that she’s made herself impossible to love. 

Rumi stays away from Mira and Zoey.

She spends all of her time in her room or outside of the penthouse. Zoey begs her to at least text and let her know when she’ll be back, when she leaves, to turn on her location. Rumi obliges with the first two requests; she does not turn on her location. Every single part of her is desperate, screaming to ignore Zoey entirely, but Rumi loves her. She loves her, even when Zoey must hate her, so she texts whenever she leaves and when she gets back. 

Most of the time, there are days worth of silence between the first text and the last. Rumi was the one to fuck up and ruin everything, so she’s the one who has to leave. 

She spends most of her time at the compound, silently tucked away in her childhood home, pretending like her bedroom doesn’t house a thousand memories, two ghosts always lingering just out of reach. There are weeks where she spends her time with Bobby, who is always thrilled to have her, even if Rumi doesn’t talk that much. He fills the empty space, makes her a permanent guest room, and leaves breakfast at her door.

When she stays with Celine, she’s given much of the same treatment, but Celine is much more insistent on her hitting every meal. They don’t talk very much—what’s there to even say?—but Celine has quietly reassured her that the media aspect of it all has been handled, that the “public break-up” has been scrubbed from existence, that HUNTR/X has been placed on an indefinite hiatus for as long as she needs. Celine, after all of that, softly tells her to focus on herself. 

The words come out wrong. Rumi can barely believe that Celine is even saying them in the first place. Rumi has wanted Celine to love her for years, and here she is, curled up in a bed that’s too small for her with a small stash of crackers placed on her nightstand, because Celine is still trying to get her to eat more than she has been. Her patterns are on full display, and out of some sort of anger or spite, Rumi only wears short-sleeves around the hanok. 

Celine looks at her each time. She never says that she was wrong, but there is a time where her hands brush over Rumi’s, and they stay there for half a second too long to be anything other than intentional, and that’s as close to an admission as anything could possibly be. 

When she stays with Bobby, he never questions why she suddenly has patterns. Rumi doesn’t tell him much more than that it’s a skin condition, because tattoos felt too ridiculous, and telling him about demons is still something hammered into her to never do, so she bites her tongue on that one. He tells her—after gently saying that he hopes he isn’t imposing too much—that they’re beautiful. That she should be proud of herself for being able to come forward with it all. It’s the first time she cries since the Idol Awards.

Bobby’s place is full of music, even though he’s rarely there. He keeps a speaker on for her. Starts meal-prepping, shoving about a million plastic containers into his fridge with labels neatly written on all of them. 

The hanok is full of Celine’s quiet movements, which Rumi only recognises from years of her life being near-inseparate with Celine’s. She’s taken out to the greenhouse and forced to garden, which helps keep her hands busy and her mind busier. It’s one of the most shameful moments of her life when she asks Celine to sing, but Celine does, and it ends up being the second time that Rumi cries since the Idol Awards.

It doesn’t take long for Rumi to break down about Mira, about Zoey, about how she’s ruined everything. She sobs into Celine’s arms and begs to know why she can’t be loved, begs to know why Mira hates her, begs to understand why she can’t be better than this, why she’s always going to be like this, why she does nothing other than hurt the people she’s supposed to be intertwined with.

Celine holds her. Actually holds her, touches her and her patterns, rests her head on Rumi’s. All of her questions go unanswered, but Rumi feels less sick to her stomach when she wakes up the next morning.

She gardens with Celine. Bobby takes a week away to invest in “meditative adult colouring books”, which Rumi finds that she enjoys more than she really should. She goes out for coffee with Bobby, finds herself in a flower market with Celine a day after that. Bobby starts putting up sticky notes all over her room, full of how he loves her and how he’s always in her corner (“So you have reminders when I can’t actually say it!” Bobby sheepishly says when she asks about them). Celine remains quiet, just like how she’s been for Rumi’s entire life, but she’s uncharacteristically gentle in a way that Rumi hasn’t seen since she was a child. 

Rumi gets looped into birdwatching with Celine. Bobby forces them to go through a cooking tutorial that ends with his oven smoking and the two of them standing there with their hands on their hips. Celine brings her a leatherbound journal and quietly offers the suggestion that maybe writing letters would be easier than seeing them, at least for now. Bobby offers time and time again to be the messenger between them if that’s what Rumi needs from him.

She writes; she doesn’t let Bobby deliver the letters. Not yet. She does make Bobby promise to take care of Mira and Zoey, too, and he assures her that he’s been doing it the whole time. It takes every single ounce of willpower Rumi has to not ask about them, to not ask about what Mira has said about her. 

At some point, Rumi realises that she hasn’t stepped foot in her home, the one she built with Mira and Zoey, in over a month. At some point, she’s stopped trying to escape, and the idea of returning is now terrifying, because what if they still hate her? They have to still hate her, because neither of them have come looking for her. Zoey sends texts—Rumi is bad about responding, but Celine and Bobby hound her to do so, so she gets better with time—and updates her about the things that she’s doing, specifically what she’s doing with Bobby. They never talk about Mira.

(The one time Rumi asks, Zoey calls her within seconds. Zoey tells her that she is not going to do this, that she will not be the one who has to go back and forth, that she loves them both, that they both clearly love each other, but they fucked up in different ways, and that they have to be the ones to handle that. A little more gently, Zoey promises that she’s not going anywhere, and that Rumi is always more than free to reach out, because they’re soulmates. But, more importantly than that, Zoey loves her. Rumi doesn’t know which she believes less, but she knows she’s desperate to believe both statements.)

The idea of going back to the HUNTR/X tower seems unfathomable to her. The idea that it’s still her home is even harder for her to believe, because, well, how could it be? Rumi hasn’t been there in a month. She was the one who ran first. She’s been staying away from both Mira and Zoey—largely Mira these days, because she has gotten better at texting Zoey—this entire time, so how could she possibly just...go back? 

It feels like she’s intruding. Rumi doesn’t want to intrude. She doesn’t want to give them another reason to hate her, more than they already do.

It takes a month and five days for Rumi to bite the bullet and ask if she can come back. 

She sends the text in their group chat, not just her messages with Zoey.

Zoey immediately responds with, ABSOLUTELY!!! we’ve missed you a ton rumi :(!

Mira doesn’t say anything at all, but there’s a pink heart reaction to her message within five minutes.

Rumi breaks down when she sees it, barely able to get out, I’ll be back tomorrow. Thank you

And then, more hesitantly, I love you both.

There’s the expected, i love YOU!! from Zoey. Nothing from Mira. No reaction.

The lack of response hurts worse than anything Mira could have done. It takes a full pep talk from Bobby for Rumi to not back out of going back to the tower, and even then, she’s still sick with fear and anxiety and worry and terror. 

She doesn't sleep the entire night beforehand, too restless to do anything more than pace the layout of Bobby’s living room, looping in circles around his coffee table until he comes out of his room and gently tells her to sit down. They spend the early morning together, and Bobby doesn’t even let her apologise once. Rumi makes apology coffee instead, which he does take.

“What if they hate me?” Rumi quietly asks, her leg bouncing. She’s desperate to get up and move, but she knows that one look from Bobby will be enough to get her to stop again, so there’s no real point in standing back up. 

Bobby sets his mug down, giving her a soft look. “Do you hate either of them?”

“No,” Rumi immediately says, feeling sick at the words. She’s never hated them. She was...angry. She was angry when Mira said that she followed her, but it hadn’t been hate, because how could it have been? Rumi doesn’t think it’s possible for her to hate Mira or Zoey. 

“I’m sure they feel the same way,” Bobby gently tells her, and the sincerity in his voice is almost enough to ease Rumi’s worries. “You girls have been through a lot. You’re young. You’ve got plenty of time to work this out, okay? Plenty of time. And you’ve got nothing to worry about, y’know, publicity-wise. I’ve got that locked down. So does Celine.”

Rumi nods, tapping her fingers against her own mug. “I know. Thank you. Seriously, Bobby, I don’t...I don’t know how I’d handle, like...any of this without you,” she says, genuinely meaning it. “And, um, thank you for letting me—”

“You are the best roommate I have ever had,” Bobby quickly says, shooting her a wide grin. “Seriously, Rumi. You are absolutely more than welcome to come back any time. Literally any time. My home is your home, too.”

Rumi doesn’t say anything, nodding instead, because she doesn’t trust herself not to cry. 

Bobby gives her an hour to get her stuff ready. Getting into his car takes a good five minutes, but Bobby patiently stands there and waits for her to open the door before he gets in, promising again that he thinks everything will be totally fine, and that they’ve been through worse, and that they’ve got this.

Rumi is nervous the entire drive there, and by the time the tower comes into view, she’s completely terrified.

It takes another thirty minutes of them sitting there before Bobby gently tells her that she needs to do this. It takes five minutes after that for Rumi to mutely nod, thanking him again, before she finally gets out of the car.

Rumi hates how it feels less like coming back home and more like returning to a place to die.

There’s three days of quiet before the silence eventually snaps.

Zoey is the one who sits them both down and goes, “I’m not doing this. I’m not losing my family because you two were both too stubborn to give in and say sorry. You both have things to apologise for. Figure it out. I’m not losing my soulmates because you two don’t want to try because that’s easier for you. When I come back, I expect things to be different. Okay?”

Rumi can’t do anything other than quietly promise Zoey that she’ll do it, and she hears Mira make the same confirmation, and then Zoey is gone. Just like that.

There’s a distant, selfish part of herself that is suddenly terrified that Zoey will leave just like she did, that Zoey is going to be gone for a month. It’s hardly fair; Rumi disappeared for a month and didn’t see either one of them. Texting isn’t the same as actually talking, and she made it very, very difficult to pin her down for any conversation that lasted longer than ten minutes.

For a while, neither of them speak.

Mira still won’t look at her.

The prospect of losing her—for good—suddenly makes Rumi sick. What if this is too much for them to fix? What if they’ve already crossed the line? What if that line had been crossed from the moment Mira followed her, from the conversation they had that night? Conversation, Rumi thinks, as if it hadn’t been the worst fight of her life.

“I’m sorry,” Rumi whispers, her voice coming out quiet and strangled. “I’m sorry, Mira. I fucked up.”

Rumi feels like the air has been knocked out of her lungs when she looks up, finding Mira’s eyes trained directly onto her own. Mira is looking at her. For the first time since their fight, for the first time in over a month, Mira is actually looking at her. Eyes meeting her own. Gaze solid, steady. 

Mira nods. Then, so precisely that this can’t possibly be her first time saying it, Mira quietly recites, “I should have noticed. I shouldn’t have let it get this far. I shouldn’t have followed you, but I’m not sorry for that. I shouldn’t have raised my weapon. I shouldn’t have let you leave. I—” Mira’s voice falters, her words falling apart. Rumi watches as she raises her shoulders up, as she squeezes her eyes shut. “I didn’t hate Jinu because he was a demon. I hated him because he made you happier than I could.”

Rumi stares at her. The words alternate between feeling freezing cold and burning hot, her body tensing up, unable to figure out what it’s meant to feel. Rumi can barely breathe, feeling as if her entire world has been ripped out from under her.

“That’s not true.”

“Isn’t it?” Mira asks, her voice a little harder. “You smiled with him, laughed with him. You stopped doing that with me. With us.”

Rumi looks away, swallowing. She did, but she—she had to. Didn’t she?

“I wanted to tell you,” Rumi starts, softly. “About my patterns. I kept—I kept getting into fights with Celine about it, and it always made them spread, and I just...I thought that, if I was perfect,” Rumi hisses the word out, disdain flooding her mouth, “That I could fix everything, fix myself, and then go back to normal. I didn’t want to.”

“But you did,” Mira mutters. “It felt like I lost my best friend. I don’t even know who you are anymore, Rumi.”

“I don’t know you, either,” Rumi says back, a little too harshly. Mira blinks at her, and Rumi forces her face to soften, guilt immediately washing over her. “I’m sorry. I know I fucked up, Mira. I wanted everything to be better,” she whispers, looking down to her hands, at the patterns glowing over her fingers. “I thought you would have hated me if you knew. I thought...I don’t know. That you’d kill me.”

Mira makes a noise, something crossed between anger and hurt. “Why would you—?”

“Because I hate myself!” Rumi snaps, frustration flaring up. She looks back to Mira, swallowing back the grief in her mouth. “I hate myself. For my patterns, for how I keep hurting you and Zoey, for who I am, for—for all of me. And it’s not new. It’s always been there, from the moment I knew what these—” Rumi furiously gestures to herself, “—Meant for me. And I just...I don’t know. It’s all I could feel, but that just made them spread even more, and so I tried to stop feeling at all.”

Mira stares at her for a while. Then, softly, she murmurs, “I don’t hate you.”

That makes Rumi laugh, watery and broken. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I don’t hate you,” Mira says again, more firmly now. “I’m serious, Rumi. I don’t think I could ever hate you.”

“You should,” Rumi mutters, dropping her head. “I know I would. I already do.”

“Maybe,” Mira quietly agrees. “I think you should hate me. I proved you right when I raised my woldo.”

Rumi shakes her head, pressing a hand to the side of her temple. “You were just doing what you were trained to do.”

“To kill someone that I love?” Mira asks, her voice cracking halfway through the words. “Is that what I should have done, Rumi?”

Rumi can barely believe what she’s hearing. She looks back up, her heart hammering in her chest, feeling like she’s been punched. “You love me?” she whispers, feeling pathetic as soon as the words are out of her mouth, but it’s too late to take them back. 

Mira stares at her for a long, long time. “Why wouldn’t I love you?” she finally asks, looking like she’s been hit. “Rumi, I’m—” Mira sucks in a sharp breath of air, turning her head to the side. “Don’t make me say it.” 

“What?” Rumi presses, anxiety clawing away at her chest now. “What, Mira?”

“I’m in love with you,” Mira says. The words are barely audible, and Rumi almost thinks that she’s heard her wrong, because that can’t be true. That can’t be true. It’s not true, it’s just...Mira isn’t...why would Mira lie to her about that? Why would she...

Rumi shakes her head. “Don’t say that,” she begs, feeling tears prick at her eyes. “You can’t be in love with me.”

“Too late,” Mira mutters with a broken, almost bitter laugh. “Way too late.”

“That’s not fair,” Rumi whispers, feeling like her entire world has crashed down around her. “I’m—” Rumi feels herself choke, the words sticking in her throat. She slowly breathes in, staring at the carpet. “I wanted to be better for you,” she breathes out. “Do you understand me? Do you—please, Mira. Tell me you know what I’m trying to say.”

Rumi looks up, watching as Mira shakes her head, her eyes huge. She’s crying, too. Rumi hates seeing her cry. “No. Say it.”

“Please,” Rumi whispers. “Mira.”

“I said it,” Mira says, her voice a little louder. “I said it for you, Rumi. Why can’t you say it for me?”

“Because it shouldn’t be me!” Rumi hisses out, feeling guilty as soon as she does. “It shouldn’t be me. That’s not what you deserve.”

Mira shakes her head. “You don’t get to decide that. You can’t make that choice for me. Please, Rumi.”

Rumi lets out a strangled sob, dropping her head for a second. She feels like she’s dying, like years of shame and guilt and hate are being pulled out of her when she whispers, “I’m in love with you, Mira.”

I always have been. It’s always been you. It always will be you. I’m sorry that it’s me.

“And what about him?” Mira asks, quietly. “Did you love him?”

Rumi doesn’t know. 

“Not the same way that I love you,” she offers, because that much is true. “I wasn’t in love with him. I never could have been.”

Mira nods, and Rumi sees the tension drop from her shoulders. She looks exhausted when she meets Rumi’s eyes again, pain shining clearly in Mira’s own. It makes Rumi sick, guilt and shame and bitterness swirling in her chest, getting dangerously close to suffocating her. 

For a long time, neither of them speak. For a long time, neither of them move. The weight of what’s been said hangs heavily in the air between them, thicker than any tension they’ve had for the past month. It makes Rumi feel like she’s choking, like she’s lightheaded, like she doesn’t know where she begins and where she ends, or who she even is anymore.

Eventually, Rumi pushes herself up off her end of the couch, slowly padding over to stand in front of Mira. The request goes unspoken, with Rumi only asking with her eyes. The subtle twitch of Mira’s lips, the way her brows draw together for half a second, is more than enough of a response.

Rumi settles down beside her, wrapping her arms around Mira’s shoulders. It doesn’t take any time at all before Mira is wrapping her own arms around Rumi’s sides, her head burying in her shoulder. Rumi can feel the weight of the world disappear all around them, can feel the immediate relief that surges through her body like a wildfire when Mira returns the touch, when she pulls Rumi in closer, when she practically digs her nails into the skin on her back, holding her firmly there, like Mira is afraid to let her go.

Rumi doesn’t know how much time they spend there on the couch, wrapped up in each other. She can hear Mira’s heartbeat even out after about twenty minutes, and carefully pulling back just a few inches is enough for her to tell that Mira has completely passed out. 

She does her best to adjust them without accidentally waking Mira up, cautiously scooting back a bit so she can lean against the couch and have Mira largely on top of her. It works better than expected, with Mira making no noises of protest. Rumi sinks into the softness of her couch—she missed her couch—and tightly wraps her arms around Mira, bringing one hand up to cup the back of her head, fingers carding through her hair.

Rumi quietly asks the honmoon to move her phone to her, wincing when it floats along the honmoon’s threads, dangerously close to dropping on the ground, and she really doesn’t want to wake Mira up.

Rumi uses one hand to pull up Zoey’s contact, quickly typing out, We talked and I think it's going to be okay. I love you so much Zoey I’m so sorry for everything I promise I’ll make it up to you.

Zoey responds immediately, with a link to...

Rumi grins so hard her face hurts, letting out a soft sob. She sends a dozen purple hearts, following those up with, I will buy you literally anything in the world for the rest of our lives I promise I love you so much 

This time, Zoey sends just about a thousand blue hearts—Rumi counts her adding one more than the purple hearts she just sent—and sends back, I LOVE YOU!!!! i love BOTH of you!!!! you do owe me though like tbh kind of massively but that’s ok <3 you guys are literally my whole world thank you for trying (let mira see this too it goes for her also)!

Rumi sends off a quick promise—she’ll show Mira when she wakes up—and gently sets her phone on the couch, tucked a little to the side. She moves her arms back around Mira, feeling the weight of their conversation sink back into her head, the confession, the admission, the way Mira had looked at her, and...

Her heart hammers in her chest, thousands of emotions swirling around wildly inside of her. 

For the first time that she can remember, Rumi doesn’t swallow them back. She lets herself feel and feel and feel until she’s silently sobbing, doing her best to not wake Mira up. It feels like she’s been broken into a thousand pieces, but that awful ache in her chest, the fear of returning home, has gone away entirely. 

By the time she cries herself into exhaustion, Rumi feels the most hopeful she’s felt in her entire life.

Maybe they’re not soulmates. Maybe fate hasn’t woven them together. 

Rumi swears that she’ll take the honmoon’s threads herself and hold onto Mira until the day she dies if that’s what it takes to keep her, to keep this. Maybe they aren’t soulmates, but Rumi will do everything in her power to give her soul up to Mira in a way that actually means something to her.